Part 4
_“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 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._
_“Yours,_ _“L. C.”_
_He has us on the hip with his Jeremiah Curtius. And I feel more than ever that you were too drastic in your views and I too weak in yielding to them...._
_We should always guard ourselves against the bees in our bonnets. When I produced Zola’s ~Heirs of Rabourdin~, the stage-manager said his play-actors couldn’t pronounce Monsieur, Madame and Mademoiselle to his liking: might he try how it would sound with Mr., Mrs., and Miss Rabourdin? He tried!_
_If your principle were carried to any length, you would have to call a pagoda a tower, a jinrickshaw a buggy, a café a coffee-house, a gendarme a policeman (i.e. a ~sergent-de-ville~), 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._
In the spring and summer of 1919 our letters became more frequent. Though Teixeira 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~, 21.5.19; 4:57 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 Æquora celarat.
_... My intentions are to go down to I. for 5 or 6 days on the 5th of June and to join my wife at Bexhill on or about the 18th for 3 or 4 weeks._
_“Bexhill-on-Sea_ _Is the haven for me,”_
_sang Clement Scott in a visitors’-book discovered by Max Beerbohm, who 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:
_I 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, 1919. Cocktail-time. What would you think of me if I headed my letters with the equally unseemly time at which I sometimes 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 whether you had done anything in the matter of the Belgian quartette.[8] You will be shocked to hear that the quartette is not only still in existence, but 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 scripsomaniac you will surely be, if you do not check yourself 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 Somersetshire with I., who is at this moment speeding towards the Hôtel du Vieux Doelen at the Hague, to nurse a sick friend. Ker pongsay voo der sah? And I 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 utterly at my ease, not even blushing when my brother cuckoo mocks me from the tree-top, as he does sixty times to the minute._
_I return on the 12th; on the 13th I go cuckooing at the Wharf, returning on the 16th; ... on the 18th 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 but 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 yesterday with one Butterworth, who is opening up a publisher’s business. In the course of conversation 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 presumptuous, but I have not committed you in any way to anything, and yesterday’s transaction may be 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 unpublished in England, and, if Butterworth thinks fit to make you a good offer, no one will be better pleased than me...._
_~On 26.7.19 he wrote from Bexhill~: If it comes on to rain as it threatens daily, I shall be returning ~The Tour~ to you quite soon; and in any case it will go back to you before I leave here on the 15th 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 Cora’s song[9] in your sleep meanwhile; and my additional comments 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 stalking 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 ~Fille de Madame Angot~? I am dying to hear the whole Offenbach series before I die._
A letter from Bexhill, dated 2.7.19, touches on one general principle of translating:
_... With all deference, a translator’s first duty is not to translate. His first duty is to love God, honour the king and hate the Germans. His next duty is to produce a version corresponding as near as may be with what an English original writer, if he were writing that particular book, would set down. His last duty is to translate 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 Finsbury 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 99 pages, I have discovered 21 expressions which you would undoubtedly have condemned in ~The Tour~._
_... 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 have 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 remember at the moment only Aphrodite and Zeus and possibly Eros. It may be that Juno is mentioned as Hera, but I doubt it._
_There is a charming garden, with a most beautifully kept lawn. The flowers ... consist entirely of the only three that I dislike: fuchsias, begonias and red geraniums._
_Still ..._
_I hope that you are spending the day as peacefully and that this will find you well and happy...._
_Two east-end Jews within hail of me are talking Yiddish and sharing a Daily Snail between them. There is a cat. There is or am I. And there are those fuchsias._
On 18.8.19, 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 would not fail to present himself at Euston next Friday at 8.10 p.m. to tuck me into my sleeper and see me safely off? My address in Ireland from Aug. 23rd to 31st 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 Huntercombe 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 wish 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 boat-deck with her (but without an overcoat), watching 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 Dublin. Being faced with the prospect of waiting 2½ 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 was eclipsed by the recognition accorded me by an old woman who remembered—unprompted—my coming to Glaslough 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 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 be 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 without encountering cataclysmal adventures on the road.... Still, would that I had known that you can buy collars, clean and therefore presumably 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 evening.... You are to accept it as a token of the happiness which I wish you during this Christmas and the whole of the coming year._
_That was a very jolly party on Wednesday: I enjoyed everything: the gay and kindly company, the admirable foodstuffs, even the music; and, if it be 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 Christmas Day~, I am allowed to indulge my passion for chocolates, but not to buy any for myself; and it was most thoughtful 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[10] which to my mind is a most remarkable production and which will have to be read by you at all costs. It is published in Dublin; and it is doubtful 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:
_It is blowing what-you-may-call-it here: ’arf a mo’, ’arf a brick, half a gale. Apart from that, we are well and send our love._
Commenting on a house-party which I had described, he adds:
_All 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-fellow-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 henceforward he must regard himself as an invalid and must work under the conditions imposed by his doctor.
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 beginning 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. I’m getting plaguily impatient at the slowness of my recovery: it’s very wrong, wicked and impatient of me._
_I enclose._
_A. Two lines from your favourite “poet” (save the Mark Tapley)!_
_B. Some wedding-effusions which remind me that Burne-Jones, when they told him that marriage was 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, like 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 wonder 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!~ Wha-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 will never see it acted) a stage-play called ~Titus Andronicus~....)_
_(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 sonnés~. 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 pedigree tracing the descent of the English from the ten lost tribes of Israel?_
_Isaac_ | | _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 & Co. to reject? Was it ~Treasure Island~ or something quite different?_
_Which Samuel 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 off 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 the best two or three, in their order as written._
_Where shall I find the quarrels between Huxley 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 inclination (thank God) for work yet, but I can read day without end._
_Pearsall Smith’s ~Stories from the Old Testament~ 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 sympathize. 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 accent 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. Why, I once “began” to read the Bible!...)_
_With most of your criticisms I agree, ~my letter continued. Teixeira had been reading the 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 Coldstreamer whether he belongs to the Coldstreams. It is always either the Coldstream Guards or the Coldstream...._[11]
_(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. Cricketing terms, nautical terms, military terms, Latin quantities, those endless excuses for the worst forms of British snobbery, all leave me cold.)_
In discussing methods of work, he writes:
_(... It will interest you to know that Oscar Wilde 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 at least, ~The Importance~, was 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:
_You’re not interested in my brown 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 hitherto not heard, Teixeira wrote, 4.6.20:
_... It must have been my morbid delicacy that prevented me, knowing your dislike of dogs, from mentioning the brown dog before. As a man gains strength, he loses delicacy: that explains 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 itching 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._[12]