Page:Tex; a chapter in the life of Alexander Teixeira de Mattos (IA texchapterinlife00mcke).pdf/129



''best sense; and it in no way imposed or impressed itself on the middle and upper classes of London society. How could they? I doubt if any number of the Savoy ever sold 1,000 copies; certainly no number ever sold 2,000. And they were never in society, were never in the outskirts of society and never wanted to be in either.''

''But there! I daresay you were thinking of Oscar all the time''

''Enter on the lawn a nurse bearing my dinner-tray. After dinner I retire to bed''

One day, Teixeira added, 17. 7. 20, I'll return to those men of the nineties (I will never write a book about them: really I was too much outside them)

''I trust that some Leonard Merricks are on the way: I'm nigh starved for books again. Don't send me Zola or Balzac in English: I couldn't stomach the translations. And I expect you're right about Balzac's French style. Those giants were awful chaps: Balzac, Rubens, the pylon-designing Baines, brrr!''

On 22. 7. 20 he writes:

I beseech you, if you haven't it, buy yourself a copy of The Home Life of Herbert Spencer''. By "Two." It is the book praised by "Rozbury" in his letter to Arrowsmith prefacing The Diary''