British Romantic Travellers in Spain: Friends or Foes?

JOSÉ RUIZ MAS

Universidad de Granada

jrmas@ugr.es

Exultation of Nature, depicted as paradisiacal and sublime, as opposed to the decay of big cities, corrupted by the Industrial Revolution and overpopulation: unhygenic conditions of the humble layers of society, high level of mortality, abusing working conditions, including children and women; no education social turbulence

Romantic poets aspire to their individual freedom from all types of rules: literary experimentation and exultation of the poet’s creativity and power of imagination (expression of the poet’s intimate feelings, passion, eroticism)

Idealization of the Middle Ages in an escapist attitude from the harsh reality of industrialized England: Gothic fiction and ballads (folklore and chivalry)

The Romantics aspire to liberty and democracy (all men are born equal) against all types of tyrannical powers (Monarchy, the idle aristocracy, the Church and their privileges, foreign invaders, colonial powers, any type of injustice, etc): French Revolution, American Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars …

…. The Independence of the Spanish and Portuguese

colonies in South America, The Peninsular War, the Greek War of Independence, the first social revolts in England (the «Peterloo Massacre» in 1819), etc.

Growing importance of European Travel in the Romantic period: The educational Grand Tour of the upper classes in the 18th century and early 19th century had ignored Spain completely.

The rising of Orientalism and exoticism in English Romanticism - The poet S. T. Coleridge entertained fantasies of the luxurious east. His early masterpiece “Kubla Khan or, A Vision In a Dream: A Fragment”, was reputedly composed after an opium dream (i.e., “a mental journey to the East”) in 1797-8: 'In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree: Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea... A savage place! As holy and enchanted As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted By woman wailing for her demon-lover!...'

- Napoleon's Egyptian Campaign (1798-1801) led to the foundation of the new discipline of Egyptology, and transformed European knowledge of the middle east. A flood of Egyptian antiquities entered Europe. After contemplating a monumental head of the pharaoh Ramses II, the English poet P. B. Shelley wrote the sonnet “Ozymandias” (1818):

'I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read… And on the pedestal these words appear: "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!“

- British East India Company: Munghal architecture («Hindoo Style»): The Royal Pavilion (Brighton), Sezincote House (Gloucestershire). - Lord Byron toured the Levant (Greece, Turkey) before settling in Italy: Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1818). He also participated (and died) in the Greek War of Independence against the Ottoman Empire.

Romantic Orientalism

Spain is «discovered» in

Britain

The Peninsular War (1808-1814)

• Britain helps Spain and Portugal to fight Napoleon’s invasion of the Iberian Peninsula: The Duke of Wellington and his officers «discover» a brave people ready to fight for their freedom.

The leading British poets of the time (Walter Scott, William Wordsworth, Lord Byron, Felicia Hemans, Robert Southey, Thomas Moore, etc), praise

Spanish valour against Napoleon’s French army

And you, brave Iberians! oh! ever disdain

The sword of oppression and tyranny’s chain!

Be free, gallant Spaniards, or die!

For you, when surrounded by darkness and foes,

The day-spring of Freedom in radiance arose:

Tho’ shadows and clouds may obscure it awhile,

Oh! yet it may brighten, oh! yet it may smile,

And beam in meridian on high!

(Felicia Hemans, fragment from «The Call of Liberty»)

Lord Byron exiles himself from England: he travels in southern Europe and the Mediterranean: Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage and Don Juan. These best-sellers turn pre-industrialized Spain into a

fashionable country to visit.

Awake, ye sons of Spain! awake! advance!

Lo! Chivalry, your ancient goddess, cries;

But wields not, as of old, her thirsty lance,

Nor shakes her crimson plumage in the skies:

Now on the smoke of blazing bolts she flies,

And speaks, in thunder through yon engine’s roar:

In every peal she calls – «Awake! arise!»

Say, is her voice more feeble than of yore,

When her war-song was heard on Andalusia’s shore?

(Lord Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Canto I, stanza 37)

…But Spain’s artistic heritage had also been «discovered»!

a) Europe’s Protestant disdain for Spain throughout the 17th and 18th centuries (the «Black Legend of Spain» and Spanish political decadence) had kept Spanish artists away from international artistic circles: their works were thought to be almost exclusively religious (=Catholic) and therefore the infamous product of the Inquisition! Velázquez, Murillo, Zurbarán, El Greco, etc, were unknown outside Spain.

b) Taking advantage of the chaos of the Peninsular War, British and French army chiefs (the Duke of Wellington, Marshall Nicolas de Sault, King Joseph I, etc), officers and the soldiery loot Spanish museums, palaces, mansions, convents, monasteries, churches, cathedrals… in search of Spanish treasures to take to their countries.

c) After the Peninsular War British and French consuls, ambassadors, travellers and art collectors come to Spain to «admire» the newly discovered art and to buy Spanish paintings for ridiculously cheap prices, especially after the 1830s, when the Church properties are expropriated and sold to pay for the country’s debts. The destination of these art masterpieces is private collections and European museums.

Artists most sought by British and French collectors: Velázquez, El Greco, Murillo, Zurbarán, Ribera, Goya, Alonso Cano, etc. Spanish art is the fashion in 19th-century-Europe now. “Opportunities to purchase works of art arose during the first half of the 19th century that were probably without parallel in Spanish history.” (Nigel Glendinning, 1929-2013)

“We are all crazy here about pictures, buying and selling [“the grand chasse”]. By the time Mæcenas [Frank Hall] Standish and that eminent connoisseur, Captain [Samuel E.] Cook arrive, the market [in Seville] will be cleaned out. Sir William Eden is muy pegajoso and bizarre. I did not suspect that he was such an amateur and collector.” (Richard Ford, from a letter to his friend the British ambassador Henry Unwin Addington, 1830)

“Great changes have taken place in the political world of Spain since my departure; the friars have been driven from their convents, and their effects sold. All the paintings of the province [of Seville] are to be collected, and the best reserved to form a museum, the others are destined to the hammer.” (Frank Hall Standish, The Shores of the Mediterranean, 1837-38)

Velázquez

National Gallery, London

Velázquez, The Wallace Collection

Velázquez, Duke of Wellington’s private collection

El Greco in British museums: National Gallery, Scotland’s National Gallery, The Bowes Museum, Upton House, Glasgow Museum

Spain (=Andalusia) is also «discovered» as a nearby and acceptably safe «Oriental» destination!

- Spain is seen as a semi-barbarian unindustrialised country, but it is at least

«civilized» enough to guarantee the safety of Anglophone travellers.

- Gibraltar is next to Andalusia, in case British travellers feel «unsafe» or «homesick» for their English ways.

- Spain can be «easily» accessed by steamboat (Gibraltar, Málaga, Cádiz), by river navigation (The Guadalquivir in Sevilla), through Portugal and even through the Pyrenees (through more uncomfortable stagecoaches). Spain is much nearer to Britain than Africa and Asia.

- In the Anglophone cosmology, Oriental (=Arabic) architecture represents the counterpoint of Catholic (=Gothic) architecture: The Alhambra is idealized as the perfect epitome of Orientalism in Europe.

- The Alhambra becomes an inspiration for writers, artists and architects.

- The Alhambra is «abandoned» enough by Spanish authorities as to serve as «romantic» accomodation and to allow its expoliation.

The Alhambra in English literature: Washington Irving (1783-1859)

• (Tales) of the Alhambra (1832)

The Alhambra in art: John Frederick Lewis, Sir David Wilkie, David Roberts, Harriet Ford, George Vivian, etc

James Cavanah Murphy (1760-1814)

• Arabian Antiquities in Spain (1813-16): over 100 plates of the

Great Mosque of Córdoba and the Alhambra of Granada.

Owen Jones (1809-1874) • Plans, Elevations, Sections and Details of the Alhambra (1836-45) and The

Grammar of Ornament (1856)

Owen Jones’s influence in English architecture

• The Great Exhibition (1851)

• The Crystal Palace at Sydenham (1854)

The negative side of English Orientalism: the expoliation of the Alhambra (I)

The negative side of English Orientalism: the expoliation of the Alhambra (II)

English travel accounts on Spain

- They contribute to the making of Spain into an «appealing» country to visit, a «European ‘other’»: pre-industrialised Spain is seen as a virginal destination to explore, a country full of «romantic» characters and adventurous situations.

- Spanish characters and situations: bandits/brigands

(bandoleros), gipsies (gitanos), smugglers (contrabandistas), guerrillas (guerrilleros), Carlists (carlistas), beggars (mendigos), carmens (the Carmen prototype), don quixotes (Don Quijote), sanchos (Sancho Panza), bullfighters (toreros), donjuans (Don Juan prototypes), friars (frailes), stagecoaches (diligencias), inns (ventas/posadas), bullfights (corridas), etc.

A constant flood of English travel accounts on Spain… Michael Quin (A Visit to Spain, 1823) Henry David Inglis (Spain in 1830, 1831) Alexander Sliddell MacKenzie (A Year in Spain, 1831; Spain Revisited, 1836) (Am.) Washington Irving (Tales of the Alhambra, 1832) (Am.) Captain S. E. Cook/Widdrington (Sketches in Spain, 1834) Thomas Roscoe (The Tourist in Spain, 1835) Frank Hall Standish (The Shores of the Mediiterranean, 1837) George Dennis (A Summer in Andalusia, 1839) George Borrow (The Bible in Spain, 1844) Richard Ford (A Handbook of Travellers in Spain, and Readers at Home, 1845; Gatherings from Spain, 1846) Lady Louise Tenison (Castile and Andalusia, 1853)

Cayley, George John (The Bridle Roads of Spain or Las Alforjas, 1853) …ETC

MAJOS AND MAJAS

BANDITS/BRIGANDS

GYPSIES

SMUGGLERS

BEGGARS

CARMENS

DON QUIXOTES AND SANCHOS

BULLFIGHTERS

DONJUANS: «PELANDO LA PAVA»

PRIESTS, FRIARS AND THE INQUISITION

STAGECOACHES

INNS

BULLFIGHTS

BANDITS IN ACTION

FLAMENCO

FIESTA

La Gloria: A Spanish Wake (John Phillip)

The decadence of English travel literature on Spain in the 19th century

From the 1850s onwards Spain gradually loses her Romantic appeal due to the deployment of the railway and the founding of the Spanish Civil Guard (1844). The disappearance of chronic banditry and smuggling makes commerce and industry flow more easily in the country, thus favouring prosperity: Spain is becoming “modern” and its industrial progress no longer attracts the «adventurous traveller» but the «comfortable tourist» who prefers to use the train to the primitive stagecoaches. However, English travel books still insist on depicting Spain as a land of adventure and romanticism, full of bandits (when there are hardly any). But “pseudo-romantic” Spain still “sells” in Britain and America at the end of the 19th century.

Railways and Civil Guards: The Spoilsports of Romantic Spain