THE LETTERS OF
RICHARD FORD

Political Condition of Spain—Ford as a Traveller—Life at Seville—Journey to Madrid by Diligence —Don Quixote’s Country—Return to Seville

London , September 15 [1830] .

Dear Addington ,

Mr. Wetherell will take this to Madrid, on his way to Seville, where I am shortly bound myself on account of Mrs. Ford’s health. She is condemned to spend a winter or two in a warm climate, and we have decided on the south of Spain for this year. We shall sail very soon, as a friend of mine, Captain Shirreff, who is appointed Port-admiral at Gibraltar, gives us a passage out.

News we have none, as grass is growing in the deserted streets of London; other news are not safely sent por la delicadeza de las circunstancias politicas . But with them you are well acquainted by the newspapers, which, if you could contrive occasionally to send to me confidentially, and not to be shown, when at Seville, would be the greatest favour our King’s representative could show to one of his humble subjects on his travels.

I am in hopes all will be quiet in Spain. Cea Bermudez thinks so, and hinted to Lord Dudley, who told me, that they were going to do everything that could be fairly expected by the Liberals. I am praying the Queen may produce a son.

I have seen much here of the Consul at Malaga, {3} Mr. Mark; if I am to believe him, Malaga is a second Paradise. The Duke of Wellington says Granada is charming; he has given us a letter to O’Lawlor, who manages his property at Soto de Roma. Washington Irving tells us we shall be able to be lodged in the Alhambra, as he was, which will tempt me to pass next summer there.

It is a serious undertaking to travel into Spain with three children and four women, and a great bore to break up my establishment here, but it must be done.

S[u] S[eguro] S[ervidor],
Richard Ford .

We are all safely arrived at Seville, in spite of the Bay of Biscay, and all the dangers and perils

supposed to abound in this quiet country by the good people in England. We had rather a long passage—twenty days—but were in a good ship with a good captain, an old friend of mine, who is now employed in cleaning that Augean Stable of jobs and mismanagement—the Bay of Gibraltar. We were as comfortable as the wretched nature of ships will allow of; man-cook, doctor, cow, sheep, and chickens contributed thereunto.

We were right glad to be landed at the Rock, and spent eight or ten days there very agreeably in seeing the lions and monkeys, guns and garrisons, and in going to balls and batteries. When I come to Madrid, I will let you into a few of the secrets I heard at the Rock. The old general [1] and his lady (an old friend of my mother’s) were very civil and good-natured to us. We found their house very agreeable. Having clambered all over the Rock, we began to feel the epidemic under which the garrison labours, namely, bore , and the feeling of being shut up on so small a space. We therefore took an English brig and proceeded to Cadiz.

By the way, before you leave Spain, you should see the Straits of Gibraltar. I never yet have seen any scenery to equal the African coast, so bold and mountainous. Cadiz is charming, clean and tidy, {10} abounding in all good things, the result of a free trade , [2] if you and the Spaniards would but think so. Thence in the steamer to Seville, where we are finally settled in an excellent house which I have taken of Mr. Hall Standish. It has the advantages of a garden, a fireplace, and a southern exposure, which make it perfectly warm; the climate delicious, everybody very civil.

We have brought letters to all the governors and grandees, and one from a gentleman who was of some consequence, the Duke of Wellington, to his old friend, the Marquis de las Amarillas, the beau idéal of a Spanish caballero. [3] We intend spending the winter here.

I am in treaty for a grande chasse near this place, where the assistente goes, and also am about to take the best box at the theatre. You will think I have discovered a mine of gold; but all this may be done for much less than the weekly bills in London, and I hope to save at least half my income.

Pray consider this house at your disposal if ever you may be inclined to come to Seville; I think we shall be able to make you comfortable.

This place is dull enough for people inclined to balls and dinners; but we are very well pleased. The climate delicious beyond description, open {13} doors and windows, with the sun streaming in. We have had a good deal of rain, but no cold. I have a good fireplace in my sitting-room, which is a rarity here, and indeed is not much wanted. The habits of the natives are very unsocial, never meeting in each other’s houses, and only going to the theatre Thursdays and Mondays. Politics, and a want of money, contribute much to this, and, more, their natural indolence and love of hugger-muggery at home in their shawls and over the Brasero . Their customs are droll and inconvenient. Nothing more so than that of visiting in grand costume, white gloves and necklaces, from 12 to 2; then they dine, and what they do afterwards, God knows. The day is pretty well consumed in doing nothing. However, we dine at half-past 5, and contrive to get a morning for walking, sketching, reading, etc.

The principal people are very civil, especially the Assistente , Arjona, and a General Giron, Marquis of Amarillas, a friend of the Duke of Wellington. They talk politics to me ; but that is a subject nobody touches on here.

As far as I can see, mixing much with bankers, canonigos , and grandees, there is no appearance whatever of anything unpleasant, and I am sure at Cadiz still less; either they do not talk about {14} these matters, or do not care. I am inclined to think the latter. I saw a captain of an English brig yesterday, twelve days from Plymouth, who says that everything is quite quiet in the south-west part of England—no burnings or meetings.

I have had no news yet from my Whig friends in London. Now would be the time for me to be looking out for something; but there are ten Pigs no doubt for every Teat, and the Whigs are much more hungry from long abstinence than the Tories who have been sucking away this fifty years. I will venture to opine that they will not meddle with you. Lord Palmerston is a great friend of Lord Dudley’s and they were in office together, and I am sure Lord D. is a good friend of yours. I hope they won’t for all sorts of reasons, and a selfish one of looking forward to paying you a visit at Madrid next April.

I am going on Sunday to the Coto del Rey for a week’s shooting, the Assistente having ordered an officer to go with me and see that I have the best of it and good lodgings in the Palacio .

Mr. Williams [4] has a very fine collection of pictures of the Spanish school, which I own disappoints me, a sort of jumble of Rubens {15} and Carlo Maratti. However, I have not seen much yet.

My wife is better already, and the children in a wonderful state of health; we positively live in the open air; the air is good, the water better, and the bread superlative. I don’t see what they want here except money, which is after all something, but nothing to so rich a man as your very humble servant is in Seville.

Many thanks for the Galignanis, always most acceptable, whether early or late, many or few. One can’t expect in Spain to keep pace with the march of intellect and English mail. I trust civilisation will be long getting in here, for it is now an original Peculiar People, potted for six centuries, as was well said. Luckily the robbers and roads will stop much advance of improvement. I have too much respect for Ambassadors and their privileges to presume to expect anything out of the way. La forme, il faut s’y tenir. If you can get me a Galignani, well; if not, well. I have a great mind to write to Paris at once, as I see they never touch any of my letters. If they did I should go to Arjona, who is a great friend of mine. {16}

I am just returned from a shooting excursion at the Coto del Rey , where he sent me, with a captain to attend on me; a magnificent sporting country and full of woodcocks.

We go on in our humdrum manner, for there is absolutely no society whatever; dinners of course not, but not even a Tertulia [“at home” or Conversazione ]. They meet twice a week at the theatre. The great bore is the visiting for all the fine ladies (what would Lʸ. Jersey or Lʸ. Cowper think of them?). They have condescended to quit their braseros and call on my wife, partly to see the strange monster they conceive her to be, and partly to show their laces, white gloves, and trinkets. They call about 2 o’clock, dressed out for a ball, with fans, and all their wardrobe on their back; visits interminable. Some bring Mr. Fernando White as their dragoman, which is rather droll, as his English is infinitely less intelligible than their Spanish. Then we return the visits, my wife in mantilla and white gloves, according to etiquette. What a contrast between these fine ladies at home and abroad! No Cinderella changes more rapidly. There they are, squatting over their brasero , unwashed, undressed, cold and shivering, and uncomfortable, wrapped up in a shawl in their great barnlike, unfurnished houses; a matted rush and a few {17} chairs the inventory of their chattels. A book is a thing I have not yet set eyes on, nor anything which indicates the possession of those damnable, heretical accomplishments, reading and writing. They are very civil and gracious, and everything is at our disposition, especially as they see we have eyes, hands, and faces, like other mortals. Of course I am considered to be a milor, and am known by the name of the Don Ricardo.

We have had many letters from England; all seem very uncomfortable there about the way things are going on. After all, it will turn out, as I said in England, the only place to be quiet in is Spain. Lady Jersey is broken-hearted; Lady Lyndhurst ruined,—they have just £1200 a year, which won’t pay her coiffeur. Lord Lyndhurst [5] expected to the last to have been Chancellor; Lords Carnarvon, Dudley, and Radnor indignant. The new Ministry thought to be very Grey, too much so. [6] They will cut down all the good things, till, as old Tierney said, it will be a losing concern to come in. Lord Castlereagh used to say, in the good old times, in {18} the dark days of Nicolas, that “the cake was not then too large for the wholesome aliment of the constitution.”

Great doings in the cathedrals, churches, and convents: much bell-ringing, processions, great consumption of incense, torches, and tapers. I wonder how the lower orders manage to keep themselves, as every day seems to be a holiday. The most active branch of commerce is the sale of the water of the Alameda, which seems to agree with the Sevillian as well as it would with a trout.

Everything appears to me to be in a state of profound repose, all dead and still.

February 2, 1831.

I send you a proclamation issued this morning. People do not seem inclined to believe it, and think Torrijos had at least two thousand men. If he had, there must have been a vast propagation going on in the bay this winter, and armed revolutionists must have sprung out of the seaweed like so many soldiers of Cadmus. When I was there, I heard much of them from General Don, the {22} Town Major, and Shirreff (the Captain of the Port, who brought us out), and the outside number was computed at six hundred, without arms or money. I believe the people would have no objection here to a change, if it could be accomplished by the act of God, or anyhow without putting them to expense or trouble. They are afraid of everything, I am told—hot water, cold water, shaving, talking, or indeed doing anything. As for their ignorance, it is the result of leaving the mind constantly fallow, and the sharpest Spaniard would get dull, with their 2-o’clock dinners and habits of living. I find them all slow in the movements of mind and body. The climate of this place is most delicious; the rains are over, and the last ten days have been more charming than any July in England, the sun so warm as really to be almost oppressive. Spring is coming on rapidly; the trees are budding, and the vegetation makes gigantic strides. We have not had above ten days’ cold all the winter, and that a degree of cold varying between 36 and 46.

I have had many letters from England, and fear that people are very uncomfortable there. The tone and feeling I collect from the mass of letters are far from satisfactory. I believe we are now in the only quiet place. If ever you should see any real clouds {23} in the horizon, pray give me a timely hint, as I have a wife and three children here, and Gibraltar is a very snug place in stormy weather. I am going to write to Shirreff, and will beg him to let me know the rights of this Spanish business at Gibraltar, and communicate them to you.

There is nothing doing; we live a humdrum life, never going out, neither to the theatre, which is really insupportably dull, nor to the Alameda . We dine late, and are much occupied with those damnable heretical inventions—reading and writing, with those incomprehensible ones to Spaniards—drawing and music, for not even the guitar is played. I have made a large collection of drawings of this most picturesque old town; my wife is hard at work with her guitar, and will play you some real Spanish airs when she gets to Madrid.

There is no such thing as a drawing master . The natives are interested and surprised at all our proceedings, and verily believe we have all arrived from the moon.

February (undated) 1831.

We are here blockaded by the waters, and almost cut off from all communications. The country from the top of the Giralda looks like Venice, and in many of the streets people go about in boats. The state of the poor is very lamentable, and they {24} are distributing bread, etc. Still, the suburb of Triana has risen, and a troop of soldiers has been obliged to be sent there. However, the rain has ceased, and there is a prospect of better weather. I hear occasionally from England, where things are settling down, but people seem to expect a continental war, in consequence of the Polish revolution. However, you are much more in the light than I can possibly be. Is it true that Sir Frˢ. Burdett is dead? I hope not, as he is a great friend of mine and a most agreeable and perfect gentleman, tho’ not a Tory, con licencia de usted [begging your Honour’s pardon]. People seem to think Parliament will be dissolved after all.

This is a sad, dull town for news, as I see nobody, and nobody sees anybody. I have got into a mess by asking some of the Grandees to dinner, and giving them a Spanish dinner and using some Spanish plates. God knows I have neither plates nor plate. They have thought what I meant as a compliment was meant to turn them into ridicule. However, I have gravely explained the matter, and stand right again, rectus in curia , having afforded conversation to this excellent and industrious Capital for some few days.

Certainly to us who have seen England, France, Germany, and Italy, this is a curious country, and {25} the people are not attainted by the march of intellect. However, I am much inclined to like them better than the French, the Germans, or the Italians.

My wife is pretty well; she did not expect such a tremendous visitation of rain and damp as we have undergone. As soon as she is delivered of her precious burden, she will set out for Madrid, and hopes to find your Excellency there. In spite of all our Whig friends, I am a rank Tory in hoping to see you at your post, and am not quite sure that some of the Tory principles I imbibed in very early youth do not remain, in spite of Brooks’s, and the dangerous company I have kept since marriage. I am not sure if I should not prefer the Canning System to all others; you will despise that as a half-measure. However, here I have no politics, nor care much to have any anywhere.

March 25, 1831.

At length I am able to announce the safe confinement of my wife, who on the 22nd presented me with another boy to consume my substance in these hard times. My wife had an excellent time, and everything was managed in the Spanish fashion, much to her satisfaction. She is doing quite well. Owing to her confinement having taken place so {26} much later than we expected, I am afraid she must give up all thoughts of coming to Madrid, as the journey is too long for one so newly confined. I think of coming myself after the raree show of the Holy Week here is over, so very likely may set out in the diligence about the 7th or 8th of April.

We are all very quiet here. The Captain-General is come back, so I conclude all the row near Gibraltar is put down. Indeed, the thing seems to be rather ridiculous. We have a flaming account of the bizarria and wonderful gallantry of the troops—how they stood firm under a most tremendous fire, the result of which was one man killed, two wounded, one horse ditto, and two men with contusion. They were in a sad stew the night the news of the assassination of the Cadiz Governor arrived; but since that all has been most tranquil, and now Quesada is come back, the Liberals will be in such a fright as will even surprise a Spaniard.

Many thanks for the Galignanis. The debates are most interesting. It is a sweeping measure, and if the Ministry go out on it, the country will go with them. Those who succeed will not be on a bed of roses. I hardly think they can carry it, with the present state of the House.

I am in hopes, now Quesada is come back, that they will let the processions go on as usual. There {27} was some talk that this year they would not; it would be a hard case not to see the whole game played.

I have just seen a friend of mine, Captain Bigge, who was very ill-used at Cadiz, and threatened with arrest unless he left the town. Quesada, the Captain-General here, is very civil to him. The people in Madrid must be crazy to offend such a man as Quesada, whose presence and name only put down the affair at Cadiz. Here they say that they have refused him the pardon he asked for for some of the revolutionists. He is so annoyed that they expect he will resign; if so, the Lord have mercy upon the ruling powers. As long as he is here all will go right. They are arresting and shooting away in Cadiz, and they say an order is arrived for all those settled there since 1822 to leave the place in forty-eight hours; they will all join José Maria or turn Liberals. Some low rumours are afloat that Cadiz will no longer be a free port. Quem Deus vult perdere, prius dementat . The only man to conciliate and consult is Quesada, as far as this part of the world goes, as he is a fair straightforward man of common sense, and equally respected by all parties, and his name alone is a host in a country where everybody is afraid of everything and everybody.

Many thanks for your hospitable offer. I shall {28} certainly come alone to Madrid, and may Providence protect your Excellency from the reductions of the Whigs for many a year! Depend upon it, the general feeling in Andalusia is against these cold-blooded military executions, and no one more so than Quesada, who is the magnus Apollo here, and the only person of whom the Spanish Government might say sic me servavit . The processions of the Holy Week are all stopped,—much to my sorrow, as I am told they were most curious, delightful relics of superstition, which I am very fond of, very picturesque and barbarous.

April 2 [1831].

I venture to take up a moment of your time, to say that I have taken my place in the diligence for Thursday next, and shall, in due time, God willing, arrive in Madrid on Monday the 11th . I accept with great thankfulness the offer you make of {31} giving me a room in your house, and will give you no trouble, I assure you.

No doubt you have had a long protest, etc., etc., from Brackenbury [10] on the subject of Captain Bigge’s ill-usage at Cadiz. Now, as Bigge is an old friend of mine, I can tell you en confidence something about it. In the first place, he thinks neither of Liberals nor Constitutions, but only where he can get the best cigars. He was dining with me, and talking of his Cadiz adventures, when he let out that he was a friend of Torrijos and Calderon; that his passport was signed the 3rd of March , the fatal day; that he had told a girl he was dancing with in Cadiz last Carnival to beware of the Ides of March, and not to venture out on the 3rd. Now, all this being duly reported to the police, in such a moment as this, was enough to make them treat him as a suspected person,—very unjustly, but, still, on these sort of matters Spaniards do not understand how young men talk in England. I just mention all this to put you au courant .

We have also here a Captain Cook, a navigator [11] {32} (but not the Captain Cook). He is a great geologist and stuffer of little birds, a tall, stiff man, with a sort of philosophical hat, that Buckland or Cuvier might wear. Now you know what you have to expect in Madrid.

I have had a most civil letter from General O’Lawlor, of Granada (having sent him a letter his master, the great Duke, gave me). He has procured me the refusal of the Alhambra; but it is represented to be in a ruinous condition, and, as my children and English servants have no taste for the Moorish picturesque, but a great notion of the more humble gratification proceeding from a comfortable house and well-appointed kitchen, I am rather inclined to put up with the unromantic reality of some good ready-furnished house.

Meantime vive valeque ! I hope very shortly to pay my personal respects to your Excellency.

Sevilla , May 14 .

I arrived safely this morning here after a very prosperous journey, and rather an interesting one, through Talavera, Merida, and Badajoz. Talavera, a very curious old Spanish town in a most picturesque state of dirt and decay; Merida, where I remained two days, full of Roman remains, an aqueduct grander than anything I ever saw in {33} Italy; Badajoz, well worth seeing, a magnificent position, and fine old castle, which we have pretty well knocked about. They were all rather in a fuss there (as being the frontier town) as to what was going on in Portugal, and very particular about all strangers coming in and going out. Thence to Sevilla over the Sierra Morena, a glorious, wild, uncultivated, uninhabited country, full of hawks, partridges, and cistus. The hills, being covered with the white flower, looked like Epinards sucrés . I found my spouse much better than I expected.

Messrs. de Custine [12] and de Barbe are, I believe, still here. They have been taking a great many people up here lately for political reasons, but no executions.

The Alhambra—Addington’s Visit—Tour to Alicante, Valencia, Barcelona, Zaragoza, Madrid—Return to the Alhambra

Alhambra , June 7 [1831] .

Dear Addington ,

I am almost tempted to go down a crumbling staircase, which leads from my kitchen into the Sala de los Embajadores , to indite my epistle from a local conveniente a sa Ecc . I am busy up here with a troop of painters and carpenters putting the part of the Alhambra given up to the Alcaide, and by him to me, into order: no small task, I can assure you, for, what with time, the French, and the barbarous Spaniards, all this enchanted spot is going the way of everything in Spain. To attempt any account of it would be impossible, either by pen or pencil. No previous idea can come up to {39} the exquisite beauty of the Alhambra. Here we are, with the most delicious breezes from the snowy mountain above us, perfumed by a thousand groves and gardens of vine, orange, and pomegranate, carolled by nightingales, who daily and nightly sing in the dark grove to the tune of “Ally Croker,” [14] all by the side of gushing streams and never-failing fountains. Here summer cometh not— not in the way that it appears not to come in Castille; but, while all below in the town and Vega are roasting, broiling, and baking, we neither know it nor feel it.

The journey here was very prosperous. Esposa y sa servidor started alone in the diligence to Cordova. The heat without intense, inside ( six inside ) infernal. Ecija, another hell, and well deserves to be called La sartenilla [the frying-pan] de Andalucia . We remained at Cordova three days; in the ancient mezquita a wood of pillars, some eight hundred odd, to say nothing of the holy chapel of the Moslems, La Ceca , which is finer and better preserved than anything even here, owing to the purification of Sn. Fernando’s monks, which was simply daubing over with plaster of Paris all the painted arabesque and delicate damascene work of the Moor. A few years ago all this impurification {40} was removed, and the worshippers of Mahomet and the fine arts made happy. Thence to Andujar per diligence . Thence in a coche with nine Miquelites to Granada, by Jaen. The road to Jaen through ploughed fields, uninhabited except by the gang of the Botiga , the José Maria of Jaen; but we neither saw nor heard of him, and duly arrived, well shaken, at the worst inn in Spain. Jaen very striking and picturesque. I was much bored by the commandante , one Downie, who has forgotten English, but came to pay me a visit.

Thence to Granada, through the mountains, the most beautiful road ( quoad road) possible, a thing to delight Macadam. The scenery to delight any son of Adam with or without a Mac, full of torrents, rivers, rocks, precipices, goats, vines, figs, lights and shades, etc., but wanting in good accommodation for man or beast. So we went direct the seventeen leagues, seventeen mortal mountain leagues, at a pull, twenty-three hours en coche ; think of that, Master Brook! [15] The Miquelites , being well supplied with strong cigars of the worst Royal fabrication, ran and sang the whole way.

Arrived here at a most excellent inn, the best I have seen in Spain, and forgot all our woes at

the first sight of the Albaicin, Generalife, and Alhambra, with the cold, snowy, sparkling Sierra glistening in the blue cloudless sky. Then such an airecillo : not the one in the calle Alcalá that goes through your Capa and upper Benjamin in the twinkling of a bedpost, but a mild, gentle, refreshing, reinvigorating breeze. Then such a profusion of tree and water. General O’Lawlor, very civil, has procured me the Governor’s suite of apartments in the Alhambra, one staircase of which leads into the Sala de los Embajadores (as aforesaid), where I hope and trust to have the honour of receiving the present one of his B.M. The other leads to the Patio de los Leones , which beat Pidcock’s lions, and are lions worth seeing.

All very quiet. They were prepared to rise had the thing succeeded at Cadiz, but as that did not , they think little about it, but eat their ices as usual.

There has been a horrid execution here, which was calculated to excite a revolution anywhere. A beautiful widow, connected with high families, was garrotted , solely for a Constitutional flag, with a half-embroidered motto, having been found in her possession. She refused to give any account of it herself, or any accomplices. The matter was sent to Madrid, and down came, to the equal {42} horror and surprise of every one, an order for her execution! a woman executed for such an offence anno 1831! They certainly manage these things differently in Spain.

If you come, you must do so per diligence to Andujar, and thence ride in two days across the country with three or four of these stout Miquelites . You will find every comfort in the inn, and I am now constructing a sort of a grate, the sweet vision of Your Excellency’s excellent, super-excellent, rost-bif ever floating before my eyes as the hour of 6 approaches. I cannot promise such fare as it was my lot to consume at Madrid, and which sent me back to the conjugal embrace Epicuri de grege porcum . But you shall dine in the fabled palace of the Moorish kings: the fountains shall play, and a band of Gitanas shall dance their half-voluptuous dance around you; you shall drink the purest, coldest water from the Moorish cistern, which is opposite my window, and which I am supplied with gratis : (it costing to the public an ocharo per cantaro ); [16] you shall eat the delicious ice, the Queso de albaricoqui ; and, last of all, a most hearty welcome from

S. S. S. y amigo,
R. F.

P. S.— Mr. Sᵗᵉ Barbe , el ingles afrancesado , and Mr. de Custine, el Frances inglesado , being duly dressed as majos by Pindar of Seville, departed for Tariffa, where the Marquis tells me he is going to write “some poem about the good Guzman.” They are then coming here. I shall entertain them in the Alhambra, and be immortalised in a note by this poetical Marquis.

My wife thinks she can manage a room and a sort of a bed for you and your man. It appears inhospitable in me to talk of the inn, but the Alhambra is but a ruin; however, you shall choose yourself. Utrum horum mavis accipe.

Alhambra , Sunday, 14th June, /31 .

I am delighted to hear that you are really coming here; you will find at least a clean bed, and a clean dinner, with no oil or garlic.

You must put up with the unfurnished, whitewashed sort of way we are living in, which is unlike the gorgeous mansion in Alcala Street.

Everything is arranged, and you will find a coche at Andujar, and a sufficient number of Miquelites . They have lately taken so many robbers, executed some, banished others, that the road is quite safe. I should recommend your buying some cigars at Andujar, which, being duly distributed to the men, majorals , and innkeepers, will act like magic. I expended a dollar in them on my journey, and am celebrated in los cuatro reinos as the greatest and most affable milor ever seen since the ‘grand Lord’ commanded in Spain.

I have written to Downie, to get the inn ready for you, and to provide, if possible, some partridges, {46} and not have you bothered with ceremony, guards, or visits,—all which he nevertheless will doubtless inflict on you, calculating by the Rule of 3 principle. If he did such and such things for a simple milor, what will he do for an embajador ?

I have duly instructed O’Lawlor on your being left quiet, which I think you will be, at least in the Alhambra, as no Spaniard has courage to face the hill, or any wish to see anything of their much superior predecessors, the Moors.

The 20th, or thereabouts, is the time to go up the Sierra Nevada. I am thinking of taking my wife that trip, so you may imagine it is not attended with much difficulty. It is a glorious mountain, though the dog-days have played the devil with the snow. Still there is enough left to swear by, and to cool one’s wine. By God’s blessing, a quarter-cask of sherry has made its appearance in Granada, otherwise you would have got nothing but Bara , a sort of clarety-porty wine, not bad in water, but very disagreeable to British officers, as they find it too weak to drink in goblets this hot weather. The weather has been very hot, but getting cooler,—down to 72 at night.

You will have a terrible bad road to Jaen, and I should set out very early, before 4, and get into {47} Jaen before the great heat of the day. Set out again early for Campillo de la Arena, half way to Granada. I remained there four or five hours in the day, and came on in the night, getting here very early in the morning. I would, however, not recommend that to you. You had better sleep at Campillo, where you will get partridges , on asking if there are any to be bought in the village.

By setting out betimes, you will get here in nine or ten hours, and I will take care and have a roast pavito [young cock turkey], which is equivalent to a London fowl, ready for you.

My wife is frightened at the thoughts of our cuisine, but I assure her that you are an ex-dyspeptic, and not very difficult, rather more in that you do not eat than in what you do.

My Spanish servant (who calls himself my major duomo ) wants me to borrow a service of plate, and have the dinners sent up from the inn!! Lord deliver us! They are curious people, muy Etiqueteros (I can’t even spell the word), and think we are as great asses as themselves. What we have here are delicious eggs—laid under your window, fine fruit, tolerable mutton, good bread and water, and a jack for roasting, the only one in Granada, to say nothing of cool breezes, cool fountains (though {48} they don’t play), much shade, many nightingales (though they don’t sing now), and plenty of snow, and a view, from the windows and all about, passing all understanding; but you will see with your own eyes and hear with your own ears, so no more for the present.

Alhambra , June 22 [1831] .

Dear Addington ,

I am going to give you proper and business-like answers to your six questions, and I think satisfactory ones to all.

1. The inn is the best in Spain, but very crowded and very hot , a long way from the Alhambra, and all up hill—quite out of the question, except early and late. You may, to be sure, ride up, and General O’Lawlor will send you a horse whenever you want; but I enclose you a plan of my dwelling up here, which is very spacious, and where I can accommodate you well and without the least inconvenience. You will then see the Alhambra in your dressing-gown, cool and comfortable, and never get heated or tired. You will, too, be within reach of the Generalife, which, if possible, is more beautiful than the Alhambra. It is about as high above the Alhambra as the Alhambra is above the town; but a tolerable shady walk through fig-trees, vines and pomegranates. {49}

2. The getting here will be easily accomplished in a coche —that is, every bone will be broken, but, however, get here you will. I should take the diligence to Baylen, and thence in one day to Jaen in the coche . The road, I am told, is tolerable. I came from Andujar, which would be out of your way—the road the most infernal ever seen. From Jaen to Granada it is magnificent; Macadam never made a better, and the scenery most beautiful and picturesque. We came in one day—that is, left Jaen early, 3 a.m., arrived at Campillo de Arenas about 1, halted till 5, eating salad and Guisado de Perdices at the Venta; thence per night to Granada, where we arrived about 4 a.m. The whole journey from Jaen takes about twenty hours en route . You might do it quicker without Miquelites , as it is a long pull (seventeen leagues) for men to walk in one day; thermometer at 3000, and up hill. Now if your plans really do ripen into reality, what you should do is this: let me know the day you leave Madrid; the third night you will get to Andujar or Baylen. I will send over the identical coche which brought us, a roomy one with four mules, and an excellent majoral , who will buy you partridges at the Venta, etc. The cost will be 29 dollars for the six days there and back. I will manage with O’Lawlor that a troop of Miquelites , {50} eight or nine, shall be picked men, and sent with the coche . I gave them 25 dollars for nine men eight days. They generally get a pezeta apiece, but half a dollar is what they well deserve, as they are fine fellows.

3. I know the commandante at Jaen, who will choose the best. The said commandante , Downie, the d—st bore in Jaen, Spain, or anywhere, will call upon you and plague your heart out with bad English, etc.

My silver watch is excellent, and cost three dollars at Madrid. I should think you might buy Mr. Pearson’s, who bought one too for one dollar. [17]

4. I hear there is some shooting here; but August is very hot, except up in the Sierra Nevada, where I propose going, as the view is superb—Mediterranean, Atlantic, Africa, etc. The Pico de Valeta is easily ascended in August.

5. The post comes in very regularly twice a week, and goes out the day after—from Madrid in three days and a half. The letters do not appear to be opened.

6. Plenty of hats, white and black straw and {51} chip, in Granada; the men here are the greatest dandies in Spain, and are not at all ill dressed.

I should not think you will be much bothered. O’Lawlor is a sensible man, and does not bore one, but is very civil, and will be of great use in every way, and a banker besides. As he has to remit money to the Duke of Wellington, he is glad of good bills on London.

Your journey here will take you six days; there is not much, I believe, in Granada to be seen. I seldom go there, except in the cool dark night, to eat ices. This is the place; you will see it in a morning; but the more one lives in it, the more delightful it is. The walks about are charming. If you live in the town, you will not see much more of the Alhambra than those brutes the natives, who think it fabrica antiqua, obra de los arabes , to which they seem to have an antipathy.

You must make up your mind to fare but indifferently here when compared to your own good ménage ; but we can, at all events, serve you up a clean dinner, and without any poisonous matters. At all events you must not think of going to the inn; you may as well stay where you are, as far as the Alhambra is concerned.

Ever most sincerely,
Rich. Ford .

July 27 [1831] , Alhambra .

I am afraid, as you say nothing about your journey to Granada, that you have had bad news from home; all work and no play. How unlucky all this business about the free trade of Cadiz, and the voluminous speculations thereon by my friend the Proconsul; to say nothing of despatches from Hopner to plague your heart out. Well, well! no tiene remedio . I only mention all this, as it is considered unlucky here not to ascend the Pico de Valeta about this time, in some of these three or four “glorious days” of July, glorious Dog Days; son en canicula . However, we managed to keep our thermometer under 80, which is not more than the heat at Paris, as I see per Galignani—for which accept my greatest thanks—that true pabulum of an Englishman. The three received yesterday were very amusing: the debate on the reform, Macaulay’s essay oratorical, Porchester’s discourse peninsular and historical, Wetherell droll and coarsish, some lucid intervals , as was said of that part of his shirt which always appears between his breeches and waistcoat; Peel sentential and sonorous in the Joseph Surface school; and bravo! old Sir Francis Burdett, who gave him a sound drubbing. For all that, I would vote against the bill, professing myself a bit by bit reformer. The {53} Tories may thank themselves, for the people could not but see, after that Bassetlaw job, [18] that they would do nothing for them.

Monʳ de Sᵗᵉ Barbe and A. Custine, Esq., have duly started for Madrid with his unfinished MSS. By speaking bad English, the one is forgetting his French—the other, the wholesome vernacular tongue as expressed in Hampshire. I don’t think they took kindly to the Alhambra; however, you will see and hear. I have begged the Marquis de Sᵗᵉ Barbe to give you some account of my Local and poor means of receiving so great a personage as your Excellency. I can only say that it will be con muchisimo agrado . Mrs. Ford has got a Pajes, [19] and there is a dark glancing Spaniard washing clothes in the Alhambra, to whom you may pour forth your amatory rondeñas .

I rather think that, about the middle of September, I shall come up to Madrid with my spouse for a very few days, show her Toledo and the Escurial, and return by a short cut (to diddle Castaños ) {54} through Zaragoça, Barcelona, and Valencia. This little trip will occupy very well a couple of the autumnal months; and then on to Malaga; and should any rows take place, and the consular protection of the apostolic Mark be insufficient, I shall place myself under the batteries of Gibraltar: so much for plans. If you have time, you may let me have a line as to yours, whether we have any chance of your visit. You really should come, for, depend on it, the old woman of the Alhambra, in whose house we are living, will never let the Governor turn her out again, and if you do not live in the Alhambra, you may as well remain in the Calle de Alcalá.

Saturday, 3rd Sept. [1831] , Alhambra .

I hope you got quite safely to Andujar in that tremendous machine you started in. We are off on Thursday for Alicante: Pasqual in a Tartana , wife on the Burra , and your humble servant on Cavallo . With a troop of Miquelites we shall, I trust, get safely to Alicante, and publish in due time a rival account of Mr. Inglis, [22] another traveller ingles .

My wife kisses your hands, I your feet, offering you my kitchenmaid, four children, and the Burra , and anything else.

Valencia , Saturday, 24 Sept. [1831] .

Dear Addington ,

We arrived here yesterday, having ridden from Granada to Alicante, and thence to Xativa, a most magnificent mountain ride, full of old towns, perched on rocks, and sheltered by ruined castles, narrow defiles, precipices and torrents. The accommodation and roads infinitely better {57} than we had been led to expect, so that my wife, riding on the foal of an ass, arrived at Alicante hardly fatigued.

San Philipe de Xativa is one of the most picturesque towns in Spain, not even excepting Granada. The famous country about Valencia may be very fertile, and rich, and extremely agreeable to the eye of the proprietor, but very little so to the traveller, as the mulberry and olive trees on each side of the road, in so flat a country, completely intercept the view.

I see in the papers that you have had to interfere for some English artist, who was taken up for sketching the Palace at Madrid, which you will probably have to do some day for me, as I was nearly taken to the Alcalde for drawing some palm trees at Elche; but, on telling the officer that he and the Alcalde might go to Carrajo , and refusing to go, the thing passed off; to be sure, I had six of the Alhambra invalids with me, and might have ordered them to bring the Alcalde to me, which would have been the best way after all. I shall remain here four or five days, and thence proceed to Barcelona and Zaragoça, to either of which places, if any crumbs of comfort fall from your table in the way of Galignani, they may be addressed, at all events to the latter place, Zaragoça. {58}

I left Dionysia in great force, and Don José much delighted at the honour of your Excellency’s visit. The Captain-General wrote me two notes after you were gone, one addressed to me as Gentilhombre de S. M. Britanica and the second to Lord Ricardo Fort. There is no saying what I might not have come to be had I remained there a few days longer.

Valencia seems to be a nice place; the women as pretty here as the Granadinas are ugly.

Ever most truly yours,
Richard Ford .

Valencia , Wed., 28th [Sept. 1831] .

Dear Addington ,

Here we are still, and shall remain until Friday, when we go over to Murviedro, to potter about the ruined Saguntum till the Saturday diligence comes through to take us on to Tarragona. As far as my finances are concerned, I had perhaps better not have come here, for I have been tempted by a certain picture of Ribalta, and have given 11,000 reals for it, a large sum here, or anywhere; but it is a stupendous picture, and of the very grandest finest class, and worth £500. However, tell not this in Gath or Askalon, for I always make it a rule crier au pauvre , which an extravagance like this would infallibly contradict. I have just {59} written to that worthy Israelite, Ravasa, to send me a credit of 4000 reals to Zaragoça, Burgos, and Valladolid in case of accidents, and have referred him again to you to say a word as to my being a solvent person, though I am afraid, after the Gold Rosario of the Senora and the Ribalta of Milor, you will rather hesitate this time. However, if you still think me responsible, write a line to Ravasa to tell him that he may venture his monies, and that I will honestly repay him when I reach Madrid.

We go to Barcelona, and by Zaragoça and Segovia to Madrid, where I hope we shall arrive about the first week in November.

This is a very nice place, and I regret that it is impossible to convey my impedimenta here, as I should much have liked to have spent the winter here, instead of Gibraltar, where I take refuge to escape the protection of His M. Consul at Malaga, from whom I have had such a letter which I am keeping for your amusement. Chico’s motto of “there is no conqueror but God” [23] is nothing to the account Mark gives of himself. {60}

The pictures they possess here are endless, almost as many as at Seville; but, if possible, even still more neglected and unknown, not unknown only by the natives, but by the dignitaries and heads of the churches, and going to ruin from neglect, damp, dust, and smoke. No information of any kind is ever to be obtained; “ No sé ” [I don’t know] the universal answer. The fine pictures are kept merely as objects of idolatry, not as matters of art, and called as such; if you ask for the Virgin of Juanes, the sacristan or curate knows nothing about it; but ask for the Purissima and up goes a curtain in a minute.

The women are very pretty indeed, fairer than the Andalucians, quite as small feet and much better shoes, not so tight or pointed. I do not know when the seventh commandment has run such risks.

To-morrow, Friday, we go to Murviedro and thence to Barcelona.

Ever most sincerely,
Richard Ford .

Barcelona , Oct. 9 .

Your letter with the papers reached this place quite safely, as did we some four or five days ago; and, being heartily tired of these Catalonians, who {61} are neither Spaniards nor French, are going to set out to-morrow for the Salt Mountain at Cardona and the monastery of Monserrat, and thence to Zaragoça, where we expect to arrive the 16th, and proceed directly afterwards to Madrid, as we find we shall have much difficulty in crossing the country to Burgos. I hope we may manage to get to La Corte about Saturday, the 22nd, si Dios quiere [God willing], and shall be both proud and happy to be installed in the Duchess’s dry dock.

This is a fine town, but not Spanish. The troops have shoes instead of sandals, and, I believe, stockings. They can roast at the inn, and have mustard and French wines. The women wear mantillas over caps, and commit divers other equally un-Spanish atrocities; people stupid and ill-mannered; a horrid language; all the discomforts and prohibitions of Spain, without being made up for by the curious and original people of the South; women ugly and coarse; men in large high trousers, looking like Cruickshank’s prints of “nobody, all legs.” Everything in perfect order and quiet. The name of the Conde de España does here what that of Quesada does in Andalucia. They are all frightened about the cholera, and the quarantine regulations most severe. The Captain-General has sent to England for four gallons of {62} Cajeput oil, which for a population of more than 100,000 is a fair stock.

Zaragoça , Oct. 18 .

Dear Addington ,

We arrived here quite safely on Sunday in a tremendous storm of rain, having stuck in the mud divers times during our journey, and being extricated by the spades of peasants and many supplications to the Santissima Virgen del Pilar , whose effigy I have bought in consequence.

On our arrival here, to my utter dismay and discomfiture, I found no letter from V. E., and, worse, no letter of credit from that arch-circumcised dog, Ravisa, to whom I had written from Valencia at the same time as I wrote you, but which letters must, from some Spanish mismanagement, have never reached their destination. Well! here we are with about 800 reals in our pocket,—no means of getting any more, the bill to pay, and the places to Madrid some 600 or 700 more. I had, like a fool, refused a letter of credit from my Barcelona banker, trusting to that Philistine Ravisa. Henceforward I have vowed before the Pilar of Zaragoça never to trust to Jew or Christian again. In this quandary, the post to-day from Madrid having brought no letter, I have despatched my eloquent, mellifluous-tongued Pasqual, who has persuaded {63} the diligence to take us to Madrid without our paying here, my wife, Pasqual, and the luggage to be detained in pledge at the office until the dollars are regularly booked up. It would be a rare opportunity for a husband who wanted to break up his establishment to leave these tender pledges unredeemed; but I do not propose doing so if your Excellency will interfere, and this is dignus vindice nodus . My plan is to start on Friday; we are to arrive at Madrid on Sunday, time uncertain, somewhere between 12 and 5. Will you therefore be so good as to put up 600 or 700 reals in a paper directed to me, and leave it with your porter? I shall get out at the P. de Alcalá, pass your door, take the cash, and hasten to liberate the pledges from the magazines of the diligence , and proceed from their prison to the sumptuous quarters you have prepared for us.

We made an interesting tour into the mountains on leaving Barcelona, first to Monserrat, where we slept in the convent, and spent the next day in wandering about the rocks and hermitages,—a most wonderful rock, and scenery well worth of itself the journey to Monserrat from Granada. Thence we proceeded to Manresa, and on to Cardona to the celebrated Salt Mountain, which stands out of the ground like a huge lump of {64} confiture , peach, apricot, and lemon, all candied over with little pearly globules of salt—a true Spanish mine, as they have absolutely nothing to do but knock off lumps, put them into a bag, pound them and eat them—no salt-pans, refining, corporations, or any other tedious processes. Thence we rode over a wild mountain, sometimes up the bed of dry rivers, sometimes through torrents, generally over rock, and never over road, to Igualada, and so on in the diligence to Zaragoça, a gloomy, old, dirty, brick-built town, but truly Spanish; many things very well worth seeing—the Virgen del Pilar and the positions during the siege, the great lions. As to the siege, they seem neither to know nor care much about it, though, really, here the Spaniards might be proud of their truly Moorish exploits of fighting well behind a wall . I met two well-dressed men on the walk to Sᵗᵃ Engracia, and made Pasqual ask them (to prevent the possibility of being misunderstood) where Sᵗᵃ Engracia was, and, though it was close by, and the famous Quartel of the French, they shrugged their shoulders with the true Spanish shrug, and muttered out the usual true meaning of said shrug— No sé! Fine, honest, downright simplicity of ignorance! Viva la España, viva la Stˢᵃ Vⁿ del Pilar y S.E. mille años! But do not forget los 600 reales ; for, if my wife {65} is knocked down for a dollar at the diligence sale of unredeemed pledges, it will be entirely the fault of the want of these 600 reales . So farewell.

Ever most sincerely,
Richard Ford .

We arrived safely at the Alhambra this afternoon, after rather an uncomfortable ride from Andujar. As you predicted it would rain, it did, and we got into Jaen wet one evening to set out the next morning in a Scotch mist, which lasted all the way to Campillo, where we put up in the worst posada in Spain, which pray commend to Col. Oxholm, who has a list of them. At Jaen we saw Don Carlos [Downie], whose heart, body, and soul are at your service. I called on the Intendente to enquire after his precious health, and praise his cigars, both of which he felt, as he ought, highly flattered, and Jaen is at your disposicion , whenever you choose to have it.

Don Carlos very fat, talking bad English and worse Spanish, delighted with your visit and the dinner he gave you, which was, like his Tertulia , a contribution from all the houses in Jaen, as he {66} sent round to everybody to say the great man was to dine with him, and begging them to send him their best wine and the best dish of their own dinner to his. I did not see “God’s Face,” which is only shewn to representatives of Kings and Bishops. [24]

We rode a pretty ride from Campillo this morning through Benalua, which you may inform the Duchess of San Lorenzo is in a high state of preservation; a sort of town on the side of a hill, which looks as if giants had been pelting each other with pigsties.

At Valdepeñas we fell in with three ’pon-honourish, well-fleshed English, journeying on to the Corte, a trio, which will relieve you when you have had enough of duets , the order of travelling in Spain since the unnatural alliance of those modern Pyladeses and Oresteses, St. Barbe and Custine, Eden [25] and Martin, Meara and Heaphy, all hunting in couples, to say nothing of a more proper marital couple, who have lately drawn so largely on your good-nature and hospitality.

I have not had time to throw myself at the feet {67} of Dionysia, being fully occupied with the joys of paternity, having a small boarding-school now romping about, to the utter discomfiture of any intelligible writing or spelling.

Pray let us hear of that horrid cholera, whether the last news in Galignani is confirmed. The smallest donations in that way thankfully received.

Excuse this scrawl, which is just to notify to you that we have escaped José Maria and Botiga, and are always your secure servants. What a sheet of paper to write, as Don Carlos says, “to such a great man as we never had in Jaen.” You will become a Carlista.

Return to Seville—Execution of Torrijos—Question of Spanish Intervention in the Affairs of Portugal—Tarifa—Salamanca and North-Western Spain—Succession to the Spanish Crown.

We have at length arrived here safely, God be praised! through the deepest ploughed fields, worst Ventas , and stoutest gangs of robbers in all Spain. We have been six mortal days on the journey, doing some 36 leagues at an expense of 6000 or 7000 reals, having to feed 29 persons every night, ravenous wolves who never ate before and probably never will again, unless some Milor or Embajador should make that journey. José Maria was muy {69} politico , and neither the chink of my dollars nor the black eye and red lip of Sarah could tempt him to come down from a hill, where we saw him and his drawn up in a line about a mile off, as we passed through his country—his it is in every sense of the word.

When we passed through Jaen, we saw Don Carlos [Downie], who regaled us with good English and better wine of the country, of which he had prepared a choice barrel to be sent to your Excellency q. Dios guarde y Lord Palmerston .

I have got into a magnificent house, larger even than yours, and very comfortable in every respect. It belongs to the Mˢ. de la Granja, who, I believe, is General O’Neil (being interpreted). If so, make my respects to him, and tell him I will use it well, and pay the rent duly and truly on the appointed days, and it is such a rent as will enable him to cut a figure at the Corte . Don José [O’Lawlor] invited us to dinner, to our great surprise; grand dinner de cent Couverts , to meet fiscals and the Lord knows who; the dinner not bad, as he is a wise man, and knows how to deal with Englishmen.

Famous shooting here, I am told—snipe, woodcock, rabbit, chorlito [curlew or gray plover], alcaravan [bittern], bustards, etc. So if you like to put yourself in the diligence , here is a Casa at {70} your disposicion , a warm, sunny suite of rooms, and a decent bottle of sherry; an excellent clergyman, a friend of mine, will provide you with books at a monthly subscription. Captain Heaphy and his hairsplitting prigmatic friend have, thank God! passed through into the keeping of that great man, Don Brackenbury. I met the Polish polished Russian Cheffhttinschkwi on his way up to the Alhambra. I could be of no use to him unfortunately , as I was going to leave the town the next morning. Captain Martin and Sir Eden are daily expected here. The Gallego Standish has bought two pictures here at tremendous prices—a Murillo £400, a Velazquez £200.

Have you ascertained the exact use of those curious spears we saw in the Armeria? I conclude, when you have, you will draw on me by the hands of that worthy Israelite, Don Ravarra or Ravisa (I forget which, though often lectured for it by you), and I will duly honour the bill.

My wife begs to thank you for the good-natured way you put up with the inconvenience a marital pair must have inflicted on your B.A. habits.

Dec. 27, 1831.

My wife is very far from well, in a sad state of nervousness and weakness, the result of over- {71} excitement in travelling and over-exertions in drawing in the Alhambra. The doctors leave all to naturaleza and asses’ milk, having a congenial feeling for that animal.

Sir Eden and Captain Martin are here, having taken up their winter quarters in Seville.

I am only awaiting an answer from my landlord, General O’Neil, to put up a fireplace in the Quarto, which is destined for my despacho [office] and for your habitation when you come here in the spring. I wished to make a necessary, a roasting jack, and this fireplace, three things rather usual, and thought in England to be rather necessary, in large houses. I have had great difficulty with the administrador , who, after offering me his house, kissing my hand, and laying himself at my wife’s feet, proceeded rather to protest against these innovations, viewing them in the light of dilapidations, especially the comun , which he assured me no clean Spaniard would use, as they preferred a pan in their bedrooms, and that, when I left the house, he should be at the expense of restoring matters to their former state of comfort and cleanliness.

The jack, however, is up, and the turkeys are roasting.

The weather is delicious, fine clear sky, 66 and 67 in the sun, open windows and doors, and plenty {72} of dry crackling olive-wood (cheap) for the mornings and evenings.

Don Julian [Williams] in great force, in a consular coat with G.R. buttons, which would shame an ambassador. We are going to Cadiz (Don Julian and I) on a visit to a still greater man, Don Brackʸ., to taste sherry at Xeres, and look after a few pictures. The Alhambra we left in a cruel state of repair, the Patio de Leones and Sala de los Abencerrages one mass of ruin, rubbish, and dirt. They are re-tiling the whole of it, and the ladders of the presidarios [convicts] are every day knocking off part of the delicate stucco work. The Governor is going to repair the wall, and remove the garden from the Patio . They say the powder will be removed from the Palace of Carlos V. As the Spaniards do not work with the rapidity of lightning, I take it a stray Rayo may get the start of them, and send old Frascita and Dolorosita to the devil.

Janʸ. 11, 1832 , Sevilla .

I have had a magnificent, grandis Epistola from Mark, who is gone wild about the Malaga events, and the execution of Mr. Boyd. In his heart, I believe he was as glad as a young surgeon to get a subject for his new churchyard. He certainly has a hankering after my wife’s body, not her live body, but, hearing of her ill health, tried all in his power to get me to Malaga to have a pretty female specimen in his sepulchral museum. I must try {75} and get you a copy of a letter, which is circulating here, from one of the monks of the convent, where the victims were taken, to a friend here. Mark is mentioned as coming in a coche in uniform to take Mr. Boyd’s body, over which he read prayers. Mark’s Epistle concludes with crumbs of comfort for you. “No man of honour can be otherwise than disgusted in serving near such men as are seen in command here, and I shall use all possible means in my power to quit the country as soon as it can be done.” Feliz viage y vaya v. con Dios . Meantime he threatens me with a visit, cum duodecim Marcis , pretty dears, who will certainly convey their sweet persons to the Fonda , as I can’t take in woman-kind.

The weather is most delicious here, sunny and balmy, and winter is gone. I am meditating a shooting excursion with Martin and Eden, not having the fear of José Maria in my eyes. I understand the officers kidnapped near Gibraltar have paid the fine; they had much better cross over to Africa, where both travelling and shooting, and indeed all the comforts of civilised life, are much more easily obtained than in Spain.

José Maria has sent to Quesada, offering to give up business on being secured a pardon; I suspect he has sold the goodwill of his vocation to his {76} second in command, one Juan Cavallero. Quesada told me this, and that he took no notice of the application. Everybody here outrageous at Don Moreno and the Deshonra on Spanish buena fé !! The English papers you are so beneficent as to send me, as usual, are gone stark staring crazy about Don Boyd. Certainly, if anybody of the party deserved shooting, it is a meddling Foreigner , who must have known the existence of the decree under which all rebels, taken in flagrante delicto , were liable to summary punishment.

I have taken no steps about your wine yet, as the dealer has shown somewhat of the Moreno , a little mala fé , in some transactions I have had with him. I hope soon to go to Xeres, and will then taste all the wines in all the cellars, till I am carried off dead drunk.

My wife does not mend, and I am rather uneasy about her, and shall be more so, if this delightful change of weather does nothing. I shall take her down to Cadiz and try sea air, sub consule Branco , who is detained at Gibraltar, not daring to go by land, as, if they could catch a consul , they would ask more ransom than for the whole staff of Sir Houston.

We are all crazy here about pictures, such buying and selling. By the time Mecænas Standish and {77} that eminent connoisseur, Captain Cook, arrive, the market will be cleaned out. Sir William Eden is muy pegajoso and bizarro [very attractive and full of spirits]. I did not suspect that he was such an amateur and collector. In short, we are buying things here at double what they are worth in England.

I have received splendid letters from the Mˢ de la Granja and his sobrino , the Colonel. The Marques in a sad way about the dilapidations of jacks, fireplaces, and comun , damned English revolutionary nuisances. The poor administrador quite frantic about changes in a house, which had remained in genuine discomfort since the days of the Moors,—an argument he thought to put me and my fire out with. “If,” says he, “these things had been wanted, the very great families who always have lived here would have done them.”

Meantime, whenever you like to come here, you can really be decently lodged and fed, and return by Badajoz and Talavera, a very interesting route.

We are expecting the Conde de los Andes here from Granada, where Don Moreno, the “complete Spanish letter writer,” goes to replace him.

Saturday 14th [ Jan. 1832 ], Sevilla .

I think I can assure you, on the best authority, that no troops have been sent from this place, or {78} from hereabouts, to the Portuguese frontier, and that, rather, they are diminishing than increasing their forces, disbanding the militia regiments. At the cannon foundry they are occupied more in repairs than in casting cannon. I believe they have about a hundred pieces ready, with carriages, etc., etc.

Here all is, as usual, perfectly quiet and tranquil, I have seen several persons this day, all of whom give the same account of the absence of all military movements.

There has been a fulsome address voted by the Chapter of the Cathedral of Malaga to Don Moreno, which, with his reply, has been printed. I am sorry Don Julio O’Niel considers me so troublesome; but he will think otherwise when the term expires and he loses so good a tenant and so excellent a rent. He has a sad character here as to money matters, and as for his administrador he is still more; arcades ambo .

We have had very fine weather lately, and I am meditating a week’s shooting with Los Señores Eden and Martin, as we hear rare accounts of the woodcocks.

My wife does not mend. The doctors come daily, take their fee, and say all must be dejado a la Naturaleza . Of what use are they, then? {79}

I am sorry you see so many clouds brewing for the Easter week, as we shall have a dull Carnival, and none of the Saints and Saintesses will come out in the streets. Even war will be better than the cholera.

I have no news here. The days glide on in a sort of far niente , with the tinkling of my wife’s guitar, and the crying of my nursery, all of whose teeth have taken to plague them and their parents. These are blessings you know not. Fortunati nimium.

Feb. 1 [1832] , Sevilla .

Captain Martin and Eden are setting out for Badajoz and Lisbon, where they will probably get into some disagreeable scrape; rather a bad time to visit Portugal, to say nothing of the wet rain and cold Ventas.

We have an arrival of three officers from the garrison, two of which were of the party taken up into the mountains by José Maria, who wanted to rob them again, as, hearing they were at Xeres, he proceeded yesterday to rob the diligence , thinking to catch them; but they had luckily taken the steamer. This is a serious system for travellers, now he finds the English will pay handsome ransoms.

There is an order come here to prepare thirty {80} cannon forthwith . The number they have quite ready, with men, mules, etc., is not above eight or ten; but I am told, if money was forthcoming, they could soon get ready above a hundred. No troops have moved from this place.

The Conde de los Andes has not arrived here yet; I heard from Don José [O’Lawlor], who is now performing the functions of Captain-General at Granada, that Dionysia is rather ailing.

We are all here going on in the usual humdrum way, sin novedad , and without any news. The weather mild and open. The swallows flying about, and the storks looking out for lodgings on the church towers, all of which, the learned say, is a sign that winter is over.

I am expecting Shirreff from Gibraltar, to occupy the Sala del Embajador in my Palacio , where I hope in the summer you will come and take up your quarters. They tell me this is a most delicious summer house, and that Seville and the Andaluças should be seen in the genial month of May or June.

Sevilla , Wednesday, 15 Feb. 1832 .

They are all in a bustle here with warlike movements and preparations; artillery ordered off to Badajoz, infantry and cavalry to Salamanca. I heard to-day that the militia regiments and the Royalists are to be called out. Some of the troops {81} went to-day, and others are to follow to-morrow. The partidas [parties of soldiers] which were in José Maria’s country are coming in, and he will then be de facto absolute king of the countries between Cadiz, Sevilla, and Granada. They say General Monet, of Algeciras, a General O’Donnel, and the Captain-General of Valladolid, are to command this cordon sanitaire on the frontiers of Portugal. All this will probably be stale news to you. I do not think they can send much very effective stuff from hence, either in cavalry, artillery, or troops. The pesetas are unusually scarce, and the derechos de Puerta [tolls, octrois ] weighing everybody down. The Conde de los Andes has been here for a few days, and is now gone back to his Quartel at Cadiz. Captain Martin and Sir William Eden will be in the thick of the row, as they started some ten days ago for Badajoz, with the intention of going on to Portugal. If they fall into the hands of that truculent youth, Dom Miguel, you will have to claim them, if alive, and Mark, if dead, for his new burying ground. That eminent undertaker is on his way to visit me and Seville. I am much honoured, and only regret that you should not be here to gain a “few hints” as to governing Spaniards.

I am quite sorry that you are bothered with so {82} many “suspicious-looking letters” for me. They are quite as unwelcome to me. One of them was from a Valentian azulejo [tile] manufacturer, begging me to intercede with you to get him an order for painted tiles from the Grand Señor at Constantinople. Many thanks for the papers. The debate very interesting. Lord Aberdeen seems to be gone demented, and the great Duke, if weak in body, perfectly sound in his intellect. I suspect my friends the Whigs are rather at a discount. There must be a screw loose. The only good of all these trastornos [disturbances] is the exchange on England being so delightfully low. They are, here and at Cadiz, looking out for bills on England, it is said, to remit them to Lisbon.

My wife is busy as ever with the Alhambra, and is a little better, but still most wretchedly thin and weak.

Saturday , Sevilla [ 21 Feb. 1832 ].

I enclose you an exact account of the military movements which have taken place here; you will receive the same account by next post from a greater man from Cadiz. This is a copy of what Don Julian writes to him this post; but, as possibly it may interest you to have even this information without loss of time, I send it you also.

Don Julian (who is the best of God’s creatures)

never likes troubling any one, still less so great a man as your Excellency, as his instructions are to correspond with Don Brakenbury, otherwise he would, in these sort of cases, write directly to you.

The weather here is delicious, like English October. Ronda Hills are covered with snow, which is unusual: Don José writes from Granada that the Vega is wrapt in a fleecy mantle and the Picacho inaccessible. Captain Cook duly arrived per diligence ; we shall shortly forward him to Cadiz. I wish I could say as much of Don Mark, who is expected.

My spouse mends very slowly; I wish she got on as well as the Alhambra azulejo drawings.

( Enclosure. )

Wednesday, the 15th inst. (February 1832). Part of the Escuadron de Artilleria Volante left this city for Valencia de Alcantara by the Badajoz road, consisting of

• 4 pieces (8-pounders),
• 8 furgones (artillery waggons),
• 1 fragua (forge),

with the Escuadron maniobrero del Regimento de Caballeria del Principe, consisting of 115 men, well mounted, for the same destination.

Thursday, the 16th inst. The 2nd battalion of the Regimenᵗᵒ de Ynfanteria de Africa 6º de Linea left this for Madrid, consisting of nearly 900 men, {84} including officers, having been completed with men taken from the 1st and 3rd battalions.

Observations. The Escuadron de Artilleria Volante, which consists of 12 pieces, for want of horses, could only send off the 4 pieces above-mentioned, although the orders were for the entire Escuadron to proceed to Valencia de Alcantara. Exertions are making to get it completed, that it may be able to proceed.

The Regimᵗᵒ de Caballeria del Principe, although it consists of above 300 men, could send only 115, also for want of horses.

The 1st and 3rd battalions of the Regimᵗᵒ de Ynfanteria de Africa, remaining here, have only from 300 to 400 men, and the battalion that has gone to Madrid, it is said, will be replaced by one battalion of Ynfanteria de la Regna, which is to come from Ceuta.

The Regimᵗᵒ Provincial de Sevilla is to be called together as soon as shoes and various articles of clothing, of which they are much in want, can be got ready.

Sevilla , March 31, 1832 .

Since I wrote last, I have been scampering over the mountains of Ronda, not having the fear of José Maria in my eyes. I went first to Cadiz to see the consular pictures and drink the consular sherry, both very fine, cosas de gran gusto . Thence by Vejer to Tarifa to see the castle of Guzman el Bueno , and the eye of many a dark Tarifenia. They go about there, as they do at Tangiers, covering their faces with a black manta ; one black eye shines out and goes clean through one like a bullet. Thence to Gibraltar, where your despatches have set the General and his staff on the alert, and the dogs of war are looking forward to be slipped. The first thing General Houston told me was how he regretted that General {86} Monet [26] had left Algeciras for Seville , which was news to me who had come from Algeciras that morning, and was going back to dine with the said General Monet. General Monet, all pacific, and, as he has had some experience as to what took place in the last business, his opinion was a fair set-off against el ingles . However, they know as much about Spain in Gibraltar as people in Plymouth do about Algeciras, or those in Algeciras about Plymouth.

I was strongly advised by all my friends on the Rock not to venture back into Spain, but send forthwith for my family. I did, however, venture, and proceeded to Ronda, through a wild mountain country, full of smugglers and robbers (though one implies the other). The ride was very striking. The old Moorish towns with Moorish names perched like the nests of eagles on almost inaccessible pinnacles. Indeed, they are still Moors, talking Spanish. Ronda, with its tajo or cleft between the old town and the new one, is a thing worth being robbed in order to have seen.

Thence to Xeres through Grazalema, the hotbed of José Maria and contrabandistas . I there had a long interview with Frasquito de la Torre and his eleven robbers. They are now all hombres de bien , {87} indultados y en persecucion de los malhechores ; they have undertaken to clear Andalucia of Ladrones , a plant that all the armed agriculturists in Europe will never weed from so fertile a soil; a fine set of picturesque well-dressed Majos . I had, however, six soldiers given me by General Monet, and would have shown fight; but they showed me all sort of civility, giving me wine and presenting me to their wives, who are not worth our pretty Sevillañas . Thence to Xeres, full of sherry, which is better discussed out of a decanter than in an epistle. The Duke of San Lorenzo has a magnificent Alcazar there, and, were I him, I should cut Madrid, and take to drinking dry Amontillado in my Moorish palace.

Mrs. O’Lawlor has presented the General with a little girl, born on the 25th. Don Carlos Downie has presented him with twenty-four robbers from the neighbourhood of Jaen, who will be duly hung, si Dios quiere .

All the authorities here, Arjona, Quesada, General Flegres (these two know something about the Raya [frontier] de Portugal), are quite confident about peace, and that Spain will not interfere. I hope you will give me a hint, verbum sapienti et ab Sapiente , as to when you think the climate of Gibraltar more favourable for the welfare of my family than that of Seville. {88}

We have Captain Cook here. Sʳ. Eden has just returned from Lisbon. Everything most perfectly quiet there. He was much struck by the admirable appearance of the Portuguese troops. Pedro will get a licking if he does not look sharp. I should not be sorry, who want to remain another year in Spain; and then they may both go to Carrajo or the Carracas , or wherever and whenever they like.

All perfectly quiet at Badajoz.

I find my wife very unwell and in great anxiety about the little baby (who was born at Seville last year). It has been alarmingly ill within these few days, and I fear there is not much chance that it will live. I am the more distressed on my wife’s account, as it has thrown her back very much, and intercepted the slow progress of her recovery.

Sevilla , May 12, 1832.

I am going to set out to-morrow for Zafra and Merida, and thence through Placencia, Alcantara, Ciudad Rodrigo to Salamanca, where I shall finish my education. If I see anything interesting to you on the Raya of Portugal I will take care and forward a despatch. If this finds you in Madrid, you will much oblige me by letting Alphonso walk to that arch-Hebrew, Ravassa, to desire him to send me a credit on Ciudad Rodrigo, Salamanca and Valladolid, and write to me at Ciudad Rodrigo the names of the bankers. You may remember what a state of poverty and destitution the Jew left me in at Zaragoça for want of diplomatic garantias . I have written to the circumcised dog this post. When I reach Salamanca, I shall settle my future plans. Much will depend on whether the cholera should take a fancy about that time to travel in Spain, in which case I shall get back here through Madrid as quickly as I can, as I would rather meet José Maria than the Cholera.

My wife has relinquished all thoughts of leaving Seville this spring, as our last baby continues in rather a precarious state, and she is unwilling to {90} leave him; otherwise we should have gone to Malaga and Granada. Seville is free from English; Heaphy el feroz , and O’Meara el Majadero [gawk], (what a knack they have at soubriquets !) are gone to Murcia; S Eden and Martin per steamer to England; Cook and Baring return to Madrid on Thursday. They have been detained here by another ball I have been giving, to the horror of the dévotes , during the Rogativas , for which, they say, all those who attended will be carried off by a particular and express cholera. Meantime the ball was very well attended; and by most beautiful and bewitching Andaluças , as Baring and Cook will tell you. By the way, we are expecting the famous French dandy, Charles de Mornay, who is coming from Morocco, where he has been as Plenipo . He will enlighten the Madrid dandies by some outlandish Paris coat couleur de cholera morbus ; if you fall in with him, and can get over his outward appearance, you will find him very tolerable. He is an acquaintance of mine, and friend of my wife, which may be predicated of all his English connoissances .

Salamanca , June 6 [1832] .

Here I am in this venerable university, completing my education, and endeavouring to make amends for the sad waste of time during the years {91} mis-spent at Oxford in earning the honour of a M.A. This peaceful habitation of the Muses is disturbed by the piping of the fife and the beating of the “soul-stirring” drum. The empty colleges are filled with soldiers, who are inscribing on the walls carrajo , and the usual words by which that class of people show their proficiency in the art of writing.

Everything very quiet in Portugal; in Merida there may be 400 or 500 men; in Placencia as many cuirassiers; in Ciudad Rodrigo a company of artillery and about 1200 men. Here there are artillery from Seville, some cavalry, and altogether about 4000 to 4500 men. This army on the frontier, including Badajoz, I should state as under 10,000. They are very well appointed in all respects, and seem fine troops—full, however, of quintas [balloted men] and young lads.

I have seen much of General Sarsfield, which is more than anybody else has. He seems to think that there is no chance of anything taking place in Portugal, except in case of a general war.

This is a charming old town. I have been over the field of battle. The identical guide who was with Lord Wellington lives still in Arapiles. [27] {92} Would you believe it? not a single Spaniard, though they have been here two months, has ever been over to see the scene of battle. They, I suppose, know full well how very little they had to do with it.

I have been wandering over the mountains to the mines of Rio Tinto, to Zafra and Merida, and thence across the uninhabited plain of Estremadura to Alcantara, a magnificent Roman bridge in a most picturesque situation, reminding me much of Toledo. Thence through Coria to Placencia, and to the convent of Yuste, where Charles V. died. The monks received me with great hospitality, lodged me in the imperial quarters, and gave me a bed in the room in which Charles died, and I did not see his ghost.

Thence through Capara (a beautiful Roman arch) to Abadia, a ruined palace of the great Duke of Alva. Thence over the mountains through the romantic valley of Jurdes to the celebrated convent of Las Batuecas, a mountain scene of the grandest description. Thence to the ruined town of Ciudad Rodrigo, and so on to Salamanca; where I have been living much with the Prior, a great ally of the Duke of Wellington, and who furnished him with the most important intelligence during the war. I am now going to Benavente, thence to Santiago, {93} Oviedo, Leon, and so to Madrid, viá Burgos and Valladolid. Please God, I hope to arrive in the Corte early in July.

Pray be so kind as to put aside the Galignanis since May, as these are most interesting times, and I am longing to read the debates. If I can be of any service, manda V. E. con toda franqueza a su criado ; and write either to Lugo, Oviedo, or Leon, in case you wish anything done in the mountains or a prayer said for your sins at Compostella.

I have good accounts of my wife at Seville, who is broiling while I am shivering under the blasts of Castille, attended with cold and rain—worse weather than the most inclement June in England. Sad work for an artist, as the wind blows one’s paper to rags and the rain wets it through, to say nothing of the chance of being shot as a spy or laid in the Red Sea as the ghost of Mr. Boyd.

Madrid , Thursday [July 13, 1832] .

I arrived here this morning, having left Bilbao on Tuesday, which is not bad work this warm weather. I am very sorry not to meet you here, to talk over my pilgrimage and travels, which have been rather interesting. I have been absent from my spouse and children so long that my marital and paternal feelings are getting impatient for {94} Seville, where I hope to arrive next week, leaving this Corte on Tuesday by the Malle de Poste . This is an excellent and most rapid mode of travelling, as we came from Vitoria nearly a gallop all the way. I hope this autumn, if Dom Pedro allows you, that you will come down and look at our pretty Sevillanas.

I have been looking over the batch of Galignanis, and have many thanks to give you for having preserved them for me; any you can henceforth spare for Seville pray send me. I saw nothing worth writing to you about on my tour in political matters. There are about two thousand men at Zamora, and, altogether, I should reckon the Spanish force to be about twelve thousand men—good troops and well appointed with everything. The general feeling everywhere is that they will not pass the frontier.

Madrid , Tuesday, 17th [July 1832] .

I am off this night per Malle de Poste to Seville. I am very sorry that we have not met in Madrid, but hope in the autumn we may meet in the marble court of my house in the sweet south. You will do well to come down and dissipate a little after your fatigues with Dom Pedro. Dulce est desipere in Seville. Will you be so kind as to forward the enclosed to the Duke of Wellington, whenever you {95} have a safe conveyance? It contains a letter which a friend of his gave me at Salamanca.

A Mr. Lewis, [28] a clever artist whose father I know well, has been recommended to me by Henry Wellesley. He is about to make a sort of picturesque tour of Spain, having orders for young ladies’ albums and from divers booksellers who are illustrating Lord Byron. Will you be so good as to get his passport viséd in manner that he may not be shot or hung as a spy? I think, if it were viséd in your Embassy in Spanish, it would be quite sufficient in a sort of form like this:—

“El contenido artista Ingles viaja en España con el unico objeto de estudiar y debujar y siendo sujeto de confianse se le recommienda a las auctoridades civiles y militares de su Transitu.”

I had a sort of visé like this from Quesada, which operated like magic. To be sure, they took me for your Excellency in disguise, or at least for a Field-Marshal. This place is very hot, dusty and glaring, and I shall be glad to repose under my orange trees and vines in the shade, and listen to the splashing {96} of waters, the domestic details of my spouse, and the crying of my children, all which pass a single gentleman’s belief.

I see nothing new except the Velazquez, which are more extraordinary every time I meet them.

Sevilla , Aug. 1 [1832] .

My poor little baby (who has been a year struggling against the organic injury received by his fall in the Alhambra) on Monday evening was released from its continual and cruel sufferings, and has been buried in the orange garden of San Diego, where the remains of those English who die in this distant land are gathered together. (I doubt if Mark will ever forgive me.)

This melancholy event, though long anticipated, has upset my wife more than I should have expected. I found her on my return very much improved in health, and looking much better than she has ever done this last three years—quite fat and stout. {99}

José Maria is now a hombre de bien , living like an honest gentleman retired from an honourable and laborious profession, enjoying the otium cum dignitate , the rich reward of meritorious industry in Estefa. About forty gentlemen in his line have been received into the society of honest Spaniards by an ample indulto . The roads are in consequence quite safe for the present, as long as the uneasy virtue of these gentlemen continues. It is just possible that we may spend our autumn in Granada, and the winter under the protection of Marco el grande , who is always the conqueror. Malaga is a rinconcillo [small corner] we have never seen, and I am anxious to go over to Africa in the spring to see the real Moors . Many thanks for the Galignanis, which tell us something about Messrs. Peter and Miguel, a pretty pair, as the Devil said. I suppose that thing must by this time be ended. Would the cholera were!

We have a man here, fresh from London, who says nobody there pays the slightest attention to it, and if there were no newspapers its presence would be unnoticed.

The Infante [29] has been here, seeing bull-fights. {100} The Infanta very sulky, ugly, and cross, and insulting the Sevillanas. They were coldly received, and at one time hissed (not kissed) in the Plaza. The Alcazar is exquisite. What a palace it is now, hung with the finest pictures in Seville, and furnished with the most beautiful and costly furniture, old plate, etc., lent by the principal families, all those who have saved anything since the war of de pendence! The sheets on the bed, costing 5000 Rs., like Lady Holland’s, edged with lace, and for the repose of such carcasses! The consequence is that we flesh-eaters are paying the penalty of these fooleries, two cuartos [30] having been added to the pound of meat, and a tax here (and elsewhere), once put on, is never taken off.

Sevilla , Aug. 22, 1832 .

We are now full of warlike reports; Juntas of Realistas ; four thousand are to march from this province, and two hundred valientissimos from Sevilla, who will eat Dom Pedro in a Gaspacho [a cold vegetable soup].

They say that the Spaniards are determined to interfere, which will very much interfere with my remaining in Spain; but I hope, if you think the horizon cloudy and bad for a gentleman’s health, {101} that you will give me a timely hint, to get a little sea-bathing at Gibraltar.

Spaniards deal so much in hyperbole, that one never knows what to believe; they say that you and the Frenchman have taken down your arms (if the Frenchman did his tombstones and cocks it would be no bad thing). They also say that Sartorius [31] has taken Dom Miguel’s ships, all except the large one. These news came per London steamer. However, the Realistas are certainly in a bustle; of that there can be no doubt, and it looks warlike. God help poor fallen Spain! The cholera and a French army marching in at once, and the plentiful crop of weeds which will sprout up out of the earth, like the armed men of Cadmus. The Liberals and discontented are overjoyed; they are like Mother Cary’s chickens, which only come out when there are symptoms of foul and dirty weather.

I wish Dom Pedro was hung in the Tripas of Dom Miguel, as the Spaniards say of the English and French. {102}

Many thanks for your passport for Don Luis. He has written a letter to me, full of thanks for your good nature to him, and will no doubt draw your portrait gratis .

We have nothing new here. Colonel Buller talking incessantly and unceasingly of his uniform; if he does not make haste, they will declare war before he gets it. His friend Mr. Horner sits in a corner.

There have been magnificent doings at the Alhambra, and I hear that Dionysia’s dress and magnificence are the talk of the town. Travelling is quite safe, as José Maria is looking after the robbers instead of being looked after.

Sevilla , Sept. 19 [1832] .

By desire of Don José I enclose you an account of the gay doings in the Alhambra in honour of His Serene Highness Don Francisco de Paula. You may depend upon it that, in knocking up their trumpery lamps and chandeliers, they have cruelly injured the beautiful Moorish stucco, and probably have whitewashed over the little remnants of its former gilding.

We have the supreme felicity of being honoured by the royal presence, and have had a grand bull-fight (the cause and effect), given by the Maes {103} tranza, [32] in which Don Rafael Gusman (a descendant of Gusman el Bueno ) killed a bull, who, in his dying spring, bounded over the barrier and died between it and the spectators, a lance [a lucky event] considered by the aficionados [enthusiasts] as algo raro [somewhat unusual], and much applauded by His Highness and the Majos of Seville. This occupies much conversation, of course, and Dom Pedro and the cholera are at a discount. As to Doms Miguel and Pedro, even the Spaniards are disgusted at their want of fight. What two blackguards, to disturb the peace of the Peninsula!

Everybody here is satisfied that the King is to spend the winter in Seville, and to set out as soon as he can be moved, as they make him out to be very ill. Meantime Gutierrez the painter, who is in high favour in Court (drawing two hundred heads of the servants, attendants, etc., in a blank book of the Queen’s), describes the King as coming in and being very affable and good-humoured.

We have no news whatever. Colonel Buller’s uniform is arrived, and both are still remaining at Seville. Otherwise, God be praised! there are {104} no British subjects here. The weather perfectly delicious; the walks of an evening and at night charming. My wife has been very unwell, feverish, and relaxed. As soon as she is confined, which I hope will be early next month, we think of starting for Malaga to eat raisins and be under the protection of Mark.

Our great visitors are all to go the 24th, and say they shall return next year much earlier. The people are so poor that they have not been able to give them a ball. In the town they said I was going to do so. You see how we apples swim, and what a great place this is for little people; however, I prefer counting my dollars in my box, nummos in arcâ .

Sevilla , Saturday [29 Sept. 1832] .

As you have been so long “in at the death,” I will give you a little birth by way of a change. On Wednesday my wife was safely brought to bed of a little girl, both mother and child doing perfectly well. The birth was premature by three weeks, and brought on by a severe illness which my wife has had, and which has thrown her back sadly. I am in hopes that she will now recover her strength for the journey to Malaga.

They say, first, that the King is dead, and that he died on the 17th; next, that he is eating {105} chickens and smoking cigars, on the 20th; and that he is coming here to a dead certainty.

The furniture of the Alcazar, provided for the Infante, which was to have been sold, is ordered to be put away in case of being shortly required. How is all this? Is there really any chance of the King’s coming? If so, pray let me know ( quite privately ), as I in that case would remain the winter, having the largest and best house in the town, which I need not say is at the Disposicion de V.E. , and where I can give you a nice little apartment , with a fireplace, and with no chickens to sing ovations on your arrival.

Don Lewis is drawing the Alhambra, and Don José is speculating on politics, about three weeks more behindhand than we are, which might be expected, as he lives in an out-of-the-way mountainous kingdom.

I suppose you have had a rare time of it at the Granja. The running up and down stairs and the stir of diplomacy will keep your feet free from chilblains in that Mountain Court. The weather here is beyond expression delicious.

November 10, 1832 : Sevilla .

I have moved out of O’Neill’s house to the one I formerly occupied, which is warmer and smaller, and have just laid in 1500 cwt. of dry olive wood, {106} which I wish I could present you with. O’Neill’s administrador , who is a regular skinflint, has taken to his bed, in consequence of the loss of a tenant who paid 35 reals a day for a Caseron which will never again be relet. Here they say that he is coming to Seville for his Quartel .

Amarillas has been well received at Granada, where the joy at having got rid of that scoundrel Moreno is unbounded; above 500 prisoners have been let out of the dungeons there. In spite of his passport, he ordered Mr. Lewis out of Granada at two hours’ notice, but relented on an application of Don José.

Mark, who is always the conqueror, has got all the original correspondence between Torrijos and Moreno, which I hear beats cockfighting. They say Moreno has fled into Portugal.

Quesada is making rare reforms in the police, and the Andalucians are dancing Fandangos with delight.

I am expecting Mr. Lewis from Granada, and am going to take him into my house. I look forward to his Alhambra drawings, and hope my wife will make some good copies of them. She is, I am very sorry to say, in a most delicate state, and cruelly pulled down. People are all in high spirits and looking forward to changes and im {107} provements which they will never see realised. The Queen very popular, and, if the King exchange a terrestrial for an immortal crown, she will here have a strong party.

Sevilla , Saturday, 15 [December 1832] .

As soon as I received your Walter Scott [33] prospectuses I sent one to Arjona, the assistente , another to Quesada, and another to the editor of the Diario . If you send any more, it will be as well to add a postscript, saying who Walter Scott was, whether he was a Frenchman or a German, whether he wrote Verses or dealt in Bacalao [dried cod-fish], as there is no one here who has yet heard of him, and all, like Lord Westmorland when asked to subscribe to the monument of Watt, are asking what’s what . However, if he had written the Song of Solomon, and been as notorious as the Cid, the devil a cuarto would any Spaniard subscribe, and I do not expect one peseta from Andalucia. The Major is occupied in buying a horse; Colonel Buller in buying cloth for new trousers, on which he descants till even tailors cry ohe! jam satis est . I am buying meat and drink for my family. All these matter-of-fact expenses militate against handing over dollars for the decoration of a bleak northern capital. {108}

We are about to lose Quesada, who goes to Madrid; but he is replaced by a better officer and a far higher-bred gentleman, Amarillas; so that, as far as we are concerned, we rather gain. Madame Quesada is one of the most agreeable, graciosas y chistosas [gay] of all Gaditanas , and, if you fall in her way, pray become acquainted with her.

We are all going on here in our usual humdrum manner, my wife certainly much better. I have just bought her a horse, and she is having a splendid Maja riding-habit made, which will make the Andaluças die of envy; black, with innumerable lacing and tagging, and a profusion of silver filigree buttons.

I have Don Luis staying in my house, he has made some beautiful sketches of Granada, and is very busy with Sevilla.

The wall of the Alhambra is not yet built up. Remember me and mine to O’Lawlor, who, I hope, will pick up something in these times of scramble and change.

Sevilla , Saturday, January 12 [1833] .

I did not answer your letter last post, as I was then in the Sierra Morena, near Alcolea, on a shooting excursion.

You will find a large engraving of the tomb of the Catholic kings in the folio work published at Madrid in 1804 by Don Pablo Lorano, and called Antiquedades arabes in España .

Lewis, who is here, says, if you are not satisfied with that print, that he will make a drawing of the chapel and tomb at Granada when he returns. There are portraits of Fernando and Isabella in the Generalife; but they are bad, and certainly not so old as the period those personages lived in. At the Cartuja convent, near Burgos, is a genuine and beautiful small portrait of Isabella, which struck {110} me very much when I was there, and is certainly of the time, and in the manner, of Holbein.

If you are acquainted with a brother of General Sⁿ. Martin, who has just been named Bishop of Barcelona, he will probably be able to put you in the way of getting a copy made of this portrait by some artist at Burgos. The newly-elected Bishop was treasurer of the cathedral at Burgos, and is a most worthy and good man.

Don José O’Lawlor could get you copies made of the portraits at the Generalife and of the tomb of Granada, and that musical artist Muriel will do the job in a manner that no one will recognise them.

So much for your Excellency’s commissions.

We are all agog here with the arrival of Amarillas from Granada, who will make an excellent Captain-General, quite as honest and firm as Quesada, and much better and higher bred. If you see Madᵉ Quesada, who is a most agreeable, charming, fat old lady, pray lay me most devotedly at her feet.

My wife has been far from well lately—a bad cough, pain in her chest, and palpitations of the heart. I am not quite comfortable about her, and have some thoughts of going to Madeira. The Colonel is here as usual, and has lately set up a waistcoat, which he has eulogised to all Seville.

My wife wishes to know if you would like to have {111} a very, very fine Pajes guitar. There was a talk of one being to be sold, and it was mentioned to her.

I have this instant seen the Gazetta , and that Don José is appointed Captain-General of Mallorca. I suspected something was in the wind when so prudent a gentleman undertook the journey to Madrid. I am sorry for it, as I had eyes on the Alhambra for next summer.

Sevilla , March 6 [1833] .

I have been resisting during these last six weeks an empeño [favour] of my wife’s, but have at length yielded, as most men, whether single or married, must to the constant battery of female determination. She has bought a small silver filigree box, about half a foot long and six inches high, which she is very anxious to send to England, and to get it in without being broken up. She wants to know whether you can or will help her in this matter. It is a favour to be bestowed on her, and for which she will ever remain your handmaid or handwoman. I have told her that I do not ask you, because you would say no slap, and there would be an end of it. As the box is so small, will it be possible to get Lady S. Canning to take it back with her? I hardly like writing to Lord Althorp about it, as the Whigs, of course, will never do a job. So the matter stands. If you can do it, it will be a great {112} favour to her, as the nicknack is a very pretty one. If you cannot, then she must bear it patiently— no tiene remedio . You will have heard of us and of our masquerading from a tall major, who was as high as a hill; he passed through with a stammering gentleman, who, I hope, was not the talebearer, or it is not told yet.

We are expecting a flock of Consuls from Europe and Africa—the Brackenburys and the Drummond Hays, who are going to spend the Holy Week, and a rare unholy one will they make it; as, where two or three English are gathered together, there is envy, hatred, and uncharitableness amongst them, and still more with that great class of people His B.M. Consuls. The Hays, I hear, are the greatest men alive. I am thinking of being off to escape the Consular deluge, and to retire to the polished cities of Tangier and Tetuan. Mr. Hay has made me offers for my house, and probably I shall make hay while the sun shines.

We have applied for the Alhambra, and, as soon as I can get an answer, we shall prepare to set forth for Granada, having no fear now of José Maria, who came to Seville and paid me a visit of which the whole town is talking. I received him as a man of his merits deserves, and gave him a present of a pistol, with which probably, if he meets {113} me on the high road, he will shoot me. Lewis, who is with me still, made a drawing of him—a fine handsome fellow, and fit to be absolute king of Andalucia.

If you have time to write, pray tell us what is really known about the cholera. Is it at Lisbon? What are you about at Madrid, making the exchange to rise so? I am ruined by it.

My wife begs to be remembered to you, and that her empeño may be remembered by you.

Poor Don José! What a mess he made of his trip to Madrid, where his Dionysia nearly miscarried, and he has completely. As far as we are concerned, I am delighted to see him again at Granada.

Sevilla , April 3 [1833] .

My wife begs me to thank you a thousand times for offering to send her box. The size is 5 inches wide, 6 inches high, 8 inches long.

If you think fit, I will send it to you, and you shall dispose of the matter as you like. It contains a few odd Spanish trinkets, about £50 worth, in which materiam superavit opus , and which she wishes not to lose on account of the recollections attached to them, being memorials of her travels. I am really quite vexed at giving you all this trouble, thinking on the subject exactly the same {114} as you do, and wishing all ladies and their empeños at the devil.

We are full of Misereres , Custodias , Pagos , and processions, all the night and day work of the Holy Week, all unction, the fruits of which will duly make their appearance, this day nine months, in a plentiful crop of bastards for the Casa de los Expositos . Lots of English from the Rock, of the regiment called The Tiger; Consuls, Vice-Consuls, and Consuls-General, as thick as blackberries, and quite as insipid. I am dying to be lodged again in the Alhambra, and hear the ovation of the Tia’s chickens. Will the troubled times permit your Excellency to come and see us again this summer, when we will ride to Alhama and on to the Consul Mark, el siempre Vencidor, El Galib?

We are all at a nonplus at what is going on in the Corte . His Majesty’s letter to the Captain-Generals is a poser, and means in English, “I want nobody but my little Cea Bermudez.” [34] However, I am delighted to see that his Majesty is so well, as these decrees speak more clearly than any bulletins, that he has no thoughts of dying, and cares no more for Isabel than George the Fourth did for Charlotte. I wonder you can have any {115} doubts whatever as to what will happen next. You will see the next word of command will be “As you were.”

It would be a pity that the march of intellect should get into the Peninsula, or that Africa should cease to begin at the Pyrenees.

Sevilla , Wednesday, 17 [April 1833] .

I enclose you the receipt of the diligence for the small box I sent you, in consequence of your kind offer to send it home for my wife. Mind, I should never have ventured to bother you on such a subject. The diligence will arrive on Monday morning. If you will send your whiskered Chasseur with the enclosed paper, no custom-house officer will dare to open it.

I suppose Brackenbury will send you the news of the two packets, up and down, which have met at Cadiz. The one from Malta brings the news that the Russians have 7 sail of the line at Constantinople, and 40 transports full of troops in the Bosphorus, and that Mehemet Ali’s fleet, 5 sail, have hoisted the flag of independence. [35]

The Hermes from England, sent off at an hou {116} r’s notice by the Admiralty, touched at Oporto, Vigo, Lisbon, with orders to all the English ships of war to proceed directly to Constantinople, without anchoring at Gibraltar. The Malabar , Captain Percy (with Sir William Eden on board), is at Cadiz, and, ere this, in the Mediterranean. Other English ships are in sight. Private intelligence to “ the Proconsul ” says that the cholera is at Lisbon.

Will you be so kind, if you have time, to let me know when the box arrives, and, if it goes to England, how and when? It contains £50 or £60 of trinkets, the honey collected by my Queen Bee.

Shirreff is uncertain as to his motions. He is agog at the thoughts of a war and a three-decker. It is probable that he will turn off at Ossuna and proceed directly to Gibraltar by Ronda.

I hope to arrive at Granada next Wednesday, where, in case of seizure or squalls, you have a house at your disposicion to retire to.

Tetuan , Saturday, May 25 [1833] .

Do not be alarmed at a letter from this land of lions, tigers, deserts, and cannibals, for I assure you it is a paradise compared to the garrison and gunfire of Gibraltar, almost as beautiful as Granada, quite as civilised as Spain, and abounding with comforts and accommodations, seeing that the houses of the Jews are more handsomely and {117} abundantly furnished than those of the grandees of Seville.

It is quite a mistake to suppose that there is any difficulty or danger in travelling in Barbary, or that the condition of the Jews or Christians here is so deplorable as gentlemen on their travels have printed and published for the benefit of Mr. Colburn and edification of the British public. Both are treated with great kindness, and the proof of the substantial prosperity of the sons of Israel is in the silks and jewels, domestic comforts and luxuries, which are to be met with even among the poorest of them.

I must go back a little in my letter. We left Seville in April, and reached Granada in due time, in spite of the wind and the rain. We thence proceeded to the town called by the English Gib, by the way of Alhama ay de mi ! [36] Loja, Antequera, and Ronda, a fine mountain ride, full of Moorish castles and fastnesses, the scene of many a desperate conflict, all of which are written in the book of Washington Irving. From Gibraltar we were conveyed by Shirreff to Tangiers, a pretty little town situated in a sheltered bay. I need {118} not tell you how great is the change on landing, greater than that between Dover and Calais. I will not say that, on coming from Spain, it is coming from civilisation to barbarism, it being well known that Africa begins at the Pyrenees; but still the change of turbans for hats, haiks for capas , camels for mules, wild Arabs in their peaked jellibeas for monks, is sufficiently striking. The interior of the town is like a Spanish one—all dirt, ruin, and bad pavement, the houses, low and windowless, looking like whitened sepulchres; and the women, in their haiks and muffled-up faces, look like the ghost in Semiramis —a very appropriate population for so sepulchral a city. From under the shroud, however, peep out certain black, soft eyes, so full of life that a gentleman would have no objection to be haunted in the night-time by one of these spectres.

The Jewesses do not hide their faces, and it would be a sin to do so, as they are truly beautiful. Their costume is most fanciful and oriental—a mass of brocade, golden sashes, handkerchiefs, and jewelry, pearls, rubies, and emeralds, by no means the trappings of a people said to be stripped to the skin by the Moors. If they have any “ old cloes ,” they buy and sell them and do not wear them. They are highly pleased at being visited, {119} and show their finery with great complacency. My wife has been admitted into the interior of divers houses of the Moors, but does not give so favourable an account of them as of the Jewesses. The newly-married women paint their faces very much as we remember, in the days of our youth, that facetious gentleman Grimaldi did.

There is a very decent inn, much cleaner and better provided than those in Spain. We were lodged at His B. Majesty’s Consulate-General, and so changed houses with the Hays. From Tangiers we rode to Tetuan, a pleasant ride through a rich country, well cultivated, of about eleven hours. Here we have put up in the oriental dwelling of a respectable Jew, who has two daughters, who make me think every day better of Moses as a legislator—fair complexions, dark black hair, and soft, mild, large, almond-shaped eyes, rendered more oriental by a dark powder, with which the lids are slightly blacked, which gives an indescribable soft expression to them. We have been received by the Pasha in oriental state, turbaned guards, Ethiopian slaves, cushions and couches, and much green tea, almond cakes and sweetmeats. My wife was presented to his lady, and presented by her with a scarf value ten shillings, for which she gave her a musical snuff-box. {120}

The situation of the town delightful, on the slope of a hill commanded by an embattled castle, and overlooking a valley of gardens bounded to the north-east by the blue sea, and to the south by a magnificent chain of mountains. It is a second Granada, and the original founders who fled from Granada brought with them all their love for agriculture and gardens, which are here the delight of the Moors. The hills supply them with an abundance of water, which under African sun and a fertile soil covers the earth with the most luxuriant vegetation and every kind of fruit given to man to eat. The town is like that of Tangiers, impressive when seen from the distance, but ruined in the interior. The bazaars, and especially the corn and vegetable markets, very African. Lines of camels laden with dates from Tafilet, silks from Fez, Ethiopians, wild Arabs, and muffled women, naked legs and covered faces, all talking a guttural idiom which beats German to nothing. The wares they deal with are as singular as the people: painted couskousu dishes from Fez, odd brown zebra-looking carpets from Rabat, tricolour clothes for the Ethiopians, velvet embroidered cushions, slippers and sashes from Algiers. Then the jewelry of the women. My wife represents the Moorish women as one mass of pearls and precious stones. {121} I have seen the collection of a Jewish woman which filled a decent-size box, about four times as big as the one my wife troubled you with, and which I hope started safely for England. Huge uncut emeralds seem to be the favourites. The houses are full of small patios , arches, arabesque work, and tesselated pavement, like the Alhambra, and the palace of the Governor, which is in high order, gives one an idea of what the Alhambra must have been once upon a time. We hope to set out to-morrow for Gibraltar, and thence to Granada viâ Malaga, and, having embraced His B. M. Consul in that city, to get back to the Alhambra by the 6th of June, el dia de Corpus , which is celebrated with great pomp in Granada. Adios ever, here and everywhere.

Gibraltar , Thursday, 30 [May, 1833] .

We have arrived here quite safely from Tetuan, and hope to be back at Granada by the 6th of June for el dia de Corpus .

Malaga , June 2 [1833] .

If you do not repent you of your hospitable offer of giving me a bed, during the approaching shows and ceremonies, I should be delighted to run up for a few days. As I should come alone, any hole or corner in your house would be perfectly good enough, and I should put you by no means out of your way.

I hope to be at Granada by Thursday, and will consult Don José’s tailor on the subject of a coat, something blue, turned up with red and a few dollars of gold lace; you can pass me, in this decent livery, as an attaché extraordinary from the Pacha of Tetuan, or a proconsul from his B.M. Consul-General at Tangiers. I hope in this disguise to be allowed to stand behind your Excellency’s chair at the different ceremonies, bull-fights, rows ( si Dios quiere ), and hold your dress cocked hat.

My wife is not well, and much knocked up by this last journey, and will do quite well to remain quiet in the Alhambra. Indeed, some repose is absolutely necessary to her, both bodily and mentally.

This is a warm spot; and having dined with the consul, eaten the raisins, drunk the Malaga, and looked at the clay figures, nought remains but to {124} pack up the Alforjas [saddle-bags] and be off to Granada.

I wrote you a letter from Tetuan, which I hope reached you, and was less tedious than one of sixty pages from Mr. Edward Drummond Mortimer Auriol Hay.

I hear there will be no time for an answer to reach me at Granada, as I must set out about the 10th to arrive the 16th. All sorts of conveyances will no doubt be occupied, and I shall have to ride over the interminable plains of Castille, and shall arrive as brown as the Plenipo from Algiers.

July 6 [1833] , Granada .

I arrived here to dinner on Monday last, having left Madrid Saturday morning at 2, passing through the Prado , which was full of people eating gingerbread, and dancing to guitars and strumming, a very proper and Catholic mode of keeping the Visperas of Sⁿ. Pedro.

The journey here was severe, but rapid. I found Mrs. Ford much better, very much better than I could have expected—so much so that we have determined on returning to England in September, si Dios quiere . I do not like the looks of things here, and, with the Portuguese business and the cholera in the Peninsula, think it high time to return to England. Indeed, it is high time for other reasons. My wife is left alone without female society; my children at this important age are brought up as heathens and Spaniards, a pretty prospect for daughters; and I myself must purge like Falstaff, and live cleanly like a gentleman, and take to that gentlemanlike old vice, {126} avarice, to save a little money for the bad times which hang over England.

We hear here that the expedition in the south of Portugal is advancing prosperously, and that they pay as they go, which is a surer way of making proselytes than all their charters and constitutions.

Don José has added another young lady to his family, Dionysia having been safely brought to bed yesterday. This is her sixth child of the female sex.

The weather here delicious, mornings and evenings cool and fresh, and all green, and trickling streams, shady over-leafy arbours, with sweet singing nightingales; per contra nothing to eat, and no Valdepeñas or dinners.

The wall in the Alhambra is rising most rapidly, and the Frenchman equally expeditious in his painting of the Patio de los Leones for Vista allegre ; indeed he had better make haste, for the vista of the future is anything but allegre .

Granada , August 24, 1833 .

I was astounded in seeing in the Revista that your ambassadorial career in Spain is coming to a conclusion. As you have been long prepared for it, and, indeed, rather surprised at its not having taken place sooner, I need say no more on the {127} matter except that you will retire to enjoy your otium cum dignitate . They have been very considerate to let you out of Spain just when the cholera is coming in. We hear that it was at Huelva on the 10th, and will soon be at Cadiz and Seville. This is bad intelligence for us, as we were preparing to return to England that route. If it does not reach Gibraltar by October, we shall go home in that packet.

If you have time, in all the misery of packing up and departure, to write me a line, I shall be very glad to know when you are going and what are your plans. I am sure I am most thankful to the Whigs for their forbearance, as I verily believe, had you not furnished me with the Galignani (to say nothing of much and friendly hospitality on all and many occasions), I could not have survived in this land of darkness. The papers say George Villiers is to be your successor. He is a very clever, high-bred man, muy rubio and an elegante ; he will please the Madrilenas. I should doubt if he knew a word of Spanish, which he will find a pretty considerable desideratum .

We are here enjoying the most beautiful weather, and one would hardly suppose, on looking at the blue sky and bright sun, that there was cholera in the world. {128}

The summer has been unusually warm, and old Picacho has taken off his white nightcap in consequence of the heat. I went up to the Barranco de Sⁿ. Juan with Head, [38] who is a well-informed, agreeable companion, and is filling his portfolio and pericranium with all sorts of Spanish memoranda .

Don José is in statu quo , and has had another baby born to him. I occasionally stroll with him in the Alameda, and listen to his old campaigns and how the Duke “flaked” the French on all occasions. I am reading the masterly work of Napier, and O’Lawlor is quite a commentator. Quæque ipse miserrima vidi et quorum pars magna fui.

You won’t be tempted to run down here in the diligence , and go home in the October packet?

Brackenbury was at Seville, gone to see the paintings of Mr. Roberts, which I hear are very fine; [39] but the news at Huelva sent him off per steamer to his post at Cadiz.

I fear the wise Whigs will find their protégé in Portugal in a mess; we hear every day of the country rising against Dom Pedro. O’Lawlor {129} considers his troubles as now beginning. Your troubles and mine are fast drawing to an end.

Sept. 21, 1833 , Madrid .

We arrived here at last this morning, after a most distressing journey, in consequence of the detentions and discomforts occasioned on the road by the singular precautions taken in the towns against the approach of the cholera. These are so very absurd, and so totally calculated to defeat the object in view, that I think some account of what took place may possibly interest you.

As I had to travel with a sick wife, four small children—one of them only weaned a few days—I made many enquiries of General Abadia and the administrador of the diligence at Granada whether any difficulties would be offered on the road, with a view of making some sort of preparation; but, having been assured that none would, I ventured forth on Wednesday morning. We reached Jaen without interruption, but on our arrival found a guard of soldiers drawn up across the road, with many of the inhabitants behind them. The diligence was stopped, though it could only come from Granada; and though all other carriages coming from Granada were admitted at once, a precaution taken against the diligence only , which on the {130} contrary ought to have been the least suspected, both from the forms of its institution and the decency of travellers who proceed by such a conveyance. The mayoral got down, and entered into close communication with the soldiers and people, collected all the passports, and gave them into the hand of a person appointed to receive them. The passengers then alighted, and mingled with the assembled people until the passports were returned.

Next morning we proceeded to Mengibar, a miserable hamlet, where we were detained by some wild-looking peasants and a nondescript soldier in a gorro without stockings, but with a sword in his hand. The passports were received in the same way, and returned duly viséd by the Junta de Sanidad . In almost every town some sort of detention took place, generally of about half an hour, but varying in detail according to the plan laid down by each petty Junta.

At Guarroman a carriage, supposed to have a person from Seville in it, was turned out of the town, and the passengers obliged to pass the day in the sun, without food or communication, while some steps were taken to procure them a cortijo .

At Manzanares, where we arrived early, we were detained much longer, as none of the peasants could read or write, and the passports had to be {131} taken to the Escribano , who was in bed, and had left orders not to be disturbed.

At Ocaña, where we ought to have rested some hours and supped, the diligence was peremptorily ordered out of the town. We were driven out and left to ourselves; the innkeeper, who ought to have provided food, not having done so because there might be some difficulty in his getting paid. However, a party in the carriage fared better: several ladies, attended by two officers of the garrison with servants, came down to the diligence with provisions, remained with it an hour, and then returned to Ocaña with the very guards who were appointed to prevent all communication.

At Aranjuez, the next town, we were admitted without stoppage, enquiry, or notice of any sort.

It is needless to point out to you the absurdity of these proceedings, so vexatious to travellers, and so utterly ill calculated to produce any good effect. Persons suspected of being infected are allowed to remain in full communication with inhabitants of the town, before their actual freedom from disease is ascertained. The commonest measures of sanitary precautions are neglected. There was no bar, no rope across the road, no fixed spot for the travellers to communicate with the guards, no receiving papers or passports with {132} tongs, or with vinegar, or any of the usual disinfecting processes.

Each little town seemed to act according to its own ideas, and all absolute and peremptory; all in equal ignorance of what was passing below and left in equal ignorance by the authorities at Madrid; without orders or instructions, or one general simple plan to be adopted everywhere, each petty village acting for itself as if no other town existed, and without reference to the public good.

Depend upon it, they are adopting the sure means of rapidly communicating the disease, and any one infected traveller will bring it, to a certainty, to Madrid, if no better precautions are taken in the towns nearer the disorder.

Death of Ferdinand VII.—Exeter—Projected Book on Spain—Purchase of Heavitree House—Marriage of Lord King and of Addington—First Article in the Quarterly Review —Death of Mrs. Ford.

[123, Park Street ], London , Wednesday, 4th Dec., 1833 .

I am afraid I shall have left town before your return, which I am very sorry for, as I should have much liked to have had a chat with you in this dull and dingy capital, and to have talked over that fair land ( alias brown) beyond the Pyrenees. I should have had more to tell you than will go in a letter of our perils by sea and by land, moving adventures and escapes. Poor old Fernando, as you predicted, died when we were there, and we {134} saw him duly conveyed to the Escurial in a coche de colleras , with his feet projecting out of the front windows, and the capa of the Zagal hanging up behind. Alva, Medina Celi, and other grandees, riding hacks, in gold-embroidered coats and black trousers (the under man like an undertaker; the upper, all the tinsel of Spain, which gilds those mean hearts that lurk beneath a star). Sad dogs they looked, tel maître tel valet . Old Alagon brought up the rear. It was archi-Spanish, a mixture of the paltry and magnificent, and no one caring one inch about any part of it.

Villiers arrived with a good cook, and began his dinners, which were good and agreeable. He has arrived at a rare difficult period; but he is a very clever fellow and a complete man of the world.

I am going down to Exeter, where I have taken a house for a year, and am going to place my children in the hands of my brother [40] to eradicate Santa Maria , and teach them the architecture of the interiors of English churches.

I met Grant the other day, who was on his way {135} from Madrid to Lisbon, viâ Londres . He told me that all your goods and chattels were in the Downs, “all in the downs the goods were moored”; among them is a silver vase and some coins belonging to your servidor , and a Maja dress with four million silver buttons belonging to Mrs. Ford. A case of old books went at the same time, and probably is among them; for them I wish to pay duty, if your agent would be so good as to do so, and then all the Roba may be forwarded to my mother’s, with many thanks for all the trouble you have taken.

Grant tells me that your pension is rather undecided! God forfend! Ruin seems to stare everybody in the face; London half-deserted, and the roads and inns of the continent encumbered with absentees. We are patriotic, and come home in the time of need.

“This Exeter is quite a Capital, abounding in all that London has, except its fog and smoke. There is an excellent institution here with a well-chosen large Library, in which I take great pastime and am beginning my education. There is a bookseller who has some ten thousand old tomes {136} to tempt a poor man. However, here one has no vices or expenses except eating clotted cream, and a duro crown piece wears a hole in your pocket before you are tempted to change it. The dollars accumulate, and I am reading my Bible and minding my purse. Spain is in a pretty state. Llauder [41] cannot be trusted, as he has been true to no one, not even to himself. Quesada is a violent man, without much statesmanlike tact; he is piqued with what happened to him at Madrid, when they were fools enough to set out with disgusting him. He is no Liberal in his heart, hates the English, likes the French, believes in the Gazette de France . I know him right well; he is muy integro , and has a sort of straightforward common sense.

“Amarillas is, without any sort of doubt, the first man in Spain, and of the soundest political sentiments, a true friend to England, and most anxious to recognise the Americas, which he always told me must be the first step to the welfare of {137} Spain. He has property in Andalucia which has been ruined by the non-exportation of their oils.

“My brother and his family (all most super-excellent people and of transcendental goodness) are quite well, and the five Miss Fords are the dearest friends.

“I amuse myself much with old Spanish books and old Spanish recollections, and have my pen in my hand . The more I read, the more ignorant I find I am, and how the middle age of life has been mis-spent. I am rubbing up what I knew at eighteen and nineteen; it is an awful thing, now the world is so learned and the lower orders walking encyclopedias, to think of writing anything and printing. Nous verrons .”

Exeter , March 10, 1834 .

I have been rubbing up my notes on the coast of Andalucia, and have been in the Bottegas of Xeres , drinking the golden Consular; thence to Tarifa, and sucked a sweet orange with Guzman el Bueno . Thence to Gib., round of beef and porter at Griffiths’. So to Malaga; all sweet wine, raisins, and Consular uniforms. I cannot say how much the fighting one’s old battles over again delights me. I am afraid it will delight the gentle reader less. If I were to write familiar letters like old Howell, [42] perhaps they might do, but the times won’t stand that now. Penny Magazines are all the order of the day. Well! well! dulce est desipere in loco . I often think that one day would take me to Falmouth, and six to Cadiz to the society of the fair Brackybrigas, and another day per steamer to the dark-eyed Sevillanas . Howbeit I have done with that bird-lime to the human race, viscarium Diaboli , as old St. Ambrose has it.

Exeter , March 15, 1834 .

I sent Head a sample of my wares, to see if the article would do for the public. He is a learned, dry antiquarian; that is not exactly my line. You wish me to write an entertaining book (how easy!!), bagatella , with anecdotes on men and manners. Mores multorum vidit et urbes! A lady wished for scenery and sentiment. Heigho! true lovers’ knots and moonlight. I should wish to make a sort of Puchero , an olla Andaluça , a little dry vacca à la Cook (that cocinero has just turned out two volumes which I have sent for), a little chorizo [sausage] and jamon de las Alfujarras , with some good pepper, salsa [sauce] de Zandunga .

Where you could most assist me would be in a droll account of life at Aranjuez or la Granja, which I never saw. I am strong in Religion (you did not know that), Arts, and all except the Literature; but I have an excellent Spanish library, and could in six weeks write such an essay on the matter as would appear to be the result of a greater acquaintance with their authors than I have. I have, indeed, turned over a good many pages in Spain, but it has been odd out-of-the-way reading.

If you feel up to this task, it will be a very, very great obligation, and will keep my book correct , and, I hope, cut out all that is offensive. I hope not to {140} insert anything on politics, which I neither like nor understand. I must wait and see Captain Cook’s book. It will be heavy and correct; no taste, much industry (the plates ought to be wood blocks): it will be very ligneous, no pyro ligneous acid —as stiff and bolt-upright as a mainmast. I do not see any possibility of getting the book done before next spring; it will take a year to write. I care not for Captain Heaphy, who will sail over the surface in an ice-boat. Captain Cook will go down pondere suo .

It is a serious matter; but I have leisure, and nothing to do. This place is delicious: such a climate! such clotted cream! and an excellent public Library with all good books of reference.

Exeter , March 26, 1834 .

You should look at Captain Cook’s book ( Sketches in Spain : Boone, Bond Street), dry, painstaking and accurate, better than I had expected by far. He understands the people better than the pictures. There he breaks down lamentably. But he is without taste, and does not know a Murillo from a mainmast. You will see a splendid sentence on old Ferdinand’s patronage of the Arts in giving the pictures to the Museum. I have always heard that it was the deed of the Portuguesa and the Ms. de Santa Cruz, who was Major duomo . {141} The D. of [?] told me that he and Santa Cruz spent days in rummaging them out. Ferdinand had sent them to the Devil to make room for some new French paper.

Exeter , April 20, 1834 .

I enclose you a batch of MSS. which will remind you of the despatches of Mark.

The greatest act of real friendship you can show me is by not scrupling to use your pencil as freely as a surgeon would his knife, when he really thought the patient’s recovery required it. I write in haste always, and am more troubled to restrain and keep in matter, than for want of it.

I want the book to run easy, to read easy, to be light and pleasant, not dry and pedantic. I get on but slowly, and do not see land. I feel the matter grow upon my hands in proportion as I get on. It is like travelling in the Asturias; when you get up one mountain, you see five or six higher before you. However, the coast is clear, and that able circumnavigator, Cook, will be drier than the Mummy of Cheops before my sheets will be dampt for printing.

Do not forget to throw into an omnium-gatherum any odd remarks about Madrid. If you get a copybook, when any stray dyspeptic observation occurs, book it, and I will work it up, as a gipsy does the {142} stolen children of a gentleman, so that the parent shall not recognise it.

Sunday Evening , Exeter , May 4, 1834 .

Your letter has knocked the breath out of my body, the ink out of my pen, the pen out of my hand. You have settled my cacoethes . I had no idea I was anything but a friend to the Spaniards. I do not think them brave, or romantic, but with many super-excellent qualities, all of which I should have duly praised. You cut out my wit! Head cuts out my poetry! and I shall cut the concern. What is to be done? I can’t write like Cook; I really wish to take in a very wide haul, and have very great materials. Religion must come in, or the Arts must go out. Politics and Poetry I care nothing for. Wit (if there is any),—it is not wit but a trick of stringing words together, and I cannot write a common letter, or say anything, without falling into these sort of absurdities. It would not be my book, if it was not so. I have a horror of {143} flippancy . That is what I fear most, and am most likely to run into. There you may carbonado me, and I will kiss the rod. If you read the MSS., do not spare your pencil, and I will make great sacrifices to please you. Remember you only see an excursion. My early chapters on Seville will be historical, prosaical , and artistical.

I should like you to read Faure or Bory St. Vincent, [43] and see how they handle the Spaniards,—or some of the older works. Mine is milk and water to Napier. I always thought you prejudiced against the Spaniards rather than in their favour, poor innocents! All about the grandees at Madrid, if you have stumbled on that, I will cut out with pleasure. At the same time, if you don’t agree in the book, I cannot be so right as I imagined, and had better have nothing to do with the concern, but read other people’s works instead of their reading mine.

I have not the presumption to suppose my opinion to be worth yours in many important subjects. On some I think it is,—the lighter and more frivolous. I am a humble-minded author, as Head will tell you, very docile, and not at all {144} irritable. I care not how much you cut out, as I have written for four volumes, and would rather write two .

We will talk over the matter when I come to town, which will be soon. Meanwhile, read the MSS., and cut away. Spare not my pungency, and correct my mistakes. Cut out all that is flippant, personal, or offensive (the grandees, I admit, is both). Remember you have only the rough sketch. I have two years before me, and the lean kine of reflection will eat up the fat ones of the overflowing of young conceit and inexperience. I wish to write an amusing, instructive, and, more than all, a gentlemanlike book. I hold myself lucky that you and Head see it, and will abide by your dictations, and kiss the rod and your hand.

Exeter , Saturday evening, 14 June, 1834 .

Now that the show is over, and all the caps and gowns, stars and garters no more, I venture to indite you an epistle from the green fields of Devon; right pleasing and fresh are they after the dusty treadmill of la Corte . There are houses of all sorts from {145} £50 a year to £ 250 ; one at that price is beautiful and fit for a Plenipo. (I have not fixed on anything myself, having been chiefly in bed with an infernal urticaria , alias a nettle-rash.) The women, God be praised! are very ugly. Meat at 6 d . a pound, butter seldom making 1 s .; I am told in the London Buttometer it reaches 18 d . A Mr. Radford, who has a place to sell, has one gardener, who looks after two acres and three horses, all for a matter of £15 or so a year. Servants go twice to church of a Sunday, and masters read family prayers, and make them work their bodies like galley slaves, per contra the benefit conferred on their souls.

The town is pueblo levitico de hidalguia y algo aficionado a la Iglesia y al Rey absoluto ; otherwise quiet and literary: clergymen, physicians, colonels, plain £1000-a-year folk, given to talk about quarter sessions and the new road bill (if you will allow them). Otherwise a man goes quietly down hill here, oblitus et obliviscendus , reads his books (or those of the Institution), goes to church, and gets rich, which is very pleasurable and a novel feeling—better than the romance of youth.

I am wandering (he says) inter Academiæ silvas , to my great delight, poring over old books in the Bodleian, and copying barge-boards and gable-ends, in order to ruin myself as expeditiously as possible at Heavitree.

The move from Southernhay to Heavitree was accomplished in three most sunny days. All the books and other traps duly conveyed into Myrtle Bower to the tune of a triple bob major of the village bells. I have already begun digging, and moving plants; to-morrow comes my man of mortar to plan the kitchen. My pink thorn will be out in a month: quite a nosegay. You can’t think how snug my upper drawing-room looks, now it is full of books, ormolu, drawings, etc. I expect to see you here very shortly, as London must be detestable now O’Connell rules the land.

The work of destruction (he writes a week later) proceeds as rapidly as Dr. Bowring or Lord Johnico could desire. The removal of the cob has let in a flood of light and a side view over my extensive landed estate. A part is preserved, overmantled with ancient ivy (the harbour of slugs, black- {148} beetles, and earwigs), which is to be converted into a Moorish ruin, and tricked out with veritable azulejo from the Alhambra. The myrtles only want an Andalucian muchacha to be shrubs worthy of Venus. The foundations of the kitchen will be laid on a rock on Monday next. Meanwhile my cook roasts meat admirably with a nail and a string.

I have no vote, or I would go ten miles on foot to record my contempt for that aristocratical prig, that levelling lordling.

I have given up the pen for the hoe and spade, all a-delving and digging. I hope, however, in a week or so, that the obra will be so far planned and definitely arranged as to send me back to my old books, which I find the best and surest of resources.

Heavitree House , May 3 [1835], Friday Evening .

We had a drenching rain this morning; it had not rained for many weeks (it seldom rains except when testy gentlemen come down in July), but just when Lord Johnny came forward, the heavens poured forth their phials by buckets. The little man, “the widow’s mite,” could not be heard for the sweet acclamations of “O’Connell,” “The tail,” “Cut it short,” “Here’s the Bishop coming.” At every sentence was a chorus, “That’s a new lie.” All Devon was assembled. The Parker mob very noisy and violent, but all yeomen and substantial farmers. Johnny’s crew a sad set, hired at 2/6ᵈ per man. He was supported by Lord Ebrington and Dr. Bowring.

Bulteel proposed Johnny; seconded by Lillifant, a sort of a methodist, a member of the temperance society, which occasioned much fun and cries of “Heavy wet,” “Brandy.” Parker (a dandy-looking youth) was proposed in a loud, bold, and successful speech by Baldwin Fulford, Jr., and seconded in a quieter and gentlemanlike manner by Stafford Northcote ( fils , the Wykehamist). By this time I was so wet that I made off for Heavitree, and found my myrtles just washed by a shower, etc.

I dined yesterday with all the Rads, and sat next to Dr. Bowring. They do not seem over-confident. {150} The Conservatives say that Parker has a numerical majority, as far as promises go, of 700. They say the Rads are spending money by sackfuls in inducing Parkerites not to vote at all.

I dined the other day with Episcopus , who made grateful mention of your Excellency, and rejoices in the prospect of your arrival. So you are in for it, and have nothing to do but to give me notice, when my niggar shall stand at the Ship in Heavitree to conduct you to my house . It is in a rare state of external mortarification; but the interior is tolerable, and there is ample accommodation for man and beast, master and man, or nags, and plenty of wholesome food for the mind and body.

“Since you have been gone” (he writes to Addington, June 21st, 1833), “I have laid the axe to the foot of the trees, and have cut down some twenty apples in my orchard, which has let in a great deal of light and sun, and rejoiced the green grass below. The weather delicious; thermometer 79 in the shade. I sit under my drooping elm and cock up my head when I read the works of Socrates, Plato, and Lady Morgan. {151}

“ ‘ Les deux tiers de ma vie sont écoulés. Pourquoi m’inquieter sur ce qui m’en reste? La plus brillante fortune ne mérite point les tourments que l’on se donne. Le meilleur de tous les biens, s’il y a des biens, c’est le repos, la retraite, et un endroit qui soit sa domaine.’ There’s a black cat for your Excellency to swallow!”

“The Baron’s bride” (he writes in June) “will be worthy of himself in name and fortune. I guessed who she was by his sighs and unpremeditated discoveries. La Bruyère says, ‘In friendship a secret is confided; in love il nous échappe .’ Viva el Amor! ”

‘Ada! sole daughter of my house and heart!’ From the Baron’s account she must be perfection, such a perfection as her father’s fancy and fine phrenzy rolling would have imagined. She is highly simple, hateth the city and gay world, and will not be likely to turn up her nose at you and me, the respectable aged friends of her lord. {152}

I believe the Baron has all the elements of domestic felicity in his composition, and it will go hard even if he did not make a good wife out of bad materials. But when the prima materia is worthy of himself, we must expect a scion worthy of the descendants of Locke and Byron, the union of philosophical esteem with poetic ardour.

The book does not progress as much as the chimneys. I never go beyond my cob walls, have never been out fishing, and probably never shall until you reappear in these regions.

Heavitree , October 13, 1836 .

Dear Addington ,

You are right. From 20 to 40 a man takes a wife, as a mistress; and sometimes makes a mistake, gets tired, and wants to change horses. From 40 to 50 (sometimes 55) a man hugs a spouse to his bosom, for comfort and sweet companionship. When the hopes of youth, the heyday of manhood, the recklessness of health and prosperity are waning,—when he begins to know how few things answer, and how hard it is to depend on one’s own resources to pass well through the long day and longer night,—then it is not good to be alone. {153} You have felt that, and have now chosen the right moment. Your wild oats are sown, a good crop of experience reaped, and you have found (and there is no mistake) that the solitary, selfish system won’t do.

Happy, thrice happy are you to be able to bind yourself in those golden threads, woven by friendship, esteem and love! For love, a sine quâ non , must be tempered to become durable. Felix quem faciunt aliena pericula cautum.

You will find, after having had your own way so long, how much more it tends to peace of mind to give up and be nicely managed and taken care of. You may amuse yourself with the superintendence of your cellar, and keep a bottle of Valdepeñas for those old friends who may occasionally drop in, and twaddle about that fair land peopled by devils incarnate, male and female.

I have no news. I am content to dig in my garden; like Candide, il faut cultiver son jardin —an innocent, refreshing occupation, which gives health to the body, peace to the mind, oblivion for the past, hopes for the future;—to do no more harm, if possible, and as much good,—to bury resentments and cultivate peace and goodwill, read my Bible and mind my purse, and thank my stars that matters are no worse. {154}

The Elizabethan apartment is finished and furnished. Esta casa esta muy a la disposicion de V.E. y de mi Señora (cuyos pies beso) la Esposa de V.E. I beg you will speak kindly of me to your fair bride, as I am anxious to stand well in her opinion. I have had the good fortune hitherto to have lost neither of two old friends who have recently married.

If your Reading plan fails, there are really some very nice places within 5 and 8 miles of Exon, cheap and delightful. You can make the place your headquarters, if you have a fancy to look for habitations amid the green valleys of Devon.

So, with the best and sincerest wishes for the unmixed and long happiness of Bride and Bridegroom, and it can hardly fail to be so, believe me,

Ever most truly yours,
Richard Ford .

Cob, depend upon it, is indestructible. I am about next week to read a learned paper on that very subject at the Athenæum, which I will send you, with a chapter on Spanish Comedy.

The house at Heavitree is now in really a very habitable state, and the gardens beginning to put on their spring livery. I was heartily glad to get out of that plague-stricken, foggy, heart-and-soul-withering city of London, where I was detained more than a month by the illness of my boy, who is still far from well and unable to return to his tutor. I am occupied in the parental task of teaching him chess and the Greek alphabet. I saw very few of our mutual friends in London, as I was, like the rest of mankind, under the lowering influenza.

I have no news here,—leading a humdrum life amid my flowers and books, with a clean tongue and dirty hands, oblitus et obliviscendus .

Monday [ 15 May, 1837 ], 123, Park Street [ London ].

You will be sadly shocked with the melancholy import of this letter; indeed I am so overwhelmed that I hardly know how to express myself. My poor wife died yesterday morning! She, as you know, never was well, and latterly has suffered from excruciating headaches which deprived her entirely of rest. Last Sunday week she was seized

with a sort of paralysis of the brain and loss of speech. She remained a few days sensible and recognising those who came into the room; but on Friday all consciousness was gone, and she yesterday morning at quarter past 9 breathed her last. I am dreadfully afflicted.

Literary Work—Engagement and Second Marriage—Articles in the Quarterly Review —Preparations for a Tour on the Continent—Promise to Write the Handbook for Travellers in Spain —Delays and Interruptions—George Borrow—Reviews of the Zincali and the Bible in Spain —Suppression of the First Edition of the Handbook —Final Publication—The Felicidade .

In your miserable days of celibacy (he writes to his friend in May 1837) you waded through much of my MSS. Now I only trouble you with print, as you have less time to devote to those solitary occupations. I send you the proofs of a review on Pückler Muskau. Will you skim it over, and send it back per twopenny post? If you object to anything, or can add a barb or sting to any critical fish-hook, do so.

You will see “Cob” in the last number of the Quarterly . Viva Don Carlos!

Many thanks for your valuable critical emendations, which have been duly and thankfully introduced. I fear my liberal education and foreign travel will never enable me to spell either my own or any other language. You can form no idea how very difficult it is for a hasty, currente calamo , {160} slipshod writer like me to form a critical, sober, proper style. That stile is always in my way, as it is in the country; I shall never, I fear, change my old into the new stile, nor get my writing stile, stilus , sufficiently pointed, although whetted on so excellent a bone as your Excellency is. You are quite qualified to be the Editor of the Quarterly Review , and I wish you were, for I wonder Lockhart overlooks the manifest flaws you detect.

I am by no means averse to the limæ labor , and am really anxious to turn out my wares in a workmanlike manner; I often take more pains with them than you or my readers will give me credit for.

As the affair has been the unceasing nine days’ wonder of this part of the world, it is no longer a secret, and has been duly communicated to Lord Essex. Therefore you may participate to the fair partner of your joys the important secret so long concealed in the diplomatic depths of your silent {161} bosom, “ un secreto de importanza .” I hope in due time that these ladies will meet, and like each other, and be equally of opinion, that no men make such excellent, super-excellent husbands as those who have lived in the world, been in Spain, and not been there for three or four years.

Be assured that there is no truth in my selling my Alhambra. My Sultana, who disposes of me, and my house, and all, is pleased with the idea of leading a loving, rational, quiet life there. The Moorish tower is finished, and covered with arabesque Lienzo work, and is prettier than the Puerta del Vino of the Alhambra.

Heavitree , March 6, 1838 .

Your kind and friendly letter (as all indeed have been and are) was duly and gratefully received by me, and dutifully communicated to that sweet person in whose keeping I have placed myself and my happiness, and, having done so, my perturbed spirit is at rest. This ceremony took place on the 24th, at Stoke Gabriel, a beautiful little hamlet in one of those quiet sequestered nooks on the Dart, where the woods slope into the clear waters, a locality dulces qui suadet amores . She was very {162} nervous and affected, but went through the trying scene with that purity, grace, and propriety which mark all she says or does. I was nervous, but very collected, and think few men were more aware than I was, how much and entirely the future depends on the husband. I am not afraid of myself, and less of her. We returned to Sandridge, and in the afternoon proceeded quietly to this quiet cell, gladdened with the sunny presence of a cheerful, contented mistress. She is highly pleased with her abode and (I am pleased to say) with the master. All is placed at her disposicion . Indeed, since you were here so much has been done, internally and externally, that you would not know the place. I am in hopes, now there is a fit personage to receive her, that some day die gnädige Frau Gesandterrinn ( C.P.B. ) will honour this (her) house. The Moorish trellis-walk and the tower are worth seeing. We are expecting Lord Cranstoun here to-day, and King on the 10th. Strange that he should come to witness my hymeneals, as we did his. We shall then proceed reluctantly to London. I have got rid of my house in Jermyn Street at a sad loss of coin, but a great gain of peace. I am still hampered with the Casita in Lowndes Street, where my children are. I hope this year to get rid of that, and then to pitch my tent here, far from the opes {163} strepitumque Romæ . I am going to build a small Britzka, and have bought another nag, which goes well in harness with my old horse, you will remember. Madame rides well, and has a beautiful horse which her brother has given her. We think of driving up to town, and be not therefore surprised at an intimation that we may take you in the way for a night. I will present you to my spouse, and you will do me the same service by yours, to whom I in anticipation offer my profound respects. I meditate an article on Spanish Heraldry and on Bull-fighting. So farewell. Cherish your spouse, and think no more of the past nor las tierras calientes .

Heavitree , Aug. 16, 1838 .

Many thanks for your tororesque notices. I have finished the paper,— opus exegi ,—having worked incessantly for a fortnight five or six hours a day. The MSS. goes up with this to the printer’s. I {164} have begged him to send you a proof: will you be so kind as to run it over, and forward it here per mail quam primum ? Never mind correcting the press, except the Spanish .

The article is long, and I am not afraid of your Excellency’s shears, and will gladly avail myself of any proposed excisions or additions. Any word or idea more pungent than my poor thoughts might be pencilled in the margin. The article is extremely learned and tororesque. I think the old subject is treated newly. I hope Murray will treat me to £36 15 s. , as gaunt poverty flits about my gilded ceiling. I wish you could see the dining-room, all blue, red, yellow, and green à la Mamhead, very gay and brilliant. Madame is quite well and happy, and salutes your dimidium vitæ animæque . We are going next week for a few days to Sandridge, a place of her brother’s. I shall then hurry back to correct the press. I intend summing up with a few general remarks on the moral tendency and effect on Spanish character produced by the bull-fight. If you have ever philosophically cogitated thereon, favour me with a few “ ’ ints.” My idea is that the Spaniards were cruel and ferocious before they had bull-fights; that bull-fights are rather an effect than a cause, albeit they reciprocate now; that the savage part is lost on {165} them from early habit; that the sporting feeling predominates; and that strangers are hardly fair judges, for they feel first excitement, then bore, then disgust; bore the predominant. Still, the whole is magnificent, though the details (like Paris) are miserable. I should like to have a neat peroration, and am going to meditate on the subject in those shady groves which hang over the clear Dart, where we as bachelors used to toil and catch no fish, and where I caught that fish which has swallowed up all others and all my cares besides.

Heavitree , December 5 [1838] .

The critique is so palatable, that I beg you will not think I wrote it myself. Pray, as you will be in franking-land, let me know whence you extracted it. I am delighted. I want people to think that I could , if I wished, write a d—d, long, dry, serious essay, which they would not read. The political pepper flavours the Puchero , and it is exactly that that makes Lockhart write to me that all the world cries “Bravo!”

I am buttered by Murray, and considered a {166} man of deep research . Dii boni! and people regret that I “should persifler , and amuse, instead of boring.”

Your letter followed me to this foggy, careworn abode of attorneys, and men who sow tares in the corn of human happiness. I have been up here nearly three weeks, to my infinite worry and the fret of an absent and disconsolate spouse, about mortgages and the devil knows what of my own and my mother. I hope to get back again to my pleasant house et placens uxor before the end of next week.

All these breaks interfere sadly with literary pursuits. The rolling stone gathers no moss. Prescott, promised half a year ago, is not yet begun! In fact, I blink, bolt, shy and jib from the task. Meanwhile, to keep my pen in, I have written a lightish article on Ronda and Granada , which looks well in print, and will come out in the next number, and Prescott in the June number.

I have read Gurwood attentively, which took six {167} weeks, and never were six weeks better employed. Murray tells me that the Duke cut out as much more as would have made six more volumes. What a pity! But they will be printed when that great man is gone. Serus in cœlum redeat!

Do you know that I am up in the market, and that my articles are thought No. 1, Letter A,—clear grit? I am fed by those who usually feed lions, and curious people are asked to meet me . This is not unamusing. I have seen “Sam Slick” (Haliburton); Scrope, who wrote that charming book on Deer Stalking ; Jones of the Alhambra, Marryat, etc., and I do not know who. Murray feeds well, and his claret is particular; “Bulls” £36 15 s. ; so my papers rise in value. Lockhart’s Ballads are to be republished, and I rather think that I am to edit them. All this looks like turning author. Who would have thought it? and to have a character for most profound reading and research! Dii boni!

I met a friend of yours yesterday at Lockhart’s—Mr. Best: we had a pleasant dinner; Scrope and Lord Selkirk, great shooters and fishers, whose healthy exploits gave a game flavour to the blue men around them. If I remained here, neither head, nor legs, nor entrañas could do their work. It is all very well now and then. But oh rus! {168} quando te aspiciam ? Not but what, if I had £5000 a year, I would spend three months in this metropolis to rub off rust, keep up acquaintances, and hear the news up to Saturday night.

I have been occupied, since my return to these myrtle bowers, in a review on Prescott’s Ferdinand and Isabella . I ought to have done it long ago; but I deferred and deferred. Mañana, mañana! I find it a tougher job than I had expected, and almost think that I have undertaken a task for which I am unfit. However, stultorum numerus est infinitus , and I presume on people knowing less than myself. It will be a mighty dull, learned, and historical affair.

I am not very well, as I cannot sleep. I never can when I write, and believe you are right to hunt and fish, the original délassement of a gentleman.

Many thanks (writes Ford, August 4th, 1839) for all your valuable hints. I rather incline to cross over from Weymouth to Cherbourg, or, if not so, from Southampton to Jersey and St. Malo. As I intend to go through the south, it will be autant de gagné sur la belle France . I take it we shall have bad inns between St. Malo and Toulouse. No hay atajo sin trabajo [no con {171} venience without inconvenience]. We shall follow your steps with due respect, and, I hope, meet in the Eternal City.

I progress greatly in design, and am washing in skies which are heavier than lead. I reckon on your portable library and beg to tell you that I take Shakespeare, Burton’s Rome , and Conder’s Italy , which will always be á la disposicion de V.E. y de mi Señora la Esposa de V.E. (C.P.B.)

I have just bought a charming Britzka here which was made at Vienna, and shall therefore jog down with all my traps, pictorial and piscatorial. I am sorry that you do not take your rod and line. How little room they will take! and quien sabe? Who knows what trout spring in Terni’s fall? I never was so agog for migration, and intend to go the whole Continental hog.

You will have the pleasure of seeing your old friend Sir Richard Ottley at Naples,—he who asked us to dine at 5 to meet the Miss Barings. We will not dine with him at Naples, be his macaroni royal. His daughter has turned Roman Catholic: so much for taking imaginative maidens into the glowing climes of Italian Abates .

We have been all gaieties here. The great squires have been giving déjeuners , with archery and pine-apples, under tents. We will eat polpette , {172} drink Orvieto in the Eternal City, and grow young and forget years and care.

Did you (he asks) get a letter from me at Milan? It contained an account of my Sicilian trip and of our hurried flight home. We drove through France as hard as four horses could go, and crossed from Havre on the 14th of July—nine months to a day.

Meanwhile we are slowly recovering from the vast scarifications and bleedings of Italia cum Gallia . I am afraid to look at all the items; I should like to see your sum total. N’importe! It was a gallant trip, and shed a flood of new light and sources of future reading, writing, and drawing on one’s mind.

When you were in Rome I asked you to lend me your Minaño, diccionario de España . I am going to do a handbook for Spain for Murray, and we have not been able to get a Minaño in London. I will take the greatest care of it, and send you an early copy of the book when written and when published—when!!—for your fee. Will you pack

it up and send it me per coach? I hope to do the little book before February.

Heavitree , 13 September, 1840 .

The Minaños are duly arrived, and to-morrow will leave this library for a den in a cottage here in my garden, where I am going to retire and compose Handbook . What a mass of matter the said Minaño contains, and how will it be simmered down into a gallipot guide-book?

I have no news yet of the macaroni; but it is in London. Let me know how you feel as to sharing in the rotuli . There is no delicacy in refusing, if the taste be swamped by eating German sour crout, as there are more amateurs for that article hereabouts than for Rafaello ware. By the way, I could indeed turn one honest penny by those pots {175} and plates, having been offered guineas for what cost scudi , and having weeded my collection very nearly to the amount of the prime cost. The marbles are still in the agents’ custody, as I have nowhere to put them here. But buying what one does not want is the veritable malaria of the Via Babuino.

The weather is so delicious that I have not the heart to begin work. I take a lesson every day in drawing, and am going through the whole of my sketches, which then will be put in a huge book. It is wonderful, as in the case of Spain, how they carry you back to scenes long forgotten, and awaken a million events hived in the brain, which, like dewdrops on the boughs, only fall when touched! There’s a go!

I don’t wonder at the contending elements that are now fermenting in your noddle. They will all settle down into a delicious elixir to sweeten future existence, and make cheerful the domestic fireside when a lull comes—which will happen, and indeed ought to happen, as we can’t be always living on cayenne and lollypops.

November 6, 1840.

I assure you I have been so scared about war, and the exposed site of Heavitree between Exmouth and Exeter, that I have been meditating moving {176} up land my Wilsons and roba fina . However, I think the storm is clearing away. Vive Louis Philippe!

While you are hunting of foxes, I am going to hunt through Minaño. I begin Spanish Handbook next week.

Wednesday, November 18, 1840.

The Minaños frighten me, like the great Genius did the Arabian fisherman. How am I to get this mass into the small pot or duodecimo handbook?

Handbook lingers. I have made no progress, and am tempted to give it up. I am all for the sublime and beautiful, sententious and sesquipedalian. I can’t cool my style to the tone of a way-bill.

“Part of Handbook” (he writes, January 14th, 1841) “is gone to press.” “I am meditating” (he says, February 16th, 1841) “a serious go at the Handbook, and have got about forty pages of preliminary remarks in print, which I am told are amusing. I have written them off like a letter, sermone pedestri , without, however, forgetting the ajo y cibolla [garlic and onion].”

“I send you a few sheets of Handbook. If your eyes will permit you to run through it, pray correct any error or make any suggestion. I have done about fifty pages (letterpress) more. The object I have is to combine learning with facetiousness, utile dulci .”

April 11, 1841 .

The print is damnable, and what is worse is the enormous quantity it takes to a page. All this preliminary part, which will run to two hundred pages, is an after-thought of mine. Murray only bargained for distances and mere lionizing. It appears to me that the traveller in a Venta will thank me for an amusing bit of reading. How often have I cursed Starke [45] for the contrary, and I hope to give a true insight into Spanish manners.

May 4, 1841.

I have already expunged the bits that you objected to, and the sheets read all the better for it. I grieve deeply that the print is so execrable. But you cannot tell what a service your sound censorship is. I write currente calamo in a sort of {178} slip-slap-and-shod style both as to matter and language. It comes boiling over like a soda-water bottle, and I cannot help it. I daresay that, if I had more time, I should make it worse , as it would be more laboured.

November 3, 1841.

I am not so bigoted a Carlist as to think all reform a wilderness. But my antiquarian, artistical and romantic predilections make me grieve at seeing barbarous destructives overturning in an hour the works of ages of taste and magnificence. This age can only destroy: witness cheap, compo churches versus cathedrals.

I am getting very slowly on. But I hope it may be done by May or June. I intend in a short preface to allude to the “state of transition” of the moment. But some things are fixed—country, ruins, battlefields, history of the past. All that can be pointed out. I am only afraid it will be too good.

November 18, 1841.

I am sick of Handbook. I meditate bringing out the first volume, the preliminary and the most difficult, early next spring. It is nearly completed. It is a series of essays, and has plagued me to death. The next volume will be more mechanical and matter-of-fact—what Murray wanted; and I am {179} an ass for my pains. I have been throwing pearly articles into the trough of a road-book. However, there will be stuff in it.

I have made acquaintance (he tells Addington, January 14th, 1841) with an extraordinary fellow, George Borrow , who went out to Spain to convert the gipsies . He is about to publish his failure, and a curious book it will be. It was submitted to my perusal by the hesitating Murray.

Borrow is done (he writes November 3rd, 1841), and I daresay will soon be printed. I took the greatest pains with it, and Lockhart, on reading a portion, wrote to me that it was “perfect”—a great word from a man not prodigal of praise.

I have written a very careful review of Borrow’s Gypsies , with which Lockhart seems well pleased. {180} The book has created a great sensation far and wide. I was sure it would, and I hope you think that when I read the MS. my opinion and advice were sound.

I have now a letter from Borrow telling me that he has nearly completed his Bible in Spain . I have given him much advice,—to avoid Spanish historians and poetry like Prussic acid; to stick to himself, his biography, and queer adventures. He writes: “I shall attend to all your advice. The book will consist entirely of my personal adventures, travels, etc., in that country during five years. I met with a number of strange characters, all of whom I have introduced; the most surprising of them is my Greek servant, who accompanied me in my ride of 1500 miles.”

The author writes again, November 8th: “ The Bible in Spain is a rum, very rum, mixture of gipseyism, Judaism, and missionary adventure, and I have no doubt will be greedily read.”

I have some thoughts of asking him down here with his MS., and pruning it a little for him.

I read Borrow with great delight all the way down per rail, and it shortened the rapid flight of that velocipede. You may depend upon it that the book will sell, which, after all, is the rub. It is the antipodes of Lord Carnarvon, and yet how they tally in what they have in common, and that is much—the people, the scenery of Galicia, and the suspicions and absurdities of Spanish Jacks-in-office, who yield not in ignorance or insolence to any kind of red-tapists, hatched in the hot-beds of jobbery and utilitarian mares-nests. Borrow spares none of them. I see he hits right and left, and floors his man whenever he meets him. I am pleased with his honest sincerity of purpose and his graphic abrupt style. It is like an old Spanish ballad, leaping in medias res , going from incident to incident, bang, bang, bang, hops, steps, and jumps like a cracker, and leaving off like one, when you wish he would give you another touch or coup de grâce .

He really puts me in mind of Gil Blas; but he has not the sneer of the Frenchman, nor does he gild the bad. He has a touch of Bunyan, and, like that enthusiastic tinker, hammers away, à la Gitano , whenever he thinks he can thwack the Devil or his man-of-all-work on earth—the Pope. Therein he resembles my friend and everybod {182} y’s friend— Punch —who, amidst all his adventures, never spares the black one.

However, I am not going to review him now; for I know that Mr. Lockhart has expressed a wish that I should do it for the Quarterly Review . Now, a wish from my liege master is a command. I had half engaged myself elsewhere, thinking that he did not quite appreciate such a trump as I know Borrow to be. He is as full of meat as an egg, and a fresh-laid one—not one of your Inglis breed, long addled by over-bookmaking. Borrow will lay you golden eggs, and hatch them after the ways of Egypt; put salt on his tail and secure him in your coop, and beware how any poacher coaxes him with ‘raisins’ or reasons out of the Albemarle preserve.

When you see Mr. Lockhart tell him that I will do the paper. I owe my entire allegiance to the Q. R. flag.... Perhaps my understanding the full force of this “gratia” makes me over-partial to this wild Missionary; but I have ridden over the same tracks without the tracts, seen the same people, and know that he is true, and I believe that he believes all that he writes to be true.

I have been very busy (he writes, December 16th, 1842) about Borrow’s Bible in Spain . It is a most curious book, and mind you read it, if you can steal a moment. In the last Quarterly there is a paper by Lockhart, principally extracts, which will only give you a slight notion of the contents of the chorizo [sausage]. The first sentence will amuse you, in which Lockhart grieves that he let slip my gipsy paper. [48] I would have done one for the Quarterly Review , but he only could give me five days. That was enough to write with a pair of scissors , but not quite for such a paper as the subject deserved. So I have done a grandis et verbosa epistola , which has been offered to the Ed. Rev. , and graciously accepted with many civil speeches. It is very careful, enters into the {184} philosophy of Spanish fanaticism, etc., very anti-Gallican.

Heavitree , Jan. 10, 1843 .

How you must have disported in rural idleness. Oh Rus! Here we have enough of it, and too much of local festivities. How the excise can fall off I can’t imagine. Here Belly is the god of all classes. The squires are not scared with the tariff, which by the way has done me no good in any respect, nor any one else that I can hear of, while the income tax is a real, tangible, awful evil.

Drawing flourishes, and I am now making a {185} Spanish volume, and have begun with Toledo, glorious, rock-built, imperial Toledo!

I meditate coming up to town at Easter with my two girls, who are now assuming the toga muliebris , having discarded their governess. The next step is a husband, and, when once a grandpapa, I shall consider the 5th act of the comedia imbrogliata as fast approaching. I shall bring up the Spanish drawings, and, if any should revive in your Excellency recollections of pleasant days gone by, I shall be proud to make you any you may select for your private portfolio.

Borrow is a queer chap. I believe that an extra number of the Edinburgh is to come out next month, when my article will appear. I have just got an application to write the life of Velazquez for the Penny Cyclopædia . Murray will sigh for his Handbook as you do for the country; but I am so interrupted that I have never fairly gone to work, and, as it is, at least two-thirds of what I have got together must be exscinded, but they are a useful mass of work got up for any future object.

Heavitree , 27th Feb., /43 .

The enclosed will amuse, if not convince you. I believe Borrow to be honest, albeit a Gitano . His biography will be passing strange if he tells the whole truth. He is now writing it by my advice. {186}

Have you found time to run through my paper in the last Edinburgh Review , which the critic ee lauds so much and pour cause ? The value of a thing is, however, just what it will bring , and the thirty-two pages brought me £ 44 , well and truly paid by the canny Scot, Napier, who does not throw away cash without “ value received .” Verily the Whigs pay well, and will do Murray by seducing his light troops. Hayward (also a Quarterly reviewer like me) figures in the last blue and bluff; proh pudor! et nummos! his paper on “Advertising” is droll.

I have invested my £44 in Château Margaux.

Handbook is done—that is, I have done my own hobby , and have covered a haycock of reams with the past and present of Spain: antiquities, art, history, manners, scenery, battles, and what not. Now comes the rub , to cut out all that is good and simmer it down to a way-bill. I shy and “gib” like a Pegasus in a dung-cart.

Weymouth , July 30, 1843 .

I am here with all my family, first and second, [49] great and small, having been dabbling in brick, mortar, and paint at home—wild vagaries you will

not favourable to the man with the notebook; however, I shall settle something this next week.

Heavitree , Oct. 10, 1843 .

While you have been up to your middle in No. 6548, I have been boating and catching mackerel at Weymouth, eating Portland mutton, and dreaming of George III. Now the falling leaf has warned us to see the warm household and penates. The Domus has been painted, and a new wing added, which is not paid for. The placens uxor is well and much improved by sea air; the chiquilla is in stupendous force, and rejoicing in a new hoop.

We shall have the railroad open to this place next May, and then you and Madame might run down and rusticate here amid the myrtles and forget Downing Street. I was rather idle at Weymouth; ’tis the quality of a watering-place; but now I am simmering and resimmering at Handbook; which although done, waits the imprimatur of Murray. The times are out of joint as regards Spanish travelling. I met a man yesterday at dinner just returned from a tour in Spain. Nothing can exceed the dilapidation and demoralisation. This new outbreak has come like the war after Ferdinand VII.’s death, to blight the improvements which quiet was producing. That {189} French influence and Christina gold effected the matter, no one doubts in Spain. The French are hated and the English not unpopular.

Borrow writes me word that his life is nearly ready, and that it will run the Bible hull down. If he tells truth, it will be a queer thing. I shall review it for the Edinburgh . There is nothing new here; the harvest has been splendid, and there is cider enough to make the country drunk. The farmers are in better spirits; if the Government did but know their strength and act, all would go well, but the house is on fire in many places, and not a bucket moved: Vaya! vaya! il faut cultiver son jardin .

Heavitree , Dec. 28th, 1843 .

We are all here, pursuing the same uniform vegetable existence for which Devonians are renowned, and none the worse for the routine. It has been somewhat varied by my bringing out two Daughters, which, in point of satin slips, ball flounces, and trimmed nightcaps, is nearly equivalent to a marriage trousseau. The bills, combined with those of Eton, have reduced my Irish 5 per cents. to almost an unknown quantity. Such is the perverse tendency of expenditure to advance in a more rapid ratio than increase of income. Ireland just now seems quiet; so is Vesuvius. If {190} Dan carries the day, I shall be shot up, or rather be shot down, light as the scoriæ by which Pompeii was covered over; but I have no fears whatever.

Handbook is about to be printed. All these civil wars in Spain are not very attractive to the wayfaring man, who purchases in Albemarle Street; but I dare swear that ere April the goodly tomes—now two—will decorate Murray’s shop. The task has indeed been severe, yet a serious pleasure, a great occupation,—somewhat indeed too much, as the mind ought not to be kept on a perpetual strain. I shall “ couper mon bâton ” and pen; when it is done, his artem cestumque repono .

Asi va el mundo. I am lamenting over the silent and rapid flight, and the desengaño of all things. It is lucky that there is no San Yuste in this Protestant land, or (as one, now en la gloria esta , used to say) I might be tempted to turn hermit and count my beads. What a charming place after all Sⁿ Yuste was! and what capital trout fishing!

Oulton Hall , Lowestoft , 26 Jan. /44 .

Handbook goes forthwith to press.

I am here on a visit to El Gitano ; two “rum coves,” in a queer country. This is a regular Patmos, an ultima Thule ; placed in an angle of the most unvisited, out-of-the-way portion of England. {191} His house hangs over a lonely lake covered with wild fowl, and is girt with dark firs, through which the wind sighs sadly; however, we defy the elements, and chat over las cosas de España , and he tells me portions of his life, more strange even than his book. We scamper by day over the country in a sort of gig, which reminds me of Mr. Weare on his trip with Mr. Thurtell (Borrow’s old preceptor); “Sidi Habismilk” is in the stable, and a Zamarra [sheepskin coat] now before me, writing as I am in a sort of summer-house called La Mezquita , in which El Gitano concocts his lucubrations, and paints his pictures, for his object is to colour up and poetise his adventures.

Almost as soon as I got back from Norwich the weather became very disagreeable, a strange jumble of frost, fog, and wet. I am glad that during your stay here it has been a little more favourable. I still keep up, but not exactly the thing. You can’t think how I miss you and our chats by the fireside. The wine, now I am alone, has lost its flavour, and the cigars make me ill. I am very frequently in my valley of the shadows, and had I not my summer jaunt to look forward to, I am afraid it would be {192} all up with your friend and Batushka [little father]. I still go on with my Life , but slowly and lazily. What I write, however, is good . I feel it is good, strange and wild as it is.

Heavitree , May 23, 1844 .

As your Excellency is naturally a studier of human character, I think you will be edified by beholding me in a new phase, that of Church-building and drawing up reports thereanent; so I enclose you the particulars.

Mrs. Ford and myself are about to quit these bemyrtled bowers on Monday next: we proceed to Eton, where my son and heir is to figure in the Montem Saturnalia, in a red coat, cocked hat and sword, and to be brought back,—oh sight painful to parents! drunk in a wheelbarrow. There is nothing like spending £250 a year in giving one’s boy a liberal good education. Hawtrey has bidden us to the feastings which he gives to sundry Papas and Mamas.

Handbook is slowly printing. The Mañana of Spain has infected even Albemarle Street; but we have got well to page 264 of Vol. I.

The rail is now open, and Exeter is 7-1/2 hours from London. We hope some day that you and {193} mi Señora ( c.p.b. ) may be tempted to come and see us and the New Church.

I have been suffering from influenza in common with almost everybody. The bright sun and cold north-east winds remind me of Madrid.

Sept. 26, 1844.

Visions of Joinville, Narvaez, and the Pope breaking Murray’s presses and écrase -ing my head have haunted me since your letter. Alas! alas! the Preface which you condemn is drawn very mild, and was written purposely to soften more severe castigations on events, historians, and nationalities. What is a man to do who wishes to write the truth, when, at every step in Spain, he meets a French ruin, and, at every page in a Spanish or French book, a libel against us?

I have told the truth . I wish I had not. I have, however, said nothing more than Southey, Napier, Schepeler [50] , and the Duke. But I am quite averse to getting into hot water or ill words, and must reconsider the subject, and either cancel much, {194} or make complimentary amendes honorables in the subsequent sheets.

My spouse thinks with you, and I have such a high opinion of you as a man of the world and of sound judgment, and know you to be so kind, true, and good a friend, that I am now going to write to Murray.

Heavitree , Jan. 26, /45 .

I enclose you a very characteristic letter from Don Jorge [Borrow], which please to return. It would be well if he could allay the evil spirit that is broken loose here; the flocks are rising against the shepherds, more like wolves than lambs. The thing is much more serious, and lies deeper than many imagine; it is no mob affair. The entire mass of the middling classes and rich tradesmen are the leaders; the lower and better classes stand {195} aloof. The disquieted are not only urged by a violent, no-popery, protestant feeling, but by a democratic element, probably unknown to themselves, which resists dignities and anything, even a surplice, being dictated to them. The mob, the real [Greek: polykephalon], is quiet, having work and cheap food. The gentry attach no importance to the black or white vesture, nor do their clergy ever, in fact, rule them. But with the middling, and a numerous, class, these clerical crotchets are not shadows, but realities and dangers. The church coach will be upset, unless great temper and management be shown (and that will not be shown); the dissentients are ripe for a free church. Philpotti has been considerably in the wrong; he would have made a splendid Hildebrand or Loyola, but the age of railroads and steam will smash mitres and tracts. The war of opinions which has been now raged for ten years is coming to a crisis. I take our tradesmen in Exeter to be types of those throughout England, and Foolometers; and as they have acted, so will all their like. The train is laid, and a spark may ignite it.

April 30, 1845.

I am leading the life of a true Devoto á la Santissima Hygeia . I sleep at Exmouth, rise at six, walk on the beach, listening to the ripple of the waves, and inhaling the morning sea-impregnated breezes. I come home to breakfast at seven; at half-past mount my steed, and come clipping over here, ganando horas , in about an hour, nine miles, and such hills! then, while hot as a horseshoe, I hiss under a shower-bath, and occupy the morning until two in Handbooky and gentle exercise of the mind. At two I dine, en famille , on rôti and a pint of Bordeaux; after dinner is dedicated to sauntering on the terrace and listening to the gentle discourse of Mrs. Ford, when in a sweet disposition, and at other times to lectures, à la Mrs. Caudle, on gastronomic excesses and consequent pains and penalties. At five I remount, and jog leisurely back again through sweet, shady, and verdurous lanes. A butter-and-egg pace favours meditation and sentiment which is akin to the season, when Nature puts on her new livery of {197} spring, which we can’t. Arrived at Exmouth, I again wander on the lonely shore and watch the sunsets, which are transcendental, the heaven and the earth all crimson; then I count the pretty stars as they come out coyly one by one for their evening’s pleasure, tomando el fresco . All this air and belles pensées naturally conduce to hunger and thirst, and at eight I sit down to two mutton chops, nada más , ni menos , and another pint of claret. Then I peruse the Morning Post of the day, and soon the gentle, oblivious style and absence of thought steal over my senses, and then to bed, to sleep sound and short, and then up again: asi gira la vida . The most pendulous uvula yields to such a bracing winding-up system: hominem sic erigo . I will duly advise you whether Don Jorge will meet me in London.

I will secure the Western Times . Nothing can have been so bad as Platt, or his vulgar platitudes. The defence too, was miserable. Manning, un Burro cargado de leyes , broke down, and Collier, a young advocate, proved his clients’ guilt, by over-examination; and what think you of a peroration like this—“Will you hang up these foreigners like ropes of onions ( ? ajos ) and cast them then as carrion to the crows?” Mr. Godson, who came down special, made sad hash or ash with the Queen’s Alphabet: “Suppose this case Hay and B. on the ’igh seas,” etc. The facts were too clear to admit of a doubt, and seven have been found {199} guilty. It is a sad thing for our peaceable, unslave-dealing city to be horrified with such a wholesale execution, and they ought to be hung on the African coast. If they are not hung, the exasperation of the cruising Jacks is so great that they will Pelissier the next slave prize to avenge their murdered comrades. A Frenchman on the jury did all he could to save the prisoners from la perfide Albion . An attaché also of the Brazilian Mission was down here, abusing the witnesses in their vernacular until stopt. What think you of the Spanish and Portuguese Government refusing to pay for more than one counsel, who was chosen because a nephew of the Portuguese Consul? Thus ten men’s lives were risked to put 5 guineas in a relation’s pocket. Vaya! un empeño! Drewe was so annoyed that he retained Manning (who understands Spanish) at his own cost.

I forgot to say that these Spaniards were made a regular show of by the magistrates, who gave orders by hundreds to see them in the jail, until Drewe, the High Sheriff, stopt the spectacle. The pirates thought that they had been tried, and came here expecting to be hung. One was a monstrous handsome fellow, and all the ladies are interested for him, as he realised the Corsair, while his bronzed cheek, raven locks and flashing eyes {200} contrasted with the pudding-headed, clotted-cream, commonfaced Devonians. Another culprit was the facsimile of a monk of Zurbaran; the rest were a savage South America set. Of course nothing has occupied people here but Cosas de España , and your humble servant, quasi one of the gang, was at a premium and a sort of lion.

Success of the Handbook — Gatherings from Spain —Illness and Death of his Wife—Marriage with Miss Mary Molesworth—Telbin’s “Diorama of the Duke of Wellington’s Campaigns”—Francis Clare Ford and the Diplomatic Service—Death of Sir William Molesworth—Failing Health—Marriage of Clare Ford—Last Article in the Quarterly Review , and Last Letter to Addington—Death at Heavitree, August 31st, 1858.

“ Since July” (Ford writes to Don Pascual Gayangos at Madrid, November 27th, 1845) “I have been wandering with my son in Germany, and have visited those mighty rivers, the Rhine and the Danube, and beheld the temples and frescoes of Munich.”

I am but just returned from Oxford, where I spent ten days. The minds of the young men are perplexed with Puseyismo y la Santa Iglesia Catholica y Romana . That evil, and a tremendous habit of smoking cigars, seem to be the features of the place, and perplex the tutors and heads of colleges.

Oxford , Nov. 25, /45 .

I propose leaving this learned city on Monday, and am about to spend a week in Park Street, to settle some law matters for my mother. This is the moment which is big with fate for the Montanches Porkers, and I am about to write to Don Juan to forward to me my annual adventure of Jamones . How do you feel disposed?

This Oxford is indeed changed since my time. The youths drink toast and water and fast on Wednesdays and Fridays. They have somewhat of a priggish, macerated look; der Puseyismus has spread far among the rising generation of fellows of colleges. Pusey, the arch-heretic, has indeed the true Jesuit look. I sang an anthem out of his book and with him last Sunday, having been placed in a stall at Christ Church between him and Gaisford of Greek fame; but I have not yet {204} joined Rome, being still rather of the school of the æsthetics than of the ascetics.

I am glad (he writes to Addington, December 1846) that Gatherings have been deemed worthy of your perusal. The first part has indeed been knocked off currente calamo , and almost without my ever seeing the pages in revise. They were written against time, composed, printed, and type distributed in three weeks. This is not fair on the Author, as slips in style must inevitably occur. I have almost written a new book as to half of it.

The Gatherings have taken wonderfully. All the critics praise without exception. So I have sacked £210 by two months’ work, and not damaged my literary reputation.

As for Alva (he writes, December 14th, 1848), I imagine that iron Duke will form a prominent figure in Prescott’s Philip II. , on which he is hard at work. To write a new and real history, State-paper offices, archives, and family documents must {206} be consulted all over the world. Neither eyes nor domestic businesses permit a sufficient lucid interval. It is something for a man who has idled away the best part of life to have put forth two red tomes, and be acknowledged as competent. Claudite jam rivos pueri, sat prata biberunt.

“Great events” (he writes to Addington from 123, Park Street, December 1850) “have taken place here. My humble dwelling has become a perfect temple of Hymen. Cupid scatters orange blossoms plenis manibus . Both my girls are going to be married. Georgy, [51] —you know,—to Mowbray , son of our old friend, Henry Northcote; Minnie [52] to Edmund Tyrwhitt, next brother to Sir Henry, and cousin

to my little Meta. So I shall be left, high and dry, to console myself with Jamones y seco . Not but what a lady told me yesterday that she heard as positive that I was booked also. The ardent imaginations of the best half of creation rush at conclusions, and underrate the difficulties of fifty-four. After this, let no man despair. Instead of making love, I have been pursuing a more becoming task of writing articles.”

The pen seems to have passed from the fingers of the late literary Mr. Ford into those of Mrs. Ford. She is now with her nose in her blotting-book, diligently, dutifully, and no doubt delicately inditing to you. I generally leave her to the monopoly of the inkstand, and take refuge in my paint-box, having begun a series of Spanish views {208} to decorate her room, in the hopes of keeping her out of Spain by bringing the Peninsula to Park Street.

Meanwhile we rub on pleasantly and much enjoy the repose of London “out of town.” We vary existence by suburban trips of an approved cockney and connubial character. One day we steam down to Greenwich, champagne and whitebait; another, we float down the beautiful Thames at Twickenham, to the disturbance of swans and punters.

You will have heard from Mary of all our sayings and doings. Nothing could be kinder or more hospitable than Miss Molesworth [53] was. She is a very superior and a right honest woman. We fraternised and sisterised greatly. I suppose I have some old hankering and a predilection for the name of “Miss Molesworth.” Assuredly we shall repeat our visit, which our hostess so repeatedly and really pressed.

The lady of the Lodge gave me lessons in the cultivation and concoction of flax, which she conducts with great profit, and I hope I may do no worse when an Irish proprietor. I shall grow a small plot of hemp for Cardinals and Co. By the way, what an excellent politician Miss M. is!

The predatory system of Napoleon, in forcing the countries he invaded to nourish his armies, necessarily sapped the foundations of military discipline and good conduct. This increased the French difficulties of subduing the Peninsula, which cannot be done with a small army, and where a large one must starve i Polf separated from {210} magazines. The Massenas, who trusted to gaining their ends by impetuous advances, did not or would not attend to organised supplies, the sinews of war. Strong only when in position, and with no hold on the soil or hearts of the nation, their convoys, few and far between, were always exposed to be cut off by roving bands who waged a guerilla , or little war, which, congenial to their country—broken and rugged, and to their character—warlike but not military, was conducted with infinite perseverance, energy, skill, daring, valour, and success. Lord Wellington, who knew by experience the impossibility of any Spanish army, “in want of everything at the critical moment,” carrying on a regular war, pronounced their partizanship the real and best national power. Unparalleled in a contest of shifts and devices, and without discipline or drill, the Guerilleros waged a war to the knife; and circumventing the invader by fair means and foul, avenged in his heart’s blood wrongs too many ever to be forgotten, too great ever to be forgiven. These hornets swarmed around every movement, and displaced a force equal to 30,000 men, who were required to patrol roads and keep communications open. The success of these irregulars sustained the flame of Spain’s patriotism, amid the disgrace and defeats {211} of her regular armies. The French, who smarted, executed them as robbers, because, forsooth, they wore no uniform. Can a Marshal’s embroidery transform spoilers of church and cottage into heroes, or its want degrade the honest defender of altar and hearth into a bandit? Throughout the war, the surprises of French convoys afforded scenes no less frequent than picturesque. Down Alpine defiles and amid aromatic brushwood, the long lines of laden mules, cars, and mounted escorts tracked their tangled way, now concealed in rocks and thickets, now glittering in the sun and giving life to the loneliness; then, in the most perilous point of passage and behind loosened crags lurked the partizans; every blunderbuss loaded and cocked, every finger on the trigger, every knife unclasped, each breathlessly awaiting the signal; nor ever was priest or monk wanting to shrive the souls, and hold out immediate paradise to these humble crusaders, who fell gloriously in the holy war for God, King and country. Honour eternal to these noble sons of Spain! However wild, undisciplined and oriental their resistance, it rises grandly, an example to the world, now the crimes and follies of their unworthy leaders in cabinet and camp have sunk into deserved oblivion.

Just now (Ford writes to Addington, May 7th, {212} 1852) the old Tory’s Duke of Wellington’s Campaign Libretto is much talked of at the Palace. Think of the F.M. going there in personâ , pulling out his shilling, and buying a book, and carrying it off.

The old Duke (he adds, May 11th) has been to the Diorama, and was much pleased, especially with Lisbon, Salamanca, Vitoria, and Sorauren. When the squares at the concluding Waterloo began to move, he quite fought his battles over again.

The Queen is illustrating the Diorama, the guide in hand.

I am most anxious (wrote Ford) to start my only son in diplomacy, to be followed up as his profession. You know the youth. He was at Eton, has learnt the world in the course of soldiering, {213} speaks and writes French excellently, is a clever artist, gentlemanlike and good-looking, can keep a secret, and is aged twenty-three. Hereafter he will have an independent fortune.

I am fully aware that I have no right to apply to Lord Malmesbury on private or public grounds; but, at least, I have always been, and in the worst of times, a good Tory with pen and by mouth.

I really hardly know how to thank you enough . But I do feel it greatly , and hope you believe that. Nothing could be more gentlemanlike than Lord Malmesbury. In the middle of dinner—I sat next to him—he said: “Let’s have a glass of champagne together and drink your son’s health, whom I have just appointed an attaché to Naples.”

We have been (he writes to Addington, September 14th, 1854) ruralising and rusticating ever since we fled from the thick-pent, pestilence-stricken city. The days and weeks flit past with wings, and fast as my ducats, for, to the raw material of ruin (farming), I have in my dotage superadded building, and towers and domes are rising while the bankers’ balance comes down. We are great {215} in pigs and pears, but only so-so in potatoes, which are cruelly diseased; all my fond hopes of getting home by these tubers are dissipated.

I am pretty well, barring pocket;—early to bed and early to rise, without, however, being wealthy or wise. Handbook is at a standstill; in fact, it is impossible to dip in the inkstand, or remain indoors, when there is so much going on out of doors, and, as I never admit either architects or nursery gardeners, there is plenty for the master’s head to devise and eye to superintend.

His system (writes Ford to Addington, October 21st, 1855), never very strong, has succumbed to {216} a long and late session, to which the overwork of a new office was added just at the moment when repose and the country were most wanting. He is in a very critical state ; but I do not quite despair, and I hope to-morrow to be able to report progress.

I have no heart now to enter on those matters which would have filled my pages. Oh the vanity of vanities! Look at poor Sir William, a young man, stretched on his bed and wrestling with death with the heart of a lion, and this just at the moment when all his honours were budding thick and the object of a life’s honourable ambition gained.

One line from the most palatial Paris, the capital and centre of general civilisation, where gold and gastric juice and the insolence of health and intellect seem to be the things wanting, and where the lust of the eye is indeed gratified. To those {217} who have not seen it for many years, the transformations are magical, and the slaves of the lamp are at work day and night. Diruit—edificat is the imperial mandate.

We, I fear, must mark No. 2 in many things, not only in political matters. Our prestige has sadly fallen on the Continent, and the French, who claim all the glory of the Crimea, almost fancy we exist at their sufferance, and that by saving us at Inkerman, etc., they have wiped out Waterloo. Not a few call the English medal which figures on the breast of many a Zouave La Medaille de sauvetage , and compare it to that given by the Humane Society to those who have rescued others from death and danger.

My son is alive and busy. He has now an idea of what work is, and this mission at Paris is of a very different stamp from Otiosa Neapolis . However, work is good for the young. The time will arrive, and how rapidly! when we must all say tempus abire , and happy those who are en règle , and are blessed besides, like you, with a strong and philosophic mind,—both of which are wanting to me, who would gladly prefer them to gold and gastric juice.

Dear Addington ,

Many thanks for your old-friendlike and most seasonable letter, and, indeed, I most sincerely reciprocate in wishing you and your dear wife every possible happiness, and in these wishes Mrs. Ford most entirely joins. May the season be pleasant to you both, nay, even “merry.” May you both enjoy that good old epithet associated to the auspicious moment, to which your sound health and right cheery mind so fairly entitle you.

We dined last night with the Marshalls, and the turkey was indeed most orthodox and succulent. Spring Rice dined there with Bessy , and my son {220} Clare with his Bene . They are preparing for Lisbon, and will start in about a fortnight. Bon voyage!

The Indian news is well-timed. The worst is now past, and the difficult task of reconstruction has begun. Your friend, Lord Canning, seems to have done right well. Things seem to be bettering in the City; but I fear that there will be much distress among our industrious operatives. The next three months will be a terrible trial for the poor.

God bless you, dear Addington!

Ever yours most truly,
Richard Ford .