I have been reading a lot of French lately, in those very cheap, double-columned, illustrated editions. It is perfectly marvellous to see how happily the French draughtsmen succeed in catching their authors’ ideas, whereas one may safely say that “our” British illustrators do not catch them once in ten times. Why is this? I am not sure that a certain rough, unwashed Bohemianism is not at the bottom of it, achieving results which are beyond that prim, priggish mode of life which nowadays governs the artists on this side. I may be wrong: I certainly couldn’t elaborate my theory; on the other hand, I may be perfectly right....
In an earlier letter I had asked why he sought a refuge where he could see the sea but where the sea could not see him. The answer is given in a postscript:
I might turn giddy if the sea saw me; but it would look very ugly if I saw it.
By way of revenge I reminded Teixeira that the gender of virus was neuter:
Alas!, he replies, 27.11.20.
I suspected it at the time; and now my uprooted hairs are beglooming the pink geraniums below my window. I have taken my oath; and now you and I are pledged: no French, you; no Greek or Latin, I. It may be all for the best.
And arma virusqus cano would have sounded so much better!...
Returning to the subject of French Illustration, he adds, 28.11.20:
It’s the knock-about, rough-and-tumble, café life in Paris I expect, that accounts for the greater success of the French illustrators. They all of them meet all the authors in the great Bourse à poignées de main that are the Paris coffee-houses. The subjects are discussed over a thousand books; and the draughtsman is not overpaid.... What I’m “after” is this, that the British illustrators, sitting at home in their neatly-swept fiats or studios, decorated mainly with Japanese fans, furnished with wives instead of mistresses, that these smug dogs, with their pappy brains, cannot turn out such good work or enter so well into the spirit of things, as the Frenchman. And, if all this sounds damned immoral, I can’t help it.