Chapter XIV

Teixeira continued to live at Ventnor until the beginning of May, with spirits, health and powers of work all steadily improving. He returned to London in time to welcome Couperus, who arrived in the middle of the month and was entertained privately and publicly for five or six weeks.

_I don’t know exactly when you’ll be back, ~he writes,
11.3.21~, but I welcome you home with all my heart ... and with
an S.O.S._

_The title of ~[Couperus’]~ ~The Inevitable~[20] has been
forestalled, in a novel publishing with Holden & Harlingham.
And I want another good title in a hurry. Can you help me?_

_There is always:_

Cornélie.

_Wilkie Collins would have called it:_

Could She Do Otherwise?

_George Egerton would have said:_

The Woman Who Went Back.

_(But that’s giving the solution away too soon)._

_Is there a possible title with “Doom” or “Fate” in it?_

_Henry James:_

How Cornélie Ended.

_Stephen McKenna:_

The Reluctant Plover.

_George Robey:_

Did She Fall or Was She Pushed?

_The Bible:_

_(unquotable)_

_Tex:_

_Anything on the Wilkie Collins lines overleaf._

The Lure of Fate.

Could She Avoid It?

It Had To Be.

_And, as I said, there’s always:_

Cornélie....

_Welcome home, my dear Stephen, ~he writes, 19.3.21~...._

_I look forward, with pleasure, to receiving your diary and
soon you may look backward, with disgust, to having received
mine._

_My health has made very reasonable progress and my wife
is exceedingly well. Frank Dodd visits us for two days on
Thursday: how we shall be after that ... well, how ~shall~ we
be after that?..._

On 27.3.21 he writes:

_Dodd arrived on Thursday: I say, he arrived. He arrived by
travelling from London to Southhampton in a luggage-van with a
first-class ticket (what’s the penalty for that?); by running
his boat into the mud 10 minutes from Cowes; by missing his
connection; by changing at Ryde; and by repeating his offence
“thence” and “hither”: ~i.e.~ travelling with the same ticket
in a second luggage-van. At 9 p.m. he arrived, greeting me with
the words:_

_“I’ve had nothing to eat since breakfast.”_

_You should have seen the poor fellow torn between two
longings, with a plateful of soup before him while waiting
for a Ventnor cocktail, consisting of 98% Plymouth gin and 2%
orange bitters._

_We motored him on Friday to Blackgang, to Chale, to
Carisbrooke, to Newport, to Brading, to Bembridge, to Sandown,
to Shanklin and back. Having already familiarized himself with
Cowes and Ryde, he declared that he had now seen every city in
the Isle of Wight except Freshwater._

_I lay low about Yarmouth, but yesterday I walked him back from
Bonchurch, after my doctor had motored us “thither.”_

_We did a lot of talking in between, but he did not sap my
vitality.... He left after tea for France, ~via~ Southhampton
and Havre; and I was able to sit up, take nourishment and
even stand and watch a ball-room full of people dance Lent
out on what the festive programme called “Easter Saturday”:
Christians, you may or may not be aware, call it Holy
Saturday...._

And on 31.3.21:

_... I booked a seat on a four-in-hand this morning to go
to certain point-to-point races; cancelled it; received an
invitation from my young doctor to take me there in his car;
declined it, feeling too weak and sulphurous.... I have a leg,
like Sir Willoughby what’s-his-name; but this leg is covered
with patterns (Sir Willoughby Patterne, was it?) and to cure it
I am covered and lined with brimstone. It is not curing; and I
am just tempersome, that’s all...._

In answer to my question what he would like for a birthday present, he replies, 3.4.21:

_This is one of the days on which I feel like nothing on
earth. Yet I must answer your three letters to the best of my
enfeebled power.... I want a ~Catholic Dictionary~_

or

_Drummond’s ~Life of Erasmus~_

or

_a second-hand copy of either
will be quite acceptable: the
second is an old book and
probably out of print._

_five fumable cigars “from stock”; but a present I must have
because I am working a stunt about the immense number of
birthday gifts which I am sure of receiving. The Cleveland Club
is being canvassed with this intent and the members urged to
make canvass-backed ducks and drakes of their money: oh, how
like nothing on earth I feel after being brought to bed of
this joke! I am to have a cake with 56 candles in it from my
doctor’s wife, which her name is Phyllis Twigg; so let no one
send me an other. If I ate more than 56 candles at my age, I
should have to go in cossack-cloth and ashes for the rest of
my life; oh, like nothing on earth, Stephen, like nothing on
earth!..._

The acknowledgement of the birthday present had to be delayed while Teixeira described his effort to observe an eclipse:

_I ordered a pail and some water (“and let the water be inside
the pail”) to be placed on the lawn this morning, so that I
might observe the eclipse of the sun. The eclipse was over
before I got down; as the pail was bright white that made no
difference. Things looked very uncanny from my bedroom window
and I tried to tremble like a Red Indian: they tremble, as you
know, like Red Indianything...._

It was written on the morrow of his birthday, 10.4.21:

_Many thanks for your letter of the 8th, for your good wishes
and for a noble ~Catholic Dictionary~, with which I was
mightily pleased. It will be of great value to me if I live (a)
to edit ~The Autumn of the Middle Ages~, by Huisinga and (b) to
translate The Land of Rembrand, by Busken Huet, two monumental
tasks which I have been discussing with Dodd...._

_You have presumably bought ~Queen Victoria~, by the side of
which ~Eminent Victorians~ is quite a dull book. And I read
that, on Friday last, eight gentleman were seen sitting in a
row in Kensington Gardens, all reading Strachey’s book. If,
however K. G. were closed to the public on Friday, then the
story is mythical...._

_Your birthday-stunt worked wonders. Miracles never cease:
R—— sent me an Omar Khayyam! R. a round or circular
photograph-frame of a precious metal known as silver. N. F. 25
cigars of the por Laranaga flavor. B. 50 of the flavour known
as Romeo y Julieta. P. 100 cigarettes of the snake-charming
flavour, which, being manufactured from the finest high-grade
selected Turkish leaf tobacco, must be exchanged for the
cigarettes of Ole Virginny when I am next in hail of one of
Messrs. Salmon & Gladstone’s famous establishments._

_This exhausts your list. Over and above these gifts, I
received from S. an Umps, ~i.e.~ a biscuit-ware naked doll,
with wings, practicable arms and a heart in the right,
non-commital place, in the middle of its chest. Also, a neat
black and grey tie. From Mrs. H. a tie.... From my wiff a tie
and a pair of mittens, for elderly early-morning wear. From
the manageress of the hotel, a knitted canary waistcoat with
sapphire buttons to cover the nudity of the Umps. From an
anonymous admirer, a smaller naked doll, made, I venture to
think, of celluloid-georgette. From a lady staying at the
hotel, a box of Sainsbury’s chocolates, which are the most
toothsome in the world. From G. H., aged 80, and F., his wife,
age 75, a box of other chocolates, and 50 De Reske cigarettes.
From A. T., aged 6, bought with her own money, a bottle of ink
and a ball of twine. From her mother, P. T., neé McKenna—nay,
Mackenzie—two blue-bird electric-light shades._

_The T’s, who belong to my local doctor, in the proportion
of one wife and one daughter, also gave me a birthday
party. To meet me were invited Dr. C., Dr. F., and Captain
Cave-Brown-Cave. It opened with an ode or oratorio about
fairies and happiness, intoned by Anne and Dr. C. to an
accompaniment by Mrs. T. Then Anne put her arms round my neck,
embraced me tenderly and told me not to mind what Mrs. Teixeira
said about my touting for presents: Mrs. Teixeira didn’t mean
it, couldn’t mean it; and Anne didn’t believe it, couldn’t
believe it. With the tears streaming down the knees of my
cashmere trouserings, I was led in to tea to see my name spelt
in letter-biscuits and my birthday-cake surrounded by 56 pink,
green, white and red candles. Then we played bridge and I won
eight shillings. And I doubt if Queen Victoria ever described a
birthday more fully._

_No, she would not have forgotten, as I nearly forgot, that F.
E. W. also sent me a tie...._

In the middle of the month, Teixeira began to make preparations, for his return:

_Should you happen, ~he writes, 14.4.21~, to buy a steam-yacht,
in addition to a motor-car, before the 5th of May, you might
send her for us: we would as soon travel that way, land at the
Temple stairs and lunch with you while the yacht takes our
luggage up-river to Chelsea...._

_You have evidently misunderstood my motives in deciding to buy
a car, ~I began to explain~._

_Get a neat, unobstrusive disk with “Hackney Carriage” fitted
to it, ~he interposed~: you can make a tidy income out of your
car then, when the Muse (should I say the Garage?) fails you._

_... If, ~he writes, 19.4.21~, you have not blewed or blued
(which is it?) your last fiver, consider whether your library
is really complete without the Greville Memoirs. Strachey’s
book will probably have set you lusting for them._

_They contain the original story about “speaking
disrespectfully of the Equator.”..._

_I send you the second edition of Harris’ life of Oscar. You
have already read the first edition. But you will like to
see such things, if any, in the appendix as may be new and
certainly Shaw’s contribution to the end...._

I had the misfortune to offend Teixeira by quoting a passage from Sir James Frazer’s _Golden Bough_:

_I save my temper, ~he writes, 22.4.21~, by not discussing
religion except with Catholics or politics except with
liberals. There’s room for discussion in the ~nuances~,
there’s too much room for it with those who call my black
white. I never dispute the goodness of certain infidels nor
the wickedness of many of the faithful. What I hate is the
smug-smiling affectation of superiority displayed by the
agnostics...._

_Huxley I have proved guilty—at least to my own satisfaction—of
intellectual dishonesty and financial turpitude; of Frazer I
know nothing whatever. I vaguely pictured him as one of several
distinguished compilers of whom I knew nothing; that beastly
quotation at the head of one of your chapters came as a great
shock to me, which grew into a very cataclysm when I found it
followed by another and a longer one._

_I won’t call you an Englishman again. But it is funny that
you can’t write about yourself without going into the matter of
what you think or do not think about religion...._

_I forgot to tell you, ~he writes, 24.4.21~, that I received
y’day, from Jack Tennant, from a house with an improbable name,
in a Scotch county which I had never heard of (Morayshire), a
salmon—the whole bird—weighing 7½ lbs. and measuring somewhere
about 7½ feet. I distributed 3 lbs. to my doctor and 3 lbs. to
the heir presumptive to the Cave-Brown-Cave baronetcy (with
apologies for the radical source of the gift). My wiff and I
ate 3 oz. of it to our dinner; and the remainder was consumed
by the manageress, the bookkeeper and housekeeper of the Royal
Hotel...._

Ten days later his preparations were complete.

_Unless I ring you up at 11, on Friday, ~he writes, 3.5.21~, I
will be with you at 11, as suggested in your letter—the morning
is still my best time—and lunch at the club._