In the middle of May I cabled to Teixeira in code, asking him to forward
no more letters; and I did not hear from him again until my return to
England in the second week of June.
As soon as I was ready to take his place, he went to Harrogate for a
cure and remained there for six weeks. For part of the time I took his
place in another sense of the phrase. At the end of July the Air Board
commandeered my flat; and, until I could find, decorate and furnish
another, Teixeira and his wife most kindly placed their house at my
disposal. This will explain the following extract:
_Harrogate: 15 July, 1917._
_Here is the key. Come in when you like, make yourself as
comfortable as you can and forgive all deficiencies. I feel a
compunction at not having the physical energy to “clear” things
a bit for you; but there you are...._
_I have started my cure, ~he writes on 18.7.17~, which promises
to be a most strenuous, arduous and tedious affair. I have to
take daily two soda-water tumblers of strong sulphur water and
two ordinary tumblers of warm magnesia water; and on alternate
days (a) a Nauheim bath and (b) a hot-air bath...._
_It is raining steadily. This doesn’t matter. But that
sulphur-water, on an empty stomach, at 8 a.m.! Two-and-twenty
ounces of it, hot! The stench of it! It is said to remind one
of rotten eggs; but, as I have never smelt a rotten egg, it
reminds me of nothing and only suggests hell._[5]
Sugar seems to have been more scarce in Harrogate than in London; and
Teixeira’s appeals and contrivances were always pathetic and sometimes
frantic.
_My wife did manage to get half a pound of it flung at her
head this morning, ~he writes on 19.7.17~. I had so entirely
forgotten the essential rudeness of the people of Yorkshire
that its discovery came upon me as an utter surprise. I amuse
myself by overcoming it with smiles. Smiles are unfamiliar
symptoms to them and take them aback._
_You may tell Sutro that I have bought a dozen silk collars._
After weary weeks of nauseating treatment, he writes:
_It will be an awful sell if this cure ends without doing me
good. Still I always hope. Whatever happens I shall want at
least a week’s after-cure which I should probably take here:
simply a rest and air, without any waters or baths. But what is
your Cornish date?_