Conrad and son John in front of 'Pent Farm'

Conrad's next project regarded the collaboration with Ford Madox Ford (Ford's real name was 'Hueffer'). Together with Ford he wrote several stories starting from the year 1900. Mister Hueffer, based on the reports of some witnesses, must have been sort of a 'strange person'. He was rejected by most of Conrad's friends, but Jessie Conrad disliked him the most. There must have been several arguments between Jessie and Conrad because of his companion. Ernest Hemingway later wrote about him:

I had always avoided looking at Ford when I could and I always held my. breath when I was near him in a closed room, but this was the open air ...'

(Hemingway; A moveable feast)

Some of his works from this 'great period' clearly show the financial situation he was trapped in. One of his best known stories today is 'Heart of Darkness' (widely known also because of the 1979 movie 'Apocalypse Now', directed by Francis Ford Coppola), but some critics pay attention to the fact that 'Heart of Darkness' has a very long beginning, but a short climax and end. Finally, they say, this novel is only sort of a longer short-story.

Thomas E. Lawrence once said about Conrad's literature:

'He's absolutely the most haunting thing in prose that ever was ... I wish I knew how every paragraph he writes (... they are all paragraphs: he seldom writes a single sentence...) goes on sounding in waves, like the note of a tenor bell, after it stops ... it all ends in a kind of hunger.'

(Lawrence had met Conrad in 1920 at the home of the author Hugh Walpole and he visited him on July 18, 1920 in Bishopsbourne).

If one compares 'Heart of Darkness' with 'Nostromo' we have to realize that 'Nostromo' differs in the way that it is the ultimate experiment of dealing with a tremendous tale, which includes the literary production of a complex state.

However, both novels belong to the most brilliant works from Conrad and to the most influential pieces of literature from the beginning of the 20th Century.

Conrad defended Hueffer desultorily against his critics 'he is not such a bad guy'. In reality he had needed him to act as audience, producer of ideas, secretary and so on. Even Henry James thought that Ford could 'ruin Conrad's style'. Anyway: It is true that Conrad and Ford Madox worked together on several books (including 'Nostromo'). In 1909 the relationship ended abruptly.