Leading the Blind (22 page)

Ford goes on thus for some time, until his analysis takes on a more political, not to say racial, aspect: ‘If the people are sometimes cruel and ferocious when collected in numbers, we must remember that the blood of Africa boils in their veins; their fathers were the children of the Arab, whose arm is against every man; they have never had a chance given them – an iniquitous and long-continued system of misgovernment in church and state has tended to depress their good qualities and encourage their vices; the former, which are all their own, have flourished in spite of the depressing incubus. Can it be wondered that their armies should fly when every means of efficiency is wanting to the poor soldier, and when unworthy chiefs set the example? Is there no allowance to be made for their taking the law into their own hands, when they see the fountains of justice habitually corrupted? The world is not their friend, nor the world's law; their lives, sinews, and little properties have never been respected by the powers that be, who have ever favoured the rich and strong, at the expense of the poor and weak; the people, therefore, from sad experience have no confidence in institutions, and when armed with power, and their blood on fire, can it be expected that they should not slake their great revenge?'

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.'

Gibraltar itself, as a town, is said to be ‘stuffy and sea-coaly, the houses wooden and druggeted, and built on the Liverpool pattern, under a tropical climate; but transport an Englishman where you will, and like a snail, he takes his house and his habits with him. The traveller who lands by the steamer will be tormented by
cads
and
touters
, who clamorously canvass him to put up at their respective inns. They are second-rate and dear. At Griffith's hotel is one Messias, a Jew (called Rafael in Spain), who is a capital guide both here and throughout Andalucia. The other posadas are mere punch and pot-houses, nor is the cookery or company firstrate, but the hospitality of the Rock is unbounded, and, perhaps, the endless dinnerings is the greatest change from the hungry and thirsty Spain. As there are generally five regiments in garrison, the messes are on a grand scale; more roast beef is eaten and sherry drunk than in the whole of Spain: but there is death in the pot, and the faces of “yours and ours” glow redder than their jackets; a tendency to fever and inflammation is induced by carrying the domestics and gastronomies of cool damp England to this arid and torrid “Rock”.'

We are told that no one should omit to cross the Straits and set foot on African soil. ‘The contrast is more striking than even passing from Dover to Calais.' At Tangiers one can put up at the house of a Scottish woman, ‘or at Joanna Correa's; one Ben Elia also takes in travellers, for he is a Jew … obtain a soldier as an escort, and ride in twelve hours to Tetuan; lodge in the Jewish quarter. The daughters of Israel, both of Tetuan and Tangiers, are unequalled in beauty: observe their eyes, feet, and costume; they are true Rebeccas.'

Moving further up the coast of the Spanish peninsula, Ford has little good to say about the people. ‘The Valencians are perfidious, vindictive, sullen, and mistrustful, fickle, and treacherous. Theirs is a sort of
tigre śinge
character, of cruelty allied with frivolity; so blithe, so smooth, so gay, yet empty of all good; nor can their pleasantry be trusted, for, like the Devil's good humour, it depends on their being pleased; at the least rub, they pass like the laughing hyena, into a snarl and bite: nowhere is assassination more common; they smile, and murder while they smile.'

As for their physical appearance: ‘… they are as dusky as Moors, and have the peculiar look in their eyes of half cunning, half ferocity of the Berbers. The burning sun not only tans their complexions, but excites their nervous system; hence they are highly irritable, imaginative, superstitious, and mariolatrous; their great joys and relaxations are religious shows.'

Perhaps some of this can be put down to their work in the surrounding rice-fields where ‘the sallow amphibious cultivator wrestles with fever amid an Egyptian plague of moskitos, for man appears to have been created here solely for their subsistence. The mortality in these swamps is frightful; few labourers reach the age of 60. The women are seldom prolific, but the gap is filled up by Murcians and Arrogonese, who exchange life for gold, as there is a fascination in this lucrative but fatal employment; so closely and mysteriously do the elements of production and destruction, plenty and pestilence, life and death, tread on the heels of each other.'

The Catalans are said to be discourteous and inhospitable to foreigners, ‘whom they fear and hate. They were neither French nor Spanish, but
sui generis
both in language, costume, and habits; indeed the rudeness, activity, and manufacturing industry of the districts near Barcelona, are enough to warn the traveller that he is no longer in high-bred, indolent Spain.'

Nevertheless, when you get to know them, ‘they are true, honest, honourable, and rough diamonds … Catalonians, powerfully constituted physically, are strong, sinewy, and active, patient under fatigue and privation, brave, daring, and obstinate, preferring to die rather than to yield. They form the raw material of excellent soldiers and sailors, and have always, when well commanded, proved their valour and intelligence on sea and land.' Ford's handbook is often as much a guide to himself as to Spain, and later guides, as we shall see, discontinued this prejudicial if not prejudiced analysis of the Spanish provincial character, apart from a few general and unexceptionable remarks which left the traveller to find things out for himself.

In the edition of 1892, still said to have been written by Ford though it was thirty-four years after his death (though ‘revised and corrected'), the above comments on the Catalans had been much reduced, while the strictures against the Valencians had disappeared altogether.

In the half-century after Ford's day twelve thousand kilometres of railways were built or put under construction, ‘principally by means of French capital, and at enormous cost. They are, perhaps, the worst constructed and worst managed lines in the world, but they keep excellent time. Every train is bound to carry a first-class nonsmoking compartment, but the privilege is not commonly enjoyed without hard fighting, unless the non-smoker has already taken possession at the starting-point of the train. Railway guards, and indeed all officials except the very lowest, invariably travel first-class, and sometimes occupy nearly half the available seats in the carriages. Luggage robberies on railways are not uncommon; it is therefore better not to put valuables into the trunks which go in the van.'