To Leslie Stephen.
5, Leon y Castillo,
Telde,
Gran Canaria.
30 Jan. 1902.
Let me wish you a happy new year and then ask for a line in return. It doesn't follow in law or in fact that because I have nothing to say that you care to hear therefore you have nothing to say that I care to hear. Q.E.D.
Why did you make my life miserable by suggesting that grammar does not allow me to wish you a happy new year and does not allow you to send me a letter? I consulted a professed grammarian who told me that "me" and "you" are good datives and "to" in such cases an unnecessary and historically unjustifiable preposition. Go on like this and you will end where the Spaniard is, and he loves "to" his parents, etc. When we still have to contend with relics of a subjunctive you need not be making more difficulties. I am led into these exceedingly uninteresting remarks by the nature of my only pursuit. I had a bad time on the voyage. Something went wrong with my works and since I have been here I have not had much choice between lying almost flat and suffering a good deal of pain. So I have been copying Year Books from the manuscripts that I brought from Cambridge and since the scribes did not finish their words and I have to supply the endings I have been compelled to take a serious interest in old French Grammar. However, things are improving. I had ten minutes on the cycle yesterday and hope soon to see a little of the country. We are in a village this year. It is the centre of the trade in tomatos. Boxes of tomatos with the Telde mark have been seen even in the Cambridge market place. As I lie here I am surrounded by oranges, coffee, bananas, etc., and we have even a true dragon tree. It is wonderfully beautiful. Florence and the children are exceedingly happy and I am beginning to doubt whether I shall get them back to Cambridge when the Spring comes. You would think that Florence had never talked anything but Spanish. Not that I would warrant its Castilian quality, but at any rate it is rapid and highly effectual.