Very many thanks for The Secret Victory, with the delightful dedication and preface. I am not at all sure that I shall not read the book again.
I have just returned from an interview with the local income-tax brigand which filled me with some apprehensions.... After a ... jest or two, I left the brigand’s cave unscathed....
I go to the Wharf to-morrow for a week and may stay on a day or two longer, if pressed: I always do, you know....
I had been invited to deliver some lectures in Sweden and Denmark. Teixeira was good enough to read the manuscript of these, as of almost everything I wrote. With his letter of 3.10.21 he returned the first:
Here is your lecture ... I really cannot suggest any cuts. My one and only lecture read 2¾ minutes: this is no reason why yours should not read an hour and a quarter. Does any one want to go and sit in a hall, with free light and warmth thrown in for less than an hour and a quarter? No; the Swedes will admire your fluency and be pleased with you.
On my return to England, he asks, 14.11.21:
When do we meet? We have decided to leave on the 30th. I can lunch with you to-morrow, if you like, and bring you your two Ewald books.
Teixeira’s departure to Cornwall, already delayed by his wife’s illness, had now to be postponed again, as he was prostrated with ptomaine poisoning.
Both invalids were sufficiently recovered to face the journey on 2 December; and, next day, Teixeira sent me news of his safe arrival:
Tregenna Castle Hotel,
St. Ives, Cornwall,
3 December, 1921.