I arrived safely this morning here after a very prosperous journey, and rather an interesting one, through Talavera, Merida, and Badajoz. Talavera, a very curious old Spanish town in a most picturesque state of dirt and decay; Merida, where I remained two days, full of Roman remains, an aqueduct grander than anything I ever saw in Italy; Badajoz, well worth seeing, a magnificent position, and fine old castle, which we have pretty well knocked about. They were all rather in a fuss there (as being the frontier town) as to what was going on in Portugal, and very particular about all strangers coming in and going out. Thence to Sevilla over the Sierra Morena, a glorious, wild, uncultivated, uninhabited country, full of hawks, partridges, and cistus. The hills, being covered with the white flower, looked like Epinards sucrés. I found my spouse much better than I expected.
Messrs. de Custine[12] and de Barbe are, I believe, still here. They have been taking a great many people up here lately for political reasons, but no executions.
CHAPTER II
THE ALHAMBRA
(MAY-NOVEMBER 1831)
The Alhambra—Addington’s Visit—Tour to Alicante, Valencia, Barcelona, Zaragoza, Madrid—Return to the Alhambra
When Ford wrote to Addington in April 1831, he was hesitating between a furnished house at Granada or rooms in the ruined palace of the Alhambra. Poetry conquered prose; comfort gave way to romance. His letter of June 7th, 1831, announces that he had installed himself in the palace.
Granada and the Alhambra are places which seem to rise above the prosaic level of the working world and catch the last gleams of mediæval romance. The very mention of their names conjures up pageants of chivalry and splendid visions of departed glory. Soil and climate increase the fascination and deepen the spell which is cast upon the imagination. The verdure of a northern climate spreads itself beneath the cloudless azure of the south. Olive-yards, orange-groves, and vineyards clothe the hills, gardens embroider the valleys, billows of corn wave in the plains, of that enchanted region over which hung the celestial Paradise of Mahomet. Here, hemmed in between the mountains and the sea, and narrowed within the space of ten years, till its events assume the distinctness and unity of an epic, was concentrated the final struggle which closed the drama of Moorish domination in Spain. Every spot recalls some scene in the conflict, and the “last sigh of the Moor” still whispers on the heights above Granada. In that Holy War historical truth outrivalled romantic fiction; the manners, customs, creeds of the East and the West contended for supremacy; the splendour of steel-clad chivalry met the roar and crash of artillery; the Middle Ages were locked in the death-grapple with modern civilisation.
The journey from Seville to Granada followed the high road to Madrid as far as Andujar. Leaving the diligence at that place, the Fords drove from Andujar to Granada by way of Jaen in a coche de colleras. Their carriage was a huge machine belonging to the seventeenth century, carved, gilded, and richly painted, set on wheels which were as extravagantly high behind as they were low in front. It was drawn by four mules, driven by the voice, whip, and stones of the driver (majoral) and his helper (zagal). But the picturesque novelty of the expedition was the guard of six Miquelites who accompanied the carriage. These men, drawn from a regular body which was organised throughout Spain for the protection of travellers, are said to derive their name from Miquel de Prats, a bravo in the train of Cæsar Borgia. Well armed with short guns, swords, and pistols, dressed in a sort of uniform of blue jackets trimmed with red, they were all young men picked for their strength and activity. Many of them had previously been smugglers or bandits, and were held in wholesome dread by their former colleagues.
Thus escorted, the journey was performed without risk, and Ford, with his wife and family, safely lodged in the Alhambra. The palace, whitewashed by the monks and purified from Moslem abominations, or wrecked by Charles V. to supply materials for new palaces, had fallen into neglect and decay. It had been an asylum for debtors, a hospital for invalid soldiers, a prison for galley-slaves. From 1798 onwards it was the official residence of Spanish governors, who made good use of their opportunity for plunder. The dados were broken up to make firewood for cooks and bakers; the tiles were torn up and worked into shop fronts; the leaden pipes which supplied the fountains were sold. A donkey was stabled in the chapel, sheep were folded in the courtyards, poultry penned in the halls. The French invaders converted it into a barrack, a powder magazine, a store for plundered goods, and, when they evacuated it, blew up eight of the Moorish towers. The work of gutting the place was continued by the Spaniards, who tore down doors, wrenched off locks, and carried off panes of glass. When Ford was there galley-slaves were at work converting, to the chink of their chains, a part of the building into a storehouse for salt fish. The first real attempt to restore the Alhambra was made by a peasant woman, Francisca de Molina, the “Tia Antonia” of Washington Irving.