... I booked a seat on a four-in-hand this morning to go to certain point-to-point races; cancelled it; received an invitation from my young doctor to take me there in his car; declined it, feeling too weak and sulphurous.... I have a leg, like Sir Willoughby what’s-his-name; but this leg is covered with patterns (Sir Willoughby Patterne, was it?) and to cure it I am covered and lined with brimstone. It is not curing; and I am just tempersome, that’s all....
In answer to my question what he would like for a birthday present, he replies, 3.4.21:
This is one of the days on which I feel like nothing on earth. Yet I must answer your three letters to the best of my enfeebled power.... I want a Catholic Dictionary
or
Drummond’s Life of Erasmus
or
a second-hand copy of either will be quite acceptable: the second is an old book and probably out of print.
five fumable cigars “from stock”; but a present I must have because I am working a stunt about the immense number of birthday gifts which I am sure of receiving. The Cleveland Club is being canvassed with this intent and the members urged to make canvass-backed ducks and drakes of their money: oh, how like nothing on earth I feel after being brought to bed of this joke! I am to have a cake with 56 candles in it from my doctor’s wife, which her name is Phyllis Twigg; so let no one send me an other. If I ate more than 56 candles at my age, I should have to go in cossack-cloth and ashes for the rest of my life; oh, like nothing on earth, Stephen, like nothing on earth!...
The acknowledgement of the birthday present had to be delayed while Teixeira described his effort to observe an eclipse: