What to observe in Spain—How to observe—Spanish Incuriousness and Suspicions—French Spies and Plunderers—Sketching in Spain—Difficulties, How Surmounted—Efficacy of Passports and Bribes—Uncertainty and Want of Information in the Natives.
DIFFICULTIES OF OBSERVING.
NOW that the most approved methods of travelling, living, and being buried in Spain have been touched on, our kind readers will naturally inquire, what are the peculiar attractions which should induce gentlemen and ladies who take their ease at home, to adventure into this land of roughing it, in which rats rather than hares jump up when the least expected. “What to observe” is a question easier asked than answered; who indeed can cater for the multitudinous variety of fancies, the differences by which Nature keeps all nature right? Who shall decide when doctors disagree, as they always do, on matters of taste, since every one has his own way of viewing things, and his own hobby and predilection? Say not, however, with Smellfungus, that all is a wilderness from Dan to Beersheba,—nor seek for weeds where flowers grow. The search for the excellent is the high road to excellence, as not to appreciate it when found is the surest test of mediocrity. The refining effort and habit teaches the mind to think; from long pondering on the beautiful world without, snatches are caught of the beautiful world within, and a glimpse is granted to the chosen few, of glories hidden from the vulgar many. They indeed have eyes, but see not; nay, scarcely do they behold the things of external nature, until told what to look for, where to find it, and how to observe it; then a new sense, a second sight, is given. Happy, thrice happy those from whose eyes the film has been removed, who instead of a previous vague general and unintelligent stare, have really learnt to see! To them a fountain of new delights, pure and undefiled, welling up and overflowing, is opened; in proportion as they comprehend the infinite form, colour, and beauty with which Nature clothes her every work, albeit her sweetest charms are only revealed to the initiated, reserved as the rich reward of those who bow to her shrine with singleness of purpose, and turn to her worship with all their hearts, souls, and understandings.
It was with these beneficent intentions that our good friend John Murray first devised Handbooks; and next, by writing them himself, taught others how to dip into inkstands for red books, which tell man, woman, and child what to observe, to the ruin of laquais de place, and discomfiture of authors of single octavos and long vacation excursions. Few gentlemen who publish the notes of their Peninsular gallop much improve their light diaries by discussing heavy handbook subjects; skimming, like swallows, over the surface, and in pursuit of insects, they neither heed nor discern the gems which lurk in the deeps below; they see indeed all the scum and straws which float on the surface, and write down on their tablets all that is rotten in the state of Spain. Hence the sameness of some of their works; one book and bandit reflects another, until writers and readers are imprisoned in a vicious circle. Nothing gives more pain to Spaniards than seeing volume after volume written on themselves and their country by foreigners, who have only rapidly glanced at one-half of the subject, and that half the one of which they are the most ashamed, and consider the least worth notice. This constant prying into the nakedness of the land and exposing it afterwards, has increased the dislike which they entertain towards the impertinente curioso tribe: they well know and deeply feel their country’s decline; but like poor gentlefolks, who have nothing but the past to be proud of, they are anxious to keep these family secrets concealed, even from themselves, and still more from the observations of those who happen to be their superiors, not in blood, but in worldly prosperity. This dread of being shown up sharpens their inherent suspicions, when strangers wish to “observe,” and examine into their ill-provided arsenals and institutions, just as Burns was scared even by the honest antiquarian Grose; so they lump the good and the bad, putting them down as book-making Paul Prys:—
DISLIKE TO OBSERVERS.
“If there’s a hole in a’ your coats,
I rede ye tent it;
A chiel’s amang ye, taking notes,
And faith! he’ll prent it.”
The less observed and said about these Spanish matters, these cosas de España—the present tatters in her once proud flag, on which the sun never set—is, they think, the soonest mended. These comments heal slower than the knife-gash—“Sanan cuchilladas, mas no malas palabras.” Let no author imagine that the fairest observations that he can take and make of Spain as she is, setting down nought in malice, can ever please a Spaniard; his pride and self-esteem are as great as the self-conceit and low consequence of the American: both are morbidly sensitive and touchy; both are afflicted with the notion that all the world, who are never troubling their heads about them, are thinking of nothing else, and linked in one common conspiracy, based in envy, jealousy, or ignorance; “you don’t understand us, I guess.” Truth, except in the shape of a compliment, is the greatest of libels, and is howled against as a lie and forgery from the Straits to the Bidasoa; Napier’s history, for example. The Spaniard, who is hardly accustomed to a free, or rather a licentious press, and the scavenger propensity with which, in England and America, it rakes into the sewers of private life and the gangrenes of public, is disgusted with details which he resents as a breach of hospitality in strangers. He considers, and justly, that it is no proof either of goodness of breeding, heart, or intellect, to be searching for blemishes rather than beauties, for toadstools rather than violets; he despises those curmudgeons who see motes rather than beams in the brightest eyes of Andalucia. The productions of strangers, and especially of those who ride and write the quickest, must savour of the pace and sources from whence they originate. Foreigners who are unacquainted with the language and good society of Spain are of necessity brought the most into contact with the lowest scenes and the worst class of people, thus road-scrapings and postilion information too often constitute the raw-head-and-bloody-bones material of their composition. All this may be very amusing to those who like these subjects, but they afford a poor criterion for descanting on whatever does the most honour to a country, or gives sound data for judging its real condition. How would we ourselves like that Spaniards should form their opinions of England and Englishmen from the Newgate calendars, the reports of cads, and the annals of beershops?
DISLIKE TO OBSERVERS.
Various as are the objects worth observing in Spain, many of which are to be seen there only, it may be as well to mention what is not to be seen, for there is no such loss of time as finding this out oneself, after weary chace and wasted hour. Those who expect to meet with well-garnished arsenals, libraries, restaurants, charitable or literary institutions, canals, railroads, tunnels, suspension-bridges, steam-engines, omnibuses, manufactories, polytechnic galleries, pale-ale breweries, and similar appliances and appurtenances of a high state of political, social, and commercial civilization, had better stay at home. In Spain there are no turnpike-trust meetings, no quarter-sessions, no courts of justice, according to the real meaning of that word, no treadmills, no boards of guardians, no chairmen, directors, masters-extraordinary of the court of chancery, no assistant poor-law commissioners. There are no anti-tobacco-teetotal-temperance-meetings, no auxiliary-missionary-propagating societies, nothing in the blanket and lying-in asylum line, nothing, in short, worth a revising-barrister of three years’ standing’s notice, unless he be partial to the study of the laws of bankruptcy. Spain is no country for the political economist, beyond affording an example of the decline of the wealth of nations, and offering a wide topic on errors to be avoided, as well as for experimental theories, plans of reform and amelioration. In Spain, Nature reigns; she has there lavished her utmost prodigality of soil and climate, which Spaniards have for the last four centuries been endeavouring to counteract by a culpable neglect of agricultural speeches and dinners, and a non-distribution of prizes for the biggest boars, asses, and labourers with largest families.