Clifford Lea Bax (13 July 1886 – 18 November 1962)[2][3] was a versatile English writer, known particularly as a playwright, a journalist, critic and editor, and a poet, lyricist and hymn writer. He also was a translator (for example, ofGoldoni). The composerArnold Bax was his brother, and set some of his words to music.
The youngest son of Alfred Ridley Bax (1844–1918) and his wife, Charlotte Ellen (1860–1940), daughter of Rev. William Knibb Lea, of Amoy, China,[4][2]Bax was born inUpper Tooting, south London (notKnightsbridge, as sometimes stated). His father was abarrister of theMiddle Temple, but having a private income he did not practise. In 1896 the family moved to a mansion inHampstead.[5] He was educated at theSlade and theHeatherley Art School.[6] He gave up painting to concentrate on writing.
Independent wealth gave Bax time to write, and social connections. He had an apartment inAlbany, the apartment complex in Piccadilly, London. He was a friend ofGustav Holst, whom he introduced toastrology,[7] the criticJames Agate, andArthur Ransome, among others. He met and played chess withAleister Crowley in 1904, and kept up an acquaintance with him over the years, later in the 1930s introducing both the artistFrieda Harris and the writerJohn Symonds to him.[8] An early venture (1908–1914) wasOrpheus, atheosophical magazine he edited. His interest in the esoteric extended to editing works ofJakob Boehme, and helpingAllan Bennett, the Buddhist.
His first play on the commercial stage wasThe Poetasters of Ispahan (1912), and he became a fixture of British drama for a generation. He was involved in thePhoenix Society (1919–1926), concerned with reviving older plays, and theIncorporated Stage Society.
He also edited, withAustin Osman Spare,Golden Hind, an artistic and literary magazine that appeared from October 1922 to July 1924.
He married actress and jewellery-maker Gwendolen Daphne Bishop, née Bernhard-Smith, on 21 September 1910.[10] Their daughter, Undine, was born 6 August 1911.[11]
In 1927, Bax married Vera, née Rawnsley, a painter and poet (1888–1974). Rawnsley was previously married to Stanley Kennedy North, an artist, andAlexander Bell Filson Young (1876–1938), a journalist with whom she had two sons: William David Loraine Filson-Young and Richard Filson-Young; they—Bax's stepsons—were both killed inWorld War II.[12]
