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....

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]

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.

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!

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?”“Youareto 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....

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?”

“Youareto 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 nogood 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.

[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, therewas 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 shouldbe 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....

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