Further Letters of Blanco White to Robert Southey

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Notes

1. The Life of the Reverend Joseph Blanco White, written by himself, with portions of his correspondence. Edited by J. Hamilton Thom (London: John Chapman, 1845) 3 vols. For Southey's letters, see vol. 1, 310–12, 380–81, 410–15, 420–30, 433–44, 451–53.

2. V. Llorens, ‘Blanco White and Robert Southey: Fragments of a Correspondence’, Studies in Romanticism, XI (1972), 147–52.

3. The article ‘Reflexiones generales sobre la revolución española’ is reprinted in V. Llorens (ed.) José Maria Blanco White, Antología de obras en español (Barcelona: Editorial Labor, 1971). The introduction to this anthology is still the best short account of Blanco's life and work.

4. Jack Simmons, Southey (New Haven: Yale U.P., 1945), 152. For a discussion of Southey's political beliefs, see also Geoffrey Carnall, Robert Southey and his Age: The Development of a Conservative Mind (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960).

5. For an exhaustive treatment of the Spanish theme in Southey's poetry, see Ludwig Pfandl, ‘Southey und Spanien’, Revue Hispanique, XXVIII (1913), 1–315.

6. History of the Peninsular War, vol. I, 1823, iii.

7. G. Carnall, op. cit., 120.

8. Kenneth Curry (ed.) New Letters of Robert Southey, Vol. 2 (New York: Columbia U.P. 1965), 2. Earlier Southey had described Moore's retreat to Corunna as ‘one of the most disastrous and disgraceful flights upon record’ (ibid., 516). For Blanco's defence of Moore, see Life I, 177–78.

9. cf. Blanco to Lord Holland in Life III, 322–23.

10. Blanco is referring to his Letter upon the mischievous influence of the Spanish Inquisition as it actually exists in the Provinces under the Spanish government. Translated from El Español & c (London: J. Johnson & Co., 1811).

11. In V. Llorens, art. cit., 147–49.

12. On this, see V. Llorens, El romanticismo español (Madrid: Castalia, 1979), 42.

13. K. Curry, op. cit. 16–18.

14. ‘Reflexiones sobre la revolución española’, El Español, no. 1 (April 1810), I, 5–27 (Llorens, Antología, 223–42).

15. ‘Don Gaspar de Jovellanos a sus compatriotas’, El Español no. 22 (January 1812), IV, 279–306.

16. Edinburgh Annual Register for 1810, vol. 3, Part 1 (Edinburgh, 1812), 336, 380.

17. In his account of the French invasion of Andalusia, Southey wrote that the contradictory orders given to Albuquerque, the commander of the army of Estremadura, by Cornel, the Minister of War, were ‘sufficiently accounted for by their [the Junta's] incapacity and their alarm’ (op. cit., 385).

18. Tomás de Morla, Captain-General of Andalusia, was in charge of the defence of Madrid in December 1808. After presenting the surrender of the city to Napoleon he made his way to Cadiz where he assumed the direction of the supreme Junta. Shortly afterwards he came under suspicion of corresponding with Napoleon's agents and transferred his allegiance to King Joseph.

19. Lorenzo Calvo de Rozas distinguished himself during the first siege of Zaragoza (July–August 1808) and was appointed to the Junta Central in September 1808. A member of the liberal group which advocated the convocation of a democratic Cortes and press freedom, he was arrested by the Regency after the dissolution of the Central but released when the Cortes eventually met. See E. Martínez Quinteiro, Los grupos liberales antes de las cortes de Cádiz (Madrid: Narcea, 1977), 48–49, 235. The Conde de Tilly, with Tap y Núñez and Padre Gil, was the leader of the uprising at Seville in May 1808 and later representative of the Junta of Seville to the Junta Central. For Blanco's attack on his moral character, see El Español no. 1, in V. Llorens op. cit. 229, 235, and Letters from Spain, 1822, 439–40 (an even more virulent attack, in which Blanco charges Tilly with responsibility for the murder of the Conde de Aquila). Southey's verdict follows Blanco: ‘A man of notorious profligacy who had acquired great wealth by the vilest means’ (Edinburgh Annual Register for 1810, 355). Tilly was arrested by the Regency at Cadiz on a charge of corruption and died there in prison.

20. i.e. the Consejo reunido de Castilla.

21. Riquelme was the representative of the province of Granada on the Junta Central. Politically he was an enigma, regarded by some as a Jacobin and by others as a moderate in the Jovellanos mould. See E. Martínez Quinteiro, op. cit., 206–07.

22. José de Palafox y Melci, Captain-General of Aragon, conducted the heroic defence of Zaragoza during its second siege in the winter of 1808–09.

23. Cf. Southey, op. cit., 393: ‘He was no more attended to than if he had been in the Seven Towers of Constantinople’. This is only one of several passages in the Edinburgh Annual Register narrative which draw directly on Blanco's letter. Compare 384–85 (the orders given to Alburquerque) and 393 (the arrest of Calvo and Tilly).

24. Martín de Garay was the secretary general of the Central Junta. He was responsible for liaison with Lord Wellesley on military and supply matters. The mistrust and suspicion which characterized Anglo-Spanish relations are reflected in Wellesley's records. See The Despatches and Correspondence of the Marquess of Wellesley K.G., ed. Montgomery Martin (London, 1838), 37–39, 145, 147, 160, 181–82 etc.

25. Eugenio, Conde de Montijo, and Francisco de Palafox y Melci, brother of the more famous José (see n. 22, supra) were imprisoned at Seville by the Central Junta in October 1809 on suspicion of conspiracy. The day after the Junta's departure from Seville in January 1810 they were liberated and appointed to the Junta Provincial of Seville, which declared itself to be the Junta Suprema Nacional. However they were almost immediately forced to flee Seville in the panic caused by the approach of the French.

26. Elected by popular suffrage on 29 January 1809, the Junta of Cadiz was largely composed of progressive liberals representing commercial interests. Entrusted by the Regency with the administration of public funds it used its power to influence government policy to its own commercial advantage. In the Español Blanco bitterly denounced the Cadiz Junta for its later intransigence vis-à-vis the American colonies. Esteban Fernández de León, a member of the Council of the Indies, was nominated to the Regency as representative of the colonies but was not acceptable to the Cadiz Junta and so declined the appointment on the grounds of ill-health, his place being taken by Miguel de Lardizábal. See Southey, op. cit., 392.

27. When the Junta Central was at Aranjuez, Quintana criticized the tone and style of its public pronouncements. As a result the Junta put him in charge of propaganda, with responsibility for writing its proclamations and manifestos. See A. Derozier, Manuel José Quintana et la naissance du libéralisme en Espagne (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1968), 332–33. The text of these proclamations was published by Derozier in the appendices to vol. 2 of this work, published in 1970. For Blanco's tribute to Quintana's eloquence, see El Español no. 1 (I), 20. (reproduced by Llorens, op cit., 236). Blanco's personal friendship with Quintana dated back to 1806, and it was Quintana who delegated to him the editorship of the Semanario Patriótico. However Blanco's attack on the Junta Central in the first number of the Español alienated Quintana, whose bitter reactions are recorded in a letter to Lord Holland of 7 May 1810 (BM Add MSS 51621, 30–32).

28. Lascelles Hoppner, son of the painter John Hoppner, had made the acquaintance of Blanco in Seville and accompanied him on his voyage from Cadiz to Falmouth in February 1810. It was with Hoppner's family that Blanco first stayed on his arrival in London. See Life, I, 166–88.

29. Blanco's Jacobin sympathies are clearly expressed in the Semanario Patriótico, no. 25, 177–78; no. 30, 257; no. 31, 267. For the ideological differences of the time, see Alcalá Galiano, Memorias [BAE LXXXIII], (Madrid, 1955), 356; H. Juretschke, ‘Los supuestos históricos e ideológicos de las Cortes de Cadiz’, Nuestro Tiempo, año II, no. 18 (December 1955), 21–22. On Blanco's relations with Jovellanos, see V. Llorens, ‘Jovellanos y Blanco’, NRFH, XXX (1961), 261–78.

30. Jovellanos, Memoria en defensa de la Junta Central in Obras, [BAE XLVI] (Madrid, 1951), 584b, 598a, 13, 600a, 29. Cf. Jovellanos to Lord Holland, 22 May 1809 [BAE LXXXVI], 377.

31. Southey, op. cit., 392–93.

32. See Life I, 183.

33. This was almost certainly the Anglo-Spanish Colonel Juan Murphy, a partner in the prosperous firm of Gordon and Murphy, ‘a house which during the war with Spain had made an enormous fortune by means of a contract with the Spanish government to which the English Cabinet were a party. The object of the contract was to obtain a quantity of silver from Mexico’ (Life I, 189). For Murphy's moral and financial help, cf. Blanco's letter to his parents, 24 September 1812, in Llorens, Antología, 323.

34. ‘The Present State of the Spanish Colonies’, The Quarterly Review, VII (1812), 235–64. This was Blanco's first contribution to an English periodical, ‘wonderfully free from anything which could betray the foreigner’ (Southey to John Murray, in K. Curry, op. cit., 38).

35. For Gordon and Murphy's subscription, see the MS in Blanco White's hand, ‘A general account’, etc. Blanco White Papers, Sydney Jones Library, Liverpool, III 9/228. For the Foreign Office subscription see Hamilton to Vaughan, 12 May 1810 (Vaughan Papers, All Souls College, Oxford, G/48:6); Blanco White to Sir Henry Wellesley 25 September 1810, Antología, 316–18; Blanco White to Lord Holland 25 September 1810, in Life III, 330.

36. Blanco White to Vega, 3 August 1812, Vaughan Papers, All Souls, OB 37/1. The relevant passage is marked in Blanco White's hand ‘reservado’. For Peltier, see Hélène Maspéro-Clerc, Un Journaliste contre-révolutionnaire, Jean-Gabriel Peltier 1760–1825 (Paris: Bibliothèque d'Histoire Révolutionnaire, 1973). For the circulation of L'Ambigu in Caracas, see Carlos Pi Sunyer, Patriotas Americanos en Londres (Caracas: Monte Ávila, 1978), 313–18.

37. Vaughan to Hamilton, 8 September 1812, PRO FO 72/113, ff, 183–86. The phrase ‘to lay an embargo upon Blanco’ appears to mean that the Foreign Office should requisition Blanco White for their exclusive use. Cf. OED, 1897 edn, Vol. III, Pt 2. 103.

38. Life, I, 188.

39. Life, 207.

40. Public Record Office: documents in FO 72/104, 123–24, 133, 138–41, 151–52, 154–56, 166–71. These include a pamphlet (72/124, ff. 93–100) written by Blanco to counter the criticisms of British policy in Spain voiced by J. B. Arriaza in his Observaciones sobre el sistema de guerra de los aliados (London, 1811). Blanco was also a consistent advocate of British mediation between Spain and her American colonies (72/152, ff. 95–100), and urged the British government to support the establishment in South America of provincial juntas owing allegiance to the Spanish crown—the ‘middle and safest path’ between the old colonial system and the formation of independent republics (72/123, ff. 172–77).

41. However, the Foreign Office was alarmed by the tone of the first number of the Español. In a letter of 12 May 1810 the Under-Secretary of State assured Vaughan in Cadiz that ‘the succeeding numbers will be revised, and of course no very exceptionable passages be allowed to remain’ (Vaughan Papers C 48/6). As things turned out, Blanco proved to be his own moderator, so this censorship was unnecessary.

42. Editor of the Quarterly Review.

43. William Jacob, Travels in the South of Spain written A.D. 1809 and 1810 (London, 1811). Jacob met Blanco White in Seville, and in Letter XXI, dated Seville Nov. 1809, mentions him as a member of the circle which frequented the house of Dean Cepero: ‘Padre Blanco, so well known throughout Spain as the author of the patriotico seminario [sic] frequently joins this circle. If there be a priest without bigotry, a philosopher without vanity, or a politician without prejudice, Padre Blanco is that man: whenever he is of the party he enlightens it by his knowledge and animates it by his patriotism’ (145).

44. Joseph Nightingale, Portraiture of the Roman Catholic Religion (London, 1812).

45. The battle of Salamanca in July 1812 had been followed by Wellington's advance to Valladolid and entry into Madrid (August 12). Thereupon Soult raised the siege of Cadiz and evacuated Andalusia. However the French made a successful stand at Burgos.

46. Evidently a variation on the proverb ‘El socorro de Espana siempre llega tarde’ (Luis Martínez Kleiser, Refranero general ideológico español [Madrid: RAE, 1953], no. 22, 699).

47. On this conversion, see V. Llorens, ‘Los motivos de un converso’, Revista de Occidente, V (April 1964), 44–60.

48. Life I, 310.

49. Samuel Rogers the poet.

50. Roderick, the last of the Goths, Southey's blank verse epic published in 1814. Its combination of Romantic legend and scenery, a strong moral theme (Roderick's expiation for his sin) and political allegory (Southey saw Pelayo as ‘the first restorer of Spain’) made it an instant success.

51. Southey to Blanco White, 28 June 1822, in Life I, 380–81.

52. Blanco edited the journal Variedades, o Mensajero de Londres from 1823 to 1825. The first number appeared in January 1823, and the remaining eight between January 1824 and October 1825. The hiatus is explained by the difference of opinion between the editor and his proprietor, Rudolf Ackermann, which is set out in this letter. Ackermann allowed Blanco to banish the plates of ‘fine ladies and articles of furniture’ to the back pages so as not to compromise the serious tone of the journal.

53. On 9 January 1823 Louis XVIII had declared that a hundred thousand Frenchmen were ready to enter Spain under the protection of ‘the God of St Louis’ to restore the monarchy. The invasion took place on 7 April.

54. Southey to Blanco White, 19 November 1817, in Life I, 310, cf. 411. The story was drawn from Dobrizhoffer's Historia de Abiponibus (Vienna, 1784). Southey appended to the poem his usual apparatus of antiquarian notes, on which he consulted Blanco (Life I, 411).

55. G. Tillotson, ‘Newman's Essay on Poetry’, Newman Centenary Essays (London: Burns and Oates, 1945), 178–200. Blanco's essay ‘Sobre el placer de las imaginaciones inverosímiles’ was published by V. Llorens in his Antología, 212–20: for a critical commentary see Llorens, El romanticismo español, 36–41. In his later life Blanco increasingly looked to literature for moral improvement. In an article on Crabbe, written in 1835, he declared: ‘The great concern of social man, his progress as a rational and moral being, must now be the final end of every work of literature and of art’ (London Review, II [July 1835]). On this literary utilitarianism, see R. M. Johnson, ‘Letters of Blanco White to J. H. Wiffen and Samuel Rogers’, Neophilologus, LII (1968), 148, n. 33. Blanco's contacts with the English utilitarians reawakened and developed a tendency towards the practical which may be attributed to the early influence of J. P. Forner.

On A Tale of Paraguay, see E. Bernhardt-Kabisch, ‘Southey in the Tropics: A Tale of Paraguay and the Problem of Romantic Faith’, The Wordsworth Circle, V (1974), 97–104.

56. See Southey's note on the practice of couvade in A Tale of Paraguay (London, 1825), 172–74, note on Canto I, st. 28.

57. See Southey's note on the practice of couvade in A Tale of Paraguay (London, 1825), 186–87, note on Canto II, st. 45.

58. The documents attesting Blanco's limpieza de sangre (now in the archives of the University of Seville) indicate that this was fr. Isidoro de Neve, Abbot of the Monastery of San Benito at Seville.

59. For this controversy, see Sheridan Gilley, ‘Nationality and Liberty, Protestant and Catholic: Robert Southey's The Book of the Church’, in Studies in Church History, vol. 18, ed. Stuart Mews (Oxford: Blackwell, 1982), 409–32; G. Martin Murphy, ‘España perseguidora, Irlanda perseguida: un aspecto de Blanco White’, Archivo Hispalense, CC (1982), 115–38.

60. Life I, 415.

61. For a report of the speech see The Truthteller, vol. 2, no. 20, 25 February 1826.

62. Richard Garnett, the philologist and a prominent campaigner against Emancipation.

63. A Letter to Charles Butler Esq., by the Rev. J. Blanco White (London: J. Murray, 1826).

64. Life I, 434, cf. 424–27, 428–30.

65. A Letter to Protestants Converted from Romanism (Oxford: W. Baxter, 1827).

66. Lord Liverpool's long ministry ended in February 1827. His short-lived successor, Canning, was favourable to Catholic Emancipation, and governed with Whig support.

67. Henry Philpotts, later Bishop of Exeter, and at this time a leading clerical opponent of Emancipation.

68. Life I, 451–53.

69. See K. Curry, op. cit., 427.

70. Acknowledgements are due to the Bodleian Library for permission to publish the text of Letters 1–6 and 9 (MS English letters d74, ff. 84–101); to the Taylorian Library, Oxford, for Letter 7 (MS Sp. BW 1); to the National Library of Scotland for Letter 8 (MS 2528, f.50). We are grateful to Professor Nigel Glendinning for his comments on a first draft of this article.