Evidently feeling that I was living too much alone, Teixeira enclosed a copy of The Times’ list of forthcoming dances:
(Don’t wait for invitations, he urged in a postscript. Ring the top bell and walk inside.)
The next letter needs to have Teixeira’s use of the word palimpsest explained. His good-nature in reading his friends’ manuscripts was inexhaustible. I never intended him to do more than give me a general opinion; but his critical vision was microscopic, and he filled the margins with questions and comments. In returning me one manuscript, he wrote:
I have made some 800 notes, of which 600 are purely frivolous. Six are worth serious attention.
While this textual scrutiny was quite invaluable, Teixeira seldom gave that general opinion of which I always felt in most need at the moment when I had lately finished a book and was unable to regard it with detachment. Accordingly, the manuscript, on leaving him, was usually sent to another friend, who commented not only on the text but also on the marginalia. As her occasional controversies with Teixeira (expressed in such minutes as:
“Pull yourself together, Mr. T!”
“You men! One’s as bad as the other, you know.”
“Never mind what Mr. T. says, Stephen: I understand.”
“I wish my brain worked as quickly as that.”)
and with me invited rejoinders, the first version of a manuscript sometimes took on the appearance of a contentious departmental file. It was in this form that Teixeira called it a palimpsest.