I propose to revise Majesty so thoroughly that I shall be entitled to eliminate Ernest Dowson’s name from the title-page, even as I eliminated John Gray’s from that of Ecstacy. There was no true collaboration in either case; and they did little more for me than you did in Old People: not so much as you did in The Tour. Neither had the original before him.
I look forward greatly to my stay with you.... Eimar O’Duffy [the author of The Wasted Island] has been married by another novelist and has gone to live with her in a cottage in Wexford. She spells her name Cathleen; and he has sent me his early poems, in which he spelt his name Eimhar. He tells me that this spelling was abandoned because it didn’t look well; this I accept. He adds that it is pronounced Avar: this I do not believe....
On leaving me, Teixeira wrote 24.9.20 to tell me that he had reached Ventnor without mishap:
This is not to acknowledge the receipt of any letter from you that may or may not be awaiting me at the County & Castle Club, an edifice into which I have not yet made my comital and castellated entry. Rather is it to announce my safe arrival, after four hours of wearying travel, and my complete revival, after ten hours of refreshing sleep, and to repeat my thanks for your utterly exceptional and debonnair hospitality.
The first impression of Ventnor is favourable....
This pococurantist attitude, if I may employ a phrase beloved by Teixeira, was not supported by his wife in the postscript which she added:
Poor fellow, he was so tired travelling and so good over it. This place one could wear rags in, it’s so antiquated; and we shall return confirmed frumps and bores. There is some miniature beauty in a low hill and a tinkly pier that would be blown away in a quarter of a gale....
I have seen the sun and feel reasonably well and happy, Teixeira proclaims in a second letter on the same day....
From the end of September to the end of December, when I left England, our letters—though we corresponded almost daily were much taken up with business matters. I therefore only reproduce such extracts as throw light on Teixeira’s literary opinions and on his life at Ventnor.