Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 60, No. 369, July 1846

When the party arrived at Durango, Don Carlos sent word that he would next morning pay a visit to his wounded chief; the frame of mind of the latter may be collected from an exclamation he made on the road, heard by all, and commented on by many – "Truly this is a happy day for the court of the king!"

As announced, Don Carlos came, and the following remarkable conversation took place: – "Well, Thomas, how could'st thou do so foolish a thing as to get wounded?" (The Spanish royal family always use the second person singular.) "Sir, I exposed myself, because it was my duty to do so – besides, I have lived long enough, and I am firmly convinced that we shall all have to die in your majesty's service." "Well, but where do'st thou intend going?" "To Cegama, sir." "No, don't go there, it is a long way off: stay here, I'll have thee taken care of." "Sir, I have said I would go to Cegama, and to Cegama will I go: your majesty knows me well enough to be convinced that what I say, I do." "Oh yes! Thomas, that is certain – well, go with God, and take care of thyself."

After this interview, Zumalacarregui instantly set off, as if it was a relief to him to get out of the atmosphere of the court. Between Durango and Bergara he was met by the quack Petriquillo and the cura Zabala. Besides the above-mentioned Grediaga, Don Carlos had desired two other nominal physicians, Gelos and Voloqui, to accompany the general; but these two men were, in fact, as ignorant, and as rash, and as opinionated as Petriquillo himself. Petriquillo took off the dressing from the wound; he made two men rub the patient for four hours from the hip to the ankle, with an unctuous substance known only to himself. He then put on a bandage dipped in some medicament of his own composition. Zumalacarregui suffered extremely during the night.

Next morning a violent fever manifested itself. Mr Burgess, frightened at this treatment, returned to Bilbao, and Zumalacarregui continued his journey, arriving at Cegama on the evening of the 17th.

The surgeon Grediaga still continued, not his services, but his useless advice. As the fever increased, he recommended quiet, diet, and blood-letting. Petriquillo objected to venesection or leeches; he administered food in large quantities, to support the general's strength, and kept the room full of company to keep up the general's spirits.

Five days passed in this way with this treatment, or rather absence of treatment, only diversified by various attempts to extract the ball, though the leg, by the progress of the fever, and the continued application of the knife and probe, was swollen to twice its size, and was in a state of the highest exacerbation.

In the middle of the night of the 23d, a great idea struck Gelos and Petriquillo, the former was sleeping in the same room with Grediaga, and, fearful lest the latter should prevent its accomplishment, rose stealthily at one o'clock in the morning, proceeded with Petriquillo to the room of the general, and they there together did extract the ball.

At daylight, the joy in the house was extreme; the ball was passed through the hands of every inhabitant in Cegama, and was then dispatched in a box to Don Carlos. Petriquillo and Gelos announced, that in fifteen days the general would be at the head of his army before Bilbao.

At six o'clock, Zumalacarregui began to complain of insupportable thirst, and of pains all through the body; shortly afterwards, general shiverings came on, with convulsions at times. During an interval between these, he received the last consolations of religion; for though far from being a bigot, or even a devotee, Zumalacarregui respected, and practised reverentially, the religion of his country. At eleven o'clock in the morning of the 24th of June 1835, he expired.

On examining the body, it was found that two cuts had been made completely through the calf of the leg in order to get at the ball: Their length was about three inches, and their depth was as great as it could be; for they reached the bone. The whole of the integuments had been divided by Petriquillo, and the sheets of the bed were one mass of blood.

About three hours before the general's death, Petriquillo, unseen, went into the stable, saddled his mule, and departed.

As the dead chief never possessed the uniform of a general, his body was laid out in borrowed garments belonging to the attorney of the place. It was dressed in a black coat and black pantaloons, with a white waistcoat, and over the shoulder was put the riband of the fifth class of St Ferdinand, without the star, for he never had one. Zumalacarregui had troubled himself little about external decorations; and his ordinary dress, a black sheep-skin jacket, red overalls, and a flat scarlet boyna, or cap of the country, which he thought sufficiently good for his body when living, was deemed unworthy of him when he became dust. It was an apt type of what had preceded, and what was to follow: the rude neglected warrior during life – the Duke, the King's friend, the grandee of Spain after death.

One word about the cruelty of Zumalacarregui. He was cruel, and what is about to be said is a reason, but it is not put forth as either an excuse or a justification. His cruelty proceeded from no innate or idiosyncratic ferocity. In a less cruel atmosphere he would have breathed a milder spirit. There is an indifference to life in all Spaniards, which, on one side, prompts great deeds, and, on the other, readily ripens into inhumanity. They care little about their own lives, and speedily learn to care still less about the lives of others. In this melancholy warfare there was cruelty on all sides; and, from the execution of Santos Ladron, there followed a series of bloody atonements, each producing each, which strewed the highways with as many bodies as had fallen in the field.

Though the temptation of straying into any thing like a biography has been studiously avoided, there is one anecdote so curious, and not only so explanatory of what has just been said, but so illustrative of the character of both the man and the country, that it will hardly be deemed out of place.

A young grandee of Spain, the Count of Via-Manuel, had been taken prisoner. Zumalacarregui was anxious to save his life, though the circumstance of his rank seemed to make his death the more certain, as being a fitter expiation for many executions which had lately taken place on the Christino side. Zumalacarregui addressed a letter to Rodil, the commander-in-chief of that army, saying that he was anxious to exchange his prisoner for a subaltern officer, and some soldiers that had been lately seized sick in a farm-house, and that he awaited the answer. The distance between the armies was short, and, some hours after, Via-Manuel requested permission to see the general and learn his fate. Zumalacarregui received him in the room when he was just going to dinner, and, in that oriental style so interwoven in the whole web of Spanish customs, offered him a part of the repast that was before him. In ordinary times, this is but a courteous form, and it is rarely accepted; but Via-Manuel, thinking perhaps of the Arab's salt in this Moorish compliment, accepted the invitation, and sat down at the table. They eat, and at the end of dinner an orderly entered and gave a letter to the general. It was from Rodil, and contained only these words – "The rebels were shot this morning." Zumalacarregui, without saying a word, handed the paper to Via-Manuel, rose from table, and went out of the room. The unfortunate count was that night placed, according to custom, in the chapel of the village, and was shot next morning.

This happened in Lecumberri, which was entered shortly afterwards by the troops of the Queen. On leaving it the following day, two Carlist officers were pinioned and shot through the back, on the very spot where Via-Manuel fell. Such was the frightful mode of reciprocal expiation carried on on both sides; but the writer of this notice has, at least, among those painful recollections, the consolation of reflecting, that in this, as in other instances more fortunate, he did all in his power to save the victims.

This little sketch has swelled beyond its intended bulk, but when those who love Spain have passed the Pyrenees, it is difficult not to linger there, even on paper. Amid dangers and difficulties, and even the horrors of civil war, Spain has an attraction which it would be as difficult to explain to those who do not feel it, as to describe the sound of a trumpet to a deaf man. To those who have passed their early years there, Spain is like the shining decoration in a play, which still continues haunting the slumbers of the child that has seen one for the first time.

After the death of Zumalacarregui, Don Carlos took command of the army, with Moreno for chief of his staff, but the latter exercised all real authority. The Pretender was utterly deficient of every thing like military talent, and from the day of Zumalacarregui's death, his cause was not only hopeless, but felt to be so by the queen's party, who shortly regained the large portion of occupied territory which they had recently lost.

Zumalacarregui, from the 1st May 1835 to the 11th of June of that year, had made upwards of three thousand soldiers and a hundred officers prisoners. He left for all inheritance to his wife and daughters something less than forty pounds and four horses.

NEW SCOTTISH PLAYS AND POEMS. ⁵³

We suspect that in this railway age poetry is at a greater discount than ever. The reason is obvious. Not only the public, who are the readers, but even the poets themselves, have been largely infected by the current mania of speculation. Had the possession of capital been requisite for a participation in any of the thousand defunct schemes which have caused so unprecedented an emigration to the breezy shores of Boulogne, our poetical friends might have claimed for their vocation the credit of a rare morality. But unfortunately, the national gaming-table was open to men of every class. Peer and peasant, count and costermonger, millionaire and bankrupt, were alike entitled to figure as allottees, or even as committee-men, for the simple subscription of their signatures; and amidst the rush and squeeze of the crowd, who thronged towards the portal of Plutus, we were less surprised than pained to observe some of the most venerated votaries of Apollo. We shall not affect to disguise the purpose for which we were there ourselves. But much may be permitted to the prosaic writer which is forbidden to the canonized bard. Ours is a pen of all work – equally ready to concoct a prospectus, or to expose a literary charlatan. We are intensely fond of lucre, and expect, some day or another, to be in possession of the moiety of a plum. We have therefore no vain scruples regarding the sanctity of our calling, but carry our genius like a hooded falcon upon our wrist, ready to let it fly at any manner of game which may arise. We, however, deny in absolute terms the right of a poet to any such general license. He has no business whatever to trespass one foot beyond the limits his own domain. He ought to be thoroughly ignorant of the existence of bulls and bears, stags and ducks, and the rest of the zoology of the Exchange. Consols should be to him a mystery more impenetrable than the Sibylline verses, and the state of the stocks as unaccountable as the policy of Sir Robert Peel. The mischief, however, is done, and we fear it is irremediable. The example of the Poet-Laureate may indeed serve as a kind of excuse for the minor professors of the art. His well-known attempt to bear the Kendal and Windermere line, by a series of ferocious sonnets, is still fresh in the memory of the public, and we trust the veteran has, long ere this, realized a handsome profit. We ourselves made a little money out of the Perth and Inverness, by means of an indignant tirade against the desecration of the Pass of Killiecrankie; and we should, to a certainty, have made more, had not the Parliamentary Committee been weak enough to believe us, and, in consequence, to reject the bill. Yet it may be long before the literary market can recover its healthy tone – ere sonnets once more resume their ancient ascendency, and circulate from hand to hand in the character of intellectual scrip.

We suspect that very few of the poets backed out of the scrape in time. Their sanguine and enthusiastic temperament led them to hold, at all risks and hazards; and they did not, as a body, take warning from the symptoms of a declining market. An amiable friend of ours who belongs to the Young England party, and who has issued a couple of duodecimos in laudation of Bishop Bonner, found himself at the period of the crash in possession of two thousand Caithness and Land's End scrip, utterly unsaleable at any discount, though a fortnight before they were quoted at fifteen premium. He meditates, as we are informed, a speedy retirement to the penal solitudes of La Trappe, as there now seems to be little hope that Louis Philippe will provide a proper refuge for chivalrous misfortune by resuscitating the Order of Malta. The weaver-poet of Camlachie has gone into the Gazette in consequence of an unfortunate speculation in Caledonians. His lyre is as silent as his shuttle; and we fear that in his hours of despondency he is becoming by far too much addicted to drink. A clever young dramatist confessed to us some time ago that he found himself utterly "goosed;" and the last hope of the school of Byron has been forced to deny himself the luxury of inverted collars, as his uncompromising laundress peremptorily refused to accept of payment in characteristic Cemetery shares.

In the gross, this state of things seems deplorable enough; and yet, when we analyse it, there is still some room for comfort. Never, since we first had the honour of wielding the critical lash – for the Crutch is a sacred instrument – in the broad amphitheatre of letters, do we recollect a year less fertile in the product of verse than the present. Our young friends are not possessed with the same supreme and sublime contempt of gold which formed so disinterested a feature of the poets of the by-gone age. They have become corrupted by the manufacturing and utilitarian tenets of the day; and – we shudder to record it – divers of them are violent free-traders. They have all fallen into the snare of the man Broker; and at the very outset of life, in the heyday and spring of their existence, they can count both sides of a shilling with the acuteness of a born Pennsylvanian. Hence it is, we presume, that they have attained to a knowledge of the fact – long ago notorious among the Trade – that poetry will not pay. They look upon genius through the glasses of Adam Smith, weigh the probability of an adequate demand before they venture on the production of a supply, and cut short the inchoate canto upon principles of Political Economy. In a few years, we fear, poetry will be no longer extant, save for the commercial purposes of the advertisements of Messrs Moses and Hyam; unless, indeed, some Welsh or Highland railway company should take the matter up, and double their dividends by bribing a first-rate poet to produce another Lady of the Lake. Hence the sparseness of our library table, which renders our old vocation comparatively a sinecure, and leaves us, without the necessity of immolation, to the undisturbed enjoyment of our chair.

We might indeed, were we savagely inclined, discover some Volscians worth our fluttering in the ranks of Young England, or the more sombre group of poetical Oxonian divines. But we look with a kindly eye upon the eccentricities of the one school, and we listen to the drowsy strains of the other with no more active demonstration of disapproval than a yawn. We have high hope of George Sydney Smythe, Lord John Manners, and others, who have already produced some things of evident promise – not mere beaten tinsel, such as the resuscitated Cockneys are again beginning to vend in the literary market – but verses of true and genuine originality. Could we but ensure them against the vitiating effects of politics, it were a light hazard to predict for either of the above gentlemen a far higher reputation than has been achieved by the united efforts of the whole canorous crew which constituted the Melbourne administration. We must indeed except Mr Macaulay, a better poet than a politician, but – the brilliant ballad-writer being removed – what soul could have been contented to fatten upon the spongy lyrics of a Spring Rice, or the intolerable tragedies of a Russell! What food to sweeten the tedium of a solitary imprisonment for life!

As for the Oxford school, we fairly confess that its votaries are beyond our comprehension. Amiable they are, no doubt, although ascetic in principle; but they are likewise insufferably tedious. We have attempted at various times, and during different states of the barometer, to make ourselves master of the compositions of Mr Williams and his principal followers. We failed. After skimming over a page or two of mellifluous blank verse, we began to experience a strange sensation, as if a bee were humming through the room. At each evolution of the imaginary insect, our eyes felt heavier and heavier. We made a strong effort to rally ourselves at the description of a crystalline stream, meandering, as we rather think, somewhere through the confines of Paradise; but the hue of the water gradually changed. It became dark and treacly, purled with a somniferous sound, as though the channel had been filled with living laudanum; and in three minutes more we were unconscious of the existence of the income-tax, and as relieved from the load of worldly cares as though we had joined company with the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus.

Surely we have a right to expect something better from Oxford than this. The old nurse of learning must bestir herself once more, forswear morphia, and teach her pupils to strike a manlier chord, else men will cease to believe in the ancient magic of her name. What we want is, power, energy, pathos – not mere vapid sentiment, so diligently distilled that scarce a flavour of the original material is left to enable us to discover its origin. If poetry be a copy or a reflex of life, let it show out lifelike and true; if it be the representation of a dream, at all events let us have the vision, as in the mirror of Agrippa, well defined, though around its edges rest the clouds of impenetrable mystery. Above all things, let us have meaning, not vague allegorical phrases – power if not passion – sense if not sublimity. If the classics cannot teach us these, let us go back to the earlier ballads, and see how our fathers wrote without the aid of metaphysical jargon.

Our present purpose is to deal with Scottish writers, and fortunately we have material at hand. Last month we were in London, engaged in divers matters connected with the state of the nation and our own private emolument, which latter pursuit we as seldom as possible neglect. The cares of a railway witness, in which capacity we had the honour to act, are but few. A bountiful table was spread for us, not in the wilderness, but in an excellent hotel in St James's; breakfast, luncheon, dinner, and supper, followed one another with praiseworthy regularity; the matutinal soda-water was only succeeded by the iced hock and champagne of the vespers, and a beneficent Fairy of seventeen stone, in the guise of a Writer to Her Majesty's Signet, was courteous enough not only to defray the whole of the attending expenses, but to furnish us with certain sums of gold, which we disseminated at our own proper pleasure. In return for the attentions of our legal Barmecide, we submitted to ensconce ourselves for a couple of days in a hot room somewhere about the Cloisters, in the course of which sederunt we held an animated conversation with several gentlemen in wigs, for the edification – as we were given to understand – of five other gentlemen in hats, who sat yawning behind a green table. We take this opportunity of tendering our acknowledgments to the eminent and raucous Queen's Counsel who was kind enough to conduct our cross-examination, and who so delicately insinuated his doubts as to the veracity and candour of our replies. As his knowledge of the localities about Braemar – the district then under question – was about equal to his cognizance of the natural history of Kamschatka, we felt the compliment deeply; and should we ever have the pleasure of encountering our beetle-browed acquaintance during a vacation ramble on the skirts of Schehallion, we pledge ourselves that he shall carry back with him to Lincoln's Inn some lasting tokens of our regard. In the mean time we sincerely hope he has recovered from that distressing fit of huskiness which rendered his immediate vicinity by no means a seat of comfort to his solicitor.

As a matter of course, we relieved the monotony of our duties by divers modes of relaxation. Greenwich – in the glory of its whitebait, its undeniable Thames flounders, its dear little ducklings enshrined in their asparagus nest, and its flagons, wherein the cider cup shows sparklingly through the light blue Borage– was not unfrequented by us in the course of the sultry afternoon. At Richmond, likewise, we battened sybaritically; and more than once essayed to resuscitate our appetite, and awake within us the dormant sense of poetry, by a stroll along the breezy heath of Hampstead, preparatory to a dive into the Saracen, where, doubtless, in the days of yore, Leigh Hunt, Keats, and Hazlitt used to make wild work among the eggs and spinach. Our attendance at the theatres, however, was a matter of rarity. We have no fancy to undergo martyrdom by means of a slow stewing, when the sole palm we can win, in exchange for the sudorific pangs, is the enjoyment of some such shabby-genteel comedy as The Beggar on Horseback, or a travestie like that of the Birds of Aristophanes, the only peculiarity of which is its utter want of meaning. As a general rule, we prefer the spectacles on the Surrey side, to those exhibited in the Metropolitan or Westminster districts. There, the nautical drama still flourishes in its pristine force. The old British tar, in ringlets, pumps, and oil-skin castor, still hitches up his trousers with appropriate oath; revolves the unfailing bolus of pigtail in his cheek – swims to shore across a tempestuous sea of canvass, with a pistol in each hand and a cutlass in his teeth, from the wreck of the foundering frigate – and sets foot once more on the British soil, just in time to deliver Pretty Poll of Portsmouth, his affianced bride, (who has a passion for short petticoats and crimson stockings,) from the persecutions of that bebuttoned pirate with the whiskers, who carries more pistols in his girdle than the scalps of an Indian chief, and whose fall, after a terrific combat with basket-hilts and shower of fiery sparkles, brings down the curtain at the close of the third act amidst roars of unmitigated joy. Also we delight to see, at never-failing Astley's, the revived glories of British prowess – Wellington, in the midst of his staff, smiling benignantly upon the facetious pleasantries of a Fitzroy Somerset – Sergeant M'Craw of the Forty-Second, delighting the élite of Brussels by his performance of the reel of Tullochgorum at the Duchess of Richmond's ball – the charge of the Scots Greys – the single combat between Marshal Ney and the infuriated Life-guardsman Shaw – and the final retreat of Napoleon amidst a volley of Roman candles, and the flames of an arseniated Hougomont. Nor is our gratification less to discern, after the subsiding of the shower of saw-dust so gracefully scattered by that groom in the doeskin integuments, the stately form of Widdicomb, cased in martial apparel, advancing towards the centre of the wing, and commanding – with imperious gestures, and some slight flagellation in return for dubious compliment – the double-jointed clown to assist the Signora Cavalcanti to her seat upon the celebrated Arabian. How lovely looks the lady, as she vaults to her feet upon the breadth of the yielding saddle! With what inimitable grace does she whirl these tiny banners around her head, as winningly as a Titania performing the sword exercise! How coyly does she dispose her garments and floating drapery to hide the too maddening symmetry of her limbs! Gods! – She is transformed all at once into an Amazon – the fawn-like timidity of her first demeanour is gone. Bold and beautiful flushes her cheek with animated crimson – her full voluptuous lip is more compressed and firm – the deep passion of the huntress sparkles in her lustrous eye! Widdicomb becomes excited – he moves with quicker step around the periphery of his central circle – incessant is the smacking of his whip – not this time directed against Mr Merryman, who at his ease is enjoying a swim upon the saw-dust – and lo! the grooms rush in, six bars are elevated in a trice, and over them all bounds the volatile Signora like a panther, nor pauses until, with airy somersets, she has passed twice through the purgatory of the blazing hoop, and then, drooping and exhausted, sinks like a Sabine into the arms of the herculean Master, who – a second Romulus – bears away his lovely burden to the stables, amidst such a whirlwind of applause as Kemble might have been proud to earn!

"So," in the language of Tennyson —

 
"So we triumph'd, ere our passion sweeping through us left us dry,
Left us with the palsied heart, and left us with the jaundiced eye."
 

"Dryness," however, according to our creed and practice, is not altogether unappeasable, and by the help of Barclay, Perkins, and Company, we succeeded in mitigating its rage. But we confess to the other miseries of the palsied heart and jaundiced eye, so soon as we were informed by the above-mentioned scribe, that our bill had been thrown out upon committee, and that, if we tarried longer in London, it must be upon our own proper charges. We had been so used for the last twelve months to voyage, and to subsist at the expense of joint-stock companies – so habituated to dine with provisional committees, and to hold sweet supper consultations in the society of salaried surveyors – that a reference to our private resources appeared a matter of serious hardship. However, there was no help for it. Some mean and unreasonable share-holders were already growling about a return of some portion of the deposits, and even, to the infinite disgust of the directors, hinted at a taxation of accounts. The murmurs of these slaves of Mammon broke up our little Eden. The Irish egg-merchant, who had been fed for three weeks upon turtle to induce him to give testimony touching the importation of eerocks – the tollman from Strathspey, who nightly meandered to the Coal-hole, in company with the intoxicated distiller – the three clerks who did the dirty work of the committee-room, and were therefore, with wise precaution, stinted in their allowance of beer – the northern bailie, who stuck strenuously to toddy, and the maritime provost, who affected the vintage of the Rhine – the raw uncouth surveyor from Dingwall, who, guiltless of straps, and rejoicing in a superfluity of rig-and-fur over a pair of monstrous brogues, displayed his native symmetry every afternoon in Regent Street, and reciprocated the gaze of the wondering milliners with a coarse guffaw, and the exhibition of his enormous teeth; – All these worthies vanished from the house in a single day, like spirits at the crowing of the cock, and returned to their native hills in a state of comparative demoralization. For our own part, we packed our portmanteau in gloomy silence, and meditated a speedy retreat to the distant solitudes of Loch Awe.

We were eating, as we thought, our last muffin, when our eye was accidentally caught by an advertisement in the Times, purporting that a new play was to be immediately produced at the Princess's theatre, and that its title was The King of the Commons. A spasm of delight shot through us. We were aware, some time before, that a dear friend, and distinguished fellow-labourer of ours, whose contributions have always been of sweetest savour in the nostrils of fastidious Christopher, had turned his attention to dramatic poetry, and was resolved, for once at least, to launch an experimental shallop upon the stage. Nor did we doubt that this was the enunciation of his attempt. We divined it at once from the subject, so akin to his genius and deep national feelings – we knew the fervour of his love to Scotland, and his earnest desire to illustrate some page of her varied annals – and we resolved accordingly to postpone our departure, and be present at the success or discomfiture of our bold and adventurous brother.

The first night of a new play is always attended with some agreeable excitement. If the author is a known man upon the boards – a veteran of some six comedies, all of which have found their way into the provinces, and are usually selected by the leading Star on the occasion of his or her benefit – the general audiences are desirous to ascertain whether his new effort is equal in point of merit to the rest. The critics, most of whom have failed in their own proper persons, are by no means indisposed to detect the occurrence of blemishes – friends hope that it may succeed, and unsuccessful rivals devoutly trust it may be damned. If the author is unknown, and if no very flagrant efforts have been made to pre-puff his performance, he has at all events the chance of an impartial hearing. Let the play go on smoothly to the middle; let no very glaring absurdities appear; let the actors really exert themselves, and display any thing like interest or talent in their business, and young Sophocles is generally sure of a favourable verdict. Our dear friends, the public, are always well disposed towards a winning man. One cheer elicits another, and applause, once commenced, goes on at a multiplied ratio. No doubt, the case may be reversed, and the sound of a solitary catcall from the pit awake the slumbering serpents, and become the signal for universal sibilation.