A Supplementary Chapter to the Bible in Spain

by George Borrow

vengan ustedes atras,’ its head was turned round in a jiffy, and back it came bounding over the waters with twice its former rapidity. We are again in the cabin; the three Spaniards, the domestic, ourselves, and the steward; the latter stands with his back against the door, for the purpose of keeping out intruders. There is a small chest on the table, on which all eyes are fixed; and now, at a sign from Cordova, the domestic advances, in his hand a chisel, which he inserts beneath the lid of the chest, exerting all the strength of his wrist—the lid flies open, and discloses some hundreds of genuine Havannah cigars. ‘What obligations am I not under to you!’ said Cordova, again taking us by the hand, ‘the very sight of them gives me new life; long have I been expecting them. A trusty friend at Gibraltar promised to send them, but they have tarried many weeks: but now to dispose of this treasure.’ In a moment he and his friends were busily employed in filling their pockets. Yes Cordova, the renowned general, and the two secretaries of a certain legation at Lisbon—for such were his two friends—are stowing away the Havannah cigars with all the eagerness of contrabandistas. ‘Rascal,’ said Cordova, suddenly turning to his domestic with a furious air and regular Spanish grimace, ‘you are doing nothing; why don’t you take more?’ ‘I can’t hold any more, your worship,’ replied the latter in a piteous tone. ‘My pockets are already full; and see how full I am here,’ he continued,

pointing to his bosom. ‘Peace, bribon,’ said his master; ‘if your bosom is full, fill your hat, and put it on your head. We owe you more than we can express,’ said he, turning round and addressing us in the blandest tones. ‘But why all this mystery?’ we demanded. ‘O, tobacco is a royal monopoly here, you know, so we are obliged to be cautious.’ ‘But you came in the custom-house barge?’ ‘Yes, the superintendent of the customs lent it to us in order that we might be put to as little inconvenience as possible. Between ourselves, he knows all about it; he is only solicitous to avoid any scandal. Really these Portuguese have some slight tincture of gentility in them, though they are neither Castilian nor English,’ he continued, making us another low bow. On taking his departure the general gave the steward an ounce of gold, and having embraced us and kissed us on the cheek, said, ‘In a few weeks I shall be in England, pray come and see me there.’ This we promised faithfully to do, but never had the opportunity; he went on shore with his cigars, gave a champagne supper to his friends, and the next morning was a corpse. What a puff of smoke is the breath of man!

But here before us is a Hand-book for Spain. From what we have written above it will have been seen that we are not altogether unacquainted with the country; indeed we plead guilty to having performed the grand tour of Spain more than once; but why do we say guilty—it is scarcely a thing to be ashamed of;

the country is a magnificent one, and the people are a highly curious people, and we are by no means sorry that we have made the acquaintance of either. Detestation of the public policy of Spain, and a hearty abhorrence of its state creed, we consider by no means incompatible with a warm admiration for the natural beauties of the country, and even a zest for Spanish life and manners. We love a ride in Spain, and the company to be found in a Spanish venta; but the Lord preserve us from the politics of Spain, and from having anything to do with the Spaniards in any graver matters than interchanging cigars and compliments, meetings upon the road (peaceable ones of course), kissing and embracing (see above). Whosoever wishes to enjoy Spain or the Spaniards, let him go as a private individual, the humbler in appearance the better: let him call every beggar Cavalier, every Don a Señor Conde; praise the water of the place in which he happens to be as the best of all water; and wherever he goes he will meet with attention and sympathy. ‘The strange Cavalier is evidently the child of honourable fathers, although, poor man, he appears to be, like myself, unfortunate’—will be the ejaculation of many a proud tatterdemalion who has been refused charity with formal politeness—whereas should the stranger chuck him contemptuously an ounce of gold, he may be pretty sure that he has bought his undying hatred both in this world and the next.

Here we have a Hand-book for Spain—we mean for travellers in Spain—and of course for English travellers. The various hand-books which our friend Mr. Murray has published at different times are very well known, and their merit generally recognized. We cannot say that we have made use of any of them ourselves, yet in the course of our peregrinations we have frequently heard travellers speak in terms of high encomium of their general truth and exactness, and of the immense mass of information which they contain. There is one class of people, however, who are by no means disposed to look upon these publications with a favourable eye—we mean certain gentry generally known by the name of valets de place, for whom we confess we entertain no particular affection, believing them upon the whole to be about the most worthless, heartless, and greedy set of miscreants to be found upon the whole wide continent of Europe. These gentry, we have reason to know, look with a by no means favourable eye upon these far-famed publications of Albemarle-street. ‘They steal away our honest bread,’ said one of them to us the other day at Venice, ‘I Signori forestieri find no farther necessity for us since they have appeared; we are thinking of petitioning the government in order that they may be prohibited as heretical and republican. Were it not for these accursed books I should now have the advantage of waiting upon those forestieri’—and he pointed to a fat English squire, who with a

blooming daughter under each arm, was proceeding across the piazza to St. Marco with no other guide than a ‘Murray,’ which he held in his hand. High, however, as was the opinion which we had formed of these Hand-books from what we had heard concerning them, we were utterly unprepared for such a treat as has been afforded us by the perusal of the one which now lies before us—the Hand-book for Spain.

It is evidently the production of a highly-gifted and accomplished man of infinite cleverness, considerable learning, and who is moreover thoroughly acquainted with the subject of which he treats. That he knows Spain as completely as he knows the lines upon the palm of his hand, is a fact which cannot fail of forcing itself upon the conviction of any person who shall merely glance over the pages; yet this is a book not to be glanced over, for we defy any one to take it up without being seized with an irresistible inclination to peruse it from the beginning to the end—so flowing and captivating is the style, and so singular and various are the objects and events here treated of. We have here a perfect panorama of Spain, to accomplish which we believe to have been the aim and intention of the author; and gigantic as the conception was, it is but doing him justice to say that in our opinion he has fully worked it out. But what iron application was required for the task—what years of enormous labour must have been spent in carrying it into effect even after the necessary materials had been collected—and then the

collecting of the materials themselves—what strange ideas of difficulty and danger arise in our minds at the sole mention of that most important point! But here is the work before us; the splendid result of the toil, travel, genius, and learning of one man, and that man an Englishman. The above is no overstrained panegyric; we refer our readers to the work itself, and then fearlessly abandon the matter to their decision. We have here all Spain before us; mountain, plain, and river, poblado y desploblado—the well known and the mysterious—Barcelona and Batuecas.

Amidst all the delight and wonder which we have felt, we confess that we have been troubled by an impertinent thought of which we could not divest ourselves. We could not help thinking that the author, generous enough as he has been to the public, has been rather unjust to himself—by publishing the result of his labours under the present title. A Hand-book is a Hand-book after all, a very useful thing, but still—The fact is that we live in an age of humbug, in which every thing to obtain much note and reputation must depend less upon its own intrinsic merits than on the name it bears. The present work is about one of the best books ever written upon Spain; but we are afraid that it will never be estimated at its proper value; for after all a Hand-book is a Hand-book. Permit us, your Ladyship, to introduce to you the learned, talented, and imaginative author of the—shocking! Her Ladyship would faint, and would

never again admit ourselves and our friends to her soirées. What a pity that this delightful book does not bear a more romantic sounding title—’Wanderings in Spain,’ for example; or yet better, ‘The Wonders of the Peninsula.’