To Henry Jackson.
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to us, and my wife's account of the state in which the house was when she entered and set some servants to scrub it is not for publication....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?