Page:Tex; a chapter in the life of Alexander Teixeira de Mattos (IA texchapterinlife00mcke).pdf/133



''Those Heine quodlibets about which I wrote y'day are, I believe, called "split puns," though I doubt the happiness of the term. I made one in my sleep this morning: rowdies on the Brighton road indulging in a charabanquet)''

I can never have news, as you may imagine, writes Teixeira, 29. 7. 20; my letters must be always replies to yours

''I like your Cave-Brown-Cave story if it was true; it probably was, as a family of that name exists.''

''I never heard John Redmond, I am sorry to say. He was, so to speak, after my time. I heard Parnell and, if I were only a mimic, could give you his curiously contemptuous, high-bred, high-pitched voice to-day. I heard Randolph; and at the time, in the eighties, both he and Arthur Balfour used to lisp. Does A. B. lisp now? Answer this: it interests me; and it has a sort of bearing on that passing-fashion competition which you were starting. So essential to birth and breeding was the lisp in those days that even the English-bred Comte de Paris lisped in French! I was at his silver wed-''*