Alexander Teixeira de Mattos
make himself ridiculous for the diversion of his company. "Thus," he writes of a childish freak, "do the elderly amuse themselves for the further amusement of a limited circle." Weighty commissions were assembled, daring expeditions set out under his leadership to choose a dressing-gown for country-house wear; the grey tall-hat with which he surprised one private view of the Royal Academy was no less of a surprise to him and even more of an abiding pleasure. For a year or two afterwards he would telephone on the first of May: "If you will wear your goodish white topper to-day, I will wear mine"; and once, when these conspicuous headpieces were in evidence, he led the way to Covent Garden Market, with the words: "It is not every day that the women of the market see two men in such hats, such coats and such spats, standing before a fruit-stall with their canes crooked over their arms and their yellow gloves protruding from their pockets, consuming the first green figs of the year in the year's first sunshine."
In conversation he once boasted that he was never bored; and, though every man and
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