Seville, May 1798.

I am inclined to think with you, that a Spaniard, who, like myself, has resided many years in England, is, perhaps, the fittest person to write an account of life, manners and opinions as they exist in this country, and to shew them in the light which is most likely to interest an Englishman. The most acute and diligent travellers are subject to constant mistakes; and perhaps the more so, for what is generally thought a circumstance in their favour—a moderate knowledge of foreign languages. A traveller who uses only his eyes, will confine himself to the description of external objects; and though his narrative may be deficient in many topics of interest, it will certainly be exempt from great and ludicrous blunders. The difficulty, which a person, with a smattering of the language of the country he is visiting, experiences every moment in the endeavour to communicate his own, and catch other men’s thoughts, often urges him into a sort of mental rashness, which leads him to settle many a doubtful point for himself, and to forget the unlimited power, I should have said tyranny, of usage, in whatever relates to language.

I still recollect the unlucky hit I made on my arrival in London, when, anxious beyond measure to catch every idiomatic expression, and reading the huge inscription of the Cannon Brewery at Knightsbridge, as the building had some resemblance to the great cannon-foundry in this town, I settled it in my mind that the genuine English idiom, for what I should now call casting, was no other than brewing cannon. This, however, was a mere verbal mistake. Not so that which I made when the word nursery stared me in the face every five minutes, as in a fine afternoon I approached your great metropolis, on the western road. Luxury and wealth, said I to myself, in a strain approaching to philosophic indignation, have at last blunted the best feelings of nature among the English. Surely, if I am to judge from this endless string of nurseries, the English ladies have gone a step beyond the unnatural practice of devolving their first maternal duties upon domestic hirelings. Here, it seems, the poor helpless infants are sent to be kept and suckled in crowds, in a decent kind of Foundling-Hospitals. You may easily guess that I knew but one signification of the words nursing and nursery. Fortunately I was not collecting materials for a book of travels during a summer excursion, otherwise I should now be enjoying all the honour of the originality of my remarks on the customs and manners of Old England.

From similar mistakes I think myself safe enough in speaking of my native country; but I wish I could feel equal confidence as to the execution of the sketches you desire to obtain from me. I know you too well to doubt that my letters will, by some chance or other, find their way to some of the London Magazines, before they have been long in your hands. And only think, I intreat you, how I shall fret and fidget under the apprehension that some of your pert newspaper writers may raise a laugh against me in some of those Suns or Stars, which, in spite of intervening seas and mountains, can dart a baneful influence, and blast the character of infallibility, as an English scholar, which I have acquired since my return to Spain. I have so strongly rivetted the admiration of the Irish merchants in this place, that, in spite of their objection to my not calling tea ta, they submit to my decision every intricate question about your provoking shall and will: and surely it would be no small disparagement, in this land of proud Dons, to be posted up in a London paper as a murderer of the King’s English. How fortunate was our famous Spanish traveller, my relative, Espriella[1] (for you know that there exists a family connexion between us by my mother’s side) to find one of the best writers in England, willing to translate his letters. But since you will not allow me to write in my own language, and since, to say the truth, I feel a pleasure in using that which reminds me of the dear land which has been my second home—the land where I drew my first breath of liberty—the land which taught me how to retrieve, though imperfectly and with pain, the time which, under the influence of ignorance and superstition, I had lost in early youth—I will not delay a task which, should circumstances allow me to complete it, I intend as a token of friendship to you, and of gratitude and love to your country.

Few travellers are equal to your countryman, Mr. Townsend, in the truth and liveliness of his descriptions, as well as in the mass of useful information and depth of remark with which he has presented the public[2]. It would be impossible for any but a native Spaniard to add to the collection of traits descriptive of the national character, which animates his narrative; and I must confess that he has rather confined me in the selection of my topics. He has, indeed, fallen into such mistakes and inaccuracies, as nothing short of perfect familiarity with a country can prevent. But I may safely recommend him to you as a guide for a fuller acquaintance with the places whose inhabitants I intend to make the chief subject of my letters. But that I may not lay upon you the necessity of a constant reference, I shall begin by providing your fancy with a “local habitation” for the people whose habits and modes of thinking I will forthwith attempt to pourtray.

The view of Cadiz from the sea, as, in a fine day, you approach its magnificent harbour, is one of the most attractive beauty. The strong deep light of a southern sky, reflected from the lofty buildings of white free stone, which face the bay, rivets the eye of the navigator from the very verge of the horizon. The sea actually washes the ramparts, except where, on the opposite side of the town, it is divided by a narrow neck of land, which joins Cadiz to the neighbouring continent. When, therefore, you begin to discover the upper part of the buildings, and the white pinnacles of glazed earthenware, resembling china, that ornament the parapets with which their flat roofs are crowned; the airy structure, melting at times into the distant glare of the waves, is more like a pleasing delusion—a kind of Fata Morgana—than the lofty, uniform massive buildings which, rising gradually before the vessel, bring you back, however unwilling, to the dull realities of life. After landing on a crowded quay, you are led the whole depth of the ramparts along a dark vaulted passage, at the farthest end of which, new-comers must submit to the scrutiny of the inferior custom-house officers. Eighteen-pence slipped into their hands with the keys of your trunks, will spare you the vexation of seeing your clothes and linen scattered about in the utmost disorder.

I forgot to tell you, that scarcely does a boat with passengers approach the landing-stairs of the quay, when three or four Gallegos, (natives of the province of Galicia) who are the only porters in this town, will take a fearful leap into the boat, and begin a scuffle, which ends by the stronger seizing upon the luggage. The successful champion becomes your guide through the town to the place where you wish to take up your abode. As only two gates are used as a thoroughfare—the sea-gate, Puerta de la Mar, and the land-gate, Puerta de Tierra—those who come by water are obliged to cross the great Market—a place not unlike Covent Garden, where the country people expose all sorts of vegetables and fruits for sale. Fish is also sold at this place, where you see it laid out upon the pavement in the same state as it was taken out of the net. The noise and din of this market are absolutely intolerable. All classes of Spaniards, not excluding the ladies, are rather loud and boisterous in their speech. But here is a contention between three or four hundred peasants, who shall make his harsh and guttural voice be uppermost, to inform the passengers of the price and quality of his goods. In a word, the noise is such as will astound any one, who has not lived for some years near Cornhill or Temple Bar.

Religion, or, if you please, superstition, is so intimately blended with the whole system of public and domestic life in Spain, that I fear I shall tire you with the perpetual recurrence of that subject. I am already compelled, by an involuntary train of ideas, to enter upon that endless topic. If, however, you wish to become thoroughly acquainted with the national character of my country, you must learn the character of the national religion. The influence of religion in Spain is boundless. It divides the whole population into two comprehensive classes, bigots and dissemblers. Do not, however, mistake me. I am very far from wishing to libel my countrymen. If I use these invidious words, it is not that I believe every Spaniard either a downright bigot or a hypocrite: yet I cannot shut my eyes to the melancholy fact, that the system under which we live must unavoidably give, even to the best among us, a taint of one of those vices. Where the law threatens every dissenter from such an encroaching system of divinity as that of the Church of Rome, with death and infamy—where every individual is not only invited, but enjoined, at the peril of both body and soul, to assist in enforcing that law; must not an undue and tyrannical influence accrue to the believing party? Are not such as disbelieve in secret, condemned to a life of degrading deference, or of heart-burning silence? Silence, did I say? No; every day, every hour, renews the necessity of explicitly declaring yourself what you are not. The most contemptible individual may, at pleasure, force out a lie from an honestly proud bosom.

I must not, however, keep you any longer in suspense as to the origin of this flight—this unprepared digression from the plain narrative I had begun. You know me well enough to believe that after a long residence in England, my landing at Cadiz, instead of cheering my heart at the sight of my native country, would naturally produce a mixed sensation, in which pain and gloominess must have had the ascendant. I had enjoyed the blessings of liberty for several years; and now, alas! I perceived that I had been irresistibly drawn back by the holiest ties of affection, to stretch out my hands to the manacles, and bow my neck to that yoke, which had formerly galled my very soul. The convent of San Juan de Dios—(laugh, my dear friend, if you will: at what you call my monachophobia; you may do so, who have never lived within range of any of these European jungles, where lurks every thing that is hideous and venomous)—well, then, San Juan de Dios is the first remarkable object that meets the eye upon entering Cadiz by the sea-gate. A single glance at the convent had awakened the strongest and most rooted aversions of my heart, when just as I was walking into the nearest street to avoid the crowd, the well-remembered sound of a hand-bell made me instantly aware that, unless pretending not to hear it, I could retrace my steps, and turn another corner, I should be obliged to kneel in the mud till a priest, who was carrying the consecrated wafer to a dying person, had moved slowly in his sedan-chair from the farthest end of the street to the place where I began to hear the bell.

The rule on these occasions, is expressed in a proverbial saying—al Rey, en viendolo; a Dios, en oyendolo—which, after supplying its elliptical form, means that external homage is due to the king upon seeing him: and to God—i. e. the host, preceded by its never-failing appendage, the bell—the very moment you hear him. I must add, as a previous explanation of what is to follow, that God and the king are so coupled in the language of this country, that the same title of Majesty is applied to both. You hear, from the pulpit, the duties that men owe to both Majesties; and a foreigner is often surprised at the hopes expressed by the Spaniards, that his Majesty will be pleased to grant them life and health for some years more. I must add a very ludicrous circumstance arising from this absurd form of speech. When the priest, attended by the clerk, and surrounded by eight or ten people, bearing lighted flambeaus, has broken into the chamber of the dying person, and gone through a form of prayer, half Latin, half Spanish, which lasts for about twenty minutes, one of the wafers is taken out of a little gold casket, and put into the mouth of the patient as he lies in bed. To swallow the wafer without the loss of any particle—which, according to the Council of Trent, (and I fully agree with the fathers) contains the same Divine person as the whole—is an operation of some difficulty. To obviate, therefore, the impropriety of lodging a sacred atom, as it might easily happen, in a bad tooth, the clerk comes forth with a glass of water, and in a firm and loud voice asks the sick person, “Is his Majesty gone down?”[3] The answer enables the learned clerk to decide whether the passage is to be expedited by means of his cooling draught.

But I must return to my Gallego, and myself. No sooner had I called him back, as if I had suddenly changed my mind as to the direction in which we were to go, than with a most determined tone he said “Dios—Su Magestad.” Pretending not to hear, I turned sharply round, and was now making my retreat—but it would not do. Fired with holy zeal, he raised his harsh voice, and in the barbarous accent of his province, repeated three or four times, “Dios—Su Magestad;” adding, with an oath, “This man is a heretic!” There was no resisting that dreadful word: it pinned me to the ground. I took out my pocket-handkerchief, and laying it on the least dirty part of the pavement, knelt upon it—not indeed to pray; but while, as another act of conformity to the custom of the country, I was beating my breast with my clenched right hand, as gently as it could be done without offence—to curse the hour when I had submitted thus to degrade myself, and tremble at the mere suspicion of a being little removed from the four-footed animals, whom it was his occupation to relieve of their burdens.

In the more populous towns of Spain, these unpleasant meetings are frequent. Nor are you free from being disturbed by the holy bell in the most retired part of your house. Its sound operates like magic upon the Spaniards. In the midst of a gay, noisy party, the word—“Su Magestad”—will bring every one upon his knees until the tinkling dies in the distance. Are you at dinner?—you must leave the table. In bed?—you must, at least, sit up. But the most preposterous effect of this custom is to be seen at the theatres. On the approach of the host to any military guard, the drum beats, the men are drawn out, and as soon as the priest can be seen, they bend the right knee, and invert the firelocks, placing the point of the bayonet on the ground. As an officer’s guard is always stationed at the door of a Spanish theatre, I have often laughed in my sleeve at the effect of the chamade both upon the actors and the company. “Dios, Dios!” resounds from all parts of the house, and every one falls that moment upon his knees. The actors’ ranting, or the rattling of the castanets in the fandango, is hushed for a few minutes, till the sound of the bell growing fainter and fainter, the amusement is resumed, and the devout performers are once more upon their legs, anxious to make amends for the interruption. So powerful is the effect of early habit, that I had been for some weeks in London before I could hear the postman’s bell in the evening, without feeling instinctively inclined to perform a due genuflection.

Cadiz, though fast declining from the wealth and splendour to which she had reached during her exclusive privilege to trade with the Colonies of South America, is still one of the few towns of Spain, which, for refinement, can be compared with some of the second rate in England. The people are hospitable and cheerful. The women, without being at all beautiful, are really fascinating. Some of the Tertulias, or evening parties, which a simple introduction to the lady of the house entitles any one to attend daily, are very lively and agreeable. No stiffness of etiquette prevails: you may drop in when you like, and leave the room when it suits you. The young ladies, however, will soon either find out, or imagine, the house and company to which you give the preference; and a week’s acquaintance will lay you open to a great deal of good-natured bantering upon the cause of your short calls. Singing to the guitar, or the piano, is a very common resource at these meetings. But the musical acquirements of the Spanish ladies cannot bear the most distant comparison with those of the female amateurs in London. In singing, however, they possess one great advantage—that of opening the mouth—which your English Misses seem to consider as a great breach of propriety.

The inhabitants of Cadiz, being confined to the rock on which their city is built, have made the towns of Chiclana, Puerto Real, and Port St. Mary’s, their places of resort, especially in the summer. The passage, by water, to Port St. Mary’s, is, upon an average, of about an hour and a half, and the intercourse between the two places, nearly as constant as between a large city and its suburbs. Boats full of passengers are incessantly crossing from daybreak till sunset. This passage is not, however, without danger in case of a strong wind from the east, in summer, or of rough weather, in winter. At the mouth of the Guadalete, a river that runs into the bay of Cadiz, by Port St. Mary’s, there are extensive banks of shifting sands, which every year prove fatal to many. The passage-boats are often excessively crowded with people of all descriptions. The Spaniards, however, are not so shy of strangers as I have generally found your countrymen. Place any two of them, male or female, by the merest chance, together, and they will immediately enter into some conversation. The absolute disregard to a stranger, which custom has established in England, would be taken for an insult in any part of Spain; consequently little gravity is preserved in these aquatic excursions.

In fine weather, when the female part of the company are not troubled with fear or sickness, the passengers indulge in a boisterous sort of mirth, which is congenial to Andalusians of all classes. It is known by the old Spanish word Arana, pronounced with the Southern aspirate, as if written Haranna. I do not know whether I shall be able to convey a notion of this kind of amusement. It admits of no liberties of action, while every allowance is made for words which do not amount to gross indecency. It is—if I may use the expression—a conversational row; or, to indulge a more strange assemblage of ideas, the Arana is to conversation, what romping is to walking arm in arm. In the midst, however, of hoarse laugh and loud shouting, as soon as the boat reaches the shoals, the steersman, raising his voice with a gravity becoming a parish-clerk, addresses himself to the company in words amounting to these—“Let us pray for the souls of all that have perished in this place.” The pious address of the boatman has a striking effect upon the company: for one or two minutes every one mutters a private prayer, whilst a sailor-boy goes round collecting a few copper coins from the passengers, which are religiously spent in procuring masses for the souls in purgatory. This ceremony being over, the riot is resumed with unabated spirit, till the very point of landing.

I went by land to St. Lucar, a town of some wealth and consequence at the mouth of the Guadalquivir, or Boetis, where this river is lost in the sea through a channel of more than a mile in breadth. The passage to Seville, of about twenty Spanish leagues up the river, is tedious; but I had often performed it, in early youth, with great pleasure, and I now quite forgot the change which twenty years must have made upon my feelings. No Spanish conveyance is either comfortable or expeditious. The St. Lucar boats are clumsy and heavy, without a single accommodation for passengers. Half of the hold is covered with hatches, but so low, that one cannot stand upright under them. A piece of canvass, loosely let down to the bottom of the boat, is the only partition between the passengers and the sailors. It would be extremely unpleasant for any person, above the lower class, to bear the inconveniences of a mixed company in one of these boats. Fortunately, it is neither difficult nor expensive to obtain the exclusive hire of one. You must submit, however, at the time of embarkation, to the disagreeable circumstance of riding on a man’s shoulders from the water’s edge to a little skiff, which, from the flatness of the shore, lies waiting for the passengers at the distance of fifteen or twenty yards.

The country, on both sides of the river, is for the most part, flat and desolate. The eye roves in vain over vast plains of alluvial ground in search of some marks of human habitation. Herds of black cattle, and large flocks of sheep, are seen on two considerable islands formed by different branches of the river. The fierce Andalusian bulls, kept by themselves in large enclosures, where, with a view to their appearance on the arena, they are made more savage by solitude; are seen straggling here and there down to the brink of the river, tossing their shaggy heads, and pawing the ground on the approach of the boat.

The windings of the river, and the growing shallows, which obstruct its channel, oblige the boats to wait for the tide, except when there is a strong wind from the south. After two tedious days, and two uncomfortable nights, I found myself under the Torre del Oro, a large octagon tower of great antiquity, and generally supposed to have been built by Julius CÆsar, which stands by the mole or quay of the capital of Andalusia, my native, and by me, long deserted town. Townsend will acquaint you with its situation, its general aspect, and the remarkable buildings, which are the boast of the Sevillanos. My task will be confined to the description of such peculiarities of the country as he did not see, or which must have escaped his notice.

The eastern custom of building houses on the four sides of an open area is so general in Andalusia, that, till my first journey to Madrid, I confess, I was perfectly at a loss to conceive a habitable dwelling in any other shape. The houses are generally two stories high, with a gallery, or corredor, which, as the name implies, runs along the four, or at least the three sides of the PÁtio, or central square, affording an external communication between the rooms above stairs, and forming a covered walk over the doors of the ground-floor apartments. These two suites of rooms are a counterpart to each other, being alternately inhabited or deserted in the seasons of winter and summer. About the middle of October every house in Seville is in a complete bustle for two or three days. The lower apartments are stripped of their furniture, and every chair and table—nay, the kitchen vestal, with all her laboratory—are ordered off to winter quarters. This change of habitation, together with mats laid over the brick-floors, thicker and warmer than those used in summer, is all the provision against cold, which is made in this country. A flat and open brass pan of about two feet diameter, raised a few inches from the ground by a round wooden frame, on which, those who sit near it, may rest their feet, is used to burn charcoal made of brushwood, which the natives call cisco. The fumes of charcoal are injurious to health; but such is the effect of habit, that the natives are seldom aware of any inconvenience arising from the choking smell of their brasiers.

The precautions against heat, however, are numerous. About the latter end of May the whole population moves down stairs. A thick awning, which draws and undraws by means of ropes and pullies, is stretched over the central square, on a level with the roof of the house. The window-shutters are nearly closed from morning till sunset, admitting just light enough to see one another, provided the eyes have not lately been exposed to the glare of the streets. The floors are washed every morning, that the evaporation of the water imbibed by the bricks, may abate the heat of the air. A very light mat, made of a delicate sort of rush, and dyed with a variety of colours, is used instead of a carpet. The PÁtio, or square, is ornamented with flowerpots, especially round a jet d’eau, which in most houses occupies its centre. During the hot season the ladies sit and receive their friends in the PÁtio. The street-doors are generally open; but invariably so from sunset till eleven or twelve in the night. Three or four very large glass lamps are hung in a line from the street-door to the opposite end of the PÁtio; and, as in most houses, those who meet at night for a Tertulia, are visible from the streets, the town presents a very pretty and animated scene till near midnight. The poorer class of people, to avoid the intolerable heat of their habitations, pass a great part of the night in conversation at their doors; while persons of all descriptions are moving about till late, either to see their friends, or to enjoy the cool air in the public walks.

This gay scene vanishes, however, on the approach of winter. The people retreat to the upper floors; the ill-lighted streets are deserted at the close of day, and become so dangerous from robbers, that few but the young and adventurous retire home from the Tertulia without being attended by a servant, sometimes bearing a lighted torch. The free access to every house, which prevails in summer, is now checked by the caution of the inhabitants. The entrance to the houses lies through a passage with two doors, one to the street, and another called the middle-door (for there is another at the top of the stairs) which opens into the PÁtio. This passage is called Zaguan—a pure Arabic word, which means, I believe, a porch. The middle-door is generally shut in the day-time: the outer one is never closed but at night. Whoever wants to be admitted must knock at the middle-door, and be prepared to answer a question, which, as it presents one of those little peculiarities which you are so fond of hearing, I shall not consider as unworthy of a place in my narrative.

The knock at the door, which, by-the-by, must be single, and by no means loud—in fact, a tradesman’s knock in London—is answered with a Who is there? To this question the stranger replies, “Peaceful people,” Gente de paz—and the door is opened without farther enquiries. Peasants and beggars call out at the door, “Hail, spotless Mary!” Ave, Maria purisima! The answer, in that case, is given from within in the words Sin pecado concebida: “Conceived without sin.” This custom is a remnant of the fierce controversy, which existed about three hundred years ago, between the Franciscan and the Dominican friars, whether the Virgin Mary had or not been subject to the penal consequences of original sin. The Dominicans were not willing to grant any exemption; while the Franciscans contended for the propriety of such a privilege. The Spaniards, and especially the Sevillians, with their characteristic gallantry, stood for the honour of our Lady, and embraced the latter opinion so warmly, that they turned the watchword of their party into the form of address, which is still so prevalent in Andalusia. During the heat of the dispute, and before the Dominicans had been silenced by the authority of the Pope, the people of Seville began to assemble at various churches, and, sallying forth with an emblematical picture of the sinless Mary, set upon a sort of standard surmounted by a cross, paraded the city in different directions, singing a hymn to the Immaculate Conception, and repeating aloud their beads or rosary. These processions have continued to our times, and constitute one of the nightly nuisances of this place. Though confined at present to the lower classes, those that join in them assume that characteristic importance and overbearing spirit, which attaches to the most insignificant religious associations in this country. Wherever one of these shabby processions presents itself to the public, it takes up the street from side to side, stopping the passengers, and expecting them to stand uncovered in all kinds of weather, till the standard is gone by. Their awkward and heavy banners are called, at Seville, Sinpecados, that is, “sinless,” from the theological opinion in support of which they were raised.

The Spanish government, under Charles III., shewed the most ludicrous eagerness to have the sinless purity of the Virgin Mary added by the Pope to the articles of the Roman Catholic faith. The court of Rome, however, with the cautious spirit which has at all times guided its spiritual politics, endeavoured to keep clear from a stretch of authority, which, even some of their own divines would be ready to question; but splitting, as it were, the difference with theological precision, the censures of the church were levelled against such as should have the boldness to assert that the Virgin Mary had derived any taint from “her great ancestor;” and, having personified the Immaculate Conception, it was declared, that the Spanish dominions in Europe and America were under the protecting influence of that mysterious event. This declaration diffused universal joy over the whole nation. It was celebrated with public rejoicings on both sides of the Atlantic. The king instituted an order distinguished by the emblem of the Immaculate Conception—a woman dressed in white and blue; and a law was enacted, requiring a declaration, upon oath, of a firm belief in the Immaculate Conception, from every individual, previous to his taking any degree at the universities, or being admitted into any of the corporations, civil and religious, which abound in Spain. This oath is administered even to mechanics upon their being made free of a Guild.[4]

Here, however, I must break off, for fear of making this packet too large for the confidential conveyance, to which alone I could trust it without great risk of finishing my task in one of the cells of the Holy Inquisition. I will not fail, however, to resume my subject as soon as circumstances permit me.