Silk Hats and No Breakfast: Notes on a Spanish Journey by Honor Tracy ~ 1957. This edition: Penguin, 1962. Paperback. 190 pages.
My rating: 6/10
New to me with this book is this writer, one Honor Lilbush Wingfield Tracy.
Born in England in 1913, Honor Tracy seems to have been involved in the world of the written word from early on, with her first job being in a London publishing house. She went on to work in wartime intelligence for the British government, and then as a newspaper columnist and foreign correspondent, eventually turning out a number of well-received travel memoirs as well as a respectable number of satirical novels.
Honor Tracy, according to the biographical write-up in my vintage Penguin paperback copy of Silk Hats and No Breakfast, generally spent her summers in “a village near Dublin”, and her winters in Spain, making her something of an accepted authority on both countries and a translator of both Irish and Spanish quirks and eccentricities to her English readership. She also wrote a book, Kakemono, about her 8-month stay in Japan in 1948, which piques my interest, for if Silk Hats is any indication of her general technique, Honor Tracy would have written with brutal accuracy her impressions of that war-torn land and the reception she received from its people.
Silk Hats and No Breakfast recounts a summer journey – June till September, 1956 – made into Spain, from Algeciras to Vigo, with numerous side excursions, over something like 1200 miles of road (the author’s rough estimate) travelled by public transport (mostly bus) and hired taxis.
Though well-prepared with an itinerary of what she wished to see, and with abundant prior experience in Spanish travel, Honor Tracy rather gallantly threw herself to the mercies of fate regarding her accommodations and meals. She goes with the first hotel tout she meets at each bus or railway station, and ventures into any number of local (versus for-the-tourist) restaurants, cafes and bars, sometimes with wonderful results and fantastic food, and other times not quite so fortunately.
This sounded like an interesting travel memoir, and I had very high hopes for it, and it met many of my expectations. It is good – very good, really- but I wouldn’t go so far as to call it “great”, which is, of course, only a reflection of my own individual likes and dislikes for books of this genre.
Honor Tracy writes with skill and precision, and she is mostly acceptably interesting, though after a while I started to lose track of exactly where we were supposed to be – place names being lavishly provided but with little explanation of context, as if the reader is expected to be as familiar with the intricacies of the Spanish map as the writer obviously was.
There is, however, a continual bitter cynicism to her tone which keeps one from getting too close to her, as it were. The best travel writers have the reader stepping along as a firmly attached shadow; with Honor Tracy I get the feeling that I am very much an audience member, and an uncritical one at that – she can say anything she likes and can indulge in sarcasm and asides, and I am expected to nod and smile and not say anything in return.
That probably doesn’t help you much with deciding if this is your sort of thing, does it? I should probably include a few excerpts, so you can get a taste of this writer’s flavour for yourself.
I’m rather curious about her other works, and am debating tracking down the Japanese memoir, as well as some of her fiction. She’s very readable, as long as one is prepared to be the recipient of some rather brutally opinionated asides, mixed a bit confusing with frequent warm approbation of the people and country she is turning her journalistic X-ray eye upon.
(At the start of the journey, visiting with a friend and fellow writer, Gerald Brenan.) All along the hilly path to the shore we talked about Spain, and when at last we reached Torremolinos we sank into chairs at a café and talked about it further. Gerald Brenan knows the country as well as any Englishman alive and he shares his knowledge with the ignorant in a splendidly open way. When two or three English people are gathered together in the Iberian Peninsula inevitably at some point the question of animals comes up, and it was startling to hear him say that Spaniards love them as we do. They might think it unseemly, obsessed as they are with their own human dignity, to fondle a beast, but their attitude was not the cruel or indifferent one that foreigners supposed. He gave what seemed a curious illustration of the argument: that when domestic creatures are old or sick the owners cannot bear to put them down but will push donkeys and mules over cliffs and leave them, perhaps with broken backs or legs, to die alone; and will turn unwanted dogs and cats loose to fend for themselves among the hundreds and hundreds of strays already starving. This unwillingness to take their lives directly, he thought, came down from the Moors: his wife put it down to stupidity and want of imagination: I wondered if it might be simply the helplessness of uneducated people anywhere. But Gerald Brenan said that the reluctance to tamper with life went through all classes, and gave as example doctors, who will refuse morphia to an agonizing patient if it is likely to bring death any the sooner: adding, wryly, that this attitude disappeared at once the moment passions were aroused, as in the Civil War, when people would be slaughtered to left and right.
Tracy consistently points out examples of animals being routinely abused (by all accepted English standards) – donkeys and mules bearing staggering loads, emaciated draft animals, starving stray cats and dogs haunting street cafes and garbage piles for scraps – and she seems to relate this casual acceptance of animal hardship to the frequently dire physical condition of many of the “common people” she observes. There are descriptions of the many beggars and street people in varying degrees of physical infirmity, which she includes as frequently and as soberly as the accounts of the animals. One wonders what a Spanish observer would have to say about this same situation? – and what the situation regarding animal and human welfare is in a more modern Spain, given that Honor Tracy’s journeyings there occurred well over a half-century ago.
(Tracking down a “great beauty spot” recommended by travel writers and locals, but apparently unreachable by any sort of scheduled public conveyance.) In the morning I hired a taxi at frightful expense and drove to the Lago. The scene deserved all that was said about it: a great expanse of water, clear green and mirror-smooth save where now and again a breeze fretted the surface, enclosed by mountains with fields of pale gold corn all over their lower reaches. I have never seen an inland lake of greater beauty in Switzerland or Yugoslavia or anywhere else; and except for a girl washing clothes at the edge of it it was quite deserted. No bathing cabins, refreshment stalls, or boats for hire, and not a soul in sight: and, better than that, not a sound to be heard but the girl chanting a melancholy little tune to herself or the ripple of a leaping fish. After the eternal brouhaha of Spanish life, this lovely peace was far more than the mere absence of bustle and commotion, and I lay on a rock in the sun almost drunk with it, fervently blessing the tourist officials for their lack of enterprise. Presently I went to swim: the water was warm and not icy-cold as described in the literature, but no doubt the author of this, for want of conveyance, had been unable to make a personal verification. As the morning wore on one or two motor-cars drove up and by lunch-time there were about fifteen people on the sand, among them some enchanting little brown baby boys, each with his peaked cap to protect him from the sun and not a stitch of anything else: with whom their papas constantly played as if they were dolls, unable to leave them. alone for a minute and fussing over them a great deal more than the mothers.
So, Honor Tracy. Is anyone familiar with her? Have you read any of her travel memoirs or novels? Silk Hats and No Breakfast may well not be one of her best works; I’m wondering if I should dig a little deeper…
Leaves & Pages 
Honor Tracy achieved a libel “double”, one might say.
She wrote an article for the Sunday Times about an Irish village which built a large and luxurious house for its roman catholic parish priest. The priest disliked the tone and sued the paper and Ms Tracy for libel. The paper decided it was cheaper to apologise and pay damages to the priest than to defend the action and did so, whereupon Ms Tracy successfully sued the Sunday Times for suggesting she had not told the truth in her article.
She certainly has a sense of “rightness” regarding her opinions – and she is also quite hard on the Spanish clergy and on the amount of resources poured into the churches versus alleviating some of the poverty of the parishioners. So I can see how feathers were ruffled all around. Didn’t she write a very controversial “take that!” novel based on the libel suit, too? The more I find out about her the more fascinating I am finding her.(Rather scary, if one happened to cross her, too.) 😉
Ive never heard of her – but between your review and Jimmie’s comment she sounds like a helluva character!
I think that’s a fair assessment. 🙂
My mother bought me this book when I was a teenager and I longed to visit Spain. Since then I’ve visited many times and mislaid the book, and forgotten its existence. Your review makes me think I need a quick check on Amazon so I can decide if my rose-tinted memory or your measured comments are the better match. Thanks for the reminder.
Well, many parts of the book are very enthusiastic about the people of Spain, and the beauties of landscape and architecture, but there is a certain undercurrent of bitterness which made me rather uncomfortable. Hence the reference to “paradox” – I found it within the book itself, definitely within the Spain of the time period – as the author points out so very well, and within my own response to Honor Tracy’s monologue. Of course I did read it just after reading a memoir by T.H. White, in which that writer was very fair-minded towards the people of the land he was visiting – rural Ireland of the 1940s. Honor Tracy did not make me wish to follow her footsteps, whereas T.H. White has me rather pensively thinking of how grand it would be to visit rural Ireland, allowing of course for the reality that a good half century has passed since both of these memoirs!
I haven’t read Silk Hats and No Breakfast but I did try Spanish Leaves. As I have lived in Spain, albeit somewhat later than Tracy did, it seemed a great find when I came upon it in a used bookstore, but I’m afraid I abandoned it pretty quickly. I found the tone patronizing (“For most Spaniards one idea at a time is plenty, a fact which clearly comes home when we raise a matter with the while they are engaged on something else.”) and Tracy’s superiority tedious (“The Japanese say the four terrors of life are earthquake, fire, flood and father, and where Spain is concerned I would add foreigners and fiestas. By foreigners, naturally, I do not mean myself.”) The blurb on the dust jacket says it “is above all a book of affection” but somehow the affection wasn’t there for me.
She does frequently contradict herself – enough so that I had the thought that she would have benefitted from a stringent editor. All in all, one of those books which tell as much or more about the writer as about the purported subject being written about. She doesn’t strike me as being a thoroughly happy person – though she has an amusing way of telling anecdotes, and it is apparent that her intentions are good – something’s still a bit “off” here and there. I’m curious to explore her work a bit more – perhaps some of her satiric fiction versus her travel writing. But I would hesitate to recommend Silk Hats as anything of a must-read – it isn’t that sort of a book – the writer is perhaps too unforgiving in her not-very-well-hidden attitudes. “Patronizing” fits well – I thought that too. And very prone to making blanket statements – “Spaniards are like THIS. No discussion necessary.” Occasionally I wondered if she was merely trying to be humorous, but by the end of the book I didn’t really think so any more.
I started off thinking, “Ooooh,” because I love travel accounts, particularly of Spain – but as I read further, it was more “ummmmm….” I think I will pass on this one.
Probably a good call. It had some merits, but is not what I would recommend as any sort of a “must read”. I find Honor Tracy interesting enough that I will likely poke around a bit and try to come up with another of her books – one of the novels, perhaps – or the Japanese memoir. But I’m not expecting a purely pleasurable further reading experience – she’s a mite too astringent, and rather unreliable as an observer, letting her biases show more so than is comfortable for at least this reader.
She sounds absolutely appalling. While this kind of writer is scribbling down their condescending abuse, I often wonder what the local restaurant staff, hoteliers and taxi drivers thought of them. We never hear the opinion of the other side.
For anyone looking for a richer and more complex view of Spain, I’d suggest Laurie Lee’s books As I Stepped Out One Midsummer Morning and A Moment of War. He also explores the dark side of Spain, but clearly connects with people in much closer way than someone like Honor Tracy ever could.
One thing that worried me not too far into Silk Hats was that I couldn’t figure out exactly why Honor Tracy was in Spain at all. Was it strictly to gather material for the book? That’s what it reads like. She makes much of the fact that she’s an “old Spanish hand”, not at all a tourist (in her opinion), and she openly scorns other non-Spaniards she meets for their “Gosh! Golly! Look at that!” attitudes. (Except Gerald Brenan, whom she obviously respects and likes. Now he’s another intriguing character – I think I saw him referenced as a “Hispanist” – he appears to have quite collection of Spain-related writings to his name – a Briton who had moved to Spain and set himself up as a recorder of his adopted country. I’ve not read anything by him. Now I’m curious.)
Anyway. I generally dislike travel books in which the journey is ONLY to gather material. There should, for greatest interest (and writerly verisimilitude) be at least a pretence of a greater reason for undertaking the trip. Satisfying personal curiousity is perfectly acceptable, by the way. Just as long as we know up front that this is what it’s all about. Honor Tracy (in this particular book at least) writes as though she has a checklist of things to document, and then to show off she writes as though her readers OF COURSE know that to get to the village of Anencialla one must catch the small green bus under the mulberry tree in the plaza at Los Alamos de Maretzia not at seven o’clock as the policeman at the corner says but at nine-thirty instead, and when you get there you should have remembered to pack a lunch because of course the only café is horrifically dirty and the patroness is a great fat slut of a woman and by this time I’m thinking to myself “But WHY go to Anencialla, anyway, Miss Tracy???! What is the purpose of this pilgrimage?” Surely not just to give a description of the little stone church with its image of the Virgin (crystal tears cemented to its cheeks…) and its gem-encrusted bullfighter’s cape donated by the local celebrity? An item on the checkbox? A subject for another chapter in the book?
One can almost see her checking the page count, sighing to herself, and taking another taxi ride to another festa, to watch another bullfight, to visit another monastery. Okay, I’m not being strictly fair – I think she was truly interested in her surroundings. But one is aware throughout that she’s writing her travels up because it is her job – it’s how she (presumably) makes her living. Which makes for occasionally awkward reading – we are so very much the customers of her labours, and ones she secretly rather despises, one can’t help but occasionally feel.
Rant over. 🙂
Yes, I’ve read Laurie Lee’s Midsummer Morning. And it was very good. I have A Rose for Winter waiting for an appropriate time to follow it up. And just a few years ago came across something slightly similar by Walter Starkie – Spanish Raggle-Taggle, I think that one was – which I couldn’t quite get into – perhaps the timing was off.
Ha ha ha! You have got it one. I’ve lived in Spain for 9 years and I would never dream of writing a travel book, which is why I wonder how these people who come here for a few months suddenly see themselves as experts. The fact is that whatever someone like Tracy thinks, she is just a tourist and these are her postcards home.
And “tourist postcards” can be perfectly fine, if honestly presented as what they are! To be quite fair, Honor Tracy was an “experienced traveller”, and she had apparently spent considerable (?) time in Spain before. I had actually hoped for some comparisons of her experiences over her years of visiting, but there really wasn’t much of that. It was almost as if she assumed her readers were either already familiar with Spanish politics/social conditions of the time, or too hopelessly out of the loop to bother explaining things to. And she completely presents herself as an “expert”, making the most extraordinary pronouncements without that so-important “in my view”, or “I have sometimes thought” etcetera which softens the impact and allows for the idea that the writer might merely be presenting an OPINION. The more I think about it (and the more snippets of her other writing I am coming across – I have been finding excerpts of the Japanese book, Kakemono, here and there) the more she presents as a travel writer who “knows” what she will find/experience/think before she gets there, and of course is overjoyed to find evidence to confirm her preconceived theories.
Oh, and after nine years in Spain, one might be considered to have had enough time to form an interesting impression worth sharing. 🙂 So don’t dismiss your own experience, Alastair! Of course if you trumpeted that you were now an unquestioned expert on all things Spanish we might look at you a bit sideways, but travellers’ tales (and tales from those who move from one culture into another) can be highly enjoyable to read, both for armchair travellers and those natives of the country in question. I hugely enjoy reading such impressions of my own region/country – they are quite often exceedingly on-the-mark – and to see one (or one’s country/fellow citizens) through another’s eyes is always thought-provoking, even if it is only in one’s gut reaction to patronizing or just plain silly assertions. It’s all in the writer’s tone and intent, isn’t it?
The longer I’m here, the less I think I know really. Spain is an amazing country though and far richer and more interesting than the sand and sun stereotype would lead people to believe. I do blog about it from time to time …
I’ve been prowling around your blog a bit, and found some of the Spanish posts. Grand! Thank you.
Oh great, thanks! I liked the one on Cremat best, the drink from Catalonia that you set on fire before drinking, but hardly anyone read it >>whimper, sniff, whimper<<: https://alastairsavage.wordpress.com/2013/09/03/cremat/
I have another Spanish post coming next week funnily enough – keep your eyes peeled on Wednedsday!
Ha! I found that post. Loved your description of the whole experience. So…(and I asked you this already in my comment on your post)…how does it actually taste? It sound like it could be quite delicious, what with the spices and orange peel and the rest. Reminds me a bit of a time when I was present at a medievalish-style event where the mulled wine was heated with a red hot iron poker. The end result was quite interesting. More of a show (lots of steam!) than a really efficient way of blending the flavours and heating the brew.
Hmm … I love mulled wine. I also once had an amazing red type of mulled wine in Finland called glögi which was redand served with currants on top.
Cremat is like coffee roasted in brandy but it does have lots of cinammon type spices and lemon and orange in there too. I was trying hard not to set my hair on fire so I can’t actually remember the taste of it all too well…
Honor Tracy–there’s a blast from the past. I remember seeing her books on my grandfather’s shelves. I was always intrigued by her name.
I had never heard of her before. But she has started me on some intriguing avenues of further exploration. For which I give her a nod of thanks, even though she didn’t please me to the degree I had hoped for, from a reader’s point of view.
Ahahahah, “mostly acceptably interesting” is damning with SUCH faint praise. 😀
🙂 Well, I did find it interesting – though perhaps not as the author intended…I didn’t quite swallow her more outrageous personal opinions, though the descriptions and some of the anecdotes were fascinating. But not a book I could recommend to others without the warning!
[…] « Paradox in Post-War Spain: Silk Hats and No Breakfast by Honor Tracy […]
‘The Straight and Narrow Path’ was her withering retort to the nonsensical lawsuit against her in Ireland. In my opinion it is the best book I have read of hers so far. ‘The Heart of England’ showed her at her crankiest and most condescending, I’m afraid. For all her airs as a woman of the world she came across as being remarkably narrow minded. I’m reading ‘Spanish Leaves’ now, and it reminds me of ‘Red Hats and no Breakfast’. . Like others, I find her an entertaining story teller, but condescending and intolerant much of the time. Her understanding of Americans, for example, doesn’t seem much deeper or open minded than that of Enid Blyton. She disapproves of almost anyone or anything that is lower than herself on the social scale, and dwells a little too long on Catholicism. I find I want to warm to her, but shake my head in astonishment when she proves herself often unworthy of her hosts. Many of the travel books I’ve read in the past by British writers (particularly those set in France) have a similar smirking and condescending tone about travelling abroad. The locals rarely seem to meet up to the high standards of the writer, and are therefore fair game for ridicule.
I lived in Spain 1970 – 73 and found it fascinating to read about an earlier period, (published 1957). In 70s Spain, I found the food revealingly great compared to English cooking of the time whereas she finds it mostly disgusting, I was never bothered by gangs of street children (except on a trip to Porto) as she is, and I met various people with an intellectual range of ideas far beyond the ‘cronistas’ she seeks out. And I never found the Spanish any worse at time-keeping than any other nation. Not sure how far this is down to a society evolving out of the post-Civil War period over those 13 years and how far down to her prejudices. It’s difficult to imagine an Almodovar emerging even after some decades from the country she describes. BUT I love the book. It is finely written in a style Jane Austen would approve of, provocatively opinionated and, provided you take it on its own terms, as one person’s view of a country she clearly enjoys, at a particular time, hugely readable and stimulating.