CASA PEÑATE, MONTE,
LAS PALMAS.
_18 Feb. 1900._
It is downright wickedly pleasant here. By here I do not mean in Las
Palmas--which stinketh--but some seven miles out of it and some 1300
feet above it, in a "finca" that we were lucky enough to hire: that
is something between a farm house and a villa. The Spaniard of the
middle class is a town-loving animal. He likes to have up country a
house to which he can go for six weeks or so in the year and where he
keeps a major domo (= bailiff) who supplies the town house with country
produce. Such a finca we hired for £1 a week, and there we live very
comfortably and very cheaply among vines and oranges and so forth.
Life here would have been impossible if my wife had not acquired the
Spanish, or rather the Canario, tongue with wonderful rapidity. I fancy
that some of her language is strong; but if you want anything here you
must shout.
I am right glad to hear that it is no worse with you. But just you
be careful about cold. I know it is the worst enemy that I have, and
I suspect that you will find the same. I have often wondered how you
contrived to live in "a thorough draught." The time comes when one
cannot do it, and that time came to me early. In the sunshine I begin
to make some flesh, the wind no longer whistles through my ribs and
I have not had ache or pain these two months. (Interval during which
the writer gets himself out of the aforesaid sunshine which to-day
has an African quality.) I wish you could be here, but wonder whether
you could be demoralized; some demoralization would do you good,
but I cannot imagine you as lazy as I am. Still you might try. And
really though I am lazy I have managed to do some things that I should
not have done at home and hope to have something to offer the Press
when I return. The subject of my meditations is the damnability of
corporations. I rather think that they must be damned: the Chartered
for example.
News as you suppose comes here fitfully. Sometimes a telegram reaches
Las Palmas, and occasionally it is not contradicted. But in the main we
depend upon newspapers. I feel somewhat of a beast for being outside
all this war trouble, more especially as I went abroad with a very low
opinion of the Government's South African policy. That opinion I should
like to change but I cannot. Your amateur strategist must be pretty
intolerable. I have met a few people here who knew something of the
Transvaal and they have none of them been cheerful. The puzzle to me
"after the event" is why more was not known in Downing Street. I can't
help fearing that when all comes out the whole affair will look very
bad....
It will be a very strange book that _History_ of ours[27]. I am
extremely curious to see whether Acton will be able to maintain a
decent amount of harmony among the chapters. Some chapters that I
saw did not look much like parts of one and the same book. Before
I went off I put my chapter into his lordship's hands. I never was
more relieved than when I got rid of it. His lordship's lordship was
considerate to an invalid and only excepted to a few new words that I
had made, but I daresay he swore--if he ever swears--in private.... I
never knew time run as it runs here. Soon I shall have to be thinking
of my return with the mixedest feelings. I am going to give Cambridge a
last chance. If it cannot keep me at about 9 stone, I shall "realise"
such patrimony as I have and buy a finca. Then for the great treatise
De Damnabilitate Universitatis.