Chapter XI

For the next few days Teixeira was absorbed in his preparations for leaving Crowborough. On arriving in London, he came to stay with me until he and his wife went to the Isle of Wight for the autumn and winter.

In acknowledging, on 1.9.20 his instructions about the diet on which he now lived, I wrote:

_Many thanks for your letter written on the anniversary of Her
Majesty the Queen of the Netherlands. Do not forget to date any
letters you may write on Friday the anniversary of Naseby, the
crowning mercy of Worcester and the death of O. Cromwell._

Teixeira interpolated here:

(_And the birthday of my late aunt Judith Teixeira._)

On 2.9.20 he writes:

_Dodd ~[Dodd, Mead and Co. Inc.]~ is going to reissue
~[Couperus’]~ ~Majesty~ in America and would like you to write
a preface to it.... Will you do this? I should very much like
you to. It involves re-reading the book, I fear; but after that
you will not have much to do except to draw an analogy between
the hero and the poor Czar, on whose character the recent
articles in the ~Times~ have thrown an interesting light._

I reminded Teixeira that I had never read _Majesty_, as I had never been able to secure a copy.

_You’re perfectly right, ~he replied on 5.9.20~. I’ll bring the
only copy in the world, that I know of, in my suit-case._

_You will be able to point to some remarkable prophecies on
C’s part (he foretold the Hague Conference years before it
happened) and, for the rest, to let yourself go as you please
on high continental dynastic politics. I doubt if any writer
ever entered into the soul of princes as this astonishing youth
of 25 or so did...._

_I propose to revise ~Majesty~ so thoroughly that I shall be
entitled to eliminate Ernest Dowson’s name from the title-page,
even as I eliminated John Gray’s from that of ~Ecstacy~. There
was no true collaboration in either case; and they did little
more for me than you did in ~Old People~: not so much as you
did in ~The Tour~. Neither had the original before him._

_I look forward greatly to my stay with you.... Eimar O’Duffy
~[the author of The Wasted Island]~ has been married by another
novelist and has gone to live with her in a cottage in Wexford.
She spells her name Cathleen; and he has sent me his early
poems, in which he spelt his name Eimhar. He tells me that
this spelling was abandoned because it didn’t look well; this
I accept. He adds that it is pronounced Avar: this I do not
believe...._

On leaving me, Teixeira wrote 24.9.20 to tell me that he had reached Ventnor without mishap:

_This is not to acknowledge the receipt of any letter from
you that may or may not be awaiting me at the County & Castle
Club, an edifice into which I have not yet made my comital and
castellated entry. Rather is it to announce my safe arrival,
after four hours of wearying travel, and my complete revival,
after ten hours of refreshing sleep, and to repeat my thanks
for your utterly exceptional and debonnair hospitality._

_The first impression of Ventnor is favourable...._

This pococurantist attitude, if I may employ a phrase beloved by Teixeira, was not supported by his wife in the postscript which she added:

_Poor fellow, he was so tired travelling and so good over it.
This place one could wear rags in, it’s so antiquated; and
we shall return confirmed frumps and bores. There is some
miniature beauty in a low hill and a tinkly pier that would be
blown away in a quarter of a gale...._

_I have seen the sun and feel reasonably well and happy,
~Teixeira proclaims in a second letter on the same day~...._

From the end of September to the end of December, when I left England, our letters—though we corresponded almost daily were much taken up with business matters. I therefore only reproduce such extracts as throw light on Teixeira’s literary opinions and on his life at Ventnor.

_My dear Stephen, loyal and true, ~he writes on 3.10.20~; A
thousand thanks for Lady Lilith, with its charming dedication,
and for your letter.... I cannot well lend you the Repington
volumes. I have them from the Times Book Club, which is all
that my poor wife has to supply her with books. But seriously
I advise you to buy them. They are as admirable as they are
beastly. They form a perfect record of the war as you and I saw
it; you will refer to them often in years to come; they mention
every one that I know (except yourself) and a host more, every
one that you know and a few more; and there is a very full
index to them...._

_No, do not send me the Tree book: it will arrive in the next
parcel from the Times Book Club...._

There follows an account of a characteristic dialogue between Teixeira and his dentist:

_New (enumerating every action, like a comic-conjurer):
“Spray!”_

_Tex: “Oremus!”..._

_I wish, ~he writes on 6.10.20~, that I had no correspondent
but you: what good stuff I could write to you! But 19 letters
in one day: think of it!..._

_My age is a melancholy one. The man of 50 or 60 sees all his
acquaintances and friends dying off in ones and twos: Heinemann
and Williamson to-day; who will it be to-morrow? When he’s 70,
he begins to be a sole survivor, with no friends left to lose._

_You will find the Tree book amusing as you go on with it.
Four-fifths of it represent the life of a dead fairy told by
living fairies, one wittier and more whimsical than the others.
I confess to tittering over Viola’s “screwing their screws
to the sticking-point” and “peacocks held in the leash.” And
that’s a glorious portrait of Julius, though, when I knew him,
he was more mature and more majestic...._

On 11.10.20 he breaks into verse:

_My very dear Stephen McKenna,_
_I’m reading your Lilith again,_
_With much intellectual pleasure_
_And some little physical pain._
_This jingle shaped itself within my head_
_As I stepped to my table from my bed._

_It’s that physical pain I’m after for the present. The book
hurts my eyes...._

_I’ve had a little petty cash from the Couperus books. It’s
been amusing to see that ~Small Souls~ in a given six months
produces 15 times as much in America as in this benighted
country...._

Though he commonly kept his religion and politics to himself, Teixeira’s sympathy with the Irish moved him to write, 27.10.20:

_I’m angrily unhappy at the death of McSwiney. To kill a man
with a face like that! Compare the faces of those who killed
him!..._

_It’s a brute of a world that the sun is shining on so
brightly...._

I had contemplated spending the winter in a voyage up the Amazon, but abandoned it in favour of one down the east coast of South America. Teixeira comments, 29.10.20:

_Your new voyage is the more sensible and interesting by far.
What’s Amazon to you or you to Amazon? I pictured you and
trembled for you, steaming slowly up that mighty river between
alligators taking pot-shots at you with poisoned pea-shooters
from one bank and hummingbirds yapping split infinitives at
you from the other. You will be much better off on board your
goodish coasting tramp...._

_... It interested me, ~he adds, 30.10.20~, to read in this
morning’s ~Times~ that Brazilian stock has risen a couple of
points at the news of your contemplated visit. I hope that
Argentine rails will follow suit...._

_~[A lady]~ when returning Shane Leslie’s book, which I had
lent to her and she enjoyed ... had the asinine effrontery
to write to me ... of “McSwiney’s farcical death.” Isn’t it
dreadful to think that the world has given birth to women who
can write like that?_

_Can death ever be farcical? We know that the epithet is
wholly inapposite in the present instance. But can death ever
be farcical? I told you, I think, of Major Johnson, who,
throwing hot coppers from the balcony of the Grand Hôtel in
Paris at the crowd cheering Kruger, overbalanced himself, fell
to the pavement and was killed. That is the nearest approach
to a farcical death that I can think of. But I should call it
ironical. A farcical death. Alas!..._

On 31.10.20 he writes:

_I fear you will have a hell of a windy time at Deal or Dover
or wherever Walmer Castle has its being (Walmer perhaps, as an
afterthought)? It is blowing half a gale here. The Dutch say
“to lie like a horse-thief.” The English ought to say “to lie
like a guide-book.” One lies before me at this moment:_

_“In fact, Ventnor is a sun-box; and the east and north winds
would have to confess that they have not even a visiting
acquaintance with her.”_

_At the same moment, these self-same winds are “a-sharting in
my ear”:_

_“We don’t confess to nothink of the sort!_
_Ho, leave us in yer will before yer die!”_

_’Tis well to be you, looking forward to sailing the Spanish
Main...._

Of Philip Guedalla’s _Supers and Supermen_, Teixeira writes, 7.11.20:

_I have got it out of the Times Book Club because of a kindly
notice. There are two or three delicious plums in it...._

_Among the happy phrases is one—“nudging us with his inimitably
knowing inverted commas”—to which I would in my mean, Parthian
way call your attention, as bearing upon one of our recent
controversies...._

_What is B.N.C., a Noxford college mentioned in Galsworthy’s
book?[18] ~he asks, 10.11.20~. Bras(?z)enos? How I hate these
initials!..._

On St. Stanislaus’ Day, he writes:

_Many thanks for your letter of yesterday (which was the eve of
St. Stanislaus) ... I have no ... bright social news for you._

_Yet stay._

_A card was left upon me, a few days ago, by Captain
Cave-Brown-Cave, R.N., with a verbal message:_

_“Would Mr. Teixeira-de-Mattos-Teixeira care for a rubber of
bridge one afternoon?”_

_Yesterday I accepted the soft invitation and took 14/- off
Captain Cave-Brown-Cave and his fellow troglodytes. This would
have been £7 at my normal points._

_These are our island adventures._

_Here is your ~Inevitable~._

_Make me a list (will you?) of people who to your knowledge
have entreated me hospitably during the past twelve-month, so
that I may send them copies of this or some other book when
Christmas cometh round._

_With their addresses, please, of which I remembreth not one
single one...._

I had been recommended to go from Buenos Aires across the Andes to Valparaiso and to come home by Chile, Peru and the Panama Canal rather than to sail twice over the same course between Buenos Aires and Southampton.

Teixeira comments on this change of plans in his letter of 16.11.20:

_They have had a cyclone, I see, at “Baires,” as the wireless
used to have it at the W.T.I.D; but, as we had a gale y’day at
Ventnor, there’s not much in that. On the other hand, how do
you propose to travel from Baires to Paradise Valley? I ask in
all ignorance: is there a railway? I know there are Argentine
Rails; but are the Andes tunnelled? If not, what about it? You
can travel from London to Ventnor ~via~ Cowes but also ~via~
Ryde; in my days, the route from Baires to Valparaiso knew but
one method: to Ride, if you like, but to Ride ~via~ Llamas. Let
me warn you, a llama would spit in your eye as soon as look at
you. And you not knowing a word of the language! How’s it to
be done, Stephen, how’s it to be done? There are bits of the
Andes where you cross a crevasse, llama and all, in a basket
slung on a rope which stretches from precipice to precipice. Of
all the cinematographic stunts! Well, there! Have you a nice
revolver?..._

_... Tell me what you think that you are going to eat
between Baires and Valparaiso, ~he adds next day~. They grow
comparatively few fish on the slopes or even on the crests of
the Andes...._

_As a matter of curiosity, write to me to-morrow what your
weather was like now at 9.15 a.m. to-day. I am sitting at a
wide-open window actually perspiring (saving your presence)
with heat._

I reassured him as best I could (17.11.20):

_... Those who know tell me that there is a perfectly good
railway from Buenos Aires to Valparaiso with a permanent
way, rolling stock, points and signals, tunnels to taste and
all the paraphernalia that one might buy on a small scale at
Hamley’s toy-shop. The Andes ought, of course, to be crossed
on mule-back, but this takes long and I do not know any mules.
Nor, from your exposition of their habits, am I desirous of
meeting any llamas...._

_My faithful Stephen, many thanks for your three letters, ~he
writes, 21.11.20~. I’ve been feeling rather out of sorts these
last few days and have not written to you since Thursday, I
believe; not that I have much to tell you ... except that,
were I weller and stronger, I should write and offer my sword
to that maligned monarch, Constantine I. of the Hellenes. I am
growing heartily sick of seeing countries meddling in other
countries’ business...._

_It were the baldest side on my part, ~he confesses on
23.11.20~ to pretend that the weather here has not turned cold.
The winds are what is known as bitter. But the sun is shining
like blazes. And there you have what I was leading up to: once
bitter, twice shining._

_Ever yours,
Alexander Crawshay._

Not content with emulating Mrs. Robert Crawshay’s wit and appropriating her name, Teixeira laid his witticism before her and challenged her to say that it was not of the true brand. There is a reference to this in a later letter; his next communication was a picture-postcard of Ventnor, annotated by himself:

_A. ~[A bathchair man]~ This is not me._

_B. ~[A child with a hoop]~ Nor is this, really._

_C. ~[An indistinguishable figure]~ This might be._

_D. ~[A picture of the hotel]~ But probably I am here, lurking
in the Royal Hotel, where I can sea the sea but the sea can’t
see me._

_I think little of your latest joke, ~I wrote, 24.11.20~, and
have myself made several of late that put yours into the shade.
Thus, on learning that a woman of my acquaintance had left her
rich husband and run away with a penniless lover, I added the
conclusion that they were now living in silver-gilty splendour.
I can assure you that that is far more in the true Crawshay
tradition...._

My effort met with less than no approval:

_My poor Stephen!, ~Teixeira wrote 25.11.20~. The worst of your
jokes, when you attempt to play upon words, is that they have
all been made before. It must be 36 (thirty-six) years (I said,
years) since I saw at the old Strand Theatre a play called
~Silver Guilt~ parodying ~The Silver King~._

_I am glad or sorry, whichever I should be, that your arm[19]
has taken (~arma virumque cano~: beat that if you can! ~Virus~
poison, acc. (I hope and trust) ~virum~)...._

_My conscience smites me, ~he writes, 26.11.20~, for having
omitted in either of my last two letters to express the
sympathy which I feel with Seymour Leslie—and you—in this
serious illness of his. What is it exactly? Whatever it may be,
I hope that he will get the better of it...._

_His aunt Crawshay has been good enough to pass “once bitter,
twice shining.” She says that it “is a really worthy phrase and
will be of use to us all!”..._

_I have been reading a lot of French lately, in those very
cheap, double-columned, illustrated editions. It is perfectly
marvellous to see how happily the French draughtsmen succeed in
catching their authors’ ideas, whereas one may safely say that
“our” British illustrators do not catch them once in ten times.
Why is this? I am not sure that a certain rough, unwashed
Bohemianism is not at the bottom of it, achieving results which
are beyond that prim, priggish mode of life which nowadays
governs the artists on this side. I may be wrong: I certainly
couldn’t elaborate my theory; on the other hand, I may be
perfectly right...._

In an earlier letter I had asked why he sought a refuge where he could see the sea but where the sea could not see him. The answer is given in a postscript:

_I might turn giddy if the ~sea saw~ me; but it would look very
ugly if ~I saw~ it._

By way of revenge I reminded Teixeira that the gender of _virus_ was neuter:

_Alas!, ~he replies, 27.11.20~._

_I suspected it at the time; and now my uprooted hairs are
beglooming the pink geraniums below my window. I have taken my
oath; and now you and I are pledged: no French, you; no Greek
or Latin, I. It may be all for the best._

_And ~arma virusqus cano~ would have sounded so much better!..._

Returning to the subject of French Illustration, he adds, 28.11.20:

_It’s the knock-about, rough-and-tumble, café life in Paris
I expect, that accounts for the greater success of the
French illustrators. They all of them meet all the authors
in the great ~Bourse à poignées de main~ that are the Paris
coffee-houses. The subjects are discussed over a thousand
books; and the draughtsman is not overpaid.... What I’m “after”
is this, that the British illustrators, sitting at home in
their neatly-swept fiats or studios, decorated mainly with
Japanese fans, furnished with wives instead of mistresses, that
these smug dogs, with their pappy brains, ~cannot~ turn out
such good work or enter so well into the spirit of things, as
the Frenchman. And, if all this sounds damned immoral, I can’t
help it._

The shadow of Christmas fell across Teixeira’s mind so early as the first day of December:

_I ask myself, ~he writes~:_

_“What shall I give this Stephen? A book?... But he’s got a
book!... Ah, but has he a three-volume novel? No, bedad!...
And, as I live, I don’t believe that ~Violet Moses~ is included
in his collected edition of the works of that mighty writer,
Leonard Merrick.”_

_So here’s a first edition for you, with my blessing. ~[Your
secretary]~ should try to remove the labels with that nastiest
of utensils, a wet, hot sponge...._

For the first time in many months Teixeira was driven back on _The Wrong Box_ to find an adequate comparison with the informative newcomer who now disturbed the noiseless tenour of his way:

_Joseph Finsbury has arrived, ~he writes, 2.12.20~. Overhearing
me tell my wife that Bucharest is the capital of Roumania, he
leant forward and asked me if I had been to Bucharest._

_Tex: No._

_Joseph: Oh, I thought I heard you mention Bucharest._

_Tex: I sometimes mention places which I have never visited._

_Joseph: Bucharest is a second Paris._

_Tex: Grrrrrrrrmph!_

_Joseph: Though I daresay it has been destroyed by now._

_Tex: (to his wife).... Have you done with ~Femina~? If so,
I’ll give it to those Dutch ladies._

(_Stalks off to Mrs. and Miss van L._)

_Joseph: (to an Irish widow) I have been to all the capitals of
Europe ... (and holds the wretched Mrs. N. enthralled, so I am
told, for two mortal hours)...._

_Later. Joseph (to ~[my wife]~): How clever of your husband to
speak Dutch to those ladies!_

_~[My wife]~: Not at all! He’s a Dutchman._

_Joseph: I know Holland very well. I have been to Rotterdam. I
have been to Java. The finest botanical gardens in the world
are at Buitenzorg near Batavia._

_~[My wife]~: Re-e-ally!_

_Can you ~Teixeira asks, 2.12.20~, lend me that book by James
Joyce (~Portrait of the Artist~), which you once wrote to me
about? I see Barbellion praises it enthusiastically in the new
diary._

_Would you like me to lend you ~A Last Diary~ or have you
bought it?_

_Your Uncle Joseph was in disgrace yesterday. We have a girl
trio of musicians here, who play at tea-time and eke after
dinner. The pianist reports that he said to her:_

_“I have been to Japan. I was very ill there and I found myself
in the arms of a Japanese woman.”_

_To-day he stopped me in the road and said:_

_“I wish I could speak Dutch, sir, as well as you speak
English. I once learnt a continental language, but I mustn’t
speak it now. What it was” (throwing out his arms) “you can
guess....”_

I had read Barbellion’s two books without sharing Teixeira’s admiration for them, in part because I thought that a book of self-revelation so unreserved should only have been published posthumously, in part because it was incongruous—to use no stronger word—to find a man, who had aroused wide-spread compassion by what was taken to be the account of his last hours, reading with relish the sympathetic press notices which it brought him.

To this criticism Teixeira replies, 5.12.20:

_Thank you for your two letters and the loan of James Joyce....
Barbellion I like and almost love—I should love him entirely
but for a common strain in him that makes itself heard
occasionally—but then I was taught very early in life to make
every allowance for men of any genius, whereas you look for the
public-school attitude towards all and sundry. Apart from this,
B. seems to me to have borne almost unparalleled suffering
with remarkable courage and to have shown a good deal of pluck
besides in laying bare his soul in the midst of it all._

_You see, if one cared to take the pains, one could make you
detest pretty well everybody you know and like. For everybody
has a mean, petty, shabby, cowardly side to him; and one has
only to tell you of what the man in question chooses to keep
concealed. B. chose to reveal it; that’s all about it...._

_My wife bids you be sure to say good-bye, when you go on your
travels, to the woman, whoever she may be, in whom you are most
interested. Her reason is that she dreamt two nights ago that
you were prevented from doing so. This does not imply that you
will not return alive. It means only that something prevented
you from saying good-bye to that person and that it would be
fun to stultify the dream...._

On 7.12.20 Teixeira writes:

_... I am reading James Joyce, skippily. The fellow has a great
deal of talent, but much of it is misdirected. I should not be
surprised if one day he began to write books that he and his
country will be proud of...._

_Incidentally I admire his ruthless suppression of capitals and
am interested in his ditto ditto of hyphens...._

On Christmas Eve, he writes:

_Forgive us our Christmases as we forgive them that Christmas
against us._

_What I want to know by your next letter and what you have not
told me, though you may think that you have, is how you propose
to travel home from the west coast of South America...._

And on 27.12.20:

_I was asked to “recite” yesterday! I refused. I was asked
to take part in a hypnotic experiment: would I rather be the
professor or the subject?_

_“The subject,” I replied. “But I would even rather be dead.”_

And on 29.12.20:

_... This is the last letter but one or two which I shall be
writing to you before you sail or puff down the Solent....
Needless to add that I feel sad at the thought of your imminent
departure and glad at the thought that you appear to feel a
trifle sad too._

_The ~Almanzora~! Well, God speed her across the Atlantic! But
she’s got a plaguy hairdressing name. On my dressing-table
stand two bottles and two only. One contains Anzora cream; the
other Pandora brilliantine. Both are meant to preserve and
beautify my already well-preserved and beautiful hair. I must
try to “become” some Almanzora to keep them company...._