CASA PEÑATE, MONTE,
LAS PALMAS.
_5 Jan. 1900._
I have been wasting too many of my hours in bed--and such hours
too--and have consequently written few letters. Somehow or another I
was chilled in the course of my voyage: I think it was on board the
little Spanish steamer that brought me here from Teneriffe: and after
a few days, during which I improvidently cycled to Las Palmas and
found that I had to trudge back, I collapsed. However that episode I
hope is over, and certainly we are in luck this year. For three weeks
the weather has been magnificent; no drop of rain has fallen and day
after day the sun has shone. It is like the best English June and there
is nothing that tells of midwinter except some leafless poplars and
chestnuts. I brought out a minimum thermometer which has refused to
register anything less than 54°.
I have been devouring too rapidly my small store of books since I have
been cut off from the writing which I projected. What I have seen of my
two MSS of the Year Books of Edward II tells me that there is a solid
piece of work to be done. One of these MSS is much fuller than the
printed book. I cannot understand what demand there can have been for
that printed book: it is so very unintelligible--mere nonsense much of
it.
The B.G.B. will have to wait--at least so I think at present--as I
shall give all my working time to the Y.B.B.--but the volumes of
_Materialien_ are very interesting--especially so much as consists of
the debates in the Reichstag[26]. By far the keenest debate was about
damage done by hares and pheasants: the sportsmen of the Right were
very keen about this matter.
... You will gather from this scrawl that I am recumbent in a
garden--the fact is so and I won't deny it.