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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Exeter, March 10, 1834.

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

Exeter, March 15, 1834.

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

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

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

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

Exeter, March 26, 1834.

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

Exeter, April 20, 1834.

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

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

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

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

Sunday Evening, Exeter, May 4, 1834.

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

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

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

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

Exeter, Saturday evening, 14 June, 1834.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Heavitree, October 13, 1836.

Dear Addington,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ever most truly yours,
Richard Ford.

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

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

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

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

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

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