第28章 TORRIJOS(1)

Torrijos,who had now in 1829been here some four or five years,having come over in 1824,had from the first enjoyed a superior reception in England.Possessing not only a language to speak,which few of the others did,but manifold experiences courtly,military,diplomatic,with fine natural faculties,and high Spanish manners tempered into cosmopolitan,he had been welcomed in various circles of society;and found,perhaps he alone of those Spaniards,a certain human companionship among persons of some standing in this country.

With the elder Sterlings,among others,he had made acquaintance;became familiar in the social circle at South Place,and was much esteemed there.With Madam Torrijos,who also was a person of amiable and distinguished qualities,an affectionate friendship grew up on the part of Mrs.Sterling,which ended only with the death of these two ladies.John Sterling,on arriving in London from his University work,naturally inherited what he liked to take up of this relation:and in the lodgings in Regent Street,and the democratico-literary element there,Torrijos became a very prominent,and at length almost the central object.

The man himself,it is well known,was a valiant,gallant man;of lively intellect,of noble chivalrous character:fine talents,fine accomplishments,all grounding themselves on a certain rugged veracity,recommended him to the discerning.He had begun youth in the Court of Ferdinand;had gone on in Wellington and other arduous,victorious and unvictorious,soldierings;familiar in camps and council-rooms,in presence-chambers and in prisons.He knew romantic Spain;--he was himself,standing withal in the vanguard of Freedom's fight,a kind of living romance.Infinitely interesting to John Sterling,for one.

It was to Torrijos that the poor Spaniards of Somers Town looked mainly,in their helplessness,for every species of help.Torrijos,it was hoped,would yet lead them into Spain and glorious victory there;meanwhile here in England,under defeat,he was their captain and sovereign in another painfully inverse sense.To whom,in extremity,everybody might apply.When all present resources failed,and the exchequer was quite out,there still remained Torrijos.

Torrijos has to find new resources for his destitute patriots,find loans,find Spanish lessons for them among his English friends:in all which charitable operations,it need not be said,John Sterling was his foremost man;zealous to empty his own purse for the object;impetuous in rushing hither or thither to enlist the aid of others,and find lessons or something that would do.His friends,of course,had to assist;the Bartons,among others,were wont to assist;--and Ihave heard that the fair Susan,stirring up her indolent enthusiasm into practicality,was very successful in finding Spanish lessons,and the like,for these distressed men.Sterling and his friends were yet new in this business;but Torrijos and the others were getting old in it?--and doubtless weary and almost desperate of it.They had now been seven years in it,many of them;and were asking,When will the end be?

Torrijos is described as a man of excellent discernment:who knows how long he had repressed the unreasonable schemes of his followers,and turned a deaf ear to the temptings of fallacious hope?But there comes at length a sum-total of oppressive burdens which is intolerable,which tempts the wisest towards fallacies for relief.

These weary groups,pacing the Euston-Square pavements,had often said in their despair,"Were not death in battle better?Here are we slowly mouldering into nothingness;there we might reach it rapidly,in flaming splendor.Flame,either of victory to Spain and us,or of a patriot death,the sure harbinger of victory to Spain.Flame fit to kindle a fire which no Ferdinand,with all his Inquisitions and Charles Tenths,could put out."Enough,in the end of 1829,Torrijos himself had yielded to this pressure;and hoping against hope,persuaded himself that if he could but land in the South of Spain with a small patriot band well armed and well resolved,a band carrying fire in its heart,--then Spain,all inflammable as touchwood,and groaning indignantly under its brutal tyrant,might blaze wholly into flame round him,and incalculable victory be won.Such was his conclusion;not sudden,yet surely not deliberate either,--desperate rather,and forced on by circumstances.He thought with himself that,considering Somers Town and considering Spain,the terrible chance was worth trying;that this big game of Fate,go how it might,was one which the omens credibly declared he and these poor Spaniards ought to play.

His whole industries and energies were thereupon bent towards starting the said game;and his thought and continual speech and song now was,That if he had a few thousand pounds to buy arms,to freight a ship and make the other preparations,he and these poor gentlemen,and Spain and the world,were made men and a saved Spain and world.What talks and consultations in the apartment in Regent Street,during those winter days of 1829-30;setting into open conflagration the young democracy that was wont to assemble there!Of which there is now left next to no remembrance.For Sterling never spoke a word of this affair in after-days,nor was any of the actors much tempted to speak.We can understand too well that here were young fervid hearts in an explosive condition;young rash heads,sanctioned by a man's experienced head.Here at last shall enthusiasm and theory become practice and fact;fiery dreams are at last permitted to realize themselves;and now is the time or never!--How the Coleridge moonshine comported itself amid these hot telluric flames,or whether it had not yet begun to play there (which I rather doubt),must be left to conjecture.