morning I got up early (7:30 is wee hours for Madrid) and took a train out to a place some 3miles off called El Escorial. There is situated the royal monastery which Philip II built, in the latter 16th century, and if Mr Hall has seen it he will attest to its magnificence, if only on a scale of geometrical grandeur. Here are some figures from Baedeker, first off, to give you a notion: in the entire building there are said to be 16courts, 267windows, 1200doors, 86staircases, 89fountains; total length of the corridors about 100miles! I got to the town in the earliest morning, cool, and open—that is what did it, the air, and the 1mile uphill walk, then the birds making such wondrous busy morning noise around the towers of that great weight of a building. The land is rocky, off to the east mountains snow-capped and down before the great open ragged plain toward Madrid. Throughout the day, when I was not in the monastery, I did a great deal of walking, and climbing, up behind the town to look down: the purgative effect of climbing. Often it was as I imagine the Tyrol. But the sound of a brook running, of burros braying: one suddenly realises that one’s senses have fallen into disuse in the abuses of the city, and suddenly is aware of sounds, of smell—even the delicious freshness of cow manure.
After first coffee I went into the church which is the centre of this gigantic affair, and there attended the Christmas morning mass: oh! such ritual, what a myth they have. And in this setting; imagine, the retablo behind the high altar is 98feet high, and the dome under which I attended 215feet high. And then the endless tour through the building; the burial vault of the Spanish kings under the altar, such marble, and gilt, and work: sarcophagi of black marble; rooms with paintings by El Greco, Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese, Velasquez; a room exhibiting books & manuscripts from the 9th century on, with illuminations in colours & gold in the most fantastic meticulousness;
And so it was. & it was this sudden being outside that was so good, that showed me that I must not spend any more time than necessary in Madrid, which is simply a city. I have now got a room in a pension, and a good-sized room & comfortable, with meals for 40pesetas a day. Meals though: breakfast a small bowl of coffee & a stump of bread; lunch at 2pm: bean soup & then the body of a fish which has been done to a horrible death by fire; supper at 10pm: soup, followed by very strange croquettes, or cutlets, or ‘meat’balls, & a piece of fruit. I don’t think anyone eats with very great relish in Spain. But am having some difficulty with the cigarette business; American are impossibly expensive (& you cannot send any in) & the Spanish make their own with tobacco bought on ration. So I have about 20 left, and hoard them miserably. Eh bien.
This American fellow, Bill Taylor, has been excellent to me, but has gone to Paris for the holidays; I look forward to seeing him on his return; and otherwise am baited by a compleat idiot to whom kind Juancho recommended me (J. really wrote my introduction to the father, who is an intelligent gentleman but doesn’t speak English) and so I see occasionally this fool Luis, who is 29, & somewhere has been misinformed to the extent that he believes he can speak English. Oh it is painful, almost burlesque at times: he goes at it with heroic enthusiasm, and the results might be amusing if there were not, as there usually is, something at stake. But this sort of noodle: we plan (with Herculean effort on both parts) to dine, he to meet me at 10; I wait, miss ‘dinner’ here, & at 10:40 he calls to say ‘I can’t go.’ And such politeness, delight, good intentions. oh dear.
I cannot say much better for my own conquest of the other language; I am tampering with it to some extent successfully in conversation, but it will take much more doing. And so as for plans I have none, in the way of study. I do think that before too long, perhaps about 3weeks, I shall leave Madrid and go down to stay at Sevilla; but I shall let you know, certainly, and the US Embassy address in Madrid will get me eventually. And so: if the tenants come through, will you please send half in a draft payable, if they are to make it thus, to me at the bank of spain; & the rest just cashiers check (which, I must add, must be received by the 16th of January, as that is when my visa runs out). Life here is not at all as cheap as I had hoped, but I do believe it is working out. And how wonderful that it can really be happening. Of course I have the constant feeling of the press it must make on you, and wondering always how you are making out, how you can make out, and as I foolishly repeat, eternally grateful.
What with the holidays—and I must admit to a good dose of sentimental loneliness—I had thought of sending you a cable; but finally it was too late to send it to the Edison & I did not know what your address is now. And so I sent no cable, not even the smallest gift; but again, one day I shall make up for these ingracious silences. This experience now is certainly the biggest of my life, and it will eventually be turned profitably. And so I hope that you are having good holidays, have had a good Christmas today, and that the New Year will be a celebration for you of the sort you wish. I think of nothing more just now; shall write again soon, and my best wishes to ‘all those others’.
and love to you,
W.
because I do not hope to turn again: the opening line of “Ash Wednesday” (1930).
El Escorial: called San Zwingli in R; both Rev. Gwyon (I.1) and Wyatt (III.3) visit it.
Tyrol: the mountainous region between Italy and Austria.
sound of a brook running [...] cow manure: counterfeiter Frank Sinisterra (calling himself Mr. Yák at this point) also visits San Zwingli: “With this spring in his step he was soon up behind the town, where the sound of running water nearby, the braying of burros and the desultory tinkling of bells [...] reached him where he paused to sniff, and then stood still inhaling the pines above him and the delicious freshness of cow manure, like a man rediscovering senses long forgotten under the abuses of cities” (R 776).
tenants: WG received the rent on the house in Massapequa, his major source of income until the mid 1950s.
To Edith Gaddis
Madrid
[27 December 1948]
Well well; dear Mother again.
I had put this off until getting up to the Embassy, both to look for mail & to query Our Representative on the usual concerns of an innocent abroad. And so now I have been, queried & been queried, and got your letters. It is a nice feeling, a kind of re-affirmation of one’s identity after many days wandering in boats, trains, dark hotel rooms and strange cities, to see a familiar hand, read familiar words and names (in, I add vehemently, a familiar language). And many thanks for Barney’s note, a delight as always; but he of course is by now a rather continental person; and writes: —Spain sounds like a splendid thing, and it would be good to see you . . . he just off for a little time in Paris France &c. These fellow creatures of mine who have made Europe into one large madhouse, each capital a room, and they running from room-to-room, screaming & giggling (to use a phrase of Barney’s) . . . well it is all beyond me.
By now I feel settled in a way, not for life in Madrid, but I mean mentally; such things as actually getting letters here makes it seem that I am still in the same world and not barefoot in South Africa as I felt earlier (though a rather glacial South Africa to be sure). But with this good-sized room and large window, pleasant girls among the ‘help’ who applaud my Spanish, and getting used to the food which is not bad, I suppose one might say dull, but food. And having been fortunate in my choice of books & papers brought over with me, some of Eliot I had not read which is The Answer (just this fragment, listen:
“So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years—
Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l’entre deux guerres—
