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To Edith Gaddis

Sevilla

29 March 49

As Becky Sharp once said, “I think I could be a good woman, if I had five- thousand (she meant pounds 25000$) a year . . .” And so it is, and the pity of it how “money” makes the world all smiles, and this afternoon (having got your ‘note’) I pass through the streets offering benediction to sundry wretches who hours before would have merited curses between the teeth . . .

It is some time since you have recieved a cheerful letter from me, isn’t it. And here I hasten, under the aegis of wealth, to try to make up. Really; you must get tired to death of niggling notes from rocky places, detailing nothing but the weather (cold), the food (vile), the health (absence of), the prospects (ditto) . . . Because—though it does seem so at times—it is not all disaster, beggarly wonderment. Why, with the possibility of change of lodgings immediately in view, I can even tell you here in all good cheer that my stomach has succumbed to the culinary disasters of economical living, and when I lie down (which has been often) it really sounds like a huge hydro-electric plant, the Hoover Dam or the TVA or whatever, but something grand, in full operation: I hear valves open and shut, mighty rivers gush, canals furiously overflow their banks, whirlpools and cascading waterfalls, —indeed, if I do not seem to exaggerate, there have been times when I have heard the voices of men crying out down there in the darkness “Tote dat barge . . . Lif’ dat bale.” . . . well.

Spain is not the kind of a country you travel in; it is a country you flee across. To get from one place to another (the eternal problem in any respectable metaphysic) is the object; and trains, hopelessly laden, occasionally set out bravely with just such purpose. One set out recently from Valencia, and I was one of the unshaven, bread-carrying, orange-peeling idiots ‘on board’. Olive trees. All you see is olive trees. They are pretty, planted in pattern and rather like our weeping willow—pretty until you understand their purpose.

At any rate, the ‘train’ (that is a euphemism) got all the way to Alcazar that night, averaging almost 18miles per hour. Shocking age of speed. About 1:30 something thundered into Alcazar from Madrid, I climbed on its back and together we were in Sevilla the Very Next Afternoon! (I think that perhaps the reason for the trains’ pace is to give the people an illusion about the size of their country: those who have never seen maps probably believe, and with All Good Reason, that Africa would dwindle in comparison: no wonder Mr. Franco, as I read today, says ‘The Atlantic Pact without Spain is like an omelette without eggs’: He is a train-rider.) But back to my original complaint (it is hard to keep them in order), all they can grow is these damned olives, and so, logically (Spanish logic) all they eat is the oil. By they I mean we. Just today what was put before me would have roused even Old Grunter’s hackles; briefly described (I daren’t try details, the spirit is willing but the stomach weak) is was, or had been, an artichoke, now hoary and greyed with age and oil, in which it floated miraculously, the oil, slightly contaminated with a dark colouring-matter, sporting weary but invincible peas. Oh I tell you. Think of me, next mashed-potato-with-‘xxxxxbutter’ (such a foreign word I can’t even spell it) and green broccoli, beef bathed in its own juices, or perhaps a lamb steak or chop, seared but tenderly red inside, garnished with parsley (green) . . . not pityingly, just think of me. Tomorrow will be better.

(You must charitably excuse my many typing mistakes; the light in the room is about equal to the glow of a friendly cigarette—and also, if my hand shakes somewhat, it is because I am waiting, with understandable trepidation, for “Dinner”.

On the other hand (though that is ridiculous: we are still in Spain), as you know, I like, respect, enjoy the company of, and otherwise esteem Juancho. But his Iberian circle of friends out-do one another as human and social impossibilities. After the string of disasters precipitated by one of his chums in Madrid, I had the witless inspiration to look up another here, to whom he had given me a letter. Or am I the miserable ingrate? the shy boy with boarding-school manners and New England shyness?—this gentleman is an officer in the ARMY, and lives quite wretchedly with his family in a haze of music from other peoples’ radios, children, unpaid bills, plexiglass collars (the modern celluloid here), splendid medals, and used stamps—he is also a philatelist, has boxes and boxes of carefully-arranged stamps, mostly duplicates and mostly current Spanish. When he came to call (as a matter of fact he followed me ‘home’) he continued to cement our relationship the way eight-yr-olds do, the exhibition and inspection of each other’s earthly possessions: nothing in my spare luggage but that he picked up, weighed, priced, and, if I may presume to say, coveted. Now informality is one thing; but a hand reaching into one’s breast pocket for a cigarette while its owner spits on the floor, —as I say, am I still a Merricourt boy? But that floor business is a national trait; no wasteba[s]ckets (except, in this modern hostel, one beside the toilet in which to throw used paper) nor ashtrays: there is always some hag who comes to clean up: no trouble in this country over emancipated women, one of Spain’s seductive qualities to the American Boy.

Sevilla, right now, is blooming; not the palm tree, breadfruit, or banyan, but the eyes of any and all who stand to gain by tourists. In about ten days, Holy Week descends, along with floats, Virgins, barbarous crucifixes, jewels and gold and silver, and wadded money from such hapless pockets as my own. If you remember South Wind’s description of a similar festivity, you have a fragmentary picture. The mayor, in honour of the Resurrection and the exchange rate for tourists, has authorized all hide-outs[,] from the level of this YMCA shelter I am in to the Hotel Inglaterra, to double all rates. We don’t do anything half-way. Then for any left who have not been beatified by the actual Resurrection taking place before their eyes (in a square, you can’t miss it, turn left here, yes, right near the Public Conveniences) there follows a Fair of monstrous and pagan proportions. Drinking and bangles in the ears are in order; broughams, surreys, coupés fairly dripping Girls (24 count them 24) in costumes of ‘Old Spain’ wheel through any streets wide enough to accomodate them (the carriages I mean) and The People, for five days, dream that Charles V is king, and that the Spanish Armada will win for Our Side . . . (it was launched, you know, in 1588 by Philip II, and fanatic is a dull word for him, in an effort to crush Protestantism as it flowered in England; I do believe that the people here still hold the destruction of the Armada against Me).

But one immensely important feature of the Fair: a bullfight every day, and some of the best toreros in the country, which makes me hope to manage to stay, in spite of the mayor, who knows a good thing when he sees it, and continues his hospitible legislation.

Did I write you? about a hysterical letter I had from our Barney-in-London, setting out for here on an apple-green bicycle? Oh, how I shall miss it, how I had looked forward to seeing him; because, quite reasonably, he reformed toward the last and retracted; in this form, that he was about to set out for Perpignon (a French town in the Pyrenees, just over the border), and could I meet him there for a week; even, imagine, offering to wire me the fare there and back! But no; he, seeing the ornate arrangement of difficulties before one entering Spain, has no notion of what lies before one who wishes to leave, especially if that one wishes to return. And so that is lost, and I am sad about it. You may imagine how I had pictured the two of us here,

menaced by monsters, fancy lights,

Risking enchantment . . .

Other civilised friends have decamped, in the direction of Paris Fr., which, I must confess, begins to look more like the fountainhead daily. But I feel that this land has a few more disasters to be enjoyed before abandonment, perhaps the summer . . .

I am glad to read in your letter that things are going well for you; it all (NY) seems a great distance away—far from this funny-house, which I have just thrown into an uproar by asking for Hot water and a ‘bath’, and pleading, demanding, that a lock, a hook, a catch, anything, be put on the door of the water-closet.

with love,

W.

Becky Sharp: Vanity Fair, chap. 41.

TVA: Tennessee Valley Authority, the hydroelectric power company established, like the Hoover Dam, during the Depression.

“Tote dat barge . . . Lif’ dat bale”: from the song “Ol’ Man River,” from the musical Showboat