A. T.
“Harry Edwin.”
To see.
23.8.16.
Seen and approved.
H. E. P.
... Don’t overbathe, he adds as a postscript. Why be so reckless? You remind me of the London city “clurks” who arrive in Switzerland one evening, run straight up the Matterhorn the next morning. I believe that two per cent of them do not drop dead.
The Sehr Hochwohlgeboren und Verdammter Graf Zeppelin, he writes on 25.18.16, did some damage last night at Greenwich, Blackwall (a power-station) etc. For the rest, no news. I am picking up not wholly unconsidered trifles at the Wellington and benefiting your Uncle Reggie pro rata. [Bridge winnings at this time were thriftily exchanged for War Savings Certificates.] This morning I (pro)-rated the girl ... at the post-office for not “pushing” those certificates. I said that, whenever any one asked for a penny stamp, she should ask:
“May we not supply you with one of these?”
It went very well with the audience.
This morning, he writes later, I have bought my thirteenth fifteen-and-sixpennyworth of Uncle Reggie. Mindful of my injunction to “push” the goods, the post-office girl ... urged me to buy a £19.7. affair which would be good for £25 in five years’ time. Alas! Still, there are hopes.
In his preface to The Admirable Bashville, Bernard Shaw explains his reason for throwing it into blank verse: “I had but a week to write it in. Blank verse is so childishly easy and expedious (hence, by the way, Shakespeare’s copious output), that by adopting it I was enabled to do within the week what would have cost me a month in prose.” Pressure of work sometimes drove Teixeira to a similar expedient in rimed verse: