Max Beerbohm’s caricature of Teixeira, discovered later—to the subject’s
delight—in the waiting-room of an eminent gynaecologist, emphasizes
the most strongly marked natural and acquired characteristics of his
appearance: a big nose and a liking for the fantastic in dress. There is
hardly space, in the drawing, even for the tiny hat of the music-hall
comedian, so devastating is the sweep of that nose, outward from the
lips, up and round, annihilating forehead and cranium until it merges
in the nape of the neck. Of the dress no more need be said than that it
looks like a valiant attempt to live up to the nose.
As this caricature has not been published in any collection of Max
Beerbohm’s drawings, it was probably unknown to most of those who were
brought into the Intelligence Section of the War Trade Intelligence
Department, there to be introduced to its head, to receive the handshake
and bow of a courtier and to wonder how Tenniel could have drawn the
old sheep in _Alice Through the Looking-Glass_ without Teixeira as a
model. Tall and broad-shouldered, with thick black hair and a white face,
tortoise-shell-rimmed spectacles, and a cigarette in a holder, taciturn,
impassive and unsmiling, Teixeira never failed to conceal that he was
more shy than his visitor. With articulation as beautifully clear as
his writing and in words not less exquisitely chosen than the language
of his books, he would introduce the newcomer to those with whom he was
to work. Messengers would be despatched to bring an additional chair
and table. In the resultant confusion, the immense, silent figure would
walk away with a heavy tread, to find that a pile of papers, two feet
high, had risen like an Indian mango where there had been but six inches
a moment before. A voice of authority, rolling its r’s like the rumble
of distant artillery, would telephone for more messengers; in time the
pile would dwindle until the spectacles and then the nose and then the
cigarette-holder were visible. In time, too, the newcomer recovered from
his fright and set about learning the business of the department.
It was a pleasant surprise to hear “this Olympian creature”, as Stevenson
called Prince Florizel, addressed by Sutro as “Tex”; and, although the
first terror was disabling, even the newcomer realized that every one in
the section seemed happy. The Olympian creature never lost his temper, he
condescended to jokes and invented nicknames; the appalling gravity was
found to be a mask for shyness and a disguise for bubbling absurdity.
In the summer of 1915 the machinery of the blockade was still making.
The department, overworked and understaffed, was inadequately housed
in a corner of Central Buildings, Westminster. In the autumn it moved
to Broadway House, in Tothill Street; and one newcomer was invited to
sit at Teixeira’s table as deputy-head of the section. Thenceforth,
until the armistice, we worked together daily, save when one or other
was on leave or ill and during the early summer of 1917 when I was
sent to Washington. The office, changing almost weekly in personnel,
underwent reconstruction when the blockade was modified in 1918: Teixeira
became secretary to the department; I succeeded him as head of the
intelligence section; and, when I left in 1919, he stayed behind to help
in dismantling the old machine and in assembling a new one to supply
economic information to the peace conference.
Our correspondence for the last three years of the war was restricted to
the times when one of us was away. These absences grew more frequent as
Teixeira exchanged one illness for another. His letters present him as
a government servant rejoicing in his work, tingling with the new sense
of new responsibility and, “from his circumstances having been always
such, that he had scarcely any share in the real business of life”,
suggesting irresistibly a comparison with Dr. Johnson at the sale of his
friend Thrale’s brewery, “bustling about, with an ink-horn and pen in his
button-hole, like an exciseman”. So much of them, however, is taken up
with departmental business that I have drawn sparingly upon them.
V
The first five months of 1916 were a time of relatively good health for
Teixeira; and our correspondence contains little more than an invitation,
which he acknowledged in departmental language.