[1] Heuffer was born in 1877 in Surrey to Catherine Madox Brown, an artist, and Francis Hueffer, a German-English music critic and librettist.

In it, he colourfully recounted his penurious and picaresque existence living in the public spaces of an unfamiliar city, finding, due to his "provincial" accent and English phraseology, no immediate career in writing and only dead-end jobs, including bartender, delicatessen assistant and sideshow "fakir".

He recounted that his return trip to England saw him travelling in steerage, stoking coal on the steamer which carried him home.

[3] While covering the Mexican Revolution for the Daily Express, he was reported in 1910 to have been "executed and buried" for spying on behalf of the Americans, having been court-martialed and sentenced to death; British intervention saw him safely out of the country.

[2] During the First World War, fought for the British For ten years, he was the music critic for The Times.