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+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75130 ***
+
+=Transcriber’s Note:= The chapter numbering in this book is as printed:
+there is no Chapter VIII and no Chapter XII.
+
+
+
+
+
+TEX
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Alexander Teixeira de Mattos]
+
+
+
+
+                                   TEX
+
+                          A CHAPTER IN THE LIFE
+                                    OF
+
+                       ALEXANDER TEIXEIRA DE MATTOS
+
+                                    BY
+                             STEPHEN McKENNA
+
+                              [Illustration]
+
+                                 NEW YORK
+                          DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
+                                   1922
+
+                             COPYRIGHT, 1922,
+                     BY DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, INC.
+
+                            Printed in U.S.A.
+
+                           VAIL-BALLOU COMPANY
+                         Binghamton and New York
+
+
+
+
+                                    To
+                               ALFRED SUTRO
+
+I dedicate to you this slight tribute to the memory of our friend. You
+were the luckier, in knowing him the longer. I shall be more than content
+if you find, in reading this book, as I found in reading his letters
+again, that he has returned to us even for a moment and that a whim of
+his language or an echo of his laughter has recreated the triple alliance
+which he founded.
+
+
+
+
+I trust also you may be long without finding out the devil that there
+is in a bereavement. After love it is the one great surprise that life
+preserves for us. Now I don’t think I can be astonished any more.
+
+                                        ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON: _Letters_.
+
+
+
+
+TEX
+
+
+
+
+Alexander Teixeira de Mattos
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+“_A great translator_,” one friend wrote of Teixeira, “_is far more rare
+than a great author._”
+
+Judged by the quality and volume of his work, by the range of foreign
+languages from which he translated and by the perfection of the English
+in which he rendered them, Teixeira was incontestably the greatest
+translator of his time. Throughout Great Britain and the United States
+his name has long been held in honour by all who have watched, cheering,
+as the literature of France and Belgium, of Germany and the Netherlands,
+of Denmark and Norway strode along the broad viaduct which his labours
+had, in great part, established.
+
+Of the man, apart from his name, little has been made public. His love
+of laughing at himself might prompt him to say: “When you write my
+_Life and Letters_ ...”; but his modesty and his humour would have been
+perturbed in equal measure by the vision of a solemn biography and a
+low-voiced press. “I was a little bit underpraised before,” he once
+confessed; “I’m being a little bit overpraised now.” Since the best of
+himself went impartially into all that he wrote, his conscience could
+never be haunted by the recollection of shoddy workmanship, even in the
+days before he had a reputation to jeopardize; nor, when he had won
+recognition, could his head be turned by the announcement that he had
+created a masterpiece. If he enjoyed the consciousness of having filled
+the English treasury with the literary spoils of six countries, he
+dissembled his enjoyment. In so far as he wished to be remembered at all,
+it was not as a man of letters, but as a friend, a connoisseur of life,
+a man of sympathy unaging and zest unstaled, a lover of simple jests, a
+laughing philosopher. Of their charity, he wished those who loved him to
+have masses said for the repose of his soul; he would have been tortured
+by the thought that, in life or death, he had brought unhappiness to
+any one or that, dead or living, he had prompted any one to discuss him
+with pomposity. “Are you not being a little solemn?” was a question that
+alternated with the advice: “Cultivate a pococurantist attitude to life.”
+
+“If there had been no _Alice in Wonderland_,” said another friend, “it
+would have been necessary for Tex to create her.”
+
+Those who knew the translator of Fabre and Ewald, of Maeterlinck and
+Couperus only by his awe-inspiring name must detect in this a hint that
+Alexander Teixeira de Mattos had a lighter side to his nature; the
+suspicion can best be established or laid by the evidence of his own
+letters.
+
+The present volume is an attempt to sketch the man in outline for those
+readers who have recognized his talent in scholarship without guessing
+his genius for friendship. “The apostles are not all dead,” he wrote,
+in criticism of the legends that were growing up around the men of the
+nineties; “many of them are your living contemporaries; you could, if you
+like, receive at first hand their memories of their dead fellows.” ... It
+is the purpose of this sketch to present one ‘apostle’ as he revealed
+himself to one of his disciples. A biography and bibliography will be
+found in the appropriate works of reference. Only a single chapter has
+been attempted here; of those who knew him during the nineties, which
+he loved so well and of which he preserved the tradition so faithfully,
+perhaps one will write that earlier chapter and describe Teixeira in the
+position which he took up on their outskirts. And one better qualified
+than the present writer should paint this sphinx of the bridge-table,
+with his perversity of declaration and his brilliance of play. “You have
+made your contract,” admitted a friend who was partnering him for the
+first time; “but ... but ... but _why_ that declaration?” “I wanted to
+see your expression,” answered Teixeira with the complacency of a man
+who did not greatly mind whether he won or lost, but abominated a dull
+game. Those who knew him all his life may feel, with the writer, that the
+last half-dozen years constitute, naturally and dramatically, a chapter
+by themselves. They are the period of his literary recognition and,
+unhappily, of his physical decline; of his emergence from seclusion; of
+his first public services and his last private friendships.
+
+By 1914 Teixeira stood in the forefront of English translators; and,
+through his labours, translation had won a place in the forefront of
+English literature. Almost simultaneously with the outbreak of war,
+he was attacked by the heart-affection that ultimately killed him;
+and the record of this period is the record of an invalid. Ill-health
+notwithstanding, he offered his energy and ability to the country of his
+adoption; and, in an emergency war-department largely staffed by men of
+letters, the most retiring of them all became enmeshed in the machinery
+of government. From his marriage until the war, Teixeira had lived an
+almost monastic life, only relaxing his rule of solitary work in favour
+of the bridge-table. Once set in the midst of appreciative friends,
+this sham recluse found himself entertaining and being entertained,
+joining new clubs, indulging his old inscrutable sociability and almost
+overcoming his former shyness.
+
+For three-and-a-half out of these last seven years, one of Teixeira’s
+colleagues worked with him almost daily at the same table in the same
+room of the same department. The rare separations due to leave or illness
+were countered by an almost daily correspondence, conducted in the spirit
+of an intimate and elaborate game; and, when the work of the department
+ended, the letters—sometimes interrupted by a diary or suspended for a
+meeting—kept the intimacy unbroken.
+
+So written, they are as personal, as discursive and—to a stranger—as full
+of allusion as the long-sustained conversation of two friends. It is to
+be hoped that, in their present form, they are at least not obscure; of
+these, and of all, letters it must not be forgotten that the writer was
+not counting his words for a telegram nor selecting his subjects for
+later publication.
+
+From his half of the correspondence—in a life untouched by
+drama—Teixeira’s personality may be left to reconstruct itself. Not every
+side of his character is revealed, for an interchange conducted primarily
+as a game afforded him few opportunities of exhibiting his serene
+philosophy and meditative bent. The absence of all calculation from his
+mind—a part of his refusal to grow up—may, for want of counter-availing
+ballast, be interpreted as flippancy. And, as the man was greater than
+the word he wrote and the word he translated, his letters have to be
+supplied by imagination with some of the radiance which he shed over
+preposterous story and trivial jest. Charm, which is so hard to analyse
+in the living, is yet harder to recapture from the dead; but, if the
+record of a single friendship can suggest loyalty, courage, generosity
+and tenderness, if a whimsical turn of phrase can indicate humour,
+patience and an infinite capacity for providing and receiving enjoyment,
+Teixeira’s letters will preserve, for those who did not know him, the
+fragrance of spirit recognized and remembered by all who did.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+In the autumn of 1914 a censorship department was improvised in the
+office of the National Service League. A press-gang of two, working the
+clubs of London and the colleges of Oxford, established the nucleus of
+a staff; and the first recruits were given, as their earliest duty, the
+task of bringing in more recruits. As the department had been formed to
+examine the commercial correspondence of neutrals and enemies, the first
+qualification of a candidate was a knowledge of languages; and, in the
+preliminary search for recruits, Alfred Sutro convinced the friend who
+had succeeded him in translating Maeterlinck that a man who was equally
+at home in English, French, German, Flemish, Dutch and Danish, with
+a smattering of ecclesiastical Latin, was too valuable to be spared.
+Teixeira joined the growing brotherhood of lawyers, dons and business
+men in Palace Street, Westminster, advising on intercepted letters and
+cables, curtailing the activities of traders in contraband, assimilating
+the procedure of a government department and being paid stealthily each
+week, like a member of some criminal association, with a furtive bundle
+of notes.
+
+It was his first experience of the public service, almost his only taste
+of responsibility; and it marked the end of the cloistered life. Though
+he brought to his new work a varied knowledge of affairs, Teixeira had
+participated but little in them since his marriage in 1900. The friends
+of his youth, when he was living in the Temple,—John Gray and Ernest
+Dowson, William Wilde (whose widow he married) and William Campbell,—such
+acquaintances as Oscar Wilde and Max Beerbohm, Robert Ross and Bernard
+Shaw, Leonard Smithers and Frank Harris, were for the most part scattered
+or dead; and, though he kept touch with J. T. Grein, Edgar Jepson, Alfred
+Sutro and a few more, he seemed at this time, after Campbell’s death, to
+lack opportunity and inclination for making new friends.
+
+His gregarious years, and the varied experience which they brought,
+belonged to an earlier period. Coming from Amsterdam to London in 1874
+at the age of nine, the son of a Dutch father and an English mother,
+Teixeira[1] placed himself under instruction with Monsignor Capel and
+was received into the Holy Roman Catholic Church. In blood, faith and
+nationality, the Dutch Protestant of Portuguese-Jewish extraction had
+thus passed through many vicissitudes before he married an Irish wife,
+became a British citizen and died a Catholic. Traces of the Jew survived
+in his appearance; of the Dutchman in his speech; and his intellectual
+and racial mixed ancestry was betrayed by a cosmopolitan outlook.
+Ignorant of many prejudices that are the native Briton’s birthright, he
+remained ever aloof from the passions of British thought and speech. If
+he respected, at least he could not share the conventional enthusiasms
+nor associate himself with the conventional judgements of his new
+countrymen. He wrote of his neighbours among whom he had lived for
+more than forty years, with an unaffected sense of remoteness, as “the
+English”; after his naturalization, he was fond of talking, tongue
+in cheek, about what “we English” thought and did; but, in the last
+analysis, he embodied too many various strains to favour any single
+nationality.
+
+After being educated at the Kensington Catholic Public School and at
+Beaumont, Teixeira worked for some time in the City and was rescued for
+literature by J. T. Grein, who made him secretary of the Independent
+Theatre. By his work as a translator and as the London correspondent of a
+Dutch paper, he lived precariously until his renderings of Maeterlinck,
+whose official translator he became with _The Double Garden_, called
+public attention to a new quality of scholarship. Though he flirted with
+journalism, as editor of _Dramatic Opinions_ and of _The Candid Friend_,
+and with publishing, in connection with Leonard Smithers, translation
+was the business of his life until he entered government service. He is
+best known for his version of Fabre’s natural history, which he lived
+to complete and which he himself regarded as his greatest achievement,
+for the later plays and essays of Maeterlinck, for the novels and stories
+of Ewald and for the novels of Couperus. These, however, formed only a
+part of his output; and his bibliography includes the names of Zola,
+Châteaubriand, de Tocqueville, President Kruger, Maurice Leblanc, Madame
+Leblanc, Streuvels and many more. One work alone ran to more than a
+million words; and he married on a commission to translate what he called
+“the longest book in any language”.
+
+The improvised censorship was not long suffered to function unmolested.
+The home secretary, learning that his majesty’s mails were being opened
+without due authority, warned the unorthodox censors that they were
+incurring a heavy fine for each offence and advised them to regularize
+their position. Simultaneously, the Customs were thrown into difficulty
+and confusion,[2] by the proclamation of the king in council, forbidding
+all trade with the enemy: in the absence of records, investigation and an
+intelligence department, it was impossible to say whether goods cleared
+from London would ultimately reach enemy destination; and the censors who
+were watching the cable and wireless operations of Dutch and Scandinavian
+importers seemed the natural advisers to approach. At this point the
+embryonic department, which had risen from the ashes of the National
+Service League, joined with a licensing delegation from the Customs to
+form the War Trade Department and Trade Clearing House.
+
+Drifting about Westminster from Palace Street to Central Buildings, from
+Central Buildings to Broadway House and from Broadway House to Lake
+Buildings, St. James’ Park, the War Trade Intelligence Department, as it
+came to be called, was made the advisory body to the Blockade Department
+of the Foreign Office, with Lord Robert Cecil as its parliamentary
+chief, Sir Henry Penson, of Worcester College, as its chairman, and H.
+W. C. Davis, of Balliol, as its deputy-chairman. Teixeira, as the head
+of the Intelligence Section, controlled the supply of advice on the
+export of “prohibited commodities” to neutral countries; as a member
+of the Advisory Board, he came later to share in responsibility for
+the department as a whole. Among his colleagues, not already named,
+were “Freddie” Browning, the first organizer of the department, O.
+R. A. Simpkin, now Public Trustee, H. B. Betterton, now a member of
+parliament, Michael Sadleir, the novelist, R. S. Rait, the Scottish
+Historiographer-Royal, John Palmer, the dramatic critic, and G. L.
+Bickersteth, the translator of Carducci.
+
+When the department came to an end, Teixeira resumed his interrupted task
+of translation, which had, indeed, never been wholly abandoned; his daily
+programme during the war was to work at home from 5.0 a.m. till 8.0 a.m.
+and in his department from 10.0 a.m. till 6.0 p.m. or 7.0 p.m., then to
+play bridge for an hour at the Cleveland Club, returning home in time for
+a light dinner and an early bed.[3]
+
+Leisure, when at last it came to him, was not to be long enjoyed:
+early in 1920, a further break in health compelled him to undertake
+a rest-cure, first at Crowborough and then in the Isle of Wight. He
+returned to Chelsea in the spring of 1921 and spent the summer and
+autumn working in London or staying with friends in the country, to all
+appearances better than he had been for some years, though in play and
+work alike he had now to walk circumspectly. Towards the end of the year
+he went to Cornwall for the winter and collapsed from _angina pectoris_
+on 5 December 1921.
+
+In a life of nearly fifty-seven years Teixeira escaped almost everything
+that could be considered spectacular. Happy in the devotion of his wife
+and the love of his friends, unshaken in the faith which he had embraced
+and untroubled by the misgivings and melancholy that assail a temperament
+less serene, he faced the world with a manner of gentle understanding
+and a philosophy of almost universal toleration. His only child—a
+boy—died within a few hours of birth; Teixeira was troubled for years by
+ill-health; he was never rich and seldom even assured of a comfortable
+income. Nevertheless his temper or faith gave him power to extract more
+amusement from his sufferings than most men derive from the plentitude
+of health and fortune. Of a malady new even to his experience he writes:
+“Is death imminent? Why do I always have the rarer disorders?” He loved
+life to the end—the world was always “God’s dear world” to him—; to the
+end, he, who had known so many of the world’s waifs, continued forbearing
+to all but the censorious. “I was taught very early in life,” he writes,
+“to make every allowance for men of any genius, whereas you look for a
+public-school attitude towards all and sundry.... You see, if one cared
+to take the pains, one could make you detest pretty well everybody you
+know and like. For everybody has a mean, petty, shabby, cowardly side to
+him; and one had only to tell you of what the man in question chooses to
+keep concealed.” ...
+
+“Life,” said Samuel Butler, “is like playing a violin solo in public
+and learning the instrument as one goes on.” Those who met Teixeira
+only in his later years must have felt that he was born a master of his
+instrument; it is not to be imagined that there could ever have been a
+time when he was ignorant of the grace, the urbanity, the consideration
+and the gusto that mark off the artist in life from his fellows.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+Though his letters contain scattered references to the principles which
+he followed in translation, Teixeira could never be persuaded to publish
+his complete and considered theory. His excuse was that he had never
+been able to write more than eight hundred words of original matter, a
+disability that once threatened him with disaster when he was invited
+to lecture on the science and art of bridge to the members of a club
+formed for mutual improvement and the pursuit of learning. After being
+entertained at a fortifying banquet, Teixeira delivered his eight-hundred
+words. As, at the end of the two and three-quarter minutes which his
+reading occupied, the audience seemed ready and even anxious for more,
+he read his address a second time. Later, he began in the middle; later
+still, he ran disgracefully from the hall.
+
+The method which he followed in translation has, therefore, to be
+reconstructed from the internal evidence of his books and from personal
+experience in collaboration.
+
+“I shall not,” wrote Matthew Arnold in criticizing Newman, “in the least
+concern myself with theories of translation as such. But I advise the
+translator not to try ‘to rear on the basis of the _Iliad_, a poem that
+shall affect our countrymen as the original may be conceived to have
+affected its natural hearers’; and for this simple reason, that we cannot
+possibly tell _how_ the _Iliad_ ‘affected its natural hearers.’”
+
+The first quality that distinguishes Teixeira from most of the
+translators whose work and methods of work have swelled the controversial
+literature of translation is that he confined himself to modern authors.
+Unacquainted with Greek and little versed in Latin, he was never faced
+with the difficulty of having to imagine how an original work affected
+its natural hearers. Maeterlinck and Couperus were his personal friends;
+Fabre and Ewald, who predeceased him, were older contemporaries; it is
+only with de Tocqueville and Châteaubriand that he had to gauge the
+intellectual atmosphere of an earlier generation. In judging whether
+his English rendering left on the minds of English readers the same
+impression as the original had left on its “natural hearers”, he had
+a court of appeal always available; and, while the English reader is
+“lulled into the illusion that he is reading an original work”, the
+foreign author can testify to the fidelity with which his text has been
+followed and his spirit reproduced. “What a magnificent translation _The
+Tour_ is!” Couperus writes; “what a most charming little book it has
+become! I am in raptures over it and have read it and reread it all day
+and have had tears in my eyes and have laughed over it. You may think it
+silly of me to say all this; but it has become an exquisitely beautiful
+work in its English form. My warmest congratulations!”
+
+To achieve this illusion, Teixeira began his literary life with the
+most essential quality of a translator: an equal knowledge of the
+language that was to be translated and of the language into which he was
+translating it. English and Dutch came to him by inheritance; French
+and Flemish, German and Danish he added by study; and throughout his
+working life he was incessantly sharpening, polishing and adding to
+his tools. Limitless reading refreshed a vast vocabulary; meticulous
+accuracy refined his meanings and justified his usages. His dictionaries
+were annotated freely; and the margins of his manuscripts were filled
+with challenges and suggestions for his friends to consider, until his
+own exacting fastidiousness had at last been satisfied. Apart from
+professional lexicographers, it would have been difficult to find a man
+with more words in current use; it would have been almost impossible
+to find one who employed them with nicer precision. Learning sat too
+lightly on his shoulders to make him vain of it, but no one could hear
+or correspond with him without realizing the presence of a purist; he
+seldom quoted, mistrusting his memory, confessed himself an amateur
+in colloquial dialogue and refused with equal obstinacy to venture on
+English metaphors and English field-sports. “I do not know the difference
+between a niblick and a foursome,” he would protest. “When you say that
+your withers are unwrung, I do not know whether you are boasting or
+complaining. What are your withers? Have you any, to begin with? Do you
+‘wring’ them or ‘ring’ them? And why can’t you leave them alone?”
+
+Not content with mastering five foreign languages, Teixeira created a
+new literary English for every new kind of book that he translated. His
+versions of Maeterlinck’s _Blue Bird_, Couperus’ _Old People and The
+Things That Pass_, Fabre’s _Hunting Wasps_ and Ewald’s _My Little Boy_
+have nothing in common but their exquisite sympathy and scholarship;
+four different men might have produced them if four men could be
+found with the same taste, knowledge and diligence. Fabre’s ingenuous
+air of perpetual discovery demanded the style of a grave, grown-up
+child; Maeterlinck’s mystical essays invited a hint of preciosity and
+aloofness, to suggest that omniscience was expounding infinity through
+symbols older than time; and the atmospheric sixth-sense of Couperus
+had to be communicated by a sensitiveness of language that could create
+pictures and conjure up intangible clouds of discontent, guilty terror,
+suppressed antagonism or universal boredom. In reading the original,
+Teixeira seemed to steep himself in the personality of his author until
+he could pass, like a repertory actor, from one mood and expression
+to another; his own mannerisms are confined to a few easily defended
+peculiarities of spelling and punctuation.
+
+For a man who must surely have divined that his calibre was unique,
+Teixeira was engagingly free from touchiness. In translating a book, as
+in organizing a department, he was magnificently grateful for the word
+that had eluded him and for the criticism which he had not foreseen. A
+purist in language and a precisian in everything, he realized that a
+living style is throttled by too great obedience to rules; but he was
+afraid, even in dialogue, of unchaining a wind of colloquialism which
+he might be unable to control; and, in constructing the deliberately
+artificial speech of his Maeterlinck translations, he recognized that he
+lacked his readers’ age-old familiarity with the English of the Bible.
+Though his passion for consistency led him to say: “My name ought to
+have been Procrus-Tex,” he stretched out both hands for an authority
+that would justify him in broadening his rule. “I have always spelt
+judgment without an e in the middle,” he declared in 1915, when, with the
+gravity that characterized his more trivial decisions, he had abandoned
+violet ink, because it seemed frivolous in war-time, and the long s (ſ),
+because it bore a Teutonic aspect. “I am too old to change now; and you
+know my rule, All or None.” Four years later he announced: “In future
+I shall spell ‘judgement’ with an e in the middle. The New English
+Dictionary favours it; you assure me that it is so spelt in your English
+prayer-book; and Germany has signed the peace terms.”
+
+No comparison with other translators can be attempted until another
+arise with Teixeira’s range of languages and his volume of achievement.
+He himself could never say, within a dozen, how many books he had
+translated; but in them all he created such an illusion of originality
+that they are not suspected of being translations until his name is seen.
+In a wider view, he undermined the pretensions of those who boasted
+that they could never read translations; and, if no one is likely to be
+found with all his gifts, he at least prepared the way for a new school
+of translators. It may be hoped that, after the battles which he fought,
+important foreign authors will not again be sacrificed to illiterate
+hacks at five-shillings a thousand words: it may even be expected that
+competent scholars will no longer disdain the task of translating
+contemporary works. All literary predictions are rash; but there seems
+little risk in prophesying that Teixeira’s renderings of Fabre, Couperus
+and Maeterlinck will be read as long as the originals.
+
+The tangible fruits of his astonishing industry are only a part of his
+achievement: it is to him, in company with Constance Garnett, William
+Archer, Aylmer Maude and the other undaunted pioneers, that English
+readers owe their escape from the self-satisfied insularity with which
+they had protected themselves against continental literature. When
+publishers have been convinced that translations need not be unprofitable
+and when a conservative public has discovered that they need not be
+unreadable, a future generation may be privileged to have prompt access
+to every noteworthy book in whatsoever language it has been written,
+without waiting as the present generation has had to wait for an English
+rendering of Tolstoi, Turgenieff, Dostoieffski and Tchehov.
+
+In conversation Teixeira took little pleasure in discussing himself;
+in correspondence he could not help giving himself away. The reader
+will deduce, from his slow surrender of intimacy, the shyness that ever
+conflicted with his sociability; the absence of all allusions to his
+literary work, save when he fancied that a second opinion might help him,
+is evidence of a personal modesty that amounted almost to unconsciousness
+of his position in letters. Diffidence and sociability, first
+conflicting, then joining forces, led him in his departmental work to
+discuss every problem with a friend; and in all personal relationships,
+he needed an hourly confidant because everything in life was an adventure
+to be shared and might be worked in later to the saga with which he
+strove to make himself ridiculous for the diversion of his company.
+“Thus,” he writes of a childish freak, “do the elderly amuse themselves
+for the further amusement of a limited circle.” Weighty commissions were
+assembled, daring expeditions set out under his leadership to choose a
+dressing-gown for country-house wear; the grey tall-hat with which he
+surprised one private view of the Royal Academy was no less of a surprise
+to him and even more of an abiding pleasure. For a year or two afterwards
+he would telephone on the first of May: “If you will wear your goodish
+white topper to-day, I will wear mine”; and once, when these conspicuous
+headpieces were in evidence, he led the way to Covent Garden Market, with
+the words: “It is not every day that the women of the market see two men
+in such hats, such coats and such spats, standing before a fruit-stall
+with their canes crooked over their arms and their yellow gloves
+protruding from their pockets, consuming the first green figs of the year
+in the year’s first sunshine.”
+
+In conversation he once boasted that he was never bored; and, though
+every man and woman at the table volunteered the names of at least six
+people who would bore him to extinction, the boast was justified in
+that, however irksome one moment might be, it could always be invested
+afterwards with the glamour of an eccentric adventure. Somewhere,
+among his immediate ascendants, there must have been a not too remote
+ancestor of Peter Pan. On his fifty-sixth birthday, Teixeira was having
+a party arranged for him, with a cake and fifty-six tiny candles; for
+days beforehand he had been asking for presents of any kind, to impress
+the other visitors in his hotel; and, if he knew one joy greater than
+receiving presents, it was finding an excuse to give them.
+
+With the heart of a child in all things, he had the child’s quality of
+being frightened by small pains and undaunted by great; a cut finger was
+an occasion for panic, but the threat of blindness found him indomitable.
+Herein he was supported throughout life by the faith which he had
+acquired in boyhood and which he preserved until his death. “I save my
+temper,” he once wrote, “by not discussing religion except with Catholics
+or politics except with liberals. There’s room for discussion in the
+_nuances_; there’s too much room for it with those who call my black
+white.” ... While it was generally known among his friends that he was
+a devout Catholic, only a few were allowed to see how much reliance he
+placed in religion; and he would grow impatient with what he considered a
+morbid protestant passion for worrying at something that for him had been
+immutably settled.
+
+In political debates he would only join at the prompting of extreme
+sympathy or extreme exasperation. His native feeling for the Boers in
+the Transvaal was little shared in England during the South African
+war; and his loathing for English misrule in Ireland was too strong to
+be ventilated acceptably among the people whom he met most commonly in
+London. His connection with the Legitimist cause came to an end with the
+outbreak of war: though he had hitherto delighted in penetrating between
+the sentries at St. James’ Palace and placarding the wall with an appeal
+to all loyal subjects of the rightful king, he was unable to continue
+his allegiance when Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria became an enemy alien.
+
+Legitimacy and Catholicism, apart from other claims on his regard,
+gratified a love for ceremonial and tradition that would have been more
+incongruous in a liberal if Teixeira’s whole equipment of beliefs,
+practices and preferences had not been a collection of incongruities.
+Though he detested militarism, he could never understand why the English
+civilians omitted to uncover to the colours; hating pomposity, he enjoyed
+the grand manner in address and, on being greeted by a peer as “my dear
+sir,” replied “my dear lord” in a formula beloved by Disraeli. As a
+relief to an accuracy of expression which he himself called Procrustean
+and pernickety, he would transform any word that he thought would look
+or sound more engaging for a little mutilation. It was a bad day for the
+English of his letters when he read Heine and entered into competition
+for the most torturing play upon words; his case became hopeless when
+he was introduced to a couple of friends who could pun with him in
+four or five languages. It was this bent of mind that may justify the
+description of him[4] as the son of Edward Lear and the grandson of
+Charles Lamb.
+
+Underlying the whimsical humour of his letters and peeping through the
+mock solemnity of his speech was a young child’s concern for the welfare
+of his friends: himself never growing up, he never outgrew his generous
+delight in any success that came to them; their ill-health and sorrow
+were harder to bear than his own; and he shewed a child’s impulsive
+generosity in offering all he had in comfort. Sympathy, help, experience
+and advice were at hand for whosoever would take them: he had too long
+lived precariously to forget the tragedy of those who failed and failed
+again; he knew life too well to grow impatient with those who failed
+through no one’s fault but their own.
+
+Love of life, enduring to the end, knowledge of life, increasing every
+day, combined to join this heart of a child to the experience of an
+old man. As a connoisseur of food and wine, as of style and manner, he
+belonged to a generation that ranked life as the greatest of the fine
+arts. To lunch with him was to receive a liberal education in gastronomy,
+though his course of personal instruction sometimes broke down for lack
+of material: from time to time he would announce with jubilation that
+he had discovered some rare vintage in some unknown restaurant; a party
+would be organized to sample it, only to be informed that the last bottle
+had been consumed by Mr. Teixeira the day before.
+
+As an explorer, he remained, to his last hour, at the age when a
+boy lingers rapturously before one shop after another, enjoying all
+impartially, sharing his enjoyment with every passer-by, confident that
+life is an unending vista of glittering shop-windows and that the day
+must somehow be long enough for him to take them all in.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+Max Beerbohm’s caricature of Teixeira, discovered later—to the subject’s
+delight—in the waiting-room of an eminent gynaecologist, emphasizes
+the most strongly marked natural and acquired characteristics of his
+appearance: a big nose and a liking for the fantastic in dress. There is
+hardly space, in the drawing, even for the tiny hat of the music-hall
+comedian, so devastating is the sweep of that nose, outward from the
+lips, up and round, annihilating forehead and cranium until it merges
+in the nape of the neck. Of the dress no more need be said than that it
+looks like a valiant attempt to live up to the nose.
+
+As this caricature has not been published in any collection of Max
+Beerbohm’s drawings, it was probably unknown to most of those who were
+brought into the Intelligence Section of the War Trade Intelligence
+Department, there to be introduced to its head, to receive the handshake
+and bow of a courtier and to wonder how Tenniel could have drawn the
+old sheep in _Alice Through the Looking-Glass_ without Teixeira as a
+model. Tall and broad-shouldered, with thick black hair and a white face,
+tortoise-shell-rimmed spectacles, and a cigarette in a holder, taciturn,
+impassive and unsmiling, Teixeira never failed to conceal that he was
+more shy than his visitor. With articulation as beautifully clear as
+his writing and in words not less exquisitely chosen than the language
+of his books, he would introduce the newcomer to those with whom he was
+to work. Messengers would be despatched to bring an additional chair
+and table. In the resultant confusion, the immense, silent figure would
+walk away with a heavy tread, to find that a pile of papers, two feet
+high, had risen like an Indian mango where there had been but six inches
+a moment before. A voice of authority, rolling its r’s like the rumble
+of distant artillery, would telephone for more messengers; in time the
+pile would dwindle until the spectacles and then the nose and then the
+cigarette-holder were visible. In time, too, the newcomer recovered from
+his fright and set about learning the business of the department.
+
+It was a pleasant surprise to hear “this Olympian creature”, as Stevenson
+called Prince Florizel, addressed by Sutro as “Tex”; and, although the
+first terror was disabling, even the newcomer realized that every one in
+the section seemed happy. The Olympian creature never lost his temper, he
+condescended to jokes and invented nicknames; the appalling gravity was
+found to be a mask for shyness and a disguise for bubbling absurdity.
+
+In the summer of 1915 the machinery of the blockade was still making.
+The department, overworked and understaffed, was inadequately housed
+in a corner of Central Buildings, Westminster. In the autumn it moved
+to Broadway House, in Tothill Street; and one newcomer was invited to
+sit at Teixeira’s table as deputy-head of the section. Thenceforth,
+until the armistice, we worked together daily, save when one or other
+was on leave or ill and during the early summer of 1917 when I was
+sent to Washington. The office, changing almost weekly in personnel,
+underwent reconstruction when the blockade was modified in 1918: Teixeira
+became secretary to the department; I succeeded him as head of the
+intelligence section; and, when I left in 1919, he stayed behind to help
+in dismantling the old machine and in assembling a new one to supply
+economic information to the peace conference.
+
+Our correspondence for the last three years of the war was restricted to
+the times when one of us was away. These absences grew more frequent as
+Teixeira exchanged one illness for another. His letters present him as
+a government servant rejoicing in his work, tingling with the new sense
+of new responsibility and, “from his circumstances having been always
+such, that he had scarcely any share in the real business of life”,
+suggesting irresistibly a comparison with Dr. Johnson at the sale of his
+friend Thrale’s brewery, “bustling about, with an ink-horn and pen in his
+button-hole, like an exciseman”. So much of them, however, is taken up
+with departmental business that I have drawn sparingly upon them.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+The first five months of 1916 were a time of relatively good health for
+Teixeira; and our correspondence contains little more than an invitation,
+which he acknowledged in departmental language.
+
+I wrote:
+
+                                          _Tuesday, Jan. 4th, 1916._
+
+    _Though long I’ve wished to bid you come and dine,_
+        _Your way of life stood ever in the way;_
+    _For you, I gather, go to bed at nine_
+        _And rise at five (or five-fifteen) next day._
+
+    _Yet Tuesday brings my chance. At half-past eight_
+        _I go to guard my king; but, ere I go,_
+    _With meat and wine I purpose to inflate_
+        _My sagging stomach for an hour or so._
+
+    _Then will you join me? Seven o’clock, I think:_
+        _The Mausoleum Club is fairly near:_
+    _Whate’er your heart desire of food and drink,_
+        _And any kind of clothes you choose to wear._
+
+                                                           _S. McK._
+
+    _We should be glad, ~replies Teixeira~, if this application
+    could come up again in say a fortnight’s time._
+
+                                             _A. T._
+                                             _Trade Clearing House._
+
+When next I was summoned for duty as a special constable, the application
+was submitted again; and Teixeira dined with me at the Reform Club. Later
+in the year, though he had been warned by William Campbell, the greatest
+friend of his middle years, that a man who laughed so much would never
+be admitted to membership, I was allowed to propose him as a candidate;
+and from the day of his election he became one of the most popular
+figures both in the card-room and in the south-east corner of the big
+smoking-room, where his most intimate associates gathered.
+
+His hours of work, to which the first stanza refers, have already
+been mentioned; his methods call for a word or two of description.
+The library in Cheltenham Terrace looked out over the Duke of York’s
+School and was lined with book-cases wherever windows, fire-place or
+door permitted. The furniture consisted of a sofa, which was used for
+hat-boxes and more books; a writing-table, which was used for anything
+but writing; a revolving book-case, filled with works of reference; and
+the editorial chair from the office of _The Candid Friend_. Seating
+himself in dressing-gown and slippers, between the fire-place and the
+revolving book-case, Teixeira dug himself into position: a despatch-box
+under his feet raised his knees to an angle at which he could balance
+a dictionary upon them, with its edge resting on a miniature bureau;
+on the dictionary rested a blotting-pad; and every book that he needed
+was in reach either of his hand or an elongated pair of “lazy-tongs”;
+scissors, string, sealing-wax, india-rubber and knives were ingeniously
+and menacingly suspended from nails in the revolving book-case; on the
+top stood cigarettes, matches, a paste-pot and a vast copper ash-tub;
+and the colour of his violet carpet was chosen to conceal the occasional
+splashings of a violet-ink pen. With a telephone on one side to put him
+in touch with the outside world and with a bell on the other to secure
+his morning coffee, Teixeira could work without moving until evicted by
+force.
+
+In the beginning of June, he was ordered to Malvern.
+
+    _No news, ~he writes on the 10th~, except that I have arrived
+    and had some tea...._
+
+    _There are hawthorns at Malvern and rhododendrons of -dra but
+    also the most bloodthirsty hills. And there was an officer
+    in the train who told me that the feeling in Franst was most
+    “optimistic”._
+
+    _The proprietress of this hotel pronounces my name Teisheira.
+    This must be looked into._
+
+    _I s’pose I’m enjoying myself, ~he writes next day~. I feel
+    very restless._
+
+    _~[My cook]~, I forgot to tell you, was mounting guard over the
+    dispatch-box like a very sentinel, with hands duly folded: a
+    most proper spectacle. I nearly died, but not entirely, hunting
+    for my porter up and down the length of the longest train you
+    ever saw (I am sure this must be correct, in view of the fact
+    that you never did see this particular train)...._
+
+    _This hotel is not so uncomfortable: I slept eight hours; I
+    have a writing-table in my room; my bath was too hot to get
+    into; these are signs of human comfort, are not they? Nor
+    is the food nasty. Fortunately, there is not much of it. I
+    ordered me a bottle of Berncastler Doctor. They brought me
+    Liebfraumilch. I waved it away, saying that hock was acid and
+    gave me gout. Then, persuaded to be a Christian, I sent one
+    running after it before the doctor was opened and drank two
+    glasses; and it was delicious; and I have no gout._
+
+    _Why I sit boring you with this dull stuff I do not know: it is
+    certainly not worth including in the Life and Letters._
+
+Two days of solitude set him athirst for companionship.
+
+    _Good-morning, fair sir, ~he writes on 12.6.16~. I hope this
+    finds you as it leaves me at present, a little improved in
+    health. But I would not wish my worst enemy the weariness from
+    which I am suffering.... Picture me buying useless things so
+    that I may exchange a word with a shopman; for no one talks to
+    me here. Also the weather is bitterly cold._
+
+And next day:
+
+    _I have ... talked at length to a highly intelligent Dane, with
+    a massy pair of calves that do credit to his pastoral country.
+    But he has returned to town this morning._
+
+    _They play very low at the club, fortunately, for I lost 13/-,
+    which would have been £10, had I been playing R.A.C. points.
+    Also they make me too late to dress for dinner, which doesn’t
+    matter: nothing matters in this world._
+
+    _For the rest, I have reason to think that I shall begin to
+    cheer up from to-morrow and to remain cheerful until Saturday.
+    That is “speech-day”—I presume at Malvern College—when I expect
+    to see an awful invasion of horribobble papas and mammas._
+
+    _Bless you._
+
+    _The hoped-for cheerfulness has not yet arrived, ~he laments
+    on 14.6.16~. I live in one of the most tragic of worlds. But
+    ... I have had more conversation. The place of the Dane with
+    the fatted calves ... has been taken by a parson, a passon, a
+    parsoon, an elderly parsoon with the complete manner of the
+    late Mr. Penley in ~The Private Secretary~: he would like
+    to give every German a good, hard slap, I am sure. He is a
+    much-travelled man; and his ignorance of every place which he
+    has visited is thoroughly entertaining...._
+
+    _I am becoming popular at the club: they took 12/- out of me
+    yesterday. I must set my teeth and get it back though._
+
+    _The influx of odious parents, ~he writes on 18.6.16~, with
+    their loathy, freckled criminals of offspring has flustered
+    the waiters and is spoiling all my meals. What I do now is to
+    change for dinner after all and come in exactly an hour late
+    for meals. They have some way of keeping the food—such as it
+    is—piping hot; and so I do not suffer unduly for avoiding the
+    sight of some, at least, of the carroty-headed boys and their
+    thick-ankled sisters...._
+
+    _Ah well! I can begin to count the days until I am back among
+    you; and a glad day that will be for me! Nobody in the world, I
+    think, hates either rest or enjoyment so much as I do._
+
+    _Good-bye. I am going for a walk. I tell you frankly, I am
+    going for a walk. I tell you this frankly...._
+
+On Teixeira’s return to the department, our correspondence was suspended
+until I went to Cornwall for a week’s leave in August. When I wrote in
+praise of my surroundings, he replied with a warning:
+
+    _You are probably too young ever to have heard of ... a
+    play-actress ... who brought a breach of promise action ... and
+    earned the then record damages of £10,000. She took a cottage
+    somewhere the other day and brought her mother to live in it.
+    The mother said, “This is just the sort of place I like; I
+    shall be happy here,” then fell down the stairs and was dead in
+    half an hour...._
+
+    _... Remember me to the Atlantic...._
+
+The next letter contained a story from Ireland:
+
+                                            _Sligo, 18 August 1916._
+
+    _... Here, in this most distressful country, we are about to
+    experience again the blessings of coercion, administered by
+    Duke, K.C., and Carson, high priest of the cult. In Sligo, the
+    other day, two ladies treating each other in a public-house,
+    the barman intervened at the tenth drink, saying:_
+
+    _“Stop it now; ye can’t have any more; troth, I won’t sarve ye
+    again. Don’t ye know it’s Martial Law that’s on the people?”_
+
+    _Whereupon one of them enquired of the other:_
+
+    _“For the love of God, Mrs. Murphy, what’s he talking about at
+    all? Who’s Martial Law?”_
+
+    _To which her friend replied ~sotto voce~:_
+
+    _“Whist, don’t be showing your ignorance, ma’am! Don’t ye know
+    he’s a brother of Bonar Law’s?”..._
+
+As official papers accompanied every letter, a trace of departmental
+style is occasionally visible in private notes:
+
+               _War Trade Intelligence Department, 23 August, 1916._
+
+    _“Harry Edwin” ate a grouse last night and drank many glasses
+    of port. You can imagine the sort of grumpy ~commensal~ that he
+    is to-day._
+
+                                _A. T._
+
+    _“Harry Edwin.”
+        To see.
+        23.8.16._
+
+    _Seen and approved.
+        H. E. P._
+
+    _... Don’t overbathe, ~he adds as a postscript~. Why be so
+    reckless? You remind me of the London city “clurks” who arrive
+    in Switzerland one evening, run straight up the Matterhorn the
+    next morning. I believe that two per cent of them do not drop
+    dead._
+
+    _The Sehr Hochwohlgeboren und Verdammter Graf Zeppelin, ~he
+    writes on 25.18.16~, did some damage last night at Greenwich,
+    Blackwall (a power-station) etc. For the rest, no news. I am
+    picking up not wholly unconsidered trifles at the Wellington
+    and benefiting your Uncle Reggie ~pro rata~. ~[Bridge
+    winnings at this time were thriftily exchanged for War Savings
+    Certificates.]~ This morning I (pro)-rated the girl ... at the
+    post-office for not “pushing” those certificates. I said that,
+    whenever any one asked for a penny stamp, she should ask:_
+
+    _“May we not supply you with one of these?”_
+
+    _It went very well with the audience._
+
+    _This morning, ~he writes later~, I have bought my thirteenth
+    fifteen-and-sixpennyworth of Uncle Reggie. Mindful of my
+    injunction to “push” the goods, the post-office girl ... urged
+    me to buy a £19.7. affair which would be good for £25 in five
+    years’ time. Alas! Still, there are hopes._
+
+In his preface to _The Admirable Bashville_, Bernard Shaw explains his
+reason for throwing it into blank verse: “I had but a week to write it
+in. Blank verse is so childishly easy and expedious (hence, by the way,
+Shakespeare’s copious output), that by adopting it I was enabled to do
+within the week what would have cost me a month in prose.” Pressure of
+work sometimes drove Teixeira to a similar expedient in rimed verse:
+
+    _Letter just received, ~he writes in haste on 26.8.16. to
+    acknowledge the account of a bathing mishap~:_
+
+    _With great relief at noon I found_
+    _That S. McKenna was not drowned._
+
+    _Many thanks for the pendant to these lovely ~verses~._
+
+    _P.S. I note—and we all note—~he adds~—that you never express
+    the wish to see us all again. How different from my Malvern
+    letters! Ah, what a terrible thing is sincerity!_
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+On Holy Saturday, 1917, I was asked by the deputy-chairman whether I
+would represent the department on the mission which Mr. Balfour was
+taking to Washington with a view to coordinating the war-organization of
+Great Britain and the United States.
+
+For the next two months Teixeira and I communicated whenever a bag passed
+between the British Embassy and the Foreign Office, overflowing into a
+brief journal betweenwhiles. He also disposed of my varied correspondence
+with uniform discretion and with a courage that only failed him when
+unknown mothers asked him if I would stand sponsor to their children.
+
+    _The enquiries into the cause of your absence, ~he writes on
+    12.4.17~, have been distressing. More people ask if you are ill
+    than if you are being married. The unit of the last idea was
+    Sutro, who then went off to Davis and found out what he wanted
+    to know...._
+
+                                                         _13 April._
+
+    _The work is pretty stiff and I doubt if I can make this
+    desultory diary as gossipy as I could have wished. And, after
+    all, it will seem pretty stale and jejune by the time it
+    reaches you...._
+
+    _Your whereabouts are known now in the dept. and will be at the
+    club to-morrow, if any one asks me again. Hitherto great wonder
+    has reigned; but the “no blame attaches to his name” stunt has
+    worked exquisitely._
+
+The figure of Max Beerbohm’s caricature is seen in the following
+paragraph:
+
+    _I have ordered eight new coloured shirts, bringing the total
+    up to 23. Then I have about a dozen black-and-white shirts;
+    and only seven dress-shirts, I find. This makes 42 in all. My
+    father’s theory was that no gentleman should have fewer than
+    eighty shirts to his name. Times have changed; and we are a
+    petty and pettyfogging generation of mankind. On the other
+    hand, I have 33 ties, exclusive of white ties. I feel almost
+    sure that my father did not have so many as that. And I outdo
+    him utterly in boot-trees, of which I have just ordered a pair
+    to be marked “L8” and “R8,” meaning thereby that it is my
+    eighth pair. ~Sursum corda.~_
+
+Teixeira believed with almost complete sincerity that he would die on
+21 April 1917. The origin of this belief he never explained to me; and
+I do not know whether he confided it to others. This accounts for the
+following entry:
+
+    _Shall I live, I wonder, till the 22nd, to write to you that I
+    am still alive? When I allow my thoughts to dwell upon 21.4.17,
+    now but six brief days off, there rises to them the memory of
+    the horrible Widow’s Song which Vesta Victoria used to sing. I
+    will start the next page with the chorus; for you, poor young
+    fellow, know nothing of the songs that brightened the Augustan
+    age of the music-halls._
+
+    _Read and admire:_
+
+    _He was a good, kind husband,_
+    _One of the best of men:_
+      _So fond of his home, sweet home,_
+      _He never, never wanted to roam._
+    _There he would sit by the fire-side,_
+      _Such a chilly man was John!_
+    _I hope and trust_
+    _There’s a nice, warm fire_
+      _Where my old man’s gone._
+
+    _Gallows-humour, my dear executor, gallows-humour!_
+
+                                                         _16 April._
+
+    _Yesterday being a fine day, I have caught cold. A bad
+    look-out, executor, a bad look-out!_
+
+    _Adieu, cher ami._
+
+    _You will observe a brief hiatus, ~he writes on 19 April,
+    1917~. A letter begun to you on the 16th is reposing in my
+    drawer at the department, where I have not been since then,
+    having succumbed to an attack of bronchitis. And ~[my doctor]~
+    will not let me out till the 21st (“der Tag!”) at the earliest._
+
+_Der Tag_ was reached ...
+
+                                                   _21 April, 1917._
+
+    _It was a comfort and a joy to read this morning that your
+    party has arrived safely at Halifax. I propose to pass this
+    bloudie day without any cheap philosophizing. I am about cured
+    of my bronchitis, I think, though fearsomely weak; and, if
+    I “be” to “be” carried off to-day, it’ll be a motor-bus or
+    -cab that’ll do for me. Look out for a letter from me dated
+    to-morrow. I hope the voyage has done you all the good in the
+    world...._
+
+... _and survived_.
+
+                                                   _22 April, 1917._
+
+    _Ebbene, caro mio Stefano! You will be able to tell your
+    grandchildren that you once knew a man who for twenty years was
+    convinced that he would die on the day when he was fifty-two
+    years and twelve days old and who lived to be fifty-two and
+    thirteen...._
+
+    _Bottomley has turned against the new government and is
+    adumbrating his ideal government. He retains the present
+    foreign secretary, but nominates H. H. A. as lord chancellor
+    and Sir Edward Holden as chancellor of the exchequer. He wants
+    Beresford as minister of blockade. Oof!_
+
+    _Robbie Ross has a story of a German poet, one Oskar Schmidt,
+    “a charming fellow,” who, armed with the best letters of
+    recommendation, went to Oxford and spent several agreeable
+    weeks there. The fine flower of his observations was:_
+
+    _“Der Oxfort oontercratuades, dey go apout between a melangolly
+    and a flegma.”..._
+
+                                                   _24 April, 1917._
+
+    _Your name appeared in the ~Times~ yesterday; and I am now
+    able to read daily, or I hope, shall be, how Mr. McKenna
+    bowed, raised his hat and, escorted by cavalry, took his first
+    cocktail on American soil. I do hope that you are not only
+    having the time of your life but feeling amazingly well. J.
+    pictures you a victim of indigestion; but I, knowing your
+    justly celebrated strength of character, have no fears on that
+    score. ~Cura ut valeas.~_
+
+                                                      _4 May, 1917._
+
+    _This is a private-view day. The sun is blazing truculently. I
+    am wearing a new shirt, white with black and yellow lines (the
+    Teixeira colours), and the white hat and all’s well in God’s
+    dear world._
+
+That these sartorial efforts were not wasted is shewn by the next entry:
+
+                                                      _5 May, 1917._
+
+    _... From yesterday’s Star:_
+
+                      _“Society Sees the Pictures_
+
+    _“The beautiful spring day induced one Beau Brummel to sport a
+    white box-hat”!!!_
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+In the middle of May I cabled to Teixeira in code, asking him to forward
+no more letters; and I did not hear from him again until my return to
+England in the second week of June.
+
+As soon as I was ready to take his place, he went to Harrogate for a
+cure and remained there for six weeks. For part of the time I took his
+place in another sense of the phrase. At the end of July the Air Board
+commandeered my flat; and, until I could find, decorate and furnish
+another, Teixeira and his wife most kindly placed their house at my
+disposal. This will explain the following extract:
+
+                                         _Harrogate: 15 July, 1917._
+
+    _Here is the key. Come in when you like, make yourself as
+    comfortable as you can and forgive all deficiencies. I feel a
+    compunction at not having the physical energy to “clear” things
+    a bit for you; but there you are...._
+
+    _I have started my cure, ~he writes on 18.7.17~, which promises
+    to be a most strenuous, arduous and tedious affair. I have to
+    take daily two soda-water tumblers of strong sulphur water and
+    two ordinary tumblers of warm magnesia water; and on alternate
+    days (a) a Nauheim bath and (b) a hot-air bath...._
+
+    _It is raining steadily. This doesn’t matter. But that
+    sulphur-water, on an empty stomach, at 8 a.m.! Two-and-twenty
+    ounces of it, hot! The stench of it! It is said to remind one
+    of rotten eggs; but, as I have never smelt a rotten egg, it
+    reminds me of nothing and only suggests hell._[5]
+
+Sugar seems to have been more scarce in Harrogate than in London; and
+Teixeira’s appeals and contrivances were always pathetic and sometimes
+frantic.
+
+    _My wife did manage to get half a pound of it flung at her
+    head this morning, ~he writes on 19.7.17~. I had so entirely
+    forgotten the essential rudeness of the people of Yorkshire
+    that its discovery came upon me as an utter surprise. I amuse
+    myself by overcoming it with smiles. Smiles are unfamiliar
+    symptoms to them and take them aback._
+
+    _You may tell Sutro that I have bought a dozen silk collars._
+
+After weary weeks of nauseating treatment, he writes:
+
+    _It will be an awful sell if this cure ends without doing me
+    good. Still I always hope. Whatever happens I shall want at
+    least a week’s after-cure which I should probably take here:
+    simply a rest and air, without any waters or baths. But what is
+    your Cornish date?_
+
+I replied, 27.7.17.
+
+    _By this time you will have seen that our minds have been
+    working on parallel lines towards the same conclusion that an
+    after-cure is quite essential. It will suit me perfectly well
+    to stay here until, and including, Friday the 24th, or later if
+    you like. My Cornish arrangements are quite fluid...._
+
+    _For all your pagan pose, ~he writes~, you are a fine old Irish
+    Christian gentleman, as is proved by your suggestion of an
+    after-cure, dictated no doubt at the identical moment when I
+    was writing my answer to it. At any rate, I prefer to think of
+    you as a Christian brother rather than as a Corsican brother.
+    As I said, I shall probably take that after-cure, but take
+    it at Harrogate, which is about as bracing a spot as any in
+    the three kingdoms. To go straight to the sea might set up my
+    rheumatism again, if indeed it is suppressed; there is no sign
+    yet of that desiderandum...._
+
+It is necessary to insert my letter of 30.7.17 in order to explain
+Teixeira’s reply to it.
+
+    _I went home for the week-end, ~I wrote~, and travelled up this
+    morning with C. H. C. has a new and most amusing game. It
+    consists of inviting people to stay with him for the week-end
+    and encouraging them to bathe in the river Thames and only
+    disclosing, when the damage has been done, that the bed of that
+    ancient river is richly studded with broken bottles. There was
+    a small boy in the carriage with one badly injured foot as a
+    result of C.’s pleasantry. I did a conspicuous St. Christopher
+    stunt and carried the boy on my shoulders the entire length of
+    the arrival platform at Paddington...._
+
+    _I, ~Teixeira answers, 30.7.17~, once carried Willie
+    Crosthwait, then aged 14, the whole length of the Euston
+    departure platform. That beats you (and perhaps caused the best
+    part of my present troubles). He is now an army chaplain; and I
+    sit moaning at Harrogate._
+
+    _Ululu!_
+
+My eviction took place in the first week of August; and on 3.8.17 I wrote
+to Teixeira:
+
+    _I am thinking of moving to Chelsea on Tuesday.... You may
+    remember a story of Benjamin Jowett in connection with
+    two undergraduates who persisted in staying up at Balliol
+    throughout the Long Vacation. Jowett, by way of gently
+    dislodging them, insisted first that they should attend Chapel
+    daily. The undergraduates grumbled, but obeyed. Jowett, seeing
+    that his first attack had failed, arranged with the kitchen
+    authorities that the food served to these recalcitrant young
+    scholars should be entirely uneatable, and in the course of
+    time their spirit was so much broken that they left him and
+    Balliol in peace. He is reported to have said, as he watched
+    them driving down to the station: “That sort goeth not forth
+    but by prayer and fasting.” So with me. I have manfully
+    withstood the stalwart labourers who break walls down all
+    round me throughout the night; but, when the porters are paid
+    off, the maids deprived of their rooms, the hot-water supply
+    disconnected and the gas cut off at the main, I feel that I may
+    retire with dignity and the full honours of war...._
+
+    _Make yourself as comfortable in Chelsea as you can, ~he
+    answered on 4.8.17~. As at present advised, we return on
+    Wednesday fortnight, the 22nd...._
+
+    _The days here speed past on wings, thanks to their monotony.
+    Waters at 8; again at 10.30; a bath or baths at 11; lunch at
+    1.30; a jog-trot drive from 3 to 4; bridge; dinner at 7.30;
+    massage at 9; all this with unfailing regularity. I believe
+    far more in my masseuse (she lives at this house) than in my
+    doctor. It will amuse your father to hear that this genius is
+    prescribing for me in the matter of rheumatism, neuritis and
+    fibrositis in the arm without having once had my shirt off!
+    I make suggestions, at the instance of the masseuse, and he
+    promptly annexes them as his own:_
+
+    _“Tell me, doctor, may I do so-and-so?”_
+
+    _“You ~are~ to do so-and-so; and this very day!”_
+
+    _The doctors here generally have the very worst name; but there
+    is nobody to pull them up or show them up._
+
+    _The place teems with people whom I know and don’t want to see._
+
+    _The rain it raineth every day and all day...._
+
+    _My cure is now over, ~he writes on 12.8.17~; it has been long
+    and costly; it has done me no good at all. Indeed my main
+    affliction is worse; certain movements of the right arm which
+    were possible with comparative ease before I came down are now
+    nearly impossible. On Saturday, at the final consultation, when
+    I took leave of my doctor and paid him five guineas, he told
+    me for the first time that I have no neuritis but that I have
+    bursitis. All the while, mark you, he has been treating me for
+    fibrositis. It is a consolation to know, however, that I have
+    no arthritis. What I have been having is what the vulgar would
+    call a hi-tiddlyhitis high old time...._
+
+A week later I went again to Cornwall on leave.
+
+    _Do devote yourself, ~wrote Teixeira, 25.8.17~, at any rate for
+    the first ten days of your absence, to becoming very well and
+    strong. I have never seen you quite so ill as yesterday and I
+    was infinitely distressed about it. Treat yourself as though
+    you were an exceedingly old man like me. Then when you have
+    entered upon your rejuvenescence you can begin to play pranks
+    with yourself again...._
+
+Later he added:
+
+    _Be careful not to honour the Atlantic with more than one
+    immersion a day...._
+
+    _~And, 30.8.17.~ I am exceedingly busy, but I am enjoying it
+    all. My health is as bad as ever and I have recovered my famous
+    lead-poisoning hue. I expect you, however, to return with the
+    bloom of roses and the stains of coffee on your cheeks. So make
+    up your mind to sleep and do it...._
+
+In the first week of September there began the most persistent series of
+air-raids that occurred at any stage during the war.
+
+    _Last night, ~Teixeira writes, 5.9.17~, was made hideous by a
+    pack of confounded Germans who came over London and created no
+    end of a din. I looked out of the window, saw one shell burst
+    in a south-easterly direction, debated whether to go below or
+    remain in bed and remained in bed._
+
+    _~[My cook]~, from her basement, appears to have obtained a
+    much clearer aural view:_
+
+    _“Didn’t you hear them two raiders firing bom-m-ms at each
+    other, sir?”_
+
+    _There spoke your Sinn Feiner: they were both raiders to her.
+    The row lasted for over two hours; and I feel an utter wreck.
+    Lord knows what mischief the brutes have done this time._
+
+    _Vale et nos ama._
+
+Next day, in a letter dated, _City of Dreadful Nights_, he adds:
+
+    _Last night no air-raid was possible, because of an appalling
+    thunderstorm, which kept me awake for another three hours. If
+    you have ever heard thunder rolling for fifty seconds without
+    intercession and giving sixty of these rolls to the hour, you
+    will know the sort of thunderstorm it was._
+
+This description prompts him to an anecdote:
+
+    _“Then there’s Roche, the resident magistrate. Don’t go
+    shooting Roche now ... unless it’s by accident. What does he
+    look like? Well, if ye’ve ever seen a half-drowned rat, with a
+    grey worsted muffler round its neck, then ye know the kind of
+    man Roche is!”—Speech quoted before the Parnell Commission._
+
+On my return from Cornwall, my flat was not yet ready for me, but the
+Teixeiras’ hospitality allowed me to continue staying with them.
+
+    _You will be as welcome on Thursday night as peace at
+    Christmas, ~wrote Teixeira, 9.9.17~. ~[My cook]~ is away on a
+    holiday and there is a possibility that she will not be back
+    by then; and in the meantime there is nobody else. You may,
+    therefore, have to submit to a modicum of discomfort: ... your
+    boots will probably have to accumulate to some extent before
+    they are cleaned on the larger scale. You have so many boots,
+    however, that I venture to hope that this will not incommode
+    you unduly._
+
+This welcome was seasoned later by a story which Teixeira invented,
+describing his efforts to dislodge me. According to this, he used to fall
+resonantly from his bedroom to his study at 5.0 each morning and, if this
+failed to rouse me, he would mount the stairs again and continue to throw
+himself down until I waked. At 6.0 a cup of tea would be brought me;
+at 7.0 the morning paper; at 8.0 my letters. When I went to my bath at
+8.30, Teixeira used to assert that he flung my clothes into a suit-case,
+tiptoed downstairs and laid the case on the doorstep. His tactics failed
+because I only waited until he was locked in the bathroom before creeping
+down and retrieving the case.
+
+As our leave was over for the year, there was no further exchange of
+letters save when one or other was absent from our department.
+
+    _I have read the new Maeterlinck play[6]—a good theme
+    infamously treated, ~I find myself writing, 27.12.18~. I beg
+    you to scrap the third act and with it your regard for M’s
+    feelings; then rewrite it with a little passion, a great deal
+    of fear and unlimited un-understanding horror. The invasion
+    of Belgium wasn’t a Greek tragedy where the afflicted prosed
+    and philosophised—with a chorus dilating on cattle-yas; it was
+    noisy, bloody and, above all, unbelievable. Maeterlinck has
+    brought no nightmare into it...._
+
+    _Letter just received, ~he replied next day~. You are a highly
+    illuminated and illuminating critick. Your remarks upon that
+    play are exactly right (as I now know, having just read my
+    first three Greek plays)...._
+
+    _I enclose, ~he writes 10.8.18~, 1¾ chapters of the Couperus
+    classical comedy-novel ~[The Tour]~, which I amused myself
+    by doing because you insisted so emphatically that the book
+    should be done. But I will go no further till I have your
+    verdict. Don’t trouble to do any work on this; the marginal
+    refs. were merely inserted as I went along. Just see if the
+    thing is the sort of thing that’s likely to take on; and talk
+    to me about it when you see me...._
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+
+In 1918 Teixeira’s health had so much improved that he was able to
+dispense with all violent and disabling cures.
+
+This was the period when he was, socially, in greatest request. I
+introduced him, in the spring, to Mr. and Mrs. Asquith, who shewed him
+much hospitality and great kindness from this time until his death. His
+leaves were now usually spent with them at Sutton Courtney; but, since he
+required to take little or no sick-leave, the number of letters exchanged
+in this year is small.
+
+At the armistice, he left the Intelligence Section to become secretary
+to the department; and, though we worked in the same building for two or
+three months more, I naturally saw less of him than when we shared the
+same table. The last communication that passed between us as colleagues,
+like the first, written three years before, contained an invitation. Its
+form must be explained by reference to Stevenson’s and Osborne’s _Wrong
+Box_. Rudyard Kipling has mentioned, in _A Diversity of Creatures_, the
+sublime brotherhood to whom this book is a second Bible.
+
+    “I remembered,” [he writes in _The Vortex_], “a certain Joseph
+    Finsbury who delighted the Tregonwell Arms ... with nine ...
+    versions of a single income of two hundred pounds, placing the
+    imaginary person in—but I could not recall the list of towns
+    further than ‘London, Paris, Bagdad, and Spitzbergen.’ This
+    last I must have murmured aloud, for the Agent-General suddenly
+    became human and went on: ‘Bussoran, Heligoland, and the Scilly
+    Islands’—‘What?’ growled Penfentenyou. ‘Nothing,’ said the
+    Agent-General, squeezing my hand affectionately. ‘Only we have
+    just found out that we are brothers.... I’ve got it. Brighton,
+    Cincinnati and Nijni-Novgorod!’ God bless R. L. S.[7]...” One
+    of the greatest living authorities on _The Wrong Box_ was a
+    member of the Reform Club; and, on joining, Teixeira found it
+    necessary to his self-protection to study the most aptly-quoted
+    work in the world.
+
+    My invitation was couched in the cryptic terms of the
+    brotherhood:
+
+        _MATTOS. Alexander William de Bent Teixeira,
+                 if this should meet the eye of, he
+                 will hear something to his advantage
+                 by lunching with me to-day at the far
+                 end of Waterloo Station (Departure
+                 Platform) or even at Lincoln’s Inn._
+
+                 _War Trade Intelligence Department._
+
+                                                _30 December, 1918._
+
+On leaving the department early in 1919, I saw and heard little of
+Teixeira until he invited me to collaborate in the translation of _The
+Tour_. Occasional divergencies of opinion about translating Latin words
+in the English rendering of a Dutch novel had the very desirable result
+of making Teixeira set out some few of the principles which he followed.
+
+    _Couperus sends me this postcard, ~he writes, 29.4.18~:_
+
+    _“Amice,_
+
+    _“You are of course at liberty to act according to your taste
+    and judgement. I do not however understand the thing: in every
+    novel treating of antiquity the classical word sometimes gives
+    a nuance to the untranslatable local colour. And every novelist
+    feels this: See ~Quo Vadis~, in Jeremiah Curtius’ translation.
+    However, do as you think proper._
+
+                               _“Yours,_
+                               _“L. C.”_
+
+    _He has us on the hip with his Jeremiah Curtius. And I feel
+    more than ever that you were too drastic in your views and I
+    too weak in yielding to them...._
+
+    _We should always guard ourselves against the bees in our
+    bonnets. When I produced Zola’s ~Heirs of Rabourdin~, the
+    stage-manager said his play-actors couldn’t pronounce Monsieur,
+    Madame and Mademoiselle to his liking: might he try how it
+    would sound with Mr., Mrs., and Miss Rabourdin? He tried!_
+
+    _If your principle were carried to any length, you would
+    have to call a pagoda a tower, a jinrickshaw a buggy,
+    a café a coffee-house, a gendarme a policeman (i.e. a
+    ~sergent-de-ville~), a toga a cloak, a gondola a wherry, an
+    Alpenstock an Alpine stick, a ski a snowshoe: one could go on
+    for ever!_
+
+    _Yet I am ever yours,_
+
+                                                              _Tex._
+
+In the spring and summer of 1919 our letters became more frequent.
+Though Teixeira spent most of his time in his department, I employed
+the first months of liberation in staying with friends. The translation
+of _The Tour_ went on apace; and arrangements were made for the English
+publication of _Old People and the Things That Pass_. If he had given his
+readers no other book by Couperus or by any other writer, he would still
+have established two reputations with this.
+
+    _It’s a funny thing, ~he writes~, 21.5.19; 4:57 a.m.; but I
+    find that I can no longer trs. Latin, even with a dictionary.
+    I suppose it’s because I can’t construe it. Would you mind
+    putting a line-and-a-bit of Ovid into English for me? Here it
+    is:_
+
+    Materian superabat opus, nam Mulciber illic
+    Æquora celarat.
+
+    _... My intentions are to go down to I. for 5 or 6 days on the
+    5th of June and to join my wife at Bexhill on or about the 18th
+    for 3 or 4 weeks._
+
+    _“Bexhill-on-Sea_
+    _Is the haven for me,”_
+
+    _sang Clement Scott in a visitors’-book discovered by Max
+    Beerbohm, who tore him to pieces for it in the ~Saturday~, in
+    an article signed “Max.” Scott, pretending not to know who Max
+    was, flew to the ~Era~ and wrote his famous absurdity, “Come
+    out of your hole, rat!” Gad, how we used to laugh in those
+    days!..._
+
+My reply began:
+
+    _I resent your practice of heading your letters with the
+    unseemly time at which you leave a warm and comfortable bed.
+    ~And I dated my own~: 22 May, 1919. Cocktail-time. What would
+    you think of me if I headed my letters with the equally
+    unseemly time at which I sometimes go to bed? I have been
+    working so late one or two nights last week and this that the
+    times would coincide, and you might bid me good-morning as I
+    bade you good-night...._
+
+    _I went ... to a musical party.... I felt that it was incumbent
+    upon me to see whether you had done anything in the matter of
+    the Belgian quartette.[8] You will be shocked to hear that the
+    quartette is not only still in existence, but has added a
+    supernumerary to turn over the music of the pianist...._
+
+    _~On 7.6.19, he wrote from Somersetshire~: You are—it is borne
+    in upon me that you must be—a secret autograph-hunter. Here am
+    I, hoping to do nothing but sleep 26 hours out of the 24, to
+    do nothing ever, to the great ever; and here come you, hoping
+    for a letter, lest you be pained. A scripsomaniac, my poor
+    Stephen, a scripsomaniac you will surely be, if you do not
+    check yourself in time._
+
+    _Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes! I know that I am Satan rebuking sin;
+    but was Satan ever better employed? Far rather would I see him
+    rebuking sin than prompting letters for idle hands to write._
+
+    _Well, I know that I am staying in Somersetshire with I., who
+    is at this moment speeding towards the Hôtel du Vieux Doelen
+    at the Hague, to nurse a sick friend. Ker pongsay voo der sah?
+    And I am happy as the day is long, petted and coddled by his
+    delightful mother, lolling from the morning unto the evening in
+    the open air and doing not one stroke of work. And utterly at
+    my ease, not even blushing when my brother cuckoo mocks me from
+    the tree-top, as he does sixty times to the minute._
+
+    _I return on the 12th; on the 13th I go cuckooing at the Wharf,
+    returning on the 16th; ... on the 18th I join my wife at
+    Bexhill; how, I ask you, can I come a-cuckooing in Lincoln’s
+    Inn?_
+
+    _Nor do see any chance of touching ~The Tour~ while I am here.
+    I am really too busy to do aught but play the sedulous cuckoo
+    in Cockayne. So let my visit to you be a pleasure (to both of
+    us) postponed...._
+
+    _~To this I replied, 14.7.19~: I lunched yesterday with one
+    Butterworth, who is opening up a publisher’s business. In the
+    course of conversation I mentioned to him your translation of
+    ~Old People and the Things that Pass~. More than that, I took
+    upon myself to lend him my copy of the American edition so that
+    he might have an opportunity of forming his own opinion of it.
+    You may, if you like, call me interfering and presumptuous,
+    but I have not committed you in any way to anything, and
+    yesterday’s transaction may be regarded as no more than the
+    loan of a book from one person to another. I, as you know, feel
+    it a reproach that that book is still unpublished in England,
+    and, if Butterworth thinks fit to make you a good offer, no one
+    will be better pleased than me...._
+
+    _~On 26.7.19 he wrote from Bexhill~: If it comes on to rain
+    as it threatens daily, I shall be returning ~The Tour~ to you
+    quite soon; and in any case it will go back to you before I
+    leave here on the 15th of July: I must reduce the weight of my
+    luggage; I had to run all over the town to find two stalwart
+    ruffians to carry it to the attic where I sleep._
+
+    _You need not look at it before we meet unless you wish; but
+    you may like to do Cora’s song[9] in your sleep meanwhile; and
+    my additional comments and queries are few._
+
+    _I am leading here that methodical humdrum life which alone
+    makes time fly. When I return to town you shall see me
+    occasionally at the opera, but not oftener than twice a
+    week. You will have to look for me, however, for I shall be
+    stalking behind pillars, cloaked in black, like Lucien de
+    What’s-his-name, hiding from my black beast, Lady...._
+
+    _P.S. Can you tell me if Beecham intends to do any light operas
+    at Drury Lane in addition to that tinkly, overrated ~Fille de
+    Madame Angot~? I am dying to hear the whole Offenbach series
+    before I die._
+
+A letter from Bexhill, dated 2.7.19, touches on one general principle of
+translating:
+
+    _... With all deference, a translator’s first duty is not to
+    translate. His first duty is to love God, honour the king
+    and hate the Germans. His next duty is to produce a version
+    corresponding as near as may be with what an English original
+    writer, if he were writing that particular book, would set
+    down. His last duty is to translate every blessed word of the
+    original...._
+
+Next day he wrote:
+
+    _~T. B. [Thornton Butterworth]~ is taking “O. P.” ~[Old
+    People]~ and coming down here to see me on Saturday._
+
+    _Ever so many thanks for your generous offices in the
+    matter...._
+
+On Peace Day, in a letter dated from Finsbury Circus, Teixeira writes:
+
+    _Here sit I, putting in four or five hours before a train
+    leaves to take me to Herbert George and Jane Wells at Easton
+    Glebe and reading ~Quo Vadis~. Already, in 99 pages, I have
+    discovered 21 expressions which you would undoubtedly have
+    condemned in ~The Tour~._
+
+    _... This is interesting: ~[the author]~ says that in Nero’s
+    day it was already becoming a stunt among the Romans to call
+    the gods by their Greek Names. Tiberius was not so much
+    earlier—was he?—than Nero that the practice might not have
+    begun even then. If so, we can let Couperus have his way and
+    retain those few names. They are very few, I think. I can
+    remember at the moment only Aphrodite and Zeus and possibly
+    Eros. It may be that Juno is mentioned as Hera, but I doubt it._
+
+    _There is a charming garden, with a most beautifully kept lawn.
+    The flowers ... consist entirely of the only three that I
+    dislike: fuchsias, begonias and red geraniums._
+
+    _Still ..._
+
+    _I hope that you are spending the day as peacefully and that
+    this will find you well and happy...._
+
+    _Two east-end Jews within hail of me are talking Yiddish and
+    sharing a Daily Snail between them. There is a cat. There is or
+    am I. And there are those fuchsias._
+
+On 18.8.19, I wrote:
+
+    _The North of Ireland seems beating up for a storm, does not
+    it? I suppose there is no point in my reminding you that a
+    perfect gentleman would not fail to present himself at Euston
+    next Friday at 8.10 p.m. to tuck me into my sleeper and see
+    me safely off? My address in Ireland from Aug. 23rd to 31st
+    is (in the care of Sir John Leslie, Baronet) Glaslough, Co.
+    Monaghan...._
+
+    _At 8.10 on Friday, ~he replied, 20.8.19~, this perfect
+    gentleman will be eating his melon at Huntercombe Manor House,
+    Henley-on-Thames (in the care of Squire Nevile Foster), but
+    for which he would undoubtedly come to see you oft in the
+    stilly night. I wish you safely through the war-zone, happy
+    and interested in this, your first visit to Ireland and
+    prosperously home again. Now do not write and answer that you
+    have paid eighteen visits to Ireland before: those eighteen
+    visits have always been and always will be to my mind as
+    mythical as the travels of Mungo Park or Mendes Pinto...._
+
+Feeling that I must acquaint Teixeira with my safe arrival in Ireland, I
+wrote, 28.8.19:
+
+                                          _Glaslough, Co. Monaghan._
+
+    _... I am here; yes, but how did I get here? I am here; yes,
+    but shall I ever get away? I left London on Friday with my
+    young and very lovely charge, encountered engine-trouble and
+    reached Holyhead an hour late. I sat on the boat-deck with
+    her (but without an overcoat), watching the dawn until I
+    was chilled to the marrow and any other man would have been
+    delirious with pneumonia. The breakfast-car train had left, so
+    we took a later one from Dublin. Being faced with the prospect
+    of waiting 2½ hours at Clones, I got out at Drogheda to send
+    a telegram to the Leslies, begging them to meet us there by
+    car. Unhappily, the train went on without me, bearing away my
+    young and very lovely charge, my suit-case, my despatch-box, my
+    umbrella and my hat. I was left with a pair of gloves and my
+    charge’s ticket.... I bought myself a cap of 4/6 and a clean
+    collar for /4d, and spent the day writing letters, contriving
+    epigrams and lunching off scrambled eggs and Irish whiskey._
+
+    _I have been taken to the McKenna grave at Donagh and
+    presented—by Shane—to the clan as its head, which I am
+    not. The recognition of Odysseus by his old nurse was
+    eclipsed by the recognition accorded me by an old woman who
+    remembered—unprompted—my coming to Glaslough twelve years ago
+    and thanked God that she had been spared to see me again. It is
+    a very lovely place that the Leslies have taken from us._
+
+    _But how to leave it? It is Horse Show week, and every sleeper
+    has been booked for three weeks. I shall have to cross from
+    Belfast to Liverpool, I think, and try to get my sleeping done
+    on the boat. And that means that I shall not be home till
+    Tuesday. Can’t be helped._
+
+On 31.8.19 Teixeira wrote to greet me on my return from Ireland:
+
+    _After your preliminary wanderings, my dear Stephen O’Dysseus,
+    welcome home again! You were always the worst courier in the
+    world; I’ve not ever known you to bring one of your young and
+    very lovely charges to her destination without encountering
+    cataclysmal adventures on the road.... Still, would that I had
+    known that you can buy collars, clean and therefore presumably
+    new collars, at Drogheda for fourpence apiece. Yesterday I paid
+    fifteen shillings for a dozen...._
+
+On 21.12.19 he writes to offer me good wishes for Christmas:
+
+    _The one and only thing that the Fortunate Youth appeared to
+    me not to possess will reach you in a little registered packet
+    to-morrow evening.... You are to accept it as a token of the
+    happiness which I wish you during this Christmas and the whole
+    of the coming year._
+
+    _That was a very jolly party on Wednesday: I enjoyed
+    everything: the gay and kindly company, the admirable
+    foodstuffs, even the music; and, if it be true, as I told you,
+    that Covent Garden has shrunk in size since my young days, I am
+    compelled to confess that your box was a larger than I ever saw
+    before._
+
+    _At this season of excess, ~he writes on Christmas Day~, I am
+    allowed to indulge my passion for chocolates, but not to buy
+    any for myself; and it was most thoughtful of you to pander to
+    my taste. Thank you ever so much. And thank you also for your
+    good wishes...._
+
+    _I must be off to mass, but not without first begging you to
+    hand your mother and sister my best wishes for a happy New
+    Year. As to you, I shall see or talk to you before then.... My
+    young Sinn Feiner has written a novel[10] which to my mind is
+    a most remarkable production and which will have to be read by
+    you at all costs. It is published in Dublin; and it is doubtful
+    whether a single other copy will find its way to this foreign
+    land._
+
+In April Teixeira and his wife went to Hove: and on 27.4.20 he writes:
+
+    _It is blowing what-you-may-call-it here: ’arf a mo’, ’arf a
+    brick, half a gale. Apart from that, we are well and send our
+    love._
+
+Commenting on a house-party which I had described, he adds:
+
+    _All we can do, my dear Stephen, is to ask you to remember the
+    old adage:_
+
+    _Birds of a feather flock together;_
+
+    _and the modern variants:_
+
+    _Birds of a beak meet twice a week;_
+    _Birds of a voice share a Rolls-Royce;_
+    _Birds of a kidney are Alf and Sydney;_
+    _Birds of a tail are hail-fellow-hail;_
+    _Birds of a crest are twins of the best;_
+    _Birds of a gizzard are witch and wizzard;_
+    _Birds of a chirrup are treacle and syrup;_
+    _The hawk and the owl sit cheek by jowl._
+
+                                            _Yours ever,
+                                            Alexander and Lily Tex._
+
+The next letter was from his wife and brought the news that Teixeira’s
+health had taken an unexpected turn for the worse. His life was not in
+immediate danger, but henceforward he must regard himself as an invalid
+and must work under the conditions imposed by his doctor.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+
+As soon as he was well enough to be moved, Teixeira came up from Hove
+and, after a few days in Chelsea, went to a nursing-home in Crowborough
+for the summer.
+
+Nothing is more characteristic of him than that the first message he sent
+after the beginning of his illness was one of reassurance and optimism:
+
+    _Sent you a wire this morning, ~he writes~, lest you be
+    seriously distressed. Really much better after nine hours’
+    sleep.... I expect I shall be quite well by Saturday, when we
+    return but I shall have to be jolly careful...._
+
+    _Thanks for your letters, ~he writes, 8.5.20, when we were
+    arranging to meet~. Nothing you can do for me at present except
+    converse with me in the form of: Tex. Very short questions:
+    Stephen. Very long answers. I’m getting plaguily impatient
+    at the slowness of my recovery: it’s very wrong, wicked and
+    impatient of me._
+
+    _I enclose._
+
+    _A. Two lines from your favourite “poet” (save the Mark
+    Tapley)!_
+
+    _B. Some wedding-effusions which remind me that Burne-Jones,
+    when they told him that marriage was a lottery, said:_
+
+    _“Then it ought to be made illegal.”_
+
+While undergoing his rest-cure, he not infrequently communicated with me
+by means of annotations to the letters which I wrote him. His comments
+are given in parenthesis.
+
+    _I ... went to see ~As You Like It~ at the Lyric Theatre,
+    Hammersmith, ~I wrote, 15.5.20~. It is a good production but
+    an uncommonly bad play, like so many of that author’s. If any
+    dramatist of the present day served up that kind of musical
+    comedy without the music, but with all the existing purple
+    patches, I wonder what your modern critic would make of it._
+
+    _(Laurence Irving used to go about saying, “Teixeira says
+    that Shakespeare wrote only one decent play: ~Timon of
+    Athens!~ Wha-art d’ye think of that? The mun’s mud!” Talking
+    of Shakespeare, if you want to laugh, really to laugh, ~ce
+    qu’on appelle~ to laugh, read (you will never see it acted) a
+    stage-play called ~Titus Andronicus~....)_
+
+    _(Help! A man waved to me on the lawn y’day: an Ebrew Jew ...
+    had motored down to see his sister here; told me I’d find her
+    very “bright.” She’s fifty ~bien sonnés~. Told him I’d feel too
+    shy to talk to anybody for weeks. But I’m lending her books.
+    Help!)_
+
+Strictly limited in the amount of work which he was allowed to do,
+Teixeira in these weeks read voraciously; and his letters of this period
+contain almost the only critical judgements that I was able to extract
+from him.
+
+On 25.5.20. he writes:
+
+    _Was Pearsall Smith the inventor of the pedigree tracing the
+    descent of the English from the ten lost tribes of Israel?_
+
+                              _Isaac_
+                                 |
+                                 |
+                            _Isaacson_
+                                 |
+                                 |
+                              _Saxon_
+
+    _What was the other famous book, besides ~Erewhon~, which
+    George Meredith (whom I am beginning to dislike almost as much
+    as Henry James and Pearl Craigie) caused Smith, Elder & Co. to
+    reject? Was it ~Treasure Island~ or something quite different?_
+
+    _Which Samuel Butlers am I to buy now? I have (in the order of
+    which I have enjoyed them):_
+
+    The Way of all Flesh
+    Alps and Sanctuaries
+    The Notebooks
+    Erewhon Revisited
+    Erewhon
+
+    _The machinery part of the last-named bored me; the philosophy
+    also; and I fear I missed much of the irony. But the style!
+    It’s unbeaten. It’s as good as Defoe. It knocks Stevenson silly
+    because it’s so utterly natural. Hats off to that for style._
+
+    _Should I enjoy ~The Humour of Homer~, though knowing nothing
+    or little about Homer? ~The Authoress of the Odyssey~: would
+    this be wasted on me? What is ~The Fair Haven~ about? I don’t
+    want to read Butler’s religious views—all you Britons think
+    and talk and write much too much about religion—nor his views
+    on evolution: he is too much in sympathy, I gather, with that
+    dishonest fellow, Darwin._
+
+    _What shall I read of that same Darwin, so that I may do my own
+    chuckling? Please name the best two or three, in their order
+    as written._
+
+    _Where shall I find the quarrels between Huxley and Darwin?
+    That accomplished gyurl, my stepdaughter, had read all about
+    them before she was sixteen but was unable to point me to the
+    book._
+
+    _At your leisure, my dear Stephen, answer me all these
+    questions. As you see, I’m making progress. I have neither
+    capacity nor inclination (thank God) for work yet, but I can
+    read day without end._
+
+    _Pearsall Smith’s ~Stories from the Old Testament~ would amuse
+    you. It’s too dear; but it would amuse you, in parts._
+
+In discussing Darwin’s books, I suggested that Teixeira should find out
+whether the members of his church were encouraged to read them.
+
+He replies, 28.5.20:
+
+    _... I am very glad that Darwin is on the Index and I hope that
+    this interferes with his royalties...._
+
+And on 2.6.20:
+
+    _Pray bear with a postcard. I noticed that you used “detour” on
+    two occasions.... I sympathize. There’s no English equivalent
+    save Tony Lumpkin’s seriocomic “circumbendibus.” But I meant to
+    tell you of my recent discovery that Chesterton uses “detour,”
+    ~sic~ without an accent or italics. And it’s well worth
+    considering. I, for my part, have made up my mind to adopt
+    it in future, by analogy with “depot” and, for that matter,
+    “tour,” which is never italicized._
+
+    _I also intend to adopt your “judgement”...._
+
+    _What a lot one can still write for a penny!_
+
+                                                              _Tex._
+
+In acknowledging one of his translations, I wrote:
+
+    _Two of my worst faults as a reader are that I always finish a
+    book which I have begun and always begin a book which has been
+    presented to me by the author or translator._
+
+Teixeira comments:
+
+    _(I always thought highly of your brain till now. I regret to
+    tell you that the only other human being who has ever confessed
+    that vice to me is J. T. Grein’s mother.... Drop that vice.
+    Why, I once “began” to read the Bible!...)_
+
+    _With most of your criticisms I agree, ~my letter continued.
+    Teixeira had been reading the manuscript of some short
+    stories;~ though there are one or two points on which I remain
+    adamant. If you wish to shorten your life, ask any Coldstreamer
+    whether he belongs to the Coldstreams. It is always either the
+    Coldstream Guards or the Coldstream...._[11]
+
+    _(I suspected you of being right, but I was not ashamed to ask
+    you. You may or may not have observed how much less of a snob
+    I am than most of the people you strike. Cricketing terms,
+    nautical terms, military terms, Latin quantities, those endless
+    excuses for the worst forms of British snobbery, all leave me
+    cold.)_
+
+In discussing methods of work, he writes:
+
+    _(... It will interest you to know that Oscar Wilde dropped
+    all his pleasures when he wrote his plays; retired into rooms
+    in St. James’ Place, hired ~ad hoc~, to write the first line;
+    and did not leave them till he had written the last. And one
+    of them at least, ~The Importance~, was a perfect work of art,
+    whatever one may think of the others.)_
+
+Though he enjoyed his rest-cure, it gave him—he complained—no news to
+communicate:
+
+    _You’re not interested in my brown dog and I speak to no one
+    else._
+
+On my pointing out that I could not be interested in an animal of which I
+had hitherto not heard, Teixeira wrote, 4.6.20:
+
+    _... It must have been my morbid delicacy that prevented me,
+    knowing your dislike of dogs, from mentioning the brown dog
+    before. As a man gains strength, he loses delicacy: that
+    explains though it does not excuse my late reference to him.
+    He is an Irish terrier, endowed with a vast sense of humour,
+    who runs about on three legs (which is one more than I, who am
+    eighteen times his age, can boast) and plays with me from ten
+    till half-past six (when I go to bed). He saves me from all
+    boredom and I am grateful to him...._
+
+    _Little by little I am beginning to itch for work.... I can’t
+    work yet; but I regard the itching as a good sign. And I no
+    longer find these longish letters so much of a strain. It takes
+    a lot to kill a Portugal._[12]
+
+    _Bring me to the gentle remembrance of your charming host and
+    hostess. I wonder if I shall ever meet either of them at one
+    of your pleasant dinners again. I wonder if I shall ever dine
+    with you again at all...._
+
+On 8.6.20 he writes:
+
+    _... I send you a letter from ... a Beaumont master and
+    scholastic in minor orders. Apart from its nice misspelling,
+    its noble, broad-minded casuistry will explain to you why
+    I love the Church, as it explains to me why you hate it.
+    ~Cependant~ I suppose that I must set to work and read me a
+    little Darwin._
+
+    _I am making fair progress, as my recent letters must have
+    proved to you. But I do not yet consider myself near enough to
+    complete recovery to return to town...._
+
+In June Teixeira was created a Chevalier of the Order of Leopold II. My
+letter of congratulation was annotated on this and other subjects:
+
+Referring to a criticism of _Kipps_, I had written:
+
+    _It is excellent stuff, and I always regard Wells as being one
+    of the ... greatest ... comedy-writers. But I always feel that
+    in ~Kipps~ and all the earlier books he is only working up to
+    ~Mr. Polly~, which is the most exquisite thing that he has
+    done in that line._
+
+    _(I have read both down here and prefer ~Kipps~. The phrases
+    underlined, quoted in the ~Times~ notice (attached) of Wells’
+    Polly-Kippsian “~History of the World~” reminds me irresistibly
+    of the old lady who, witnessing a performance of “~Anthony and
+    Cleopatra~,” by your Mr. Shakespeare or our Mr. Shaw, observed:
+    “How different from the home life of our dear queen!”)_
+
+    _... Let me offer you—a trifle belatedly perhaps—my
+    congratulations on your new dignity._
+
+    _(“Thanks.” A. Kipps)_
+
+    _Certainly you should tell the ~[Belgian]~ Ambassador that
+    it is not only inconvenient but impossible for you to be
+    invested in person and that he must send you the warrant and
+    insignia...._
+
+    _Did I ever tell you the story of Mr. G.’s search for a
+    decoration? The Kaiser refused to give him one on any
+    consideration, and he therefore toured Europe, lending or
+    giving money to one government after another in the hope of
+    being ultimately rewarded with the 4th class of the Speckled
+    Pig. In every court he was promised his decoration, but, when
+    he presented himself for the investiture, the court officials
+    turned from him with just that expression of loathing and
+    nausea which he had formerly observed on the face of the
+    Kaiser. It was only when he reached Bulgaria that he found the
+    Czar and his court less squeamish. On payment of a considerable
+    solatium he was invested with the 19th class of the Expiring
+    Porpoise and returned in triumph to his native Stettin. Here,
+    however, his troubles were only beginning, as he was unable to
+    obtain permission to wear the Expiring Porpoise at any public
+    function in Germany. Seeing that he had paid one considerable
+    sum to the Bulgarian Czar and another to the firm of jewellers,
+    who substituted diamonds for the paste of the jewel he felt,
+    naturally enough, that he was receiving little value for his
+    lavish expenditure. Bulgaria, it seemed, was the only country
+    where the Expiring Porpoise could be worn. Accordingly he
+    returned to Sofia and paid a further sum to be invited to the
+    banquet which the burgomaster of Sofia was giving on the Czar’s
+    birthday. Here he was at length rewarded for so many months of
+    disappointment and neglect. Before the soup had been served,
+    the Czar had hurried round to his place and was kissing him on
+    both cheeks. “My dear old friend!” said he, “No, you are not to
+    call me ‘sir’; henceforth it is ‘Fritz’ and ‘Ferdinand’ between
+    us, is it not? How long it is since last I saw you! I have been
+    waiting to express my heart-felt regret for the unpardonable
+    carelessness of my Chamberlain. When it was too late and you
+    had left Sofia (I feared for ever), my Chamberlain discovered
+    that you had been invested with the 19th Class of the Expiring
+    Porpoise. You must have thought me mad, for no sane man would
+    offer the 19th class to a person of your distinction. It was
+    the 1st class that I intended. This bauble that I am wearing
+    round my neck to-night. Tell me, my dear Fritz, that it is not
+    too late for me to repair my error.” With that word the Czar
+    removed the collar and jewel from his own neck and slipped it
+    over the head of G. taking in exchange G.’s despised collar and
+    jewel of the 19th class. It was only when our friend returned
+    to his hotel that he discovered the new jewel to be of the most
+    unfinished paste, as cheap or cheaper than the paste which he
+    had previously removed at such expense from the jewel of the
+    19th class._
+
+    _(This is a splendid story.)_
+
+    _I am afraid, ~I added~, that I have no idea who is the
+    official to whom you apply for leave to wear these things...._
+
+    _(My dear Stephen, you had better here and now adopt as your
+    maxim what I said to Browning soon after he had engaged my
+    services on behalf of H.M.G.: “I yield to no man living in
+    my ignorance on every subject under the sun.” You outdo and
+    outvie me. You never know anything. In other words, you know
+    nothing. But I’ll wager that these are worn without permission.
+    What’s the penalty? ~The Morning Post~ to-day names a couple of
+    dozen to whom it’s been granted.)_
+
+Evidently feeling that I was living too much alone, Teixeira enclosed a
+copy of _The Times’_ list of forthcoming dances:
+
+    (_Don’t wait for invitations, ~he urged in a postscript~. Ring
+    the top bell and walk inside._)
+
+The next letter needs to have Teixeira’s use of the word palimpsest
+explained. His good-nature in reading his friends’ manuscripts was
+inexhaustible. I never intended him to do more than give me a general
+opinion; but his critical vision was microscopic, and he filled the
+margins with questions and comments. In returning me one manuscript, he
+wrote:
+
+    _I have made some 800 notes, of which 600 are purely frivolous.
+    Six are worth serious attention._
+
+While this textual scrutiny was quite invaluable, Teixeira seldom gave
+that general opinion of which I always felt in most need at the moment
+when I had lately finished a book and was unable to regard it with
+detachment. Accordingly, the manuscript, on leaving him, was usually sent
+to another friend, who commented not only on the text but also on the
+marginalia. As her occasional controversies with Teixeira (expressed in
+such minutes as:
+
+“Pull yourself together, Mr. T!”
+
+“You men! One’s as bad as the other, you know.”
+
+“Never mind what Mr. T. says, Stephen: _I_ understand.”
+
+“I _wish_ my brain worked as quickly as that.”)
+
+and with me invited rejoinders, the first version of a manuscript
+sometimes took on the appearance of a contentious departmental file. It
+was in this form that Teixeira called it a palimpsest.
+
+On 22.6.20 he writes:
+
+    _Thanks for your letter and the palimpsest.... I’ve studied it
+    amid distressing circumstances, in a long-chair, on a lawn,
+    beneath the sun, surrounded by breezes and patients, who being
+    forbidden to speak to me, dare not help me to collect the
+    scattered pages...._
+
+    _Lady D. is another of England’s darlings. In the first place,
+    she nearly always agrees with me and there she’s right: I have
+    told you time after time that, if only everybody would agree
+    with me, the world would be an infinitely sweeter place. In
+    the second place, she dislikes Browning almost as much as I
+    do. No one can dislike him quite so much; but she certainly
+    disapproves of your particular taste in extracts from the
+    burjoice mountebank’s rhymed works._
+
+    _I can understand that she sometimes unsettles you by
+    condemning you for the quite logical behaviour of the male
+    characters in your trilogy: you might meet this by presenting
+    her with a copy of ~Thus spake Zarathustra~ in addition to
+    those pencils which will mark which you already had in mind for
+    her. On the other hand, I think that you may safely take her
+    word for it when she says:_
+
+    _“Oh, Stephen, women aren’t like this!”_
+
+    _Send me more! Send me more!_
+
+In a letter of 22.6.20, he wrote:
+
+    _To-morrow I make my way up to Oxford for the House Gaudy but
+    before leaving I may find a moment to report my movements._
+
+Teixeira comments:
+
+    _I have heard of the House Beautiful but never of the House
+    Gaudy. Now don’t be a British snob but answer like a little
+    Irish gentleman, as I should answer if you asked me what
+    “acht-en-tachtig Achtergracht” mean in Dutch. Of course,
+    working it out in the light of my own intelligence, I feel
+    that, if “House” is an Oxford sobriquet for Christ Church and
+    “gaudy” Oxford slang for a merrymaking of sorts, you ought to
+    have suppressed that capital G and written “the House gaudy,”
+    in distinction from the Balliol gaudy, the Magdalen gaudy, etc._
+
+    _You are not a Hottentot (Loud cheers), but you are as fond of
+    capital letters as a Hottentot is of glass beads._
+
+    _I’m feeling rather full of beans to-day ... (as you
+    perceive.)..._
+
+The improvement was visibly maintained in his letter of 25.6.20:
+
+    _Thanks for your two letters of the 23rd and 24th instant
+    postum. Don’t start; instant postum is the ridiculous name of
+    the toothsome beverage which my specialist ordered me to take
+    instead of tea or coffee...._
+
+    _I jump at the chance of playing the schoolmaster in the matter
+    of those capital letters. It is too utterly jolly finding you
+    in a compliant mood...._
+
+    _My rule and yours might well be to start with a definite
+    prejudice against capital letters in the middle of a sentence,
+    combined with a resolve never to use them if it can be
+    avoided. Having taken up this firm standpoint, we can afford
+    and we can begin to make concessions. For instance, my heart
+    leapt with joy, nearly twenty years ago, when the founders of
+    the ~Burlington Review~ decided to abolish all capitals to
+    adjectives, to print “french, german, egyptian, persian,” etc.
+    You have no idea how well this affected the page. But what is
+    all right in a majestic review (or was it magazine, by the
+    way?) like the ~Burlington~ may look ultraprecious in a novel.
+    Therefore I concede French, German, etc. Only remember that it
+    is a concession, a concession to Anglo-American vulgarity. A
+    Frenchman writes (and that not invariably: I mean, not every
+    Frenchman). “Un Français les Anglais,” but (invariably) “L’elan
+    français, le rosbif anglais”. The Germans and Danes begin all
+    nouns with a capital (as the English did, in some centuries),
+    but no adjectives whatever. The Italians, Norwegians and
+    Swedes have no capitals to their adjectives; the Dutch are
+    gradually discarding them; they are discarded entirely in
+    scientists’ Latin: the Narbonne Lycosa (a certain spider of the
+    Tarantula genus) in Latin becomes ~Lycosa narbonniensis~...._
+
+    _Your question about “high mass” is, involuntarily, not quite
+    fair. Mass quite conceivably comes within the category of such
+    words as State and a few others, which are spelt with a capital
+    in one sense and not in another.[13] I write “going to mass”
+    (no French catholic would write “allant à la Messe!”) and I
+    see no reason why catholics should write Mass except in a
+    technical work. They would write “the Host” because of the real
+    presence; but I see no more reason for the Mass than for Matins
+    or Compline. Obviously, it is different in a technical work in
+    translating Fabre, I speak of a Wasp, a Spider, a Beetle; in
+    translating Couperus, I do not...._
+
+    _“The Colonel, the Major, the Vicar,” in a novel; don’t they
+    set your teeth on edge? As well write about the Postmistress of
+    the village._
+
+    _When in doubt, as I wrote to you on the subject of the
+    hyphenated nouns, take little Murray[14] for your guide. He
+    has the sense to begin the vast, the immense majority of his
+    words with a lower-case letter. And there are doubtful words:
+    Titanic, Cyclopean. I never know these without turning ’em up
+    for myself._
+
+    _To sum up:_
+
+    _(a) take a firm stand against capitals generally;_
+
+    _(b) be prepared to make moderate (i.e. grudging,) concessions;_
+
+    _(c) have little Murray at your elbow._
+
+After so long a letter, Teixeira contented himself with a few annotations
+to one next day.
+
+On my telling him that I had congratulated a common friend of his son’s
+“blue”, he interposed:
+
+    (_I would write to A. P. if I knew what a “blue” was; but I
+    really have not the remotest idea. Word of honour, I’m not
+    conniegilchristing. I presume it has to do with cricket; and
+    it’s a mere guess._)
+
+    _I have studied your exposition of capitals, ~I continued~,
+    with great interest and, I hope, profit, though there is a
+    fundamental difficulty which I hasten to put before you.... So
+    long as proper names intrude their capitals into mid-sentence
+    you cannot arrive at flat uniformity, and a few capitals more
+    or less do not offend me...._
+
+    _I did not intend to be unfair about High Mass and first
+    thought of suggesting for your consideration either Holy
+    Communion or that hideous, hypocritical, pusillanimous
+    compromise beloved of Anglicans, the “eucharist,” then
+    substituted the name of a ceremonial in your own church. You, I
+    see, write of the Real Presence without capitals._
+
+    (_Gross knavery and insincerity on my part; rank scoundrelism.
+    I’d have put caps, on any other occasion._)
+
+    _I should give capitals to this and to such words as
+    Incarnation, Crucifixion and Ascension, when used in a
+    religious connection. Also to the word Hegira and any similar
+    words culled from any other religion. As I told you before,
+    I am without a rule and would let almost any word have its
+    capital, if I could please it thereby. Words used in a special
+    sense also have their capitals from me, as for example Hall,
+    when that means a college dinner served in hall. No, I am
+    afraid that a capital for colonel, major and vicar leaves my
+    teeth unmoved, and I could write postmistress with a capital
+    light-heartedly. On the other hand I should not use a capital
+    for dustman, as this is not a title or office._
+
+    _I am, as you see, quite illogical and inconsistent; and, if
+    I try to follow your rules, it will be only in the hope of
+    pleasing you. I cannot rouse myself to any enthusiasm for or
+    against a liberal use of capitals and I do not think that it is
+    a matter of great importance. On considerations of comeliness,
+    I think the French printed page, with its vile type and
+    vile, fluffy paper, is one of the ugliest things (Nonsense,
+    nonsense, you unæsthetic Celt! The unsought, natural beauty
+    and perfection of the page make up for all the inferiority of
+    the material. Never say that again! Your friend Seymour Leslie
+    would scratch and claw you for it.) ever allowed to issue from
+    a printing press, but that may be only insular prejudice...._
+
+    _Forgive a boring letter, I beg, but I am in a thoroughly
+    boring mood. (Grawnted.)..._
+
+A postscript to this controversy came on a postcard dated 28.6.20:
+
+    _... Darwin spells “the king” with a small “k.”_
+
+    _He is rather good in spelling, bad in punctuation, execrable
+    in statement, logic, deduction. In ~The Descent of Man~ he
+    says:_
+
+        _“Music arouses in us various emotions, but not the
+        more terrible ones of horror, fear, rage, etc.”_
+
+    _He had never heard of me, though I was 17 when he died._
+
+                                                              _Tex._
+
+                _Crowborough, 30 June (alas, how time flies!) 1920._
+
+    _For your two letters of 28, 29 June, many thanks. I really
+    can’t write and congratulate H. on ~that~! How awful!_
+
+    _And to think that, if Lionel ~[the recipient of the “blue”]~
+    had been “vowed” to the B.V.M. in his infancy, he’d have worn
+    nothing but blue and white, anyhow, till he came of age!..._
+
+Objecting to my having enclosed the phrase “honest broker” in inverted
+commas, he continues:
+
+    _Lady Y., you may remember, said:_
+
+    _“Good beobles, we come here for your goots.”_
+
+    _“Ay,” they replied, “and for our chattels too!”_
+
+    _I don’t want your chattels; but I am convinced that I came
+    to England for your goots and to save you from degenerating
+    into a lady novelist. The worst of it is that Lady D. agreed
+    with you.... Seriously, however: suppose Winston were to use
+    a perfectly commonplace metaphor, to say, ~e.g.~, that he had
+    ordered the Gallipoli expedition off his own bat. Would that
+    for all time raise those four words from the commonplace to
+    the exceptional? Could you never employ that phrase except in
+    “quotes”?..._
+
+    _Be sensible. Do not fight against your rescuer. Let me, when I
+    receive the Royal Humane Society’s medal, feel that my gallant
+    efforts were not in vain, that I succeeded in saving your life
+    and soul!..._
+
+    _P.S. An invitation to the ... Oppenheim wedding has just
+    arrived. Like the man who answered the big-game-hunter’s
+    advertisement, I’m not going._[15]
+
+    _Trusting that this will find you alive, ~he writes 7.7.20~,
+    I write to thank you for your letter and to return the book.
+    ~[The Diary of a Nobody]~. It amused me, though I am not
+    prepared to go as far as Rosebinger, Birringer or Bellinger.
+    I could certainly furnish a bedroom without it; in fact, I
+    hope to die before I read it again; I don’t rank it with Don
+    Quixote; and I have never seen the statue of St. John the
+    Baptist, so “can’t say.” I think that Mr. Hardfur Huttle,
+    towards the end, does much to cheer the reader._
+
+    _I have bought pahnds and pahnds’ worth of books; I am
+    rou-inned; and yet I never have aught to read. Can you lend me
+    Huxley’s Collected Essays? Can you lend me anything in which
+    somebody “goes for” somebody else? I yearn to read savage
+    attacks; you know what I mean: not attaxi-cabri-au lait, but
+    attacks free from all milk of human kindness._
+
+    _Here is a typical quotation from your favourite “poet”, whom,
+    by the way, Benjamin Beaconsfield disliked as much as I do:_
+
+    “Out of the wreck I rise, past Zeus to the P(sic)otency o’er
+    him.”
+
+    _Nice and typical, isn’t it? But you mustn’t use it, as the
+    first six words form the title of a novel by Beatrice Harraden
+    which I have been driven to read down here by the dearth of
+    books._
+
+    _My last two purchases have just arrived; series i and ii of
+    the New Decameron. Shall I enjoy them?..._
+
+    _You will want something to read in the train, ~he writes on
+    10.7.20~. Read this Muddiman’s ~Men of the Nineties~. But
+    please return it to me; it will serve to keep the child quiet
+    when she next comes down. And it served to make me feel very
+    young again (seven years younger than you are now) to read
+    of all those remarkable men with whom I foregathered in the
+    nineties._
+
+    _They would probably have accepted Squire and Siegfried
+    Sassoon.[16] None of the other poets; none of the
+    prose-writers, painters, “blasters” or blighters...._
+
+In acknowledging the book, I objected to what I considered the excessive
+importance that is still attached to the men of the nineties and to
+their work:
+
+    _I doubt, ~I wrote, 12.7.20~, whether the years 1890 to 1900
+    have produced more permanent literature of the first order
+    than any other decade of the 19th century—or the twentieth.
+    Paris was discovered anew in those days and seemed a tremendous
+    discovery, though its influence was meretricious, and the
+    imitations from the French were usually of the worst French
+    models. The discovery of art for art’s sake was, I always feel,
+    the most meaningless and pretentious of all other shams. Even
+    Wilde never made clear what he meant by the phrase, though
+    he and his school interpreted it practically by a wholly
+    decadent over-elaboration of decoration. The interest of the
+    period lies in the astounding success achieved by this noisy
+    and self-sufficient coterie in imposing itself on the easily
+    startled, and easily shocked and still more easily impressed
+    middle and upper classes of London society. But that is a thing
+    that so many people can do and a thing that is so seldom worth
+    doing._
+
+In a later letter, I added, 15.6.20:
+
+    _I believe that the great bubble of the nineties has been
+    pricked for the present generation. All the work of Max, most
+    of Beardsley and a little of Wilde have a permanent place;
+    and, if some one would do for the poets and essayists of the
+    nineties what Eddie Marsh has done for the Georgian poets, we
+    might have one volume of moderate size containing the poetry
+    of interest and good craftsmanship though of little power or
+    originality...._
+
+    _Whether ~[the artistic movement of the nineties]~ effected
+    any great liberation of spirit or manner from the fetters of
+    mid-Victorian literature I cannot say, though I am inclined
+    to doubt it. That liberation was being achieved by individual
+    writers such as Meredith and Kipling, who never had anything
+    to do with the domino-room of the Cheshire Cheese. Never, I am
+    sure, was any artistic group so void of humour as the men of
+    the nineties._
+
+    _Having damned them, their period and work so far, I may
+    surprise you by conceding that they do still arouse great
+    interest.... I have been thinking that it is almost your duty
+    to put on permanent record your own knowledge and opinions
+    about this school. Max Beerbohm is unlikely to do it, and you
+    must now be one of the very few men living who were on terms
+    of intimacy with the leaders of the movement.... Men under
+    thirty have never heard of John Gray, Grackanthorpe or your
+    over advertised American friend Peters. Your annotations to
+    Muddiman’s book go some very little distance towards filling
+    this gap, but I think you should undertake something more
+    substantial. For heaven’s sake do not call it ~The History
+    of the Nineties~, but is there any reason why you should
+    not—from your memory and without consulting a single work of
+    reference—compile a little book of ~Notes on the ’Nineties~?
+    Make it an informal dictionary of biography, put down all the
+    names of the men associated with that movement at leisure,
+    record about each everything that has not yet appeared in
+    print and correct the occasionally incorrect accounts of other
+    writers. Such a book would be a valuable addition to literary
+    history, it would be amusing and not difficult for you to
+    write, it could be turned to the profit of your reputation and
+    pocket...._
+
+For this criticism Teixeira took me to task in his letter of 14.7.20.
+
+    _And now, Stephen, tremble. How often have I not called you
+    “the wise youth!” How constantly have I not believed you to
+    be filled with knowledge, either acquired or instinctive
+    and intuitive, of most things! And now your letter ... has
+    disappointed me almost to tears._
+
+    _Your only excuse would be that you took Oscar Wilde and
+    Bernard Shaw to be and practically alone to be the men of
+    the nineties. That is not so. And, if you agree with me that
+    Oscar was a man of the eighties and that Shaw is a man of the
+    twentieth century, you have no excuse whatever and 98% of the
+    first paragraph in your letter is dead wrong._
+
+    _I presume that you keep copies of your letters to me: you
+    should; they will be useful for your ~Memoirs of a Celibate~
+    (~John Murray: 1950; 105/- net~). Anyhow, here goes:_
+
+    _There was no question of either a literary revival or
+    revolution in the nineties and there was no sham, colossal or
+    minute._
+
+    _The men engaged were not pretentious, not conceited, not
+    humbugs. They were a group of men, mostly under 30, who just
+    wrote and drew and painted as well as they could, in all
+    sincerity and with no view of financial gain. Dowson, Johnson,
+    Horner, Image, etc., etc., etc., were the humblest, most modest
+    lot of literary men I ever met._
+
+    _Their output was not immense: it was infinitesimal, just
+    because they were so careful to produce only work that was
+    “just so.” Think, Stephen. What did Henry Harland, one of the
+    few to live to over 40, put out? ~The Cardinal’s Snuff Box~,
+    ~My Friend Prospers~, ~Mademoiselle Miss and Other Stories~:
+    that is all! Ernest Dowson: two slim volumes of verse,
+    half-a-dozen short stories, a collaborator’s share in two
+    novels. John Gray: one slim volume of verse. Lionel Johnson:
+    God knows how little. And so on. Arthur Symns has worked on
+    steadily, but, though he is getting on for sixty, you cannot
+    say that his output is immense or contains anything that was
+    not worth doing._
+
+    _Immensely advertised! Where? And by whom?_
+
+    _Beardsley’s output was immense, for his years. Ought not the
+    world to be grateful for it? He told me once that he had an
+    itch for work; and it looked afterwards as if he knew that he
+    was doomed to die at 24 or 26 and wanted to throw off all he
+    could before. When he worked no one knew: no one ever saw him
+    at work and he was always about and always accessible._
+
+    _He was not conceited.... Rickets and Shannon were a little
+    conceited: they had a way of “coming the Pope” over the rest,
+    as Will Rothenstein once put it to me. (Will always took “a
+    proper pride” in his excellent work, but no more). But, Lord,
+    hadn’t they the right to be? Was ever a book more beautifully
+    designed than ~Silverpoints~ (cover, page, type, typesetting by
+    Ricketts)? Place Ricketts’ cover of the ~Pageant~ beside any
+    other book in your library and tell me how it strikes you. Look
+    at anything that Charles Shannon condescends to exhibit in the
+    Academy and see how the quality of it slays everything around
+    it exactly as a picture by Whistler or Rossetti would do._
+
+    _To revert to immensity of output (I have to keep levanting
+    and tacking about), I call immense the output of Belloc (the
+    modern Sterne), Chesterton (the modern Swift), E. V. Lucas
+    (the modern Addison); they themselves would be flattered at
+    the comparisons. These chaps, though they can and sometimes do
+    write as well as the men of the nineties, spoil their average
+    by writing immensely; and they write immensely because they
+    want a good deal of money. Now the men of the nineties hadn’t
+    clubs, homes, wives or children; lunched for a shilling; dined
+    for eighteen pence; and didn’t want a lot of money. They cared
+    neither for money nor fame; they cared for their own esteem and
+    that of what you call their coterie and I their set._
+
+    _And that (to answer a question which you once asked me) is art
+    for art’s sake; and I maintain that it is not right to call
+    this meaningless or pretentious or a sham._
+
+    _This coterie, or set, was not noisy: I never met a quieter; it
+    was self-sufficient only in the best sense; and it in no way
+    imposed or impressed itself on the middle and upper classes of
+    London society. How could they? I doubt if any number of the
+    ~Savoy~ ever sold 1,000 copies; certainly no number ever sold
+    2,000. And they ... were never in society, were never in the
+    outskirts of society and never wanted to be in either._
+
+    _But there! I daresay you were thinking of Oscar all the
+    time...._
+
+    _Enter on the lawn a nurse bearing my dinner-tray. After dinner
+    I retire to bed...._
+
+    _One day, ~Teixeira added, 17.7.20~, I’ll return to those men
+    of the nineties (I will never write a book about them: really I
+    was too much outside them)...._
+
+    _I trust that some Leonard Merricks are on the way: I’m nigh
+    starved for books again. Don’t send me Zola or Balzac in
+    English: I couldn’t stomach the translations. And I expect
+    you’re right about Balzac’s French style. Those giants were
+    awful chaps: Balzac, Rubens, the pylon-designing Baines,
+    brrr!..._
+
+On 22.7.20 he writes:
+
+    _I beseech you, if you haven’t it, buy yourself a copy of ~The
+    Home Life of Herbert Spencer. By “Two.”~ It is the book
+    praised by “Rozbury” in his letter to Arrowsmith prefacing
+    ~The Diary of a Nobody~. I bought it and began to shake with
+    laughter at Rosebery’s being such an ass. But, after a few
+    pages, I began to see what he meant; and then, time after time,
+    I nearly rolled off my long-chair with laughing not at Rosebery
+    but with him. I’d lend it you, but it’ll only cost you 3/6; and
+    I want you to have it as a companion volume to ~The Diary~._
+
+    _However, if you will not buy it, I will lend it to you. You’ve
+    “got” to read it, or I will never write you another letter._
+
+And on 23.7.20:
+
+    _Some 32 years ago, “Pearl Hobbes” wrote to me that I ought to
+    translate Balzac; and I am sorry it is too late for me to do
+    ~Goriot~. I am rereading it all the same with much enjoyment,
+    though I think that these gala editions should be at least as
+    well translated as my Lutetian set of six Zola novels._
+
+    _Huxley, in his little autobiography, writes:_
+
+    _“As Rastignac, in the Père Goriot, says to Paris, I said to
+    London:_
+
+    _“‘A nous deux!’”_
+
+    _I remembered that this came at the end of the book, turned to
+    it and found:_
+
+    _“Rastignac ... saw beneath him Paris, ... The glance he darted
+    on this buzzing hive seemed in advance to drink its honey,
+    while he said proudly:_
+
+    _“‘Now for our turn—hers and mine.’”_
+
+    _An epigrammatic tag sadly boshed, I think._
+
+    _I find that “leave them nothing but their eyes to weep with”
+    occurs in this book; so we must absolve poor old Bismark at any
+    rate from inventing this bloodthirsty phrase._
+
+    _And I find the Ukraine mentioned! The Ukraine! The dear old
+    Ukraine! A sweet land of which I—and you? be honest! had never
+    heard before the days of the W.T.I.D._
+
+    _I have sent for a complete set of Heine from Heinemann; it
+    just occurred to me that I have read little of this great
+    man’s. And I am told that the translation is good...._
+
+    _Do E. and J., ~he asks, 26.7.20~, ever perpetrate those plays
+    upon words of which Heine was so fond? They are not exactly
+    puns; I am not sure that quodlibets isn’t the word for them.
+    E.G.: Herr von Schnabelowpski smites the heart of a Dutch
+    hotel-proprietress. Over the real china cups she gazes at him
+    porcela(i)nguidly._
+
+    _That is not a very good example. This one is better: Heine
+    calls on Rothschild at Frankfurt. Rothschild receives him quite
+    famillionairly._
+
+    _Good-bye. It threatens rain; and I propose to spend the day
+    in bed, with the proofs of ~The Inevitable~...._
+
+A criticism of Plarr’s Life of Dowson leads Teixeira, 27.7.20, to
+annotate the letter that contained it:
+
+    _... I was suggesting, I wrote, that the effect ... on the
+    minds of a generation which knew not Dowson would be to make it
+    feel that it did not want to know him...._
+
+    _(Your cecession from catholicism, he replies, has done you
+    McKennas a lot of harm. You flout tradition and go in for
+    rational inference and deduction in its place. Horrible,
+    horrible! The apostles are not all dead; many of them are your
+    living contemporaries; you could, if you like, receive at first
+    hand their memories of their dead fellows; and you prefer to
+    make up your own mistaken impressions in the light of your own
+    mistaken intellect. Well, well!_
+
+    _And, if you write just that sort of life of me, I’ll wriggle
+    with pleasure in my coffin.)_
+
+    _This evening Henry Arthur Jones is giving a dinner ... to
+    James M. Beck.... I have been bidden to attend...._
+
+    _(Beck is the finest orator I ever heard; and I’ve heard
+    Gladstone ~inter alios~._
+
+    _Those Heine quodlibets about which I wrote y’day are, I
+    believe, called “split puns,” though I doubt the happiness of
+    the term. I made one in my sleep this morning: rowdies on the
+    Brighton road indulging in a charabanquet....)_
+
+    _I can never have news, as you may imagine, ~writes Teixeira,
+    29.7.20~; my letters must be always replies to yours...._
+
+    _I like your Cave-Brown-Cave story if it was true; it probably
+    was, as a family of that name exists._[17]
+
+    _I never heard John Redmond, I am sorry to say. He was, so to
+    speak, after my time. I heard Parnell and, if I were only a
+    mimic, could give you his curiously contemptuous, high-bred,
+    high-pitched voice to-day. I heard Randolph; and at the time,
+    in the eighties, both he and Arthur Balfour used to lisp. Does
+    A. B. lisp now? Answer this: it interests me; and it has a sort
+    of bearing on that passing-fashion competition which you were
+    starting. So essential to birth and breeding was the lisp in
+    those days that even the English-bred Comte de Paris lisped ...
+    in French! I was at his silver wedding and well remember his
+    reception of me._
+
+    “Vouth êtes le bienvenu ithi!”
+
+    _Incidentally I remember that good King Edward (“then Prince of
+    Wales,” as the memoir-writers say) glared at me furiously on
+    that occasion, because I was wearing trousers of the identical
+    pattern as his: an Urquhart check with a pink line...._
+
+In the course of a dinner-party given at this time, the conversation
+turned on those men and women who had won everlasting renown with the
+least effort or justification. The United States Ambassador (Mr. Davis)
+proposed Eutychus, of whom little is known but that he fell asleep during
+a sermon and tumbled from a window: I suggested the uncaring Gallio, who
+did less and is better known. Some one else put forward Melchisedec.
+Agreeing that every name in the Bible has a certain immortality, we
+turned to secular history. At the subsequent instigation of Mr. Davis,
+Lord Curzon of Kedleston propounded “the apple-bearing son of William
+Tell.” I invited Teixeira to give his opinion.
+
+    _I can’t compete with Curzon, ~he replied on 6.8.20~, though
+    I’ve tried. After all, he was one of the Souls! I did think
+    of Alfred and the cakes; but that monarch owes only 5/6 of
+    his immortality to those cakes and young Tell owed all his to
+    the apple. But stay! Many hold Tell and his offspring to be
+    mythical persons. If so, what about the good wife who scolded
+    Alfred? I should like you to find some one who will say that I
+    have beaten Curzon...._
+
+    _I shall be in town from 8 September to a few days later.
+    If you want to see me, you must arrange your engagements
+    accordingly. I am the colour which we can never get our brown
+    shoes to assume till just before the moment when they drop off
+    our feet. But I am as weak as ten thousand rats...._
+
+On 7.8.20 he writes:
+
+    _You will remember that ... I declined to join your Passing
+    Fashion Research Society, or whatever you decided to call it.
+    But I have no objection to being an honorary corresponding
+    member. And I will set you a subject._
+
+    _To establish the year in which it first became the vogue for
+    smart British males to don a deliberately dowdy attire._
+
+    _The dowdiness all burst upon my astonished eyes at once: the
+    up-and-down collar worn with a top hat and a morning coat;
+    permanently turned trousers worn with Oxford shoes, so as to
+    display an inch or so of sock; tie usually to match the socks
+    and often “self-coloured” and patternless. There are three
+    items of sheer deliberate dowdiness for you. Another dowdy item
+    was even a little earlier, I believe: the one-buttoned glove,
+    showing a bit of bare wrist between it and the shirt-cuff. But
+    the soft-fronted dress-shirt, also a piece of dowdy dandyism,
+    came in much at the same time as the three specimens cited
+    above._
+
+    _I should guess the year to be either 1907 or 1908, but I am
+    not quite sure. You, with your wonderful memory, may be able to
+    place it, for 1907-8 marks the period when you burst upon the
+    London firmament._
+
+    _I—who can remember witnessing a departure for Cremorne—I, I
+    need hardly tell you, remember much older and almost as strange
+    things. I remember peg-top trowsers, skin-tight trowsers,
+    bell-shaped trowsers, though I can’t fix the epoch of any of
+    these phenomena; and I can remember when we deliberately wore
+    our trowsers so long that we trod upon them with our heels and
+    frayed them; and that was in 1880-1._
+
+    _But all I ask that you should fix is the date of the
+    deliberately dowdy well-dressed man...._
+
+    _I think, ~he writes, 9.8.20~, that the time has come for you
+    to write ... a big political novel, a big, serious, flippant,
+    earnest, sarcastic, political novel.... Your book should be
+    quite Disraelian in scope; it should be a ~roman a clef~ to
+    this extent, that it would contain half—or quarter-portraits;
+    and you ought to concentrate on it very thoroughly. I am
+    convinced that the world is waiting for it._
+
+    _Do you observe the comparative sweetness of my mood. It is
+    doomed entirely to this glorious weather. For the rest, I hope
+    and believe that you never resent those whacks with which, when
+    the sky is overcast, I am apt to belabour my correspondents
+    like an elderly Mr. Punch on his hustings._
+
+    _My good, kind Brighton doctor—good because he is clever, kind
+    because he charges me no fee—was over here from Brighton y’day
+    to see me. He tells me that this peculiar susceptibility of
+    mine to atmospheric influence is a symptom of convalescence
+    rather than ill-health. He is much pleased with the improvement
+    in my condition; and he approves of my winter plans, though he
+    would rather have dispatched me to San Remo or even Egypt had
+    either been feasible._
+
+    _Read Max on Swinburne in the ~Fortnightly Review~ when you get
+    the chance and contrast it with George Moore’s account of his
+    visit to Swinburne, in which he can only tell us that he found
+    the poet naked in bed. I forget where it occurs...._
+
+In answering this letter I pointed out that Disraeli avoided the great
+political issues of the days in which he was writing and that any author,
+such as H. G. Wells in _The New Machiavelli_, Granville Barker in
+_Waste_ and H. M. Harwood in the _Grain of Mustard Seed_, who attempts a
+political theme is almost bound to impale himself on one or other horn of
+a dilemma; if his novel or play revolve round a living controversy such
+as the right to strike in war-time or the justice of ordering reprisals
+in Ireland, the theatre may become the scene of a nightly riot and the
+critics will consider their own political preferences more earnestly than
+the literary merits of the book; if the action of play or novel be based
+on a dead or unborn controversy, it will fail to arouse the faintest
+interest. I was sure that the other admirers of the three works which I
+quoted were unmoved by the endowment of motherhood, by educational reform
+and by housing schemes.
+
+In reply, Teixeira wrote, 11.8.20:
+
+    _... Don’t slay the suggestions of the big political novel
+    off-hand or outright. I mean a bigger thing than you do; a
+    thing that not Wells nor Barker nor Harwood ... could write,
+    whereas you, I think, could; a thing as big as ~Coningsby~; a
+    thing called ~The Secretary of State~ or ~The First Lord of the
+    Treasury~, or some such frank affair as that._
+
+    _You have kept up a “very average” logical position in life.
+    You know a number of statesmen, but you know only those
+    whom you like and you like only those whom you esteem. Your
+    portraits of those whom you esteem could not offend them; your
+    sketch even of a genial rogue ... could not offend him; and you
+    don’t or ought not to care if your daguerreotypes of S., M. and
+    B. offended them or not...._
+
+    _Incidentally you might do no little good, to Ireland, which
+    should have been your native land, to England, which by your
+    own choice remains your home, and to the world in general, to
+    which I hope that you bear no ill-will...._
+
+In his next letter, 14.8.20, he returns to the same subject:
+
+    _Your letter ... pretty well convinces me, at any rate about
+    the Coningsby novel. Dizzy never wrote about the period in
+    which he was just then living. All his novels are antedated a
+    good many years. This by way of defending him against any idea
+    that he ever offended by betraying private or official secrets
+    in his novels...._
+
+One of Teixeira’s last letters (19.8.20) from Crowborough contained a
+translation of the terms (already quoted) in which Couperus congratulated
+him on his version of _The Tour_:
+
+Couperus writes:
+
+    _“Your last envoi has given me a most delightful day. What a
+    magnificent translation. ~The Tour~ is; what a most charming
+    little book it has become! I am in raptures over it and read
+    and reread it all day and have had tears in my eyes and have
+    laughed over it. You may think it silly of me to say all this;
+    but it has become an exquisitely beautiful work in its English
+    form. My warmest congratulations!..._
+
+    _“Thank McKenna for his assistance: the hymn has become very
+    fine. For that matter the whole book is a gem, if I may say so
+    myself.”_
+
+    _So I’ve had one appreciative reader at any rate!..._
+
+On 27.8.20 he adds:
+
+    _Tell Norman ~[Major Holden, then liberal candidate for the
+    Isle of Wight]~ that, should there be an election in “the
+    island” before I leave Ventnor, he’ll find me both able and
+    ready to impersonate the oldest inhabitant and gallop to the
+    polling-station, in my bath-chair, and vote for him...._
+
+And, finally, in praise of toleration:
+
+                        _31 August 1920 (being the birthday of Her
+                        Majesty the Queen of the Netherlands)._
+
+    _It won’t do to insist on this racial aspect of things. I
+    was never of those who called L. G. a damned little Welsh
+    solicitor. He would have been just the same had he been Scotch
+    or English or Irish. After all, our friend R. is little and
+    Welsh and was a solicitor and will as likely as not be damned
+    if he doesn’t join his wife’s church. And there is the converse
+    case, when you hear men describing an outrage committed by
+    Englishmen as “unenglish.” How can the things be unenglish
+    which the English do?_
+
+    _Like yourself, the late W. H. Smith was shocked when Parnell
+    stood up and told the House of Commons ... that he had lied to
+    them in the interests of his country. I like to think of you as
+    occupying a subtler and more philosophical standpoint than the
+    late W. H. Smith...._
+
+    _I continue to feel better; and the arrival of two very pretty
+    women patients has loosed my tongue and given me an outlet for
+    many a childish and innocent jest. I excuse these jests by
+    saying that they’re due to Minerva._
+
+    _“Who’s Minerva?”_
+
+    _“Mi-nervous breakdown. By the way, I hope you like your Alf?”_
+
+    _“Our Alf? What do you mean?”_
+
+    _“Your al-f-resco meals.”_
+
+    _Just like that!..._
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+
+For the next few days Teixeira was absorbed in his preparations for
+leaving Crowborough. On arriving in London, he came to stay with me until
+he and his wife went to the Isle of Wight for the autumn and winter.
+
+In acknowledging, on 1.9.20 his instructions about the diet on which he
+now lived, I wrote:
+
+    _Many thanks for your letter written on the anniversary of Her
+    Majesty the Queen of the Netherlands. Do not forget to date any
+    letters you may write on Friday the anniversary of Naseby, the
+    crowning mercy of Worcester and the death of O. Cromwell._
+
+Teixeira interpolated here:
+
+    (_And the birthday of my late aunt Judith Teixeira._)
+
+On 2.9.20 he writes:
+
+    _Dodd ~[Dodd, Mead and Co. Inc.]~ is going to reissue
+    ~[Couperus’]~ ~Majesty~ in America and would like you to write
+    a preface to it.... Will you do this? I should very much like
+    you to. It involves re-reading the book, I fear; but after that
+    you will not have much to do except to draw an analogy between
+    the hero and the poor Czar, on whose character the recent
+    articles in the ~Times~ have thrown an interesting light._
+
+I reminded Teixeira that I had never read _Majesty_, as I had never been
+able to secure a copy.
+
+    _You’re perfectly right, ~he replied on 5.9.20~. I’ll bring the
+    only copy in the world, that I know of, in my suit-case._
+
+    _You will be able to point to some remarkable prophecies on
+    C’s part (he foretold the Hague Conference years before it
+    happened) and, for the rest, to let yourself go as you please
+    on high continental dynastic politics. I doubt if any writer
+    ever entered into the soul of princes as this astonishing youth
+    of 25 or so did...._
+
+    _I propose to revise ~Majesty~ so thoroughly that I shall be
+    entitled to eliminate Ernest Dowson’s name from the title-page,
+    even as I eliminated John Gray’s from that of ~Ecstacy~. There
+    was no true collaboration in either case; and they did little
+    more for me than you did in ~Old People~: not so much as you
+    did in ~The Tour~. Neither had the original before him._
+
+    _I look forward greatly to my stay with you.... Eimar O’Duffy
+    ~[the author of The Wasted Island]~ has been married by another
+    novelist and has gone to live with her in a cottage in Wexford.
+    She spells her name Cathleen; and he has sent me his early
+    poems, in which he spelt his name Eimhar. He tells me that
+    this spelling was abandoned because it didn’t look well; this
+    I accept. He adds that it is pronounced Avar: this I do not
+    believe...._
+
+On leaving me, Teixeira wrote 24.9.20 to tell me that he had reached
+Ventnor without mishap:
+
+    _This is not to acknowledge the receipt of any letter from
+    you that may or may not be awaiting me at the County & Castle
+    Club, an edifice into which I have not yet made my comital and
+    castellated entry. Rather is it to announce my safe arrival,
+    after four hours of wearying travel, and my complete revival,
+    after ten hours of refreshing sleep, and to repeat my thanks
+    for your utterly exceptional and debonnair hospitality._
+
+    _The first impression of Ventnor is favourable...._
+
+This pococurantist attitude, if I may employ a phrase beloved by
+Teixeira, was not supported by his wife in the postscript which she added:
+
+    _Poor fellow, he was so tired travelling and so good over it.
+    This place one could wear rags in, it’s so antiquated; and
+    we shall return confirmed frumps and bores. There is some
+    miniature beauty in a low hill and a tinkly pier that would be
+    blown away in a quarter of a gale...._
+
+    _I have seen the sun and feel reasonably well and happy,
+    ~Teixeira proclaims in a second letter on the same day~...._
+
+From the end of September to the end of December, when I left England,
+our letters—though we corresponded almost daily were much taken up with
+business matters. I therefore only reproduce such extracts as throw light
+on Teixeira’s literary opinions and on his life at Ventnor.
+
+    _My dear Stephen, loyal and true, ~he writes on 3.10.20~; A
+    thousand thanks for Lady Lilith, with its charming dedication,
+    and for your letter.... I cannot well lend you the Repington
+    volumes. I have them from the Times Book Club, which is all
+    that my poor wife has to supply her with books. But seriously
+    I advise you to buy them. They are as admirable as they are
+    beastly. They form a perfect record of the war as you and I saw
+    it; you will refer to them often in years to come; they mention
+    every one that I know (except yourself) and a host more, every
+    one that you know and a few more; and there is a very full
+    index to them...._
+
+    _No, do not send me the Tree book: it will arrive in the next
+    parcel from the Times Book Club...._
+
+There follows an account of a characteristic dialogue between Teixeira
+and his dentist:
+
+    _New (enumerating every action, like a comic-conjurer):
+    “Spray!”_
+
+    _Tex: “Oremus!”..._
+
+    _I wish, ~he writes on 6.10.20~, that I had no correspondent
+    but you: what good stuff I could write to you! But 19 letters
+    in one day: think of it!..._
+
+    _My age is a melancholy one. The man of 50 or 60 sees all his
+    acquaintances and friends dying off in ones and twos: Heinemann
+    and Williamson to-day; who will it be to-morrow? When he’s 70,
+    he begins to be a sole survivor, with no friends left to lose._
+
+    _You will find the Tree book amusing as you go on with it.
+    Four-fifths of it represent the life of a dead fairy told by
+    living fairies, one wittier and more whimsical than the others.
+    I confess to tittering over Viola’s “screwing their screws
+    to the sticking-point” and “peacocks held in the leash.” And
+    that’s a glorious portrait of Julius, though, when I knew him,
+    he was more mature and more majestic...._
+
+On 11.10.20 he breaks into verse:
+
+      _My very dear Stephen McKenna,_
+        _I’m reading your Lilith again,_
+      _With much intellectual pleasure_
+        _And some little physical pain._
+    _This jingle shaped itself within my head_
+    _As I stepped to my table from my bed._
+
+    _It’s that physical pain I’m after for the present. The book
+    hurts my eyes...._
+
+    _I’ve had a little petty cash from the Couperus books. It’s
+    been amusing to see that ~Small Souls~ in a given six months
+    produces 15 times as much in America as in this benighted
+    country...._
+
+Though he commonly kept his religion and politics to himself, Teixeira’s
+sympathy with the Irish moved him to write, 27.10.20:
+
+    _I’m angrily unhappy at the death of McSwiney. To kill a man
+    with a face like that! Compare the faces of those who killed
+    him!..._
+
+    _It’s a brute of a world that the sun is shining on so
+    brightly...._
+
+I had contemplated spending the winter in a voyage up the Amazon, but
+abandoned it in favour of one down the east coast of South America.
+Teixeira comments, 29.10.20:
+
+    _Your new voyage is the more sensible and interesting by far.
+    What’s Amazon to you or you to Amazon? I pictured you and
+    trembled for you, steaming slowly up that mighty river between
+    alligators taking pot-shots at you with poisoned pea-shooters
+    from one bank and hummingbirds yapping split infinitives at
+    you from the other. You will be much better off on board your
+    goodish coasting tramp...._
+
+    _... It interested me, ~he adds, 30.10.20~, to read in this
+    morning’s ~Times~ that Brazilian stock has risen a couple of
+    points at the news of your contemplated visit. I hope that
+    Argentine rails will follow suit...._
+
+    _~[A lady]~ when returning Shane Leslie’s book, which I had
+    lent to her and she enjoyed ... had the asinine effrontery
+    to write to me ... of “McSwiney’s farcical death.” Isn’t it
+    dreadful to think that the world has given birth to women who
+    can write like that?_
+
+    _Can death ever be farcical? We know that the epithet is
+    wholly inapposite in the present instance. But can death ever
+    be farcical? I told you, I think, of Major Johnson, who,
+    throwing hot coppers from the balcony of the Grand Hôtel in
+    Paris at the crowd cheering Kruger, overbalanced himself, fell
+    to the pavement and was killed. That is the nearest approach
+    to a farcical death that I can think of. But I should call it
+    ironical. A farcical death. Alas!..._
+
+On 31.10.20 he writes:
+
+    _I fear you will have a hell of a windy time at Deal or Dover
+    or wherever Walmer Castle has its being (Walmer perhaps, as an
+    afterthought)? It is blowing half a gale here. The Dutch say
+    “to lie like a horse-thief.” The English ought to say “to lie
+    like a guide-book.” One lies before me at this moment:_
+
+    _“In fact, Ventnor is a sun-box; and the east and north winds
+    would have to confess that they have not even a visiting
+    acquaintance with her.”_
+
+    _At the same moment, these self-same winds are “a-sharting in
+    my ear”:_
+
+    _“We don’t confess to nothink of the sort!_
+    _Ho, leave us in yer will before yer die!”_
+
+    _’Tis well to be you, looking forward to sailing the Spanish
+    Main...._
+
+Of Philip Guedalla’s _Supers and Supermen_, Teixeira writes, 7.11.20:
+
+    _I have got it out of the Times Book Club because of a kindly
+    notice. There are two or three delicious plums in it...._
+
+    _Among the happy phrases is one—“nudging us with his inimitably
+    knowing inverted commas”—to which I would in my mean, Parthian
+    way call your attention, as bearing upon one of our recent
+    controversies...._
+
+    _What is B.N.C., a Noxford college mentioned in Galsworthy’s
+    book?[18] ~he asks, 10.11.20~. Bras(?z)enos? How I hate these
+    initials!..._
+
+On St. Stanislaus’ Day, he writes:
+
+    _Many thanks for your letter of yesterday (which was the eve of
+    St. Stanislaus) ... I have no ... bright social news for you._
+
+    _Yet stay._
+
+    _A card was left upon me, a few days ago, by Captain
+    Cave-Brown-Cave, R.N., with a verbal message:_
+
+    _“Would Mr. Teixeira-de-Mattos-Teixeira care for a rubber of
+    bridge one afternoon?”_
+
+    _Yesterday I accepted the soft invitation and took 14/- off
+    Captain Cave-Brown-Cave and his fellow troglodytes. This would
+    have been £7 at my normal points._
+
+    _These are our island adventures._
+
+    _Here is your ~Inevitable~._
+
+    _Make me a list (will you?) of people who to your knowledge
+    have entreated me hospitably during the past twelve-month, so
+    that I may send them copies of this or some other book when
+    Christmas cometh round._
+
+    _With their addresses, please, of which I remembreth not one
+    single one...._
+
+I had been recommended to go from Buenos Aires across the Andes to
+Valparaiso and to come home by Chile, Peru and the Panama Canal rather
+than to sail twice over the same course between Buenos Aires and
+Southampton.
+
+Teixeira comments on this change of plans in his letter of 16.11.20:
+
+    _They have had a cyclone, I see, at “Baires,” as the wireless
+    used to have it at the W.T.I.D; but, as we had a gale y’day at
+    Ventnor, there’s not much in that. On the other hand, how do
+    you propose to travel from Baires to Paradise Valley? I ask in
+    all ignorance: is there a railway? I know there are Argentine
+    Rails; but are the Andes tunnelled? If not, what about it? You
+    can travel from London to Ventnor ~via~ Cowes but also ~via~
+    Ryde; in my days, the route from Baires to Valparaiso knew but
+    one method: to Ride, if you like, but to Ride ~via~ Llamas. Let
+    me warn you, a llama would spit in your eye as soon as look at
+    you. And you not knowing a word of the language! How’s it to
+    be done, Stephen, how’s it to be done? There are bits of the
+    Andes where you cross a crevasse, llama and all, in a basket
+    slung on a rope which stretches from precipice to precipice. Of
+    all the cinematographic stunts! Well, there! Have you a nice
+    revolver?..._
+
+    _... Tell me what you think that you are going to eat
+    between Baires and Valparaiso, ~he adds next day~. They grow
+    comparatively few fish on the slopes or even on the crests of
+    the Andes...._
+
+    _As a matter of curiosity, write to me to-morrow what your
+    weather was like now at 9.15 a.m. to-day. I am sitting at a
+    wide-open window actually perspiring (saving your presence)
+    with heat._
+
+I reassured him as best I could (17.11.20):
+
+    _... Those who know tell me that there is a perfectly good
+    railway from Buenos Aires to Valparaiso with a permanent
+    way, rolling stock, points and signals, tunnels to taste and
+    all the paraphernalia that one might buy on a small scale at
+    Hamley’s toy-shop. The Andes ought, of course, to be crossed
+    on mule-back, but this takes long and I do not know any mules.
+    Nor, from your exposition of their habits, am I desirous of
+    meeting any llamas...._
+
+    _My faithful Stephen, many thanks for your three letters, ~he
+    writes, 21.11.20~. I’ve been feeling rather out of sorts these
+    last few days and have not written to you since Thursday, I
+    believe; not that I have much to tell you ... except that,
+    were I weller and stronger, I should write and offer my sword
+    to that maligned monarch, Constantine I. of the Hellenes. I am
+    growing heartily sick of seeing countries meddling in other
+    countries’ business...._
+
+    _It were the baldest side on my part, ~he confesses on
+    23.11.20~ to pretend that the weather here has not turned cold.
+    The winds are what is known as bitter. But the sun is shining
+    like blazes. And there you have what I was leading up to: once
+    bitter, twice shining._
+
+                                                _Ever yours,
+                                                Alexander Crawshay._
+
+Not content with emulating Mrs. Robert Crawshay’s wit and appropriating
+her name, Teixeira laid his witticism before her and challenged her to
+say that it was not of the true brand. There is a reference to this in a
+later letter; his next communication was a picture-postcard of Ventnor,
+annotated by himself:
+
+    _A. ~[A bathchair man]~ This is not me._
+
+    _B. ~[A child with a hoop]~ Nor is this, really._
+
+    _C. ~[An indistinguishable figure]~ This might be._
+
+    _D. ~[A picture of the hotel]~ But probably I am here, lurking
+    in the Royal Hotel, where I can sea the sea but the sea can’t
+    see me._
+
+    _I think little of your latest joke, ~I wrote, 24.11.20~, and
+    have myself made several of late that put yours into the shade.
+    Thus, on learning that a woman of my acquaintance had left her
+    rich husband and run away with a penniless lover, I added the
+    conclusion that they were now living in silver-gilty splendour.
+    I can assure you that that is far more in the true Crawshay
+    tradition...._
+
+My effort met with less than no approval:
+
+    _My poor Stephen!, ~Teixeira wrote 25.11.20~. The worst of your
+    jokes, when you attempt to play upon words, is that they have
+    all been made before. It must be 36 (thirty-six) years (I said,
+    years) since I saw at the old Strand Theatre a play called
+    ~Silver Guilt~ parodying ~The Silver King~._
+
+    _I am glad or sorry, whichever I should be, that your arm[19]
+    has taken (~arma virumque cano~: beat that if you can! ~Virus~
+    poison, acc. (I hope and trust) ~virum~)...._
+
+    _My conscience smites me, ~he writes, 26.11.20~, for having
+    omitted in either of my last two letters to express the
+    sympathy which I feel with Seymour Leslie—and you—in this
+    serious illness of his. What is it exactly? Whatever it may be,
+    I hope that he will get the better of it...._
+
+    _His aunt Crawshay has been good enough to pass “once bitter,
+    twice shining.” She says that it “is a really worthy phrase and
+    will be of use to us all!”..._
+
+    _I have been reading a lot of French lately, in those very
+    cheap, double-columned, illustrated editions. It is perfectly
+    marvellous to see how happily the French draughtsmen succeed in
+    catching their authors’ ideas, whereas one may safely say that
+    “our” British illustrators do not catch them once in ten times.
+    Why is this? I am not sure that a certain rough, unwashed
+    Bohemianism is not at the bottom of it, achieving results which
+    are beyond that prim, priggish mode of life which nowadays
+    governs the artists on this side. I may be wrong: I certainly
+    couldn’t elaborate my theory; on the other hand, I may be
+    perfectly right...._
+
+In an earlier letter I had asked why he sought a refuge where he could
+see the sea but where the sea could not see him. The answer is given in a
+postscript:
+
+    _I might turn giddy if the ~sea saw~ me; but it would look very
+    ugly if ~I saw~ it._
+
+By way of revenge I reminded Teixeira that the gender of _virus_ was
+neuter:
+
+    _Alas!, ~he replies, 27.11.20~._
+
+    _I suspected it at the time; and now my uprooted hairs are
+    beglooming the pink geraniums below my window. I have taken my
+    oath; and now you and I are pledged: no French, you; no Greek
+    or Latin, I. It may be all for the best._
+
+    _And ~arma virusqus cano~ would have sounded so much better!..._
+
+Returning to the subject of French Illustration, he adds, 28.11.20:
+
+    _It’s the knock-about, rough-and-tumble, café life in Paris
+    I expect, that accounts for the greater success of the
+    French illustrators. They all of them meet all the authors
+    in the great ~Bourse à poignées de main~ that are the Paris
+    coffee-houses. The subjects are discussed over a thousand
+    books; and the draughtsman is not overpaid.... What I’m “after”
+    is this, that the British illustrators, sitting at home in
+    their neatly-swept fiats or studios, decorated mainly with
+    Japanese fans, furnished with wives instead of mistresses, that
+    these smug dogs, with their pappy brains, ~cannot~ turn out
+    such good work or enter so well into the spirit of things, as
+    the Frenchman. And, if all this sounds damned immoral, I can’t
+    help it._
+
+The shadow of Christmas fell across Teixeira’s mind so early as the
+first day of December:
+
+    _I ask myself, ~he writes~:_
+
+    _“What shall I give this Stephen? A book?... But he’s got a
+    book!... Ah, but has he a three-volume novel? No, bedad!...
+    And, as I live, I don’t believe that ~Violet Moses~ is included
+    in his collected edition of the works of that mighty writer,
+    Leonard Merrick.”_
+
+    _So here’s a first edition for you, with my blessing. ~[Your
+    secretary]~ should try to remove the labels with that nastiest
+    of utensils, a wet, hot sponge...._
+
+For the first time in many months Teixeira was driven back on _The Wrong
+Box_ to find an adequate comparison with the informative newcomer who now
+disturbed the noiseless tenour of his way:
+
+    _Joseph Finsbury has arrived, ~he writes, 2.12.20~. Overhearing
+    me tell my wife that Bucharest is the capital of Roumania, he
+    leant forward and asked me if I had been to Bucharest._
+
+    _Tex: No._
+
+    _Joseph: Oh, I thought I heard you mention Bucharest._
+
+    _Tex: I sometimes mention places which I have never visited._
+
+    _Joseph: Bucharest is a second Paris._
+
+    _Tex: Grrrrrrrrmph!_
+
+    _Joseph: Though I daresay it has been destroyed by now._
+
+    _Tex: (to his wife).... Have you done with ~Femina~? If so,
+    I’ll give it to those Dutch ladies._
+
+    (_Stalks off to Mrs. and Miss van L._)
+
+    _Joseph: (to an Irish widow) I have been to all the capitals of
+    Europe ... (and holds the wretched Mrs. N. enthralled, so I am
+    told, for two mortal hours)...._
+
+    _Later. Joseph (to ~[my wife]~): How clever of your husband to
+    speak Dutch to those ladies!_
+
+    _~[My wife]~: Not at all! He’s a Dutchman._
+
+    _Joseph: I know Holland very well. I have been to Rotterdam. I
+    have been to Java. The finest botanical gardens in the world
+    are at Buitenzorg near Batavia._
+
+    _~[My wife]~: Re-e-ally!_
+
+    _Can you ~Teixeira asks, 2.12.20~, lend me that book by James
+    Joyce (~Portrait of the Artist~), which you once wrote to me
+    about? I see Barbellion praises it enthusiastically in the new
+    diary._
+
+    _Would you like me to lend you ~A Last Diary~ or have you
+    bought it?_
+
+    _Your Uncle Joseph was in disgrace yesterday. We have a girl
+    trio of musicians here, who play at tea-time and eke after
+    dinner. The pianist reports that he said to her:_
+
+    _“I have been to Japan. I was very ill there and I found myself
+    in the arms of a Japanese woman.”_
+
+    _To-day he stopped me in the road and said:_
+
+    _“I wish I could speak Dutch, sir, as well as you speak
+    English. I once learnt a continental language, but I mustn’t
+    speak it now. What it was” (throwing out his arms) “you can
+    guess....”_
+
+I had read Barbellion’s two books without sharing Teixeira’s admiration
+for them, in part because I thought that a book of self-revelation so
+unreserved should only have been published posthumously, in part because
+it was incongruous—to use no stronger word—to find a man, who had aroused
+wide-spread compassion by what was taken to be the account of his last
+hours, reading with relish the sympathetic press notices which it brought
+him.
+
+To this criticism Teixeira replies, 5.12.20:
+
+    _Thank you for your two letters and the loan of James Joyce....
+    Barbellion I like and almost love—I should love him entirely
+    but for a common strain in him that makes itself heard
+    occasionally—but then I was taught very early in life to make
+    every allowance for men of any genius, whereas you look for the
+    public-school attitude towards all and sundry. Apart from this,
+    B. seems to me to have borne almost unparalleled suffering
+    with remarkable courage and to have shown a good deal of pluck
+    besides in laying bare his soul in the midst of it all._
+
+    _You see, if one cared to take the pains, one could make you
+    detest pretty well everybody you know and like. For everybody
+    has a mean, petty, shabby, cowardly side to him; and one has
+    only to tell you of what the man in question chooses to keep
+    concealed. B. chose to reveal it; that’s all about it...._
+
+    _My wife bids you be sure to say good-bye, when you go on your
+    travels, to the woman, whoever she may be, in whom you are most
+    interested. Her reason is that she dreamt two nights ago that
+    you were prevented from doing so. This does not imply that you
+    will not return alive. It means only that something prevented
+    you from saying good-bye to that person and that it would be
+    fun to stultify the dream...._
+
+On 7.12.20 Teixeira writes:
+
+    _... I am reading James Joyce, skippily. The fellow has a great
+    deal of talent, but much of it is misdirected. I should not be
+    surprised if one day he began to write books that he and his
+    country will be proud of...._
+
+    _Incidentally I admire his ruthless suppression of capitals and
+    am interested in his ditto ditto of hyphens...._
+
+On Christmas Eve, he writes:
+
+    _Forgive us our Christmases as we forgive them that Christmas
+    against us._
+
+    _What I want to know by your next letter and what you have not
+    told me, though you may think that you have, is how you propose
+    to travel home from the west coast of South America...._
+
+And on 27.12.20:
+
+    _I was asked to “recite” yesterday! I refused. I was asked
+    to take part in a hypnotic experiment: would I rather be the
+    professor or the subject?_
+
+    _“The subject,” I replied. “But I would even rather be dead.”_
+
+And on 29.12.20:
+
+    _... This is the last letter but one or two which I shall be
+    writing to you before you sail or puff down the Solent....
+    Needless to add that I feel sad at the thought of your imminent
+    departure and glad at the thought that you appear to feel a
+    trifle sad too._
+
+    _The ~Almanzora~! Well, God speed her across the Atlantic! But
+    she’s got a plaguy hairdressing name. On my dressing-table
+    stand two bottles and two only. One contains Anzora cream; the
+    other Pandora brilliantine. Both are meant to preserve and
+    beautify my already well-preserved and beautiful hair. I must
+    try to “become” some Almanzora to keep them company...._
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+
+The diary which Teixeira kept for me during my absence in South America
+was, so far as I am aware, his first venture in this kind of literature.
+Approaching it with trepidation, he abandoned it with loathing. The
+mystery of a double cash-column quickly palled; and he was not long
+intrigued even by printed reminders of the moon’s phases and of the days
+on which dividends and insurance-policy renewals became due.
+
+                         30 December 1920.
+
+    As a large number of these Diaries circulate abroad it may be
+    well to point out that the Astronomical Data, such as phases of
+    the moon etc. are given in Greenwich time.
+
+    _Perhaps it may be as well, ~Teixeira concurs, 30.12.20~._
+
+                         31 December 1920.
+
+    _I did not see the old year out. I played 1/- bridge in the
+    afternoon at Captain Cave-Brown-Cave’s, with him, Captain B.
+    and Dr. F. and won_
+
+                                                           _£—18.0._
+
+    _which at normal points would have been_
+
+                                                            _9.5.0._
+
+    _(I presume that is what the right-hand column is for. But the
+    left-hand column? Ah, that left-hand column!...)_
+
+    _The last that I saw of the old year was a 68-7-0, grey-haired
+    parson in pumps and a prince-consort moustache and whiskers
+    waltzing a polka, or polkering a waltz—in short, dancing
+    something exceedingly modern—with a 15-7-0 flapper. Then we
+    went to bed, wondering how Stephen was spending his New Year’s
+    Eve, on board the ~Almanzora~, in a south-westerly gale._
+
+                       Saturday, 1 January.
+
+    _When at 5.30 I switched on my light and rose, I saw a
+    leprechaun standing on my writing-table, looking like a little
+    sandwich-man. Fearlessly I approached; and he changed into a
+    bottle of ~eau-de-Cologne~ with an envelope slung round his
+    neck, inscribed, “To my Best Beloved.” Mark ~[my wife’s]~ bold
+    capitals. And show me another couple whose united ages amount
+    to 117 years or more and who still do this sort of thing. O
+    olden times and olden manners!..._
+
+                        Monday, 3 January.
+
+    _Bridge at Cave’s with Captain B. and Dr. C._
+
+    _~[My wife]~: “What did you talk about at tea?”_
+
+    _Tex: “Jam.”_
+
+    _This question and answer never vary, after my return from a
+    visit to the C.-B.-C’s...._
+
+    _I foresee that this compilation is going to rival the ~Diary
+    of a Nobody~. And I am pledged to keep it up until the 7th of
+    March. Kismet! Or, as the dying Nelson said, “Kismet, Hardy.”_
+
+                       Wednesday, 5 January.
+
+    Dividends due
+
+    _What dividends?_
+
+                        Sunday, 9 January.
+
+    _Thank goodness that I have only space to thank goodness that I
+    have only space wherein ... ~ad infinitum~...._
+
+                       Thursday, 13 January.
+
+    _Received from Stephen’s mother his letter to his mother...._
+
+    _Received from Lady D. Stephen’s letter to ~[her]~ and wrote
+    to her in appropriate terms, expressing doubts upon Stephen’s
+    dietary while crossing the South-American continent, where
+    there are neither fish nor eggs, save the eggs of condors and
+    hummingbirds...._
+
+                        Friday, 14 January.
+
+    _... My bank-balance is overdrawn, but I make 19/6 at bridge._
+
+    _... Mr. and Mrs. Hugh Martin arrive. I do not know if this is
+    the ~Daily News’~ Irish correspondent whom the Black and Tans
+    wanted to murder._
+
+                       Tuesday, 18 January.
+
+    _Begin Couperus’ ~Iskander: The novel of Alexander the Great~;
+    two enormous volumes, which I may hardly live to translate.
+    It is a great joy to see this artist building up his story
+    with firm and elegant perfection from the very first page,
+    with conviction and a fine self-confidence, no grouping, no
+    floundering, no hesitation...._
+
+                       Saturday, 23 January.
+
+    _Need something happen every day at Ventnor? Danged if there
+    need!_
+
+                        Monday, 24 January.
+
+    _... The new rich arrive, Rolls-Royce and all._
+
+                       Tuesday, 25 January.
+
+    _Those new rich! So new, so rich, so drearily unostentatious!
+    Young new richard bald, pan-snayed, ill-dressed; young new
+    wife and sister-in-law dowdy; young new secretary without a
+    dinner-jacket to his backside; young new baby and young new
+    nurse all over the place; young new Rolls-Royce, careering over
+    the island, the only sign of wealth._
+
+    _If only there were a few diamonds, a few banded cigars, a few
+    h’s dropping on the floor with a dull thud, one could at least
+    laugh. But the drabness, the gloom of these particular new
+    rich: O my lungs and O my liver!..._
+
+                       Thursday, 27 January.
+
+    _It is terrible, the number of people who come to this hotel;
+    and I regret the pleasant, non-“paying” days when we were six
+    visitors and three musicians, with a full staff of servants
+    to wait on us. There are now over thirty people at meals, one
+    uglier than the other. And as soon as one goes two others take
+    his place...._
+
+                        Sunday, 30 January.
+
+    _... To bed at 5, with my “special dinner” at 7, John Francis
+    Taylor’s meal: “Give me some milk; and let the milk be hot.
+    And give me some bread; and let the bread be inside the milk.”_
+
+                        Monday, 31 January.
+
+    The Insurance herein contained is not valid until your name has
+    been registered.
+
+    _I don’t care. Yer can ’ave the insurance._
+
+    _The new rich have some business visitors._
+
+                       Tuesday, 1 February.
+
+    _... Departure of the new riches’ little thyndicate of friends._
+
+    _Arrival of the dividend on my Benson & Hedges’ 10% 2nd
+    pref., the only shares wherein I have ever invested that have
+    ever paid any dividend whatever. Lord, how I have moiled
+    and toiled to sink money in stumer companies! Shrewsburry &
+    Talbot Hansoms! Galician Oilfields! Rubber substitutes! Cork
+    substitutes! Tampico-Panuco Deferred! United Transport Co.! In
+    the three last I still have holdings: about £250 in all. And
+    the things that I have inherited: thousand of dollars’ worth of
+    Mexican (and Turkish and Hungarian and Russian) rubbish, which
+    would barely fetch a tenner, all told!..._
+
+                       Thursday, 3 February.
+
+    _... The new arrivals include a long, lean man ... and his
+    wife. His hair is dyed to suggest 55; he is probably a
+    cadaverous 77. He comes down to dinner in a white tie and
+    tails. His digestion is of the weakest. He refuses soup, leaves
+    the fish, refuses a cutlet, leaves the goose and seems to
+    dine mainly on ~crême Beau Rivage~, which is a ~crême carmel~
+    decorated with a blob of whipped cream and angelica. His
+    conversation with his wife consists purely of whispered smiles._
+
+                        Friday, 4 February.
+
+    _I received letters from Stephen to me and from Stephen to his
+    mother. I have still to receive a letter from Stephen to Lady
+    D...._
+
+    _On his return he will borrow from me Frank Harris’ second
+    series of ~Contemporary Portraits~, just arrived from New York._
+
+    _There is no bridge at the Home-Sweet-Homes. I go to the club,
+    play with P. the local solicitor; Dr. W., of Harrogate; Mr. S.,
+    of the same and win the sum of £——2½ d._
+
+            Saturday, 5 February and Sunday, 6 February
+
+    _An episode of “And oh, the children’s voices in the lounge!”
+    was followed by my going to the office and saying:_
+
+    _“I am going to bed lest these children be the death of me. May
+    I have a special dinner, please?”_
+
+    _“Certainly. What would you like?”_
+
+    _“Send me some milk and let the milk be hot. And send me some
+    bread and let the bread be inside the milk.”_
+
+    _Next morning, having slept eight hours and fifteen minutes, I
+    went to the manageress and:_
+
+    _“People,” I said, “are far too proud of their children and
+    too fond of displaying them in public.... There is nothing
+    wonderful about parentage and nothing clever. Most people are
+    parents. I have been one myself.... Children should be seen and
+    not heard.... If they raise their voices in the public rooms,
+    they should be sent to their bedrooms. Some would suggest the
+    coal-hole; but I, as you know, have a gentle heart.... Remember
+    that we live in an age of reprisals. The privilege of screaming
+    and yelling is not confined to children. Adults enjoy equal
+    rights. Next time a child raises its voice in my presence, I
+    shall in quick succession bellow like a bull, roar like a
+    lion, howl like a jackal, laugh like a hyena. If you drive me
+    to it, I shall copy all the shriller domestic animals.... The
+    matter is now in your hands.”_
+
+                        Monday, 7 February.
+
+    _Peace reigns at Ventnor...._
+
+                      Wednesday, 16 February.
+
+    _... I start my sock-and-tie stunt, which consists in
+    “copycatting” daily, Austin Read seconding, an absurd young man
+    of half my age. Thus do the elderly amuse themselves for the
+    further amusement of a limited circle...._
+
+                       Tuesday, 22 February.
+
+    _Stephen’s letter of 20.1.21 to his mother arrives. ~[I
+    again varied my itinerary and had decided to make my way to
+    Valparaiso through the Straits of Magellan rather than across
+    the Andes.]~ So he is travelling in the wake of H.M.S. Beagle
+    and the late Charles Robert Darwin! He’ll be perished with
+    cold; but he’s more likely to get a fish or two to eat...._
+
+                       Sunday, 27 February.
+
+    _Stephen’s birthday. His health shall be drunk in brimming
+    barley-water; and, though I believe he has already had a
+    birthday-present, he shall have a copy of ~The Tour~ the moment
+    it arrives. Good luck to him!_
+
+    _P.S. Absolutely a good notice of ~The Tour~ in the ~Sunday
+    Times~. My wife says that the critic must have been drunk._
+
+                       Monday, 28 February.
+
+    _Arrival of a terrible Yorkshire group, two men and a woman....
+    They foregather with ... a man who appears in carpet-slippers,
+    like Kipps, and talk of nothing but food, in broad Leeds._
+
+                         Tuesday, 1 March.
+
+    _... “Ah had hum-und-eggs to my breakfast this morning. Ah
+    was always partial to hum-und-eggs for breakfast.... Ah had
+    new potai-i-toes ut the dinner. Ah said to McKanner, ‘These
+    are too good to pass.’ We had summon with ’em, summon und new
+    potai-i-itoes.”_
+
+    _They seem to be bank-managers and to have dined with Reggie at
+    some London City and Midland Bank-wet...._
+
+                        Thursday, 3 March.
+
+    _T. takes me to East Dene, the childhood home of Swinburne, now
+    a convent of the Sacred Heart. I am shown over the entrancing
+    grounds by the Mother Superior. Before taking me into the
+    chapel:_
+
+    _“You are not a catholic, I suppose?” she asks._
+
+    _“Indeed I am.”_
+
+    _“I mean, a Roman catholic?”_
+
+    _“Reverend mother, are there any others?”_
+
+    _“Oh, they all call themselves Anglican catholics nowadays!”_
+
+    _Then on to Craigie Lodge, where Pearl Hobbes pesters the
+    tenants with trivial spirit-messages._
+
+    _Home, feeling cold as death...._
+
+                        Saturday, 5 March.
+
+    _... I am correcting proofs of ~The Three Eyes~ for Hurst &
+    Blackett. Altogether I shall have four books out this spring._
+
+        _~The Tour~, Butterworth._
+        _~The Three Eyes~, Hurst & Blackett._
+        _~Majesty~, Dodd._
+        _~More Hunting Wasps~, Dodd._
+
+    _Not so bad for an owld, infirm mahn!_
+
+                         Sunday, 6 March.
+
+    _It is pleasant to see the sun gain strength daily, with
+    every sort of flower appearing, almond-blossoms in full
+    swing, cherry-blossoms hard at it and pear-blossoms making a
+    beginning._
+
+                         Monday, 7 March.
+
+    _Departure of ~[the married Yorkshire visitors]~._
+
+    _“Thank God, they’re gone!” the survivor is heard to say._
+
+    _Arrival of the survivor’s women-folk. He sees them to their
+    rooms and comes down to gloat over some woman. When his wife
+    returns to the hall:_
+
+    _“Hullo, Helen!” he says. “Are ye dahn olready?” And repeats
+    the bright question: “Hullo, Helen! Are ye dahn olready?”_
+
+    _What a people, the men of Yorkshire!..._
+
+                        Wednesday, 9 March.
+
+    _I begin a collodial sulphur treatment ... for that picturesque
+    right leg of mine. Irving’s left leg was a poem (Oscar Wilde);
+    my right leg is a money-box, adorned with three patches the
+    size of a shilling, a sixpence and a groat, all very nice and
+    silvery. I asked ~[the doctor]~ whether it was leprosy or
+    dropsy. He said it was soriasis, scoriasis, scloriasis: I don’t
+    know which and I don’t care._
+
+                        Thursday, 10 March.
+
+    _The ~[other Yorkshire visitors]~ are to go on Monday, when I
+    can say:_
+
+    _“Thank God, they’re gone!”_
+
+    _And I pray that the table next to ours may not be given to
+    people with provincial accents. Let it be noted that the
+    friend of “McKannar” is manager of the—branch of the L.J.C.M.
+    at Leeds, so that, when I go to live at Leeds, I may bank
+    elsewhere...._
+
+                         Friday, 11 March.
+
+    _At the club, I win 1861 points at bridge in 90 minutes._
+
+                                                     £.    s.   d.
+    _In money, at 2½d the 100, this represents_           _4_  _0_
+    _At the Cleveland it would have represented_    _9_  _12_  _0_
+    _At the Reform Club it would have represented_  _2_   _8_  _0_
+
+                         Sunday, 13 March.
+
+    _John (“Shane”) Leslie’s book on Cardinal Manning seems to
+    me very good. Leslie is very nasty to Purcell, who no doubt
+    deserves it._
+
+                         Monday, 14 March.
+
+    _Departure of ~[the last Yorkshireman]~, leaving his
+    women-people behind him. He asked for it and he shall have it:_
+
+    _“Thank God he’s gone!”_
+
+    _He used to stare at me till I devised the retort: closing my
+    eyelids and yawning at him like a lion._
+
+    _I think I must talk to Reggie about him some day._
+
+                        Tuesday, 15 March.
+
+    _... The hotel is filling up madly for Easter. There will be
+    more here then than at Christmas. Help!..._
+
+                        Thursday, 17 March.
+
+    S. Patrick ☽ First Quarter, 3.49 a.m.
+
+    _Well, I went to church to pray for Ireland: what else was
+    there to be done?_
+
+    _Stephen’s return seems to be unduly delayed; and I’ve
+    forgotten the name of his ship._
+
+                         Friday, 18 March.
+
+    _The sun shines in the morning._
+
+    _The rain falls in the afternoon._
+
+    _I play a little bridge._
+
+    _The sun shines all day._
+
+    _Thank God, a letter from Stephen and an end to this beastly
+    diary!_
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+
+Teixeira continued to live at Ventnor until the beginning of May, with
+spirits, health and powers of work all steadily improving. He returned
+to London in time to welcome Couperus, who arrived in the middle of the
+month and was entertained privately and publicly for five or six weeks.
+
+    _I don’t know exactly when you’ll be back, ~he writes,
+    11.3.21~, but I welcome you home with all my heart ... and with
+    an S.O.S._
+
+    _The title of ~[Couperus’]~ ~The Inevitable~[20] has been
+    forestalled, in a novel publishing with Holden & Harlingham.
+    And I want another good title in a hurry. Can you help me?_
+
+    _There is always:_
+
+        Cornélie.
+
+    _Wilkie Collins would have called it:_
+
+        Could She Do Otherwise?
+
+    _George Egerton would have said:_
+
+        The Woman Who Went Back.
+
+    _(But that’s giving the solution away too soon)._
+
+    _Is there a possible title with “Doom” or “Fate” in it?_
+
+    _Henry James:_
+
+        How Cornélie Ended.
+
+    _Stephen McKenna:_
+
+        The Reluctant Plover.
+
+    _George Robey:_
+
+        Did She Fall or Was She Pushed?
+
+    _The Bible:_
+
+        _(unquotable)_
+
+    _Tex:_
+
+        _Anything on the Wilkie Collins lines overleaf._
+
+        The Lure of Fate.
+
+        Could She Avoid It?
+
+        It Had To Be.
+
+    _And, as I said, there’s always:_
+
+        Cornélie....
+
+    _Welcome home, my dear Stephen, ~he writes, 19.3.21~...._
+
+    _I look forward, with pleasure, to receiving your diary and
+    soon you may look backward, with disgust, to having received
+    mine._
+
+    _My health has made very reasonable progress and my wife
+    is exceedingly well. Frank Dodd visits us for two days on
+    Thursday: how we shall be after that ... well, how ~shall~ we
+    be after that?..._
+
+On 27.3.21 he writes:
+
+    _Dodd arrived on Thursday: I say, he arrived. He arrived by
+    travelling from London to Southhampton in a luggage-van with a
+    first-class ticket (what’s the penalty for that?); by running
+    his boat into the mud 10 minutes from Cowes; by missing his
+    connection; by changing at Ryde; and by repeating his offence
+    “thence” and “hither”: ~i.e.~ travelling with the same ticket
+    in a second luggage-van. At 9 p.m. he arrived, greeting me with
+    the words:_
+
+    _“I’ve had nothing to eat since breakfast.”_
+
+    _You should have seen the poor fellow torn between two
+    longings, with a plateful of soup before him while waiting
+    for a Ventnor cocktail, consisting of 98% Plymouth gin and 2%
+    orange bitters._
+
+    _We motored him on Friday to Blackgang, to Chale, to
+    Carisbrooke, to Newport, to Brading, to Bembridge, to Sandown,
+    to Shanklin and back. Having already familiarized himself with
+    Cowes and Ryde, he declared that he had now seen every city in
+    the Isle of Wight except Freshwater._
+
+    _I lay low about Yarmouth, but yesterday I walked him back from
+    Bonchurch, after my doctor had motored us “thither.”_
+
+    _We did a lot of talking in between, but he did not sap my
+    vitality.... He left after tea for France, ~via~ Southhampton
+    and Havre; and I was able to sit up, take nourishment and
+    even stand and watch a ball-room full of people dance Lent
+    out on what the festive programme called “Easter Saturday”:
+    Christians, you may or may not be aware, call it Holy
+    Saturday...._
+
+And on 31.3.21:
+
+    _... I booked a seat on a four-in-hand this morning to go
+    to certain point-to-point races; cancelled it; received an
+    invitation from my young doctor to take me there in his car;
+    declined it, feeling too weak and sulphurous.... I have a leg,
+    like Sir Willoughby what’s-his-name; but this leg is covered
+    with patterns (Sir Willoughby Patterne, was it?) and to cure it
+    I am covered and lined with brimstone. It is not curing; and I
+    am just tempersome, that’s all...._
+
+In answer to my question what he would like for a birthday present, he
+replies, 3.4.21:
+
+    _This is one of the days on which I feel like nothing on
+    earth. Yet I must answer your three letters to the best of my
+    enfeebled power.... I want a ~Catholic Dictionary~_
+
+                                   or
+
+    _Drummond’s ~Life of Erasmus~_
+
+                                   or
+
+                                     _a second-hand copy of either
+                                     will be quite acceptable: the
+                                         second is an old book and
+                                           probably out of print._
+
+    _five fumable cigars “from stock”; but a present I must have
+    because I am working a stunt about the immense number of
+    birthday gifts which I am sure of receiving. The Cleveland Club
+    is being canvassed with this intent and the members urged to
+    make canvass-backed ducks and drakes of their money: oh, how
+    like nothing on earth I feel after being brought to bed of
+    this joke! I am to have a cake with 56 candles in it from my
+    doctor’s wife, which her name is Phyllis Twigg; so let no one
+    send me an other. If I ate more than 56 candles at my age, I
+    should have to go in cossack-cloth and ashes for the rest of
+    my life; oh, like nothing on earth, Stephen, like nothing on
+    earth!..._
+
+The acknowledgement of the birthday present had to be delayed while
+Teixeira described his effort to observe an eclipse:
+
+    _I ordered a pail and some water (“and let the water be inside
+    the pail”) to be placed on the lawn this morning, so that I
+    might observe the eclipse of the sun. The eclipse was over
+    before I got down; as the pail was bright white that made no
+    difference. Things looked very uncanny from my bedroom window
+    and I tried to tremble like a Red Indian: they tremble, as you
+    know, like Red Indianything...._
+
+It was written on the morrow of his birthday, 10.4.21:
+
+    _Many thanks for your letter of the 8th, for your good wishes
+    and for a noble ~Catholic Dictionary~, with which I was
+    mightily pleased. It will be of great value to me if I live (a)
+    to edit ~The Autumn of the Middle Ages~, by Huisinga and (b) to
+    translate The Land of Rembrand, by Busken Huet, two monumental
+    tasks which I have been discussing with Dodd...._
+
+    _You have presumably bought ~Queen Victoria~, by the side of
+    which ~Eminent Victorians~ is quite a dull book. And I read
+    that, on Friday last, eight gentleman were seen sitting in a
+    row in Kensington Gardens, all reading Strachey’s book. If,
+    however K. G. were closed to the public on Friday, then the
+    story is mythical...._
+
+    _Your birthday-stunt worked wonders. Miracles never cease:
+    R—— sent me an Omar Khayyam! R. a round or circular
+    photograph-frame of a precious metal known as silver. N. F. 25
+    cigars of the por Laranaga flavor. B. 50 of the flavour known
+    as Romeo y Julieta. P. 100 cigarettes of the snake-charming
+    flavour, which, being manufactured from the finest high-grade
+    selected Turkish leaf tobacco, must be exchanged for the
+    cigarettes of Ole Virginny when I am next in hail of one of
+    Messrs. Salmon & Gladstone’s famous establishments._
+
+    _This exhausts your list. Over and above these gifts, I
+    received from S. an Umps, ~i.e.~ a biscuit-ware naked doll,
+    with wings, practicable arms and a heart in the right,
+    non-commital place, in the middle of its chest. Also, a neat
+    black and grey tie. From Mrs. H. a tie.... From my wiff a tie
+    and a pair of mittens, for elderly early-morning wear. From
+    the manageress of the hotel, a knitted canary waistcoat with
+    sapphire buttons to cover the nudity of the Umps. From an
+    anonymous admirer, a smaller naked doll, made, I venture to
+    think, of celluloid-georgette. From a lady staying at the
+    hotel, a box of Sainsbury’s chocolates, which are the most
+    toothsome in the world. From G. H., aged 80, and F., his wife,
+    age 75, a box of other chocolates, and 50 De Reske cigarettes.
+    From A. T., aged 6, bought with her own money, a bottle of ink
+    and a ball of twine. From her mother, P. T., neé McKenna—nay,
+    Mackenzie—two blue-bird electric-light shades._
+
+    _The T’s, who belong to my local doctor, in the proportion
+    of one wife and one daughter, also gave me a birthday
+    party. To meet me were invited Dr. C., Dr. F., and Captain
+    Cave-Brown-Cave. It opened with an ode or oratorio about
+    fairies and happiness, intoned by Anne and Dr. C. to an
+    accompaniment by Mrs. T. Then Anne put her arms round my neck,
+    embraced me tenderly and told me not to mind what Mrs. Teixeira
+    said about my touting for presents: Mrs. Teixeira didn’t mean
+    it, couldn’t mean it; and Anne didn’t believe it, couldn’t
+    believe it. With the tears streaming down the knees of my
+    cashmere trouserings, I was led in to tea to see my name spelt
+    in letter-biscuits and my birthday-cake surrounded by 56 pink,
+    green, white and red candles. Then we played bridge and I won
+    eight shillings. And I doubt if Queen Victoria ever described a
+    birthday more fully._
+
+    _No, she would not have forgotten, as I nearly forgot, that F.
+    E. W. also sent me a tie...._
+
+In the middle of the month, Teixeira began to make preparations, for his
+return:
+
+    _Should you happen, ~he writes, 14.4.21~, to buy a steam-yacht,
+    in addition to a motor-car, before the 5th of May, you might
+    send her for us: we would as soon travel that way, land at the
+    Temple stairs and lunch with you while the yacht takes our
+    luggage up-river to Chelsea...._
+
+    _You have evidently misunderstood my motives in deciding to buy
+    a car, ~I began to explain~._
+
+    _Get a neat, unobstrusive disk with “Hackney Carriage” fitted
+    to it, ~he interposed~: you can make a tidy income out of your
+    car then, when the Muse (should I say the Garage?) fails you._
+
+    _... If, ~he writes, 19.4.21~, you have not blewed or blued
+    (which is it?) your last fiver, consider whether your library
+    is really complete without the Greville Memoirs. Strachey’s
+    book will probably have set you lusting for them._
+
+    _They contain the original story about “speaking
+    disrespectfully of the Equator.”..._
+
+    _I send you the second edition of Harris’ life of Oscar. You
+    have already read the first edition. But you will like to
+    see such things, if any, in the appendix as may be new and
+    certainly Shaw’s contribution to the end...._
+
+I had the misfortune to offend Teixeira by quoting a passage from Sir
+James Frazer’s _Golden Bough_:
+
+    _I save my temper, ~he writes, 22.4.21~, by not discussing
+    religion except with Catholics or politics except with
+    liberals. There’s room for discussion in the ~nuances~,
+    there’s too much room for it with those who call my black
+    white. I never dispute the goodness of certain infidels nor
+    the wickedness of many of the faithful. What I hate is the
+    smug-smiling affectation of superiority displayed by the
+    agnostics...._
+
+    _Huxley I have proved guilty—at least to my own satisfaction—of
+    intellectual dishonesty and financial turpitude; of Frazer I
+    know nothing whatever. I vaguely pictured him as one of several
+    distinguished compilers of whom I knew nothing; that beastly
+    quotation at the head of one of your chapters came as a great
+    shock to me, which grew into a very cataclysm when I found it
+    followed by another and a longer one._
+
+    _I won’t call you an Englishman again. But it is funny that
+    you can’t write about yourself without going into the matter of
+    what you think or do not think about religion...._
+
+    _I forgot to tell you, ~he writes, 24.4.21~, that I received
+    y’day, from Jack Tennant, from a house with an improbable name,
+    in a Scotch county which I had never heard of (Morayshire), a
+    salmon—the whole bird—weighing 7½ lbs. and measuring somewhere
+    about 7½ feet. I distributed 3 lbs. to my doctor and 3 lbs. to
+    the heir presumptive to the Cave-Brown-Cave baronetcy (with
+    apologies for the radical source of the gift). My wiff and I
+    ate 3 oz. of it to our dinner; and the remainder was consumed
+    by the manageress, the bookkeeper and housekeeper of the Royal
+    Hotel...._
+
+Ten days later his preparations were complete.
+
+    _Unless I ring you up at 11, on Friday, ~he writes, 3.5.21~, I
+    will be with you at 11, as suggested in your letter—the morning
+    is still my best time—and lunch at the club._
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+
+In the summer and autumn of 1921 Teixeira enjoyed better health than
+at any time in the last seven years. He supported without ill-effects
+the strain of incessant luncheon and dinner-parties during the visit of
+Couperus to London; he moved from house to house, staying with friends;
+he completed his unfinished work and laid ambitious schemes for the
+future.
+
+    _I have written to Couperus, ~he told me, 13.5.21~, preparing
+    him to be entertained by the Titmarsh Club and by the
+    Asquiths...._
+
+    _You might tell me in an early letter what to do in proposing
+    ~[him]~ for temporary honorary membership of the Reform Club
+    and when to do it...._
+
+    _My dear Stephen, ~he writes, 16.5.21~;_
+
+    _My dear Stephen, ~he repeats~;_
+
+    _The second allocution sounds almost superfluous; but I will
+    not waste a sheet of Ryman’s priceless Hertford Bank. I
+    intended the “M” of “My dear Stephen” to form the “M” of “Many
+    thanks for your letter of the 14th.” However, you may remember
+    that the only difference between Moses and Manchester is that
+    one ends in -oses and the other in -anchester; and there you
+    are...._
+
+    _I am calling on the Netherlands minister at half-past eleven
+    this morning.... Bisschop (of the Anglo-Batavian Society) rang
+    me up on Saturday evening.... There is to be a council-meeting
+    at 4 o’clock on Friday at the International Law Association in
+    King’s Bench Walk.... If you are back by Friday and likely to
+    be at home, I’ll come on to see you from there. And I’ll write
+    to you to-morrow about my call on Van Swinderen...._
+
+    _P.S. to my former letter, ~he writes on the same day:~ Van
+    Swinderen was most charming. He at once offered to have the
+    Dutch reading at the legation.... I said that, if Van S. would
+    make it an invitation matter, he would be doing a great honour
+    to C. and giving a very welcome reception to the Dutch colony
+    in London...._
+
+    _He leapt at this; said he would give a dinner to twenty of la
+    ~crême de la crême~; he could manage thirty at two tables; and
+    ask up to a hundred to the reception...._
+
+    _Everything is provisional to Mrs. Van Swinderen’s agreement;
+    and I am to lunch there on Friday and hear more...._
+
+When Couperus returned to Holland, my correspondence with Teixeira was
+suspended. We were meeting or communicating by telephone almost daily;
+and it was only when we left London to stay with friends that the letters
+were resumed.
+
+    _Weather hot and stuffy, ~he writes, 1.8.21, from Sutton
+    Courtney~. Lawns running down to a perfectly full river and
+    absolutely dry: and I with not much to tell you...._
+
+    _I am sleeping beautifully and eating lightly; and I feel too
+    indolent for words._
+
+    _Good-bye and bless you!_
+
+    _My wife, ~he writes, 5.8.21~, pictures me surrounded by people
+    who, if she broke my heart by dying, would thrust women of
+    forty on me, “dear, dearest Mr. Tex,” to look after me. Is it
+    not a beautifully witty tag to a letter? I think so...._
+
+To my reproach that he had left London without saying good-bye to me, he
+replies, 16.8.21 with complete justification:
+
+    _As our logical neighbours across the channel say:_
+
+    _“Zut!... Zut!... Et encore zut!...”_
+
+    _Had you profited as you ought by the careful bringing up which
+    your kind parents gave you, you would have known that it is for
+    those who go away to say good-bye, for those who arrive to say
+    good-day. You left London before I did. I say no more in reply
+    to your reproaches...._
+
+    _If ever you leave London, however, at about the same time
+    as I, remember, will you not, the etiquette (French) and the
+    punctilio (Italian)?..._
+
+    _... If you think that I have much to tell you, ~he adds,
+    20.8.21~, you are mistaken. Y’day I went for a stroll, turned
+    up a footpath which I imagined would bring me back here, found
+    that it didn’t, after I had gone much too far to turn back, and
+    plodded on and on—my apprehensive mind full of a picture of
+    myself being devoured by onsticelli and stercoraceous geodurpes
+    amid a fine setting of ferns and bracken—until I reached
+    Abingdon. It might have been Oxford, so exhausted was I._
+
+    _A boy was bribed to fetch me a car and I returned just before
+    the search-party set out for me. I roam no more. There is a
+    lawn here: let me walk up and down it...._
+
+    _I do not despair about Ireland because I never despair about
+    anything._
+
+    _And I am ever yours,_
+
+                                                              _Tex._
+
+    _Your letter of the 23rd, ~he writes, 25.8.21~, found me still
+    here. (The Wharf, Sutton Courtney): I go to-morrow to the
+    Norton Priory till Monday ... and longer if they will have me
+    longer. Then back home; and to Sutro’s for a brief week-end on
+    Saturday._
+
+    _Yes, I know Lancaster, its castle, where I have, and its
+    lunatic asylum, where I have never, stayed...._
+
+    _It were useless for me to pretend that I have not mislayed
+    your list of addresses. I may find it in some other suit; but
+    you might notify me of your next movement whenever you write.
+    But do not translate m.p.h. as miles per hour. Master of
+    phoxhounds, if you like, or miles per horam; but we English say
+    an hour and not per hour...._
+
+    _M. sent an enormous 120 h.p. (hocus pocus) land-yacht
+    to meet me at Portsmouth, ~he writes from Norton Priory,
+    27.8.21~, relieving me of the worst part of the journey....
+    N. arrived from town before dinner, bringing with him a ...
+    stockbroker.... They go up on Monday morning, but I stay on
+    till Wednesday, like a gay limpet but a perfectly moral: M’s
+    brother comes down on Monday._
+
+    _For the rest, I have the same room, but have not yet cracked
+    my skull against the canopy of the same fourposter; and I am
+    perfectly happy...._
+
+    _Your original waybill is found, ~he adds, 30.8.21~; but
+    I have the receipt of no letter from you to acknowledge. N.
+    ... went up after breakfast y’day and brother R. M. came down
+    before dinner. He is a pleasant New Zealander and took a lot
+    out of me at bridge._
+
+    _Life here pursues its quiet course. I accompanied M. and W.
+    to the sea’s edge yesterday but found the effort of ploughing
+    through the shingle tolerably exhausting and shall not repeat
+    it to-day. Indeed, the whole family, Miss T. included,
+    are bathing now and I am writing twaddle to you under the
+    pear-tree._
+
+    _And, as I live, I think I’ll write no more. I have no more to
+    say; and the papers have just come. I leave here after lunch
+    (eon) to-morrow, spend an hour or two in Chichester cathedral
+    and arrive home in time for my bread and milk...._
+
+On his return to Chelsea and a typewriter, he says, 1.9.21:
+
+    _You will be pleased to receive a letter from me in legible
+    type, instead of in that hand which is becoming almost as
+    crabbed as yours. And I continue to address you at Bamborough
+    Castle, though that stronghold figures as something very near
+    Zambuk Castle in your letter of 30 August._
+
+    _N. filled me with fears of internecine feuds within your
+    fortress, of bloody strife for the one shady nook of the
+    orchard and so on. You say nothing of these things; and I
+    assume that there has been no slaughter in your time. There
+    was a horrid game when I became a British kid in the early
+    seventies: I am king of the castle! Get out, you dirty rascal!
+    I trembled at the thought of you and N. playing this game
+    against ruthless border clansmen. All’s well that ends well...._
+
+    _I lost twenty goodish guineas at three-handed bridge after
+    Brother Roy arrived. He wanted to can everything on the estate:
+    the apples, the pears, the fleas on the dogs’ backs, the
+    flyaway ducks. He wanted to introduce New Zealand mutton-birds
+    into this country...._
+
+    _I had a tooth out yesterday, ~he writes, 3.9.21~,—until then
+    I had thirteen of my own left, an unlucky number—and was not
+    at my best.... The tooth was extracted at a high cost, in the
+    presence of a dentist, an anaesthetist and my body-physician
+    but without unpleasant consequences. And this afternoon I go to
+    the Sutros for a brief week-end._
+
+    _I have no news, except that I have bought some most attractive
+    socks, or half-hose...._
+
+    _... I have no news, ~he complains, 12.9.21.~ I write to you
+    simply out of friendship and duty. I spent five hours at the
+    Zoo y’day.... We lunched there; so did most of the beasts,
+    heavily. You should have seen S. staggering under the weight
+    of about nine pounds of the most expensive oranges, bananas,
+    apples and onions, not to mention sugar, monkey-nuts, and two
+    raw eggs. Say what you will, it is laffable to feed a small
+    monkey with slices of apple till he has both pouches full, all
+    four hands and his mouth. When you hand him the eighth slice,
+    you wait in breathless expectation...._
+
+    _I had a tooth extracted last week, reducing the number of my
+    real teeth to twelve. To-day the number of my pseudo-teeth is
+    to be increased to eighteen (quite correct: they swindle you
+    out of a couple) and I propose to lunch at the Reform Club with
+    many gaps in my mouth._
+
+    _I have arranged terms for two luvverly rooms at the Tregenna
+    Castle Hotel, St. Ives, from 1 November to 1 April. Rooms face
+    south, away from the beastly ocean; breakfast in the bedroom;
+    baths ~a volonte~. We hope to be well and happy there. I must
+    see much of you before you go to Sweden...._
+
+    _... I rejoice to hear that you are going to Copenhagen. It is
+    a charming coquette of a little city, with which you will fall
+    head over ears in love._
+
+    _Not to take a second risk, I send this to Crosswood, ~he
+    writes 13.9.21~, and I beg you to lay me at the feet of your
+    gracious chatelaine; and, if E. is there, you can give her the
+    love of her Uncle Tex._
+
+    _At the Reform Club ... I played a little bridge ... and won
+    29/-; then, finding my rate of progress rather slow, I veered
+    off to Cleveland Club and won £7.12.0 more. This satisfied
+    me; and I came home, ate two little fillets of sole, some
+    apple-sauce and custard and (damn the expense) a ha’porth of
+    cheese and so to bed._
+
+    _To complete my ~Diary of a Nobody~, I am glad that you have
+    changed your name from Gowing to Cumming and I am_
+
+                             _ever yours,_
+
+                                                              _Tex._
+
+    _Many thanks for your letter of y’day, ~he writes, 14.9.21~,
+    bearing traces of the pear skin and plumstones therein
+    mentioned, not to speak of a spot of butter and a small burn
+    from your after-brekker cigarette._
+
+    _I have crossed Shap in a swift and powerful railway-train,
+    with a whiskered and spectacled judge of the high court, in the
+    opposite seat. I remember old Day’s teaching me how to observe
+    whether one were going up hill or down by watching the roadside
+    rills:_
+
+    _“Water invariably flows downwards,” said he, gravely...._
+
+    _Ecclefechan I don’t know and don’t want to; Carlisle, I do;
+    Gretna Green I do: I never want to set eyes on either again.
+    I have a desolating memory of brown fields between Carlisle
+    and Gretna Green. By now you have, I expect, seen as much
+    of England as you wish to see in the course of your natural
+    life...._
+
+    _To-day, seized with a sudden lech for art and beauty, my wiff
+    and I are going to Hammersmith to hear ~The Beggar’s Opera~...._
+
+    _I have again lost your waybill, ~he writes, 16.9.21~, and
+    cannot tell if this will still find you at Glow-worm Castle._
+
+    _~The Beggar’s Opera~ was a great affair._
+
+    _Little has happened to me since._
+
+    _But to-day Mrs. Asquith and her daughter are coming to play
+    different forms of the game of auction bridge at the Cleveland
+    Club._
+
+    _And to-morrow ... ah, to-morrow! To-morrow I am going to stay
+    for the week-end with a hostess, at or near Marlow, whose name
+    I do not even know.... I am promised a perfectly good end;
+    but so were any babies of old who ended in being eaten by the
+    ogress._
+
+    _We are never too old for adventures; but pray that I come
+    safely out of this one._
+
+On 30.9.21 he writes:
+
+    _Very many thanks for ~The Secret Victory~, with the delightful
+    dedication and preface. I am not at all sure that I shall not
+    read the book again._
+
+    _I have just returned from an interview with the local
+    income-tax brigand which filled me with some apprehensions....
+    After a ... jest or two, I left the brigand’s cave
+    unscathed...._
+
+    _I go to the Wharf to-morrow for a week and may stay on a day
+    or two longer, if pressed: I always do, you know...._
+
+I had been invited to deliver some lectures in Sweden and Denmark.
+Teixeira was good enough to read the manuscript of these, as of almost
+everything I wrote. With his letter of 3.10.21 he returned the first:
+
+    _Here is your lecture ... I really cannot suggest any cuts. My
+    one and only lecture read 2¾ minutes: this is no reason why
+    yours should not read an hour and a quarter. Does any one want
+    to go and sit in a hall, with free light and warmth thrown in
+    for less than an hour and a quarter? No; the Swedes will admire
+    your fluency and be pleased with you._
+
+On my return to England, he asks, 14.11.21:
+
+    _When do we meet? We have decided to leave on the 30th. I can
+    lunch with you to-morrow, if you like, and bring you your two
+    Ewald books._
+
+Teixeira’s departure to Cornwall, already delayed by his wife’s illness,
+had now to be postponed again, as he was prostrated with ptomaine
+poisoning.
+
+Both invalids were sufficiently recovered to face the journey on 2
+December; and, next day, Teixeira sent me news of his safe arrival:
+
+                                             _Tregenna Castle Hotel,
+                                             St. Ives, Cornwall,
+                                             3 December, 1921._
+
+    _My dear Stephen:_
+
+    _Thanks for your letter that reached me just before I left
+    town. This is my address: what else would it be? And the
+    enclosed ~[an invitation to lecture]~ is sent to show you that
+    you are not the only Beppo on the peach (damn your British
+    metaphors!): you might not believe it otherwise. But you may
+    picture the courteous terms in which I declined._
+
+    _There is nothing for nervous dyspepsia or gastric
+    horribobblums like seven goodish hours in a swift and powerful
+    railway-express. I have been free from pain or sickness for the
+    first night since Wednesday week. But I slept little. From 1
+    a.m. onwards I spent a sleepless, painless night._
+
+    _The hotel is comfortable and commodious in an old-fashioned
+    country-house way; no central heating, but big fires; a certain
+    amount of intrigue with Lizzie the chambermaid to secure a
+    really hot bath: you know the sort of thing; immense grounds, a
+    very park of 100 acres, which I shall never leave, because, if
+    I did, I should never get back: we stand too high._
+
+    _Bless you._
+
+                                                        _Ever yours,
+                                                        Tex._
+
+It was the last letter that I ever received from him; and on Monday,
+December the fifth, as I was in the middle of answering it, a telegram
+informed me that he had died that morning. As he was getting up, he
+collapsed in his wife’s arms and slipped, unconscious, on the floor.
+Death was instantaneous and, it may be presumed and hoped, painless. He
+was buried in the Holy Roman Catholic Cemetery at St. Ives; and a requiem
+mass for the repose of his soul was said at the Brompton Oratory.
+
+Even those with best cause to suspect how nerveless was his grasp on life
+could not readily believe that one who loved life so well was to enjoy no
+more of it. “He was spared old age,” said one friend; but to another Tex
+had lately confessed that he would like to live for ever.
+
+Before he left London, we said good-bye for five months: he was to
+winter in Cornwall, I in the West Indies. In seeing again the exquisite
+handwriting of these many hundreds of letters that commemorate our
+friendship for the last six years of his life, I at least cannot feel
+that his voice has grown silent or that his laughter is at an end. The
+big, solemn figure is vividly present; the favourite phrases and the
+familiar gestures are stamped for ever on the memory of any one that
+loved him.
+
+I am writing four thousand miles away from St. Ives: and it may be
+possible to fancy that he has been ordered to remain there longer than we
+expected. This time there may be no diary; perhaps the only letters will
+be those already written; he may seem not to hear all that he once loved
+hearing; but, wherever he has gone, his personality remains behind.
+
+It was an old-standing bond that the survivor should write of the other.
+I have tried to make Teixeira paint his own portrait. If his letters
+have failed to reveal him, what can I add? His literary position is
+unchallenged; those who knew him how slightly soever knew his humour and
+wit, his whimsical charm, his understanding and toleration. Those who
+knew him best had strongest reason for loving him most deeply. Those who
+knew him not missed knowing a ripe scholar, a fine and tender spirit, a
+great and gallant gentleman, a matchless companion and the truest friend
+on earth.
+
+                                                        _BERBICE,
+                                                        BRITISH GUIANA_
+                                                        15 February, 1922.
+
+
+
+
+FOOTNOTES
+
+
+[1] The Jonkheer Alexander Louis Teixeira de Mattos san Paio y Mendes.
+The family was Jewish in origin and was driven from Portugal by the
+persecution of the Holy Office. Teixeira was naturalized a British
+subject in the middle of the war and gave up his Dutch title. Even before
+this, he had contracted his full style to Alexander Teixeira de Mattos on
+ceremonial occasions, to A. Teixeira in departmental correspondence and
+to Tex or T. in letters to his friends.
+
+[2] I quote from Chapter VII of _While I Remember_, where the genesis of
+the department is described, though only from hearsay.
+
+[3] Even in Teixeira’s wide reading there were occasional gaps; and,
+until I brought it to his notice, he was unacquainted with the celebrated
+life of Sir Christopher Wren by Mr. E. Clerihew and Mr. G. K. Chesterton:
+
+    ‘Sir Christopher Wren
+    Said, “I am going to dine with some men.
+    If anybody calls
+    Say I am designing St. Paul’s.”’
+
+After reading it, Teixeira’s nightly valediction as he left for his
+bridge club was: “I think ... yes, I think I shall design St. Paul’s for
+an hour or two.”
+
+[4] From the notice of his death in _The Times_.
+
+[5] Future letters were dated from ‘Hellgate’.
+
+[6] The Burgomaster of Stillemonde.
+
+[7] Frank MacKinnon K.C.
+
+[8] A short time before, Teixeira, who affected a loathing for music, had
+been invited to hear the same quartette. Abandoning his usual gentleness
+of speech and spirit, he had accepted on condition of being allowed to
+massacre the quartette.
+
+[9] Hymn to Aphrodite.
+
+[10] Eimar O’Duffy’s _Wasted Island_.
+
+[11] Incidentally, my father lived 85 years, during all of which he
+never spoke of his particular regiment, brigade, division or army corps
+as anything but the Coldcream Guards; not in jest but in sheer, manly,
+gentlemanly ignorance.
+
+[12] Perfectly good seventeenth-century English.
+
+[13] _Even the French write_, invariably, un coup d’Etat, le conseil
+d’Etat, but l’état des coups, l’état du conseil.
+
+[14] The Concise Oxford Dictionary.
+
+[15] The reference here is to a story illustrative of the tricks which a
+man’s memory sometimes plays him:
+
+Reading in the _Morning Post_, that Mr. John Brown, of 500 Clarges
+Street, is shortly leaving for Uganda on a big-game-shooting expedition
+and would like a gentleman to come with him, sharing expenses, thought
+no more of the advertisement and went about his day’s work. That night
+he dined intemperately. On being ejected from his club, he was bound
+for home when he recalled the forgotten advertisement and decided that
+something must be done about it.
+
+Driving to 500 Clarges Street, he demanded to see Mr. John Brown.
+
+“Are you Mr. John Brown?” he enquired of a sleepy and illhumoured figure
+in pyjamas.
+
+“I am, sir,” answered John Brown.
+
+“You’re the Mr. John Brown going shooting Uganda?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“You want shome one come with you?”
+
+“Yes.”...
+
+“Share ’spenshes?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“You put that ’vertisshment in _Morning Posht_?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“I thought sho. Shorry knock you up. Felt I musht tell you.... that I’m
+not coming.”...
+
+[16] They would have gone quite mad over the Russian Ballet.
+
+[17] The story in question was of a member of the Cave-Brown-Cave family,
+who, after conversing with a stranger in a railway-carriage, was asked
+his name.
+
+“Cave-Brown-Cave,” he replied. “And may I ask yours?”
+
+“Home-Sweet-Home,” answered his infuriated interlocutor.
+
+[18] In Chancery.
+
+[19] In preparation for visiting South America I had been vaccinated.
+
+[20] Ultimately this was published with the title: _The Law Inevitable_.
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75130 ***
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+<body>
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75130 ***</div>
+
+<div class="transnote">
+<p><b>Transcriber’s Note:</b> The chapter numbering in this book is as printed:
+there is no Chapter VIII and no Chapter XII.</p>
+</div>
+
+<h1>TEX</h1>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp48" id="frontispiece" style="max-width: 28.125em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/frontispiece.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption class="caption"><p>Alexander Teixeira de Mattos</p></figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<p class="titlepage larger">TEX</p>
+
+<p class="center">A CHAPTER IN THE LIFE<br>
+<span class="smaller">OF</span></p>
+
+<p class="titlepage">ALEXANDER TEIXEIRA DE MATTOS</p>
+
+<p class="titlepage"><span class="smaller">BY</span><br>
+STEPHEN McKENNA</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter titlepage illowp75" id="logo" style="max-width: 9.375em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/logo.jpg" alt="">
+</figure>
+
+<p class="titlepage">NEW YORK<br>
+DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY<br>
+1922</p>
+
+<p class="titlepage smaller"><span class="smcap">Copyright, 1922,<br>
+By DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, Inc.</span></p>
+
+<p class="center smaller">Printed in U.S.A.</p>
+
+<p class="titlepage smaller">VAIL-BALLOU COMPANY<br>
+Binghamton and New York</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<p class="center">To<br>
+ALFRED SUTRO</p>
+
+<p>I dedicate to you this slight tribute to the memory of
+our friend. You were the luckier, in knowing him the
+longer. I shall be more than content if you find, in
+reading this book, as I found in reading his letters
+again, that he has returned to us even for a moment and
+that a whim of his language or an echo of his laughter
+has recreated the triple alliance which he founded.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p>I trust also you may be long without finding out the
+devil that there is in a bereavement. After love it is
+the one great surprise that life preserves for us. Now
+I don’t think I can be astonished any more.</p>
+
+<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis Stevenson</span>: <i>Letters</i>.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h1>TEX</h1>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_1"></a>[1]</span></p>
+
+<h1>Alexander Teixeira de Mattos</h1>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="I">I</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>“<i>A great translator</i>,” one friend wrote of
+Teixeira, “<i>is far more rare than a great
+author.</i>”</p>
+
+<p>Judged by the quality and volume of his
+work, by the range of foreign languages from
+which he translated and by the perfection
+of the English in which he rendered them,
+Teixeira was incontestably the greatest translator
+of his time. Throughout Great Britain
+and the United States his name has long been
+held in honour by all who have watched,
+cheering, as the literature of France and
+Belgium, of Germany and the Netherlands,
+of Denmark and Norway strode along the
+broad viaduct which his labours had, in
+great part, established.</p>
+
+<p>Of the man, apart from his name, little has
+been made public. His love of laughing at
+himself might prompt him to say: “When<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_2"></a>[2]</span>
+you write my <i>Life and Letters</i> ...”; but
+his modesty and his humour would have been
+perturbed in equal measure by the vision of
+a solemn biography and a low-voiced press.
+“I was a little bit underpraised before,” he
+once confessed; “I’m being a little bit overpraised
+now.” Since the best of himself
+went impartially into all that he wrote, his
+conscience could never be haunted by the
+recollection of shoddy workmanship, even in
+the days before he had a reputation to jeopardize;
+nor, when he had won recognition,
+could his head be turned by the announcement
+that he had created a masterpiece. If he
+enjoyed the consciousness of having filled
+the English treasury with the literary spoils
+of six countries, he dissembled his enjoyment.
+In so far as he wished to be remembered at all,
+it was not as a man of letters, but as a friend,
+a connoisseur of life, a man of sympathy unaging
+and zest unstaled, a lover of simple
+jests, a laughing philosopher. Of their charity,
+he wished those who loved him to have
+masses said for the repose of his soul; he
+would have been tortured by the thought that,
+in life or death, he had brought unhappiness<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_3"></a>[3]</span>
+to any one or that, dead or living, he had
+prompted any one to discuss him with pomposity.
+“Are you not being a little solemn?”
+was a question that alternated with the advice:
+“Cultivate a pococurantist attitude to life.”</p>
+
+<p>“If there had been no <i>Alice in Wonderland</i>,”
+said another friend, “it would have
+been necessary for Tex to create her.”</p>
+
+<p>Those who knew the translator of Fabre
+and Ewald, of Maeterlinck and Couperus
+only by his awe-inspiring name must detect in
+this a hint that Alexander Teixeira de Mattos
+had a lighter side to his nature; the suspicion
+can best be established or laid by the evidence
+of his own letters.</p>
+
+<p>The present volume is an attempt to sketch
+the man in outline for those readers who have
+recognized his talent in scholarship without
+guessing his genius for friendship. “The
+apostles are not all dead,” he wrote, in criticism
+of the legends that were growing up
+around the men of the nineties; “many of
+them are your living contemporaries; you
+could, if you like, receive at first hand their
+memories of their dead fellows.” ... It is
+the purpose of this sketch to present one<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_4"></a>[4]</span>
+‘apostle’ as he revealed himself to one of his
+disciples. A biography and bibliography
+will be found in the appropriate works of reference.
+Only a single chapter has been attempted
+here; of those who knew him during
+the nineties, which he loved so well and of
+which he preserved the tradition so faithfully,
+perhaps one will write that earlier chapter
+and describe Teixeira in the position which
+he took up on their outskirts. And one better
+qualified than the present writer should paint
+this sphinx of the bridge-table, with his perversity
+of declaration and his brilliance of
+play. “You have made your contract,” admitted
+a friend who was partnering him for
+the first time; “but ... but ... but <i>why</i>
+that declaration?” “I wanted to see your expression,”
+answered Teixeira with the complacency
+of a man who did not greatly mind
+whether he won or lost, but abominated a dull
+game. Those who knew him all his life may
+feel, with the writer, that the last half-dozen
+years constitute, naturally and dramatically, a
+chapter by themselves. They are the period
+of his literary recognition and, unhappily, of
+his physical decline; of his emergence from<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_5"></a>[5]</span>
+seclusion; of his first public services and his
+last private friendships.</p>
+
+<p>By 1914 Teixeira stood in the forefront of
+English translators; and, through his labours,
+translation had won a place in the forefront
+of English literature. Almost simultaneously
+with the outbreak of war, he was
+attacked by the heart-affection that ultimately
+killed him; and the record of this period is
+the record of an invalid. Ill-health notwithstanding,
+he offered his energy and ability to
+the country of his adoption; and, in an emergency
+war-department largely staffed by men
+of letters, the most retiring of them all became
+enmeshed in the machinery of government.
+From his marriage until the war,
+Teixeira had lived an almost monastic life,
+only relaxing his rule of solitary work in
+favour of the bridge-table. Once set in the
+midst of appreciative friends, this sham recluse
+found himself entertaining and being
+entertained, joining new clubs, indulging his
+old inscrutable sociability and almost overcoming
+his former shyness.</p>
+
+<p>For three-and-a-half out of these last seven
+years, one of Teixeira’s colleagues worked<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_6"></a>[6]</span>
+with him almost daily at the same table in the
+same room of the same department. The rare
+separations due to leave or illness were countered
+by an almost daily correspondence, conducted
+in the spirit of an intimate and elaborate
+game; and, when the work of the department
+ended, the letters—sometimes interrupted
+by a diary or suspended for a meeting—kept
+the intimacy unbroken.</p>
+
+<p>So written, they are as personal, as discursive
+and—to a stranger—as full of allusion as
+the long-sustained conversation of two friends.
+It is to be hoped that, in their present form,
+they are at least not obscure; of these, and of
+all, letters it must not be forgotten that the
+writer was not counting his words for a telegram
+nor selecting his subjects for later publication.</p>
+
+<p>From his half of the correspondence—in
+a life untouched by drama—Teixeira’s personality
+may be left to reconstruct itself.
+Not every side of his character is revealed,
+for an interchange conducted primarily as a
+game afforded him few opportunities of exhibiting
+his serene philosophy and meditative
+bent. The absence of all calculation from<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_7"></a>[7]</span>
+his mind—a part of his refusal to grow up—may,
+for want of counter-availing ballast, be
+interpreted as flippancy. And, as the man
+was greater than the word he wrote and the
+word he translated, his letters have to be supplied
+by imagination with some of the radiance
+which he shed over preposterous story
+and trivial jest. Charm, which is so hard
+to analyse in the living, is yet harder to
+recapture from the dead; but, if the record
+of a single friendship can suggest loyalty,
+courage, generosity and tenderness, if a
+whimsical turn of phrase can indicate
+humour, patience and an infinite capacity for
+providing and receiving enjoyment, Teixeira’s
+letters will preserve, for those who did not
+know him, the fragrance of spirit recognized
+and remembered by all who did.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_8"></a>[8]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="II">II</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>In the autumn of 1914 a censorship department
+was improvised in the office of the
+National Service League. A press-gang of
+two, working the clubs of London and the
+colleges of Oxford, established the nucleus of
+a staff; and the first recruits were given, as
+their earliest duty, the task of bringing in
+more recruits. As the department had been
+formed to examine the commercial correspondence
+of neutrals and enemies, the first
+qualification of a candidate was a knowledge
+of languages; and, in the preliminary search
+for recruits, Alfred Sutro convinced the friend
+who had succeeded him in translating Maeterlinck
+that a man who was equally at home
+in English, French, German, Flemish, Dutch
+and Danish, with a smattering of ecclesiastical
+Latin, was too valuable to be spared. Teixeira
+joined the growing brotherhood of lawyers,
+dons and business men in Palace Street,
+Westminster, advising on intercepted letters
+and cables, curtailing the activities of traders<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_9"></a>[9]</span>
+in contraband, assimilating the procedure of
+a government department and being paid
+stealthily each week, like a member of some
+criminal association, with a furtive bundle of
+notes.</p>
+
+<p>It was his first experience of the public service,
+almost his only taste of responsibility;
+and it marked the end of the cloistered life.
+Though he brought to his new work a varied
+knowledge of affairs, Teixeira had participated
+but little in them since his marriage in
+1900. The friends of his youth, when he was
+living in the Temple,—John Gray and Ernest
+Dowson, William Wilde (whose widow he
+married) and William Campbell,—such
+acquaintances as Oscar Wilde and Max
+Beerbohm, Robert Ross and Bernard Shaw,
+Leonard Smithers and Frank Harris, were
+for the most part scattered or dead; and,
+though he kept touch with J. T. Grein, Edgar
+Jepson, Alfred Sutro and a few more, he
+seemed at this time, after Campbell’s death,
+to lack opportunity and inclination for making
+new friends.</p>
+
+<p>His gregarious years, and the varied experience
+which they brought, belonged to an<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_10"></a>[10]</span>
+earlier period. Coming from Amsterdam to
+London in 1874 at the age of nine, the son
+of a Dutch father and an English mother,
+Teixeira<a id="FNanchor_1" href="#Footnote_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> placed himself under instruction
+with Monsignor Capel and was received into
+the Holy Roman Catholic Church. In
+blood, faith and nationality, the Dutch Protestant
+of Portuguese-Jewish extraction had
+thus passed through many vicissitudes before
+he married an Irish wife, became a British
+citizen and died a Catholic. Traces of the
+Jew survived in his appearance; of the Dutchman
+in his speech; and his intellectual and
+racial mixed ancestry was betrayed by a cosmopolitan
+outlook. Ignorant of many prejudices
+that are the native Briton’s birthright,
+he remained ever aloof from the passions of
+British thought and speech. If he respected,
+at least he could not share the conventional
+enthusiasms nor associate himself with the conventional<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_11"></a>[11]</span>
+judgements of his new countrymen.
+He wrote of his neighbours among whom he
+had lived for more than forty years, with an
+unaffected sense of remoteness, as “the English”;
+after his naturalization, he was fond of
+talking, tongue in cheek, about what “we English”
+thought and did; but, in the last analysis,
+he embodied too many various strains to
+favour any single nationality.</p>
+
+<p>After being educated at the Kensington
+Catholic Public School and at Beaumont,
+Teixeira worked for some time in the City
+and was rescued for literature by J. T. Grein,
+who made him secretary of the Independent
+Theatre. By his work as a translator and as
+the London correspondent of a Dutch paper,
+he lived precariously until his renderings of
+Maeterlinck, whose official translator he became
+with <i>The Double Garden</i>, called public
+attention to a new quality of scholarship.
+Though he flirted with journalism, as editor
+of <i>Dramatic Opinions</i> and of <i>The Candid
+Friend</i>, and with publishing, in connection
+with Leonard Smithers, translation was the
+business of his life until he entered government
+service. He is best known for his version<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_12"></a>[12]</span>
+of Fabre’s natural history, which he lived
+to complete and which he himself regarded
+as his greatest achievement, for the later
+plays and essays of Maeterlinck, for the novels
+and stories of Ewald and for the novels
+of Couperus. These, however, formed only
+a part of his output; and his bibliography includes
+the names of Zola, Châteaubriand, de
+Tocqueville, President Kruger, Maurice Leblanc,
+Madame Leblanc, Streuvels and many
+more. One work alone ran to more than a
+million words; and he married on a commission
+to translate what he called “the longest
+book in any language”.</p>
+
+<p>The improvised censorship was not long
+suffered to function unmolested. The home
+secretary, learning that his majesty’s mails
+were being opened without due authority,
+warned the unorthodox censors that they were
+incurring a heavy fine for each offence and
+advised them to regularize their position.
+Simultaneously, the Customs were thrown into
+difficulty and confusion,<a id="FNanchor_2" href="#Footnote_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> by the proclamation<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_13"></a>[13]</span>
+of the king in council, forbidding all
+trade with the enemy: in the absence of records,
+investigation and an intelligence department,
+it was impossible to say whether
+goods cleared from London would ultimately
+reach enemy destination; and the censors who
+were watching the cable and wireless operations
+of Dutch and Scandinavian importers
+seemed the natural advisers to approach. At
+this point the embryonic department, which
+had risen from the ashes of the National
+Service League, joined with a licensing delegation
+from the Customs to form the War
+Trade Department and Trade Clearing
+House.</p>
+
+<p>Drifting about Westminster from Palace
+Street to Central Buildings, from Central
+Buildings to Broadway House and from
+Broadway House to Lake Buildings, St.
+James’ Park, the War Trade Intelligence Department,
+as it came to be called, was made
+the advisory body to the Blockade Department
+of the Foreign Office, with Lord Robert
+Cecil as its parliamentary chief, Sir Henry
+Penson, of Worcester College, as its chairman,
+and H. W. C. Davis, of Balliol, as its<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_14"></a>[14]</span>
+deputy-chairman. Teixeira, as the head of
+the Intelligence Section, controlled the supply
+of advice on the export of “prohibited commodities”
+to neutral countries; as a member
+of the Advisory Board, he came later to share
+in responsibility for the department as a
+whole. Among his colleagues, not already
+named, were “Freddie” Browning, the first
+organizer of the department, O. R. A. Simpkin,
+now Public Trustee, H. B. Betterton,
+now a member of parliament, Michael Sadleir,
+the novelist, R. S. Rait, the Scottish Historiographer-Royal,
+John Palmer, the dramatic
+critic, and G. L. Bickersteth, the translator of
+Carducci.</p>
+
+<p>When the department came to an end,
+Teixeira resumed his interrupted task of translation,
+which had, indeed, never been wholly
+abandoned; his daily programme during the
+war was to work at home from 5.0 a.m. till
+8.0 a.m. and in his department from 10.0 a.m.
+till 6.0 p.m. or 7.0 p.m., then to play
+bridge for an hour at the Cleveland Club, returning
+home in time for a light dinner and
+an early bed.<a id="FNanchor_3" href="#Footnote_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_15"></a>[15]</span></p>
+
+<p>Leisure, when at last it came to him, was
+not to be long enjoyed: early in 1920, a further
+break in health compelled him to undertake
+a rest-cure, first at Crowborough and then
+in the Isle of Wight. He returned to Chelsea
+in the spring of 1921 and spent the summer
+and autumn working in London or staying
+with friends in the country, to all appearances
+better than he had been for some years,
+though in play and work alike he had now to
+walk circumspectly. Towards the end of the
+year he went to Cornwall for the winter and
+collapsed from <i>angina pectoris</i> on 5 December
+1921.</p>
+
+<p>In a life of nearly fifty-seven years Teixeira
+escaped almost everything that could be
+considered spectacular. Happy in the devotion
+of his wife and the love of his friends,
+unshaken in the faith which he had embraced<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_16"></a>[16]</span>
+and untroubled by the misgivings and melancholy
+that assail a temperament less serene,
+he faced the world with a manner of gentle
+understanding and a philosophy of almost universal
+toleration. His only child—a boy—died
+within a few hours of birth; Teixeira
+was troubled for years by ill-health; he was
+never rich and seldom even assured of a comfortable
+income. Nevertheless his temper or
+faith gave him power to extract more amusement
+from his sufferings than most men derive
+from the plentitude of health and fortune.
+Of a malady new even to his experience
+he writes: “Is death imminent? Why
+do I always have the rarer disorders?” He
+loved life to the end—the world was always
+“God’s dear world” to him—; to the end, he,
+who had known so many of the world’s waifs,
+continued forbearing to all but the censorious.
+“I was taught very early in life,” he writes,
+“to make every allowance for men of any
+genius, whereas you look for a public-school
+attitude towards all and sundry.... You
+see, if one cared to take the pains, one could
+make you detest pretty well everybody you
+know and like. For everybody has a mean,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_17"></a>[17]</span>
+petty, shabby, cowardly side to him; and one
+had only to tell you of what the man in question
+chooses to keep concealed.” ...</p>
+
+<p>“Life,” said Samuel Butler, “is like playing
+a violin solo in public and learning the instrument
+as one goes on.” Those who met Teixeira
+only in his later years must have felt that
+he was born a master of his instrument; it
+is not to be imagined that there could ever
+have been a time when he was ignorant of
+the grace, the urbanity, the consideration and
+the gusto that mark off the artist in life from
+his fellows.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_18"></a>[18]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="III">III</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Though his letters contain scattered references
+to the principles which he followed in
+translation, Teixeira could never be persuaded
+to publish his complete and considered
+theory. His excuse was that he had
+never been able to write more than eight hundred
+words of original matter, a disability
+that once threatened him with disaster when
+he was invited to lecture on the science and
+art of bridge to the members of a club formed
+for mutual improvement and the pursuit of
+learning. After being entertained at a fortifying
+banquet, Teixeira delivered his eight-hundred
+words. As, at the end of the two
+and three-quarter minutes which his reading
+occupied, the audience seemed ready and
+even anxious for more, he read his address
+a second time. Later, he began in the middle;
+later still, he ran disgracefully from the
+hall.</p>
+
+<p>The method which he followed in translation
+has, therefore, to be reconstructed from<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_19"></a>[19]</span>
+the internal evidence of his books and from
+personal experience in collaboration.</p>
+
+<p>“I shall not,” wrote Matthew Arnold in
+criticizing Newman, “in the least concern
+myself with theories of translation as such.
+But I advise the translator not to try ‘to rear
+on the basis of the <i>Iliad</i>, a poem that shall
+affect our countrymen as the original may be
+conceived to have affected its natural hearers’;
+and for this simple reason, that we cannot
+possibly tell <i>how</i> the <i>Iliad</i> ‘affected its natural
+hearers.’”</p>
+
+<p>The first quality that distinguishes Teixeira
+from most of the translators whose work and
+methods of work have swelled the controversial
+literature of translation is that he
+confined himself to modern authors. Unacquainted
+with Greek and little versed in
+Latin, he was never faced with the difficulty
+of having to imagine how an original work
+affected its natural hearers. Maeterlinck
+and Couperus were his personal friends;
+Fabre and Ewald, who predeceased him,
+were older contemporaries; it is only with de
+Tocqueville and Châteaubriand that he had
+to gauge the intellectual atmosphere of an<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_20"></a>[20]</span>
+earlier generation. In judging whether his
+English rendering left on the minds of
+English readers the same impression as the
+original had left on its “natural hearers”, he
+had a court of appeal always available; and,
+while the English reader is “lulled into the
+illusion that he is reading an original work”,
+the foreign author can testify to the fidelity
+with which his text has been followed and his
+spirit reproduced. “What a magnificent
+translation <i>The Tour</i> is!” Couperus writes;
+“what a most charming little book it has
+become! I am in raptures over it and have
+read it and reread it all day and have had
+tears in my eyes and have laughed over it.
+You may think it silly of me to say all this;
+but it has become an exquisitely beautiful
+work in its English form. My warmest
+congratulations!”</p>
+
+<p>To achieve this illusion, Teixeira began
+his literary life with the most essential quality
+of a translator: an equal knowledge of the
+language that was to be translated and of the
+language into which he was translating it.
+English and Dutch came to him by inheritance;
+French and Flemish, German and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_21"></a>[21]</span>
+Danish he added by study; and throughout
+his working life he was incessantly sharpening,
+polishing and adding to his tools.
+Limitless reading refreshed a vast vocabulary;
+meticulous accuracy refined his meanings
+and justified his usages. His dictionaries
+were annotated freely; and the margins
+of his manuscripts were filled with challenges
+and suggestions for his friends to consider,
+until his own exacting fastidiousness had at
+last been satisfied. Apart from professional
+lexicographers, it would have been difficult
+to find a man with more words in current use;
+it would have been almost impossible to find
+one who employed them with nicer precision.
+Learning sat too lightly on his shoulders to
+make him vain of it, but no one could hear or
+correspond with him without realizing the
+presence of a purist; he seldom quoted, mistrusting
+his memory, confessed himself an
+amateur in colloquial dialogue and refused
+with equal obstinacy to venture on English
+metaphors and English field-sports. “I do
+not know the difference between a niblick
+and a foursome,” he would protest. “When
+you say that your withers are unwrung, I do<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_22"></a>[22]</span>
+not know whether you are boasting or complaining.
+What are your withers? Have
+you any, to begin with? Do you ‘wring’
+them or ‘ring’ them? And why can’t you
+leave them alone?”</p>
+
+<p>Not content with mastering five foreign
+languages, Teixeira created a new literary
+English for every new kind of book that he
+translated. His versions of Maeterlinck’s
+<i>Blue Bird</i>, Couperus’ <i>Old People and The
+Things That Pass</i>, Fabre’s <i>Hunting Wasps</i>
+and Ewald’s <i>My Little Boy</i> have nothing in
+common but their exquisite sympathy and
+scholarship; four different men might have
+produced them if four men could be found
+with the same taste, knowledge and diligence.
+Fabre’s ingenuous air of perpetual discovery
+demanded the style of a grave, grown-up
+child; Maeterlinck’s mystical essays invited
+a hint of preciosity and aloofness, to suggest
+that omniscience was expounding infinity
+through symbols older than time; and the
+atmospheric sixth-sense of Couperus had to
+be communicated by a sensitiveness of language
+that could create pictures and conjure
+up intangible clouds of discontent, guilty<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_23"></a>[23]</span>
+terror, suppressed antagonism or universal
+boredom. In reading the original, Teixeira
+seemed to steep himself in the personality of
+his author until he could pass, like a repertory
+actor, from one mood and expression to
+another; his own mannerisms are confined to
+a few easily defended peculiarities of spelling
+and punctuation.</p>
+
+<p>For a man who must surely have divined
+that his calibre was unique, Teixeira was
+engagingly free from touchiness. In translating
+a book, as in organizing a department,
+he was magnificently grateful for the word
+that had eluded him and for the criticism
+which he had not foreseen. A purist in
+language and a precisian in everything, he
+realized that a living style is throttled by too
+great obedience to rules; but he was afraid,
+even in dialogue, of unchaining a wind of
+colloquialism which he might be unable to
+control; and, in constructing the deliberately
+artificial speech of his Maeterlinck translations,
+he recognized that he lacked his
+readers’ age-old familiarity with the English
+of the Bible. Though his passion for consistency
+led him to say: “My name ought to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_24"></a>[24]</span>
+have been Procrus-Tex,” he stretched out
+both hands for an authority that would justify
+him in broadening his rule. “I have
+always spelt judgment without an e in the
+middle,” he declared in 1915, when, with the
+gravity that characterized his more trivial
+decisions, he had abandoned violet ink, because
+it seemed frivolous in war-time, and the
+long s (ſ), because it bore a Teutonic aspect.
+“I am too old to change now; and you know
+my rule, All or None.” Four years later he
+announced: “In future I shall spell ‘judgement’
+with an e in the middle. The New
+English Dictionary favours it; you assure me
+that it is so spelt in your English prayer-book;
+and Germany has signed the peace
+terms.”</p>
+
+<p>No comparison with other translators can
+be attempted until another arise with Teixeira’s
+range of languages and his volume of
+achievement. He himself could never say,
+within a dozen, how many books he had
+translated; but in them all he created such an
+illusion of originality that they are not suspected
+of being translations until his name is
+seen. In a wider view, he undermined the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_25"></a>[25]</span>
+pretensions of those who boasted that they
+could never read translations; and, if no one
+is likely to be found with all his gifts, he at
+least prepared the way for a new school of
+translators. It may be hoped that, after the
+battles which he fought, important foreign
+authors will not again be sacrificed to illiterate
+hacks at five-shillings a thousand words:
+it may even be expected that competent
+scholars will no longer disdain the task of
+translating contemporary works. All literary
+predictions are rash; but there seems
+little risk in prophesying that Teixeira’s renderings
+of Fabre, Couperus and Maeterlinck
+will be read as long as the originals.</p>
+
+<p>The tangible fruits of his astonishing
+industry are only a part of his achievement:
+it is to him, in company with Constance
+Garnett, William Archer, Aylmer Maude
+and the other undaunted pioneers, that English
+readers owe their escape from the self-satisfied
+insularity with which they had protected
+themselves against continental literature.
+When publishers have been convinced
+that translations need not be unprofitable
+and when a conservative public has discovered<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_26"></a>[26]</span>
+that they need not be unreadable, a
+future generation may be privileged to have
+prompt access to every noteworthy book in
+whatsoever language it has been written,
+without waiting as the present generation has
+had to wait for an English rendering of
+Tolstoi, Turgenieff, Dostoieffski and Tchehov.</p>
+
+<p>In conversation Teixeira took little pleasure
+in discussing himself; in correspondence
+he could not help giving himself away. The
+reader will deduce, from his slow surrender
+of intimacy, the shyness that ever conflicted
+with his sociability; the absence of all allusions
+to his literary work, save when he
+fancied that a second opinion might help
+him, is evidence of a personal modesty that
+amounted almost to unconsciousness of his
+position in letters. Diffidence and sociability,
+first conflicting, then joining forces,
+led him in his departmental work to discuss
+every problem with a friend; and in all personal
+relationships, he needed an hourly confidant
+because everything in life was an
+adventure to be shared and might be worked
+in later to the saga with which he strove to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_27"></a>[27]</span>
+make himself ridiculous for the diversion of
+his company. “Thus,” he writes of a childish
+freak, “do the elderly amuse themselves for
+the further amusement of a limited circle.”
+Weighty commissions were assembled, daring
+expeditions set out under his leadership to
+choose a dressing-gown for country-house
+wear; the grey tall-hat with which he surprised
+one private view of the Royal Academy
+was no less of a surprise to him and even
+more of an abiding pleasure. For a year or
+two afterwards he would telephone on the
+first of May: “If you will wear your goodish
+white topper to-day, I will wear mine”;
+and once, when these conspicuous headpieces
+were in evidence, he led the way to Covent
+Garden Market, with the words: “It is not
+every day that the women of the market see
+two men in such hats, such coats and such
+spats, standing before a fruit-stall with their
+canes crooked over their arms and their
+yellow gloves protruding from their pockets,
+consuming the first green figs of the year in
+the year’s first sunshine.”</p>
+
+<p>In conversation he once boasted that he was
+never bored; and, though every man and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_28"></a>[28]</span>
+woman at the table volunteered the names of
+at least six people who would bore him to
+extinction, the boast was justified in that,
+however irksome one moment might be, it
+could always be invested afterwards with the
+glamour of an eccentric adventure. Somewhere,
+among his immediate ascendants, there
+must have been a not too remote ancestor of
+Peter Pan. On his fifty-sixth birthday, Teixeira
+was having a party arranged for him,
+with a cake and fifty-six tiny candles; for days
+beforehand he had been asking for presents
+of any kind, to impress the other visitors in
+his hotel; and, if he knew one joy greater
+than receiving presents, it was finding an
+excuse to give them.</p>
+
+<p>With the heart of a child in all things, he
+had the child’s quality of being frightened by
+small pains and undaunted by great; a cut
+finger was an occasion for panic, but the
+threat of blindness found him indomitable.
+Herein he was supported throughout life by
+the faith which he had acquired in boyhood
+and which he preserved until his death. “I
+save my temper,” he once wrote, “by not discussing
+religion except with Catholics or<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_29"></a>[29]</span>
+politics except with liberals. There’s room
+for discussion in the <i>nuances</i>; there’s too much
+room for it with those who call my black
+white.” ... While it was generally known
+among his friends that he was a devout Catholic,
+only a few were allowed to see how much
+reliance he placed in religion; and he would
+grow impatient with what he considered a
+morbid protestant passion for worrying at
+something that for him had been immutably
+settled.</p>
+
+<p>In political debates he would only join at
+the prompting of extreme sympathy or extreme
+exasperation. His native feeling for
+the Boers in the Transvaal was little shared
+in England during the South African war;
+and his loathing for English misrule in Ireland
+was too strong to be ventilated acceptably
+among the people whom he met most commonly
+in London. His connection with the
+Legitimist cause came to an end with the outbreak
+of war: though he had hitherto delighted
+in penetrating between the sentries at
+St. James’ Palace and placarding the wall
+with an appeal to all loyal subjects of the
+rightful king, he was unable to continue his<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_30"></a>[30]</span>
+allegiance when Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria
+became an enemy alien.</p>
+
+<p>Legitimacy and Catholicism, apart from
+other claims on his regard, gratified a love
+for ceremonial and tradition that would have
+been more incongruous in a liberal if Teixeira’s
+whole equipment of beliefs, practices
+and preferences had not been a collection
+of incongruities. Though he detested militarism,
+he could never understand why the
+English civilians omitted to uncover to the
+colours; hating pomposity, he enjoyed the
+grand manner in address and, on being
+greeted by a peer as “my dear sir,” replied
+“my dear lord” in a formula beloved by Disraeli.
+As a relief to an accuracy of expression
+which he himself called Procrustean
+and pernickety, he would transform any word
+that he thought would look or sound more
+engaging for a little mutilation. It was a
+bad day for the English of his letters when he
+read Heine and entered into competition for
+the most torturing play upon words; his
+case became hopeless when he was introduced
+to a couple of friends who could pun with
+him in four or five languages. It was this<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_31"></a>[31]</span>
+bent of mind that may justify the description
+of him<a id="FNanchor_4" href="#Footnote_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> as the son of Edward Lear and the
+grandson of Charles Lamb.</p>
+
+<p>Underlying the whimsical humour of his
+letters and peeping through the mock solemnity
+of his speech was a young child’s concern
+for the welfare of his friends: himself never
+growing up, he never outgrew his generous
+delight in any success that came to them; their
+ill-health and sorrow were harder to bear
+than his own; and he shewed a child’s impulsive
+generosity in offering all he had in comfort.
+Sympathy, help, experience and advice
+were at hand for whosoever would take them:
+he had too long lived precariously to forget
+the tragedy of those who failed and failed
+again; he knew life too well to grow impatient
+with those who failed through no one’s fault
+but their own.</p>
+
+<p>Love of life, enduring to the end, knowledge
+of life, increasing every day, combined
+to join this heart of a child to the experience
+of an old man. As a connoisseur of food and
+wine, as of style and manner, he belonged to
+a generation that ranked life as the greatest<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_32"></a>[32]</span>
+of the fine arts. To lunch with him was to
+receive a liberal education in gastronomy,
+though his course of personal instruction
+sometimes broke down for lack of material:
+from time to time he would announce with
+jubilation that he had discovered some rare
+vintage in some unknown restaurant; a party
+would be organized to sample it, only to be
+informed that the last bottle had been consumed
+by Mr. Teixeira the day before.</p>
+
+<p>As an explorer, he remained, to his last
+hour, at the age when a boy lingers rapturously
+before one shop after another, enjoying
+all impartially, sharing his enjoyment with
+every passer-by, confident that life is an unending
+vista of glittering shop-windows and
+that the day must somehow be long enough
+for him to take them all in.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_33"></a>[33]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="IV">IV</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Max Beerbohm’s caricature of Teixeira,
+discovered later—to the subject’s delight—in
+the waiting-room of an eminent gynaecologist,
+emphasizes the most strongly marked
+natural and acquired characteristics of his appearance:
+a big nose and a liking for the fantastic
+in dress. There is hardly space, in the
+drawing, even for the tiny hat of the music-hall
+comedian, so devastating is the sweep of
+that nose, outward from the lips, up and
+round, annihilating forehead and cranium
+until it merges in the nape of the neck. Of
+the dress no more need be said than that it
+looks like a valiant attempt to live up to the
+nose.</p>
+
+<p>As this caricature has not been published in
+any collection of Max Beerbohm’s drawings,
+it was probably unknown to most of those who
+were brought into the Intelligence Section
+of the War Trade Intelligence Department,
+there to be introduced to its head, to receive
+the handshake and bow of a courtier and to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_34"></a>[34]</span>
+wonder how Tenniel could have drawn the
+old sheep in <i>Alice Through the Looking-Glass</i>
+without Teixeira as a model. Tall and
+broad-shouldered, with thick black hair and
+a white face, tortoise-shell-rimmed spectacles,
+and a cigarette in a holder, taciturn, impassive
+and unsmiling, Teixeira never failed to
+conceal that he was more shy than his visitor.
+With articulation as beautifully clear as his
+writing and in words not less exquisitely
+chosen than the language of his books, he
+would introduce the newcomer to those with
+whom he was to work. Messengers would
+be despatched to bring an additional chair
+and table. In the resultant confusion, the
+immense, silent figure would walk away with
+a heavy tread, to find that a pile of papers,
+two feet high, had risen like an Indian mango
+where there had been but six inches a moment
+before. A voice of authority, rolling its r’s
+like the rumble of distant artillery, would
+telephone for more messengers; in time the
+pile would dwindle until the spectacles and
+then the nose and then the cigarette-holder
+were visible. In time, too, the newcomer recovered<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_35"></a>[35]</span>
+from his fright and set about learning
+the business of the department.</p>
+
+<p>It was a pleasant surprise to hear “this
+Olympian creature”, as Stevenson called
+Prince Florizel, addressed by Sutro as “Tex”;
+and, although the first terror was disabling,
+even the newcomer realized that every one in
+the section seemed happy. The Olympian
+creature never lost his temper, he condescended
+to jokes and invented nicknames; the
+appalling gravity was found to be a mask for
+shyness and a disguise for bubbling absurdity.</p>
+
+<p>In the summer of 1915 the machinery of
+the blockade was still making. The department,
+overworked and understaffed, was inadequately
+housed in a corner of Central
+Buildings, Westminster. In the autumn it
+moved to Broadway House, in Tothill Street;
+and one newcomer was invited to sit at Teixeira’s
+table as deputy-head of the section.
+Thenceforth, until the armistice, we worked
+together daily, save when one or other was on
+leave or ill and during the early summer of
+1917 when I was sent to Washington. The
+office, changing almost weekly in personnel,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_36"></a>[36]</span>
+underwent reconstruction when the blockade
+was modified in 1918: Teixeira became secretary
+to the department; I succeeded him
+as head of the intelligence section; and, when
+I left in 1919, he stayed behind to help in
+dismantling the old machine and in assembling
+a new one to supply economic information
+to the peace conference.</p>
+
+<p>Our correspondence for the last three years
+of the war was restricted to the times when
+one of us was away. These absences grew
+more frequent as Teixeira exchanged one
+illness for another. His letters present him
+as a government servant rejoicing in his work,
+tingling with the new sense of new responsibility
+and, “from his circumstances having
+been always such, that he had scarcely any
+share in the real business of life”, suggesting
+irresistibly a comparison with Dr. Johnson
+at the sale of his friend Thrale’s brewery,
+“bustling about, with an ink-horn and pen in
+his button-hole, like an exciseman”. So much
+of them, however, is taken up with departmental
+business that I have drawn sparingly
+upon them.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_37"></a>[37]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="V">V</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>The first five months of 1916 were a time
+of relatively good health for Teixeira; and
+our correspondence contains little more than
+an invitation, which he acknowledged in
+departmental language.</p>
+
+<p>I wrote:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p class="right"><i>Tuesday, Jan. 4th, 1916.</i></p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Though long I’ve wished to bid you come and dine,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent4"><i>Your way of life stood ever in the way;</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>For you, I gather, go to bed at nine</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent4"><i>And rise at five (or five-fifteen) next day.</i></div>
+  </div>
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Yet Tuesday brings my chance. At half-past eight</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent4"><i>I go to guard my king; but, ere I go,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>With meat and wine I purpose to inflate</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent4"><i>My sagging stomach for an hour or so.</i></div>
+  </div>
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Then will you join me? Seven o’clock, I think:</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent4"><i>The Mausoleum Club is fairly near:</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Whate’er your heart desire of food and drink,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent4"><i>And any kind of clothes you choose to wear.</i></div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="right"><i>S. McK.</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_38"></a>[38]</span></p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>We should be glad, <span class="antiqua">replies Teixeira</span>, if this
+application could come up again in say a fortnight’s
+time.</i></p>
+
+<p class="right"><span style="margin-right: 8em;"><i>A. T.</i></span><br>
+<i>Trade Clearing House.</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>When next I was summoned for duty as a
+special constable, the application was submitted
+again; and Teixeira dined with me at
+the Reform Club. Later in the year, though
+he had been warned by William Campbell,
+the greatest friend of his middle years, that a
+man who laughed so much would never be
+admitted to membership, I was allowed to
+propose him as a candidate; and from the day
+of his election he became one of the most
+popular figures both in the card-room and
+in the south-east corner of the big smoking-room,
+where his most intimate associates gathered.</p>
+
+<p>His hours of work, to which the first stanza
+refers, have already been mentioned; his
+methods call for a word or two of description.
+The library in Cheltenham Terrace looked
+out over the Duke of York’s School and was
+lined with book-cases wherever windows,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_39"></a>[39]</span>
+fire-place or door permitted. The furniture
+consisted of a sofa, which was used for hat-boxes
+and more books; a writing-table, which
+was used for anything but writing; a revolving
+book-case, filled with works of reference;
+and the editorial chair from the office of <i>The
+Candid Friend</i>. Seating himself in dressing-gown
+and slippers, between the fire-place and
+the revolving book-case, Teixeira dug himself
+into position: a despatch-box under his
+feet raised his knees to an angle at which he
+could balance a dictionary upon them, with
+its edge resting on a miniature bureau; on the
+dictionary rested a blotting-pad; and every
+book that he needed was in reach either of his
+hand or an elongated pair of “lazy-tongs”;
+scissors, string, sealing-wax, india-rubber and
+knives were ingeniously and menacingly suspended
+from nails in the revolving book-case;
+on the top stood cigarettes, matches, a paste-pot
+and a vast copper ash-tub; and the colour
+of his violet carpet was chosen to conceal the
+occasional splashings of a violet-ink pen.
+With a telephone on one side to put him in
+touch with the outside world and with a bell
+on the other to secure his morning coffee,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_40"></a>[40]</span>
+Teixeira could work without moving until
+evicted by force.</p>
+
+<p>In the beginning of June, he was ordered to
+Malvern.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>No news, <span class="antiqua">he writes on the 10th</span>, except that
+I have arrived and had some tea....</i></p>
+
+<p><i>There are hawthorns at Malvern and rhododendrons
+of -dra but also the most bloodthirsty
+hills. And there was an officer in the train who
+told me that the feeling in Franst was most
+“optimistic”.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>The proprietress of this hotel pronounces my
+name Teisheira. This must be looked into.</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>I s’pose I’m enjoying myself, <span class="antiqua">he writes next
+day</span>. I feel very restless.</i></p>
+
+<p><i><span class="antiqua">[My cook]</span>, I forgot to tell you, was mounting
+guard over the dispatch-box like a very sentinel,
+with hands duly folded: a most proper spectacle.
+I nearly died, but not entirely, hunting for my
+porter up and down the length of the longest
+train you ever saw (I am sure this must be correct,
+in view of the fact that you never did see
+this particular train)....</i></p>
+
+<p><i>This hotel is not so uncomfortable: I slept
+eight hours; I have a writing-table in my room;
+my bath was too hot to get into; these are signs
+of human comfort, are not they? Nor is the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_41"></a>[41]</span>
+food nasty. Fortunately, there is not much of it.
+I ordered me a bottle of Berncastler Doctor.
+They brought me Liebfraumilch. I waved it
+away, saying that hock was acid and gave me
+gout. Then, persuaded to be a Christian, I sent
+one running after it before the doctor was opened
+and drank two glasses; and it was delicious; and
+I have no gout.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Why I sit boring you with this dull stuff I do
+not know: it is certainly not worth including in
+the Life and Letters.</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Two days of solitude set him athirst for
+companionship.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>Good-morning, fair sir, <span class="antiqua">he writes on
+12.6.16</span>. I hope this finds you as it leaves me at
+present, a little improved in health. But I would
+not wish my worst enemy the weariness from
+which I am suffering.... Picture me buying
+useless things so that I may exchange a word
+with a shopman; for no one talks to me here.
+Also the weather is bitterly cold.</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>And next day:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>I have ... talked at length to a highly intelligent
+Dane, with a massy pair of calves that
+do credit to his pastoral country. But he has
+returned to town this morning.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_42"></a>[42]</span></p>
+
+<p><i>They play very low at the club, fortunately, for
+I lost 13/-, which would have been £10, had I
+been playing R.A.C. points. Also they make
+me too late to dress for dinner, which doesn’t
+matter: nothing matters in this world.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>For the rest, I have reason to think that I
+shall begin to cheer up from to-morrow and to
+remain cheerful until Saturday. That is “speech-day”—I
+presume at Malvern College—when I
+expect to see an awful invasion of horribobble
+papas and mammas.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Bless you.</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>The hoped-for cheerfulness has not yet arrived,
+<span class="antiqua">he laments on 14.6.16</span>. I live in one of the
+most tragic of worlds. But ... I have had
+more conversation. The place of the Dane with
+the fatted calves ... has been taken by a parson,
+a passon, a parsoon, an elderly parsoon with
+the complete manner of the late Mr. Penley in
+<span class="antiqua">The Private Secretary</span>: he would like to give
+every German a good, hard slap, I am sure. He
+is a much-travelled man; and his ignorance of
+every place which he has visited is thoroughly entertaining....</i></p>
+
+<p><i>I am becoming popular at the club: they took
+12/- out of me yesterday. I must set my teeth
+and get it back though.</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_43"></a>[43]</span></p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>The influx of odious parents, <span class="antiqua">he writes on
+18.6.16</span>, with their loathy, freckled criminals
+of offspring has flustered the waiters and is spoiling
+all my meals. What I do now is to change
+for dinner after all and come in exactly an hour
+late for meals. They have some way of keeping
+the food—such as it is—piping hot; and so I do
+not suffer unduly for avoiding the sight of some,
+at least, of the carroty-headed boys and their
+thick-ankled sisters....</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Ah well! I can begin to count the days until
+I am back among you; and a glad day that will
+be for me! Nobody in the world, I think, hates
+either rest or enjoyment so much as I do.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Good-bye. I am going for a walk. I tell you
+frankly, I am going for a walk. I tell you this
+frankly....</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>On Teixeira’s return to the department,
+our correspondence was suspended until I
+went to Cornwall for a week’s leave in August.
+When I wrote in praise of my surroundings,
+he replied with a warning:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>You are probably too young ever to have heard
+of ... a play-actress ... who brought a breach
+of promise action ... and earned the then
+record damages of £10,000. She took a cottage<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_44"></a>[44]</span>
+somewhere the other day and brought her mother
+to live in it. The mother said, “This is just the
+sort of place I like; I shall be happy here,” then
+fell down the stairs and was dead in half an
+hour....</i></p>
+
+<p><i>... Remember me to the Atlantic....</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>The next letter contained a story from
+Ireland:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p class="right"><i>Sligo, 18 August 1916.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>... Here, in this most distressful country, we
+are about to experience again the blessings of
+coercion, administered by Duke, K.C., and Carson,
+high priest of the cult. In Sligo, the other
+day, two ladies treating each other in a public-house,
+the barman intervened at the tenth drink,
+saying:</i></p>
+
+<p><i>“Stop it now; ye can’t have any more; troth,
+I won’t sarve ye again. Don’t ye know it’s Martial
+Law that’s on the people?”</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Whereupon one of them enquired of the other:</i></p>
+
+<p><i>“For the love of God, Mrs. Murphy, what’s
+he talking about at all? Who’s Martial Law?”</i></p>
+
+<p><i>To which her friend replied <span class="antiqua">sotto voce</span>:</i></p>
+
+<p><i>“Whist, don’t be showing your ignorance,
+ma’am! Don’t ye know he’s a brother of Bonar
+Law’s?”...</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_45"></a>[45]</span></p>
+
+<p>As official papers accompanied every letter,
+a trace of departmental style is occasionally
+visible in private notes:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p class="right"><i>War Trade Intelligence Department, 23 August, 1916.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>“Harry Edwin” ate a grouse last night and drank
+many glasses of port. You can imagine the sort
+of grumpy <span class="antiqua">commensal</span> that he is to-day.</i></p>
+
+<p class="center"><i>A. T.</i></p>
+
+<p class="hanging"><i>“Harry Edwin.”<br>
+To see.<br>
+23.8.16.</i></p>
+
+<p class="hanging"><i>Seen and approved.<br>
+H. E. P.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>... Don’t overbathe, <span class="antiqua">he adds as a postscript</span>.
+Why be so reckless? You remind me of the
+London city “clurks” who arrive in Switzerland
+one evening, run straight up the Matterhorn the
+next morning. I believe that two per cent of
+them do not drop dead.</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>The Sehr Hochwohlgeboren und Verdammter
+Graf Zeppelin, <span class="antiqua">he writes on 25.18.16</span>, did
+some damage last night at Greenwich, Blackwall
+(a power-station) etc. For the rest, no news.
+I am picking up not wholly unconsidered trifles
+at the Wellington and benefiting your Uncle<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_46"></a>[46]</span>
+Reggie <span class="antiqua">pro rata</span>. <span class="antiqua">[Bridge winnings at this time
+were thriftily exchanged for War Savings Certificates.]</span>
+This morning I (pro)-rated the girl ...
+at the post-office for not “pushing” those certificates.
+I said that, whenever any one asked for
+a penny stamp, she should ask:</i></p>
+
+<p><i>“May we not supply you with one of these?”</i></p>
+
+<p><i>It went very well with the audience.</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>This morning, <span class="antiqua">he writes later</span>, I have bought
+my thirteenth fifteen-and-sixpennyworth of Uncle
+Reggie. Mindful of my injunction to “push” the
+goods, the post-office girl ... urged me to buy
+a £19.7. affair which would be good for £25 in
+five years’ time. Alas! Still, there are hopes.</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>In his preface to <i>The Admirable Bashville</i>,
+Bernard Shaw explains his reason for throwing
+it into blank verse: “I had but a week
+to write it in. Blank verse is so childishly
+easy and expedious (hence, by the way,
+Shakespeare’s copious output), that by adopting
+it I was enabled to do within the week
+what would have cost me a month in prose.”
+Pressure of work sometimes drove Teixeira
+to a similar expedient in rimed verse:</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_47"></a>[47]</span></p><div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>Letter just received, <span class="antiqua">he writes in haste on
+26.8.16. to acknowledge the account of a bathing
+mishap</span>:</i></p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>With great relief at noon I found</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>That S. McKenna was not drowned.</i></div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p><i>Many thanks for the pendant to these lovely
+<span class="antiqua">verses</span>.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>P.S. I note—and we all note—<span class="antiqua">he adds</span>—that
+you never express the wish to see us all again.
+How different from my Malvern letters! Ah,
+what a terrible thing is sincerity!</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_48"></a>[48]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="VI">VI</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>On Holy Saturday, 1917, I was asked by
+the deputy-chairman whether I would represent
+the department on the mission which
+Mr. Balfour was taking to Washington with a
+view to coordinating the war-organization of
+Great Britain and the United States.</p>
+
+<p>For the next two months Teixeira and I
+communicated whenever a bag passed between
+the British Embassy and the Foreign
+Office, overflowing into a brief journal betweenwhiles.
+He also disposed of my varied
+correspondence with uniform discretion and
+with a courage that only failed him when unknown
+mothers asked him if I would stand
+sponsor to their children.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>The enquiries into the cause of your absence,
+<span class="antiqua">he writes on 12.4.17</span>, have been distressing.
+More people ask if you are ill than if you are
+being married. The unit of the last idea was
+Sutro, who then went off to Davis and found
+out what he wanted to know....</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_49"></a>[49]</span></p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p class="right"><i>13 April.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>The work is pretty stiff and I doubt if I can
+make this desultory diary as gossipy as I could
+have wished. And, after all, it will seem pretty
+stale and jejune by the time it reaches you....</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Your whereabouts are known now in the dept.
+and will be at the club to-morrow, if any one asks
+me again. Hitherto great wonder has reigned;
+but the “no blame attaches to his name” stunt
+has worked exquisitely.</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>The figure of Max Beerbohm’s caricature
+is seen in the following paragraph:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>I have ordered eight new coloured shirts,
+bringing the total up to 23. Then I have about
+a dozen black-and-white shirts; and only seven
+dress-shirts, I find. This makes 42 in all. My
+father’s theory was that no gentleman should
+have fewer than eighty shirts to his name.
+Times have changed; and we are a petty and
+pettyfogging generation of mankind. On the
+other hand, I have 33 ties, exclusive of white
+ties. I feel almost sure that my father did not
+have so many as that. And I outdo him utterly
+in boot-trees, of which I have just ordered a pair
+to be marked “L8” and “R8,” meaning thereby
+that it is my eighth pair. <span class="antiqua">Sursum corda.</span></i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_50"></a>[50]</span></p>
+
+<p>Teixeira believed with almost complete
+sincerity that he would die on 21 April 1917.
+The origin of this belief he never explained to
+me; and I do not know whether he confided
+it to others. This accounts for the following
+entry:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>Shall I live, I wonder, till the 22nd, to write
+to you that I am still alive? When I allow my
+thoughts to dwell upon 21.4.17, now but six
+brief days off, there rises to them the memory of
+the horrible Widow’s Song which Vesta Victoria
+used to sing. I will start the next page with the
+chorus; for you, poor young fellow, know nothing
+of the songs that brightened the Augustan age
+of the music-halls.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Read and admire:</i></p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>He was a good, kind husband,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>One of the best of men:</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent2"><i>So fond of his home, sweet home,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent2"><i>He never, never wanted to roam.</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>There he would sit by the fire-side,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent2"><i>Such a chilly man was John!</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>I hope and trust</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>There’s a nice, warm fire</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent2"><i>Where my old man’s gone.</i></div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p><i>Gallows-humour, my dear executor, gallows-humour!</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_51"></a>[51]</span></p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p class="right"><i>16 April.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Yesterday being a fine day, I have caught cold.
+A bad look-out, executor, a bad look-out!</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Adieu, cher ami.</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>You will observe a brief hiatus, <span class="antiqua">he writes on
+19 April, 1917</span>. A letter begun to you on the
+16th is reposing in my drawer at the department,
+where I have not been since then, having succumbed
+to an attack of bronchitis. And <span class="antiqua">[my
+doctor]</span> will not let me out till the 21st (“der
+Tag!”) at the earliest.</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p><i>Der Tag</i> was reached ...</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p class="right"><i>21 April, 1917.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>It was a comfort and a joy to read this morning
+that your party has arrived safely at Halifax.
+I propose to pass this bloudie day without any
+cheap philosophizing. I am about cured of my
+bronchitis, I think, though fearsomely weak; and,
+if I “be” to “be” carried off to-day, it’ll be a
+motor-bus or -cab that’ll do for me. Look out
+for a letter from me dated to-morrow. I hope
+the voyage has done you all the good in the
+world....</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">... <i>and survived</i>.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p class="right"><i>22 April, 1917.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Ebbene, caro mio Stefano! You will be able<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_52"></a>[52]</span>
+to tell your grandchildren that you once knew a
+man who for twenty years was convinced that he
+would die on the day when he was fifty-two years
+and twelve days old and who lived to be fifty-two
+and thirteen....</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Bottomley has turned against the new government
+and is adumbrating his ideal government.
+He retains the present foreign secretary, but
+nominates H. H. A. as lord chancellor and Sir
+Edward Holden as chancellor of the exchequer.
+He wants Beresford as minister of blockade.
+Oof!</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Robbie Ross has a story of a German poet,
+one Oskar Schmidt, “a charming fellow,” who,
+armed with the best letters of recommendation,
+went to Oxford and spent several agreeable weeks
+there. The fine flower of his observations was:</i></p>
+
+<p><i>“Der Oxfort oontercratuades, dey go apout
+between a melangolly and a flegma.”...</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p class="right"><i>24 April, 1917.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Your name appeared in the <span class="antiqua">Times</span> yesterday;
+and I am now able to read daily, or I hope, shall
+be, how Mr. McKenna bowed, raised his hat and,
+escorted by cavalry, took his first cocktail on
+American soil. I do hope that you are not only
+having the time of your life but feeling amazingly
+well. J. pictures you a victim of indigestion;<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_53"></a>[53]</span>
+but I, knowing your justly celebrated
+strength of character, have no fears on that
+score. <span class="antiqua">Cura ut valeas.</span></i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p class="right"><i>4 May, 1917.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>This is a private-view day. The sun is blazing
+truculently. I am wearing a new shirt, white
+with black and yellow lines (the Teixeira colours),
+and the white hat and all’s well in God’s
+dear world.</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>That these sartorial efforts were not
+wasted is shewn by the next entry:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p class="right"><i>5 May, 1917.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>... From yesterday’s Star:</i></p>
+
+<p class="center"><i>“Society Sees the Pictures</i></p>
+
+<p><i>“The beautiful spring day induced one Beau
+Brummel to sport a white box-hat”!!!</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_54"></a>[54]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="VII">VII</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>In the middle of May I cabled to Teixeira
+in code, asking him to forward no more
+letters; and I did not hear from him again
+until my return to England in the second week
+of June.</p>
+
+<p>As soon as I was ready to take his place, he
+went to Harrogate for a cure and remained
+there for six weeks. For part of the time I
+took his place in another sense of the phrase.
+At the end of July the Air Board commandeered
+my flat; and, until I could find, decorate
+and furnish another, Teixeira and his
+wife most kindly placed their house at my
+disposal. This will explain the following
+extract:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p class="right"><i>Harrogate: 15 July, 1917.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Here is the key. Come in when you like, make
+yourself as comfortable as you can and forgive
+all deficiencies. I feel a compunction at not having
+the physical energy to “clear” things a bit for
+you; but there you are....</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_55"></a>[55]</span></p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>I have started my cure, <span class="antiqua">he writes on 18.7.17</span>,
+which promises to be a most strenuous, arduous
+and tedious affair. I have to take daily two
+soda-water tumblers of strong sulphur water and
+two ordinary tumblers of warm magnesia water;
+and on alternate days (a) a Nauheim bath and
+(b) a hot-air bath....</i></p>
+
+<p><i>It is raining steadily. This doesn’t matter.
+But that sulphur-water, on an empty stomach, at
+8 a.m.! Two-and-twenty ounces of it, hot! The
+stench of it! It is said to remind one of rotten
+eggs; but, as I have never smelt a rotten egg, it
+reminds me of nothing and only suggests hell.</i><a id="FNanchor_5" href="#Footnote_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Sugar seems to have been more scarce in
+Harrogate than in London; and Teixeira’s
+appeals and contrivances were always pathetic
+and sometimes frantic.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>My wife did manage to get half a pound of it
+flung at her head this morning, <span class="antiqua">he writes on
+19.7.17</span>. I had so entirely forgotten the essential
+rudeness of the people of Yorkshire that its
+discovery came upon me as an utter surprise. I
+amuse myself by overcoming it with smiles.
+Smiles are unfamiliar symptoms to them and take
+them aback.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_56"></a>[56]</span></p>
+
+<p><i>You may tell Sutro that I have bought a dozen
+silk collars.</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>After weary weeks of nauseating treatment,
+he writes:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>It will be an awful sell if this cure ends without
+doing me good. Still I always hope. Whatever
+happens I shall want at least a week’s after-cure
+which I should probably take here: simply a rest
+and air, without any waters or baths. But what
+is your Cornish date?</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>I replied, 27.7.17.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>By this time you will have seen that our minds
+have been working on parallel lines towards the
+same conclusion that an after-cure is quite essential.
+It will suit me perfectly well to stay here
+until, and including, Friday the 24th, or later if
+you like. My Cornish arrangements are quite
+fluid....</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>For all your pagan pose, <span class="antiqua">he writes</span>, you are a
+fine old Irish Christian gentleman, as is proved
+by your suggestion of an after-cure, dictated no
+doubt at the identical moment when I was writing
+my answer to it. At any rate, I prefer to
+think of you as a Christian brother rather than
+as a Corsican brother. As I said, I shall probably
+take that after-cure, but take it at Harrogate,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_57"></a>[57]</span>
+which is about as bracing a spot as any in
+the three kingdoms. To go straight to the sea
+might set up my rheumatism again, if indeed it
+is suppressed; there is no sign yet of that desiderandum....</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>It is necessary to insert my letter of 30.7.17
+in order to explain Teixeira’s reply to it.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>I went home for the week-end, <span class="antiqua">I wrote</span>, and
+travelled up this morning with C. H. C. has a
+new and most amusing game. It consists of inviting
+people to stay with him for the week-end
+and encouraging them to bathe in the river
+Thames and only disclosing, when the damage
+has been done, that the bed of that ancient river
+is richly studded with broken bottles. There
+was a small boy in the carriage with one badly
+injured foot as a result of C.’s pleasantry. I did
+a conspicuous St. Christopher stunt and carried
+the boy on my shoulders the entire length of the
+arrival platform at Paddington....</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>I, <span class="antiqua">Teixeira answers, 30.7.17</span>, once carried
+Willie Crosthwait, then aged 14, the whole
+length of the Euston departure platform. That
+beats you (and perhaps caused the best part of my
+present troubles). He is now an army chaplain;
+and I sit moaning at Harrogate.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_58"></a>[58]</span></p>
+
+<p><i>Ululu!</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>My eviction took place in the first week of
+August; and on 3.8.17 I wrote to Teixeira:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>I am thinking of moving to Chelsea on Tuesday....
+You may remember a story of Benjamin
+Jowett in connection with two undergraduates
+who persisted in staying up at Balliol
+throughout the Long Vacation. Jowett, by way
+of gently dislodging them, insisted first that they
+should attend Chapel daily. The undergraduates
+grumbled, but obeyed. Jowett, seeing that his
+first attack had failed, arranged with the kitchen
+authorities that the food served to these recalcitrant
+young scholars should be entirely uneatable,
+and in the course of time their spirit was
+so much broken that they left him and Balliol in
+peace. He is reported to have said, as he
+watched them driving down to the station:
+“That sort goeth not forth but by prayer and
+fasting.” So with me. I have manfully withstood
+the stalwart labourers who break walls
+down all round me throughout the night; but,
+when the porters are paid off, the maids deprived
+of their rooms, the hot-water supply disconnected
+and the gas cut off at the main, I feel that I may
+retire with dignity and the full honours of
+war....</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_59"></a>[59]</span></p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>Make yourself as comfortable in Chelsea as
+you can, <span class="antiqua">he answered on 4.8.17</span>. As at present
+advised, we return on Wednesday fortnight, the
+22nd....</i></p>
+
+<p><i>The days here speed past on wings, thanks to
+their monotony. Waters at 8; again at 10.30;
+a bath or baths at 11; lunch at 1.30; a jog-trot
+drive from 3 to 4; bridge; dinner at 7.30; massage
+at 9; all this with unfailing regularity. I
+believe far more in my masseuse (she lives at this
+house) than in my doctor. It will amuse your
+father to hear that this genius is prescribing for
+me in the matter of rheumatism, neuritis and
+fibrositis in the arm without having once had my
+shirt off! I make suggestions, at the instance of
+the masseuse, and he promptly annexes them as
+his own:</i></p>
+
+<p><i>“Tell me, doctor, may I do so-and-so?”</i></p>
+
+<p><i>“You <span class="antiqua">are</span> to do so-and-so; and this very day!”</i></p>
+
+<p><i>The doctors here generally have the very
+worst name; but there is nobody to pull them up
+or show them up.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>The place teems with people whom I know and
+don’t want to see.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>The rain it raineth every day and all day....</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>My cure is now over, <span class="antiqua">he writes on 12.8.17</span>;
+it has been long and costly; it has done me no<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_60"></a>[60]</span>
+good at all. Indeed my main affliction is worse;
+certain movements of the right arm which were
+possible with comparative ease before I came
+down are now nearly impossible. On Saturday,
+at the final consultation, when I took leave of my
+doctor and paid him five guineas, he told me for
+the first time that I have no neuritis but that I
+have bursitis. All the while, mark you, he has
+been treating me for fibrositis. It is a consolation
+to know, however, that I have no arthritis.
+What I have been having is what the vulgar
+would call a hi-tiddlyhitis high old time....</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>A week later I went again to Cornwall on
+leave.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>Do devote yourself, <span class="antiqua">wrote Teixeira, 25.8.17</span>,
+at any rate for the first ten days of your
+absence, to becoming very well and strong. I
+have never seen you quite so ill as yesterday and I
+was infinitely distressed about it. Treat yourself
+as though you were an exceedingly old man like
+me. Then when you have entered upon your
+rejuvenescence you can begin to play pranks with
+yourself again....</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Later he added:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>Be careful not to honour the Atlantic with
+more than one immersion a day....</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_61"></a>[61]</span></p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i><span class="antiqua">And, 30.8.17.</span> I am exceedingly busy, but
+I am enjoying it all. My health is as bad as ever
+and I have recovered my famous lead-poisoning
+hue. I expect you, however, to return with the
+bloom of roses and the stains of coffee on your
+cheeks. So make up your mind to sleep and do
+it....</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>In the first week of September there began
+the most persistent series of air-raids that occurred
+at any stage during the war.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>Last night, <span class="antiqua">Teixeira writes, 5.9.17</span>, was
+made hideous by a pack of confounded Germans
+who came over London and created no end of a
+din. I looked out of the window, saw one shell
+burst in a south-easterly direction, debated
+whether to go below or remain in bed and remained
+in bed.</i></p>
+
+<p><i><span class="antiqua">[My cook]</span>, from her basement, appears to
+have obtained a much clearer aural view:</i></p>
+
+<p><i>“Didn’t you hear them two raiders firing
+bom-m-ms at each other, sir?”</i></p>
+
+<p><i>There spoke your Sinn Feiner: they were both
+raiders to her. The row lasted for over two
+hours; and I feel an utter wreck. Lord knows
+what mischief the brutes have done this time.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Vale et nos ama.</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_62"></a>[62]</span></p>
+
+<p>Next day, in a letter dated, <i>City of Dreadful
+Nights</i>, he adds:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>Last night no air-raid was possible, because of
+an appalling thunderstorm, which kept me awake
+for another three hours. If you have ever heard
+thunder rolling for fifty seconds without intercession
+and giving sixty of these rolls to the
+hour, you will know the sort of thunderstorm it
+was.</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>This description prompts him to an anecdote:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>“Then there’s Roche, the resident magistrate.
+Don’t go shooting Roche now ... unless it’s by
+accident. What does he look like? Well, if
+ye’ve ever seen a half-drowned rat, with a grey
+worsted muffler round its neck, then ye know the
+kind of man Roche is!”—Speech quoted before
+the Parnell Commission.</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>On my return from Cornwall, my flat was
+not yet ready for me, but the Teixeiras’ hospitality
+allowed me to continue staying with
+them.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>You will be as welcome on Thursday night as
+peace at Christmas, <span class="antiqua">wrote Teixeira, 9.9.17</span>.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_63"></a>[63]</span>
+<span class="antiqua">[My cook]</span> is away on a holiday and there is a
+possibility that she will not be back by then; and
+in the meantime there is nobody else. You may,
+therefore, have to submit to a modicum of discomfort:
+... your boots will probably have to
+accumulate to some extent before they are cleaned
+on the larger scale. You have so many boots,
+however, that I venture to hope that this will
+not incommode you unduly.</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>This welcome was seasoned later by a story
+which Teixeira invented, describing his
+efforts to dislodge me. According to this, he
+used to fall resonantly from his bedroom to his
+study at 5.0 each morning and, if this failed to
+rouse me, he would mount the stairs again
+and continue to throw himself down until I
+waked. At 6.0 a cup of tea would be brought
+me; at 7.0 the morning paper; at 8.0 my
+letters. When I went to my bath at 8.30,
+Teixeira used to assert that he flung my
+clothes into a suit-case, tiptoed downstairs
+and laid the case on the doorstep. His tactics
+failed because I only waited until he was
+locked in the bathroom before creeping down
+and retrieving the case.</p>
+
+<p>As our leave was over for the year, there<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_64"></a>[64]</span>
+was no further exchange of letters save when
+one or other was absent from our department.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>I have read the new Maeterlinck play<a id="FNanchor_6" href="#Footnote_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a>—a
+good theme infamously treated, <span class="antiqua">I find myself
+writing, 27.12.18</span>. I beg you to scrap the
+third act and with it your regard for M’s feelings;
+then rewrite it with a little passion, a great
+deal of fear and unlimited un-understanding
+horror. The invasion of Belgium wasn’t a
+Greek tragedy where the afflicted prosed and
+philosophised—with a chorus dilating on cattle-yas;
+it was noisy, bloody and, above all, unbelievable.
+Maeterlinck has brought no nightmare
+into it....</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>Letter just received, <span class="antiqua">he replied next day</span>.
+You are a highly illuminated and illuminating
+critick. Your remarks upon that play are exactly
+right (as I now know, having just read my
+first three Greek plays)....</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>I enclose, <span class="antiqua">he writes 10.8.18</span>, 1¾ chapters
+of the Couperus classical comedy-novel <span class="antiqua">[The
+Tour]</span>, which I amused myself by doing because
+you insisted so emphatically that the book should<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_65"></a>[65]</span>
+be done. But I will go no further till I have
+your verdict. Don’t trouble to do any work on
+this; the marginal refs. were merely inserted as
+I went along. Just see if the thing is the sort of
+thing that’s likely to take on; and talk to me
+about it when you see me....</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_66"></a>[66]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="IX">IX</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>In 1918 Teixeira’s health had so much improved
+that he was able to dispense with all
+violent and disabling cures.</p>
+
+<p>This was the period when he was, socially,
+in greatest request. I introduced him, in the
+spring, to Mr. and Mrs. Asquith, who shewed
+him much hospitality and great kindness
+from this time until his death. His leaves
+were now usually spent with them at Sutton
+Courtney; but, since he required to take little
+or no sick-leave, the number of letters exchanged
+in this year is small.</p>
+
+<p>At the armistice, he left the Intelligence
+Section to become secretary to the department;
+and, though we worked in the same
+building for two or three months more, I
+naturally saw less of him than when we shared
+the same table. The last communication that
+passed between us as colleagues, like the first,
+written three years before, contained an invitation.
+Its form must be explained by reference
+to Stevenson’s and Osborne’s <i>Wrong<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_67"></a>[67]</span>
+Box</i>. Rudyard Kipling has mentioned, in
+<i>A Diversity of Creatures</i>, the sublime brotherhood
+to whom this book is a second Bible.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>“I remembered,” [he writes in <i>The Vortex</i>],
+“a certain Joseph Finsbury who delighted the
+Tregonwell Arms ... with nine ... versions
+of a single income of two hundred pounds, placing
+the imaginary person in—but I could not
+recall the list of towns further than ‘London,
+Paris, Bagdad, and Spitzbergen.’ This last I
+must have murmured aloud, for the Agent-General
+suddenly became human and went on: ‘Bussoran,
+Heligoland, and the Scilly Islands’—‘What?’
+growled Penfentenyou. ‘Nothing,’ said
+the Agent-General, squeezing my hand affectionately.
+‘Only we have just found out that we
+are brothers.... I’ve got it. Brighton, Cincinnati
+and Nijni-Novgorod!’ God bless
+<span class="allsmcap">R. L. S.</span><a id="FNanchor_7" href="#Footnote_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a>...” One of the greatest living authorities
+on <i>The Wrong Box</i> was a member of the
+Reform Club; and, on joining, Teixeira found it
+necessary to his self-protection to study the most
+aptly-quoted work in the world.</p>
+
+<p>My invitation was couched in the cryptic terms
+of the brotherhood:</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_68"></a>[68]</span></p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p class="hanging"><i>MATTOS. Alexander William de Bent
+Teixeira, if this should meet
+the eye of, he will hear
+something to his advantage
+by lunching with me to-day
+at the far end of Waterloo
+Station (Departure Platform)
+or even at Lincoln’s
+Inn.</i></p>
+
+<p class="center"><i>War Trade Intelligence Department.</i></p>
+
+<p class="right"><i>30 December, 1918.</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>On leaving the department early in 1919, I
+saw and heard little of Teixeira until he invited
+me to collaborate in the translation
+of <i>The Tour</i>. Occasional divergencies of
+opinion about translating Latin words in the
+English rendering of a Dutch novel had the
+very desirable result of making Teixeira set
+out some few of the principles which he followed.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>Couperus sends me this postcard, <span class="antiqua">he writes,
+29.4.18</span>:</i></p>
+
+<p><i>“Amice,</i></p>
+
+<p><i>“You are of course at liberty to act according
+to your taste and judgement. I do not however
+understand the thing: in every novel treating of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_69"></a>[69]</span>
+antiquity the classical word sometimes gives a
+nuance to the untranslatable local colour. And
+every novelist feels this: See <span class="antiqua">Quo Vadis</span>, in
+Jeremiah Curtius’ translation. However, do as
+you think proper.</i></p>
+
+<p class="center"><i>“Yours,</i></p>
+
+<p class="center"><i>“L. C.”</i></p>
+
+<p><i>He has us on the hip with his Jeremiah Curtius.
+And I feel more than ever that you were too drastic
+in your views and I too weak in yielding to
+them....</i></p>
+
+<p><i>We should always guard ourselves against the
+bees in our bonnets. When I produced Zola’s
+<span class="antiqua">Heirs of Rabourdin</span>, the stage-manager said his
+play-actors couldn’t pronounce Monsieur, Madame
+and Mademoiselle to his liking: might he
+try how it would sound with Mr., Mrs., and Miss
+Rabourdin? He tried!</i></p>
+
+<p><i>If your principle were carried to any length,
+you would have to call a pagoda a tower, a jinrickshaw
+a buggy, a café a coffee-house, a gendarme
+a policeman (i.e. a <span class="antiqua">sergent-de-ville</span>), a
+toga a cloak, a gondola a wherry, an Alpenstock
+an Alpine stick, a ski a snowshoe: one could go
+on for ever!</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Yet I am ever yours,</i></p>
+
+<p class="right"><i>Tex.</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_70"></a>[70]</span></p>
+
+<p>In the spring and summer of 1919 our
+letters became more frequent. Though Teixeira
+spent most of his time in his department, I
+employed the first months of liberation in
+staying with friends. The translation of <i>The
+Tour</i> went on apace; and arrangements were
+made for the English publication of <i>Old
+People and the Things That Pass</i>. If he had
+given his readers no other book by Couperus
+or by any other writer, he would still have
+established two reputations with this.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>It’s a funny thing, <span class="antiqua">he writes</span>, 21.5.19; 4:57
+a.m.; but I find that I can no longer trs. Latin,
+even with a dictionary. I suppose it’s because
+I can’t construe it. Would you mind putting a
+line-and-a-bit of Ovid into English for me?
+Here it is:</i></p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">Materian superabat opus, nam Mulciber illic</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Æquora celarat.</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p><i>... My intentions are to go down to I. for
+5 or 6 days on the 5th of June and to join my
+wife at Bexhill on or about the 18th for 3 or 4
+weeks.</i></p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>“Bexhill-on-Sea</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Is the haven for me,”</i></div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_71"></a>[71]</span></p>
+
+<p class="noindent"><i>sang Clement Scott in a visitors’-book discovered
+by Max Beerbohm, who tore him to pieces for
+it in the <span class="antiqua">Saturday</span>, in an article signed “Max.”
+Scott, pretending not to know who Max was,
+flew to the <span class="antiqua">Era</span> and wrote his famous absurdity,
+“Come out of your hole, rat!” Gad, how we
+used to laugh in those days!...</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>My reply began:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>I resent your practice of heading your letters
+with the unseemly time at which you leave a warm
+and comfortable bed. <span class="antiqua">And I dated my own</span>: 22
+May, 1919. Cocktail-time. What would you
+think of me if I headed my letters with the equally
+unseemly time at which I sometimes go to bed?
+I have been working so late one or two nights last
+week and this that the times would coincide, and
+you might bid me good-morning as I bade you
+good-night....</i></p>
+
+<p><i>I went ... to a musical party.... I felt
+that it was incumbent upon me to see whether
+you had done anything in the matter of the Belgian
+quartette.<a id="FNanchor_8" href="#Footnote_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a> You will be shocked to hear
+that the quartette is not only still in existence, but<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_72"></a>[72]</span>
+has added a supernumerary to turn over the
+music of the pianist....</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i><span class="antiqua">On 7.6.19, he wrote from Somersetshire</span>: You
+are—it is borne in upon me that you must be—a
+secret autograph-hunter. Here am I, hoping to
+do nothing but sleep 26 hours out of the 24, to
+do nothing ever, to the great ever; and here
+come you, hoping for a letter, lest you be pained.
+A scripsomaniac, my poor Stephen, a scripsomaniac
+you will surely be, if you do not check yourself
+in time.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes! I know that I am Satan
+rebuking sin; but was Satan ever better employed?
+Far rather would I see him rebuking sin than
+prompting letters for idle hands to write.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Well, I know that I am staying in Somersetshire
+with I., who is at this moment speeding towards
+the Hôtel du Vieux Doelen at the Hague,
+to nurse a sick friend. Ker pongsay voo der
+sah? And I am happy as the day is long, petted
+and coddled by his delightful mother, lolling
+from the morning unto the evening in the open
+air and doing not one stroke of work. And utterly
+at my ease, not even blushing when my
+brother cuckoo mocks me from the tree-top, as he
+does sixty times to the minute.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_73"></a>[73]</span></p>
+
+<p><i>I return on the 12th; on the 13th I go cuckooing
+at the Wharf, returning on the 16th; ...
+on the 18th I join my wife at Bexhill; how, I
+ask you, can I come a-cuckooing in Lincoln’s Inn?</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Nor do see any chance of touching <span class="antiqua">The Tour</span>
+while I am here. I am really too busy to do
+aught but play the sedulous cuckoo in Cockayne.
+So let my visit to you be a pleasure (to both of
+us) postponed....</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i><span class="antiqua">To this I replied, 14.7.19</span>: I lunched yesterday
+with one Butterworth, who is opening up a
+publisher’s business. In the course of conversation
+I mentioned to him your translation of <span class="antiqua">Old
+People and the Things that Pass</span>. More than
+that, I took upon myself to lend him my copy of
+the American edition so that he might have an
+opportunity of forming his own opinion of it.
+You may, if you like, call me interfering and presumptuous,
+but I have not committed you in any
+way to anything, and yesterday’s transaction may
+be regarded as no more than the loan of a book
+from one person to another. I, as you know,
+feel it a reproach that that book is still unpublished
+in England, and, if Butterworth thinks fit
+to make you a good offer, no one will be better
+pleased than me....</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_74"></a>[74]</span></p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i><span class="antiqua">On 26.7.19 he wrote from Bexhill</span>: If it
+comes on to rain as it threatens daily, I shall be
+returning <span class="antiqua">The Tour</span> to you quite soon; and in any
+case it will go back to you before I leave here on
+the 15th of July: I must reduce the weight of
+my luggage; I had to run all over the town to
+find two stalwart ruffians to carry it to the attic
+where I sleep.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>You need not look at it before we meet unless
+you wish; but you may like to do Cora’s song<a id="FNanchor_9" href="#Footnote_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a>
+in your sleep meanwhile; and my additional comments
+and queries are few.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>I am leading here that methodical humdrum
+life which alone makes time fly. When I return
+to town you shall see me occasionally at the opera,
+but not oftener than twice a week. You will
+have to look for me, however, for I shall be stalking
+behind pillars, cloaked in black, like Lucien
+de What’s-his-name, hiding from my black beast,
+Lady....</i></p>
+
+<p><i>P.S. Can you tell me if Beecham intends to
+do any light operas at Drury Lane in addition to
+that tinkly, overrated <span class="antiqua">Fille de Madame Angot</span>?
+I am dying to hear the whole Offenbach series
+before I die.</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>A letter from Bexhill, dated 2.7.19,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_75"></a>[75]</span>
+touches on one general principle of translating:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>... With all deference, a translator’s first
+duty is not to translate. His first duty is to love
+God, honour the king and hate the Germans.
+His next duty is to produce a version corresponding
+as near as may be with what an English original
+writer, if he were writing that particular
+book, would set down. His last duty is to translate
+every blessed word of the original....</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Next day he wrote:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i><span class="antiqua">T. B. [Thornton Butterworth]</span> is taking “O.
+P.” <span class="antiqua">[Old People]</span> and coming down here to see
+me on Saturday.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Ever so many thanks for your generous offices
+in the matter....</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>On Peace Day, in a letter dated from Finsbury
+Circus, Teixeira writes:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>Here sit I, putting in four or five hours before
+a train leaves to take me to Herbert George and
+Jane Wells at Easton Glebe and reading <span class="antiqua">Quo
+Vadis</span>. Already, in 99 pages, I have discovered
+21 expressions which you would undoubtedly
+have condemned in <span class="antiqua">The Tour</span>.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_76"></a>[76]</span></p>
+
+<p><i>... This is interesting: <span class="antiqua">[the author]</span> says
+that in Nero’s day it was already becoming a
+stunt among the Romans to call the gods by their
+Greek Names. Tiberius was not so much earlier—was
+he?—than Nero that the practice might
+not have begun even then. If so, we can let
+Couperus have his way and retain those few
+names. They are very few, I think. I can remember
+at the moment only Aphrodite and Zeus
+and possibly Eros. It may be that Juno is mentioned
+as Hera, but I doubt it.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>There is a charming garden, with a most beautifully
+kept lawn. The flowers ... consist
+entirely of the only three that I dislike: fuchsias,
+begonias and red geraniums.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Still ...</i></p>
+
+<p><i>I hope that you are spending the day as peacefully
+and that this will find you well and
+happy....</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Two east-end Jews within hail of me are talking
+Yiddish and sharing a Daily Snail between
+them. There is a cat. There is or am I. And
+there are those fuchsias.</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>On 18.8.19, I wrote:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>The North of Ireland seems beating up for a
+storm, does not it? I suppose there is no point
+in my reminding you that a perfect gentleman<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_77"></a>[77]</span>
+would not fail to present himself at Euston next
+Friday at 8.10 p.m. to tuck me into my sleeper
+and see me safely off? My address in Ireland
+from Aug. 23rd to 31st is (in the care of Sir John
+Leslie, Baronet) Glaslough, Co. Monaghan....</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>At 8.10 on Friday, <span class="antiqua">he replied, 20.8.19</span>,
+this perfect gentleman will be eating his melon
+at Huntercombe Manor House, Henley-on-Thames
+(in the care of Squire Nevile Foster),
+but for which he would undoubtedly come to see
+you oft in the stilly night. I wish you safely
+through the war-zone, happy and interested in
+this, your first visit to Ireland and prosperously
+home again. Now do not write and answer that
+you have paid eighteen visits to Ireland before:
+those eighteen visits have always been and always
+will be to my mind as mythical as the travels of
+Mungo Park or Mendes Pinto....</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Feeling that I must acquaint Teixeira with
+my safe arrival in Ireland, I wrote, 28.8.19:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p class="right"><i>Glaslough, Co. Monaghan.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>... I am here; yes, but how did I get here?
+I am here; yes, but shall I ever get away? I
+left London on Friday with my young and very
+lovely charge, encountered engine-trouble and
+reached Holyhead an hour late. I sat on the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_78"></a>[78]</span>
+boat-deck with her (but without an overcoat),
+watching the dawn until I was chilled to the
+marrow and any other man would have been
+delirious with pneumonia. The breakfast-car
+train had left, so we took a later one from Dublin.
+Being faced with the prospect of waiting
+2½ hours at Clones, I got out at Drogheda to
+send a telegram to the Leslies, begging them to
+meet us there by car. Unhappily, the train went
+on without me, bearing away my young and very
+lovely charge, my suit-case, my despatch-box, my
+umbrella and my hat. I was left with a pair of
+gloves and my charge’s ticket.... I bought
+myself a cap of 4/6 and a clean collar for
+/4d, and spent the day writing letters, contriving
+epigrams and lunching off scrambled eggs and
+Irish whiskey.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>I have been taken to the McKenna grave at
+Donagh and presented—by Shane—to the clan
+as its head, which I am not. The recognition of
+Odysseus by his old nurse was eclipsed by the
+recognition accorded me by an old woman who
+remembered—unprompted—my coming to Glaslough
+twelve years ago and thanked God that she
+had been spared to see me again. It is a very
+lovely place that the Leslies have taken from us.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>But how to leave it? It is Horse Show week,
+and every sleeper has been booked for three<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_79"></a>[79]</span>
+weeks. I shall have to cross from Belfast to
+Liverpool, I think, and try to get my sleeping
+done on the boat. And that means that I shall
+not be home till Tuesday. Can’t be helped.</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>On 31.8.19 Teixeira wrote to greet me on
+my return from Ireland:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>After your preliminary wanderings, my dear
+Stephen O’Dysseus, welcome home again! You
+were always the worst courier in the world; I’ve
+not ever known you to bring one of your young
+and very lovely charges to her destination without
+encountering cataclysmal adventures on the
+road.... Still, would that I had known that
+you can buy collars, clean and therefore presumably
+new collars, at Drogheda for fourpence
+apiece. Yesterday I paid fifteen shillings for a
+dozen....</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>On 21.12.19 he writes to offer me good
+wishes for Christmas:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>The one and only thing that the Fortunate
+Youth appeared to me not to possess will reach
+you in a little registered packet to-morrow evening....
+You are to accept it as a token of the
+happiness which I wish you during this Christmas
+and the whole of the coming year.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_80"></a>[80]</span></p>
+
+<p><i>That was a very jolly party on Wednesday:
+I enjoyed everything: the gay and kindly company,
+the admirable foodstuffs, even the music;
+and, if it be true, as I told you, that Covent
+Garden has shrunk in size since my young days,
+I am compelled to confess that your box was a
+larger than I ever saw before.</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>At this season of excess, <span class="antiqua">he writes on Christmas
+Day</span>, I am allowed to indulge my passion
+for chocolates, but not to buy any for myself;
+and it was most thoughtful of you to pander to
+my taste. Thank you ever so much. And thank
+you also for your good wishes....</i></p>
+
+<p><i>I must be off to mass, but not without first
+begging you to hand your mother and sister my
+best wishes for a happy New Year. As to you,
+I shall see or talk to you before then....
+My young Sinn Feiner has written a novel<a id="FNanchor_10" href="#Footnote_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a>
+which to my mind is a most remarkable production
+and which will have to be read by you at all
+costs. It is published in Dublin; and it is doubtful
+whether a single other copy will find its way
+to this foreign land.</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>In April Teixeira and his wife went to
+Hove: and on 27.4.20 he writes:</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_81"></a>[81]</span></p><div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>It is blowing what-you-may-call-it here: ’arf a
+mo’, ’arf a brick, half a gale. Apart from that,
+we are well and send our love.</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Commenting on a house-party which I had
+described, he adds:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>All we can do, my dear Stephen, is to ask you
+to remember the old adage:</i></p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Birds of a feather flock together;</i></div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent"><i>and the modern variants:</i></p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Birds of a beak meet twice a week;</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Birds of a voice share a Rolls-Royce;</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Birds of a kidney are Alf and Sydney;</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Birds of a tail are hail-fellow-hail;</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Birds of a crest are twins of the best;</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Birds of a gizzard are witch and wizzard;</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Birds of a chirrup are treacle and syrup;</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>The hawk and the owl sit cheek by jowl.</i></div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="right"><i><span style="margin-right: 5.5em;">Yours ever,</span><br>
+Alexander and Lily Tex.</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>The next letter was from his wife and
+brought the news that Teixeira’s health had
+taken an unexpected turn for the worse. His
+life was not in immediate danger, but henceforward
+he must regard himself as an invalid
+and must work under the conditions imposed
+by his doctor.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_82"></a>[82]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="X">X</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>As soon as he was well enough to be moved,
+Teixeira came up from Hove and, after a
+few days in Chelsea, went to a nursing-home
+in Crowborough for the summer.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing is more characteristic of him than
+that the first message he sent after the beginning
+of his illness was one of reassurance
+and optimism:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>Sent you a wire this morning, <span class="antiqua">he writes</span>, lest
+you be seriously distressed. Really much better
+after nine hours’ sleep.... I expect I shall be
+quite well by Saturday, when we return but I
+shall have to be jolly careful....</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>Thanks for your letters, <span class="antiqua">he writes, 8.5.20,
+when we were arranging to meet</span>. Nothing you
+can do for me at present except converse with
+me in the form of: Tex. Very short questions:
+Stephen. Very long answers. I’m getting
+plaguily impatient at the slowness of my recovery:
+it’s very wrong, wicked and impatient of me.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>I enclose.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_83"></a>[83]</span></p>
+
+<p><i>A. Two lines from your favourite “poet”
+(save the Mark Tapley)!</i></p>
+
+<p><i>B. Some wedding-effusions which remind me
+that Burne-Jones, when they told him that marriage
+was a lottery, said:</i></p>
+
+<p><i>“Then it ought to be made illegal.”</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>While undergoing his rest-cure, he not
+infrequently communicated with me by
+means of annotations to the letters which I
+wrote him. His comments are given in
+parenthesis.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>I ... went to see <span class="antiqua">As You Like It</span> at the Lyric
+Theatre, Hammersmith, <span class="antiqua">I wrote, 15.5.20</span>. It
+is a good production but an uncommonly bad
+play, like so many of that author’s. If any
+dramatist of the present day served up that kind
+of musical comedy without the music, but with
+all the existing purple patches, I wonder what
+your modern critic would make of it.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>(Laurence Irving used to go about saying,
+“Teixeira says that Shakespeare wrote only one
+decent play: <span class="antiqua">Timon of Athens!</span> Wha-art d’ye
+think of that? The mun’s mud!” Talking of
+Shakespeare, if you want to laugh, really to
+laugh, <span class="antiqua">ce qu’on appelle</span> to laugh, read (you will
+never see it acted) a stage-play called <span class="antiqua">Titus Andronicus</span>....)</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_84"></a>[84]</span></p>
+
+<p><i>(Help! A man waved to me on the lawn
+y’day: an Ebrew Jew ... had motored down to
+see his sister here; told me I’d find her very
+“bright.” She’s fifty <span class="antiqua">bien sonnés</span>. Told him I’d
+feel too shy to talk to anybody for weeks. But
+I’m lending her books. Help!)</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Strictly limited in the amount of work
+which he was allowed to do, Teixeira
+in these weeks read voraciously; and his
+letters of this period contain almost the only
+critical judgements that I was able to extract
+from him.</p>
+
+<p>On 25.5.20. he writes:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>Was Pearsall Smith the inventor of the pedigree
+tracing the descent of the English from the
+ten lost tribes of Israel?</i></p>
+
+<p class="center"><i>Isaac</i><br>
+|<br>
+|<br>
+<i>Isaacson</i><br>
+|<br>
+|<br>
+<i>Saxon</i></p>
+
+<p><i>What was the other famous book, besides
+<span class="antiqua">Erewhon</span>, which George Meredith (whom I am
+beginning to dislike almost as much as Henry
+James and Pearl Craigie) caused Smith, Elder<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_85"></a>[85]</span>
+&amp; Co. to reject? Was it <span class="antiqua">Treasure Island</span> or
+something quite different?</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Which Samuel Butlers am I to buy now? I
+have (in the order of which I have enjoyed
+them):</i></p>
+
+
+<ul><li>The Way of all Flesh</li>
+<li>Alps and Sanctuaries</li>
+<li>The Notebooks</li>
+<li>Erewhon Revisited</li>
+<li>Erewhon</li>
+</ul>
+
+<p><i>The machinery part of the last-named bored
+me; the philosophy also; and I fear I missed much
+of the irony. But the style! It’s unbeaten.
+It’s as good as Defoe. It knocks Stevenson silly
+because it’s so utterly natural. Hats off to that
+for style.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Should I enjoy <span class="antiqua">The Humour of Homer</span>,
+though knowing nothing or little about Homer?
+<span class="antiqua">The Authoress of the Odyssey</span>: would this be
+wasted on me? What is <span class="antiqua">The Fair Haven</span> about?
+I don’t want to read Butler’s religious views—all
+you Britons think and talk and write much too
+much about religion—nor his views on evolution:
+he is too much in sympathy, I gather, with that
+dishonest fellow, Darwin.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>What shall I read of that same Darwin, so
+that I may do my own chuckling? Please name<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_86"></a>[86]</span>
+the best two or three, in their order as written.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Where shall I find the quarrels between Huxley
+and Darwin? That accomplished gyurl, my
+stepdaughter, had read all about them before
+she was sixteen but was unable to point me to
+the book.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>At your leisure, my dear Stephen, answer me
+all these questions. As you see, I’m making
+progress. I have neither capacity nor inclination
+(thank God) for work yet, but I can read day
+without end.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Pearsall Smith’s <span class="antiqua">Stories from the Old Testament</span>
+would amuse you. It’s too dear; but it
+would amuse you, in parts.</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>In discussing Darwin’s books, I suggested
+that Teixeira should find out whether the
+members of his church were encouraged to
+read them.</p>
+
+<p>He replies, 28.5.20:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>... I am very glad that Darwin is on the
+Index and I hope that this interferes with his
+royalties....</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>And on 2.6.20:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>Pray bear with a postcard. I noticed that
+you used “detour” on two occasions.... I sympathize.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_87"></a>[87]</span>
+There’s no English equivalent save
+Tony Lumpkin’s seriocomic “circumbendibus.”
+But I meant to tell you of my recent discovery
+that Chesterton uses “detour,” <span class="antiqua">sic</span> without an accent
+or italics. And it’s well worth considering.
+I, for my part, have made up my mind to adopt
+it in future, by analogy with “depot” and, for
+that matter, “tour,” which is never italicized.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>I also intend to adopt your “judgement”....</i></p>
+
+<p><i>What a lot one can still write for a penny!</i></p>
+
+<p class="right"><i>Tex.</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>In acknowledging one of his translations,
+I wrote:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>Two of my worst faults as a reader are that
+I always finish a book which I have begun and
+always begin a book which has been presented
+to me by the author or translator.</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Teixeira comments:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>(I always thought highly of your brain till
+now. I regret to tell you that the only other
+human being who has ever confessed that vice to
+me is J. T. Grein’s mother.... Drop that vice.
+Why, I once “began” to read the Bible!...)</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>With most of your criticisms I agree, <span class="antiqua">my letter
+continued. Teixeira had been reading the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_88"></a>[88]</span>
+manuscript of some short stories;</span> though there
+are one or two points on which I remain adamant.
+If you wish to shorten your life, ask any Coldstreamer
+whether he belongs to the Coldstreams.
+It is always either the Coldstream Guards or the
+Coldstream....</i><a id="FNanchor_11" href="#Footnote_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a></p>
+
+<p><i>(I suspected you of being right, but I was not
+ashamed to ask you. You may or may not have
+observed how much less of a snob I am than most
+of the people you strike. Cricketing terms,
+nautical terms, military terms, Latin quantities,
+those endless excuses for the worst forms of British
+snobbery, all leave me cold.)</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>In discussing methods of work, he writes:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>(... It will interest you to know that Oscar
+Wilde dropped all his pleasures when he wrote
+his plays; retired into rooms in St. James’ Place,
+hired <span class="antiqua">ad hoc</span>, to write the first line; and did not
+leave them till he had written the last. And one
+of them at least, <span class="antiqua">The Importance</span>, was a perfect
+work of art, whatever one may think of the
+others.)</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Though he enjoyed his rest-cure, it gave him—he
+complained—no news to communicate:</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_89"></a>[89]</span></p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>You’re not interested in my brown dog and I
+speak to no one else.</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>On my pointing out that I could not be
+interested in an animal of which I had hitherto
+not heard, Teixeira wrote, 4.6.20:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>... It must have been my morbid delicacy
+that prevented me, knowing your dislike of dogs,
+from mentioning the brown dog before. As a
+man gains strength, he loses delicacy: that explains
+though it does not excuse my late reference
+to him. He is an Irish terrier, endowed with a
+vast sense of humour, who runs about on three
+legs (which is one more than I, who am eighteen
+times his age, can boast) and plays with me from
+ten till half-past six (when I go to bed). He
+saves me from all boredom and I am grateful to
+him....</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Little by little I am beginning to itch for
+work.... I can’t work yet; but I regard the itching
+as a good sign. And I no longer find these
+longish letters so much of a strain. It takes a
+lot to kill a Portugal.</i><a id="FNanchor_12" href="#Footnote_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a></p>
+
+<p><i>Bring me to the gentle remembrance of your
+charming host and hostess. I wonder if I shall
+ever meet either of them at one of your pleasant<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_90"></a>[90]</span>
+dinners again. I wonder if I shall ever dine
+with you again at all....</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>On 8.6.20 he writes:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>... I send you a letter from ... a Beaumont
+master and scholastic in minor orders.
+Apart from its nice misspelling, its noble, broad-minded
+casuistry will explain to you why I love
+the Church, as it explains to me why you hate it.
+<span class="antiqua">Cependant</span> I suppose that I must set to work and
+read me a little Darwin.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>I am making fair progress, as my recent letters
+must have proved to you. But I do not yet
+consider myself near enough to complete recovery
+to return to town....</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>In June Teixeira was created a Chevalier
+of the Order of Leopold II. My letter of
+congratulation was annotated on this and
+other subjects:</p>
+
+<p>Referring to a criticism of <i>Kipps</i>, I had
+written:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>It is excellent stuff, and I always regard Wells
+as being one of the ... greatest ... comedy-writers.
+But I always feel that in <span class="antiqua">Kipps</span> and all
+the earlier books he is only working up to <span class="antiqua">Mr.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_91"></a>[91]</span>
+Polly</span>, which is the most exquisite thing that he
+has done in that line.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>(I have read both down here and prefer <span class="antiqua">Kipps</span>.
+The phrases underlined, quoted in the <span class="antiqua">Times</span>
+notice (attached) of Wells’ Polly-Kippsian “<span class="antiqua">History
+of the World</span>” reminds me irresistibly of
+the old lady who, witnessing a performance of
+“<span class="antiqua">Anthony and Cleopatra</span>,” by your Mr. Shakespeare
+or our Mr. Shaw, observed: “How different
+from the home life of our dear queen!”)</i></p>
+
+<p><i>... Let me offer you—a trifle belatedly perhaps—my
+congratulations on your new dignity.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>(“Thanks.” A. Kipps)</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Certainly you should tell the <span class="antiqua">[Belgian]</span> Ambassador
+that it is not only inconvenient but impossible
+for you to be invested in person and that he
+must send you the warrant and insignia....</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Did I ever tell you the story of Mr. G.’s search
+for a decoration? The Kaiser refused to give
+him one on any consideration, and he therefore
+toured Europe, lending or giving money to one
+government after another in the hope of being
+ultimately rewarded with the 4th class of the
+Speckled Pig. In every court he was promised
+his decoration, but, when he presented himself
+for the investiture, the court officials turned from
+him with just that expression of loathing and
+nausea which he had formerly observed on the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_92"></a>[92]</span>
+face of the Kaiser. It was only when he reached
+Bulgaria that he found the Czar and his court less
+squeamish. On payment of a considerable solatium
+he was invested with the 19th class of the
+Expiring Porpoise and returned in triumph to his
+native Stettin. Here, however, his troubles were
+only beginning, as he was unable to obtain permission
+to wear the Expiring Porpoise at any
+public function in Germany. Seeing that he had
+paid one considerable sum to the Bulgarian Czar
+and another to the firm of jewellers, who substituted
+diamonds for the paste of the jewel he
+felt, naturally enough, that he was receiving little
+value for his lavish expenditure. Bulgaria, it
+seemed, was the only country where the Expiring
+Porpoise could be worn. Accordingly he returned
+to Sofia and paid a further sum to be invited
+to the banquet which the burgomaster of
+Sofia was giving on the Czar’s birthday. Here
+he was at length rewarded for so many months of
+disappointment and neglect. Before the soup
+had been served, the Czar had hurried round to
+his place and was kissing him on both cheeks.
+“My dear old friend!” said he, “No, you are
+not to call me ‘sir’; henceforth it is ‘Fritz’ and
+‘Ferdinand’ between us, is it not? How long it
+is since last I saw you! I have been waiting to
+express my heart-felt regret for the unpardonable<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_93"></a>[93]</span>
+carelessness of my Chamberlain. When it was
+too late and you had left Sofia (I feared for
+ever), my Chamberlain discovered that you had
+been invested with the 19th Class of the Expiring
+Porpoise. You must have thought me mad, for
+no sane man would offer the 19th class to a person
+of your distinction. It was the 1st class that
+I intended. This bauble that I am wearing round
+my neck to-night. Tell me, my dear Fritz, that it
+is not too late for me to repair my error.” With
+that word the Czar removed the collar and jewel
+from his own neck and slipped it over the head
+of G. taking in exchange G.’s despised collar and
+jewel of the 19th class. It was only when our
+friend returned to his hotel that he discovered
+the new jewel to be of the most unfinished paste,
+as cheap or cheaper than the paste which he had
+previously removed at such expense from the
+jewel of the 19th class.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>(This is a splendid story.)</i></p>
+
+<p><i>I am afraid, <span class="antiqua">I added</span>, that I have no idea who
+is the official to whom you apply for leave to
+wear these things....</i></p>
+
+<p><i>(My dear Stephen, you had better here and
+now adopt as your maxim what I said to Browning
+soon after he had engaged my services on
+behalf of H.M.G.: “I yield to no man living
+in my ignorance on every subject under the sun.”<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_94"></a>[94]</span>
+You outdo and outvie me. You never know
+anything. In other words, you know nothing.
+But I’ll wager that these are worn without permission.
+What’s the penalty? <span class="antiqua">The Morning
+Post</span> to-day names a couple of dozen to whom
+it’s been granted.)</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Evidently feeling that I was living too
+much alone, Teixeira enclosed a copy of <i>The
+Times’</i> list of forthcoming dances:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>(<i>Don’t wait for invitations, <span class="antiqua">he urged in a postscript</span>.
+Ring the top bell and walk inside.</i>)</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>The next letter needs to have Teixeira’s use
+of the word palimpsest explained. His
+good-nature in reading his friends’ manuscripts
+was inexhaustible. I never intended
+him to do more than give me a general
+opinion; but his critical vision was microscopic,
+and he filled the margins with questions
+and comments. In returning me one
+manuscript, he wrote:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>I have made some 800 notes, of which 600 are
+purely frivolous. Six are worth serious attention.</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>While this textual scrutiny was quite invaluable,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_95"></a>[95]</span>
+Teixeira seldom gave that general
+opinion of which I always felt in most need
+at the moment when I had lately finished a
+book and was unable to regard it with detachment.
+Accordingly, the manuscript, on leaving
+him, was usually sent to another friend,
+who commented not only on the text but also
+on the marginalia. As her occasional controversies
+with Teixeira (expressed in such
+minutes as:</p>
+
+<p>“Pull yourself together, Mr. T!”</p>
+
+<p>“You men! One’s as bad as the other,
+you know.”</p>
+
+<p>“Never mind what Mr. T. says, Stephen:
+<i>I</i> understand.”</p>
+
+<p>“I <i>wish</i> my brain worked as quickly as
+that.”)</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">and with me invited rejoinders, the first version
+of a manuscript sometimes took on the
+appearance of a contentious departmental
+file. It was in this form that Teixeira called
+it a palimpsest.</p>
+
+<p>On 22.6.20 he writes:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>Thanks for your letter and the palimpsest....
+I’ve studied it amid distressing circumstances, in<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_96"></a>[96]</span>
+a long-chair, on a lawn, beneath the sun, surrounded
+by breezes and patients, who being forbidden
+to speak to me, dare not help me to collect
+the scattered pages....</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Lady D. is another of England’s darlings. In
+the first place, she nearly always agrees with me
+and there she’s right: I have told you time after
+time that, if only everybody would agree with
+me, the world would be an infinitely sweeter
+place. In the second place, she dislikes Browning
+almost as much as I do. No one can dislike
+him quite so much; but she certainly disapproves
+of your particular taste in extracts from the burjoice
+mountebank’s rhymed works.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>I can understand that she sometimes unsettles
+you by condemning you for the quite logical behaviour
+of the male characters in your trilogy:
+you might meet this by presenting her with a
+copy of <span class="antiqua">Thus spake Zarathustra</span> in addition to
+those pencils which will mark which you already
+had in mind for her. On the other hand, I think
+that you may safely take her word for it when
+she says:</i></p>
+
+<p><i>“Oh, Stephen, women aren’t like this!”</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Send me more! Send me more!</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>In a letter of 22.6.20, he wrote:</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_97"></a>[97]</span></p><div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>To-morrow I make my way up to Oxford for
+the House Gaudy but before leaving I may find a
+moment to report my movements.</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Teixeira comments:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>I have heard of the House Beautiful but never
+of the House Gaudy. Now don’t be a British
+snob but answer like a little Irish gentleman, as
+I should answer if you asked me what “acht-en-tachtig
+Achtergracht” mean in Dutch. Of
+course, working it out in the light of my own intelligence,
+I feel that, if “House” is an Oxford
+sobriquet for Christ Church and “gaudy” Oxford
+slang for a merrymaking of sorts, you ought to
+have suppressed that capital G and written “the
+House gaudy,” in distinction from the Balliol
+gaudy, the Magdalen gaudy, etc.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>You are not a Hottentot (Loud cheers), but
+you are as fond of capital letters as a Hottentot
+is of glass beads.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>I’m feeling rather full of beans to-day ...
+(as you perceive.)...</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>The improvement was visibly maintained
+in his letter of 25.6.20:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>Thanks for your two letters of the 23rd and
+24th instant postum. Don’t start; instant postum
+is the ridiculous name of the toothsome beverage<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_98"></a>[98]</span>
+which my specialist ordered me to take
+instead of tea or coffee....</i></p>
+
+<p><i>I jump at the chance of playing the schoolmaster
+in the matter of those capital letters. It
+is too utterly jolly finding you in a compliant
+mood....</i></p>
+
+<p><i>My rule and yours might well be to start with
+a definite prejudice against capital letters in the
+middle of a sentence, combined with a resolve
+never to use them if it can be avoided. Having
+taken up this firm standpoint, we can afford and
+we can begin to make concessions. For instance,
+my heart leapt with joy, nearly twenty years
+ago, when the founders of the <span class="antiqua">Burlington Review</span>
+decided to abolish all capitals to adjectives, to
+print “french, german, egyptian, persian,” etc.
+You have no idea how well this affected the page.
+But what is all right in a majestic review (or was
+it magazine, by the way?) like the <span class="antiqua">Burlington</span>
+may look ultraprecious in a novel. Therefore I
+concede French, German, etc. Only remember
+that it is a concession, a concession to Anglo-American
+vulgarity. A Frenchman writes (and
+that not invariably: I mean, not every Frenchman).
+“Un Français les Anglais,” but (invariably)
+“L’elan français, le rosbif anglais”. The
+Germans and Danes begin all nouns with a capital
+(as the English did, in some centuries), but<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_99"></a>[99]</span>
+no adjectives whatever. The Italians, Norwegians
+and Swedes have no capitals to their adjectives;
+the Dutch are gradually discarding
+them; they are discarded entirely in scientists’
+Latin: the Narbonne Lycosa (a certain spider of
+the Tarantula genus) in Latin becomes <span class="antiqua">Lycosa
+narbonniensis</span>....</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Your question about “high mass” is, involuntarily,
+not quite fair. Mass quite conceivably
+comes within the category of such words as State
+and a few others, which are spelt with a capital
+in one sense and not in another.<a id="FNanchor_13" href="#Footnote_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a> I write “going
+to mass” (no French catholic would write “allant
+à la Messe!”) and I see no reason why catholics
+should write Mass except in a technical work.
+They would write “the Host” because of the real
+presence; but I see no more reason for the Mass
+than for Matins or Compline. Obviously, it
+is different in a technical work in translating
+Fabre, I speak of a Wasp, a Spider, a Beetle; in
+translating Couperus, I do not....</i></p>
+
+<p><i>“The Colonel, the Major, the Vicar,” in a
+novel; don’t they set your teeth on edge? As
+well write about the Postmistress of the village.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>When in doubt, as I wrote to you on the subject
+of the hyphenated nouns, take little Murray<a id="FNanchor_14" href="#Footnote_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_100"></a>[100]</span>
+for your guide. He has the sense to begin the
+vast, the immense majority of his words with a
+lower-case letter. And there are doubtful
+words: Titanic, Cyclopean. I never know these
+without turning ’em up for myself.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>To sum up:</i></p>
+
+<p><i>(a) take a firm stand against capitals generally;</i></p>
+
+<p><i>(b) be prepared to make moderate (i.e.
+grudging,) concessions;</i></p>
+
+<p><i>(c) have little Murray at your elbow.</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>After so long a letter, Teixeira contented
+himself with a few annotations to one next
+day.</p>
+
+<p>On my telling him that I had congratulated
+a common friend of his son’s “blue”, he interposed:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>(<i>I would write to A. P. if I knew what a
+“blue” was; but I really have not the remotest
+idea. Word of honour, I’m not conniegilchristing.
+I presume it has to do with cricket; and
+it’s a mere guess.</i>)</p>
+
+<p><i>I have studied your exposition of capitals, <span class="antiqua">I
+continued</span>, with great interest and, I hope, profit,
+though there is a fundamental difficulty which I<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_101"></a>[101]</span>
+hasten to put before you.... So long as
+proper names intrude their capitals into mid-sentence
+you cannot arrive at flat uniformity, and
+a few capitals more or less do not offend
+me....</i></p>
+
+<p><i>I did not intend to be unfair about High Mass
+and first thought of suggesting for your consideration
+either Holy Communion or that hideous,
+hypocritical, pusillanimous compromise beloved
+of Anglicans, the “eucharist,” then substituted the
+name of a ceremonial in your own church. You,
+I see, write of the Real Presence without capitals.</i></p>
+
+<p>(<i>Gross knavery and insincerity on my part;
+rank scoundrelism. I’d have put caps, on any
+other occasion.</i>)</p>
+
+<p><i>I should give capitals to this and to such words
+as Incarnation, Crucifixion and Ascension, when
+used in a religious connection. Also to the word
+Hegira and any similar words culled from any
+other religion. As I told you before, I am without
+a rule and would let almost any word have
+its capital, if I could please it thereby. Words
+used in a special sense also have their capitals
+from me, as for example Hall, when that means
+a college dinner served in hall. No, I am afraid
+that a capital for colonel, major and vicar leaves
+my teeth unmoved, and I could write postmistress<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_102"></a>[102]</span>
+with a capital light-heartedly. On the other
+hand I should not use a capital for dustman, as
+this is not a title or office.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>I am, as you see, quite illogical and inconsistent;
+and, if I try to follow your rules, it will
+be only in the hope of pleasing you. I cannot
+rouse myself to any enthusiasm for or against a
+liberal use of capitals and I do not think that
+it is a matter of great importance. On considerations
+of comeliness, I think the French printed
+page, with its vile type and vile, fluffy paper, is
+one of the ugliest things (Nonsense, nonsense,
+you unæsthetic Celt! The unsought, natural
+beauty and perfection of the page make up for
+all the inferiority of the material. Never say
+that again! Your friend Seymour Leslie would
+scratch and claw you for it.) ever allowed to
+issue from a printing press, but that may be only
+insular prejudice....</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Forgive a boring letter, I beg, but I am in a
+thoroughly boring mood. (Grawnted.)...</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>A postscript to this controversy came on a
+postcard dated 28.6.20:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>... Darwin spells “the king” with a small
+“k.”</i></p>
+
+<p><i>He is rather good in spelling, bad in punctuation,
+execrable in statement, logic, deduction. In<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_103"></a>[103]</span>
+<span class="antiqua">The Descent of Man</span> he says:</i></p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>“Music arouses in us various emotions, but not
+the more terrible ones of horror, fear, rage, etc.”</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p><i>He had never heard of me, though I was 17
+when he died.</i></p>
+
+<p class="right"><i>Tex.</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p class="right"><i>Crowborough, 30 June (alas, how time flies!) 1920.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>For your two letters of 28, 29 June, many
+thanks. I really can’t write and congratulate H.
+on <span class="antiqua">that</span>! How awful!</i></p>
+
+<p><i>And to think that, if Lionel <span class="antiqua">[the recipient of
+the “blue”]</span> had been “vowed” to the B.V.M.
+in his infancy, he’d have worn nothing but blue
+and white, anyhow, till he came of age!...</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Objecting to my having enclosed the phrase
+“honest broker” in inverted commas, he
+continues:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>Lady Y., you may remember, said:</i></p>
+
+<p><i>“Good beobles, we come here for your goots.”</i></p>
+
+<p><i>“Ay,” they replied, “and for our chattels
+too!”</i></p>
+
+<p><i>I don’t want your chattels; but I am convinced
+that I came to England for your goots and to
+save you from degenerating into a lady novelist.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_104"></a>[104]</span>
+The worst of it is that Lady D. agreed with you....
+Seriously, however: suppose Winston were
+to use a perfectly commonplace metaphor, to say,
+<span class="antiqua">e.g.</span>, that he had ordered the Gallipoli expedition
+off his own bat. Would that for all time
+raise those four words from the commonplace to
+the exceptional? Could you never employ that
+phrase except in “quotes”?...</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Be sensible. Do not fight against your rescuer.
+Let me, when I receive the Royal Humane
+Society’s medal, feel that my gallant efforts were
+not in vain, that I succeeded in saving your life
+and soul!...</i></p>
+
+<p><i>P.S. An invitation to the ... Oppenheim wedding
+has just arrived. Like the man who answered
+the big-game-hunter’s advertisement, I’m
+not going.</i><a id="FNanchor_15" href="#Footnote_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_105"></a>[105]</span></p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>Trusting that this will find you alive, <span class="antiqua">he writes
+7.7.20</span>, I write to thank you for your letter
+and to return the book. <span class="antiqua">[The Diary of a Nobody]</span>.
+It amused me, though I am not prepared
+to go as far as Rosebinger, Birringer or Bellinger.
+I could certainly furnish a bedroom without
+it; in fact, I hope to die before I read it
+again; I don’t rank it with Don Quixote; and I
+have never seen the statue of St. John the Baptist,
+so “can’t say.” I think that Mr. Hardfur
+Huttle, towards the end, does much to cheer the
+reader.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>I have bought pahnds and pahnds’ worth of
+books; I am rou-inned; and yet I never have
+aught to read. Can you lend me Huxley’s Collected
+Essays? Can you lend me anything in
+which somebody “goes for” somebody else? I
+yearn to read savage attacks; you know what I
+mean: not attaxi-cabri-au lait, but attacks free
+from all milk of human kindness.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_106"></a>[106]</span></p>
+
+<p><i>Here is a typical quotation from your favourite
+“poet”, whom, by the way, Benjamin Beaconsfield
+disliked as much as I do:</i></p>
+
+<p>“Out of the wreck I rise, past Zeus to the
+P(sic)otency o’er him.”</p>
+
+<p><i>Nice and typical, isn’t it? But you mustn’t use
+it, as the first six words form the title of a novel
+by Beatrice Harraden which I have been driven
+to read down here by the dearth of books.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>My last two purchases have just arrived; series
+i and ii of the New Decameron. Shall I enjoy
+them?...</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>You will want something to read in the train,
+<span class="antiqua">he writes on 10.7.20</span>. Read this Muddiman’s
+<span class="antiqua">Men of the Nineties</span>. But please return it to me;
+it will serve to keep the child quiet when she next
+comes down. And it served to make me feel
+very young again (seven years younger than you
+are now) to read of all those remarkable men
+with whom I foregathered in the nineties.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>They would probably have accepted Squire and
+Siegfried Sassoon.<a id="FNanchor_16" href="#Footnote_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a> None of the other poets;
+none of the prose-writers, painters, “blasters” or
+blighters....</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>In acknowledging the book, I objected to
+what I considered the excessive importance<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_107"></a>[107]</span>
+that is still attached to the men of the nineties
+and to their work:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>I doubt, <span class="antiqua">I wrote, 12.7.20</span>, whether the
+years 1890 to 1900 have produced more permanent
+literature of the first order than any other
+decade of the 19th century—or the twentieth.
+Paris was discovered anew in those days and
+seemed a tremendous discovery, though its influence
+was meretricious, and the imitations from
+the French were usually of the worst French
+models. The discovery of art for art’s sake was,
+I always feel, the most meaningless and pretentious
+of all other shams. Even Wilde never
+made clear what he meant by the phrase, though
+he and his school interpreted it practically by a
+wholly decadent over-elaboration of decoration.
+The interest of the period lies in the astounding
+success achieved by this noisy and self-sufficient
+coterie in imposing itself on the easily startled,
+and easily shocked and still more easily impressed
+middle and upper classes of London society.
+But that is a thing that so many people can do
+and a thing that is so seldom worth doing.</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>In a later letter, I added, 15.6.20:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>I believe that the great bubble of the nineties
+has been pricked for the present generation. All<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_108"></a>[108]</span>
+the work of Max, most of Beardsley and a little
+of Wilde have a permanent place; and, if some
+one would do for the poets and essayists of the
+nineties what Eddie Marsh has done for the
+Georgian poets, we might have one volume of
+moderate size containing the poetry of interest
+and good craftsmanship though of little power or
+originality....</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Whether <span class="antiqua">[the artistic movement of the
+nineties]</span> effected any great liberation of spirit or
+manner from the fetters of mid-Victorian literature
+I cannot say, though I am inclined to doubt it.
+That liberation was being achieved by individual
+writers such as Meredith and Kipling, who never
+had anything to do with the domino-room of the
+Cheshire Cheese. Never, I am sure, was any
+artistic group so void of humour as the men of the
+nineties.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Having damned them, their period and
+work so far, I may surprise you by conceding
+that they do still arouse great interest.... I
+have been thinking that it is almost your duty to
+put on permanent record your own knowledge and
+opinions about this school. Max Beerbohm is
+unlikely to do it, and you must now be one of
+the very few men living who were on terms of
+intimacy with the leaders of the movement....
+Men under thirty have never heard of John Gray,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_109"></a>[109]</span>
+Grackanthorpe or your over advertised American
+friend Peters. Your annotations to Muddiman’s
+book go some very little distance towards
+filling this gap, but I think you should undertake
+something more substantial. For heaven’s sake
+do not call it <span class="antiqua">The History of the Nineties</span>, but
+is there any reason why you should not—from
+your memory and without consulting a single
+work of reference—compile a little book of
+<span class="antiqua">Notes on the ’Nineties</span>? Make it an informal
+dictionary of biography, put down all the names
+of the men associated with that movement at
+leisure, record about each everything that has not
+yet appeared in print and correct the occasionally
+incorrect accounts of other writers. Such a book
+would be a valuable addition to literary history,
+it would be amusing and not difficult for you to
+write, it could be turned to the profit of your
+reputation and pocket....</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>For this criticism Teixeira took me to task
+in his letter of 14.7.20.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>And now, Stephen, tremble. How often have
+I not called you “the wise youth!” How constantly
+have I not believed you to be filled with
+knowledge, either acquired or instinctive and intuitive,
+of most things! And now your
+letter ... has disappointed me almost to tears.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_110"></a>[110]</span></p>
+
+<p><i>Your only excuse would be that you took Oscar
+Wilde and Bernard Shaw to be and practically
+alone to be the men of the nineties. That is not
+so. And, if you agree with me that Oscar was a
+man of the eighties and that Shaw is a man of
+the twentieth century, you have no excuse whatever
+and 98% of the first paragraph in your
+letter is dead wrong.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>I presume that you keep copies of your letters
+to me: you should; they will be useful for your
+<span class="antiqua">Memoirs of a Celibate</span> (<span class="antiqua">John Murray: 1950;
+105/- net</span>). Anyhow, here goes:</i></p>
+
+<p><i>There was no question of either a literary revival
+or revolution in the nineties and there was
+no sham, colossal or minute.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>The men engaged were not pretentious, not
+conceited, not humbugs. They were a group of
+men, mostly under 30, who just wrote and drew
+and painted as well as they could, in all sincerity
+and with no view of financial gain. Dowson, Johnson,
+Horner, Image, etc., etc., etc., were the humblest,
+most modest lot of literary men I ever met.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Their output was not immense: it was infinitesimal,
+just because they were so careful to
+produce only work that was “just so.” Think,
+Stephen. What did Henry Harland, one of the
+few to live to over 40, put out? <span class="antiqua">The Cardinal’s
+Snuff Box</span>, <span class="antiqua">My Friend Prospers</span>, <span class="antiqua">Mademoiselle<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_111"></a>[111]</span>
+Miss and Other Stories</span>: that is all! Ernest
+Dowson: two slim volumes of verse, half-a-dozen
+short stories, a collaborator’s share in two
+novels. John Gray: one slim volume of verse.
+Lionel Johnson: God knows how little. And so
+on. Arthur Symns has worked on steadily, but,
+though he is getting on for sixty, you cannot say
+that his output is immense or contains anything
+that was not worth doing.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Immensely advertised! Where? And by
+whom?</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Beardsley’s output was immense, for his years.
+Ought not the world to be grateful for it? He
+told me once that he had an itch for work; and it
+looked afterwards as if he knew that he was
+doomed to die at 24 or 26 and wanted to throw
+off all he could before. When he worked no one
+knew: no one ever saw him at work and he was
+always about and always accessible.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>He was not conceited.... Rickets and Shannon
+were a little conceited: they had a way of
+“coming the Pope” over the rest, as Will Rothenstein
+once put it to me. (Will always took
+“a proper pride” in his excellent work, but no
+more). But, Lord, hadn’t they the right to be?
+Was ever a book more beautifully designed than
+<span class="antiqua">Silverpoints</span> (cover, page, type, typesetting by
+Ricketts)? Place Ricketts’ cover of the <span class="antiqua">Pageant</span><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_112"></a>[112]</span>
+beside any other book in your library and tell me
+how it strikes you. Look at anything that
+Charles Shannon condescends to exhibit in the
+Academy and see how the quality of it slays
+everything around it exactly as a picture by Whistler
+or Rossetti would do.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>To revert to immensity of output (I have to
+keep levanting and tacking about), I call immense
+the output of Belloc (the modern Sterne),
+Chesterton (the modern Swift), E. V. Lucas
+(the modern Addison); they themselves would be
+flattered at the comparisons. These chaps,
+though they can and sometimes do write as well
+as the men of the nineties, spoil their average by
+writing immensely; and they write immensely because
+they want a good deal of money. Now the
+men of the nineties hadn’t clubs, homes, wives or
+children; lunched for a shilling; dined for eighteen
+pence; and didn’t want a lot of money.
+They cared neither for money nor fame; they
+cared for their own esteem and that of what you
+call their coterie and I their set.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>And that (to answer a question which you once
+asked me) is art for art’s sake; and I maintain
+that it is not right to call this meaningless or pretentious
+or a sham.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>This coterie, or set, was not noisy: I never
+met a quieter; it was self-sufficient only in the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_113"></a>[113]</span>
+best sense; and it in no way imposed or impressed
+itself on the middle and upper classes of London
+society. How could they? I doubt if any number
+of the <span class="antiqua">Savoy</span> ever sold 1,000 copies; certainly
+no number ever sold 2,000. And they ... were
+never in society, were never in the outskirts of
+society and never wanted to be in either.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>But there! I daresay you were thinking of
+Oscar all the time....</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Enter on the lawn a nurse bearing my dinner-tray.
+After dinner I retire to bed....</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>One day, <span class="antiqua">Teixeira added, 17.7.20</span>, I’ll return
+to those men of the nineties (I will never
+write a book about them: really I was too much
+outside them)....</i></p>
+
+<p><i>I trust that some Leonard Merricks are on
+the way: I’m nigh starved for books again.
+Don’t send me Zola or Balzac in English: I
+couldn’t stomach the translations. And I expect
+you’re right about Balzac’s French style.
+Those giants were awful chaps: Balzac, Rubens,
+the pylon-designing Baines, brrr!...</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>On 22.7.20 he writes:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>I beseech you, if you haven’t it, buy yourself a
+copy of <span class="antiqua">The Home Life of Herbert Spencer.
+By “Two.”</span> It is the book praised by “Rozbury”
+in his letter to Arrowsmith prefacing <span class="antiqua">The Diary<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_114"></a>[114]</span>
+of a Nobody</span>. I bought it and began to shake
+with laughter at Rosebery’s being such an ass.
+But, after a few pages, I began to see what he
+meant; and then, time after time, I nearly rolled
+off my long-chair with laughing not at Rosebery
+but with him. I’d lend it you, but it’ll only
+cost you 3/6; and I want you to have it as a companion
+volume to <span class="antiqua">The Diary</span>.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>However, if you will not buy it, I will lend it
+to you. You’ve “got” to read it, or I will never
+write you another letter.</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>And on 23.7.20:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>Some 32 years ago, “Pearl Hobbes” wrote to
+me that I ought to translate Balzac; and I am
+sorry it is too late for me to do <span class="antiqua">Goriot</span>. I am
+rereading it all the same with much enjoyment,
+though I think that these gala editions should be
+at least as well translated as my Lutetian set of
+six Zola novels.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Huxley, in his little autobiography, writes:</i></p>
+
+<p><i>“As Rastignac, in the Père Goriot, says to
+Paris, I said to London:</i></p>
+
+<p><i>“‘A nous deux!’”</i></p>
+
+<p><i>I remembered that this came at the end of
+the book, turned to it and found:</i></p>
+
+<p><i>“Rastignac ... saw beneath him Paris, ...
+The glance he darted on this buzzing hive seemed<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_115"></a>[115]</span>
+in advance to drink its honey, while he said
+proudly:</i></p>
+
+<p><i>“‘Now for our turn—hers and mine.’”</i></p>
+
+<p><i>An epigrammatic tag sadly boshed, I think.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>I find that “leave them nothing but their eyes
+to weep with” occurs in this book; so we must
+absolve poor old Bismark at any rate from inventing
+this bloodthirsty phrase.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>And I find the Ukraine mentioned! The
+Ukraine! The dear old Ukraine! A sweet
+land of which I—and you? be honest! had never
+heard before the days of the W.T.I.D.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>I have sent for a complete set of Heine from
+Heinemann; it just occurred to me that I have
+read little of this great man’s. And I am told
+that the translation is good....</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>Do E. and J., <span class="antiqua">he asks, 26.7.20</span>, ever perpetrate
+those plays upon words of which Heine was
+so fond? They are not exactly puns; I am not
+sure that quodlibets isn’t the word for them. E.G.:
+Herr von Schnabelowpski smites the heart
+of a Dutch hotel-proprietress. Over the real
+china cups she gazes at him porcela(i)nguidly.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>That is not a very good example. This one
+is better: Heine calls on Rothschild at Frankfurt.
+Rothschild receives him quite famillionairly.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Good-bye. It threatens rain; and I propose<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_116"></a>[116]</span>
+to spend the day in bed, with the proofs of <span class="antiqua">The
+Inevitable</span>....</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>A criticism of Plarr’s Life of Dowson
+leads Teixeira, 27.7.20, to annotate the letter
+that contained it:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>... I was suggesting, I wrote, that the effect ... on
+the minds of a generation which
+knew not Dowson would be to make it feel that
+it did not want to know him....</i></p>
+
+<p><i>(Your cecession from catholicism, he replies,
+has done you McKennas a lot of harm. You
+flout tradition and go in for rational inference
+and deduction in its place. Horrible, horrible!
+The apostles are not all dead; many of them are
+your living contemporaries; you could, if you like,
+receive at first hand their memories of their dead
+fellows; and you prefer to make up your own
+mistaken impressions in the light of your own
+mistaken intellect. Well, well!</i></p>
+
+<p><i>And, if you write just that sort of life of me,
+I’ll wriggle with pleasure in my coffin.)</i></p>
+
+<p><i>This evening Henry Arthur Jones is giving a
+dinner ... to James M. Beck.... I have been
+bidden to attend....</i></p>
+
+<p><i>(Beck is the finest orator I ever heard; and I’ve
+heard Gladstone <span class="antiqua">inter alios</span>.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_117"></a>[117]</span></p>
+
+<p><i>Those Heine quodlibets about which I wrote
+y’day are, I believe, called “split puns,” though
+I doubt the happiness of the term. I made one in
+my sleep this morning: rowdies on the Brighton
+road indulging in a charabanquet....)</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>I can never have news, as you may imagine,
+<span class="antiqua">writes Teixeira, 29.7.20</span>; my letters must be
+always replies to yours....</i></p>
+
+<p><i>I like your Cave-Brown-Cave story if it was
+true; it probably was, as a family of that name
+exists.</i><a id="FNanchor_17" href="#Footnote_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a></p>
+
+<p><i>I never heard John Redmond, I am sorry to
+say. He was, so to speak, after my time. I
+heard Parnell and, if I were only a mimic, could
+give you his curiously contemptuous, high-bred,
+high-pitched voice to-day. I heard Randolph;
+and at the time, in the eighties, both he and
+Arthur Balfour used to lisp. Does A. B. lisp
+now? Answer this: it interests me; and it has
+a sort of bearing on that passing-fashion competition
+which you were starting. So essential
+to birth and breeding was the lisp in those days
+that even the English-bred Comte de Paris
+lisped ... in French! I was at his silver wedding<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_118"></a>[118]</span>
+and well remember his reception of me.</i></p>
+
+<p>“Vouth êtes le bienvenu ithi!”</p>
+
+<p><i>Incidentally I remember that good King Edward
+(“then Prince of Wales,” as the memoir-writers
+say) glared at me furiously on that occasion,
+because I was wearing trousers of the
+identical pattern as his: an Urquhart check with
+a pink line....</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>In the course of a dinner-party given at
+this time, the conversation turned on those men
+and women who had won everlasting renown
+with the least effort or justification. The
+United States Ambassador (Mr. Davis) proposed
+Eutychus, of whom little is known but
+that he fell asleep during a sermon and
+tumbled from a window: I suggested the
+uncaring Gallio, who did less and is better
+known. Some one else put forward Melchisedec.
+Agreeing that every name in the Bible
+has a certain immortality, we turned to secular
+history. At the subsequent instigation
+of Mr. Davis, Lord Curzon of Kedleston
+propounded “the apple-bearing son of William
+Tell.” I invited Teixeira to give his
+opinion.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_119"></a>[119]</span></p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>I can’t compete with Curzon, <span class="antiqua">he replied on
+6.8.20</span>, though I’ve tried. After all, he was
+one of the Souls! I did think of Alfred and the
+cakes; but that monarch owes only 5/6 of his
+immortality to those cakes and young Tell owed
+all his to the apple. But stay! Many hold
+Tell and his offspring to be mythical persons.
+If so, what about the good wife who scolded Alfred?
+I should like you to find some one who
+will say that I have beaten Curzon....</i></p>
+
+<p><i>I shall be in town from 8 September to a few
+days later. If you want to see me, you must
+arrange your engagements accordingly. I am the
+colour which we can never get our brown shoes to
+assume till just before the moment when they
+drop off our feet. But I am as weak as ten thousand
+rats....</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>On 7.8.20 he writes:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>You will remember that ... I declined to join
+your Passing Fashion Research Society, or whatever
+you decided to call it. But I have no objection
+to being an honorary corresponding member.
+And I will set you a subject.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>To establish the year in which it first became
+the vogue for smart British males to don a deliberately
+dowdy attire.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_120"></a>[120]</span></p>
+
+<p><i>The dowdiness all burst upon my astonished
+eyes at once: the up-and-down collar worn with
+a top hat and a morning coat; permanently
+turned trousers worn with Oxford shoes, so as to
+display an inch or so of sock; tie usually to
+match the socks and often “self-coloured” and patternless.
+There are three items of sheer deliberate
+dowdiness for you. Another dowdy item
+was even a little earlier, I believe: the one-buttoned
+glove, showing a bit of bare wrist between
+it and the shirt-cuff. But the soft-fronted dress-shirt,
+also a piece of dowdy dandyism, came in
+much at the same time as the three specimens
+cited above.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>I should guess the year to be either 1907 or
+1908, but I am not quite sure. You, with your
+wonderful memory, may be able to place it, for
+1907-8 marks the period when you burst upon
+the London firmament.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>I—who can remember witnessing a departure
+for Cremorne—I, I need hardly tell you, remember
+much older and almost as strange things.
+I remember peg-top trowsers, skin-tight trowsers,
+bell-shaped trowsers, though I can’t fix the epoch
+of any of these phenomena; and I can remember
+when we deliberately wore our trowsers so long
+that we trod upon them with our heels and
+frayed them; and that was in 1880-1.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_121"></a>[121]</span></p>
+
+<p><i>But all I ask that you should fix is the date of
+the deliberately dowdy well-dressed man....</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>I think, <span class="antiqua">he writes, 9.8.20</span>, that the time has
+come for you to write ... a big political novel,
+a big, serious, flippant, earnest, sarcastic, political
+novel.... Your book should be quite Disraelian
+in scope; it should be a <span class="antiqua">roman a clef</span> to this
+extent, that it would contain half—or quarter-portraits;
+and you ought to concentrate on it
+very thoroughly. I am convinced that the world
+is waiting for it.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Do you observe the comparative sweetness of
+my mood. It is doomed entirely to this glorious
+weather. For the rest, I hope and believe that
+you never resent those whacks with which, when
+the sky is overcast, I am apt to belabour my correspondents
+like an elderly Mr. Punch on his
+hustings.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>My good, kind Brighton doctor—good because
+he is clever, kind because he charges me no fee—was
+over here from Brighton y’day to see me.
+He tells me that this peculiar susceptibility of
+mine to atmospheric influence is a symptom of
+convalescence rather than ill-health. He is much
+pleased with the improvement in my condition;
+and he approves of my winter plans, though he
+would rather have dispatched me to San Remo
+or even Egypt had either been feasible.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_122"></a>[122]</span></p>
+
+<p><i>Read Max on Swinburne in the <span class="antiqua">Fortnightly
+Review</span> when you get the chance and contrast it
+with George Moore’s account of his visit to Swinburne,
+in which he can only tell us that he found
+the poet naked in bed. I forget where it occurs....</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>In answering this letter I pointed out that
+Disraeli avoided the great political issues of
+the days in which he was writing and that any
+author, such as H. G. Wells in <i>The New
+Machiavelli</i>, Granville Barker in <i>Waste</i> and
+H. M. Harwood in the <i>Grain of Mustard
+Seed</i>, who attempts a political theme is almost
+bound to impale himself on one or other
+horn of a dilemma; if his novel or play revolve
+round a living controversy such as the right
+to strike in war-time or the justice of ordering
+reprisals in Ireland, the theatre may become
+the scene of a nightly riot and the critics
+will consider their own political preferences
+more earnestly than the literary merits of the
+book; if the action of play or novel be based
+on a dead or unborn controversy, it will fail
+to arouse the faintest interest. I was sure
+that the other admirers of the three works<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_123"></a>[123]</span>
+which I quoted were unmoved by the endowment
+of motherhood, by educational reform
+and by housing schemes.</p>
+
+<p>In reply, Teixeira wrote, 11.8.20:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>... Don’t slay the suggestions of the big
+political novel off-hand or outright. I mean a
+bigger thing than you do; a thing that not Wells
+nor Barker nor Harwood ... could write,
+whereas you, I think, could; a thing as big as
+<span class="antiqua">Coningsby</span>; a thing called <span class="antiqua">The Secretary of State</span>
+or <span class="antiqua">The First Lord of the Treasury</span>, or some such
+frank affair as that.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>You have kept up a “very average” logical
+position in life. You know a number of statesmen,
+but you know only those whom you like and
+you like only those whom you esteem. Your portraits
+of those whom you esteem could not offend
+them; your sketch even of a genial rogue ...
+could not offend him; and you don’t or ought not
+to care if your daguerreotypes of S., M. and B.
+offended them or not....</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Incidentally you might do no little good, to
+Ireland, which should have been your native land,
+to England, which by your own choice remains
+your home, and to the world in general, to which
+I hope that you bear no ill-will....</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_124"></a>[124]</span></p>
+
+<p>In his next letter, 14.8.20, he returns to
+the same subject:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>Your letter ... pretty well convinces me, at
+any rate about the Coningsby novel. Dizzy never
+wrote about the period in which he was just then
+living. All his novels are antedated a good many
+years. This by way of defending him against
+any idea that he ever offended by betraying private
+or official secrets in his novels....</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>One of Teixeira’s last letters (19.8.20)
+from Crowborough contained a translation
+of the terms (already quoted) in which
+Couperus congratulated him on his version of
+<i>The Tour</i>:</p>
+
+<p>Couperus writes:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>“Your last envoi has given me a most delightful
+day. What a magnificent translation. <span class="antiqua">The
+Tour</span> is; what a most charming little book it has
+become! I am in raptures over it and read and
+reread it all day and have had tears in my eyes
+and have laughed over it. You may think it
+silly of me to say all this; but it has become an
+exquisitely beautiful work in its English form.
+My warmest congratulations!...</i></p>
+
+<p><i>“Thank McKenna for his assistance: the hymn
+has become very fine. For that matter the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_125"></a>[125]</span>
+whole book is a gem, if I may say so myself.”</i></p>
+
+<p><i>So I’ve had one appreciative reader at any
+rate!...</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>On 27.8.20 he adds:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>Tell Norman <span class="antiqua">[Major Holden, then liberal
+candidate for the Isle of Wight]</span> that, should
+there be an election in “the island” before I leave
+Ventnor, he’ll find me both able and ready to
+impersonate the oldest inhabitant and gallop to
+the polling-station, in my bath-chair, and vote for
+him....</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>And, finally, in praise of toleration:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p class="right"><i>31 August 1920 (being the birthday of Her
+Majesty the Queen of the Netherlands).</i></p>
+
+<p><i>It won’t do to insist on this racial aspect of
+things. I was never of those who called L. G.
+a damned little Welsh solicitor. He would have
+been just the same had he been Scotch or English
+or Irish. After all, our friend R. is little and
+Welsh and was a solicitor and will as likely as
+not be damned if he doesn’t join his wife’s church.
+And there is the converse case, when you hear
+men describing an outrage committed by Englishmen
+as “unenglish.” How can the things be unenglish
+which the English do?</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_126"></a>[126]</span></p>
+
+<p><i>Like yourself, the late W. H. Smith was
+shocked when Parnell stood up and told the House
+of Commons ... that he had lied to them in
+the interests of his country. I like to think of
+you as occupying a subtler and more philosophical
+standpoint than the late W. H. Smith....</i></p>
+
+<p><i>I continue to feel better; and the arrival of
+two very pretty women patients has loosed my
+tongue and given me an outlet for many a childish
+and innocent jest. I excuse these jests by
+saying that they’re due to Minerva.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>“Who’s Minerva?”</i></p>
+
+<p><i>“Mi-nervous breakdown. By the way, I hope
+you like your Alf?”</i></p>
+
+<p><i>“Our Alf? What do you mean?”</i></p>
+
+<p><i>“Your al-f-resco meals.”</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Just like that!...</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_127"></a>[127]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="XI">XI</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>For the next few days Teixeira was absorbed
+in his preparations for leaving Crowborough.
+On arriving in London, he came
+to stay with me until he and his wife went to
+the Isle of Wight for the autumn and winter.</p>
+
+<p>In acknowledging, on 1.9.20 his instructions
+about the diet on which he now lived, I
+wrote:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>Many thanks for your letter written on the
+anniversary of Her Majesty the Queen of the
+Netherlands. Do not forget to date any letters
+you may write on Friday the anniversary of
+Naseby, the crowning mercy of Worcester and the
+death of O. Cromwell.</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Teixeira interpolated here:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>(<i>And the birthday of my late aunt Judith Teixeira.</i>)</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>On 2.9.20 he writes:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>Dodd <span class="antiqua">[Dodd, Mead and Co. Inc.]</span> is going to
+reissue <span class="antiqua">[Couperus’]</span> <span class="antiqua">Majesty</span> in America and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_128"></a>[128]</span>
+would like you to write a preface to it.... Will
+you do this? I should very much like you to. It
+involves re-reading the book, I fear; but after
+that you will not have much to do except to draw
+an analogy between the hero and the poor Czar,
+on whose character the recent articles in the
+<span class="antiqua">Times</span> have thrown an interesting light.</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>I reminded Teixeira that I had never read
+<i>Majesty</i>, as I had never been able to secure
+a copy.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>You’re perfectly right, <span class="antiqua">he replied on 5.9.20</span>.
+I’ll bring the only copy in the world, that I know
+of, in my suit-case.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>You will be able to point to some remarkable
+prophecies on C’s part (he foretold the Hague
+Conference years before it happened) and, for
+the rest, to let yourself go as you please on high
+continental dynastic politics. I doubt if any
+writer ever entered into the soul of princes as this
+astonishing youth of 25 or so did....</i></p>
+
+<p><i>I propose to revise <span class="antiqua">Majesty</span> so thoroughly that
+I shall be entitled to eliminate Ernest Dowson’s
+name from the title-page, even as I eliminated
+John Gray’s from that of <span class="antiqua">Ecstacy</span>. There was
+no true collaboration in either case; and they did
+little more for me than you did in <span class="antiqua">Old People</span>:<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_129"></a>[129]</span>
+not so much as you did in <span class="antiqua">The Tour</span>. Neither
+had the original before him.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>I look forward greatly to my stay with you....
+Eimar O’Duffy <span class="antiqua">[the author of The Wasted Island]</span>
+has been married by another novelist and
+has gone to live with her in a cottage in Wexford.
+She spells her name Cathleen; and he has sent
+me his early poems, in which he spelt his name
+Eimhar. He tells me that this spelling was
+abandoned because it didn’t look well; this I accept.
+He adds that it is pronounced Avar: this
+I do not believe....</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>On leaving me, Teixeira wrote 24.9.20 to
+tell me that he had reached Ventnor without
+mishap:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>This is not to acknowledge the receipt of any
+letter from you that may or may not be awaiting
+me at the County &amp; Castle Club, an edifice into
+which I have not yet made my comital and castellated
+entry. Rather is it to announce my safe
+arrival, after four hours of wearying travel, and
+my complete revival, after ten hours of refreshing
+sleep, and to repeat my thanks for your utterly
+exceptional and debonnair hospitality.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>The first impression of Ventnor is favourable....</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_130"></a>[130]</span></p>
+
+<p>This pococurantist attitude, if I may employ
+a phrase beloved by Teixeira, was not supported
+by his wife in the postscript which
+she added:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>Poor fellow, he was so tired travelling and so
+good over it. This place one could wear rags in,
+it’s so antiquated; and we shall return confirmed
+frumps and bores. There is some miniature
+beauty in a low hill and a tinkly pier that would
+be blown away in a quarter of a gale....</i></p>
+
+<p><i>I have seen the sun and feel reasonably well
+and happy, <span class="antiqua">Teixeira proclaims in a second letter
+on the same day</span>....</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>From the end of September to the end of
+December, when I left England, our letters—though
+we corresponded almost daily were
+much taken up with business matters. I
+therefore only reproduce such extracts as
+throw light on Teixeira’s literary opinions
+and on his life at Ventnor.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>My dear Stephen, loyal and true, <span class="antiqua">he writes on
+3.10.20</span>; A thousand thanks for Lady Lilith,
+with its charming dedication, and for your letter....
+I cannot well lend you the Repington
+volumes. I have them from the Times Book<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_131"></a>[131]</span>
+Club, which is all that my poor wife has to supply
+her with books. But seriously I advise you to
+buy them. They are as admirable as they are
+beastly. They form a perfect record of the war
+as you and I saw it; you will refer to them often
+in years to come; they mention every one that I
+know (except yourself) and a host more, every
+one that you know and a few more; and there is
+a very full index to them....</i></p>
+
+<p><i>No, do not send me the Tree book: it will
+arrive in the next parcel from the Times Book
+Club....</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>There follows an account of a characteristic
+dialogue between Teixeira and his
+dentist:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>New (enumerating every action, like a comic-conjurer):
+“Spray!”</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Tex: “Oremus!”...</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>I wish, <span class="antiqua">he writes on 6.10.20</span>, that I had no
+correspondent but you: what good stuff I could
+write to you! But 19 letters in one day: think
+of it!...</i></p>
+
+<p><i>My age is a melancholy one. The man of 50
+or 60 sees all his acquaintances and friends dying
+off in ones and twos: Heinemann and Williamson
+to-day; who will it be to-morrow? When<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_132"></a>[132]</span>
+he’s 70, he begins to be a sole survivor, with no
+friends left to lose.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>You will find the Tree book amusing as you go
+on with it. Four-fifths of it represent the life of
+a dead fairy told by living fairies, one wittier and
+more whimsical than the others. I confess to
+tittering over Viola’s “screwing their screws to
+the sticking-point” and “peacocks held in the
+leash.” And that’s a glorious portrait of Julius,
+though, when I knew him, he was more mature
+and more majestic....</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>On 11.10.20 he breaks into verse:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>My very dear Stephen McKenna,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>I’m reading your Lilith again,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>With much intellectual pleasure</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>And some little physical pain.</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>This jingle shaped itself within my head</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>As I stepped to my table from my bed.</i></div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p><i>It’s that physical pain I’m after for the present.
+The book hurts my eyes....</i></p>
+
+<p><i>I’ve had a little petty cash from the Couperus
+books. It’s been amusing to see that <span class="antiqua">Small Souls</span>
+in a given six months produces 15 times as much
+in America as in this benighted country....</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Though he commonly kept his religion and
+politics to himself, Teixeira’s sympathy with<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_133"></a>[133]</span>
+the Irish moved him to write, 27.10.20:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>I’m angrily unhappy at the death of McSwiney.
+To kill a man with a face like that! Compare
+the faces of those who killed him!...</i></p>
+
+<p><i>It’s a brute of a world that the sun is shining
+on so brightly....</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>I had contemplated spending the winter in
+a voyage up the Amazon, but abandoned it
+in favour of one down the east coast of South
+America. Teixeira comments, 29.10.20:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>Your new voyage is the more sensible and interesting
+by far. What’s Amazon to you or you
+to Amazon? I pictured you and trembled for
+you, steaming slowly up that mighty river between
+alligators taking pot-shots at you with poisoned
+pea-shooters from one bank and hummingbirds
+yapping split infinitives at you from the
+other. You will be much better off on board your
+goodish coasting tramp....</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>... It interested me, <span class="antiqua">he adds, 30.10.20</span>,
+to read in this morning’s <span class="antiqua">Times</span> that Brazilian
+stock has risen a couple of points at the news of
+your contemplated visit. I hope that Argentine
+rails will follow suit....</i></p>
+
+<p><i><span class="antiqua">[A lady]</span> when returning Shane Leslie’s book,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_134"></a>[134]</span>
+which I had lent to her and she enjoyed ... had
+the asinine effrontery to write to me ... of
+“McSwiney’s farcical death.” Isn’t it dreadful to
+think that the world has given birth to women
+who can write like that?</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Can death ever be farcical? We know that
+the epithet is wholly inapposite in the present instance.
+But can death ever be farcical? I told
+you, I think, of Major Johnson, who, throwing
+hot coppers from the balcony of the Grand Hôtel
+in Paris at the crowd cheering Kruger, overbalanced
+himself, fell to the pavement and was killed.
+That is the nearest approach to a farcical death
+that I can think of. But I should call it ironical.
+A farcical death. Alas!...</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>On 31.10.20 he writes:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>I fear you will have a hell of a windy time at
+Deal or Dover or wherever Walmer Castle has
+its being (Walmer perhaps, as an afterthought)?
+It is blowing half a gale here. The Dutch say
+“to lie like a horse-thief.” The English ought
+to say “to lie like a guide-book.” One lies before
+me at this moment:</i></p>
+
+<p><i>“In fact, Ventnor is a sun-box; and the east
+and north winds would have to confess that they<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_135"></a>[135]</span>
+have not even a visiting acquaintance with her.”</i></p>
+
+<p><i>At the same moment, these self-same winds are
+“a-sharting in my ear”:</i></p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>“We don’t confess to nothink of the sort!</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Ho, leave us in yer will before yer die!”</i></div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p><i>’Tis well to be you, looking forward to sailing
+the Spanish Main....</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Of Philip Guedalla’s <i>Supers and Supermen</i>,
+Teixeira writes, 7.11.20:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>I have got it out of the Times Book Club because
+of a kindly notice. There are two or three
+delicious plums in it....</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Among the happy phrases is one—“nudging
+us with his inimitably knowing inverted commas”—to
+which I would in my mean, Parthian way
+call your attention, as bearing upon one of our
+recent controversies....</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>What is B.N.C., a Noxford college mentioned
+in Galsworthy’s book?<a id="FNanchor_18" href="#Footnote_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a> <span class="antiqua">he asks, 10.11.20</span>.
+Bras(?z)enos? How I hate these initials!...</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>On St. Stanislaus’ Day, he writes:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>Many thanks for your letter of yesterday
+(which was the eve of St. Stanislaus) ... I
+have no ... bright social news for you.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_136"></a>[136]</span></p>
+
+<p><i>Yet stay.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>A card was left upon me, a few days ago, by
+Captain Cave-Brown-Cave, R.N., with a verbal
+message:</i></p>
+
+<p><i>“Would Mr. Teixeira-de-Mattos-Teixeira care
+for a rubber of bridge one afternoon?”</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Yesterday I accepted the soft invitation and
+took 14/- off Captain Cave-Brown-Cave and his
+fellow troglodytes. This would have been £7 at
+my normal points.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>These are our island adventures.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Here is your <span class="antiqua">Inevitable</span>.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Make me a list (will you?) of people who to
+your knowledge have entreated me hospitably
+during the past twelve-month, so that I may send
+them copies of this or some other book when
+Christmas cometh round.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>With their addresses, please, of which I remembreth
+not one single one....</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>I had been recommended to go from Buenos
+Aires across the Andes to Valparaiso and to
+come home by Chile, Peru and the Panama
+Canal rather than to sail twice over the same
+course between Buenos Aires and Southampton.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_137"></a>[137]</span></p>
+
+<p>Teixeira comments on this change of plans
+in his letter of 16.11.20:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>They have had a cyclone, I see, at “Baires,” as
+the wireless used to have it at the W.T.I.D;
+but, as we had a gale y’day at Ventnor, there’s
+not much in that. On the other hand, how do
+you propose to travel from Baires to Paradise
+Valley? I ask in all ignorance: is there a railway?
+I know there are Argentine Rails; but are
+the Andes tunnelled? If not, what about it?
+You can travel from London to Ventnor <span class="antiqua">via</span>
+Cowes but also <span class="antiqua">via</span> Ryde; in my days, the route
+from Baires to Valparaiso knew but one method:
+to Ride, if you like, but to Ride <span class="antiqua">via</span> Llamas. Let
+me warn you, a llama would spit in your eye as
+soon as look at you. And you not knowing a
+word of the language! How’s it to be done,
+Stephen, how’s it to be done? There are bits of
+the Andes where you cross a crevasse, llama and
+all, in a basket slung on a rope which stretches
+from precipice to precipice. Of all the cinematographic
+stunts! Well, there! Have you a nice
+revolver?...</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>... Tell me what you think that you are going
+to eat between Baires and Valparaiso, <span class="antiqua">he adds
+next day</span>. They grow comparatively few fish on<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_138"></a>[138]</span>
+the slopes or even on the crests of the Andes....</i></p>
+
+<p><i>As a matter of curiosity, write to me to-morrow
+what your weather was like now at 9.15 a.m. to-day.
+I am sitting at a wide-open window actually
+perspiring (saving your presence) with heat.</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>I reassured him as best I could (17.11.20):</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>... Those who know tell me that there is a
+perfectly good railway from Buenos Aires to Valparaiso
+with a permanent way, rolling stock,
+points and signals, tunnels to taste and all the
+paraphernalia that one might buy on a small scale
+at Hamley’s toy-shop. The Andes ought, of
+course, to be crossed on mule-back, but this takes
+long and I do not know any mules. Nor, from
+your exposition of their habits, am I desirous of
+meeting any llamas....</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>My faithful Stephen, many thanks for your
+three letters, <span class="antiqua">he writes, 21.11.20</span>. I’ve been
+feeling rather out of sorts these last few days
+and have not written to you since Thursday, I
+believe; not that I have much to tell you ...
+except that, were I weller and stronger, I should
+write and offer my sword to that maligned monarch,
+Constantine I. of the Hellenes. I am
+growing heartily sick of seeing countries meddling
+in other countries’ business....</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_139"></a>[139]</span></p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>It were the baldest side on my part, <span class="antiqua">he confesses
+on 23.11.20</span> to pretend that the weather here
+has not turned cold. The winds are what is
+known as bitter. But the sun is shining like
+blazes. And there you have what I was leading
+up to: once bitter, twice shining.</i></p>
+
+<p class="right"><i><span style="margin-right: 4.5em;">Ever yours,</span><br>
+Alexander Crawshay.</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Not content with emulating Mrs. Robert
+Crawshay’s wit and appropriating her name,
+Teixeira laid his witticism before her and
+challenged her to say that it was not of the
+true brand. There is a reference to this in a
+later letter; his next communication was a
+picture-postcard of Ventnor, annotated by
+himself:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>A. <span class="antiqua">[A bathchair man]</span> This is not me.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>B. <span class="antiqua">[A child with a hoop]</span> Nor is this, really.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>C. <span class="antiqua">[An indistinguishable figure]</span> This might
+be.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>D. <span class="antiqua">[A picture of the hotel]</span> But probably
+I am here, lurking in the Royal Hotel, where I
+can sea the sea but the sea can’t see me.</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>I think little of your latest joke, <span class="antiqua">I wrote, 24.11.20</span>,
+and have myself made several of late
+that put yours into the shade. Thus, on learning<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_140"></a>[140]</span>
+that a woman of my acquaintance had left her
+rich husband and run away with a penniless lover,
+I added the conclusion that they were now living
+in silver-gilty splendour. I can assure you that
+that is far more in the true Crawshay tradition....</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>My effort met with less than no approval:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>My poor Stephen!, <span class="antiqua">Teixeira wrote 25.11.20</span>.
+The worst of your jokes, when you attempt to
+play upon words, is that they have all been made
+before. It must be 36 (thirty-six) years (I said,
+years) since I saw at the old Strand Theatre a
+play called <span class="antiqua">Silver Guilt</span> parodying <span class="antiqua">The Silver
+King</span>.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>I am glad or sorry, whichever I should be, that
+your arm<a id="FNanchor_19" href="#Footnote_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a> has taken (<span class="antiqua">arma virumque cano</span>: beat
+that if you can! <span class="antiqua">Virus</span> poison, acc. (I hope
+and trust) <span class="antiqua">virum</span>)....</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>My conscience smites me, <span class="antiqua">he writes, 26.11.20</span>,
+for having omitted in either of my last two
+letters to express the sympathy which I feel with
+Seymour Leslie—and you—in this serious illness
+of his. What is it exactly? Whatever it may
+be, I hope that he will get the better of it....</i></p>
+
+<p><i>His aunt Crawshay has been good enough to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_141"></a>[141]</span>
+pass “once bitter, twice shining.” She says that
+it “is a really worthy phrase and will be of use to
+us all!”...</i></p>
+
+<p><i>I have been reading a lot of French lately, in
+those very cheap, double-columned, illustrated
+editions. It is perfectly marvellous to see how
+happily the French draughtsmen succeed in catching
+their authors’ ideas, whereas one may safely
+say that “our” British illustrators do not catch
+them once in ten times. Why is this? I am not
+sure that a certain rough, unwashed Bohemianism
+is not at the bottom of it, achieving results
+which are beyond that prim, priggish mode of
+life which nowadays governs the artists on this
+side. I may be wrong: I certainly couldn’t
+elaborate my theory; on the other hand, I may be
+perfectly right....</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>In an earlier letter I had asked why he
+sought a refuge where he could see the sea but
+where the sea could not see him. The answer
+is given in a postscript:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>I might turn giddy if the <span class="antiqua">sea saw</span> me; but it
+would look very ugly if <span class="antiqua">I saw</span> it.</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>By way of revenge I reminded Teixeira
+that the gender of <i>virus</i> was neuter:</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_142"></a>[142]</span></p><div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>Alas!, <span class="antiqua">he replies, 27.11.20</span>.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>I suspected it at the time; and now my uprooted
+hairs are beglooming the pink geraniums
+below my window. I have taken my oath; and
+now you and I are pledged: no French, you; no
+Greek or Latin, I. It may be all for the best.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>And <span class="antiqua">arma virusqus cano</span> would have sounded
+so much better!...</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Returning to the subject of French Illustration,
+he adds, 28.11.20:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>It’s the knock-about, rough-and-tumble, café life
+in Paris I expect, that accounts for the greater
+success of the French illustrators. They all of
+them meet all the authors in the great <span class="antiqua">Bourse à
+poignées de main</span> that are the Paris coffee-houses.
+The subjects are discussed over a thousand
+books; and the draughtsman is not overpaid....
+What I’m “after” is this, that the British illustrators,
+sitting at home in their neatly-swept fiats
+or studios, decorated mainly with Japanese fans,
+furnished with wives instead of mistresses, that
+these smug dogs, with their pappy brains, <span class="antiqua">cannot</span>
+turn out such good work or enter so well into the
+spirit of things, as the Frenchman. And, if all
+this sounds damned immoral, I can’t help it.</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>The shadow of Christmas fell across Teixeira’s<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_143"></a>[143]</span>
+mind so early as the first day of December:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>I ask myself, <span class="antiqua">he writes</span>:</i></p>
+
+<p><i>“What shall I give this Stephen? A
+book?... But he’s got a book!... Ah,
+but has he a three-volume novel? No, bedad!...
+And, as I live, I don’t believe that <span class="antiqua">Violet
+Moses</span> is included in his collected edition of the
+works of that mighty writer, Leonard Merrick.”</i></p>
+
+<p><i>So here’s a first edition for you, with my blessing.
+<span class="antiqua">[Your secretary]</span> should try to remove the
+labels with that nastiest of utensils, a wet, hot
+sponge....</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>For the first time in many months Teixeira
+was driven back on <i>The Wrong Box</i> to find
+an adequate comparison with the informative
+newcomer who now disturbed the noiseless
+tenour of his way:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>Joseph Finsbury has arrived, <span class="antiqua">he writes,
+2.12.20</span>. Overhearing me tell my wife that
+Bucharest is the capital of Roumania, he leant
+forward and asked me if I had been to Bucharest.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Tex: No.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Joseph: Oh, I thought I heard you mention
+Bucharest.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_144"></a>[144]</span></p>
+
+<p><i>Tex: I sometimes mention places which I have
+never visited.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Joseph: Bucharest is a second Paris.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Tex: Grrrrrrrrmph!</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Joseph: Though I daresay it has been destroyed
+by now.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Tex: (to his wife).... Have you done with <span class="antiqua">Femina</span>?
+If so, I’ll give it to those Dutch ladies.</i></p>
+
+<p>(<i>Stalks off to Mrs. and Miss van L.</i>)</p>
+
+<p><i>Joseph: (to an Irish widow) I have been to
+all the capitals of Europe ... (and holds the
+wretched Mrs. N. enthralled, so I am told, for
+two mortal hours)....</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Later. Joseph (to <span class="antiqua">[my wife]</span>): How clever
+of your husband to speak Dutch to those ladies!</i></p>
+
+<p><i><span class="antiqua">[My wife]</span>: Not at all! He’s a Dutchman.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Joseph: I know Holland very well. I have been
+to Rotterdam. I have been to Java. The finest
+botanical gardens in the world are at Buitenzorg
+near Batavia.</i></p>
+
+<p><i><span class="antiqua">[My wife]</span>: Re-e-ally!</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>Can you <span class="antiqua">Teixeira asks, 2.12.20</span>, lend me that
+book by James Joyce (<span class="antiqua">Portrait of the Artist</span>),
+which you once wrote to me about? I see Barbellion
+praises it enthusiastically in the new diary.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Would you like me to lend you <span class="antiqua">A Last Diary</span>
+or have you bought it?</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Your Uncle Joseph was in disgrace yesterday.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_145"></a>[145]</span>
+We have a girl trio of musicians here, who play
+at tea-time and eke after dinner. The pianist
+reports that he said to her:</i></p>
+
+<p><i>“I have been to Japan. I was very ill there
+and I found myself in the arms of a Japanese
+woman.”</i></p>
+
+<p><i>To-day he stopped me in the road and said:</i></p>
+
+<p><i>“I wish I could speak Dutch, sir, as well as you
+speak English. I once learnt a continental language,
+but I mustn’t speak it now. What it was”
+(throwing out his arms) “you can guess....”</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>I had read Barbellion’s two books without
+sharing Teixeira’s admiration for them, in
+part because I thought that a book of self-revelation
+so unreserved should only have
+been published posthumously, in part because
+it was incongruous—to use no stronger word—to
+find a man, who had aroused wide-spread
+compassion by what was taken to be the account
+of his last hours, reading with relish
+the sympathetic press notices which it brought
+him.</p>
+
+<p>To this criticism Teixeira replies, 5.12.20:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>Thank you for your two letters and the loan
+of James Joyce.... Barbellion I like and almost<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_146"></a>[146]</span>
+love—I should love him entirely but for a
+common strain in him that makes itself heard
+occasionally—but then I was taught very early
+in life to make every allowance for men of any
+genius, whereas you look for the public-school
+attitude towards all and sundry. Apart from
+this, B. seems to me to have borne almost unparalleled
+suffering with remarkable courage and to
+have shown a good deal of pluck besides in laying
+bare his soul in the midst of it all.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>You see, if one cared to take the pains, one
+could make you detest pretty well everybody you
+know and like. For everybody has a mean,
+petty, shabby, cowardly side to him; and one has
+only to tell you of what the man in question
+chooses to keep concealed. B. chose to reveal
+it; that’s all about it....</i></p>
+
+<p><i>My wife bids you be sure to say good-bye,
+when you go on your travels, to the woman,
+whoever she may be, in whom you are most interested.
+Her reason is that she dreamt two
+nights ago that you were prevented from doing
+so. This does not imply that you will not return
+alive. It means only that something prevented
+you from saying good-bye to that person and that
+it would be fun to stultify the dream....</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>On 7.12.20 Teixeira writes:</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_147"></a>[147]</span></p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>... I am reading James Joyce, skippily. The
+fellow has a great deal of talent, but much of it is
+misdirected. I should not be surprised if one day
+he began to write books that he and his country
+will be proud of....</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Incidentally I admire his ruthless suppression
+of capitals and am interested in his ditto ditto
+of hyphens....</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>On Christmas Eve, he writes:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>Forgive us our Christmases as we forgive them
+that Christmas against us.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>What I want to know by your next letter and
+what you have not told me, though you may think
+that you have, is how you propose to travel home
+from the west coast of South America....</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>And on 27.12.20:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>I was asked to “recite” yesterday! I refused.
+I was asked to take part in a hypnotic experiment:
+would I rather be the professor or the
+subject?</i></p>
+
+<p><i>“The subject,” I replied. “But I would even
+rather be dead.”</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>And on 29.12.20:</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_148"></a>[148]</span></p><div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>... This is the last letter but one or two
+which I shall be writing to you before you sail or
+puff down the Solent.... Needless to add that
+I feel sad at the thought of your imminent departure
+and glad at the thought that you appear
+to feel a trifle sad too.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>The <span class="antiqua">Almanzora</span>! Well, God speed her
+across the Atlantic! But she’s got a plaguy hairdressing
+name. On my dressing-table stand two
+bottles and two only. One contains Anzora
+cream; the other Pandora brilliantine. Both are
+meant to preserve and beautify my already well-preserved
+and beautiful hair. I must try to “become”
+some Almanzora to keep them company....</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_149"></a>[149]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="XIII">XIII</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>The diary which Teixeira kept for me
+during my absence in South America was,
+so far as I am aware, his first venture in
+this kind of literature. Approaching it with
+trepidation, he abandoned it with loathing.
+The mystery of a double cash-column quickly
+palled; and he was not long intrigued even
+by printed reminders of the moon’s phases and
+of the days on which dividends and insurance-policy
+renewals became due.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p class="center">30 December 1920.</p>
+
+<p>As a large number of these Diaries circulate
+abroad it may be well to point out that the Astronomical
+Data, such as phases of the moon etc.
+are given in Greenwich time.</p>
+
+<p><i>Perhaps it may be as well, <span class="antiqua">Teixeira concurs,
+30.12.20</span>.</i></p>
+
+<p class="center">31 December 1920.</p>
+
+<p><i>I did not see the old year out. I played 1/-
+bridge in the afternoon at Captain Cave-Brown-Cave’s,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_150"></a>[150]</span>
+with him, Captain B. and Dr. F. and won</i></p>
+
+<p class="right"><i>£—18.0.</i></p>
+
+<p class="noindent"><i>which at normal points would have been</i></p>
+
+<p class="right"><i>9.5.0.</i></p>
+
+<p class="noindent"><i>(I presume that is what the right-hand column
+is for. But the left-hand column? Ah, that
+left-hand column!...)</i></p>
+
+<p><i>The last that I saw of the old year was a 68-7-0,
+grey-haired parson in pumps and a prince-consort
+moustache and whiskers waltzing a polka,
+or polkering a waltz—in short, dancing something
+exceedingly modern—with a 15-7-0 flapper.
+Then we went to bed, wondering how Stephen
+was spending his New Year’s Eve, on board the
+<span class="antiqua">Almanzora</span>, in a south-westerly gale.</i></p>
+
+<p class="center">Saturday, 1 January.</p>
+
+<p><i>When at 5.30 I switched on my light and
+rose, I saw a leprechaun standing on my writing-table,
+looking like a little sandwich-man. Fearlessly
+I approached; and he changed into a bottle
+of <span class="antiqua">eau-de-Cologne</span> with an envelope slung round
+his neck, inscribed, “To my Best Beloved.”
+Mark <span class="antiqua">[my wife’s]</span> bold capitals. And show
+me another couple whose united ages amount to
+117 years or more and who still do this sort of
+thing. O olden times and olden manners!...</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_151"></a>[151]</span></p>
+
+<p class="center">Monday, 3 January.</p>
+
+<p><i>Bridge at Cave’s with Captain B. and Dr. C.</i></p>
+
+<p><i><span class="antiqua">[My wife]</span>: “What did you talk about at
+tea?”</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Tex: “Jam.”</i></p>
+
+<p><i>This question and answer never vary, after my
+return from a visit to the C.-B.-C’s....</i></p>
+
+<p><i>I foresee that this compilation is going to rival
+the <span class="antiqua">Diary of a Nobody</span>. And I am pledged to
+keep it up until the 7th of March. Kismet!
+Or, as the dying Nelson said, “Kismet, Hardy.”</i></p>
+
+<p class="center">Wednesday, 5 January.</p>
+
+<p>Dividends due</p>
+
+<p><i>What dividends?</i></p>
+
+<p class="center">Sunday, 9 January.</p>
+
+<p><i>Thank goodness that I have only space to
+thank goodness that I have only space wherein
+... <span class="antiqua">ad infinitum</span>....</i></p>
+
+<p class="center">Thursday, 13 January.</p>
+
+<p><i>Received from Stephen’s mother his letter to
+his mother....</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Received from Lady D. Stephen’s letter to
+<span class="antiqua">[her]</span> and wrote to her in appropriate terms, expressing
+doubts upon Stephen’s dietary while<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_152"></a>[152]</span>
+crossing the South-American continent, where
+there are neither fish nor eggs, save the eggs of
+condors and hummingbirds....</i></p>
+
+<p class="center">Friday, 14 January.</p>
+
+<p><i>... My bank-balance is overdrawn, but I
+make 19/6 at bridge.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>... Mr. and Mrs. Hugh Martin arrive. I
+do not know if this is the <span class="antiqua">Daily News’</span> Irish correspondent
+whom the Black and Tans wanted to
+murder.</i></p>
+
+<p class="center">Tuesday, 18 January.</p>
+
+<p><i>Begin Couperus’ <span class="antiqua">Iskander: The novel of
+Alexander the Great</span>; two enormous volumes,
+which I may hardly live to translate. It is a
+great joy to see this artist building up his story
+with firm and elegant perfection from the very
+first page, with conviction and a fine self-confidence,
+no grouping, no floundering, no hesitation....</i></p>
+
+<p class="center">Saturday, 23 January.</p>
+
+<p><i>Need something happen every day at Ventnor?
+Danged if there need!</i></p>
+
+<p class="center">Monday, 24 January.</p>
+
+<p><i>... The new rich arrive, Rolls-Royce and all.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_153"></a>[153]</span></p>
+
+<p class="center">Tuesday, 25 January.</p>
+
+<p><i>Those new rich! So new, so rich, so drearily
+unostentatious! Young new richard bald, pan-snayed,
+ill-dressed; young new wife and sister-in-law
+dowdy; young new secretary without a dinner-jacket
+to his backside; young new baby and young
+new nurse all over the place; young new Rolls-Royce,
+careering over the island, the only sign of
+wealth.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>If only there were a few diamonds, a few
+banded cigars, a few h’s dropping on the floor
+with a dull thud, one could at least laugh. But
+the drabness, the gloom of these particular new
+rich: O my lungs and O my liver!...</i></p>
+
+<p class="center">Thursday, 27 January.</p>
+
+<p><i>It is terrible, the number of people who come
+to this hotel; and I regret the pleasant, non-“paying”
+days when we were six visitors and three
+musicians, with a full staff of servants to wait on
+us. There are now over thirty people at meals,
+one uglier than the other. And as soon as one
+goes two others take his place....</i></p>
+
+<p class="center">Sunday, 30 January.</p>
+
+<p><i>... To bed at 5, with my “special dinner”
+at 7, John Francis Taylor’s meal: “Give me<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_154"></a>[154]</span>
+some milk; and let the milk be hot. And give me
+some bread; and let the bread be inside the milk.”</i></p>
+
+<p class="center">Monday, 31 January.</p>
+
+<p>The Insurance herein contained is not valid
+until your name has been registered.</p>
+
+<p><i>I don’t care. Yer can ’ave the insurance.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>The new rich have some business visitors.</i></p>
+
+<p class="center">Tuesday, 1 February.</p>
+
+<p><i>... Departure of the new riches’ little thyndicate
+of friends.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Arrival of the dividend on my Benson &amp;
+Hedges’ 10% 2nd pref., the only shares wherein
+I have ever invested that have ever paid any
+dividend whatever. Lord, how I have moiled
+and toiled to sink money in stumer companies!
+Shrewsburry &amp; Talbot Hansoms! Galician Oilfields!
+Rubber substitutes! Cork substitutes!
+Tampico-Panuco Deferred! United Transport
+Co.! In the three last I still have holdings:
+about £250 in all. And the things that
+I have inherited: thousand of dollars’ worth
+of Mexican (and Turkish and Hungarian and
+Russian) rubbish, which would barely fetch a
+tenner, all told!...</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_155"></a>[155]</span></p>
+
+<p class="center">Thursday, 3 February.</p>
+
+<p><i>... The new arrivals include a long, lean
+man ... and his wife. His hair is dyed to
+suggest 55; he is probably a cadaverous 77. He
+comes down to dinner in a white tie and tails.
+His digestion is of the weakest. He refuses
+soup, leaves the fish, refuses a cutlet, leaves the
+goose and seems to dine mainly on <span class="antiqua">crême Beau
+Rivage</span>, which is a <span class="antiqua">crême carmel</span> decorated with
+a blob of whipped cream and angelica. His conversation
+with his wife consists purely of whispered
+smiles.</i></p>
+
+<p class="center">Friday, 4 February.</p>
+
+<p><i>I received letters from Stephen to me and
+from Stephen to his mother. I have still to receive
+a letter from Stephen to Lady D....</i></p>
+
+<p><i>On his return he will borrow from me Frank
+Harris’ second series of <span class="antiqua">Contemporary Portraits</span>,
+just arrived from New York.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>There is no bridge at the Home-Sweet-Homes.
+I go to the club, play with P. the local solicitor;
+Dr. W., of Harrogate; Mr. S., of the same and
+win the sum of £——2½ d.</i></p>
+
+<p class="center">Saturday, 5 February and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_156"></a>[156]</span>
+Sunday, 6 February</p>
+
+<p><i>An episode of “And oh, the children’s voices
+in the lounge!” was followed by my going to
+the office and saying:</i></p>
+
+<p><i>“I am going to bed lest these children be the
+death of me. May I have a special dinner,
+please?”</i></p>
+
+<p><i>“Certainly. What would you like?”</i></p>
+
+<p><i>“Send me some milk and let the milk be hot.
+And send me some bread and let the bread be inside
+the milk.”</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Next morning, having slept eight hours and
+fifteen minutes, I went to the manageress and:</i></p>
+
+<p><i>“People,” I said, “are far too proud of their
+children and too fond of displaying them in
+public.... There is nothing wonderful about
+parentage and nothing clever. Most people are
+parents. I have been one myself.... Children
+should be seen and not heard.... If they raise
+their voices in the public rooms, they should be
+sent to their bedrooms. Some would suggest the
+coal-hole; but I, as you know, have a gentle
+heart.... Remember that we live in an age
+of reprisals. The privilege of screaming and
+yelling is not confined to children. Adults enjoy
+equal rights. Next time a child raises its voice
+in my presence, I shall in quick succession bellow<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_157"></a>[157]</span>
+like a bull, roar like a lion, howl like a jackal,
+laugh like a hyena. If you drive me to it, I shall
+copy all the shriller domestic animals.... The
+matter is now in your hands.”</i></p>
+
+<p class="center">Monday, 7 February.</p>
+
+<p><i>Peace reigns at Ventnor....</i></p>
+
+<p class="center">Wednesday, 16 February.</p>
+
+<p><i>... I start my sock-and-tie stunt, which consists
+in “copycatting” daily, Austin Read seconding,
+an absurd young man of half my age. Thus
+do the elderly amuse themselves for the further
+amusement of a limited circle....</i></p>
+
+<p class="center">Tuesday, 22 February.</p>
+
+<p><i>Stephen’s letter of 20.1.21 to his mother
+arrives. <span class="antiqua">[I again varied my itinerary and had
+decided to make my way to Valparaiso through
+the Straits of Magellan rather than across the
+Andes.]</span> So he is travelling in the wake of
+H.M.S. Beagle and the late Charles Robert
+Darwin! He’ll be perished with cold; but he’s
+more likely to get a fish or two to eat....</i></p>
+
+<p class="center">Sunday, 27 February.</p>
+
+<p><i>Stephen’s birthday. His health shall be drunk
+in brimming barley-water; and, though I believe<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_158"></a>[158]</span>
+he has already had a birthday-present, he shall
+have a copy of <span class="antiqua">The Tour</span> the moment it arrives.
+Good luck to him!</i></p>
+
+<p><i>P.S. Absolutely a good notice of <span class="antiqua">The Tour</span>
+in the <span class="antiqua">Sunday Times</span>. My wife says that the
+critic must have been drunk.</i></p>
+
+<p class="center">Monday, 28 February.</p>
+
+<p><i>Arrival of a terrible Yorkshire group, two men
+and a woman.... They foregather with ...
+a man who appears in carpet-slippers, like Kipps,
+and talk of nothing but food, in broad Leeds.</i></p>
+
+<p class="center">Tuesday, 1 March.</p>
+
+<p><i>... “Ah had hum-und-eggs to my breakfast
+this morning. Ah was always partial to hum-und-eggs
+for breakfast.... Ah had new potai-i-toes
+ut the dinner. Ah said to McKanner,
+‘These are too good to pass.’ We had summon
+with ’em, summon und new potai-i-itoes.”</i></p>
+
+<p><i>They seem to be bank-managers and to have
+dined with Reggie at some London City and
+Midland Bank-wet....</i></p>
+
+<p class="center">Thursday, 3 March.</p>
+
+<p><i>T. takes me to East Dene, the childhood home
+of Swinburne, now a convent of the Sacred Heart.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_159"></a>[159]</span>
+I am shown over the entrancing grounds by the
+Mother Superior. Before taking me into the
+chapel:</i></p>
+
+<p><i>“You are not a catholic, I suppose?” she asks.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>“Indeed I am.”</i></p>
+
+<p><i>“I mean, a Roman catholic?”</i></p>
+
+<p><i>“Reverend mother, are there any others?”</i></p>
+
+<p><i>“Oh, they all call themselves Anglican catholics
+nowadays!”</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Then on to Craigie Lodge, where Pearl
+Hobbes pesters the tenants with trivial spirit-messages.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Home, feeling cold as death....</i></p>
+
+<p class="center">Saturday, 5 March.</p>
+
+<p><i>... I am correcting proofs of <span class="antiqua">The Three
+Eyes</span> for Hurst &amp; Blackett. Altogether I shall
+have four books out this spring.</i></p>
+
+<ul>
+<li><i><span class="antiqua">The Tour</span>, Butterworth.</i></li>
+<li><i><span class="antiqua">The Three Eyes</span>, Hurst &amp; Blackett.</i></li>
+<li><i><span class="antiqua">Majesty</span>, Dodd.</i></li>
+<li><i><span class="antiqua">More Hunting Wasps</span>, Dodd.</i></li>
+</ul>
+
+<p><i>Not so bad for an owld, infirm mahn!</i></p>
+
+<p class="center">Sunday, 6 March.</p>
+
+<p><i>It is pleasant to see the sun gain strength
+daily, with every sort of flower appearing,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_160"></a>[160]</span>
+almond-blossoms in full swing, cherry-blossoms hard
+at it and pear-blossoms making a beginning.</i></p>
+
+<p class="center">Monday, 7 March.</p>
+
+<p><i>Departure of <span class="antiqua">[the married Yorkshire visitors]</span>.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>“Thank God, they’re gone!” the survivor is
+heard to say.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Arrival of the survivor’s women-folk. He
+sees them to their rooms and comes down to gloat
+over some woman. When his wife returns to
+the hall:</i></p>
+
+<p><i>“Hullo, Helen!” he says. “Are ye dahn olready?”
+And repeats the bright question:
+“Hullo, Helen! Are ye dahn olready?”</i></p>
+
+<p><i>What a people, the men of Yorkshire!...</i></p>
+
+<p class="center">Wednesday, 9 March.</p>
+
+<p><i>I begin a collodial sulphur treatment ...
+for that picturesque right leg of mine. Irving’s
+left leg was a poem (Oscar Wilde); my right leg
+is a money-box, adorned with three patches the
+size of a shilling, a sixpence and a groat, all very
+nice and silvery. I asked <span class="antiqua">[the doctor]</span> whether
+it was leprosy or dropsy. He said it was soriasis,
+scoriasis, scloriasis: I don’t know which
+and I don’t care.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_161"></a>[161]</span></p>
+
+<p class="center">Thursday, 10 March.</p>
+
+<p><i>The <span class="antiqua">[other Yorkshire visitors]</span> are to go on
+Monday, when I can say:</i></p>
+
+<p><i>“Thank God, they’re gone!”</i></p>
+
+<p><i>And I pray that the table next to ours may not
+be given to people with provincial accents. Let
+it be noted that the friend of “McKannar” is
+manager of the—branch of the L.J.C.M.
+at Leeds, so that, when I go to live at Leeds, I
+may bank elsewhere....</i></p>
+
+<p class="center">Friday, 11 March.</p>
+
+<p><i>At the club, I win 1861 points at bridge in 90
+minutes.</i></p>
+
+<table>
+  <tr>
+    <th></th>
+    <th>£.</th>
+    <th>s.</th>
+    <th>d.</th>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><i>In money, at 2½d the 100, this represents</i></td>
+    <td class="tdr"></td>
+    <td class="tdr"><i>4</i></td>
+    <td class="tdr"><i>0</i></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><i>At the Cleveland it would have represented</i></td>
+    <td class="tdr"><i>9</i></td>
+    <td class="tdr"><i>12</i></td>
+    <td class="tdr"><i>0</i></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><i>At the Reform Club it would have represented</i></td>
+    <td class="tdr"><i>2</i></td>
+    <td class="tdr"><i>8</i></td>
+    <td class="tdr"><i>0</i></td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<p class="center">Sunday, 13 March.</p>
+
+<p><i>John (“Shane”) Leslie’s book on Cardinal
+Manning seems to me very good. Leslie is very
+nasty to Purcell, who no doubt deserves it.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_162"></a>[162]</span></p>
+
+<p class="center">Monday, 14 March.</p>
+
+<p><i>Departure of <span class="antiqua">[the last Yorkshireman]</span>, leaving
+his women-people behind him. He asked
+for it and he shall have it:</i></p>
+
+<p><i>“Thank God he’s gone!”</i></p>
+
+<p><i>He used to stare at me till I devised the retort:
+closing my eyelids and yawning at him
+like a lion.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>I think I must talk to Reggie about him some
+day.</i></p>
+
+<p class="center">Tuesday, 15 March.</p>
+
+<p><i>... The hotel is filling up madly for Easter.
+There will be more here then than at Christmas.
+Help!...</i></p>
+
+<p class="center">Thursday, 17 March.</p>
+
+<p>S. Patrick ☽ First Quarter, 3.49 a.m.</p>
+
+<p><i>Well, I went to church to pray for Ireland:
+what else was there to be done?</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Stephen’s return seems to be unduly delayed;
+and I’ve forgotten the name of his ship.</i></p>
+
+<p class="center">Friday, 18 March.</p>
+
+<p><i>The sun shines in the morning.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>The rain falls in the afternoon.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>I play a little bridge.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_163"></a>[163]</span></p>
+
+<p><i>The sun shines all day.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Thank God, a letter from Stephen and an end
+to this beastly diary!</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_164"></a>[164]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="XIV">XIV</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Teixeira continued to live at Ventnor until
+the beginning of May, with spirits, health and
+powers of work all steadily improving. He
+returned to London in time to welcome Couperus,
+who arrived in the middle of the month
+and was entertained privately and publicly
+for five or six weeks.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>I don’t know exactly when you’ll be back, <span class="antiqua">he
+writes, 11.3.21</span>, but I welcome you home with
+all my heart ... and with an S.O.S.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>The title of <span class="antiqua">[Couperus’]</span> <span class="antiqua">The Inevitable</span><a id="FNanchor_20" href="#Footnote_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a>
+has been forestalled, in a novel publishing with
+Holden &amp; Harlingham. And I want another
+good title in a hurry. Can you help me?</i></p>
+
+<p><i>There is always:</i></p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>Cornélie.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p><i>Wilkie Collins would have called it:</i></p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>Could She Do Otherwise?</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p><i>George Egerton would have said:</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_165"></a>[165]</span></p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>The Woman Who Went Back.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p><i>(But that’s giving the solution away too soon).</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Is there a possible title with “Doom” or
+“Fate” in it?</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Henry James:</i></p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>How Cornélie Ended.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p><i>Stephen McKenna:</i></p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>The Reluctant Plover.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p><i>George Robey:</i></p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>Did She Fall or Was She Pushed?</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p><i>The Bible:</i></p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>(unquotable)</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p><i>Tex:</i></p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>Anything on the Wilkie Collins lines overleaf.</i></p>
+
+<p>The Lure of Fate.</p>
+
+<p>Could She Avoid It?</p>
+
+<p>It Had To Be.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p><i>And, as I said, there’s always:</i></p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>Cornélie....</p>
+
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>Welcome home, my dear Stephen, <span class="antiqua">he writes,
+19.3.21</span>....</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_166"></a>[166]</span></p>
+
+<p><i>I look forward, with pleasure, to receiving your
+diary and soon you may look backward, with disgust,
+to having received mine.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>My health has made very reasonable progress
+and my wife is exceedingly well. Frank Dodd
+visits us for two days on Thursday: how we
+shall be after that ... well, how <span class="antiqua">shall</span> we be
+after that?...</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>On 27.3.21 he writes:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>Dodd arrived on Thursday: I say, he arrived.
+He arrived by travelling from London to Southhampton
+in a luggage-van with a first-class ticket
+(what’s the penalty for that?); by running his
+boat into the mud 10 minutes from Cowes; by
+missing his connection; by changing at Ryde; and
+by repeating his offence “thence” and “hither”:
+<span class="antiqua">i.e.</span> travelling with the same ticket in a second
+luggage-van. At 9 p.m. he arrived, greeting me
+with the words:</i></p>
+
+<p><i>“I’ve had nothing to eat since breakfast.”</i></p>
+
+<p><i>You should have seen the poor fellow torn
+between two longings, with a plateful of soup
+before him while waiting for a Ventnor cocktail,
+consisting of 98% Plymouth gin and 2% orange
+bitters.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>We motored him on Friday to Blackgang, to
+Chale, to Carisbrooke, to Newport, to Brading,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_167"></a>[167]</span>
+to Bembridge, to Sandown, to Shanklin and back.
+Having already familiarized himself with Cowes
+and Ryde, he declared that he had now seen
+every city in the Isle of Wight except Freshwater.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>I lay low about Yarmouth, but yesterday I
+walked him back from Bonchurch, after my
+doctor had motored us “thither.”</i></p>
+
+<p><i>We did a lot of talking in between, but he did
+not sap my vitality.... He left after tea for
+France, <span class="antiqua">via</span> Southhampton and Havre; and I
+was able to sit up, take nourishment and even
+stand and watch a ball-room full of people dance
+Lent out on what the festive programme called
+“Easter Saturday”: Christians, you may or
+may not be aware, call it Holy Saturday....</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>And on 31.3.21:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>... I booked a seat on a four-in-hand this
+morning to go to certain point-to-point races;
+cancelled it; received an invitation from my young
+doctor to take me there in his car; declined it,
+feeling too weak and sulphurous.... I have
+a leg, like Sir Willoughby what’s-his-name; but
+this leg is covered with patterns (Sir Willoughby
+Patterne, was it?) and to cure it I am covered
+and lined with brimstone. It is not curing; and
+I am just tempersome, that’s all....</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>In answer to my question what he would<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_168"></a>[168]</span>
+like for a birthday present, he replies, 3.4.21:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>This is one of the days on which I feel like
+nothing on earth. Yet I must answer your three
+letters to the best of my enfeebled power....
+I want a <span class="antiqua">Catholic Dictionary</span></i></p>
+
+<p class="center">or</p>
+
+<p class="noindent"><i>Drummond’s <span class="antiqua">Life of Erasmus</span></i></p>
+
+<p class="center">or</p>
+
+<div style="width: 60%; margin-left: 40%;">
+
+<p class="noindent"><i>a second-hand copy of either
+will be quite acceptable: the
+second is an old book and
+probably out of print.</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent"><i>five fumable cigars “from stock”; but a present
+I must have because I am working a stunt about
+the immense number of birthday gifts which I am
+sure of receiving. The Cleveland Club is being
+canvassed with this intent and the members
+urged to make canvass-backed ducks and drakes
+of their money: oh, how like nothing on earth I
+feel after being brought to bed of this joke!
+I am to have a cake with 56 candles in it from my
+doctor’s wife, which her name is Phyllis Twigg;
+so let no one send me an other. If I ate more
+than 56 candles at my age, I should have to go in
+cossack-cloth and ashes for the rest of my life; oh,
+like nothing on earth, Stephen, like nothing on
+earth!...</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_169"></a>[169]</span></p>
+
+<p>The acknowledgement of the birthday
+present had to be delayed while Teixeira
+described his effort to observe an eclipse:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>I ordered a pail and some water (“and let the
+water be inside the pail”) to be placed on the lawn
+this morning, so that I might observe the eclipse
+of the sun. The eclipse was over before I got
+down; as the pail was bright white that made no
+difference. Things looked very uncanny from
+my bedroom window and I tried to tremble like a
+Red Indian: they tremble, as you know, like Red
+Indianything....</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>It was written on the morrow of his birthday,
+10.4.21:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>Many thanks for your letter of the 8th, for
+your good wishes and for a noble <span class="antiqua">Catholic Dictionary</span>,
+with which I was mightily pleased. It
+will be of great value to me if I live (a) to edit
+<span class="antiqua">The Autumn of the Middle Ages</span>, by Huisinga
+and (b) to translate The Land of Rembrand, by
+Busken Huet, two monumental tasks which I have
+been discussing with Dodd....</i></p>
+
+<p><i>You have presumably bought <span class="antiqua">Queen Victoria</span>,
+by the side of which <span class="antiqua">Eminent Victorians</span> is quite a
+dull book. And I read that, on Friday last,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_170"></a>[170]</span>
+eight gentleman were seen sitting in a row in
+Kensington Gardens, all reading Strachey’s book.
+If, however K. G. were closed to the public on
+Friday, then the story is mythical....</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Your birthday-stunt worked wonders. Miracles
+never cease: R—— sent me an Omar Khayyam!
+R. a round or circular photograph-frame of
+a precious metal known as silver. N. F. 25 cigars
+of the por Laranaga flavor. B. 50 of the
+flavour known as Romeo y Julieta. P. 100 cigarettes
+of the snake-charming flavour, which, being
+manufactured from the finest high-grade selected
+Turkish leaf tobacco, must be exchanged
+for the cigarettes of Ole Virginny when I am next
+in hail of one of Messrs. Salmon &amp; Gladstone’s
+famous establishments.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>This exhausts your list. Over and above these
+gifts, I received from S. an Umps, <span class="antiqua">i.e.</span> a biscuit-ware
+naked doll, with wings, practicable arms
+and a heart in the right, non-commital place, in
+the middle of its chest. Also, a neat black and
+grey tie. From Mrs. H. a tie.... From my
+wiff a tie and a pair of mittens, for elderly early-morning
+wear. From the manageress of the hotel,
+a knitted canary waistcoat with sapphire buttons
+to cover the nudity of the Umps. From an
+anonymous admirer, a smaller naked doll, made,
+I venture to think, of celluloid-georgette. From<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_171"></a>[171]</span>
+a lady staying at the hotel, a box of Sainsbury’s
+chocolates, which are the most toothsome in the
+world. From G. H., aged 80, and F., his wife,
+age 75, a box of other chocolates, and 50 De
+Reske cigarettes. From A. T., aged 6, bought
+with her own money, a bottle of ink and a ball of
+twine. From her mother, P. T., neé McKenna—nay,
+Mackenzie—two blue-bird electric-light
+shades.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>The T’s, who belong to my local doctor, in
+the proportion of one wife and one daughter, also
+gave me a birthday party. To meet me were invited
+Dr. C., Dr. F., and Captain Cave-Brown-Cave.
+It opened with an ode or oratorio about
+fairies and happiness, intoned by Anne and Dr.
+C. to an accompaniment by Mrs. T. Then Anne
+put her arms round my neck, embraced me tenderly
+and told me not to mind what Mrs. Teixeira
+said about my touting for presents: Mrs. Teixeira
+didn’t mean it, couldn’t mean it; and Anne
+didn’t believe it, couldn’t believe it. With the
+tears streaming down the knees of my cashmere
+trouserings, I was led in to tea to see my name
+spelt in letter-biscuits and my birthday-cake surrounded
+by 56 pink, green, white and red candles.
+Then we played bridge and I won eight shillings.
+And I doubt if Queen Victoria ever described a
+birthday more fully.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_172"></a>[172]</span></p>
+
+<p><i>No, she would not have forgotten, as I nearly
+forgot, that F. E. W. also sent me a tie....</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>In the middle of the month, Teixeira began
+to make preparations, for his return:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>Should you happen, <span class="antiqua">he writes, 14.4.21</span>, to buy
+a steam-yacht, in addition to a motor-car, before
+the 5th of May, you might send her for us:
+we would as soon travel that way, land at the
+Temple stairs and lunch with you while the yacht
+takes our luggage up-river to Chelsea....</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>You have evidently misunderstood my motives
+in deciding to buy a car, <span class="antiqua">I began to explain</span>.</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>Get a neat, unobstrusive disk with “Hackney
+Carriage” fitted to it, <span class="antiqua">he interposed</span>: you can
+make a tidy income out of your car then, when
+the Muse (should I say the Garage?) fails you.</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>... If, <span class="antiqua">he writes, 19.4.21</span>, you have not
+blewed or blued (which is it?) your last fiver,
+consider whether your library is really complete
+without the Greville Memoirs. Strachey’s book
+will probably have set you lusting for them.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>They contain the original story about “speaking
+disrespectfully of the Equator.”...</i></p>
+
+<p><i>I send you the second edition of Harris’ life
+of Oscar. You have already read the first edition.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_173"></a>[173]</span>
+But you will like to see such things, if
+any, in the appendix as may be new and certainly
+Shaw’s contribution to the end....</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>I had the misfortune to offend Teixeira by
+quoting a passage from Sir James Frazer’s
+<i>Golden Bough</i>:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>I save my temper, <span class="antiqua">he writes, 22.4.21</span>, by
+not discussing religion except with Catholics or
+politics except with liberals. There’s room for
+discussion in the <span class="antiqua">nuances</span>, there’s too much room
+for it with those who call my black white. I
+never dispute the goodness of certain infidels nor
+the wickedness of many of the faithful. What I
+hate is the smug-smiling affectation of superiority
+displayed by the agnostics....</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Huxley I have proved guilty—at least to my
+own satisfaction—of intellectual dishonesty and
+financial turpitude; of Frazer I know nothing
+whatever. I vaguely pictured him as one of several
+distinguished compilers of whom I knew
+nothing; that beastly quotation at the head of one
+of your chapters came as a great shock to me,
+which grew into a very cataclysm when I found it
+followed by another and a longer one.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>I won’t call you an Englishman again. But it<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_174"></a>[174]</span>
+is funny that you can’t write about yourself without
+going into the matter of what you think or
+do not think about religion....</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>I forgot to tell you, <span class="antiqua">he writes, 24.4.21</span>, that
+I received y’day, from Jack Tennant, from a
+house with an improbable name, in a Scotch
+county which I had never heard of (Morayshire),
+a salmon—the whole bird—weighing 7½ lbs. and
+measuring somewhere about 7½ feet. I distributed
+3 lbs. to my doctor and 3 lbs. to the heir
+presumptive to the Cave-Brown-Cave baronetcy
+(with apologies for the radical source of the gift).
+My wiff and I ate 3 oz. of it to our dinner; and
+the remainder was consumed by the manageress,
+the bookkeeper and housekeeper of the Royal
+Hotel....</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Ten days later his preparations were complete.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>Unless I ring you up at 11, on Friday, <span class="antiqua">he
+writes, 3.5.21</span>, I will be with you at 11, as suggested
+in your letter—the morning is still my
+best time—and lunch at the club.</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_175"></a>[175]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="XV">XV</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>In the summer and autumn of 1921 Teixeira
+enjoyed better health than at any time in the
+last seven years. He supported without ill-effects
+the strain of incessant luncheon and
+dinner-parties during the visit of Couperus
+to London; he moved from house to house,
+staying with friends; he completed his unfinished
+work and laid ambitious schemes for
+the future.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>I have written to Couperus, <span class="antiqua">he told me,
+13.5.21</span>, preparing him to be entertained by the
+Titmarsh Club and by the Asquiths....</i></p>
+
+<p><i>You might tell me in an early letter what to
+do in proposing <span class="antiqua">[him]</span> for temporary honorary
+membership of the Reform Club and when to do
+it....</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>My dear Stephen, <span class="antiqua">he writes, 16.5.21</span>;</i></p>
+
+<p><i>My dear Stephen, <span class="antiqua">he repeats</span>;</i></p>
+
+<p><i>The second allocution sounds almost superfluous;
+but I will not waste a sheet of Ryman’s
+priceless Hertford Bank. I intended the “M”<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_176"></a>[176]</span>
+of “My dear Stephen” to form the “M” of
+“Many thanks for your letter of the 14th.”
+However, you may remember that the only difference
+between Moses and Manchester is that
+one ends in -oses and the other in -anchester;
+and there you are....</i></p>
+
+<p><i>I am calling on the Netherlands minister at
+half-past eleven this morning.... Bisschop (of
+the Anglo-Batavian Society) rang me up on Saturday
+evening.... There is to be a council-meeting
+at 4 o’clock on Friday at the International
+Law Association in King’s Bench Walk....
+If you are back by Friday and likely to be at
+home, I’ll come on to see you from there. And
+I’ll write to you to-morrow about my call on Van
+Swinderen....</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>P.S. to my former letter, <span class="antiqua">he writes on the
+same day:</span> Van Swinderen was most charming.
+He at once offered to have the Dutch reading at
+the legation.... I said that, if Van S. would
+make it an invitation matter, he would be doing
+a great honour to C. and giving a very welcome
+reception to the Dutch colony in London....</i></p>
+
+<p><i>He leapt at this; said he would give a dinner
+to twenty of la <span class="antiqua">crême de la crême</span>; he could manage
+thirty at two tables; and ask up to a hundred
+to the reception....</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_177"></a>[177]</span></p>
+
+<p><i>Everything is provisional to Mrs. Van Swinderen’s
+agreement; and I am to lunch there on
+Friday and hear more....</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>When Couperus returned to Holland, my
+correspondence with Teixeira was suspended.
+We were meeting or communicating by telephone
+almost daily; and it was only when we
+left London to stay with friends that the
+letters were resumed.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>Weather hot and stuffy, <span class="antiqua">he writes, 1.8.21,
+from Sutton Courtney</span>. Lawns running down to
+a perfectly full river and absolutely dry: and I
+with not much to tell you....</i></p>
+
+<p><i>I am sleeping beautifully and eating lightly;
+and I feel too indolent for words.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Good-bye and bless you!</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>My wife, <span class="antiqua">he writes, 5.8.21</span>, pictures me surrounded
+by people who, if she broke my heart
+by dying, would thrust women of forty on me,
+“dear, dearest Mr. Tex,” to look after me. Is
+it not a beautifully witty tag to a letter? I think
+so....</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>To my reproach that he had left London
+without saying good-bye to me, he replies,
+16.8.21 with complete justification:</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_178"></a>[178]</span></p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>As our logical neighbours across the channel say:</i></p>
+
+<p><i>“Zut!... Zut!... Et encore zut!...”</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Had you profited as you ought by the careful
+bringing up which your kind parents gave you,
+you would have known that it is for those who
+go away to say good-bye, for those who arrive to
+say good-day. You left London before I did.
+I say no more in reply to your reproaches....</i></p>
+
+<p><i>If ever you leave London, however, at about
+the same time as I, remember, will you not, the
+etiquette (French) and the punctilio (Italian)?...</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>... If you think that I have much to tell you,
+<span class="antiqua">he adds, 20.8.21</span>, you are mistaken. Y’day I
+went for a stroll, turned up a footpath which I
+imagined would bring me back here, found that
+it didn’t, after I had gone much too far to turn
+back, and plodded on and on—my apprehensive
+mind full of a picture of myself being devoured
+by onsticelli and stercoraceous geodurpes amid a
+fine setting of ferns and bracken—until I reached
+Abingdon. It might have been Oxford, so exhausted
+was I.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>A boy was bribed to fetch me a car and I returned
+just before the search-party set out for me.
+I roam no more. There is a lawn here: let me
+walk up and down it....</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_179"></a>[179]</span></p>
+
+<p><i>I do not despair about Ireland because I never
+despair about anything.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>And I am ever yours,</i></p>
+
+<p class="right"><i>Tex.</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>Your letter of the 23rd, <span class="antiqua">he writes, 25.8.21</span>,
+found me still here. (The Wharf, Sutton Courtney):
+I go to-morrow to the Norton Priory till
+Monday ... and longer if they will have me
+longer. Then back home; and to Sutro’s for a
+brief week-end on Saturday.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Yes, I know Lancaster, its castle, where I have,
+and its lunatic asylum, where I have never,
+stayed....</i></p>
+
+<p><i>It were useless for me to pretend that I have
+not mislayed your list of addresses. I may find
+it in some other suit; but you might notify me of
+your next movement whenever you write. But do
+not translate m.p.h. as miles per hour. Master
+of phoxhounds, if you like, or miles per horam;
+but we English say an hour and not per hour....</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>M. sent an enormous 120 h.p. (hocus pocus)
+land-yacht to meet me at Portsmouth, <span class="antiqua">he writes
+from Norton Priory, 27.8.21</span>, relieving me of
+the worst part of the journey.... N. arrived
+from town before dinner, bringing with him
+a ... stockbroker.... They go up on Monday
+morning, but I stay on till Wednesday, like<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_180"></a>[180]</span>
+a gay limpet but a perfectly moral: M’s brother
+comes down on Monday.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>For the rest, I have the same room, but have
+not yet cracked my skull against the canopy of
+the same fourposter; and I am perfectly
+happy....</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>Your original waybill is found, <span class="antiqua">he adds, 30.8.21</span>;
+but I have the receipt of no letter from you
+to acknowledge. N. ... went up after breakfast
+y’day and brother R. M. came down before
+dinner. He is a pleasant New Zealander and
+took a lot out of me at bridge.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Life here pursues its quiet course. I accompanied
+M. and W. to the sea’s edge yesterday
+but found the effort of ploughing through the
+shingle tolerably exhausting and shall not repeat
+it to-day. Indeed, the whole family, Miss T. included,
+are bathing now and I am writing twaddle
+to you under the pear-tree.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>And, as I live, I think I’ll write no more. I
+have no more to say; and the papers have just
+come. I leave here after lunch (eon) to-morrow,
+spend an hour or two in Chichester cathedral and
+arrive home in time for my bread and milk....</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>On his return to Chelsea and a typewriter,
+he says, 1.9.21:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>You will be pleased to receive a letter from me
+in legible type, instead of in that hand which is<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_181"></a>[181]</span>
+becoming almost as crabbed as yours. And I
+continue to address you at Bamborough Castle,
+though that stronghold figures as something very
+near Zambuk Castle in your letter of 30 August.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>N. filled me with fears of internecine feuds
+within your fortress, of bloody strife for the one
+shady nook of the orchard and so on. You say
+nothing of these things; and I assume that there
+has been no slaughter in your time. There was
+a horrid game when I became a British kid in the
+early seventies: I am king of the castle! Get
+out, you dirty rascal! I trembled at the thought
+of you and N. playing this game against ruthless
+border clansmen. All’s well that ends well....</i></p>
+
+<p><i>I lost twenty goodish guineas at three-handed
+bridge after Brother Roy arrived. He wanted
+to can everything on the estate: the apples, the
+pears, the fleas on the dogs’ backs, the flyaway
+ducks. He wanted to introduce New Zealand
+mutton-birds into this country....</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>I had a tooth out yesterday, <span class="antiqua">he writes,
+3.9.21</span>,—until then I had thirteen of my own left,
+an unlucky number—and was not at my best....
+The tooth was extracted at a high cost, in the
+presence of a dentist, an anaesthetist and my
+body-physician but without unpleasant consequences.
+And this afternoon I go to the Sutros
+for a brief week-end.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_182"></a>[182]</span></p>
+
+<p><i>I have no news, except that I have bought
+some most attractive socks, or half-hose....</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>... I have no news, <span class="antiqua">he complains, 12.9.21.</span>
+I write to you simply out of friendship and
+duty. I spent five hours at the Zoo y’day....
+We lunched there; so did most of the beasts,
+heavily. You should have seen S. staggering
+under the weight of about nine pounds of the
+most expensive oranges, bananas, apples and
+onions, not to mention sugar, monkey-nuts, and
+two raw eggs. Say what you will, it is laffable to
+feed a small monkey with slices of apple till he
+has both pouches full, all four hands and his
+mouth. When you hand him the eighth slice,
+you wait in breathless expectation....</i></p>
+
+<p><i>I had a tooth extracted last week, reducing
+the number of my real teeth to twelve. To-day
+the number of my pseudo-teeth is to be increased
+to eighteen (quite correct: they swindle you out
+of a couple) and I propose to lunch at the Reform
+Club with many gaps in my mouth.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>I have arranged terms for two luvverly rooms
+at the Tregenna Castle Hotel, St. Ives, from
+1 November to 1 April. Rooms face south, away
+from the beastly ocean; breakfast in the bedroom;
+baths <span class="antiqua">a volonte</span>. We hope to be well and
+happy there. I must see much of you before
+you go to Sweden....</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_183"></a>[183]</span></p>
+
+<p><i>... I rejoice to hear that you are going to
+Copenhagen. It is a charming coquette of a
+little city, with which you will fall head over ears
+in love.</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>Not to take a second risk, I send this to Crosswood,
+<span class="antiqua">he writes 13.9.21</span>, and I beg you to lay
+me at the feet of your gracious chatelaine; and,
+if E. is there, you can give her the love of her
+Uncle Tex.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>At the Reform Club ... I played a little
+bridge ... and won 29/-; then, finding my rate
+of progress rather slow, I veered off to Cleveland
+Club and won £7.12.0 more. This satisfied me;
+and I came home, ate two little fillets of sole, some
+apple-sauce and custard and (damn the expense)
+a ha’porth of cheese and so to bed.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>To complete my <span class="antiqua">Diary of a Nobody</span>, I am glad
+that you have changed your name from Gowing
+to Cumming and I am</i></p>
+
+<p class="center"><i>ever yours,</i></p>
+
+<p class="right"><i>Tex.</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>Many thanks for your letter of y’day, <span class="antiqua">he
+writes, 14.9.21</span>, bearing traces of the pear skin
+and plumstones therein mentioned, not to speak
+of a spot of butter and a small burn from your
+after-brekker cigarette.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>I have crossed Shap in a swift and powerful<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_184"></a>[184]</span>
+railway-train, with a whiskered and spectacled
+judge of the high court, in the opposite seat. I
+remember old Day’s teaching me how to observe
+whether one were going up hill or down by watching
+the roadside rills:</i></p>
+
+<p><i>“Water invariably flows downwards,” said he,
+gravely....</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Ecclefechan I don’t know and don’t want to;
+Carlisle, I do; Gretna Green I do: I never
+want to set eyes on either again. I have a desolating
+memory of brown fields between Carlisle
+and Gretna Green. By now you have, I expect,
+seen as much of England as you wish to see in
+the course of your natural life....</i></p>
+
+<p><i>To-day, seized with a sudden lech for art and
+beauty, my wiff and I are going to Hammersmith
+to hear <span class="antiqua">The Beggar’s Opera</span>....</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>I have again lost your waybill, <span class="antiqua">he writes,
+16.9.21</span>, and cannot tell if this will still find you
+at Glow-worm Castle.</i></p>
+
+<p><i><span class="antiqua">The Beggar’s Opera</span> was a great affair.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Little has happened to me since.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>But to-day Mrs. Asquith and her daughter
+are coming to play different forms of the game
+of auction bridge at the Cleveland Club.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>And to-morrow ... ah, to-morrow! To-morrow
+I am going to stay for the week-end
+with a hostess, at or near Marlow, whose name<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_185"></a>[185]</span>
+I do not even know.... I am promised a perfectly
+good end; but so were any babies of old
+who ended in being eaten by the ogress.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>We are never too old for adventures; but pray
+that I come safely out of this one.</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>On 30.9.21 he writes:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>Very many thanks for <span class="antiqua">The Secret Victory</span>, with
+the delightful dedication and preface. I am not
+at all sure that I shall not read the book again.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>I have just returned from an interview with the
+local income-tax brigand which filled me with some
+apprehensions.... After a ... jest or two, I
+left the brigand’s cave unscathed....</i></p>
+
+<p><i>I go to the Wharf to-morrow for a week and
+may stay on a day or two longer, if pressed: I always
+do, you know....</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>I had been invited to deliver some lectures
+in Sweden and Denmark. Teixeira was good
+enough to read the manuscript of these, as of
+almost everything I wrote. With his letter
+of 3.10.21 he returned the first:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>Here is your lecture ... I really cannot suggest
+any cuts. My one and only lecture read 2¾
+minutes: this is no reason why yours should not<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_186"></a>[186]</span>
+read an hour and a quarter. Does any one want
+to go and sit in a hall, with free light and warmth
+thrown in for less than an hour and a quarter?
+No; the Swedes will admire your fluency and be
+pleased with you.</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>On my return to England, he asks,
+14.11.21:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>When do we meet? We have decided to leave
+on the 30th. I can lunch with you to-morrow,
+if you like, and bring you your two Ewald books.</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Teixeira’s departure to Cornwall, already
+delayed by his wife’s illness, had now to be
+postponed again, as he was prostrated with
+ptomaine poisoning.</p>
+
+<p>Both invalids were sufficiently recovered
+to face the journey on 2 December; and, next
+day, Teixeira sent me news of his safe arrival:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p class="right"><i>Tregenna Castle Hotel,<br>
+<span style="margin-right: 2em;">St. Ives, Cornwall,</span><br>
+<span style="margin-right: 2em;">3 December, 1921.</span></i></p>
+
+<p class="noindent"><i>My dear Stephen:</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Thanks for your letter that reached me just
+before I left town. This is my address: what
+else would it be? And the enclosed <span class="antiqua">[an invitation
+to lecture]</span> is sent to show you that you are<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_187"></a>[187]</span>
+not the only Beppo on the peach (damn your
+British metaphors!): you might not believe it
+otherwise. But you may picture the courteous
+terms in which I declined.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>There is nothing for nervous dyspepsia or gastric
+horribobblums like seven goodish hours in
+a swift and powerful railway-express. I have
+been free from pain or sickness for the first night
+since Wednesday week. But I slept little.
+From 1 a.m. onwards I spent a sleepless, painless
+night.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>The hotel is comfortable and commodious in
+an old-fashioned country-house way; no central
+heating, but big fires; a certain amount of intrigue
+with Lizzie the chambermaid to secure a really
+hot bath: you know the sort of thing; immense
+grounds, a very park of 100 acres, which I shall
+never leave, because, if I did, I should never get
+back: we stand too high.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Bless you.</i></p>
+
+<p class="right"><i>Ever yours,<br>
+<span style="margin-right: 3em;">Tex.</span></i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>It was the last letter that I ever received
+from him; and on Monday, December the
+fifth, as I was in the middle of answering it,
+a telegram informed me that he had died that
+morning. As he was getting up, he collapsed<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_188"></a>[188]</span>
+in his wife’s arms and slipped, unconscious,
+on the floor. Death was instantaneous and,
+it may be presumed and hoped, painless.
+He was buried in the Holy Roman Catholic
+Cemetery at St. Ives; and a requiem mass for
+the repose of his soul was said at the Brompton
+Oratory.</p>
+
+<p>Even those with best cause to suspect how
+nerveless was his grasp on life could not
+readily believe that one who loved life so
+well was to enjoy no more of it. “He was
+spared old age,” said one friend; but to
+another Tex had lately confessed that he
+would like to live for ever.</p>
+
+<p>Before he left London, we said good-bye
+for five months: he was to winter in Cornwall,
+I in the West Indies. In seeing again the
+exquisite handwriting of these many hundreds
+of letters that commemorate our friendship
+for the last six years of his life, I at least
+cannot feel that his voice has grown silent
+or that his laughter is at an end. The big,
+solemn figure is vividly present; the favourite
+phrases and the familiar gestures are stamped
+for ever on the memory of any one that loved
+him.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_189"></a>[189]</span></p>
+
+<p>I am writing four thousand miles away
+from St. Ives: and it may be possible to fancy
+that he has been ordered to remain there
+longer than we expected. This time there
+may be no diary; perhaps the only letters will
+be those already written; he may seem not to
+hear all that he once loved hearing; but,
+wherever he has gone, his personality remains
+behind.</p>
+
+<p>It was an old-standing bond that the survivor
+should write of the other. I have tried
+to make Teixeira paint his own portrait. If
+his letters have failed to reveal him, what can
+I add? His literary position is unchallenged;
+those who knew him how slightly soever
+knew his humour and wit, his whimsical
+charm, his understanding and toleration.
+Those who knew him best had strongest
+reason for loving him most deeply. Those
+who knew him not missed knowing a ripe
+scholar, a fine and tender spirit, a great and
+gallant gentleman, a matchless companion
+and the truest friend on earth.</p>
+
+<p class="right"><i><span style="margin-right: 3.5em;">BERBICE,</span><br>
+BRITISH GUIANA</i><br>
+15 February, 1922.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="footnotes">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="FOOTNOTES">FOOTNOTES</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_1" href="#FNanchor_1" class="label">[1]</a> The Jonkheer Alexander Louis Teixeira de Mattos san
+Paio y Mendes. The family was Jewish in origin and was
+driven from Portugal by the persecution of the Holy Office.
+Teixeira was naturalized a British subject in the middle of the
+war and gave up his Dutch title. Even before this, he had
+contracted his full style to Alexander Teixeira de Mattos on
+ceremonial occasions, to A. Teixeira in departmental correspondence
+and to Tex or T. in letters to his friends.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_2" href="#FNanchor_2" class="label">[2]</a> I quote from Chapter VII of <i>While I Remember</i>, where the
+genesis of the department is described, though only from hearsay.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_3" href="#FNanchor_3" class="label">[3]</a> Even in Teixeira’s wide reading there were occasional gaps;
+and, until I brought it to his notice, he was unacquainted with
+the celebrated life of Sir Christopher Wren by Mr. E. Clerihew
+and Mr. G. K. Chesterton:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">‘Sir Christopher Wren</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Said, “I am going to dine with some men.</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">If anybody calls</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Say I am designing St. Paul’s.”’</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>After reading it, Teixeira’s nightly valediction as he left for
+his bridge club was: “I think ... yes, I think I shall design
+St. Paul’s for an hour or two.”</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_4" href="#FNanchor_4" class="label">[4]</a> From the notice of his death in <i>The Times</i>.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_5" href="#FNanchor_5" class="label">[5]</a> Future letters were dated from ‘Hellgate’.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_6" href="#FNanchor_6" class="label">[6]</a> The Burgomaster of Stillemonde.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_7" href="#FNanchor_7" class="label">[7]</a> Frank MacKinnon K.C.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_8" href="#FNanchor_8" class="label">[8]</a> A short time before, Teixeira, who affected a loathing for
+music, had been invited to hear the same quartette. Abandoning
+his usual gentleness of speech and spirit, he had accepted on
+condition of being allowed to massacre the quartette.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_9" href="#FNanchor_9" class="label">[9]</a> Hymn to Aphrodite.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_10" href="#FNanchor_10" class="label">[10]</a> Eimar O’Duffy’s <i>Wasted Island</i>.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_11" href="#FNanchor_11" class="label">[11]</a> Incidentally, my father lived 85 years, during all of which
+he never spoke of his particular regiment, brigade, division or
+army corps as anything but the Coldcream Guards; not in jest
+but in sheer, manly, gentlemanly ignorance.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_12" href="#FNanchor_12" class="label">[12]</a> Perfectly good seventeenth-century English.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_13" href="#FNanchor_13" class="label">[13]</a> <i>Even the French write</i>, invariably, un coup d’Etat, le
+conseil d’Etat, but l’état des coups, l’état du conseil.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_14" href="#FNanchor_14" class="label">[14]</a> The Concise Oxford Dictionary.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_15" href="#FNanchor_15" class="label">[15]</a> The reference here is to a story illustrative of the tricks
+which a man’s memory sometimes plays him:</p>
+
+<p>Reading in the <i>Morning Post</i>, that Mr. John Brown, of 500
+Clarges Street, is shortly leaving for Uganda on a big-game-shooting
+expedition and would like a gentleman to come with
+him, sharing expenses, thought no more of the advertisement
+and went about his day’s work. That night he dined intemperately.
+On being ejected from his club, he was bound for home
+when he recalled the forgotten advertisement and decided that
+something must be done about it.</p>
+
+<p>Driving to 500 Clarges Street, he demanded to see Mr. John
+Brown.</p>
+
+<p>“Are you Mr. John Brown?” he enquired of a sleepy and
+illhumoured figure in pyjamas.</p>
+
+<p>“I am, sir,” answered John Brown.</p>
+
+<p>“You’re the Mr. John Brown going shooting Uganda?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes.”</p>
+
+<p>“You want shome one come with you?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes.”...</p>
+
+<p>“Share ’spenshes?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes.”</p>
+
+<p>“You put that ’vertisshment in <i>Morning Posht</i>?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes.”</p>
+
+<p>“I thought sho. Shorry knock you up. Felt I musht tell
+you.... that I’m not coming.”...</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_16" href="#FNanchor_16" class="label">[16]</a> They would have gone quite mad over the Russian Ballet.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_17" href="#FNanchor_17" class="label">[17]</a> The story in question was of a member of the Cave-Brown-Cave
+family, who, after conversing with a stranger in a railway-carriage,
+was asked his name.</p>
+
+<p>“Cave-Brown-Cave,” he replied. “And may I ask yours?”</p>
+
+<p>“Home-Sweet-Home,” answered his infuriated interlocutor.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_18" href="#FNanchor_18" class="label">[18]</a> In Chancery.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_19" href="#FNanchor_19" class="label">[19]</a> In preparation for visiting South America I had been
+vaccinated.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_20" href="#FNanchor_20" class="label">[20]</a> Ultimately this was published with the title: <i>The Law
+Inevitable</i>.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75130 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
+
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #75130 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/75130)