Next day, in a letter dated, City of Dreadful Nights, he adds:
Last night no air-raid was possible, because of an appalling thunderstorm, which kept me awake for another three hours. If you have ever heard thunder rolling for fifty seconds without intercession and giving sixty of these rolls to the hour, you will know the sort of thunderstorm it was.
This description prompts him to an anecdote:
“Then there’s Roche, the resident magistrate. Don’t go shooting Roche now ... unless it’s by accident. What does he look like? Well, if ye’ve ever seen a half-drowned rat, with a grey worsted muffler round its neck, then ye know the kind of man Roche is!”—Speech quoted before the Parnell Commission.
On my return from Cornwall, my flat was not yet ready for me, but the Teixeiras’ hospitality allowed me to continue staying with them.
You will be as welcome on Thursday night as peace at Christmas, wrote Teixeira, 9.9.17. [My cook] is away on a holiday and there is a possibility that she will not be back by then; and in the meantime there is nobody else. You may, therefore, have to submit to a modicum of discomfort: ... your boots will probably have to accumulate to some extent before they are cleaned on the larger scale. You have so many boots, however, that I venture to hope that this will not incommode you unduly.
This welcome was seasoned later by a story which Teixeira invented, describing his efforts to dislodge me. According to this, he used to fall resonantly from his bedroom to his study at 5.0 each morning and, if this failed to rouse me, he would mount the stairs again and continue to throw himself down until I waked. At 6.0 a cup of tea would be brought me; at 7.0 the morning paper; at 8.0 my letters. When I went to my bath at 8.30, Teixeira used to assert that he flung my clothes into a suit-case, tiptoed downstairs and laid the case on the doorstep. His tactics failed because I only waited until he was locked in the bathroom before creeping down and retrieving the case.
As our leave was over for the year, there was no further exchange of letters save when one or other was absent from our department.
I have read the new Maeterlinck play[6]—a good theme infamously treated, I find myself writing, 27.12.18. I beg you to scrap the third act and with it your regard for M’s feelings; then rewrite it with a little passion, a great deal of fear and unlimited un-understanding horror. The invasion of Belgium wasn’t a Greek tragedy where the afflicted prosed and philosophised—with a chorus dilating on cattle-yas; it was noisy, bloody and, above all, unbelievable. Maeterlinck has brought no nightmare into it....
Letter just received, he replied next day. You are a highly illuminated and illuminating critick. Your remarks upon that play are exactly right (as I now know, having just read my first three Greek plays)....