“The subject,” I replied. “But I would even rather be dead.”
And on 29.12.20:
... This is the last letter but one or two which I shall be writing to you before you sail or puff down the Solent.... Needless to add that I feel sad at the thought of your imminent departure and glad at the thought that you appear to feel a trifle sad too.
The Almanzora! Well, God speed her across the Atlantic! But she’s got a plaguy hairdressing name. On my dressing-table stand two bottles and two only. One contains Anzora cream; the other Pandora brilliantine. Both are meant to preserve and beautify my already well-preserved and beautiful hair. I must try to “become” some Almanzora to keep them company....
XIII
The diary which Teixeira kept for me during my absence in South America was, so far as I am aware, his first venture in this kind of literature. Approaching it with trepidation, he abandoned it with loathing. The mystery of a double cash-column quickly palled; and he was not long intrigued even by printed reminders of the moon’s phases and of the days on which dividends and insurance-policy renewals became due.
30 December 1920.
As a large number of these Diaries circulate abroad it may be well to point out that the Astronomical Data, such as phases of the moon etc. are given in Greenwich time.