Addington’s criticism was in some respects discouraging. His diplomatic caution was probably alarmed at Ford’s outspoken vigour, and he does not seem to have read enough between the lines to recognise Ford’s real love for Spain and the Spanish people. Ford’s reply shows his surprise at the impression which he had produced on Addington.
Sunday Evening, Exeter, May 4, 1834.
Your letter has knocked the breath out of my body, the ink out of my pen, the pen out of my hand. You have settled my cacoethes. I had no idea I was anything but a friend to the Spaniards. I do not think them brave, or romantic, but with many super-excellent qualities, all of which I should have duly praised. You cut out my wit! Head cuts out my poetry! and I shall cut the concern. What is to be done? I can’t write like Cook; I really wish to take in a very wide haul, and have very great materials. Religion must come in, or the Arts must go out. Politics and Poetry I care nothing for. Wit (if there is any),—it is not wit but a trick of stringing words together, and I cannot write a common letter, or say anything, without falling into these sort of absurdities. It would not be my book, if it was not so. I have a horror of flippancy. That is what I fear most, and am most likely to run into. There you may carbonado me, and I will kiss the rod. If you read the MSS., do not spare your pencil, and I will make great sacrifices to please you. Remember you only see an excursion. My early chapters on Seville will be historical, prosaical, and artistical.
I should like you to read Faure or Bory St. Vincent,[43] and see how they handle the Spaniards,—or some of the older works. Mine is milk and water to Napier. I always thought you prejudiced against the Spaniards rather than in their favour, poor innocents! All about the grandees at Madrid, if you have stumbled on that, I will cut out with pleasure. At the same time, if you don’t agree in the book, I cannot be so right as I imagined, and had better have nothing to do with the concern, but read other people’s works instead of their reading mine.
I have not the presumption to suppose my opinion to be worth yours in many important subjects. On some I think it is,—the lighter and more frivolous. I am a humble-minded author, as Head will tell you, very docile, and not at all irritable. I care not how much you cut out, as I have written for four volumes, and would rather write two.
We will talk over the matter when I come to town, which will be soon. Meanwhile, read the MSS., and cut away. Spare not my pungency, and correct my mistakes. Cut out all that is flippant, personal, or offensive (the grandees, I admit, is both). Remember you have only the rough sketch. I have two years before me, and the lean kine of reflection will eat up the fat ones of the overflowing of young conceit and inexperience. I wish to write an amusing, instructive, and, more than all, a gentlemanlike book. I hold myself lucky that you and Head see it, and will abide by your dictations, and kiss the rod and your hand.
But the discouragement was not great enough to divert Ford from his enterprise. The criticism did not cool his friendship. He was eager to persuade Addington to settle near him, and once more sings the praises of Exeter.
Exeter, Saturday evening, 14 June, 1834.
Now that the show is over, and all the caps and gowns, stars and garters no more, I venture to indite you an epistle from the green fields of Devon; right pleasing and fresh are they after the dusty treadmill of la Corte. There are houses of all sorts from £50 a year to £250; one at that price is beautiful and fit for a Plenipo. (I have not fixed on anything myself, having been chiefly in bed with an infernal urticaria, alias a nettle-rash.) The women, God be praised! are very ugly. Meat at 6d. a pound, butter seldom making 1s.; I am told in the London Buttometer it reaches 18d. A Mr. Radford, who has a place to sell, has one gardener, who looks after two acres and three horses, all for a matter of £15 or so a year. Servants go twice to church of a Sunday, and masters read family prayers, and make them work their bodies like galley slaves, per contra the benefit conferred on their souls.
The town is pueblo levitico de hidalguia y algo aficionado a la Iglesia y al Rey absoluto; otherwise quiet and literary: clergymen, physicians, colonels, plain £1000-a-year folk, given to talk about quarter sessions and the new road bill (if you will allow them). Otherwise a man goes quietly down hill here, oblitus et obliviscendus, reads his books (or those of the Institution), goes to church, and gets rich, which is very pleasurable and a novel feeling—better than the romance of youth.