To Frederick Pollock.
Casa Peñate, Monte,
Las Palmas.
5 Jan. 1900.
I have been wasting too many of my hours in bed—and such hours too—and have consequently written few letters. Somehow or another I was chilled in the course of my voyage: I think it was on board the little Spanish steamer that brought me here from Teneriffe: and after a few days, during which I improvidently cycled to Las Palmas and found that I had to trudge back, I collapsed. However that episode I hope is over, and certainly we are in luck this year. For three weeks the weather has been magnificent; no drop of rain has fallen and day after day the sun has shone. It is like the best English June and there is nothing that tells of midwinter except some leafless poplars and chestnuts. I brought out a minimum thermometer which has refused to register anything less than 54°.
I have been devouring too rapidly my small store of books since I have been cut off from the writing which I projected. What I have seen of my two MSS of the Year Books of Edward II tells me that there is a solid piece of work to be done. One of these MSS is much fuller than the printed book. I cannot understand what demand there can have been for that printed book: it is so very unintelligible—mere nonsense much of it.
The B.G.B. will have to wait—at least so I think at present—as I shall give all my working time to the Y.B.B.—but the volumes of Materialien are very interesting—especially so much as consists of the debates in the Reichstag[26]. By far the keenest debate was about damage done by hares and pheasants: the sportsmen of the Right were very keen about this matter.
... You will gather from this scrawl that I am recumbent in a garden—the fact is so and I won't deny it.
To Leslie Stephen.
22 Jan. 1900.
I can well believe that England is a gloomy place just now. Even here where I see few papers and few English folk, except the family, this ghastly affair sits heavily upon me and is always coming between me and my book: at the moment Gardiners History: from which my thoughts flit off to England and the Transvaal. It don't make things better to doubt profoundly whether we have any business to be at war at all. I remember telling you at Warboys (what a good day that was!) that I deeply mistrusted Chamberlain. Since then I have been thinking worse and worse of him: I hope that I am in the wrong, but only hope.
... Then I feel a beast for lazing here in the sunshine among the Spaniards who heartily enjoy all our misfortunes. And the worst of it is that lazing is obviously and visibly doing me good. Really and truly the temptation comes to me, when the sky is at its bluest, to resign my professorship, realise my small fortune and become a Canario for the days that remain. On the other hand three or four projects occasionally twitch my sleeve—connected with the Selden Society, which has behaved more than handsomely by me. But both sets of motives conspire to keep me lying in the sun and saying with the Apostles "Lord! it is good for us to be here."