Yf 
 
 THE famous translator of Maeterlinck, 
 Fabre, Couperus, Ewald and many an- 
 other, died suddenly at the end of 1921. 
 In this biographical and critical sketch, Mr. 
 Stephen McKenna, who was his most inti- 
 mate friend during the last chapter of his 
 life, pays a tribute to his subject's double 
 genius for scholarship and friendship. It is 
 doubtful whether Teixeira himself could 
 have said offhand how many dozen volumes 
 or how many million words he had trans- 
 lated ; but the quantity is of less importance 
 than the quality. His versions read like orig- 
 inals, and originals of the highest literary 
 order at that. 
 
 Among his friends and acquaintances were 
 numbered Oscar and Willie Wilde, Max 
 Beerbohm, Bernard Shaw, George Moore, 
 John Gray, Ernest Dowson and Alfred Sutro, 
 to the last of whom this book is dedicated. 
 An indefatigable worker, an accomplished 
 wit, an enchanting companion, a whimsical 
 acquaintance and a devoted friend, Teixeira 
 paints his own portrait and delineates his 
 own character in the many letters which he 
 exchanged with his friend. 
 
 p^ 
 
 BY ^^ 
 
 STEPHEN McKENNA
 
 TEX
 
 / 
 
 a-r^^tCct /€^ 
 
 ^ /Vo^
 
 TEX 
 
 A CHAPTER IN THE LIFE 
 OF 
 
 ALEXANDER TEIXEIRA DE MATTOS 
 
 BY 
 
 STEPHEN McKENNA 
 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 
 1922
 
 COPTEIGHT, 1922, 
 
 By DODD, mead AND COMPANY, Inc. 
 
 FEINTED IN U. S. A. 
 
 • » '- 
 
 VAIL-BALLOU COMPANV 
 
 BINGHAMTON AND NEW YORK
 
 a 
 
 
 ID 
 O. 
 
 PR 
 
 To 
 
 g ALFRED SUTRO 
 
 ^, I dedicate to you this slight tribute to the memory of 
 
 ^ our friend. You were the luckier, in knowing him the 
 
 longer. I shall be more than content if you find, in 
 
 reading this book, as I found in reading his letters 
 
 <rj again, that he has returned to us even for a moment and 
 
 5^ that a whim of his language or an echo of his laughter 
 
 has recreated the triple alliance which he founded. 
 
 2'' 
 
 9583
 
 I trust also you may be long without finding out the 
 devil that there is in a bereavement. After love it is 
 the one great surprise that life preserves for us. Now 
 I don't think I 'can be astonished any more. 
 
 Robert Louis Stevenson: Letters.
 
 TEX
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 ''A great translator," one friend wrote of 
 Teixeira, *'is far more rare than a great 
 author." 
 
 Judged by the quality and volume of his 
 work, by the range of foreign languages from 
 which he translated and by the perfection 
 of the English in which he rendered them, 
 Teixeira was incontestably the greatest trans- 
 lator of his time. Throughout Great Britain 
 and the United States his name has long been 
 held in honour by all who have watched, 
 cheering, as the literature of France and 
 Belgium, of Germany and the Netherlands, 
 of Denmark and Norway strode along the 
 broad viaduct which his labours had, in 
 great part, established. 
 
 Of the man, apart from his name, little has 
 been made public. His love of laughing at 
 himself might prompt him to say: "When
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 you write my Life and Letters ...■"; but 
 his modesty and his humour would have been 
 perturbed in equal measure by the vision of 
 a solemn biography and a low-voiced press. 
 "I was a little bit underpraised before," he 
 once confessed; "I'm being a little bit over- 
 praised now." Since the best of himself 
 went impartially into all that he wrote, his 
 conscience could never be haunted by the 
 recollection of shoddy workmanship, even in 
 the days before he had a reputation to jeo- 
 pardize; nor, when he had won recognition, 
 could his head be turned by the announcement 
 that he had created a masterpiece. If he 
 enjoyed the consciousness of having filled 
 the English treasury with the literary spoils 
 of six countries, he dissembled his enjoyment. 
 In so far as he wished to be remembered at all, 
 it was not as a man of letters, but as a friend, 
 a connoisseur of life, a man of sympathy un- 
 aging and zest unstaled, a lover of simple 
 jests, a laughing philosopher. Of their char- 
 ity, he wished those who loved him to have 
 masses said for the repose of his soul; he 
 w^ould have been tortured by the thought that, 
 in life or death, he had brought unhappiness 
 
 2
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 to any one or that, dead or living, he had 
 prompted any one to discuss him with pom- 
 posity. "Are you not being a little solemn?" 
 was a question that alternated with the advice : 
 "Cultivate a pococurantist attitude to life." 
 
 "If there had been no Alice in Wonder- 
 land," said another friend, "it would have 
 been necessary for Tex to create her." 
 
 Those who knew the translator of Fabre 
 and Ewald, of Maeterlinck and Couperus 
 only by his awe-inspiring name must detect in 
 this a hint that Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 had a lighter side to his nature; the suspicion 
 can best be established or laid by the evidence 
 of his own letters. 
 
 The present volume is an attempt to sketch 
 the man in outline for those readers who have 
 recognized his talent in scholarship without 
 guessing his genius for friendship. "The 
 apostles are not all dead," he wrote, in criti- 
 cism of the legends that were growing up 
 around the men of the nineties; "many of 
 them are your living contemporaries; you 
 could, if you like, receive at first hand their 
 memories of their dead fellows." ... It is 
 the purpose of this sketch to present one 
 
 3
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 'apostle' as he revealed himself to one of his 
 disciples. A biography and bibliography 
 will be found in the appropriate works of ref- 
 erence. Only a single chapter has been at- 
 tempted here; of those who knew him during 
 the nineties, which he loved so well and of 
 which he preserved the tradition so faithfully, 
 perhaps one will write that earlier chapter 
 and describe Teixeira in the position which 
 he took up on their outskirts. And one better 
 qualified than the present writer should paint 
 this sphinx of the bridge-table, with his per- 
 versity of declaration and his brilliance of 
 play. "You have made your contract," ad- 
 mitted a friend who was partnering him for 
 the first time; "but . . . but . . . but why 
 that declaration?" "I wanted to see your ex- 
 pression," answered Teixeira with the com- 
 placency of a man who did not greatly mind 
 whether he won or lost, but abominated a dulL 
 game. Those who knew him all his life may 
 feel, with the writer, that the last half-dozen 
 years constitute, naturally and dramatically, a 
 chapter by themselves. They are the period 
 of his literary recognition and, unhappily, of 
 his physical decline; of his emergence from 
 
 4
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 seclusion; of his first public services and his 
 last private friendships. 
 
 By 1914 Teixeira stood in the forefront of 
 English translators; and, through his labours, 
 translation had won a place in the fore- 
 front of English literature. Almost sim- 
 ultaneously with the outbreak of war, he was 
 attacked by the heart-afifection that ultimately 
 killed him; and the record of this period is 
 the record of an invalid. Ill-health notwith- 
 standing, he offered his energy and ability to 
 the country of his adoption; and, in an emer- 
 gency war-department largely stafifed by men 
 of letters, the most retiring of them all be- 
 came enmeshed in the machinery of govern- 
 ment. From his marriage until the war, 
 Teixeira had lived an almost monastic life, 
 only relaxing his rule of solitary work in 
 favour of the bridge-table. Once set in the 
 midst of appreciative friends, this sham re- 
 cluse found himself entertaining and being 
 entertained, joining new clubs, indulging his 
 old inscrutable sociability and almost over- 
 coming his former shyness. 
 
 For three-and-a-half out of these last seven 
 years, one of Teixeira's colleagues worked 
 
 5
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 with him almost daily at the same table in the 
 same room of the same department. The rare 
 separations due to leave or illness were coun- 
 tered by an almost daily correspondence, con- 
 ducted in the spirit of an intimate and elabor- 
 ate game; and, when the work of the depart- 
 ment ended, the letters— sometimes inter- 
 rupted by a diary or suspended for a meeting 
 — kept the intimacy unbroken. 
 
 So written, they are as personal, as discur- 
 sive and — to a stranger — as full of allusion as 
 the long-sustained conversation of two friends. 
 It is to be hoped that, in their present form, 
 they are at least not obscure; of these, and of 
 all, letters it must not be forgotten that the 
 writer was not counting his words for a tele- 
 gram nor selecting his subjects for later pub- 
 lication. 
 
 From his half of the correspondence — in 
 a life untouched by drama — Teixeira's per- 
 sonality may be left to reconstruct itself. 
 Not every side of his character is revealed, 
 for an interchange conducted primarily as a 
 game afforded him few opportunities of ex- 
 hibiting his serene philosophy and meditative 
 bent. The absence of all calculation from 
 
 6
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 his mind — a part of his refusal to grow up — 
 may, for want of counter-availing ballast, be 
 interpreted as flippancy. And, as the man 
 was greater than the word he wrote and the 
 word he translated, his letters have to be sup- 
 plied by imagination with some of the radi- 
 ance which he shed over preposterous story 
 and trivial jest. Charm, which is so hard 
 to analyse in the living, is yet harder to 
 recapture from the dead; but, if the record 
 of a single friendship can suggest loyalty, 
 courage, generosity and tenderness, if a 
 whimsical turn of phrase can indicate 
 humour, patience and an infinite capacity for 
 providing and receiving enjoyment, Teixeira's 
 letters will preserve, for those who did not 
 know him, the fragrance of spirit recognized 
 and remembered by all who did.
 
 II 
 
 In the autumn of 1914 a censorship de- 
 partment was improvised in the office of the 
 National Service League. A press-gang of 
 two, working the clubs of London and the 
 colleges of Oxford, established the nucleus of 
 a stafif; and the first recruits were given, as 
 their earliest duty, the task of bringing in 
 more recruits. As the department had been 
 formed to examine the commercial corres- 
 pondence of neutrals and enemies, the first 
 qualification of a candidate was a knowledge 
 of languages; and, in the preliminary search 
 for recruits, Alfred Sutro convinced the friend 
 who had succeeded him in translating Maet- 
 erlinck that a man who was equally at home 
 in English, French, German, Flemish, Dutch 
 and Danish, with a smattering of ecclesiastical 
 Latin, was too valuable to be spared. Teix- 
 eira joined the growing brotherhood of law- 
 yers, dons and business men in Palace Street, 
 Westminster, advising on intercepted letters 
 and cables, curtailing the activities of traders 
 
 8
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 in contraband, assimilating the procedure of 
 a government department and being paid 
 stealthily each week, like a member of some 
 criminal association, with a furtive bundle of 
 notes. 
 
 It was his first experience of the public serv- 
 ice, almost his only taste of responsibility; 
 and it marked the end of the cloistered life. 
 Though he brought to his new work a varied 
 knowledge of affairs, Teixeira had partici- 
 pated but little in them since his marriage in 
 1900. The friends of his youth, when he was 
 living in the Temple, — John Gray and Ernest 
 Dowson, William Wilde (whose widow he 
 married) and William Campbell, — such 
 acquaintances as Oscar Wilde and Max 
 Beerbohm, Robert Ross and Bernard Shaw, 
 Leonard Smithers and Frank Harris, were 
 for the most part scattered or dead; and, 
 though he kept touch with J. T. Grein, Edgar 
 Jepson, Alfred Sutro and a few more, he 
 seemed at this time, after Campbell's death, 
 to lack opportunity and inclination for mak- 
 ing new friends. 
 
 His gregarious years, and the varied ex- 
 perience which they brought, belonged to an 
 
 9
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 earlier period. Coming from Amsterdam to 
 London in 1874 at the age of nine, the son 
 of a Dutch father and an English mother, 
 Teixeira ^ placed himself under instruction 
 with Monsignor Capel and was received in- 
 to the Holy Roman Catholic Church. In 
 blood, faith and nationality, the Dutch Pro- 
 testant of Portuguese-Jewish extraction had 
 thus passed through many vicissitudes before 
 he married an Irish wife, became a British 
 citizen and died a Catholic. Traces of the 
 Jew survived in his appearance ; of the Dutch- 
 man in his speech; and his intellectual and 
 racial mixed ancestry was betrayed by a cos- 
 mopolitan outlook. Ignorant of many preju- 
 dices that are the native Briton's birthright, 
 he remained ever aloof from the passions of 
 British thought and speech. If he respected, 
 at least he could not share the conventional 
 enthusiasms nor associate himself with the con- 
 
 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 corre- 
 spondence and to Tex or T. in letters to his friends. 
 
 10
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 ventional judgements of his new countrymen. 
 He wrote of his neighbours among whom he 
 had lived for more than forty years, with an 
 unaffected sense of remoteness, as "the Eng- 
 lish"; after his naturalization, he was fond of 
 talking, tongue in cheek, about what "we Eng- 
 lish" thought and did; but, in the last analysis, 
 he embodied too many various strains to 
 favour any single nationality. 
 
 After being educated at the Kensington 
 Catholic Public School and at Beaumont, 
 Teixeira worked for some time in the City 
 and was rescued for literature by J. T. Grein, 
 who made him secretary of the Independent 
 Theatre. iBy his work as a translator and as 
 the London correspondent of a Dutch paper, 
 he lived precariously until his renderings of 
 Maeterlinck, whose official translator he be- 
 came with The Double Garden, called public 
 attention to a new quality of scholarship. 
 Though he flirted with journalism, as editor 
 of Dramatic Opinions and of The Candid 
 Friend, and with publishing, in connection 
 with Leonard Smithers, translation was the 
 business of his life until he entered govern- 
 ment service. He is best known for his ver- 
 
 1 1
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 slon of Fabre's natural history, which he lived 
 to complete and which he himself regarded 
 as his greatest achievement, for the later 
 plays and essays of Maeterlinck, for the novels 
 and stories of Ewald and for the novels 
 of Couperus. These, however, formed only 
 a part of his output; and his bibliography in- 
 cludes the names of Zola, Chateaubriand, de 
 Tocqueville, President Kruger, Maurice Le- 
 blanc, Madame Leblanc, Streuvels and many 
 more. One work alone ran to more than a 
 million words; and he married on a com- 
 mission to translate what he called "the long- 
 est book in any language". 
 
 The improvised censorship was not long 
 suffered to function unmolested. The home 
 secretary, learning that his majesty's mails 
 were being opened without due authority, 
 warned the unorthodox censors that they were 
 incurring a heavy fine for each offence and 
 advised them to regularize their position. 
 Simultaneously, the Customs were thrown in- 
 to difficulty and confusion, ^ by the proclam- 
 
 1 1 quote from Chapter VII of JF/iile I Remember, where the 
 genesis of the department is described, though only from hear- 
 say. 
 
 12
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 ation of the king in council, forbidding all 
 trade with the enemy: in the absence of re- 
 cords, investigation and an intelligence de- 
 partment, it was impossible to say whether 
 goods cleared from London would ultimately 
 reach enemy destination; and the censors who 
 were watching the cable and wireless oper- 
 ations of Dutch and Scandinavian importers 
 seemed the natural advisers to approach. At 
 this point the embryonic department, which 
 had risen from the ashes of the National 
 Service League, joined with a licensing del- 
 egation from the Customs to form the War 
 Trade Department and Trade Clearing 
 House. 
 
 Drifting about Westminster from Palace 
 Street to Central Buildings, from Central 
 Buildings to Broadway House and from 
 Broadway House to Lake Buildings, St. 
 James' Park, the War Trade Intelligence De- 
 partment, as it came to be called, was made 
 the advisory body to the Blockade Depart- 
 ment of the Foreign Office, with Lord Robert 
 Cecil as its parliamentary chief. Sir Henry 
 Penson, of Worcester College, as its chair- 
 man, and H. W. C. Davis, of Balliol, as its 
 
 13
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 deputy-chairman. Teixeira, as the head of 
 the Intelligence Section, controlled the supply 
 of advice on the export of "prohibited com- 
 modities" to neutral countries; as a member 
 of the Advisory Board, he came later to share 
 in responsibility for the department as a 
 whole. Among his colleagues, not already 
 named, were "Freddie" Browning, the first 
 organizer of the department, O. R. A. Simp- 
 kin, now Public Trustee, H. B. Betterton, 
 now a member of parliment, Michael Sadleir, 
 the novelist, R. S. Rait, the Scottish Historio- 
 grapher-Royal, John Palmer, the dramatic 
 critic, and G. L. Bickersteth, the translator of 
 Carducci. 
 
 When the department came to an end, 
 Teixeira resumed his interrupted task of trans- 
 lation, which had, indeed, never been wholly 
 abandoned; his daily programme during the 
 war was to work at home from 5.0 a. m. till 
 8.0 a. m. and in his department from lo.o a. m. 
 till 6.0 p. m. or 7.0 p. m., then to play 
 bridge for an hour at the Cleveland Club, re- 
 turning home in time for a light dinner and 
 an early bed. ^ 
 
 lEven in Teixeria's wide reading there were occasional gaps; 
 
 14
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 Leisure, when at last it came to him, was 
 not to be long enjoyed: early in 1920, a fur- 
 ther break in health compelled him to under- 
 take a rest-cure, first at Crowborough and then 
 in the Isle of Wight. He returned to Chelsea 
 in the spring of 192 1 and spent the summer 
 and autumn working in London or staying 
 with friends in the country, to all appear- 
 ances better than he had been for some years, 
 though in play and work alike he had now to 
 walk circumspectly. Towards the end of the 
 year he went to Cornwall for the winter and 
 collapsed from angina pectoris on 5 De- 
 cember 1921. 
 
 In a life of nearly fifty-seven years Teix- 
 eira escaped almost everything that could be 
 considered spectacular. Happy in the .de- 
 votion of his wife and the love of his friends, 
 unshaken in the faith which he had embraced 
 
 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." 
 
 15
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 and untroubled by the misgivings and melan- 
 choly that assail a temperament less serene, 
 he faced the world with a manner of gentle 
 understanding and a philosophy of almost uni- 
 versal toleration. His only child — a boy — 
 died within a few hours of birth; Teixeira 
 was troubled for years by ill-health; he was 
 never rich and seldom even assured of a com- 
 fortable income. Nevertheless his temper or 
 faith gave him power to extract more amuse- 
 ment from his sufferings than most men de- 
 rive from the plentitude of health and for- 
 tune. Of a malady new even to his expe- 
 rience he writes: "Is death imminent? Why 
 do I always have the rarer disorders?" He 
 loved life to the end — the world was always 
 "God's dear world" to him — ; to the end, he, 
 who had known so many of the world's waifs, 
 continued forbearing to all but the censorious. 
 "I was taught very early in life," he writes, 
 "to make every allowance for men of any 
 genius, whereas you look for a public-school 
 attitude towards all and sundry. . . . You 
 see, if one cared to take the pains, one could 
 make you detest pretty well everybody you 
 know and like. For everybody has a mean, 
 
 i6
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 petty, shabby, cowardly side to him; and one 
 had only to tell you of what the man in ques- 
 tion chooses to keep concealed." . . . 
 
 "Life," said Samuel Butler, "is like playing 
 a violin solo in public and learning the instru- 
 ment as one goes on." Those who met Teix- 
 eira only in his later years must have felt that 
 he was born a master of his instrument; it 
 is not to be imagined that there could ever 
 have been a time when he was ignorant of 
 the grace, the urbanity, the consideration and 
 the gusto that mark ofif the artist in life from 
 his fellows. 
 
 n
 
 Ill 
 
 Though his letters contain scattered refer- 
 ences to the principles which he followed in 
 translation, Teixeira could never be per- 
 suaded to publish his complete and consid- 
 ered theory. His excuse was that he had 
 never been able to write more than eight hun- 
 dred words of original matter, a disability 
 that once threatened him with disaster when 
 he was invited to lecture on the science and 
 art of bridge to the members of a club formed 
 for mutual improvement and the pursuit of 
 learning. After being entertained at a forti- 
 fying banquet, Teixeira delivered his eight- 
 hundred words. As, at the end of the two 
 and three-quarter minutes which his reading 
 occupied, the audience seemed ready and 
 even anxious for more, he read his address 
 a second time. Later, he began in the mid- 
 dle; later still, he ran disgracefully from the 
 hall. 
 
 The method which he followed in trans- 
 lation has, therefore, to be reconstructed from 
 
 i8
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 the internal evidence of his books and from 
 personal experience in collaboration. 
 
 "I shall not," wrote Matthew Arnold in 
 criticizing Newman, "in the least concern 
 myself with theories of translation as such. 
 But I advise the translator not to try 'to rear 
 on the basis of the Iliad, a poem that shall 
 afifect our countrymen as the original may be 
 conceived to have affected its natural hearers'; 
 and for this simple reason, that we cannot 
 possibly tell how the Iliad 'affected its nat- 
 ural hearers.' " 
 
 The first quality that distinguishes Teixeira 
 from most of the translators whose work and 
 methods of work have swelled the contro- 
 versial literature of translation is that he 
 confined himself to modern authors. Un- 
 acquainted with Greek and little versed in 
 Tatin, he was never faced with the difficulty 
 of having to imagine how an original work 
 affected its natural hearers. Maeterlinck 
 and Couperus were his personal friends; 
 Fabre and Ewald, who predeceased him, 
 were older contemporaries; it is only with de 
 Tocqueville and Chateaubriand that he had 
 to gauge the intellectual atmosphere of an 
 
 19
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 earlier generation. In judging whether his 
 English rendering left on the minds of 
 English readers the same impression as the 
 original had left on its "natural hearers", he 
 had a court of appeal always available; and, 
 while the English reader is "lulled into the 
 illusion that he is reading an original work", 
 the foreign author can testify to the fidelity 
 with which his text has been followed and his 
 spirit reproduced. "What a magnificent 
 translation The Tour is!" Couperus writes; 
 "what a most charming little book it has 
 become! I am in raptures over it and have 
 read it and reread it all day and have had 
 tears in my eyes and have laughed over it. 
 You may think it silly of me to say all this; 
 but it has become an exquisitely beautiful 
 work in its English form. My warmest 
 congratulations!" 
 
 To achieve this illusion, Teixeira began 
 his literary life with the most essential quality 
 of a translator: an equal knowledge of the 
 language that was to be translated and of the 
 language into which he was translating it. 
 English and Dutch came to him by inherit- 
 ance; French and Flemish, German and 
 
 20
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 Danish he added by study; and throughout 
 his working life he was incessantly sharp- 
 ening, polishing and adding to his tools. 
 Limitless reading refreshed a vast vocab- 
 ulary; meticulous accuracy refined his mean- 
 ings and justified his usages. His diction- 
 aries were annotated freely; and the margins 
 of his manuscripts were filled with challenges 
 and suggestions for his friends to consider, 
 until his own exacting fastidiousness had at 
 last been satisfied. Apart from professional 
 lexicographers, it would have been difficult 
 to find a man with more words in current use; 
 it would have been almost impossible to find 
 one who employed them with nicer precision. 
 Learning sat too lightly on his shoulders to 
 make him vain of it, but no one could hear or 
 correspond with him without realizing the 
 presence of a purist; he seldom quoted, mis- 
 trusting his memory, confessed himself an 
 amateur in colloquial dialogue and refused 
 with equal obstinacy to venture on English 
 metaphors and English field-sports. "I do 
 not know the difiference between a niblick 
 and a foursome," he would protest. "When 
 you say that your withers are unwrung, I do 
 
 21
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 not know whether you are boasting or com- 
 plaining. What are your withers? Have 
 you any, to begin with? Do you 'wring' 
 them or 'ring' them? And why can't you 
 leave them alone?" 
 
 Not content with mastering five foreign 
 languages, Teixeira created a new literary 
 English for every new kind of book that he 
 translated. His versions of Maeterlinck's 
 Blue Bird, Couperus' Old People and The 
 Things That Pass^ Fabre's Hunting Wasps 
 and Ewald's My Little Boy have nothing in 
 common but their exquisite sympathy and 
 scholarship; four different men might have 
 produced them if four men could be found 
 with the same taste, knowledge and diligence. 
 Fabre's ingenuous air of perpetual discovery 
 demanded the style of a grave, grown-up 
 child; Maeterlinck's mystical essays invited 
 a hint of preciosity and aloofness, to suggest 
 that omniscience was expounding infinity 
 through symbols older than time; and the 
 atmospheric sixth-sense of Couperus had to 
 be communicated by a sensitiveness of lan- 
 guage that could create pictures and conjure 
 up intangible clouds of discontent, guilty 
 
 22
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 terror, suppressed antagonism or universal 
 boredom. In reading the original, Teixeira 
 seemed to steep himself in the personality of 
 his author until he could pass, like a reper- 
 tory actor, from one mood and expression to 
 another; his own mannerisms are confined to 
 a few easily defended peculiarities of spelling 
 and punctuation. 
 
 For a man who must surely have divined 
 that his calibre was unique, Teixeira was 
 engagingly free from touchiness. In trans- 
 lating a book, as in organizing a department, 
 he was magnificently grateful for the word 
 that had eluded him and for the criticism 
 which he had not foreseen. A purist in 
 language and a precisian in everything, he 
 realized that a living style is throttled by too 
 great obedience to rules; but he was afraid, 
 even in dialogue, of unchaining a wind of 
 colloquialism which he might be unable to 
 control; and, in constructing the deliberately 
 artificial speech of his Maeterlinck trans- 
 lations, he recognized that he lacked his 
 readers' age-old familiarity with the English 
 of the Bible. Though his passion for con- 
 sistency led him to say: "My name ought to 
 
 23
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 have been Procrus-Tex," he stretched out 
 both hands for an authority that would jus- 
 tify him in broadening his rule. "I have 
 always spelt judgment without an e in the 
 middle," he declared in 1915, when, with the 
 gravity that characterized his more trivial 
 decisions, he had abandoned violet ink, be- 
 cause it seemed frivolous in war-time, and the 
 long s (i), because it bore a Teutonic aspect. 
 *'I am too old to change now; and you know 
 my rule. All or None." Four years later he 
 announced: "In future I shall spell 'judge- 
 ment with an e in the middle. The New 
 English Dictionary favours it; you assure me 
 that it is so spelt in your English prayer- 
 book; and Germany has signed the peace 
 terms." 
 
 No comparison with other translators can 
 be attempted until another arise with Teix- 
 eira's range of languages and his volume of 
 achievement. He himself could never say, 
 within a dozen, how many books he had 
 translated; but in them all he created such an 
 illusion of originality that they are not sus- 
 pected of being translations until his name is 
 seen. In a wider view, he undermined the 
 
 24
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 pretensions of those who boasted that they 
 could never read translations; and, if no one 
 is likely to be found with all his gifts, he at 
 least prepared the way for a new school of 
 translators. It may be hoped that, after the 
 battles which he fought, important foreign 
 authors will not again be sacrificed to illit- 
 erate hacks at five-shillings a thousand words: 
 it may even be expected that competent 
 scholars will no longer disdain the task of 
 translating contemporary works. All liter- 
 ary predictions are rash; but there seems 
 little risk in prophesying that Teixeira's ren- 
 derings of Fabre, Couperus and Maeterlinck 
 will be read as long as the originals. 
 
 The tangible fruits of his astonishing 
 industry are only a part of his achievement: 
 it is to him, in company with Constance 
 Garnett, William Archer, Aylmer Maude 
 and the other undaunted pioneers, that Eng- 
 lish readers owe their escape from the self- 
 satisfied insularity with which they had pro- 
 tected themselves against continental litera- 
 ture. When publishers have been convinced 
 that translations need not be unprofitable 
 and when a conservative public has discov- 
 
 25
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 ered that they need not be unreadable, a 
 future generation may be privileged to have 
 prompt access to every noteworthy book in 
 whatsoever language it has been written, 
 without waiting as the present generation has 
 had to wait for an English rendering of 
 Tolstoi, Turgenieff, Dostoieffski and Tche- 
 hov. 
 
 In conversation Teixeira took little pleas- 
 ure in discussing himself; in correspondence 
 he could not help giving himself away. The 
 reader will deduce, from his slow surrender 
 of intimacy, the shyness that ever conflicted 
 with his sociability; the absence of all al- 
 lusions to his literary work, save when he 
 fancied that a second opinion might help 
 him, is evidence of a personal modesty that 
 amounted almost to unconsciousness of his 
 position in letters. Diffidence and socia- 
 bility, first conflicting, then joining forces, 
 led him in his departmental work to discuss 
 every problem with a friend; and in all per- 
 sonal relationships, he needed an hourly con- 
 fidant because everything in life was an 
 adventure to be shared and might be worked 
 in later to the saga with which he strove to 
 
 26
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 make himself ridiculous for the diversion of 
 his company. "Thus," he writes of a childish 
 freak, "do the elderly amuse themselves for 
 the further amusement of a limited circle." 
 Weighty commissions were assembled, daring 
 expeditions set out under his leadership to 
 choose a dressing-gown for country-house 
 wear; the grey tall-hat with which he sur- 
 prised one private view of the Royal Academy 
 was no less of a surprise to him and even 
 more of an abiding pleasure. For a year or 
 two afterwards he would telephone on the 
 first of May: "If you will wear your good- 
 ish white topper to-day, I will wear mine"; 
 and once, when these conspicuous headpieces 
 were in evidence, he led the way to Covent 
 Garden Market, with the words: "It is not 
 every day that the women of the market see 
 two men in such hats, such coats and such 
 spats, standing before a fruit-stall with their 
 canes crooked over their arms and their 
 yellow gloves protruding from their pockets, 
 consuming the first green figs of the year in 
 the year's first sunshine." 
 
 In conversation he once boasted that he was 
 never bored; and, though every man and 
 
 27
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 woman at the table volunteered the names of 
 at least six people who would bore him to 
 extinction, the boast was justified in that, 
 however irksome one moment might be, it 
 could always be invested afterwards with the 
 glamour of an eccentric adventure. Some- 
 where, among his immediate ascendants, there 
 must have been a not too remote ancestor of 
 Peter Pan. On his fifty-sixth birthday, Teix- 
 eira was having a party arranged for him, 
 with a cake and fifty-six tiny candles; for days 
 beforehand he had been asking for presents 
 of any kind, to impress the other visitors in 
 his hotel; and, if he knew one joy greater 
 than receiving presents, it was finding an 
 excuse to give them. 
 
 With the heart of a child in all things, he 
 had the child's quality of being frightened by 
 small pains and undaunted by great; a cut 
 finger was an occasion for panic, but the 
 threat of blindness found him indomitable. 
 Herein he was supported throughout life by 
 the faith which he had acquired in boyhood 
 and which he preserved until his death. "I 
 save my temper," he once wrote, "by not dis- 
 cussing religion except with Catholics or 
 
 28
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 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." . . . While it was generally known 
 among his friends that he was a devout Cath- 
 olic, only a few were allowed to see how much 
 reliance he placed in religion; and he would 
 grow impatient with what he considered a 
 morbid protestant passion for worrying at 
 something that for him had been immutably 
 settled. 
 
 In political debates he would only join at 
 the prompting of extreme sympathy or ex- 
 treme exasperation. His native feeling for 
 the Boers in the Transvaal was little shared 
 in England during the South African war; 
 and his loathing for English misrule in Ire- 
 land was too strong to be ventilated acceptably 
 among the people whom he met most com- 
 monly in London. His connection with the 
 Legitimist cause came to an end with the out- 
 break of war: though he had hitherto de- 
 lighted in penetrating beween the sentries at 
 St. James' Palace and placarding the wall 
 with an appeal to all loyal subjects of the 
 rightful king, he was unable to continue his 
 
 29
 
 Alexander' Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 allegiance when Prince Rupprecht of Ba- 
 varia became an enemy alien. 
 
 Legitimacy and Catholicism, apart from 
 other claims on his regard, gratified a love 
 for ceremonial and tradition that would have 
 been more incongruous in a liberal if Teix- 
 eira's whole equipment of beliefs, practices 
 and preferences had not been a collection 
 of incongruities. Though he detested mili- 
 tarism, he could never understand why the 
 English civilians omitted to uncover to the 
 colours; hating pomposity, he enjoyed the 
 grand manner in address and, on being 
 greeted by a peer as ''my dear sir," replied 
 "my dear lord" in a formula beloved by Dis- 
 raeli. As a relief to an accuracy of ex- 
 pression which he himself called Procrustean 
 and pernickety, he would transform any word 
 that he thought would look or sound more 
 engaging for a little mutilation. It was a 
 bad day for the English of his letters when he 
 read Heine and entered into competition for 
 the most torturing play upon words; his 
 case became hopeless when he was introduced 
 to a couple of friends who could pun with 
 him in four or five languages. It was this 
 
 30
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 bent of mind that may justify the description 
 of him^ as the son of Edward Lear and the 
 grandson of Charles Lamb. 
 
 Underlying the whimsical humour of his 
 letters and peeping through the mock solem- 
 nity of his speech was a young child's concern 
 for the welfare of his friends: himself never 
 growing up, he never outgrew his generous 
 delight in any success that came to them; their 
 ill-health and sorrow were harder to bear 
 than his own; and he shewed a child's impul- 
 sive generosity in offering all he had in com- 
 fort. Sympathy, help, experience and advice 
 were at hand for whosoever would take them: 
 he had too long lived precariously to forget 
 the tragedy of those who failed and failed 
 again; he knew life too well to grow impatient 
 with those who failed through no one's fault 
 but their own. 
 
 Love of life, enduring to the end, know- 
 ledge of life, increasing every day, combined 
 to join this heart of a child to the experience 
 of an old man. As a connoisseur of food and 
 wine, as of style and manner, he belonged to 
 a generation that ranked life as the greatest 
 
 1 From the notice of his death in The Times. 
 
 31
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 of the fine arts. To lunch with him was to 
 receive a liberal education in gastronomy, 
 though his course of personal instruction 
 sometimes broke down for lack of material: 
 from time to time he would announce with 
 jubilation that he had discovered some rare 
 vintage in some unknown restaurant; a party 
 would be organized to sample it, only to be 
 informed that the last bottle had been con- 
 sumed by Mr. Teixeira the day before. 
 
 As an explorer, he remained, to his last 
 hour, at the age when a boy lingers raptur- 
 ously before one shop after another, enjoying 
 all impartially, sharing his enjoyment with 
 every passer-by, confident that life is an un- 
 ending vista of glittering shop-windows and 
 that the day must somehow be long enough 
 for him to take them all in. 
 
 32
 
 IV 
 
 Max Beerbohm's caricature of Teixeira, 
 discovered later — to the subject's delight— in 
 the waiting-room of an eminent gynaecolog- 
 ist, emphasizes the most strongly marked 
 natural and acquired characteristics of his ap- 
 pearance: a big nose and a liking for the fan- 
 tastic 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 
 
 33
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 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, impas- 
 sive 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 re- 
 
 34
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 covered from his fright and set about learn- 
 ing 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 w^as disabling, 
 even the newcomer realized that every one in 
 the section seemed happy. The Olympian 
 creature never lost his temper, he condes- 
 cended 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 191 5 the machinery of 
 the blockade was still making. The depart- 
 ment, overworked and understaffed, was in- 
 adequately 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 Teix- 
 eira'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 
 19 17 when I was sent to Washington. The 
 office, changing almost weekly in personnel,
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 underwent reconstruction when the blockade 
 was modified in 1918: Teixeira became sec- 
 retary 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 assem- 
 bling a new one to supply economic inform- 
 ation 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 respon- 
 sibility 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 depart- 
 mental business that I have drawn sparingly 
 upon them. 
 
 36
 
 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. 
 
 I wrote: 
 
 Tuesday, Jan. 4th, igi6. 
 Though long I've wished to bid you come and 
 dine, 
 Your way of life stood ever in the way; 
 For you, I gather, go to bed at nine 
 
 And rise at five (or five-fifteen) next day. 
 
 Yet Tuesday brings my chance. At half -past 
 eight 
 
 I go to guard my king; but, ere I go, 
 H^ith meat and wine I purpose to inflate 
 
 My sagging stomach for an hour or so. 
 
 Then will you join me? Seven o'clock, I think: 
 The Mausoleum Club is fairly near: 
 
 Whatever your heart desire of food and drink, 
 And any kind of clothes you choose to wear. 
 
 S. McK. 
 
 37 
 
 .24958:?
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 We should be glad, replies Teixeira, if this 
 application could come up again in say a fort- 
 night's time. 
 
 A. T. 
 Trade Clearing House. 
 
 When next I was summoned for duty as a 
 special constable, the application was sub- 
 mitted again; and Teixeira dined with me at 
 the Reform Club. Later in the year, though 
 he had been warned by William Campbell, 
 the greatest friend of his middle years, that a 
 man who laughed so much would never be 
 admitted to membership, I was allowed to 
 propose him as a candidate; and from the day 
 of his election he became one of the most 
 popular figures both in the card-room and 
 in the south-east corner of the big smoking- 
 room, where his most intimate associates gath- 
 ered. 
 
 His hours of work, to which the first stanza 
 refers, have already been mentioned; his 
 methods call for a word or two of description. 
 The library in Cheltenham Terrace looked 
 out over the Duke of York's School and was 
 lined with book-cases wherever windows, 
 
 38
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 fire-place or door permitted. The furniture 
 consisted of a sofa, whch was used for hat- 
 boxes and more books; a writing-table, which 
 was used for anything but writing; a revolving 
 book-case, filled with works of reference; 
 and the editorial chair from the office of The 
 Candid Friend. Seating himself in dressing- 
 gown and slippers, between the fire-place and 
 the revolving book-case, Teixeira dug him- 
 self into position: a despatch-box under his 
 feet raised his knees to an angle at which he 
 could balance a dictionary upon them, with 
 its edge resting on a miniature bureau; on the 
 dictionary rested a blotting-pad; and every 
 book that he needed was in reach either of his 
 hand or an elongated pair of "lazy-tongs"; 
 scissors, string, sealing-wax, india-rubber and 
 knives were ingeniously and menacingly sus- 
 pended from nails in the revolving book-case; 
 on the top stood cigarettes, matches, a paste- 
 pot and a vast copper ash-tub; and the colour 
 of his violet carpet was chosen to conceal the 
 occasional splashings of a violet-ink pen. 
 With a telephone on one side to put him in 
 touch with the outside world and with a bell 
 on the other to secure his morning coffee, 
 
 39
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 Teixeira could work without moving until 
 evicted by force. 
 
 In the beginning of June, he was ordered to 
 Malvern. 
 
 No news, he writes on the loth, except that 
 I have arrived and had some tea. . . . 
 
 There are hawthorns at Malvern and rhodo- 
 dendrons of -dra hut also the most bloodthirsty 
 hills. And there was an officer in the train who 
 told me that the feeling in Franst was most 
 "optimistic" . 
 
 The proprietress of this hotel pronounces my 
 name Teisheira. This must he looked into. 
 
 I s'pose Fm enjoying myself, he writes next 
 day. / feel very restless. 
 
 [My cook], / forgot to tell you, was mounting 
 guard over the dispatch-box like a very sentinel, 
 with hands duly folded: a most proper spectacle. 
 I nearly died, but not entirely, hunting for my 
 porter up and down the length of the longest 
 train you ever saw (I am sure this must he cor- 
 rect, in view of the fact that you never did see 
 this particular train). . . . 
 
 This hotel is not so uncomfortable: I slept 
 eight hours; I have a writing-table in my room; 
 my bath was too hot to get into; these are signs 
 of human comfort, are not they? Nor is the 
 
 40
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 food nasty. Fortunately, there is not much of it. 
 I ordered me a bottle of Berncastler Doctor. 
 They brought me Liebfraumilch. I waved it 
 away, saying that hock was acid and gave me 
 gout. Then, persuaded to be a Christian, I sent 
 one running after it before the doctor was opened 
 and drank two glasses; and it was delicious; and 
 I have no gout. 
 
 fVhy I sit boring you with this dull stuff I do 
 not know: it is certainly not worth including in 
 the Life and Letters. 
 
 Two days of solitude set him athirst for 
 companionship. 
 
 Good-morning, fair sir, he writes on 12. 6. 
 16. / hope this finds you as it leaves me at 
 present, a little improved in health. But I would 
 not wish my worst enemy the weariness from 
 which I am suffering. . . . Picture me buying 
 useless things so that I may exchange a word 
 with a shopman; for no one talks to me here. 
 Also the weather is bitterly cold. 
 
 And next day: 
 
 / have . . . talked at length to a highly in- 
 telligent Dane, with a massy pair of calves that 
 do credit to his pastoral country. But he has 
 returned to town this morning. 
 
 41
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 They play very low at the club, fortunately, for 
 I lost 13/-, which would have been £10, had I 
 been playing R. A. C. points. Also they make 
 me too late to dress for dinner, which doesn't 
 matter: nothing matters in this zuorld. 
 
 For the rest, I have reason to think that I 
 shall begin to cheer up from to-morrow and to 
 remain cheerful until Saturday. That is "speech- 
 day" — I presume at Malvern College — when I 
 expect to see an awful invasion of horribohble 
 papas and mammas. 
 
 Bless you. 
 
 The hoped-for cheerfulness has not yet arrived, 
 he laments on 14. 6. 16. / live in one of the 
 most tragic of worlds. But . . . I have had 
 more conversation. The place of the Dane zvith 
 the fatted calves . . . has been taken by a par- 
 son, a passon, a parsoon, an elderly parsoon with 
 the complete manner of the late Mr. Penley in 
 The Private Secretary: he would like to give 
 every German a good, hard slap, I am sure. He 
 is a much-travelled 7nan; and his ignorance of 
 every place which he has visited is thoroughly en- 
 tertaining. . . . 
 
 I am becoming popular at the club: they took 
 12/- out of me yesterday. I must set my teeth 
 and get it back though. 
 
 42
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 The influx of odious parents, he writes on 
 18. 6. 16, ivith their loalhy, freckled criminals 
 of offspring has flustered the waiters and is spoil- 
 ing all my meals. What I do now is to change 
 for dinner after all and come in exactly an hour 
 late for meals. They have some way of keeping 
 the food — such as it is — piping hot; and so I do 
 not suffer unduly for avoiding the sight of so7ne, 
 at least, of the carroty-headed boys and their 
 thick-ankled sisters. . . . 
 
 Ah well! I can begin to count the days until 
 I am back among you; and a glad day that zvill 
 he for me! Nobody in the world, I think, hates 
 either rest or enjoyment so much as I do. 
 
 Good-bye. I am going for a walk. I tell you 
 frankly, I am going for a walk. I tell you this 
 frankly. . . . 
 
 On Teixeira's return to the department, 
 our correspondence was suspended until I 
 went to Cornwall for a week's leave in Aug- 
 ust. When I wrote in praise of my surround- 
 ings, he replied with a warning: 
 
 You are probably too young ever to have heard 
 of ... a play-actress . . . who brought a breach 
 of promise action . . . and earned the then 
 record damages of £10,000. She took a cottage 
 
 43
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 so77iewhere the other day and brought her mother 
 to live in it. The mother said, ''This is just the 
 sort of place I like; I shall he happy here,'' then 
 fell down the stairs and was dead in half an 
 hour. . . . 
 
 . . . Remember me to the Atlantic. . . . 
 
 The next letter contained a story from 
 Ireland: 
 
 'Sligo, 1 8 August igi6. 
 . . . Here, in this most distressful country, Kve 
 are about to experience again the blessings of 
 coercion, adfuinistered by Duke, K. C, and Car- 
 son, high priest of the cult. In Sligo, the other 
 day, two ladies treating each other in a public- 
 house, the barman intervened at the tenth drink, 
 saying: 
 
 "Stop it now; ye can't have any more; troth, 
 I wont sarve ye again. Don't ye know it's Mar- 
 tial Law that's on the people?' 
 
 Whereupon one of them enquired of the other: 
 
 "For the love of God, Mrs. Murphy, what's 
 
 he talking about at all? IFho's Martial Law?" 
 
 To which her friend replied sotto voce : 
 
 "Whist, don't be showing your ignorance, 
 
 ma'am! Don't ye know he's a brother of Bonar 
 
 Law's?". . . 
 
 44
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 As official papers accompanied every letter, 
 a trace of departmental style is occasionally 
 visible in private notes: 
 
 fFar Trade Intelligence Department. 
 25 August, igi6. 
 "Harry Edwin" ate a grouse last night and drank 
 viany glasses of port. You can imagine the sort 
 of grumpy commensal that he is to-day. 
 
 A. T. 
 "Harry Edwin.'' 
 To see. 
 25. 8. 16. 
 Seen and approved. 
 H. E. P. 
 . . . Don t overbathe, he adds as a postscript. 
 JVhy be so reckless? You remind me of the 
 London city "chirks" who arrive in Switzerland 
 one evening, run straight up the Matterhorn the 
 next morning. I believe that two per cent of 
 them do not drop dead. 
 
 The Sehr Hochwohlgeboren iind Verdamniter 
 Graf Zeppelin, he writes on 25. 18. 16, did 
 some damage last night at Greenwich, Blackwall 
 (a power-station) etc. For the rest, no news. 
 I am picking up not wholly unconsidered trifles 
 at the fVelUngton and benefiting your Uncle 
 
 45
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 Reggie pro rata. [Bridge winnings at this time 
 were thriftily exchanged for War Savings Certifi- 
 cates,] This morning I (pro )-rated the girl . . . 
 at the post-office for not "pushing" those certifi- 
 cates. I said that, whenever any one asked for 
 a penny stamp, she should ask: 
 
 "May we not supply you with one of these?" 
 It went very well with the audience. 
 
 This morning, he writes later, / have bought 
 my thirteenth fifteen-and-sixpennyworth of Uncle 
 Reggie. Alindful of my injunction to "push" the 
 goods, the post-office girl . . . urged me to buy 
 a £ig. 7. affair which would be good for £2^ in 
 five years' tifne. Alas! Still, there are hopes. 
 
 In his preface to The Admirable Bashville, 
 Bernard Shaw explains his reason for throw- 
 ing it into blank verse: "I had but a week 
 to write it in. iBlank verse is so childishly 
 easy and expedious (hence, by the way, 
 Shakespeare's copious output), that by adopt- 
 ing it I was enabled to do within the week 
 what would have cost me a month in prose." 
 Pressure of work sometimes drove Teixeira 
 to a similar expedient in rimed verse : 
 
 Letter just received, he writes in haste on 
 
 46
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 26. 8. 16. to acknowledge the account of a bath- 
 ing mishap : 
 
 With great relief at noon I found 
 That S. McKenna was not drowned. 
 Many thanks for the pendant to these lovely 
 verses. 
 
 P. S. I note — and we all note — he adds — that 
 you never express the wish to see us all again. 
 How different from my Malvern letters/ Ah, 
 what a terrible thing is sincerity/ 
 
 47
 
 VI 
 
 On Holy Saturday, 1917, I was asked by 
 the deputy-chairman whether I would repre- 
 sent the department on the mission which 
 Mr. Balfour was taking to Washington with a 
 view to coordinating the war-organization of 
 Great Britain and the United States. 
 
 For the next two months Teixeira and I 
 communicated whenever a bag passed be- 
 tween the British Embassy and the Foreign 
 Office, overflowing into a brief journal be- 
 tweenwhiles. He also disposed of my varied 
 correspondence with uniform discretion and 
 with a courage that only failed him when un- 
 known mothers asked him if I would stand 
 sponsor to their children. 
 
 The enquiries into the cause of your absence, 
 he writes on 12. 4. 17, have been distressing. 
 More people ask if you are ill than if you are 
 being married. The unit of the last idea was 
 Sutro, who then went of to Davis and found 
 out what he wanted to know. . . . 
 
 48
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 7j April. 
 
 The work is pretty stiff and I doubt if I can 
 
 make this desultory diary as gossipy as I could 
 
 have wished. And, after all, it will seem pretty 
 
 stale and jejune by the time it reaches you. . . . 
 
 Your whereabouts are known now in the dept. 
 and will be at the club to-morrow, if any one asks 
 me again. Hitherto great wonder has reigned; 
 but the "no blame attaches to his name" stunt 
 has worked exquisitely. 
 
 The figure of Max Beerbohm's caricature 
 is seen in the following paragraph: 
 
 / have ordered eight new coloured shirts, 
 bringing the total up to 2j. Then I have about 
 a dozen black-and-white shirts; and only seven 
 dress-shirts, I find. This makes 42 in all. My 
 father s theory was that no gentleman should 
 have fewer than eighty shirts to his name. 
 Times have changed; and we are a petty and 
 pettyfogging generation of mankind. On the 
 other hand, I have JJ ties, exclusive of ivhite 
 ties. I feel almost sure that my father did not 
 have so many as that. And I outdo him utterly 
 in boot-trees, of which I have just ordered a pair 
 to be marked "L8" and "RS," meaning thereby 
 that it is my eighth pair. Sursum corda. 
 
 49
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 Teixeira believed with almost complete 
 sincerity that he would die on 21 April 1917. 
 The origin of this belief he never explained to 
 me; and I do not know whether he confided 
 it to others. This accounts for the following 
 entry: 
 
 Shall I live, I wonder, till the 22nd, to write 
 to you that I am still alive? When I allow my 
 thoughts to dwell upon 21. 4. ij , now but six 
 brief days off, there rises to them the memory of 
 the horrible Widow's Song which Vesta Victoria 
 used to sing. I will start the next page with the 
 chorus; for you, poor young fellow, know nothing 
 of the songs that brightened the Augustan age 
 of the music-halls. 
 Read and admire: 
 
 He was a good, kind husband. 
 One of the best of men: 
 
 So fond of his home, sweet home. 
 He never, never wanted to roam. 
 There he would sit by the fire-side. 
 
 Such a chilly man was John! 
 I hope and trust 
 There' s a nice, warm fire 
 Where my old man's gone. 
 Gallows-humour , my dear executor, gallowS' 
 humour! 
 
 50
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 1 6 April. 
 Yesterday being a fine day, I have caught cold. 
 A had look-out, executor, a bad look-out! 
 Adieu, cher ami. 
 
 You will observe a brief hiatus, he writes on 
 19 April, 19 17. A letter begun to you on the 
 1 6th is reposing in my drawer at the department, 
 where I have not been since then, having suc- 
 cumbed to an attack of bronchitis. And [my 
 doctor] will not let me out till the 2ist ("der 
 Tag!" ) at the earliest. 
 
 Der Tag was reached. . . 
 
 21 April, 1917. 
 It was a comfort and a joy to read this morn- 
 ing that your party has arrived safely at Halifax. 
 I propose to pass this bloudie day without any 
 cheap philosophizing. I am about cured of my 
 bronchitis, I think, though fearsomely weak; and, 
 if I "be" to "be" carried off to-day, it'll be a 
 motor-bus or -cab that'll do for me. Look out 
 for a letter from me dated to-morrow. I hope 
 the voyage has done you all the good in the 
 world. . . . 
 
 . . . and survived. 
 
 22 April, igij. 
 
 Ebbene, caro mio Stefano! You will be able 
 
 51
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 to tell your grandchildren that you once knew a 
 man who for twenty years was convinced that he 
 would die on the day when he was fifty-two years 
 and twelve days old and who lived to he fifty-two 
 and thirteen. . . . 
 
 Bottomley has turned against the new govern- 
 ment and is adumbrating his ideal government. 
 He retains the present foreign secretary, hut 
 nominates H. H. A. as lord chancellor and Sir 
 Edward Holden as chancellor of the exchequer. 
 He wants Beresford as minister of blockade. 
 Oof! 
 
 Robbie Ross has a story of a German poet, 
 one Oskar Schmidt, ''a charrjiing fellow,'^ who, 
 armed with the best letters of recommendation, 
 went to Oxford and spent several agreeable weeks 
 there. The fine flower of his observations was: 
 
 "Der Oxfort oontercratuades, dey go apout 
 between a melangolly and a fleg^na." . . . 
 
 24 April, 1917. 
 Your name appeared in the Times yesterday; 
 and I am now able to read daily, or I hope, shall 
 be, how Mr. McKenna bowed, raised his hat and, 
 escorted by cavalry, took his first cocktail on 
 American soil. I do hope that you are not only 
 having the time of your life but feeling amaz- 
 ingly well. J. pictures you a victim of indiges- 
 
 52
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 tion; but I, knowing your justly celebrated 
 strength of character, have no fears on that 
 score. Cura ut valeas. 
 
 4 May, igiy. 
 This is a private-view day. The sun is blazing 
 
 truculently. I am wearing a new shirt, white 
 with black and yellow lines (the Teixeira col- 
 ours), and the white hat and all's well in God's 
 dear zvorld. 
 
 That these sartorial efforts were not 
 wasted is shewn by the next entry : 
 
 5 May, igij. 
 . . . From yesterday's Star: 
 
 "Society Sees the Pictures 
 "The beautiful spring day induced one Beau 
 Brummel to sport a white box-hat" ! ! ! 
 
 53
 
 VII 
 
 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 command- 
 eered my flat; and, until I could find, dec- 
 orate and furnish another, Teixeira and his 
 wife most kindly placed their house at my 
 disposal. This will explain the following 
 extract: 
 
 Harrogate: 15 July, IQIJ- 
 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 hav- 
 ing the physical energy to "clear" things a bit for 
 you; but there you are. . . . 
 
 54
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 I have started ?tiy cure, he writes on i8. 7. 17., 
 which promises to be a most strenuous, ar^ 
 duous and tedious affair. I have to take daily two 
 soda-water tumblers of strong sulphur water and 
 tzvo ordinary tumblers of tvarm magnesia water; 
 and on alternate days (a) a Nauheim bath and 
 (b) a hot-air hath. . . . 
 
 It is raining steadily. This doesn't matter. 
 But that sulphur-water, on an empty stomach, at 
 S a.m./ Two-and-tiventy ounces of it, hot! The 
 stench of it! It is said to remind one of rotten 
 eggs; hut, as I have never smelt a rotten egg, it 
 reminds me of nothing and only suggests hell.^ 
 
 Sugar seems to have been more scarce in 
 Harrogate than in London; and Teixeira's 
 appeals and contrivances were always pa- 
 thetic 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. / had so entirely forgotten the essen- 
 tial rudeness of the people of Yorkshire that its 
 discovery came upon me as an utter surp?ise. I 
 amuse myself by overcoming it with smiles. 
 Smiles are unfamiliar symptoms to them and take 
 them aback. 
 
 1 Future letters were dated from 'Hellgate'. 
 
 ss
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 You may tell Siitro that I have bought a dozen 
 silk collars. 
 
 After weary weeks of nauseating treatment, 
 he writes : 
 
 It will he 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 
 zuhich I should probably take here: simply a rest 
 and air, without any waters or baths. But what 
 is your Cornish date? 
 
 I replied, 27. 7. 17. 
 
 By this time you will have seen that our minds 
 have been working on parallel lines towards the 
 same conclusion that an after-cure is quite essen- 
 tial. It will suit me perfectly well to stay here 
 until, and including, Friday the 24th, or later if 
 you like. My Cornish arrangements are quite 
 fluid. . . . 
 
 For all your pagan pose, he writes, you are a 
 fine old Irish Christian gentleman, as is proved 
 by your suggestion of an after-cure, dictated no 
 doubt at the identical moment when I was writ- 
 ing my answer to it. At any rate, I prefer to 
 think of you as a Christian brother rather than 
 as a Corsican brother. As I said, I shall prob- 
 ably take that after-cure, but take it at Harro- 
 
 56
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 gate, which is about as bracing a spot as any in 
 the three kingdoms. To go straight to the sea 
 might set up my rheumatism again, if indeed it 
 is suppressed; there is no sign yet of that desid- 
 erandum. . . . 
 
 It is necessary to insert my letter of 30. 7. 17 
 in order to explain Teixeira's reply to it. 
 
 / went home for the week-end, I wrote, and 
 travelled up this morning with C. H. C. has a 
 new and most amusing game. It consists of in- 
 viting people to stay with him for the week-end 
 and encouraging them to bathe in the river 
 Thames and only disclosing, when the damage 
 has been done, that the bed of that ancient river 
 is richly studded with broken bottles. There 
 was a small boy in the carriage with one badly 
 injured foot as a result of C.'s pleasantry. I did 
 a conspicuous St. Christopher stunt and carried 
 the boy on my shoulders the entire length of the 
 arrival platform at Paddington. . . . 
 
 I, Teixeira answers, 30. 7. 17, once carried 
 Willie Crosthwait, then aged 14, the whole 
 length of the Euston departure platform. That 
 beats you (and perhaps caused the best part of my 
 present troubles). He is now an army chaplain; 
 and I sit moaning at Harrogate. 
 
 57
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 Ululu ! 
 
 My eviction took place in the first week of 
 August; and on 3. 8. 17 I wrote to Teixeira: 
 
 / am thinking of moving to Chelsea on Tues- 
 day. . . . You may remeitiber a story of Ben- 
 jamin Jowett in connection with two undergrad- 
 uates who persisted in staying up at BallioL 
 throughout the Long Vacation. Jowett, by way 
 of gently dislodging them, insisted first that they 
 should attend Chapel daily. The undergraduates 
 grumbled, but obeyed. Jowett, seeing that his 
 first attack had failed, arranged with the kitchen 
 authorities that the food served to these recalcit- 
 rant young scholars should be entirely uneat- 
 able, and in the course of time their spirit was 
 so much broken that they left him and Balliol in 
 peace. He is reported to have said, as he 
 watched them driving down to the station: 
 "That sort goeth not forth but by prayer and 
 fasting." So with me. J have manfully with- 
 stood the stahvart labourers zvho break walls 
 down all round me throughout the night; but, 
 when the porters are paid off, the maids deprived 
 of their rooms, the hot-water supply disconnected 
 and the gas cut of at the main, I feel that I may 
 retire with dignity and the full honours of 
 war. . . . 
 
 58
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 Make yourself as comfortable in Chelsea as 
 you can, he answered on 4. 8. 17. As at present 
 advised, we return on JVednesday fortnight, the 
 22nd. . . . 
 
 The days here speed past on wings, thanks to 
 their monotony. Waters at 8; again at lO.^o; 
 a bath or baths at 11; lunch at i.^o; a jog-trot 
 drive from j to 4; bridge; dinner at 7.J0; mas- 
 sage at g; all this with unfailing regularity. 1 
 believe far more in my masseuse (she lives at this 
 house) than in my doctor. It will amuse your 
 father to hear that this genius is prescribing for 
 me in the matter of rheumatism, neuritis and 
 fjbrositis in the arm without having once had my 
 shirt off/ I make suggestions, at the instance of 
 the masseuse, and he promptly annexes them as 
 his own: 
 
 ''Tell me, doctor, may I do so-and-so?" 
 
 "You are to do so-and-so; and this very day!" 
 
 The doctors here generally have the very 
 worst name; but there is nobody to pull them up 
 or show them up. 
 
 The place teems with people zvhoni I know and 
 don't want to see. 
 
 The rain it raineth every day and all day. . . . 
 
 My cure is now over, he writes on 12. 8. 17; 
 it has been long and costly; it has done me no 
 
 59
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 good at all. hideed viy main affliction is worse; 
 certain movements of the right arm which zvere 
 possible zuith comparative ease before I came 
 down are now nearly impossible. On Saturday, 
 at the final consultation, when I took leave of my 
 doctor and paid him five guineas, he told me for 
 the first time that I have no neuritis but that I 
 have bursitis. All the while, mark you, he has 
 been treating me for fibrositis. It is a consola- 
 tion to know, however, that I have no arthritis. 
 fVhat I have been having is what the vulgar 
 would call a hi-tiddlyhitis high old time. . . . 
 
 A week later I went again to Cornwall on 
 leave. 
 
 Do devote yourself, wrote Teixeira, 25. 8. 17, 
 at any rate for the first ten days of your 
 absence, to becoming very well and strong. I 
 have never seen you quite so ill as yesterday and I 
 was infinitely distressed about it. Treat yourself 
 as though you were an exceedingly old man like 
 me. Then when you have entered upon your 
 rejuvenescence you can begin to play pranks with 
 yourself again. . . . 
 
 Later he added : 
 
 Be careful not to honour the Atlantic with 
 more than one immersion a day. . . . 
 
 60
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 And, 30. 8. 17. / am exceedingly busy, but 
 I am enjoying it all. My health is as bad as ever 
 and I have recovered my famous lead-poisoning 
 hue. I expect you, however, to return with the 
 bloom of roses and the stains of coffee on your 
 cheeks. So make up your mind to sleep and do 
 it. . . . 
 
 In the first week of September there began 
 the most persistent series of air-raids that oc- 
 curred at any stage during the war. 
 
 Last night, Teixeira writes, 5.9. 17, was 
 made hideous by a pack of confounded Germans 
 zvho came over London and created no end of a 
 din. I looked out of the window, saw one shell 
 burst in a south-easterly direction, debated 
 whether to go below or remain in bed and re- 
 mained in bed. 
 
 [My cook], from her basement, appears to 
 have obtained a much clearer aural view: 
 
 '^Didn't you hear them two raiders firing 
 bom-m-ms at each other, sir?" 
 
 There spoke your Sinn Feiner: they were both 
 raiders to her. The row lasted for over two 
 hours; and I feel an utter wreck. Lord knows 
 what mischief the brutes have done this time. 
 
 Vale et nos ama. 
 
 61
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 Next day, in a letter dated, City of Dread- 
 ful Nights, he adds: 
 
 Last night no air-raid was possible, because of 
 an appalling thunderstorm, zvhich kept me awake 
 for another three hours. If you have tver heard 
 thunder rolling for fifty seconds imtKmit inter- 
 cession and giving sixty of these roUs to the 
 hour, you will know the sort of thundy^rstorm it 
 
 was. 
 
 This description prompts him to an anec- 
 dote: 
 
 "Then there's Roche, the resident magistrate. 
 Don't go shooting Roche now . . . unless it's by 
 accident. What does he look like? Well, if 
 ye've ever seen a half-drowned rat, with a grey 
 worsted muffler round its neck, then ye knozv the 
 kind of man Roche is!" — Speech quoted before 
 the Parnell Commission. 
 
 On my return from Cornwall, my flat was 
 not yet ready for me, but the Teixeiras' hos- 
 pitality allowed me to continue staying with 
 them. 
 
 You zvill be as welcome on Thursday night as 
 peace at Christmas, wrote Teixeira, 9. 9. 17. 
 
 62
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 [My cook] is azvay on a holiday and there is a 
 possibility that she will not he hack by then; and 
 in the meantime there is nobody else. You may, 
 therefore, have to submit to a modicum of dis- 
 comfort: . . . your boots will probably have to 
 accumulate to some extent before they are cleaned 
 on the larger scale. You have so many boots, 
 however, that I venture to hope that this zvill 
 not incommode you unduly. 
 
 This welcome was seasoned later by a story 
 which Teixeira invented, describing his 
 efforts to dislodge me. According to this, he 
 used to fall resonantly from his bedroom to his 
 study at 5.0 each morning and, if this failed to 
 rouse me, he would mount the stairs again 
 and continue to throw himself down until I 
 waked. At 6.0 a cup of tea would be brought 
 me; at 7.0 the morning paper; at 8.0 my 
 letters. When I went to my bath at 8.30, 
 Teixeira used to assert that he flung my 
 clothes into a suit-case, tiptoed downstairs 
 and laid the case on the doorstep. His tactics 
 failed because I only waited until he was 
 locked in the bathroom before creeping down 
 and retrieving the case. 
 
 As our leave was over for the year, there 
 
 63
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 was no further exchange of letters save when 
 one or other was absent from our depart- 
 ment. 
 
 / have read the new Maeterlinck play ^ — a 
 good theme infamously treated, I find myself 
 writing, 27. 12. 18. / beg you to scrap the 
 third act and with it your regard for M's feel- 
 ings; then rewrite it with a little passion, a great 
 deal of fear and unlimited un-understanditig 
 horror. The invasion of Belgium wasn't a 
 Greek tragedy where the afflicted prosed and 
 philosophised — with a chorus dilating on cattle- 
 yas ; it was noisy, bloody and, above all, unbeliev- 
 able. Maeterlinck has brought no nightmare 
 into it. . . . 
 
 Letter just received, he replied next day. 
 You are a highly illuminated and illuminating 
 critick. Your remarks upon that play are ex- 
 actly right (as I now know, having just read my 
 first three Greek plays). . . . 
 
 / enclose, he writes 10. 8. 18, i ;)4 chapters 
 of the Couperus classical comedy-novel [The 
 Tour], which I amused myself by doing because 
 you insisted so emphatically that the book should 
 
 1 The Burgomaster of Stillemonde. 
 
 64
 
 Alexander Tetxeira de Mattos 
 
 be done. But I will go no further till I have 
 your verdict. Don't trouble to do any work on 
 this; the 7narginal refs. were merely inserted as 
 I went along. Just see if the thing is the sort of 
 thing that's likely to take on; and talk to me 
 about it when you see me. . . . 
 
 65
 
 IX 
 
 In 1918 Teixeira's health had so much im- 
 proved that he was able to dispense with all 
 violent and disabling cures. 
 
 This was the period when he was, socially, 
 in greatest request. I introduced him, in the 
 spring, to Mr. and Mrs. Asquith, who shewed 
 him much hospitality and great kindness 
 from this time until, his death. His leaves 
 were now usually spent with them at Sutton 
 Courtney; but, since he required to take little 
 or no sick-leave, the number of letters ex- 
 changed in this year is small. 
 
 At the armistice, he left the Intelligence 
 Section to become secretary to the depart- 
 ment; and, though we worked in the same 
 building for two or three months more, I 
 naturally saw less of him than when we shared 
 the same table. The last,communication that 
 passed between us as colleagues, like the first, 
 written three years before, contained an invi- 
 tation. Its form must be explained by refer- 
 ence to Stevenson's and Osborne's Wrong 
 
 66
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 Box. Rudyard Kipling has mentioned, in 
 A Diversity of Creatures, the sublime brother- 
 hood to whom this book is a second Bi- 
 ble. 
 
 "I remembered," [he writes in The Vortex'], 
 "a certain Joseph Finsbury who delighted the 
 Tregonwell Arms . . . with nine . , . versions 
 of a single income of two hundred pounds, plac- 
 ing the imaginary person in — but I could not 
 recall the list of towns further than 'London, 
 Paris, Bagdad, and Spitzbergen.' This last I 
 must have murmured aloud, for the Agent-Gen- 
 eral suddenly became human and went on : 'Bus- 
 soran, Heligoland, and the Scilly Islands' — 
 'What?' growled Penfentenyou. 'Nothing,' said 
 the Agent-General, squeezing my hand affection- 
 ately, 'Only we have just found out that we 
 are brothers. . . . Fve got it. 'Brighton, Cin- 
 cinnati and Nijni-Novgorod!' God bless 
 R. L. s.^ . . ." One of the greatest living author- 
 ities on The Wrong Box was a member of the 
 Reform Club; and, on joining, Teixeira found it 
 necessary to his self-protection to study the most 
 aptly-quoted work in the world. 
 
 My invitation was couched in the cryptic terms 
 of the brotherhood: 
 
 1 Frank MacKinnon K. C. 
 
 67
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 MATTOS. Alexander William de Bent 
 Teixeira, if this should meet 
 the eye of, he will hear 
 something to his advantage 
 by lunching zvith me to-day 
 at the far end of JVatcrloo 
 Station (Departure Plat- 
 form) or even at Lincoln's 
 Inn. 
 War Trade Intelligence Department. 
 SO December, igi8. 
 
 On leaving the department early in 1919, I 
 saw and heard little, of Teixeira until he in- 
 vited me to collaborate in the translation 
 of The Tour. Occasional divergencies of 
 opinion about translating Latin words in the 
 English rendering of a Dutch novel had the 
 very desirable result of making Teixeira set 
 out some few of the principles which he fol- 
 lowed. 
 
 Couperus sends me this postcard, he writes, 
 29. 4. 18 : 
 
 "Amice, 
 
 ''You are of course at liberty to act according 
 to your taste and judgement. I do not however 
 understand the thing: in every novel treating of 
 
 68
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 antiquity the classical word sometimes gives a 
 nuance to the untranslatable local colour. And 
 every novelist feels this: See Quo Vadis, in 
 Jeremiah Curtius' translation. However, do as 
 you think proper. 
 
 1 ours, 
 "L. C." 
 
 He has us on the hip with his Jeremiah Curtius. 
 And I feel more than ever that you were too dras- 
 tic in your views and I too weak in yielding to 
 them. . . . 
 
 We should always guard ourselves against the 
 bees in our bonnets. JVhen I produced Zola's 
 Heirs of Rabourdin, the stage-manager said his 
 play-actors couldn't pronounce Monsieur, Ma- 
 dame and Mademoiselle to his liking: might he 
 try how it would sound with Mr., Mrs., and Miss 
 Rabourdinf He tried! 
 
 If your principle were carried to any length, 
 you would have to call a pagoda a tozver, a jin- 
 rickshaw a buggy, a cafe a cofee-house, a gen- 
 darme a policeman (i.e. a sergent-de-villej, a 
 toga a cloak, a gondola a wherry, an Alpenstock 
 an Alpine stick, a ski a snowshoe: one could go 
 on for ever! 
 
 Yet I am ever yours, 
 Tex. 
 
 69
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 In the spring and summer of 1919 our 
 letters became more frequent. Though Teix- 
 eira spent most of his time in his department, I 
 employed the first months of liberation in 
 staying with friends. The translation of The 
 Tour went on apace;, and arrangements were 
 made for the English publication of Old 
 People and the Things That Pass. If he had 
 given his readers no other book by Couperus 
 or by any^ other writer, he would still have 
 established two reputations with this. 
 
 It's a funny thing, he writes, 21. 5. ig; 4: S7 
 a. m..; but I find that I can no longer trs. Latin, 
 even with a dictionary. I suppose it's because 
 I can't construe it. Would you mind putting a 
 line-and-a-bit of Ovid into English for me? 
 Here it is: 
 
 Materian superabat opus, nam Mulciber illic 
 i^^quora celarat. 
 
 . . . My intentions are to go down to I. for 
 5 or 6 days on the ^th of June and to join my 
 wife at Bexhill on or about the i8th for 3 or 4 
 weeks. 
 
 "Bexhill-on-Sea 
 
 Is the haven for me," 
 
 70
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 sang Clement Scott in a visitors' -book discovered 
 by Max Beerbohm, ivho tore him to pieces for 
 it in the Saturday, in an article signed "Max." 
 Scott, pretending not to know who Max was, 
 flew to the Era and wrote his famous absurdity, 
 "Come out of your hole, rat!" Gad, how we 
 used to laugh in those days! . . . 
 
 My reply began: 
 
 / resent your practice of heading your letters 
 with the unseemly time at which you leave a warm 
 and comfortable bed. And I dated my own: 22 
 May, igig. Cocktail-time. What would you 
 think of me if I headed my letters with the equally 
 unseemly time at which I sometitnes go to bed? 
 I have been working so late one or two nights last 
 week and this that the times would coincide, and 
 you might bid me good-morning as I bade you 
 good-night. . . . 
 
 I went . . . to a musical party. . . . I felt 
 that it was incumbent upon me to see zvhether 
 you had done anything in the matter of the Bel- 
 gian quartette.^ You will be shocked to hear 
 that the quartette is not only still in existence, bul 
 
 1 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. 
 
 71
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 has added a supernumerary to turn over the 
 music of the pianist. . . . 
 
 On 7. 6. 19, he wrote from Somersetshire: You 
 are — it is borne in upon me that you must be — a 
 secret autograph-hunter. Here am I, hoping to 
 do nothing but sleep 26 hours out of the 24, to 
 do nothing ever, to the great ever; and here 
 come you, hoping for a letter, lest you be pained. 
 A scripsomaniac, my poor Stephen, a scripsoman- 
 iac you will surely be, if you do not check your- 
 self in time. 
 
 Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes! I know that I am Satan 
 rebuking sin; but was Satan ever better employed? 
 Far rather would I see him rebuking sin than 
 prompting letters for idle hands to write. 
 
 Well, I know that I am staying in Somerset- 
 shire with I., who is at this moment speeding to- 
 wards the Hotel du Vieux Doelen at the Hague, 
 to nurse a sick friend. Ker pongsay voo der 
 sahf And J am happy as the day is long, petted 
 and coddled by his delightful mother, lolling 
 from the morning unto the evening in the open 
 air and doing not one stroke of work. And ut- 
 terly at my ease, not even blushing zvJien ??iy 
 brother cuckoo mocks me from the tree-top, as he 
 does sixty times to the minute. 
 
 72
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 I return on the I2th; on the i ph I go cuckoo- 
 ing at the IFharf, returning on the i6lh; . . . 
 on the i8lh I join my wife at Bexhill; how, I 
 ask you, can I come a-cuckooing in Lincoln's Inn? 
 
 Nor do see any chance of touching The Tour 
 while I am here. I am really too busy to do 
 aught hut play the sedulous cuckoo in Cockayne. 
 So let my visit to you be a pleasure (to both of 
 us) postponed. . . . 
 
 To this I replied, 14. 7. 19: I lunched yester- 
 day with one Butterworth, ivho is opening up a 
 publisher's business. In the course of conversa- 
 tion I mentioned to him your translation of Old 
 People and the Things that Pass. More than 
 that, I took upon myself to lend him my copy of 
 the American edition so that he might have an 
 opportunity of forming his own opinion of it. 
 You may, if you like, call me interfering and pre- 
 sumptuous, but I have not committed you in any 
 way to anything, and yesterday's transaction may 
 he regarded as no more than the loan of a book 
 from one person to another. I, as you know, 
 feel it a reproach that that book is still unpub- 
 lished in England, and, if Butterworth thinks fit 
 to make you a good offer, no one will he better 
 pleased than me. . . . 
 
 73
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 On 26.7.19 he wrote from Bexhill: // it 
 comes on to rain as it threatens daily, I shall he 
 returning The Tour to you quite soon; and in any 
 case it will go hack to you before I leave here on 
 the i^th of July: I must reduce the weight of 
 my luggage; I had to run all over the town to 
 find two stalwart ruffians to carry it to the attic 
 where I sleep. 
 
 You need not look at it before we meet unless 
 you wish; but you may like to do Coras song ^ 
 in your sleep meanwhile; and my additional com- 
 ments and queries are few. 
 
 I am leading here that methodical humdrum 
 life which alone makes time fly. When I return 
 to town you shall see me occasionally at the opera, 
 but not oftener than twice a week. You will 
 have to look for me, however, for I shall be stalk- 
 ing behind pillars, cloaked in black, like Lucien 
 de What' s-his-name, hiding from my black beast, 
 Lady. . . . 
 
 P. S. Can you tell me if Beecham intends to 
 do any light operas at Drury Lane in addition to 
 that tinkly, overrated FlUe de Madame Angot? 
 / am dying to hear the whole Offenbach series 
 before I die. 
 
 A letter from Bexhill, dated 2. 7. 19, 
 
 1 Hymn to Aphrodite. 
 
 74
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 touches on one general principle of trans- 
 lating: 
 
 . . . fVith all deference, a translator's first 
 duty is not to translate. His first duly is to love 
 God, honour the king and hate the Germans. 
 His next duty is to produce a version correspond- 
 ing as near as may be with what an English or- 
 iginal writer, if he were writing that particular 
 hook, would set down. His last duty is to trans- 
 late every blessed word of the original. . . . 
 
 Next day he wrote : 
 
 T. B. [Thornton Butterworth] is taking "O. 
 P." [Old People] and coming down here to see 
 me on Saturday. 
 
 Ever so many thanks for your generous offices 
 in the matter. . . . 
 
 On Peace Day, in a letter dated from Fins- 
 bury Circus, Teixeira writes: 
 
 Here sit I, putting in four or five hours before 
 a train leaves to take me to Herbert George and 
 Jane Wells at Easton Glebe and reading Quo 
 Vadis. Already, in gg pages, I have discovered 
 21 expressions which you would undoubtedly 
 have condemned in The Tour. 
 
 75
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 . . . This is interesting: [the author] says 
 that in Nero's day it was already becoming a 
 stunt among the Romans to call the gods by their 
 Greek Names. Tiberius was not so much earlier 
 — was he? — than Nero that the practice might 
 not haie begun even then. If so, we can let 
 Couperus have his way and retain those few 
 names. They are very few, I think. I can re- 
 member at the moment only Aphrodite and Zeus 
 and possibly Eros. It may be that Juno is men- 
 tioned as Hera, but I doubt it. 
 
 There is a charming garden, with a most beau- 
 tifully kept lawn. The flowers . . . consist 
 entirely of the only three that I dislike: fuchsias, 
 begotiias and red geraniums. 
 
 Still . . . 
 
 I hope that you are spending the day as peace- 
 fully and that this will find you well and 
 happy. ... 
 
 Two east-end Jews within hail of me are talk- 
 ing Yiddish and sharing a Daily Snail between 
 them. There is a cat. There is or am I. And 
 there are those fuchsias. 
 
 On i8. 8. 19, I wrote: 
 
 The North of Ireland seems beating up for a 
 storm, does not it? I suppose there is no point 
 in my reminding you that a perfect gentleman 
 
 76
 
 Alexander Teixeira de M altos 
 
 would not fail to present himself at Etiston next 
 Friday at 8.10 p. in. to luck me into my sleeper 
 and see me safely offf My address in Ireland 
 from Aug. 2jrd to ^ist is (in the care of Sir John 
 Leslie^ Baronet) Glaslough, Co. Monaghan. . . . 
 
 At 8.10 on Friday, he replied, 20. 8. 19, 
 this perfect gentleman will be eating his melon 
 at Hunlercombe Manor House, Henley-on- 
 Thames (in the care of Squire Nevile Foster), 
 but for which he would undoubtedly come to see 
 you oft in the stilly night. I zvish you safely 
 through the war-zone, happy and interested in 
 this, your first visit to Ireland and prosperously 
 home again. Now do not write and answer that 
 you have paid eighteen visits to Ireland before: 
 those eighteen visits have always been and always 
 will be to my mind as mythical as the travels of 
 Mungo Park or Mendes Pinto. . . . 
 
 Feeling that I must acquaint Teixeira with 
 my safe arrival in Ireland, I wrote, 28. 8. 19: 
 
 Glaslough, 
 Co. Monaghan. 
 . . . I am here; yes, but how did I get here? 
 I am here; yes, but shall I ever get away? I 
 left London on Friday with my young and very 
 lovely charge, encountered engine-trouble and 
 reached Holyhead an hour late. I sat on the 
 
 77
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 boat-deck with her (but without an overcoat), 
 watcJujig the dawn until I was chilled to the 
 marrow and any other man would have been 
 delirious with pneumonia. The breakfast-car 
 train had left, so we took a later one from Dub- 
 lin. Being faced with the prospect of waiting 
 2Y2 hours at Clones, I got out at Drogheda to 
 send a telegram to the Leslies, begging them to 
 meet us there by car. Unhappily, the train went 
 on without me, bearing away my young and very 
 lovely charge, my suit-case, my despatch-box, my 
 umbrella and my hat. I was left with a pair of 
 gloves and my charge's ticket. . . . I bought 
 myself a cap of 4/6 and a clean collar for 
 / 4d, and spent the day writing letters, contriving 
 epigrams and lunching off scrambled eggs and 
 Irish whiskey. 
 
 I have been taken to the McKenna grave at 
 Donagh and presented — by Shane — to the clan 
 as its head, which I am not. The recognition of 
 Odysseus by his old nurse zvas eclipsed by the 
 recognition accorded me by an old woman who 
 remembered — unpro7npted — my coming to Glas- 
 lough twelve years ago and thanked God that she 
 had been spared to see me again. It is a very 
 lovely place that the Leslies have taken from us. 
 
 But how to leave it? It is Horse Show week, 
 and every sleeper has been booked for three 
 
 78
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 weeks. I shall have to cross from Belfast to 
 Liverpool, I think, and try to get my sleeping 
 done on the boat. And that means that I shall 
 not he home till Tuesday. Can't be helped. 
 
 On 31. 8. 19 Teixeira wrote to greet me on 
 my return from Ireland: 
 
 After your preliminary wanderings, my dear 
 Stephen O'Dysseus, welcome home again! You 
 were always the worst courier in the world; I've 
 not ever known you to bring one of your young 
 and very lovely charges to her destination with- 
 out encountering cataclysmal adventures on the 
 road. . . . Still, would that I had known that 
 you can buy collars, clean and therefore presum- 
 ably new collars, at Drogheda for fourpence 
 apiece. Yesterday I paid fifteen shillings for a 
 dozen. . . . 
 
 On 21. 12. 19 he writes to offer me good 
 wishes for Christmas: 
 
 The one and only thing that the Fortunate 
 Youth appeared to me not to possess will reach 
 you in a little registered packet to-morrow eve- 
 ning. . . . You are to accept it as a token of the 
 Jiappiness which I wish you during this Christ- 
 mas and the whole of the coming year. 
 
 79
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 That was a very jolly party on JFednesday: 
 I enjoyed everything: the gay and kindly com- 
 pany, the admirable foodstuffs, even the music; 
 and, if it he true, as I told you, that Covent 
 Garden has shrunk in size since my young days, 
 I am compelled to confess that your box was a 
 larger than I ever saw before. 
 
 At this season of excess, he writes on Christ- 
 mas Day, / am allowed to indulge my passion 
 for chocolates, but not to buy any for myself; 
 and it was most though ful of you to pander to 
 my taste. Thank you ever so much. And thank 
 you also for your good wishes. . . . 
 
 I must be off to mass, but not without first 
 begging you to hand your mother and sister my 
 best wishes for a happy New Year. As to you, 
 I shall see or talk to you before then. . . . 
 My young Sinn Feiner has written a novel ^ 
 which to my mind is a most remarkable produc- 
 tion and which will have to be read by you at all 
 costs. It is published in Dublin; and it is doubt- 
 ful whether a single other copy will find its way 
 to this foreign land. 
 
 In April Teixeira and his wife went to 
 Hove: and on 27. 4. 20 he writes: 
 
 // is blowing what-you-may-call-it here: 'arf a 
 
 1 Eimar O'Duffy's Wasted Island. 
 
 80
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 mo', 'arf a brick, half a gale. Apart from that, 
 we are well and send oiir love. 
 
 Commenting on a house-party which I had 
 described, he adds: 
 
 Jll we can do, my dear Stephen, is to ask you 
 to remember the old adage: 
 
 Birds of a feather flock together; 
 and the modern variants: 
 
 Birds of a beak meet twice a week; 
 Birds of a voice share a Rolls-Royce; 
 Birds of a kidney are Alf and Sydney; 
 Birds of a tail are hail-f ellow-hail ; 
 Birds of a crest are twins of the best; 
 Birds of a gizzard are witch and wizzard; 
 Birds of a chirrup are treacle and syrup; 
 The hawk and the owl sit cheek by jowl. 
 
 Yours ever, 
 Alexander and Lily Tex. 
 
 The next letter was from his wife and 
 brought the news that Teixeira's health had 
 taken an unexpected turn for the worse. His 
 life was not in immediate danger, but hence- 
 forward he must regard himself as an invalid 
 and must work under the conditions imposed 
 by his doctor. 
 
 8i
 
 X 
 
 As soon as he was well enough to be moved, 
 Teixeira came up from Hove and, after a 
 few days in Chelsea, went to a nursing-home 
 in Crowborough for the summer. 
 
 Nothing is more characteristic of him than 
 that the first message he sent after the be- 
 ginning of his illness was one of reassurance 
 and optimism: 
 
 Sent you a wire this morning, he writes, lest 
 you be seriously distressed. Really much better 
 after nine hours' sleep. . . . I expect I shall be 
 quite well by Saturday, when we return but I 
 shall have to be jolly careful. . . . 
 
 Thanks for your letters, he writes, 8. 5. 20, 
 when we were arranging to meet. Nothing you 
 can do for me at present except converse with 
 me in the form of: Tex. Very short questions: 
 Stephen. Very long answers. Tm getting 
 plaguily impatient at the slowness of my recovery: 
 it's very wrong, wicked and impatient of me. 
 
 I enclose. 
 
 82
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 A. Two lines from your favourite "poet" 
 (save the Mark Tapley) ! 
 
 B. Some wedding-elusions which remind me 
 that Burne-Jones, when they told him that mar- 
 riage zvas a lottery, said: 
 
 "Then it ought to be made illegal. 
 
 >} 
 
 While undergoing his rest-cure, he not 
 infrequently communicated with me by 
 means of annotations to the letters which I 
 wrote him. His comments are given in 
 parenthesis. 
 
 I . . . went to see As You Like It at the Lyric 
 Theatre, Hammersmith, I wrote, 15. 5. 20. It 
 is a good production but an uncommonly bad 
 play, tike so many of that author's. If any 
 dramatist of the present day served up that kind 
 of musical comedy without the music, but with 
 all the existing purple patches, I zuonder what 
 your modern critic would make of it. 
 
 (Laurence Irving used to go about saying, 
 "Teixeira says that Shakespeare wrote only one 
 decent play: Timon of Athens! JFha-art d'ye 
 think of that? The mun's mud!" Talking of 
 Shakespeare, if you want to laugh, really to 
 laugh, ce qu'on appelle to laugh, read {you zvill 
 never see it acted) a stage-play called Titus And- 
 ronicus. . . .) 
 
 83
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 (Help! A man waved to me on the lawn 
 y'day: an Ebrew Jew . . . had motored down to 
 see his sister here; told me I'd find her very 
 "bright." She's fifty bien sonnes. Told him I'd 
 feel too shy to talk to anybody for weeks. But 
 I'm lending her books. Help!) 
 
 Strictly limited in the amount of work 
 which he was allowed to do, Teixeira 
 in these weeks read voraciously; and his 
 letters of this period contain almost the only 
 critical judgements that I was able to extract 
 from him. 
 
 On 25. 5. 20. he writes: 
 
 Was Pearsall Smith the inventor of the pedi- 
 gree tracing the descent of the English from the 
 ten lost tribes of Israel? 
 
 Isaac 
 
 I 
 
 Isaacson 
 
 Saxon 
 
 What was the other famous book, besides 
 Erewhon, which George Meredith (whom I am 
 beginning to dislike almost as much as Henry 
 James and Pearl Craigie) caused Smith, Elder 
 
 84
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 &' Co. to reject? fVas it Treasure Island or 
 something quite different? 
 
 WJiich Satnuel Butlers am I to buy now? I 
 have (in the order of which I have enjoyed 
 them) : 
 
 The Way of all Flesh 
 Alps and Sanctuaries 
 The Notebooks 
 Erewhon Revisited 
 Erewhon 
 
 The machinery part of the last-named bored 
 me; the philosophy also; and I fear I missed much 
 of the irony. But the style! It's unbeaten. 
 It's as good as Defoe. It knocks Stevenson silly 
 because it's so utterly natural. Hats of to that 
 for style. 
 
 Should I enjoy The Humour of Homer, 
 though knowing nothing or little about Homer? 
 The Authoress of the Odyssey: would this be 
 wasted on me? What is The Fair Haven about? 
 I don't want to read Butler's religious views — all 
 you Britons think and talk and write much too 
 much about religion — nor his views on evolution: 
 he is too much in sympathy, I gather, with that 
 dishonest fellow, Darwin. 
 
 What shall I read of that same Darwin, so 
 that I may do my own chuckling? Please name 
 
 85
 
 /Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 the best t'wo or three, in their order as written. 
 
 Where shall I find the quarrels between Hux- 
 ley and Darwin? That accomplished gyurl, my 
 stepdaughter, had read all about them before 
 she was sixteen but was unable to point me to 
 the book. 
 
 At your leisure, my dear Stephen, answer me 
 all these questions. As you see, I'm making 
 progress. I have neither capacity nor inclina- 
 tion (thank God) for work yet, but I can read day 
 without end. 
 
 Pearsall Smith's Stories from the Old Testa- 
 ment would amuse you. It's too dear; but it 
 would amuse you, in parts. 
 
 In discussing Darwin's books, I suggested 
 that Teixeira should find out whether the 
 members of his church were encouraged to 
 read them. 
 
 He replies, 28. 5. 20: 
 
 . . . I am very glad that Darwin is on the 
 
 Index and I hope that this interferes with his 
 royalties. . . . 
 
 And on 2. 6. 20: 
 
 Pray bear with a postcard. I noticed that 
 you used "detour" on two occasions. . . . I sym- 
 
 86
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 pathize. There's no English equivalent save 
 Tony Lumpkin's seriocomic "circumbendibus." 
 But I meant to tell you of my recent discovery 
 that Chesterton uses "detour," sic without an ac- 
 cent or italics. And it's well worth considering. 
 I, for my part, have made up my mind to adopt 
 it in future, by analogy with "depot" and, for 
 that matter, "tour," which is never italicized. 
 
 I also intend to adopt your "judgement" . . . . 
 
 What a lot one can still write for a penny! 
 
 Tex. 
 
 In acknowledging one of his translations, 
 I wrote : 
 
 Two of my worst faults as a reader are that 
 I always finish a book which I have begun and 
 always begin a book which has been presented 
 to me by the author or translator. 
 
 Teixeira comments: 
 
 (I always thought highly of your brain till 
 now. I regret to tell you that the only other 
 human being who has ever confessed that vice to 
 me is J. T. Grein's mother. . . . Drop that vice. 
 JVhy, I once "began" to read the Bible! . . .) 
 
 With most of your criticisms I agree, my let- 
 ter continued. Teixeira had been reading the 
 
 87
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 manuscript of some short stories; though there 
 are one or two points on which I remain adamant. 
 If you wish to shorten your life, ask any Cold- 
 streamer whether he belongs to the Coldstreams. 
 It is always either the Coldstreajn Guards or the 
 Coldstream. . . .^ 
 
 (I suspected you of being right, but I was not 
 ashamed to ask you. You may or may not have 
 observed how much less of a snob I am than most 
 of the people you strike. Cricketifig terms, 
 nautical terms, military terms, Latin quantities, 
 those endless excuses for the worst forms of Brit- 
 ish snobbery, all leave me cold.) 
 
 In discussing methods of work, he writes: ' 
 (. . . It will interest you to know that Oscar 
 JVilde dropped all his pleasures when he wrote 
 his plays; retired into rooms in St. James' Place, 
 hired ad hoc, to write the first line; and did not 
 leave them till he had written the last. And one 
 of them a least, The Importance, zvas a perfect 
 work of art, whatever one may think of the 
 others.) 
 
 Though he enjoyed his rest-cure, it gave him 
 —he complained — no news to communicate: 
 
 1 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. 
 
 88
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 You're not interested in my hrozvn dog and I 
 speak to no one else. 
 
 On my pointing out that I could not be 
 interested in an animal of which I had hither- 
 to not heard, Teixeira wrote, 4. 6. 20: 
 
 . . . It must have been my morbid delicacy 
 that prevented me, knowing your dislike of dogs, 
 from fnentionitig the brovcn dog before. As a 
 man gains strength, he loses delicacy: that ex- 
 plains though it does not excuse my late reference 
 to him. He is an Irish terrier, endowed with a 
 vast sense of humour, who runs about on three 
 legs (which is one more than I, who am eighteen 
 times his age, can boast) and plays with me from 
 ten till half-past six (when I go to bed). He 
 saves me from all boredom and I am grateful to 
 him. . . . 
 
 Little by little I am beginning to itch for 
 work. . . I can't work yet; but I regard the itch- 
 ing as a good sign. And I no longer find these 
 longish letters so much of a strain. It takes a 
 lot to kill a Portugal.^ 
 
 Bring me to the gentle remembrance of your 
 charming host and hostess. I wonder if I shall 
 ever meet either of them at one of your pleasant 
 
 1 Perfectly good seventeenth-century English. 
 
 89
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 dinners agam. I wonder if I shall ever dine 
 with you again at all. . . . 
 
 On 8. 6. 20 he writes: 
 
 . . . I send you a letter from . . . a Beau- 
 mont master and scholastic in minor orders. 
 Apart from its nice misspelling, its noble, broad- 
 minded casuistry will explain to you why I love 
 the Church, as it explains to me why you hate it. 
 Cependant / suppose that I must set to work and 
 read me a little Darwin. 
 
 I am making fair progress, as my recent letters 
 must have proved to you. But I do not yet 
 consider myself near enough to complete recov- 
 ery to return to town. . . . 
 
 In June Teixeira was created a Chevalier 
 of the Order of Leopold II. My letter of 
 congratulation was annotated on this and 
 other subjects: 
 
 Referring to a criticism of Kipps, I had 
 written: 
 
 It is excellent stuff, and I always regard Wells 
 as being one of the . . . greatest . . . comedy- 
 writers. But I always feel that in Kipps and all 
 the earlier books he is only working up to Mr. 
 
 90
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 Polly, which is the most exquisite thing that he 
 has done in that line. 
 
 (I have read both down here and prefer Kipps. 
 The phrases underlined, quoted in the Times 
 notice (attached) of fVells' Polly-Kippsian "His- 
 tory of the World" reminds me irresistibly of 
 the old lady who, witnessing a performance of 
 "Anthony and Cleopatra," by your Mr. Shake- 
 speare or our Mr. Shaw, observed: "How dif- 
 ferent from the home life of our dear queen!") 
 
 . . . Let me offer you — a trifle belatedly per- 
 haps — my congratulations on your new dignity. 
 
 ("Thanks." A. Kipps) 
 
 Certainly you should tell the [Belgian] Ambas- 
 sador that it is not only inconvenient but impos- 
 sible for you to be invested in person and that he 
 must send you the warrant and insignia. . . . 
 
 Did I ever tell you the story of Mr. G.'s search 
 for a decoration? The Kaiser refused to give 
 him one on any consideration, and he therefore 
 toured Europe, lending or giving money to one 
 government after another in the hope of being 
 ultimately rewarded with the 4th class of the 
 Speckled Pig. In every court he was promised 
 his decoration, but, when he presented himself 
 for the investiture, the court officials turned from 
 him with just that expression of loathing and 
 nausea which he had formerly observed on the 
 
 91
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattes 
 
 face of the Kaiser. It was only when he reached 
 Bulgaria that he found the Czar and his court less 
 squeamish. On payment of a considerable sola- 
 tium he was invested with the igth class of the 
 Expiring Porpoise and returned in triumph to his 
 native Stettin. Here, however, his troubles were 
 only beginning, as he was unable to obtain per- 
 mission to wear the Expiring Porpoise at any 
 public function in Gerfnany. Seeing that he had 
 paid one considerable sum to the Bulgarian Czar 
 and another to the firm of jewellers, who sub- 
 stituted diamonds for the paste of the jewel he 
 felt, naturally enough, that he ivas receiving little 
 value for his lavish expenditure. Bulgaria, it 
 seemed, was the only country where the Expiring 
 Porpoise could be worn. Accordingly he re- 
 turned to Sofia and paid a further su7n to be in- 
 vited to the banquet which the burgomaster of 
 Sofia was giving on the Czar's birthday. Here 
 he was at length rewarded for so many months of 
 disappointment and neglect. Before the soup 
 had been served, the Czar had hurried round to 
 his place and was kissing him on both cheeks. 
 ''My dear old friend!" said he, "No, you are 
 not to call me 'sir' ; henceforth it is 'Fritz' and 
 'Ferdinand' betzveen us, is it not? How long it 
 is since last I sazu you! I have been waiting to 
 express my heart-felt regret for the unpardonable
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 carelessness of my Chamberlain. When it was 
 too late and you had left Sofia (/ feared for 
 ever) ^ my Chamberlain discovered that you had 
 been invested with the igth Class of the Expiring 
 Porpoise. You must have thought me mad, for 
 no sane man would offer the igth class to a per- 
 son of your distinction. It was the ist class that 
 I intended. This bauble that I am wearing round 
 my neck to-night. Tell me, my dear Fritz, that it 
 is not too late for me to repair my error." PVith 
 that word the Czar removed the collar and jewel 
 from his own neck and slipped it over the head 
 of G. taking in exchange G.'s despised collar and 
 jewel of the igth class. It was only when our 
 friend returned to his hotel that he discovered 
 the new jewel to be of the most unfinished paste, 
 as cheap or cheaper than the paste which he had 
 previously retnoved at such expense from the 
 jewel of the igth class. 
 
 (This is a splendid story.) 
 
 I am afraid, I added, that I have no idea who 
 is the official to zvhom you apply for leave to 
 wear these things. . . . 
 
 (My dear Stephen, you had better here and 
 now adopt as your maxim what I said to Brown- 
 ing soon after he had engaged my services on 
 behalf of H. M. G.: "I yield to no man living 
 in my ignorance on every subject under the sun." 
 
 93
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 You outdo and outvie me. You never know 
 anything. In other words, you know nothing. 
 But I'll wager that these are worn without per- 
 mission. What's the penalty? The Morning 
 Post to-day names a couple of dozen to whom 
 it's been granted.) 
 
 Evidently feeling that I was living to> 
 much alone, Teixeira enclosed a copy of Th. 
 Times' list of forthcoming dances: 
 
 (Don't wait for invitations, he urged in a post- 
 script. Ring the top bell and walk inside.) 
 
 The next letter needs to have Teixeira's use 
 of the word palimpsest explained. His 
 good-nature in reading his friends' manu- 
 scripts was inexhaustible. I never intended 
 him to do more than give me a general 
 opinion; but his critical vision was micro- 
 scopic, and he filled the margins with ques- 
 tions and comments. In returning me one 
 manuscript, he wrote: 
 
 / have made some 8oo notes, of which 600 are 
 purely frivolous. Six are worth serious atten- 
 tion. 
 
 While this textual scrutiny was quite inval- 
 
 94
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 uable, Teixeira seldom gave that general 
 opinion of which I always felt in most need 
 at the moment when I had lately finished a 
 book and was unable to regard it with detach- 
 ment. Accordingly, the manuscript, on leav- 
 ing him, was usually sent to another friend, 
 who commented not only on the text but also 
 on the marginalia. As her occasional con- 
 troversies with Teixeira (expressed in such 
 minutes as: 
 
 "Pull yourself together, Mr. T!" 
 
 ''You men! One's as bad as the other, 
 you know." 
 
 "Never mind what Mr. T. says, Stephen: 
 I understand." 
 
 "I u^ish my brain worked as quickly as 
 that.") 
 
 and with me invited rejoinders, the first ver- 
 sion of a manuscript sometimes took on the 
 appearance of a contentious departmental 
 file. It was in this form that Teixeira called 
 it a palimpsest. 
 
 On 22. 6. 20 he writes: 
 
 Thanks for your letter and the palimpsest. . . . 
 I've studied it amid distressing circumstances, in 
 
 95
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 a long-chair, on a lawn, beneath the sun, sur- 
 rounded by breezes and patients, who being for- 
 bidden to speak to me, dare not help me to collect 
 the scattered pages. . . . 
 
 Lady D. is another of England's darlings. In 
 the first place, she nearly always agrees with me 
 and there she's right: I have told you time after 
 time that, if only everybody would agree with 
 me, the world would be an infinitely sweeter 
 place. In the second place, she dislikes Brown- 
 ing almost as much as I do. No one can dislike 
 him quite so much; but she certainly disapproves 
 of your particular taste in extracts from the bur- 
 joice mountebank's rhymed works. 
 
 I can understand that she sometimes unsettles 
 you by condemning you for the quite logical be- 
 haviour of the male characters in your trilogy: 
 you might meet this by presenting her zvith a 
 copy of Thus spake Zarathustra in addition to 
 those pencils which will mark which you already 
 had in mind for her. On the other hand, I think 
 that you may safely take her word for it when 
 she says: 
 
 "Oh, Stephen, women aren't like this!" 
 
 Send me more! Send me more! 
 
 In a letter of 22. 6. 20, he wrote: 
 To-morrow I make my way up to Oxford for 
 
 96
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 the House Gaudy but before leaving I may find a 
 moment to report my movements. 
 
 Teixeira comments: 
 
 (I have heard of the House Beautiful but never 
 of the House Gaudy. Now don't be a British 
 snob but answer like a little Irish gentleman, as 
 I should answer if you asked me what "acht- 
 eti-tachtig Jchtergracht" mean in Dutch. Of 
 course, working it out in the light of my own in- 
 telligence, I feel that, if "House" is an Oxford 
 sobriquet for Christ Church and "gaudy" Oxford 
 slang for a merrymaking of sorts, you ought to 
 have suppressed that capital G and written "the 
 House gaudy," in distinction from the Balliol 
 gaudy, the Magdalen gaudy, etc. 
 
 You are not a Hottentot (Loud cheers), hut 
 you are as fond of capital letters as a Hottentot 
 is of glass beads. 
 
 I'm feeling rather full of beans to-day . . . 
 (as you perceive.) . . . 
 
 The improvement was visibly maintained 
 in his letter of 25. 6. 20: 
 
 Thanks for your two letters of the 2^rd and 
 2^th instant postum. Don't start; instant pos- 
 tum is the ridiculous name of the toothsome bev- 
 
 . 97
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 erage ivliich my specialist ordered me to take 
 instead of tea or cojfee. . . . 
 
 I jump at the chance of playing the school- 
 master in the matter of those capital letters. It 
 is too utterly jolly finding you in a compliant 
 mood. . . . 
 
 My rule and yours might well be to start with 
 a definite prejudice against capital letters in the 
 middle of a sentence, cofubined with a resolve 
 never to use them if it can be avoided. Having 
 taken up this firm standpoint, we can afford and 
 we can begin to make concessions. For instance, 
 my heart leapt with joy, nearly iwenty years 
 ago, when the founders of the Burlington Review 
 decided to abolish all capitals to adjectives, to 
 print "french, german, egyptian, persian," etc. 
 You have no idea how well this affected the page. 
 But what is all right in a majestic review (or was 
 it magazine, by the way?) like the Burlington 
 may look ultraprecious in a novel. Therefore I 
 concede French, German, etc. Only remember 
 that it is a concession, a concession to Anglo- 
 American vulgarity. A Frenchman writes (and 
 that not invariably : I mean, not every French- 
 man). "Un Francais les Anglais," but (invar- 
 iably) "L'elan francais, le rosbif anglais '^ The 
 Germans and Danes begin all nouns with a capi- 
 tal (as the English did, in some centuries), but 
 
 98
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 no adjectives whatever. The Italians, Norwe- 
 gians and Swedes have no capitals to their ad- 
 jectives; the Dutch are gradually discarding 
 them; they are discarded entirely in scientists* 
 Latin: the Narbonne Lycos a (a certain spider of 
 the Tarantida genus) in Latin becomes Lycosa 
 narbonniensis. . . . 
 
 Your question about "high mass" is, involun- 
 tarily, not quite fair. Mass quite conceivably 
 comes within the category of such words as State 
 and a few others, which are spelt with a capital 
 in one sense and not in another.^ I write "going 
 to mass" (no French catholic would write "allant 
 a la Messel") and I see no reason why catholics 
 should write Mass except in a technical work. 
 They would write "the Host" because of the real 
 presence; but I see no more reason for the Mass 
 than for Matins or Compline. Obviously, it 
 is different in a technical work in translating 
 Fabre, I speak of a JVasp, a Spider, a Beetle; in 
 translating Couperus, I do not. . . . 
 
 "The Colonel, the Major, the Vicar," in a 
 novel; don't they set your teeth on edge? As 
 well write about the Postmistress of the village. 
 
 When in doubt, as I wrote to you on the sub- 
 ject of the hyphenated noUns, take little Murray ^ 
 
 1 Even the French ivriie, invariably, un coup d'Etat, ie 
 conseil d'Etat, but I'etat des coups, I'etat du conseil. 
 1 The Concise Oxford Dictionary. 
 
 99
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 for your guide. He has the sense to begin the 
 vast, the i7nmense majority of his words with a 
 lower-case letter. And there are doubtful 
 words: Titanic, Cyclopean. I never know these 
 without turning 'em up for myself. 
 To sum up: 
 
 (a) take a firm stand against capitals gener- 
 ally; 
 
 (b) be prepared to make moderate (i. e. 
 grudging,) concessions ; 
 
 (c) have little Alurray at your elbow. 
 
 After so long a letter, Teixeira contented 
 himself with a few annotations to one next 
 day. 
 
 On my telling him that I had congratulated 
 a common friend of his son's "blue", he inter- 
 posed: 
 
 (I would write to A. P. if I knew what a 
 "blue" was; but I really have not the remotest 
 idea. Word of honour, I'm not conniegilchrist- 
 ing. I presume it has to do with cricket; and 
 it's a mere guess.) 
 
 I have studied your exposition of capitals, I 
 continued, with great interest and, I hope, profit, 
 though there is a fundamental difficulty which I 
 
 lOO
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 hasten to put before you. ... So long as 
 proper names intrude their capitals into mid- 
 sentetice you cannot arrive at flat uniformity, and 
 a few capitals more or less do not offend 
 me. . . . 
 
 / did not intend to be unfair about High Mass 
 and first thought of suggesting for your consid- 
 eration either Holy Communion or that hideous, 
 hypocritical, pusillanimous compromise beloved 
 of Anglicans, the "eucharist," then substituted the 
 name of a ceremonial in your own church. You, 
 I see, write of the Real Presence without capitals. 
 
 (Gross knavery and insincerity on my part; 
 rank scoundrelism. I'd have put caps, on any 
 other occasion.) 
 
 I should give capitals to this and to such words 
 as Incarnation, Crucifixion and Ascension, when 
 used in a religious connection. Also to the word 
 Hegira and any similar words culled from any 
 other religion. As I told you before, I am with- 
 out a rule and would let almost any word have 
 its capital, if I could please it thereby. Words 
 used in a special sense also have their capitals 
 from me, as for example Hall, when that means 
 a college dinner served in hall. No, I am afraid 
 that a capital for colonel, major and vicar leaves 
 my teeth unmoved, and I could write postmis- 
 
 lOI
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 tress with a capital light-heartedly. On the other 
 hand I should not use a capital for dustman, as 
 this is not a title or office. 
 
 I am, as you see, cjuite illogical and inconsist- 
 ent; and, if I try to follow your rides, it will 
 be only in the hope of pleasing you. I cannot 
 rouse myself to any enthusiasm for or against a 
 liberal use of capitals and I do not think that 
 it is a matter of great importance. On consid- 
 erations of comeliness, I think the French printed 
 page, with its vile type and vile, fiufy paper, is 
 one of the ugliest things (Nonsense, nonsense, 
 you iinasthetic Celt! The unsought, natural 
 beauty and perfection of the page make up for 
 all the inferiority of the material. Never say 
 that again! Your friend Seymour Leslie would 
 scratch and claw you for it.) ever allowed to 
 issue from a printing press, but that may be only 
 insular prejudice. . . . 
 
 Forgive a boring letter, I beg, but I am in a 
 thoroughly boring mood. (Grawnted.) . . . 
 
 A postscript to this controversy came on a 
 postcard dated 28. 6. 20: 
 
 . . . Darwin spells "the king'' with a small 
 "k." 
 
 He is rather good in spelling, bad in punctuat- 
 ion, execrable in statement, logic, deduction. In 
 
 102
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 The Descent of Man he says: 
 
 "Music arouses in us various emotions, but not 
 the more terrible ones of horror, fear, rage, etc.'' 
 
 lie had never heard of me, though I was ij 
 when he died. 
 
 Tex. 
 
 Crowborough, JO June (alas, 
 
 how time flies!) igzo. 
 For your two letters of 28, 2g June, many 
 thanks. I really can't write and congratulate H. 
 o« that! How awful! 
 
 And to think that, if Lionel [the recipient of 
 the "blue"] had been "vowed" to the B. V. M. 
 in his infancy, he'd have worn nothing but blue 
 and white, anyhow, till he came of age! . . . 
 
 (Objecting to my having enclosed the phrase 
 ^'honest broker" in inverted commas, he 
 continues : 
 
 Lady Y., you may remember, said: 
 "Good beobles, we come here for your goots." 
 "Ay," they replied, "and for our chattels 
 too!" 
 
 I don' t zvant your chattels; but I am convinced 
 that I came to England for your goots and to 
 save you from degenerating into a lady novelist. 
 
 103
 
 Alexander Teixeira de JVLattos 
 
 The worst of it is that Lady D. agreed with you. 
 . . . Seriously, however: suppose Winston were 
 to use a perfectly commonplace metaphor, to say, 
 e. g., that he had ordered the Gallipoli expedi- 
 tion off his own hat. Would that for all time 
 raise those four words from the commonplace to 
 the exceptional? Could you never employ that 
 phrase except in '' quotes"? . . . 
 
 Be sensible. Do not fight against your res- 
 cuer. Let me, when I receive the Royal Humane 
 Society's medal, feel that my gallant efforts were 
 not in vain, that I succeeded in saving your life 
 and sold! . . . 
 
 P. S. An invitation to the . . . Oppenheim wed- 
 ding has just arrived. Like the man ivho an- 
 swered the big-game-hunter's advertisement, I'm 
 not going.^ 
 
 ^ 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 intemper- 
 ately. 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. 
 
 104
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 "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 Icnock you up. Felt I musht tell 
 you. , . . that I'm not coming." . . . 
 
 Trusting thai this mill find you alive, he writes 
 7. 7. 20, / write to thank you for your letter 
 and to return the book. [The Diary of a No- 
 body]. // amused jne, though I am not prepared 
 to go as far as Rosebinger, Birring er or Bel- 
 linger. I could certainly furnish a bedroom with- 
 out it; in fact, I hope to die before I read it 
 again; I don't rank it with Don Quixote; and I 
 have never seen the statue of St. John the Bap- 
 tist, so "can't say." I think that Mr. Hardfur 
 Huttle, towards the end, does much to cheer the 
 reader. 
 
 I have bought pahnds and pahnds' worth of 
 hooks; I am rou-inned; and yet I never have 
 aught to read. Can you lend me Huxley's Col- 
 lected Essays? Can you lend me anything in 
 which somebody "goes for" somebody else? I 
 yearn to read savage attacks; you know what I 
 mean: not attaxi-cabri-au lait, but attacks free 
 from all milk of human kindness. 
 
 105
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 Here is a typical quotation from your fav- 
 ourite "poet", whojn, by the way, Benjamin Beac- 
 ons field disliked as much as I do: 
 
 "Out of the wreck I rise, past Zeus to the 
 P(sic)otency o'er him." 
 
 Nice and typical, isn't itf But you mustn't use 
 it, as the first six words form the title of a novel 
 by Beatrice Harraden which I have been driven 
 to read down here by the dearth of books. 
 
 My last two purchases have just arrived; series 
 i and ii of the New Decameron. Shall I enjoy 
 them? . . . 
 
 You will want something to read in the train, 
 he writes on lo. 7. 20. Read this Muddiman s 
 jMen of the Nineties. Bilt please return it to me; 
 it will serve to keep the child quiet when she next 
 comes down. And it served to make me feel 
 very young again (seven years younger than you 
 are now) to read of all those remarkable men 
 with whom I foregathered in the nineties. 
 
 They would probably have accepted Squire and 
 Siegfried Sassoon.^ None of the other poets; 
 none of the prose-writers, painters, "blasters" or 
 blighters. . . . 
 
 In acknowledging the book, I objected to 
 what I considered the excessive importance 
 
 ^ They would have gone quite mad over the Russian Ballet. 
 
 106
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 that is still attached to the men of the nineties 
 and to their work: 
 
 / doubt, I wrote, 12.7.20, whether the 
 years iSgo to igoo have produced more per- 
 manent literature of the first order than any other 
 decade of the igth century — or the twentieth. 
 Paris was discovered anew in those days and 
 seemed a tremendous discovery, though its in- 
 fluence was meretricious, and the imitations from 
 the French were usually of the worst French 
 models. The discovery of art for art's sake was, 
 I ahvays feel, the most meaningless and preten- 
 tious of all other shams. Even Wilde never 
 made clear 'what he meant by the phrase, though 
 he and his school interpreted it practically by a 
 wholly decadent over-elaboration of decoration. 
 The interest of the period lies in the astounding 
 success achieved by this noisy and self-sufficient 
 coterie in imposing itself on the easily startled, 
 and easily shocked and still more easily impressed 
 middle and upper classes of London society. 
 But that is a thing that so many people can do 
 and a thing that is so seldom worth doing. 
 
 In a later letter, I added, 15.6. 20: 
 
 / believe that the great bubble of the nineties 
 has been pricked for the present generation. All 
 
 107
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 the zi-ork of Max, most of Beardsley and a little 
 of Wilde have a permanent place; and, if some 
 one would do for the poets and essayists of the 
 mineties zihat Eddie Marsh has done for the 
 Georgian poets, we might have one volume of 
 moderate size containing the poetry of interest 
 and good craftsmanship though of little power or 
 originality. . . . 
 
 Whether [the artistic movement of the 
 nineties] effected any great liberation of spirit or 
 manner from the fetters of mid-Victorian litera- 
 ture I cannot say, though I am inclined to doubt it. 
 That liberation was being achieved by individual 
 writers such as Meredith and Kipling, who never 
 had anything to do with the domino-room of the 
 Cheshire Cheese. Never, I am sure, was any 
 artistic group so void of humour as the men of the 
 nineties. 
 
 Having damned them, their period and 
 work so far, I may surprise you by conceding 
 that they do still arouse great interest. . . . I 
 have been thinking that it is almost your duty to 
 put on permanent record your own knowledge and 
 opinions about this school. Max Beerbohm is 
 unlikely to do it, and you must now be one of 
 the very few men living who were on terms of 
 intimacy with the leaders of the movement. . . . 
 Men under thirty have never heard of John Gray, 
 
 io8
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 Grackanthorpe or your over advertised American 
 friend Peters. Your annotations to Muddi- 
 man's book go some very little distance towards 
 filling this gap, but I think you should undertake 
 something more substantial. For heaven s sake 
 do not call it The History of the Nineties, but 
 is there any reason why you should not — from 
 your memory and without consulting a single 
 work of reference — compile a little book of 
 Notes on the 'Nineties? Make it an informal 
 dictionary of biography, put down all the names 
 of the men associated with that movement at 
 leisure, record about each everything that has not 
 yet appeared in print and correct the occasionally 
 incorrect accounts of other writers. Such a book 
 would be a valuable addition to literary history, 
 It would be amusing and not difficult for you to 
 write, it could be turned to the profit of your 
 reputation and pocket. . . . 
 
 For this criticism Teixeira took me to task 
 in his letter of 14. 7. 20. 
 
 And now, Stephen, tremble. How often have 
 I not called you "the wise youth!" How con- 
 stantly have I not believed you to be filled with 
 knowledge, either acquired or instinctive and in- 
 tuitive, of most things! And nozv your 
 letter . . . has disappointed me almost to tears. 
 
 109
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 Your only excuse would be that you took Oscar 
 Wilde and Bernard Shaw to he and practically 
 alone to be the men of the nineties. That is not 
 so. And, if you agree with 7ne that Oscar was a 
 man of the eighties and that Shazv is a man of 
 the twentieth century, you have no excuse what- 
 ever and g8^/o of the first paragraph in your 
 letter is dead wrong. 
 
 I presume that you keep copies of your letters 
 to me: you should; they will be Useful for your 
 Memoirs of a Celibate (John Murray: 1950; 
 i05/-net). Anyhow, here goes: 
 
 There was no question of either a literary re- 
 vival or revolution in the nineties and there was 
 no sham, colossal or minute. 
 
 The 7nen engaged were not pretentious, not 
 conceited, not humbugs. They were a group of 
 7nen, mostly under JO, who just wrote and drew 
 and painted as well as they could, in all sincerity 
 and with no view of financial gain. Dowson, John- 
 son, Horner, Image, etc., etc., etc., were the hum- 
 blest, most modest lot of literary men I ever met. 
 
 Their output was not immense: it was infin- 
 itesimal, just because they were so careful to 
 produce only work that was ''just so." Think, 
 Stephen. What did Henry Harland, one of the 
 few to live to over 40, put out? The Cardinal's 
 Snuff Box, My Friend Prospers, Mademoiselle 
 
 no
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 Miss and Other Stories: that is all! Ernest 
 Dowson: two slim volumes of verse, half-a- 
 dozen short stories, a collaborator s share in two 
 novels. John Gray: one slim volume of verse. 
 Lionel Johnson: God knows how little. And so 
 on. Arthur Symns has worked on steadily, but, 
 though he is getting on for sixty, you cannot say 
 that his output is immense or contains anything 
 that was not worth doing. 
 
 Immensely advertised! Where? And by 
 whom? 
 
 Beardsley's output was immense, for his years. 
 Ought not the world to he grateful for it? He 
 told me once that he had an itch for work; and it 
 looked afterwards as if he knew that he was 
 doomed to die at 24 or 26 and wanted to throw 
 of all he could before. When he worked no one 
 knew: no one ever saw him at work and he was 
 always about and always accessible. 
 
 He was not conceited. . . . Rickets and Shan- 
 non were a little conceited: they had a way of 
 "coming the Pope" over the rest, as Will Roth- 
 enstein once put it to me. (Will always took 
 "a proper pride" in his excellent work, but no 
 more). But, Lord, hadn't they the right to he? 
 Was ever a book more beautifully designed than 
 Silverpoints (cover, page, type, typesetting by 
 Ricketts)? Place Ricketts' cover of the Pageant 
 
 III
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 beside any other book in your library and tell me 
 how it strikes you. Look at anything that 
 Charles Shannon condescends to exhibit in the 
 Academy and see how the quality of it slays 
 everything around it exactly as a picture by Whis- 
 tler or Rossetti would do. 
 
 To revert to immensity of output (I have to 
 keep levanting and tacking about), I call im- 
 mense the output of Belloc (the modern Sterne) , 
 Chesterton (the modern Swift), E. V. Lucas 
 (the modern Addison) ; they themselves would be 
 flattered at the comparisons. These chaps, 
 though they can and sometimes do write as well 
 as the men of the nineties, spoil their average by 
 writing immensely ; and they write immensely be- 
 cause they want a good deal of money. Now the 
 men of the nineties hadn't clubs, homes, wives or 
 children; lunched for a shilling; dined for eighteen 
 pence; and didn't want a lot of money. 
 They cared neither for money nor fame; they 
 cared for their own esteem and that of what you 
 call their coterie and I their set. 
 
 And that (to answer a question which you once 
 asked me) is art for art's sake; and I maintain 
 that it is not right to call this meaningless or pre- 
 tentious or a sham. 
 
 This coterie, or set, was not noisy: I never 
 met a quieter; it was self-sufficient only in the 
 
 I 12
 
 Alexander Tetxeira de Mattos 
 
 best sense; and it in no way imposed or impressed 
 itself on the middle and upper classes of London 
 society. How could they? I doubt if any num- 
 ber of the Savoy ever sold i ,000 copies; certainly 
 no number ever sold 2,000. And they . . . were 
 never in society, were never in the outskirts of 
 society and never wanted to be in either. 
 
 But there! I daresay you were thinking of 
 Oscar all the tifne. . . . 
 
 Enter on the lawn a nurse bearing my dinner- 
 tray. After dinner I retire to bed. . . . 
 
 One day, Teixeira added, 17. 7. 20, I'll re- 
 turn to those men of the nineties (I will never 
 write a book about the??i: really I was too much 
 outside them). . . . 
 
 I trust that some Leonard Merricks are on 
 the way: I'm nigh starved for books again. 
 Don't send me Zola or Balzac in English: I 
 couldn't stomach the translations. And I ex- 
 pect you're right about Balzac's French style. 
 Those giants were awful chaps: Balzac, Rubens, 
 the pylon-designing Baincs, brrrf . . . 
 
 On 22, 7. 20 he writes : 
 
 / beseech you, if you haven't it, buy yourself a 
 copy of The Home Life of Herbert Spencer. 
 By "Two." // is the book praised by "Rozbury" 
 in his letter to Arrowsmith prefacing The Diary 
 
 113
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 of a Nobody. / bought it and began to shake 
 zvith laughter at Rosebery' s being such an ass. 
 But, after a few pages, I began to see what he 
 meant; and then, time after time, I nearly rolled 
 off my long-chair with laughing not at Rosebery 
 but ivith him. I'd lend it you, but it'll only 
 cost you 3/6; and I want you to have it as a com- 
 panion volume to The Diary. 
 
 However, if you will not buy it, I will lend it 
 to you. You've ''got" to read it, or I will never 
 write you another letter. 
 
 And on 23. 7. 20: 
 
 Some 32 years ago, "Pearl Hobbes" wrote to 
 me that I ought to translate Balzac; and I am 
 sorry it is too late for me to do Goriot. / am 
 rereading it all the same with much enjoyment, 
 though I think that these gala editions should be 
 at least as well translated as my Lutetian set of 
 six Zola novels. 
 
 Huxley, in his little autobiography, writes: 
 
 "As Rastignac, in the Pere Goriot, says to 
 Paris, I said to London: 
 
 " 'A nous deux!' " 
 
 I remembered that this came at the end of 
 the book, turned to it and found: 
 
 "Rastignac . . . saw beneath him Paris, . . . 
 The glance he darted on this buzzing hive seemed 
 
 114
 
 } >) 
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 in advance to drink its honey, while he said 
 proudly: 
 
 " 'Nd'-jo for our turn — hers and mine. 
 
 An epigrammatic tag sadly boshed, I think. 
 
 I find that "leave them nothing but their eyes 
 to weep with'' occurs in this hook; so we must 
 absolve poor old Bismark at any rate from in- 
 venting this bloodthirsty phrase. 
 
 And I find the Ukraine mentioned! The 
 Ukraine! The dear old Ukraine! A sweet 
 land of which I — and you? he honest! had never 
 heard before the days of the W . T . I. D. 
 
 I have sent for a complete set of Heine from 
 Heinemann; it just occurred to me that I have 
 read little of this great man's. And I am told 
 that the translation is good. . . . 
 
 Do E. and J., he asks, 26. 7. 20, ever perpet- 
 rate those plays upon words of zvhich Heine zvas 
 so fond? They are not exactly puns; I am not 
 sure that quodlibets isn't the word for them. E. 
 G. : Herr von Schnabelowpski smites the heart 
 of a Dutch hotel-proprietress. Over the real 
 china cups she gazes at him porcela (i) nguidly. 
 
 That is not a very good example. This one 
 is better: Heine calls on Rothschild at Frank- 
 furt. Rothschild receives him quite famillion- 
 airly. 
 
 Good-bye. It threatens rain; and I propose 
 
 115
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 to spend the day in bed, with the proofs of The 
 Inevitable. . . . 
 
 A criticism of Plarr's Life of Dowson 
 leads Teixeira, 27. 7. 20, to annotate the letter 
 that contained it: 
 
 . . . I was suggesting, I wrote, that the ef- 
 fect . . . on the minds of a generation which 
 knew not Dowson zvotdd be to make it feel that 
 it did not want to know him. . . . 
 
 (Your cecession from Catholicism, he replies, 
 has done you McKennas a lot of harm. You 
 flout tradition and go in for rational inference 
 and deduction in its place. Horrible, horrible! 
 The apostles are not all dead; many of them are 
 your living contemporaries; you could, if you like, 
 leceive at first hand their memories of their dead 
 fellows; and you prefer to make up your own 
 mistaken impressions in the light of your own 
 mistaken intellect. fVell, well! 
 
 And, if you write just that sort of life of me, 
 I'll wriggle zvith pleasure in my coffin.) 
 
 This evening Henry Arthur Jones is giving a 
 dinner . . . to James M. Beck. . . . I have been 
 hidden to attend. . . . 
 
 (Beck is the finest orator I ever heard; and I've 
 heard Gladstone inter alios. 
 
 116
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 Those Heine qiiodlihets about which I wrote 
 y'day are, I believe, called "split puns," though 
 I doubt the happiness of the term. I made one in 
 my sleep this morning: rowdies on the Brighton 
 road indulging in a charabanquet. . . . ) 
 
 I can never have news, as you may imagine, 
 writes Teixeira, 29. 7. 20; my letters must be 
 always replies to yours. . . . 
 
 I like your Cave-Brown-Cave story if it was 
 true; it probably zvas, as a family of that name 
 exists.^ 
 
 I never heard John Redmond, I am sorry to 
 say. He was, so to speak, after my time. I 
 heard Parnell and, if I were only a mimic, coidd 
 give you his curiously contemptuous, high-bred, 
 high-pitched voice to-day. I heard Randolph; 
 and at the time, in the eighties, both he and 
 Arthur Balfour used to lisp. Does A. B. lisp 
 now? Answer this: it interests 7ne; and it has 
 a sort of bearing on that passing-fashion com- 
 petition which you were starting. So essential 
 to birth and breeding was the lisp in those days 
 that even the English-bred Comte de Paris 
 lisped . . . in French! I was at his silver wed- 
 
 1 The story in question was of a member of the Cave-Brown- 
 Cave family, who, after conversing with a stranger in a rail- 
 way-carriage, was asked his name. 
 
 "Cave-Brown-Cave," he replied. "And may I ask yours?" 
 "Home-Sweet-Home," answered his infuriated interlocutor. 
 
 117
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 ding and well remember his reception of me. 
 
 "Youth etes le bienvenu ithi!" 
 
 Incidentally I remember that good King Ed- 
 ward ("then Prince of Wales," as the memoir- 
 writers say) glared at me furiously on that oc- 
 casion, because I was wearing trousers of the 
 identical pattern as his: an Urquhart check with 
 a pink line. . . . 
 
 In the course of a dinner-party given at 
 this time, the conversation turned on those men 
 and women who had won everlasting renown 
 with the least effort or justification. The 
 United States Ambassador (Mr. Davis) pro- 
 posed Eutychus, of whom little is known but 
 that he fell asleep during a sermon and 
 tumbled from a window: I suggested the 
 uncaring Gallio, who did less and is better 
 known. Some one else put forward Melchis- 
 edec. Agreeing that every name in the Bible 
 has a certain immortality, we turned to sec- 
 ular history. At the subsequent instigation 
 of Mr. Davis, Lord Curzon of Kedleston 
 propounded "the apple-bearing son of Wil- 
 liam Tell." I invited Teixeira to give his 
 opinion. 
 
 ii8
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 I can't compete with Ciirzon, he replied on 
 6. 8. 20, though I've tried. After all, he was 
 one of the Souls! I did think of Alfred and the 
 cakes; but that monarch owes only % of his 
 immortality to those cakes and young Tell owed 
 all his to the apple. But stay! Many hold 
 Tell and his offspring to be mythical persons. 
 If so, what about the good wife who scolded Al- 
 fred? I should like you to find some one who 
 will say that I have beaten Curzon. . . . 
 
 I shall be in town from 8 September to a few 
 days later. If you want to see me, you must 
 arrange your engagements accordingly. I am the 
 colour which we can never get our brown shoes to 
 assume till just before the moment when they 
 drop off our feet. But I am as weak as ten thou- 
 sand rats. . . . 
 
 On 7. 8. 20 he writes : 
 
 You will remember that . . . I declined to join 
 your Passing Fashion Research Society, or what- 
 ever you decided to call it. But I have no ob- 
 jection to being an honorary corresponding mem- 
 ber. And I will set you a subject. 
 
 To establish the year in which it first became 
 the vogue for smart British males to don a de- 
 liberately dowdy attire. 
 
 119
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 The dozvdiness all burst upon my astonished 
 eyes at once: the up-and-down collar worn with 
 a top hat and a morning coat; permanently 
 turned trousers worn with Oxford shoes, so as to 
 display an inch or so of sock; tie usually to 
 match the socks and often "self-coloured" and pat- 
 ternless. There are three items of sheer deliber- 
 ate ddivdiness for you. Another dowdy item 
 was even a little earlier, I believe: the one-but- 
 toned glove, showing a bit of bare wrist between 
 it and the shirt-cuff. But the soft-fronted dress- 
 shirt, also a piece of dowdy dandyism, came in 
 much at the same time as the three specimens 
 cited above. 
 
 I should guess the year to be either igoj or 
 iQoS, but I am not quite sure. You, with your 
 wonderful memory, may be able to place it, for 
 igoy-S marks the period when you burst upon 
 the London firmainent. 
 
 I — who con remember witnessing a departure 
 for Cremorne — I, I need hardly tell you, remem- 
 ber much older and almost as strange things. 
 I remember peg-top trowsers, skin-tight trowsers-, 
 bell-shaped trowsers, though I can't fix the epoch 
 of any of these phenomena; and I can remember 
 when we deliberately wore our trowsers so long 
 that we trod upon them with our heels and 
 frayed them; and that was in 1880-1. 
 
 120
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 But all I ask that you should fix is the date of 
 the deliberately dawdy well-dressed man. . . . 
 
 I think, he writes, 9. 8. 20, that the time has 
 come for you to write . . . a big political novel, 
 a big, serious, flippant, earnest, sarcastic, political 
 novel. . . , Your book should be quite Disrael- 
 ian in scope; it should be a roman a clef to this 
 extent, that it would contain half — or quarter- 
 portraits; and you ought to concentrate on it 
 very thoroughly. I am convinced that the world 
 is waiting for it. 
 
 Do you observe the comparative sweetness of 
 my mood. It is doojned entirely to this glorious 
 weather. For the rest, I hope and believe that 
 you never resent those zvhacks with which, when 
 the sky is overcast, I am apt to belabour my cor- 
 respondents like an elderly Mr. Punch on his 
 hustings. 
 
 My good, kind Brighton doctor — good because 
 he is clever, kind because he charges me no fee 
 — was over here from Brighton y day to see me. 
 He tells me that this peculiar susceptibility of 
 mine to atmospheric influence is a sympto^n of 
 convalescence rather than ill-health. He is much 
 pleased with the improvement in my condition; 
 and he approves of my winter plans, though he 
 would rather have dispatched me to San Remo 
 or even Egypt had either been feasible. 
 
 121
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 Read Max on Swinburne in the Fortnightly 
 Review when you get the chance and contrast it 
 with George Moore' s account of his visit to Swin- 
 burne, in which he can only tell us that he found 
 the poet naked in bed. I forget where it oc- 
 curs. . . . 
 
 In answering this letter I pointed out that 
 Disraeli avoided the great political issues of 
 the days in which he was writing and that any 
 author, such as H. G. Wells in The Neiv 
 Machiavelli, Granville Barker in JVaste and 
 H. M. Harwood in the Grain of Mustard 
 Seed, who attempts a political theme is al- 
 most bound to impale himself on one or other 
 horn of a dilemma ; if his novel or play revolve 
 round a living controversy such as the right 
 to strike in war-time or the justice of order- 
 ing reprisals in Ireland, the theatre may be- 
 come the scene of a nightly riot and the critics 
 will consider their own political preferences 
 more earnestly than the literary merits of the 
 book; if the action of play or novel be based 
 on a dead or unborn controversy, it will fail 
 to arouse the faintest interest. I was sure 
 that the other admirers of the three works 
 
 122
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Maftos 
 
 which I quoted were unmoved by the endow- 
 ment of motherhood, by educational reform 
 and by housing schemes. 
 
 In reply, Teixeira wrote, ii. 8. 20: 
 
 . . . Don't slay the siigyestions of the big 
 political novel ojf-hand or outright. I mean a 
 bigger thing than you do; a thing that not Wells 
 nor Barker nor Harzvood . . . could write, 
 whereas you, I think, could; a thing as big as 
 Coningsby; a thing called The Secretary of State 
 or The First Lord of the Treasury, or some such 
 frank affair as that. 
 
 You have kept up a ''very average" logical 
 position in life. You know a number of states- 
 men, but you know only those whom you like and 
 you like only those zvhom you esteem. Your por- 
 traits of those whom you esteem could not offend 
 them; your sketch even of a genial rogue . . . 
 could not offend him; and you don't or ought not 
 to care if your daguerreotypes of S., M. and B. 
 offended them or not. . . . 
 
 Incidentally you might do no little good, to 
 Ireland, which should have been your native land, 
 to England, which by your own choice remains 
 your home, and to the world in general, to which 
 I hope that you bear no ill-will. . . . 
 
 123
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 In his next letter, 14. 8. 20, he returns to 
 the same subject: 
 
 Your letter . . . pretty ivell convinces me, at 
 any rate about the Coningsby novel. Dizzy never 
 zvrote about the period in which he was just then 
 living. All his novels are antedated a good many 
 years. This by way of defending him against 
 any idea that he ever of ended by betraying private 
 or official secrets in his novels. . . . 
 
 One of Teixeira's last letters (19.8.20) 
 from Crowborough contained a translation 
 of the terms (already quoted) in which 
 Couperus congratulated him on his version of 
 The Tour'. 
 
 Couperus writes : 
 
 ''Your last envoi has given me a most delight- 
 ful day. What a magnificent translation. The 
 Tour is; what a most charming little book it has 
 become! I am in raptures over it and read and 
 reread it all day and have had tears in my eyes 
 and have laughed over it. You may think it 
 silly of me to say all this; but it has become an 
 exquisitely beautiful work in its English form. 
 My warmest congratulations! . . . 
 
 "Thank McKenna for his assistance: the hymn 
 has become very fine. For that matter the 
 
 124
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 whole hook is a gem, if I may say so myself." 
 So I've had one appreciative reader at any 
 rate! . . . 
 
 On 27. 8. 20 he adds: 
 
 Tell Norman [Major Holden, then liberal 
 candidate for the Isle of Wight] that, shotdd 
 there be an election in "the island" before I leave 
 Fentnor, he'll find me both able and ready to 
 impersonate the oldest inhabitant and gallop to 
 the polling-station, in my bath-chair, and vote for 
 him. . . . 
 
 And, finally, in praise of toleration: 
 
 J/ August ig20 (being the birthday of Her 
 Majesty the Queen of the Netherlands). 
 It won't do to insist on this racial aspect of 
 things. I was never of those who called L. G. 
 a damned little fVelsh solicitor. He would have 
 been just the same had be been Scotch or English 
 or Irish. After all, our friend R. is little and 
 JVelsh and was a solicitor and zcill as likely as 
 not be damned if he doesn't join his wife's church. 
 And there is the converse case, when you hear 
 men describing an outrage committed by English- 
 men as "unenglish." How can the things be un- ) 
 I english which the English do? 
 
 125
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 Like yourself, the late JV. H. Smith was 
 shocked when Parnell stood up and told the House 
 of Commons . . . that he had lied to them in 
 the interests of his country. I like to think of 
 you as occupying a subtler and more philosophi- 
 cal standpoint than the late W . H. Smith. . . . 
 
 I continue to feel better; and the arrival of 
 two very pretty women patients has loosed my 
 tongue and given me an outlet for many a child- 
 ish and innocent jest. I excuse these jests by 
 [ saying that they're due to Minerva. 
 
 'Who's Minerva?" 
 \ ''Mi-nervous breakdown. By the way, I hope 
 you like your Jiff" 
 
 "Our 'Alf? What do you mean?" 
 
 "Your al-f-resco meals." 
 
 Just like that! . . . 
 
 126
 
 XI 
 
 For the next few days Teixeira was ab- 
 sorbed in his preparations for leaving Crow- 
 borough. 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 instruc- 
 tions 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 JVorcester and the 
 death of O. Cromwell. 
 
 Teixeira interpolated here: 
 
 (And the birthday of my late aunt Judith Teix- 
 eira.) 
 
 On 2. 9. 20 he writes : 
 
 Dodd [Dodd, Mead and Co. Inc.] is going to 
 reissue [Couperus'] Majesty in America and
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 zvoiild like you to write a preface to it. . . . JVill 
 you do this? I should very much like you to. It 
 involves re-reading the book, I fear; but after 
 that you zmll 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. 
 ril 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 
 zvriter 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 eliininate 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: 
 
 128
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 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 Is- 
 land] 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 ac- 
 cept. 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 Cff Castle Club, an edifice into 
 which I have not yet made my comital and cas- 
 tellated entry. Rather is it to announce my safe 
 arrival, after four hours of wearying travel, and 
 my complete revival, after ten hours of refresh- 
 ing sleep, and to repeat my thanks for your ut- 
 terly exceptional and debonnair hospitality. 
 
 The first impression of Ventnor is favour- 
 able. . . . 
 
 129
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 This pococurantist attitude, if I may employ 
 a phrase beloved by Teixeira, was not sup- 
 ported 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. lo. 20; A thousand thanks for Lady Lilith, 
 with its charming dedication, and for your let- 
 ter. . . . I cannot well lend you the Repington 
 volumes. I have them from the Times Book 
 
 130
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 Club, zvhich 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 charac- 
 teristic dialogue between Teixeira and his 
 dentist: 
 
 New (enumerating every action, like a comic- 
 con fur er) : ''Spray!" 
 
 Tex: "Oremus!". . . 
 
 / wish, he writes on 6. lo. 20, that I had no 
 correspondent but you: what good stuff I could 
 write to you! But ig letters in one day: think 
 of it! . . . 
 
 My age is a melancholy one. The man of ^0 
 or 60 sees all his acquaintances and friends dying 
 of in ones and twos: Heinemann and William- 
 son to-day; who will it be to-morrowf When 
 
 131
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 he's yo, he begins to he a sole survivor, ivith no 
 friends left to lose. 
 
 You vcill find the Tree hook amusing as you go 
 on with it. Four-fifths of it represent the life of 
 a dead fairy told hy 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 II. lo. 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 75 times as much 
 in America as in this benighted country. . . . 
 
 Though he commonly kept his religion and 
 politics to himself, Teixeira's sympathy with 
 
 132
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 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 in- 
 teresting by far. What's Amazon to you or you 
 to Amazon? I pictured you and trembled for 
 you, steaming slowly up that mighty river be- 
 tween alligators taking pot-shots at you with pois- 
 oned pea-shooters from one bank and humming- 
 birds 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, 20, 10. 20, 
 to read in this morning's Times that Brazilian 
 stock has risen a couple of points at the nezvs of 
 your contemplated visit. I hope that Argentine 
 rails will follow suit. . . . 
 
 [A lady] when returning Shane Leslie's book, 
 
 133
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 ivhich I had lent to her and she enjoyed . . . had 
 the asinine effrontery to ivrite 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 in- 
 stance. But can death ever be farcical? I told 
 you, I think, of Major Johnson, who, throwing 
 hot coppers from the balcony of the Grand Hotel 
 in Paris at the crowd cheering Kruger, overbal- 
 anced 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 : 
 
 / fear you will have a hell of a windy time at 
 Deal or Dover or wherever JValmer Castle has 
 its being (JVahner 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 
 
 134
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 have not even a visiting acquaintance with her." 
 At the same moment, these self-same winds are 
 
 ''a-sharting in my ear" : 
 
 "fVe 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 Alain. . . . 
 
 Of Philip Guedalla's Supers and Super- 
 men^ Teixeira writes, 7. 11. 20: 
 
 / have got it out of the Times Book Club be- 
 cause 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 N oxford college mentioned 
 in Galsworthy's book? ^ he asks, 10,11.20. 
 Bras (fz) enosf Hozv I hate these initials! . . . 
 
 On St. Stanislaus' Day, he writes: 
 
 Many thanks for your letter of yesterday 
 (zvhich was the eve of St. Stanislaus) . . . I 
 have no . . . bright social news for you. 
 
 1 In Chancery.
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 Yet stay. 
 
 A card was left upon me, a few days ago, by 
 Captain Cave-Brown-Cave, R. N., with a verbal 
 message: 
 
 "fFoidd Mr. T eixeira-de-M attos-T eixeira care 
 for a rubber of bridge one afternoon f 
 
 Yesterday I accepted the soft invitation and 
 took i^/- of Captain Cave-Brown-Cave and his 
 fellow troglodytes. This would have been £'J at 
 my normal points. 
 
 These are our island adventures. 
 
 Here is your Inevitable. 
 
 Make me a list (zvill 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 co7neth round. 
 
 With their addresses, please, of which I re- 
 memhreth 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 South- 
 ampton. 
 
 136
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 Teixeira comments on this change of plans 
 in his letter of i6. 1 1 . 20 : 
 
 They have had a cyclone, I see, at "Baircs," as 
 tJie wireless used to have it at the JV. T. I. D; 
 hut, 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 rail- 
 way? 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 hits 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 cinemato- 
 graphic stunts! Well, there! Have you a nice 
 revolver? . . . 
 
 . . . Tell me what you think that you are go- 
 ing to eat between Baires and Valparaiso, he adds 
 next day. They grow comparatively few fish on 
 
 137
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 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 g.i S a. m. to- 
 day. I am sitting at a wide-open window actually 
 perspiring (saving your presence) with heat. 
 
 I reassured him as best I could (17. 11. 20) : 
 
 . . . Those who know tell me that there is a 
 perfectly good railway from Buenos Aires to Val- 
 paraiso with a permanent way, rolling slock, 
 points and signals, tunnels to taste and all the 
 paraphernalia that one might buy on a small scale 
 at Hamley's toy-shop. The Andes ought, of 
 course, to be crossed on mule-back, but this takes 
 long and I do not know any mules. Nor, from 
 your exposition of their habits, am I desirous of 
 meeting any llamas. ... 
 
 My faithful Stephen, many thanks for your 
 three letters, he writes, 21. 11.20. I've been 
 feeling rather out of sorts these last few days 
 and have not written to you since Thursday, I 
 believe; not that I have much to tell you . . . 
 except that, were I weller and stronger, I should 
 write and offer tny sword to that maligned mon- 
 arch, Constantine I. of the Hellenes. I am 
 growing heartily sick of seeing countries meddling 
 in other countries' business. . . . 
 
 138
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 It were the baldest side on my part, he confesses 
 on 23. II. 20 to pretend that the weather here 
 has not turned cold. The winds are what is 
 known as bitter. But the sun is shining like 
 blazes. And there you have what I was leading 
 up to: once bitter, twice shining. 
 
 Ever yours, 
 
 Alexander Crawshay. 
 
 Not content with emulating Mrs. Robert 
 Crawshay's wit and appropriating her name, 
 Teixeira laid his witticism before her and 
 challenged her to say that it was not of the 
 true brand. There is a reference to this in a 
 later letter; his next communication was a 
 picture-postcard of Ventnor, annotated by 
 himself : 
 
 A. [A bathchair man] This is not me. 
 
 B. [A child with a hoop] Nor is this, really. 
 
 C. [An indistinguishable figure] This might 
 be. 
 
 D. [A picture of the hotel] But probably 
 I am here, lurking in the Royal Hotel, where I 
 can sea the sea but the sea can' t see ?ne. 
 
 I think little of your latest joke, I wrote, 24. 
 11.20, and have myself made several of late 
 that put yours into the shade. Thus, on learning 
 
 139
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 tliat a woman of my acquaintance had left her 
 rich husband and run away with a penniless lover, 
 I added the conclusion that they were now living 
 in silver-gilty splendour. I can assure you that 
 that is far more in the true Crawshay tradi- 
 tion. . . . 
 
 My efifort met with less than no approval: 
 
 My poor Stephen/, Teixeu-a wrote 25. 11. 20. 
 The worst of your jokes, when you attempt to 
 play upon words, is that they have all been made 
 before. It must he ^6 (thirty-six) years (I said, 
 years) since I saw at the old Strand Theatre a 
 play called Silver Guilt parodying The Silver 
 King. 
 
 / am glad or sorry, whichever I should be, that 
 your arm ^ has taken (arma virumque cano: beat 
 that if you can! Virus poison, ace. (I hope 
 and trust) virum). . . . 
 
 My conscience smites me, he writes, 26. 11. 
 20, for having omitted in either of my last two 
 letters to express the sympathy which I feel with 
 Seymour Leslie — and you — in this serious illness 
 of his. JFhat is it exactly? Whatever it may 
 he, I hope that he will get the better of it. . . . 
 
 His aunt Crawshay has been good enough to 
 
 ^ In preparation for visiting South America I had been 
 vaccinated. 
 
 140
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 pass ''once bitter, twice shining." She says that 
 it "is a really worthy phrase and will be of use to 
 us all!" . . . 
 
 I have been reading a lot of French lately, in 
 those very cheap, double-columned, illustrated 
 editions. It is perfectly marvellous to see how 
 happily the French draughtsmen succeed in catch- 
 ing their authors' ideas, whereas one may safely 
 say that "our" British illustrators do not catch 
 them once in ten times. Why is this? I am not 
 sure that a certain rough, unwashed Bohemiati- 
 ism is not at the bottom of it, achieving results 
 which are beyond that prim, priggish mode of 
 life zuhich nowadays governs the artists on this 
 side. I may be wrong: I certainly couldn't 
 elaborate my theory; on the other hand, I may be 
 perfectly right. . . . 
 
 In an earlier letter I had asked why he 
 sought a refuge where he could see the sea but 
 where the sea could not see him. The answer 
 is given in a postscript: 
 
 / 7night turn giddy if the sea saw me; but it 
 would look very ugly if I saw it. 
 
 By way of revenge I reminded Teixeira 
 that the gender of virus was neuter: 
 Alas!, he replies, 27. 11. 20. 
 
 141
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 I suspected it at the time; and now my up- 
 rooted hairs are heglooming the pink geraniums 
 below my window. I have taken my oath; and 
 nc w you and I are pledged: no French, you; no 
 Greek or Latin, I. It may he all for the best. 
 
 And arma virusqus cano would have sounded 
 so much better! . . . 
 
 Returning to the subject of French Illus- 
 tration, he adds, 28. ii. 20: 
 
 It's the knock-about, rough-and-tumble , cafe life 
 i« Paris I expect, that accounts for the greater 
 siiccess of the French illustrators. They all of 
 them meet all the authors in the great Bourse a 
 poignees de main that are the Paris coffee-houses. 
 The subjects are discussed over a thousand 
 books ; and the draughtsman is not overpaid. . . . 
 What I'm "after" is this, that the British illus- 
 trators, sitting at home in their neatly-swept flats 
 or studios, decorated mainly with Japanese fans, 
 furnished with wives instead of mistresses, that 
 these smug dogs, with their pappy brains, cannot 
 turn out such good work or enter so well into the 
 spirit of things, as the Frenchman. And, if all 
 this sounds damned immoral, I can't help it. 
 
 The shadow of Christmas fell across Teix- 
 
 142
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 eira's mind so early as the first day of De- 
 cember: 
 
 / ask myself, he writes : 
 
 "What shall I give this Stephen? A 
 hook? . . . But he's got a book! . . . Ah, 
 but has he a three-volume novel? No, bedad! 
 . . . And, as I live, I don't believe that Violet 
 Moses is included in his collected edition of the 
 ivorks of that mighty zuriter, Leonard Merrick." 
 
 So here's a first edition for you, with my bless- 
 ing. [Your secretary] should try to remove the 
 labels with that nastiest of utensils, a wet, hot 
 sponge. . . . 
 
 For the first time in many months Teixeira 
 was driven back on The Wrong Box to find 
 an adequate comparison with the informative 
 newcomer who now disturbed the noiseless 
 tenour of his way: 
 
 Joseph Finsbury has arrived, he writes, 
 2. 12. 20. Overhearing me tell my wife that 
 Bucharest is the capital of Roumania, he leant 
 forward and asked me if I had been to Bucharest. 
 Tex: No. 
 
 Joseph: Oh, I thought I heard you mention 
 Bucharest. 
 
 143
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 Tex: I sometimes mention places which I have 
 never visited. 
 
 Joseph: Bucharest is a second Paris. 
 Tex: Grrrrrrrrmph! 
 
 Joseph: Though I daresay it has been de- 
 stroyed by notv. 
 
 Tex: (to his wife) . .Have you done with Fem- 
 ina ? // so, I'll give it to those Dutch ladies. 
 (Stalks of to Mrs. and Miss van L.) 
 Joseph: (to an Irish widow) I have been to 
 all the capitals of Europe . . . (and holds the 
 zvretched Mrs. N. enthralled, so I am told, for 
 two mortal hours). . . . 
 
 Later. Joseph (to [my wife] ) : How clever 
 of your husband to speak Dutch to those ladies! 
 [My wife] : Not at all! He's a Dutchman. 
 Joseph: I know Holland very well. I have been 
 to Rotterdam. I have been to Java. The finest 
 botanical gardens in the world are at Buitenzorg 
 near Batavia. 
 [My wife] : Re-e-ally! 
 
 Can you Teixeira asks, 2. 12, 20, lend me that 
 hook by James Joyce (Portrait of the Artist), 
 which you once wrote to me about? I see Bar- 
 hellion praises it enthusiastically in the new diary. 
 
 Would you like me to lend you A Last Diary 
 or have you bought it? 
 
 Your Uncle Joseph was in disgrace yesterday. 
 
 144
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 JVe have a girl trio of musicians here, who play 
 at tea-time and eke after dinner. The pianist 
 reports that he said to her: 
 
 "I have been to Japan. I was very ill there 
 and I found myself in the arms of a Japanese 
 woman." 
 
 To-day he stopped me in the road and said: 
 "I wish I could speak Dutch, sir, as well as you 
 speak English. I once learnt a continental lan- 
 guage, but I mustn' t speak it now. What it was" 
 (throwing out his arms) "you can guess. . . ." 
 
 I had read Barbellion's two books without 
 sharing Teixeira's admiration for them, in 
 part because I thought that a book of self- 
 revelation so unreserved should only have 
 been published posthumously, in part because 
 it was incongruous — ^to use no stronger word 
 — to find a man, who had aroused wide-spread 
 compassion by what was taken to be the ac- 
 count of his last hours, reading with relish 
 the sympathetic press notices which it brought 
 him. 
 
 To this criticism Teixeira replies, 5. 12. 20: 
 
 Thank you for your tivo letters and the loan 
 of James Joyce. . . . Barbellion I like and aU 
 
 145
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 most love — / should love him entirely but for a 
 common strain in him that makes itself heard 
 occasionally — hut then I was taught very early 
 in life to make every allowance for men of any 
 genius, whereas you look for the public-school 
 attitude towards all and sundry. Apart from 
 this, B. seems to me to have borne almost unpar- 
 alleled suffering with remarkable courage and to 
 have shown a good deal of pluck besides in laying 
 bare his soul in the midst of it all. 
 
 You see, if one cared to take the pains, one 
 could make you detest pretty well everybody you 
 know and like. For everybody has a mean, 
 petty^ shabby, cowardly side to him; and one has 
 only to tell you of what the man in question 
 chooses to keep concealed. B. chose to reveal 
 it; that's all about it. . . . 
 
 My wife bids you be sure to say good-bye, 
 when you go on your travels, to the woman, 
 whoever she may be, in whom you are most in- 
 terested. Her reason is that she dreamt two 
 nights ago that you were prevented from doing 
 so. This does not imply that you will not return 
 alive. It means only that something prevented 
 you from saying good-bye to that person and that 
 it would be fun to stultify the dream. . . . 
 
 On 7. 12. 20 Teixeira writes: 
 
 146
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 . . . I am reading James Joyce, skippily. The 
 fellow has a great deal of talent, but much of it is 
 misdirected. I should not he surprised if one day 
 he began to write books that he and his country 
 will be proud of. . . . 
 
 Incidentally I admire his ruthless suppression 
 of capitals and am interested in his ditto ditto 
 of hyphens. ... 
 
 On Christmas Eve, he writes: 
 
 Forgive us our Christmases as we forgive them 
 that Christmas against us. 
 
 fVhat I want to know by your next letter and 
 what you have not told me, though you may think 
 that you have, is hokv you propose to travel home 
 from the west coast of South America. . . . 
 
 And on 27. 12. 20: 
 
 / zvas asked to "recite" yesterday! I refused. 
 I was asked to take part in a hypnotic experi- 
 ment: would I rather be the professor or the 
 subject? 
 
 "The subject," I replied. "But I would even 
 rather be dead." 
 
 And on 29. 12. 20: 
 
 . . . This is the last letter but one or two 
 
 147
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 which I shall he writing to yoii before you sail or 
 puff down the Solent. . . . Needless to add that 
 I feel sad at the thought of your im^ninent de- 
 parture and glad at the thought that you appear 
 to feel a trifle sad too. 
 
 The Almanzora ! W ell, God speed her 
 across the Atlantic! But she's got a plaguy hair- 
 dressing name. On my dressing-table stand two 
 bottles and two only. One contains Anzora 
 cream; the other Pandora brilliantine. Both are 
 meant to preserve and beautify my already well- 
 preserved and beautiful hair. I must try to "be- 
 come" some Almanzora to keep them com- 
 pany. . . . 
 
 148
 
 XIII 
 
 The diary which Teixeira kept for me 
 during my absence in South America was, 
 so far as I am aware, his first venture in 
 this kind of literature. Approaching it with 
 trepidation, he abandoned it with loathing. 
 The mystery of a double cash-column quickly 
 palled; and he was not long intrigued even 
 by printed reminders of the moon's phases and 
 of the days on which dividends and insurance- 
 policy renewals became due. 
 
 30 December 1920. 
 
 As a large number of these Diaries circulate 
 abroad it may be well to point out that the As- 
 tronomical Data, such as phases of the moon etc. 
 are given in Greenwich time. 
 
 Perhaps it may be as well, Teixeira concurs, 
 30. 12. 20. 
 
 31 December 1920. 
 
 / did not see the old year out. I played i / — 
 bridge in the afternoon at Captain Cave-Brown- 
 
 149
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 Cave's, with him, Captain B. and Dr. F. and won 
 
 £ — 18.0. 
 which at normal points would have been g. 5. 0. 
 (I presume that is what the right-hand column 
 is for. But the left-hand columnf Ah, thai 
 left-hand column! . . .) 
 
 The last that I saw of the old year was a 68- 
 7-0, grey-haired parson in pumps and a prince- 
 consort moustache and whiskers waltzing a polka, 
 or polkering a waltz — in short, dancing soiuething 
 exceedingly modern — with a 15-7-0 flapper. 
 Then we went to bed, wondering how Stephen 
 was spending his New Year's Eve, on board the 
 Almanzora, in a south-ivesterly gale. 
 
 Saturday, i January. 
 
 JVhen at 5. JO / switched on my light and 
 rose, I saw a leprechaun standing on my writing- 
 table, looking like a little sandzvich-man. Fear- 
 lessly I approached; and he changed into a bottle 
 of eau-de-Cologne with an envelope slung round 
 his neck, inscribed, ''To my Best Beloved." 
 Mark [my wife's] bold capitals. And show 
 me another couple whose united ages amount to 
 I ly years or more and who still do this sort of 
 thing. O olden times and olden manners! . . . 
 
 150
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 Monday, 3 January. 
 
 Bridge at Cave's with Captain B. and Dr. C. 
 
 [My wife:] "What did you talk about at 
 tea?" 
 
 Tex: "Jam." 
 
 This question and answer never vary, after my 
 return from a visit to the C.-B.-C's. . . . 
 
 I foresee that this compilation is going to rival 
 the Diary of a Nobody. And I am pledged to 
 keep it up until the yth of March. Kismet! 
 Or, as the dying Nelson said, "Kismet, Hardy." 
 
 Wednesday, 5 January. 
 Dividends due What dividends? 
 
 Sunday, 9 January. 
 
 Thank goodness that I have only space to 
 thank goodness that I have only space wherein 
 ... ad Infinitum. . . . 
 
 Thursday, 13 January. 
 
 Received from Stephen s mother his letter to 
 his mother. . . . 
 
 Received from Lady D. Stephen's letter to 
 [her] and wrote to her in appropriate terms, ex- 
 pressing doubts upon Stephen's dietary zvhile 
 
 151
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 crossing the South-American continent, where 
 there are neither fish nor eggs, save the eggs of 
 condors and hummingbirds. . . . 
 
 Friday, 14 January. 
 
 . . . My bank-balance is overdrawn, but I 
 make ig/6 at bridge. 
 
 . . . Mr. and Mrs. Hugh Martin arrive. I 
 do not know if this is the Daily News' Irish cor- 
 respondent whom the Black and Tans wanted to 
 murder. 
 
 Tuesday, 18 January. 
 
 Begin Couperus' Iskander : The novel of 
 Alexander the Great; tivo enormous volumes, 
 which I may hardly live to translate. It is a 
 great joy to see this artist building up his story 
 with frm and elegant perfection from the very 
 frst page, with conviction and a fine self-con- 
 fidence, no grouping, no floundering, no hesita- 
 tion. . . . 
 
 Saturday, 23 January. 
 
 Need something happen every day at Vent- 
 nor? Danged if there need! 
 
 Monday, 24 January. 
 
 . . . The new rich arrive, Rolls-Royce and all. 
 
 152
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 Tuesday, 25, January. 
 
 Those new rich! So new, so rich, so drearily 
 unostentatious! Young new richard bald, pan- 
 snayed, ill-dressed; young new wife and sister-in- 
 law dozvdy ; young new secretary without a dinner- 
 jacket to his backside; young new baby and young 
 new nurse all over the place; young new Rolls- 
 Royce, careering over the island, the only sign of 
 wealth. 
 
 If only there were a few diamonds, a few 
 banded cigars, a few h's dropping on the floor 
 with a didl thud, one could at least laugh. But 
 the drabness, the gloom of these particular new 
 rich: O my lungs and O my liver! . . . 
 
 Thursday, 27 January. 
 
 It is terrible, the number of people who come 
 to this hotel; and I regret the pleasant, non- 
 "paying" days when we zvere six visitors and three 
 musicians, with a full staff of servants to wait on 
 us. There are now over thirty people at meals, 
 one uglier than the other. And as soon as one 
 goes two others take his place. . . . 
 
 Sunday, 30 January. 
 
 . . . To bed at 5, with my "special dinner'^ 
 at J, John Francis Taylor's meal: "Give me 
 
 153
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 so77ie milk; and let the milk he hot. And give me 
 some bread; and let the bread be inside the milk." 
 
 Monday, 3 1 January. 
 
 The Insurance herein contained is not valid 
 until your name has been registered. 
 
 / don't care. Yer can 'ave the insurance. 
 The new rich have some business visitors. 
 
 Tuesday, i February. 
 
 . . . Departure of the new riches' little thyn- 
 dicate of friends. 
 
 Arrival of ihe dividend on my Benson ^ 
 Hedges' 10% 2nd pref., the only shares wherein 
 I have ever invested that have ever paid any 
 dividend whatever. Lord, how I have moiled 
 and toiled to sink money in stumer companies! 
 Shrewsburry ^ Talbot Hansoms! Galician Oil- 
 field^! Rubber substitutes! Cork substitutes! 
 Tampico-Panuco Deferred! United Transport 
 Co.! In the three last I still have hold- 
 ings: about £2^0 in all. And the things that 
 I have inherited: thousand of dollars' worth 
 of Mexican (and Turkish and Hungarian and 
 Russian) rubbish, which would barely fetch a 
 tenner, all told! ... 
 
 154
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 Thursday, 3 February. 
 
 . . . The new arrivals include a long, lean 
 man . . . and his wife. His hair is dyed to 
 suggest SS; he is probably a cadaverous JJ . He 
 comes down to dinner in a white tie and tails.' 
 His digestion is of the weakest. He refuses 
 soup, leaves the fish, refuses a cutlet, leaves the 
 goose and seems to dine mainly on creme Beau 
 Rivage, which is a creme carmel decorated with 
 a blob of whipped cream and angelica. His con- 
 versation with his wife consists purely of whis- 
 pered smiles. 
 
 Friday, 4 February, 
 
 / received letters from Stephen to me and 
 from Stephen to his mother. I have still to re- 
 ceive a letter from Stephen to Lady D. . . . 
 
 On his return he will borrow from me Frank 
 Harris' second series of Contemporary Portraits, 
 just arrived from New York. 
 
 There is no bridge at the Home-Sweet-Homes. 
 I go to the club, play with P. the local solicitor; 
 Dr. W ., of Harrogate; Mr. S., of the same and 
 win the sum of £ 2j/^^. 
 
 Saturday, 5 February and 
 ^55
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 Sunday, 6 February 
 
 /in episode of "And oh, the children s voices 
 in the lounge!" zvas followed by my going to 
 tlie office and saying: 
 
 "I am going to bed lest these children be the 
 death of me. May I have a spefial dinner, 
 please?" 
 
 "Certainly. IFhat zvould you like?" 
 
 "Send me some milk and let the milk be hot. 
 And send me some bread and let the bread be in- 
 side the milk." 
 
 Next morning, having slept eight hours and 
 fifteen minutes, I went to the manageress and: 
 
 "People," I said, "are far too proud of their 
 children and too fond of displaying them in 
 public. . . . There is nothing wonderful about 
 parentage and nothing clever. Most people are 
 parents. I have been one myself. . . . Children 
 should be seen and not heard. . . . If they raise 
 their voices in the public rooms, they should be 
 sent to their bedrooms. Some zvould suggest the 
 coal-hole; but I, as you know, have a gentle 
 heart. . . . Remember that we live in an age 
 of reprisals. The privilege of screaming and 
 yelling is not confined to children. Adults enjoy 
 equal rights. Next time a child raises its voice 
 in my presence, I shall in quick succession bellow 
 
 156
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 like a bull, roar like a lion, howl like a jackal^ 
 laugh like a hyena. If you drive me to it, I shall 
 copy all the shriller domestic animals. . . . The 
 matter is now in yoitr hands." 
 
 Monday, 7 February. 
 
 Peace reigns at Ventnor. . . . 
 
 Wednesday, 16 February. 
 
 . . . I start my sock-and-tie stunt, which con- 
 sists in "copycatting" daily, Justin Read second- 
 ing, an absurd young man of half my age. Thus 
 do the elderly amuse themselves for the further 
 amusement of a limited circle. . . . 
 
 Tuesday, 22 February. 
 
 Stephen s letter of 20. 1.21 to his mother 
 arrives. [I again varied my itinerary and had 
 decided to make my way to Valparaiso through 
 the Straits of Magellan rather than across the 
 Andes.] So he is travelling in the wake of 
 H. M. S. Beagle and the late Charles Robert 
 Darwin! He'll be perished with cold; but he's 
 more likely to get a fish or tzvo to eat. . . . 
 
 Sunday, 27 February. 
 
 Stephen's birthday. His health shall be drunk 
 in brimming barley-water; and, though I believe 
 
 157
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 he has already had a birthday-present, he shall 
 have a copy of The Tour the moment it arrives. 
 Good luck to him! 
 
 P. S. Absolutely a good notice of The Tour 
 in the Sunday Times. My wife says that the 
 critic must have been drunk. 
 
 Monday, 28 February, 
 
 Arrival of a terrible Yorkshire group, two men 
 and a woman. . . . They foregather with . . . 
 a man who appears in carpet-slippers, like Kipps, 
 and talk of nothing but food, in broad Leeds. 
 
 Tuesday, i March. 
 
 . . . "Ah had hum-und-eggs to my breakfast 
 this morning. Ah was always partial to hum- 
 und-eggs for breakfast. . . . Ah had new potai- 
 i-toes ut the dinner. Ah said to McKanner, 
 'These are too good to pass.* We had summon 
 zvith 'em, summon und new potai-i-itoes." 
 
 They seem to be bank-managers and to have 
 dined with Reggie at sotfie London City and 
 Midland Bank-wet. . . . 
 
 Thursday, 3 March. 
 
 T. takes me to East Dene, the childhood home 
 of Swinburne, now a convent of the Sacred Heart. 
 
 158
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 I am shown over the entrancing grounds by the 
 Mother Superior. Before taking me into the 
 chapel: 
 
 "You are not a catholic, I suppose?'' she asks. 
 
 "Indeed I am." 
 
 "I vie an, a Roman catholic?" 
 
 "Reverend mother, are there any others?" 
 
 "Oh, they all call themselves Anglican cath- 
 olics nowadays!" 
 
 Then on to Craigie Lodge, where Pearl 
 Hobbes pesters the tenants zvith trivial spirit- 
 messages. 
 
 Home, feeling cold as death. . . . 
 
 Saturday, 5 March. 
 
 . . . I ani correcting proofs of The Three 
 Eyes for Hurst &' Blackett. Altogether I shall 
 have four books out this spring. 
 
 The Tour, Butterworth. 
 
 The Three Eyes, Hurst &' Blackett. 
 
 Majesty, Dodd. 
 
 More Hunting Wasps, Dodd. 
 
 Not so bad for an ozvld, infirm mahnf 
 
 Sunday, 6 March. 
 
 It is pleasant to see the sun gain strength 
 daily, with every sort of flower appearing, al- 
 
 159
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 mond-hlossoms in full swing, cherry-blossoms hard 
 at it and pear-blossoms inaking a beginning. 
 
 Monday, 7 March. 
 
 Departure of [the married Yorkshire visitors.] 
 
 "Thank God, they're gone!'' the survivor is 
 heard to say. 
 
 Arrival of the survivor's women-folk. He 
 sees them to their rooms and comes down to gloat 
 over some woman. When his wife returns to 
 the hall: 
 
 "Hullo, Helen!" he says. "Are ye dahn ol- 
 ready?" And repeats the bright question: 
 "Hullo, Helen! Are ye dahn already f" 
 
 What a people, the men of Yorkshire! . . . 
 
 Wednesday, 9 March. 
 
 / begin a collodial sulphur treatment . . . 
 for that picturesque right leg of mine. Irving's 
 left leg was a poem (Oscar Wilde) ; my right leg 
 is a money-box, adorned with three patches the 
 size of a shilling, a sixpence and a groat, all very 
 nice and silvery. I asked [the doctor] whether 
 it was leprosy or dropsy. He said it was sor- 
 iasis, scoriasis, scloriasis: I don't know which 
 and I don't care. 
 
 160
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 Thursday, lo March. 
 
 The [other Yorkshire visitors] arc to go on 
 Monday, when I can say: 
 
 "Thank God, they're gone!" 
 
 And I pray that the table next to ours may not 
 he given to people with provincial accents. Let 
 it be noted that the friend of "McKannar" is 
 manager of the — branch of the L. J. C. M. 
 at Leeds, so tliat, when I go to live at Leeds, I 
 may bank elsewhere. . . . 
 
 Friday, 1 1 March. 
 
 At the club, I win iS6i points at bridge in go 
 minutes. 
 
 £. s. d. 
 
 In money, at 2^^ the lOO, this repre- 
 sents 4 O 
 
 At the Cleveland it would have rep- 
 resented g 12 
 
 At the Reform Club it would have 
 represented 280 
 
 Sunday, 13 March. 
 
 John ("Shane" ) Leslie's book on Cardinal 
 Manning seems to me very good. Leslie is very 
 nasty to Purcell, who no doubt deserves it. 
 
 161
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 Monday, 14 March. 
 
 Departure of [the last Yorkshireman], leav- 
 ing his women-people behind him. He asked 
 for it and he shall have it: 
 
 "Thank God he's gone!" 
 
 He used to stare at me till I devised the re- 
 tort: closing my eyelids and yawning at him 
 like a lion. 
 
 I think I must talk to Reggie about him some 
 day. 
 
 Tuesday, 15 March. 
 
 . . . The hotel is filling up madly for Easter. 
 There will be more here then than at Christmas. 
 Help! . . . 
 
 Thursday, 17 March. 
 
 S. Patrick D First Quarter, 3.49 a. m. 
 
 Well^ I went to church to pray for Ireland: 
 what else was there to be done? 
 
 Stephen's return seems to be unduly delayed; 
 and I've forgotten the name of his ship. 
 
 Friday, 18 March. 
 
 The sun shines in the morning. 
 The rain falls in the afternoon. 
 I play a little bridge. 
 
 162
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 The sun shines all day. 
 
 Thank God, a letter from Stephen and an end 
 to this beastly diary! 
 
 163
 
 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 Coup- 
 erus, who arrived in the middle of the month 
 and was entertained privately and publicly 
 for five or six weeks. 
 
 / don't know exactly when you II he hack, he 
 writes, 11.3. 21, hut I welcome you home with 
 all my heart . . . and with an S. O. S. 
 
 The title of [Couperus'] The Inevitable ^ 
 has been forestalled, in a novel puhlishing with 
 Holden <y Harlingham. And I zvant another 
 good title in a hurry. Can you help mef 
 
 There is always: 
 
 Cornelie. 
 Wilkie Collins would have called it: 
 
 Could She Do Otherwise? 
 George Egerton would have said: 
 
 1 Ultimately this was published with the title: The Law 
 Inevitable. 
 
 164.
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 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 Cornelie Ended. 
 Stephen McKenna: 
 
 The Reluctant Plover. 
 George Rohey: 
 
 Did She Fall or Was She Pushed? 
 
 The Bible: 
 
 (unquotable) 
 Tex: 
 
 Anything on the Wilkie Collins lines over- 
 leaf. 
 
 The Lure of Fate. 
 Could She Avoid It? 
 It Had To Be. 
 
 And, as I said, there's always: 
 
 Cornelie. . . . 
 
 Welcome home, my dear Stephen, he writes, 
 19. 3. 21. . . . 
 
 165
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 I look forward, with pleasure, to receiving your 
 diary and soon you may look backward, with dis- 
 gust, 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 South- 
 hampton 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 g 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 gSfo Plymouth gin and 2% orange 
 bitters. 
 
 We motored him on Friday to Blackgang, to 
 Chale, to Carisbrooke, to Newport, to Brading, 
 
 166
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 to Bembridge, to Sandotvn, to Shanklin and hack. 
 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 fro?n 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 iwatch a ball-room full of people dance 
 Lent out on what the festive programme called 
 "Easter Saturday" : Christians, you may or 
 viay 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 
 
 167
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 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 canv ass-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 5(5 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! . . . 
 
 168
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 The acknowledgement of the birthday 
 present had to be delayed while Teixeira 
 described his effort to observe an eclipse: 
 
 / 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 birth- 
 day, lo. 4. 21 : 
 
 Many thanks for your letter of the 8th, for 
 your good wishes and for a noble Catholic Dic- 
 tionary, 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,
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 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. Mira- 
 cles never cease: R sent me an Omar Khay- 
 
 yai7i! R. a round or circular photograph-frame of 
 a precious metal known as silver. N. F. 25 cig- 
 ars of the por Laranaga flavor. B. ^0 of the 
 flavour kndwn as Romeo y Juliet a. P. 100 cig- 
 arettes of the snake-charming flavour, which, be- 
 ing manufactured from the finest high-grade se- 
 lected Turkish leaf tobacco, must be exchanged 
 for the cigarettes of Ole Virginny when I am next 
 in hail of one of Messrs. Salmon cff 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 ho- 
 tel, a knitted canary waistcoat with sapphire but- 
 tons to cover the nudity of the Umps. From an 
 anonyrnous admirer, a smaller naked doll, made, 
 I venture to think, of celluloid-georgette. From 
 
 170
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 a lady staying at the hotel, a box of Salnshiiry's 
 chocolates, which are the most toothsome in the 
 world. From G. H., aged 80, and F., his wife, 
 age y^, 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., nee 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 in- 
 cited 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 ten- 
 derly and told me not to mind what Mrs. Teixeira 
 said about my touting for presents: Mrs. Teix- 
 eira didnt 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 sur- 
 rounded by ^6 pink, green, white and red candles. 
 Then we played bridge and I won eight shillings. 
 And I doubt if Oueen Victoria ever described a 
 birthday more fully. 
 
 171
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 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, be- 
 fore the ^th 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 "speak- 
 ing disrespectfully of the Equator." . . . 
 
 / send you the second edition of Harris' life 
 of Oscar. You have already read the first edit- 
 
 172
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Maitos 
 
 ion. But you will like to see such things, if 
 any, in the appendix as may be new and cer- 
 tainly 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 sev- 
 eral 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 
 follozved by another and a longer one. 
 
 I won't call you an Englishman again. But it 
 
 173
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 IS funny that you cant write about yourself with- 
 out 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 itnprobable name, in a Scotch 
 county which I had never heard of (Morayshire) , 
 a salmon — the whole bird — weighing 7^ lbs. and 
 measuring somewhere about //^ feet. I dis- 
 tributed J lbs. to my doctor and j 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 5 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 com- 
 plete. 
 
 Unless I ring you up at 11, on Friday, he 
 writes, 3. 5. 21, / will be with you at 11, as sug- 
 gested in your letter — the morning is still my 
 best time — and lunch at the club. 
 
 174
 
 XV 
 
 In the summer and autumn of 1921 Teixeira 
 enjoyed better health than at any time in the 
 last seven years. He supported without ill- 
 effects the strain of incessant luncheon and 
 dinner-parties during the visit of Couperus 
 to London; he moved from house to house, 
 staying with friends; he completed his un- 
 finished work and laid ambitious schemes for 
 the future. 
 
 / have written to Couperus, he told me, 
 13. 5. 21, preparing him to be entertained by the 
 Titmarsh Club and by the Asquiths. . . . 
 
 You might tell me in an early letter what to 
 do in proposing [him] for temporary honorary 
 membership of the Reform Club and when to do 
 
 f •' • • • • 
 
 My dear Stephen, he writes, 16. 5. 21; 
 My dear Stephen, he repeats; 
 
 The second allocution sounds almost super- 
 fluous; but I will not waste a sheet of Ryman's 
 priceless Hertford Bank. I intended the ^'M"
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 of ''My dear Stephen" to form the "M" of 
 "Many thanks for your letter of the 14th." 
 However, you may remember that the only dif- 
 ference between Moses and Manchester is that 
 one ends iti -oses and the other in -anchester; 
 and there you are. . . . 
 
 I am calling on the Netherlands minister at 
 half-past eleven this morning. . . . Bisschop (of 
 the Anglo-Batavian Society) rang me up on Sat- 
 urday evening. . . . There is to be a council- 
 meeting at 4. o'clock on Friday at the Internat- 
 ional Law Association in King' s Bench Walk. . . . 
 If you are back by Friday and likely to be at 
 home, I'll come on to see you from there. And 
 I'll write to you to-morrow about my call on Van 
 Swinderen. . . . 
 
 P. S. to my former letter, he writes on the 
 same day : Van Swinderen was ?nost charming. 
 He at once offered to have the Dutch reading at 
 the legation. . . . I said that, if Van S. would 
 make it an invitation matter, he would be doing 
 a great honour to C. and giving a very welcome 
 reception to the Dutch colony in Lon- 
 don. . . . 
 
 He leapt at this; said he would give a dinner 
 to twenty of la creme de la creme; he could man- 
 age thirty at two tables; and ask up to a hundred 
 to the reception. ... 
 
 176
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 Everything is provisional to Mrs. Van Swin- 
 deren's agreement; and I am to lunch there on 
 Friday and hear more. . . . 
 
 When Couperus returned to Holland, my 
 correspondence with Teixeira was suspended. 
 We were meeting or communicating by tele- 
 phone almost daily; and it was only when we 
 left London to stay with friends that the 
 letters were resumed. 
 
 Weather hot and stuffy, he writes, i. 8. 21, 
 from Sutton Courtney. Laivns running dozvn to 
 a perfectly full river and absolutely dry: and I 
 ivith not much to tell you. . . . 
 
 / am sleeping beautifully and eating lightly; 
 and I feel too indolent for words. 
 
 Good-bye and bless you! 
 
 My wife, he writes, 5. 8. 21, pictures me sur- 
 rounded by people who, if she broke my heart 
 by dying, would thrust women of forty on me, 
 "dear, dearest Mr. Tex," to look after me. Is 
 it not a beautifully witty tag to a letter? I think 
 so. . . . 
 
 To my reproach that he had left London 
 without saying good-bye to me, he replies, 
 16. 8. 21 with complete justification: 
 
 177
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 As our logical neighbours across the channel say: 
 "Zut! . . . Zut! . . . Et encore zutf . . ." 
 Had you profited as you ought by the careful 
 bringing up which your kind parents gave you, 
 you ^ivould have known that it is for those who 
 go away to say good-bye, for those who arrive to 
 say good-day. You left London before I did. 
 I say no more in reply to your reproaches. . . . 
 // ever you leave London, however, at about 
 the same time as I, remember, will you not, the 
 etiquette (French) and the punctilio (Ital- 
 ian)? . . . 
 
 . . . If you think that I have much to tell you. 
 he adds, 20. 8. 21, you are mistaken. Y'day I 
 went for a stroll, turned up a footpath which I 
 imagined would bring me back here, found that 
 it didn't, after I had gone much too far to turn 
 back, and plodded on and on — my apprehensive 
 mind full of a picture of myself being devoured 
 by onsticelli and stercoraceous geodurpes amid a 
 fine setting of ferns and bracken — until I reached 
 Abingdon. It might have been Oxford, so ex- 
 hausted was I. 
 
 A boy was bribed to fetch me a car and I re- 
 turned just before the search-party set out for me. 
 I roam no more. There is a lawn here: let me 
 walk up and down it. . . . 
 
 178
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 I do not despair about Ireland because I never 
 despair about anything. 
 And I am ever yours, 
 
 Tex. 
 
 Your letter of the 23rd, he writes, 25. 8. 21, 
 found me still here. (The Wharf, Sutton Court- 
 ney): I go to-morrow to the Norton Priory till 
 Monday . . . and longer if they will have me 
 longer. Then back home; and to Sutro's for a 
 brief week-end on Saturday. 
 
 Yes, I know Lancaster, its castle, where I have, 
 and its lunatic asylum, where I have never, 
 stayed. . . . 
 
 It were useless for me to pretend that I have 
 not mislayed your list of addresses. I may find 
 it in some other suit; but you might notify me of 
 your next movement whenever you write. But do 
 not translate m. p. h. as miles per hour. Master 
 of phoxhounds, if you like, or miles per horam; 
 but we Englih say an hour and not per hour. . . . 
 
 M. sent an enormous 120 h. p. (hocus pocus) 
 land-yacht to meet me at Portsmouth, he writes 
 from Norton Priory, 27. 8. 21, relieving me of 
 the worst part of the journey. . . . N. arrived 
 from town before dinner, bringing with him 
 a . . . stockbroker. . . . They go up on Mon- 
 day morning, but I stay on till Wednesday, like 
 
 179
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 a gay limpet but a perfectly moral: M's brother 
 comes down on Monday. 
 
 For the rest, I have the same room, but have 
 not yet cracked my skull against the canopy of 
 the same fourposter; and I am perfectly 
 happy. . . . 
 
 Your original "waybill is found, he adds, 30. 8. 
 21.; but I have the receipt of no letter from you 
 to acknowledge. N. . . . went up after break- 
 fast y day and brother R. M. came down before 
 dinner. He is a pleasant New Zealander and 
 took a lot out of me at bridge. 
 
 Life here pursues its quiet course. I accom- 
 panied M. and W . to the sea's edge yesterday 
 hut found the effort of ploughing through the 
 shingle tolerably exhausting and shall not repeat 
 it to-day. Indeed, the zvhole family. Miss T. in- 
 cluded, are bathing now and I am writing twaddle 
 to you under the pear-tree. 
 
 And, as I live, I think I'll zvrite no more. I 
 have no more to say; and the papers have just 
 come. I leave here after lunch (eon) to-morrow, 
 spend an hour or two in Chichester cathedral and 
 arrive home in time for my bread and milk. . . . 
 
 On his return to Chelsea and a typewriter, 
 he says, i. 9. 21 : 
 
 You will be pleased to receive a letter from me 
 in legible type, instead of in that hand which is 
 
 180
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 becoming almost as crabbed as yours. And I 
 continue to address you at Bamborouyh Castle, 
 though that stronghold figures as something -very 
 near Zambuk Castle in your letter of 30 August. 
 
 N. filled me ivith fears of internecine feuds 
 within your fortress, of bloody strife for the one 
 shady nook of the orchard and so on. You say 
 nothing of these things; and I assume that there 
 has been no slaughter in your time. There was 
 a horrid game when I became a British kid in the 
 early seventies: I am king of the castle! Get 
 out, you dirty rascal! I trembled at the thought 
 of you and N. playing this game against ruthless 
 border clansmen. All' s well that ends well. . . . 
 
 I lost twenty goodish guineas at three-handed 
 bridge after Brother Roy arrived. He wanted 
 to can everything on the estate: the apples, the 
 pears, the fleas on the dogs' backs, the flyaway 
 ducks. He wanted to introduce New Zealand 
 mutton-birds into this country. . . . 
 
 I had a tooth out yesterday, he writes, 3. 9. 
 21, — until then I had thirteen of my own left, 
 an unlucky number — and was not at my best. . . . 
 The tooth was extracted at a high cost, in the 
 presence of a dentist, an anaesthetist and my 
 body-physician but without unpleasant conse- 
 quences. And this afternoon I go to the Sutros 
 for a brief week-end. 
 
 181
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 I have no news, except that I have bought 
 some most attractive socks, or half-hose. . . . 
 
 . . . I have no news, he complains, 12. 9. 21. 
 / write to you simply out of friendship and 
 duty. I spent five hours at the Zoo y'day. . . . 
 We lunched there; so did most of the beasts, 
 heavily. You should have seen S. staggering 
 under the weight of about nine pounds of the 
 most expensive oranges, bananas, apples and 
 onions, not to mention sugar, monkey-nuts, and 
 two raw eggs. Say what you will, it is lajfable to 
 feed a small monkey with slices of apple till he 
 has both pouches full, all four hands and his 
 mouth. When you hand him the eighth slice, 
 you wait in breathless expectation. . . . 
 
 I had a tooth extracted last week, reducing 
 the number of my real teeth to twelve. To-day 
 the number of my pseudo-teeth is to be increased 
 io eighteen (quite correct: they swindle you out 
 of a couple) and I propose to lunch at the Re- 
 form Club with many gaps in my mouth. 
 
 I have arranged terms for two luvverly rooms 
 at the Tregenna Castle Hotel, St. Ives, from 
 I November to i April. Rooms face south, away 
 from the beastly ocean; breakfast in the bed- 
 room; baths a volonte. We hope to be well and 
 happy there. I must see much of you before 
 you go to Sweden. . . . 
 
 182
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 . . . I rejoice to hear that you are going to 
 Copenhagen. It is a charming coquette of a 
 little city, with which you will fall head over ears 
 in love. 
 
 Not to take a second risk, I send this to Cross- 
 wood, he writes 13. 9. 21, and I beg you to lay 
 me at the feet of your gracious chatelaine ; and, 
 if E. is there, you can give her the love of her 
 Uncle Tex. 
 
 At the Reform Club . . . I played a little 
 bridge . . . and won 2g/ — ; then, finding my rate 
 of progress rather slow, I veered of to Cleveland 
 Club and won £7. 12. more. This satisfied me; 
 and I came home, ate two little fillets of sole, some 
 apple-sauce and custard and (damn the expense) 
 a haporth of cheese and so to bed. 
 
 To complete my Diary of a Nobody, / am glad 
 that you have changed your name from Cowing 
 to Cumming and I am 
 
 ever yours, 
 Tex. 
 
 Many thanks for your letter of y*day, he 
 writes, 14. 9. 21, bearing traces of the pear skin 
 and plumstones therein mentioned, not to speak 
 of a spot of butter and a small burn from your 
 after-brekker cigarette. 
 
 I have crossed Shap in a swift and powerful 
 
 183
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 ra'ilivay-train, 'with a whiskered and spectacled 
 judge of the high court, in the opposite seat. I 
 remember old Day's teaching me how to observe 
 whether one zvere going up hill or down by watch- 
 ing the roadside rills: 
 
 "Water invariably flozvs dozcnziards," said he, 
 qravely. . . . 
 
 Ecclefechan I don t know and don t want to; 
 Carlisle, I do; Gretna Green I do: I never 
 want to set eyes on either again. I have a des- 
 olating memory of brown fields between Carlisle 
 and Gretna Green. By now you have, I expect, 
 seen as much of England as you wish to see in 
 the course of your natural life. . . . 
 
 To-day, seized with a sudden lech for art and 
 beauty, my wif and I are going to Hammers^nith 
 to hear The Beggar's Opera. . . . 
 
 / have again lost your waybill, he writes, 
 I 6. 9. 21, and cannot tell if this will still find you 
 at Glow-worm Castle. 
 
 The Beggar's Opera was a great affair. 
 
 Little has happened to me since. 
 
 But to-day Mrs. Asquith and her daughter 
 are coming to play different forms of the game 
 of auction bridge at the Cleveland Club. 
 
 And to-morrow . . . ah, to-7norrow! To- 
 morrow I am going to stay for the week-end 
 with a hostess, at or near Marlow, whose name 
 
 184
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 I do not even knozv. . . . I am promised a per- 
 fectly good end; hut so were any babies of old 
 ivho ended in being eaten by the ogress. 
 
 We are never too old for adventures; but pray 
 that I come safely out of this one. 
 
 On 30. 9. 21 he writes: 
 
 Fery many thanks for The Secret Victory, with 
 the delightful dedication and preface. I am not 
 at all sure that I shall not read the book again. 
 
 I have just returned from an interview with the 
 local income-tax brigand which filled me with some 
 apprehensions. . . . After a . . . jest or tzvo, I 
 left the brigand's cave unscathed. . . . 
 
 I go to the Wharf to-morrow for a week and 
 may stay on a day or two longer ^ if pressed: I al- 
 zvays do, you know. . . . 
 
 I had been invited to deliver some lectures 
 in Sweden and Denmark. Teixeira was good 
 enough to read the manuscript of these, as of 
 almost everything I wrote. With his letter 
 of 3. 10. 21 he returned the first: 
 
 Here is your lecture . . . I really cannot suggest 
 any cuts. My one and only lecture read 2}i 
 minutes: this is no reason why yours should not 
 
 185
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 read an hour and a quarter. Does any one want 
 to go and sit in a hall, with free light and warmth 
 thrown in for less than an hour and a quarter? 
 No; the Swedes will admire your fluency and he 
 pleased with you. 
 
 On my return to England, he asks, 
 14. 1 1. 21 : 
 
 When do we meet? We have decided to leave 
 on the ^oth. I can lunch with you to-morrow, 
 if you like, and bring you your two Ezvald books. 
 
 Teixeira's departure to Cornwall, already 
 delayed by his wife's illness, had now to be 
 postponed again, as he was prostrated with 
 ptomaine poisoning. 
 
 Both invalids were sufficiently recovered 
 to face the journey on 2 December; and, next 
 day, Teixeira sent me news of his safe arrival: 
 
 Tregenna Castle Hotel, 
 
 St. Ives, Cornwall, 
 J December, ig2i. 
 My dear Stephen: 
 
 Thanks for your letter that reached me just 
 before I left town. This is my address: what 
 else would it be? And the enclosed [an invita- 
 tion to lecture] is sent to show you that you are 
 
 186
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 not the only Beppo on the peach (damn your 
 British metaphors! ) : you might not believe it 
 otherzvise. But you may picture the courteous 
 terms in which I declined. 
 
 There is nothing for nervous dyspepsia or gas- 
 tric horribobblums like seven goodish hours in 
 a swift and powerful railway-express. I have 
 been free from pain or sickness for the first night 
 since Wednesday week. But I slept little. 
 From I a. m. onwards I spent a sleepless, pain- 
 less night. 
 
 The hotel is comfortable and commodious in 
 an old-fashioned country-house way; no central 
 heating, but big fires; a certain amount of intrigue 
 with Lizzie the cha7nbermaid to secure a really 
 hot bath: you know the sort of thing; immense 
 grounds, a very park of lOO acres, which I shall 
 never leave, because, if I did, I should never get 
 back: we stand too high. 
 
 Bless you. 
 
 Ever yours, 
 Tex. 
 
 It was the last letter that I ever received 
 from him; and on Monday, December the 
 fifth, as I was in the middle of answering it, 
 a telegram informed me that he had died that 
 morning. As he was getting up, he collapsed 
 
 187
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 in his wife's arms and slipped, unconscious, 
 on the floor. Death was instantaneous and, 
 it may be presumed and hoped, painless. 
 He was buried in the Holy Roman Catholic 
 Cemetery at St. Ives; and a requiem mass for 
 the repose of his soul was said at the Brompton 
 Oratory. 
 
 Even those with best cause to suspect how 
 nerveless was his grasp on life could not 
 readily believe that one who loved life so 
 well was to enjoy no more of it. "He was 
 spared old age," said one friend; but to 
 another Tex had lately confessed that he 
 would like to live for ever. 
 
 Before he left London, we said good-bye 
 for five months : he was to winter in Cornwall, 
 I in the West Indies. In seeing again the 
 exquisite handwriting of these many hundreds 
 of letters that commemorate our friendship 
 for the last six years of his life, I at least 
 cannot feel that his voice has grown silent 
 or that his laughter is at an end. The big, 
 solemn figure is vividly present; the favourite 
 phrases and the familiar gestures are stamped 
 for ever on the memory of any one that loved 
 him. 
 
 i88
 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 I am writing four thousand miles away 
 from St. Ives: and it may be possible to fancy 
 that he has been ordered to remain there 
 longer than we expected. This time there 
 may be no diary; perhaps the only letters will 
 be those already written; he may seem not to 
 hear all that he once loved hearing; but, 
 wherever he has gone, his personality remains 
 behind. 
 
 It was an old-standing bond that the sur- 
 vivor should write of the other. I have tried 
 to make Teixeira paint his own portrait. If 
 his letters have failed to reveal him, what can 
 I add ? His literary position is unchallenged ; 
 those who knew him how slightly soever 
 knew his humour and wit, his whimsical 
 charm, his understanding and toleration. 
 Those who knew him best had strongest 
 reason for loving him most deeply. Those 
 who knew him not missed knowing a ripe 
 scholar, a fine and tender spirit, a great and 
 gallant gentleman, a matchless companion 
 and the truest friend on earth. 
 
 BERBICE, 
 BRITISH GUIANA 
 15 February, 1922. 
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