Everybody here is satisfied that the King is to spend the winter in Seville, and to set out as soon as he can be moved, as they make him out to be very ill. Meantime Gutierrez the painter, who is in high favour in Court (drawing two hundred heads of the servants, attendants, etc., in a blank book of the Queen’s), describes the King as coming in and being very affable and good-humoured.
We have no news whatever. Colonel Buller’s uniform is arrived, and both are still remaining at Seville. Otherwise, God be praised! there are no British subjects here. The weather perfectly delicious; the walks of an evening and at night charming. My wife has been very unwell, feverish, and relaxed. As soon as she is confined, which I hope will be early next month, we think of starting for Malaga to eat raisins and be under the protection of Mark.
Our great visitors are all to go the 24th, and say they shall return next year much earlier. The people are so poor that they have not been able to give them a ball. In the town they said I was going to do so. You see how we apples swim, and what a great place this is for little people; however, I prefer counting my dollars in my box, nummos in arcâ.
Sevilla, Saturday [29 Sept. 1832].
As you have been so long “in at the death,” I will give you a little birth by way of a change. On Wednesday my wife was safely brought to bed of a little girl, both mother and child doing perfectly well. The birth was premature by three weeks, and brought on by a severe illness which my wife has had, and which has thrown her back sadly. I am in hopes that she will now recover her strength for the journey to Malaga.
They say, first, that the King is dead, and that he died on the 17th; next, that he is eating chickens and smoking cigars, on the 20th; and that he is coming here to a dead certainty.
The furniture of the Alcazar, provided for the Infante, which was to have been sold, is ordered to be put away in case of being shortly required. How is all this? Is there really any chance of the King’s coming? If so, pray let me know (quite privately), as I in that case would remain the winter, having the largest and best house in the town, which I need not say is at the Disposicion de V.E., and where I can give you a nice little apartment, with a fireplace, and with no chickens to sing ovations on your arrival.
Don Lewis is drawing the Alhambra, and Don José is speculating on politics, about three weeks more behindhand than we are, which might be expected, as he lives in an out-of-the-way mountainous kingdom.
I suppose you have had a rare time of it at the Granja. The running up and down stairs and the stir of diplomacy will keep your feet free from chilblains in that Mountain Court. The weather here is beyond expression delicious.
November 10, 1832: Sevilla.