PAINTERS IN SPAIN.* AUTHORS of travel books are like travelling
companions, and should be chosen for the same qualities. They should not be superhuman persons with vast erudition and one or two over-mastering enthusiasms, but pleasant, companionable people with any number of absurd little enthusiasms and any amount of humour and good fellowship. The authors of Poor Folk in Spain,' who are both artists and have illus- trated their book themselves, have the right qualities for their task. Their narrative begins, as all such things should begin, with a desire to escape.
" However, be the reason what it may, we had gathered some experience of Spain in Paris before and in England during the war. What we had tasted we had liked, and so when in our low-ceilinged attic refuge in London we gazed out upon a sky covered with flat cloud, as though with a dirty blanket, and wondered how we might escape in order to seek for our original selves—if they were not irretrievably lost—we thought of Spain. I think that we went to Spain to look for something that the war had taken from us."
Add to this that they saw an exhibition of Spanish landscapes, that a friend offered them two houses in Spain rent free for the summer, and that one of them wanted to learn to play the guitar, and it is not surprising to find them packing up their clothes and painting materials, calling a cab, " and so— hey, for the Sun Southward ! " It is hardly necessary to say that when they arrived at their destination it was raining hard and very cold.
Their ultimate refuges were Murcia, Verdolay and Jijona, which they reached by way of Madrid, and where they lounged and sketched, had lessons on the guitar and other instruments from a queer assortment of masters, learned some Spanish and fraternized with all and sundry—peasants, shopkeepers, gypsies, brother artists and others. Like all the best travellers, they had little money but a great deal of curiosity. Their narrative owes nothing at all to the guide-book, for all the usual features, from antiquities and architecture down to zoology, are missing, and in their place we are given a record of quaint encounters and quainter misadventures ; we are told about food and beds, dances and songs, about the real Spanish peasant at work and at play. And if we have the souls of real travellers and not of tourists, this is undoubtedly the kind of narrative we prefer. Our authors, really being artists and not authors, are fortunately modest in their literary pretensions, so that we are spared those deliberate purple passages, those bits of fine writing that are usually the curse of such books. Yet when an idea lies in their way, as, for example, their theory that travel becomes more tedious as the means are brought nearer to perfection, they can do it justice ; and they are certainly able to cope with all their amusing misadventures on the road. They have, for example, one chapter which prudes (if there are any left) are requested to omit, describing a night journey in a crowded carriage, which is an excellent piece of amusing writing. Equally good is their description of the wretched night they spent at a miserable, dirty little inn at Lorca, an inn kept by a very fat woman who sat outside and chanted in a hollow voice :— " I am la gorda, The fat one of Lorca. My stomach is ill
Of an illness which makes it Swell up like a football. But my heart has no illness ; It is sound, it is loving, And makes no distinctions Between different peoples.
I am la gorda,
The fat one of Lorca. My Home is well known Because of its cheapness
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and so on interminably. But the book is full of such things, for Spain, which has a picaresque soul, is the happiest of Nu Poor:Folk in Spain. By Jan and Cora Gordon. London : John Lane. ins. ed.! —(2) Through Spain andrortugai. By Ernest Teixotto. London : Scribner's. [1634
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hunting grounds for a traveller with an eye at once for the comic aitd the picturesque. As might be expected, the book is fully illustrated, and the little black-and-white drawings with which it abounds are very entertaining indeed. They have something of the comic solemnity of the drawings of George Morrow and H. M. Bate- man. Indeed the text, good as it is, is really only a setting for the illustrations or a running commentary upon them. We do not know what sort of work our authors brought back with them from Spain, though we gather that they both did a good deal of sketching and painting there, but if it is all as good as this they must be congratulated Upon having had such a fruitful summer. Their book is as good as a holiday.
But those who prefer solid information to " atiaosphere," and we confess that we are not of their company, will find more to please them in Mr. Peixotto's ample volume,2 which is on more conventional lines and deals with all those things that the happy Poor Folk leave out, such as architecture, antiquities, history, culture, and so forth. Mr. Peixotto, too, Is an artist, and merely makes his text serve as a setting for innumerable charming illustrations in pencil, charcoal and line and wash, chiefly of architecture. He is not, however, the mere artist-tourist, who is content to keep to well- frequented routes and well-known subjects, but has some excellent chapters (with some yet more excellent drawings) on Spanish Gardens, the Battle Abbeys of Portugal, Montserrat, and the Balearic .Islands. Between them, these two volumes have thoroughly exploited the charm of the romantic Penin- sula, and one or the other should satisfy every kind of stay-at- home traveller.
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