Two east-end Jews within hail of me are talking Yiddish and sharing a Daily Snail between them. There is a cat. There is or am I. And there are those fuchsias.
On 18.8.19, I wrote:
The North of Ireland seems beating up for a storm, does not it? I suppose there is no point in my reminding you that a perfect gentleman would not fail to present himself at Euston next Friday at 8.10 p.m. to tuck me into my sleeper and see me safely off? My address in Ireland from Aug. 23rd to 31st is (in the care of Sir John Leslie, Baronet) Glaslough, Co. Monaghan....
At 8.10 on Friday, he replied, 20.8.19, this perfect gentleman will be eating his melon at Huntercombe Manor House, Henley-on-Thames (in the care of Squire Nevile Foster), but for which he would undoubtedly come to see you oft in the stilly night. I wish you safely through the war-zone, happy and interested in this, your first visit to Ireland and prosperously home again. Now do not write and answer that you have paid eighteen visits to Ireland before: those eighteen visits have always been and always will be to my mind as mythical as the travels of Mungo Park or Mendes Pinto....
Feeling that I must acquaint Teixeira with my safe arrival in Ireland, I wrote, 28.8.19:
Glaslough, Co. Monaghan.
... I am here; yes, but how did I get here? I am here; yes, but shall I ever get away? I left London on Friday with my young and very lovely charge, encountered engine-trouble and reached Holyhead an hour late. I sat on the boat-deck with her (but without an overcoat), watching the dawn until I was chilled to the marrow and any other man would have been delirious with pneumonia. The breakfast-car train had left, so we took a later one from Dublin. Being faced with the prospect of waiting 2½ hours at Clones, I got out at Drogheda to send a telegram to the Leslies, begging them to meet us there by car. Unhappily, the train went on without me, bearing away my young and very lovely charge, my suit-case, my despatch-box, my umbrella and my hat. I was left with a pair of gloves and my charge’s ticket.... I bought myself a cap of 4/6 and a clean collar for /4d, and spent the day writing letters, contriving epigrams and lunching off scrambled eggs and Irish whiskey.
I have been taken to the McKenna grave at Donagh and presented—by Shane—to the clan as its head, which I am not. The recognition of Odysseus by his old nurse was eclipsed by the recognition accorded me by an old woman who remembered—unprompted—my coming to Glaslough twelve years ago and thanked God that she had been spared to see me again. It is a very lovely place that the Leslies have taken from us.
But how to leave it? It is Horse Show week, and every sleeper has been booked for three weeks. I shall have to cross from Belfast to Liverpool, I think, and try to get my sleeping done on the boat. And that means that I shall not be home till Tuesday. Can’t be helped.
On 31.8.19 Teixeira wrote to greet me on my return from Ireland: