New-York tribune., 1913-11-01
Mr.. HoWELLs IN SPAIN.

FAMILIAR SPANISH TRAVELS. by
W. D. Howells. Illustrated. SVo, pp' Al'
3l1 Harper * Bros.
i, Where is there one among us VINO IN
exactly this kind of thing can hold
candle TO Mr. Howells? By exactly
this kind of thing we mean fragrant
blend of mellow autobiography htsr-
ary associations. romantic history ana
Charming and piquant impressions Oh
travel Mr.. Howells's account of ms
entrance into Spain, after some sixty
years delay" reminds one very mueh
of Mr.. James (as ne somewhere speaks
of iU trailing through London Tor me
first time in his cab. Everything
about looked To him like the pictures ID
the pages of Punch" that he bad
pored over as a small boy. 1t was al
the same time a boy of seventeen feed
ing a passion for Spanish things on
Don Quixote" or some Spanish story
of the vanished kingdom Of the Moors'
and a man of seventy-four VINO had
Iseen almost every other interesting
country in Europe, who in a "digniiied
and deliberate Spanish train crossed
4 the border "of that enchanted realm
where we all have our castles Nr.
. Howens here somewhat slyly, we
Think asks his readers patience when
strike too persistently the chord or
autobiography" Now, Spain has been
/. having something OF considerable
run in the book trade lately. Most OF
us have been there i'm one volume ara
another befos. And it is exactly that
we may go now in the society OF the
venerable and leisurely editor OF the
Easy Chair" that we make haste to-
day to return. Our authors happy IT,
d, lie is reminiscent, as he probably IN
tended that it should be, of an earlier
visitor of his name, James Howell,
J writer of those delightful familiar
( letters" He INDUCES much, and of
course most gracefully, in trivial Fond
records" And his attitude toward
Spain is that not of the impartial OBJ
server. but of one who as boy and
man has aerished the purpose OF writ
ing the life of the author of the very
first of the fictions of the world" the
man whose renown has filed the civil
iZed world fuller even than the name
Of his contempoI AIRY, Shakespeare
that dear son of memory, great heir
of fame" Michael Cervantes. Though
he has never done it, and he says prob
ably never shall, should not despair
of doing it if lived TO be hundred
And he must try to hide the fact
whenever the real Spain fell below the
ideal. however / might reason with
my infatuation or try to scon it away.
Mr. Howells playfully confesses the
imperfection of his Spanish, and con-
fides in us his sense of incredulity,
which followed him throughout his
travels, that he was at last actually in
Spain at all. In this familiar spirit,
then, we jog along, sometimes in trains
(which do not run, but as it were,
walk with dignity and make long stops
at stations. to rest and let the loco
motive roll itself a cigarette We
visit San Sebastian and beautiful Bis
J cay; we go 10 Burgos, and endure with
amusement its bitter cold; we leave at
3:29 of a passably sunny afternoon for
the variety of Valladolid; we observe
various phases of Madrid, and spend a
night and day in Toledo. We see the
great gridiron of st. Lawrence view
Gordova and the way there spend sew
eral days contemplating Sevillian as
poets and incidents, take a long jour
ney over the levels of Andalusia,
charming and richly impressive and
arrive in Granada at { of moonlight
eVening. At Ronda We almost buy
donkey: when we walk out on the ter
race of our Kate Greenaway hotel
at Algeciras after breakfast, the first
morning, we are greeted by the orig
inal of well-known advertisement for
.an American insurance company; we
explore "the last place where we
should feel the charm Of Spain un
broken i'm the tradition which reaches
from modern. fact far back into an
tique fable; and we wind up at length
at Tarifa perhaps the quaintest town
in the world"