Part 5

_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 dinners again. 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 Beaumont 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~ I 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 recovery 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. 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 Wells’ Polly-Kippsian “~History of the World~” reminds me irresistibly of the old lady who, witnessing a performance of “~Anthony and Cleopatra~,” by your Mr. Shakespeare or our Mr. Shaw, observed: “How different from the home life of our dear queen!”)_

_... Let me offer you—a trifle belatedly perhaps—my congratulations on your new dignity._

_(“Thanks.” A. Kipps)_

_Certainly you should tell the ~[Belgian]~ Ambassador that it is not only inconvenient but impossible 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 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 solatium he was invested with the 19th 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 permission to wear the Expiring Porpoise at any public function in Germany. Seeing that he had paid one considerable sum to the Bulgarian Czar and another to the firm of jewellers, who substituted diamonds for the paste of the jewel he felt, naturally enough, that he was receiving little value for his lavish expenditure. Bulgaria, it seemed, was the only country where the Expiring Porpoise could be worn. Accordingly he returned to Sofia and paid a further sum to be invited 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’ between us, is it not? How long it is since last I saw you! I have been waiting to express my heart-felt regret for the unpardonable carelessness of my Chamberlain. When it was too late and you had left Sofia (I feared for ever), my Chamberlain discovered that you had been invested with the 19th Class of the Expiring Porpoise. You must have thought me mad, for no sane man would offer the 19th class to a person of your distinction. It was the 1st 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.” With 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 19th 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 removed at such expense from the jewel of the 19th class._

_(This is a splendid story.)_

_I am afraid, ~I added~, that I have no idea who is the official to whom 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 Browning 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.” You outdo and outvie me. You never know anything. In other words, you know nothing. But I’ll wager that these are worn without permission. 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 too much alone, Teixeira enclosed a copy of _The Times’_ list of forthcoming dances:

(_Don’t wait for invitations, ~he urged in a postscript~. 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’ manuscripts was inexhaustible. I never intended him to do more than give me a general opinion; but his critical vision was microscopic, and he filled the margins with questions and comments. In returning me one manuscript, he wrote:

_I have made some 800 notes, of which 600 are purely frivolous. Six are worth serious attention._

While this textual scrutiny was quite invaluable, 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 detachment. Accordingly, the manuscript, on leaving him, was usually sent to another friend, who commented not only on the text but also on the marginalia. As her occasional controversies 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 _wish_ my brain worked as quickly as that.”)

and with me invited rejoinders, the first version 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 a long-chair, on a lawn, beneath the sun, surrounded by breezes and patients, who being forbidden 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 Browning 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 burjoice mountebank’s rhymed works._

_I can understand that she sometimes unsettles you by condemning you for the quite logical behaviour of the male characters in your trilogy: you might meet this by presenting her with 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 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-en-tachtig Achtergracht” mean in Dutch. Of course, working it out in the light of my own intelligence, 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), but 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 23rd and 24th instant postum. Don’t start; instant postum is the ridiculous name of the toothsome beverage which my specialist ordered me to take instead of tea or coffee...._

_I jump at the chance of playing the schoolmaster 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, combined 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 twenty 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 Frenchman). “Un Français les Anglais,” but (invariably) “L’elan français, le rosbif anglais”. The Germans and Danes begin all nouns with a capital (as the English did, in some centuries), but no adjectives whatever. The Italians, Norwegians and Swedes have no capitals to their adjectives; the Dutch are gradually discarding them; they are discarded entirely in scientists’ Latin: the Narbonne Lycosa (a certain spider of the Tarantula genus) in Latin becomes ~Lycosa narbonniensis~...._

_Your question about “high mass” is, involuntarily, 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.[13] I write “going to mass” (no French catholic would write “allant à la Messe!”) 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 Wasp, 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 subject of the hyphenated nouns, take little Murray[14] for your guide. He has the sense to begin the vast, the immense 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 generally;_

_(b) be prepared to make moderate (i.e. grudging,) concessions;_

_(c) have little Murray 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 interposed:

(_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 conniegilchristing. 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 hasten to put before you.... So long as proper names intrude their capitals into mid-sentence you cannot arrive at flat uniformity, and a few capitals more or less do not offend me...._

_I did not intend to be unfair about High Mass and first thought of suggesting for your consideration 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 without 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 postmistress 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, quite illogical and inconsistent; and, if I try to follow your rules, 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 considerations of comeliness, I think the French printed page, with its vile type and vile, fluffy paper, is one of the ugliest things (Nonsense, nonsense, you unæsthetic 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 punctuation, execrable in statement, logic, deduction. In ~The Descent of Man~ he says:_

_“Music arouses in us various emotions, but not the more terrible ones of horror, fear, rage, etc.”_

_He had never heard of me, though I was 17 when he died._

_Tex._

_Crowborough, 30 June (alas, how time flies!) 1920._

_For your two letters of 28, 29 June, many thanks. I really can’t write and congratulate H. on ~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 want your chattels; but I am convinced that I came to England for your goots and to save you from degenerating into a lady novelist. 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 expedition off his own bat. 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 rescuer. 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 soul!..._

_P.S. An invitation to the ... Oppenheim wedding has just arrived. Like the man who answered the big-game-hunter’s advertisement, I’m not going._[15]

_Trusting that this will find you alive, ~he writes 7.7.20~, I write to thank you for your letter and to return the book. ~[The Diary of a Nobody]~. It amused me, though I am not prepared to go as far as Rosebinger, Birringer or Bellinger. I could certainly furnish a bedroom without 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 Baptist, 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 books; I am rou-inned; and yet I never have aught to read. Can you lend me Huxley’s Collected 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._

_Here is a typical quotation from your favourite “poet”, whom, by the way, Benjamin Beaconsfield 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 it? 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 10.7.20~. Read this Muddiman’s ~Men of the Nineties~. But 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.[16] 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 that is still attached to the men of the nineties and to their work:

_I doubt, ~I wrote, 12.7.20~, whether the years 1890 to 1900 have produced more permanent literature of the first order than any other decade of the 19th century—or the twentieth. Paris was discovered anew in those days and seemed a tremendous discovery, though its influence 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 always feel, the most meaningless and pretentious 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:

_I believe that the great bubble of the nineties has been pricked for the present generation. All the work 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 nineties what 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 literature 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, Grackanthorpe or your over advertised American friend Peters. Your annotations to Muddiman’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 constantly have I not believed you to be filled with knowledge, either acquired or instinctive and intuitive, of most things! And now your letter ... has disappointed me almost to tears._

_Your only excuse would be that you took Oscar Wilde and Bernard Shaw to be and practically alone to be the men of the nineties. That is not so. And, if you agree with me that Oscar was a man of the eighties and that Shaw is a man of the twentieth century, you have no excuse whatever and 98% 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; 105/- net~). Anyhow, here goes:_

_There was no question of either a literary revival or revolution in the nineties and there was no sham, colossal or minute._