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The Art of
Immutable
Architecture
Theory and Practice of Data Management
in Distributed Systems
—
Michael L. Perry
The Art of Immutable
Architecture
Theory and Practice of Data
Management in Distributed Systems
Michael L. Perry
The Art of Immutable Architecture: Theory and Practice of Data Management in
Distributed Systems
Michael L. Perry
Allen, TX, USA
Introduction������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������xxi
Part I: Definition���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 1
Chapter 1: Why Immutable Architecture������������������������������������������������������������������ 3
The Immutability Solution������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 3
The Problems with Immutability��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 4
Begin a New Journey�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 4
The Fallacies of Distributed Computing���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 5
The Network Is Not Reliable���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 6
Latency Is Not Zero������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 6
Topology Doesn’t Change�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 7
Changing Assumptions������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 8
Immutability Changes Everything������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 9
Shared Mutable State�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 9
Structural Sharing����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 10
The Two Generals’ Problem��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 12
A Prearranged Protocol��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 14
Reducing the Uncertainty������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 15
An Additional Message���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 16
Proof of Impossibility������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 17
Relaxing Constraints������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 18
Redefining the Problem��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 19
Decide and Act���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 20
v
Table of Contents
vi
Table of Contents
vii
Table of Contents
viii
Table of Contents
ix
Table of Contents
x
Table of Contents
xi
Table of Contents
xii
Table of Contents
Relationships���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 326
Inserting Successors����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 327
Optional Predecessors��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 328
Many Predecessors������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 328
Queries�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 332
Joins������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 333
Correlated Subqueries��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 333
Derived Tables��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 334
Selecting Results����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 336
Optimization������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 337
Spurious Joins��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 338
Covering Indexes����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 339
Where Not Exists����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 340
Integration��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 344
Legacy Application Integration�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 344
Reporting Databases����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 347
Application-Agnostic Stores������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 348
A Generic Fact Table������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 349
Predecessor Relationships�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 350
Versioning���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 352
xiii
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Index��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 405
xiv
About the Author
Michael L. Perry has built upon the works of
mathematicians such as Bertrand Meyer, Leslie Lamport,
and Donald Knuth to develop a mathematical system for
software development. He has captured this system in a set
of open source projects. Michael often presents on math
and software at events and online. You can find out more at
qedcode.com.
xv
About the Technical Reviewer
Carsten Thomsen is a back-end developer primarily
but working with smaller front-end bits as well. He has
authored and reviewed a number of books and created
numerous Microsoft Learning courses, all to do with
software development. He works as freelancer/contractor
in various countries in Europe, using Azure, Visual Studio,
Azure DevOps, and GitHub as some of the tools he works
with. Being an exceptional troubleshooter, asking the
right questions, including the less logical ones, in a most
logical to least logical fashion, he also enjoys working with
architecture, research, analysis, development, testing, and bug fixing. He is a very good
communicator with great mentoring and team lead skills and great skills in researching
and presenting new material.
xvii
Acknowledgments
As Tolkien reminds us, it's dangerous business going out your door. The first step onto
the road that has led to this book being in your hands was a shaky one. I was building my
first distributed system and making all of the rookie mistakes. Fortunately, I had good
friends to make those mistakes with.
Thank you, Russell Elledge and Jerry Feris, for fumbling alongside me. Together, we
the Three Amigos learned all the wrong ways to use TCP/IP and SOAP. Who knew that
the three-way handshake was not sufficient to guarantee delivery?
Although those first attempts were rough, we started to figure things out. Russell has
been my constant co-conspirator, sounding board, and critic throughout this journey. I
need to thank you also for introducing me to Chris Gould, who gave us both the freedom
to apply what we had learned since that fateful first attempt. His support enabled us to
build just the right solution on a mathematically sound foundation. It was the success of
that project that gave me the final confirmation that these concepts can be taught.
A huge thank you goes out to Sean Whitesell for years of support, encouragement,
and discussion. You always ask the best questions. Just as importantly, you are skilled at
bringing people together. Thank you for building the community that helped me practice
communicating the ideas that ended up in this book. And thank you especially for
making the final connection to get this project started.
It was also Sean who introduced me to Floyd May. Floyd, you are such a deep thinker
in technology, interpersonal relationships, and business. You have challenged me to
become a better communicator. I cannot wait to see where your feet sweep you off to.
To all of my friends at Improving: Cori Drew, Harold Pulcher, Barry Forrest, Ben
Kennedy, David Vibbert, David Belcher, David O'Hara...all the Daves. We have grown
so much together. I remember the first time I met each of you, and all of the things we
learned since then. Thanks especially to Tim Rayburn for helping me grow as a speaker,
as an Improver, and as a leader. And please don't tell Devlin Liles that I think he's the
most brilliant person in the company. I don't think I could stand him if he knew.
xix
Acknowledgments
A special thanks to Joan Murray at Apress for believing in this project and Jill Balzano
for seeing me through my first publishing experience. And thanks to Carsten Thomsen
for the feedback full of improvements and encouragement. You all made this process the
most fun I've had doing the most difficult job.
And finally, my most sincere gratitude to my family. Dad, you inspired me to build
software. You provided not only the Apple II and IBM that saw me through high school
but also the introduction to the first person I saw making a living doing what I love. You
kept the Nibble and Byte magazines coming in to quench my thirst and eventually to
inspire me to write about what I've learned. I am the man I am because of you.
To Jenny. You have always believed in me. You are my partner and my reason.
And Kaela. You make me proud. I am so happy we finished this project together.
The road goes ever on and on.
xx
Introduction
It was 2001. I joined a team using J2EE version 1.3 to build a distributed gift card
processor. The point of sale system was written in Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0. We were
just learning about this new thing called SOAP, the Simple Object Access Protocol. The
running joke was that it was too ill defined to be called a protocol, that it was not about
accessing objects, and it was anything but simple. But it did hold some promise for
making a C++ client talk to a Java server.
We all added three new books to our libraries. The first was on implementing a SOAP
client in C++. The second was on JAXP, the Java API for XML Processing. And the third
detailed the operation and limitations of TCP/IP. Armed with these tools, we began to
build.
At first, the challenge was just to get the two platforms to talk to each other. When we
finally settled on a subset of SOAP that both sides could handle, we thought we were over
the hump. Little did we know that on the other side lay mountains.
There were reliability problems with the network. We set up a lab that continually
ran transactions every night. We would check the card balances in the morning to find
that some machines would have the wrong total. That led to a day of digging through
logs, setting up the next test run, and then leaving it going until morning.
Over time, we evolved a message exchange protocol (over SOAP) based on
confirmations and acknowledgments. One side sent a message. The next morning, we
found messages missing. So next, the recipient confirmed that the message arrived. The
next morning, we found duplicates. And so the sender acknowledged the confirmation.
Fewer missing messages, but still not perfect.
It took many failed releases and many years of busy holiday seasons to work through
all of the problems. We learned about the Two Generals’ Problem (TGP) and realized
why our message exchange protocol was flawed. Then we learned about eventual
consistency and designed a working solution. This solution required that there be
some uncertainty about how much money was left on a gift card. We tried to have that
conversation with the product owner. Bankers get eventual consistency of money. Our
product owner was not a banker.
xxi
Introduction
The lessons we learned from gift cards were learned the hard way. “Guaranteed
delivery” does not mean what you think it means. You need to first move data, then
process it. Remote procedure calls (RPCs) aren’t procedure calls. There is no line of
code in a client–server system before which the transaction rolls back and after which it
commits. I didn’t want to learn those lessons over and over again.
And so I started putting those lessons together and defining a system that I called
Historical Modeling. It was based on the idea that historical facts cannot be modified
or destroyed. It relied upon the predecessor/successor relationships among facts. And
it identified facts based only on their content, not on their location. I filled a notebook
with examples of historical models. Eventually, I gained an intuitive feel for which kinds
of solutions could be modeled historically and which could not. That’s when I knew that
I had to share it. Hopefully I could save someone else the pain of learning these lessons
the hard way.
Since then, I have had countless conversations about immutable architectures. I
broke the topic down into digestible chunks for conference and user group talks. I have
created two open source frameworks—Correspondence and Jinaga. Yet none of that has
truly empowered others to begin practicing immutability themselves. It can’t just be
adopted in pieces. Taking on only a subset of the ideas leaves gaps that can only be filled
with the rest of the system.
Which lead to the book that you are now holding. This is a complete treatment of
the system, the patterns, and the techniques. It anticipates the problems that Historical
Modeling creates and provides the solutions that enable a cohesive implementation.
Most importantly, it presents the mathematical foundation that makes the technique
work.
If you have read this far into the introduction, you have probably faced some of these
same problems. You might even have come up with similar solutions. This leaves only a
few more questions you probably have about this book. Who should read it? What will I
get out of it? How is it organized? And how do I go about reading it?
Glad you asked.
xxii
Introduction
analyst. There are some problems that you can outsource, some that you can buy
solutions for, and some that define your core business value. You need to find just the
right team to build solutions to problems of this third kind. To find them, you need to be
able to talk to them. And once you’ve brought them on board, you need to understand
what they are doing. If your core business problem looks like the kind of thing that can
be solved with an immutable architecture, this book will help you build that team and
have those conversations.
Or perhaps you are a system builder. You are a member of the team brought in to
deliver value against a core business domain. Your title might be developer, QA engineer,
or user experience designer. You know how to solve problems. But it would be great
to have some ready-made solutions to the most common problems of distributed
computing. You want to know that all of the edge cases are accounted for. You desire
a common language to talk about solutions with the people who are helping you
build them. If your software development challenges require constructing eventually
consistent distributed systems, then this book will give you those tools.
Finally, you—like me—might be a tool crafter. You are a force multiplier. The things
that you build empower others to build solutions more quickly, more predictably, and
more effectively. You might be a solutions architect or an open source maintainer. If you
have a team, you want them focused on delivering business value while you take care
of the plumbing. If you serve the community, you want consumers to be able to quickly
learn and apply your framework to build robust systems. In either case, this book lays out
the mathematics, algorithms, and patterns that assure the correctness of your solutions.
xxiii
Introduction
Testing is all about gathering empirical evidence. It only gives you confidence that
the system behaves as expected in certain cases. It does not give you any assurance that
you haven’t missed something.
Knowing requires mathematical deduction. If something is proven mathematically,
then you can be sure that it will be true no matter what test case you try. Pythagoras is
true for any right triangle. Euclid holds up for all figures on the plane. If your reasoning is
sound, you can be sure that you haven’t missed any edge cases.
It’s not that mathematical truths are universal. It’s that they come with known
limitations. Division only works for nonzero divisors. Pythagoras only holds on the
plane. The rules of deduction tell us how to carry those boundaries through to the
solution, so that we know precisely where that solution applies and where it doesn’t.
This book applies mathematical rigor to the problem of distributed computing.
It is not the first to do so, but it does provide a complete and practical solution. If you
follow the deductive reasoning over the problem and carry the limitations of distributed
systems through your calculations, you will end up with an understanding of the
boundaries of the solution. This book is your guide through that process.
How It Is Organized
The book is roughly divided into three parts, analogous to the three primary audiences.
Decision makers need only read the first part, which includes the first three chapters. In
this part, you first learn why immutability is so important. Then you explore the space of
alternatives, eventually landing on Historical Modeling. Finally, you learn how to read a
Historical Model so that you can communicate more effectively with your team. You can
stop reading when we get into some deep math.
System builders will want to continue on to the second part. This includes Chapters
4 through 8. We get neck deep in the mathematical foundations of immutability,
causality, and conflict-free replicated data types (CRDTs). Then we see how to apply this
mathematical reasoning to analyzing systems, building state machines, and enforcing
security rules. These are the tools that you will need to build robust distributed systems.
We round out this section with a catalog of basic patterns to get you started building
historical models.
My people, the tool crafters, will want to read right through to the end. In the third
part, we take apart the components of a computer system and discover how to use
them in an immutable architecture. We will update the user interface using query
xxiv
Introduction
inverters. We will store immutable records in a relational database. And we will exchange
immutable messages securely and reliably over different kinds of networks. In the end,
we pull it all together and describe an ecosystem made up of collaborative applications
generating emergent behavior from shared specifications. It’s something truly beautiful
and inspiring, and I hope you follow me to the end.
How to Read It
Now that you know this is a math book, you might have some reservations about how
you are going to read it. Perhaps you struggled through algebra or dropped out of
calculus. You might think that math is not for you.
It is my belief that math is for everyone. And it is my goal with this book to prove
it. Mathematics is nothing more than applying logical reasoning over symbolic
representations of abstract concepts. Programming, on the other hand, is applying
logical operations to a symbolic language describing generic rules. In other words, they
are the same thing. If you are a programmer, then you are an applied mathematician.
One problem with mathematics is the jargon. In order to efficiently communicate
with each other, mathematicians have to come up with words to represent ideas.
Unfortunately, natural language is limited, and all of the good words are taken. And
so mathematicians either make up new words or use terms that almost mean the right
thing. In this book, we will be talking about the properties of a join semilattice. But I will
try not to use those words if I can avoid them. And if I can’t avoid them, I will clearly
define them.
Another problem with mathematics is how it is written. Math papers have a
predictable form. They start with an abstract. Then they fully define the problem. What
follows is section after section of lemmas and propositions building an argument. Every
statement is justified by the statements before, until finally, like an M. Night Shyamalan
plot twist, one final assertion puts the whole argument into perspective and the result
emerges.
While I really enjoy a good math paper, I don’t read them the way that they are
written. I skim the first few paragraphs for the motivation behind the problem. I scan the
headings for the outline of the argument. I want to know why each statement is proven
and how it will contribute to the whole. I want to know how the story is going to play out
before I invest the time in understanding it.
xxv
Introduction
I wrote this book the way that I read a math paper. In each section, you will
understand the motivation behind a certain result. Then you will see a sketch of the
basic reasoning. There will be no mystery why each of the steps is there. Then the section
will justify each of those steps with the rigor they require.
I fully anticipate that this will impact the way you read the book. If you are after
results, you can read just a paragraph or two past the section header. If you want to know
why or how, then continue a bit further to understand the argument. And if you need to
be convinced, then finish out the whole section. The important thing is that you can stop
reading whenever it gets too deep and skip to the next section. You won’t miss anything
important to you.
If you have read this section without skipping anything, then I am truly pleased to
have you. You are one of my people. With your help, we can build the software that the
world needs. We will make it reliable, efficient, and correct. And it will give our users the
autonomy they need to do their jobs with creativity and confidence, knowing that we
have provided the mathematical rigor.
xxvi
PART I
Definition
CHAPTER 1
Why Immutable
Architecture
Distributed systems are hard.
Most of us have used a website to buy a product. You might have seen a purchase
page that contains a warning do not click submit twice! Maybe you’ve used a site that
simply disables the buy button after you click it. The authors of that site have run up
against one of the hard problems of distributed systems and did not know how to solve
it. They abdicated the responsibility of preventing duplicate charges to the consumer.
Maybe you’ve used a mobile application on a train. The train enters a tunnel just as
you save some data. The mobile app spins for a few seconds before you realize that you
are in a race. Will the train leave the tunnel before the app gives up? Will the app correct
itself once the connection is reestablished? Or will you lose your data and have to enter it
again?
If you are involved in the creation of distributed systems, you are expected to find,
fix, and prevent these kinds of bugs. If you are in QA, it is your job to imagine all of the
possible scenarios and then replicate them in the lab. If you are in development, you
need to code for all of the various exceptions and race conditions. And if you are in
architecture, you are responsible for cutting the Gordian Knot of possible failures and
mitigations. This is the fragile process by which we build the systems that run our society.
3
© Michael L. Perry 2020
M. L. Perry, The Art of Immutable Architecture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-5955-9_1
Chapter 1 Why Immutable Architecture
This book explores a different process for building distributed systems. Rather than
connecting programs together and testing away the defects, this approach starts with
a fundamental representation of the business problem that spans machines. And this
fundamental representation is immutable.
On its face, immutability is a simple concept. Write down some data, and ensure
that it never changes. It can never be modified, updated, or deleted. It is indelible.
Immutability solves the problem of distributed systems for one simple reason: every
copy of an immutable object is just as good as any other copy. As long as things never
change, keeping distant copies in sync is a trivial problem.
4
Chapter 1 Why Immutable Architecture
• Latency is zero.
• Bandwidth is infinite.
Although it has been years since that list was written, many of these assumptions
continue to be common. I can recall on several occasions being surprised that a program
that worked flawlessly on localhost failed quickly when deployed to a test environment.
The program contained hidden assumptions that the network was reliable, that latency
was zero, and that the topology doesn’t change. Here are examples of just these three.
5
Chapter 1 Why Immutable Architecture
6
Discovering Diverse Content Through
Random Scribd Documents
one day would take me to Falmouth, and six to Cadiz to the society of the
fair Brackybrigas, and another day per steamer to the dark-eyed Sevillanas.
Howbeit I have done with that bird-lime to the human race, viscarium
Diaboli, as old St. Ambrose has it.
Exeter, March 15, 1834.
I sent Head a sample of my wares, to see if the article would do for the
public. He is a learned, dry antiquarian; that is not exactly my line. You
wish me to write an entertaining book (how easy!!), bagatella, with
anecdotes on men and manners. Mores multorum vidit et urbes! A lady
wished for scenery and sentiment. Heigho! true lovers’ knots and
moonlight. I should wish to make a sort of Puchero, an olla Andaluça, a
little dry vacca à la Cook (that cocinero has just turned out two volumes
which I have sent for), a little chorizo [sausage] and jamon de las
Alfujarras, with some good pepper, salsa [sauce] de Zandunga.
Where you could most assist me would be in a droll account of life at
Aranjuez or la Granja, which I never saw. I am strong in Religion (you did
not know that), Arts, and all except the Literature; but I have an excellent
Spanish library, and could in six weeks write such an essay on the matter as
would appear to be the result of a greater acquaintance with their authors
than I have. I have, indeed, turned over a good many pages in Spain, but it
has been odd out-of-the-way reading.
If you feel up to this task, it will be a very, very great obligation, and will
keep my book correct, and, I hope, cut out all that is offensive. I hope not to
insert anything on politics, which I neither like nor understand. I must wait
and see Captain Cook’s book. It will be heavy and correct; no taste, much
industry (the plates ought to be wood blocks): it will be very ligneous, no
pyroligneous acid—as stiff and bolt-upright as a mainmast. I do not see any
possibility of getting the book done before next spring; it will take a year to
write. I care not for Captain Heaphy, who will sail over the surface in an
ice-boat. Captain Cook will go down pondere suo.
It is a serious matter; but I have leisure, and nothing to do. This place is
delicious: such a climate! such clotted cream! and an excellent public
Library with all good books of reference.
Exeter, March 26, 1834.
You should look at Captain Cook’s book (Sketches in Spain: Boone,
Bond Street), dry, painstaking and accurate, better than I had expected by
far. He understands the people better than the pictures. There he breaks
down lamentably. But he is without taste, and does not know a Murillo from
a mainmast. You will see a splendid sentence on old Ferdinand’s patronage
of the Arts in giving the pictures to the Museum. I have always heard that it
was the deed of the Portuguesa and the Ms. de Santa Cruz, who was Major
duomo. The D. of [?] told me that he and Santa Cruz spent days in
rummaging them out. Ferdinand had sent them to the Devil to make room
for some new French paper.
Exeter, April 20, 1834.
I enclose you a batch of MSS. which will remind you of the despatches
of Mark.
The greatest act of real friendship you can show me is by not scrupling
to use your pencil as freely as a surgeon would his knife, when he really
thought the patient’s recovery required it. I write in haste always, and am
more troubled to restrain and keep in matter, than for want of it.
I want the book to run easy, to read easy, to be light and pleasant, not dry
and pedantic. I get on but slowly, and do not see land. I feel the matter grow
upon my hands in proportion as I get on. It is like travelling in the Asturias;
when you get up one mountain, you see five or six higher before you.
However, the coast is clear, and that able circumnavigator, Cook, will be
drier than the Mummy of Cheops before my sheets will be dampt for
printing.
Do not forget to throw into an omnium-gatherum any odd remarks about
Madrid. If you get a copybook, when any stray dyspeptic observation
occurs, book it, and I will work it up, as a gipsy does the stolen children of
a gentleman, so that the parent shall not recognise it.
Addington’s criticism was in some respects discouraging. His diplomatic
caution was probably alarmed at Ford’s outspoken vigour, and he does not
seem to have read enough between the lines to recognise Ford’s real love
for Spain and the Spanish people. Ford’s reply shows his surprise at the
impression which he had produced on Addington.
Sunday Evening, Exeter, May 4, 1834.
Your letter has knocked the breath out of my body, the ink out of my
pen, the pen out of my hand. You have settled my cacoethes. I had no idea I
was anything but a friend to the Spaniards. I do not think them brave, or
romantic, but with many super-excellent qualities, all of which I should
have duly praised. You cut out my wit! Head cuts out my poetry! and I shall
cut the concern. What is to be done? I can’t write like Cook; I really wish to
take in a very wide haul, and have very great materials. Religion must come
in, or the Arts must go out. Politics and Poetry I care nothing for. Wit (if
there is any),—it is not wit but a trick of stringing words together, and I
cannot write a common letter, or say anything, without falling into these
sort of absurdities. It would not be my book, if it was not so. I have a horror
of flippancy. That is what I fear most, and am most likely to run into. There
you may carbonado me, and I will kiss the rod. If you read the MSS., do not
spare your pencil, and I will make great sacrifices to please you. Remember
you only see an excursion. My early chapters on Seville will be historical,
prosaical, and artistical.
I should like you to read Faure or Bory St. Vincent,[43] and see how they
handle the Spaniards,—or some of the older works. Mine is milk and water
to Napier. I always thought you prejudiced against the Spaniards rather than
in their favour, poor innocents! All about the grandees at Madrid, if you
have stumbled on that, I will cut out with pleasure. At the same time, if you
don’t agree in the book, I cannot be so right as I imagined, and had better
have nothing to do with the concern, but read other people’s works instead
of their reading mine.
I have not the presumption to suppose my opinion to be worth yours in
many important subjects. On some I think it is,—the lighter and more
frivolous. I am a humble-minded author, as Head will tell you, very docile,
and not at all irritable. I care not how much you cut out, as I have written
for four volumes, and would rather write two.
We will talk over the matter when I come to town, which will be soon.
Meanwhile, read the MSS., and cut away. Spare not my pungency, and
correct my mistakes. Cut out all that is flippant, personal, or offensive (the
grandees, I admit, is both). Remember you have only the rough sketch. I
have two years before me, and the lean kine of reflection will eat up the fat
ones of the overflowing of young conceit and inexperience. I wish to write
an amusing, instructive, and, more than all, a gentlemanlike book. I hold
myself lucky that you and Head see it, and will abide by your dictations,
and kiss the rod and your hand.
But the discouragement was not great enough to divert Ford from his
enterprise. The criticism did not cool his friendship. He was eager to
persuade Addington to settle near him, and once more sings the praises of
Exeter.
Exeter, Saturday evening, 14 June, 1834.
Now that the show is over, and all the caps and gowns, stars and garters
no more, I venture to indite you an epistle from the green fields of Devon;
right pleasing and fresh are they after the dusty treadmill of la Corte. There
are houses of all sorts from £50 a year to £250; one at that price is beautiful
and fit for a Plenipo. (I have not fixed on anything myself, having been
chiefly in bed with an infernal urticaria, alias a nettle-rash.) The women,
God be praised! are very ugly. Meat at 6d. a pound, butter seldom making
1s.; I am told in the London Buttometer it reaches 18d. A Mr. Radford, who
has a place to sell, has one gardener, who looks after two acres and three
horses, all for a matter of £15 or so a year. Servants go twice to church of a
Sunday, and masters read family prayers, and make them work their bodies
like galley slaves, per contra the benefit conferred on their souls.
The town is pueblo levitico de hidalguia y algo aficionado a la Iglesia y
al Rey absoluto; otherwise quiet and literary: clergymen, physicians,
colonels, plain £1000-a-year folk, given to talk about quarter sessions and
the new road bill (if you will allow them). Otherwise a man goes quietly
down hill here, oblitus et obliviscendus, reads his books (or those of the
Institution), goes to church, and gets rich, which is very pleasurable and a
novel feeling—better than the romance of youth.
Once more the manuscript passed to and fro between the friends. But a
new and absorbing interest for a time diverted Ford’s energies from
literature. In the late summer of 1834 he bought an Elizabethan cottage,
called Heavitree House, near Exeter, standing in about twelve acres of land.
Here he gradually rebuilt and enlarged the house, laid out the ground in
terraces and gardens with Moorish-patterned flower borders, and planted
pines from the Pincian and cypresses from the Xenil. The first mention of
the purchase, in his correspondence with Addington, occurs in a letter
written from Oxford, September 13th, 1834.
I am wandering (he says) inter Academiæ silvas, to my great delight,
poring over old books in the Bodleian, and copying barge-boards and gable-
ends, in order to ruin myself as expeditiously as possible at Heavitree.
Within and without, as time went on, he made the house and gardens
express his varied tastes. Old houses in and about Exeter furnished many of
the treasures which enriched his home. Thus the fireplace in the hall came
from an ancient house pulled down in Rack Street; the gates, the staircase,
much of the panelling and carved woodwork were brought from “King
John’s Tavern.” The cornice of the bathroom had once adorned the Casa
Sanchez in the Alhambra; the old Register chest from Exeter Cathedral
formed the case of the bath. Here, too, he stored his curious library and
exhibited many of the spoils of his foreign travels—pictures, etchings,
engravings, and specimens of Majolica ware.
For the moment books were laid aside for building and gardening. His
letters are filled with his new pleasure. In April 1835 the house began to be
habitable, although he is still “ashamed of it as in presenti; there are beds
but no kitchen,” and “it will hardly hold the accumulation of books. I am
sighing,” he adds, “to drink the sweet waters of the Nile; and when my
book is written, when my house is built, and when I am ruined, shall go and
economise in hundred-gated Thebes.” Writing April 16th, 1834, he says:
The move from Southernhay to Heavitree was accomplished in three
most sunny days. All the books and other traps duly conveyed into Myrtle
Bower to the tune of a triple bob major of the village bells. I have already
begun digging, and moving plants; to-morrow comes my man of mortar to
plan the kitchen. My pink thorn will be out in a month: quite a nosegay. You
can’t think how snug my upper drawing-room looks, now it is full of books,
ormolu, drawings, etc. I expect to see you here very shortly, as London
must be detestable now O’Connell rules the land.
The work of destruction (he writes a week later) proceeds as rapidly as
Dr. Bowring or Lord Johnico could desire. The removal of the cob has let in
a flood of light and a side view over my extensive landed estate. A part is
preserved, overmantled with ancient ivy (the harbour of slugs, black-
beetles, and earwigs), which is to be converted into a Moorish ruin, and
tricked out with veritable azulejo from the Alhambra. The myrtles only
want an Andalucian muchacha to be shrubs worthy of Venus. The
foundations of the kitchen will be laid on a rock on Monday next.
Meanwhile my cook roasts meat admirably with a nail and a string.
I have no vote, or I would go ten miles on foot to record my contempt
for that aristocratical prig, that levelling lordling.
I have given up the pen for the hoe and spade, all a-delving and digging.
I hope, however, in a week or so, that the obra will be so far planned and
definitely arranged as to send me back to my old books, which I find the
best and surest of resources.
For one brief interval Ford was swept from his garden into the
excitement of political life. On April 8th, 1835, Sir Robert Peel and his
colleagues resigned office over the question of the Irish Church and Irish
Tithes. Under Lord Melbourne a new Government was formed, in which
Lord John Russell, as Home Secretary, was a member of the Cabinet.
Ministers offered themselves for re-election, and Lord John found his seat
in South Devonshire threatened by Mr. Parker. The contest was keenly
fought, excitement ran high, but in the end Mr. Parker won by twenty-seven
votes, and Lord John eventually found a seat at Stroud.
Heavitree House, May 3 [1835], Friday Evening.
We had a drenching rain this morning; it had not rained for many weeks
(it seldom rains except when testy gentlemen come down in July), but just
when Lord Johnny came forward, the heavens poured forth their phials by
buckets. The little man, “the widow’s mite,” could not be heard for the
sweet acclamations of “O’Connell,” “The tail,” “Cut it short,” “Here’s the
Bishop coming.” At every sentence was a chorus, “That’s a new lie.” All
Devon was assembled. The Parker mob very noisy and violent, but all
yeomen and substantial farmers. Johnny’s crew a sad set, hired at 2/6ᵈ per
man. He was supported by Lord Ebrington and Dr. Bowring.
Bulteel proposed Johnny; seconded by Lillifant, a sort of a methodist, a
member of the temperance society, which occasioned much fun and cries of
“Heavy wet,” “Brandy.” Parker (a dandy-looking youth) was proposed in a
loud, bold, and successful speech by Baldwin Fulford, Jr., and seconded in a
quieter and gentlemanlike manner by Stafford Northcote (fils, the
Wykehamist). By this time I was so wet that I made off for Heavitree, and
found my myrtles just washed by a shower, etc.
I dined yesterday with all the Rads, and sat next to Dr. Bowring. They do
not seem over-confident. The Conservatives say that Parker has a numerical
majority, as far as promises go, of 700. They say the Rads are spending
money by sackfuls in inducing Parkerites not to vote at all.
I dined the other day with Episcopus, who made grateful mention of
your Excellency, and rejoices in the prospect of your arrival. So you are in
for it, and have nothing to do but to give me notice, when my niggar shall
stand at the Ship in Heavitree to conduct you to my house. It is in a rare
state of external mortarification; but the interior is tolerable, and there is
ample accommodation for man and beast, master and man, or nags, and
plenty of wholesome food for the mind and body.
For the next eighteen months there are but few allusions in Ford’s letters
to his literary plans, and still fewer to politics. Heavitree was the absorbing
occupation of his life.
“Since you have been gone” (he writes to Addington, June 21st, 1833),
“I have laid the axe to the foot of the trees, and have cut down some twenty
apples in my orchard, which has let in a great deal of light and sun, and
rejoiced the green grass below. The weather delicious; thermometer 79 in
the shade. I sit under my drooping elm and cock up my head when I read
the works of Socrates, Plato, and Lady Morgan.
“ ‘Les deux tiers de ma vie sont écoulés. Pourquoi m’inquieter sur ce qui
m’en reste? La plus brillante fortune ne mérite point les tourments que l’on
se donne. Le meilleur de tous les biens, s’il y a des biens, c’est le repos, la
retraite, et un endroit qui soit sa domaine.’ There’s a black cat for your
Excellency to swallow!”
Beyond his cob walls Ford scarcely cared, even in mind, to travel. But in
the affairs of his friends he was still deeply interested, and especially in the
marriages of Lord King and of Addington. On July 8th, 1835, Lord King
(cr. 1838 Earl of Lovelace) was married to Augusta Ada, only daughter of
Byron.
“The Baron’s bride” (he writes in June) “will be worthy of himself in
name and fortune. I guessed who she was by his sighs and unpremeditated
discoveries. La Bruyère says, ‘In friendship a secret is confided; in love il
nous échappe.’ Viva el Amor!”
A few days later Ford returns to the subject:
‘Ada! sole daughter of my house and heart!’ From the Baron’s account
she must be perfection, such a perfection as her father’s fancy and fine
phrenzy rolling would have imagined. She is highly simple, hateth the city
and gay world, and will not be likely to turn up her nose at you and me, the
respectable aged friends of her lord.
I believe the Baron has all the elements of domestic felicity in his
composition, and it will go hard even if he did not make a good wife out of
bad materials. But when the prima materia is worthy of himself, we must
expect a scion worthy of the descendants of Locke and Byron, the union of
philosophical esteem with poetic ardour.
The book does not progress as much as the chimneys. I never go beyond
my cob walls, have never been out fishing, and probably never shall until
you reappear in these regions.
Little more than a year later, Ford was writing to congratulate Addington
on his engagement.
Heavitree, October 13, 1836.
Dear Addington,
You are right. From 20 to 40 a man takes a wife, as a mistress; and
sometimes makes a mistake, gets tired, and wants to change horses. From
40 to 50 (sometimes 55) a man hugs a spouse to his bosom, for comfort and
sweet companionship. When the hopes of youth, the heyday of manhood,
the recklessness of health and prosperity are waning,—when he begins to
know how few things answer, and how hard it is to depend on one’s own
resources to pass well through the long day and longer night,—then it is not
good to be alone. You have felt that, and have now chosen the right
moment. Your wild oats are sown, a good crop of experience reaped, and
you have found (and there is no mistake) that the solitary, selfish system
won’t do.
Happy, thrice happy are you to be able to bind yourself in those golden
threads, woven by friendship, esteem and love! For love, a sine quâ non,
must be tempered to become durable. Felix quem faciunt aliena pericula
cautum.
You will find, after having had your own way so long, how much more it
tends to peace of mind to give up and be nicely managed and taken care of.
You may amuse yourself with the superintendence of your cellar, and keep
a bottle of Valdepeñas for those old friends who may occasionally drop in,
and twaddle about that fair land peopled by devils incarnate, male and
female.
I have no news. I am content to dig in my garden; like Candide, il faut
cultiver son jardin—an innocent, refreshing occupation, which gives health
to the body, peace to the mind, oblivion for the past, hopes for the future;—
to do no more harm, if possible, and as much good,—to bury resentments
and cultivate peace and goodwill, read my Bible and mind my purse, and
thank my stars that matters are no worse.
The Elizabethan apartment is finished and furnished. Esta casa esta muy
a la disposicion de V.E. y de mi Señora (cuyos pies beso) la Esposa de V.E. I
beg you will speak kindly of me to your fair bride, as I am anxious to stand
well in her opinion. I have had the good fortune hitherto to have lost neither
of two old friends who have recently married.
If your Reading plan fails, there are really some very nice places within
5 and 8 miles of Exon, cheap and delightful. You can make the place your
headquarters, if you have a fancy to look for habitations amid the green
valleys of Devon.
So, with the best and sincerest wishes for the unmixed and long
happiness of Bride and Bridegroom, and it can hardly fail to be so, believe
me,
Ever most truly yours,
Richard Ford.
Addington was married on November 17th, 1836, to Eleanor Anne,
eldest daughter of T. G. Bucknall Estcourt, M.P. Meanwhile Heavitree
rapidly approached completion. Three weeks later Ford announces
(December 9th, 1836) that his house was ready. “Heavitree,” he says, “is
finished and furnished, and really is a little gem in its way. The Episcopus
has been to dine here, and, as he dines nowhere, it is rather an honour and
has infused an odour of sanctity over my cell.”
It is not perhaps singular, after so long a devotion to building, that the
first article which Ford contributed to the Quarterly Review should have
been dedicated to “Cob Walls.” The substance of the article seems from the
following letter (February 27th, 1837) to have been a paper read before the
Exeter Athenæum. Among the audience was William Nassau Senior, whose
praise led Lockhart to ask to publish it in the Quarterly.
Cob, depend upon it, is indestructible. I am about next week to read a
learned paper on that very subject at the Athenæum, which I will send you,
with a chapter on Spanish Comedy.
The house at Heavitree is now in really a very habitable state, and the
gardens beginning to put on their spring livery. I was heartily glad to get out
of that plague-stricken, foggy, heart-and-soul-withering city of London,
where I was detained more than a month by the illness of my boy, who is
still far from well and unable to return to his tutor. I am occupied in the
parental task of teaching him chess and the Greek alphabet. I saw very few
of our mutual friends in London, as I was, like the rest of mankind, under
the lowering influenza.
I have no news here,—leading a humdrum life amid my flowers and
books, with a clean tongue and dirty hands, oblitus et obliviscendus.
Ford’s article on “Cob Walls” well illustrates his literary methods. The
mass of miscellaneous learning, which is concentrated on an unpromising
subject, is so humorously handled as to be entirely free from pedantry. He
traces the use of the material from the time of Cain to that of modern
peasants in France and Spain, from the walls of Babylon to the white
villages of Andalusia. Finally he hazards the bold speculation that it was
introduced into the West of England by Phœnician traders. But, interspersed
with doubtful theories and historical and classical lore, are clear directions
and practical rules for the composition and employment of a material which
is almost indestructible, if it is protected from damp above and below, or
has, to quote the Devonshire saying, a good hat and a pair of shoes.
Encouraged by his success, Ford was already engaged on other literary
subjects, when his work was interrupted by the death of his wife, who had
long been in delicate health. The news is communicated to Addington in the
following letter:—
Monday [15 May, 1837], 123, Park Street [London].
You will be sadly shocked with the melancholy import of this letter;
indeed I am so overwhelmed that I hardly know how to express myself. My
poor wife died yesterday morning! She, as you know, never was well, and
latterly has suffered from excruciating headaches which deprived her
entirely of rest. Last Sunday week she was seized
with a sort of paralysis of the brain and loss of speech. She remained a few
days sensible and recognising those who came into the room; but on Friday
all consciousness was gone, and she yesterday morning at quarter past 9
breathed her last. I am dreadfully afflicted.
CHAPTER VI
(1837-1845)
Literary Work—Engagement and Second Marriage—Articles in
the Quarterly Review—Preparations for a Tour on the Continent
—Promise to Write the Handbook for Travellers in Spain—Delays
and Interruptions—George Borrow—Reviews of the Zincali and
the Bible in Spain—Suppression of the First Edition of the
Handbook—Final Publication—The Felicidade.
By his wife’s death Ford was left with the sole care of the two daughters
and the son, who alone survived out of the six children born to them. He
continued to live on at Heavitree, planning improvements in his house and
garden, busy with his books and pen. During the first few months of 1837
he contributed two articles to the Quarterly Review.[44] He also published
his first independent work, An Historical Inquiry into the Unchangeable
Character of a War in Spain, in which he made a lively, vigorous reply,
from a Tory point of view, to a pamphlet written in defence of Lord
Palmerston’s attitude towards Spain, The Policy of England towards Spain.
As usual, his work was submitted to Addington for criticism.
In your miserable days of celibacy (he writes to his friend in May 1837)
you waded through much of my MSS. Now I only trouble you with print, as
you have less time to devote to those solitary occupations. I send you the
proofs of a review on Pückler Muskau. Will you skim it over, and send it
back per twopenny post? If you object to anything, or can add a barb or
sting to any critical fish-hook, do so.
You will see “Cob” in the last number of the Quarterly. Viva Don
Carlos!
Addington’s criticisms were gratefully received, and his suggestions
generally adopted. But Ford could not, if he had wished, write otherwise
than he was. He had the good sense to know, and not to attempt, the
impossible.
Many thanks for your valuable critical emendations, which have been
duly and thankfully introduced. I fear my liberal education and foreign
travel will never enable me to spell either my own or any other language.
You can form no idea how very difficult it is for a hasty, currente calamo,
slipshod writer like me to form a critical, sober, proper style. That stile is
always in my way, as it is in the country; I shall never, I fear, change my old
into the new stile, nor get my writing stile, stilus, sufficiently pointed,
although whetted on so excellent a bone as your Excellency is. You are
quite qualified to be the Editor of the Quarterly Review, and I wish you
were, for I wonder Lockhart overlooks the manifest flaws you detect.
I am by no means averse to the limæ labor, and am really anxious to turn
out my wares in a workmanlike manner; I often take more pains with them
than you or my readers will give me credit for.
Between July 1837 and April 1838 Ford contributed nothing to the
Review. Beyond putting the final touches to articles already prepared for the
press, his pen was idle. He had become engaged to a lady whom he had
known intimately for several years, the Hon. Eliza Cranstoun, sister of the
tenth Lord Cranstoun. On October 7th, 1837, he writes of his engagement to
Addington:
As the affair has been the unceasing nine days’ wonder of this part of the
world, it is no longer a secret, and has been duly communicated to Lord
Essex. Therefore you may participate to the fair partner of your joys the
important secret so long concealed in the diplomatic depths of your silent
bosom, “un secreto de importanza.” I hope in due time that these ladies will
meet, and like each other, and be equally of opinion, that no men make such
excellent, super-excellent husbands as those who have lived in the world,
been in Spain, and not been there for three or four years.
Be assured that there is no truth in my selling my Alhambra. My Sultana,
who disposes of me, and my house, and all, is pleased with the idea of
leading a loving, rational, quiet life there. The Moorish tower is finished,
and covered with arabesque Lienzo work, and is prettier than the Puerta del
Vino of the Alhambra.
The marriage took place February 24th, 1838, and Mr. and Mrs. Ford
began life together at Heavitree.
Heavitree, March 6, 1838.
Your kind and friendly letter (as all indeed have been and are) was duly
and gratefully received by me, and dutifully communicated to that sweet
person in whose keeping I have placed myself and my happiness, and,
having done so, my perturbed spirit is at rest. This ceremony took place on
the 24th, at Stoke Gabriel, a beautiful little hamlet in one of those quiet
sequestered nooks on the Dart, where the woods slope into the clear waters,
a locality dulces qui suadet amores. She was very nervous and affected, but
went through the trying scene with that purity, grace, and propriety which
mark all she says or does. I was nervous, but very collected, and think few
men were more aware than I was, how much and entirely the future
depends on the husband. I am not afraid of myself, and less of her. We
returned to Sandridge, and in the afternoon proceeded quietly to this quiet
cell, gladdened with the sunny presence of a cheerful, contented mistress.
She is highly pleased with her abode and (I am pleased to say) with the
master. All is placed at her disposicion. Indeed, since you were here so
much has been done, internally and externally, that you would not know the
place. I am in hopes, now there is a fit personage to receive her, that some
day die gnädige Frau Gesandterrinn (C.P.B.) will honour this (her) house.
The Moorish trellis-walk and the tower are worth seeing. We are expecting
Lord Cranstoun here to-day, and King on the 10th. Strange that he should
come to witness my hymeneals, as we did his. We shall then proceed
reluctantly to London. I have got rid of my house in Jermyn Street at a sad
loss of coin, but a great gain of peace. I am still hampered with the Casita
in Lowndes Street, where my children are. I hope this year to get rid of that,
and then to pitch my tent here, far from the opes strepitumque Romæ. I am
going to build a small Britzka, and have bought another nag, which goes
well in harness with my old horse, you will remember. Madame rides well,
and has a beautiful horse which her brother has given her. We think of
driving up to town, and be not therefore surprised at an intimation that we
may take you in the way for a night. I will present you to my spouse, and
you will do me the same service by yours, to whom I in anticipation offer
my profound respects. I meditate an article on Spanish Heraldry and on
Bull-fighting. So farewell. Cherish your spouse, and think no more of the
past nor las tierras calientes.
The two articles to which Ford alludes at the close of the letter were
published before the end of the year. Both were full of curious information
gleaned from a wide field. The article on “Bull Fights” is remarkably
complete and exhaustive, and is especially interesting from the personal
observation which lightens the historical details. Before publication it had
been submitted to Addington for criticism.
Heavitree, Aug. 16, 1838.
Many thanks for your tororesque notices. I have finished the paper,—
opus exegi,—having worked incessantly for a fortnight five or six hours a
day. The MSS. goes up with this to the printer’s. I have begged him to send
you a proof: will you be so kind as to run it over, and forward it here per
mail quam primum? Never mind correcting the press, except the Spanish.
The article is long, and I am not afraid of your Excellency’s shears, and
will gladly avail myself of any proposed excisions or additions. Any word
or idea more pungent than my poor thoughts might be pencilled in the
margin. The article is extremely learned and tororesque. I think the old
subject is treated newly. I hope Murray will treat me to £36 15s., as gaunt
poverty flits about my gilded ceiling. I wish you could see the dining-room,
all blue, red, yellow, and green à la Mamhead, very gay and brilliant.
Madame is quite well and happy, and salutes your dimidium vitæ animæque.
We are going next week for a few days to Sandridge, a place of her
brother’s. I shall then hurry back to correct the press. I intend summing up
with a few general remarks on the moral tendency and effect on Spanish
character produced by the bull-fight. If you have ever philosophically
cogitated thereon, favour me with a few “ ’ints.” My idea is that the
Spaniards were cruel and ferocious before they had bull-fights; that bull-
fights are rather an effect than a cause, albeit they reciprocate now; that the
savage part is lost on them from early habit; that the sporting feeling
predominates; and that strangers are hardly fair judges, for they feel first
excitement, then bore, then disgust; bore the predominant. Still, the whole
is magnificent, though the details (like Paris) are miserable. I should like to
have a neat peroration, and am going to meditate on the subject in those
shady groves which hang over the clear Dart, where we as bachelors used to
toil and catch no fish, and where I caught that fish which has swallowed up
all others and all my cares besides.
Spanish Bull-feasts and Bull-fights created something of a sensation in
the literary world. It was noticed with high praise in the journals of the
time, and Ford writes to thank Addington for an extract which he had
himself overlooked.
Heavitree, December 5 [1838].
The critique is so palatable, that I beg you will not think I wrote it
myself. Pray, as you will be in franking-land, let me know whence you
extracted it. I am delighted. I want people to think that I could, if I wished,
write a d—d, long, dry, serious essay, which they would not read. The
political pepper flavours the Puchero, and it is exactly that that makes
Lockhart write to me that all the world cries “Bravo!”
I am buttered by Murray, and considered a man of deep research. Dii
boni! and people regret that I “should persifler, and amuse, instead of
boring.”
Ford had undertaken a review of Prescott’s Ferdinand and Isabella, “an
admirable book,” he tells Addington, “the best book ever written by a
Yankee.” But he found the task difficult. On February 9th, 1839, he writes
to Addington from his mother’s house in London:—
Your letter followed me to this foggy, careworn abode of attorneys, and
men who sow tares in the corn of human happiness. I have been up here
nearly three weeks, to my infinite worry and the fret of an absent and
disconsolate spouse, about mortgages and the devil knows what of my own
and my mother. I hope to get back again to my pleasant house et placens
uxor before the end of next week.
All these breaks interfere sadly with literary pursuits. The rolling stone
gathers no moss. Prescott, promised half a year ago, is not yet begun! In
fact, I blink, bolt, shy and jib from the task. Meanwhile, to keep my pen in,
I have written a lightish article on Ronda and Granada, which looks well in
print, and will come out in the next number, and Prescott in the June
number.
I have read Gurwood attentively, which took six weeks, and never were
six weeks better employed. Murray tells me that the Duke cut out as much
more as would have made six more volumes. What a pity! But they will be
printed when that great man is gone. Serus in cœlum redeat!
Do you know that I am up in the market, and that my articles are thought
No. 1, Letter A,—clear grit? I am fed by those who usually feed lions, and
curious people are asked to meet me. This is not unamusing. I have seen
“Sam Slick” (Haliburton); Scrope, who wrote that charming book on Deer
Stalking; Jones of the Alhambra, Marryat, etc., and I do not know who.
Murray feeds well, and his claret is particular; “Bulls” £36 15s.; so my
papers rise in value. Lockhart’s Ballads are to be republished, and I rather
think that I am to edit them. All this looks like turning author. Who would
have thought it? and to have a character for most profound reading and
research! Dii boni!
I met a friend of yours yesterday at Lockhart’s—Mr. Best: we had a
pleasant dinner; Scrope and Lord Selkirk, great shooters and fishers, whose
healthy exploits gave a game flavour to the blue men around them. If I
remained here, neither head, nor legs, nor entrañas could do their work. It is
all very well now and then. But oh rus! quando te aspiciam? Not but what,
if I had £5000 a year, I would spend three months in this metropolis to rub
off rust, keep up acquaintances, and hear the news up to Saturday night.
Six weeks later he was still engaged on his task. He writes from
Heavitree, April 2nd, 1839:—
I have been occupied, since my return to these myrtle bowers, in a
review on Prescott’s Ferdinand and Isabella. I ought to have done it long
ago; but I deferred and deferred. Mañana, mañana! I find it a tougher job
than I had expected, and almost think that I have undertaken a task for
which I am unfit. However, stultorum numerus est infinitus, and I presume
on people knowing less than myself. It will be a mighty dull, learned, and
historical affair.
I am not very well, as I cannot sleep. I never can when I write, and
believe you are right to hunt and fish, the original délassement of a
gentleman.
At last Ferdinand and Isabella was finished and published. The article
deals more with the subject than with the book. It is, however, important
from the new lights which it throws upon the period, drawn from the
writer’s intimate knowledge, not only of the history, but of the country and
the people. Some trace of effort appears in the unusual elaboration. But
another article which was printed in the same number of the Quarterly was
in Ford’s most characteristic vein. This was a review of Oliver Twist. In a
letter dated April 29th, 1839, he had asked Addington’s opinion of Dickens’
style, and given his own view. “I am inclined to think it,” he says, “the
reaction from the Silver Fork school and the Rosa Matildas, ‘car le dégoût
du beau amène le goût du singulier.’ ” He also regarded the book as a
product and a sign of democratic times. Both the literary and political
theories are developed in the Quarterly, where he describes “Boz” as “a
lively half-bred colt of great promise, bone and action,—sire, ‘Constantine
the Great,’—dam, ‘Reform.’ ”
“Constantine the Great” is Constantine Henry Phipps, first Marquis of
Normanby, and the most distinguished of the “prattling scribbling
Phippses.” His kid-glove novels and romances, founded on actual
occurrences in society, tickled the curiosity of the public. Newspapers still
further pandered to the same taste; “Perry and Stewart led the way by
chronicling and posting the dinners, wooings, and marriages of high life.”
But a diet of water gruel palled, and the patient “clamoured for beef and
stout.” Sickened of the “smooth confectionery style,” “disgusted with die-
away divorcées and effeminate man-milliners,” the public fled in despair to
“rude, rough, human, ‘Dusty-Bob’ nature.” Such was Ford’s explanation of
the appearance of Oliver Twist. As a Tory, and an Irish mortgagee, he was
no doubt pleased to treat the author of Matilda, and Yes or No as one of
these “Catilines in politics and literature” who had helped forward “a
depraved taste” and “the degradation of the higher classes, whether
monarchical, clerical, or aristocratical.” Not only had Lord Normanby
changed sides and deserted the Tories for the Liberals, but, as Lord
Lieutenant of Ireland (1835-39), his attempt to conciliate O’Connell, his
patronage of the Catholic Party, and his leniency towards political crime,
had, in the opinion of his opponents, endangered the very existence of law
and order. Politics apart, the review shows a keen appreciation of the genius
and faults of Dickens. It concludes with a just tribute to the haunting power
of George Cruikshank, for whom Ford demands admission to the rank of a
Royal Academician: “We are really surprised that such judges as Wilkie,
Landseer, Leslie, Allan, etc., have not ere now insisted on breaking through
all puny laws, and giving this man of undoubted genius a diploma.”
The last months of the year were spent in preparations for a tour abroad.
Addington and his wife were also going, and were to meet the Fords at
Rome.
Many thanks (writes Ford, August 4th, 1839) for all your valuable hints.
I rather incline to cross over from Weymouth to Cherbourg, or, if not so,
from Southampton to Jersey and St. Malo. As I intend to go through the
south, it will be autant de gagné sur la belle France. I take it we shall have
bad inns between St. Malo and Toulouse. No hay atajo sin trabajo [no
convenience without inconvenience]. We shall follow your steps with due
respect, and, I hope, meet in the Eternal City.
I progress greatly in design, and am washing in skies which are heavier
than lead. I reckon on your portable library and beg to tell you that I take
Shakespeare, Burton’s Rome, and Conder’s Italy, which will always be á la
disposicion de V.E. y de mi Señora la Esposa de V.E. (C.P.B.)
I have just bought a charming Britzka here which was made at Vienna,
and shall therefore jog down with all my traps, pictorial and piscatorial. I
am sorry that you do not take your rod and line. How little room they will
take! and quien sabe? Who knows what trout spring in Terni’s fall? I never
was so agog for migration, and intend to go the whole Continental hog.
You will have the pleasure of seeing your old friend Sir Richard Ottley at
Naples,—he who asked us to dine at 5 to meet the Miss Barings. We will
not dine with him at Naples, be his macaroni royal. His daughter has turned
Roman Catholic: so much for taking imaginative maidens into the glowing
climes of Italian Abates.
We have been all gaieties here. The great squires have been giving
déjeuners, with archery and pine-apples, under tents. We will eat polpette,
drink Orvieto in the Eternal City, and grow young and forget years and care.
Ford returned from the Continent in July 1840. Of his travels no account
exists, as he journeyed in company with Addington, who alone preserved
his letters. But he writes, September 7th, 1840, to welcome his friend back
to England from “the land of macaroni and sour crout.”
Did you (he asks) get a letter from me at Milan? It contained an account
of my Sicilian trip and of our hurried flight home. We drove through France
as hard as four horses could go, and crossed from Havre on the 14th of July
—nine months to a day.
Meanwhile we are slowly recovering from the vast scarifications and
bleedings of Italia cum Gallia. I am afraid to look at all the items; I should
like to see your sum total. N’importe! It was a gallant trip, and shed a flood
of new light and sources of future reading, writing, and drawing on one’s
mind.
When you were in Rome I asked you to lend me your Minaño,
diccionario de España. I am going to do a handbook for Spain for Murray,
and we have not been able to get a Minaño in London. I will take the
greatest care of it, and send you an early copy of the book when written and
when published—when!!—for your fee. Will you pack
it up and send it me per coach? I hope to do the little book before February.
The Handbook for Travellers in Spain, here first mentioned, seems to
have been undertaken almost in jest. In 1839, when Ford was dining with
John Murray, the publisher, his host asked him to recommend a man to
write a Spanish guide-book. “I will do it myself,” replied Ford, and thought
no more on the subject. But, after his return from abroad, Murray definitely
asked him to write the book. His estimate of the time necessary to complete
the work proved far too moderate. Instead of six months, the myrtle and
ivy-clad garden-house at Heavitree, to which he retired as a study, was for
nearly five years the scene of his labours. Week after week he sat at his inky
deal table, clad in his Spanish jacket of black sheepskin, surrounded by
shelves laden with parchment-clad folios and quartos, by pigeon-holes
crammed with notes to repletion, and by piles of manuscript which
gradually encumbered the chairs and floor. Here he entertained his visitors
with his book-rarities, and poured forth his complaints, half serious, half
humorous, of the slavery to which he had condemned himself.
In spite of its modest title, the Handbook is really a most entertaining
encyclopedia of Spanish history and antiquities, religion and art, life and
manners. But the slavery might have been less protracted if it had been
mitigated by fewer distractions. Nor had Ford acquired the habit of
prolonged labour on a lengthy subject. Review writing had encouraged him
in the short bursts of literary industry, concentrated on a comparatively
restricted field, which were most congenial to his natural tastes and
character. No doubt, as time went on, and as he realised the magnitude of
his task, he grew heartily weary of the Handbook. But it may be doubted
whether the form is not the best that, under the circumstances, he could
have chosen. At all events, no trace of effort appears in the lively vivacious
style which communicated to the reader a prodigious mass of information in
the easiest possible manner.
More than two months passed before the book was begun. Even then it
was interrupted by other literary work.
Heavitree, 13 September, 1840.
The Minaños are duly arrived, and to-morrow will leave this library for a
den in a cottage here in my garden, where I am going to retire and compose
Handbook. What a mass of matter the said Minaño contains, and how will it
be simmered down into a gallipot guide-book?
I have no news yet of the macaroni; but it is in London. Let me know
how you feel as to sharing in the rotuli. There is no delicacy in refusing, if
the taste be swamped by eating German sour crout, as there are more
amateurs for that article hereabouts than for Rafaello ware. By the way, I
could indeed turn one honest penny by those pots and plates, having been
offered guineas for what cost scudi, and having weeded my collection very
nearly to the amount of the prime cost. The marbles are still in the agents’
custody, as I have nowhere to put them here. But buying what one does not
want is the veritable malaria of the Via Babuino.
The weather is so delicious that I have not the heart to begin work. I take
a lesson every day in drawing, and am going through the whole of my
sketches, which then will be put in a huge book. It is wonderful, as in the
case of Spain, how they carry you back to scenes long forgotten, and
awaken a million events hived in the brain, which, like dewdrops on the
boughs, only fall when touched! There’s a go!
I don’t wonder at the contending elements that are now fermenting in
your noddle. They will all settle down into a delicious elixir to sweeten
future existence, and make cheerful the domestic fireside when a lull comes
—which will happen, and indeed ought to happen, as we can’t be always
living on cayenne and lollypops.
November 6, 1840.
I assure you I have been so scared about war, and the exposed site of
Heavitree between Exmouth and Exeter, that I have been meditating
moving up land my Wilsons and roba fina. However, I think the storm is
clearing away. Vive Louis Philippe!
While you are hunting of foxes, I am going to hunt through Minaño. I
begin Spanish Handbook next week.
Wednesday, November 18, 1840.
The Minaños frighten me, like the great Genius did the Arabian
fisherman. How am I to get this mass into the small pot or duodecimo
handbook?
Handbook lingers. I have made no progress, and am tempted to give it
up. I am all for the sublime and beautiful, sententious and sesquipedalian. I
can’t cool my style to the tone of a way-bill.
Gradually the work shaped itself in his mind and in print.
“Part of Handbook” (he writes, January 14th, 1841) “is gone to press.” “I
am meditating” (he says, February 16th, 1841) “a serious go at the
Handbook, and have got about forty pages of preliminary remarks in print,
which I am told are amusing. I have written them off like a letter, sermone
pedestri, without, however, forgetting the ajo y cibolla [garlic and onion].”
On March 26th, 1841, the first batch was sent to Addington.
“I send you a few sheets of Handbook. If your eyes will permit you to
run through it, pray correct any error or make any suggestion. I have done
about fifty pages (letterpress) more. The object I have is to combine
learning with facetiousness, utile dulci.”
April 11, 1841.
The print is damnable, and what is worse is the enormous quantity it
takes to a page. All this preliminary part, which will run to two hundred
pages, is an after-thought of mine. Murray only bargained for distances and
mere lionizing. It appears to me that the traveller in a Venta will thank me
for an amusing bit of reading. How often have I cursed Starke[45] for the
contrary, and I hope to give a true insight into Spanish manners.
May 4, 1841.
I have already expunged the bits that you objected to, and the sheets read
all the better for it. I grieve deeply that the print is so execrable. But you
cannot tell what a service your sound censorship is. I write currente calamo
in a sort of slip-slap-and-shod style both as to matter and language. It comes
boiling over like a soda-water bottle, and I cannot help it. I daresay that, if I
had more time, I should make it worse, as it would be more laboured.
November 3, 1841.
I am not so bigoted a Carlist as to think all reform a wilderness. But my
antiquarian, artistical and romantic predilections make me grieve at seeing
barbarous destructives overturning in an hour the works of ages of taste and
magnificence. This age can only destroy: witness cheap, compo churches
versus cathedrals.
I am getting very slowly on. But I hope it may be done by May or June. I
intend in a short preface to allude to the “state of transition” of the moment.
But some things are fixed—country, ruins, battlefields, history of the past.
All that can be pointed out. I am only afraid it will be too good.
November 18, 1841.
I am sick of Handbook. I meditate bringing out the first volume, the
preliminary and the most difficult, early next spring. It is nearly completed.
It is a series of essays, and has plagued me to death. The next volume will
be more mechanical and matter-of-fact—what Murray wanted; and I am an
ass for my pains. I have been throwing pearly articles into the trough of a
road-book. However, there will be stuff in it.
Weary of the Handbook, Ford turned from it with relief to a subject after
his own heart. In 1841 George Borrow published his Zincali; or an Account
of the Gypsies in Spain. Interested both in the writer and his work, his own
mind absorbed in Spanish life, Ford laid aside the Handbook to write an
article on the book, which he had himself recommended to Murray for
publication. His article ultimately appeared in the British and Foreign
Review (No. XXVI., p. 367).
I have made acquaintance (he tells Addington, January 14th, 1841) with
an extraordinary fellow, George Borrow, who went out to Spain to convert
the gipsies. He is about to publish his failure, and a curious book it will be.
It was submitted to my perusal by the hesitating Murray.
Borrow is done (he writes November 3rd, 1841), and I daresay will soon
be printed. I took the greatest pains with it, and Lockhart, on reading a
portion, wrote to me that it was “perfect”—a great word from a man not
prodigal of praise.
In an undated letter to John Murray, he says:
I have written a very careful review of Borrow’s Gypsies, with which
Lockhart seems well pleased. The book has created a great sensation far and
wide. I was sure it would, and I hope you think that when I read the MS. my
opinion and advice were sound.
I have now a letter from Borrow telling me that he has nearly completed
his Bible in Spain. I have given him much advice,—to avoid Spanish
historians and poetry like Prussic acid; to stick to himself, his biography,
and queer adventures. He writes: “I shall attend to all your advice. The book
will consist entirely of my personal adventures, travels, etc., in that country
during five years. I met with a number of strange characters, all of whom I
have introduced; the most surprising of them is my Greek servant, who
accompanied me in my ride of 1500 miles.”
The author writes again, November 8th: “The Bible in Spain is a rum,
very rum, mixture of gipseyism, Judaism, and missionary adventure, and I
have no doubt will be greedily read.”
I have some thoughts of asking him down here with his MS., and
pruning it a little for him.
An early copy of The Bible in Spain seems to have been given to Ford by
John Murray. In a letter[46] to the publisher he thus describes its character.
I read Borrow with great delight all the way down per rail, and it
shortened the rapid flight of that velocipede. You may depend upon it that
the book will sell, which, after all, is the rub. It is the antipodes of Lord
Carnarvon, and yet how they tally in what they have in common, and that is
much—the people, the scenery of Galicia, and the suspicions and
absurdities of Spanish Jacks-in-office, who yield not in ignorance or
insolence to any kind of red-tapists, hatched in the hot-beds of jobbery and
utilitarian mares-nests. Borrow spares none of them. I see he hits right and
left, and floors his man whenever he meets him. I am pleased with his
honest sincerity of purpose and his graphic abrupt style. It is like an old
Spanish ballad, leaping in medias res, going from incident to incident, bang,
bang, bang, hops, steps, and jumps like a cracker, and leaving off like one,
when you wish he would give you another touch or coup de grâce.
He really puts me in mind of Gil Blas; but he has not the sneer of the
Frenchman, nor does he gild the bad. He has a touch of Bunyan, and, like
that enthusiastic tinker, hammers away, à la Gitano, whenever he thinks he
can thwack the Devil or his man-of-all-work on earth—the Pope. Therein
he resembles my friend and everybody’s friend—Punch—who, amidst all
his adventures, never spares the black one.
However, I am not going to review him now; for I know that Mr.
Lockhart has expressed a wish that I should do it for the Quarterly Review.
Now, a wish from my liege master is a command. I had half engaged myself
elsewhere, thinking that he did not quite appreciate such a trump as I know
Borrow to be. He is as full of meat as an egg, and a fresh-laid one—not one
of your Inglis breed, long addled by over-bookmaking. Borrow will lay you
golden eggs, and hatch them after the ways of Egypt; put salt on his tail and
secure him in your coop, and beware how any poacher coaxes him with
‘raisins’ or reasons out of the Albemarle preserve.
When you see Mr. Lockhart tell him that I will do the paper. I owe my
entire allegiance to the Q. R. flag.... Perhaps my understanding the full force
of this “gratia” makes me over-partial to this wild Missionary; but I have
ridden over the same tracks without the tracts, seen the same people, and
know that he is true, and I believe that he believes all that he writes to be
true.
Before the book appeared, Ford had already begun a review of the work,
[47] the progress of which he reports to Addington: “Borrow has got,” says a
letter dated June 28th, 1842, “a very singular book coming out—The Bible
in Spain—the place where one would be the least likely to meet it.” “How
gat it there?” he asks later (November 21st), and describes the book as “a
sort of Gil Blas and Bunyan rolled together.” His review came out in the
Edinburgh Review for February 1843 (vol. lxxvii. pp. 105-38).
I have been very busy (he writes, December 16th, 1842) about Borrow’s
Bible in Spain. It is a most curious book, and mind you read it, if you can
steal a moment. In the last Quarterly there is a paper by Lockhart,
principally extracts, which will only give you a slight notion of the contents
of the chorizo [sausage]. The first sentence will amuse you, in which
Lockhart grieves that he let slip my gipsy paper.[48] I would have done one
for the Quarterly Review, but he only could give me five days. That was
enough to write with a pair of scissors, but not quite for such a paper as the
subject deserved. So I have done a grandis et verbosa epistola, which has
been offered to the Ed. Rev., and graciously accepted with many civil
speeches. It is very careful, enters into the philosophy of Spanish
fanaticism, etc., very anti-Gallican.
Borrow, writing to John Murray, February 25th, 1843, alludes to the
Edinburgh article as “exceedingly brilliant and clever, but rather too
epigrammatic, quotations scanty and not correct. Ford is certainly a most
astonishing fellow; he quite flabbergasts me—handbooks, reviews, and I
hear that he has just been writing a ‘Life of Velasquez’ for the Penny
Cyclopædia.” But Ford’s infidelity to the orthodox organ provoked a
characteristic note from the Duke of Wellington: “My dear Mr. Ford,” he
wrote, “you think the Lord will forgive your former Whiggishisms: I
daresay He may, but the Devil will have his due, and the contributions to
the Edinburgh are items in his account.” With these and many other
interruptions, the Handbook had made slow progress. Still, in its first draft,
it was approaching completion.
Heavitree, Jan. 10, 1843.
How you must have disported in rural idleness. Oh Rus! Here we have
enough of it, and too much of local festivities. How the excise can fall off I
can’t imagine. Here Belly is the god of all classes. The squires are not
scared with the tariff, which by the way has done me no good in any
respect, nor any one else that I can hear of, while the income tax is a real,
tangible, awful evil.
Drawing flourishes, and I am now making a Spanish volume, and have
begun with Toledo, glorious, rock-built, imperial Toledo!
I meditate coming up to town at Easter with my two girls, who are now
assuming the toga muliebris, having discarded their governess. The next
step is a husband, and, when once a grandpapa, I shall consider the 5th act
of the comedia imbrogliata as fast approaching. I shall bring up the Spanish
drawings, and, if any should revive in your Excellency recollections of
pleasant days gone by, I shall be proud to make you any you may select for
your private portfolio.
Borrow is a queer chap. I believe that an extra number of the Edinburgh
is to come out next month, when my article will appear. I have just got an
application to write the life of Velazquez for the Penny Cyclopædia. Murray
will sigh for his Handbook as you do for the country; but I am so
interrupted that I have never fairly gone to work, and, as it is, at least two-
thirds of what I have got together must be exscinded, but they are a useful
mass of work got up for any future object.
Heavitree, 27th Feb., /43.
The enclosed will amuse, if not convince you. I believe Borrow to be
honest, albeit a Gitano. His biography will be passing strange if he tells the
whole truth. He is now writing it by my advice.
Have you found time to run through my paper in the last Edinburgh
Review, which the criticee lauds so much and pour cause? The value of a
thing is, however, just what it will bring, and the thirty-two pages brought
me £44, well and truly paid by the canny Scot, Napier, who does not throw
away cash without “value received.” Verily the Whigs pay well, and will do
Murray by seducing his light troops. Hayward (also a Quarterly reviewer
like me) figures in the last blue and bluff; proh pudor! et nummos! his paper
on “Advertising” is droll.
I have invested my £44 in Château Margaux.
Handbook is done—that is, I have done my own hobby, and have
covered a haycock of reams with the past and present of Spain: antiquities,
art, history, manners, scenery, battles, and what not. Now comes the rub, to
cut out all that is good and simmer it down to a way-bill. I shy and “gib”
like a Pegasus in a dung-cart.
Weymouth, July 30, 1843.
I am here with all my family, first and second,[49] great and small,
having been dabbling in brick, mortar, and paint at home—wild vagaries
you will
say for a man who lives on an Irish mortgage; but those who have read
Milesian and Iberian annals will take things coolly: son cosas de España y
Irlanda, where peace and order are the exception, not the rule, and where
row and blarney are as wholesome as fire to the salamander. I, however,
wish we had a government. It would have been just as easy, instead of
reading a sentence from a king’s speech, to have declared mooting repeal
high treason.
There is no conciliating an enemy. Knock him down. “Hit him hardest in
the weakest point,” once said the Iron Duke. Now enemies sneer and
despise, and good friends are cooled and stand aloof. Peel’s unpopularity in
the far west is daily increasing; low prices will ruin us all.
I set out to-morrow for town, having a week’s absence. I shall bring up
Minaño, con muchas y muchissimas gracias. I have kept it an
unconscionable while; but it has produced a bairn, which I shall beg your
acceptance of: not much of a bairn, a Spanish parturition, a mouse from a
mountain.
Minaño’s book, whatever people may say, is an admirable compilation.
Handbook is written. Poor old Murray’s death has deranged the types in
Albemarle Street, and these rows in Spain are
not favourable to the man with the notebook; however, I shall settle
something this next week.
Heavitree, Oct. 10, 1843.
While you have been up to your middle in No. 6548, I have been boating
and catching mackerel at Weymouth, eating Portland mutton, and dreaming
of George III. Now the falling leaf has warned us to see the warm
household and penates. The Domus has been painted, and a new wing
added, which is not paid for. The placens uxor is well and much improved
by sea air; the chiquilla is in stupendous force, and rejoicing in a new hoop.
We shall have the railroad open to this place next May, and then you and
Madame might run down and rusticate here amid the myrtles and forget
Downing Street. I was rather idle at Weymouth; ’tis the quality of a
watering-place; but now I am simmering and resimmering at Handbook;
which although done, waits the imprimatur of Murray. The times are out of
joint as regards Spanish travelling. I met a man yesterday at dinner just
returned from a tour in Spain. Nothing can exceed the dilapidation and
demoralisation. This new outbreak has come like the war after Ferdinand
VII.’s death, to blight the improvements which quiet was producing. That
French influence and Christina gold effected the matter, no one doubts in
Spain. The French are hated and the English not unpopular.
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