It is now clear that peace is the normal condition of the human race. In the olden days this was not the case, but the tendency has been changing, and to-day we increase our powers during times of peace, and our powers fall from us during the disorganizations of war. The artist, who is the barometer of social change, was attuned to peace. In peace he exercises important functions. But with the sudden outbreak of war the whole foundation of his being was suddenly torn away. When war broke out Art for the artist seemed almost meaningless. In the face of a human catastrophe who could paint pictures? Nero may have fiddled while Rome was burning, but it must have been a poor meaningless tune that he played, some popular jingle, a Roman variation of "Ta-ra-ra-Boom-de-Ay." We had come at last to a peace which still carried on its breezes all the poisons of war, and we, at least, felt an imperative need of escape to some place where the war had not been; to some place where perchance life had carried on a not too distorted existence since 1914.
Spain drew us to her more than did Scandinavia. Romance certainly had a finger in it; the sun perhaps two fingers--for we are undoubted sun-worshippers; the music of Spain, which had attracted us in Paris, causing Jan to abandon the banjo for the guitar, added an appeal; and I think an exhibition of Spanish landscapes by Wyndham Tryon at the Twenty-One Galleries settled the matter. We had been in Majorca before the war, and this combined with our experience of Spaniards in Paris had fixed in our minds a belief in a simplicity and courtliness of the Spanish people which we hoped would be very soothing. Finally, two houses were offered by a friend rent free for the whole of the summer, together with introductions which would smooth the way. We then packed up painting materials, stamped clothes into a trunk, worried a strangely assorted collection of packages down our narrow and twisted staircase into a cab, and so--hey, for the Sun, southward!
Perhaps the reader should be warned that this is not properly a book about Spain in the true sense of the word; it is a book about ourselves. We are inclined to doubt if, in the true sense of the word, a book can ever be written about a country. Curiously enough the native scarcely perceives his country at all as long as he is living in it. When he travels he may come to a clearer vision, but then scarcely perceives with truth the country in which he is travelling. We might say that by travelling he makes out of the foreign land a sort of inverted image of his home. What he relishes abroad is probably what is lacking, what he dislikes abroad is perhaps more perfect in his own country. And thus his vision of abroad makes, as it were, a mould, and, if one could pour into it a substance which would reproduce the exact reverse as one makes a cast, one might procure a fairly faithful image of his unconscious judgment of his own land. So perhaps if this book could be turned inside out it might be found that, after all, stripped of its unessentials, we have been writing a book, not about Spain, but about England. Indeed, we have been writing about England already--romance, sun, an interesting national music, the guitar, and national unconsciousness are not assets to be found here in any overwhelming quantities. We must then deny that we are trying to write a book of any authority; we do not even assert that our facts are correct, even though they are as we saw them; we admit a mental astigmatism which we cannot avoid and which may have twisted actual happenings or hearings as much as optical astigmatism may twist a straight line.