Ford’s amusing sketch of a Spanish bookseller reads like a more inspired entry in modern-day Driff’s Guide to Second-Hand Bookdealers in Great Britain. In Spain such a character was a ‘queer uncomfortable person for an eager collector to fall foul of … He acts as if he were the author, or the collector, not the vendor of his books. He scarcely notices the stranger’s entrance; neither knows what books he had, or what he has not got; he has no catalogue, and will scarcely reach out his arm to take down any book which is pointed out; he never has anything which is published by another bookseller, and will not send for it for you, nor always even tell you where it may be had.’
On the subject of Spanish painting, which he doesn’t think much of, Ford is strongly opposed to exporting them to hang ‘in the confined rooms of private English houses’. Nevertheless: ‘A Spanish Venus, at least on canvas, is yet a desideratum among amateurs. Those of Titian and Paduanino, which are in the royal collection of Madrid, blush unseen — they, with all other improper company of that sort, Ledas, Danaes, and so forth, were all lumped together, just as the naughty epigrams of Martial are collected in one appendix in well-intentioned editions; the peccant pictures were all consigned into an under-ground apartment, into which no one was admitted without an especial permission.’
One could be sure, of course, that ‘the fair sex’ would not gain entry to that too spicy collection, for in Spain, ‘those ladies who have an azure tendency are more wondered at than espoused. Martial, a true Spaniard, prayed that his wife should not be doctissima; learning is thought to unsex them. The men dislike to see them read, the ladies think the act prejudicial to the brilliancy of the eyes, and hold that happiness is centred in the heart, not the head.’
As if to get back to reality, or at least to everyday life, Ford describes the beggars of Spain who ‘know well how to appeal to every softening and religious principle. They are now an increased and increasing nuisance. The mendicant plague rivals the moskitos; they smell the blood of an Englishman: they swarm in every side; they interrupt privacy, worry the artist and antiquarian, disfigure the palace, disenchant the Alhambra, and dispel the dignity of the house of God, which they convert into a lazar-house and den of mendacity and mendicity. They are more numerous than even in the Roman, Neapolitan, and Sicilian states.’
John Bull, ever destined to become their victim, ‘is worshipped and plundered; the Spaniard thinks him laden with ore like the asses of Arcadia, and that, in order to get on lighter, he is as ready as Lucullus to throw it away. The moment he comes in sight, the dumb will recover their speech and the lame their legs; he will be hunted by packs as a bag-fox, his pursuers are neither to be called nor whipped off. They persevere in the hopes that they may be paid a something as hush-money, in order to be got rid of; nor let any traveller ever open his mouth, which betrays that, however well put on his capa, the speaker is not a Spaniard, but a foreigner. If the pilgrim does once in despair give, the fact of the happy arrival in town of a charitable man spreads like wild-fire; all follow him the next day, just as crows do a brother-bird in whose crop they have smelt carrion at the night’s roost. None are ever content; the same beggar comes every day; his gratitude is the lively anticipation of future favours; he expects that you have granted him an annuity.’ Ford suggests certain phrases — in Spanish — on hearing which the beggar should immediately break off his importunities.
We are seriously warned against falling ill in Spain, for whatever malady you have will be followed by another far worse should you fall into the hands of the native doctor. ‘The faculty at Madrid are little in advance of their provincial colleagues, nay, often they are more destructive, since, being practitioners at court, the heaven on earth, they are in proportion superior to the medical men of the rest of the world, of whom of course they can learn nothing. They are, however, at least a century behind the practitioners in England.’ One is reminded of the Spanish doctor in Le Sage’s Gil Blas: the more people he kills the more esteemed be becomes.
Of all the pleasures of the Spaniard one of the most addictive is the bullfight and, on the torrid afternoon in question, everyone makes for the Plaza de Toros. ‘Nothing can exceed the gaiety and sparkle of a Spanish public going, eager and full-dressed, to the fight. They could not move faster were they running from a real one. All the streets or open spaces near the outside of the arena are a spectacle. The merry mob is everything. Their excitement under a burning sun, and their thirst for the blood of bulls, is fearful. There is no sacrifice, no denial which they will not undergo to save money for the bull-fight.’
More than three pages are devoted to the pleasures of smoking. ‘… whether at the bull-fight, lay or clerical, wet or dry, the Spaniard during the day, sleeping excepted, solaces himself when he can with a cigar. Can it be wondered at that the Spanish population should cling to this relief from whips and scorns, and the oppressor’s wrong, and steep in sweet oblivious stupefaction, the misery of being fretted and excited by empty larders, vicious political institutions, and a very hot climate. Tobacco, this anodyne for the irritability of human reason, is, like spirituous liquors which make it drunk, a highly-taxed article in all civilised societies.’ This seems little different, in fact, to the punishing taxes of today, when we also have many nanny-minded moralists continually inveighing against the pleasures of the weed. Ford reminds us, in conclusion, that Sir Walter Raleigh, the patron of Virginia, ‘smoked a pipe just before he lost his head, which, I think, was properly done to settle his spirits’.
Cigar-making seemed to be one of Spain’s main industries. ‘The cigar manufactories are the only ones in really full work. The many thousand pairs of hands employed at Seville are principally female: a good workwoman can make in a day from ten to twelve bundles, each of which contains fifty cigars; but their tongues are busier than their fingers, and more mischief is made than cigars. Very few of them are good-looking, yet these cigareras are reputed to be more impertinent than chaste, and undergo an ingeniously-minute search on leaving their work, for they sometimes carry off the filthy weed in a manner her most Catholic majesty never dreamed of.’
Ford tells us that the Inquisition, which has so cowed and lacerated the Spanish soul, was first derived from France, and then ‘remodelled on Moorish principles, the garrote and furnace being the bowstring and fire of the Moslem, who burnt the bodies of the infidel to prevent the ashes from becoming relics. The subject of the Inquisition in Spain, however, is no laughing matter: In the changes and chances of Spain it may be re-established, and as it never forgets or forgives, it will surely revenge. No king or constitution ever permits in Spain any approach to religious toleration; the spirit of the Inquisition is alive; all abhor and brand with eternal infamy the descendants of those convicted by this tribunal; the stain is indelible, and the stigma, if once affixed on any unfortunate family, is known in every town, by the very children in the street.’
While in Andalucia — on the way to Gibraltar — the traveller will of course visit Granada, there to wander around the Alhambra, one of the marvels of Islamic art and architecture in Spain. Concerning the depredations of foreign vandals (as opposed to the destruction carried out by the French occupiers in the Peninsular War), the 1892 edition of Murray makes the following remarks: ‘Too much cannot be said against the vulgar habit of cutting names and tearing off pieces of plaster and tiles. The guides have the strictest orders not to let travellers remain alone, and if they see them injuring in any way the building to report to the authorities immediately. The name-carving mania is all the more reprehensible when (as on the fountain basin in the Court of Lions) names of persons incapable of such pranks are deliberately forged.’