I can’t compete with Curzon,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 5/6 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 Alfred? 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 thousand rats....
I can’t compete with Curzon,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 5/6 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 Alfred? 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 thousand rats....
On 7.8.20 he writes:
You will remember that ... I declined to join your Passing Fashion Research Society, or whatever you decided to call it. But I have no objection to being an honorary corresponding member. 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 deliberately dowdy attire.The dowdiness 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 patternless. There are three items of sheer deliberate dowdiness for you. Another dowdy item was even a little earlier, I believe: the one-buttoned 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 1907 or 1908, but I am not quite sure. You, with your wonderful memory, may be able to place it, for 1907-8 marks the period when you burst upon the London firmament.I—who can remember witnessing a departure for Cremorne—I, I need hardly tell you, remember 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.But all I ask that you should fix is the date of the deliberately dowdy well-dressed man....
You will remember that ... I declined to join your Passing Fashion Research Society, or whatever you decided to call it. But I have no objection to being an honorary corresponding member. 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 deliberately dowdy attire.
The dowdiness 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 patternless. There are three items of sheer deliberate dowdiness for you. Another dowdy item was even a little earlier, I believe: the one-buttoned 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 1907 or 1908, but I am not quite sure. You, with your wonderful memory, may be able to place it, for 1907-8 marks the period when you burst upon the London firmament.
I—who can remember witnessing a departure for Cremorne—I, I need hardly tell you, remember 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.
But all I ask that you should fix is the date of the deliberately dowdy 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 Disraelian in scope; it should be aroman a clefto 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 doomed entirely to this glorious weather. For the rest, I hope and believe that you never resent those whacks with which, when the sky is overcast, I am apt to belabour my correspondents 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 symptom 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.Read Max on Swinburne in theFortnightly Reviewwhen you get the chance and contrast it with George Moore’s account of his visit to Swinburne, in which he can only tell us that he found the poet naked in bed. I forget where it occurs....
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 Disraelian in scope; it should be aroman a clefto 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 doomed entirely to this glorious weather. For the rest, I hope and believe that you never resent those whacks with which, when the sky is overcast, I am apt to belabour my correspondents 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 symptom 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.
Read Max on Swinburne in theFortnightly Reviewwhen you get the chance and contrast it with George Moore’s account of his visit to Swinburne, in which he can only tell us that he found the poet naked in bed. I forget where it occurs....
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 inThe New Machiavelli, Granville Barker inWasteand H. M. Harwood in theGrain of Mustard Seed, who attempts a political theme is almost 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 ordering reprisals in Ireland, the theatre may become 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 workswhich I quoted were unmoved by the endowment of motherhood, by educational reform and by housing schemes.
In reply, Teixeira wrote, 11.8.20:
... Don’t slay the suggestions of the big political novel off-hand or outright. I mean a bigger thing than you do; a thing that not Wells nor Barker nor Harwood ... could write, whereas you, I think, could; a thing as big asConingsby; a thing calledThe Secretary of StateorThe 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 statesmen, but you know only those whom you like and you like only those whom you esteem. Your portraits 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....
... Don’t slay the suggestions of the big political novel off-hand or outright. I mean a bigger thing than you do; a thing that not Wells nor Barker nor Harwood ... could write, whereas you, I think, could; a thing as big asConingsby; a thing calledThe Secretary of StateorThe 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 statesmen, but you know only those whom you like and you like only those whom you esteem. Your portraits 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....
In his next letter, 14.8.20, he returns to the same subject:
Your letter ... pretty well convinces me, at any rate about the Coningsby novel. Dizzy never wrote 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 offended by betraying private or official secrets in his novels....
Your letter ... pretty well convinces me, at any rate about the Coningsby novel. Dizzy never wrote 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 offended 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 ofThe Tour:
Couperus writes:
“Your last envoi has given me a most delightful day. What a magnificent translation.The Touris; 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 thewhole book is a gem, if I may say so myself.”So I’ve had one appreciative reader at any rate!...
“Your last envoi has given me a most delightful day. What a magnificent translation.The Touris; 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 thewhole book 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, should there be an election in “the island” before I leave Ventnor, 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....
Tell Norman[Major Holden, then liberal candidate for the Isle of Wight]that, should there be an election in “the island” before I leave Ventnor, 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:
31 August 1920 (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 Welsh solicitor. He would have been just the same had he been Scotch or English or Irish. After all, our friend R. is little and Welsh and was a solicitor and will 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 Englishmen as “unenglish.” How can the things be unenglish which the English do?Like yourself, the late W. 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 philosophical 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 childish 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 Alf?”“Our Alf? What do you mean?”“Your al-f-resco meals.”Just like that!...
31 August 1920 (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 Welsh solicitor. He would have been just the same had he been Scotch or English or Irish. After all, our friend R. is little and Welsh and was a solicitor and will 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 Englishmen as “unenglish.” How can the things be unenglish which the English do?
Like yourself, the late W. 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 philosophical 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 childish 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 Alf?”
“Our Alf? What do you mean?”
“Your al-f-resco meals.”
Just like that!...