Quedo de Vd. atento y Seguro
Servidor que besa su mano
F. W. Maitland.
From an exercise on the use of the subjunctive. Beyond this point my Spanish will not carry me. Compulsory Greek, acting on a fine natural stupidity, deprived me early of all power of learning languages. I envy my children who chatter to the servants in what is good enough Canario, though I doubt it being Castilian. My voyage was abominable. I am driven into the second class. I like second class men (not women): they are often very interesting people who have seen odd things and been in strange places—but a cabin close to the screw is bad and sleep was out of the question. Two lines of F. Myers (have I got them rightly) got into my head and set themselves to the accompanying noises:—"doubting if any recompense hereafter waits to atone the intolerable wrong?" But this was faithlessness—it is all atoned by a few hours of this glorious sunshine. Already I am regenerate and a new man.... Do you know Paul Bourget's L'Étape? It is not great but it served to kill some bad hours. And do you know Huysman? He looks to me like a debauchee who has turned himself into a ritualistic curate and is very sweet upon his highly artificial style. I am now tackling Gil Blas in the classical Spanish translation which some say is better than the original.
My house of call is Quiney's but I am up country at a place called Tafira.
To Frederick Pollock.
Casa Verda,
Tafira.
17 Jan. 1903.
Your letter about Paris is to hand. Well I envy you. Yours are the joys that I should have liked if I had my choice—but I must not complain, for I am having a superlatively good time. I don't exactly know why it is but the sun makes all the difference to me—I live here and don't live in England. I am even beginning to boast of my powers as a hill rider: but if ever I come here again I shall bring a machine with a very low gear and a free wheel: that is what you want if you live half way up a road that rises pretty steadily for 21 kilometres to 2600 feet. My friend Bennett who has vast experience recommends a gear of 50 for such work.
Meanwhile I push on with the Year Books. My first volume is done in the rough and a good piece is in print. Being away from books I become intrigued in small verbal problems. Am now observing the liberal use of the verb lier. In French you (an advocate) are said to lier the seisin, or the esplees, or the like, in this person or that. When translating I naturally write "lay," and I have a suspicion that the "to lay" of our legal vocabulary (e.g. to lay these damages) really descends from lier—que piensa Vd? That is the sort of triviality that occupies my mind:—however I am meditating a final say about the personality of states and corporations. Why not bring over Salmond to succeed you at Oxford? He is a good man. Local politics are interesting. I think that when Gladstone was in power he never was subjected to such continuous assaults as are directed against the Alcalde of Las Palmas by the organ of opinion that I patronize. Drought and flood, mud and dust, smallpox and measles are all from him, he fills the butchers' shops with large blue flies. But I should like to hear the lectures that you make for los Yanquis (N.B. in a Spanish mouth Americano is apt to mean a Spanish speaking man—and Yanqui is not uncivilly meant).
Much rain has fallen—but a road recovers from the most appalling mud in a very few hours.