Page:Tex; a chapter in the life of Alexander Teixeira de Mattos (IA texchapterinlife00mcke).pdf/112



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 bur-*joice 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