Is the haven for me,”
sang Clement Scott in a visitors’-book discovered by Max Beerbohm, who tore him to pieces for it in the Saturday, in an article signed “Max.” Scott, pretending not to know who Max was, flew to the Era and wrote his famous absurdity, “Come out of your hole, rat!” Gad, how we used to laugh in those days!...
My reply began:
I resent your practice of heading your letters with the unseemly time at which you leave a warm and comfortable bed. And I dated my own: 22 May, 1919. Cocktail-time. What would you think of me if I headed my letters with the equally unseemly time at which I sometimes go to bed? I have been working so late one or two nights last week and this that the times would coincide, and you might bid me good-morning as I bade you good-night....
I went ... to a musical party.... I felt that it was incumbent upon me to see whether you had done anything in the matter of the Belgian quartette.[8] You will be shocked to hear that the quartette is not only still in existence, but has added a supernumerary to turn over the music of the pianist....
On 7.6.19, he wrote from Somersetshire: You are—it is borne in upon me that you must be—a secret autograph-hunter. Here am I, hoping to do nothing but sleep 26 hours out of the 24, to do nothing ever, to the great ever; and here come you, hoping for a letter, lest you be pained. A scripsomaniac, my poor Stephen, a scripsomaniac you will surely be, if you do not check yourself in time.
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes! I know that I am Satan rebuking sin; but was Satan ever better employed? Far rather would I see him rebuking sin than prompting letters for idle hands to write.
Well, I know that I am staying in Somersetshire with I., who is at this moment speeding towards the Hôtel du Vieux Doelen at the Hague, to nurse a sick friend. Ker pongsay voo der sah? And I am happy as the day is long, petted and coddled by his delightful mother, lolling from the morning unto the evening in the open air and doing not one stroke of work. And utterly at my ease, not even blushing when my brother cuckoo mocks me from the tree-top, as he does sixty times to the minute.