[1] The Jonkheer Alexander Louis Teixeira de Mattos san Paio y Mendes.
The family was Jewish in origin and was driven from Portugal by the
persecution of the Holy Office. Teixeira was naturalized a British
subject in the middle of the war and gave up his Dutch title. Even before
this, he had contracted his full style to Alexander Teixeira de Mattos on
ceremonial occasions, to A. Teixeira in departmental correspondence and
to Tex or T. in letters to his friends.
[2] I quote from Chapter VII of _While I Remember_, where the genesis of
the department is described, though only from hearsay.
[3] Even in Teixeira’s wide reading there were occasional gaps; and,
until I brought it to his notice, he was unacquainted with the celebrated
life of Sir Christopher Wren by Mr. E. Clerihew and Mr. G. K. Chesterton:
‘Sir Christopher Wren
Said, “I am going to dine with some men.
If anybody calls
Say I am designing St. Paul’s.”’
After reading it, Teixeira’s nightly valediction as he left for his
bridge club was: “I think ... yes, I think I shall design St. Paul’s for
an hour or two.”
[4] From the notice of his death in _The Times_.
[5] Future letters were dated from ‘Hellgate’.
[6] The Burgomaster of Stillemonde.
[7] Frank MacKinnon K.C.
[8] A short time before, Teixeira, who affected a loathing for music, had
been invited to hear the same quartette. Abandoning his usual gentleness
of speech and spirit, he had accepted on condition of being allowed to
massacre the quartette.
[9] Hymn to Aphrodite.
[10] Eimar O’Duffy’s _Wasted Island_.
[11] Incidentally, my father lived 85 years, during all of which he
never spoke of his particular regiment, brigade, division or army corps
as anything but the Coldcream Guards; not in jest but in sheer, manly,
gentlemanly ignorance.
[12] Perfectly good seventeenth-century English.
[13] _Even the French write_, invariably, un coup d’Etat, le conseil
d’Etat, but l’état des coups, l’état du conseil.
[14] The Concise Oxford Dictionary.
[15] The reference here is to a story illustrative of the tricks which a
man’s memory sometimes plays him:
Reading in the _Morning Post_, that Mr. John Brown, of 500 Clarges
Street, is shortly leaving for Uganda on a big-game-shooting expedition
and would like a gentleman to come with him, sharing expenses, thought
no more of the advertisement and went about his day’s work. That night
he dined intemperately. On being ejected from his club, he was bound
for home when he recalled the forgotten advertisement and decided that
something must be done about it.
Driving to 500 Clarges Street, he demanded to see Mr. John Brown.
“Are you Mr. John Brown?” he enquired of a sleepy and illhumoured figure
in pyjamas.
“I am, sir,” answered John Brown.
“You’re the Mr. John Brown going shooting Uganda?”
“Yes.”
“You want shome one come with you?”
“Yes.”...
“Share ’spenshes?”
“Yes.”
“You put that ’vertisshment in _Morning Posht_?”
“Yes.”
“I thought sho. Shorry knock you up. Felt I musht tell you.... that I’m
not coming.”...
[16] They would have gone quite mad over the Russian Ballet.
[17] The story in question was of a member of the Cave-Brown-Cave family,
who, after conversing with a stranger in a railway-carriage, was asked
his name.
“Cave-Brown-Cave,” he replied. “And may I ask yours?”
“Home-Sweet-Home,” answered his infuriated interlocutor.
[18] In Chancery.
[19] In preparation for visiting South America I had been vaccinated.
[20] Ultimately this was published with the title: _The Law Inevitable_.