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Prescott's History Of The Conquest And Calderon de la Barca's Life In Mexico: Mexican Reaction, 1843-1844

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

Michael P. Costeloe
Michael P. Costeloe*
Affiliation:
University of Bristol, Bristol, England
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Extract

In 1843, two friends, one Scottish and one American, published books about Mexico which were to become essential reading for students of Mexican history. Much the better known of the two is William Hickling Prescott whose History of the Conquest of Mexico became an instant best-seller and remains to this day one of the classics of Mexican historiography. Less well-known but equally valuable to historians of nineteenth-century Mexico is Frances Calderón de la Barca's vivid account of Life in Mexico based on her experiences during the two years from 1840-1841 when she lived in the country as the wife of the first Spanish ambassador. By coincidence, Prescott and Sra. Calderón were close personal friends and regular correspondents and they gave each other much assistance in preparing their respective books for publication. Both their works were greeted with critical and public acclaim in the English-speaking world of Europe and North America but reactions in Mexico were markedly different. While Prescott's book was received with qualified enthusiasm, Life in Mexico was the subject of hostile reviews and its author much vitriolic, personal abuse.

Type
Research Issues
Information
The Americas , Volume 47 , Issue 3 , January 1991 , pp. 337 - 348
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 1991

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References

1 Gardiner, Harvey ed., The Literary Memoranda of William Hickling Prescott (University of Oklahoma Press, 1961), vol. 2, p. 103.Google Scholar

2 Peck, H.T., William Hickling Prescott (New York, 1905, reprint 1969), pp. 79–80.Google Scholar

3 Peck, , Prescott, pp. 80–81.Google Scholar Within a fortnight of publication. Prescott recorded that he had received between fifty and sixty notices “all chiming in with the tone of eulogy.” Gardiner, , Literary Memoranda, 2, p. 113.Google Scholar

4 Quarterly Review, LXXIII (December, 1843), 187–235.

5 The prospectus announcing the edition, dated 18 September, was published in El Defensor de la Integridad Nacional, 21 September 1844.

6 Artide published in La Abeja, 7 October 1844.

7 Advertisement in La Abeja, 9 November 1844. The installment was accompanied by an engraving done by “our celebrated cosmographer, D. Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora.”

8 Advertisement in El Siglo XIX, 5 November 1844.

9 El Siglo XIX, 13 November 1844.

10 Ibid., 26 October 1844.

11 Prescott’s version of the incident is in volume III of the R. Bentley, London, 1844 edition, pp. 310–311.

12 El Siglo XIX, 29 October 1844.

13 The essay duly appeared and Alamán explained, with supporting documents, that faced with the threat of mob violence against the remains, the city authorities had authorized the clergy to remove them. Alamán, L., Obras (Mexico, 1969), vol. 7, pp. 51,Google Scholar 314–317.

14 Frances was born in Edinburgh in 1804 and after the death of her father, emigrated with her mother to the United States.

15 W. H. Prescott to Charles Dickens, 31 August 1842, published in Wolcott, R. ed., The Correspondence of W. H. Prescott, 1833–1847 (Boston & New York, 1925), pp. 315–316.Google Scholar

16 Wolcott, , The Correspondence, pp. 315–316.Google Scholar

17 Ibid., pp. xv–xvi. The letters between Prescott and the Calderóns are published in Wolcott.

18 She was much less inhibited in her private correspondence. For example, in a letter to Prescott of 19 September 1841 from an hacienda near Mexico City where she was staying, she describes the three leading Mexican generals of the time as follows: “El Cojo [Santa Anna] is an energetic robber – Valencia a vulgar, ambitious upstart. Paredes is the best but he is always drunk.” Wolcott, , pp. 249–250.Google Scholar

19 Gardiner, II, p. 94.

20 Prescott to Dickens, 31 August 1842, in Wolcott, pp. 315–316.

21 Prescott to Dickens, 1 December 1842, in ibid., pp. 322–323.

22 The London edition was published by Chapman and Hall on 16 January 1843.

23 Prescott to Dickens, undated, December 1842, in Wolcott, pp. 328–329. Prescott’s, review appeared in North American Review, 56 (January 1843), 137–170.Google Scholar

24 I have not been able to locate copies of this paper in Mexico, Britain, France, Spain or the United States. The following details are as reported in the Diario del Gobierno, 11 May 1843, which includes a translation of an article in Le Courrier Français.

25 Diario del Gobierno, 11 May 1843.

26 Original copies of La Hesperia for this period have also not been located and the following details are as reported in the Diario del Gobierno, 12 May 1843.

27 Diario del Gobierno, 12 May 1843.

28 El Siglo XIX, 25 January 1844.

29 Diario de las Cortes (Madrid, 1871-1875), sessions 22–27 June 1822.

30 El Siglo XIX, 19 September 1844.

31 Ibid., 26 October 1844.

32 Diario del Gobierno, 30 April 1843.

33 de la Barca, F. Calderón, Life in Mexico (J. M. Dent & Sons, London, 1970), p. 84.Google Scholar

34 Diario del Gobierno, 12 May 1843.