great request here, of a fine close grain, and a reddish brown colour,
which becomes more beautiful as it grows darker with age. The history of
this wood, of which all the finer articles of furniture exclusively are
made, is rather singular. A West Indian captain, about a century ago,
brought over some planks as ballast, and gave them to his brother, Dr
Gibbons, a physician of great eminence, who was then building a house.
The workmen, however, found the wood too hard for their tools, and it
was thrown aside. Some time afterwards his wife wanted a box to hold
candles, the doctor thought of the West Indian wood, and, in spite of
the difficulty which was still found in working it, had the box made. He
admired its colour and polish so much, that he had a bureau made of it
also; and this was thought so beautiful, that it was shown to all his
friends. Among others, the Duchess of Buckingham came to see it, and
begged enough of the wood to make her a bureau also. From that moment
the demand was so great, that it became a regular article of trade, and
as long as the woods of Honduras last it is likely to continue so. There
is reason to believe that the tree would grow in England, as there are
some flourishing plants in the neighbourhood of London which have been
raised from seed. Formerly the tables were made of the solid plank; but
English ingenuity has now contrived to give the same appearance at a far
less cost of materials, by facing common deal with a layer of the fine
wood not half a barley-corn in thickness. To give you an idea of the
curiosity with which all these things are executed, is impossible;
nothing can be more perfect.
Our breakfast table is oval, large enough for eight or nine persons, yet
supported upon one claw in the centre. This is the newest fashion, and
fashions change so often in these things, as well as in every thing
else, that it is easy to know how long it is since a house has been
fitted up, by the shape of the furniture. An upholder just now
advertises _Commodes_, _Console-tables_, _Ottomans_, _Chaiselongès_, and
_Chiffoniers_;—what are all these? you ask. I asked the same question,
and could find no person in the house who could answer me; but they are
all articles of the newest fashion, and no doubt all will soon be
thought indispensably necessary in every well-furnished house. Here is
also a nest of tables for the ladies, consisting of four, one less than
another, and each fitting into the one above it; you would take them for
play-things, from their slenderness and size, if you did not see how
useful they find them for their work. A harpsichord takes up the middle
of one side of the room, and in the corners are screens to protect the
face from the fire, of mahogany, with fans of green silk, which spread
like a flower, and may be raised or lowered at pleasure. A book-case,
standing on a chest of drawers, completes the heavy furniture; it has
glazed doors, and curtains of green silk within.
But I should give you a very inadequate idea of an English room were I
to stop here. Each window has blinds to prevent the by-passers from
looking in; the plan is taken from the Venetian blinds, but made more
expensive, as the bars are fitted into a frame and move in grooves. The
shutters fit back by day, and are rendered ornamental by the gilt ring
by which they are drawn open: at night you perceive that you are in a
land of housebreakers by the contrivances for barring them, and the
bells which are fixed on to alarm the family, in case the house should
be attacked. On one side of the window the curtains hang in festoons,
they are of rich printed cotton, lined with a plain colour and fringed,
the quantity they contain is very great. Add to this a sconce of the
most graceful form, with six prints in gilt frames, and you have the
whole scene before you. Two of these are Noel’s views of Cadiz and
Lisbon; the others are from English history, and represent the battles
of the Boyne and of La Hogue, the death of General Wolfe at Quebec, and
William Penn treating with the Indians for his province of Pennsylvania.
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.
Footnote 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.
Footnote 12:
Ah God of my soul, take me from hence! alas! England is not a country
for me.—TR.
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LETTER XV.
_English Meals.—Clumsy Method of Butchery.—Lord Somerville.—Cruel Manner
of killing certain Animals.—Luxuries of the Table.—Liquors._
The English do not eat beef-steaks for breakfast, as lying travellers
have told us, nor can I find that it has ever been the custom. The
breakfast-table is a cheerful sight in this country: porcelain of their
own manufactory, which excels the Chinese in elegance of form and
ornament, is ranged on a Japan waiter, also of the country fabric; for
here they imitate every thing. The mistress sits at the head of the
board, and opposite to her the boiling water smokes and sings in an urn
of Etruscan shape. The coffee is contained in a smaller vase of the same
shape, or in a larger kind of tea-pot, wherein the grain is suspended in
a bag; but nothing is so detestable as an Englishman’s coffee. The
washing of our after-dinner cups would make a mixture as good; the
infusion is just strong enough to make the water brown and bitter. This
is not occasioned by œconomy, though coffee is enormously dear, for the
people are extravagant in the expences of the table: they know no
better; and if you tell them how it ought to be made, they reply, that
it must be very disagreeable, and even that if they could drink it so
strong, it would prevent them from sleeping. There is besides an act of
parliament to prevent the English from drinking good coffee: they are
not permitted to roast it themselves, and of course all the fresh and
finer flavour evaporates in the warehouse. They make amends however by
the excellence of their tea, which is still very cheap, though the
ministry, in violation of an explicit bargain, increased the tax upon it
four fold, during the last war. This is made in a vessel of silver, or
of a fine black porcelain: they do not use boiled milk with it, but
cream in its fresh state, which renders it a very delightful beverage.
They eat their bitter bread in various ways, either in thin slices, or
toasted, or in small hot loaves, always with butter, which is the best
thing in the country.
The dinner hour is usually five: the labouring part of the community
dine at one, the highest ranks at six, seven, or even eight. The
quantity of meat which they consume is astonishing! I verily believe
that what is drest for one dinner here, would supply the same number of
persons in Spain for a week, even if no fast-days intervened. Every
where you find both meat and vegetables in the same crude and insipid
state. The potatoe appears at table all the year round: indeed the poor
subsist so generally upon this root, that it seems surprising how they
could have lived before it was introduced from America. Beer is the
common drink. They take less wine than we do at dinner, and more after
it; but the custom of sitting for hours over the bottle, which was so
prevalent of late years, has been gradually laid aside, as much from the
gradual progress of the taxes as of good sense. Tea is served between
seven and eight, in the same manner as at breakfast, except that we do
not assemble round the table. Supper is rather a ceremony than a meal;
but the hour afterwards, over our wine and water, or spirits, is the
pleasantest in the day.
The old refinements of epicurean cruelty are no longer heard of, yet the
lower classes are cruel from mere insensibility, and the higher ones,
for want of thought, make no effort to amend them. The butchers and
drovers in particular are a savage race. The sheep which I have met on
their way to the slaughter-house, have frequently their faces smeared
with their own blood, and accidents from over-driven oxen are very
common. Cattle are slaughtered with the clumsiest barbarity: the butcher
hammers away at the forehead of the beast; blow after blow raises a
swelling which renders the following blows ineffectual, and the butchery
is completed by cutting the throat. Great pains have been taken by a
nobleman who has travelled in Spain, to introduce our humane method of
piercing the spine; the effect has been little, and I have heard that
the butchers have sometimes wantonly prolonged the sufferings of animals
in his sight, for the pleasure of tormenting a humanity which they think
ridiculous. Oysters are eaten alive here. You see women in the streets
skinning eels while the creature writhes on the fork. They are thought
delicacies here, and yet the English laugh at the French for eating
frogs! Lobsters and crabs are boiled alive, and sometimes roasted! and
carp, after having been scaled and gutted, will sometimes leap out of
the stew-pan. If humanity is in better natures an instinct, no instinct
is so easily deadened, and in the mass of mankind it seems not to exist.
Roast beef has been heard of wherever the English are known. I have more
than once been asked at table my opinion of the roast beef of Old
England, with a sort of smile, and in a tone as if the national honour
were concerned in my reply. The loin of beef is always called Sir, which
is the same as Señor.[13] Neither drunkenness nor gluttony can fairly be
imputed as national vices to this people, and yet perhaps there is no
other country where so much nice and curious attention is paid to eating
and drinking, nor where the pleasures of the table are thought of such
serious importance, and gratified at so great an expense. All parts of
the world are ransacked for an Englishman’s table. Turtle are brought
alive from the West Indies, and their arrival is of so much consequence,
that notices are immediately sent to the newspapers, particularly
stating that they are in fine order, and lively. Whereever you dine
since peace has been concluded, you see a Perigord pye. India supplies
sauces and curry powder; they have hams from Portugal and Westphalia;
reindeers’ tongues from Lapland; caviar from Russia; sausages from
Bologna; maccaroni from Naples; oil from Florence; olives from France,
Italy, or Spain, at choice; cheese from Parma and Switzerland. Fish come
packed up in ice from Scotland for the London market, and the epicures
here will not eat any mutton but what is killed in Wales. There is in
this very morning’s newspaper, a notice from a shopkeeper in the Strand,
offering to contract with any person who will send him game regularly
from France, Norway, or Russia.
Footnote 13:
D. Manuel has mistaken the word, which is Surloin, quasi
_Super-Loin_,—the upper part of it.—TR.
The choice of inferior liquors is great; but all are bad substitutes for
the pure juice of the grape. You have tasted their beer in its best
state, and cider you have drank in Biscay. They have a beverage made
from the buds of the fir-tree and treacle; necessity taught the American
settlers to brew this detestable mixture, which is introduced here as a
luxury. Factitious waters are now also become fashionable; soda-water
particularly, the fixed air of which hisses as it goes down your throat
as cutting as a razor, and draws tears as it comes up through the nose
as pungent as a pinch of snuff. The common water is abominable; it is
either from a vapid canal in which all the rabble of the outskirts wash
themselves in summer, or from the Thames, which receives all the filth
of the city. It is truly disgraceful that such a city should be without
an aqueduct. At great tables the wine stands in ice, and you keep your
glass inverted in water. In nothing are they so curious as in their
wines, though rather in the quality than the variety. They even send it
abroad to be ripened by the motion of the ship, and by warmer climates;
you see _superior, London, picked, particular, East India_ Madeira
advertised, every epithet of which must be paid for.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
LETTER XVI.
_Informers.—System upon which they act.—Anecdotes of their
Rascality.—Evil of encouraging them.—English Character a Compound of
Contradictions._
They talk here of our Holy Office as a disgrace to the Spanish nation,
when their own government is ten times more inquisitorial, for the
paltry purposes of revenue. Shortly after his last return from Spain, J—
stept into a hosier’s to buy a pair of gloves; the day was warm, and he
laid his hat upon the counter: a well-drest man came in after him for
the same ostensible purpose, either learnt his name by enquiry, or
followed him till he had discovered it, and the next day my friend was
summoned before a magistrate to answer a charge for wearing his hat
without a stamp. It was in vain he pleaded that the hat had been
purchased abroad; he had been in England more than six weeks, and had
not bought a stamp to put into it, and therefore was fined in the full
penalty.
This species of espionage has within these few years become a regular
trade; the laws are in some instances so perplexed, and in others so
vexatious, that matter for prosecution is never wanting, and many of
these familiars of the Tax Office are amassing fortunes by this infamous
business. The most lucrative method of practice is as follows: A fellow
surcharges half the people in the district; that is, he informs the
tax-commissioners, that such persons have given in a false account of
their window’s, dogs, horses, carriages, &c. an offence for which the
tax is trebled, and half the surplus given to the informer. A day of
appeal, however, is allowed for those who think they can justify
themselves; but so many have been aggrieved, that when they appear
together before the commissioners, there is not time to hear one in ten.
Some of these persons live two, four, or six, leagues from the place of
appeal: they go there a second, and perhaps a third time in the hope of
redress; the informer takes care, by new surcharges, to keep up the
crowd, and the injured persons find it at last less burthensome to pay
the unjust fine, than to be repeatedly at the trouble and expense of
seeking justice in vain.
There is nothing, however dishonourable or villanous, to which these
wretches will not stoop. One of them, on his first settling in the
province which he had chosen for the scene of his campaigns, was invited
to dinner by a neighbouring gentleman, before his character was known;
the next day he surcharged his host for another servant, because one of
the men employed about his grounds had assisted in waiting at dinner.
Another happening to lame his horse, borrowed one of a farmer to ride
home: the farmer told him it was but an uneasy-going beast, as he was
kept wholly for the cart, but rather than that the gentleman should be
distressed he would put the saddle on him;—he was surcharged the next
day for keeping a saddle-horse, as his reward. Can there be a more
convincing proof of the excellent police of England, and, what is still
better, of the admirable effect of well-executed laws upon the people,
than that such pests of society as these walk abroad among the very
people whom they oppress and insult, with perfect safety both by day and
by night!
Government do not seem to be aware that when they offer premiums for
treachery, they are corrupting the morals of the people, and thereby
weakening their own security. There is reason sufficient for pardoning a
criminal, who confesses his own guilt, and impeaches his accomplice; the
course of law could not go on without it, and such men are already
infamous. But no such plea can be alleged in this case: it is a
miserable excuse for encouraging informers, to say, that the taxes are
so clumsily laid on, that they can easily be eluded. A far worse
instance of this pernicious practice occurs in the system of pressing
men for the navy, which the English confess to be the opprobrium of
their country, while they regret it as inevitable. In the proclamation
issued upon these occasions, a reward is regularly offered to all
persons who will give information where a sailor has hidden himself.
The whole system of England, from highest to lowest, is, and has been,
one series of antagonisms; struggle—struggle—in every thing. Check and
countercheck is the principle of their constitution, which is the result
of centuries of contention between the Crown and the People. The
struggle between the Clergy and the Lawyers unfettered their lands from
feudal tenures. Their church is a half-and-half mixture of Catholicism
and Puritanism. These contests being over, it is now a trial between the
Government and the Subject, how the one can lay on taxes, and how the
other can elude them.
This spirit of contradiction is the character of the nation. They love
to be at war, but do not love to pay for their amusement; and now, that
they are at peace, they begin to complain that the newspapers are not
worth reading, and rail at the French as if they really wished to begin
again. There is not a people upon the earth who have a truer love for
their Royal Family than the English, yet they caricature them in the
most open and insolent manner. They boast of the freedom of the press,
yet as surely and systematically punish the author who publishes any
thing obnoxious, and the bookseller who sells it, as we in our country
should prevent the publication. They cry out against intolerance, and
burn down the houses of those whom they regard as heretics. They love
liberty; go to war with their neighbours, because they chose to become
republicans, and insist upon the right of enslaving the negroes. They
hate the French and ape all their fashions, ridicule their neologisms
and then naturalize them, laugh at their inventions and then adopt them,
cry out against their political measures and then imitate them; the levy
in mass, the telegraph, and the income-tax are all from France. And the
common people, not to be behind-hand with their betters in absurdity,
boast as heartily of the roast beef of Old England, as if they were not
obliged to be content themselves with bread and potatoes. Well may punch
be the favourite liquor of the English,—it is a truly emblematic
compound of contrarieties.
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LETTER XVII.