It was fully a month before that first night in Granada that I arrived
in Spain after some sixty years’ delay. During this period I had seen
almost every other interesting country in Europe. I had lived five
or six years in Italy; I had been several months in Germany; and a
fortnight in Holland; I had sojourned often in Paris; I had come and
gone a dozen times in England and lingered long each time; and yet I
had never once visited the land of my devotion. I had often wondered at
this, it was so wholly involuntary, and I had sometimes suffered from
the surprise of those who knew of my passion for Spain, and kept finding
out my dereliction, alleging the Sud-Express to Madrid as something that
left me without excuse. The very summer before last I got so far on the
way in London as to buy a Spanish phrase-book full of those inopportune
conversations with landlords, tailors, ticket-sellers, and casual
acquaintance or agreeable strangers. Yet I returned once more to America
with my desire, which was turning into a duty, unfulfilled; and when
once more I sailed for Europe in 1911 it was more with foreboding of
another failure than a prescience of fruition in my inveterate longing.
Even after that boldly decisive week of the professor in London I had my
doubts and my self-doubts. There were delays at London, delays at Paris,
delays at Tours; and when at last we crossed the Pyrenees and I found
myself in Spain, it was with an incredulity which followed me throughout
and lingered with me to the end. “Is this truly Spain, and am I actually
there?” the thing kept asking itself; and it asks itself still, in terms
that fit the accomplished fact.