Let us proceed to the dining-room.—Here the table is circular, but divides in half to receive a middle part which lengthens it, and this is so contrived that it may be made to suit any number of persons from six to twenty. The side-board is a massier piece of furniture; formerly a single slab of marble was used for this purpose, but now this is become one of the handsomest and most expensive articles. The glasses are arranged on it ready for dinner, and the knives and forks in two little chests or cabinets, the spoons are be tween them in a sort of urn; every thing being made costly and ornamental.
The drawing-room differs chiefly from the breakfast parlour in having every thing more expensive, a carpet of richer fabric, sconces and mirrors more highly ornamented, and curtains of damask like the sofas and chairs. Two chandeliers with glass drops stand on the mantle-piece; but in these we excel the English; they have not the brilliancy of those from the royal fabric at St Ildefonso. In this room are the portraits of J— and his wife, by one of the best living artists, so admirably executed as to make me blush for the present state of the arts in Spain.
Having proceeded thus far, I will go through the house. J— took me into his kitchen one day to show me what is called the kitchen-range, which has been constructed upon the philosophical principles of Count Rumford, a German[[11]] philosopher, the first person who has applied scientific discoveries to the ordinary purposes of life. The top of the fire is covered with an iron plate, so that the flame and smoke, instead of ascending, pass through bars on the one side, and there heat an iron front, against the which food may be roasted as well as by the fire itself; it passes on, heating stoves and boilers as it goes, and the smoke is not suffered to pass up the chimney till it can no longer be of any use. On the other side is an oven heated by the same fire, and vessels for boiling may be placed on the plate over the fire. The smoke finally sets a kind of wheel in motion in the chimney, which turns the spit. I could not but admire the comfort and cleanliness of every thing about the kitchen; a dresser as white as when the wood was new, the copper and tin vessels bright and burnished, the chain in which the spit plays, bright; the plates and dishes ranged in order along the shelves, and I could not but wish our dirty Domingo were here to take a lesson of English cleanliness. There is a back-kitchen in which all the dirty work is done, into which water is conveyed by pipes. The order and cleanliness of every thing made even this room cheerful, though under-ground, where the light enters only from an area, and the face of the sky is never seen.
[11]. This is a mistake of the author’s. Count Rumford is an American.—Tr.
And now for my own apartment, where I am now writing. It is on the second floor, the more, therefore, to my liking, as it is less noisy, and I breathe in a freer atmosphere. My bed, though neither covered with silk nor satin, has as much ornament as is suitable; silk or satin would not give that clean appearance which the English always require, and which I have already learnt to delight in. Hence, the damask curtains which were used in the last generation have given place to linens. These are full enough to hang in folds; by day they are gathered round the bed-posts, which are light pillars of mahogany supporting a frame-work, covered with the same furniture as the curtains; and valances are fastened round this frame, both withinside the curtains and without, and again round the sides of the bedstead. The blankets are of the natural colour of the wool, quite plain; the sheets plain also. I have never seen them flounced nor laced, nor ever seen a striped or coloured blanket. The counterpane is of all English manufactures the least tasteful; it is of white cotton, ornamented with cotton knots, in shapes as graceless as the cut box in a garden. My window-curtains are of the same pattern as the bed; a mahogany press holds my clothes, an oval looking-glass swung lengthways stands on the dressing-table. A compact kind of chest holds the bason, the soap, the toothbrush, and water-glass, each in a separate compartment; and a looking-glass, for the purpose of shaving at (for Englishmen usually shave themselves,) slips up and down behind, the water-jug and water-bottle stand below, and the whole shuts down a-top, and closes in front, like a cabinet. The room is carpeted; here I have my fire, my table, and my cassette; here I study, and here minute down every thing which I see or learn—how industriously you will perceive, and how faithfully, you who best know me, will best know.
My honoured father will say to all this, How many things are there here which I do not want?—But you, my dear mother,—I think I see you looking round the room while you say, How will Manuel like to leave these luxuries and return to Spain? How anxiously I wish to leave them, you will not easily conceive, as you have never felt that longing love for your own country, which absence from it renders a passion, and almost a disease. Fortunate as I am in having such rare advantages of society and friendship, and happy as I am in the satisfaction wherewith I reflect every night that no opportunity of enquiry or observation has been lost during the day, still my greatest pleasure is to think how fast the days and weeks are passing on, and that every day I am one day nearer the time of my return. I never longed half so earnestly to return from Alcalá, as I now do to enter my native place, to see the shield over the door-way, to hear the sound of our own water-wheel, of the bells of St Claras, of Domingo’s viola at evening, to fondle my own dogs, to hear my own language, to kneel at mass in the church where I was baptized, and to see once more around me the faces of all whom I have known from infancy, and of all whom I love best.
¡Ay[[12]] Dios de mi alma!
¡Saqueisme de aquí!
¡Ay! que Inglaterra
Ya no es para mí.