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._