Maugham

From Don Fernando:
Many years ago I wrote a book about Andalusia, but I am bitterly conscious of its defects. It is called The Land of the Blessed Virgin. In those days, at the end of the nineteenth century, the young were more immature than at present; they had not the knowing, clever way of concealing their ignorance that now fills with admiration those who have occasion to read their works. I was but twenty-three when I went to Seville. I had spent five years in a London hospital and for the first time in my life was my own master. I have been back to Spain a dozen times since then; it has never ceased to possess for me the glamour of those first few months of heavenly freedom. I had no ties and no responsibilities. I had no care in the world but to write well; I did not know then what severe labour and what harassing bondage this entailed. I wandered about the country, enthusiastic with all the new sights I saw, but my enthusiasm (though I did not know it) was perfectly conventional. It is curious how seldom youth looks at the world with the fresh and direct gaze that you would have expected to come naturally to it; whether from diffidence or timidity it looks upon what it has never seen before with alien eyes.
Perhaps a certain sophistication is needed before one can see things for oneself. Such certainly was the case with me. My feelings were genuine enough, but they were the feelings of the travellers who had gone before me. I saw what Borrow and Richard Ford, Théophile Gautier and Mérimée had seen.
Presently I went for a trip on horseback. At that time the only means of communication between one region and another was the railway, for the roads were impassable to wheeled traffic, and if you wanted to see places that were not on the line you had to ride. When I came back I thought it would be a good exercise to write an account of the excursion. In fiction the manner of your writing is conditioned by your matter. You cannot write in the same way if you are describing an incident as if you are analysing a state of mind; dialogue, which you aim at making as natural as possible, breaks the pattern; it is only in the essay or in the book of travel that you can attempt a sustained effect. It is very good for the novelist now and again to try his hand at something of the sort.