Leading the Blind

by Alan Sillitoe

  Hare notes that English doctors, ‘seldom acquainted with Mentone, are apt to recommend the Western Bay as more bracing, but it is exposed to mistral and dust, and its shabby suburbs have none of the beauty of the Eastern Bay’. That was the side I lived on for a year, whereas Katharine Mansfield, who stayed in Mentone for a few months during the First World War in the hope of ameliorating her tuberculosis, chose the area suggested by Hare, and died of her affliction.

  Dr D. W. Samways, in his Guide to Mentone, relates the following: ‘In one hotel was a young German lady, distinctly phthisical, who had lost a sister the previous year from the same malady. A young engineer also arrived, with indications of early pulmonary mischief. An American lady, somewhat seriously ill, completed the list of patients. After two winters in Mentone the German lady was sufficiently well to live in Berlin again, and later on I heard she had become engaged to be married. The engineer never needed to return, and I saw him in good health some years later. The American lady remained for several seasons in Mentone, but did not recover, though she considerably prolonged her life.’

  Some of those convalescents who took walks in the environs were given a warning by Murray in 1881: ‘A very general complaint has been made against visitors trespassing in the olive-grounds and vineyards, in search of flowers, by which damage to a considerable extent is inflicted on the peasantry.’

  Dr Bennet asks his readers not to pay children and donkey-women ‘for seeking and bringing them flowers’, but Murray has something more serious to say on the matter: ‘We may add that the depredations of strangers are not confined to flowers, but extend to lemons etc. Let them be made aware that the laws in France as to trespass are very stringent in such cases, the punishment extending to fine and imprisonment.’

  One may wonder what happens to those invalids who came to the Riviera and die, either in a hotel, or in a furnished apartment. On this matter Reynolds Ball informs us: ‘Any actual cost incurred by making good any damage caused by the illness and death in putting the bedroom into a proper sanitary condition – repapering, whitewashing, renewing curtains, etc., must of course be paid for by the representatives of the deceased.

  ‘But any charge for “moral damages” by way of indemnity for supposed loss of custom, can, and should, be resisted. Speaking generally, if a sum exceeding 500 fr. be demanded, legal advice should be sought with a view of resisting the claim, or, at all events, the advice of the nearest British Consul should be taken.’

  He cites the arrangements to be made at Montreux, in Switzerland, where ‘the proprietors have decided on a uniform tariff of charges for death occurring in any of the hotels of that town. A sliding scale has been adopted as follows: – For death from natural causes, the relatives of the deceased will pay from 200 to 300 francs; for a death due to a non-contagious disease, 300 to 400; while for a death resulting from a contagious disease, 400 to 500 francs.’

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  SUNNY SPAIN

  The first real guidebook to Spain in English, by Richard Ford, was published in 1845. Soon after his return from Italy in 1840 he was asked by John Murray to write the Hand-book for Travellers in Spain. The first edition, of eleven hundred pages in two thick volumes, weighs three pounds on my bathroom scales. Early travellers must have found it a work of literature as well as guidance, with all the quirks, prejudices and foibles of an English gentleman of that time. Solid good sense padded such matter out, as did accounts of Peninsular battles (the Peninsular War being still within living memory), accurate topographical description, historical anecdote, as well as informed opinions on Spanish life and people.

  Ford’s preface half-apologized for the length of his ‘handbook’: ‘In presenting these and other things of Spain, let not any occasional repetition be imputed to carelessness or tautology, for matter descriptive and critical more than sufficient to have made another volume, has been cancelled in order to economise space, already too confined for so large a subject. By repetition alone are impressions made and fixed; and as no hand-book is ever read through continually, each page should in some wise tell its own story; and when so many sites have witnessed similar events, the narrative and deductions cannot materially differ.’

  From the beginning he hopes to set our minds at rest, due to what he considers the many misrepresentations regarding Spain: ‘few … have been more systematically circulated than the dangers and difficulties which are there supposed to beset the traveller. This, the most romantic and peculiar country in Europe, may in reality be visited throughout its length and breadth with ease and safety, for travelling there is no worse than it was in France or Italy in 1814, before English example forced improvements.’

  The first difficulty, of course, is that of passports which, as he usually did about all that is fundamentally wrong in Spain, Ford blames on the French, who, ‘during their intrusive occupation, introduced the severe machinery of police and passports, and all those petty annoyances which impede the honest traveller, who, conscious of meaning no harm, is too apt to overlook forms and regulations, which the dishonest take especial care to observe, regulations which have neither name nor existence in England’.

  As for getting to Spain, a postscript to the preface informs the traveller: ‘By arrangements just concluded Madrid may now be reached in six days from London; the Peninsular Steamer from Southampton arrives at Corunna in about 72 hours, whence a Royal Mail coach runs to the capital in three days and a-half.’

  He remarks that the voyage offers many opportunities to lovers of sea views, though he is hardly reassuring to sufferers from seasickness. ‘No one who has never crossed the Bay of Biscay, where the storms seldom cease, can form any idea of what a sea is – those vast mountain-waves which roll unchecked and unbroken across the whole of the mighty Atlantic.’

  On landing at Cádiz the traveller will be inconvenienced by the tedious quarantine precautions, although: ‘It is carrying a joke some lengths, when the yellow cadaverous Spanish health officers suspect and inspect the ruddy-faced Britons, who hang over the packet gangway, bursting from a plethora of beef and good condition … The boatmen, who crowd to land passengers, rival in noise and rascality those of Naples. The common charge is a peseta per person; but they increase in their demands in proportion as the wind and waves arise …”

  A Spanish customs officer is likened to ‘a gentleman who pretends to examine baggage, in order to obtain money without the disgrace of begging, or the danger of robbing. They excuse themselves by necessity, which has no law; some allowance must be made for the rapacity of bribes which characterises too many Spanish empleados; their regular salaries, always inadequate, are generally in arrears, and they are forced to pay themselves by conniving at defrauding the government; this few scruple to do, as they know it to be an unjust one, and say that it can afford it; indeed, as all are offenders alike, the guilt of the offence is scarcely admitted. Where robbing and jobbing are the universal order of the day, one rogue keeps another in countenance, as one goitre does another in Switzerland.’

  After some advice on food and accommodation (the best hotel in Cádiz being run by an Englishman), Ford goes on: ‘None, however, going to make any lengthened stay should omit consulting Mr. Brackenbury, the consul, whose kindness and hospitality are hereditary and proverbial. His golden sherry deserves special notice.’ ‘Thank you, very much,’ Mr B. must often have said, after publication of this advice, speeding another thirsty visitor on his way.

  Behaviour, naturally, comes high on the list of Ford’s exposition: ‘It is incredible how popular an Englishman will become among Spaniards, if he will assimilate himself to their forms of society; a few bows are soon made, and the taking off of one’s hat, especially to ladies, in a fine climate, is no great hardship … The better rule is, on landing at Cádiz, to consider every stranger in a long-tailed coat to be a marquis, until you find him out to be a waiter, and even then no great harm is done, and you dine the quicker for the mistake. You are always on the safe side. When Spa
niards see an Englishman behaving to them as they do to him and to other gentlemen, from not expecting it, a reaction takes place. “I have met the Englishman; he is as perfect a gentleman as one of us.”’

  Setting off from Cadiz for other parts of the peninsula, it is a common mistake to suppose ‘that the Spanish highroads are bad; they are in general kept in good order. The war in the Peninsula tended to deteriorate their condition but the roads of the first class were so admirably constructed at the beginning, that, in spite of all the injuries of war and neglect, they may, as a whole, be pronounced superior to many of France. The roads of England have, indeed, latterly been rendered so excellent, and we are so apt to compare those of other nations with them, that we forget that fifty years ago Spain was much in advance in that and many other respects.’

  If you expect to be well lodged on the road you will be disappointed, the inns being not only bad, but often very bad, and even the best in the country are ‘only indifferent when compared to those to which Englishmen are accustomed at home, and have created on those high roads of the Continent which they most frequent.’

  Ford’s comments on inns continue for pages, many of the buildings having ‘at a distance quite the air of a gentleman’s mansion. Their white walls, towers, and often elegant elevations, glitter in the sun, gay and promising, while all within is dark, dirty, and dilapidated.’

  The traveller’s reception is hardly ever as he would wish: ‘… no one greets him; no obsequious landlord, bustling waiter, or simpering chambermaid, takes any notice of his arrival. He proceeds, unaided, to unload or unsaddle his beast …’

  As for which inn to choose at the end of the day: ‘The safe rule is to go to the one where the diligence puts up – The Coach Inn. We shall not be able often to give him the exact names of the posadas, nor is it requisite. The simple direction “Let us go to the inn,” will be enough in smaller towns; for the question is rather, Is there an inn, and where is it? than, Which is the best inn?’

  In spite of earlier reassurances about public security, the pages later devoted at length to the matter may well have caused a frisson of romantic alarm in the bosoms of many readers. Travelling with a baggage waggon is ‘of all others that which most exposes the party to be robbed’.

  When the caravan arrives in the small villages it attracts immediate notice, and if it gets wind that the travellers are foreigners, and still more English, they are supposed to be laden with gold and booty. In the villages near the inns there is seldom a lack of loiterers, who act as spies, and convey intelligence to their confederates; again, the bulk of the equipment, the noise and clatter of men and mules, is seen and heard from afar, by robbers who lurk in hiding-places or eminences, who are well provided with telescopes, besides with longer and sharper noses. The slow pace and impossibility of flight render the traveller an easy prey to well mounted horsemen. We do not wish to frighten our readers with much notice on Spanish robbers, being well assured that they are the exception, not the rule, in Spanish travel. It is not, however, to be denied that Spain is, of all countries in Europe, the one in which the ancient classical and once universal system of robbing on the highway exists the most unchained.

  First and foremost come the ‘ladrones’, the robbers on a great scale. These are the most formidable; and as they seldom attack any travellers except with overwhelming force, and under circumstances of ambuscade and surprise, where everything is in their favour, resistance is generally useless, and can only lead to fatal accidents; it is better to submit at once to the summons which will take no denial. Those who are provided with such a sum of money as the robbers think according to their class of life, that they ought to carry about them, are very rarely ill-used; a frank, confident, and good-humoured surrender generally not only prevents any bad treatment, but secures even civility during the disagreeable operation. The Spaniard is by nature high-bred and a ‘caballero’, and responds to any appeal to qualities of which his nation has reason to be proud; notwithstanding these moral securities, if only by way of making assurance doubly sure, an Englishman will do well when travelling in exposed districts to be provided with a bag containing fifty to one hundred dollars, which makes a handsome purse, feels heavy in the hand, and is that sort of amount which the Spanish brigand thinks a native of this proverbially rich country ought to have with him on his travels. The traveller should be particularly careful to have a watch of some kind, one with a gaudy gilt chain and seals is the best suited: not to have a watch of any kind exposes the traveller to more certain indignities than a scantily filled purse.

  Some consolation is intended by the remark that Spanish robbers may well think twice before attacking armed English travellers, ‘particularly if they appear on their guard. The robbers dislike fighting. They hate danger, from knowing what it is; they have no chivalrous courage, or abstract notions of fair play. They have also a peculiar dislike to English guns and gunpowder, which, in fact, both as arms and ammunition, are infinitely superior to the ruder Spanish weapons. Though three or four Englishmen have nothing to fear, yet where there are ladies it is always far better to be provided with an escort.’

  Travel was certainly slow, and indeed leisurely, for Ford tells us that to make a general tour of Spain ‘would be a work of much time and difficulty’, and ‘could scarcely be accomplished in under a year and a half; indeed we ourselves devoted three years to the task’.

  On the way to Seville we are told to beware of the inn rooms where, in summer, ‘legions of fleas breed in the mattings; the leaf of the oleander is often strewed as a preventive. Bugs, or French ladybirds, make bad beds resemble busy ant-hills, and the walls of ventas, where they especially lodge, are often stained with the marks of nocturnal combat, evincing the internecine guerrilla, waged against enemies who, if not exterminated, murder innocent sleep; were the bugs and fleas unanimous, they would eat up a Goliath, but fortunately, like true Iberians, they never pull together, and are conquered in detail … From these evils, however, the best houses in Seville are comparatively free.’

  Ford does not genuflect to any tenets of ‘political correctness’ – happily unformulated in his day – when dwelling on the character of the people in southern Spain. They are, he writes, ‘as impressionable as children, heedless of results, uncalculating of contingencies, passive victims to violent impulse, gay, clever, good humoured, and light-hearted, and the most subservient dupes of plausible nonsense. Tell them that their country is the most beautiful, themselves the finest, handsomest, bravest, the most civilized of mortals, and they may be led forthwith by the nose. Of all Spaniards the Andalucian is the greatest boaster; he brags chiefly of his courage and wealth. He ends in believing his own lie, and hence is always pleased with himself, with whom he is on the best of terms. His redeeming qualities are his kind and good manners, his lively, social turn, his ready wit and sparkle: he is ostentatious, and, as far as his limited means will allow, eager to show hospitality to the stranger, after the Spanish acceptation of that term, which has no English reference to the kitchen.’

  Ford goes on thus for some time, until his analysis takes on a more political, not to say racial, aspect: ‘If the people are sometimes cruel and ferocious when collected in numbers, we must remember that the blood of Africa boils in their veins; their fathers were the children of the Arab, whose arm is against every man; they have never had a chance given them – an iniquitous and long-continued system of misgovernment in church and state has tended to depress their good qualities and encourage their vices; the former, which are all their own, have flourished in spite of the depressing incubus. Can it be wondered that their armies should fly when every means of efficiency is wanting to the poor soldier, and when unworthy chiefs set the example? Is there no allowance to be made for their taking the law into their own hands, when they see the fountains of justice habitually corrupted? The world is not their friend, nor the world’s law; their lives, sinews, and little properties have never been respected by the powers that be, who have ever f
avoured the rich and strong, at the expense of the poor and weak; the people, therefore, from sad experience have no confidence in institutions, and when armed with power, and their blood on fire, can it be expected that they should not slake their great revenge?’

  Ford’s amusing sketch of a Spanish bookseller reads like a more inspired entry in modern-day Driff’s Guide to Second-Hand Bookdealers in Great Britain. In Spain such a character was a ‘queer uncomfortable person for an eager collector to fall foul of … He acts as if he were the author, or the collector, not the vendor of his books. He scarcely notices the stranger’s entrance; neither knows what books he had, or what he has not got; he has no catalogue, and will scarcely reach out his arm to take down any book which is pointed out; he never has anything which is published by another bookseller, and will not send for it for you, nor always even tell you where it may be had.’

  On the subject of Spanish painting, which he doesn’t think much of, Ford is strongly opposed to exporting them to hang ‘in the confined rooms of private English houses’. Nevertheless: ‘A Spanish Venus, at least on canvas, is yet a desideratum among amateurs. Those of Titian and Paduanino, which are in the royal collection of Madrid, blush unseen – they, with all other improper company of that sort, Ledas, Danaes, and so forth, were all lumped together, just as the naughty epigrams of Martial are collected in one appendix in well-intentioned editions; the peccant pictures were all consigned into an under-ground apartment, into which no one was admitted without an especial permission.’