Joy Unconfined

by Ian Strathcarron

  Hobhouse didn’t know what he missed; he went off in a huff and instead of chatting up a ‘sennorita’ at the opera visited a puta in a brothel and promptly picked up an STD for his troubles.

  Unfortunately the opera house is no more; likewise the bullring at Plaza de las Galeras in El Puerto, where they saw the obligatory bullfight, which is now part of the city park. On the day of the bullfight, 30 July 1809, they took their places in the governor’s box. The event had a huge effect on the vegetarian Byron, who devoted eleven stanzas to it in Childe Harold ‘s Pilgrimage - more than to any other event. The stanzas are full of irony against this ‘ungentle sport’ and about Spanish ways of spending Sundays: ‘soon as the matin bell proclaimeth nine/Thy saint adorers count the rosary... then to the crowded circus forth they fare/Young, old, high, low at once the same diversion share.’ Hobhouse noted dryly only that ‘Four horses killed by one black bull (a priest’s).’ The travel writer Sir John Carr wrote that ‘the death of one or two horses completely satisfied their curiosity. They looked pale and shuddered as even the young ladies continued their applause as another horse fell bleeding to the ground. One bull killed four horses off his own horns. He was saved by acclamations, which were redoubled when it was known he belonged to a priest. An Englishman who can be much pleased with seeing two men beat each other to pieces, cannot bear to look at a horse galloping around in an arena with his bowels trailing on the ground, and turns from the spectacle and the spectators in horror and disgust.’

  They skulked back to Bailly’s for their last dinner. No revelries were reported; maybe the bullfight had dampened their spirits. By now the HMS Hyperion under Captain Brodie was ready to leave Cadiz for Gibraltar. Byron and Hobhouse had booked their passage. It was time for the entourage to leave, time to enter the Mediterranean and head east and onto the major part of the Grand Tour. As Don Juan would later say when ‘quitting Cadiz’:

  ‘Farewell, my Spain! A long farewell!’ he cried,

  ‘Perhaps I may visit thee no more

  But die, as many an exiled heart hath died,

  Of its own thirst to see again thy shore:...’

  Chapter Four

  GIBRALTAR, GOING NOWHERE

  4-15 AUGUST 1809 | 16-23 JULY 2008

  Ye gods, but Gibraltar be a dump; ‘twas a dump when Byron and Hobhouse arrived there on HMS Hyperion from Cadiz on 4 August 1809 to start the Mediterranean part of their Grand Tour, it still is a dump when the Strathcarrons arrive there on Vasco da Gama from Lisbon on 16 July 2008, and would seem to be doomed to dumpdom forever and beyond.

  ’The dirtiest most detestable spot,’ Byron remembered it, and it is hard to see now why he was so enthusiastic. The purpose of the Gibraltar of 1809 was wholly military; the purpose of it now less clear. Then the Peninsular War was fully joined, and although the traditional Gibraltarian enemy, Spain, and Britain were allied against France, and although Nelson had made the Mediterranean safe for British shipping, Gibraltar was a place of high military activity if not actual military danger.

  In fact by 1809 the Peninsular War had been a fruitful experience for Gibraltar. By the end of 1806 all the European powers had come under Napoleon’s sway, either by direct occupation or forced alliance, except for Portugal and her old ally Britain. To deal with Portugal Napoleon planned a military invasion in alliance with Spain; they expected little opposition and would divide Portugal up between them. To deal with Britain Napoleon planned its bankruptcy and so devised the ‘Continental System’ whereby none of the countries under his control would be allowed to trade with Britain, and all British ships in these countries’ ports were to be seized immediately. Britain retaliated immediately by using her sea power to blockade Napoleon’s ports. The scene was set to see who would break first: Britain and her economy, the continental Europeans who would be unable to trade by sea, or the third parties, like America, who valued free trade as their country grew.

  The British blockade of the Mediterranean ports under the new Commander-in-Chief Admiral Collingwood saw naval activity increase and Gibraltar became the hub not just of supplies and repairs but of resistance to Napoleon’s aims. Sanctions don’t work now and didn’t work then, and Gibraltar was soon the staging post for British goods being offloaded onto American ships for onward passage to the continent. The British also encouraged Gibraltar as a base for privateering, or legalised piracy, to prey on any French ships that had slipped through the blockade. By the time Byron arrived in Gibraltar a major shift of alliances had taken place the year before when France, rather than simply march through Spain on its way to Portugal, decided that while it was on Spanish soil it might as well end Bourbon rule and let the Spanish rejoice at having Napoleon’s brother Joseph Bonaparte, then King of Naples, as their king instead. The Spanish disagreed and joined Portugal and Britain as allies against France, and thus began the Peninsular War.

  Little of the Gibraltar that was then remains today. The Garrison Library still stands, as does the Convent and adjoining King’s Chapel, the Trafalgar Cemetery, the King’s Bastion and Casemates Square. The Library was created by the officers within Gibraltar, and the Gibraltar Chronicle, still the Rock’s newspaper, was first printed from there. The Convent was built by Franciscan friars - convento in Spanish or Portuguese means a residence for monks or nuns - and is now the Governor’s Residence and place of office as well as the King’s Chapel. The Trafalgar Cemetery is where the wounded survivors of the battle, who later died, were buried after HMS Victory was towed into Gibraltar harbour; those who died during the battle were of course buried at sea. The King’s Bastion is now a leisure centre. Casemates Square, which was the old parade ground and execution yard, is now the town’s main (only) square and hosts open air events. All are well kept in a town that generally isn’t, although the Library is starting to grow somewhat weary.

  If Gibraltar’s military purpose has long been overtaken by peace and prosperity - not to mention cruise missiles should peace and prosperity not be doing well enough - its reinvention as an offshore tax haven for spread betters and online gamblers is confounded by its seeking respectability within the European Union. The scrubby old squaddy town is not quite sure what it is these days, and so has become a cross between Portsmouth without the finesse and the Cayman Islands without the financial probity. The prints in the Garrison Library show that Gibraltar was never a place of man-made beauty, and the tradition still stands with mock Tudor tower blocks and eighties modernist office developments blotting the reclaimed land. It wants to be Dubai, but it has just reinvented Fuengirola.

  Byron never willingly travelled lightly as we’ve seen, and having sent the bulk of his trunks and chests, not to mention Fletcher, Murray and Friese by sea from Lisbon to Gibraltar on the schooner Triumph he now had to wait for them all to arrive. He had expected that they would be there waiting for him, for in theory the sail down the Portuguese coast and over to and through the Straits of Gibraltar should have only taken a few days, far less time than the overland route that he, Hobhouse, Rushton and Sanguinetti had taken. But on Byron’s arrival in Gibraltar Triumph was there none, and so the party had to find a hotel and wait, with the added anxiety of not knowing why his servants and portmanteaux had not arrived, or even if they ever would arrive. In the meantime they had to make do with The Three Anchors.

  The Three Anchors is no more, hardly surprisingly as Hobhouse recorded that it was ‘horrid and dirty, a shocking hotel’, their two rooms ‘very buggy,’ and dinner ‘was bad, spoilt by greasy cooking.’ The owner, one Hawthorne, ‘a fat, short man,’ as Byron said, ‘like the pictures of jolly Bacchus,’ did not impress them much either. Eventually they retired to the first of ten ‘horrid night(s). Bed on a little sofa.’

  Without the rest of the entourage they were marooned on the Rock, and with no way of knowing what had become of the Triumph they passed the oven hot, dense, humid days of a Gibraltar August as best they could. In the evenings t
hey would ride or walk to the top of the Rock and back down, making unfulfilled plans to visit the Barbary Coast so clearly seen. In the early morning they rode over to the border near Algeciras. They walked to the top of the Rock again, they rode to the top of the Rock again, but mostly they whiled away their hours and their uncertainty in the Garrison Library.

  They found the library ‘well-filled with good common books,’ as indeed it is today. Founded in 1793 by garrison officers who donated the first five hundred books, it now has 45,000 and the shelves continue to expand with donations. Now run entirely by volunteers, it is charming and dotty, dusty and musty. The architecture is pure military Raj, two- storey, no-nonsense stone blocks and slate roof outside and cast iron pillars and wood lined walls inside. In the garden the original - so we are assured - maple tree still stands proudly to attention, now joined by subaltern palm trees and more common-or-garden shrubbery.

  Hobhouse read Life and Times of Voltaire by Espinasse, and the two volumes of Arthur Young’s French Tour. Both titles are still very much there in peaceful retirement high on the BB shelves in the upstairs reading room. It is easy to visualise Hobhouse reading the weighty and worthy Young, the full title of whose work was Travels During the Years 1787, 1788 and 1789; Undertaken More Particularly With a View to Ascertaining the Cultivation, Wealth, Resources and National Prosperity of the Kingdom of France. Hobhouse’s subsequent travel book was called, equally worthily, A Journey through Albania, and other Provinces of Turkey in Europe and Asia, to Constantinople, during the years 1809 and 1810.

  As I visit the reading room it is clear that no one has been up there for a while, and the shutters keep the room dark and cool. Two hundred years ago the officers would use the cane reclining chairs and velvet chaises-longues and whatever breeze there was upstairs to catch up on the latest news from home, although they would have learnt of the victory at Trafalgar from the Gibraltar Chronicle a few days before the readers of The Times did so back in London. The Trafalgar article has pride of place, although for reasons of preservation it is locked in the safe. I open it with white gloves, goose pimples and great care and read:

  Euryalus, at sea, October 22, 1805

  Sir,

  Yesterday a Battle was fought by His Majesty’s Fleet, with the Combined Fleets of Spain and France, and a Victory gained, which will stand recorded as one of the most brilliant and decisive, that ever distinguished the BRITISH NAVY.

  The Enemy’s Fleet sailed from Cadiz, on the 19th, in the Morning, Thirty Three sail of Line in number, for the purpose of giving Battle to the British Squadron of Twenty Seven, and yesterday at Eleven A.M. the contest began, close in with the Shoals of Trafalgar.

  At Five P.M. Seventeen of the Enemy had surrendered, and one (L’Achille) burnt, amongst which is the Sta. Ana, the Spanish Admiral DON D’ALEYA mortally wounded and the Santisima Trinidad. The French Admiral VILLENEUVE is now a Prisoner on board the Mars; I believe THREE ADMIRALS are captured.

  Our loss has been great in Men; but, what is irreparable, and the cause of Universal Lamentation, is the Death of the NOBLE COMMANDER IN CHIEF, who died in the Arms of Victory; I have not yet any reports from the Ships, but have heard that Captains DUFF and COOK fell in the Action.

  I have to congratulate you upon the Great Event, and have the Honour to be, &c.&c.

  (Signed) C. COLLINGWOOD

  I am also hoping to find some references to Byron and Hobhouse’s visit in the Gibraltar Chronicle, but it wasn’t that type of newspaper, more a weekly digest of military matters from the major European newspapers.

  Byron and Hobhouse happened to be in Gibraltar at the same time as the acting Governor, Lieutenant General Sir Hew Dalrymple, was on his annual leave (the then nominal Governor, General HRH Prince Edward, Duke of Kent was nearly always absent) and thus had no access to the social life of the Rock which then as now revolved around the comings and goings at the Convent, Gibraltar’s Government House. We have no such misfortune and are welcomed most warmly by His Excellency the Governor and his wife, Lt. Gen. Sir Robert and Lady Fulton. The setting for the welcome can hardly be less formal. Gillian is in London for a few days and I am upside down deep in the engine compartment trying to mend our water maker, sweating and cursing in the darkness and humidity, in only underpants and filthy old T-shirt, the snappy temper not improved by three taps on the hull and ‘Hello, anyone home?’

  It is indeed the Fultons, Rob and Midge, and as I am in no condition to even shake their hands we agree to meet for a very cold beer in the harbour bar, the Waterfront, as soon as I’ve had a chance to scrub up a bit. After chatting for a while Midge asks if there is anything we miss on the life afloat.

  ’Yes,’ I reply, ‘a hot bath. A good long soak in a Badedas hot bath, with the heel regulating the water out and the hot tap letting a similar amount...’

  Settled,’ the Governor says, ‘Gillian returns tomorrow and hot baths at the Convent await your arrivals.’

  ’Wonderful, come at five-ish and you can have tea before the bath and something more sensible after it. Not sure about the Badedas,’ Midge says.

  ’Don’t worry about the Badedas,’ I reply. ‘I will provide that and furthermore insist that afterwards I invite you out for dinner at the Royal Gibraltar Yacht Club.’ And so we do just that; tea and a tour and baths and drinks at the Convent and dinner at the RGYC.

  The Convent is so called because that is what it once was, a convent for Franciscan friars who settled there in 1525 after the Moors had finally left in 1475. The Moors had arrived in 711, led by one Tariq Bin Zaid, and called their new possession Jebel al-Tariq (Mount Tariq) which over the years became the anglicised Gibraltar. The friars built their convent and when the British arrived in earnest after the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 they invited the friars to invite the British to take half of the only substantial building in Gibraltar, el convento. They co-existed for ten years after which the friars had had enough of the military banging and crashing and left forever for Cadiz. The Victorians added to the building in a rather sombre Empire style but did include three excellent rooms: a twenty-six seat Gothic revival baronial dining room with coats of arms and pennants amid the mahogany and cornices, a very comfortable withdrawing room which can be used formally or informally, and from the top half of what is now the King’s Chapel they carved out the Ballroom where investitures and royal receptions are held.

  ’And balls in the ballroom?’ I ask

  ’I don’t suppose the floor could stand it,’ Sir Robert replies.

  The Victorians also encouraged the Governors to develop the acre attached to the Convent and this has now become a trove of botanical treasures, and as Sir Robert puts it as he takes us on a tour, ‘these gardens are the history of Gibraltar told in trees.’

  Nearest the chapel is a form of cork tree which the friars planted five hundred years ago, now held up with a dozen wooden supports. Around this grows milkweed, which attracts the most enormous yellow and brown hand-sized butterflies. The most striking trees are the dragon trees, dracaena marginata, originally from the Canary Islands and most seen in the UK as a spiked pot plant but here over one hundred feet tall with a long straight trunk and cats’ cradles of geometrical branches just under the leaves. Some commemorate the Treaty of Utrecht, planted in 1715, others the surviving of the great Spanish siege of 1785, yet another the visit by Queen Alexandria in 1903. The only tree not to flourish was the one planted to commemorate the visit of Prince Charles and Diana, Princess of Wales to the Convent at the start of their honeymoon on Britannia in 1981; like the marriage it withered on the vine prematurely and has now been replaced by a similar tree. ‘Vengica camillica,’ I offer; Sir Robert smiles politely, I imagine he’s heard it before.

  The next morning we join them for Family Communion in the King’s Chapel part of the Convent. The congregation is largely military as is the chaplain. In his sermon he tells the story of his posting
in South Armagh during the Troubles, when as part of an MoD ‘hearts and minds outreach initiative’ the military clergy were encouraged to visit local churches. On one occasion he was seconded to a service conducted by Ian Paisley. Paisley in his most sonorous tones was quoting from Romans IV, the part about ‘weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth’. A brave man put his hand up: ‘but Doctor Reverend, what happens if you have no teeth?’ Paisley drew his mighty chest up to its full extent and without missing a beat thundered down, ‘teeth will be provided.’

  I must say the time spent with the Governor and Lady Fulton is most welcome as, like Byron and Hobhouse, I am beginning to despair of Gibraltar. In a world of upward mobility, it is for a while worth observing somewhere so relentlessly down-market, where the Star outsells the Sun, where pink nylon cardigans and light blue acrylic slippers are stretched around muffin tops and doughnuts, many of quite repellent aspect, where soft porn calendars hang on the pub walls, where blowing bubble gum is a teenage fad from which one never evolves, where smoking is not only compulsory but competitive - with extra points for chewing gum at the same time and double extras for spitting the gum onto the pavement as you exhale the fag smoke, where the horrible little microclimate is a relief from death by open-ended two-stroke scooters, and if they somehow fail to score a direct hit there are always the pit bull terriers lying in wait in the shadow of their owners’ beer bellies; all this and also where the terrible thought arises that maybe, just maybe, there is some redemption in political correctness after all.