Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 377, March 1847

It is very unfavourable to the “Overland Journey,” that its coincidence of publication and similarity of subject with the “Gatherings from Spain,” render a comparison between them scarcely avoidable. A comparison with so elegant and scholarly a book as Mr. Ford’s, very few works on the Peninsula that have come under our notice could advantageously sustain. But, after dismissing all idea of establishing a contrast, we still find much to quarrel with in Mr. Hughes’s recent production. It is careless, often flippant, sometimes even coarse, and as we read, we regret that a shrewd observer and intelligent man should thus run into caricature, and neglect the proprieties expected from all who present themselves in print before the public. Against these he offends at the very outset. Scarcely has he put foot in France, when he begins his comments on the fair sex, in which, whilst aiming at acuteness and wit, he displays very little delicacy. Neither are his inferences the most charitable. The young ladies at Havre, who, to preserve their drapery from mud and dust, display, according to the universal French custom, some inches of their very handsome legs, are assumed to do so at mamma’s instigation, and to ensnare husbands. “She is not more than seventeen, and appears to have no consciousness – her face all seeming simplicity and serenity, as are those of most French unmarried misses, (after marriage it is a little t’other.) How ridiculous to suppose that she is not conscious of her exquisite shapes!” Mr. Hughes has a shocking opinion of the maidens of Gaul, whose conduct towards him seems to have been somewhat indecorous. “Very young girls abroad appear to have attained to consciousness, and often laugh out if you only give them a casual glance.” We know not whether there is any thing especially mirth-provoking in the glances of our lively invalid, but this is the first time we have heard tell of such very unbecoming behaviour on the part of respectable young French women. The next insinuation we stumble upon is of a different nature, although it would scarcely be more relished by its objects. Mr. Hughes is at Paris, indulging in a flânerie on the Boulevards, and taking notes of the latest fashions. “The dresses are now worn extravagantly high, stuck up into the throat, and suggesting a suspicion that there may be something blotchy underneath.” To say nothing of the suggestive and unsavoury nature of this remark, we are quite puzzled to know what would satisfy so captious a critic. One lady shows her ankle, and is set down as an immodest schemer; another covers her neck, and is suspected of a cutaneous affection. On a par with such an inference, is the gross account of an alabaster group in a shop window, and the wit of the conjecture whether Dr. Toothache, who attends to the “teeth, gums, tongue, throat, &c., has any cure for a long tongue, or if he patches the gums with gum elastic!” Such stuff as this would hardly pass muster in familiar conversation, or in a gossipping letter to an intimate friend; but in a printed book, intended, doubtless, for the perusal of thousands, it is sadly out of place. It is a relief to revert from it to the strong good sense and graceful raillery of Mr. Ford’s pages.

Sure, where all is good, to fall in a pleasant place, we open the “Gatherings” at random. Upon what have we stumbled? Railroads. Interesting to Threadneedle Street. True that the mania days are past, when an English capitalist caught at any new line puffed by a plausible prospectus, however impossible the gradients and desolate the district. Nevertheless, and in case of relapse, a word or two about the practicability of Spanish railroads will not be out of place. Mr. Ford is a man who knows Spain thoroughly: that none can doubt. Neither can there be any question of his veracity and impartiality. Whatever interest he might have to cry up such projects, he can have none to cry them down. We, therefore, recommend all persons who have not already made up their minds as to the bubble nature of Peninsular railway schemes, to send forthwith to Mr. Murray for a copy of the “Gatherings,” and to read thrice, with profound attention, the last six pages of Chapter Five. They may also glance at pages 8 and 13, and learn, what the majority of them are probably ignorant of, that the Peninsula is an agglomeration of mountains, divided by Spanish geographers into seven distinct chains, all more or less connected with each other, and having innumerable branches and off-shoots. Notwithstanding this very discouraging configuration of the land, “there is,” says Mr. Ford, “just now much talk of railroads, and splendid official and other documents are issued, by which ‘the whole country is to be intersected (on paper) with a net-work of rapid and bowling-green communications,’ which are to create a ‘perfect homogeneity amongst Spaniards.’” The absurdity of this last notion is only appreciable by those who know the vast differences that exist, in character, interests, feelings, and even race, between the different provinces of Spain. Time, tranquillity, and a secure and paternal government, may eventually produce the blending deemed so desirable, and railways would of course largely contribute to the same end, could they be made. But to say nothing of the mountains, there are a few other impediments nearly as formidable. Spain is an immense country, thinly peopled, whose inhabitants travel little, and whose commerce is unimportant. And, moreover, projectors of Peninsular rails have reckoned without a certain two-legged animal, indigenous to the soil, and known as the muleteer. To this gentleman is at present committed the whole inland carrying trade of Spain. What will he say when he finds his occupation gone? how will he get his chick peas and sausage when he has been run off the road by steam? Mr. Ford opines that he, as well as the smuggler, who also will be seriously damaged by the introduction of locomotives, will turn robber or patriot, – the two most troublesome classes in all Spain. As to prevailing on him to act as guard to a railway carriage, to trim lamps, ticket portmanteaus, or stand with outstretched arm by the road-side, the idea will only be entertained by persons who know nothing either of Spain or Spanish muleteers. By the side of the line he doubtless would often be found; but not as a telegraph to warn of danger. In his new capacity of brigand, his look-out would be for the purses of the passengers. He could hardly stop an express train in the old Finchley style of presenting himself and his pistol at the carriage window, but a few stones and tree-trunks would answer the purpose as well. “A handful of opponents,” says Mr. Ford, “in any cistus-grown waste, may at any time, in five minutes, break up the road, stop the train, stick the stoker, and burn the engines in their own fire, particularly smashing the luggage-train.” To English ears this may sound like absurd exaggeration. We have difficulty in imagining a gang of stage-coachmen, even though they have been puffed off their boxes by the mighty blast of steam, combining, under the orders of Captain Brown or Jones, the gentleman driver of some Cambridge, Rockingham, or Brighton bang-up, to build barricades across railways and pick off engineers from behind a quickset hedge. Here there would be no impunity for such malefactors; their campaign against innovation would speedily conduct them to Newgate and the hulks. Not so in the Peninsula, where roads are few, police defective, and where, at the present time, smugglers and other notorious law-breakers strut upon the crown of the causeway, appear boldly in towns, and hold themselves in every respect for as honest men as their neighbours. But it is not to be supposed that popular opposition, probable, almost certain, as it is, to be met with in such a half African, semi-civilized country, would be held worth a moment’s consideration by the dashing schemers who propose to cover the Peninsula with iron arteries. The audacity of those persons is only to be equalled by their consummate geographical ignorance, several instances of which are shown up with much humour and irony by the author of the “Gatherings.” Some of the most notoriously absurd of the schemes set afloat, have had their origin with Englishmen, of whom, since the close of the civil war, and especially within the last year or two, a vast number have betaken themselves to Spain, to follow up ventures more or less hopeful or hopeless. Owing to a long peace, to a rapid growth of population, and to the daily-increasing difficulty of fortune-making, the class Adventurer has of late years, both in this country and the sister kingdom, greatly augmented its numbers. This is evident from the throng of unemployed and aspiring gentlemen ever ready to engage in any undertaking, however desperate and doubtful of success. Let a clandestine expedition be contemplated to some hole-and-corner state or antipodean republic, and up start a host of mettlesome cavaliers, from all ranks and classes, including Irish lords and English baronets and squires of low degree, having all fought in three or four services, more or less piratical or illegitimate, all bearded like the pard, and be-ribboned like maypoles, and all eager once more to rush to the fray, and signalise themselves under a foreign banner. These are specimens of the adventurer bellicose, the Mike Lambournes and Dugald Dalgettys of the nineteenth century. Of a more calculating and ambitious class is the adventurer speculative, who possesses a Dousterswivel aptitude for discovering mines, devising railways, projecting canals, and the like undertakings. Spain has of late been favoured with the attentions of many of these gentlemen, flying at every thing, from a common sewer to a coal mine, an omnibus company to a hundred leagues of railway. With geniuses of this stamp have originated some of the impracticable projects so eagerly caught at by English capitalists, whose unemployed cash had mounted, as Mr. Ford expresses it, from their pockets to their heads. We know not who was the projector of that most magnificent scheme to connect Madrid with the Atlantic, in defiance of such trifling impediments as the Guadarama range and the Asturian Alps, but we learn from the “Gatherings” that he was “to receive £40,000 for the cession of his plan to the company, and actually did receive £25,000, which, considering the difficulties, natural and otherwise, must be considered an inadequate remuneration.” Unfortunately, when he sold his plan, he did not show the buyers how to surmount the difficulties; and indeed he would have been puzzled to do so, since they subsequently proved insurmountable. But the whole of the facts relating to Spanish railroads lie in a nutshell, and may be set forth in ten lines. Neither by the nature of its surface, nor by amount of population and importance of trade, is Spain adapted to receive this greatest invention of the present century. As to a regular system of railways, diverging from Madrid to the frontiers and principal seaport towns, on the plan laid down for France, it is not to be thought of, and can never be accomplished. And with respect to those lines which might be made along the valleys, and by following the course of rivers, the country is not yet ripe for them. Spain has not yet been able to get canals; her highroads, worthy of the name, are few and far between, leading only from the capital to coast or frontier, whilst cross roads and communications between towns are for the most part mere caminos de herradura, horse-shoe or bridle roads of a wretched description. A few short lines of cheap construction over level tracts, and favoured by peculiar circumstances, such as a populous district, the proximity of large towns, or of a country unusually rich in natural productions, are the only railways that can as yet be undertaken in Spain without certainty of heavy loss. The line between Madrid and Aranjuez is the only one, Mr. Ford thinks, at all likely to be at present carried out.

We have been greatly delighted with the pictures scattered through Mr. Ford’s book, pictures that owe nothing to pencil or graver, half pages of letter-press placing before our eyes, with the brilliant minuteness of a richly-coloured and highly-finished painting, men, things, and scenes characteristic of Spain. Amongst these, the sketch of the muleteer, that errant descendant of the old Morisco carriers, is full of life; and we defy the brush of the most cunning artist to bring the man, in all his peculiarities, more vividly before us than is done by Mr. Ford’s vigorous and graceful pen and ink touches. We see the long line of tall mules, with dusty flanks and well-poised burdens, winding their way over some rugged sierra, or across a weary despoblado, their gay worsted head-gear nodding in the sunbeams, the tinkle of their innumerable bells mingling with the mournful song of their conductor, to which, when the latter, weary of striding beside his beasts, mounts aloft upon the bales for a temporary rest, is added the monotonous thrum of a guitar. The song is as unceasing as the bells, unless when interrupted by a pull at the wine bota, or by the narration of some wild story of bandit cruelty or contrabandist daring. “The Spanish muleteer is a fine fellow; he is intelligent, active, and enduring; he braves hunger and thirst, heat and cold, mud and dust; he works as hard as his cattle, never robs or is robbed; and whilst his betters in this land put off every thing till to-morrow, except bankruptcy, he is punctual and honest.” Mr. Ford’s book will hardly find much favour in the country of which it treats. It tells too many home truths. We have heard his “Hand-book” found fault with by Spaniards, although it was evident they were puzzled where to attack him, and equally so that their hyper-critical censure of certain trifling inaccuracies, real or imaginary, was merely a mode of venting their vexation at the shrewdness, wit, and delicious impertinence with which he shows up the national vices and foibles. He dives into the most secret recesses of the Spanish character, and whilst admitting its good points, probes its weakness with an unsparing hand. No people in the world entertain such an arrogant overstrained good opinion of themselves and their country as Spaniards. To hear them refer to Spain, one would imagine it to be the first kingdom in the world, combining the advantages of all the most civilized and flourishing countries in Europe. We here speak of the masses; of course there is an enlightened and clear-sighted minority, that sees and deplores its fallen condition. But the popular notion is the other way. “Who says Spain, says every thing;” so runs the proverb. And yet whilst they mouth about España, and exalt it, not in the way of an empty boast, which the utterer believeth not, but in full conviction of the good foundation of their vaunts, above all the kingdoms of the earth, they are, in fact, the least homogeneous nation in existence, – the least patriotic, in the comprehensive sense of the word. Nowhere are distinctions of provinces so strongly marked, in no country are so many antipathies to be found between inhabitants of different districts. “Like the German, they may sing and spout about Fatherland: in both cases the theory is splendid, but in practice each Spaniard thinks his own province or town the best in the Peninsula, and himself the finest fellow in it.” The patriotisme du clocher, with which French provincials have been reproached, but which, in France, the system of centralisation has done so much to eradicate, the prejudice which narrows a man’s sympathies to his own country or department, is extra-ordinarily conspicuous in Spaniards. It is traceable to various causes; to the former divisions of the country, when it consisted of several kingdoms, independent and jealous of each other; to want of convenient communications and to the stay-at-home habits of the people; and also to the unimportance of the capital, which title has been so frequently transferred from city to city. When one Spaniard talks of another as his countryman, he does not refer to their being both Spaniards, but means that both are from the same province. “The much used phrase, ‘Españolismo,’” says Mr. Ford, who is very hard upon the poor Dons on this head, “expresses rather a dislike of foreign dictation, and the self-estimation of Spaniards, ‘Españoles sobre todos,’ than any real patriotic love of country, however highly they rate its excellencies and superiority to every other one under heaven.”

So much for a go off. We find this in the first chapter, and few of the subsequent ones conclude without some similar rap on the knuckles for the countrymen of Don Quixote; raps always dexterously applied, and in most instances well deserved. On Spanish securities, (to use a misnomer,) whether loan, land, or rail, and on the unremitting punctuality of Spanish finance ministers, Mr. Ford is particularly severe, and not without good cause. The Hispanica fides of the present day may well rival the Punica fides of the ancients. It has become as proverbial. Painful is it to behold a people, possessing so many noble qualities, held up to the scorn of surrounding nations for repeated acts of dishonesty, which, under a good government, and with a proper administration of their immense resources, they would never have been tempted to perpetrate. Under the present plan, however, with their absurd tariff, the parent of the admirably organised system of smuggling that supplies the whole country with foreign commodities, and reduces the customs revenue to a tithe of what it might be made, we see no possible exit for Spain from the labyrinth of financial embarrassment in which dishonesty and corruption have plunged her. She resembles a reckless spendthrift, who, having exhausted his credit and ruined his character amongst honest money-lenders, has been compelled to resort to Jews and usurers, and who now, when the days of his hot youth and uncalculating dissipation are past, and he wishes to redeem his character and compound with his creditors, lacks resolution to economise, and judgment to avail himself of, the resources of his encumbered but fertile estates. The debts of Spain are stated by Mr. Ford at about two hundred and eighty millions sterling, this estimate being based on reports laid before parliament in 1844 by Mr. Macgregor. The statement, however, whose possible exaggeration, owing to the difficulty of getting at correct information, is admitted in the “Gatherings,” is fiercely contradicted by an anonymous correspondent, whose letter Mr. Ford prints at the end of his volume. Some of the assertions of this “Friend of Truth” (so he signs himself) are so astonishing, as utterly to disprove his right to the title. According to him, the whole Spanish debt is less than a fourth of the sum above set down, the country is very rich, quite able to meet her trifling engagements, and Spanish stock is a fortune to whomsoever is lucky enough to possess it! After this, it was supererogatory on the part of the unknown letter-writer to inform us that he is a large holder of the valuable bonds he so highly esteems, and whose rise to their proper price, about 60 or 70, he confidently predicts. Crumbs of comfort these, for the creditors of insolvent Spain. Nevertheless, Mr. Ford persists in his incredulity as to the sunny prospects of Peninsular bond-holders; and whilst hoping that the bright visions of his anonymous friend may be fully and promptly realised, declares his extreme distaste for any thing in the shape of Spanish stock, whether active, passive, or deferred. “Beware,” he says, in his pithy and convincing style, “of Spanish stock, for, in spite of official records, documentos, and arithmetical mazes, which, intricate as an Arabesque pattern, look well on paper without being intelligible; in spite of ingenious conversions, fundings of interest, &c. &c. the thimblerig is always the same. And this is the question: – Since national credit depends on national good faith, and surplus income, how can a country pay interest on debts, whose revenues have long been, and now are, miserably insufficient for the ordinary expenses of government? You cannot get blood from a stone; ex nihilo nihil fit.” After which warning, coming from such a quarter, sane persons on the look-out for an investment will, we imagine, as soon think of making it in Glenmutchkin railway shares, as in the dishonoured paper of all-promising, non-performing Spain.

The popular notion prevalent in England, and still more so in France, that Spain is an unsafe country to travel in, is energetically combated by Mr. Ford. It, of course, would be highly impolitic in the author of a hand-book to admit that, in the country he described, the chances were about equal whether a man got to his journey’s end with a whole throat or a cut one. But this consideration, we are sure, has had no weight with Mr. Ford, both of whose books are equally adapted to amuse by an English fireside or to be useful on a Spanish highway. His contempt for the exaggerated statements and causeless terrors of tourists leads him, however, rather into the opposite extreme. Believe him, and there is scarcely a robber in the Peninsula, although he admits that thieves abound, chiefly to be found in confessional boxes, lawyers’ chambers, and government offices. The naiveté of the following is amusing: – He speaks of travellers who, by scraping together and recording every idle tale, gleaned from the gossip of muleteers and chatter of coffee-houses, “keep up the notion entertained in many counties of England, that the whole Peninsula is peopled with banditti. If such were the case society could not exist.” The assertion is undeniable. Equally so is it that in a country where civil war so lately raged, and where, until a very recent date, revolutions were still rife, where a large portion of the population lives by the lawless and demoralising profession of smuggling, where the police is bad, where roads are long and solitary and mountains many, highwaymen must abound and travelling be unsafe. That it is so, may be ascertained by a glance at any file of Spanish newspapers. And the peculiar state of Spain, its liability to the petty insurrections and desperate attempts of exiled parties and pretenders, encourages the growth of robber bands, who cloak their villanous calling with a political banner. These insurgents, Carlists, Progresista, or whatsoever they may style themselves, act upon the broad principle that those who are not with them are against them, and consequently are just as dangerous and disagreeable to meet as mere vulgar marauders of the “stand and deliver” sort, who fight upon their own account, without pretending to defend the cause either of King or Kaiser, liberty or absolutism. At the same time to believe, as many do, that of travellers in Spain the unrobbed are the exceptions or even the minority, is a gross absurdity, and the delusion arises from the romancing vein in which scribbling tourists are apt to indulge. It is certain that nearly all travellers, especially French ones, who take a run of a month or two in the Peninsula, and subsequently print the eventful history of their ramble, think it indispensable to introduce at least one robber adventure, as having occurred to themselves or come within their immediate cognisance. And if they cannot manage to get actually robbed, positively put down with their noses in the mud, whilst their carpet bags are rummaged, and their Chub-locks smashed by gloomy ruffians with triple-charged blunderbusses, and knives like scythe-blades, they at least get up a narrow escape. They encounter a troop of thorough-bred bandits, unmistakable purse-takers, fellows with slouched hats, truculent mustaches and rifle at saddle-bow, who lower at them from beneath bushy brows, and are on the point of commencing hostilities, when the well-timed appearance of a picket of dragoons, or perhaps the bold countenance of the travellers themselves, makes them change their purpose and ride surlily by. Mr. Ford shows how utterly groundless these alarms usually are. Most Spaniards, when they mount their horses for a journey, discard long-tailed coats and Paris hats, and revert in great measure to the national costume as it is still to be found in country places. A broad-brimmed, pointed hat, with velvet band and trimmings – the genuine melodramatic castor – protects head and face from the sun; a jacket, frequently of sheepskin, overalls, often of a half-military cut and colour, and a red sash round the waist, compose the habitual attire of Spanish wayfarers. Such a dress is not usual out of Spain, and to French and English imaginations does not suggest the idea of domestic habits and regular tax-paying. And when the cavaliers thus accoutred possess olive or chocolate complexions, with dark flashing eyes and a considerable amount of beard, and are elevated upon demi-pique saddles, whose holsters may or may not contain “pistols as long as my arm,” whilst some of their number have perhaps fowling-pieces slung on their shoulder, it is scarcely surprising if the English Cockney or Parisian badaud mistakes them for the banditti whom he has dreamed about ever since he crossed the Bidassoa or landed at Cadiz. And upon encounters of this kind, and incidents of very little more gravity, repeated, distorted, and hugely exaggerated, are founded five-sixths of the robber stories to which poor Spain is indebted for its popular reputation of a country of cut-throats and highwaymen.