CASA PEÑATE, MONTE,
LAS PALMAS.
_12th January, 1901._
It was very good of you to give me a piece of your New Year's Eve and
to tell me much that I wanted to know. For my part I am practising the
art of writing while lying flat on my back and am flattering myself
that I make some progress, though the management of a pipe complicates
the matter. The result of lying abed is that I am getting through
much too quickly the small store of books that I brought with me and
am falling back on the resources of the one bookshop that the island
contains. If this sort of thing goes on I shall be driven to Spanish
translations of Zola. I have just finished Feuillet's _La Muerta_--but
then I knew the French original. After what you say I must see
whether Erckmann-Chatrian has been done into Spanish. In a list that I
have before me I see Dickens down for "Dias penosos" and some Wilkie
Collins--but apparently the novel-reading Spaniard lives for the most
part on Frenchmen, especially Zola. I shall never talk Spanish. I
believe that what is or used to be called a classical education makes
many cowards: the dread of "howlers" keeps me silent when I ought to
plunge regardless of consequences.
I fancy that the comparison that you instituted between the life of
the Roman and the life of the Spaniard as seen by me in these islands
might be extended to a good many particulars. When, as happens for
about eleven months in the year, you are not living at your finca,
you occasionally pay it visits with a party of friends--male friends
only--whom you entertain there. You eat a great deal and drink until
you are merry--then late in the evening you drive back to town twanging
a guitar, and, if you can, you sing inane verses made impromptu. Our
landlord had one of these carouses the day before he handed over the
house to us, and my wife's account of the state in which the house
was when she entered and set some servants to scrub it is not for
publication.... Is not this rather classical?