Part 3
_... Don’t overbathe, ~he adds as a postscript~. Why be so reckless? You remind me of the London city “clurks” 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 und Verdammter 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 Wellington and benefiting your Uncle Reggie ~pro rata~. ~[Bridge winnings at this time were thriftily exchanged for War Savings Certificates.]~ This morning I (pro)-rated the girl ... at the post-office for not “pushing” those certificates. 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~, I have bought my thirteenth fifteen-and-sixpennyworth of Uncle Reggie. Mindful of my injunction to “push” the goods, the post-office girl ... urged me to buy a £19.7. affair which would be good for £25 in five years’ time. Alas! Still, there are hopes._
In his preface to _The Admirable Bashville_, Bernard Shaw explains his reason for throwing it into blank verse: “I had but a week to write it in. Blank verse is so childishly easy and expedious (hence, by the way, Shakespeare’s copious output), that by adopting 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 26.8.16. to acknowledge the account of a bathing 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!_
VI
On Holy Saturday, 1917, I was asked by the deputy-chairman whether I would represent 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 between the British Embassy and the Foreign Office, overflowing into a brief journal betweenwhiles. He also disposed of my varied correspondence with uniform discretion and with a courage that only failed him when unknown 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 off to Davis and found out what he wanted to know...._
_13 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:
_I have ordered eight new coloured shirts, bringing the total up to 23. 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 33 ties, exclusive of white 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 “R8,” meaning thereby that it is my eighth pair. ~Sursum corda.~_
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 21.4.17, 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!_
_16 April._
_Yesterday being a fine day, I have caught cold. A bad look-out, executor, a bad look-out!_
_Adieu, cher ami._
_You will observe a brief hiatus, ~he writes on 19 April, 1917~. A letter begun to you on the 16th is reposing in my drawer at the department, where I have not been since then, having succumbed to an attack of bronchitis. And ~[my doctor]~ will not let me out till the 21st (“der Tag!”) at the earliest._
_Der Tag_ was reached ...
_21 April, 1917._
_It was a comfort and a joy to read this morning 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, 1917._
_Ebbene, caro mio Stefano! You will be able 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 be fifty-two and thirteen...._
_Bottomley has turned against the new government and is adumbrating his ideal government. He retains the present foreign secretary, but 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 charming 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 flegma.”..._
_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 amazingly well. J. pictures you a victim of indigestion; but I, knowing your justly celebrated strength of character, have no fears on that score. ~Cura ut valeas.~_
_4 May, 1917._
_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 colours), and the white hat and all’s well in God’s dear world._
That these sartorial efforts were not wasted is shewn by the next entry:
_5 May, 1917._
_... From yesterday’s Star:_
_“Society Sees the Pictures_
_“The beautiful spring day induced one Beau Brummel to sport a white box-hat”!!!_
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 commandeered my flat; and, until I could find, decorate and furnish another, Teixeira and his wife most kindly placed their house at my disposal. This will explain the following extract:
_Harrogate: 15 July, 1917._
_Here is the key. Come in when you like, make yourself as comfortable as you can and forgive all deficiencies. I feel a compunction at not having the physical energy to “clear” things a bit for you; but there you are...._
_I have started my cure, ~he writes on 18.7.17~, which promises to be a most strenuous, arduous and tedious affair. I have to take daily two soda-water tumblers of strong sulphur water and two ordinary tumblers of warm magnesia water; and on alternate days (a) a Nauheim bath and (b) a hot-air bath...._
_It is raining steadily. This doesn’t matter. But that sulphur-water, on an empty stomach, at 8 a.m.! Two-and-twenty ounces of it, hot! The stench of it! It is said to remind one of rotten eggs; but, as I have never smelt a rotten egg, it reminds me of nothing and only suggests hell._[5]
Sugar seems to have been more scarce in Harrogate than in London; and Teixeira’s appeals and contrivances were always pathetic and sometimes frantic.
_My wife did manage to get half a pound of it flung at her head this morning, ~he writes on 19.7.17~. I had so entirely forgotten the essential rudeness of the people of Yorkshire that its discovery came upon me as an utter surprise. I amuse myself by overcoming it with smiles. Smiles are unfamiliar symptoms to them and take them aback._
_You may tell Sutro that I have bought a dozen silk collars._
After weary weeks of nauseating treatment, he writes:
_It will be an awful sell if this cure ends without doing me good. Still I always hope. Whatever happens I shall want at least a week’s after-cure which I should probably take here: simply a rest and air, without any waters or baths. But what is your Cornish date?_
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 essential. 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 writing 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 probably take that after-cure, but take it at Harrogate, 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 desiderandum...._
It is necessary to insert my letter of 30.7.17 in order to explain Teixeira’s reply to it.
_I 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 inviting 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._
_Ululu!_
My eviction took place in the first week of August; and on 3.8.17 I wrote to Teixeira:
_I am thinking of moving to Chelsea on Tuesday.... You may remember a story of Benjamin Jowett in connection with two undergraduates 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 recalcitrant young scholars should be entirely uneatable, 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. I have manfully withstood the stalwart labourers who 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 off at the main, I feel that I may retire with dignity and the full honours of war...._
_Make yourself as comfortable in Chelsea as you can, ~he answered on 4.8.17~. As at present advised, we return on Wednesday fortnight, the 22nd...._
_The days here speed past on wings, thanks to their monotony. Waters at 8; again at 10.30; a bath or baths at 11; lunch at 1.30; a jog-trot drive from 3 to 4; bridge; dinner at 7.30; massage at 9; all this with unfailing regularity. I 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 fibrositis 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 whom 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 good at all. Indeed my main affliction is worse; certain movements of the right arm which were possible with 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 consolation to know, however, that I have no arthritis. What 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...._
_~And, 30.8.17.~ I 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 occurred at any stage during the war.
_Last night, ~Teixeira writes, 5.9.17~, was made hideous by a pack of confounded Germans who 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 remained 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._
Next day, in a letter dated, _City of Dreadful Nights_, he adds:
_Last night no air-raid was possible, because of an appalling thunderstorm, which kept me awake for another three hours. If you have ever heard thunder rolling for fifty seconds without intercession and giving sixty of these rolls to the hour, you will know the sort of thunderstorm it was._
This description prompts him to an anecdote:
_“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 know 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’ hospitality allowed me to continue staying with them.
_You will be as welcome on Thursday night as peace at Christmas, ~wrote Teixeira, 9.9.17~. ~[My cook]~ is away on a holiday and there is a possibility that she will not be back by then; and in the meantime there is nobody else. You may, therefore, have to submit to a modicum of discomfort: ... 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 will 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 was no further exchange of letters save when one or other was absent from our department.
_I have read the new Maeterlinck play[6]—a good theme infamously treated, ~I find myself writing, 27.12.18~. I beg you to scrap the third act and with it your regard for M’s feelings; then rewrite it with a little passion, a great deal of fear and unlimited un-understanding 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, unbelievable. 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 exactly right (as I now know, having just read my first three Greek plays)...._
_I enclose, ~he writes 10.8.18~, 1¾ chapters of the Couperus classical comedy-novel ~[The Tour]~, which I amused myself by doing because you insisted so emphatically that the book should be done. But I will go no further till I have your verdict. Don’t trouble to do any work on this; the marginal 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...._
IX
In 1918 Teixeira’s health had so much improved 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 exchanged in this year is small.
At the armistice, he left the Intelligence Section to become secretary to the department; 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 invitation. Its form must be explained by reference to Stevenson’s and Osborne’s _Wrong Box_. Rudyard Kipling has mentioned, in _A Diversity of Creatures_, the sublime brotherhood to whom this book is a second Bible.
“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, placing 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-General suddenly became human and went on: ‘Bussoran, Heligoland, and the Scilly Islands’—‘What?’ growled Penfentenyou. ‘Nothing,’ said the Agent-General, squeezing my hand affectionately. ‘Only we have just found out that we are brothers.... I’ve got it. Brighton, Cincinnati and Nijni-Novgorod!’ God bless R. L. S.[7]...” One of the greatest living authorities 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:
_MATTOS. Alexander William de Bent Teixeira, if this should meet the eye of, he will hear something to his advantage by lunching with me to-day at the far end of Waterloo Station (Departure Platform) or even at Lincoln’s Inn._
_War Trade Intelligence Department._
_30 December, 1918._
On leaving the department early in 1919, I saw and heard little of Teixeira until he invited 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 followed.
_Couperus sends me this postcard, ~he writes, 29.4.18~:_
_“Amice,_