“This fellow,” Borrow informs Mr Brandram, “is the greatest ruffian in Seville, and I have on various occasions been insulted by him; he pretends to be a liberal, but he is of no principle at all, and as I reside within his district he has been employed by the Canons of the Cathedral to vex and harrass me on every possible occasion.”
In the following letter, addressed to the British Chargé d’Affaires (the Hon. G. S. S. Jerningham), Borrow gives a full account of what transpired between him and the Alcalde of Seville:—
Sir,
I beg leave to lay before you the following statement of certain facts which lately occurred at Seville, from which you will perceive that the person of a British Subject has been atrociously outraged, the rights and privileges of a foreigner in Spain violated, and the sanctuary of a private house invaded without the slightest reason or shadow of authority by a person in the employ of the Spanish Government.
For some months past I have been a resident at Seville in a house situated in a square called the “Plazuela de la Pila Seca.” In this house I possess apartments, the remainder being occupied by an English Lady and her daughter, the former of whom is the widow of an officer of the highest respectability who died in the naval service of Great Britain. On the twenty-fourth of last November, I sent a servant, a Native of Spain, to the Office of the “Ayuntamiento” of Seville for the purpose of demanding my passport, it being my intention to set out the next day for Cordoba. The “Ayuntamiento” returned for answer that it was necessary that the ticket of residence (Billete de residencia) which I had received on sending in the Passport should be signed by the Alcalde of the district in which I resided, to which intimation I instantly attended. I will here take the liberty of observing that on several occasions during my residence at Seville, I have experienced gross insults from this Alcalde, and that more than once when I have had occasion to leave the Town, he has refused to sign the necessary document for the recovery of the passport; he now again refused to do so, and used coarse language to the Messenger; whereupon I sent the latter back with money to pay any fees, lawful or unlawful, which might be demanded, as I wished to avoid noise and the necessity of applying to the Consul, Mr Williams; but the fellow became only more outrageous. I then went myself to demand an explanation, and was saluted with no inconsiderable quantity of abuse. I told him that if he proceeded in this manner I would make a complaint to the Authorities through the British Consul. He then said if I did not instantly depart he would drag me off to prison and cause me to be knocked down if I made the slightest resistance. I dared him repeatedly to do both, and said that he was a disgrace to the Government which employed him, and to human nature. He called me a vile foreigner. We were now in the street and a mob had collected, whereupon I cried: “Viva Inglaterra y viva la Constitucion.” The populace remained quiet, notwithstanding the exhortations of the Alcalde that they would knock down “the foreigner,” for he himself quailed before me as I looked him in the face, defying him. At length he exclaimed, with the usual obscene Spanish oath, “I will make you lower your head” (Yo te haré abajar la cabeza), and ran to a neighbouring guard-house and requested the assistance of the Nationals in conducting me to prison. I followed him and delivered myself up at the first summons, and walked to the prison without uttering a word; not so the Alcalde, who continued his abuse until we arrived at the gate, repeatedly threatening to have me knocked down if I moved to the right or left.
I was asked my name by the Authorities of the prison, which I refused to give unless in the presence of the Consul of my Nation, and indeed to answer any questions. I was then ordered to the Patio, or Courtyard, where are kept the lowest thieves and assassins of Seville, who, having no money, cannot pay for better accommodation, and by whom I should have been stripped naked in a moment as a matter of course, as they are all in a state of raging hunger and utter destitution. I asked for a private cell, which I was told I might have if I could pay for it. I stated my willingness to pay anything which might be demanded, and was conducted to an upper ward consisting of several cells and a corridor; here I found six or seven Prisoners, who received me very civilly, and instantly procured me paper and ink for the purpose of writing to the Consul. In less than an hour Mr Williams arrived and I told him my story, whereupon he instantly departed in order to demand redress of the Authorities. The next morning the Alcalde, without any authority from the Political [Civil] Governor of Seville, and unaccompanied by the English Consul, as the law requires in such cases, and solely attended by a common Escribano, went to the house in which I was accustomed to reside and demanded admission. The door was opened by my Moorish Servant, Hayim Ben-Attar, whom he commanded instantly to show the way to my apartments. On the Servant’s demanding by what authority he came, he said, “Cease chattering” (Deje cuentos), “I shall give no account to you; show me the way; if not, I will take you to prison as I did your master: I come to search for prohibited books.” The Moor, who being in a strange land was somewhat intimidated, complied and led him to the rooms occupied by me, when the Alcalde flung about my books and papers, finding nothing which could in the slightest degree justify his search, the few books being all either in Hebrew or Arabic character (they consisted of the Mitchna and some commentaries on the Coran); he at last took up a large knife which lay on a chair and which I myself purchased some months previous at Santa Cruz in La Mancha as a curiosity—the place being famous for those knives—and expressed his determination to take it away as a prohibited article. The Escribano, however, cautioned him against doing so, and he flung it down. He now became very vociferous and attempted to force his way into some apartments occupied by the Ladies, my friends; but soon desisted and at last went away, after using some threatening words to my Moorish Servant. Late at night of the second day of my imprisonment, I was set at liberty by virtue of an order of the Captain General, given on application of the British Consul, after having been for thirty hours imprisoned amongst the worst felons of Andalusia, though to do them justice I must say that I experienced from them nothing but kindness and hospitality.
The above, Sir, is the correct statement of the affair which has now brought me to Madrid. What could have induced the Alcalde in question to practise such atrocious behaviour towards me I am at a loss to conjecture, unless he were instigated by certain enemies which I possess in Seville. However this may be, I now call upon you, as the Representative of the Government of which I am a Subject, to demand of the Minister of the Spanish Crown full and ample satisfaction for the various outrages detailed above. In conclusion, I must be permitted to add that I will submit to no compromise, but will never cease to claim justice until the culprit has received condign punishment.
I am, etc., etc., etc.
George Borrow.
Madrid (no date).
Recorded 6th December [1839].” [313]
Thus it happened that on 19th December Mr Brandram received the following letter:—
Prison of Seville, 25th Nov. 1839.
I write these lines, as you see, from the common prison of Seville, to which I was led yesterday, or rather dragged, neither for murder nor robbery nor debt, but simply for having endeavoured to obtain a passport for Cordoba, to which place I was going with my Jewish servant Hayim Ben-Attar.
When questioned by the Vice-Consul as to his authority for searching Borrow’s house, the Alcalde produced a paper purporting to be the deposition of an old woman to whom Borrow was alleged to have sold a Testament some ten days previously. The document Borrow pronounced a forgery and the statement untrue.
Borrow’s fellow-prisoners treated him with unbounded kindness and hospitality, and he was forced to confess that he had “never found himself amongst more quiet and well-behaved men.” Nothing shows more clearly the power of Borrow’s personality over rogues and vagabonds than the two periods spent in Spanish prisons—at Madrid and at Seville. Mr Brandram must have shuddered when he read Borrow’s letter telling him by what manner of men he was surrounded.
“What is their history?” he writes apropos of his fellow-prisoners. “The handsome black-haired man, who is now looking over my shoulder, is the celebrated thief, Pelacio, the most expert housebreaker and dexterous swindler in Spain—in a word, the modern Guzman D’alfarache. The brawny man who sits by the brasero of charcoal is Salvador, the highwayman of Ronda, who has committed a hundred murders. A fashionably dressed man, short and slight in person, is walking about the room: he wears immense whiskers and mustachios; he is one of that most singular race the Jews of Spain; he is imprisoned for counterfeiting money. He is an atheist; but, like a true Jew, the name which he most hates is that of Christ. Yet he is so quiet and civil, and they are all so quiet and civil, and it is that which most horrifies me, for quietness and civility in them seems so unnatural.” [315]
Such were the men who fraternised with an agent of a religious society and showed him not only civility but hospitality and kindness. It is open to question if they would have shown the same to any other unfortunate missionary. In all probability they recognised a fellow-vagabond, who was at much at issue with the social conventions of communities as they were with the laws of property.
On this occasion the period of Borrow’s imprisonment was brief. He was released late at night on 25th Nov., within thirty hours of his arrest, and he immediately set to work to think out a plan by which he could once more discomfit the Spanish authorities for this indignity to a British subject. He would proceed to Madrid without delay and put his case before the British Minister, at the same time he would “make preparations for leaving Spain as soon as possible.”