MY CASTLE IN SPAIN
PERHAPS the dream which a man gives up hardest is that of his ideal home, the dream-house builded just as he and Love would build it to dwell in together—had he and Love the money!—the dream-house which in every sensitive particular would be the appropriate habitation of his spirit; in short his castle-in-Spain. Castles in Spain are not necessarily expensive. A cottage in Spain is just as good as a castle if you think so; and if you know the secret you can make a castle in Spain out of one-room-and-bath in a New York apartment house. I myself have never done it. I have never been happy enough for that.
No, I am afraid I should need money for my castle-in Spain. It would cost a fortune to build and many fortunes to run. For it would be a real castle, and real castles have always been expensive, even in feudal days when labour was somewhat cheaper than it is now. I want no cloud-castle built of moonbeams and rainbows for me and Love to dwell in, but a real earth-castle like that of an old French troubadour, with walls 34 feet thick—to keep Love safe from other troubadours—a donjon 190 feet high and 100 feet in diameter, and other massive visible particulars. I see no reason why it should not be literally situated in Spain somewhere at the eastern end of the Pyrenees, but I confess a softness for Provence, perhaps on account of the name. A situation almost equally Spanish might be found for it there on a toppling crag, somewhere up among those strange rock villages of the Maritime Alps, filled with Moorish ghosts, in the nearness all chasms and parched shadows and the thirsty sun, in the distance forests of cork-oak, silhouettes of eucalyptus and cypress. Then olives and olives and the Mediterranean Sea.
I choose Provence because the situation of one’s castle-in-Spain is almost more important than the castle itself. Environment and association count for so much in the matter of one’s dream-house. You may build the most wonderful castle-in-Spain, but it will go for nothing, seem indeed almost ridiculous, a parody, if you build it in some absurdly wrong place. No offence to Omaha, no offence to Liverpool, no offence to Glasgow—but the most beautiful castle-in-Spain would be wasted in any one of those animated capitals of industry. As the setting of a jewel is hardly less important than the jewel itself, so is the situation of one’s castle-in-Spain. Stonehenge or Westminster Abbey would be as much at home transported, numbered stone by stone, to Herald Square or Michigan Avenue—and American capital has dreamed some such dream—as one’s castle-in-Spain built in any one of those, or such, cities as I have mentioned.
As Keats has written:
“.... the trees
That whisper round a temple become soon
Dear as the temple’s self.”
One indeed might add that without the trees there is no temple. I use trees here as symbolic of environment, but, literally speaking, it is impossible to exaggerate the importance of trees to one’s castle-in-Spain. Ancient trees have always brought distinction to their possessors. It is the old park and the avenues—the setting—that give many an English house its imposing significance. To cut down the trees would be like shaving the head of a beautiful woman.
So my castle-in-Spain must be almost lost amid miles of mysterious trees, surrounded on every side by haunted forests, the home of wood-demons and the wild boar and the hunting horn and the bearded robber and the maiden in distress; and, like lanes of silver trumpets, six avenues of lime-trees shall sweep up to its six drawbridges in the air.
Of course my castle would be fortified against a world which would naturally wish to rob me of my happiness. It would be armed to the teeth with quick-firing guns of the latest pattern, and these would be manned by Japanese gunners of the quaintest size and shape. I may say—in parenthesis—that my valets would not be Japanese, but English. Each nation has its own special gift to give us, and England still remains famous for its valets. I should need volumes in folio adequately to describe my castle-in-Spain, and at least three of them would be needed to tell about my garden. Ah, what a garden there would be in my castle-in-Spain! Perhaps, aside from other fancies which I should expect to indulge, there would only be three on which I would really set my heart: