Spain, thank god, Spain!

Letter III

For me he spoils the mood at the opening of this letter by having an exasperated, unnecessary - and to be honest, quite snotty - crack at the British consul in Bayonne.  Apparently to get into Spain required a visa. (Who knew? It's the 1840s. I didn't know they'd invented visas. But the earliest example of the word in the Oxford English Dictionary is only 1831.)

Anyway, to cross the border required a visa from the consul - and it wasn't free. After a few heavily ironic remarks about the  self-importance of the entire consular class ("I have heard one, certainly far from being high on the list of these functionaries, termed...the 'Premier Consul') Nathaniel icily points out these jacks-in-office are still grubbing after your money. Well, probably not much money goes with consulling, he sniffs, .- though even if the income is limited "one is usually in a cheap place" (i.e., not Paris, not London, not anywhere a man of taste would wish to live.  No, consuls dwell in shitholes.)  Still, he reflects, it must be demeaning for such an august official to be under the obligation of "holding out his hand for his fee".  Fortunately Her Majesty's  consul in Bayonne has developed his own method of hitting on you.  He starts by elaborately regretting the necessity for such a stupid piece of paperwork - totally pointless, he'd memoed the Foreign Office about it himself - but quite indispensable, my dear sir, absolutely vital - could be turned back at the border without this! - and (significant look) to think it costs three francs, too! 

Three francs lighter and still resentful, Nathaniel is ready for Spain.  And suddenly, suddenly his mood is changing.  Everything is about to change.

"From the first view of Spanish ground, the monotony of the landscape ceases, and gives place to picturesque scenery.  This effect is as sudden as if produced by the whistle of a scene-shifter. From the brow of a hill the valley of the Bidassoa opens on the view, the bay on the right, two or three towns in the centre, and beyond them, stretching to the left, the chain of the Pyrenees.  This opening scene is very satisfactory to the newly arrived traveller, whose expectations have been rising towards fever-heat as he gradually neared the object of his dreams - the "renowned romantic land"..."

1823 view of the Valley of the Bidassoa

Fever-heat? The object of his dreams?  The renowned romantic land?  This doesn't sound like an objective trip to check medieval architecture. This is true love.

Vignette: Hot Chocolate at 3 a.m.

And now comes one of the little jewels of his book, brief and almost throwaway details about how he's travelling.  He's going by the public Diligence - from pictures, apparently a sort of long-bodied coach divided into small compartments, drawn by four horses - though the horses have been swapped for ten mules now they're in Spain. The daily schedule seems bizarre at first.  They start at 3 a.m., stop in the early afternoon, unwind for a couple of hours then eat a 'Homerically plentiful' supper, and then, maybe at only seven in the evening

"...all gradually retire to their sleeping apartments, where they are undisturbed until two o'clock in the morning.

At this hour each passenger is furnished with a candle, and requested to get up; and at a quarter to three the muchacha (chambermaid) reappears, bearing in her hand a plate, on which, after rubbing his eyes, the traveller may discover...an imperceptible cup, a xicara, - since having the thing, they have a name for it, which is of course untranslateable, - of excellent chocolate, an azucarillo (almost transparent sugar prepared for instantaneous melting), a glass of water, and a piece of bread.  After partaking of this agreeable refreshment, you have just time left to pay your bill, fold up your passport, which during the night has remained in the hands of the police, and to take your seat in the Diligence."

Right. I get the unusual hours, because we're in Spain and those mules can't travel in the torrid heat of the day.  The Diligence has to start early and journey through the cool hours before and after dawn. But I just love the glimpse of him woken at two, the meagre glow of a candle to dress by; then the knock on the door from the muchacha bearing his little mug of hot chocolate, the transparent azucarillo (I have a mental image of a sugar lump like an uncut diamond), the glass of cool water, the bread.  That bread must have been baked fresh close nearby.  It has not been transported in a refrigerated truck from somewhere in Belgium or France, it is local in a way bread may never be again. This Spain is gone, so far gone into the past: only through Nathaniel can you find your way there again. And look at the Spanish words creeping in, too, like magical incantations: muchacha, azucarillo, xicara.

It is because of this passage I now have a moderate hot chocolate habit, having researched how the Spanish make this drink, i.e. thick, dark and gloopy.