Page:Tex; a chapter in the life of Alexander Teixeira de Mattos (IA texchapterinlife00mcke).pdf/161



''We have a girl trio of musicians here, who play at tea-time and eke after dinner. The pianist reports that he said to her: "I have been to Japan. I was very ill there and I found myself in the arms of a Japanese woman."  To-day he stopped me in the road and said:  "I wish I could speak Dutch, sir, as well as you speak English. I once learnt a continental language, but I mustn't speak it now. What it was" (throwing out his arms) "you can guess"''

I had read Barbellion's two books without sharing Teixeira's admiration for them, in part because I thought that a book of self-revelation so unreserved should only have been published posthumously, in part because it was incongruous—to use no stronger word—to find a man, who had aroused wide-spread compassion by what was taken to be the account of his last hours, reading with relish the sympathetic press notices which it brought him.

To this criticism Teixeira replies, 5. 12. 20:

''Thank you for your two letters and the loan of James Joyce Barbellion I like and al-*''