JACA CORDOVESE.

[To face p. 9.

“I [R. F. rode more than 2000 miles on this Horse.”]

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, 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.

At Seville Ford remained for the next six months. There he laid the foundations of his unrivalled knowledge of Spanish life. There, sketchbook in hand, he studied the various styles of architecture, both ecclesiastical and civil, of which the city was an epitome, sketching the Prout-like subjects which every turn of the labyrinthine streets afforded. There he studied the ceremonial, origin, and meaning of the religious functions, nowhere more magnificent, and especially of the quaint pageants of Holy Week. He learnt by heart the pictures in the cathedral, the churches, the university, the museum, the private galleries, and picked up for himself not a few of the treasures of Spanish art. Under the crumbling battlements and long arches of the aqueduct at the Plaza de la Carne he watched the Easter sales of paschal lambs, reminded of Murillo by living originals, as the children led off their lambs decorated with ribbons, or as shepherds strode by, holding the animals by the four legs so as to form a tippet round their necks. With much gossip and cigar-smoking he ransacked the shop of the Greek Dionysio, the tall, gaunt bookseller in the Calle de Genoa, for rare volumes, or chaffered with the jewellers in the arcades of the Plaza for Damascene filigree and cinque-cento work, or bargained at the weekly markets of La Feria among the piled-up stalls of fish, fruit, flesh and fowl. At Seville he learned the useful art of ridding himself of the importunity of beggars. There also he masqueraded at the carnivals, flirted with the Andalusian beauties in the Plaza del Duque, and mastered, in the best of schools, the intricacies of the art of bull-fighting. At the fair of Mairena he noted every detail of the glittering dresses of the majos, the dandies who there displayed their finest dresses and feats of horsemanship. He revelled in the colours and costumes, the grouping and attitudes of the washerwomen, who screamed and chattered in the Corral del Conde. He followed with the keenest interest every step in the national bolero at the theatre, every movement of the wilder saraband, danced to the accompaniment of castanets and tambourines by the gipsies in the suburb of Los Humeros. Among the horse-dealers, jockeys, and cattle-dealers, who thronged the Alameda Vieja, he had many friends, and from them probably learned some of the secrets of horse-keeping which he knew to perfection. For his pencil he found endless subjects on the sunny flats beyond the Moorish walls in the groups of idlers, who, under the vine trellises, played cards the livelong day for wine or love or coppers; or in the suburb of La Macarena, the home of the agricultural labourer, where the women, clad in the rainbow rags of picturesque poverty, and the naked urchins, rich in every variety of brown and yellow, gathered in front of their hovels behind their carts and implements and animals.

Of society in Seville he saw as much as there was to be seen. Writing to Addington in November or December 1830, he says:

This place is dull enough for people inclined to balls and dinners; but we are very well pleased. The climate delicious beyond description, open 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 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 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.

A later letter (January 1st, 1831) is in the same strain:—

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.

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 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 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.

An enthusiastic sportsman, Ford found that the neighbourhood swarmed with game—with partridges, hares, rabbits, quail, curlew, and plover. Snipe and woodcock abounded. Within a mile from Seville, he could with ease kill ten couple of snipe in a morning: in every half-acre copse he counted on flushing five or six woodcock. Behind a pasteboard horse, or concealed in a country cart, he stalked the bustards drawn up in long lines on the plains that bordered the Guadalquivir. The Coto del Rey, a royal preserve about thirty miles from Seville, abounded not only with the smaller game of the country, but also deer and wild boars. With most of the smaller winged game he had the field to himself, and his skill, armed with a double-barrelled Purdey, and using detonators, seemed to the countrymen almost demoniacal. The natives themselves rarely fired at game in motion, partly because ammunition was extravagantly dear, partly because, with their flint and steel guns, a quarter of a minute elapsed between pulling the trigger and the discharge of the piece. Spaniards shot rather for the pot than for sport. In partridge shooting decoys were used, and the birds killed on the ground. Hares were shot in cleared runs or on their forms, and rabbits as they paused in creeping to the edges of woods.

In the occupations and amusements which Seville and its neighbourhood afforded, Ford passed his time agreeably enough. Though not yet the vehement Tory that he became in later life, he congratulated himself on having left England, then in the throes of Parliamentary Reform. Nor was he alone in his gloomy forebodings. Even the prospects of Spain seemed to him, by comparison, peaceful. Yet already revolutionary movements were on foot within his immediate neighbourhood. In his next three letters from Seville (February 2nd; February, undated; March 25th, 1831), he refers to the attempts of General Torrijos to stir up a Liberal rising in Andalusia, their failure, and their punishment.

From his safe refuge at Gibraltar, Torrijos had issued a proclamation, calling on the Spanish people to rise against the tyranny of the Government. On January 24th, 1831, he followed up this manifesto by landing near Algeciras with two hundred followers. Confronted by superior numbers, he was compelled to re-embark for Gibraltar. Six weeks later, March 3rd, 1831, his emissaries won over six hundred of the sailors and soldiers quartered at Cadiz. A riot took place: the Governor, Oliver y Hierro, was killed; the movement threatened to become general. But the rising was soon quelled. The mutineers endeavoured to join Manzanares in the hills round Ronda. On their march they were attacked by Quesada, the Captain-General of Andalusia, at Vejer, a Moorish town scrambling up the rocky cliffs from the river Barbate, sixteen miles from Cadiz. “Prodigies of valour” were performed by the royalist troops, whose losses were one man killed, two wounded, and two bruised. The rebels were defeated. A few escaped to the coast; the majority were either killed with arms in their hands or as prisoners. The followers of Manzanares had dwindled to twenty men; Manzanares himself was murdered by a goatherd, and his companions were spared at Quesada’s request. The only results of these badly planned invasions were the creation of courts martial, the multiplication of spies, wholesale executions, and the establishment of a reign of terror.

Quesada, in spite of his magniloquent bulletin, was a man of mark. Under Queen Christina’s regency he was appointed Captain-General of Madrid. Borrow, who speaks of him as “a very stupid individual, but a great fighter,”[7] was yet stirred to enthusiasm by the energy and courage of the “brute bull,” to whom he devotes some of his most picturesque pages. Almost single-handed, Quesada repressed the military riots at Madrid (August 11th and 12th, 1836). “No action,” says Borrow, “of any conqueror or hero on record is to be compared with this closing scene of the life of Quesada; for who, by his single desperate courage and impetuosity, ever stopped a revolution in full course? Quesada did; he stopped the revolution at Madrid for one entire day, and brought back the uproarious and hostile mob of a huge city to perfect order and quiet. His burst into the Puerta del Sol was the most tremendous and successful piece of daring ever witnessed. I admired so much the spirit of the ‘brute bull’ that I frequently, during his wild onset, shouted ‘Viva Quesada!’”[8] A few days afterwards Quesada was murdered by the nationals at a village near Madrid. Portions of his body were brought back to the city, and in the coffeehouse of the Calle del Alcalá the mangled fingers and hand of the murdered man were stirred in a huge bowl of coffee, which was drunk to the accompaniment of a grisly song.

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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.

In April 1831 Ford paid his proposed visit to Addington at Madrid. The two following letters announce his intended departure (April 2nd) and his safe return to Seville (May 14th).

The diligences, though only introduced into Spain in 1821, were admirably managed. Travelling over excellent main roads, drawn by teams of eight, twelve, or sometimes fifteen mules, they were lighter, more roomy, and faster than those in France. As compared with English stage-coaches, a traveller[9] considered them to be more comfortable than our own, and equally regular in their working. Posting was almost unknown, and people who in England would have hired post-horses, travelled by the public coaches. Even royal personages did not disdain their use. The journey from Seville to Madrid occupied four and a-half days, a few hours every evening being allowed for sleep on the journey. The fares varied with the places, ranging from £9 in the berlina to £5 10s. on the outside.

The living portions of the equipage were picturesque in the extreme. The mules, whose harness was adorned with skeins and tassels of gay-coloured worsted, were shorn smooth, except on the flanks and cruppers, where the hair was allowed to grow in fantastic patterns. The driver wore a sugarloaf-shaped, broad-brimmed hat over a bright silk handkerchief, tied round his head so that the tails hung down behind. He was clothed in a short jacket of brown cloth, embroidered on the back and arms with vases and flowers, and breeches of blue plush, adorned with stripes and filigree buttons, bound at the knees with cords and tassels of silk. His neck was open, with a turn-down collar, and a gaudy tie passed loosely through a ring. His waist was girt with a yellow sash. His legs were encased in stockings and embroidered gaiters, and his feet shod with brown boots of untanned calfskin. Mounting to his perch, gathering the skein of reins in his hand, cracking his whip, calling on each of the mules by her high-sounding name, he set his team in motion,—his helper, a humble imitator of his master in the matter of dress, running by the side of the animals, encouraging, reviling, or pelting them, with unerring aim, from the stones with which he had filled his sash. So the diligence rattled past the Tobacco Factory out of the city gate, under the Moorish wall, through an arch of the Roman aqueduct, and on to the great high road to Madrid.

One part of the journey, at least, was full of interest to Ford. He carried Don Quixote with him on all his travels, knew the book by heart, and now found himself passing through the barren district of La Mancha. Here was Argamasilla de Alba, the village of Don Quixote, and the site of the prison in which, as tradition wrongly asserted, Cervantes wrote his book. Here, with its neighbouring well, was the Venta de Quesada, scarcely changed in external aspect since it was the scene of the knighting of the “lantern-jawed” Don; here was El Toboso, where Dulcinea lived; here the Sierra, where the knight did penance; here, at the mouth of the gorge of Despeña-perros, was the Venta de Cardenas, which perhaps suggested the name of Cardenio for the “Ragged one of the Sorry Countenance,” and, above the pass, was the spot where he told his tale. Valdepeñas was still littered with the wine-swollen pig-skins, which Don Quixote attacked; the waterless uplands bristled with windmills; and in every village toiled numbers of brown-clad, sandal-shod Sancho Panzas.

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 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] (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 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.

CHAPTER II
THE ALHAMBRA
(MAY-NOVEMBER 1831)

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

When Ford wrote to Addington in April 1831, he was hesitating between a furnished house at Granada or rooms in the ruined palace of the Alhambra. Poetry conquered prose; comfort gave way to romance. His letter of June 7th, 1831, announces that he had installed himself in the palace.

Granada and the Alhambra are places which seem to rise above the prosaic level of the working world and catch the last gleams of mediæval romance. The very mention of their names conjures up pageants of chivalry and splendid visions of departed glory. Soil and climate increase the fascination and deepen the spell which is cast upon the imagination. The verdure of a northern climate spreads itself beneath the cloudless azure of the south. Olive-yards, orange-groves, and vineyards clothe the hills, gardens embroider the valleys, billows of corn wave in the plains, of that enchanted region over which hung the celestial Paradise of Mahomet. Here, hemmed in between the mountains and the sea, and narrowed within the space of ten years, till its events assume the distinctness and unity of an epic, was concentrated the final struggle which closed the drama of Moorish domination in Spain. Every spot recalls some scene in the conflict, and the “last sigh of the Moor” still whispers on the heights above Granada. In that Holy War historical truth outrivalled romantic fiction; the manners, customs, creeds of the East and the West contended for supremacy; the splendour of steel-clad chivalry met the roar and crash of artillery; the Middle Ages were locked in the death-grapple with modern civilisation.

The journey from Seville to Granada followed the high road to Madrid as far as Andujar. Leaving the diligence at that place, the Fords drove from Andujar to Granada by way of Jaen in a coche de colleras. Their carriage was a huge machine belonging to the seventeenth century, carved, gilded, and richly painted, set on wheels which were as extravagantly high behind as they were low in front. It was drawn by four mules, driven by the voice, whip, and stones of the driver (majoral) and his helper (zagal). But the picturesque novelty of the expedition was the guard of six Miquelites who accompanied the carriage. These men, drawn from a regular body which was organised throughout Spain for the protection of travellers, are said to derive their name from Miquel de Prats, a bravo in the train of Cæsar Borgia. Well armed with short guns, swords, and pistols, dressed in a sort of uniform of blue jackets trimmed with red, they were all young men picked for their strength and activity. Many of them had previously been smugglers or bandits, and were held in wholesome dread by their former colleagues.

Thus escorted, the journey was performed without risk, and Ford, with his wife and family, safely lodged in the Alhambra. The palace, whitewashed by the monks and purified from Moslem abominations, or wrecked by Charles V. to supply materials for new palaces, had fallen into neglect and decay. It had been an asylum for debtors, a hospital for invalid soldiers, a prison for galley-slaves. From 1798 onwards it was the official residence of Spanish governors, who made good use of their opportunity for plunder. The dados were broken up to make firewood for cooks and bakers; the tiles were torn up and worked into shop fronts; the leaden pipes which supplied the fountains were sold. A donkey was stabled in the chapel, sheep were folded in the courtyards, poultry penned in the halls. The French invaders converted it into a barrack, a powder magazine, a store for plundered goods, and, when they evacuated it, blew up eight of the Moorish towers. The work of gutting the place was continued by the Spaniards, who tore down doors, wrenched off locks, and carried off panes of glass. When Ford was there galley-slaves were at work converting, to the chink of their chains, a part of the building into a storehouse for salt fish. The first real attempt to restore the Alhambra was made by a peasant woman, Francisca de Molina, the “Tia Antonia” of Washington Irving.

BILL PAYABLE TO THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON AGAINST MONEY RECEIVED BY RICHARD FORD FROM THE DUKE’S SPANISH ESTATES.

[To face p. 36.

She worked with her own hands to repair the ravages of her predecessors, cleared away rubbish, set the famous lions on their legs in the courtyard, and reigned, with her two chattering mercenary nieces, the crabbed Queen and lioniser of the Alhambra. In the rooms which she had occupied Ford was lodged.

From the Alhambra, more beautiful, probably, in its ruin than in its restoration, most of the letters contained in this chapter were written. Here Ford entertained Addington, and to the Alhambra he returned in November, 1831, from the tour which he describes.

Ten miles from Granada is the Sota de Roma, or Wood of the Pomegranate, an estate of 4000 acres, conferred by the Cortes on the Duke of Wellington in gratitude for his victory at Salamanca. Owing to difficulties of exchange, Ford had arranged that the Duke should receive his income in England, while he drew an equivalent sum from the Duke’s Spanish estates. The agent was General O’Lawlor, an Irish gentleman in the Spanish military service. Don José, as Ford calls him, had married a wealthy heiress from Malaga, the “Dionysia” of the letters, and had made profitable investments of her money in the lead mines of Berja. Ford found the society of the O’Lawlors pleasant, as also were the green-gages in the garden attached to the old rambling house which was the agent’s residence.

His letters show little trace of the disturbed condition of the country. Yet all round him were signs of the reign of terror produced by panic of rebellion. One execution struck him, in all its circumstances, as peculiarly brutal. By express orders from Madrid, a young woman of good birth, Mariana de Pineda,[13] was, in May 1831, garrotted at Granada. Pardon was offered her if she would reveal the names of her accomplices. She refused, and died by the hand of the public executioner. Her alleged crime was the possession of a partially embroidered flag of green silk, the Constitutionalist colours. Whether she was guilty or not seems to be doubtful. It was at least alleged that the flag had been placed in her house by a Government employé, Ramon Pedroza, whose suit she had rejected. A column near the Triunfo now marks the site of her sacrifice to a longing for liberty.

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 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 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

PATIO DE LOS LEONES.

[To face p. 40.

Harriet Ford, 1832.

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 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, June 15 [1831].

I am very sorry that, at this distance from my worthy friend the Assistente, there is no chance of extracting from him the information you want, which I think I could have managed at Seville in a careless way. If I were to write to him, he would instantly be alarmed, and attach great importance to it. I enclose a letter to Lord Dudley for Mr. de Gersdorf (?) instead of one to Lord Essex; a letter to Lord Essex would be of no use, for he has now totally abandoned and shut up Cassiobury, which was very well worth seeing when he lived there; secondly, he lives entirely in a set of his own, and I know from long experience hates nothing like the sight of a foreigner;—as he expresses himself, “damn all foreigners; none shall put their foot in my house.”

I am comfortably settled here, after much painting and whitewashing, and, if you can steal away from Madrid, can give you a tidy bedroom and sitting-room, with a view out of the windows quite unequalled. The difference in the thermometer here and in the town below is some 6 or 8 degrees; then we have always such a delicious breeze, and such a constant trickling and splashing of fountains. I am sorry to say that the Lions are all adry, and the flowers in the courtyard past dying; a wall fell down the other day, which supported the aqueduct, which used to supply these cool courts. They are fast repairing it, but it is a work of great extent, and the Spaniards do not do things in an offhand style here any more than at Madrid. We have had a rare party of English Tigers, looking at the Lions; they flock out from Gibraltar, now the communication is again open, and astonish the natives in their red jackets, redder faces, and the quantity of undiluted wine they consume. Captain Pascoe, a gentlemanlike man, aide-de-camp to General Don, has been here.

We are going to be regaled with more executions—two officers who were found tampering with their troops. (They deserve it; but poor Mariana! who might have been spared.)

It is impossible to describe, either by pen or pencil, the extraordinary freshness and beauty of this spot, so take time by the forelock, and, as Ovid says:

Nil mihi rescribas, attamen, ipse veni.

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, 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 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 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.

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, 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 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 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) 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.

During Addington’s stay at the Alhambra, Ford, his wife, and their guest ascended the Picacho de la Veleta, “the watch-point,” the second highest peak (12,459 feet) of the Sierra Nevada. The greater part of the ascent to the top of the conical peak, about twenty miles, was ridden, the party sleeping for the night at the Cortijo del Puche.

After Addington had left, the Fords started (September 9th, 1831) on an expedition to eastern Spain, Mrs. Ford on a donkey, her husband on horseback, and their servant Pasqual in a one-horse, two-wheeled, covered cart. They made their way over the mountains by Elche, the “City of Palms,” to Alicante; thence by San Felipe de Xativa, the birthplace of Ribera (Spagnoletto) and Pope Alexander VI., and the prison of his son Cæsar Borgia, to Valencia.

At Valencia Ford stayed several days, delighting in the pictures of Vicente Joanes[20] and Francisco Ribalta.[21] Thence he made his way by Murviedro (Saguntum) to Tarragona and Barcelona. On the road from Barcelona to Tarragona they turned aside to see Montserrat, spent a night in the convent on the jagged saw-like hills, dropped down on Manresa and the famous cueva de san Ignacio, visited the salt mines at Cardona, rejoined the high road and the diligence, and so reached Zaragoza.

Zaragoza, the pilgrim city of Arragon, “the Ephesus of Mariolatry,” as Ford calls it in his Handbook, has two cathedrals, the Seu, and El Pilar. The latter marks the spot where the Virgin, standing on a jasper pillar, bade St. James build a chapel in her honour. At the time of Ford’s visit to the city its houses were still riddled and pitted with shot-marks. They were the honourable scars of two memorable sieges, of which Agustina, “La Artillera,” the maid of Zaragoza who snatched the match from a dying artilleryman and fired upon the French, and Tio Jorge, “Gaffer George,” who organised the peasants for the defence, were the real heroes. The first siege lasted from June 15th to August 15th, 1808. Led, as they believed, by the Virgin of the Pillar, the inhabitants fought with desperate courage. It was in the convent of Santa Engracia that the French effected a lodgment. On August 15th, those of the invaders who survived had retreated, after blowing up the monastery and leaving it in ruins. The attack was renewed on December 20th. Four marshals of France directed the operations of the siege. Shot and shell, plague and famine, did their work within the walls. On February 20th, 1809, after holding out for sixty-two days, Zaragoza surrendered to Marshal Lannes.

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 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.

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 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.

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 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 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 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 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 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.

A letter dated Saturday, November 19th, 1831, announces the return of Ford and his wife to the Alhambra.

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 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 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.

CHAPTER III
SEVILLE REVISITED
DECEMBER 1831-DECEMBER 1832

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.

In December the Fords returned from the Alhambra to a house which they had taken in the Calle de los Monsalvos at Seville. There they spent the winter of 1831-2. A letter dated December 10th, 1831, announces their return, and their life resumed its previous course.

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 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 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-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 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.

Once more political troubles disturbed Ford’s peace. So long as General Torrijos remained safe in his refuge at Gibraltar, he was a source of uneasiness to the Government. A trap was set to lure him to Spanish soil. A former friend, General Vicente Gonsalez Moreno, Captain-General of Malaga, opened a correspondence with him, professing Liberal sympathies, and promising the support of the troops. With about fifty companions, among whom was a young Irishman named Robert Boyd, Torrijos landed near Malaga, December 4th, 1831. Moreno was prepared for their arrival. The farmhouse in which the party sheltered for the night was surrounded by soldiers. Resistance was useless, and Torrijos and his friends surrendered the following morning. Six days later, Sunday, December 11th, all the prisoners were drawn up on the beach below the Carmen Convent at Malaga, and shot. Moreno was rewarded by being made Captain-General of Granada. Disgraced by Queen Christina, he subsequently joined the Carlists, and was murdered at Urdax, September 6th, 1839, by some Navarrese soldiers, in the act of escaping to France. It is said that he begged for a confessor and a brief respite. The only answer to his prayer was that he should have such mercy as he had himself shown to Torrijos, and he was instantly bayoneted and shot.

Every reasonable effort was made by Mark, Addington, and Lord Palmerston, to save Robert Boyd. But it was in vain. Boyd was the first person buried in the Protestant cemetery outside Malaga, to the east of the town. Up to this time Protestants who died at Malaga were buried on the sea-shore beyond low-water mark. The new burial ground, laid out by Mark, the British Consul, was the first spot in Spain which the authorities allowed to be enclosed for the interment of heretics.

The death of Torrijos relieved the Government from one danger. But another cause of anxiety arose. Spain threatened to intervene in the affairs of Portugal. In April 1831 Dom Pedro resigned the throne of Brazil, and returned to Europe to vindicate the Constitutional Charter, and restore to his daughter, Maria da Gloria, the crown which the Regent, her uncle, Dom Miguel, had seized. In July 1832 Pedro occupied Oporto, and held it for a year against all the attacks of Dom Miguel, both by land and sea. Spain at first favoured the cause of Miguel and the Absolutists. Her army of observation was assembling on the frontier; armed intervention seemed imminent. But the health of Ferdinand VII. was failing fast. At his death, it was plain that the crown would be claimed by Don Carlos, who was in avowed sympathy with Miguel. Christina saw that she must rally to her daughter’s support the Spanish Moderates, and she was disinclined to aid the Portuguese Government to crush the party on which she herself was relying in Spain. Thus the danger of war was averted.

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 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 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 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 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?

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 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 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 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)

PATIO DE LA MEZQUITA.

[To face p. 82.

Drawn by Harriet Ford, 1832.

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, 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.

At the end of February, 1832, Ford started alone on a riding expedition through the south-west corner of Spain, visiting Tarifa, Algeciras, Xeres, and Ronda. The story of Tarifa is the one great incident in the wretched reign of Sancho IV., called El Bravo, King of Castile and Leon (1284-1295). The castle had been taken in 1292 by Alonzo Perez de Guzman, who held it against the Moors. His only son, a child of nine, was brought under the walls of the castle by the Infante Juan, a traitor and renegade. Juan threatened to kill the boy if Guzman would not surrender to the Moors. Guzman drew his own dagger, threw it down to Juan, and replied, “Better is honour without a son than a son with dishonour.” The boy was murdered before the father’s eyes; but the castle remained in Christian hands. King Sancho rewarded the defender with the “canting” name of El Bueno, and with all the lands between the Guadalete and the Guadairo. From Guzman sprang the family of Medina Sidonia, who take their ducal title from the name of a hill fort some twenty miles from Cadiz.

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 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, 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.