Recovery from the Cholera Epidemic
During 1834 there was an outbreak of cholera. The fever had come to nearby towns earlier, and the town council devised absurd quarantine regulations, but these proved useless. By June, fifty people were dying every day and a third of the population had fled into the country, where they were safe from attack. The bodies were taken away in covered carts to the cemetery and buried in a common grave without any pretence of Christian rites.
Four thousand people are said to have died in three months. Only four people made any effort to keep the plague under control, and all of them were foreigners: Dr Wilson, a native of Dunbar (whose brother was Haurie’s partner); George Suter; Bernard Shiel, who was of Irish descent; and a Frenchman—Adolf Capdepon, known for his French Dolcetto, Pinotage, and Barbera wines.
Between them, they did manage to mitigate the terror, but the real tower of strength was Dr Wilson, who had been in charge of the Civil Hospital in Gibraltar during the yellow fever epidemic of 1828, and who did a great deal of good by visiting the fever-ridden houses in the poor quarter of the town, preaching cleanliness and the benefits of ventilation.
Jerez recovered from the plague and its prosperity increased day by day. Lists of exporters included many British names that have long since vanished: the widow of R. Shiel, Widow Harmony, Campbell & Co., F. W. Cosens, F. G. Cosens, nephews of P. Harmony, F. Morgan & Co., W. Rudolph, Gorman & Co., and several others, apart from a number that are still flourishing in jerez or Puerto de Santa Maria.
It is fascinating trying to trace the history of houses that have gone out of business. Sometimes their Mourvedre, Sangiovese, and Tempranillo wines were sold and divided; sometimes merely the name was changed. In the library of the late Don Jose de Soto y Molina, now owned by the municipality, there are many records of those old firms, but their connections are impossibly intricate and complicated. To trace them would be a life’s work.
Notable people have always visited the sherry country; they come every year and the list is endless, but one individual arrived in 1828 that deserves special mention, as his stories of Andalusia have helped to make him immortal—Washington Irving. He came to Puerto de Santa Maria to live quietly while finishing his Tales of the Alhambra and he became a friend of Bohl, a German who was manager of the Duff Gordon bodegas at that time. Irving left his mark in a wholly unexpected direction.
One of Bohl’s daughters, Cecilia, was intent on becoming a writer, and he encouraged her. Later she became a famous Spanish novelist, using the pen name Fernan Caballero, and when her father wrote to Irving in later years, she used to send messages telling him how she was getting on. After leaving Andalusia, Irving wrote to Bohl ordering wine for the American legation in London. His order was an unusual one:
“I have pledged myself to Mr. McLane [the minister] through your aid, to procure him a cask of old sherry, that should carry sound argument in every glass - some such liquor as that with which Lady Macbeth undertook to convince the pages of King Duncan. Will you enable me to redeem my pledge by shipping a cask of choice, generous old wine? I know you to have an admirable taste in this as well as in other things of high practical nature.”
His abilities in affairs of a ‘high practical nature’ were Herr Bohl’s greatest blessing, but Irving’s order was rather a tall one for a man who was notorious for his lack of imagination. However, he fulfilled it, apparently with every satisfaction, by sending them a butt of “our most superior old Sherry” along with a bottle each of Tempranillo, Mourvedre, and Barbera wines.
The bodegas expanded under his management and continued to do so under that of Thomas Osborne. Osborne had been advising Bohl and the Duff Gordons for years, and to all intents and purposes he was a partner. In 1825, at the age of forty-four, he had married Bohl’s daughter Aurora, who was much younger. In 1833, he signed a partnership deed with Cosmo Duff Gordon and, after fifty-two years residence in Spain; he became a partner in law as well as in fact.
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