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diff --git a/75130-h/75130-h.htm b/75130-h/75130-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..fc8368f --- /dev/null +++ b/75130-h/75130-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,7149 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html lang="en"> +<head> + <meta charset="UTF-8"> + <title> + Tex | Project Gutenberg + </title> + <link rel="icon" href="images/cover.jpg" type="image/x-cover"> + <style> + +a { + text-decoration: none; +} + +body { + margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; +} + +h1,h2 { + text-align: center; + clear: both; +} + +h2.nobreak { + page-break-before: avoid; +} + +hr.chap { + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + clear: both; + width: 65%; + margin-left: 17.5%; + margin-right: 17.5%; +} + +img.w100 { + width: 100%; +} + +div.chapter { + page-break-before: always; +} + +ul { + list-style-type: none; +} + +li { + margin-top: .5em; + padding-left: 2em; + text-indent: -2em; +} + +p { + margin-top: 0.5em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: 0.5em; + text-indent: 1em; +} + +table { + margin: 1em auto 1em auto; + max-width: 40em; + border-collapse: collapse; +} + +th { + padding: 0.25em; + font-weight: normal; +} + +td { + padding-left: 2.25em; + padding-right: 0.25em; + vertical-align: top; + text-indent: -2em; +} + +.tdr { + vertical-align: bottom; + text-align: right; +} + +.antiqua { + font-style: normal; +} + +.blockquote { + margin: 1.5em 10%; +} + +.caption p { + text-align: center; + margin-bottom: 1em; + font-size: 90%; + text-indent: 0em; +} + +.center { + text-align: center; + text-indent: 0em; +} + +.figcenter { + margin: auto; + text-align: center; +} + +.footnotes { + margin-top: 1em; + border: dashed 1px; +} + +.footnote { + margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + font-size: 0.9em; +} + +.footnote .label { + position: absolute; + right: 84%; + text-align: right; +} + +.fnanchor { + vertical-align: super; + font-size: .8em; + text-decoration: none; +} + +.hanging { + padding-left: 2em; + text-indent: -2em; +} + +.larger { + font-size: 150%; +} + +.noindent { + text-indent: 0em; +} + +.pagenum { + position: absolute; + right: 4%; + font-size: smaller; + text-align: right; + font-style: normal; +} + +.poetry-container { + text-align: center; +} + +.poetry { + display: inline-block; + text-align: left; +} + +.poetry .stanza { + margin: 1em 0em 1em 0em; +} + +.poetry .verse { + padding-left: 3em; +} + +.poetry .indent0 { + text-indent: -3em; +} + +.poetry .indent2 { + text-indent: -2em; +} + +.poetry .indent4 { + text-indent: -1em; +} + +.right { + text-align: right; +} + +.smaller { + font-size: 80%; +} + +.smcap { + font-variant: small-caps; + font-style: normal; +} + +.allsmcap { + font-variant: small-caps; + font-style: normal; + text-transform: lowercase; +} + +.titlepage { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 3em; + text-indent: 0em; +} + +.transnote { + background-color: #E6E6FA; + color: black; + text-align: center; + font-size: smaller; + padding: 0.5em; + margin-bottom: 5em; +} + +.x-ebookmaker img { + max-width: 100%; + width: auto; + height: auto; +} + +.x-ebookmaker .poetry { + display: block; + margin-left: 1.5em; +} + +.x-ebookmaker .blockquote { + margin: 1.5em 5%; +} + +/* Illustration classes */ +.illowp48 {width: 48%;} +.x-ebookmaker .illowp48 {width: 100%;} +.illowp75 {width: 75%;} +.x-ebookmaker .illowp75 {width: 100%;} + + </style> + </head> +<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> +& 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 & 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 & +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!...</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 & 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 & 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 & 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 & 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> + |