Gatherings from Spain, 1846 ~ Presentation copy from Richard Ford to Washington Irving

FORD, Richard.  Gatherings from Spain. By the author of The Handbook of Spain; chiefly selected from that work, with much new matter. London: John Murray, Albemarle Street, 1846. First Edition. Small 8vo,

Bound in original publisher’s red cloth with gilt lettering to spine.  Slightly rubbed and marked.   Expertly re-backed with original spine laid down.   Complete with the half-title and 16pp. publisher’s catalogue at end.  No. 20 in Murray’s Home and Colonial Library.  Preserved in cloth custom clamshell box with leather label.

Bears the Ex-libris bookplates of Douglas C Ewing and Roderick Terry on front pastedown.  Roderick Terry, “a connoisseur in the grand old tradition of the 19th century century” once owned the four Shakespeare folios and a complete set of autographs of the signers of the Declaration of Independence.  This volume probably dispersed in the Roderick Terry sales at the Anderson Galleries in 1934 / 5.   Subsequently sold by Goodspeed in 1954.  

Remarkable association copy with fine presentation inscription from Richard Ford to Washington Irving linking the two great Hispanophile writers of the 19th century.  a Su Ea. Washington Irving. Recuerdo de Amistrad de su aspasionado amigo Richard Ford. London Feb 16, 1847  (To his excellency, Washington Irving in memory of friendship from your passionate friend Richard Ford. London Feb 16, 1847) Gatherings from Spain was largely distilled from Richard Ford’s celebrated Hand-Book for Travellers in Spain – the first comprehensive guidebook to Spain – revered not only as a practical resource for the travelers but also as a literary masterwork of travel writing. Ford’s accounts were based on three years and 2,000 miles of travels on horseback between Seville and Santiago.

As Claudia Heide has written:

” Fords’s special combination of vast knowledge with stylish prose, wit, humor and trenchant expressions of personal prejudice, distinguished his book from earlier, dry, matter of fact accounts, and made the idea of travelling to what its author described as ” Europe’s most racy country”, all the more appealing……..Travelling was uncomfortable and dangerous, but to the Romantic on his quest for the “unknown”, Spain was the perfect destination”. “Ford was the first to paint a compelling and influential Spain of the imaginary, and one that is still recognizable today.  His main rival in this regard is Washington Irving, who traveled to Andalucía, and ‘rediscovered’ Seville and Granada for Northern tourists, and specifically the Alhambra as a place of enchantment”.

Ford and his family spent three winters in Seville and two summers in Granada, where he took up residence in the Alhambra. “Washington Irving tells us we shall be able to be lodged in the Alhambra, as he was, which will tempt me to pass next summer there”, Richard Ford informs the British envoy at Madrid. 

Despite the Alhambra’s discomforts and “ruinous condition”, “poetry conquered prose; comfort gave way to romance” and in his letter of June 7, 1831 Ford announced that he had installed himself in the Moorish palace, “the pearl and magnet of Granada”. Washington Irving’s Tales of the Alhambra published in 1832 prompted writers, publishers, and painters to turn their attention to Andalucia in particular. Washington Irving revelled in it:…“what a country it is for a traveller, where the most miserable inn is as full of adventure as an enchanted castle, and every meal is in itself an achievement!  Let others repine at the lack of turn-pike roads and sumptuous hotels., and all the elaborate comforts of a country cultivated and civilized into tameness and commonplace; but give me the rude mountain scramble, the roving, haphazard wayfaring; the half wild, yet frank and hospitable manners, which impart a true game-flavor to dear old romantic Spain!..

There was much mutual admiration between Richard Ford and Washington Irving, America’s first internationally famous author (of such classics as “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, “Rip Van Winkle”). Irving had been attached at the US Embassy in Madrid, where he wrote his life of Columbus and complied materials for his works on Granada and the Alhambra first published in 1832.  

From 1842-46 Irving returned to Madrid as American Minister to Spain. He  had relinquished the post shortly before Ford presented him with this warmly inscribed volume on February 16, 1847.

The 19th century perception of Spain was dominated by the Englishmen Richard Ford and American Washington Irving..  Together these early travelers provided a rich perspective that influenced every subsequent writer.