My wife is better already, and the children in a wonderful state of health; we positively live in the open air; the air is good, the water better, and the bread superlative. I don’t see what they want here except money, which is after all something, but nothing to so rich a man as your very humble servant is in Seville.
A later letter (January 1st, 1831) is in the same strain:—
Many thanks for the Galignanis, always most acceptable, whether early or late, many or few. One can’t expect in Spain to keep pace with the march of intellect and English mail. I trust civilisation will be long getting in here, for it is now an original Peculiar People, potted for six centuries, as was well said. Luckily the robbers and roads will stop much advance of improvement. I have too much respect for Ambassadors and their privileges to presume to expect anything out of the way. La forme, il faut s’y tenir. If you can get me a Galignani, well; if not, well. I have a great mind to write to Paris at once, as I see they never touch any of my letters. If they did I should go to Arjona, who is a great friend of mine.
I am just returned from a shooting excursion at the Coto del Rey, where he sent me, with a captain to attend on me; a magnificent sporting country and full of woodcocks.
We go on in our humdrum manner, for there is absolutely no society whatever; dinners of course not, but not even a Tertulia [“at home” or Conversazione]. They meet twice a week at the theatre. The great bore is the visiting for all the fine ladies (what would Lʸ. Jersey or Lʸ. Cowper think of them?). They have condescended to quit their braseros and call on my wife, partly to see the strange monster they conceive her to be, and partly to show their laces, white gloves, and trinkets. They call about 2 o’clock, dressed out for a ball, with fans, and all their wardrobe on their back; visits interminable. Some bring Mr. Fernando White as their dragoman, which is rather droll, as his English is infinitely less intelligible than their Spanish. Then we return the visits, my wife in mantilla and white gloves, according to etiquette. What a contrast between these fine ladies at home and abroad! No Cinderella changes more rapidly. There they are, squatting over their brasero, unwashed, undressed, cold and shivering, and uncomfortable, wrapped up in a shawl in their great barnlike, unfurnished houses; a matted rush and a few chairs the inventory of their chattels. A book is a thing I have not yet set eyes on, nor anything which indicates the possession of those damnable, heretical accomplishments, reading and writing. They are very civil and gracious, and everything is at our disposition, especially as they see we have eyes, hands, and faces, like other mortals. Of course I am considered to be a milor, and am known by the name of the Don Ricardo.
We have had many letters from England; all seem very uncomfortable there about the way things are going on. After all, it will turn out, as I said in England, the only place to be quiet in is Spain. Lady Jersey is broken-hearted; Lady Lyndhurst ruined,—they have just £1200 a year, which won’t pay her coiffeur. Lord Lyndhurst[5] expected to the last to have been Chancellor; Lords Carnarvon, Dudley, and Radnor indignant. The new Ministry thought to be very Grey, too much so.[6] They will cut down all the good things, till, as old Tierney said, it will be a losing concern to come in. Lord Castlereagh used to say, in the good old times, in the dark days of Nicolas, that “the cake was not then too large for the wholesome aliment of the constitution.”
Great doings in the cathedrals, churches, and convents: much bell-ringing, processions, great consumption of incense, torches, and tapers. I wonder how the lower orders manage to keep themselves, as every day seems to be a holiday. The most active branch of commerce is the sale of the water of the Alameda, which seems to agree with the Sevillian as well as it would with a trout.
Everything appears to me to be in a state of profound repose, all dead and still.
An enthusiastic sportsman, Ford found that the neighbourhood swarmed with game—with partridges, hares, rabbits, quail, curlew, and plover. Snipe and woodcock abounded. Within a mile from Seville, he could with ease kill ten couple of snipe in a morning: in every half-acre copse he counted on flushing five or six woodcock. Behind a pasteboard horse, or concealed in a country cart, he stalked the bustards drawn up in long lines on the plains that bordered the Guadalquivir. The Coto del Rey, a royal preserve about thirty miles from Seville, abounded not only with the smaller game of the country, but also deer and wild boars. With most of the smaller winged game he had the field to himself, and his skill, armed with a double-barrelled Purdey, and using detonators, seemed to the countrymen almost demoniacal. The natives themselves rarely fired at game in motion, partly because ammunition was extravagantly dear, partly because, with their flint and steel guns, a quarter of a minute elapsed between pulling the trigger and the discharge of the piece. Spaniards shot rather for the pot than for sport. In partridge shooting decoys were used, and the birds killed on the ground. Hares were shot in cleared runs or on their forms, and rabbits as they paused in creeping to the edges of woods.
In the occupations and amusements which Seville and its neighbourhood afforded, Ford passed his time agreeably enough. Though not yet the vehement Tory that he became in later life, he congratulated himself on having left England, then in the throes of Parliamentary Reform. Nor was he alone in his gloomy forebodings. Even the prospects of Spain seemed to him, by comparison, peaceful. Yet already revolutionary movements were on foot within his immediate neighbourhood. In his next three letters from Seville (February 2nd; February, undated; March 25th, 1831), he refers to the attempts of General Torrijos to stir up a Liberal rising in Andalusia, their failure, and their punishment.