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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/7430-0.txt b/7430-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..fc4dc64 --- /dev/null +++ b/7430-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,9660 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Familiar Spanish Travels, by W. D. Howells + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Familiar Spanish Travels + +Author: W. D. Howells + +Release Date: February, 2005 [EBook #7430] +Posting Date: August 21, 2016 [EBook + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FAMILIAR SPANISH TRAVELS *** + + + + +Produced by Eric Eldred + + + + + +FAMILIAR SPANISH TRAVELS + + +By W. D. Howells + + + + ILLUSTRATED + HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS + NEW YORK AND LONDON + MCMXIII + COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY HARPER & BROTHERS + PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA + PUBLISHED OCTOBER. 1913 + + +TO M. H. + + +[Illustration: 01 PUERTA DEL SOL--GATE OF THE SUN--TOLEDO] + + +CONTENTS + + + I. AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL APPROACHES + + II. SAN SEBASTIAN AND BEAUTIFUL BISCAY + + III. BURGOS AND THE BITTER COLD OF BURGOS + + IV. THE VARIETY OF VALLADOLID + + V. PHASES OF MADRID + + VI. A NIGHT AND DAY IN TOLEDO + + VII. THE GREAT GRIDIRON OF ST. LAWRENCE + + VIII. CORDOVA AND THE WAY THERE + + IX. FIRST DAYS IN SEVILLE + + X. SEVILLIAN ASPECTS AND INCIDENTS + + XI. TO AND IN GRANADA + + XII. THE SURPRISES OF RONDA + + XIII. ALGECIRAS AND TARIFA + + + + + +FAMILIAR SPANISH TRAVELS + + + + +I. AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL APPROACHES + + + +I. + +As the train took its time and ours in mounting the uplands toward +Granada on the soft, but not too soft, evening of November 6, 1911, +the air that came to me through the open window breathed as if from an +autumnal night of the middle eighteen-fifties in a little village of +northeastern Ohio. I was now going to see, for the first time, the city +where so great a part of my life was then passed, and in this magical +air the two epochs were blent in reciprocal association. The question of +my present identity was a thing indifferent and apart; it did not matter +who or where or when I was. Youth and age were at one with each other: +the boy abiding in the old man, and the old man pensively willing to +dwell for the enchanted moment in any vantage of the past which would +give him shelter. + +In that dignified and deliberate Spanish train I was a man of +seventy-four crossing the last barrier of hills that helped keep Granada +from her conquerors, and at the same time I was a boy of seventeen in +the little room under the stairs in a house now practically remoter than +the Alhambra, finding my unguided way through some Spanish story of the +vanished kingdom of the Moors. The little room which had structurally +ceased fifty years before from the house that ceased to be home even +longer ago had returned to the world with me in it, and fitted perfectly +into the first-class railway compartment which my luxury had provided +for it. From its window I saw through the car window the olive groves +and white cottages of the Spanish peasants, and the American apple +orchards and meadows stretching to the primeval woods that walled the +drowsing village round. Then, as the night deepened with me at my book, +the train slipped slowly from the hills, and the moon, leaving the Ohio +village wholly in the dark, shone over the roofs and gardens of +Granada, and I was no longer a boy of seventeen, but altogether a man of +seventy-four. + +I do not say the experience was so explicit as all this; no experience +so mystical could be so explicit; and perhaps what was intimated to +me in it was only that if I sometime meant to ask some gentle reader’s +company in a retrospect of my Spanish travels, I had better be honest +with him and own at the beginning that passion for Spanish things which +was the ruling passion of my boyhood; I had better confess that, however +unrequited, it held me in the eager bondage of a lover still, so that I +never wished to escape from it, but must try to hide the fact whenever +the real Spain fell below the ideal, however I might reason with +my infatuation or try to scoff it away. It had once been so +inextinguishable a part of me that the record of my journey must be more +or less autobiographical; and though I should decently endeavor to keep +my past out of it, perhaps I should not try very hard and should not +always succeed. + +Just when this passion began in me I should not be able to say; but +probably it was with my first reading of _Don Quixote_ in the later +eighteen-forties. I would then have been ten or twelve years old; and, +of course, I read that incomparable romance, not only greatest, but sole +of its kind, in English. The purpose of some time reading it in Spanish +and then the purpose of some time writing the author’s life grew in me +with my growing years so strongly that, though I have never yet done +either and probably never shall, I should not despair of doing both if +I lived to be a hundred. In the mean time my wandering steps had early +chanced upon a Spanish grammar, and I had begun those inquiries in it +which were based upon a total ignorance of English accidence. I do not +remember how I felt my way from it to such reading of the language +as has endeared Spanish literature to me. It embraced something of +everything: literary and political history, drama, poetry, fiction; +but it never condescended to the exigencies of common parlance. These +exigencies did not exist for me in my dreams of seeing Spain which were +not really expectations. It was not until half a century later, when my +longing became a hope and then a purpose, that I foreboded the need of +practicable Spanish. Then I invoked the help of a young professor, who +came to me for an hour each day of a week in London and let me try to +talk with him; but even then I accumulated so little practicable Spanish +that my first hour, almost my first moment in Spain, exhausted my store. +My professor was from Barcelona, but he beautifully lisped his _c’s_ +and _z’s_ like any old Castilian, when he might have hissed them in the +accent of his native Catalan; and there is no telling how much I might +have profited by his instruction if he had not been such a charming +intelligence that I liked to talk with him of literature and philosophy +and politics rather than the weather, or the cost of things, or the +question of how long the train stopped and when it would start, or the +dishes at table, or clothes at the tailor’s, or the forms of greeting +and parting. If he did not equip me with the useful colloquial phrases, +the fault was mine; and the misfortune was doubly mine when from my old +acquaintance with Italian (glib half-sister of the statelier Spanish) +the Italian phrases would thrust forward as the equivalent of the +English words I could not always think of. The truth is, then, that I +was not perfect in my Spanish after quite six weeks in Spain; and if +in the course of his travels with me the reader finds me flourishing +Spanish idioms in his face he may safely attribute them less to my +speaking than my reading knowledge: probably I never employed them in +conversation. That reading was itself without order or system, and I am +not sure but it had better been less than more. Yet who knows? The days, +or the nights of the days, in the eighteen-fifties went quickly, as +quickly as the years go now, and it would have all come to the present +pass whether that blind devotion to an alien literature had cloistered +my youth or not. + +I do not know how, with the merciful make I am of, I should then have +cared so little, or else ignored so largely the cruelties I certainly +knew that the Spaniards had practised in the conquests of Mexico and +Peru. I knew of these things, and my heart was with the Incas and the +Aztecs, and yet somehow I could not punish the Spaniards for their +atrocious destruction of the only American civilizations. As nearly as I +can now say, I was of both sides, and wistful to reconcile them, though +I do not see now how it could have been done; and in my later hopes for +the softening of the human conditions I have found it hard to forgive +Pizarro for the overthrow of the most perfectly socialized state known +to history. I scarcely realized the base ingratitude of the Spanish +sovereigns to Columbus, and there were vast regions of history that I +had not penetrated till long afterward in pursuit of Spanish perfidy and +inhumanity, as in their monstrous misrule of Holland. When it came in +those earlier days to a question of sides between the Spaniards and +the Moors, as Washington Irving invited my boyhood to take it in his +chronicle of the conquest of Granada, I experienced on a larger scale my +difficulty in the case of the Mexicans and Peruvians. The case of these +had been reported to me in the school-readers, but here, now, was an +affair submitted to the mature judgment of a boy of twelve, and yet +I felt as helpless as I was at ten. Will it be credited that at +seventy-four I am still often in doubt which side I should have had win, +though I used to fight on both? Since the matter was settled more than +four hundred years ago, I will not give the reasons for my divided +allegiance. They would hardly avail now to reverse the tragic fate of +the Moors, and if I try I cannot altogether wish to reverse it. Whatever +Spanish misrule has been since Islam was overthrown in Granada, it has +been the error of law, and the rule of Islam at the best had always been +the effect of personal will, the caprice of despots high and low, +the unstatuted sufferance of slaves, high and low. The gloomiest and +cruelest error of Inquisitional Spain was nobler, with its adoration of +ideal womanhood, than the Mohammedan state with its sensual dreams of +Paradise. I will not pretend (as I very well might, and as I perhaps +ought) that I thought of these things, all or any, as our train began to +slope rather more rapidly toward Granada, and to find its way under +the rising moon over the storied Vega. I will as little pretend that my +attitude toward Spain was ever that of the impartial observer after +I crossed the border of that enchanted realm where we all have our +castles. I have thought it best to be open with the reader here at +the beginning, and I would not, if I could, deny him the pleasure of +doubting my word or disabling my judgment at any point he likes. In +return I shall only ask his patience when I strike too persistently the +chord of autobiography. That chord is part of the harmony between the +boy and the old man who made my Spanish journey together, and were +always accusing themselves, the first of dreaming and the last of +doddering: perhaps with equal justice. Is there really much difference +between the two? + + + +II. + +It was fully a month before that first night in Granada that I arrived +in Spain after some sixty years’ delay. During this period I had seen +almost every other interesting country in Europe. I had lived five +or six years in Italy; I had been several months in Germany; and a +fortnight in Holland; I had sojourned often in Paris; I had come and +gone a dozen times in England and lingered long each time; and yet I +had never once visited the land of my devotion. I had often wondered at +this, it was so wholly involuntary, and I had sometimes suffered from +the surprise of those who knew of my passion for Spain, and kept finding +out my dereliction, alleging the Sud-Express to Madrid as something that +left me without excuse. The very summer before last I got so far on the +way in London as to buy a Spanish phrase-book full of those inopportune +conversations with landlords, tailors, ticket-sellers, and casual +acquaintance or agreeable strangers. Yet I returned once more to America +with my desire, which was turning into a duty, unfulfilled; and when +once more I sailed for Europe in 1911 it was more with foreboding of +another failure than a prescience of fruition in my inveterate longing. +Even after that boldly decisive week of the professor in London I had my +doubts and my self-doubts. There were delays at London, delays at Paris, +delays at Tours; and when at last we crossed the Pyrenees and I found +myself in Spain, it was with an incredulity which followed me throughout +and lingered with me to the end. “Is this truly Spain, and am I actually +there?” the thing kept asking itself; and it asks itself still, in terms +that fit the accomplished fact. + + + + +II. SAN SEBASTIAN AND BEAUTIFUL BISCAY + + +Even at Irun, where we arrived in Spain from Bayonne, there began at +once to be temperamental differences which ought to have wrought against +my weird misgivings of my whereabouts. Only in Spain could a customs +inspector have felt of one tray in our trunks and then passed them +all with an air of such jaded aversion from an employ uncongenial to +a gentleman. Perhaps he was also loath to attempt any inquiry in that +Desperanto of French, English, and Spanish which raged around us; but +the porter to whom we had fallen, while I hesitated at our carriage door +whether I should summon him as _Mozo_ or _Usted,_ was master of that +_lingua franca_ and recovered us from the customs without question on +our part, and understood everything we could not, say. I like to think +he was a Basque, because I like the Basques so much for no reason that +I can think of. Their being always Carlists would certainly be no reason +with me, for I was never a Carlist; and perhaps my liking is only a +prejudice in their favor from the air of thrift and work which pervades +their beautiful province, or is an effect of their language as I first +saw it inscribed on the front of the Credit Lyonnais at Bayonne. It +looked so beautifully regular, so scholarly, so Latin, so sister to both +Spanish and Italian, so richly and musically voweled, and yet remained +so impenetrable to the most daring surmise, that I conceived at once +a profound admiration for the race which could keep such a language +to itself. When I remembered how blond, how red-blond our sinewy young +porter was, I could not well help breveting him of that race, and +honoring him because he could have read those words with the eyes that +were so blue amid the general Spanish blackness of eyes. He imparted a +quiet from his own calm to our nervousness, and if we had appealed to +him on the point I am sure he would have saved us from the error of +breakfasting in the station restaurant at the deceitful _table d’hote,_ +though where else we should have breakfasted I do not know. + + + +I. + +One train left for San Sebastian while I was still lost in amaze that +what I had taken into my mouth for fried egg should be inwardly fish +and full of bones; but he quelled my anxiety with the assurance, which I +somehow understood, that there would be another train soon. In the mean +time there were most acceptable Spanish families all about, affably +conversing together, and freely admitting to their conversation the +children, who so publicly abound in Spain, and the nurses who do nothing +to prevent their publicity. There were already the typical fat Spanish +mothers and lean fathers, with the slender daughters, who, in the +tradition of Spanish good-breeding, kept their black eyes to themselves, +or only lent them to the spectators in furtive glances. Both older +and younger ladies wore the scanty Egyptian skirt of Occidental +civilization, lurking or perking in deep-drooping or high-raking hats, +though already here and there was the mantilla, which would more and +more prevail as we went southward; older and younger, they were all +painted and powdered to the favor that Spanish women everywhere corne +to. + +When the bad breakfast was over, and the waiters were laying the table +for another as bad, our Basque porter came in and led us to the train +for San Sebastian which he had promised us. It was now raining outside, +and we were glad to climb into our apartment without at all seeing what +Irun was or was not like. But we thought well of the place because we +first experienced there the ample ease of a Spanish car. In Spain the +railroad gauge is five feet six inches; and this car of ours was not +only very spacious, but very clean, while the French cars that had +brought us from Bordeaux to Bayonne and from Bayonne to Irun were +neither. I do not say all French cars are dirty, or all Spanish cars are +as clean as they are spacious. The cars of both countries are hard +to get into, by steep narrow footholds worse even than our flights of +steps; in fact, the English cars are the only ones I know which are easy +of access. But these have not the ample racks for hand-bags which the +Spanish companies provide for travelers willing to take advantage of +their trust by transferring much of their heavy stuff to them. Without +owning that we were such travelers, I find this the place to say that, +with the allowance of a hundred and thirty-two pounds free, our excess +baggage in two large steamer-trunks did not cost us three dollars in +a month’s travel, with many detours, from Irun in the extreme north to +Algeciras in the extreme south of Spain. + + + +II. + +But in this sordid detail I am keeping the reader from the scenery. It +had been growing more and more striking ever since we began climbing +into the Pyrenees from Bayonne; but upon the whole it was not so sublime +as it was beautiful. There were some steep, sharp peaks, but mostly +there were grassy valleys with white cattle grazing in them, and many +fields of Indian corn, endearingly homelike. This at least is mainly the +trace that the scenery as far as Irun has left among my notes; and after +Irun there is record of more and more corn. There was, in fact, +more corn than anything else, though there were many orchards, also +endearingly homelike, with apples yellow and red showing among the +leaves still green on the trees; if there had been something more +wasteful in the farming it would have been still more homelike, but a +traveler cannot have everything. The hillsides were often terraced, +as in Italy, and the culture apparently close and conscientious. The +farmhouses looked friendly and comfortable; at places the landscape was +molested by some sort of manufactories which could not conceal their +tall chimneys, though they kept the secret of their industry. They were +never, really, very bad, and I would have been willing to let them pass +for fulling-mills, such as I was so familiar with in _Don Quixote,_ if +I had thought of these in time. But one ought to be honest at any cost, +and I must own that the Spain I was now for the first time seeing with +every-day eyes was so little like the Spain of my boyish vision that I +never once recurred to it. That was a Spain of cork-trees, of groves +by the green margins of mountain brooks, of habitable hills, where +shepherds might feed their flocks and mad lovers and maids forlorn might +wander and maunder; and here were fields of corn and apple orchards and +vineyards reddening and yellowing up to the doors of those comfortable +farmhouses, with nowhere the sign of a Christian cavalier or a turbaned +infidel. As a man I could not help liking what I saw, but I could also +grieve for the boy who would have been so disappointed if he had come to +the Basque provinces of Spain when he was from ten to fifteen years old, +instead of seventy-four. + +It took our train nearly an hour to get by twenty miles of those +pleasant farms and the pretty hamlets which they now and then clustered +into. But that was fast for a Spanish way-train, which does not run, +but, as it were, walks with dignity and makes long stops at stations, +to rest and let the locomotive roll itself a cigarette. By the time we +reached San Sebastian our rain had thickened to a heavy downpour, and +by the time we mounted to our rooms, three pair up in the hotel, it +was storming in a fine fury over the bay under them, and sweeping the +curving quays and tossing the feathery foliage of the tamarisk-shaded +promenade. The distinct advantage of our lofty perch was the splendid +sight of the tempest, held from doing its worst by the mighty headlands +standing out to sea on the right and left. But our rooms were cold with +the stony cold of the south when it is cooling off from its summer, and +we shivered in the splendid sight. + + + +III. + +The inhabitants of San Sebastian will not hesitate to say that it is the +prettiest town in Spain, and I do not know that they could be hopefully +contradicted. It is very modern in its more obvious aspects, with a +noble thoroughfare called the Avenida de Libertad for its principal +street, shaded with a double row of those feathery tamarisks, and with +handsome shops glittering on both sides of it. Very easily it is first +of the fashionable watering-places of Spain; the King has his villa +there, and the court comes every summer. But they had gone by the time +we got there, and the town wore the dejected look of out-of-season +summer resorts; though there was the apparatus of gaiety, the fine +casino at one end of the beach, and the villas of the rich and noble all +along it to the other end. On the sand were still many bathing-machines, +but many others had begun to climb for greater safety during the winter +to the street above. We saw one hardy bather dripping up from the surf +and seeking shelter among those that remained, but they were mostly +tenanted by their owners, who looked shoreward through their open doors, +and made no secret of their cozy domesticity, where they sat and sewed +or knitted and gossiped with their neighbors. Good wives and mothers +they doubtless were, but no doubt glad to be resting from the summer +pleasure of others. They had their beautiful names written up over their +doors, and were for the service of the lady visitors only; there were +other machines for gentlemen, and no doubt it was their owners whom +we saw gathering the fat seaweed thrown up by the storm into the carts +drawn by oxen over the sand. The oxen wore no yokes, but pulled by a +band drawn over their foreheads under their horns, and they had the air +of not liking the arrangement; though, for the matter of that, I have +never seen oxen that seemed to like being yoked. + + +[Illustration: 02 THE CASINO, SAN SEBASTIAN, LOOKS OUT UPON THE CURVING CONCHA AND THE BLUE BAY] + +When we came down to dinner we found the tables fairly full of belated +visitors, who presently proved tourists flying south like ourselves. +The dinner was good, as it is in nearly all Spanish hotels, where for an +average of three dollars a day you have an inclusive rate which you must +double for as good accommodation in our States. Let no one, I say, fear +the rank cookery so much imagined of the Peninsula, the oil, the pepper, +the kid and the like strange meats; as in all other countries of Europe, +even England itself, there is a local version, a general convention of +the French cuisine, quite as good in Spain as elsewhere, and oftener +superabundant than subabundant. The plain water is generally good, With +an American edge of freshness; but if you will not trust it (we had to +learn to trust it) there are agreeable Spanish mineral waters, as +well as the Apollinaris, the St. Galmier, and the Perrier of other +civilizations, to be had for the asking, at rather greater cost than the +good native wines, often included in the inclusive rate. + +Besides this convention of the French cuisine there is almost everywhere +a convention of the English language in some one of the waiters. You +must not stray far from the beaten path of your immediate wants, but in +this you are safe. At San Sebastian we had even a wider range with the +English of the little intellectual-looking, pale Spanish waiter, with +a fine Napoleonic head, who came to my help when I began to flounder in +the language which I had read so much and spoken so little or none. He +had been a year in London, he said, and he took us for English, though, +now he came to notice it, he perceived we were Americans because we +spoke “quicklier” than the English. We did not protest; it was the +mildest criticism of our national accent which we were destined to +get from English-speaking Spaniards before they found we were not the +English we did not wish to be taken for. After dinner we asked for a +fire in one of our grates, but the maid declared there was no fuel; and, +though the hostess denied this and promised us a fire the next night, +she forgot it till nine o’clock, and then we would not have it. The cold +abode with us indoors to the last at San Sebastian, but the storm (which +had hummed and whistled theatrically at our windows) broke during the +first night, and the day followed with several intervals of sunshine, +which bathed us in a glowing-expectation of overtaking the fugitive +summer farther south. + + + +IV. + +In the mean time we hired a beautiful Basque cabman with a red Basque +cap and high-hooked Basque nose to drive us about at something above +the legal rate and let us not leave any worthy thing in San Sebastian +unseen. He took us, naturally, to several churches, old and new, with +their Gothic and rococo interiors, which I still find glooming and +glinting among my evermore thickening impressions of like things. We got +from them the sense of that architectural and sculptural richness which +the interior of no Spanish church ever failed measurably to give; but +what their historical associations were I will not offer to say. The +associations of San Sebastian with the past are in all things vague, at +least for me. She was indeed taken from the French by the English under +Wellington during the Peninsular War, but of older, if not unhappier +farther-off days and battles longer ago her history as I know it seems +to know little. It knows of savage and merciless battles between the +partisans of Don Carlos and those of Queen Isabella so few decades since +as not to be the stuff of mere pathos yet, and I am not able to blink +the fact that my beloved Basques fought on the wrong side, when they +need not have fought at all. Why they were Carlists they could perhaps +no more say than I could. The monumental historic fact is that the +Basques have been where they are immeasurably beyond the memories of +other men; what the scope of their own memories is one could perhaps +confidently say only in Basque if one could say anything. Of course, +in the nature of things, the Phoenicians must have been there and the +Greeks, doubtless, if they ever got outside of the Pillars of Hercules; +the Romans, of course, must have settled and civilized and then +Christianized the province. It is next neighbor to that province of +Asturias in which alone the Arabs failed to conquer the Goths, and from +which Spain was to live and grow again and recover all her losses from +the Moors; but what the share of San Sebastian was in this heroic fate, +again I must leave the Basques to say. They would doubtless say it with +sufficient self-respect, for wherever we came in contact that day with +the Basque nature we could not help imagining in it a sense of racial +merit equaling that of the Welsh themselves, who are indeed another +branch of the same immemorial Iberian stock, if the Basques are +Iberians. Like the Welsh, they have the devout tradition that they +never were conquered, but yielded to circumstances when these became too +strong for them. + +Among the ancient Spanish liberties which were restricted by the +consolidating monarchy from age to age, the Basque _fueros,_ or rights, +were the oldest; they lasted quite to our own day; and although it is +known to more ignorant men that these privileges (including immunity +from conscription) have now been abrogated, the custodian of the House +of Provincial Deputies, whom our driver took us to visit, was such a +glowing Basque patriot that he treated them as in full force. His pride +in the seat of the local government spared us no detail of the whole +electric-lighting system, or even the hose-bibs for guarding the edifice +against fire, let alone every picture and photograph on the wall of +every chamber of greater or less dignity, with every notable table and +chair. He certainly earned the peseta I gave him, but he would have done +far more for it if we had suffered him to take us up another flight +of stairs; and he followed us in our descent with bows and adieux that +ought to have left no doubt in our minds of the persistence of the +Basque _fueros._ + + + +V. + +It was to such a powerful embodiment of the local patriotism that our +driver had brought us from another civic palace overlooking the Plaza de +la Constitution, chiefly notable now for having been the old theater of +the bull-fights. The windows in the houses round still bear the numbers +by which they were sold to spectators as boxes; but now the municipality +has built a beautiful brand-new bull-ring in San Sebastian; and I do not +know just why we were required to inspect the interior of the edifice +overlooking this square. I only know that at sight of our bewilderment +a workman doing something to the staircase clapped his hands orientally, +and the custodian was quickly upon us in response to a form of summons +which we were to find so often used in Spain. He was not so crushingly +upon us as that other custodian; he was apologetically proud, rather +than boastfully; at times he waved his hands in deprecation, and would +have made us observe that the place was little, very little; he deplored +it like a host who wishes his possessions praised. Among the artistic +treasures of the place from which he did not excuse us there were some +pen-drawings, such as writing-masters execute without lifting the +pen from the paper, by a native of South America, probably of Basque +descent, since the Basques have done so much to people that continent. +We not only admired these, but we would not consent to any of the +custodian’s deprecations, especially when it came to question of the +pretty salon in which Queen Victoria was received on her first visit to +San Sebastian. We supposed then, and in fact I had supposed till this +moment, that it was Queen Victoria of Great Britain who was meant; but +now I realize that it must have been the queen consort of Spain, who +seems already to have made herself so liked there. + +She, of course, comes every summer to San Sebastian, and presently our +driver took us to see the royal villa by the shore, withdrawn, perhaps +from a sense of its extreme plainness, not to say ugliness, among its +trees and vines behind its gates and walls. Our driver excused himself +for not being able to show us through it; he gladly made us free of +an unrestricted view of the royal bathing-pavilion, much more frankly +splendid in its gilding, beside the beach. Other villas ranked +themselves along the hillside, testifying to the gaiety of the social +life in summers past and summers to come. In the summer just past the +gaiety may have been interrupted by the strikes taking in the newspapers +the revolutionary complexion which it was now said they did not wear. At +least, when the King had lately come to fetch the royal household +away nothing whatever happened, and the “constitutional guarantees,” + suspended amidst the ministerial anxieties, were restored during the +month, with the ironical applause of the liberal press, which pretended +that there had never been any need of their suspension. + +[Illustration: 03 THE SEA SWEEPS INLAND IN A CIRCLE OF BLUE, TO FORM THE ENTRANCE TO THE HARBOR, SAN SEBASTIAN] + + + +VI. + +All pleasures, mixed or unmixed, must end, and the qualified joy of our +drive through San Sebastian came to a close on our return to our hotel +well within the second hour, almost within its first half. When I +proposed paying our driver for the exact time, he drooped upon his box +and, remembering my remorse in former years for standing upon my just +rights in such matters, I increased the fare, peseta by peseta, till his +sinking spirits rose, and he smiled gratefully upon me and touched his +brave red cap as he drove away. He had earned his money, if racking his +invention for objects of interest in San Sebastian was a merit. At the +end we were satisfied that it was a well-built town with regular blocks +in the modern quarter, and not without the charm of picturesqueness +which comes of narrow and crooked lanes in the older parts. Prescient of +the incalculable riches before us, we did not ask much of it, and we got +all we asked. I should be grateful to San Sebastian, if for nothing +else than the two very Spanish experiences I had there. One concerned a +letter for me which had been refused by the bankers named in my letter +of credit, from a want of faith, I suppose, in my coming. When I did +come I was told that I would find it at the post-office. That would be +well enough when I found the post-office, which ought to have been easy +enough, but which presented certain difficulties in the driving rain of +our first afternoon. At last in a fine square I asked a fellow-man in +my best conversational Spanish where the post-office was, and after a +moment’s apparent suffering he returned, “Do you speak English?” “Yes.” + I said, “and I am so glad you do.” “Not at all. I don’t speak anything +else. Great pleasure. There is the post-office,” and it seemed that I +had hardly escaped collision with it. But this was the beginning, not +the end, of my troubles. When I showed my card to the _poste restante_ +clerk, he went carefully through the letters bearing the initial of my +name and denied that there was any for me. We entered into reciprocally +bewildering explanations, and parted altogether baffled. Then, at +the hotel, I consulted with a capable young office-lady, who tardily +developed a knowledge of English, and we agreed that it would be well to +send the _chico_ to the post-office for it. The _chico,_ corresponding +in a Spanish hotel to a _piccolo_ in Germany or a page in England, or +our own now evanescing bell-boy, was to get a _peseta_ for bringing me +the letter. He got the _peseta,_ though he only brought me word that +the authorities would send the letter to the hotel by the postman that +night. The authorities did not send it that night, and the next morning +I recurred to my bankers. There, on my entreaty for some one who could +meet my Spanish at least half-way in English, a manager of the bank came +out of his office and reassured me concerning the letter which I had +now begun to imagine the most important I had ever missed. Even while we +talked the postman came in and owned having taken the letter back to the +office. He voluntarily promised to bring it to the bank at one o’clock, +when I hastened to meet him. At that hour every one was out at lunch; I +came again at four, when everybody had returned, but the letter was not +delivered; at five, just before the bank closed, the letter, which had +now grown from a _carta_ to a _cartela,_ was still on its way. I left +San Sebastian without it; and will it be credited that when it was +forwarded to me a week later at Madrid it proved the most fatuous +missive imaginable, wholly concerning the writer’s own affairs and none +of mine? + +I cannot guess yet why it was withheld from me, but since the incident +brought me that experience of Spanish politeness, I cannot grieve for +it. The young banker who left his region of high finance to come out and +condole with me, in apologizing for the original refusal of my letter, +would not be contented with so little. Nothing would satisfy him but +going with me, on my hinted purpose, and inquiring with me at the +railroad office into the whole business of circular tickets, and even +those kilometric tickets which the Spanish railroads issue to such +passengers as will have their photographs affixed to them for the +prevention of transference. As it seemed advisable not to go to this +extreme till I got to Madrid, my kind young banker put himself at my +disposal for any other service I could imagine from him; but I searched +myself in vain for any desire, much less necessity, and I parted from +him at the door of his bank with the best possible opinion of the +Basques. I suppose he was a Basque; at any rate, he was blond, which +the Spaniards are mostly not, and the Basques often are. Now I am sorry, +since he was so kind, that I did not get him to read me the Basque +inscription on the front of his bank, which looked exactly like that on +the bank at Bayonne; I should not have understood it, but I should have +known what it sounded like, if it sounded like anything but Basque. + +Everybody in San Sebastian seemed resolved to outdo every other in +kindness. In a shop where we endeavored to explain that we wanted to get +a flat cap which should be both Basque and red, a lady who was buying +herself a hat asked in English if she could help us. When we gladly +answered that she could, she was silent, almost to tears, and it +appeared that in this generous offer of aid she had exhausted her +whole stock of English. Her mortification, her painful surprise, at the +strange catastrophe, was really pitiable, and we hastened to escape +from it to a shop across the street. There instantly a small boy rushed +enterprisingly out and brought back with him a very pretty girl who +spoke most of the little French which has made its way in San Sebastian +against the combined Basque and Spanish, and a cap of the right flatness +and redness was brought. I must not forget, among the pleasures done us +by the place, the pastry cook’s shop which advertised in English “Tea +at all Hours,” and which at that hour of our afternoon we now found so +opportune, that it seemed almost personally attentive to us as the only +Anglo-Saxon visitors in town. The tea might have been better, but it was +as good as it knew how; and the small boy who came in with his mother +(the Spanish mother seldom fails of the company of a small boy) in her +moments of distraction succeeded in touching with his finger all the +pieces of pastry except those we were eating. + + + +VII. + +The high aquiline nose which is characteristic of the autochthonic race +abounds in San Sebastian, but we saw no signs of the high temper which +is said to go with it. This, indeed, was known to me chiefly from my +first reading in _Don Quixote,_ of the terrific combat between the +squire of the Biscayan ladies whose carriage the knight of La Mancha +stopped after his engagement with the windmills. In their exchange of +insults incident to the knight’s desire that the ladies should go to +Toboso and thank Dulcinea for his delivery of them from the necromancers +he had put to flight in the persons of two Benedictine monks, “‘Get +gone,’ the squire called, in bad Spanish and worse Biscayan, ‘Get gone, +thou knight, and Devil go with thou; or by He Who me create... me kill +thee now so sure as me be Biscayan,’” and when the knight called him an +“inconsiderable mortal,” and said that if he were a gentleman he would +chastise him: “‘What! me no gentleman?’ replied the Biscayan. ‘I swear +thou be liar as me be Christian.... Me will show thee me be Biscayan, +and gentleman by land, gentleman by sea, gentleman in spite of Devil; +and thou lie if thou say the contrary.’” + +It is a scene which will have lived in the memory of every reader, and +I recurred to it hopefully but vainly in San Sebastian, where this +fiery threefold gentleman might have lived in his time. It would be +interesting to know how far the Basques speak broken Spanish in a +fashion of their own, which Cervantes tried to represent in the talk +of his Biscayan. Like the Welsh again they strenuously keep their +immemorial language against the inroads of the neighboring speech. How +much they fix it in a modern literature it would be easier to ask than +to say. I suppose there must be Basque newspapers; perhaps there are +Basque novelists, there are notoriously Basque bards who recite their +verses to the peasants, and doubtless there are poets who print their +rhymes: and I blame myself for not inquiring further concerning them of +that kindly Basque banker who wished so much to do something for me in +compensation for the loss of my worthless letter. I knew, too cheaply, +that the Basques have their poetical contests, as the Welsh have their +musical competitions in the Eisteddfod, and they are once more like the +Welsh, their brothers in antiquity, in calling themselves by a national +name of their own. They call themselves Euskaldunac, which is as +different from the name of Basque given them by the alien races as Cymru +is from Welsh. + +All this lore I have easily accumulated from the guide-books since +leaving San Sebastian, but I was carelessly ignorant of it in driving +from the hotel to the station when we came away, and was much concerned +in the overtures made us in a mixed Spanish, English, and French by a +charming family from Chili, through the brother to one of the ladies and +luisband to the other. When he perceived from my Spanish that we were +not English, he rejoiced that we were Americans of the north, and as +joyfully proclaimed that they were Americans of the south. We were +at once sensible of a community of spirit in our difference from our +different ancestral races. They were Spanish, but with a New World +blitheness which we nowhere afterward found in the native Spaniards; and +we were English, with a willingness to laugh and to joke which they had +not perhaps noted in our ancestral contemporaries. Again and again we +met them in the different cities where we feared we had lost them, until +we feared no more and counted confidently on seeing them wherever we +went. They were always radiantly smiling; and upon this narrow ground I +am going to base the conjecture that the most distinctive difference of +the Western Hemisphere from the Eastern is its habit of seeing the +fun of things. With those dear Chilians we saw the fun of many little +hardships of travel which might have been insupportable without the +vision. Sometimes we surprised one another in the same hotel; sometimes +it was in the street that we encountered, usually to exchange +amusing misfortunes. If we could have been constantly with these +fellow-hemispherists our progress through Spain would have been an +unbroken holiday. + +There is a superstition of travelers in Spain, much fostered by +innkeepers and porters, that you cannot get seats in the fast trains +without buying your tickets the day before, and then perhaps not, and +we abandoned ourselves to this fear at San Sebastian so far as to get +places some hours in advance. But once established in the ten-foot-wide +interior of the first-class compartment which we had to ourselves, every +anxiety fell from us; and I do not know a more flattering emotion than +that which you experience in sinking into your luxurious seat, and, +after a glance at your hand-bags in the racks where they have been put +with no strain on your own muscles, giving your eyes altogether to the +joy of the novel landscape. + +The train was what they call a Rapido in Spain; and though we were +supposed to be devouring space with indiscriminate gluttony, I do not +think that in our mad rush of twenty-five miles an hour we failed to +taste any essential detail of the scenery..But I wish now that I had +known the Basques were all nobles, and that the peasants owned many of +the little farms we saw declaring the general thrift. In the first two +hours of the six to Burgos we ran through lovely valleys held in the +embrace of gentle hills, where the fields of Indian corn were varied by +groves of chestnut trees, where we could see the burrs gaping on their +stems. The blades and tassels of the corn had been stripped away, +leaving the ripe ears a-tilt at the top of the stalks, which looked +like cranes standing on one leg with their heads slanted in pensive +contemplation. There were no vineyards, but orchards aplenty near the +farmhouses, and all about there were other trees pollarded to the quick +and tufted with mistletoe, not only the stout oaks, but the slim poplars +trimmed up into tall plumes like the poplars in southern France. The +houses, when they did not stand apart like our own farmhouses, gathered +into gray-brown villages around some high-shouldered church with a +bell-tower in front or at one corner of the fagade. In most of the +larger houses an economy of the sun’s heat, the only heat recognized +in the winter of southern countries, was practised by glassing in the +balconies that stretched quite across their fronts and kept the cold +from at least one story. It gave them a very cheery look, and must have +made them livable at least in the daytime. Now and then the tall chimney +of one of those manufactories we had seen on the way from Irun invited +belief in the march of industrial prosperity; but whether the Basque who +took work in a mill or a foundry forfeited his nobility remained a part +of the universal Basque secret. From time to time a mountain stream +brawled from under a world-old bridge, and then spread a quiet tide for +the women to kneel beside and wash the clothes which they spread to dry +on every bush and grassy slope of the banks. + +The whole scene changed after we ran out of the Basque country and into +the austere landscape of old Castile. The hills retreated and swelled +into mountains that were not less than terrible in their savage +nakedness. The fields of corn and the orchards ceased, and the green of +the pastures changed to the tawny gray of the measureless wheat-lands +into which the valleys flattened and widened. There were no longer any +factory chimneys; the villages seemed to turn from stone to mud; the +human poverty showed itself in the few patched and tattered figures that +followed the oxen in the interminable furrows shallowly scraping the +surface of the lonely levels. The haggard mountain ranges were of stone +that seemed blanched with geologic superannuation, and at one place we +ran by a wall of hoary rock that drew its line a mile long against +the sky, and then broke and fell, and then staggered up again in a +succession of titanic bulks. But stupendous as these mountain masses +were, they were not so wonderful as those wheat-lands which in +harvest-time must wash their shores like a sea of gold. Where these now +rose and sank with the long ground-swell of the plains in our own West, +a thin gray stubble covered them from the feeble culture which leaves +Spain, for all their extent in both the Castiles, in Estremadura, in +Andalusia, still without bread enough to feed herself, and obliges +her to import alien wheat. At the lunch which we had so good in the +dining-car we kept our talk to the wonder of the scenery, and well away +from the interesting Spanish pair at our table. It is never safe in +Latin Europe to count upon ignorance of English in educated people, or +people who look so; and with these we had the reward of our prudence +when the husband asked after dessert if we minded his smoking. His +English seemed meant to open the way for talk, and we were willing he +should do the talking. He spoke without a trace of accent, and we at +once imagined circles in which it was now as _chic_ for Spaniards to +speak English as it once was to speak French. They are said never to +speak French quite well; but nobody could have spoken English better +than this gentleman, not even we who were, as he said he supposed, +English. Truth and patriotism both obliged us to deny his conjecture; +and when He intimated that he would not have known us for Americans +because we did not speak with the dreadful American accent, I hazarded +my belief that this dreadfulness was personal rather than national. But +he would not have it. Boston people, yes; they spoke very well, and he +allowed other exceptions to the general rule of our nasal twang, which +his wife summoned English enough to say was very ugly. They had suffered +from it too universally in the Americans they had met during the summer +in Germany to believe it was merely personal; and I suppose one may own +to strictly American readers that our speech _is_ dreadful, that it is +very ugly. These amiable Spaniards had no reason and no wish to +wound; and they could never know what sweet and noble natures had been +producing their voices through their noses there in Germany. I for my +part could not insist; who, indeed, can defend the American accent, +which is not so much an accent as a whiffle, a snuffle, a twang? It was +mortifying, all the same, to have it openly abhorred by a foreigner, and +I willingly got away from the question to that of the weather. We agreed +admirably about the heat in England where this gentleman went every +summer, and had never found it so hot before. It was hot even in +Denmark; but he warned me not to expect any warmth in Spain now that the +autumn rains had begun. + +If this couple represented a cosmopolitan and modern Spain, it was +interesting to escape to something entirely native in the three young +girls who got in at the next station and shared our compartment with us +as far as we went. They were tenderly kissed by their father in putting +them on board, and held in lingering farewells at the window till the +train started. The eldest of the three then helped in arranging their +baskets in the rack, but the middle sister took motherly charge of the +youngest, whom she at once explained to us as _enferma._ She was +the prettiest girl of the conventional Spanish type we Lad yet seen: +dark-eyed and dark-haired, regular, but a little overfull of the chin +which she would presently have double. She was very, very pale of face, +with a pallor in which she had assisted nature with powder, as all +Spanish women, old and young, seem to do. But there was no red underglow +in the pallor, such as gives many lovely faces among them the complexion +of whitewash over pink on a stucco surface. She wrapped up the youngest +sister, who would by and by be beautiful, and now being sick had only +the flush of fever in her cheeks, and propped her in the coziest corner +of the car, where she tried to make her keep still, but could not make +her keep silent. In fact, they all babbled together, over the basket of +luncheon which the middle sister opened after springing up the little +table-leaf of the window, and spread with a substantial variety +including fowl and sausage and fruit, such as might tempt any sick +appetite, or a well one, even. As she brought out each of these +victuals, together with a bottle of wine and a large bottle of milk, she +first offered it to us, and when it was duly refused with thanks, she +made the invalid eat and drink, especially the milk which she made a wry +face at. When she had finished they all began to question whether her +fever was rising for the day; the good sister felt the girl’s pulse, and +got out a thermometer, which together they arranged under her arm, and +then duly inspected. It seemed that the fever _was_ rising, as it might +very well be, but the middle sister was not moved from her notable calm, +and the eldest did not fear. At a place where a class of young men +was to be seen before an ecclesiastical college the girls looked out +together, and joyfully decided that the brother (or possibly a cousin) +whom they expected to see, was really there among them. When we reached +Burgos we felt that we had assisted at a drama of family medicine and +affection which was so sweet that if the fever was not very wisely it +was very winningly treated. It was not perhaps a very serious case, and +it meant a good deal of pleasant excitement for all concerned. + + + + +III. BURGOS AND THE BITTER COLD OF BURGOS + + +It appears to be the use in most minor cities of Spain for the best +hotel to send the worst omnibus to the station, as who should say, “Good +wine needs no bush.” At Burgos we were almost alarmed by the shabbiness +of the omnibus for the hotel we had chosen through a consensus of praise +in the guide-books, and thought we must have got the wrong one. It was +indeed the wrong one, but because there is no right hotel in Burgos +when you arrive there on an afternoon of early October, and feel the +prophetic chill of that nine months of winter which is said to contrast +there with three months of hell. + + + +I + + +The air of Burgos when it is not the breath of a furnace is so heavy and +clammy through the testimony of all comers that Burgos herself no longer +attempts to deny it from her high perch on the uplands of Old Castile. +Just when she ceased to deny it, I do not know, but probably when she +ceased to be the sole capital and metropolis of Christian Spain and +shared her primacy with Toledo sometime in the fourteenth century. Now, +in the twentieth, we asked nothing of her but two rooms in which we +could have fire, but the best hotel in Burgos openly declared that it +had not a fireplace in its whole extent, though there must have been one +in the kitchen. The landlord pointed out that it was completely equipped +with steam-heating apparatus, but when I made him observe that there was +no steam in the shining radiators, he owned with a shrug that there was +truth in what I said. He showed us large, pleasant rooms to the south +which would have been warm from the sun if the sun which we left playing +in San Sebastian had been working that day at Burgos; he showed us his +beautiful new dining-room, cold, with the same sunny exposure. I rashly +declared that all would not do, and that I would look elsewhere for +rooms with fireplaces. I had first to find a cab in order to find +the other hotels, but I found instead that in a city of thirty-eight +thousand inhabitants there was not one cab standing for hire in the +streets. I tried to enlist the sympathies of some private carriages, but +they remained indifferent, and I went back foiled, but not crushed, +to our hotel. There it seemed that the only vehicle to be had was the +omnibus which had brought us from the station. The landlord calmly (I +did not then perceive the irony of his calm) had the horses put to +and our baggage put on, and we drove away. But first we met our dear +Chilians coming to our hotel from the hotel they had chosen, and from a +search for hearthstones in others; and we drove to the only hotel they +had left unvisited. There at our demand for fires the landlord all but +laughed us to scorn; he laid his hand on the cold radiator in the +hotel as if to ask what better we could wish than that. We drove back, +humbled, to our own hotel, where the landlord met us with the Castilian +cairn he had kept at our departure. Then there was nothing for me but +to declare myself the Prodigal Son returned to take the rooms he +had offered us. We were so perfectly in his power that he could +magnanimously afford to offer us other rooms equally cold, but we did +not care to move. The Chilians had retired baffled to their own hotel, +and there was nothing for us but to accept the long evening of gelid +torpor which we foresaw must follow the effort of the soup and wine to +warm us at dinner. That night we heard through our closed doors agonized +voices which we knew to be the voices of despairing American women +wailing through the freezing corridors, “Can’t she understand that +I want _boiling_ water?” and, “Can’t’ we go down-stairs to a fire +somewhere?” We knew the one meant the chambermaid and the other the +kitchen, but apparently neither prayer was answered. + +[Illustration: 04 GROUPS OF WOMEN ON THEIR KNEES BEATING CLOTHES IN THE WATER] + + + +II + + +As soon as we had accepted our fate, while as yet the sun had not set +behind the clouds which had kept it out of our rooms all day, we hurried +out not only to escape the rigors of our hotel, but to see as soon as we +could, as much as we could of the famous city. We had got an excellent +cup of tea in the glass-roofed pavilion of our beautiful cold +dining-room, and now our spirits rose level with the opportunities of +the entrancing walk we took along the course of the Arlanson. I say +course, because that is the right word to use of a river, but really +there was no course in the Arlanzon. Between the fine, wide Embankments +and under the noble bridges there were smooth expanses of water +(naturally with women washing at them), which reflected like an +afterglow of the evening sky the splendid masses of yarn hung red from +the dyer’s vats on the bank. The expanses of water were bordered by +wider spaces of grass which had grown during the rainless summer, but +which were no doubt soon to be submerged under the autumnal torrent the +river would become. The street which shaped itself to the stream was +a rather modern avenue, leading to a beautiful public garden, with the +statues and fountains proper to a public garden, and densely shaded +against the three infernal months of the Burgos year. But the houses +were glazed all along their fronts with the sun-traps which we had noted +in the Basque country, and which do not wait for a certain date in the +almanac to do the work of steam-heating. They gave a tempting effect to +the house-fronts, but they could not distract our admiration from the +successive crowds of small boys playing at bull-fighting in the streets +below, and in the walks of the public garden. The population of +Burgos is above thirty-seven thousand and of the inhabitants at +least thirty-six thousand are small boys, as I was convinced by the +computation of the husband and brother of the Chilian ladies which +agreed perfectly with my own hasty conjecture; the rest are small girls. +In fact large families, and large families chiefly of boys, are the rule +in Spain everywhere; and they everywhere know how to play bull-fighting, +to flap any-colored old shawl, or breadth of cloth in the face of +the bull, to avoid his furious charges, and doubtless to deal him his +death-wound, though to this climax I could not bear to follow. + +[Illustration: 05 THE IRON-GRAY BULK OF THE CATHEDRAL REARS ITSELF FROM CLUSTERING WALLS AND ROOFS] + +One or two of the bull-fighters offered to leave the national sport +and show us the House of Miranda, but it was the cathedral which was +dominating our desire, as it everywhere dominates the vision, in Burgos +and out of Burgos as far as the city can be seen. The iron-gray bulk, +all flattered or fretted by Gothic art, rears itself from the clustering +brown walls and roofs of the city, which it seems to gather into its +mass below while it towers so far above them. We needed no pointing of +the way to it; rather we should have needed instruction for shunning it; +but we chose the way which led through the gate of Santa Maria where +in an arch once part of the city wall, the great Cid, hero above every +other hero of Burgos, sits with half a dozen more or less fabled or +storied worthies of the renowned city. Then with a minute’s walk up +a stony sloping little street we were in the beautiful and reverend +presence of one of the most august temples of the Christian faith. The +avenue where the old Castilian nobles once dwelt in their now empty +palaces climbs along the hillside above the cathedral, which on its +lower side seems to elbow off the homes of meaner men, and in front to +push them away beyond a plaza not large enough for it. Even this the +cathedral had not cleared of the horde of small boys who followed us +unbidden to its doors and almost expropriated those authorized blind +beggars who own the church doors in Spain. When we declined the further +company of these boys they left us with expressions which I am afraid +accused our judgment and our personal appearance; but in another moment +we were safe from their censure, and hidden as it were in the thick +smell of immemorial incense. + +It was not the moment for doing the cathedral in the wonted tiresome and +vulgar way; that was reserved for the next day; now we simply wandered +in the vast twilight spaces; and craned our necks to breaking in trying +to pierce the gathered gloom in the vaulting overhead. It was a precious +moment, but perhaps too weird, and we were glad to find a sacristan with +businesslike activity setting red candlesticks about a bier in the area +before the choir, which here, as in the other Spanish cathedrals, is +planted frankly in the middle of the edifice, a church by itself, as if +to emphasize the incomparable grandeur of the cathedral. The sacristan +willingly paused in his task and explained that he was preparing the +bier for the funeral of a church dignitary (as we learned later, the +dean) which was to take place the next day at noon; and if we would come +at that hour we should hear some beautiful music. We knew that he +was establishing a claim on our future custom, but we thanked him and +provisionally feed him, and left him at his work, at which we might have +all but fancied him whistling, so cheerfully and briskly he went about +it. + +Outside we lingered a moment to give ourselves the solemn joy of the +Chapel of the Constable which forms the apse of the cathedral and is its +chief glory. It mounted to the hard, gray sky, from which a keen wind +was sweeping the narrow street leading to it, and blustering round +the corner of the cathedral, so that the marble men holding up the +Constable’s coat-of-arms in the rear of his chapel might well have ached +from the cold which searched the marrow of flesh-and-blood men below. +These hurried by in flat caps and corduroy coats and trousers, with +sashes at their waists and comforters round their necks; and they were +picturesque quite in the measure of their misery. Some whose tatters +were the most conspicuous feature of their costume, I am sure would have +charmed me if I had been a painter; as a mere word-painter I find myself +wishing I could give the color of their wretchedness to my page. + + + +III + + +In the absence of any specific record in my notebook I do not know just +how it was between this first glimpse of the cathedral and dinner, +but it must have been on our return to our hotel, that the little +interpreter who had met us at the station, and had been intermittently +constituting himself our protector ever since, convinced us that we +ought to visit the City Hall, and see the outside of the marble tomb +containing the bones of the Cid and his wife. Such as the bones were +we found they were not to be seen themselves, and I do not know that I +should have been the happier for their inspection. In fact, I have no +great opinion of the Cid as an historical character or a poetic fiction. +His epic, or his long ballad, formed no part of my young study in +Spanish, and when four or five years ago a friend gave me a copy of it, +beautifully printed in black letter, with the prayer that I should read +it sometime within the twelvemonth, I found the time far too short. As +a matter of fact I have never read the poem to this day, though. I have +often tried, and I doubt if its author ever intended it to be read. He +intended it rather to be recited in stirring episodes, with spaces for +refreshing slumber in the connecting narrative. As for the Cid in real +life under his proper name of Rodrigo de Vivas, though he made his +king publicly swear that he had had no part in the murder of his royal +brother, and though he was the stoutest and bravest knight in Castile, +I cannot find it altogether admirable in him that when his king banished +him he should resolve to fight thereafter for any master who paid +him best. That appears to me the part of a road-agent rather than a +reformer, and it seems to me no amend for his service under Moorish +princes that he should make war against them on his personal behalf +or afterward under his own ungrateful king. He is friends now with the +Arabian King of Saragossa, and now he defeats the Aragonese under the +Castilian sovereign, and again he sends an insulting message by the +Moslems to the Christian Count of Barcelona, whom he takes prisoner +with his followers, but releases without ransom after a contemptuous +audience. Is it well, I ask, that he helps one Moor against another, +always for what there is in it, and when he takes Valencia from the +infidels, keeps none of his promises to them, but having tortured the +governor to make him give up his treasure, buries him to his waist and +then burns him alive? After that, to be sure, he enjoys his declining +years by making forays in the neighboring country, and dies “satisfied +with having done his duty toward his God.” + +Our interpreter, who would not let us rest till he had shown us the +box holding the Cid’s bones, had himself had a varied career. If you +believed him he was born in Madrid and had passed, when three years old, +to New York, where he grew up to become a citizen and be the driver of a +delivery wagon for a large department-store. He duly married an American +woman who could speak not only French, German, and Italian, but also +Chinese, and was now living with him in Burgos. His own English had +somewhat fallen by the way, but what was left he used with great +courage; and he was one of those government interpreters whom you find +at every large station throughout Spain in the number of the principal +hotels of the place. They pay the government a certain tax for +their license, though it was our friend’s expressed belief that the +government, on the contrary, paid him a salary of two dollars a day; but +perhaps this was no better founded than his belief in a German princess +who, when he went as her courier, paid him ten dollars a day and all his +expenses. She wished him to come and live near her in Germany, so as to +be ready to go with her to South America, but he had not yet made up his +mind to leave Burgos, though his poor eyes watered with such a cold as +only Burgos can give a man in the early autumn; when I urged him to look +to the bad cough he had, he pleaded that it was a very old cough. He had +a fascination of his own, which probably came from his imaginative habit +of mind, so that I could have wished more adoptive fellow-citizens were +like him. He sympathized strongly with us in our grief with the cold of +the hotel, and when we said that a small oil-heater would take the chill +off a large room, he said that he had advised that very thing, but that +our host had replied, with proud finality, “I am the landlord.” Whether +this really happened or not, I cannot say, but I have no doubt that our +little guide had some faith in it as a real incident. He apparently had +faith in the landlord’s boast that he was going to have a stately marble +staircase to the public entrance to his hotel, which was presently of +common stone, rather tipsy in its treads, and much in need of scrubbing. + +There is as little question in my mind that he believed the carriage we +had engaged to take us next morning to the Cartuja de Miraflores +would be ready at a quarter before nine, and that he may have been +disappointed when it was not ready until a quarter after. But it was +worth waiting for if to have a team composed of a brown mule on the +right hand and a gray horse on the left was to be desired. These animals +which nature had so differenced were equalized by art through the lavish +provision of sleigh-bells, without some strands of which no team in +Spain is properly equipped. Besides, as to his size the mule was quite +as large as the horse, and as to his tail he was much more decorative. +About two inches after this member left his body it was closely shaved +for some six inches or more, and for that space it presented the effect +of a rather large size of garden-hose; below, it swept his thighs in a +lordly switch. If anything could have added distinction to our turnout +it would have been the stiff side-whiskers of our driver: the only pair +I saw in real life after seeing them so long in pictures on boxes of +raisins and cigars. There they were associated with the look and +dress of a _torrero,_ and our coachman, though an old Castilian of the +austerest and most taciturn pattern, may have been in his gay youth an +Andalusian bull-fighter. + + + +IV + + +Our pride in our equipage soon gave way to our interest in the market +for sheep, cattle, horses, and donkeys which we passed through just +outside the city. The market folk were feeling the morning’s cold; +shepherds folded in their heavy shawls leaned motionless on their long +staves, as if hating to stir; one ingenious boy wore a live lamb round +his neck which he held close by the legs for the greater comfort of it; +under the trees by the roadside some of the peasants were cooking their +breakfasts and warming themselves at the fires. The sun was on duty in +a cloudless sky; but all along the road to the Cartuja we drove between +rows of trees so thickly planted against his summer rage that no ray of +his friendly heat could now reach us. At times it seemed as if from this +remorselessly shaded avenue we should escape into the open; the trees +gave way and we caught glimpses of wide plains and distant hills; then +they closed upon us again, and in their chill shadow it was no comfort +to know that in summer, when the townspeople got through their work, +they came out to these groves, men, women, and children, and had supper +under their hospitable boughs. + +One comes to almost any Cartuja at last, and we found ours on a sunny +top just when the cold had pinched us almost beyond endurance, and +joined a sparse group before the closed gate of the convent. The group +was composed of poor people who had come for the dole of food daily +distributed from the convent, and better-to-do country-folk who had +brought things to sell to the monks, or were there on affairs not openly +declared. But it seemed that it was a saint’s day; the monks were having +service in the church solely for their own edification, and they had +shut us sinners out not only by locking the gate, but by taking away the +wire for ringing the bell, and leaving nothing but a knocker of feeble +note with which different members of our indignation meeting vainly +hammered. Our guide assumed the virtue of the greatest indignation, +though he ought to have known that we could not get in on that saint’s +day; but it did not avail, and the little group dispersed, led off by +the brown peasant who was willing to share my pleasure in our excursion +as a good joke on us, and smiled with a show of teeth as white as the +eggs in his basket. After all, it was not wholly a hardship; we could +walk about in the sunny if somewhat muddy open, and warm ourselves +against the icily shaded drive back to town; besides, there was a little +girl crouching at the foot of a tree, and playing at a phase of the +housekeeping which is the game of little girls the world over. Her sad, +still-faced mother standing near, with an interest in her apparently +renewed by my own, said that she was four years old, and joined me +in watching her as she built a pile of little sticks and boiled an +imaginary little kettle over them. I was so glad even of a make-believe +fire that I dropped a copper coin beside it, and the mother smiled +pensively as if grateful but not very hopeful from this beneficence, +though after reflection I had made my gift a “big dog” instead of a +“small dog,” as the Spanish call a ten and a five centimo piece. The +child bent her pretty head shyly on one side, and went on putting more +sticks under her supposititious pot. + +I found the little spectacle reward enough in itself and in a sort +compensation for our failure to see the exquisite alabaster tomb of Juan +II. and his wife Isabel which makes the Cartuja Church so famous. There +are a great many beautiful tombs in Burgos, but none so beautiful there +(or in the whole world if the books say true) as this; though we made +what we could of some in the museum, where we saw for the first time in +the recumbent effigies of a husband and wife, with features worn away by +time and incapable of expressing the disappointment, the surprise they +may have felt in the vain effort to warm their feet on the backs of the +little marble angels put there to support them. We made what we could, +too, of the noted Casa de Miranda, the most famous of the palaces in +which the Castilian nobles have long ceased to live at Burgos. There we +satisfied our longing to see a _patio,_ that roofless colonnaded court +which is the most distinctive feature of Spanish domestic architecture, +and more and more distinctively so the farther south you go, till at +Seville you see it in constant prevalence. At Burgos it could never have +been a great comfort, but in this House of Miranda it must have been +a great glory. The spaces between many of the columns have long been +bricked in, but there is fine carving on the front and the vaulting of +the staircase that climbs up from it in neglected grandeur. So many feet +have trodden its steps that they are worn hollow in the middle, and to +keep from falling you must go up next the wall. The object in going up +at all is to join in the gallery an old melancholy custodian in looking +down into the _patio,_ with his cat making her toilet beside him, and to +give them a fee which they receive with equal calm. Then, when you have +come down the age-worn steps without breaking your neck, you have done +the House of Miranda, and may lend yourself with what emotion you choose +to the fact that this ancient seat of hidalgos has now fallen to the low +industry of preparing pigskins to be wine-skins. + +[Illustration: 06 THE TOMB OF DONNA MARIA MANUEL] + +I do not think that a company of hidalgos in complete medieval armor +could have moved me more strongly than that first sight of these +wine-skins, distended with wine, which we had caught in approaching the +House of Miranda. We had to stop in the narrow street, and let them pass +piled high on a vintner’s wagon, and looking like a load of pork: they +are trimmed and left to keep the shape of the living pig, which they +emulate at its bulkiest, less the head and feet, and seem to roll in +fatness. It was joy to realize what they were, to feel how Spanish, how +literary, how picturesque, how romantic. There they were such as the +wine-skins are that hang from the trees of pleasant groves in many a +merry tale, and invite all swains and shepherds and wandering cavaliers +to tap their bulk and drain its rich plethora. There they were such as +Don Quixote, waking from his dream at the inn, saw them malignant giants +and fell enchanters, and slashed them with his sword till he had spilled +the room half full of their blood. For me this first sight of them was +magic. It brought back my boyhood as nothing else had yet, and I never +afterward saw them without a return to those days of my delight in all +Spanish things. + +Literature and its associations, no matter from how lowly suggestion, +must always be first for me, and I still thought of those wine-skins in +yielding to the claims of the cathedral on my wonder and reverence when +now for the second time we came to it. The funeral ceremony of the dean +was still in course, and after listening for a moment to the mighty +orchestral music of it--the deep bass of the priests swelling up with +the organ notes, and suddenly shot with the shrill, sharp trebles of the +choir-boys and pierced with the keen strains of the violins--we left the +cathedral to the solemn old ecclesiastics who sat confronting the bier, +and once more deferred our more detailed and intimate wonder. We went, +in this suspense of emotion, to the famous Convent of Las Huelgas, which +invites noble ladies to its cloistered repose a little beyond the town. +We entered to the convent church through a sort of slovenly court where +a little girl begged severely, almost censoriously, of us, and presently +a cold-faced young priest came and opened the church door. Then we found +the interior of that rank Spanish baroque which escapes somehow the +effeminate effusiveness of the Italian; it does not affect you as +decadent, but as something vigorously perfect in its sort, somberly +authentic, and ripe from a root and not a graft. In its sort, the high +altar, a gigantic triune, with massive twisted columns and swagger +statues of saints and heroes in painted wood, is a prodigy of inventive +piety, and compositely has a noble exaltation in its powerful lift to +the roof. + +The nuns came beautifully dressed to hear mass at the grilles giving +into the chapel adjoining the church; the tourist may have his glimpse +of them there on Sundays, and on week-days he may have his guess of +their cloistered life and his wonder how much it continues the tradition +of repose which the name of the old garden grounds implies. These lady +nuns must be of patrician lineage and of fortune enough to defray their +expense in the convent, which is of the courtliest origin, for it was +founded eight hundred years ago by Alfonso VIII. “to expiate his sins +and to gratify his queen,” who probably knew of them. I wish now I had +known, while I was there, that the abbess of Las Huelgas had once had +the power of life and death in the neighborhood, and could hang people +if she liked; I cannot think just what good it would have done me, but +one likes to realize such things on the spot. She is still one of the +greatest ladies of Spain, though perhaps not still “lady of ax and +gibbet,” and her nuns are of like dignity. In their chapel are the tombs +of Alfonso and his queen, whose figures are among those on the high +altar of the church. She was Eleanor Plantagenet, the daughter of our +Henry II., and was very fond of Las Huelgas, as if it were truly a rest +for her in the far-off land of Spain; I say our Henry II., for in the +eleventh century we Americans were still English, under the heel of the +Normans, as not the fiercest republican of us now need shame to own. + +In a sense of this historical unity, at Las Huelgas we felt as much at +home as if we had been English tourists, and we had our feudal pride +in the palaces where the Gastilian nobles used to live in Burgos as we +returned to the town. Their deserted seats are mostly to be seen after +you pass through the Moorish gate overarching the stony, dusty, weedy +road hard by the place where the house of the Cid is said to have stood. +The arch, so gracefully Saracenic, was the first monument of the Moslem +obsession of the country which has left its signs so abundantly in the +south; here in the far north the thing seemed almost prehistoric, almost +preglacially old, the witness of a world utterly outdated. But perhaps +it was not more utterly outdated than the residences of the nobles who +had once made the ancient Castilian capital splendid, but were now as +irrevocably merged in Madrid as the Arabs in Africa. + + + +VI + + +Some of the palaces looked down from the narrow street along the +hillside above the cathedral, but only one of them was kept up in the +state of other days; and I could not be sure at what point this street +had ceased to be the street where our guide said every one kept cows, +and the ladies took big pitchers of milk away to sell every morning. +But I am sure those ladies could have been of noble descent only in +the farthest possible remove, and I do not suppose their cows were even +remotely related to the haughty ox-team which blocked the way in front +of the palaces and obliged xis to dismount while our carriage was lifted +round the cart. Our driver was coldly disgusted, but the driver of +the ox-team preserved a calm as perfect as if he had been an hidalgo +interested by the incident before his gate. It delayed us till the +psychological moment when the funeral of the dean was over, and we could +join the formidable party following the sacristan from chapel to chapel +in the cathedral. + +We came to an agonized consciousness of the misery of this progress in +the Chapel of the Constable, where it threatened to be finally stayed +by the indecision of certain ladies of our nation in choosing among the +postal cards for sale there. By this time we had suffered much from the +wonders of the cathedral. The sacristan had not spared us a jewel or +a silvered or gilded sacerdotal garment or any precious vessel of +ceremonial, so that our jaded wonder was inadequate to the demand of the +beautiful tombs of the Constable and his lady upon it. The coffer of +the Cid, fastened against the cathedral wall for a monument of his +shrewdness in doing the Jews of Burgos, who, with the characteristic +simplicity of their race, received it back full of sand and gravel in +payment of the gold they had lent him in it, could as little move us. +Perhaps if we could have believed that he finally did return the value +received, we might have marveled a little at it, but from what we knew +of the Cid this was not credible. We did what we could with the painted +wood carving of the cloister doors; the life-size head of a man with +its open mouth for a key-hole in another portal; a fearful silver-plated +chariot given by a rich blind woman for bearing the Host in the +procession of Corpus Christi; but it was very little, and I am not +going to share my failure with the reader by the vain rehearsal of +its details. No literary art has ever reported a sense of picture or +architecture or sculpture to me: the despised postal card is better for +that; and probably throughout these “trivial fond records” I shall be +found shirking as much as I may the details of such sights, seen or +unseen, as embitter the heart of travel with unavailing regret for the +impossibility of remembering them. I must leave for some visit of the +reader’s own the large and little facts of the many chapels in the +cathedral at Burgos, and I will try to overwhelm him with my sense of +the whole mighty interior, the rich gloom, the Gothic exaltation, +which I made such shift as I could to feel in the company of those +picture-postal amateurs. It was like, say, a somber afternoon, verging +to the twilight of a cloudy sunset, so that when I came out of it into +the open noon it was like emerging into a clear morrow. Perhaps because +I could there shed the harassing human environment the outside of the +cathedral seemed to me the best of it, and we lingered there for a +moment in glad relief. + + + +VII + +[Illustration: 07 A BURGOS STREET] + +One house in some forgotten square commemorates the state in which +the Castilian nobles used to live in Burgos before Toledo, and then +Valladolid, contested the primacy of the grim old capital of the +northern uplands. We stayed for a moment to glance from our carriage +through the open portal into its leafy _patio_ shivering in the cold, +and then we bade our guide hurry back with us to the hot luncheon which +would be the only heat in our hotel. But to reach this we had to pass +through another square, which we found full of peasants’ ox-carts and +mule-teams; and there our guide instantly jumped down and entered into +a livelier quarrel with those peaceable men and women than I could +afterward have believed possible in Spain. I bade him get back to his +seat beside the driver, who was abetting him with an occasional guttural +and whom I bade turn round and go another way. I said that I had hired +this turnout, and I was master, and I would be obeyed; but it seemed +that I was wrong. My proud hirelings never left off their dispute +till somehow the ox-carts and mule-teams were jammed together, and a +thoroughfare found for us. Then it was explained that those peasants +were always blocking that square in that way and that I had, however +unwillingly, been discharging the duty of a public-spirited citizen in +compelling them to give way. I did not care for that; I prized far more +the quiet with which they had taken the whole affair. It was the first +exhibition of the national repose of manner which we were to see so +often again, south as well as north, and which I find it so beautiful to +have seen. In a Europe abounding in volcanic Italians, nervous Germans, +and exasperated Frenchmen, it was comforting, it was edifying to see +those Castilian peasants so self-respectfully self-possessed in the +wrong. + +From time to time in the opener spaces we had got into the sun from the +chill shadow of the narrow streets, but now it began to be cloudy, and +when we re-entered our hotel it was almost as warm indoors as out. We +thought our landlord might have so far repented as to put on the steam; +but he had sternly adhered to his principle that the radiators were +enough of themselves; and after luncheon we had nothing for it but to +go away from Burgos, and take with us such scraps of impression as we +could. We decided that there was no street of gayer shops than those +gloomy ones we had chanced into here and there; I do not remember now +anything like a bookseller’s or a milliner’s or a draper’s window. There +was no sign of fashion among the ladies of Burgos, so far as we could +distinguish them; there was not a glowering or perking hat, and I do not +believe there was a hobble-skirt in all the austere old capital except +such as some tourist wore; the black lace mantillas and the flowing +garments of other periods flitted by through the chill alleys and into +the dim doorways. The only cheerfulness in the local color was to be +noted in the caparison of the donkeys, which we were to find more and +more brilliant southward. Do I say the only cheerfulness? I ought to +except also the involuntary hilarity of a certain poor man’s suit which +was so patched together of myriad scraps that it looked as if cut from +the fabric of a crazy-quilt. I owe him this notice the rather because he +almost alone did not beg of us in a city which swarmed with beggars in +a forecast of that pest of beggary which infests Spain everywhere. I do +not say that the thing is without picturesqueness, without real pathos; +the little girl who kissed the copper I gave her in the cathedral +remains endeared to me by that perhaps conventional touch of poetry. + +There was compensation for the want of presence among the ladies of +Burgos, in the leading lady of the theatrical company who dined, the +night before, at our hotel with the chief actors of her support, before +giving a last performance in our ancient city. It happened another time +in our Spanish progress that we had the society of strolling players at +our hotel, and it was both times told us that the given company was the +best dramatic company in Spain; but at Burgos we did not yet know that +we were so singularly honored. The leading lady there had luminous black +eyes, large like the head-lamps of a motor-car, and a wide crimson mouth +which she employed as at a stage banquet throughout the dinner, +while she talked and laughed with her fellow-actors, beautiful as +bull-fighters, cleanshaven, serious of face and shapely of limb. They +were unaffectedly professional, and the lady made no pretense of not +being a leading lady. One could see that she was the kindest creature in +the world, and that she took a genuine pleasure in her huge, practicable +eyes. At the other end of the room a Spanish family--father, mother, +and small children, down to some in arms--were dining and the children +wailing as Spanish children will, regardless of time and place; and when +the nurse brought one of the disconsolate infants to be kissed by +the leading lady one’s heart went out to her for the amiability and +abundance of her caresses. The mere sight of their warmth did something +to supply the defect of steam in the steam-heating apparatus, but when +one got beyond their radius there was nothing for the shivering traveler +except to wrap himself in the down quilt of his bed and spread his +steamer-rug over his knees till it was time to creep under both of them +between the glacial sheets. + +We were sorry we had not got tickets for the leading lady’s public +performance; it could have been so little more public; but we had not, +and there was nothing else in Burgos to invite the foot outdoors +after dinner. From my own knowledge I cannot yet say the place was not +lighted; but my sense of the tangle of streets lying night long in a +rich Gothic gloom shall remain unimpaired by statistics. Very possibly +Burgos is brilliantly lighted with electricity; only they have not got +the electricity on, as in our steam-heated hotel they had not got the +steam on. + + + +VIII + + +We had authorized our little interpreter to engage tickets for us by the +mail-train the next afternoon for Valladolid; he pretended, of course, +that the places could be had only by his special intervention, and by +telegraphing for them to the arriving train. We accepted his romantic +theory of the case, and paid the bonus due the railroad agent in the +hotel for his offices in the matter; we would have given anything, we +were so eager to get out of Burgos before we were frozen up there. I +do not know that we were either surprised or pained to find that our +Chilian friends should have got seats in the same car without anything +of our diplomacy, by the simple process of showing their tickets. I +think our little interpreter was worth everything he cost, and more. I +would not have lost a moment of his company as he stood on the platform +with me, adding one artless invention to another for my pleasure, and +successively extracting peseta after peseta from me till he had made +up the sum which he had doubtless idealized as a just reward for his +half-day’s service when he first told me that it should be what I +pleased. We parted with the affection of fellow-citizens in a strange +monarchical country, his English growing less and less as the +train delayed, and his eyes watering more and more as with tears of +com-patriotic affection. At the moment I could have envied that German +princess her ability to make sure of his future companionship at the +low cost of fifty pesetas a day; and even now, when my affection has had +time to wane, I cannot do less than commend him to any future visitor +at Burgos, as in the last degree amiable, and abounding in surprises of +intelligence and unexpected feats of reliability. + + + + +IV. THE VARIETY OF VALLADOLID + + +When you leave Burgos at 3.29 of a passably sunny afternoon you are not +at once aware of the moral difference between the terms of your approach +and those of your departure. You are not changing your earth or your +sky very much, but it is not long before you are sensible of a change of +mind which insists more and more. There is the same long ground-swell +of wheat-fields, but yesterday you were followed in vision by the +loveliness of the frugal and fertile Biscayan farms, and to-day this +vision has left you, and you are running farther and farther into the +economic and topographic waste of Castile. Yesterday there were more +or less agreeable shepherdesses in pleasant plaids scattered over the +landscape; to-day there are only shepherds of three days’ unshornness; +the plaids are ragged, and there is not sufficient compensation in +the cavalcades of both men and women riding donkeys in and out of the +horizons on the long roads that lose and find themselves there. Flocks +of brown and black goats, looking large as cows among the sparse +stubble, do little to relieve the scene from desolation; I am not sure +but goats, when brown and black, add to the horror of a desolate scene. +There are no longer any white farmsteads, or friendly villages gathering +about high-shouldered churches, but very far away to the eastward or +westward the dun expanse of the wheat-lands is roughed with something +which seems a cluster of muddy protuberances, so like the soil at first +it is not distinguishable from it, but which as your train passes +nearer proves to be a town at the base of tablelands, without a tree +or a leaf or any spear of green to endear it to the eye as the abode of +living men. You pull yourself together in the effort to visualize the +immeasurable fields washing those dreary towns with golden tides of +harvest; but it is difficult. What you cannot help seeing is the actual +nakedness of the land which with its spindling stubble makes you think +of that awful moment of the human head, when utter baldness will be a +relief to the spectator. + + + +I + + +At times and in places, peasants were scratching the dismal surfaces +with the sort of plows which Abel must have used, when subsoiling was +not yet even a dream; and between the plowmen and their ox-teams it +seemed a question as to which should loiter longest in the unfinished +furrow. Now and then, the rush of the train gave a motionless goatherd, +with his gaunt flock, an effect of comparative celerity to the rearward. +The women riding their donkeys over + + The level waste, the rounding gray + +in the distance were the only women we saw except those who seemed to +be keeping the stations, and one very fat one who came to the train at +a small town and gabbled volubly to some passenger who made no audible +response. She excited herself, but failed to rouse the interest of the +other party to the interview, who remained unseen as well as unheard. I +could the more have wished to know what it was all about because nothing +happened on board the train to distract the mind from the joyless +landscape until we drew near Valladolid. It is true that for a while +we shared our compartment with a father and his two sons who lunched on +slices of the sausage which seems the favorite refection of the Latin as +well as the Germanic races in their travels. But this drama was not +of intense interest, and we grappled in vain with the question of our +companions’ social standard. The father, while he munched his bread +and sausage, read a newspaper which did not rank him or even define +his politics; there was a want of fashion in the cut of the young men’s +clothes and of freshness in the polish of their tan shoes which +defied conjecture. When they left the train without the formalities +of leave-taking which had hitherto distinguished our Spanish +fellow-travelers, we willingly abandoned them to a sort of middling +obscurity; but this may not really have been their origin or their +destiny. + +That spindling sparseness, worse than utter baldness, of the wheat +stubble now disappeared with cinematic suddenness, and our train was +running past stretches of vineyard, where, among the green and purple +and yellow ranks, the vintagers, with their donkeys and carts, were +gathering the grapes in the paling light of the afternoon. Again the +scene lacked the charm of woman’s presence which the vintage had in +southern France. In Spain we nowhere saw the women sharing the outdoor +work of the men; and we fancied their absence the effect of the Oriental +jealousy lingering from centuries of Moorish domination; though we could +not entirely reconcile our theory with the publicity of their washing +clothes at every stream. To be sure, that was work which they did not +share with men any more than the men shared the labor of the fields with +them. + +It was still afternoon, well before sunset, when we arrived at +Valladolid, where one of the quaintest of our Spanish surprises awaited +us. We knew that the omnibus of the hotel we had chosen would be the +shabbiest omnibus at the station, and we saw without great alarm our +Chilian friends drive off in an indefinitely finer vehicle. But what we +were not prepared for was the fact of _octroi_ at Valladolid, and for +the strange behavior of the local customs officer who stopped us on our +way into the town. He looked a very amiable young man as he put his face +in at the omnibus door, and he received without explicit question our +declaration that we had nothing taxable in our trunks. Then, however, he +mounted to the top of the omnibus and thumped our trunks about as if to +test them for contraband by the sound. The investigation continued on +these strange terms until the officer had satisfied himself of our good +faith, when he got down and with a friendly smile at the window bowed us +into Valladolid. + +In its way nothing could have been more charming; and we rather liked +being left by the omnibus about a block from our hotel, on the border of +a sort of promenade where no vehicles were allowed. We had been halted +near a public fountain, where already the mothers and daughters of the +neighborhood were gathered with earthen jars for the night’s supply of +water. The jars were not so large as to overburden any of them when, +after just delay for exchange of gossip, the girls and goodwives put +them on their heads and marched erectly away with them, each beautifully +picturesque irrespective of her age or looks. + +The air was soft, and after Burgos, warm; something southern, unfelt +before, began to qualify the whole scene, which as the evening fell grew +more dramatic, and made the promenade the theater of emotions permitted +such unrestricted play nowhere else in Spain, so far as we were witness. +On one side the place was arcaded, and bordered with little shops, not +so obtrusively brilliant that the young people who walked up and down +before them were in a glare of publicity. A little way off the avenue +expanded into a fine oblong place, where some first martyrs of the +Inquisition were burned. But the promenades kept well short of this, +as they walked up and down, and talked, talked, talked in that +inexhaustible interest which youth takes in itself the world over. They +were in the standard proportion of two girls to one young man, or, if +here and there a girl had an undivided young man to herself, she went +before some older maiden or matron whom she left altogether out of the +conversation. They mostly wore the skirts and hats of Paris, and if the +scene of the fountain was Arabically oriental the promenade was almost +Americanly occidental. The promenaders were there by hundreds; they +filled the avenue from side to side, and + + The delight of happy laughter + The delight of low replies + +that rose from their progress, with the chirp and whisper of their +feet cheered the night as long as we watched and listened from the sun +balcony of our hotel. + + + +II + + +There was no more heat in the radiators of the hotel there than at +Burgos, but for that evening at least there was none needed. It was the +principal hotel of Valladolid, and the unscrubbed and unswept staircase +by which we mounted into it was merely a phase of that genial pause, as +for second thought, in the march of progress which marks so much of the +modern advance in Spain, and was by no means an evidence of arrested +development. We had the choice of reaching our rooms either through the +dining-room or by a circuitous detour past the pantries; but our rooms +had a proud little vestibule of their own, with a balcony over the great +square, and if one of them had a belated feather-bed the other had a +new hair mattress, and the whole house was brilliantly lighted with +electricity. As for the cooking, it was delicious, and the table was +of an abundance and variety which might well have made one ashamed of +paying so small a rate as two dollars a day for bed and board, wine +included, and very fair wine at that. + +In Spain you must take the bad with the good, for whether you get the +good or not you are sure of the bad, but only very exceptionally are you +sure of the bad only. It was a pleasure not easily definable to find our +hotel managed by a mother and two daughters, who gave the orders +obeyed by the men-servants, and did not rebuke them for joining in +the assurance that when we got used to going so abruptly from the +dining-room into our bedrooms we would like it. The elder of the +daughters had some useful French, and neither of the younger ladies ever +stayed for some ultimate details of dishabille in coming to interpret +the mother and ourselves to one another when we encountered her alone +in the office. They were all thoroughly kind and nice, and they were +supported with surpassing intelligence and ability by the _chico,_ +a radiant boy of ten, who united in himself the functions which the +amiable inefficiency of the porters and waiters abandoned to him. + +When we came out to dinner after settling ourselves in our almost +obtrusively accessible rooms, we were convinced of the wisdom of our +choice of a hotel by finding our dear Chilians at one of the tables. We +rushed together like two kindred streams of transatlantic gaiety, and +in our mingled French, Spanish, and English possessed one another of our +doubts and fears in coming to our common conclusion. We had already seen +a Spanish gentleman whom we knew as a fellow-sufferer at Burgos, roaming +the streets of Valladolid, and in what seemed a disconsolate doubt, +interrogating the windows of our hotel; and now we learned from the +Chilians that he had been bitterly disappointed in the inn which a +patrician omnibus had borne him away to from our envious eyes at the +station. We learned that our South American compatriots had found +their own chosen hotel impossible, and were now lodged in rapturous +satisfaction under our roof. Their happiness penetrated us with a glow +of equal content, and confirmed us in the resolution always to take the +worst omnibus at a Spanish station as the sure index of the best hotel. + +The street-cars, which in Valladolid are poetically propelled through +lyre-shaped trolleys instead of our prosaic broomstick appliances, +groaned unheeded if not unheard under our windows through the night, and +we woke to find the sun on duty in our glazed balcony and the promenade +below already astir with life: not the exuberant young life of the +night before, but still sufficiently awake to be recognizable as life. A +crippled newsboy seated under one of the arcades was crying his papers; +an Englishman was looking at a plan of Valladolid in a shop window; a +splendid cavalry officer went by in braided uniform, and did not stare +so hard as they might have expected at some ladies passing in mantillas +to mass or market. In the late afternoon as well as the early morning +we saw a good deal of the military in Valladolid, where an army corps is +stationed. From time to time a company of infantry marched through the +streets to gay music, and toward evening slim young officers began to +frequent the arcades and glass themselves in the windows of the shops, +their spurs clinking on the pavement as they lounged by or stopped and +took distinguished attitudes. We speculated in vain as to their social +quality, and to this day I do not know whether “the career is open to +the talents” in the Spanish army, or whether military rank is merely +the just reward of civil rank. Those beautiful young swells in +riding-breeches and tight gray jackets approached an Italian type +of cavalry officer; they did not look very vigorous, and the common +soldiers we saw marching through the streets, largely followed by the +populace, were not of formidable stature or figure, though neat and +agreeable enough to the eye. + +While I indulge the record of these trivialities, which I am by no means +sure the reader will care for so much, I feel that it would be wrong to +let him remain as ignorant of the history of Valladolid as I was while +there. My ignorance was not altogether my fault; I had fancied easily +finding at some bookseller’s under the arcade a little sketch of the +local history such as you are sure of finding in any Italian town, done +by a local antiquary of those always mousing in the city’s archives. +But the bookseller’s boy and then the boy’s mother could not at first +imagine my wish, and when they did they could only supply me with a sort +of business directory, full of addresses and advertisements. So instead +of overflowing with information when we set out on our morning ramble, +we meagerly knew from the guide-books that Valladolid had once been the +capital of Castile, arid after many generations of depression following +the removal of the court, had in these latest days renewed its strength +in mercantile and industrial prosperity. There are ugly evidences of the +prosperity in the windy, dusty avenues and streets of the more modern +town; but there are lanes and alleys enough, groping for the churches +and monuments in suddenly opening squares, to console the sentimental +tourist for the havoc which enterprise has made. The mind readily goes +back through these to the palmy prehistoric times from which the town +emerged to mention in Ptolemy, and then begins to work forward past +Iberian and Roman and Goth and Moor to the Castilian kings who made it +their residence in the eleventh century. The capital won its first +great distinction when Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile were +married there in 1469. Thirty-five years later these Catholic Kings, +as one had better learn at once to call them in Spain, let Columbus die +neglected if not forgotten in the house recently pulled down, where he +had come to dwell in their cold shadow; they were much occupied with +other things and they could not realize that his discovery of America +was the great glory of their reign; probably they thought the conquest +of Granada was. Later yet, by twenty years, the dreadful Philip II. +was born in Valladolid, and in 1559 a very famous _auto da fe_ wag +celebrated in the Plaza Mayor. Fourteen Lutherans were burned alive for +their heresy, and the body of a woman suspected of imperfect orthodoxy +after her death was exhumed and burned with them. In spite of such +precautions as these, and of all the pious diligence of the Holy Office, +the reader will hardly believe that there is now a Spanish Protestant +church in Valladolid; but such is the fact, though whether it derives +from the times of the Inquisition, or is a modern missionary church I +do not know. That _auto da fe_ was of the greatest possible distinction; +the Infanta Juana presided, and the universal interest was so great that +people paid a dollar and twenty-five cents a seat; money then worth five +or six times as much as now. Philip himself came to another _auto_ when +thirteen persons were burned in the same place, and he always liked +Valladolid; it must have pleased him in a different way from Escorial, +lying flat as it does on a bare plain swept, but never thoroughly +dusted, by winds that blow pretty constantly over it. + +While the Inquisition was purging the city of error its great university +was renowning it not only throughout Spain, but in France and Italy; +students frequented it from those countries, and artists came from many +parts of Europe. Literature also came in the person of Cervantes, +who seems to have followed the Spanish court in its migrations from +Valladolid to Toledo and then to Madrid. Here also came one of the +greatest characters in fiction, for it was in Valladolid that Gil Blas +learned to practise the art of medicine tinder the instruction of the +famous Dr. Sangrado. + + + +IV + +[Illustration: 08 A STREET LEADING TO THE CATHEDRAL] + +I put these facts at the service of the reader for what use he will +while he goes with us to visit the cathedral in Valladolid, a cathedral +as unlike that of Burgos as the severest mood of Spanish renaissance can +render it. In fact, it is the work of Herrera, the architect who made +the Escorial so grim, and is the expression in large measure of his +austere mastery. If it had ever been finished it might have been quite +as dispiriting as the Escorial, but as it has only one of the +four ponderous towers it was meant to have, it is not without its +alleviations, especially as the actual tower was rebuilt after the fall +of the original seventy years ago. The grass springs cheerfully up in +the crevices of the flagging from which the broken steps falter to the +portal, but within all is firm and solid. The interior is vast, and +nowhere softened by decoration, but the space is reduced by the huge +bulk of the choir in the center of it; as we entered a fine echo mounted +to the cathedral roof from the chanting and intoning within. When +the service ended a tall figure in scarlet crossed rapidly toward the +sacristy. It was of such imposing presence that we resolved at once it +must be the figure of a cardinal, or of an archbishop at the least. But +it proved to be one of the sacristans, and when we followed him to +the sacristy with half a dozen other sightseers, he showed us a silver +monstrance weighing a hundred and fifty pounds and decked with statites +of our first parents as they appeared before the Fall. Besides this we +saw, much against our will, a great many ecclesiastical vestments +of silk and damask richly wrought in gold and silver. But if we were +reluctant there was a little fat priest there who must have seen them +hundreds of times and had still a childish delight in seeing them again +because he had seen them so often; he dimpled and smiled, and for his +sake we pretended a joy in them which it would have been cruel to deny +him. I suppose we were then led to the sacrifice at the several side +altars, but I have no specific recollection of them; I know there was a +pale, sick-looking young girl in white who went about with her father, +and moved compassion by her gentle sorrowfulness. + +Of the University, which we visited next, I recall only the baroque +facade; the interior was in reparation and I do not know whether it +would have indemnified us for not visiting the University of Salamanca. +That was in our list, but the perversity of the time-table forbade. You +could go to Salamanca, yes, but you could not come back except at two +o’clock in the morning; you could indeed continue on to Lisbon, but +perhaps you did not wish to see Lisbon. A like perversity of the +time-table, once universal in Spain, but now much reformed, also kept +us away from Segovia, which was on our list. But our knowledge of it +enabled us to tell a fellow-countrywoman whom we presently met in the +museum of the University, how she could best, or worst, get to that +city. Our speech gave us away to her, and she turned to us from the +other objects of interest to explain first that she was in a hotel where +she paid only six pesetas a day, but where she could get no English +explanation of the time-table for any money. She had come to Valladolid +with a friend who was going next day to Salamanca, but next day was +Sunday and she did not like to travel on Sunday, and Segovia seemed the +only alternative. We could not make out why, or if it came to that +why she should be traveling alone through Spain with such a slender +equipment of motive or object, but we perceived she was one of the +most estimable souls in the world, and if she cared more for getting +to Segovia that afternoon than for looking at the wonders of the place +where we were, we could not blame her. We had to leave her when we left +the museum in the charge of two custodians who led her, involuntary but +unresisting, to an upper chamber where there were some pictures +which she could care no more for than for the wood carvings below. We +ourselves cared so little for those pictures that we would not go to see +them. Pictures you can see anywhere, but not statuary of such singular +interest, such transcendant powerfulness as those carvings of Berruguete +and other masters less known, which held us fascinated in the lower +rooms of the museum. They are the spoil of convents in the region about, +suppressed by the government at different times, and collected here with +little relevancy to their original appeal. Some are Scriptural subjects +and some are figures of the dancers who take part in certain ceremonials +of the Spanish churches (notably the cathedral at Seville), which have a +quaint reality, an intense personal character. They are of a fascination +which I can hope to convey by no phrase of mine; but far beyond this is +the motionless force, the tremendous repose of the figures of the Roman +soldiers taken in the part of sleeping at the Tomb. These sculptures are +in wood, life-size, and painted in the colors of flesh and costume, with +every detail and of a strong mass in which the detail is lost and must +be found again by the wondering eye. Beyond all other Spanish sculptures +they seemed to me expressive of the national temperament; I thought no +other race could have produced them, and that in their return to +the Greek ideal of color in statuary they were ingenuously frank and +unsurpassably bold. + +It might have been the exhaustion experienced from the encounter with +their strenuousness that suddenly fatigued us past even the thought of +doing any more of Valladolid on foot. At any rate, when we came out of +the museum we took refuge in a corner grocery (it seems the nature of +groceries to seek corners the world over) and asked the grocer where we +could find a cab. + +[Illustration: 09 THE UNIVERSITY OF VALLADOLID] + +The grocer was young and kind, and not so busy but he could give willing +attention to our case. He said he would send for a cab, and he called +up from his hands and knees a beautiful blond half-grown boy who was +scrubbing the floor, and despatched him on this errand, first making him +wipe the suds off his hands. The boy was back wonderfully soon to +say the cab would come for us in ten minutes, and to receive with +self-respectful appreciation the peseta which rewarded his promptness. +In the mean time we feigned a small need which we satisfied by a +purchase, and then the grocer put us chairs in front of his counter and +made us his guests while his other customers came and went. They came +oftener than they went, for our interest in them did not surpass their +interest in us. We felt that through this we reflected credit upon +our amiable host; rumors of the mysterious strangers apparently spread +through the neighborhood and the room was soon filled with people +who did not all come to buy; but those who did buy were the most, +interesting. An elderly man with his wife bought a large bottle which +the grocer put into one scale of his balance, and poured its weight +in chick-peas into the other. Then he filled the bottle with oil and +weighed it, and then he gave the peas along with it to his customers. +It seemed a pretty convention, though we could not quite make out its +meaning, unless the peas were bestowed as a sort of bonus; but the +next convention was clearer to us. An old man in black corduroy with a +clean-shaven face and a rather fierce, retired bull-fighter air, bought +a whole dried stock-fish (which the Spaniards eat instead of salt cod) +talking loudly to the grocer and at us while the grocer cut it across in +widths of two inches and folded it into a neat pocketful; then a glass +of wine was poured from a cask behind the counter, and the customer +drank it off in honor of the transaction with the effect also of +pledging us with his keen eyes; all the time he talked, and he was +joined in conversation by a very fat woman who studied us not unkindly. +Other neighbors who had gathered in had no apparent purpose but to +verify our outlandish presence and to hear my occasional Spanish, which +was worth hearing if for nothing but the effort it cost me. The grocer +accepted with dignity the popularity we had won him, and when at last +our cab arrived from Mount Ararat with the mire of the subsiding Deluge +encrusted upon it he led us out to it through the small boys who swarmed +upon us wherever we stopped or started in Valladolid; and whose bulk was +now much increased by the coming of that very fat woman from within the +grocery. As the morning was bright we proposed having the top opened, +but here still another convention of the place intervened. In Valladolid +it seems that no self-respecting cabman will open the top of his cab +for an hour’s drive, and we could not promise to keep ours longer. The +grocer waited the result of our parley, and then he opened our carriage +door and bowed us away. It was charming; if he had a place on Sixth +Avenue I would be his customer as long as I lived in New York; and to +this moment I do not understand why I did not bargain with that blond +boy to come to America with us and be with us always. But there was no +city I visited in Spain where I was not sorry to leave some boy behind +with the immense rabble of boys whom I hoped never to see again. + + + +VI + + +After this passage of real life it was not easy to sink again to the +level of art, but if we must come down it there could have been no +descent less jarring than that which left us in the exquisite _patio_ +of the College of San Gregorio, founded for poor students of theology in +the time of the Catholic Kings. The students who now thronged the place +inside and out looked neither clerical nor poverty-stricken; but I dare +say they were good Christians, and whatever their condition they were +rich in the constant vision of beauty which one sight of seemed to us +more than we merited. Perhaps the facade of the college and that of the +neighboring Church of San Pablo may be elsewhere surpassed in the sort +of sumptuous delicacy of that Gothic which gets its name of plateresque +from the silversmithing spirit of its designs; but I doubt it. The +wonderfulness of it is that it is not mechanical or monotonous like +the stucco fretting of the Moorish decoration which people rave over +in Spain, but has a strength in its refinement which comes from its +expression in the exquisitely carven marble. When this is grayed with +age it is indeed of the effect of old silver work; but the plateresque +in Valladolid does not suggest fragility or triviality; its grace is +perhaps rather feminine than masculine; but at the worst it is only the +ultimation of the decorative genius of the Gothic. It is, at any rate, +the finest surprise which the local architecture has to offer and it +leaves one wishing for more rather than less of it, so that after the +facade of San Gregorio one is glad of it again in the walls of the +_patio,_ whose staircases and galleries, with the painted wooden beams +of their ceilings, scarcely tempt the eye from it. + +We thought the front of San Pablo deserved a second visit, and we were +rewarded by finding it far lovelier than we thought. The church was +open, and when we went in we had the advantage of seeing a large +silver-gilt car moved from the high altar down the nave to a side altar +next the door, probably for use in some public procession. The tongue +of the car was pulled by a man with one leg; a half-grown boy under the +body of it hoisted it on his back and eased it along; and a monk with +his white robe tucked up into his girdle pushed it powerfully from +behind. I did not make out why so strange a team should have been +employed for the work, but the spectacle of that quaint progress was +unique among my experiences at Valladolid and of a value which I wish I +could make the reader feel with me. We ourselves were so interested in +the event that we took part in it so far as to push aside a bench that +blocked the way, and we received a grateful smile from the monk in +reward of our zeal. + +We were in the mood for simple kindness because of our stiff official +reception at the Royal Palace, which we visited in the gratification +of our passion for _patios._ It is now used for provincial or municipal +offices and guarded by sentries who indeed admitted us to the courtyard, +but would not understand our wish (it was not very articulately +expressed) to mount to the cloistered galleries which all the +guide-books united in pronouncing so noble, with their decorative busts +of the Roman Emperors and arms of the Spanish provinces. The sculptures +are by the school of Berruguete, for whom we had formed so strong +a taste at the museum; but our disappointment was not at the moment +further embittered by knowing that Napoleon resided there in 1809. We +made what we could of other _patios_ in the vicinity, especially of one +in the palace across from San Gregorio, to which the liveried porter +welcomed us, though the noble family was in residence, and allowed us to +mount the red-carpeted staircase to a closed portal in consideration of +the peseta which he correctly foresaw. It was not a very characteristic +_patio,_ bare of flower and fountain as it was, and others more fully +appointed did not entirely satisfy us. The fact is the _patio_ is to be +seen best in Andalusia, its home, where every house is built round it, +and in summer cooled and in winter chilled by it. But if we were not +willing to wait for Seville, Valladolid did what it could; and if we saw +no house with quite the _patio_ we expected we did see the house where +Philip II. was born, unless the enterprising boy who led us to it was +mistaken; in that case we were, Ophelia-like, the more deceived. + + + +VII + +[Illustration: 10 CHURCH OF SAN PABLO] + +Such things do not really matter; the guide-book’s object of interest is +seldom an object of human interest; you may miss it or ignore it without +real personal loss; but if we had failed of that mystic progress of the +silver car down the nave of San Pablo we should have been really if +not sensibly poorer. So we should if we had failed of the charming +experience which awaited us in our hotel at lunch-time. When we went out +in the morning we saw a table spread the length of the long dining-room, +and now when we returned we found every chair taken. At once we surmised +a wedding breakfast, not more from the gaiety than the gravity of the +guests; and the head waiter confirmed our impression: it was indeed a +_boda._ The party was just breaking up, and as we sat down at our table +the wedding guests rose from theirs. I do not know but in any country +the women on such an occasion would look more adequate to it than the +men; at any rate, there in Spain they looked altogether superior. It +was not only that they were handsomer and better dressed, but that they +expressed finer social and intellectual quality. + +All the faces had the quiet which the Spanish face has in such degree +that the quiet seems national more than personal; but the women’s faces +were oval, though rather heavily based, while the men’s were squared, +with high cheek-bones, and they seemed more distinctly middle class. Men +and women had equally repose of manner, and when the women came to put +on their headgear near our corner, it was with a surface calm unbroken +by what must have been their inner excitement. They wore hats and +mantillas in about the same proportion; but the bride wore a black +mantilla and a black dress with sprigs of orange blossoms in her hair +and on her breast for the only note of white. Her lovely, gentle face +was white, of course, from the universal powder, and so were the faces +of the others, who talked in low tones around her, with scarcely more +animation than so many masks. The handsomest of them, whom we decided +to be her sister, arranged the bride’s mantilla, and was then helped on +with hers by the others, with soft smiles and glances. Two little girls, +imaginably sorry the feast was over, suppressed their regret in the +tutelage of the maiden aunts and grandmothers who put up cakes in +napkins to carry home; and then the party vanished in unbroken decorum. +When they were gone we found that in studying the behavior of the bride +and her friends we had not only failed to identify the bridegroom, but +had altogether forgotten to try. + + + +VIII + + +The terrible Torquemada dwelt for years in Valla-dolid and must there +have excogitated some of the methods of the Holy Office in dealing with +heresy. As I have noted, Ferdinand and Isabella were married there and +Philip II. was born there; but I think the reader will agree with me +that the highest honor of the city is that it was long the home of the +gallant gentleman who after five years of captivity in Algiers and the +loss of his hand in the Battle of Lepanto, wrote there, in his poverty +and neglect, the first part of a romance which remains and must always +remain one of the first if not the very first of the fictions of the +world. I mean that + + Dear son of memory, great heir of fame, + +Michael Cervantes; and I wish I could pay here that devoir to his memory +and fame which squalid circumstance forbade me to render under the roof +that once sheltered him. One can never say enough in his praise, and +even Valladolid seems to have thought so, for the city has put up a +tablet to him with his bust above it in the front of his incredible +house and done him the homage of a reverent inscription. It is a very +little house, as small as Ariosto’s in Ferrara, which he said was so apt +for him, but it is not in a long, clean street like that; it is in a bad +neighborhood which has not yet outlived the evil repute it bore in the +days of Cervantes. It was then the scene of nightly brawls and in one of +these a gentleman was stabbed near the author’s house. The alarm brought +Cervantes to the door and being the first to reach the dying man he +was promptly arrested, together with his wife, his two sisters, and his +niece, who were living with him and who were taken up as accessories +before the fact. The whole abomination is matter of judicial record, +and it appears from this that suspicion fell upon the gentle family (one +sister was a nun) because they were living in that infamous place. The +man whose renown has since filled the civilized world fuller even than +the name of his contemporary, Shakespeare (they died on the same day), +was then so unknown to the authorities of Valladolid that he had great +ado to establish the innocence of himself and his household. To be +sure, his _Don Quixote_ had not yet appeared, though he is said to have +finished the first part in that miserable abode in that vile region; +but he had written poems and plays, especially his most noble tragedy +of “Numancia,” and he had held public employs and lived near enough to +courts to be at least in their cold shade. It is all very Spanish +and very strange, and perhaps the wonder should be that in this most +provincial of royal capitals, in a time devoted to the extirpation of +ideas, the fact that he was a poet and a scholar did not tell fatally +against him. In his declaration before the magistrates he says that +his literary reputation procured him the acquaintance of courtiers and +scholars, who visited him in that pitiable abode where the ladies of his +family cared for themselves and him with the help of one servant maid. + +They had an upper floor of the house, which stands at the base of a +stone terrace dropping from the wide, dusty, fly-blown street, where I +stayed long enough to buy a melon (I was always buying a melon in Spain) +and put it into my cab before I descended the terrace to revere the +house of Cervantes on its own level. There was no mistaking it; there +was the bust and the inscription; but it was well I bought my melon +before I ventured upon this act of piety; I should not have had the +stomach for it afterward. I was not satisfied with the outside of the +house, but when I entered the open doorway, meaning to mount to the +upper floor, it was as if I were immediately blown into the street +again by the thick and noisome stench which filled the place from some +unmentionable if not unimaginable source. + +It was like a filthy insult to the great presence whose sacred shrine +the house should have been religiously kept. But Cervantes dead was as +forgotten in Valladolid as Cervantes living had been. In some paroxysm +of civic pride the tablet had been set in the wall and then the house +abandoned to whatever might happen. I thought foul shame of Valladolid +for her neglect, and though she might have answered that her burden of +memories was more than she could bear, that she could not be forever +keeping her celebrity sweet, still I could have retorted, But Cervantes, +but Cervantes! There was only one Cervantes in the world and there never +would be another, and could not she watch over this poor once home of +his for his matchless sake? Then if Valladolid had come back at me with +the fact that Cervantes had lived pretty well all over Spain, and what +had Seville done, Cordova done, Toledo done, Madrid done, for the upkeep +of his divers sojourns more than she had done, after placing a tablet +in his house wall?--certainly I could have said that this did not excuse +her, but I must have owned that she was not alone, though she seemed +most to blame. + + + +IX + +[Illustration: 11 THE HOUSE IN WHICH PHILIP II. WAS BORN] + +Now I look back and am glad I had not consciously with me, as we drove +away, the boy who once meant to write the life of Cervantes, and who +I knew from my recollection of his idolatry of that chief of Spaniards +would not have listened to the excuses of Valladolid for a moment. +All appeared fair and noble in that Spain of his which shone with such +allure far across the snows through which he trudged morning and evening +with his father to and from the printing-office, and made his dream +of that great work the common theme of their talk. Now the boy is as +utterly gone as the father, who was a boy too at heart, but who died a +very old man many years ago; and in the place of both is another old man +trammeled in his tangled memories of Spain visited and unvisited. + +It would be a poor sort of make-believe if this survivor pretended any +lasting indignation with Valladolid because of the stench of Cervantes’s +house. There are a great many very bad smells in Spain everywhere, and +it is only fair to own that a psychological change toward Valladolid had +been operating itself in me since luncheon which Valladolid was not very +specifically to blame for. Up to the time the wedding guests left us we +had said Valladolid was the most interesting city we had ever seen, and +we would like to stay there a week; then, suddenly, we began to turn +against it. One thing: the weather had clouded, and it was colder. But +we determined to be just, and after we left the house of Cervantes we +drove out to the promenades along the banks of the Pisuerga, in hopes of +a better mind, for we had read that they were the favorite resort of the +citizens in summer, and we did not know but even in autumn we might +have some glimpses of their recreation. Our way took us sorrowfully +past hospitals and prisons and barracks; and when we came out on the +promenade we found ourselves in the gloom of close set mulberry trees, +with the dust thick on the paths under them. The leaves hung leaden gray +on the boughs and there could never have been a spear of grass along +those disconsolate ways. The river was shrunken in its bed, and where +its current crept from pool to pool, women were washing some of the rags +which already hung so thick on the bushes that it was wonderful there +should be any left to wash. Squalid children abounded, and at one +point a crowd of people had gathered and stood looking silently and +motionlessly over the bank. We looked too and on a sand-bar near the +shore we saw three gendarmes standing with a group of civilians. Between +their fixed and absolutely motionless figures lay the body of a drowned +man on the sand, poorly clothed in a workman’s dress, and with his poor, +dead clay-white hands stretched out from him on the sand, and his gray +face showing to the sky. Everywhere people were stopping and staring; +from one of the crowded windows of the nearest house a woman hung with +a rope of her long hair in one hand, and in the other the brush she was +passing over it. On the bridge the man who had found the body made a +merit of his discovery which he dramatized to a group of spectators +without rousing them to a murmur or stirring them from their statuesque +fixity. His own excitement in comparison seemed indecent. + + + +X + + +It was now three o’clock and I thought I might be in time to draw some +money on my letter of credit, at the bank which we had found standing in +a pleasant garden in the course of our stroll through the town the night +before. We had said, How charming it would be to draw money in such an +environment; and full of the romantic expectation, I offered my letter +at the window, where after a discreet interval I managed to call from +their preoccupation some unoccupied persons within. They had not a very +financial air, and I thought them the porters they really were, with +some fear that I had come after banking-hours. But they joined in +reassuring me, and told me that if I would return after five o’clock the +proper authorities would be there. + +I did not know then what late hours Spain kept in every way; but I +concealed my surprise; and I came back at the time suggested, and +offered my letter at the window with a request for ten pounds, which I +fancied I might need. A clerk took the letter and scrutinized it with +a deliberation which I thought it scarcely merited. His self-respect +doubtless would not suffer him to betray that he could not read the +English of it; and with an air of wishing to consult higher authority he +carried it to another clerk at a desk across the room. To this official +it seemed to come as something of a blow. Tie made a show of reading it +several times over, inside and out, and then from the pigeonhole of his +desk he began to accumulate what I supposed corroborative documents, +or _pieces justificatives._ When lie had amassed a heap several inches +thick, he rose and hurried out through the gate, across the hall where +I sat, into a room beyond. He returned without in any wise referring +himself to me and sat down at his desk again. The first clerk explained +to the anxious face with which I now approached him that the second +clerk had taken my letter to the director. I went back to my seat and +waited fifteen minutes longer, fifteen having passed already; then I +presented my anxious face, now somewhat indignant, to the first clerk +again. “What is the director doing with my letter?” The first clerk +referred my question to the second clerk, who answered from his place, +“He is verifying the signature.” “But what signature?” I wondered to +myself, reflecting that he had as yet had none of mine. Could it be the +signature of my New York banker or my London one? I repaired once +more to the window, after another wait, and said in polite but firm +Castilian, “Do me the favor to return me my letter.” A commotion +of protest took place within the barrier, followed by the repeated +explanation that the director was verifying the signature. I returned +to toy place and considered that the suspicious document which I had +presented bore record of moneys drawn in London, in Paris, in Tours, in +San Sebastian, which ought to have allayed all suspicion; then for the +last time I repaired to the window; more in anger now than in sorrow, +and gathered nay severest Spanish together for a final demand: “Do me +the favor to give me back my letter _without the pounds sterling.”_ The +clerks consulted together; one of them decided to go to the director’s +room, and after a dignified delay he came back with my letter, and +dashed it down before me with the only rudeness I experienced in Spain. + +I was glad to get it on any terms; it was only too probable that it +would have been returned without the money if I had not demanded it; +and I did what I could with the fact that this amusing financial +transaction, involving a total of fifty dollars, had taken place in the +chief banking-house of one of the commercial and industrial centers of +the country. Valladolid is among other works the seat of the locomotive +works of the northern railway lines, and as these machines average +a speed of twenty-five miles an hour with express trains, it seemed +strange to me that something like their rapidity should not have +governed the action of that bank director in forcing me to ask back my +discredited letter of credit. + + + +XI + + +That evening the young voices and the young feet began to chirp again +under our sun balcony. But there had been no sun in it since noon and +presently a cold thin rain was falling and driving the promenaders under +the arcades, where they were perhaps not unhappier for being closely +massed. We missed the prettiness of the spectacle, though as yet we did +not know that it was the only one of the sort we might hope to see in +Spain, where women walk little indoors, and when they go out, drive and +increase in the sort of loveliness which may be weighed and measured. +Even under the arcades the promenade ceased early and in the adjoining +Plaza Mayor, where the _autos da fe_ once took place, the rain still +earlier made an end of the municipal music, and the dancing of the +lower ranks of the people. But we were fortunate in our Chilian friend’s +representation of the dancing; he came to our table at dinner, and did +with charming sympathy a mother waltzing with her babe in arms for a +partner. + +He came to the omnibus at the end of the promenade, when we were +starting for the station next morning, not yet shaven, in his friendly +zeal to make sure of seeing us off, and we parted with confident +prophecies of meeting each other again in Madrid. We had already bidden +adieu with effusion to our landlady-sisters-and-mother, and had wished +to keep forever our own the adorable _chico_ who, when cautioned against +trying to carry a very heavy bag, valiantly jerked it to his shoulder +and made off with it to the omnibus, as if it were nothing. I do not +believe such a boy breathes out of Spain, where I hope he will grow up +to the Oriental calm of so many of his countrymen, and rest from the +toils of his nonage. At the last moment after the Chilian had left us, +we perceived that one of our trunks had been forgotten, and the _chico_ +coursed back to the hotel for it and returned with the delinquent porter +bearing it, as if to make sure of his bringing it. + +When it was put on top of the omnibus, and we were in probably +unparalleled readiness for starting to the station, at an hour when +scarcely anybody else in Valladolid was up, a mule composing a portion +of our team immediately fell down, as if startled too abruptly from a +somnambulic dream. I really do not remember how it was got to its feet +again; but I remember the anguish of the delay and the fear that we +might not be able to escape from Valladolid after all our pains in +trying for the Sud-Express at that hour; and I remember that when we +reached the station we found that the Sud-Express was forty minutes +behind time and that we were a full hour after that before starting for +Madrid. + + + + +V. PHASES OF MADRID + + +I fancied that a kind of Gothic gloom was expressed in the black +wine-skins of Old Castile, as contrasted with the fairer color of those +which began to prevail even so little south of Burgos as Valladolid. I +am not sure that the Old Castilian wine-skins derived their blackness +from the complexion of the pigs, or that there are more pale pigs in the +south than in the north of Spain; I am sure only of a difference in +the color of the skins, which may have come from a difference in the +treatment of them. At a venture I should not say that there were more +black pigs in Old Castile than in Andalusia, as we observed them from +the train, rooting among the unpromising stubble of the wheat-lands. +Rather I should say that the prevailing pig of all the Spains was brown, +corresponding to the reddish blondness frequent among both the Visigoths +and the Moors. The black pig was probably the original, prehistoric +Iberian pig, or of an Italian strain imported by the Romans; but I do +not offer this as more than a guess. The Visigothic or Arabic pig showed +himself an animal of great energy and alertness wherever we saw him, +and able to live upon the lean of the land where it was leanest. At his +youngest he abounded in the furrows and hollows, matching his russet +with the russet of the soil and darting to and fro with the quickness +of a hare. He was always of an ingratiating humorousness and endeared +himself by an apparent readiness to enter into any joke that was going, +especially that of startling the pedestrian by his own sudden apparition +from behind a tuft of grass or withered stalk. I will not be sure, but I +think we began to see his kind as soon as we got out of Yalladolid, when +we began running through a country wooded with heavy, low-crowned pines +that looked like the stone-pines of Italy, but were probably not the +same. After twenty miles of this landscape the brown pig with pigs of +other complexions, as much guarded as possible, multiplied among the +patches of vineyard. He had there the company of tall black goats and +rather unhappy-looking black sheep, all of whom he excelled in the +art of foraging among the vines and the stubble of the surrounding +wheat-lands. After the vineyards these opened and stretched themselves +wearily, from low dull sky to low dull sky, nowise cheered in aspect by +the squalid peasants, scratching their tawny expanses with those crooked +prehistoric sticks which they use for plows in Spain. It was a dreary +landscape, but it was good to be out of Valladolid on any terms, and +especially good to be away from the station which we had left emulating +the odors of the house of Cervantes. + + + +I + + +There had been the usual alarm about the lack of places in the +Sud-Express which we were to take at Valladolid, but we chanced getting +them, and our boldness was rewarded by getting a whole compartment to +ourselves, and a large, fat friendly conductor with an eye out for tips +in every direction. The lunch in our dining-car was for the first time +in Spain not worth the American price asked for it; everywhere else +on the Spanish trains I must testify that the meals were excellent and +abundant; and the refection may now have felt in some obscure sort the +horror of the world in which the Sud-Express seemed to have lost itself. +The scene was as alien to any other known aspect of our comfortable +planet as if it were the landscape of some star condemned for the +sins of its extinct children to wander through space in unimaginable +desolation. It seldom happens in Spain that the scenery is the same on +both sides of the railroad track, but here it was malignly alike on one +hand and on the other, though we seemed to be running along the slope of +an upland, so that the left hand was higher and the right lower. It was +more as if we were crossing the face of some prodigious rapid, whose +surges were the measureless granite boulders tossing everywhere in +masses from the size of a man’s fist to the size of a house. In a wild +chaos they wallowed against one another, the greater bearing on their +tops or between them on their shoulders smaller regular or irregular +masses of the same gray stone. Everywhere among their awful shallows +grew gray live-oaks, and in among the rocks and trees spread tufts of +gray shrub. Suddenly, over the frenzy of this mad world, a storm of cold +rain broke whirling, and cold gray mists drove, blinding the windows and +chilling us where we sat within. From time to time the storm lifted and +showed again this vision of nature hoary as if with immemorial eld; if +at times we seemed to have run away from it again it closed in upon us +and held us captive in its desolation. + +With longer and longer intervals of relief it closed upon us for the +last time in the neighborhood of the gloomiest pile that ever a man +built for his life, his death and his prayer between; but before we came +to the palace-tomb of the Escorial, we had clear in the distance the +vision of the walls and roofs and towers of the medieval city of Avila. +It is said to be the perfectest relic of the Middle Ages after or before +Rothenburg, and we who had seen Rothenburg solemnly promised ourselves +to come back some day from Madrid and spend it in Avila. But we never +came, and Avila remains a vision of walls and roofs and towers tawny +gray glimpsed in a rift of the storm that again swept toward the Spanish +capital. + + + +II + + +We were very glad indeed to get to Madrid, though dismayed by +apprehensions of the _octroi_ which we felt sure awaited us. We recalled +the behavior of the amiable officer of Valladolid who bumped our baggage +about on the roof of our omnibus, and we thought that in Madrid such +an officer could not do less than shatter our boxes and scatter their +contents in the streaming street. What was then our surprise, our +joy, to find that in Madrid there was no _octroi_ at all, and that the +amiable _mozos_ who took our things hardly knew what we meant when we +asked for it. At Madrid they scarcely wanted our tickets at the gate of +the station, and we found ourselves in the soft embrace of modernity, +so dear after the feudal rigors of Old Castile, when we mounted into a +motor-bus and sped away through the spectacular town, so like Paris, +so like Rome as to have no personality of its own except in this +similarity, and never stopped till the liveried service swarmed upon us +at the door of the Hotel Ritz. + +Here the modernity which had so winningly greeted us at the station +welcomed us more and consolingly. There was not only steam-heating, but +the steam was on! It wanted but a turn of the hand at the radiators, and +the rooms were warm. The rooms themselves responded to our appeal +and looked down into a silent inner court, deaf to the clatter of the +streets, and sleep haunted the very air, distracted, if at all, by the +instant facility and luxury of the appliances. Was it really in Spain +that a metallic tablet at the bed-head invited the wanderer to call with +one button for the _camerero,_ another for the _camerera,_ and another +for the _mozo,_ who would all instantly come speaking English like so +many angels? Were we to have these beautiful chambers for a humble two +dollars and forty cents a day; and if it was true, why did we ever +leave them and try for something ever so much worse and so very little +cheaper? Let me be frank with the reader whom I desire for my friend, +and own that we were frightened from the Eitz Hotel by the rumor of +Eitz prices. I paid my bill there, which was imagined with scrupulous +fullness to the last possible _centimo,_ and so I may disinterestedly +declare that the Eitz is the only hotel in Madrid where you get the +worth of your money, even when the money seems more but scarcely is so. +In all Spain I know of only two other hotels which may compare with it, +and these are the English hotels, one at Ronda and one at Algeciras. If +I add falteringly the hotel where we stayed a night in Toledo and the +hotel where we abode a fortnight in Seville, I heap the measure of merit +and press it down. + +We did not begin at once our insensate search for another hotel in +Madrid: but the sky had cleared and we went out into the strange capital +so uncharacteristically characteristic, to find tea at a certain cafe +we had heard of. It was in the Calle de Alcala (a name which so richly +stimulates the imagination), and it looked out across this handsome +street, to a club that I never knew the name of, where at a series of +open windows was a flare of young men in silk hats leaning out on their +elbows and letting no passing fact of the avenue escape them. It was +worth their study, and if I had been an idle young Spaniard, or an +idle old one, I would have asked nothing better than to spend my Sunday +afternoon poring from one of those windows on my well-known world of +Madrid as it babbled by. Even in my quality of alien, newly arrived and +ignorant of that world, I already felt its fascination. + +Sunday in Spain is perhaps different from other days of the week to +the Spanish sense, but to the traveler it is too like them to be +distinguishable except in that guilty Sabbath consciousness which is +probably an effect from original sin in every Protestant soul. The +casual eye could not see but that in Madrid every one seemed as much or +as little at work as on any other day. My own casual eye noted that the +most picturesquely evident thing in the city was the country life which +seemed so to pervade it. In the Calle de Alcala, flowing to the Prado +out of the Puerta del Sol, there passed a current of farm-carts and +farm-wagons more conspicuous than any urban vehicles, as they jingled +by, with men and women on their sleigh-belled donkeys, astride or atop +the heavily laden panniers. The donkeys bore a part literally leading in +all the rustic equipages, and with their superior intellect found a way +through the crowds for the string-teams of the three or four large mules +that followed them in harness. Whenever we saw a team of mules without +this sage guidance we trembled for their safety; as for horses, no team +of them attempted the difficult passage, though ox-trains seemed able to +dispense with the path-finding donkeys. + +To be sure, the horses abounded in the cabs, which were mostly bad, more +or less. It is an idiosyncrasy of the cabs in Madrid that only the open +victorias have rubber tires; if you go in a coupe you must consent to +be ruthlessly bounced over the rough pavements on wheels unsoftened. It +“follows as the night the day” that the coupe is not in favor, and that +in its conservative disuse it accumulates a smell not to be acquired out +of Spain. One such vehicle I had which I thought must have been stabled +in the house of Cervantes at Valladolid, and rushed on the Sud-Express +for my service at Madrid; the stench in it was such that after a short +drive to the house of a friend I was fain to dismiss it at a serious +loss in pesetas and take the risk of another which might have been as +bad. Fortunately a kind lady intervened with a private carriage and a +coachman shaved that very day, whereas my poor old cabman, who was of +one and the same smell as his cab, had not been shaved for three days. + + + +III + + +This seems the place to note the fact that no Spaniard in humble life +shaves oftener than once in three days, and that you always see him on +the third day just before he has shaved. But all this time I have left +myself sitting in the cafe looking out on the club that looks out on the +Calle de Aleala, and keeping the waiter waiting with a jug of hot milk +in his hand while I convince him (such a friendly, smiling man he is, +and glad of my instruction!) that in tea one always wants the milk cold. +To him that does not seem reasonable, since one wants it hot in coffee +and chocolate; but he yields to my prejudice, and after that he always +says, _“Ah, leche fria!”_ and we smile radiantly together in the bond of +comradery which cold milk establishes between man and man in Spain. As +yet tea is a novelty in that country, though the young English queen, +universally loved and honored, has made it the fashion in high life. +Still it is hard to overcome such a prepossession as that of hot milk in +tea, and in some places you cannot get it cold for love or money. + +But again I leave myself waiting in that cafe, where slowly, and at last +not very overwhelmingly in number, the beautiful plaster-pale Spanish +ladies gather with their husbands and have chocolate. It is a riotous +dissipation for them, though it does not sound so; the home is the +Spanish ideal of the woman’s place, as it is of our anti-suffragists, +though there is nothing corresponding to our fireside in it; and the +cafe is her husband’s place without her. When she walks in the street, +where mostly she drives, she walks with her eyes straight before her; to +look either to the right or left, especially if a man is on either hand, +is a superfluity of naughtiness. The habit of looking straight ahead is +formed in youth, and it continues through life; so at least it is said, +and if I cannot affirm it I will not deny it. The beautiful black eyes +so discreetly directed looked as often from mantillas as hats, even in +Madrid, which is the capital, and much infested by French fashions. You +must not believe it when any one tells you that the mantilla is going +out; it prevails everywhere, and it increases from north to south, and +in Seville it is almost universal. Hats are worn there only in driving, +but at Madrid there were many hats worn in walking, though whether +by Spanish women or by foreigners, of course one could not, though a +wayfaring man and an American, stop them to ask. + +There are more women in the street at Madrid than in the provincial +cities, perhaps because it is the capital and cosmopolitan, and perhaps +because the streets are many of them open and pleasant, though there arc +enough of them dark and narrow, too. I do not know just why the Puerta +del Sol seems so much ampler and gayer than the Calle de Alcala; it is +not really wider, but it seems more to concentrate the coming and +going, and with its high-hoteled opposition of corners is of a supreme +spectacularity. Besides, the name is so fine: what better could any city +place ask than to be called Gate of the Sun? Perpetual trams wheeze and +whistle through it; large shops face upon it; the sidewalks are thronged +with passers, and the many little streets debouching on it pour their +streams of traffic and travel into it on the right and left. It is +mainly fed by the avenues leaving the royal palace on the west, and its +eddying tide empties through the Calle de Alcala into the groves and +gardens of the Prado whence it spreads over all the drives and parks +east and north and south. + +For a capital purposed and planned Madrid is very well indeed. It has +not the symmetry which forethought gave the topography of Washington, or +the beauty which afterthought has given Paris. But it makes you think +a little of Washington, and a great deal of Paris, though a great deal +more yet of Rome. It is Renaissance so far as architecture goes, and it +is very modern Latin; so that it is of the older and the newer Rome that +it makes you think. From, time to time it seemed to me I must be in. +Rome, and I recovered myself with a pang to find I was not. Yet, as I +say, Madrid was very well indeed, and when I reflected I had to own that +I had come there on purpose to be there, and not to be in Rome, where +also I should have been so satisfied to be. + + + +IV + + +I do not know but we chose our hotel when we left the Ritz because it +was so Italian, so Roman. It had a wide grape arbor before it, with +a generous spread of trellised roof through which dangled the grape +bunches among the leaves of the vine. Around this arbor at top went a +balustrade of marble, with fat _putti,_ or marble boys, on the corners, +who would have watched over the fruit if they had not been preoccupied +with looking like so many thousands of _putti_ in Italy. They looked +like Italian _putti_ with a difference, the difference that passes +between all the Spanish things and the Italian things they resemble. +They were coarser and grosser in figure, and though amiable enough +in aspect, they lacked the refinement, the air of pretty appeal which +Italian art learns from nature to give the faces of _putti._ Yet they +were charming, and it was always a pleasure to look at them posing in +pairs at the corners of the balustrade, and I do not know but dozing in +the hours of _siesta._ If they had been in wood Spanish art would have +known how to make them better, but in stone they had been gathering +an acceptable weather stain during the human generations they had been +there, and their plump stomachs were weather-beaten white. + +I do not know if they had been there long enough to have witnessed +the murder of Cromwell’s ambassador done in our street by two Jacobite +gentlemen who could not abide his coming to honor in the land where +they were in exile from England. That must have been sometime about the +middle of the century after Philip II., bigot as he was, could not bear +the more masterful bigotry of the archbishop of Toledo, and brought his +court from that ancient capital, and declared Madrid henceforward the +capital forever; which did not prevent Philip III. from taking his court +to Valladolid and making that the capital _en titre_ when he liked. +However, some other Philip or Charles, or whoever, returned with his +court to Madrid and it has ever since remained the capital, and has +come, with many natural disadvantages, to look its supremacy. For my +pleasure I would rather live in Seville, but that would be a luxurious +indulgence of the love of beauty, and like a preference of Venice in +Italy when there was Rome to live in. Madrid is not Rome, but it makes +you think of Rome as I have said, and if it had a better climate it +would make you think of Rome still more. Notoriously, however, it has +not a good climate and we had not come at the right season to get the +best of the bad. The bad season itself was perverse, for the rains do +not usually begin in their bitterness at Madrid before November, and now +they began early in October. The day would open fair, with only a few +little white clouds in the large blue, and if we could trust other’s +experience we knew it would rain before the day closed; only a morning +absolutely clear could warrant the hope of a day fair till sunset. +Shortly after noon the little white clouds would drift together and be +joined by others till they hid the large blue, and then the drops would +begin to fall. By that time the air would have turned raw and chill, and +the rain would be of a cold which it kept through the night. + +This habit of raining every afternoon was what kept us from seeing rank, +riches, and beauty in the Paseo de la Castellana, where they drive only +on fine afternoons; they now remained at home even more persistently +than we did, for with that love of the fashionable world for which I am +always blaming myself I sometimes took a cab and fared desperately forth +in pursuit of them. Only once did I seem to catch a glimpse of them, and +that once I saw a closed carriage weltering along the drive between the +trees and the trams that border it, with the coachman and footman snugly +sheltered under umbrellas on the box. This was something, though not a +great deal; I could not make out the people inside the carriage; yet it +helped to certify to me the fact that the great world does drive in the +Paseo de la Castellana and does not drive in the Paseo del Prado; that +is quite abandoned, even on the wettest days, to the very poor and +perhaps unfashionable people. + + + +V + +[Illustration: 12 THE BULL-RING, MADRID] + +It may have been our comparative defeat with fashion in its most +distinctive moments of pleasuring (for one thing I wished to see how the +dreariness of Madrid gaiety in the Paseo de la Castellana would compare +with that of Roman gaiety on the Pincian) which made us the more +determined to see a bull-fight in the Spanish capital. We had vowed +ourselves in coming to Spain to set the Spaniards an example of +civilization by inflexibly refusing to see a bull-fight under any +circumstances or for any consideration; but it seemed to us that it was +a sort of public duty to go and see the crowd, what it was like, in the +time and place where the Spanish crowd is most like itself. We would go +and remain in our places till everybody else was placed, and then, +when the picadors and banderilleros and matadors were all ranged in the +arena, and the gate was lifted, and the bull came rushing madly in, we +would rise before he had time to gore anybody, and go inexorably away. +This union of self-indulgence and self-denial seemed almost an act of +piety when we learned that the bull-fight was to be on Sunday, and we +prepared ourselves with tickets quite early in the week. On Saturday +afternoon it rained, of course, but the worst was that it rained on +Sunday morning, and the clouds did not lift till noon. Then the glowing +concierge of our hotel, a man so gaily hopeful, so expansively promising +that I could hardly believe he was not an Italian, said that there could +not possibly be a bull-fight that day; the rain would have made the +arena so slippery that man, horse, and bull would all fall down together +in a common ruin, with no hope whatever of hurting one another. + +We gave up this bull-fight at once, but we were the more resolved to see +a bull-fight because we still owed it to the Spanish people to come away +before we had time to look at it, and we said we would certainly go at +Cordova where we should spend the next Sabbath. At Cordova we learned +that it was the closed season for bull-fighting, but vague hopes of +usefulness to the Spanish public were held out to us at Seville, the +very metropolis of bull-fighting, where the bulls came bellowing up +from their native fields athirst for the blood of the profession and +the _aficionados,_ who outnumber there the amateurs of the whole rest +of Spain. But at Seville we were told that there would be no more +bull-feasts, as the Spaniards much more preferably call the bullfights, +till April, and now we were only in October. We said, Never mind; we +would go to a bull-feast in Granada; but at Granada the season was even +more hopelessly closed. In Ronda itself, which is the heart, as Seville +is the home of the bull-feast, we could only see the inside of the empty +arena; and at Algeciras the outside alone offered itself to our vision. +By this time the sense of duty was so strong upon us that if there had +been a bull-feast we would have shared in it and stayed through till the +last _espada_ dropped dead, gored through, at the knees of the last +bull transfixed by his unerring sword; and the other _toreros,_ +the _banderilleros_ with their darts and the picadors with their +disemboweled horses, lay scattered over the blood-stained arena. Such +is the force of a high resolve in strangers bent upon a lesson of +civilization to a barbarous people when disappointed of their purpose. +But we learned too late that only in Madrid is there any bull-feasting +in the winter. In the provincial cities the bulls are dispirited by the +cold; but in the capital, for the honor of the nation, they somehow pull +themselves together and do their poor best to kill and be killed. Yet +in the capital where the zeal of the bulls, and I suppose, of the +bull-fighters, is such, it is said that there is a subtle decay in the +fashionable, if not popular, esteem of the only sport which remembers +in the modern world the gladiatorial shows of imperial Rome. It is said, +but I do not know whether it is true, that the young English queen who +has gladly renounced her nation and religion for the people who seem so +to love her, cannot endure the bloody sights of the bull-feast; and when +it comes to the horses dragging their entrails across the ring, or the +_espada_ despatching the bull, or the bull tossing a _landerillero_ +in the air she puts up her fan. It is said also that the young Spanish +king, who has shown himself such a merciful-minded youth, and seems +so eager to make the best of the bad business of being a king at all, +sympathizes with her, and shows an obviously abated interest at these +supreme moments. + +I do not know whether or not it was because we had failed with the +bull-feast that we failed to go to any sort of public entertainment in +Madrid. It certainly was in my book to go to the theater, and see some +of those modern plays which I had read so many of, and which I had +translated one of for Lawrence Barrett in the far-off days before the +flood of native American dramas now deluging our theater. That play was +“Un Drama Nueva,” by Estebanez, which between us we called “Yorick’s +Love” and which my very knightly tragedian made his battle-horse during +the latter years of his life. In another version Barrett had seen it +fail in New York, but its failure left him with the lasting desire to do +it himself. A Spanish friend, now dead but then the gifted and eccentric +Consul General at Quebec, got me a copy of the play from Madrid, and I +thought there was great reason in a suggestion from another friend that +it had failed because it put Shakespeare on the stage as one of its +characters; but it seemed to me that the trouble could be got over by +making the poet Heywood represent the Shakespearian epoch. I did this +and the sole obstacle to its success seemed removed. It went, as the +enthusiastic Barrett used to say, “with a shout,” though to please him I +had hurt it all I could by some additions and adaptations; and though it +was a most ridiculously romantic story of the tragical loves of Yorick +(whom the Latins like to go on imagining out of Hamlet a much more +interesting and important character than Shakespeare ever meant him to +be fancied), and ought to have remained the fiasco it began, still it +gained Barrett much money and me some little. + +I was always proud of this success, and I boasted of it to the +bookseller in Madrid, whom I interested in finding me some still +moderner plays after quite failing to interest another bookseller. Your +Spanish merchant seems seldom concerned in a mercantile transaction; +but perhaps it was not so strange in the case of this Spanish bookseller +because he was a German and spoke a surprising English in response to my +demand whether he spoke any. He was the frowsiest bookseller I ever saw, +and he was in the third day of his unshavenness with a shirt-front +and coat-collar plentifully bedandruffed from his shaggy hair; but he +entered into the spirit of my affair and said if that Spanish play had +succeeded so wonderfully, then I ought to pay fifty per cent, more than +the current price for the other Spanish plays which I wanted him to get +me. I laughed with him at the joke which I found simple earnest when our +glowing concierge gave me the books next day, and I perceived that +the proposed supplement had really been paid for them on my account. +I should not now be grieving for this incident if the plays had proved +better reading than they did on experiment. Some of them were from the +Catalan, and all of them dealt with the simpler actual life of Spain; +but they did not deal impressively with it, though they seemed to me +more hopeful in conception than certain psychological plays of ten or +fifteen years ago, which the Spanish authors had too clearly studied +from Ibsen. + +They might have had their effect in the theater, but the rainy weather +had not only spoiled my sole chance of the bull-feast; the effect of it +in a stubborn cold forbade me the night air and kept me from testing +any of the new dramas on the stage, which is always giving new dramas in +Madrid. The stage, or rather the theater, is said to be truly a passion +with the Madrilenos, who go every night to see the whole or the part of +a play and do not mind seeing the same play constantly, as if it were +opera. They may not care to see the play so much as to be seen at it; +that happens in every country; but no doubt the plays have a charm which +did not impart itself from the printed page. The companies are reported +very good: but the reader must take this from me at second hand, as he +must take the general society fact. I only know that people ask you to +dinner at nine, and if they go to the theater afterward they cannot +well come away till toward one o’clock. It is after this hour that the +_tertulia,_ that peculiarly Spanish function, begins, but how long it +lasts or just what it is I do not know. I am able to report confidently, +however, that it is a species of _salon_ and that it is said to be +called a _tertulia_ because of the former habit in the guests, and no +doubt the hostess, of quoting the poet Tertullian. It is of various +constituents, according as it is a fashionable, a literary, or an +artistic _tertulia,_ or all three with an infusion of science. Oftenest, +I believe, it is a domestic affair and all degrees of cousinship resort +to it with brothers and sisters and uncles, who meet with the pleasant +Latin liking of frequent meetings among kindred. In some cases no doubt +it is a brilliant reunion where lively things are said; in others it +may be dull; in far the most cases it seems to be held late at night or +early in the morning. + + + +VI + + +It was hard, after being shut up several days, that one must not go out +after nightfall, and if one went out by day, one must go with closed +lips and avoid all talking in the street under penalty of incurring +the dreaded pneumonia of Madrid. Except for that dreaded pneumonia, +I believe the air of Madrid is not so pestilential as it has been +reported. Public opinion is beginning to veer in favor of it, just as +the criticism which has pronounced Madrid commonplace and unpicturesque +because it is not obviously old, is now finding a charm in it peculiar +to the place. Its very modernity embodies and imparts the charm, which +will grow as the city grows in wideness and straightness. It is in the +newer quarter that it recalls Rome or the newer quarters of Rome; but +there is an old part of it that recalls the older part of Naples, though +the streets are not quite so narrow nor the houses so high. There +is like bargaining at the open stands with the buyers and sellers +chaffering over them; there is a likeness in the people’s looks, too, +but when it comes to the most characteristic thing of Naples, Madrid is +not in it for a moment. I mean the bursts of song which all day long and +all night long you hear in Naples; and this seems as good a place as any +to say that to my experience Spain is a songless land. We had read much +of the song and dance there, but though the dance might be hired the +song was never offered for love or money. To be sure, in Toledo, once, +a woman came to her door across the way under otir hotel window and sang +over the slops she emptied into the street, but then she shut the door +and we heard her no more. In Cordova there was as brief a peal of music +from a house which we passed, and in Algeciras we heard one short sweet +strain from a girl whom we could not see behind her lattice. Besides +these chance notes we heard no other by any chance. But this is by no +means saying that there is not abundant song in Spain, only it was kept +quiet; I suppose that if we had been there in the spring instead of the +fall we should at least have heard the birds singing. In Madrid there +were not even many street cries; a few in the Puerta del Sol, yes; but +the peasants who drove their mule-teams through the streets scarcely +lifted their voices in reproach or invitation; they could trust the wise +donkeys that led them to get them safely through the difficult places. +There was no audible quarreling among the cabmen, and when you called a +cab it was useless to cry “Heigh!” or shake your umbrella; you made +play with your thumb and finger in the air and sibilantly whispered; +otherwise the cabman ignored you and went on reading his newspaper. The +cabmen of Madrid are great readers, much greater, I am sorry to say, +than I was, for whenever I bought a Spanish paper I found it extremely +well written. Now and then I expressed my political preferences in +buying _El Liberal_ which I thought very able; even _El Imparcial_ I +thought able, though it is less radical than _El Liberal,_ a paper which +is published simultaneously in Madrid, with local editions in several +provincial cities. + +For all the street silence there seemed to be a great deal of noise, +which I suppose came from the click of boots on the sidewalks and of +hoofs in roadways and the grind and squeal of the trams, with the harsh +smiting of the unrubbered tires of the closed cabs on the rough granite +blocks of the streets. But there are asphalted streets in Madrid where +the sound of the hoofs and wheels is subdued, and the streets rough and +smooth are kept of a cleanliness which would put the streets of New York +to shame if anything could. Ordinarily you could get cabs anywhere, but +if you wanted one very badly, when remote from a stand, there was more +than one chance that a cab marked _Libre_ would pass you with lordly +indifference. As for motor taxi-cabs there are none in the city, and +at Cook’s they would not take the responsibility of recommending any +automobiles for country excursions. + + + +VII + + +I linger over these sordid details because I must needs shrink before +the mention of that incomparable gallery, the Museo del Prado. I am +careful not to call it the greatest gallery in the world, for I think of +what the Louvre, the Pitti, and the National Gallery are, and what +our own Metropolitan is going to be; but surely the Museo del Prado is +incomparable for its peculiar riches. It is part of the autobiographical +associations with my Spanish travel that when John Hay, who was not yet, +by thirty or forty years, the great statesman he became, but only the +breeziest of young Secretaries of Legation, just two weeks from his post +in Madrid, blew surprisingly into my little carpenter’s box in Cambridge +one day, he boasted almost the first thing that the best Titians in the +world were in the Prado galleries. I was too lately from Venice in 1867 +not to have my inward question whether there could be anywhere a better +Titian than the “Assumption,” but I loved Hay too much to deny him +openly. I said that I had no doubt of it, and when the other day I +went to the Prado it was with the wish of finding him perfectly right, +triumphantly right. I had been from the first a strong partisan of +Titian, and in many a heated argument with Ruskin, unaware of our +controversy, I had it out with that most prejudiced partisan of +Tintoretto. I always got the better of him, as one does in such +dramatizations, where one frames one’s opponent’s feeble replies for +him; but now in the Prado, sadly and strangely enough, I began to wonder +if Ruskin might not have tacitly had the better of me all the time. If +Hay was right in holding that the best Titians in the world were in the +Prado, then I was wrong in having argued for Titian against Tintoretto +with Ruskin. I could only wish that I had the “Assumption” there, or +some of those senators whose portraits I remembered in the Academy +at Venice. The truth is that to my eye he seemed to weaken before the +Spanish masters, though I say this, who must confess that I failed to +see the room of his great portraits. The Italians who hold their own +with the Spaniards are Tintoretto and Veronese; even Murillo was more +than a match for Titian in such pictures of his as I saw (I must own +that I did not see the best, or nearly all), though properly speaking +Murillo is to be known at his greatest only in Seville. + +But Velasquez, but Velasquez! In the Prado there is no one else present +when he is by, with his Philips and Charleses, and their “villainous +hanging of the nether lip,” with his hideous court dwarfs and his pretty +princes and princesses, his grandees and jesters, his allegories and +battles, his pastorals and chases, which fitly have a vast salon to +themselves, not only that the spectator may realize at once the rich +variety and abundance of the master, but that such lesser lights as +Rubens, Titian, Correggio, Giorgione, Tintoretto, Veronese, Rembrandt, +Zurbaran, El Greco, Murillo, may not be needlessly dimmed by his +surpassing splendor. I leave to those who know painting from the +painter’s art to appreciate the technical perfection of Velasquez; I +take my stand outside of that, and acclaim its supremacy in virtue of +that reality which all Spanish art has seemed always to strive for and +which in Velasquez it incomparably attains. This is the literary quality +which the most untechnical may feel, and which is not clearer to the +connoisseur than to the least unlearned. + +After Velasquez in the Prado we wanted Goya, and more and more Goya, who +is as Spanish and as unlike Velasquez as can very well be. There was +not enough Goya abovestairs to satisfy us, but in the Goya room in the +basement there was a series of scenes from Spanish life, mostly frolic +campestral things, which he did as patterns for tapestries and which +came near being enough in their way: the way of that reality which is +so far from the reality of Velasquez. There, striving with their +strangeness, we found a young American husband and wife who said they +were going to Egypt, and seemed so anxious to get out of Spain that they +all but asked us which turning to take. They had a Baedeker of 1901. +which they had been deceived in at New York as the latest edition, and +they were apparently making nothing of the Goyas and were as if lost +down there in the basement. They were in doubt about going further in a +country which had inveigled them from Gibraltar as far as its capital. +They advised with us about Burgos, of all places, and when we said the +hotels in Burgos were very cold, they answered, Well they had thought +so; and the husband asked, Spain was a pretty good place to cut out, +wasn’t it? The wife expected that they would find some one in Egypt who +spoke English; she had expected they would speak French in Spain, but +had been disappointed. They had left their warm things at Gibraltar and +were almost frozen already. They were as good and sweet and nice as they +could be, and we were truly sorry to part with them and leave them to +what seemed to be a mistake which they were not to blame for. + +I wish that all Europeans and all Europeanized Americans knew how to +value such incorruptible con-nationals, who would, I was sure, carry +into the deepest dark of Egypt and over the whole earth undimmed the +light of our American single-heartedness. I would have given something +to know from just which kind country town and companionable commonwealth +of our Union they had come, but I would not have given much, for I knew +that they could have come from almost any. In their modest satisfaction +with our own order of things, our language, our climate, our weather, +they would not rashly condemn those of other lands, but would give them +a fair chance; and, if when they got home again, they would have to +report unfavorably of the Old World to the Board of Trade or the Woman’s +Club, it would not be without intelligent reservations, even generous +reservations. They would know much more than they knew before they +came abroad, and if they had not seen Europe distinctly, but in a glass +darkly, still they would have seen it and would be the wiser and none +the worse for it. They would still be of their shrewd, pure American +ideals, and would judge their recollections as they judged their +experiences by them; and I wish we were all as confirmed in our fealty +to those ideals. + +They were not, clearly enough, of that yet older fashion of Americans +who used to go through European galleries buying copies of the +masterpieces which the local painters were everywhere making. With this +pair the various postal-card reproductions must have long superseded the +desire or the knowledge of copies, and I doubt if many Americans of any +sort now support that honored tradition. Who, then, does support it? The +galleries of the Prado seem as full of copyists as they could have been +fifty years ago, and many of them were making very good copies. _I_ wish +I could say they were working as diligently as copyists used to work, +but copyists are now subject to frequent interruptions, not from the +tourists but from one another. They used to be all men, mostly grown +gray in their pursuit, but now they are both men and women, and younger +and the women are sometimes very pretty. In the Prado one saw several +pairs of such youth conversing together, forgetful of everything around +them, and on terms so very like flirtatious that they could not well be +distinguished from them. They were terms that other Spanish girls could +enjoy only with a wooden lattice and an iron grille between them and the +_novios_ outside their windows; and no tourist of the least heart could +help rejoicing with them. In the case of one who stood with her little +figure slanted and her little head tilted, looking up into the charmed +eyes of a tall _rubio,_ the tourist could not help rejoicing with the +young man too. + +The day after our day in the Prado we found ourselves in the Museum of +Modern Art through the kind offices of our mistaken cabman when we were +looking for the Archaeological Museum. But we were not sorry, for some +of the new or newer pictures and sculptures were well worth seeing, +though we should never have tried for them. The force of the masters +which the ideals of the past held in restraint here raged in unbridled +excess: but if I like that force so much, why do I say excess? The new +or newer Spanish art likes an immense canvas, say as large as the side +of a barn, and it chooses mostly a tragical Spanish history in which it +riots with a young sense of power brave to see. There were a dozen of +those mighty dramas which I would have liked to bring away with me if +I had only had a town hall big enough to put them into after I got them +home. There were sculptures as masterful and as mighty as the pictures, +but among the paintings there was one that seemed to subdue all the +infuriate actions to the calm of its awful repose. This was Gisbert’s +“Execution of Torrejos and his Companions,” who were shot at Malaga in +1830 for a rising in favor of constitutional government. One does not, +if one is as wise as I, attempt to depict pictures, and I leave +this most heroic, most pathetic, most heart-breaking, most consoling +masterpiece for my reader to go and see for himself; it is almost worth +going as far as Madrid to see. Never in any picture do I remember the +like of those sad, brave, severe faces of the men standing up there to +be shot, where already their friends lay dead at their feet. A tumbled +top-hat in the foreground had an effect awfuller than a tumbled head +would have had. + + + +VIII + + +Besides this and those other histories there were energetic portraits +and vigorous landscapes in the Modern Museum, where if we had not been +bent so on visiting the Archaeological Museum, we would willingly have +spent the whole morning. But we were determined to see the Peruvian and +Mexican antiquities which we believed must be treasured up in it; and +that we might not fail of finding it, I gave one of the custodians a +special peseta to take us out on the balcony and show us exactly how +to get to it. He was so precise and so full in his directions that we +spent the next half-hour in wandering fatuously round the whole region +before we stumbled, almost violently, upon it immediately back of the +Modern Museum. Will, it be credited that it was then hardly worth seeing +for the things we meant to see? The Peruvian and Mexican antiquities +were so disappointing that we would hardly look at the Etruscan, Greek, +and Roman things which it was so much richer in. To be sure, we had +seen and overseen the like of these long before in Italy; but they were +admirably arranged in this museum, so that without the eager help of the +custodians (which two cents would buy at any turn) we could have found +pleasure in them, whereas the Aztec antiquities were mostly copies in +plaster and the Inca jewelry not striking. + +Before finding the place we had had the help of two policemen and one +newsboy and a postman in losing ourselves in the Prado where we mostly +sought for it, and with difficulty kept ourselves from being thrust into +the gallery there. In Spain a man, or even a boy, does not like to say +he does not know where a place is; he is either too proud or too polite +to do it, and he will misdirect you without mercy. But the morning was +bright, and almost warm, and we should have looked forward to weeks of +sunny weather if our experience had not taught us that it would rain in +the afternoon, and if greater experience than ours had not instructed +us that there would be many days of thick fog now before the climate of +Madrid settled itself to the usual brightness of February. We had time +to note again in the Paseo Castellana, which is the fashionable drive, +that it consists of four rows of acacias and tamarisks and a stretch +of lawn, with seats beside it; the rest is bare grasslessness, with a +bridle-path on one side and a tram-line on the other. If it had been +late afternoon the Paseo would have been filled with the gay world, but +being the late forenoon we had to leave it well-nigh unpeopled and go +back to our hotel, where the excellent midday breakfast merited the best +appetite one could bring to it. + +In fact, all the meals of our hotel were good, and of course they were +only too superabundant. They were pretty much what they were everywhere +in Spain, and they were better everywhere than they were in Granada +where we paid most for them. They were appetizing, and not of the +cooking which the popular superstition attributes to Spain, where the +hotel cooking is not rank with garlic or fiery with pepper, as the +untraveled believe. At luncheon in our Madrid hotel we had a liberal +choice of eggs in any form, the delicious _arroz a la Valencia,_ a +kind of risotto, with saffron to savor and color it; veal cutlets or +beefsteak, salad, cheese, grapes, pears, and peaches, and often melon; +the ever-admirable melon of Spain, which I had learned to like in +England. At dinner there were soup, fish, entree, roast beef, lamb, +or poultry, vegetables, salad, sweet, cheese, and fruit; and there was +pretty poor wine _ad libitum_ at both meals. For breakfast there was +good and true (or true enough) coffee with rich milk, which if we +sometimes doubted it to be goat’s milk we were none the worse if none +the wiser for, as at dinner we were not either if we unwittingly ate kid +for lamb. + +There were not many people in the hotel, but the dining-room was filled +by citizens who came in with the air of frequenters. They were +not people of fashion, as we readily perceived, but kindly-looking +mercantile folk, and ladies painted as white as newly calcimined house +walls; and all gravely polite. There was one gentleman as large round +as a hogshead, with a triple arrangement of fat at the back of his neck +which was fascinating. He always bowed when we met (necessarily with +his whole back) and he ate with an appetite proportioned to his girth. +I could wish still to know who and what he was, for he was a person very +much to my mind. So was the head waiter, dark, silent, clean-shaven, who +let me use my deplorable Spanish with him, till in the last days he came +out with some very fair English which he had been courteously concealing +from me. He looked own brother to the room-waiter in our corridor, +whose companionship I could desire always to have. One could not be so +confident of the sincerity of the little _camarera_ who slipped out of +the room with a soft, sidelong “_De nada”_ at one’s thanks for the hot +water in the morning; but one could stake one’s life on the goodness of +this _camarero._ He was not so tall as his leanness made him look; he +was of a national darkness of eyes and hair which as imparted to his +tertian clean-shavenness was a deep blue. He spoke, with a certain +hesitation, a beautiful Castilian, delicately lisping the sibilants and +strongly throating the gutturals; and what he said you could believe. +He never was out of the way when wanted; he darkled with your boots +and shoes in a little closet next your door, and came from it with the +morning coffee and rolls. In a stress of frequentation he appeared in +evening dress in the dining-room at night, and did honor to the place; +but otherwise he was to be seen only in our corridor, or in the cold, +dark chamber at the stair head where the _camareras_ sat sewing, kept in +check by his decorum. Without being explicitly advised of the fact, I am +sure he was the best of Catholics, and that he would have burnt me for a +heretic if necessary; but he would have done it from his conscience and +for my soul’s good after I had recanted. He seldom smiled, but when he +did you could see it was from his heart. + +His contrast, his very antithesis, the joyous concierge, was always +smiling, and was every way more like an Italian than a Spaniard. He +followed us into the wettest Madrid weather with the sunny rays of his +temperament, and welcomed our returning cab with an effulgence that +performed the effect of an umbrella in the longish walk from the +curbstone to the hotel door, past the grape arbor whose fruit ripened +for us only in a single bunch, though he had so confidently prophesied +our daily pleasure in it. He seemed at first to be the landlord, +and without reference to higher authority he gave us beautiful rooms +overlooking the bacchanal vine which would have been filled with +sunshine if the weather had permitted. When he lapsed into the +concierge, he got us, for five pesetas, so deep and wide a wood-box, +covered with crimson cloth, that he was borne out by the fact in +declaring that the wood in it would last us as long as we stayed; it was +oak wood, hard as iron, and with the bellows that accompanied it we +blew the last billet of it into a solid coal by which we drank our last +coffee in that hotel. His spirit, his genial hopefulness, reconciled +us to the infirmities of the house during the period of transition +beginning for it and covering our stay. It was to be rebuilt on a scale +out-Ritzing the Ritz; but in the mean while it was not quite the Ritz. +There was a time when the elevator-shaft seemed to have tapped the awful +sources of the smell in the house of Cervantes at Valladolid, but I do +not remember what blameless origin the concierge assigned to the odor, +or whether it had anything to do with the horses and the hens which a +chance-opened back door showed us stabled in the rear of the hotel’s +grandiose entrance. + +Our tourist clientele, thanks I think to the allure of our concierge for +all comers, was most respectable, though there was no public place for +people to sit but a small reading-room colder than the baths of Apollo. +But when he entered the place it was as if a fire were kindled in the +minute stove never otherwise heated, and the old English and French +newspapers freshened themselves up to the actual date as nearly as they +could. We were mostly, perhaps, Spanish families come from our several +provinces for a bit of the season which all Spanish families of +civil condition desire more or less of: lean, dark fathers, slender, +white-stuccoed daughters, and fat, white-stuccoed mothers; very +still-faced, and grave-mannered. We were also a few English, and from +time to time a few Americans, but I believe we were not, however worthy, +very great-world. The concierge who had so skilfully got us together was +instant in our errands and commissions, and when it came to two of us +being shut up with colds brought from Burgos it vas he who supplemented +the promptness of the apothecaries in sending our medicines and coming +himself at times to ask after our welfare. + + + +IX + + +In a strange country all the details of life are interesting, and +we noticed with peculiar interest that Spain was a country where the +prescriptions were written in the vulgar tongue instead of the little +Latin in which prescriptions are addressed to the apothecaries of other +lands. We were disposed to praise the faculty if not the art for this, +but our doctor forbade. He said it was because the Spanish apothecaries +were so unlearned that they could not read even so little Latin as the +shortest prescription contained. Still I could not think the custom a +bad one, though founded on ignorance, and I do not see why it should not +have made for the greater safety of those who took the medicine if those +who put it up should follow a formula in their native tongue. I know +that at any rate we found the Spanish medicines beneficial and were +presently suffered to go out-of-doors, but with those severe injunctions +against going out after nightfall or opening our lips when we went out +by day. It was rather a bother, but it was fine to feel one’s self in +the classic Madrid tradition of danger from pneumonia and to be of the +dignified company of the Spanish gentlemen whom we met with the border +of their cloaks over their mouths; like being a character in a _capa y +espada_ drama. + +There was almost as little acted as spoken drama in the streets. I have +given my impression of the songlessness of Spain in Madrid as elsewhere, +but if there was no street singing there was often street playing by +pathetic bands of blind minstrels with guitars and mandolins. The blind +abound everywhere in Spain in that profession of street beggary which +I always encouraged, believing as I do that comfort in this unbalanced +world cannot be too constantly reminded of misery. As the hunchbacks are +in Italy, or the wooden peg-legged in England, so the blind are in +Spain for number. I could not say how touching the sight of their +sightlessness was, or how the remembrance of it makes me wish that I had +carried more coppers with me when I set out. I would gladly authorize +the reader when he goes to Madrid to do the charity I often neglected; +he will be the better man, or even woman, for it; and he need not mind +if his beneficiary is occasionally unworthy; he may be unworthy himself; +I am sure I was. + +But the Spanish street is rarely the theatrical spectacle that the +Italian street nearly always is. Now and then there was a bit in Madrid +which one would be sorry to have missed, such as the funeral of a civil +magistrate, otherwise unknown to me, which I saw pass my cafe window: +a most architectural black hearse, under a black roof, drawn by eight +black horses, sable-plumed. The hearse was open at the sides, with +the coffin fully showing, and a gold-laced _chapeau bras_ lying on +it. Behind came twenty or twenty-five gentlemen on foot in the modern +ineffectiveness of frock-coats and top-hats, and after them eight or ten +closed carriages. The procession passed without the least notice from +the crowd, which I saw at other times stirred to a flutter of emulation +in its small boys by companies of infantry marching to the music of +sharply blown bugles. The men were handsomer than Italian soldiers, but +not so handsome as the English, and in figure they were not quite the +deplorable pigmies one often sees in France. Their bugles, with the +rhythmical note which the tram-cars sound, and the guitars and mandolins +of the blind minstrels, made the only street music I remember in Madrid. + +Between the daily rains, which came in the afternoon, the sun was +sometimes very hot, but it was always cool enough indoors. The indoors +interests were not the art or story of the churches. The intensest +Catholic capital in Christendom is in fact conspicuous in nothing more +than the reputed uninterestingness of its churches. I went into one of +them, however, with a Spanish friend, and I found it beautiful, most +original, and most impressive for its architecture and painting, but +I forget which church it was. We were going rather a desultory drive +through those less frequented parts of the city which I have mentioned +as like a sort of muted Naples: poor folk living much out-of-doors, +buying and selling at hucksters’ stands and booths, and swarming about +the chief market, where the guilty were formerly put to death, but the +innocent are now provisioned. Outside the market was not attractive, and +what it was within we did not look to see. We went rather to satisfy +my wish to see whether the Manzanares is as groveling a stream as the +guide-books pretend in their effort to give a just idea of the natural +disadvantages of Madrid, as the only great capital without an adequate +river. But whether abetted by the arts of my friend or not, the +Manzanares managed to conceal itself from me; when we left our carriage +and went to look for it, I saw only some pretty rills and falls which +it possibly fed and which lent their beauty to the charming up and down +hill walks, now a public pleasaunce, but formerly the groves and gardens +of the royal palace. Our talk in Spanish from him and Italian from me +was of Tolstoy and several esthetic and spiritual interests, and when +we remounted and drove back to the city, whom should I see, hard by the +King’s palace, but those dear Chilians of my heart whom we had left at +Valladolid--husband, wife, sister, with the addition of a Spanish lady +of very acceptable comeliness, in white gloves, and as blithe as they. +In honor of the capital the other ladies wore white gloves too, but the +husband and brother still kept the straw hat which I had first known him +in at San Sebastian, and which I hope yet to know him by in New York. It +was a glad clash of greetings which none of us tried to make coherent or +intelligible, and could not if we had tried. They acclaimed their hotel, +and I ours; but on both sides I dare say we had our reserves; and +then we parted, secure that the kind chances of travel would bring us +together again somewhere. + +[Illustration: 13 GUARD-MOUNT IN THE PLAZA DE ARMAS, ROYAL PALACE, MADRID] + +I did not visit the palace, but the Royal Armory I had seen two days +before on a gay morning that had not yet sorrowed to the afternoon’s +rain. At the gate of the palace I fell into the keeping of one of the +authorized guides whom I wish I could identify so that I could send the +reader to pay him the tip I came short in. It is a pang to think of +the repressed disappointment in his face when in a moment of insensate +sparing I gave him the bare peseta to which he was officially entitled, +instead of the two or three due his zeal and intelligence; and I +strongly urge my readers to be on their guard against a mistaken +meanness like mine. I can never repair that, for if I went back to the +Royal Armory I should not know him by sight, and if I sought among the +guides saying I was the stranger who had behaved in that shabby sort, +how would that identify me among so many other shabby strangers? He had +the intelligence to leave me and the constant companion of these travels +to ourselves as we went about that treasury of wonders, but before we +got to the armory he stayed us with a delicate gesture outside the court +of the palace till a troop for the guard-mounting had gone in. Then he +led us across the fine, beautiful quadrangle to the door of the museum, +and waited for us there till we came out. By this time the space was +brilliant with the confronted bodies of troops, those about to be +relieved of guard duty, and those come to relieve them, and our guide +got us excellent places where we could see everything and yet be out +of the wind which was beginning to blow cuttingly through the gates +and colonnades. There were all arms of the service--horse, foot, and +artillery; and the ceremony, with its pantomime and parley, was much +more impressive than the changing of the colors which I had once seen +at Buckingham Palace. The Spanish privates took the business not less +seriously than the British, and however they felt the Spanish officers +did not allow themselves to look bored. The marching and countermarching +was of a refined stateliness, as if the pace were not a goose step but +a peacock step; and the music was of an exquisitely plaintive and tender +note, which seemed to grieve rather than exult; I believe it was the +royal march which they were playing, but I am not versed in _such_ +matters. Nothing could have been fitter than the quiet beauty of the +spectacle, opening through the westward colonnade to the hills and woods +of the royal demesne, with yellowing and embrowning trees that billowed +from distance to distance. Some day these groves and forests must be for +the people’s pleasure, as all royal belongings seem finally to be; and +in the mean time I did not grudge the landscape to the young king and +queen who probably would not have grudged it to me. Our guide valued +himself upon our admiration of it; without our special admiration he +valued himself upon the impressive buildings of the railway station +in the middle distance. I forget whether he followed us out of +the quadrangle into the roadway where we had the advantage of some +picturesque army wagons, and some wagoners in red-faced jackets and red +trousers, and top-boots with heavy fringes of leathern strings. Yet it +must have been he who made us aware of a high-walled inclosure where +soldiers found worthy of death by court martial could be conveniently +shot; though I think we discovered for ourselves the old woman curled up +out of the wind in a sentry-box, and sweetly asleep there while the boys +were playing marbles on the smooth ground before it. I must not omit the +peanut-boaster in front of the palace; it was in the figure of an ocean +steamer, nearly as large as the _Lusitania,_ and had smoke coming out +of the funnel, with rudder and screw complete and doll sailors climbing +over the rigging. + +But it is impossible to speak adequately of the things in that wonderful +armory. If the reader has any pleasure in the harnesses of Spanish kings +and captains, from the great Charles the Fifth down through all the +Philips and the Charleses, he can glut it there. Their suits begin +almost with their steel baby clothes, and adapt themselves almost to +their senile decrepitude. There is the horse-litter in which the great +emperor was borne to battle, and there is the sword which Isabella the +great queen wore; and I liked looking at the lanterns and the flags of +the Turkish galleys from the mighty sea-fight cf Lepanto, and the many +other trophies won from the Turks. The pavilion of Francis I. taken +at Pavia was of no secondary interest, and everywhere was personal and +national history told in the weapons and the armor of those who made the +history. Perhaps some time the peoples will gather into museums the pens +and pencils and chisels of authors and artists, and the old caps and +gowns they wore, or the chairs they sat in at their work, or the pianos +and violoncellos of famous musicians, or the planes of surpassing +carpenters, or the hammers of eminent ironworkers; but these things will +never be so picturesque as the equipments with which the military heroes +saved their own lives or took others’. We who have never done either +must not be unreasonable or impatient. It will be many a long century +yet before we are appreciated at the value we now set upon ourselves. In +the mean while we do not have such a bad time, and we are not so easily +forgotten as some of those princes and warriors. + + + +XI + + +One of the first errors of our search for the Archaeological Museum, +promoted by the mistaken kindness of people we asked the way, found us +in the Academy of Fine Arts, where in the company of a fat and flabby +Rubens (Susanna, of course, and those filthy Elders) we chanced on a +portrait of Goya by himself: a fine head most takingly shrewd. But there +was another portrait by him, of the ridiculous Godoy, Prince of the +Peace, a sort of handsome, foolish fleshy George Fourthish person +looking his character and history: one of the most incredible parasites +who ever fattened on a nation. This impossible creature, hated more than +feared, and despised more than hated, who misruled a generous people for +twenty-five years, throughout the most heroic period of their annals, +the low-born paramour of their queen and the beloved friend of the +king her husband, who honored and trusted him with the most pathetic +single-hearted and simple-minded devotion, could not look all that +he was and was not; but in this portrait by Goya he suggested his +unutterable worthlessness: a worthlessness which you can only begin to +realize by successively excluding all the virtues, and contrasting it +with the sort of abandon of faith on the part of the king; this in the +common imbecility, the triune madness of the strange group, has its +sublimity. In the next room are two pieces of Goya’s which recall +in their absolute realism another passage of Spanish history with +unparalleled effect. They represent, one the accused heretics receiving +sentence before a tribunal of the Inquisition, and the other the +execution of the sentence, where the victims are mocked by a sort of +fools’ caps inscribed with the terms of their accusal. Their faces are +turned on the spectator, who may forget them if he can. + +I had the help of a beautiful face there which Goya had also painted: +the face of Moratin, the historian of the Spanish drama whose book had +been one of the consolations of exile from Spain in my Ohio village. +That fine countenance rapt me far from where I stood, to the village, +with its long maple-shaded summer afternoons, and its long lamp-lit +winter nights when I was trying to find my way through Moratin’s history +of the Spanish drama, and somehow not altogether failing, so that +fragments of the fact still hang about me. I wish now I could find the +way back through it, or even to it, but between me and it there are +so many forgotten passes that it would be hopeless trying. I can only +remember the pride and joy of finding my way alone through it, and +emerging from time to time into the light that glimmered before me. I +cannot at all remember whether it was before or after exploring this +history that I ventured upon the trackless waste of a volume of the +dramatists themselves, where I faithfully began with the earliest and +came down to those of the great age when Cervantes and Calderon and Lope +de Vega were writing the plays. It was either my misfortune that I read +Lope and not Calderon, or that I do not recall reading Calderon at all, +and know him only by a charming little play of Madrid life given ten or +fifteen years ago by the pupils of the Dramatic Academy in New York. My +lasting ignorance of this master was not for want of knowing how great +he was, especially from Lowell, who never failed to dwell on it when the +talk was of Spanish literature. The fact is I did not get much pleasure +out of Lope, but I did enjoy the great tragedy of Cervantes, and such of +his comedies as I found in that massive volume. + +I did not realize, however, till I saw that play of Calderon’s, in New +York, how much the Spanish drama lias made Madrid its scene; and until +one knows modern Spanish fiction one cannot know how essentially the +incongruous city is the capital of the Spanish imagination. Of course +the action of Gil Bias largely passes there, but Gil Blas in only +adoptively a Spanish novel, and the native picaresque story is oftener +at home in the provinces; but since Spanish fiction has come to full +consciousness in the work of the modern masters it has resorted more +and more to Madrid. If I speak only of Galdos and Valdes by name, it is +because I know them best as the greatest of their time; but I fancy the +allure of the capital has been felt by every other modern more or less; +and if I were a Spanish author I should like to put a story there. If I +were a Spaniard at all, I should like to live there a part of the year, +or to come up for some sojourn, as the real Spaniards do. In such an +event I should be able to tell the reader more about Madrid than I now +know. I should not be poorly keeping to hotels and galleries and streets +and the like surfaces of civilization; but should be saying all sorts of +well-informed and surprising things about my fellow-citizens. As it is +I have tried somewhat to say how I think they look to a stranger, and if +it is not quite as they have looked to other strangers I do not insist +upon my own stranger’s impression. There is a great choice of good books +about Spain, so that I do not feel bound to add to them with anything +like finality. + +I have tried to give a sense of the grand-opera effect of the street +scene, but I have record of only one passage such as one often sees in +Italy where moments of the street are always waiting for transfer to +the theater. A pair had posed themselves, across the way from our hotel, +against the large closed shutter of a shop which made an admirable +background. The woman in a black dress, with a red shawl over her +shoulders, stood statuesquely immovable, confronting the middle-class +man who, while people went and came about them, poured out his mind +to her, with many frenzied gestures, but mostly using one hand for +emphasis. He seemed to be telling something rather than asserting +himself or accusing her; portraying a past fact or defining a situation; +and she waited immovably silent till he had finished. Then she began +and warmed to her work, but apparently without anger or prejudice. She +talked herself out, as he had talked himself out. He waited and then +he left her and crossed to the other corner. She called after him as he +kept on down the street. She turned away, but stopped, and turned again +and called after him till he passed from sight. Then she turned once +more and went her own way. Nobody minded, any more than if they had been +two unhappy ghosts invisibly and inaudibly quarreling, but I remained, +and remain to this day, afflicted because of the mystery of their +dispute. + +We did not think there were so many boys, proportionately, or boys let +loose, in Madrid as in the other towns we had seen, and we remarked to +that sort of foreign sojourner who is so often met in strange cities +that the children seemed like little men and women. “Yes,” he said, “the +Spaniards are not children until they are thirty or forty, and then they +never grow up.” It was perhaps too epigrammatic, but it may have caught +at a fact. From another foreign sojourner I heard that the Catholicism +of Spain, in spite of all newspaper appearances to the contrary and many +bold novels, is still intense and unyieldingly repressive. But how far +the severity of the church characterizes manners it would be hard to +say. Perhaps these are often the effect of temperament. One heard more +than one saw of the indifference of shop-keepers to shoppers in Madrid; +in Andalusia, say especially in Seville, one saw nothing of it. But from +the testimony of sufferers it appears to be the Madrid shop-keeper’s +reasonable conception that if a customer comes to buy something it is +because he, or more frequently she, wants it and is more concerned than +himself in the transaction. He does not put himself about in serving +her, and if she intimates that he is rudely indifferent, and that though +she has often come to him before she will never come again, he remains +tranquil. From experience I cannot say how true this is; but certainly +I failed to awaken any lively emotion in the booksellers of whom I tried +to buy some modern plays. It seemed to me that I was vexing them in the +Oriental calm which they would have preferred to my money, or even my +interest in the new Spanish drama. But in a shop where fans were sold, +the shopman, taken in an unguarded moment, seemed really to enter into +the spirit of our selection for friends at home; he even corrected my +wrong accent in the Spanish word for fan, which was certainly going a +great way. + + + +XII + + +It was not the weather for fans in Madrid, where it rained that cold +rain every afternoon, and once the whole of one day, and we could not +reasonably expect to see fans in the hands of ladies in real life so +much as in the pictures of ladies on the fans themselves. In fact, I +suppose that to see the Madrilenas most in character one should see them +in summer which in southern countries is the most characteristic season. +Theophile Gautier was governed by this belief when he visited Spain in +the hottest possible weather, and left for the lasting delight of the +world the record of that _Voyage en Espagne_ which he made seventy-two +years ago. He then thought the men better dressed than the women at +Madrid. Their boots are as “varnished, and they are gloved as white as +possible. Their coats are correct and their trousers laudable; but the +cravat is not of the same purity, and the waistcoat, that only part of +modern dress where the fancy may play, is not always of irreproachable +taste.” As to the women: “What we understand in France as the Spanish +type does not exist in Spain... One imagines usually, when one says +_mantilla_ and _senora,_ an oval, rather long and pale, with large dark +eyes, surmounted with brows of velvet, a thin nose, a little arched, +a mouth red as a pomegranate, and, above all, a tone warm and golden, +justifying the verse of romance, _She is yellow like an orange._ This +is the Arab or Moorish type and not the Spanish type. The Madrilenas are +charming in the full acceptation of the word; out of four three will be +pretty; but they do not answer at all to the idea we have of them. They +are small, delicate, well formed, the foot narrow and the figure curved, +the bust of a rich contour; but their skin is very white, the features +delicate and mobile, the mouth heart-shaped and representing perfectly +certain portraits of the Regency. Often they have fair hair, and you +cannot take three turns in the Prado without meeting eight blonds of all +shades, from the ashen blond to the most vehement red, the red of the +beard of Charles V. It is a mistake to think there are no blonds in +Spain. Blue eyes abound there, but they are not so much liked as the +black.” + +Is this a true picture of the actual Madrilenas? What I say is that +seventy-two years have passed since it was painted and the originals +have had time to change. What I say is that it was nearly always +raining, and I could not be sure. What I say, above all, is that I +am not a Frenchman of the high Romantic moment and that what I chiefly +noticed was how beautiful the mantilla was whether worn by old or +young, how fit, how gentle, how winning. I suppose that the women we +saw walking in it were never of the highest class; who would be driving +except when we saw them going to church. But they were often of the +latest fashion, with their feet hobbled by the narrow skirts, of which +they lost the last poignant effect by not having wide or high or slouch +or swashbuckler hats on; they were not top-heavy. What seems certain is +that the Spanish women are short and slight or short and fat. I find it +recorded that when a young English couple came into the Royal Armory the +girl looked impossibly tall and fair. + +The women of the lower classes are commonly handsome and carry +themselves finely; their heads are bare, even of mantillas, and their +skirts are ample. When it did not rain they added to the gaiety of the +streets, and when it did to their gloom. Wet or dry the streets were +always thronged; nobody, apparently, stayed indoors who could go out, +and after two days’ housing, even with a fire to air and warm our rooms, +we did not wonder at the universal preference. As I have said, the noise +that we heard in the streets was mainly the clatter of shoes and hoofs, +but now and then there were street cries besides those I have noted. +There was in particular a half-grown boy in our street who had a flat +basket decorated with oysters at his feet, and for long hours of the day +and dark he cried them incessantly. I do not know that he ever sold them +or cared; his affair was to cry them. + + + + +VI. A NIGHT AND DAY IN TOLEDO + + +If you choose to make your visit to Toledo an episode of your stay in +Madrid, you have still to choose between going at eight in the morning +and arriving back at five in the evening, or going at five one evening +and coming back at the same hour the next. In either case you will have +two hours’ jolting each way over the roughest bit of railroad in the +world, and if your _mozo,_ before you could stop him, has selected for +your going a compartment over the wheels, you can never be sure that +he has done worse for you than you will have done for yourself when you +come back in a compartment between the trucks. However you go or come, +you remain in doubt whether you have been jolting over rails jointed +at every yard, or getting on without any track over a cobble-stone +pavement. Still, if the compartment is wide and well cushioned, as it is +in Spain nearly always, with free play for your person between roof and +floor and wall and wall; and if you go at five o’clock you have from +your windows, as long as the afternoon light lasts, while you bound +and rebound, glimpses of far-stretching wheat-fields, with nearer +kitchen-gardens rich in beets and cabbages, alternating with purple and +yellow patches of vineyard. + + + +I + + +I find from my ever-faithful note-book that the landscape seemed to grow +drearier as we got away from Madrid, but this may have been the effect +of the waning day: a day which at its brightest had been dim from +recurrent rain and incessant damp. The gloom was not relieved by the +long stops at the frequent stations, though the stops were good for +getting one’s breath, and for trying to plan greater control over +one’s activities when the train should be going on again. The stations +themselves were not so alluring that we were not willing to get away +from them; and we were glad to get away from them by train, instead of +by mule-team over the rainy levels to the towns that glimmered along the +horizon two or three miles off. There had been nothing to lift the +heart in the sight of two small boys ready perched on one horse, or of +a priest difficultly mounting another in his long robe. At the only +station which I can remember having any town about it a large number of +our passengers left the train, and I realized that they were commuters +like those who might have been leaving it at some soaking suburb of Long +Island or New Jersey. In the sense of human brotherhood which the fact +inspired I was not so lonely as I might have been, when we resumed +our gloomy progress, with all that punctilio which custom demands of +a Spanish way-train. First the station-master rings a bell of alarming +note hanging on the wall, and the _mozos_ run along the train shutting +the car doors. After an interval some other official sounds a pocket +whistle, and then there is still time for a belated passenger to find +his car and scramble aboard. When the ensuing pause prolongs itself +until you think the train has decided to remain all day, or all night, +and several passengers have left it again, the locomotive rouses itself +and utters a peremptory screech. This really means going, but your doubt +has not been fully overcome when the wheels begin to bump under your +compartment, and you set your teeth and clutch your seat, and otherwise +prepare yourself for the renewal of your acrobatic feats. I may not +get the order of the signals for departure just right, but I am sure +of their number. Perhaps the Sud-Express starts with less, but the +Sud-Express is partly French. + +It had been raining intermittently all day; now that the weary old day +was done the young night took up the work and vigorously devoted itself +to a steady downpour which, when we reached our hotel in Toledo, had +taken the role of a theatrical tempest, with sudden peals of thunder and +long loud bellowing reverberations and blinding flashes of lightning, +such as the wildest stage effects of the tempest in the Catskills when +Rip Van Winkle is lost would have been nothing to. Foreboding the inner +chill of a Spanish hotel on such a day, we had telegraphed for a fire in +our rooms, and our eccentricity had been interpreted in spirit as well +as in letter. It was not the habitual hotel omnibus which met us at the +station, but a luxurious closed carriage commanded by an interpreter who +intuitively opened our compartment door, and conveyed us dry and warm +to our hotel, in every circumstance of tender regard for our comfort, +during the slow, sidelong uphill climb to the city midst details of +historic and romantic picturesqueness which the lightning momently +flashed in sight. From our carriage we passed as in a dream between the +dress-coated head waiter and the skull-capped landlord who silently and +motionlessly received us in the Gothic doorway, and mounted by a stately +stair from a beautiful glass-roofed _patio,_ columned round with airy +galleries, to the rooms from which a smoky warmth gushed out to welcome +us. + +The warmth was from the generous blaze kindled in the fireplace against +our coming, and the smoke was from the crevices in a chimneypiece not +sufficiently calked with newspapers to keep the smoke going up the flue. +The fastidious may think this a defect in our perfect experience, but we +would not have had it otherwise, if we could, and probably we could not. +We easily assumed that we were in the palace of some haughty hidalgo, +adapted to the uses of a modern hotel, with a magical prevision which +need not include the accurate jointing of a chimneypiece. The storm +bellowed and blazed outside, the rain strummed richly on the _patio_ +roof which the lightning illumined, and as we descended that stately +stair, with its walls ramped and foliaged over with heraldic fauna +and flora, I felt as never before the disadvantage of not being still +fourteen years old. + +But you cannot be of every age at once and it was no bad thing to be +presently sitting down in my actual epoch at one of those excellent +Spanish dinners which no European hotel can surpass and no American +hotel can equal. It may seem a descent from the high horse, the winged +steed of dreaming, to have been following those admirable courses with +unflagging appetite, as it were on foot, but man born of woman is hungry +after such a ride as ours from Madrid; and it was with no appreciable +loss to our sense of enchantment that we presently learned from our +host, waiting skull-capped in the _patio,_ that we were in no real +palace of an ancient hidalgo, but were housed as we found ourselves by +the fancy of a rich nobleman of Toledo whom the whim had taken to equip +his city with a hotel of poetic perfection. I am afraid I have forgotten +his name; perhaps I should not have the right to parade it here if I +remembered it; but I cannot help saluting him brother in imagination, +and thanking him for one of the rarest pleasures that travel, even +Spanish travel, has given me. + + + +II + + +One must recall the effect of such a gentle fantasy as his with some +such emotion as one recalls a pleasant tale unexpectedly told when one +feared a repetition of stale commonplaces, and I now feel a pang of +retroactive self-reproach for not spending the whole evening after +dinner in reading up the story of that most storied city where this +Spanish castle received us. What better could I have done in the smoky +warmth of our hearth-fire than to con, by the light of the electric +bulb dangling overhead, its annals in some such voluntarily quaint and +unconsciously old-fashioned volume as Irving’s _Legends of the Conquest +of Spain;_ or to read in some such (if there is any such other) +imperishably actual and unfadingly brilliant record of impressions as +Gautier’s _Voyage en Espagne,_ the miserably tragic tale of that poor, +wicked, over-punished last of the Gothic kings, Don Roderick? It comes +to much the same effect in both, and as I knew it already from the notes +to Scott’s poem of Don Roderick, which I had read sixty years before in +the loft of our log cabin (long before the era of my unguided Spanish +studies), I found it better to go to bed after a day which had not been +without its pains as well as pleasures. I could recall the story well +enough for all purposes of the imagination as I found it in the fine +print of those notes, and if I could believe the reader did not know +it I would tell him now how this wretched Don Roderick betrayed the +daughter of Count Julian whom her father had intrusted to him here in +his capital of Toledo, when, with the rest of Spain, it had submitted to +his rule. That was in the eighth century when the hearts of kings were +more easily corrupted by power than perhaps in the twentieth; and it +is possible that there was a good deal of politics mixed up with Count +Julian’s passion for revenge on the king, when he invited the Moors to +invade his native land and helped them overrun it. The conquest, let me +remind the reader, was also abetted by the Jews who had been flourishing +mightily under the Gothic anarchy, but whom Don Roderick had reduced to +a choice between exile or slavery when he came to full power. Every one +knows how in a few weeks the whole peninsula fell before the invaders. +Toledo fell after the battle of Guadalete, where even the Bishop of +Seville fought on their side, and Roderick was lastingly numbered among +the missing, and was no doubt killed, as nothing has since been heard +of him. It was not until nearly three hundred years afterward that the +Christians recovered the city. By this time they were no longer Arians, +but good Catholics; so good that Philip II. himself, one of the best +of Catholics (as I have told), is said to have removed the capital to +Madrid because he could not endure the still more scrupulous Catholicity +of the Toledan Bishop. + +Nobody is obliged to believe this, but I should be sorry if any reader +of mine questioned the insurpassable antiquity of Toledo, as attested by +a cloud of chroniclers. Theophile Gautier notes that “the most moderate +place the epoch of its foundation before the Deluge,” and he does not +see why they do not put the time “under the pre-Adamite kings, some +years before the creation of the world. Some attribute the honor of +laying its first stone to Jubal, others to the Greek; some to the Roman +consuls Tolmor and Brutus; some to the Jews who entered Spain with +Nebuchadnezzar, resting their theory on the etymology of Toledo, which +comes from Toledoth, a Hebrew word signifying generations, because the +Twelve Tribes had helped to build and people it.” + + + +III + + +Even if the whole of this was not accurate, it offered such an +embarrassing abundance to the choice that I am glad I knew little or +nothing of the antagonistic origins when I opened my window to the sunny +morning which smiled at the notion of the overnight tempest, and lighted +all the landscape on that side of the hotel. The outlook was over +vast plowed lands red as Virginia or New Jersey fields, stretching +and billowing away from the yellow Tagus in the foreground to the +mountain-walled horizon, with far stretches of forest in the middle +distance. What riches of gray roof, of white wall, of glossy green, or +embrowning foliage in the city gardens the prospect included, one should +have the brush rather than the pen to suggest; or else one should have +an inexhaustible ink-bottle with every color of the chromatic scale in +it to pour the right tints. Mostly, however, I should say that the city +of Toledo is of a mellow gray, and the country of Toledo a rich orange. +Seen from any elevation the gray of the town made me think of Genoa; and +if the reader’s knowledge does not enable him, to realize it from this +association, he had better lose no time in going to Genoa. + +[Illustration: 14 RICHES OF GRAY ROOF AND WHITE WALL MARK ITS INSURPASSABLE ANTIQUITY] + +I myself should prefer going again to Toledo, where we made only a day’s +demand upon the city’s wealth of beauty when a lifetime would hardly +have exhausted it. Yet I would not counsel any one to pass his whole +life in Toledo unless he was sure he could bear the fullness of that +beauty. Add insurpassable antiquity, add tragedy, add unendurable +orthodoxy, add the pathos of hopeless decay, and I think I would rather +give a day than a lifetime to Toledo. Or I would like to go back and +give another day to it and come every year and give a day. This very +moment, instead of writing of it in a high New York flat and looking +out on a prospect incomparably sky-scrapered, I would rather be in that +glass-roofed _patio_ of our histrionic hotel, engaging the services +of one of the most admirable guides who ever fell to the lot of mortal +Americans, while much advised by our skull-capped landlord to shun +the cicerone of another hotel as “an Italian man,” with little or no +English. + +As soon as we appeared outside the beggars of Toledo swarmed upon us; +but I hope it was not from them I formed the notion that the beauty of +the place was architectural and not personal, though these poor +things were as deplorably plain as they were obviously miserable. The +inhabitants who did not ask alms were of course in the majority, but +neither were these impressive in looks or bearing. Rather, I should say, +their average was small and dark, and in color of eyes and hair as +well as skin they suggested the African race that held Toledo for four +centuries. Neither here nor anywhere else in Spain are there any traces +of the Jews who helped bring the Arabs in; once for all, that people +have been banished so perfectly that they do not show their noses +anywhere. Possibly they exist, but they do not exist openly, any more +than the descendants of the Moorish invaders practise their Moslem +rites. As for the beggars, to whom I return as they constantly returned +to us, it did not avail to do them charity; that by no means dispersed +them; the thronging misery and mutilation in the lame, the halt and the +blind, was as great at our coming back to our hotel as our going out of +it. They were of every age and sex; the very school-children left +their sports to chance our charity; and it is still with a pang that +I remember the little girl whom we denied a copper when she was really +asking for a _florecito_ out of the nosegay that one of us carried. But +how could we know that it was a little flower and not a “little dog” she +wanted? + +There was something vividly spectacular in the square, by no means +large, which we came into on turning the corner from our hotel. It was +a sort of market-place as well as business place, and it looked as if +it might be the resort at certain hours of the polite as well as the +impolite leisure of a city of leisure not apparently overworked in any +of its classes. But at ten o’clock in the morning it was empty enough, +and after a small purchase at one of the shops we passed from it without +elbowing or being elbowed, and found ourselves at the portal of that +ancient _posada_ where Cervantes is said to have once sojourned at least +long enough to write one of his _Exemplary Novels._ He was of such a +ubiquitous habit that if we had visited every city of Spain we should +have found some witness of his stay, but I do not believe we could have +found any more satisfactory than this. It is verified by a tablet in its +outer wall, and within it is convincingly a _posada_ of his time. It has +a large low-vaulted interior, with the carts and wagons of the muleteers +at the right of the entrance, and beyond these the stalls of the mules +where they stood chewing their provender, and glancing uninterestedly +round at the intruders, for plainly we were not of the guests who +frequent the place. Such, for a chamber like those around and behind the +stalls, on the same earthen level, pay five cents of our money a day; +they supply their own bed and board and pay five cents more for the use +of a fire. + +Some guests were coming and going in the dim light of the cavernous +spaces; others were squatting on the ground before their morning meal. +An endearing smoke-browned wooden gallery went round three sides of the +_patio_ overhead; half-way to this at one side rose an immense earthen +water jar, dim red; piles of straw mats, which were perhaps the bedding +of the guests, heaped the ground or hung from the gallery; and the +guests, among them a most beautiful youth, black as Africa, but of a +Greek perfection of profile, regarded us with a friendly indifference +that contrasted strikingly with the fixed stare of the bluish-gray hound +beside one of the wagons. He had a human effect of having brushed his +hair from his strange grave eyes, and of a sad, hopeless puzzle in the +effort to make us out. If he was haunted by some inexplicable relation +in me to the great author whose dog he undoubtedly had been in a +retroactive incarnation, and was thinking to question me of that ever +unfulfilled boyish self-promise of writing the life of Cervantes, I +could as successfully have challenged him to say how and where in such a +place as that an Exemplary Novelist could have written even the story of +_The Illustrious Scullion._ But he seemed on reflection not to push the +matter with me, and I left him still lost in his puzzle while I came +away in mine. Whether Cervantes really wrote one of his tales there or +not, it is certain that he could have exactly studied from that _posada_ +the setting of the scene for the episode of the enchanted castle in _Don +Quixote,_ where the knight suffered all the demoniacal torments which a +jealous and infuriate muleteer knew how to inflict. + + + +IV + + +Upon the whole I am not sure that I was more edified by the cathedral of +Toledo, though I am afraid to own it, and must make haste to say that it +is a cathedral surpassing in some things any other cathedral in Spain. +Chiefly it surpasses them in the glory of that stupendous _retablo_ +which fills one whole end of the vast fane, and mounting from floor to +roof, tells the Christian story with an ineffable fullness of dramatic +detail, up to the tragic climax of the crucifixion, the _Calvario,_ at +the summit. Every fact of it fixes itself the more ineffaceably in the +consciousness because of that cunningly studied increase in the stature +of the actors, who always appear life-size in spite of their lift from +level to level above the spectator. But what is the use, what _is_ the +use? Am I to abandon the young and younger wisdom with which I have +refrained in so many books from attempting the portrayal of any Italian, +any English church, and fall into the folly, now that I am old, of +trying to say again in words what one of the greatest of Spanish +churches says in form, in color? Let me rather turn from that vainest +endeavor to the trivialities of sight-seeing which endear the memory +of monuments and make the experience of them endurable. The beautiful +choir, with its walls pierced in gigantic filigree, might have been art +or not, as one chose, but the three young girls who smiled and whispered +with the young man near it were nature, which there could be no two +minds about. They were pathetically privileged there to a moment of +the free interplay of youthful interests and emotions which the Spanish +convention forbids less in the churches than anywhere else. + +The Spanish religion is, in fact, kind to the young in many ways, and +on our way to the cathedral we had paused at a shrine of the Virgin in +appreciation of her friendly offices to poor girls wanting husbands; +they have only to drop a pin inside the grating before her and draw a +husband, tall for a large pin and short for a little one; or if they can +make their offering in coin, their chances of marrying money are +good. The Virgin is always ready to befriend her devotees, and in the +cathedral near that beautiful choir screen she has a shrine above the +stone where she alighted when she brought a chasuble to St. Ildefonso +(she owed him something for his maintenance of her Immaculate Conception +long before it was imagined a dogma) and left the print of her foot +in the pavement. The fact is attested by the very simple yet absolute +inscription: + + Quando la Reina del Cielo + Puso los pies en el suelo, + En esta piedra los puso, + +or as my English will have it: + + When the Queen of Heaven put + Upon the earth her foot, + She put it on this stone + +and left it indelible there, so that now if you thrust your finger +through the grille and touch the place you get off three hundred years +of purgatory: not much in the count of eternity, but still something. + +We saw a woman and a priest touching it as we stood by and going away +enviably comforted; but we were there as connoisseurs, not as votaries; +and we were trying to be conscious solely of the surpassing grandeur +and beauty of the cathedral. Here as elsewhere in Spain the passionate +desire of the race to realize a fact in art expresses itself gloriously +or grotesquely according to the occasion. The rear of the chorus is one +vast riot of rococo sculpture, representing I do not know what mystical +event; but down through the midst of the livingly studied performance +a mighty angel comes plunging, with his fine legs following his torso +through the air, like those of a diver taking a header into the water. +Nothing less than the sublime touch of those legs would have satisfied +the instinct from which and for which the artist worked; they gave +reality to the affair in every part. + +I wish I could give reality to every part of that most noble, that most +lovably beautiful temple. We had only a poor half-hour for it, and we +could not do more than flutter the pages of the epic it was and +catch here and there a word, a phrase: a word writ in architecture or +sculpture, a phrase richly expressed in gold and silver and precious +marble, or painted in the dyes of the dawns and sunsets which used to +lend themselves so much more willingly to the arts than they seem to do +now. From our note-books I find that this cathedral of Toledo appeared +more wonderful to one of us than the cathedral of Burgos; but who knows? +It might have been that the day was warmer and brighter and had not yet +shivered and saddened to the cold rain it ended in. At any rate the vast +church filled itself more and more with the solemn glow in which we left +it steeped when we went out and took our dreamway through the narrow, +winding, wandering streets that seemed to lure us where they would. One +of them climbed with us to the Alcazar, which is no longer any great +thing to see in itself, but which opens a hospitable space within its +court for a prospect of so much of the world around Toledo, the world of +yellow river and red fields and blue mountains, and white-clouded azure +sky, that we might well have mistaken it for the whole earth. In itself, +as I say, the Alcazar is no great thing for where it is, but if we had +here in New York an Alcazar that remembered historically back through +French, English, Arabic, Gothic. Roman, and Carthaginian occupations to +the inarticulate Iberian past we should come, I suppose, from far and +near to visit it. Now, however, after gasping at its outlook, we left +it hopelessly, and lost ourselves, except for our kindly guide, in the +crooked little stony lanes, with the sun hot on our backs and the shade +cool in our faces. There were Moorish bits and suggestions in the +white walls and the low flat roofs of the houses, but these were not so +jealous of their privacy as such houses were once meant to be. Through +the gate of one we were led into a garden of simple flowers belted with +a world-old parapet, over which we could look at a stretch of the Gothic +wall of King Wamba’s time, before the miserable Roderick won and lost +his kingdom. A pomegranate tree, red with fruit, overhung us, and +from the borders of marigolds and zinnias and German clover the gray +garden-wife gathered a nosegay for us. She said she was three _duros_ +and a half old, as who should say three dollars and a half, and she had +a grim amusement in so translating her seventy years. + + + +V + + +It was hard by her cottage that we saw our first mosque, which had +begun by being a Gothic church, but had lost itself in paynim hands for +centuries, in spite of the lamp always kept burning in it. Then one day +the Cid came riding by, and his horse, at sight of a white stone in the +street pavement, knelt down and would not budge till men came and dug +through the wall of the mosque and disclosed this indefatigable lamp in +the church. We expressed our doubt of the man’s knowing so unerringly +that the horse meant them to dig through the mosque. “If you can believe +the rest I think you can believe that,” our guide argued. + +[Illustration: 15 AN ANCIENT CORNER OF THE CITY] + +He was like so many taciturn Spaniards, not inconversable, and we had +a pleasure in his unobtrusive intelligence which I should be sorry +to exaggerate. He supplied us with such statistics of his city as we +brought away with us, and as I think the reader may join me in trusting, +and in regretting that I did not ask more. Still it is something to have +learned that in Toledo now each family lives English fashion in a house +of its own, while in the other continental cities it mostly dwells in +a flat. This is because the population has fallen from two hundred +thousand to twenty thousand, and the houses have not shared its +decay, but remain habitable for numbers immensely beyond those of the +households. In the summer the family inhabits the first floor which +the _patio_ and the subterranean damp from the rains keep cool; in the +winter it retreats to the upper chambers which the sun is supposed to +warm, and which are at any rate dry even on cloudy days. The rents would +be thought low in New York: three dollars a month get a fair house in +Toledo; but wages are low, too; three dollars a month for a manservant +and a dollar and a half for a maid. If the Toledans from high to low are +extravagant in anything it is dress, but dress for the outside, not the +inside, which does not show, as our guide satirically explained. They +scrimp themselves in food and they pay the penalty in lessened vitality; +there is not so much fever as one might think; but there is a great +deal of consumption; and as we could not help seeing everywhere in the +streets there were many blind, who seemed oftenest to have suffered from +smallpox. The beggars were not so well dressed as the other classes, but +I saw no such delirious patchwork as at Burgos. On the other hand, there +were no idle people who were fashionably dressed; no men or women who +looked great-world. + +Perhaps if the afternoon had kept the sunny promise of the forenoon they +might have been driving in the Paseo, a promenade which Toledo has like +every Spanish city; but it rained and we did not stop at the Paseo which +looked so pleasant. + +The city, as so many have told and as I hope the reader will imagine, is +a network of winding and crooked lanes, which the books say are Moorish, +but which are medieval like those of every old city. They nowhere lend +themselves to walking for pleasure, and the houses do not open their +_patios_ to the passer with Andalusian expansiveness; they are in fact +of a quite Oriental reserve. I remember no dwellings of the grade, +quite, of hovels; but neither do there seem to be many palaces +or palatial houses in my hurried impression. Whatever it may be +industrially or ecclesiastically, Toledo is now socially provincial and +tending to extinction. It is so near Madrid that if I myself were living +in Toledo I would want to live in Madrid, and only return for brief +sojourns to mourn my want of a serious object in life; at Toledo it must +be easy to cherish such an object. + +Industrially, of course, one associates it with the manufacture of the +famous Toledo blades, which it is said are made as wonderful as ever, +and I had a dim idea of getting a large one for decorative use in a New +York flat. But the foundry is a mile out of town, and I only got so far +as to look at the artists who engrave the smaller sort in shops open to +the public eye; and my purpose dwindled to the purchase of a little pair +of scissors, much as a high resolve for the famous marchpane of Toledo +ended in a piece of that pastry about twice the size of a silver dollar. +Not all of the twenty thousand people of Toledo could be engaged in +these specialties, and I owe myself to blame for not asking more about +the local industries; but it is not too late for the reader, whom +I could do no greater favor than sending him there, to repair my +deficiency. In self-defense I urge my knowledge of a military school +in the Alcazar, where and in the street leading up to it we saw some +companies of the comely and kindly-looking cadets. I know also that +there are public night schools where those so minded may study the arts +and letters, as our guide was doing in certain directions. Now that +there are no longer any Jews in Toledo, and the Arabs to whom they +betrayed the Gothic capital have all been Christians or exiles for many +centuries, we felt that we represented the whole alien element of the +place; there seemed to be at least no other visitors of our lineage or +language. + + + +VI + + +We were going to spend the rest of the day driving out through the +city into the country beyond the Tagus, and we drove off in our really +splendid turnout through swarms of beggars whose prayers our horses’ +bells drowned when we left them to their despair at the hotel door. At +the moment of course we believe that it was a purely dramatic misery +which the wretched creatures represented; but sometimes I have since +had moments of remorse in which I wish I had thrown big and little +dogs broadcast among them. They could not all have been begging for the +profit or pleasure of it; some of them were imaginably out of work and +worthily ragged as I saw them, and hungry as I begin to fear them. I am +glad now to think that many of them could not see with their poor blind +eyes the face which I hardened against them, as we whirled away to the +music of our horses’ bells. + +The bells pretty well covered our horses from their necks to their +haunches, a pair of gallant grays urged to their briskest pace by the +driver whose short square face and humorous mouth and eyes were a joy +whenever we caught a glimpse of them. He was one of those drivers who +know everybody; he passed the time of day with all the men we met, and +he had a joking compliment for all the women, who gladdened at sight of +him from the thresholds where they sat sewing or knitting: such a driver +as brings a gay world to home-keeping souls and leaves them with the +feeling of having been in it. I would have given much more than I gave +the beggars in Toledo to know just in what terms he and his universal +acquaintance bantered each other; but the terms might sometimes have +been rather rank. Something, at any rate, qualified the air, which I +fancied softer than that of Madrid, with a faint recurrent odor, as +if in testimony of the driver’s derivation from those old rancid +Christians, as the Spaniards used to call them, whose lineage had never +been crossed with Moorish blood. If it was merely something the +carriage had acquired from the stable, still it was to be valued for +its distinction in a country of many smells; and I would not have been +without it. + +When we crossed the Tagus by a bridge which a company of workmen +willingly paused from mending to let us by, and remained standing +absent-mindedly aside some time after we had passed, we found ourselves +in a scene which I do not believe was ever surpassed for spectacularity +in any theater. I hope this is not giving the notion of something +fictitious in it; I only mean that here Nature was in one of her most +dramatic moods. The yellow torrent swept through a deep gorge of red +earth, which on the farther side climbed in precipitous banks, cleft by +enormous fissures, or chasms rather, to the wide plateau where the gray +city stood. The roofs of mellow tiles formed a succession of levels +from which the irregular towers and pinnacles of the churches stamped +themselves against a sky now filled with clouds, but in an air so clear +that their beautiful irregularities and differences showed to one very +noble effect. The city still looked the ancient capital of the two +hundred thousand souls it once embraced, and in its stony repair there +was no hint of decay. + +[Illustration: 16 THE BRIDGE ACROSS THE YELLOW TAGUS] + +On our right, the road mounted through country wild enough at times, but +for the most part comparatively friendly, with moments of being almost +homelike. There were slopes which, if massive always, were sometimes +mild and were gray with immemorial olives. In certain orchard nooks +there were apricot trees, yellowing to the autumn, with red-brown +withered grasses tangling under them. Men were gathering the fruit of +the abounding cactuses in places, and in one place a peasant was bearing +an arm-load of them to a wide stone pen in the midst of which stood a +lordly black pig, with head lifted and staring, indifferent to cactuses, +toward Toledo. His statuesque pose was of a fine hauteur, and a more +imaginative tourist than I might have fancied him lost in a dream of +the past, piercing beyond the time of the Iberian autochtons to those +prehistoric ages + + When wild in woods the noble savage ran, + +pursuing or pursued by his tusked and bristled ancestor, and then slowly +reverting through the different invasions and civilizations to that +signal moment when, after three hundred Moslem years, Toledo became +Christian again forever, and pork resumed its primacy at the table. +Dark, mysterious, fierce, the proud pig stood, a figure made for +sculpture; and if he had been a lion, with the lion’s royal ideal of +eating rather than feeding the human race, the reader would not have +thought him unworthy of literature; I have seldom seen a lion that +looked worthier of it. + +We must have met farmer-folk, men and women, on our way and have seen +their white houses farther or nearer. But mostly the landscape was +lonely and at times nightmarish, as the Castilian landscape has a trick +of being, and remanded us momently to the awful entourage of our run +from Valladolid to Madrid. We were glad to get back to the Tagus, which +if awful is not grisly, but wherever it rolls its yellow flood lends the +landscape such a sublimity that it was no esthetic descent from the high +perch of that proud pig to the mighty gorge through which, geologically +long ago, the river had torn its way. When we drove back the +bridge-menders stood aside for us while we were yet far off, and the +women came to their doorways at the sound of our bells for another +exchange of jokes with our driver. By the time a protracted file of +mules had preceded us over the bridge, a brisk shower had come up, and +after urging our grays at their topmost speed toward the famous church +of San Juan de los Reyes Catolicos, we still had to run from our +carriage door through the rain. + +Happily the portal was in the keeping of one of those authorized beggars +who guard the gates of heaven everywhere in that kind country, and he +welcomed us so eagerly from the wet that I could not do less than give +him a big dog at once. In a moment of confusion I turned about, and +taking him for another beggar, I gave him another big dog; and when we +came out of the church he had put off his cap and arranged so complete a +disguise with the red handkerchief bravely tied round his head, that my +innocence was again abused, and once more a big dog passed between us. +But if the merit of the church might only be partially attributed +to him, he was worth the whole three. The merit of the church was +incalculable, for it was meant to be the sepulcher of the Catholic +Kings, who were eventually more fitly buried in the cathedral at +Granada, in the heart of their great conquest; and it is a most +beautiful church, of a mingled Saracenic plateresque Gothic, as the +guide-books remind me, and extravagantly baroque as I myself found it. I +personally recall also a sense of chill obscurity and of an airy gallery +wandering far aloof in the upper gloom, which remains overhead with me +still, and the yet fainter sense of the balconies crowning like capitals +the two pillars fronting the high altar. I am now sorry for our haste, +but one has not so much time for enjoying such churches in their +presence as for regretting them in their absence. One should live +near them, and visit them daily, if one would feel their beauty in its +recondite details; to have come three thousand miles for three minutes +of them is no way of making that beauty part of one’s being, and I will +not pretend that I did in this case. What I shall always maintain is +that I had a living heartache from the sight of that space on the +fagade of this church which is overhung with the chains of the Christian +captives rescued from slavery among the Moors by the Catholic Kings in +their conquest of Granada. They were not only the memorials of the most +sorrowful fact, but they represented the misery of a thousand years of +warfare in which the prisoners on either side suffered in chains for +being Moslems or being Christians. The manacles and the fetters on the +church front are merely decorative to the glance, but to the eye that +reads deeper, how structural in their tale of man’s inhumanity to man! +How heavily they had hung on weary limbs! How pitilessly they had +eaten through bleeding ulcers to the bone! Yet they were very, very +decorative, as the flowers are that bloom on battle-fields. + +Even with only a few minutes of a scant quarter-hour to spare, I would +not have any one miss seeing the cloister, from which the Catholic Kings +used to enter the church by the gallery to those balcony capitals, but +which the common American must now see by going outside the church. The +cloister is turned to the uses of an industrial school, as we were glad +to realize because our guide, whom we liked so much, was a night student +there. It remains as beautiful and reverend as if it were of no secular +use, full of gentle sculptures, with a garden in the middle, raised +above the pavement with a border of thin tiles, and flower-pots standing +on their coping, all in the shadow of tall trees, overhanging a deep +secret-keeping well. From this place, where you will be partly sheltered +from the rain, your next profitable sally through the storm will be to +Santa Maria la Blanca, once the synagogue of the richest Jews of Toledo, +but now turned church in spite of its high authorization as a place of +Hebrew worship. It was permitted them to build it because they declared +they were of that tribe of Israel which, when Caiaphas, the High Priest, +sent round to the different tribes for their vote whether Jesus should +live or die, alone voted that He should live. Their response, as +Theophile Gautier reports from the chronicles, is preserved in the +Vatican with a Latin version of the Hebrew text. The fable, if it is a +fable, has its pathos; and I for one can only lament the religious +zeal to which the preaching of a fanatical monk roused the Christian +neighborhood in the fifteenth century, to such excess that these kind +Jews were afterward forbidden their worship in the place. It is a very +clean-looking, cold-looking white monument of the Catholic faith, with +a _retablo_ attributed to Berruguete, and much plateresque Gothic detail +mingled with Byzantine ornament, and Moorish arabesquing and the famous +stucco honeycombing which we were destined at Seville and Granada to +find almost sickeningly sweet. Where the Rabbis read the law from their +pulpit the high altar stands, and the pious populace has for three +hundred years pushed the Jews from the surrounding streets, where they +had so humbled their dwellings to the lowliest lest they should rouse +the jealousy of their sleepless enemies. + + + +VII + + +When we had visited this church there remained only the house of the +painter known as El Greco, for whom we had formed such a distaste, +because of the long features of the faces in his pictures, that our +guide could hardly persuade us his house was worth seeing. Now I am glad +he prevailed with us, for we have since come to find a peculiar charm +in these long features and the characteristic coloring of El Greco’s +pictures. The little house full of memorials and the little garden full +of flowers, which ought to have been all forget-me-nots, were entirely +delightful. As every one but I knew, and even I now know, he was born a +Greek with the name of Theotocopuli, and studied tinder Titian till he +found his account in a manner of his own, making long noses and long +chins and high narrow foreheads in ashen gray, and at last went mad in +the excess of his manner. The house has been restored by the Marquis de +la Vega, according to his notion of an old Spanish house, and has the +pleasantest small _patio_ in the world, looked down into from a carved +wooden gallery, with a pavement of red tiles interset with Moorish tiles +of divers colors. There are interesting pictures everywhere, and on one +wall the certificate of the owner’s membership in the Hispanic Society +of America, which made me feel at home because it was signed with the +name of an American friend of mine, who is repressed by prosperity from +being known as a poet and one of the first Spanish scholars of any time. + +The whole place is endearingly homelike and so genuinely hospitable that +we almost sat down to luncheon in the kitchen with the young Spanish +king who had lunched with the Marquis there a few weeks before. There +was a veranda outside where we could linger till the rain held up, +and look into the garden where the flowers ought to have been +forget-me-nots, but were as usual mostly marigolds and zinnias. They +crowded round tile-edged pools, and other flowers bloomed in pots on the +coping of the garden-seats built up of thin tiles carved on their edges +to an inward curve. It is strongly believed that there are several +stories under the house, and the Marquis is going some day to dig them +up or out to the last one where the original Jewish owner of the house +is supposed to have hid his treasure. In the mean time we could look +across the low wall that belted the garden in, to a vacant ground a +little way off where some boys were playing with a wagon they had +made. They had made it out of an oblong box, with wheels so rudely and +imperfectly rounded, that they wabbled fearfully and at times gave way +under the body; just as they did with the wagons that the boys I knew +seventy years ago used to make. + +I became so engrossed in the spectacle, so essentially a part of the +drama, that I did not make due account of some particulars of the +subterranean six stories of El Greco’s house. There must have been other +things worth seeing in Toledo, thousands of others, and some others we +saw, but most we missed, and many I do not remember. It was now coming +the hour to leave Toledo, and we drove back to our enchanted castle for +our bill, and for the omnibus to the station. I thought for some time +that there was no charge for the fire, or even the smoke we had the +night before, but my eyes were holden from the item which I found later, +by seeing myself addressed as Milor. I had never been addressed as +a lord in any bill before, but I reflected that in the proud old +metropolis of the Goths I could not be saluted as less, and I gladly +paid the bill, which observed a golden mean between cheapness and +dearness, and we parted good friends with our host, and better with +our guide, who at the last brought out an English book, given him by an +English friend, about the English cathedrals. He was fine, and I could +not wish any future traveler kinder fortune than to have his guidance +in Toledo. Some day I am going back to profit more fully by it, and +to repay him the various fees which he disbursed for me to different +doorkeepers and custodians and which I forgot at parting and he was too +delicate to remind me of. + +When all leaves were taken and we were bowed out and away our horses, +covered with bells, burst with the omnibus through a solid mass of +beggars come to give us a last chance of meriting heaven by charity +to them, and dashed down the hill to the station. There we sat a long +half-hour in the wet evening air, wondering how we had been spared +seeing those wretches trampled under our horses’ feet, or how the long +train of goats climbing to the city to be milked escaped our wheels. But +as we were guiltless of inflicting either disaster, we could watch +with a good conscience the quiescent industry of some laborers in the +brickyard beyond the track. Slowly and more slowly they worked, +wearily, apathetically, fetching, carrying, in their divided skirts of +cross-barred stuff of a rich Velasquez dirt color. One was especially +worthy of admiration from his wide-brimmed black hat and his thoughtful +indifference to his task, which was stacking up a sort of bundles of +long grass; but I dare say he knew what it all meant. Throughout I +was tormented by question of the precise co-racial quality of some +English-speaking folk who had come to share our bone-breaking return to +Madrid in the train so deliberately waiting there to begin afflicting +us. English English they certainly were not; American English as +little. If they were Australian English, why should not it have been a +convention of polite travel for them to come up and say so, and save us +that torment of curiosity? But perhaps they were not Australians. + + + + +VII. THE GREAT GRIDIRON OF ST. LAWRENCE + + +It seems a duty every Protestant owes his heresy to go and see +how dismally the arch-enemy of heresy housed his true faith in the +palace-tomb-and-church of the Escorial. If the more light-minded tourist +shirks this act of piety, he makes a mistake which he will repent +afterward in vain. The Escorial is, for its plainness, one of the two +or three things worthiest seeing among the two or three hundred things +worth seeing in Spain. Yet we feigned meaning to miss it after we +returned to Madrid from Toledo, saying that everybody went to the +Escorial and that it would be a proud distinction not to go. All the +time we knew we should go, and we were not surprised when we were chosen +by one of our few bright days for the excursion, though we were taken +inordinately early, and might well have been started a little later. + + + +I + + +Nothing was out of the common on the way to the station, and our sense +of the ordinary was not relieved when we found ourselves in a car of the +American open-saloon pattern, well filled with other Americans bent upon +the same errand as ourselves; though I am bound to say that the backs of +the transverse seats rose well toward the roof of the car with a certain +originality. + +When we cleared the city streets and houses, we began running out +into the country through suburbs vulgarly gay with small, bright brick +villas, so expressive of commuting that the eye required the vision of +young husbands and fathers going in at the gates with gardening tools +on their shoulders and under their arms. To be sure, the time of day +and the time of year were against this; it was now morning and autumn, +though there was a vernal brilliancy in the air; and the grass, +flattered by the recent rains, was green where we had last seen it +gray. Along a pretty stream, which, for all I know may have been the +Manzanares, it was so little, files of Lombardy poplars followed +away very agreeably golden in foliage; and scattered about were +deciduous-looking evergreens which we questioned for live-oaks. We were +going northward over the track which had brought us southward to Madrid +two weeks before, and by and by the pleasant levels broke into rough +hills and hollows, strewn with granite boulders which, as our train +mounted, changed into the savage rock masses of New Castile, and as we +drew near the village of Escorial gave the scene the look of that very +desolate country. But it could not be so gloomy in the kind sunlight +as it was when lashed by the savage storm which we had seen it cowering +under before; and at the station we lost all feeling of friendlessness +in the welcome of the thronging guides and hotel touters. + +Our ideal was a carriage which we could keep throughout the day and use +for our return to the train in the afternoon; and this was so exactly +the ideal of a driver to whom we committed ourselves that we were +somewhat surprised to have his vehicle develop into a motor-omnibus, and +himself into a conductor. + +When we arrived at the palace some miles off, up a winding way, he +underwent another change, and became our guide to the Escorial. In the +event he proved a very intelligent guide, as guides go, and I really +cannot now see how we could have got on without him. He adapted the +Spanish names of things to our English understanding by shortening +them; a _patio_ became a _pat’,_ and an old master an old mast’; and an +endearing quality was imparted to the grim memory of Philip II. by the +diminutive of Philly. We accepted this, but even to have Charles V. +brought nearer our hearts as Charley Fif, we could not bear to have our +guide exposed to the mockery of less considerate travelers. I instructed +him that the emperor’s name was Charles, and that only boys and very +familiar friends of that name were called Charley among us. He thanked +me, and at once spoke again of Charley Fif; which I afterward found was +the universally accepted style of the great emperor among the guides +of Spain. In vain I tried to persuade them out of it at Cordova, at +Seville, at Granada, and wherever else they had to speak of an emperor +whose memory really seems to pervade the whole land. + + + +II + + +The genuine village of Escorial lies mostly to the left of the station, +but the artificial town which grew up with the palace is to the right. +Both are called after the slag of the iron-smelting works which were and +are the vital industry of the first Escorial; but the road to the palace +takes you far from the slag, with a much-hoteled and garden-walled +dignity, to the plateau, apparently not altogether natural, where the +massive triune edifice stands in the keeping of a throng of American +women wondering how they are going to see it, and lunch, and get back to +their train in time. Many were trying, the day of our visit, to see the +place with no help but that of their bewildering Baedekers, and we had +constant reason to be glad of our guide as we met or passed them in the +measureless courts and endless corridors. + +At this distance of time and place we seem to have hurried first to the +gorgeous burial vault where the kings and queens of Spain lie, each +one shut in a gilded marble sarcophagus in their several niches of the +circular chamber, where under the high altar of the church they have the +advantage of all the masses said above them. But on the way we must have +passed through the church, immense, bare, cold, and sullener far than +that sepulcher; and I am sure that we visited last of all the palace, +where it is said the present young king comes so seldom and unwillingly, +as if shrinking from the shelf appointed for him in that crypt shining +with gold and polished marble. + +It is of death, not life, that the Escorial preaches, and it was to +eternal death, its pride and gloom, and not life everlasting, that the +dark piety of Philip voluntarily, or involuntarily, consecrated +the edifice. But it would be doing a wrong to one of the greatest +achievements of the human will, if one dwelt too much, or too wholly, +upon this gloomy ideal. The Escorial has been many times described; I +myself forbear with difficulty the attempt to describe it, and I satisfy +my longing to set it visibly before the reader by letting an earlier +visitor of my name describe it for me. I think he does it larger justice +than modern observers, because he escapes the cumulative obligation +which time has laid upon them to find the subjective rather than the +objective fulfilment of its founder’s intention in it. At any rate, in +March, 1623, James Howell, waiting as secretary of the romantic mission +the bursting of the iridescent love-dream which had brought Charles +Stuart, Prince of Wales, from England to woo the sister of the +Spanish king in Madrid, had leisure to write one of his most delightful +“familiar letters” concerning the Escorial to a friend in London. + +[Illustration: 17 THE TOWN AND MONASTERY OF ESCORIAL] + +“I was yesterday at the Escorial to see the monastery of St. Lawrence, +the eighth wonder of the world; and truly considering the site of the +place, the state of the thing, the symmetry of the structure, with +diverse other rareties, it may be called so; for what I have seen +in Italy and other places are but baubles to it. It is built among +a company of craggy hills, which makes the air the hungrier and +wholesomer; it is all built of freestone and marble, and that with +such solidity and moderate height that surely Philip the Second’s chief +design was to make a sacrifice of it to eternity, and to contest with +the meteors and time itself. It cost eight millions; it was twenty-four +years abuilding, and the founder himself saw it furnished and enjoyed it +twelve years after, and carried his bones himself thither to be buried. +The reason that moved King Philip to waste so much treasure was a vow he +had made at the battle of St. Quentin, where he was forced to batter +a monastery of St. Lawrence friars, and if he had the victory he would +erect such a monument to St. Lawrence that the world had not the like; +therefore the form of it is like a gridiron, the handle is a huge +royal palace, and the body a vast monastery or assembly of quadrangular +cloisters, for there are as many as there be months of the year. There +be a hundred monks, and every one hath his man and his mule, and a +multitude of officers; besides there are three libraries there full of +the choicest books for all sciences. It is beyond all expression what +grots, gardens, walks, and aqueducts there are there, and what curious +fountains in the upper cloisters, for there be two stages of cloisters. +In fine, there is nothing that is vulgar there. To take a view of every +room in the house one must make account to go ten miles; there is a +vault called the Pantheon under the high altar, which is all paved, +walled, and arched with marble; there be a number of huge silver +candlesticks taller than I am; lamps three yards compass, and diverse +chalices and crosses of massive gold; there is one choir made all +of burnished brass; pictures and statues like giants; and a world of +glorious things that purely ravished me. By this mighty monument it may +be inferred that Philip the Second, though he was a little man, yet +he had vast gigantic thoughts in him, to leave such a huge pile for +posterity to gaze upon and admire in his memory.” + + + +III + + +Perhaps this description is not very exact, but precision of statement +is not to be expected of a Welshman; and if Howell preferred to say +Philip built the place in fulfilment of that vow at the battle of St. +Quentin, doubtless he believed it; many others did; it has only of late +been discovered that Philip was not at St. Quentin, and did not “batter +a monastery of St. Lawrence friars” there. I like to think the rest is +all as Howell says down to the man and mule for every monk. If there are +no men and mules left, there are very few monks either, after the many +suppressions of convents. The gardens are there of an unquestionable +symmetry and beauty, and the “company of craggy hills” abides all round +the prodigious edifice, which is at once so prodigious, and grows larger +upon you in the retrospect. + +Now that I am this good distance away, and cannot bring myself to book +by a second experience, I feel it safe to say that I had a feeling of +St. Peter’s-like immensity in the church of the Escorial, with more than +St. Peter’s-like bareness. The gray colorlessness of the architecture +somberly prevails in memory over the frescoes of the painters invited +to relieve it in the roof and the _retablo,_ and thought turns from the +red-and-yellow jasper of altar and pulpit, and the bronze-gilt effigies +of kneeling kings and queens to that niche near the oratory where the +little terrible man who imagined and realized it all used to steal in +from his palace, and worship next the small chamber where at last he +died. It is said he also read despatches and state papers in this nook, +but doubtless only in the intervals of devotion. + +Every one to his taste, even in matters of religion; Philip reared +a temple to the life beyond this, and as if with the splendor of the +mausoleum which it enshrines he hoped to overcome the victorious grave; +the Caliph who built the mighty mosque at Cordova, which outlasts every +other glory of his capital, dedicated it to the joy of this life as +against the gloom of whose who would have put it under the feet of +death. “Let us build,” he said to his people, “the Kaaba of the West +upon the site of a Christian temple, which we will destroy, so that we +may set forth how the Cross shall fall and become abased before the True +Prophet. Allah will never place the world beneath the feet of those who +make themselves the slaves of drink and sensuality while they preach +penitence and the joys of chastity, and while extolling poverty enrich +themselves to the loss of their neighbors. For these the sad and silent +cloister; for us, the crystalline fountain and the shady grove; for +them, the rude and unsocial life of dungeon-like strongholds; for us, +the charm of social life and culture; for them, intolerance and tyranny; +for us, a ruler who is our father; for them, the darkness of ignorance; +for us, letters and instruction as wide-spread as our creed; for them, +the wilderness, celibacy, and the doom of the false martyr; for us, +plenty, love, brotherhood, and eternal joy.” + +In spite of the somewhat vaunting spirit of his appeal, the wager of +battle decided against the Arab; it was the Crescent that fell, the +Cross that prevailed; in the very heart of Abderrahman’s mosque a +Christian cathedral rises. Yet in the very heart of Philip’s temple to +the spirit of the cloister, the desert, the martyrdom, one feels that +a great deal could be said on Abderrahman’s side. This is a world which +will not be renounced, in fact, and even in Christian Spain it has +triumphed in the arts and sciences beyond its earlier victories in +Moslem Spain. One finds Philip himself, with his despatches in that high +nook, rather than among the bronze-gilt royalties at the high altar, +though his statue is duly there with those of his three wives. The group +does not include that poor Bloody Mary of England, who should have been +the fourth there, for surely she suffered enough for his faith and him +to be of his domestic circle forever. + + + +IV + + +It is the distinct merit of the Escorial that it does not, and perhaps +cannot take long in doing; otherwise the doer could not bear it. A look +round the sumptuous burial chamber of the sovereigns below the high +altar of the church; a glance at the lesser sepulchral glories of the +infantes and infantas in their chapels and corridors, suffices for the +funereal third of the trinity of tomb and temple and palace; and though +there are gayer constituents of the last, especially the gallery of the +chapter-house, with its surprisingly lively frescoes and its sometimes +startling canvases, there is not much that need really keep you from +the royal apartments which seem the natural end of your visit. Of these +something better can be said than that they are no worse than most other +royal apartments; our guide led us to them through many granite courts +and corridors where we left groups of unguided Americans still maddening +over their Baedekers; and we found them hung with pleasing tapestries, +some after such designs of Goya’s as one finds in the basement of +the Prado. The furniture was in certain rooms cheerily upholstered in +crimson and salmon without sense of color, but as if seeking relief from +the gray of the church; and there are battle-pieces on the walls, +fights between Moors and Christians, which interested me. The dignified +consideration of the custodian who showed us through the apartments +seemed to have adapted to our station a manner left over from the +infrequent presence of royalty; as I have said, the young king of Spain +does not like coming to the Escorial. + +I do not know why any one comes there, and I search my consciousness in +vain for a better reason than the feeling that I must come, or would be +sorrier if I did not than if I did. The worthy Howell does not commit +himself to any expression of rejoicing or regretting in having done the +Escorial. But the good Theophile Gautier, who visited the place more +than two hundred years after, owns frankly that he is “excessively +embarrassed in giving his opinion” of it. “So many people,” he says, +“serious and well-conditioned, who, I prefer to think, have never seen +it, have spoken of it as a _chef d’oeuvre,_ and a supreme effort of +the human spirit, so that I should have the air, poor devil of a +_facilletoniste errant,_ of wishing to play the original and taking +pleasure in my contrary-mindedness; but still in my soul and conscience +I cannot help finding the Escorial the most tiresome and the most +stupid monument that could be imagined, for the mortification of his +fellow-beings, by a morose monk and a suspicious tyrant. I know very +well that the Escorial had a serious and religious aim; but gravity +is not dryness, melancholy is not marasm, meditation is not ennui, and +beauty of forms can always be happily wedded to elevation of ideas.” + This is the Frenchman’s language as he goes into the Escorial; he does +not cheer up as he passes through the place, and when he comes out he +has to say: “I issued from that desert of granite, from that monkish +necropolis with an extraordinary feeling of release, of exultation; +it seemed to me I was born into life again, that I could be young once +more, and rejoice in the creation of the good God, of which I had lost +all hope in those funeral vaults. The bland and luminous air wrapt me +round like a soft robe of fine wool, and warmed my body frozen in that +cadaverous atmosphere; I was saved from that architectural nightmare, +which I thought never would end. I advise people who are so fatuous as +to pretend that they are ever bored to go and spend three or four days +in the Escorial; they will learn what real ennui is and they will enjoy +themselves all the rest of their lives in reflecting that they might be +in the Escorial and that they are not.” + +That was well toward a century ago. It is not quite like that now, +but it is something like it; the human race has become inured to the +Escorial; more tourists have visited the place and imaginably lightened +its burden by sharing it among their increasing number. Still there is +now and then one who is oppressed, crushed by it, and cannot relieve +himself in such ironies as Gautier’s, but must cry aloud in suffering +like that of the more emotional De Amicis: “You approach a courtyard and +say, ‘I have seen this already.’ No. You are mistaken; it is another.... +You ask the guide where the cloister is and he replies, ‘This is it,’ +and you walk on for half an hour. You see the light of another world: +you have never seen just such a light; is it the reflection from the +stone, or does it come from the moon? No, it is daylight, but sadder +than darkness. As you go on from corridor to corridor, from court to +court, you look ahead with misgivings, expecting to see suddenly, as you +turn a corner, a row of skeleton monks with hoods over their eyes and +crosses in their hands; you think of Philip II.... You remember all +that you have read about him, of his terrors and the Inquisition; and +everything becomes clear to your mind’s eye with a sudden light; for the +first time you understand it all; the Escorial is Philip II.... He is +still there alive and terrible, with the image of his dreadful God... . +Even now, after so long a time, on rainy days, when I am feeling sad, +I think of the Escorial, and then look at the walls of my room and +congratulate myself.... I see again the courtyards of the Escorial. ... +I dream of wandering through the corridors alone in the dark, followed +by the ghost of an old friar, crying and pounding at all the doors +without finding a way of escape.” + +[Illustration: 18 THE PANTHEON OF THE KINGS AND QUEENS OF SPAIN] + +I am of another race both from the Frenchman and the Italian, and +I cannot pretend to their experiences, their inferences, and their +conclusions; but I am not going to leave the Escorial to the reader +without trying to make him feel that I too was terribly impressed by it. +To be sure, I had some light moments in it, because when gloom goes too +far it becomes ridiculous; and I did think the convent gardens as I saw +them from the chapter-house window were beautiful, and the hills around +majestic and serious, with no intention of falling upon my prostrate +spirit. Yes, and after a lifelong abhorrence of that bleak king who +founded the Escorial, I will own that I am, through pity, beginning to +feel an affection for Philip II.; perhaps I was finally wrought upon by +hearing him so endearingly called Philly by our guide. + +Yet I will not say but I was glad to get out of the Escorial alive; and +that I welcomed even the sulkiness of the landlord of the hotel where +our guide took us for lunch. To this day I do not know why that landlord +should have been so sour; his lunch was bad, but I paid his price +without murmuring; and still at parting he could scarcely restrain his +rage; the Escorial might have entered into his soul. On the way to his +hotel the street was empty, but the house bubbled over with children +who gaped giggling at his guests from the kitchen door, and were then +apparently silenced with food, behind it. There were a great many flies +in the hotel, and if I could remember its name I would warn the public +against it. + +After lunch our guide lapsed again to our conductor and reappeared with +his motor-bus and took us to the station, where he overcame the scruples +of the lady in the ticket-office concerning our wish to return to Madrid +by the Sud-Express instead of the ordinary train. The trouble was about +the supplementary fare which we easily paid on board; in fact, there +is never any difficulty in paying a supplementary fare in Spain; the +authorities meet you quite half-way. But we were nervous because we had +already suffered from the delays of people at the last hotel where our +motor-bus stopped to take up passengers; they lingered so long over +lunch that we were sure we should miss the Sud-Express, and we did not +see how we could live in Escorial till the way-train started; yet for +all their delays we reached the station in time and more. The train +seemed strangely reduced in the number of its cars, but we confidently +started with others to board the nearest of them; there we were waved +violently away, and bidden get into the dining-car at the rear of the +train. In some dudgeon we obeyed, but we were glad to get away from +Escorial on any terms, and the dining-car was not bad, though it had a +somewhat disheveled air. We could only suppose that all the places in +the two other cars were taken, and we resigned ourselves to choosing +the least coffee-stained of the coffee-stained tables and ordered +more coffee at it. The waiter brought it as promptly as the conductor +collected our supplementary fare; he even made a feint of removing the +stains from our table-cloth with a flourish of his napkin, and then he +left us to our conjectures and reflections till he came for his pay and +his fee just before we ran into Madrid. + + + +VI + + +The mystery persisted and it was only when our train paused in the +station that it was solved. There, as we got out of our car, we +perceived that a broad red velvet carpet was laid from the car in front +into the station; a red carpet such as is used to keep the feet of +distinguished persons from their native earth the world over, but more +especially in Europe. Along this carpet were loosely grouped a number of +solemnly smiling gentlemen in frock-coats with their top-hats genteelly +resting in the hollows of their left arms, and without and beyond the +station in the space usually filled by closed and open cabs was a swarm +of automobiles. Then while our spirits were keyed to the highest pitch, +the Queen of Spain descended from the train, wearing a long black satin +cloak and a large black hat, very blond and beautiful beyond the report +of her pictures. By each hand she led one of her two pretty boys, Don +Jaime, the Prince of Asturias, heir apparent, and his younger brother. +She walked swiftly, with glad, kind looks around, and her ladies +followed her according to their state; then ushered and followed by the +gentlemen assembled to receive them, they mounted to their motors and +whirred away like so many persons of a histrionic pageant: not least +impressive, the court attendants filled a stage drawn by six mules, and +clattered after. + +From hearsay and reasonable surmise we learned that we had not come from +Escorial in the Sud-Express at all, but in the Queen’s special train +bringing her and her children from their autumn sojourn at La Granja, +and that we had been for an hour a notable feature of the royal party +without knowing it, and of course without getting the least good of it. +We had indeed ignorantly enjoyed no less of the honor than two +other Americans, who came in the dining-car with us, but whether the +nice-looking Spanish couple who sat in the corner next us were equally +ignorant of their advantage I shall never know. It was but too highly +probable that the messed condition of the car was due to royal luncheon +in it just before we came aboard; but why we were suffered to come +aboard, or why a supplementary fare should have been collected from us +remains one of those mysteries which I should once have liked to keep +all Spain. + +We had to go quite outside of the station grounds to get a cab for our +hotel, but from this blow to our dignity I recovered a little later in +the day, when the king, attended by as small a troop of cavalry as I +suppose a king ever has with him, came driving by in the street where I +was walking. As he sat in his open carriage he looked very amiable, and +handsomer than most of the pictures make him. He seemed to be gazing at +me, and when he bowed I could do no less than return his salutation. As +I glanced round to see if people near me were impressed by our exchange +of civilities, I perceived an elderly officer next me. He was smiling as +I was, and I think he was in the delusion that the king’s bow, which I +had so promptly returned, was intended for him. + + + + +VIII. CORDOVA AND THE WAY THERE + + +I should be sorry if I could believe that Cordova experienced the +disappointment in us, which I must own we felt in her; but our +disappointment was unquestionable, and I will at once offer it to +the reader as an inducement for him to go to Cordova with less lively +expectations than ours. I would by no means have him stay away; after +all, there is only one Cordova in the world which the capital of the +Caliphate of the West once filled with her renown; and if the great +mosque of Abderrahman is not so beautiful as one has been made to fancy +it, still it is wonderful, and could not be missed without loss. + + + +I + + +Better, I should say, take the _rapido_ which leaves Madrid three times +a week at nine-thirty in the morning, than the night express which +leaves as often at the same hour in the evening. Since there are now +such good day trains on the chief Spanish lines, it is flying in the +face of Providence not to go by them; they might be suddenly taken off; +besides, they have excellent restaurant-cars, and there is, moreover, +always the fascinating and often the memorable landscape which they pass +through. By no fault of ours that I can remember, our train was rather +crowded; that is, four or five out of the eight places in our corridor +compartment were taken, and we were afraid at every stop that more +people would get in, though I do not know that it was our anxieties +kept them out. For the matter of that, I do not know why I employed an +interpreter at Madrid to get my ticket stamped at the ticket-office; it +required merely the presentation of the ticket at the window; but the +interpreter seemed to wish it and it enabled him to practise his English +with me, and I realized that he must live. In a peseta’s worth of +gratitude he followed us to our carriage, and he did not molest the +_mozo_ in putting our bags into the racks, though he hovered about the +door till the train started; and it just now occurs to me that he may +have thought a peseta was not a sufficient return for his gratitude; he +had rendered us no service. + +At Aranjuez the wheat-lands, which began to widen about us as soon as we +got beyond the suburbs of Madrid, gave way to the groves and gardens of +that really charming pleasaunce, charming quite from the station, with +grounds penetrated by placid waters overhung by the English elms which +the Castilians are so happy in having naturalized in their treeless +waste. Multitudes of nightingales are said to sing among them, but it +was not the season for hearing them from the train; and we made what +shift we could with the strawberry and asparagus beds which we could +see plainly, and the peach trees and cherry trees. One of these had +committed the solecism of blossoming in October, instead of April or +May, when the nobility came to their villas. + +We had often said during our stay in Madrid that we should certainly +come for a day at Aranjuez; and here we were, passing it with a five +minutes’ stop. I am sure it merited much more, not only for its many +proud memories, but for its shameful ones, which are apt to be so much +more lasting in the case of royal pleasaunces. The great Catholic +King Ferdinand inherited the place with the Mastership of the Order of +Santiago; Charles V. used to come there for the shooting, and Philip +II., Charleses III. and IV., and Ferdinand VII. built and rebuilt its +edifices. But it is also memorable because the wretched Godoy fled there +with the king, his friend, and the queen, his paramour, and there the +pitiable king abdicated in favor of his abominable son Ferdinand VII. +It is the careful Murray who reminds me of this fact; Gautier, who +apparently fails to get anything to his purpose out of Aranjuez, passes +it with the remark that Godoy built there a gallery from his villa to +the royal palace, for his easier access to the royal family in which he +held a place so anomalous. From Mr. Martin Hume’s _Modern Spain_ I learn +that when the court fled to Aranjuez from Madrid before the advance of +Murat, and the mob, civil and military, hunted Godoy’s villa through for +him, he jumped out of bed and hid himself under a roll of matting, while +the king and the queen, to save him, decreed his dismissal from all his +offices and honors. + +But here just at the most interesting moment the successive bells and +whistles are screeching, and the _rapido_ is hurrying me away from +Aranjuez. We are leaving a railway station, but presently it is as if +we had set sail on a gray sea, with a long ground-swell such as we +remembered from Old Castile. These innumerable pastures and wheat-fields +are in New Castile, and before long more distinctively they are in La +Mancha, the country dear to fame as the home of Don Quixote. I must own +at once it does not look it, or at least look like the country I had +read out of his history in my boyhood. For the matter of that, no +country ever looks like the country one reads out of a book, however +really it may be that country. The trouble probably is that one carries +out of one’s reading an image which one had carried into it. When I read +_Don Quixote_ and read and read it again, I put La Mancha first into the +map of southern Ohio, and then into that, after an interval of seven +or eight years, of northern Ohio; and the scenes I arranged for his +adventures were landscapes composed from those about me in my earlier +and later boyhood. There was then always something soft and mild in the +_Don Quixote_ country, with a blue river and gentle uplands, and woods +where one could rest in the shade, and hide one’s self if one wished, +after easily rescuing the oppressed. Now, instead, a treeless plain +unrolled itself from sky to sky, clean, dull, empty; and if some azure +tops dimmed the clear line of the western horizon, how could I have got +them into my early picture when I had never yet seen a mountain in my +life? I could not put the knight and his squire on those naked levels +where they should not have got a mile from home without discovery and +arrest. I tried to think of them jogging along in talk of the adventures +which the knight hoped for; but I could not make it work. I could have +done better before we got so far from Aranjuez; there were gardens +and orchards and a very suitable river there, and those elm trees +overhanging it; but the prospect in La Mancha had only here and there a +white-availed white farmhouse to vary its lonely simplicity, its +desert fertility; and I could do nothing with the strips and patches of +vineyard. It was all strangely African, strangely Mexican, and not at +all American, not Ohioan, enough to be anything like the real La Mancha +of my invention. To be sure, the doors and windows of the nearer houses +were visibly netted against mosquitoes and that was something, but even +that did not begin to be noticeable till we were drawing near the Sierra +Morena. Then, so long before we reached the mighty chain of mountains +which nature has stretched between the gravity of New Castile and the +gaiety of Andalusia, as if they could not bear immediate contact, I +experienced a moment of perfect reconciliation to the landscape as +really wearing the face of that La Mancha familiar to my boyish vision. +Late in the forenoon, but early enough to save the face of La Mancha, +there appeared certain unquestionable shapes in the nearer and farther +distance which I joyously knew for those windmills which Don Quixote had +known for giants and spurred at, lance in rest. They were waving their +vans in what he had found insolent defiance, but which seemed to us +glad welcome, as of windmills waiting that long time for a reader of +Cervantes who could enter into their feelings and into the friendly +companionship they were offering. + + + +II + + +Our train did not pass very near, but the distance was not bad for +them; it kept them sixty or sixty-five years back in the past where they +belonged, and in its dimness I could the more distinctly see Don +Quixote careering against them, and Sancho Panza vainly warning, vainly +imploring him, and then in his rage and despair, “giving himself to the +devil,” as he had so often to do in that master’s service; I do not +know now that I would have gone nearer them if I could. Sometimes in the +desolate plains where the windmills stood so well aloof men were lazily, +or at least leisurely, plowing with their prehistoric crooked sticks. +Here and there the clean levels were broken by shallow pools of water; +and we were at first much tormented by expanses, almost as great as +these pools, of a certain purple flower, which no curiosity of ours +could prevail with to yield up the secret of its name or nature. It +was one of the anomalies of this desert country that it was apparently +prosperous, if one might guess from the comfortable-looking farmsteads +scattered over it, inclosing house and stables in the courtyard framed +by their white walls. The houses stood at no great distances from one +another, but were nowhere grouped in villages. There were commonly no +towns near the stations, which were not always uncheerful; sometimes +there were flower-beds, unless my memory deceives me. Perhaps there +would be a passenger or two, and certainly a loafer or two, and always +of the sex which in town life does the loafing; in the background +or through the windows the other sex could be seen in its domestic +activities. Only once did we see three girls of such as stay for the +coming and going of trains the world over; they waited arm in arm, and +we were obliged to own they were plain, poor things. + +Their whitewash saves the distant towns from the effect of sinking into +the earth, or irregularly rising from it, as in Old Castile, and the +landscape cheered up more and more as we ran farther south. We passed +through the country of the Valdepenas wine, which it is said would so +willingly be better than it is; there was even a station of that name, +which looked much more of a station than most, and had, I think I +remember, buildings necessary to the wine industry about it. Murray, +indeed, emboldens me in this halting conjecture with the declaration +that the neighboring town of Valdepenas is “completely undermined by +wine-cellars of very ancient date” where the wine is “kept in caves in +huge earthen jars,” and when removed is put into goat or pig skins in +the right Don Quixote fashion. + +The whole region begins to reek of Cervantean memories. Ten miles from +the station of Argamasilla is the village where he imagined, and the +inhabitants believe, Don Quixote to have been born. Somewhere among +these little towns Cervantes himself was thrown into prison for +presuming to attempt collecting their rents when the people did not want +to pay them. This is what I seem to remember having read, but heaven +knows where, or if. What is certain is that almost before I was aware +we were leaving the neighborhood of Valdepenas, where we saw men with +donkeys gathering grapes and letting the donkeys browse on the vine +leaves. Then we were mounting among the foothills of the Sierra Morena, +not without much besetting trouble of mind because of those certain +circles and squares of stone on the nearer and farther slopes which we +have since somehow determined were sheep-folds. They abounded almost to +the very scene of those capers which Don Quixote cut on the mountainside +to testify his love for Dulcinea del Toboso, to the great scandal of +Sancho Panza riding away to give his letter to the lady, but unable to +bear the sight of the knight skipping on the rocks in a single garment. + + + +III + + +In the forests about befell all those adventures with the mad Cardenio +and the wronged Dorothea, both self-banished to the wilderness through +the perfidy of the same false friend and faithless lover. The episodes +which end so well, and which form, I think, the heart of the wonderful +romance, have, from the car windows, the fittest possible setting; +but suddenly the scene changes, and you are among aspects of nature as +savagely wild as any in that new western land where the countrymen of +Cervantes found a New Spain, just as the countrymen of Shakespeare found +a New England. Suddenly, or if not suddenly, then startlingly, we were +in a pass of the Sierra called (for some reason which I will leave +picturesquely unexplained) the Precipice of Dogs, where bare sharp peaks +and spears of rock started into the air, and the faces of the cliffs +glared down upon us like the faces of Indian warriors painted yellow and +orange and crimson, and every other warlike color. With my poor scruples +of moderation I cannot give a just notion of the wild aspects; I must +leave it to the reader, with the assurance that he cannot exaggerate +it, while I employ myself in noting that already on this awful summit we +began to feel ourselves in the south, in Andalusia. Along the mountain +stream that slipped silverly away in the valley below, there were +oleanders in bloom, such as we had left in Bermuda the April before. +Already, north of the Sierra the country had been gentling. The upturned +soil had warmed from gray to red; elsewhere the fields were green with +sprouting wheat; and there were wide spaces of those purple flowers, +like crocuses, which women were gathering in large baskets. Probably +they were not crocuses; but there could be no doubt of the vineyards +increasing in their acreage; and the farmhouses which had been without +windows in their outer walls, now sometimes opened as many as two to +the passing train. Flocks of black sheep and goats, through the optical +illusion frequent in the Spanish air, looked large as cattle in the +offing. Only in one place had we seen the tumbled boulders of Old +Castile, and there had been really no greater objection to La Mancha +than that it was flat, stale, and unprofitable and wholly unimaginable +as the scene of even Don Quixote’s first adventures. + +But now that we had mounted to the station among the summits of the +Sierra Morena, my fancy began to feel at home, and rested in a scene +which did all the work for it. There was ample time for the fancy to +rest in that more than co-operative landscape. Just beyond the first +station the engine of a freight-train had opportunely left the track in +front of us, and we waited there four hours till it could be got back. +It would be inhuman to make the reader suffer through this delay with +us after it ceased to be pleasure and began to be pain. Of course, +everybody of foreign extraction got out of the train and many even, +went forward to look at the engine and see what they could do about it; +others went partly forward and asked the bolder spirits on their way +back what was the matter. Now and then our locomotive whistled as if +to scare the wandering engine back to the rails. At moments the +station-master gloomily returned to the station from somewhere and +diligently despaired in front of it. Then we backed as if to let our +locomotive run up the siding and try to butt the freight-train off the +track to keep its engine company. + +About this time the restaurant-car bethought itself of some sort of +late-afternoon repast, and we went forward and ate it with an interest +which we prolonged as much as possible. We returned to our car which was +now pervaded by an extremely bad smell. The smell drove us out, and we +watched a public-spirited peasant beating the acorns from a live-oak +near the station with a long pole. He brought a great many down, and +first filled his sash-pocket with them; then he distributed them among +the children of the third-class passengers who left the train and +flocked about him. But nobody seemed to do anything with the acorns, +though they were more than an inch long, narrow, and very sharp-pointed. +As soon as he had discharged his self-assumed duty the peasant lay down +on the sloping bank under the tree, and with his face in the grass, went +to sleep for all our stay, and for what I know the whole night after. + +It did not now seem likely that we should ever reach Gordova, though +people made repeated expeditions to the front of the train, and came +back reporting that in an hour we should start. We interested ourselves +as intensely as possible in a family from the next compartment, +London-tailored, and speaking either Spanish or English as they fancied, +who we somehow understood lived at Barcelona; but nothing came of our +interest. Then as the day waned we threw ourselves into the interest +taken by a fellow-passenger in a young Spanish girl of thirteen or +fourteen who had been in the care of a youngish middle-aged man when our +train stopped, and been then abandoned by him for hours, while he seemed +to be satisfying a vain curiosity at the head of the train. She owned +that the deserter was her father, and while we were still poignantly +concerned for her he came back and relieved the anxiety which the girl +herself had apparently not shared even under pressure of the whole +compartment’s sympathy. + + + +IV + + +The day waned more and more; the sun began to sink, and then it sank +with that sudden drop which the sun has at last. The sky flushed +crimson, turned mauve, turned gray, and the twilight thickened over the +summits billowing softly westward. There had been a good deal of joking, +both Spanish and English, among the passengers; I had found particularly +cheering the richness of a certain machinist’s trousers of bright golden +corduroy; but as the shades of night began to embrown the scene our +spirits fell; and at the cry of a lonesome bird, far off where the +sunset had been, they followed the sun in its sudden drop. Against +the horizon a peasant boy leaned on his staff and darkled against the +darkening sky. + +Nothing lacked now but the opportune recollection that this was the +region where the natives had been so wicked in times past that an +ingenious statesman, such as have seldom been wanting to Spain, imagined +bringing in a colony of German peasants to mix with them and reform +them. That is what some of the books say, but others say that the region +had remained unpeopled after the first exile of the conquered Moors. All +hold that the notion of mixing the colonists and the natives worked +the wrong way; the natives were not reformed, but the colonists were +depraved and stood in with the local brigands, ultimately, if not +immediately. This is the view suggested, if not taken, by that amusing +emissary, George Borrow, who seems in his _Bible in Spain_ to have been +equally employed in distributing the truths of the New Testament and +collecting material for the most dramatic study of Spanish civilization +known to literature. It is a delightful book, and not least delightful +in the moments of misgiving which it imparts to the reader, when he +does not know whether to prize more the author’s observation or his +invention, whichever it may be. Borrow reports a conversation with an +innkeeper and his wife of the Colonial German descent, who gave a good +enough account of themselves, and then adds the dark intimation of an +Italian companion that they could not be honestly keeping a hotel in +that unfrequented place. It was not just in that place that our delay +had chosen to occur, but it was in the same colonized region, and I am +glad now that I had not remembered the incident from my first reading of +Borrow. It was sufficiently uncomfortable to have some vague association +with the failure of that excellent statesman’s plan, blending creepily +with the feeling of desolation from the gathering dark, and I now recall +the distinct relief given by the unexpected appearance of two such +Guardias Civiles as travel with every Spanish train, in the space before +our lonely station. + +These admirable friends were part of the system which has made travel as +safe throughout Spain as it is in Connecticut, where indeed I sometimes +wonder that road-agents do not stop my Boston express in the waste +expanse of those certain sand barrens just beyond New Haven. The last +time I came through that desert I could not help thinking how nice it +would be to have two Guardias Civiles in our Pullman car; but of course +at the summit of the Sierra Morena, where our _rapido_ was stalled in +the deepening twilight, it was still nicer to see that soldier pair, +pacing up and down, trim, straight, very gentle and polite-looking, but +firm, with their rifles lying on their shoulders which they kept exactly +together. It is part of the system that they may use those rifles upon +any evil-doer whom they discover in a deed of violence, acting at +once as police, court of law, and executioners; and satisfying public +curiosity by pinning to the offender’s coat their official certificate +that he was shot by such and such a civil guard for such and such a +reason, and then notifying the nearest authorities. It is perhaps too +positive, too peremptory, too precise; and the responsibility could +not be intrusted to men who had not satisfied the government of their +fitness by two years’ service in the army without arrest for any +offense, or even any question of misbehavior. But these conditions +once satisfied, and their temperament and character approved, they are +intrusted with what seem plenary powers till they are retired for old +age; then their sons may serve after them as Civil Guards with the same +prospect of pensions in the end. I suppose they do not always travel +first class, but once their silent, soldierly presence honored our +compartment between stations; and once an officer of their corps +conversed for long with a fellow-passenger in that courteous ease and +self-respect which is so Spanish between persons of all ranks. + +It was not very long after the guards appeared so reassuringly before +the station, when a series of warning bells and whistles sounded, and +our locomotive with an impatient scream began to tug at our train. We +were really off, starting from Santa Elena at the very time when we +ought to have been stopping at Cordova, with a good stretch of four +hours still before us. As our fellow-travelers quitted us at one station +and another we were finally left alone with the kindly-looking old man +who had seemed interested in us from the first, and who now made some +advances in broken English. Presently he told us in Spanish, to account +for the English accent on which we complimented him, that he had two +sons studying some manufacturing business in Manchester, where he had +visited them, and acquired so much of our tongue as we had heard. He +was very proud and glad to speak of his sons, and he valued us for our +English and the strangeness which commends people to one another in +travel. When he got out at a station obscured past identification by its +flaring lamps, he would not suffer me to help him with his hand-baggage; +while he deplored my offered civility, he reassured me by patting my +back at parting. Yet I myself had to endure the kindness which he would +not when we arrived at Cordova, where two young fellows, who had got in +at a suburban station, helped me with our bags and bundles quite as if +they had been two young Americans. + + + +V + + +Somewhere at a junction our train had been divided and our car, left +the last of what remained, had bumped and threatened to beat itself to +pieces during its remaining run of fifteen miles. This, with our long +retard at Santa Elena, and our opportune defense from the depraved +descendants of the reforming German colonists by the Guardias Civiles, +had given us a day of so much excitement that we were anxious to have +it end tranquilly at midnight in the hotel which we had chosen from, our +Baedeker. I would not have any reader of mine choose it again from +my experience of it, though it was helplessly rather wilfully bad; +certainly the fault was not the hotel’s that it seemed as far from the +station as Cordova was from Madrid. It might, under the circumstances, +have, been _a_ merit in it to be undergoing a thorough overhauling of +the furnishing and decoration of the rooms on the _patio_ which had +formed our ideal for a quiet night. A conventionally napkined waiter +welcomed us from the stony street, and sent us up to our rooms with the +young interpreter who met us at the station, but was obscure as to their +location. When we refused them because they were over that loud-echoing +alley, the interpreter made himself still more our friend and called +mandatorially down the speaking-tube that we wished _interiores_ and +would take nothing else, though he must have known that no such rooms +were to be had. He even abetted us in visiting the rooms on the _patio_ +and satisfying ourselves that they were all dismantled; when the waiter +brought up the hot soup which was the only hot thing in the house beside +our tempers, he joined with that poor fellow in reconciling us to the +inevitable. They declared that the people whom we heard uninterruptedly +clattering and chattering by in the street below, and the occasional +tempest of wheels and bells and hoofs that clashed up to us would be the +very last to pass through there that night, and they gave such good and +sufficient reasons for their opinion that we yielded as we needs must. +Of course, they were wrong; and perhaps they even knew that they were +wrong; but I think we were the only people in that neighborhood who got +any sleep that night or the next. We slept the sleep of exhaustion, but +I believe those Cordovese preferred waking outdoors to trying to sleep +within. It was apparently their custom to walk and talk the night away +in the streets, not our street alone, but all the other streets of +Cordova; the laughing which I heard may have expressed the popular +despair of getting any sleep. The next day we experimented in listening +from rooms offered us over another street, and then we remained +measurably contented to bear the ills we had. This was after an +exhaustive search for a better hotel had partly appeased us; but there +remained in the Paseo del Gran Capitan one house unvisited which has +ever since grown upon my belief as embracing every comfort and advantage +lacking to our hotel. I suppose I am the stronger in this belief because +when we came to it we had been so disappointed with the others that we +had not the courage to go inside. Smell for smell, the interior of that +hotel may have harbored a worse one than the odor of henhouse which +pervaded ours, I hope from the materials for calcimining the rooms on +the _patio._ + +By the time we returned we found a guide waiting for us, and we agreed +with him for a day’s service. He did not differ with other authorities +as to the claims of Cordova on the tourist’s interest. From being the +most brilliant capital of the Western world in the time of the Caliphs +it is now allowed by all the guides and guide-books and most of the +travelers, to be one of the dullest of provincial towns. It is no longer +the center of learning; and though it cannot help doing a large business +in olives, with the orchards covering the hills around it, the business +does not seem to be a very active one. “The city once the abode of +the flower of Andalusian nobility,” says the intelligent O’Shea in +his _Guide to Spain, “_is inhabited chiefly by administradores of the +absentee senorio; their ‘solares’ are desert and wretched, the streets +ill paved though clean, and the whitewashed houses unimportant, low, and +denuded of all art and meaning, either past or present.” Baedeker gives +like reasons for thinking “the traveler whose expectation is on +tiptoe as he enters the ancient capital of the Moors will probably be +disappointed in all but the cathedral.” _Cook’s Guide,_ latest but not +least commendable of the authorities, is of a more divided mind and +finds the means of trade and industry and their total want of visible +employment at the worst anomalous. + +[Illustration: 19 THE ANCIENT CITY OF CORDOVA] + +Vacant, narrow streets where the grass does not grow, and there is only +an endless going and coming of aimless feet; a market without buyers or +sellers to speak of, and a tangle of squat white houses, abounding in +lovely _patios,_ sweet and bright with flowers and fountains: this +seems to be Cordova in the consensus of the manuals, and with me in +the retrospect a sort of puzzle is the ultimate suggestion of the dead +capital of the Western Caliphs. Gautier thinks, or seventy-two years ago +he thought (and there has not been much change since), that “Cordova has +a more African look than any other city of Andalusia; its streets, or +rather its lanes, whose tumultuous pavement resembles the bed of dry +torrents, all littered with straw from the loads of passing donkeys, +have nothing that recalls the manners and customs of Europe. The Moors, +if they came back, would have no great trouble to reinstate themselves. +... The universal use of lime-wash gives a uniform tint to the +monuments, blunts the lines of the architecture, effaces the +ornamentation, and forbids you to read their age.... You cannot know +the wall of a century ago from the wall of yesterday. Cordova, once the +center of Arab civilization, is now a huddle of little white houses with +corridors between them where two mules could hardly pass abreast. Life +seems to have ebbed from the vast body, once animated by the active +circulation of Moorish blood; nothing is left now but the blanched +and calcined skeleton.... In spite of its Moslem air, Cordova is very +Christian and rests under the special protection of the Archangel +Raphael.” It is all rather contradictory; but Gautier owns that the +great mosque is a “monument unique in the world, and novel even for +travelers who have had the fortune to admire the wonders of Moorish +architecture at Granada or Seville.” + +De Amicis, who visited Cordova nearly forty-five years later, and in the +heart of spring, brought letters which opened something of the intimate +life of that apparently blanched and calcined skeleton. He meets young +men and matches Italian verses with their Spanish; spends whole nights +sitting in their cafes or walking their plazas, and comes away with his +mouth full of the rapturous verses of an Arab poet: “Adieu, Cordova! +Would that my life were as long as Noah’s, that I might live forever +within thy walls! Would that I had the treasures of Pharaoh, to spend +them upon wine and the beautiful women of Cordova, with tho gentle +eyes that invite kisses!” He allows that the lines may be “a little too +tropical for the taste of a European,” and it seems to me that there may +be a golden mean between scolding and flattering which would give the +truth about Cordova. I do not promise to strike it; our hotel still +rankles in my heart; but I promise to try for it, though I have to say +that the very moment we started for the famous mosque it began to rain, +and rained throughout the forenoon, while we weltered from wonder to +wonder through the town. We were indeed weltering in a closed carriage, +which found its way not so badly through the alleys where two mules +could not pass abreast. The lime-wash of the walls did not emit the +white heat in which the other tourists have basked or baked; the houses +looked wet and chill, and if they had those flowered and fountained +_patios_ which people talk of they had taken them in out of the rain. + + + +VI + + +At the mosque the _patio_ was not taken in only because it was so large, +but I find by our records that it was much molested by a beggar who +followed us when we dismounted at the gate of the Court of Oranges, and +all but took our minds off the famous Moorish fountain in the midst. It +was not a fountain of the plashing or gushing sort, but a noble great +pool in a marble basin. The women who clustered about it were not +laughing and chattering, or singing, or even dancing, in the right +Andalusian fashion, but stood silent in statuesque poses from which they +seemed in no haste to stir for filling their water jars and jugs. The +Moorish tradition of irrigation confronting one in all the travels and +histories as a supreme agricultural advantage which the Arabs took back +to Africa with them, leaving Spain to thirst and fry, lingers here in +the circles sunk round the orange trees and fed by little channels. +The trees grew about as the fancy took them, and did not mind the +incongruous palms towering as irregularly above them. While we wandered +toward the mosque a woman robed in white cotton, with a lavender scarf +crossing her breast, came in as irrelevantly as the orange trees and +stood as stably as the palms; in her night-black hair she alone in +Cordova redeemed the pledge of beauty made for all Andalusian women by +the reckless poets and romancers, whether in ballads or books of travel. + +One enters the court by a gate in a richly yellow tower, with a shrine +to St. Michael over the door, and still higher at the lodging of the +keeper a bed of bright flowers. Then, however, one is confronted with +the first great disappointment in the mosque. Shall it be whispered +in awe-stricken undertone that the impression of a bull-ring is what +lingers in the memory of the honest sight-seer from his first glance +at the edifice? The effect is heightened by the filling of the arcades +which encircle it, and which now confront the eye with a rounded wall, +where the Saracenic horseshoe remains distinct, but the space of yellow +masonry below seems to forbid the outsider stealing knowledge of the +spectacle inside. The spectacle is of course no feast of bulls (as the +Spanish euphemism has it), but the first amphitheatrical impression is +not wholly dispersed by the sight of the interior. In order that the +reader at his distance may figure this, he must imagine an indefinite +cavernous expanse, with a low roof supported in vaulted arches by some +thousand marble pillars, each with a different capital. There used to be +perhaps half a thousand more pillars, and Charles V. made the Cordovese +his reproaches for destroying the wonder of them when they planted +their proud cathedral in the heart of the mosque. He held it a sort of +sacrilege, but I think the honest traveler will say that there are still +enough of those rather stumpy white marble columns left, and enough of +those arches, striped in red and white with their undeniable suggestion +of calico awnings. It is like a grotto gaudily but dingily decorated, or +a vast circus-tent curtained off in hangings of those colors. + +[Illustration: 20 THE BELL-TOWER OF THE GREAT MOSQUE, CORDOVA] + +One sees the sanctuary where the great Caliph said his prayers, and the +Koran written by Othman and stained with his blood was kept; but I +know at least one traveler who saw it without sentiment or any sort of +reverent emotion, though he had not the authority of the “old rancid +Christianity” of a Castilian for withholding his homage. If people would +be as sincere as other people would like them to be, I think no one +would profess regret for the Arab civilization in the presence of its +monuments. Those Moors were of a religion which revolts all the finer +instincts and lifts the soul with no generous hopes; and the records of +it have no appeal save to the love of mere beautiful decoration. Even +here it mostly fails, to my thinking, and I say that for my part I found +nothing so grand in the great mosaue of Cordova as the cathedral which +rises in the heart of it. If Abderrahman boasted that he would rear a +shrine to the joy of earthly life and the hope of an earthly heaven, in +the place of the Christian temple which he would throw down, I should +like to overhear what his disembodied spirit would have to say to the +saint whose shrine he demolished. I think the saint would have the +better of him in any contention for their respective faiths, and could +easily convince the impartial witness that his religion then abiding in +medieval gloom was of promise for the future which Islam can never be. +Yet it cannot be denied that when Abderraham built his mosque the Arabs +of Cordova were a finer and wiser people than the Christians who +dwelt in intellectual darkness among them, with an ideal of gloom and +self-denial and a zeal for aimless martyrdom which must have been very +hard for a gentleman and scholar to bear. Gentlemen and scholars were +what the Arabs of the Western Caliphate seem to have become, with a +primacy in medicine and mathematics beyond the learning of all other +Europe in their day. They were tolerant skeptics in matters of religion; +polite agnostics, who disliked extremely the passion of some Christians +dwelling among them for getting themselves put to death, as they did, +for insulting the popularly accepted Mohammedan creed. Probably people +of culture in Cordova were quite of Abderrahman’s mind in wishing +to substitute the temple of a cheerfuler ideal for the shrine of the +medieval Christianity which he destroyed; though they might have had +their reserves as to the taste in which his mosque was completed. If +they recognized it as a concession to the general preference, they could +do so without the discomfort which they must have suffered when some new +horde of Berbers, full of faith and fight, came over from Africa to push +back the encroaching Spanish frontier, and give the local Christians as +much martyrdom as they wanted. + +It is all a conjecture based upon material witness no more substantial +than that which the Latin domination left long centuries before the +Arabs came to possess the land. The mosque from which you drive through +the rain to the river is neither newer nor older looking than the +beautiful Saracenic bridge over the Guadalquivir which the Arabs +themselves say was first built by the Romans in the time of Augustus; +the Moorish mill by the thither shore might have ground the first wheat +grown in Europe. It is intensely, immemorially African, flat-roofed, +white-walled; the mules waiting outside in the wet might have been +drooping there ever since the going down of the Flood, from which the +river could have got its muddy yellow. + +If the reader will be advised by me he will not go to the Archaeological +Museum, unless he wishes particularly to contribute to the support of +the custodian; the collection will not repay him even for the time in +which a whole day of Cordova will seem so superabundant. Any little +street will be worthier his study, with its type of passing girls in +white and black mantillas, and its shallow shops of all sorts, their +fronts thrown open, and their interiors flung, as it were, on the +sidewalk. It is said that the streets were the first to be paved in +Europe, and they have apparently not been repaved since 850. This indeed +will not Hold quite true of that thoroughfare, twenty feet wide at +least, which led from our hotel to the Paseo del Gran Capitan. In this +were divers shops of the genteeler sort, and some large cafes, standing +full of men of leisure, who crowded to their doors and windows, with +their hats on and their hands in their pockets, as at a club, and let +no fact of the passing world escape their hungry eyes. Their behavior +expressed a famine of incident in Cordova which was pathetic. + + + +VII + + +The people did not look very healthy as to build or color, and there was +a sound of coughing everywhere. To be sure, it was now the season of +the first colds, which would no doubt wear off with the coming of next +spring; and there was at any rate not nearly so much begging as at +Toledo, because there could not be anywhere. I am sorry I can contribute +no statistics as to the moral or intellectual condition of Cordova; +perhaps they will not be expected or desired of me; I can only say that +the general intelligence is such that no one will own he does not know +anything you ask him even when he does not; but this is a national +rather than a local trait, which causes the stranger to go in many wrong +directions all over the peninsula. I should not say that there was any +noticeable decay of character from the north to the south such as the +attributive pride of the old Castilian in the Sheridan Knowlesian drama +would teach; the Cordovese looked no more shiftless than the haughtiest +citizens of Burgos. + +They had decidedly prettier _patios_ and more of them, and they had many +public carriages against none whatever in that ancient capital. Rubber +tires I did not expect in Cordova and certainly did not get in a city +where a single course over the pavements of 850 would have worn them to +tatters: but there seems a good deal of public spirit if one may judge +from the fact that it is the municipality which keeps Abderrahman’s +mosque in repair. There are public gardens, far pleasanter than those of +Valladolid, which we visited in an interval of the afternoon, and there +is a very personable bull-ring to which we drove in the vain hope of +seeing the people come out in a typical multitude. But there had been no +feast of bulls; and we had to make what we could out of the walking +and driving in the Paseo del Gran Capitan toward evening. In its long, +discouraging course there were some good houses, but not many, and the +promenaders of any social quality were almost as few. Some ladies in +private carriages were driving out, and a great many more in public +ones as well dressed as the others, but with no pretense of state in +the horses or drivers. The women of the people all wore flowers in their +hair, a dahlia or a marigold, whether their hair was black or gray. No +ladies were walking in the Paseo, except one pretty mother, with her +nice-looking children about her, who totaled the sum of her class; but +men of every class rather swarmed. High or low, they all wore the kind +of hat which abounds everywhere in Andalusia and is called a Cordovese: +flat, stiff, squat in crown and wide in brim, and of every shade of +gray, brown, and black. + +I ought to have had my associations with the great Captain Gonsalvo in +the promenade which the city has named after him, but I am not sure that +I had, though his life was one of the Spanish books which I won my +way through in the middle years of my pathless teens. A comprehensive +ignorance of the countries and histories which formed the setting of his +most dramatic career was not the best preparation for knowledge of +the man, but it was the best I had, and now I can only look back at my +struggle with him and wonder that I came off alive. It is the hard fate +of the self-taught that their learning must cost them twice as much +labor as it would if they were taught by others; the very books they +study are grudging friends if not insidious foes. Long afterward when I +came to Italy, and began to make the past part of my present, I began to +untangle a little the web that the French and the Aragonese wove in +the conquest and reconquest of the wretched Sicilies; but how was I +to imagine in the Connecticut Western Reserve the scene of Gonsalvo’s +victories in Calabria? Even loath Ferdinand the Catholic said they +brought greater glory to his crown than his own conquest of Granada; I +dare say I took some unintelligent pride in his being Viceroy of Naples, +and I may have been indignant at his recall and then his retirement from +court by the jealous king. But my present knowledge of these facts, and +of his helping put down the Moorish insurrection in 1500, as well as his +exploits as commander of a Spanish armada against the Turks is a +recent debt I owe to the _Encyclopedia Britannica_ and not to my boyish +researches. Of like actuality is my debt to Mr. Calvert’s _Southern +Spain,_ where he quotes the accounting which the Great Captain gave +on the greedy king’s demand for a statement of his expenses in the +Sicilies. + +“Two hundred thousand seven hundred and thirty-six ducats and 9 reals +paid to the clergy and the poor who prayed for the victory of the army +of Spain. + +“One hundred millions in pikes, bullets, and intrenching tools; 10,000 +ducats in scented gloves, to preserve the troops from the odor of the +enemies’ dead left on the battle-field; 100,000 ducats, spent in the +repair of the bells completely worn out by every-day announcing fresh +victories gained over our enemies; 50,000 ducats in ‘aguardiente’ +for the troops on the eve of battle. A million and a half for the +safeguarding prisoners and wounded. + +“One million for Masses of Thanksgiving; 700,494 ducats for secret +service, etc. + +“And one hundred millions for the patience with which I have listened to +the king, who demands an account from the man who has presented him with +a Kingdom.” + +It seems that Gonsalvo was one of the greatest humorists, as well as +captains of his age, and the king may very well have liked his fun no +better than his fame. Now that he has been dead nearly four hundred +years, Ferdinand would, if he were living, no doubt join Cordova in +honoring Gonzalo Hernandez de Aguila y de Cordova. After all he was not +born in Cordova (as I had supposed till an hour ago), but in the little +city of Montilla, five stations away on the railroad to the Malaga, and +now more noted for its surpassing sherry than for the greatest soldier +of his time. To have given its name to Amontillado is glory enough for +Montilla, and it must be owned that Gonzalo Hernandez de Aguila y de +Montilla would not sound so well as the title we know the hero by, when +we know him at all. There may be some who will say that Cordova merits +remembrance less because of him than because of Columbus, who first +came to the Catholic kings there to offer them not a mere kingdom, but +a whole hemisphere. Cordova was then the Spanish headquarters for the +operations against Granada, and one reads of the fact with a luminous +sense which one cannot have till one has seen Cordova. + + + +VIII + +[Illustration: 21 GATEWAY OF THE BRIDGE, CORDOVA] + +After our visits to the mosque and the bridge and the museum there +remained nothing of our forenoon, and we gave the whole of the earlier +afternoon to an excursion which strangers are expected to make into the +first climb of hills to the eastward of the city. The road which reaches +the Huerto de los Arcos is rather smoother for driving than the streets +of Cordova, but the rain had made it heavy, and we were glad of our good +horses and their owner’s mercy to them. He stopped so often to breathe +them when the ascent began that we had abundant time to note the +features of the wayside; the many villas, piously named for saints, set +on the incline, and orcharded about with orange trees, in the beginning +of that measureless forest of olives which has no limit but the horizon. + +From the gate to the villa which we had come to see it was a stiff +ascent by terraced beds of roses, zinneas, and purple salvia beside +walls heavy with jasmine and trumpet creepers, in full bloom, and orange +trees, fruiting and flowering in their desultory way. Before the villa +we were to see a fountain much favored by our guide who had a passion +for the jets that played ball with themselves as long as the gardener +let him turn the water on, and watched with joy to see how high the +balls would go before slipping back. The fountain was in a grotto-like +nook, where benches of cement decked with scallop shells were set round +a basin with the figures of two small boys in it bestriding that of a +lamb, all employed in letting the water dribble from their mouths. It +was very simple-hearted, as such things seem mostly obliged to be, but +nature helped art out so well with a lovely abundance of leaf and petal +that a far more exacting taste than ours must have been satisfied. The +garden was in fact very pretty, though whether it was worth fifteen +pesetas and three hours coming to see the reader must decide for himself +when he does it. I think it was, myself, and I would like to be there +now, sitting in a shell-covered cement chair at the villa steps, and +letting the landscape unroll itself wonderfully before me. We were on a +shore of that ocean of olives which in southern Spain washes far up the +mountain walls of the blue and bluer distances, and which we were to +skirt more and more in bay and inlet and widening and narrowing expanses +throughout Andalusia. Before we left it we wearied utterly of it, and in +fact the olive of Spain is not the sympathetic olive of Italy, though +I should think it a much more practical and profitable tree. It is not +planted so much at haphazard as the Italian olive seems to be; its +mass looks less like an old apple orchard than the Italian; its regular +succession is a march of trim files as far as the horizon or the +hillsides, which they often climbed to the top. We were in the season of +the olive harvest, and throughout the month of October its nearer lines +showed the sturdy trees weighed down by the dense fruit, sometimes +very small, sometimes as large as pigeon eggs. There were vineyards and +wheat-fields in that vast prospect, and certainly there were towns and +villages; but what remains with me is the sense of olives and ever more +olives, though this may be the cumulative effect of other such prospects +as vast and as monotonous. + +While we looked away and away, the gardener and a half-grown boy were +about their labors that Sunday afternoon as if it were a week-day, +though for that reason perhaps they were not working very hard. They +seemed mostly to be sweeping up the fallen leaves from the paths, and +where the leaves had not fallen from the horse-chestnuts the boy was +assisting nature by climbing the trees and plucking them. We tried to +find out why he was doing this, but to this day I do not know why he +was doing it, and I must be content to contribute the bare fact to the +science of arboriculture. Possibly it was in the interest of neatness, +and was a precaution against letting the leaves drop and litter the +grass. There was apparently a passion for neatness throughout, which in +the villa itself mounted to ecstasy. It was in a state to be come and +lived in at any moment, though I believe it was occupied only in the +late spring and the early autumn; in winter the noble family went to +Madrid, and in summer to some northern watering-place. It was rather +small, and expressed a life of the minor hospitalities when the family +was in residence. It was no place for house-parties, and scarcely for +week-end visits, or even for neighborhood dinners. Perhaps on that +terrace there was afternoon ice-cream or chocolate for friends who rode +or drove over or out; it seemed so possible that we had to check in +ourselves the cozy impulse to pull up our shell-covered cement chairs to +some central table of like composition. + +Within, the villa was of a spick-and-spanness which I feel that I have +not adequately suggested; and may I say that the spray of a garden-hose +seemed all that would be needed to put the place in readiness for +occupation? Not that even this was needed for that interior of tile and +marble, so absolutely apt for the climate and the use the place would +be put to. In vain we conjectured, and I hope not impertinently, the +characters and tastes of the absentees; the sole clue that offered +itself was a bookshelf of some Spanish versions from authors scientific +and metaphysical to the verge of agnosticism. I would not swear to +Huxley and Herbert Spencer among the English writers, but they were such +as these, not in their entire bulk, but in extracts and special essays. +I recall the slightly tilted row of the neat paper copies; and I wish I +knew who it was liked to read them. The Spanish have a fondness for +such dangerous ground; from some of their novels it appears they feel it +rather chic to venture on it. + + + +IX + + +We came away from Cordova with a pretty good conscience as to its +sights. Upon the whole we were glad they were so few, when once we had +made up our minds about the mosque. But now I have found too late that +we ought to have visited the general market in the old square where the +tournaments used to take place; we ought to have seen also the Chapel +of the Hospital del Cardenal, because it was part of the mosque of +Al-Manssour; we ought to have verified the remains of two baths out of +the nine hundred once existing in the Calle del Bagno Alta; and we ought +finally to have visited the remnant of a Moorish house in the Plazuela +de San Nicolas, with its gallery of jasper columns, now unhappily +whitewashed. The Campo Santo has an unsatisfied claim upon my interest +because it was the place where the perfervid Christian zealots used to +find the martyrdom they sought at the hands of the unwilling Arabs; and +where, far earlier, Julius Caesar planted a plane tree after his victory +over the forces of Pompeii at Munda. The tree no longer exists, but +neither does Caesar, or the thirty thousand enemies whom he slew there, +or the sons of Pompeii who commanded them. These were so near beating +Casar at first that he ran among his soldiers “asking them whether they +were not ashamed to deliver him into the hands of boys.” One of the boys +escaped, but two days after the fight the head of the elder was brought +to Caesar, who was not liked for the triumph he made himself after the +event in Rome, where it was thought out of taste to rejoice over the +calamity of his fellow-countrymen as if they had been foreign foes; +the Romans do not seem to have minded his putting twenty-eight thousand +Cordovese to death for their Pompeian politics. If I had remembered all +this from my Plutarch, I should certainly have gone to see the place +where Caesar planted that plane tree. Perhaps some kind soul will go to +see it for me. I myself do not expect to return to Cordova. + + + + +IX. FIRST DAYS IN SEVILLE + + +Cordova seemed to cheer up as much as we at our going. We had +undoubtedly had the better night’s sleep; as often as we woke we found +Cordova awake, walking and talking, and coughing more than the night +before, probably from fresh colds taken in the rain. From time to time +there were church-bells, variously like tin pans and iron pots in +tone, without sonorousness in their noise, or such wild clangor as some +Italian church-bells have. But Cordova had lived through it, and at the +station was lively with the arriving and departing trains. The morning +was not only bright; it was hot, and the place babbled with many voices. +We thought one voice crying “Agua, agua!” was a parrot’s and then we +thought it was a girl’s, but really it was a boy with water for sale in +a stone bottle. He had not a rose, white or red, in his hair, but if he +had been a girl, old or young, he would have had one, white or red. Some +of the elder women wore mantillas, but these wore flowers too, and were +less pleasing than pathetic for it; one very massive matron was less +pleasing and more pathetic than the rest. Peasant women carried bunches +of chickens by the legs, and one had a turkey in a rush bag with a +narrow neck to put its head out of for its greater convenience in +gobbling. At the door of the station a donkey tried to bite a fly on +its back; but even a Spanish donkey cannot do everything. There was no +attempt to cheat us in the weight of our trunks, as there often is in +Italy, and the _mozo_ who put us and our hand-bags into the train was +content with his reasonable fee. As for the pair of Civil Guards who +were to go with us, they were of an insurpassable beauty and propriety, +and we felt it a peculiar honor when one of them got into the +compartment beside ours. + +We were to take the mail-train to Seville; and in Spain the _correo_ +is next to the Sud-Express, which is the last word in the vocabulary of +Peninsular railroading. Our _correo_ had been up all night on the +way from Madrid, and our compartment had apparently been used as a +bedchamber, with moments of supper-room. It seemed to have been occupied +by a whole family; there were frowsy pillows crushed into the corners of +the seats, and, though a porter caught these away, the cigar stubs, +and the cigarette ashes strewing the rug and fixed in it with various +liquids, as well as some scattering hair-pins, escaped his care. But +when it was dried and aired out by windows opened to the sunny weather, +it was by no means a bad compartment. The broad cushions were certainly +cleaner than the carpet; and it was something--it was a great deal--to +be getting out of Cordova on any terms. Not that Cordova seems at this +distance so bad as it seemed on the ground. If we could have had the +bright Monday of our departure instead of the rainy Sunday of our stay +there we might have wished to stay longer. But as it was the four hours’ +run to Seville was delightful, largely because it Was the run from +Cordova. + +We were running at once over a gentle ground-swell which rose and sank +in larger billows now and then, and the yellow Guadalquivir followed us +all the way, in a valley that sometimes widened to the blue mountains +always walling the horizon. We had first entered Andalusia after dark, +and the scene had now a novelty little staled by the distant view of +the afternoon before. The olive orchards then seen afar were intimately +realized more and more in their amazing extent. None of the trees looked +so old, so world-old, as certain trees in the careless olive groves of +Italy. They were regularly planted, and most were in a vigorous middle +life; where they were old they were closely pollarded; and there were +young trees, apparently newly set out; there were holes indefinitely +waiting for others. These were often, throughout Andalusia, covered to +their first fork with cones of earth; and we remained in the dramatic +superstition that this was to protect them against the omnivorous hunger +of the goats, till we were told that it was to save their roots from +being loosened by the wind. The orchards filled the level foregrounds +and the hilly backgrounds to the vanishing-points of the mountainous +perspectives; but when I say this I mean the reader to allow for wide +expanses of pasturage, where lordly bulls were hoarding themselves +for the feasts throughout Spain which the bulls of Andalusia are happy +beyond others in supplying. With their devoted families they paraded +the meadows, black against the green, or stood in sharp arrest, the +most characteristic accent of the scene. In the farther rather than +the nearer distance there were towns, very white, very African, keeping +jealously away from the stations, as the custom of most towns is in +Spain, beyond the wheat-lands which disputed the landscape with the +olive orchards. + +One of these towns lay white at the base of a hill topped by a yellow +Moorish castle against the blue sky, like a subject waiting for its +painter and conscious of its wonderful adaptation to water-color. The +railroad-banks were hedged with Spanish bayonet, and in places with +cactus grown into trees, all knees and elbows, and of a diabolical +uncouthness. The air was fresh and springlike, and under the bright +sun, which we had already felt hot, men were plowing the gray fields +for wheat. Other men were beginning their noonday lunch, which, with the +long nap to follow, would last till three o’clock, and perhaps be rashly +accounted to them for sloth by the industrious tourist who did not know +that their work had begun at dawn and would not end till dusk. Indolence +may be a vice of the towns in Spain, but there is no loafing in the +country, if I may believe the conclusions of my note-book. The fields +often looked barren enough, and large spaces of their surface were +covered by a sort of ground palm, as it seemed to be, though whether it +was really a ground palm or not I know no more than I know the name or +nature of the wild flower which looked an autumn crocus, and which with +other wild flowers fringed the whole course of the train. There was +especially a small yellow flower, star-shaped, which we afterward +learned was called Todos Santos, from its custom of blooming at All +Saints, and which washed the sward in the childlike enthusiasm of +buttercups. A fine white narcissus abounded, and clumps of a mauve +flower which swung its tiny bells over the sward washed by the Todos +Santos. There were other flowers, which did what they could to brighten +our way, all clinging to the notion of summer, which the weather +continued to flatter throughout our fortnight in Seville. + +I could not honestly say that the stations or the people about them +were more interesting than in La Mancha. But at one place, where some +gentlemen in linen jackets dismounted with their guns, a group of men +with dogs leashed in pairs and saddle-horses behind them, took me with +the sense of something peculiarly native where everything was so +native. They were slim, narrow-hipped young fellows, tight-jerkined, +loose-trousered, with a sort of divided apron of leather facing the +leg and coming to the ankle; and all were of a most masterly Velasquez +coloring and drawing. As they stood smoking motionlessly, letting the +smoke drift from their nostrils, they seemed somehow of the same make +with the slouching hounds, and they leaned forward together, giving the +hunters no visible or audible greeting, but questioning their will with +one quality of gaze. The hunters moved toward them, but not as if they +belonged together, or expected any sort of demonstration from the men, +dogs, and horses that were of course there to meet them. As long as our +train paused, no electrifying spark kindled them to a show of emotion; +but it would have been interesting to see what happened after we +left them behind; they could not have kept their attitude of mutual +indifference much longer. These peasants, like the Spaniards everywhere, +were of an intelligent and sagacious look; they only wanted a chance, +one must think, to be a leading race. They have sometimes an anxiety of +appeal in their apathy, as if they would like to know more than they do. + +There was some livelier thronging at the station where the train stopped +for luncheon, but secure with the pretty rush-basket which the head +waiter at our hotel, so much better than the hotel, had furnished us at +starting, we kept to our car; and there presently we were joined by a +young couple who were unmistakably a new married couple. The man was of +a rich brown, and the woman of a dead white with dead black hair. They +both might have been better-looking than they were, but apparently not +better otherwise, for at Seville the groom helped us out of the car with +our hand-bags. + +I do not know what polite offers from him had already brought out the +thanks in which our speech bewrayed us; but at our outlandish accents +they at once became easier. They became frankly at home with themselves, +and talked in their Andalusian patter with no fear of being understood. +I might, indeed, have been far apter in Spanish without understanding +their talk, for when printed the Andalusian dialect varies as far from +the Castilian as, say, the Venetian varies from the Tuscan, and when +spoken, more. It may then be reduced almost wholly to vowel sounds, and +from the lips of some speakers it is really no more consonantal than if +it came from the beaks of birds. They do not lisp the soft _c_ or the +_z,_ as the Castilians do, but hiss them, and lisp the _s_ instead, as +the reader will find amusingly noted in the Sevillian chapters of _The +Sister of San Sulpice,_ which are the most charming chapters of that +most charming novel. At the stations there were sometimes girls and +sometimes boys with water for sale from stone bottles, who walked by +the cars crying it; and there were bits of bright garden, or there were +flowers in pots. There were also poor little human flowers, or call +them weeds, if you will, that suddenly sprang up beside our windows, and +moved their petals in pitiful prayer for alms. They always sprang up on +the off side of the train, so that the trainmen could not see them, but +I hope no trainman in Spain would have had the heart to molest them. +As a matter of taste in vegetation, however, we preferred an occasional +effect of mixed orange and pomegranate trees, with their perennial green +and their autumnal red. We were, in fact, so spoiled by the profusion of +these little human flowers, or weeds, that we even liked the change to +the dried stalk of an old man, flowering at top into a flat basket of +pale-pink shrimps. He gave us our first sight of sea-fruit, when we had +got, without knowing it, to Seville Junction. There was, oddly enough, +no other fruit for sale there; but there was a very agreeable-looking +booth at the end of the platform placarded with signs of Puerto +Rico coffee, cognac, and other drinks; and outside of it there were +wash-basins and clean towels. I do not know how an old woman with a +blind daughter made herself effective in the crowd, which did not seem +much preoccupied with the opportunities of ablution and refection at +that booth; but perhaps she begged with her blind daughter’s help while +the crowd was busy in assorting itself for Cadiz and Seville and +Malaga and Cordova and other musically syllabled mothers of history and +romance. + + + +II + + +A few miles and a few minutes more and we were in the embrace of the +loveliest of them, which was at first the clutch on the octroi. But the +octroi at Seville is not serious, and a walrus-mustached old porter, who +looked like an old American car-driver of the bearded eighteen-sixties, +eased us--not very swiftly, but softly--through the local customs, and +then we drove neither so swiftly nor so softly to the hotel, where we +had decided we would have rooms on the _patio._ We had still to learn +that if there is a _patio_ in a Spanish hotel you cannot have rooms +in it, because they are either in repair or they are occupied. In +the present case they were occupied; but we could have rooms over the +street, which were the same as in the _patio,_ and which were perfectly +quiet, as we could perceive from the trolley-cars grinding and squealing +under their windows. The manager (if that was the quality of the patient +and amiable old official who received us) seemed surprised to see the +cars there, perhaps because they were so inaudible; but he said we could +have rooms in the annex, fronting on the adjoining plaza and siding on +an inoffensive avenue where there were absolutely no cars. The interior, +climbing to a lofty roof by a succession of galleries, was hushed by +four silent senoras, all in black, and seated in mute ceremony around a +table in chairs from which their little feet scarcely touched the marble +pavement. Their quiet confirmed the manager’s assurance of a pervading +tranquillity, and though the only bath in the annex was confessedly on +the ground floor, and we were to be two floors above, the affair was +very simple: the chambermaid would always show us where the bath was. + +With misgiving, lost in a sense of our helplessness, we tried to think +that the avenue under us was then quieting down with the waning day; and +certainly it was not so noisy as the plaza, which, resounded with +the whips and quips of the cabmen, and gave no signs of quiescence. +Otherwise the annex was very pleasant, and we took the rooms shown us, +hoping the best and fearing the worst. Our fears were wiser than our +hopes, but we did not know this, and we went as gaily as we could for +tea in the _patio_ of our hotel, where a fountain typically trickled +amidst its water-plants and a noiseless Englishman at his separate table +almost restored our lost faith in a world not wholly racket. A young +Spaniard and two young Spanish girls helped out the illusion with their +gentle movements and their muted gutturals, and we looked forward to +dinner with fond expectation. To tell the truth, the dinner, when we +came back to it, was not very good, or at least not very winning, and +the next night it was no better, though the head waiter had then, made +us so much favor with himself as to promise us a side-table for the rest +of our stay. He was a very friendly head waiter, and the dining-room was +a long glare of the encaustic tiling which all Seville seems lined with, +and of every Moorish motive in the decoration. Besides, there was a +young Scotch girl, very interestingly pale and delicate of face, at one +of the tables, and at another a Spanish girl with the most wonderful +fire-red hair, and there were several miracles of the beautiful obesity +which abounds in Spain. + +When we returned to the annex it did seem, for the short time we kept +our windows shut, that the manager had spoken true, and we promised +ourselves a tranquil night, which, after our two nights in Cordova, we +needed if we did not merit. But we had counted without the spread of +popular education in Spain. Under our windows, just across the way, +there proved to be a school of the “Royal Society of Friends of their +Country,” as the Spanish inscription in its front proclaimed; and +at dusk its pupils, children and young people of both sexes, began +clamoring for knowledge at its doors. About ten o’clock they burst from +them again with joyous exultation in their acquirements; then, shortly +after, every manner of vehicle began to pass, especially heavy market +wagons overladen and drawn by horses swarming with bells. Their +succession left scarcely a moment of the night unstunned; but if ever a +moment seemed to be escaping, there was a maniacal bell in a church near +by that clashed out: “Hello! Here’s a bit of silence; let’s knock it on +the head!” + +We went promptly the next day to the gentle old manager and told him +that he had been deceived in thinking he had given us rooms on a quiet +street, and appealed to his invention for something, for anything, +different. His invention had probably never been put to such stress +before, and he showed us an excess of impossible apartments, which we +subjected to a consideration worthy of the greatest promise in them. Our +search ended in a suite of rooms on the top floor, where we could have +the range of a flat roof outside if we wanted; but as the private family +living next door kept hens, led by a lordly turkey, on their roof, we +were sorrowfully forced to forego our peculiar advantage. Peculiar we +then thought it, though we learned afterward that poultry-farming was +not uncommon on the flat roofs of Seville, and there is now no telling +how we might have prospered if we had taken those rooms and stocked +our roof with Plymouth Rocks and Wyandottes. At the moment, however, +we thought it would not do, and we could only offer our excuses to the +manager, whose resources we had now exhausted, but not whose patience, +and we parted with expressions of mutual esteem and regret. + +Our own grief was sincerer in leaving behind us the enthusiastic +chambermaid of the annex who had greeted us with glad service, and was +so hopeful that when she said our doors should be made to latch and lock +in the morning, it was as if they latched and locked already. Her zeal +made the hot water she brought for the baths really hot, _“Caliente, +caliente,”_ and her voice would have quieted the street under our +windows if music could have soothed it. At a friendly word she grew +trustful, and told us how it was hard, hard for poor people in Seville; +how she had three dollars a month and her husband four; and how they had +to toil for it. When we could not help telling her, cruelly enough, +what they singly and jointly earn in New York, she praised rather than +coveted the happier chance impossible to them. They would like to go, +but they could not go! She was gay with it all, and after we had left +the hotel and come back for the shawl which had been forgotten, she ran +for it, shouting with laughter, as if we must see it the great joke she +did; and she took the reward offered with the self-respect never wanting +to the Spanish poor. Very likely if I ransacked my memory I might find +instances of their abusing those advantages over the stranger which +Providence puts in the reach of the native everywhere; but on the spur +of the moment, I do not recall any. In Spain, where a woman earns three +dollars a month, as in America where she earns thirty, the poor seem to +abound in the comparative virtues which the rich demand in return for +the chances of Heaven which they abandon to them. There were few of +those rendering us service there whom we would not willingly have +brought away with us; but very likely we should have found they had the +defects of their qualities. + +When we definitely turned our backs on the potential poultry-farm +offered us at our hotel, we found ourselves in as good housing at +another, overlooking the length and breadth of the stately Plaza San +Fernando, with its parallelogram of tall palms, under a full moon +swimming in a cloudless heaven by night and by day. By day, of course, +we did not see it, but the sun was visibly there, rather blazing hot, +even in mid-October, and showing more distinctly than the moon the +beautiful tower of the Giralda from the waist up, and the shoulder of +the great cathedral, besides features of other noble, though less noble, +edifices. Our plaza was so full of romantic suggestion that I am rather +glad now I had no association with it. I am sure I could not have borne +at the time to know, as I have only now learned by recurring to my +Baedeker, that in the old Franciscan cloister once there had stood the +equestrian statue of the Comendador who dismounts and comes unbidden to +the supper of Don Giovanni in the opera. That was a statue which, seen +in my far youth, haunted my nightmares for many a year, and I am sure it +would have kept me from sleep in the conditions, now so perfect, of our +new housing if I had known, about it. + + + +III + + +The plaza is named, of course, for King Fernando, who took Seville from +the Moors six hundred years ago, and was canonized for his conquests and +his virtues. But I must not enter so rashly upon the history of Seville, +or forget the arrears of personal impression which I have to bring up. +The very drive from the station was full of impressions, from the narrow +and crooked streets, the houses of yellow, blue, and pink stucco, the +flowered and fountained _patios_ glimpsed passingly, the half-lengths +of church-towers, and the fleeting facades of convents and palaces, +all lovely in the mild afternoon light. These impressions soon became +confluent, so that without the constant witness of our note-books +I should now find it impossible to separate them. If they could be +imparted to the reader in their complexity, that would doubtless be the +ideal, though he would not believe that their confused pattern was a +true reflex of Seville; so I recur to the record, which says that the +morning after our arrival we hurried to see the great and beautiful +cathedral. It had failed, in our approach the afternoon before, to +fulfil the promise of one of our half-dozen guide-books (I forget which +one) that it would seem to gather Seville about it as a hen gathers her +chickens, but its vastness grew upon us with every moment of our +more intimate acquaintance. Our acquaintance quickly ripened into the +affectionate friendship which became a tender regret when we looked +our last upon it; and vast as it was, it was never too large for our +embrace. I doubt if there was a moment in our fortnight’s devotion when +we thought the doughty canons, its brave-spoken founders, “mad to have +undertaken it,” as they said they expected people to think, or any +moment when we did not revere them for imagining a temple at once so +beautiful and so big. + +Our first visit was redeemed from the commonplace of our duty-round of +the side-chapels by two things which I can remember without the help of +my notes. One, and the great one, was Murillo’s “Vision of St. Anthony,” + in which the painter has most surpassed himself, and which not to have +seen, Gautier says, is not to have known the painter. It is so glorious +a masterpiece, with the Child joyously running down from the clustering +angels toward the kneeling saint in the nearest corner of the +foreground, that it was distinctly a moment before I realized that the +saint had once been cut out of his corner and sent into an incredible +exile in America, and then munificently restored to it, though the seam +in the canvas only too literally attested the incident. I could not well +say how this fact then enhanced the interest of the painting, and then +how it ceased from the consciousness, which it must always recur to with +any remembrance of it. If one could envy wealth its chance of doing a +deed of absolute good, here was the occasion, and I used it. I did envy +the mind, along with the money, to do that great thing. Another great +thing which still more swelled my American heart and made it glow with +patriotic pride was the monument to Columbus, which our suffering his +dust to be translated from Havana has made possible in Seville. There +may be other noble results of our war on Spain for the suzerainty of +Cuba and the conquest of Puerto Rico and the Philippines, but there is +none which matches in moral beauty the chance it won us for this Grand +Consent. I suppose those effigies of the four Spanish realms of Castile, +Leon, Aragon, and Navarre, which bear the coffin of the discoverer in +stateliest processional on their shoulders, may be censured for being +too boldly superb, too almost swagger, but I will not be the one to +censure them. They are painted the color of life, and they advance +colossally, royal-robed and mail-clad, as if marching to some proud +music, and would tread you down if you did not stand aside. It is +perhaps not art, but it is magnificent; nothing less stupendously +Spanish would have sufficed; and I felt that the magnanimity which had +yielded Spain this swelling opportunity had made America her equal in +it. + +We went to the cathedral the first morning after our arrival in Seville, +because we did not know how soon we might go away, and then we went +every morning or every afternoon of our fortnight there. Habitually +we entered by that Gate of Pardon which in former times had opened the +sanctuary to any wickedness short of heresy; but, as our need of refuge +was not pressing, we wearied of the Gate of Pardon, with its beautiful +Saracenic arch converted to Christianity by the Renaissance bas-relief +obliterating the texts from the Koran. We tried to form the habit of +going in by other gates, but the Gate of Pardon finally prevailed; there +was always a gantlet of cabmen to be run beside it, which brought our +sins home to us. It led into the badly paved Court of Oranges, where the +trees seem planted haphazard and where there used also to be fountains. +Gate and court are remnants of the mosque, patterned upon that of +Cordova by one of the proud Moorish kings of Seville, and burned by the +Normans when they took and sacked his city. His mosque had displaced the +early Christian basilica of San Vicente, which the still earlier temple +to Venus Salambo had become. Then, after the mosque was rebuilt, the +good San Fernando in his turn equipped it with a Gothic choir and +chapels and turned it into the cathedral, which was worn out with +pious uses when the present edifice was founded, in their _folie des +grandeurs,_ by those glorious madmen in the first year of the fifteenth +century. + + + +IV + + +Little of this learning troubled me in my visits to the cathedral, or +even the fact that, next to St. Peter’s, it was the largest church in +the world. It was sufficient to itself by mere force of architectural +presence, without the help of incidents or measurements. It was a city +in itself, with a community of priests and sacristans dwelling in it, +and a floating population of sightseers and worshipers always passing +through it. The first morning we had submitted to make the round of +the chapels, patiently paying to have each of them unlocked and wearily +wondering at their wonders, but only sympathizing really with the stern +cleric who showed the ceremonial vestments and jewels of the cathedral, +and whose bitter face expressed, or seemed to express, abhorrence of our +whole trivial tourist tribe. After that morning we took our curiosity +into our own keeping and looked at nothing that did not interest us, and +we were interested most in those fellow-beings who kept coming and going +all day long. + +[Illustration: 22 IN ATTITUDES OF SILENT DEVOTION] + +Chiefly, of course, they were women. In Catholic countries women have +either more sins to be forgiven than the men, or else they are sorrier +for them; and here, whether there was service or not, they were dropped +everywhere in veiled and motionless prayer. In Seville the law of the +mantilla is rigorously enforced. If a woman drives, she may wear a hat; +but if she walks, she must wear a mantilla under pain of being pointed +at by the finger of scorn. If she is a young girl she may wear colors +with it (a cheerful blue seems the favorite), but by far the greater +number came to the cathedral in complete black. Those somber figures +which clustered before chapel, or singly dotted the pavement everywhere, +flitted in and out like shadows in the perpetual twilight. For far the +greater number, their coming to the church was almost their sole escape +into the world. They sometimes met friends, and after a moment, or an +hour, of prayer they could cheer their hearts with neighborly gossip. +But for the greater part they appeared and disappeared silently and +swiftly, and left the spectator to helpless conjecture of their history. +Many of them would have first met their husbands in the cathedral when +they prayed, or when they began to look around to see who was looking +at them. It might have been their trysting-place, safeguarding them in +their lovers’ meetings, and after marriage it had become their social +world, when their husbands left them for the clubs or the cafes. They +could not go at night, of course, except to some special function, but +they could come by day as often as they liked. I do not suppose that +the worshipers I saw habitually united love or friendship with their +devotions in the cathedral, but some certainly joined business with +devotion; at a high function one day an American girl felt herself +sharply nudged in the side, and when she turned she found the palm of +her kneeling neighbor stretched toward her. They must all have had their +parish churches besides the cathedral, and a devotee might make the day +a social whirl by visiting one shrine after another. But I do not +think that many do. The Spanish women are of a domestic genus, and are +expected to keep at home by the men who expect to keep abroad. + +I do not know just how it is in the parish churches; they must each +have its special rite, which draws and holds the frequenter; but +the cathedral constantly offers a drama of irresistible appeal. +We non-Catholics can feel this even at the distance to which our +Protestantism has remanded us, and at your first visit to the Seville +cathedral during mass you cannot help a moment of recreant regret when +you wish that a part in the mystery enacting was your birthright. The +esthetic emotion is not denied you; the organ-tide that floods the place +bears you on it, too; the priests perform their rites before the altar +for you; they come and go, they bow and kneel, for you; the censer +swings and smokes for you; the little wicked-eyed choir-boys and +mischievous-looking acolytes suppress their natures in your behalf as +much as if you were a believer, or perhaps more. The whole unstinted +hospitality of the service is there for you, as well as for the children +of the house, and the heart must be rude and the soul ungrateful that +would refuse it. For my part, I accepted it as far as I knew how, +and when I left the worshipers on their knees and went tiptoeing from +picture to picture and chapel to chapel, it was with shame for the +unscrupulous sacristan showing me about, and I felt that he, if not I, +ought to be put out and not allowed back till the function was over. I +call him sacristan at a venture; but there were several kinds of guides +in the cathedral, some in the livery of the place and some in civil +dress, willing to supplement our hotel interpreter, or lying in wait for +us when we came alone. I wish now I had taken them all, but at the time +they tired me, and I denied them. + +Though not a day passed but we saw it, I am not able to say what the +cathedral was like. The choir was planted in the heart of it, as it +might be a celestial refuge in that forest of mighty pillars, as great +in girth as the giant redwoods of California, and climbing to a Gothic +firmament horizoned round as with sunset light from near a hundred +painted windows. The chapels on each side, the most beautiful in Spain, +abound in riches of art and pious memorials, with chief among them the +Royal Chapel, in the prow, as it were, of the ship which the cathedral +has been likened to, keeping the bones not only of the sainted hero, +King Fernando, but also, among others, the bones of Peter the Cruel, and +of his unwedded love, Maria de Padilla, far too good for Peter in life, +if not quite worthy of San Fernando in death. You can see the saint’s +body on certain dates four times a year, when, as your Baedeker will +tell you, “the troops of the garrison march past and lower their colors” + outside the cathedral. We were there on none of these dates, and, far +more regretably, not on the day of Corpus Christi, when those boys whose +effigies in sculptured and painted wood we had seen in the museum at +Valladolid pace in their mystic dance before the people at the opposite +portal of the cathedral. But I appoint any reader, so minded, to go and +witness the rite some springtime for me. There is no hurry, for it is +destined to endure through the device practised in defeating the pope +who proposed to abolish it. He ordained that it should continue only +as long as the boys’ actual costumes lasted; but by renewing these +carefully wherever they began to wear out, they have become practically +imperishable. + +If we missed this attraction of the cathedral, we had the high good +fortune to witness another ceremony peculiar to it, but perhaps less +popularly acceptable. The building had often suffered from earthquakes, +and on the awful day, _dies irae,_ of the great Lisbon earthquake, +during mass and at the moment of the elevation of the Host, when the +worshipers were on their knees, there came such a mighty shock in +sympathy with the far-off cataclysm that the people started to their +feet and ran out of the cathedral. If the priests ran after them, as +soon as the apparent danger was past they led the return of their flock +and resumed the interrupted rite. It was, of course, by a miracle that +the temple was spared, and when it was realized how scarcely Seville +had escaped the fate of Lisbon it was natural that the event should +be dramatized in a perpetual observance. Every year now, on the 1st of +November, the clergy leave the cathedral at a chosen moment of the mass, +with much more stateliness than in the original event, and lead the +people out of one portal, to return with them by another for the +conclusion of the ceremonial. + +[Illustration: 23 THE CATHEDRAL AND TOWER OF THE GIRALDA] + +We waited long for the climax, but at last we almost missed it through +the overeagerness of the guide I had chosen out of many that petitioned. +He was so politely, so forbearingly insistent in his offer to see that +we were vigilantly cared for, that I must have had a heart harder than +Peter the Cruel’s to have denied him, and he planted us at the most +favorable point for the function in the High Chapel, with instructions +which portal to hurry to when the movement began, and took his peseta +and went his way. Then, while we confidingly waited, he came rushing +back and with a great sweep of his hat wafted us to the door which he +had said the procession would go out by, but which he seemed to have +learned it would come in by, and we were saved from what had almost been +his fatal error. I forgave him the more gladly because I could rejoice +in his returning to repair his error, although he had collected his +money; and with a heart full of pride in his verification of my +theory of the faithful Spanish nature, I gave myself to the shining +gorgeousness of the procession that advanced chanting in the blaze of +the Sevillian sun. There was every rank of clergy, from the archbishop +down, in robes of ceremonial, but I am unable honestly to declare the +admiration for their splendor which I would have willingly felt. The +ages of faith in which those vestments were designed were apparently +not the ages of taste; yet it was the shape of the vestments and not the +color which troubled the eye of unfaith, if not of taste. The archbishop +in crimson silk, with his train borne by two acolytes, the canons in +their purple, the dean in his gold-embroidered robes, and the priests +and choristers in their black robes and white surplices richly satisfied +it; and if some of the clerics were a little frayed and some of the +acolytes were spotted with the droppings of the candles, these were +details which one remembered afterward and that did not matter at the +time. + +When the procession was housed again, we went off and forgot it in the +gardens of the Alcazar. But I must not begin yet on the gardens of the +Alcazar. We went to them every day, as we did to the cathedral, but we +did not see them until our second morning in Seville. We gave what was +left from the first morning in the cathedral to a random exploration of +the streets and places of the city. There was, no doubt, everywhere some +touch of the bravery of our square of San Fernando, where the public +windows were hung with crimson tapestries and brocades in honor of St. +Raphael; but his holiday did not make itself molestively felt in the +city’s business or pleasure. Where we could drive we drove, and where we +must we walked, and we walked of course through the famous Calle de las +Sierpes, because no one drives there. As a rule no woman walks there, +and naturally there were many women walking there, under the eyes of +the popular cafes and aristocratic clubs which principally abound in Las +Sierpes, for it is also the street of the principal shops, though it is +not very long and is narrower than many other streets of Seville. It has +its name from so commonplace an origin as the sign over a tavern door, +with some snakes painted on it; but if the example of sinuosity had been +set it by prehistoric serpents, there were scores of other streets which +have bettered its instruction. There were streets that crooked away +everywhere, not going anywhere, and breaking from time to time into +irregular angular spaces with a church or a convent or a nobleman’s +house looking into them. + + + +VI + + +The noblemen’s houses often showed a severely simple facade to the +square or street, and hid their inner glories with what could have been +fancied a haughty reserve if it had not been for the frankness with +which they opened their _patios_ to the gaze of the stranger, who, when +he did not halt his carriage before them, could enjoy their hospitality +from a sidewalk sometimes eighteen inches wide. The passing tram-car +might grind him against the tall grilles which were the only barriers +to the _patios,_ but otherwise there would be nothing to spoil his +enjoyment of those marble floors and tiled walls and fountains potted +round with flowering plants. In summer he could have seen the family +life there; and people who are of such oriental seclusion otherwise +will sometimes even suffer the admiring traveler to come as well as +look within. But one who would not press their hospitality so far could +reward his forbearance by finding some of the _patios_ too new-looking, +with rather a glare from their tiles and marbles, their painted iron +pillars, and their glass roofs which the rain comes through in the +winter. The ladies sit and sew there, or talk, if they prefer, and +receive their friends, and turn night into day in the fashion of +climates where they are so easily convertible. The _patio_ is the place +of that peculiarly Spanish rite, the _tertulia,_ and the family nightly +meets its next of kin and then its nearer and farther friends there with +that Latin regularity which may also be monotony. One _patio_ is often +much like another, though none was perhaps of so much public interest +as the _patio_ of the lady who loved a bull-fighter and has made her +_patio_ a sort of shrine to him. The famous _espada_ perished in his +heroic calling, no worse if no better than those who saw him die, and +now his bust is in plain view, with a fit inscription recognizing his +worth and prowess, and with the heads of some of the bulls he slew. + +Under that clement sky the elements do not waste the works of man as +elsewhere, and many of the houses of Seville are said to be such as the +Moors built there. We did not know them from the Christian houses; but +there are no longer any mosques, while in our wanderings we had the +pretty constant succession of the convents which, when they are still in +the keeping of their sisterhoods and brotherhoods, remain monuments of +the medieval piety of Spain; or, when they are suppressed and turned to +secular uses, attest the recurrence of her modern moods of revolution +and reform. It is to one of these that Seville owes the stately Alameda +de Hercules, a promenade covering the length and breadth of aforetime +convent gardens, which you reach from the Street of the Serpents by the +Street of the Love of God, and are then startled by the pagan presence +of two mighty columns lifting aloft the figures of Caesar and of the +titular demigod. Statues and pillars are alike antique, and give you a +moment of the Eternal City the more intense because the promenade is of +an unkempt and broken surface, like the Cow-field which the Roman Forum +used to be. Baedeker calls it shady, and I dare say it is shady, but +I do not remember the trees--only those glorious columns climbing the +summer sky of the Andalusian autumn, and proclaiming the imperishable +memory of the republic that conquered and the empire that ruled the +world, and have never loosed their hold upon it. We were rather newly +from the grass-grown ruin of a Roman town in Wales, and in this other +Iberian land we were always meeting the witnesses of the grandeur which +no change short of some universal sea change can wholly sweep from the +earth. Before it Goth and Arab shrink, with all their works, into the +local and provisional; Rome remains for all time imperial and universal. + +[Illustration: 24 ANCIENT ROMAN COLUMNS LIFTING ALOFT THE FIGURES OF HERCULES AND CAESAR] + +To descend from this high-horsed reflection, as I must, I have to record +that there did not seem to be so many small boys in Seville as in the +Castillian capitals we had visited; in the very home of the bull-feast +we did not see one mimic _corrida_ given by the _torreros_ of the +future. Not even in the suburb of Triana, where the small boys again +consolingly superabounded, was the great national game played among +the wheels and hoofs of the dusty streets to which we crossed the +Guadalquivir that afternoon. To be sure, we were so taken with other +things that a boyish bull-feast might have rioted unnoticed under our +horses’ very feet, especially on the long bridge which gives you the far +upward and downward stretch of the river, so simple and quiet and empty +above, so busy and noisy and thronged with shipping below. I suppose +there are lovelier rivers than that--we ourselves are known to brag +of our Pharpar and Abana--but I cannot think of anything more nobly +beautiful than the Guadalquivir resting at peace in her bed, where she +has had so many bad dreams of Carthaginian and Roman and Gothic and Arab +and Norman invasion. Now her waters redden, for the time at least, only +from the scarlet hulls of the tramp steamers lying in long succession +beside the shore where the gardens of the Delicias were waiting to +welcome us that afternoon to our first sight of the pride and fashion of +Seville. I never got enough of the brave color of those tramp steamers; +and in thinking of them as English, Norse, French, and Dutch, fetching +or carrying their cargoes over those war-worn, storied waters, I had +some finer thrills than in dwelling on the Tower of Gold which rose +from the midst of them. It was built in the last century of the Moorish +dominion to mark the last point to which the gardens of the Moorish +palace of the Alcazar could stretch, but they were long ago obliterated +behind it; and though it was so recent, no doubt it would have had its +pathos if I could ever have felt pity for the downfall of the Moslem +power in Spain. As it was, I found the tramp steamers more moving, and +it was these that my eye preferably sought whenever I crossed the Triana +bridge. + + + +VII + + +We were often crossing it on one errand or other, but now we were +especially going to see the gipsy quarter of Seville, which disputes +with that of Granada the infamy of the loathsomest purlieu imaginable. +Perhaps because it was so very loathsome, I would not afterward visit +the gipsy quarter in Granada, and if such a thing were possible I would +willingly unvisit the gipsy quarter of Seville. All Triana is pretty +squalid, though it has merits and charms to which I will try eventually +to be just, and I must even now advise the reader to visit the tile +potteries there. If he has our good-fortune he may see in the manager of +one a type of that fusion of races with which Spain long so cruelly +and vainly struggled after the fall of the last Moorish kingdom. He was +beautifully lean and clean of limb, and of a grave gentleness of manner; +his classically regular face was as swarthy as the darkest mulatto’s, +but his quiet eyes were gray. I carried the sense of his fine decency +with me when we drove away from his warerooms, and suddenly whirled +round the corner of the street into the gipsy quarter, and made it my +prophylactic against the human noisomeness which instantly beset our +course. Let no Romany Rye romancing Barrow, or other fond fibbing +sentimentalist, ever pretend to me hereafter that those persistent +savages have even the ridiculous claim of the North American Indians to +the interest of the civilized man, except as something to be morally and +physically scoured and washed up, and drained and fumigated, and treated +with insecticides and put away in mothballs. Our own settled order +of things is not agreeable at all points; it reeks and it smells, +especially in Spain, when you get down to its lower levels; but it does +not assail the senses with such rank offense as smites them in the gipsy +quarter with sights and sounds and odors which to eye and ear, as well +as nose, were all stenches. + +Low huts lined the street, which swarmed at our coming with ragged +children running beside us and after us and screaming, “Minny, niooney, +_ money!”_ in a climax of what they wanted. Men leaned against the +door-posts and stared motionless, and hags, lean and fat, sat on the +thresholds and wished to tell our fortunes; younger women ranged the +sidewalks and offered to dance. They all had flowers in their hair, and +some were of a horrible beauty, especially one in a green waist, with +both white and red flowers in her dusky locks. Down the middle of the +road a troop of children, some blond, but mostly black, tormented +a hapless ass colt; and we hurried away as fast as our guide could +persuade our cabman to drive. But the gipsy quarter had another street +in reserve which made us sorry to have left the first. It paralleled +the river, and into the center of it every manner of offal had been cast +from the beginning of time to reek and fester and juicily ripen and rot +in unspeakable corruption. It was such a thoroughfare as Dante might +have imagined in his Hell, if people in his time had minded such +horrors; but as it was we could only realize that it was worse than +infernal, it was medieval, and that we were driving in such putrid +foulness as the gilded carriages of kings and queens and the prancing +steeds and palfreys of knights and ladies found their way through +whenever they went abroad in the picturesque and romantic Middle Ages. I +scarcely remember now how we got away and down to the decent waterside, +and then by the helpful bridge to the other shore of the Guadalquivir, +painted red with the reflections of those consoling tramp steamers. + +After that abhorrent home of indolence, which its children never left +except to do a little fortune-telling and mule and donkey trading, eked +out with theft in the country round, any show of honest industry looked +wholesome and kind. I rejoiced almost as much in the machinery as in the +men who were loading the steamers; even the huge casks of olives, which +were working from the salt-water poured into them and frothing at the +bung in great white sponges of spume, might have been examples of toil +by which those noisome vagabonds could well have profited. But now we +had come to see another sort of leisure--the famous leisure of fortune +and fashion driving in the Delicias, but perhaps never quite fulfilling +the traveler’s fond ideal of it. We came many times to the Delicias +in hope of it, with decreasing disappointment, indeed, but to the last +without entire fruition. For our first visit we could not have had a +fitter evening, with its pale sky reddening from a streak of sunset +beyond Triana, and we arrived in appropriate circumstance, round the +immense circle of the bull-ring and past the palace which the Duc de +Montpensier has given the church for a theological seminary, with long +stretches of beautiful gardens. Then we were in the famous Paseo, a +drive with footways on each side, and on one side dusky groves widening +to the river. The paths were lit with gleaming statues, and among +the palms and the eucalyptuses were orange trees full of their golden +globes, which we wondered were not stolen till we were told they were of +that bitter sort which are mostly sent to Scotland, not because they +are in accord with the acrid nature of man there, but that they may be +wrought into marmalade. On the other hand stretched less formal woods, +with fields for such polite athletics as tennis, which the example of +the beloved young English Queen of Spain is bringing into reluctant +favor with women immemorially accustomed to immobility. The road was +badly kept, like most things in Spain, where when a thing is done it is +expected to stay done. Every afternoon it is a cloud of dust and every +evening a welter of mud, for the Iberian idea of watering a street is to +soak it into a slough. But nothing can spoil the Paseo, and that evening +we had it mostly to ourselves, though there were two or three carriages +with ladies in hats, and at one place other ladies dismounted and +courageously walking, while their carriages followed. A magnate of some +sort was shut alone in a brougham, in the care of footman and coachman +with deeply silver-banded hats; there were a few military and civil +riders, and there was distinctly a young man in a dog-cart with a groom, +keeping abreast the landau of three ladies in mantillas, with whom he +was improving what seemed a chance acquaintance. Along the course the +public park gave way at times to the grounds of private villas; before +one of these a boy did what he could for us by playing ball with a +priest. At other points there were booths with chairs and tables, where +I am sure interesting parties of people would have been sitting if they +could have expected us to pass. + + + +VIII + + +The reader, pampered by the brilliant excitements of our American +promenades, may think this spectacle of the gay world of Seville dull; +but he ought to have been with us a colder, redder, and sadder evening +when we had the Delicias still more to ourselves. Afterward the Delicias +seemed to cheer up, and the place was fairly frequented on a holiday, +which we had not suspected was one till our cabman convinced us from his +tariff that we must pay him double, because you must always do that in +Seville on holidays. By this time we knew that most of the Sevillian +rank and riches had gone to Madrid for the winter, and we were the more +surprised by some evident show of them in the private turnouts where +by far most of the turnouts were public. But in Spain a carriage is a +carriage, and the Sevillian cabs are really very proper and sometimes +even handsome, and we felt that our own did no discredit to the +Delicias. Many of the holiday-makers were walking, and there were +actually women on foot in hats and hobble-skirts without being openly +mocked. On the evening of our last resort to the Delicias it was quite +thronged far into the twilight, after a lemon sunset that continued to +tinge the east with pink and violet. There were hundreds of carriages, +fully half of them private, with coachmen and footmen in livery. With +them it seemed to be the rule to stop in the circle at a turning-point a +mile off and watch the going and coming. It was a serious spectacle, +but not solemn, and it had its reliefs, its high-lights. It was always +pleasant to see three Spanish ladies on a carriage seat, the middle one +protruding because of their common bulk, and oftener in umbrella-wide +hats with towering plumes than in the charming mantilla. There were no +top-hats or other formality in the men’s dress; some of them were on +horseback, and there were two women riding. + +Suddenly, as if it had come up out of the ground, I perceived a tram-car +keeping abreast of the riding and walking and driving, and through all I +was agreeably aware of files of peasants bestriding their homing donkeys +on the bridle-path next the tram. I confess that they interested me more +than my social equals and superiors; I should have liked to talk with +those fathers and mothers of toil, bestriding or perched on the cruppers +of their donkeys, and I should have liked especially to know what passed +in the mind of one dear little girl who sat before her father with her +bare brown legs tucked into the pockets of the pannier. + + + + +X. SEVILLIAN ASPECTS AND INCIDENTS + + +It is always a question how much or little we had better know about +the history of a strange country when seeing it. If the great mass of +travelers voted according to their ignorance, the majority in favor of +knowing next to nothing would be overwhelming, and I do not say they +would be altogether unwise. History itself is often of two minds about +the facts, or the truth from them, and when you have stored away +its diverse conclusions, and you begin to apply them to the actual +conditions, you are constantly embarrassed by the misfits. What did it +avail me to believe that when the Goths overran the north of Spain the +Vandals overran the south, and when they swept on into Africa and melted +away in the hot sun there as a distinctive race, they left nothing but +the name Vandalusia, a letter less, behind them? If the Vandals +were what they are reported to have been, the name does not at all +characterize the liveliest province of Spain. Besides, the very next +history told me that they took even their name with them, and forbade me +the simple and apt etymology which I had pinned my indolent faith to. + + + +I + + +Before I left Seville I convinced a principal bookseller, much against +his opinions, that there must be some such brief local history of the +city as I was fond of finding in Italian towns, and I took it from +his own reluctant shelf. It was a very intelligent little guide, this +_Seville in the Hand,_ as it calls itself, but I got it too late for +use in exploring the city, and now I can turn to it only for those +directions which will keep the reader from losing his way in the devious +past. The author rejects the fable which the chroniclers delight in, +and holds with historians who accept the Phoenicians as the sufficiently +remote founders of Seville. This does not put out of commission those +Biblical “ships of Tarshish” which Dr. Edward Everett Hale, in +his graphic sketch of Spanish history, has sailing to and from the +neighboring coasts. Very likely they came up the Guadalquivir, and lay +in the stream where a few thousand years later I saw those cheerful +tramp-steamers lying. At any rate, the Phoenicians greatly flourished +there, and gave their colony the name of Hispalis, which it remained +content with till the Romans came and called the town Julia Romula, +and Julius Caesar fenced it with the strong walls which the Moorish +conquerors, after the Goths, reinforced and have left plain to be seen +at this day. The most casual of wayfaring men must have read as he ran +that the Moorish power fell before the sword of San Fernando as the +Gothic fell before their own, and the Roman before the Gothic. But it +is more difficult to realize that earlier than the Gothic, somewhere in +between the Vandals and the Romans, had been the Carthaginians, whose +great general Hamilcar fancied turning all Spain into a Carthaginian +province. They were a branch of the Phoenicians as even the older, +unadvertised edition of the _Encyclopedia Britannica_ will tell, and the +Phoenicians were a sort of Hebrews. Whether they remained to flourish +with the other Jews under the Moors, my _Sevilla en la Mano_ does not +say; and I am not sure whether they survived to share the universal +exile into which Islam and Israel were finally driven. What is certain +is, that the old Phoenician name of Hispalis outlived the Roman name of +Julia Romula and reappeared in the Arabic as Ishbiliya (I know it from +my Baedeker) and is now permanently established as Seville. + +Under the Moors the city was subordinate to Cordova, though I can hardly +bear to think so in my far greater love of Seville. But it was the seat +of schools of science, art, and agriculture, and after the Christians +had got it back, Alfonso the Learned founded other schools there for the +study of Latin and Arabic. But her greatest prosperity and glory came +to Seville with the discovery of America. Not Columbus only, but all his +most famous contemporaries, sailed from the ports of her coasts; she was +the capital of the commerce with the new world, ruling and regulating it +by the oldest mercantile tribunal in the world, and becoming the richest +city of Spain. Then riches flowered in the letters and arts, especially +the arts, and Herrera, Pacheco, Velasquez, Murillo, and Zurburan +were born and flourished in Seville. In modern times she has taken a +prominent part in political events. She led in the patriotic war to +drive out the armies of Napoleon, and she seems to have been on both +sides in the struggle for liberal and absolutist principles, the +establishment of the brief republic of 1868, and the restoration of the +present monarchy. + +Through all the many changes from better to Worse, from richer to +poorer, Seville continued faithful to the ideal of religious unity which +the wise Isabel and the shrewd Ferdinand divined was the only means of +consolidating the intensely provincial kingdoms of Spain into one nation +of Spaniards. Andalusia not being Gothic had never been Aryan, and +it was one of her kings who carried his orthodoxy to Castile and +established it inexpugnably at Toledo after he succeeded his heretical +father there. When four or five hundred years later it became a +political necessity of the Catholic Kings to expel their Jewish and +Moorish subjects and convert their wealth to pious and patriotic uses, +Andalusia was one of the most zealous provinces in the cause. When +presently the inquisitions of the Holy Office began, some five hundred +heretics were burned alive at Seville before the year was out; many +others, who were dead and buried, paid the penalty of their heresy +in effigy; in all more than two thousand suffered in the region round +about. Before he was in Valladolid, Torquemada was in Seville, and there +he drew up the rules that governed the procedure of the Inquisition +throughout Spain. A magnificent _quemadero,_ or crematory, second only +to that of Madrid, was built: a square stone platform where almost every +day the smoke of human sacrifice ascended. This crematory for the living +was in the meadow of San Sebastian, now a part of the city park system +which we left on the right that first evening when we drove to the +Delicias. I do not know why I should now regret not having visited the +place of this dreadful altar and offered my unavailing pity there to +the memory of those scores of thousands of hapless martyrs who suffered +there to no end, not even to the end of confirming Spain in the faith +one and indivisible, for there are now, after so many generations of +torment, two Protestant churches in Seville. For one thing I did not +know where the place of the _quemadero_ was; and I do not yet know where +those Protestant churches are. + + + +II + +[Illustration: 25 GARDENS OF THE ALCAZAR] + +If I went again to Seville I should try to visit them--but, as it was, +we gave our second day to the Alcazar, which is merely the first in +the series of palaces and gardens once stretching from the flank of +the cathedral to the Tower of Gold beside the Guadalquivir. A rich +sufficiency is left in the actual Alcazar to suggest the splendor of the +series, and more than enough in the gardens to invite our fatigue, day +after day, to the sun and shade of its quiet paths and seats when we +came spent with the glories and the bustling piety of the cathedral. In +our first visit we had the guidance of a patriotic young Granadan whose +zeal for the Alhambra would not admit the Alcazar to any comparison, +but I myself still prefer it after seeing the Alhambra. It is as purely +Moorish as that and it is in better repair if not better taste. The +taste in fact is the same, and the Castilian kings consulted it as +eagerly as their Arabic predecessors in the talent of the Moslem +architects whom they had not yet begun to drive into exile. I am not +going to set up rival to the colored picture postals, which give +a better notion than I could give of the painted and gilded stucco +decoration, the ingenious geometrical designs on the walls, and the +cloying sweetness of the honeycombing in the vaulted roofs. Every one +will have his feeling about Moorish architecture; mine is that a little +goes a great way, and that it is too monotonous to compete with the +Gothic in variety, while it lacks the dignity of any form of the Greek +or the Renaissance. If the phrase did not insult the sex which the faith +of the Moslem insufferably insults, one might sum up one’s slight for it +in the word effeminate. + +The Alcazar gardens are the best of the Alcazar. But I would not ignore +the homelike charm of the vast court by which you enter from the street +outside to the palace beyond. It is planted casually about with rather +shabby orange trees that children were playing under, and was decorated +with the week’s wash of the low, simple dwellings which may be hired +at a rental moderate even for Seville, where a handsome and commodious +house in a good quarter rents for sixty dollars a year. One of those +two-story cottages, as we should call them, in the ante-court of the +Alcazar had for the student of Spanish life the special advantage of +a lover close to a ground-floor window dropping tender nothings down +through the slats of the shutter to some maiden lurking within. The +nothings were so tender that you could not hear them drop, and, besides, +they were Spanish nothings, and it would not have served any purpose +for the stranger to listen for them. Once afterward we saw the national +courtship going on at another casement, but that was at night, and +here the precious first sight of it was offered at ten o’clock in the +morning. Nobody seemed to mind the lover stationed outside the shutter +with which the iron bars forbade him the closest contact; and it is +only fair to say that he minded nobody; he was there when we went in +and there when we came out, and it appears that when it is a question +of love-making time is no more an object in Spain than in the United +States. The scene would have been better by moonlight, but you cannot +always have it moonlight, and the sun did very well; at least, the lover +did not seem to miss the moon. + +He was only an incident, and I hope the most romantic reader will let me +revert from him to the Alcazar gardens. We were always reverting to them +on any pretext or occasion, and we mostly had them to ourselves in the +gentle afternoons when we strayed or sat about at will in them. The +first day we were somewhat molested by the instruction of our patriotic +Granadan guide, who had a whopper-jaw and grayish blue eyes, but +coal-black hair for all his other blondness. He smoked incessant +cigarettes, and he showed us especially the pavilion of Charles the +Fifth, whom, after that use of all English-speaking Spanish guides, +he called Charley Fift. It appeared that the great emperor used this +pavilion for purposes of meditation; but he could not always have +meditated there, though the frame of a brazier standing in the center +intimated that it was tempered for reflection. The first day we found +a small bird in possession, flying from one bit of the carved wooden +ceiling to another, and then, taking our presence in dudgeon, out into +the sun. Another day there was a nursery-girl there with a baby that +cried; on another, still more distractingly, a fashionable young +French bride who went kodaking round while her husband talked with an +archaeological official, evidently Spanish. In his own time, Charley +probably had the place more to himself, though even then his thoughts +could not have been altogether cheerful, whether he recalled what he had +vainly done to keep out of Spain and yet to take the worst of Spain with +him into the Netherlands, where he tried to plant the Inquisition among +his Flemings; he was already much soured with a world that had cloyed +him, and was perhaps considering even then how he might make his escape +from it to the cloister. + + + +III + + +We did not know as yet how almost entirely dramatic the palace of the +Alcazar was, how largely it was representative of what the Spanish +successors of the Moorish kings thought those kings would have made it +if they had made it; and it was probably through an instinct for the +genuine that we preferred the gardens after our first cries of wonder. +What remains to me of our many visits is the mass of high borders of +box, with roses, jasmine, and orange trees, palms, and cypresses. The +fountains dribbled rather than gushed, and everywhere were ranks and +rows of plants in large, high earthen pots beside or upon the tiled +benching that faced the fountains and would have been easier to sit on +if you had not had to supply the back yourself. The flowers were not in +great profusion, and chiefly we rejoiced in the familiar quaintness of +clumps of massive blood-red coxcombs and strange yellow ones. The walks +were bordered with box, and there remains distinctly the impression +of marble steps and mosaic seats inlaid with tiles; all Seville seems +inlaid with tiles. One afternoon we lingered longer than usual because +the day was so sunnily warm in the garden paths and spaces, without +being hot. A gardener whom we saw oftenest hung about his flowers in a +sort of vegetable calm, and not very different from theirs except that +they were not smoking cigarettes. He did not move a muscle or falter in +his apparently unseeing gaze; but when one of us picked a seed from the +ground and wondered what it was he said it was a magnolia seed, and as +if he could bear no more went away. In one wilding place which seemed +set apart for a nursery several men were idly working with many pauses, +but not so many as to make the spectator nervous. As the afternoon waned +and the sun sank, its level rays dwelt on the galleries of the palace +which Peter the Cruel built himself and made so ugly with harsh brown +stucco ornament that it set your teeth on edge, and with gigantic +frescos exaggerated from the Italian, and very coarse and rank. + +It was this savage prince who invented much of the Alcazar in the soft +Moorish taste; but in those hideous galleries he let his terrible nature +loose, though as for that some say he was no crueler than certain other +Spanish kings of that period. This is the notion of my unadvertised +_Encyclopaedia Britannica,_ and perhaps we ought to think of him +leniently as Peter the Ferocious. He was kind to some people and was +popularly known as the Justiciary; he especially liked the Moors and +Jews, who were gratefully glad, poor things, of being liked by any one +under the new Christian rule. But he certainly killed several of his +half-brothers, and notably he killed his half-brother Don Fadrique in +the Alcazar. That is, if he had no hand in the butchery himself he had +him killed after luring him to Seville for the tournaments and forgiving +him for all their mutual injuries with every caressing circumstance. One +reads that after the king has kissed him he sits down again to his +game of backgammon and Don Fadrique goes into the next room to Maria do +Padilla, the lovely and gentle lady whom Don Pedro has married as much +as he can with a wedded wife shut up in Toledo. She sits there in terror +with her damsels and tries with looks and signs to make Don Fadrique +aware of his danger. But he imagines no harm till the king and his +companions, with their daggers drawn, come to the curtains, which the +king parts, commanding, “Seize the Master of Santiago!” Don Fadrique +tries to draw his sword, and then he turns and flies through the halls +of the Alcazar, where he finds every door bolted and barred. The king’s +men are at his heels, and at last one of them fells him with a blow of +his mace. The king goes back with a face of sympathy to Maria, who has +fallen to the floor. + +The treacherous keeping is all rather in the taste of the Italian +Renaissance, but the murder itself is more Roman, as the Spanish +atrocities and amusements are apt to be. Murray says it was in the +beautiful Hall of the Ambassadors that Don Fadrique was killed, but +the other manuals are not so specific. Wherever it was, there is a +blood-stain in the pavement which our Granadan guide failed to show us, +possibly from a patriotic pique that there are no blood-stains in the +Alhambra with personal associations. I cannot say that much is to be +made of the vaulted tunnel where poor Maria de Padilla used to bathe, +probably not much comforted by the courtiers afterward drinking the +water from the tank; she must have thought the compliment rather nasty, +and no doubt it was paid her to please Don Pedro. + +We found it pleasanter going and coming through the corridor leading to +the gardens from the public court. This was kept at the outer end by an +“old rancid Christian” smoking incessant cigarettes and not explicitly +refusing to sell us picture postals after taking our entrance fee; the +other end was held by a young, blond, sickly-looking girl, who made us +take small nosegays at our own price and whom it became a game to see if +we could escape. I have left saying to the last that the king and queen +of Spain have a residence in the Alcazar, and that when they come in +the early spring they do not mind corning to it through that plebeian +quadrangle. I should not mind it myself if I could go back there next +spring. + + + +IV + + +We had refused with loathing the offer of those gipsy jades to dance for +us in their noisome purlieu at Triana, but we were not proof against +the chance of seeing some gipsy dancing in a cafe-theater one night in +Seville. The decent place was filled with the “plain people,” who sat +with their hats on at rude tables smoking and drinking coffee from tall +glasses. They were apparently nearly all working-men who had left nearly +all their wives to keep on working at home, though a few of these +also had come. On a small stage four gipsy girls, in unfashionably and +untheatrically decent gowns of white, blue, or red, with flowers in +their hair, sat in a semicircle with one subtle, silent, darkling man +among them. One after another they got up and did the same twisting and +posturing, without dancing, and while one posed and contorted the rest +unenviously joined the spectators in their clapping and their hoarse +cries of “Ole!” It was all perfectly proper except for one high moment +of indecency thrown in at the end of each turn, as if to give the house +its money’s worth. But the real, overflowing compensation came when that +little, lithe, hipless man in black jumped to his feet and stormed the +audience with a dance of hands and arms, feet and legs, head, neck, +and the whole body, which Mordkin in his finest frenzy could not have +equaled or approached. Whatever was fiercest and wildest in nature +and boldest in art was there, and now the house went mad with its +hand-clappings and table-hammerings and deep-throated “Oles!” + +Another night we went to the academy of the world-renowned Otero and +saw the instruction of Sevillian youth in native dances of the _haute +ecole._ The academy used to be free to a select public, but now the +chosen, who are nearly always people from the hotels, must pay ten +pesetas each for their pleasure, and it is not too much for a pleasure +so innocent and charming. The academy is on the ground floor of the +_maestro’s_ unpretentious house, and in a waiting-room beyond the +shoemaker’s shop which filled the vestibule sat, patient in their black +mantillas, the mothers and nurses of the pupils. These were mostly quite +small children in their every-day clothes, but there were two or three +older girls in the conventional dancing costume which a lady from one of +the hotels had emulated. Everything was very simple and friendly; Otero +found good seats among the _aficionados_ for the guests presented to +him, and then began calling his pupils to the floor of the long, narrow +room with quick commands of “_Venga_!” A piano was tucked away in a +corner, but the dancers kept time now with castanets and now by snapping +their fingers. Two of the oldest girls, who were apparently graduates, +were “differently beautiful” in their darkness and fairness, but +alike picturesquely Spanish in their vivid dresses and the black veils +fluttering from their high combs. A youth in green velvet jacket and +orange trousers, whose wonderful dancing did him credit as Otero’s prize +pupil, took part with them; he had the square-jawed, high-cheek-boned +face of the lower-class Spaniard, and they the oval of all Spanish +women. Here there was no mere posturing and contortioning among the +girls as with the gipsies; they sprang like flames and stamped the floor +with joyous detonations of their slippers. It was their convention to +catch the hat from the head of some young spectator and wear it in a +figure and then toss it back to him. One of them enacted the part of a +_torero_ at a bull-fight, stamping round first in a green satin cloak +which she then waved before a man’s felt hat thrown on the ground to +represent the bull hemmed about with _banderillas_ stuck quivering into +the floor. But the prettiest thing was the dancing of two little girl +pupils, one fair and thin and of an angelic gracefulness, and the other +plump and dark, who was as dramatic as the blond was lyrical. They +accompanied themselves with castanets, and, though the little fatling +toed in and wore a common dress of blue-striped gingham, I am afraid she +won our hearts from her graceful rival. Both were very serious and +gave their whole souls to the dance, but they were not more childishly +earnest than an older girl in black who danced with one of the gaudy +graduates, panting in her anxious zeal and stopping at last with her +image of the Virgin she resembled flung wildly down her back from the +place where it had hung over her heart. + + + +V + + +We preferred walking home from Senor Otero’s house through the bright, +quiescing street, because in driving there we had met with an adventure +which we did not care to repeat. We were driving most unaggressively +across a small plaza, with a driver and a friend on the box beside him +to help keep us from harm, when a trolley-car came wildly round a corner +at the speed of at least two miles an hour and crossed our track. Our +own speed was such that we could not help striking the trolley in a +collision which was the fault of no one apparently. The front of the +car was severely banged, one mud-guard of our victoria was bent, and +our conversation was interrupted. Immediately a crowd assembled from the +earth or the air, but after a single exchange of reproaches between +the two drivers nothing was said by any one. No policeman arrived to +_constater_ the facts, and after the crowd had silently satisfied or +dissatisfied itself that no one was hurt it silently dispersed. The car +ambled grumbling off and we drove on with some vague murmurs from our +driver, whose nerves seemed shaken, but who was supported in a somewhat +lurching and devious progress by the caressing arm of the friend on the +seat beside him. + +All this was in Seville, where the popular emotions are painted in +travel and romance as volcanic as at Naples, where no one would have +slept the night of our accident and the spectators would be debating it +still. In our own surprise and alarm we partook of the taciturnity of +the witnesses, which I think was rather fine and was much decenter than +any sort of utterance. On our way home we had occasion to practise a +like forbearance toward the lover whom we passed as he stood courting +through the casement of a ground floor. The soft air was full of the +sweet of jasmine and orange blossoms from the open _patios._ Many people +besides ourselves were passing, but in a well-bred avoidance of the dark +figure pressed to the grating and scarcely more recognizable than the +invisible figure within. I confess I thought it charming, and if at some +period of their lives people must make love I do not believe there is a +more inoffensive way of doing it. + +By the sort of echo notable in life’s experience we had a reverberation +of the orange-flower perfume of that night in the orange-flower honey at +breakfast next morning. We lived to learn that our own bees gather +the same honey from the orange flowers of Florida; but at the time we +believed that only the bees of Seville did it, and I still doubt whether +anywhere in America the morning wakes to anything like the long, rich, +sad calls of the Sevillian street hucksters. It is true that you do not +get this plaintive music without the accompanying note of the hucksters’ +donkeys, which, if they were better advised, would not close with the +sort of inefficient sifflication which they now use in spoiling an +otherwise most noble, most leonine roar. But when were donkeys of any +sort ever well advised in all respects? Those of Seville, where donkeys +abound, were otherwise of the superior intelligence which throughout +Spain leaves the horse and even the mule far behind, and constitutes the +donkeys, far beyond the idle and useless dogs, the friends of man. They +indefinitely outnumber the dogs, and the cats are of course nowhere +in the count. Yet I would not misprize the cats of Seville, which +apparently have their money price. We stopped to admire a beautiful +white one, on our way to see the market one day, praising it as +intelligibly as we could, and the owner caught it up, when we had passed +and ran after us, and offered to sell it to us. + +That might have been because it was near the market where we experienced +almost the only mercantile zeal we had known in Spain. Women with ropes +and garlands of onions round their necks invited us to buy, and we had +hopeful advances from the stalls of salads and fruits, where there was +a brave and beautiful show of lettuces and endives, grapes, medlars, and +heaps of melons, but no oranges; I do not know why, though there were +shining masses of red peppers and green, peppers, and vast earthen bowls +with yellow peas soaking in them. The flowers were every gay autumnal +sort, especially dahlias, sometimes made into stiff bouquets, perhaps +for church offerings. There were mounds of chestnuts, four or five feet +high and wide; and these flowers and fruits filled the interior of the +market, while the stalls for the flesh and fish were on the outside. +There seemed more sellers than buyers; here and there were ladies +buying, but it is said that the mistresses commonly send their maids for +the daily provision. + +Ordinarily I should say you could not go amiss for your profit and +pleasure in Seville, but there are certain imperative objects of +interest like the Casa de Pilatos which you really have to do. Strangely +enough, it is very well worth doing, for, though it is even more +factitiously Moorish than the Alcazar, it is of almost as great beauty +and of greater dignity. Gardens, galleries, staircases, statues, +paintings, all are interesting, with a mingled air of care and neglect +which is peculiarly charming, though perhaps the keener sensibilities, +the morbider nerves may suffer from the glare and hardness of the tiling +which render the place so wonderful and so exquisite. One must complain +of something, and I complain of the tiling; I do not mind the house +being supposed like the house of Pontius Pilate in Jerusalem. + +It belongs to the Duke of Medina-Celi, who no more comes to it from +Madrid than the Duke of Alva comes to his house, which I somehow +perversely preferred. For one thing, the Alva palace has eleven +_patios,_ all far more forgotten than the four in the House of Pilate, +and I could fully glut my love of _patios_ without seeing half of them. +Besides, it was in the charge of a typical Spanish family: a lean, +leathery, sallow father, a fat, immovable mother, and a tall, silent +daughter. The girl showed us darkly about the dreary place, with its +fountains and orange trees and palms, its damp, Moresque, moldy +walls, its damp, moldy, beautiful wooden ceilings, and its damp, moldy +staircase leading to the family rooms overhead, which we could not see. +The family stays for a little time only in the spring and fall, but if +ever they stay so late as we had come the sunlight lying so soft and +warm in the _patio_ and the garden out of it must have made them as +sorry to leave it as we were. + +I am not sure but I valued the House of Alva somewhat for the chance my +visit to it gave me of seeing a Sevillian tenement-house such as I had +hoped I might see. One hears that such houses are very scrupulously +kept by the janitors who compel the tenants to a cleanliness not perhaps +always their nature. At any rate, this one, just across the way from +the Alva House, was of a surprising neatness. It was built three stories +high, with galleries looking into an open court and doors giving from +these into the several tenements. As fortune, which does not continually +smile on travel, would have it that morning, two ladies of the house +were having a vivid difference of opinion on an upper gallery. Or at +least one was, for the other remained almost as silent as the spectators +who grouped themselves about her or put their heads out of the windows +to see, as well as hear, what it was about. I wish I knew and I would +tell the reader. The injured party, and I am sure she must have been +deeply injured, showered her enemy with reproaches, and each time when +she had emptied the vials of her wrath with much shaking of her hands in +the wrong-doer’s face she went away a few yards and filled them up again +and then returned for a fresh discharge. It was perfectly like a scene +of Goldoni and like many a passage of real life in his native city, and +I was rapt in it across fifty years to the Venice I used to know. But +the difference in Seville was that there was actively only one combatant +in the strife, and the witnesses took no more part in it than the +passive resistant. + + + +VI + + +As a contrast to this violent scene which was not so wholly violent +but that it was relieved by a boy teasing a cat with his cap in the +foreground, and the sweet singing of canaries in the windows of the +houses near, I may commend the Casa de los Venerables, ecclesiastics +somehow related to the cathedral and having their tranquil dwelling not +far from it. The street we took from the Duke of Alva’s palace was so +narrow and crooked that we scraped the walls in passing, and we should +never have got by one heavily laden donkey if he had not politely pushed +the side of his pannier into a doorway to make room for us. When we did +get to the Casa de los Venerables we found it mildly yellow-washed and +as beautifully serene and sweet as the house of venerable men should be. +Its distinction in a world of _patios_ was a _patio_ where the central +fountain was sunk half a story below the entrance floor, and encircled +by a stairway by which the humble neighbor folk freely descended to fill +their water jars. I suppose that gentle mansion has other merits, but +the fine staircase that ended under a baroque dome left us facing a +bolted door, so that we had to guess at those attractions, which I leave +the reader to imagine in turn. + +I have kept the unique wonder of Seville waiting too long already for +my recognition, though in its eight hundred years it should have learned +patience enough for worse things. From its great antiquity alone, if +from nothing else, it is plain that the Giralda at Seville could not +have been studied from the tower of the Madison Square Garden in New +York, which the American will recall when he sees it. If the case must +be reversed and we must allow that the Madison Square tower was studied +from the Giralda, we must still recognize that it is no servile copy, +but in its frank imitation has a grace and beauty which achieves +originality. Still, the Giralda is always the Giralda, and, though there +had been no Saint-Gaudens to tip its summit with such a flying-footed +nymph as poises on our own tower, the figure of Faith which crowns it is +at least a good weather-vane, and from its office of turning gives the +mighty bell-tower its name. Long centuries before the tower was a belfry +it served the mosque, which the cathedral now replaces, as a minaret +for the muezzin to call the faithful to prayer, but it was then only +two-thirds as high. The Christian belfry which continues it is not in +offensive discord with the structure below; its other difference in form +and spirit achieves an impossible harmony. The Giralda, however, chiefly +works its enchantment by its color, but here I must leave the proof of +this to the picture postal which now everywhere takes the bread out +of the word-painter’s mouth. The time was when with a palette full +of tinted adjectives one might hope to do an unrivaled picture of the +Giralda; but that time is gone; and if the reader has not a colored +postal by him he should lose no time in going to Seville and seeing the +original. For the best view of it I must advise a certain beautifully +irregular small court in the neighborhood, with simple houses so low +that you can easily look up over their roofs and see the mighty bells of +the Giralda rioting far aloof, flinging themselves beyond the openings +of the belfry and deafeningly making believe to leap out into space. If +the traveler fails to find this court (for it seems now and then to be +taken in and put away), he need not despair of seeing the Giralda fitly. +He cannot see Seville at all without seeing it, and from every point, +far or near, he sees it grand and glorious. + +[Illustration: 26 THE COURT OF FLAGS AND TOWER OF THE GIRALDA] + +I remember it especially from beyond the Guadalquivir in the drive +we took through Triana to the village of Italica, where three Roman +emperors were born, as the guide-books will officiously hasten to tell, +and steal away your chance of treating your reader with any effect +of learned research. These emperors (I will not be stopped by any +guide-book from saying) were Trajan, Hadrian, and Theodosius; and Triana +is named for the first of them. Fortunately, we turned to the right +after crossing the bridge and so escaped the gipsy quarter, but we +paused through a long street so swarming with children that we wondered +to hear whole schoolrooms full of them humming and droning their lessons +as we made our way among the tenants. Fortunately, they played mostly in +the gutters, the larger looking after the smaller when their years +and riches were so few more, with that beautiful care which childhood +bestows on babyhood everywhere in Europe. To say that those Spanish +children were as tenderly watchful of these Spanish babies as English +children is to say everything. Now and then a mother cared for a babe as +only a mother can in an office which the pictures and images of the Most +Holy Virgin consecrate and endear in lands where the sterilized bottle +is unknown, but oftenest it was a little sister that held it in her arms +and crooned whatever was the Spanish of-- + + Rack back, baby, daddy shot a b’ar; + Rack back, baby, see it hangin’ thar. + +For there are no rocking-chairs in Triana, as there were none in our +backwoods, and the little maids tilted to and fro on the fore legs and +hind legs of their chairs and lulled their charges to sleep with seismic +joltings. When the street turned into a road it turned into a road a +hundred feet wide; one of those roads which Charles III., when he came +to the Spanish throne from Naples, full of beneficent projects and +ideals, bestowed upon his unwilling and ungrateful subjects. These roads +were made about the middle of the eighteenth century, and they have been +gathering dust ever since, so that the white powder now lies in the +one beyond Triana five or six inches deep. Along the sides occasional +shade-trees stifled, and beyond these gaunt, verdureless fields widened +away, though we were told that in the spring the fields were red with +flowers and green with young wheat. There were no market-gardens, +and the chief crop seemed brown pigs and black goats. In some of the +foregrounds, as well as the backgrounds, were olive orchards with +olives heaped under them and peasants still resting from their midday +breakfast. A mauve bell-shaped flower plentifully fringed the wayside; +our driver said it had no name, and later an old peasant said it was +“bad.” + + + +VII + + +We passed a convent turned into a prosperous-looking manufactory and we +met a troop of merry priests talking gayly and laughing together, and +very effective in their black robes against the white road. When we came +to the village that was a _municipium_ under Augustus and a _colonia_ +under Hadrian, we found it indeed scanty and poor, but very neat and +self-respectful-looking, and not unworthy to have been founded by Scipio +Africanus two hundred years before Christ. Such cottage interiors as +we glimpsed seemed cleaner and cozier than some in Wales; men in wide +flat-brimmed hats sat like statues at the doors, absolutely motionless, +but there were women bustling in and out in their work, and at one place +a little girl of ten had been left to do the family wash, and was doing +it joyously and spreading the clothes in the dooryard to dry. We did not +meet with universal favor as we drove by; some groups of girls mocked +our driver; when we said one of them was pretty he answered that he had +seen prettier. + +At the entrance to the ruins of the amphitheater which forms the +tourist’s chief excuse for visiting Italica the popular manners softened +toward us; the village children offered to sell us wild narcissus +flowers and were even willing to take money in charity. They followed us +into the ruins, much forbidden by the fine, toothless old custodian +who took possession of us as his proper prey and led us through +the moldering caverns and crumbling tiers of seats which form the +amphitheater. Vast blocks, vast hunks, of the masonry are broken off +from the mass and lie detached, but the mass keeps the form and dignity +of the original design; and in the lonely fields there it had something +august and proud beyond any quality of the Arena at Verona or the +Colosseum at Rome. It is mostly stripped of the marble that once faced +the interior, and is like some monstrous oval shaped out of the earth, +but near the imperial box lay some white slabs with initials cut in them +which restored the vision of the “grandeur that was Rome” pretty +well over the known world when this great work was in its prime. Our +custodian was qualified by his toothlessness to lisp like any old +Castilian the letters that other Andalusians hiss, but my own Spanish +was so slight and his _patois_ was so dense that the best we could do +was to establish a polite misunderstanding. On this his one word of +English, repeated as we passed through the subterranean doors, “Lion, +lion, lion,” cast a gleam of intelligence which brightened into a vivid +community of ideas when we ended in his cottage, and he prepared to sell +us some of the small Roman coins which formed his stock in trade. The +poor place was beautifully neat, and from his window he made us free +of a sight of Seville, signally the cathedral and the Giralda, such as +could not be bought for money in New York. + +Then we set out on our return, leaving unvisited to the left the church +of San Isidore de Campo, with its tombs of Guzman the Good and that +Better Lady Dona Urraca Osorio, whom Peter the Cruel had burned. I say +better, because I hold it nobler in Urraca to have rejected the love of +a wicked king than in Guzman to have let the Moors slay his son rather +than surrender a city to them. But I could only pay honor to her +pathetic memory and the memory of that nameless handmaid of hers who +rushed into the flames to right the garments on the form which the wind +had blown them away from, and so perished with her. We had to take on +trust from the guide-books all trace of the Roman town where the three +emperors were born, and whose “palaces, aqueducts, and temples and +circus were magnificent.” We had bought some of the “coins daily dug +up,” but we intrusted to the elements those “vestiges of vestiges” left +of Trajan’s palaces after an envious earthquake destroyed them so lately +as 1755. + +The one incident of our return worthy of literature was the dramatic +triumph of a woman over a man and a mule as we saw it exhibited on the +parapet of a culvert over a dry torrent’s bed. It was the purpose of +this woman, standing on the coping in statuesque relief and showing +against the sky the comfortable proportions of the Spanish housewife, to +mount the mule behind the man. She waited patiently while the man slowly +and as we thought faithlessly urged the mule to the parapet; then, when +she put out her hands and leaned forward to take her seat, the mule +inched softly away and left her to recover her balance at the risk of a +fall on the other side. We were too far for anything but the dumb show, +but there were, no doubt, words which conveyed her opinions unmistakably +to both man and mule. With our hearts in our mouths we witnessed the +scene and its repetitions till we could bear it no longer, and we had +bidden our cabman drive on when with a sudden spring the brave woman +launched herself semicircularly forward and descended upon the exact +spot which she had been aiming at. There solidly established on the +mule, with her arms fast round the man, she rode off; and I do not think +any reader of mine would like to have been that mule or that man for the +rest of the way home. + +We met many other mules, much more exemplary, in teams of two, three, +and four, covered with bells and drawing every kind of carryall and +stage and omnibus. These vehicles were built when the road was, about +1750, and were, like the road, left to the natural forces for keeping +themselves in repair. The natural forces were not wholly adequate in +either case, but the vehicles were not so thick with dust as the road, +because they could shake it off. They had each two or four passengers +seated with the driver; passengers clustered over the top and packed the +inside, but every one was in the joyous mood of people going home for +the day. In a plaza not far from the Triana bridge you may see these +decrepit conveyances assembling every afternoon for their suburban +journeys, and there is no more picturesque sight in Seville, more +homelike, more endearing. Of course, when I say this I leave out of the +count the bridge over the Guadalquivir at the morning or evening hour +when it is covered with brightly caparisoned donkeys, themselves covered +with men needing a shave, and gay-kerchiefed women of every age, with +boys and dogs underfoot, and pedestrians of every kind, and hucksters +selling sea-fruit and land-fruit and whatever else the stranger would +rather see than eat. Very little outcry was needed for the sale of these +things, which in Naples or even in Venice would have been attended by +such vociferation as would have sufficed to proclaim a city in flames. + +On a day not long after our expedition to Italica we went a drive with a +young American friend living in Seville, whom I look to for a book about +that famous city such as I should like to write myself if I had the time +to live it as he has done. He promised that he would show us a piece of +the old Roman wall, but he showed us ever so much more, beginning with +the fore court of the conventual church of Santa Paula, where we found +the afternoon light waiting to illumine for us with its tender caress +the Luca della Robbia-like colored porcelain figures of the portal and +the beautiful octagon tower staying a moment before taking flight for +heaven: the most exquisite moment of our whole fortnight in Seville. +Tall pots of flowers stood round, and the grass came green through the +crevices of the old foot-worn pavement. When we passed out a small boy +scuffled for our copper with the little girl who opened the gate for us, +but was brought to justice by us, and joined cheerfully in the chorus of +children chanting “Mo-ney, mo-ney!” round us, but no more expecting an +answer to their prayer than if we had been saints off the church door. + +We passed out of the city by a gate where in a little coign of vantage +a cobbler was thoughtfully hammering away in the tumult at a shoe-sole, +and then suddenly on our right we had the Julian wall: not a mere +fragment, but a good long stretch of it. The Moors had built upon it +and characterized it, but had not so masked it as to hide the perdurable +physiognomy of the Roman work. It was vastly more Roman wall than you +see at Rome; but far better than this heroic image of war and waste was +the beautiful old aqueduct, perfectly Roman still, with no visible touch +from Moor, or from Christian, before or after the Moor, and performing +its beneficent use after two thousand years as effectively as in the +years before Christ came to bless the peacemakers. Nine miles from its +mountain source the graceful arches bring the water on their shoulders; +and though there is now an English company that pipes other streams to +the city through its underground mains, the Roman aqueduct, eternally +sublime in its usefulness, is constant to the purpose of the forgotten +men who imagined it. The outer surfaces of the channel which it lifted +to the light and air were tagged with weeds and immemorial mosses, and +dripped as with the sweat of its twenty-centuried toil. + +We followed it as far as it went on our way to a modern work of peace +and use which the ancient friend and servant of man would feel no +unworthy rival. Beyond the drives and gardens of the Delicias, where we +lingered our last to look at the pleasurers haunting them, we drove far +across the wheat-fields where a ship-canal five miles long is cutting +to rectify the curve of the Guadalquivir and bring Seville many miles +nearer the sea than it has ever been before; hitherto the tramp steamers +have had to follow the course of the ships of Tarshish in their winding +approach. The canal is the notion of the young king of Spain, and the +work on it goes forward night and day. The electric lights were +shedding their blinding glare on the deafening clatter of the excavating +machinery, and it was an unworthy relief to escape from the intense +modernity of the scene to that medieval retreat nearer the city where +the _aficionados_ night-long watch the bulls coming up from their +pastures for the fight or the feast, whichever you choose to call it, of +the morrow. These amateurs, whom it would be rude to call sports, lurk +in the wayside cafe over their cups of chocolate and wait till in that +darkest hour before dawn, with irregular trampling and deep bellowing, +these hapless heroes of the arena pass on to their doom. It is a great +thing for the _aficionados_ who may imagine in that bellowing the the +gladiator’s hail of _Morituri salutant._ At any rate, it is very chic; +it gives a man standing in Seville, which disputes with Madrid the +primacy in bull-feasting. If the national capital has bull-feasting +every Sunday of the year, all the famous _torreros_ come from Andalusia, +with the bulls, their brave antagonists, and in the great provincial +capital there are bull-feasts of insurpassable, if not incomparable, +splendor. + +Before our pleasant drive ended we passed, as we had already passed +several times, the scene of the famous Feria of Seville, the cattle show +which draws tens of thousands to the city every springtime for business +and pleasure, but mostly pleasure. The Feria focuses in its greatest +intensity at one of the entrances to the Delicias, where the street is +then so dense with every sort of vehicle that people can cross it only +by the branching viaduct, which rises in two several ascents from each +footway, intersecting at top and delivering their endless multitudes on +the opposite sidewalk. Along the street are gay pavilions and cottages +where the nobility live through the Feria with their families and +welcome the public to the sight of their revelry through the open doors +and windows. Then, if ever, the stranger may see the dancing, and hear +the singing and playing which all the other year in Seville disappoints +him of. + + + +VIII + + +On the eve of All Saints, after we had driven over the worst road in +the world outside of Spain or America, we arrived at the entrance of +the cemetery where Baedeker had mysteriously said “some sort of fair was +held.” Then we perceived that we were present at the preparations for +celebrating one of the most affecting events of the Spanish year. This +was the visit of kindred and friends bringing tokens of remembrance and +affection to the dead. The whole long, rough way we had passed them on +foot, and at the cemetery gate we found them arriving in public cabs, +as well as in private carriages, with the dignity and gravity of +smooth-shaven footmen and coachmen. In Spain these functionaries look +their office more solemnly even than in England and affect you as +peculiarly correct and eighteenth-century. But apart from their looks +the occasion seemed more a festivity than a solemnity. The people bore +flowers, mostly artificial, as well as lanterns, and within the cemetery +they were furbishing up the monuments with every appliance according +to the material, scrubbing the marble, whitewashing the stucco, and +repainting the galvanized iron. The lanterns were made to match the +monuments and fences architecturally, and the mourners were attaching +them with a gentle satisfaction in their fitness; I suppose they were to +be lighted at dark and to burn through the night. There were men among +the mourners, but most of them were women and children; some were +weeping, like a father leading his two little ones, and an old woman +grieving for her dead with tears. But what prevailed was a community of +quiet resignation, almost to the sort of cheerfulness which bereavement +sometimes knows. The scene was tenderly affecting, but it had a +tremendous touch of tragic setting in the long, straight avenue of black +cypresses which slimly climbed the upward slope from the entrance to the +farther bound of the cemetery. Otherwise there was only the patience of +entire faith in this annually recurring visit of the living to the dead: +the fixed belief that these should rise from the places where they lay. +and they who survived them for yet a little more of time should join +them from whatever end of the earth in the morning of the Last Day. + +All along I have been shirking what any right-minded traveler would feel +almost his duty, but I now own that there is a museum in Seville, +the Museo Provincial, which was of course once a convent and is now a +gallery, with the best, but not the very best, Murillos in it, not to +speak of the best Zurburans. I will not speak at all of those pictures, +because I could in no wise say what they were, or were like, and because +I would not have the reader come to them with any opinions of mine which +he might bring away with him in the belief that they were his own. Let +him not fail to go to the museum, however; he will be the poorer beyond +calculation if he does not; but he will be a beggar if he does not go +to the Hospital de la Caridad, where in the church he will find six +Murillos out-Murilloing any others excepting always the incomparable +“Vision of St. Anthony” in the cathedral. We did not think of those six +Murillos when we went to the hospital; we knew nothing of the peculiar +beauty and dignity of the church; but we came because we wished to see +what the repentance of a man could do for others after a youth spent in +wicked riot. The gentle, pensive little Mother who received us carefully +said at once that the hospital was not for the sick, but only for the +superannuated and the poor and friendless who came to pass a night or +an indefinite time in it, according to the pressure of their need; and +after showing us the rich little church, she led us through long, clean +corridors where old men lay in their white beds or sat beside them +eating their breakfasts, very savory-looking, out of ample white bowls. +Some of them saluted us, but the others we excused because they were so +preoccupied. In a special room set apart for them were what we brutally +call tramps, but who doubtless are known in Spain for indigent brethren +overtaken on their wayfaring without a lodging for the night. Here +they could come for it and cook their supper and breakfast at the large +circular fireplace which filled one end of their room. They rose at our +entrance and bowed; and how I wish I could have asked them, every one, +about their lives! + +There was nothing more except the doubt of that dear little Mother when +I gave her a silver dollar for her kindness. She seemed surprised and +worried, and asked, “Is it for the charity or for me?” What could I do +but answer, “Oh, for your Grace,” and add another for the charity. +She still looked perplexed, but there was no way out of our +misunderstanding, if it was one, and we left her with her sweet, +troubled face between the white wings of her cap, like angel’s wings +mounting to it from her shoulders. Then we went to look at the statue of +the founder bearing a hapless stranger in his arms in a space of flowers +before the hospital, where a gardener kept watch that no visitor should +escape without a bunch worth at least a peseta. He had no belief that +the peseta could possibly be for the charity, and the poverty of the +poor neighborhood was so much relieved by the mere presence of the +hospital that it begged of us very little as we passed through. + + + +IX + + +We had expected to go to Granada after a week in Seville, but man is +always proposing beyond his disposing in strange lands as well as at +home, and we were fully a fortnight in the far lovelier capital. In +the mean time we had changed from our rooms in the rear of the hotel to +others in the front, where we entered intimately into the life of the +Plaza San Fernando as far as we might share it from our windows. It was +not very active life; even the cabmen whose neat victorias bordered +the place on three sides were not eager for custom; they invited the +stranger, but they did not urge; there was a continual but not a rapid +passing through the ample oblong; there was a good deal of still life on +the benches where leisure enjoyed the feathery shadow of the palms, +for the sun was apt to be too hot at the hour of noon, though later it +conduced to the slumber which in Spain accompanies the digestion of the +midday meal in all classes. As the afternoon advanced numbers of little +girls came into the plaza and played children’s games which seemed a +translation of games familiar to our own country. One evening a small +boy was playing with them, but after a while he seemed to be found +unequal to the sport; he was ejected from the group and went off +gloomily to grieve apart with his little thumb in his mouth. The sight +of his dignified desolation was insupportable, and we tried what a +copper of the big-dog value would do to comfort him. He took it without +looking up and ran away to the peanut-stand which is always steaming +at the first corner all over Christendom. Late in the evening--in fact, +after the night had fairly fallen--we saw him making his way into a +house fronting on the plaza. He tried at the door with one hand and in +the other he held an unexhausted bag of peanuts. He had wasted no word +of thanks on us, and he did not now. When he got the door open he backed +into the interior still facing us and so fading from our sight and +knowledge. + +He had the touch of comedy which makes pathos endurable, but another +incident was wholly pathetic. As we came out of an antiquity shop near +the cathedral one afternoon we found on the elevated footway near the +Gate of Pardon a mother and daughter, both of the same second youth, who +gently and jointly pronounced to us the magical word _encajes._ Rather, +they questioned us with it, and they only suggested, very forbearingly, +that we should come to their house with them to see those laces, which +of course were old laces; their house was quite near. But that one of +us twain who was singly concerned in _encajes_ had fatigued and perhaps +overbought herself at the antiquity shop, and she signified a regret +which they divined too well was dissent. They looked rather than +expressed a keen little disappointment; the mother began a faint +insistence, but the daughter would not suffer it. Here was the pride of +poverty, if not poverty itself, and it was with a pang that we parted +from these mutely appealing ladies. We could not have borne it if we had +not instantly promised ourselves to come the next day and meet them and +go home with them and buy all their _encajes_ that we had money for. We +kept our promise, and we came the next day and the next and every day +we remained in Seville, and lingered so long that we implanted in the +cabmen beside the curbing the inextinguishable belief that we were in +need of a cab; but we never saw those dear ladies again. + +These are some of the cruel memories which the happiest travel leaves, +and I gratefully recall that in the case of a custodian of the Columbian +Museum, which adjoins the cathedral, we did not inflict a pang that +rankled in our hearts for long. I gave him a handful of copper coins +which I thought made up a peseta, but his eyes were keener, and a sorrow +gloomed his brow which projected its shadow so darkly over us when we +went into the cathedral for one of our daily looks that we hastened to +return and make up the full peseta with another heap of coppers; a whole +sunburst of smiles illumined his face, and a rainbow of the brightest +colors arched our sky and still arches it whenever we think of that +custodian and his rehabilitated trust in man. + +This seems the crevice where I can crowd in the fact that bits of family +wash hung from the rail of the old pulpit in the Court of Oranges beside +the cathedral, and a pumpkin vine lavishly decorated an arcade near a +doorway which perhaps gave into the dwelling of that very custodian. At +the same time I must not fail to urge the reader’s seeing the Columbian +Museum, which is richly interesting and chiefly for those Latin and +Italian authors annotated by the immortal admiral’s own hand. These give +the American a sense of him as the discoverer of our hemisphere which +nothing else could, and insurpassably render the New World credible. +At the same time they somehow bring a lump of pity and piety into the +throat at the thought of the things he did and suffered. They bring him +from history and make him at home in the beholder’s heart, and there +seems a mystical significance in the fact that the volume most abounding +in marginalia should be _Seneca’s Prophecies._ + +The frequent passing of men as well as women and children through our +Plaza San Fernando and the prevalence of men asleep on the benches; the +immense majority of boys everywhere; the moralized _abattoir_ outside +the walls where the humanity dormant at the bull-feast wakes to hide +every detail of slaughter for the market; a large family of cats basking +at their ease in a sunny doorway; trains of milch goats with wicker +muzzles, led by a milch cow from door to door through the streets; the +sudden solemn beauty of the high altar in the cathedral, seen by chance +on a brilliant day; the bright, inspiriting air of Seville; a glorious +glimpse of the Giralda coming home from a drive; the figure of a girl +outlined in a lofty window; a middle-aged Finnish pair trying to give +themselves in murmured talk to the colored stucco of the Hall of the +Ambassadors in what seems their wedding journey; two artists working +near with sketches tilted against the wall; a large American lady who +arrives one forenoon in traveling dress and goes out after luncheon in +a mantilla with a fan and high comb; another American lady who appears +after dinner in the costume of a Spanish dancing-girl; the fact that +there is no Spanish butter and that the only good butter comes from +France and the passable butter from Denmark; the soft long veils of +pink cloud that trail themselves in the sky across our Plaza, and then +dissolve in the silvery radiance of the gibbous moon; the yellowish-red +electric Brush lights swinging from palm to palm as in the decoration +of some vast ballroom; a second drive through Triana, and a failure to +reach the church we set out for; the droves of brown pigs and flocks of +brown sheep; the goatherds unloading olive boughs in the fields for +the goats to browse; a dirty, kind, peaceful village, with an English +factory in it, and a mansion of galvanized iron with an automobile +before it; a pink villa on a hillside and a family group on the shoulder +of a high-walled garden; a girl looking down from the wall, and a young +man resting his hand on the masonry and looking up at her; the good +faces of the people, men and women; boys wrestling and frolicking in the +village streets; the wide dust-heap of a road, full of sudden holes; the +heat of the sun in the first November week after touches of cold; the +tram-cars that wander from one side of the city street to the other, and +then barely miss scraping the house walls; in our drive home from our +failure for that church, men with trains of oxen plowing and showing +against the round red rayless sun; a stretch of the river with the +crimson-hulled steamers, and a distant sail-boat seen across the fields; +the gray moon that burnishes itself and rides bright and high for our +return; people in balconies, and the air full of golden dust shot +with bluish electric lights; here is a handful of suggestions from my +note-book which each and every one would expand into a chapter or a +small volume under the intensive culture which the reader may well have +come to dread. But I fling them all down here for him to do what he +likes with, and turn to speak at more length of the University, or, +rather the University Church, which I would not have any reader of mine +fail to visit. + + + +X + + +With my desire to find likeness rather than difference in strange +peoples, I was glad to have two of the students loitering in the _patio_ +play just such a trick on a carter at the gate as school-boys might play +in our own land. While his back was turned they took his whip and hid it +and duly triumphed in his mystification and dismay. We did not wait +for the catastrophe, but by the politeness of another student found +the booth of the custodian, who showed us to the library. A noise +of recitation from the windows looking into the _patio_ followed us +up-stairs; but maturer students were reading at tables in the hushed +library, and at a large central table a circle of grave authorities +of some sort were smoking the air blue with their cigarettes. One, +who seemed chief among them, rose and bowed us into the freedom of the +place, and again rose and bowed when we went out. We did not stay long, +for a library is of the repellent interest of a wine-cellar; unless the +books or bottles are broached it is useless to linger. There are eighty +thousand volumes in that library, but we had to come away without +examining half of them. The church was more appreciable, and its value +was enhanced to us by the reluctance of the stiff old sacristan to +unlock it. We found it rich in a most wonderful _retablo_ carved in wood +and painted. Besides the excellent pictures at the high altar, there +are two portrait brasses which were meant to be recumbent, but which are +stood up against the wall, perhaps to their surprise, without loss of +impressiveness. Most notable of all is the mural tomb of Pedro Enriquez +de Ribera and his wife: he who built the Casa de Pilatos, and as he had +visited the Holy Land was naturally fabled to have copied it from the +House of Pilate. Now, as if still continuing his travels, he reposes +with his wife in a sort of double-decker monument, where the Evil One +would have them suggest to the beholder the notion of passengers in the +upper and lower berths of a Pullman sleeper. + +Of all the Spanish cities that I saw, Seville was the most charming, +not for those attributive blandishments of the song and dance which the +tourist is supposed to find it, but which we quite failed of, but for +the simpler and less conventional amiabilities which she was so rich +in. I have tried to hint at these, but really one must go to Seville for +them and let them happen as they will. Many happened in our hotel where +we liked everybody, from the kindly, most capable Catalonian head waiter +to the fine-headed little Napoleonic-looking waiter who had identified +us at San Sebastian as Americans, because we spoke “quicklier” than the +English, and who ran to us when we came into the hotel and shook hands +with its as if we were his oldest and dearest friends. There was a Swiss +concierge who could not be bought for money, and the manager was the +mirror of managers. Fancy the landlord of the Waldorf-Astoria, or the +St. Regis, coming out on the sidewalk and beating down a taxicabman +from a charge of fifteen pesetas to six for a certain drive! It is not +thinkable, and yet the like of it happened to xis in Seville from our +manager. It was not his fault, when our rear apartment became a little +too chill, and we took a parlor in the front and came back on the first +day hoping to find it stored full of the afternoon sun’s warmth, but +found that the _camerera_ had opened the windows and closed the shutters +in our absence so that our parlor was of a frigidity which no glitter of +the electric light could temper. The halls and public rooms were chill +in anticipation and remembrance of any cold outside, but in otir parlor +there was a hole for the sort of stove which we saw in the reading-room, +twice as large as an average teakettle, with a pipe as big around as +the average rain-pipe. I am sure this apparatus would have heated us +admirably, but the weather grew milder and milder and we never had +occasion to make the successful experiment. Meanwhile the moral +atmosphere of the hotel was of a blandness which would have gone far to +content us with any meteorological perversity. When we left it we were +on those human terms with every one who ruled or served in it which one +never attains in an American hotel, and rarely in an English one. + +At noon on the 4th of November the sun was really hot in our plaza; but +we were instructed that before the winter was over there would be cold +enough, not of great frosty severity, of course, but nasty and hard to +bear in the summer conditions which prevail through the year. I wish I +could tell how the people live then in their beautiful, cool houses, but +I do not know, and I do not know how they live at any season except from +the scantiest hearsay. The women remain at home except when they go +to church or to drive in the Delicias--that is to say, the women of +society, of the nobility. There is no society in our sense among people +of the middle classes; the men when they are not at business are at the +cafe; the women when they are not at mass are at home. That is what we +were told, and yet at a moving-picture show we saw many women of the +middle as well as the lower classes. The frequent holidays afford them +an outlet, and indoors they constantly see their friends and kindred at +their _tertulias._ + +The land is in large holdings which are managed by the factors or agents +of the noble proprietors. These, when they are not at Madrid, are to be +found at their clubs, where their business men bring them papers to be +signed, often unread. This sounds a little romantic, and perhaps it is +not true. Some gentlemen take a great interest in the bull-feasts and +breed the bulls and cultivate the bull-fighters; what other esthetic +interests they have I do not know. All classes are said to be of an +Oriental philosophy of life; they hold that the English striving and +running to and fro and seeing strange countries comes in the end to +the same thing as sitting still; and why should they bother? There is +something in that, but one may sit still too much; the Spanish ladies, +as I many times heard, do overdo it. Not only they do not walk abroad; +they do not walk at home; everything is carried to and from them; they +do not lift hand or foot. The consequence is that they have very small +hands and feet; Gautier, who seems to have grown tired when he reached +Seville, and has comparatively little to say of it, says that a child +may hold a Sevillian lady’s foot in its hand; he does not say he saw it +done. What is true is that no child could begin to clasp with both hands +the waist of an average Sevillian lady. But here again the rule has +its exceptions and will probably have more. Not only is the English +queen-consort stimulating the Andalusian girls to play tennis by her +example when she comes to Seville, but it has somehow become the fashion +for ladies of all ages to leave their carriages in the Delicias and walk +up and down; we saw at least a dozen doing it. + +Whatever flirting and intriguing goes on, the public sees nothing of +it. In the street there is no gleam of sheep’s-eying or any manner of +indecorum. The women look sensible and good, and I should say the same +of the men; the stranger’s experience must have been more unfortunate +than mine if he has had any unkindness from them. One heard that Spanish +women do not smoke, unless they are _cigarreras_ and work in the large +tobacco factory, where the “Carmen” tradition has given place to the +mother-of-a-family type, with her baby on the floor beside her. Even +these may prefer not to set the baby a bad example and have her grow +up and smoke like those English and American women. The strength of +the Church is, of course, in the women’s faith, and its strength is +unquestionable, if not quite unquestioned. In Seville, as I have said, +there are two Spanish Protestant churches, and their worship, is not +molested. Society does not receive their members; but we heard that with +most Spanish people Protestantism is a puzzle rather than offense. They +know we are not Jews, but Christians; yet we are not Catholics; and +what, then, are we? With the Protestants, as with the Catholics, there +is always religious marriage. There is civil marriage for all, but +without the religious rite the pair are not well seen by either sect. + +It is said that the editor of the ablest paper in Madrid, which +publishes a local edition at Seville, is a Protestant. The queen mother +is extremely clerical, though one of the wisest and best women who ever +ruled; the king and queen consort are as liberal as possible, and the +king is notoriously a democrat, with a dash of Haroun al Rashid, he +likes to take his governmental subordinates unawares, and a story is +told of his dropping in at the post-office on a late visit to Seville, +and asking for the chief. He was out, and so were all the subordinate +officials down to the lowest, whom the king found at his work. The +others have since been diligent at theirs. The story is characteristic +of the king, if not of the post-office people. + +Political freedom is almost grotesquely unrestricted. In our American +republic we should scarcely tolerate a party in favor of a monarchy, +but in the Spanish monarchy a republican party is recognized and +represented. It holds public meetings and counts among its members many +able and distinguished men, such as the novelist Perez Galdos, one of +the most brilliant novelists not only in Spain but in Europe. With this +unbounded liberty in Andalusia, it is said that the Spaniards of the +north are still more radical. + +Though the climate is most favorable for consumptives, the habits of the +people are so unwholesome that tuberculosis prevails, and there are +two or three deaths a day from it in Seville. There is no avoidance of +tuberculous suspects; they cough, and the men spit everywhere in the +streets and on the floors and carpets of the clubs. The women suffer +for want of fresh air, though now with the example of the English queen +before them and the young girls who used to lie abed till noon getting +up early ta play tennis, it will be different. Their mothers and aunts +still drive to the Delicias to prove that they have carriages, but when +there they alight and walk up and down by their doctor’s advice. + +I only know that during our fortnight in Seville I suffered no wound to +a sensibility which has been kept in full repair for literary, if not +for humanitarian purposes. The climate was as kind as the people. It is +notorious that in summer the heat is that of a furnace, but even then it +is bearable because it is a dry heat, like that of our indoor furnaces. +The 5th of November was our last day, and then it was too hot for +comfort in the sun, but one is willing to find the November sun too hot; +it is an agreeable solecism; and I only wish that we could have found +the sun too hot during the next three days in Granada. If the 5th of +November had been worse for heat than it was it must still remain dear +in our memory, because in the afternoon we met once more these Chilians +of our hearts whom we had met in San Sebastian and Burgos and Valladolid +and Madrid. We knew we should meet them in Seville and were not the +least surprised. They were as glad and gay as ever, and in our common +polyglot they possessed us of the fact that they had just completed +the eastern hemicycle of their Peninsular tour. They were latest from +Malaga, and now they were going northward. It was our last meeting, but +better friends I could not hope to meet again, whether in the Old +World or the New, or that Other World which we hope will somehow be the +summation of all that is best in both. + + + + +XI. TO AND IN GRANADA + + +The train which leaves Seville at ten of a sunny morning is supposed to +arrive in Granada at seven of a moonlight evening. This is a mistake; +the moonlight is on time, but the train arrives at a quarter of nine. +Still, if the day has been sunny the whole way and the moonlight is +there at the end, no harm has really been done; and measurably the +promise of the train has been kept. + + + +I + + +There was not a moment of the long journey over the levels of Andahisia +which was not charming; when it began to be over the uplands of the last +Moorish kingdom, it was richly impressive. The only thing that I can +remember against the landscape is the prevalence of olive orchards. I +hailed as a relief the stubble-fields immeasurably spread at times, +and I did not always resent the roadside planting of some sort of tall +hedges which now and then hid the olives. But olive orchards may vary +their monotony by the spectacle of peasants on ladders gathering +their fruit into wide-mouthed sacks, and occasionally their ranks of +symmetrical green may be broken by the yellow and red of poplars and +pomegranates around the pleasant farmsteads. The nearer we drew to +Granada the pleasanter these grew, till in the famous Vega they thickly +dotted the landscape with their brown roofs and white walls. + +We had not this effect till we had climbed the first barrier of hills +and began to descend on the thither side; but we had incident enough to +keep us engaged without the picturesqueness. The beggars alone, who +did not fail us at any station, were enough; for what could the most +exacting tourist ask more than to be eating his luncheon under the eyes +of the children who besieged his car windows and protested their famine +in accents which would have melted a heart of stone or of anything +less obdurate than travel? We had always our brace of Civil Guards, +who preserved us from bandits, but they left the beggars unmolested by +getting out on the train next the station and pacing the platform, while +the rabble of hunger thronged us on the other side. There was especially +a hoy who, after being compassionated in money for his misfortune, +continued to fling his wooden leg into the air and wave it at our +window by some masterly gymnastics; and there was another boy who kept +lamenting that he had no mother, till, having duly feed and fed him, I +suggested, “But you have a father?” Then, as if he had never seen +the case in that light before, he was silent, and presently went away +without further insistence on his bereavement. + +The laconic fidelity of my note-book enables me to recall here that +the last we saw of Seville was the Cathedral and the Giralda, which the +guide-books had promised us we should see first; that we passed some +fields of alfalfa which the Moors had brought from Africa and the +Spanish have carried to America; that in places men were plowing and +that the plowed land was red; that the towns on the uplands in the +distance were white and not gray, or mud-colored, as in Castile; that +the morning sky was blue, with thin, pale clouds; that the first station +out was charmingly called Two Brothers, and that the loungers about it +were plain, but kind-looking men-folk with good faces, some actually +clean-shaven, and a woman with a white rose in her hair; that Two +Brothers is a suburb of Seville, frequented in the winter, and has +orange orchards about it; that farther on at one place the green of +the fields spread up to the walls of a white farm with a fine sense of +color; that there were hawks sailing in the blue air; that there were +grotesque hedges of cactus and piles of crooked cactus logs; that there +were many eucalyptus trees; that there were plantations of young olives, +as if never to let that all-pervading industry perish; that there were +irregular mountain ranges on the right, but never the same kind of +scenery on both sides of the track; that there was once a white cottage +on a yellow hill and a pink villa with two towers; that there was a +solitary fig tree near the road, and that there were vast lonely fields +when there were not olive orchards. + +Taking breath after one o’clock, much restored by our luncheon, my +note-book remembers a gray-roofed, yellow-walled town, very suitable +for a water-color, and just beyond it the first vineyard we had come +to. Then there were pomegranate trees, golden-leaved, and tall poplars +pollarded plume fashion as in southern France; and in a field a herd of +brown pigs feeding, which commended itself to observance, doubtless, as +color in some possible word-painting. There now abounded pomegranates, +figs, young corn, and more and more olives; and as if the old olives and +young olives were not enough, the earth began to be pitted with holes +dug for the olives which had not yet been planted. + + + +II + + +At Bobadilla, the junction where an English railway company begins +to get in its work and to animate the Spanish environment to unwonted +enterprise, there was a varied luncheon far past our capacity. But when +a Cockney voice asked over my shoulder, “Tea, sir?” I gladly closed with +the proposition. “But you’ve put hot milk into it!” I protested. “I know +it, sir. We ‘ave no cold milk at Bobadilla,” and instantly a baleful +suspicion implanted itself which has since grown into a upas tree of +poisonous conviction: goat’s milk does not keep well, and it was not +only hot milk, but hot _goat’s_ milk which they were serving us at +Bobadilla. However, there were admirable ham sandwiches, not of goat’s +flesh, at the other end of the room, and with these one could console +oneself. There was also a commendable pancake whose honored name I never +knew, but whose acquaintance I should be sorry not to have made; and all +about Bobadilla there was an agreeable bustle, which we enjoyed the +more when we had made sure that we had changed into the right train for +Granada and found in our compartment the charming young Swedish couple +who had come with us from Seville. + +Thoroughly refreshed by the tea with hot goat’s milk in it, by the +genuine ham sandwiches and the pancakes, my note-book takes up the tale +once more. It dwells upon the rich look of the land and the comfort of +the farms contrasting with the wild irregularity of the mountain ranges +which now began to serrate the horizon; and I have no doubt that if +I had then read that most charming of all Washington Irving’s Spanish +studies, the story, namely, of his journey over quite the same way we +had come seventy-five years later, my note-book would abound in lively +comment on the changed aspect of the whole landscape. Even as it is, I +find it exclamatory over the wonder of the mountain coloring which it +professes to have found green, brown, red, gray, and blue, but whether +all at once or not it does not say. It is more definite as to the +plain we were traversing, with its increasing number of white cottages, +cheerfully testifying to the distribution of the land in small holdings, +so different from the vast estates abandoned to homeless expanses of +wheat-fields and olive orchards which we had been passing through. +It did not appear on later inquiry that these small holdings were of +peasant ownership, as I could have wished; they were tenant farms, but +their neatness testified to the prosperity of the tenants, and their +frequency cheered our way as the evening waned and the lamps began to +twinkle from their windows. At a certain station, I am reminded by my +careful mentor, the craggy mountain-tops were softened by the sunset +pink, and that then the warm afternoon air began to grow cooler, and the +dying day to empurple the uplands everywhere, without abating the charm +of the blithe cottages. It seems to have been mostly a very homelike +scene, and where there was a certain stretch of woodland its loneliness +was relieved by the antic feat of a goat lifting itself on its hind legs +to browse the olive leaves on their native bough. The air was thinner +and cooler, but never damp, and at times it relented and blew lullingly +in at our window. We made such long stops that the lights began to fade +out of the farm-windows, but kept bright in the villages, when at a +station which we were so long in coming to that we thought it must be +next to Granada, a Spanish gentleman got in with us; and though the +prohibitory notice of _No Fumadores_ stared him in the face, it did +not stare him out of countenance; for he continued to smoke like a +locomotive the whole way to our journey’s end. From time to time I +meditated a severe rebuke, but in the end I made him none, and I am now +convinced that this was wise, for he probably would not have minded it, +and as it was, when I addressed him some commonplace as to the probable +time of our arrival he answered in the same spirit, and then presently +grew very courteously communicative. He told me for one thing, after we +had passed the mountain gates of the famous Vega and were making our way +under the moonlight over the storied expanse, drenched with the blood of +battles long ago, that the tall chimneys we began to see blackening the +air with their volumed fumes were the chimneys of fourteen beet-root +sugar factories belonging to the Duke of Wellington. Then I divined, as +afterward I learned, that the lands devoted to this industry were part +of the rich gift which Spain bestowed upon the Great Duke in gratitude +for his services against the Napoleonic invasion. His present heir has +imagined a benevolent use of his heritage by inviting the peasantry of +the Vega to the culture of the sugar-beet; but whether the enterprise +was prospering I could not say; and I do not suppose any reader of mine +will care so much for it as I did in the pour of the moonlight over the +roofs and towers that were now becoming Granada, and quickening my slow +old emotions to a youthful glow. At the station, which, in spite of +Boabdil el Chico and Ferdinand and Isabel, was quite like every other +railway station of southern Europe, we parted friends with our Spanish +fellow-traveler, whom we left smoking and who is probably smoking still. +Then we mounted with our Swedish friends into the omnibus of the hotel +we had chosen and which began, after discreet delays, to climb the hill +town toward the Alhambra through a commonplace-looking town gay with +the lights of cafes and shops, and to lose itself in the more congenial +darkness of narrower streets barred with moonlight. It was drawn by four +mules, covered with bells and constantly coaxed and cursed by at least +two drivers on the box, while a vigorous boy ran alongside and lashed +their legs without ceasing till we reached the shelf where our hotel +perched. + + + +III + + +I had taken the precaution to write for rooms, and we got the best in +the house, or if not that then the best we could wish at a price which +I could have wished much less, till we stepped out upon our balcony, and +looked down and over the most beautiful, the most magnificent scene that +eyes, or at least my eyes, ever dwelt on. Beside us and before us +the silver cup of the Sierra Nevada, which held the city in its tiled +hollow, poured it out over the immeasurable Vega washed with moonshine +which brightened and darkened its spread in a thousand radiances +and obscurities of windows and walls and roofs and trees and lurking +gardens. Because it was unspeakable we could not speak, but I may say +now that this was our supreme moment of Granada. There were other fine +moments, but none unmixed with the reservations which truth obliges +honest travel to own. Now, when from some secret spot there rose the +wild cry of a sentinel, and prolonged itself to another who caught it +dying up and breathed new life into it and sent it echoing on till it +had made the round of the whole fairy city, the heart shut with a pang +of pure ecstasy. One could bear no more; we stepped within, and closed +the window behind us. That is, we tried to close it, but it would not +latch, and we were obliged to ring for a _camerero_ to come and see what +ailed it. + +[Illustration: 27 TO THE ALHAMBRA] + +The infirmity of the door-latch was emblematic of a temperamental +infirmity in the whole hotel. The promises were those of Madrid, but the +performances were those of Segovia. There was a glitter, almost a glare, +of Ritz-like splendor, and the rates were Ritz-like, but there the +resemblance ceased. The porter followed us to our rooms on our +arrival and told us in excellent English (which excelled less and less +throughout our stay) that he was the hall porter and that we could +confidently refer all our wants to him; but their reference seemed +always to close the incident. There was a secretary who assured us that +our rooms were not dear, and who could not out of regard to our honor +and comfort consider cheaper ones; and then ceased to be until he +receipted our bill when we went away. There was a splendid dining-room +with waiters of such beauty and dignity, and so purple from clean +shaving, that we scarcely dared face them, and there were luncheons +and dinners of rich and delicate superabundance in the menu, but of an +exquisite insipidity on the palate, and of a swiftly vanishing Barmecide +insubstantiality, as if they were banquets from the _Arabian Nights_ +imagined under the rule of the Moors. Everywhere shone silver-bright +radiators, such as we had not seen since we left their like freezing +in Burgos; but though the weather presently changed from an Andalusian +softness to a Castilian severity after a snowfall in the Sierra, the +radiators remained insensible to the difference and the air nipped the +nose and fingers wherever one went in the hotel. The hall porter, who +knew everything, said the boilers were out of order, and a traveler who +had been there the winter before confirmed him with the testimony that +they were out of order even in January. There may not have been any fire +under them then, as there was none now; but if they needed repairing now +it was clearly because they needed repairing then. In the corner of one +of our rooms the frescoed plastering had scaled off, and we knew that +if we came back a year later the same spot would offer us a familiar +welcome. + +But why do I gird at that hotel in Granada as if I knew of no faults in +American hotels? I know of many and like faults, and I do not know of a +single hotel of ours with such a glorious outlook and downlook as that +hotel in Granada. The details which the sunlight of the morrow revealed +to us when we had mastered the mystery of our window-catch and stood +again on our balcony took nothing from the loveliness of the moonlight +picture, but rather added to it, and, besides a more incredible scene of +mountain and plain and city, it gave us one particular tree in a garden +almost under us which my heart clings to still with a rapture changing +to a fond regret. At first the tree, of what name or nature I cannot +tell, stood full and perfect, a mass of foliage all yellow as if made +up of “patines of bright gold.” Then day by day, almost hour by hour, it +darkened and the tree shrank as if huddling its leaves closer about it +in the cold that fell from the ever-snowier Sierra. On the last morning +we left its boughs shaking in the rain against the cold, + + Bare, ruined choir where late the sweet birds sang. + + + +IV + + +But we anticipate, as I should say if I were still a romantic novelist. +Many other trees in and about Granada were yellower than that one, and +the air hung dim with a thin haze as of Indian summer when we left our +hotel in eager haste to see the Alhambra such as travelers use when they +do not want some wonder of the world to escape them. Of course there was +really no need of haste, and we had to wait till our guide could borrow +a match to light the first of the cigarettes which he never ceased to +smoke. He was commended to us by the hall porter, who said he could +speak French, and so he could, to the extreme of constantly saying, +with a wave of his cigarette, “_N’est ce pas?”_ For the rest he helped +himself out willingly with my small Spanish. At the end he would have +delivered us over to a dealer in antiquities hard by the gate of the +palace if I had not prevented him, as it were, by main force; he did +not repine, but we were not sorry that he should be engaged for the next +day. + +Our way to the gate, which was the famous Gate of Justice and was lovely +enough to be the Gate of Mercy, lay through the beautiful woods, mostly +elms, planted there by the English early in the last century. The birds +sang in their tops, and the waters warbled at their feet, and it was +somewhat thrillingly cold in their dense shade, so that we were glad to +get out of it, and into the sunshine where the old Moorish palace lay +basking and dreaming. At once let me confide to the impatient reader +that the whole Alhambra, by which he must understand a citadel, and +almost a city, since it could, if it never did, hold twenty thousand +people within its walls, is only historically and not artistically more +Moorish than the Alcazar at Seville. Far nobler and more beautiful +than its Arabic decorativeness in tinted stucco is the palace begun +by Charles V., after a design in the spirit of the supreme hour of the +Italian Renaissance. It is not a ruin in its long arrest, and one hears +with hopeful sympathy that the Spanish king means some day to complete +it. To be sure, the world is, perhaps, already full enough of royal +palaces, but since they return sooner or later to the people whose +pockets they come out of, one must be willing to have this palace +completed as the architect imagined it. + +We were followed into the Moorish palace by the music of three blind +minstrels who began to tune their guitars as soon as they felt us: see +us they could not. Then presently we were in the famous Court of the +Lions, where a group of those beasts, at once archaic and puerile in +conception, sustained the basin of a fountain in the midst of a graveled +court arabesqued and honeycombed round with the wonted ornamentation of +the Moors. + +The place was disappointing to the boy in me who had once passed so much +of his leisure there, and had made it all marble and gold. The floor +is not only gravel, and the lions are not only more like sheep, but the +environing architecture and decoration are of a faded prettiness which +cannot bear comparison with the fresh rougeing, equally Moorish, of the +Alcazar at Seville. Was this indeed the place where the Abencerrages +were brought in from supper one by one and beheaded into the fountain at +the behest of their royal host? Was it here that the haughty Don Juan de +Vera, coming to demand for the Catholic kings the arrears of tribute due +them from the Moor, “paused to regard its celebrated fountain” and “fell +into discourse with the Moorish courtiers on certain mysteries of the +Christian faith”? So Washington Irving says, and so I once believed, +with glowing heart and throbbing brow as I read how “this most Christian +knight and discreet ambassador restrained himself within the limits of +lofty gravity, leaning on the pommel of his sword and looking down with +ineffable scorn upon the weak casuists around him. The quick and subtle +Arabian witlings redoubled their light attacks on the stately Spaniard, +but when one of them, of the race of the Abencerrages dared to question, +with a sneer, the immaculate conception of the blessed Virgin, the +Catholic knight could no longer restrain his ire. Elevating his voice of +a sudden, he told the infidel he lied, and raising his arm at the same +time he smote him on the head with his sheathed sword. In an instant +the Court of Lions glistened with the flash of arms,” insomuch that the +American lady whom we saw writing a letter beside a friend sketching +there must have been startled from her opening words, “I am sitting here +with my portfolio on my knees in the beautiful Court of the Lions,” + and if Muley Aben Hassan had not “overheard the tumult and forbade all +appeal to force, pronouncing the person of the ambassador sacred,” she +never could have gone on. + + + +V + +[Illustration: 28 THE COURT OF THE LIONS] + +I did not doubt the fact when I read of it under the level boughs of the +beechen tree with J. W., sixty years ago, by the green woodland light +of the primeval forest which hemmed our village in, and since I am well +away from the Alhambra again I do not doubt it now. I doubt nothing that +Irving says of the Alhambra; he is the gentle genius of the place, and +I could almost wish that I had paid the ten pesetas extra which the +custodian demanded for showing his apartment in the palace. On the +ground the demand of two dollars seemed a gross extortion; yet it was +not too much for a devotion so rich as mine to have paid, and I advise +other travelers to buy themselves off from a vain regret by giving it. +If ever a memory merited the right to levy tribute on all comers to the +place it haunts, Washington Irving’s is that memory. His _Conquest of +Granada_ is still the history which one would wish to read; his _Tales +of the Alhambra_ embody fable and fact in just the right measure for the +heart’s desire in the presence of the monuments they verify or falsify. +They belong to that strange age of romance which is now so almost +pathetic and to which one cannot refuse his sympathy without sensible +loss. But for the eager make-believe of that time we should still have +to hoard up much rubbish which we can now leave aside, or accept without +bothering to assay for the few grains of gold in it. Washington Irving +had just the playful kindness which sufficed best to deal with the +accumulations of his age; if he does not forbid you to believe, he does +not oblige you to disbelieve, and he has always a tolerant civility +in his humor which comports best with the duty of taking leniently a +history impossible to take altogether seriously. Till the Spaniards +had put an end to the Moorish misrule, with its ruthless despotism and +bloody civil brawls, the Moors deserved to be conquered; it was not till +their power was broken forever that they became truly heroic in their +vain struggles and their unavailing sorrows. Then their pathetic +resignation to persecution and exile lent dignity even to their +ridiculous religion; but it was of the first and not the second period +that Irving had to treat. + + + +VI + + +The Alhambra is not so impressive by its glory or grandeur as by the +unparalleled beauty of its place. If it is not very noble as an effect +of art, the inspiration of its founders is affirmed by their choice of +an outlook which commands one of the most magnificent panoramas in the +whole world. It would be useless to rehearse the proofs by name. Think +of far-off silver-crested summits and of a peopled plain stretching away +from them out of eye-shot, dense first with roofs and domes and towers, +and then freeing itself within fields and vineyards and orchards and +forests to the vanishing-point of the perspective; think of steep and +sudden plunges into chasms at the foot of the palace walls, and one +crooked stream stealing snakelike in their depths; think of whatever +splendid impossible dramas of topography that you will, of a tremendous +map outstretched in colored relief, and you will perhaps have some +notion of the prospect from the giddy windows of the Alhambra; and +perhaps not. Of one thing we made memorably sure beyond the gulf of the +Darro, and that was the famous gipsy quarter which the traveler visits +at the risk of his life in order to have his fortune told. At the same +moment we made sure that we should not go nearer it, for though we knew +that it was insurpassably dirty as well as dangerous, we remembered so +distinctly the loathsomeness of the gipsy quarter at Seville that we +felt no desire to put it to the comparison. + +We preferred rather the bird’s-eye study of the beautiful Generalife +which our outlook enabled us to make, and which we supplemented by +a visit the next day. We preferred, after the Barmecide lunch at our +hotel, taking the tram-car that noisily and more noisily clambers up and +down, and descending into the town by it. The ascent is so steep that +at a certain point the electric current no longer suffices, and the car +bites into the line of cogs with its sort of powerful under-jaw and +so arrives. Yet it is a kindly little vehicle, with a conductor so +affectionately careful in transporting the stranger that I felt after +a single day we should soon become brothers, or at least step-brothers. +Whenever we left or took his car, after the beginning or ending of the +cogway, he was alert to see that we made the right change to or from +it, and that we no more overpaid than underpaid him. Such homely natures +console the traveler for the thousand inhospitalities of travel, and +bind races and religions together in spite of patriotism and piety. + +We were going first to the Cartuja, and in the city, which we found +curiously much more modern, after the Latin notion, than Seville, with +freshly built apartment-houses and business blocks, we took a cab, not +so modern as to be a taxicab, and drove through the quarter said to have +been assigned to the Moors after the fall of Granada. The dust lay thick +in the roadway where filthy children played, but in the sunny doorways +good mothers of families crouched taking away the popular reproach of +vermin by searching one another’s heads. Men bestriding their donkeys +rode fearlessly through the dust, and one cleanly-looking old peasant +woman, who sat hers plumply cushioned and framed in with a chair-back +and arms, showed a patience with the young trees planted for future +shade along the desperate avenue which I could wish we had emulated. +When we reached the entrance of the old Carthusian Convent, long since +suppressed and its brothers exiled, a strong force of beggarmen waited +for us, but a modest beggar-woman, old and sad, had withdrawn to the +church door, where she shared in our impartial alms. We were admitted +to the cloister, rather oddly, by a young girl, who went for one of the +remaining monks to show us the church. He came with a newspaper (I hope +of clerical politics) in his hand, and distracted himself from it only +long enough to draw a curtain, or turn on a light, and point out a +picture or statue from time to time. But he was visibly anxious to get +back to it, and sped us more eagerly than he welcomed us in a church +which upon the whole is richer in its peculiar treasures of painting, +sculpture, especially in wood, costly marble, and precious stones +than any other I remember. According to my custom, I leave it to the +guide-books to name these, and to the abounding critics of Spanish art +to celebrate the pictures and statues; it is enough for me that I have +now forgotten them all except those scenes of the martyrdom inflicted by +certain Protestants on members of the Carthusian brotherhood at the time +when all sorts of Christians felt bound to correct the opinions of all +other sorts by the cruelest tortures they could invent. When the monk +had put us to shame by the sight of these paintings (bad as their +subjects), he put us out, letting his eyes fall back upon his newspaper +before the door had well closed upon us. + +The beggarmen had waited in their places to give us another chance +of meriting heaven; and at the church door still crouched the old +beggarwoman. I saw now that the imploring eyes she lifted were +sightless, and I could not forbear another alms, and as I put my copper +big-dog in her leathern palm I said, _“Adios, madre.”_ Then happened +something that I had long desired. I had heard and read that in Spain +people always said at parting, “Go with God,” but up to that moment +nobody had said it to me, though I had lingeringly given many the +opportunity. Now, at my words and at the touch of my coin this old +beggarwoman smiled beneficently and said, “Go with God,” or, as she put +it in her Spanish, “_Vaya vested con Dios.”_ Immediately I ought to +have pressed another coin in her palm, with a _“Gracias, madre; muchas +gracias,”_ out of regard to the literary climax; but whether I really +did so I cannot now remember; I can only hope I did. + + + +VII + + +I think that it was while I was still in this high satisfaction that +we went a drive in the promenade, which in all Spanish cities is the +Alameda, except Seville, where it so deservedly is the Delicias. It was +in every way a contrast to the road we had come from the Cartuja: an +avenue of gardened paths and embowered driveways, where we hoped to join +the rank and fashion of Granada in their afternoon’s outing. But there +was only one carriage besides our own with people in it, who looked no +greater world than ourselves, and a little girl riding with her groom. +On one hand were pretty villas, new-looking and neat, which I heard +could sometimes be taken for the summer at rents so low that I am glad +I have forgotten the exact figures lest the reader should doubt my word. +Nothing but the fact that the winter was then hanging over us from the +Sierras prevented my taking one of them for the summer that had passed, +the Granadan summer being notoriously the most delightful in the world. +On the other hand stretched the wonderful Vega, which covers so many +acres in history and romance, and there, so near that we look down into +them at times were “the silvery windings of the Xenil,” which glides +through so many descriptive passages of Irving’s page; only now, on +account of recent rain, its windings were rather coppery. + +At the hotel on the terrace under our balcony we found on our return +a party of Spanish ladies and gentlemen taking tea, or whatever drink +stood for it in their custom: no doubt chocolate; but it was at least +the afternoon-tea hour. The women’s clothes were just from Paris, and +the men’s from London, but their customs, I suppose, were national; +the women sat on one side of the table and talked across it to the men, +while they ate and drank, and then each sex grouped itself apart and +talked to its kind, the women in those hardened vowels of a dialect from +which the Andalusians for conversational purposes have eliminated all +consonants. The sun was setting red and rayless, with a play of many +lights and tints, over the landscape up to the snow-line on the Sierra. +The town lay a stretch of gray roofs and white walls, intermixed with +yellow poplars and black cypresses, and misted over with smoke from the +chimneys of the sugar factories. The mountains stood flat against the +sky, purple with wide stretches of brown, and dark, slanting furrows. +The light became lemon-yellow before nightfall, and then a dull crimson +under pale violet. + +The twitter of the Spanish women was overborne at times by the voices +of an American party whose presence I was rather proud of as another +American. They were all young men, and they were making an educational +tour of the world in the charge of a professor who saw to it that +they learned as much of its languages and history and civilization as +possible on the way. They ranged in their years from about fifteen to +twenty and even more, and they were preparing for college, or doing what +they could to repair the loss of university training before they took +up the work of life. It seemed to me a charming notion, and charming the +seriousness with which they were fulfilling it. They were not so serious +in everything as to miss any incidental pleasure; they had a large table +to themselves in our Barmecide banquet-hall, where they seemed always +to be having a good time, and where once they celebrated the birthday +of one of them with a gaiety which would have penetrated, if anything +could, the shining chill of the hostelry. In the evening we heard them +in the billiard-room below lifting their voices in the lays of our +college muse, and waking to ecstasy the living piano in the strains of +our national ragtime. They were never intrusively cheerful; one might +remain, in spite of them, as dispirited as the place would have one; but +as far as the _genius loci_ would let me, I liked them; and so far as +I made their acquaintance I thought that they were very intelligently +carrying out the enterprise imagined for them. + + + +VIII + + +I wish now that I had known them well enough to ask them what they +candidly thought of the city of which I felt the witchery under the +dying day I have left celebrating for the moment in order to speak of +them. It seems to me at this distance of time and space that I did not +duly reflect that in places it was a city which smelled very badly and +was almost as dirty as New York in others, and very ill paved. The worst +places are in the older quarters, where the streets are very crooked and +very narrow, so narrow that the tram-car can barely scrape through them. +They are old enough to be streets belonging to the Moorish city, like +many streets in Cordova and Seville, but no fond inquiry of our guides +could identify this lane or that alley as of Moorish origin. There is +indeed a group of picturesque shops clearly faked to look Moorish, which +the lover of that period may pin his faith to, and for a moment I did +so, but upon second thought I unpinned it. + +We visited this plated fragment of the old Moorish capital when +we descended from our hotel with a new guide to see the great, the +stupendous cathedral, where the Catholic kings lie triumphantly entombed +in the heart of their conquest. It is altogether unlike the other +Spanish cathedrals of my knowledge; for though the cathedral of +Valladolid is of Renaissance architecture in its austere simplicity, +it is somehow even less like that of Granada than the Gothic fanes of +Burgos or Toledo or Seville. All the detail at Granada is classicistic, +but the whole is often of Gothic effect, especially in the mass of +those clustered Corinthian columns that lift its domes aloof on their +prodigious bulk, huge as that of the grouped pillars in the York +Minster. The white of the marble walls, the gold of altars, the colors +of painted wooden sculpture form the tones of the place, subdued to one +bizarre richness which I may as well leave first as last to the reader’s +fancy; though, let his fancy riot as it will, it never can picture that +gorgeousness. Mass was saying at a side altar as we entered, and the +music of stringed instruments and the shrill voices of choir-boys +pierced the spaces here and there, but no more filled them than the +immemorable plastic and pictorial facts: than a certain very lively +bishop kneeling on his tomb and looking like George Washington; or +than a St. Jerome in the Desert, outwrinkling age, with his lion curled +cozily up in his mantle; or than the colossal busts of Adam and Eve +and the praying figures of Ferdinand and Isabel, richly gilded in +the exquisite temple forming the high altar; or than the St. James on +horseback, with his horse’s hoof planted on the throat of a Moor; or +than the Blessed Virgins in jeweled crowns and stomachers and brocaded +skirts; or than that unsparing decapitation of John the Baptist bloodily +falling forward with his severed gullet thrusting at the spectator. +Nothing has ever been too terrible in life for Spanish art to represent; +it is as ruthlessly veracious as Russian literature; and of all the +painters and sculptors who have portrayed the story of Christianity as +a tale of torture and slaughter, the Spaniards seem to have studied it +closest from the fact; perhaps because for centuries the Inquisition +lavished the fact upon them. + +The supreme interest of the cathedral is, of course, the Royal Chapel, +where in a sunken level Ferdinand and Isabel lie, with their poor mad +daughter Joan and her idolized unfaithful husband Philip the Fair, whose +body she bore about with her while she lived. The picture postal has +these monuments in its keeping and can show them better than my pen, +which falters also from the tremendous _retablo_ of the chapel dense +with the agonies of martyrdom and serene with the piety of the Catholic +Kings kneeling placidly amid the horrors. If the picture postal will not +supply these, or reproduce the many and many relics and memorials which +abound there and in the sacristy--jewels and vestments and banners and +draperies of the royal camp-altar--there is nothing for the reader but +to go himself and see. It is richly worth his while, and if he cannot +believe in a box which will be shown him as the box Isabel gave Columbus +her jewels in merely because he has been shown a reliquary as her +hand-glass, so much the worse for him. He will not then merit the +company of a small choir-boy who efficiently opens the iron gate to +the crypt and gives the custodian as good as he sends in back-talk and +defiantly pockets the coppers he has earned. Much less will he deserve +to witness the homely scene in an area outside of the Royal Chapel, +where many milch goats are assembled, and when a customer comes, +preferably a little girl with a tin cup, one of the mothers of the flock +is pinioned much against her will by a street boy volunteering for the +office, and her head held tight while the goatherdess milks the measure +full at the other end. + + + +IX + + +Everywhere about the cathedral beggars lay in wait, and the neighboring +streets were lively with bargains of prickly pears spread open on the +ground by old women who did not care whether any one bought or not. +There were also bargains in palmistry; and at one place a delightful +humorist was selling clothing at auction. He allured the bidders +by having his left hand dressed as a puppet and holding a sparkling +dialogue with it; when it did not respond to his liking he beat it with +his right hand, and every now and then he rang a little bell. He had a +pleased crowd about him in the sunny square; but it seemed to me +that all the newer part of Granada was lively with commerce in ample, +tram-trodden streets which gave the shops, larger than any we had seen +out of Madrid, a chance uncommon in the narrow ways of other Spanish +cities. Yet when I went to get money on my letter of credit, I found +the bank withdrawn from the modernity in a seclusion reached through a +lovely _patio._ We were seated in old-fashioned welcome, such as used to +honor a banker’s customers in Venice, and all comers bowed and bade us +good day. The bankers had no such question of the different signatures +as vexed those of Valladolid, and after no more delay than due ceremony +demanded, I went away with both my money and my letter, courteously seen +to the door. + +The guide, to whom we had fallen in the absence of our French-speaking +guide of the day before, spoke a little English, and he seemed to +grow in sympathetic intelligence as the morning passed. He made our +sightseeing include visits to the church of St. John of God, and the +church of San Geronimo, which was built by Gonsalvo de Cordova, the +Great Captain, and remains now a memorial to him. We rang at the door, +and after long delay a woman came and let us into an interior stranger +ever than her being there as custodian. It was frescoed from floor to +ceiling everywhere, except the places of the altars now kept by the +painted _retablos_ and the tombs and the statues of the various saints +and heroes. The _retablo_ of the high altar is almost more beautiful +than wonderful, but the chief glory of the place is in the kneeling +figures of the Great Captain and his wife, one on either side of the +altar, and farther away the effigies of his famous companions-in-arms, +and on the walls above their heraldic blazons and his. The church +Was unfinished when the Great Captain died in the displeasure of his +ungrateful king, and its sumptuous completion testifies to the devotion +of his wife and her taste in choosing the best artists for the work. + +I have still the sense of a noonday quiet that lingered with us after we +left this church and which seemed to go with us to the Hospital of St. +John of God, founded, with other hospitals, by the pious Portuguese, +who, after a life of good works, took this name on his well-merited +canonization. The hospital is the monument of his devotion to good +works, and is full of every manner of religious curio. I cannot remember +to have seen so many relics under one roof, bones of both holy men and +women, with idols of the heathen brought from Portuguese possessions in +the East which are now faded from the map, as well as the body of St. +John of God shrined in silver in the midst of all. + +[Illustration: 29 LOOKING NORTHWEST FROM THE GENERALIFE OVER GRANADA] + +I do not know why I should have brought away from these two places a +peacefulness of mind such as seldom follows a visit to show-places, but +the fact is so; perhaps it was because we drove to and from them, and +were not so tired as footworn sight-seers are, or so rebellious. One +who had seen not only the body of St. John of God, but his cane with +a whistle in it to warn the charitable of his coming and attune their +minds to alms-giving, and the straw basket in which he collected food +for the poor, now preserved under an embroidered satin covering, and an +autograph letter of his framed in glass and silver, might even have been +refreshed by his experience. At any rate, we were so far from tired +that after luncheon we walked to the Garden of the Generalife, and then +walked all over it. The afternoon was of the very mood for such a visit, +and we passed it there in these walks and bowers, and the black cypress +aisles, and the trees and vines yellowing to the fall of their leaves. +The melancholy laugh of water chasing down the steep channels and +gurgling through the stone rails of stairways was everywhere, and its +dim smile gleamed from pools and tanks. In the court where it stretched +in a long basin an English girl was painting and another girl was +sewing, to whom I now tardily offer my thanks for adding to the charm of +the place. Not many other people were there to dispute our afternoon’s +ownership. I count a peasant family, the women in black shawls and the +men wearing wide, black sashes, rather as our guests than as strangers; +and I am often there still with no sense of molestation. Even the reader +who does not conceive of a garden being less flowers and shrubs than +fountains and pavilions and porches and borders of box and walls of +clipped evergreens, will scarcely follow me to the Generalife or outstay +me there. + +The place is probably dense with history and suffocating with +association, but I prefer to leave all that to the imagination where +my own ignorance found it. A painter had told me once of his spending a +summer in it, and he showed some beautiful pieces of color in proof, but +otherwise I came to it with a blank surface on which it might photograph +itself without blurring any earlier record. This, perhaps, is why I love +so much to dwell there on that never-ending afternoon of late October. +It was long past the hour of its summer bloom, but the autumnal air was +enriching it beyond the dreams of avarice with the gold which prevails +in the Spanish landscape wherever the green is gone, and we could look +out of its yellowing bowers over a landscape immeasurable in beauty. Of +course, we tried to master the facts of the Generalife’s past, but we +really did not care for them and scarcely believed that Charles V. had +doubted the sincerity of the converted Moor who had it from Ferdinand +of Aragon, and so withheld it from his heirs for four generations +until they could ripen to a genuine Christianity at Genoa, whither they +withdrew and became the patrician family now its proprietors. The arms +of this family decorate the roof and walls of the colonnaded belvedere +from which you look out over the city and the plain and the mountains; +and there are remnants of Moorish decoration in many places, but +otherwise the Generalife is now as Christian as the noble Pallavicini +who possess it. There were plenty of flower-beds, box-bordered, but +there were no flowers in them; the flowers preferred standing about +in tall pots. There was an arbor overhung with black forgotten grapes +before the keeper’s door and in the corner of it dangled ropes of +fire-red peppers. + +This detail is what, with written help, I remember of the Generalife, +but no loveliness of it shall fade from, my soul. From its embowered and +many-fountained height it looks over to the Alhambra, dull red, and the +city wall climbing the opposite slope across the Darro to a church on +the hilltop which was once a mosque. The precipice to which the garden +clings plunges sheer to the river-bed with a downlook insurpassably +thrilling; but the best view of the city is from the flowery walk that +runs along the side of the Alcazaba, which was once a fortress and is +now a garden, long forgetful of its office of defending the Alhambra +palace. From this terrace Granada looks worthy of her place in history +and romance. We visited the Alcazaba after the Generalife, and were very +critical, but I must own the supremacy of this prospect. I should not +mind owning its supremacy among all the prospects in the world. + + + +XI + + +Meanwhile our shining hotel had begun to thrill with something besides +the cold which nightly pierced it from the snowy Sierra. This was the +excitement pending from an event promised the next day, which was the +production of a drama in verse, of peculiar and intense interest for +Granada, where the scene of it was laid in the Alhambra at one of the +highest moments of its history, and the persons were some of those +dearest to its romance. Not only the company to perform it (of course +the first company in Spain) had been in the hotel overnight, and the +ladies of it had gleamed and gloomed through the cold corridors, but the +poet had been conspicuous at dinner, with his wife, young and beautiful +and blond, and powdered so white that her blondness was of quite a +violet cast. There was not so much a question of whether we should +take tickets as whether we could get them, but for this the powerful +influence of our guide availed, and he got tickets providentially given +up in the morning for a price so exorbitant I should be ashamed to +confess it. They were for the afternoon performance, and at three +o’clock we went with the rest of the gay and great world of Granada to +the principal theater. + +The Latin conception of a theater is of something rather more barnlike +than ours, but this theater was of a sufficiently handsome presence, and +when we had been carried into it by the physical pressure exerted upon +us by the crowd at the entrance we found its vastness already thronged. +The seats in the orchestra were mostly taken; the gallery under the +roof was loud with the impatience for the play which the auditors +there testified by cries and whistlings and stampings until the curtain +lifted; the tiers of boxes rising all round the theater were filled with +family parties. The fathers and mothers sat in front with the children +between them of all ages down to babies in their nurses’ arms. These +made themselves perfectly at home, in one case reaching over the edge +of the box and clawing the hair of a gentleman standing below and openly +enjoying the joke. The friendly equality of the prevailing spirit was +expressed in the presence of the family servants at the back of the +family boxes, from which the latest fashions showed themselves here and +there, as well as the belated local versions of them. In the orchestra +the men had promptly lighted their cigars and the air was blue with +smoke. Friends found one another, to their joyful amaze, not having met +since morning; and especially young girls were enraptured to recognize +young men; one girl shook hands twice with a young man, and gurgled with +laughter as long as he stood near her. + +As a lifelong lover of the drama and a boyish friend of Granadan +romance, I ought to have cared more for the play than the people who had +come to it, but I did not. The play was unintentionally amusing enough; +but after listening for two hours to the monotonous cadences of the +speeches which the persons of it recited to one another, while the +ladies of the Moorish world took as public a part in its events as if +they had been so many American Christians, we came away. We had already +enjoyed the first entr’acte, when the men all rose and went out, or +lighted fresh cigars and went to talk with the Paris hats and plumes +or the Spanish mantillas and high combs in the boxes. The curtain had +scarcely fallen when the author of the play was called before it and +applauded by the generous, the madly generous, spectators. He stood +bowing and bowing on tiptoe, as if the wings of his rapture lifted him +to them and would presently fly away with him. He could not drink deep +enough of the delicious draught, put brimming to his lips, and the +divine intoxication must have lasted him through the night, for after +breakfast the next morning I met him in our common corridor at the hotel +smiling to himself, and when I could not forbear smiling in return he +smiled more; he beamed, he glowed upon me as if I were a crowded house +still cheering him to the echo. It was a beautiful moment and I realized +even better than the afternoon before what it was to be a young poet and +a young Spanish poet, and to have had a first play given for the first +time in the city of Granada, where the morning papers glowed with praise +so ardent that the print all but smoked with it. We were alone in the +corridor where we met, and our eyes confessed us kindred spirits, and +I hope he understood me better than if I had taken him in my arms and +kissed him on both cheeks. + +I really had no time for that; I was on my way down-stairs to witness +the farewell scene between the leading lady and the large group of +young Granadans who had come up to see her off. When she came out to +the carriage with her husband, by a delicate refinement of homage they +cheered him, and left him to deliver their devotion to her, which +she acknowledged only with a smile. But not so the leading lady’s +lady’s-maid, when her turn came to bid good-by from our omnibus window +to the assembled upper servants of the hotel. She put her head out and +said in a voice hoarse with excitement and good-fellowship, _“Adios, +hombres!”_ (“Good-by, men!”), and vanished with us from their applausive +presence. + +With us, I say, for we, too, were leaving Granada in rain which was +snow on the Sierra and so cold that we might well have seemed leaving +Greenland. The brave mules which had so gallantly, under the lash of +the running foot-boy beside them, galloped uphill with us the moonlight +night of our coming, now felt their anxious way down in the dismal +drizzle of that last morning, and brought us at last to the plaza before +the station. It was a wide puddle where I thought our craft should have +floundered, but it made its way to the door, and left us dry shod within +and glad to be quitting the city of my young dreams. + + + + +XII. THE SURPRISES OF RONDA + + +The rain that pelted sharply into the puddle before the station at +Granada was snow on the Sierra, and the snow that fell farther and +farther down the mountainsides resolved itself over the Vega into a +fog as white and almost as cold. Half-way across the storied and fabled +plain the rain stopped and the fog lifted, and then we saw by day, as +we had already seen by night, how the Vega was plentifully dotted with +white cottages amid breadths of wheat-land where the peasants were +plowing. Here and there were fields of Indian corn, and in a certain +place there was a small vineyard; in one of the middle distances there +spread a forest of Lombardy poplars, yellow as gold, and there was +abundance of this autumn coloring in the landscape, which grew lonelier +as we began to mount from the level. Olives, of course, abounded, and +there were oak woods and clumps of wild cherry trees. The towns were far +from the stations, which we reached at the rate of perhaps two miles an +hour as we approached the top of the hills; and we might have got out +and walked without fear of being left behind by our train, which made +long stops, as if to get its breath for another climb. Before this the +sole companion of our journey, whom we decided to be a landed proprietor +coming out in his riding-gear to inspect his possessions, had left us, +but at the first station after our descent began other passengers got +in, with a captain of Civil Guards among them, very loquacious and very +courteous, and much deferred to by the rest of us. At Bobadilla, where +again we had tea with hot goat’s milk in it, we changed cars, and +from that on we had the company of a Rock-Scorpion pair whose name was +beautifully Italian and whose speech was beautifully English, as the +speech of those born at Gibraltar should rightfully be. + + + +I + + +It was quite dark at Ronda when our omnibus drove into the gardened +grounds of one of those admirable inns which an English company is +building in Spain, and put us down at the door of the office, where a +typical English manageress and her assistant appointed us pleasant rooms +and had fires kindled in them while we dined. There were already fires +in the pleasant reading-room, which did not diffuse a heat too great +for health but imparted to the eye a sense of warmth such as we had +experienced nowhere else in Spain. Over all was spread a quiet and +quieting British influence; outside of the office the nature of the +service was Spanish, but the character of it was English; the Spanish +waiters spoke English, and they looked English in dress and manner; +superficially the chambermaid was as English as one could have found her +in the United Kingdom, but at heart you could see she was as absolutely +and instinctively a Spanish _camerera_ as any in a hotel of Madrid or +Seville. In the atmosphere of insularity the few Spanish guests +were scarcely distinguishable from Anglo-Saxons, though a group +of magnificent girls at a middle table, quelled by the duenna-like +correctness of their mother, looked with their exaggerated hair and eyes +like Spanish ladies made up for English parts in a play. + +We had our breakfast in the reading-room where all the rest were +breakfasting and trying not to see that they were keeping one another +from the fire. It was very cold, for Ronda is high in the mountains +which hem it round and tower far above it. We had already had our first +glimpse of their summits from our own windows, but it was from the +terrace outside the reading-room that we felt their grandeur most after +we had drunk our coffee: we could scarcely have borne it before. In +their presence, we could not realize at once that Ronda itself was +a mountain, a mere mighty mass of rock, cleft in twain, with chasmal +depths where we saw pygmy men and mules creeping out upon the valley +that stretched upward to the foot of the Sierra. Why there should ever +have been a town built there in the prehistoric beginning, except that +the rock was so impossible to take, and why it should have therefore +been taken by that series of invaders who pervaded all Spain--by the +Phoenicians, by the Carthaginians, by the Romans, by the Goths, by the +Moors, by the Christians, and after many centuries by the French, and +finally by the Spaniards again--it would not be easy to say. Among its +many conquerors, the Moors left their impress upon it, though here +as often as elsewhere in Spain their impress is sometimes merely a +decoration of earlier Roman work. There remains a Roman bridge which +the Moors did not make over into the likeness of their architecture, but +built a bridge of their own which also remains and may be seen from the +magnificent structure with which the Spaniards have arched the abyss +where the river rushes writhing and foaming through the gorge three +hundred feet below. There on the steps that lead from the brink, the eye +of pity may still see the files of Christian captives bringing water up +to their Moslem masters; but as one cannot help them now, even by the +wildest throe, it is as well to give a vain regret to the architect of +the Spanish bridge, who fell to his death from its parapet, and then +push on to the market hard by. + + + +II + + +You have probably come to see that market because you have read in your +guide-books that the region round about Ronda is one of the richest in +Spain for grapes and peaches and medlars and melons and other fruits +whose names melt in the mouth. If you do not find in the market the +abundance you expect of its picturesqueness you must blame the lateness +of the season, and go visit the bull-ring, one of the most famous in the +world, for Ronda is not less noted for its _toreros_ and _aficionados_ +than for its vineyards and orchards. But here again the season will have +been before you with the glory of those _corridas_ which you have still +hoped not to witness but to turn from as an example to the natives +before the first horse is disemboweled or the first bull slain, or even +the first _banderillero_ tossed over the barrier. + +The bull-ring seemed fast shut to the public when we approached it, +but we found ourselves smilingly welcomed to the interior by the kindly +mother in charge. She made us free of the whole vast place, where eight +thousand people could witness in perfect comfort the dying agonies of +beasts and men, but especially she showed us the chamber over the gate, +full of bullfighting properties: the pikes, the little barbed pennons, +the long sword by which the bull suffers and dies, as well as the +cumbrous saddles and bridles and spears for the unhappy horses and their +riders. She was especially compassionate of the horses, and she had +apparently no pleasure in any of the cruel things, though she was not +critical of the sport. The King of Spain is president of the Ronda +bull-fighting association, and she took us into the royal box, which +is the worthier to be seen because under it the bulls are shunted and +shouted into the ring from the pen where they have been kept in the +dark. Before we escaped her husband sold us some very vivid postal +cards representing the sport; so that with the help of a large black cat +holding the center of the ring, we felt that we had seen as much of a +bull-fight as we could reasonably wish. + +We were seeing the wonders of the city in the guidance of a charming boy +whom we had found in wait for us at the gate of the hotel garden when we +came out. He offered his services in the best English he had, and he had +enough of it to match my Spanish word for word throughout the morning. +He led us from the bull-ring to the church known to few visitors, I +believe, where the last male descendant of Montezuma lies entombed, +under a fit inscription, and then through the Plaza past the college of +Montezuma, probably named for this heir of the Aztec empire. I do not +know why the poor prince should have come to die in Ronda, but there are +many things in Ronda which I could not explain: especially why a certain +fruit is sold by an old woman on the bridge. Its berries are threaded +on a straw and look like the most luscious strawberries but taste like +turpentine, though they may be avoided under the name of _madrones._ But +on no account would I have the reader avoid the Church of Santa Maria +Mayor. It is so dark within that he will not see the finely carved choir +seats without the help of matches, or the pictures at all; but it is +worth realizing, as one presently may, that the hither part of the +church is a tolerably perfect mosque of Moorish architecture, through +which you must pass to the Renaissance temple of the Christian faith. + +Near by is the Casa de Mondragon which he should as little miss if he +has any pleasure in houses with two _patios_ perching on the gardened +brink of a precipice and overlooking one of the most beautiful valleys +in the whole world, with donkey-trains climbing up from it over the +face of the cliff. The garden is as charming as red geraniums and blue +cabbages can make a garden, and the house is fascinatingly quaint and +unutterably Spanish, with the inner _patio_ furnished in bright-colored +cushions and wicker chairs, and looked into by a brown wooden gallery. A +stately lemon-colored elderly woman followed us silently about, and the +whole place was pervaded by a smell that was impossible at the time and +now seems incredible. + + + +III + + +I here hesitate before a little adventure which I would not make too +much of nor yet minify: it seems to me so gentle and winning. I had long +meant to buy a donkey, and I thought I could make no fitter beginning +to this end than by buying a donkey’s head-stall in the country where +donkeys are more respected and more brilliantly accoutred than anywhere +else in the whole earth. When I ventured to suggest my notion, or call +it dream, to our young guide, he instantly imagined it in its full +beauty, and he led us directly to a shop in the principal street which +for the richness and variety of the coloring in its display might +have been a florist’s shop. Donkeys’ trappings in brilliant yellow, +vermillion, and magenta hung from the walls, and head-stalls, gorgeously +woven and embroidered, dangled from the roof. Among them and under them +the donkeys’ harness-maker sat at his work, a short, brown, handsome +man with eyes that seemed the more prominent because of his close-shaven +head. We chose a headstall of such splendor that no heart could have +resisted it, and while he sewed to it the twine muzzle which Spanish +donkeys wear on their noses for the protection of the public, our guide +expatiated upon us, and said, among other things to our credit, that we +were from America and were going to take the head-stall back with us. + +The harness-maker lifted his head alertly. “Where, in America?” and we +answered for ourselves, “From New York.” + +Then the harness-maker rose and went to an inner doorway and called +through it something that brought out a comely, motherly woman as alert +as himself. She verified our statement for herself, and having paved +the way firmly for her next question she asked, “Do you know the Escuela +Mann?” + +As well as our surprise would let us, we said that we knew the Mann +School, both where and what it was. + +She waited with a sort of rapturous patience before saying, “My son, our +eldest son, was educated at the Escuela Mann, to be a teacher, and now +he is a professor in the Commercial College in Puerto Rico.” + +If our joint interest in this did not satisfy her expectation I for my +part can never forgive myself; certainly I tried to put as much passion +into my interest as I could, when she added that his education at the +Escuela Mann was without cost to him. By this time, in fact, I was so +proud of the Escuela Mann that I could not forbear proclaiming that a +member of my own family, no less than the father of the grandson for +whose potential donkey I was buying that headstall, was one of the +architects of the Escuela Mann building. + +She now vanished within, and when she came out she brought her daughter, +a gentle young girl who sat down and smiled upon us through the rest of +the interview. She brought also an armful of books, the Spanish-English +Ollendorff which her son had used in studying our language, his +dictionary, and the copy-book where he had written his exercises, with +two photographs of him, not yet too Americanized; and she showed us not +only how correctly but how beautifully his exercises were done. If I did +not admire these enough, again I cannot forgive myself, but she +seemed satisfied with what I did, and she talked on about him, not too +loquaciously, but lovingly and lovably as a mother should, and proudly +as the mother of such a boy should, though without vainglory; I have +forgotten to say that she had a certain distinction of face, and was +appropriately dressed in black. By this time we felt that a head-stall +for such a donkey as I was going to buy was not enough to get of such +people, and I added a piece of embroidered leather such as goes in Spain +on the front of a donkey’s saddle; if we could not use it so, in final +defect of the donkey, we could put it on a veranda chair. The saddler +gave it at so low a price that we perceived he must have tacitly abated +something from the visual demand, and when we did not try to beat him +down, his wife went again into that inner room and came out with an +iron-holder of scarlet flannel backed with canvas, and fringed with +magenta, and richly inwrought with a Moorish design, in white, yellow, +green, and purple. I say Moorish, because one must say something, but +if it was a pattern of her own invention the gift was the more precious +when she bestowed it on the sister of one of the architects of the +Escuela Mann. That led to more conversation about the Escuela Mann, and +about the graduate of it who was now a professor in Puerto Rico, and we +all grew such friends, and so proud of one another, and of the country +so wide open to the talents without cost to them, that when I asked +her if she would not sometime be going to America, her husband answered +almost fiercely in his determination, “I am going when I have learned +English!” and to prove that this was no idle boast, he pronounced some +words of our language at random, but very well. We parted in a glow of +reciprocal esteem and I still think of that quarter-hour as one of my +happiest; and whatever others may say, I say that to have done such a +favor to one Spanish family as the Escuela Mann had been the means of +our nation doing this one was a greater thing than to have taken Cuba +from Spain and bought the Philippines when we had seized them already +and had led the Filipinos to believe that we meant to give their islands +to them. + + + +IV + +[Illustration: 30 LOOKING ACROSS THE NEW BRIDGE (300 FEET HIGH) OVER THE GUADA-LAVIAR GORGE, RONDA + +Suddenly, on the way home to our very English hotel, the air of Ronda +seemed charged with English. We were already used to the English of our +young guide, which so far as it went, went firmly and courageously after +forethought and reflection for each sentence, but we were not quite +prepared for the English of two polite youths who lifted their hats as +they passed us and said, “Good afternoon.” The general English lasted +quite overnight and far into the next day when we found several natives +prepared to try it on us in the pretty Alameda, and learned from one, +who proved to be the teacher of it in the public school, that there were +some twenty boys studying it there: heaven knows why, but the English +hotel and its success may have suggested it to them as a means of +prosperity. The students seem each prepared to guide strangers through +Ronda, but sometimes they fail of strangers. That was the case with the +pathetic young hunchback whom we met in Alameda, and who owned that he +had guided none that day. In view of this and as a prophylactic against +a course of bad luck, I made so bold as to ask if I might venture to +repair the loss of the peseta which he would otherwise have earned. He +smiled wanly, and then with the countenance of the teacher, he submitted +and thanked me in English which I can cordially recommend to strangers +knowing no Spanish. + +All this was at the end of another morning when we had set out with +the purpose of seeing the rest of Ronda for ourselves. We chose a back +street parallel to the great thoroughfare leading to the new bridge, and +of a squalor which we might have imagined but had not. The dwellers in +the decent-looking houses did not seem to mind the sights and scents of +their street, but these revolted us, and we made haste out of it into +the avenue where the greater world of Ronda was strolling or standing +about, but preferably standing about. In the midst of it, at the +entrance of the new bridge we heard ourselves civilly saluted and +recognized with some hesitation the donkey’s harness-maker who, in his +Sunday dress and with his hat on, was not just the work-day presence +we knew. He held by the hand a pretty boy of eleven years, whom he +introduced as his second son, self-destined to follow the elder brother +to America, and duly take up the profession of teaching in Puerto Rico +after experiencing the advantages of the Escuela Mann. His father said +that he already knew some English, and he proposed that the boy should +go about with us and practise it, and after polite demur and insistence +the child came with us, to our great pleasure. He bore himself with fit +gravity, in his cap and long linen pinafore as he went before us, and we +were personally proud of his fine, long face and his serious eyes, dark +and darkened yet more by their long lashes. He knew the way to just such +a book store as we wanted, where the lady behind the desk knew him and +willingly promised to get me some books in the Andalusian dialect, and +send them to our hotel by him at half past twelve. Naturally she did not +do so, but he came to report her failure to get them. We had offered to +pay him for his trouble, but he forbade us, and when we had overcome his +scruple he brought the money back, and we had our trouble over again +to make him keep it. To this hour I do not know how we ever brought +ourselves to part with him; perhaps it was his promise of coming to +America next year that prevailed with us; his brother was returning on a +visit and then they were going back together. + + + +V + + +Our search for literature in Ronda was not wholly a failure. At another +bookstore, I found one of those local histories which I was always +vainly trying for in other Spanish towns, and I can praise the _Historia +de Ronda par Federico Lozano Gutierrez_ as well done, and telling all +that one would ask to know about that famous city. The author’s picture +is on the cover, and with his charming letter dedicating the book to his +father goes far to win the reader’s heart. Outside the bookseller’s a +blind minstrel was playing the guitar in the care of a small boy who was +selling, not singing, the ballads. They celebrated the prowess of Spain +in recent wars, and it would not be praising them too highly to say that +they seemed such as might have been written by a drum-major. Not that I +think less of them for that reason, or that I think I need humble myself +greatly to the historian of Ronda for associating their purchase with +that of his excellent little book. If I had bought some of the blind +minstrel’s almanacs and jest-books I might indeed apologize, but ballads +are another thing. + +After we left the bookseller’s, our little guide asked us if we would +like to see a church, and we said that we would, and he took us into a +white and gold interior, with altar splendors out of proportion to its +simplicity, all in the charge of a boy no older than himself, who was +presently joined by two other contemporaries. They followed us gravely +about, and we felt that it was an even thing between ourselves and +the church as objects of interest equally ignored by Baedeker. Then we +thought we would go home and proposed going by the Alameda. + +That is a beautiful place, where one may walk a good deal, and drive, +rather less, but not sit down much unless indeed one likes being swarmed +upon by the beggars who have a just priority of the benches. There +seemed at first to be nobody walking in the Alameda except a gentleman +pacing to and from the handsome modern house at the first corner, which +our guide said was this cavalier’s house. He interested me beyond any +reason I could give; he looked as if he might represent the highest +society in Ronda, but did not find it an adequate occupation, and might +well have interests and ambitions beyond it. I make him my excuses for +intruding my print upon him, but I would give untold gold if I had it to +know all about such a man in such a city, walking up and down under +the embrowning trees and shrinking flowers of its Alameda, on a Sunday +morning like that. + +Our guide led us to the back gate of our hotel garden, where we found +ourselves in the company of several other students of English. There +was our charming young guide of the day before and there was that sad +hunchback already mentioned, and there was their teacher who seemed so +few years older and master of so little more English. Together we looked +into the valley into which the vision makes its prodigious plunge at +Ronda before lifting again over the fertile plain to the amphitheater of +its mighty mountains; and there we took leave of that nice boy who would +not follow us into our garden because, as he showed us by the sign, it +was forbidden to any but guests. He said he was going into the country +with his family for the afternoon, and with some difficulty he owned +that he expected to play there; it was truly an admission hard to make +for a boy of his gravity. We shook hands at parting with him, and with +our yesterday’s guide, and with the teacher and with the hunchback; they +all offered it in the bond of our common English; and then we felt that +we had parted with much, very much of what was sweetest and best in +Ronda. + + + +VI + + +The day had been so lovely till now that we said we would stay many +days in Ronda, and we loitered in the sun admiring the garden; the young +landlady among her flowers said that all the soil had to be brought for +it in carts and panniers, and this made us admire its autumn blaze the +more. That afternoon we had planned taking our tea on the terrace for +the advantage of looking at the sunset light on the mountains, but +suddenly great black clouds blotted it out. Then we lost courage; it +appeared to us that it would be both brighter and, warmer by the sea and +that near Gibraltar we could more effectually prevent our steamer from +getting away to New York without us. We called for our bill, and after +luncheon the head waiter who brought it said that the large black cat +which had just made friends with us always woke him if he slept late +in the morning and followed him into the town like a dog when he walked +there. + +It was hard to part with a cat like that, but it was hard to part with +anything in Ronda. Yet we made the break, and instead of ruining over +the precipitous face of the rock where the city stands, as we might have +expected, we glided smoothly down the long grade into the storm-swept +lowlands sloping to the sea. They grew more fertile as we descended +and after we had left a mountain valley where the mist hung grayest and +chillest, we suddenly burst into a region of mellow fruitfulness, where +the haze was all luminous, and where the oranges hung gold and green +upon the trees, and the women brought grapes and peaches and apples to +the train. The towns seemed to welcome us southward and the woods we +knew instantly to be of cork trees, with Don Quixote and Sancho Panza +under their branches anywhere we chose to look. + +Otherwise, the journey was without those incidents which have so often +rendered these pages thrilling. Just before we left Ronda a couple, +self-evidently the domestics of a good family, got into our first-class +carriage though they had unquestionably only third-class tickets. They +had the good family’s dog with them, and after an unintelligible appeal +to us and to the young English couple in the other corner, they remained +and banished any misgivings they had by cheerful dialogue. The dog +coiled himself down at my feet and put his nose close to my ankles, so +that without rousing his resentment I could not express in Spanish my +indignation at what I felt to be an outrageous intrusion: servants, we +all are, but in traveling first class one must draw the line at dogs, I +said as much to the English couple, but they silently refused any part +in the demonstration. Presently the conductor came out to the window +for our fares, and he made the Spanish pair observe that they had +third-class tickets and their dog had none. He told them they must get +out, but they noted to him the fact that none of us had objected +to their company, or their dog’s, and they all remained, referring +themselves to us for sympathy when the conductor left. After the next +station the same thing happened with little change; the conductor was +perhaps firmer and they rather more yielding in their disobedience. Once +more after a stop the conductor appeared and told them that when the +train halted again, they and their dog must certainly get out. Then +something surprising happened: they really got out, and very amiably; +perhaps it was the place where they had always meant to get out; but it +was a great triumph for the railway company, which owed nothing in the +way of countenance to the young English couple; they had done nothing +but lunch from their basket and bottle. We ourselves arrived safely soon +after nightfall at Algeciras, just in time for dinner in the comfortable +mother-hotel whose pretty daughter had made us so much at home in Ronda. + + + + +XIII. ALGECIRAS AND TARIFA + + +When we walked out on the terrace of our hotel at Algeciras after +breakfast, the first morning, we were greeted by the familiar form of +the Rock of Gibraltar still advertising, as we had seen it three years +before, a well-known American insurance company. It rose beyond five +miles of land-locked water, which we were to cross every other day for +three weeks on many idle and anxious errands, until we sailed from it at +last for New York. + +Meanwhile Algeciras was altogether delightful not only because of our +Kate-Greenaway hotel, embowered in ten or twelve acres of gardened +ground, with walks going and coming under its palms and eucalyptuses, +beside beds of geraniums and past trellises of roses and jasmines, all +in the keeping of a captive stork which was apt unexpectedly to meet +the stranger and clap its formidable mandibles at him, and then hop away +with half-lifted wings. Algeciras had other claims which it urged day +after day more winningly upon us as the last place where we should feel +the charm of Spain unbroken in the tradition which reaches from modern +fact far back into antique fable. I will not follow it beyond the +historic clue, for I think the reader ought to be satisfied with knowing +that the Moors held it as early as the seven hundreds and as late as the +thirteen hundreds, when the Christians definitively recaptured it and +their kings became kings of Algeciras as well as kings of Spain, and +remain so to this day. At the end of the eighteenth century one of these +kings made it his lookout for watching the movements of the inimical +English fleets, and then Algeciras slumbered again, haunted only by “a +deep dream of peace” till the European diplomats, rather unexpectedly +assisted by an American envoy, made it the scene of their famous +conference for settling the Morocco question in. 1906. + +[Illustration: 31 VIEW OF ALGECIRAS] + +I think this is my whole duty to the political interest of Algeciras, +and until I come to our excursion to Tarifa I am going to give myself +altogether to our pleasure in the place unvexed by any event of history. +I disdain even to note that the Moors took the city again from the +Christians, after twenty-five years, and demolished it, for I prefer to +remember it as it has been rebuilt and lies white by its bay, a series +of red-tiled levels of roof with a few church-towers topping them. It is +a pretty place, and remarkably clean, inhabited mostly by beggars, with +a minority of industrial, commercial, and professional citizens, who +live in agreeable little houses, with _patios_ open to the passer, and +with balconies overhanging him. It has of course a bull-ring, enviously +closed during our stay, and it has one of the pleasantest Alamedas +and the best swept in Spain, where some nice boys are playing in +the afternoon sun, and a gentleman, coming out of one of the villas +bordering on it, is courteously interested in the two strangers whom he +sees sitting on a bench beside the walk, with the leaves of the plane +trees dropping round them in the still air. + +The Alameda is quite at the thither end of Algeciras. At the end next +our hotel, but with the intervention of a space of cliff, topped and +faced by summer cottages and gardens, is the station with a train +usually ready to start from it for Ronda or Seville or Malaga, I do not +know which, and with the usual company of freight-cars idling about, +empty or laden with sheets of cork, as indifferent to them as if +they were so much mere pine or spruce lumber. There is a sufficiently +attractive hotel here for transients, and as an allurement to the marine +and military leisure of Gibraltar, “The Picnic Restaurant,” and “The +Cabin Tea Room,” where no doubt there is something to be had beside +sandwiches and tea. Here also is the pier for the Gibraltar boats, with +the Spanish custom-house which their passengers must pass through and +have their packages and persons searched for contraband. One heard of +wild caprices on the part of the inspectors in levying duties which +were sometimes made to pass the prime cost of the goods in Gibraltar. I +myself only carried in books which after the first few declarations were +recognized as of no imaginable value and passed with a genial tolerance, +as a sort of joke, by officers whom I saw feeling the persons of their +fellow-Spaniards unsparingly over. + +We had, if anything, less business really in Algeciras than in +Gibraltar, but we went into the town nearly every afternoon, and +wantonly bought things. By this means we proved that the Andalusian +shopmen had not the proud phlegm of the Castilians across their +counters. In the principal dry-goods store two salesmen rivaled each +other in showing us politeness, and sent home our small purchases as +promptly as if we had done them a favor in buying. We were indeed the +wonder of our fellow-customers who were not buying; but our pride was +brought down in the little shop where the proprietress was too much +concerned in cooking her dinner (it smelled delicious) to mind our wish +for a very cheap green vase, inestimably Spanish after we got it home. +However, in another shop where the lady was ironing her week’s wash on +the counter, a lady friend who was making her an afternoon call got such +a vase down for us and transacted the negotiation out of pure good will +for both parties to it. + +Parallel with the railway was a channel where small fishing-craft lay, +and where a leisurely dredging-machine was stirring up the depths in +a stench so dire that I wonder we do not smell it across the Atlantic. +Over this channel a bridge led into the town, and offered the convenient +support of its parapet to the crowd of spectators who wished to inhale +that powerful odor at their ease, and who hung there throughout the +working-day; the working-day of the dredging-machine, that is. The +population was so much absorbed in this that when we first crossed into +the town, we found no beggar children even, though there were a few +blind beggarmen, but so few that a boy who had one of them in charge was +obliged to leave off smelling the river and run and hunt him up for us. +Other boys were busy in street-sweeping and b-r-r-r-r-ing to the donkeys +that carried off the sweepings in panniers; and in the fine large plaza +before the principal church of Algeciras there was a boy who had plainly +nothing but mischief to do, though he did not molest us farther than +to ask in English, “Want to see the cathedral?” Then he went his way +swiftly and we went into the church, which we found very whitewashed and +very Moorish in architecture, but very Spanish in the Blessed Virgins +on most of the altars, dressed in brocades and jewels. A sacristan was +brushing and dusting the place, but he did not bother us, and we went +freely about among the tall candles standing on the floor as well as on +the altars, and bearing each a placard attached with black ribbon, and +dedicated in black letters on silver “To the Repose of This or That” one +among the dead. + +The meaning was evident enough, but we sought something further of the +druggist at the corner, who did his best for us in such English as he +had. It was not quite the English of Ronda; but he praised his grammar +while he owned that his vocabulary was in decay from want of practise. +In fact, he well-nigh committed us to the purchase of one of those +votive candles, which he understood we wished to buy; he all but sent to +the sacristan to get one. There were several onlookers, as there always +are in Latin pharmacies, and there was a sad young mother waiting for +medicine with a sick baby in her arms. The druggist said it had fever of +the stomach; he seemed proud of the fact, and some talk passed between +him and the bystanders which related to it. We asked if he had any of +the quince jelly which we had learned to like in Seville, but he could +only refer us to the confectioner’s on the other corner. Here was not +indeed quince jelly, but we compromised on quince cheese, as the English +call it; and we bought several boxes of it to take to America, which I +am sorry to say moulded before our voyage began, and had to be thrown +away. Near this confectioner’s was a booth where boiled sweet-potatoes +were sold, with oranges and joints of sugar-cane, and, spitted on +straws, that terrible fruit of the strawberry tree which we had tasted +at Honda without wishing to taste it ever again. Yet there was a boy +boldly buying several straws of it and chancing the intoxication which +over-indulgence in it is said to cause. Whether the excitement of these +events was too great or not, we found ourselves suddenly unwilling, if +not unable, to walk back to our hotel, and we took a cab of the three +standing in the plaza. One was without a horse, another without a +driver, but the third had both, as in some sort of riddle, and we had no +sooner taken it than a horse was put into the first and a driver ran +out and got on the box of the second, as if that was the answer to the +riddle. + + + +II + + +It was then too late for them to share our custom, but I am not sure +that it was not one of these very horses or drivers whom we got another +day for our drive about the town and its suburbs, and an excursion to +a section of the Moorish aqueduct which remains after a thousand years. +You can see it at a distance, but no horse or driver in our employ could +ever find the way to it; in fact, it seemed to vanish on approach, and +we were always bringing up in our hotel gardens without having got to +it; I do not know what we should have done with it if we had. We were +not able to do anything definite with the new villas built or building +around Algeciras, though they looked very livable, and seemed proof of a +prosperity in the place for which I can give no reason except the great +natural beauty of the nearer neighborhood, and the magnificence of +the farther, mountain-walled and skyed over with a September blue in +November. I think it would be a good place to spend the winter if one +liked each day to be exactly like every other. I do not know whether it +is inhabited by English people from Gibraltar, where there are of course +those resources of sport and society which an English colony always +carries with it. + +The popular amusements of Algeciras in the off season for bull-feasts +did not readily lend themselves to observance. Chiefly we noted two +young men with a graphophone on wheels which, being pushed about, +wheezed out the latest songs to the acceptance of large crowds. We +ourselves amused a large crowd when one of us attempted to sketch +the yellow facade of a church so small that it seemed all facade; and +another day when that one of us who held the coppers, commonly +kept sacred to blind beggars, delighted an innumerable multitude of +mendicants having their eyesight perfect. They were most of them in +the vigor of youth, and they were waiting on a certain street for the +monthly dole with which a resident of Algeciras may buy immunity for all +the other days of the month. They instantly recognized in the stranger +a fraudulent tax-dodger, and when he attempted tardily to purchase +immunity they poured upon him; in front, behind, on both sides, all +round, they boiled up and bubbled about him; and the exhaustion of his +riches alone saved him alive. It must have been a wonderful spectacle, +and I do not suppose the like of it was ever seen in Algeciras before. +It was a triumph over charity, and left quite out of comparison the +organized onsets of the infant gang which always beset the way to the +hotel under a leader whose battle-cry, at once a demand and a promise, +was “Penny-go-way, Penny-go-way!” + +Along that pleasant shore bare-legged fishermen spread their nets, and +going and coming by the Gibraltar boats were sometimes white-hosed, +brown-cloaked, white-turbaned Moors, who occasionally wore Christian +boots, but otherwise looked just such Moslems as landed at Algeciras +in the eighth century; people do not change much in Africa. They were +probably hucksters from the Moorish market in Gibraltar, where they had +given their geese and turkeys the holiday they were taking themselves. +They were handsome men, tall and vigorous, but they did not win me to +sympathy with their architecture or religion, and I am not sure but, +if there had been any concerted movement against them on the landing at +Algeciras, I should have joined in driving them out of Spain. As it +was I made as much Africa as I could of them in defect of crossing to +Tangier, which we had firmly meant to do, but which we forbore doing +till the plague had ceased to rage there. By this time the boat which +touched at Tangier on the way to Cadiz stopped going to Cadiz, and if +we could not go to Cadiz we did not care for going to Tangier. It was +something like this, if not quite like it, and it ended in our seeing +Africa only from the southernmost verge of Europe at Tarifa. At that +little distance across it looked dazzlingly white, like the cotton +vestments of those Moorish marketmen, but probably would have been no +cleaner on closer approach. + + + +III + + +As a matter of fact, we were very near not going even to Tarifa, though +we had promised ourselves going from the first. But it was very charming +to linger in the civilization of that hotel; to wander through its +garden paths in the afternoon after a forenoon’s writing and inhale the +keen aromatic odors of the eucalyptus, and when the day waned to have +tea at an iron table on the seaward terrace. Or if we went to Gibraltar, +it was interesting to wonder why we had gone, and to be so glad of +getting back, and after dinner joining a pleasant international group in +the long reading-room with the hearth-fires at either end which, if you +got near them, were so comforting against the evening chill. Sometimes +the pleasure of the time was heightened by the rain pattering on the +glass roof of the _patio,_ where in the afternoon a bulky Spanish mother +sat mute beside her basket of laces which you could buy if you would, +but need not if you would rather not; in either case she smiled +placidly. + +At last we did get together courage enough to drive twelve miles over +the hills to Tarifa, but this courage was pieced out of the fragments +of the courage we had lost for going to Cadiz by the public automobile +which runs daily from Algeciras. The road after you passed Tarifa was +so bad that those who had endured it said nobody could endure it, and +in such a case I was sure I could not, but now I am sorry I did not +venture, for since then I have motored over some of the roads in the +state of Maine and lived. If people in Maine had that Spanish road as +far as Tarifa they would think it the superb Massachusetts state road +gone astray, and it would be thought a good road anywhere, with the +promise of being better when the young eucalyptus trees planted every +few yards along it grew big enough to shade it. But we were glad of as +much sun as we could get on the brisk November morning when we drove out +of the hotel garden and began the long climb, with little intervals of +level and even of lapse. We started at ten o’clock, and it was not too +late in that land of anomalous hours to meet peasants on their mules and +donkeys bringing loads of stuff to market in Algeciras. Men were plowing +with many yoke of oxen in the wheat-fields; elsewhere there were green +pastures with herds of horses grazing in them, an abundance of brown +pigs, and flocks of sheep with small lambs plaintively bleating. +The pretty white farmhouses, named each after a favorite saint, and +gathering at times into villages, had grapes and figs and pomegranates +in their gardens; and when we left them and climbed higher, we began +passing through long stretches of cork woods. + +The trees grew wild, sometimes sturdily like our oaks, and sometimes +gnarled and twisted like our seaside cedars, and in every state of +excoriation. The bark is taken from them each seventh year, and it +begins to be taken long before the first seventh. The tender saplings +and the superannuated shell wasting to its fall yield alike their bark, +which is stripped from the roots to the highest boughs. Where they have +been flayed recently they look literally as if they were left bleeding, +for the sap turns a red color; but with time this changes to brown, and +the bark begins to renew itself and grows again till the next seventh +year. Upon the whole the cork-wood forest is not cheerful, and I would +rather frequent it in the pages of _Don Quixote_ than out; though if the +trees do not mind being barked it is mere sentimentality in me to pity +them. + +The country grew lonelier and drearier as we mounted, and the wind blew +colder over the fields blotched with that sort of ground-palm, which +lays waste so much land in southern Spain. When we descended the winding +road from the summit we came in sight of the sea with Africa clearly +visible beyond, and we did not lose sight of it again. Sometimes we +met soldiers possibly looking out for smugglers but, let us hope, not +molesting them; and once we met a brace of the all-respected Civil +Guards, marching shoulder to shoulder, with their cloaks swinging free +and their carbines on their arms, severe, serene, silent. Now and then a +mounted wayfarer came toward us looking like a landed proprietor in +his own equipment and that of his steed, and there were peasant women +solidly perched on donkeys, and draped in long black cloaks and hooded +in white kerchiefs. + + + +IV + + +The landscape softened again, with tilled fields and gardened spaces +around the cottages, and now we had Tarifa always in sight, a stretch of +white walls beside the blue sea with an effect of vicinity which it was +very long in realizing. We had meant when we reached the town at last to +choose which _fonda_ we should stop at for our luncheon, but our driver +chose the Fonda de Villanueva outside the town wall, and I do not +believe we could have chosen better if he had let us. He really put +us down across the way at the _venta_ where he was going to bait his +horses; and in what might well have seemed the custody of a little +policeman with a sword at his side, we were conducted to the _fonda_ and +shown up into the very neat icy cold parlor where a young girl with a +yellow flower in her hair received us. We were chill and stiff from our +drive and we hoped for something warmer from the dining-room, which we +perceived must face southward, and must be full of sun. But we reckoned +without the ideal of the girl with the yellow flower in her hair: in +the little saloon, shining round with glazed tiles where we next found +ourselves, the sun had been carefully screened and scarcely pierced the +scrim shades. But this was the worst, this was all that was bad, in that +_fonda._ When the breakfast or the luncheon, or whatever corresponds in +our usage to the Spanish _almuerzo,_ began to come, it seemed as if it +never would stop. An original but admirable omelette with potatoes and +bacon in it was followed by fried fish flavored with saffron. Then there +was brought in fried kid with a dish of kidneys; more fried fish came +after, and then boiled beef, with a dessert of small cakes. Of course +there was wine, as much as you would, such as it was, and several sorts +of fruit. I am sorry to have forgotten how little all this cost, but at +a venture I will say forty cents, or fifty at the outside; and so great +kindness and good will went with it from the family who cooked it in the +next room and served it with such cordial insistence that I think it was +worth quite the larger sum. It would not have been polite to note how +much of this superabundance was consumed by the three Spanish gentlemen +who had so courteously saluted us in sitting down at table with us. I +only know that they made us the conventional acknowledgment in refusing +our conventional offer of some things we had brought with us from our +hotel to eat in the event of famine at Tarifa. + +When we had come at last to the last course, we turned our thoughts +somewhat anxiously to the question of a guide for the town which we felt +so little able to explore without one; and it seemed to me that I had +better ask the policeman who had brought us to our _fonda._ He was +sitting at the head of the stairs where we had left him, and so far from +being baffled by my problem, he instantly solved it by offering himself +to be our guide. Perhaps it was a profession which he merely joined to +his civic function, but it was as if we were taken into custody when he +put himself in charge of us and led us to the objects of interest which +I cannot say Tarifa abounds in. That is, if you leave out of the count +the irregular, to and fro, up and down, narrow lanes, passing the blank +walls of low houses, and glimpsing leafy and flowery _patios_ through +open gates, and suddenly expanding into broader streets and unexpected +plazas, with shops and cafes and churches in them. + +Tarifa is perhaps the quaintest town left in the world, either in or +out of Spain, but whether it is more Moorish than parts of Cordova or +Seville I could not say. It is at least pre-eminent in a feature of +the women’s costume which you are promised at the first mention of the +place, and which is said to be a survival of the Moslem civilization. +Of course we were eager for it, and when we came into the first wide +street, there at the principal corner three women were standing, just +as advertised, with black skirts caught up from their waists over their +heads and held before their faces so that only one eye could look out +at the strangers. It was like the women’s costume at Chiozza on the +Venetian lagoon, but there it is not claimed for Moorish and here it +was authenticated by being black. “Moorish ladies,” our guide proudly +proclaimed them in his scanty English, but I suspect they were Spanish; +if they were really Orientals, they followed us with those eyes single +as daringly as if they had been of our own Christian Occident. + +The event was so perfect in its way that it seemed as if our guiding +policeman might have especially ordered it; but this could not have +really been, and was no such effect of his office as the immunity from +beggars which we enjoyed in his charge. The worst boy in Tarifa (we did +not identify him) dared not approach for a big-dog or a little, and +we were safe from the boldest blind man, the hardiest hag, however +pockmarked. The lanes and the streets and the plazas were clean as +though our guide had them newly swept for us, and the plaza of the +principal church (no guide-book remembers its name) is perhaps the +cleanest in all Spain. + + + +VI + + +The church itself we found very clean, and of an interest quite beyond +the promise of the rather bare outside. A painted window above the +door cast a glare of fresh red and blue over the interior, and over +the comfortably matted floor; and there was a quite freshly carved and +gilded chapel which the pleasant youth supplementing our policeman for +the time said was done by artists still living in Tarifa. The edifice +was of a very flamboyant Gothic, with clusters of slender columns and a +vault brilliantly swirled over with decorations of the effect of peacock +feathers. But above all there was on a small side altar a figure of +the Child Jesus dressed in the corduroy suit and felt hat of a Spanish +shepherd, with a silver crook in one hand and leading a toy lamb by a +string in the other. Our young guide took the image down for us to look +at, and showed its shepherd’s dress with peculiar satisfaction; and then +he left it on the ground while he went to show us something else. When +we came back we found two small boys playing with the Child, putting its +hat off and on, and feeling of its clothes. Our guide took it from them, +not unkindly, and put it back on the altar; and whether the reader +will agree with me or not, I must own that I did not find the incident +irreverent or without a certain touchingness, as if those children and +He were all of one family and they were at home with Him there. + +Rather suddenly, after we left the church, by way of one of those +unexpectedly expanding lanes, we found ourselves on the shore of the +purple sea where the Moors first triumphed over the Goths twelve hundred +years before, and five centuries later the Spaniards heat them back from +their attempt to reconquer the city. There were barracks, empty of the +Spanish soldiers gone to fight the same old battle of the Moors on their +own ground in Africa, and there was the castle which Alfonso Perez de +Guzman held against them in 1292, and made the scene of one of those +acts of self-devotion which the heart of this time has scarcely strength +for. The Moors when they had vainly summoned him to yield brought out +his son whom they held captive, and threatened to kill him. Guzman drew +his knife and flung it down to them, and they slew the boy, but Tarif a +was saved. His king decreed that thereafter the father should be known +as Guzman the Good, and the fact has gone into a ballad, but the name +somehow does not seem quite to fit, and one wishes that the father had +not won it that way. + +We were glad to go away from the dreadful place, though Tangier was so +plain across the strait, and we were almost in Africa there, and hard +by, in the waters tossing free, the great battle of Trafalgar was +fought. From the fountains of my far youth, when I first heard of +Guzman’s dreadful heroism, I endeavored to pump up an adequate emotion; +I succeeded somewhat better with Nelson and his pathetic prayer of +“Kiss me, Hardy,” as he lay dying on his bloody deck; but I did not much +triumph with either, and I was grateful when our good little policeman +comfortably questioned the deed of Guzman which he said some doubted, +though he took us to the very spot where the Moors had parleyed with +Guzman, and showed us the tablet over the castle gate affirming the +fact. + +We liked far better the pretty Alameda rising in terraces from it with +beds of flowers beside the promenade, and boys playing up and down, and +old men sitting in the sun, and trying to ignore the wind that blew over +them too freshly for us. Our policeman confessed that there was nothing +more worth seeing in Tarifa, and we entreated of him the favor of +showing us a shop where we could buy a Cordovese hat; a hat which we +had seen nourishing on the heads of all men in Cordova and Seville and +Granada and Ronda, and had always forborne to buy because we could get +it anywhere; and now we were almost leaving Spain without it. We wanted +one brown in color, as well as stiff and flat of brim, and slightly +conical in form; and our policeman promptly imagined it, and took us +to a shop abounding solely in hats, and especially in Cordoveses. The +proprietor came out wiping his mouth from an inner room, where he had +left his family visibly at their _almuerzo;_ and then we were desolated +together that he should only have Cordoveses that were black. But +passing a _patio_ where there was a poinsettia in brilliant bloom +against the wall, we found ourselves in a variety store where there were +Cordoveses of all colors; and we chose one of the right brown, with the +picture of a beautiful Spanish girl, wearing a pink shawl, inside the +crown which was fluted round in green and red ribbon. Seven pesetas was +the monstrous asking price, but we beat it down to five and a half, +and then came a trying moment: we could not carry a Cordovese in +tissue-paper through the streets of Tarifa, but could we ask our guide, +who was also our armed escort, to carry it? He simplified the situation +by taking it himself and bearing it back to the _fonda_ as proudly as +if he had not also worn a sword at his side; and we parted there in a +kindness which I should like to think he shared equally with us. + +He was practically the last of those Spaniards who were always +winning my heart (save in the bank at Valladolid where they must +have misunderstood me), and whom I remember with tenderness for their +courtesy and amiability. In little things and large, I found the +Spaniards everywhere what I heard a Piedmontese commercial traveler say +of them in Venice fifty years ago: “They are the honestest people in +Europe.” In Italy I never began to see the cruelty to animals which +English tourists report, and in Spain I saw none at all. If the +reader asks how with this gentleness, this civility and integrity, +the Spaniards have contrived to build up their repute for cruelty, +treachery, mendacity, and every atrocity; how with their love of +bull-feasts and the suffering to man and brute which these involve, they +should yet seem so kind to both, I answer frankly, I do not know. I do +not know how the Americans are reputed good and just and law-abiding, +although they often shoot one another, and upon mere suspicion rather +often burn negroes alive. + +THE END + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg’s Familiar Spanish Travels, by W. D. Howells + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FAMILIAR SPANISH TRAVELS *** + +***** This file should be named 7430-0.txt or 7430-0.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/7/4/3/7430/ + +Produced by Eric Eldred + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. 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D. Howells + </title> + <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve"> + + body { margin:5%; background:#faebd7; text-align:justify} + P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; } + H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; } + hr { width: 50%; text-align: center;} + .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; } + blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;} + .mynote {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;} + .toc { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;} + .toc2 { margin-left: 20%;} + div.fig { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; } + .figleft {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;} + .figright {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;} + pre { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;} + +</style> + </head> + <body> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Familiar Spanish Travels, by W. D. Howells + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Familiar Spanish Travels + +Author: W. D. Howells + +Release Date: July 24, 2009 [EBook #7430] +Last Updated: August 21, 2016 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FAMILIAR SPANISH TRAVELS *** + + + + +Produced by Eric Eldred, and David Widger + + + + + + +</pre> + + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <h1> + FAMILIAR SPANISH TRAVELS + </h1> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <h2> + By W. D. Howells + </h2> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> +<h4> + ILLUSTRATED<br /><br /> + HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS<br /> + NEW YORK AND LONDON<br /><br /> + MCMXIII<br /><br /> + COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY HARPER & BROTHERS<br /><br /> + PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA<br /><br /> + PUBLISHED OCTOBER. 1913 +</h4> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <h2> + TO M. H. + </h2> + <p> + <br /><br /> <a name="linkimage-0001" id="linkimage-0001"> + <!-- IMG --></a> + </p> + <div class="fig" style="width:60%;"> + <img src="images/h1-1.jpg" + alt="01 Puerta Del Sol--gate of the Sun--toledo " width="100%" /><br /> + </div> + <p> + <br /> <br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <br /> <br /> + </p> + <blockquote> + <p class="toc"> + <big><b>CONTENTS</b></big> + </p> + <p> + <br /> <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> <big><b>FAMILIAR SPANISH TRAVELS</b></big> + </a> <br /> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> I. AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL APPROACHES </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> II. SAN SEBASTIAN AND BEAUTIFUL BISCAY </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0004"> III. BURGOS AND THE BITTER COLD OF BURGOS </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0005"> IV. THE VARIETY OF VALLADOLID </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0006"> V. PHASES OF MADRID </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0007"> VI. A NIGHT AND DAY IN TOLEDO </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0008"> VII. THE GREAT GRIDIRON OF ST. LAWRENCE </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0009"> VIII. CORDOVA AND THE WAY THERE </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0010"> IX. FIRST DAYS IN SEVILLE </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0011"> X. SEVILLIAN ASPECTS AND INCIDENTS </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0012"> XI. TO AND IN GRANADA </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0013"> XII. THE SURPRISES OF RONDA </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0014"> XIII. ALGECIRAS AND TARIFA </a> + </p> + <p> + <br /> <br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <br /> <br /> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <big><b>ILLUSTRATIONS</b></big> + </p> + <p> + <br /> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#linkimage-0001"> 01 Puerta Del Sol—gate of the Sun—toledo + </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#linkimage-0002"> 02 The Casino, San Sebastian, Looks out Upon + The Curving Concha and The Blue Bay </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#linkimage-0003"> 03 The Sea Sweeps Inland in a Circle of Blue, + to Form The Entrance To The Harbor, San Sebastian </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#linkimage-0004"> 04 Groups of Women on Their Knees Beating + Clothes in the Water </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#linkimage-0005"> 05 The Iron-gray Bulk of The Cathedral Rears + Itself from Clustering Walls and Roofs </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#linkimage-0006"> 06 The Tomb of Donna Maria Manuel </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#linkimage-0007"> 07 A Burgos Street </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#linkimage-0008"> 08 A Street Leading to the Cathedral </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#linkimage-0009"> 09 The University of Valladolid </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#linkimage-0010"> 10 Church of San Pablo </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#linkimage-0011"> 11 The House in Which Philip Ii. Was Born + </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#linkimage-0012"> 12 The Bull-ring, Madrid </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#linkimage-0013"> 13 Guard-mount in the Plaza de Armas, Royal + Palace, Madrid </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#linkimage-0014"> 14 Riches of Gray Roof and White Wall Mark + Its Insurpassable Antiquity </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#linkimage-0015"> 15 An Ancient Corner of the City </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#linkimage-0016"> 16 The Bridge Across The Yellow Tagus </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#linkimage-0017"> 17 The Town and Monastery of Escorial </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#linkimage-0018"> 18 The Pantheon of The Kings and Queens Of + Spain </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#linkimage-0019"> 19 The Ancient City of Cordova </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#linkimage-0020"> 20 The Bell-tower of The Great Mosque, + Cordova </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#linkimage-0021"> 21 Gateway of the Bridge, Cordova </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#linkimage-0022"> 22 In Attitudes of Silent Devotion </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#linkimage-0023"> 23 The Cathedral and Tower of The Giralda + </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#linkimage-0024"> 24 Ancient Roman Columns Lifting Aloft the + Figures of Hercules and Caesar </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#linkimage-0025"> 25 Gardens of the Alcazar </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#linkimage-0026"> 26 The Court of Flags and Tower Of The + Giralda </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#linkimage-0027"> 27 To the Alhambra </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#linkimage-0028"> 28 The Court of The Lions </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#linkimage-0029"> 29 Looking Northwest from the Generalife over + Granada </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#linkimage-0030"> 30 Looking Across the New Bridge (300 Feet + High) over The Guada-laviar Gorge, Ronda </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#linkimage-0031"> 31 View of Algeciras </a> + </p> + </blockquote> + <p> + <br /> <br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <br /> <br /> <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <h1> + FAMILIAR SPANISH TRAVELS + </h1> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + I. AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL APPROACHES + </h2> + <p> + I. + </p> + <p> + As the train took its time and ours in mounting the uplands toward Granada + on the soft, but not too soft, evening of November 6, 1911, the air that + came to me through the open window breathed as if from an autumnal night + of the middle eighteen-fifties in a little village of northeastern Ohio. I + was now going to see, for the first time, the city where so great a part + of my life was then passed, and in this magical air the two epochs were + blent in reciprocal association. The question of my present identity was a + thing indifferent and apart; it did not matter who or where or when I was. + Youth and age were at one with each other: the boy abiding in the old man, + and the old man pensively willing to dwell for the enchanted moment in any + vantage of the past which would give him shelter. + </p> + <p> + In that dignified and deliberate Spanish train I was a man of seventy-four + crossing the last barrier of hills that helped keep Granada from her + conquerors, and at the same time I was a boy of seventeen in the little + room under the stairs in a house now practically remoter than the + Alhambra, finding my unguided way through some Spanish story of the + vanished kingdom of the Moors. The little room which had structurally + ceased fifty years before from the house that ceased to be home even + longer ago had returned to the world with me in it, and fitted perfectly + into the first-class railway compartment which my luxury had provided for + it. From its window I saw through the car window the olive groves and + white cottages of the Spanish peasants, and the American apple orchards + and meadows stretching to the primeval woods that walled the drowsing + village round. Then, as the night deepened with me at my book, the train + slipped slowly from the hills, and the moon, leaving the Ohio village + wholly in the dark, shone over the roofs and gardens of Granada, and I was + no longer a boy of seventeen, but altogether a man of seventy-four. + </p> + <p> + I do not say the experience was so explicit as all this; no experience so + mystical could be so explicit; and perhaps what was intimated to me in it + was only that if I sometime meant to ask some gentle reader’s company in a + retrospect of my Spanish travels, I had better be honest with him and own + at the beginning that passion for Spanish things which was the ruling + passion of my boyhood; I had better confess that, however unrequited, it + held me in the eager bondage of a lover still, so that I never wished to + escape from it, but must try to hide the fact whenever the real Spain fell + below the ideal, however I might reason with my infatuation or try to + scoff it away. It had once been so inextinguishable a part of me that the + record of my journey must be more or less autobiographical; and though I + should decently endeavor to keep my past out of it, perhaps I should not + try very hard and should not always succeed. + </p> + <p> + Just when this passion began in me I should not be able to say; but + probably it was with my first reading of <i>Don Quixote</i> in the later + eighteen-forties. I would then have been ten or twelve years old; and, of + course, I read that incomparable romance, not only greatest, but sole of + its kind, in English. The purpose of some time reading it in Spanish and + then the purpose of some time writing the author’s life grew in me with my + growing years so strongly that, though I have never yet done either and + probably never shall, I should not despair of doing both if I lived to be + a hundred. In the mean time my wandering steps had early chanced upon a + Spanish grammar, and I had begun those inquiries in it which were based + upon a total ignorance of English accidence. I do not remember how I felt + my way from it to such reading of the language as has endeared Spanish + literature to me. It embraced something of everything: literary and + political history, drama, poetry, fiction; but it never condescended to + the exigencies of common parlance. These exigencies did not exist for me + in my dreams of seeing Spain which were not really expectations. It was + not until half a century later, when my longing became a hope and then a + purpose, that I foreboded the need of practicable Spanish. Then I invoked + the help of a young professor, who came to me for an hour each day of a + week in London and let me try to talk with him; but even then I + accumulated so little practicable Spanish that my first hour, almost my + first moment in Spain, exhausted my store. My professor was from + Barcelona, but he beautifully lisped his <i>c’s</i> and <i>z’s</i> like + any old Castilian, when he might have hissed them in the accent of his + native Catalan; and there is no telling how much I might have profited by + his instruction if he had not been such a charming intelligence that I + liked to talk with him of literature and philosophy and politics rather + than the weather, or the cost of things, or the question of how long the + train stopped and when it would start, or the dishes at table, or clothes + at the tailor’s, or the forms of greeting and parting. If he did not equip + me with the useful colloquial phrases, the fault was mine; and the + misfortune was doubly mine when from my old acquaintance with Italian + (glib half-sister of the statelier Spanish) the Italian phrases would + thrust forward as the equivalent of the English words I could not always + think of. The truth is, then, that I was not perfect in my Spanish after + quite six weeks in Spain; and if in the course of his travels with me the + reader finds me flourishing Spanish idioms in his face he may safely + attribute them less to my speaking than my reading knowledge: probably I + never employed them in conversation. That reading was itself without order + or system, and I am not sure but it had better been less than more. Yet + who knows? The days, or the nights of the days, in the eighteen-fifties + went quickly, as quickly as the years go now, and it would have all come + to the present pass whether that blind devotion to an alien literature had + cloistered my youth or not. + </p> + <p> + I do not know how, with the merciful make I am of, I should then have + cared so little, or else ignored so largely the cruelties I certainly knew + that the Spaniards had practised in the conquests of Mexico and Peru. I + knew of these things, and my heart was with the Incas and the Aztecs, and + yet somehow I could not punish the Spaniards for their atrocious + destruction of the only American civilizations. As nearly as I can now + say, I was of both sides, and wistful to reconcile them, though I do not + see now how it could have been done; and in my later hopes for the + softening of the human conditions I have found it hard to forgive Pizarro + for the overthrow of the most perfectly socialized state known to history. + I scarcely realized the base ingratitude of the Spanish sovereigns to + Columbus, and there were vast regions of history that I had not penetrated + till long afterward in pursuit of Spanish perfidy and inhumanity, as in + their monstrous misrule of Holland. When it came in those earlier days to + a question of sides between the Spaniards and the Moors, as Washington + Irving invited my boyhood to take it in his chronicle of the conquest of + Granada, I experienced on a larger scale my difficulty in the case of the + Mexicans and Peruvians. The case of these had been reported to me in the + school-readers, but here, now, was an affair submitted to the mature + judgment of a boy of twelve, and yet I felt as helpless as I was at ten. + Will it be credited that at seventy-four I am still often in doubt which + side I should have had win, though I used to fight on both? Since the + matter was settled more than four hundred years ago, I will not give the + reasons for my divided allegiance. They would hardly avail now to reverse + the tragic fate of the Moors, and if I try I cannot altogether wish to + reverse it. Whatever Spanish misrule has been since Islam was overthrown + in Granada, it has been the error of law, and the rule of Islam at the + best had always been the effect of personal will, the caprice of despots + high and low, the unstatuted sufferance of slaves, high and low. The + gloomiest and cruelest error of Inquisitional Spain was nobler, with its + adoration of ideal womanhood, than the Mohammedan state with its sensual + dreams of Paradise. I will not pretend (as I very well might, and as I + perhaps ought) that I thought of these things, all or any, as our train + began to slope rather more rapidly toward Granada, and to find its way + under the rising moon over the storied Vega. I will as little pretend that + my attitude toward Spain was ever that of the impartial observer after I + crossed the border of that enchanted realm where we all have our castles. + I have thought it best to be open with the reader here at the beginning, + and I would not, if I could, deny him the pleasure of doubting my word or + disabling my judgment at any point he likes. In return I shall only ask + his patience when I strike too persistently the chord of autobiography. + That chord is part of the harmony between the boy and the old man who made + my Spanish journey together, and were always accusing themselves, the + first of dreaming and the last of doddering: perhaps with equal justice. + Is there really much difference between the two? + </p> + <p> + II. + </p> + <p> + It was fully a month before that first night in Granada that I arrived in + Spain after some sixty years’ delay. During this period I had seen almost + every other interesting country in Europe. I had lived five or six years + in Italy; I had been several months in Germany; and a fortnight in + Holland; I had sojourned often in Paris; I had come and gone a dozen times + in England and lingered long each time; and yet I had never once visited + the land of my devotion. I had often wondered at this, it was so wholly + involuntary, and I had sometimes suffered from the surprise of those who + knew of my passion for Spain, and kept finding out my dereliction, + alleging the Sud-Express to Madrid as something that left me without + excuse. The very summer before last I got so far on the way in London as + to buy a Spanish phrase-book full of those inopportune conversations with + landlords, tailors, ticket-sellers, and casual acquaintance or agreeable + strangers. Yet I returned once more to America with my desire, which was + turning into a duty, unfulfilled; and when once more I sailed for Europe + in 1911 it was more with foreboding of another failure than a prescience + of fruition in my inveterate longing. Even after that boldly decisive week + of the professor in London I had my doubts and my self-doubts. There were + delays at London, delays at Paris, delays at Tours; and when at last we + crossed the Pyrenees and I found myself in Spain, it was with an + incredulity which followed me throughout and lingered with me to the end. + “Is this truly Spain, and am I actually there?” the thing kept asking + itself; and it asks itself still, in terms that fit the accomplished fact. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + II. SAN SEBASTIAN AND BEAUTIFUL BISCAY + </h2> + <p> + Even at Irun, where we arrived in Spain from Bayonne, there began at once + to be temperamental differences which ought to have wrought against my + weird misgivings of my whereabouts. Only in Spain could a customs + inspector have felt of one tray in our trunks and then passed them all + with an air of such jaded aversion from an employ uncongenial to a + gentleman. Perhaps he was also loath to attempt any inquiry in that + Desperanto of French, English, and Spanish which raged around us; but the + porter to whom we had fallen, while I hesitated at our carriage door + whether I should summon him as <i>Mozo</i> or <i>Usted,</i> was master of + that <i>lingua franca</i> and recovered us from the customs without + question on our part, and understood everything we could not, say. I like + to think he was a Basque, because I like the Basques so much for no reason + that I can think of. Their being always Carlists would certainly be no + reason with me, for I was never a Carlist; and perhaps my liking is only a + prejudice in their favor from the air of thrift and work which pervades + their beautiful province, or is an effect of their language as I first saw + it inscribed on the front of the Credit Lyonnais at Bayonne. It looked so + beautifully regular, so scholarly, so Latin, so sister to both Spanish and + Italian, so richly and musically voweled, and yet remained so impenetrable + to the most daring surmise, that I conceived at once a profound admiration + for the race which could keep such a language to itself. When I remembered + how blond, how red-blond our sinewy young porter was, I could not well + help breveting him of that race, and honoring him because he could have + read those words with the eyes that were so blue amid the general Spanish + blackness of eyes. He imparted a quiet from his own calm to our + nervousness, and if we had appealed to him on the point I am sure he would + have saved us from the error of breakfasting in the station restaurant at + the deceitful <i>table d’hote,</i> though where else we should have + breakfasted I do not know. + </p> + <p> + I. + </p> + <p> + One train left for San Sebastian while I was still lost in amaze that what + I had taken into my mouth for fried egg should be inwardly fish and full + of bones; but he quelled my anxiety with the assurance, which I somehow + understood, that there would be another train soon. In the mean time there + were most acceptable Spanish families all about, affably conversing + together, and freely admitting to their conversation the children, who so + publicly abound in Spain, and the nurses who do nothing to prevent their + publicity. There were already the typical fat Spanish mothers and lean + fathers, with the slender daughters, who, in the tradition of Spanish + good-breeding, kept their black eyes to themselves, or only lent them to + the spectators in furtive glances. Both older and younger ladies wore the + scanty Egyptian skirt of Occidental civilization, lurking or perking in + deep-drooping or high-raking hats, though already here and there was the + mantilla, which would more and more prevail as we went southward; older + and younger, they were all painted and powdered to the favor that Spanish + women everywhere corne to. + </p> + <p> + When the bad breakfast was over, and the waiters were laying the table for + another as bad, our Basque porter came in and led us to the train for San + Sebastian which he had promised us. It was now raining outside, and we + were glad to climb into our apartment without at all seeing what Irun was + or was not like. But we thought well of the place because we first + experienced there the ample ease of a Spanish car. In Spain the railroad + gauge is five feet six inches; and this car of ours was not only very + spacious, but very clean, while the French cars that had brought us from + Bordeaux to Bayonne and from Bayonne to Irun were neither. I do not say + all French cars are dirty, or all Spanish cars are as clean as they are + spacious. The cars of both countries are hard to get into, by steep narrow + footholds worse even than our flights of steps; in fact, the English cars + are the only ones I know which are easy of access. But these have not the + ample racks for hand-bags which the Spanish companies provide for + travelers willing to take advantage of their trust by transferring much of + their heavy stuff to them. Without owning that we were such travelers, I + find this the place to say that, with the allowance of a hundred and + thirty-two pounds free, our excess baggage in two large steamer-trunks did + not cost us three dollars in a month’s travel, with many detours, from + Irun in the extreme north to Algeciras in the extreme south of Spain. + </p> + <p> + II. + </p> + <p> + But in this sordid detail I am keeping the reader from the scenery. It had + been growing more and more striking ever since we began climbing into the + Pyrenees from Bayonne; but upon the whole it was not so sublime as it was + beautiful. There were some steep, sharp peaks, but mostly there were + grassy valleys with white cattle grazing in them, and many fields of + Indian corn, endearingly homelike. This at least is mainly the trace that + the scenery as far as Irun has left among my notes; and after Irun there + is record of more and more corn. There was, in fact, more corn than + anything else, though there were many orchards, also endearingly homelike, + with apples yellow and red showing among the leaves still green on the + trees; if there had been something more wasteful in the farming it would + have been still more homelike, but a traveler cannot have everything. The + hillsides were often terraced, as in Italy, and the culture apparently + close and conscientious. The farmhouses looked friendly and comfortable; + at places the landscape was molested by some sort of manufactories which + could not conceal their tall chimneys, though they kept the secret of + their industry. They were never, really, very bad, and I would have been + willing to let them pass for fulling-mills, such as I was so familiar with + in <i>Don Quixote,</i> if I had thought of these in time. But one ought to + be honest at any cost, and I must own that the Spain I was now for the + first time seeing with every-day eyes was so little like the Spain of my + boyish vision that I never once recurred to it. That was a Spain of + cork-trees, of groves by the green margins of mountain brooks, of + habitable hills, where shepherds might feed their flocks and mad lovers + and maids forlorn might wander and maunder; and here were fields of corn + and apple orchards and vineyards reddening and yellowing up to the doors + of those comfortable farmhouses, with nowhere the sign of a Christian + cavalier or a turbaned infidel. As a man I could not help liking what I + saw, but I could also grieve for the boy who would have been so + disappointed if he had come to the Basque provinces of Spain when he was + from ten to fifteen years old, instead of seventy-four. + </p> + <p> + It took our train nearly an hour to get by twenty miles of those pleasant + farms and the pretty hamlets which they now and then clustered into. But + that was fast for a Spanish way-train, which does not run, but, as it + were, walks with dignity and makes long stops at stations, to rest and let + the locomotive roll itself a cigarette. By the time we reached San + Sebastian our rain had thickened to a heavy downpour, and by the time we + mounted to our rooms, three pair up in the hotel, it was storming in a + fine fury over the bay under them, and sweeping the curving quays and + tossing the feathery foliage of the tamarisk-shaded promenade. The + distinct advantage of our lofty perch was the splendid sight of the + tempest, held from doing its worst by the mighty headlands standing out to + sea on the right and left. But our rooms were cold with the stony cold of + the south when it is cooling off from its summer, and we shivered in the + splendid sight. + </p> + <p> + III. + </p> + <p> + The inhabitants of San Sebastian will not hesitate to say that it is the + prettiest town in Spain, and I do not know that they could be hopefully + contradicted. It is very modern in its more obvious aspects, with a noble + thoroughfare called the Avenida de Libertad for its principal street, + shaded with a double row of those feathery tamarisks, and with handsome + shops glittering on both sides of it. Very easily it is first of the + fashionable watering-places of Spain; the King has his villa there, and + the court comes every summer. But they had gone by the time we got there, + and the town wore the dejected look of out-of-season summer resorts; + though there was the apparatus of gaiety, the fine casino at one end of + the beach, and the villas of the rich and noble all along it to the other + end. On the sand were still many bathing-machines, but many others had + begun to climb for greater safety during the winter to the street above. + We saw one hardy bather dripping up from the surf and seeking shelter + among those that remained, but they were mostly tenanted by their owners, + who looked shoreward through their open doors, and made no secret of their + cozy domesticity, where they sat and sewed or knitted and gossiped with + their neighbors. Good wives and mothers they doubtless were, but no doubt + glad to be resting from the summer pleasure of others. They had their + beautiful names written up over their doors, and were for the service of + the lady visitors only; there were other machines for gentlemen, and no + doubt it was their owners whom we saw gathering the fat seaweed thrown up + by the storm into the carts drawn by oxen over the sand. The oxen wore no + yokes, but pulled by a band drawn over their foreheads under their horns, + and they had the air of not liking the arrangement; though, for the matter + of that, I have never seen oxen that seemed to like being yoked. + </p> + <p> + <a name="linkimage-0002" id="linkimage-0002"> + <!-- IMG --></a> + </p> + <div class="fig" style="width:60%;"> + <img src="images/h1-2.jpg" + alt="02 the Casino, San Sebastian, Looks out Upon The Curving Concha and The Blue Bay " width="100%" /><br /> + </div> + <p> + When we came down to dinner we found the tables fairly full of belated + visitors, who presently proved tourists flying south like ourselves. The + dinner was good, as it is in nearly all Spanish hotels, where for an + average of three dollars a day you have an inclusive rate which you must + double for as good accommodation in our States. Let no one, I say, fear + the rank cookery so much imagined of the Peninsula, the oil, the pepper, + the kid and the like strange meats; as in all other countries of Europe, + even England itself, there is a local version, a general convention of the + French cuisine, quite as good in Spain as elsewhere, and oftener + superabundant than subabundant. The plain water is generally good, With an + American edge of freshness; but if you will not trust it (we had to learn + to trust it) there are agreeable Spanish mineral waters, as well as the + Apollinaris, the St. Galmier, and the Perrier of other civilizations, to + be had for the asking, at rather greater cost than the good native wines, + often included in the inclusive rate. + </p> + <p> + Besides this convention of the French cuisine there is almost everywhere a + convention of the English language in some one of the waiters. You must + not stray far from the beaten path of your immediate wants, but in this + you are safe. At San Sebastian we had even a wider range with the English + of the little intellectual-looking, pale Spanish waiter, with a fine + Napoleonic head, who came to my help when I began to flounder in the + language which I had read so much and spoken so little or none. He had + been a year in London, he said, and he took us for English, though, now he + came to notice it, he perceived we were Americans because we spoke + “quicklier” than the English. We did not protest; it was the mildest + criticism of our national accent which we were destined to get from + English-speaking Spaniards before they found we were not the English we + did not wish to be taken for. After dinner we asked for a fire in one of + our grates, but the maid declared there was no fuel; and, though the + hostess denied this and promised us a fire the next night, she forgot it + till nine o’clock, and then we would not have it. The cold abode with us + indoors to the last at San Sebastian, but the storm (which had hummed and + whistled theatrically at our windows) broke during the first night, and + the day followed with several intervals of sunshine, which bathed us in a + glowing-expectation of overtaking the fugitive summer farther south. + </p> + <p> + IV. + </p> + <p> + In the mean time we hired a beautiful Basque cabman with a red Basque cap + and high-hooked Basque nose to drive us about at something above the legal + rate and let us not leave any worthy thing in San Sebastian unseen. He + took us, naturally, to several churches, old and new, with their Gothic + and rococo interiors, which I still find glooming and glinting among my + evermore thickening impressions of like things. We got from them the sense + of that architectural and sculptural richness which the interior of no + Spanish church ever failed measurably to give; but what their historical + associations were I will not offer to say. The associations of San + Sebastian with the past are in all things vague, at least for me. She was + indeed taken from the French by the English under Wellington during the + Peninsular War, but of older, if not unhappier farther-off days and + battles longer ago her history as I know it seems to know little. It knows + of savage and merciless battles between the partisans of Don Carlos and + those of Queen Isabella so few decades since as not to be the stuff of + mere pathos yet, and I am not able to blink the fact that my beloved + Basques fought on the wrong side, when they need not have fought at all. + Why they were Carlists they could perhaps no more say than I could. The + monumental historic fact is that the Basques have been where they are + immeasurably beyond the memories of other men; what the scope of their own + memories is one could perhaps confidently say only in Basque if one could + say anything. Of course, in the nature of things, the Phoenicians must + have been there and the Greeks, doubtless, if they ever got outside of the + Pillars of Hercules; the Romans, of course, must have settled and + civilized and then Christianized the province. It is next neighbor to that + province of Asturias in which alone the Arabs failed to conquer the Goths, + and from which Spain was to live and grow again and recover all her losses + from the Moors; but what the share of San Sebastian was in this heroic + fate, again I must leave the Basques to say. They would doubtless say it + with sufficient self-respect, for wherever we came in contact that day + with the Basque nature we could not help imagining in it a sense of racial + merit equaling that of the Welsh themselves, who are indeed another branch + of the same immemorial Iberian stock, if the Basques are Iberians. Like + the Welsh, they have the devout tradition that they never were conquered, + but yielded to circumstances when these became too strong for them. + </p> + <p> + Among the ancient Spanish liberties which were restricted by the + consolidating monarchy from age to age, the Basque <i>fueros,</i> or + rights, were the oldest; they lasted quite to our own day; and although it + is known to more ignorant men that these privileges (including immunity + from conscription) have now been abrogated, the custodian of the House of + Provincial Deputies, whom our driver took us to visit, was such a glowing + Basque patriot that he treated them as in full force. His pride in the + seat of the local government spared us no detail of the whole + electric-lighting system, or even the hose-bibs for guarding the edifice + against fire, let alone every picture and photograph on the wall of every + chamber of greater or less dignity, with every notable table and chair. He + certainly earned the peseta I gave him, but he would have done far more + for it if we had suffered him to take us up another flight of stairs; and + he followed us in our descent with bows and adieux that ought to have left + no doubt in our minds of the persistence of the Basque <i>fueros.</i> + </p> + <p> + V. + </p> + <p> + It was to such a powerful embodiment of the local patriotism that our + driver had brought us from another civic palace overlooking the Plaza de + la Constitution, chiefly notable now for having been the old theater of + the bull-fights. The windows in the houses round still bear the numbers by + which they were sold to spectators as boxes; but now the municipality has + built a beautiful brand-new bull-ring in San Sebastian; and I do not know + just why we were required to inspect the interior of the edifice + overlooking this square. I only know that at sight of our bewilderment a + workman doing something to the staircase clapped his hands orientally, and + the custodian was quickly upon us in response to a form of summons which + we were to find so often used in Spain. He was not so crushingly upon us + as that other custodian; he was apologetically proud, rather than + boastfully; at times he waved his hands in deprecation, and would have + made us observe that the place was little, very little; he deplored it + like a host who wishes his possessions praised. Among the artistic + treasures of the place from which he did not excuse us there were some + pen-drawings, such as writing-masters execute without lifting the pen from + the paper, by a native of South America, probably of Basque descent, since + the Basques have done so much to people that continent. We not only + admired these, but we would not consent to any of the custodian’s + deprecations, especially when it came to question of the pretty salon in + which Queen Victoria was received on her first visit to San Sebastian. We + supposed then, and in fact I had supposed till this moment, that it was + Queen Victoria of Great Britain who was meant; but now I realize that it + must have been the queen consort of Spain, who seems already to have made + herself so liked there. + </p> + <p> + She, of course, comes every summer to San Sebastian, and presently our + driver took us to see the royal villa by the shore, withdrawn, perhaps + from a sense of its extreme plainness, not to say ugliness, among its + trees and vines behind its gates and walls. Our driver excused himself for + not being able to show us through it; he gladly made us free of an + unrestricted view of the royal bathing-pavilion, much more frankly + splendid in its gilding, beside the beach. Other villas ranked themselves + along the hillside, testifying to the gaiety of the social life in summers + past and summers to come. In the summer just past the gaiety may have been + interrupted by the strikes taking in the newspapers the revolutionary + complexion which it was now said they did not wear. At least, when the + King had lately come to fetch the royal household away nothing whatever + happened, and the “constitutional guarantees,” suspended amidst the + ministerial anxieties, were restored during the month, with the ironical + applause of the liberal press, which pretended that there had never been + any need of their suspension. + </p> + <p> + <a name="linkimage-0003" id="linkimage-0003"> + <!-- IMG --></a> + </p> + <div class="fig" style="width:60%;"> + <img src="images/h1-3.jpg" + alt="03 the Sea Sweeps Inland in a Circle of Blue, to Form The Entrance To The Harbor, San Sebastian " width="100%" /><br /> + </div> + <p> + VI. + </p> + <p> + All pleasures, mixed or unmixed, must end, and the qualified joy of our + drive through San Sebastian came to a close on our return to our hotel + well within the second hour, almost within its first half. When I proposed + paying our driver for the exact time, he drooped upon his box and, + remembering my remorse in former years for standing upon my just rights in + such matters, I increased the fare, peseta by peseta, till his sinking + spirits rose, and he smiled gratefully upon me and touched his brave red + cap as he drove away. He had earned his money, if racking his invention + for objects of interest in San Sebastian was a merit. At the end we were + satisfied that it was a well-built town with regular blocks in the modern + quarter, and not without the charm of picturesqueness which comes of + narrow and crooked lanes in the older parts. Prescient of the incalculable + riches before us, we did not ask much of it, and we got all we asked. I + should be grateful to San Sebastian, if for nothing else than the two very + Spanish experiences I had there. One concerned a letter for me which had + been refused by the bankers named in my letter of credit, from a want of + faith, I suppose, in my coming. When I did come I was told that I would + find it at the post-office. That would be well enough when I found the + post-office, which ought to have been easy enough, but which presented + certain difficulties in the driving rain of our first afternoon. At last + in a fine square I asked a fellow-man in my best conversational Spanish + where the post-office was, and after a moment’s apparent suffering he + returned, “Do you speak English?” “Yes.” I said, “and I am so glad you + do.” “Not at all. I don’t speak anything else. Great pleasure. There is + the post-office,” and it seemed that I had hardly escaped collision with + it. But this was the beginning, not the end, of my troubles. When I showed + my card to the <i>poste restante</i> clerk, he went carefully through the + letters bearing the initial of my name and denied that there was any for + me. We entered into reciprocally bewildering explanations, and parted + altogether baffled. Then, at the hotel, I consulted with a capable young + office-lady, who tardily developed a knowledge of English, and we agreed + that it would be well to send the <i>chico</i> to the post-office for it. + The <i>chico,</i> corresponding in a Spanish hotel to a <i>piccolo</i> in + Germany or a page in England, or our own now evanescing bell-boy, was to + get a <i>peseta</i> for bringing me the letter. He got the <i>peseta,</i> + though he only brought me word that the authorities would send the letter + to the hotel by the postman that night. The authorities did not send it + that night, and the next morning I recurred to my bankers. There, on my + entreaty for some one who could meet my Spanish at least half-way in + English, a manager of the bank came out of his office and reassured me + concerning the letter which I had now begun to imagine the most important + I had ever missed. Even while we talked the postman came in and owned + having taken the letter back to the office. He voluntarily promised to + bring it to the bank at one o’clock, when I hastened to meet him. At that + hour every one was out at lunch; I came again at four, when everybody had + returned, but the letter was not delivered; at five, just before the bank + closed, the letter, which had now grown from a <i>carta</i> to a <i>cartela,</i> + was still on its way. I left San Sebastian without it; and will it be + credited that when it was forwarded to me a week later at Madrid it proved + the most fatuous missive imaginable, wholly concerning the writer’s own + affairs and none of mine? + </p> + <p> + I cannot guess yet why it was withheld from me, but since the incident + brought me that experience of Spanish politeness, I cannot grieve for it. + The young banker who left his region of high finance to come out and + condole with me, in apologizing for the original refusal of my letter, + would not be contented with so little. Nothing would satisfy him but going + with me, on my hinted purpose, and inquiring with me at the railroad + office into the whole business of circular tickets, and even those + kilometric tickets which the Spanish railroads issue to such passengers as + will have their photographs affixed to them for the prevention of + transference. As it seemed advisable not to go to this extreme till I got + to Madrid, my kind young banker put himself at my disposal for any other + service I could imagine from him; but I searched myself in vain for any + desire, much less necessity, and I parted from him at the door of his bank + with the best possible opinion of the Basques. I suppose he was a Basque; + at any rate, he was blond, which the Spaniards are mostly not, and the + Basques often are. Now I am sorry, since he was so kind, that I did not + get him to read me the Basque inscription on the front of his bank, which + looked exactly like that on the bank at Bayonne; I should not have + understood it, but I should have known what it sounded like, if it sounded + like anything but Basque. + </p> + <p> + Everybody in San Sebastian seemed resolved to outdo every other in + kindness. In a shop where we endeavored to explain that we wanted to get a + flat cap which should be both Basque and red, a lady who was buying + herself a hat asked in English if she could help us. When we gladly + answered that she could, she was silent, almost to tears, and it appeared + that in this generous offer of aid she had exhausted her whole stock of + English. Her mortification, her painful surprise, at the strange + catastrophe, was really pitiable, and we hastened to escape from it to a + shop across the street. There instantly a small boy rushed enterprisingly + out and brought back with him a very pretty girl who spoke most of the + little French which has made its way in San Sebastian against the combined + Basque and Spanish, and a cap of the right flatness and redness was + brought. I must not forget, among the pleasures done us by the place, the + pastry cook’s shop which advertised in English “Tea at all Hours,” and + which at that hour of our afternoon we now found so opportune, that it + seemed almost personally attentive to us as the only Anglo-Saxon visitors + in town. The tea might have been better, but it was as good as it knew + how; and the small boy who came in with his mother (the Spanish mother + seldom fails of the company of a small boy) in her moments of distraction + succeeded in touching with his finger all the pieces of pastry except + those we were eating. + </p> + <p> + VII. + </p> + <p> + The high aquiline nose which is characteristic of the autochthonic race + abounds in San Sebastian, but we saw no signs of the high temper which is + said to go with it. This, indeed, was known to me chiefly from my first + reading in <i>Don Quixote,</i> of the terrific combat between the squire + of the Biscayan ladies whose carriage the knight of La Mancha stopped + after his engagement with the windmills. In their exchange of insults + incident to the knight’s desire that the ladies should go to Toboso and + thank Dulcinea for his delivery of them from the necromancers he had put + to flight in the persons of two Benedictine monks, “‘Get gone,’ the squire + called, in bad Spanish and worse Biscayan, ‘Get gone, thou knight, and + Devil go with thou; or by He Who me create... me kill thee now so sure as + me be Biscayan,’” and when the knight called him an “inconsiderable + mortal,” and said that if he were a gentleman he would chastise him: + “‘What! me no gentleman?’ replied the Biscayan. ‘I swear thou be liar as + me be Christian.... Me will show thee me be Biscayan, and gentleman by + land, gentleman by sea, gentleman in spite of Devil; and thou lie if thou + say the contrary.’” + </p> + <p> + It is a scene which will have lived in the memory of every reader, and I + recurred to it hopefully but vainly in San Sebastian, where this fiery + threefold gentleman might have lived in his time. It would be interesting + to know how far the Basques speak broken Spanish in a fashion of their + own, which Cervantes tried to represent in the talk of his Biscayan. Like + the Welsh again they strenuously keep their immemorial language against + the inroads of the neighboring speech. How much they fix it in a modern + literature it would be easier to ask than to say. I suppose there must be + Basque newspapers; perhaps there are Basque novelists, there are + notoriously Basque bards who recite their verses to the peasants, and + doubtless there are poets who print their rhymes: and I blame myself for + not inquiring further concerning them of that kindly Basque banker who + wished so much to do something for me in compensation for the loss of my + worthless letter. I knew, too cheaply, that the Basques have their + poetical contests, as the Welsh have their musical competitions in the + Eisteddfod, and they are once more like the Welsh, their brothers in + antiquity, in calling themselves by a national name of their own. They + call themselves Euskaldunac, which is as different from the name of Basque + given them by the alien races as Cymru is from Welsh. + </p> + <p> + All this lore I have easily accumulated from the guide-books since leaving + San Sebastian, but I was carelessly ignorant of it in driving from the + hotel to the station when we came away, and was much concerned in the + overtures made us in a mixed Spanish, English, and French by a charming + family from Chili, through the brother to one of the ladies and luisband + to the other. When he perceived from my Spanish that we were not English, + he rejoiced that we were Americans of the north, and as joyfully + proclaimed that they were Americans of the south. We were at once sensible + of a community of spirit in our difference from our different ancestral + races. They were Spanish, but with a New World blitheness which we nowhere + afterward found in the native Spaniards; and we were English, with a + willingness to laugh and to joke which they had not perhaps noted in our + ancestral contemporaries. Again and again we met them in the different + cities where we feared we had lost them, until we feared no more and + counted confidently on seeing them wherever we went. They were always + radiantly smiling; and upon this narrow ground I am going to base the + conjecture that the most distinctive difference of the Western Hemisphere + from the Eastern is its habit of seeing the fun of things. With those dear + Chilians we saw the fun of many little hardships of travel which might + have been insupportable without the vision. Sometimes we surprised one + another in the same hotel; sometimes it was in the street that we + encountered, usually to exchange amusing misfortunes. If we could have + been constantly with these fellow-hemispherists our progress through Spain + would have been an unbroken holiday. + </p> + <p> + There is a superstition of travelers in Spain, much fostered by innkeepers + and porters, that you cannot get seats in the fast trains without buying + your tickets the day before, and then perhaps not, and we abandoned + ourselves to this fear at San Sebastian so far as to get places some hours + in advance. But once established in the ten-foot-wide interior of the + first-class compartment which we had to ourselves, every anxiety fell from + us; and I do not know a more flattering emotion than that which you + experience in sinking into your luxurious seat, and, after a glance at + your hand-bags in the racks where they have been put with no strain on + your own muscles, giving your eyes altogether to the joy of the novel + landscape. + </p> + <p> + The train was what they call a Rapido in Spain; and though we were + supposed to be devouring space with indiscriminate gluttony, I do not + think that in our mad rush of twenty-five miles an hour we failed to taste + any essential detail of the scenery..But I wish now that I had known the + Basques were all nobles, and that the peasants owned many of the little + farms we saw declaring the general thrift. In the first two hours of the + six to Burgos we ran through lovely valleys held in the embrace of gentle + hills, where the fields of Indian corn were varied by groves of chestnut + trees, where we could see the burrs gaping on their stems. The blades and + tassels of the corn had been stripped away, leaving the ripe ears a-tilt + at the top of the stalks, which looked like cranes standing on one leg + with their heads slanted in pensive contemplation. There were no + vineyards, but orchards aplenty near the farmhouses, and all about there + were other trees pollarded to the quick and tufted with mistletoe, not + only the stout oaks, but the slim poplars trimmed up into tall plumes like + the poplars in southern France. The houses, when they did not stand apart + like our own farmhouses, gathered into gray-brown villages around some + high-shouldered church with a bell-tower in front or at one corner of the + fagade. In most of the larger houses an economy of the sun’s heat, the + only heat recognized in the winter of southern countries, was practised by + glassing in the balconies that stretched quite across their fronts and + kept the cold from at least one story. It gave them a very cheery look, + and must have made them livable at least in the daytime. Now and then the + tall chimney of one of those manufactories we had seen on the way from + Irun invited belief in the march of industrial prosperity; but whether the + Basque who took work in a mill or a foundry forfeited his nobility + remained a part of the universal Basque secret. From time to time a + mountain stream brawled from under a world-old bridge, and then spread a + quiet tide for the women to kneel beside and wash the clothes which they + spread to dry on every bush and grassy slope of the banks. + </p> + <p> + The whole scene changed after we ran out of the Basque country and into + the austere landscape of old Castile. The hills retreated and swelled into + mountains that were not less than terrible in their savage nakedness. The + fields of corn and the orchards ceased, and the green of the pastures + changed to the tawny gray of the measureless wheat-lands into which the + valleys flattened and widened. There were no longer any factory chimneys; + the villages seemed to turn from stone to mud; the human poverty showed + itself in the few patched and tattered figures that followed the oxen in + the interminable furrows shallowly scraping the surface of the lonely + levels. The haggard mountain ranges were of stone that seemed blanched + with geologic superannuation, and at one place we ran by a wall of hoary + rock that drew its line a mile long against the sky, and then broke and + fell, and then staggered up again in a succession of titanic bulks. But + stupendous as these mountain masses were, they were not so wonderful as + those wheat-lands which in harvest-time must wash their shores like a sea + of gold. Where these now rose and sank with the long ground-swell of the + plains in our own West, a thin gray stubble covered them from the feeble + culture which leaves Spain, for all their extent in both the Castiles, in + Estremadura, in Andalusia, still without bread enough to feed herself, and + obliges her to import alien wheat. At the lunch which we had so good in + the dining-car we kept our talk to the wonder of the scenery, and well + away from the interesting Spanish pair at our table. It is never safe in + Latin Europe to count upon ignorance of English in educated people, or + people who look so; and with these we had the reward of our prudence when + the husband asked after dessert if we minded his smoking. His English + seemed meant to open the way for talk, and we were willing he should do + the talking. He spoke without a trace of accent, and we at once imagined + circles in which it was now as <i>chic</i> for Spaniards to speak English + as it once was to speak French. They are said never to speak French quite + well; but nobody could have spoken English better than this gentleman, not + even we who were, as he said he supposed, English. Truth and patriotism + both obliged us to deny his conjecture; and when He intimated that he + would not have known us for Americans because we did not speak with the + dreadful American accent, I hazarded my belief that this dreadfulness was + personal rather than national. But he would not have it. Boston people, + yes; they spoke very well, and he allowed other exceptions to the general + rule of our nasal twang, which his wife summoned English enough to say was + very ugly. They had suffered from it too universally in the Americans they + had met during the summer in Germany to believe it was merely personal; + and I suppose one may own to strictly American readers that our speech <i>is</i> + dreadful, that it is very ugly. These amiable Spaniards had no reason and + no wish to wound; and they could never know what sweet and noble natures + had been producing their voices through their noses there in Germany. I + for my part could not insist; who, indeed, can defend the American accent, + which is not so much an accent as a whiffle, a snuffle, a twang? It was + mortifying, all the same, to have it openly abhorred by a foreigner, and I + willingly got away from the question to that of the weather. We agreed + admirably about the heat in England where this gentleman went every + summer, and had never found it so hot before. It was hot even in Denmark; + but he warned me not to expect any warmth in Spain now that the autumn + rains had begun. + </p> + <p> + If this couple represented a cosmopolitan and modern Spain, it was + interesting to escape to something entirely native in the three young + girls who got in at the next station and shared our compartment with us as + far as we went. They were tenderly kissed by their father in putting them + on board, and held in lingering farewells at the window till the train + started. The eldest of the three then helped in arranging their baskets in + the rack, but the middle sister took motherly charge of the youngest, whom + she at once explained to us as <i>enferma.</i> She was the prettiest girl + of the conventional Spanish type we Lad yet seen: dark-eyed and + dark-haired, regular, but a little overfull of the chin which she would + presently have double. She was very, very pale of face, with a pallor in + which she had assisted nature with powder, as all Spanish women, old and + young, seem to do. But there was no red underglow in the pallor, such as + gives many lovely faces among them the complexion of whitewash over pink + on a stucco surface. She wrapped up the youngest sister, who would by and + by be beautiful, and now being sick had only the flush of fever in her + cheeks, and propped her in the coziest corner of the car, where she tried + to make her keep still, but could not make her keep silent. In fact, they + all babbled together, over the basket of luncheon which the middle sister + opened after springing up the little table-leaf of the window, and spread + with a substantial variety including fowl and sausage and fruit, such as + might tempt any sick appetite, or a well one, even. As she brought out + each of these victuals, together with a bottle of wine and a large bottle + of milk, she first offered it to us, and when it was duly refused with + thanks, she made the invalid eat and drink, especially the milk which she + made a wry face at. When she had finished they all began to question + whether her fever was rising for the day; the good sister felt the girl’s + pulse, and got out a thermometer, which together they arranged under her + arm, and then duly inspected. It seemed that the fever <i>was</i> rising, + as it might very well be, but the middle sister was not moved from her + notable calm, and the eldest did not fear. At a place where a class of + young men was to be seen before an ecclesiastical college the girls looked + out together, and joyfully decided that the brother (or possibly a cousin) + whom they expected to see, was really there among them. When we reached + Burgos we felt that we had assisted at a drama of family medicine and + affection which was so sweet that if the fever was not very wisely it was + very winningly treated. It was not perhaps a very serious case, and it + meant a good deal of pleasant excitement for all concerned. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + III. BURGOS AND THE BITTER COLD OF BURGOS + </h2> + <p> + It appears to be the use in most minor cities of Spain for the best hotel + to send the worst omnibus to the station, as who should say, “Good wine + needs no bush.” At Burgos we were almost alarmed by the shabbiness of the + omnibus for the hotel we had chosen through a consensus of praise in the + guide-books, and thought we must have got the wrong one. It was indeed the + wrong one, but because there is no right hotel in Burgos when you arrive + there on an afternoon of early October, and feel the prophetic chill of + that nine months of winter which is said to contrast there with three + months of hell. + </p> + <p> + I + </p> + <p> + The air of Burgos when it is not the breath of a furnace is so heavy and + clammy through the testimony of all comers that Burgos herself no longer + attempts to deny it from her high perch on the uplands of Old Castile. + Just when she ceased to deny it, I do not know, but probably when she + ceased to be the sole capital and metropolis of Christian Spain and shared + her primacy with Toledo sometime in the fourteenth century. Now, in the + twentieth, we asked nothing of her but two rooms in which we could have + fire, but the best hotel in Burgos openly declared that it had not a + fireplace in its whole extent, though there must have been one in the + kitchen. The landlord pointed out that it was completely equipped with + steam-heating apparatus, but when I made him observe that there was no + steam in the shining radiators, he owned with a shrug that there was truth + in what I said. He showed us large, pleasant rooms to the south which + would have been warm from the sun if the sun which we left playing in San + Sebastian had been working that day at Burgos; he showed us his beautiful + new dining-room, cold, with the same sunny exposure. I rashly declared + that all would not do, and that I would look elsewhere for rooms with + fireplaces. I had first to find a cab in order to find the other hotels, + but I found instead that in a city of thirty-eight thousand inhabitants + there was not one cab standing for hire in the streets. I tried to enlist + the sympathies of some private carriages, but they remained indifferent, + and I went back foiled, but not crushed, to our hotel. There it seemed + that the only vehicle to be had was the omnibus which had brought us from + the station. The landlord calmly (I did not then perceive the irony of his + calm) had the horses put to and our baggage put on, and we drove away. But + first we met our dear Chilians coming to our hotel from the hotel they had + chosen, and from a search for hearthstones in others; and we drove to the + only hotel they had left unvisited. There at our demand for fires the + landlord all but laughed us to scorn; he laid his hand on the cold + radiator in the hotel as if to ask what better we could wish than that. We + drove back, humbled, to our own hotel, where the landlord met us with the + Castilian cairn he had kept at our departure. Then there was nothing for + me but to declare myself the Prodigal Son returned to take the rooms he + had offered us. We were so perfectly in his power that he could + magnanimously afford to offer us other rooms equally cold, but we did not + care to move. The Chilians had retired baffled to their own hotel, and + there was nothing for us but to accept the long evening of gelid torpor + which we foresaw must follow the effort of the soup and wine to warm us at + dinner. That night we heard through our closed doors agonized voices which + we knew to be the voices of despairing American women wailing through the + freezing corridors, “Can’t she understand that I want <i>boiling</i> + water?” and, “Can’t’ we go down-stairs to a fire somewhere?” We knew the + one meant the chambermaid and the other the kitchen, but apparently + neither prayer was answered. + </p> + <p> + <a name="linkimage-0004" id="linkimage-0004"> + <!-- IMG --></a> + </p> + <div class="fig" style="width:60%;"> + <img src="images/h1-4.jpg" + alt="04 Groups of Women on Their Knees Beating Clothes in the Water " width="100%" /><br /> + </div> + <p> + II + </p> + <p> + As soon as we had accepted our fate, while as yet the sun had not set + behind the clouds which had kept it out of our rooms all day, we hurried + out not only to escape the rigors of our hotel, but to see as soon as we + could, as much as we could of the famous city. We had got an excellent cup + of tea in the glass-roofed pavilion of our beautiful cold dining-room, and + now our spirits rose level with the opportunities of the entrancing walk + we took along the course of the Arlanson. I say course, because that is + the right word to use of a river, but really there was no course in the + Arlanzon. Between the fine, wide Embankments and under the noble bridges + there were smooth expanses of water (naturally with women washing at + them), which reflected like an afterglow of the evening sky the splendid + masses of yarn hung red from the dyer’s vats on the bank. The expanses of + water were bordered by wider spaces of grass which had grown during the + rainless summer, but which were no doubt soon to be submerged under the + autumnal torrent the river would become. The street which shaped itself to + the stream was a rather modern avenue, leading to a beautiful public + garden, with the statues and fountains proper to a public garden, and + densely shaded against the three infernal months of the Burgos year. But + the houses were glazed all along their fronts with the sun-traps which we + had noted in the Basque country, and which do not wait for a certain date + in the almanac to do the work of steam-heating. They gave a tempting + effect to the house-fronts, but they could not distract our admiration + from the successive crowds of small boys playing at bull-fighting in the + streets below, and in the walks of the public garden. The population of + Burgos is above thirty-seven thousand and of the inhabitants at least + thirty-six thousand are small boys, as I was convinced by the computation + of the husband and brother of the Chilian ladies which agreed perfectly + with my own hasty conjecture; the rest are small girls. In fact large + families, and large families chiefly of boys, are the rule in Spain + everywhere; and they everywhere know how to play bull-fighting, to flap + any-colored old shawl, or breadth of cloth in the face of the bull, to + avoid his furious charges, and doubtless to deal him his death-wound, + though to this climax I could not bear to follow. + </p> + <p> + <a name="linkimage-0005" id="linkimage-0005"> + <!-- IMG --></a> + </p> + <div class="fig" style="width:60%;"> + <img src="images/h1-5.jpg" + alt="05 the Iron-gray Bulk of The Cathedral Rears Itself from Clustering Walls and Roofs " width="100%" /><br /> + </div> + <p> + One or two of the bull-fighters offered to leave the national sport and + show us the House of Miranda, but it was the cathedral which was + dominating our desire, as it everywhere dominates the vision, in Burgos + and out of Burgos as far as the city can be seen. The iron-gray bulk, all + flattered or fretted by Gothic art, rears itself from the clustering brown + walls and roofs of the city, which it seems to gather into its mass below + while it towers so far above them. We needed no pointing of the way to it; + rather we should have needed instruction for shunning it; but we chose the + way which led through the gate of Santa Maria where in an arch once part + of the city wall, the great Cid, hero above every other hero of Burgos, + sits with half a dozen more or less fabled or storied worthies of the + renowned city. Then with a minute’s walk up a stony sloping little street + we were in the beautiful and reverend presence of one of the most august + temples of the Christian faith. The avenue where the old Castilian nobles + once dwelt in their now empty palaces climbs along the hillside above the + cathedral, which on its lower side seems to elbow off the homes of meaner + men, and in front to push them away beyond a plaza not large enough for + it. Even this the cathedral had not cleared of the horde of small boys who + followed us unbidden to its doors and almost expropriated those authorized + blind beggars who own the church doors in Spain. When we declined the + further company of these boys they left us with expressions which I am + afraid accused our judgment and our personal appearance; but in another + moment we were safe from their censure, and hidden as it were in the thick + smell of immemorial incense. + </p> + <p> + It was not the moment for doing the cathedral in the wonted tiresome and + vulgar way; that was reserved for the next day; now we simply wandered in + the vast twilight spaces; and craned our necks to breaking in trying to + pierce the gathered gloom in the vaulting overhead. It was a precious + moment, but perhaps too weird, and we were glad to find a sacristan with + businesslike activity setting red candlesticks about a bier in the area + before the choir, which here, as in the other Spanish cathedrals, is + planted frankly in the middle of the edifice, a church by itself, as if to + emphasize the incomparable grandeur of the cathedral. The sacristan + willingly paused in his task and explained that he was preparing the bier + for the funeral of a church dignitary (as we learned later, the dean) + which was to take place the next day at noon; and if we would come at that + hour we should hear some beautiful music. We knew that he was establishing + a claim on our future custom, but we thanked him and provisionally feed + him, and left him at his work, at which we might have all but fancied him + whistling, so cheerfully and briskly he went about it. + </p> + <p> + Outside we lingered a moment to give ourselves the solemn joy of the + Chapel of the Constable which forms the apse of the cathedral and is its + chief glory. It mounted to the hard, gray sky, from which a keen wind was + sweeping the narrow street leading to it, and blustering round the corner + of the cathedral, so that the marble men holding up the Constable’s + coat-of-arms in the rear of his chapel might well have ached from the cold + which searched the marrow of flesh-and-blood men below. These hurried by + in flat caps and corduroy coats and trousers, with sashes at their waists + and comforters round their necks; and they were picturesque quite in the + measure of their misery. Some whose tatters were the most conspicuous + feature of their costume, I am sure would have charmed me if I had been a + painter; as a mere word-painter I find myself wishing I could give the + color of their wretchedness to my page. + </p> + <p> + III + </p> + <p> + In the absence of any specific record in my notebook I do not know just + how it was between this first glimpse of the cathedral and dinner, but it + must have been on our return to our hotel, that the little interpreter who + had met us at the station, and had been intermittently constituting + himself our protector ever since, convinced us that we ought to visit the + City Hall, and see the outside of the marble tomb containing the bones of + the Cid and his wife. Such as the bones were we found they were not to be + seen themselves, and I do not know that I should have been the happier for + their inspection. In fact, I have no great opinion of the Cid as an + historical character or a poetic fiction. His epic, or his long ballad, + formed no part of my young study in Spanish, and when four or five years + ago a friend gave me a copy of it, beautifully printed in black letter, + with the prayer that I should read it sometime within the twelvemonth, I + found the time far too short. As a matter of fact I have never read the + poem to this day, though. I have often tried, and I doubt if its author + ever intended it to be read. He intended it rather to be recited in + stirring episodes, with spaces for refreshing slumber in the connecting + narrative. As for the Cid in real life under his proper name of Rodrigo de + Vivas, though he made his king publicly swear that he had had no part in + the murder of his royal brother, and though he was the stoutest and + bravest knight in Castile, I cannot find it altogether admirable in him + that when his king banished him he should resolve to fight thereafter for + any master who paid him best. That appears to me the part of a road-agent + rather than a reformer, and it seems to me no amend for his service under + Moorish princes that he should make war against them on his personal + behalf or afterward under his own ungrateful king. He is friends now with + the Arabian King of Saragossa, and now he defeats the Aragonese under the + Castilian sovereign, and again he sends an insulting message by the + Moslems to the Christian Count of Barcelona, whom he takes prisoner with + his followers, but releases without ransom after a contemptuous audience. + Is it well, I ask, that he helps one Moor against another, always for what + there is in it, and when he takes Valencia from the infidels, keeps none + of his promises to them, but having tortured the governor to make him give + up his treasure, buries him to his waist and then burns him alive? After + that, to be sure, he enjoys his declining years by making forays in the + neighboring country, and dies “satisfied with having done his duty toward + his God.” + </p> + <p> + Our interpreter, who would not let us rest till he had shown us the box + holding the Cid’s bones, had himself had a varied career. If you believed + him he was born in Madrid and had passed, when three years old, to New + York, where he grew up to become a citizen and be the driver of a delivery + wagon for a large department-store. He duly married an American woman who + could speak not only French, German, and Italian, but also Chinese, and + was now living with him in Burgos. His own English had somewhat fallen by + the way, but what was left he used with great courage; and he was one of + those government interpreters whom you find at every large station + throughout Spain in the number of the principal hotels of the place. They + pay the government a certain tax for their license, though it was our + friend’s expressed belief that the government, on the contrary, paid him a + salary of two dollars a day; but perhaps this was no better founded than + his belief in a German princess who, when he went as her courier, paid him + ten dollars a day and all his expenses. She wished him to come and live + near her in Germany, so as to be ready to go with her to South America, + but he had not yet made up his mind to leave Burgos, though his poor eyes + watered with such a cold as only Burgos can give a man in the early + autumn; when I urged him to look to the bad cough he had, he pleaded that + it was a very old cough. He had a fascination of his own, which probably + came from his imaginative habit of mind, so that I could have wished more + adoptive fellow-citizens were like him. He sympathized strongly with us in + our grief with the cold of the hotel, and when we said that a small + oil-heater would take the chill off a large room, he said that he had + advised that very thing, but that our host had replied, with proud + finality, “I am the landlord.” Whether this really happened or not, I + cannot say, but I have no doubt that our little guide had some faith in it + as a real incident. He apparently had faith in the landlord’s boast that + he was going to have a stately marble staircase to the public entrance to + his hotel, which was presently of common stone, rather tipsy in its + treads, and much in need of scrubbing. + </p> + <p> + There is as little question in my mind that he believed the carriage we + had engaged to take us next morning to the Cartuja de Miraflores would be + ready at a quarter before nine, and that he may have been disappointed + when it was not ready until a quarter after. But it was worth waiting for + if to have a team composed of a brown mule on the right hand and a gray + horse on the left was to be desired. These animals which nature had so + differenced were equalized by art through the lavish provision of + sleigh-bells, without some strands of which no team in Spain is properly + equipped. Besides, as to his size the mule was quite as large as the + horse, and as to his tail he was much more decorative. About two inches + after this member left his body it was closely shaved for some six inches + or more, and for that space it presented the effect of a rather large size + of garden-hose; below, it swept his thighs in a lordly switch. If anything + could have added distinction to our turnout it would have been the stiff + side-whiskers of our driver: the only pair I saw in real life after seeing + them so long in pictures on boxes of raisins and cigars. There they were + associated with the look and dress of a <i>torrero,</i> and our coachman, + though an old Castilian of the austerest and most taciturn pattern, may + have been in his gay youth an Andalusian bull-fighter. + </p> + <p> + IV + </p> + <p> + Our pride in our equipage soon gave way to our interest in the market for + sheep, cattle, horses, and donkeys which we passed through just outside + the city. The market folk were feeling the morning’s cold; shepherds + folded in their heavy shawls leaned motionless on their long staves, as if + hating to stir; one ingenious boy wore a live lamb round his neck which he + held close by the legs for the greater comfort of it; under the trees by + the roadside some of the peasants were cooking their breakfasts and + warming themselves at the fires. The sun was on duty in a cloudless sky; + but all along the road to the Cartuja we drove between rows of trees so + thickly planted against his summer rage that no ray of his friendly heat + could now reach us. At times it seemed as if from this remorselessly + shaded avenue we should escape into the open; the trees gave way and we + caught glimpses of wide plains and distant hills; then they closed upon us + again, and in their chill shadow it was no comfort to know that in summer, + when the townspeople got through their work, they came out to these + groves, men, women, and children, and had supper under their hospitable + boughs. + </p> + <p> + One comes to almost any Cartuja at last, and we found ours on a sunny top + just when the cold had pinched us almost beyond endurance, and joined a + sparse group before the closed gate of the convent. The group was composed + of poor people who had come for the dole of food daily distributed from + the convent, and better-to-do country-folk who had brought things to sell + to the monks, or were there on affairs not openly declared. But it seemed + that it was a saint’s day; the monks were having service in the church + solely for their own edification, and they had shut us sinners out not + only by locking the gate, but by taking away the wire for ringing the + bell, and leaving nothing but a knocker of feeble note with which + different members of our indignation meeting vainly hammered. Our guide + assumed the virtue of the greatest indignation, though he ought to have + known that we could not get in on that saint’s day; but it did not avail, + and the little group dispersed, led off by the brown peasant who was + willing to share my pleasure in our excursion as a good joke on us, and + smiled with a show of teeth as white as the eggs in his basket. After all, + it was not wholly a hardship; we could walk about in the sunny if somewhat + muddy open, and warm ourselves against the icily shaded drive back to + town; besides, there was a little girl crouching at the foot of a tree, + and playing at a phase of the housekeeping which is the game of little + girls the world over. Her sad, still-faced mother standing near, with an + interest in her apparently renewed by my own, said that she was four years + old, and joined me in watching her as she built a pile of little sticks + and boiled an imaginary little kettle over them. I was so glad even of a + make-believe fire that I dropped a copper coin beside it, and the mother + smiled pensively as if grateful but not very hopeful from this + beneficence, though after reflection I had made my gift a “big dog” + instead of a “small dog,” as the Spanish call a ten and a five centimo + piece. The child bent her pretty head shyly on one side, and went on + putting more sticks under her supposititious pot. + </p> + <p> + I found the little spectacle reward enough in itself and in a sort + compensation for our failure to see the exquisite alabaster tomb of Juan + II. and his wife Isabel which makes the Cartuja Church so famous. There + are a great many beautiful tombs in Burgos, but none so beautiful there + (or in the whole world if the books say true) as this; though we made what + we could of some in the museum, where we saw for the first time in the + recumbent effigies of a husband and wife, with features worn away by time + and incapable of expressing the disappointment, the surprise they may have + felt in the vain effort to warm their feet on the backs of the little + marble angels put there to support them. We made what we could, too, of + the noted Casa de Miranda, the most famous of the palaces in which the + Castilian nobles have long ceased to live at Burgos. There we satisfied + our longing to see a <i>patio,</i> that roofless colonnaded court which is + the most distinctive feature of Spanish domestic architecture, and more + and more distinctively so the farther south you go, till at Seville you + see it in constant prevalence. At Burgos it could never have been a great + comfort, but in this House of Miranda it must have been a great glory. The + spaces between many of the columns have long been bricked in, but there is + fine carving on the front and the vaulting of the staircase that climbs up + from it in neglected grandeur. So many feet have trodden its steps that + they are worn hollow in the middle, and to keep from falling you must go + up next the wall. The object in going up at all is to join in the gallery + an old melancholy custodian in looking down into the <i>patio,</i> with + his cat making her toilet beside him, and to give them a fee which they + receive with equal calm. Then, when you have come down the age-worn steps + without breaking your neck, you have done the House of Miranda, and may + lend yourself with what emotion you choose to the fact that this ancient + seat of hidalgos has now fallen to the low industry of preparing pigskins + to be wine-skins. + </p> + <p> + <a name="linkimage-0006" id="linkimage-0006"> + <!-- IMG --></a> + </p> + <div class="fig" style="width:60%;"> + <img src="images/h1-6.jpg" alt="06 the Tomb of Donna Maria Manuel " width="100%" /><br /> + </div> + <p> + I do not think that a company of hidalgos in complete medieval armor could + have moved me more strongly than that first sight of these wine-skins, + distended with wine, which we had caught in approaching the House of + Miranda. We had to stop in the narrow street, and let them pass piled high + on a vintner’s wagon, and looking like a load of pork: they are trimmed + and left to keep the shape of the living pig, which they emulate at its + bulkiest, less the head and feet, and seem to roll in fatness. It was joy + to realize what they were, to feel how Spanish, how literary, how + picturesque, how romantic. There they were such as the wine-skins are that + hang from the trees of pleasant groves in many a merry tale, and invite + all swains and shepherds and wandering cavaliers to tap their bulk and + drain its rich plethora. There they were such as Don Quixote, waking from + his dream at the inn, saw them malignant giants and fell enchanters, and + slashed them with his sword till he had spilled the room half full of + their blood. For me this first sight of them was magic. It brought back my + boyhood as nothing else had yet, and I never afterward saw them without a + return to those days of my delight in all Spanish things. + </p> + <p> + Literature and its associations, no matter from how lowly suggestion, must + always be first for me, and I still thought of those wine-skins in + yielding to the claims of the cathedral on my wonder and reverence when + now for the second time we came to it. The funeral ceremony of the dean + was still in course, and after listening for a moment to the mighty + orchestral music of it—the deep bass of the priests swelling up with + the organ notes, and suddenly shot with the shrill, sharp trebles of the + choir-boys and pierced with the keen strains of the violins—we left + the cathedral to the solemn old ecclesiastics who sat confronting the + bier, and once more deferred our more detailed and intimate wonder. We + went, in this suspense of emotion, to the famous Convent of Las Huelgas, + which invites noble ladies to its cloistered repose a little beyond the + town. We entered to the convent church through a sort of slovenly court + where a little girl begged severely, almost censoriously, of us, and + presently a cold-faced young priest came and opened the church door. Then + we found the interior of that rank Spanish baroque which escapes somehow + the effeminate effusiveness of the Italian; it does not affect you as + decadent, but as something vigorously perfect in its sort, somberly + authentic, and ripe from a root and not a graft. In its sort, the high + altar, a gigantic triune, with massive twisted columns and swagger statues + of saints and heroes in painted wood, is a prodigy of inventive piety, and + compositely has a noble exaltation in its powerful lift to the roof. + </p> + <p> + The nuns came beautifully dressed to hear mass at the grilles giving into + the chapel adjoining the church; the tourist may have his glimpse of them + there on Sundays, and on week-days he may have his guess of their + cloistered life and his wonder how much it continues the tradition of + repose which the name of the old garden grounds implies. These lady nuns + must be of patrician lineage and of fortune enough to defray their expense + in the convent, which is of the courtliest origin, for it was founded + eight hundred years ago by Alfonso VIII. “to expiate his sins and to + gratify his queen,” who probably knew of them. I wish now I had known, + while I was there, that the abbess of Las Huelgas had once had the power + of life and death in the neighborhood, and could hang people if she liked; + I cannot think just what good it would have done me, but one likes to + realize such things on the spot. She is still one of the greatest ladies + of Spain, though perhaps not still “lady of ax and gibbet,” and her nuns + are of like dignity. In their chapel are the tombs of Alfonso and his + queen, whose figures are among those on the high altar of the church. She + was Eleanor Plantagenet, the daughter of our Henry II., and was very fond + of Las Huelgas, as if it were truly a rest for her in the far-off land of + Spain; I say our Henry II., for in the eleventh century we Americans were + still English, under the heel of the Normans, as not the fiercest + republican of us now need shame to own. + </p> + <p> + In a sense of this historical unity, at Las Huelgas we felt as much at + home as if we had been English tourists, and we had our feudal pride in + the palaces where the Gastilian nobles used to live in Burgos as we + returned to the town. Their deserted seats are mostly to be seen after you + pass through the Moorish gate overarching the stony, dusty, weedy road + hard by the place where the house of the Cid is said to have stood. The + arch, so gracefully Saracenic, was the first monument of the Moslem + obsession of the country which has left its signs so abundantly in the + south; here in the far north the thing seemed almost prehistoric, almost + preglacially old, the witness of a world utterly outdated. But perhaps it + was not more utterly outdated than the residences of the nobles who had + once made the ancient Castilian capital splendid, but were now as + irrevocably merged in Madrid as the Arabs in Africa. + </p> + <p> + VI + </p> + <p> + Some of the palaces looked down from the narrow street along the hillside + above the cathedral, but only one of them was kept up in the state of + other days; and I could not be sure at what point this street had ceased + to be the street where our guide said every one kept cows, and the ladies + took big pitchers of milk away to sell every morning. But I am sure those + ladies could have been of noble descent only in the farthest possible + remove, and I do not suppose their cows were even remotely related to the + haughty ox-team which blocked the way in front of the palaces and obliged + xis to dismount while our carriage was lifted round the cart. Our driver + was coldly disgusted, but the driver of the ox-team preserved a calm as + perfect as if he had been an hidalgo interested by the incident before his + gate. It delayed us till the psychological moment when the funeral of the + dean was over, and we could join the formidable party following the + sacristan from chapel to chapel in the cathedral. + </p> + <p> + We came to an agonized consciousness of the misery of this progress in the + Chapel of the Constable, where it threatened to be finally stayed by the + indecision of certain ladies of our nation in choosing among the postal + cards for sale there. By this time we had suffered much from the wonders + of the cathedral. The sacristan had not spared us a jewel or a silvered or + gilded sacerdotal garment or any precious vessel of ceremonial, so that + our jaded wonder was inadequate to the demand of the beautiful tombs of + the Constable and his lady upon it. The coffer of the Cid, fastened + against the cathedral wall for a monument of his shrewdness in doing the + Jews of Burgos, who, with the characteristic simplicity of their race, + received it back full of sand and gravel in payment of the gold they had + lent him in it, could as little move us. Perhaps if we could have believed + that he finally did return the value received, we might have marveled a + little at it, but from what we knew of the Cid this was not credible. We + did what we could with the painted wood carving of the cloister doors; the + life-size head of a man with its open mouth for a key-hole in another + portal; a fearful silver-plated chariot given by a rich blind woman for + bearing the Host in the procession of Corpus Christi; but it was very + little, and I am not going to share my failure with the reader by the vain + rehearsal of its details. No literary art has ever reported a sense of + picture or architecture or sculpture to me: the despised postal card is + better for that; and probably throughout these “trivial fond records” I + shall be found shirking as much as I may the details of such sights, seen + or unseen, as embitter the heart of travel with unavailing regret for the + impossibility of remembering them. I must leave for some visit of the + reader’s own the large and little facts of the many chapels in the + cathedral at Burgos, and I will try to overwhelm him with my sense of the + whole mighty interior, the rich gloom, the Gothic exaltation, which I made + such shift as I could to feel in the company of those picture-postal + amateurs. It was like, say, a somber afternoon, verging to the twilight of + a cloudy sunset, so that when I came out of it into the open noon it was + like emerging into a clear morrow. Perhaps because I could there shed the + harassing human environment the outside of the cathedral seemed to me the + best of it, and we lingered there for a moment in glad relief. + </p> + <p> + VII <a name="linkimage-0007" id="linkimage-0007"> + <!-- IMG --></a> + </p> + <div class="fig" style="width:60%;"> + <img src="images/h1-7.jpg" alt="07 a Burgos Street " width="100%" /><br /> + </div> + <p> + One house in some forgotten square commemorates the state in which the + Castilian nobles used to live in Burgos before Toledo, and then + Valladolid, contested the primacy of the grim old capital of the northern + uplands. We stayed for a moment to glance from our carriage through the + open portal into its leafy <i>patio</i> shivering in the cold, and then we + bade our guide hurry back with us to the hot luncheon which would be the + only heat in our hotel. But to reach this we had to pass through another + square, which we found full of peasants’ ox-carts and mule-teams; and + there our guide instantly jumped down and entered into a livelier quarrel + with those peaceable men and women than I could afterward have believed + possible in Spain. I bade him get back to his seat beside the driver, who + was abetting him with an occasional guttural and whom I bade turn round + and go another way. I said that I had hired this turnout, and I was + master, and I would be obeyed; but it seemed that I was wrong. My proud + hirelings never left off their dispute till somehow the ox-carts and + mule-teams were jammed together, and a thoroughfare found for us. Then it + was explained that those peasants were always blocking that square in that + way and that I had, however unwillingly, been discharging the duty of a + public-spirited citizen in compelling them to give way. I did not care for + that; I prized far more the quiet with which they had taken the whole + affair. It was the first exhibition of the national repose of manner which + we were to see so often again, south as well as north, and which I find it + so beautiful to have seen. In a Europe abounding in volcanic Italians, + nervous Germans, and exasperated Frenchmen, it was comforting, it was + edifying to see those Castilian peasants so self-respectfully + self-possessed in the wrong. + </p> + <p> + From time to time in the opener spaces we had got into the sun from the + chill shadow of the narrow streets, but now it began to be cloudy, and + when we re-entered our hotel it was almost as warm indoors as out. We + thought our landlord might have so far repented as to put on the steam; + but he had sternly adhered to his principle that the radiators were enough + of themselves; and after luncheon we had nothing for it but to go away + from Burgos, and take with us such scraps of impression as we could. We + decided that there was no street of gayer shops than those gloomy ones we + had chanced into here and there; I do not remember now anything like a + bookseller’s or a milliner’s or a draper’s window. There was no sign of + fashion among the ladies of Burgos, so far as we could distinguish them; + there was not a glowering or perking hat, and I do not believe there was a + hobble-skirt in all the austere old capital except such as some tourist + wore; the black lace mantillas and the flowing garments of other periods + flitted by through the chill alleys and into the dim doorways. The only + cheerfulness in the local color was to be noted in the caparison of the + donkeys, which we were to find more and more brilliant southward. Do I say + the only cheerfulness? I ought to except also the involuntary hilarity of + a certain poor man’s suit which was so patched together of myriad scraps + that it looked as if cut from the fabric of a crazy-quilt. I owe him this + notice the rather because he almost alone did not beg of us in a city + which swarmed with beggars in a forecast of that pest of beggary which + infests Spain everywhere. I do not say that the thing is without + picturesqueness, without real pathos; the little girl who kissed the + copper I gave her in the cathedral remains endeared to me by that perhaps + conventional touch of poetry. + </p> + <p> + There was compensation for the want of presence among the ladies of + Burgos, in the leading lady of the theatrical company who dined, the night + before, at our hotel with the chief actors of her support, before giving a + last performance in our ancient city. It happened another time in our + Spanish progress that we had the society of strolling players at our + hotel, and it was both times told us that the given company was the best + dramatic company in Spain; but at Burgos we did not yet know that we were + so singularly honored. The leading lady there had luminous black eyes, + large like the head-lamps of a motor-car, and a wide crimson mouth which + she employed as at a stage banquet throughout the dinner, while she talked + and laughed with her fellow-actors, beautiful as bull-fighters, + cleanshaven, serious of face and shapely of limb. They were unaffectedly + professional, and the lady made no pretense of not being a leading lady. + One could see that she was the kindest creature in the world, and that she + took a genuine pleasure in her huge, practicable eyes. At the other end of + the room a Spanish family—father, mother, and small children, down + to some in arms—were dining and the children wailing as Spanish + children will, regardless of time and place; and when the nurse brought + one of the disconsolate infants to be kissed by the leading lady one’s + heart went out to her for the amiability and abundance of her caresses. + The mere sight of their warmth did something to supply the defect of steam + in the steam-heating apparatus, but when one got beyond their radius there + was nothing for the shivering traveler except to wrap himself in the down + quilt of his bed and spread his steamer-rug over his knees till it was + time to creep under both of them between the glacial sheets. + </p> + <p> + We were sorry we had not got tickets for the leading lady’s public + performance; it could have been so little more public; but we had not, and + there was nothing else in Burgos to invite the foot outdoors after dinner. + From my own knowledge I cannot yet say the place was not lighted; but my + sense of the tangle of streets lying night long in a rich Gothic gloom + shall remain unimpaired by statistics. Very possibly Burgos is brilliantly + lighted with electricity; only they have not got the electricity on, as in + our steam-heated hotel they had not got the steam on. + </p> + <p> + VIII + </p> + <p> + We had authorized our little interpreter to engage tickets for us by the + mail-train the next afternoon for Valladolid; he pretended, of course, + that the places could be had only by his special intervention, and by + telegraphing for them to the arriving train. We accepted his romantic + theory of the case, and paid the bonus due the railroad agent in the hotel + for his offices in the matter; we would have given anything, we were so + eager to get out of Burgos before we were frozen up there. I do not know + that we were either surprised or pained to find that our Chilian friends + should have got seats in the same car without anything of our diplomacy, + by the simple process of showing their tickets. I think our little + interpreter was worth everything he cost, and more. I would not have lost + a moment of his company as he stood on the platform with me, adding one + artless invention to another for my pleasure, and successively extracting + peseta after peseta from me till he had made up the sum which he had + doubtless idealized as a just reward for his half-day’s service when he + first told me that it should be what I pleased. We parted with the + affection of fellow-citizens in a strange monarchical country, his English + growing less and less as the train delayed, and his eyes watering more and + more as with tears of com-patriotic affection. At the moment I could have + envied that German princess her ability to make sure of his future + companionship at the low cost of fifty pesetas a day; and even now, when + my affection has had time to wane, I cannot do less than commend him to + any future visitor at Burgos, as in the last degree amiable, and abounding + in surprises of intelligence and unexpected feats of reliability. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + IV. THE VARIETY OF VALLADOLID + </h2> + <p> + When you leave Burgos at 3.29 of a passably sunny afternoon you are not at + once aware of the moral difference between the terms of your approach and + those of your departure. You are not changing your earth or your sky very + much, but it is not long before you are sensible of a change of mind which + insists more and more. There is the same long ground-swell of + wheat-fields, but yesterday you were followed in vision by the loveliness + of the frugal and fertile Biscayan farms, and to-day this vision has left + you, and you are running farther and farther into the economic and + topographic waste of Castile. Yesterday there were more or less agreeable + shepherdesses in pleasant plaids scattered over the landscape; to-day + there are only shepherds of three days’ unshornness; the plaids are + ragged, and there is not sufficient compensation in the cavalcades of both + men and women riding donkeys in and out of the horizons on the long roads + that lose and find themselves there. Flocks of brown and black goats, + looking large as cows among the sparse stubble, do little to relieve the + scene from desolation; I am not sure but goats, when brown and black, add + to the horror of a desolate scene. There are no longer any white + farmsteads, or friendly villages gathering about high-shouldered churches, + but very far away to the eastward or westward the dun expanse of the + wheat-lands is roughed with something which seems a cluster of muddy + protuberances, so like the soil at first it is not distinguishable from + it, but which as your train passes nearer proves to be a town at the base + of tablelands, without a tree or a leaf or any spear of green to endear it + to the eye as the abode of living men. You pull yourself together in the + effort to visualize the immeasurable fields washing those dreary towns + with golden tides of harvest; but it is difficult. What you cannot help + seeing is the actual nakedness of the land which with its spindling + stubble makes you think of that awful moment of the human head, when utter + baldness will be a relief to the spectator. + </p> + <p> + I + </p> + <p> + At times and in places, peasants were scratching the dismal surfaces with + the sort of plows which Abel must have used, when subsoiling was not yet + even a dream; and between the plowmen and their ox-teams it seemed a + question as to which should loiter longest in the unfinished furrow. Now + and then, the rush of the train gave a motionless goatherd, with his gaunt + flock, an effect of comparative celerity to the rearward. The women riding + their donkeys over + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + The level waste, the rounding gray +</pre> + <p> + in the distance were the only women we saw except those who seemed to be + keeping the stations, and one very fat one who came to the train at a + small town and gabbled volubly to some passenger who made no audible + response. She excited herself, but failed to rouse the interest of the + other party to the interview, who remained unseen as well as unheard. I + could the more have wished to know what it was all about because nothing + happened on board the train to distract the mind from the joyless + landscape until we drew near Valladolid. It is true that for a while we + shared our compartment with a father and his two sons who lunched on + slices of the sausage which seems the favorite refection of the Latin as + well as the Germanic races in their travels. But this drama was not of + intense interest, and we grappled in vain with the question of our + companions’ social standard. The father, while he munched his bread and + sausage, read a newspaper which did not rank him or even define his + politics; there was a want of fashion in the cut of the young men’s + clothes and of freshness in the polish of their tan shoes which defied + conjecture. When they left the train without the formalities of + leave-taking which had hitherto distinguished our Spanish + fellow-travelers, we willingly abandoned them to a sort of middling + obscurity; but this may not really have been their origin or their + destiny. + </p> + <p> + That spindling sparseness, worse than utter baldness, of the wheat stubble + now disappeared with cinematic suddenness, and our train was running past + stretches of vineyard, where, among the green and purple and yellow ranks, + the vintagers, with their donkeys and carts, were gathering the grapes in + the paling light of the afternoon. Again the scene lacked the charm of + woman’s presence which the vintage had in southern France. In Spain we + nowhere saw the women sharing the outdoor work of the men; and we fancied + their absence the effect of the Oriental jealousy lingering from centuries + of Moorish domination; though we could not entirely reconcile our theory + with the publicity of their washing clothes at every stream. To be sure, + that was work which they did not share with men any more than the men + shared the labor of the fields with them. + </p> + <p> + It was still afternoon, well before sunset, when we arrived at Valladolid, + where one of the quaintest of our Spanish surprises awaited us. We knew + that the omnibus of the hotel we had chosen would be the shabbiest omnibus + at the station, and we saw without great alarm our Chilian friends drive + off in an indefinitely finer vehicle. But what we were not prepared for + was the fact of <i>octroi</i> at Valladolid, and for the strange behavior + of the local customs officer who stopped us on our way into the town. He + looked a very amiable young man as he put his face in at the omnibus door, + and he received without explicit question our declaration that we had + nothing taxable in our trunks. Then, however, he mounted to the top of the + omnibus and thumped our trunks about as if to test them for contraband by + the sound. The investigation continued on these strange terms until the + officer had satisfied himself of our good faith, when he got down and with + a friendly smile at the window bowed us into Valladolid. + </p> + <p> + In its way nothing could have been more charming; and we rather liked + being left by the omnibus about a block from our hotel, on the border of a + sort of promenade where no vehicles were allowed. We had been halted near + a public fountain, where already the mothers and daughters of the + neighborhood were gathered with earthen jars for the night’s supply of + water. The jars were not so large as to overburden any of them when, after + just delay for exchange of gossip, the girls and goodwives put them on + their heads and marched erectly away with them, each beautifully + picturesque irrespective of her age or looks. + </p> + <p> + The air was soft, and after Burgos, warm; something southern, unfelt + before, began to qualify the whole scene, which as the evening fell grew + more dramatic, and made the promenade the theater of emotions permitted + such unrestricted play nowhere else in Spain, so far as we were witness. + On one side the place was arcaded, and bordered with little shops, not so + obtrusively brilliant that the young people who walked up and down before + them were in a glare of publicity. A little way off the avenue expanded + into a fine oblong place, where some first martyrs of the Inquisition were + burned. But the promenades kept well short of this, as they walked up and + down, and talked, talked, talked in that inexhaustible interest which + youth takes in itself the world over. They were in the standard proportion + of two girls to one young man, or, if here and there a girl had an + undivided young man to herself, she went before some older maiden or + matron whom she left altogether out of the conversation. They mostly wore + the skirts and hats of Paris, and if the scene of the fountain was + Arabically oriental the promenade was almost Americanly occidental. The + promenaders were there by hundreds; they filled the avenue from side to + side, and + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + The delight of happy laughter + The delight of low replies +</pre> + <p> + that rose from their progress, with the chirp and whisper of their feet + cheered the night as long as we watched and listened from the sun balcony + of our hotel. + </p> + <p> + II + </p> + <p> + There was no more heat in the radiators of the hotel there than at Burgos, + but for that evening at least there was none needed. It was the principal + hotel of Valladolid, and the unscrubbed and unswept staircase by which we + mounted into it was merely a phase of that genial pause, as for second + thought, in the march of progress which marks so much of the modern + advance in Spain, and was by no means an evidence of arrested development. + We had the choice of reaching our rooms either through the dining-room or + by a circuitous detour past the pantries; but our rooms had a proud little + vestibule of their own, with a balcony over the great square, and if one + of them had a belated feather-bed the other had a new hair mattress, and + the whole house was brilliantly lighted with electricity. As for the + cooking, it was delicious, and the table was of an abundance and variety + which might well have made one ashamed of paying so small a rate as two + dollars a day for bed and board, wine included, and very fair wine at + that. + </p> + <p> + In Spain you must take the bad with the good, for whether you get the good + or not you are sure of the bad, but only very exceptionally are you sure + of the bad only. It was a pleasure not easily definable to find our hotel + managed by a mother and two daughters, who gave the orders obeyed by the + men-servants, and did not rebuke them for joining in the assurance that + when we got used to going so abruptly from the dining-room into our + bedrooms we would like it. The elder of the daughters had some useful + French, and neither of the younger ladies ever stayed for some ultimate + details of dishabille in coming to interpret the mother and ourselves to + one another when we encountered her alone in the office. They were all + thoroughly kind and nice, and they were supported with surpassing + intelligence and ability by the <i>chico,</i> a radiant boy of ten, who + united in himself the functions which the amiable inefficiency of the + porters and waiters abandoned to him. + </p> + <p> + When we came out to dinner after settling ourselves in our almost + obtrusively accessible rooms, we were convinced of the wisdom of our + choice of a hotel by finding our dear Chilians at one of the tables. We + rushed together like two kindred streams of transatlantic gaiety, and in + our mingled French, Spanish, and English possessed one another of our + doubts and fears in coming to our common conclusion. We had already seen a + Spanish gentleman whom we knew as a fellow-sufferer at Burgos, roaming the + streets of Valladolid, and in what seemed a disconsolate doubt, + interrogating the windows of our hotel; and now we learned from the + Chilians that he had been bitterly disappointed in the inn which a + patrician omnibus had borne him away to from our envious eyes at the + station. We learned that our South American compatriots had found their + own chosen hotel impossible, and were now lodged in rapturous satisfaction + under our roof. Their happiness penetrated us with a glow of equal + content, and confirmed us in the resolution always to take the worst + omnibus at a Spanish station as the sure index of the best hotel. + </p> + <p> + The street-cars, which in Valladolid are poetically propelled through + lyre-shaped trolleys instead of our prosaic broomstick appliances, groaned + unheeded if not unheard under our windows through the night, and we woke + to find the sun on duty in our glazed balcony and the promenade below + already astir with life: not the exuberant young life of the night before, + but still sufficiently awake to be recognizable as life. A crippled + newsboy seated under one of the arcades was crying his papers; an + Englishman was looking at a plan of Valladolid in a shop window; a + splendid cavalry officer went by in braided uniform, and did not stare so + hard as they might have expected at some ladies passing in mantillas to + mass or market. In the late afternoon as well as the early morning we saw + a good deal of the military in Valladolid, where an army corps is + stationed. From time to time a company of infantry marched through the + streets to gay music, and toward evening slim young officers began to + frequent the arcades and glass themselves in the windows of the shops, + their spurs clinking on the pavement as they lounged by or stopped and + took distinguished attitudes. We speculated in vain as to their social + quality, and to this day I do not know whether “the career is open to the + talents” in the Spanish army, or whether military rank is merely the just + reward of civil rank. Those beautiful young swells in riding-breeches and + tight gray jackets approached an Italian type of cavalry officer; they did + not look very vigorous, and the common soldiers we saw marching through + the streets, largely followed by the populace, were not of formidable + stature or figure, though neat and agreeable enough to the eye. + </p> + <p> + While I indulge the record of these trivialities, which I am by no means + sure the reader will care for so much, I feel that it would be wrong to + let him remain as ignorant of the history of Valladolid as I was while + there. My ignorance was not altogether my fault; I had fancied easily + finding at some bookseller’s under the arcade a little sketch of the local + history such as you are sure of finding in any Italian town, done by a + local antiquary of those always mousing in the city’s archives. But the + bookseller’s boy and then the boy’s mother could not at first imagine my + wish, and when they did they could only supply me with a sort of business + directory, full of addresses and advertisements. So instead of overflowing + with information when we set out on our morning ramble, we meagerly knew + from the guide-books that Valladolid had once been the capital of Castile, + arid after many generations of depression following the removal of the + court, had in these latest days renewed its strength in mercantile and + industrial prosperity. There are ugly evidences of the prosperity in the + windy, dusty avenues and streets of the more modern town; but there are + lanes and alleys enough, groping for the churches and monuments in + suddenly opening squares, to console the sentimental tourist for the havoc + which enterprise has made. The mind readily goes back through these to the + palmy prehistoric times from which the town emerged to mention in Ptolemy, + and then begins to work forward past Iberian and Roman and Goth and Moor + to the Castilian kings who made it their residence in the eleventh + century. The capital won its first great distinction when Ferdinand of + Aragon and Isabella of Castile were married there in 1469. Thirty-five + years later these Catholic Kings, as one had better learn at once to call + them in Spain, let Columbus die neglected if not forgotten in the house + recently pulled down, where he had come to dwell in their cold shadow; + they were much occupied with other things and they could not realize that + his discovery of America was the great glory of their reign; probably they + thought the conquest of Granada was. Later yet, by twenty years, the + dreadful Philip II. was born in Valladolid, and in 1559 a very famous <i>auto + da fe</i> wag celebrated in the Plaza Mayor. Fourteen Lutherans were + burned alive for their heresy, and the body of a woman suspected of + imperfect orthodoxy after her death was exhumed and burned with them. In + spite of such precautions as these, and of all the pious diligence of the + Holy Office, the reader will hardly believe that there is now a Spanish + Protestant church in Valladolid; but such is the fact, though whether it + derives from the times of the Inquisition, or is a modern missionary + church I do not know. That <i>auto da fe</i> was of the greatest possible + distinction; the Infanta Juana presided, and the universal interest was so + great that people paid a dollar and twenty-five cents a seat; money then + worth five or six times as much as now. Philip himself came to another <i>auto</i> + when thirteen persons were burned in the same place, and he always liked + Valladolid; it must have pleased him in a different way from Escorial, + lying flat as it does on a bare plain swept, but never thoroughly dusted, + by winds that blow pretty constantly over it. + </p> + <p> + While the Inquisition was purging the city of error its great university + was renowning it not only throughout Spain, but in France and Italy; + students frequented it from those countries, and artists came from many + parts of Europe. Literature also came in the person of Cervantes, who + seems to have followed the Spanish court in its migrations from Valladolid + to Toledo and then to Madrid. Here also came one of the greatest + characters in fiction, for it was in Valladolid that Gil Blas learned to + practise the art of medicine tinder the instruction of the famous Dr. + Sangrado. + </p> + <p> + IV <a name="linkimage-0008" id="linkimage-0008"> + <!-- IMG --></a> + </p> + <div class="fig" style="width:60%;"> + <img src="images/h1-8.jpg" alt="08 a Street Leading to the Cathedral " width="100%" /><br /> + </div> + <p> + I put these facts at the service of the reader for what use he will while + he goes with us to visit the cathedral in Valladolid, a cathedral as + unlike that of Burgos as the severest mood of Spanish renaissance can + render it. In fact, it is the work of Herrera, the architect who made the + Escorial so grim, and is the expression in large measure of his austere + mastery. If it had ever been finished it might have been quite as + dispiriting as the Escorial, but as it has only one of the four ponderous + towers it was meant to have, it is not without its alleviations, + especially as the actual tower was rebuilt after the fall of the original + seventy years ago. The grass springs cheerfully up in the crevices of the + flagging from which the broken steps falter to the portal, but within all + is firm and solid. The interior is vast, and nowhere softened by + decoration, but the space is reduced by the huge bulk of the choir in the + center of it; as we entered a fine echo mounted to the cathedral roof from + the chanting and intoning within. When the service ended a tall figure in + scarlet crossed rapidly toward the sacristy. It was of such imposing + presence that we resolved at once it must be the figure of a cardinal, or + of an archbishop at the least. But it proved to be one of the sacristans, + and when we followed him to the sacristy with half a dozen other + sightseers, he showed us a silver monstrance weighing a hundred and fifty + pounds and decked with statites of our first parents as they appeared + before the Fall. Besides this we saw, much against our will, a great many + ecclesiastical vestments of silk and damask richly wrought in gold and + silver. But if we were reluctant there was a little fat priest there who + must have seen them hundreds of times and had still a childish delight in + seeing them again because he had seen them so often; he dimpled and + smiled, and for his sake we pretended a joy in them which it would have + been cruel to deny him. I suppose we were then led to the sacrifice at the + several side altars, but I have no specific recollection of them; I know + there was a pale, sick-looking young girl in white who went about with her + father, and moved compassion by her gentle sorrowfulness. + </p> + <p> + Of the University, which we visited next, I recall only the baroque + facade; the interior was in reparation and I do not know whether it would + have indemnified us for not visiting the University of Salamanca. That was + in our list, but the perversity of the time-table forbade. You could go to + Salamanca, yes, but you could not come back except at two o’clock in the + morning; you could indeed continue on to Lisbon, but perhaps you did not + wish to see Lisbon. A like perversity of the time-table, once universal in + Spain, but now much reformed, also kept us away from Segovia, which was on + our list. But our knowledge of it enabled us to tell a fellow-countrywoman + whom we presently met in the museum of the University, how she could best, + or worst, get to that city. Our speech gave us away to her, and she turned + to us from the other objects of interest to explain first that she was in + a hotel where she paid only six pesetas a day, but where she could get no + English explanation of the time-table for any money. She had come to + Valladolid with a friend who was going next day to Salamanca, but next day + was Sunday and she did not like to travel on Sunday, and Segovia seemed + the only alternative. We could not make out why, or if it came to that why + she should be traveling alone through Spain with such a slender equipment + of motive or object, but we perceived she was one of the most estimable + souls in the world, and if she cared more for getting to Segovia that + afternoon than for looking at the wonders of the place where we were, we + could not blame her. We had to leave her when we left the museum in the + charge of two custodians who led her, involuntary but unresisting, to an + upper chamber where there were some pictures which she could care no more + for than for the wood carvings below. We ourselves cared so little for + those pictures that we would not go to see them. Pictures you can see + anywhere, but not statuary of such singular interest, such transcendant + powerfulness as those carvings of Berruguete and other masters less known, + which held us fascinated in the lower rooms of the museum. They are the + spoil of convents in the region about, suppressed by the government at + different times, and collected here with little relevancy to their + original appeal. Some are Scriptural subjects and some are figures of the + dancers who take part in certain ceremonials of the Spanish churches + (notably the cathedral at Seville), which have a quaint reality, an + intense personal character. They are of a fascination which I can hope to + convey by no phrase of mine; but far beyond this is the motionless force, + the tremendous repose of the figures of the Roman soldiers taken in the + part of sleeping at the Tomb. These sculptures are in wood, life-size, and + painted in the colors of flesh and costume, with every detail and of a + strong mass in which the detail is lost and must be found again by the + wondering eye. Beyond all other Spanish sculptures they seemed to me + expressive of the national temperament; I thought no other race could have + produced them, and that in their return to the Greek ideal of color in + statuary they were ingenuously frank and unsurpassably bold. + </p> + <p> + It might have been the exhaustion experienced from the encounter with + their strenuousness that suddenly fatigued us past even the thought of + doing any more of Valladolid on foot. At any rate, when we came out of the + museum we took refuge in a corner grocery (it seems the nature of + groceries to seek corners the world over) and asked the grocer where we + could find a cab. + </p> + <p> + <a name="linkimage-0009" id="linkimage-0009"> + <!-- IMG --></a> + </p> + <div class="fig" style="width:60%;"> + <img src="images/h1-9.jpg" alt="09 the University of Valladolid " width="100%" /><br /> + </div> + <p> + The grocer was young and kind, and not so busy but he could give willing + attention to our case. He said he would send for a cab, and he called up + from his hands and knees a beautiful blond half-grown boy who was + scrubbing the floor, and despatched him on this errand, first making him + wipe the suds off his hands. The boy was back wonderfully soon to say the + cab would come for us in ten minutes, and to receive with self-respectful + appreciation the peseta which rewarded his promptness. In the mean time we + feigned a small need which we satisfied by a purchase, and then the grocer + put us chairs in front of his counter and made us his guests while his + other customers came and went. They came oftener than they went, for our + interest in them did not surpass their interest in us. We felt that + through this we reflected credit upon our amiable host; rumors of the + mysterious strangers apparently spread through the neighborhood and the + room was soon filled with people who did not all come to buy; but those + who did buy were the most, interesting. An elderly man with his wife + bought a large bottle which the grocer put into one scale of his balance, + and poured its weight in chick-peas into the other. Then he filled the + bottle with oil and weighed it, and then he gave the peas along with it to + his customers. It seemed a pretty convention, though we could not quite + make out its meaning, unless the peas were bestowed as a sort of bonus; + but the next convention was clearer to us. An old man in black corduroy + with a clean-shaven face and a rather fierce, retired bull-fighter air, + bought a whole dried stock-fish (which the Spaniards eat instead of salt + cod) talking loudly to the grocer and at us while the grocer cut it across + in widths of two inches and folded it into a neat pocketful; then a glass + of wine was poured from a cask behind the counter, and the customer drank + it off in honor of the transaction with the effect also of pledging us + with his keen eyes; all the time he talked, and he was joined in + conversation by a very fat woman who studied us not unkindly. Other + neighbors who had gathered in had no apparent purpose but to verify our + outlandish presence and to hear my occasional Spanish, which was worth + hearing if for nothing but the effort it cost me. The grocer accepted with + dignity the popularity we had won him, and when at last our cab arrived + from Mount Ararat with the mire of the subsiding Deluge encrusted upon it + he led us out to it through the small boys who swarmed upon us wherever we + stopped or started in Valladolid; and whose bulk was now much increased by + the coming of that very fat woman from within the grocery. As the morning + was bright we proposed having the top opened, but here still another + convention of the place intervened. In Valladolid it seems that no + self-respecting cabman will open the top of his cab for an hour’s drive, + and we could not promise to keep ours longer. The grocer waited the result + of our parley, and then he opened our carriage door and bowed us away. It + was charming; if he had a place on Sixth Avenue I would be his customer as + long as I lived in New York; and to this moment I do not understand why I + did not bargain with that blond boy to come to America with us and be with + us always. But there was no city I visited in Spain where I was not sorry + to leave some boy behind with the immense rabble of boys whom I hoped + never to see again. + </p> + <p> + VI + </p> + <p> + After this passage of real life it was not easy to sink again to the level + of art, but if we must come down it there could have been no descent less + jarring than that which left us in the exquisite <i>patio</i> of the + College of San Gregorio, founded for poor students of theology in the time + of the Catholic Kings. The students who now thronged the place inside and + out looked neither clerical nor poverty-stricken; but I dare say they were + good Christians, and whatever their condition they were rich in the + constant vision of beauty which one sight of seemed to us more than we + merited. Perhaps the facade of the college and that of the neighboring + Church of San Pablo may be elsewhere surpassed in the sort of sumptuous + delicacy of that Gothic which gets its name of plateresque from the + silversmithing spirit of its designs; but I doubt it. The wonderfulness of + it is that it is not mechanical or monotonous like the stucco fretting of + the Moorish decoration which people rave over in Spain, but has a strength + in its refinement which comes from its expression in the exquisitely + carven marble. When this is grayed with age it is indeed of the effect of + old silver work; but the plateresque in Valladolid does not suggest + fragility or triviality; its grace is perhaps rather feminine than + masculine; but at the worst it is only the ultimation of the decorative + genius of the Gothic. It is, at any rate, the finest surprise which the + local architecture has to offer and it leaves one wishing for more rather + than less of it, so that after the facade of San Gregorio one is glad of + it again in the walls of the <i>patio,</i> whose staircases and galleries, + with the painted wooden beams of their ceilings, scarcely tempt the eye + from it. + </p> + <p> + We thought the front of San Pablo deserved a second visit, and we were + rewarded by finding it far lovelier than we thought. The church was open, + and when we went in we had the advantage of seeing a large silver-gilt car + moved from the high altar down the nave to a side altar next the door, + probably for use in some public procession. The tongue of the car was + pulled by a man with one leg; a half-grown boy under the body of it + hoisted it on his back and eased it along; and a monk with his white robe + tucked up into his girdle pushed it powerfully from behind. I did not make + out why so strange a team should have been employed for the work, but the + spectacle of that quaint progress was unique among my experiences at + Valladolid and of a value which I wish I could make the reader feel with + me. We ourselves were so interested in the event that we took part in it + so far as to push aside a bench that blocked the way, and we received a + grateful smile from the monk in reward of our zeal. + </p> + <p> + We were in the mood for simple kindness because of our stiff official + reception at the Royal Palace, which we visited in the gratification of + our passion for <i>patios.</i> It is now used for provincial or municipal + offices and guarded by sentries who indeed admitted us to the courtyard, + but would not understand our wish (it was not very articulately expressed) + to mount to the cloistered galleries which all the guide-books united in + pronouncing so noble, with their decorative busts of the Roman Emperors + and arms of the Spanish provinces. The sculptures are by the school of + Berruguete, for whom we had formed so strong a taste at the museum; but + our disappointment was not at the moment further embittered by knowing + that Napoleon resided there in 1809. We made what we could of other <i>patios</i> + in the vicinity, especially of one in the palace across from San Gregorio, + to which the liveried porter welcomed us, though the noble family was in + residence, and allowed us to mount the red-carpeted staircase to a closed + portal in consideration of the peseta which he correctly foresaw. It was + not a very characteristic <i>patio,</i> bare of flower and fountain as it + was, and others more fully appointed did not entirely satisfy us. The fact + is the <i>patio</i> is to be seen best in Andalusia, its home, where every + house is built round it, and in summer cooled and in winter chilled by it. + But if we were not willing to wait for Seville, Valladolid did what it + could; and if we saw no house with quite the <i>patio</i> we expected we + did see the house where Philip II. was born, unless the enterprising boy + who led us to it was mistaken; in that case we were, Ophelia-like, the + more deceived. + </p> + <p> + VII <a name="linkimage-0010" id="linkimage-0010"> + <!-- IMG --></a> + </p> + <div class="fig" style="width:60%;"> + <img src="images/h1-10.jpg" alt="10 Church of San Pablo " width="100%" /><br /> + </div> + <p> + Such things do not really matter; the guide-book’s object of interest is + seldom an object of human interest; you may miss it or ignore it without + real personal loss; but if we had failed of that mystic progress of the + silver car down the nave of San Pablo we should have been really if not + sensibly poorer. So we should if we had failed of the charming experience + which awaited us in our hotel at lunch-time. When we went out in the + morning we saw a table spread the length of the long dining-room, and now + when we returned we found every chair taken. At once we surmised a wedding + breakfast, not more from the gaiety than the gravity of the guests; and + the head waiter confirmed our impression: it was indeed a <i>boda.</i> The + party was just breaking up, and as we sat down at our table the wedding + guests rose from theirs. I do not know but in any country the women on + such an occasion would look more adequate to it than the men; at any rate, + there in Spain they looked altogether superior. It was not only that they + were handsomer and better dressed, but that they expressed finer social + and intellectual quality. + </p> + <p> + All the faces had the quiet which the Spanish face has in such degree that + the quiet seems national more than personal; but the women’s faces were + oval, though rather heavily based, while the men’s were squared, with high + cheek-bones, and they seemed more distinctly middle class. Men and women + had equally repose of manner, and when the women came to put on their + headgear near our corner, it was with a surface calm unbroken by what must + have been their inner excitement. They wore hats and mantillas in about + the same proportion; but the bride wore a black mantilla and a black dress + with sprigs of orange blossoms in her hair and on her breast for the only + note of white. Her lovely, gentle face was white, of course, from the + universal powder, and so were the faces of the others, who talked in low + tones around her, with scarcely more animation than so many masks. The + handsomest of them, whom we decided to be her sister, arranged the bride’s + mantilla, and was then helped on with hers by the others, with soft smiles + and glances. Two little girls, imaginably sorry the feast was over, + suppressed their regret in the tutelage of the maiden aunts and + grandmothers who put up cakes in napkins to carry home; and then the party + vanished in unbroken decorum. When they were gone we found that in + studying the behavior of the bride and her friends we had not only failed + to identify the bridegroom, but had altogether forgotten to try. + </p> + <p> + VIII + </p> + <p> + The terrible Torquemada dwelt for years in Valla-dolid and must there have + excogitated some of the methods of the Holy Office in dealing with heresy. + As I have noted, Ferdinand and Isabella were married there and Philip II. + was born there; but I think the reader will agree with me that the highest + honor of the city is that it was long the home of the gallant gentleman + who after five years of captivity in Algiers and the loss of his hand in + the Battle of Lepanto, wrote there, in his poverty and neglect, the first + part of a romance which remains and must always remain one of the first if + not the very first of the fictions of the world. I mean that + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + Dear son of memory, great heir of fame, +</pre> + <p> + Michael Cervantes; and I wish I could pay here that devoir to his memory + and fame which squalid circumstance forbade me to render under the roof + that once sheltered him. One can never say enough in his praise, and even + Valladolid seems to have thought so, for the city has put up a tablet to + him with his bust above it in the front of his incredible house and done + him the homage of a reverent inscription. It is a very little house, as + small as Ariosto’s in Ferrara, which he said was so apt for him, but it is + not in a long, clean street like that; it is in a bad neighborhood which + has not yet outlived the evil repute it bore in the days of Cervantes. It + was then the scene of nightly brawls and in one of these a gentleman was + stabbed near the author’s house. The alarm brought Cervantes to the door + and being the first to reach the dying man he was promptly arrested, + together with his wife, his two sisters, and his niece, who were living + with him and who were taken up as accessories before the fact. The whole + abomination is matter of judicial record, and it appears from this that + suspicion fell upon the gentle family (one sister was a nun) because they + were living in that infamous place. The man whose renown has since filled + the civilized world fuller even than the name of his contemporary, + Shakespeare (they died on the same day), was then so unknown to the + authorities of Valladolid that he had great ado to establish the innocence + of himself and his household. To be sure, his <i>Don Quixote</i> had not + yet appeared, though he is said to have finished the first part in that + miserable abode in that vile region; but he had written poems and plays, + especially his most noble tragedy of “Numancia,” and he had held public + employs and lived near enough to courts to be at least in their cold + shade. It is all very Spanish and very strange, and perhaps the wonder + should be that in this most provincial of royal capitals, in a time + devoted to the extirpation of ideas, the fact that he was a poet and a + scholar did not tell fatally against him. In his declaration before the + magistrates he says that his literary reputation procured him the + acquaintance of courtiers and scholars, who visited him in that pitiable + abode where the ladies of his family cared for themselves and him with the + help of one servant maid. + </p> + <p> + They had an upper floor of the house, which stands at the base of a stone + terrace dropping from the wide, dusty, fly-blown street, where I stayed + long enough to buy a melon (I was always buying a melon in Spain) and put + it into my cab before I descended the terrace to revere the house of + Cervantes on its own level. There was no mistaking it; there was the bust + and the inscription; but it was well I bought my melon before I ventured + upon this act of piety; I should not have had the stomach for it + afterward. I was not satisfied with the outside of the house, but when I + entered the open doorway, meaning to mount to the upper floor, it was as + if I were immediately blown into the street again by the thick and noisome + stench which filled the place from some unmentionable if not unimaginable + source. + </p> + <p> + It was like a filthy insult to the great presence whose sacred shrine the + house should have been religiously kept. But Cervantes dead was as + forgotten in Valladolid as Cervantes living had been. In some paroxysm of + civic pride the tablet had been set in the wall and then the house + abandoned to whatever might happen. I thought foul shame of Valladolid for + her neglect, and though she might have answered that her burden of + memories was more than she could bear, that she could not be forever + keeping her celebrity sweet, still I could have retorted, But Cervantes, + but Cervantes! There was only one Cervantes in the world and there never + would be another, and could not she watch over this poor once home of his + for his matchless sake? Then if Valladolid had come back at me with the + fact that Cervantes had lived pretty well all over Spain, and what had + Seville done, Cordova done, Toledo done, Madrid done, for the upkeep of + his divers sojourns more than she had done, after placing a tablet in his + house wall?—certainly I could have said that this did not excuse + her, but I must have owned that she was not alone, though she seemed most + to blame. + </p> + <p> + IX <a name="linkimage-0011" id="linkimage-0011"> + <!-- IMG --></a> + </p> + <div class="fig" style="width:60%;"> + <img src="images/h1-11.jpg" + alt="11 the House in Which Philip Ii. Was Born " width="100%" /><br /> + </div> + <p> + Now I look back and am glad I had not consciously with me, as we drove + away, the boy who once meant to write the life of Cervantes, and who I + knew from my recollection of his idolatry of that chief of Spaniards would + not have listened to the excuses of Valladolid for a moment. All appeared + fair and noble in that Spain of his which shone with such allure far + across the snows through which he trudged morning and evening with his + father to and from the printing-office, and made his dream of that great + work the common theme of their talk. Now the boy is as utterly gone as the + father, who was a boy too at heart, but who died a very old man many years + ago; and in the place of both is another old man trammeled in his tangled + memories of Spain visited and unvisited. + </p> + <p> + It would be a poor sort of make-believe if this survivor pretended any + lasting indignation with Valladolid because of the stench of Cervantes’s + house. There are a great many very bad smells in Spain everywhere, and it + is only fair to own that a psychological change toward Valladolid had been + operating itself in me since luncheon which Valladolid was not very + specifically to blame for. Up to the time the wedding guests left us we + had said Valladolid was the most interesting city we had ever seen, and we + would like to stay there a week; then, suddenly, we began to turn against + it. One thing: the weather had clouded, and it was colder. But we + determined to be just, and after we left the house of Cervantes we drove + out to the promenades along the banks of the Pisuerga, in hopes of a + better mind, for we had read that they were the favorite resort of the + citizens in summer, and we did not know but even in autumn we might have + some glimpses of their recreation. Our way took us sorrowfully past + hospitals and prisons and barracks; and when we came out on the promenade + we found ourselves in the gloom of close set mulberry trees, with the dust + thick on the paths under them. The leaves hung leaden gray on the boughs + and there could never have been a spear of grass along those disconsolate + ways. The river was shrunken in its bed, and where its current crept from + pool to pool, women were washing some of the rags which already hung so + thick on the bushes that it was wonderful there should be any left to + wash. Squalid children abounded, and at one point a crowd of people had + gathered and stood looking silently and motionlessly over the bank. We + looked too and on a sand-bar near the shore we saw three gendarmes + standing with a group of civilians. Between their fixed and absolutely + motionless figures lay the body of a drowned man on the sand, poorly + clothed in a workman’s dress, and with his poor, dead clay-white hands + stretched out from him on the sand, and his gray face showing to the sky. + Everywhere people were stopping and staring; from one of the crowded + windows of the nearest house a woman hung with a rope of her long hair in + one hand, and in the other the brush she was passing over it. On the + bridge the man who had found the body made a merit of his discovery which + he dramatized to a group of spectators without rousing them to a murmur or + stirring them from their statuesque fixity. His own excitement in + comparison seemed indecent. + </p> + <p> + X + </p> + <p> + It was now three o’clock and I thought I might be in time to draw some + money on my letter of credit, at the bank which we had found standing in a + pleasant garden in the course of our stroll through the town the night + before. We had said, How charming it would be to draw money in such an + environment; and full of the romantic expectation, I offered my letter at + the window, where after a discreet interval I managed to call from their + preoccupation some unoccupied persons within. They had not a very + financial air, and I thought them the porters they really were, with some + fear that I had come after banking-hours. But they joined in reassuring + me, and told me that if I would return after five o’clock the proper + authorities would be there. + </p> + <p> + I did not know then what late hours Spain kept in every way; but I + concealed my surprise; and I came back at the time suggested, and offered + my letter at the window with a request for ten pounds, which I fancied I + might need. A clerk took the letter and scrutinized it with a deliberation + which I thought it scarcely merited. His self-respect doubtless would not + suffer him to betray that he could not read the English of it; and with an + air of wishing to consult higher authority he carried it to another clerk + at a desk across the room. To this official it seemed to come as something + of a blow. Tie made a show of reading it several times over, inside and + out, and then from the pigeonhole of his desk he began to accumulate what + I supposed corroborative documents, or <i>pieces justificatives.</i> When + lie had amassed a heap several inches thick, he rose and hurried out + through the gate, across the hall where I sat, into a room beyond. He + returned without in any wise referring himself to me and sat down at his + desk again. The first clerk explained to the anxious face with which I now + approached him that the second clerk had taken my letter to the director. + I went back to my seat and waited fifteen minutes longer, fifteen having + passed already; then I presented my anxious face, now somewhat indignant, + to the first clerk again. “What is the director doing with my letter?” The + first clerk referred my question to the second clerk, who answered from + his place, “He is verifying the signature.” “But what signature?” I + wondered to myself, reflecting that he had as yet had none of mine. Could + it be the signature of my New York banker or my London one? I repaired + once more to the window, after another wait, and said in polite but firm + Castilian, “Do me the favor to return me my letter.” A commotion of + protest took place within the barrier, followed by the repeated + explanation that the director was verifying the signature. I returned to + toy place and considered that the suspicious document which I had + presented bore record of moneys drawn in London, in Paris, in Tours, in + San Sebastian, which ought to have allayed all suspicion; then for the + last time I repaired to the window; more in anger now than in sorrow, and + gathered nay severest Spanish together for a final demand: “Do me the + favor to give me back my letter <i>without the pounds sterling.”</i> The + clerks consulted together; one of them decided to go to the director’s + room, and after a dignified delay he came back with my letter, and dashed + it down before me with the only rudeness I experienced in Spain. + </p> + <p> + I was glad to get it on any terms; it was only too probable that it would + have been returned without the money if I had not demanded it; and I did + what I could with the fact that this amusing financial transaction, + involving a total of fifty dollars, had taken place in the chief + banking-house of one of the commercial and industrial centers of the + country. Valladolid is among other works the seat of the locomotive works + of the northern railway lines, and as these machines average a speed of + twenty-five miles an hour with express trains, it seemed strange to me + that something like their rapidity should not have governed the action of + that bank director in forcing me to ask back my discredited letter of + credit. + </p> + <p> + XI + </p> + <p> + That evening the young voices and the young feet began to chirp again + under our sun balcony. But there had been no sun in it since noon and + presently a cold thin rain was falling and driving the promenaders under + the arcades, where they were perhaps not unhappier for being closely + massed. We missed the prettiness of the spectacle, though as yet we did + not know that it was the only one of the sort we might hope to see in + Spain, where women walk little indoors, and when they go out, drive and + increase in the sort of loveliness which may be weighed and measured. Even + under the arcades the promenade ceased early and in the adjoining Plaza + Mayor, where the <i>autos da fe</i> once took place, the rain still + earlier made an end of the municipal music, and the dancing of the lower + ranks of the people. But we were fortunate in our Chilian friend’s + representation of the dancing; he came to our table at dinner, and did + with charming sympathy a mother waltzing with her babe in arms for a + partner. + </p> + <p> + He came to the omnibus at the end of the promenade, when we were starting + for the station next morning, not yet shaven, in his friendly zeal to make + sure of seeing us off, and we parted with confident prophecies of meeting + each other again in Madrid. We had already bidden adieu with effusion to + our landlady-sisters-and-mother, and had wished to keep forever our own + the adorable <i>chico</i> who, when cautioned against trying to carry a + very heavy bag, valiantly jerked it to his shoulder and made off with it + to the omnibus, as if it were nothing. I do not believe such a boy + breathes out of Spain, where I hope he will grow up to the Oriental calm + of so many of his countrymen, and rest from the toils of his nonage. At + the last moment after the Chilian had left us, we perceived that one of + our trunks had been forgotten, and the <i>chico</i> coursed back to the + hotel for it and returned with the delinquent porter bearing it, as if to + make sure of his bringing it. + </p> + <p> + When it was put on top of the omnibus, and we were in probably + unparalleled readiness for starting to the station, at an hour when + scarcely anybody else in Valladolid was up, a mule composing a portion of + our team immediately fell down, as if startled too abruptly from a + somnambulic dream. I really do not remember how it was got to its feet + again; but I remember the anguish of the delay and the fear that we might + not be able to escape from Valladolid after all our pains in trying for + the Sud-Express at that hour; and I remember that when we reached the + station we found that the Sud-Express was forty minutes behind time and + that we were a full hour after that before starting for Madrid. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0006" id="link2H_4_0006"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + V. PHASES OF MADRID + </h2> + <p> + I fancied that a kind of Gothic gloom was expressed in the black + wine-skins of Old Castile, as contrasted with the fairer color of those + which began to prevail even so little south of Burgos as Valladolid. I am + not sure that the Old Castilian wine-skins derived their blackness from + the complexion of the pigs, or that there are more pale pigs in the south + than in the north of Spain; I am sure only of a difference in the color of + the skins, which may have come from a difference in the treatment of them. + At a venture I should not say that there were more black pigs in Old + Castile than in Andalusia, as we observed them from the train, rooting + among the unpromising stubble of the wheat-lands. Rather I should say that + the prevailing pig of all the Spains was brown, corresponding to the + reddish blondness frequent among both the Visigoths and the Moors. The + black pig was probably the original, prehistoric Iberian pig, or of an + Italian strain imported by the Romans; but I do not offer this as more + than a guess. The Visigothic or Arabic pig showed himself an animal of + great energy and alertness wherever we saw him, and able to live upon the + lean of the land where it was leanest. At his youngest he abounded in the + furrows and hollows, matching his russet with the russet of the soil and + darting to and fro with the quickness of a hare. He was always of an + ingratiating humorousness and endeared himself by an apparent readiness to + enter into any joke that was going, especially that of startling the + pedestrian by his own sudden apparition from behind a tuft of grass or + withered stalk. I will not be sure, but I think we began to see his kind + as soon as we got out of Yalladolid, when we began running through a + country wooded with heavy, low-crowned pines that looked like the + stone-pines of Italy, but were probably not the same. After twenty miles + of this landscape the brown pig with pigs of other complexions, as much + guarded as possible, multiplied among the patches of vineyard. He had + there the company of tall black goats and rather unhappy-looking black + sheep, all of whom he excelled in the art of foraging among the vines and + the stubble of the surrounding wheat-lands. After the vineyards these + opened and stretched themselves wearily, from low dull sky to low dull + sky, nowise cheered in aspect by the squalid peasants, scratching their + tawny expanses with those crooked prehistoric sticks which they use for + plows in Spain. It was a dreary landscape, but it was good to be out of + Valladolid on any terms, and especially good to be away from the station + which we had left emulating the odors of the house of Cervantes. + </p> + <p> + I + </p> + <p> + There had been the usual alarm about the lack of places in the Sud-Express + which we were to take at Valladolid, but we chanced getting them, and our + boldness was rewarded by getting a whole compartment to ourselves, and a + large, fat friendly conductor with an eye out for tips in every direction. + The lunch in our dining-car was for the first time in Spain not worth the + American price asked for it; everywhere else on the Spanish trains I must + testify that the meals were excellent and abundant; and the refection may + now have felt in some obscure sort the horror of the world in which the + Sud-Express seemed to have lost itself. The scene was as alien to any + other known aspect of our comfortable planet as if it were the landscape + of some star condemned for the sins of its extinct children to wander + through space in unimaginable desolation. It seldom happens in Spain that + the scenery is the same on both sides of the railroad track, but here it + was malignly alike on one hand and on the other, though we seemed to be + running along the slope of an upland, so that the left hand was higher and + the right lower. It was more as if we were crossing the face of some + prodigious rapid, whose surges were the measureless granite boulders + tossing everywhere in masses from the size of a man’s fist to the size of + a house. In a wild chaos they wallowed against one another, the greater + bearing on their tops or between them on their shoulders smaller regular + or irregular masses of the same gray stone. Everywhere among their awful + shallows grew gray live-oaks, and in among the rocks and trees spread + tufts of gray shrub. Suddenly, over the frenzy of this mad world, a storm + of cold rain broke whirling, and cold gray mists drove, blinding the + windows and chilling us where we sat within. From time to time the storm + lifted and showed again this vision of nature hoary as if with immemorial + eld; if at times we seemed to have run away from it again it closed in + upon us and held us captive in its desolation. + </p> + <p> + With longer and longer intervals of relief it closed upon us for the last + time in the neighborhood of the gloomiest pile that ever a man built for + his life, his death and his prayer between; but before we came to the + palace-tomb of the Escorial, we had clear in the distance the vision of + the walls and roofs and towers of the medieval city of Avila. It is said + to be the perfectest relic of the Middle Ages after or before Rothenburg, + and we who had seen Rothenburg solemnly promised ourselves to come back + some day from Madrid and spend it in Avila. But we never came, and Avila + remains a vision of walls and roofs and towers tawny gray glimpsed in a + rift of the storm that again swept toward the Spanish capital. + </p> + <p> + II + </p> + <p> + We were very glad indeed to get to Madrid, though dismayed by + apprehensions of the <i>octroi</i> which we felt sure awaited us. We + recalled the behavior of the amiable officer of Valladolid who bumped our + baggage about on the roof of our omnibus, and we thought that in Madrid + such an officer could not do less than shatter our boxes and scatter their + contents in the streaming street. What was then our surprise, our joy, to + find that in Madrid there was no <i>octroi</i> at all, and that the + amiable <i>mozos</i> who took our things hardly knew what we meant when we + asked for it. At Madrid they scarcely wanted our tickets at the gate of + the station, and we found ourselves in the soft embrace of modernity, so + dear after the feudal rigors of Old Castile, when we mounted into a + motor-bus and sped away through the spectacular town, so like Paris, so + like Rome as to have no personality of its own except in this similarity, + and never stopped till the liveried service swarmed upon us at the door of + the Hotel Ritz. + </p> + <p> + Here the modernity which had so winningly greeted us at the station + welcomed us more and consolingly. There was not only steam-heating, but + the steam was on! It wanted but a turn of the hand at the radiators, and + the rooms were warm. The rooms themselves responded to our appeal and + looked down into a silent inner court, deaf to the clatter of the streets, + and sleep haunted the very air, distracted, if at all, by the instant + facility and luxury of the appliances. Was it really in Spain that a + metallic tablet at the bed-head invited the wanderer to call with one + button for the <i>camerero,</i> another for the <i>camerera,</i> and + another for the <i>mozo,</i> who would all instantly come speaking English + like so many angels? Were we to have these beautiful chambers for a humble + two dollars and forty cents a day; and if it was true, why did we ever + leave them and try for something ever so much worse and so very little + cheaper? Let me be frank with the reader whom I desire for my friend, and + own that we were frightened from the Eitz Hotel by the rumor of Eitz + prices. I paid my bill there, which was imagined with scrupulous fullness + to the last possible <i>centimo,</i> and so I may disinterestedly declare + that the Eitz is the only hotel in Madrid where you get the worth of your + money, even when the money seems more but scarcely is so. In all Spain I + know of only two other hotels which may compare with it, and these are the + English hotels, one at Ronda and one at Algeciras. If I add falteringly + the hotel where we stayed a night in Toledo and the hotel where we abode a + fortnight in Seville, I heap the measure of merit and press it down. + </p> + <p> + We did not begin at once our insensate search for another hotel in Madrid: + but the sky had cleared and we went out into the strange capital so + uncharacteristically characteristic, to find tea at a certain cafe we had + heard of. It was in the Calle de Alcala (a name which so richly stimulates + the imagination), and it looked out across this handsome street, to a club + that I never knew the name of, where at a series of open windows was a + flare of young men in silk hats leaning out on their elbows and letting no + passing fact of the avenue escape them. It was worth their study, and if I + had been an idle young Spaniard, or an idle old one, I would have asked + nothing better than to spend my Sunday afternoon poring from one of those + windows on my well-known world of Madrid as it babbled by. Even in my + quality of alien, newly arrived and ignorant of that world, I already felt + its fascination. + </p> + <p> + Sunday in Spain is perhaps different from other days of the week to the + Spanish sense, but to the traveler it is too like them to be + distinguishable except in that guilty Sabbath consciousness which is + probably an effect from original sin in every Protestant soul. The casual + eye could not see but that in Madrid every one seemed as much or as little + at work as on any other day. My own casual eye noted that the most + picturesquely evident thing in the city was the country life which seemed + so to pervade it. In the Calle de Alcala, flowing to the Prado out of the + Puerta del Sol, there passed a current of farm-carts and farm-wagons more + conspicuous than any urban vehicles, as they jingled by, with men and + women on their sleigh-belled donkeys, astride or atop the heavily laden + panniers. The donkeys bore a part literally leading in all the rustic + equipages, and with their superior intellect found a way through the + crowds for the string-teams of the three or four large mules that followed + them in harness. Whenever we saw a team of mules without this sage + guidance we trembled for their safety; as for horses, no team of them + attempted the difficult passage, though ox-trains seemed able to dispense + with the path-finding donkeys. + </p> + <p> + To be sure, the horses abounded in the cabs, which were mostly bad, more + or less. It is an idiosyncrasy of the cabs in Madrid that only the open + victorias have rubber tires; if you go in a coupe you must consent to be + ruthlessly bounced over the rough pavements on wheels unsoftened. It + “follows as the night the day” that the coupe is not in favor, and that in + its conservative disuse it accumulates a smell not to be acquired out of + Spain. One such vehicle I had which I thought must have been stabled in + the house of Cervantes at Valladolid, and rushed on the Sud-Express for my + service at Madrid; the stench in it was such that after a short drive to + the house of a friend I was fain to dismiss it at a serious loss in + pesetas and take the risk of another which might have been as bad. + Fortunately a kind lady intervened with a private carriage and a coachman + shaved that very day, whereas my poor old cabman, who was of one and the + same smell as his cab, had not been shaved for three days. + </p> + <p> + III + </p> + <p> + This seems the place to note the fact that no Spaniard in humble life + shaves oftener than once in three days, and that you always see him on the + third day just before he has shaved. But all this time I have left myself + sitting in the cafe looking out on the club that looks out on the Calle de + Aleala, and keeping the waiter waiting with a jug of hot milk in his hand + while I convince him (such a friendly, smiling man he is, and glad of my + instruction!) that in tea one always wants the milk cold. To him that does + not seem reasonable, since one wants it hot in coffee and chocolate; but + he yields to my prejudice, and after that he always says, <i>“Ah, leche + fria!”</i> and we smile radiantly together in the bond of comradery which + cold milk establishes between man and man in Spain. As yet tea is a + novelty in that country, though the young English queen, universally loved + and honored, has made it the fashion in high life. Still it is hard to + overcome such a prepossession as that of hot milk in tea, and in some + places you cannot get it cold for love or money. + </p> + <p> + But again I leave myself waiting in that cafe, where slowly, and at last + not very overwhelmingly in number, the beautiful plaster-pale Spanish + ladies gather with their husbands and have chocolate. It is a riotous + dissipation for them, though it does not sound so; the home is the Spanish + ideal of the woman’s place, as it is of our anti-suffragists, though there + is nothing corresponding to our fireside in it; and the cafe is her + husband’s place without her. When she walks in the street, where mostly + she drives, she walks with her eyes straight before her; to look either to + the right or left, especially if a man is on either hand, is a superfluity + of naughtiness. The habit of looking straight ahead is formed in youth, + and it continues through life; so at least it is said, and if I cannot + affirm it I will not deny it. The beautiful black eyes so discreetly + directed looked as often from mantillas as hats, even in Madrid, which is + the capital, and much infested by French fashions. You must not believe it + when any one tells you that the mantilla is going out; it prevails + everywhere, and it increases from north to south, and in Seville it is + almost universal. Hats are worn there only in driving, but at Madrid there + were many hats worn in walking, though whether by Spanish women or by + foreigners, of course one could not, though a wayfaring man and an + American, stop them to ask. + </p> + <p> + There are more women in the street at Madrid than in the provincial + cities, perhaps because it is the capital and cosmopolitan, and perhaps + because the streets are many of them open and pleasant, though there arc + enough of them dark and narrow, too. I do not know just why the Puerta del + Sol seems so much ampler and gayer than the Calle de Alcala; it is not + really wider, but it seems more to concentrate the coming and going, and + with its high-hoteled opposition of corners is of a supreme + spectacularity. Besides, the name is so fine: what better could any city + place ask than to be called Gate of the Sun? Perpetual trams wheeze and + whistle through it; large shops face upon it; the sidewalks are thronged + with passers, and the many little streets debouching on it pour their + streams of traffic and travel into it on the right and left. It is mainly + fed by the avenues leaving the royal palace on the west, and its eddying + tide empties through the Calle de Alcala into the groves and gardens of + the Prado whence it spreads over all the drives and parks east and north + and south. + </p> + <p> + For a capital purposed and planned Madrid is very well indeed. It has not + the symmetry which forethought gave the topography of Washington, or the + beauty which afterthought has given Paris. But it makes you think a little + of Washington, and a great deal of Paris, though a great deal more yet of + Rome. It is Renaissance so far as architecture goes, and it is very modern + Latin; so that it is of the older and the newer Rome that it makes you + think. From, time to time it seemed to me I must be in. Rome, and I + recovered myself with a pang to find I was not. Yet, as I say, Madrid was + very well indeed, and when I reflected I had to own that I had come there + on purpose to be there, and not to be in Rome, where also I should have + been so satisfied to be. + </p> + <p> + IV + </p> + <p> + I do not know but we chose our hotel when we left the Ritz because it was + so Italian, so Roman. It had a wide grape arbor before it, with a generous + spread of trellised roof through which dangled the grape bunches among the + leaves of the vine. Around this arbor at top went a balustrade of marble, + with fat <i>putti,</i> or marble boys, on the corners, who would have + watched over the fruit if they had not been preoccupied with looking like + so many thousands of <i>putti</i> in Italy. They looked like Italian <i>putti</i> + with a difference, the difference that passes between all the Spanish + things and the Italian things they resemble. They were coarser and grosser + in figure, and though amiable enough in aspect, they lacked the + refinement, the air of pretty appeal which Italian art learns from nature + to give the faces of <i>putti.</i> Yet they were charming, and it was + always a pleasure to look at them posing in pairs at the corners of the + balustrade, and I do not know but dozing in the hours of <i>siesta.</i> If + they had been in wood Spanish art would have known how to make them + better, but in stone they had been gathering an acceptable weather stain + during the human generations they had been there, and their plump stomachs + were weather-beaten white. + </p> + <p> + I do not know if they had been there long enough to have witnessed the + murder of Cromwell’s ambassador done in our street by two Jacobite + gentlemen who could not abide his coming to honor in the land where they + were in exile from England. That must have been sometime about the middle + of the century after Philip II., bigot as he was, could not bear the more + masterful bigotry of the archbishop of Toledo, and brought his court from + that ancient capital, and declared Madrid henceforward the capital + forever; which did not prevent Philip III. from taking his court to + Valladolid and making that the capital <i>en titre</i> when he liked. + However, some other Philip or Charles, or whoever, returned with his court + to Madrid and it has ever since remained the capital, and has come, with + many natural disadvantages, to look its supremacy. For my pleasure I would + rather live in Seville, but that would be a luxurious indulgence of the + love of beauty, and like a preference of Venice in Italy when there was + Rome to live in. Madrid is not Rome, but it makes you think of Rome as I + have said, and if it had a better climate it would make you think of Rome + still more. Notoriously, however, it has not a good climate and we had not + come at the right season to get the best of the bad. The bad season itself + was perverse, for the rains do not usually begin in their bitterness at + Madrid before November, and now they began early in October. The day would + open fair, with only a few little white clouds in the large blue, and if + we could trust other’s experience we knew it would rain before the day + closed; only a morning absolutely clear could warrant the hope of a day + fair till sunset. Shortly after noon the little white clouds would drift + together and be joined by others till they hid the large blue, and then + the drops would begin to fall. By that time the air would have turned raw + and chill, and the rain would be of a cold which it kept through the + night. + </p> + <p> + This habit of raining every afternoon was what kept us from seeing rank, + riches, and beauty in the Paseo de la Castellana, where they drive only on + fine afternoons; they now remained at home even more persistently than we + did, for with that love of the fashionable world for which I am always + blaming myself I sometimes took a cab and fared desperately forth in + pursuit of them. Only once did I seem to catch a glimpse of them, and that + once I saw a closed carriage weltering along the drive between the trees + and the trams that border it, with the coachman and footman snugly + sheltered under umbrellas on the box. This was something, though not a + great deal; I could not make out the people inside the carriage; yet it + helped to certify to me the fact that the great world does drive in the + Paseo de la Castellana and does not drive in the Paseo del Prado; that is + quite abandoned, even on the wettest days, to the very poor and perhaps + unfashionable people. + </p> + <p> + V <a name="linkimage-0012" id="linkimage-0012"> + <!-- IMG --></a> + </p> + <div class="fig" style="width:60%;"> + <img src="images/h1-12.jpg" alt="12 the Bull-ring, Madrid " width="100%" /><br /> + </div> + <p> + It may have been our comparative defeat with fashion in its most + distinctive moments of pleasuring (for one thing I wished to see how the + dreariness of Madrid gaiety in the Paseo de la Castellana would compare + with that of Roman gaiety on the Pincian) which made us the more + determined to see a bull-fight in the Spanish capital. We had vowed + ourselves in coming to Spain to set the Spaniards an example of + civilization by inflexibly refusing to see a bull-fight under any + circumstances or for any consideration; but it seemed to us that it was a + sort of public duty to go and see the crowd, what it was like, in the time + and place where the Spanish crowd is most like itself. We would go and + remain in our places till everybody else was placed, and then, when the + picadors and banderilleros and matadors were all ranged in the arena, and + the gate was lifted, and the bull came rushing madly in, we would rise + before he had time to gore anybody, and go inexorably away. This union of + self-indulgence and self-denial seemed almost an act of piety when we + learned that the bull-fight was to be on Sunday, and we prepared ourselves + with tickets quite early in the week. On Saturday afternoon it rained, of + course, but the worst was that it rained on Sunday morning, and the clouds + did not lift till noon. Then the glowing concierge of our hotel, a man so + gaily hopeful, so expansively promising that I could hardly believe he was + not an Italian, said that there could not possibly be a bull-fight that + day; the rain would have made the arena so slippery that man, horse, and + bull would all fall down together in a common ruin, with no hope whatever + of hurting one another. + </p> + <p> + We gave up this bull-fight at once, but we were the more resolved to see a + bull-fight because we still owed it to the Spanish people to come away + before we had time to look at it, and we said we would certainly go at + Cordova where we should spend the next Sabbath. At Cordova we learned that + it was the closed season for bull-fighting, but vague hopes of usefulness + to the Spanish public were held out to us at Seville, the very metropolis + of bull-fighting, where the bulls came bellowing up from their native + fields athirst for the blood of the profession and the <i>aficionados,</i> + who outnumber there the amateurs of the whole rest of Spain. But at + Seville we were told that there would be no more bull-feasts, as the + Spaniards much more preferably call the bullfights, till April, and now we + were only in October. We said, Never mind; we would go to a bull-feast in + Granada; but at Granada the season was even more hopelessly closed. In + Ronda itself, which is the heart, as Seville is the home of the + bull-feast, we could only see the inside of the empty arena; and at + Algeciras the outside alone offered itself to our vision. By this time the + sense of duty was so strong upon us that if there had been a bull-feast we + would have shared in it and stayed through till the last <i>espada</i> + dropped dead, gored through, at the knees of the last bull transfixed by + his unerring sword; and the other <i>toreros,</i> the <i>banderilleros</i> + with their darts and the picadors with their disemboweled horses, lay + scattered over the blood-stained arena. Such is the force of a high + resolve in strangers bent upon a lesson of civilization to a barbarous + people when disappointed of their purpose. But we learned too late that + only in Madrid is there any bull-feasting in the winter. In the provincial + cities the bulls are dispirited by the cold; but in the capital, for the + honor of the nation, they somehow pull themselves together and do their + poor best to kill and be killed. Yet in the capital where the zeal of the + bulls, and I suppose, of the bull-fighters, is such, it is said that there + is a subtle decay in the fashionable, if not popular, esteem of the only + sport which remembers in the modern world the gladiatorial shows of + imperial Rome. It is said, but I do not know whether it is true, that the + young English queen who has gladly renounced her nation and religion for + the people who seem so to love her, cannot endure the bloody sights of the + bull-feast; and when it comes to the horses dragging their entrails across + the ring, or the <i>espada</i> despatching the bull, or the bull tossing a + <i>landerillero</i> in the air she puts up her fan. It is said also that + the young Spanish king, who has shown himself such a merciful-minded + youth, and seems so eager to make the best of the bad business of being a + king at all, sympathizes with her, and shows an obviously abated interest + at these supreme moments. + </p> + <p> + I do not know whether or not it was because we had failed with the + bull-feast that we failed to go to any sort of public entertainment in + Madrid. It certainly was in my book to go to the theater, and see some of + those modern plays which I had read so many of, and which I had translated + one of for Lawrence Barrett in the far-off days before the flood of native + American dramas now deluging our theater. That play was “Un Drama Nueva,” + by Estebanez, which between us we called “Yorick’s Love” and which my very + knightly tragedian made his battle-horse during the latter years of his + life. In another version Barrett had seen it fail in New York, but its + failure left him with the lasting desire to do it himself. A Spanish + friend, now dead but then the gifted and eccentric Consul General at + Quebec, got me a copy of the play from Madrid, and I thought there was + great reason in a suggestion from another friend that it had failed + because it put Shakespeare on the stage as one of its characters; but it + seemed to me that the trouble could be got over by making the poet Heywood + represent the Shakespearian epoch. I did this and the sole obstacle to its + success seemed removed. It went, as the enthusiastic Barrett used to say, + “with a shout,” though to please him I had hurt it all I could by some + additions and adaptations; and though it was a most ridiculously romantic + story of the tragical loves of Yorick (whom the Latins like to go on + imagining out of Hamlet a much more interesting and important character + than Shakespeare ever meant him to be fancied), and ought to have remained + the fiasco it began, still it gained Barrett much money and me some + little. + </p> + <p> + I was always proud of this success, and I boasted of it to the bookseller + in Madrid, whom I interested in finding me some still moderner plays after + quite failing to interest another bookseller. Your Spanish merchant seems + seldom concerned in a mercantile transaction; but perhaps it was not so + strange in the case of this Spanish bookseller because he was a German and + spoke a surprising English in response to my demand whether he spoke any. + He was the frowsiest bookseller I ever saw, and he was in the third day of + his unshavenness with a shirt-front and coat-collar plentifully + bedandruffed from his shaggy hair; but he entered into the spirit of my + affair and said if that Spanish play had succeeded so wonderfully, then I + ought to pay fifty per cent, more than the current price for the other + Spanish plays which I wanted him to get me. I laughed with him at the joke + which I found simple earnest when our glowing concierge gave me the books + next day, and I perceived that the proposed supplement had really been + paid for them on my account. I should not now be grieving for this + incident if the plays had proved better reading than they did on + experiment. Some of them were from the Catalan, and all of them dealt with + the simpler actual life of Spain; but they did not deal impressively with + it, though they seemed to me more hopeful in conception than certain + psychological plays of ten or fifteen years ago, which the Spanish authors + had too clearly studied from Ibsen. + </p> + <p> + They might have had their effect in the theater, but the rainy weather had + not only spoiled my sole chance of the bull-feast; the effect of it in a + stubborn cold forbade me the night air and kept me from testing any of the + new dramas on the stage, which is always giving new dramas in Madrid. The + stage, or rather the theater, is said to be truly a passion with the + Madrilenos, who go every night to see the whole or the part of a play and + do not mind seeing the same play constantly, as if it were opera. They may + not care to see the play so much as to be seen at it; that happens in + every country; but no doubt the plays have a charm which did not impart + itself from the printed page. The companies are reported very good: but + the reader must take this from me at second hand, as he must take the + general society fact. I only know that people ask you to dinner at nine, + and if they go to the theater afterward they cannot well come away till + toward one o’clock. It is after this hour that the <i>tertulia,</i> that + peculiarly Spanish function, begins, but how long it lasts or just what it + is I do not know. I am able to report confidently, however, that it is a + species of <i>salon</i> and that it is said to be called a <i>tertulia</i> + because of the former habit in the guests, and no doubt the hostess, of + quoting the poet Tertullian. It is of various constituents, according as + it is a fashionable, a literary, or an artistic <i>tertulia,</i> or all + three with an infusion of science. Oftenest, I believe, it is a domestic + affair and all degrees of cousinship resort to it with brothers and + sisters and uncles, who meet with the pleasant Latin liking of frequent + meetings among kindred. In some cases no doubt it is a brilliant reunion + where lively things are said; in others it may be dull; in far the most + cases it seems to be held late at night or early in the morning. + </p> + <p> + VI + </p> + <p> + It was hard, after being shut up several days, that one must not go out + after nightfall, and if one went out by day, one must go with closed lips + and avoid all talking in the street under penalty of incurring the dreaded + pneumonia of Madrid. Except for that dreaded pneumonia, I believe the air + of Madrid is not so pestilential as it has been reported. Public opinion + is beginning to veer in favor of it, just as the criticism which has + pronounced Madrid commonplace and unpicturesque because it is not + obviously old, is now finding a charm in it peculiar to the place. Its + very modernity embodies and imparts the charm, which will grow as the city + grows in wideness and straightness. It is in the newer quarter that it + recalls Rome or the newer quarters of Rome; but there is an old part of it + that recalls the older part of Naples, though the streets are not quite so + narrow nor the houses so high. There is like bargaining at the open stands + with the buyers and sellers chaffering over them; there is a likeness in + the people’s looks, too, but when it comes to the most characteristic + thing of Naples, Madrid is not in it for a moment. I mean the bursts of + song which all day long and all night long you hear in Naples; and this + seems as good a place as any to say that to my experience Spain is a + songless land. We had read much of the song and dance there, but though + the dance might be hired the song was never offered for love or money. To + be sure, in Toledo, once, a woman came to her door across the way under + otir hotel window and sang over the slops she emptied into the street, but + then she shut the door and we heard her no more. In Cordova there was as + brief a peal of music from a house which we passed, and in Algeciras we + heard one short sweet strain from a girl whom we could not see behind her + lattice. Besides these chance notes we heard no other by any chance. But + this is by no means saying that there is not abundant song in Spain, only + it was kept quiet; I suppose that if we had been there in the spring + instead of the fall we should at least have heard the birds singing. In + Madrid there were not even many street cries; a few in the Puerta del Sol, + yes; but the peasants who drove their mule-teams through the streets + scarcely lifted their voices in reproach or invitation; they could trust + the wise donkeys that led them to get them safely through the difficult + places. There was no audible quarreling among the cabmen, and when you + called a cab it was useless to cry “Heigh!” or shake your umbrella; you + made play with your thumb and finger in the air and sibilantly whispered; + otherwise the cabman ignored you and went on reading his newspaper. The + cabmen of Madrid are great readers, much greater, I am sorry to say, than + I was, for whenever I bought a Spanish paper I found it extremely well + written. Now and then I expressed my political preferences in buying <i>El + Liberal</i> which I thought very able; even <i>El Imparcial</i> I thought + able, though it is less radical than <i>El Liberal,</i> a paper which is + published simultaneously in Madrid, with local editions in several + provincial cities. + </p> + <p> + For all the street silence there seemed to be a great deal of noise, which + I suppose came from the click of boots on the sidewalks and of hoofs in + roadways and the grind and squeal of the trams, with the harsh smiting of + the unrubbered tires of the closed cabs on the rough granite blocks of the + streets. But there are asphalted streets in Madrid where the sound of the + hoofs and wheels is subdued, and the streets rough and smooth are kept of + a cleanliness which would put the streets of New York to shame if anything + could. Ordinarily you could get cabs anywhere, but if you wanted one very + badly, when remote from a stand, there was more than one chance that a cab + marked <i>Libre</i> would pass you with lordly indifference. As for motor + taxi-cabs there are none in the city, and at Cook’s they would not take + the responsibility of recommending any automobiles for country excursions. + </p> + <p> + VII + </p> + <p> + I linger over these sordid details because I must needs shrink before the + mention of that incomparable gallery, the Museo del Prado. I am careful + not to call it the greatest gallery in the world, for I think of what the + Louvre, the Pitti, and the National Gallery are, and what our own + Metropolitan is going to be; but surely the Museo del Prado is + incomparable for its peculiar riches. It is part of the autobiographical + associations with my Spanish travel that when John Hay, who was not yet, + by thirty or forty years, the great statesman he became, but only the + breeziest of young Secretaries of Legation, just two weeks from his post + in Madrid, blew surprisingly into my little carpenter’s box in Cambridge + one day, he boasted almost the first thing that the best Titians in the + world were in the Prado galleries. I was too lately from Venice in 1867 + not to have my inward question whether there could be anywhere a better + Titian than the “Assumption,” but I loved Hay too much to deny him openly. + I said that I had no doubt of it, and when the other day I went to the + Prado it was with the wish of finding him perfectly right, triumphantly + right. I had been from the first a strong partisan of Titian, and in many + a heated argument with Ruskin, unaware of our controversy, I had it out + with that most prejudiced partisan of Tintoretto. I always got the better + of him, as one does in such dramatizations, where one frames one’s + opponent’s feeble replies for him; but now in the Prado, sadly and + strangely enough, I began to wonder if Ruskin might not have tacitly had + the better of me all the time. If Hay was right in holding that the best + Titians in the world were in the Prado, then I was wrong in having argued + for Titian against Tintoretto with Ruskin. I could only wish that I had + the “Assumption” there, or some of those senators whose portraits I + remembered in the Academy at Venice. The truth is that to my eye he seemed + to weaken before the Spanish masters, though I say this, who must confess + that I failed to see the room of his great portraits. The Italians who + hold their own with the Spaniards are Tintoretto and Veronese; even + Murillo was more than a match for Titian in such pictures of his as I saw + (I must own that I did not see the best, or nearly all), though properly + speaking Murillo is to be known at his greatest only in Seville. + </p> + <p> + But Velasquez, but Velasquez! In the Prado there is no one else present + when he is by, with his Philips and Charleses, and their “villainous + hanging of the nether lip,” with his hideous court dwarfs and his pretty + princes and princesses, his grandees and jesters, his allegories and + battles, his pastorals and chases, which fitly have a vast salon to + themselves, not only that the spectator may realize at once the rich + variety and abundance of the master, but that such lesser lights as + Rubens, Titian, Correggio, Giorgione, Tintoretto, Veronese, Rembrandt, + Zurbaran, El Greco, Murillo, may not be needlessly dimmed by his + surpassing splendor. I leave to those who know painting from the painter’s + art to appreciate the technical perfection of Velasquez; I take my stand + outside of that, and acclaim its supremacy in virtue of that reality which + all Spanish art has seemed always to strive for and which in Velasquez it + incomparably attains. This is the literary quality which the most + untechnical may feel, and which is not clearer to the connoisseur than to + the least unlearned. + </p> + <p> + After Velasquez in the Prado we wanted Goya, and more and more Goya, who + is as Spanish and as unlike Velasquez as can very well be. There was not + enough Goya abovestairs to satisfy us, but in the Goya room in the + basement there was a series of scenes from Spanish life, mostly frolic + campestral things, which he did as patterns for tapestries and which came + near being enough in their way: the way of that reality which is so far + from the reality of Velasquez. There, striving with their strangeness, we + found a young American husband and wife who said they were going to Egypt, + and seemed so anxious to get out of Spain that they all but asked us which + turning to take. They had a Baedeker of 1901. which they had been deceived + in at New York as the latest edition, and they were apparently making + nothing of the Goyas and were as if lost down there in the basement. They + were in doubt about going further in a country which had inveigled them + from Gibraltar as far as its capital. They advised with us about Burgos, + of all places, and when we said the hotels in Burgos were very cold, they + answered, Well they had thought so; and the husband asked, Spain was a + pretty good place to cut out, wasn’t it? The wife expected that they would + find some one in Egypt who spoke English; she had expected they would + speak French in Spain, but had been disappointed. They had left their warm + things at Gibraltar and were almost frozen already. They were as good and + sweet and nice as they could be, and we were truly sorry to part with them + and leave them to what seemed to be a mistake which they were not to blame + for. + </p> + <p> + I wish that all Europeans and all Europeanized Americans knew how to value + such incorruptible con-nationals, who would, I was sure, carry into the + deepest dark of Egypt and over the whole earth undimmed the light of our + American single-heartedness. I would have given something to know from + just which kind country town and companionable commonwealth of our Union + they had come, but I would not have given much, for I knew that they could + have come from almost any. In their modest satisfaction with our own order + of things, our language, our climate, our weather, they would not rashly + condemn those of other lands, but would give them a fair chance; and, if + when they got home again, they would have to report unfavorably of the Old + World to the Board of Trade or the Woman’s Club, it would not be without + intelligent reservations, even generous reservations. They would know much + more than they knew before they came abroad, and if they had not seen + Europe distinctly, but in a glass darkly, still they would have seen it + and would be the wiser and none the worse for it. They would still be of + their shrewd, pure American ideals, and would judge their recollections as + they judged their experiences by them; and I wish we were all as confirmed + in our fealty to those ideals. + </p> + <p> + They were not, clearly enough, of that yet older fashion of Americans who + used to go through European galleries buying copies of the masterpieces + which the local painters were everywhere making. With this pair the + various postal-card reproductions must have long superseded the desire or + the knowledge of copies, and I doubt if many Americans of any sort now + support that honored tradition. Who, then, does support it? The galleries + of the Prado seem as full of copyists as they could have been fifty years + ago, and many of them were making very good copies. <i>I</i> wish I could + say they were working as diligently as copyists used to work, but copyists + are now subject to frequent interruptions, not from the tourists but from + one another. They used to be all men, mostly grown gray in their pursuit, + but now they are both men and women, and younger and the women are + sometimes very pretty. In the Prado one saw several pairs of such youth + conversing together, forgetful of everything around them, and on terms so + very like flirtatious that they could not well be distinguished from them. + They were terms that other Spanish girls could enjoy only with a wooden + lattice and an iron grille between them and the <i>novios</i> outside + their windows; and no tourist of the least heart could help rejoicing with + them. In the case of one who stood with her little figure slanted and her + little head tilted, looking up into the charmed eyes of a tall <i>rubio,</i> + the tourist could not help rejoicing with the young man too. + </p> + <p> + The day after our day in the Prado we found ourselves in the Museum of + Modern Art through the kind offices of our mistaken cabman when we were + looking for the Archaeological Museum. But we were not sorry, for some of + the new or newer pictures and sculptures were well worth seeing, though we + should never have tried for them. The force of the masters which the + ideals of the past held in restraint here raged in unbridled excess: but + if I like that force so much, why do I say excess? The new or newer + Spanish art likes an immense canvas, say as large as the side of a barn, + and it chooses mostly a tragical Spanish history in which it riots with a + young sense of power brave to see. There were a dozen of those mighty + dramas which I would have liked to bring away with me if I had only had a + town hall big enough to put them into after I got them home. There were + sculptures as masterful and as mighty as the pictures, but among the + paintings there was one that seemed to subdue all the infuriate actions to + the calm of its awful repose. This was Gisbert’s “Execution of Torrejos + and his Companions,” who were shot at Malaga in 1830 for a rising in favor + of constitutional government. One does not, if one is as wise as I, + attempt to depict pictures, and I leave this most heroic, most pathetic, + most heart-breaking, most consoling masterpiece for my reader to go and + see for himself; it is almost worth going as far as Madrid to see. Never + in any picture do I remember the like of those sad, brave, severe faces of + the men standing up there to be shot, where already their friends lay dead + at their feet. A tumbled top-hat in the foreground had an effect awfuller + than a tumbled head would have had. + </p> + <p> + VIII + </p> + <p> + Besides this and those other histories there were energetic portraits and + vigorous landscapes in the Modern Museum, where if we had not been bent so + on visiting the Archaeological Museum, we would willingly have spent the + whole morning. But we were determined to see the Peruvian and Mexican + antiquities which we believed must be treasured up in it; and that we + might not fail of finding it, I gave one of the custodians a special + peseta to take us out on the balcony and show us exactly how to get to it. + He was so precise and so full in his directions that we spent the next + half-hour in wandering fatuously round the whole region before we + stumbled, almost violently, upon it immediately back of the Modern Museum. + Will, it be credited that it was then hardly worth seeing for the things + we meant to see? The Peruvian and Mexican antiquities were so + disappointing that we would hardly look at the Etruscan, Greek, and Roman + things which it was so much richer in. To be sure, we had seen and + overseen the like of these long before in Italy; but they were admirably + arranged in this museum, so that without the eager help of the custodians + (which two cents would buy at any turn) we could have found pleasure in + them, whereas the Aztec antiquities were mostly copies in plaster and the + Inca jewelry not striking. + </p> + <p> + Before finding the place we had had the help of two policemen and one + newsboy and a postman in losing ourselves in the Prado where we mostly + sought for it, and with difficulty kept ourselves from being thrust into + the gallery there. In Spain a man, or even a boy, does not like to say he + does not know where a place is; he is either too proud or too polite to do + it, and he will misdirect you without mercy. But the morning was bright, + and almost warm, and we should have looked forward to weeks of sunny + weather if our experience had not taught us that it would rain in the + afternoon, and if greater experience than ours had not instructed us that + there would be many days of thick fog now before the climate of Madrid + settled itself to the usual brightness of February. We had time to note + again in the Paseo Castellana, which is the fashionable drive, that it + consists of four rows of acacias and tamarisks and a stretch of lawn, with + seats beside it; the rest is bare grasslessness, with a bridle-path on one + side and a tram-line on the other. If it had been late afternoon the Paseo + would have been filled with the gay world, but being the late forenoon we + had to leave it well-nigh unpeopled and go back to our hotel, where the + excellent midday breakfast merited the best appetite one could bring to + it. + </p> + <p> + In fact, all the meals of our hotel were good, and of course they were + only too superabundant. They were pretty much what they were everywhere in + Spain, and they were better everywhere than they were in Granada where we + paid most for them. They were appetizing, and not of the cooking which the + popular superstition attributes to Spain, where the hotel cooking is not + rank with garlic or fiery with pepper, as the untraveled believe. At + luncheon in our Madrid hotel we had a liberal choice of eggs in any form, + the delicious <i>arroz a la Valencia,</i> a kind of risotto, with saffron + to savor and color it; veal cutlets or beefsteak, salad, cheese, grapes, + pears, and peaches, and often melon; the ever-admirable melon of Spain, + which I had learned to like in England. At dinner there were soup, fish, + entree, roast beef, lamb, or poultry, vegetables, salad, sweet, cheese, + and fruit; and there was pretty poor wine <i>ad libitum</i> at both meals. + For breakfast there was good and true (or true enough) coffee with rich + milk, which if we sometimes doubted it to be goat’s milk we were none the + worse if none the wiser for, as at dinner we were not either if we + unwittingly ate kid for lamb. + </p> + <p> + There were not many people in the hotel, but the dining-room was filled by + citizens who came in with the air of frequenters. They were not people of + fashion, as we readily perceived, but kindly-looking mercantile folk, and + ladies painted as white as newly calcimined house walls; and all gravely + polite. There was one gentleman as large round as a hogshead, with a + triple arrangement of fat at the back of his neck which was fascinating. + He always bowed when we met (necessarily with his whole back) and he ate + with an appetite proportioned to his girth. I could wish still to know who + and what he was, for he was a person very much to my mind. So was the head + waiter, dark, silent, clean-shaven, who let me use my deplorable Spanish + with him, till in the last days he came out with some very fair English + which he had been courteously concealing from me. He looked own brother to + the room-waiter in our corridor, whose companionship I could desire always + to have. One could not be so confident of the sincerity of the little <i>camarera</i> + who slipped out of the room with a soft, sidelong “<i>De nada”</i> at + one’s thanks for the hot water in the morning; but one could stake one’s + life on the goodness of this <i>camarero.</i> He was not so tall as his + leanness made him look; he was of a national darkness of eyes and hair + which as imparted to his tertian clean-shavenness was a deep blue. He + spoke, with a certain hesitation, a beautiful Castilian, delicately + lisping the sibilants and strongly throating the gutturals; and what he + said you could believe. He never was out of the way when wanted; he + darkled with your boots and shoes in a little closet next your door, and + came from it with the morning coffee and rolls. In a stress of + frequentation he appeared in evening dress in the dining-room at night, + and did honor to the place; but otherwise he was to be seen only in our + corridor, or in the cold, dark chamber at the stair head where the <i>camareras</i> + sat sewing, kept in check by his decorum. Without being explicitly advised + of the fact, I am sure he was the best of Catholics, and that he would + have burnt me for a heretic if necessary; but he would have done it from + his conscience and for my soul’s good after I had recanted. He seldom + smiled, but when he did you could see it was from his heart. + </p> + <p> + His contrast, his very antithesis, the joyous concierge, was always + smiling, and was every way more like an Italian than a Spaniard. He + followed us into the wettest Madrid weather with the sunny rays of his + temperament, and welcomed our returning cab with an effulgence that + performed the effect of an umbrella in the longish walk from the curbstone + to the hotel door, past the grape arbor whose fruit ripened for us only in + a single bunch, though he had so confidently prophesied our daily pleasure + in it. He seemed at first to be the landlord, and without reference to + higher authority he gave us beautiful rooms overlooking the bacchanal vine + which would have been filled with sunshine if the weather had permitted. + When he lapsed into the concierge, he got us, for five pesetas, so deep + and wide a wood-box, covered with crimson cloth, that he was borne out by + the fact in declaring that the wood in it would last us as long as we + stayed; it was oak wood, hard as iron, and with the bellows that + accompanied it we blew the last billet of it into a solid coal by which we + drank our last coffee in that hotel. His spirit, his genial hopefulness, + reconciled us to the infirmities of the house during the period of + transition beginning for it and covering our stay. It was to be rebuilt on + a scale out-Ritzing the Ritz; but in the mean while it was not quite the + Ritz. There was a time when the elevator-shaft seemed to have tapped the + awful sources of the smell in the house of Cervantes at Valladolid, but I + do not remember what blameless origin the concierge assigned to the odor, + or whether it had anything to do with the horses and the hens which a + chance-opened back door showed us stabled in the rear of the hotel’s + grandiose entrance. + </p> + <p> + Our tourist clientele, thanks I think to the allure of our concierge for + all comers, was most respectable, though there was no public place for + people to sit but a small reading-room colder than the baths of Apollo. + But when he entered the place it was as if a fire were kindled in the + minute stove never otherwise heated, and the old English and French + newspapers freshened themselves up to the actual date as nearly as they + could. We were mostly, perhaps, Spanish families come from our several + provinces for a bit of the season which all Spanish families of civil + condition desire more or less of: lean, dark fathers, slender, + white-stuccoed daughters, and fat, white-stuccoed mothers; very + still-faced, and grave-mannered. We were also a few English, and from time + to time a few Americans, but I believe we were not, however worthy, very + great-world. The concierge who had so skilfully got us together was + instant in our errands and commissions, and when it came to two of us + being shut up with colds brought from Burgos it vas he who supplemented + the promptness of the apothecaries in sending our medicines and coming + himself at times to ask after our welfare. + </p> + <p> + IX + </p> + <p> + In a strange country all the details of life are interesting, and we + noticed with peculiar interest that Spain was a country where the + prescriptions were written in the vulgar tongue instead of the little + Latin in which prescriptions are addressed to the apothecaries of other + lands. We were disposed to praise the faculty if not the art for this, but + our doctor forbade. He said it was because the Spanish apothecaries were + so unlearned that they could not read even so little Latin as the shortest + prescription contained. Still I could not think the custom a bad one, + though founded on ignorance, and I do not see why it should not have made + for the greater safety of those who took the medicine if those who put it + up should follow a formula in their native tongue. I know that at any rate + we found the Spanish medicines beneficial and were presently suffered to + go out-of-doors, but with those severe injunctions against going out after + nightfall or opening our lips when we went out by day. It was rather a + bother, but it was fine to feel one’s self in the classic Madrid tradition + of danger from pneumonia and to be of the dignified company of the Spanish + gentlemen whom we met with the border of their cloaks over their mouths; + like being a character in a <i>capa y espada</i> drama. + </p> + <p> + There was almost as little acted as spoken drama in the streets. I have + given my impression of the songlessness of Spain in Madrid as elsewhere, + but if there was no street singing there was often street playing by + pathetic bands of blind minstrels with guitars and mandolins. The blind + abound everywhere in Spain in that profession of street beggary which I + always encouraged, believing as I do that comfort in this unbalanced world + cannot be too constantly reminded of misery. As the hunchbacks are in + Italy, or the wooden peg-legged in England, so the blind are in Spain for + number. I could not say how touching the sight of their sightlessness was, + or how the remembrance of it makes me wish that I had carried more coppers + with me when I set out. I would gladly authorize the reader when he goes + to Madrid to do the charity I often neglected; he will be the better man, + or even woman, for it; and he need not mind if his beneficiary is + occasionally unworthy; he may be unworthy himself; I am sure I was. + </p> + <p> + But the Spanish street is rarely the theatrical spectacle that the Italian + street nearly always is. Now and then there was a bit in Madrid which one + would be sorry to have missed, such as the funeral of a civil magistrate, + otherwise unknown to me, which I saw pass my cafe window: a most + architectural black hearse, under a black roof, drawn by eight black + horses, sable-plumed. The hearse was open at the sides, with the coffin + fully showing, and a gold-laced <i>chapeau bras</i> lying on it. Behind + came twenty or twenty-five gentlemen on foot in the modern ineffectiveness + of frock-coats and top-hats, and after them eight or ten closed carriages. + The procession passed without the least notice from the crowd, which I saw + at other times stirred to a flutter of emulation in its small boys by + companies of infantry marching to the music of sharply blown bugles. The + men were handsomer than Italian soldiers, but not so handsome as the + English, and in figure they were not quite the deplorable pigmies one + often sees in France. Their bugles, with the rhythmical note which the + tram-cars sound, and the guitars and mandolins of the blind minstrels, + made the only street music I remember in Madrid. + </p> + <p> + Between the daily rains, which came in the afternoon, the sun was + sometimes very hot, but it was always cool enough indoors. The indoors + interests were not the art or story of the churches. The intensest + Catholic capital in Christendom is in fact conspicuous in nothing more + than the reputed uninterestingness of its churches. I went into one of + them, however, with a Spanish friend, and I found it beautiful, most + original, and most impressive for its architecture and painting, but I + forget which church it was. We were going rather a desultory drive through + those less frequented parts of the city which I have mentioned as like a + sort of muted Naples: poor folk living much out-of-doors, buying and + selling at hucksters’ stands and booths, and swarming about the chief + market, where the guilty were formerly put to death, but the innocent are + now provisioned. Outside the market was not attractive, and what it was + within we did not look to see. We went rather to satisfy my wish to see + whether the Manzanares is as groveling a stream as the guide-books pretend + in their effort to give a just idea of the natural disadvantages of + Madrid, as the only great capital without an adequate river. But whether + abetted by the arts of my friend or not, the Manzanares managed to conceal + itself from me; when we left our carriage and went to look for it, I saw + only some pretty rills and falls which it possibly fed and which lent + their beauty to the charming up and down hill walks, now a public + pleasaunce, but formerly the groves and gardens of the royal palace. Our + talk in Spanish from him and Italian from me was of Tolstoy and several + esthetic and spiritual interests, and when we remounted and drove back to + the city, whom should I see, hard by the King’s palace, but those dear + Chilians of my heart whom we had left at Valladolid—husband, wife, + sister, with the addition of a Spanish lady of very acceptable comeliness, + in white gloves, and as blithe as they. In honor of the capital the other + ladies wore white gloves too, but the husband and brother still kept the + straw hat which I had first known him in at San Sebastian, and which I + hope yet to know him by in New York. It was a glad clash of greetings + which none of us tried to make coherent or intelligible, and could not if + we had tried. They acclaimed their hotel, and I ours; but on both sides I + dare say we had our reserves; and then we parted, secure that the kind + chances of travel would bring us together again somewhere. + </p> + <p> + <a name="linkimage-0013" id="linkimage-0013"> + <!-- IMG --></a> + </p> + <div class="fig" style="width:60%;"> + <img src="images/h1-13.jpg" + alt="13 Guard-mount in the Plaza de Armas, Royal Palace, Madrid " width="100%" /><br /> + </div> + <p> + I did not visit the palace, but the Royal Armory I had seen two days + before on a gay morning that had not yet sorrowed to the afternoon’s rain. + At the gate of the palace I fell into the keeping of one of the authorized + guides whom I wish I could identify so that I could send the reader to pay + him the tip I came short in. It is a pang to think of the repressed + disappointment in his face when in a moment of insensate sparing I gave + him the bare peseta to which he was officially entitled, instead of the + two or three due his zeal and intelligence; and I strongly urge my readers + to be on their guard against a mistaken meanness like mine. I can never + repair that, for if I went back to the Royal Armory I should not know him + by sight, and if I sought among the guides saying I was the stranger who + had behaved in that shabby sort, how would that identify me among so many + other shabby strangers? He had the intelligence to leave me and the + constant companion of these travels to ourselves as we went about that + treasury of wonders, but before we got to the armory he stayed us with a + delicate gesture outside the court of the palace till a troop for the + guard-mounting had gone in. Then he led us across the fine, beautiful + quadrangle to the door of the museum, and waited for us there till we came + out. By this time the space was brilliant with the confronted bodies of + troops, those about to be relieved of guard duty, and those come to + relieve them, and our guide got us excellent places where we could see + everything and yet be out of the wind which was beginning to blow + cuttingly through the gates and colonnades. There were all arms of the + service—horse, foot, and artillery; and the ceremony, with its + pantomime and parley, was much more impressive than the changing of the + colors which I had once seen at Buckingham Palace. The Spanish privates + took the business not less seriously than the British, and however they + felt the Spanish officers did not allow themselves to look bored. The + marching and countermarching was of a refined stateliness, as if the pace + were not a goose step but a peacock step; and the music was of an + exquisitely plaintive and tender note, which seemed to grieve rather than + exult; I believe it was the royal march which they were playing, but I am + not versed in <i>such</i> matters. Nothing could have been fitter than the + quiet beauty of the spectacle, opening through the westward colonnade to + the hills and woods of the royal demesne, with yellowing and embrowning + trees that billowed from distance to distance. Some day these groves and + forests must be for the people’s pleasure, as all royal belongings seem + finally to be; and in the mean time I did not grudge the landscape to the + young king and queen who probably would not have grudged it to me. Our + guide valued himself upon our admiration of it; without our special + admiration he valued himself upon the impressive buildings of the railway + station in the middle distance. I forget whether he followed us out of the + quadrangle into the roadway where we had the advantage of some picturesque + army wagons, and some wagoners in red-faced jackets and red trousers, and + top-boots with heavy fringes of leathern strings. Yet it must have been he + who made us aware of a high-walled inclosure where soldiers found worthy + of death by court martial could be conveniently shot; though I think we + discovered for ourselves the old woman curled up out of the wind in a + sentry-box, and sweetly asleep there while the boys were playing marbles + on the smooth ground before it. I must not omit the peanut-boaster in + front of the palace; it was in the figure of an ocean steamer, nearly as + large as the <i>Lusitania,</i> and had smoke coming out of the funnel, + with rudder and screw complete and doll sailors climbing over the rigging. + </p> + <p> + But it is impossible to speak adequately of the things in that wonderful + armory. If the reader has any pleasure in the harnesses of Spanish kings + and captains, from the great Charles the Fifth down through all the + Philips and the Charleses, he can glut it there. Their suits begin almost + with their steel baby clothes, and adapt themselves almost to their senile + decrepitude. There is the horse-litter in which the great emperor was + borne to battle, and there is the sword which Isabella the great queen + wore; and I liked looking at the lanterns and the flags of the Turkish + galleys from the mighty sea-fight cf Lepanto, and the many other trophies + won from the Turks. The pavilion of Francis I. taken at Pavia was of no + secondary interest, and everywhere was personal and national history told + in the weapons and the armor of those who made the history. Perhaps some + time the peoples will gather into museums the pens and pencils and chisels + of authors and artists, and the old caps and gowns they wore, or the + chairs they sat in at their work, or the pianos and violoncellos of famous + musicians, or the planes of surpassing carpenters, or the hammers of + eminent ironworkers; but these things will never be so picturesque as the + equipments with which the military heroes saved their own lives or took + others’. We who have never done either must not be unreasonable or + impatient. It will be many a long century yet before we are appreciated at + the value we now set upon ourselves. In the mean while we do not have such + a bad time, and we are not so easily forgotten as some of those princes + and warriors. + </p> + <p> + XI + </p> + <p> + One of the first errors of our search for the Archaeological Museum, + promoted by the mistaken kindness of people we asked the way, found us in + the Academy of Fine Arts, where in the company of a fat and flabby Rubens + (Susanna, of course, and those filthy Elders) we chanced on a portrait of + Goya by himself: a fine head most takingly shrewd. But there was another + portrait by him, of the ridiculous Godoy, Prince of the Peace, a sort of + handsome, foolish fleshy George Fourthish person looking his character and + history: one of the most incredible parasites who ever fattened on a + nation. This impossible creature, hated more than feared, and despised + more than hated, who misruled a generous people for twenty-five years, + throughout the most heroic period of their annals, the low-born paramour + of their queen and the beloved friend of the king her husband, who honored + and trusted him with the most pathetic single-hearted and simple-minded + devotion, could not look all that he was and was not; but in this portrait + by Goya he suggested his unutterable worthlessness: a worthlessness which + you can only begin to realize by successively excluding all the virtues, + and contrasting it with the sort of abandon of faith on the part of the + king; this in the common imbecility, the triune madness of the strange + group, has its sublimity. In the next room are two pieces of Goya’s which + recall in their absolute realism another passage of Spanish history with + unparalleled effect. They represent, one the accused heretics receiving + sentence before a tribunal of the Inquisition, and the other the execution + of the sentence, where the victims are mocked by a sort of fools’ caps + inscribed with the terms of their accusal. Their faces are turned on the + spectator, who may forget them if he can. + </p> + <p> + I had the help of a beautiful face there which Goya had also painted: the + face of Moratin, the historian of the Spanish drama whose book had been + one of the consolations of exile from Spain in my Ohio village. That fine + countenance rapt me far from where I stood, to the village, with its long + maple-shaded summer afternoons, and its long lamp-lit winter nights when I + was trying to find my way through Moratin’s history of the Spanish drama, + and somehow not altogether failing, so that fragments of the fact still + hang about me. I wish now I could find the way back through it, or even to + it, but between me and it there are so many forgotten passes that it would + be hopeless trying. I can only remember the pride and joy of finding my + way alone through it, and emerging from time to time into the light that + glimmered before me. I cannot at all remember whether it was before or + after exploring this history that I ventured upon the trackless waste of a + volume of the dramatists themselves, where I faithfully began with the + earliest and came down to those of the great age when Cervantes and + Calderon and Lope de Vega were writing the plays. It was either my + misfortune that I read Lope and not Calderon, or that I do not recall + reading Calderon at all, and know him only by a charming little play of + Madrid life given ten or fifteen years ago by the pupils of the Dramatic + Academy in New York. My lasting ignorance of this master was not for want + of knowing how great he was, especially from Lowell, who never failed to + dwell on it when the talk was of Spanish literature. The fact is I did not + get much pleasure out of Lope, but I did enjoy the great tragedy of + Cervantes, and such of his comedies as I found in that massive volume. + </p> + <p> + I did not realize, however, till I saw that play of Calderon’s, in New + York, how much the Spanish drama lias made Madrid its scene; and until one + knows modern Spanish fiction one cannot know how essentially the + incongruous city is the capital of the Spanish imagination. Of course the + action of Gil Bias largely passes there, but Gil Blas in only adoptively a + Spanish novel, and the native picaresque story is oftener at home in the + provinces; but since Spanish fiction has come to full consciousness in the + work of the modern masters it has resorted more and more to Madrid. If I + speak only of Galdos and Valdes by name, it is because I know them best as + the greatest of their time; but I fancy the allure of the capital has been + felt by every other modern more or less; and if I were a Spanish author I + should like to put a story there. If I were a Spaniard at all, I should + like to live there a part of the year, or to come up for some sojourn, as + the real Spaniards do. In such an event I should be able to tell the + reader more about Madrid than I now know. I should not be poorly keeping + to hotels and galleries and streets and the like surfaces of civilization; + but should be saying all sorts of well-informed and surprising things + about my fellow-citizens. As it is I have tried somewhat to say how I + think they look to a stranger, and if it is not quite as they have looked + to other strangers I do not insist upon my own stranger’s impression. + There is a great choice of good books about Spain, so that I do not feel + bound to add to them with anything like finality. + </p> + <p> + I have tried to give a sense of the grand-opera effect of the street + scene, but I have record of only one passage such as one often sees in + Italy where moments of the street are always waiting for transfer to the + theater. A pair had posed themselves, across the way from our hotel, + against the large closed shutter of a shop which made an admirable + background. The woman in a black dress, with a red shawl over her + shoulders, stood statuesquely immovable, confronting the middle-class man + who, while people went and came about them, poured out his mind to her, + with many frenzied gestures, but mostly using one hand for emphasis. He + seemed to be telling something rather than asserting himself or accusing + her; portraying a past fact or defining a situation; and she waited + immovably silent till he had finished. Then she began and warmed to her + work, but apparently without anger or prejudice. She talked herself out, + as he had talked himself out. He waited and then he left her and crossed + to the other corner. She called after him as he kept on down the street. + She turned away, but stopped, and turned again and called after him till + he passed from sight. Then she turned once more and went her own way. + Nobody minded, any more than if they had been two unhappy ghosts invisibly + and inaudibly quarreling, but I remained, and remain to this day, + afflicted because of the mystery of their dispute. + </p> + <p> + We did not think there were so many boys, proportionately, or boys let + loose, in Madrid as in the other towns we had seen, and we remarked to + that sort of foreign sojourner who is so often met in strange cities that + the children seemed like little men and women. “Yes,” he said, “the + Spaniards are not children until they are thirty or forty, and then they + never grow up.” It was perhaps too epigrammatic, but it may have caught at + a fact. From another foreign sojourner I heard that the Catholicism of + Spain, in spite of all newspaper appearances to the contrary and many bold + novels, is still intense and unyieldingly repressive. But how far the + severity of the church characterizes manners it would be hard to say. + Perhaps these are often the effect of temperament. One heard more than one + saw of the indifference of shop-keepers to shoppers in Madrid; in + Andalusia, say especially in Seville, one saw nothing of it. But from the + testimony of sufferers it appears to be the Madrid shop-keeper’s + reasonable conception that if a customer comes to buy something it is + because he, or more frequently she, wants it and is more concerned than + himself in the transaction. He does not put himself about in serving her, + and if she intimates that he is rudely indifferent, and that though she + has often come to him before she will never come again, he remains + tranquil. From experience I cannot say how true this is; but certainly I + failed to awaken any lively emotion in the booksellers of whom I tried to + buy some modern plays. It seemed to me that I was vexing them in the + Oriental calm which they would have preferred to my money, or even my + interest in the new Spanish drama. But in a shop where fans were sold, the + shopman, taken in an unguarded moment, seemed really to enter into the + spirit of our selection for friends at home; he even corrected my wrong + accent in the Spanish word for fan, which was certainly going a great way. + </p> + <p> + XII + </p> + <p> + It was not the weather for fans in Madrid, where it rained that cold rain + every afternoon, and once the whole of one day, and we could not + reasonably expect to see fans in the hands of ladies in real life so much + as in the pictures of ladies on the fans themselves. In fact, I suppose + that to see the Madrilenas most in character one should see them in summer + which in southern countries is the most characteristic season. Theophile + Gautier was governed by this belief when he visited Spain in the hottest + possible weather, and left for the lasting delight of the world the record + of that <i>Voyage en Espagne</i> which he made seventy-two years ago. He + then thought the men better dressed than the women at Madrid. Their boots + are as “varnished, and they are gloved as white as possible. Their coats + are correct and their trousers laudable; but the cravat is not of the same + purity, and the waistcoat, that only part of modern dress where the fancy + may play, is not always of irreproachable taste.” As to the women: “What + we understand in France as the Spanish type does not exist in Spain... One + imagines usually, when one says <i>mantilla</i> and <i>senora,</i> an + oval, rather long and pale, with large dark eyes, surmounted with brows of + velvet, a thin nose, a little arched, a mouth red as a pomegranate, and, + above all, a tone warm and golden, justifying the verse of romance, <i>She + is yellow like an orange.</i> This is the Arab or Moorish type and not the + Spanish type. The Madrilenas are charming in the full acceptation of the + word; out of four three will be pretty; but they do not answer at all to + the idea we have of them. They are small, delicate, well formed, the foot + narrow and the figure curved, the bust of a rich contour; but their skin + is very white, the features delicate and mobile, the mouth heart-shaped + and representing perfectly certain portraits of the Regency. Often they + have fair hair, and you cannot take three turns in the Prado without + meeting eight blonds of all shades, from the ashen blond to the most + vehement red, the red of the beard of Charles V. It is a mistake to think + there are no blonds in Spain. Blue eyes abound there, but they are not so + much liked as the black.” + </p> + <p> + Is this a true picture of the actual Madrilenas? What I say is that + seventy-two years have passed since it was painted and the originals have + had time to change. What I say is that it was nearly always raining, and I + could not be sure. What I say, above all, is that I am not a Frenchman of + the high Romantic moment and that what I chiefly noticed was how beautiful + the mantilla was whether worn by old or young, how fit, how gentle, how + winning. I suppose that the women we saw walking in it were never of the + highest class; who would be driving except when we saw them going to + church. But they were often of the latest fashion, with their feet hobbled + by the narrow skirts, of which they lost the last poignant effect by not + having wide or high or slouch or swashbuckler hats on; they were not + top-heavy. What seems certain is that the Spanish women are short and + slight or short and fat. I find it recorded that when a young English + couple came into the Royal Armory the girl looked impossibly tall and + fair. + </p> + <p> + The women of the lower classes are commonly handsome and carry themselves + finely; their heads are bare, even of mantillas, and their skirts are + ample. When it did not rain they added to the gaiety of the streets, and + when it did to their gloom. Wet or dry the streets were always thronged; + nobody, apparently, stayed indoors who could go out, and after two days’ + housing, even with a fire to air and warm our rooms, we did not wonder at + the universal preference. As I have said, the noise that we heard in the + streets was mainly the clatter of shoes and hoofs, but now and then there + were street cries besides those I have noted. There was in particular a + half-grown boy in our street who had a flat basket decorated with oysters + at his feet, and for long hours of the day and dark he cried them + incessantly. I do not know that he ever sold them or cared; his affair was + to cry them. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0007" id="link2H_4_0007"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + VI. A NIGHT AND DAY IN TOLEDO + </h2> + <p> + If you choose to make your visit to Toledo an episode of your stay in + Madrid, you have still to choose between going at eight in the morning and + arriving back at five in the evening, or going at five one evening and + coming back at the same hour the next. In either case you will have two + hours’ jolting each way over the roughest bit of railroad in the world, + and if your <i>mozo,</i> before you could stop him, has selected for your + going a compartment over the wheels, you can never be sure that he has + done worse for you than you will have done for yourself when you come back + in a compartment between the trucks. However you go or come, you remain in + doubt whether you have been jolting over rails jointed at every yard, or + getting on without any track over a cobble-stone pavement. Still, if the + compartment is wide and well cushioned, as it is in Spain nearly always, + with free play for your person between roof and floor and wall and wall; + and if you go at five o’clock you have from your windows, as long as the + afternoon light lasts, while you bound and rebound, glimpses of + far-stretching wheat-fields, with nearer kitchen-gardens rich in beets and + cabbages, alternating with purple and yellow patches of vineyard. + </p> + <p> + I + </p> + <p> + I find from my ever-faithful note-book that the landscape seemed to grow + drearier as we got away from Madrid, but this may have been the effect of + the waning day: a day which at its brightest had been dim from recurrent + rain and incessant damp. The gloom was not relieved by the long stops at + the frequent stations, though the stops were good for getting one’s + breath, and for trying to plan greater control over one’s activities when + the train should be going on again. The stations themselves were not so + alluring that we were not willing to get away from them; and we were glad + to get away from them by train, instead of by mule-team over the rainy + levels to the towns that glimmered along the horizon two or three miles + off. There had been nothing to lift the heart in the sight of two small + boys ready perched on one horse, or of a priest difficultly mounting + another in his long robe. At the only station which I can remember having + any town about it a large number of our passengers left the train, and I + realized that they were commuters like those who might have been leaving + it at some soaking suburb of Long Island or New Jersey. In the sense of + human brotherhood which the fact inspired I was not so lonely as I might + have been, when we resumed our gloomy progress, with all that punctilio + which custom demands of a Spanish way-train. First the station-master + rings a bell of alarming note hanging on the wall, and the <i>mozos</i> + run along the train shutting the car doors. After an interval some other + official sounds a pocket whistle, and then there is still time for a + belated passenger to find his car and scramble aboard. When the ensuing + pause prolongs itself until you think the train has decided to remain all + day, or all night, and several passengers have left it again, the + locomotive rouses itself and utters a peremptory screech. This really + means going, but your doubt has not been fully overcome when the wheels + begin to bump under your compartment, and you set your teeth and clutch + your seat, and otherwise prepare yourself for the renewal of your + acrobatic feats. I may not get the order of the signals for departure just + right, but I am sure of their number. Perhaps the Sud-Express starts with + less, but the Sud-Express is partly French. + </p> + <p> + It had been raining intermittently all day; now that the weary old day was + done the young night took up the work and vigorously devoted itself to a + steady downpour which, when we reached our hotel in Toledo, had taken the + role of a theatrical tempest, with sudden peals of thunder and long loud + bellowing reverberations and blinding flashes of lightning, such as the + wildest stage effects of the tempest in the Catskills when Rip Van Winkle + is lost would have been nothing to. Foreboding the inner chill of a + Spanish hotel on such a day, we had telegraphed for a fire in our rooms, + and our eccentricity had been interpreted in spirit as well as in letter. + It was not the habitual hotel omnibus which met us at the station, but a + luxurious closed carriage commanded by an interpreter who intuitively + opened our compartment door, and conveyed us dry and warm to our hotel, in + every circumstance of tender regard for our comfort, during the slow, + sidelong uphill climb to the city midst details of historic and romantic + picturesqueness which the lightning momently flashed in sight. From our + carriage we passed as in a dream between the dress-coated head waiter and + the skull-capped landlord who silently and motionlessly received us in the + Gothic doorway, and mounted by a stately stair from a beautiful + glass-roofed <i>patio,</i> columned round with airy galleries, to the + rooms from which a smoky warmth gushed out to welcome us. + </p> + <p> + The warmth was from the generous blaze kindled in the fireplace against + our coming, and the smoke was from the crevices in a chimneypiece not + sufficiently calked with newspapers to keep the smoke going up the flue. + The fastidious may think this a defect in our perfect experience, but we + would not have had it otherwise, if we could, and probably we could not. + We easily assumed that we were in the palace of some haughty hidalgo, + adapted to the uses of a modern hotel, with a magical prevision which need + not include the accurate jointing of a chimneypiece. The storm bellowed + and blazed outside, the rain strummed richly on the <i>patio</i> roof + which the lightning illumined, and as we descended that stately stair, + with its walls ramped and foliaged over with heraldic fauna and flora, I + felt as never before the disadvantage of not being still fourteen years + old. + </p> + <p> + But you cannot be of every age at once and it was no bad thing to be + presently sitting down in my actual epoch at one of those excellent + Spanish dinners which no European hotel can surpass and no American hotel + can equal. It may seem a descent from the high horse, the winged steed of + dreaming, to have been following those admirable courses with unflagging + appetite, as it were on foot, but man born of woman is hungry after such a + ride as ours from Madrid; and it was with no appreciable loss to our sense + of enchantment that we presently learned from our host, waiting + skull-capped in the <i>patio,</i> that we were in no real palace of an + ancient hidalgo, but were housed as we found ourselves by the fancy of a + rich nobleman of Toledo whom the whim had taken to equip his city with a + hotel of poetic perfection. I am afraid I have forgotten his name; perhaps + I should not have the right to parade it here if I remembered it; but I + cannot help saluting him brother in imagination, and thanking him for one + of the rarest pleasures that travel, even Spanish travel, has given me. + </p> + <p> + II + </p> + <p> + One must recall the effect of such a gentle fantasy as his with some such + emotion as one recalls a pleasant tale unexpectedly told when one feared a + repetition of stale commonplaces, and I now feel a pang of retroactive + self-reproach for not spending the whole evening after dinner in reading + up the story of that most storied city where this Spanish castle received + us. What better could I have done in the smoky warmth of our hearth-fire + than to con, by the light of the electric bulb dangling overhead, its + annals in some such voluntarily quaint and unconsciously old-fashioned + volume as Irving’s <i>Legends of the Conquest of Spain;</i> or to read in + some such (if there is any such other) imperishably actual and unfadingly + brilliant record of impressions as Gautier’s <i>Voyage en Espagne,</i> the + miserably tragic tale of that poor, wicked, over-punished last of the + Gothic kings, Don Roderick? It comes to much the same effect in both, and + as I knew it already from the notes to Scott’s poem of Don Roderick, which + I had read sixty years before in the loft of our log cabin (long before + the era of my unguided Spanish studies), I found it better to go to bed + after a day which had not been without its pains as well as pleasures. I + could recall the story well enough for all purposes of the imagination as + I found it in the fine print of those notes, and if I could believe the + reader did not know it I would tell him now how this wretched Don Roderick + betrayed the daughter of Count Julian whom her father had intrusted to him + here in his capital of Toledo, when, with the rest of Spain, it had + submitted to his rule. That was in the eighth century when the hearts of + kings were more easily corrupted by power than perhaps in the twentieth; + and it is possible that there was a good deal of politics mixed up with + Count Julian’s passion for revenge on the king, when he invited the Moors + to invade his native land and helped them overrun it. The conquest, let me + remind the reader, was also abetted by the Jews who had been flourishing + mightily under the Gothic anarchy, but whom Don Roderick had reduced to a + choice between exile or slavery when he came to full power. Every one + knows how in a few weeks the whole peninsula fell before the invaders. + Toledo fell after the battle of Guadalete, where even the Bishop of + Seville fought on their side, and Roderick was lastingly numbered among + the missing, and was no doubt killed, as nothing has since been heard of + him. It was not until nearly three hundred years afterward that the + Christians recovered the city. By this time they were no longer Arians, + but good Catholics; so good that Philip II. himself, one of the best of + Catholics (as I have told), is said to have removed the capital to Madrid + because he could not endure the still more scrupulous Catholicity of the + Toledan Bishop. + </p> + <p> + Nobody is obliged to believe this, but I should be sorry if any reader of + mine questioned the insurpassable antiquity of Toledo, as attested by a + cloud of chroniclers. Theophile Gautier notes that “the most moderate + place the epoch of its foundation before the Deluge,” and he does not see + why they do not put the time “under the pre-Adamite kings, some years + before the creation of the world. Some attribute the honor of laying its + first stone to Jubal, others to the Greek; some to the Roman consuls + Tolmor and Brutus; some to the Jews who entered Spain with Nebuchadnezzar, + resting their theory on the etymology of Toledo, which comes from + Toledoth, a Hebrew word signifying generations, because the Twelve Tribes + had helped to build and people it.” + </p> + <p> + III + </p> + <p> + Even if the whole of this was not accurate, it offered such an + embarrassing abundance to the choice that I am glad I knew little or + nothing of the antagonistic origins when I opened my window to the sunny + morning which smiled at the notion of the overnight tempest, and lighted + all the landscape on that side of the hotel. The outlook was over vast + plowed lands red as Virginia or New Jersey fields, stretching and + billowing away from the yellow Tagus in the foreground to the + mountain-walled horizon, with far stretches of forest in the middle + distance. What riches of gray roof, of white wall, of glossy green, or + embrowning foliage in the city gardens the prospect included, one should + have the brush rather than the pen to suggest; or else one should have an + inexhaustible ink-bottle with every color of the chromatic scale in it to + pour the right tints. Mostly, however, I should say that the city of + Toledo is of a mellow gray, and the country of Toledo a rich orange. Seen + from any elevation the gray of the town made me think of Genoa; and if the + reader’s knowledge does not enable him, to realize it from this + association, he had better lose no time in going to Genoa. + </p> + <p> + <a name="linkimage-0014" id="linkimage-0014"> + <!-- IMG --></a> + </p> + <div class="fig" style="width:60%;"> + <img src="images/h1-14.jpg" + alt="14 Riches of Gray Roof and White Wall Mark Its Insurpassable Antiquity " width="100%" /><br /> + </div> + <p> + I myself should prefer going again to Toledo, where we made only a day’s + demand upon the city’s wealth of beauty when a lifetime would hardly have + exhausted it. Yet I would not counsel any one to pass his whole life in + Toledo unless he was sure he could bear the fullness of that beauty. Add + insurpassable antiquity, add tragedy, add unendurable orthodoxy, add the + pathos of hopeless decay, and I think I would rather give a day than a + lifetime to Toledo. Or I would like to go back and give another day to it + and come every year and give a day. This very moment, instead of writing + of it in a high New York flat and looking out on a prospect incomparably + sky-scrapered, I would rather be in that glass-roofed <i>patio</i> of our + histrionic hotel, engaging the services of one of the most admirable + guides who ever fell to the lot of mortal Americans, while much advised by + our skull-capped landlord to shun the cicerone of another hotel as “an + Italian man,” with little or no English. + </p> + <p> + As soon as we appeared outside the beggars of Toledo swarmed upon us; but + I hope it was not from them I formed the notion that the beauty of the + place was architectural and not personal, though these poor things were as + deplorably plain as they were obviously miserable. The inhabitants who did + not ask alms were of course in the majority, but neither were these + impressive in looks or bearing. Rather, I should say, their average was + small and dark, and in color of eyes and hair as well as skin they + suggested the African race that held Toledo for four centuries. Neither + here nor anywhere else in Spain are there any traces of the Jews who + helped bring the Arabs in; once for all, that people have been banished so + perfectly that they do not show their noses anywhere. Possibly they exist, + but they do not exist openly, any more than the descendants of the Moorish + invaders practise their Moslem rites. As for the beggars, to whom I return + as they constantly returned to us, it did not avail to do them charity; + that by no means dispersed them; the thronging misery and mutilation in + the lame, the halt and the blind, was as great at our coming back to our + hotel as our going out of it. They were of every age and sex; the very + school-children left their sports to chance our charity; and it is still + with a pang that I remember the little girl whom we denied a copper when + she was really asking for a <i>florecito</i> out of the nosegay that one + of us carried. But how could we know that it was a little flower and not a + “little dog” she wanted? + </p> + <p> + There was something vividly spectacular in the square, by no means large, + which we came into on turning the corner from our hotel. It was a sort of + market-place as well as business place, and it looked as if it might be + the resort at certain hours of the polite as well as the impolite leisure + of a city of leisure not apparently overworked in any of its classes. But + at ten o’clock in the morning it was empty enough, and after a small + purchase at one of the shops we passed from it without elbowing or being + elbowed, and found ourselves at the portal of that ancient <i>posada</i> + where Cervantes is said to have once sojourned at least long enough to + write one of his <i>Exemplary Novels.</i> He was of such a ubiquitous + habit that if we had visited every city of Spain we should have found some + witness of his stay, but I do not believe we could have found any more + satisfactory than this. It is verified by a tablet in its outer wall, and + within it is convincingly a <i>posada</i> of his time. It has a large + low-vaulted interior, with the carts and wagons of the muleteers at the + right of the entrance, and beyond these the stalls of the mules where they + stood chewing their provender, and glancing uninterestedly round at the + intruders, for plainly we were not of the guests who frequent the place. + Such, for a chamber like those around and behind the stalls, on the same + earthen level, pay five cents of our money a day; they supply their own + bed and board and pay five cents more for the use of a fire. + </p> + <p> + Some guests were coming and going in the dim light of the cavernous + spaces; others were squatting on the ground before their morning meal. An + endearing smoke-browned wooden gallery went round three sides of the <i>patio</i> + overhead; half-way to this at one side rose an immense earthen water jar, + dim red; piles of straw mats, which were perhaps the bedding of the + guests, heaped the ground or hung from the gallery; and the guests, among + them a most beautiful youth, black as Africa, but of a Greek perfection of + profile, regarded us with a friendly indifference that contrasted + strikingly with the fixed stare of the bluish-gray hound beside one of the + wagons. He had a human effect of having brushed his hair from his strange + grave eyes, and of a sad, hopeless puzzle in the effort to make us out. If + he was haunted by some inexplicable relation in me to the great author + whose dog he undoubtedly had been in a retroactive incarnation, and was + thinking to question me of that ever unfulfilled boyish self-promise of + writing the life of Cervantes, I could as successfully have challenged him + to say how and where in such a place as that an Exemplary Novelist could + have written even the story of <i>The Illustrious Scullion.</i> But he + seemed on reflection not to push the matter with me, and I left him still + lost in his puzzle while I came away in mine. Whether Cervantes really + wrote one of his tales there or not, it is certain that he could have + exactly studied from that <i>posada</i> the setting of the scene for the + episode of the enchanted castle in <i>Don Quixote,</i> where the knight + suffered all the demoniacal torments which a jealous and infuriate + muleteer knew how to inflict. + </p> + <p> + IV + </p> + <p> + Upon the whole I am not sure that I was more edified by the cathedral of + Toledo, though I am afraid to own it, and must make haste to say that it + is a cathedral surpassing in some things any other cathedral in Spain. + Chiefly it surpasses them in the glory of that stupendous <i>retablo</i> + which fills one whole end of the vast fane, and mounting from floor to + roof, tells the Christian story with an ineffable fullness of dramatic + detail, up to the tragic climax of the crucifixion, the <i>Calvario,</i> + at the summit. Every fact of it fixes itself the more ineffaceably in the + consciousness because of that cunningly studied increase in the stature of + the actors, who always appear life-size in spite of their lift from level + to level above the spectator. But what is the use, what <i>is</i> the use? + Am I to abandon the young and younger wisdom with which I have refrained + in so many books from attempting the portrayal of any Italian, any English + church, and fall into the folly, now that I am old, of trying to say again + in words what one of the greatest of Spanish churches says in form, in + color? Let me rather turn from that vainest endeavor to the trivialities + of sight-seeing which endear the memory of monuments and make the + experience of them endurable. The beautiful choir, with its walls pierced + in gigantic filigree, might have been art or not, as one chose, but the + three young girls who smiled and whispered with the young man near it were + nature, which there could be no two minds about. They were pathetically + privileged there to a moment of the free interplay of youthful interests + and emotions which the Spanish convention forbids less in the churches + than anywhere else. + </p> + <p> + The Spanish religion is, in fact, kind to the young in many ways, and on + our way to the cathedral we had paused at a shrine of the Virgin in + appreciation of her friendly offices to poor girls wanting husbands; they + have only to drop a pin inside the grating before her and draw a husband, + tall for a large pin and short for a little one; or if they can make their + offering in coin, their chances of marrying money are good. The Virgin is + always ready to befriend her devotees, and in the cathedral near that + beautiful choir screen she has a shrine above the stone where she alighted + when she brought a chasuble to St. Ildefonso (she owed him something for + his maintenance of her Immaculate Conception long before it was imagined a + dogma) and left the print of her foot in the pavement. The fact is + attested by the very simple yet absolute inscription: + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + Quando la Reina del Cielo + Puso los pies en el suelo, + En esta piedra los puso, +</pre> + <p> + or as my English will have it: + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + When the Queen of Heaven put + Upon the earth her foot, + She put it on this stone +</pre> + <p> + and left it indelible there, so that now if you thrust your finger through + the grille and touch the place you get off three hundred years of + purgatory: not much in the count of eternity, but still something. + </p> + <p> + We saw a woman and a priest touching it as we stood by and going away + enviably comforted; but we were there as connoisseurs, not as votaries; + and we were trying to be conscious solely of the surpassing grandeur and + beauty of the cathedral. Here as elsewhere in Spain the passionate desire + of the race to realize a fact in art expresses itself gloriously or + grotesquely according to the occasion. The rear of the chorus is one vast + riot of rococo sculpture, representing I do not know what mystical event; + but down through the midst of the livingly studied performance a mighty + angel comes plunging, with his fine legs following his torso through the + air, like those of a diver taking a header into the water. Nothing less + than the sublime touch of those legs would have satisfied the instinct + from which and for which the artist worked; they gave reality to the + affair in every part. + </p> + <p> + I wish I could give reality to every part of that most noble, that most + lovably beautiful temple. We had only a poor half-hour for it, and we + could not do more than flutter the pages of the epic it was and catch here + and there a word, a phrase: a word writ in architecture or sculpture, a + phrase richly expressed in gold and silver and precious marble, or painted + in the dyes of the dawns and sunsets which used to lend themselves so much + more willingly to the arts than they seem to do now. From our note-books I + find that this cathedral of Toledo appeared more wonderful to one of us + than the cathedral of Burgos; but who knows? It might have been that the + day was warmer and brighter and had not yet shivered and saddened to the + cold rain it ended in. At any rate the vast church filled itself more and + more with the solemn glow in which we left it steeped when we went out and + took our dreamway through the narrow, winding, wandering streets that + seemed to lure us where they would. One of them climbed with us to the + Alcazar, which is no longer any great thing to see in itself, but which + opens a hospitable space within its court for a prospect of so much of the + world around Toledo, the world of yellow river and red fields and blue + mountains, and white-clouded azure sky, that we might well have mistaken + it for the whole earth. In itself, as I say, the Alcazar is no great thing + for where it is, but if we had here in New York an Alcazar that remembered + historically back through French, English, Arabic, Gothic. Roman, and + Carthaginian occupations to the inarticulate Iberian past we should come, + I suppose, from far and near to visit it. Now, however, after gasping at + its outlook, we left it hopelessly, and lost ourselves, except for our + kindly guide, in the crooked little stony lanes, with the sun hot on our + backs and the shade cool in our faces. There were Moorish bits and + suggestions in the white walls and the low flat roofs of the houses, but + these were not so jealous of their privacy as such houses were once meant + to be. Through the gate of one we were led into a garden of simple flowers + belted with a world-old parapet, over which we could look at a stretch of + the Gothic wall of King Wamba’s time, before the miserable Roderick won + and lost his kingdom. A pomegranate tree, red with fruit, overhung us, and + from the borders of marigolds and zinnias and German clover the gray + garden-wife gathered a nosegay for us. She said she was three <i>duros</i> + and a half old, as who should say three dollars and a half, and she had a + grim amusement in so translating her seventy years. + </p> + <p> + V + </p> + <p> + It was hard by her cottage that we saw our first mosque, which had begun + by being a Gothic church, but had lost itself in paynim hands for + centuries, in spite of the lamp always kept burning in it. Then one day + the Cid came riding by, and his horse, at sight of a white stone in the + street pavement, knelt down and would not budge till men came and dug + through the wall of the mosque and disclosed this indefatigable lamp in + the church. We expressed our doubt of the man’s knowing so unerringly that + the horse meant them to dig through the mosque. “If you can believe the + rest I think you can believe that,” our guide argued. + </p> + <p> + <a name="linkimage-0015" id="linkimage-0015"> + <!-- IMG --></a> + </p> + <div class="fig" style="width:60%;"> + <img src="images/h1-15.jpg" alt="15 an Ancient Corner of the City " width="100%" /><br /> + </div> + <p> + He was like so many taciturn Spaniards, not inconversable, and we had a + pleasure in his unobtrusive intelligence which I should be sorry to + exaggerate. He supplied us with such statistics of his city as we brought + away with us, and as I think the reader may join me in trusting, and in + regretting that I did not ask more. Still it is something to have learned + that in Toledo now each family lives English fashion in a house of its + own, while in the other continental cities it mostly dwells in a flat. + This is because the population has fallen from two hundred thousand to + twenty thousand, and the houses have not shared its decay, but remain + habitable for numbers immensely beyond those of the households. In the + summer the family inhabits the first floor which the <i>patio</i> and the + subterranean damp from the rains keep cool; in the winter it retreats to + the upper chambers which the sun is supposed to warm, and which are at any + rate dry even on cloudy days. The rents would be thought low in New York: + three dollars a month get a fair house in Toledo; but wages are low, too; + three dollars a month for a manservant and a dollar and a half for a maid. + If the Toledans from high to low are extravagant in anything it is dress, + but dress for the outside, not the inside, which does not show, as our + guide satirically explained. They scrimp themselves in food and they pay + the penalty in lessened vitality; there is not so much fever as one might + think; but there is a great deal of consumption; and as we could not help + seeing everywhere in the streets there were many blind, who seemed + oftenest to have suffered from smallpox. The beggars were not so well + dressed as the other classes, but I saw no such delirious patchwork as at + Burgos. On the other hand, there were no idle people who were fashionably + dressed; no men or women who looked great-world. + </p> + <p> + Perhaps if the afternoon had kept the sunny promise of the forenoon they + might have been driving in the Paseo, a promenade which Toledo has like + every Spanish city; but it rained and we did not stop at the Paseo which + looked so pleasant. + </p> + <p> + The city, as so many have told and as I hope the reader will imagine, is a + network of winding and crooked lanes, which the books say are Moorish, but + which are medieval like those of every old city. They nowhere lend + themselves to walking for pleasure, and the houses do not open their <i>patios</i> + to the passer with Andalusian expansiveness; they are in fact of a quite + Oriental reserve. I remember no dwellings of the grade, quite, of hovels; + but neither do there seem to be many palaces or palatial houses in my + hurried impression. Whatever it may be industrially or ecclesiastically, + Toledo is now socially provincial and tending to extinction. It is so near + Madrid that if I myself were living in Toledo I would want to live in + Madrid, and only return for brief sojourns to mourn my want of a serious + object in life; at Toledo it must be easy to cherish such an object. + </p> + <p> + Industrially, of course, one associates it with the manufacture of the + famous Toledo blades, which it is said are made as wonderful as ever, and + I had a dim idea of getting a large one for decorative use in a New York + flat. But the foundry is a mile out of town, and I only got so far as to + look at the artists who engrave the smaller sort in shops open to the + public eye; and my purpose dwindled to the purchase of a little pair of + scissors, much as a high resolve for the famous marchpane of Toledo ended + in a piece of that pastry about twice the size of a silver dollar. Not all + of the twenty thousand people of Toledo could be engaged in these + specialties, and I owe myself to blame for not asking more about the local + industries; but it is not too late for the reader, whom I could do no + greater favor than sending him there, to repair my deficiency. In + self-defense I urge my knowledge of a military school in the Alcazar, + where and in the street leading up to it we saw some companies of the + comely and kindly-looking cadets. I know also that there are public night + schools where those so minded may study the arts and letters, as our guide + was doing in certain directions. Now that there are no longer any Jews in + Toledo, and the Arabs to whom they betrayed the Gothic capital have all + been Christians or exiles for many centuries, we felt that we represented + the whole alien element of the place; there seemed to be at least no other + visitors of our lineage or language. + </p> + <p> + VI + </p> + <p> + We were going to spend the rest of the day driving out through the city + into the country beyond the Tagus, and we drove off in our really splendid + turnout through swarms of beggars whose prayers our horses’ bells drowned + when we left them to their despair at the hotel door. At the moment of + course we believe that it was a purely dramatic misery which the wretched + creatures represented; but sometimes I have since had moments of remorse + in which I wish I had thrown big and little dogs broadcast among them. + They could not all have been begging for the profit or pleasure of it; + some of them were imaginably out of work and worthily ragged as I saw + them, and hungry as I begin to fear them. I am glad now to think that many + of them could not see with their poor blind eyes the face which I hardened + against them, as we whirled away to the music of our horses’ bells. + </p> + <p> + The bells pretty well covered our horses from their necks to their + haunches, a pair of gallant grays urged to their briskest pace by the + driver whose short square face and humorous mouth and eyes were a joy + whenever we caught a glimpse of them. He was one of those drivers who know + everybody; he passed the time of day with all the men we met, and he had a + joking compliment for all the women, who gladdened at sight of him from + the thresholds where they sat sewing or knitting: such a driver as brings + a gay world to home-keeping souls and leaves them with the feeling of + having been in it. I would have given much more than I gave the beggars in + Toledo to know just in what terms he and his universal acquaintance + bantered each other; but the terms might sometimes have been rather rank. + Something, at any rate, qualified the air, which I fancied softer than + that of Madrid, with a faint recurrent odor, as if in testimony of the + driver’s derivation from those old rancid Christians, as the Spaniards + used to call them, whose lineage had never been crossed with Moorish + blood. If it was merely something the carriage had acquired from the + stable, still it was to be valued for its distinction in a country of many + smells; and I would not have been without it. + </p> + <p> + When we crossed the Tagus by a bridge which a company of workmen willingly + paused from mending to let us by, and remained standing absent-mindedly + aside some time after we had passed, we found ourselves in a scene which I + do not believe was ever surpassed for spectacularity in any theater. I + hope this is not giving the notion of something fictitious in it; I only + mean that here Nature was in one of her most dramatic moods. The yellow + torrent swept through a deep gorge of red earth, which on the farther side + climbed in precipitous banks, cleft by enormous fissures, or chasms + rather, to the wide plateau where the gray city stood. The roofs of mellow + tiles formed a succession of levels from which the irregular towers and + pinnacles of the churches stamped themselves against a sky now filled with + clouds, but in an air so clear that their beautiful irregularities and + differences showed to one very noble effect. The city still looked the + ancient capital of the two hundred thousand souls it once embraced, and in + its stony repair there was no hint of decay. + </p> + <p> + <a name="linkimage-0016" id="linkimage-0016"> + <!-- IMG --></a> + </p> + <div class="fig" style="width:60%;"> + <img src="images/h1-16.jpg" alt="16 the Bridge Across The Yellow Tagus " width="100%" /><br /> + </div> + <p> + On our right, the road mounted through country wild enough at times, but + for the most part comparatively friendly, with moments of being almost + homelike. There were slopes which, if massive always, were sometimes mild + and were gray with immemorial olives. In certain orchard nooks there were + apricot trees, yellowing to the autumn, with red-brown withered grasses + tangling under them. Men were gathering the fruit of the abounding + cactuses in places, and in one place a peasant was bearing an arm-load of + them to a wide stone pen in the midst of which stood a lordly black pig, + with head lifted and staring, indifferent to cactuses, toward Toledo. His + statuesque pose was of a fine hauteur, and a more imaginative tourist than + I might have fancied him lost in a dream of the past, piercing beyond the + time of the Iberian autochtons to those prehistoric ages + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + When wild in woods the noble savage ran, +</pre> + <p> + pursuing or pursued by his tusked and bristled ancestor, and then slowly + reverting through the different invasions and civilizations to that signal + moment when, after three hundred Moslem years, Toledo became Christian + again forever, and pork resumed its primacy at the table. Dark, + mysterious, fierce, the proud pig stood, a figure made for sculpture; and + if he had been a lion, with the lion’s royal ideal of eating rather than + feeding the human race, the reader would not have thought him unworthy of + literature; I have seldom seen a lion that looked worthier of it. + </p> + <p> + We must have met farmer-folk, men and women, on our way and have seen + their white houses farther or nearer. But mostly the landscape was lonely + and at times nightmarish, as the Castilian landscape has a trick of being, + and remanded us momently to the awful entourage of our run from Valladolid + to Madrid. We were glad to get back to the Tagus, which if awful is not + grisly, but wherever it rolls its yellow flood lends the landscape such a + sublimity that it was no esthetic descent from the high perch of that + proud pig to the mighty gorge through which, geologically long ago, the + river had torn its way. When we drove back the bridge-menders stood aside + for us while we were yet far off, and the women came to their doorways at + the sound of our bells for another exchange of jokes with our driver. By + the time a protracted file of mules had preceded us over the bridge, a + brisk shower had come up, and after urging our grays at their topmost + speed toward the famous church of San Juan de los Reyes Catolicos, we + still had to run from our carriage door through the rain. + </p> + <p> + Happily the portal was in the keeping of one of those authorized beggars + who guard the gates of heaven everywhere in that kind country, and he + welcomed us so eagerly from the wet that I could not do less than give him + a big dog at once. In a moment of confusion I turned about, and taking him + for another beggar, I gave him another big dog; and when we came out of + the church he had put off his cap and arranged so complete a disguise with + the red handkerchief bravely tied round his head, that my innocence was + again abused, and once more a big dog passed between us. But if the merit + of the church might only be partially attributed to him, he was worth the + whole three. The merit of the church was incalculable, for it was meant to + be the sepulcher of the Catholic Kings, who were eventually more fitly + buried in the cathedral at Granada, in the heart of their great conquest; + and it is a most beautiful church, of a mingled Saracenic plateresque + Gothic, as the guide-books remind me, and extravagantly baroque as I + myself found it. I personally recall also a sense of chill obscurity and + of an airy gallery wandering far aloof in the upper gloom, which remains + overhead with me still, and the yet fainter sense of the balconies + crowning like capitals the two pillars fronting the high altar. I am now + sorry for our haste, but one has not so much time for enjoying such + churches in their presence as for regretting them in their absence. One + should live near them, and visit them daily, if one would feel their + beauty in its recondite details; to have come three thousand miles for + three minutes of them is no way of making that beauty part of one’s being, + and I will not pretend that I did in this case. What I shall always + maintain is that I had a living heartache from the sight of that space on + the fagade of this church which is overhung with the chains of the + Christian captives rescued from slavery among the Moors by the Catholic + Kings in their conquest of Granada. They were not only the memorials of + the most sorrowful fact, but they represented the misery of a thousand + years of warfare in which the prisoners on either side suffered in chains + for being Moslems or being Christians. The manacles and the fetters on the + church front are merely decorative to the glance, but to the eye that + reads deeper, how structural in their tale of man’s inhumanity to man! How + heavily they had hung on weary limbs! How pitilessly they had eaten + through bleeding ulcers to the bone! Yet they were very, very decorative, + as the flowers are that bloom on battle-fields. + </p> + <p> + Even with only a few minutes of a scant quarter-hour to spare, I would not + have any one miss seeing the cloister, from which the Catholic Kings used + to enter the church by the gallery to those balcony capitals, but which + the common American must now see by going outside the church. The cloister + is turned to the uses of an industrial school, as we were glad to realize + because our guide, whom we liked so much, was a night student there. It + remains as beautiful and reverend as if it were of no secular use, full of + gentle sculptures, with a garden in the middle, raised above the pavement + with a border of thin tiles, and flower-pots standing on their coping, all + in the shadow of tall trees, overhanging a deep secret-keeping well. From + this place, where you will be partly sheltered from the rain, your next + profitable sally through the storm will be to Santa Maria la Blanca, once + the synagogue of the richest Jews of Toledo, but now turned church in + spite of its high authorization as a place of Hebrew worship. It was + permitted them to build it because they declared they were of that tribe + of Israel which, when Caiaphas, the High Priest, sent round to the + different tribes for their vote whether Jesus should live or die, alone + voted that He should live. Their response, as Theophile Gautier reports + from the chronicles, is preserved in the Vatican with a Latin version of + the Hebrew text. The fable, if it is a fable, has its pathos; and I for + one can only lament the religious zeal to which the preaching of a + fanatical monk roused the Christian neighborhood in the fifteenth century, + to such excess that these kind Jews were afterward forbidden their worship + in the place. It is a very clean-looking, cold-looking white monument of + the Catholic faith, with a <i>retablo</i> attributed to Berruguete, and + much plateresque Gothic detail mingled with Byzantine ornament, and + Moorish arabesquing and the famous stucco honeycombing which we were + destined at Seville and Granada to find almost sickeningly sweet. Where + the Rabbis read the law from their pulpit the high altar stands, and the + pious populace has for three hundred years pushed the Jews from the + surrounding streets, where they had so humbled their dwellings to the + lowliest lest they should rouse the jealousy of their sleepless enemies. + </p> + <p> + VII + </p> + <p> + When we had visited this church there remained only the house of the + painter known as El Greco, for whom we had formed such a distaste, because + of the long features of the faces in his pictures, that our guide could + hardly persuade us his house was worth seeing. Now I am glad he prevailed + with us, for we have since come to find a peculiar charm in these long + features and the characteristic coloring of El Greco’s pictures. The + little house full of memorials and the little garden full of flowers, + which ought to have been all forget-me-nots, were entirely delightful. As + every one but I knew, and even I now know, he was born a Greek with the + name of Theotocopuli, and studied tinder Titian till he found his account + in a manner of his own, making long noses and long chins and high narrow + foreheads in ashen gray, and at last went mad in the excess of his manner. + The house has been restored by the Marquis de la Vega, according to his + notion of an old Spanish house, and has the pleasantest small <i>patio</i> + in the world, looked down into from a carved wooden gallery, with a + pavement of red tiles interset with Moorish tiles of divers colors. There + are interesting pictures everywhere, and on one wall the certificate of + the owner’s membership in the Hispanic Society of America, which made me + feel at home because it was signed with the name of an American friend of + mine, who is repressed by prosperity from being known as a poet and one of + the first Spanish scholars of any time. + </p> + <p> + The whole place is endearingly homelike and so genuinely hospitable that + we almost sat down to luncheon in the kitchen with the young Spanish king + who had lunched with the Marquis there a few weeks before. There was a + veranda outside where we could linger till the rain held up, and look into + the garden where the flowers ought to have been forget-me-nots, but were + as usual mostly marigolds and zinnias. They crowded round tile-edged + pools, and other flowers bloomed in pots on the coping of the garden-seats + built up of thin tiles carved on their edges to an inward curve. It is + strongly believed that there are several stories under the house, and the + Marquis is going some day to dig them up or out to the last one where the + original Jewish owner of the house is supposed to have hid his treasure. + In the mean time we could look across the low wall that belted the garden + in, to a vacant ground a little way off where some boys were playing with + a wagon they had made. They had made it out of an oblong box, with wheels + so rudely and imperfectly rounded, that they wabbled fearfully and at + times gave way under the body; just as they did with the wagons that the + boys I knew seventy years ago used to make. + </p> + <p> + I became so engrossed in the spectacle, so essentially a part of the + drama, that I did not make due account of some particulars of the + subterranean six stories of El Greco’s house. There must have been other + things worth seeing in Toledo, thousands of others, and some others we + saw, but most we missed, and many I do not remember. It was now coming the + hour to leave Toledo, and we drove back to our enchanted castle for our + bill, and for the omnibus to the station. I thought for some time that + there was no charge for the fire, or even the smoke we had the night + before, but my eyes were holden from the item which I found later, by + seeing myself addressed as Milor. I had never been addressed as a lord in + any bill before, but I reflected that in the proud old metropolis of the + Goths I could not be saluted as less, and I gladly paid the bill, which + observed a golden mean between cheapness and dearness, and we parted good + friends with our host, and better with our guide, who at the last brought + out an English book, given him by an English friend, about the English + cathedrals. He was fine, and I could not wish any future traveler kinder + fortune than to have his guidance in Toledo. Some day I am going back to + profit more fully by it, and to repay him the various fees which he + disbursed for me to different doorkeepers and custodians and which I + forgot at parting and he was too delicate to remind me of. + </p> + <p> + When all leaves were taken and we were bowed out and away our horses, + covered with bells, burst with the omnibus through a solid mass of beggars + come to give us a last chance of meriting heaven by charity to them, and + dashed down the hill to the station. There we sat a long half-hour in the + wet evening air, wondering how we had been spared seeing those wretches + trampled under our horses’ feet, or how the long train of goats climbing + to the city to be milked escaped our wheels. But as we were guiltless of + inflicting either disaster, we could watch with a good conscience the + quiescent industry of some laborers in the brickyard beyond the track. + Slowly and more slowly they worked, wearily, apathetically, fetching, + carrying, in their divided skirts of cross-barred stuff of a rich + Velasquez dirt color. One was especially worthy of admiration from his + wide-brimmed black hat and his thoughtful indifference to his task, which + was stacking up a sort of bundles of long grass; but I dare say he knew + what it all meant. Throughout I was tormented by question of the precise + co-racial quality of some English-speaking folk who had come to share our + bone-breaking return to Madrid in the train so deliberately waiting there + to begin afflicting us. English English they certainly were not; American + English as little. If they were Australian English, why should not it have + been a convention of polite travel for them to come up and say so, and + save us that torment of curiosity? But perhaps they were not Australians. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0008" id="link2H_4_0008"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + VII. THE GREAT GRIDIRON OF ST. LAWRENCE + </h2> + <p> + It seems a duty every Protestant owes his heresy to go and see how + dismally the arch-enemy of heresy housed his true faith in the + palace-tomb-and-church of the Escorial. If the more light-minded tourist + shirks this act of piety, he makes a mistake which he will repent + afterward in vain. The Escorial is, for its plainness, one of the two or + three things worthiest seeing among the two or three hundred things worth + seeing in Spain. Yet we feigned meaning to miss it after we returned to + Madrid from Toledo, saying that everybody went to the Escorial and that it + would be a proud distinction not to go. All the time we knew we should go, + and we were not surprised when we were chosen by one of our few bright + days for the excursion, though we were taken inordinately early, and might + well have been started a little later. + </p> + <p> + I + </p> + <p> + Nothing was out of the common on the way to the station, and our sense of + the ordinary was not relieved when we found ourselves in a car of the + American open-saloon pattern, well filled with other Americans bent upon + the same errand as ourselves; though I am bound to say that the backs of + the transverse seats rose well toward the roof of the car with a certain + originality. + </p> + <p> + When we cleared the city streets and houses, we began running out into the + country through suburbs vulgarly gay with small, bright brick villas, so + expressive of commuting that the eye required the vision of young husbands + and fathers going in at the gates with gardening tools on their shoulders + and under their arms. To be sure, the time of day and the time of year + were against this; it was now morning and autumn, though there was a + vernal brilliancy in the air; and the grass, flattered by the recent + rains, was green where we had last seen it gray. Along a pretty stream, + which, for all I know may have been the Manzanares, it was so little, + files of Lombardy poplars followed away very agreeably golden in foliage; + and scattered about were deciduous-looking evergreens which we questioned + for live-oaks. We were going northward over the track which had brought us + southward to Madrid two weeks before, and by and by the pleasant levels + broke into rough hills and hollows, strewn with granite boulders which, as + our train mounted, changed into the savage rock masses of New Castile, and + as we drew near the village of Escorial gave the scene the look of that + very desolate country. But it could not be so gloomy in the kind sunlight + as it was when lashed by the savage storm which we had seen it cowering + under before; and at the station we lost all feeling of friendlessness in + the welcome of the thronging guides and hotel touters. + </p> + <p> + Our ideal was a carriage which we could keep throughout the day and use + for our return to the train in the afternoon; and this was so exactly the + ideal of a driver to whom we committed ourselves that we were somewhat + surprised to have his vehicle develop into a motor-omnibus, and himself + into a conductor. + </p> + <p> + When we arrived at the palace some miles off, up a winding way, he + underwent another change, and became our guide to the Escorial. In the + event he proved a very intelligent guide, as guides go, and I really + cannot now see how we could have got on without him. He adapted the + Spanish names of things to our English understanding by shortening them; a + <i>patio</i> became a <i>pat’,</i> and an old master an old mast’; and an + endearing quality was imparted to the grim memory of Philip II. by the + diminutive of Philly. We accepted this, but even to have Charles V. + brought nearer our hearts as Charley Fif, we could not bear to have our + guide exposed to the mockery of less considerate travelers. I instructed + him that the emperor’s name was Charles, and that only boys and very + familiar friends of that name were called Charley among us. He thanked me, + and at once spoke again of Charley Fif; which I afterward found was the + universally accepted style of the great emperor among the guides of Spain. + In vain I tried to persuade them out of it at Cordova, at Seville, at + Granada, and wherever else they had to speak of an emperor whose memory + really seems to pervade the whole land. + </p> + <p> + II + </p> + <p> + The genuine village of Escorial lies mostly to the left of the station, + but the artificial town which grew up with the palace is to the right. + Both are called after the slag of the iron-smelting works which were and + are the vital industry of the first Escorial; but the road to the palace + takes you far from the slag, with a much-hoteled and garden-walled + dignity, to the plateau, apparently not altogether natural, where the + massive triune edifice stands in the keeping of a throng of American women + wondering how they are going to see it, and lunch, and get back to their + train in time. Many were trying, the day of our visit, to see the place + with no help but that of their bewildering Baedekers, and we had constant + reason to be glad of our guide as we met or passed them in the measureless + courts and endless corridors. + </p> + <p> + At this distance of time and place we seem to have hurried first to the + gorgeous burial vault where the kings and queens of Spain lie, each one + shut in a gilded marble sarcophagus in their several niches of the + circular chamber, where under the high altar of the church they have the + advantage of all the masses said above them. But on the way we must have + passed through the church, immense, bare, cold, and sullener far than that + sepulcher; and I am sure that we visited last of all the palace, where it + is said the present young king comes so seldom and unwillingly, as if + shrinking from the shelf appointed for him in that crypt shining with gold + and polished marble. + </p> + <p> + It is of death, not life, that the Escorial preaches, and it was to + eternal death, its pride and gloom, and not life everlasting, that the + dark piety of Philip voluntarily, or involuntarily, consecrated the + edifice. But it would be doing a wrong to one of the greatest achievements + of the human will, if one dwelt too much, or too wholly, upon this gloomy + ideal. The Escorial has been many times described; I myself forbear with + difficulty the attempt to describe it, and I satisfy my longing to set it + visibly before the reader by letting an earlier visitor of my name + describe it for me. I think he does it larger justice than modern + observers, because he escapes the cumulative obligation which time has + laid upon them to find the subjective rather than the objective fulfilment + of its founder’s intention in it. At any rate, in March, 1623, James + Howell, waiting as secretary of the romantic mission the bursting of the + iridescent love-dream which had brought Charles Stuart, Prince of Wales, + from England to woo the sister of the Spanish king in Madrid, had leisure + to write one of his most delightful “familiar letters” concerning the + Escorial to a friend in London. + </p> + <p> + <a name="linkimage-0017" id="linkimage-0017"> + <!-- IMG --></a> + </p> + <div class="fig" style="width:60%;"> + <img src="images/h1-17.jpg" alt="17 the Town and Monastery of Escorial " width="100%" /><br /> + </div> + <p> + “I was yesterday at the Escorial to see the monastery of St. Lawrence, the + eighth wonder of the world; and truly considering the site of the place, + the state of the thing, the symmetry of the structure, with diverse other + rareties, it may be called so; for what I have seen in Italy and other + places are but baubles to it. It is built among a company of craggy hills, + which makes the air the hungrier and wholesomer; it is all built of + freestone and marble, and that with such solidity and moderate height that + surely Philip the Second’s chief design was to make a sacrifice of it to + eternity, and to contest with the meteors and time itself. It cost eight + millions; it was twenty-four years abuilding, and the founder himself saw + it furnished and enjoyed it twelve years after, and carried his bones + himself thither to be buried. The reason that moved King Philip to waste + so much treasure was a vow he had made at the battle of St. Quentin, where + he was forced to batter a monastery of St. Lawrence friars, and if he had + the victory he would erect such a monument to St. Lawrence that the world + had not the like; therefore the form of it is like a gridiron, the handle + is a huge royal palace, and the body a vast monastery or assembly of + quadrangular cloisters, for there are as many as there be months of the + year. There be a hundred monks, and every one hath his man and his mule, + and a multitude of officers; besides there are three libraries there full + of the choicest books for all sciences. It is beyond all expression what + grots, gardens, walks, and aqueducts there are there, and what curious + fountains in the upper cloisters, for there be two stages of cloisters. In + fine, there is nothing that is vulgar there. To take a view of every room + in the house one must make account to go ten miles; there is a vault + called the Pantheon under the high altar, which is all paved, walled, and + arched with marble; there be a number of huge silver candlesticks taller + than I am; lamps three yards compass, and diverse chalices and crosses of + massive gold; there is one choir made all of burnished brass; pictures and + statues like giants; and a world of glorious things that purely ravished + me. By this mighty monument it may be inferred that Philip the Second, + though he was a little man, yet he had vast gigantic thoughts in him, to + leave such a huge pile for posterity to gaze upon and admire in his + memory.” + </p> + <p> + III + </p> + <p> + Perhaps this description is not very exact, but precision of statement is + not to be expected of a Welshman; and if Howell preferred to say Philip + built the place in fulfilment of that vow at the battle of St. Quentin, + doubtless he believed it; many others did; it has only of late been + discovered that Philip was not at St. Quentin, and did not “batter a + monastery of St. Lawrence friars” there. I like to think the rest is all + as Howell says down to the man and mule for every monk. If there are no + men and mules left, there are very few monks either, after the many + suppressions of convents. The gardens are there of an unquestionable + symmetry and beauty, and the “company of craggy hills” abides all round + the prodigious edifice, which is at once so prodigious, and grows larger + upon you in the retrospect. + </p> + <p> + Now that I am this good distance away, and cannot bring myself to book by + a second experience, I feel it safe to say that I had a feeling of St. + Peter’s-like immensity in the church of the Escorial, with more than St. + Peter’s-like bareness. The gray colorlessness of the architecture somberly + prevails in memory over the frescoes of the painters invited to relieve it + in the roof and the <i>retablo,</i> and thought turns from the + red-and-yellow jasper of altar and pulpit, and the bronze-gilt effigies of + kneeling kings and queens to that niche near the oratory where the little + terrible man who imagined and realized it all used to steal in from his + palace, and worship next the small chamber where at last he died. It is + said he also read despatches and state papers in this nook, but doubtless + only in the intervals of devotion. + </p> + <p> + Every one to his taste, even in matters of religion; Philip reared a + temple to the life beyond this, and as if with the splendor of the + mausoleum which it enshrines he hoped to overcome the victorious grave; + the Caliph who built the mighty mosque at Cordova, which outlasts every + other glory of his capital, dedicated it to the joy of this life as + against the gloom of whose who would have put it under the feet of death. + “Let us build,” he said to his people, “the Kaaba of the West upon the + site of a Christian temple, which we will destroy, so that we may set + forth how the Cross shall fall and become abased before the True Prophet. + Allah will never place the world beneath the feet of those who make + themselves the slaves of drink and sensuality while they preach penitence + and the joys of chastity, and while extolling poverty enrich themselves to + the loss of their neighbors. For these the sad and silent cloister; for + us, the crystalline fountain and the shady grove; for them, the rude and + unsocial life of dungeon-like strongholds; for us, the charm of social + life and culture; for them, intolerance and tyranny; for us, a ruler who + is our father; for them, the darkness of ignorance; for us, letters and + instruction as wide-spread as our creed; for them, the wilderness, + celibacy, and the doom of the false martyr; for us, plenty, love, + brotherhood, and eternal joy.” + </p> + <p> + In spite of the somewhat vaunting spirit of his appeal, the wager of + battle decided against the Arab; it was the Crescent that fell, the Cross + that prevailed; in the very heart of Abderrahman’s mosque a Christian + cathedral rises. Yet in the very heart of Philip’s temple to the spirit of + the cloister, the desert, the martyrdom, one feels that a great deal could + be said on Abderrahman’s side. This is a world which will not be + renounced, in fact, and even in Christian Spain it has triumphed in the + arts and sciences beyond its earlier victories in Moslem Spain. One finds + Philip himself, with his despatches in that high nook, rather than among + the bronze-gilt royalties at the high altar, though his statue is duly + there with those of his three wives. The group does not include that poor + Bloody Mary of England, who should have been the fourth there, for surely + she suffered enough for his faith and him to be of his domestic circle + forever. + </p> + <p> + IV + </p> + <p> + It is the distinct merit of the Escorial that it does not, and perhaps + cannot take long in doing; otherwise the doer could not bear it. A look + round the sumptuous burial chamber of the sovereigns below the high altar + of the church; a glance at the lesser sepulchral glories of the infantes + and infantas in their chapels and corridors, suffices for the funereal + third of the trinity of tomb and temple and palace; and though there are + gayer constituents of the last, especially the gallery of the + chapter-house, with its surprisingly lively frescoes and its sometimes + startling canvases, there is not much that need really keep you from the + royal apartments which seem the natural end of your visit. Of these + something better can be said than that they are no worse than most other + royal apartments; our guide led us to them through many granite courts and + corridors where we left groups of unguided Americans still maddening over + their Baedekers; and we found them hung with pleasing tapestries, some + after such designs of Goya’s as one finds in the basement of the Prado. + The furniture was in certain rooms cheerily upholstered in crimson and + salmon without sense of color, but as if seeking relief from the gray of + the church; and there are battle-pieces on the walls, fights between Moors + and Christians, which interested me. The dignified consideration of the + custodian who showed us through the apartments seemed to have adapted to + our station a manner left over from the infrequent presence of royalty; as + I have said, the young king of Spain does not like coming to the Escorial. + </p> + <p> + I do not know why any one comes there, and I search my consciousness in + vain for a better reason than the feeling that I must come, or would be + sorrier if I did not than if I did. The worthy Howell does not commit + himself to any expression of rejoicing or regretting in having done the + Escorial. But the good Theophile Gautier, who visited the place more than + two hundred years after, owns frankly that he is “excessively embarrassed + in giving his opinion” of it. “So many people,” he says, “serious and + well-conditioned, who, I prefer to think, have never seen it, have spoken + of it as a <i>chef d’oeuvre,</i> and a supreme effort of the human spirit, + so that I should have the air, poor devil of a <i>facilletoniste errant,</i> + of wishing to play the original and taking pleasure in my + contrary-mindedness; but still in my soul and conscience I cannot help + finding the Escorial the most tiresome and the most stupid monument that + could be imagined, for the mortification of his fellow-beings, by a morose + monk and a suspicious tyrant. I know very well that the Escorial had a + serious and religious aim; but gravity is not dryness, melancholy is not + marasm, meditation is not ennui, and beauty of forms can always be happily + wedded to elevation of ideas.” This is the Frenchman’s language as he goes + into the Escorial; he does not cheer up as he passes through the place, + and when he comes out he has to say: “I issued from that desert of + granite, from that monkish necropolis with an extraordinary feeling of + release, of exultation; it seemed to me I was born into life again, that I + could be young once more, and rejoice in the creation of the good God, of + which I had lost all hope in those funeral vaults. The bland and luminous + air wrapt me round like a soft robe of fine wool, and warmed my body + frozen in that cadaverous atmosphere; I was saved from that architectural + nightmare, which I thought never would end. I advise people who are so + fatuous as to pretend that they are ever bored to go and spend three or + four days in the Escorial; they will learn what real ennui is and they + will enjoy themselves all the rest of their lives in reflecting that they + might be in the Escorial and that they are not.” + </p> + <p> + That was well toward a century ago. It is not quite like that now, but it + is something like it; the human race has become inured to the Escorial; + more tourists have visited the place and imaginably lightened its burden + by sharing it among their increasing number. Still there is now and then + one who is oppressed, crushed by it, and cannot relieve himself in such + ironies as Gautier’s, but must cry aloud in suffering like that of the + more emotional De Amicis: “You approach a courtyard and say, ‘I have seen + this already.’ No. You are mistaken; it is another.... You ask the guide + where the cloister is and he replies, ‘This is it,’ and you walk on for + half an hour. You see the light of another world: you have never seen just + such a light; is it the reflection from the stone, or does it come from + the moon? No, it is daylight, but sadder than darkness. As you go on from + corridor to corridor, from court to court, you look ahead with misgivings, + expecting to see suddenly, as you turn a corner, a row of skeleton monks + with hoods over their eyes and crosses in their hands; you think of Philip + II.... You remember all that you have read about him, of his terrors and + the Inquisition; and everything becomes clear to your mind’s eye with a + sudden light; for the first time you understand it all; the Escorial is + Philip II.... He is still there alive and terrible, with the image of his + dreadful God... . Even now, after so long a time, on rainy days, when I am + feeling sad, I think of the Escorial, and then look at the walls of my + room and congratulate myself.... I see again the courtyards of the + Escorial. ... I dream of wandering through the corridors alone in the + dark, followed by the ghost of an old friar, crying and pounding at all + the doors without finding a way of escape.” + </p> + <p> + <a name="linkimage-0018" id="linkimage-0018"> + <!-- IMG --></a> + </p> + <div class="fig" style="width:60%;"> + <img src="images/h1-18.jpg" + alt="18 the Pantheon of The Kings and Queens Of Spain " width="100%" /><br /> + </div> + <p> + I am of another race both from the Frenchman and the Italian, and I cannot + pretend to their experiences, their inferences, and their conclusions; but + I am not going to leave the Escorial to the reader without trying to make + him feel that I too was terribly impressed by it. To be sure, I had some + light moments in it, because when gloom goes too far it becomes + ridiculous; and I did think the convent gardens as I saw them from the + chapter-house window were beautiful, and the hills around majestic and + serious, with no intention of falling upon my prostrate spirit. Yes, and + after a lifelong abhorrence of that bleak king who founded the Escorial, I + will own that I am, through pity, beginning to feel an affection for + Philip II.; perhaps I was finally wrought upon by hearing him so + endearingly called Philly by our guide. + </p> + <p> + Yet I will not say but I was glad to get out of the Escorial alive; and + that I welcomed even the sulkiness of the landlord of the hotel where our + guide took us for lunch. To this day I do not know why that landlord + should have been so sour; his lunch was bad, but I paid his price without + murmuring; and still at parting he could scarcely restrain his rage; the + Escorial might have entered into his soul. On the way to his hotel the + street was empty, but the house bubbled over with children who gaped + giggling at his guests from the kitchen door, and were then apparently + silenced with food, behind it. There were a great many flies in the hotel, + and if I could remember its name I would warn the public against it. + </p> + <p> + After lunch our guide lapsed again to our conductor and reappeared with + his motor-bus and took us to the station, where he overcame the scruples + of the lady in the ticket-office concerning our wish to return to Madrid + by the Sud-Express instead of the ordinary train. The trouble was about + the supplementary fare which we easily paid on board; in fact, there is + never any difficulty in paying a supplementary fare in Spain; the + authorities meet you quite half-way. But we were nervous because we had + already suffered from the delays of people at the last hotel where our + motor-bus stopped to take up passengers; they lingered so long over lunch + that we were sure we should miss the Sud-Express, and we did not see how + we could live in Escorial till the way-train started; yet for all their + delays we reached the station in time and more. The train seemed strangely + reduced in the number of its cars, but we confidently started with others + to board the nearest of them; there we were waved violently away, and + bidden get into the dining-car at the rear of the train. In some dudgeon + we obeyed, but we were glad to get away from Escorial on any terms, and + the dining-car was not bad, though it had a somewhat disheveled air. We + could only suppose that all the places in the two other cars were taken, + and we resigned ourselves to choosing the least coffee-stained of the + coffee-stained tables and ordered more coffee at it. The waiter brought it + as promptly as the conductor collected our supplementary fare; he even + made a feint of removing the stains from our table-cloth with a flourish + of his napkin, and then he left us to our conjectures and reflections till + he came for his pay and his fee just before we ran into Madrid. + </p> + <p> + VI + </p> + <p> + The mystery persisted and it was only when our train paused in the station + that it was solved. There, as we got out of our car, we perceived that a + broad red velvet carpet was laid from the car in front into the station; a + red carpet such as is used to keep the feet of distinguished persons from + their native earth the world over, but more especially in Europe. Along + this carpet were loosely grouped a number of solemnly smiling gentlemen in + frock-coats with their top-hats genteelly resting in the hollows of their + left arms, and without and beyond the station in the space usually filled + by closed and open cabs was a swarm of automobiles. Then while our spirits + were keyed to the highest pitch, the Queen of Spain descended from the + train, wearing a long black satin cloak and a large black hat, very blond + and beautiful beyond the report of her pictures. By each hand she led one + of her two pretty boys, Don Jaime, the Prince of Asturias, heir apparent, + and his younger brother. She walked swiftly, with glad, kind looks around, + and her ladies followed her according to their state; then ushered and + followed by the gentlemen assembled to receive them, they mounted to their + motors and whirred away like so many persons of a histrionic pageant: not + least impressive, the court attendants filled a stage drawn by six mules, + and clattered after. + </p> + <p> + From hearsay and reasonable surmise we learned that we had not come from + Escorial in the Sud-Express at all, but in the Queen’s special train + bringing her and her children from their autumn sojourn at La Granja, and + that we had been for an hour a notable feature of the royal party without + knowing it, and of course without getting the least good of it. We had + indeed ignorantly enjoyed no less of the honor than two other Americans, + who came in the dining-car with us, but whether the nice-looking Spanish + couple who sat in the corner next us were equally ignorant of their + advantage I shall never know. It was but too highly probable that the + messed condition of the car was due to royal luncheon in it just before we + came aboard; but why we were suffered to come aboard, or why a + supplementary fare should have been collected from us remains one of those + mysteries which I should once have liked to keep all Spain. + </p> + <p> + We had to go quite outside of the station grounds to get a cab for our + hotel, but from this blow to our dignity I recovered a little later in the + day, when the king, attended by as small a troop of cavalry as I suppose a + king ever has with him, came driving by in the street where I was walking. + As he sat in his open carriage he looked very amiable, and handsomer than + most of the pictures make him. He seemed to be gazing at me, and when he + bowed I could do no less than return his salutation. As I glanced round to + see if people near me were impressed by our exchange of civilities, I + perceived an elderly officer next me. He was smiling as I was, and I think + he was in the delusion that the king’s bow, which I had so promptly + returned, was intended for him. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0009" id="link2H_4_0009"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + VIII. CORDOVA AND THE WAY THERE + </h2> + <p> + I should be sorry if I could believe that Cordova experienced the + disappointment in us, which I must own we felt in her; but our + disappointment was unquestionable, and I will at once offer it to the + reader as an inducement for him to go to Cordova with less lively + expectations than ours. I would by no means have him stay away; after all, + there is only one Cordova in the world which the capital of the Caliphate + of the West once filled with her renown; and if the great mosque of + Abderrahman is not so beautiful as one has been made to fancy it, still it + is wonderful, and could not be missed without loss. + </p> + <p> + I + </p> + <p> + Better, I should say, take the <i>rapido</i> which leaves Madrid three + times a week at nine-thirty in the morning, than the night express which + leaves as often at the same hour in the evening. Since there are now such + good day trains on the chief Spanish lines, it is flying in the face of + Providence not to go by them; they might be suddenly taken off; besides, + they have excellent restaurant-cars, and there is, moreover, always the + fascinating and often the memorable landscape which they pass through. By + no fault of ours that I can remember, our train was rather crowded; that + is, four or five out of the eight places in our corridor compartment were + taken, and we were afraid at every stop that more people would get in, + though I do not know that it was our anxieties kept them out. For the + matter of that, I do not know why I employed an interpreter at Madrid to + get my ticket stamped at the ticket-office; it required merely the + presentation of the ticket at the window; but the interpreter seemed to + wish it and it enabled him to practise his English with me, and I realized + that he must live. In a peseta’s worth of gratitude he followed us to our + carriage, and he did not molest the <i>mozo</i> in putting our bags into + the racks, though he hovered about the door till the train started; and it + just now occurs to me that he may have thought a peseta was not a + sufficient return for his gratitude; he had rendered us no service. + </p> + <p> + At Aranjuez the wheat-lands, which began to widen about us as soon as we + got beyond the suburbs of Madrid, gave way to the groves and gardens of + that really charming pleasaunce, charming quite from the station, with + grounds penetrated by placid waters overhung by the English elms which the + Castilians are so happy in having naturalized in their treeless waste. + Multitudes of nightingales are said to sing among them, but it was not the + season for hearing them from the train; and we made what shift we could + with the strawberry and asparagus beds which we could see plainly, and the + peach trees and cherry trees. One of these had committed the solecism of + blossoming in October, instead of April or May, when the nobility came to + their villas. + </p> + <p> + We had often said during our stay in Madrid that we should certainly come + for a day at Aranjuez; and here we were, passing it with a five minutes’ + stop. I am sure it merited much more, not only for its many proud + memories, but for its shameful ones, which are apt to be so much more + lasting in the case of royal pleasaunces. The great Catholic King + Ferdinand inherited the place with the Mastership of the Order of + Santiago; Charles V. used to come there for the shooting, and Philip II., + Charleses III. and IV., and Ferdinand VII. built and rebuilt its edifices. + But it is also memorable because the wretched Godoy fled there with the + king, his friend, and the queen, his paramour, and there the pitiable king + abdicated in favor of his abominable son Ferdinand VII. It is the careful + Murray who reminds me of this fact; Gautier, who apparently fails to get + anything to his purpose out of Aranjuez, passes it with the remark that + Godoy built there a gallery from his villa to the royal palace, for his + easier access to the royal family in which he held a place so anomalous. + From Mr. Martin Hume’s <i>Modern Spain</i> I learn that when the court + fled to Aranjuez from Madrid before the advance of Murat, and the mob, + civil and military, hunted Godoy’s villa through for him, he jumped out of + bed and hid himself under a roll of matting, while the king and the queen, + to save him, decreed his dismissal from all his offices and honors. + </p> + <p> + But here just at the most interesting moment the successive bells and + whistles are screeching, and the <i>rapido</i> is hurrying me away from + Aranjuez. We are leaving a railway station, but presently it is as if we + had set sail on a gray sea, with a long ground-swell such as we remembered + from Old Castile. These innumerable pastures and wheat-fields are in New + Castile, and before long more distinctively they are in La Mancha, the + country dear to fame as the home of Don Quixote. I must own at once it + does not look it, or at least look like the country I had read out of his + history in my boyhood. For the matter of that, no country ever looks like + the country one reads out of a book, however really it may be that + country. The trouble probably is that one carries out of one’s reading an + image which one had carried into it. When I read <i>Don Quixote</i> and + read and read it again, I put La Mancha first into the map of southern + Ohio, and then into that, after an interval of seven or eight years, of + northern Ohio; and the scenes I arranged for his adventures were + landscapes composed from those about me in my earlier and later boyhood. + There was then always something soft and mild in the <i>Don Quixote</i> + country, with a blue river and gentle uplands, and woods where one could + rest in the shade, and hide one’s self if one wished, after easily + rescuing the oppressed. Now, instead, a treeless plain unrolled itself + from sky to sky, clean, dull, empty; and if some azure tops dimmed the + clear line of the western horizon, how could I have got them into my early + picture when I had never yet seen a mountain in my life? I could not put + the knight and his squire on those naked levels where they should not have + got a mile from home without discovery and arrest. I tried to think of + them jogging along in talk of the adventures which the knight hoped for; + but I could not make it work. I could have done better before we got so + far from Aranjuez; there were gardens and orchards and a very suitable + river there, and those elm trees overhanging it; but the prospect in La + Mancha had only here and there a white-availed white farmhouse to vary its + lonely simplicity, its desert fertility; and I could do nothing with the + strips and patches of vineyard. It was all strangely African, strangely + Mexican, and not at all American, not Ohioan, enough to be anything like + the real La Mancha of my invention. To be sure, the doors and windows of + the nearer houses were visibly netted against mosquitoes and that was + something, but even that did not begin to be noticeable till we were + drawing near the Sierra Morena. Then, so long before we reached the mighty + chain of mountains which nature has stretched between the gravity of New + Castile and the gaiety of Andalusia, as if they could not bear immediate + contact, I experienced a moment of perfect reconciliation to the landscape + as really wearing the face of that La Mancha familiar to my boyish vision. + Late in the forenoon, but early enough to save the face of La Mancha, + there appeared certain unquestionable shapes in the nearer and farther + distance which I joyously knew for those windmills which Don Quixote had + known for giants and spurred at, lance in rest. They were waving their + vans in what he had found insolent defiance, but which seemed to us glad + welcome, as of windmills waiting that long time for a reader of Cervantes + who could enter into their feelings and into the friendly companionship + they were offering. + </p> + <p> + II + </p> + <p> + Our train did not pass very near, but the distance was not bad for them; + it kept them sixty or sixty-five years back in the past where they + belonged, and in its dimness I could the more distinctly see Don Quixote + careering against them, and Sancho Panza vainly warning, vainly imploring + him, and then in his rage and despair, “giving himself to the devil,” as + he had so often to do in that master’s service; I do not know now that I + would have gone nearer them if I could. Sometimes in the desolate plains + where the windmills stood so well aloof men were lazily, or at least + leisurely, plowing with their prehistoric crooked sticks. Here and there + the clean levels were broken by shallow pools of water; and we were at + first much tormented by expanses, almost as great as these pools, of a + certain purple flower, which no curiosity of ours could prevail with to + yield up the secret of its name or nature. It was one of the anomalies of + this desert country that it was apparently prosperous, if one might guess + from the comfortable-looking farmsteads scattered over it, inclosing house + and stables in the courtyard framed by their white walls. The houses stood + at no great distances from one another, but were nowhere grouped in + villages. There were commonly no towns near the stations, which were not + always uncheerful; sometimes there were flower-beds, unless my memory + deceives me. Perhaps there would be a passenger or two, and certainly a + loafer or two, and always of the sex which in town life does the loafing; + in the background or through the windows the other sex could be seen in + its domestic activities. Only once did we see three girls of such as stay + for the coming and going of trains the world over; they waited arm in arm, + and we were obliged to own they were plain, poor things. + </p> + <p> + Their whitewash saves the distant towns from the effect of sinking into + the earth, or irregularly rising from it, as in Old Castile, and the + landscape cheered up more and more as we ran farther south. We passed + through the country of the Valdepenas wine, which it is said would so + willingly be better than it is; there was even a station of that name, + which looked much more of a station than most, and had, I think I + remember, buildings necessary to the wine industry about it. Murray, + indeed, emboldens me in this halting conjecture with the declaration that + the neighboring town of Valdepenas is “completely undermined by + wine-cellars of very ancient date” where the wine is “kept in caves in + huge earthen jars,” and when removed is put into goat or pig skins in the + right Don Quixote fashion. + </p> + <p> + The whole region begins to reek of Cervantean memories. Ten miles from the + station of Argamasilla is the village where he imagined, and the + inhabitants believe, Don Quixote to have been born. Somewhere among these + little towns Cervantes himself was thrown into prison for presuming to + attempt collecting their rents when the people did not want to pay them. + This is what I seem to remember having read, but heaven knows where, or + if. What is certain is that almost before I was aware we were leaving the + neighborhood of Valdepenas, where we saw men with donkeys gathering grapes + and letting the donkeys browse on the vine leaves. Then we were mounting + among the foothills of the Sierra Morena, not without much besetting + trouble of mind because of those certain circles and squares of stone on + the nearer and farther slopes which we have since somehow determined were + sheep-folds. They abounded almost to the very scene of those capers which + Don Quixote cut on the mountainside to testify his love for Dulcinea del + Toboso, to the great scandal of Sancho Panza riding away to give his + letter to the lady, but unable to bear the sight of the knight skipping on + the rocks in a single garment. + </p> + <p> + III + </p> + <p> + In the forests about befell all those adventures with the mad Cardenio and + the wronged Dorothea, both self-banished to the wilderness through the + perfidy of the same false friend and faithless lover. The episodes which + end so well, and which form, I think, the heart of the wonderful romance, + have, from the car windows, the fittest possible setting; but suddenly the + scene changes, and you are among aspects of nature as savagely wild as any + in that new western land where the countrymen of Cervantes found a New + Spain, just as the countrymen of Shakespeare found a New England. + Suddenly, or if not suddenly, then startlingly, we were in a pass of the + Sierra called (for some reason which I will leave picturesquely + unexplained) the Precipice of Dogs, where bare sharp peaks and spears of + rock started into the air, and the faces of the cliffs glared down upon us + like the faces of Indian warriors painted yellow and orange and crimson, + and every other warlike color. With my poor scruples of moderation I + cannot give a just notion of the wild aspects; I must leave it to the + reader, with the assurance that he cannot exaggerate it, while I employ + myself in noting that already on this awful summit we began to feel + ourselves in the south, in Andalusia. Along the mountain stream that + slipped silverly away in the valley below, there were oleanders in bloom, + such as we had left in Bermuda the April before. Already, north of the + Sierra the country had been gentling. The upturned soil had warmed from + gray to red; elsewhere the fields were green with sprouting wheat; and + there were wide spaces of those purple flowers, like crocuses, which women + were gathering in large baskets. Probably they were not crocuses; but + there could be no doubt of the vineyards increasing in their acreage; and + the farmhouses which had been without windows in their outer walls, now + sometimes opened as many as two to the passing train. Flocks of black + sheep and goats, through the optical illusion frequent in the Spanish air, + looked large as cattle in the offing. Only in one place had we seen the + tumbled boulders of Old Castile, and there had been really no greater + objection to La Mancha than that it was flat, stale, and unprofitable and + wholly unimaginable as the scene of even Don Quixote’s first adventures. + </p> + <p> + But now that we had mounted to the station among the summits of the Sierra + Morena, my fancy began to feel at home, and rested in a scene which did + all the work for it. There was ample time for the fancy to rest in that + more than co-operative landscape. Just beyond the first station the engine + of a freight-train had opportunely left the track in front of us, and we + waited there four hours till it could be got back. It would be inhuman to + make the reader suffer through this delay with us after it ceased to be + pleasure and began to be pain. Of course, everybody of foreign extraction + got out of the train and many even, went forward to look at the engine and + see what they could do about it; others went partly forward and asked the + bolder spirits on their way back what was the matter. Now and then our + locomotive whistled as if to scare the wandering engine back to the rails. + At moments the station-master gloomily returned to the station from + somewhere and diligently despaired in front of it. Then we backed as if to + let our locomotive run up the siding and try to butt the freight-train off + the track to keep its engine company. + </p> + <p> + About this time the restaurant-car bethought itself of some sort of + late-afternoon repast, and we went forward and ate it with an interest + which we prolonged as much as possible. We returned to our car which was + now pervaded by an extremely bad smell. The smell drove us out, and we + watched a public-spirited peasant beating the acorns from a live-oak near + the station with a long pole. He brought a great many down, and first + filled his sash-pocket with them; then he distributed them among the + children of the third-class passengers who left the train and flocked + about him. But nobody seemed to do anything with the acorns, though they + were more than an inch long, narrow, and very sharp-pointed. As soon as he + had discharged his self-assumed duty the peasant lay down on the sloping + bank under the tree, and with his face in the grass, went to sleep for all + our stay, and for what I know the whole night after. + </p> + <p> + It did not now seem likely that we should ever reach Gordova, though + people made repeated expeditions to the front of the train, and came back + reporting that in an hour we should start. We interested ourselves as + intensely as possible in a family from the next compartment, + London-tailored, and speaking either Spanish or English as they fancied, + who we somehow understood lived at Barcelona; but nothing came of our + interest. Then as the day waned we threw ourselves into the interest taken + by a fellow-passenger in a young Spanish girl of thirteen or fourteen who + had been in the care of a youngish middle-aged man when our train stopped, + and been then abandoned by him for hours, while he seemed to be satisfying + a vain curiosity at the head of the train. She owned that the deserter was + her father, and while we were still poignantly concerned for her he came + back and relieved the anxiety which the girl herself had apparently not + shared even under pressure of the whole compartment’s sympathy. + </p> + <p> + IV + </p> + <p> + The day waned more and more; the sun began to sink, and then it sank with + that sudden drop which the sun has at last. The sky flushed crimson, + turned mauve, turned gray, and the twilight thickened over the summits + billowing softly westward. There had been a good deal of joking, both + Spanish and English, among the passengers; I had found particularly + cheering the richness of a certain machinist’s trousers of bright golden + corduroy; but as the shades of night began to embrown the scene our + spirits fell; and at the cry of a lonesome bird, far off where the sunset + had been, they followed the sun in its sudden drop. Against the horizon a + peasant boy leaned on his staff and darkled against the darkening sky. + </p> + <p> + Nothing lacked now but the opportune recollection that this was the region + where the natives had been so wicked in times past that an ingenious + statesman, such as have seldom been wanting to Spain, imagined bringing in + a colony of German peasants to mix with them and reform them. That is what + some of the books say, but others say that the region had remained + unpeopled after the first exile of the conquered Moors. All hold that the + notion of mixing the colonists and the natives worked the wrong way; the + natives were not reformed, but the colonists were depraved and stood in + with the local brigands, ultimately, if not immediately. This is the view + suggested, if not taken, by that amusing emissary, George Borrow, who + seems in his <i>Bible in Spain</i> to have been equally employed in + distributing the truths of the New Testament and collecting material for + the most dramatic study of Spanish civilization known to literature. It is + a delightful book, and not least delightful in the moments of misgiving + which it imparts to the reader, when he does not know whether to prize + more the author’s observation or his invention, whichever it may be. + Borrow reports a conversation with an innkeeper and his wife of the + Colonial German descent, who gave a good enough account of themselves, and + then adds the dark intimation of an Italian companion that they could not + be honestly keeping a hotel in that unfrequented place. It was not just in + that place that our delay had chosen to occur, but it was in the same + colonized region, and I am glad now that I had not remembered the incident + from my first reading of Borrow. It was sufficiently uncomfortable to have + some vague association with the failure of that excellent statesman’s + plan, blending creepily with the feeling of desolation from the gathering + dark, and I now recall the distinct relief given by the unexpected + appearance of two such Guardias Civiles as travel with every Spanish + train, in the space before our lonely station. + </p> + <p> + These admirable friends were part of the system which has made travel as + safe throughout Spain as it is in Connecticut, where indeed I sometimes + wonder that road-agents do not stop my Boston express in the waste expanse + of those certain sand barrens just beyond New Haven. The last time I came + through that desert I could not help thinking how nice it would be to have + two Guardias Civiles in our Pullman car; but of course at the summit of + the Sierra Morena, where our <i>rapido</i> was stalled in the deepening + twilight, it was still nicer to see that soldier pair, pacing up and down, + trim, straight, very gentle and polite-looking, but firm, with their + rifles lying on their shoulders which they kept exactly together. It is + part of the system that they may use those rifles upon any evil-doer whom + they discover in a deed of violence, acting at once as police, court of + law, and executioners; and satisfying public curiosity by pinning to the + offender’s coat their official certificate that he was shot by such and + such a civil guard for such and such a reason, and then notifying the + nearest authorities. It is perhaps too positive, too peremptory, too + precise; and the responsibility could not be intrusted to men who had not + satisfied the government of their fitness by two years’ service in the + army without arrest for any offense, or even any question of misbehavior. + But these conditions once satisfied, and their temperament and character + approved, they are intrusted with what seem plenary powers till they are + retired for old age; then their sons may serve after them as Civil Guards + with the same prospect of pensions in the end. I suppose they do not + always travel first class, but once their silent, soldierly presence + honored our compartment between stations; and once an officer of their + corps conversed for long with a fellow-passenger in that courteous ease + and self-respect which is so Spanish between persons of all ranks. + </p> + <p> + It was not very long after the guards appeared so reassuringly before the + station, when a series of warning bells and whistles sounded, and our + locomotive with an impatient scream began to tug at our train. We were + really off, starting from Santa Elena at the very time when we ought to + have been stopping at Cordova, with a good stretch of four hours still + before us. As our fellow-travelers quitted us at one station and another + we were finally left alone with the kindly-looking old man who had seemed + interested in us from the first, and who now made some advances in broken + English. Presently he told us in Spanish, to account for the English + accent on which we complimented him, that he had two sons studying some + manufacturing business in Manchester, where he had visited them, and + acquired so much of our tongue as we had heard. He was very proud and glad + to speak of his sons, and he valued us for our English and the strangeness + which commends people to one another in travel. When he got out at a + station obscured past identification by its flaring lamps, he would not + suffer me to help him with his hand-baggage; while he deplored my offered + civility, he reassured me by patting my back at parting. Yet I myself had + to endure the kindness which he would not when we arrived at Cordova, + where two young fellows, who had got in at a suburban station, helped me + with our bags and bundles quite as if they had been two young Americans. + </p> + <p> + V + </p> + <p> + Somewhere at a junction our train had been divided and our car, left the + last of what remained, had bumped and threatened to beat itself to pieces + during its remaining run of fifteen miles. This, with our long retard at + Santa Elena, and our opportune defense from the depraved descendants of + the reforming German colonists by the Guardias Civiles, had given us a day + of so much excitement that we were anxious to have it end tranquilly at + midnight in the hotel which we had chosen from, our Baedeker. I would not + have any reader of mine choose it again from my experience of it, though + it was helplessly rather wilfully bad; certainly the fault was not the + hotel’s that it seemed as far from the station as Cordova was from Madrid. + It might, under the circumstances, have, been <i>a</i> merit in it to be + undergoing a thorough overhauling of the furnishing and decoration of the + rooms on the <i>patio</i> which had formed our ideal for a quiet night. A + conventionally napkined waiter welcomed us from the stony street, and sent + us up to our rooms with the young interpreter who met us at the station, + but was obscure as to their location. When we refused them because they + were over that loud-echoing alley, the interpreter made himself still more + our friend and called mandatorially down the speaking-tube that we wished + <i>interiores</i> and would take nothing else, though he must have known + that no such rooms were to be had. He even abetted us in visiting the + rooms on the <i>patio</i> and satisfying ourselves that they were all + dismantled; when the waiter brought up the hot soup which was the only hot + thing in the house beside our tempers, he joined with that poor fellow in + reconciling us to the inevitable. They declared that the people whom we + heard uninterruptedly clattering and chattering by in the street below, + and the occasional tempest of wheels and bells and hoofs that clashed up + to us would be the very last to pass through there that night, and they + gave such good and sufficient reasons for their opinion that we yielded as + we needs must. Of course, they were wrong; and perhaps they even knew that + they were wrong; but I think we were the only people in that neighborhood + who got any sleep that night or the next. We slept the sleep of + exhaustion, but I believe those Cordovese preferred waking outdoors to + trying to sleep within. It was apparently their custom to walk and talk + the night away in the streets, not our street alone, but all the other + streets of Cordova; the laughing which I heard may have expressed the + popular despair of getting any sleep. The next day we experimented in + listening from rooms offered us over another street, and then we remained + measurably contented to bear the ills we had. This was after an exhaustive + search for a better hotel had partly appeased us; but there remained in + the Paseo del Gran Capitan one house unvisited which has ever since grown + upon my belief as embracing every comfort and advantage lacking to our + hotel. I suppose I am the stronger in this belief because when we came to + it we had been so disappointed with the others that we had not the courage + to go inside. Smell for smell, the interior of that hotel may have + harbored a worse one than the odor of henhouse which pervaded ours, I hope + from the materials for calcimining the rooms on the <i>patio.</i> + </p> + <p> + By the time we returned we found a guide waiting for us, and we agreed + with him for a day’s service. He did not differ with other authorities as + to the claims of Cordova on the tourist’s interest. From being the most + brilliant capital of the Western world in the time of the Caliphs it is + now allowed by all the guides and guide-books and most of the travelers, + to be one of the dullest of provincial towns. It is no longer the center + of learning; and though it cannot help doing a large business in olives, + with the orchards covering the hills around it, the business does not seem + to be a very active one. “The city once the abode of the flower of + Andalusian nobility,” says the intelligent O’Shea in his <i>Guide to + Spain, “</i>is inhabited chiefly by administradores of the absentee + senorio; their ‘solares’ are desert and wretched, the streets ill paved + though clean, and the whitewashed houses unimportant, low, and denuded of + all art and meaning, either past or present.” Baedeker gives like reasons + for thinking “the traveler whose expectation is on tiptoe as he enters the + ancient capital of the Moors will probably be disappointed in all but the + cathedral.” <i>Cook’s Guide,</i> latest but not least commendable of the + authorities, is of a more divided mind and finds the means of trade and + industry and their total want of visible employment at the worst + anomalous. + </p> + <p> + <a name="linkimage-0019" id="linkimage-0019"> + <!-- IMG --></a> + </p> + <div class="fig" style="width:60%;"> + <img src="images/h1-19.jpg" alt="19 the Ancient City of Cordova " width="100%" /><br /> + </div> + <p> + Vacant, narrow streets where the grass does not grow, and there is only an + endless going and coming of aimless feet; a market without buyers or + sellers to speak of, and a tangle of squat white houses, abounding in + lovely <i>patios,</i> sweet and bright with flowers and fountains: this + seems to be Cordova in the consensus of the manuals, and with me in the + retrospect a sort of puzzle is the ultimate suggestion of the dead capital + of the Western Caliphs. Gautier thinks, or seventy-two years ago he + thought (and there has not been much change since), that “Cordova has a + more African look than any other city of Andalusia; its streets, or rather + its lanes, whose tumultuous pavement resembles the bed of dry torrents, + all littered with straw from the loads of passing donkeys, have nothing + that recalls the manners and customs of Europe. The Moors, if they came + back, would have no great trouble to reinstate themselves. ... The + universal use of lime-wash gives a uniform tint to the monuments, blunts + the lines of the architecture, effaces the ornamentation, and forbids you + to read their age.... You cannot know the wall of a century ago from the + wall of yesterday. Cordova, once the center of Arab civilization, is now a + huddle of little white houses with corridors between them where two mules + could hardly pass abreast. Life seems to have ebbed from the vast body, + once animated by the active circulation of Moorish blood; nothing is left + now but the blanched and calcined skeleton.... In spite of its Moslem air, + Cordova is very Christian and rests under the special protection of the + Archangel Raphael.” It is all rather contradictory; but Gautier owns that + the great mosque is a “monument unique in the world, and novel even for + travelers who have had the fortune to admire the wonders of Moorish + architecture at Granada or Seville.” + </p> + <p> + De Amicis, who visited Cordova nearly forty-five years later, and in the + heart of spring, brought letters which opened something of the intimate + life of that apparently blanched and calcined skeleton. He meets young men + and matches Italian verses with their Spanish; spends whole nights sitting + in their cafes or walking their plazas, and comes away with his mouth full + of the rapturous verses of an Arab poet: “Adieu, Cordova! Would that my + life were as long as Noah’s, that I might live forever within thy walls! + Would that I had the treasures of Pharaoh, to spend them upon wine and the + beautiful women of Cordova, with tho gentle eyes that invite kisses!” He + allows that the lines may be “a little too tropical for the taste of a + European,” and it seems to me that there may be a golden mean between + scolding and flattering which would give the truth about Cordova. I do not + promise to strike it; our hotel still rankles in my heart; but I promise + to try for it, though I have to say that the very moment we started for + the famous mosque it began to rain, and rained throughout the forenoon, + while we weltered from wonder to wonder through the town. We were indeed + weltering in a closed carriage, which found its way not so badly through + the alleys where two mules could not pass abreast. The lime-wash of the + walls did not emit the white heat in which the other tourists have basked + or baked; the houses looked wet and chill, and if they had those flowered + and fountained <i>patios</i> which people talk of they had taken them in + out of the rain. + </p> + <p> + VI + </p> + <p> + At the mosque the <i>patio</i> was not taken in only because it was so + large, but I find by our records that it was much molested by a beggar who + followed us when we dismounted at the gate of the Court of Oranges, and + all but took our minds off the famous Moorish fountain in the midst. It + was not a fountain of the plashing or gushing sort, but a noble great pool + in a marble basin. The women who clustered about it were not laughing and + chattering, or singing, or even dancing, in the right Andalusian fashion, + but stood silent in statuesque poses from which they seemed in no haste to + stir for filling their water jars and jugs. The Moorish tradition of + irrigation confronting one in all the travels and histories as a supreme + agricultural advantage which the Arabs took back to Africa with them, + leaving Spain to thirst and fry, lingers here in the circles sunk round + the orange trees and fed by little channels. The trees grew about as the + fancy took them, and did not mind the incongruous palms towering as + irregularly above them. While we wandered toward the mosque a woman robed + in white cotton, with a lavender scarf crossing her breast, came in as + irrelevantly as the orange trees and stood as stably as the palms; in her + night-black hair she alone in Cordova redeemed the pledge of beauty made + for all Andalusian women by the reckless poets and romancers, whether in + ballads or books of travel. + </p> + <p> + One enters the court by a gate in a richly yellow tower, with a shrine to + St. Michael over the door, and still higher at the lodging of the keeper a + bed of bright flowers. Then, however, one is confronted with the first + great disappointment in the mosque. Shall it be whispered in awe-stricken + undertone that the impression of a bull-ring is what lingers in the memory + of the honest sight-seer from his first glance at the edifice? The effect + is heightened by the filling of the arcades which encircle it, and which + now confront the eye with a rounded wall, where the Saracenic horseshoe + remains distinct, but the space of yellow masonry below seems to forbid + the outsider stealing knowledge of the spectacle inside. The spectacle is + of course no feast of bulls (as the Spanish euphemism has it), but the + first amphitheatrical impression is not wholly dispersed by the sight of + the interior. In order that the reader at his distance may figure this, he + must imagine an indefinite cavernous expanse, with a low roof supported in + vaulted arches by some thousand marble pillars, each with a different + capital. There used to be perhaps half a thousand more pillars, and + Charles V. made the Cordovese his reproaches for destroying the wonder of + them when they planted their proud cathedral in the heart of the mosque. + He held it a sort of sacrilege, but I think the honest traveler will say + that there are still enough of those rather stumpy white marble columns + left, and enough of those arches, striped in red and white with their + undeniable suggestion of calico awnings. It is like a grotto gaudily but + dingily decorated, or a vast circus-tent curtained off in hangings of + those colors. + </p> + <p> + <a name="linkimage-0020" id="linkimage-0020"> + <!-- IMG --></a> + </p> + <div class="fig" style="width:60%;"> + <img src="images/h1-20.jpg" + alt="20 the Bell-tower of The Great Mosque, Cordova " width="100%" /><br /> + </div> + <p> + One sees the sanctuary where the great Caliph said his prayers, and the + Koran written by Othman and stained with his blood was kept; but I know at + least one traveler who saw it without sentiment or any sort of reverent + emotion, though he had not the authority of the “old rancid Christianity” + of a Castilian for withholding his homage. If people would be as sincere + as other people would like them to be, I think no one would profess regret + for the Arab civilization in the presence of its monuments. Those Moors + were of a religion which revolts all the finer instincts and lifts the + soul with no generous hopes; and the records of it have no appeal save to + the love of mere beautiful decoration. Even here it mostly fails, to my + thinking, and I say that for my part I found nothing so grand in the great + mosaue of Cordova as the cathedral which rises in the heart of it. If + Abderrahman boasted that he would rear a shrine to the joy of earthly life + and the hope of an earthly heaven, in the place of the Christian temple + which he would throw down, I should like to overhear what his disembodied + spirit would have to say to the saint whose shrine he demolished. I think + the saint would have the better of him in any contention for their + respective faiths, and could easily convince the impartial witness that + his religion then abiding in medieval gloom was of promise for the future + which Islam can never be. Yet it cannot be denied that when Abderraham + built his mosque the Arabs of Cordova were a finer and wiser people than + the Christians who dwelt in intellectual darkness among them, with an + ideal of gloom and self-denial and a zeal for aimless martyrdom which must + have been very hard for a gentleman and scholar to bear. Gentlemen and + scholars were what the Arabs of the Western Caliphate seem to have become, + with a primacy in medicine and mathematics beyond the learning of all + other Europe in their day. They were tolerant skeptics in matters of + religion; polite agnostics, who disliked extremely the passion of some + Christians dwelling among them for getting themselves put to death, as + they did, for insulting the popularly accepted Mohammedan creed. Probably + people of culture in Cordova were quite of Abderrahman’s mind in wishing + to substitute the temple of a cheerfuler ideal for the shrine of the + medieval Christianity which he destroyed; though they might have had their + reserves as to the taste in which his mosque was completed. If they + recognized it as a concession to the general preference, they could do so + without the discomfort which they must have suffered when some new horde + of Berbers, full of faith and fight, came over from Africa to push back + the encroaching Spanish frontier, and give the local Christians as much + martyrdom as they wanted. + </p> + <p> + It is all a conjecture based upon material witness no more substantial + than that which the Latin domination left long centuries before the Arabs + came to possess the land. The mosque from which you drive through the rain + to the river is neither newer nor older looking than the beautiful + Saracenic bridge over the Guadalquivir which the Arabs themselves say was + first built by the Romans in the time of Augustus; the Moorish mill by the + thither shore might have ground the first wheat grown in Europe. It is + intensely, immemorially African, flat-roofed, white-walled; the mules + waiting outside in the wet might have been drooping there ever since the + going down of the Flood, from which the river could have got its muddy + yellow. + </p> + <p> + If the reader will be advised by me he will not go to the Archaeological + Museum, unless he wishes particularly to contribute to the support of the + custodian; the collection will not repay him even for the time in which a + whole day of Cordova will seem so superabundant. Any little street will be + worthier his study, with its type of passing girls in white and black + mantillas, and its shallow shops of all sorts, their fronts thrown open, + and their interiors flung, as it were, on the sidewalk. It is said that + the streets were the first to be paved in Europe, and they have apparently + not been repaved since 850. This indeed will not Hold quite true of that + thoroughfare, twenty feet wide at least, which led from our hotel to the + Paseo del Gran Capitan. In this were divers shops of the genteeler sort, + and some large cafes, standing full of men of leisure, who crowded to + their doors and windows, with their hats on and their hands in their + pockets, as at a club, and let no fact of the passing world escape their + hungry eyes. Their behavior expressed a famine of incident in Cordova + which was pathetic. + </p> + <p> + VII + </p> + <p> + The people did not look very healthy as to build or color, and there was a + sound of coughing everywhere. To be sure, it was now the season of the + first colds, which would no doubt wear off with the coming of next spring; + and there was at any rate not nearly so much begging as at Toledo, because + there could not be anywhere. I am sorry I can contribute no statistics as + to the moral or intellectual condition of Cordova; perhaps they will not + be expected or desired of me; I can only say that the general intelligence + is such that no one will own he does not know anything you ask him even + when he does not; but this is a national rather than a local trait, which + causes the stranger to go in many wrong directions all over the peninsula. + I should not say that there was any noticeable decay of character from the + north to the south such as the attributive pride of the old Castilian in + the Sheridan Knowlesian drama would teach; the Cordovese looked no more + shiftless than the haughtiest citizens of Burgos. + </p> + <p> + They had decidedly prettier <i>patios</i> and more of them, and they had + many public carriages against none whatever in that ancient capital. + Rubber tires I did not expect in Cordova and certainly did not get in a + city where a single course over the pavements of 850 would have worn them + to tatters: but there seems a good deal of public spirit if one may judge + from the fact that it is the municipality which keeps Abderrahman’s mosque + in repair. There are public gardens, far pleasanter than those of + Valladolid, which we visited in an interval of the afternoon, and there is + a very personable bull-ring to which we drove in the vain hope of seeing + the people come out in a typical multitude. But there had been no feast of + bulls; and we had to make what we could out of the walking and driving in + the Paseo del Gran Capitan toward evening. In its long, discouraging + course there were some good houses, but not many, and the promenaders of + any social quality were almost as few. Some ladies in private carriages + were driving out, and a great many more in public ones as well dressed as + the others, but with no pretense of state in the horses or drivers. The + women of the people all wore flowers in their hair, a dahlia or a + marigold, whether their hair was black or gray. No ladies were walking in + the Paseo, except one pretty mother, with her nice-looking children about + her, who totaled the sum of her class; but men of every class rather + swarmed. High or low, they all wore the kind of hat which abounds + everywhere in Andalusia and is called a Cordovese: flat, stiff, squat in + crown and wide in brim, and of every shade of gray, brown, and black. + </p> + <p> + I ought to have had my associations with the great Captain Gonsalvo in the + promenade which the city has named after him, but I am not sure that I + had, though his life was one of the Spanish books which I won my way + through in the middle years of my pathless teens. A comprehensive + ignorance of the countries and histories which formed the setting of his + most dramatic career was not the best preparation for knowledge of the + man, but it was the best I had, and now I can only look back at my + struggle with him and wonder that I came off alive. It is the hard fate of + the self-taught that their learning must cost them twice as much labor as + it would if they were taught by others; the very books they study are + grudging friends if not insidious foes. Long afterward when I came to + Italy, and began to make the past part of my present, I began to untangle + a little the web that the French and the Aragonese wove in the conquest + and reconquest of the wretched Sicilies; but how was I to imagine in the + Connecticut Western Reserve the scene of Gonsalvo’s victories in Calabria? + Even loath Ferdinand the Catholic said they brought greater glory to his + crown than his own conquest of Granada; I dare say I took some + unintelligent pride in his being Viceroy of Naples, and I may have been + indignant at his recall and then his retirement from court by the jealous + king. But my present knowledge of these facts, and of his helping put down + the Moorish insurrection in 1500, as well as his exploits as commander of + a Spanish armada against the Turks is a recent debt I owe to the <i>Encyclopedia + Britannica</i> and not to my boyish researches. Of like actuality is my + debt to Mr. Calvert’s <i>Southern Spain,</i> where he quotes the + accounting which the Great Captain gave on the greedy king’s demand for a + statement of his expenses in the Sicilies. + </p> + <p> + “Two hundred thousand seven hundred and thirty-six ducats and 9 reals paid + to the clergy and the poor who prayed for the victory of the army of + Spain. + </p> + <p> + “One hundred millions in pikes, bullets, and intrenching tools; 10,000 + ducats in scented gloves, to preserve the troops from the odor of the + enemies’ dead left on the battle-field; 100,000 ducats, spent in the + repair of the bells completely worn out by every-day announcing fresh + victories gained over our enemies; 50,000 ducats in ‘aguardiente’ for the + troops on the eve of battle. A million and a half for the safeguarding + prisoners and wounded. + </p> + <p> + “One million for Masses of Thanksgiving; 700,494 ducats for secret + service, etc. + </p> + <p> + “And one hundred millions for the patience with which I have listened to + the king, who demands an account from the man who has presented him with a + Kingdom.” + </p> + <p> + It seems that Gonsalvo was one of the greatest humorists, as well as + captains of his age, and the king may very well have liked his fun no + better than his fame. Now that he has been dead nearly four hundred years, + Ferdinand would, if he were living, no doubt join Cordova in honoring + Gonzalo Hernandez de Aguila y de Cordova. After all he was not born in + Cordova (as I had supposed till an hour ago), but in the little city of + Montilla, five stations away on the railroad to the Malaga, and now more + noted for its surpassing sherry than for the greatest soldier of his time. + To have given its name to Amontillado is glory enough for Montilla, and it + must be owned that Gonzalo Hernandez de Aguila y de Montilla would not + sound so well as the title we know the hero by, when we know him at all. + There may be some who will say that Cordova merits remembrance less + because of him than because of Columbus, who first came to the Catholic + kings there to offer them not a mere kingdom, but a whole hemisphere. + Cordova was then the Spanish headquarters for the operations against + Granada, and one reads of the fact with a luminous sense which one cannot + have till one has seen Cordova. + </p> + <p> + VIII <a name="linkimage-0021" id="linkimage-0021"> + <!-- IMG --></a> + </p> + <div class="fig" style="width:60%;"> + <img src="images/h1-21.jpg" alt="21 Gateway of the Bridge, Cordova " width="100%" /><br /> + </div> + <p> + After our visits to the mosque and the bridge and the museum there + remained nothing of our forenoon, and we gave the whole of the earlier + afternoon to an excursion which strangers are expected to make into the + first climb of hills to the eastward of the city. The road which reaches + the Huerto de los Arcos is rather smoother for driving than the streets of + Cordova, but the rain had made it heavy, and we were glad of our good + horses and their owner’s mercy to them. He stopped so often to breathe + them when the ascent began that we had abundant time to note the features + of the wayside; the many villas, piously named for saints, set on the + incline, and orcharded about with orange trees, in the beginning of that + measureless forest of olives which has no limit but the horizon. + </p> + <p> + From the gate to the villa which we had come to see it was a stiff ascent + by terraced beds of roses, zinneas, and purple salvia beside walls heavy + with jasmine and trumpet creepers, in full bloom, and orange trees, + fruiting and flowering in their desultory way. Before the villa we were to + see a fountain much favored by our guide who had a passion for the jets + that played ball with themselves as long as the gardener let him turn the + water on, and watched with joy to see how high the balls would go before + slipping back. The fountain was in a grotto-like nook, where benches of + cement decked with scallop shells were set round a basin with the figures + of two small boys in it bestriding that of a lamb, all employed in letting + the water dribble from their mouths. It was very simple-hearted, as such + things seem mostly obliged to be, but nature helped art out so well with a + lovely abundance of leaf and petal that a far more exacting taste than + ours must have been satisfied. The garden was in fact very pretty, though + whether it was worth fifteen pesetas and three hours coming to see the + reader must decide for himself when he does it. I think it was, myself, + and I would like to be there now, sitting in a shell-covered cement chair + at the villa steps, and letting the landscape unroll itself wonderfully + before me. We were on a shore of that ocean of olives which in southern + Spain washes far up the mountain walls of the blue and bluer distances, + and which we were to skirt more and more in bay and inlet and widening and + narrowing expanses throughout Andalusia. Before we left it we wearied + utterly of it, and in fact the olive of Spain is not the sympathetic olive + of Italy, though I should think it a much more practical and profitable + tree. It is not planted so much at haphazard as the Italian olive seems to + be; its mass looks less like an old apple orchard than the Italian; its + regular succession is a march of trim files as far as the horizon or the + hillsides, which they often climbed to the top. We were in the season of + the olive harvest, and throughout the month of October its nearer lines + showed the sturdy trees weighed down by the dense fruit, sometimes very + small, sometimes as large as pigeon eggs. There were vineyards and + wheat-fields in that vast prospect, and certainly there were towns and + villages; but what remains with me is the sense of olives and ever more + olives, though this may be the cumulative effect of other such prospects + as vast and as monotonous. + </p> + <p> + While we looked away and away, the gardener and a half-grown boy were + about their labors that Sunday afternoon as if it were a week-day, though + for that reason perhaps they were not working very hard. They seemed + mostly to be sweeping up the fallen leaves from the paths, and where the + leaves had not fallen from the horse-chestnuts the boy was assisting + nature by climbing the trees and plucking them. We tried to find out why + he was doing this, but to this day I do not know why he was doing it, and + I must be content to contribute the bare fact to the science of + arboriculture. Possibly it was in the interest of neatness, and was a + precaution against letting the leaves drop and litter the grass. There was + apparently a passion for neatness throughout, which in the villa itself + mounted to ecstasy. It was in a state to be come and lived in at any + moment, though I believe it was occupied only in the late spring and the + early autumn; in winter the noble family went to Madrid, and in summer to + some northern watering-place. It was rather small, and expressed a life of + the minor hospitalities when the family was in residence. It was no place + for house-parties, and scarcely for week-end visits, or even for + neighborhood dinners. Perhaps on that terrace there was afternoon + ice-cream or chocolate for friends who rode or drove over or out; it + seemed so possible that we had to check in ourselves the cozy impulse to + pull up our shell-covered cement chairs to some central table of like + composition. + </p> + <p> + Within, the villa was of a spick-and-spanness which I feel that I have not + adequately suggested; and may I say that the spray of a garden-hose seemed + all that would be needed to put the place in readiness for occupation? Not + that even this was needed for that interior of tile and marble, so + absolutely apt for the climate and the use the place would be put to. In + vain we conjectured, and I hope not impertinently, the characters and + tastes of the absentees; the sole clue that offered itself was a bookshelf + of some Spanish versions from authors scientific and metaphysical to the + verge of agnosticism. I would not swear to Huxley and Herbert Spencer + among the English writers, but they were such as these, not in their + entire bulk, but in extracts and special essays. I recall the slightly + tilted row of the neat paper copies; and I wish I knew who it was liked to + read them. The Spanish have a fondness for such dangerous ground; from + some of their novels it appears they feel it rather chic to venture on it. + </p> + <p> + IX + </p> + <p> + We came away from Cordova with a pretty good conscience as to its sights. + Upon the whole we were glad they were so few, when once we had made up our + minds about the mosque. But now I have found too late that we ought to + have visited the general market in the old square where the tournaments + used to take place; we ought to have seen also the Chapel of the Hospital + del Cardenal, because it was part of the mosque of Al-Manssour; we ought + to have verified the remains of two baths out of the nine hundred once + existing in the Calle del Bagno Alta; and we ought finally to have visited + the remnant of a Moorish house in the Plazuela de San Nicolas, with its + gallery of jasper columns, now unhappily whitewashed. The Campo Santo has + an unsatisfied claim upon my interest because it was the place where the + perfervid Christian zealots used to find the martyrdom they sought at the + hands of the unwilling Arabs; and where, far earlier, Julius Caesar + planted a plane tree after his victory over the forces of Pompeii at + Munda. The tree no longer exists, but neither does Caesar, or the thirty + thousand enemies whom he slew there, or the sons of Pompeii who commanded + them. These were so near beating Casar at first that he ran among his + soldiers “asking them whether they were not ashamed to deliver him into + the hands of boys.” One of the boys escaped, but two days after the fight + the head of the elder was brought to Caesar, who was not liked for the + triumph he made himself after the event in Rome, where it was thought out + of taste to rejoice over the calamity of his fellow-countrymen as if they + had been foreign foes; the Romans do not seem to have minded his putting + twenty-eight thousand Cordovese to death for their Pompeian politics. If I + had remembered all this from my Plutarch, I should certainly have gone to + see the place where Caesar planted that plane tree. Perhaps some kind soul + will go to see it for me. I myself do not expect to return to Cordova. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0010" id="link2H_4_0010"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + IX. FIRST DAYS IN SEVILLE + </h2> + <p> + Cordova seemed to cheer up as much as we at our going. We had undoubtedly + had the better night’s sleep; as often as we woke we found Cordova awake, + walking and talking, and coughing more than the night before, probably + from fresh colds taken in the rain. From time to time there were + church-bells, variously like tin pans and iron pots in tone, without + sonorousness in their noise, or such wild clangor as some Italian + church-bells have. But Cordova had lived through it, and at the station + was lively with the arriving and departing trains. The morning was not + only bright; it was hot, and the place babbled with many voices. We + thought one voice crying “Agua, agua!” was a parrot’s and then we thought + it was a girl’s, but really it was a boy with water for sale in a stone + bottle. He had not a rose, white or red, in his hair, but if he had been a + girl, old or young, he would have had one, white or red. Some of the elder + women wore mantillas, but these wore flowers too, and were less pleasing + than pathetic for it; one very massive matron was less pleasing and more + pathetic than the rest. Peasant women carried bunches of chickens by the + legs, and one had a turkey in a rush bag with a narrow neck to put its + head out of for its greater convenience in gobbling. At the door of the + station a donkey tried to bite a fly on its back; but even a Spanish + donkey cannot do everything. There was no attempt to cheat us in the + weight of our trunks, as there often is in Italy, and the <i>mozo</i> who + put us and our hand-bags into the train was content with his reasonable + fee. As for the pair of Civil Guards who were to go with us, they were of + an insurpassable beauty and propriety, and we felt it a peculiar honor + when one of them got into the compartment beside ours. + </p> + <p> + We were to take the mail-train to Seville; and in Spain the <i>correo</i> + is next to the Sud-Express, which is the last word in the vocabulary of + Peninsular railroading. Our <i>correo</i> had been up all night on the way + from Madrid, and our compartment had apparently been used as a bedchamber, + with moments of supper-room. It seemed to have been occupied by a whole + family; there were frowsy pillows crushed into the corners of the seats, + and, though a porter caught these away, the cigar stubs, and the cigarette + ashes strewing the rug and fixed in it with various liquids, as well as + some scattering hair-pins, escaped his care. But when it was dried and + aired out by windows opened to the sunny weather, it was by no means a bad + compartment. The broad cushions were certainly cleaner than the carpet; + and it was something—it was a great deal—to be getting out of + Cordova on any terms. Not that Cordova seems at this distance so bad as it + seemed on the ground. If we could have had the bright Monday of our + departure instead of the rainy Sunday of our stay there we might have + wished to stay longer. But as it was the four hours’ run to Seville was + delightful, largely because it Was the run from Cordova. + </p> + <p> + We were running at once over a gentle ground-swell which rose and sank in + larger billows now and then, and the yellow Guadalquivir followed us all + the way, in a valley that sometimes widened to the blue mountains always + walling the horizon. We had first entered Andalusia after dark, and the + scene had now a novelty little staled by the distant view of the afternoon + before. The olive orchards then seen afar were intimately realized more + and more in their amazing extent. None of the trees looked so old, so + world-old, as certain trees in the careless olive groves of Italy. They + were regularly planted, and most were in a vigorous middle life; where + they were old they were closely pollarded; and there were young trees, + apparently newly set out; there were holes indefinitely waiting for + others. These were often, throughout Andalusia, covered to their first + fork with cones of earth; and we remained in the dramatic superstition + that this was to protect them against the omnivorous hunger of the goats, + till we were told that it was to save their roots from being loosened by + the wind. The orchards filled the level foregrounds and the hilly + backgrounds to the vanishing-points of the mountainous perspectives; but + when I say this I mean the reader to allow for wide expanses of pasturage, + where lordly bulls were hoarding themselves for the feasts throughout + Spain which the bulls of Andalusia are happy beyond others in supplying. + With their devoted families they paraded the meadows, black against the + green, or stood in sharp arrest, the most characteristic accent of the + scene. In the farther rather than the nearer distance there were towns, + very white, very African, keeping jealously away from the stations, as the + custom of most towns is in Spain, beyond the wheat-lands which disputed + the landscape with the olive orchards. + </p> + <p> + One of these towns lay white at the base of a hill topped by a yellow + Moorish castle against the blue sky, like a subject waiting for its + painter and conscious of its wonderful adaptation to water-color. The + railroad-banks were hedged with Spanish bayonet, and in places with cactus + grown into trees, all knees and elbows, and of a diabolical uncouthness. + The air was fresh and springlike, and under the bright sun, which we had + already felt hot, men were plowing the gray fields for wheat. Other men + were beginning their noonday lunch, which, with the long nap to follow, + would last till three o’clock, and perhaps be rashly accounted to them for + sloth by the industrious tourist who did not know that their work had + begun at dawn and would not end till dusk. Indolence may be a vice of the + towns in Spain, but there is no loafing in the country, if I may believe + the conclusions of my note-book. The fields often looked barren enough, + and large spaces of their surface were covered by a sort of ground palm, + as it seemed to be, though whether it was really a ground palm or not I + know no more than I know the name or nature of the wild flower which + looked an autumn crocus, and which with other wild flowers fringed the + whole course of the train. There was especially a small yellow flower, + star-shaped, which we afterward learned was called Todos Santos, from its + custom of blooming at All Saints, and which washed the sward in the + childlike enthusiasm of buttercups. A fine white narcissus abounded, and + clumps of a mauve flower which swung its tiny bells over the sward washed + by the Todos Santos. There were other flowers, which did what they could + to brighten our way, all clinging to the notion of summer, which the + weather continued to flatter throughout our fortnight in Seville. + </p> + <p> + I could not honestly say that the stations or the people about them were + more interesting than in La Mancha. But at one place, where some gentlemen + in linen jackets dismounted with their guns, a group of men with dogs + leashed in pairs and saddle-horses behind them, took me with the sense of + something peculiarly native where everything was so native. They were + slim, narrow-hipped young fellows, tight-jerkined, loose-trousered, with a + sort of divided apron of leather facing the leg and coming to the ankle; + and all were of a most masterly Velasquez coloring and drawing. As they + stood smoking motionlessly, letting the smoke drift from their nostrils, + they seemed somehow of the same make with the slouching hounds, and they + leaned forward together, giving the hunters no visible or audible + greeting, but questioning their will with one quality of gaze. The hunters + moved toward them, but not as if they belonged together, or expected any + sort of demonstration from the men, dogs, and horses that were of course + there to meet them. As long as our train paused, no electrifying spark + kindled them to a show of emotion; but it would have been interesting to + see what happened after we left them behind; they could not have kept + their attitude of mutual indifference much longer. These peasants, like + the Spaniards everywhere, were of an intelligent and sagacious look; they + only wanted a chance, one must think, to be a leading race. They have + sometimes an anxiety of appeal in their apathy, as if they would like to + know more than they do. + </p> + <p> + There was some livelier thronging at the station where the train stopped + for luncheon, but secure with the pretty rush-basket which the head waiter + at our hotel, so much better than the hotel, had furnished us at starting, + we kept to our car; and there presently we were joined by a young couple + who were unmistakably a new married couple. The man was of a rich brown, + and the woman of a dead white with dead black hair. They both might have + been better-looking than they were, but apparently not better otherwise, + for at Seville the groom helped us out of the car with our hand-bags. + </p> + <p> + I do not know what polite offers from him had already brought out the + thanks in which our speech bewrayed us; but at our outlandish accents they + at once became easier. They became frankly at home with themselves, and + talked in their Andalusian patter with no fear of being understood. I + might, indeed, have been far apter in Spanish without understanding their + talk, for when printed the Andalusian dialect varies as far from the + Castilian as, say, the Venetian varies from the Tuscan, and when spoken, + more. It may then be reduced almost wholly to vowel sounds, and from the + lips of some speakers it is really no more consonantal than if it came + from the beaks of birds. They do not lisp the soft <i>c</i> or the <i>z,</i> + as the Castilians do, but hiss them, and lisp the <i>s</i> instead, as the + reader will find amusingly noted in the Sevillian chapters of <i>The + Sister of San Sulpice,</i> which are the most charming chapters of that + most charming novel. At the stations there were sometimes girls and + sometimes boys with water for sale from stone bottles, who walked by the + cars crying it; and there were bits of bright garden, or there were + flowers in pots. There were also poor little human flowers, or call them + weeds, if you will, that suddenly sprang up beside our windows, and moved + their petals in pitiful prayer for alms. They always sprang up on the off + side of the train, so that the trainmen could not see them, but I hope no + trainman in Spain would have had the heart to molest them. As a matter of + taste in vegetation, however, we preferred an occasional effect of mixed + orange and pomegranate trees, with their perennial green and their + autumnal red. We were, in fact, so spoiled by the profusion of these + little human flowers, or weeds, that we even liked the change to the dried + stalk of an old man, flowering at top into a flat basket of pale-pink + shrimps. He gave us our first sight of sea-fruit, when we had got, without + knowing it, to Seville Junction. There was, oddly enough, no other fruit + for sale there; but there was a very agreeable-looking booth at the end of + the platform placarded with signs of Puerto Rico coffee, cognac, and other + drinks; and outside of it there were wash-basins and clean towels. I do + not know how an old woman with a blind daughter made herself effective in + the crowd, which did not seem much preoccupied with the opportunities of + ablution and refection at that booth; but perhaps she begged with her + blind daughter’s help while the crowd was busy in assorting itself for + Cadiz and Seville and Malaga and Cordova and other musically syllabled + mothers of history and romance. + </p> + <p> + II + </p> + <p> + A few miles and a few minutes more and we were in the embrace of the + loveliest of them, which was at first the clutch on the octroi. But the + octroi at Seville is not serious, and a walrus-mustached old porter, who + looked like an old American car-driver of the bearded eighteen-sixties, + eased us—not very swiftly, but softly—through the local + customs, and then we drove neither so swiftly nor so softly to the hotel, + where we had decided we would have rooms on the <i>patio.</i> We had still + to learn that if there is a <i>patio</i> in a Spanish hotel you cannot + have rooms in it, because they are either in repair or they are occupied. + In the present case they were occupied; but we could have rooms over the + street, which were the same as in the <i>patio,</i> and which were + perfectly quiet, as we could perceive from the trolley-cars grinding and + squealing under their windows. The manager (if that was the quality of the + patient and amiable old official who received us) seemed surprised to see + the cars there, perhaps because they were so inaudible; but he said we + could have rooms in the annex, fronting on the adjoining plaza and siding + on an inoffensive avenue where there were absolutely no cars. The + interior, climbing to a lofty roof by a succession of galleries, was + hushed by four silent senoras, all in black, and seated in mute ceremony + around a table in chairs from which their little feet scarcely touched the + marble pavement. Their quiet confirmed the manager’s assurance of a + pervading tranquillity, and though the only bath in the annex was + confessedly on the ground floor, and we were to be two floors above, the + affair was very simple: the chambermaid would always show us where the + bath was. + </p> + <p> + With misgiving, lost in a sense of our helplessness, we tried to think + that the avenue under us was then quieting down with the waning day; and + certainly it was not so noisy as the plaza, which, resounded with the + whips and quips of the cabmen, and gave no signs of quiescence. Otherwise + the annex was very pleasant, and we took the rooms shown us, hoping the + best and fearing the worst. Our fears were wiser than our hopes, but we + did not know this, and we went as gaily as we could for tea in the <i>patio</i> + of our hotel, where a fountain typically trickled amidst its water-plants + and a noiseless Englishman at his separate table almost restored our lost + faith in a world not wholly racket. A young Spaniard and two young Spanish + girls helped out the illusion with their gentle movements and their muted + gutturals, and we looked forward to dinner with fond expectation. To tell + the truth, the dinner, when we came back to it, was not very good, or at + least not very winning, and the next night it was no better, though the + head waiter had then, made us so much favor with himself as to promise us + a side-table for the rest of our stay. He was a very friendly head waiter, + and the dining-room was a long glare of the encaustic tiling which all + Seville seems lined with, and of every Moorish motive in the decoration. + Besides, there was a young Scotch girl, very interestingly pale and + delicate of face, at one of the tables, and at another a Spanish girl with + the most wonderful fire-red hair, and there were several miracles of the + beautiful obesity which abounds in Spain. + </p> + <p> + When we returned to the annex it did seem, for the short time we kept our + windows shut, that the manager had spoken true, and we promised ourselves + a tranquil night, which, after our two nights in Cordova, we needed if we + did not merit. But we had counted without the spread of popular education + in Spain. Under our windows, just across the way, there proved to be a + school of the “Royal Society of Friends of their Country,” as the Spanish + inscription in its front proclaimed; and at dusk its pupils, children and + young people of both sexes, began clamoring for knowledge at its doors. + About ten o’clock they burst from them again with joyous exultation in + their acquirements; then, shortly after, every manner of vehicle began to + pass, especially heavy market wagons overladen and drawn by horses + swarming with bells. Their succession left scarcely a moment of the night + unstunned; but if ever a moment seemed to be escaping, there was a + maniacal bell in a church near by that clashed out: “Hello! Here’s a bit + of silence; let’s knock it on the head!” + </p> + <p> + We went promptly the next day to the gentle old manager and told him that + he had been deceived in thinking he had given us rooms on a quiet street, + and appealed to his invention for something, for anything, different. His + invention had probably never been put to such stress before, and he showed + us an excess of impossible apartments, which we subjected to a + consideration worthy of the greatest promise in them. Our search ended in + a suite of rooms on the top floor, where we could have the range of a flat + roof outside if we wanted; but as the private family living next door kept + hens, led by a lordly turkey, on their roof, we were sorrowfully forced to + forego our peculiar advantage. Peculiar we then thought it, though we + learned afterward that poultry-farming was not uncommon on the flat roofs + of Seville, and there is now no telling how we might have prospered if we + had taken those rooms and stocked our roof with Plymouth Rocks and + Wyandottes. At the moment, however, we thought it would not do, and we + could only offer our excuses to the manager, whose resources we had now + exhausted, but not whose patience, and we parted with expressions of + mutual esteem and regret. + </p> + <p> + Our own grief was sincerer in leaving behind us the enthusiastic + chambermaid of the annex who had greeted us with glad service, and was so + hopeful that when she said our doors should be made to latch and lock in + the morning, it was as if they latched and locked already. Her zeal made + the hot water she brought for the baths really hot, <i>“Caliente, + caliente,”</i> and her voice would have quieted the street under our + windows if music could have soothed it. At a friendly word she grew + trustful, and told us how it was hard, hard for poor people in Seville; + how she had three dollars a month and her husband four; and how they had + to toil for it. When we could not help telling her, cruelly enough, what + they singly and jointly earn in New York, she praised rather than coveted + the happier chance impossible to them. They would like to go, but they + could not go! She was gay with it all, and after we had left the hotel and + come back for the shawl which had been forgotten, she ran for it, shouting + with laughter, as if we must see it the great joke she did; and she took + the reward offered with the self-respect never wanting to the Spanish + poor. Very likely if I ransacked my memory I might find instances of their + abusing those advantages over the stranger which Providence puts in the + reach of the native everywhere; but on the spur of the moment, I do not + recall any. In Spain, where a woman earns three dollars a month, as in + America where she earns thirty, the poor seem to abound in the comparative + virtues which the rich demand in return for the chances of Heaven which + they abandon to them. There were few of those rendering us service there + whom we would not willingly have brought away with us; but very likely we + should have found they had the defects of their qualities. + </p> + <p> + When we definitely turned our backs on the potential poultry-farm offered + us at our hotel, we found ourselves in as good housing at another, + overlooking the length and breadth of the stately Plaza San Fernando, with + its parallelogram of tall palms, under a full moon swimming in a cloudless + heaven by night and by day. By day, of course, we did not see it, but the + sun was visibly there, rather blazing hot, even in mid-October, and + showing more distinctly than the moon the beautiful tower of the Giralda + from the waist up, and the shoulder of the great cathedral, besides + features of other noble, though less noble, edifices. Our plaza was so + full of romantic suggestion that I am rather glad now I had no association + with it. I am sure I could not have borne at the time to know, as I have + only now learned by recurring to my Baedeker, that in the old Franciscan + cloister once there had stood the equestrian statue of the Comendador who + dismounts and comes unbidden to the supper of Don Giovanni in the opera. + That was a statue which, seen in my far youth, haunted my nightmares for + many a year, and I am sure it would have kept me from sleep in the + conditions, now so perfect, of our new housing if I had known, about it. + </p> + <p> + III + </p> + <p> + The plaza is named, of course, for King Fernando, who took Seville from + the Moors six hundred years ago, and was canonized for his conquests and + his virtues. But I must not enter so rashly upon the history of Seville, + or forget the arrears of personal impression which I have to bring up. The + very drive from the station was full of impressions, from the narrow and + crooked streets, the houses of yellow, blue, and pink stucco, the flowered + and fountained <i>patios</i> glimpsed passingly, the half-lengths of + church-towers, and the fleeting facades of convents and palaces, all + lovely in the mild afternoon light. These impressions soon became + confluent, so that without the constant witness of our note-books I should + now find it impossible to separate them. If they could be imparted to the + reader in their complexity, that would doubtless be the ideal, though he + would not believe that their confused pattern was a true reflex of + Seville; so I recur to the record, which says that the morning after our + arrival we hurried to see the great and beautiful cathedral. It had + failed, in our approach the afternoon before, to fulfil the promise of one + of our half-dozen guide-books (I forget which one) that it would seem to + gather Seville about it as a hen gathers her chickens, but its vastness + grew upon us with every moment of our more intimate acquaintance. Our + acquaintance quickly ripened into the affectionate friendship which became + a tender regret when we looked our last upon it; and vast as it was, it + was never too large for our embrace. I doubt if there was a moment in our + fortnight’s devotion when we thought the doughty canons, its brave-spoken + founders, “mad to have undertaken it,” as they said they expected people + to think, or any moment when we did not revere them for imagining a temple + at once so beautiful and so big. + </p> + <p> + Our first visit was redeemed from the commonplace of our duty-round of the + side-chapels by two things which I can remember without the help of my + notes. One, and the great one, was Murillo’s “Vision of St. Anthony,” in + which the painter has most surpassed himself, and which not to have seen, + Gautier says, is not to have known the painter. It is so glorious a + masterpiece, with the Child joyously running down from the clustering + angels toward the kneeling saint in the nearest corner of the foreground, + that it was distinctly a moment before I realized that the saint had once + been cut out of his corner and sent into an incredible exile in America, + and then munificently restored to it, though the seam in the canvas only + too literally attested the incident. I could not well say how this fact + then enhanced the interest of the painting, and then how it ceased from + the consciousness, which it must always recur to with any remembrance of + it. If one could envy wealth its chance of doing a deed of absolute good, + here was the occasion, and I used it. I did envy the mind, along with the + money, to do that great thing. Another great thing which still more + swelled my American heart and made it glow with patriotic pride was the + monument to Columbus, which our suffering his dust to be translated from + Havana has made possible in Seville. There may be other noble results of + our war on Spain for the suzerainty of Cuba and the conquest of Puerto + Rico and the Philippines, but there is none which matches in moral beauty + the chance it won us for this Grand Consent. I suppose those effigies of + the four Spanish realms of Castile, Leon, Aragon, and Navarre, which bear + the coffin of the discoverer in stateliest processional on their + shoulders, may be censured for being too boldly superb, too almost + swagger, but I will not be the one to censure them. They are painted the + color of life, and they advance colossally, royal-robed and mail-clad, as + if marching to some proud music, and would tread you down if you did not + stand aside. It is perhaps not art, but it is magnificent; nothing less + stupendously Spanish would have sufficed; and I felt that the magnanimity + which had yielded Spain this swelling opportunity had made America her + equal in it. + </p> + <p> + We went to the cathedral the first morning after our arrival in Seville, + because we did not know how soon we might go away, and then we went every + morning or every afternoon of our fortnight there. Habitually we entered + by that Gate of Pardon which in former times had opened the sanctuary to + any wickedness short of heresy; but, as our need of refuge was not + pressing, we wearied of the Gate of Pardon, with its beautiful Saracenic + arch converted to Christianity by the Renaissance bas-relief obliterating + the texts from the Koran. We tried to form the habit of going in by other + gates, but the Gate of Pardon finally prevailed; there was always a + gantlet of cabmen to be run beside it, which brought our sins home to us. + It led into the badly paved Court of Oranges, where the trees seem planted + haphazard and where there used also to be fountains. Gate and court are + remnants of the mosque, patterned upon that of Cordova by one of the proud + Moorish kings of Seville, and burned by the Normans when they took and + sacked his city. His mosque had displaced the early Christian basilica of + San Vicente, which the still earlier temple to Venus Salambo had become. + Then, after the mosque was rebuilt, the good San Fernando in his turn + equipped it with a Gothic choir and chapels and turned it into the + cathedral, which was worn out with pious uses when the present edifice was + founded, in their <i>folie des grandeurs,</i> by those glorious madmen in + the first year of the fifteenth century. + </p> + <p> + IV + </p> + <p> + Little of this learning troubled me in my visits to the cathedral, or even + the fact that, next to St. Peter’s, it was the largest church in the + world. It was sufficient to itself by mere force of architectural + presence, without the help of incidents or measurements. It was a city in + itself, with a community of priests and sacristans dwelling in it, and a + floating population of sightseers and worshipers always passing through + it. The first morning we had submitted to make the round of the chapels, + patiently paying to have each of them unlocked and wearily wondering at + their wonders, but only sympathizing really with the stern cleric who + showed the ceremonial vestments and jewels of the cathedral, and whose + bitter face expressed, or seemed to express, abhorrence of our whole + trivial tourist tribe. After that morning we took our curiosity into our + own keeping and looked at nothing that did not interest us, and we were + interested most in those fellow-beings who kept coming and going all day + long. + </p> + <p> + <a name="linkimage-0022" id="linkimage-0022"> + <!-- IMG --></a> + </p> + <div class="fig" style="width:60%;"> + <img src="images/h1-22.jpg" alt="22 in Attitudes of Silent Devotion " width="100%" /><br /> + </div> + <p> + Chiefly, of course, they were women. In Catholic countries women have + either more sins to be forgiven than the men, or else they are sorrier for + them; and here, whether there was service or not, they were dropped + everywhere in veiled and motionless prayer. In Seville the law of the + mantilla is rigorously enforced. If a woman drives, she may wear a hat; + but if she walks, she must wear a mantilla under pain of being pointed at + by the finger of scorn. If she is a young girl she may wear colors with it + (a cheerful blue seems the favorite), but by far the greater number came + to the cathedral in complete black. Those somber figures which clustered + before chapel, or singly dotted the pavement everywhere, flitted in and + out like shadows in the perpetual twilight. For far the greater number, + their coming to the church was almost their sole escape into the world. + They sometimes met friends, and after a moment, or an hour, of prayer they + could cheer their hearts with neighborly gossip. But for the greater part + they appeared and disappeared silently and swiftly, and left the spectator + to helpless conjecture of their history. Many of them would have first met + their husbands in the cathedral when they prayed, or when they began to + look around to see who was looking at them. It might have been their + trysting-place, safeguarding them in their lovers’ meetings, and after + marriage it had become their social world, when their husbands left them + for the clubs or the cafes. They could not go at night, of course, except + to some special function, but they could come by day as often as they + liked. I do not suppose that the worshipers I saw habitually united love + or friendship with their devotions in the cathedral, but some certainly + joined business with devotion; at a high function one day an American girl + felt herself sharply nudged in the side, and when she turned she found the + palm of her kneeling neighbor stretched toward her. They must all have had + their parish churches besides the cathedral, and a devotee might make the + day a social whirl by visiting one shrine after another. But I do not + think that many do. The Spanish women are of a domestic genus, and are + expected to keep at home by the men who expect to keep abroad. + </p> + <p> + I do not know just how it is in the parish churches; they must each have + its special rite, which draws and holds the frequenter; but the cathedral + constantly offers a drama of irresistible appeal. We non-Catholics can + feel this even at the distance to which our Protestantism has remanded us, + and at your first visit to the Seville cathedral during mass you cannot + help a moment of recreant regret when you wish that a part in the mystery + enacting was your birthright. The esthetic emotion is not denied you; the + organ-tide that floods the place bears you on it, too; the priests perform + their rites before the altar for you; they come and go, they bow and + kneel, for you; the censer swings and smokes for you; the little + wicked-eyed choir-boys and mischievous-looking acolytes suppress their + natures in your behalf as much as if you were a believer, or perhaps more. + The whole unstinted hospitality of the service is there for you, as well + as for the children of the house, and the heart must be rude and the soul + ungrateful that would refuse it. For my part, I accepted it as far as I + knew how, and when I left the worshipers on their knees and went tiptoeing + from picture to picture and chapel to chapel, it was with shame for the + unscrupulous sacristan showing me about, and I felt that he, if not I, + ought to be put out and not allowed back till the function was over. I + call him sacristan at a venture; but there were several kinds of guides in + the cathedral, some in the livery of the place and some in civil dress, + willing to supplement our hotel interpreter, or lying in wait for us when + we came alone. I wish now I had taken them all, but at the time they tired + me, and I denied them. + </p> + <p> + Though not a day passed but we saw it, I am not able to say what the + cathedral was like. The choir was planted in the heart of it, as it might + be a celestial refuge in that forest of mighty pillars, as great in girth + as the giant redwoods of California, and climbing to a Gothic firmament + horizoned round as with sunset light from near a hundred painted windows. + The chapels on each side, the most beautiful in Spain, abound in riches of + art and pious memorials, with chief among them the Royal Chapel, in the + prow, as it were, of the ship which the cathedral has been likened to, + keeping the bones not only of the sainted hero, King Fernando, but also, + among others, the bones of Peter the Cruel, and of his unwedded love, + Maria de Padilla, far too good for Peter in life, if not quite worthy of + San Fernando in death. You can see the saint’s body on certain dates four + times a year, when, as your Baedeker will tell you, “the troops of the + garrison march past and lower their colors” outside the cathedral. We were + there on none of these dates, and, far more regretably, not on the day of + Corpus Christi, when those boys whose effigies in sculptured and painted + wood we had seen in the museum at Valladolid pace in their mystic dance + before the people at the opposite portal of the cathedral. But I appoint + any reader, so minded, to go and witness the rite some springtime for me. + There is no hurry, for it is destined to endure through the device + practised in defeating the pope who proposed to abolish it. He ordained + that it should continue only as long as the boys’ actual costumes lasted; + but by renewing these carefully wherever they began to wear out, they have + become practically imperishable. + </p> + <p> + If we missed this attraction of the cathedral, we had the high good + fortune to witness another ceremony peculiar to it, but perhaps less + popularly acceptable. The building had often suffered from earthquakes, + and on the awful day, <i>dies irae,</i> of the great Lisbon earthquake, + during mass and at the moment of the elevation of the Host, when the + worshipers were on their knees, there came such a mighty shock in sympathy + with the far-off cataclysm that the people started to their feet and ran + out of the cathedral. If the priests ran after them, as soon as the + apparent danger was past they led the return of their flock and resumed + the interrupted rite. It was, of course, by a miracle that the temple was + spared, and when it was realized how scarcely Seville had escaped the fate + of Lisbon it was natural that the event should be dramatized in a + perpetual observance. Every year now, on the 1st of November, the clergy + leave the cathedral at a chosen moment of the mass, with much more + stateliness than in the original event, and lead the people out of one + portal, to return with them by another for the conclusion of the + ceremonial. + </p> + <p> + <a name="linkimage-0023" id="linkimage-0023"> + <!-- IMG --></a> + </p> + <div class="fig" style="width:60%;"> + <img src="images/h1-23.jpg" + alt="23 the Cathedral and Tower of The Giralda " width="100%" /><br /> + </div> + <p> + We waited long for the climax, but at last we almost missed it through the + overeagerness of the guide I had chosen out of many that petitioned. He + was so politely, so forbearingly insistent in his offer to see that we + were vigilantly cared for, that I must have had a heart harder than Peter + the Cruel’s to have denied him, and he planted us at the most favorable + point for the function in the High Chapel, with instructions which portal + to hurry to when the movement began, and took his peseta and went his way. + Then, while we confidingly waited, he came rushing back and with a great + sweep of his hat wafted us to the door which he had said the procession + would go out by, but which he seemed to have learned it would come in by, + and we were saved from what had almost been his fatal error. I forgave him + the more gladly because I could rejoice in his returning to repair his + error, although he had collected his money; and with a heart full of pride + in his verification of my theory of the faithful Spanish nature, I gave + myself to the shining gorgeousness of the procession that advanced + chanting in the blaze of the Sevillian sun. There was every rank of + clergy, from the archbishop down, in robes of ceremonial, but I am unable + honestly to declare the admiration for their splendor which I would have + willingly felt. The ages of faith in which those vestments were designed + were apparently not the ages of taste; yet it was the shape of the + vestments and not the color which troubled the eye of unfaith, if not of + taste. The archbishop in crimson silk, with his train borne by two + acolytes, the canons in their purple, the dean in his gold-embroidered + robes, and the priests and choristers in their black robes and white + surplices richly satisfied it; and if some of the clerics were a little + frayed and some of the acolytes were spotted with the droppings of the + candles, these were details which one remembered afterward and that did + not matter at the time. + </p> + <p> + When the procession was housed again, we went off and forgot it in the + gardens of the Alcazar. But I must not begin yet on the gardens of the + Alcazar. We went to them every day, as we did to the cathedral, but we did + not see them until our second morning in Seville. We gave what was left + from the first morning in the cathedral to a random exploration of the + streets and places of the city. There was, no doubt, everywhere some touch + of the bravery of our square of San Fernando, where the public windows + were hung with crimson tapestries and brocades in honor of St. Raphael; + but his holiday did not make itself molestively felt in the city’s + business or pleasure. Where we could drive we drove, and where we must we + walked, and we walked of course through the famous Calle de las Sierpes, + because no one drives there. As a rule no woman walks there, and naturally + there were many women walking there, under the eyes of the popular cafes + and aristocratic clubs which principally abound in Las Sierpes, for it is + also the street of the principal shops, though it is not very long and is + narrower than many other streets of Seville. It has its name from so + commonplace an origin as the sign over a tavern door, with some snakes + painted on it; but if the example of sinuosity had been set it by + prehistoric serpents, there were scores of other streets which have + bettered its instruction. There were streets that crooked away everywhere, + not going anywhere, and breaking from time to time into irregular angular + spaces with a church or a convent or a nobleman’s house looking into them. + </p> + <p> + VI + </p> + <p> + The noblemen’s houses often showed a severely simple facade to the square + or street, and hid their inner glories with what could have been fancied a + haughty reserve if it had not been for the frankness with which they + opened their <i>patios</i> to the gaze of the stranger, who, when he did + not halt his carriage before them, could enjoy their hospitality from a + sidewalk sometimes eighteen inches wide. The passing tram-car might grind + him against the tall grilles which were the only barriers to the <i>patios,</i> + but otherwise there would be nothing to spoil his enjoyment of those + marble floors and tiled walls and fountains potted round with flowering + plants. In summer he could have seen the family life there; and people who + are of such oriental seclusion otherwise will sometimes even suffer the + admiring traveler to come as well as look within. But one who would not + press their hospitality so far could reward his forbearance by finding + some of the <i>patios</i> too new-looking, with rather a glare from their + tiles and marbles, their painted iron pillars, and their glass roofs which + the rain comes through in the winter. The ladies sit and sew there, or + talk, if they prefer, and receive their friends, and turn night into day + in the fashion of climates where they are so easily convertible. The <i>patio</i> + is the place of that peculiarly Spanish rite, the <i>tertulia,</i> and the + family nightly meets its next of kin and then its nearer and farther + friends there with that Latin regularity which may also be monotony. One + <i>patio</i> is often much like another, though none was perhaps of so + much public interest as the <i>patio</i> of the lady who loved a + bull-fighter and has made her <i>patio</i> a sort of shrine to him. The + famous <i>espada</i> perished in his heroic calling, no worse if no better + than those who saw him die, and now his bust is in plain view, with a fit + inscription recognizing his worth and prowess, and with the heads of some + of the bulls he slew. + </p> + <p> + Under that clement sky the elements do not waste the works of man as + elsewhere, and many of the houses of Seville are said to be such as the + Moors built there. We did not know them from the Christian houses; but + there are no longer any mosques, while in our wanderings we had the pretty + constant succession of the convents which, when they are still in the + keeping of their sisterhoods and brotherhoods, remain monuments of the + medieval piety of Spain; or, when they are suppressed and turned to + secular uses, attest the recurrence of her modern moods of revolution and + reform. It is to one of these that Seville owes the stately Alameda de + Hercules, a promenade covering the length and breadth of aforetime convent + gardens, which you reach from the Street of the Serpents by the Street of + the Love of God, and are then startled by the pagan presence of two mighty + columns lifting aloft the figures of Caesar and of the titular demigod. + Statues and pillars are alike antique, and give you a moment of the + Eternal City the more intense because the promenade is of an unkempt and + broken surface, like the Cow-field which the Roman Forum used to be. + Baedeker calls it shady, and I dare say it is shady, but I do not remember + the trees—only those glorious columns climbing the summer sky of the + Andalusian autumn, and proclaiming the imperishable memory of the republic + that conquered and the empire that ruled the world, and have never loosed + their hold upon it. We were rather newly from the grass-grown ruin of a + Roman town in Wales, and in this other Iberian land we were always meeting + the witnesses of the grandeur which no change short of some universal sea + change can wholly sweep from the earth. Before it Goth and Arab shrink, + with all their works, into the local and provisional; Rome remains for all + time imperial and universal. + </p> + <p> + <a name="linkimage-0024" id="linkimage-0024"> + <!-- IMG --></a> + </p> + <div class="fig" style="width:60%;"> + <img src="images/h1-24.jpg" + alt="24 Ancient Roman Columns Lifting Aloft the Figures of Hercules and Caesar " width="100%" /><br /> + </div> + <p> + To descend from this high-horsed reflection, as I must, I have to record + that there did not seem to be so many small boys in Seville as in the + Castillian capitals we had visited; in the very home of the bull-feast we + did not see one mimic <i>corrida</i> given by the <i>torreros</i> of the + future. Not even in the suburb of Triana, where the small boys again + consolingly superabounded, was the great national game played among the + wheels and hoofs of the dusty streets to which we crossed the Guadalquivir + that afternoon. To be sure, we were so taken with other things that a + boyish bull-feast might have rioted unnoticed under our horses’ very feet, + especially on the long bridge which gives you the far upward and downward + stretch of the river, so simple and quiet and empty above, so busy and + noisy and thronged with shipping below. I suppose there are lovelier + rivers than that—we ourselves are known to brag of our Pharpar and + Abana—but I cannot think of anything more nobly beautiful than the + Guadalquivir resting at peace in her bed, where she has had so many bad + dreams of Carthaginian and Roman and Gothic and Arab and Norman invasion. + Now her waters redden, for the time at least, only from the scarlet hulls + of the tramp steamers lying in long succession beside the shore where the + gardens of the Delicias were waiting to welcome us that afternoon to our + first sight of the pride and fashion of Seville. I never got enough of the + brave color of those tramp steamers; and in thinking of them as English, + Norse, French, and Dutch, fetching or carrying their cargoes over those + war-worn, storied waters, I had some finer thrills than in dwelling on the + Tower of Gold which rose from the midst of them. It was built in the last + century of the Moorish dominion to mark the last point to which the + gardens of the Moorish palace of the Alcazar could stretch, but they were + long ago obliterated behind it; and though it was so recent, no doubt it + would have had its pathos if I could ever have felt pity for the downfall + of the Moslem power in Spain. As it was, I found the tramp steamers more + moving, and it was these that my eye preferably sought whenever I crossed + the Triana bridge. + </p> + <p> + VII + </p> + <p> + We were often crossing it on one errand or other, but now we were + especially going to see the gipsy quarter of Seville, which disputes with + that of Granada the infamy of the loathsomest purlieu imaginable. Perhaps + because it was so very loathsome, I would not afterward visit the gipsy + quarter in Granada, and if such a thing were possible I would willingly + unvisit the gipsy quarter of Seville. All Triana is pretty squalid, though + it has merits and charms to which I will try eventually to be just, and I + must even now advise the reader to visit the tile potteries there. If he + has our good-fortune he may see in the manager of one a type of that + fusion of races with which Spain long so cruelly and vainly struggled + after the fall of the last Moorish kingdom. He was beautifully lean and + clean of limb, and of a grave gentleness of manner; his classically + regular face was as swarthy as the darkest mulatto’s, but his quiet eyes + were gray. I carried the sense of his fine decency with me when we drove + away from his warerooms, and suddenly whirled round the corner of the + street into the gipsy quarter, and made it my prophylactic against the + human noisomeness which instantly beset our course. Let no Romany Rye + romancing Barrow, or other fond fibbing sentimentalist, ever pretend to me + hereafter that those persistent savages have even the ridiculous claim of + the North American Indians to the interest of the civilized man, except as + something to be morally and physically scoured and washed up, and drained + and fumigated, and treated with insecticides and put away in mothballs. + Our own settled order of things is not agreeable at all points; it reeks + and it smells, especially in Spain, when you get down to its lower levels; + but it does not assail the senses with such rank offense as smites them in + the gipsy quarter with sights and sounds and odors which to eye and ear, + as well as nose, were all stenches. + </p> + <p> + Low huts lined the street, which swarmed at our coming with ragged + children running beside us and after us and screaming, “Minny, niooney, <i> + money!”</i> in a climax of what they wanted. Men leaned against the + door-posts and stared motionless, and hags, lean and fat, sat on the + thresholds and wished to tell our fortunes; younger women ranged the + sidewalks and offered to dance. They all had flowers in their hair, and + some were of a horrible beauty, especially one in a green waist, with both + white and red flowers in her dusky locks. Down the middle of the road a + troop of children, some blond, but mostly black, tormented a hapless ass + colt; and we hurried away as fast as our guide could persuade our cabman + to drive. But the gipsy quarter had another street in reserve which made + us sorry to have left the first. It paralleled the river, and into the + center of it every manner of offal had been cast from the beginning of + time to reek and fester and juicily ripen and rot in unspeakable + corruption. It was such a thoroughfare as Dante might have imagined in his + Hell, if people in his time had minded such horrors; but as it was we + could only realize that it was worse than infernal, it was medieval, and + that we were driving in such putrid foulness as the gilded carriages of + kings and queens and the prancing steeds and palfreys of knights and + ladies found their way through whenever they went abroad in the + picturesque and romantic Middle Ages. I scarcely remember now how we got + away and down to the decent waterside, and then by the helpful bridge to + the other shore of the Guadalquivir, painted red with the reflections of + those consoling tramp steamers. + </p> + <p> + After that abhorrent home of indolence, which its children never left + except to do a little fortune-telling and mule and donkey trading, eked + out with theft in the country round, any show of honest industry looked + wholesome and kind. I rejoiced almost as much in the machinery as in the + men who were loading the steamers; even the huge casks of olives, which + were working from the salt-water poured into them and frothing at the bung + in great white sponges of spume, might have been examples of toil by which + those noisome vagabonds could well have profited. But now we had come to + see another sort of leisure—the famous leisure of fortune and + fashion driving in the Delicias, but perhaps never quite fulfilling the + traveler’s fond ideal of it. We came many times to the Delicias in hope of + it, with decreasing disappointment, indeed, but to the last without entire + fruition. For our first visit we could not have had a fitter evening, with + its pale sky reddening from a streak of sunset beyond Triana, and we + arrived in appropriate circumstance, round the immense circle of the + bull-ring and past the palace which the Duc de Montpensier has given the + church for a theological seminary, with long stretches of beautiful + gardens. Then we were in the famous Paseo, a drive with footways on each + side, and on one side dusky groves widening to the river. The paths were + lit with gleaming statues, and among the palms and the eucalyptuses were + orange trees full of their golden globes, which we wondered were not + stolen till we were told they were of that bitter sort which are mostly + sent to Scotland, not because they are in accord with the acrid nature of + man there, but that they may be wrought into marmalade. On the other hand + stretched less formal woods, with fields for such polite athletics as + tennis, which the example of the beloved young English Queen of Spain is + bringing into reluctant favor with women immemorially accustomed to + immobility. The road was badly kept, like most things in Spain, where when + a thing is done it is expected to stay done. Every afternoon it is a cloud + of dust and every evening a welter of mud, for the Iberian idea of + watering a street is to soak it into a slough. But nothing can spoil the + Paseo, and that evening we had it mostly to ourselves, though there were + two or three carriages with ladies in hats, and at one place other ladies + dismounted and courageously walking, while their carriages followed. A + magnate of some sort was shut alone in a brougham, in the care of footman + and coachman with deeply silver-banded hats; there were a few military and + civil riders, and there was distinctly a young man in a dog-cart with a + groom, keeping abreast the landau of three ladies in mantillas, with whom + he was improving what seemed a chance acquaintance. Along the course the + public park gave way at times to the grounds of private villas; before one + of these a boy did what he could for us by playing ball with a priest. At + other points there were booths with chairs and tables, where I am sure + interesting parties of people would have been sitting if they could have + expected us to pass. + </p> + <p> + VIII + </p> + <p> + The reader, pampered by the brilliant excitements of our American + promenades, may think this spectacle of the gay world of Seville dull; but + he ought to have been with us a colder, redder, and sadder evening when we + had the Delicias still more to ourselves. Afterward the Delicias seemed to + cheer up, and the place was fairly frequented on a holiday, which we had + not suspected was one till our cabman convinced us from his tariff that we + must pay him double, because you must always do that in Seville on + holidays. By this time we knew that most of the Sevillian rank and riches + had gone to Madrid for the winter, and we were the more surprised by some + evident show of them in the private turnouts where by far most of the + turnouts were public. But in Spain a carriage is a carriage, and the + Sevillian cabs are really very proper and sometimes even handsome, and we + felt that our own did no discredit to the Delicias. Many of the + holiday-makers were walking, and there were actually women on foot in hats + and hobble-skirts without being openly mocked. On the evening of our last + resort to the Delicias it was quite thronged far into the twilight, after + a lemon sunset that continued to tinge the east with pink and violet. + There were hundreds of carriages, fully half of them private, with + coachmen and footmen in livery. With them it seemed to be the rule to stop + in the circle at a turning-point a mile off and watch the going and + coming. It was a serious spectacle, but not solemn, and it had its + reliefs, its high-lights. It was always pleasant to see three Spanish + ladies on a carriage seat, the middle one protruding because of their + common bulk, and oftener in umbrella-wide hats with towering plumes than + in the charming mantilla. There were no top-hats or other formality in the + men’s dress; some of them were on horseback, and there were two women + riding. + </p> + <p> + Suddenly, as if it had come up out of the ground, I perceived a tram-car + keeping abreast of the riding and walking and driving, and through all I + was agreeably aware of files of peasants bestriding their homing donkeys + on the bridle-path next the tram. I confess that they interested me more + than my social equals and superiors; I should have liked to talk with + those fathers and mothers of toil, bestriding or perched on the cruppers + of their donkeys, and I should have liked especially to know what passed + in the mind of one dear little girl who sat before her father with her + bare brown legs tucked into the pockets of the pannier. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0011" id="link2H_4_0011"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + X. SEVILLIAN ASPECTS AND INCIDENTS + </h2> + <p> + It is always a question how much or little we had better know about the + history of a strange country when seeing it. If the great mass of + travelers voted according to their ignorance, the majority in favor of + knowing next to nothing would be overwhelming, and I do not say they would + be altogether unwise. History itself is often of two minds about the + facts, or the truth from them, and when you have stored away its diverse + conclusions, and you begin to apply them to the actual conditions, you are + constantly embarrassed by the misfits. What did it avail me to believe + that when the Goths overran the north of Spain the Vandals overran the + south, and when they swept on into Africa and melted away in the hot sun + there as a distinctive race, they left nothing but the name Vandalusia, a + letter less, behind them? If the Vandals were what they are reported to + have been, the name does not at all characterize the liveliest province of + Spain. Besides, the very next history told me that they took even their + name with them, and forbade me the simple and apt etymology which I had + pinned my indolent faith to. + </p> + <p> + I + </p> + <p> + Before I left Seville I convinced a principal bookseller, much against his + opinions, that there must be some such brief local history of the city as + I was fond of finding in Italian towns, and I took it from his own + reluctant shelf. It was a very intelligent little guide, this <i>Seville + in the Hand,</i> as it calls itself, but I got it too late for use in + exploring the city, and now I can turn to it only for those directions + which will keep the reader from losing his way in the devious past. The + author rejects the fable which the chroniclers delight in, and holds with + historians who accept the Phoenicians as the sufficiently remote founders + of Seville. This does not put out of commission those Biblical “ships of + Tarshish” which Dr. Edward Everett Hale, in his graphic sketch of Spanish + history, has sailing to and from the neighboring coasts. Very likely they + came up the Guadalquivir, and lay in the stream where a few thousand years + later I saw those cheerful tramp-steamers lying. At any rate, the + Phoenicians greatly flourished there, and gave their colony the name of + Hispalis, which it remained content with till the Romans came and called + the town Julia Romula, and Julius Caesar fenced it with the strong walls + which the Moorish conquerors, after the Goths, reinforced and have left + plain to be seen at this day. The most casual of wayfaring men must have + read as he ran that the Moorish power fell before the sword of San + Fernando as the Gothic fell before their own, and the Roman before the + Gothic. But it is more difficult to realize that earlier than the Gothic, + somewhere in between the Vandals and the Romans, had been the + Carthaginians, whose great general Hamilcar fancied turning all Spain into + a Carthaginian province. They were a branch of the Phoenicians as even the + older, unadvertised edition of the <i>Encyclopedia Britannica</i> will + tell, and the Phoenicians were a sort of Hebrews. Whether they remained to + flourish with the other Jews under the Moors, my <i>Sevilla en la Mano</i> + does not say; and I am not sure whether they survived to share the + universal exile into which Islam and Israel were finally driven. What is + certain is, that the old Phoenician name of Hispalis outlived the Roman + name of Julia Romula and reappeared in the Arabic as Ishbiliya (I know it + from my Baedeker) and is now permanently established as Seville. + </p> + <p> + Under the Moors the city was subordinate to Cordova, though I can hardly + bear to think so in my far greater love of Seville. But it was the seat of + schools of science, art, and agriculture, and after the Christians had got + it back, Alfonso the Learned founded other schools there for the study of + Latin and Arabic. But her greatest prosperity and glory came to Seville + with the discovery of America. Not Columbus only, but all his most famous + contemporaries, sailed from the ports of her coasts; she was the capital + of the commerce with the new world, ruling and regulating it by the oldest + mercantile tribunal in the world, and becoming the richest city of Spain. + Then riches flowered in the letters and arts, especially the arts, and + Herrera, Pacheco, Velasquez, Murillo, and Zurburan were born and + flourished in Seville. In modern times she has taken a prominent part in + political events. She led in the patriotic war to drive out the armies of + Napoleon, and she seems to have been on both sides in the struggle for + liberal and absolutist principles, the establishment of the brief republic + of 1868, and the restoration of the present monarchy. + </p> + <p> + Through all the many changes from better to Worse, from richer to poorer, + Seville continued faithful to the ideal of religious unity which the wise + Isabel and the shrewd Ferdinand divined was the only means of + consolidating the intensely provincial kingdoms of Spain into one nation + of Spaniards. Andalusia not being Gothic had never been Aryan, and it was + one of her kings who carried his orthodoxy to Castile and established it + inexpugnably at Toledo after he succeeded his heretical father there. When + four or five hundred years later it became a political necessity of the + Catholic Kings to expel their Jewish and Moorish subjects and convert + their wealth to pious and patriotic uses, Andalusia was one of the most + zealous provinces in the cause. When presently the inquisitions of the + Holy Office began, some five hundred heretics were burned alive at Seville + before the year was out; many others, who were dead and buried, paid the + penalty of their heresy in effigy; in all more than two thousand suffered + in the region round about. Before he was in Valladolid, Torquemada was in + Seville, and there he drew up the rules that governed the procedure of the + Inquisition throughout Spain. A magnificent <i>quemadero,</i> or + crematory, second only to that of Madrid, was built: a square stone + platform where almost every day the smoke of human sacrifice ascended. + This crematory for the living was in the meadow of San Sebastian, now a + part of the city park system which we left on the right that first evening + when we drove to the Delicias. I do not know why I should now regret not + having visited the place of this dreadful altar and offered my unavailing + pity there to the memory of those scores of thousands of hapless martyrs + who suffered there to no end, not even to the end of confirming Spain in + the faith one and indivisible, for there are now, after so many + generations of torment, two Protestant churches in Seville. For one thing + I did not know where the place of the <i>quemadero</i> was; and I do not + yet know where those Protestant churches are. + </p> + <p> + II <a name="linkimage-0025" id="linkimage-0025"> + <!-- IMG --></a> + </p> + <div class="fig" style="width:60%;"> + <img src="images/h1-25.jpg" alt="25 Gardens of the Alcazar " width="100%" /><br /> + </div> + <p> + If I went again to Seville I should try to visit them—but, as it + was, we gave our second day to the Alcazar, which is merely the first in + the series of palaces and gardens once stretching from the flank of the + cathedral to the Tower of Gold beside the Guadalquivir. A rich sufficiency + is left in the actual Alcazar to suggest the splendor of the series, and + more than enough in the gardens to invite our fatigue, day after day, to + the sun and shade of its quiet paths and seats when we came spent with the + glories and the bustling piety of the cathedral. In our first visit we had + the guidance of a patriotic young Granadan whose zeal for the Alhambra + would not admit the Alcazar to any comparison, but I myself still prefer + it after seeing the Alhambra. It is as purely Moorish as that and it is in + better repair if not better taste. The taste in fact is the same, and the + Castilian kings consulted it as eagerly as their Arabic predecessors in + the talent of the Moslem architects whom they had not yet begun to drive + into exile. I am not going to set up rival to the colored picture postals, + which give a better notion than I could give of the painted and gilded + stucco decoration, the ingenious geometrical designs on the walls, and the + cloying sweetness of the honeycombing in the vaulted roofs. Every one will + have his feeling about Moorish architecture; mine is that a little goes a + great way, and that it is too monotonous to compete with the Gothic in + variety, while it lacks the dignity of any form of the Greek or the + Renaissance. If the phrase did not insult the sex which the faith of the + Moslem insufferably insults, one might sum up one’s slight for it in the + word effeminate. + </p> + <p> + The Alcazar gardens are the best of the Alcazar. But I would not ignore + the homelike charm of the vast court by which you enter from the street + outside to the palace beyond. It is planted casually about with rather + shabby orange trees that children were playing under, and was decorated + with the week’s wash of the low, simple dwellings which may be hired at a + rental moderate even for Seville, where a handsome and commodious house in + a good quarter rents for sixty dollars a year. One of those two-story + cottages, as we should call them, in the ante-court of the Alcazar had for + the student of Spanish life the special advantage of a lover close to a + ground-floor window dropping tender nothings down through the slats of the + shutter to some maiden lurking within. The nothings were so tender that + you could not hear them drop, and, besides, they were Spanish nothings, + and it would not have served any purpose for the stranger to listen for + them. Once afterward we saw the national courtship going on at another + casement, but that was at night, and here the precious first sight of it + was offered at ten o’clock in the morning. Nobody seemed to mind the lover + stationed outside the shutter with which the iron bars forbade him the + closest contact; and it is only fair to say that he minded nobody; he was + there when we went in and there when we came out, and it appears that when + it is a question of love-making time is no more an object in Spain than in + the United States. The scene would have been better by moonlight, but you + cannot always have it moonlight, and the sun did very well; at least, the + lover did not seem to miss the moon. + </p> + <p> + He was only an incident, and I hope the most romantic reader will let me + revert from him to the Alcazar gardens. We were always reverting to them + on any pretext or occasion, and we mostly had them to ourselves in the + gentle afternoons when we strayed or sat about at will in them. The first + day we were somewhat molested by the instruction of our patriotic Granadan + guide, who had a whopper-jaw and grayish blue eyes, but coal-black hair + for all his other blondness. He smoked incessant cigarettes, and he showed + us especially the pavilion of Charles the Fifth, whom, after that use of + all English-speaking Spanish guides, he called Charley Fift. It appeared + that the great emperor used this pavilion for purposes of meditation; but + he could not always have meditated there, though the frame of a brazier + standing in the center intimated that it was tempered for reflection. The + first day we found a small bird in possession, flying from one bit of the + carved wooden ceiling to another, and then, taking our presence in + dudgeon, out into the sun. Another day there was a nursery-girl there with + a baby that cried; on another, still more distractingly, a fashionable + young French bride who went kodaking round while her husband talked with + an archaeological official, evidently Spanish. In his own time, Charley + probably had the place more to himself, though even then his thoughts + could not have been altogether cheerful, whether he recalled what he had + vainly done to keep out of Spain and yet to take the worst of Spain with + him into the Netherlands, where he tried to plant the Inquisition among + his Flemings; he was already much soured with a world that had cloyed him, + and was perhaps considering even then how he might make his escape from it + to the cloister. + </p> + <p> + III + </p> + <p> + We did not know as yet how almost entirely dramatic the palace of the + Alcazar was, how largely it was representative of what the Spanish + successors of the Moorish kings thought those kings would have made it if + they had made it; and it was probably through an instinct for the genuine + that we preferred the gardens after our first cries of wonder. What + remains to me of our many visits is the mass of high borders of box, with + roses, jasmine, and orange trees, palms, and cypresses. The fountains + dribbled rather than gushed, and everywhere were ranks and rows of plants + in large, high earthen pots beside or upon the tiled benching that faced + the fountains and would have been easier to sit on if you had not had to + supply the back yourself. The flowers were not in great profusion, and + chiefly we rejoiced in the familiar quaintness of clumps of massive + blood-red coxcombs and strange yellow ones. The walks were bordered with + box, and there remains distinctly the impression of marble steps and + mosaic seats inlaid with tiles; all Seville seems inlaid with tiles. One + afternoon we lingered longer than usual because the day was so sunnily + warm in the garden paths and spaces, without being hot. A gardener whom we + saw oftenest hung about his flowers in a sort of vegetable calm, and not + very different from theirs except that they were not smoking cigarettes. + He did not move a muscle or falter in his apparently unseeing gaze; but + when one of us picked a seed from the ground and wondered what it was he + said it was a magnolia seed, and as if he could bear no more went away. In + one wilding place which seemed set apart for a nursery several men were + idly working with many pauses, but not so many as to make the spectator + nervous. As the afternoon waned and the sun sank, its level rays dwelt on + the galleries of the palace which Peter the Cruel built himself and made + so ugly with harsh brown stucco ornament that it set your teeth on edge, + and with gigantic frescos exaggerated from the Italian, and very coarse + and rank. + </p> + <p> + It was this savage prince who invented much of the Alcazar in the soft + Moorish taste; but in those hideous galleries he let his terrible nature + loose, though as for that some say he was no crueler than certain other + Spanish kings of that period. This is the notion of my unadvertised <i>Encyclopaedia + Britannica,</i> and perhaps we ought to think of him leniently as Peter + the Ferocious. He was kind to some people and was popularly known as the + Justiciary; he especially liked the Moors and Jews, who were gratefully + glad, poor things, of being liked by any one under the new Christian rule. + But he certainly killed several of his half-brothers, and notably he + killed his half-brother Don Fadrique in the Alcazar. That is, if he had no + hand in the butchery himself he had him killed after luring him to Seville + for the tournaments and forgiving him for all their mutual injuries with + every caressing circumstance. One reads that after the king has kissed him + he sits down again to his game of backgammon and Don Fadrique goes into + the next room to Maria do Padilla, the lovely and gentle lady whom Don + Pedro has married as much as he can with a wedded wife shut up in Toledo. + She sits there in terror with her damsels and tries with looks and signs + to make Don Fadrique aware of his danger. But he imagines no harm till the + king and his companions, with their daggers drawn, come to the curtains, + which the king parts, commanding, “Seize the Master of Santiago!” Don + Fadrique tries to draw his sword, and then he turns and flies through the + halls of the Alcazar, where he finds every door bolted and barred. The + king’s men are at his heels, and at last one of them fells him with a blow + of his mace. The king goes back with a face of sympathy to Maria, who has + fallen to the floor. + </p> + <p> + The treacherous keeping is all rather in the taste of the Italian + Renaissance, but the murder itself is more Roman, as the Spanish + atrocities and amusements are apt to be. Murray says it was in the + beautiful Hall of the Ambassadors that Don Fadrique was killed, but the + other manuals are not so specific. Wherever it was, there is a blood-stain + in the pavement which our Granadan guide failed to show us, possibly from + a patriotic pique that there are no blood-stains in the Alhambra with + personal associations. I cannot say that much is to be made of the vaulted + tunnel where poor Maria de Padilla used to bathe, probably not much + comforted by the courtiers afterward drinking the water from the tank; she + must have thought the compliment rather nasty, and no doubt it was paid + her to please Don Pedro. + </p> + <p> + We found it pleasanter going and coming through the corridor leading to + the gardens from the public court. This was kept at the outer end by an + “old rancid Christian” smoking incessant cigarettes and not explicitly + refusing to sell us picture postals after taking our entrance fee; the + other end was held by a young, blond, sickly-looking girl, who made us + take small nosegays at our own price and whom it became a game to see if + we could escape. I have left saying to the last that the king and queen of + Spain have a residence in the Alcazar, and that when they come in the + early spring they do not mind corning to it through that plebeian + quadrangle. I should not mind it myself if I could go back there next + spring. + </p> + <p> + IV + </p> + <p> + We had refused with loathing the offer of those gipsy jades to dance for + us in their noisome purlieu at Triana, but we were not proof against the + chance of seeing some gipsy dancing in a cafe-theater one night in + Seville. The decent place was filled with the “plain people,” who sat with + their hats on at rude tables smoking and drinking coffee from tall + glasses. They were apparently nearly all working-men who had left nearly + all their wives to keep on working at home, though a few of these also had + come. On a small stage four gipsy girls, in unfashionably and + untheatrically decent gowns of white, blue, or red, with flowers in their + hair, sat in a semicircle with one subtle, silent, darkling man among + them. One after another they got up and did the same twisting and + posturing, without dancing, and while one posed and contorted the rest + unenviously joined the spectators in their clapping and their hoarse cries + of “Ole!” It was all perfectly proper except for one high moment of + indecency thrown in at the end of each turn, as if to give the house its + money’s worth. But the real, overflowing compensation came when that + little, lithe, hipless man in black jumped to his feet and stormed the + audience with a dance of hands and arms, feet and legs, head, neck, and + the whole body, which Mordkin in his finest frenzy could not have equaled + or approached. Whatever was fiercest and wildest in nature and boldest in + art was there, and now the house went mad with its hand-clappings and + table-hammerings and deep-throated “Oles!” + </p> + <p> + Another night we went to the academy of the world-renowned Otero and saw + the instruction of Sevillian youth in native dances of the <i>haute ecole.</i> + The academy used to be free to a select public, but now the chosen, who + are nearly always people from the hotels, must pay ten pesetas each for + their pleasure, and it is not too much for a pleasure so innocent and + charming. The academy is on the ground floor of the <i>maestro’s</i> + unpretentious house, and in a waiting-room beyond the shoemaker’s shop + which filled the vestibule sat, patient in their black mantillas, the + mothers and nurses of the pupils. These were mostly quite small children + in their every-day clothes, but there were two or three older girls in the + conventional dancing costume which a lady from one of the hotels had + emulated. Everything was very simple and friendly; Otero found good seats + among the <i>aficionados</i> for the guests presented to him, and then + began calling his pupils to the floor of the long, narrow room with quick + commands of “<i>Venga</i>!” A piano was tucked away in a corner, but the + dancers kept time now with castanets and now by snapping their fingers. + Two of the oldest girls, who were apparently graduates, were “differently + beautiful” in their darkness and fairness, but alike picturesquely Spanish + in their vivid dresses and the black veils fluttering from their high + combs. A youth in green velvet jacket and orange trousers, whose wonderful + dancing did him credit as Otero’s prize pupil, took part with them; he had + the square-jawed, high-cheek-boned face of the lower-class Spaniard, and + they the oval of all Spanish women. Here there was no mere posturing and + contortioning among the girls as with the gipsies; they sprang like flames + and stamped the floor with joyous detonations of their slippers. It was + their convention to catch the hat from the head of some young spectator + and wear it in a figure and then toss it back to him. One of them enacted + the part of a <i>torero</i> at a bull-fight, stamping round first in a + green satin cloak which she then waved before a man’s felt hat thrown on + the ground to represent the bull hemmed about with <i>banderillas</i> + stuck quivering into the floor. But the prettiest thing was the dancing of + two little girl pupils, one fair and thin and of an angelic gracefulness, + and the other plump and dark, who was as dramatic as the blond was + lyrical. They accompanied themselves with castanets, and, though the + little fatling toed in and wore a common dress of blue-striped gingham, I + am afraid she won our hearts from her graceful rival. Both were very + serious and gave their whole souls to the dance, but they were not more + childishly earnest than an older girl in black who danced with one of the + gaudy graduates, panting in her anxious zeal and stopping at last with her + image of the Virgin she resembled flung wildly down her back from the + place where it had hung over her heart. + </p> + <p> + V + </p> + <p> + We preferred walking home from Senor Otero’s house through the bright, + quiescing street, because in driving there we had met with an adventure + which we did not care to repeat. We were driving most unaggressively + across a small plaza, with a driver and a friend on the box beside him to + help keep us from harm, when a trolley-car came wildly round a corner at + the speed of at least two miles an hour and crossed our track. Our own + speed was such that we could not help striking the trolley in a collision + which was the fault of no one apparently. The front of the car was + severely banged, one mud-guard of our victoria was bent, and our + conversation was interrupted. Immediately a crowd assembled from the earth + or the air, but after a single exchange of reproaches between the two + drivers nothing was said by any one. No policeman arrived to <i>constater</i> + the facts, and after the crowd had silently satisfied or dissatisfied + itself that no one was hurt it silently dispersed. The car ambled + grumbling off and we drove on with some vague murmurs from our driver, + whose nerves seemed shaken, but who was supported in a somewhat lurching + and devious progress by the caressing arm of the friend on the seat beside + him. + </p> + <p> + All this was in Seville, where the popular emotions are painted in travel + and romance as volcanic as at Naples, where no one would have slept the + night of our accident and the spectators would be debating it still. In + our own surprise and alarm we partook of the taciturnity of the witnesses, + which I think was rather fine and was much decenter than any sort of + utterance. On our way home we had occasion to practise a like forbearance + toward the lover whom we passed as he stood courting through the casement + of a ground floor. The soft air was full of the sweet of jasmine and + orange blossoms from the open <i>patios.</i> Many people besides ourselves + were passing, but in a well-bred avoidance of the dark figure pressed to + the grating and scarcely more recognizable than the invisible figure + within. I confess I thought it charming, and if at some period of their + lives people must make love I do not believe there is a more inoffensive + way of doing it. + </p> + <p> + By the sort of echo notable in life’s experience we had a reverberation of + the orange-flower perfume of that night in the orange-flower honey at + breakfast next morning. We lived to learn that our own bees gather the + same honey from the orange flowers of Florida; but at the time we believed + that only the bees of Seville did it, and I still doubt whether anywhere + in America the morning wakes to anything like the long, rich, sad calls of + the Sevillian street hucksters. It is true that you do not get this + plaintive music without the accompanying note of the hucksters’ donkeys, + which, if they were better advised, would not close with the sort of + inefficient sifflication which they now use in spoiling an otherwise most + noble, most leonine roar. But when were donkeys of any sort ever well + advised in all respects? Those of Seville, where donkeys abound, were + otherwise of the superior intelligence which throughout Spain leaves the + horse and even the mule far behind, and constitutes the donkeys, far + beyond the idle and useless dogs, the friends of man. They indefinitely + outnumber the dogs, and the cats are of course nowhere in the count. Yet I + would not misprize the cats of Seville, which apparently have their money + price. We stopped to admire a beautiful white one, on our way to see the + market one day, praising it as intelligibly as we could, and the owner + caught it up, when we had passed and ran after us, and offered to sell it + to us. + </p> + <p> + That might have been because it was near the market where we experienced + almost the only mercantile zeal we had known in Spain. Women with ropes + and garlands of onions round their necks invited us to buy, and we had + hopeful advances from the stalls of salads and fruits, where there was a + brave and beautiful show of lettuces and endives, grapes, medlars, and + heaps of melons, but no oranges; I do not know why, though there were + shining masses of red peppers and green, peppers, and vast earthen bowls + with yellow peas soaking in them. The flowers were every gay autumnal + sort, especially dahlias, sometimes made into stiff bouquets, perhaps for + church offerings. There were mounds of chestnuts, four or five feet high + and wide; and these flowers and fruits filled the interior of the market, + while the stalls for the flesh and fish were on the outside. There seemed + more sellers than buyers; here and there were ladies buying, but it is + said that the mistresses commonly send their maids for the daily + provision. + </p> + <p> + Ordinarily I should say you could not go amiss for your profit and + pleasure in Seville, but there are certain imperative objects of interest + like the Casa de Pilatos which you really have to do. Strangely enough, it + is very well worth doing, for, though it is even more factitiously Moorish + than the Alcazar, it is of almost as great beauty and of greater dignity. + Gardens, galleries, staircases, statues, paintings, all are interesting, + with a mingled air of care and neglect which is peculiarly charming, + though perhaps the keener sensibilities, the morbider nerves may suffer + from the glare and hardness of the tiling which render the place so + wonderful and so exquisite. One must complain of something, and I complain + of the tiling; I do not mind the house being supposed like the house of + Pontius Pilate in Jerusalem. + </p> + <p> + It belongs to the Duke of Medina-Celi, who no more comes to it from Madrid + than the Duke of Alva comes to his house, which I somehow perversely + preferred. For one thing, the Alva palace has eleven <i>patios,</i> all + far more forgotten than the four in the House of Pilate, and I could fully + glut my love of <i>patios</i> without seeing half of them. Besides, it was + in the charge of a typical Spanish family: a lean, leathery, sallow + father, a fat, immovable mother, and a tall, silent daughter. The girl + showed us darkly about the dreary place, with its fountains and orange + trees and palms, its damp, Moresque, moldy walls, its damp, moldy, + beautiful wooden ceilings, and its damp, moldy staircase leading to the + family rooms overhead, which we could not see. The family stays for a + little time only in the spring and fall, but if ever they stay so late as + we had come the sunlight lying so soft and warm in the <i>patio</i> and + the garden out of it must have made them as sorry to leave it as we were. + </p> + <p> + I am not sure but I valued the House of Alva somewhat for the chance my + visit to it gave me of seeing a Sevillian tenement-house such as I had + hoped I might see. One hears that such houses are very scrupulously kept + by the janitors who compel the tenants to a cleanliness not perhaps always + their nature. At any rate, this one, just across the way from the Alva + House, was of a surprising neatness. It was built three stories high, with + galleries looking into an open court and doors giving from these into the + several tenements. As fortune, which does not continually smile on travel, + would have it that morning, two ladies of the house were having a vivid + difference of opinion on an upper gallery. Or at least one was, for the + other remained almost as silent as the spectators who grouped themselves + about her or put their heads out of the windows to see, as well as hear, + what it was about. I wish I knew and I would tell the reader. The injured + party, and I am sure she must have been deeply injured, showered her enemy + with reproaches, and each time when she had emptied the vials of her wrath + with much shaking of her hands in the wrong-doer’s face she went away a + few yards and filled them up again and then returned for a fresh + discharge. It was perfectly like a scene of Goldoni and like many a + passage of real life in his native city, and I was rapt in it across fifty + years to the Venice I used to know. But the difference in Seville was that + there was actively only one combatant in the strife, and the witnesses + took no more part in it than the passive resistant. + </p> + <p> + VI + </p> + <p> + As a contrast to this violent scene which was not so wholly violent but + that it was relieved by a boy teasing a cat with his cap in the + foreground, and the sweet singing of canaries in the windows of the houses + near, I may commend the Casa de los Venerables, ecclesiastics somehow + related to the cathedral and having their tranquil dwelling not far from + it. The street we took from the Duke of Alva’s palace was so narrow and + crooked that we scraped the walls in passing, and we should never have got + by one heavily laden donkey if he had not politely pushed the side of his + pannier into a doorway to make room for us. When we did get to the Casa de + los Venerables we found it mildly yellow-washed and as beautifully serene + and sweet as the house of venerable men should be. Its distinction in a + world of <i>patios</i> was a <i>patio</i> where the central fountain was + sunk half a story below the entrance floor, and encircled by a stairway by + which the humble neighbor folk freely descended to fill their water jars. + I suppose that gentle mansion has other merits, but the fine staircase + that ended under a baroque dome left us facing a bolted door, so that we + had to guess at those attractions, which I leave the reader to imagine in + turn. + </p> + <p> + I have kept the unique wonder of Seville waiting too long already for my + recognition, though in its eight hundred years it should have learned + patience enough for worse things. From its great antiquity alone, if from + nothing else, it is plain that the Giralda at Seville could not have been + studied from the tower of the Madison Square Garden in New York, which the + American will recall when he sees it. If the case must be reversed and we + must allow that the Madison Square tower was studied from the Giralda, we + must still recognize that it is no servile copy, but in its frank + imitation has a grace and beauty which achieves originality. Still, the + Giralda is always the Giralda, and, though there had been no Saint-Gaudens + to tip its summit with such a flying-footed nymph as poises on our own + tower, the figure of Faith which crowns it is at least a good + weather-vane, and from its office of turning gives the mighty bell-tower + its name. Long centuries before the tower was a belfry it served the + mosque, which the cathedral now replaces, as a minaret for the muezzin to + call the faithful to prayer, but it was then only two-thirds as high. The + Christian belfry which continues it is not in offensive discord with the + structure below; its other difference in form and spirit achieves an + impossible harmony. The Giralda, however, chiefly works its enchantment by + its color, but here I must leave the proof of this to the picture postal + which now everywhere takes the bread out of the word-painter’s mouth. The + time was when with a palette full of tinted adjectives one might hope to + do an unrivaled picture of the Giralda; but that time is gone; and if the + reader has not a colored postal by him he should lose no time in going to + Seville and seeing the original. For the best view of it I must advise a + certain beautifully irregular small court in the neighborhood, with simple + houses so low that you can easily look up over their roofs and see the + mighty bells of the Giralda rioting far aloof, flinging themselves beyond + the openings of the belfry and deafeningly making believe to leap out into + space. If the traveler fails to find this court (for it seems now and then + to be taken in and put away), he need not despair of seeing the Giralda + fitly. He cannot see Seville at all without seeing it, and from every + point, far or near, he sees it grand and glorious. + </p> + <p> + <a name="linkimage-0026" id="linkimage-0026"> + <!-- IMG --></a> + </p> + <div class="fig" style="width:60%;"> + <img src="images/h1-26.jpg" + alt="26 the Court of Flags and Tower Of The Giralda " width="100%" /><br /> + </div> + <p> + I remember it especially from beyond the Guadalquivir in the drive we took + through Triana to the village of Italica, where three Roman emperors were + born, as the guide-books will officiously hasten to tell, and steal away + your chance of treating your reader with any effect of learned research. + These emperors (I will not be stopped by any guide-book from saying) were + Trajan, Hadrian, and Theodosius; and Triana is named for the first of + them. Fortunately, we turned to the right after crossing the bridge and so + escaped the gipsy quarter, but we paused through a long street so swarming + with children that we wondered to hear whole schoolrooms full of them + humming and droning their lessons as we made our way among the tenants. + Fortunately, they played mostly in the gutters, the larger looking after + the smaller when their years and riches were so few more, with that + beautiful care which childhood bestows on babyhood everywhere in Europe. + To say that those Spanish children were as tenderly watchful of these + Spanish babies as English children is to say everything. Now and then a + mother cared for a babe as only a mother can in an office which the + pictures and images of the Most Holy Virgin consecrate and endear in lands + where the sterilized bottle is unknown, but oftenest it was a little + sister that held it in her arms and crooned whatever was the Spanish of— + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + Rack back, baby, daddy shot a b’ar; + Rack back, baby, see it hangin’ thar. +</pre> + <p> + For there are no rocking-chairs in Triana, as there were none in our + backwoods, and the little maids tilted to and fro on the fore legs and + hind legs of their chairs and lulled their charges to sleep with seismic + joltings. When the street turned into a road it turned into a road a + hundred feet wide; one of those roads which Charles III., when he came to + the Spanish throne from Naples, full of beneficent projects and ideals, + bestowed upon his unwilling and ungrateful subjects. These roads were made + about the middle of the eighteenth century, and they have been gathering + dust ever since, so that the white powder now lies in the one beyond + Triana five or six inches deep. Along the sides occasional shade-trees + stifled, and beyond these gaunt, verdureless fields widened away, though + we were told that in the spring the fields were red with flowers and green + with young wheat. There were no market-gardens, and the chief crop seemed + brown pigs and black goats. In some of the foregrounds, as well as the + backgrounds, were olive orchards with olives heaped under them and + peasants still resting from their midday breakfast. A mauve bell-shaped + flower plentifully fringed the wayside; our driver said it had no name, + and later an old peasant said it was “bad.” + </p> + <p> + VII + </p> + <p> + We passed a convent turned into a prosperous-looking manufactory and we + met a troop of merry priests talking gayly and laughing together, and very + effective in their black robes against the white road. When we came to the + village that was a <i>municipium</i> under Augustus and a <i>colonia</i> + under Hadrian, we found it indeed scanty and poor, but very neat and + self-respectful-looking, and not unworthy to have been founded by Scipio + Africanus two hundred years before Christ. Such cottage interiors as we + glimpsed seemed cleaner and cozier than some in Wales; men in wide + flat-brimmed hats sat like statues at the doors, absolutely motionless, + but there were women bustling in and out in their work, and at one place a + little girl of ten had been left to do the family wash, and was doing it + joyously and spreading the clothes in the dooryard to dry. We did not meet + with universal favor as we drove by; some groups of girls mocked our + driver; when we said one of them was pretty he answered that he had seen + prettier. + </p> + <p> + At the entrance to the ruins of the amphitheater which forms the tourist’s + chief excuse for visiting Italica the popular manners softened toward us; + the village children offered to sell us wild narcissus flowers and were + even willing to take money in charity. They followed us into the ruins, + much forbidden by the fine, toothless old custodian who took possession of + us as his proper prey and led us through the moldering caverns and + crumbling tiers of seats which form the amphitheater. Vast blocks, vast + hunks, of the masonry are broken off from the mass and lie detached, but + the mass keeps the form and dignity of the original design; and in the + lonely fields there it had something august and proud beyond any quality + of the Arena at Verona or the Colosseum at Rome. It is mostly stripped of + the marble that once faced the interior, and is like some monstrous oval + shaped out of the earth, but near the imperial box lay some white slabs + with initials cut in them which restored the vision of the “grandeur that + was Rome” pretty well over the known world when this great work was in its + prime. Our custodian was qualified by his toothlessness to lisp like any + old Castilian the letters that other Andalusians hiss, but my own Spanish + was so slight and his <i>patois</i> was so dense that the best we could do + was to establish a polite misunderstanding. On this his one word of + English, repeated as we passed through the subterranean doors, “Lion, + lion, lion,” cast a gleam of intelligence which brightened into a vivid + community of ideas when we ended in his cottage, and he prepared to sell + us some of the small Roman coins which formed his stock in trade. The poor + place was beautifully neat, and from his window he made us free of a sight + of Seville, signally the cathedral and the Giralda, such as could not be + bought for money in New York. + </p> + <p> + Then we set out on our return, leaving unvisited to the left the church of + San Isidore de Campo, with its tombs of Guzman the Good and that Better + Lady Dona Urraca Osorio, whom Peter the Cruel had burned. I say better, + because I hold it nobler in Urraca to have rejected the love of a wicked + king than in Guzman to have let the Moors slay his son rather than + surrender a city to them. But I could only pay honor to her pathetic + memory and the memory of that nameless handmaid of hers who rushed into + the flames to right the garments on the form which the wind had blown them + away from, and so perished with her. We had to take on trust from the + guide-books all trace of the Roman town where the three emperors were + born, and whose “palaces, aqueducts, and temples and circus were + magnificent.” We had bought some of the “coins daily dug up,” but we + intrusted to the elements those “vestiges of vestiges” left of Trajan’s + palaces after an envious earthquake destroyed them so lately as 1755. + </p> + <p> + The one incident of our return worthy of literature was the dramatic + triumph of a woman over a man and a mule as we saw it exhibited on the + parapet of a culvert over a dry torrent’s bed. It was the purpose of this + woman, standing on the coping in statuesque relief and showing against the + sky the comfortable proportions of the Spanish housewife, to mount the + mule behind the man. She waited patiently while the man slowly and as we + thought faithlessly urged the mule to the parapet; then, when she put out + her hands and leaned forward to take her seat, the mule inched softly away + and left her to recover her balance at the risk of a fall on the other + side. We were too far for anything but the dumb show, but there were, no + doubt, words which conveyed her opinions unmistakably to both man and + mule. With our hearts in our mouths we witnessed the scene and its + repetitions till we could bear it no longer, and we had bidden our cabman + drive on when with a sudden spring the brave woman launched herself + semicircularly forward and descended upon the exact spot which she had + been aiming at. There solidly established on the mule, with her arms fast + round the man, she rode off; and I do not think any reader of mine would + like to have been that mule or that man for the rest of the way home. + </p> + <p> + We met many other mules, much more exemplary, in teams of two, three, and + four, covered with bells and drawing every kind of carryall and stage and + omnibus. These vehicles were built when the road was, about 1750, and + were, like the road, left to the natural forces for keeping themselves in + repair. The natural forces were not wholly adequate in either case, but + the vehicles were not so thick with dust as the road, because they could + shake it off. They had each two or four passengers seated with the driver; + passengers clustered over the top and packed the inside, but every one was + in the joyous mood of people going home for the day. In a plaza not far + from the Triana bridge you may see these decrepit conveyances assembling + every afternoon for their suburban journeys, and there is no more + picturesque sight in Seville, more homelike, more endearing. Of course, + when I say this I leave out of the count the bridge over the Guadalquivir + at the morning or evening hour when it is covered with brightly + caparisoned donkeys, themselves covered with men needing a shave, and + gay-kerchiefed women of every age, with boys and dogs underfoot, and + pedestrians of every kind, and hucksters selling sea-fruit and land-fruit + and whatever else the stranger would rather see than eat. Very little + outcry was needed for the sale of these things, which in Naples or even in + Venice would have been attended by such vociferation as would have + sufficed to proclaim a city in flames. + </p> + <p> + On a day not long after our expedition to Italica we went a drive with a + young American friend living in Seville, whom I look to for a book about + that famous city such as I should like to write myself if I had the time + to live it as he has done. He promised that he would show us a piece of + the old Roman wall, but he showed us ever so much more, beginning with the + fore court of the conventual church of Santa Paula, where we found the + afternoon light waiting to illumine for us with its tender caress the Luca + della Robbia-like colored porcelain figures of the portal and the + beautiful octagon tower staying a moment before taking flight for heaven: + the most exquisite moment of our whole fortnight in Seville. Tall pots of + flowers stood round, and the grass came green through the crevices of the + old foot-worn pavement. When we passed out a small boy scuffled for our + copper with the little girl who opened the gate for us, but was brought to + justice by us, and joined cheerfully in the chorus of children chanting + “Mo-ney, mo-ney!” round us, but no more expecting an answer to their + prayer than if we had been saints off the church door. + </p> + <p> + We passed out of the city by a gate where in a little coign of vantage a + cobbler was thoughtfully hammering away in the tumult at a shoe-sole, and + then suddenly on our right we had the Julian wall: not a mere fragment, + but a good long stretch of it. The Moors had built upon it and + characterized it, but had not so masked it as to hide the perdurable + physiognomy of the Roman work. It was vastly more Roman wall than you see + at Rome; but far better than this heroic image of war and waste was the + beautiful old aqueduct, perfectly Roman still, with no visible touch from + Moor, or from Christian, before or after the Moor, and performing its + beneficent use after two thousand years as effectively as in the years + before Christ came to bless the peacemakers. Nine miles from its mountain + source the graceful arches bring the water on their shoulders; and though + there is now an English company that pipes other streams to the city + through its underground mains, the Roman aqueduct, eternally sublime in + its usefulness, is constant to the purpose of the forgotten men who + imagined it. The outer surfaces of the channel which it lifted to the + light and air were tagged with weeds and immemorial mosses, and dripped as + with the sweat of its twenty-centuried toil. + </p> + <p> + We followed it as far as it went on our way to a modern work of peace and + use which the ancient friend and servant of man would feel no unworthy + rival. Beyond the drives and gardens of the Delicias, where we lingered + our last to look at the pleasurers haunting them, we drove far across the + wheat-fields where a ship-canal five miles long is cutting to rectify the + curve of the Guadalquivir and bring Seville many miles nearer the sea than + it has ever been before; hitherto the tramp steamers have had to follow + the course of the ships of Tarshish in their winding approach. The canal + is the notion of the young king of Spain, and the work on it goes forward + night and day. The electric lights were shedding their blinding glare on + the deafening clatter of the excavating machinery, and it was an unworthy + relief to escape from the intense modernity of the scene to that medieval + retreat nearer the city where the <i>aficionados</i> night-long watch the + bulls coming up from their pastures for the fight or the feast, whichever + you choose to call it, of the morrow. These amateurs, whom it would be + rude to call sports, lurk in the wayside cafe over their cups of chocolate + and wait till in that darkest hour before dawn, with irregular trampling + and deep bellowing, these hapless heroes of the arena pass on to their + doom. It is a great thing for the <i>aficionados</i> who may imagine in + that bellowing the the gladiator’s hail of <i>Morituri salutant.</i> At + any rate, it is very chic; it gives a man standing in Seville, which + disputes with Madrid the primacy in bull-feasting. If the national capital + has bull-feasting every Sunday of the year, all the famous <i>torreros</i> + come from Andalusia, with the bulls, their brave antagonists, and in the + great provincial capital there are bull-feasts of insurpassable, if not + incomparable, splendor. + </p> + <p> + Before our pleasant drive ended we passed, as we had already passed + several times, the scene of the famous Feria of Seville, the cattle show + which draws tens of thousands to the city every springtime for business + and pleasure, but mostly pleasure. The Feria focuses in its greatest + intensity at one of the entrances to the Delicias, where the street is + then so dense with every sort of vehicle that people can cross it only by + the branching viaduct, which rises in two several ascents from each + footway, intersecting at top and delivering their endless multitudes on + the opposite sidewalk. Along the street are gay pavilions and cottages + where the nobility live through the Feria with their families and welcome + the public to the sight of their revelry through the open doors and + windows. Then, if ever, the stranger may see the dancing, and hear the + singing and playing which all the other year in Seville disappoints him + of. + </p> + <p> + VIII + </p> + <p> + On the eve of All Saints, after we had driven over the worst road in the + world outside of Spain or America, we arrived at the entrance of the + cemetery where Baedeker had mysteriously said “some sort of fair was + held.” Then we perceived that we were present at the preparations for + celebrating one of the most affecting events of the Spanish year. This was + the visit of kindred and friends bringing tokens of remembrance and + affection to the dead. The whole long, rough way we had passed them on + foot, and at the cemetery gate we found them arriving in public cabs, as + well as in private carriages, with the dignity and gravity of + smooth-shaven footmen and coachmen. In Spain these functionaries look + their office more solemnly even than in England and affect you as + peculiarly correct and eighteenth-century. But apart from their looks the + occasion seemed more a festivity than a solemnity. The people bore + flowers, mostly artificial, as well as lanterns, and within the cemetery + they were furbishing up the monuments with every appliance according to + the material, scrubbing the marble, whitewashing the stucco, and + repainting the galvanized iron. The lanterns were made to match the + monuments and fences architecturally, and the mourners were attaching them + with a gentle satisfaction in their fitness; I suppose they were to be + lighted at dark and to burn through the night. There were men among the + mourners, but most of them were women and children; some were weeping, + like a father leading his two little ones, and an old woman grieving for + her dead with tears. But what prevailed was a community of quiet + resignation, almost to the sort of cheerfulness which bereavement + sometimes knows. The scene was tenderly affecting, but it had a tremendous + touch of tragic setting in the long, straight avenue of black cypresses + which slimly climbed the upward slope from the entrance to the farther + bound of the cemetery. Otherwise there was only the patience of entire + faith in this annually recurring visit of the living to the dead: the + fixed belief that these should rise from the places where they lay. and + they who survived them for yet a little more of time should join them from + whatever end of the earth in the morning of the Last Day. + </p> + <p> + All along I have been shirking what any right-minded traveler would feel + almost his duty, but I now own that there is a museum in Seville, the + Museo Provincial, which was of course once a convent and is now a gallery, + with the best, but not the very best, Murillos in it, not to speak of the + best Zurburans. I will not speak at all of those pictures, because I could + in no wise say what they were, or were like, and because I would not have + the reader come to them with any opinions of mine which he might bring + away with him in the belief that they were his own. Let him not fail to go + to the museum, however; he will be the poorer beyond calculation if he + does not; but he will be a beggar if he does not go to the Hospital de la + Caridad, where in the church he will find six Murillos out-Murilloing any + others excepting always the incomparable “Vision of St. Anthony” in the + cathedral. We did not think of those six Murillos when we went to the + hospital; we knew nothing of the peculiar beauty and dignity of the + church; but we came because we wished to see what the repentance of a man + could do for others after a youth spent in wicked riot. The gentle, + pensive little Mother who received us carefully said at once that the + hospital was not for the sick, but only for the superannuated and the poor + and friendless who came to pass a night or an indefinite time in it, + according to the pressure of their need; and after showing us the rich + little church, she led us through long, clean corridors where old men lay + in their white beds or sat beside them eating their breakfasts, very + savory-looking, out of ample white bowls. Some of them saluted us, but the + others we excused because they were so preoccupied. In a special room set + apart for them were what we brutally call tramps, but who doubtless are + known in Spain for indigent brethren overtaken on their wayfaring without + a lodging for the night. Here they could come for it and cook their supper + and breakfast at the large circular fireplace which filled one end of + their room. They rose at our entrance and bowed; and how I wish I could + have asked them, every one, about their lives! + </p> + <p> + There was nothing more except the doubt of that dear little Mother when I + gave her a silver dollar for her kindness. She seemed surprised and + worried, and asked, “Is it for the charity or for me?” What could I do but + answer, “Oh, for your Grace,” and add another for the charity. She still + looked perplexed, but there was no way out of our misunderstanding, if it + was one, and we left her with her sweet, troubled face between the white + wings of her cap, like angel’s wings mounting to it from her shoulders. + Then we went to look at the statue of the founder bearing a hapless + stranger in his arms in a space of flowers before the hospital, where a + gardener kept watch that no visitor should escape without a bunch worth at + least a peseta. He had no belief that the peseta could possibly be for the + charity, and the poverty of the poor neighborhood was so much relieved by + the mere presence of the hospital that it begged of us very little as we + passed through. + </p> + <p> + IX + </p> + <p> + We had expected to go to Granada after a week in Seville, but man is + always proposing beyond his disposing in strange lands as well as at home, + and we were fully a fortnight in the far lovelier capital. In the mean + time we had changed from our rooms in the rear of the hotel to others in + the front, where we entered intimately into the life of the Plaza San + Fernando as far as we might share it from our windows. It was not very + active life; even the cabmen whose neat victorias bordered the place on + three sides were not eager for custom; they invited the stranger, but they + did not urge; there was a continual but not a rapid passing through the + ample oblong; there was a good deal of still life on the benches where + leisure enjoyed the feathery shadow of the palms, for the sun was apt to + be too hot at the hour of noon, though later it conduced to the slumber + which in Spain accompanies the digestion of the midday meal in all + classes. As the afternoon advanced numbers of little girls came into the + plaza and played children’s games which seemed a translation of games + familiar to our own country. One evening a small boy was playing with + them, but after a while he seemed to be found unequal to the sport; he was + ejected from the group and went off gloomily to grieve apart with his + little thumb in his mouth. The sight of his dignified desolation was + insupportable, and we tried what a copper of the big-dog value would do to + comfort him. He took it without looking up and ran away to the + peanut-stand which is always steaming at the first corner all over + Christendom. Late in the evening—in fact, after the night had fairly + fallen—we saw him making his way into a house fronting on the plaza. + He tried at the door with one hand and in the other he held an unexhausted + bag of peanuts. He had wasted no word of thanks on us, and he did not now. + When he got the door open he backed into the interior still facing us and + so fading from our sight and knowledge. + </p> + <p> + He had the touch of comedy which makes pathos endurable, but another + incident was wholly pathetic. As we came out of an antiquity shop near the + cathedral one afternoon we found on the elevated footway near the Gate of + Pardon a mother and daughter, both of the same second youth, who gently + and jointly pronounced to us the magical word <i>encajes.</i> Rather, they + questioned us with it, and they only suggested, very forbearingly, that we + should come to their house with them to see those laces, which of course + were old laces; their house was quite near. But that one of us twain who + was singly concerned in <i>encajes</i> had fatigued and perhaps overbought + herself at the antiquity shop, and she signified a regret which they + divined too well was dissent. They looked rather than expressed a keen + little disappointment; the mother began a faint insistence, but the + daughter would not suffer it. Here was the pride of poverty, if not + poverty itself, and it was with a pang that we parted from these mutely + appealing ladies. We could not have borne it if we had not instantly + promised ourselves to come the next day and meet them and go home with + them and buy all their <i>encajes</i> that we had money for. We kept our + promise, and we came the next day and the next and every day we remained + in Seville, and lingered so long that we implanted in the cabmen beside + the curbing the inextinguishable belief that we were in need of a cab; but + we never saw those dear ladies again. + </p> + <p> + These are some of the cruel memories which the happiest travel leaves, and + I gratefully recall that in the case of a custodian of the Columbian + Museum, which adjoins the cathedral, we did not inflict a pang that + rankled in our hearts for long. I gave him a handful of copper coins which + I thought made up a peseta, but his eyes were keener, and a sorrow gloomed + his brow which projected its shadow so darkly over us when we went into + the cathedral for one of our daily looks that we hastened to return and + make up the full peseta with another heap of coppers; a whole sunburst of + smiles illumined his face, and a rainbow of the brightest colors arched + our sky and still arches it whenever we think of that custodian and his + rehabilitated trust in man. + </p> + <p> + This seems the crevice where I can crowd in the fact that bits of family + wash hung from the rail of the old pulpit in the Court of Oranges beside + the cathedral, and a pumpkin vine lavishly decorated an arcade near a + doorway which perhaps gave into the dwelling of that very custodian. At + the same time I must not fail to urge the reader’s seeing the Columbian + Museum, which is richly interesting and chiefly for those Latin and + Italian authors annotated by the immortal admiral’s own hand. These give + the American a sense of him as the discoverer of our hemisphere which + nothing else could, and insurpassably render the New World credible. At + the same time they somehow bring a lump of pity and piety into the throat + at the thought of the things he did and suffered. They bring him from + history and make him at home in the beholder’s heart, and there seems a + mystical significance in the fact that the volume most abounding in + marginalia should be <i>Seneca’s Prophecies.</i> + </p> + <p> + The frequent passing of men as well as women and children through our + Plaza San Fernando and the prevalence of men asleep on the benches; the + immense majority of boys everywhere; the moralized <i>abattoir</i> outside + the walls where the humanity dormant at the bull-feast wakes to hide every + detail of slaughter for the market; a large family of cats basking at + their ease in a sunny doorway; trains of milch goats with wicker muzzles, + led by a milch cow from door to door through the streets; the sudden + solemn beauty of the high altar in the cathedral, seen by chance on a + brilliant day; the bright, inspiriting air of Seville; a glorious glimpse + of the Giralda coming home from a drive; the figure of a girl outlined in + a lofty window; a middle-aged Finnish pair trying to give themselves in + murmured talk to the colored stucco of the Hall of the Ambassadors in what + seems their wedding journey; two artists working near with sketches tilted + against the wall; a large American lady who arrives one forenoon in + traveling dress and goes out after luncheon in a mantilla with a fan and + high comb; another American lady who appears after dinner in the costume + of a Spanish dancing-girl; the fact that there is no Spanish butter and + that the only good butter comes from France and the passable butter from + Denmark; the soft long veils of pink cloud that trail themselves in the + sky across our Plaza, and then dissolve in the silvery radiance of the + gibbous moon; the yellowish-red electric Brush lights swinging from palm + to palm as in the decoration of some vast ballroom; a second drive through + Triana, and a failure to reach the church we set out for; the droves of + brown pigs and flocks of brown sheep; the goatherds unloading olive boughs + in the fields for the goats to browse; a dirty, kind, peaceful village, + with an English factory in it, and a mansion of galvanized iron with an + automobile before it; a pink villa on a hillside and a family group on the + shoulder of a high-walled garden; a girl looking down from the wall, and a + young man resting his hand on the masonry and looking up at her; the good + faces of the people, men and women; boys wrestling and frolicking in the + village streets; the wide dust-heap of a road, full of sudden holes; the + heat of the sun in the first November week after touches of cold; the + tram-cars that wander from one side of the city street to the other, and + then barely miss scraping the house walls; in our drive home from our + failure for that church, men with trains of oxen plowing and showing + against the round red rayless sun; a stretch of the river with the + crimson-hulled steamers, and a distant sail-boat seen across the fields; + the gray moon that burnishes itself and rides bright and high for our + return; people in balconies, and the air full of golden dust shot with + bluish electric lights; here is a handful of suggestions from my note-book + which each and every one would expand into a chapter or a small volume + under the intensive culture which the reader may well have come to dread. + But I fling them all down here for him to do what he likes with, and turn + to speak at more length of the University, or, rather the University + Church, which I would not have any reader of mine fail to visit. + </p> + <p> + X + </p> + <p> + With my desire to find likeness rather than difference in strange peoples, + I was glad to have two of the students loitering in the <i>patio</i> play + just such a trick on a carter at the gate as school-boys might play in our + own land. While his back was turned they took his whip and hid it and duly + triumphed in his mystification and dismay. We did not wait for the + catastrophe, but by the politeness of another student found the booth of + the custodian, who showed us to the library. A noise of recitation from + the windows looking into the <i>patio</i> followed us up-stairs; but + maturer students were reading at tables in the hushed library, and at a + large central table a circle of grave authorities of some sort were + smoking the air blue with their cigarettes. One, who seemed chief among + them, rose and bowed us into the freedom of the place, and again rose and + bowed when we went out. We did not stay long, for a library is of the + repellent interest of a wine-cellar; unless the books or bottles are + broached it is useless to linger. There are eighty thousand volumes in + that library, but we had to come away without examining half of them. The + church was more appreciable, and its value was enhanced to us by the + reluctance of the stiff old sacristan to unlock it. We found it rich in a + most wonderful <i>retablo</i> carved in wood and painted. Besides the + excellent pictures at the high altar, there are two portrait brasses which + were meant to be recumbent, but which are stood up against the wall, + perhaps to their surprise, without loss of impressiveness. Most notable of + all is the mural tomb of Pedro Enriquez de Ribera and his wife: he who + built the Casa de Pilatos, and as he had visited the Holy Land was + naturally fabled to have copied it from the House of Pilate. Now, as if + still continuing his travels, he reposes with his wife in a sort of + double-decker monument, where the Evil One would have them suggest to the + beholder the notion of passengers in the upper and lower berths of a + Pullman sleeper. + </p> + <p> + Of all the Spanish cities that I saw, Seville was the most charming, not + for those attributive blandishments of the song and dance which the + tourist is supposed to find it, but which we quite failed of, but for the + simpler and less conventional amiabilities which she was so rich in. I + have tried to hint at these, but really one must go to Seville for them + and let them happen as they will. Many happened in our hotel where we + liked everybody, from the kindly, most capable Catalonian head waiter to + the fine-headed little Napoleonic-looking waiter who had identified us at + San Sebastian as Americans, because we spoke “quicklier” than the English, + and who ran to us when we came into the hotel and shook hands with its as + if we were his oldest and dearest friends. There was a Swiss concierge who + could not be bought for money, and the manager was the mirror of managers. + Fancy the landlord of the Waldorf-Astoria, or the St. Regis, coming out on + the sidewalk and beating down a taxicabman from a charge of fifteen + pesetas to six for a certain drive! It is not thinkable, and yet the like + of it happened to xis in Seville from our manager. It was not his fault, + when our rear apartment became a little too chill, and we took a parlor in + the front and came back on the first day hoping to find it stored full of + the afternoon sun’s warmth, but found that the <i>camerera</i> had opened + the windows and closed the shutters in our absence so that our parlor was + of a frigidity which no glitter of the electric light could temper. The + halls and public rooms were chill in anticipation and remembrance of any + cold outside, but in otir parlor there was a hole for the sort of stove + which we saw in the reading-room, twice as large as an average teakettle, + with a pipe as big around as the average rain-pipe. I am sure this + apparatus would have heated us admirably, but the weather grew milder and + milder and we never had occasion to make the successful experiment. + Meanwhile the moral atmosphere of the hotel was of a blandness which would + have gone far to content us with any meteorological perversity. When we + left it we were on those human terms with every one who ruled or served in + it which one never attains in an American hotel, and rarely in an English + one. + </p> + <p> + At noon on the 4th of November the sun was really hot in our plaza; but we + were instructed that before the winter was over there would be cold + enough, not of great frosty severity, of course, but nasty and hard to + bear in the summer conditions which prevail through the year. I wish I + could tell how the people live then in their beautiful, cool houses, but I + do not know, and I do not know how they live at any season except from the + scantiest hearsay. The women remain at home except when they go to church + or to drive in the Delicias—that is to say, the women of society, of + the nobility. There is no society in our sense among people of the middle + classes; the men when they are not at business are at the cafe; the women + when they are not at mass are at home. That is what we were told, and yet + at a moving-picture show we saw many women of the middle as well as the + lower classes. The frequent holidays afford them an outlet, and indoors + they constantly see their friends and kindred at their <i>tertulias.</i> + </p> + <p> + The land is in large holdings which are managed by the factors or agents + of the noble proprietors. These, when they are not at Madrid, are to be + found at their clubs, where their business men bring them papers to be + signed, often unread. This sounds a little romantic, and perhaps it is not + true. Some gentlemen take a great interest in the bull-feasts and breed + the bulls and cultivate the bull-fighters; what other esthetic interests + they have I do not know. All classes are said to be of an Oriental + philosophy of life; they hold that the English striving and running to and + fro and seeing strange countries comes in the end to the same thing as + sitting still; and why should they bother? There is something in that, but + one may sit still too much; the Spanish ladies, as I many times heard, do + overdo it. Not only they do not walk abroad; they do not walk at home; + everything is carried to and from them; they do not lift hand or foot. The + consequence is that they have very small hands and feet; Gautier, who + seems to have grown tired when he reached Seville, and has comparatively + little to say of it, says that a child may hold a Sevillian lady’s foot in + its hand; he does not say he saw it done. What is true is that no child + could begin to clasp with both hands the waist of an average Sevillian + lady. But here again the rule has its exceptions and will probably have + more. Not only is the English queen-consort stimulating the Andalusian + girls to play tennis by her example when she comes to Seville, but it has + somehow become the fashion for ladies of all ages to leave their carriages + in the Delicias and walk up and down; we saw at least a dozen doing it. + </p> + <p> + Whatever flirting and intriguing goes on, the public sees nothing of it. + In the street there is no gleam of sheep’s-eying or any manner of + indecorum. The women look sensible and good, and I should say the same of + the men; the stranger’s experience must have been more unfortunate than + mine if he has had any unkindness from them. One heard that Spanish women + do not smoke, unless they are <i>cigarreras</i> and work in the large + tobacco factory, where the “Carmen” tradition has given place to the + mother-of-a-family type, with her baby on the floor beside her. Even these + may prefer not to set the baby a bad example and have her grow up and + smoke like those English and American women. The strength of the Church + is, of course, in the women’s faith, and its strength is unquestionable, + if not quite unquestioned. In Seville, as I have said, there are two + Spanish Protestant churches, and their worship, is not molested. Society + does not receive their members; but we heard that with most Spanish people + Protestantism is a puzzle rather than offense. They know we are not Jews, + but Christians; yet we are not Catholics; and what, then, are we? With the + Protestants, as with the Catholics, there is always religious marriage. + There is civil marriage for all, but without the religious rite the pair + are not well seen by either sect. + </p> + <p> + It is said that the editor of the ablest paper in Madrid, which publishes + a local edition at Seville, is a Protestant. The queen mother is extremely + clerical, though one of the wisest and best women who ever ruled; the king + and queen consort are as liberal as possible, and the king is notoriously + a democrat, with a dash of Haroun al Rashid, he likes to take his + governmental subordinates unawares, and a story is told of his dropping in + at the post-office on a late visit to Seville, and asking for the chief. + He was out, and so were all the subordinate officials down to the lowest, + whom the king found at his work. The others have since been diligent at + theirs. The story is characteristic of the king, if not of the post-office + people. + </p> + <p> + Political freedom is almost grotesquely unrestricted. In our American + republic we should scarcely tolerate a party in favor of a monarchy, but + in the Spanish monarchy a republican party is recognized and represented. + It holds public meetings and counts among its members many able and + distinguished men, such as the novelist Perez Galdos, one of the most + brilliant novelists not only in Spain but in Europe. With this unbounded + liberty in Andalusia, it is said that the Spaniards of the north are still + more radical. + </p> + <p> + Though the climate is most favorable for consumptives, the habits of the + people are so unwholesome that tuberculosis prevails, and there are two or + three deaths a day from it in Seville. There is no avoidance of + tuberculous suspects; they cough, and the men spit everywhere in the + streets and on the floors and carpets of the clubs. The women suffer for + want of fresh air, though now with the example of the English queen before + them and the young girls who used to lie abed till noon getting up early + ta play tennis, it will be different. Their mothers and aunts still drive + to the Delicias to prove that they have carriages, but when there they + alight and walk up and down by their doctor’s advice. + </p> + <p> + I only know that during our fortnight in Seville I suffered no wound to a + sensibility which has been kept in full repair for literary, if not for + humanitarian purposes. The climate was as kind as the people. It is + notorious that in summer the heat is that of a furnace, but even then it + is bearable because it is a dry heat, like that of our indoor furnaces. + The 5th of November was our last day, and then it was too hot for comfort + in the sun, but one is willing to find the November sun too hot; it is an + agreeable solecism; and I only wish that we could have found the sun too + hot during the next three days in Granada. If the 5th of November had been + worse for heat than it was it must still remain dear in our memory, + because in the afternoon we met once more these Chilians of our hearts + whom we had met in San Sebastian and Burgos and Valladolid and Madrid. We + knew we should meet them in Seville and were not the least surprised. They + were as glad and gay as ever, and in our common polyglot they possessed us + of the fact that they had just completed the eastern hemicycle of their + Peninsular tour. They were latest from Malaga, and now they were going + northward. It was our last meeting, but better friends I could not hope to + meet again, whether in the Old World or the New, or that Other World which + we hope will somehow be the summation of all that is best in both. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0012" id="link2H_4_0012"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + XI. TO AND IN GRANADA + </h2> + <p> + The train which leaves Seville at ten of a sunny morning is supposed to + arrive in Granada at seven of a moonlight evening. This is a mistake; the + moonlight is on time, but the train arrives at a quarter of nine. Still, + if the day has been sunny the whole way and the moonlight is there at the + end, no harm has really been done; and measurably the promise of the train + has been kept. + </p> + <p> + I + </p> + <p> + There was not a moment of the long journey over the levels of Andahisia + which was not charming; when it began to be over the uplands of the last + Moorish kingdom, it was richly impressive. The only thing that I can + remember against the landscape is the prevalence of olive orchards. I + hailed as a relief the stubble-fields immeasurably spread at times, and I + did not always resent the roadside planting of some sort of tall hedges + which now and then hid the olives. But olive orchards may vary their + monotony by the spectacle of peasants on ladders gathering their fruit + into wide-mouthed sacks, and occasionally their ranks of symmetrical green + may be broken by the yellow and red of poplars and pomegranates around the + pleasant farmsteads. The nearer we drew to Granada the pleasanter these + grew, till in the famous Vega they thickly dotted the landscape with their + brown roofs and white walls. + </p> + <p> + We had not this effect till we had climbed the first barrier of hills and + began to descend on the thither side; but we had incident enough to keep + us engaged without the picturesqueness. The beggars alone, who did not + fail us at any station, were enough; for what could the most exacting + tourist ask more than to be eating his luncheon under the eyes of the + children who besieged his car windows and protested their famine in + accents which would have melted a heart of stone or of anything less + obdurate than travel? We had always our brace of Civil Guards, who + preserved us from bandits, but they left the beggars unmolested by getting + out on the train next the station and pacing the platform, while the + rabble of hunger thronged us on the other side. There was especially a hoy + who, after being compassionated in money for his misfortune, continued to + fling his wooden leg into the air and wave it at our window by some + masterly gymnastics; and there was another boy who kept lamenting that he + had no mother, till, having duly feed and fed him, I suggested, “But you + have a father?” Then, as if he had never seen the case in that light + before, he was silent, and presently went away without further insistence + on his bereavement. + </p> + <p> + The laconic fidelity of my note-book enables me to recall here that the + last we saw of Seville was the Cathedral and the Giralda, which the + guide-books had promised us we should see first; that we passed some + fields of alfalfa which the Moors had brought from Africa and the Spanish + have carried to America; that in places men were plowing and that the + plowed land was red; that the towns on the uplands in the distance were + white and not gray, or mud-colored, as in Castile; that the morning sky + was blue, with thin, pale clouds; that the first station out was + charmingly called Two Brothers, and that the loungers about it were plain, + but kind-looking men-folk with good faces, some actually clean-shaven, and + a woman with a white rose in her hair; that Two Brothers is a suburb of + Seville, frequented in the winter, and has orange orchards about it; that + farther on at one place the green of the fields spread up to the walls of + a white farm with a fine sense of color; that there were hawks sailing in + the blue air; that there were grotesque hedges of cactus and piles of + crooked cactus logs; that there were many eucalyptus trees; that there + were plantations of young olives, as if never to let that all-pervading + industry perish; that there were irregular mountain ranges on the right, + but never the same kind of scenery on both sides of the track; that there + was once a white cottage on a yellow hill and a pink villa with two + towers; that there was a solitary fig tree near the road, and that there + were vast lonely fields when there were not olive orchards. + </p> + <p> + Taking breath after one o’clock, much restored by our luncheon, my + note-book remembers a gray-roofed, yellow-walled town, very suitable for a + water-color, and just beyond it the first vineyard we had come to. Then + there were pomegranate trees, golden-leaved, and tall poplars pollarded + plume fashion as in southern France; and in a field a herd of brown pigs + feeding, which commended itself to observance, doubtless, as color in some + possible word-painting. There now abounded pomegranates, figs, young corn, + and more and more olives; and as if the old olives and young olives were + not enough, the earth began to be pitted with holes dug for the olives + which had not yet been planted. + </p> + <p> + II + </p> + <p> + At Bobadilla, the junction where an English railway company begins to get + in its work and to animate the Spanish environment to unwonted enterprise, + there was a varied luncheon far past our capacity. But when a Cockney + voice asked over my shoulder, “Tea, sir?” I gladly closed with the + proposition. “But you’ve put hot milk into it!” I protested. “I know it, + sir. We ‘ave no cold milk at Bobadilla,” and instantly a baleful suspicion + implanted itself which has since grown into a upas tree of poisonous + conviction: goat’s milk does not keep well, and it was not only hot milk, + but hot <i>goat’s</i> milk which they were serving us at Bobadilla. + However, there were admirable ham sandwiches, not of goat’s flesh, at the + other end of the room, and with these one could console oneself. There was + also a commendable pancake whose honored name I never knew, but whose + acquaintance I should be sorry not to have made; and all about Bobadilla + there was an agreeable bustle, which we enjoyed the more when we had made + sure that we had changed into the right train for Granada and found in our + compartment the charming young Swedish couple who had come with us from + Seville. + </p> + <p> + Thoroughly refreshed by the tea with hot goat’s milk in it, by the genuine + ham sandwiches and the pancakes, my note-book takes up the tale once more. + It dwells upon the rich look of the land and the comfort of the farms + contrasting with the wild irregularity of the mountain ranges which now + began to serrate the horizon; and I have no doubt that if I had then read + that most charming of all Washington Irving’s Spanish studies, the story, + namely, of his journey over quite the same way we had come seventy-five + years later, my note-book would abound in lively comment on the changed + aspect of the whole landscape. Even as it is, I find it exclamatory over + the wonder of the mountain coloring which it professes to have found + green, brown, red, gray, and blue, but whether all at once or not it does + not say. It is more definite as to the plain we were traversing, with its + increasing number of white cottages, cheerfully testifying to the + distribution of the land in small holdings, so different from the vast + estates abandoned to homeless expanses of wheat-fields and olive orchards + which we had been passing through. It did not appear on later inquiry that + these small holdings were of peasant ownership, as I could have wished; + they were tenant farms, but their neatness testified to the prosperity of + the tenants, and their frequency cheered our way as the evening waned and + the lamps began to twinkle from their windows. At a certain station, I am + reminded by my careful mentor, the craggy mountain-tops were softened by + the sunset pink, and that then the warm afternoon air began to grow + cooler, and the dying day to empurple the uplands everywhere, without + abating the charm of the blithe cottages. It seems to have been mostly a + very homelike scene, and where there was a certain stretch of woodland its + loneliness was relieved by the antic feat of a goat lifting itself on its + hind legs to browse the olive leaves on their native bough. The air was + thinner and cooler, but never damp, and at times it relented and blew + lullingly in at our window. We made such long stops that the lights began + to fade out of the farm-windows, but kept bright in the villages, when at + a station which we were so long in coming to that we thought it must be + next to Granada, a Spanish gentleman got in with us; and though the + prohibitory notice of <i>No Fumadores</i> stared him in the face, it did + not stare him out of countenance; for he continued to smoke like a + locomotive the whole way to our journey’s end. From time to time I + meditated a severe rebuke, but in the end I made him none, and I am now + convinced that this was wise, for he probably would not have minded it, + and as it was, when I addressed him some commonplace as to the probable + time of our arrival he answered in the same spirit, and then presently + grew very courteously communicative. He told me for one thing, after we + had passed the mountain gates of the famous Vega and were making our way + under the moonlight over the storied expanse, drenched with the blood of + battles long ago, that the tall chimneys we began to see blackening the + air with their volumed fumes were the chimneys of fourteen beet-root sugar + factories belonging to the Duke of Wellington. Then I divined, as + afterward I learned, that the lands devoted to this industry were part of + the rich gift which Spain bestowed upon the Great Duke in gratitude for + his services against the Napoleonic invasion. His present heir has + imagined a benevolent use of his heritage by inviting the peasantry of the + Vega to the culture of the sugar-beet; but whether the enterprise was + prospering I could not say; and I do not suppose any reader of mine will + care so much for it as I did in the pour of the moonlight over the roofs + and towers that were now becoming Granada, and quickening my slow old + emotions to a youthful glow. At the station, which, in spite of Boabdil el + Chico and Ferdinand and Isabel, was quite like every other railway station + of southern Europe, we parted friends with our Spanish fellow-traveler, + whom we left smoking and who is probably smoking still. Then we mounted + with our Swedish friends into the omnibus of the hotel we had chosen and + which began, after discreet delays, to climb the hill town toward the + Alhambra through a commonplace-looking town gay with the lights of cafes + and shops, and to lose itself in the more congenial darkness of narrower + streets barred with moonlight. It was drawn by four mules, covered with + bells and constantly coaxed and cursed by at least two drivers on the box, + while a vigorous boy ran alongside and lashed their legs without ceasing + till we reached the shelf where our hotel perched. + </p> + <p> + III + </p> + <p> + I had taken the precaution to write for rooms, and we got the best in the + house, or if not that then the best we could wish at a price which I could + have wished much less, till we stepped out upon our balcony, and looked + down and over the most beautiful, the most magnificent scene that eyes, or + at least my eyes, ever dwelt on. Beside us and before us the silver cup of + the Sierra Nevada, which held the city in its tiled hollow, poured it out + over the immeasurable Vega washed with moonshine which brightened and + darkened its spread in a thousand radiances and obscurities of windows and + walls and roofs and trees and lurking gardens. Because it was unspeakable + we could not speak, but I may say now that this was our supreme moment of + Granada. There were other fine moments, but none unmixed with the + reservations which truth obliges honest travel to own. Now, when from some + secret spot there rose the wild cry of a sentinel, and prolonged itself to + another who caught it dying up and breathed new life into it and sent it + echoing on till it had made the round of the whole fairy city, the heart + shut with a pang of pure ecstasy. One could bear no more; we stepped + within, and closed the window behind us. That is, we tried to close it, + but it would not latch, and we were obliged to ring for a <i>camerero</i> + to come and see what ailed it. + </p> + <p> + <a name="linkimage-0027" id="linkimage-0027"> + <!-- IMG --></a> + </p> + <div class="fig" style="width:60%;"> + <img src="images/h1-27.jpg" alt="27 to the Alhambra " width="100%" /><br /> + </div> + <p> + The infirmity of the door-latch was emblematic of a temperamental + infirmity in the whole hotel. The promises were those of Madrid, but the + performances were those of Segovia. There was a glitter, almost a glare, + of Ritz-like splendor, and the rates were Ritz-like, but there the + resemblance ceased. The porter followed us to our rooms on our arrival and + told us in excellent English (which excelled less and less throughout our + stay) that he was the hall porter and that we could confidently refer all + our wants to him; but their reference seemed always to close the incident. + There was a secretary who assured us that our rooms were not dear, and who + could not out of regard to our honor and comfort consider cheaper ones; + and then ceased to be until he receipted our bill when we went away. There + was a splendid dining-room with waiters of such beauty and dignity, and so + purple from clean shaving, that we scarcely dared face them, and there + were luncheons and dinners of rich and delicate superabundance in the + menu, but of an exquisite insipidity on the palate, and of a swiftly + vanishing Barmecide insubstantiality, as if they were banquets from the <i>Arabian + Nights</i> imagined under the rule of the Moors. Everywhere shone + silver-bright radiators, such as we had not seen since we left their like + freezing in Burgos; but though the weather presently changed from an + Andalusian softness to a Castilian severity after a snowfall in the + Sierra, the radiators remained insensible to the difference and the air + nipped the nose and fingers wherever one went in the hotel. The hall + porter, who knew everything, said the boilers were out of order, and a + traveler who had been there the winter before confirmed him with the + testimony that they were out of order even in January. There may not have + been any fire under them then, as there was none now; but if they needed + repairing now it was clearly because they needed repairing then. In the + corner of one of our rooms the frescoed plastering had scaled off, and we + knew that if we came back a year later the same spot would offer us a + familiar welcome. + </p> + <p> + But why do I gird at that hotel in Granada as if I knew of no faults in + American hotels? I know of many and like faults, and I do not know of a + single hotel of ours with such a glorious outlook and downlook as that + hotel in Granada. The details which the sunlight of the morrow revealed to + us when we had mastered the mystery of our window-catch and stood again on + our balcony took nothing from the loveliness of the moonlight picture, but + rather added to it, and, besides a more incredible scene of mountain and + plain and city, it gave us one particular tree in a garden almost under us + which my heart clings to still with a rapture changing to a fond regret. + At first the tree, of what name or nature I cannot tell, stood full and + perfect, a mass of foliage all yellow as if made up of “patines of bright + gold.” Then day by day, almost hour by hour, it darkened and the tree + shrank as if huddling its leaves closer about it in the cold that fell + from the ever-snowier Sierra. On the last morning we left its boughs + shaking in the rain against the cold, + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + Bare, ruined choir where late the sweet birds sang. +</pre> + <p> + IV + </p> + <p> + But we anticipate, as I should say if I were still a romantic novelist. + Many other trees in and about Granada were yellower than that one, and the + air hung dim with a thin haze as of Indian summer when we left our hotel + in eager haste to see the Alhambra such as travelers use when they do not + want some wonder of the world to escape them. Of course there was really + no need of haste, and we had to wait till our guide could borrow a match + to light the first of the cigarettes which he never ceased to smoke. He + was commended to us by the hall porter, who said he could speak French, + and so he could, to the extreme of constantly saying, with a wave of his + cigarette, “<i>N’est ce pas?”</i> For the rest he helped himself out + willingly with my small Spanish. At the end he would have delivered us + over to a dealer in antiquities hard by the gate of the palace if I had + not prevented him, as it were, by main force; he did not repine, but we + were not sorry that he should be engaged for the next day. + </p> + <p> + Our way to the gate, which was the famous Gate of Justice and was lovely + enough to be the Gate of Mercy, lay through the beautiful woods, mostly + elms, planted there by the English early in the last century. The birds + sang in their tops, and the waters warbled at their feet, and it was + somewhat thrillingly cold in their dense shade, so that we were glad to + get out of it, and into the sunshine where the old Moorish palace lay + basking and dreaming. At once let me confide to the impatient reader that + the whole Alhambra, by which he must understand a citadel, and almost a + city, since it could, if it never did, hold twenty thousand people within + its walls, is only historically and not artistically more Moorish than the + Alcazar at Seville. Far nobler and more beautiful than its Arabic + decorativeness in tinted stucco is the palace begun by Charles V., after a + design in the spirit of the supreme hour of the Italian Renaissance. It is + not a ruin in its long arrest, and one hears with hopeful sympathy that + the Spanish king means some day to complete it. To be sure, the world is, + perhaps, already full enough of royal palaces, but since they return + sooner or later to the people whose pockets they come out of, one must be + willing to have this palace completed as the architect imagined it. + </p> + <p> + We were followed into the Moorish palace by the music of three blind + minstrels who began to tune their guitars as soon as they felt us: see us + they could not. Then presently we were in the famous Court of the Lions, + where a group of those beasts, at once archaic and puerile in conception, + sustained the basin of a fountain in the midst of a graveled court + arabesqued and honeycombed round with the wonted ornamentation of the + Moors. + </p> + <p> + The place was disappointing to the boy in me who had once passed so much + of his leisure there, and had made it all marble and gold. The floor is + not only gravel, and the lions are not only more like sheep, but the + environing architecture and decoration are of a faded prettiness which + cannot bear comparison with the fresh rougeing, equally Moorish, of the + Alcazar at Seville. Was this indeed the place where the Abencerrages were + brought in from supper one by one and beheaded into the fountain at the + behest of their royal host? Was it here that the haughty Don Juan de Vera, + coming to demand for the Catholic kings the arrears of tribute due them + from the Moor, “paused to regard its celebrated fountain” and “fell into + discourse with the Moorish courtiers on certain mysteries of the Christian + faith”? So Washington Irving says, and so I once believed, with glowing + heart and throbbing brow as I read how “this most Christian knight and + discreet ambassador restrained himself within the limits of lofty gravity, + leaning on the pommel of his sword and looking down with ineffable scorn + upon the weak casuists around him. The quick and subtle Arabian witlings + redoubled their light attacks on the stately Spaniard, but when one of + them, of the race of the Abencerrages dared to question, with a sneer, the + immaculate conception of the blessed Virgin, the Catholic knight could no + longer restrain his ire. Elevating his voice of a sudden, he told the + infidel he lied, and raising his arm at the same time he smote him on the + head with his sheathed sword. In an instant the Court of Lions glistened + with the flash of arms,” insomuch that the American lady whom we saw + writing a letter beside a friend sketching there must have been startled + from her opening words, “I am sitting here with my portfolio on my knees + in the beautiful Court of the Lions,” and if Muley Aben Hassan had not + “overheard the tumult and forbade all appeal to force, pronouncing the + person of the ambassador sacred,” she never could have gone on. + </p> + <p> + V <a name="linkimage-0028" id="linkimage-0028"> + <!-- IMG --></a> + </p> + <div class="fig" style="width:60%;"> + <img src="images/h1-28.jpg" alt="28 the Court of The Lions " width="100%" /><br /> + </div> + <p> + I did not doubt the fact when I read of it under the level boughs of the + beechen tree with J. W., sixty years ago, by the green woodland light of + the primeval forest which hemmed our village in, and since I am well away + from the Alhambra again I do not doubt it now. I doubt nothing that Irving + says of the Alhambra; he is the gentle genius of the place, and I could + almost wish that I had paid the ten pesetas extra which the custodian + demanded for showing his apartment in the palace. On the ground the demand + of two dollars seemed a gross extortion; yet it was not too much for a + devotion so rich as mine to have paid, and I advise other travelers to buy + themselves off from a vain regret by giving it. If ever a memory merited + the right to levy tribute on all comers to the place it haunts, Washington + Irving’s is that memory. His <i>Conquest of Granada</i> is still the + history which one would wish to read; his <i>Tales of the Alhambra</i> + embody fable and fact in just the right measure for the heart’s desire in + the presence of the monuments they verify or falsify. They belong to that + strange age of romance which is now so almost pathetic and to which one + cannot refuse his sympathy without sensible loss. But for the eager + make-believe of that time we should still have to hoard up much rubbish + which we can now leave aside, or accept without bothering to assay for the + few grains of gold in it. Washington Irving had just the playful kindness + which sufficed best to deal with the accumulations of his age; if he does + not forbid you to believe, he does not oblige you to disbelieve, and he + has always a tolerant civility in his humor which comports best with the + duty of taking leniently a history impossible to take altogether + seriously. Till the Spaniards had put an end to the Moorish misrule, with + its ruthless despotism and bloody civil brawls, the Moors deserved to be + conquered; it was not till their power was broken forever that they became + truly heroic in their vain struggles and their unavailing sorrows. Then + their pathetic resignation to persecution and exile lent dignity even to + their ridiculous religion; but it was of the first and not the second + period that Irving had to treat. + </p> + <p> + VI + </p> + <p> + The Alhambra is not so impressive by its glory or grandeur as by the + unparalleled beauty of its place. If it is not very noble as an effect of + art, the inspiration of its founders is affirmed by their choice of an + outlook which commands one of the most magnificent panoramas in the whole + world. It would be useless to rehearse the proofs by name. Think of + far-off silver-crested summits and of a peopled plain stretching away from + them out of eye-shot, dense first with roofs and domes and towers, and + then freeing itself within fields and vineyards and orchards and forests + to the vanishing-point of the perspective; think of steep and sudden + plunges into chasms at the foot of the palace walls, and one crooked + stream stealing snakelike in their depths; think of whatever splendid + impossible dramas of topography that you will, of a tremendous map + outstretched in colored relief, and you will perhaps have some notion of + the prospect from the giddy windows of the Alhambra; and perhaps not. Of + one thing we made memorably sure beyond the gulf of the Darro, and that + was the famous gipsy quarter which the traveler visits at the risk of his + life in order to have his fortune told. At the same moment we made sure + that we should not go nearer it, for though we knew that it was + insurpassably dirty as well as dangerous, we remembered so distinctly the + loathsomeness of the gipsy quarter at Seville that we felt no desire to + put it to the comparison. + </p> + <p> + We preferred rather the bird’s-eye study of the beautiful Generalife which + our outlook enabled us to make, and which we supplemented by a visit the + next day. We preferred, after the Barmecide lunch at our hotel, taking the + tram-car that noisily and more noisily clambers up and down, and + descending into the town by it. The ascent is so steep that at a certain + point the electric current no longer suffices, and the car bites into the + line of cogs with its sort of powerful under-jaw and so arrives. Yet it is + a kindly little vehicle, with a conductor so affectionately careful in + transporting the stranger that I felt after a single day we should soon + become brothers, or at least step-brothers. Whenever we left or took his + car, after the beginning or ending of the cogway, he was alert to see that + we made the right change to or from it, and that we no more overpaid than + underpaid him. Such homely natures console the traveler for the thousand + inhospitalities of travel, and bind races and religions together in spite + of patriotism and piety. + </p> + <p> + We were going first to the Cartuja, and in the city, which we found + curiously much more modern, after the Latin notion, than Seville, with + freshly built apartment-houses and business blocks, we took a cab, not so + modern as to be a taxicab, and drove through the quarter said to have been + assigned to the Moors after the fall of Granada. The dust lay thick in the + roadway where filthy children played, but in the sunny doorways good + mothers of families crouched taking away the popular reproach of vermin by + searching one another’s heads. Men bestriding their donkeys rode + fearlessly through the dust, and one cleanly-looking old peasant woman, + who sat hers plumply cushioned and framed in with a chair-back and arms, + showed a patience with the young trees planted for future shade along the + desperate avenue which I could wish we had emulated. When we reached the + entrance of the old Carthusian Convent, long since suppressed and its + brothers exiled, a strong force of beggarmen waited for us, but a modest + beggar-woman, old and sad, had withdrawn to the church door, where she + shared in our impartial alms. We were admitted to the cloister, rather + oddly, by a young girl, who went for one of the remaining monks to show us + the church. He came with a newspaper (I hope of clerical politics) in his + hand, and distracted himself from it only long enough to draw a curtain, + or turn on a light, and point out a picture or statue from time to time. + But he was visibly anxious to get back to it, and sped us more eagerly + than he welcomed us in a church which upon the whole is richer in its + peculiar treasures of painting, sculpture, especially in wood, costly + marble, and precious stones than any other I remember. According to my + custom, I leave it to the guide-books to name these, and to the abounding + critics of Spanish art to celebrate the pictures and statues; it is enough + for me that I have now forgotten them all except those scenes of the + martyrdom inflicted by certain Protestants on members of the Carthusian + brotherhood at the time when all sorts of Christians felt bound to correct + the opinions of all other sorts by the cruelest tortures they could + invent. When the monk had put us to shame by the sight of these paintings + (bad as their subjects), he put us out, letting his eyes fall back upon + his newspaper before the door had well closed upon us. + </p> + <p> + The beggarmen had waited in their places to give us another chance of + meriting heaven; and at the church door still crouched the old + beggarwoman. I saw now that the imploring eyes she lifted were sightless, + and I could not forbear another alms, and as I put my copper big-dog in + her leathern palm I said, <i>“Adios, madre.”</i> Then happened something + that I had long desired. I had heard and read that in Spain people always + said at parting, “Go with God,” but up to that moment nobody had said it + to me, though I had lingeringly given many the opportunity. Now, at my + words and at the touch of my coin this old beggarwoman smiled beneficently + and said, “Go with God,” or, as she put it in her Spanish, “<i>Vaya vested + con Dios.”</i> Immediately I ought to have pressed another coin in her + palm, with a <i>“Gracias, madre; muchas gracias,”</i> out of regard to the + literary climax; but whether I really did so I cannot now remember; I can + only hope I did. + </p> + <p> + VII + </p> + <p> + I think that it was while I was still in this high satisfaction that we + went a drive in the promenade, which in all Spanish cities is the Alameda, + except Seville, where it so deservedly is the Delicias. It was in every + way a contrast to the road we had come from the Cartuja: an avenue of + gardened paths and embowered driveways, where we hoped to join the rank + and fashion of Granada in their afternoon’s outing. But there was only one + carriage besides our own with people in it, who looked no greater world + than ourselves, and a little girl riding with her groom. On one hand were + pretty villas, new-looking and neat, which I heard could sometimes be + taken for the summer at rents so low that I am glad I have forgotten the + exact figures lest the reader should doubt my word. Nothing but the fact + that the winter was then hanging over us from the Sierras prevented my + taking one of them for the summer that had passed, the Granadan summer + being notoriously the most delightful in the world. On the other hand + stretched the wonderful Vega, which covers so many acres in history and + romance, and there, so near that we look down into them at times were “the + silvery windings of the Xenil,” which glides through so many descriptive + passages of Irving’s page; only now, on account of recent rain, its + windings were rather coppery. + </p> + <p> + At the hotel on the terrace under our balcony we found on our return a + party of Spanish ladies and gentlemen taking tea, or whatever drink stood + for it in their custom: no doubt chocolate; but it was at least the + afternoon-tea hour. The women’s clothes were just from Paris, and the + men’s from London, but their customs, I suppose, were national; the women + sat on one side of the table and talked across it to the men, while they + ate and drank, and then each sex grouped itself apart and talked to its + kind, the women in those hardened vowels of a dialect from which the + Andalusians for conversational purposes have eliminated all consonants. + The sun was setting red and rayless, with a play of many lights and tints, + over the landscape up to the snow-line on the Sierra. The town lay a + stretch of gray roofs and white walls, intermixed with yellow poplars and + black cypresses, and misted over with smoke from the chimneys of the sugar + factories. The mountains stood flat against the sky, purple with wide + stretches of brown, and dark, slanting furrows. The light became + lemon-yellow before nightfall, and then a dull crimson under pale violet. + </p> + <p> + The twitter of the Spanish women was overborne at times by the voices of + an American party whose presence I was rather proud of as another + American. They were all young men, and they were making an educational + tour of the world in the charge of a professor who saw to it that they + learned as much of its languages and history and civilization as possible + on the way. They ranged in their years from about fifteen to twenty and + even more, and they were preparing for college, or doing what they could + to repair the loss of university training before they took up the work of + life. It seemed to me a charming notion, and charming the seriousness with + which they were fulfilling it. They were not so serious in everything as + to miss any incidental pleasure; they had a large table to themselves in + our Barmecide banquet-hall, where they seemed always to be having a good + time, and where once they celebrated the birthday of one of them with a + gaiety which would have penetrated, if anything could, the shining chill + of the hostelry. In the evening we heard them in the billiard-room below + lifting their voices in the lays of our college muse, and waking to + ecstasy the living piano in the strains of our national ragtime. They were + never intrusively cheerful; one might remain, in spite of them, as + dispirited as the place would have one; but as far as the <i>genius loci</i> + would let me, I liked them; and so far as I made their acquaintance I + thought that they were very intelligently carrying out the enterprise + imagined for them. + </p> + <p> + VIII + </p> + <p> + I wish now that I had known them well enough to ask them what they + candidly thought of the city of which I felt the witchery under the dying + day I have left celebrating for the moment in order to speak of them. It + seems to me at this distance of time and space that I did not duly reflect + that in places it was a city which smelled very badly and was almost as + dirty as New York in others, and very ill paved. The worst places are in + the older quarters, where the streets are very crooked and very narrow, so + narrow that the tram-car can barely scrape through them. They are old + enough to be streets belonging to the Moorish city, like many streets in + Cordova and Seville, but no fond inquiry of our guides could identify this + lane or that alley as of Moorish origin. There is indeed a group of + picturesque shops clearly faked to look Moorish, which the lover of that + period may pin his faith to, and for a moment I did so, but upon second + thought I unpinned it. + </p> + <p> + We visited this plated fragment of the old Moorish capital when we + descended from our hotel with a new guide to see the great, the stupendous + cathedral, where the Catholic kings lie triumphantly entombed in the heart + of their conquest. It is altogether unlike the other Spanish cathedrals of + my knowledge; for though the cathedral of Valladolid is of Renaissance + architecture in its austere simplicity, it is somehow even less like that + of Granada than the Gothic fanes of Burgos or Toledo or Seville. All the + detail at Granada is classicistic, but the whole is often of Gothic + effect, especially in the mass of those clustered Corinthian columns that + lift its domes aloof on their prodigious bulk, huge as that of the grouped + pillars in the York Minster. The white of the marble walls, the gold of + altars, the colors of painted wooden sculpture form the tones of the + place, subdued to one bizarre richness which I may as well leave first as + last to the reader’s fancy; though, let his fancy riot as it will, it + never can picture that gorgeousness. Mass was saying at a side altar as we + entered, and the music of stringed instruments and the shrill voices of + choir-boys pierced the spaces here and there, but no more filled them than + the immemorable plastic and pictorial facts: than a certain very lively + bishop kneeling on his tomb and looking like George Washington; or than a + St. Jerome in the Desert, outwrinkling age, with his lion curled cozily up + in his mantle; or than the colossal busts of Adam and Eve and the praying + figures of Ferdinand and Isabel, richly gilded in the exquisite temple + forming the high altar; or than the St. James on horseback, with his + horse’s hoof planted on the throat of a Moor; or than the Blessed Virgins + in jeweled crowns and stomachers and brocaded skirts; or than that + unsparing decapitation of John the Baptist bloodily falling forward with + his severed gullet thrusting at the spectator. Nothing has ever been too + terrible in life for Spanish art to represent; it is as ruthlessly + veracious as Russian literature; and of all the painters and sculptors who + have portrayed the story of Christianity as a tale of torture and + slaughter, the Spaniards seem to have studied it closest from the fact; + perhaps because for centuries the Inquisition lavished the fact upon them. + </p> + <p> + The supreme interest of the cathedral is, of course, the Royal Chapel, + where in a sunken level Ferdinand and Isabel lie, with their poor mad + daughter Joan and her idolized unfaithful husband Philip the Fair, whose + body she bore about with her while she lived. The picture postal has these + monuments in its keeping and can show them better than my pen, which + falters also from the tremendous <i>retablo</i> of the chapel dense with + the agonies of martyrdom and serene with the piety of the Catholic Kings + kneeling placidly amid the horrors. If the picture postal will not supply + these, or reproduce the many and many relics and memorials which abound + there and in the sacristy—jewels and vestments and banners and + draperies of the royal camp-altar—there is nothing for the reader + but to go himself and see. It is richly worth his while, and if he cannot + believe in a box which will be shown him as the box Isabel gave Columbus + her jewels in merely because he has been shown a reliquary as her + hand-glass, so much the worse for him. He will not then merit the company + of a small choir-boy who efficiently opens the iron gate to the crypt and + gives the custodian as good as he sends in back-talk and defiantly pockets + the coppers he has earned. Much less will he deserve to witness the homely + scene in an area outside of the Royal Chapel, where many milch goats are + assembled, and when a customer comes, preferably a little girl with a tin + cup, one of the mothers of the flock is pinioned much against her will by + a street boy volunteering for the office, and her head held tight while + the goatherdess milks the measure full at the other end. + </p> + <p> + IX + </p> + <p> + Everywhere about the cathedral beggars lay in wait, and the neighboring + streets were lively with bargains of prickly pears spread open on the + ground by old women who did not care whether any one bought or not. There + were also bargains in palmistry; and at one place a delightful humorist + was selling clothing at auction. He allured the bidders by having his left + hand dressed as a puppet and holding a sparkling dialogue with it; when it + did not respond to his liking he beat it with his right hand, and every + now and then he rang a little bell. He had a pleased crowd about him in + the sunny square; but it seemed to me that all the newer part of Granada + was lively with commerce in ample, tram-trodden streets which gave the + shops, larger than any we had seen out of Madrid, a chance uncommon in the + narrow ways of other Spanish cities. Yet when I went to get money on my + letter of credit, I found the bank withdrawn from the modernity in a + seclusion reached through a lovely <i>patio.</i> We were seated in + old-fashioned welcome, such as used to honor a banker’s customers in + Venice, and all comers bowed and bade us good day. The bankers had no such + question of the different signatures as vexed those of Valladolid, and + after no more delay than due ceremony demanded, I went away with both my + money and my letter, courteously seen to the door. + </p> + <p> + The guide, to whom we had fallen in the absence of our French-speaking + guide of the day before, spoke a little English, and he seemed to grow in + sympathetic intelligence as the morning passed. He made our sightseeing + include visits to the church of St. John of God, and the church of San + Geronimo, which was built by Gonsalvo de Cordova, the Great Captain, and + remains now a memorial to him. We rang at the door, and after long delay a + woman came and let us into an interior stranger ever than her being there + as custodian. It was frescoed from floor to ceiling everywhere, except the + places of the altars now kept by the painted <i>retablos</i> and the tombs + and the statues of the various saints and heroes. The <i>retablo</i> of + the high altar is almost more beautiful than wonderful, but the chief + glory of the place is in the kneeling figures of the Great Captain and his + wife, one on either side of the altar, and farther away the effigies of + his famous companions-in-arms, and on the walls above their heraldic + blazons and his. The church Was unfinished when the Great Captain died in + the displeasure of his ungrateful king, and its sumptuous completion + testifies to the devotion of his wife and her taste in choosing the best + artists for the work. + </p> + <p> + I have still the sense of a noonday quiet that lingered with us after we + left this church and which seemed to go with us to the Hospital of St. + John of God, founded, with other hospitals, by the pious Portuguese, who, + after a life of good works, took this name on his well-merited + canonization. The hospital is the monument of his devotion to good works, + and is full of every manner of religious curio. I cannot remember to have + seen so many relics under one roof, bones of both holy men and women, with + idols of the heathen brought from Portuguese possessions in the East which + are now faded from the map, as well as the body of St. John of God shrined + in silver in the midst of all. + </p> + <p> + <a name="linkimage-0029" id="linkimage-0029"> + <!-- IMG --></a> + </p> + <div class="fig" style="width:60%;"> + <img src="images/h1-29.jpg" + alt="29 Looking Northwest from the Generalife over Granada " width="100%" /><br /> + </div> + <p> + I do not know why I should have brought away from these two places a + peacefulness of mind such as seldom follows a visit to show-places, but + the fact is so; perhaps it was because we drove to and from them, and were + not so tired as footworn sight-seers are, or so rebellious. One who had + seen not only the body of St. John of God, but his cane with a whistle in + it to warn the charitable of his coming and attune their minds to + alms-giving, and the straw basket in which he collected food for the poor, + now preserved under an embroidered satin covering, and an autograph letter + of his framed in glass and silver, might even have been refreshed by his + experience. At any rate, we were so far from tired that after luncheon we + walked to the Garden of the Generalife, and then walked all over it. The + afternoon was of the very mood for such a visit, and we passed it there in + these walks and bowers, and the black cypress aisles, and the trees and + vines yellowing to the fall of their leaves. The melancholy laugh of water + chasing down the steep channels and gurgling through the stone rails of + stairways was everywhere, and its dim smile gleamed from pools and tanks. + In the court where it stretched in a long basin an English girl was + painting and another girl was sewing, to whom I now tardily offer my + thanks for adding to the charm of the place. Not many other people were + there to dispute our afternoon’s ownership. I count a peasant family, the + women in black shawls and the men wearing wide, black sashes, rather as + our guests than as strangers; and I am often there still with no sense of + molestation. Even the reader who does not conceive of a garden being less + flowers and shrubs than fountains and pavilions and porches and borders of + box and walls of clipped evergreens, will scarcely follow me to the + Generalife or outstay me there. + </p> + <p> + The place is probably dense with history and suffocating with association, + but I prefer to leave all that to the imagination where my own ignorance + found it. A painter had told me once of his spending a summer in it, and + he showed some beautiful pieces of color in proof, but otherwise I came to + it with a blank surface on which it might photograph itself without + blurring any earlier record. This, perhaps, is why I love so much to dwell + there on that never-ending afternoon of late October. It was long past the + hour of its summer bloom, but the autumnal air was enriching it beyond the + dreams of avarice with the gold which prevails in the Spanish landscape + wherever the green is gone, and we could look out of its yellowing bowers + over a landscape immeasurable in beauty. Of course, we tried to master the + facts of the Generalife’s past, but we really did not care for them and + scarcely believed that Charles V. had doubted the sincerity of the + converted Moor who had it from Ferdinand of Aragon, and so withheld it + from his heirs for four generations until they could ripen to a genuine + Christianity at Genoa, whither they withdrew and became the patrician + family now its proprietors. The arms of this family decorate the roof and + walls of the colonnaded belvedere from which you look out over the city + and the plain and the mountains; and there are remnants of Moorish + decoration in many places, but otherwise the Generalife is now as + Christian as the noble Pallavicini who possess it. There were plenty of + flower-beds, box-bordered, but there were no flowers in them; the flowers + preferred standing about in tall pots. There was an arbor overhung with + black forgotten grapes before the keeper’s door and in the corner of it + dangled ropes of fire-red peppers. + </p> + <p> + This detail is what, with written help, I remember of the Generalife, but + no loveliness of it shall fade from, my soul. From its embowered and + many-fountained height it looks over to the Alhambra, dull red, and the + city wall climbing the opposite slope across the Darro to a church on the + hilltop which was once a mosque. The precipice to which the garden clings + plunges sheer to the river-bed with a downlook insurpassably thrilling; + but the best view of the city is from the flowery walk that runs along the + side of the Alcazaba, which was once a fortress and is now a garden, long + forgetful of its office of defending the Alhambra palace. From this + terrace Granada looks worthy of her place in history and romance. We + visited the Alcazaba after the Generalife, and were very critical, but I + must own the supremacy of this prospect. I should not mind owning its + supremacy among all the prospects in the world. + </p> + <p> + XI + </p> + <p> + Meanwhile our shining hotel had begun to thrill with something besides the + cold which nightly pierced it from the snowy Sierra. This was the + excitement pending from an event promised the next day, which was the + production of a drama in verse, of peculiar and intense interest for + Granada, where the scene of it was laid in the Alhambra at one of the + highest moments of its history, and the persons were some of those dearest + to its romance. Not only the company to perform it (of course the first + company in Spain) had been in the hotel overnight, and the ladies of it + had gleamed and gloomed through the cold corridors, but the poet had been + conspicuous at dinner, with his wife, young and beautiful and blond, and + powdered so white that her blondness was of quite a violet cast. There was + not so much a question of whether we should take tickets as whether we + could get them, but for this the powerful influence of our guide availed, + and he got tickets providentially given up in the morning for a price so + exorbitant I should be ashamed to confess it. They were for the afternoon + performance, and at three o’clock we went with the rest of the gay and + great world of Granada to the principal theater. + </p> + <p> + The Latin conception of a theater is of something rather more barnlike + than ours, but this theater was of a sufficiently handsome presence, and + when we had been carried into it by the physical pressure exerted upon us + by the crowd at the entrance we found its vastness already thronged. The + seats in the orchestra were mostly taken; the gallery under the roof was + loud with the impatience for the play which the auditors there testified + by cries and whistlings and stampings until the curtain lifted; the tiers + of boxes rising all round the theater were filled with family parties. The + fathers and mothers sat in front with the children between them of all + ages down to babies in their nurses’ arms. These made themselves perfectly + at home, in one case reaching over the edge of the box and clawing the + hair of a gentleman standing below and openly enjoying the joke. The + friendly equality of the prevailing spirit was expressed in the presence + of the family servants at the back of the family boxes, from which the + latest fashions showed themselves here and there, as well as the belated + local versions of them. In the orchestra the men had promptly lighted + their cigars and the air was blue with smoke. Friends found one another, + to their joyful amaze, not having met since morning; and especially young + girls were enraptured to recognize young men; one girl shook hands twice + with a young man, and gurgled with laughter as long as he stood near her. + </p> + <p> + As a lifelong lover of the drama and a boyish friend of Granadan romance, + I ought to have cared more for the play than the people who had come to + it, but I did not. The play was unintentionally amusing enough; but after + listening for two hours to the monotonous cadences of the speeches which + the persons of it recited to one another, while the ladies of the Moorish + world took as public a part in its events as if they had been so many + American Christians, we came away. We had already enjoyed the first + entr’acte, when the men all rose and went out, or lighted fresh cigars and + went to talk with the Paris hats and plumes or the Spanish mantillas and + high combs in the boxes. The curtain had scarcely fallen when the author + of the play was called before it and applauded by the generous, the madly + generous, spectators. He stood bowing and bowing on tiptoe, as if the + wings of his rapture lifted him to them and would presently fly away with + him. He could not drink deep enough of the delicious draught, put brimming + to his lips, and the divine intoxication must have lasted him through the + night, for after breakfast the next morning I met him in our common + corridor at the hotel smiling to himself, and when I could not forbear + smiling in return he smiled more; he beamed, he glowed upon me as if I + were a crowded house still cheering him to the echo. It was a beautiful + moment and I realized even better than the afternoon before what it was to + be a young poet and a young Spanish poet, and to have had a first play + given for the first time in the city of Granada, where the morning papers + glowed with praise so ardent that the print all but smoked with it. We + were alone in the corridor where we met, and our eyes confessed us kindred + spirits, and I hope he understood me better than if I had taken him in my + arms and kissed him on both cheeks. + </p> + <p> + I really had no time for that; I was on my way down-stairs to witness the + farewell scene between the leading lady and the large group of young + Granadans who had come up to see her off. When she came out to the + carriage with her husband, by a delicate refinement of homage they cheered + him, and left him to deliver their devotion to her, which she acknowledged + only with a smile. But not so the leading lady’s lady’s-maid, when her + turn came to bid good-by from our omnibus window to the assembled upper + servants of the hotel. She put her head out and said in a voice hoarse + with excitement and good-fellowship, <i>“Adios, hombres!”</i> (“Good-by, + men!”), and vanished with us from their applausive presence. + </p> + <p> + With us, I say, for we, too, were leaving Granada in rain which was snow + on the Sierra and so cold that we might well have seemed leaving + Greenland. The brave mules which had so gallantly, under the lash of the + running foot-boy beside them, galloped uphill with us the moonlight night + of our coming, now felt their anxious way down in the dismal drizzle of + that last morning, and brought us at last to the plaza before the station. + It was a wide puddle where I thought our craft should have floundered, but + it made its way to the door, and left us dry shod within and glad to be + quitting the city of my young dreams. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0013" id="link2H_4_0013"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + XII. THE SURPRISES OF RONDA + </h2> + <p> + The rain that pelted sharply into the puddle before the station at Granada + was snow on the Sierra, and the snow that fell farther and farther down + the mountainsides resolved itself over the Vega into a fog as white and + almost as cold. Half-way across the storied and fabled plain the rain + stopped and the fog lifted, and then we saw by day, as we had already seen + by night, how the Vega was plentifully dotted with white cottages amid + breadths of wheat-land where the peasants were plowing. Here and there + were fields of Indian corn, and in a certain place there was a small + vineyard; in one of the middle distances there spread a forest of Lombardy + poplars, yellow as gold, and there was abundance of this autumn coloring + in the landscape, which grew lonelier as we began to mount from the level. + Olives, of course, abounded, and there were oak woods and clumps of wild + cherry trees. The towns were far from the stations, which we reached at + the rate of perhaps two miles an hour as we approached the top of the + hills; and we might have got out and walked without fear of being left + behind by our train, which made long stops, as if to get its breath for + another climb. Before this the sole companion of our journey, whom we + decided to be a landed proprietor coming out in his riding-gear to inspect + his possessions, had left us, but at the first station after our descent + began other passengers got in, with a captain of Civil Guards among them, + very loquacious and very courteous, and much deferred to by the rest of + us. At Bobadilla, where again we had tea with hot goat’s milk in it, we + changed cars, and from that on we had the company of a Rock-Scorpion pair + whose name was beautifully Italian and whose speech was beautifully + English, as the speech of those born at Gibraltar should rightfully be. + </p> + <p> + I + </p> + <p> + It was quite dark at Ronda when our omnibus drove into the gardened + grounds of one of those admirable inns which an English company is + building in Spain, and put us down at the door of the office, where a + typical English manageress and her assistant appointed us pleasant rooms + and had fires kindled in them while we dined. There were already fires in + the pleasant reading-room, which did not diffuse a heat too great for + health but imparted to the eye a sense of warmth such as we had + experienced nowhere else in Spain. Over all was spread a quiet and + quieting British influence; outside of the office the nature of the + service was Spanish, but the character of it was English; the Spanish + waiters spoke English, and they looked English in dress and manner; + superficially the chambermaid was as English as one could have found her + in the United Kingdom, but at heart you could see she was as absolutely + and instinctively a Spanish <i>camerera</i> as any in a hotel of Madrid or + Seville. In the atmosphere of insularity the few Spanish guests were + scarcely distinguishable from Anglo-Saxons, though a group of magnificent + girls at a middle table, quelled by the duenna-like correctness of their + mother, looked with their exaggerated hair and eyes like Spanish ladies + made up for English parts in a play. + </p> + <p> + We had our breakfast in the reading-room where all the rest were + breakfasting and trying not to see that they were keeping one another from + the fire. It was very cold, for Ronda is high in the mountains which hem + it round and tower far above it. We had already had our first glimpse of + their summits from our own windows, but it was from the terrace outside + the reading-room that we felt their grandeur most after we had drunk our + coffee: we could scarcely have borne it before. In their presence, we + could not realize at once that Ronda itself was a mountain, a mere mighty + mass of rock, cleft in twain, with chasmal depths where we saw pygmy men + and mules creeping out upon the valley that stretched upward to the foot + of the Sierra. Why there should ever have been a town built there in the + prehistoric beginning, except that the rock was so impossible to take, and + why it should have therefore been taken by that series of invaders who + pervaded all Spain—by the Phoenicians, by the Carthaginians, by the + Romans, by the Goths, by the Moors, by the Christians, and after many + centuries by the French, and finally by the Spaniards again—it would + not be easy to say. Among its many conquerors, the Moors left their + impress upon it, though here as often as elsewhere in Spain their impress + is sometimes merely a decoration of earlier Roman work. There remains a + Roman bridge which the Moors did not make over into the likeness of their + architecture, but built a bridge of their own which also remains and may + be seen from the magnificent structure with which the Spaniards have + arched the abyss where the river rushes writhing and foaming through the + gorge three hundred feet below. There on the steps that lead from the + brink, the eye of pity may still see the files of Christian captives + bringing water up to their Moslem masters; but as one cannot help them + now, even by the wildest throe, it is as well to give a vain regret to the + architect of the Spanish bridge, who fell to his death from its parapet, + and then push on to the market hard by. + </p> + <p> + II + </p> + <p> + You have probably come to see that market because you have read in your + guide-books that the region round about Ronda is one of the richest in + Spain for grapes and peaches and medlars and melons and other fruits whose + names melt in the mouth. If you do not find in the market the abundance + you expect of its picturesqueness you must blame the lateness of the + season, and go visit the bull-ring, one of the most famous in the world, + for Ronda is not less noted for its <i>toreros</i> and <i>aficionados</i> + than for its vineyards and orchards. But here again the season will have + been before you with the glory of those <i>corridas</i> which you have + still hoped not to witness but to turn from as an example to the natives + before the first horse is disemboweled or the first bull slain, or even + the first <i>banderillero</i> tossed over the barrier. + </p> + <p> + The bull-ring seemed fast shut to the public when we approached it, but we + found ourselves smilingly welcomed to the interior by the kindly mother in + charge. She made us free of the whole vast place, where eight thousand + people could witness in perfect comfort the dying agonies of beasts and + men, but especially she showed us the chamber over the gate, full of + bullfighting properties: the pikes, the little barbed pennons, the long + sword by which the bull suffers and dies, as well as the cumbrous saddles + and bridles and spears for the unhappy horses and their riders. She was + especially compassionate of the horses, and she had apparently no pleasure + in any of the cruel things, though she was not critical of the sport. The + King of Spain is president of the Ronda bull-fighting association, and she + took us into the royal box, which is the worthier to be seen because under + it the bulls are shunted and shouted into the ring from the pen where they + have been kept in the dark. Before we escaped her husband sold us some + very vivid postal cards representing the sport; so that with the help of a + large black cat holding the center of the ring, we felt that we had seen + as much of a bull-fight as we could reasonably wish. + </p> + <p> + We were seeing the wonders of the city in the guidance of a charming boy + whom we had found in wait for us at the gate of the hotel garden when we + came out. He offered his services in the best English he had, and he had + enough of it to match my Spanish word for word throughout the morning. He + led us from the bull-ring to the church known to few visitors, I believe, + where the last male descendant of Montezuma lies entombed, under a fit + inscription, and then through the Plaza past the college of Montezuma, + probably named for this heir of the Aztec empire. I do not know why the + poor prince should have come to die in Ronda, but there are many things in + Ronda which I could not explain: especially why a certain fruit is sold by + an old woman on the bridge. Its berries are threaded on a straw and look + like the most luscious strawberries but taste like turpentine, though they + may be avoided under the name of <i>madrones.</i> But on no account would + I have the reader avoid the Church of Santa Maria Mayor. It is so dark + within that he will not see the finely carved choir seats without the help + of matches, or the pictures at all; but it is worth realizing, as one + presently may, that the hither part of the church is a tolerably perfect + mosque of Moorish architecture, through which you must pass to the + Renaissance temple of the Christian faith. + </p> + <p> + Near by is the Casa de Mondragon which he should as little miss if he has + any pleasure in houses with two <i>patios</i> perching on the gardened + brink of a precipice and overlooking one of the most beautiful valleys in + the whole world, with donkey-trains climbing up from it over the face of + the cliff. The garden is as charming as red geraniums and blue cabbages + can make a garden, and the house is fascinatingly quaint and unutterably + Spanish, with the inner <i>patio</i> furnished in bright-colored cushions + and wicker chairs, and looked into by a brown wooden gallery. A stately + lemon-colored elderly woman followed us silently about, and the whole + place was pervaded by a smell that was impossible at the time and now + seems incredible. + </p> + <p> + III + </p> + <p> + I here hesitate before a little adventure which I would not make too much + of nor yet minify: it seems to me so gentle and winning. I had long meant + to buy a donkey, and I thought I could make no fitter beginning to this + end than by buying a donkey’s head-stall in the country where donkeys are + more respected and more brilliantly accoutred than anywhere else in the + whole earth. When I ventured to suggest my notion, or call it dream, to + our young guide, he instantly imagined it in its full beauty, and he led + us directly to a shop in the principal street which for the richness and + variety of the coloring in its display might have been a florist’s shop. + Donkeys’ trappings in brilliant yellow, vermillion, and magenta hung from + the walls, and head-stalls, gorgeously woven and embroidered, dangled from + the roof. Among them and under them the donkeys’ harness-maker sat at his + work, a short, brown, handsome man with eyes that seemed the more + prominent because of his close-shaven head. We chose a headstall of such + splendor that no heart could have resisted it, and while he sewed to it + the twine muzzle which Spanish donkeys wear on their noses for the + protection of the public, our guide expatiated upon us, and said, among + other things to our credit, that we were from America and were going to + take the head-stall back with us. + </p> + <p> + The harness-maker lifted his head alertly. “Where, in America?” and we + answered for ourselves, “From New York.” + </p> + <p> + Then the harness-maker rose and went to an inner doorway and called + through it something that brought out a comely, motherly woman as alert as + himself. She verified our statement for herself, and having paved the way + firmly for her next question she asked, “Do you know the Escuela Mann?” + </p> + <p> + As well as our surprise would let us, we said that we knew the Mann + School, both where and what it was. + </p> + <p> + She waited with a sort of rapturous patience before saying, “My son, our + eldest son, was educated at the Escuela Mann, to be a teacher, and now he + is a professor in the Commercial College in Puerto Rico.” + </p> + <p> + If our joint interest in this did not satisfy her expectation I for my + part can never forgive myself; certainly I tried to put as much passion + into my interest as I could, when she added that his education at the + Escuela Mann was without cost to him. By this time, in fact, I was so + proud of the Escuela Mann that I could not forbear proclaiming that a + member of my own family, no less than the father of the grandson for whose + potential donkey I was buying that headstall, was one of the architects of + the Escuela Mann building. + </p> + <p> + She now vanished within, and when she came out she brought her daughter, a + gentle young girl who sat down and smiled upon us through the rest of the + interview. She brought also an armful of books, the Spanish-English + Ollendorff which her son had used in studying our language, his + dictionary, and the copy-book where he had written his exercises, with two + photographs of him, not yet too Americanized; and she showed us not only + how correctly but how beautifully his exercises were done. If I did not + admire these enough, again I cannot forgive myself, but she seemed + satisfied with what I did, and she talked on about him, not too + loquaciously, but lovingly and lovably as a mother should, and proudly as + the mother of such a boy should, though without vainglory; I have + forgotten to say that she had a certain distinction of face, and was + appropriately dressed in black. By this time we felt that a head-stall for + such a donkey as I was going to buy was not enough to get of such people, + and I added a piece of embroidered leather such as goes in Spain on the + front of a donkey’s saddle; if we could not use it so, in final defect of + the donkey, we could put it on a veranda chair. The saddler gave it at so + low a price that we perceived he must have tacitly abated something from + the visual demand, and when we did not try to beat him down, his wife went + again into that inner room and came out with an iron-holder of scarlet + flannel backed with canvas, and fringed with magenta, and richly inwrought + with a Moorish design, in white, yellow, green, and purple. I say Moorish, + because one must say something, but if it was a pattern of her own + invention the gift was the more precious when she bestowed it on the + sister of one of the architects of the Escuela Mann. That led to more + conversation about the Escuela Mann, and about the graduate of it who was + now a professor in Puerto Rico, and we all grew such friends, and so proud + of one another, and of the country so wide open to the talents without + cost to them, that when I asked her if she would not sometime be going to + America, her husband answered almost fiercely in his determination, “I am + going when I have learned English!” and to prove that this was no idle + boast, he pronounced some words of our language at random, but very well. + We parted in a glow of reciprocal esteem and I still think of that + quarter-hour as one of my happiest; and whatever others may say, I say + that to have done such a favor to one Spanish family as the Escuela Mann + had been the means of our nation doing this one was a greater thing than + to have taken Cuba from Spain and bought the Philippines when we had + seized them already and had led the Filipinos to believe that we meant to + give their islands to them. + </p> + <p> + IV <a name="linkimage-0030" id="linkimage-0030"> + <!-- IMG --></a> + </p> + <div class="fig" style="width:60%;"> + <img src="images/h1-30.jpg" + alt="30 Looking Across the New Bridge (300 Feet High) over The Guada-laviar Gorge, Ronda " width="100%" /><br /> + </div> + <p> + Suddenly, on the way home to our very English hotel, the air of Ronda + seemed charged with English. We were already used to the English of our + young guide, which so far as it went, went firmly and courageously after + forethought and reflection for each sentence, but we were not quite + prepared for the English of two polite youths who lifted their hats as + they passed us and said, “Good afternoon.” The general English lasted + quite overnight and far into the next day when we found several natives + prepared to try it on us in the pretty Alameda, and learned from one, who + proved to be the teacher of it in the public school, that there were some + twenty boys studying it there: heaven knows why, but the English hotel and + its success may have suggested it to them as a means of prosperity. The + students seem each prepared to guide strangers through Ronda, but + sometimes they fail of strangers. That was the case with the pathetic + young hunchback whom we met in Alameda, and who owned that he had guided + none that day. In view of this and as a prophylactic against a course of + bad luck, I made so bold as to ask if I might venture to repair the loss + of the peseta which he would otherwise have earned. He smiled wanly, and + then with the countenance of the teacher, he submitted and thanked me in + English which I can cordially recommend to strangers knowing no Spanish. + </p> + <p> + All this was at the end of another morning when we had set out with the + purpose of seeing the rest of Ronda for ourselves. We chose a back street + parallel to the great thoroughfare leading to the new bridge, and of a + squalor which we might have imagined but had not. The dwellers in the + decent-looking houses did not seem to mind the sights and scents of their + street, but these revolted us, and we made haste out of it into the avenue + where the greater world of Ronda was strolling or standing about, but + preferably standing about. In the midst of it, at the entrance of the new + bridge we heard ourselves civilly saluted and recognized with some + hesitation the donkey’s harness-maker who, in his Sunday dress and with + his hat on, was not just the work-day presence we knew. He held by the + hand a pretty boy of eleven years, whom he introduced as his second son, + self-destined to follow the elder brother to America, and duly take up the + profession of teaching in Puerto Rico after experiencing the advantages of + the Escuela Mann. His father said that he already knew some English, and + he proposed that the boy should go about with us and practise it, and + after polite demur and insistence the child came with us, to our great + pleasure. He bore himself with fit gravity, in his cap and long linen + pinafore as he went before us, and we were personally proud of his fine, + long face and his serious eyes, dark and darkened yet more by their long + lashes. He knew the way to just such a book store as we wanted, where the + lady behind the desk knew him and willingly promised to get me some books + in the Andalusian dialect, and send them to our hotel by him at half past + twelve. Naturally she did not do so, but he came to report her failure to + get them. We had offered to pay him for his trouble, but he forbade us, + and when we had overcome his scruple he brought the money back, and we had + our trouble over again to make him keep it. To this hour I do not know how + we ever brought ourselves to part with him; perhaps it was his promise of + coming to America next year that prevailed with us; his brother was + returning on a visit and then they were going back together. + </p> + <p> + V + </p> + <p> + Our search for literature in Ronda was not wholly a failure. At another + bookstore, I found one of those local histories which I was always vainly + trying for in other Spanish towns, and I can praise the <i>Historia de + Ronda par Federico Lozano Gutierrez</i> as well done, and telling all that + one would ask to know about that famous city. The author’s picture is on + the cover, and with his charming letter dedicating the book to his father + goes far to win the reader’s heart. Outside the bookseller’s a blind + minstrel was playing the guitar in the care of a small boy who was + selling, not singing, the ballads. They celebrated the prowess of Spain in + recent wars, and it would not be praising them too highly to say that they + seemed such as might have been written by a drum-major. Not that I think + less of them for that reason, or that I think I need humble myself greatly + to the historian of Ronda for associating their purchase with that of his + excellent little book. If I had bought some of the blind minstrel’s + almanacs and jest-books I might indeed apologize, but ballads are another + thing. + </p> + <p> + After we left the bookseller’s, our little guide asked us if we would like + to see a church, and we said that we would, and he took us into a white + and gold interior, with altar splendors out of proportion to its + simplicity, all in the charge of a boy no older than himself, who was + presently joined by two other contemporaries. They followed us gravely + about, and we felt that it was an even thing between ourselves and the + church as objects of interest equally ignored by Baedeker. Then we thought + we would go home and proposed going by the Alameda. + </p> + <p> + That is a beautiful place, where one may walk a good deal, and drive, + rather less, but not sit down much unless indeed one likes being swarmed + upon by the beggars who have a just priority of the benches. There seemed + at first to be nobody walking in the Alameda except a gentleman pacing to + and from the handsome modern house at the first corner, which our guide + said was this cavalier’s house. He interested me beyond any reason I could + give; he looked as if he might represent the highest society in Ronda, but + did not find it an adequate occupation, and might well have interests and + ambitions beyond it. I make him my excuses for intruding my print upon + him, but I would give untold gold if I had it to know all about such a man + in such a city, walking up and down under the embrowning trees and + shrinking flowers of its Alameda, on a Sunday morning like that. + </p> + <p> + Our guide led us to the back gate of our hotel garden, where we found + ourselves in the company of several other students of English. There was + our charming young guide of the day before and there was that sad + hunchback already mentioned, and there was their teacher who seemed so few + years older and master of so little more English. Together we looked into + the valley into which the vision makes its prodigious plunge at Ronda + before lifting again over the fertile plain to the amphitheater of its + mighty mountains; and there we took leave of that nice boy who would not + follow us into our garden because, as he showed us by the sign, it was + forbidden to any but guests. He said he was going into the country with + his family for the afternoon, and with some difficulty he owned that he + expected to play there; it was truly an admission hard to make for a boy + of his gravity. We shook hands at parting with him, and with our + yesterday’s guide, and with the teacher and with the hunchback; they all + offered it in the bond of our common English; and then we felt that we had + parted with much, very much of what was sweetest and best in Ronda. + </p> + <p> + VI + </p> + <p> + The day had been so lovely till now that we said we would stay many days + in Ronda, and we loitered in the sun admiring the garden; the young + landlady among her flowers said that all the soil had to be brought for it + in carts and panniers, and this made us admire its autumn blaze the more. + That afternoon we had planned taking our tea on the terrace for the + advantage of looking at the sunset light on the mountains, but suddenly + great black clouds blotted it out. Then we lost courage; it appeared to us + that it would be both brighter and, warmer by the sea and that near + Gibraltar we could more effectually prevent our steamer from getting away + to New York without us. We called for our bill, and after luncheon the + head waiter who brought it said that the large black cat which had just + made friends with us always woke him if he slept late in the morning and + followed him into the town like a dog when he walked there. + </p> + <p> + It was hard to part with a cat like that, but it was hard to part with + anything in Ronda. Yet we made the break, and instead of ruining over the + precipitous face of the rock where the city stands, as we might have + expected, we glided smoothly down the long grade into the storm-swept + lowlands sloping to the sea. They grew more fertile as we descended and + after we had left a mountain valley where the mist hung grayest and + chillest, we suddenly burst into a region of mellow fruitfulness, where + the haze was all luminous, and where the oranges hung gold and green upon + the trees, and the women brought grapes and peaches and apples to the + train. The towns seemed to welcome us southward and the woods we knew + instantly to be of cork trees, with Don Quixote and Sancho Panza under + their branches anywhere we chose to look. + </p> + <p> + Otherwise, the journey was without those incidents which have so often + rendered these pages thrilling. Just before we left Ronda a couple, + self-evidently the domestics of a good family, got into our first-class + carriage though they had unquestionably only third-class tickets. They had + the good family’s dog with them, and after an unintelligible appeal to us + and to the young English couple in the other corner, they remained and + banished any misgivings they had by cheerful dialogue. The dog coiled + himself down at my feet and put his nose close to my ankles, so that + without rousing his resentment I could not express in Spanish my + indignation at what I felt to be an outrageous intrusion: servants, we all + are, but in traveling first class one must draw the line at dogs, I said + as much to the English couple, but they silently refused any part in the + demonstration. Presently the conductor came out to the window for our + fares, and he made the Spanish pair observe that they had third-class + tickets and their dog had none. He told them they must get out, but they + noted to him the fact that none of us had objected to their company, or + their dog’s, and they all remained, referring themselves to us for + sympathy when the conductor left. After the next station the same thing + happened with little change; the conductor was perhaps firmer and they + rather more yielding in their disobedience. Once more after a stop the + conductor appeared and told them that when the train halted again, they + and their dog must certainly get out. Then something surprising happened: + they really got out, and very amiably; perhaps it was the place where they + had always meant to get out; but it was a great triumph for the railway + company, which owed nothing in the way of countenance to the young English + couple; they had done nothing but lunch from their basket and bottle. We + ourselves arrived safely soon after nightfall at Algeciras, just in time + for dinner in the comfortable mother-hotel whose pretty daughter had made + us so much at home in Ronda. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0014" id="link2H_4_0014"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + XIII. ALGECIRAS AND TARIFA + </h2> + <p> + When we walked out on the terrace of our hotel at Algeciras after + breakfast, the first morning, we were greeted by the familiar form of the + Rock of Gibraltar still advertising, as we had seen it three years before, + a well-known American insurance company. It rose beyond five miles of + land-locked water, which we were to cross every other day for three weeks + on many idle and anxious errands, until we sailed from it at last for New + York. + </p> + <p> + Meanwhile Algeciras was altogether delightful not only because of our + Kate-Greenaway hotel, embowered in ten or twelve acres of gardened ground, + with walks going and coming under its palms and eucalyptuses, beside beds + of geraniums and past trellises of roses and jasmines, all in the keeping + of a captive stork which was apt unexpectedly to meet the stranger and + clap its formidable mandibles at him, and then hop away with half-lifted + wings. Algeciras had other claims which it urged day after day more + winningly upon us as the last place where we should feel the charm of + Spain unbroken in the tradition which reaches from modern fact far back + into antique fable. I will not follow it beyond the historic clue, for I + think the reader ought to be satisfied with knowing that the Moors held it + as early as the seven hundreds and as late as the thirteen hundreds, when + the Christians definitively recaptured it and their kings became kings of + Algeciras as well as kings of Spain, and remain so to this day. At the end + of the eighteenth century one of these kings made it his lookout for + watching the movements of the inimical English fleets, and then Algeciras + slumbered again, haunted only by “a deep dream of peace” till the European + diplomats, rather unexpectedly assisted by an American envoy, made it the + scene of their famous conference for settling the Morocco question in. + 1906. + </p> + <p> + <a name="linkimage-0031" id="linkimage-0031"> + <!-- IMG --></a> + </p> + <div class="fig" style="width:60%;"> + <img src="images/h1-31.jpg" alt="31 View of Algeciras " width="100%" /><br /> + </div> + <p> + I think this is my whole duty to the political interest of Algeciras, and + until I come to our excursion to Tarifa I am going to give myself + altogether to our pleasure in the place unvexed by any event of history. I + disdain even to note that the Moors took the city again from the + Christians, after twenty-five years, and demolished it, for I prefer to + remember it as it has been rebuilt and lies white by its bay, a series of + red-tiled levels of roof with a few church-towers topping them. It is a + pretty place, and remarkably clean, inhabited mostly by beggars, with a + minority of industrial, commercial, and professional citizens, who live in + agreeable little houses, with <i>patios</i> open to the passer, and with + balconies overhanging him. It has of course a bull-ring, enviously closed + during our stay, and it has one of the pleasantest Alamedas and the best + swept in Spain, where some nice boys are playing in the afternoon sun, and + a gentleman, coming out of one of the villas bordering on it, is + courteously interested in the two strangers whom he sees sitting on a + bench beside the walk, with the leaves of the plane trees dropping round + them in the still air. + </p> + <p> + The Alameda is quite at the thither end of Algeciras. At the end next our + hotel, but with the intervention of a space of cliff, topped and faced by + summer cottages and gardens, is the station with a train usually ready to + start from it for Ronda or Seville or Malaga, I do not know which, and + with the usual company of freight-cars idling about, empty or laden with + sheets of cork, as indifferent to them as if they were so much mere pine + or spruce lumber. There is a sufficiently attractive hotel here for + transients, and as an allurement to the marine and military leisure of + Gibraltar, “The Picnic Restaurant,” and “The Cabin Tea Room,” where no + doubt there is something to be had beside sandwiches and tea. Here also is + the pier for the Gibraltar boats, with the Spanish custom-house which + their passengers must pass through and have their packages and persons + searched for contraband. One heard of wild caprices on the part of the + inspectors in levying duties which were sometimes made to pass the prime + cost of the goods in Gibraltar. I myself only carried in books which after + the first few declarations were recognized as of no imaginable value and + passed with a genial tolerance, as a sort of joke, by officers whom I saw + feeling the persons of their fellow-Spaniards unsparingly over. + </p> + <p> + We had, if anything, less business really in Algeciras than in Gibraltar, + but we went into the town nearly every afternoon, and wantonly bought + things. By this means we proved that the Andalusian shopmen had not the + proud phlegm of the Castilians across their counters. In the principal + dry-goods store two salesmen rivaled each other in showing us politeness, + and sent home our small purchases as promptly as if we had done them a + favor in buying. We were indeed the wonder of our fellow-customers who + were not buying; but our pride was brought down in the little shop where + the proprietress was too much concerned in cooking her dinner (it smelled + delicious) to mind our wish for a very cheap green vase, inestimably + Spanish after we got it home. However, in another shop where the lady was + ironing her week’s wash on the counter, a lady friend who was making her + an afternoon call got such a vase down for us and transacted the + negotiation out of pure good will for both parties to it. + </p> + <p> + Parallel with the railway was a channel where small fishing-craft lay, and + where a leisurely dredging-machine was stirring up the depths in a stench + so dire that I wonder we do not smell it across the Atlantic. Over this + channel a bridge led into the town, and offered the convenient support of + its parapet to the crowd of spectators who wished to inhale that powerful + odor at their ease, and who hung there throughout the working-day; the + working-day of the dredging-machine, that is. The population was so much + absorbed in this that when we first crossed into the town, we found no + beggar children even, though there were a few blind beggarmen, but so few + that a boy who had one of them in charge was obliged to leave off smelling + the river and run and hunt him up for us. Other boys were busy in + street-sweeping and b-r-r-r-r-ing to the donkeys that carried off the + sweepings in panniers; and in the fine large plaza before the principal + church of Algeciras there was a boy who had plainly nothing but mischief + to do, though he did not molest us farther than to ask in English, “Want + to see the cathedral?” Then he went his way swiftly and we went into the + church, which we found very whitewashed and very Moorish in architecture, + but very Spanish in the Blessed Virgins on most of the altars, dressed in + brocades and jewels. A sacristan was brushing and dusting the place, but + he did not bother us, and we went freely about among the tall candles + standing on the floor as well as on the altars, and bearing each a placard + attached with black ribbon, and dedicated in black letters on silver “To + the Repose of This or That” one among the dead. + </p> + <p> + The meaning was evident enough, but we sought something further of the + druggist at the corner, who did his best for us in such English as he had. + It was not quite the English of Ronda; but he praised his grammar while he + owned that his vocabulary was in decay from want of practise. In fact, he + well-nigh committed us to the purchase of one of those votive candles, + which he understood we wished to buy; he all but sent to the sacristan to + get one. There were several onlookers, as there always are in Latin + pharmacies, and there was a sad young mother waiting for medicine with a + sick baby in her arms. The druggist said it had fever of the stomach; he + seemed proud of the fact, and some talk passed between him and the + bystanders which related to it. We asked if he had any of the quince jelly + which we had learned to like in Seville, but he could only refer us to the + confectioner’s on the other corner. Here was not indeed quince jelly, but + we compromised on quince cheese, as the English call it; and we bought + several boxes of it to take to America, which I am sorry to say moulded + before our voyage began, and had to be thrown away. Near this + confectioner’s was a booth where boiled sweet-potatoes were sold, with + oranges and joints of sugar-cane, and, spitted on straws, that terrible + fruit of the strawberry tree which we had tasted at Honda without wishing + to taste it ever again. Yet there was a boy boldly buying several straws + of it and chancing the intoxication which over-indulgence in it is said to + cause. Whether the excitement of these events was too great or not, we + found ourselves suddenly unwilling, if not unable, to walk back to our + hotel, and we took a cab of the three standing in the plaza. One was + without a horse, another without a driver, but the third had both, as in + some sort of riddle, and we had no sooner taken it than a horse was put + into the first and a driver ran out and got on the box of the second, as + if that was the answer to the riddle. + </p> + <p> + II + </p> + <p> + It was then too late for them to share our custom, but I am not sure that + it was not one of these very horses or drivers whom we got another day for + our drive about the town and its suburbs, and an excursion to a section of + the Moorish aqueduct which remains after a thousand years. You can see it + at a distance, but no horse or driver in our employ could ever find the + way to it; in fact, it seemed to vanish on approach, and we were always + bringing up in our hotel gardens without having got to it; I do not know + what we should have done with it if we had. We were not able to do + anything definite with the new villas built or building around Algeciras, + though they looked very livable, and seemed proof of a prosperity in the + place for which I can give no reason except the great natural beauty of + the nearer neighborhood, and the magnificence of the farther, + mountain-walled and skyed over with a September blue in November. I think + it would be a good place to spend the winter if one liked each day to be + exactly like every other. I do not know whether it is inhabited by English + people from Gibraltar, where there are of course those resources of sport + and society which an English colony always carries with it. + </p> + <p> + The popular amusements of Algeciras in the off season for bull-feasts did + not readily lend themselves to observance. Chiefly we noted two young men + with a graphophone on wheels which, being pushed about, wheezed out the + latest songs to the acceptance of large crowds. We ourselves amused a + large crowd when one of us attempted to sketch the yellow facade of a + church so small that it seemed all facade; and another day when that one + of us who held the coppers, commonly kept sacred to blind beggars, + delighted an innumerable multitude of mendicants having their eyesight + perfect. They were most of them in the vigor of youth, and they were + waiting on a certain street for the monthly dole with which a resident of + Algeciras may buy immunity for all the other days of the month. They + instantly recognized in the stranger a fraudulent tax-dodger, and when he + attempted tardily to purchase immunity they poured upon him; in front, + behind, on both sides, all round, they boiled up and bubbled about him; + and the exhaustion of his riches alone saved him alive. It must have been + a wonderful spectacle, and I do not suppose the like of it was ever seen + in Algeciras before. It was a triumph over charity, and left quite out of + comparison the organized onsets of the infant gang which always beset the + way to the hotel under a leader whose battle-cry, at once a demand and a + promise, was “Penny-go-way, Penny-go-way!” + </p> + <p> + Along that pleasant shore bare-legged fishermen spread their nets, and + going and coming by the Gibraltar boats were sometimes white-hosed, + brown-cloaked, white-turbaned Moors, who occasionally wore Christian + boots, but otherwise looked just such Moslems as landed at Algeciras in + the eighth century; people do not change much in Africa. They were + probably hucksters from the Moorish market in Gibraltar, where they had + given their geese and turkeys the holiday they were taking themselves. + They were handsome men, tall and vigorous, but they did not win me to + sympathy with their architecture or religion, and I am not sure but, if + there had been any concerted movement against them on the landing at + Algeciras, I should have joined in driving them out of Spain. As it was I + made as much Africa as I could of them in defect of crossing to Tangier, + which we had firmly meant to do, but which we forbore doing till the + plague had ceased to rage there. By this time the boat which touched at + Tangier on the way to Cadiz stopped going to Cadiz, and if we could not go + to Cadiz we did not care for going to Tangier. It was something like this, + if not quite like it, and it ended in our seeing Africa only from the + southernmost verge of Europe at Tarifa. At that little distance across it + looked dazzlingly white, like the cotton vestments of those Moorish + marketmen, but probably would have been no cleaner on closer approach. + </p> + <p> + III + </p> + <p> + As a matter of fact, we were very near not going even to Tarifa, though we + had promised ourselves going from the first. But it was very charming to + linger in the civilization of that hotel; to wander through its garden + paths in the afternoon after a forenoon’s writing and inhale the keen + aromatic odors of the eucalyptus, and when the day waned to have tea at an + iron table on the seaward terrace. Or if we went to Gibraltar, it was + interesting to wonder why we had gone, and to be so glad of getting back, + and after dinner joining a pleasant international group in the long + reading-room with the hearth-fires at either end which, if you got near + them, were so comforting against the evening chill. Sometimes the pleasure + of the time was heightened by the rain pattering on the glass roof of the + <i>patio,</i> where in the afternoon a bulky Spanish mother sat mute + beside her basket of laces which you could buy if you would, but need not + if you would rather not; in either case she smiled placidly. + </p> + <p> + At last we did get together courage enough to drive twelve miles over the + hills to Tarifa, but this courage was pieced out of the fragments of the + courage we had lost for going to Cadiz by the public automobile which runs + daily from Algeciras. The road after you passed Tarifa was so bad that + those who had endured it said nobody could endure it, and in such a case I + was sure I could not, but now I am sorry I did not venture, for since then + I have motored over some of the roads in the state of Maine and lived. If + people in Maine had that Spanish road as far as Tarifa they would think it + the superb Massachusetts state road gone astray, and it would be thought a + good road anywhere, with the promise of being better when the young + eucalyptus trees planted every few yards along it grew big enough to shade + it. But we were glad of as much sun as we could get on the brisk November + morning when we drove out of the hotel garden and began the long climb, + with little intervals of level and even of lapse. We started at ten + o’clock, and it was not too late in that land of anomalous hours to meet + peasants on their mules and donkeys bringing loads of stuff to market in + Algeciras. Men were plowing with many yoke of oxen in the wheat-fields; + elsewhere there were green pastures with herds of horses grazing in them, + an abundance of brown pigs, and flocks of sheep with small lambs + plaintively bleating. The pretty white farmhouses, named each after a + favorite saint, and gathering at times into villages, had grapes and figs + and pomegranates in their gardens; and when we left them and climbed + higher, we began passing through long stretches of cork woods. + </p> + <p> + The trees grew wild, sometimes sturdily like our oaks, and sometimes + gnarled and twisted like our seaside cedars, and in every state of + excoriation. The bark is taken from them each seventh year, and it begins + to be taken long before the first seventh. The tender saplings and the + superannuated shell wasting to its fall yield alike their bark, which is + stripped from the roots to the highest boughs. Where they have been flayed + recently they look literally as if they were left bleeding, for the sap + turns a red color; but with time this changes to brown, and the bark + begins to renew itself and grows again till the next seventh year. Upon + the whole the cork-wood forest is not cheerful, and I would rather + frequent it in the pages of <i>Don Quixote</i> than out; though if the + trees do not mind being barked it is mere sentimentality in me to pity + them. + </p> + <p> + The country grew lonelier and drearier as we mounted, and the wind blew + colder over the fields blotched with that sort of ground-palm, which lays + waste so much land in southern Spain. When we descended the winding road + from the summit we came in sight of the sea with Africa clearly visible + beyond, and we did not lose sight of it again. Sometimes we met soldiers + possibly looking out for smugglers but, let us hope, not molesting them; + and once we met a brace of the all-respected Civil Guards, marching + shoulder to shoulder, with their cloaks swinging free and their carbines + on their arms, severe, serene, silent. Now and then a mounted wayfarer + came toward us looking like a landed proprietor in his own equipment and + that of his steed, and there were peasant women solidly perched on + donkeys, and draped in long black cloaks and hooded in white kerchiefs. + </p> + <p> + IV + </p> + <p> + The landscape softened again, with tilled fields and gardened spaces + around the cottages, and now we had Tarifa always in sight, a stretch of + white walls beside the blue sea with an effect of vicinity which it was + very long in realizing. We had meant when we reached the town at last to + choose which <i>fonda</i> we should stop at for our luncheon, but our + driver chose the Fonda de Villanueva outside the town wall, and I do not + believe we could have chosen better if he had let us. He really put us + down across the way at the <i>venta</i> where he was going to bait his + horses; and in what might well have seemed the custody of a little + policeman with a sword at his side, we were conducted to the <i>fonda</i> + and shown up into the very neat icy cold parlor where a young girl with a + yellow flower in her hair received us. We were chill and stiff from our + drive and we hoped for something warmer from the dining-room, which we + perceived must face southward, and must be full of sun. But we reckoned + without the ideal of the girl with the yellow flower in her hair: in the + little saloon, shining round with glazed tiles where we next found + ourselves, the sun had been carefully screened and scarcely pierced the + scrim shades. But this was the worst, this was all that was bad, in that + <i>fonda.</i> When the breakfast or the luncheon, or whatever corresponds + in our usage to the Spanish <i>almuerzo,</i> began to come, it seemed as + if it never would stop. An original but admirable omelette with potatoes + and bacon in it was followed by fried fish flavored with saffron. Then + there was brought in fried kid with a dish of kidneys; more fried fish + came after, and then boiled beef, with a dessert of small cakes. Of course + there was wine, as much as you would, such as it was, and several sorts of + fruit. I am sorry to have forgotten how little all this cost, but at a + venture I will say forty cents, or fifty at the outside; and so great + kindness and good will went with it from the family who cooked it in the + next room and served it with such cordial insistence that I think it was + worth quite the larger sum. It would not have been polite to note how much + of this superabundance was consumed by the three Spanish gentlemen who had + so courteously saluted us in sitting down at table with us. I only know + that they made us the conventional acknowledgment in refusing our + conventional offer of some things we had brought with us from our hotel to + eat in the event of famine at Tarifa. + </p> + <p> + When we had come at last to the last course, we turned our thoughts + somewhat anxiously to the question of a guide for the town which we felt + so little able to explore without one; and it seemed to me that I had + better ask the policeman who had brought us to our <i>fonda.</i> He was + sitting at the head of the stairs where we had left him, and so far from + being baffled by my problem, he instantly solved it by offering himself to + be our guide. Perhaps it was a profession which he merely joined to his + civic function, but it was as if we were taken into custody when he put + himself in charge of us and led us to the objects of interest which I + cannot say Tarifa abounds in. That is, if you leave out of the count the + irregular, to and fro, up and down, narrow lanes, passing the blank walls + of low houses, and glimpsing leafy and flowery <i>patios</i> through open + gates, and suddenly expanding into broader streets and unexpected plazas, + with shops and cafes and churches in them. + </p> + <p> + Tarifa is perhaps the quaintest town left in the world, either in or out + of Spain, but whether it is more Moorish than parts of Cordova or Seville + I could not say. It is at least pre-eminent in a feature of the women’s + costume which you are promised at the first mention of the place, and + which is said to be a survival of the Moslem civilization. Of course we + were eager for it, and when we came into the first wide street, there at + the principal corner three women were standing, just as advertised, with + black skirts caught up from their waists over their heads and held before + their faces so that only one eye could look out at the strangers. It was + like the women’s costume at Chiozza on the Venetian lagoon, but there it + is not claimed for Moorish and here it was authenticated by being black. + “Moorish ladies,” our guide proudly proclaimed them in his scanty English, + but I suspect they were Spanish; if they were really Orientals, they + followed us with those eyes single as daringly as if they had been of our + own Christian Occident. + </p> + <p> + The event was so perfect in its way that it seemed as if our guiding + policeman might have especially ordered it; but this could not have really + been, and was no such effect of his office as the immunity from beggars + which we enjoyed in his charge. The worst boy in Tarifa (we did not + identify him) dared not approach for a big-dog or a little, and we were + safe from the boldest blind man, the hardiest hag, however pockmarked. The + lanes and the streets and the plazas were clean as though our guide had + them newly swept for us, and the plaza of the principal church (no + guide-book remembers its name) is perhaps the cleanest in all Spain. + </p> + <p> + VI + </p> + <p> + The church itself we found very clean, and of an interest quite beyond the + promise of the rather bare outside. A painted window above the door cast a + glare of fresh red and blue over the interior, and over the comfortably + matted floor; and there was a quite freshly carved and gilded chapel which + the pleasant youth supplementing our policeman for the time said was done + by artists still living in Tarifa. The edifice was of a very flamboyant + Gothic, with clusters of slender columns and a vault brilliantly swirled + over with decorations of the effect of peacock feathers. But above all + there was on a small side altar a figure of the Child Jesus dressed in the + corduroy suit and felt hat of a Spanish shepherd, with a silver crook in + one hand and leading a toy lamb by a string in the other. Our young guide + took the image down for us to look at, and showed its shepherd’s dress + with peculiar satisfaction; and then he left it on the ground while he + went to show us something else. When we came back we found two small boys + playing with the Child, putting its hat off and on, and feeling of its + clothes. Our guide took it from them, not unkindly, and put it back on the + altar; and whether the reader will agree with me or not, I must own that I + did not find the incident irreverent or without a certain touchingness, as + if those children and He were all of one family and they were at home with + Him there. + </p> + <p> + Rather suddenly, after we left the church, by way of one of those + unexpectedly expanding lanes, we found ourselves on the shore of the + purple sea where the Moors first triumphed over the Goths twelve hundred + years before, and five centuries later the Spaniards heat them back from + their attempt to reconquer the city. There were barracks, empty of the + Spanish soldiers gone to fight the same old battle of the Moors on their + own ground in Africa, and there was the castle which Alfonso Perez de + Guzman held against them in 1292, and made the scene of one of those acts + of self-devotion which the heart of this time has scarcely strength for. + The Moors when they had vainly summoned him to yield brought out his son + whom they held captive, and threatened to kill him. Guzman drew his knife + and flung it down to them, and they slew the boy, but Tarif a was saved. + His king decreed that thereafter the father should be known as Guzman the + Good, and the fact has gone into a ballad, but the name somehow does not + seem quite to fit, and one wishes that the father had not won it that way. + </p> + <p> + We were glad to go away from the dreadful place, though Tangier was so + plain across the strait, and we were almost in Africa there, and hard by, + in the waters tossing free, the great battle of Trafalgar was fought. From + the fountains of my far youth, when I first heard of Guzman’s dreadful + heroism, I endeavored to pump up an adequate emotion; I succeeded somewhat + better with Nelson and his pathetic prayer of “Kiss me, Hardy,” as he lay + dying on his bloody deck; but I did not much triumph with either, and I + was grateful when our good little policeman comfortably questioned the + deed of Guzman which he said some doubted, though he took us to the very + spot where the Moors had parleyed with Guzman, and showed us the tablet + over the castle gate affirming the fact. + </p> + <p> + We liked far better the pretty Alameda rising in terraces from it with + beds of flowers beside the promenade, and boys playing up and down, and + old men sitting in the sun, and trying to ignore the wind that blew over + them too freshly for us. Our policeman confessed that there was nothing + more worth seeing in Tarifa, and we entreated of him the favor of showing + us a shop where we could buy a Cordovese hat; a hat which we had seen + nourishing on the heads of all men in Cordova and Seville and Granada and + Ronda, and had always forborne to buy because we could get it anywhere; + and now we were almost leaving Spain without it. We wanted one brown in + color, as well as stiff and flat of brim, and slightly conical in form; + and our policeman promptly imagined it, and took us to a shop abounding + solely in hats, and especially in Cordoveses. The proprietor came out + wiping his mouth from an inner room, where he had left his family visibly + at their <i>almuerzo;</i> and then we were desolated together that he + should only have Cordoveses that were black. But passing a <i>patio</i> + where there was a poinsettia in brilliant bloom against the wall, we found + ourselves in a variety store where there were Cordoveses of all colors; + and we chose one of the right brown, with the picture of a beautiful + Spanish girl, wearing a pink shawl, inside the crown which was fluted + round in green and red ribbon. Seven pesetas was the monstrous asking + price, but we beat it down to five and a half, and then came a trying + moment: we could not carry a Cordovese in tissue-paper through the streets + of Tarifa, but could we ask our guide, who was also our armed escort, to + carry it? He simplified the situation by taking it himself and bearing it + back to the <i>fonda</i> as proudly as if he had not also worn a sword at + his side; and we parted there in a kindness which I should like to think + he shared equally with us. + </p> + <p> + He was practically the last of those Spaniards who were always winning my + heart (save in the bank at Valladolid where they must have misunderstood + me), and whom I remember with tenderness for their courtesy and + amiability. In little things and large, I found the Spaniards everywhere + what I heard a Piedmontese commercial traveler say of them in Venice fifty + years ago: “They are the honestest people in Europe.” In Italy I never + began to see the cruelty to animals which English tourists report, and in + Spain I saw none at all. If the reader asks how with this gentleness, this + civility and integrity, the Spaniards have contrived to build up their + repute for cruelty, treachery, mendacity, and every atrocity; how with + their love of bull-feasts and the suffering to man and brute which these + involve, they should yet seem so kind to both, I answer frankly, I do not + know. I do not know how the Americans are reputed good and just and + law-abiding, although they often shoot one another, and upon mere + suspicion rather often burn negroes alive. + </p> + <p> + THE END <br /> <br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <br /> <br /> + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg’s Familiar Spanish Travels, by W. D. 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D. Howells + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Familiar Spanish Travels + +Author: W. D. Howells + +Release Date: February, 2005 [EBook #7430] +Posting Date: July 24, 2009 [EBook + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FAMILIAR SPANISH TRAVELS *** + + + + +Produced by Eric Eldred + + + + + +FAMILIAR SPANISH TRAVELS + + +By W. D. Howells + + + + ILLUSTRATED + HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS + NEW YORK AND LONDON + MCMXIII + COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY HARPER & BROTHERS + PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA + PUBLISHED OCTOBER. 1913 + + +TO M. H. + + +[Illustration: 01 PUERTA DEL SOL--GATE OF THE SUN--TOLEDO] + + +CONTENTS + + + I. AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL APPROACHES + + II. SAN SEBASTIAN AND BEAUTIFUL BISCAY + + III. BURGOS AND THE BITTER COLD OF BURGOS + + IV. THE VARIETY OF VALLADOLID + + V. PHASES OF MADRID + + VI. A NIGHT AND DAY IN TOLEDO + + VII. THE GREAT GRIDIRON OF ST. LAWRENCE + + VIII. CORDOVA AND THE WAY THERE + + IX. FIRST DAYS IN SEVILLE + + X. SEVILLIAN ASPECTS AND INCIDENTS + + XI. TO AND IN GRANADA + + XII. THE SURPRISES OF RONDA + + XIII. ALGECIRAS AND TARIFA + + + + + +FAMILIAR SPANISH TRAVELS + + + + +I. AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL APPROACHES + + + +I. + +As the train took its time and ours in mounting the uplands toward +Granada on the soft, but not too soft, evening of November 6, 1911, +the air that came to me through the open window breathed as if from an +autumnal night of the middle eighteen-fifties in a little village of +northeastern Ohio. I was now going to see, for the first time, the city +where so great a part of my life was then passed, and in this magical +air the two epochs were blent in reciprocal association. The question of +my present identity was a thing indifferent and apart; it did not matter +who or where or when I was. Youth and age were at one with each other: +the boy abiding in the old man, and the old man pensively willing to +dwell for the enchanted moment in any vantage of the past which would +give him shelter. + +In that dignified and deliberate Spanish train I was a man of +seventy-four crossing the last barrier of hills that helped keep Granada +from her conquerors, and at the same time I was a boy of seventeen in +the little room under the stairs in a house now practically remoter than +the Alhambra, finding my unguided way through some Spanish story of the +vanished kingdom of the Moors. The little room which had structurally +ceased fifty years before from the house that ceased to be home even +longer ago had returned to the world with me in it, and fitted perfectly +into the first-class railway compartment which my luxury had provided +for it. From its window I saw through the car window the olive groves +and white cottages of the Spanish peasants, and the American apple +orchards and meadows stretching to the primeval woods that walled the +drowsing village round. Then, as the night deepened with me at my book, +the train slipped slowly from the hills, and the moon, leaving the Ohio +village wholly in the dark, shone over the roofs and gardens of +Granada, and I was no longer a boy of seventeen, but altogether a man of +seventy-four. + +I do not say the experience was so explicit as all this; no experience +so mystical could be so explicit; and perhaps what was intimated to +me in it was only that if I sometime meant to ask some gentle reader's +company in a retrospect of my Spanish travels, I had better be honest +with him and own at the beginning that passion for Spanish things which +was the ruling passion of my boyhood; I had better confess that, however +unrequited, it held me in the eager bondage of a lover still, so that I +never wished to escape from it, but must try to hide the fact whenever +the real Spain fell below the ideal, however I might reason with +my infatuation or try to scoff it away. It had once been so +inextinguishable a part of me that the record of my journey must be more +or less autobiographical; and though I should decently endeavor to keep +my past out of it, perhaps I should not try very hard and should not +always succeed. + +Just when this passion began in me I should not be able to say; but +probably it was with my first reading of _Don Quixote_ in the later +eighteen-forties. I would then have been ten or twelve years old; and, +of course, I read that incomparable romance, not only greatest, but sole +of its kind, in English. The purpose of some time reading it in Spanish +and then the purpose of some time writing the author's life grew in me +with my growing years so strongly that, though I have never yet done +either and probably never shall, I should not despair of doing both if +I lived to be a hundred. In the mean time my wandering steps had early +chanced upon a Spanish grammar, and I had begun those inquiries in it +which were based upon a total ignorance of English accidence. I do not +remember how I felt my way from it to such reading of the language +as has endeared Spanish literature to me. It embraced something of +everything: literary and political history, drama, poetry, fiction; +but it never condescended to the exigencies of common parlance. These +exigencies did not exist for me in my dreams of seeing Spain which were +not really expectations. It was not until half a century later, when my +longing became a hope and then a purpose, that I foreboded the need of +practicable Spanish. Then I invoked the help of a young professor, who +came to me for an hour each day of a week in London and let me try to +talk with him; but even then I accumulated so little practicable Spanish +that my first hour, almost my first moment in Spain, exhausted my store. +My professor was from Barcelona, but he beautifully lisped his _c's_ +and _z's_ like any old Castilian, when he might have hissed them in the +accent of his native Catalan; and there is no telling how much I might +have profited by his instruction if he had not been such a charming +intelligence that I liked to talk with him of literature and philosophy +and politics rather than the weather, or the cost of things, or the +question of how long the train stopped and when it would start, or the +dishes at table, or clothes at the tailor's, or the forms of greeting +and parting. If he did not equip me with the useful colloquial phrases, +the fault was mine; and the misfortune was doubly mine when from my old +acquaintance with Italian (glib half-sister of the statelier Spanish) +the Italian phrases would thrust forward as the equivalent of the +English words I could not always think of. The truth is, then, that I +was not perfect in my Spanish after quite six weeks in Spain; and if +in the course of his travels with me the reader finds me flourishing +Spanish idioms in his face he may safely attribute them less to my +speaking than my reading knowledge: probably I never employed them in +conversation. That reading was itself without order or system, and I am +not sure but it had better been less than more. Yet who knows? The days, +or the nights of the days, in the eighteen-fifties went quickly, as +quickly as the years go now, and it would have all come to the present +pass whether that blind devotion to an alien literature had cloistered +my youth or not. + +I do not know how, with the merciful make I am of, I should then have +cared so little, or else ignored so largely the cruelties I certainly +knew that the Spaniards had practised in the conquests of Mexico and +Peru. I knew of these things, and my heart was with the Incas and the +Aztecs, and yet somehow I could not punish the Spaniards for their +atrocious destruction of the only American civilizations. As nearly as I +can now say, I was of both sides, and wistful to reconcile them, though +I do not see now how it could have been done; and in my later hopes for +the softening of the human conditions I have found it hard to forgive +Pizarro for the overthrow of the most perfectly socialized state known +to history. I scarcely realized the base ingratitude of the Spanish +sovereigns to Columbus, and there were vast regions of history that I +had not penetrated till long afterward in pursuit of Spanish perfidy and +inhumanity, as in their monstrous misrule of Holland. When it came in +those earlier days to a question of sides between the Spaniards and +the Moors, as Washington Irving invited my boyhood to take it in his +chronicle of the conquest of Granada, I experienced on a larger scale my +difficulty in the case of the Mexicans and Peruvians. The case of these +had been reported to me in the school-readers, but here, now, was an +affair submitted to the mature judgment of a boy of twelve, and yet +I felt as helpless as I was at ten. Will it be credited that at +seventy-four I am still often in doubt which side I should have had win, +though I used to fight on both? Since the matter was settled more than +four hundred years ago, I will not give the reasons for my divided +allegiance. They would hardly avail now to reverse the tragic fate of +the Moors, and if I try I cannot altogether wish to reverse it. Whatever +Spanish misrule has been since Islam was overthrown in Granada, it has +been the error of law, and the rule of Islam at the best had always been +the effect of personal will, the caprice of despots high and low, +the unstatuted sufferance of slaves, high and low. The gloomiest and +cruelest error of Inquisitional Spain was nobler, with its adoration of +ideal womanhood, than the Mohammedan state with its sensual dreams of +Paradise. I will not pretend (as I very well might, and as I perhaps +ought) that I thought of these things, all or any, as our train began to +slope rather more rapidly toward Granada, and to find its way under +the rising moon over the storied Vega. I will as little pretend that my +attitude toward Spain was ever that of the impartial observer after +I crossed the border of that enchanted realm where we all have our +castles. I have thought it best to be open with the reader here at +the beginning, and I would not, if I could, deny him the pleasure of +doubting my word or disabling my judgment at any point he likes. In +return I shall only ask his patience when I strike too persistently the +chord of autobiography. That chord is part of the harmony between the +boy and the old man who made my Spanish journey together, and were +always accusing themselves, the first of dreaming and the last of +doddering: perhaps with equal justice. Is there really much difference +between the two? + + + +II. + +It was fully a month before that first night in Granada that I arrived +in Spain after some sixty years' delay. During this period I had seen +almost every other interesting country in Europe. I had lived five +or six years in Italy; I had been several months in Germany; and a +fortnight in Holland; I had sojourned often in Paris; I had come and +gone a dozen times in England and lingered long each time; and yet I +had never once visited the land of my devotion. I had often wondered at +this, it was so wholly involuntary, and I had sometimes suffered from +the surprise of those who knew of my passion for Spain, and kept finding +out my dereliction, alleging the Sud-Express to Madrid as something that +left me without excuse. The very summer before last I got so far on the +way in London as to buy a Spanish phrase-book full of those inopportune +conversations with landlords, tailors, ticket-sellers, and casual +acquaintance or agreeable strangers. Yet I returned once more to America +with my desire, which was turning into a duty, unfulfilled; and when +once more I sailed for Europe in 1911 it was more with foreboding of +another failure than a prescience of fruition in my inveterate longing. +Even after that boldly decisive week of the professor in London I had my +doubts and my self-doubts. There were delays at London, delays at Paris, +delays at Tours; and when at last we crossed the Pyrenees and I found +myself in Spain, it was with an incredulity which followed me throughout +and lingered with me to the end. "Is this truly Spain, and am I actually +there?" the thing kept asking itself; and it asks itself still, in terms +that fit the accomplished fact. + + + + +II. SAN SEBASTIAN AND BEAUTIFUL BISCAY + + +Even at Irun, where we arrived in Spain from Bayonne, there began at +once to be temperamental differences which ought to have wrought against +my weird misgivings of my whereabouts. Only in Spain could a customs +inspector have felt of one tray in our trunks and then passed them +all with an air of such jaded aversion from an employ uncongenial to +a gentleman. Perhaps he was also loath to attempt any inquiry in that +Desperanto of French, English, and Spanish which raged around us; but +the porter to whom we had fallen, while I hesitated at our carriage door +whether I should summon him as _Mozo_ or _Usted,_ was master of that +_lingua franca_ and recovered us from the customs without question on +our part, and understood everything we could not, say. I like to think +he was a Basque, because I like the Basques so much for no reason that +I can think of. Their being always Carlists would certainly be no reason +with me, for I was never a Carlist; and perhaps my liking is only a +prejudice in their favor from the air of thrift and work which pervades +their beautiful province, or is an effect of their language as I first +saw it inscribed on the front of the Credit Lyonnais at Bayonne. It +looked so beautifully regular, so scholarly, so Latin, so sister to both +Spanish and Italian, so richly and musically voweled, and yet remained +so impenetrable to the most daring surmise, that I conceived at once +a profound admiration for the race which could keep such a language +to itself. When I remembered how blond, how red-blond our sinewy young +porter was, I could not well help breveting him of that race, and +honoring him because he could have read those words with the eyes that +were so blue amid the general Spanish blackness of eyes. He imparted a +quiet from his own calm to our nervousness, and if we had appealed to +him on the point I am sure he would have saved us from the error of +breakfasting in the station restaurant at the deceitful _table d'hote,_ +though where else we should have breakfasted I do not know. + + + +I. + +One train left for San Sebastian while I was still lost in amaze that +what I had taken into my mouth for fried egg should be inwardly fish +and full of bones; but he quelled my anxiety with the assurance, which I +somehow understood, that there would be another train soon. In the mean +time there were most acceptable Spanish families all about, affably +conversing together, and freely admitting to their conversation the +children, who so publicly abound in Spain, and the nurses who do nothing +to prevent their publicity. There were already the typical fat Spanish +mothers and lean fathers, with the slender daughters, who, in the +tradition of Spanish good-breeding, kept their black eyes to themselves, +or only lent them to the spectators in furtive glances. Both older +and younger ladies wore the scanty Egyptian skirt of Occidental +civilization, lurking or perking in deep-drooping or high-raking hats, +though already here and there was the mantilla, which would more and +more prevail as we went southward; older and younger, they were all +painted and powdered to the favor that Spanish women everywhere corne +to. + +When the bad breakfast was over, and the waiters were laying the table +for another as bad, our Basque porter came in and led us to the train +for San Sebastian which he had promised us. It was now raining outside, +and we were glad to climb into our apartment without at all seeing what +Irun was or was not like. But we thought well of the place because we +first experienced there the ample ease of a Spanish car. In Spain the +railroad gauge is five feet six inches; and this car of ours was not +only very spacious, but very clean, while the French cars that had +brought us from Bordeaux to Bayonne and from Bayonne to Irun were +neither. I do not say all French cars are dirty, or all Spanish cars are +as clean as they are spacious. The cars of both countries are hard +to get into, by steep narrow footholds worse even than our flights of +steps; in fact, the English cars are the only ones I know which are easy +of access. But these have not the ample racks for hand-bags which the +Spanish companies provide for travelers willing to take advantage of +their trust by transferring much of their heavy stuff to them. Without +owning that we were such travelers, I find this the place to say that, +with the allowance of a hundred and thirty-two pounds free, our excess +baggage in two large steamer-trunks did not cost us three dollars in +a month's travel, with many detours, from Irun in the extreme north to +Algeciras in the extreme south of Spain. + + + +II. + +But in this sordid detail I am keeping the reader from the scenery. It +had been growing more and more striking ever since we began climbing +into the Pyrenees from Bayonne; but upon the whole it was not so sublime +as it was beautiful. There were some steep, sharp peaks, but mostly +there were grassy valleys with white cattle grazing in them, and many +fields of Indian corn, endearingly homelike. This at least is mainly the +trace that the scenery as far as Irun has left among my notes; and after +Irun there is record of more and more corn. There was, in fact, +more corn than anything else, though there were many orchards, also +endearingly homelike, with apples yellow and red showing among the +leaves still green on the trees; if there had been something more +wasteful in the farming it would have been still more homelike, but a +traveler cannot have everything. The hillsides were often terraced, +as in Italy, and the culture apparently close and conscientious. The +farmhouses looked friendly and comfortable; at places the landscape was +molested by some sort of manufactories which could not conceal their +tall chimneys, though they kept the secret of their industry. They were +never, really, very bad, and I would have been willing to let them pass +for fulling-mills, such as I was so familiar with in _Don Quixote,_ if +I had thought of these in time. But one ought to be honest at any cost, +and I must own that the Spain I was now for the first time seeing with +every-day eyes was so little like the Spain of my boyish vision that I +never once recurred to it. That was a Spain of cork-trees, of groves +by the green margins of mountain brooks, of habitable hills, where +shepherds might feed their flocks and mad lovers and maids forlorn might +wander and maunder; and here were fields of corn and apple orchards and +vineyards reddening and yellowing up to the doors of those comfortable +farmhouses, with nowhere the sign of a Christian cavalier or a turbaned +infidel. As a man I could not help liking what I saw, but I could also +grieve for the boy who would have been so disappointed if he had come to +the Basque provinces of Spain when he was from ten to fifteen years old, +instead of seventy-four. + +It took our train nearly an hour to get by twenty miles of those +pleasant farms and the pretty hamlets which they now and then clustered +into. But that was fast for a Spanish way-train, which does not run, +but, as it were, walks with dignity and makes long stops at stations, +to rest and let the locomotive roll itself a cigarette. By the time we +reached San Sebastian our rain had thickened to a heavy downpour, and +by the time we mounted to our rooms, three pair up in the hotel, it +was storming in a fine fury over the bay under them, and sweeping the +curving quays and tossing the feathery foliage of the tamarisk-shaded +promenade. The distinct advantage of our lofty perch was the splendid +sight of the tempest, held from doing its worst by the mighty headlands +standing out to sea on the right and left. But our rooms were cold with +the stony cold of the south when it is cooling off from its summer, and +we shivered in the splendid sight. + + + +III. + +The inhabitants of San Sebastian will not hesitate to say that it is the +prettiest town in Spain, and I do not know that they could be hopefully +contradicted. It is very modern in its more obvious aspects, with a +noble thoroughfare called the Avenida de Libertad for its principal +street, shaded with a double row of those feathery tamarisks, and with +handsome shops glittering on both sides of it. Very easily it is first +of the fashionable watering-places of Spain; the King has his villa +there, and the court comes every summer. But they had gone by the time +we got there, and the town wore the dejected look of out-of-season +summer resorts; though there was the apparatus of gaiety, the fine +casino at one end of the beach, and the villas of the rich and noble all +along it to the other end. On the sand were still many bathing-machines, +but many others had begun to climb for greater safety during the winter +to the street above. We saw one hardy bather dripping up from the surf +and seeking shelter among those that remained, but they were mostly +tenanted by their owners, who looked shoreward through their open doors, +and made no secret of their cozy domesticity, where they sat and sewed +or knitted and gossiped with their neighbors. Good wives and mothers +they doubtless were, but no doubt glad to be resting from the summer +pleasure of others. They had their beautiful names written up over their +doors, and were for the service of the lady visitors only; there were +other machines for gentlemen, and no doubt it was their owners whom +we saw gathering the fat seaweed thrown up by the storm into the carts +drawn by oxen over the sand. The oxen wore no yokes, but pulled by a +band drawn over their foreheads under their horns, and they had the air +of not liking the arrangement; though, for the matter of that, I have +never seen oxen that seemed to like being yoked. + + +[Illustration: 02 THE CASINO, SAN SEBASTIAN, LOOKS OUT UPON THE CURVING CONCHA AND THE BLUE BAY] + +When we came down to dinner we found the tables fairly full of belated +visitors, who presently proved tourists flying south like ourselves. +The dinner was good, as it is in nearly all Spanish hotels, where for an +average of three dollars a day you have an inclusive rate which you must +double for as good accommodation in our States. Let no one, I say, fear +the rank cookery so much imagined of the Peninsula, the oil, the pepper, +the kid and the like strange meats; as in all other countries of Europe, +even England itself, there is a local version, a general convention of +the French cuisine, quite as good in Spain as elsewhere, and oftener +superabundant than subabundant. The plain water is generally good, With +an American edge of freshness; but if you will not trust it (we had to +learn to trust it) there are agreeable Spanish mineral waters, as +well as the Apollinaris, the St. Galmier, and the Perrier of other +civilizations, to be had for the asking, at rather greater cost than the +good native wines, often included in the inclusive rate. + +Besides this convention of the French cuisine there is almost everywhere +a convention of the English language in some one of the waiters. You +must not stray far from the beaten path of your immediate wants, but in +this you are safe. At San Sebastian we had even a wider range with the +English of the little intellectual-looking, pale Spanish waiter, with +a fine Napoleonic head, who came to my help when I began to flounder in +the language which I had read so much and spoken so little or none. He +had been a year in London, he said, and he took us for English, though, +now he came to notice it, he perceived we were Americans because we +spoke "quicklier" than the English. We did not protest; it was the +mildest criticism of our national accent which we were destined to +get from English-speaking Spaniards before they found we were not the +English we did not wish to be taken for. After dinner we asked for a +fire in one of our grates, but the maid declared there was no fuel; and, +though the hostess denied this and promised us a fire the next night, +she forgot it till nine o'clock, and then we would not have it. The cold +abode with us indoors to the last at San Sebastian, but the storm (which +had hummed and whistled theatrically at our windows) broke during the +first night, and the day followed with several intervals of sunshine, +which bathed us in a glowing-expectation of overtaking the fugitive +summer farther south. + + + +IV. + +In the mean time we hired a beautiful Basque cabman with a red Basque +cap and high-hooked Basque nose to drive us about at something above +the legal rate and let us not leave any worthy thing in San Sebastian +unseen. He took us, naturally, to several churches, old and new, with +their Gothic and rococo interiors, which I still find glooming and +glinting among my evermore thickening impressions of like things. We got +from them the sense of that architectural and sculptural richness which +the interior of no Spanish church ever failed measurably to give; but +what their historical associations were I will not offer to say. The +associations of San Sebastian with the past are in all things vague, at +least for me. She was indeed taken from the French by the English under +Wellington during the Peninsular War, but of older, if not unhappier +farther-off days and battles longer ago her history as I know it seems +to know little. It knows of savage and merciless battles between the +partisans of Don Carlos and those of Queen Isabella so few decades since +as not to be the stuff of mere pathos yet, and I am not able to blink +the fact that my beloved Basques fought on the wrong side, when they +need not have fought at all. Why they were Carlists they could perhaps +no more say than I could. The monumental historic fact is that the +Basques have been where they are immeasurably beyond the memories of +other men; what the scope of their own memories is one could perhaps +confidently say only in Basque if one could say anything. Of course, +in the nature of things, the Phoenicians must have been there and the +Greeks, doubtless, if they ever got outside of the Pillars of Hercules; +the Romans, of course, must have settled and civilized and then +Christianized the province. It is next neighbor to that province of +Asturias in which alone the Arabs failed to conquer the Goths, and from +which Spain was to live and grow again and recover all her losses from +the Moors; but what the share of San Sebastian was in this heroic fate, +again I must leave the Basques to say. They would doubtless say it with +sufficient self-respect, for wherever we came in contact that day with +the Basque nature we could not help imagining in it a sense of racial +merit equaling that of the Welsh themselves, who are indeed another +branch of the same immemorial Iberian stock, if the Basques are +Iberians. Like the Welsh, they have the devout tradition that they +never were conquered, but yielded to circumstances when these became too +strong for them. + +Among the ancient Spanish liberties which were restricted by the +consolidating monarchy from age to age, the Basque _fueros,_ or rights, +were the oldest; they lasted quite to our own day; and although it is +known to more ignorant men that these privileges (including immunity +from conscription) have now been abrogated, the custodian of the House +of Provincial Deputies, whom our driver took us to visit, was such a +glowing Basque patriot that he treated them as in full force. His pride +in the seat of the local government spared us no detail of the whole +electric-lighting system, or even the hose-bibs for guarding the edifice +against fire, let alone every picture and photograph on the wall of +every chamber of greater or less dignity, with every notable table and +chair. He certainly earned the peseta I gave him, but he would have done +far more for it if we had suffered him to take us up another flight +of stairs; and he followed us in our descent with bows and adieux that +ought to have left no doubt in our minds of the persistence of the +Basque _fueros._ + + + +V. + +It was to such a powerful embodiment of the local patriotism that our +driver had brought us from another civic palace overlooking the Plaza de +la Constitution, chiefly notable now for having been the old theater of +the bull-fights. The windows in the houses round still bear the numbers +by which they were sold to spectators as boxes; but now the municipality +has built a beautiful brand-new bull-ring in San Sebastian; and I do not +know just why we were required to inspect the interior of the edifice +overlooking this square. I only know that at sight of our bewilderment +a workman doing something to the staircase clapped his hands orientally, +and the custodian was quickly upon us in response to a form of summons +which we were to find so often used in Spain. He was not so crushingly +upon us as that other custodian; he was apologetically proud, rather +than boastfully; at times he waved his hands in deprecation, and would +have made us observe that the place was little, very little; he deplored +it like a host who wishes his possessions praised. Among the artistic +treasures of the place from which he did not excuse us there were some +pen-drawings, such as writing-masters execute without lifting the +pen from the paper, by a native of South America, probably of Basque +descent, since the Basques have done so much to people that continent. +We not only admired these, but we would not consent to any of the +custodian's deprecations, especially when it came to question of the +pretty salon in which Queen Victoria was received on her first visit to +San Sebastian. We supposed then, and in fact I had supposed till this +moment, that it was Queen Victoria of Great Britain who was meant; but +now I realize that it must have been the queen consort of Spain, who +seems already to have made herself so liked there. + +She, of course, comes every summer to San Sebastian, and presently our +driver took us to see the royal villa by the shore, withdrawn, perhaps +from a sense of its extreme plainness, not to say ugliness, among its +trees and vines behind its gates and walls. Our driver excused himself +for not being able to show us through it; he gladly made us free of +an unrestricted view of the royal bathing-pavilion, much more frankly +splendid in its gilding, beside the beach. Other villas ranked +themselves along the hillside, testifying to the gaiety of the social +life in summers past and summers to come. In the summer just past the +gaiety may have been interrupted by the strikes taking in the newspapers +the revolutionary complexion which it was now said they did not wear. At +least, when the King had lately come to fetch the royal household +away nothing whatever happened, and the "constitutional guarantees," +suspended amidst the ministerial anxieties, were restored during the +month, with the ironical applause of the liberal press, which pretended +that there had never been any need of their suspension. + +[Illustration: 03 THE SEA SWEEPS INLAND IN A CIRCLE OF BLUE, TO FORM THE ENTRANCE TO THE HARBOR, SAN SEBASTIAN] + + + +VI. + +All pleasures, mixed or unmixed, must end, and the qualified joy of our +drive through San Sebastian came to a close on our return to our hotel +well within the second hour, almost within its first half. When I +proposed paying our driver for the exact time, he drooped upon his box +and, remembering my remorse in former years for standing upon my just +rights in such matters, I increased the fare, peseta by peseta, till his +sinking spirits rose, and he smiled gratefully upon me and touched his +brave red cap as he drove away. He had earned his money, if racking his +invention for objects of interest in San Sebastian was a merit. At the +end we were satisfied that it was a well-built town with regular blocks +in the modern quarter, and not without the charm of picturesqueness +which comes of narrow and crooked lanes in the older parts. Prescient of +the incalculable riches before us, we did not ask much of it, and we got +all we asked. I should be grateful to San Sebastian, if for nothing +else than the two very Spanish experiences I had there. One concerned a +letter for me which had been refused by the bankers named in my letter +of credit, from a want of faith, I suppose, in my coming. When I did +come I was told that I would find it at the post-office. That would be +well enough when I found the post-office, which ought to have been easy +enough, but which presented certain difficulties in the driving rain of +our first afternoon. At last in a fine square I asked a fellow-man in +my best conversational Spanish where the post-office was, and after a +moment's apparent suffering he returned, "Do you speak English?" "Yes." +I said, "and I am so glad you do." "Not at all. I don't speak anything +else. Great pleasure. There is the post-office," and it seemed that I +had hardly escaped collision with it. But this was the beginning, not +the end, of my troubles. When I showed my card to the _poste restante_ +clerk, he went carefully through the letters bearing the initial of my +name and denied that there was any for me. We entered into reciprocally +bewildering explanations, and parted altogether baffled. Then, at +the hotel, I consulted with a capable young office-lady, who tardily +developed a knowledge of English, and we agreed that it would be well to +send the _chico_ to the post-office for it. The _chico,_ corresponding +in a Spanish hotel to a _piccolo_ in Germany or a page in England, or +our own now evanescing bell-boy, was to get a _peseta_ for bringing me +the letter. He got the _peseta,_ though he only brought me word that +the authorities would send the letter to the hotel by the postman that +night. The authorities did not send it that night, and the next morning +I recurred to my bankers. There, on my entreaty for some one who could +meet my Spanish at least half-way in English, a manager of the bank came +out of his office and reassured me concerning the letter which I had +now begun to imagine the most important I had ever missed. Even while we +talked the postman came in and owned having taken the letter back to the +office. He voluntarily promised to bring it to the bank at one o'clock, +when I hastened to meet him. At that hour every one was out at lunch; I +came again at four, when everybody had returned, but the letter was not +delivered; at five, just before the bank closed, the letter, which had +now grown from a _carta_ to a _cartela,_ was still on its way. I left +San Sebastian without it; and will it be credited that when it was +forwarded to me a week later at Madrid it proved the most fatuous +missive imaginable, wholly concerning the writer's own affairs and none +of mine? + +I cannot guess yet why it was withheld from me, but since the incident +brought me that experience of Spanish politeness, I cannot grieve for +it. The young banker who left his region of high finance to come out and +condole with me, in apologizing for the original refusal of my letter, +would not be contented with so little. Nothing would satisfy him but +going with me, on my hinted purpose, and inquiring with me at the +railroad office into the whole business of circular tickets, and even +those kilometric tickets which the Spanish railroads issue to such +passengers as will have their photographs affixed to them for the +prevention of transference. As it seemed advisable not to go to this +extreme till I got to Madrid, my kind young banker put himself at my +disposal for any other service I could imagine from him; but I searched +myself in vain for any desire, much less necessity, and I parted from +him at the door of his bank with the best possible opinion of the +Basques. I suppose he was a Basque; at any rate, he was blond, which +the Spaniards are mostly not, and the Basques often are. Now I am sorry, +since he was so kind, that I did not get him to read me the Basque +inscription on the front of his bank, which looked exactly like that on +the bank at Bayonne; I should not have understood it, but I should have +known what it sounded like, if it sounded like anything but Basque. + +Everybody in San Sebastian seemed resolved to outdo every other in +kindness. In a shop where we endeavored to explain that we wanted to get +a flat cap which should be both Basque and red, a lady who was buying +herself a hat asked in English if she could help us. When we gladly +answered that she could, she was silent, almost to tears, and it +appeared that in this generous offer of aid she had exhausted her +whole stock of English. Her mortification, her painful surprise, at the +strange catastrophe, was really pitiable, and we hastened to escape +from it to a shop across the street. There instantly a small boy rushed +enterprisingly out and brought back with him a very pretty girl who +spoke most of the little French which has made its way in San Sebastian +against the combined Basque and Spanish, and a cap of the right flatness +and redness was brought. I must not forget, among the pleasures done us +by the place, the pastry cook's shop which advertised in English "Tea +at all Hours," and which at that hour of our afternoon we now found so +opportune, that it seemed almost personally attentive to us as the only +Anglo-Saxon visitors in town. The tea might have been better, but it was +as good as it knew how; and the small boy who came in with his mother +(the Spanish mother seldom fails of the company of a small boy) in her +moments of distraction succeeded in touching with his finger all the +pieces of pastry except those we were eating. + + + +VII. + +The high aquiline nose which is characteristic of the autochthonic race +abounds in San Sebastian, but we saw no signs of the high temper which +is said to go with it. This, indeed, was known to me chiefly from my +first reading in _Don Quixote,_ of the terrific combat between the +squire of the Biscayan ladies whose carriage the knight of La Mancha +stopped after his engagement with the windmills. In their exchange of +insults incident to the knight's desire that the ladies should go to +Toboso and thank Dulcinea for his delivery of them from the necromancers +he had put to flight in the persons of two Benedictine monks, "'Get +gone,' the squire called, in bad Spanish and worse Biscayan, 'Get gone, +thou knight, and Devil go with thou; or by He Who me create... me kill +thee now so sure as me be Biscayan,'" and when the knight called him an +"inconsiderable mortal," and said that if he were a gentleman he would +chastise him: "'What! me no gentleman?' replied the Biscayan. 'I swear +thou be liar as me be Christian.... Me will show thee me be Biscayan, +and gentleman by land, gentleman by sea, gentleman in spite of Devil; +and thou lie if thou say the contrary.'" + +It is a scene which will have lived in the memory of every reader, and +I recurred to it hopefully but vainly in San Sebastian, where this +fiery threefold gentleman might have lived in his time. It would be +interesting to know how far the Basques speak broken Spanish in a +fashion of their own, which Cervantes tried to represent in the talk +of his Biscayan. Like the Welsh again they strenuously keep their +immemorial language against the inroads of the neighboring speech. How +much they fix it in a modern literature it would be easier to ask than +to say. I suppose there must be Basque newspapers; perhaps there are +Basque novelists, there are notoriously Basque bards who recite their +verses to the peasants, and doubtless there are poets who print their +rhymes: and I blame myself for not inquiring further concerning them of +that kindly Basque banker who wished so much to do something for me in +compensation for the loss of my worthless letter. I knew, too cheaply, +that the Basques have their poetical contests, as the Welsh have their +musical competitions in the Eisteddfod, and they are once more like the +Welsh, their brothers in antiquity, in calling themselves by a national +name of their own. They call themselves Euskaldunac, which is as +different from the name of Basque given them by the alien races as Cymru +is from Welsh. + +All this lore I have easily accumulated from the guide-books since +leaving San Sebastian, but I was carelessly ignorant of it in driving +from the hotel to the station when we came away, and was much concerned +in the overtures made us in a mixed Spanish, English, and French by a +charming family from Chili, through the brother to one of the ladies and +luisband to the other. When he perceived from my Spanish that we were +not English, he rejoiced that we were Americans of the north, and as +joyfully proclaimed that they were Americans of the south. We were +at once sensible of a community of spirit in our difference from our +different ancestral races. They were Spanish, but with a New World +blitheness which we nowhere afterward found in the native Spaniards; and +we were English, with a willingness to laugh and to joke which they had +not perhaps noted in our ancestral contemporaries. Again and again we +met them in the different cities where we feared we had lost them, until +we feared no more and counted confidently on seeing them wherever we +went. They were always radiantly smiling; and upon this narrow ground I +am going to base the conjecture that the most distinctive difference of +the Western Hemisphere from the Eastern is its habit of seeing the +fun of things. With those dear Chilians we saw the fun of many little +hardships of travel which might have been insupportable without the +vision. Sometimes we surprised one another in the same hotel; sometimes +it was in the street that we encountered, usually to exchange +amusing misfortunes. If we could have been constantly with these +fellow-hemispherists our progress through Spain would have been an +unbroken holiday. + +There is a superstition of travelers in Spain, much fostered by +innkeepers and porters, that you cannot get seats in the fast trains +without buying your tickets the day before, and then perhaps not, and +we abandoned ourselves to this fear at San Sebastian so far as to get +places some hours in advance. But once established in the ten-foot-wide +interior of the first-class compartment which we had to ourselves, every +anxiety fell from us; and I do not know a more flattering emotion than +that which you experience in sinking into your luxurious seat, and, +after a glance at your hand-bags in the racks where they have been put +with no strain on your own muscles, giving your eyes altogether to the +joy of the novel landscape. + +The train was what they call a Rapido in Spain; and though we were +supposed to be devouring space with indiscriminate gluttony, I do not +think that in our mad rush of twenty-five miles an hour we failed to +taste any essential detail of the scenery..But I wish now that I had +known the Basques were all nobles, and that the peasants owned many of +the little farms we saw declaring the general thrift. In the first two +hours of the six to Burgos we ran through lovely valleys held in the +embrace of gentle hills, where the fields of Indian corn were varied by +groves of chestnut trees, where we could see the burrs gaping on their +stems. The blades and tassels of the corn had been stripped away, +leaving the ripe ears a-tilt at the top of the stalks, which looked +like cranes standing on one leg with their heads slanted in pensive +contemplation. There were no vineyards, but orchards aplenty near the +farmhouses, and all about there were other trees pollarded to the quick +and tufted with mistletoe, not only the stout oaks, but the slim poplars +trimmed up into tall plumes like the poplars in southern France. The +houses, when they did not stand apart like our own farmhouses, gathered +into gray-brown villages around some high-shouldered church with a +bell-tower in front or at one corner of the fagade. In most of the +larger houses an economy of the sun's heat, the only heat recognized +in the winter of southern countries, was practised by glassing in the +balconies that stretched quite across their fronts and kept the cold +from at least one story. It gave them a very cheery look, and must have +made them livable at least in the daytime. Now and then the tall chimney +of one of those manufactories we had seen on the way from Irun invited +belief in the march of industrial prosperity; but whether the Basque who +took work in a mill or a foundry forfeited his nobility remained a part +of the universal Basque secret. From time to time a mountain stream +brawled from under a world-old bridge, and then spread a quiet tide for +the women to kneel beside and wash the clothes which they spread to dry +on every bush and grassy slope of the banks. + +The whole scene changed after we ran out of the Basque country and into +the austere landscape of old Castile. The hills retreated and swelled +into mountains that were not less than terrible in their savage +nakedness. The fields of corn and the orchards ceased, and the green of +the pastures changed to the tawny gray of the measureless wheat-lands +into which the valleys flattened and widened. There were no longer any +factory chimneys; the villages seemed to turn from stone to mud; the +human poverty showed itself in the few patched and tattered figures that +followed the oxen in the interminable furrows shallowly scraping the +surface of the lonely levels. The haggard mountain ranges were of stone +that seemed blanched with geologic superannuation, and at one place we +ran by a wall of hoary rock that drew its line a mile long against +the sky, and then broke and fell, and then staggered up again in a +succession of titanic bulks. But stupendous as these mountain masses +were, they were not so wonderful as those wheat-lands which in +harvest-time must wash their shores like a sea of gold. Where these now +rose and sank with the long ground-swell of the plains in our own West, +a thin gray stubble covered them from the feeble culture which leaves +Spain, for all their extent in both the Castiles, in Estremadura, in +Andalusia, still without bread enough to feed herself, and obliges +her to import alien wheat. At the lunch which we had so good in the +dining-car we kept our talk to the wonder of the scenery, and well away +from the interesting Spanish pair at our table. It is never safe in +Latin Europe to count upon ignorance of English in educated people, or +people who look so; and with these we had the reward of our prudence +when the husband asked after dessert if we minded his smoking. His +English seemed meant to open the way for talk, and we were willing he +should do the talking. He spoke without a trace of accent, and we at +once imagined circles in which it was now as _chic_ for Spaniards to +speak English as it once was to speak French. They are said never to +speak French quite well; but nobody could have spoken English better +than this gentleman, not even we who were, as he said he supposed, +English. Truth and patriotism both obliged us to deny his conjecture; +and when He intimated that he would not have known us for Americans +because we did not speak with the dreadful American accent, I hazarded +my belief that this dreadfulness was personal rather than national. But +he would not have it. Boston people, yes; they spoke very well, and he +allowed other exceptions to the general rule of our nasal twang, which +his wife summoned English enough to say was very ugly. They had suffered +from it too universally in the Americans they had met during the summer +in Germany to believe it was merely personal; and I suppose one may own +to strictly American readers that our speech _is_ dreadful, that it is +very ugly. These amiable Spaniards had no reason and no wish to +wound; and they could never know what sweet and noble natures had been +producing their voices through their noses there in Germany. I for my +part could not insist; who, indeed, can defend the American accent, +which is not so much an accent as a whiffle, a snuffle, a twang? It was +mortifying, all the same, to have it openly abhorred by a foreigner, and +I willingly got away from the question to that of the weather. We agreed +admirably about the heat in England where this gentleman went every +summer, and had never found it so hot before. It was hot even in +Denmark; but he warned me not to expect any warmth in Spain now that the +autumn rains had begun. + +If this couple represented a cosmopolitan and modern Spain, it was +interesting to escape to something entirely native in the three young +girls who got in at the next station and shared our compartment with us +as far as we went. They were tenderly kissed by their father in putting +them on board, and held in lingering farewells at the window till the +train started. The eldest of the three then helped in arranging their +baskets in the rack, but the middle sister took motherly charge of the +youngest, whom she at once explained to us as _enferma._ She was +the prettiest girl of the conventional Spanish type we Lad yet seen: +dark-eyed and dark-haired, regular, but a little overfull of the chin +which she would presently have double. She was very, very pale of face, +with a pallor in which she had assisted nature with powder, as all +Spanish women, old and young, seem to do. But there was no red underglow +in the pallor, such as gives many lovely faces among them the complexion +of whitewash over pink on a stucco surface. She wrapped up the youngest +sister, who would by and by be beautiful, and now being sick had only +the flush of fever in her cheeks, and propped her in the coziest corner +of the car, where she tried to make her keep still, but could not make +her keep silent. In fact, they all babbled together, over the basket of +luncheon which the middle sister opened after springing up the little +table-leaf of the window, and spread with a substantial variety +including fowl and sausage and fruit, such as might tempt any sick +appetite, or a well one, even. As she brought out each of these +victuals, together with a bottle of wine and a large bottle of milk, she +first offered it to us, and when it was duly refused with thanks, she +made the invalid eat and drink, especially the milk which she made a wry +face at. When she had finished they all began to question whether her +fever was rising for the day; the good sister felt the girl's pulse, and +got out a thermometer, which together they arranged under her arm, and +then duly inspected. It seemed that the fever _was_ rising, as it might +very well be, but the middle sister was not moved from her notable calm, +and the eldest did not fear. At a place where a class of young men +was to be seen before an ecclesiastical college the girls looked out +together, and joyfully decided that the brother (or possibly a cousin) +whom they expected to see, was really there among them. When we reached +Burgos we felt that we had assisted at a drama of family medicine and +affection which was so sweet that if the fever was not very wisely it +was very winningly treated. It was not perhaps a very serious case, and +it meant a good deal of pleasant excitement for all concerned. + + + + +III. BURGOS AND THE BITTER COLD OF BURGOS + + +It appears to be the use in most minor cities of Spain for the best +hotel to send the worst omnibus to the station, as who should say, "Good +wine needs no bush." At Burgos we were almost alarmed by the shabbiness +of the omnibus for the hotel we had chosen through a consensus of praise +in the guide-books, and thought we must have got the wrong one. It was +indeed the wrong one, but because there is no right hotel in Burgos +when you arrive there on an afternoon of early October, and feel the +prophetic chill of that nine months of winter which is said to contrast +there with three months of hell. + + + +I + + +The air of Burgos when it is not the breath of a furnace is so heavy and +clammy through the testimony of all comers that Burgos herself no longer +attempts to deny it from her high perch on the uplands of Old Castile. +Just when she ceased to deny it, I do not know, but probably when she +ceased to be the sole capital and metropolis of Christian Spain and +shared her primacy with Toledo sometime in the fourteenth century. Now, +in the twentieth, we asked nothing of her but two rooms in which we +could have fire, but the best hotel in Burgos openly declared that it +had not a fireplace in its whole extent, though there must have been one +in the kitchen. The landlord pointed out that it was completely equipped +with steam-heating apparatus, but when I made him observe that there was +no steam in the shining radiators, he owned with a shrug that there was +truth in what I said. He showed us large, pleasant rooms to the south +which would have been warm from the sun if the sun which we left playing +in San Sebastian had been working that day at Burgos; he showed us his +beautiful new dining-room, cold, with the same sunny exposure. I rashly +declared that all would not do, and that I would look elsewhere for +rooms with fireplaces. I had first to find a cab in order to find +the other hotels, but I found instead that in a city of thirty-eight +thousand inhabitants there was not one cab standing for hire in the +streets. I tried to enlist the sympathies of some private carriages, but +they remained indifferent, and I went back foiled, but not crushed, +to our hotel. There it seemed that the only vehicle to be had was the +omnibus which had brought us from the station. The landlord calmly (I +did not then perceive the irony of his calm) had the horses put to +and our baggage put on, and we drove away. But first we met our dear +Chilians coming to our hotel from the hotel they had chosen, and from a +search for hearthstones in others; and we drove to the only hotel they +had left unvisited. There at our demand for fires the landlord all but +laughed us to scorn; he laid his hand on the cold radiator in the +hotel as if to ask what better we could wish than that. We drove back, +humbled, to our own hotel, where the landlord met us with the Castilian +cairn he had kept at our departure. Then there was nothing for me but +to declare myself the Prodigal Son returned to take the rooms he +had offered us. We were so perfectly in his power that he could +magnanimously afford to offer us other rooms equally cold, but we did +not care to move. The Chilians had retired baffled to their own hotel, +and there was nothing for us but to accept the long evening of gelid +torpor which we foresaw must follow the effort of the soup and wine to +warm us at dinner. That night we heard through our closed doors agonized +voices which we knew to be the voices of despairing American women +wailing through the freezing corridors, "Can't she understand that +I want _boiling_ water?" and, "Can't' we go down-stairs to a fire +somewhere?" We knew the one meant the chambermaid and the other the +kitchen, but apparently neither prayer was answered. + +[Illustration: 04 GROUPS OF WOMEN ON THEIR KNEES BEATING CLOTHES IN THE WATER] + + + +II + + +As soon as we had accepted our fate, while as yet the sun had not set +behind the clouds which had kept it out of our rooms all day, we hurried +out not only to escape the rigors of our hotel, but to see as soon as we +could, as much as we could of the famous city. We had got an excellent +cup of tea in the glass-roofed pavilion of our beautiful cold +dining-room, and now our spirits rose level with the opportunities of +the entrancing walk we took along the course of the Arlanson. I say +course, because that is the right word to use of a river, but really +there was no course in the Arlanzon. Between the fine, wide Embankments +and under the noble bridges there were smooth expanses of water +(naturally with women washing at them), which reflected like an +afterglow of the evening sky the splendid masses of yarn hung red from +the dyer's vats on the bank. The expanses of water were bordered by +wider spaces of grass which had grown during the rainless summer, but +which were no doubt soon to be submerged under the autumnal torrent the +river would become. The street which shaped itself to the stream was +a rather modern avenue, leading to a beautiful public garden, with the +statues and fountains proper to a public garden, and densely shaded +against the three infernal months of the Burgos year. But the houses +were glazed all along their fronts with the sun-traps which we had noted +in the Basque country, and which do not wait for a certain date in the +almanac to do the work of steam-heating. They gave a tempting effect to +the house-fronts, but they could not distract our admiration from the +successive crowds of small boys playing at bull-fighting in the streets +below, and in the walks of the public garden. The population of +Burgos is above thirty-seven thousand and of the inhabitants at +least thirty-six thousand are small boys, as I was convinced by the +computation of the husband and brother of the Chilian ladies which +agreed perfectly with my own hasty conjecture; the rest are small girls. +In fact large families, and large families chiefly of boys, are the rule +in Spain everywhere; and they everywhere know how to play bull-fighting, +to flap any-colored old shawl, or breadth of cloth in the face of +the bull, to avoid his furious charges, and doubtless to deal him his +death-wound, though to this climax I could not bear to follow. + +[Illustration: 05 THE IRON-GRAY BULK OF THE CATHEDRAL REARS ITSELF FROM CLUSTERING WALLS AND ROOFS] + +One or two of the bull-fighters offered to leave the national sport +and show us the House of Miranda, but it was the cathedral which was +dominating our desire, as it everywhere dominates the vision, in Burgos +and out of Burgos as far as the city can be seen. The iron-gray bulk, +all flattered or fretted by Gothic art, rears itself from the clustering +brown walls and roofs of the city, which it seems to gather into its +mass below while it towers so far above them. We needed no pointing of +the way to it; rather we should have needed instruction for shunning it; +but we chose the way which led through the gate of Santa Maria where +in an arch once part of the city wall, the great Cid, hero above every +other hero of Burgos, sits with half a dozen more or less fabled or +storied worthies of the renowned city. Then with a minute's walk up +a stony sloping little street we were in the beautiful and reverend +presence of one of the most august temples of the Christian faith. The +avenue where the old Castilian nobles once dwelt in their now empty +palaces climbs along the hillside above the cathedral, which on its +lower side seems to elbow off the homes of meaner men, and in front to +push them away beyond a plaza not large enough for it. Even this the +cathedral had not cleared of the horde of small boys who followed us +unbidden to its doors and almost expropriated those authorized blind +beggars who own the church doors in Spain. When we declined the further +company of these boys they left us with expressions which I am afraid +accused our judgment and our personal appearance; but in another moment +we were safe from their censure, and hidden as it were in the thick +smell of immemorial incense. + +It was not the moment for doing the cathedral in the wonted tiresome and +vulgar way; that was reserved for the next day; now we simply wandered +in the vast twilight spaces; and craned our necks to breaking in trying +to pierce the gathered gloom in the vaulting overhead. It was a precious +moment, but perhaps too weird, and we were glad to find a sacristan with +businesslike activity setting red candlesticks about a bier in the area +before the choir, which here, as in the other Spanish cathedrals, is +planted frankly in the middle of the edifice, a church by itself, as if +to emphasize the incomparable grandeur of the cathedral. The sacristan +willingly paused in his task and explained that he was preparing the +bier for the funeral of a church dignitary (as we learned later, the +dean) which was to take place the next day at noon; and if we would come +at that hour we should hear some beautiful music. We knew that he +was establishing a claim on our future custom, but we thanked him and +provisionally feed him, and left him at his work, at which we might have +all but fancied him whistling, so cheerfully and briskly he went about +it. + +Outside we lingered a moment to give ourselves the solemn joy of the +Chapel of the Constable which forms the apse of the cathedral and is its +chief glory. It mounted to the hard, gray sky, from which a keen wind +was sweeping the narrow street leading to it, and blustering round +the corner of the cathedral, so that the marble men holding up the +Constable's coat-of-arms in the rear of his chapel might well have ached +from the cold which searched the marrow of flesh-and-blood men below. +These hurried by in flat caps and corduroy coats and trousers, with +sashes at their waists and comforters round their necks; and they were +picturesque quite in the measure of their misery. Some whose tatters +were the most conspicuous feature of their costume, I am sure would have +charmed me if I had been a painter; as a mere word-painter I find myself +wishing I could give the color of their wretchedness to my page. + + + +III + + +In the absence of any specific record in my notebook I do not know just +how it was between this first glimpse of the cathedral and dinner, +but it must have been on our return to our hotel, that the little +interpreter who had met us at the station, and had been intermittently +constituting himself our protector ever since, convinced us that we +ought to visit the City Hall, and see the outside of the marble tomb +containing the bones of the Cid and his wife. Such as the bones were +we found they were not to be seen themselves, and I do not know that I +should have been the happier for their inspection. In fact, I have no +great opinion of the Cid as an historical character or a poetic fiction. +His epic, or his long ballad, formed no part of my young study in +Spanish, and when four or five years ago a friend gave me a copy of it, +beautifully printed in black letter, with the prayer that I should read +it sometime within the twelvemonth, I found the time far too short. As +a matter of fact I have never read the poem to this day, though. I have +often tried, and I doubt if its author ever intended it to be read. He +intended it rather to be recited in stirring episodes, with spaces for +refreshing slumber in the connecting narrative. As for the Cid in real +life under his proper name of Rodrigo de Vivas, though he made his +king publicly swear that he had had no part in the murder of his royal +brother, and though he was the stoutest and bravest knight in Castile, +I cannot find it altogether admirable in him that when his king banished +him he should resolve to fight thereafter for any master who paid +him best. That appears to me the part of a road-agent rather than a +reformer, and it seems to me no amend for his service under Moorish +princes that he should make war against them on his personal behalf +or afterward under his own ungrateful king. He is friends now with the +Arabian King of Saragossa, and now he defeats the Aragonese under the +Castilian sovereign, and again he sends an insulting message by the +Moslems to the Christian Count of Barcelona, whom he takes prisoner +with his followers, but releases without ransom after a contemptuous +audience. Is it well, I ask, that he helps one Moor against another, +always for what there is in it, and when he takes Valencia from the +infidels, keeps none of his promises to them, but having tortured the +governor to make him give up his treasure, buries him to his waist and +then burns him alive? After that, to be sure, he enjoys his declining +years by making forays in the neighboring country, and dies "satisfied +with having done his duty toward his God." + +Our interpreter, who would not let us rest till he had shown us the +box holding the Cid's bones, had himself had a varied career. If you +believed him he was born in Madrid and had passed, when three years old, +to New York, where he grew up to become a citizen and be the driver of a +delivery wagon for a large department-store. He duly married an American +woman who could speak not only French, German, and Italian, but also +Chinese, and was now living with him in Burgos. His own English had +somewhat fallen by the way, but what was left he used with great +courage; and he was one of those government interpreters whom you find +at every large station throughout Spain in the number of the principal +hotels of the place. They pay the government a certain tax for +their license, though it was our friend's expressed belief that the +government, on the contrary, paid him a salary of two dollars a day; but +perhaps this was no better founded than his belief in a German princess +who, when he went as her courier, paid him ten dollars a day and all his +expenses. She wished him to come and live near her in Germany, so as to +be ready to go with her to South America, but he had not yet made up his +mind to leave Burgos, though his poor eyes watered with such a cold as +only Burgos can give a man in the early autumn; when I urged him to look +to the bad cough he had, he pleaded that it was a very old cough. He had +a fascination of his own, which probably came from his imaginative habit +of mind, so that I could have wished more adoptive fellow-citizens were +like him. He sympathized strongly with us in our grief with the cold of +the hotel, and when we said that a small oil-heater would take the chill +off a large room, he said that he had advised that very thing, but that +our host had replied, with proud finality, "I am the landlord." Whether +this really happened or not, I cannot say, but I have no doubt that our +little guide had some faith in it as a real incident. He apparently had +faith in the landlord's boast that he was going to have a stately marble +staircase to the public entrance to his hotel, which was presently of +common stone, rather tipsy in its treads, and much in need of scrubbing. + +There is as little question in my mind that he believed the carriage we +had engaged to take us next morning to the Cartuja de Miraflores +would be ready at a quarter before nine, and that he may have been +disappointed when it was not ready until a quarter after. But it was +worth waiting for if to have a team composed of a brown mule on the +right hand and a gray horse on the left was to be desired. These animals +which nature had so differenced were equalized by art through the lavish +provision of sleigh-bells, without some strands of which no team in +Spain is properly equipped. Besides, as to his size the mule was quite +as large as the horse, and as to his tail he was much more decorative. +About two inches after this member left his body it was closely shaved +for some six inches or more, and for that space it presented the effect +of a rather large size of garden-hose; below, it swept his thighs in a +lordly switch. If anything could have added distinction to our turnout +it would have been the stiff side-whiskers of our driver: the only pair +I saw in real life after seeing them so long in pictures on boxes of +raisins and cigars. There they were associated with the look and +dress of a _torrero,_ and our coachman, though an old Castilian of the +austerest and most taciturn pattern, may have been in his gay youth an +Andalusian bull-fighter. + + + +IV + + +Our pride in our equipage soon gave way to our interest in the market +for sheep, cattle, horses, and donkeys which we passed through just +outside the city. The market folk were feeling the morning's cold; +shepherds folded in their heavy shawls leaned motionless on their long +staves, as if hating to stir; one ingenious boy wore a live lamb round +his neck which he held close by the legs for the greater comfort of it; +under the trees by the roadside some of the peasants were cooking their +breakfasts and warming themselves at the fires. The sun was on duty in +a cloudless sky; but all along the road to the Cartuja we drove between +rows of trees so thickly planted against his summer rage that no ray of +his friendly heat could now reach us. At times it seemed as if from this +remorselessly shaded avenue we should escape into the open; the trees +gave way and we caught glimpses of wide plains and distant hills; then +they closed upon us again, and in their chill shadow it was no comfort +to know that in summer, when the townspeople got through their work, +they came out to these groves, men, women, and children, and had supper +under their hospitable boughs. + +One comes to almost any Cartuja at last, and we found ours on a sunny +top just when the cold had pinched us almost beyond endurance, and +joined a sparse group before the closed gate of the convent. The group +was composed of poor people who had come for the dole of food daily +distributed from the convent, and better-to-do country-folk who had +brought things to sell to the monks, or were there on affairs not openly +declared. But it seemed that it was a saint's day; the monks were having +service in the church solely for their own edification, and they had +shut us sinners out not only by locking the gate, but by taking away the +wire for ringing the bell, and leaving nothing but a knocker of feeble +note with which different members of our indignation meeting vainly +hammered. Our guide assumed the virtue of the greatest indignation, +though he ought to have known that we could not get in on that saint's +day; but it did not avail, and the little group dispersed, led off by +the brown peasant who was willing to share my pleasure in our excursion +as a good joke on us, and smiled with a show of teeth as white as the +eggs in his basket. After all, it was not wholly a hardship; we could +walk about in the sunny if somewhat muddy open, and warm ourselves +against the icily shaded drive back to town; besides, there was a little +girl crouching at the foot of a tree, and playing at a phase of the +housekeeping which is the game of little girls the world over. Her sad, +still-faced mother standing near, with an interest in her apparently +renewed by my own, said that she was four years old, and joined me +in watching her as she built a pile of little sticks and boiled an +imaginary little kettle over them. I was so glad even of a make-believe +fire that I dropped a copper coin beside it, and the mother smiled +pensively as if grateful but not very hopeful from this beneficence, +though after reflection I had made my gift a "big dog" instead of a +"small dog," as the Spanish call a ten and a five centimo piece. The +child bent her pretty head shyly on one side, and went on putting more +sticks under her supposititious pot. + +I found the little spectacle reward enough in itself and in a sort +compensation for our failure to see the exquisite alabaster tomb of Juan +II. and his wife Isabel which makes the Cartuja Church so famous. There +are a great many beautiful tombs in Burgos, but none so beautiful there +(or in the whole world if the books say true) as this; though we made +what we could of some in the museum, where we saw for the first time in +the recumbent effigies of a husband and wife, with features worn away by +time and incapable of expressing the disappointment, the surprise they +may have felt in the vain effort to warm their feet on the backs of the +little marble angels put there to support them. We made what we could, +too, of the noted Casa de Miranda, the most famous of the palaces in +which the Castilian nobles have long ceased to live at Burgos. There we +satisfied our longing to see a _patio,_ that roofless colonnaded court +which is the most distinctive feature of Spanish domestic architecture, +and more and more distinctively so the farther south you go, till at +Seville you see it in constant prevalence. At Burgos it could never have +been a great comfort, but in this House of Miranda it must have been +a great glory. The spaces between many of the columns have long been +bricked in, but there is fine carving on the front and the vaulting of +the staircase that climbs up from it in neglected grandeur. So many feet +have trodden its steps that they are worn hollow in the middle, and to +keep from falling you must go up next the wall. The object in going up +at all is to join in the gallery an old melancholy custodian in looking +down into the _patio,_ with his cat making her toilet beside him, and to +give them a fee which they receive with equal calm. Then, when you have +come down the age-worn steps without breaking your neck, you have done +the House of Miranda, and may lend yourself with what emotion you choose +to the fact that this ancient seat of hidalgos has now fallen to the low +industry of preparing pigskins to be wine-skins. + +[Illustration: 06 THE TOMB OF DONNA MARIA MANUEL] + +I do not think that a company of hidalgos in complete medieval armor +could have moved me more strongly than that first sight of these +wine-skins, distended with wine, which we had caught in approaching the +House of Miranda. We had to stop in the narrow street, and let them pass +piled high on a vintner's wagon, and looking like a load of pork: they +are trimmed and left to keep the shape of the living pig, which they +emulate at its bulkiest, less the head and feet, and seem to roll in +fatness. It was joy to realize what they were, to feel how Spanish, how +literary, how picturesque, how romantic. There they were such as the +wine-skins are that hang from the trees of pleasant groves in many a +merry tale, and invite all swains and shepherds and wandering cavaliers +to tap their bulk and drain its rich plethora. There they were such as +Don Quixote, waking from his dream at the inn, saw them malignant giants +and fell enchanters, and slashed them with his sword till he had spilled +the room half full of their blood. For me this first sight of them was +magic. It brought back my boyhood as nothing else had yet, and I never +afterward saw them without a return to those days of my delight in all +Spanish things. + +Literature and its associations, no matter from how lowly suggestion, +must always be first for me, and I still thought of those wine-skins in +yielding to the claims of the cathedral on my wonder and reverence when +now for the second time we came to it. The funeral ceremony of the dean +was still in course, and after listening for a moment to the mighty +orchestral music of it--the deep bass of the priests swelling up with +the organ notes, and suddenly shot with the shrill, sharp trebles of the +choir-boys and pierced with the keen strains of the violins--we left the +cathedral to the solemn old ecclesiastics who sat confronting the bier, +and once more deferred our more detailed and intimate wonder. We went, +in this suspense of emotion, to the famous Convent of Las Huelgas, which +invites noble ladies to its cloistered repose a little beyond the town. +We entered to the convent church through a sort of slovenly court where +a little girl begged severely, almost censoriously, of us, and presently +a cold-faced young priest came and opened the church door. Then we found +the interior of that rank Spanish baroque which escapes somehow the +effeminate effusiveness of the Italian; it does not affect you as +decadent, but as something vigorously perfect in its sort, somberly +authentic, and ripe from a root and not a graft. In its sort, the high +altar, a gigantic triune, with massive twisted columns and swagger +statues of saints and heroes in painted wood, is a prodigy of inventive +piety, and compositely has a noble exaltation in its powerful lift to +the roof. + +The nuns came beautifully dressed to hear mass at the grilles giving +into the chapel adjoining the church; the tourist may have his glimpse +of them there on Sundays, and on week-days he may have his guess of +their cloistered life and his wonder how much it continues the tradition +of repose which the name of the old garden grounds implies. These lady +nuns must be of patrician lineage and of fortune enough to defray their +expense in the convent, which is of the courtliest origin, for it was +founded eight hundred years ago by Alfonso VIII. "to expiate his sins +and to gratify his queen," who probably knew of them. I wish now I had +known, while I was there, that the abbess of Las Huelgas had once had +the power of life and death in the neighborhood, and could hang people +if she liked; I cannot think just what good it would have done me, but +one likes to realize such things on the spot. She is still one of the +greatest ladies of Spain, though perhaps not still "lady of ax and +gibbet," and her nuns are of like dignity. In their chapel are the tombs +of Alfonso and his queen, whose figures are among those on the high +altar of the church. She was Eleanor Plantagenet, the daughter of our +Henry II., and was very fond of Las Huelgas, as if it were truly a rest +for her in the far-off land of Spain; I say our Henry II., for in the +eleventh century we Americans were still English, under the heel of the +Normans, as not the fiercest republican of us now need shame to own. + +In a sense of this historical unity, at Las Huelgas we felt as much at +home as if we had been English tourists, and we had our feudal pride +in the palaces where the Gastilian nobles used to live in Burgos as we +returned to the town. Their deserted seats are mostly to be seen after +you pass through the Moorish gate overarching the stony, dusty, weedy +road hard by the place where the house of the Cid is said to have stood. +The arch, so gracefully Saracenic, was the first monument of the Moslem +obsession of the country which has left its signs so abundantly in the +south; here in the far north the thing seemed almost prehistoric, almost +preglacially old, the witness of a world utterly outdated. But perhaps +it was not more utterly outdated than the residences of the nobles who +had once made the ancient Castilian capital splendid, but were now as +irrevocably merged in Madrid as the Arabs in Africa. + + + +VI + + +Some of the palaces looked down from the narrow street along the +hillside above the cathedral, but only one of them was kept up in the +state of other days; and I could not be sure at what point this street +had ceased to be the street where our guide said every one kept cows, +and the ladies took big pitchers of milk away to sell every morning. +But I am sure those ladies could have been of noble descent only in +the farthest possible remove, and I do not suppose their cows were even +remotely related to the haughty ox-team which blocked the way in front +of the palaces and obliged xis to dismount while our carriage was lifted +round the cart. Our driver was coldly disgusted, but the driver of +the ox-team preserved a calm as perfect as if he had been an hidalgo +interested by the incident before his gate. It delayed us till the +psychological moment when the funeral of the dean was over, and we could +join the formidable party following the sacristan from chapel to chapel +in the cathedral. + +We came to an agonized consciousness of the misery of this progress in +the Chapel of the Constable, where it threatened to be finally stayed +by the indecision of certain ladies of our nation in choosing among the +postal cards for sale there. By this time we had suffered much from the +wonders of the cathedral. The sacristan had not spared us a jewel or +a silvered or gilded sacerdotal garment or any precious vessel of +ceremonial, so that our jaded wonder was inadequate to the demand of the +beautiful tombs of the Constable and his lady upon it. The coffer of +the Cid, fastened against the cathedral wall for a monument of his +shrewdness in doing the Jews of Burgos, who, with the characteristic +simplicity of their race, received it back full of sand and gravel in +payment of the gold they had lent him in it, could as little move us. +Perhaps if we could have believed that he finally did return the value +received, we might have marveled a little at it, but from what we knew +of the Cid this was not credible. We did what we could with the painted +wood carving of the cloister doors; the life-size head of a man with +its open mouth for a key-hole in another portal; a fearful silver-plated +chariot given by a rich blind woman for bearing the Host in the +procession of Corpus Christi; but it was very little, and I am not +going to share my failure with the reader by the vain rehearsal of +its details. No literary art has ever reported a sense of picture or +architecture or sculpture to me: the despised postal card is better for +that; and probably throughout these "trivial fond records" I shall be +found shirking as much as I may the details of such sights, seen or +unseen, as embitter the heart of travel with unavailing regret for the +impossibility of remembering them. I must leave for some visit of the +reader's own the large and little facts of the many chapels in the +cathedral at Burgos, and I will try to overwhelm him with my sense of +the whole mighty interior, the rich gloom, the Gothic exaltation, +which I made such shift as I could to feel in the company of those +picture-postal amateurs. It was like, say, a somber afternoon, verging +to the twilight of a cloudy sunset, so that when I came out of it into +the open noon it was like emerging into a clear morrow. Perhaps because +I could there shed the harassing human environment the outside of the +cathedral seemed to me the best of it, and we lingered there for a +moment in glad relief. + + + +VII + +[Illustration: 07 A BURGOS STREET] + +One house in some forgotten square commemorates the state in which +the Castilian nobles used to live in Burgos before Toledo, and then +Valladolid, contested the primacy of the grim old capital of the +northern uplands. We stayed for a moment to glance from our carriage +through the open portal into its leafy _patio_ shivering in the cold, +and then we bade our guide hurry back with us to the hot luncheon which +would be the only heat in our hotel. But to reach this we had to pass +through another square, which we found full of peasants' ox-carts and +mule-teams; and there our guide instantly jumped down and entered into +a livelier quarrel with those peaceable men and women than I could +afterward have believed possible in Spain. I bade him get back to his +seat beside the driver, who was abetting him with an occasional guttural +and whom I bade turn round and go another way. I said that I had hired +this turnout, and I was master, and I would be obeyed; but it seemed +that I was wrong. My proud hirelings never left off their dispute +till somehow the ox-carts and mule-teams were jammed together, and a +thoroughfare found for us. Then it was explained that those peasants +were always blocking that square in that way and that I had, however +unwillingly, been discharging the duty of a public-spirited citizen in +compelling them to give way. I did not care for that; I prized far more +the quiet with which they had taken the whole affair. It was the first +exhibition of the national repose of manner which we were to see so +often again, south as well as north, and which I find it so beautiful to +have seen. In a Europe abounding in volcanic Italians, nervous Germans, +and exasperated Frenchmen, it was comforting, it was edifying to see +those Castilian peasants so self-respectfully self-possessed in the +wrong. + +From time to time in the opener spaces we had got into the sun from the +chill shadow of the narrow streets, but now it began to be cloudy, and +when we re-entered our hotel it was almost as warm indoors as out. We +thought our landlord might have so far repented as to put on the steam; +but he had sternly adhered to his principle that the radiators were +enough of themselves; and after luncheon we had nothing for it but to +go away from Burgos, and take with us such scraps of impression as we +could. We decided that there was no street of gayer shops than those +gloomy ones we had chanced into here and there; I do not remember now +anything like a bookseller's or a milliner's or a draper's window. There +was no sign of fashion among the ladies of Burgos, so far as we could +distinguish them; there was not a glowering or perking hat, and I do not +believe there was a hobble-skirt in all the austere old capital except +such as some tourist wore; the black lace mantillas and the flowing +garments of other periods flitted by through the chill alleys and into +the dim doorways. The only cheerfulness in the local color was to be +noted in the caparison of the donkeys, which we were to find more and +more brilliant southward. Do I say the only cheerfulness? I ought to +except also the involuntary hilarity of a certain poor man's suit which +was so patched together of myriad scraps that it looked as if cut from +the fabric of a crazy-quilt. I owe him this notice the rather because he +almost alone did not beg of us in a city which swarmed with beggars in +a forecast of that pest of beggary which infests Spain everywhere. I do +not say that the thing is without picturesqueness, without real pathos; +the little girl who kissed the copper I gave her in the cathedral +remains endeared to me by that perhaps conventional touch of poetry. + +There was compensation for the want of presence among the ladies of +Burgos, in the leading lady of the theatrical company who dined, the +night before, at our hotel with the chief actors of her support, before +giving a last performance in our ancient city. It happened another time +in our Spanish progress that we had the society of strolling players at +our hotel, and it was both times told us that the given company was the +best dramatic company in Spain; but at Burgos we did not yet know that +we were so singularly honored. The leading lady there had luminous black +eyes, large like the head-lamps of a motor-car, and a wide crimson mouth +which she employed as at a stage banquet throughout the dinner, +while she talked and laughed with her fellow-actors, beautiful as +bull-fighters, cleanshaven, serious of face and shapely of limb. They +were unaffectedly professional, and the lady made no pretense of not +being a leading lady. One could see that she was the kindest creature in +the world, and that she took a genuine pleasure in her huge, practicable +eyes. At the other end of the room a Spanish family--father, mother, +and small children, down to some in arms--were dining and the children +wailing as Spanish children will, regardless of time and place; and when +the nurse brought one of the disconsolate infants to be kissed by +the leading lady one's heart went out to her for the amiability and +abundance of her caresses. The mere sight of their warmth did something +to supply the defect of steam in the steam-heating apparatus, but when +one got beyond their radius there was nothing for the shivering traveler +except to wrap himself in the down quilt of his bed and spread his +steamer-rug over his knees till it was time to creep under both of them +between the glacial sheets. + +We were sorry we had not got tickets for the leading lady's public +performance; it could have been so little more public; but we had not, +and there was nothing else in Burgos to invite the foot outdoors +after dinner. From my own knowledge I cannot yet say the place was not +lighted; but my sense of the tangle of streets lying night long in a +rich Gothic gloom shall remain unimpaired by statistics. Very possibly +Burgos is brilliantly lighted with electricity; only they have not got +the electricity on, as in our steam-heated hotel they had not got the +steam on. + + + +VIII + + +We had authorized our little interpreter to engage tickets for us by the +mail-train the next afternoon for Valladolid; he pretended, of course, +that the places could be had only by his special intervention, and by +telegraphing for them to the arriving train. We accepted his romantic +theory of the case, and paid the bonus due the railroad agent in the +hotel for his offices in the matter; we would have given anything, we +were so eager to get out of Burgos before we were frozen up there. I +do not know that we were either surprised or pained to find that our +Chilian friends should have got seats in the same car without anything +of our diplomacy, by the simple process of showing their tickets. I +think our little interpreter was worth everything he cost, and more. I +would not have lost a moment of his company as he stood on the platform +with me, adding one artless invention to another for my pleasure, and +successively extracting peseta after peseta from me till he had made +up the sum which he had doubtless idealized as a just reward for his +half-day's service when he first told me that it should be what I +pleased. We parted with the affection of fellow-citizens in a strange +monarchical country, his English growing less and less as the +train delayed, and his eyes watering more and more as with tears of +com-patriotic affection. At the moment I could have envied that German +princess her ability to make sure of his future companionship at the +low cost of fifty pesetas a day; and even now, when my affection has had +time to wane, I cannot do less than commend him to any future visitor +at Burgos, as in the last degree amiable, and abounding in surprises of +intelligence and unexpected feats of reliability. + + + + +IV. THE VARIETY OF VALLADOLID + + +When you leave Burgos at 3.29 of a passably sunny afternoon you are not +at once aware of the moral difference between the terms of your approach +and those of your departure. You are not changing your earth or your +sky very much, but it is not long before you are sensible of a change of +mind which insists more and more. There is the same long ground-swell +of wheat-fields, but yesterday you were followed in vision by the +loveliness of the frugal and fertile Biscayan farms, and to-day this +vision has left you, and you are running farther and farther into the +economic and topographic waste of Castile. Yesterday there were more +or less agreeable shepherdesses in pleasant plaids scattered over the +landscape; to-day there are only shepherds of three days' unshornness; +the plaids are ragged, and there is not sufficient compensation in +the cavalcades of both men and women riding donkeys in and out of the +horizons on the long roads that lose and find themselves there. Flocks +of brown and black goats, looking large as cows among the sparse +stubble, do little to relieve the scene from desolation; I am not sure +but goats, when brown and black, add to the horror of a desolate scene. +There are no longer any white farmsteads, or friendly villages gathering +about high-shouldered churches, but very far away to the eastward or +westward the dun expanse of the wheat-lands is roughed with something +which seems a cluster of muddy protuberances, so like the soil at first +it is not distinguishable from it, but which as your train passes +nearer proves to be a town at the base of tablelands, without a tree +or a leaf or any spear of green to endear it to the eye as the abode of +living men. You pull yourself together in the effort to visualize the +immeasurable fields washing those dreary towns with golden tides of +harvest; but it is difficult. What you cannot help seeing is the actual +nakedness of the land which with its spindling stubble makes you think +of that awful moment of the human head, when utter baldness will be a +relief to the spectator. + + + +I + + +At times and in places, peasants were scratching the dismal surfaces +with the sort of plows which Abel must have used, when subsoiling was +not yet even a dream; and between the plowmen and their ox-teams it +seemed a question as to which should loiter longest in the unfinished +furrow. Now and then, the rush of the train gave a motionless goatherd, +with his gaunt flock, an effect of comparative celerity to the rearward. +The women riding their donkeys over + + The level waste, the rounding gray + +in the distance were the only women we saw except those who seemed to +be keeping the stations, and one very fat one who came to the train at +a small town and gabbled volubly to some passenger who made no audible +response. She excited herself, but failed to rouse the interest of the +other party to the interview, who remained unseen as well as unheard. I +could the more have wished to know what it was all about because nothing +happened on board the train to distract the mind from the joyless +landscape until we drew near Valladolid. It is true that for a while +we shared our compartment with a father and his two sons who lunched on +slices of the sausage which seems the favorite refection of the Latin as +well as the Germanic races in their travels. But this drama was not +of intense interest, and we grappled in vain with the question of our +companions' social standard. The father, while he munched his bread +and sausage, read a newspaper which did not rank him or even define +his politics; there was a want of fashion in the cut of the young men's +clothes and of freshness in the polish of their tan shoes which +defied conjecture. When they left the train without the formalities +of leave-taking which had hitherto distinguished our Spanish +fellow-travelers, we willingly abandoned them to a sort of middling +obscurity; but this may not really have been their origin or their +destiny. + +That spindling sparseness, worse than utter baldness, of the wheat +stubble now disappeared with cinematic suddenness, and our train was +running past stretches of vineyard, where, among the green and purple +and yellow ranks, the vintagers, with their donkeys and carts, were +gathering the grapes in the paling light of the afternoon. Again the +scene lacked the charm of woman's presence which the vintage had in +southern France. In Spain we nowhere saw the women sharing the outdoor +work of the men; and we fancied their absence the effect of the Oriental +jealousy lingering from centuries of Moorish domination; though we could +not entirely reconcile our theory with the publicity of their washing +clothes at every stream. To be sure, that was work which they did not +share with men any more than the men shared the labor of the fields with +them. + +It was still afternoon, well before sunset, when we arrived at +Valladolid, where one of the quaintest of our Spanish surprises awaited +us. We knew that the omnibus of the hotel we had chosen would be the +shabbiest omnibus at the station, and we saw without great alarm our +Chilian friends drive off in an indefinitely finer vehicle. But what we +were not prepared for was the fact of _octroi_ at Valladolid, and for +the strange behavior of the local customs officer who stopped us on our +way into the town. He looked a very amiable young man as he put his face +in at the omnibus door, and he received without explicit question our +declaration that we had nothing taxable in our trunks. Then, however, he +mounted to the top of the omnibus and thumped our trunks about as if to +test them for contraband by the sound. The investigation continued on +these strange terms until the officer had satisfied himself of our good +faith, when he got down and with a friendly smile at the window bowed us +into Valladolid. + +In its way nothing could have been more charming; and we rather liked +being left by the omnibus about a block from our hotel, on the border of +a sort of promenade where no vehicles were allowed. We had been halted +near a public fountain, where already the mothers and daughters of the +neighborhood were gathered with earthen jars for the night's supply of +water. The jars were not so large as to overburden any of them when, +after just delay for exchange of gossip, the girls and goodwives put +them on their heads and marched erectly away with them, each beautifully +picturesque irrespective of her age or looks. + +The air was soft, and after Burgos, warm; something southern, unfelt +before, began to qualify the whole scene, which as the evening fell grew +more dramatic, and made the promenade the theater of emotions permitted +such unrestricted play nowhere else in Spain, so far as we were witness. +On one side the place was arcaded, and bordered with little shops, not +so obtrusively brilliant that the young people who walked up and down +before them were in a glare of publicity. A little way off the avenue +expanded into a fine oblong place, where some first martyrs of the +Inquisition were burned. But the promenades kept well short of this, +as they walked up and down, and talked, talked, talked in that +inexhaustible interest which youth takes in itself the world over. They +were in the standard proportion of two girls to one young man, or, if +here and there a girl had an undivided young man to herself, she went +before some older maiden or matron whom she left altogether out of the +conversation. They mostly wore the skirts and hats of Paris, and if the +scene of the fountain was Arabically oriental the promenade was almost +Americanly occidental. The promenaders were there by hundreds; they +filled the avenue from side to side, and + + The delight of happy laughter + The delight of low replies + +that rose from their progress, with the chirp and whisper of their +feet cheered the night as long as we watched and listened from the sun +balcony of our hotel. + + + +II + + +There was no more heat in the radiators of the hotel there than at +Burgos, but for that evening at least there was none needed. It was the +principal hotel of Valladolid, and the unscrubbed and unswept staircase +by which we mounted into it was merely a phase of that genial pause, as +for second thought, in the march of progress which marks so much of the +modern advance in Spain, and was by no means an evidence of arrested +development. We had the choice of reaching our rooms either through the +dining-room or by a circuitous detour past the pantries; but our rooms +had a proud little vestibule of their own, with a balcony over the great +square, and if one of them had a belated feather-bed the other had a +new hair mattress, and the whole house was brilliantly lighted with +electricity. As for the cooking, it was delicious, and the table was +of an abundance and variety which might well have made one ashamed of +paying so small a rate as two dollars a day for bed and board, wine +included, and very fair wine at that. + +In Spain you must take the bad with the good, for whether you get the +good or not you are sure of the bad, but only very exceptionally are you +sure of the bad only. It was a pleasure not easily definable to find our +hotel managed by a mother and two daughters, who gave the orders +obeyed by the men-servants, and did not rebuke them for joining in +the assurance that when we got used to going so abruptly from the +dining-room into our bedrooms we would like it. The elder of the +daughters had some useful French, and neither of the younger ladies ever +stayed for some ultimate details of dishabille in coming to interpret +the mother and ourselves to one another when we encountered her alone +in the office. They were all thoroughly kind and nice, and they were +supported with surpassing intelligence and ability by the _chico,_ +a radiant boy of ten, who united in himself the functions which the +amiable inefficiency of the porters and waiters abandoned to him. + +When we came out to dinner after settling ourselves in our almost +obtrusively accessible rooms, we were convinced of the wisdom of our +choice of a hotel by finding our dear Chilians at one of the tables. We +rushed together like two kindred streams of transatlantic gaiety, and +in our mingled French, Spanish, and English possessed one another of our +doubts and fears in coming to our common conclusion. We had already seen +a Spanish gentleman whom we knew as a fellow-sufferer at Burgos, roaming +the streets of Valladolid, and in what seemed a disconsolate doubt, +interrogating the windows of our hotel; and now we learned from the +Chilians that he had been bitterly disappointed in the inn which a +patrician omnibus had borne him away to from our envious eyes at the +station. We learned that our South American compatriots had found +their own chosen hotel impossible, and were now lodged in rapturous +satisfaction under our roof. Their happiness penetrated us with a glow +of equal content, and confirmed us in the resolution always to take the +worst omnibus at a Spanish station as the sure index of the best hotel. + +The street-cars, which in Valladolid are poetically propelled through +lyre-shaped trolleys instead of our prosaic broomstick appliances, +groaned unheeded if not unheard under our windows through the night, and +we woke to find the sun on duty in our glazed balcony and the promenade +below already astir with life: not the exuberant young life of the +night before, but still sufficiently awake to be recognizable as life. A +crippled newsboy seated under one of the arcades was crying his papers; +an Englishman was looking at a plan of Valladolid in a shop window; a +splendid cavalry officer went by in braided uniform, and did not stare +so hard as they might have expected at some ladies passing in mantillas +to mass or market. In the late afternoon as well as the early morning +we saw a good deal of the military in Valladolid, where an army corps is +stationed. From time to time a company of infantry marched through the +streets to gay music, and toward evening slim young officers began to +frequent the arcades and glass themselves in the windows of the shops, +their spurs clinking on the pavement as they lounged by or stopped and +took distinguished attitudes. We speculated in vain as to their social +quality, and to this day I do not know whether "the career is open to +the talents" in the Spanish army, or whether military rank is merely +the just reward of civil rank. Those beautiful young swells in +riding-breeches and tight gray jackets approached an Italian type +of cavalry officer; they did not look very vigorous, and the common +soldiers we saw marching through the streets, largely followed by the +populace, were not of formidable stature or figure, though neat and +agreeable enough to the eye. + +While I indulge the record of these trivialities, which I am by no means +sure the reader will care for so much, I feel that it would be wrong to +let him remain as ignorant of the history of Valladolid as I was while +there. My ignorance was not altogether my fault; I had fancied easily +finding at some bookseller's under the arcade a little sketch of the +local history such as you are sure of finding in any Italian town, done +by a local antiquary of those always mousing in the city's archives. +But the bookseller's boy and then the boy's mother could not at first +imagine my wish, and when they did they could only supply me with a sort +of business directory, full of addresses and advertisements. So instead +of overflowing with information when we set out on our morning ramble, +we meagerly knew from the guide-books that Valladolid had once been the +capital of Castile, arid after many generations of depression following +the removal of the court, had in these latest days renewed its strength +in mercantile and industrial prosperity. There are ugly evidences of the +prosperity in the windy, dusty avenues and streets of the more modern +town; but there are lanes and alleys enough, groping for the churches +and monuments in suddenly opening squares, to console the sentimental +tourist for the havoc which enterprise has made. The mind readily goes +back through these to the palmy prehistoric times from which the town +emerged to mention in Ptolemy, and then begins to work forward past +Iberian and Roman and Goth and Moor to the Castilian kings who made it +their residence in the eleventh century. The capital won its first +great distinction when Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile were +married there in 1469. Thirty-five years later these Catholic Kings, +as one had better learn at once to call them in Spain, let Columbus die +neglected if not forgotten in the house recently pulled down, where he +had come to dwell in their cold shadow; they were much occupied with +other things and they could not realize that his discovery of America +was the great glory of their reign; probably they thought the conquest +of Granada was. Later yet, by twenty years, the dreadful Philip II. +was born in Valladolid, and in 1559 a very famous _auto da fe_ wag +celebrated in the Plaza Mayor. Fourteen Lutherans were burned alive for +their heresy, and the body of a woman suspected of imperfect orthodoxy +after her death was exhumed and burned with them. In spite of such +precautions as these, and of all the pious diligence of the Holy Office, +the reader will hardly believe that there is now a Spanish Protestant +church in Valladolid; but such is the fact, though whether it derives +from the times of the Inquisition, or is a modern missionary church I +do not know. That _auto da fe_ was of the greatest possible distinction; +the Infanta Juana presided, and the universal interest was so great that +people paid a dollar and twenty-five cents a seat; money then worth five +or six times as much as now. Philip himself came to another _auto_ when +thirteen persons were burned in the same place, and he always liked +Valladolid; it must have pleased him in a different way from Escorial, +lying flat as it does on a bare plain swept, but never thoroughly +dusted, by winds that blow pretty constantly over it. + +While the Inquisition was purging the city of error its great university +was renowning it not only throughout Spain, but in France and Italy; +students frequented it from those countries, and artists came from many +parts of Europe. Literature also came in the person of Cervantes, +who seems to have followed the Spanish court in its migrations from +Valladolid to Toledo and then to Madrid. Here also came one of the +greatest characters in fiction, for it was in Valladolid that Gil Blas +learned to practise the art of medicine tinder the instruction of the +famous Dr. Sangrado. + + + +IV + +[Illustration: 08 A STREET LEADING TO THE CATHEDRAL] + +I put these facts at the service of the reader for what use he will +while he goes with us to visit the cathedral in Valladolid, a cathedral +as unlike that of Burgos as the severest mood of Spanish renaissance can +render it. In fact, it is the work of Herrera, the architect who made +the Escorial so grim, and is the expression in large measure of his +austere mastery. If it had ever been finished it might have been quite +as dispiriting as the Escorial, but as it has only one of the +four ponderous towers it was meant to have, it is not without its +alleviations, especially as the actual tower was rebuilt after the fall +of the original seventy years ago. The grass springs cheerfully up in +the crevices of the flagging from which the broken steps falter to the +portal, but within all is firm and solid. The interior is vast, and +nowhere softened by decoration, but the space is reduced by the huge +bulk of the choir in the center of it; as we entered a fine echo mounted +to the cathedral roof from the chanting and intoning within. When +the service ended a tall figure in scarlet crossed rapidly toward the +sacristy. It was of such imposing presence that we resolved at once it +must be the figure of a cardinal, or of an archbishop at the least. But +it proved to be one of the sacristans, and when we followed him to +the sacristy with half a dozen other sightseers, he showed us a silver +monstrance weighing a hundred and fifty pounds and decked with statites +of our first parents as they appeared before the Fall. Besides this we +saw, much against our will, a great many ecclesiastical vestments +of silk and damask richly wrought in gold and silver. But if we were +reluctant there was a little fat priest there who must have seen them +hundreds of times and had still a childish delight in seeing them again +because he had seen them so often; he dimpled and smiled, and for his +sake we pretended a joy in them which it would have been cruel to deny +him. I suppose we were then led to the sacrifice at the several side +altars, but I have no specific recollection of them; I know there was a +pale, sick-looking young girl in white who went about with her father, +and moved compassion by her gentle sorrowfulness. + +Of the University, which we visited next, I recall only the baroque +facade; the interior was in reparation and I do not know whether it +would have indemnified us for not visiting the University of Salamanca. +That was in our list, but the perversity of the time-table forbade. You +could go to Salamanca, yes, but you could not come back except at two +o'clock in the morning; you could indeed continue on to Lisbon, but +perhaps you did not wish to see Lisbon. A like perversity of the +time-table, once universal in Spain, but now much reformed, also kept +us away from Segovia, which was on our list. But our knowledge of it +enabled us to tell a fellow-countrywoman whom we presently met in the +museum of the University, how she could best, or worst, get to that +city. Our speech gave us away to her, and she turned to us from the +other objects of interest to explain first that she was in a hotel where +she paid only six pesetas a day, but where she could get no English +explanation of the time-table for any money. She had come to Valladolid +with a friend who was going next day to Salamanca, but next day was +Sunday and she did not like to travel on Sunday, and Segovia seemed the +only alternative. We could not make out why, or if it came to that +why she should be traveling alone through Spain with such a slender +equipment of motive or object, but we perceived she was one of the +most estimable souls in the world, and if she cared more for getting +to Segovia that afternoon than for looking at the wonders of the place +where we were, we could not blame her. We had to leave her when we left +the museum in the charge of two custodians who led her, involuntary but +unresisting, to an upper chamber where there were some pictures +which she could care no more for than for the wood carvings below. We +ourselves cared so little for those pictures that we would not go to see +them. Pictures you can see anywhere, but not statuary of such singular +interest, such transcendant powerfulness as those carvings of Berruguete +and other masters less known, which held us fascinated in the lower +rooms of the museum. They are the spoil of convents in the region about, +suppressed by the government at different times, and collected here with +little relevancy to their original appeal. Some are Scriptural subjects +and some are figures of the dancers who take part in certain ceremonials +of the Spanish churches (notably the cathedral at Seville), which have a +quaint reality, an intense personal character. They are of a fascination +which I can hope to convey by no phrase of mine; but far beyond this is +the motionless force, the tremendous repose of the figures of the Roman +soldiers taken in the part of sleeping at the Tomb. These sculptures are +in wood, life-size, and painted in the colors of flesh and costume, with +every detail and of a strong mass in which the detail is lost and must +be found again by the wondering eye. Beyond all other Spanish sculptures +they seemed to me expressive of the national temperament; I thought no +other race could have produced them, and that in their return to +the Greek ideal of color in statuary they were ingenuously frank and +unsurpassably bold. + +It might have been the exhaustion experienced from the encounter with +their strenuousness that suddenly fatigued us past even the thought of +doing any more of Valladolid on foot. At any rate, when we came out of +the museum we took refuge in a corner grocery (it seems the nature of +groceries to seek corners the world over) and asked the grocer where we +could find a cab. + +[Illustration: 09 THE UNIVERSITY OF VALLADOLID] + +The grocer was young and kind, and not so busy but he could give willing +attention to our case. He said he would send for a cab, and he called +up from his hands and knees a beautiful blond half-grown boy who was +scrubbing the floor, and despatched him on this errand, first making him +wipe the suds off his hands. The boy was back wonderfully soon to +say the cab would come for us in ten minutes, and to receive with +self-respectful appreciation the peseta which rewarded his promptness. +In the mean time we feigned a small need which we satisfied by a +purchase, and then the grocer put us chairs in front of his counter and +made us his guests while his other customers came and went. They came +oftener than they went, for our interest in them did not surpass their +interest in us. We felt that through this we reflected credit upon +our amiable host; rumors of the mysterious strangers apparently spread +through the neighborhood and the room was soon filled with people +who did not all come to buy; but those who did buy were the most, +interesting. An elderly man with his wife bought a large bottle which +the grocer put into one scale of his balance, and poured its weight +in chick-peas into the other. Then he filled the bottle with oil and +weighed it, and then he gave the peas along with it to his customers. +It seemed a pretty convention, though we could not quite make out its +meaning, unless the peas were bestowed as a sort of bonus; but the +next convention was clearer to us. An old man in black corduroy with a +clean-shaven face and a rather fierce, retired bull-fighter air, bought +a whole dried stock-fish (which the Spaniards eat instead of salt cod) +talking loudly to the grocer and at us while the grocer cut it across in +widths of two inches and folded it into a neat pocketful; then a glass +of wine was poured from a cask behind the counter, and the customer +drank it off in honor of the transaction with the effect also of +pledging us with his keen eyes; all the time he talked, and he was +joined in conversation by a very fat woman who studied us not unkindly. +Other neighbors who had gathered in had no apparent purpose but to +verify our outlandish presence and to hear my occasional Spanish, which +was worth hearing if for nothing but the effort it cost me. The grocer +accepted with dignity the popularity we had won him, and when at last +our cab arrived from Mount Ararat with the mire of the subsiding Deluge +encrusted upon it he led us out to it through the small boys who swarmed +upon us wherever we stopped or started in Valladolid; and whose bulk was +now much increased by the coming of that very fat woman from within the +grocery. As the morning was bright we proposed having the top opened, +but here still another convention of the place intervened. In Valladolid +it seems that no self-respecting cabman will open the top of his cab +for an hour's drive, and we could not promise to keep ours longer. The +grocer waited the result of our parley, and then he opened our carriage +door and bowed us away. It was charming; if he had a place on Sixth +Avenue I would be his customer as long as I lived in New York; and to +this moment I do not understand why I did not bargain with that blond +boy to come to America with us and be with us always. But there was no +city I visited in Spain where I was not sorry to leave some boy behind +with the immense rabble of boys whom I hoped never to see again. + + + +VI + + +After this passage of real life it was not easy to sink again to the +level of art, but if we must come down it there could have been no +descent less jarring than that which left us in the exquisite _patio_ +of the College of San Gregorio, founded for poor students of theology in +the time of the Catholic Kings. The students who now thronged the place +inside and out looked neither clerical nor poverty-stricken; but I dare +say they were good Christians, and whatever their condition they were +rich in the constant vision of beauty which one sight of seemed to us +more than we merited. Perhaps the facade of the college and that of the +neighboring Church of San Pablo may be elsewhere surpassed in the sort +of sumptuous delicacy of that Gothic which gets its name of plateresque +from the silversmithing spirit of its designs; but I doubt it. The +wonderfulness of it is that it is not mechanical or monotonous like +the stucco fretting of the Moorish decoration which people rave over +in Spain, but has a strength in its refinement which comes from its +expression in the exquisitely carven marble. When this is grayed with +age it is indeed of the effect of old silver work; but the plateresque +in Valladolid does not suggest fragility or triviality; its grace is +perhaps rather feminine than masculine; but at the worst it is only the +ultimation of the decorative genius of the Gothic. It is, at any rate, +the finest surprise which the local architecture has to offer and it +leaves one wishing for more rather than less of it, so that after the +facade of San Gregorio one is glad of it again in the walls of the +_patio,_ whose staircases and galleries, with the painted wooden beams +of their ceilings, scarcely tempt the eye from it. + +We thought the front of San Pablo deserved a second visit, and we were +rewarded by finding it far lovelier than we thought. The church was +open, and when we went in we had the advantage of seeing a large +silver-gilt car moved from the high altar down the nave to a side altar +next the door, probably for use in some public procession. The tongue +of the car was pulled by a man with one leg; a half-grown boy under the +body of it hoisted it on his back and eased it along; and a monk with +his white robe tucked up into his girdle pushed it powerfully from +behind. I did not make out why so strange a team should have been +employed for the work, but the spectacle of that quaint progress was +unique among my experiences at Valladolid and of a value which I wish I +could make the reader feel with me. We ourselves were so interested in +the event that we took part in it so far as to push aside a bench that +blocked the way, and we received a grateful smile from the monk in +reward of our zeal. + +We were in the mood for simple kindness because of our stiff official +reception at the Royal Palace, which we visited in the gratification +of our passion for _patios._ It is now used for provincial or municipal +offices and guarded by sentries who indeed admitted us to the courtyard, +but would not understand our wish (it was not very articulately +expressed) to mount to the cloistered galleries which all the +guide-books united in pronouncing so noble, with their decorative busts +of the Roman Emperors and arms of the Spanish provinces. The sculptures +are by the school of Berruguete, for whom we had formed so strong +a taste at the museum; but our disappointment was not at the moment +further embittered by knowing that Napoleon resided there in 1809. We +made what we could of other _patios_ in the vicinity, especially of one +in the palace across from San Gregorio, to which the liveried porter +welcomed us, though the noble family was in residence, and allowed us to +mount the red-carpeted staircase to a closed portal in consideration of +the peseta which he correctly foresaw. It was not a very characteristic +_patio,_ bare of flower and fountain as it was, and others more fully +appointed did not entirely satisfy us. The fact is the _patio_ is to be +seen best in Andalusia, its home, where every house is built round it, +and in summer cooled and in winter chilled by it. But if we were not +willing to wait for Seville, Valladolid did what it could; and if we saw +no house with quite the _patio_ we expected we did see the house where +Philip II. was born, unless the enterprising boy who led us to it was +mistaken; in that case we were, Ophelia-like, the more deceived. + + + +VII + +[Illustration: 10 CHURCH OF SAN PABLO] + +Such things do not really matter; the guide-book's object of interest is +seldom an object of human interest; you may miss it or ignore it without +real personal loss; but if we had failed of that mystic progress of the +silver car down the nave of San Pablo we should have been really if +not sensibly poorer. So we should if we had failed of the charming +experience which awaited us in our hotel at lunch-time. When we went out +in the morning we saw a table spread the length of the long dining-room, +and now when we returned we found every chair taken. At once we surmised +a wedding breakfast, not more from the gaiety than the gravity of the +guests; and the head waiter confirmed our impression: it was indeed a +_boda._ The party was just breaking up, and as we sat down at our table +the wedding guests rose from theirs. I do not know but in any country +the women on such an occasion would look more adequate to it than the +men; at any rate, there in Spain they looked altogether superior. It +was not only that they were handsomer and better dressed, but that they +expressed finer social and intellectual quality. + +All the faces had the quiet which the Spanish face has in such degree +that the quiet seems national more than personal; but the women's faces +were oval, though rather heavily based, while the men's were squared, +with high cheek-bones, and they seemed more distinctly middle class. Men +and women had equally repose of manner, and when the women came to put +on their headgear near our corner, it was with a surface calm unbroken +by what must have been their inner excitement. They wore hats and +mantillas in about the same proportion; but the bride wore a black +mantilla and a black dress with sprigs of orange blossoms in her hair +and on her breast for the only note of white. Her lovely, gentle face +was white, of course, from the universal powder, and so were the faces +of the others, who talked in low tones around her, with scarcely more +animation than so many masks. The handsomest of them, whom we decided +to be her sister, arranged the bride's mantilla, and was then helped on +with hers by the others, with soft smiles and glances. Two little girls, +imaginably sorry the feast was over, suppressed their regret in the +tutelage of the maiden aunts and grandmothers who put up cakes in +napkins to carry home; and then the party vanished in unbroken decorum. +When they were gone we found that in studying the behavior of the bride +and her friends we had not only failed to identify the bridegroom, but +had altogether forgotten to try. + + + +VIII + + +The terrible Torquemada dwelt for years in Valla-dolid and must there +have excogitated some of the methods of the Holy Office in dealing with +heresy. As I have noted, Ferdinand and Isabella were married there and +Philip II. was born there; but I think the reader will agree with me +that the highest honor of the city is that it was long the home of the +gallant gentleman who after five years of captivity in Algiers and the +loss of his hand in the Battle of Lepanto, wrote there, in his poverty +and neglect, the first part of a romance which remains and must always +remain one of the first if not the very first of the fictions of the +world. I mean that + + Dear son of memory, great heir of fame, + +Michael Cervantes; and I wish I could pay here that devoir to his memory +and fame which squalid circumstance forbade me to render under the roof +that once sheltered him. One can never say enough in his praise, and +even Valladolid seems to have thought so, for the city has put up a +tablet to him with his bust above it in the front of his incredible +house and done him the homage of a reverent inscription. It is a very +little house, as small as Ariosto's in Ferrara, which he said was so apt +for him, but it is not in a long, clean street like that; it is in a bad +neighborhood which has not yet outlived the evil repute it bore in the +days of Cervantes. It was then the scene of nightly brawls and in one of +these a gentleman was stabbed near the author's house. The alarm brought +Cervantes to the door and being the first to reach the dying man he +was promptly arrested, together with his wife, his two sisters, and his +niece, who were living with him and who were taken up as accessories +before the fact. The whole abomination is matter of judicial record, +and it appears from this that suspicion fell upon the gentle family (one +sister was a nun) because they were living in that infamous place. The +man whose renown has since filled the civilized world fuller even than +the name of his contemporary, Shakespeare (they died on the same day), +was then so unknown to the authorities of Valladolid that he had great +ado to establish the innocence of himself and his household. To be +sure, his _Don Quixote_ had not yet appeared, though he is said to have +finished the first part in that miserable abode in that vile region; +but he had written poems and plays, especially his most noble tragedy +of "Numancia," and he had held public employs and lived near enough to +courts to be at least in their cold shade. It is all very Spanish +and very strange, and perhaps the wonder should be that in this most +provincial of royal capitals, in a time devoted to the extirpation of +ideas, the fact that he was a poet and a scholar did not tell fatally +against him. In his declaration before the magistrates he says that +his literary reputation procured him the acquaintance of courtiers and +scholars, who visited him in that pitiable abode where the ladies of his +family cared for themselves and him with the help of one servant maid. + +They had an upper floor of the house, which stands at the base of a +stone terrace dropping from the wide, dusty, fly-blown street, where I +stayed long enough to buy a melon (I was always buying a melon in Spain) +and put it into my cab before I descended the terrace to revere the +house of Cervantes on its own level. There was no mistaking it; there +was the bust and the inscription; but it was well I bought my melon +before I ventured upon this act of piety; I should not have had the +stomach for it afterward. I was not satisfied with the outside of the +house, but when I entered the open doorway, meaning to mount to the +upper floor, it was as if I were immediately blown into the street +again by the thick and noisome stench which filled the place from some +unmentionable if not unimaginable source. + +It was like a filthy insult to the great presence whose sacred shrine +the house should have been religiously kept. But Cervantes dead was as +forgotten in Valladolid as Cervantes living had been. In some paroxysm +of civic pride the tablet had been set in the wall and then the house +abandoned to whatever might happen. I thought foul shame of Valladolid +for her neglect, and though she might have answered that her burden of +memories was more than she could bear, that she could not be forever +keeping her celebrity sweet, still I could have retorted, But Cervantes, +but Cervantes! There was only one Cervantes in the world and there never +would be another, and could not she watch over this poor once home of +his for his matchless sake? Then if Valladolid had come back at me with +the fact that Cervantes had lived pretty well all over Spain, and what +had Seville done, Cordova done, Toledo done, Madrid done, for the upkeep +of his divers sojourns more than she had done, after placing a tablet +in his house wall?--certainly I could have said that this did not excuse +her, but I must have owned that she was not alone, though she seemed +most to blame. + + + +IX + +[Illustration: 11 THE HOUSE IN WHICH PHILIP II. WAS BORN] + +Now I look back and am glad I had not consciously with me, as we drove +away, the boy who once meant to write the life of Cervantes, and who +I knew from my recollection of his idolatry of that chief of Spaniards +would not have listened to the excuses of Valladolid for a moment. +All appeared fair and noble in that Spain of his which shone with such +allure far across the snows through which he trudged morning and evening +with his father to and from the printing-office, and made his dream +of that great work the common theme of their talk. Now the boy is as +utterly gone as the father, who was a boy too at heart, but who died a +very old man many years ago; and in the place of both is another old man +trammeled in his tangled memories of Spain visited and unvisited. + +It would be a poor sort of make-believe if this survivor pretended any +lasting indignation with Valladolid because of the stench of Cervantes's +house. There are a great many very bad smells in Spain everywhere, and +it is only fair to own that a psychological change toward Valladolid had +been operating itself in me since luncheon which Valladolid was not very +specifically to blame for. Up to the time the wedding guests left us we +had said Valladolid was the most interesting city we had ever seen, and +we would like to stay there a week; then, suddenly, we began to turn +against it. One thing: the weather had clouded, and it was colder. But +we determined to be just, and after we left the house of Cervantes we +drove out to the promenades along the banks of the Pisuerga, in hopes of +a better mind, for we had read that they were the favorite resort of the +citizens in summer, and we did not know but even in autumn we might +have some glimpses of their recreation. Our way took us sorrowfully +past hospitals and prisons and barracks; and when we came out on the +promenade we found ourselves in the gloom of close set mulberry trees, +with the dust thick on the paths under them. The leaves hung leaden gray +on the boughs and there could never have been a spear of grass along +those disconsolate ways. The river was shrunken in its bed, and where +its current crept from pool to pool, women were washing some of the rags +which already hung so thick on the bushes that it was wonderful there +should be any left to wash. Squalid children abounded, and at one +point a crowd of people had gathered and stood looking silently and +motionlessly over the bank. We looked too and on a sand-bar near the +shore we saw three gendarmes standing with a group of civilians. Between +their fixed and absolutely motionless figures lay the body of a drowned +man on the sand, poorly clothed in a workman's dress, and with his poor, +dead clay-white hands stretched out from him on the sand, and his gray +face showing to the sky. Everywhere people were stopping and staring; +from one of the crowded windows of the nearest house a woman hung with +a rope of her long hair in one hand, and in the other the brush she was +passing over it. On the bridge the man who had found the body made a +merit of his discovery which he dramatized to a group of spectators +without rousing them to a murmur or stirring them from their statuesque +fixity. His own excitement in comparison seemed indecent. + + + +X + + +It was now three o'clock and I thought I might be in time to draw some +money on my letter of credit, at the bank which we had found standing in +a pleasant garden in the course of our stroll through the town the night +before. We had said, How charming it would be to draw money in such an +environment; and full of the romantic expectation, I offered my letter +at the window, where after a discreet interval I managed to call from +their preoccupation some unoccupied persons within. They had not a very +financial air, and I thought them the porters they really were, with +some fear that I had come after banking-hours. But they joined in +reassuring me, and told me that if I would return after five o'clock the +proper authorities would be there. + +I did not know then what late hours Spain kept in every way; but I +concealed my surprise; and I came back at the time suggested, and +offered my letter at the window with a request for ten pounds, which I +fancied I might need. A clerk took the letter and scrutinized it with +a deliberation which I thought it scarcely merited. His self-respect +doubtless would not suffer him to betray that he could not read the +English of it; and with an air of wishing to consult higher authority he +carried it to another clerk at a desk across the room. To this official +it seemed to come as something of a blow. Tie made a show of reading it +several times over, inside and out, and then from the pigeonhole of his +desk he began to accumulate what I supposed corroborative documents, +or _pieces justificatives._ When lie had amassed a heap several inches +thick, he rose and hurried out through the gate, across the hall where +I sat, into a room beyond. He returned without in any wise referring +himself to me and sat down at his desk again. The first clerk explained +to the anxious face with which I now approached him that the second +clerk had taken my letter to the director. I went back to my seat and +waited fifteen minutes longer, fifteen having passed already; then I +presented my anxious face, now somewhat indignant, to the first clerk +again. "What is the director doing with my letter?" The first clerk +referred my question to the second clerk, who answered from his place, +"He is verifying the signature." "But what signature?" I wondered to +myself, reflecting that he had as yet had none of mine. Could it be the +signature of my New York banker or my London one? I repaired once +more to the window, after another wait, and said in polite but firm +Castilian, "Do me the favor to return me my letter." A commotion +of protest took place within the barrier, followed by the repeated +explanation that the director was verifying the signature. I returned +to toy place and considered that the suspicious document which I had +presented bore record of moneys drawn in London, in Paris, in Tours, in +San Sebastian, which ought to have allayed all suspicion; then for the +last time I repaired to the window; more in anger now than in sorrow, +and gathered nay severest Spanish together for a final demand: "Do me +the favor to give me back my letter _without the pounds sterling."_ The +clerks consulted together; one of them decided to go to the director's +room, and after a dignified delay he came back with my letter, and +dashed it down before me with the only rudeness I experienced in Spain. + +I was glad to get it on any terms; it was only too probable that it +would have been returned without the money if I had not demanded it; +and I did what I could with the fact that this amusing financial +transaction, involving a total of fifty dollars, had taken place in the +chief banking-house of one of the commercial and industrial centers of +the country. Valladolid is among other works the seat of the locomotive +works of the northern railway lines, and as these machines average +a speed of twenty-five miles an hour with express trains, it seemed +strange to me that something like their rapidity should not have +governed the action of that bank director in forcing me to ask back my +discredited letter of credit. + + + +XI + + +That evening the young voices and the young feet began to chirp again +under our sun balcony. But there had been no sun in it since noon and +presently a cold thin rain was falling and driving the promenaders under +the arcades, where they were perhaps not unhappier for being closely +massed. We missed the prettiness of the spectacle, though as yet we did +not know that it was the only one of the sort we might hope to see in +Spain, where women walk little indoors, and when they go out, drive and +increase in the sort of loveliness which may be weighed and measured. +Even under the arcades the promenade ceased early and in the adjoining +Plaza Mayor, where the _autos da fe_ once took place, the rain still +earlier made an end of the municipal music, and the dancing of the +lower ranks of the people. But we were fortunate in our Chilian friend's +representation of the dancing; he came to our table at dinner, and did +with charming sympathy a mother waltzing with her babe in arms for a +partner. + +He came to the omnibus at the end of the promenade, when we were +starting for the station next morning, not yet shaven, in his friendly +zeal to make sure of seeing us off, and we parted with confident +prophecies of meeting each other again in Madrid. We had already bidden +adieu with effusion to our landlady-sisters-and-mother, and had wished +to keep forever our own the adorable _chico_ who, when cautioned against +trying to carry a very heavy bag, valiantly jerked it to his shoulder +and made off with it to the omnibus, as if it were nothing. I do not +believe such a boy breathes out of Spain, where I hope he will grow up +to the Oriental calm of so many of his countrymen, and rest from the +toils of his nonage. At the last moment after the Chilian had left us, +we perceived that one of our trunks had been forgotten, and the _chico_ +coursed back to the hotel for it and returned with the delinquent porter +bearing it, as if to make sure of his bringing it. + +When it was put on top of the omnibus, and we were in probably +unparalleled readiness for starting to the station, at an hour when +scarcely anybody else in Valladolid was up, a mule composing a portion +of our team immediately fell down, as if startled too abruptly from a +somnambulic dream. I really do not remember how it was got to its feet +again; but I remember the anguish of the delay and the fear that we +might not be able to escape from Valladolid after all our pains in +trying for the Sud-Express at that hour; and I remember that when we +reached the station we found that the Sud-Express was forty minutes +behind time and that we were a full hour after that before starting for +Madrid. + + + + +V. PHASES OF MADRID + + +I fancied that a kind of Gothic gloom was expressed in the black +wine-skins of Old Castile, as contrasted with the fairer color of those +which began to prevail even so little south of Burgos as Valladolid. I +am not sure that the Old Castilian wine-skins derived their blackness +from the complexion of the pigs, or that there are more pale pigs in the +south than in the north of Spain; I am sure only of a difference in +the color of the skins, which may have come from a difference in the +treatment of them. At a venture I should not say that there were more +black pigs in Old Castile than in Andalusia, as we observed them from +the train, rooting among the unpromising stubble of the wheat-lands. +Rather I should say that the prevailing pig of all the Spains was brown, +corresponding to the reddish blondness frequent among both the Visigoths +and the Moors. The black pig was probably the original, prehistoric +Iberian pig, or of an Italian strain imported by the Romans; but I do +not offer this as more than a guess. The Visigothic or Arabic pig showed +himself an animal of great energy and alertness wherever we saw him, +and able to live upon the lean of the land where it was leanest. At his +youngest he abounded in the furrows and hollows, matching his russet +with the russet of the soil and darting to and fro with the quickness +of a hare. He was always of an ingratiating humorousness and endeared +himself by an apparent readiness to enter into any joke that was going, +especially that of startling the pedestrian by his own sudden apparition +from behind a tuft of grass or withered stalk. I will not be sure, but I +think we began to see his kind as soon as we got out of Yalladolid, when +we began running through a country wooded with heavy, low-crowned pines +that looked like the stone-pines of Italy, but were probably not the +same. After twenty miles of this landscape the brown pig with pigs of +other complexions, as much guarded as possible, multiplied among the +patches of vineyard. He had there the company of tall black goats and +rather unhappy-looking black sheep, all of whom he excelled in the +art of foraging among the vines and the stubble of the surrounding +wheat-lands. After the vineyards these opened and stretched themselves +wearily, from low dull sky to low dull sky, nowise cheered in aspect by +the squalid peasants, scratching their tawny expanses with those crooked +prehistoric sticks which they use for plows in Spain. It was a dreary +landscape, but it was good to be out of Valladolid on any terms, and +especially good to be away from the station which we had left emulating +the odors of the house of Cervantes. + + + +I + + +There had been the usual alarm about the lack of places in the +Sud-Express which we were to take at Valladolid, but we chanced getting +them, and our boldness was rewarded by getting a whole compartment to +ourselves, and a large, fat friendly conductor with an eye out for tips +in every direction. The lunch in our dining-car was for the first time +in Spain not worth the American price asked for it; everywhere else +on the Spanish trains I must testify that the meals were excellent and +abundant; and the refection may now have felt in some obscure sort the +horror of the world in which the Sud-Express seemed to have lost itself. +The scene was as alien to any other known aspect of our comfortable +planet as if it were the landscape of some star condemned for the +sins of its extinct children to wander through space in unimaginable +desolation. It seldom happens in Spain that the scenery is the same on +both sides of the railroad track, but here it was malignly alike on one +hand and on the other, though we seemed to be running along the slope of +an upland, so that the left hand was higher and the right lower. It was +more as if we were crossing the face of some prodigious rapid, whose +surges were the measureless granite boulders tossing everywhere in +masses from the size of a man's fist to the size of a house. In a wild +chaos they wallowed against one another, the greater bearing on their +tops or between them on their shoulders smaller regular or irregular +masses of the same gray stone. Everywhere among their awful shallows +grew gray live-oaks, and in among the rocks and trees spread tufts of +gray shrub. Suddenly, over the frenzy of this mad world, a storm of cold +rain broke whirling, and cold gray mists drove, blinding the windows and +chilling us where we sat within. From time to time the storm lifted and +showed again this vision of nature hoary as if with immemorial eld; if +at times we seemed to have run away from it again it closed in upon us +and held us captive in its desolation. + +With longer and longer intervals of relief it closed upon us for the +last time in the neighborhood of the gloomiest pile that ever a man +built for his life, his death and his prayer between; but before we came +to the palace-tomb of the Escorial, we had clear in the distance the +vision of the walls and roofs and towers of the medieval city of Avila. +It is said to be the perfectest relic of the Middle Ages after or before +Rothenburg, and we who had seen Rothenburg solemnly promised ourselves +to come back some day from Madrid and spend it in Avila. But we never +came, and Avila remains a vision of walls and roofs and towers tawny +gray glimpsed in a rift of the storm that again swept toward the Spanish +capital. + + + +II + + +We were very glad indeed to get to Madrid, though dismayed by +apprehensions of the _octroi_ which we felt sure awaited us. We recalled +the behavior of the amiable officer of Valladolid who bumped our baggage +about on the roof of our omnibus, and we thought that in Madrid such +an officer could not do less than shatter our boxes and scatter their +contents in the streaming street. What was then our surprise, our +joy, to find that in Madrid there was no _octroi_ at all, and that the +amiable _mozos_ who took our things hardly knew what we meant when we +asked for it. At Madrid they scarcely wanted our tickets at the gate of +the station, and we found ourselves in the soft embrace of modernity, +so dear after the feudal rigors of Old Castile, when we mounted into a +motor-bus and sped away through the spectacular town, so like Paris, +so like Rome as to have no personality of its own except in this +similarity, and never stopped till the liveried service swarmed upon us +at the door of the Hotel Ritz. + +Here the modernity which had so winningly greeted us at the station +welcomed us more and consolingly. There was not only steam-heating, but +the steam was on! It wanted but a turn of the hand at the radiators, and +the rooms were warm. The rooms themselves responded to our appeal +and looked down into a silent inner court, deaf to the clatter of the +streets, and sleep haunted the very air, distracted, if at all, by the +instant facility and luxury of the appliances. Was it really in Spain +that a metallic tablet at the bed-head invited the wanderer to call with +one button for the _camerero,_ another for the _camerera,_ and another +for the _mozo,_ who would all instantly come speaking English like so +many angels? Were we to have these beautiful chambers for a humble two +dollars and forty cents a day; and if it was true, why did we ever +leave them and try for something ever so much worse and so very little +cheaper? Let me be frank with the reader whom I desire for my friend, +and own that we were frightened from the Eitz Hotel by the rumor of +Eitz prices. I paid my bill there, which was imagined with scrupulous +fullness to the last possible _centimo,_ and so I may disinterestedly +declare that the Eitz is the only hotel in Madrid where you get the +worth of your money, even when the money seems more but scarcely is so. +In all Spain I know of only two other hotels which may compare with it, +and these are the English hotels, one at Ronda and one at Algeciras. If +I add falteringly the hotel where we stayed a night in Toledo and the +hotel where we abode a fortnight in Seville, I heap the measure of merit +and press it down. + +We did not begin at once our insensate search for another hotel in +Madrid: but the sky had cleared and we went out into the strange capital +so uncharacteristically characteristic, to find tea at a certain cafe +we had heard of. It was in the Calle de Alcala (a name which so richly +stimulates the imagination), and it looked out across this handsome +street, to a club that I never knew the name of, where at a series of +open windows was a flare of young men in silk hats leaning out on their +elbows and letting no passing fact of the avenue escape them. It was +worth their study, and if I had been an idle young Spaniard, or an +idle old one, I would have asked nothing better than to spend my Sunday +afternoon poring from one of those windows on my well-known world of +Madrid as it babbled by. Even in my quality of alien, newly arrived and +ignorant of that world, I already felt its fascination. + +Sunday in Spain is perhaps different from other days of the week to +the Spanish sense, but to the traveler it is too like them to be +distinguishable except in that guilty Sabbath consciousness which is +probably an effect from original sin in every Protestant soul. The +casual eye could not see but that in Madrid every one seemed as much or +as little at work as on any other day. My own casual eye noted that the +most picturesquely evident thing in the city was the country life which +seemed so to pervade it. In the Calle de Alcala, flowing to the Prado +out of the Puerta del Sol, there passed a current of farm-carts and +farm-wagons more conspicuous than any urban vehicles, as they jingled +by, with men and women on their sleigh-belled donkeys, astride or atop +the heavily laden panniers. The donkeys bore a part literally leading in +all the rustic equipages, and with their superior intellect found a way +through the crowds for the string-teams of the three or four large mules +that followed them in harness. Whenever we saw a team of mules without +this sage guidance we trembled for their safety; as for horses, no team +of them attempted the difficult passage, though ox-trains seemed able to +dispense with the path-finding donkeys. + +To be sure, the horses abounded in the cabs, which were mostly bad, more +or less. It is an idiosyncrasy of the cabs in Madrid that only the open +victorias have rubber tires; if you go in a coupe you must consent to +be ruthlessly bounced over the rough pavements on wheels unsoftened. It +"follows as the night the day" that the coupe is not in favor, and that +in its conservative disuse it accumulates a smell not to be acquired out +of Spain. One such vehicle I had which I thought must have been stabled +in the house of Cervantes at Valladolid, and rushed on the Sud-Express +for my service at Madrid; the stench in it was such that after a short +drive to the house of a friend I was fain to dismiss it at a serious +loss in pesetas and take the risk of another which might have been as +bad. Fortunately a kind lady intervened with a private carriage and a +coachman shaved that very day, whereas my poor old cabman, who was of +one and the same smell as his cab, had not been shaved for three days. + + + +III + + +This seems the place to note the fact that no Spaniard in humble life +shaves oftener than once in three days, and that you always see him on +the third day just before he has shaved. But all this time I have left +myself sitting in the cafe looking out on the club that looks out on the +Calle de Aleala, and keeping the waiter waiting with a jug of hot milk +in his hand while I convince him (such a friendly, smiling man he is, +and glad of my instruction!) that in tea one always wants the milk cold. +To him that does not seem reasonable, since one wants it hot in coffee +and chocolate; but he yields to my prejudice, and after that he always +says, _"Ah, leche fria!"_ and we smile radiantly together in the bond of +comradery which cold milk establishes between man and man in Spain. As +yet tea is a novelty in that country, though the young English queen, +universally loved and honored, has made it the fashion in high life. +Still it is hard to overcome such a prepossession as that of hot milk in +tea, and in some places you cannot get it cold for love or money. + +But again I leave myself waiting in that cafe, where slowly, and at last +not very overwhelmingly in number, the beautiful plaster-pale Spanish +ladies gather with their husbands and have chocolate. It is a riotous +dissipation for them, though it does not sound so; the home is the +Spanish ideal of the woman's place, as it is of our anti-suffragists, +though there is nothing corresponding to our fireside in it; and the +cafe is her husband's place without her. When she walks in the street, +where mostly she drives, she walks with her eyes straight before her; to +look either to the right or left, especially if a man is on either hand, +is a superfluity of naughtiness. The habit of looking straight ahead is +formed in youth, and it continues through life; so at least it is said, +and if I cannot affirm it I will not deny it. The beautiful black eyes +so discreetly directed looked as often from mantillas as hats, even in +Madrid, which is the capital, and much infested by French fashions. You +must not believe it when any one tells you that the mantilla is going +out; it prevails everywhere, and it increases from north to south, and +in Seville it is almost universal. Hats are worn there only in driving, +but at Madrid there were many hats worn in walking, though whether +by Spanish women or by foreigners, of course one could not, though a +wayfaring man and an American, stop them to ask. + +There are more women in the street at Madrid than in the provincial +cities, perhaps because it is the capital and cosmopolitan, and perhaps +because the streets are many of them open and pleasant, though there arc +enough of them dark and narrow, too. I do not know just why the Puerta +del Sol seems so much ampler and gayer than the Calle de Alcala; it is +not really wider, but it seems more to concentrate the coming and +going, and with its high-hoteled opposition of corners is of a supreme +spectacularity. Besides, the name is so fine: what better could any city +place ask than to be called Gate of the Sun? Perpetual trams wheeze and +whistle through it; large shops face upon it; the sidewalks are thronged +with passers, and the many little streets debouching on it pour their +streams of traffic and travel into it on the right and left. It is +mainly fed by the avenues leaving the royal palace on the west, and its +eddying tide empties through the Calle de Alcala into the groves and +gardens of the Prado whence it spreads over all the drives and parks +east and north and south. + +For a capital purposed and planned Madrid is very well indeed. It has +not the symmetry which forethought gave the topography of Washington, or +the beauty which afterthought has given Paris. But it makes you think +a little of Washington, and a great deal of Paris, though a great deal +more yet of Rome. It is Renaissance so far as architecture goes, and it +is very modern Latin; so that it is of the older and the newer Rome that +it makes you think. From, time to time it seemed to me I must be in. +Rome, and I recovered myself with a pang to find I was not. Yet, as I +say, Madrid was very well indeed, and when I reflected I had to own that +I had come there on purpose to be there, and not to be in Rome, where +also I should have been so satisfied to be. + + + +IV + + +I do not know but we chose our hotel when we left the Ritz because it +was so Italian, so Roman. It had a wide grape arbor before it, with +a generous spread of trellised roof through which dangled the grape +bunches among the leaves of the vine. Around this arbor at top went a +balustrade of marble, with fat _putti,_ or marble boys, on the corners, +who would have watched over the fruit if they had not been preoccupied +with looking like so many thousands of _putti_ in Italy. They looked +like Italian _putti_ with a difference, the difference that passes +between all the Spanish things and the Italian things they resemble. +They were coarser and grosser in figure, and though amiable enough +in aspect, they lacked the refinement, the air of pretty appeal which +Italian art learns from nature to give the faces of _putti._ Yet they +were charming, and it was always a pleasure to look at them posing in +pairs at the corners of the balustrade, and I do not know but dozing in +the hours of _siesta._ If they had been in wood Spanish art would have +known how to make them better, but in stone they had been gathering +an acceptable weather stain during the human generations they had been +there, and their plump stomachs were weather-beaten white. + +I do not know if they had been there long enough to have witnessed +the murder of Cromwell's ambassador done in our street by two Jacobite +gentlemen who could not abide his coming to honor in the land where +they were in exile from England. That must have been sometime about the +middle of the century after Philip II., bigot as he was, could not bear +the more masterful bigotry of the archbishop of Toledo, and brought his +court from that ancient capital, and declared Madrid henceforward the +capital forever; which did not prevent Philip III. from taking his court +to Valladolid and making that the capital _en titre_ when he liked. +However, some other Philip or Charles, or whoever, returned with his +court to Madrid and it has ever since remained the capital, and has +come, with many natural disadvantages, to look its supremacy. For my +pleasure I would rather live in Seville, but that would be a luxurious +indulgence of the love of beauty, and like a preference of Venice in +Italy when there was Rome to live in. Madrid is not Rome, but it makes +you think of Rome as I have said, and if it had a better climate it +would make you think of Rome still more. Notoriously, however, it has +not a good climate and we had not come at the right season to get the +best of the bad. The bad season itself was perverse, for the rains do +not usually begin in their bitterness at Madrid before November, and now +they began early in October. The day would open fair, with only a few +little white clouds in the large blue, and if we could trust other's +experience we knew it would rain before the day closed; only a morning +absolutely clear could warrant the hope of a day fair till sunset. +Shortly after noon the little white clouds would drift together and be +joined by others till they hid the large blue, and then the drops would +begin to fall. By that time the air would have turned raw and chill, and +the rain would be of a cold which it kept through the night. + +This habit of raining every afternoon was what kept us from seeing rank, +riches, and beauty in the Paseo de la Castellana, where they drive only +on fine afternoons; they now remained at home even more persistently +than we did, for with that love of the fashionable world for which I am +always blaming myself I sometimes took a cab and fared desperately forth +in pursuit of them. Only once did I seem to catch a glimpse of them, and +that once I saw a closed carriage weltering along the drive between the +trees and the trams that border it, with the coachman and footman snugly +sheltered under umbrellas on the box. This was something, though not a +great deal; I could not make out the people inside the carriage; yet it +helped to certify to me the fact that the great world does drive in the +Paseo de la Castellana and does not drive in the Paseo del Prado; that +is quite abandoned, even on the wettest days, to the very poor and +perhaps unfashionable people. + + + +V + +[Illustration: 12 THE BULL-RING, MADRID] + +It may have been our comparative defeat with fashion in its most +distinctive moments of pleasuring (for one thing I wished to see how the +dreariness of Madrid gaiety in the Paseo de la Castellana would compare +with that of Roman gaiety on the Pincian) which made us the more +determined to see a bull-fight in the Spanish capital. We had vowed +ourselves in coming to Spain to set the Spaniards an example of +civilization by inflexibly refusing to see a bull-fight under any +circumstances or for any consideration; but it seemed to us that it was +a sort of public duty to go and see the crowd, what it was like, in the +time and place where the Spanish crowd is most like itself. We would go +and remain in our places till everybody else was placed, and then, +when the picadors and banderilleros and matadors were all ranged in the +arena, and the gate was lifted, and the bull came rushing madly in, we +would rise before he had time to gore anybody, and go inexorably away. +This union of self-indulgence and self-denial seemed almost an act of +piety when we learned that the bull-fight was to be on Sunday, and we +prepared ourselves with tickets quite early in the week. On Saturday +afternoon it rained, of course, but the worst was that it rained on +Sunday morning, and the clouds did not lift till noon. Then the glowing +concierge of our hotel, a man so gaily hopeful, so expansively promising +that I could hardly believe he was not an Italian, said that there could +not possibly be a bull-fight that day; the rain would have made the +arena so slippery that man, horse, and bull would all fall down together +in a common ruin, with no hope whatever of hurting one another. + +We gave up this bull-fight at once, but we were the more resolved to see +a bull-fight because we still owed it to the Spanish people to come away +before we had time to look at it, and we said we would certainly go at +Cordova where we should spend the next Sabbath. At Cordova we learned +that it was the closed season for bull-fighting, but vague hopes of +usefulness to the Spanish public were held out to us at Seville, the +very metropolis of bull-fighting, where the bulls came bellowing up +from their native fields athirst for the blood of the profession and +the _aficionados,_ who outnumber there the amateurs of the whole rest +of Spain. But at Seville we were told that there would be no more +bull-feasts, as the Spaniards much more preferably call the bullfights, +till April, and now we were only in October. We said, Never mind; we +would go to a bull-feast in Granada; but at Granada the season was even +more hopelessly closed. In Ronda itself, which is the heart, as Seville +is the home of the bull-feast, we could only see the inside of the empty +arena; and at Algeciras the outside alone offered itself to our vision. +By this time the sense of duty was so strong upon us that if there had +been a bull-feast we would have shared in it and stayed through till the +last _espada_ dropped dead, gored through, at the knees of the last +bull transfixed by his unerring sword; and the other _toreros,_ +the _banderilleros_ with their darts and the picadors with their +disemboweled horses, lay scattered over the blood-stained arena. Such +is the force of a high resolve in strangers bent upon a lesson of +civilization to a barbarous people when disappointed of their purpose. +But we learned too late that only in Madrid is there any bull-feasting +in the winter. In the provincial cities the bulls are dispirited by the +cold; but in the capital, for the honor of the nation, they somehow pull +themselves together and do their poor best to kill and be killed. Yet +in the capital where the zeal of the bulls, and I suppose, of the +bull-fighters, is such, it is said that there is a subtle decay in the +fashionable, if not popular, esteem of the only sport which remembers +in the modern world the gladiatorial shows of imperial Rome. It is said, +but I do not know whether it is true, that the young English queen who +has gladly renounced her nation and religion for the people who seem so +to love her, cannot endure the bloody sights of the bull-feast; and when +it comes to the horses dragging their entrails across the ring, or the +_espada_ despatching the bull, or the bull tossing a _landerillero_ +in the air she puts up her fan. It is said also that the young Spanish +king, who has shown himself such a merciful-minded youth, and seems +so eager to make the best of the bad business of being a king at all, +sympathizes with her, and shows an obviously abated interest at these +supreme moments. + +I do not know whether or not it was because we had failed with the +bull-feast that we failed to go to any sort of public entertainment in +Madrid. It certainly was in my book to go to the theater, and see some +of those modern plays which I had read so many of, and which I had +translated one of for Lawrence Barrett in the far-off days before the +flood of native American dramas now deluging our theater. That play was +"Un Drama Nueva," by Estebanez, which between us we called "Yorick's +Love" and which my very knightly tragedian made his battle-horse during +the latter years of his life. In another version Barrett had seen it +fail in New York, but its failure left him with the lasting desire to do +it himself. A Spanish friend, now dead but then the gifted and eccentric +Consul General at Quebec, got me a copy of the play from Madrid, and I +thought there was great reason in a suggestion from another friend that +it had failed because it put Shakespeare on the stage as one of its +characters; but it seemed to me that the trouble could be got over by +making the poet Heywood represent the Shakespearian epoch. I did this +and the sole obstacle to its success seemed removed. It went, as the +enthusiastic Barrett used to say, "with a shout," though to please him I +had hurt it all I could by some additions and adaptations; and though it +was a most ridiculously romantic story of the tragical loves of Yorick +(whom the Latins like to go on imagining out of Hamlet a much more +interesting and important character than Shakespeare ever meant him to +be fancied), and ought to have remained the fiasco it began, still it +gained Barrett much money and me some little. + +I was always proud of this success, and I boasted of it to the +bookseller in Madrid, whom I interested in finding me some still +moderner plays after quite failing to interest another bookseller. Your +Spanish merchant seems seldom concerned in a mercantile transaction; +but perhaps it was not so strange in the case of this Spanish bookseller +because he was a German and spoke a surprising English in response to my +demand whether he spoke any. He was the frowsiest bookseller I ever saw, +and he was in the third day of his unshavenness with a shirt-front +and coat-collar plentifully bedandruffed from his shaggy hair; but he +entered into the spirit of my affair and said if that Spanish play had +succeeded so wonderfully, then I ought to pay fifty per cent, more than +the current price for the other Spanish plays which I wanted him to get +me. I laughed with him at the joke which I found simple earnest when our +glowing concierge gave me the books next day, and I perceived that +the proposed supplement had really been paid for them on my account. +I should not now be grieving for this incident if the plays had proved +better reading than they did on experiment. Some of them were from the +Catalan, and all of them dealt with the simpler actual life of Spain; +but they did not deal impressively with it, though they seemed to me +more hopeful in conception than certain psychological plays of ten or +fifteen years ago, which the Spanish authors had too clearly studied +from Ibsen. + +They might have had their effect in the theater, but the rainy weather +had not only spoiled my sole chance of the bull-feast; the effect of it +in a stubborn cold forbade me the night air and kept me from testing +any of the new dramas on the stage, which is always giving new dramas in +Madrid. The stage, or rather the theater, is said to be truly a passion +with the Madrilenos, who go every night to see the whole or the part of +a play and do not mind seeing the same play constantly, as if it were +opera. They may not care to see the play so much as to be seen at it; +that happens in every country; but no doubt the plays have a charm which +did not impart itself from the printed page. The companies are reported +very good: but the reader must take this from me at second hand, as he +must take the general society fact. I only know that people ask you to +dinner at nine, and if they go to the theater afterward they cannot +well come away till toward one o'clock. It is after this hour that the +_tertulia,_ that peculiarly Spanish function, begins, but how long it +lasts or just what it is I do not know. I am able to report confidently, +however, that it is a species of _salon_ and that it is said to be +called a _tertulia_ because of the former habit in the guests, and no +doubt the hostess, of quoting the poet Tertullian. It is of various +constituents, according as it is a fashionable, a literary, or an +artistic _tertulia,_ or all three with an infusion of science. Oftenest, +I believe, it is a domestic affair and all degrees of cousinship resort +to it with brothers and sisters and uncles, who meet with the pleasant +Latin liking of frequent meetings among kindred. In some cases no doubt +it is a brilliant reunion where lively things are said; in others it +may be dull; in far the most cases it seems to be held late at night or +early in the morning. + + + +VI + + +It was hard, after being shut up several days, that one must not go out +after nightfall, and if one went out by day, one must go with closed +lips and avoid all talking in the street under penalty of incurring +the dreaded pneumonia of Madrid. Except for that dreaded pneumonia, +I believe the air of Madrid is not so pestilential as it has been +reported. Public opinion is beginning to veer in favor of it, just as +the criticism which has pronounced Madrid commonplace and unpicturesque +because it is not obviously old, is now finding a charm in it peculiar +to the place. Its very modernity embodies and imparts the charm, which +will grow as the city grows in wideness and straightness. It is in the +newer quarter that it recalls Rome or the newer quarters of Rome; but +there is an old part of it that recalls the older part of Naples, though +the streets are not quite so narrow nor the houses so high. There +is like bargaining at the open stands with the buyers and sellers +chaffering over them; there is a likeness in the people's looks, too, +but when it comes to the most characteristic thing of Naples, Madrid is +not in it for a moment. I mean the bursts of song which all day long and +all night long you hear in Naples; and this seems as good a place as any +to say that to my experience Spain is a songless land. We had read much +of the song and dance there, but though the dance might be hired the +song was never offered for love or money. To be sure, in Toledo, once, +a woman came to her door across the way under otir hotel window and sang +over the slops she emptied into the street, but then she shut the door +and we heard her no more. In Cordova there was as brief a peal of music +from a house which we passed, and in Algeciras we heard one short sweet +strain from a girl whom we could not see behind her lattice. Besides +these chance notes we heard no other by any chance. But this is by no +means saying that there is not abundant song in Spain, only it was kept +quiet; I suppose that if we had been there in the spring instead of the +fall we should at least have heard the birds singing. In Madrid there +were not even many street cries; a few in the Puerta del Sol, yes; but +the peasants who drove their mule-teams through the streets scarcely +lifted their voices in reproach or invitation; they could trust the wise +donkeys that led them to get them safely through the difficult places. +There was no audible quarreling among the cabmen, and when you called a +cab it was useless to cry "Heigh!" or shake your umbrella; you made +play with your thumb and finger in the air and sibilantly whispered; +otherwise the cabman ignored you and went on reading his newspaper. The +cabmen of Madrid are great readers, much greater, I am sorry to say, +than I was, for whenever I bought a Spanish paper I found it extremely +well written. Now and then I expressed my political preferences in +buying _El Liberal_ which I thought very able; even _El Imparcial_ I +thought able, though it is less radical than _El Liberal,_ a paper which +is published simultaneously in Madrid, with local editions in several +provincial cities. + +For all the street silence there seemed to be a great deal of noise, +which I suppose came from the click of boots on the sidewalks and of +hoofs in roadways and the grind and squeal of the trams, with the harsh +smiting of the unrubbered tires of the closed cabs on the rough granite +blocks of the streets. But there are asphalted streets in Madrid where +the sound of the hoofs and wheels is subdued, and the streets rough and +smooth are kept of a cleanliness which would put the streets of New York +to shame if anything could. Ordinarily you could get cabs anywhere, but +if you wanted one very badly, when remote from a stand, there was more +than one chance that a cab marked _Libre_ would pass you with lordly +indifference. As for motor taxi-cabs there are none in the city, and +at Cook's they would not take the responsibility of recommending any +automobiles for country excursions. + + + +VII + + +I linger over these sordid details because I must needs shrink before +the mention of that incomparable gallery, the Museo del Prado. I am +careful not to call it the greatest gallery in the world, for I think of +what the Louvre, the Pitti, and the National Gallery are, and what +our own Metropolitan is going to be; but surely the Museo del Prado is +incomparable for its peculiar riches. It is part of the autobiographical +associations with my Spanish travel that when John Hay, who was not yet, +by thirty or forty years, the great statesman he became, but only the +breeziest of young Secretaries of Legation, just two weeks from his post +in Madrid, blew surprisingly into my little carpenter's box in Cambridge +one day, he boasted almost the first thing that the best Titians in the +world were in the Prado galleries. I was too lately from Venice in 1867 +not to have my inward question whether there could be anywhere a better +Titian than the "Assumption," but I loved Hay too much to deny him +openly. I said that I had no doubt of it, and when the other day I +went to the Prado it was with the wish of finding him perfectly right, +triumphantly right. I had been from the first a strong partisan of +Titian, and in many a heated argument with Ruskin, unaware of our +controversy, I had it out with that most prejudiced partisan of +Tintoretto. I always got the better of him, as one does in such +dramatizations, where one frames one's opponent's feeble replies for +him; but now in the Prado, sadly and strangely enough, I began to wonder +if Ruskin might not have tacitly had the better of me all the time. If +Hay was right in holding that the best Titians in the world were in the +Prado, then I was wrong in having argued for Titian against Tintoretto +with Ruskin. I could only wish that I had the "Assumption" there, or +some of those senators whose portraits I remembered in the Academy +at Venice. The truth is that to my eye he seemed to weaken before the +Spanish masters, though I say this, who must confess that I failed to +see the room of his great portraits. The Italians who hold their own +with the Spaniards are Tintoretto and Veronese; even Murillo was more +than a match for Titian in such pictures of his as I saw (I must own +that I did not see the best, or nearly all), though properly speaking +Murillo is to be known at his greatest only in Seville. + +But Velasquez, but Velasquez! In the Prado there is no one else present +when he is by, with his Philips and Charleses, and their "villainous +hanging of the nether lip," with his hideous court dwarfs and his pretty +princes and princesses, his grandees and jesters, his allegories and +battles, his pastorals and chases, which fitly have a vast salon to +themselves, not only that the spectator may realize at once the rich +variety and abundance of the master, but that such lesser lights as +Rubens, Titian, Correggio, Giorgione, Tintoretto, Veronese, Rembrandt, +Zurbaran, El Greco, Murillo, may not be needlessly dimmed by his +surpassing splendor. I leave to those who know painting from the +painter's art to appreciate the technical perfection of Velasquez; I +take my stand outside of that, and acclaim its supremacy in virtue of +that reality which all Spanish art has seemed always to strive for and +which in Velasquez it incomparably attains. This is the literary quality +which the most untechnical may feel, and which is not clearer to the +connoisseur than to the least unlearned. + +After Velasquez in the Prado we wanted Goya, and more and more Goya, who +is as Spanish and as unlike Velasquez as can very well be. There was +not enough Goya abovestairs to satisfy us, but in the Goya room in the +basement there was a series of scenes from Spanish life, mostly frolic +campestral things, which he did as patterns for tapestries and which +came near being enough in their way: the way of that reality which is +so far from the reality of Velasquez. There, striving with their +strangeness, we found a young American husband and wife who said they +were going to Egypt, and seemed so anxious to get out of Spain that they +all but asked us which turning to take. They had a Baedeker of 1901. +which they had been deceived in at New York as the latest edition, and +they were apparently making nothing of the Goyas and were as if lost +down there in the basement. They were in doubt about going further in a +country which had inveigled them from Gibraltar as far as its capital. +They advised with us about Burgos, of all places, and when we said the +hotels in Burgos were very cold, they answered, Well they had thought +so; and the husband asked, Spain was a pretty good place to cut out, +wasn't it? The wife expected that they would find some one in Egypt who +spoke English; she had expected they would speak French in Spain, but +had been disappointed. They had left their warm things at Gibraltar and +were almost frozen already. They were as good and sweet and nice as they +could be, and we were truly sorry to part with them and leave them to +what seemed to be a mistake which they were not to blame for. + +I wish that all Europeans and all Europeanized Americans knew how to +value such incorruptible con-nationals, who would, I was sure, carry +into the deepest dark of Egypt and over the whole earth undimmed the +light of our American single-heartedness. I would have given something +to know from just which kind country town and companionable commonwealth +of our Union they had come, but I would not have given much, for I knew +that they could have come from almost any. In their modest satisfaction +with our own order of things, our language, our climate, our weather, +they would not rashly condemn those of other lands, but would give them +a fair chance; and, if when they got home again, they would have to +report unfavorably of the Old World to the Board of Trade or the Woman's +Club, it would not be without intelligent reservations, even generous +reservations. They would know much more than they knew before they +came abroad, and if they had not seen Europe distinctly, but in a glass +darkly, still they would have seen it and would be the wiser and none +the worse for it. They would still be of their shrewd, pure American +ideals, and would judge their recollections as they judged their +experiences by them; and I wish we were all as confirmed in our fealty +to those ideals. + +They were not, clearly enough, of that yet older fashion of Americans +who used to go through European galleries buying copies of the +masterpieces which the local painters were everywhere making. With this +pair the various postal-card reproductions must have long superseded the +desire or the knowledge of copies, and I doubt if many Americans of any +sort now support that honored tradition. Who, then, does support it? The +galleries of the Prado seem as full of copyists as they could have been +fifty years ago, and many of them were making very good copies. _I_ wish +I could say they were working as diligently as copyists used to work, +but copyists are now subject to frequent interruptions, not from the +tourists but from one another. They used to be all men, mostly grown +gray in their pursuit, but now they are both men and women, and younger +and the women are sometimes very pretty. In the Prado one saw several +pairs of such youth conversing together, forgetful of everything around +them, and on terms so very like flirtatious that they could not well be +distinguished from them. They were terms that other Spanish girls could +enjoy only with a wooden lattice and an iron grille between them and the +_novios_ outside their windows; and no tourist of the least heart could +help rejoicing with them. In the case of one who stood with her little +figure slanted and her little head tilted, looking up into the charmed +eyes of a tall _rubio,_ the tourist could not help rejoicing with the +young man too. + +The day after our day in the Prado we found ourselves in the Museum of +Modern Art through the kind offices of our mistaken cabman when we were +looking for the Archaeological Museum. But we were not sorry, for some +of the new or newer pictures and sculptures were well worth seeing, +though we should never have tried for them. The force of the masters +which the ideals of the past held in restraint here raged in unbridled +excess: but if I like that force so much, why do I say excess? The new +or newer Spanish art likes an immense canvas, say as large as the side +of a barn, and it chooses mostly a tragical Spanish history in which it +riots with a young sense of power brave to see. There were a dozen of +those mighty dramas which I would have liked to bring away with me if +I had only had a town hall big enough to put them into after I got them +home. There were sculptures as masterful and as mighty as the pictures, +but among the paintings there was one that seemed to subdue all the +infuriate actions to the calm of its awful repose. This was Gisbert's +"Execution of Torrejos and his Companions," who were shot at Malaga in +1830 for a rising in favor of constitutional government. One does not, +if one is as wise as I, attempt to depict pictures, and I leave +this most heroic, most pathetic, most heart-breaking, most consoling +masterpiece for my reader to go and see for himself; it is almost worth +going as far as Madrid to see. Never in any picture do I remember the +like of those sad, brave, severe faces of the men standing up there to +be shot, where already their friends lay dead at their feet. A tumbled +top-hat in the foreground had an effect awfuller than a tumbled head +would have had. + + + +VIII + + +Besides this and those other histories there were energetic portraits +and vigorous landscapes in the Modern Museum, where if we had not been +bent so on visiting the Archaeological Museum, we would willingly have +spent the whole morning. But we were determined to see the Peruvian and +Mexican antiquities which we believed must be treasured up in it; and +that we might not fail of finding it, I gave one of the custodians a +special peseta to take us out on the balcony and show us exactly how +to get to it. He was so precise and so full in his directions that we +spent the next half-hour in wandering fatuously round the whole region +before we stumbled, almost violently, upon it immediately back of the +Modern Museum. Will, it be credited that it was then hardly worth seeing +for the things we meant to see? The Peruvian and Mexican antiquities +were so disappointing that we would hardly look at the Etruscan, Greek, +and Roman things which it was so much richer in. To be sure, we had +seen and overseen the like of these long before in Italy; but they were +admirably arranged in this museum, so that without the eager help of the +custodians (which two cents would buy at any turn) we could have found +pleasure in them, whereas the Aztec antiquities were mostly copies in +plaster and the Inca jewelry not striking. + +Before finding the place we had had the help of two policemen and one +newsboy and a postman in losing ourselves in the Prado where we mostly +sought for it, and with difficulty kept ourselves from being thrust into +the gallery there. In Spain a man, or even a boy, does not like to say +he does not know where a place is; he is either too proud or too polite +to do it, and he will misdirect you without mercy. But the morning was +bright, and almost warm, and we should have looked forward to weeks of +sunny weather if our experience had not taught us that it would rain in +the afternoon, and if greater experience than ours had not instructed +us that there would be many days of thick fog now before the climate of +Madrid settled itself to the usual brightness of February. We had time +to note again in the Paseo Castellana, which is the fashionable drive, +that it consists of four rows of acacias and tamarisks and a stretch +of lawn, with seats beside it; the rest is bare grasslessness, with a +bridle-path on one side and a tram-line on the other. If it had been +late afternoon the Paseo would have been filled with the gay world, but +being the late forenoon we had to leave it well-nigh unpeopled and go +back to our hotel, where the excellent midday breakfast merited the best +appetite one could bring to it. + +In fact, all the meals of our hotel were good, and of course they were +only too superabundant. They were pretty much what they were everywhere +in Spain, and they were better everywhere than they were in Granada +where we paid most for them. They were appetizing, and not of the +cooking which the popular superstition attributes to Spain, where the +hotel cooking is not rank with garlic or fiery with pepper, as the +untraveled believe. At luncheon in our Madrid hotel we had a liberal +choice of eggs in any form, the delicious _arroz a la Valencia,_ a +kind of risotto, with saffron to savor and color it; veal cutlets or +beefsteak, salad, cheese, grapes, pears, and peaches, and often melon; +the ever-admirable melon of Spain, which I had learned to like in +England. At dinner there were soup, fish, entree, roast beef, lamb, +or poultry, vegetables, salad, sweet, cheese, and fruit; and there was +pretty poor wine _ad libitum_ at both meals. For breakfast there was +good and true (or true enough) coffee with rich milk, which if we +sometimes doubted it to be goat's milk we were none the worse if none +the wiser for, as at dinner we were not either if we unwittingly ate kid +for lamb. + +There were not many people in the hotel, but the dining-room was filled +by citizens who came in with the air of frequenters. They were +not people of fashion, as we readily perceived, but kindly-looking +mercantile folk, and ladies painted as white as newly calcimined house +walls; and all gravely polite. There was one gentleman as large round +as a hogshead, with a triple arrangement of fat at the back of his neck +which was fascinating. He always bowed when we met (necessarily with +his whole back) and he ate with an appetite proportioned to his girth. +I could wish still to know who and what he was, for he was a person very +much to my mind. So was the head waiter, dark, silent, clean-shaven, who +let me use my deplorable Spanish with him, till in the last days he came +out with some very fair English which he had been courteously concealing +from me. He looked own brother to the room-waiter in our corridor, +whose companionship I could desire always to have. One could not be so +confident of the sincerity of the little _camarera_ who slipped out of +the room with a soft, sidelong "_De nada"_ at one's thanks for the hot +water in the morning; but one could stake one's life on the goodness of +this _camarero._ He was not so tall as his leanness made him look; he +was of a national darkness of eyes and hair which as imparted to his +tertian clean-shavenness was a deep blue. He spoke, with a certain +hesitation, a beautiful Castilian, delicately lisping the sibilants and +strongly throating the gutturals; and what he said you could believe. +He never was out of the way when wanted; he darkled with your boots +and shoes in a little closet next your door, and came from it with the +morning coffee and rolls. In a stress of frequentation he appeared in +evening dress in the dining-room at night, and did honor to the place; +but otherwise he was to be seen only in our corridor, or in the cold, +dark chamber at the stair head where the _camareras_ sat sewing, kept in +check by his decorum. Without being explicitly advised of the fact, I am +sure he was the best of Catholics, and that he would have burnt me for a +heretic if necessary; but he would have done it from his conscience and +for my soul's good after I had recanted. He seldom smiled, but when he +did you could see it was from his heart. + +His contrast, his very antithesis, the joyous concierge, was always +smiling, and was every way more like an Italian than a Spaniard. He +followed us into the wettest Madrid weather with the sunny rays of his +temperament, and welcomed our returning cab with an effulgence that +performed the effect of an umbrella in the longish walk from the +curbstone to the hotel door, past the grape arbor whose fruit ripened +for us only in a single bunch, though he had so confidently prophesied +our daily pleasure in it. He seemed at first to be the landlord, +and without reference to higher authority he gave us beautiful rooms +overlooking the bacchanal vine which would have been filled with +sunshine if the weather had permitted. When he lapsed into the +concierge, he got us, for five pesetas, so deep and wide a wood-box, +covered with crimson cloth, that he was borne out by the fact in +declaring that the wood in it would last us as long as we stayed; it was +oak wood, hard as iron, and with the bellows that accompanied it we +blew the last billet of it into a solid coal by which we drank our last +coffee in that hotel. His spirit, his genial hopefulness, reconciled +us to the infirmities of the house during the period of transition +beginning for it and covering our stay. It was to be rebuilt on a scale +out-Ritzing the Ritz; but in the mean while it was not quite the Ritz. +There was a time when the elevator-shaft seemed to have tapped the awful +sources of the smell in the house of Cervantes at Valladolid, but I do +not remember what blameless origin the concierge assigned to the odor, +or whether it had anything to do with the horses and the hens which a +chance-opened back door showed us stabled in the rear of the hotel's +grandiose entrance. + +Our tourist clientele, thanks I think to the allure of our concierge for +all comers, was most respectable, though there was no public place for +people to sit but a small reading-room colder than the baths of Apollo. +But when he entered the place it was as if a fire were kindled in the +minute stove never otherwise heated, and the old English and French +newspapers freshened themselves up to the actual date as nearly as they +could. We were mostly, perhaps, Spanish families come from our several +provinces for a bit of the season which all Spanish families of +civil condition desire more or less of: lean, dark fathers, slender, +white-stuccoed daughters, and fat, white-stuccoed mothers; very +still-faced, and grave-mannered. We were also a few English, and from +time to time a few Americans, but I believe we were not, however worthy, +very great-world. The concierge who had so skilfully got us together was +instant in our errands and commissions, and when it came to two of us +being shut up with colds brought from Burgos it vas he who supplemented +the promptness of the apothecaries in sending our medicines and coming +himself at times to ask after our welfare. + + + +IX + + +In a strange country all the details of life are interesting, and +we noticed with peculiar interest that Spain was a country where the +prescriptions were written in the vulgar tongue instead of the little +Latin in which prescriptions are addressed to the apothecaries of other +lands. We were disposed to praise the faculty if not the art for this, +but our doctor forbade. He said it was because the Spanish apothecaries +were so unlearned that they could not read even so little Latin as the +shortest prescription contained. Still I could not think the custom a +bad one, though founded on ignorance, and I do not see why it should not +have made for the greater safety of those who took the medicine if those +who put it up should follow a formula in their native tongue. I know +that at any rate we found the Spanish medicines beneficial and were +presently suffered to go out-of-doors, but with those severe injunctions +against going out after nightfall or opening our lips when we went out +by day. It was rather a bother, but it was fine to feel one's self in +the classic Madrid tradition of danger from pneumonia and to be of the +dignified company of the Spanish gentlemen whom we met with the border +of their cloaks over their mouths; like being a character in a _capa y +espada_ drama. + +There was almost as little acted as spoken drama in the streets. I have +given my impression of the songlessness of Spain in Madrid as elsewhere, +but if there was no street singing there was often street playing by +pathetic bands of blind minstrels with guitars and mandolins. The blind +abound everywhere in Spain in that profession of street beggary which +I always encouraged, believing as I do that comfort in this unbalanced +world cannot be too constantly reminded of misery. As the hunchbacks are +in Italy, or the wooden peg-legged in England, so the blind are in +Spain for number. I could not say how touching the sight of their +sightlessness was, or how the remembrance of it makes me wish that I had +carried more coppers with me when I set out. I would gladly authorize +the reader when he goes to Madrid to do the charity I often neglected; +he will be the better man, or even woman, for it; and he need not mind +if his beneficiary is occasionally unworthy; he may be unworthy himself; +I am sure I was. + +But the Spanish street is rarely the theatrical spectacle that the +Italian street nearly always is. Now and then there was a bit in Madrid +which one would be sorry to have missed, such as the funeral of a civil +magistrate, otherwise unknown to me, which I saw pass my cafe window: +a most architectural black hearse, under a black roof, drawn by eight +black horses, sable-plumed. The hearse was open at the sides, with +the coffin fully showing, and a gold-laced _chapeau bras_ lying on +it. Behind came twenty or twenty-five gentlemen on foot in the modern +ineffectiveness of frock-coats and top-hats, and after them eight or ten +closed carriages. The procession passed without the least notice from +the crowd, which I saw at other times stirred to a flutter of emulation +in its small boys by companies of infantry marching to the music of +sharply blown bugles. The men were handsomer than Italian soldiers, but +not so handsome as the English, and in figure they were not quite the +deplorable pigmies one often sees in France. Their bugles, with the +rhythmical note which the tram-cars sound, and the guitars and mandolins +of the blind minstrels, made the only street music I remember in Madrid. + +Between the daily rains, which came in the afternoon, the sun was +sometimes very hot, but it was always cool enough indoors. The indoors +interests were not the art or story of the churches. The intensest +Catholic capital in Christendom is in fact conspicuous in nothing more +than the reputed uninterestingness of its churches. I went into one of +them, however, with a Spanish friend, and I found it beautiful, most +original, and most impressive for its architecture and painting, but +I forget which church it was. We were going rather a desultory drive +through those less frequented parts of the city which I have mentioned +as like a sort of muted Naples: poor folk living much out-of-doors, +buying and selling at hucksters' stands and booths, and swarming about +the chief market, where the guilty were formerly put to death, but the +innocent are now provisioned. Outside the market was not attractive, and +what it was within we did not look to see. We went rather to satisfy +my wish to see whether the Manzanares is as groveling a stream as the +guide-books pretend in their effort to give a just idea of the natural +disadvantages of Madrid, as the only great capital without an adequate +river. But whether abetted by the arts of my friend or not, the +Manzanares managed to conceal itself from me; when we left our carriage +and went to look for it, I saw only some pretty rills and falls which +it possibly fed and which lent their beauty to the charming up and down +hill walks, now a public pleasaunce, but formerly the groves and gardens +of the royal palace. Our talk in Spanish from him and Italian from me +was of Tolstoy and several esthetic and spiritual interests, and when +we remounted and drove back to the city, whom should I see, hard by the +King's palace, but those dear Chilians of my heart whom we had left at +Valladolid--husband, wife, sister, with the addition of a Spanish lady +of very acceptable comeliness, in white gloves, and as blithe as they. +In honor of the capital the other ladies wore white gloves too, but the +husband and brother still kept the straw hat which I had first known him +in at San Sebastian, and which I hope yet to know him by in New York. It +was a glad clash of greetings which none of us tried to make coherent or +intelligible, and could not if we had tried. They acclaimed their hotel, +and I ours; but on both sides I dare say we had our reserves; and +then we parted, secure that the kind chances of travel would bring us +together again somewhere. + +[Illustration: 13 GUARD-MOUNT IN THE PLAZA DE ARMAS, ROYAL PALACE, MADRID] + +I did not visit the palace, but the Royal Armory I had seen two days +before on a gay morning that had not yet sorrowed to the afternoon's +rain. At the gate of the palace I fell into the keeping of one of the +authorized guides whom I wish I could identify so that I could send the +reader to pay him the tip I came short in. It is a pang to think of +the repressed disappointment in his face when in a moment of insensate +sparing I gave him the bare peseta to which he was officially entitled, +instead of the two or three due his zeal and intelligence; and I +strongly urge my readers to be on their guard against a mistaken +meanness like mine. I can never repair that, for if I went back to the +Royal Armory I should not know him by sight, and if I sought among the +guides saying I was the stranger who had behaved in that shabby sort, +how would that identify me among so many other shabby strangers? He had +the intelligence to leave me and the constant companion of these travels +to ourselves as we went about that treasury of wonders, but before we +got to the armory he stayed us with a delicate gesture outside the court +of the palace till a troop for the guard-mounting had gone in. Then he +led us across the fine, beautiful quadrangle to the door of the museum, +and waited for us there till we came out. By this time the space was +brilliant with the confronted bodies of troops, those about to be +relieved of guard duty, and those come to relieve them, and our guide +got us excellent places where we could see everything and yet be out +of the wind which was beginning to blow cuttingly through the gates +and colonnades. There were all arms of the service--horse, foot, and +artillery; and the ceremony, with its pantomime and parley, was much +more impressive than the changing of the colors which I had once seen +at Buckingham Palace. The Spanish privates took the business not less +seriously than the British, and however they felt the Spanish officers +did not allow themselves to look bored. The marching and countermarching +was of a refined stateliness, as if the pace were not a goose step but +a peacock step; and the music was of an exquisitely plaintive and tender +note, which seemed to grieve rather than exult; I believe it was the +royal march which they were playing, but I am not versed in _such_ +matters. Nothing could have been fitter than the quiet beauty of the +spectacle, opening through the westward colonnade to the hills and woods +of the royal demesne, with yellowing and embrowning trees that billowed +from distance to distance. Some day these groves and forests must be for +the people's pleasure, as all royal belongings seem finally to be; and +in the mean time I did not grudge the landscape to the young king and +queen who probably would not have grudged it to me. Our guide valued +himself upon our admiration of it; without our special admiration he +valued himself upon the impressive buildings of the railway station +in the middle distance. I forget whether he followed us out of +the quadrangle into the roadway where we had the advantage of some +picturesque army wagons, and some wagoners in red-faced jackets and red +trousers, and top-boots with heavy fringes of leathern strings. Yet it +must have been he who made us aware of a high-walled inclosure where +soldiers found worthy of death by court martial could be conveniently +shot; though I think we discovered for ourselves the old woman curled up +out of the wind in a sentry-box, and sweetly asleep there while the boys +were playing marbles on the smooth ground before it. I must not omit the +peanut-boaster in front of the palace; it was in the figure of an ocean +steamer, nearly as large as the _Lusitania,_ and had smoke coming out +of the funnel, with rudder and screw complete and doll sailors climbing +over the rigging. + +But it is impossible to speak adequately of the things in that wonderful +armory. If the reader has any pleasure in the harnesses of Spanish kings +and captains, from the great Charles the Fifth down through all the +Philips and the Charleses, he can glut it there. Their suits begin +almost with their steel baby clothes, and adapt themselves almost to +their senile decrepitude. There is the horse-litter in which the great +emperor was borne to battle, and there is the sword which Isabella the +great queen wore; and I liked looking at the lanterns and the flags of +the Turkish galleys from the mighty sea-fight cf Lepanto, and the many +other trophies won from the Turks. The pavilion of Francis I. taken +at Pavia was of no secondary interest, and everywhere was personal and +national history told in the weapons and the armor of those who made the +history. Perhaps some time the peoples will gather into museums the pens +and pencils and chisels of authors and artists, and the old caps and +gowns they wore, or the chairs they sat in at their work, or the pianos +and violoncellos of famous musicians, or the planes of surpassing +carpenters, or the hammers of eminent ironworkers; but these things will +never be so picturesque as the equipments with which the military heroes +saved their own lives or took others'. We who have never done either +must not be unreasonable or impatient. It will be many a long century +yet before we are appreciated at the value we now set upon ourselves. In +the mean while we do not have such a bad time, and we are not so easily +forgotten as some of those princes and warriors. + + + +XI + + +One of the first errors of our search for the Archaeological Museum, +promoted by the mistaken kindness of people we asked the way, found us +in the Academy of Fine Arts, where in the company of a fat and flabby +Rubens (Susanna, of course, and those filthy Elders) we chanced on a +portrait of Goya by himself: a fine head most takingly shrewd. But there +was another portrait by him, of the ridiculous Godoy, Prince of the +Peace, a sort of handsome, foolish fleshy George Fourthish person +looking his character and history: one of the most incredible parasites +who ever fattened on a nation. This impossible creature, hated more than +feared, and despised more than hated, who misruled a generous people for +twenty-five years, throughout the most heroic period of their annals, +the low-born paramour of their queen and the beloved friend of the +king her husband, who honored and trusted him with the most pathetic +single-hearted and simple-minded devotion, could not look all that +he was and was not; but in this portrait by Goya he suggested his +unutterable worthlessness: a worthlessness which you can only begin to +realize by successively excluding all the virtues, and contrasting it +with the sort of abandon of faith on the part of the king; this in the +common imbecility, the triune madness of the strange group, has its +sublimity. In the next room are two pieces of Goya's which recall +in their absolute realism another passage of Spanish history with +unparalleled effect. They represent, one the accused heretics receiving +sentence before a tribunal of the Inquisition, and the other the +execution of the sentence, where the victims are mocked by a sort of +fools' caps inscribed with the terms of their accusal. Their faces are +turned on the spectator, who may forget them if he can. + +I had the help of a beautiful face there which Goya had also painted: +the face of Moratin, the historian of the Spanish drama whose book had +been one of the consolations of exile from Spain in my Ohio village. +That fine countenance rapt me far from where I stood, to the village, +with its long maple-shaded summer afternoons, and its long lamp-lit +winter nights when I was trying to find my way through Moratin's history +of the Spanish drama, and somehow not altogether failing, so that +fragments of the fact still hang about me. I wish now I could find the +way back through it, or even to it, but between me and it there are +so many forgotten passes that it would be hopeless trying. I can only +remember the pride and joy of finding my way alone through it, and +emerging from time to time into the light that glimmered before me. I +cannot at all remember whether it was before or after exploring this +history that I ventured upon the trackless waste of a volume of the +dramatists themselves, where I faithfully began with the earliest and +came down to those of the great age when Cervantes and Calderon and Lope +de Vega were writing the plays. It was either my misfortune that I read +Lope and not Calderon, or that I do not recall reading Calderon at all, +and know him only by a charming little play of Madrid life given ten or +fifteen years ago by the pupils of the Dramatic Academy in New York. My +lasting ignorance of this master was not for want of knowing how great +he was, especially from Lowell, who never failed to dwell on it when the +talk was of Spanish literature. The fact is I did not get much pleasure +out of Lope, but I did enjoy the great tragedy of Cervantes, and such of +his comedies as I found in that massive volume. + +I did not realize, however, till I saw that play of Calderon's, in New +York, how much the Spanish drama lias made Madrid its scene; and until +one knows modern Spanish fiction one cannot know how essentially the +incongruous city is the capital of the Spanish imagination. Of course +the action of Gil Bias largely passes there, but Gil Blas in only +adoptively a Spanish novel, and the native picaresque story is oftener +at home in the provinces; but since Spanish fiction has come to full +consciousness in the work of the modern masters it has resorted more +and more to Madrid. If I speak only of Galdos and Valdes by name, it is +because I know them best as the greatest of their time; but I fancy the +allure of the capital has been felt by every other modern more or less; +and if I were a Spanish author I should like to put a story there. If I +were a Spaniard at all, I should like to live there a part of the year, +or to come up for some sojourn, as the real Spaniards do. In such an +event I should be able to tell the reader more about Madrid than I now +know. I should not be poorly keeping to hotels and galleries and streets +and the like surfaces of civilization; but should be saying all sorts of +well-informed and surprising things about my fellow-citizens. As it is +I have tried somewhat to say how I think they look to a stranger, and if +it is not quite as they have looked to other strangers I do not insist +upon my own stranger's impression. There is a great choice of good books +about Spain, so that I do not feel bound to add to them with anything +like finality. + +I have tried to give a sense of the grand-opera effect of the street +scene, but I have record of only one passage such as one often sees in +Italy where moments of the street are always waiting for transfer to +the theater. A pair had posed themselves, across the way from our hotel, +against the large closed shutter of a shop which made an admirable +background. The woman in a black dress, with a red shawl over her +shoulders, stood statuesquely immovable, confronting the middle-class +man who, while people went and came about them, poured out his mind +to her, with many frenzied gestures, but mostly using one hand for +emphasis. He seemed to be telling something rather than asserting +himself or accusing her; portraying a past fact or defining a situation; +and she waited immovably silent till he had finished. Then she began +and warmed to her work, but apparently without anger or prejudice. She +talked herself out, as he had talked himself out. He waited and then +he left her and crossed to the other corner. She called after him as he +kept on down the street. She turned away, but stopped, and turned again +and called after him till he passed from sight. Then she turned once +more and went her own way. Nobody minded, any more than if they had been +two unhappy ghosts invisibly and inaudibly quarreling, but I remained, +and remain to this day, afflicted because of the mystery of their +dispute. + +We did not think there were so many boys, proportionately, or boys let +loose, in Madrid as in the other towns we had seen, and we remarked to +that sort of foreign sojourner who is so often met in strange cities +that the children seemed like little men and women. "Yes," he said, "the +Spaniards are not children until they are thirty or forty, and then they +never grow up." It was perhaps too epigrammatic, but it may have caught +at a fact. From another foreign sojourner I heard that the Catholicism +of Spain, in spite of all newspaper appearances to the contrary and many +bold novels, is still intense and unyieldingly repressive. But how far +the severity of the church characterizes manners it would be hard to +say. Perhaps these are often the effect of temperament. One heard more +than one saw of the indifference of shop-keepers to shoppers in Madrid; +in Andalusia, say especially in Seville, one saw nothing of it. But from +the testimony of sufferers it appears to be the Madrid shop-keeper's +reasonable conception that if a customer comes to buy something it is +because he, or more frequently she, wants it and is more concerned than +himself in the transaction. He does not put himself about in serving +her, and if she intimates that he is rudely indifferent, and that though +she has often come to him before she will never come again, he remains +tranquil. From experience I cannot say how true this is; but certainly +I failed to awaken any lively emotion in the booksellers of whom I tried +to buy some modern plays. It seemed to me that I was vexing them in the +Oriental calm which they would have preferred to my money, or even my +interest in the new Spanish drama. But in a shop where fans were sold, +the shopman, taken in an unguarded moment, seemed really to enter into +the spirit of our selection for friends at home; he even corrected my +wrong accent in the Spanish word for fan, which was certainly going a +great way. + + + +XII + + +It was not the weather for fans in Madrid, where it rained that cold +rain every afternoon, and once the whole of one day, and we could not +reasonably expect to see fans in the hands of ladies in real life so +much as in the pictures of ladies on the fans themselves. In fact, I +suppose that to see the Madrilenas most in character one should see them +in summer which in southern countries is the most characteristic season. +Theophile Gautier was governed by this belief when he visited Spain in +the hottest possible weather, and left for the lasting delight of the +world the record of that _Voyage en Espagne_ which he made seventy-two +years ago. He then thought the men better dressed than the women at +Madrid. Their boots are as "varnished, and they are gloved as white as +possible. Their coats are correct and their trousers laudable; but the +cravat is not of the same purity, and the waistcoat, that only part of +modern dress where the fancy may play, is not always of irreproachable +taste." As to the women: "What we understand in France as the Spanish +type does not exist in Spain... One imagines usually, when one says +_mantilla_ and _senora,_ an oval, rather long and pale, with large dark +eyes, surmounted with brows of velvet, a thin nose, a little arched, +a mouth red as a pomegranate, and, above all, a tone warm and golden, +justifying the verse of romance, _She is yellow like an orange._ This +is the Arab or Moorish type and not the Spanish type. The Madrilenas are +charming in the full acceptation of the word; out of four three will be +pretty; but they do not answer at all to the idea we have of them. They +are small, delicate, well formed, the foot narrow and the figure curved, +the bust of a rich contour; but their skin is very white, the features +delicate and mobile, the mouth heart-shaped and representing perfectly +certain portraits of the Regency. Often they have fair hair, and you +cannot take three turns in the Prado without meeting eight blonds of all +shades, from the ashen blond to the most vehement red, the red of the +beard of Charles V. It is a mistake to think there are no blonds in +Spain. Blue eyes abound there, but they are not so much liked as the +black." + +Is this a true picture of the actual Madrilenas? What I say is that +seventy-two years have passed since it was painted and the originals +have had time to change. What I say is that it was nearly always +raining, and I could not be sure. What I say, above all, is that I +am not a Frenchman of the high Romantic moment and that what I chiefly +noticed was how beautiful the mantilla was whether worn by old or +young, how fit, how gentle, how winning. I suppose that the women we +saw walking in it were never of the highest class; who would be driving +except when we saw them going to church. But they were often of the +latest fashion, with their feet hobbled by the narrow skirts, of which +they lost the last poignant effect by not having wide or high or slouch +or swashbuckler hats on; they were not top-heavy. What seems certain is +that the Spanish women are short and slight or short and fat. I find it +recorded that when a young English couple came into the Royal Armory the +girl looked impossibly tall and fair. + +The women of the lower classes are commonly handsome and carry +themselves finely; their heads are bare, even of mantillas, and their +skirts are ample. When it did not rain they added to the gaiety of the +streets, and when it did to their gloom. Wet or dry the streets were +always thronged; nobody, apparently, stayed indoors who could go out, +and after two days' housing, even with a fire to air and warm our rooms, +we did not wonder at the universal preference. As I have said, the noise +that we heard in the streets was mainly the clatter of shoes and hoofs, +but now and then there were street cries besides those I have noted. +There was in particular a half-grown boy in our street who had a flat +basket decorated with oysters at his feet, and for long hours of the day +and dark he cried them incessantly. I do not know that he ever sold them +or cared; his affair was to cry them. + + + + +VI. A NIGHT AND DAY IN TOLEDO + + +If you choose to make your visit to Toledo an episode of your stay in +Madrid, you have still to choose between going at eight in the morning +and arriving back at five in the evening, or going at five one evening +and coming back at the same hour the next. In either case you will have +two hours' jolting each way over the roughest bit of railroad in the +world, and if your _mozo,_ before you could stop him, has selected for +your going a compartment over the wheels, you can never be sure that +he has done worse for you than you will have done for yourself when you +come back in a compartment between the trucks. However you go or come, +you remain in doubt whether you have been jolting over rails jointed +at every yard, or getting on without any track over a cobble-stone +pavement. Still, if the compartment is wide and well cushioned, as it is +in Spain nearly always, with free play for your person between roof and +floor and wall and wall; and if you go at five o'clock you have from +your windows, as long as the afternoon light lasts, while you bound +and rebound, glimpses of far-stretching wheat-fields, with nearer +kitchen-gardens rich in beets and cabbages, alternating with purple and +yellow patches of vineyard. + + + +I + + +I find from my ever-faithful note-book that the landscape seemed to grow +drearier as we got away from Madrid, but this may have been the effect +of the waning day: a day which at its brightest had been dim from +recurrent rain and incessant damp. The gloom was not relieved by the +long stops at the frequent stations, though the stops were good for +getting one's breath, and for trying to plan greater control over +one's activities when the train should be going on again. The stations +themselves were not so alluring that we were not willing to get away +from them; and we were glad to get away from them by train, instead of +by mule-team over the rainy levels to the towns that glimmered along the +horizon two or three miles off. There had been nothing to lift the +heart in the sight of two small boys ready perched on one horse, or of +a priest difficultly mounting another in his long robe. At the only +station which I can remember having any town about it a large number of +our passengers left the train, and I realized that they were commuters +like those who might have been leaving it at some soaking suburb of Long +Island or New Jersey. In the sense of human brotherhood which the fact +inspired I was not so lonely as I might have been, when we resumed +our gloomy progress, with all that punctilio which custom demands of +a Spanish way-train. First the station-master rings a bell of alarming +note hanging on the wall, and the _mozos_ run along the train shutting +the car doors. After an interval some other official sounds a pocket +whistle, and then there is still time for a belated passenger to find +his car and scramble aboard. When the ensuing pause prolongs itself +until you think the train has decided to remain all day, or all night, +and several passengers have left it again, the locomotive rouses itself +and utters a peremptory screech. This really means going, but your doubt +has not been fully overcome when the wheels begin to bump under your +compartment, and you set your teeth and clutch your seat, and otherwise +prepare yourself for the renewal of your acrobatic feats. I may not +get the order of the signals for departure just right, but I am sure +of their number. Perhaps the Sud-Express starts with less, but the +Sud-Express is partly French. + +It had been raining intermittently all day; now that the weary old day +was done the young night took up the work and vigorously devoted itself +to a steady downpour which, when we reached our hotel in Toledo, had +taken the role of a theatrical tempest, with sudden peals of thunder and +long loud bellowing reverberations and blinding flashes of lightning, +such as the wildest stage effects of the tempest in the Catskills when +Rip Van Winkle is lost would have been nothing to. Foreboding the inner +chill of a Spanish hotel on such a day, we had telegraphed for a fire in +our rooms, and our eccentricity had been interpreted in spirit as well +as in letter. It was not the habitual hotel omnibus which met us at the +station, but a luxurious closed carriage commanded by an interpreter who +intuitively opened our compartment door, and conveyed us dry and warm +to our hotel, in every circumstance of tender regard for our comfort, +during the slow, sidelong uphill climb to the city midst details of +historic and romantic picturesqueness which the lightning momently +flashed in sight. From our carriage we passed as in a dream between the +dress-coated head waiter and the skull-capped landlord who silently and +motionlessly received us in the Gothic doorway, and mounted by a stately +stair from a beautiful glass-roofed _patio,_ columned round with airy +galleries, to the rooms from which a smoky warmth gushed out to welcome +us. + +The warmth was from the generous blaze kindled in the fireplace against +our coming, and the smoke was from the crevices in a chimneypiece not +sufficiently calked with newspapers to keep the smoke going up the flue. +The fastidious may think this a defect in our perfect experience, but we +would not have had it otherwise, if we could, and probably we could not. +We easily assumed that we were in the palace of some haughty hidalgo, +adapted to the uses of a modern hotel, with a magical prevision which +need not include the accurate jointing of a chimneypiece. The storm +bellowed and blazed outside, the rain strummed richly on the _patio_ +roof which the lightning illumined, and as we descended that stately +stair, with its walls ramped and foliaged over with heraldic fauna +and flora, I felt as never before the disadvantage of not being still +fourteen years old. + +But you cannot be of every age at once and it was no bad thing to be +presently sitting down in my actual epoch at one of those excellent +Spanish dinners which no European hotel can surpass and no American +hotel can equal. It may seem a descent from the high horse, the winged +steed of dreaming, to have been following those admirable courses with +unflagging appetite, as it were on foot, but man born of woman is hungry +after such a ride as ours from Madrid; and it was with no appreciable +loss to our sense of enchantment that we presently learned from our +host, waiting skull-capped in the _patio,_ that we were in no real +palace of an ancient hidalgo, but were housed as we found ourselves by +the fancy of a rich nobleman of Toledo whom the whim had taken to equip +his city with a hotel of poetic perfection. I am afraid I have forgotten +his name; perhaps I should not have the right to parade it here if I +remembered it; but I cannot help saluting him brother in imagination, +and thanking him for one of the rarest pleasures that travel, even +Spanish travel, has given me. + + + +II + + +One must recall the effect of such a gentle fantasy as his with some +such emotion as one recalls a pleasant tale unexpectedly told when one +feared a repetition of stale commonplaces, and I now feel a pang of +retroactive self-reproach for not spending the whole evening after +dinner in reading up the story of that most storied city where this +Spanish castle received us. What better could I have done in the smoky +warmth of our hearth-fire than to con, by the light of the electric +bulb dangling overhead, its annals in some such voluntarily quaint and +unconsciously old-fashioned volume as Irving's _Legends of the Conquest +of Spain;_ or to read in some such (if there is any such other) +imperishably actual and unfadingly brilliant record of impressions as +Gautier's _Voyage en Espagne,_ the miserably tragic tale of that poor, +wicked, over-punished last of the Gothic kings, Don Roderick? It comes +to much the same effect in both, and as I knew it already from the notes +to Scott's poem of Don Roderick, which I had read sixty years before in +the loft of our log cabin (long before the era of my unguided Spanish +studies), I found it better to go to bed after a day which had not been +without its pains as well as pleasures. I could recall the story well +enough for all purposes of the imagination as I found it in the fine +print of those notes, and if I could believe the reader did not know +it I would tell him now how this wretched Don Roderick betrayed the +daughter of Count Julian whom her father had intrusted to him here in +his capital of Toledo, when, with the rest of Spain, it had submitted to +his rule. That was in the eighth century when the hearts of kings were +more easily corrupted by power than perhaps in the twentieth; and it +is possible that there was a good deal of politics mixed up with Count +Julian's passion for revenge on the king, when he invited the Moors to +invade his native land and helped them overrun it. The conquest, let me +remind the reader, was also abetted by the Jews who had been flourishing +mightily under the Gothic anarchy, but whom Don Roderick had reduced to +a choice between exile or slavery when he came to full power. Every one +knows how in a few weeks the whole peninsula fell before the invaders. +Toledo fell after the battle of Guadalete, where even the Bishop of +Seville fought on their side, and Roderick was lastingly numbered among +the missing, and was no doubt killed, as nothing has since been heard +of him. It was not until nearly three hundred years afterward that the +Christians recovered the city. By this time they were no longer Arians, +but good Catholics; so good that Philip II. himself, one of the best +of Catholics (as I have told), is said to have removed the capital to +Madrid because he could not endure the still more scrupulous Catholicity +of the Toledan Bishop. + +Nobody is obliged to believe this, but I should be sorry if any reader +of mine questioned the insurpassable antiquity of Toledo, as attested by +a cloud of chroniclers. Theophile Gautier notes that "the most moderate +place the epoch of its foundation before the Deluge," and he does not +see why they do not put the time "under the pre-Adamite kings, some +years before the creation of the world. Some attribute the honor of +laying its first stone to Jubal, others to the Greek; some to the Roman +consuls Tolmor and Brutus; some to the Jews who entered Spain with +Nebuchadnezzar, resting their theory on the etymology of Toledo, which +comes from Toledoth, a Hebrew word signifying generations, because the +Twelve Tribes had helped to build and people it." + + + +III + + +Even if the whole of this was not accurate, it offered such an +embarrassing abundance to the choice that I am glad I knew little or +nothing of the antagonistic origins when I opened my window to the sunny +morning which smiled at the notion of the overnight tempest, and lighted +all the landscape on that side of the hotel. The outlook was over +vast plowed lands red as Virginia or New Jersey fields, stretching +and billowing away from the yellow Tagus in the foreground to the +mountain-walled horizon, with far stretches of forest in the middle +distance. What riches of gray roof, of white wall, of glossy green, or +embrowning foliage in the city gardens the prospect included, one should +have the brush rather than the pen to suggest; or else one should have +an inexhaustible ink-bottle with every color of the chromatic scale in +it to pour the right tints. Mostly, however, I should say that the city +of Toledo is of a mellow gray, and the country of Toledo a rich orange. +Seen from any elevation the gray of the town made me think of Genoa; and +if the reader's knowledge does not enable him, to realize it from this +association, he had better lose no time in going to Genoa. + +[Illustration: 14 RICHES OF GRAY ROOF AND WHITE WALL MARK ITS INSURPASSABLE ANTIQUITY] + +I myself should prefer going again to Toledo, where we made only a day's +demand upon the city's wealth of beauty when a lifetime would hardly +have exhausted it. Yet I would not counsel any one to pass his whole +life in Toledo unless he was sure he could bear the fullness of that +beauty. Add insurpassable antiquity, add tragedy, add unendurable +orthodoxy, add the pathos of hopeless decay, and I think I would rather +give a day than a lifetime to Toledo. Or I would like to go back and +give another day to it and come every year and give a day. This very +moment, instead of writing of it in a high New York flat and looking +out on a prospect incomparably sky-scrapered, I would rather be in that +glass-roofed _patio_ of our histrionic hotel, engaging the services +of one of the most admirable guides who ever fell to the lot of mortal +Americans, while much advised by our skull-capped landlord to shun +the cicerone of another hotel as "an Italian man," with little or no +English. + +As soon as we appeared outside the beggars of Toledo swarmed upon us; +but I hope it was not from them I formed the notion that the beauty of +the place was architectural and not personal, though these poor +things were as deplorably plain as they were obviously miserable. The +inhabitants who did not ask alms were of course in the majority, but +neither were these impressive in looks or bearing. Rather, I should say, +their average was small and dark, and in color of eyes and hair as +well as skin they suggested the African race that held Toledo for four +centuries. Neither here nor anywhere else in Spain are there any traces +of the Jews who helped bring the Arabs in; once for all, that people +have been banished so perfectly that they do not show their noses +anywhere. Possibly they exist, but they do not exist openly, any more +than the descendants of the Moorish invaders practise their Moslem +rites. As for the beggars, to whom I return as they constantly returned +to us, it did not avail to do them charity; that by no means dispersed +them; the thronging misery and mutilation in the lame, the halt and the +blind, was as great at our coming back to our hotel as our going out of +it. They were of every age and sex; the very school-children left +their sports to chance our charity; and it is still with a pang that +I remember the little girl whom we denied a copper when she was really +asking for a _florecito_ out of the nosegay that one of us carried. But +how could we know that it was a little flower and not a "little dog" she +wanted? + +There was something vividly spectacular in the square, by no means +large, which we came into on turning the corner from our hotel. It was +a sort of market-place as well as business place, and it looked as if +it might be the resort at certain hours of the polite as well as the +impolite leisure of a city of leisure not apparently overworked in any +of its classes. But at ten o'clock in the morning it was empty enough, +and after a small purchase at one of the shops we passed from it without +elbowing or being elbowed, and found ourselves at the portal of that +ancient _posada_ where Cervantes is said to have once sojourned at least +long enough to write one of his _Exemplary Novels._ He was of such a +ubiquitous habit that if we had visited every city of Spain we should +have found some witness of his stay, but I do not believe we could have +found any more satisfactory than this. It is verified by a tablet in its +outer wall, and within it is convincingly a _posada_ of his time. It has +a large low-vaulted interior, with the carts and wagons of the muleteers +at the right of the entrance, and beyond these the stalls of the mules +where they stood chewing their provender, and glancing uninterestedly +round at the intruders, for plainly we were not of the guests who +frequent the place. Such, for a chamber like those around and behind the +stalls, on the same earthen level, pay five cents of our money a day; +they supply their own bed and board and pay five cents more for the use +of a fire. + +Some guests were coming and going in the dim light of the cavernous +spaces; others were squatting on the ground before their morning meal. +An endearing smoke-browned wooden gallery went round three sides of the +_patio_ overhead; half-way to this at one side rose an immense earthen +water jar, dim red; piles of straw mats, which were perhaps the bedding +of the guests, heaped the ground or hung from the gallery; and the +guests, among them a most beautiful youth, black as Africa, but of a +Greek perfection of profile, regarded us with a friendly indifference +that contrasted strikingly with the fixed stare of the bluish-gray hound +beside one of the wagons. He had a human effect of having brushed his +hair from his strange grave eyes, and of a sad, hopeless puzzle in the +effort to make us out. If he was haunted by some inexplicable relation +in me to the great author whose dog he undoubtedly had been in a +retroactive incarnation, and was thinking to question me of that ever +unfulfilled boyish self-promise of writing the life of Cervantes, I +could as successfully have challenged him to say how and where in such a +place as that an Exemplary Novelist could have written even the story of +_The Illustrious Scullion._ But he seemed on reflection not to push the +matter with me, and I left him still lost in his puzzle while I came +away in mine. Whether Cervantes really wrote one of his tales there or +not, it is certain that he could have exactly studied from that _posada_ +the setting of the scene for the episode of the enchanted castle in _Don +Quixote,_ where the knight suffered all the demoniacal torments which a +jealous and infuriate muleteer knew how to inflict. + + + +IV + + +Upon the whole I am not sure that I was more edified by the cathedral of +Toledo, though I am afraid to own it, and must make haste to say that it +is a cathedral surpassing in some things any other cathedral in Spain. +Chiefly it surpasses them in the glory of that stupendous _retablo_ +which fills one whole end of the vast fane, and mounting from floor to +roof, tells the Christian story with an ineffable fullness of dramatic +detail, up to the tragic climax of the crucifixion, the _Calvario,_ at +the summit. Every fact of it fixes itself the more ineffaceably in the +consciousness because of that cunningly studied increase in the stature +of the actors, who always appear life-size in spite of their lift from +level to level above the spectator. But what is the use, what _is_ the +use? Am I to abandon the young and younger wisdom with which I have +refrained in so many books from attempting the portrayal of any Italian, +any English church, and fall into the folly, now that I am old, of +trying to say again in words what one of the greatest of Spanish +churches says in form, in color? Let me rather turn from that vainest +endeavor to the trivialities of sight-seeing which endear the memory +of monuments and make the experience of them endurable. The beautiful +choir, with its walls pierced in gigantic filigree, might have been art +or not, as one chose, but the three young girls who smiled and whispered +with the young man near it were nature, which there could be no two +minds about. They were pathetically privileged there to a moment of +the free interplay of youthful interests and emotions which the Spanish +convention forbids less in the churches than anywhere else. + +The Spanish religion is, in fact, kind to the young in many ways, and +on our way to the cathedral we had paused at a shrine of the Virgin in +appreciation of her friendly offices to poor girls wanting husbands; +they have only to drop a pin inside the grating before her and draw a +husband, tall for a large pin and short for a little one; or if they can +make their offering in coin, their chances of marrying money are +good. The Virgin is always ready to befriend her devotees, and in the +cathedral near that beautiful choir screen she has a shrine above the +stone where she alighted when she brought a chasuble to St. Ildefonso +(she owed him something for his maintenance of her Immaculate Conception +long before it was imagined a dogma) and left the print of her foot +in the pavement. The fact is attested by the very simple yet absolute +inscription: + + Quando la Reina del Cielo + Puso los pies en el suelo, + En esta piedra los puso, + +or as my English will have it: + + When the Queen of Heaven put + Upon the earth her foot, + She put it on this stone + +and left it indelible there, so that now if you thrust your finger +through the grille and touch the place you get off three hundred years +of purgatory: not much in the count of eternity, but still something. + +We saw a woman and a priest touching it as we stood by and going away +enviably comforted; but we were there as connoisseurs, not as votaries; +and we were trying to be conscious solely of the surpassing grandeur +and beauty of the cathedral. Here as elsewhere in Spain the passionate +desire of the race to realize a fact in art expresses itself gloriously +or grotesquely according to the occasion. The rear of the chorus is one +vast riot of rococo sculpture, representing I do not know what mystical +event; but down through the midst of the livingly studied performance +a mighty angel comes plunging, with his fine legs following his torso +through the air, like those of a diver taking a header into the water. +Nothing less than the sublime touch of those legs would have satisfied +the instinct from which and for which the artist worked; they gave +reality to the affair in every part. + +I wish I could give reality to every part of that most noble, that most +lovably beautiful temple. We had only a poor half-hour for it, and we +could not do more than flutter the pages of the epic it was and +catch here and there a word, a phrase: a word writ in architecture or +sculpture, a phrase richly expressed in gold and silver and precious +marble, or painted in the dyes of the dawns and sunsets which used to +lend themselves so much more willingly to the arts than they seem to do +now. From our note-books I find that this cathedral of Toledo appeared +more wonderful to one of us than the cathedral of Burgos; but who knows? +It might have been that the day was warmer and brighter and had not yet +shivered and saddened to the cold rain it ended in. At any rate the vast +church filled itself more and more with the solemn glow in which we left +it steeped when we went out and took our dreamway through the narrow, +winding, wandering streets that seemed to lure us where they would. One +of them climbed with us to the Alcazar, which is no longer any great +thing to see in itself, but which opens a hospitable space within its +court for a prospect of so much of the world around Toledo, the world of +yellow river and red fields and blue mountains, and white-clouded azure +sky, that we might well have mistaken it for the whole earth. In itself, +as I say, the Alcazar is no great thing for where it is, but if we had +here in New York an Alcazar that remembered historically back through +French, English, Arabic, Gothic. Roman, and Carthaginian occupations to +the inarticulate Iberian past we should come, I suppose, from far and +near to visit it. Now, however, after gasping at its outlook, we left +it hopelessly, and lost ourselves, except for our kindly guide, in the +crooked little stony lanes, with the sun hot on our backs and the shade +cool in our faces. There were Moorish bits and suggestions in the +white walls and the low flat roofs of the houses, but these were not so +jealous of their privacy as such houses were once meant to be. Through +the gate of one we were led into a garden of simple flowers belted with +a world-old parapet, over which we could look at a stretch of the Gothic +wall of King Wamba's time, before the miserable Roderick won and lost +his kingdom. A pomegranate tree, red with fruit, overhung us, and +from the borders of marigolds and zinnias and German clover the gray +garden-wife gathered a nosegay for us. She said she was three _duros_ +and a half old, as who should say three dollars and a half, and she had +a grim amusement in so translating her seventy years. + + + +V + + +It was hard by her cottage that we saw our first mosque, which had +begun by being a Gothic church, but had lost itself in paynim hands for +centuries, in spite of the lamp always kept burning in it. Then one day +the Cid came riding by, and his horse, at sight of a white stone in the +street pavement, knelt down and would not budge till men came and dug +through the wall of the mosque and disclosed this indefatigable lamp in +the church. We expressed our doubt of the man's knowing so unerringly +that the horse meant them to dig through the mosque. "If you can believe +the rest I think you can believe that," our guide argued. + +[Illustration: 15 AN ANCIENT CORNER OF THE CITY] + +He was like so many taciturn Spaniards, not inconversable, and we had +a pleasure in his unobtrusive intelligence which I should be sorry +to exaggerate. He supplied us with such statistics of his city as we +brought away with us, and as I think the reader may join me in trusting, +and in regretting that I did not ask more. Still it is something to have +learned that in Toledo now each family lives English fashion in a house +of its own, while in the other continental cities it mostly dwells in +a flat. This is because the population has fallen from two hundred +thousand to twenty thousand, and the houses have not shared its +decay, but remain habitable for numbers immensely beyond those of the +households. In the summer the family inhabits the first floor which +the _patio_ and the subterranean damp from the rains keep cool; in the +winter it retreats to the upper chambers which the sun is supposed to +warm, and which are at any rate dry even on cloudy days. The rents would +be thought low in New York: three dollars a month get a fair house in +Toledo; but wages are low, too; three dollars a month for a manservant +and a dollar and a half for a maid. If the Toledans from high to low are +extravagant in anything it is dress, but dress for the outside, not the +inside, which does not show, as our guide satirically explained. They +scrimp themselves in food and they pay the penalty in lessened vitality; +there is not so much fever as one might think; but there is a great +deal of consumption; and as we could not help seeing everywhere in the +streets there were many blind, who seemed oftenest to have suffered from +smallpox. The beggars were not so well dressed as the other classes, but +I saw no such delirious patchwork as at Burgos. On the other hand, there +were no idle people who were fashionably dressed; no men or women who +looked great-world. + +Perhaps if the afternoon had kept the sunny promise of the forenoon they +might have been driving in the Paseo, a promenade which Toledo has like +every Spanish city; but it rained and we did not stop at the Paseo which +looked so pleasant. + +The city, as so many have told and as I hope the reader will imagine, is +a network of winding and crooked lanes, which the books say are Moorish, +but which are medieval like those of every old city. They nowhere lend +themselves to walking for pleasure, and the houses do not open their +_patios_ to the passer with Andalusian expansiveness; they are in fact +of a quite Oriental reserve. I remember no dwellings of the grade, +quite, of hovels; but neither do there seem to be many palaces +or palatial houses in my hurried impression. Whatever it may be +industrially or ecclesiastically, Toledo is now socially provincial and +tending to extinction. It is so near Madrid that if I myself were living +in Toledo I would want to live in Madrid, and only return for brief +sojourns to mourn my want of a serious object in life; at Toledo it must +be easy to cherish such an object. + +Industrially, of course, one associates it with the manufacture of the +famous Toledo blades, which it is said are made as wonderful as ever, +and I had a dim idea of getting a large one for decorative use in a New +York flat. But the foundry is a mile out of town, and I only got so far +as to look at the artists who engrave the smaller sort in shops open to +the public eye; and my purpose dwindled to the purchase of a little pair +of scissors, much as a high resolve for the famous marchpane of Toledo +ended in a piece of that pastry about twice the size of a silver dollar. +Not all of the twenty thousand people of Toledo could be engaged in +these specialties, and I owe myself to blame for not asking more about +the local industries; but it is not too late for the reader, whom +I could do no greater favor than sending him there, to repair my +deficiency. In self-defense I urge my knowledge of a military school +in the Alcazar, where and in the street leading up to it we saw some +companies of the comely and kindly-looking cadets. I know also that +there are public night schools where those so minded may study the arts +and letters, as our guide was doing in certain directions. Now that +there are no longer any Jews in Toledo, and the Arabs to whom they +betrayed the Gothic capital have all been Christians or exiles for many +centuries, we felt that we represented the whole alien element of the +place; there seemed to be at least no other visitors of our lineage or +language. + + + +VI + + +We were going to spend the rest of the day driving out through the +city into the country beyond the Tagus, and we drove off in our really +splendid turnout through swarms of beggars whose prayers our horses' +bells drowned when we left them to their despair at the hotel door. At +the moment of course we believe that it was a purely dramatic misery +which the wretched creatures represented; but sometimes I have since +had moments of remorse in which I wish I had thrown big and little +dogs broadcast among them. They could not all have been begging for the +profit or pleasure of it; some of them were imaginably out of work and +worthily ragged as I saw them, and hungry as I begin to fear them. I am +glad now to think that many of them could not see with their poor blind +eyes the face which I hardened against them, as we whirled away to the +music of our horses' bells. + +The bells pretty well covered our horses from their necks to their +haunches, a pair of gallant grays urged to their briskest pace by the +driver whose short square face and humorous mouth and eyes were a joy +whenever we caught a glimpse of them. He was one of those drivers who +know everybody; he passed the time of day with all the men we met, and +he had a joking compliment for all the women, who gladdened at sight of +him from the thresholds where they sat sewing or knitting: such a driver +as brings a gay world to home-keeping souls and leaves them with the +feeling of having been in it. I would have given much more than I gave +the beggars in Toledo to know just in what terms he and his universal +acquaintance bantered each other; but the terms might sometimes have +been rather rank. Something, at any rate, qualified the air, which I +fancied softer than that of Madrid, with a faint recurrent odor, as +if in testimony of the driver's derivation from those old rancid +Christians, as the Spaniards used to call them, whose lineage had never +been crossed with Moorish blood. If it was merely something the +carriage had acquired from the stable, still it was to be valued for +its distinction in a country of many smells; and I would not have been +without it. + +When we crossed the Tagus by a bridge which a company of workmen +willingly paused from mending to let us by, and remained standing +absent-mindedly aside some time after we had passed, we found ourselves +in a scene which I do not believe was ever surpassed for spectacularity +in any theater. I hope this is not giving the notion of something +fictitious in it; I only mean that here Nature was in one of her most +dramatic moods. The yellow torrent swept through a deep gorge of red +earth, which on the farther side climbed in precipitous banks, cleft by +enormous fissures, or chasms rather, to the wide plateau where the gray +city stood. The roofs of mellow tiles formed a succession of levels +from which the irregular towers and pinnacles of the churches stamped +themselves against a sky now filled with clouds, but in an air so clear +that their beautiful irregularities and differences showed to one very +noble effect. The city still looked the ancient capital of the two +hundred thousand souls it once embraced, and in its stony repair there +was no hint of decay. + +[Illustration: 16 THE BRIDGE ACROSS THE YELLOW TAGUS] + +On our right, the road mounted through country wild enough at times, but +for the most part comparatively friendly, with moments of being almost +homelike. There were slopes which, if massive always, were sometimes +mild and were gray with immemorial olives. In certain orchard nooks +there were apricot trees, yellowing to the autumn, with red-brown +withered grasses tangling under them. Men were gathering the fruit of +the abounding cactuses in places, and in one place a peasant was bearing +an arm-load of them to a wide stone pen in the midst of which stood a +lordly black pig, with head lifted and staring, indifferent to cactuses, +toward Toledo. His statuesque pose was of a fine hauteur, and a more +imaginative tourist than I might have fancied him lost in a dream of +the past, piercing beyond the time of the Iberian autochtons to those +prehistoric ages + + When wild in woods the noble savage ran, + +pursuing or pursued by his tusked and bristled ancestor, and then slowly +reverting through the different invasions and civilizations to that +signal moment when, after three hundred Moslem years, Toledo became +Christian again forever, and pork resumed its primacy at the table. +Dark, mysterious, fierce, the proud pig stood, a figure made for +sculpture; and if he had been a lion, with the lion's royal ideal of +eating rather than feeding the human race, the reader would not have +thought him unworthy of literature; I have seldom seen a lion that +looked worthier of it. + +We must have met farmer-folk, men and women, on our way and have seen +their white houses farther or nearer. But mostly the landscape was +lonely and at times nightmarish, as the Castilian landscape has a trick +of being, and remanded us momently to the awful entourage of our run +from Valladolid to Madrid. We were glad to get back to the Tagus, which +if awful is not grisly, but wherever it rolls its yellow flood lends the +landscape such a sublimity that it was no esthetic descent from the high +perch of that proud pig to the mighty gorge through which, geologically +long ago, the river had torn its way. When we drove back the +bridge-menders stood aside for us while we were yet far off, and the +women came to their doorways at the sound of our bells for another +exchange of jokes with our driver. By the time a protracted file of +mules had preceded us over the bridge, a brisk shower had come up, and +after urging our grays at their topmost speed toward the famous church +of San Juan de los Reyes Catolicos, we still had to run from our +carriage door through the rain. + +Happily the portal was in the keeping of one of those authorized beggars +who guard the gates of heaven everywhere in that kind country, and he +welcomed us so eagerly from the wet that I could not do less than give +him a big dog at once. In a moment of confusion I turned about, and +taking him for another beggar, I gave him another big dog; and when we +came out of the church he had put off his cap and arranged so complete a +disguise with the red handkerchief bravely tied round his head, that my +innocence was again abused, and once more a big dog passed between us. +But if the merit of the church might only be partially attributed +to him, he was worth the whole three. The merit of the church was +incalculable, for it was meant to be the sepulcher of the Catholic +Kings, who were eventually more fitly buried in the cathedral at +Granada, in the heart of their great conquest; and it is a most +beautiful church, of a mingled Saracenic plateresque Gothic, as the +guide-books remind me, and extravagantly baroque as I myself found it. I +personally recall also a sense of chill obscurity and of an airy gallery +wandering far aloof in the upper gloom, which remains overhead with me +still, and the yet fainter sense of the balconies crowning like capitals +the two pillars fronting the high altar. I am now sorry for our haste, +but one has not so much time for enjoying such churches in their +presence as for regretting them in their absence. One should live +near them, and visit them daily, if one would feel their beauty in its +recondite details; to have come three thousand miles for three minutes +of them is no way of making that beauty part of one's being, and I will +not pretend that I did in this case. What I shall always maintain is +that I had a living heartache from the sight of that space on the +fagade of this church which is overhung with the chains of the Christian +captives rescued from slavery among the Moors by the Catholic Kings in +their conquest of Granada. They were not only the memorials of the most +sorrowful fact, but they represented the misery of a thousand years of +warfare in which the prisoners on either side suffered in chains for +being Moslems or being Christians. The manacles and the fetters on the +church front are merely decorative to the glance, but to the eye that +reads deeper, how structural in their tale of man's inhumanity to man! +How heavily they had hung on weary limbs! How pitilessly they had +eaten through bleeding ulcers to the bone! Yet they were very, very +decorative, as the flowers are that bloom on battle-fields. + +Even with only a few minutes of a scant quarter-hour to spare, I would +not have any one miss seeing the cloister, from which the Catholic Kings +used to enter the church by the gallery to those balcony capitals, but +which the common American must now see by going outside the church. The +cloister is turned to the uses of an industrial school, as we were glad +to realize because our guide, whom we liked so much, was a night student +there. It remains as beautiful and reverend as if it were of no secular +use, full of gentle sculptures, with a garden in the middle, raised +above the pavement with a border of thin tiles, and flower-pots standing +on their coping, all in the shadow of tall trees, overhanging a deep +secret-keeping well. From this place, where you will be partly sheltered +from the rain, your next profitable sally through the storm will be to +Santa Maria la Blanca, once the synagogue of the richest Jews of Toledo, +but now turned church in spite of its high authorization as a place of +Hebrew worship. It was permitted them to build it because they declared +they were of that tribe of Israel which, when Caiaphas, the High Priest, +sent round to the different tribes for their vote whether Jesus should +live or die, alone voted that He should live. Their response, as +Theophile Gautier reports from the chronicles, is preserved in the +Vatican with a Latin version of the Hebrew text. The fable, if it is a +fable, has its pathos; and I for one can only lament the religious +zeal to which the preaching of a fanatical monk roused the Christian +neighborhood in the fifteenth century, to such excess that these kind +Jews were afterward forbidden their worship in the place. It is a very +clean-looking, cold-looking white monument of the Catholic faith, with +a _retablo_ attributed to Berruguete, and much plateresque Gothic detail +mingled with Byzantine ornament, and Moorish arabesquing and the famous +stucco honeycombing which we were destined at Seville and Granada to +find almost sickeningly sweet. Where the Rabbis read the law from their +pulpit the high altar stands, and the pious populace has for three +hundred years pushed the Jews from the surrounding streets, where they +had so humbled their dwellings to the lowliest lest they should rouse +the jealousy of their sleepless enemies. + + + +VII + + +When we had visited this church there remained only the house of the +painter known as El Greco, for whom we had formed such a distaste, +because of the long features of the faces in his pictures, that our +guide could hardly persuade us his house was worth seeing. Now I am glad +he prevailed with us, for we have since come to find a peculiar charm +in these long features and the characteristic coloring of El Greco's +pictures. The little house full of memorials and the little garden full +of flowers, which ought to have been all forget-me-nots, were entirely +delightful. As every one but I knew, and even I now know, he was born a +Greek with the name of Theotocopuli, and studied tinder Titian till he +found his account in a manner of his own, making long noses and long +chins and high narrow foreheads in ashen gray, and at last went mad in +the excess of his manner. The house has been restored by the Marquis de +la Vega, according to his notion of an old Spanish house, and has the +pleasantest small _patio_ in the world, looked down into from a carved +wooden gallery, with a pavement of red tiles interset with Moorish tiles +of divers colors. There are interesting pictures everywhere, and on one +wall the certificate of the owner's membership in the Hispanic Society +of America, which made me feel at home because it was signed with the +name of an American friend of mine, who is repressed by prosperity from +being known as a poet and one of the first Spanish scholars of any time. + +The whole place is endearingly homelike and so genuinely hospitable that +we almost sat down to luncheon in the kitchen with the young Spanish +king who had lunched with the Marquis there a few weeks before. There +was a veranda outside where we could linger till the rain held up, +and look into the garden where the flowers ought to have been +forget-me-nots, but were as usual mostly marigolds and zinnias. They +crowded round tile-edged pools, and other flowers bloomed in pots on the +coping of the garden-seats built up of thin tiles carved on their edges +to an inward curve. It is strongly believed that there are several +stories under the house, and the Marquis is going some day to dig them +up or out to the last one where the original Jewish owner of the house +is supposed to have hid his treasure. In the mean time we could look +across the low wall that belted the garden in, to a vacant ground a +little way off where some boys were playing with a wagon they had +made. They had made it out of an oblong box, with wheels so rudely and +imperfectly rounded, that they wabbled fearfully and at times gave way +under the body; just as they did with the wagons that the boys I knew +seventy years ago used to make. + +I became so engrossed in the spectacle, so essentially a part of the +drama, that I did not make due account of some particulars of the +subterranean six stories of El Greco's house. There must have been other +things worth seeing in Toledo, thousands of others, and some others we +saw, but most we missed, and many I do not remember. It was now coming +the hour to leave Toledo, and we drove back to our enchanted castle for +our bill, and for the omnibus to the station. I thought for some time +that there was no charge for the fire, or even the smoke we had the +night before, but my eyes were holden from the item which I found later, +by seeing myself addressed as Milor. I had never been addressed as +a lord in any bill before, but I reflected that in the proud old +metropolis of the Goths I could not be saluted as less, and I gladly +paid the bill, which observed a golden mean between cheapness and +dearness, and we parted good friends with our host, and better with +our guide, who at the last brought out an English book, given him by an +English friend, about the English cathedrals. He was fine, and I could +not wish any future traveler kinder fortune than to have his guidance +in Toledo. Some day I am going back to profit more fully by it, and +to repay him the various fees which he disbursed for me to different +doorkeepers and custodians and which I forgot at parting and he was too +delicate to remind me of. + +When all leaves were taken and we were bowed out and away our horses, +covered with bells, burst with the omnibus through a solid mass of +beggars come to give us a last chance of meriting heaven by charity +to them, and dashed down the hill to the station. There we sat a long +half-hour in the wet evening air, wondering how we had been spared +seeing those wretches trampled under our horses' feet, or how the long +train of goats climbing to the city to be milked escaped our wheels. But +as we were guiltless of inflicting either disaster, we could watch +with a good conscience the quiescent industry of some laborers in the +brickyard beyond the track. Slowly and more slowly they worked, +wearily, apathetically, fetching, carrying, in their divided skirts of +cross-barred stuff of a rich Velasquez dirt color. One was especially +worthy of admiration from his wide-brimmed black hat and his thoughtful +indifference to his task, which was stacking up a sort of bundles of +long grass; but I dare say he knew what it all meant. Throughout I +was tormented by question of the precise co-racial quality of some +English-speaking folk who had come to share our bone-breaking return to +Madrid in the train so deliberately waiting there to begin afflicting +us. English English they certainly were not; American English as +little. If they were Australian English, why should not it have been a +convention of polite travel for them to come up and say so, and save us +that torment of curiosity? But perhaps they were not Australians. + + + + +VII. THE GREAT GRIDIRON OF ST. LAWRENCE + + +It seems a duty every Protestant owes his heresy to go and see +how dismally the arch-enemy of heresy housed his true faith in the +palace-tomb-and-church of the Escorial. If the more light-minded tourist +shirks this act of piety, he makes a mistake which he will repent +afterward in vain. The Escorial is, for its plainness, one of the two +or three things worthiest seeing among the two or three hundred things +worth seeing in Spain. Yet we feigned meaning to miss it after we +returned to Madrid from Toledo, saying that everybody went to the +Escorial and that it would be a proud distinction not to go. All the +time we knew we should go, and we were not surprised when we were chosen +by one of our few bright days for the excursion, though we were taken +inordinately early, and might well have been started a little later. + + + +I + + +Nothing was out of the common on the way to the station, and our sense +of the ordinary was not relieved when we found ourselves in a car of the +American open-saloon pattern, well filled with other Americans bent upon +the same errand as ourselves; though I am bound to say that the backs of +the transverse seats rose well toward the roof of the car with a certain +originality. + +When we cleared the city streets and houses, we began running out +into the country through suburbs vulgarly gay with small, bright brick +villas, so expressive of commuting that the eye required the vision of +young husbands and fathers going in at the gates with gardening tools +on their shoulders and under their arms. To be sure, the time of day +and the time of year were against this; it was now morning and autumn, +though there was a vernal brilliancy in the air; and the grass, +flattered by the recent rains, was green where we had last seen it +gray. Along a pretty stream, which, for all I know may have been the +Manzanares, it was so little, files of Lombardy poplars followed +away very agreeably golden in foliage; and scattered about were +deciduous-looking evergreens which we questioned for live-oaks. We were +going northward over the track which had brought us southward to Madrid +two weeks before, and by and by the pleasant levels broke into rough +hills and hollows, strewn with granite boulders which, as our train +mounted, changed into the savage rock masses of New Castile, and as we +drew near the village of Escorial gave the scene the look of that very +desolate country. But it could not be so gloomy in the kind sunlight +as it was when lashed by the savage storm which we had seen it cowering +under before; and at the station we lost all feeling of friendlessness +in the welcome of the thronging guides and hotel touters. + +Our ideal was a carriage which we could keep throughout the day and use +for our return to the train in the afternoon; and this was so exactly +the ideal of a driver to whom we committed ourselves that we were +somewhat surprised to have his vehicle develop into a motor-omnibus, and +himself into a conductor. + +When we arrived at the palace some miles off, up a winding way, he +underwent another change, and became our guide to the Escorial. In the +event he proved a very intelligent guide, as guides go, and I really +cannot now see how we could have got on without him. He adapted the +Spanish names of things to our English understanding by shortening +them; a _patio_ became a _pat',_ and an old master an old mast'; and an +endearing quality was imparted to the grim memory of Philip II. by the +diminutive of Philly. We accepted this, but even to have Charles V. +brought nearer our hearts as Charley Fif, we could not bear to have our +guide exposed to the mockery of less considerate travelers. I instructed +him that the emperor's name was Charles, and that only boys and very +familiar friends of that name were called Charley among us. He thanked +me, and at once spoke again of Charley Fif; which I afterward found was +the universally accepted style of the great emperor among the guides +of Spain. In vain I tried to persuade them out of it at Cordova, at +Seville, at Granada, and wherever else they had to speak of an emperor +whose memory really seems to pervade the whole land. + + + +II + + +The genuine village of Escorial lies mostly to the left of the station, +but the artificial town which grew up with the palace is to the right. +Both are called after the slag of the iron-smelting works which were and +are the vital industry of the first Escorial; but the road to the palace +takes you far from the slag, with a much-hoteled and garden-walled +dignity, to the plateau, apparently not altogether natural, where the +massive triune edifice stands in the keeping of a throng of American +women wondering how they are going to see it, and lunch, and get back to +their train in time. Many were trying, the day of our visit, to see the +place with no help but that of their bewildering Baedekers, and we had +constant reason to be glad of our guide as we met or passed them in the +measureless courts and endless corridors. + +At this distance of time and place we seem to have hurried first to the +gorgeous burial vault where the kings and queens of Spain lie, each +one shut in a gilded marble sarcophagus in their several niches of the +circular chamber, where under the high altar of the church they have the +advantage of all the masses said above them. But on the way we must have +passed through the church, immense, bare, cold, and sullener far than +that sepulcher; and I am sure that we visited last of all the palace, +where it is said the present young king comes so seldom and unwillingly, +as if shrinking from the shelf appointed for him in that crypt shining +with gold and polished marble. + +It is of death, not life, that the Escorial preaches, and it was to +eternal death, its pride and gloom, and not life everlasting, that the +dark piety of Philip voluntarily, or involuntarily, consecrated +the edifice. But it would be doing a wrong to one of the greatest +achievements of the human will, if one dwelt too much, or too wholly, +upon this gloomy ideal. The Escorial has been many times described; I +myself forbear with difficulty the attempt to describe it, and I satisfy +my longing to set it visibly before the reader by letting an earlier +visitor of my name describe it for me. I think he does it larger justice +than modern observers, because he escapes the cumulative obligation +which time has laid upon them to find the subjective rather than the +objective fulfilment of its founder's intention in it. At any rate, in +March, 1623, James Howell, waiting as secretary of the romantic mission +the bursting of the iridescent love-dream which had brought Charles +Stuart, Prince of Wales, from England to woo the sister of the +Spanish king in Madrid, had leisure to write one of his most delightful +"familiar letters" concerning the Escorial to a friend in London. + +[Illustration: 17 THE TOWN AND MONASTERY OF ESCORIAL] + +"I was yesterday at the Escorial to see the monastery of St. Lawrence, +the eighth wonder of the world; and truly considering the site of the +place, the state of the thing, the symmetry of the structure, with +diverse other rareties, it may be called so; for what I have seen +in Italy and other places are but baubles to it. It is built among +a company of craggy hills, which makes the air the hungrier and +wholesomer; it is all built of freestone and marble, and that with +such solidity and moderate height that surely Philip the Second's chief +design was to make a sacrifice of it to eternity, and to contest with +the meteors and time itself. It cost eight millions; it was twenty-four +years abuilding, and the founder himself saw it furnished and enjoyed it +twelve years after, and carried his bones himself thither to be buried. +The reason that moved King Philip to waste so much treasure was a vow he +had made at the battle of St. Quentin, where he was forced to batter +a monastery of St. Lawrence friars, and if he had the victory he would +erect such a monument to St. Lawrence that the world had not the like; +therefore the form of it is like a gridiron, the handle is a huge +royal palace, and the body a vast monastery or assembly of quadrangular +cloisters, for there are as many as there be months of the year. There +be a hundred monks, and every one hath his man and his mule, and a +multitude of officers; besides there are three libraries there full of +the choicest books for all sciences. It is beyond all expression what +grots, gardens, walks, and aqueducts there are there, and what curious +fountains in the upper cloisters, for there be two stages of cloisters. +In fine, there is nothing that is vulgar there. To take a view of every +room in the house one must make account to go ten miles; there is a +vault called the Pantheon under the high altar, which is all paved, +walled, and arched with marble; there be a number of huge silver +candlesticks taller than I am; lamps three yards compass, and diverse +chalices and crosses of massive gold; there is one choir made all +of burnished brass; pictures and statues like giants; and a world of +glorious things that purely ravished me. By this mighty monument it may +be inferred that Philip the Second, though he was a little man, yet +he had vast gigantic thoughts in him, to leave such a huge pile for +posterity to gaze upon and admire in his memory." + + + +III + + +Perhaps this description is not very exact, but precision of statement +is not to be expected of a Welshman; and if Howell preferred to say +Philip built the place in fulfilment of that vow at the battle of St. +Quentin, doubtless he believed it; many others did; it has only of late +been discovered that Philip was not at St. Quentin, and did not "batter +a monastery of St. Lawrence friars" there. I like to think the rest is +all as Howell says down to the man and mule for every monk. If there are +no men and mules left, there are very few monks either, after the many +suppressions of convents. The gardens are there of an unquestionable +symmetry and beauty, and the "company of craggy hills" abides all round +the prodigious edifice, which is at once so prodigious, and grows larger +upon you in the retrospect. + +Now that I am this good distance away, and cannot bring myself to book +by a second experience, I feel it safe to say that I had a feeling of +St. Peter's-like immensity in the church of the Escorial, with more than +St. Peter's-like bareness. The gray colorlessness of the architecture +somberly prevails in memory over the frescoes of the painters invited +to relieve it in the roof and the _retablo,_ and thought turns from the +red-and-yellow jasper of altar and pulpit, and the bronze-gilt effigies +of kneeling kings and queens to that niche near the oratory where the +little terrible man who imagined and realized it all used to steal in +from his palace, and worship next the small chamber where at last he +died. It is said he also read despatches and state papers in this nook, +but doubtless only in the intervals of devotion. + +Every one to his taste, even in matters of religion; Philip reared +a temple to the life beyond this, and as if with the splendor of the +mausoleum which it enshrines he hoped to overcome the victorious grave; +the Caliph who built the mighty mosque at Cordova, which outlasts every +other glory of his capital, dedicated it to the joy of this life as +against the gloom of whose who would have put it under the feet of +death. "Let us build," he said to his people, "the Kaaba of the West +upon the site of a Christian temple, which we will destroy, so that we +may set forth how the Cross shall fall and become abased before the True +Prophet. Allah will never place the world beneath the feet of those who +make themselves the slaves of drink and sensuality while they preach +penitence and the joys of chastity, and while extolling poverty enrich +themselves to the loss of their neighbors. For these the sad and silent +cloister; for us, the crystalline fountain and the shady grove; for +them, the rude and unsocial life of dungeon-like strongholds; for us, +the charm of social life and culture; for them, intolerance and tyranny; +for us, a ruler who is our father; for them, the darkness of ignorance; +for us, letters and instruction as wide-spread as our creed; for them, +the wilderness, celibacy, and the doom of the false martyr; for us, +plenty, love, brotherhood, and eternal joy." + +In spite of the somewhat vaunting spirit of his appeal, the wager of +battle decided against the Arab; it was the Crescent that fell, the +Cross that prevailed; in the very heart of Abderrahman's mosque a +Christian cathedral rises. Yet in the very heart of Philip's temple to +the spirit of the cloister, the desert, the martyrdom, one feels that +a great deal could be said on Abderrahman's side. This is a world which +will not be renounced, in fact, and even in Christian Spain it has +triumphed in the arts and sciences beyond its earlier victories in +Moslem Spain. One finds Philip himself, with his despatches in that high +nook, rather than among the bronze-gilt royalties at the high altar, +though his statue is duly there with those of his three wives. The group +does not include that poor Bloody Mary of England, who should have been +the fourth there, for surely she suffered enough for his faith and him +to be of his domestic circle forever. + + + +IV + + +It is the distinct merit of the Escorial that it does not, and perhaps +cannot take long in doing; otherwise the doer could not bear it. A look +round the sumptuous burial chamber of the sovereigns below the high +altar of the church; a glance at the lesser sepulchral glories of the +infantes and infantas in their chapels and corridors, suffices for the +funereal third of the trinity of tomb and temple and palace; and though +there are gayer constituents of the last, especially the gallery of the +chapter-house, with its surprisingly lively frescoes and its sometimes +startling canvases, there is not much that need really keep you from +the royal apartments which seem the natural end of your visit. Of these +something better can be said than that they are no worse than most other +royal apartments; our guide led us to them through many granite courts +and corridors where we left groups of unguided Americans still maddening +over their Baedekers; and we found them hung with pleasing tapestries, +some after such designs of Goya's as one finds in the basement of +the Prado. The furniture was in certain rooms cheerily upholstered in +crimson and salmon without sense of color, but as if seeking relief from +the gray of the church; and there are battle-pieces on the walls, +fights between Moors and Christians, which interested me. The dignified +consideration of the custodian who showed us through the apartments +seemed to have adapted to our station a manner left over from the +infrequent presence of royalty; as I have said, the young king of Spain +does not like coming to the Escorial. + +I do not know why any one comes there, and I search my consciousness in +vain for a better reason than the feeling that I must come, or would be +sorrier if I did not than if I did. The worthy Howell does not commit +himself to any expression of rejoicing or regretting in having done the +Escorial. But the good Theophile Gautier, who visited the place more +than two hundred years after, owns frankly that he is "excessively +embarrassed in giving his opinion" of it. "So many people," he says, +"serious and well-conditioned, who, I prefer to think, have never seen +it, have spoken of it as a _chef d'oeuvre,_ and a supreme effort of +the human spirit, so that I should have the air, poor devil of a +_facilletoniste errant,_ of wishing to play the original and taking +pleasure in my contrary-mindedness; but still in my soul and conscience +I cannot help finding the Escorial the most tiresome and the most +stupid monument that could be imagined, for the mortification of his +fellow-beings, by a morose monk and a suspicious tyrant. I know very +well that the Escorial had a serious and religious aim; but gravity +is not dryness, melancholy is not marasm, meditation is not ennui, and +beauty of forms can always be happily wedded to elevation of ideas." +This is the Frenchman's language as he goes into the Escorial; he does +not cheer up as he passes through the place, and when he comes out he +has to say: "I issued from that desert of granite, from that monkish +necropolis with an extraordinary feeling of release, of exultation; +it seemed to me I was born into life again, that I could be young once +more, and rejoice in the creation of the good God, of which I had lost +all hope in those funeral vaults. The bland and luminous air wrapt me +round like a soft robe of fine wool, and warmed my body frozen in that +cadaverous atmosphere; I was saved from that architectural nightmare, +which I thought never would end. I advise people who are so fatuous as +to pretend that they are ever bored to go and spend three or four days +in the Escorial; they will learn what real ennui is and they will enjoy +themselves all the rest of their lives in reflecting that they might be +in the Escorial and that they are not." + +That was well toward a century ago. It is not quite like that now, +but it is something like it; the human race has become inured to the +Escorial; more tourists have visited the place and imaginably lightened +its burden by sharing it among their increasing number. Still there is +now and then one who is oppressed, crushed by it, and cannot relieve +himself in such ironies as Gautier's, but must cry aloud in suffering +like that of the more emotional De Amicis: "You approach a courtyard and +say, 'I have seen this already.' No. You are mistaken; it is another.... +You ask the guide where the cloister is and he replies, 'This is it,' +and you walk on for half an hour. You see the light of another world: +you have never seen just such a light; is it the reflection from the +stone, or does it come from the moon? No, it is daylight, but sadder +than darkness. As you go on from corridor to corridor, from court to +court, you look ahead with misgivings, expecting to see suddenly, as you +turn a corner, a row of skeleton monks with hoods over their eyes and +crosses in their hands; you think of Philip II.... You remember all +that you have read about him, of his terrors and the Inquisition; and +everything becomes clear to your mind's eye with a sudden light; for the +first time you understand it all; the Escorial is Philip II.... He is +still there alive and terrible, with the image of his dreadful God... . +Even now, after so long a time, on rainy days, when I am feeling sad, +I think of the Escorial, and then look at the walls of my room and +congratulate myself.... I see again the courtyards of the Escorial. ... +I dream of wandering through the corridors alone in the dark, followed +by the ghost of an old friar, crying and pounding at all the doors +without finding a way of escape." + +[Illustration: 18 THE PANTHEON OF THE KINGS AND QUEENS OF SPAIN] + +I am of another race both from the Frenchman and the Italian, and +I cannot pretend to their experiences, their inferences, and their +conclusions; but I am not going to leave the Escorial to the reader +without trying to make him feel that I too was terribly impressed by it. +To be sure, I had some light moments in it, because when gloom goes too +far it becomes ridiculous; and I did think the convent gardens as I saw +them from the chapter-house window were beautiful, and the hills around +majestic and serious, with no intention of falling upon my prostrate +spirit. Yes, and after a lifelong abhorrence of that bleak king who +founded the Escorial, I will own that I am, through pity, beginning to +feel an affection for Philip II.; perhaps I was finally wrought upon by +hearing him so endearingly called Philly by our guide. + +Yet I will not say but I was glad to get out of the Escorial alive; and +that I welcomed even the sulkiness of the landlord of the hotel where +our guide took us for lunch. To this day I do not know why that landlord +should have been so sour; his lunch was bad, but I paid his price +without murmuring; and still at parting he could scarcely restrain his +rage; the Escorial might have entered into his soul. On the way to his +hotel the street was empty, but the house bubbled over with children +who gaped giggling at his guests from the kitchen door, and were then +apparently silenced with food, behind it. There were a great many flies +in the hotel, and if I could remember its name I would warn the public +against it. + +After lunch our guide lapsed again to our conductor and reappeared with +his motor-bus and took us to the station, where he overcame the scruples +of the lady in the ticket-office concerning our wish to return to Madrid +by the Sud-Express instead of the ordinary train. The trouble was about +the supplementary fare which we easily paid on board; in fact, there +is never any difficulty in paying a supplementary fare in Spain; the +authorities meet you quite half-way. But we were nervous because we had +already suffered from the delays of people at the last hotel where our +motor-bus stopped to take up passengers; they lingered so long over +lunch that we were sure we should miss the Sud-Express, and we did not +see how we could live in Escorial till the way-train started; yet for +all their delays we reached the station in time and more. The train +seemed strangely reduced in the number of its cars, but we confidently +started with others to board the nearest of them; there we were waved +violently away, and bidden get into the dining-car at the rear of the +train. In some dudgeon we obeyed, but we were glad to get away from +Escorial on any terms, and the dining-car was not bad, though it had a +somewhat disheveled air. We could only suppose that all the places in +the two other cars were taken, and we resigned ourselves to choosing +the least coffee-stained of the coffee-stained tables and ordered +more coffee at it. The waiter brought it as promptly as the conductor +collected our supplementary fare; he even made a feint of removing the +stains from our table-cloth with a flourish of his napkin, and then he +left us to our conjectures and reflections till he came for his pay and +his fee just before we ran into Madrid. + + + +VI + + +The mystery persisted and it was only when our train paused in the +station that it was solved. There, as we got out of our car, we +perceived that a broad red velvet carpet was laid from the car in front +into the station; a red carpet such as is used to keep the feet of +distinguished persons from their native earth the world over, but more +especially in Europe. Along this carpet were loosely grouped a number of +solemnly smiling gentlemen in frock-coats with their top-hats genteelly +resting in the hollows of their left arms, and without and beyond the +station in the space usually filled by closed and open cabs was a swarm +of automobiles. Then while our spirits were keyed to the highest pitch, +the Queen of Spain descended from the train, wearing a long black satin +cloak and a large black hat, very blond and beautiful beyond the report +of her pictures. By each hand she led one of her two pretty boys, Don +Jaime, the Prince of Asturias, heir apparent, and his younger brother. +She walked swiftly, with glad, kind looks around, and her ladies +followed her according to their state; then ushered and followed by the +gentlemen assembled to receive them, they mounted to their motors and +whirred away like so many persons of a histrionic pageant: not least +impressive, the court attendants filled a stage drawn by six mules, and +clattered after. + +From hearsay and reasonable surmise we learned that we had not come from +Escorial in the Sud-Express at all, but in the Queen's special train +bringing her and her children from their autumn sojourn at La Granja, +and that we had been for an hour a notable feature of the royal party +without knowing it, and of course without getting the least good of it. +We had indeed ignorantly enjoyed no less of the honor than two +other Americans, who came in the dining-car with us, but whether the +nice-looking Spanish couple who sat in the corner next us were equally +ignorant of their advantage I shall never know. It was but too highly +probable that the messed condition of the car was due to royal luncheon +in it just before we came aboard; but why we were suffered to come +aboard, or why a supplementary fare should have been collected from us +remains one of those mysteries which I should once have liked to keep +all Spain. + +We had to go quite outside of the station grounds to get a cab for our +hotel, but from this blow to our dignity I recovered a little later in +the day, when the king, attended by as small a troop of cavalry as I +suppose a king ever has with him, came driving by in the street where I +was walking. As he sat in his open carriage he looked very amiable, and +handsomer than most of the pictures make him. He seemed to be gazing at +me, and when he bowed I could do no less than return his salutation. As +I glanced round to see if people near me were impressed by our exchange +of civilities, I perceived an elderly officer next me. He was smiling as +I was, and I think he was in the delusion that the king's bow, which I +had so promptly returned, was intended for him. + + + + +VIII. CORDOVA AND THE WAY THERE + + +I should be sorry if I could believe that Cordova experienced the +disappointment in us, which I must own we felt in her; but our +disappointment was unquestionable, and I will at once offer it to +the reader as an inducement for him to go to Cordova with less lively +expectations than ours. I would by no means have him stay away; after +all, there is only one Cordova in the world which the capital of the +Caliphate of the West once filled with her renown; and if the great +mosque of Abderrahman is not so beautiful as one has been made to fancy +it, still it is wonderful, and could not be missed without loss. + + + +I + + +Better, I should say, take the _rapido_ which leaves Madrid three times +a week at nine-thirty in the morning, than the night express which +leaves as often at the same hour in the evening. Since there are now +such good day trains on the chief Spanish lines, it is flying in the +face of Providence not to go by them; they might be suddenly taken off; +besides, they have excellent restaurant-cars, and there is, moreover, +always the fascinating and often the memorable landscape which they pass +through. By no fault of ours that I can remember, our train was rather +crowded; that is, four or five out of the eight places in our corridor +compartment were taken, and we were afraid at every stop that more +people would get in, though I do not know that it was our anxieties +kept them out. For the matter of that, I do not know why I employed an +interpreter at Madrid to get my ticket stamped at the ticket-office; it +required merely the presentation of the ticket at the window; but the +interpreter seemed to wish it and it enabled him to practise his English +with me, and I realized that he must live. In a peseta's worth of +gratitude he followed us to our carriage, and he did not molest the +_mozo_ in putting our bags into the racks, though he hovered about the +door till the train started; and it just now occurs to me that he may +have thought a peseta was not a sufficient return for his gratitude; he +had rendered us no service. + +At Aranjuez the wheat-lands, which began to widen about us as soon as we +got beyond the suburbs of Madrid, gave way to the groves and gardens of +that really charming pleasaunce, charming quite from the station, with +grounds penetrated by placid waters overhung by the English elms which +the Castilians are so happy in having naturalized in their treeless +waste. Multitudes of nightingales are said to sing among them, but it +was not the season for hearing them from the train; and we made what +shift we could with the strawberry and asparagus beds which we could +see plainly, and the peach trees and cherry trees. One of these had +committed the solecism of blossoming in October, instead of April or +May, when the nobility came to their villas. + +We had often said during our stay in Madrid that we should certainly +come for a day at Aranjuez; and here we were, passing it with a five +minutes' stop. I am sure it merited much more, not only for its many +proud memories, but for its shameful ones, which are apt to be so much +more lasting in the case of royal pleasaunces. The great Catholic +King Ferdinand inherited the place with the Mastership of the Order of +Santiago; Charles V. used to come there for the shooting, and Philip +II., Charleses III. and IV., and Ferdinand VII. built and rebuilt its +edifices. But it is also memorable because the wretched Godoy fled there +with the king, his friend, and the queen, his paramour, and there the +pitiable king abdicated in favor of his abominable son Ferdinand VII. +It is the careful Murray who reminds me of this fact; Gautier, who +apparently fails to get anything to his purpose out of Aranjuez, passes +it with the remark that Godoy built there a gallery from his villa to +the royal palace, for his easier access to the royal family in which he +held a place so anomalous. From Mr. Martin Hume's _Modern Spain_ I learn +that when the court fled to Aranjuez from Madrid before the advance of +Murat, and the mob, civil and military, hunted Godoy's villa through for +him, he jumped out of bed and hid himself under a roll of matting, while +the king and the queen, to save him, decreed his dismissal from all his +offices and honors. + +But here just at the most interesting moment the successive bells and +whistles are screeching, and the _rapido_ is hurrying me away from +Aranjuez. We are leaving a railway station, but presently it is as if +we had set sail on a gray sea, with a long ground-swell such as we +remembered from Old Castile. These innumerable pastures and wheat-fields +are in New Castile, and before long more distinctively they are in La +Mancha, the country dear to fame as the home of Don Quixote. I must own +at once it does not look it, or at least look like the country I had +read out of his history in my boyhood. For the matter of that, no +country ever looks like the country one reads out of a book, however +really it may be that country. The trouble probably is that one carries +out of one's reading an image which one had carried into it. When I read +_Don Quixote_ and read and read it again, I put La Mancha first into the +map of southern Ohio, and then into that, after an interval of seven +or eight years, of northern Ohio; and the scenes I arranged for his +adventures were landscapes composed from those about me in my earlier +and later boyhood. There was then always something soft and mild in the +_Don Quixote_ country, with a blue river and gentle uplands, and woods +where one could rest in the shade, and hide one's self if one wished, +after easily rescuing the oppressed. Now, instead, a treeless plain +unrolled itself from sky to sky, clean, dull, empty; and if some azure +tops dimmed the clear line of the western horizon, how could I have got +them into my early picture when I had never yet seen a mountain in my +life? I could not put the knight and his squire on those naked levels +where they should not have got a mile from home without discovery and +arrest. I tried to think of them jogging along in talk of the adventures +which the knight hoped for; but I could not make it work. I could have +done better before we got so far from Aranjuez; there were gardens +and orchards and a very suitable river there, and those elm trees +overhanging it; but the prospect in La Mancha had only here and there a +white-availed white farmhouse to vary its lonely simplicity, its +desert fertility; and I could do nothing with the strips and patches of +vineyard. It was all strangely African, strangely Mexican, and not at +all American, not Ohioan, enough to be anything like the real La Mancha +of my invention. To be sure, the doors and windows of the nearer houses +were visibly netted against mosquitoes and that was something, but even +that did not begin to be noticeable till we were drawing near the Sierra +Morena. Then, so long before we reached the mighty chain of mountains +which nature has stretched between the gravity of New Castile and the +gaiety of Andalusia, as if they could not bear immediate contact, I +experienced a moment of perfect reconciliation to the landscape as +really wearing the face of that La Mancha familiar to my boyish vision. +Late in the forenoon, but early enough to save the face of La Mancha, +there appeared certain unquestionable shapes in the nearer and farther +distance which I joyously knew for those windmills which Don Quixote had +known for giants and spurred at, lance in rest. They were waving their +vans in what he had found insolent defiance, but which seemed to us +glad welcome, as of windmills waiting that long time for a reader of +Cervantes who could enter into their feelings and into the friendly +companionship they were offering. + + + +II + + +Our train did not pass very near, but the distance was not bad for +them; it kept them sixty or sixty-five years back in the past where they +belonged, and in its dimness I could the more distinctly see Don +Quixote careering against them, and Sancho Panza vainly warning, vainly +imploring him, and then in his rage and despair, "giving himself to the +devil," as he had so often to do in that master's service; I do not +know now that I would have gone nearer them if I could. Sometimes in the +desolate plains where the windmills stood so well aloof men were lazily, +or at least leisurely, plowing with their prehistoric crooked sticks. +Here and there the clean levels were broken by shallow pools of water; +and we were at first much tormented by expanses, almost as great as +these pools, of a certain purple flower, which no curiosity of ours +could prevail with to yield up the secret of its name or nature. It +was one of the anomalies of this desert country that it was apparently +prosperous, if one might guess from the comfortable-looking farmsteads +scattered over it, inclosing house and stables in the courtyard framed +by their white walls. The houses stood at no great distances from one +another, but were nowhere grouped in villages. There were commonly no +towns near the stations, which were not always uncheerful; sometimes +there were flower-beds, unless my memory deceives me. Perhaps there +would be a passenger or two, and certainly a loafer or two, and always +of the sex which in town life does the loafing; in the background +or through the windows the other sex could be seen in its domestic +activities. Only once did we see three girls of such as stay for the +coming and going of trains the world over; they waited arm in arm, and +we were obliged to own they were plain, poor things. + +Their whitewash saves the distant towns from the effect of sinking into +the earth, or irregularly rising from it, as in Old Castile, and the +landscape cheered up more and more as we ran farther south. We passed +through the country of the Valdepenas wine, which it is said would so +willingly be better than it is; there was even a station of that name, +which looked much more of a station than most, and had, I think I +remember, buildings necessary to the wine industry about it. Murray, +indeed, emboldens me in this halting conjecture with the declaration +that the neighboring town of Valdepenas is "completely undermined by +wine-cellars of very ancient date" where the wine is "kept in caves in +huge earthen jars," and when removed is put into goat or pig skins in +the right Don Quixote fashion. + +The whole region begins to reek of Cervantean memories. Ten miles from +the station of Argamasilla is the village where he imagined, and the +inhabitants believe, Don Quixote to have been born. Somewhere among +these little towns Cervantes himself was thrown into prison for +presuming to attempt collecting their rents when the people did not want +to pay them. This is what I seem to remember having read, but heaven +knows where, or if. What is certain is that almost before I was aware +we were leaving the neighborhood of Valdepenas, where we saw men with +donkeys gathering grapes and letting the donkeys browse on the vine +leaves. Then we were mounting among the foothills of the Sierra Morena, +not without much besetting trouble of mind because of those certain +circles and squares of stone on the nearer and farther slopes which we +have since somehow determined were sheep-folds. They abounded almost to +the very scene of those capers which Don Quixote cut on the mountainside +to testify his love for Dulcinea del Toboso, to the great scandal of +Sancho Panza riding away to give his letter to the lady, but unable to +bear the sight of the knight skipping on the rocks in a single garment. + + + +III + + +In the forests about befell all those adventures with the mad Cardenio +and the wronged Dorothea, both self-banished to the wilderness through +the perfidy of the same false friend and faithless lover. The episodes +which end so well, and which form, I think, the heart of the wonderful +romance, have, from the car windows, the fittest possible setting; +but suddenly the scene changes, and you are among aspects of nature as +savagely wild as any in that new western land where the countrymen of +Cervantes found a New Spain, just as the countrymen of Shakespeare found +a New England. Suddenly, or if not suddenly, then startlingly, we were +in a pass of the Sierra called (for some reason which I will leave +picturesquely unexplained) the Precipice of Dogs, where bare sharp peaks +and spears of rock started into the air, and the faces of the cliffs +glared down upon us like the faces of Indian warriors painted yellow and +orange and crimson, and every other warlike color. With my poor scruples +of moderation I cannot give a just notion of the wild aspects; I must +leave it to the reader, with the assurance that he cannot exaggerate +it, while I employ myself in noting that already on this awful summit we +began to feel ourselves in the south, in Andalusia. Along the mountain +stream that slipped silverly away in the valley below, there were +oleanders in bloom, such as we had left in Bermuda the April before. +Already, north of the Sierra the country had been gentling. The upturned +soil had warmed from gray to red; elsewhere the fields were green with +sprouting wheat; and there were wide spaces of those purple flowers, +like crocuses, which women were gathering in large baskets. Probably +they were not crocuses; but there could be no doubt of the vineyards +increasing in their acreage; and the farmhouses which had been without +windows in their outer walls, now sometimes opened as many as two to +the passing train. Flocks of black sheep and goats, through the optical +illusion frequent in the Spanish air, looked large as cattle in the +offing. Only in one place had we seen the tumbled boulders of Old +Castile, and there had been really no greater objection to La Mancha +than that it was flat, stale, and unprofitable and wholly unimaginable +as the scene of even Don Quixote's first adventures. + +But now that we had mounted to the station among the summits of the +Sierra Morena, my fancy began to feel at home, and rested in a scene +which did all the work for it. There was ample time for the fancy to +rest in that more than co-operative landscape. Just beyond the first +station the engine of a freight-train had opportunely left the track in +front of us, and we waited there four hours till it could be got back. +It would be inhuman to make the reader suffer through this delay with +us after it ceased to be pleasure and began to be pain. Of course, +everybody of foreign extraction got out of the train and many even, +went forward to look at the engine and see what they could do about it; +others went partly forward and asked the bolder spirits on their way +back what was the matter. Now and then our locomotive whistled as if +to scare the wandering engine back to the rails. At moments the +station-master gloomily returned to the station from somewhere and +diligently despaired in front of it. Then we backed as if to let our +locomotive run up the siding and try to butt the freight-train off the +track to keep its engine company. + +About this time the restaurant-car bethought itself of some sort of +late-afternoon repast, and we went forward and ate it with an interest +which we prolonged as much as possible. We returned to our car which was +now pervaded by an extremely bad smell. The smell drove us out, and we +watched a public-spirited peasant beating the acorns from a live-oak +near the station with a long pole. He brought a great many down, and +first filled his sash-pocket with them; then he distributed them among +the children of the third-class passengers who left the train and +flocked about him. But nobody seemed to do anything with the acorns, +though they were more than an inch long, narrow, and very sharp-pointed. +As soon as he had discharged his self-assumed duty the peasant lay down +on the sloping bank under the tree, and with his face in the grass, went +to sleep for all our stay, and for what I know the whole night after. + +It did not now seem likely that we should ever reach Gordova, though +people made repeated expeditions to the front of the train, and came +back reporting that in an hour we should start. We interested ourselves +as intensely as possible in a family from the next compartment, +London-tailored, and speaking either Spanish or English as they fancied, +who we somehow understood lived at Barcelona; but nothing came of our +interest. Then as the day waned we threw ourselves into the interest +taken by a fellow-passenger in a young Spanish girl of thirteen or +fourteen who had been in the care of a youngish middle-aged man when our +train stopped, and been then abandoned by him for hours, while he seemed +to be satisfying a vain curiosity at the head of the train. She owned +that the deserter was her father, and while we were still poignantly +concerned for her he came back and relieved the anxiety which the girl +herself had apparently not shared even under pressure of the whole +compartment's sympathy. + + + +IV + + +The day waned more and more; the sun began to sink, and then it sank +with that sudden drop which the sun has at last. The sky flushed +crimson, turned mauve, turned gray, and the twilight thickened over the +summits billowing softly westward. There had been a good deal of joking, +both Spanish and English, among the passengers; I had found particularly +cheering the richness of a certain machinist's trousers of bright golden +corduroy; but as the shades of night began to embrown the scene our +spirits fell; and at the cry of a lonesome bird, far off where the +sunset had been, they followed the sun in its sudden drop. Against +the horizon a peasant boy leaned on his staff and darkled against the +darkening sky. + +Nothing lacked now but the opportune recollection that this was the +region where the natives had been so wicked in times past that an +ingenious statesman, such as have seldom been wanting to Spain, imagined +bringing in a colony of German peasants to mix with them and reform +them. That is what some of the books say, but others say that the region +had remained unpeopled after the first exile of the conquered Moors. All +hold that the notion of mixing the colonists and the natives worked +the wrong way; the natives were not reformed, but the colonists were +depraved and stood in with the local brigands, ultimately, if not +immediately. This is the view suggested, if not taken, by that amusing +emissary, George Borrow, who seems in his _Bible in Spain_ to have been +equally employed in distributing the truths of the New Testament and +collecting material for the most dramatic study of Spanish civilization +known to literature. It is a delightful book, and not least delightful +in the moments of misgiving which it imparts to the reader, when he +does not know whether to prize more the author's observation or his +invention, whichever it may be. Borrow reports a conversation with an +innkeeper and his wife of the Colonial German descent, who gave a good +enough account of themselves, and then adds the dark intimation of an +Italian companion that they could not be honestly keeping a hotel in +that unfrequented place. It was not just in that place that our delay +had chosen to occur, but it was in the same colonized region, and I am +glad now that I had not remembered the incident from my first reading of +Borrow. It was sufficiently uncomfortable to have some vague association +with the failure of that excellent statesman's plan, blending creepily +with the feeling of desolation from the gathering dark, and I now recall +the distinct relief given by the unexpected appearance of two such +Guardias Civiles as travel with every Spanish train, in the space before +our lonely station. + +These admirable friends were part of the system which has made travel as +safe throughout Spain as it is in Connecticut, where indeed I sometimes +wonder that road-agents do not stop my Boston express in the waste +expanse of those certain sand barrens just beyond New Haven. The last +time I came through that desert I could not help thinking how nice it +would be to have two Guardias Civiles in our Pullman car; but of course +at the summit of the Sierra Morena, where our _rapido_ was stalled in +the deepening twilight, it was still nicer to see that soldier pair, +pacing up and down, trim, straight, very gentle and polite-looking, but +firm, with their rifles lying on their shoulders which they kept exactly +together. It is part of the system that they may use those rifles upon +any evil-doer whom they discover in a deed of violence, acting at +once as police, court of law, and executioners; and satisfying public +curiosity by pinning to the offender's coat their official certificate +that he was shot by such and such a civil guard for such and such a +reason, and then notifying the nearest authorities. It is perhaps too +positive, too peremptory, too precise; and the responsibility could +not be intrusted to men who had not satisfied the government of their +fitness by two years' service in the army without arrest for any +offense, or even any question of misbehavior. But these conditions +once satisfied, and their temperament and character approved, they are +intrusted with what seem plenary powers till they are retired for old +age; then their sons may serve after them as Civil Guards with the same +prospect of pensions in the end. I suppose they do not always travel +first class, but once their silent, soldierly presence honored our +compartment between stations; and once an officer of their corps +conversed for long with a fellow-passenger in that courteous ease and +self-respect which is so Spanish between persons of all ranks. + +It was not very long after the guards appeared so reassuringly before +the station, when a series of warning bells and whistles sounded, and +our locomotive with an impatient scream began to tug at our train. We +were really off, starting from Santa Elena at the very time when we +ought to have been stopping at Cordova, with a good stretch of four +hours still before us. As our fellow-travelers quitted us at one station +and another we were finally left alone with the kindly-looking old man +who had seemed interested in us from the first, and who now made some +advances in broken English. Presently he told us in Spanish, to account +for the English accent on which we complimented him, that he had two +sons studying some manufacturing business in Manchester, where he had +visited them, and acquired so much of our tongue as we had heard. He +was very proud and glad to speak of his sons, and he valued us for our +English and the strangeness which commends people to one another in +travel. When he got out at a station obscured past identification by its +flaring lamps, he would not suffer me to help him with his hand-baggage; +while he deplored my offered civility, he reassured me by patting my +back at parting. Yet I myself had to endure the kindness which he would +not when we arrived at Cordova, where two young fellows, who had got in +at a suburban station, helped me with our bags and bundles quite as if +they had been two young Americans. + + + +V + + +Somewhere at a junction our train had been divided and our car, left +the last of what remained, had bumped and threatened to beat itself to +pieces during its remaining run of fifteen miles. This, with our long +retard at Santa Elena, and our opportune defense from the depraved +descendants of the reforming German colonists by the Guardias Civiles, +had given us a day of so much excitement that we were anxious to have +it end tranquilly at midnight in the hotel which we had chosen from, our +Baedeker. I would not have any reader of mine choose it again from +my experience of it, though it was helplessly rather wilfully bad; +certainly the fault was not the hotel's that it seemed as far from the +station as Cordova was from Madrid. It might, under the circumstances, +have, been _a_ merit in it to be undergoing a thorough overhauling of +the furnishing and decoration of the rooms on the _patio_ which had +formed our ideal for a quiet night. A conventionally napkined waiter +welcomed us from the stony street, and sent us up to our rooms with the +young interpreter who met us at the station, but was obscure as to their +location. When we refused them because they were over that loud-echoing +alley, the interpreter made himself still more our friend and called +mandatorially down the speaking-tube that we wished _interiores_ and +would take nothing else, though he must have known that no such rooms +were to be had. He even abetted us in visiting the rooms on the _patio_ +and satisfying ourselves that they were all dismantled; when the waiter +brought up the hot soup which was the only hot thing in the house beside +our tempers, he joined with that poor fellow in reconciling us to the +inevitable. They declared that the people whom we heard uninterruptedly +clattering and chattering by in the street below, and the occasional +tempest of wheels and bells and hoofs that clashed up to us would be the +very last to pass through there that night, and they gave such good and +sufficient reasons for their opinion that we yielded as we needs must. +Of course, they were wrong; and perhaps they even knew that they were +wrong; but I think we were the only people in that neighborhood who got +any sleep that night or the next. We slept the sleep of exhaustion, but +I believe those Cordovese preferred waking outdoors to trying to sleep +within. It was apparently their custom to walk and talk the night away +in the streets, not our street alone, but all the other streets of +Cordova; the laughing which I heard may have expressed the popular +despair of getting any sleep. The next day we experimented in listening +from rooms offered us over another street, and then we remained +measurably contented to bear the ills we had. This was after an +exhaustive search for a better hotel had partly appeased us; but there +remained in the Paseo del Gran Capitan one house unvisited which has +ever since grown upon my belief as embracing every comfort and advantage +lacking to our hotel. I suppose I am the stronger in this belief because +when we came to it we had been so disappointed with the others that we +had not the courage to go inside. Smell for smell, the interior of that +hotel may have harbored a worse one than the odor of henhouse which +pervaded ours, I hope from the materials for calcimining the rooms on +the _patio._ + +By the time we returned we found a guide waiting for us, and we agreed +with him for a day's service. He did not differ with other authorities +as to the claims of Cordova on the tourist's interest. From being the +most brilliant capital of the Western world in the time of the Caliphs +it is now allowed by all the guides and guide-books and most of the +travelers, to be one of the dullest of provincial towns. It is no longer +the center of learning; and though it cannot help doing a large business +in olives, with the orchards covering the hills around it, the business +does not seem to be a very active one. "The city once the abode of +the flower of Andalusian nobility," says the intelligent O'Shea in +his _Guide to Spain, "_is inhabited chiefly by administradores of the +absentee senorio; their 'solares' are desert and wretched, the streets +ill paved though clean, and the whitewashed houses unimportant, low, and +denuded of all art and meaning, either past or present." Baedeker gives +like reasons for thinking "the traveler whose expectation is on +tiptoe as he enters the ancient capital of the Moors will probably be +disappointed in all but the cathedral." _Cook's Guide,_ latest but not +least commendable of the authorities, is of a more divided mind and +finds the means of trade and industry and their total want of visible +employment at the worst anomalous. + +[Illustration: 19 THE ANCIENT CITY OF CORDOVA] + +Vacant, narrow streets where the grass does not grow, and there is only +an endless going and coming of aimless feet; a market without buyers or +sellers to speak of, and a tangle of squat white houses, abounding in +lovely _patios,_ sweet and bright with flowers and fountains: this +seems to be Cordova in the consensus of the manuals, and with me in +the retrospect a sort of puzzle is the ultimate suggestion of the dead +capital of the Western Caliphs. Gautier thinks, or seventy-two years ago +he thought (and there has not been much change since), that "Cordova has +a more African look than any other city of Andalusia; its streets, or +rather its lanes, whose tumultuous pavement resembles the bed of dry +torrents, all littered with straw from the loads of passing donkeys, +have nothing that recalls the manners and customs of Europe. The Moors, +if they came back, would have no great trouble to reinstate themselves. +... The universal use of lime-wash gives a uniform tint to the +monuments, blunts the lines of the architecture, effaces the +ornamentation, and forbids you to read their age.... You cannot know +the wall of a century ago from the wall of yesterday. Cordova, once the +center of Arab civilization, is now a huddle of little white houses with +corridors between them where two mules could hardly pass abreast. Life +seems to have ebbed from the vast body, once animated by the active +circulation of Moorish blood; nothing is left now but the blanched +and calcined skeleton.... In spite of its Moslem air, Cordova is very +Christian and rests under the special protection of the Archangel +Raphael." It is all rather contradictory; but Gautier owns that the +great mosque is a "monument unique in the world, and novel even for +travelers who have had the fortune to admire the wonders of Moorish +architecture at Granada or Seville." + +De Amicis, who visited Cordova nearly forty-five years later, and in the +heart of spring, brought letters which opened something of the intimate +life of that apparently blanched and calcined skeleton. He meets young +men and matches Italian verses with their Spanish; spends whole nights +sitting in their cafes or walking their plazas, and comes away with his +mouth full of the rapturous verses of an Arab poet: "Adieu, Cordova! +Would that my life were as long as Noah's, that I might live forever +within thy walls! Would that I had the treasures of Pharaoh, to spend +them upon wine and the beautiful women of Cordova, with tho gentle +eyes that invite kisses!" He allows that the lines may be "a little too +tropical for the taste of a European," and it seems to me that there may +be a golden mean between scolding and flattering which would give the +truth about Cordova. I do not promise to strike it; our hotel still +rankles in my heart; but I promise to try for it, though I have to say +that the very moment we started for the famous mosque it began to rain, +and rained throughout the forenoon, while we weltered from wonder to +wonder through the town. We were indeed weltering in a closed carriage, +which found its way not so badly through the alleys where two mules +could not pass abreast. The lime-wash of the walls did not emit the +white heat in which the other tourists have basked or baked; the houses +looked wet and chill, and if they had those flowered and fountained +_patios_ which people talk of they had taken them in out of the rain. + + + +VI + + +At the mosque the _patio_ was not taken in only because it was so large, +but I find by our records that it was much molested by a beggar who +followed us when we dismounted at the gate of the Court of Oranges, and +all but took our minds off the famous Moorish fountain in the midst. It +was not a fountain of the plashing or gushing sort, but a noble great +pool in a marble basin. The women who clustered about it were not +laughing and chattering, or singing, or even dancing, in the right +Andalusian fashion, but stood silent in statuesque poses from which they +seemed in no haste to stir for filling their water jars and jugs. The +Moorish tradition of irrigation confronting one in all the travels and +histories as a supreme agricultural advantage which the Arabs took back +to Africa with them, leaving Spain to thirst and fry, lingers here in +the circles sunk round the orange trees and fed by little channels. +The trees grew about as the fancy took them, and did not mind the +incongruous palms towering as irregularly above them. While we wandered +toward the mosque a woman robed in white cotton, with a lavender scarf +crossing her breast, came in as irrelevantly as the orange trees and +stood as stably as the palms; in her night-black hair she alone in +Cordova redeemed the pledge of beauty made for all Andalusian women by +the reckless poets and romancers, whether in ballads or books of travel. + +One enters the court by a gate in a richly yellow tower, with a shrine +to St. Michael over the door, and still higher at the lodging of the +keeper a bed of bright flowers. Then, however, one is confronted with +the first great disappointment in the mosque. Shall it be whispered +in awe-stricken undertone that the impression of a bull-ring is what +lingers in the memory of the honest sight-seer from his first glance +at the edifice? The effect is heightened by the filling of the arcades +which encircle it, and which now confront the eye with a rounded wall, +where the Saracenic horseshoe remains distinct, but the space of yellow +masonry below seems to forbid the outsider stealing knowledge of the +spectacle inside. The spectacle is of course no feast of bulls (as the +Spanish euphemism has it), but the first amphitheatrical impression is +not wholly dispersed by the sight of the interior. In order that the +reader at his distance may figure this, he must imagine an indefinite +cavernous expanse, with a low roof supported in vaulted arches by some +thousand marble pillars, each with a different capital. There used to be +perhaps half a thousand more pillars, and Charles V. made the Cordovese +his reproaches for destroying the wonder of them when they planted +their proud cathedral in the heart of the mosque. He held it a sort of +sacrilege, but I think the honest traveler will say that there are still +enough of those rather stumpy white marble columns left, and enough of +those arches, striped in red and white with their undeniable suggestion +of calico awnings. It is like a grotto gaudily but dingily decorated, or +a vast circus-tent curtained off in hangings of those colors. + +[Illustration: 20 THE BELL-TOWER OF THE GREAT MOSQUE, CORDOVA] + +One sees the sanctuary where the great Caliph said his prayers, and the +Koran written by Othman and stained with his blood was kept; but I +know at least one traveler who saw it without sentiment or any sort of +reverent emotion, though he had not the authority of the "old rancid +Christianity" of a Castilian for withholding his homage. If people would +be as sincere as other people would like them to be, I think no one +would profess regret for the Arab civilization in the presence of its +monuments. Those Moors were of a religion which revolts all the finer +instincts and lifts the soul with no generous hopes; and the records of +it have no appeal save to the love of mere beautiful decoration. Even +here it mostly fails, to my thinking, and I say that for my part I found +nothing so grand in the great mosaue of Cordova as the cathedral which +rises in the heart of it. If Abderrahman boasted that he would rear a +shrine to the joy of earthly life and the hope of an earthly heaven, in +the place of the Christian temple which he would throw down, I should +like to overhear what his disembodied spirit would have to say to the +saint whose shrine he demolished. I think the saint would have the +better of him in any contention for their respective faiths, and could +easily convince the impartial witness that his religion then abiding in +medieval gloom was of promise for the future which Islam can never be. +Yet it cannot be denied that when Abderraham built his mosque the Arabs +of Cordova were a finer and wiser people than the Christians who +dwelt in intellectual darkness among them, with an ideal of gloom and +self-denial and a zeal for aimless martyrdom which must have been very +hard for a gentleman and scholar to bear. Gentlemen and scholars were +what the Arabs of the Western Caliphate seem to have become, with a +primacy in medicine and mathematics beyond the learning of all other +Europe in their day. They were tolerant skeptics in matters of religion; +polite agnostics, who disliked extremely the passion of some Christians +dwelling among them for getting themselves put to death, as they did, +for insulting the popularly accepted Mohammedan creed. Probably people +of culture in Cordova were quite of Abderrahman's mind in wishing +to substitute the temple of a cheerfuler ideal for the shrine of the +medieval Christianity which he destroyed; though they might have had +their reserves as to the taste in which his mosque was completed. If +they recognized it as a concession to the general preference, they could +do so without the discomfort which they must have suffered when some new +horde of Berbers, full of faith and fight, came over from Africa to push +back the encroaching Spanish frontier, and give the local Christians as +much martyrdom as they wanted. + +It is all a conjecture based upon material witness no more substantial +than that which the Latin domination left long centuries before the +Arabs came to possess the land. The mosque from which you drive through +the rain to the river is neither newer nor older looking than the +beautiful Saracenic bridge over the Guadalquivir which the Arabs +themselves say was first built by the Romans in the time of Augustus; +the Moorish mill by the thither shore might have ground the first wheat +grown in Europe. It is intensely, immemorially African, flat-roofed, +white-walled; the mules waiting outside in the wet might have been +drooping there ever since the going down of the Flood, from which the +river could have got its muddy yellow. + +If the reader will be advised by me he will not go to the Archaeological +Museum, unless he wishes particularly to contribute to the support of +the custodian; the collection will not repay him even for the time in +which a whole day of Cordova will seem so superabundant. Any little +street will be worthier his study, with its type of passing girls in +white and black mantillas, and its shallow shops of all sorts, their +fronts thrown open, and their interiors flung, as it were, on the +sidewalk. It is said that the streets were the first to be paved in +Europe, and they have apparently not been repaved since 850. This indeed +will not Hold quite true of that thoroughfare, twenty feet wide at +least, which led from our hotel to the Paseo del Gran Capitan. In this +were divers shops of the genteeler sort, and some large cafes, standing +full of men of leisure, who crowded to their doors and windows, with +their hats on and their hands in their pockets, as at a club, and let +no fact of the passing world escape their hungry eyes. Their behavior +expressed a famine of incident in Cordova which was pathetic. + + + +VII + + +The people did not look very healthy as to build or color, and there was +a sound of coughing everywhere. To be sure, it was now the season of +the first colds, which would no doubt wear off with the coming of next +spring; and there was at any rate not nearly so much begging as at +Toledo, because there could not be anywhere. I am sorry I can contribute +no statistics as to the moral or intellectual condition of Cordova; +perhaps they will not be expected or desired of me; I can only say that +the general intelligence is such that no one will own he does not know +anything you ask him even when he does not; but this is a national +rather than a local trait, which causes the stranger to go in many wrong +directions all over the peninsula. I should not say that there was any +noticeable decay of character from the north to the south such as the +attributive pride of the old Castilian in the Sheridan Knowlesian drama +would teach; the Cordovese looked no more shiftless than the haughtiest +citizens of Burgos. + +They had decidedly prettier _patios_ and more of them, and they had many +public carriages against none whatever in that ancient capital. Rubber +tires I did not expect in Cordova and certainly did not get in a city +where a single course over the pavements of 850 would have worn them to +tatters: but there seems a good deal of public spirit if one may judge +from the fact that it is the municipality which keeps Abderrahman's +mosque in repair. There are public gardens, far pleasanter than those of +Valladolid, which we visited in an interval of the afternoon, and there +is a very personable bull-ring to which we drove in the vain hope of +seeing the people come out in a typical multitude. But there had been no +feast of bulls; and we had to make what we could out of the walking +and driving in the Paseo del Gran Capitan toward evening. In its long, +discouraging course there were some good houses, but not many, and the +promenaders of any social quality were almost as few. Some ladies in +private carriages were driving out, and a great many more in public +ones as well dressed as the others, but with no pretense of state in +the horses or drivers. The women of the people all wore flowers in their +hair, a dahlia or a marigold, whether their hair was black or gray. No +ladies were walking in the Paseo, except one pretty mother, with her +nice-looking children about her, who totaled the sum of her class; but +men of every class rather swarmed. High or low, they all wore the kind +of hat which abounds everywhere in Andalusia and is called a Cordovese: +flat, stiff, squat in crown and wide in brim, and of every shade of +gray, brown, and black. + +I ought to have had my associations with the great Captain Gonsalvo in +the promenade which the city has named after him, but I am not sure that +I had, though his life was one of the Spanish books which I won my +way through in the middle years of my pathless teens. A comprehensive +ignorance of the countries and histories which formed the setting of his +most dramatic career was not the best preparation for knowledge of +the man, but it was the best I had, and now I can only look back at my +struggle with him and wonder that I came off alive. It is the hard fate +of the self-taught that their learning must cost them twice as much +labor as it would if they were taught by others; the very books they +study are grudging friends if not insidious foes. Long afterward when I +came to Italy, and began to make the past part of my present, I began to +untangle a little the web that the French and the Aragonese wove in +the conquest and reconquest of the wretched Sicilies; but how was I +to imagine in the Connecticut Western Reserve the scene of Gonsalvo's +victories in Calabria? Even loath Ferdinand the Catholic said they +brought greater glory to his crown than his own conquest of Granada; I +dare say I took some unintelligent pride in his being Viceroy of Naples, +and I may have been indignant at his recall and then his retirement from +court by the jealous king. But my present knowledge of these facts, and +of his helping put down the Moorish insurrection in 1500, as well as his +exploits as commander of a Spanish armada against the Turks is a +recent debt I owe to the _Encyclopedia Britannica_ and not to my boyish +researches. Of like actuality is my debt to Mr. Calvert's _Southern +Spain,_ where he quotes the accounting which the Great Captain gave +on the greedy king's demand for a statement of his expenses in the +Sicilies. + +"Two hundred thousand seven hundred and thirty-six ducats and 9 reals +paid to the clergy and the poor who prayed for the victory of the army +of Spain. + +"One hundred millions in pikes, bullets, and intrenching tools; 10,000 +ducats in scented gloves, to preserve the troops from the odor of the +enemies' dead left on the battle-field; 100,000 ducats, spent in the +repair of the bells completely worn out by every-day announcing fresh +victories gained over our enemies; 50,000 ducats in 'aguardiente' +for the troops on the eve of battle. A million and a half for the +safeguarding prisoners and wounded. + +"One million for Masses of Thanksgiving; 700,494 ducats for secret +service, etc. + +"And one hundred millions for the patience with which I have listened to +the king, who demands an account from the man who has presented him with +a Kingdom." + +It seems that Gonsalvo was one of the greatest humorists, as well as +captains of his age, and the king may very well have liked his fun no +better than his fame. Now that he has been dead nearly four hundred +years, Ferdinand would, if he were living, no doubt join Cordova in +honoring Gonzalo Hernandez de Aguila y de Cordova. After all he was not +born in Cordova (as I had supposed till an hour ago), but in the little +city of Montilla, five stations away on the railroad to the Malaga, and +now more noted for its surpassing sherry than for the greatest soldier +of his time. To have given its name to Amontillado is glory enough for +Montilla, and it must be owned that Gonzalo Hernandez de Aguila y de +Montilla would not sound so well as the title we know the hero by, when +we know him at all. There may be some who will say that Cordova merits +remembrance less because of him than because of Columbus, who first +came to the Catholic kings there to offer them not a mere kingdom, but +a whole hemisphere. Cordova was then the Spanish headquarters for the +operations against Granada, and one reads of the fact with a luminous +sense which one cannot have till one has seen Cordova. + + + +VIII + +[Illustration: 21 GATEWAY OF THE BRIDGE, CORDOVA] + +After our visits to the mosque and the bridge and the museum there +remained nothing of our forenoon, and we gave the whole of the earlier +afternoon to an excursion which strangers are expected to make into the +first climb of hills to the eastward of the city. The road which reaches +the Huerto de los Arcos is rather smoother for driving than the streets +of Cordova, but the rain had made it heavy, and we were glad of our good +horses and their owner's mercy to them. He stopped so often to breathe +them when the ascent began that we had abundant time to note the +features of the wayside; the many villas, piously named for saints, set +on the incline, and orcharded about with orange trees, in the beginning +of that measureless forest of olives which has no limit but the horizon. + +From the gate to the villa which we had come to see it was a stiff +ascent by terraced beds of roses, zinneas, and purple salvia beside +walls heavy with jasmine and trumpet creepers, in full bloom, and orange +trees, fruiting and flowering in their desultory way. Before the villa +we were to see a fountain much favored by our guide who had a passion +for the jets that played ball with themselves as long as the gardener +let him turn the water on, and watched with joy to see how high the +balls would go before slipping back. The fountain was in a grotto-like +nook, where benches of cement decked with scallop shells were set round +a basin with the figures of two small boys in it bestriding that of a +lamb, all employed in letting the water dribble from their mouths. It +was very simple-hearted, as such things seem mostly obliged to be, but +nature helped art out so well with a lovely abundance of leaf and petal +that a far more exacting taste than ours must have been satisfied. The +garden was in fact very pretty, though whether it was worth fifteen +pesetas and three hours coming to see the reader must decide for himself +when he does it. I think it was, myself, and I would like to be there +now, sitting in a shell-covered cement chair at the villa steps, and +letting the landscape unroll itself wonderfully before me. We were on a +shore of that ocean of olives which in southern Spain washes far up the +mountain walls of the blue and bluer distances, and which we were to +skirt more and more in bay and inlet and widening and narrowing expanses +throughout Andalusia. Before we left it we wearied utterly of it, and in +fact the olive of Spain is not the sympathetic olive of Italy, though +I should think it a much more practical and profitable tree. It is not +planted so much at haphazard as the Italian olive seems to be; its +mass looks less like an old apple orchard than the Italian; its regular +succession is a march of trim files as far as the horizon or the +hillsides, which they often climbed to the top. We were in the season of +the olive harvest, and throughout the month of October its nearer lines +showed the sturdy trees weighed down by the dense fruit, sometimes +very small, sometimes as large as pigeon eggs. There were vineyards and +wheat-fields in that vast prospect, and certainly there were towns and +villages; but what remains with me is the sense of olives and ever more +olives, though this may be the cumulative effect of other such prospects +as vast and as monotonous. + +While we looked away and away, the gardener and a half-grown boy were +about their labors that Sunday afternoon as if it were a week-day, +though for that reason perhaps they were not working very hard. They +seemed mostly to be sweeping up the fallen leaves from the paths, and +where the leaves had not fallen from the horse-chestnuts the boy was +assisting nature by climbing the trees and plucking them. We tried to +find out why he was doing this, but to this day I do not know why he +was doing it, and I must be content to contribute the bare fact to the +science of arboriculture. Possibly it was in the interest of neatness, +and was a precaution against letting the leaves drop and litter the +grass. There was apparently a passion for neatness throughout, which in +the villa itself mounted to ecstasy. It was in a state to be come and +lived in at any moment, though I believe it was occupied only in the +late spring and the early autumn; in winter the noble family went to +Madrid, and in summer to some northern watering-place. It was rather +small, and expressed a life of the minor hospitalities when the family +was in residence. It was no place for house-parties, and scarcely for +week-end visits, or even for neighborhood dinners. Perhaps on that +terrace there was afternoon ice-cream or chocolate for friends who rode +or drove over or out; it seemed so possible that we had to check in +ourselves the cozy impulse to pull up our shell-covered cement chairs to +some central table of like composition. + +Within, the villa was of a spick-and-spanness which I feel that I have +not adequately suggested; and may I say that the spray of a garden-hose +seemed all that would be needed to put the place in readiness for +occupation? Not that even this was needed for that interior of tile and +marble, so absolutely apt for the climate and the use the place would +be put to. In vain we conjectured, and I hope not impertinently, the +characters and tastes of the absentees; the sole clue that offered +itself was a bookshelf of some Spanish versions from authors scientific +and metaphysical to the verge of agnosticism. I would not swear to +Huxley and Herbert Spencer among the English writers, but they were such +as these, not in their entire bulk, but in extracts and special essays. +I recall the slightly tilted row of the neat paper copies; and I wish I +knew who it was liked to read them. The Spanish have a fondness for +such dangerous ground; from some of their novels it appears they feel it +rather chic to venture on it. + + + +IX + + +We came away from Cordova with a pretty good conscience as to its +sights. Upon the whole we were glad they were so few, when once we had +made up our minds about the mosque. But now I have found too late that +we ought to have visited the general market in the old square where the +tournaments used to take place; we ought to have seen also the Chapel +of the Hospital del Cardenal, because it was part of the mosque of +Al-Manssour; we ought to have verified the remains of two baths out of +the nine hundred once existing in the Calle del Bagno Alta; and we ought +finally to have visited the remnant of a Moorish house in the Plazuela +de San Nicolas, with its gallery of jasper columns, now unhappily +whitewashed. The Campo Santo has an unsatisfied claim upon my interest +because it was the place where the perfervid Christian zealots used to +find the martyrdom they sought at the hands of the unwilling Arabs; and +where, far earlier, Julius Caesar planted a plane tree after his victory +over the forces of Pompeii at Munda. The tree no longer exists, but +neither does Caesar, or the thirty thousand enemies whom he slew there, +or the sons of Pompeii who commanded them. These were so near beating +Casar at first that he ran among his soldiers "asking them whether they +were not ashamed to deliver him into the hands of boys." One of the boys +escaped, but two days after the fight the head of the elder was brought +to Caesar, who was not liked for the triumph he made himself after the +event in Rome, where it was thought out of taste to rejoice over the +calamity of his fellow-countrymen as if they had been foreign foes; +the Romans do not seem to have minded his putting twenty-eight thousand +Cordovese to death for their Pompeian politics. If I had remembered all +this from my Plutarch, I should certainly have gone to see the place +where Caesar planted that plane tree. Perhaps some kind soul will go to +see it for me. I myself do not expect to return to Cordova. + + + + +IX. FIRST DAYS IN SEVILLE + + +Cordova seemed to cheer up as much as we at our going. We had +undoubtedly had the better night's sleep; as often as we woke we found +Cordova awake, walking and talking, and coughing more than the night +before, probably from fresh colds taken in the rain. From time to time +there were church-bells, variously like tin pans and iron pots in +tone, without sonorousness in their noise, or such wild clangor as some +Italian church-bells have. But Cordova had lived through it, and at the +station was lively with the arriving and departing trains. The morning +was not only bright; it was hot, and the place babbled with many voices. +We thought one voice crying "Agua, agua!" was a parrot's and then we +thought it was a girl's, but really it was a boy with water for sale in +a stone bottle. He had not a rose, white or red, in his hair, but if he +had been a girl, old or young, he would have had one, white or red. Some +of the elder women wore mantillas, but these wore flowers too, and were +less pleasing than pathetic for it; one very massive matron was less +pleasing and more pathetic than the rest. Peasant women carried bunches +of chickens by the legs, and one had a turkey in a rush bag with a +narrow neck to put its head out of for its greater convenience in +gobbling. At the door of the station a donkey tried to bite a fly on +its back; but even a Spanish donkey cannot do everything. There was no +attempt to cheat us in the weight of our trunks, as there often is in +Italy, and the _mozo_ who put us and our hand-bags into the train was +content with his reasonable fee. As for the pair of Civil Guards who +were to go with us, they were of an insurpassable beauty and propriety, +and we felt it a peculiar honor when one of them got into the +compartment beside ours. + +We were to take the mail-train to Seville; and in Spain the _correo_ +is next to the Sud-Express, which is the last word in the vocabulary of +Peninsular railroading. Our _correo_ had been up all night on the +way from Madrid, and our compartment had apparently been used as a +bedchamber, with moments of supper-room. It seemed to have been occupied +by a whole family; there were frowsy pillows crushed into the corners of +the seats, and, though a porter caught these away, the cigar stubs, +and the cigarette ashes strewing the rug and fixed in it with various +liquids, as well as some scattering hair-pins, escaped his care. But +when it was dried and aired out by windows opened to the sunny weather, +it was by no means a bad compartment. The broad cushions were certainly +cleaner than the carpet; and it was something--it was a great deal--to +be getting out of Cordova on any terms. Not that Cordova seems at this +distance so bad as it seemed on the ground. If we could have had the +bright Monday of our departure instead of the rainy Sunday of our stay +there we might have wished to stay longer. But as it was the four hours' +run to Seville was delightful, largely because it Was the run from +Cordova. + +We were running at once over a gentle ground-swell which rose and sank +in larger billows now and then, and the yellow Guadalquivir followed us +all the way, in a valley that sometimes widened to the blue mountains +always walling the horizon. We had first entered Andalusia after dark, +and the scene had now a novelty little staled by the distant view of +the afternoon before. The olive orchards then seen afar were intimately +realized more and more in their amazing extent. None of the trees looked +so old, so world-old, as certain trees in the careless olive groves of +Italy. They were regularly planted, and most were in a vigorous middle +life; where they were old they were closely pollarded; and there were +young trees, apparently newly set out; there were holes indefinitely +waiting for others. These were often, throughout Andalusia, covered to +their first fork with cones of earth; and we remained in the dramatic +superstition that this was to protect them against the omnivorous hunger +of the goats, till we were told that it was to save their roots from +being loosened by the wind. The orchards filled the level foregrounds +and the hilly backgrounds to the vanishing-points of the mountainous +perspectives; but when I say this I mean the reader to allow for wide +expanses of pasturage, where lordly bulls were hoarding themselves +for the feasts throughout Spain which the bulls of Andalusia are happy +beyond others in supplying. With their devoted families they paraded +the meadows, black against the green, or stood in sharp arrest, the +most characteristic accent of the scene. In the farther rather than +the nearer distance there were towns, very white, very African, keeping +jealously away from the stations, as the custom of most towns is in +Spain, beyond the wheat-lands which disputed the landscape with the +olive orchards. + +One of these towns lay white at the base of a hill topped by a yellow +Moorish castle against the blue sky, like a subject waiting for its +painter and conscious of its wonderful adaptation to water-color. The +railroad-banks were hedged with Spanish bayonet, and in places with +cactus grown into trees, all knees and elbows, and of a diabolical +uncouthness. The air was fresh and springlike, and under the bright +sun, which we had already felt hot, men were plowing the gray fields +for wheat. Other men were beginning their noonday lunch, which, with the +long nap to follow, would last till three o'clock, and perhaps be rashly +accounted to them for sloth by the industrious tourist who did not know +that their work had begun at dawn and would not end till dusk. Indolence +may be a vice of the towns in Spain, but there is no loafing in the +country, if I may believe the conclusions of my note-book. The fields +often looked barren enough, and large spaces of their surface were +covered by a sort of ground palm, as it seemed to be, though whether it +was really a ground palm or not I know no more than I know the name or +nature of the wild flower which looked an autumn crocus, and which with +other wild flowers fringed the whole course of the train. There was +especially a small yellow flower, star-shaped, which we afterward +learned was called Todos Santos, from its custom of blooming at All +Saints, and which washed the sward in the childlike enthusiasm of +buttercups. A fine white narcissus abounded, and clumps of a mauve +flower which swung its tiny bells over the sward washed by the Todos +Santos. There were other flowers, which did what they could to brighten +our way, all clinging to the notion of summer, which the weather +continued to flatter throughout our fortnight in Seville. + +I could not honestly say that the stations or the people about them +were more interesting than in La Mancha. But at one place, where some +gentlemen in linen jackets dismounted with their guns, a group of men +with dogs leashed in pairs and saddle-horses behind them, took me with +the sense of something peculiarly native where everything was so +native. They were slim, narrow-hipped young fellows, tight-jerkined, +loose-trousered, with a sort of divided apron of leather facing the +leg and coming to the ankle; and all were of a most masterly Velasquez +coloring and drawing. As they stood smoking motionlessly, letting the +smoke drift from their nostrils, they seemed somehow of the same make +with the slouching hounds, and they leaned forward together, giving the +hunters no visible or audible greeting, but questioning their will with +one quality of gaze. The hunters moved toward them, but not as if they +belonged together, or expected any sort of demonstration from the men, +dogs, and horses that were of course there to meet them. As long as our +train paused, no electrifying spark kindled them to a show of emotion; +but it would have been interesting to see what happened after we +left them behind; they could not have kept their attitude of mutual +indifference much longer. These peasants, like the Spaniards everywhere, +were of an intelligent and sagacious look; they only wanted a chance, +one must think, to be a leading race. They have sometimes an anxiety of +appeal in their apathy, as if they would like to know more than they do. + +There was some livelier thronging at the station where the train stopped +for luncheon, but secure with the pretty rush-basket which the head +waiter at our hotel, so much better than the hotel, had furnished us at +starting, we kept to our car; and there presently we were joined by a +young couple who were unmistakably a new married couple. The man was of +a rich brown, and the woman of a dead white with dead black hair. They +both might have been better-looking than they were, but apparently not +better otherwise, for at Seville the groom helped us out of the car with +our hand-bags. + +I do not know what polite offers from him had already brought out the +thanks in which our speech bewrayed us; but at our outlandish accents +they at once became easier. They became frankly at home with themselves, +and talked in their Andalusian patter with no fear of being understood. +I might, indeed, have been far apter in Spanish without understanding +their talk, for when printed the Andalusian dialect varies as far from +the Castilian as, say, the Venetian varies from the Tuscan, and when +spoken, more. It may then be reduced almost wholly to vowel sounds, and +from the lips of some speakers it is really no more consonantal than if +it came from the beaks of birds. They do not lisp the soft _c_ or the +_z,_ as the Castilians do, but hiss them, and lisp the _s_ instead, as +the reader will find amusingly noted in the Sevillian chapters of _The +Sister of San Sulpice,_ which are the most charming chapters of that +most charming novel. At the stations there were sometimes girls and +sometimes boys with water for sale from stone bottles, who walked by +the cars crying it; and there were bits of bright garden, or there were +flowers in pots. There were also poor little human flowers, or call +them weeds, if you will, that suddenly sprang up beside our windows, and +moved their petals in pitiful prayer for alms. They always sprang up on +the off side of the train, so that the trainmen could not see them, but +I hope no trainman in Spain would have had the heart to molest them. +As a matter of taste in vegetation, however, we preferred an occasional +effect of mixed orange and pomegranate trees, with their perennial green +and their autumnal red. We were, in fact, so spoiled by the profusion of +these little human flowers, or weeds, that we even liked the change to +the dried stalk of an old man, flowering at top into a flat basket of +pale-pink shrimps. He gave us our first sight of sea-fruit, when we had +got, without knowing it, to Seville Junction. There was, oddly enough, +no other fruit for sale there; but there was a very agreeable-looking +booth at the end of the platform placarded with signs of Puerto +Rico coffee, cognac, and other drinks; and outside of it there were +wash-basins and clean towels. I do not know how an old woman with a +blind daughter made herself effective in the crowd, which did not seem +much preoccupied with the opportunities of ablution and refection at +that booth; but perhaps she begged with her blind daughter's help while +the crowd was busy in assorting itself for Cadiz and Seville and +Malaga and Cordova and other musically syllabled mothers of history and +romance. + + + +II + + +A few miles and a few minutes more and we were in the embrace of the +loveliest of them, which was at first the clutch on the octroi. But the +octroi at Seville is not serious, and a walrus-mustached old porter, who +looked like an old American car-driver of the bearded eighteen-sixties, +eased us--not very swiftly, but softly--through the local customs, and +then we drove neither so swiftly nor so softly to the hotel, where we +had decided we would have rooms on the _patio._ We had still to learn +that if there is a _patio_ in a Spanish hotel you cannot have rooms +in it, because they are either in repair or they are occupied. In +the present case they were occupied; but we could have rooms over the +street, which were the same as in the _patio,_ and which were perfectly +quiet, as we could perceive from the trolley-cars grinding and squealing +under their windows. The manager (if that was the quality of the patient +and amiable old official who received us) seemed surprised to see the +cars there, perhaps because they were so inaudible; but he said we could +have rooms in the annex, fronting on the adjoining plaza and siding on +an inoffensive avenue where there were absolutely no cars. The interior, +climbing to a lofty roof by a succession of galleries, was hushed by +four silent senoras, all in black, and seated in mute ceremony around a +table in chairs from which their little feet scarcely touched the marble +pavement. Their quiet confirmed the manager's assurance of a pervading +tranquillity, and though the only bath in the annex was confessedly on +the ground floor, and we were to be two floors above, the affair was +very simple: the chambermaid would always show us where the bath was. + +With misgiving, lost in a sense of our helplessness, we tried to think +that the avenue under us was then quieting down with the waning day; and +certainly it was not so noisy as the plaza, which, resounded with +the whips and quips of the cabmen, and gave no signs of quiescence. +Otherwise the annex was very pleasant, and we took the rooms shown us, +hoping the best and fearing the worst. Our fears were wiser than our +hopes, but we did not know this, and we went as gaily as we could for +tea in the _patio_ of our hotel, where a fountain typically trickled +amidst its water-plants and a noiseless Englishman at his separate table +almost restored our lost faith in a world not wholly racket. A young +Spaniard and two young Spanish girls helped out the illusion with their +gentle movements and their muted gutturals, and we looked forward to +dinner with fond expectation. To tell the truth, the dinner, when we +came back to it, was not very good, or at least not very winning, and +the next night it was no better, though the head waiter had then, made +us so much favor with himself as to promise us a side-table for the rest +of our stay. He was a very friendly head waiter, and the dining-room was +a long glare of the encaustic tiling which all Seville seems lined with, +and of every Moorish motive in the decoration. Besides, there was a +young Scotch girl, very interestingly pale and delicate of face, at one +of the tables, and at another a Spanish girl with the most wonderful +fire-red hair, and there were several miracles of the beautiful obesity +which abounds in Spain. + +When we returned to the annex it did seem, for the short time we kept +our windows shut, that the manager had spoken true, and we promised +ourselves a tranquil night, which, after our two nights in Cordova, we +needed if we did not merit. But we had counted without the spread of +popular education in Spain. Under our windows, just across the way, +there proved to be a school of the "Royal Society of Friends of their +Country," as the Spanish inscription in its front proclaimed; and +at dusk its pupils, children and young people of both sexes, began +clamoring for knowledge at its doors. About ten o'clock they burst from +them again with joyous exultation in their acquirements; then, shortly +after, every manner of vehicle began to pass, especially heavy market +wagons overladen and drawn by horses swarming with bells. Their +succession left scarcely a moment of the night unstunned; but if ever a +moment seemed to be escaping, there was a maniacal bell in a church near +by that clashed out: "Hello! Here's a bit of silence; let's knock it on +the head!" + +We went promptly the next day to the gentle old manager and told him +that he had been deceived in thinking he had given us rooms on a quiet +street, and appealed to his invention for something, for anything, +different. His invention had probably never been put to such stress +before, and he showed us an excess of impossible apartments, which we +subjected to a consideration worthy of the greatest promise in them. Our +search ended in a suite of rooms on the top floor, where we could have +the range of a flat roof outside if we wanted; but as the private family +living next door kept hens, led by a lordly turkey, on their roof, we +were sorrowfully forced to forego our peculiar advantage. Peculiar we +then thought it, though we learned afterward that poultry-farming was +not uncommon on the flat roofs of Seville, and there is now no telling +how we might have prospered if we had taken those rooms and stocked +our roof with Plymouth Rocks and Wyandottes. At the moment, however, +we thought it would not do, and we could only offer our excuses to the +manager, whose resources we had now exhausted, but not whose patience, +and we parted with expressions of mutual esteem and regret. + +Our own grief was sincerer in leaving behind us the enthusiastic +chambermaid of the annex who had greeted us with glad service, and was +so hopeful that when she said our doors should be made to latch and lock +in the morning, it was as if they latched and locked already. Her zeal +made the hot water she brought for the baths really hot, _"Caliente, +caliente,"_ and her voice would have quieted the street under our +windows if music could have soothed it. At a friendly word she grew +trustful, and told us how it was hard, hard for poor people in Seville; +how she had three dollars a month and her husband four; and how they had +to toil for it. When we could not help telling her, cruelly enough, +what they singly and jointly earn in New York, she praised rather than +coveted the happier chance impossible to them. They would like to go, +but they could not go! She was gay with it all, and after we had left +the hotel and come back for the shawl which had been forgotten, she ran +for it, shouting with laughter, as if we must see it the great joke she +did; and she took the reward offered with the self-respect never wanting +to the Spanish poor. Very likely if I ransacked my memory I might find +instances of their abusing those advantages over the stranger which +Providence puts in the reach of the native everywhere; but on the spur +of the moment, I do not recall any. In Spain, where a woman earns three +dollars a month, as in America where she earns thirty, the poor seem to +abound in the comparative virtues which the rich demand in return for +the chances of Heaven which they abandon to them. There were few of +those rendering us service there whom we would not willingly have +brought away with us; but very likely we should have found they had the +defects of their qualities. + +When we definitely turned our backs on the potential poultry-farm +offered us at our hotel, we found ourselves in as good housing at +another, overlooking the length and breadth of the stately Plaza San +Fernando, with its parallelogram of tall palms, under a full moon +swimming in a cloudless heaven by night and by day. By day, of course, +we did not see it, but the sun was visibly there, rather blazing hot, +even in mid-October, and showing more distinctly than the moon the +beautiful tower of the Giralda from the waist up, and the shoulder of +the great cathedral, besides features of other noble, though less noble, +edifices. Our plaza was so full of romantic suggestion that I am rather +glad now I had no association with it. I am sure I could not have borne +at the time to know, as I have only now learned by recurring to my +Baedeker, that in the old Franciscan cloister once there had stood the +equestrian statue of the Comendador who dismounts and comes unbidden to +the supper of Don Giovanni in the opera. That was a statue which, seen +in my far youth, haunted my nightmares for many a year, and I am sure it +would have kept me from sleep in the conditions, now so perfect, of our +new housing if I had known, about it. + + + +III + + +The plaza is named, of course, for King Fernando, who took Seville from +the Moors six hundred years ago, and was canonized for his conquests and +his virtues. But I must not enter so rashly upon the history of Seville, +or forget the arrears of personal impression which I have to bring up. +The very drive from the station was full of impressions, from the narrow +and crooked streets, the houses of yellow, blue, and pink stucco, the +flowered and fountained _patios_ glimpsed passingly, the half-lengths +of church-towers, and the fleeting facades of convents and palaces, +all lovely in the mild afternoon light. These impressions soon became +confluent, so that without the constant witness of our note-books +I should now find it impossible to separate them. If they could be +imparted to the reader in their complexity, that would doubtless be the +ideal, though he would not believe that their confused pattern was a +true reflex of Seville; so I recur to the record, which says that the +morning after our arrival we hurried to see the great and beautiful +cathedral. It had failed, in our approach the afternoon before, to +fulfil the promise of one of our half-dozen guide-books (I forget which +one) that it would seem to gather Seville about it as a hen gathers her +chickens, but its vastness grew upon us with every moment of our +more intimate acquaintance. Our acquaintance quickly ripened into the +affectionate friendship which became a tender regret when we looked +our last upon it; and vast as it was, it was never too large for our +embrace. I doubt if there was a moment in our fortnight's devotion when +we thought the doughty canons, its brave-spoken founders, "mad to have +undertaken it," as they said they expected people to think, or any +moment when we did not revere them for imagining a temple at once so +beautiful and so big. + +Our first visit was redeemed from the commonplace of our duty-round of +the side-chapels by two things which I can remember without the help of +my notes. One, and the great one, was Murillo's "Vision of St. Anthony," +in which the painter has most surpassed himself, and which not to have +seen, Gautier says, is not to have known the painter. It is so glorious +a masterpiece, with the Child joyously running down from the clustering +angels toward the kneeling saint in the nearest corner of the +foreground, that it was distinctly a moment before I realized that the +saint had once been cut out of his corner and sent into an incredible +exile in America, and then munificently restored to it, though the seam +in the canvas only too literally attested the incident. I could not well +say how this fact then enhanced the interest of the painting, and then +how it ceased from the consciousness, which it must always recur to with +any remembrance of it. If one could envy wealth its chance of doing a +deed of absolute good, here was the occasion, and I used it. I did envy +the mind, along with the money, to do that great thing. Another great +thing which still more swelled my American heart and made it glow with +patriotic pride was the monument to Columbus, which our suffering his +dust to be translated from Havana has made possible in Seville. There +may be other noble results of our war on Spain for the suzerainty of +Cuba and the conquest of Puerto Rico and the Philippines, but there is +none which matches in moral beauty the chance it won us for this Grand +Consent. I suppose those effigies of the four Spanish realms of Castile, +Leon, Aragon, and Navarre, which bear the coffin of the discoverer in +stateliest processional on their shoulders, may be censured for being +too boldly superb, too almost swagger, but I will not be the one to +censure them. They are painted the color of life, and they advance +colossally, royal-robed and mail-clad, as if marching to some proud +music, and would tread you down if you did not stand aside. It is +perhaps not art, but it is magnificent; nothing less stupendously +Spanish would have sufficed; and I felt that the magnanimity which had +yielded Spain this swelling opportunity had made America her equal in +it. + +We went to the cathedral the first morning after our arrival in Seville, +because we did not know how soon we might go away, and then we went +every morning or every afternoon of our fortnight there. Habitually +we entered by that Gate of Pardon which in former times had opened the +sanctuary to any wickedness short of heresy; but, as our need of refuge +was not pressing, we wearied of the Gate of Pardon, with its beautiful +Saracenic arch converted to Christianity by the Renaissance bas-relief +obliterating the texts from the Koran. We tried to form the habit of +going in by other gates, but the Gate of Pardon finally prevailed; there +was always a gantlet of cabmen to be run beside it, which brought our +sins home to us. It led into the badly paved Court of Oranges, where the +trees seem planted haphazard and where there used also to be fountains. +Gate and court are remnants of the mosque, patterned upon that of +Cordova by one of the proud Moorish kings of Seville, and burned by the +Normans when they took and sacked his city. His mosque had displaced the +early Christian basilica of San Vicente, which the still earlier temple +to Venus Salambo had become. Then, after the mosque was rebuilt, the +good San Fernando in his turn equipped it with a Gothic choir and +chapels and turned it into the cathedral, which was worn out with +pious uses when the present edifice was founded, in their _folie des +grandeurs,_ by those glorious madmen in the first year of the fifteenth +century. + + + +IV + + +Little of this learning troubled me in my visits to the cathedral, or +even the fact that, next to St. Peter's, it was the largest church in +the world. It was sufficient to itself by mere force of architectural +presence, without the help of incidents or measurements. It was a city +in itself, with a community of priests and sacristans dwelling in it, +and a floating population of sightseers and worshipers always passing +through it. The first morning we had submitted to make the round of +the chapels, patiently paying to have each of them unlocked and wearily +wondering at their wonders, but only sympathizing really with the stern +cleric who showed the ceremonial vestments and jewels of the cathedral, +and whose bitter face expressed, or seemed to express, abhorrence of our +whole trivial tourist tribe. After that morning we took our curiosity +into our own keeping and looked at nothing that did not interest us, and +we were interested most in those fellow-beings who kept coming and going +all day long. + +[Illustration: 22 IN ATTITUDES OF SILENT DEVOTION] + +Chiefly, of course, they were women. In Catholic countries women have +either more sins to be forgiven than the men, or else they are sorrier +for them; and here, whether there was service or not, they were dropped +everywhere in veiled and motionless prayer. In Seville the law of the +mantilla is rigorously enforced. If a woman drives, she may wear a hat; +but if she walks, she must wear a mantilla under pain of being pointed +at by the finger of scorn. If she is a young girl she may wear colors +with it (a cheerful blue seems the favorite), but by far the greater +number came to the cathedral in complete black. Those somber figures +which clustered before chapel, or singly dotted the pavement everywhere, +flitted in and out like shadows in the perpetual twilight. For far the +greater number, their coming to the church was almost their sole escape +into the world. They sometimes met friends, and after a moment, or an +hour, of prayer they could cheer their hearts with neighborly gossip. +But for the greater part they appeared and disappeared silently and +swiftly, and left the spectator to helpless conjecture of their history. +Many of them would have first met their husbands in the cathedral when +they prayed, or when they began to look around to see who was looking +at them. It might have been their trysting-place, safeguarding them in +their lovers' meetings, and after marriage it had become their social +world, when their husbands left them for the clubs or the cafes. They +could not go at night, of course, except to some special function, but +they could come by day as often as they liked. I do not suppose that +the worshipers I saw habitually united love or friendship with their +devotions in the cathedral, but some certainly joined business with +devotion; at a high function one day an American girl felt herself +sharply nudged in the side, and when she turned she found the palm of +her kneeling neighbor stretched toward her. They must all have had their +parish churches besides the cathedral, and a devotee might make the day +a social whirl by visiting one shrine after another. But I do not +think that many do. The Spanish women are of a domestic genus, and are +expected to keep at home by the men who expect to keep abroad. + +I do not know just how it is in the parish churches; they must each +have its special rite, which draws and holds the frequenter; but +the cathedral constantly offers a drama of irresistible appeal. +We non-Catholics can feel this even at the distance to which our +Protestantism has remanded us, and at your first visit to the Seville +cathedral during mass you cannot help a moment of recreant regret when +you wish that a part in the mystery enacting was your birthright. The +esthetic emotion is not denied you; the organ-tide that floods the place +bears you on it, too; the priests perform their rites before the altar +for you; they come and go, they bow and kneel, for you; the censer +swings and smokes for you; the little wicked-eyed choir-boys and +mischievous-looking acolytes suppress their natures in your behalf as +much as if you were a believer, or perhaps more. The whole unstinted +hospitality of the service is there for you, as well as for the children +of the house, and the heart must be rude and the soul ungrateful that +would refuse it. For my part, I accepted it as far as I knew how, +and when I left the worshipers on their knees and went tiptoeing from +picture to picture and chapel to chapel, it was with shame for the +unscrupulous sacristan showing me about, and I felt that he, if not I, +ought to be put out and not allowed back till the function was over. I +call him sacristan at a venture; but there were several kinds of guides +in the cathedral, some in the livery of the place and some in civil +dress, willing to supplement our hotel interpreter, or lying in wait for +us when we came alone. I wish now I had taken them all, but at the time +they tired me, and I denied them. + +Though not a day passed but we saw it, I am not able to say what the +cathedral was like. The choir was planted in the heart of it, as it +might be a celestial refuge in that forest of mighty pillars, as great +in girth as the giant redwoods of California, and climbing to a Gothic +firmament horizoned round as with sunset light from near a hundred +painted windows. The chapels on each side, the most beautiful in Spain, +abound in riches of art and pious memorials, with chief among them the +Royal Chapel, in the prow, as it were, of the ship which the cathedral +has been likened to, keeping the bones not only of the sainted hero, +King Fernando, but also, among others, the bones of Peter the Cruel, and +of his unwedded love, Maria de Padilla, far too good for Peter in life, +if not quite worthy of San Fernando in death. You can see the saint's +body on certain dates four times a year, when, as your Baedeker will +tell you, "the troops of the garrison march past and lower their colors" +outside the cathedral. We were there on none of these dates, and, far +more regretably, not on the day of Corpus Christi, when those boys whose +effigies in sculptured and painted wood we had seen in the museum at +Valladolid pace in their mystic dance before the people at the opposite +portal of the cathedral. But I appoint any reader, so minded, to go and +witness the rite some springtime for me. There is no hurry, for it is +destined to endure through the device practised in defeating the pope +who proposed to abolish it. He ordained that it should continue only +as long as the boys' actual costumes lasted; but by renewing these +carefully wherever they began to wear out, they have become practically +imperishable. + +If we missed this attraction of the cathedral, we had the high good +fortune to witness another ceremony peculiar to it, but perhaps less +popularly acceptable. The building had often suffered from earthquakes, +and on the awful day, _dies irae,_ of the great Lisbon earthquake, +during mass and at the moment of the elevation of the Host, when the +worshipers were on their knees, there came such a mighty shock in +sympathy with the far-off cataclysm that the people started to their +feet and ran out of the cathedral. If the priests ran after them, as +soon as the apparent danger was past they led the return of their flock +and resumed the interrupted rite. It was, of course, by a miracle that +the temple was spared, and when it was realized how scarcely Seville +had escaped the fate of Lisbon it was natural that the event should +be dramatized in a perpetual observance. Every year now, on the 1st of +November, the clergy leave the cathedral at a chosen moment of the mass, +with much more stateliness than in the original event, and lead the +people out of one portal, to return with them by another for the +conclusion of the ceremonial. + +[Illustration: 23 THE CATHEDRAL AND TOWER OF THE GIRALDA] + +We waited long for the climax, but at last we almost missed it through +the overeagerness of the guide I had chosen out of many that petitioned. +He was so politely, so forbearingly insistent in his offer to see that +we were vigilantly cared for, that I must have had a heart harder than +Peter the Cruel's to have denied him, and he planted us at the most +favorable point for the function in the High Chapel, with instructions +which portal to hurry to when the movement began, and took his peseta +and went his way. Then, while we confidingly waited, he came rushing +back and with a great sweep of his hat wafted us to the door which he +had said the procession would go out by, but which he seemed to have +learned it would come in by, and we were saved from what had almost been +his fatal error. I forgave him the more gladly because I could rejoice +in his returning to repair his error, although he had collected his +money; and with a heart full of pride in his verification of my +theory of the faithful Spanish nature, I gave myself to the shining +gorgeousness of the procession that advanced chanting in the blaze of +the Sevillian sun. There was every rank of clergy, from the archbishop +down, in robes of ceremonial, but I am unable honestly to declare the +admiration for their splendor which I would have willingly felt. The +ages of faith in which those vestments were designed were apparently +not the ages of taste; yet it was the shape of the vestments and not the +color which troubled the eye of unfaith, if not of taste. The archbishop +in crimson silk, with his train borne by two acolytes, the canons in +their purple, the dean in his gold-embroidered robes, and the priests +and choristers in their black robes and white surplices richly satisfied +it; and if some of the clerics were a little frayed and some of the +acolytes were spotted with the droppings of the candles, these were +details which one remembered afterward and that did not matter at the +time. + +When the procession was housed again, we went off and forgot it in the +gardens of the Alcazar. But I must not begin yet on the gardens of the +Alcazar. We went to them every day, as we did to the cathedral, but we +did not see them until our second morning in Seville. We gave what was +left from the first morning in the cathedral to a random exploration of +the streets and places of the city. There was, no doubt, everywhere some +touch of the bravery of our square of San Fernando, where the public +windows were hung with crimson tapestries and brocades in honor of St. +Raphael; but his holiday did not make itself molestively felt in the +city's business or pleasure. Where we could drive we drove, and where we +must we walked, and we walked of course through the famous Calle de las +Sierpes, because no one drives there. As a rule no woman walks there, +and naturally there were many women walking there, under the eyes of +the popular cafes and aristocratic clubs which principally abound in Las +Sierpes, for it is also the street of the principal shops, though it is +not very long and is narrower than many other streets of Seville. It has +its name from so commonplace an origin as the sign over a tavern door, +with some snakes painted on it; but if the example of sinuosity had been +set it by prehistoric serpents, there were scores of other streets which +have bettered its instruction. There were streets that crooked away +everywhere, not going anywhere, and breaking from time to time into +irregular angular spaces with a church or a convent or a nobleman's +house looking into them. + + + +VI + + +The noblemen's houses often showed a severely simple facade to the +square or street, and hid their inner glories with what could have been +fancied a haughty reserve if it had not been for the frankness with +which they opened their _patios_ to the gaze of the stranger, who, when +he did not halt his carriage before them, could enjoy their hospitality +from a sidewalk sometimes eighteen inches wide. The passing tram-car +might grind him against the tall grilles which were the only barriers +to the _patios,_ but otherwise there would be nothing to spoil his +enjoyment of those marble floors and tiled walls and fountains potted +round with flowering plants. In summer he could have seen the family +life there; and people who are of such oriental seclusion otherwise +will sometimes even suffer the admiring traveler to come as well as +look within. But one who would not press their hospitality so far could +reward his forbearance by finding some of the _patios_ too new-looking, +with rather a glare from their tiles and marbles, their painted iron +pillars, and their glass roofs which the rain comes through in the +winter. The ladies sit and sew there, or talk, if they prefer, and +receive their friends, and turn night into day in the fashion of +climates where they are so easily convertible. The _patio_ is the place +of that peculiarly Spanish rite, the _tertulia,_ and the family nightly +meets its next of kin and then its nearer and farther friends there with +that Latin regularity which may also be monotony. One _patio_ is often +much like another, though none was perhaps of so much public interest +as the _patio_ of the lady who loved a bull-fighter and has made her +_patio_ a sort of shrine to him. The famous _espada_ perished in his +heroic calling, no worse if no better than those who saw him die, and +now his bust is in plain view, with a fit inscription recognizing his +worth and prowess, and with the heads of some of the bulls he slew. + +Under that clement sky the elements do not waste the works of man as +elsewhere, and many of the houses of Seville are said to be such as the +Moors built there. We did not know them from the Christian houses; but +there are no longer any mosques, while in our wanderings we had the +pretty constant succession of the convents which, when they are still in +the keeping of their sisterhoods and brotherhoods, remain monuments of +the medieval piety of Spain; or, when they are suppressed and turned to +secular uses, attest the recurrence of her modern moods of revolution +and reform. It is to one of these that Seville owes the stately Alameda +de Hercules, a promenade covering the length and breadth of aforetime +convent gardens, which you reach from the Street of the Serpents by the +Street of the Love of God, and are then startled by the pagan presence +of two mighty columns lifting aloft the figures of Caesar and of the +titular demigod. Statues and pillars are alike antique, and give you a +moment of the Eternal City the more intense because the promenade is of +an unkempt and broken surface, like the Cow-field which the Roman Forum +used to be. Baedeker calls it shady, and I dare say it is shady, but +I do not remember the trees--only those glorious columns climbing the +summer sky of the Andalusian autumn, and proclaiming the imperishable +memory of the republic that conquered and the empire that ruled the +world, and have never loosed their hold upon it. We were rather newly +from the grass-grown ruin of a Roman town in Wales, and in this other +Iberian land we were always meeting the witnesses of the grandeur which +no change short of some universal sea change can wholly sweep from the +earth. Before it Goth and Arab shrink, with all their works, into the +local and provisional; Rome remains for all time imperial and universal. + +[Illustration: 24 ANCIENT ROMAN COLUMNS LIFTING ALOFT THE FIGURES OF HERCULES AND CAESAR] + +To descend from this high-horsed reflection, as I must, I have to record +that there did not seem to be so many small boys in Seville as in the +Castillian capitals we had visited; in the very home of the bull-feast +we did not see one mimic _corrida_ given by the _torreros_ of the +future. Not even in the suburb of Triana, where the small boys again +consolingly superabounded, was the great national game played among +the wheels and hoofs of the dusty streets to which we crossed the +Guadalquivir that afternoon. To be sure, we were so taken with other +things that a boyish bull-feast might have rioted unnoticed under our +horses' very feet, especially on the long bridge which gives you the far +upward and downward stretch of the river, so simple and quiet and empty +above, so busy and noisy and thronged with shipping below. I suppose +there are lovelier rivers than that--we ourselves are known to brag +of our Pharpar and Abana--but I cannot think of anything more nobly +beautiful than the Guadalquivir resting at peace in her bed, where she +has had so many bad dreams of Carthaginian and Roman and Gothic and Arab +and Norman invasion. Now her waters redden, for the time at least, only +from the scarlet hulls of the tramp steamers lying in long succession +beside the shore where the gardens of the Delicias were waiting to +welcome us that afternoon to our first sight of the pride and fashion of +Seville. I never got enough of the brave color of those tramp steamers; +and in thinking of them as English, Norse, French, and Dutch, fetching +or carrying their cargoes over those war-worn, storied waters, I had +some finer thrills than in dwelling on the Tower of Gold which rose +from the midst of them. It was built in the last century of the Moorish +dominion to mark the last point to which the gardens of the Moorish +palace of the Alcazar could stretch, but they were long ago obliterated +behind it; and though it was so recent, no doubt it would have had its +pathos if I could ever have felt pity for the downfall of the Moslem +power in Spain. As it was, I found the tramp steamers more moving, and +it was these that my eye preferably sought whenever I crossed the Triana +bridge. + + + +VII + + +We were often crossing it on one errand or other, but now we were +especially going to see the gipsy quarter of Seville, which disputes +with that of Granada the infamy of the loathsomest purlieu imaginable. +Perhaps because it was so very loathsome, I would not afterward visit +the gipsy quarter in Granada, and if such a thing were possible I would +willingly unvisit the gipsy quarter of Seville. All Triana is pretty +squalid, though it has merits and charms to which I will try eventually +to be just, and I must even now advise the reader to visit the tile +potteries there. If he has our good-fortune he may see in the manager of +one a type of that fusion of races with which Spain long so cruelly +and vainly struggled after the fall of the last Moorish kingdom. He was +beautifully lean and clean of limb, and of a grave gentleness of manner; +his classically regular face was as swarthy as the darkest mulatto's, +but his quiet eyes were gray. I carried the sense of his fine decency +with me when we drove away from his warerooms, and suddenly whirled +round the corner of the street into the gipsy quarter, and made it my +prophylactic against the human noisomeness which instantly beset our +course. Let no Romany Rye romancing Barrow, or other fond fibbing +sentimentalist, ever pretend to me hereafter that those persistent +savages have even the ridiculous claim of the North American Indians to +the interest of the civilized man, except as something to be morally and +physically scoured and washed up, and drained and fumigated, and treated +with insecticides and put away in mothballs. Our own settled order +of things is not agreeable at all points; it reeks and it smells, +especially in Spain, when you get down to its lower levels; but it does +not assail the senses with such rank offense as smites them in the gipsy +quarter with sights and sounds and odors which to eye and ear, as well +as nose, were all stenches. + +Low huts lined the street, which swarmed at our coming with ragged +children running beside us and after us and screaming, "Minny, niooney, +_ money!"_ in a climax of what they wanted. Men leaned against the +door-posts and stared motionless, and hags, lean and fat, sat on the +thresholds and wished to tell our fortunes; younger women ranged the +sidewalks and offered to dance. They all had flowers in their hair, and +some were of a horrible beauty, especially one in a green waist, with +both white and red flowers in her dusky locks. Down the middle of the +road a troop of children, some blond, but mostly black, tormented +a hapless ass colt; and we hurried away as fast as our guide could +persuade our cabman to drive. But the gipsy quarter had another street +in reserve which made us sorry to have left the first. It paralleled +the river, and into the center of it every manner of offal had been cast +from the beginning of time to reek and fester and juicily ripen and rot +in unspeakable corruption. It was such a thoroughfare as Dante might +have imagined in his Hell, if people in his time had minded such +horrors; but as it was we could only realize that it was worse than +infernal, it was medieval, and that we were driving in such putrid +foulness as the gilded carriages of kings and queens and the prancing +steeds and palfreys of knights and ladies found their way through +whenever they went abroad in the picturesque and romantic Middle Ages. I +scarcely remember now how we got away and down to the decent waterside, +and then by the helpful bridge to the other shore of the Guadalquivir, +painted red with the reflections of those consoling tramp steamers. + +After that abhorrent home of indolence, which its children never left +except to do a little fortune-telling and mule and donkey trading, eked +out with theft in the country round, any show of honest industry looked +wholesome and kind. I rejoiced almost as much in the machinery as in the +men who were loading the steamers; even the huge casks of olives, which +were working from the salt-water poured into them and frothing at the +bung in great white sponges of spume, might have been examples of toil +by which those noisome vagabonds could well have profited. But now we +had come to see another sort of leisure--the famous leisure of fortune +and fashion driving in the Delicias, but perhaps never quite fulfilling +the traveler's fond ideal of it. We came many times to the Delicias +in hope of it, with decreasing disappointment, indeed, but to the last +without entire fruition. For our first visit we could not have had a +fitter evening, with its pale sky reddening from a streak of sunset +beyond Triana, and we arrived in appropriate circumstance, round the +immense circle of the bull-ring and past the palace which the Duc de +Montpensier has given the church for a theological seminary, with long +stretches of beautiful gardens. Then we were in the famous Paseo, a +drive with footways on each side, and on one side dusky groves widening +to the river. The paths were lit with gleaming statues, and among +the palms and the eucalyptuses were orange trees full of their golden +globes, which we wondered were not stolen till we were told they were of +that bitter sort which are mostly sent to Scotland, not because they +are in accord with the acrid nature of man there, but that they may be +wrought into marmalade. On the other hand stretched less formal woods, +with fields for such polite athletics as tennis, which the example of +the beloved young English Queen of Spain is bringing into reluctant +favor with women immemorially accustomed to immobility. The road was +badly kept, like most things in Spain, where when a thing is done it is +expected to stay done. Every afternoon it is a cloud of dust and every +evening a welter of mud, for the Iberian idea of watering a street is to +soak it into a slough. But nothing can spoil the Paseo, and that evening +we had it mostly to ourselves, though there were two or three carriages +with ladies in hats, and at one place other ladies dismounted and +courageously walking, while their carriages followed. A magnate of some +sort was shut alone in a brougham, in the care of footman and coachman +with deeply silver-banded hats; there were a few military and civil +riders, and there was distinctly a young man in a dog-cart with a groom, +keeping abreast the landau of three ladies in mantillas, with whom he +was improving what seemed a chance acquaintance. Along the course the +public park gave way at times to the grounds of private villas; before +one of these a boy did what he could for us by playing ball with a +priest. At other points there were booths with chairs and tables, where +I am sure interesting parties of people would have been sitting if they +could have expected us to pass. + + + +VIII + + +The reader, pampered by the brilliant excitements of our American +promenades, may think this spectacle of the gay world of Seville dull; +but he ought to have been with us a colder, redder, and sadder evening +when we had the Delicias still more to ourselves. Afterward the Delicias +seemed to cheer up, and the place was fairly frequented on a holiday, +which we had not suspected was one till our cabman convinced us from his +tariff that we must pay him double, because you must always do that in +Seville on holidays. By this time we knew that most of the Sevillian +rank and riches had gone to Madrid for the winter, and we were the more +surprised by some evident show of them in the private turnouts where +by far most of the turnouts were public. But in Spain a carriage is a +carriage, and the Sevillian cabs are really very proper and sometimes +even handsome, and we felt that our own did no discredit to the +Delicias. Many of the holiday-makers were walking, and there were +actually women on foot in hats and hobble-skirts without being openly +mocked. On the evening of our last resort to the Delicias it was quite +thronged far into the twilight, after a lemon sunset that continued to +tinge the east with pink and violet. There were hundreds of carriages, +fully half of them private, with coachmen and footmen in livery. With +them it seemed to be the rule to stop in the circle at a turning-point a +mile off and watch the going and coming. It was a serious spectacle, +but not solemn, and it had its reliefs, its high-lights. It was always +pleasant to see three Spanish ladies on a carriage seat, the middle one +protruding because of their common bulk, and oftener in umbrella-wide +hats with towering plumes than in the charming mantilla. There were no +top-hats or other formality in the men's dress; some of them were on +horseback, and there were two women riding. + +Suddenly, as if it had come up out of the ground, I perceived a tram-car +keeping abreast of the riding and walking and driving, and through all I +was agreeably aware of files of peasants bestriding their homing donkeys +on the bridle-path next the tram. I confess that they interested me more +than my social equals and superiors; I should have liked to talk with +those fathers and mothers of toil, bestriding or perched on the cruppers +of their donkeys, and I should have liked especially to know what passed +in the mind of one dear little girl who sat before her father with her +bare brown legs tucked into the pockets of the pannier. + + + + +X. SEVILLIAN ASPECTS AND INCIDENTS + + +It is always a question how much or little we had better know about +the history of a strange country when seeing it. If the great mass of +travelers voted according to their ignorance, the majority in favor of +knowing next to nothing would be overwhelming, and I do not say they +would be altogether unwise. History itself is often of two minds about +the facts, or the truth from them, and when you have stored away +its diverse conclusions, and you begin to apply them to the actual +conditions, you are constantly embarrassed by the misfits. What did it +avail me to believe that when the Goths overran the north of Spain the +Vandals overran the south, and when they swept on into Africa and melted +away in the hot sun there as a distinctive race, they left nothing but +the name Vandalusia, a letter less, behind them? If the Vandals +were what they are reported to have been, the name does not at all +characterize the liveliest province of Spain. Besides, the very next +history told me that they took even their name with them, and forbade me +the simple and apt etymology which I had pinned my indolent faith to. + + + +I + + +Before I left Seville I convinced a principal bookseller, much against +his opinions, that there must be some such brief local history of the +city as I was fond of finding in Italian towns, and I took it from +his own reluctant shelf. It was a very intelligent little guide, this +_Seville in the Hand,_ as it calls itself, but I got it too late for +use in exploring the city, and now I can turn to it only for those +directions which will keep the reader from losing his way in the devious +past. The author rejects the fable which the chroniclers delight in, +and holds with historians who accept the Phoenicians as the sufficiently +remote founders of Seville. This does not put out of commission those +Biblical "ships of Tarshish" which Dr. Edward Everett Hale, in +his graphic sketch of Spanish history, has sailing to and from the +neighboring coasts. Very likely they came up the Guadalquivir, and lay +in the stream where a few thousand years later I saw those cheerful +tramp-steamers lying. At any rate, the Phoenicians greatly flourished +there, and gave their colony the name of Hispalis, which it remained +content with till the Romans came and called the town Julia Romula, +and Julius Caesar fenced it with the strong walls which the Moorish +conquerors, after the Goths, reinforced and have left plain to be seen +at this day. The most casual of wayfaring men must have read as he ran +that the Moorish power fell before the sword of San Fernando as the +Gothic fell before their own, and the Roman before the Gothic. But it +is more difficult to realize that earlier than the Gothic, somewhere in +between the Vandals and the Romans, had been the Carthaginians, whose +great general Hamilcar fancied turning all Spain into a Carthaginian +province. They were a branch of the Phoenicians as even the older, +unadvertised edition of the _Encyclopedia Britannica_ will tell, and the +Phoenicians were a sort of Hebrews. Whether they remained to flourish +with the other Jews under the Moors, my _Sevilla en la Mano_ does not +say; and I am not sure whether they survived to share the universal +exile into which Islam and Israel were finally driven. What is certain +is, that the old Phoenician name of Hispalis outlived the Roman name of +Julia Romula and reappeared in the Arabic as Ishbiliya (I know it from +my Baedeker) and is now permanently established as Seville. + +Under the Moors the city was subordinate to Cordova, though I can hardly +bear to think so in my far greater love of Seville. But it was the seat +of schools of science, art, and agriculture, and after the Christians +had got it back, Alfonso the Learned founded other schools there for the +study of Latin and Arabic. But her greatest prosperity and glory came +to Seville with the discovery of America. Not Columbus only, but all his +most famous contemporaries, sailed from the ports of her coasts; she was +the capital of the commerce with the new world, ruling and regulating it +by the oldest mercantile tribunal in the world, and becoming the richest +city of Spain. Then riches flowered in the letters and arts, especially +the arts, and Herrera, Pacheco, Velasquez, Murillo, and Zurburan +were born and flourished in Seville. In modern times she has taken a +prominent part in political events. She led in the patriotic war to +drive out the armies of Napoleon, and she seems to have been on both +sides in the struggle for liberal and absolutist principles, the +establishment of the brief republic of 1868, and the restoration of the +present monarchy. + +Through all the many changes from better to Worse, from richer to +poorer, Seville continued faithful to the ideal of religious unity which +the wise Isabel and the shrewd Ferdinand divined was the only means of +consolidating the intensely provincial kingdoms of Spain into one nation +of Spaniards. Andalusia not being Gothic had never been Aryan, and +it was one of her kings who carried his orthodoxy to Castile and +established it inexpugnably at Toledo after he succeeded his heretical +father there. When four or five hundred years later it became a +political necessity of the Catholic Kings to expel their Jewish and +Moorish subjects and convert their wealth to pious and patriotic uses, +Andalusia was one of the most zealous provinces in the cause. When +presently the inquisitions of the Holy Office began, some five hundred +heretics were burned alive at Seville before the year was out; many +others, who were dead and buried, paid the penalty of their heresy +in effigy; in all more than two thousand suffered in the region round +about. Before he was in Valladolid, Torquemada was in Seville, and there +he drew up the rules that governed the procedure of the Inquisition +throughout Spain. A magnificent _quemadero,_ or crematory, second only +to that of Madrid, was built: a square stone platform where almost every +day the smoke of human sacrifice ascended. This crematory for the living +was in the meadow of San Sebastian, now a part of the city park system +which we left on the right that first evening when we drove to the +Delicias. I do not know why I should now regret not having visited the +place of this dreadful altar and offered my unavailing pity there to +the memory of those scores of thousands of hapless martyrs who suffered +there to no end, not even to the end of confirming Spain in the faith +one and indivisible, for there are now, after so many generations of +torment, two Protestant churches in Seville. For one thing I did not +know where the place of the _quemadero_ was; and I do not yet know where +those Protestant churches are. + + + +II + +[Illustration: 25 GARDENS OF THE ALCAZAR] + +If I went again to Seville I should try to visit them--but, as it was, +we gave our second day to the Alcazar, which is merely the first in +the series of palaces and gardens once stretching from the flank of +the cathedral to the Tower of Gold beside the Guadalquivir. A rich +sufficiency is left in the actual Alcazar to suggest the splendor of the +series, and more than enough in the gardens to invite our fatigue, day +after day, to the sun and shade of its quiet paths and seats when we +came spent with the glories and the bustling piety of the cathedral. In +our first visit we had the guidance of a patriotic young Granadan whose +zeal for the Alhambra would not admit the Alcazar to any comparison, +but I myself still prefer it after seeing the Alhambra. It is as purely +Moorish as that and it is in better repair if not better taste. The +taste in fact is the same, and the Castilian kings consulted it as +eagerly as their Arabic predecessors in the talent of the Moslem +architects whom they had not yet begun to drive into exile. I am not +going to set up rival to the colored picture postals, which give +a better notion than I could give of the painted and gilded stucco +decoration, the ingenious geometrical designs on the walls, and the +cloying sweetness of the honeycombing in the vaulted roofs. Every one +will have his feeling about Moorish architecture; mine is that a little +goes a great way, and that it is too monotonous to compete with the +Gothic in variety, while it lacks the dignity of any form of the Greek +or the Renaissance. If the phrase did not insult the sex which the faith +of the Moslem insufferably insults, one might sum up one's slight for it +in the word effeminate. + +The Alcazar gardens are the best of the Alcazar. But I would not ignore +the homelike charm of the vast court by which you enter from the street +outside to the palace beyond. It is planted casually about with rather +shabby orange trees that children were playing under, and was decorated +with the week's wash of the low, simple dwellings which may be hired +at a rental moderate even for Seville, where a handsome and commodious +house in a good quarter rents for sixty dollars a year. One of those +two-story cottages, as we should call them, in the ante-court of the +Alcazar had for the student of Spanish life the special advantage of +a lover close to a ground-floor window dropping tender nothings down +through the slats of the shutter to some maiden lurking within. The +nothings were so tender that you could not hear them drop, and, besides, +they were Spanish nothings, and it would not have served any purpose +for the stranger to listen for them. Once afterward we saw the national +courtship going on at another casement, but that was at night, and +here the precious first sight of it was offered at ten o'clock in the +morning. Nobody seemed to mind the lover stationed outside the shutter +with which the iron bars forbade him the closest contact; and it is +only fair to say that he minded nobody; he was there when we went in +and there when we came out, and it appears that when it is a question +of love-making time is no more an object in Spain than in the United +States. The scene would have been better by moonlight, but you cannot +always have it moonlight, and the sun did very well; at least, the lover +did not seem to miss the moon. + +He was only an incident, and I hope the most romantic reader will let me +revert from him to the Alcazar gardens. We were always reverting to them +on any pretext or occasion, and we mostly had them to ourselves in the +gentle afternoons when we strayed or sat about at will in them. The +first day we were somewhat molested by the instruction of our patriotic +Granadan guide, who had a whopper-jaw and grayish blue eyes, but +coal-black hair for all his other blondness. He smoked incessant +cigarettes, and he showed us especially the pavilion of Charles the +Fifth, whom, after that use of all English-speaking Spanish guides, +he called Charley Fift. It appeared that the great emperor used this +pavilion for purposes of meditation; but he could not always have +meditated there, though the frame of a brazier standing in the center +intimated that it was tempered for reflection. The first day we found +a small bird in possession, flying from one bit of the carved wooden +ceiling to another, and then, taking our presence in dudgeon, out into +the sun. Another day there was a nursery-girl there with a baby that +cried; on another, still more distractingly, a fashionable young +French bride who went kodaking round while her husband talked with an +archaeological official, evidently Spanish. In his own time, Charley +probably had the place more to himself, though even then his thoughts +could not have been altogether cheerful, whether he recalled what he had +vainly done to keep out of Spain and yet to take the worst of Spain with +him into the Netherlands, where he tried to plant the Inquisition among +his Flemings; he was already much soured with a world that had cloyed +him, and was perhaps considering even then how he might make his escape +from it to the cloister. + + + +III + + +We did not know as yet how almost entirely dramatic the palace of the +Alcazar was, how largely it was representative of what the Spanish +successors of the Moorish kings thought those kings would have made it +if they had made it; and it was probably through an instinct for the +genuine that we preferred the gardens after our first cries of wonder. +What remains to me of our many visits is the mass of high borders of +box, with roses, jasmine, and orange trees, palms, and cypresses. The +fountains dribbled rather than gushed, and everywhere were ranks and +rows of plants in large, high earthen pots beside or upon the tiled +benching that faced the fountains and would have been easier to sit on +if you had not had to supply the back yourself. The flowers were not in +great profusion, and chiefly we rejoiced in the familiar quaintness of +clumps of massive blood-red coxcombs and strange yellow ones. The walks +were bordered with box, and there remains distinctly the impression +of marble steps and mosaic seats inlaid with tiles; all Seville seems +inlaid with tiles. One afternoon we lingered longer than usual because +the day was so sunnily warm in the garden paths and spaces, without +being hot. A gardener whom we saw oftenest hung about his flowers in a +sort of vegetable calm, and not very different from theirs except that +they were not smoking cigarettes. He did not move a muscle or falter in +his apparently unseeing gaze; but when one of us picked a seed from the +ground and wondered what it was he said it was a magnolia seed, and as +if he could bear no more went away. In one wilding place which seemed +set apart for a nursery several men were idly working with many pauses, +but not so many as to make the spectator nervous. As the afternoon waned +and the sun sank, its level rays dwelt on the galleries of the palace +which Peter the Cruel built himself and made so ugly with harsh brown +stucco ornament that it set your teeth on edge, and with gigantic +frescos exaggerated from the Italian, and very coarse and rank. + +It was this savage prince who invented much of the Alcazar in the soft +Moorish taste; but in those hideous galleries he let his terrible nature +loose, though as for that some say he was no crueler than certain other +Spanish kings of that period. This is the notion of my unadvertised +_Encyclopaedia Britannica,_ and perhaps we ought to think of him +leniently as Peter the Ferocious. He was kind to some people and was +popularly known as the Justiciary; he especially liked the Moors and +Jews, who were gratefully glad, poor things, of being liked by any one +under the new Christian rule. But he certainly killed several of his +half-brothers, and notably he killed his half-brother Don Fadrique in +the Alcazar. That is, if he had no hand in the butchery himself he had +him killed after luring him to Seville for the tournaments and forgiving +him for all their mutual injuries with every caressing circumstance. One +reads that after the king has kissed him he sits down again to his +game of backgammon and Don Fadrique goes into the next room to Maria do +Padilla, the lovely and gentle lady whom Don Pedro has married as much +as he can with a wedded wife shut up in Toledo. She sits there in terror +with her damsels and tries with looks and signs to make Don Fadrique +aware of his danger. But he imagines no harm till the king and his +companions, with their daggers drawn, come to the curtains, which the +king parts, commanding, "Seize the Master of Santiago!" Don Fadrique +tries to draw his sword, and then he turns and flies through the halls +of the Alcazar, where he finds every door bolted and barred. The king's +men are at his heels, and at last one of them fells him with a blow of +his mace. The king goes back with a face of sympathy to Maria, who has +fallen to the floor. + +The treacherous keeping is all rather in the taste of the Italian +Renaissance, but the murder itself is more Roman, as the Spanish +atrocities and amusements are apt to be. Murray says it was in the +beautiful Hall of the Ambassadors that Don Fadrique was killed, but +the other manuals are not so specific. Wherever it was, there is a +blood-stain in the pavement which our Granadan guide failed to show us, +possibly from a patriotic pique that there are no blood-stains in the +Alhambra with personal associations. I cannot say that much is to be +made of the vaulted tunnel where poor Maria de Padilla used to bathe, +probably not much comforted by the courtiers afterward drinking the +water from the tank; she must have thought the compliment rather nasty, +and no doubt it was paid her to please Don Pedro. + +We found it pleasanter going and coming through the corridor leading to +the gardens from the public court. This was kept at the outer end by an +"old rancid Christian" smoking incessant cigarettes and not explicitly +refusing to sell us picture postals after taking our entrance fee; the +other end was held by a young, blond, sickly-looking girl, who made us +take small nosegays at our own price and whom it became a game to see if +we could escape. I have left saying to the last that the king and queen +of Spain have a residence in the Alcazar, and that when they come in +the early spring they do not mind corning to it through that plebeian +quadrangle. I should not mind it myself if I could go back there next +spring. + + + +IV + + +We had refused with loathing the offer of those gipsy jades to dance for +us in their noisome purlieu at Triana, but we were not proof against +the chance of seeing some gipsy dancing in a cafe-theater one night in +Seville. The decent place was filled with the "plain people," who sat +with their hats on at rude tables smoking and drinking coffee from tall +glasses. They were apparently nearly all working-men who had left nearly +all their wives to keep on working at home, though a few of these +also had come. On a small stage four gipsy girls, in unfashionably and +untheatrically decent gowns of white, blue, or red, with flowers in +their hair, sat in a semicircle with one subtle, silent, darkling man +among them. One after another they got up and did the same twisting and +posturing, without dancing, and while one posed and contorted the rest +unenviously joined the spectators in their clapping and their hoarse +cries of "Ole!" It was all perfectly proper except for one high moment +of indecency thrown in at the end of each turn, as if to give the house +its money's worth. But the real, overflowing compensation came when that +little, lithe, hipless man in black jumped to his feet and stormed the +audience with a dance of hands and arms, feet and legs, head, neck, +and the whole body, which Mordkin in his finest frenzy could not have +equaled or approached. Whatever was fiercest and wildest in nature +and boldest in art was there, and now the house went mad with its +hand-clappings and table-hammerings and deep-throated "Oles!" + +Another night we went to the academy of the world-renowned Otero and +saw the instruction of Sevillian youth in native dances of the _haute +ecole._ The academy used to be free to a select public, but now the +chosen, who are nearly always people from the hotels, must pay ten +pesetas each for their pleasure, and it is not too much for a pleasure +so innocent and charming. The academy is on the ground floor of the +_maestro's_ unpretentious house, and in a waiting-room beyond the +shoemaker's shop which filled the vestibule sat, patient in their black +mantillas, the mothers and nurses of the pupils. These were mostly quite +small children in their every-day clothes, but there were two or three +older girls in the conventional dancing costume which a lady from one of +the hotels had emulated. Everything was very simple and friendly; Otero +found good seats among the _aficionados_ for the guests presented to +him, and then began calling his pupils to the floor of the long, narrow +room with quick commands of "_Venga_!" A piano was tucked away in a +corner, but the dancers kept time now with castanets and now by snapping +their fingers. Two of the oldest girls, who were apparently graduates, +were "differently beautiful" in their darkness and fairness, but +alike picturesquely Spanish in their vivid dresses and the black veils +fluttering from their high combs. A youth in green velvet jacket and +orange trousers, whose wonderful dancing did him credit as Otero's prize +pupil, took part with them; he had the square-jawed, high-cheek-boned +face of the lower-class Spaniard, and they the oval of all Spanish +women. Here there was no mere posturing and contortioning among the +girls as with the gipsies; they sprang like flames and stamped the floor +with joyous detonations of their slippers. It was their convention to +catch the hat from the head of some young spectator and wear it in a +figure and then toss it back to him. One of them enacted the part of a +_torero_ at a bull-fight, stamping round first in a green satin cloak +which she then waved before a man's felt hat thrown on the ground to +represent the bull hemmed about with _banderillas_ stuck quivering into +the floor. But the prettiest thing was the dancing of two little girl +pupils, one fair and thin and of an angelic gracefulness, and the other +plump and dark, who was as dramatic as the blond was lyrical. They +accompanied themselves with castanets, and, though the little fatling +toed in and wore a common dress of blue-striped gingham, I am afraid she +won our hearts from her graceful rival. Both were very serious and +gave their whole souls to the dance, but they were not more childishly +earnest than an older girl in black who danced with one of the gaudy +graduates, panting in her anxious zeal and stopping at last with her +image of the Virgin she resembled flung wildly down her back from the +place where it had hung over her heart. + + + +V + + +We preferred walking home from Senor Otero's house through the bright, +quiescing street, because in driving there we had met with an adventure +which we did not care to repeat. We were driving most unaggressively +across a small plaza, with a driver and a friend on the box beside him +to help keep us from harm, when a trolley-car came wildly round a corner +at the speed of at least two miles an hour and crossed our track. Our +own speed was such that we could not help striking the trolley in a +collision which was the fault of no one apparently. The front of the +car was severely banged, one mud-guard of our victoria was bent, and +our conversation was interrupted. Immediately a crowd assembled from the +earth or the air, but after a single exchange of reproaches between +the two drivers nothing was said by any one. No policeman arrived to +_constater_ the facts, and after the crowd had silently satisfied or +dissatisfied itself that no one was hurt it silently dispersed. The car +ambled grumbling off and we drove on with some vague murmurs from our +driver, whose nerves seemed shaken, but who was supported in a somewhat +lurching and devious progress by the caressing arm of the friend on the +seat beside him. + +All this was in Seville, where the popular emotions are painted in +travel and romance as volcanic as at Naples, where no one would have +slept the night of our accident and the spectators would be debating it +still. In our own surprise and alarm we partook of the taciturnity of +the witnesses, which I think was rather fine and was much decenter than +any sort of utterance. On our way home we had occasion to practise a +like forbearance toward the lover whom we passed as he stood courting +through the casement of a ground floor. The soft air was full of the +sweet of jasmine and orange blossoms from the open _patios._ Many people +besides ourselves were passing, but in a well-bred avoidance of the dark +figure pressed to the grating and scarcely more recognizable than the +invisible figure within. I confess I thought it charming, and if at some +period of their lives people must make love I do not believe there is a +more inoffensive way of doing it. + +By the sort of echo notable in life's experience we had a reverberation +of the orange-flower perfume of that night in the orange-flower honey at +breakfast next morning. We lived to learn that our own bees gather +the same honey from the orange flowers of Florida; but at the time we +believed that only the bees of Seville did it, and I still doubt whether +anywhere in America the morning wakes to anything like the long, rich, +sad calls of the Sevillian street hucksters. It is true that you do not +get this plaintive music without the accompanying note of the hucksters' +donkeys, which, if they were better advised, would not close with the +sort of inefficient sifflication which they now use in spoiling an +otherwise most noble, most leonine roar. But when were donkeys of any +sort ever well advised in all respects? Those of Seville, where donkeys +abound, were otherwise of the superior intelligence which throughout +Spain leaves the horse and even the mule far behind, and constitutes the +donkeys, far beyond the idle and useless dogs, the friends of man. They +indefinitely outnumber the dogs, and the cats are of course nowhere +in the count. Yet I would not misprize the cats of Seville, which +apparently have their money price. We stopped to admire a beautiful +white one, on our way to see the market one day, praising it as +intelligibly as we could, and the owner caught it up, when we had passed +and ran after us, and offered to sell it to us. + +That might have been because it was near the market where we experienced +almost the only mercantile zeal we had known in Spain. Women with ropes +and garlands of onions round their necks invited us to buy, and we had +hopeful advances from the stalls of salads and fruits, where there was +a brave and beautiful show of lettuces and endives, grapes, medlars, and +heaps of melons, but no oranges; I do not know why, though there were +shining masses of red peppers and green, peppers, and vast earthen bowls +with yellow peas soaking in them. The flowers were every gay autumnal +sort, especially dahlias, sometimes made into stiff bouquets, perhaps +for church offerings. There were mounds of chestnuts, four or five feet +high and wide; and these flowers and fruits filled the interior of the +market, while the stalls for the flesh and fish were on the outside. +There seemed more sellers than buyers; here and there were ladies +buying, but it is said that the mistresses commonly send their maids for +the daily provision. + +Ordinarily I should say you could not go amiss for your profit and +pleasure in Seville, but there are certain imperative objects of +interest like the Casa de Pilatos which you really have to do. Strangely +enough, it is very well worth doing, for, though it is even more +factitiously Moorish than the Alcazar, it is of almost as great beauty +and of greater dignity. Gardens, galleries, staircases, statues, +paintings, all are interesting, with a mingled air of care and neglect +which is peculiarly charming, though perhaps the keener sensibilities, +the morbider nerves may suffer from the glare and hardness of the tiling +which render the place so wonderful and so exquisite. One must complain +of something, and I complain of the tiling; I do not mind the house +being supposed like the house of Pontius Pilate in Jerusalem. + +It belongs to the Duke of Medina-Celi, who no more comes to it from +Madrid than the Duke of Alva comes to his house, which I somehow +perversely preferred. For one thing, the Alva palace has eleven +_patios,_ all far more forgotten than the four in the House of Pilate, +and I could fully glut my love of _patios_ without seeing half of them. +Besides, it was in the charge of a typical Spanish family: a lean, +leathery, sallow father, a fat, immovable mother, and a tall, silent +daughter. The girl showed us darkly about the dreary place, with its +fountains and orange trees and palms, its damp, Moresque, moldy +walls, its damp, moldy, beautiful wooden ceilings, and its damp, moldy +staircase leading to the family rooms overhead, which we could not see. +The family stays for a little time only in the spring and fall, but if +ever they stay so late as we had come the sunlight lying so soft and +warm in the _patio_ and the garden out of it must have made them as +sorry to leave it as we were. + +I am not sure but I valued the House of Alva somewhat for the chance my +visit to it gave me of seeing a Sevillian tenement-house such as I had +hoped I might see. One hears that such houses are very scrupulously +kept by the janitors who compel the tenants to a cleanliness not perhaps +always their nature. At any rate, this one, just across the way from +the Alva House, was of a surprising neatness. It was built three stories +high, with galleries looking into an open court and doors giving from +these into the several tenements. As fortune, which does not continually +smile on travel, would have it that morning, two ladies of the house +were having a vivid difference of opinion on an upper gallery. Or at +least one was, for the other remained almost as silent as the spectators +who grouped themselves about her or put their heads out of the windows +to see, as well as hear, what it was about. I wish I knew and I would +tell the reader. The injured party, and I am sure she must have been +deeply injured, showered her enemy with reproaches, and each time when +she had emptied the vials of her wrath with much shaking of her hands in +the wrong-doer's face she went away a few yards and filled them up again +and then returned for a fresh discharge. It was perfectly like a scene +of Goldoni and like many a passage of real life in his native city, and +I was rapt in it across fifty years to the Venice I used to know. But +the difference in Seville was that there was actively only one combatant +in the strife, and the witnesses took no more part in it than the +passive resistant. + + + +VI + + +As a contrast to this violent scene which was not so wholly violent +but that it was relieved by a boy teasing a cat with his cap in the +foreground, and the sweet singing of canaries in the windows of the +houses near, I may commend the Casa de los Venerables, ecclesiastics +somehow related to the cathedral and having their tranquil dwelling not +far from it. The street we took from the Duke of Alva's palace was so +narrow and crooked that we scraped the walls in passing, and we should +never have got by one heavily laden donkey if he had not politely pushed +the side of his pannier into a doorway to make room for us. When we did +get to the Casa de los Venerables we found it mildly yellow-washed and +as beautifully serene and sweet as the house of venerable men should be. +Its distinction in a world of _patios_ was a _patio_ where the central +fountain was sunk half a story below the entrance floor, and encircled +by a stairway by which the humble neighbor folk freely descended to fill +their water jars. I suppose that gentle mansion has other merits, but +the fine staircase that ended under a baroque dome left us facing a +bolted door, so that we had to guess at those attractions, which I leave +the reader to imagine in turn. + +I have kept the unique wonder of Seville waiting too long already for +my recognition, though in its eight hundred years it should have learned +patience enough for worse things. From its great antiquity alone, if +from nothing else, it is plain that the Giralda at Seville could not +have been studied from the tower of the Madison Square Garden in New +York, which the American will recall when he sees it. If the case must +be reversed and we must allow that the Madison Square tower was studied +from the Giralda, we must still recognize that it is no servile copy, +but in its frank imitation has a grace and beauty which achieves +originality. Still, the Giralda is always the Giralda, and, though there +had been no Saint-Gaudens to tip its summit with such a flying-footed +nymph as poises on our own tower, the figure of Faith which crowns it is +at least a good weather-vane, and from its office of turning gives the +mighty bell-tower its name. Long centuries before the tower was a belfry +it served the mosque, which the cathedral now replaces, as a minaret +for the muezzin to call the faithful to prayer, but it was then only +two-thirds as high. The Christian belfry which continues it is not in +offensive discord with the structure below; its other difference in form +and spirit achieves an impossible harmony. The Giralda, however, chiefly +works its enchantment by its color, but here I must leave the proof of +this to the picture postal which now everywhere takes the bread out +of the word-painter's mouth. The time was when with a palette full +of tinted adjectives one might hope to do an unrivaled picture of the +Giralda; but that time is gone; and if the reader has not a colored +postal by him he should lose no time in going to Seville and seeing the +original. For the best view of it I must advise a certain beautifully +irregular small court in the neighborhood, with simple houses so low +that you can easily look up over their roofs and see the mighty bells of +the Giralda rioting far aloof, flinging themselves beyond the openings +of the belfry and deafeningly making believe to leap out into space. If +the traveler fails to find this court (for it seems now and then to be +taken in and put away), he need not despair of seeing the Giralda fitly. +He cannot see Seville at all without seeing it, and from every point, +far or near, he sees it grand and glorious. + +[Illustration: 26 THE COURT OF FLAGS AND TOWER OF THE GIRALDA] + +I remember it especially from beyond the Guadalquivir in the drive +we took through Triana to the village of Italica, where three Roman +emperors were born, as the guide-books will officiously hasten to tell, +and steal away your chance of treating your reader with any effect +of learned research. These emperors (I will not be stopped by any +guide-book from saying) were Trajan, Hadrian, and Theodosius; and Triana +is named for the first of them. Fortunately, we turned to the right +after crossing the bridge and so escaped the gipsy quarter, but we +paused through a long street so swarming with children that we wondered +to hear whole schoolrooms full of them humming and droning their lessons +as we made our way among the tenants. Fortunately, they played mostly in +the gutters, the larger looking after the smaller when their years +and riches were so few more, with that beautiful care which childhood +bestows on babyhood everywhere in Europe. To say that those Spanish +children were as tenderly watchful of these Spanish babies as English +children is to say everything. Now and then a mother cared for a babe as +only a mother can in an office which the pictures and images of the Most +Holy Virgin consecrate and endear in lands where the sterilized bottle +is unknown, but oftenest it was a little sister that held it in her arms +and crooned whatever was the Spanish of-- + + Rack back, baby, daddy shot a b'ar; + Rack back, baby, see it hangin' thar. + +For there are no rocking-chairs in Triana, as there were none in our +backwoods, and the little maids tilted to and fro on the fore legs and +hind legs of their chairs and lulled their charges to sleep with seismic +joltings. When the street turned into a road it turned into a road a +hundred feet wide; one of those roads which Charles III., when he came +to the Spanish throne from Naples, full of beneficent projects and +ideals, bestowed upon his unwilling and ungrateful subjects. These roads +were made about the middle of the eighteenth century, and they have been +gathering dust ever since, so that the white powder now lies in the +one beyond Triana five or six inches deep. Along the sides occasional +shade-trees stifled, and beyond these gaunt, verdureless fields widened +away, though we were told that in the spring the fields were red with +flowers and green with young wheat. There were no market-gardens, +and the chief crop seemed brown pigs and black goats. In some of the +foregrounds, as well as the backgrounds, were olive orchards with +olives heaped under them and peasants still resting from their midday +breakfast. A mauve bell-shaped flower plentifully fringed the wayside; +our driver said it had no name, and later an old peasant said it was +"bad." + + + +VII + + +We passed a convent turned into a prosperous-looking manufactory and we +met a troop of merry priests talking gayly and laughing together, and +very effective in their black robes against the white road. When we came +to the village that was a _municipium_ under Augustus and a _colonia_ +under Hadrian, we found it indeed scanty and poor, but very neat and +self-respectful-looking, and not unworthy to have been founded by Scipio +Africanus two hundred years before Christ. Such cottage interiors as +we glimpsed seemed cleaner and cozier than some in Wales; men in wide +flat-brimmed hats sat like statues at the doors, absolutely motionless, +but there were women bustling in and out in their work, and at one place +a little girl of ten had been left to do the family wash, and was doing +it joyously and spreading the clothes in the dooryard to dry. We did not +meet with universal favor as we drove by; some groups of girls mocked +our driver; when we said one of them was pretty he answered that he had +seen prettier. + +At the entrance to the ruins of the amphitheater which forms the +tourist's chief excuse for visiting Italica the popular manners softened +toward us; the village children offered to sell us wild narcissus +flowers and were even willing to take money in charity. They followed us +into the ruins, much forbidden by the fine, toothless old custodian +who took possession of us as his proper prey and led us through +the moldering caverns and crumbling tiers of seats which form the +amphitheater. Vast blocks, vast hunks, of the masonry are broken off +from the mass and lie detached, but the mass keeps the form and dignity +of the original design; and in the lonely fields there it had something +august and proud beyond any quality of the Arena at Verona or the +Colosseum at Rome. It is mostly stripped of the marble that once faced +the interior, and is like some monstrous oval shaped out of the earth, +but near the imperial box lay some white slabs with initials cut in them +which restored the vision of the "grandeur that was Rome" pretty +well over the known world when this great work was in its prime. Our +custodian was qualified by his toothlessness to lisp like any old +Castilian the letters that other Andalusians hiss, but my own Spanish +was so slight and his _patois_ was so dense that the best we could do +was to establish a polite misunderstanding. On this his one word of +English, repeated as we passed through the subterranean doors, "Lion, +lion, lion," cast a gleam of intelligence which brightened into a vivid +community of ideas when we ended in his cottage, and he prepared to sell +us some of the small Roman coins which formed his stock in trade. The +poor place was beautifully neat, and from his window he made us free +of a sight of Seville, signally the cathedral and the Giralda, such as +could not be bought for money in New York. + +Then we set out on our return, leaving unvisited to the left the church +of San Isidore de Campo, with its tombs of Guzman the Good and that +Better Lady Dona Urraca Osorio, whom Peter the Cruel had burned. I say +better, because I hold it nobler in Urraca to have rejected the love of +a wicked king than in Guzman to have let the Moors slay his son rather +than surrender a city to them. But I could only pay honor to her +pathetic memory and the memory of that nameless handmaid of hers who +rushed into the flames to right the garments on the form which the wind +had blown them away from, and so perished with her. We had to take on +trust from the guide-books all trace of the Roman town where the three +emperors were born, and whose "palaces, aqueducts, and temples and +circus were magnificent." We had bought some of the "coins daily dug +up," but we intrusted to the elements those "vestiges of vestiges" left +of Trajan's palaces after an envious earthquake destroyed them so lately +as 1755. + +The one incident of our return worthy of literature was the dramatic +triumph of a woman over a man and a mule as we saw it exhibited on the +parapet of a culvert over a dry torrent's bed. It was the purpose of +this woman, standing on the coping in statuesque relief and showing +against the sky the comfortable proportions of the Spanish housewife, to +mount the mule behind the man. She waited patiently while the man slowly +and as we thought faithlessly urged the mule to the parapet; then, when +she put out her hands and leaned forward to take her seat, the mule +inched softly away and left her to recover her balance at the risk of a +fall on the other side. We were too far for anything but the dumb show, +but there were, no doubt, words which conveyed her opinions unmistakably +to both man and mule. With our hearts in our mouths we witnessed the +scene and its repetitions till we could bear it no longer, and we had +bidden our cabman drive on when with a sudden spring the brave woman +launched herself semicircularly forward and descended upon the exact +spot which she had been aiming at. There solidly established on the +mule, with her arms fast round the man, she rode off; and I do not think +any reader of mine would like to have been that mule or that man for the +rest of the way home. + +We met many other mules, much more exemplary, in teams of two, three, +and four, covered with bells and drawing every kind of carryall and +stage and omnibus. These vehicles were built when the road was, about +1750, and were, like the road, left to the natural forces for keeping +themselves in repair. The natural forces were not wholly adequate in +either case, but the vehicles were not so thick with dust as the road, +because they could shake it off. They had each two or four passengers +seated with the driver; passengers clustered over the top and packed the +inside, but every one was in the joyous mood of people going home for +the day. In a plaza not far from the Triana bridge you may see these +decrepit conveyances assembling every afternoon for their suburban +journeys, and there is no more picturesque sight in Seville, more +homelike, more endearing. Of course, when I say this I leave out of the +count the bridge over the Guadalquivir at the morning or evening hour +when it is covered with brightly caparisoned donkeys, themselves covered +with men needing a shave, and gay-kerchiefed women of every age, with +boys and dogs underfoot, and pedestrians of every kind, and hucksters +selling sea-fruit and land-fruit and whatever else the stranger would +rather see than eat. Very little outcry was needed for the sale of these +things, which in Naples or even in Venice would have been attended by +such vociferation as would have sufficed to proclaim a city in flames. + +On a day not long after our expedition to Italica we went a drive with a +young American friend living in Seville, whom I look to for a book about +that famous city such as I should like to write myself if I had the time +to live it as he has done. He promised that he would show us a piece of +the old Roman wall, but he showed us ever so much more, beginning with +the fore court of the conventual church of Santa Paula, where we found +the afternoon light waiting to illumine for us with its tender caress +the Luca della Robbia-like colored porcelain figures of the portal and +the beautiful octagon tower staying a moment before taking flight for +heaven: the most exquisite moment of our whole fortnight in Seville. +Tall pots of flowers stood round, and the grass came green through the +crevices of the old foot-worn pavement. When we passed out a small boy +scuffled for our copper with the little girl who opened the gate for us, +but was brought to justice by us, and joined cheerfully in the chorus of +children chanting "Mo-ney, mo-ney!" round us, but no more expecting an +answer to their prayer than if we had been saints off the church door. + +We passed out of the city by a gate where in a little coign of vantage +a cobbler was thoughtfully hammering away in the tumult at a shoe-sole, +and then suddenly on our right we had the Julian wall: not a mere +fragment, but a good long stretch of it. The Moors had built upon it +and characterized it, but had not so masked it as to hide the perdurable +physiognomy of the Roman work. It was vastly more Roman wall than you +see at Rome; but far better than this heroic image of war and waste was +the beautiful old aqueduct, perfectly Roman still, with no visible touch +from Moor, or from Christian, before or after the Moor, and performing +its beneficent use after two thousand years as effectively as in the +years before Christ came to bless the peacemakers. Nine miles from its +mountain source the graceful arches bring the water on their shoulders; +and though there is now an English company that pipes other streams to +the city through its underground mains, the Roman aqueduct, eternally +sublime in its usefulness, is constant to the purpose of the forgotten +men who imagined it. The outer surfaces of the channel which it lifted +to the light and air were tagged with weeds and immemorial mosses, and +dripped as with the sweat of its twenty-centuried toil. + +We followed it as far as it went on our way to a modern work of peace +and use which the ancient friend and servant of man would feel no +unworthy rival. Beyond the drives and gardens of the Delicias, where we +lingered our last to look at the pleasurers haunting them, we drove far +across the wheat-fields where a ship-canal five miles long is cutting +to rectify the curve of the Guadalquivir and bring Seville many miles +nearer the sea than it has ever been before; hitherto the tramp steamers +have had to follow the course of the ships of Tarshish in their winding +approach. The canal is the notion of the young king of Spain, and the +work on it goes forward night and day. The electric lights were +shedding their blinding glare on the deafening clatter of the excavating +machinery, and it was an unworthy relief to escape from the intense +modernity of the scene to that medieval retreat nearer the city where +the _aficionados_ night-long watch the bulls coming up from their +pastures for the fight or the feast, whichever you choose to call it, of +the morrow. These amateurs, whom it would be rude to call sports, lurk +in the wayside cafe over their cups of chocolate and wait till in that +darkest hour before dawn, with irregular trampling and deep bellowing, +these hapless heroes of the arena pass on to their doom. It is a great +thing for the _aficionados_ who may imagine in that bellowing the the +gladiator's hail of _Morituri salutant._ At any rate, it is very chic; +it gives a man standing in Seville, which disputes with Madrid the +primacy in bull-feasting. If the national capital has bull-feasting +every Sunday of the year, all the famous _torreros_ come from Andalusia, +with the bulls, their brave antagonists, and in the great provincial +capital there are bull-feasts of insurpassable, if not incomparable, +splendor. + +Before our pleasant drive ended we passed, as we had already passed +several times, the scene of the famous Feria of Seville, the cattle show +which draws tens of thousands to the city every springtime for business +and pleasure, but mostly pleasure. The Feria focuses in its greatest +intensity at one of the entrances to the Delicias, where the street is +then so dense with every sort of vehicle that people can cross it only +by the branching viaduct, which rises in two several ascents from each +footway, intersecting at top and delivering their endless multitudes on +the opposite sidewalk. Along the street are gay pavilions and cottages +where the nobility live through the Feria with their families and +welcome the public to the sight of their revelry through the open doors +and windows. Then, if ever, the stranger may see the dancing, and hear +the singing and playing which all the other year in Seville disappoints +him of. + + + +VIII + + +On the eve of All Saints, after we had driven over the worst road in +the world outside of Spain or America, we arrived at the entrance of +the cemetery where Baedeker had mysteriously said "some sort of fair was +held." Then we perceived that we were present at the preparations for +celebrating one of the most affecting events of the Spanish year. This +was the visit of kindred and friends bringing tokens of remembrance and +affection to the dead. The whole long, rough way we had passed them on +foot, and at the cemetery gate we found them arriving in public cabs, +as well as in private carriages, with the dignity and gravity of +smooth-shaven footmen and coachmen. In Spain these functionaries look +their office more solemnly even than in England and affect you as +peculiarly correct and eighteenth-century. But apart from their looks +the occasion seemed more a festivity than a solemnity. The people bore +flowers, mostly artificial, as well as lanterns, and within the cemetery +they were furbishing up the monuments with every appliance according +to the material, scrubbing the marble, whitewashing the stucco, and +repainting the galvanized iron. The lanterns were made to match the +monuments and fences architecturally, and the mourners were attaching +them with a gentle satisfaction in their fitness; I suppose they were to +be lighted at dark and to burn through the night. There were men among +the mourners, but most of them were women and children; some were +weeping, like a father leading his two little ones, and an old woman +grieving for her dead with tears. But what prevailed was a community of +quiet resignation, almost to the sort of cheerfulness which bereavement +sometimes knows. The scene was tenderly affecting, but it had a +tremendous touch of tragic setting in the long, straight avenue of black +cypresses which slimly climbed the upward slope from the entrance to the +farther bound of the cemetery. Otherwise there was only the patience of +entire faith in this annually recurring visit of the living to the dead: +the fixed belief that these should rise from the places where they lay. +and they who survived them for yet a little more of time should join +them from whatever end of the earth in the morning of the Last Day. + +All along I have been shirking what any right-minded traveler would feel +almost his duty, but I now own that there is a museum in Seville, +the Museo Provincial, which was of course once a convent and is now a +gallery, with the best, but not the very best, Murillos in it, not to +speak of the best Zurburans. I will not speak at all of those pictures, +because I could in no wise say what they were, or were like, and because +I would not have the reader come to them with any opinions of mine which +he might bring away with him in the belief that they were his own. Let +him not fail to go to the museum, however; he will be the poorer beyond +calculation if he does not; but he will be a beggar if he does not go +to the Hospital de la Caridad, where in the church he will find six +Murillos out-Murilloing any others excepting always the incomparable +"Vision of St. Anthony" in the cathedral. We did not think of those six +Murillos when we went to the hospital; we knew nothing of the peculiar +beauty and dignity of the church; but we came because we wished to see +what the repentance of a man could do for others after a youth spent in +wicked riot. The gentle, pensive little Mother who received us carefully +said at once that the hospital was not for the sick, but only for the +superannuated and the poor and friendless who came to pass a night or +an indefinite time in it, according to the pressure of their need; and +after showing us the rich little church, she led us through long, clean +corridors where old men lay in their white beds or sat beside them +eating their breakfasts, very savory-looking, out of ample white bowls. +Some of them saluted us, but the others we excused because they were so +preoccupied. In a special room set apart for them were what we brutally +call tramps, but who doubtless are known in Spain for indigent brethren +overtaken on their wayfaring without a lodging for the night. Here +they could come for it and cook their supper and breakfast at the large +circular fireplace which filled one end of their room. They rose at our +entrance and bowed; and how I wish I could have asked them, every one, +about their lives! + +There was nothing more except the doubt of that dear little Mother when +I gave her a silver dollar for her kindness. She seemed surprised and +worried, and asked, "Is it for the charity or for me?" What could I do +but answer, "Oh, for your Grace," and add another for the charity. +She still looked perplexed, but there was no way out of our +misunderstanding, if it was one, and we left her with her sweet, +troubled face between the white wings of her cap, like angel's wings +mounting to it from her shoulders. Then we went to look at the statue of +the founder bearing a hapless stranger in his arms in a space of flowers +before the hospital, where a gardener kept watch that no visitor should +escape without a bunch worth at least a peseta. He had no belief that +the peseta could possibly be for the charity, and the poverty of the +poor neighborhood was so much relieved by the mere presence of the +hospital that it begged of us very little as we passed through. + + + +IX + + +We had expected to go to Granada after a week in Seville, but man is +always proposing beyond his disposing in strange lands as well as at +home, and we were fully a fortnight in the far lovelier capital. In +the mean time we had changed from our rooms in the rear of the hotel to +others in the front, where we entered intimately into the life of the +Plaza San Fernando as far as we might share it from our windows. It was +not very active life; even the cabmen whose neat victorias bordered +the place on three sides were not eager for custom; they invited the +stranger, but they did not urge; there was a continual but not a rapid +passing through the ample oblong; there was a good deal of still life on +the benches where leisure enjoyed the feathery shadow of the palms, +for the sun was apt to be too hot at the hour of noon, though later it +conduced to the slumber which in Spain accompanies the digestion of the +midday meal in all classes. As the afternoon advanced numbers of little +girls came into the plaza and played children's games which seemed a +translation of games familiar to our own country. One evening a small +boy was playing with them, but after a while he seemed to be found +unequal to the sport; he was ejected from the group and went off +gloomily to grieve apart with his little thumb in his mouth. The sight +of his dignified desolation was insupportable, and we tried what a +copper of the big-dog value would do to comfort him. He took it without +looking up and ran away to the peanut-stand which is always steaming +at the first corner all over Christendom. Late in the evening--in fact, +after the night had fairly fallen--we saw him making his way into a +house fronting on the plaza. He tried at the door with one hand and in +the other he held an unexhausted bag of peanuts. He had wasted no word +of thanks on us, and he did not now. When he got the door open he backed +into the interior still facing us and so fading from our sight and +knowledge. + +He had the touch of comedy which makes pathos endurable, but another +incident was wholly pathetic. As we came out of an antiquity shop near +the cathedral one afternoon we found on the elevated footway near the +Gate of Pardon a mother and daughter, both of the same second youth, who +gently and jointly pronounced to us the magical word _encajes._ Rather, +they questioned us with it, and they only suggested, very forbearingly, +that we should come to their house with them to see those laces, which +of course were old laces; their house was quite near. But that one of +us twain who was singly concerned in _encajes_ had fatigued and perhaps +overbought herself at the antiquity shop, and she signified a regret +which they divined too well was dissent. They looked rather than +expressed a keen little disappointment; the mother began a faint +insistence, but the daughter would not suffer it. Here was the pride of +poverty, if not poverty itself, and it was with a pang that we parted +from these mutely appealing ladies. We could not have borne it if we had +not instantly promised ourselves to come the next day and meet them and +go home with them and buy all their _encajes_ that we had money for. We +kept our promise, and we came the next day and the next and every day +we remained in Seville, and lingered so long that we implanted in the +cabmen beside the curbing the inextinguishable belief that we were in +need of a cab; but we never saw those dear ladies again. + +These are some of the cruel memories which the happiest travel leaves, +and I gratefully recall that in the case of a custodian of the Columbian +Museum, which adjoins the cathedral, we did not inflict a pang that +rankled in our hearts for long. I gave him a handful of copper coins +which I thought made up a peseta, but his eyes were keener, and a sorrow +gloomed his brow which projected its shadow so darkly over us when we +went into the cathedral for one of our daily looks that we hastened to +return and make up the full peseta with another heap of coppers; a whole +sunburst of smiles illumined his face, and a rainbow of the brightest +colors arched our sky and still arches it whenever we think of that +custodian and his rehabilitated trust in man. + +This seems the crevice where I can crowd in the fact that bits of family +wash hung from the rail of the old pulpit in the Court of Oranges beside +the cathedral, and a pumpkin vine lavishly decorated an arcade near a +doorway which perhaps gave into the dwelling of that very custodian. At +the same time I must not fail to urge the reader's seeing the Columbian +Museum, which is richly interesting and chiefly for those Latin and +Italian authors annotated by the immortal admiral's own hand. These give +the American a sense of him as the discoverer of our hemisphere which +nothing else could, and insurpassably render the New World credible. +At the same time they somehow bring a lump of pity and piety into the +throat at the thought of the things he did and suffered. They bring him +from history and make him at home in the beholder's heart, and there +seems a mystical significance in the fact that the volume most abounding +in marginalia should be _Seneca's Prophecies._ + +The frequent passing of men as well as women and children through our +Plaza San Fernando and the prevalence of men asleep on the benches; the +immense majority of boys everywhere; the moralized _abattoir_ outside +the walls where the humanity dormant at the bull-feast wakes to hide +every detail of slaughter for the market; a large family of cats basking +at their ease in a sunny doorway; trains of milch goats with wicker +muzzles, led by a milch cow from door to door through the streets; the +sudden solemn beauty of the high altar in the cathedral, seen by chance +on a brilliant day; the bright, inspiriting air of Seville; a glorious +glimpse of the Giralda coming home from a drive; the figure of a girl +outlined in a lofty window; a middle-aged Finnish pair trying to give +themselves in murmured talk to the colored stucco of the Hall of the +Ambassadors in what seems their wedding journey; two artists working +near with sketches tilted against the wall; a large American lady who +arrives one forenoon in traveling dress and goes out after luncheon in +a mantilla with a fan and high comb; another American lady who appears +after dinner in the costume of a Spanish dancing-girl; the fact that +there is no Spanish butter and that the only good butter comes from +France and the passable butter from Denmark; the soft long veils of +pink cloud that trail themselves in the sky across our Plaza, and then +dissolve in the silvery radiance of the gibbous moon; the yellowish-red +electric Brush lights swinging from palm to palm as in the decoration +of some vast ballroom; a second drive through Triana, and a failure to +reach the church we set out for; the droves of brown pigs and flocks of +brown sheep; the goatherds unloading olive boughs in the fields for +the goats to browse; a dirty, kind, peaceful village, with an English +factory in it, and a mansion of galvanized iron with an automobile +before it; a pink villa on a hillside and a family group on the shoulder +of a high-walled garden; a girl looking down from the wall, and a young +man resting his hand on the masonry and looking up at her; the good +faces of the people, men and women; boys wrestling and frolicking in the +village streets; the wide dust-heap of a road, full of sudden holes; the +heat of the sun in the first November week after touches of cold; the +tram-cars that wander from one side of the city street to the other, and +then barely miss scraping the house walls; in our drive home from our +failure for that church, men with trains of oxen plowing and showing +against the round red rayless sun; a stretch of the river with the +crimson-hulled steamers, and a distant sail-boat seen across the fields; +the gray moon that burnishes itself and rides bright and high for our +return; people in balconies, and the air full of golden dust shot +with bluish electric lights; here is a handful of suggestions from my +note-book which each and every one would expand into a chapter or a +small volume under the intensive culture which the reader may well have +come to dread. But I fling them all down here for him to do what he +likes with, and turn to speak at more length of the University, or, +rather the University Church, which I would not have any reader of mine +fail to visit. + + + +X + + +With my desire to find likeness rather than difference in strange +peoples, I was glad to have two of the students loitering in the _patio_ +play just such a trick on a carter at the gate as school-boys might play +in our own land. While his back was turned they took his whip and hid it +and duly triumphed in his mystification and dismay. We did not wait +for the catastrophe, but by the politeness of another student found +the booth of the custodian, who showed us to the library. A noise +of recitation from the windows looking into the _patio_ followed us +up-stairs; but maturer students were reading at tables in the hushed +library, and at a large central table a circle of grave authorities +of some sort were smoking the air blue with their cigarettes. One, +who seemed chief among them, rose and bowed us into the freedom of the +place, and again rose and bowed when we went out. We did not stay long, +for a library is of the repellent interest of a wine-cellar; unless the +books or bottles are broached it is useless to linger. There are eighty +thousand volumes in that library, but we had to come away without +examining half of them. The church was more appreciable, and its value +was enhanced to us by the reluctance of the stiff old sacristan to +unlock it. We found it rich in a most wonderful _retablo_ carved in wood +and painted. Besides the excellent pictures at the high altar, there +are two portrait brasses which were meant to be recumbent, but which are +stood up against the wall, perhaps to their surprise, without loss of +impressiveness. Most notable of all is the mural tomb of Pedro Enriquez +de Ribera and his wife: he who built the Casa de Pilatos, and as he had +visited the Holy Land was naturally fabled to have copied it from the +House of Pilate. Now, as if still continuing his travels, he reposes +with his wife in a sort of double-decker monument, where the Evil One +would have them suggest to the beholder the notion of passengers in the +upper and lower berths of a Pullman sleeper. + +Of all the Spanish cities that I saw, Seville was the most charming, +not for those attributive blandishments of the song and dance which the +tourist is supposed to find it, but which we quite failed of, but for +the simpler and less conventional amiabilities which she was so rich +in. I have tried to hint at these, but really one must go to Seville for +them and let them happen as they will. Many happened in our hotel where +we liked everybody, from the kindly, most capable Catalonian head waiter +to the fine-headed little Napoleonic-looking waiter who had identified +us at San Sebastian as Americans, because we spoke "quicklier" than the +English, and who ran to us when we came into the hotel and shook hands +with its as if we were his oldest and dearest friends. There was a Swiss +concierge who could not be bought for money, and the manager was the +mirror of managers. Fancy the landlord of the Waldorf-Astoria, or the +St. Regis, coming out on the sidewalk and beating down a taxicabman +from a charge of fifteen pesetas to six for a certain drive! It is not +thinkable, and yet the like of it happened to xis in Seville from our +manager. It was not his fault, when our rear apartment became a little +too chill, and we took a parlor in the front and came back on the first +day hoping to find it stored full of the afternoon sun's warmth, but +found that the _camerera_ had opened the windows and closed the shutters +in our absence so that our parlor was of a frigidity which no glitter of +the electric light could temper. The halls and public rooms were chill +in anticipation and remembrance of any cold outside, but in otir parlor +there was a hole for the sort of stove which we saw in the reading-room, +twice as large as an average teakettle, with a pipe as big around as +the average rain-pipe. I am sure this apparatus would have heated us +admirably, but the weather grew milder and milder and we never had +occasion to make the successful experiment. Meanwhile the moral +atmosphere of the hotel was of a blandness which would have gone far to +content us with any meteorological perversity. When we left it we were +on those human terms with every one who ruled or served in it which one +never attains in an American hotel, and rarely in an English one. + +At noon on the 4th of November the sun was really hot in our plaza; but +we were instructed that before the winter was over there would be cold +enough, not of great frosty severity, of course, but nasty and hard to +bear in the summer conditions which prevail through the year. I wish I +could tell how the people live then in their beautiful, cool houses, but +I do not know, and I do not know how they live at any season except from +the scantiest hearsay. The women remain at home except when they go +to church or to drive in the Delicias--that is to say, the women of +society, of the nobility. There is no society in our sense among people +of the middle classes; the men when they are not at business are at the +cafe; the women when they are not at mass are at home. That is what we +were told, and yet at a moving-picture show we saw many women of the +middle as well as the lower classes. The frequent holidays afford them +an outlet, and indoors they constantly see their friends and kindred at +their _tertulias._ + +The land is in large holdings which are managed by the factors or agents +of the noble proprietors. These, when they are not at Madrid, are to be +found at their clubs, where their business men bring them papers to be +signed, often unread. This sounds a little romantic, and perhaps it is +not true. Some gentlemen take a great interest in the bull-feasts and +breed the bulls and cultivate the bull-fighters; what other esthetic +interests they have I do not know. All classes are said to be of an +Oriental philosophy of life; they hold that the English striving and +running to and fro and seeing strange countries comes in the end to +the same thing as sitting still; and why should they bother? There is +something in that, but one may sit still too much; the Spanish ladies, +as I many times heard, do overdo it. Not only they do not walk abroad; +they do not walk at home; everything is carried to and from them; they +do not lift hand or foot. The consequence is that they have very small +hands and feet; Gautier, who seems to have grown tired when he reached +Seville, and has comparatively little to say of it, says that a child +may hold a Sevillian lady's foot in its hand; he does not say he saw it +done. What is true is that no child could begin to clasp with both hands +the waist of an average Sevillian lady. But here again the rule has +its exceptions and will probably have more. Not only is the English +queen-consort stimulating the Andalusian girls to play tennis by her +example when she comes to Seville, but it has somehow become the fashion +for ladies of all ages to leave their carriages in the Delicias and walk +up and down; we saw at least a dozen doing it. + +Whatever flirting and intriguing goes on, the public sees nothing of +it. In the street there is no gleam of sheep's-eying or any manner of +indecorum. The women look sensible and good, and I should say the same +of the men; the stranger's experience must have been more unfortunate +than mine if he has had any unkindness from them. One heard that Spanish +women do not smoke, unless they are _cigarreras_ and work in the large +tobacco factory, where the "Carmen" tradition has given place to the +mother-of-a-family type, with her baby on the floor beside her. Even +these may prefer not to set the baby a bad example and have her grow +up and smoke like those English and American women. The strength of +the Church is, of course, in the women's faith, and its strength is +unquestionable, if not quite unquestioned. In Seville, as I have said, +there are two Spanish Protestant churches, and their worship, is not +molested. Society does not receive their members; but we heard that with +most Spanish people Protestantism is a puzzle rather than offense. They +know we are not Jews, but Christians; yet we are not Catholics; and +what, then, are we? With the Protestants, as with the Catholics, there +is always religious marriage. There is civil marriage for all, but +without the religious rite the pair are not well seen by either sect. + +It is said that the editor of the ablest paper in Madrid, which +publishes a local edition at Seville, is a Protestant. The queen mother +is extremely clerical, though one of the wisest and best women who ever +ruled; the king and queen consort are as liberal as possible, and the +king is notoriously a democrat, with a dash of Haroun al Rashid, he +likes to take his governmental subordinates unawares, and a story is +told of his dropping in at the post-office on a late visit to Seville, +and asking for the chief. He was out, and so were all the subordinate +officials down to the lowest, whom the king found at his work. The +others have since been diligent at theirs. The story is characteristic +of the king, if not of the post-office people. + +Political freedom is almost grotesquely unrestricted. In our American +republic we should scarcely tolerate a party in favor of a monarchy, +but in the Spanish monarchy a republican party is recognized and +represented. It holds public meetings and counts among its members many +able and distinguished men, such as the novelist Perez Galdos, one of +the most brilliant novelists not only in Spain but in Europe. With this +unbounded liberty in Andalusia, it is said that the Spaniards of the +north are still more radical. + +Though the climate is most favorable for consumptives, the habits of the +people are so unwholesome that tuberculosis prevails, and there are +two or three deaths a day from it in Seville. There is no avoidance of +tuberculous suspects; they cough, and the men spit everywhere in the +streets and on the floors and carpets of the clubs. The women suffer +for want of fresh air, though now with the example of the English queen +before them and the young girls who used to lie abed till noon getting +up early ta play tennis, it will be different. Their mothers and aunts +still drive to the Delicias to prove that they have carriages, but when +there they alight and walk up and down by their doctor's advice. + +I only know that during our fortnight in Seville I suffered no wound to +a sensibility which has been kept in full repair for literary, if not +for humanitarian purposes. The climate was as kind as the people. It is +notorious that in summer the heat is that of a furnace, but even then it +is bearable because it is a dry heat, like that of our indoor furnaces. +The 5th of November was our last day, and then it was too hot for +comfort in the sun, but one is willing to find the November sun too hot; +it is an agreeable solecism; and I only wish that we could have found +the sun too hot during the next three days in Granada. If the 5th of +November had been worse for heat than it was it must still remain dear +in our memory, because in the afternoon we met once more these Chilians +of our hearts whom we had met in San Sebastian and Burgos and Valladolid +and Madrid. We knew we should meet them in Seville and were not the +least surprised. They were as glad and gay as ever, and in our common +polyglot they possessed us of the fact that they had just completed +the eastern hemicycle of their Peninsular tour. They were latest from +Malaga, and now they were going northward. It was our last meeting, but +better friends I could not hope to meet again, whether in the Old +World or the New, or that Other World which we hope will somehow be the +summation of all that is best in both. + + + + +XI. TO AND IN GRANADA + + +The train which leaves Seville at ten of a sunny morning is supposed to +arrive in Granada at seven of a moonlight evening. This is a mistake; +the moonlight is on time, but the train arrives at a quarter of nine. +Still, if the day has been sunny the whole way and the moonlight is +there at the end, no harm has really been done; and measurably the +promise of the train has been kept. + + + +I + + +There was not a moment of the long journey over the levels of Andahisia +which was not charming; when it began to be over the uplands of the last +Moorish kingdom, it was richly impressive. The only thing that I can +remember against the landscape is the prevalence of olive orchards. I +hailed as a relief the stubble-fields immeasurably spread at times, +and I did not always resent the roadside planting of some sort of tall +hedges which now and then hid the olives. But olive orchards may vary +their monotony by the spectacle of peasants on ladders gathering +their fruit into wide-mouthed sacks, and occasionally their ranks of +symmetrical green may be broken by the yellow and red of poplars and +pomegranates around the pleasant farmsteads. The nearer we drew to +Granada the pleasanter these grew, till in the famous Vega they thickly +dotted the landscape with their brown roofs and white walls. + +We had not this effect till we had climbed the first barrier of hills +and began to descend on the thither side; but we had incident enough to +keep us engaged without the picturesqueness. The beggars alone, who +did not fail us at any station, were enough; for what could the most +exacting tourist ask more than to be eating his luncheon under the eyes +of the children who besieged his car windows and protested their famine +in accents which would have melted a heart of stone or of anything +less obdurate than travel? We had always our brace of Civil Guards, +who preserved us from bandits, but they left the beggars unmolested by +getting out on the train next the station and pacing the platform, while +the rabble of hunger thronged us on the other side. There was especially +a hoy who, after being compassionated in money for his misfortune, +continued to fling his wooden leg into the air and wave it at our +window by some masterly gymnastics; and there was another boy who kept +lamenting that he had no mother, till, having duly feed and fed him, I +suggested, "But you have a father?" Then, as if he had never seen +the case in that light before, he was silent, and presently went away +without further insistence on his bereavement. + +The laconic fidelity of my note-book enables me to recall here that +the last we saw of Seville was the Cathedral and the Giralda, which the +guide-books had promised us we should see first; that we passed some +fields of alfalfa which the Moors had brought from Africa and the +Spanish have carried to America; that in places men were plowing and +that the plowed land was red; that the towns on the uplands in the +distance were white and not gray, or mud-colored, as in Castile; that +the morning sky was blue, with thin, pale clouds; that the first station +out was charmingly called Two Brothers, and that the loungers about it +were plain, but kind-looking men-folk with good faces, some actually +clean-shaven, and a woman with a white rose in her hair; that Two +Brothers is a suburb of Seville, frequented in the winter, and has +orange orchards about it; that farther on at one place the green of +the fields spread up to the walls of a white farm with a fine sense of +color; that there were hawks sailing in the blue air; that there were +grotesque hedges of cactus and piles of crooked cactus logs; that there +were many eucalyptus trees; that there were plantations of young olives, +as if never to let that all-pervading industry perish; that there were +irregular mountain ranges on the right, but never the same kind of +scenery on both sides of the track; that there was once a white cottage +on a yellow hill and a pink villa with two towers; that there was a +solitary fig tree near the road, and that there were vast lonely fields +when there were not olive orchards. + +Taking breath after one o'clock, much restored by our luncheon, my +note-book remembers a gray-roofed, yellow-walled town, very suitable +for a water-color, and just beyond it the first vineyard we had come +to. Then there were pomegranate trees, golden-leaved, and tall poplars +pollarded plume fashion as in southern France; and in a field a herd of +brown pigs feeding, which commended itself to observance, doubtless, as +color in some possible word-painting. There now abounded pomegranates, +figs, young corn, and more and more olives; and as if the old olives and +young olives were not enough, the earth began to be pitted with holes +dug for the olives which had not yet been planted. + + + +II + + +At Bobadilla, the junction where an English railway company begins +to get in its work and to animate the Spanish environment to unwonted +enterprise, there was a varied luncheon far past our capacity. But when +a Cockney voice asked over my shoulder, "Tea, sir?" I gladly closed with +the proposition. "But you've put hot milk into it!" I protested. "I know +it, sir. We 'ave no cold milk at Bobadilla," and instantly a baleful +suspicion implanted itself which has since grown into a upas tree of +poisonous conviction: goat's milk does not keep well, and it was not +only hot milk, but hot _goat's_ milk which they were serving us at +Bobadilla. However, there were admirable ham sandwiches, not of goat's +flesh, at the other end of the room, and with these one could console +oneself. There was also a commendable pancake whose honored name I never +knew, but whose acquaintance I should be sorry not to have made; and all +about Bobadilla there was an agreeable bustle, which we enjoyed the +more when we had made sure that we had changed into the right train for +Granada and found in our compartment the charming young Swedish couple +who had come with us from Seville. + +Thoroughly refreshed by the tea with hot goat's milk in it, by the +genuine ham sandwiches and the pancakes, my note-book takes up the tale +once more. It dwells upon the rich look of the land and the comfort of +the farms contrasting with the wild irregularity of the mountain ranges +which now began to serrate the horizon; and I have no doubt that if +I had then read that most charming of all Washington Irving's Spanish +studies, the story, namely, of his journey over quite the same way we +had come seventy-five years later, my note-book would abound in lively +comment on the changed aspect of the whole landscape. Even as it is, I +find it exclamatory over the wonder of the mountain coloring which it +professes to have found green, brown, red, gray, and blue, but whether +all at once or not it does not say. It is more definite as to the +plain we were traversing, with its increasing number of white cottages, +cheerfully testifying to the distribution of the land in small holdings, +so different from the vast estates abandoned to homeless expanses of +wheat-fields and olive orchards which we had been passing through. +It did not appear on later inquiry that these small holdings were of +peasant ownership, as I could have wished; they were tenant farms, but +their neatness testified to the prosperity of the tenants, and their +frequency cheered our way as the evening waned and the lamps began to +twinkle from their windows. At a certain station, I am reminded by my +careful mentor, the craggy mountain-tops were softened by the sunset +pink, and that then the warm afternoon air began to grow cooler, and the +dying day to empurple the uplands everywhere, without abating the charm +of the blithe cottages. It seems to have been mostly a very homelike +scene, and where there was a certain stretch of woodland its loneliness +was relieved by the antic feat of a goat lifting itself on its hind legs +to browse the olive leaves on their native bough. The air was thinner +and cooler, but never damp, and at times it relented and blew lullingly +in at our window. We made such long stops that the lights began to fade +out of the farm-windows, but kept bright in the villages, when at a +station which we were so long in coming to that we thought it must be +next to Granada, a Spanish gentleman got in with us; and though the +prohibitory notice of _No Fumadores_ stared him in the face, it did +not stare him out of countenance; for he continued to smoke like a +locomotive the whole way to our journey's end. From time to time I +meditated a severe rebuke, but in the end I made him none, and I am now +convinced that this was wise, for he probably would not have minded it, +and as it was, when I addressed him some commonplace as to the probable +time of our arrival he answered in the same spirit, and then presently +grew very courteously communicative. He told me for one thing, after we +had passed the mountain gates of the famous Vega and were making our way +under the moonlight over the storied expanse, drenched with the blood of +battles long ago, that the tall chimneys we began to see blackening the +air with their volumed fumes were the chimneys of fourteen beet-root +sugar factories belonging to the Duke of Wellington. Then I divined, as +afterward I learned, that the lands devoted to this industry were part +of the rich gift which Spain bestowed upon the Great Duke in gratitude +for his services against the Napoleonic invasion. His present heir has +imagined a benevolent use of his heritage by inviting the peasantry of +the Vega to the culture of the sugar-beet; but whether the enterprise +was prospering I could not say; and I do not suppose any reader of mine +will care so much for it as I did in the pour of the moonlight over the +roofs and towers that were now becoming Granada, and quickening my slow +old emotions to a youthful glow. At the station, which, in spite of +Boabdil el Chico and Ferdinand and Isabel, was quite like every other +railway station of southern Europe, we parted friends with our Spanish +fellow-traveler, whom we left smoking and who is probably smoking still. +Then we mounted with our Swedish friends into the omnibus of the hotel +we had chosen and which began, after discreet delays, to climb the hill +town toward the Alhambra through a commonplace-looking town gay with +the lights of cafes and shops, and to lose itself in the more congenial +darkness of narrower streets barred with moonlight. It was drawn by four +mules, covered with bells and constantly coaxed and cursed by at least +two drivers on the box, while a vigorous boy ran alongside and lashed +their legs without ceasing till we reached the shelf where our hotel +perched. + + + +III + + +I had taken the precaution to write for rooms, and we got the best in +the house, or if not that then the best we could wish at a price which +I could have wished much less, till we stepped out upon our balcony, and +looked down and over the most beautiful, the most magnificent scene that +eyes, or at least my eyes, ever dwelt on. Beside us and before us +the silver cup of the Sierra Nevada, which held the city in its tiled +hollow, poured it out over the immeasurable Vega washed with moonshine +which brightened and darkened its spread in a thousand radiances +and obscurities of windows and walls and roofs and trees and lurking +gardens. Because it was unspeakable we could not speak, but I may say +now that this was our supreme moment of Granada. There were other fine +moments, but none unmixed with the reservations which truth obliges +honest travel to own. Now, when from some secret spot there rose the +wild cry of a sentinel, and prolonged itself to another who caught it +dying up and breathed new life into it and sent it echoing on till it +had made the round of the whole fairy city, the heart shut with a pang +of pure ecstasy. One could bear no more; we stepped within, and closed +the window behind us. That is, we tried to close it, but it would not +latch, and we were obliged to ring for a _camerero_ to come and see what +ailed it. + +[Illustration: 27 TO THE ALHAMBRA] + +The infirmity of the door-latch was emblematic of a temperamental +infirmity in the whole hotel. The promises were those of Madrid, but the +performances were those of Segovia. There was a glitter, almost a glare, +of Ritz-like splendor, and the rates were Ritz-like, but there the +resemblance ceased. The porter followed us to our rooms on our +arrival and told us in excellent English (which excelled less and less +throughout our stay) that he was the hall porter and that we could +confidently refer all our wants to him; but their reference seemed +always to close the incident. There was a secretary who assured us that +our rooms were not dear, and who could not out of regard to our honor +and comfort consider cheaper ones; and then ceased to be until he +receipted our bill when we went away. There was a splendid dining-room +with waiters of such beauty and dignity, and so purple from clean +shaving, that we scarcely dared face them, and there were luncheons +and dinners of rich and delicate superabundance in the menu, but of an +exquisite insipidity on the palate, and of a swiftly vanishing Barmecide +insubstantiality, as if they were banquets from the _Arabian Nights_ +imagined under the rule of the Moors. Everywhere shone silver-bright +radiators, such as we had not seen since we left their like freezing +in Burgos; but though the weather presently changed from an Andalusian +softness to a Castilian severity after a snowfall in the Sierra, the +radiators remained insensible to the difference and the air nipped the +nose and fingers wherever one went in the hotel. The hall porter, who +knew everything, said the boilers were out of order, and a traveler who +had been there the winter before confirmed him with the testimony that +they were out of order even in January. There may not have been any fire +under them then, as there was none now; but if they needed repairing now +it was clearly because they needed repairing then. In the corner of one +of our rooms the frescoed plastering had scaled off, and we knew that +if we came back a year later the same spot would offer us a familiar +welcome. + +But why do I gird at that hotel in Granada as if I knew of no faults in +American hotels? I know of many and like faults, and I do not know of a +single hotel of ours with such a glorious outlook and downlook as that +hotel in Granada. The details which the sunlight of the morrow revealed +to us when we had mastered the mystery of our window-catch and stood +again on our balcony took nothing from the loveliness of the moonlight +picture, but rather added to it, and, besides a more incredible scene of +mountain and plain and city, it gave us one particular tree in a garden +almost under us which my heart clings to still with a rapture changing +to a fond regret. At first the tree, of what name or nature I cannot +tell, stood full and perfect, a mass of foliage all yellow as if made +up of "patines of bright gold." Then day by day, almost hour by hour, it +darkened and the tree shrank as if huddling its leaves closer about it +in the cold that fell from the ever-snowier Sierra. On the last morning +we left its boughs shaking in the rain against the cold, + + Bare, ruined choir where late the sweet birds sang. + + + +IV + + +But we anticipate, as I should say if I were still a romantic novelist. +Many other trees in and about Granada were yellower than that one, and +the air hung dim with a thin haze as of Indian summer when we left our +hotel in eager haste to see the Alhambra such as travelers use when they +do not want some wonder of the world to escape them. Of course there was +really no need of haste, and we had to wait till our guide could borrow +a match to light the first of the cigarettes which he never ceased to +smoke. He was commended to us by the hall porter, who said he could +speak French, and so he could, to the extreme of constantly saying, +with a wave of his cigarette, "_N'est ce pas?"_ For the rest he helped +himself out willingly with my small Spanish. At the end he would have +delivered us over to a dealer in antiquities hard by the gate of the +palace if I had not prevented him, as it were, by main force; he did +not repine, but we were not sorry that he should be engaged for the next +day. + +Our way to the gate, which was the famous Gate of Justice and was lovely +enough to be the Gate of Mercy, lay through the beautiful woods, mostly +elms, planted there by the English early in the last century. The birds +sang in their tops, and the waters warbled at their feet, and it was +somewhat thrillingly cold in their dense shade, so that we were glad to +get out of it, and into the sunshine where the old Moorish palace lay +basking and dreaming. At once let me confide to the impatient reader +that the whole Alhambra, by which he must understand a citadel, and +almost a city, since it could, if it never did, hold twenty thousand +people within its walls, is only historically and not artistically more +Moorish than the Alcazar at Seville. Far nobler and more beautiful +than its Arabic decorativeness in tinted stucco is the palace begun +by Charles V., after a design in the spirit of the supreme hour of the +Italian Renaissance. It is not a ruin in its long arrest, and one hears +with hopeful sympathy that the Spanish king means some day to complete +it. To be sure, the world is, perhaps, already full enough of royal +palaces, but since they return sooner or later to the people whose +pockets they come out of, one must be willing to have this palace +completed as the architect imagined it. + +We were followed into the Moorish palace by the music of three blind +minstrels who began to tune their guitars as soon as they felt us: see +us they could not. Then presently we were in the famous Court of the +Lions, where a group of those beasts, at once archaic and puerile in +conception, sustained the basin of a fountain in the midst of a graveled +court arabesqued and honeycombed round with the wonted ornamentation of +the Moors. + +The place was disappointing to the boy in me who had once passed so much +of his leisure there, and had made it all marble and gold. The floor +is not only gravel, and the lions are not only more like sheep, but the +environing architecture and decoration are of a faded prettiness which +cannot bear comparison with the fresh rougeing, equally Moorish, of the +Alcazar at Seville. Was this indeed the place where the Abencerrages +were brought in from supper one by one and beheaded into the fountain at +the behest of their royal host? Was it here that the haughty Don Juan de +Vera, coming to demand for the Catholic kings the arrears of tribute due +them from the Moor, "paused to regard its celebrated fountain" and "fell +into discourse with the Moorish courtiers on certain mysteries of the +Christian faith"? So Washington Irving says, and so I once believed, +with glowing heart and throbbing brow as I read how "this most Christian +knight and discreet ambassador restrained himself within the limits of +lofty gravity, leaning on the pommel of his sword and looking down with +ineffable scorn upon the weak casuists around him. The quick and subtle +Arabian witlings redoubled their light attacks on the stately Spaniard, +but when one of them, of the race of the Abencerrages dared to question, +with a sneer, the immaculate conception of the blessed Virgin, the +Catholic knight could no longer restrain his ire. Elevating his voice of +a sudden, he told the infidel he lied, and raising his arm at the same +time he smote him on the head with his sheathed sword. In an instant +the Court of Lions glistened with the flash of arms," insomuch that the +American lady whom we saw writing a letter beside a friend sketching +there must have been startled from her opening words, "I am sitting here +with my portfolio on my knees in the beautiful Court of the Lions," +and if Muley Aben Hassan had not "overheard the tumult and forbade all +appeal to force, pronouncing the person of the ambassador sacred," she +never could have gone on. + + + +V + +[Illustration: 28 THE COURT OF THE LIONS] + +I did not doubt the fact when I read of it under the level boughs of the +beechen tree with J. W., sixty years ago, by the green woodland light +of the primeval forest which hemmed our village in, and since I am well +away from the Alhambra again I do not doubt it now. I doubt nothing that +Irving says of the Alhambra; he is the gentle genius of the place, and +I could almost wish that I had paid the ten pesetas extra which the +custodian demanded for showing his apartment in the palace. On the +ground the demand of two dollars seemed a gross extortion; yet it was +not too much for a devotion so rich as mine to have paid, and I advise +other travelers to buy themselves off from a vain regret by giving it. +If ever a memory merited the right to levy tribute on all comers to the +place it haunts, Washington Irving's is that memory. His _Conquest of +Granada_ is still the history which one would wish to read; his _Tales +of the Alhambra_ embody fable and fact in just the right measure for the +heart's desire in the presence of the monuments they verify or falsify. +They belong to that strange age of romance which is now so almost +pathetic and to which one cannot refuse his sympathy without sensible +loss. But for the eager make-believe of that time we should still have +to hoard up much rubbish which we can now leave aside, or accept without +bothering to assay for the few grains of gold in it. Washington Irving +had just the playful kindness which sufficed best to deal with the +accumulations of his age; if he does not forbid you to believe, he does +not oblige you to disbelieve, and he has always a tolerant civility +in his humor which comports best with the duty of taking leniently a +history impossible to take altogether seriously. Till the Spaniards +had put an end to the Moorish misrule, with its ruthless despotism and +bloody civil brawls, the Moors deserved to be conquered; it was not till +their power was broken forever that they became truly heroic in their +vain struggles and their unavailing sorrows. Then their pathetic +resignation to persecution and exile lent dignity even to their +ridiculous religion; but it was of the first and not the second period +that Irving had to treat. + + + +VI + + +The Alhambra is not so impressive by its glory or grandeur as by the +unparalleled beauty of its place. If it is not very noble as an effect +of art, the inspiration of its founders is affirmed by their choice of +an outlook which commands one of the most magnificent panoramas in the +whole world. It would be useless to rehearse the proofs by name. Think +of far-off silver-crested summits and of a peopled plain stretching away +from them out of eye-shot, dense first with roofs and domes and towers, +and then freeing itself within fields and vineyards and orchards and +forests to the vanishing-point of the perspective; think of steep and +sudden plunges into chasms at the foot of the palace walls, and one +crooked stream stealing snakelike in their depths; think of whatever +splendid impossible dramas of topography that you will, of a tremendous +map outstretched in colored relief, and you will perhaps have some +notion of the prospect from the giddy windows of the Alhambra; and +perhaps not. Of one thing we made memorably sure beyond the gulf of the +Darro, and that was the famous gipsy quarter which the traveler visits +at the risk of his life in order to have his fortune told. At the same +moment we made sure that we should not go nearer it, for though we knew +that it was insurpassably dirty as well as dangerous, we remembered so +distinctly the loathsomeness of the gipsy quarter at Seville that we +felt no desire to put it to the comparison. + +We preferred rather the bird's-eye study of the beautiful Generalife +which our outlook enabled us to make, and which we supplemented by +a visit the next day. We preferred, after the Barmecide lunch at our +hotel, taking the tram-car that noisily and more noisily clambers up and +down, and descending into the town by it. The ascent is so steep that +at a certain point the electric current no longer suffices, and the car +bites into the line of cogs with its sort of powerful under-jaw and +so arrives. Yet it is a kindly little vehicle, with a conductor so +affectionately careful in transporting the stranger that I felt after +a single day we should soon become brothers, or at least step-brothers. +Whenever we left or took his car, after the beginning or ending of the +cogway, he was alert to see that we made the right change to or from +it, and that we no more overpaid than underpaid him. Such homely natures +console the traveler for the thousand inhospitalities of travel, and +bind races and religions together in spite of patriotism and piety. + +We were going first to the Cartuja, and in the city, which we found +curiously much more modern, after the Latin notion, than Seville, with +freshly built apartment-houses and business blocks, we took a cab, not +so modern as to be a taxicab, and drove through the quarter said to have +been assigned to the Moors after the fall of Granada. The dust lay thick +in the roadway where filthy children played, but in the sunny doorways +good mothers of families crouched taking away the popular reproach of +vermin by searching one another's heads. Men bestriding their donkeys +rode fearlessly through the dust, and one cleanly-looking old peasant +woman, who sat hers plumply cushioned and framed in with a chair-back +and arms, showed a patience with the young trees planted for future +shade along the desperate avenue which I could wish we had emulated. +When we reached the entrance of the old Carthusian Convent, long since +suppressed and its brothers exiled, a strong force of beggarmen waited +for us, but a modest beggar-woman, old and sad, had withdrawn to the +church door, where she shared in our impartial alms. We were admitted +to the cloister, rather oddly, by a young girl, who went for one of the +remaining monks to show us the church. He came with a newspaper (I hope +of clerical politics) in his hand, and distracted himself from it only +long enough to draw a curtain, or turn on a light, and point out a +picture or statue from time to time. But he was visibly anxious to get +back to it, and sped us more eagerly than he welcomed us in a church +which upon the whole is richer in its peculiar treasures of painting, +sculpture, especially in wood, costly marble, and precious stones +than any other I remember. According to my custom, I leave it to the +guide-books to name these, and to the abounding critics of Spanish art +to celebrate the pictures and statues; it is enough for me that I have +now forgotten them all except those scenes of the martyrdom inflicted by +certain Protestants on members of the Carthusian brotherhood at the time +when all sorts of Christians felt bound to correct the opinions of all +other sorts by the cruelest tortures they could invent. When the monk +had put us to shame by the sight of these paintings (bad as their +subjects), he put us out, letting his eyes fall back upon his newspaper +before the door had well closed upon us. + +The beggarmen had waited in their places to give us another chance +of meriting heaven; and at the church door still crouched the old +beggarwoman. I saw now that the imploring eyes she lifted were +sightless, and I could not forbear another alms, and as I put my copper +big-dog in her leathern palm I said, _"Adios, madre."_ Then happened +something that I had long desired. I had heard and read that in Spain +people always said at parting, "Go with God," but up to that moment +nobody had said it to me, though I had lingeringly given many the +opportunity. Now, at my words and at the touch of my coin this old +beggarwoman smiled beneficently and said, "Go with God," or, as she put +it in her Spanish, "_Vaya vested con Dios."_ Immediately I ought to +have pressed another coin in her palm, with a _"Gracias, madre; muchas +gracias,"_ out of regard to the literary climax; but whether I really +did so I cannot now remember; I can only hope I did. + + + +VII + + +I think that it was while I was still in this high satisfaction that +we went a drive in the promenade, which in all Spanish cities is the +Alameda, except Seville, where it so deservedly is the Delicias. It was +in every way a contrast to the road we had come from the Cartuja: an +avenue of gardened paths and embowered driveways, where we hoped to join +the rank and fashion of Granada in their afternoon's outing. But there +was only one carriage besides our own with people in it, who looked no +greater world than ourselves, and a little girl riding with her groom. +On one hand were pretty villas, new-looking and neat, which I heard +could sometimes be taken for the summer at rents so low that I am glad +I have forgotten the exact figures lest the reader should doubt my word. +Nothing but the fact that the winter was then hanging over us from the +Sierras prevented my taking one of them for the summer that had passed, +the Granadan summer being notoriously the most delightful in the world. +On the other hand stretched the wonderful Vega, which covers so many +acres in history and romance, and there, so near that we look down into +them at times were "the silvery windings of the Xenil," which glides +through so many descriptive passages of Irving's page; only now, on +account of recent rain, its windings were rather coppery. + +At the hotel on the terrace under our balcony we found on our return +a party of Spanish ladies and gentlemen taking tea, or whatever drink +stood for it in their custom: no doubt chocolate; but it was at least +the afternoon-tea hour. The women's clothes were just from Paris, and +the men's from London, but their customs, I suppose, were national; +the women sat on one side of the table and talked across it to the men, +while they ate and drank, and then each sex grouped itself apart and +talked to its kind, the women in those hardened vowels of a dialect from +which the Andalusians for conversational purposes have eliminated all +consonants. The sun was setting red and rayless, with a play of many +lights and tints, over the landscape up to the snow-line on the Sierra. +The town lay a stretch of gray roofs and white walls, intermixed with +yellow poplars and black cypresses, and misted over with smoke from the +chimneys of the sugar factories. The mountains stood flat against the +sky, purple with wide stretches of brown, and dark, slanting furrows. +The light became lemon-yellow before nightfall, and then a dull crimson +under pale violet. + +The twitter of the Spanish women was overborne at times by the voices +of an American party whose presence I was rather proud of as another +American. They were all young men, and they were making an educational +tour of the world in the charge of a professor who saw to it that +they learned as much of its languages and history and civilization as +possible on the way. They ranged in their years from about fifteen to +twenty and even more, and they were preparing for college, or doing what +they could to repair the loss of university training before they took +up the work of life. It seemed to me a charming notion, and charming the +seriousness with which they were fulfilling it. They were not so serious +in everything as to miss any incidental pleasure; they had a large table +to themselves in our Barmecide banquet-hall, where they seemed always +to be having a good time, and where once they celebrated the birthday +of one of them with a gaiety which would have penetrated, if anything +could, the shining chill of the hostelry. In the evening we heard them +in the billiard-room below lifting their voices in the lays of our +college muse, and waking to ecstasy the living piano in the strains of +our national ragtime. They were never intrusively cheerful; one might +remain, in spite of them, as dispirited as the place would have one; but +as far as the _genius loci_ would let me, I liked them; and so far as +I made their acquaintance I thought that they were very intelligently +carrying out the enterprise imagined for them. + + + +VIII + + +I wish now that I had known them well enough to ask them what they +candidly thought of the city of which I felt the witchery under the +dying day I have left celebrating for the moment in order to speak of +them. It seems to me at this distance of time and space that I did not +duly reflect that in places it was a city which smelled very badly and +was almost as dirty as New York in others, and very ill paved. The worst +places are in the older quarters, where the streets are very crooked and +very narrow, so narrow that the tram-car can barely scrape through them. +They are old enough to be streets belonging to the Moorish city, like +many streets in Cordova and Seville, but no fond inquiry of our guides +could identify this lane or that alley as of Moorish origin. There is +indeed a group of picturesque shops clearly faked to look Moorish, which +the lover of that period may pin his faith to, and for a moment I did +so, but upon second thought I unpinned it. + +We visited this plated fragment of the old Moorish capital when +we descended from our hotel with a new guide to see the great, the +stupendous cathedral, where the Catholic kings lie triumphantly entombed +in the heart of their conquest. It is altogether unlike the other +Spanish cathedrals of my knowledge; for though the cathedral of +Valladolid is of Renaissance architecture in its austere simplicity, +it is somehow even less like that of Granada than the Gothic fanes of +Burgos or Toledo or Seville. All the detail at Granada is classicistic, +but the whole is often of Gothic effect, especially in the mass of +those clustered Corinthian columns that lift its domes aloof on their +prodigious bulk, huge as that of the grouped pillars in the York +Minster. The white of the marble walls, the gold of altars, the colors +of painted wooden sculpture form the tones of the place, subdued to one +bizarre richness which I may as well leave first as last to the reader's +fancy; though, let his fancy riot as it will, it never can picture that +gorgeousness. Mass was saying at a side altar as we entered, and the +music of stringed instruments and the shrill voices of choir-boys +pierced the spaces here and there, but no more filled them than the +immemorable plastic and pictorial facts: than a certain very lively +bishop kneeling on his tomb and looking like George Washington; or +than a St. Jerome in the Desert, outwrinkling age, with his lion curled +cozily up in his mantle; or than the colossal busts of Adam and Eve +and the praying figures of Ferdinand and Isabel, richly gilded in +the exquisite temple forming the high altar; or than the St. James on +horseback, with his horse's hoof planted on the throat of a Moor; or +than the Blessed Virgins in jeweled crowns and stomachers and brocaded +skirts; or than that unsparing decapitation of John the Baptist bloodily +falling forward with his severed gullet thrusting at the spectator. +Nothing has ever been too terrible in life for Spanish art to represent; +it is as ruthlessly veracious as Russian literature; and of all the +painters and sculptors who have portrayed the story of Christianity as +a tale of torture and slaughter, the Spaniards seem to have studied it +closest from the fact; perhaps because for centuries the Inquisition +lavished the fact upon them. + +The supreme interest of the cathedral is, of course, the Royal Chapel, +where in a sunken level Ferdinand and Isabel lie, with their poor mad +daughter Joan and her idolized unfaithful husband Philip the Fair, whose +body she bore about with her while she lived. The picture postal has +these monuments in its keeping and can show them better than my pen, +which falters also from the tremendous _retablo_ of the chapel dense +with the agonies of martyrdom and serene with the piety of the Catholic +Kings kneeling placidly amid the horrors. If the picture postal will not +supply these, or reproduce the many and many relics and memorials which +abound there and in the sacristy--jewels and vestments and banners and +draperies of the royal camp-altar--there is nothing for the reader but +to go himself and see. It is richly worth his while, and if he cannot +believe in a box which will be shown him as the box Isabel gave Columbus +her jewels in merely because he has been shown a reliquary as her +hand-glass, so much the worse for him. He will not then merit the +company of a small choir-boy who efficiently opens the iron gate to +the crypt and gives the custodian as good as he sends in back-talk and +defiantly pockets the coppers he has earned. Much less will he deserve +to witness the homely scene in an area outside of the Royal Chapel, +where many milch goats are assembled, and when a customer comes, +preferably a little girl with a tin cup, one of the mothers of the flock +is pinioned much against her will by a street boy volunteering for the +office, and her head held tight while the goatherdess milks the measure +full at the other end. + + + +IX + + +Everywhere about the cathedral beggars lay in wait, and the neighboring +streets were lively with bargains of prickly pears spread open on the +ground by old women who did not care whether any one bought or not. +There were also bargains in palmistry; and at one place a delightful +humorist was selling clothing at auction. He allured the bidders +by having his left hand dressed as a puppet and holding a sparkling +dialogue with it; when it did not respond to his liking he beat it with +his right hand, and every now and then he rang a little bell. He had a +pleased crowd about him in the sunny square; but it seemed to me +that all the newer part of Granada was lively with commerce in ample, +tram-trodden streets which gave the shops, larger than any we had seen +out of Madrid, a chance uncommon in the narrow ways of other Spanish +cities. Yet when I went to get money on my letter of credit, I found +the bank withdrawn from the modernity in a seclusion reached through a +lovely _patio._ We were seated in old-fashioned welcome, such as used to +honor a banker's customers in Venice, and all comers bowed and bade us +good day. The bankers had no such question of the different signatures +as vexed those of Valladolid, and after no more delay than due ceremony +demanded, I went away with both my money and my letter, courteously seen +to the door. + +The guide, to whom we had fallen in the absence of our French-speaking +guide of the day before, spoke a little English, and he seemed to +grow in sympathetic intelligence as the morning passed. He made our +sightseeing include visits to the church of St. John of God, and the +church of San Geronimo, which was built by Gonsalvo de Cordova, the +Great Captain, and remains now a memorial to him. We rang at the door, +and after long delay a woman came and let us into an interior stranger +ever than her being there as custodian. It was frescoed from floor to +ceiling everywhere, except the places of the altars now kept by the +painted _retablos_ and the tombs and the statues of the various saints +and heroes. The _retablo_ of the high altar is almost more beautiful +than wonderful, but the chief glory of the place is in the kneeling +figures of the Great Captain and his wife, one on either side of the +altar, and farther away the effigies of his famous companions-in-arms, +and on the walls above their heraldic blazons and his. The church +Was unfinished when the Great Captain died in the displeasure of his +ungrateful king, and its sumptuous completion testifies to the devotion +of his wife and her taste in choosing the best artists for the work. + +I have still the sense of a noonday quiet that lingered with us after we +left this church and which seemed to go with us to the Hospital of St. +John of God, founded, with other hospitals, by the pious Portuguese, +who, after a life of good works, took this name on his well-merited +canonization. The hospital is the monument of his devotion to good +works, and is full of every manner of religious curio. I cannot remember +to have seen so many relics under one roof, bones of both holy men and +women, with idols of the heathen brought from Portuguese possessions in +the East which are now faded from the map, as well as the body of St. +John of God shrined in silver in the midst of all. + +[Illustration: 29 LOOKING NORTHWEST FROM THE GENERALIFE OVER GRANADA] + +I do not know why I should have brought away from these two places a +peacefulness of mind such as seldom follows a visit to show-places, but +the fact is so; perhaps it was because we drove to and from them, and +were not so tired as footworn sight-seers are, or so rebellious. One +who had seen not only the body of St. John of God, but his cane with +a whistle in it to warn the charitable of his coming and attune their +minds to alms-giving, and the straw basket in which he collected food +for the poor, now preserved under an embroidered satin covering, and an +autograph letter of his framed in glass and silver, might even have been +refreshed by his experience. At any rate, we were so far from tired +that after luncheon we walked to the Garden of the Generalife, and then +walked all over it. The afternoon was of the very mood for such a visit, +and we passed it there in these walks and bowers, and the black cypress +aisles, and the trees and vines yellowing to the fall of their leaves. +The melancholy laugh of water chasing down the steep channels and +gurgling through the stone rails of stairways was everywhere, and its +dim smile gleamed from pools and tanks. In the court where it stretched +in a long basin an English girl was painting and another girl was +sewing, to whom I now tardily offer my thanks for adding to the charm of +the place. Not many other people were there to dispute our afternoon's +ownership. I count a peasant family, the women in black shawls and the +men wearing wide, black sashes, rather as our guests than as strangers; +and I am often there still with no sense of molestation. Even the reader +who does not conceive of a garden being less flowers and shrubs than +fountains and pavilions and porches and borders of box and walls of +clipped evergreens, will scarcely follow me to the Generalife or outstay +me there. + +The place is probably dense with history and suffocating with +association, but I prefer to leave all that to the imagination where +my own ignorance found it. A painter had told me once of his spending a +summer in it, and he showed some beautiful pieces of color in proof, but +otherwise I came to it with a blank surface on which it might photograph +itself without blurring any earlier record. This, perhaps, is why I love +so much to dwell there on that never-ending afternoon of late October. +It was long past the hour of its summer bloom, but the autumnal air was +enriching it beyond the dreams of avarice with the gold which prevails +in the Spanish landscape wherever the green is gone, and we could look +out of its yellowing bowers over a landscape immeasurable in beauty. Of +course, we tried to master the facts of the Generalife's past, but we +really did not care for them and scarcely believed that Charles V. had +doubted the sincerity of the converted Moor who had it from Ferdinand +of Aragon, and so withheld it from his heirs for four generations +until they could ripen to a genuine Christianity at Genoa, whither they +withdrew and became the patrician family now its proprietors. The arms +of this family decorate the roof and walls of the colonnaded belvedere +from which you look out over the city and the plain and the mountains; +and there are remnants of Moorish decoration in many places, but +otherwise the Generalife is now as Christian as the noble Pallavicini +who possess it. There were plenty of flower-beds, box-bordered, but +there were no flowers in them; the flowers preferred standing about +in tall pots. There was an arbor overhung with black forgotten grapes +before the keeper's door and in the corner of it dangled ropes of +fire-red peppers. + +This detail is what, with written help, I remember of the Generalife, +but no loveliness of it shall fade from, my soul. From its embowered and +many-fountained height it looks over to the Alhambra, dull red, and the +city wall climbing the opposite slope across the Darro to a church on +the hilltop which was once a mosque. The precipice to which the garden +clings plunges sheer to the river-bed with a downlook insurpassably +thrilling; but the best view of the city is from the flowery walk that +runs along the side of the Alcazaba, which was once a fortress and is +now a garden, long forgetful of its office of defending the Alhambra +palace. From this terrace Granada looks worthy of her place in history +and romance. We visited the Alcazaba after the Generalife, and were very +critical, but I must own the supremacy of this prospect. I should not +mind owning its supremacy among all the prospects in the world. + + + +XI + + +Meanwhile our shining hotel had begun to thrill with something besides +the cold which nightly pierced it from the snowy Sierra. This was the +excitement pending from an event promised the next day, which was the +production of a drama in verse, of peculiar and intense interest for +Granada, where the scene of it was laid in the Alhambra at one of the +highest moments of its history, and the persons were some of those +dearest to its romance. Not only the company to perform it (of course +the first company in Spain) had been in the hotel overnight, and the +ladies of it had gleamed and gloomed through the cold corridors, but the +poet had been conspicuous at dinner, with his wife, young and beautiful +and blond, and powdered so white that her blondness was of quite a +violet cast. There was not so much a question of whether we should +take tickets as whether we could get them, but for this the powerful +influence of our guide availed, and he got tickets providentially given +up in the morning for a price so exorbitant I should be ashamed to +confess it. They were for the afternoon performance, and at three +o'clock we went with the rest of the gay and great world of Granada to +the principal theater. + +The Latin conception of a theater is of something rather more barnlike +than ours, but this theater was of a sufficiently handsome presence, and +when we had been carried into it by the physical pressure exerted upon +us by the crowd at the entrance we found its vastness already thronged. +The seats in the orchestra were mostly taken; the gallery under the +roof was loud with the impatience for the play which the auditors +there testified by cries and whistlings and stampings until the curtain +lifted; the tiers of boxes rising all round the theater were filled with +family parties. The fathers and mothers sat in front with the children +between them of all ages down to babies in their nurses' arms. These +made themselves perfectly at home, in one case reaching over the edge +of the box and clawing the hair of a gentleman standing below and openly +enjoying the joke. The friendly equality of the prevailing spirit was +expressed in the presence of the family servants at the back of the +family boxes, from which the latest fashions showed themselves here and +there, as well as the belated local versions of them. In the orchestra +the men had promptly lighted their cigars and the air was blue with +smoke. Friends found one another, to their joyful amaze, not having met +since morning; and especially young girls were enraptured to recognize +young men; one girl shook hands twice with a young man, and gurgled with +laughter as long as he stood near her. + +As a lifelong lover of the drama and a boyish friend of Granadan +romance, I ought to have cared more for the play than the people who had +come to it, but I did not. The play was unintentionally amusing enough; +but after listening for two hours to the monotonous cadences of the +speeches which the persons of it recited to one another, while the +ladies of the Moorish world took as public a part in its events as if +they had been so many American Christians, we came away. We had already +enjoyed the first entr'acte, when the men all rose and went out, or +lighted fresh cigars and went to talk with the Paris hats and plumes +or the Spanish mantillas and high combs in the boxes. The curtain had +scarcely fallen when the author of the play was called before it and +applauded by the generous, the madly generous, spectators. He stood +bowing and bowing on tiptoe, as if the wings of his rapture lifted him +to them and would presently fly away with him. He could not drink deep +enough of the delicious draught, put brimming to his lips, and the +divine intoxication must have lasted him through the night, for after +breakfast the next morning I met him in our common corridor at the hotel +smiling to himself, and when I could not forbear smiling in return he +smiled more; he beamed, he glowed upon me as if I were a crowded house +still cheering him to the echo. It was a beautiful moment and I realized +even better than the afternoon before what it was to be a young poet and +a young Spanish poet, and to have had a first play given for the first +time in the city of Granada, where the morning papers glowed with praise +so ardent that the print all but smoked with it. We were alone in the +corridor where we met, and our eyes confessed us kindred spirits, and +I hope he understood me better than if I had taken him in my arms and +kissed him on both cheeks. + +I really had no time for that; I was on my way down-stairs to witness +the farewell scene between the leading lady and the large group of +young Granadans who had come up to see her off. When she came out to +the carriage with her husband, by a delicate refinement of homage they +cheered him, and left him to deliver their devotion to her, which +she acknowledged only with a smile. But not so the leading lady's +lady's-maid, when her turn came to bid good-by from our omnibus window +to the assembled upper servants of the hotel. She put her head out and +said in a voice hoarse with excitement and good-fellowship, _"Adios, +hombres!"_ ("Good-by, men!"), and vanished with us from their applausive +presence. + +With us, I say, for we, too, were leaving Granada in rain which was +snow on the Sierra and so cold that we might well have seemed leaving +Greenland. The brave mules which had so gallantly, under the lash of +the running foot-boy beside them, galloped uphill with us the moonlight +night of our coming, now felt their anxious way down in the dismal +drizzle of that last morning, and brought us at last to the plaza before +the station. It was a wide puddle where I thought our craft should have +floundered, but it made its way to the door, and left us dry shod within +and glad to be quitting the city of my young dreams. + + + + +XII. THE SURPRISES OF RONDA + + +The rain that pelted sharply into the puddle before the station at +Granada was snow on the Sierra, and the snow that fell farther and +farther down the mountainsides resolved itself over the Vega into a +fog as white and almost as cold. Half-way across the storied and fabled +plain the rain stopped and the fog lifted, and then we saw by day, as +we had already seen by night, how the Vega was plentifully dotted with +white cottages amid breadths of wheat-land where the peasants were +plowing. Here and there were fields of Indian corn, and in a certain +place there was a small vineyard; in one of the middle distances there +spread a forest of Lombardy poplars, yellow as gold, and there was +abundance of this autumn coloring in the landscape, which grew lonelier +as we began to mount from the level. Olives, of course, abounded, and +there were oak woods and clumps of wild cherry trees. The towns were far +from the stations, which we reached at the rate of perhaps two miles an +hour as we approached the top of the hills; and we might have got out +and walked without fear of being left behind by our train, which made +long stops, as if to get its breath for another climb. Before this the +sole companion of our journey, whom we decided to be a landed proprietor +coming out in his riding-gear to inspect his possessions, had left us, +but at the first station after our descent began other passengers got +in, with a captain of Civil Guards among them, very loquacious and very +courteous, and much deferred to by the rest of us. At Bobadilla, where +again we had tea with hot goat's milk in it, we changed cars, and +from that on we had the company of a Rock-Scorpion pair whose name was +beautifully Italian and whose speech was beautifully English, as the +speech of those born at Gibraltar should rightfully be. + + + +I + + +It was quite dark at Ronda when our omnibus drove into the gardened +grounds of one of those admirable inns which an English company is +building in Spain, and put us down at the door of the office, where a +typical English manageress and her assistant appointed us pleasant rooms +and had fires kindled in them while we dined. There were already fires +in the pleasant reading-room, which did not diffuse a heat too great +for health but imparted to the eye a sense of warmth such as we had +experienced nowhere else in Spain. Over all was spread a quiet and +quieting British influence; outside of the office the nature of the +service was Spanish, but the character of it was English; the Spanish +waiters spoke English, and they looked English in dress and manner; +superficially the chambermaid was as English as one could have found her +in the United Kingdom, but at heart you could see she was as absolutely +and instinctively a Spanish _camerera_ as any in a hotel of Madrid or +Seville. In the atmosphere of insularity the few Spanish guests +were scarcely distinguishable from Anglo-Saxons, though a group +of magnificent girls at a middle table, quelled by the duenna-like +correctness of their mother, looked with their exaggerated hair and eyes +like Spanish ladies made up for English parts in a play. + +We had our breakfast in the reading-room where all the rest were +breakfasting and trying not to see that they were keeping one another +from the fire. It was very cold, for Ronda is high in the mountains +which hem it round and tower far above it. We had already had our first +glimpse of their summits from our own windows, but it was from the +terrace outside the reading-room that we felt their grandeur most after +we had drunk our coffee: we could scarcely have borne it before. In +their presence, we could not realize at once that Ronda itself was +a mountain, a mere mighty mass of rock, cleft in twain, with chasmal +depths where we saw pygmy men and mules creeping out upon the valley +that stretched upward to the foot of the Sierra. Why there should ever +have been a town built there in the prehistoric beginning, except that +the rock was so impossible to take, and why it should have therefore +been taken by that series of invaders who pervaded all Spain--by the +Phoenicians, by the Carthaginians, by the Romans, by the Goths, by the +Moors, by the Christians, and after many centuries by the French, and +finally by the Spaniards again--it would not be easy to say. Among its +many conquerors, the Moors left their impress upon it, though here +as often as elsewhere in Spain their impress is sometimes merely a +decoration of earlier Roman work. There remains a Roman bridge which +the Moors did not make over into the likeness of their architecture, but +built a bridge of their own which also remains and may be seen from the +magnificent structure with which the Spaniards have arched the abyss +where the river rushes writhing and foaming through the gorge three +hundred feet below. There on the steps that lead from the brink, the eye +of pity may still see the files of Christian captives bringing water up +to their Moslem masters; but as one cannot help them now, even by the +wildest throe, it is as well to give a vain regret to the architect of +the Spanish bridge, who fell to his death from its parapet, and then +push on to the market hard by. + + + +II + + +You have probably come to see that market because you have read in your +guide-books that the region round about Ronda is one of the richest in +Spain for grapes and peaches and medlars and melons and other fruits +whose names melt in the mouth. If you do not find in the market the +abundance you expect of its picturesqueness you must blame the lateness +of the season, and go visit the bull-ring, one of the most famous in the +world, for Ronda is not less noted for its _toreros_ and _aficionados_ +than for its vineyards and orchards. But here again the season will have +been before you with the glory of those _corridas_ which you have still +hoped not to witness but to turn from as an example to the natives +before the first horse is disemboweled or the first bull slain, or even +the first _banderillero_ tossed over the barrier. + +The bull-ring seemed fast shut to the public when we approached it, +but we found ourselves smilingly welcomed to the interior by the kindly +mother in charge. She made us free of the whole vast place, where eight +thousand people could witness in perfect comfort the dying agonies of +beasts and men, but especially she showed us the chamber over the gate, +full of bullfighting properties: the pikes, the little barbed pennons, +the long sword by which the bull suffers and dies, as well as the +cumbrous saddles and bridles and spears for the unhappy horses and their +riders. She was especially compassionate of the horses, and she had +apparently no pleasure in any of the cruel things, though she was not +critical of the sport. The King of Spain is president of the Ronda +bull-fighting association, and she took us into the royal box, which +is the worthier to be seen because under it the bulls are shunted and +shouted into the ring from the pen where they have been kept in the +dark. Before we escaped her husband sold us some very vivid postal +cards representing the sport; so that with the help of a large black cat +holding the center of the ring, we felt that we had seen as much of a +bull-fight as we could reasonably wish. + +We were seeing the wonders of the city in the guidance of a charming boy +whom we had found in wait for us at the gate of the hotel garden when we +came out. He offered his services in the best English he had, and he had +enough of it to match my Spanish word for word throughout the morning. +He led us from the bull-ring to the church known to few visitors, I +believe, where the last male descendant of Montezuma lies entombed, +under a fit inscription, and then through the Plaza past the college of +Montezuma, probably named for this heir of the Aztec empire. I do not +know why the poor prince should have come to die in Ronda, but there are +many things in Ronda which I could not explain: especially why a certain +fruit is sold by an old woman on the bridge. Its berries are threaded +on a straw and look like the most luscious strawberries but taste like +turpentine, though they may be avoided under the name of _madrones._ But +on no account would I have the reader avoid the Church of Santa Maria +Mayor. It is so dark within that he will not see the finely carved choir +seats without the help of matches, or the pictures at all; but it is +worth realizing, as one presently may, that the hither part of the +church is a tolerably perfect mosque of Moorish architecture, through +which you must pass to the Renaissance temple of the Christian faith. + +Near by is the Casa de Mondragon which he should as little miss if he +has any pleasure in houses with two _patios_ perching on the gardened +brink of a precipice and overlooking one of the most beautiful valleys +in the whole world, with donkey-trains climbing up from it over the +face of the cliff. The garden is as charming as red geraniums and blue +cabbages can make a garden, and the house is fascinatingly quaint and +unutterably Spanish, with the inner _patio_ furnished in bright-colored +cushions and wicker chairs, and looked into by a brown wooden gallery. A +stately lemon-colored elderly woman followed us silently about, and the +whole place was pervaded by a smell that was impossible at the time and +now seems incredible. + + + +III + + +I here hesitate before a little adventure which I would not make too +much of nor yet minify: it seems to me so gentle and winning. I had long +meant to buy a donkey, and I thought I could make no fitter beginning +to this end than by buying a donkey's head-stall in the country where +donkeys are more respected and more brilliantly accoutred than anywhere +else in the whole earth. When I ventured to suggest my notion, or call +it dream, to our young guide, he instantly imagined it in its full +beauty, and he led us directly to a shop in the principal street which +for the richness and variety of the coloring in its display might +have been a florist's shop. Donkeys' trappings in brilliant yellow, +vermillion, and magenta hung from the walls, and head-stalls, gorgeously +woven and embroidered, dangled from the roof. Among them and under them +the donkeys' harness-maker sat at his work, a short, brown, handsome +man with eyes that seemed the more prominent because of his close-shaven +head. We chose a headstall of such splendor that no heart could have +resisted it, and while he sewed to it the twine muzzle which Spanish +donkeys wear on their noses for the protection of the public, our guide +expatiated upon us, and said, among other things to our credit, that we +were from America and were going to take the head-stall back with us. + +The harness-maker lifted his head alertly. "Where, in America?" and we +answered for ourselves, "From New York." + +Then the harness-maker rose and went to an inner doorway and called +through it something that brought out a comely, motherly woman as alert +as himself. She verified our statement for herself, and having paved +the way firmly for her next question she asked, "Do you know the Escuela +Mann?" + +As well as our surprise would let us, we said that we knew the Mann +School, both where and what it was. + +She waited with a sort of rapturous patience before saying, "My son, our +eldest son, was educated at the Escuela Mann, to be a teacher, and now +he is a professor in the Commercial College in Puerto Rico." + +If our joint interest in this did not satisfy her expectation I for my +part can never forgive myself; certainly I tried to put as much passion +into my interest as I could, when she added that his education at the +Escuela Mann was without cost to him. By this time, in fact, I was so +proud of the Escuela Mann that I could not forbear proclaiming that a +member of my own family, no less than the father of the grandson for +whose potential donkey I was buying that headstall, was one of the +architects of the Escuela Mann building. + +She now vanished within, and when she came out she brought her daughter, +a gentle young girl who sat down and smiled upon us through the rest of +the interview. She brought also an armful of books, the Spanish-English +Ollendorff which her son had used in studying our language, his +dictionary, and the copy-book where he had written his exercises, with +two photographs of him, not yet too Americanized; and she showed us not +only how correctly but how beautifully his exercises were done. If I did +not admire these enough, again I cannot forgive myself, but she +seemed satisfied with what I did, and she talked on about him, not too +loquaciously, but lovingly and lovably as a mother should, and proudly +as the mother of such a boy should, though without vainglory; I have +forgotten to say that she had a certain distinction of face, and was +appropriately dressed in black. By this time we felt that a head-stall +for such a donkey as I was going to buy was not enough to get of such +people, and I added a piece of embroidered leather such as goes in Spain +on the front of a donkey's saddle; if we could not use it so, in final +defect of the donkey, we could put it on a veranda chair. The saddler +gave it at so low a price that we perceived he must have tacitly abated +something from the visual demand, and when we did not try to beat him +down, his wife went again into that inner room and came out with an +iron-holder of scarlet flannel backed with canvas, and fringed with +magenta, and richly inwrought with a Moorish design, in white, yellow, +green, and purple. I say Moorish, because one must say something, but +if it was a pattern of her own invention the gift was the more precious +when she bestowed it on the sister of one of the architects of the +Escuela Mann. That led to more conversation about the Escuela Mann, and +about the graduate of it who was now a professor in Puerto Rico, and we +all grew such friends, and so proud of one another, and of the country +so wide open to the talents without cost to them, that when I asked +her if she would not sometime be going to America, her husband answered +almost fiercely in his determination, "I am going when I have learned +English!" and to prove that this was no idle boast, he pronounced some +words of our language at random, but very well. We parted in a glow of +reciprocal esteem and I still think of that quarter-hour as one of my +happiest; and whatever others may say, I say that to have done such a +favor to one Spanish family as the Escuela Mann had been the means of +our nation doing this one was a greater thing than to have taken Cuba +from Spain and bought the Philippines when we had seized them already +and had led the Filipinos to believe that we meant to give their islands +to them. + + + +IV + +[Illustration: 30 LOOKING ACROSS THE NEW BRIDGE (300 FEET HIGH) OVER THE GUADA-LAVIAR GORGE, RONDA + +Suddenly, on the way home to our very English hotel, the air of Ronda +seemed charged with English. We were already used to the English of our +young guide, which so far as it went, went firmly and courageously after +forethought and reflection for each sentence, but we were not quite +prepared for the English of two polite youths who lifted their hats as +they passed us and said, "Good afternoon." The general English lasted +quite overnight and far into the next day when we found several natives +prepared to try it on us in the pretty Alameda, and learned from one, +who proved to be the teacher of it in the public school, that there were +some twenty boys studying it there: heaven knows why, but the English +hotel and its success may have suggested it to them as a means of +prosperity. The students seem each prepared to guide strangers through +Ronda, but sometimes they fail of strangers. That was the case with the +pathetic young hunchback whom we met in Alameda, and who owned that he +had guided none that day. In view of this and as a prophylactic against +a course of bad luck, I made so bold as to ask if I might venture to +repair the loss of the peseta which he would otherwise have earned. He +smiled wanly, and then with the countenance of the teacher, he submitted +and thanked me in English which I can cordially recommend to strangers +knowing no Spanish. + +All this was at the end of another morning when we had set out with +the purpose of seeing the rest of Ronda for ourselves. We chose a back +street parallel to the great thoroughfare leading to the new bridge, and +of a squalor which we might have imagined but had not. The dwellers in +the decent-looking houses did not seem to mind the sights and scents of +their street, but these revolted us, and we made haste out of it into +the avenue where the greater world of Ronda was strolling or standing +about, but preferably standing about. In the midst of it, at the +entrance of the new bridge we heard ourselves civilly saluted and +recognized with some hesitation the donkey's harness-maker who, in his +Sunday dress and with his hat on, was not just the work-day presence +we knew. He held by the hand a pretty boy of eleven years, whom he +introduced as his second son, self-destined to follow the elder brother +to America, and duly take up the profession of teaching in Puerto Rico +after experiencing the advantages of the Escuela Mann. His father said +that he already knew some English, and he proposed that the boy should +go about with us and practise it, and after polite demur and insistence +the child came with us, to our great pleasure. He bore himself with fit +gravity, in his cap and long linen pinafore as he went before us, and we +were personally proud of his fine, long face and his serious eyes, dark +and darkened yet more by their long lashes. He knew the way to just such +a book store as we wanted, where the lady behind the desk knew him and +willingly promised to get me some books in the Andalusian dialect, and +send them to our hotel by him at half past twelve. Naturally she did not +do so, but he came to report her failure to get them. We had offered to +pay him for his trouble, but he forbade us, and when we had overcome his +scruple he brought the money back, and we had our trouble over again +to make him keep it. To this hour I do not know how we ever brought +ourselves to part with him; perhaps it was his promise of coming to +America next year that prevailed with us; his brother was returning on a +visit and then they were going back together. + + + +V + + +Our search for literature in Ronda was not wholly a failure. At another +bookstore, I found one of those local histories which I was always +vainly trying for in other Spanish towns, and I can praise the _Historia +de Ronda par Federico Lozano Gutierrez_ as well done, and telling all +that one would ask to know about that famous city. The author's picture +is on the cover, and with his charming letter dedicating the book to his +father goes far to win the reader's heart. Outside the bookseller's a +blind minstrel was playing the guitar in the care of a small boy who was +selling, not singing, the ballads. They celebrated the prowess of Spain +in recent wars, and it would not be praising them too highly to say that +they seemed such as might have been written by a drum-major. Not that I +think less of them for that reason, or that I think I need humble myself +greatly to the historian of Ronda for associating their purchase with +that of his excellent little book. If I had bought some of the blind +minstrel's almanacs and jest-books I might indeed apologize, but ballads +are another thing. + +After we left the bookseller's, our little guide asked us if we would +like to see a church, and we said that we would, and he took us into a +white and gold interior, with altar splendors out of proportion to its +simplicity, all in the charge of a boy no older than himself, who was +presently joined by two other contemporaries. They followed us gravely +about, and we felt that it was an even thing between ourselves and +the church as objects of interest equally ignored by Baedeker. Then we +thought we would go home and proposed going by the Alameda. + +That is a beautiful place, where one may walk a good deal, and drive, +rather less, but not sit down much unless indeed one likes being swarmed +upon by the beggars who have a just priority of the benches. There +seemed at first to be nobody walking in the Alameda except a gentleman +pacing to and from the handsome modern house at the first corner, which +our guide said was this cavalier's house. He interested me beyond any +reason I could give; he looked as if he might represent the highest +society in Ronda, but did not find it an adequate occupation, and might +well have interests and ambitions beyond it. I make him my excuses for +intruding my print upon him, but I would give untold gold if I had it to +know all about such a man in such a city, walking up and down under +the embrowning trees and shrinking flowers of its Alameda, on a Sunday +morning like that. + +Our guide led us to the back gate of our hotel garden, where we found +ourselves in the company of several other students of English. There +was our charming young guide of the day before and there was that sad +hunchback already mentioned, and there was their teacher who seemed so +few years older and master of so little more English. Together we looked +into the valley into which the vision makes its prodigious plunge at +Ronda before lifting again over the fertile plain to the amphitheater of +its mighty mountains; and there we took leave of that nice boy who would +not follow us into our garden because, as he showed us by the sign, it +was forbidden to any but guests. He said he was going into the country +with his family for the afternoon, and with some difficulty he owned +that he expected to play there; it was truly an admission hard to make +for a boy of his gravity. We shook hands at parting with him, and with +our yesterday's guide, and with the teacher and with the hunchback; they +all offered it in the bond of our common English; and then we felt that +we had parted with much, very much of what was sweetest and best in +Ronda. + + + +VI + + +The day had been so lovely till now that we said we would stay many +days in Ronda, and we loitered in the sun admiring the garden; the young +landlady among her flowers said that all the soil had to be brought for +it in carts and panniers, and this made us admire its autumn blaze the +more. That afternoon we had planned taking our tea on the terrace for +the advantage of looking at the sunset light on the mountains, but +suddenly great black clouds blotted it out. Then we lost courage; it +appeared to us that it would be both brighter and, warmer by the sea and +that near Gibraltar we could more effectually prevent our steamer from +getting away to New York without us. We called for our bill, and after +luncheon the head waiter who brought it said that the large black cat +which had just made friends with us always woke him if he slept late +in the morning and followed him into the town like a dog when he walked +there. + +It was hard to part with a cat like that, but it was hard to part with +anything in Ronda. Yet we made the break, and instead of ruining over +the precipitous face of the rock where the city stands, as we might have +expected, we glided smoothly down the long grade into the storm-swept +lowlands sloping to the sea. They grew more fertile as we descended +and after we had left a mountain valley where the mist hung grayest and +chillest, we suddenly burst into a region of mellow fruitfulness, where +the haze was all luminous, and where the oranges hung gold and green +upon the trees, and the women brought grapes and peaches and apples to +the train. The towns seemed to welcome us southward and the woods we +knew instantly to be of cork trees, with Don Quixote and Sancho Panza +under their branches anywhere we chose to look. + +Otherwise, the journey was without those incidents which have so often +rendered these pages thrilling. Just before we left Ronda a couple, +self-evidently the domestics of a good family, got into our first-class +carriage though they had unquestionably only third-class tickets. They +had the good family's dog with them, and after an unintelligible appeal +to us and to the young English couple in the other corner, they remained +and banished any misgivings they had by cheerful dialogue. The dog +coiled himself down at my feet and put his nose close to my ankles, so +that without rousing his resentment I could not express in Spanish my +indignation at what I felt to be an outrageous intrusion: servants, we +all are, but in traveling first class one must draw the line at dogs, I +said as much to the English couple, but they silently refused any part +in the demonstration. Presently the conductor came out to the window +for our fares, and he made the Spanish pair observe that they had +third-class tickets and their dog had none. He told them they must get +out, but they noted to him the fact that none of us had objected +to their company, or their dog's, and they all remained, referring +themselves to us for sympathy when the conductor left. After the next +station the same thing happened with little change; the conductor was +perhaps firmer and they rather more yielding in their disobedience. Once +more after a stop the conductor appeared and told them that when the +train halted again, they and their dog must certainly get out. Then +something surprising happened: they really got out, and very amiably; +perhaps it was the place where they had always meant to get out; but it +was a great triumph for the railway company, which owed nothing in the +way of countenance to the young English couple; they had done nothing +but lunch from their basket and bottle. We ourselves arrived safely soon +after nightfall at Algeciras, just in time for dinner in the comfortable +mother-hotel whose pretty daughter had made us so much at home in Ronda. + + + + +XIII. ALGECIRAS AND TARIFA + + +When we walked out on the terrace of our hotel at Algeciras after +breakfast, the first morning, we were greeted by the familiar form of +the Rock of Gibraltar still advertising, as we had seen it three years +before, a well-known American insurance company. It rose beyond five +miles of land-locked water, which we were to cross every other day for +three weeks on many idle and anxious errands, until we sailed from it at +last for New York. + +Meanwhile Algeciras was altogether delightful not only because of our +Kate-Greenaway hotel, embowered in ten or twelve acres of gardened +ground, with walks going and coming under its palms and eucalyptuses, +beside beds of geraniums and past trellises of roses and jasmines, all +in the keeping of a captive stork which was apt unexpectedly to meet +the stranger and clap its formidable mandibles at him, and then hop away +with half-lifted wings. Algeciras had other claims which it urged day +after day more winningly upon us as the last place where we should feel +the charm of Spain unbroken in the tradition which reaches from modern +fact far back into antique fable. I will not follow it beyond the +historic clue, for I think the reader ought to be satisfied with knowing +that the Moors held it as early as the seven hundreds and as late as the +thirteen hundreds, when the Christians definitively recaptured it and +their kings became kings of Algeciras as well as kings of Spain, and +remain so to this day. At the end of the eighteenth century one of these +kings made it his lookout for watching the movements of the inimical +English fleets, and then Algeciras slumbered again, haunted only by "a +deep dream of peace" till the European diplomats, rather unexpectedly +assisted by an American envoy, made it the scene of their famous +conference for settling the Morocco question in. 1906. + +[Illustration: 31 VIEW OF ALGECIRAS] + +I think this is my whole duty to the political interest of Algeciras, +and until I come to our excursion to Tarifa I am going to give myself +altogether to our pleasure in the place unvexed by any event of history. +I disdain even to note that the Moors took the city again from the +Christians, after twenty-five years, and demolished it, for I prefer to +remember it as it has been rebuilt and lies white by its bay, a series +of red-tiled levels of roof with a few church-towers topping them. It is +a pretty place, and remarkably clean, inhabited mostly by beggars, with +a minority of industrial, commercial, and professional citizens, who +live in agreeable little houses, with _patios_ open to the passer, and +with balconies overhanging him. It has of course a bull-ring, enviously +closed during our stay, and it has one of the pleasantest Alamedas +and the best swept in Spain, where some nice boys are playing in +the afternoon sun, and a gentleman, coming out of one of the villas +bordering on it, is courteously interested in the two strangers whom he +sees sitting on a bench beside the walk, with the leaves of the plane +trees dropping round them in the still air. + +The Alameda is quite at the thither end of Algeciras. At the end next +our hotel, but with the intervention of a space of cliff, topped and +faced by summer cottages and gardens, is the station with a train +usually ready to start from it for Ronda or Seville or Malaga, I do not +know which, and with the usual company of freight-cars idling about, +empty or laden with sheets of cork, as indifferent to them as if +they were so much mere pine or spruce lumber. There is a sufficiently +attractive hotel here for transients, and as an allurement to the marine +and military leisure of Gibraltar, "The Picnic Restaurant," and "The +Cabin Tea Room," where no doubt there is something to be had beside +sandwiches and tea. Here also is the pier for the Gibraltar boats, with +the Spanish custom-house which their passengers must pass through and +have their packages and persons searched for contraband. One heard of +wild caprices on the part of the inspectors in levying duties which +were sometimes made to pass the prime cost of the goods in Gibraltar. I +myself only carried in books which after the first few declarations were +recognized as of no imaginable value and passed with a genial tolerance, +as a sort of joke, by officers whom I saw feeling the persons of their +fellow-Spaniards unsparingly over. + +We had, if anything, less business really in Algeciras than in +Gibraltar, but we went into the town nearly every afternoon, and +wantonly bought things. By this means we proved that the Andalusian +shopmen had not the proud phlegm of the Castilians across their +counters. In the principal dry-goods store two salesmen rivaled each +other in showing us politeness, and sent home our small purchases as +promptly as if we had done them a favor in buying. We were indeed the +wonder of our fellow-customers who were not buying; but our pride was +brought down in the little shop where the proprietress was too much +concerned in cooking her dinner (it smelled delicious) to mind our wish +for a very cheap green vase, inestimably Spanish after we got it home. +However, in another shop where the lady was ironing her week's wash on +the counter, a lady friend who was making her an afternoon call got such +a vase down for us and transacted the negotiation out of pure good will +for both parties to it. + +Parallel with the railway was a channel where small fishing-craft lay, +and where a leisurely dredging-machine was stirring up the depths in +a stench so dire that I wonder we do not smell it across the Atlantic. +Over this channel a bridge led into the town, and offered the convenient +support of its parapet to the crowd of spectators who wished to inhale +that powerful odor at their ease, and who hung there throughout the +working-day; the working-day of the dredging-machine, that is. The +population was so much absorbed in this that when we first crossed into +the town, we found no beggar children even, though there were a few +blind beggarmen, but so few that a boy who had one of them in charge was +obliged to leave off smelling the river and run and hunt him up for us. +Other boys were busy in street-sweeping and b-r-r-r-r-ing to the donkeys +that carried off the sweepings in panniers; and in the fine large plaza +before the principal church of Algeciras there was a boy who had plainly +nothing but mischief to do, though he did not molest us farther than +to ask in English, "Want to see the cathedral?" Then he went his way +swiftly and we went into the church, which we found very whitewashed and +very Moorish in architecture, but very Spanish in the Blessed Virgins +on most of the altars, dressed in brocades and jewels. A sacristan was +brushing and dusting the place, but he did not bother us, and we went +freely about among the tall candles standing on the floor as well as on +the altars, and bearing each a placard attached with black ribbon, and +dedicated in black letters on silver "To the Repose of This or That" one +among the dead. + +The meaning was evident enough, but we sought something further of the +druggist at the corner, who did his best for us in such English as he +had. It was not quite the English of Ronda; but he praised his grammar +while he owned that his vocabulary was in decay from want of practise. +In fact, he well-nigh committed us to the purchase of one of those +votive candles, which he understood we wished to buy; he all but sent to +the sacristan to get one. There were several onlookers, as there always +are in Latin pharmacies, and there was a sad young mother waiting for +medicine with a sick baby in her arms. The druggist said it had fever of +the stomach; he seemed proud of the fact, and some talk passed between +him and the bystanders which related to it. We asked if he had any of +the quince jelly which we had learned to like in Seville, but he could +only refer us to the confectioner's on the other corner. Here was not +indeed quince jelly, but we compromised on quince cheese, as the English +call it; and we bought several boxes of it to take to America, which I +am sorry to say moulded before our voyage began, and had to be thrown +away. Near this confectioner's was a booth where boiled sweet-potatoes +were sold, with oranges and joints of sugar-cane, and, spitted on +straws, that terrible fruit of the strawberry tree which we had tasted +at Honda without wishing to taste it ever again. Yet there was a boy +boldly buying several straws of it and chancing the intoxication which +over-indulgence in it is said to cause. Whether the excitement of these +events was too great or not, we found ourselves suddenly unwilling, if +not unable, to walk back to our hotel, and we took a cab of the three +standing in the plaza. One was without a horse, another without a +driver, but the third had both, as in some sort of riddle, and we had no +sooner taken it than a horse was put into the first and a driver ran +out and got on the box of the second, as if that was the answer to the +riddle. + + + +II + + +It was then too late for them to share our custom, but I am not sure +that it was not one of these very horses or drivers whom we got another +day for our drive about the town and its suburbs, and an excursion to +a section of the Moorish aqueduct which remains after a thousand years. +You can see it at a distance, but no horse or driver in our employ could +ever find the way to it; in fact, it seemed to vanish on approach, and +we were always bringing up in our hotel gardens without having got to +it; I do not know what we should have done with it if we had. We were +not able to do anything definite with the new villas built or building +around Algeciras, though they looked very livable, and seemed proof of a +prosperity in the place for which I can give no reason except the great +natural beauty of the nearer neighborhood, and the magnificence of +the farther, mountain-walled and skyed over with a September blue in +November. I think it would be a good place to spend the winter if one +liked each day to be exactly like every other. I do not know whether it +is inhabited by English people from Gibraltar, where there are of course +those resources of sport and society which an English colony always +carries with it. + +The popular amusements of Algeciras in the off season for bull-feasts +did not readily lend themselves to observance. Chiefly we noted two +young men with a graphophone on wheels which, being pushed about, +wheezed out the latest songs to the acceptance of large crowds. We +ourselves amused a large crowd when one of us attempted to sketch +the yellow facade of a church so small that it seemed all facade; and +another day when that one of us who held the coppers, commonly +kept sacred to blind beggars, delighted an innumerable multitude of +mendicants having their eyesight perfect. They were most of them in +the vigor of youth, and they were waiting on a certain street for the +monthly dole with which a resident of Algeciras may buy immunity for all +the other days of the month. They instantly recognized in the stranger +a fraudulent tax-dodger, and when he attempted tardily to purchase +immunity they poured upon him; in front, behind, on both sides, all +round, they boiled up and bubbled about him; and the exhaustion of his +riches alone saved him alive. It must have been a wonderful spectacle, +and I do not suppose the like of it was ever seen in Algeciras before. +It was a triumph over charity, and left quite out of comparison the +organized onsets of the infant gang which always beset the way to the +hotel under a leader whose battle-cry, at once a demand and a promise, +was "Penny-go-way, Penny-go-way!" + +Along that pleasant shore bare-legged fishermen spread their nets, and +going and coming by the Gibraltar boats were sometimes white-hosed, +brown-cloaked, white-turbaned Moors, who occasionally wore Christian +boots, but otherwise looked just such Moslems as landed at Algeciras +in the eighth century; people do not change much in Africa. They were +probably hucksters from the Moorish market in Gibraltar, where they had +given their geese and turkeys the holiday they were taking themselves. +They were handsome men, tall and vigorous, but they did not win me to +sympathy with their architecture or religion, and I am not sure but, +if there had been any concerted movement against them on the landing at +Algeciras, I should have joined in driving them out of Spain. As it +was I made as much Africa as I could of them in defect of crossing to +Tangier, which we had firmly meant to do, but which we forbore doing +till the plague had ceased to rage there. By this time the boat which +touched at Tangier on the way to Cadiz stopped going to Cadiz, and if +we could not go to Cadiz we did not care for going to Tangier. It was +something like this, if not quite like it, and it ended in our seeing +Africa only from the southernmost verge of Europe at Tarifa. At that +little distance across it looked dazzlingly white, like the cotton +vestments of those Moorish marketmen, but probably would have been no +cleaner on closer approach. + + + +III + + +As a matter of fact, we were very near not going even to Tarifa, though +we had promised ourselves going from the first. But it was very charming +to linger in the civilization of that hotel; to wander through its +garden paths in the afternoon after a forenoon's writing and inhale the +keen aromatic odors of the eucalyptus, and when the day waned to have +tea at an iron table on the seaward terrace. Or if we went to Gibraltar, +it was interesting to wonder why we had gone, and to be so glad of +getting back, and after dinner joining a pleasant international group in +the long reading-room with the hearth-fires at either end which, if you +got near them, were so comforting against the evening chill. Sometimes +the pleasure of the time was heightened by the rain pattering on the +glass roof of the _patio,_ where in the afternoon a bulky Spanish mother +sat mute beside her basket of laces which you could buy if you would, +but need not if you would rather not; in either case she smiled +placidly. + +At last we did get together courage enough to drive twelve miles over +the hills to Tarifa, but this courage was pieced out of the fragments +of the courage we had lost for going to Cadiz by the public automobile +which runs daily from Algeciras. The road after you passed Tarifa was +so bad that those who had endured it said nobody could endure it, and +in such a case I was sure I could not, but now I am sorry I did not +venture, for since then I have motored over some of the roads in the +state of Maine and lived. If people in Maine had that Spanish road as +far as Tarifa they would think it the superb Massachusetts state road +gone astray, and it would be thought a good road anywhere, with the +promise of being better when the young eucalyptus trees planted every +few yards along it grew big enough to shade it. But we were glad of as +much sun as we could get on the brisk November morning when we drove out +of the hotel garden and began the long climb, with little intervals of +level and even of lapse. We started at ten o'clock, and it was not too +late in that land of anomalous hours to meet peasants on their mules and +donkeys bringing loads of stuff to market in Algeciras. Men were plowing +with many yoke of oxen in the wheat-fields; elsewhere there were green +pastures with herds of horses grazing in them, an abundance of brown +pigs, and flocks of sheep with small lambs plaintively bleating. +The pretty white farmhouses, named each after a favorite saint, and +gathering at times into villages, had grapes and figs and pomegranates +in their gardens; and when we left them and climbed higher, we began +passing through long stretches of cork woods. + +The trees grew wild, sometimes sturdily like our oaks, and sometimes +gnarled and twisted like our seaside cedars, and in every state of +excoriation. The bark is taken from them each seventh year, and it +begins to be taken long before the first seventh. The tender saplings +and the superannuated shell wasting to its fall yield alike their bark, +which is stripped from the roots to the highest boughs. Where they have +been flayed recently they look literally as if they were left bleeding, +for the sap turns a red color; but with time this changes to brown, and +the bark begins to renew itself and grows again till the next seventh +year. Upon the whole the cork-wood forest is not cheerful, and I would +rather frequent it in the pages of _Don Quixote_ than out; though if the +trees do not mind being barked it is mere sentimentality in me to pity +them. + +The country grew lonelier and drearier as we mounted, and the wind blew +colder over the fields blotched with that sort of ground-palm, which +lays waste so much land in southern Spain. When we descended the winding +road from the summit we came in sight of the sea with Africa clearly +visible beyond, and we did not lose sight of it again. Sometimes we +met soldiers possibly looking out for smugglers but, let us hope, not +molesting them; and once we met a brace of the all-respected Civil +Guards, marching shoulder to shoulder, with their cloaks swinging free +and their carbines on their arms, severe, serene, silent. Now and then a +mounted wayfarer came toward us looking like a landed proprietor in +his own equipment and that of his steed, and there were peasant women +solidly perched on donkeys, and draped in long black cloaks and hooded +in white kerchiefs. + + + +IV + + +The landscape softened again, with tilled fields and gardened spaces +around the cottages, and now we had Tarifa always in sight, a stretch of +white walls beside the blue sea with an effect of vicinity which it was +very long in realizing. We had meant when we reached the town at last to +choose which _fonda_ we should stop at for our luncheon, but our driver +chose the Fonda de Villanueva outside the town wall, and I do not +believe we could have chosen better if he had let us. He really put +us down across the way at the _venta_ where he was going to bait his +horses; and in what might well have seemed the custody of a little +policeman with a sword at his side, we were conducted to the _fonda_ and +shown up into the very neat icy cold parlor where a young girl with a +yellow flower in her hair received us. We were chill and stiff from our +drive and we hoped for something warmer from the dining-room, which we +perceived must face southward, and must be full of sun. But we reckoned +without the ideal of the girl with the yellow flower in her hair: in +the little saloon, shining round with glazed tiles where we next found +ourselves, the sun had been carefully screened and scarcely pierced the +scrim shades. But this was the worst, this was all that was bad, in that +_fonda._ When the breakfast or the luncheon, or whatever corresponds in +our usage to the Spanish _almuerzo,_ began to come, it seemed as if it +never would stop. An original but admirable omelette with potatoes and +bacon in it was followed by fried fish flavored with saffron. Then there +was brought in fried kid with a dish of kidneys; more fried fish came +after, and then boiled beef, with a dessert of small cakes. Of course +there was wine, as much as you would, such as it was, and several sorts +of fruit. I am sorry to have forgotten how little all this cost, but at +a venture I will say forty cents, or fifty at the outside; and so great +kindness and good will went with it from the family who cooked it in the +next room and served it with such cordial insistence that I think it was +worth quite the larger sum. It would not have been polite to note how +much of this superabundance was consumed by the three Spanish gentlemen +who had so courteously saluted us in sitting down at table with us. I +only know that they made us the conventional acknowledgment in refusing +our conventional offer of some things we had brought with us from our +hotel to eat in the event of famine at Tarifa. + +When we had come at last to the last course, we turned our thoughts +somewhat anxiously to the question of a guide for the town which we felt +so little able to explore without one; and it seemed to me that I had +better ask the policeman who had brought us to our _fonda._ He was +sitting at the head of the stairs where we had left him, and so far from +being baffled by my problem, he instantly solved it by offering himself +to be our guide. Perhaps it was a profession which he merely joined to +his civic function, but it was as if we were taken into custody when he +put himself in charge of us and led us to the objects of interest which +I cannot say Tarifa abounds in. That is, if you leave out of the count +the irregular, to and fro, up and down, narrow lanes, passing the blank +walls of low houses, and glimpsing leafy and flowery _patios_ through +open gates, and suddenly expanding into broader streets and unexpected +plazas, with shops and cafes and churches in them. + +Tarifa is perhaps the quaintest town left in the world, either in or +out of Spain, but whether it is more Moorish than parts of Cordova or +Seville I could not say. It is at least pre-eminent in a feature of +the women's costume which you are promised at the first mention of the +place, and which is said to be a survival of the Moslem civilization. +Of course we were eager for it, and when we came into the first wide +street, there at the principal corner three women were standing, just +as advertised, with black skirts caught up from their waists over their +heads and held before their faces so that only one eye could look out +at the strangers. It was like the women's costume at Chiozza on the +Venetian lagoon, but there it is not claimed for Moorish and here it +was authenticated by being black. "Moorish ladies," our guide proudly +proclaimed them in his scanty English, but I suspect they were Spanish; +if they were really Orientals, they followed us with those eyes single +as daringly as if they had been of our own Christian Occident. + +The event was so perfect in its way that it seemed as if our guiding +policeman might have especially ordered it; but this could not have +really been, and was no such effect of his office as the immunity from +beggars which we enjoyed in his charge. The worst boy in Tarifa (we did +not identify him) dared not approach for a big-dog or a little, and +we were safe from the boldest blind man, the hardiest hag, however +pockmarked. The lanes and the streets and the plazas were clean as +though our guide had them newly swept for us, and the plaza of the +principal church (no guide-book remembers its name) is perhaps the +cleanest in all Spain. + + + +VI + + +The church itself we found very clean, and of an interest quite beyond +the promise of the rather bare outside. A painted window above the +door cast a glare of fresh red and blue over the interior, and over +the comfortably matted floor; and there was a quite freshly carved and +gilded chapel which the pleasant youth supplementing our policeman for +the time said was done by artists still living in Tarifa. The edifice +was of a very flamboyant Gothic, with clusters of slender columns and a +vault brilliantly swirled over with decorations of the effect of peacock +feathers. But above all there was on a small side altar a figure of +the Child Jesus dressed in the corduroy suit and felt hat of a Spanish +shepherd, with a silver crook in one hand and leading a toy lamb by a +string in the other. Our young guide took the image down for us to look +at, and showed its shepherd's dress with peculiar satisfaction; and then +he left it on the ground while he went to show us something else. When +we came back we found two small boys playing with the Child, putting its +hat off and on, and feeling of its clothes. Our guide took it from them, +not unkindly, and put it back on the altar; and whether the reader +will agree with me or not, I must own that I did not find the incident +irreverent or without a certain touchingness, as if those children and +He were all of one family and they were at home with Him there. + +Rather suddenly, after we left the church, by way of one of those +unexpectedly expanding lanes, we found ourselves on the shore of the +purple sea where the Moors first triumphed over the Goths twelve hundred +years before, and five centuries later the Spaniards heat them back from +their attempt to reconquer the city. There were barracks, empty of the +Spanish soldiers gone to fight the same old battle of the Moors on their +own ground in Africa, and there was the castle which Alfonso Perez de +Guzman held against them in 1292, and made the scene of one of those +acts of self-devotion which the heart of this time has scarcely strength +for. The Moors when they had vainly summoned him to yield brought out +his son whom they held captive, and threatened to kill him. Guzman drew +his knife and flung it down to them, and they slew the boy, but Tarif a +was saved. His king decreed that thereafter the father should be known +as Guzman the Good, and the fact has gone into a ballad, but the name +somehow does not seem quite to fit, and one wishes that the father had +not won it that way. + +We were glad to go away from the dreadful place, though Tangier was so +plain across the strait, and we were almost in Africa there, and hard +by, in the waters tossing free, the great battle of Trafalgar was +fought. From the fountains of my far youth, when I first heard of +Guzman's dreadful heroism, I endeavored to pump up an adequate emotion; +I succeeded somewhat better with Nelson and his pathetic prayer of +"Kiss me, Hardy," as he lay dying on his bloody deck; but I did not much +triumph with either, and I was grateful when our good little policeman +comfortably questioned the deed of Guzman which he said some doubted, +though he took us to the very spot where the Moors had parleyed with +Guzman, and showed us the tablet over the castle gate affirming the +fact. + +We liked far better the pretty Alameda rising in terraces from it with +beds of flowers beside the promenade, and boys playing up and down, and +old men sitting in the sun, and trying to ignore the wind that blew over +them too freshly for us. Our policeman confessed that there was nothing +more worth seeing in Tarifa, and we entreated of him the favor of +showing us a shop where we could buy a Cordovese hat; a hat which we +had seen nourishing on the heads of all men in Cordova and Seville and +Granada and Ronda, and had always forborne to buy because we could get +it anywhere; and now we were almost leaving Spain without it. We wanted +one brown in color, as well as stiff and flat of brim, and slightly +conical in form; and our policeman promptly imagined it, and took us +to a shop abounding solely in hats, and especially in Cordoveses. The +proprietor came out wiping his mouth from an inner room, where he had +left his family visibly at their _almuerzo;_ and then we were desolated +together that he should only have Cordoveses that were black. But +passing a _patio_ where there was a poinsettia in brilliant bloom +against the wall, we found ourselves in a variety store where there were +Cordoveses of all colors; and we chose one of the right brown, with the +picture of a beautiful Spanish girl, wearing a pink shawl, inside the +crown which was fluted round in green and red ribbon. Seven pesetas was +the monstrous asking price, but we beat it down to five and a half, +and then came a trying moment: we could not carry a Cordovese in +tissue-paper through the streets of Tarifa, but could we ask our guide, +who was also our armed escort, to carry it? He simplified the situation +by taking it himself and bearing it back to the _fonda_ as proudly as +if he had not also worn a sword at his side; and we parted there in a +kindness which I should like to think he shared equally with us. + +He was practically the last of those Spaniards who were always +winning my heart (save in the bank at Valladolid where they must +have misunderstood me), and whom I remember with tenderness for their +courtesy and amiability. In little things and large, I found the +Spaniards everywhere what I heard a Piedmontese commercial traveler say +of them in Venice fifty years ago: "They are the honestest people in +Europe." In Italy I never began to see the cruelty to animals which +English tourists report, and in Spain I saw none at all. If the +reader asks how with this gentleness, this civility and integrity, +the Spaniards have contrived to build up their repute for cruelty, +treachery, mendacity, and every atrocity; how with their love of +bull-feasts and the suffering to man and brute which these involve, they +should yet seem so kind to both, I answer frankly, I do not know. I do +not know how the Americans are reputed good and just and law-abiding, +although they often shoot one another, and upon mere suspicion rather +often burn negroes alive. + +THE END + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Familiar Spanish Travels, by W. D. 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Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a34b32c --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #7430 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/7430) diff --git a/old/sptrv10.txt b/old/sptrv10.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..94126da --- /dev/null +++ b/old/sptrv10.txt @@ -0,0 +1,9708 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Familiar Spanish Travels, by W. D. Howells +#63 in our series by W. D. Howells + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the +copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing +this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook. + +This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project +Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the +header without written permission. + +Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the +eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is +important information about your specific rights and restrictions in +how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a +donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** + + +Title: Familiar Spanish Travels + +Author: W. D. Howells + +Release Date: February, 2005 [EBook #7430] +[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] +[This file was first posted on April 29, 2003] + +Edition: 10 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FAMILIAR SPANISH TRAVELS *** + + + + +Produced by Eric Eldred + + + + + + + +FAMILIAR SPANISH TRAVELS + + +W. D. HOWELLS + + + +ILLUSTRATED +HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS +NEW YORK AND LONDON +MCMXIII +COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY HARPER & BROTHERS +PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA +PUBLISHED OCTOBER. 1913 + + + + +TO M. H. + + + + +CONTENTS + + +I. AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL APPROACHES + +II. SAN SEBASTIAN AND BEAUTIFUL BISCAY + +III. BURGOS AND THE BITTER COLD OF BURGOS + +IV. THE VARIETY OF VALLADOLID + +V. PHASES OF MADRID + +VI. A NIGHT AND DAY IN TOLEDO + +VII. THE GREAT GRIDIRON OF ST. LAWRENCE + +VIII. CORDOVA AND THE WAY THERE + +IX. FIRST DAYS IN SEVILLE + +X. SEVILLIAN ASPECTS AND INCIDENTS + +XI. TO AND IN GRANADA + +XII. THE SURPRISES OF RONDA + +XIII. ALGECIRAS AND TARIFA + + + + + +FAMILIAR SPANISH TRAVELS + +I + +AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL APPROACHES + + +As the train took its time and ours in mounting the uplands toward +Granada on the soft, but not too soft, evening of November 6, 1911, the +air that came to me through the open window breathed as if from an +autumnal night of the middle eighteen-fifties in a little village of +northeastern Ohio. I was now going to see, for the first time, the city +where so great a part of my life was then passed, and in this magical +air the two epochs were blent in reciprocal association. The question of +my present identity was a thing indifferent and apart; it did not matter +who or where or when I was. Youth and age were at one with each other: +the boy abiding in the old man, and the old man pensively willing to +dwell for the enchanted moment in any vantage of the past which would +give him shelter. + +In that dignified and deliberate Spanish train I was a man of +seventy-four crossing the last barrier of hills that helped keep Granada +from her conquerors, and at the same time I was a boy of seventeen in +the little room under the stairs in a house now practically remoter than +the Alhambra, finding my unguided way through some Spanish story of the +vanished kingdom of the Moors. The little room which had structurally +ceased fifty years before from the house that ceased to be home even +longer ago had returned to the world with me in it, and fitted perfectly +into the first-class railway compartment which my luxury had provided +for it. From its window I saw through the car window the olive groves +and white cottages of the Spanish peasants, and the American apple +orchards and meadows stretching to the primeval woods that walled the +drowsing village round. Then, as the night deepened with me at my book, +the train slipped slowly from the hills, and the moon, leaving the Ohio +village wholly in the dark, shone over the roofs and gardens of Granada, +and I was no longer a boy of seventeen, but altogether a man of +seventy-four. + +I do not say the experience was so explicit as all this; no experience +so mystical could be so explicit; and perhaps what was intimated to me +in it was only that if I sometime meant to ask some gentle reader's +company in a retrospect of my Spanish travels, I had better be honest +with him and own at the beginning that passion for Spanish things which +was the ruling passion of my boyhood; I had better confess that, however +unrequited, it held me in the eager bondage of a lover still, so that I +never wished to escape from it, but must try to hide the fact whenever +the real Spain fell below the ideal, however I might reason with my +infatuation or try to scoff it away. It had once been so +inextinguishable a part of me that the record of my journey must be more +or less autobiographical; and though I should decently endeavor to keep +my past out of it, perhaps I should not try very hard and should not +always succeed. + +Just when this passion began in me I should not be able to say; but +probably it was with my first reading of _Don Quixote_ in the later +eighteen-forties. I would then have been ten or twelve years old; and, +of course, I read that incomparable romance, not only greatest, but sole +of its kind, in English. The purpose of some time reading it in Spanish +and then the purpose of some time writing the author's life grew in me +with my growing years so strongly that, though I have never yet done +either and probably never shall, I should not despair of doing both if I +lived to be a hundred. In the mean time my wandering steps had early +chanced upon a Spanish grammar, and I had begun those inquiries in it +which were based upon a total ignorance of English accidence. I do not +remember how I felt my way from it to such reading of the language as +has endeared Spanish literature to me. It embraced something of +everything: literary and political history, drama, poetry, fiction; but +it never condescended to the exigencies of common parlance. These +exigencies did not exist for me in my dreams of seeing Spain which were +not really expectations. It was not until half a century later, when my +longing became a hope and then a purpose, that I foreboded the need of +practicable Spanish. Then I invoked the help of a young professor, who +came to me for an hour each day of a week in London and let me try to +talk with him; but even then I accumulated so little practicable Spanish +that my first hour, almost my first moment in Spain, exhausted my store. +My professor was from Barcelona, but he beautifully lisped his _c's_ and +_z's_ like any old Castilian, when he might have hissed them in the +accent of his native Catalan; and there is no telling how much I might +have profited by his instruction if he had not been such a charming +intelligence that I liked to talk with him of literature and philosophy +and politics rather than the weather, or the cost of things, or the +question of how long the train stopped and when it would start, or the +dishes at table, or clothes at the tailor's, or the forms of greeting +and parting. If he did not equip me with the useful colloquial phrases, +the fault was mine; and the misfortune was doubly mine when from my old +acquaintance with Italian (glib half-sister of the statelier Spanish) +the Italian phrases would thrust forward as the equivalent of the +English words I could not always think of. The truth is, then, that I +was not perfect in my Spanish after quite six weeks in Spain; and if in +the course of his travels with me the reader finds me flourishing +Spanish idioms in his face he may safely attribute them less to my +speaking than my reading knowledge: probably I never employed them in +conversation. That reading was itself without order or system, and I am +not sure but it had better been less than more. Yet who knows? The +days, or the nights of the days, in the eighteen-fifties went quickly, +as quickly as the years go now, and it would have all come to the +present pass whether that blind devotion to an alien literature had +cloistered my youth or not. + +I do not know how, with the merciful make I am of, I should then have +cared so little, or else ignored so largely the cruelties I certainly +knew that the Spaniards had practised in the conquests of Mexico and +Peru. I knew of these things, and my heart was with the Incas and the +Aztecs, and yet somehow I could not punish the Spaniards for their +atrocious destruction of the only American civilizations. As nearly as I +can now say, I was of both sides, and wistful to reconcile them, though +I do not see now how it could have been done; and in my later hopes for +the softening of the human conditions I have found it hard to forgive +Pizarro for the overthrow of the most perfectly socialized state known +to history. I scarcely realized the base ingratitude of the Spanish +sovereigns to Columbus, and there were vast regions of history that I +had not penetrated till long afterward in pursuit of Spanish perfidy and +inhumanity, as in their monstrous misrule of Holland. When it came in +those earlier days to a question of sides between the Spaniards and the +Moors, as Washington Irving invited my boyhood to take it in his +chronicle of the conquest of Granada, I experienced on a larger scale my +difficulty in the case of the Mexicans and Peruvians. The case of these +had been reported to me in the school-readers, but here, now, was an +affair submitted to the mature judgment of a boy of twelve, and yet I +felt as helpless as I was at ten. Will it be credited that at +seventy-four I am still often in doubt which side I should have had +win, though I used to fight on both? Since the matter was settled more +than four hundred years ago, I will not give the reasons for my divided +allegiance. They would hardly avail now to reverse the tragic fate of +the Moors, and if I try I cannot altogether wish to reverse it. Whatever +Spanish misrule has been since Islam was overthrown in Granada, it has +been the error of law, and the rule of Islam at the best had always been +the effect of personal will, the caprice of despots high and low, the +unstatuted sufferance of slaves, high and low. The gloomiest and +cruelest error of Inquisitional Spain was nobler, with its adoration of +ideal womanhood, than the Mohammedan state with its sensual dreams of +Paradise. I will not pretend (as I very well might, and as I perhaps +ought) that I thought of these things, all or any, as our train began to +slope rather more rapidly toward Granada, and to find its way under the +rising moon over the storied Vega. I will as little pretend that my +attitude toward Spain was ever that of the impartial observer after I +crossed the border of that enchanted realm where we all have our +castles. I have thought it best to be open with the reader here at the +beginning, and I would not, if I could, deny him the pleasure of +doubting my word or disabling my judgment at any point he likes. In +return I shall only ask his patience when I strike too persistently the +chord of autobiography. That chord is part of the harmony between the +boy and the old man who made my Spanish journey together, and were +always accusing themselves, the first of dreaming and the last of +doddering: perhaps with equal justice. Is there really much difference +between the two? + + + + +II + + +It was fully a month before that first night in Granada that I arrived +in Spain after some sixty years' delay. During this period I had seen +almost every other interesting country in Europe. I had lived five or +six years in Italy; I had been several months in Germany; and a +fortnight in Holland; I had sojourned often in Paris; I had come and +gone a dozen times in England and lingered long each time; and yet I had +never once visited the land of my devotion. I had often wondered at +this, it was so wholly involuntary, and I had sometimes suffered from +the surprise of those who knew of my passion for Spain, and kept finding +out my dereliction, alleging the Sud-Express to Madrid as something that +left me without excuse. The very summer before last I got so far on the +way in London as to buy a Spanish phrase-book full of those inopportune +conversations with landlords, tailors, ticket-sellers, and casual +acquaintance or agreeable strangers. Yet I returned once more to +America with my desire, which was turning into a duty, unfulfilled; and +when once more I sailed for Europe in 1911 it was more with foreboding +of another failure than a prescience of fruition in my inveterate +longing. Even after that boldly decisive week of the professor in London +I had my doubts and my self-doubts. There were delays at London, delays +at Paris, delays at Tours; and when at last we crossed the Pyrenees and +I found myself in Spain, it was with an incredulity which followed me +throughout and lingered with me to the end. "Is this truly Spain, and am +I actually there?" the thing kept asking itself; and it asks itself +still, in terms that fit the accomplished fact. + + + + +II + +SAN SEBASTIAN AND BEAUTIFUL BISCAY + + +Even at Irun, where we arrived in Spain from Bayonne, there began at +once to be temperamental differences which ought to have wrought against +my weird misgivings of my whereabouts. Only in Spain could a customs +inspector have felt of one tray in our trunks and then passed them all +with an air of such jaded aversion from an employ uncongenial to a +gentleman. Perhaps he was also loath to attempt any inquiry in that +Desperanto of French, English, and Spanish which raged around us; but +the porter to whom we had fallen, while I hesitated at our carriage door +whether I should summon him as _Mozo_ or _Usted,_ was master of that +_lingua franca_ and recovered us from the customs without question on +our part, and understood everything we could not, say. I like to think +he was a Basque, because I like the Basques so much for no reason that I +can think of. Their being always Carlists would certainly be no reason +with me, for I was never a Carlist; and perhaps my liking is only a +prejudice in their favor from the air of thrift and work which pervades +their beautiful province, or is an effect of their language as I first +saw it inscribed on the front of the Credit Lyonnais at Bayonne. It +looked so beautifully regular, so scholarly, so Latin, so sister to both +Spanish and Italian, so richly and musically voweled, and yet remained +so impenetrable to the most daring surmise, that I conceived at once a +profound admiration for the race which could keep such a language to +itself. When I remembered how blond, how red-blond our sinewy young +porter was, I could not well help breveting him of that race, and +honoring him because he could have read those words with the eyes that +were so blue amid the general Spanish blackness of eyes. He imparted a +quiet from his own calm to our nervousness, and if we had appealed to +him on the point I am sure he would have saved us from the error of +breakfasting in the station restaurant at the deceitful _table d'hote,_ +though where else we should have breakfasted I do not know. + +I + +One train left for San Sebastian while I was still lost in amaze that +what I had taken into my mouth for fried egg should be inwardly fish and +full of bones; but he quelled my anxiety with the assurance, which I +somehow understood, that there would be another train soon. In the mean +time there were most acceptable Spanish families all about, affably +conversing together, and freely admitting to their conversation the +children, who so publicly abound in Spain, and the nurses who do nothing +to prevent their publicity. There were already the typical fat Spanish +mothers and lean fathers, with the slender daughters, who, in the +tradition of Spanish good-breeding, kept their black eyes to themselves, +or only lent them to the spectators in furtive glances. Both older and +younger ladies wore the scanty Egyptian skirt of Occidental +civilization, lurking or perking in deep-drooping or high-raking hats, +though already here and there was the mantilla, which would more and +more prevail as we went southward; older and younger, they were all +painted and powdered to the favor that Spanish women everywhere corne +to. + +When the bad breakfast was over, and the waiters were laying the table +for another as bad, our Basque porter came in and led us to the train +for San Sebastian which he had promised us. It was now raining outside, +and we were glad to climb into our apartment without at all seeing what +Irun was or was not like. But we thought well of the place because we +first experienced there the ample ease of a Spanish car. In Spain the +railroad gauge is five feet six inches; and this car of ours was not +only very spacious, but very clean, while the French cars that had +brought us from Bordeaux to Bayonne and from Bayonne to Irun were +neither. I do not say all French cars are dirty, or all Spanish cars are +as clean as they are spacious. The cars of both countries are hard to +get into, by steep narrow footholds worse even than our flights of +steps; in fact, the English cars are the only ones I know which are easy +of access. But these have not the ample racks for hand-bags which the +Spanish companies provide for travelers willing to take advantage of +their trust by transferring much of their heavy stuff to them. Without +owning that we were such travelers, I find this the place to say that, +with the allowance of a hundred and thirty-two pounds free, our excess +baggage in two large steamer-trunks did not cost us three dollars in a +month's travel, with many detours, from Irun in the extreme north to +Algeciras in the extreme south of Spain. + + + + +II + + +But in this sordid detail I am keeping the reader from the scenery. It +had been growing more and more striking ever since we began climbing +into the Pyrenees from Bayonne; but upon the whole it was not so sublime +as it was beautiful. There were some steep, sharp peaks, but mostly +there were grassy valleys with white cattle grazing in them, and many +fields of Indian corn, endearingly homelike. This at least is mainly the +trace that the scenery as far as Irun has left among my notes; and after +Irun there is record of more and more corn. There was, in fact, more +corn than anything else, though there were many orchards, also +endearingly homelike, with apples yellow and red showing among the +leaves still green on the trees; if there had been something more +wasteful in the farming it would have been still more homelike, but a +traveler cannot have everything. The hillsides were often terraced, as +in Italy, and the culture apparently close and conscientious. The +farmhouses looked friendly and comfortable; at places the landscape was +molested by some sort of manufactories which could not conceal their +tall chimneys, though they kept the secret of their industry. They were +never, really, very bad, and I would have been willing to let them pass +for fulling-mills, such as I was so familiar with in _Don Quixote,_ if I +had thought of these in time. But one ought to be honest at any cost, +and I must own that the Spain I was now for the first time seeing with +every-day eyes was so little like the Spain of my boyish vision that I +never once recurred to it. That was a Spain of cork-trees, of groves by +the green margins of mountain brooks, of habitable hills, where +shepherds might feed their flocks and mad lovers and maids forlorn might +wander and maunder; and here were fields of corn and apple orchards and +vineyards reddening and yellowing up to the doors of those comfortable +farmhouses, with nowhere the sign of a Christian cavalier or a turbaned +infidel. As a man I could not help liking what I saw, but I could also +grieve for the boy who would have been so disappointed if he had come to +the Basque provinces of Spain when he was from ten to fifteen years old, +instead of seventy-four. + +It took our train nearly an hour to get by twenty miles of those +pleasant farms and the pretty hamlets which they now and then clustered +into. But that was fast for a Spanish way-train, which does not run, +but, as it were, walks with dignity and makes long stops at stations, to +rest and let the locomotive roll itself a cigarette. By the time we +reached San Sebastian our rain had thickened to a heavy downpour, and by +the time we mounted to our rooms, three pair up in the hotel, it was +storming in a fine fury over the bay under them, and sweeping the +curving quays and tossing the feathery foliage of the tamarisk-shaded +promenade. The distinct advantage of our lofty perch was the splendid +sight of the tempest, held from doing its worst by the mighty headlands +standing out to sea on the right and left. But our rooms were cold with +the stony cold of the south when it is cooling off from its summer, and +we shivered in the splendid sight. + + + + +III + + +The inhabitants of San Sebastian will not hesitate to say that it is the +prettiest town in Spain, and I do not know that they could be hopefully +contradicted. It is very modern in its more obvious aspects, with a +noble thoroughfare called the Avenida de Libertad for its principal +street, shaded with a double row of those feathery tamarisks, and with +handsome shops glittering on both sides of it. Very easily it is first +of the fashionable watering-places of Spain; the King has his villa +there, and the court comes every summer. But they had gone by the time +we got there, and the town wore the dejected look of out-of-season +summer resorts; though there was the apparatus of gaiety, the fine +casino at one end of the beach, and the villas of the rich and noble all +along it to the other end. On the sand were still many +bathing-machines, but many others had begun to climb for greater safety +during the winter to the street above. We saw one hardy bather dripping +up from the surf and seeking shelter among those that remained, but they +were mostly tenanted by their owners, who looked shoreward through their +open doors, and made no secret of their cozy domesticity, where they sat +and sewed or knitted and gossiped with their neighbors. Good wives and +mothers they doubtless were, but no doubt glad to be resting from the +summer pleasure of others. They had their beautiful names written up +over their doors, and were for the service of the lady visitors only; +there were other machines for gentlemen, and no doubt it was their +owners whom we saw gathering the fat seaweed thrown up by the storm into +the carts drawn by oxen over the sand. The oxen wore no yokes, but +pulled by a band drawn over their foreheads under their horns, and they +had the air of not liking the arrangement; though, for the matter of +that, I have never seen oxen that seemed to like being yoked. + +When we came down to dinner we found the tables fairly full of belated +visitors, who presently proved tourists flying south like ourselves. The +dinner was good, as it is in nearly all Spanish hotels, where for an +average of three dollars a day you have an inclusive rate which you must +double for as good accommodation in our States. Let no one, I say, fear +the rank cookery so much imagined of the Peninsula, the oil, the pepper, +the kid and the like strange meats; as in all other countries of Europe, +even England itself, there is a local version, a general convention of +the French cuisine, quite as good in Spain as elsewhere, and oftener +superabundant than subabundant. The plain water is generally good, With +an American edge of freshness; but if you will not trust it (we had to +learn to trust it) there are agreeable Spanish mineral waters, as well +as the Apollinaris, the St. Galmier, and the Perrier of other +civilizations, to be had for the asking, at rather greater cost than the +good native wines, often included in the inclusive rate. + +Besides this convention of the French cuisine there is almost everywhere +a convention of the English language in some one of the waiters. You +must not stray far from the beaten path of your immediate wants, but in +this you are safe. At San Sebastian we had even a wider range with the +English of the little intellectual-looking, pale Spanish waiter, with a +fine Napoleonic head, who came to my help when I began to flounder in +the language which I had read so much and spoken so little or none. He +had been a year in London, he said, and he took us for English, though, +now he came to notice it, he perceived we were Americans because we +spoke "quicklier" than the English. We did not protest; it was the +mildest criticism of our national accent which we were destined to get +from English-speaking Spaniards before they found we were not the +English we did not wish to be taken for. After dinner we asked for a +fire in one of our grates, but the maid declared there was no fuel; and, +though the hostess denied this and promised us a fire the next night, +she forgot it till nine o'clock, and then we would not have it. The cold +abode with us indoors to the last at San Sebastian, but the storm (which +had hummed and whistled theatrically at our windows) broke during the +first night, and the day followed with several intervals of sunshine, +which bathed us in a glowing-expectation of overtaking the fugitive +summer farther south. + + + + +IV + + +In the mean time we hired a beautiful Basque cabman with a red Basque +cap and high-hooked Basque nose to drive us about at something above the +legal rate and let us not leave any worthy thing in San Sebastian +unseen. He took us, naturally, to several churches, old and new, with +their Gothic and rococo interiors, which I still find glooming and +glinting among my evermore thickening impressions of like things. We got +from them the sense of that architectural and sculptural richness which +the interior of no Spanish church ever failed measurably to give; but +what their historical associations were I will not offer to say. The +associations of San Sebastian with the past are in all things vague, at +least for me. She was indeed taken from the French by the English under +Wellington during the Peninsular War, but of older, if not unhappier +farther-off days and battles longer ago her history as I know it seems +to know little. It knows of savage and merciless battles between the +partisans of Don Carlos and those of Queen Isabella so few decades since +as not to be the stuff of mere pathos yet, and I am not able to blink +the fact that my beloved Basques fought on the wrong side, when they +need not have fought at all. Why they were Carlists they could perhaps +no more say than I could. The monumental historic fact is that the +Basques have been where they are immeasurably beyond the memories of +other men; what the scope of their own memories is one could perhaps +confidently say only in Basque if one could say anything. Of course, in +the nature of things, the Phoenicians must have been there and the +Greeks, doubtless, if they ever got outside of the Pillars of Hercules; +the Romans, of course, must have settled and civilized and then +Christianized the province. It is next neighbor to that province of +Asturias in which alone the Arabs failed to conquer the Goths, and from +which Spain was to live and grow again and recover all her losses from +the Moors; but what the share of San Sebastian was in this heroic fate, +again I must leave the Basques to say. They would doubtless say it with +sufficient self-respect, for wherever we came in contact that day with +the Basque nature we could not help imagining in it a sense of racial +merit equaling that of the Welsh themselves, who are indeed another +branch of the same immemorial Iberian stock, if the Basques are +Iberians. Like the Welsh, they have the devout tradition that they never +were conquered, but yielded to circumstances when these became too +strong for them. + +Among the ancient Spanish liberties which were restricted by the +consolidating monarchy from age to age, the Basque _fueros,_ or rights, +were the oldest; they lasted quite to our own day; and although it is +known to more ignorant men that these privileges (including immunity +from conscription) have now been abrogated, the custodian of the House +of Provincial Deputies, whom our driver took us to visit, was such a +glowing Basque patriot that he treated them as in full force. His pride +in the seat of the local government spared us no detail of the whole +electric-lighting system, or even the hose-bibs for guarding the edifice +against fire, let alone every picture and photograph on the wall of +every chamber of greater or less dignity, with every notable table and +chair. He certainly earned the peseta I gave him, but he would have done +far more for it if we had suffered him to take us up another flight of +stairs; and he followed us in our descent with bows and adieux that +ought to have left no doubt in our minds of the persistence of the +Basque _fueros._ + + + + +V + + +It was to such a powerful embodiment of the local patriotism that our +driver had brought us from another civic palace overlooking the Plaza de +la Constitution, chiefly notable now for having been the old theater of +the bull-fights. The windows in the houses round still bear the numbers +by which they were sold to spectators as boxes; but now the municipality +has built a beautiful brand-new bull-ring in San Sebastian; and I do not +know just why we were required to inspect the interior of the edifice +overlooking this square. I only know that at sight of our bewilderment a +workman doing something to the staircase clapped his hands orientally, +and the custodian was quickly upon us in response to a form of summons +which we were to find so often used in Spain. He was not so crushingly +upon us as that other custodian; he was apologetically proud, rather +than boastfully; at times he waved his hands in deprecation, and would +have made us observe that the place was little, very little; he deplored +it like a host who wishes his possessions praised. Among the artistic +treasures of the place from which he did not excuse us there were some +pen-drawings, such as writing-masters execute without lifting the pen +from the paper, by a native of South America, probably of Basque +descent, since the Basques have done so much to people that continent. +We not only admired these, but we would not consent to any of the +custodian's deprecations, especially when it came to question of the +pretty salon in which Queen Victoria was received on her first visit to +San Sebastian. We supposed then, and in fact I had supposed till this +moment, that it was Queen Victoria of Great Britain who was meant; but +now I realize that it must have been the queen consort of Spain, who +seems already to have made herself so liked there. + +She, of course, comes every summer to San Sebastian, and presently our +driver took us to see the royal villa by the shore, withdrawn, perhaps +from a sense of its extreme plainness, not to say ugliness, among its +trees and vines behind its gates and walls. Our driver excused himself +for not being able to show us through it; he gladly made us free of an +unrestricted view of the royal bathing-pavilion, much more frankly +splendid in its gilding, beside the beach. Other villas ranked +themselves along the hillside, testifying to the gaiety of the social +life in summers past and summers to come. In the summer just past the +gaiety may have been interrupted by the strikes taking in the newspapers +the revolutionary complexion which it was now said they did not wear. At +least, when the King had lately come to fetch the royal household away +nothing whatever happened, and the "constitutional guarantees," +suspended amidst the ministerial anxieties, were restored during the +month, with the ironical applause of the liberal press, which pretended +that there had never been any need of their suspension. + + + + +VI + + +All pleasures, mixed or unmixed, must end, and the qualified joy of our +drive through San Sebastian came to a close on our return to our hotel +well within the second hour, almost within its first half. When I +proposed paying our driver for the exact time, he drooped upon his box +and, remembering my remorse in former years for standing upon my just +rights in such matters, I increased the fare, peseta by peseta, till his +sinking spirits rose, and he smiled gratefully upon me and touched his +brave red cap as he drove away. He had earned his money, if racking his +invention for objects of interest in San Sebastian was a merit. At the +end we were satisfied that it was a well-built town with regular blocks +in the modern quarter, and not without the charm of picturesqueness +which comes of narrow and crooked lanes in the older parts. Prescient of +the incalculable riches before us, we did not ask much of it, and we got +all we asked. I should be grateful to San Sebastian, if for nothing else +than the two very Spanish experiences I had there. One concerned a +letter for me which had been refused by the bankers named in my letter +of credit, from a want of faith, I suppose, in my coming. When I did +come I was told that I would find it at the post-office. That would be +well enough when I found the post-office, which ought to have been easy +enough, but which presented certain difficulties in the driving rain of +our first afternoon. At last in a fine square I asked a fellow-man in my +best conversational Spanish where the post-office was, and after a +moment's apparent suffering he returned, "Do you speak English?" "Yes." +I said, "and I am so glad you do." "Not at all. I don't speak anything +else. Great pleasure. There is the post-office," and it seemed that I +had hardly escaped collision with it. But this was the beginning, not +the end, of my troubles. When I showed my card to the _poste restante_ +clerk, he went carefully through the letters bearing the initial of my +name and denied that there was any for me. We entered into reciprocally +bewildering explanations, and parted altogether baffled. Then, at the +hotel, I consulted with a capable young office-lady, who tardily +developed a knowledge of English, and we agreed that it would be well to +send the _chico_ to the post-office for it. The _chico,_ corresponding +in a Spanish hotel to a _piccolo_ in Germany or a page in England, or +our own now evanescing bell-boy, was to get a _peseta_ for bringing me +the letter. He got the _peseta,_ though he only brought me word that the +axithorities would send the letter to the hotel by the postman that +night. The authorities did not send it that night, and the next morning +I recurred to my bankers. There, on my entreaty for some one who could +meet my Spanish at least half-way in English, a manager of the bank came +out of his office and reassured me concerning the letter which I had now +begun to imagine the most important I had ever missed. Even while we +talked the postman came in and owned having taken the letter back to the +office. He voluntarily promised to bring it to the bank at one o'clock, +when I hastened to meet him. At that hour every one was out at lunch; I +came again at four, when everybody had returned, but the letter was not +delivered; at five, just before the bank closed, the letter, which had +now grown from a _carta_ to a _cartela,_ was still on its way. I left +San Sebastian without it; and will it be credited that when it was +forwarded to me a week later at Madrid it proved the most fatuous +missive imaginable, wholly concerning the writer's own affairs and none +of mine? + +I cannot guess yet why it was withheld from me, but since the incident +brought me that experience of Spanish politeness, I cannot grieve for +it. The young banker who left his region of high finance to come out and +condole with me, in apologizing for the original refusal of my letter, +would not be contented with so little. Nothing would satisfy him but +going with me, on my hinted purpose, and inquiring with me at the +railroad office into the whole business of circular tickets, and even +those kilometric tickets which the Spanish railroads issue to such +passengers as will have their photographs affixed to them for the +prevention of transference. As it seemed advisable not to go to this +extreme till I got to Madrid, my kind young banker put himself at my +disposal for any other service I could imagine from him; but I searched +myself in vain for any desire, much less necessity, and I parted from +him at the door of his bank with the best possible opinion of the +Basques. I suppose he was a Basque; at any rate, he was blond, which the +Spaniards are mostly not, and the Basques often are. Now I am sorry, +since he was so kind, that I did not get him to read me the Basque +inscription on the front of his bank, which looked exactly like that on +the bank at Bayonne; I should not have understood it, but I should have +known what it sounded like, if it sounded like anything but Basque. + +Everybody in San Sebastian seemed resolved to outdo every other in +kindness. In a shop where we endeavored to explain that we wanted to get +a flat cap which should be both Basque and red, a lady who was buying +herself a hat asked in English if she could help us. When we gladly +answered that she could, she was silent, almost to tears, and it +appeared that in this generous offer of aid she had exhausted her whole +stock of English. Her mortification, her painful surprise, at the +strange catastrophe, was really pitiable, and we hastened to escape from +it to a shop across the street. There instantly a small boy rushed +enterprisingly out and brought back with him a very pretty girl who +spoke most of the little French which has made its way in San Sebastian +against the combined Basque and Spanish, and a cap of the right flatness +and redness was brought. I must not forget, among the pleasures done us +by the place, the pastry cook's shop which advertised in English "Tea at +all Hours," and which at that hour of our afternoon we now found so +opportune, that it seemed almost personally attentive to us as the only +Anglo-Saxon visitors in town. The tea might have been better, but it was +as good as it knew how; and the small boy who came in with his mother +(the Spanish mother seldom fails of the company of a small boy) in her +moments of distraction succeeded in touching with his finger all the +pieces of pastry except those we were eating. + + + + +VII + + +The high aquiline nose which is characteristic of the autochthonic race +abounds in San Sebastian, but we saw no signs of the high temper which +is said to go with it. This, indeed, was known to me chiefly from my +first reading in _Don Quixote,_ of the terrific combat between the +squire of the Biscayan ladies whose carriage the knight of La Mancha +stopped after his engagement with the windmills. In their exchange of +insults incident to the knight's desire that the ladies should go to +Toboso and thank Dulcinea for his delivery of them from the necromancers +he had put to flight in the persons of two Benedictine monks, "'Get +gone,' the squire called, in bad Spanish and worse Biscayan, 'Get gone, +thou knight, and Devil go with thou; or by He Who me create . . . me +kill thee now so sure as me be Biscayan,'" and when the knight called +him an "inconsiderable mortal," and said that if he were a gentleman he +would chastise him: "'What! me no gentleman?' replied the Biscayan. 'I +swear thou be liar as me be Christian. . . . Me will show thee me be +Biscayan, and gentleman by land, gentleman by sea, gentleman in spite of +Devil; and thou lie if thou say the contrary.'" + +It is a scene which will have lived in the memory of every reader, and I +recurred to it hopefully but vainly in San Sebastian, where this fiery +threefold gentleman might have lived in his time. It would be +interesting to know how far the Basques speak broken Spanish in a +fashion of their own, which Cervantes tried to represent in the talk of +his Biscayan. Like the Welsh again they strenuously keep their +immemorial language against the inroads of the neighboring speech. How +much they fix it in a modern literature it would be easier to ask than +to say. I suppose there must be Basque newspapers; perhaps there are +Basque novelists, there are notoriously Basque bards who recite their +verses to the peasants, and doubtless there are poets who print their +rhymes: and I blame myself for not inquiring further concerning them of +that kindly Basque banker who wished so much to do something for me in +compensation for the loss of my worthless letter. I knew, too cheaply, +that the Basques have their poetical contests, as the Welsh have their +musical competitions in the Eisteddfod, and they are once more like the +Welsh, their brothers in antiquity, in calling themselves by a national +name of their own. They call themselves Euskaldunac, which is as +different from the name of Basque given them by the alien races as Cymru +is from Welsh. + +All this lore I have easily accumulated from the guide-books since +leaving San Sebastian, but I was carelessly ignorant of it in driving +from the hotel to the station when we came away, and was much concerned +in the overtures made us in a mixed Spanish, English, and French by a +charming family from Chili, through the brother to one of the ladies and +luisband to the other. When he perceived from my Spanish that we were +not English, he rejoiced that we were Americans of the north, and as +joyfully proclaimed that they were Americans of the south. We were at +once sensible of a community of spirit in our difference from our +different ancestral races. They were Spanish, but with a New World +blitheness which we nowhere afterward found in the native Spaniards; and +we were English, with a willingness to laugh and to joke which they had +not perhaps noted in our ancestral contemporaries. Again and again we +met them in the different cities where we feared we had lost them, until +we feared no more and counted confidently on seeing them wherever we +went. They were always radiantly smiling; and upon this narrow ground I +am going to base the conjecture that the most distinctive difference of +the Western Hemisphere from the Eastern is its habit of seeing the fun +of things. With those dear Chilians we saw the fun of many little +hardships of travel which might have been insupportable without the +vision. Sometimes we surprised one another in the same hotel; sometimes +it was in the street that we encountered, usually to exchange amusing +misfortunes. If we could have been constantly with these +fellow-hemispherists our progress through Spain would have been an +unbroken holiday. + +There is a superstition of travelers in Spain, much fostered by +innkeepers and porters, that you cannot get seats in the fast trains +without buying your tickets the day before, and then perhaps not, and we +abandoned ourselves to this fear at San Sebastian so far as to get +places some hours in advance. But once established in the ten-foot-wide +interior of the first-class compartment which we had to ourselves, every +anxiety fell from us; and I do not know a more flattering emotion than +that which you experience in sinking into your luxurious seat, and, +after a glance at your hand-bags in the racks where they have been put +with no strain on your own muscles, giving your eyes altogether to the +joy of the novel landscape. + +The train was what they call a Rapido in Spain; and though we were +supposed to be devouring space with indiscriminate gluttony, I do not +think that in our mad rush of twenty-five miles an hour we failed to +taste any essential detail of the scenery. .But I wish now that I had +known the Basques were all nobles, and that the peasants owned many of +the little farms we saw declaring the general thrift. In the first two +hours of the six to Burgos we ran through lovely valleys held in the +embrace of gentle hills, where the fields of Indian corn were varied by +groves of chestnut trees, where we could see the burrs gaping on their +stems. The blades and tassels of the corn had been stripped away, +leaving the ripe ears a-tilt at the top of the stalks, which looked like +cranes standing on one leg with their heads slanted in pensive +contemplation. There were no vineyards, but orchards aplenty near the +farmhouses, and all about there were other trees pollarded to the quick +and tufted with mistletoe, not only the stout oaks, but the slim poplars +trimmed up into tall plumes like the poplars in southern France. The +houses, when they did not stand apart like our own farmhouses, gathered +into gray-brown villages around some high-shouldered church with a +bell-tower in front or at one corner of the fagade. In most of the +larger houses an economy of the sun's heat, the only heat recognized in +the winter of southern countries, was practised by glassing in the +balconies that stretched quite across their fronts and kept the cold +from at least one story. It gave them a very cheery look, and must have +made them livable at least in the daytime. Now and then the tall +chimney of one of those manufactories we had seen on the way from Irun +invited belief in the march of industrial prosperity; but whether the +Basque who took work in a mill or a foundry forfeited his nobility +remained a part of the universal Basque secret. From time to time a +mountain stream brawled from under a world-old bridge, and then spread a +quiet tide for the women to kneel beside and wash the clothes which they +spread to dry on every bush and grassy slope of the banks. + +The whole scene changed after we ran out of the Basque country and into +the austere landscape of old Castile. The hills retreated and swelled +into mountains that were not less than terrible in their savage +nakedness. The fields of corn and the orchards ceased, and the green of +the pastures changed to the tawny gray of the measureless wheat-lands +into which the valleys flattened and widened. There were no longer any +factory chimneys; the villages seemed to turn from stone to mud; the +human poverty showed itself in the few patched and tattered figures that +followed the oxen in the interminable furrows shallowly scraping the +surface of the lonely levels. The haggard mountain ranges were of stone +that seemed blanched with geologic superannuation, and at one place we +ran by a wall of hoary rock that drew its line a mile long against the +sky, and then broke and fell, and then staggered up again in a +succession of titanic bulks. But stupendous as these mountain masses +were, they were not so wonderful as those wheat-lands which in +harvest-time must wash their shores like a sea of gold. Where these now +rose and sank with the long ground-swell of the plains in our own West, +a thin gray stubble covered them from the feeble culture which leaves +Spain, for all their extent in both the Castiles, in Estremadura, in +Andalusia, still without bread enough to feed herself, and obliges her +to import alien wheat. At the lunch which we had so good in the +dining-car we kept our talk to the wonder of the scenery, and well away +from the interesting Spanish pair at our table. It is never safe in +Latin Europe to count upon ignorance of English in educated people, or +people who look so; and with these we had the reward of our prudence +when the husband asked after dessert if we minded his smoking. His +English seemed meant to open the way for talk, and we were willing he +should do the talking. He spoke without a trace of accent, and we at +once imagined circles in which it was now as _chic_ for Spaniards to +speak English as it once was to speak French. They are said never to +speak French quite well; but nobody could have spoken English better +than this gentleman, not even we who were, as he said he supposed, +English. Truth and patriotism both obliged us to deny his conjecture; +and when He intimated that he would not have known us for Americans +because we did not speak with the dreadful American accent, I hazarded +my belief that this dreadfulness was personal rather than national. But +he would not have it. Boston people, yes; they spoke very well, and he +allowed other exceptions to the general rule of our nasal twang, which +his wife summoned English enough to say was very ugly. They had suffered +from it too universally in the Americans they had met during the summer +in Germany to believe it was merely personal; and I suppose one may own +to strictly American readers that our speech _is_ dreadful, that it is +very ugly. These amiable Spaniards had no reason and no wish to wound; +and they could never know what sweet and noble natures had been +producing their voices through their noses there in Germany. I for my +part could not insist; who, indeed, can defend the American accent, +which is not so much an accent as a whiffle, a snuffle, a twang? It was +mortifying, all the same, to have it openly abhorred by a foreigner, and +I willingly got away from the question to that of the weather. We agreed +admirably about the heat in England where this gentleman went every +summer, and had never found it so hot before. It was hot even in +Denmark; but he warned me not to expect any warmth in Spain now that the +autumn rains had begun. + +If this couple represented a cosmopolitan and modern Spain, it was +interesting to escape to something entirely native in the three young +girls who got in at the next station and shared our compartment with us +as far as we went. They were tenderly kissed by their father in putting +them on board, and held in lingering farewells at the window till the +train started. The eldest of the three then helped in arranging their +baskets in the rack, but the middle sister took motherly charge of the +youngest, whom she at once explained to us as _enferma._ She was the +prettiest girl of the conventional Spanish type we Lad yet seen: +dark-eyed and dark-haired, regular, but a little overfull of the chin +which she would presently have double. She was very, very pale of face, +with a pallor in which she had assisted nature with powder, as all +Spanish women, old and young, seem to do. But there was no red underglow +in the pallor, such as gives many lovely faces among them the complexion +of whitewash over pink on a stucco surface. She wrapped up the youngest +sister, who would by and by be beautiful, and now being sick had only +the flush of fever in her cheeks, and propped her in the coziest corner +of the car, where she tried to make her keep still, but could not make +her keep silent. In fact, they all babbled together, over the basket of +luncheon which the middle sister opened after springing up the little +table-leaf of the window, and spread with a substantial variety +including fowl and sausage and fruit, such as might tempt any sick +appetite, or a well one, even. As she brought out each of these +victuals, together with a bottle of wine and a large bottle of milk, she +first offered it to us, and when it was duly refused with thanks, she +made the invalid eat and drink, especially the milk which she made a wry +face at. When she had finished they all began to question whether her +fever was rising for the day; the good sister felt the girl's pulse, and +got out a thermometer, which together they arranged under her arm, and +then duly inspected. It seemed that the fever _was_ rising, as it might +very well be, but the middle sister was not moved from her notable calm, +and the eldest did not fear. At a place where a class of young men was +to be seen before an ecclesiastical college the girls looked out +together, and joyfully decided that the brother (or possibly a cousin) +whom they expected to see, was really there among them. When we reached +Burgos we felt that we had assisted at a drama of family medicine and +affection which was so sweet that if the fever was not very wisely it +was very winningly treated. It was not perhaps a very serious case, and +it meant a good deal of pleasant excitement for all concerned. + + + + +III + +BURGOS AND THE BITTER COLD OF BURGOS + + +It appears to be the use in most minor cities of Spain for the best +hotel to send the worst omnibus to the station, as who should say, "Good +wine needs no bush." At Burgos we were almost alarmed by the shabbiness +of the omnibus for the hotel we had chosen through a consensus of praise +in the guide-books, and thought we must have got the wrong one. It was +indeed the wrong one, but because there is no right hotel in Burgos when +you arrive there on an afternoon of early October, and feel the +prophetic chill of that nine months of winter which is said to contrast +there with three months of hell. + + + +I + + +The air of Burgos when it is not the breath of a furnace is so heavy and +clammy through the testimony of all comers that Burgos herself no longer +attempts to deny it from her high perch on the uplands of Old Castile. +Just when she ceased to deny it, I do not know, but probably when she +ceased to be the sole capital and metropolis of Christian Spain and +shared her primacy with Toledo sometime in the fourteenth century. Now, +in the twentieth, we asked nothing of her but two rooms in which we +could have fire, but the best hotel in Burgos openly declared that it +had not a fireplace in its whole extent, though there must have been one +in the kitchen. The landlord pointed out that it was completely equipped +with steam-heating apparatus, but when I made him observe that there was +no steam in the shining radiators, he owned with a shrug that there was +truth in what I said. He showed us large, pleasant rooms to the south +which would have been warm from the sun if the sun which we left playing +in San Sebastian had been working that day at Burgos; he showed us his +beautiful new dining-room, cold, with the same sunny exposure. I rashly +declared that all would not do, and that I would look elsewhere for +rooms with fireplaces. I had first to find a cab in order to find the +other hotels, but I found instead that in a city of thirty-eight +thousand inhabitants there was not one cab standing for hire in the +streets. I tried to enlist the sympathies of some private carriages, but +they remained indifferent, and I went back foiled, but not crushed, to +our hotel. There it seemed that the only vehicle to be had was the +omnibus which had brought us from the station. The landlord calmly (I +did not then perceive the irony of his calm) had the horses put to and +our baggage put on, and we drove away. But first we met our dear +Chilians coming to our hotel from the hotel they had chosen, and from a +search for hearthstones in others; and we drove to the only hotel they +had left unvisited. There at our demand for fires the landlord all but +laughed us to scorn; he laid his hand on the cold radiator in the hotel +as if to ask what better we could wish than that. We drove back, +humbled, to our own hotel, where the landlord met us with the Castilian +cairn he had kept at our departure. Then there was nothing for me but to +declare myself the Prodigal Son returned to take the rooms he had +offered us. We were so perfectly in his power that he could +magnanimously afford to offer us other rooms equally cold, but we did +not care to move. The Chilians had retired baffled to their own hotel, +and there was nothing for us but to accept the long evening of gelid +torpor which we foresaw must follow the effort of the soup and wine to +warm us at dinner. That night we heard through our closed doors agonized +voices which we knew to be the voices of despairing American women +wailing through the freezing corridors, "Can't she understand that I +want _boiling_ water?" and, "Can't' we go down-stairs to a fire +somewhere?" We knew the one meant the chambermaid and the other the +kitchen, but apparently neither prayer was answered. + + + + +II + + +As soon as we had accepted our fate, while as yet the sun had not set +behind the clouds which had kept it out of our rooms all day, we hurried +out not only to escape the rigors of our hotel, but to see as soon as we +could, as much as we could of the famous city. We had got an excellent +cup of tea in the glass-roofed pavilion of our beautiful cold +dining-room, and now our spirits rose level with the opportunities of +the entrancing walk we took along the course of the Arlanson. I say +course, because that is the right word to use of a river, but really +there was no course in the Arlanzon. Between the fine, wide Embankments +and under the noble bridges there were smooth expanses of water +(naturally with women washing at them), which reflected like an +afterglow of the evening sky the splendid masses of yarn hung red from +the dyer's vats on the bank. The expanses of water were bordered by +wider spaces of grass which had grown during the rainless summer, but +which were no doubt soon to be submerged under the autumnal torrent the +river would become. The street which shaped itself to the stream was a +rather modern avenue, leading to a beautiful public garden, with the +statues and fountains proper to a public garden, and densely shaded +against the three infernal months of the Burgos year. But the houses +were glazed all along their fronts with the sun-traps which we had noted +in the Basque country, and which do not wait for a certain date in the +almanac to do the work of steam-heating. They gave a tempting effect to +the house-fronts, but they could not distract our admiration from the +successive crowds of small boys playing at bull-fighting in the streets +below, and in the walks of the public garden. The population of Burgos +is above thirty-seven thousand and of the inhabitants at least +thirty-six thousand are small boys, as I was convinced by the +computation of the husband and brother of the Chilian ladies which +agreed perfectly with my own hasty conjecture; the rest are small girls. +In fact large families, and large families chiefly of boys, are the rule +in Spain everywhere; and they everywhere know how to play bull-fighting, +to flap any-colored old shawl, or breadth of cloth in the face of the +bull, to avoid his furious charges, and doubtless to deal him his +death-wound, though to this climax I could not bear to follow. + +One or two of the bull-fighters offered to leave the national sport and +show us the House of Miranda, but it was the cathedral which was +dominating our desire, as it everywhere dominates the vision, in Burgos +and out of Burgos as far as the city can be seen. The iron-gray bulk, +all flattered or fretted by Gothic art, rears itself from the clustering +brown walls and roofs of the city, which it seems to gather into its +mass below while it towers so far above them. We needed no pointing of +the way to it; rather we should have needed instruction for shunning it; +but we chose the way which led through the gate of Santa Maria where in +an arch once part of the city wall, the great Cid, hero above every +other hero of Burgos, sits with half a dozen more or less fabled or +storied worthies of the renowned city. Then with a minute's walk up a +stony sloping little street we were in the beautiful and reverend +presence of one of the most august temples of the Christian faith. The +avenue where the old Castilian nobles once dwelt in their now empty +palaces climbs along the hillside above the cathedral, which on its +lower side seems to elbow off the homes of meaner men, and in front to +push them away beyond a plaza not large enough for it. Even this the +cathedral had not cleared of the horde of small boys who followed us +unbidden to its doors and almost expropriated those authorized blind +beggars who own the church doors in Spain. When we declined the further +company of these boys they left us with expressions which I am afraid +accused our judgment and our personal appearance; but in another moment +we were safe from their censure, and hidden as it were in the thick +smell of immemorial incense. + +It was not the moment for doing the cathedral in the wonted tiresome and +vulgar way; that was reserved for the next day; now we simply wandered +in the vast twilight spaces; and craned our necks to breaking in trying +to pierce the gathered gloom in the vaulting overhead. It was a precious +moment, but perhaps too weird, and we were glad to find a sacristan with +businesslike activity setting red candlesticks about a bier in the area +before the choir, which here, as in the other Spanish cathedrals, is +planted frankly in the middle of the edifice, a church by itself, as if +to emphasize the incomparable grandeur of the cathedral. The sacristan +willingly paused in his task and explained that he was preparing the +bier for the funeral of a church dignitary (as we learned later, the +dean) which was to take place the next day at noon; and if we would come +at that hour we should hear some beautiful music. We knew that he was +establishing a claim on our future custom, but we thanked him and +provisionally feed him, and left him at his work, at which we might have +all but fancied him whistling, so cheerfully and briskly he went about +it. + +Outside we lingered a moment to give ourselves the solemn joy of the +Chapel of the Constable which forms the apse of the cathedral and is its +chief glory. It mounted to the hard, gray sky, from which a keen wind +was sweeping the narrow street leading to it, and blustering round the +corner of the cathedral, so that the marble men holding up the +Constable's coat-of-arms in the rear of his chapel might well have ached +from the cold which searched the marrow of flesh-and-blood men below. +These hurried by in flat caps and corduroy coats and trousers, with +sashes at their waists and comforters round their necks; and they were +picturesque quite in the measure of their misery. Some whose tatters +were the most conspicuous feature of their costume, I am sure would have +charmed me if I had been a painter; as a mere word-painter I find myself +wishing I could give the color of their wretchedness to my page. + + + + +III + + +In the absence of any specific record in my notebook I do not know just +how it was between this first glimpse of the cathedral and dinner, but +it must have been on our return to our hotel, that the little +interpreter who had met us at the station, and had been intermittently +constituting himself our protector ever since, convinced us that we +ought to visit the City Hall, and see the outside of the marble tomb +containing the bones of the Cid and his wife. Such as the bones were we +found they were not to be seen themselves, and I do not know that I +should have been the happier for their inspection. In fact, I have no +great opinion of the Cid as an historical character or a poetic fiction. +His epic, or his long ballad, formed no part of my young study in +Spanish, and when four or five years ago a friend gave me a copy of it, +beautifully printed in black letter, with the prayer that I should read +it sometime within the twelvemonth, I found the time far too short. As a +matter of fact I have never read the poem to this day, though. I have +often tried, and I doubt if its author ever intended it to be read. He +intended it rather to be recited in stirring episodes, with spaces for +refreshing slumber in the connecting narrative. As for the Cid in real +life under his proper name of Rodrigo de Vivas, though he made his king +publicly swear that he had had no part in the murder of his royal +brother, and though he was the stoutest and bravest knight in Castile, I +cannot find it altogether admirable in him that when his king banished +him he should resolve to fight thereafter for any master who paid him +best. That appears to me the part of a road-agent rather than a +reformer, and it seems to me no amend for his service under Moorish +princes that he should make war against them on his personal behalf or +afterward under his own ungrateful king. He is friends now with the +Arabian King of Saragossa, and now he defeats the Aragonese under the +Castilian sovereign, and again he sends an insulting message by the +Moslems to the Christian Count of Barcelona, whom he takes prisoner with +his followers, but releases without ransom after a contemptuous +audience. Is it well, I ask, that he helps one Moor against another, +always for what there is in it, and when he takes Valencia from the +infidels, keeps none of his promises to them, but having tortured the +governor to make him give up his treasure, buries him to his waist and +then burns him alive? After that, to be sure, he enjoys his declining +years by making forays in the neighboring country, and dies "satisfied +with having done his duty toward his God." + +Our interpreter, who would not let us rest till he had shown us the box +holding the Cid's bones, had himself had a varied career. If you +believed him he was born in Madrid and had passed, when three years old, +to New York, where he grew up to become a citizen and be the driver of a +delivery wagon for a large department-store. He duly married an American +woman who could speak not only French, German, and Italian, but also +Chinese, and was now living with him in Burgos. His own English had +somewhat fallen by the way, but what was left he used with great +courage; and he was one of those government interpreters whom you find +at every large station throughout Spain in the number of the principal +hotels of the place. They pay the government a certain tax for their +license, though it was our friend's expressed belief that the +government, on the contrary, paid him a salary of two dollars a day; but +perhaps this was no better founded than his belief in a German princess +who, when he went as her courier, paid him ten dollars a day and all his +expenses. She wished him to come and live near her in Germany, so as to +be ready to go with her to South America, but he had not yet made up his +mind to leave Burgos, though his poor eyes watered with such a cold as +only Burgos can give a man in the early autumn; when I urged him to look +to the bad cough he had, he pleaded that it was a very old cough. He had +a fascination of his own, which probably came from his imaginative habit +of mind, so that I could have wished more adoptive fellow-citizens were +like him. He sympathized strongly with us in our grief with the cold of +the hotel, and when we said that a small oil-heater would take the chill +off a large room, he said that he had advised that very thing, but that +our host had replied, with proud finality, "I am the landlord." Whether +this really happened or not, I cannot say, but I have no doubt that our +little guide had some faith in it as a real incident. He apparently had +faith in the landlord's boast that he was going to have a stately marble +staircase to the public entrance to his hotel, which was presently of +common stone, rather tipsy in its treads, and much in need of scrubbing. + +There is as little question in my mind that he believed the carriage we +had engaged to take us next morning to the Cartuja de Miraflores would +be ready at a quarter before nine, and that he may have been +disappointed when it was not ready until a quarter after. But it was +worth waiting for if to have a team composed of a brown mule on the +right hand and a gray horse on the left was to be desired. These animals +which nature had so differenced were equalized by art through the lavish +provision of sleigh-bells, without some strands of which no team in +Spain is properly equipped. Besides, as to his size the mule was quite +as large as the horse, and as to his tail he was much more decorative. +About two inches after this member left his body it was closely shaved +for some six inches or more, and for that space it presented the effect +of a rather large size of garden-hose; below, it swept his thighs in a +lordly switch. If anything could have added distinction to our turnout +it would have been the stiff side-whiskers of our driver: the only pair +I saw in real life after seeing them so long in pictures on boxes of +raisins and cigars. There they were associated with the look and dress +of a _torrero,_ and our coachman, though an old Castilian of the +austerest and most taciturn pattern, may have been in his gay youth an +Andalusian bull-fighter. + + + + +IV + + +Our pride in our equipage soon gave way to our interest in the market +for sheep, cattle, horses, and donkeys which we passed through just +outside the city. The market folk were feeling the morning's cold; +shepherds folded in their heavy shawls leaned motionless on their long +staves, as if hating to stir; one ingenious boy wore a live lamb round +his neck which he held close by the legs for the greater comfort of it; +under the trees by the roadside some of the peasants were cooking their +breakfasts and warming themselves at the fires. The sun was on duty in a +cloudless sky; but all along the road to the Cartuja we drove between +rows of trees so thickly planted against his summer rage that no ray of +his friendly heat could now reach us. At times it seemed as if from this +remorselessly shaded avenue we should escape into the open; the trees +gave way and we caught glimpses of wide plains and distant hills; then +they closed upon us again, and in their chill shadow it was no comfort +to know that in summer, when the townspeople got through their work, +they came out to these groves, men, women, and children, and had supper +under their hospitable boughs. + +One comes to almost any Cartuja at last, and we found ours on a sunny +top just when the cold had pinched us almost beyond endurance, and +joined a sparse group before the closed gate of the convent. The group +was composed of poor people who had come for the dole of food daily +distributed from the convent, and better-to-do country-folk who had +brought things to sell to the monks, or were there on affairs not openly +declared. But it seemed that it was a saint's day; the monks were having +service in the church solely for their own edification, and they had +shut us sinners out not only by locking the gate, but by taking away the +wire for ringing the bell, and leaving nothing but a knocker of feeble +note with which different members of our indignation meeting vainly +hammered. Our guide assumed the virtue of the greatest indignation, +though he ought to have known that we could not get in on that saint's +day; but it did not avail, and the little group dispersed, led off by +the brown peasant who was willing to share my pleasure in our excursion +as a good joke on us, and smiled with a show of teeth as white as the +eggs in his basket. After all, it was not wholly a hardship; we could +walk about in the sunny if somewhat muddy open, and warm ourselves +against the icily shaded drive back to town; besides, there was a little +girl crouching at the foot of a tree, and playing at a phase of the +housekeeping which is the game of little girls the world over. Her sad, +still-faced mother standing near, with an interest in her apparently +renewed by my own, said that she was four years old, and joined me in +watching her as she built a pile of little sticks and boiled an +imaginary little kettle over them. I was so glad even of a make-believe +fire that I dropped a copper coin beside it, and the mother smiled +pensively as if grateful but not very hopeful from this beneficence, +though after reflection I had made my gift a "big dog" instead of a +"small dog," as the Spanish call a ten and a five centimo piece. The +child bent her pretty head shyly on one side, and went on putting more +sticks under her supposititious pot. + +I found the little spectacle reward enough in itself and in a sort +compensation for our failure to see the exquisite alabaster tomb of Juan +II. and his wife Isabel which makes the Cartuja Church so famous. There +are a great many beautiful tombs in Burgos, but none so beautiful there +(or in the whole world if the books say true) as this; though we made +what we could of some in the museum, where we saw for the first time in +the recumbent effigies of a husband and wife, with features worn away by +time and incapable of expressing the disappointment, the surprise they +may have felt in the vain effort to warm their feet on the backs of the +little marble angels put there to support them. We made what we could, +too, of the noted Casa de Miranda, the most famous of the palaces in +which the Castilian nobles have long ceased to live at Burgos. There we +satisfied our longing to see a _patio,_ that roofless colonnaded court +which is the most distinctive feature of Spanish domestic architecture, +and more and more distinctively so the farther south you go, till at +Seville you see it in constant prevalence. At Burgos it could never have +been a great comfort, but in this House of Miranda it must have been a +great glory. The spaces between many of the columns have long been +bricked in, but there is fine carving on the front and the vaulting of +the staircase that climbs up from it in neglected grandeur. So many feet +have trodden its steps that they are worn hollow in the middle, and to +keep from falling you must go up next the wall. The object in going up +at all is to join in the gallery an old melancholy custodian in looking +down into the _patio,_ with his cat making her toilet beside him, and to +give them a fee which they receive with equal calm. Then, when you have +come down the age-worn steps without breaking your neck, you have done +the House of Miranda, and may lend yourself with what emotion you choose +to the fact that this ancient seat of hidalgos has now fallen to the low +industry of preparing pigskins to be wine-skins. + +I do not think that a company of hidalgos in complete medieval armor +could have moved me more strongly than that first sight of these +wine-skins, distended with wine, which we had caught in approaching the +House of Miranda. We had to stop in the narrow street, and let them pass +piled high on a vintner's wagon, and looking like a load of pork: they +are trimmed and left to keep the shape of the living pig, which they +emulate at its bulkiest, less the head and feet, and seem to roll in +fatness. It was joy to realize what they were, to feel how Spanish, how +literary, how picturesque, how romantic. There they were such as the +wine-skins are that hang from the trees of pleasant groves in many a +merry tale, and invite all swains and shepherds and wandering cavaliers +to tap their bulk and drain its rich plethora. There they were such as +Don Quixote, waking from his dream at the inn, saw them malignant giants +and fell enchanters, and slashed them with his sword till he had spilled +the room half full of their blood. For me this first sight of them was +magic. It brought back my boyhood as nothing else had yet, and I never +afterward saw them without a return to those days of my delight in all +Spanish things. + +Literature and its associations, no matter from how lowly suggestion, +must always be first for me, and I still thought of those wine-skins +in yielding to the claims of the cathedral on my wonder and reverence +when now for the second time we came to it. The funeral ceremony of the +dean was still in course, and after listening for a moment to the mighty +orchestral music of it--the deep bass of the priests swelling up with +the organ notes, and suddenly shot with the shrill, sharp trebles of the +choir-boys and pierced with the keen strains of the violins--we left the +cathedral to the solemn old ecclesiastics who sat confronting the bier, +and once more deferred our more detailed and intimate wonder. We went, +in this suspense of emotion, to the famous Convent of Las Huelgas, which +invites noble ladies to its cloistered repose a little beyond the town. +We entered to the convent church through a sort of slovenly court where +a little girl begged severely, almost censoriously, of us, and presently +a cold-faced young priest came and opened the church door. Then we found +the interior of that rank Spanish baroque which escapes somehow the +effeminate effusiveness of the Italian; it does not affect you as +decadent, but as something vigorously perfect in its sort, somberly +authentic, and ripe from a root and not a graft. In its sort, the high +altar, a gigantic triune, with massive twisted columns and swagger +statues of saints and heroes in painted wood, is a prodigy of inventive +piety, and compositely has a noble exaltation in its powerful lift to +the roof. + +The nuns came beautifully dressed to hear mass at the grilles giving +into the chapel adjoining the church; the tourist may have his glimpse +of them there on Sundays, and on week-days he may have his guess of +their cloistered life and his wonder how much it continues the tradition +of repose which the name of the old garden grounds implies. These lady +nuns must be of patrician lineage and of fortune enough to defray their +expense in the convent, which is of the courtliest origin, for it was +founded eight hundred years ago by Alfonso VIII. "to expiate his sins +and to gratify his queen," who probably knew of them. I wish now I had +known, while I was there, that the abbess of Las Huelgas had once had +the power of life and death in the neighborhood, and could hang people +if she liked; I cannot think just what good it would have done me, but +one likes to realize such things on the spot. She is still one of the +greatest ladies of Spain, though perhaps not still "lady of ax and +gibbet," and her nuns are of like dignity. In their chapel are the tombs +of Alfonso and his queen, whose figures are among those on the high +altar of the church. She was Eleanor Plantagenet, the daughter of our +Henry II., and was very fond of Las Huelgas, as if it were truly a rest +for her in the far-off land of Spain; I say our Henry II., for in the +eleventh century we Americans were still English, under the heel of the +Normans, as not the fiercest republican of us now need shame to own. + +In a sense of this historical unity, at Las Huelgas we felt as much at +home as if we had been English tourists, and we had our feudal pride in +the palaces where the Gastilian nobles used to live in Burgos as we +returned to the town. Their deserted seats are mostly to be seen after +you pass through the Moorish gate overarching the stony, dusty, weedy +road hard by the place where the house of the Cid is said to have stood. +The arch, so gracefully Saracenic, was the first monument of the Moslem +obsession of the country which has left its signs so abundantly in the +south; here in the far north the thing seemed almost prehistoric, almost +preglacially old, the witness of a world utterly outdated. But perhaps +it was not more utterly outdated than the residences of the nobles who +had once made the ancient Castilian capital splendid, but were now as +irrevocably merged in Madrid as the Arabs in Africa. + + + + +VI + + +Some of the palaces looked down from the narrow street along the +hillside above the cathedral, but only one of them was kept up in the +state of other days; and I could not be sure at what point this street +had ceased to be the street where our guide said every one kept cows, +and the ladies took big pitchers of milk away to sell every morning. But +I am sure those ladies could have been of noble descent only in the +farthest possible remove, and I do not suppose their cows were even +remotely related to the haughty ox-team which blocked the way in front +of the palaces and obliged xis to dismount while our carriage was lifted +round the cart. Our driver was coldly disgusted, but the driver of the +ox-team preserved a calm as perfect as if he had been an hidalgo +interested by the incident before his gate. It delayed us till the +psychological moment when the funeral of the dean was over, and we could +join the formidable party following the sacristan from chapel to chapel +in the cathedral. + +We came to an agonized consciousness of the misery of this progress in +the Chapel of the Constable, where it threatened to be finally stayed by +the indecision of certain ladies of our nation in choosing among the +postal cards for sale there. By this time we had suffered much from the +wonders of the cathedral. The sacristan had not spared us a jewel or a +silvered or gilded sacerdotal garment or any precious vessel of +ceremonial, so that our jaded wonder was inadequate to the demand of the +beautiful tombs of the Constable and his lady upon it. The coffer of the +Cid, fastened against the cathedral wall for a monument of his +shrewdness in doing the Jews of Burgos, who, with the characteristic +simplicity of their race, received it back full of sand and gravel in +payment of the gold they had lent him in it, could as little move us. +Perhaps if we could have believed that he finally did return the value +received, we might have marveled a little at it, but from what we knew +of the Cid this was not credible. We did what we could with the painted +wood carving of the cloister doors; the life-size head of a man with its +open mouth for a key-hole in another portal; a fearful silver-plated +chariot given by a rich blind woman for bearing the Host in the +procession of Corpus Christi; but it was very little, and I am not going +to share my failure with the reader by the vain rehearsal of its +details. No literary art has ever reported a sense of picture or +architecture or sculpture to me: the despised postal card is better for +that; and probably throughout these "trivial fond records" I shall be +found shirking as much as I may the details of such sights, seen or +unseen, as embitter the heart of travel with unavailing regret for the +impossibility of remembering them. I must leave for some visit of the +reader's own the large and little facts of the many chapels in the +cathedral at Burgos, and I will try to overwhelm him with my sense of +the whole mighty interior, the rich gloom, the Gothic exaltation, which +I made such shift as I could to feel in the company of those +picture-postal amateurs. It was like, say, a somber afternoon, verging +to the twilight of a cloudy sunset, so that when I came out of it into +the open noon it was like emerging into a clear morrow. Perhaps because +I could there shed the harassing human environment the outside of the +cathedral seemed to me the best of it, and we lingered there for a +moment in glad relief. + + + + +VII + + +One house in some forgotten square commemorates the state in which the +Castilian nobles used to live in Burgos before Toledo, and then +Valladolid, contested the primacy of the grim old capital of the +northern uplands. We stayed for a moment to glance from our carriage +through the open portal into its leafy _patio_ shivering in the cold, +and then we bade our guide hurry back with us to the hot luncheon which +would be the only heat in our hotel. But to reach this we had to pass +through another square, which we found full of peasants' ox-carts and +mule-teams; and there our guide instantly jumped down and entered into a +livelier quarrel with those peaceable men and women than I could +afterward have believed possible in Spain. I bade him get back to his +seat beside the driver, who was abetting him with an occasional guttural +and whom I bade turn round and go another way. I said that I had hired +this turnout, and I was master, and I would be obeyed; but it seemed +that I was wrong. My proud hirelings never left off their dispute till +somehow the ox-carts and mule-teams were jammed together, and a +thoroughfare found for us. Then it was explained that those peasants +were always blocking that square in that way and that I had, however +unwillingly, been discharging the duty of a public-spirited citizen in +compelling them to give way. I did not care for that; I prized far more +the quiet with which they had taken the whole affair. It was the first +exhibition of the national repose of manner which we were to see so +often again, south as well as north, and which I find it so beautiful to +have seen. In a Europe abounding in volcanic Italians, nervous Germans, +and exasperated Frenchmen, it was comforting, it was edifying to see +those Castilian peasants so self-respectfully self-possessed in the +wrong. + +From time to time in the opener spaces we had got into the sun from the +chill shadow of the narrow streets, but now it began to be cloudy, and +when we re-entered our hotel it was almost as warm indoors as out. We +thought our landlord might have so far repented as to put on the steam; +but he had sternly adhered to his principle that the radiators were +enough of themselves; and after luncheon we had nothing for it but to go +away from Burgos, and take with us such scraps of impression as we +could. We decided that there was no street of gayer shops than those +gloomy ones we had chanced into here and there; I do not remember now +anything like a bookseller's or a milliner's or a draper's window. There +was no sign of fashion among the ladies of Burgos, so far as we could +distinguish them; there was not a glowering or perking hat, and I do not +believe there was a hobble-skirt in all the austere old capital except +such as some tourist wore; the black lace mantillas and the flowing +garments of other periods flitted by through the chill alleys and into +the dim doorways. The only cheerfulness in the local color was to be +noted in the caparison of the donkeys, which we were to find more and +more brilliant southward. Do I say the only cheerfulness? I ought to +except also the involuntary hilarity of a certain poor man's suit which +was so patched together of myriad scraps that it looked as if cut from +the fabric of a crazy-quilt. I owe him this notice the rather because he +almost alone did not beg of us in a city which swarmed with beggars in a +forecast of that pest of beggary which infests Spain everywhere. I do +not say that the thing is without picturesqueness, without real pathos; +the little girl who kissed the copper I gave her in the cathedral +remains endeared to me by that perhaps conventional touch of poetry. + +There was compensation for the want of presence among the ladies of +Burgos, in the leading lady of the theatrical company who dined, the +night before, at our hotel with the chief actors of her support, before +giving a last performance in our ancient city. It happened another time +in our Spanish progress that we had the society of strolling players at +our hotel, and it was both times told us that the given company was the +best dramatic company in Spain; but at Burgos we did not yet know that +we were so singularly honored. The leading lady there had luminous black +eyes, large like the head-lamps of a motor-car, and a wide crimson mouth +which she employed as at a stage banquet throughout the dinner, while +she talked and laughed with her fellow-actors, beautiful as +bull-fighters, cleanshaven, serious of face and shapely of limb. They +were unaffectedly professional, and the lady made no pretense of not +being a leading lady. One could see that she was the kindest creature in +the world, and that she took a genuine pleasure in her huge, practicable +eyes. At the other end of the room a Spanish family--father, mother, and +small children, down to some in arms--were dining and the children +wailing as Spanish children will, regardless of time and place; and when +the nurse brought one of the disconsolate infants to be kissed by the +leading lady one's heart went out to her for the amiability and +abundance of her caresses. The mere sight of their warmth did something +to supply the defect of steam in the steam-heating apparatus, but when +one got beyond their radius there was nothing for the shivering traveler +except to wrap himself in the down quilt of his bed and spread his +steamer-rug over his knees till it was time to creep under both of them +between the glacial sheets. + +We were sorry we had not got tickets for the leading lady's public +performance; it could have been so little more public; but we had not, +and there was nothing else in Burgos to invite the foot outdoors after +dinner. From my own knowledge I cannot yet say the place was not +lighted; but my sense of the tangle of streets lying night long in a +rich Gothic gloom shall remain unimpaired by statistics. Very possibly +Burgos is brilliantly lighted with electricity; only they have not got +the electricity on, as in our steam-heated hotel they had not got the +steam on. + + + + +VIII + + +We had authorized our little interpreter to engage tickets for us by the +mail-train the next afternoon for Valladolid; he pretended, of course, +that the places could be had only by his special intervention, and by +telegraphing for them to the arriving train. We accepted his romantic +theory of the case, and paid the bonus due the railroad agent in the +hotel for his offices in the matter; we would have given anything, we +were so eager to get out of Burgos before we were frozen up there. I do +not know that we were either surprised or pained to find that our +Chilian friends should have got seats in the same car without anything +of our diplomacy, by the simple process of showing their tickets. I +think our little interpreter was worth everything he cost, and more. I +would not have lost a moment of his company as he stood on the platform +with me, adding one artless invention to another for my pleasure, and +successively extracting peseta after peseta from me till he had made up +the sum which he had doubtless idealized as a just reward for his +half-day's service when he first told me that it should be what I +pleased. We parted with the affection of fellow-citizens in a strange +monarchical country, his English growing less and less as the train +delayed, and his eyes watering more and more as with tears of +com-patriotic affection. At the moment I could have envied that German +princess her ability to make sure of his future companionship at the low +cost of fifty pesetas a day; and even now, when my affection has had +time to wane, I cannot do less than commend him to any future visitor at +Burgos, as in the last degree amiable, and abounding in surprises of +intelligence and unexpected feats of reliability. + + + + +IV + +THE VARIETY OF VALLADOLID + + +When you leave Burgos at 3.29 of a passably sunny afternoon you are not +at once aware of the moral difference between the terms of your approach +and those of your departure. You are not changing your earth or your sky +very much, but it is not long before you are sensible of a change of +mind which insists more and more. There is the same long ground-swell of +wheat-fields, but yesterday you were followed in vision by the +loveliness of the frugal and fertile Biscayan farms, and to-day this +vision has left you, and you are running farther and farther into the +economic and topographic waste of Castile. Yesterday there were more or +less agreeable shepherdesses in pleasant plaids scattered over the +landscape; to-day there are only shepherds of three days' unshornness; +the plaids are ragged, and there is not sufficient compensation in the +cavalcades of both men and women riding donkeys in and out of the +horizons on the long roads that lose and find themselves there. Flocks +of brown and black goats, looking large as cows among the sparse +stubble, do little to relieve the scene from desolation; I am not sure +but goats, when brown and black, add to the horror of a desolate scene. +There are no longer any white farmsteads, or friendly villages gathering +about high-shouldered churches, but very far away to the eastward or +westward the dun expanse of the wheat-lands is roughed with something +which seems a cluster of muddy protuberances, so like the soil at first +it is not distinguishable from it, btit which as your train passes +nearer proves to be a town at the base of tablelands, without a tree or +a leaf or any spear of green to endear it to the eye as the abode of +living men. You pull yourself together in the effort to visualize the +immeasurable fields washing those dreary towns with golden tides of +harvest; but it is difficult. What you cannot help seeing is the actual +nakedness of the land which with its spindling stubble makes you think +of that awful moment of the human head, when utter baldness will be a +relief to the spectator. + + + + +I + + +At times and in places, peasants were scratching the dismal surfaces +with the sort of plows which Abel must have used, when subsoiling was +not yet even a dream; and between the plowmen and their ox-teams it +seemed a question as to which should loiter longest in the unfinished +furrow. Now and then, the rush of the train gave a motionless goatherd, +with his gaunt flock, an effect of comparative celerity to the rearward. +The women riding their donkeys over + + The level waste, the rounding gray + +in the distance were the only women we saw except those who seemed to be +keeping the stations, and one very fat one who came to the train at a +small town and gabbled volubly to some passenger who made no audible +response. She excited herself, but failed to rouse the interest of the +other party to the interview, who remained unseen as well as unheard. I +could the more have wished to know what it was all about because nothing +happened on board the train to distract the mind from the joyless +landscape until we drew near Valladolid. It is true that for a while we +shared our compartment with a father and his two sons who lunched on +slices of the sausage which seems the favorite refection of the Latin as +well as the Germanic races in their travels. But this drama was not of +intense interest, and we grappled in vain with the question of our +companions' social standard. The father, while he munched his bread and +sausage, read a newspaper which did not rank him or even define his +politics; there was a want of fashion in the cut of the young men's +clothes and of freshness in the polish of their tan shoes which defied +conjecture. When they left the train without the formalities of +leave-taking which had hitherto distinguished our Spanish +fellow-travelers, we willingly abandoned them to a sort of middling +obscurity; but this may not really have been their origin or their +destiny. + +That spindling sparseness, worse than utter baldness, of the wheat +stubble now disappeared with cinematic suddenness, and our train was +running past stretches of vineyard, where, among the green and purple +and yellow ranks, the vintagers, with their donkeys and carts, were +gathering the grapes in the paling light of the afternoon. Again the +scene lacked the charm of woman's presence which the vintage had in +southern France. In Spain we nowhere saw the women sharing the outdoor +work of the men; and we fancied their absence the effect of the Oriental +jealousy lingering from centuries of Moorish domination; though we could +not entirely reconcile our theory with the publicity of their washing +clothes at every stream. To be sure, that was work which they did not +share with men any more than the men shared the labor of the fields with +them. + +It was still afternoon, well before sunset, when we arrived at +Valladolid, where one of the quaintest of our Spanish surprises awaited +us. We knew that the omnibus of the hotel we had chosen would be the +shabbiest omnibus at the station, and we saw without great alarm our +Chilian friends drive off in an indefinitely finer vehicle. But what we +were not prepared for was the fact of _octroi_ at Valladolid, and for +the strange behavior of the local customs officer who stopped us on our +way into the town. He looked a very amiable young man as he put his face +in at the omnibus door, and he received without explicit question our +declaration that we had nothing taxable in our trunks. Then, however, he +mounted to the top of the omnibus and thumped our trunks about as if to +test them for contraband by the sound. The investigation continued on +these strange terms until the officer had satisfied himself of our good +faith, when he got down and with a friendly smile at the window bowed us +into Valladolid. + +In its way nothing could have been more charming; and we rather liked +being left by the omnibus about a block from our hotel, on the border of +a sort of promenade where no vehicles were allowed. We had been halted +near a public fountain, where already the mothers and daughters of the +neighborhood were gathered with earthen jars for the night's supply of +water. The jars were not so large as to overburden any of them when, +after just delay for exchange of gossip, the girls and goodwives put +them on their heads and marched erectly away with them, each beautifully +picturesque irrespective of her age or looks. + +The air was soft, and after Burgos, warm; something southern, unfelt +before, began to qualify the whole scene, which as the evening fell grew +more dramatic, and made the promenade the theater of emotions permitted +such unrestricted play nowhere else in Spain, so far as we were witness. +On one side the place was arcaded, and bordered with little shops, not +so obtrusively brilliant that the young people who walked up and down +before them were in a glare of publicity. A little way off the avenue +expanded into a fine oblong place, where some first martyrs of the +Inquisition were burned. But the promenadefs kept well short of this, as +they walked up and down, and talked, talked, talked in that +inexhaustible interest which youth takes in itself the world over. They +were in the standard proportion of two girls to one young man, or, if +here and there a girl had an undivided young man to herself, she went +before some older maiden or matron whom she left altogether out of the +conversation. They mostly wore the skirts and hats of Paris, and if the +scene of the fountain was Arabically oriental the promenade was almost +Americanly occidental. The promenaders were there by hundreds; they +filled the avenue from side to side, and + + The delight of happy laughter + The delight of low replies + +that rose from their progress, with the chirp and whisper of their feet +cheered the night as long as we watched and listened from the sun +balcony of our hotel. + + + + +II + + +There was no more heat in the radiators of the hotel there than at +Burgos, but for that evening at least there was none needed. It was the +principal hotel of Valladolid, and the unscrubbed and unswept staircase +by which we mounted into it was merely a phase of that genial pause, as +for second thought, in the march of progress which marks so much of the +modern advance in Spain, and was by no means an evidence of arrested +development. We had the choice of reaching our rooms either through the +dining-room or by a circuitous detour past the pantries; but our rooms +had a proud little vestibule of their own, with a balcony over the great +square, and if one of them had a belated feather-bed the other had a new +hair mattress, and the whole house was brilliantly lighted with +electricity. As for the cooking, it was delicious, and the table was of +an abundance and variety which might well have made one ashamed of +paying so small a rate as two dollars a day for bed and board, wine +included, and very fair wine at that. + +In Spain you must take the bad with the good, for whether you get the +good or not you are sure of the bad, but only very exceptionally are you +sure of the bad only. It was a pleasure not easily definable to find our +hotel managed by a mother and two daughters, who gave the orders obeyed +by the men-servants, and did not rebuke them for joining in the +assurance that when we got used to going so abruptly from the +dining-room into our bedrooms we would like it. The elder of the +daughters had some useful French, and neither of the younger ladies ever +stayed for some ultimate details of dishabille in coming to interpret +the mother and ourselves to one another when we encountered her alone in +the office. They were all thoroughly kind and nice, and they were +supported with surpassing intelligence and ability by the _chico,_ a +radiant boy of ten, who united in himself the functions which the +amiable inefficiency of the porters and waiters abandoned to him. + +When we came out to dinner after settling ourselves in our almost +obtrusively accessible rooms, we were convinced of the wisdom of our +choice of a hotel by finding our dear Chilians at one of the tables. We +rushed together like two kindred streams of transatlantic gaiety, and in +our mingled French, Spanish, and English possessed one another of our +doubts and fears in coming to our common conclusion. We had already seen +a Spanish gentleman whom we knew as a fellow-sufferer at Burgos, roaming +the streets of Valladolid, and in what seemed a disconsolate doubt, +interrogating the windows of our hotel; and now we learned from the +Chilians that he had been bitterly disappointed in the inn which a +patrician omnibus had borne him away to from our envious eyes at the +station. We learned that our South American compatriots had found their +own chosen hotel impossible, and were now lodged in rapturous +satisfaction under our roof. Their happiness penetrated us with a glow +of equal content, and confirmed us in the resolution always to take the +worst omnibus at a Spanish station as the sure index of the best hotel. + +The street-cars, which in Valladolid are poetically propelled through +lyre-shaped trolleys instead of our prosaic broomstick appliances, +groaned unheeded if not unheard under our windows through the night, and +we woke to find the sun on duty in our glazed balcony and the promenade +below already astir with life: not the exuberant young life of the night +before, but still sufficiently awake to be recognizable as life. A +crippled newsboy seated under one of the arcades was crying his papers; +an Englishman was looking at a plan of Valladolid in a shop window; a +splendid cavalry officer went by in braided uniform, and did not stare +so hard as they might have expected at some ladies passing in mantillas +to mass or market. In the late afternoon as well as the early morning we +saw a good deal of the military in Valladolid, where an army corps is +stationed. From time to time a company of infantry marched through the +streets to gay music, and toward evening slim young officers began to +frequent the arcades and glass themselves in the windows of the shops, +their spurs clinking on the pavement as they lounged by or stopped and +took distinguished attitudes. We speculated in vain as to their social +quality, and to this day I do not know whether "the career is open to +the talents" in the Spanish army, or whether military rank is merely the +just reward of civil rank. Those beautiful young swells in +riding-breeches and tight gray jackets approached an Italian type of +cavalry officer; they did not look very vigorous, and the common +soldiers we saw marching through the streets, largely followed by the +populace, were not of formidable stature or figure, though neat and +agreeable enough to the eye. + +While I indulge the record of these trivialities, which I am by no means +sure the reader will care for so much, I feel that it would be wrong to +let him remain as ignorant of the history of Valladolid as I was while +there. My ignorance was not altogether my fault; I had fancied easily +finding at some bookseller's under the arcade a little sketch of the +local history such as you are sure of finding in any Italian town, done +by a local antiquary of those always mousing in the city's archives. But +the bookseller's boy and then the boy's mother could not at first +imagine my wish, and when they did they could only supply me with a sort +of business directorv, full of addresses and advertisements. So instead +of overflowing with information when we set out on our morning ramble, +we meagerly knew from the guide-books that Valladolid had once been the +capital of Castile, arid after many generations of depression following +the removal of the court, had in these latest days renewed its strength +in mercantile and industrial prosperity. There are ugly evidences of the +prosperity in the windy, dusty avenues and streets of the more modern +town; but there are lanes and alleys enough, groping for the churches +and monuments in suddenly opening squares, to console the sentimental +tourist for the havoc which enterprise has made. The mind readily goes +back through these to the palmy prehistoric times from which the town +emerged to mention in Ptolemy, and then begins to work forward past +Iberian and Roman and Goth and Moor to the Castilian kings who made it +their residence in the eleventh century. The capital won its first great +distinction when Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile were +married there in 1469. Thirty-five years later these Catholic Kings, as +one had better learn at once to call them in Spain, let Columbus die +neglected if not forgotten in the house recently pulled down, where he +had come to dwell in their cold shadow; they were much occupied with +other things and they could not realize that his discovery of America +was the great glory of their reign; probably they thought the conquest +of Granada was. Later yet, by twenty years, the dreadful Philip II. was +born in Valladolid, and in 1559 a very famous _auto da fe_ wag +celebrated in the Plaza Mayor. Fourteen Lutherans were burned alive for +their heresy, and the body of a woman suspected of imperfect orthodoxy +after her death was exhumed and burned with them. In spite of such +precautions as these, and of all the pious diligence of the Holy Office, +the reader will hardly believe that there is now a Spanish Protestant +church in Valladolid; but such is the fact, though whether it derives +from the times of the Inquisition, or is a modern missionary church I do +not know. That _auto da fe_ was of the greatest possible distinction; +the Infanta Juana presided, and the universal interest was so great that +people paid a dollar and twenty-five cents a seat; money then worth five +or six times as much as now. Philip himself came to another _auto_ when +thirteen persons were burned in the same place, and he always liked +Valladolid; it must have pleased him in a different way from Escorial, +lying flat as it does on a bare plain swept, but never thoroughly +dusted, by winds that blow pretty constantly over it. + +While the Inquisition was purging the city of error its great university +was renowning it not only throughout Spain, but in France and Italy; +students frequented it from those countries, and artists came from many +parts of Europe. Literature also came in the person of Cervantes, who +seems to have followed the Spanish court in its migrations from +Valladolid to Toledo and then to Madrid. Here also came one of the +greatest characters in fiction, for it was in Valladolid that Gil Blas +learned to practise the art of medicine tinder the instruction of the +famous Dr. Sangrado. + + + + +IV + + +I put these facts at the service of the reader for what use he will +while he goes with us to visit the cathedral in Valladolid, a cathedral +as unlike that of Burgos as the severest mood of Spanish renaissance can +render it. In fact, it is the work of Herrera, the architect who made +the Escorial so grim, and is the expression in large measure of his +austere mastery. If it had ever been finished it might have been quite +as dispiriting as the Escorial, but as it has only one of the four +ponderous towers it was meant to have, it is not without its +alleviations, especially as the actual tower was rebuilt after the fall +of the original seventy years ago. The grass springs cheerfully up in +the crevices of the flagging from which the broken steps falter to the +portal, but within all is firm and solid. The interior is vast, and +nowhere softened by decoration, but the space is reduced by the huge +bulk of the choir in the center of it; as we entered a fine echo mounted +to the cathedral roof from the chanting and intoning within. When the +service ended a tall figure in scarlet crossed rapidly toward the +sacristy. It was of such imposing presence that we resolved at once it +must be the figure of a cardinal, or of an archbishop at the least. But +it proved to be one of the sacristans, and when we followed him to the +sacristy with half a dozen other sightseers, he showed us a silver +monstrance weighing a hundred and fifty pounds and decked with statites +of our first parents as they appeared before the Fall. Besides this we +saw, much against our will, a great many ecclesiastical vestments of +silk and damask richly wrought in gold and silver. But if we were +reluctant there was a little fat priest there who must have seen them +hundreds of times and had still a childish delight in seeing them again +because he had seen them so often; he dimpled and smiled, and for his +sake we pretended a joy in them which it would have been cruel to deny +him. I suppose we were then led to the sacrifice at the several side +altars, but I have no specific recollection of them; I know there was a +pale, sick-looking young girl in white who went about with her father, +and moved compassion by her gentle sorrowfulness. + +Of the University, which we visited next, I recall only the baroque +facade; tha interior was in reparation and I do not know whether it +would have indemnified us for not visiting the University of Salamanca. +That was in our list, but the perversity of the time-table forbade. You +could go to Salamanca, yes, but you could not come back except at two +o'clock in the morning; you could indeed continue on to Lisbon, but +perhaps you did not wish to see Lisbon. A like perversity of the +time-table, once universal in Spain, but now much reformed, also kept us +away from Segovia, which was on our list. But our knowledge of it +enabled us to tell a fellow-countrywoman whom we presently met in the +museum of the University, how she could best, or worst, get to that +city. Our speech gave us away to her, and she turned to us from the +other objects of interest to explain first that she was in a hotel where +she paid only six pesetas a day, but where she could get no English +explanation of the time-table for any money. She had come to Valladolid +with a friend who was going next day to Salamanca, but next day was +Sunday and she did not like to travel on Sunday, and Segovia seemed the +only alternative. We could not make out why, or if it came to that why +she should be traveling alone through Spain with such a slender +equipment of motive or object, but we perceived she was one of the most +estimable souls in the world, and if she cared more for getting to +Segovia that afternoon than for looking at the wonders of the place +where we were, we could not blame her. We had to leave her when we left +the museum in the charge of two custodians who led her, involuntary but +unresisting, to an upper chamber where there were some pictures which +she could care no more for than for the wood carvings below. We +ourselves cared so little for those pictures that we would not go to see +them. Pictures you can see anywhere, but not statuary of such singular +interest, such transcendant powerfulness as those carvings of Berruguete +and other masters less known, which held us fascinated in the lower +rooms of the museum. They are the spoil of convents in the region about, +suppressed by the government at different times, and collected here with +little relevancy to their original appeal. Some are Scriptural subjects +and some are figures of the dancers who take part in certain ceremonials +of the Spanish churches (notably the cathedral at Seville), which have a +quaint reality, an intense personal character. They are of a fascination +which I can hope to convey by no phrase of mine; but far beyond this is +the motionless force, the tremendous repose of the figures of the Roman +soldiers taken in the part of sleeping at the Tomb. These sculptures are +in wood, life-size, and painted in the colors of flesh and costume, with +every detail and of a strong mass in which the detail is lost and must +be found again by the wondering eye. Beyond all other Spanish sculptures +they seemed to me expressive of the national temperament; I thought no +other race could have produced them, and that in their return to the +Greek ideal of color in statuary they were ingenuously frank and +unsurpassably bold. + +It might have been the exhaustion experienced from the encounter with +their strenuousness that suddenly fatigued us past even the thought of +doing any more of Valladolid on foot. At any rate, when we came out of +the museum we took refuge in a corner grocery (it seems the nature of +groceries to seek corners the world over) and asked the grocer where we +could find a cab. + +The grocer was young and kind, and not so busy but he could give willing +attention to our case. He said he would send for a cab, and he called up +from his hands and knees a beautiful blond half-grown boy who was +scrubbing the floor, and despatched him on this errand, first making him +wipe the suds off his hands. The boy was back wonderfully soon to say +the cab would come for us in ten minutes, and to receive with +self-respectful appreciation the peseta which rewarded his promptness. +In the mean time we feigned a small need which we satisfied by a +purchase, and then the grocer put us chairs in front of his counter and +made us his guests while his other customers came and went. They came +oftener than they went, for our interest in them did not surpass their +interest in us. We felt that through this we reflected credit upon our +amiable host; rumors of the mysterious strangers apparently spread +through the neighborhood and the room was soon filled with people who +did not all come to buy; but those who did buy were the most, +interesting. An elderly man with his wife bought a large bottle which +the grocer put into one scale of his balance, and poured its weight in +chick-peas into the other. Then he filled the bottle with oil and +weighed it, and then he gave the peas along with it to his customers. It +seemed a pretty convention, though we could not quite make out its +meaning, unless the peas were bestowed as a sort of bonus; but the next +convention was clearer to us. An old man in black corduroy with a +clean-shaven face and a rather fierce, retired bull-fighter air, bought +a whole dried stock-fish (which the Spaniards eat instead of salt cod) +talking loudly to the grocer and at us while the grocer cut it across in +widths of two inches and folded it into a neat pocketful; then a glass +of wine was poured from a cask behind the counter, and the customer +drank it off in honor of the transaction with the effect also of +pledging us with his keen eyes; all the time he talked, and he was +joined in conversation by a very fat woman who studied us not unkindly. +Other neighbors who had gathered in had no apparent purpose but to +verify our outlandish presence and to hear my occasional Spanish, which +was worth hearing if for nothing but the effort it cost me. The grocer +accepted with dignity the popularity we had won him, and when at last +our cab arrived from Mount Ararat with the mire of the subsiding Deluge +encrusted upon it he led us out to it through the small boys who swarmed +upon us wherever we stopped or started in Valladolid; and whose bulk was +now much increased by the coming of that very fat woman from within the +grocery. As the morning was bright we proposed having the top opened, +but here still another convention of the place intervened. In Valladolid +it seems that no self-respecting cabman will open the top of his cab for +an hour's drive, and we could not promise to keep ours longer. The +grocer waited the result of our parley, and then he opened our carriage +door and bowed us away. It was charming; if he had a place on Sixth +Avenue I would be his customer as long as I lived in New York; and to +this moment I do not understand why I did not bargain with that blond +boy to come to America with us and be with us always. But there was no +city I visited in Spain where I was not sorry to leave some boy behind +with the immense rabble of boys whom I hoped never to see again. + + + + +VI + + +After this passage of real life it was not easy to sink again to the +level of art, but if we must come down it there could have been no +descent less jarring than that which left us in the exquisite _patio_ of +the College of San Gregorio, founded for poor students of theology in +the time of the Catholic Kings. The students who now thronged the place +inside and out looked neither clerical nor poverty-stricken; but I dare +say they were good Christians, and whatever their condition they were +rich in the constant vision of beauty which one sight of seemed to us +more than we merited. Perhaps the facade of the college and that of the +neighboring Church of San Pablo may be elsewhere surpassed in the sort +of sumptuous delicacy of that Gothic which gets its name of plateresque +from the silversmithing spirit of its designs; but I doubt it. The +wonderfulness of it is that it is not mechanical or monotonous like the +stucco fretting of the Moorish decoration which people rave over in +Spain, but has a strength in its refinement which comes from its +expression in the exquisitely carven marble. When this is grayed with +age it is indeed of the effect of old silver work; but the plateresque +in Valladolid does not suggest fragility or triviality; its grace is +perhaps rather feminine than masculine; but at the worst it is only the +ultimation of the decorative genius of the Gothic. It is, at any rate, +the finest surprise which the local architecture has to offer and it +leaves one wishing for more rather than less of it, so that after the +facade of San Gregorio one is glad of it again in the walls of the +_patio,_ whose staircases and galleries, with the painted wooden beams +of their ceilings, scarcely tempt the eye from it. + +We thought the front of San Pablo deserved a second visit, and we were +rewarded by finding it far lovelier than we thought. The church was +open, and when we went in we had the advantage of seeing a large +silver-gilt car moved from the high altar down the nave to a side altar +next the door, probably for use in some public procession. The tongue +of the car was pulled by a man with one leg; a half-grown boy under the +body of it hoisted it on his back and eased it along; and a monk with +his white robe tucked up into his girdle pushed it powerfully from +behind. I did not make out why so strange a team should have been +employed for the work, but the spectacle of that quaint progress was +unique among my experiences at Valladolid and of a value which I wish I +could make the reader feel with me. We ourselves were so interested in +the event that we took part in it so far as to push aside a bench that +blocked the way, and we received a grateful smile from the monk in +reward of our zeal. + +We were in the mood for simple kindness because of our stiff official +reception at the Royal Palace, which we visited in the gratification of +our passion for _patios._ It is now used for provincial or municipal +offices and guarded by sentries who indeed admitted us to the courtyard, +but would not understand our wish (it was not very articulately +expressed) to mount to the cloistered galleries which all the +guide-books united in pronouncing so noble, with their decorative busts +of the Roman Emperors and arms of the Spanish provinces. The sculptures +are by the school of Berruguete, for whom we had formed so strong a +taste at the museum; but our disappointment was not at the moment +further embittered by knowing that Napoleon resided there in 1809. We +made what we could of other _patios_ in the vicinity, especially of one +in the palace across from San Gregorio, to which the liveried porter +welcomed us, though the noble family was in residence, and allowed us to +mount the red-carpeted staircase to a closed portal in consideration of +the peseta which he correctly foresaw. It was not a very characteristic +_patio,_ bare of flower and fountain as it was, and others more fully +appointed did not entirely satisfy us. The fact is the _patio_ is to be +seen best in Andalusia, its home, where every house is built round it, +and in summer cooled and in winter chilled by it. But if we were not +willing to wait for Seville, Valladolid did what it could; and if we saw +no house with quite the _patio_ we expected we did see the house where +Philip II. was born, unless the enterprising boy who led us to it was +mistaken; in that case we were, Ophelia-like, the more deceived. + + + + +VII + + +Such things do not really matter; the guide-book's object of interest is +seldom an object of human interest; you may miss it or ignore it without +real personal loss; but if we had failed of that mystic progress of the +silver car down the nave of San Pablo we should have been really if not +sensibly poorer. So we should if we had failed of the charming +experience which awaited us in our hotel at lunch-time. When we went out +in the morning we saw a table spread the length of the long dining-room, +and now when we returned we found every chair taken. At once we surmised +a wedding breakfast, not more from the gaiety than the gravity of the +guests; and the head waiter confirmed our impression: it was indeed a +_boda._ The party was just breaking up, and as we sat down at our table +the wedding guests rose from theirs. I do not know but in any country +the women on such an occasion would look more adequate to it than the +men; at any rate, there in Spain they looked altogether superior. It was +not only that they were handsomer and better dressed, but that they +expressed finer social and intellectual quality. + +All the faces had the quiet which the Spanish face has in such degree +that the quiet seems national more than personal; but the women's faces +were oval, though rather heavily based, while the men's were squared, +with high cheek-bones, and they seemed more distinctly middle class. Men +and women had equally repose of manner, and when the women came to put +on their headgear near our corner, it was with a surface calm unbroken +by what must have been their inner excitement. They wore hats and +mantillas in about the same proportion; but the bride wore a black +mantilla and a black dress with sprigs of orange blossoms in her hair +and on her breast for the only note of white. Her lovely, gentle face +was white, of course, from the universal powder, and so were the faces +of the others, who talked in low tones around her, with scarcely more +animation than so many masks. The handsomest of them, whom we decided to +be her sister, arranged the bride's mantilla, and was then helped on +with hers by the others, with soft smiles and glances. Two little girls, +imaginably sorry the feast was over, suppressed their regret in the +tutelage of the maiden aunts and grandmothers who put up cakes in +napkins to carry home; and then the party vanished in unbroken decorum. +When they were gone we found that in studying the behavior of the bride +and her friends we had not only failed to identify the bridegroom, but +had altogether forgotten to try. + + + + +VIII + + +The terrible Torquemada dwelt for years in Valla-dolid and must there +have excogitated some of the methods of the Holy Office in dealing with +heresy. As I have noted, Ferdinand and Isabella were married there and +Philip II. was born there; but I think the reader will agree with me +that the highest honor of the city is that it was long the home of the +gallant gentleman who after five years of captivity in Algiers and the +loss of his hand in the Battle of Lepanto, wrote there, in his poverty +and neglect, the first part of a romance which remains and must always +remain one of the first if not the very first of the fictions of the +world. I mean that + + Dear son of memory, great heir of fame, + +Michael Cervantes; and I wish I could pay here that devoir to his memory +and fame which squalid circumstance forbade me to render under the roof +that once sheltered him. One can never say enough in his praise, and +even Valladolid seems to have thought so, for the city has put up a +tablet to him with his bust above it in the front of his incredible +house and done him the homage of a reverent inscription. It is a very +little house, as small as Ariosto's in Ferrara, which he said was so apt +for him, but it is not in a long, clean street like that; it is in a bad +neighborhood which has not yet outlived the evil repute it bore in the +days of Cervantes. It was then the scene of nightly brawls and in one of +these a gentleman was stabbed near the author's house. The alarm brought +Cervantes to the door and being the first to reach the dying man he was +promptly arrested, together with his wife, his two sisters, and his +niece, who were living with him and who were taken up as accessories +before the fact. The whole abomination is matter of judicial record, and +it appears from this that suspicion fell upon the gentle family (one +sister was a nun) because they were living in that infamous place. The +man whose renown has since filled the civilized world fuller even than +the name of his contemporary, Shakespeare (they died on the same day), +was then so unknown to the authorities of Valladolid that he had great +ado to establish the innocence of himself and his household. To be sure, +his _Don Quixote_ had not yet appeared, though he is said to have +finished the first part in that miserable abode in that vile region; but +he had written poems and plays, especially his most noble tragedy of +"Numancia," and he had held public employs and lived near enough to +courts to be at least in their cold shade. It is all very Spanish and +very strange, and perhaps the wonder should be that in this most +provincial of royal capitals, in a time devoted to the extirpation of +ideas, the fact that he was a poet and a scholar did not tell fatally +against him. In his declaration before the magistrates he says that his +literary reputation procured him the acquaintance of courtiers and +scholars, who visited him in that pitiable abode where the ladies of his +family cared for themselves and him with the help of one servant maid. + +They had an upper floor of the house, which stands at the base of a +stone terrace dropping from the wide, dusty, fly-blown street, where I +stayed long enough to buy a melon (I was always buying a melon in Spain) +and put it into my cab before I descended the terrace to revere the +house of Cervantes on its own level. There was no mistaking it; there +was the bust and the inscription; but it was well I bought my melon +before I ventured upon this act of piety; I should not have had the +stomach for it afterward. I was not satisfied with the outside of the +house, but when I entered the open doorway, meaning to mount to the +upper floor, it was as if I were immediately blown into the street again +by the thick and noisome stench which filled the place from some +unmentionable if not unimaginable source. + +It was like a filthy insult to the great presence whose sacred shrine +the house should have been religiously kept. But Cervantes dead was as +forgotten in Valladolid as Cervantes living had been. In some paroxysm +of civic pride the tablet had been set in the wall and then the house +abandoned to whatever might happen. I thought foul shame of Valladolid +for her neglect, and though she might have answered that her burden of +memories was more than she could bear, that she could not be forever +keeping her celebrity sweet, still I could have retorted, But Cervantes, +but Cervantes! There was only one Cervantes in the world and there never +would be another, and could not she watch over this poor once home of +his for his matchless sake? Then if Valladolid had come back at me with +the fact that Cervantes had lived pretty well all over Spain, and what +had Seville done, Cordova done, Toledo done, Madrid done, for the upkeep +of his divers sojourns more than she had done, after placing a tablet in +his house wall?--certainly I could have said that this did not excuse +her, but I must have owned that she was not alone, though she seemed +most to blame. + + + + +IX + + +Now I look back and am glad I had not consciously with me, as we drove +away, the boy who once meant to write the life of Cervantes, and who I +knew from my recollection of his idolatry of that chief of Spaniards +would not have listened to the excuses of Valladolid for a moment. All +appeared fair and noble in that Spain of his which shone with such +allure far across the snows through which he trudged morning and evening +with his father to and from the printing-office, and made his dream of +that great work the common theme of their talk. Now the boy is as +utterly gone as the father, who was a boy too at heart, but who died a +very old man many years ago; and in the place of both is another old man +trammeled in his tangled memories of Spain visited and unvisited. + +It would be a poor sort of make-believe if this survivor pretended any +lasting indignation with Valladolid because of the stench of +Cervantes's house. There are a great many very bad smells in Spain +everywhere, and it is only fair to own that a psychological change +toward Valladolid had been operating itself in me since luncheon which +Valladolid was not very specifically to blame for. Up to the time the +wedding guests left us we had said Valladolid was the most interesting +city we had ever seen, and we would like to stay there a week; then, +suddenly, we began to turn against it. One thing: the weather had +clouded, and it was colder. But we determined to be just, and after we +left the house of Cervantes we drove out to the promenades along the +banks of the Pisuerga, in hopes of a better mind, for we had read that +they were the favorite resort of the citizens in summer, and we did not +know but even in autumn we might have some glimpses of their recreation. +Our way took us sorrowfully past hospitals and prisons and barracks; and +when we came out on the promenade we found ourselves in the gloom of +close set mulberry trees, with the dust thick on the paths under them. +The leaves hung leaden gray on the boughs and there could never have +been a spear of grass along those disconsolate ways. The river was +shrunken in its bed, and where its current crept from pool to pool, +women were washing some of the rags which already hung so thick on the +bushes that it was wonderful there should be any left to wash. Squalid +children abounded, and at one point a crowd of people had gathered and +stood looking silently and motionlessly over the bank. We looked too +and on a sand-bar near the shore we saw three gendarmes standing with a +group of civilians. Between their fixed and absolutely motionless +figures lay the body of a drowned man on the sand, poorly clothed in a +workman's dress, and with his poor, dead clay-white hands stretched out +from him on the sand, and his gray face showing to the sky. Everywhere +people were stopping and staring; from one of the crowded windows of the +nearest house a woman hung with a rope of her long hair in one hand, and +in the other the brush she was passing over it. On the bridge the man +who had found the body made a merit of his discovery which he dramatized +to a group of spectators without rousing them to a murmur or stirring +them from their statuesque fixity. His own excitement in comparison +seemed indecent. + + + + +X + + +It was now three o'clock and I thought I might be in time to draw some +money on my letter of credit, at the bank which we had found standing in +a pleasant garden in the course of our stroll through the town the night +before. We had said, How charming it would be to draw money in such an +environment; and full of the romantic expectation, I offered my letter +at the window, where after a discreet interval I managed to call from +their preoccupation some unoccupied persons within. They had not a very +financial air, and I thought them the porters they really were, with +some fear that I had come after banking-hours. But they joined in +reassuring me, and told me that if I would return after five o'clock the +proper authorities would be there. + +I did not know then what late hours Spain kept in every way; but I +concealed my surprise; and I came back at the time suggested, and +offered my letter at the window with a request for ten pounds, which I +fancied I might need. A clerk took the letter and scrutinized it with a +deliberation which I thought it scarcely merited. His self-respect +doubtless would not suffer him to betray that he could not read the +English of it; and with an air of wishing to consult higher authority he +carried it to another clerk at a desk across the room. To this official +it seemed to come as something of a blow. Tie made a show of reading it +several times over, inside and out, and then from the pigeonhole of his +desk he began to accumulate what I supposed corroborative documents, or +_pieces justificatives._ When lie had amassed a heap several inches +thick, he rose and hurried out through the gate, across the hall where I +sat, into a room beyond. He returned without in any wise referring +himself to me and sat down at his desk again. The first clerk explained +to the anxious face with which I now approached him that the second +clerk had taken my letter to the director. I went back to my seat and +waited fifteen minutes longer, fifteen having passed already; then I +presented my anxious face, now somewhat indignant, to the first clerk +again. "What is the director doing with my letter?" The first clerk +referred my question to the second clerk, who answered from his place, +"He is verifying the signature." "But what signature?" I wondered to +myself, reflecting that he had as yet had none of mine. Could it be the +signature of my New York banker or my London one? I repaired once more +to the window, after another wait, and said in polite but firm +Castilian, "Do me the favor to return me my letter." A commotion of +protest took place within the barrier, followed by the repeated +explanation that the director was verifying the signature. I returned to +toy place and considered that the suspicious document which I had +presented bore record of moneys drawn in London, in Paris, in Tours, in +San Sebastian, which ought to have allayed all suspicion; then for the +last time I repaired to the window; more in anger now than in sorrow, +and gathered nay severest Spanish together for a final demand: "Do me +the favor to give me back my letter _without the pounds sterling."_ The +clerks consulted together; one of them decided to go to the director's +room, and after a dignified delay he came back with my letter, and +dashed it down before me with the only rudeness I experienced in Spain. + +I was glad to get it on any terms; it was only too probable that it +would have been returned without the money if I had not demanded it; and +I did what I could with the fact that this amusing financial +transaction, involving a total of fifty dollars, had taken place in the +chief banking-house of one of the commercial and industrial centers of +the country. Valladolid is among other works the seat of the locomotive +works of the northern railway lines, and as these machines average a +speed of twenty-five miles an hour with express trains, it seemed +strange to me that something like their rapidity should not have +governed the action of that bank director in forcing me to ask back my +discredited letter of credit. + + + + +XI + + +That evening the young voices and the young feet began to chirp again +under our sun balcony. But there had been no sun in it since noon and +presently a cold thin rain was falling and driving the promenaders under +the arcades, where they were perhaps not unhappier for being closely +massed. We missed the prettiness of the spectacle, though as yet we did +not know that it was the only one of the sort we might hope to see in +Spain, where women walk little indoors, and when they go out, drive and +increase in the sort of loveliness which may be weighed and measured. +Even under the arcades the promenade ceased early and in the adjoining +Plaza Mayor, where the _autos da fe_ once took place, the rain still +earlier made an end of the municipal music, and the dancing of the lower +ranks of the people. But we were fortunate in our Chilian friend's +representation of the dancing; he came to our table at dinner, and did +with charming sympathy a mother waltzing with her babe in arms for a +partner. + +He came to the omnibus at the end of the promenade, when we were +starting for the station next morning, not yet shaven, in his friendly +zeal to make sure of seeing us off, and we parted with confident +prophecies of meeting each other again in Madrid. We had already bidden +adieu with effusion to our landlady-sisters-and-mother, and had wished +to keep forever our own the adorable _chico_ who, when cautioned against +trying to carry a very heavy bag, valiantly jerked it to his shoulder +and made off with it to the omnibus, as if it were nothing. I do not +believe such a boy breathes out of Spain, where I hope he will grow up +to the Oriental calm of so many of his countrymen, and rest from the +toils of his nonage. At the last moment after the Chilian had left us, +we perceived that one of our trunks had been forgotten, and the _chico_ +coursed back to the hotel for it and returned with the delinquent porter +bearing it, as if to make sure of his bringing it. + +When it was put on top of the omnibus, and we were in probably +unparalleled readiness for starting to the station, at an hour when +scarcely anybody else in Valladolid was up, a mule composing a portion +of our team immediately fell down, as if startled too abruptly from a +somnambulic dream. I really do not remember how it was got to its feet +again; but I remember the anguish of the delay and the fear that we +might not be able to escape from Valladolid after all our pains in +trying for the Sud-Express at that hour; and I remember that when we +reached the station we found that the Sud-Express was forty minutes +behind time and that we were a full hour after that before starting for +Madrid. + + + + +V + +PHASES OF MADRID + + +I fancied that a kind of Gothic gloom was expressed in the black +wine-skins of Old Castile, as contrasted with the fairer color of those +which began to prevail even so little south of Burgos as Valladolid. I +am not sure that the Old Castilian wine-skins derived their blackness +from the complexion of the pigs, or that there are more pale pigs in the +south than in the north of Spain; I am sure only of a difference in the +color of the skins, which may have come from a difference in the +treatment of them. At a venture I should not say that there were more +black pigs in Old Castile than in Andalusia, as we observed them from +the train, rooting among the unpromising stubble of the wheat-lands. +Rather I should say that the prevailing pig of all the Spains was brown, +corresponding to the reddish blondness frequent among both the Visigoths +and the Moors. The black pig was probably the original, prehistoric +Iberian pig, or of an Italian strain imported by the Romans; but I do +not offer this as more than a guess. The Visigothic or Arabic pig showed +himself an animal of great energy and alertness wherever we saw him, and +able to live upon the lean of the land where it was leanest. At his +youngest he abounded in the furrows and hollows, matching his russet +with the russet of the soil and darting to and fro with the quickness of +a hare. He was always of an ingratiating humorousness and endeared +himself by an apparent readiness to enter into any joke that was going, +especially that of startling the pedestrian by his own sudden apparition +from behind a tuft of grass or withered stalk. I will not be sure, but +I think we began to see his kind as soon as we got out of Yalladolid, +when we began running through a country wooded with heavy, low-crowned +pines that looked like the stone-pines of Italy, but were probably not +the same. After twenty miles of this landscape the brown pig with pigs +of other complexions, as much guarded as possible, multiplied among the +patches of vineyard. He had there the company of tall black goats and +rather unhappy-looking black sheep, all of whom he excelled in the art +of foraging among the vines and the stubble of the surrounding +wheat-lands. After the vineyards these opened and stretched themselves +wearily, from low dull sky to low dull sky, nowise cheered in aspect by +the squalid peasants, scratching their tawny expanses with those crooked +prehistoric sticks which they use for plows in Spain. It was a dreary +landscape, but it was good to be out of Valladolid on any terms, and +especially good to be away from the station which we had left emulating +the odors of the house of Cervantes. + + + + +I + + +There had been the usual alarm about the lack of places in the +Sud-Express which we were to take at Valladolid, but we chanced getting +them, and our boldness was rewarded by getting a whole compartment to +ourselves, and a large, fat friendly conductor with an eye out for tips +in every direction. The lunch in our dining-car was for the first time +in Spain not worth the American price asked for it; everywhere else on +the Spanish trains I must testify that the meals were excellent and +abundant; and the refection may now have felt in some obscure sort the +horror of the world in which the Sud-Express seemed to have lost itself. +The scene was as alien to any other known aspect of our comfortable +planet as if it were the landscape of some star condemned for the sins +of its extinct children to wander through space in unimaginable +desolation. It seldom happens in Spain that the scenery is the same on +both sides of the railroad track, but here it was malignly alike on one +hand and on the other, though we seemed to be running along the slope of +an upland, so that the left hand was higher and the right lower. It was +more as if we were crossing the face of some prodigious rapid, whose +surges were the measureless granite boulders tossing everywhere in +masses from the size of a man's fist to the size of a house. In a wild +chaos they wallowed against one another, the greater bearing on their +tops or between them on their shoulders smaller regular or irregular +masses of the same gray stone. Everywhere among their awful shallows +grew gray live-oaks, and in among the rocks and trees spread tufts of +gray shrub. Suddenly, over the frenzy of this mad world, a storm of cold +rain broke whirling, and cold gray mists drove, blinding the windows and +chilling us where we sat within. From time to time the storm lifted and +showed again this vision of nature hoary as if with immemorial eld; if +at times we seemed to have run away from it again it closed in upon us +and held us captive in its desolation. + +With longer and longer intervals of relief it closed upon us for the +last time in the neighborhood of the gloomiest pile that ever a man +built for his life, his death and his prayer between; but before we came +to the palace-tomb of the Escorial, we had clear in the distance the +vision of the walls and roofs and towers of the medieval city of Avila. +It is said to be the perfectest relic of the Middle Ages after or +before Rothenburg, and we who had seen Rothenburg solemnly promised +ourselves to come back some day from Madrid and spend it in Avila. But +we never came, and Avila remains a vision of walls and roofs and towers +tawny gray glimpsed in a rift of the storm that again swept toward the +Spanish capital. + + + + +II + + +We were very glad indeed to get to Madrid, though dismayed by +apprehensions of the _octroi_ which we felt sure awaited us. We recalled +the behavior of the amiable officer of Valladolid who bumped our baggage +about on the roof of our omnibus, and we thought that in Madrid such an +officer could not do less than shatter our boxes and scatter their +contents in the streaming street. What was then our surprise, our joy, +to find that in Madrid there was no _octroi_ at all, and that the +amiable _mozos_ who took our things hardly knew what we meant when we +asked for it. At Madrid they scarcely wanted our tickets at the gate of +the station, and we found ourselves in the soft embrace of modernity, so +dear after the feudal rigors of Old Castile, when we mounted into a +motor-bus and sped away through the spectacular town, so like Paris, so +like Rome as to have no personality of its own except in this +similarity, and never stopped till the liveried service swarmed upon us +at the door of the Hotel Ritz. + +Here the modernity which had so winningly greeted us at the station +welcomed us more and consolingly. There was not only steam-heating, but +the steam was on! It wanted but a turn of the hand at the radiators, and +the rooms were warm. The rooms themselves responded to our appeal and +looked down into a silent inner court, deaf to the clatter of the +streets, and sleep haunted the very air, distracted, if at all, by the +instant facility and luxury of the appliances. Was it really in Spain +that a metallic tablet at the bed-head invited the wanderer to call with +one button for the _camerero,_ another for the _camerera,_ and another +for the _mozo,_ who would all instantly come speaking English like so +many angels? Were we to have these beautiful chambers for a humble two +dollars and forty cents a day; and if it was true, why did we ever leave +them and try for something ever so much worse and so very little +cheaper? Let me be frank with the reader whom I desire for my friend, +and own that we were frightened from the Eitz Hotel by the rumor of Eitz +prices. I paid my bill there, which was imagined with scrupulous +fullness to the last possible _centimo,_ and so I may disinterestedly +declare that the Eitz is the only hotel in Madrid where you get the +worth of your money, even when the money seems more but scarcely is so. +In all Spain I know of only two other hotels which may compare with it, +and these are the English hotels, one at Ronda and one at Algeciras. If +I add falteringly the hotel where we stayed a night in Toledo and the +hotel where we abode a fortnight in Seville, I heap the measure of merit +and press it down. + +We did not begin at once our insensate search for another hotel in +Madrid: but the sky had cleared and we went out into the strange capital +so uncharacteristically characteristic, to find tea at a certain cafe we +had heard of. It was in the Calle de Alcala (a name which so richly +stimulates the imagination), and it looked out across this handsome +street, to a club that I never knew the name of, where at a series of +open windows was a flare of young men in silk hats leaning out on their +elbows and letting no passing fact of the avenue escape them. It was +worth their study, and if I had been an idle young Spaniard, or an idle +old one, I would have asked nothing better than to spend my Sunday +afternoon poring from one of those windows on my well-known world of +Madrid as it babbled by. Even in my quality of alien, newly arrived and +ignorant of that world, I already felt its fascination. + +Sunday in Spain is perhaps different from other days of the week to the +Spanish sense, but to the traveler it is too like them to be +distinguishable except in that guilty Sabbath consciousness which is +probably an effect from original sin in every Protestant soul. The +casual eye could not see but that in Madrid every one seemed as much or +as little at work as on any other day. My own casual eye noted that the +most picturesquely evident thing in the city was the country life which +seemed so to pervade it. In the Calle de Alcala, flowing to the Prado +out of the Puerta del Sol, there passed a current of farm-carts and +farm-wagons more conspicuous than any urban vehicles, as they jingled +by, with men and women on their sleigh-belled donkeys, astride or atop +the heavily laden panniers. The donkeys bore a part literally leading in +all the rustic equipages, and with their superior intellect found a way +through the crowds for the string-teams of the three or four large mules +that followed them in harness. Whenever we saw a team of mules without +this sage guidance we trembled for their safety; as for horses, no team +of them attempted the difficult passage, though ox-trains seemed able to +dispense with the path-finding donkeys. + +To be sure, the horses abounded in the cabs, which were mostly bad, more +or less. It is an idiosyncrasy of the cabs in Madrid that only the open +victorias have rubber tires; if you go in a coupe you must consent to be +ruthlessly bounced over the rough pavements on wheels unsoftened. It +"follows as the night the day" that the coupe is not in favor, and that +in its conservative disuse it accumulates a smell not to be acquired out +of Spain. One such vehicle I had which I thought must have been stabled +in the house of Cervantes at Valladolid, and rushed on the Sud-Express +for my service at Madrid; the stench in it was such that after a short +drive to the house of a friend I was fain to dismiss it at a serious +loss in pesetas and take the risk of another which might have been as +bad. Fortunately a kind lady intervened with a private carriage and a +coachman shaved that very day, whereas my poor old cabman, who was of +one and the same smell as his cab, had not been shaved for three days. + + + + +III + + +This seems the place to note the fact that no Spaniard in humble life +shaves oftener than once in three days, and that you always see him on +the third day just before he has shaved. But all this time I have left +myself sitting in the cafe looking out on the club that looks out on the +Calle de Aleala, and keeping the waiter waiting with a jug of hot milk +in his hand while I convince him (such a friendly, smiling man he is, +and glad of my instruction!) that in tea one always wants the milk cold. +To him that does not seem reasonable, since one wants it hot in coffee +and chocolate; but he yields to niy prejudice, and after that he always +says, _"Ah, leche fria!"_ and we smile radiantly together in the bond of +comradery which cold milk establishes between man and man in Spain. As +yet tea is a novelty in that country, though the young English queen, +universally loved and honored, has made it the fashion in high life. +Still it is hard to overcome such a prepossession as that of hot milk in +tea, and in some places you cannot get it cold for love or money. + +But again I leave myself waiting in that cafe, where slowly, and at last +not very overwhelmingly in number, the beautiful plaster-pale Spanish +ladies gather with their husbands and have chocolate. It is a riotous +dissipation for them, though it does not sound so; the home is the +Spanish ideal of the woman's place, as it is of our anti-suffragists, +though there is nothing corresponding to our fireside in it; and the +cafe is her husband's place without her. When she walks in the street, +where mostly she drives, she walks with her eyes straight before her; to +look either to the right or left, especially if a man is on either hand, +is a superfluity of naughtiness. The habit of looking straight ahead is +formed in youth, and it continues through life; so at least it is said, +and if I cannot affirm it I will not deny it. The beautiful black eyes +so discreetly directed looked as often from mantillas as hats, even in +Madrid, which is the capital, and much infested by French fashions. You +must not believe it when any one tells you that the mantilla is going +out; it prevails everywhere, and it increases from north to south, and +in Seville it is almost universal. Hats are worn there only in driving, +but at Madrid there were many hats worn in walking, though whether by +Spanish women or by foreigners, of course one could not, though a +wayfaring man and an American, stop them to ask. + +There are more women in the street at Madrid than in the provincial +cities, perhaps because it is the capital and cosmopolitan, and perhaps +because the streets are many of them open and pleasant, though there arc +enough of them dark and narrow, too. I do not know just why the Puerta +del Sol seems so much ampler and gayer than the Calle de Alcala; it is +not really wider, but it seems more to concentrate the coming and going, +and with its high-hoteled opposition of corners is of a supreme +spectacularity. Besides, the name is so fine: what better could any city +place ask than to be called Gate of the Sun? Perpetual trams wheeze and +whistle through it; large shops face upon it; the sidewalks are thronged +with passers, and the many little streets debouching on it pour their +streams of traffic and travel into it on the right and left. It is +mainly fed by the avenues leaving the royal palace on the west, and its +eddying tide empties through the Calle de Alcala into the groves and +gardens of the Prado whence it spreads over all the drives and parks +east and north and south. + +For a capital purposed and planned Madrid is very well indeed. It has +not the symmetry which forethought gave the topography of Washington, or +the beauty which afterthought has given Paris. But it makes you think a +little of Washington, and a great deal of Paris, though a great deal +more yet of Rome. It is Renaissance so far as architecture goes, and it +is very modern Latin; so that it is of the older and the newer Rome that +it makes you think. From, time to time it seemed to me I must be in. +Rome, and I recovered myself with a pang to find I was not. Yet, as I +say, Madrid was very well indeed, and when I reflected I had to own that +I had come there on purpose to be there, and not to be in Rome, where +also I should have been so satisfied to be. + + + + +IV + + +I do not know but we chose our hotel when we left the Ritz because it +was so Italian, so Roman. It had a wide grape arbor before it, with a +generous spread of trellised roof through which dangled the grape +bunches among the leaves of the vine. Around this arbor at top went a +balustrade of marble, with fat _putti,_ or marble boys, on the corners, +who would have watched over the fruit if they had not been preoccupied +with looking like so many thousands of _putti_ in Italy. They looked +like Italian _putti_ with a difference, the difference that passes +between all the Spanish things and the Italian things they resemble. +They were coarser and grosser in figure, and though amiable enough in +aspect, they lacked the refinement, the air of pretty appeal which +Italian art learns from nature to give the faces of _putti._ Yet they +were charming, and it was always a pleasure to look at them posing in +pairs at the corners of the balustrade, and I do not know but dozing in +the hours of _siesta._ If they had been in wood Spanish art would have +known how to make them better, but in stone they had been gathering an +acceptable weather stain during the human generations they had been +there, and their plump stomachs were weather-beaten white. + +I do not know if they had been there long enough to have witnessed the +murder of Cromwell's ambassador done in our street by two Jacobite +gentlemen who could not abide his coming to honor in the land where they +were in exile from England. That must have been sometime about the +middle of the century after Philip II., bigot as he was, could not bear +the more masterful bigotry of the archbishop of Toledo, and brought his +court from that ancient capital, and declared Madrid henceforward the +capital forever; which did not prevent Philip III. from taking his court +to Valladolid and making that the capital _en titre_ when he liked. +However, some other Philip or Charles, or whoever, returned with his +court to Madrid and it has ever since remained the capital, and has +come, with many natural disadvantages, to look its supremacy. For my +pleasure I would rather live in Seville, but that would be a luxurious +indulgence of the love of beauty, and like a preference of Venice in +Italy when there was Rome to live in. Madrid is not Rome, but it makes +you think of Rome as I have said, and if it had a better climate it +would make you think of Rome still more. Notoriously, however, it has +not a good climate and we had not come at the right season to get the +best of the bad. The bad season itself was perverse, for the rains do +not usually begin in their bitterness at Madrid before November, and now +they began early in October. The day would open fair, with only a few +little white clouds in the large blue, and if we could trust other's +experience we knew it would rain before the day closed; only a morning +absolutely clear could warrant the hope of a day fair till sunset. +Shortly after noon the little white clouds would drift together and be +joined by others till they hid the large blue, and then the drops would +begin to fall. By that time the air would have turned raw and chill, and +the rain would be of a cold which it kept through the night. + +This habit of raining every afternoon was what kept us from seeing rank, +riches, and beauty in the Paseo de la Castellana, where they drive only +on fine afternoons; they now remained at home even more persistently +than we did, for with that love of the fashionable world for which I am +always blaming myself I sometimes took a cab and fared desperately forth +in pursuit of them. Only once did I seem to catch a glimpse of them, and +that once I saw a closed carriage weltering along the drive between the +trees and the trams that border it, with the coachman and footman snugly +sheltered under umbrellas on the box. This was something, though not a +great deal; I could not make out the people inside the carriage; yet it +helped to certify to me the fact that the great world does drive in the +Paseo de la Castellana and does not drive in the Paseo del Prado; that +is quite abandoned, even on the wettest days, to the very poor and +perhaps unfashionable people. + + + + +V + + +It may have been our comparative defeat with fashion in its most +distinctive moments of pleasuring (for one thing I wished to see how the +dreariness of Madrid gaiety in the Paseo de la Castellana would compare +with that of Roman gaiety on the Pincian) which made us the more +determined to see a bull-fight in the Spanish capital. We had vowed +ourselves in coming to Spain to set the Spaniards an example of +civilization by inflexibly refusing to see a bull-fight under any +circumstances or for any consideration; but it seemed to us that it was +a sort of public duty to go and see the crowd, what it was like, in the +time and place where the Spanish crowd is most like itself. We would go +and remain in our places till everybody else was placed, and then, when +the picadors and banderilleros and matadors were all ranged in the +arena, and the gate was lifted, and the bull came rushing madly in, we +would rise before he had time to gore anybody, and go inexorably away. +This union of self-indulgence and self-denial seemed almost an act of +piety when we learned that the bull-fight was to be on Sunday, and we +prepared ourselves with tickets quite early in the week. On Saturday +afternoon it rained, of course, but the worst was that it rained on +Sunday morning, and the clouds did not lift till noon. Then the glowing +concierge of our hotel, a man so gaily hopeful, so expansively promising +that I could hardly believe he was not an Italian, said that there could +not possibly be a bull-fight that day; the rain would have made the +arena so slippery that man, horse, and bull would all fall down together +in a common ruin, with no hope whatever of hurting one another. + +We gave up this bull-fight at once, but we were the more resolved to see +a bull-fight because we still owed it to the Spanish people to come away +before we had time to look at it, and we said we would certainly go at +Cordova where we should spend the next Sabbath. At Cordova we learned +that it was the closed season for bull-fighting, but vague hopes of +usefulness to the Spanish public were held out to us at Seville, the +very metropolis of bull-fighting, where the bulls came bellowing up from +their native fields athirst for the blood of the profession and the +_aficionados,_ who outnumber there the amateurs of the whole rest of +Spain. But at Seville we were told that there would be no more +bull-feasts, as the Spaniards much more preferably call the bullfights, +till April, and now we were only in October. We said, Never mind; we +would go to a bull-feast in Granada; but at Granada the season was even +more hopelessly closed. In Ronda itself, which is the heart, as Seville +is the home of the bull-feast, we could only see the inside of the empty +arena; and at Algeciras the outside alone offered itself to our vision. +By this time the sense of duty was so strong upon us that if there had +been a bull-feast we would have shared in it and stayed through till the +last _espada_ dropped dead, gored through, at the knees of the last bull +transfixed by his unerring sword; and the other _toreros,_ the +_banderilleros_ with their darts and the picadors with their +disemboweled horses, lay scattered over the blood-stained arena. Such is +the force of a high resolve in strangers bent upon a lesson of +civilization to a barbarous people when disappointed of their purpose. +But we learned too late that only in Madrid is there any bull-feasting +in the winter. In the provincial cities the bulls are dispirited by the +cold; but in the capital, for the honor of the nation, they somehow pull +themselves together and do their poor best to kill and be killed. Yet in +the capital where the zeal of the bulls, and I suppose, of the +bull-fighters, is such, it is said that there is a subtle decay in the +fashionable, if not popular, esteem of the only sport which remembers in +the modern world the gladiatorial shows of imperial Rome. It is said, +but I do not know whether it is true, that the young English queen who +has gladly renounced her nation and religion for the people who seem so +to love her, cannot endure the bloody sights of the bull-feast; and when +it comes to the horses dragging their entrails across the ring, or the +_espada_ despatching the bull, or the bull tossing a _landerillero_ in +the air she puts up her fan. It is said also that the young Spanish +king, who has shown himself such a merciful-minded youth, and seems so +eager to make the best of the bad business of being a king at all, +sympathizes with her, and shows an obviously abated interest at these +supreme moments. + +I do not know whether or not it was because we had failed with the +bull-feast that we failed to go to any sort of public entertainment in +Madrid. It certainly was in my book to go to the theater, and see some +of those modern plays which I had read so many of, and which I had +translated one of for Lawrence Barrett in the far-off days before the +flood of native American dramas now deluging our theater. That play was +"Un Drama Nueva," by Estebanez, which between us we called "Yorick's +Love" and which my very knightly tragedian made his battle-horse during +the latter years of his life. In another version Barrett had seen it +fail in New York, but its failure left him with the lasting desire to do +it himself. A Spanish friend, now dead but then the gifted and eccentric +Consul General at Quebec, got me a copy of the play from Madrid, and I +thought there was great reason in a suggestion from another friend that +it had failed because it put Shakespeare on the stage as one of its +characters; but it seemed to me that the trouble could be got over by +making the poet Heywood represent the Shakespearian epoch. I did this +and the sole obstacle to its success seemed removed. It went, as the +enthusiastic Barrett used to say, "with a shout," though to please him I +had hurt it all I could by some additions and adaptations; and though it +was a most ridiculously romantic story of the tragical loves of Yorick +(whom the Latins like to go on imagining out of Hamlet a much more +interesting and important character than Shakespeare ever meant him to +be fancied), and ought to have remained the fiasco it began, still it +gained Barrett much money and me some little. + +I was always proud of this success, and I boasted of it to the +bookseller in Madrid, whom I interested in finding me some still +moderner plays after quite failing to interest another bookseller. Your +Spanish merchant seems seldom concerned in a mercantile transaction; but +perhaps it was not so strange in the case of this Spanish bookseller +because he was a German and spoke a surprising English in response to my +demand whether he spoke any. He was the frowsiest bookseller I ever saw, +and he was in the third day of his unshavenness with a shirt-front and +coat-collar plentifully bedandruffed from his shaggy hair; but he +entered into the spirit of my affair and said if that Spanish play had +succeeded so wonderfully, then I ought to pay fifty per cent, more than +the current price for the other Spanish plays which I wanted him to get +me. I laughed with him at the joke which I found simple earnest when our +glowing concierge gave me the books next day, and I perceived that the +proposed supplement had really been paid for them on my account. I +should not now be grieving for this incident if the plays had proved +better reading than they did on experiment. Some of them were from the +Catalan, and all of them dealt with the simpler actual life of Spain; +but they did not deal impressively with it, though they seemed to me +more hopeful in conception than certain psychological plays of ten or +fifteen years ago, which the Spanish authors had too clearly studied +from Ibsen. + +They might have had their effect in the theater, but the rainy weather +had not only spoiled my sole chance of the bull-feast; the effect of it +in a stubborn cold forbade me the night air and kept me from testing any +of the new dramas on the stage, which is always giving new dramas in +Madrid. The stage, or rather the theater, is said to be truly a passion +with the Madrilenos, who go every night to see the whole or the part of +a play and do not mind seeing the same play constantly, as if it were +opera. They may not care to see the play so much as to be seen at it; +that happens in every country; but no doubt the plays have a charm which +did not impart itself from the printed page. The companies are reported +very good: but the reader must take this from me at second hand, as he +must take the general society fact. I only know that people ask you to +dinner at nine, and if they go to the theater afterward they cannot well +come away till toward one o'clock. It is after this hour that the +_tertulia,_ that peculiarly Spanish function, begins, but how long it +lasts or just what it is I do not know. I am able to report confidently, +however, that it is a species of _salon_ and that it is said to be +called a _tertulia_ because of the former habit in the guests, and no +doubt the hostess, of quoting the poet Tertullian. It is of various +constituents, according as it is a fashionable, a literary, or an +artistic _tertulia,_ or all three with an infusion of science. +Oftenest, I believe, it is a domestic affair and all degrees of +cousinship resort to it with brothers and sisters and uncles, who meet +with the pleasant Latin liking of frequent meetings among kindred. In +some cases no doubt it is a brilliant reunion where lively things are +said; in others it may be dull; in far the most cases it seems to be +held late at night or early in the morning. + + + + +VI + + +It was hard, after being shut up several days, that one must not go out +after nightfall, and if one went out by day, one must go with closed +lips and avoid all talking in the street under penalty of incurring the +dreaded pneumonia of Madrid. Except for that dreaded pneumonia, I +believe the air of Madrid is not so pestilential as it has been +reported. Public opinion is beginning to veer in favor of it, just as +the criticism which has pronounced Madrid commonplace and unpicturesque +because it is not obviously old, is now finding a charm in it peculiar +to the place. Its very modernity embodies and imparts the charm, which +will grow as the city grows in wideness and straightness. It is in the +newer quarter that it recalls Rome or the newer quarters of Rome; but +there is an old part of it that recalls the older part of Naples, though +the streets are not quite so narrow nor the houses so high. There is +like bargaining at the open stands with the buyers and sellers +chaffering over them; there is a likeness in the people's looks, too, +but when it comes to the most characteristic thing of Naples, Madrid is +not in it for a moment. I mean the bursts of song which all day long and +all night long you hear in Naples; and this seems as good a place as any +to say that to my experience Spain is a songless land. We had read much +of the song and dance there, but though the dance might be hired the +song was never offered for love or money. To be sure, in Toledo, once, a +woman came to her door across the way under otir hotel window and sang +over the slops she emptied into the street, but then she shut the door +and we heard her no more. In Cprdova there was as brief a peal of music +from a house which we passed, and in Algeciras we heard one short sweet +strain from a girl whom we could not see behind her lattice. Besides +these chance notes we heard no other by any chance. But this is by no +means saying that there is not abundant song in Spain, only it was kept +quiet; I suppose that if we had been there in the spring instead of the +fall we should at least have heard the birds singing. In Madrid there +were not even many street cries; a few in the Puerta del Sol, yes; but +the peasants who drove their mule-teams through the streets scarcely +lifted their voices in reproach or invitation; they could trust the wise +donkeys that led them to get them safely through the difficult places. +There was no audible quarreling among the cabmen, and when you called a +cab it was useless to cry "Heigh!" or shake your umbrella; you made play +with your thumb and finger in the air and sibilantly whispered; +otherwise the cabman ignored you and went on reading his newspaper. The +cabmen of Madrid are great readers, much greater, I am sorry to say, +than I was, for whenever I bought a Spanish paper I found it extremely +well written. Now and then I expressed my political preferences in +buying _El Liberal_ which I thought very able; even _El Imparcial_ I +thought able, though it is less radical than _El Liberal,_ a paper which +is published simultaneously in Madrid, with local editions in several +provincial cities. + +For all the street silence there seemed to be a great deal of noise, +which I suppose came from the click of boots on the sidewalks and of +hoofs in roadways and the grind and squeal of the trams, with the harsh +smiting of the unrubbered tires of the closed cabs on the rough granite +blocks of the streets. But there are asphalted streets in Madrid where +the sound of the hoofs and wheels is subdued, and the streets rough and +smooth are kept of a cleanliness which would put the streets of New York +to shame if anything could. Ordinarily you could get cabs anywhere, but +if you wanted one very badly, when remote from a stand, there was more +than one chance that a cab marked _Libre_ would pass you with lordly +indifference. As for motor taxi-cabs there are none in the city, and at +Cook's they would not take the responsibility of recommending any +automobiles for country excursions. + + + + +VII + + +I linger over these sordid details because I must needs shrink before +the mention of that incomparable gallery, the Museo del Prado. I am +careful not to call it the greatest gallery in the world, for I think of +what the Louvre, the Pitti, and the National Gallery are, and what our +own Metropolitan is going to be; but surely the Museo del Prado is +incomparable for its peculiar riches. It is part of the autobiographical +associations with my Spanish travel that when John Hay, who was not yet, +by thirty or forty years, the great statesman he became, but only the +breeziest of young Secretaries of Legation, just two weeks from his post +in Madrid, blew surprisingly into my little carpenter's box in Cambridge +one day, he boasted almost the first thing that the best Titians in the +world were in the Prado galleries. I was too lately from Venice in 1867 +not to have my inward question whether there could be anywhere a better +Titian than the "Assumption," but I loved Hay too much to deny him +openly. I said that I had no doubt of it, and when the other day I went +to the Prado it was with the wish of finding him perfectly right, +triumphantly right. I had been from the first a strong partisan of +Titian, and in many a heated argument with Ruskin, unaware of our +controversy, I had it out with that most prejudiced partisan of +Tintoretto. I always got the better of him, as one does in such +dramatizations, where one frames one's opponent's feeble replies for +him; but now in the Prado, sadly and strangely enough, I began to wonder +if Ruskin might not have tacitly had the better of me all the time. If +Hay was right in holding that the best Titians in the world were in the +Prado, then I was wrong in having argued for Titian against Tintoretto +with Ruskin. I could only wish that I had the "Assumption" there, or +some of those senators whose portraits I remembered in the Academy at +Venice. The truth is that to my eye he seemed to weaken before the +Spanish masters, though I say this, who must confess that I failed to +see the room of his great portraits. The Italians who hold their own +with the Spaniards are Tintoretto and Veronese; even Murillo was more +than a match for Titian in such pictures of his as I saw (I must own +that I did not see the best, or nearly all), though properly speaking +Murillo is to be known at his greatest only in Seville. + +But Velasquez, but Velasquez! In the Prado there is no one else present +when he is by, with his Philips and Charleses, and their "villainous +hanging of the nether lip," with his hideous court dwarfs and his pretty +princes and princesses, his grandees and jesters, his allegories and +battles, his pastorals and chases, which fitly have a vast salon to +themselves, not only that the spectator may realize at once the rich +variety and abundance of the master, but that such lesser lights as +Rubens, Titian, Correggio, Giorgione, Tintoretto, Veronese, Rembrandt, +Zurbaran, El Greco, Murillo, may not be needlessly dimmed by his +surpassing splendor. I leave to those who know painting from the +painter's art to appreciate the technical perfection of Velasquez; I +take my stand outside of that, and acclaim its supremacy in virtue of +that reality which all Spanish art has seemed always to strive for and +which in Velasquez it incomparably attains. This is the literary quality +which the most unteclmical may feel, and which is not clearer to the +connoisseur than to the least unlearned. + +After Velasquez in the Prado we wanted Goya, and more and more Goya, who +is as Spanish and as unlike Velasquez as can very well be. There was not +enough Goya abovestairs to satisfy us, but in the Goya room in the +basement there was a series of scenes from Spanish life, mostly frolic +campestral things, which he did as patterns for tapestries and which +came near being enough in their way: the way of that reality which is so +far from the reality of Velasquez. There, striving with their +strangeness, we found a young American husband and wife who said they +were going to Egypt, and seemed so anxious to get out of Spain that they +all but asked us which turning to take. They had a Baedeker of 1901. +which they had been deceived in at New York as the latest edition, and +they were apparently making nothing of the Goyas and were as if lost +down there in the basement. They were in doubt about going further in a +country which had inveigled them from Gibraltar as far as its capital. +They advised with us about Burgos, of all places, and when we said the +hotels in Burgos were very cold, they answered, Well they had thought +so; and the husband asked, Spain was a pretty good place to cut out, +wasn't it? The wife expected that they would find some one in Egypt who +spoke English; she had expected they would speak French in Spain, but +had been disappointed. They had left their warm things at Gibraltar and +were almost frozen already. They were as good and sweet and nice as they +could be, and we were truly sorry to part with them and leave them to +what seemed to be a mistake which they were not to blame for. + +I wish that all Europeans and all Europeanized Americans knew how to +value such incorruptible con-nationals, who would, I was sure, carry +into the deepest dark of Egypt and over the whole earth undimmed the +light of our American single-heartedness. I would have given something +to know from just which kind country town and companionable commonwealth +of our Union they had come, but I would not have given much, for I knew +that they could have come from almost any. In their modest satisfaction +with our own order of things, our language, our climate, our weather, +they would not rashly condemn those of other lands, but would give them +a fair chance; and, if when they got home again, they would have to +report unfavorably of the Old World to the Board of Trade or the Woman's +Club, it would not be without intelligent reservations, even generous +reservations. They would know much more than they knew before they came +abroad, and if they had not seen Europe distinctly, but in a glass +darkly, still they would have seen it and would be the wiser and none +the worse for it. They would still be of their shrewd, pure American +ideals, and would judge their recollections as they judged their +experiences by them; and I wish we were all as confirmed in our fealty +to those ideals. + +They were not, clearly enough, of that yet older fashion of Americans +who used to go through European galleries buying copies of the +masterpieces which the local painters were everywhere making. With this +pair the various postal-card reproductions must have long superseded the +desire or the knowledge of copies, and I doubt if many Americans of any +sort now support that honored tradition. Who, then, does support it? The +galleries of the Prado seem as full of copyists as they could have been +fifty years ago, and many of them were making very good copies. _I_ wish +I could say they were working as diligently as copyists used to work, +but copyists are now subject to frequent interruptions, not from the +tourists but from one another. They used to be all men, mostly grown +gray in their pursuit, but now they are both men and women, and younger +and the women are sometimes very pretty. In the Prado one saw several +pairs of such youth conversing together, forgetful of everything around +them, and on terms so very like flirtatious that they could not well be +distinguished from them. They were terms that other Spanish girls could +enjoy only with a wooden lattice and an iron grille between them and the +_novios_ outside their windows; and no tourist of the least heart could +help rejoicing with them. In the case of one who stood with her little +figure slanted and her little head tilted, looking up into the charmed +eyes of a tall _rubio,_ the tourist could not help rejoicing with the +young man too. + +The day after our day in the Prado we found ourselves in the Museum of +Modern Art through the kind offices of our mistaken cabman when we were +looking for the Archaeological Museum. But we were not sorry, for some +of the new or newer pictures and sculptures were well worth seeing, +though we should never have tried for them. The force of the masters +which the ideals of the past held in restraint here raged in unbridled +excess: but if I like that force so much, why do I say excess? The new +or newer Spanish art likes an immense canvas, say as large as the side +of a barn, and it chooses mostly a tragical Spanish history in which it +riots with a young sense of power brave to see. There were a dozen of +those mighty dramas which I would have liked to bring away with me if I +had only had a town hall big enough to put them into after I got them +home. There were sculptures as masterful and as mighty as the pictures, +but among the paintings there was one that seemed to subdue all the +infuriate actions to the calm of its awful repose. This was Gisbert's +"Execution of Torrejos and his Companions," who were shot at Malaga in +1830 for a rising in favor of constitutional government. One does not, +if one is as wise as I, attempt to depict pictures, and I leave this +most heroic, most pathetic, most heart-breaking, most consoling +masterpiece for my reader to go and see for himself; it is almost worth +going as far as Madrid to see. Never in any picture do I remember the +like of those sad, brave, severe faces of the men standing up there to +be shot, where already their friends lay dead at their feet. A tumbled +top-hat in the foreground had an effect awfuller than a tumbled head +would have had. + + + + +VIII + + +Besides this and those other histories there were energetic portraits +and vigorous landscapes in the Modern Museum, where if we had not been +bent so on visiting the Archaeological Museum, we would willingly have +spent the whole morning. But we were determined to see the Peruvian and +Mexican antiquities which we believed must be treasured up in it; and +that we might not fail of finding it, I gave one of the custodians a +special peseta to take us out on the balcony and show us exactly how to +get to it. He was so precise and so full in. his directions that we +spent the next half-hour in wandering fatuously round the whole region +before we stumbled, almost violently, upon it immediately back of the +Modern Museum. Will, it be credited that it was then hardly worth seeing +for the things we meant to see? The Peruvian and Mexican antiquities +were so disappointing that we would hardly look at the Etruscan, Greek, +and Roman things which it was so much richer in. To be sure, we had seen +and overseen the like of these long before in Italy; but they were +admirably arranged in this museum, so that without the eager help of the +custodians (which two cents would buy at any turn) we could have found +pleasure in them, whereas the Aztec antiquities were mostly copies in +plaster and the Inca jewelry not striking. + +Before finding the place we had had the help of two policemen and one +newsboy and a postman in losing ourselves in the Prado where we mostly +sought for it, and with difficulty kept ourselves from being thrust into +the gallery there. In Spain a man, or even a boy, does not like to say +he does not know where a place is; he is either too proud or too polite +to do it, and he will misdirect you without mercy. But the morning was +bright, and almost warm, and we should have looked forward to weeks of +sunny weather if our experience had not taught us that it would rain in +the afternoon, and if greater experience than ours had not instructed us +that there would be many days of thick fog now before the climate of +Madrid settled itself to the usual brightness of February. We had time +to note again in the Paseo Castellana, which is the fashionable drive, +that it consists of four rows of acacias and tamarisks and a stretch of +lawn, with seats beside it; the rest is bare grasslessness, with a +bridle-path on one side and a tram-line on the other. If it had been +late afternoon the Paseo would have been filled with the gay world, but +being the late forenoon we had to leave it well-nigh unpeopled and go +back to our hotel, where the excellent midday breakfast merited the best +appetite one could bring to it. + +In fact, all the meals of our hotel were good, and of course they were +only too superabundant. They were pretty much what they were everywhere +in Spain, and they were better everywhere than they were in Granada +where we paid most for them. They were appetizing, and not of the +cooking which the popular superstition attributes to Spain, where the +hotel cooking is not rank with garlic or fiery with pepper, as the +untraveled believe. At luncheon in our Madrid hotel we had a liberal +choice of eggs in any form, the delicious _arroz a la Valencia,_ a kind +of risotto, with saffron to savor and color it; veal cutlets or +beefsteak, salad, cheese, grapes, pears, and peaches, and often melon; +the ever-admirable melon of Spain, which I had learned to like in +England. At dinner there were soup, fish, entree, roast beef, lamb, or +poultry, vegetables, salad, sweet, cheese, and fruit; and there was +pretty poor wine _ad libitum_ at both meals. For breakfast there was +good and true (or true enough) coffee with rich milk, which if we +sometimes doubted it to be goat's milk we were none the worse if none +the wiser for, as at dinner we were not either if we unwittingly ate kid +for lamb. + +There were not many people in the hotel, but the dining-room was filled +by citizens who came in with the air of frequenters. They were not +people of fashion, as we readily perceived, but kindly-looking +mercantile folk, and ladies painted as white as newly calcimined house +walls; and all gravely polite. There was one gentleman as large round as +a hogshead, with a triple arrangement of fat at the back of his neck +which was fascinating. He always bowed when we met (necessarily with his +whole back) and he ate with an appetite proportioned to his girth. I +could wish still to know who and what he was, for he was a person very +much to my mind. So was the head waiter, dark, silent, clean-shaven, who +let me use my deplorable Spanish with him, till in the last days he came +out with some very fair English which he had been courteously concealing +from me. He looked own brother to the room-waiter in our corridor, whose +companionship I could desire always to have. One could not be so +confident of the sincerity of the little _camarera_ who slipped out of +the room with a soft, sidelong "_De nada"_ at one's thanks for the hot +water in the morning; but one could stake one's life on the goodness of +this _camarero._ He was not so tall as his leanness made him look; he +was of a national darkness of eyes and hair which as imparted to his +tertian clean-shavenness was a deep blue. He spoke, with a certain +hesitation, a beautiful Castilian, delicately lisping the sibilants and +strongly throating the gutturals; and what he said you could believe. He +never was out of the way when wanted; he darkled with your boots and +shoes in a little closet next your door, and came from it with the +morning coffee and rolls. In a stress of frequentation he appeared in +evening dress in the dining-room at night, and did honor to the place; +but otherwise he was to be seen only in our corridor, or in the cold, +dark chamber at the stair head where the _camareras_ sat sewing, kept in +check by his decorum. Without being explicitly advised of the fact, I am +sure he was the best of Catholics, and that he would have burnt me for a +heretic if necessary; but he would have done it from his conscience and +for my soul's good after I had recanted. He seldom smiled, but when he +did you could see it was from his heart. + +His contrast, his very antithesis, the joyous concierge, was always +smiling, and was every way more like an Italian than a Spaniard. He +followed us into the wettest Madrid weather with the sunny rays of his +temperament, and welcomed our returning cab with an effulgence that +performed the effect of an umbrella in the longish walk from the +curbstone to the hotel door, past the grape arbor whose fruit ripened +for us only in a single bunch, though he had so confidently prophesied +our daily pleasure in it. He seemed at first to be the landlord, and +without reference to higher authority he gave us beautiful rooms +overlooking the bacchanal vine which would have been filled with +sunshine if the weather had permitted. When he lapsed into the +concierge, he got us, for five pesetas, so deep and wide a wood-box, +covered with crimson cloth, that he was borne out by the fact in +declaring that the wood in it would last us as long as we stayed; it was +oak wood, hard as iron, and with the bellows that accompanied it we blew +the last billet of it into a solid coal by which we drank our last +coffee in that hotel. His spirit, his genial hopefulness, reconciled us +to the infirmities of the house during the period of transition +beginning for it and covering our stay. It was to be rebuilt on a scale +out-Ritzing the Ritz; but in the mean while it was not quite the Ritz. +There was a time when the elevator-shaft seemed to have tapped the awful +sources of the smell in the house of Cervantes at Valladolid, but I do +not remember what blameless origin the concierge assigned to the odor, +or whether it had anything to do with the horses and the hens which a +chance-opened back door showed us stabled in the rear of the hotel's +grandiose entrance. + +Our tourist clientele, thanks I think to the allure of our concierge for +all comers, was most respectable, though there was no public place for +people to sit but a small reading-room colder than the baths of Apollo. +But when he entered the place it was as if a fire were kindled in the +minute stove never otherwise heated, and the old English and French +newspapers freshened themselves up to the actual date as nearly as they +could. We were mostly, perhaps, Spanish families come from our several +provinces for a bit of the season which all Spanish families of civil +condition desire more or less of: lean, dark fathers, slender, +white-stuccoed daughters, and fat, white-stuccoed mothers; very +still-faced, and grave-mannered. We were also a few English, and from +time to time a few Americans, but I believe we were not, however worthy, +very great-world. The concierge who had so skilfully got us together +was instant in our errands and commissions, and when it came to two of +us being shut up with colds brought from Burgos it vas he who +supplemented the promptness of the apothecaries in sending our medicines +and coming himself at times to ask after our welfare. + + + + +IX + + +In a strange country all the details of life are interesting, and we +noticed with peculiar interest that Spain was a country where the +prescriptions were written in the vulgar tongue instead of the little +Latin in which prescriptions are addressed to the apothecaries of other +lands. We were disposed to praise the faculty if not the art for this, +but our doctor forbade. He said it was because the Spanish apothecaries +were so unlearned that they could not read even so little Latin as the +shortest prescription contained. Still I could not think the custom a +bad one, though founded on ignorance, and I do not see why it should not +have made for the greater safety of those who took the medicine if those +who put it up should follow a formula in their native tongue. I know +that at any rate we found the Spanish medicines beneficial and were +presently suffered to go out-of-doors, but with those severe injunctions +against going out after nightfall or opening our lips when we went out +by day. It was rather a bother, but it was fine to feel one's self in +the classic Madrid tradition of danger from pneumonia and to be of the +dignified company of the Spanish gentlemen whom we met with the border +of their cloaks over their mouths; like being a character in a _capa y +espada_ drama. + +There was almost as little acted as spoken drama in the streets. I have +given my impression of the songlessness of Spain in Madrid as elsewhere, +but if there was no street singing there was often street playing by +pathetic bands of blind minstrels with guitars and mandolins. The blind +abound everywhere in Spain in that profession of street beggary which I +always encouraged, believing as I do that comfort in this unbalanced +world cannot be too constantly reminded of misery. As the hunchbacks are +in Italy, or the wooden peg-legged in England, so the blind are in Spain +for number. I could not say how touching the sight of their +sightlessness was, or how the remembrance of it makes me wish that I had +carried more coppers with me when I set out. I would gladly authorize +the reader when he goes to Madrid to do the charity I often neglected; +he will be the better man, or even woman, for it; and he need not mind +if his beneficiary is occasionally unworthy; he may be unworthy himself; +I am sure I was. + +But the Spanish street is rarely the theatrical spectacle that the +Italian street nearly always is. Now and then there was a bit in Madrid +which one would be sorry to have missed, such as the funeral of a civil +magistrate, otherwise unknown to me, which I saw pass my cafe window: a +most architectural black hearse, under a black roof, drawn by eight +black horses, sable-plumed. The hearse was open at the sides, with the +coffin fully showing, and a gold-laced _chapeau bras_ lying on it. +Behind came twenty or twenty-five gentlemen on foot in the modern +ineffectiveness of frock-coats and top-hats, and after them eight or ten +closed carriages. The procession passed without the least notice from +the crowd, which I saw at other times stirred to a flutter of emulation +in its small boys by companies of infantry marching to the music of +sharply blown bugles. The men were handsomer than Italian soldiers, but +not so handsome as the English, and in figure they were not quite the +deplorable pigmies one often sees in France. Their bugles, with the +rhythmical note which the tram-cars sound, and the guitars and mandolins +of the blind minstrels, made the only street music I remember in Madrid. + +Between the daily rains, which came in the afternoon, the sun was +sometimes very hot, but it was always cool enough indoors. The indoors +interests were not the art or story of the churches. The intensest +Catholic capital in Christendom is in fact conspicuous in nothing more +than the reputed uninterestingness of its churches. I went into one of +them, however, with a Spanish friend, and I found it beautiful, most +original, and most impressive for its architecture and painting, but I +forget which church it was. We were going rather a desultory drive +through those less frequented parts of the city which I have mentioned +as like a sort of muted Naples: poor folk living much out-of-doors, +buying and selling at hucksters' stands and booths, and swarming about +the chief market, where the guilty were formerly put to death, but the +innocent are now provisioned. Outside the market was not attractive, and +what it was within we did not look to see. We went rather to satisfy my +wish to see whether the Manzanares is as groveling a stream as the +guide-books pretend in their effort to give a just idea of the natural +disadvantages of Madrid, as the only great capital without an adequate +river. But whether abetted by the arts of my friend or not, the +Manzanares managed to conceal itself from me; when we left our carriage +and went to look for it, I saw only some pretty rills and falls which it +possibly fed and which lent their beauty to the charming up and down +hill walks, now a public pleasaunce, but formerly the groves and gardens +of the royal palace. Our talk in Spanish from him and Italian from me +was of Tolstoy and several esthetic and spiritual interests, and when we +remounted and drove back to the city, whom should I see, hard by the +King's palace, but those dear Chilians of my heart whom we had left at +Valladolid--husband, wife, sister, with the addition of a Spanish lady +of very acceptable comeliness, in white gloves, and as blithe as they. +In honor of the capital the other ladies wore white gloves too, but the +husband and brother still kept the straw hat which I had first known him +in at San Sebastian, and which I hope yet to know him by in New York. It +was a glad clash of greetings which none of us tried to make coherent or +intelligible, and could not if we had tried. They acclaimed their hotel, +and I ours; but on both sides I dare say we had our reserves; and then +we parted, secure that the kind chances of travel would bring us +together again somewhere. + +I did not visit the palace, but the Royal Armory I had seen two days +before on a gay morning that had not yet sorrowed to the afternoon's +rain. At the gate of the palace I fell into the keeping of one of the +authorized guides whom I wish I could identify so that I could send the +reader to pay him the tip I came short in. It is a pang to think of the +repressed disappointment in his face when in a moment of insensate +sparing I gave him the bare peseta to which he was officially entitled, +instead of the two or three due his zeal and intelligence; and I +strongly urge my readers to be on their guard against a mistaken +meanness like mine. I can never repair that, for if I went back to the +Royal Armory I should not know him by sight, and if I sought among the +guides saying I was the stranger who had behaved in that shabby sort, +how would that identify me among so many other shabby strangers? He had +the intelligence to leave me and the constant companion of these travels +to ourselves as we went about that treasury of wonders, but before we +got to the armory he stayed us with a delicate gesture outside the court +of the palace till a troop for the guard-mounting had gone in. Then he +led us across the fine, beautiful quadrangle to the door of the museum, +and waited for us there till we came out. By this time the space was +brilliant with the confronted bodies of troops, those about to be +relieved of guard duty, and those come to relieve them, and our guide +got us excellent places where we could see everything and yet be out of +the wind which was beginning to blow cuttingly through the gates and +colonnades. There were all arms of the service--horse, foot, and +artillery; and the ceremony, with its pantomime and parley, was much +more impressive than the changing of the colors which I had once seen at +Buckingham Palace. The Spanish privates took the business not less +seriously than the British, and however they felt the Spanish officers +did not allow themselves to look bored. The marching and countermarching +was of a refined stateliness, as if the pace were not a goose step but +a peacock step; and the music was of an exquisitely plaintive and tender +note, which seemed to grieve rather than exult; I believe it was the +royal march which they were playing, but I am not versed in _such_ +matters. Nothing could have been fitter than the quiet beauty of the +spectacle, opening through the westward colonnade to the hills and woods +of the royal demesne, with yellowing and embrowning trees that billowed +from distance to distance. Some day these groves and forests must be for +the people's pleasure, as all royal belongings seem finally to be; and +in the mean time I did not grudge the landscape to the young king and +queen who probably would not have grudged it to me. Our guide valued +himself upon our admiration of it; without our special admiration he +valued himself upon the impressive buildings of the railway station in +the middle distance. I forget whether he followed us out of the +quadrangle into the roadway where we had the advantage of some +picturesque army wagons, and some wagoners in red-faced jackets and red +trousers, and top-boots with heavy fringes of leathern strings. Yet it +must have been he who made us aware of a high-walled inclosure where +soldiers found worthy of death by court martial could be conveniently +shot; though I think we discovered for ourselves the old woman curled up +out of the wind in a sentry-box, and sweetly asleep there while the boys +were playing marbles on the smooth ground before it. I must not omit the +peanut-boaster in front of the palace; it was in the figure of an ocean +steamer, nearly as large as the _Lusitania,_ and had smoke coming out +of the funnel, with rudder and screw complete and doll sailors climbing +over the rigging. + +But it is impossible to speak adequately of the things in that wonderful +armory. If the reader has any pleasure in the harnesses of Spanish kings +and captains, from the great Charles the Fifth down through all the +Philips and the Charleses, he can glut it there. Their suits begin +almost with their steel baby clothes, and adapt themselves almost to +their senile decrepitude. There is the horse-litter in which the great +emperor was borne to battle, and there is the sword which Isabella the +great queen wore; and I liked looking at the lanterns and the flags of +the Turkish galleys from the mighty sea-fight cf Lepanto, and the many +other trophies won from the Turks. The pavilion of Francis I. taken at +Pavia was of no secondary interest, and everywhere was personal and +national history told in the weapons and the armor of those who made the +history. Perhaps some time the peoples will gather into museums the pens +and pencils and chisels of authors and artists, and the old caps and +gowns they wore, or the chairs they sat in at their work, or the pianos +and violoncellos of famous musicians, or the planes of surpassing +carpenters, or the hammers of eminent ironworkers; but these things will +never be so picturesque as the equipments with which the military heroes +saved their own lives or took others'. We who have never done either +must not be unreasonable or impatient. It will be many a long century +yet before we are appreciated at the value we now set upon ourselves. In +the mean while we do not have such a bad time, and we are not so easily +forgotten as some of those princes and warriors. + + + + +XI + + +One of the first errors of our search for the Archaeological Museum, +promoted by the mistaken kindness of people we asked the way, found us +in the Academy of Fine Arts, where in the company of a fat and flabby +Rubens (Susanna, of course, and those filthy Elders) we chanced on a +portrait of Goya by himself: a fine head most takingly shrewd. But there +was another portrait by him, of the ridiculous Godoy, Prince of the +Peace, a sort of handsome, foolish fleshy George Fourthish person +looking his character and history: one of the miost incredible parasites +who ever fattened on a nation. This impossible creature, hated more +than feared, and despised more than hated, who misruled a generous +people for twenty-five years, throughout the most heroic period of their +annals, the low-born paramour of their queen and the beloved friend of +the king her husband, who honored and trusted him with the most pathetic +single-hearted and simple-minded devotion, could not look all that he +was and was not; but in this portrait by Goya he suggested his +unutterable worthlessness: a worthlessness which you can only begin to +realize by successively excluding all the virtues, and contrasting it +with the sort of abandon of faith on the part of the king; this in the +common imbecility, the triune madness of the strange group, has its +sublimity. In the next room are two pieces of Goya's which recall in +their absolute realism another passage of Spanish history with +unparalleled effect. They represent, one the accused heretics receiving +sentence before a tribunal of the Inquisition, and the other the +execution of the sentence, where the victims are mocked by a sort of +fools' caps inscribed with the terms of their accusal. Their faces are +turned on the spectator, who may forget them if he can. + +I had the help of a beautiful face there which Goya had also painted: +the face of Moratin, the historian of the Spanish drama whose book had +been one of the consolations of exile from Spain in my Ohio village. +That fine countenance rapt me far from where I stood, to the village, +with its long maple-shaded summer afternoons, and its long lamp-lit +winter nights when I was trying to find my way through Moratin's history +of the Spanish drama, and somehow not altogether failing, so that +fragments of the fact still hang about me. I wish now I could find the +way back through it, or even to it, but between me and it there are so +many forgotten passes that it would be hopeless trying. I can only +remember the pride and joy of finding my way alone through it, and +emerging from time to time into the light that glimmered before me. I +cannot at all remember whether it was before or after exploring this +history that I ventured upon the trackless waste of a volume of the +dramatists themselves, where I faithfully began with the earliest and +came down to those of the great age when Cervantes and Calderon and Lope +de Vega were writing the plays. It was either my misfortune that I read +Lope and not Calderon, or that I do not recall reading Calderon at all, +and know him only by a charming little play of Madrid life given ten or +fifteen years ago by the pupils of the Dramatic Academy in New York. My +lasting ignorance of this master was not for want of knowing how great +he was, especially from Lowell, who never failed to dwell on it when the +talk was of Spanish literature. The fact is I did not get much pleasure +out of Lope, but I did enjoy the great tragedy of Cervantes, and such of +his comedies as I found in that massive volume. + +I did not realize, however, till I saw that play of Calderon's, in New +York, how much the Spanish drama lias made Madrid its scene; and until +one knows modern Spanish fiction one cannot know how essentially the +incongruous city is the capital of the Spanish imagination. Of course +the action of Gil Bias largely passes there, but Gil Blas in only +adoptively a Spanish novel, and the native picaresque story is oftener +at home in the provinces; but since Spanish fiction has come to full +consciousness in the work of the modern masters it has resorted more and +more to Madrid. If I speak only of Galdos and Valdes by name, it is +because I know them best as the greatest of their time; but I fancy the +allure of the capital has been felt by every other modern more or less; +and if I were a Spanish author I should like to put a story there. If I +were a Spaniard at all, I should like to live there a part of the year, +or to come up for some sojourn, as the real Spaniards do. In such an +event I should be able to tell the reader more about Madrid than I now +know. I should not be poorly keeping to hotels and galleries and streets +and the like surfaces of civilization; but should be saying all sorts of +well-informed and surprising things about my fellow-citizens. As it is I +have tried somewhat to say how I think they look to a stranger, and if +it is not quite as they have looked to other strangers I do not insist +upon my own stranger's impression. There is a great choice of good books +about Spain, so that I do not feel bound to add to them with anything +like finality. + +I have tried to give a sense of the grand-opera effect of the street +scene, but I have record of only one passage such as one often sees in +Italy where moments of the street are always waiting for transfer to the +theater. A pair had posed themselves, across the way from our hotel, +against the large closed shutter of a shop which made an admirable +background. The woman in a black dress, with a red shawl over her +shoulders, stood statuesquely immovable, confronting the middle-class +man who, while people went and came about them, poured out his mind to +her, with many frenzied gestures, but mostly using one hand for +emphasis. He seemed to be telling something rather than asserting +himself or accusing her; portraying a past fact or defining a situation; +and she waited immovably silent till he had finished. Then she began and +warmed to her work, but apparently without anger or prejudice. She +talked herself out, as he had talked himself out. He waited and then he +left her and crossed to the other corner. She called after him as he +kept on down the street. She turned away, but stopped, and turned again +and called after him till he passed from sight. Then she turned once +more and went her own way. Nobody minded, any more than if they had been +two unhappy ghosts invisibly and inaudibly quarreling, but I remained, +and remain to this day, afflicted because of the mystery of their +dispute. + +We did not think there were so many boys, proportionately, or boys let +loose, in Madrid as in the other towns we had seen, and we remarked to +that sort of foreign sojourner who is so often met in strange cities +that the children seemed like little men and women. "Yes," he said, "the +Spaniards are not children until they are thirty or forty, and then they +never grow up." It was perhaps too epigrammatic, but it may have caught +at a fact. From another foreign sojourner I heard that the Catholicism +of Spain, in spite of all newspaper appearances to the contrary and many +bold novels, is still intense and unyieldingly repressive. But how far +the severity of the church characterizes manners it would be hard to +say. Perhaps these are often the effect of temperament. One heard more +than one saw of the indifference of shop-keepers to shoppers in Madrid; +in Andalusia, say especially in Seville, one saw nothing of it. But from +the testimony of sufferers it appears to be the Madrid shop-keeper's +reasonable conception that if a customer comes to buy something it is +because he, or more frequently she, wants it and is more concerned than +himself in the transaction. He does not put himself about in serving +her, and if she intimates that he is rudely indifferent, and that though +she has often come to him before she will never come again, he remains +tranquil. From experience I cannot say how true this is; but certainly I +failed to awaken any lively emotion in the booksellers of whom I tried +to buy some modern plays. It seemed to me that I was vexing them in the +Oriental calm which they would have preferred to my money, or even my +interest in the new Spanish drama. But in a shop where fans were sold, +the shopman, taken in an unguarded moment, seemed really to enter into +the spirit of our selection for friends at home; he even corrected my +wrong accent in the Spanish word for fan, which was certainly going a +great way. + + + + +XII + + +It was not the weather for fans in Madrid, where it rained that cold +rain every afternoon, and once the whole of one day, and we could not +reasonably expect to see fans in the hands of ladies in real life so +much as in the pictures of ladies on the fans themselves. In fact, I +suppose that to see the Madrilenas most in character one should see them +in summer which in southern countries is the most characteristic season. +Theophile Gautier was governed by this belief when he visited Spain in +the hottest possible weather, and left for the lasting delight of the +world the record of that _Voyage en Espagne_ which he made seventy-two +years ago. He then thought the men better dressed than the women at +Madrid. Their boots are as "varnished, and they are gloved as white as +possible. Their coats are correct and their trousers laudable; but the +cravat is not of the same purity, and the waistcoat, that only part of +modern dress where the fancy may play, is not always of irreproachable +taste." As to the women: "What we understand in France as the Spanish +type does not exist in Spain. . . One imagines usually, when one says +_mantilla_ and _senora,_ an oval, rather long and pale, with large dark +eyes, surmounted with brows of velvet, a thin nose, a little arched, a +mouth red as a pomegranate, and, above all, a tone warm and golden, +justifying the verse of romance, _She is yellow like an orange._ This is +the Arab or Moorish type and not the Spanish type. The Madrilenas are +charming in the full acceptation of the word; out of four three will be +pretty; but they do not answer at all to the idea we have of them. They +are small, delicate, well formed, the foot narrow and the figure curved, +the bust of a rich contour; but their skin is very white, the features +delicate and mobile, the mouth heart-shaped and representing perfectly +certain portraits of the Regency. Often they have fair hair, and you +cannot take three turns in the Prado without meeting eight blonds of all +shades, from the ashen blond to the most vehement red, the red of the +beard of Charles V. It is a mistake to think there are no blonds in +Spain. Blue eyes abound there, but they are not so much liked as the +black." + +Is this a true picture of the actual Madrilenas? What I say is that +seventy-two years have passed since it was painted and the originals +have had time to change. What I say is that it was nearly always +raining, and I could not be stire. What I say, above all, is that I am +not a Frenchman of the high Romantic moment and that what I chiefly +noticed was how beautiful the mantilla was whether worn by old or young, +how fit, how gentle, how winning. I suppose that the women we saw +walking in it were never of the highest class; who would be driving +except when we saw them going to church. But they were often of the +latest fashion, with their feet hobbled by the narrow skirts, of which +they lost the last poignant effect by not having wide or high or slouch +or swashbuckler hats on; they were not top-heavy. What seems certain is +that the Spanish women are short and slight or short and fat. I find it +recorded that when a young English couple came into the Royal Armory the +girl looked impossibly tall and fair. + +The women of the lower classes are commonly handsome and carry +themselves finely; their heads are bare, even of mantillas, and their +skirts are ample. When it did not rain they added to the gaiety of the +streets, and when it did to their gloom. Wet or dry the streets were +always thronged; nobody, apparently, stayed indoors who could go out, +and after two days' housing, even with a fire to air and warm our rooms, +we did not wonder at the universal preference. As I have said, the noise +that we heard in the streets was mainly the clatter of shoes and hoofs, +but now and then there were street cries besides those I have noted. +There was in particular a half-grown boy in our street who had a flat +basket decorated with oysters at his feet, and for long hours of the day +and dark he cried them incessantly. I do not know that he ever sold them +or cared; his affair was to cry them. + + + + +VI + +A NIGHT AND DAY IN TOLEDO + + +If you choose to make your visit to Toledo an episode of your stay in +Madrid, you have still to choose between going at eight in the morning +and arriving back at five in the evening, or going at five one evening +and coming back at the same hour the next. In either case you will have +two hours' jolting each way over the roughest bit of railroad in the +world, and if your _mozo,_ before you could stop him, has selected for +your going a compartment over the wheels, you can never be sure that he +has done worse for you than you will have done for yourself when you +come back in a compartment between the trucks. However you go or come, +you remain in doubt whether you have been jolting over rails jointed at +every yard, or getting on without any track over a cobble-stone +pavement. Still, if the compartment is wide and well cushioned, as it is +in Spain nearly always, with free play for your person between roof and +floor and wall and wall; and if you go at five o'clock you have from +your windows, as long as the afternoon light lasts, while you bound and +rebound, glimpses of far-stretching wheat-fields, with nearer +kitchen-gardens rich in beets and cabbages, alternating with purple and +yellow patches of vineyard. + + + + +I + + +I find from my ever-faithful note-book that the landscape seemed to grow +drearier as we got away from Madrid, but this may have been the effect +of the waning day: a day which at its brightest had been dim from +recurrent rain and incessant damp. The gloom was not relieved by the +long stops at the frequent stations, though the stops were good for +getting one's breath, and for trying to plan greater control over one's +activities when the train should be going on again. The stations +themselves were not so alluring that we were not willing to get away +from them; and we were glad to get away from them by train, instead of +by mule-team over the rainy levels to the towns that glimmered along the +horizon two or three miles off. There had been nothing to lift the heart +in the sight of two small boys ready perched on one horse, or of a +priest difficultly mounting another in his long robe. At the only +station which I can remember having any town about it a large number of +our passengers left the train, and I realized that they were commuters +like those who might have been leaving it at some soaking suburb of Long +Island or New Jersey. In the sense of human brotherhood which the fact +inspired I was not so lonely as I might have been, when we resumed our +gloomy progress, with all that punctilio which custom demands of a +Spanish way-train. First the station-master rings a bell of alarming +note hanging on the wall, and the _mozos_ run along the train shutting +the car doors. After an interval some other official sounds a pocket +whistle, and then there is still time for a belated passenger to find +his car and scramble aboard. When the ensuing pause prolongs itself +until you think the train has decided to remain all day, or all night, +and several passengers have left it again, the locomotive rouses itself +and utters a peremptory screech. This really means going, but your doubt +has not been fully overcome when the wheels begin to bump under your +compartment, and you set your teeth and clutch your seat, and otherwise +prepare yourself for the renewal of your acrobatic feats. I may not get +the order of the signals for departure just right, but I am sure of +their number. Perhaps the Sud-Express starts with less, but the +Sud-Express is partly French. + +It had been raining intermittently all day; now that the weary old day +was done the young night took up the work and vigorously devoted itself +to a steady downpour which, when we reached our hotel in Toledo, had +taken the role of a theatrical tempest, with sudden peals of thunder and +long loud bellowing reverberations and blinding flashes of lightning, +such as the wildest stage effects of the tempest in the Catskills when +Rip Van Winkle is lost would have been nothing to. Foreboding the inner +chill of a Spanish hotel on such a day, we had telegraphed for a fire in +our rooms, and our eccentricity had been interpreted in spirit as well +as in letter. It was not the habitual hotel omnibus which met us at the +station, but a luxurious closed carriage commanded by an interpreter who +intuitively opened our compartment door, and conveyed us dry and warm to +our hotel, in every circumstance of tender regard for our comfort, +during the slow, sidelong uphill climb to the city midst details of +historic and romantic picturesqueness which the lightning momently +flashed in sight. From our carriage we passed as in a dream between the +dress-coated head waiter and the skull-capped landlord who silently and +motionlessly received us in the Gothic doorway, and mounted by a stately +stair from a beautiful glass-roofed _patio,_ columned round with airy +galleries, to the rooms from which a smoky warmth gushed out to welcome +us. + +The warmth was from the generous blaze kindled in the fireplace against +our coming, and the smoke was from the crevices in a chimneypiece not +sufficiently calked with newspapers to keep the smoke going up the flue. +The fastidious may think this a defect in our perfect experience, but we +would not have had it otherwise, if we could, and probably we could not. +We easily assumed that we were in the palace of some haughty hidalgo, +adapted to the uses of a modern hotel, with a magical prevision which +need not include the accurate jointing of a chimneypiece. The storm +bellowed and blazed outside, the rain strummed richly on the _patio_ +roof which the lightning illumined, and as we descended that stately +stair, with its walls ramped and foliaged over with heraldic fauna and +flora, I felt as never before the disadvantage of not being still +fourteen years old. + +But you cannot be of every age at once and it was no bad thing to be +presently sitting down in my actual epoch at one of those excellent +Spanish dinners which no European hotel can surpass and no American +hotel can equal. It may seem a descent from the high horse, the winged +steed of dreaming, to have been following those admirable courses with +unflagging appetite, as it were on foot, but man born of woman is hungry +after such a ride as ours from Madrid; and it was with no appreciable +loss to our sense of enchantment that we presently learned from our +host, waiting skull-capped in the _patio,_ that we were in no real +palace of an ancient hidalgo, but were housed as we found ourselves by +the fancy of a rich nobleman of Toledo whom the whim had taken to equip +his city with a hotel of poetic perfection. I am afraid I have forgotten +his name; perhaps I should not have the right to parade it here if I +remembered it; but I cannot help saluting him brother in imagination, +and thanking him for one of the rarest pleasures that travel, even +Spanish travel, has given me. + + + + +II + + +One must recall the effect of such a gentle fantasy as his with some +such emotion as one recalls a pleasant tale unexpectedly told when one +feared a repetition of stale commonplaces, and I now feel a pang of +retroactive self-reproach for not spending the whole evening after +dinner in reading up the story of that most storied city where this +Spanish castle received us. What better could I have done in the smoky +warmth of our hearth-fire than to con, by the light of the electric bulb +dangling overhead, its annals in some such voluntarily quaint and +unconsciously old-fashioned volume as Irving's _Legends of the Conquest +of Spain;_ or to read in some such (if there is any such other) +imperishably actual and unfadingly brilliant record of impressions as +Gautier's _Voyage en Espagne,_ the miserably tragic tale of that poor, +wicked, over-punished last of the Gothic kings, Don Roderick? It comes +to much the same effect in both, and as I knew it already from the notes +to Scott's poem of Don Roderick, which I had read sixty years before in +the loft of our log cabin (long before the era of my unguided Spanish +studies), I found it better to go to bed after a day which had not been +without its pains as well as pleasures. I could recall the story well +enough for all purposes of the imagination as I found it in the fine +print of those notes, and if I could believe the reader did not know it +I would tell him now how this wretched Don Roderick betrayed the +daughter of Count Julian whom her father had intrusted to him here in +his capital of Toledo, when, with the rest of Spain, it had submitted to +his rule. That was in the eighth century when the hearts of kings were +more easily corrupted by power than perhaps in the twentieth; and it is +possible that there was a good deal of politics mixed up with Count +Julian's passion for revenge on the king, when he invited the Moors to +invade his native land and helped them overrun it. The conquest, let me +remind the reader, was also abetted by the Jews who had been flourishing +mightily under the Gothic anarchy, but whom Don Roderick had reduced to +a choice between exile or slavery when he came to full power. Every one +knows how in a few weeks the whole peninsula fell before the invaders. +Toledo fell after the battle of Guadalete, where even the Bishop of +Seville fought on their side, and Roderick was lastingly numbered among +the missing, and was no doubt killed, as nothing has since been heard of +him. It was not until nearly three hundred years afterward that the +Christians recovered the city. By this time they were no longer Arians, +but good Catholics; so good that Philip II. himself, one of the best of +Catholics (as I have told), is said to have removed the capital to +Madrid because he could not endure the still more scrupulous Catholicity +of the Toledan Bishop. + +Nobody is obliged to believe this, but I should be sorry if any reader +of mine questioned the insurpassable antiquity of Toledo, as attested by +a cloud of chroniclers. Theophile Gautier notes that "the most moderate +place the epoch of its foundation before the Deluge," and he does not +see why they do not put the time "under the pre-Adamite kings, some +years before the creation of the world. Some attribute the honor of +laying its first stone to Jubal, others to the Greek; some to the Roman +consuls Tolmor and Brutus; some to the Jews who entered Spain with +Nebuchadnezzar, resting their theory on the etymology of Toledo, which +comes from Toledoth, a Hebrew word signifying generations, because the +Twelve Tribes had helped to build and people it." + + + + +III + + +Even if the whole of this was not accurate, it offered such an +embarrassing abundance to the choice that I am glad I knew little or +nothing of the antagonistic origins when I opened my window to the sunny +morning which smiled at the notion of the overnight tempest, and lighted +all the landscape on that side of the hotel. The outlook was over vast +plowed lands red as Virginia or New Jersey fields, stretching and +billowing away from the yellow Tagus in the foreground to the +mountain-walled horizon, with far stretches of forest in the middle +distance. What riches of gray roof, of white wall, of glossy green, or +embrowning foliage in the city gardens the prospect included, one should +have the brush rather than the pen to suggest; or else one should have +an inexhaustible ink-bottle with every color of the chromatic scale in +it to pour the right tints. Mostly, however, I should say that the city +of Toledo is of a mellow gray, and the country of Toledo a rich orange. +Seen from any elevation the gray of the town made me think of Genoa; and +if the reader's knowledge does not enable him, to realize it from this +association, he had better lose no time in going to Genoa. + +I myself should prefer going again to Toledo, where we made only a day's +demand upon the city's wealth of beauty when a lifetime would hardly +have exhausted it. Yet I would not counsel any one to pass his whole +life in Toledo unless he was sure he could bear the fullness of that +beauty. Add insurpassable antiquity, add tragedy, add unendurable +orthodoxy, add the pathos of hopeless decay, and I think I would rather +give a day than a lifetime to Toledo. Or I would like to go back and +give another day to it and come every year and give a day. This very +moment, instead of writing of it in a high New York flat and looking out +on a prospect incomparably sky-scrapered, I would rather be in that +glass-roofed _patio_ of our histrionic hotel, engaging the services of +one of the most admirable guides who ever fell to the lot of mortal +Americans, while much advised by our skull-capped landlord to shun the +cicerone of another hotel as "an Italian man," with little or no +English. + +As soon as we appeared outside the beggars of Toledo swarmed upon us; +but I hope it was not from them I formed the notion that the beauty of +the place was architectural and not personal, though these poor things +were as deplorably plain as they were obviously miserable. The +inhabitants who did not ask alms were of course in the majority, but +neither were these impressive in looks or bearing. Rather, I should say, +their average was small and dark, and in color of eyes and hair as well +as skin they suggested the African race that held Toledo for four +centuries. Neither here nor anywhere else in Spain are there any traces +of the Jews who helped bring the Arabs in; once for all, that people +have been banished so perfectly that they do not show their noses +anywhere. Possibly they exist, but they do not exist openly, any more +than the descendants of the Moorish invaders practise their Moslem +rites. As for the beggars, to whom I return as they constantly returned +to us, it did not avail to do them charity; that by no means dispersed +them; the thronging misery and mutilation in the lame, the halt and the +blind, was as great at our coming back to our hotel as our going out of +it. They were of every age and sex; the very school-children left their +sports to chance our charity; and it is still with a pang that I +remember the little girl whom we denied a copper when she was really +asking for a _florecito_ out of the nosegay that one of us carried. But +how could we know that it was a little flower and not a "little dog" she +wanted? + +There was something vividly spectacular in the square, by no means +large, which we came into on turning the corner from our hotel. It was a +sort of market-place as well as business place, and it looked as if it +might be the resort at certain hours of the polite as well as the +impolite leisure of a city of leisure not apparently overworked in any +of its classes. But at ten o'clock in the morning it was empty enough, +and after a small purchase at one of the shops we passed from it without +elbowing or being elbowed, and found ourselves at the portal of that +ancient _posada_ where Cervantes is said to have once sojourned at least +long enough to write one of his _Exemplary Novels._ He was of such a +ubiquitous habit that if we had visited every city of Spain we should +have found some witness of his stay, but I do not believe we could have +found any more satisfactory than this. It is verified by a tablet in its +outer wall, and within it is convincingly a _posada_ of his time. It has +a large low-vaulted interior, with the carts and wagons of the muleteers +at the right of the entrance, and beyond these the stalls of the mules +where they stood chewing their provender, and glancing uninterestedly +round at the intruders, for plainly we were not of the guests who +frequent the place. Such, for a chamber like those around and behind the +stalls, on the same earthen level, pay five cents of our money a day; +they supply their own bed and board and pay five cents more for the use +of a fire. + +Some guests were coming and going in the dim light of the cavernous +spaces; others were squatting on the ground before their morning meal. +An endearing smoke-browned wooden gallery went round three sides of the +_patio_ overhead; half-way to this at one side rose an immense earthen +watei jar, dim red; piles of straw mats, which were perhaps the bedding +of the guests, heaped the ground or hung from the gallery; and the +guests, among them a most beautiful youth, black as Africa, but of a +Greek perfection of profile, regarded us with a friendly indifference +that contrasted strikingly with the fixed stare of the bluish-gray hound +beside one of the wagons. He had a human effect of having brushed his +hair from his strange grave eyes, and of a sad, hopeless puzzle in the +effort to make us out. If he was haunted by some inexplicable relation +in me to the great author whose dog he undoubtedly had been in a +retroactive incarnation, and was thinking to question me of that ever +unfulfilled boyish self-promise of writing the life of Cervantes, I +could as successfully have challenged him to say how and where in such a +place as that an Exemplary Novelist could have written even the story of +_The Illustrious Scullion._ But he seemed on reflection not to push the +matter with me, and I left him still lost in his puzzle while I came +away in mine. Whether Cervantes really wrote one of his tales there or +not, it is certain that he could have exactly studied from that _posada_ +the setting of the scene for the episode of the enchanted castle in _Don +Quixote,_ where the knight suffered all the demoniacal torments which a +jealous and infuriate muleteer knew how to inflict. + + + + +IV + + +Upon the whole I am not sure that I was more edified by the cathedral of +Toledo, though I am afraid to own it, and must make haste to say that it +is a cathedral surpassing in some things any other cathedral in Spain. +Chiefly it surpasses them in the glory of that stupendous _retablo_ +which fills one whole end of the vast fane, and mounting from floor to +roof, tells the Christian story with an ineffable fullness of dramatic +detail, up to the tragic climax of the crucifixion, the _Calvario,_ at +the summit. Every fact of it fixes itself the more ineffaceably in the +consciousness because of that cunningly studied increase in the stature +of the actors, who always appear life-size in spite of their lift from +level to level above the spectator. But what is the use, what _is_ the +use? Am I to abandon the young and younger wisdom with which I have +refrained in so many books from attempting the portrayal of any Italian, +any English church, and fall into the folly, now that I am old, of +trying to say again in words what one of the greatest of Spanish +churches says in form, in color? Let me rather turn from that vainest +endeavor to the trivialities of sight-seeing which endear the memory of +monuments and make the experience of them endurable. The beautiful +choir, with its walls pierced in gigantic filigree, might have been art +or not, as one chose, but the three young girls who smiled and whispered +with the young man near it were nature, which there could be no two +minds about. They were pathetically privileged there to a moment of the +free interplay of youthful interests and emotions which the Spanish +convention forbids less in the churches than anywhere else. + +The Spanish religion is, in fact, kind to the young in many ways, and on +our way to the cathedral we had paused at a shrine of the Virgin in +appreciation of her friendly offices to poor girls wanting husbands; +they have only to drop a pin inside the grating before her and draw a +husband, tall for a large pin and short for a little one; or if they can +make their offering in coin, their chances of marrying money are good. +The Virgin is always ready to befriend her devotees, and in the +cathedral near that beautiful choir screen she has a shrine above the +stone where she alighted when she brought a chasuble to St. Ildefonso +(she owed him something for his maintenance of her Immaculate Conception +long before it was imagined a dogma) and left the print of her foot in +the pavement. The fact is attested by the very simple yet absolute +inscription: + + Quando la Reina del Cielo + Puso los pies en el suelo, + En esta piedra los puso, + +or as my English will have it: + + When the Queen of Heaven put + Upon the earth her foot, + She put it on this stone + +and left it indelible there, so that now if you thrust your finger +through the grille and touch the place you get off three hundred years +of purgatory: not much in the count of eternity, but still something. + +We saw a woman and a priest touching it as we stood by and going away +enviably comforted; but we were there as connoisseurs, not as votaries; +and we were trying to be conscious solely of the surpassing grandeur and +beauty of the cathedral. Here as elsewhere in Spain the passionate +desire of the race to realize a fact in art expresses itself gloriously +or grotesquely according to the occasion. The rear of the chorus is one +vast riot of rococo sculpture, representing I do not know what mystical +event; but down through the midst of the livingly studied performance a +mighty angel comes plunging, with his fine legs following his torso +through the air, like those of a diver taking a header into the water. +Nothing less than the sublime touch of those legs would have satisfied +the instinct from which and for which the artist worked; they gave +reality to the affair in every part. + +I wish I could give reality to every part of that most noble, that most +lovably beautiful temple. We had only a poor half-hour for it, and we +could not do more than flutter the pages of the epic it was and catch +here and there a word, a phrase: a word writ in architecture or +sculpture, a phrase richly expressed in gold and silver and precious +marble, or painted in the dyes of the dawns and sunsets which used to +lend themselves so much more willingly to the arts than they seem to do +now. From our note-books I find that this cathedral of Toledo appeared +more wonderful to one of us than the cathedral of Burgos; but who knows? +It might have been that the day was warmer and brighter and had not yet +shivered and saddened to the cold rain it ended in. At any rate the vast +church filled itself more and more with the solemn glow in which we left +it steeped when we went out and took our dreamway through the narrow, +winding, wandering streets that seemed to lure us where they would. One +of them climbed with us to the Alcazar, which is no longer any great +thing to see in itself, but which opens a hospitable space within its +court for a prospect of so much of the world around Toledo, the world of +yellow river and red fields and blue mountains, and white-clouded azure +sky, that we might well have mistaken it for the whole earth. In itself, +as I say, the Alcazar is no great thing for where it is, but if we had +here in New York an Alcazar that remembered historically back through +French, English, Arabic, Gothic. Roman, and Carthaginian occupations to +the inarticulate Iberian past we should come, I suppose, from far and +near to visit it. Now, however, after gasping at its outlook, we left it +hopelessly, and lost ourselves, except for our kindly guide, in the +crooked little stony lanes, with the sun hot on our backs and the shade +cool in our faces. There were Moorish bits and suggestions in the white +walls and the low flat roofs of the houses, but these were not so +jealous of their privacy as such houses were once meant to be. Through +the gate of one we were led into a garden of simple flowers belted with +a world-old parapet, over which we could look at a stretch of the Gothic +wall of King Wamba's time, before the miserable Roderick won and lost +his kingdom. A pomegranate tree, red with fruit, overhung us, and from +the borders of marigolds and zinnias and German clover the gray +garden-wife gathered a nosegay for us. She said she was three _duros_ +and a half old, as who should say three dollars and a half, and she had +a grim amusement in so translating her seventy years. + + + + +V + + +It was hard by her cottage that we saw our first mosque, which had begun +by being a Gothic church, but had lost itself in paynim hands for +centuries, in spite of the lamp always kept burning in it. Then one day +the Cid came riding by, and his horse, at sight of a white stone in the +street pavement, knelt down and would not budge till men came and dug +through the wall of the mosque and disclosed this indefatigable lamp in +the church. We expressed our doubt of the man's knowing so unerringly +that the horse meant them to dig through the mosque. "If you can believe +the rest I think you can believe that," our guide argued. + +He was like so many taciturn Spaniards, not inconversable, and we had a +pleasure in his unobtrusive intelligence which I should be sorry to +exaggerate. He supplied us with such statistics of his city as we +brought away with us, and as I think the reader may join me in trusting, +and in regretting that I did not ask more. Still it is something to have +learned that in Toledo now each family lives English fashion in a house +of its own, while in the other continental cities it mostly dwells in a +flat. This is because the population has fallen from two hundred +thousand to twenty thousand, and the houses have not shared its decay, +but remain habitable for numbers immensely beyond those of the +households. In the summer the family inhabits the first floor which the +_patio_ and the subterranean damp from the rains keep cool; in the +winter it retreats to the upper chambers which the sun is supposed to +warm, and which are at any rate dry even on cloudy days. The rents would +be thought low in New York: three dollars a month get a fair house in +Toledo; but wages are low, too; three dollars a month for a manservant +and a dollar and a half for a maid. If the Toledans from high to low are +extravagant in anything it is dress, but dress for the outside, not the +inside, which does not show, as our guide satirically explained. They +scrimp themselves in food and they pay the penalty in lessened vitality; +there is not so much fever as one might think; but there is a great deal +of consumption; and as we could not help seeing everywhere in the +streets there were many blind, who seemed oftenest to have suffered +from smallpox. The beggars were not so well dressed as the other +classes, but I saw no such delirious patchwork as at Burgos. On the +other hand, there were no idle people who were fashionably dressed; no +men or women who looked great-world. + +Perhaps if the afternoon had kept the sunny promise of the forenoon they +might have been driving in the Paseo, a promenade which Toledo has like +every Spanish city; but it rained and we did not stop at the Paseo which +looked so pleasant. + +The city, as so many have told and as I hope the reader will imagine, is +a network of winding and crooked lanes, which the books say are Moorish, +but which are medieval like those of every old city. They nowhere lend +themselves to walking for pleasure, and the houses do not open their +_patios_ to the passer with Andalusian expansiveness; they are in fact +of a quite Oriental reserve. I remember no dwellings of the grade, +quite, of hovels; but neither do there seem to be many palaces or +palatial houses in my hurried impression. Whatever it may be +industrially or ecclesiastically, Toledo is now socially provincial and +tending to extinction. It is so near Madrid that if I myself were living +in Toledo I would want to live in Madrid, and only return for brief +sojourns to mourn my want of a serious object in life; at Toledo it must +be easy to cherish such an object. + +Industrially, of course, one associates it with the manufacture of the +famous Toledo blades, which it is said are made as wonderful as ever, +and I had a dim idea of getting a large one for decorative use in a, New +York flat. But the foundry is a mile out of town, and I only got so far +as to look at the artists who engrave the smaller sort in shops open to +the public eye; and my purpose dwindled to the purchase of a little pair +of scissors, much as a high resolve for the famous marchpane of Toledo +ended in a piece of that pastry about twice the size of a silver dollar. +Not all of the twenty thousand people of Toledo could be engaged in +these specialties, and I owe myself to blame for not asking more about +the local industries; but it is not too late for the reader, whom I +could do no greater favor than sending him there, to repair my +deficiency. In self-defense I urge my knowledge of a military school in +the Alcazar, where and in the street leading up to it we saw some +companies of the comely and kindly-looking cadets. I know also that +there are public night schools where those so minded may study the arts +and letters, as our guide was doing in certain directions. Now that +there are no longer any Jews in Toledo, and the Arabs to whom they +betrayed the Gothic capital have all been Christians or exiles for many +centuries, we felt that we represented the whole alien element of the +place; there seemed to be at least no other visitors of our lineage or +language. + + + +VI + + +We were going to spend the rest of the day driving out through the city +into the country beyond the Tagus, and we drove off in our really +splendid turnout through swarms of beggars whose prayers our horses' +bells drowned when we left them to their despair at the hotel door. At +the moment of course we believe that it was a purely dramatic misery +which the wretched creatures represented; but sometimes I have since had +moments of remorse in which I wish I had thrown big and little dogs +broadcast among them. They could not all have been begging for the +profit or pleasure of it; some of them were imaginably out of work and +worthily ragged as I saw them, and hungry as I begin to fear them. I am +glad now to think that many of them could not see with their poor blind +eyes the face which I hardened against them, as we whirled away to the +music of our horses' bells. + +The bells pretty well covered our horses from their necks to their +haunches, a pair of gallant grays urged to their briskest pace by the +driver whose short square face and humorous mouth and eyes were a joy +whenever we caught a glimpse of them. He was one of those drivers who +know everybody; he passed the time of day with all the men we met, and +he had a joking compliment for all the women, who gladdened at sight of +him from the thresholds where they sat sewing or knitting: such a driver +as brings a gay world to home-keeping souls and leaves them with the +feeling of having been in it. I would have given much more than I gave +the beggars in Toledo to know just in what terms he and his universal +acquaintance bantered each other; but the terms might sometimes have +been rather rank. Something, at any rate, qualified the air, which I +fancied softer than that of Madrid, with a faint recurrent odor, as if +in testimony of the driver's derivation from those old rancid +Christians, as the Spaniards used to call them, whose lineage had never +been crossed with Moorish blood. If it was merely something the carriage +had acquired from the stable, still it was to be valued for its +distinction in a country of many smells; and I would not have been +without it. + +When we crossed the Tagus by a bridge which a company of workmen +willingly paused from mending to let us by, and remained standing +absent-mindedly aside some time after we had passed, we found ourselves +in a scene which I do not believe was ever surpassed for spectacularity +in any theater. I hope this is not giving the notion of something +fictitious in it; I only mean that here Nature was in one of her most +dramatic moods. The yellow torrent swept through a deep gorge of red +earth, which on the farther side climbed in precipitous banks, cleft by +enormous fissures, or chasms rather, to the wide plateau where the gray +city stood. The roofs of mellow tiles formed a succession of levels from +which the irregular towers and pinnacles of the churches stamped +themselves against a sky now filled with clouds, but in an air so clear +that their beautiful irregularities and differences showed to one very +noble effect. The city still looked the ancient capital of the two +hundred thousand souls it once embraced, and in its stony repair there +was no hint of decay. + +On our right, the road mounted through country wild enough at times, but +for the most part comparatively friendly, with moments of being almost +homelike. There were slopes which, if massive always, were sometimes +mild and were gray with immemorial olives. In certain orchard nooks +there were apricot trees, yellowing to the autumn, with red-brown +withered grasses tangling under them. Men were gathering the fruit of +the abounding cactuses in places, and in one place a peasant was bearing +an arm-load of them to a wide stone pen in the midst of which stood a +lordly black pig, with head lifted and staring, indifferent to cactuses, +toward Toledo. His statuesque pose was of a fine hauteur, and a more +imaginative tourist than I might have fancied him lost in a dream of the +past, piercing beyond the time of the Iberian autochtons to those +prehistoric ages + + When wild in woods the noble savage ran, + +pursuing or pursued by his tusked and bristled ancestor, and then slowly +reverting through the different invasions and civilizations to that +signal moment when, after three hundred Moslem years, Toledo became +Christian again forever, and pork resumed its primacy at the table. +Dark, mysterious, fierce, the proud pig stood, a figure made for +sculpture; and if he had been a lion, with the lion's royal ideal of +eating rather than feeding the human race, the reader would not have +thought him unworthy of literature; I have seldom seen a lion that +looked worthier of it. + +We must have met farmer-folk, men and women, on our way and have seen +their white houses farther or nearer. But mostly the landscape was +lonely and at times nightmarish, as the Castilian landscape has a trick +of being, and remanded us momently to the awful entourage of our run +from Valladolid to Madrid. We were glad to get back to the Tagus, which +if awful is not grisly, but wherever it rolls its yellow flood lends the +landscape such a sublimity that it was no esthetic descent from the high +perch of that proud pig to the mighty gorge through which, geologically +long ago, the river had torn its way. When we drove back the +bridge-menders stood aside for us while we were yet far off, and the +women came to their doorways at the sound of our bells for another +exchange of jokes with our driver. By the time a protracted file of +mules had preceded us over the bridge, a brisk shower had come up, and +after urging our grays at their topmost speed toward the famous church +of San Juan de los Reyes Catolicos, we still had to run from our +carriage door through the rain. + +Happily the portal was in the keeping of one of those authorized beggars +who guard the gates of heaven everywhere in that kind country, and he +welcomed us so eagerly from the wet that I could not do less than give +him a big dog at once. In a moment of confusion I turned about, and +taking him for another beggar, I gave him another big dog; and when we +came out of the church he had put off his cap and arranged so complete a +disguise with the red handkerchief bravely tied round his head, that my +innocence was again abused, and once more a big dog passed between us. +But if the merit of the church might only be partially attributed to +him, he was worth the whole three. The merit of the church was +incalculable, for it was meant to be the sepulcher of the Catholic +Kings, who were eventually more fitly buried in the cathedral at +Granada, in the heart of their great conquest; and it is a most +beautiful church, of a mingled Saracenic plateresque Gothic, as the +guide-books remind me, and extravagantly baroque as I myself found it. I +personally recall also a sense of chill obscurity and of an airy gallery +wandering far aloof in the upper gloom, which remains overhead with me +still, and the yet fainter sense of the balconies crowning like capitals +the two pillars fronting the high altar. I am now sorry for our haste, +but one has not so much time for enjoying such churches in their +presence as for regretting them in their absence. One should live near +them, and visit them daily, if one would feel their beauty in its +recondite details; to have come three thousand miles for three minutes +of them is no way of making that beauty part of one's being, and I will +not pretend that I did in this case. What I shall always maintain is +that I had a living heartache from the sight of that space on the fagade +of this church which is overhung with the chains of the Christian +captives rescued from slavery among the Moors by the Catholic Kings in +their conquest of Granada. They were not only the memorials of the most +sorrowful fact, but they represented the misery of a thousand years of +warfare in which the prisoners on either side suffered in chains for +being Moslems or being Christians. The manacles and the fetters on the +church front are merely decorative to the glance, but to the eye that +reads deeper, how structural in their tale of man's inhumanity to man! +How heavily they had hung on weary limbs! How pitilessly they had eaten +through bleeding ulcers to the bone! Yet they were very, very +decorative, as the flowers are that bloom on battle-fields. + +Even with only a few minutes of a scant quarter-hour to spare, I would +not have any one miss seeing the cloister, from which the Catholic Kings +used to enter the church by the gallery to those balcony capitals, but +which the common American must now see by going outside the church. The +cloister is turned to the uses of an industrial school, as we were glad +to realize because our guide, whom we liked so much, was a night student +there. It remains as beautiful and reverend as if it were of no secular +use, full of gentle sculptures, with a garden in the middle, raised +above the pavement with a border of thin tiles, and flower-pots standing +on their coping, all in the shadow of tall trees, overhanging a deep +secret-keeping well. From this place, where you will be partly sheltered +from the rain, your next profitable sally through the storm will be to +Santa Maria la Blanca, once the synagogue of the richest Jews of Toledo, +but now turned church in spite of its high authorization as a place of +Hebrew worship. It was permitted them to build it because they declared +they were of that tribe of Israel which, when Caiaphas, the High Priest, +sent round to the different tribes for their vote whether Jesus should +live or die, alone voted that He should live. Their response, as +Theophile Gautier reports from the chronicles, is preserved in the +Vatican with a Latin version of the Hebrew text. The fable, if it is a +fable, has its pathos; and I for one can only lament the religious zeal +to which the preaching of a fanatical monk roused the Christian +neighborhood in the fifteenth century, to such excess that these kind +Jews were afterward forbidden their worship in the place. It is a very +clean-looking, cold-looking white monument of the Catholic faith, with a +_retablo_ attributed to Berruguete, and much plateresque Gothic detail +mingled with Byzantine ornament, and Moorish arabesquing and the famous +stucco honeycombing which we were destined at Seville and Granada to +find almost sickeningly sweet. Where the Rabbis read the law from their +pulpit the high altar stands, and the pious populace has for three +hundred years pushed the Jews from the surrounding streets, where they +had so humbled their dwellings to the lowliest lest they should rouse +the jealousy of their sleepless enemies. + + + +VII + + +When we had visited this church there remained only the house of the +painter known as El Greco, for whom we had formed such a distaste, +because of the long features of the faces in his pictures, that our +guide could hardly persuade us his house was worth seeing. Now I am glad +he prevailed with us, for we have since come to find a peculiar charm in +these long features and the characteristic coloring of El Greco's +pictures. The little house full of memorials and the little garden full +of flowers, which ought to have been all forget-me-nots, were entirely +delightful. As every one but I knew, and even I now know, he was born a +Greek with the name of Theotocopuli, and studied tinder Titian till he +found his account in a manner of his own, making long noses and long +chins and high narrow foreheads in ashen gray, and at last went mad in +the excess of his manner. The house has been restored by the Marquis de +la Vega, according to his notion of an old Spanish house, and has the +pleasantest small _patio_ in the world, looked down into from a carved +wooden gallery, with a pavement of red tiles interset with Moorish tiles +of divers colors. There are interesting pictures everywhere, and on one +wall the certificate of the owner's membership in the Hispanic Society +of America, which made me feel at home because it was signed with the +name of an American friend of mine, who is repressed by prosperity from +being known as a poet and one of the first Spanish scholars of any time. + +The whole place is endearingly homelike and so genuinely hospitable that +we almost sat down to luncheon in the kitchen with the young Spanish +king who had lunched with the Marquis there a few weeks before. There +was a veranda outside where we could linger till the rain held up, and +look into the garden where the flowers ought to have been +forget-me-nots, but were as usual mostly marigolds and zinnias. They +crowded round tile-edged pools, and other flowers bloomed in pots on the +coping of the garden-seats built up of thin tiles carved on their edges +to an inward curve. It is strongly believed that there are several +stories under the house, and the Marquis is going some day to dig them +up or out to the last one where the original Jewish owner of the house +is supposed to have hid his treasure. In the mean time we could look +across the low wall that belted the garden in, to a vacant ground a +little way off where some boys were playing with a wagon they had made. +They had made it out of an oblong box, with wheels so rudely and +imperfectly rounded, that they wabbled fearfully and at times gave way +under the body; just as they did with the wagons that the boys I knew +seventy years ago used to make. + +I became so engrossed in the spectacle, so essentially a part of the +drama, that I did not make due account of some particulars of the +subterranean six stories of El Greco's house. There must have been other +things worth seeing in Toledo, thousands of others, and some others we +saw, but most we missed, and many I do not remember. It was now coming +the hour to leave Toledo, and we drove back to our enchanted castle for +our bill, and for the omnibus to the station. I thought for some time +that there was no charge for the fire, or even the smoke we had the +night before, but my eyes were holden from the item which I found later, +by seeing myself addressed as Milor. I had never been addressed as a +lord in any bill before, but I reflected that in the proud old +metropolis of the Goths I could not be saluted as less, and I gladly +paid the bill, which observed a golden mean between cheapness and +dearness, and we parted good friends with our host, and better with our +guide, who at the last brought out an English book, given him by an +English friend, about the English cathedrals. He was fine, and I could +not wish any future traveler kinder fortune than to have his guidance in +Toledo. Some day I am going back to profit more fully by it, and to +repay him the various fees which he disbursed for me to different +doorkeepers and custodians and which I forgot at parting and he was too +delicate to remind me of. + +When all leaves were taken and we were bowed out and away our horses, +covered with bells, burst with the omnibus through a solid mass of +beggars come to give us a last chance of meriting heaven by charity to +them, and dashed down the hill to the station. There we sat a long +half-hour in the wet evening air, wondering how we had been spared +seeing those wretches trampled under our horses' feet, or how the long +train of goats climbing to the city to be milked escaped our wheels. But +as we were guiltless of inflicting either disaster, we could watch with +a good conscience the quiescent industry of some laborers in the +brickyard beyond the track. Slowly and more slowly they worked, wearily, +apathetically, fetching, carrying, in their divided skirts of +cross-barred stuff of a rich Velasquez dirt color. One was especially +worthy of admiration from his wide-brimmed black hat and his thoughtful +indifference to his task, which was stacking up a sort of bundles of +long grass; but I dare say he knew what it all meant. Throughout I was +tormented by question of the precise co-racial quality of some +English-speaking folk who had come to share our bone-breaking return to +Madrid in the train so deliberately waiting there to begin afflicting +us. English English they certainly were not; American English as little. +If they were Australian English, why should not it have been a +convention of polite travel for them to come up and say so, and save us +that torment of curiosity? But perhaps they were not Australians. + + + + +VII + +THE GREAT GRIDIRON OF ST. LAWRENCE + + +It seems a duty every Protestant owes his heresy to go and see how +dismally the arch-enemy of heresy housed his true faith in the +palace-tomb-and-church of the Escorial. If the more light-minded tourist +shirks this act of piety, he makes a mistake which he will repent +afterward in vain. The Escorial is, for its plainness, one of the two or +three things worthiest seeing among the two or three hundred things +worth seeing in Spain. Yet we feigned meaning to miss it after we +returned to Madrid from Toledo, saying that everybody went to the +Escorial and that it would be a proud distinction not to go. All the +time we knew we should go, and we were not surprised when we were chosen +by one of our few bright days for the excursion, though we were taken +inordinately early, and might well have been started a little later. + + + + +I + + +Nothing was out of the common on the way to the station, and our sense +of the ordinary was not relieved when we found ourselves in a car of the +American open-saloon pattern, well filled with other Americans bent upon +the same errand as ourselves; though I am bound to say that the backs of +the transverse seats rose well toward the roof of the car with a certain +originality. + +When we cleared the city streets and houses, we began running out into +the country through suburbs vulgarly gay with small, bright brick +villas, so expressive of commuting that the eye required the vision of +young husbands and fathers going in at the gates with gardening tools on +their shoulders and under their arms. To be sure, the time of day and +the time of year were against this; it was now morning and autumn, +though there was a vernal brilliancy in the air; and the grass, +flattered by the recent rains, was green where we had last seen it gray. +Along a pretty stream, which, for all I know may have been the +Manzanares, it was so little, files of Lombardy poplars followed away +very agreeably golden in foliage; and scattered about were +deciduous-looking evergreens which we questioned for live-oaks. We were +going northward over the track which had brought us southward to Madrid +two weeks before, and by and by the pleasant levels broke into rough +hills and hollows, strewn with granite boulders which, as our train +mounted, changed into the savage rock masses of New Castile, and as we +drew near the village of Escorial gave the scene the look of that very +desolate country. But it could not be so gloomy in the kind sunlight as +it was when lashed by the savage storm which we had seen it cowering +under before; and at the station we lost all feeling of friendlessness +in the welcome of the thronging guides and hotel touters. + +Our ideal was a carriage which we could keep throughout the day and use +for our return to the train in the afternoon; and this was so exactly +the ideal of a driver to whom we committed ourselves that we were +somewhat surprised to have his vehicle develop into a motor-omnibus, and +himself into a conductor. + +When we arrived at the palace some miles off, up a winding way, he +underwent another change, and became our guide to the Escorial. In the +event he proved a very intelligent guide, as guides go, and I really +cannot now see how we could have got on without him. He adapted the +Spanish names of things to our English understanding by shortening them; +a _patio_ became a _pat',_ and an old master an old mast'; and an +endearing quality was imparted to the grim memory of Philip II. by the +diminutive of Philly. We accepted this, but even to have Charles V. +brought nearer our hearts as Charley Fif, we could not bear to have our +guide exposed to the mockery of less considerate travelers. I instructed +him that the emperor's name was Charles, and that only boys and very +familiar friends of that name were called Charley among us. He thanked +me, and at once spoke again of Charley Fif; which I afterward found was +the universally accepted style of the great emperor among the guides of +Spain. In vain I tried to persuade them out of it at Cordova, at +Seville, at Granada, and wherever else they had to speak of an emperor +whose memory really seems to pervade the whole land. + + + + +II + + +The genuine village of Escorial lies mostly to the left of the station, +but the artificial town which grew up with the palace is to the right. +Both are called after the slag of the iron-smelting works which were and +are the vital industry of the first Escorial; but the road to the palace +takes you far from the slag, with a much-hoteled and garden-walled +dignity, to the plateau, apparently not altogether natural, where the +massive triune edifice stands in the keeping of a throng of American +women wondering how they are going to see it, and lunch, and get back to +their train in time. Many were trying, the day of our visit, to see the +place with no help but that of their bewildering Baedekers, and we had +constant reason to be glad of our guide as we met or passed them in the +measureless courts and endless corridors. + +At this distance of time and place we seem to have hurried first to the +gorgeous burial vault where the kings and queens of Spain lie, each one +shut in a gilded marble sarcophagus in their several niches of the +circular chamber, where under the high altar of the church they have the +advantage of all the masses said above them. But on the way we must have +passed through the church, immense, bare, cold, and sullener far than +that sepulcher; and I am sure that we visited last of all the palace, +where it is said the present young king comes so seldom and unwillingly, +as if shrinking from the shelf appointed for him in that crypt shining +with gold and polished marble. + +It is of death, not life, that the Escorial preaches, and it was to +eternal death, its pride and gloom, and not life everlasting, that the +dark piety of Philip voluntarily, or involuntarily, consecrated the +edifice. But it would be doing a wrong to one of the greatest +achievements of the human will, if one dwelt too much, or too wholly, +upon this gloomy ideal. The Escorial has been many times described; I +myself forbear with difficulty the attempt to describe it, and I satisfy +my longing to set it visibly before the reader by letting an earlier +visitor of my name describe it for me. I think he does it larger justice +than modern observers, because he escapes the cumulative obligation +which time has laid upon them to find the subjective rather than the +objective fulfilment of its founder's intention in it. At any rate, in +March, 1623, James Howell, waiting as secretary of the romantic mission +the bursting of the iridescent love-dream which had brought Charles +Stutart, Prince of Wales, from England to woo the sister of the Spanish +king in Madrid, had leisure to write one of his most delightful +"familiar letters" concerning the Escorial to a friend in London. + +"I was yesterday at the Escorial to see the monastery of St. Lawrence, +the eighth wonder of the world; and truly considering the site of the +place, the state of the thing, the symmetry of the structure, with +diverse other rareties, it may be called so; for what I have seen in +Italy and other places are but baubles to it. It is built among a +company of craggy hills, which makes the air the hungrier and +wholesomer; it is all built of freestone and marble, and that with such +solidity and moderate height that surely Philip the Second's chief +design was to make a sacrifice of it to eternity, and to contest with +the meteors and time itself. It cost eight millions; it was twenty-four +years abuilding, and the founder himself saw it furnished and enjoyed it +twelve years after, and carried his bones himself thither to be buried. +The reason that moved King Philip to waste so much treasure was a vow he +had made at the battle of St. Quentin, where he was forced to batter a +monastery of St. Lawrence friars, and if he had the victory he would +erect such a monument to St. Lawrence that the world had not the like; +therefore the form of it is like a gridiron, the handle is a huge royal +palace, and the body a vast monastery or assembly of quadrangular +cloisters, for there are as many as there be months of the year. There +be a hundred monks, and every one hath his man and his mule, and a +multitude of officers; besides there are three libraries there full of +the choicest books for all sciences. It is beyond all expression what +grots, gardens, walks, and aqueducts there are there, and what curious +fountains in the upper cloisters, for there be two stages of cloisters. +In fine, there is nothing that is vulgar there. To take a view of every +room in the house one must make account to go ten miles; there is a +vault called the Pantheon under the high altar, which is all paved, +walled, and arched with marble; there be a number of huge silver +candlesticks taller than I am; lamps three yards compass, and diverse +chalices and crosses of massive gold; there is one choir made all of +burnished brass; pictures and statues like giants; and a world of +glorious things that purely ravished me. By this mighty monument it may +be inferred that Philip the Second, though he was a little man, yet he +had vast gigantic thoughts in him, to leave such a huge pile for +posterity to gaze upon and admire in his memory." + + + + +III + + +Perhaps this description is not very exact, but precision of statement +is not to be expected of a Welshman; and if Howell preferred to say +Philip built the place in fulfilment of that vow at the battle of St. +Quentin, doubtless he believed it; many others did; it has only of late +been discovered that Philip was not at St. Quentin, and did not "batter +a monastery of St. Lawrence friars" there. I like to think the rest is +all as Howell says down to the man and mule for every monk. If there are +no men and mules left, there are very few monks either, after the many +suppressions of convents. The gardens are there of an unquestionable +symmetry and beauty, and the "company of craggy hills" abides all round +the prodigious edifice, which is at once so prodigious, and grows larger +upon you in the retrospect. + +Now that I am this good distance away, and cannot bring myself to book +by a second experience, I feel it safe to say that I had a feeling of +St. Peter's-like immensity in the church of the Escorial, with more than +St. Peter's-like bareness. The gray colorlessness of the architecture +somberly prevails in memory over the frescoes of the painters invited to +relieve it in the roof and the _retablo,_ and thought turns from the +red-and-yellow jasper of altar and pulpit, and the bronze-gilt effigies +of kneeling kings and queens to that niche near the oratory where the +little terrible man who imagined and realized it all used to steal in +from his palace, and worship next the small chamber where at last he +died. It is said he also read despatches and state papers in this nook, +but doubtless only in the intervals of devotion. + +Every one to his taste, even in matters of religion; Philip reared a +temple to the life beyond this, and as if with the splendor of the +mausoleum which it enshrines he hoped to overcome the victorious grave; +the Caliph who built the mighty mosque at Cordova, which outlasts every +other glory of his capital, dedicated it to the joy of this life as +against the gloom of whose who would have put it under the feet of +death. "Let us build," he said to his people, "the Kaaba of the West +upon the site of a Christian temple, which we will destroy, so that we +may set forth how the Cross shall fall and become abased before the True +Prophet. Allah will never place the world beneath the feet of those who +make themselves the slaves of drink and sensuality while they preach +penitence and the joys of chastity, and while extolling poverty enrich +themselves to the loss of their neighbors. For these the sad and silent +cloister; for us, the crystalline fountain and the shady grove; for +them, the rude and unsocial life of dungeon-like strongholds; for us, +the charm of social life and culture; for them, intolerance and tyranny; +for us, a ruler who is our father; for them, the darkness of ignorance; +for us, letters and instruction as wide-spread as our creed; for them, +the wilderness, celibacy, and the doom of the false martyr; for us, +plenty, love, brotherhood, and eternal joy." + +In spite of the somewhat vaunting spirit of his appeal, the wager of +battle decided against the Arab; it was the Crescent that fell, the +Cross that prevailed; in the very heart of Abderrahman's mosque a +Christian cathedral rises. Yet in the very heart of Philip's temple to +the spirit of the cloister, the desert, the martyrdom, one feels that a +great deal could be said on Abderrahman's side. This is a world which +will not be renounced, in fact, and even in Christian Spain it has +triumphed in the arts and sciences beyond its earlier victories in +Moslem Spain. One finds Philip himself, with his despatches in that high +nook, rather than among the bronze-gilt royalties at the high altar, +though his statue is duly there with those of his three wives. The group +does not include that poor Bloody Mary of England, who should have been +the fourth there, for surely she suffered enough for his faith and him +to be of his domestic circle forever. + + + + +IV + + +It is the distinct merit of the Escorial that it does not, and perhaps +cannot take long in doing; otherwise the doer could not bear it. A look +round the sumptuous burial chamber of the sovereigns below the high +altar of the church; a glance at the lesser sepulchral glories of the +infantes and infantas in their chapels and corridors, suffices for the +funereal third of the trinity of tomb and temple and palace; and though +there are gayer constituents of the last, especially the gallery of the +chapter-house, with its surprisingly lively frescoes and its sometimes +startling canvases, there is not much that need really keep you from the +royal apartments which seem the natural end of your visit. Of these +something better can be said than that they are no worse than most other +royal apartments; our guide led us to them through many granite courts +and corridors where we left groups of unguided Americans still maddening +over their Baedekers; and we found them hung with pleasing tapestries, +some after such designs of Goya's as one finds in the basement of the +Prado. The furniture was in certain rooms cheerily upholstered in +crimson and salmon without sense of color, but as if seeking relief from +the gray of the church; and there are battle-pieces on the walls, fights +between Moors and Christians, which interested me. The dignified +consideration of the custodian who showed us through the apartments +seemed to have adapted to our station a manner left over from the +infrequent presence of royalty; as I have said, the young king of Spain +does not like coming to the Escorial. + +I do not know why any one comes there, and I search my consciousness in +vain for a better reason than the feeling that I must come, or would be +sorrier if I did not than if I did. The worthy Howell does not commit +himself to any expression of rejoicing or regretting in having done the +Escorial. But the good Theophile Gautier, who visited the place more +than two hundred years after, owns frankly that he is "excessively +embarrassed in giving his opinion" of it. "So many people," he says, +"serious and well-conditioned, who, I prefer to think, have never seen +it, have spoken of it as a _chef d'oeuvre,_ and a supreme effort of the +human spirit, so that I should have the air, poor devil of a +_facilletoniste errant,_ of wishing to play the original and taking +pleasure in my contrary-mindedness; but still in my soul and conscience +I cannot help finding the Escorial the most tiresome and the most stupid +monument that could be imagined, for the mortification of his +fellow-beings, by a morose monk and a suspicious tyrant. I know very +well that the Escorial had a serious and religious aim; but gravity is +not dryness, melancholy is not marasm, meditation is not ennui, and +beauty of forms can always be happily wedded to elevation of ideas." +This is the Frenchman's language as he goes into the Escorial; he does +not cheer up as he passes through the place, and when he comes out he +has to say: "I issued from that desert of granite, from that monkish +necropolis with an extraordinary feeling of release, of exultation; it +seemed to me I was born into life again, that I could be young once +more, and rejoice in the creation of the good God, of which I had lost +all hope in those funeral vaults. The bland and luminous air wrapt me +round like a soft robe of fine wool, and warmed my body frozen in that +cadaverous atmosphere; I was saved from that architectural nightmare, +which I thought never would end. I advise people who are so fatuous as +to pretend that they are ever bored to go and spend three or four days +in the Escorial; they will learn what real ennui is and they will enjoy +themselves all the rest of their lives in reflecting that they might be +in the Escorial and that they are not." + +That was well toward a century ago. It is not quite like that now, but +it is something like it; the human race has become inured to the +Escorial; more tourists have visited the place and imaginably lightened +its burden by sharing it among their increasing number. Still there is +now and then one who is oppressed, crushed by it, and cannot relieve +himself in such ironies as Gautier's, but must cry aloud in suffering +like that of the more emotional De Amicis: "You approach a courtyard and +say, 'I have seen this already.' No. You are mistaken; it is another. . +. . You ask the guide where the cloister is and he replies, 'This is +it,' and you walk on for half an hour. You see the light of another +world: you have never seen just such a light; is it the reflection from +the stone, or does it come from the moon? No, it is daylight, but sadder +than darkness. As you go on from corridor to corridor, from court to +court, you look ahead with misgivings, expecting to see suddenly, as you +turn a corner, a row of skeleton monks with hoods over their eyes and +crosses in their hands; you think of Philip II. . . . You remember all +that you have read about him, of his terrors and the Inquisition; and +everything becomes clear to your mind's eye with a sudden light; for the +first time you understand it all; the Escorial is Philip II. ... He is +still there alive and terrible, with the image of his dreadful God. . . +. Even now, after so long a time, on rainy days, when I am feeling sad, +I think of the Escorial, and then look at the walls of my room and +congratulate myself. ... I see again the courtyards of the Escorial. +... I dream of wandering through the corridors alone in the dark, +followed by the ghost of an old friar, crying and pounding at all the +doors without finding a way of escape." + +I am of another race both from the Frenchman and the Italian, and I +cannot pretend to their experiences, their inferences, and their +conclusions; but I am not going to leave the Escorial to the reader +without trying to make him feel that I too was terribly impressed by it. +To be sure, I had some light moments in it, because when gloom goes too +far it becomes ridiculous; and I did think the convent gardens as I saw +them from the chapter-house window were beautiful, and the hills around +majestic and serious, with no intention of falling upon my prostrate +spirit. Yes, and after a lifelong abhorrence of that bleak king who +founded the Escorial, I will own that I am, through pity, beginning to +feel an affection for Philip II.; perhaps I was finally wrought upon by +hearing him so endearingly called Philly by our guide. + +Yet I will not say but I was glad to get out of the Escorial alive; and +that I welcomed even the sulkiness of the landlord of the hotel where +our guide took us for lunch. To this day I do not know why that landlord +should have been so sour; his lunch was bad, but I paid his price +without murmuring; and still at parting he could scarcely restrain his +rage; the Escorial might have entered into his soul. On the way to his +hotel the street was empty, but the house bubbled over with children who +gaped giggling at his guests from the kitchen door, and were then +apparently silenced with food, behind it. There were a great many flies +in the hotel, and if I could remember its name I would warn the public +against it. + +After lunch our guide lapsed again to our conductor and reappeared with +his motor-bus and took us to the station, where he overcame the scruples +of the lady in the ticket-office concerning our wish to return to Madrid +by the Sud-Express instead of the ordinary train. The trouble was about +the supplementary fare which we easily paid on board; in fact, there is +never any difficulty in paying a supplementary fare in Spain; the +authorities meet you quite half-way. But we were nervous because we had +already suffered from the delays of people at the last hotel where our +motor-bus stopped to take up passengers; they lingered so long over +lunch that we were sure we should miss the Sud-Express, and we did not +see how we could live in Escorial till the way-train started; yet for +all their delays we reached the station in time and more. The train +seemed strangely reduced in the number of its cars, but we confidently +started with others to board the nearest of them; there we were waved +violently away, and bidden get into the dining-car at the rear of the +train. In some dudgeon we obeyed, but we were glad to get away from +Escorial on any terms, and the dining-car was not bad, though it had a +somewhat disheveled air. We could only suppose that all the places in +the two other cars were taken, and we resigned ourselves to choosing the +least coffee-stained of the coffee-stained tables and ordered more +coffee at it. The waiter brought it as promptly as the conductor +collected our supplementary fare; he even made a feint of removing the +stains from our table-cloth with a flourish of his napkin, and then he +left us to our conjectures and reflections till he came for his pay and +his fee just before we ran into Madrid. + + + + +VI + + +The mystery persisted and it was only when our train paused in the +station that it was solved. There, as we got out of our car, we +perceived that a broad red velvet carpet was laid from the car in front +into the station; a red carpet such as is used to keep the feet of +distinguished persons from their native earth the world over, but more +especially in Europe. Along this carpet were loosely grouped a number of +solemnly smiling gentlemen in frock-coats with their top-hats genteelly +resting in the hollows of their left arms, and without and beyond the +station in the space usually filled by closed and open cabs was a swarm +of automobiles. Then while our spirits were keyed to the highest pitch, +the Queen of Spain descended from the train, wearing a long black satin +cloak and a large black hat, very blond and beautiful beyond the report +of her pictures. By each hand she led one of her two pretty boys, Don +Jaime, the Prince of Asturias, heir apparent, and his younger brother. +She walked swiftly, with glad, kind looks around, and her ladies +followed her according to their state; then ushered and followed by the +gentlemen assembled to receive them, they mounted to their motors and +whirred away like so many persons of a histrionic pageant: not least +impressive, the court attendants filled a stage drawn by six mules, and +clattered after. + +From hearsay and reasonable surmise we learned that we had not come from +Escorial in the Sud-Express at all, but in the Queen's special train +bringing her and her children from their autumn sojourn at La Granja, +and that we had been for an hour a notable feature of the royal party +without knowing it, and of course without getting the least good of it. +We had indeed ignorantly enjoyed no less of the honor than two other +Americans, who came in the dining-car with us, but whether the +nice-looking Spanish couple who sat in the corner next us were equally +ignorant of their advantage I shall never know. It was but too highly +probable that the messed condition of the car was due to royal luncheon +in it just before we came aboard; but why we were suffered to come +aboard, or why a supplementary fare should have been collected from us +remains one of those mysteries which I should once have liked to keep +all Spain. + +We had to go quite outside of the station grounds to get a cab for our +hotel, but from this blow to our dignity I recovered a little later in +the day, when the king, attended by as small a troop of cavalry as I +suppose a king ever has with him, came driving by in the street where I +was walking. As he sat in his open carriage he looked very amiable, and +handsomer than most of the pictures make him. He seemed to be gazing at +me, and when he bowed I could do no less than return his salutation. As +I glanced round to see if people near me were impressed by our exchange +of civilities, I perceived an elderly officer next me. He was smiling as +I was, and I think he was in the delusion that the king's bow, which I +had so promptly returned, was intended for him. + + + + +VIII + +CORDOVA AND THE WAY THERE + + +I should be sorry if I could believe that Cordova experienced the +disappointment in us, which I must own we felt in her; but our +disappointment was unquestionable, and I will at once offer it to the +reader as an inducement for him to go to Cordova with less lively +expectations than ours. I would by no means have him stay away; after +all, there is only one Cordova in the world which the capital of the +Caliphate of the West once filled with her renown; and if the great +mosque of Abderrahman is not so beautiful as one has been made to fancy +it, still it is wonderful, and could not be missed without loss. + + + + +I + + +Better, I should say, take the _rapido_ which leaves Madrid three times +a week at nine-thirty in the morning, than the night express which +leaves as often at the same hour in the evening. Since there are now +such good day trains on the chief Spanish lines, it is flying in the +face of Providence not to go by them; they might be suddenly taken off; +besides, they have excellent restaurant-cars, and there is, moreover, +always the fascinating and often the memorable landscape which they pass +through. By no fault of ours that I can remember, our train was rather +crowded; that is, four or five out of the eight places in our corridor +compartment were taken, and we were afraid at every stop that more +people would get in, though I do not know that it was our anxieties kept +them out. For the matter of that, I do not know why I employed an +interpreter at Madrid to get my ticket stamped at the ticket-office; it +required merely the presentation of the ticket at the window; but the +interpreter seemed to wish it and it enabled him to practise his English +with me, and I realized that he must live. In a peseta's worth of +gratitude he followed us to our carriage, and he did not molest the +_mozo_ in putting our bags into the racks, though he hovered about the +door till the train started; and it just now occurs to me that he may +have thought a peseta was not a sufficient return for his gratitude; he +had rendered us no service. + +At Aranjuez the wheat-lands, which began to widen about us as soon as we +got beyond the suburbs of Madrid, gave way to the groves and gardens of +that really charming pleasaunce, charming quite from the station, with +grounds penetrated by placid waters overhung by the English elms which +the Castilians are so happy in having naturalized in their treeless +waste. Multitudes of nightingales are said to sing among them, but it +was not the season for hearing them from the train; and we made what +shift we could with the strawberry and asparagus beds which we could see +plainly, and the peach trees and cherry trees. One of these had +committed the solecism of blossoming in October, instead of April or +May, when the nobility came to their villas. + +We had often said during our stay in Madrid that we should certainly +come for a day at Aranjuez; and here we were, passing it with a five +minutes' stop. I am sure it merited much more, not only for its many +proud memories, but for its shameful ones, which are apt to be so much +more lasting in the case of royal pleasaunces. The great Catholic King +Ferdinand inherited the place with the Mastership of the Order of +Santiago; Charles V. used to come there for the shooting, and Philip +II., Charleses III. and IV., and Ferdinand VII. built and rebuilt its +edifices. But it is also memorable because the wretched Godoy fled there +with the king, his friend, and the queen, his paramour, and there the +pitiable king abdicated in favor of his abominable son Ferdinand VII. It +is the careful Murray who reminds me of this fact; Gautier, who +apparently fails to get anything to his purpose out of Aranjuez, passes +it with the remark that Godoy built there a gallery from his villa to +the royal palace, for his easier access to the royal family in which he +held a place so anomalous. From Mr. Martin Hume's _Modern Spain_ I learn +that when the court fled to Aranjuez from Madrid before the advance of +Murat, and the mob, civil and military, hunted Godoy's villa through for +him, he jumped out of bed and hid himself under a roll of matting, while +the king and the queen, to save him, decreed his dismissal from all his +offices and honors. + +But here just at the most interesting moment the successive bells and +whistles are screeching, and the _rapido_ is hurrying me away from +Aranjuez. We are leaving a railway station, but presently it is as if we +had set sail on a gray sea, with a long ground-swell such as we +remembered from Old Castile. These innumerable pastures and wheat-fields +are in New Castile, and before long more distinctively they are in La +Mancha, the country dear to fame as the home of Don Quixote. I must own +at once it does not look it, or at least look like the country I had +read out of his history in my boyhood. For the matter of that, no +country ever looks like the country one reads out of a book, however +really it may be that country. The trouble probably is that one carries +out of one's reading an image which one had carried into it. When I read +_Don Quixote_ and read and read it again, I put La Mancha first into the +map of southern Ohio, and then into that, after an interval of seven or +eight years, of northern Ohio; and the scenes I arranged for his +adventures were landscapes composed from those about me in my earlier +and later boyhood. There was then always something soft and mild in the +_Don Quixote_ country, with a blue river and gentle uplands, and woods +where one could rest in the shade, and hide one's self if one wished, +after easily rescuing the oppressed. Now, instead, a treeless plain +unrolled itself from sky to sky, clean, dull, empty; and if some azure +tops dimmed the clear line of the western horizon, how could I have got +them into my early picture when I had never yet seen a mountain in my +life? I could not put the knight and his squire on those naked levels +where they should not have got a mile from home without discovery and +arrest. I tried to think of them jogging along in talk of the adventures +which the knight hoped for; but I could not make it work. I could have +done better before we got so far from Aranjuez; there were gardens and +orchards and a very suitable river there, and those elm trees +overhanging it; but the prospect in La Mancha had only here and there a +white-availed white farmhouse to vary its lonely simplicity, its desert +fertility; and I could do nothing with the strips and patches of +vineyard. It was all strangely African, strangely Mexican, and not at +all American, not Ohioan, enough to be anything like the real La Mancha +of my invention. To be sure, the doors and windows of the nearer houses +were visibly netted against mosquitoes and that was something, but even +that did not begin to be noticeable till we were drawing near the Sierra +Morena. Then, so long before we reached the mighty chain of mountains +which nature has stretched between the gravity of New Castile and the +gaiety of Andalusia, as if they could not bear immediate contact, I +experienced a moment of perfect reconciliation to the landscape as +really wearing the face of that La Mancha familiar to my boyish vision. +Late in the forenoon, but early enough to save the face of La Mancha, +there appeared certain unquestionable shapes in the nearer and farther +distance which I joyously knew for those windmills which Don Quixote had +known for giants and spurred at, lance in rest. They were waving their +vans in what he had found insolent defiance, but which seemed to us glad +welcome, as of windmills waiting that long time for a reader of +Cervantes who could enter into their feelings and into the friendly +companionship they were offering. + + + + +II + + +Our train did not pass very near, but the distance was not bad for them; +it kept them sixty or sixty-five years back in the past where they +belonged, and in its dimness I could the more distinctly see Don Quixote +careering against them, and Sancho Panza vainly warning, vainly +imploring him, and then in his rage and despair, "giving himself to the +devil," as he had so often to do in that master's service; I do not know +now that I would have gone nearer them if I could. Sometimes in the +desolate plains where the windmills stood so well aloof men were lazily, +or at least leisurely, plowing with their prehistoric crooked sticks. +Here and there the clean levels were broken by shallow pools of water; +and we were at first much tormented by expanses, almost as great as +these pools, of a certain purple flower, which no curiosity of ours +could prevail with to yield up the secret of its name or nature. It was +one of the anomalies of this desert country that it was apparently +prosperous, if one might guess from the comfortable-looking farmsteads +scattered over it, inclosing house and stables in the courtyard framed +by their white walls. The houses stood at no great distances from one +another, but were nowhere grouped in villages. There were commonly no +towns near the stations, which were not always uncheerful; sometimes +there were flower-beds, unless my memory deceives me. Perhaps there +would be a passenger or two, and certainly a loafer or two, and always +of the sex which in town life does the loafing; in the background or +through the windows the other sex could be seen in its domestic +activities. Only once did we see three girls of such as stay for the +coming and going of trains the world over; they waited arm in arm, and +we were obliged to own they were plain, poor things. + +Their whitewash saves the distant towns from the effect of sinking into +the earth, or irregularly rising from it, as in Old Castile, and the +landscape cheered up more and more as we ran farther south. We passed +through the country of the Valdepenas wine, which it is said would so +willingly be better than it is; there was even a station of that name, +which looked much more of a station than most, and had, I think I +remember, buildings necessary to the wine industry about it. Murray, +indeed, emboldens me in this halting conjecture with the declaration +that the neighboring town of Valdepenas is "completely undermined by +wine-cellars of very ancient date" where the wine is "kept in caves in +huge earthen jars," and when removed is put into goat or pig skins in +the right Don Quixote fashion. + +The whole region begins to reek of Cervantean memories. Ten miles from +the station of Argamasilla is the village where he imagined, and the +inhabitants believe, Don Quixote to have been born. Somewhere among +these little towns Cervantes himself was thrown into prison for +presuming to attempt collecting their rents when the people did not want +to pay them. This is what I seem to remember having read, but heaven +knows where, or if. What is certain is that almost before I was aware we +were leaving the neighborhood of Valdepenas, where we saw men with +donkeys gathering grapes and letting the donkeys browse on the vine +leaves. Then we were mounting among the foothills of the Sierra Morena, +not without much besetting trouble of mind because of those certain +circles and squares of stone on the nearer and farther slopes which we +have since somehow determined were sheep-folds. They abounded almost to +the very scene of those capers which Don Quixote cut on the mountainside +to testify his love for Dulcinea del Toboso, to the great scandal of +Sancho Panza riding away to give his letter to the lady, but unable to +bear the sight of the knight skipping on the rocks in a single garment. + + + + +III + + +In the forests about befell all those adventures with the mad Cardenio +and the wronged Dorothea, both self-banished to the wilderness through +the perfidy of the same false friend and faithless lover. The episodes +which end so well, and which form, I think, the heart of the wonderful +romance, have, from the car windows, the fittest possible setting; but +suddenly the scene changes, and you are among aspects of nature as +savagely wild as any in that new western land where the countrymen of +Cervantes found a New Spain, just as the countrymen of Shakespeare found +a New England. Suddenly, or if not suddenly, then startlingly, we were +in a pass of the Sierra called (for some reason which I will leave +picturesquely unexplained) the Precipice of Dogs, where bare sharp peaks +and spears of rock started into the air, and the faces of the cliffs +glared down upon us like the faces of Indian warriors painted yellow and +orange and crimson, and every other warlike color. With my poor scruples +of moderation I cannot give a just notion of the wild aspects; I must +leave it to the reader, with the assurance that he cannot exaggerate it, +while I employ myself in noting that already on this awful summit we +began to feel ourselves in the south, in Andalusia. Along the mountain +stream that slipped silverly away in the valley below, there were +oleanders in bloom, such as we had left in Bermuda the April before. +Already, north of the Sierra the country had been gentling. The upturned +soil had warmed from gray to red; elsewhere the fields were green with +sprouting wheat; and there were wide spaces of those purple flowers, +like crocuses, which women were gathering in large baskets. Probably +they were not crocuses; but there could be no doubt of the vineyards +increasing in their acreage; and the farmhouses which had been without +windows in their outer walls, now sometimes opened as many as two to the +passing train. Flocks of black sheep and goats, through the optical +illusion frequent in the Spanish air, looked large as cattle in the +offing. Only in one place had we seen the tumbled boulders of Old +Castile, and there had been really no greater objection to La Mancha +than that it was flat, stale, and unprofitable and wholly unimaginable +as the scene of even Don Quixote's first adventures. + +But now that we had mounted to the station among the summits of the +Sierra Morena, my fancy began to feel at home, and rested in a scene +which did all the work for it. There was ample time for the fancy to +rest in that more than co-operative landscape. Just beyond the first +station the engine of a freight-train had opportunely left the track in +front of us, and we waited there four hours till it could be got back. +It would be inhuman to make the reader suffer through this delay with us +after it ceased to be pleasure and began to be pain. Of course, +everybody of foreign extraction got out of the train and many even, went +forward to look at the engine and see what they could do about it; +others went partly forward and asked the bolder spirits on their way +back what was the matter. Now and then our locomotive whistled as if to +scare the wandering engine back to the rails. At moments the +station-master gloomily returned to the station from somewhere and +diligently despaired in front of it. Then we backed as if to let our +locomotive run up the siding and try to butt the freight-train off the +track to keep its engine company. + +About this time the restaurant-car bethought itself of some sort of +late-afternoon repast, and we went forward and ate it with an interest +which we prolonged as much as possible. We returned to our car which was +now pervaded by an extremely bad smell. The smell drove us out, and we +watched a public-spirited peasant beating the acorns from a live-oak +near the station with a long pole. He brought a great many down, and +first filled his sash-pocket with them; then he distributed them among +the children of the third-class passengers who left the train and +flocked about him. But nobody seemed to do anything with the acorns, +though they were more than an inch long, narrow, and very sharp-pointed. +As soon as he had discharged his self-assumed duty the peasant lay down +on the sloping bank under the tree, and with his face in the grass, went +to sleep for all our stay, and for what I know the whole night after. + +It did not now seem likely that we should ever reach Gordova, though +people made repeated expeditions to the front of the train, and came +back reporting that in an hour we should start. We interested ourselves +as intensely as possible in a family from the next compartment, +London-tailored, and speaking either Spanish or English as they fancied, +who we somehow understood lived at Barcelona; but nothing came of our +interest. Then as the day waned we threw ourselves into the interest +taken by a fellow-passenger in a young Spanish girl of thirteen or +fourteen who had been in the care of a youngish middle-aged man when our +train stopped, and been then abandoned by him for hours, while he seemed +to be satisfying a vain curiosity at the head of the train. She owned +that the deserter was her father, and while we were still poignantly +concerned for her he came back and relieved the anxiety which the girl +herself had apparently not shared even under pressure of the whole +compartment's sympathy. + + + + +IV + + +The day waned more and more; the sun began to sink, and then it sank +with that sudden drop which the sun has at last. The sky flushed +crimson, turned mauve, turned gray, and the twilight thickened over the +summits billowing softly westward. There had been a good deal of +joking, both Spanish and English, among the passengers; I had found +particularly cheering the richness of a certain machinist's trousers of +bright golden corduroy; but as the shades of night began to embrown the +scene our spirits fell; and at the cry of a lonesome bird, far off where +the sunset had been, they followed the sun in its sudden drop. Against +the horizon a peasant boy leaned on his staff and darkled against the +darkening sky. + +Nothing lacked now but the opportune recollection that this was the +region where the natives had been so wicked in times past that an +ingenious statesman, such as have seldom been wanting to Spain, imagined +bringing in a colony of German peasants to mix with them and reform +them. That is what some of the books say, but others say that the region +had remained unpeopled after the first exile of the conquered Moors. All +hold that the notion of mixing the colonists and the natives worked the +wrong way; the natives were not reformed, but the colonists were +depraved and stood in with the local brigands, ultimately, if not +immediately. This is the view suggested, if not taken, by that amusing +emissary, George Borrow, who seems in his _Bible in Spain_ to have been +equally employed in distributing the truths of the New Testament and +collecting material for the most dramatic study of Spanish civilization +known to literature. It is a delightful book, and not least delightful +in the moments of misgiving which it imparts to the reader, when he does +not know whether to prize more the author's observation or his +invention, whichever it may be. Borrow reports a conversation with an +innkeeper and his wife of the Colonial German descent, who gave a good +enough account of themselves, and then adds the dark intimation of an +Italian companion that they could not be honestly keeping a hotel in +that unfrequented place. It was not just in that place that our delay +had chosen to occur, but it was in the same colonized region, and I am +glad now that I had not remembered the incident from my first reading of +Borrow. It was sufficiently uncomfortable to have some vague association +with the failure of that excellent statesman's plan, blending creepily +with the feeling of desolation from the gathering dark, and I now recall +the distinct relief given by the unexpected appearance of two such +Guardias Civiles as travel with every Spanish train, in the space before +our lonely station. + +These admirable friends were part of the system which has made travel as +safe throughout Spain as it is in Connecticut, where indeed I sometimes +wonder that road-agents do not stop my Boston express in the waste +expanse of those certain sand barrens just beyond New Haven. The last +time I came through that desert I could not help thinking how nice it +would be to have two Guardias Civiles in our Pullman car; but of course +at the summit of the Sierra Morena, where our _rapido_ was stalled in +the deepening twilight, it was still nicer to see that soldier pair, +pacing up and down, trim, straight, very gentle and polite-looking, but +firm, with their rifles lying on their shoulders which they kept exactly +together. It is part of the system that they may use those rifles upon +any evil-doer whom they discover in a deed of violence, acting at once +as police, court of law, and executioners; and satisfying public +curiosity by pinning to the offender's coat their official certificate +that he was shot by such and such a civil guard for such and such a +reason, and then notifying the nearest authorities. It is perhaps too +positive, too peremptory, too precise; and the responsibility could not +be intrusted to men who had not satisfied the government of their +fitness by two years' service in the army without arrest for any +offense, or even any question of misbehavior. But these conditions once +satisfied, and their temperament and character approved, they are +intrusted with what seem plenary powers till they are retired for old +age; then their sons may serve after them as Civil Guards with the same +prospect of pensions in the end. I suppose they do not always travel +first class, but once their silent, soldierly presence honored our +compartment between stations; and once an officer of their corps +conversed for long with a fellow-passenger in that courteous ease and +self-respect which is so Spanish between persons of all ranks. + +It was not very long after the guards appeared so reassuringly before +the station, when a series of warning bells and whistles sounded, and +our locomotive with an impatient scream began to tug at our train. We +were really off, starting from Santa Elena at the very time when we +ought to have been stopping at Oordova, with a good stretch of four +hours still before us. As our fellow-travelers quitted us at one station +and another we were finally left alone with the kindly-looking old man +who had seemed interested in us from the first, and who now made some +advances in broken English. Presently he told us in Spanish, to account +for the English accent on which we complimented him, that he had two +sons studying some manufacturing business in Manchester, where he had +visited them, and acquired so much of our tongue as we had heard. He was +very proud and glad to speak of his sons, and he valued us for our +English and the strangeness which commends people to one another in +travel. When he got out at a station obscured past identification by its +flaring lamps, he would not suffer me to help him with his hand-baggage; +while he deplored my offered civility, he reassured me by patting my +back at parting. Yet I myself had to endure the kindness which he would +not when we arrived at Cordova, where two young fellows, who had got in +at a suburban station, helped me with our bags and bundles quite as if +they had been two young Americans. + + + + +V + + +Somewhere at a junction our train had been divided and our car, left the +last of what remained, had bumped and threatened to beat itself to +pieces during its remaining run of fifteen miles. This, with our long +retard at Santa Elena, and our opportune defense from the depraved +descendants of the reforming German colonists by the Guardias Civiles, +had given us a day of so much excitement that we were anxious to have it +end tranquilly at midnight in the hotel which we had chosen from, our +Baedeker. I would not have any reader of mine choose it again from my +experience of it, though it was helplessly rather wilfully bad; +certainly the fault was not the hotel's that it seemed as far from the +station as Cordova was from Madrid. It might, under the circumstances, +have, been _a_ merit in it to be undergoing a thorough overhauling of +the furnishing and decoration of the rooms on the _patio_ which had +formed our ideal for a quiet night. A conventionally napkined waiter +welcomed us from the stony street, and sent us up to our rooms with the +young interpreter who met us at the station, but was obscure as to their +location. When we refused them because they were over that loud-echoing +alley, the interpreter made himself still more our friend and called +mandatorially down the speaking-tube that we wished _interiores_ and +would take nothing else, though he must have known that no such rooms +were to be had. He even abetted us in visiting the rooms on the _patio_ +and satisfying ourselves that they were all dismantled; when the waiter +brought up the hot soup which was the only hot thing in the house beside +our tempers, he joined with that poor fellow in reconciling us to the +inevitable. They declared that the people whom we heard uninterruptedly +clattering and chattering by in the street below, and the occasional +tempest of wheels and bells and hoofs that clashed up to us would be the +very last to pass through there that night, and they gave such good and +sufficient reasons for their opinion that we yielded as we needs must. +Of course, they were wrong; and perhaps they even knew that they were +wrong; but I think we were the only people in that neighborhood who got +any sleep that night or the next. We slept the sleep of exhaustion, but +I believe those Cordovese preferred waking outdoors to trying to sleep +within. It was apparently their custom to walk and talk the night away +in the streets, not our street alone, but all the other streets of +Cordova; the laughing which I heard may have expressed the popular +despair of getting any sleep. The next day we experimented in listening +from rooms offered us over another street, and then we remained +measurably contented to bear the ills we had. This was after an +exhaustive search for a better hotel had partly appeased us; but there +remained in the Paseo del Gran Capitan one house unvisited which has +ever since grown upon my belief as embracing every comfort and advantage +lacking to our hotel. I suppose I am the stronger in this belief because +when we came to it we had been so disappointed with the others that we +had not the courage to go inside. Smell for smell, the interior of that +hotel may have harbored a worse one than the odor of henhouse which +pervaded ours, I hope from the materials for calcimining the rooms on +the _patio._ + +By the time we returned we found a guide waiting for us, and we agreed +with him for a day's service. He did not differ with other authorities +as to the claims of Cordova on the tourist's interest. From being the +most brilliant capital of the Western world in the time of the Caliphs +it is now allowed by all the guides and guide-books and most of the +travelers, to be one of the dullest of provincial towns. It is no longer +the center of learning; and though it cannot help doing a large business +in olives, with the orchards covering the hills around it, the business +does not seem to be a very active one. "The city once the abode of the +flower of Andalusian nobility," says the intelligent O'Shea in his +_Guide to Spain, "_is inhabited chiefly by administradores of the +absentee senorio; their 'solares' are desert and wretched, the streets +ill paved though clean, and the whitewashed houses unimportant, low, and +denuded of all art and meaning, either past or present." Baedeker gives +like reasons for thinking "the traveler whose expectation is on tiptoe +as he enters the ancient capital of the Moors will probably be +disappointed in all but the cathedral." _Cook's Guide,_ latest but not +least commendable of the authorities, is of a more divided mind and +finds the means of trade and industry and their total want of visible +employment at the worst anomalous. + +Vacant, narrow streets where the grass does not grow, and there is only +an endless going and coming of aimless feet; a market without buyers or +sellers to speak of, and a tangle of squat white houses, abounding in +lovely _patios,_ sweet and bright with flowers and fountains: this seems +to be Cordova in the consensus of the manuals, and with me in the +retrospect a sort of puzzle is the ultimate suggestion of the dead +capital of the Western Caliphs. Gautier thinks, or seventy-two years ago +he thought (and there has not been much change since), that "Cordova has +a more African look than any other city of Andalusia; its streets, or +rather its lanes, whose tumultuous pavement resembles the bed of dry +torrents, all littered with straw from the loads of passing donkeys, +have nothing that recalls the manners and customs of Europe. The Moors, +if they came back, would have no great trouble to reinstate themselves. +. . . The universal use of lime-wash gives a uniform tint to the +monuments, blunts the lines of the architecture, effaces the +ornamentation, and forbids you to read their age. . . . You cannot know +the wall of a century ago from the wall of yesterday. Cordova, once the +center of Arab civilization, is now a huddle of little white houses with +corridors between them where two mules could hardly pass abreast. Life +seems to have ebbed from the vast body, once animated by the active +circulation of Moorish blood; nothing is left now but the blanched and +calcined skeleton. ... In spite of its Moslem air, Cordova is very +Christian and rests under the special protection of the Archangel +Raphael." It is all rather contradictory; but Gautier owns that the +great mosque is a "monument unique in the world, and novel even for +travelers who have had the fortune to admire the wonders of Moorish +architecture at Granada or Seville." + +De Amicis, who visited Cordova nearly forty-five years later, and in the +heart of spring, brought letters which opened something of the intimate +life of that apparently blanched and calcined skeleton. He meets young +men and matches Italian verses with their Spanish; spends whole nights +sitting in their cafes or walking their plazas, and comes away with his +mouth full of the rapturous verses of an Arab poet: "Adieu, Cordova! +Would that my life were as long as Noah's, that I might live forever +within thy walls! Would that I had the treasures of Pharaoh, to spend +them upon wine and the beautiful women of Cordova, with tho gentle eyes +that invite kisses!" He allows that the lines may be "a little too +tropical for the taste of a European," and it seems to me that there may +be a golden mean between scolding and flattering which would give the +truth about Cordova. I do not promise to strike it; our hotel still +rankles in my heart; but I promise to try for it, though I have to say +that the very moment we started for the famous mosque it began to rain, +and rained throughout the forenoon, while we weltered from wonder to +wonder through the town. We were indeed weltering in a closed carriage, +which found its way not so badly through the alleys where two mules +could not pass abreast. The lime-wash of the walls did not emit the +white heat in which tho other tourists have basked or baked; the houses +looked wet and chill, and if they had those flowered and fountained +_patios_ which people talk of they had taken them in out of the rain. + + + + +VI + + +At the mosque the _patio_ was not taken in only because it was so large, +but I find by our records that it was much molested by a beggar who +followed us when we dismounted at the gate of the Court of Oranges, and +all but took our minds off the famous Moorish fountain in the midst. It +was not a fountain of the plashing or gushing sort, but a noble great +pool in a marble basin. The women who clustered about it were not +laughing and chattering, or singing, or even dancing, in the right +Andalusian fashion, but stood silent in statuesque poses from which they +seemed in no haste to stir for filling their water jars and jugs. The +Moorish tradition of irrigation confronting one in all the travels and +histories as a supreme agricultural advantage which the Arabs took back +to Africa with them, leaving Spain to thirst and fry, lingers here in +the circles sunk round the orange trees and fed by little channels. The +trees grew about as the fancy took them, and did not mind the +incongruous palms towering as irregularly above them. While we wandered +toward the mosque a woman robed in white cotton, with a lavender scarf +crossing her breast, came in as irrelevantly as the orange trees and +stood as stably as the palms; in her night-black hair she alone in +Cordova redeemed the pledge of beauty made for all Andalusian women by +the reckless poets and romancers, whether in ballads or books of travel. + +One enters the court by a gate in a richly yellow tower, with a shrine +to St. Michael over the door, and still higher at the lodging of the +keeper a bed of bright flowers. Then, however, one is confronted with +the first great disappointment in the mosque. Shall it be whispered in +awe-stricken undertone that the impression of a bull-ring is what +lingers in the memory of the honest sight-seer from his first glance at +the edifice? The effect is heightened by the filling of the arcades +which encircle it, and which now confront the eye with a rounded wall, +where the Saracenic horseshoe remains distinct, but the space of yellow +masonry below seems to forbid the outsider stealing knowledge of the +spectacle inside. The spectacle is of course no feast of bulls (as the +Spanish euphemism has it), but the first amphitheatrical impression is +not wholly dispersed by the sight of the interior. In order that the +reader at his distance may figure this, he must imagine an indefinite +cavernous expanse, with a low roof supported in vaulted arches by some +thousand marble pillars, each with a different capital. There used to be +perhaps half a thousand more pillars, and Charles V. made the Cordovese +his reproaches for destroying the wonder of them when they planted their +proud cathedral in the heart of the mosque. He held it a sort of +sacrilege, but I think the honest traveler will say that there are still +enough of those rather stumpy white marble columns left, and enough of +those arches, striped in red and white with their undeniable suggestion +of calico awnings. It is like a grotto gaudily but dingily decorated, or +a vast circus-tent curtained off in hangings of those colors. + +One sees the sanctuary where the great Caliph said his prayers, and the +Koran written by Othman and stained with his blood was kept; but I know +at least one traveler who saw it without sentiment or any sort of +reverent emotion, though he had not the authority of the "old rancid +Christianity" of a Castilian for withholding his homage. If people would +be as sincere as other people would like them to be, I think no one +would profess regret for the Arab civilization in the presence of its +monuments. Those Moors were of a religion which revolts all the finer +instincts and lifts the soul with no generous hopes; and the records of +it have no appeal save to the love of mere beautiful decoration. Even +here it mostly fails, to my thinking, and I say that for my part I found +nothing so grand in the great mosaue of Cordova as the cathedral which +rises in the heart of it. If Abderrahman boasted that he would rear a +shrine to the joy of earthly life and the hope of an earthly heaven, in +the place of the Christian temple which he would throw down, I should +like to overhear what his disembodied spirit would have to say to the +saint whose shrine he demolished. I think the saint would have the +better of him in any contention for their respective faiths, and could +easily convince the impartial witness that his religion then abiding in +medieval gloom was of promise for the future which Islam can never be. +Yet it cannot be denied that when Abderraham built his mosque the Arabs +of Cordova were a finer and wiser people than the Christians who dwelt +in intellectual darkness among them, with an ideal of gloom and +self-denial and a zeal for aimless martyrdom which must have been very +hard for a gentleman and scholar to bear. Gentlemen and scholars were +what the Arabs of the Western Caliphate seem to have become, with a +primacy in medicine and mathematics beyond the learning of all other +Europe in their day. They were tolerant skeptics in matters of religion; +polite agnostics, who disliked extremely the passion of some Christians +dwelling among them for getting themselves put to death, as they did, +for insulting the popularly accepted Mohammedan creed. Probably people +of culture in Cordova were quite of Abderrahman's mind in wishing to +substitute the temple of a cheerfuler ideal for the shrine of the +medieval Christianity which he destroyed; though they might have had +their reserves as to the taste in which his mosque was completed. If +they recognized it as a concession to the general preference, they could +do so without the discomfort which they must have suffered when some new +horde of Berbers, full of faith and fight, came over from Africa to push +back the encroaching Spanish frontier, and give the local Christians as +much martyrdom as they wanted. + +It is all a conjecture based upon material witness no more substantial +than that which the Latin domination left long centuries before the +Arabs came to possess the land. The mosque from which you drive through +the rain to the river is neither newer nor older looking than the +beautiful Saracenic bridge over the Guadalquivir which the Arabs +themselves say was first built by the Romans in the time of Augustus; +the Moorish mill by the thither shore might have ground the first wheat +grown in Europe. It is intensely, immemorially African, flat-roofed, +white-walled; the mules waiting outside in the wet might have been +drooping there ever since the going down of the Flood, from which the +river could have got its muddy yellow. + +If the reader will be advised by me he will not go to the Archaeological +Museum, unless he wishes particularly to contribute to the support of +the custodian; the collection will not repay him even for the time in +which a whole day of Cordova will seem so superabundant. Any little +street will be worthier his study, with its type of passing girls in +white and black mantillas, and its shallow shops of all sorts, their +fronts thrown open, and their interiors flung, as it were, on the +sidewalk. It is said that the streets were the first to be paved in +Europe, and they have apparently not been repaved since 850. This indeed +will not Hold quite true of that thoroughfare, twenty feet wide at +least, which led from our hotel to the Paseo del Gran Capitan. In this +were divers shops of the genteeler sort, and some large cafes, standing +full of men of leisure, who crowded to their doors and windows, with +their hats on and their hands in their pockets, as at a club, and let no +fact of the passing world escape their hungry eyes. Their behavior +expressed a famine of incident in Cordova which was pathetic. + + + + +VII + + +The people did not look very healthy as to build or color, and there was +a sound of coughing everywhere. To be sure, it was now the season of the +first colds, which would no doubt wear off with the coming of next +spring; and there was at any rate not nearly so much begging as at +Toledo, because there could not be anywhere. I am sorry I can contribute +no statistics as to the moral or intellectual condition of Cordova; +perhaps they will not be expected or desired of me; I can only say that +the general intelligence is such that no one will own he does not know +anything you ask him even when he does not; but this is a national +rather than a local trait, which causes the stranger to go in many wrong +directions all over the peninsula. I should not say that there was any +noticeable decay of character from the north to the south such as the +attributive pride of the old Castilian in the Sheridan Knowlesian drama +would teach; the Cordovese looked no more shiftless than the haughtiest +citizens of Burgos. + +They had decidedly prettier _patios_ and more of them, and they had many +public carriages against none whatever in that ancient capital. Rubber +tires I did not expect in Cordova and certainly did not get in a city +where a single course over the pavements of 850 would have worn them to +tatters: but there seems a good deal of public spirit if one may judge +from the fact that it is the municipality which keeps Abderrahman's +mosque in repair. There are public gardens, far pleasanter than those of +Valladolid, which we visited in an interval of the afternoon, and there +is a very personable bull-ring to which we drove in the vain hope of +seeing the people come out in a typical multitude. But there had been no +feast of bulls; and we had to make what we could out of the walking and +driving in the Paseo del Gran Capitan toward evening. In its long, +discouraging course there were some good houses, but not many, and the +promenaders of any social quality were almost as few. Some ladies in +private carriages were driving out, and a great many more in public ones +as well dressed as the others, but with no pretense of state in the +horses or drivers. The women of the people all wore flowers in their +hair, a dahlia or a marigold, whether their hair was black or gray. No +ladies were walking in the Paseo, except one pretty mother, with her +nice-looking children about her, who totaled the sum of her class; but +men of every class rather swarmed. High or low, they all wore the kind +of hat which abounds everywhere in Andalusia and is called a Cordovese: +flat, stiff, squat in crown and wide in brim, and of every shade of +gray, brown, and black. + +I ought to have had my associations with the great Captain Gonsalvo in +the promenade which the city has named after him, but I am not sure that +I had, though his life was one of the Spanish books which I won my way +through in the middle years of my pathless teens. A comprehensive +ignorance of the countries and histories which formed the setting of his +most dramatic career was not the best preparation for knowledge of the +man, but it was the best I had, and now I can only look back at my +struggle with him and wonder that I came off alive. It is the hard fate +of the self-taught that their learning must cost them twice as much +labor as it would if they were taught by others; the very books they +study are grudging friends if not insidious foes. Long afterward when I +came to Italy, and began to make the past part of my present, I began to +untangle a little the web that the French and the Aragonese wove in the +conquest and reconquest of the wretched Sicilies; but how was I to +imagine in the Connecticut Western Reserve the scene of Gonsalvo's +victories in Calabria? Even loath Ferdinand the Catholic said they +brought greater glory to his crown than his own conquest of Granada; I +dare say I took some unintelligent pride in his being Viceroy of Naples, +and I may have been indignant at his recall and then his retirement from +court by the jealous king. But my present knowledge of these facts, and +of his helping put down the Moorish insurrection in 1500, as well as his +exploits as commander of a Spanish armada against the Turks is a recent +debt I owe to the _Encyclopedia Britannica_ and not to my boyish +researches. Of like actuality is my debt to Mr. Calvert's _Southern +Spain,_ where he quotes the accounting which the Great Captain gave on +the greedy king's demand for a statement of his expenses in the +Sicilies. + +"Two hundred thousand seven hundred and thirty-six ducats and 9 reals +paid to the clergy and the poor who prayed for the victory of the army +of Spain. + +"One hundred millions in pikes, bullets, and intrenching tools; 10,000 +ducats in scented gloves, to preserve the troops from the odor of the +enemies' dead left on the battle-field; 100,000 ducats, spent in the +repair of the bells completely worn out by every-day announcing fresh +victories gained over our enemies; 50,000 ducats in 'aguardiente' for +the troops on the eve of battle. A million and a half for the +safeguarding prisoners and wounded. + +"One million for Masses of Thanksgiving; 700,494 ducats for secret +service, etc. + +"And one hundred millions for the patience with which I have listened to +the king, who demands an account from the man who has presented him with +a Kingdom." + +It seems that Gonsalvo was one of the greatest humorists, as well as +captains of his age, and the king may very well have liked his fun no +better than his fame. Now that he has been dead nearly four hundred +years, Ferdinand would, if he were living, no doubt join Cordova in +honoring Gonzalo Hernandez de Aguila y de Cordova. After all he was not +born in Cordova (as I had supposed till an hour ago), but in the little +city of Montilla, five stations away on the railroad to the Malaga, and +now more noted for its surpassing sherry than for the greatest soldier +of his time. To have given its name to Amontillado is glory enough for +Montilla, and it must be owned that Gonzalo Hernandez de Aguila y de +Montilla would not sound so well as the title we know the hero by, when +we know him at all. There may be some who will say that Cordova merits +remembrance less because of him than because of Columbus, who first came +to the Catholic kings there to offer them not a mere kingdom, but a +whole hemisphere. Cordova was then the Spanish headquarters for the +operations against Granada, and one reads of the fact with a luminous +sense which one cannot have till one has seen Cordova. + + + + +VIII + + +After our visits to the mosque and the bridge and the museum there +remained nothing of our forenoon, and we gave the whole of the earlier +afternoon to an excursion which strangers are expected to make into the +first climb of hills to the eastward of the city. The road which reaches +the Huerto de los Arcos is rather smoother for driving than the streets +of Cordova, but the rain had made it heavy, and we were glad of our good +horses and their owner's mercy to them. He stopped so often to breathe +them when the ascent began that we had abundant time to note the +features of the wayside; the many villas, piously named for saints, set +on the incline, and orcharded about with orange trees, in the beginning +of that measureless forest of olives which has no limit but the horizon. + +From the gate to the villa which we had come to see it was a stiff +ascent by terraced beds of roses, zinneas, and purple salvia beside +walls heavy with jasmine and trumpet creepers, in full bloom, and orange +trees, fruiting and flowering in their desultory way. Before the villa +we were to see a fountain much favored by our guide who had a passion +for the jets that played ball with themselves as long as the gardener +let him turn the water on, and watched with joy to see how high the +balls would go before slipping back. The fountain was in a grotto-like +nook, where benches of cement decked with scallop shells were set round +a basin with the figures of two small boys in it bestriding that of a +lamb, all employed in letting the water dribble from their mouths. It +was very simple-hearted, as such things seem mostly obliged to be, but +nature helped art out so well with a lovely abundance of leaf and petal +that a far more exacting taste than ours must have been satisfied. The +garden was in fact very pretty, though whether it was worth fifteen +pesetas and three hours coming to see the reader must decide for himself +when he does it. I think it was, myself, and I would like to be there +now, sitting in a shell-covered cement chair at the villa steps, and +letting the landscape unroll itself wonderfully before me. We were on a +shore of that ocean of olives which in southern Spain washes far up the +mountain walls of the blue and bluer distances, and which we were to +skirt more and more in bay and inlet and widening and narrowing expanses +throughout Andalusia. Before we left it we wearied utterly of it, and in +fact the olive of Spain is not the sympathetic olive of Italy, though I +should think it a much more practical and profitable tree. It is not +planted so much at haphazard as the Italian olive seems to be; its mass +looks less like an old apple orchard than the Italian; its regular +succession is a march of trim files as far as the horizon or the +hillsides, which they often climbed to the top. We were in the season of +the olive harvest, and throughout the month of October its nearer lines +showed the sturdy trees weighed down by the dense fruit, sometimes very +small, sometimes as large as pigeon eggs. There were vineyards and +wheat-fields in that vast prospect, and certainly there were towns and +villages; but what remains with me is the sense of olives and ever more +olives, though this may be the cumulative effect of other such prospects +as vast and as monotonous. + +While we looked away and away, the gardener and a half-grown boy were +about their labors that Sunday afternoon as if it were a week-day, +though for that reason perhaps they were not working very hard. They +seemed mostly to be sweeping up the fallen leaves from the paths, and +where the leaves had not fallen from the horse-chestnuts the boy was +assisting nature by climbing the trees and plucking them. We tried to +find out why he was doing this, but to this day I do not know why he was +doing it, and I must be content to contribute the bare fact to the +science of arboriculture. Possibly it was in the interest of neatness, +and was a precaution against letting the leaves drop and litter the +grass. There was apparently a passion for neatness throughout, which in +the villa itself mounted to ecstasy. It was in a state to be come and +lived in at any moment, though I believe it was occupied only in the +late spring and the early autumn; in winter the noble family went to +Madrid, and in summer to some northern watering-place. It was rather +small, and expressed a life of the minor hospitalities when the family +was in residence. It was no place for house-parties, and scarcely for +week-end visits, or even for neighborhood dinners. Perhaps on that +terrace there was afternoon ice-cream or chocolate for friends who rode +or drove over or out; it seemed so possible that we had to check in +ourselves the cozy impulse to pull up our shell-covered cement chairs to +some central table of like composition. + +Within, the villa was of a spick-and-spanness which I feel that I have +not adequately suggested; and may I say that the spray of a garden-hose +seemed all that would be needed to put the place in readiness for +occupation? Not that even this was needed for that interior of tile and +marble, so absolutely apt for the climate and the use the place would be +put to. In vain we conjectured, and I hope not impertinently, the +characters and tastes of the absentees; the sole clue that offered +itself was a bookshelf of some Spanish versions from authors scientific +and metaphysical to the verge of agnosticism. I would not swear to +Huxley and Herbert Spencer among the English writers, but they were such +as these, not in their entire bulk, but in extracts and special essays. +I recall the slightly tilted row of the neat paper copies; and I wish I +knew who it was liked to read them. The Spanish have a fondness for such +dangerous ground; from some of their novels it appears they feel it +rather chic to venture on it. + + + + +IX + + +We came away from Cordova with a pretty good conscience as to its +sights. Upon the whole we were glad they were so few, when once we had +made up our minds about the mosque. But now I have found too late that +we ought to have visited the general market in the old square where the +tournaments used to take place; we ought to have seen also the Chapel of +the Hospital del Cardenal, because it was part of the mosque of +Al-Manssour; we ought to have verified the remains of two baths out of +the nine hundred once existing in the Calle del Bagno Alta; and we ought +finally to have visited the remnant of a Moorish house in the Plazuela +de San Nicolas, with its gallery of jasper columns, now unhappily +whitewashed. The Campo Santo has an unsatisfied claim upon my interest +because it was the place where the perfervid Christian zealots used to +find the martyrdom they sought at the hands of the unwilling Arabs; and +where, far earlier, Julius Caesar planted a plane tree after his victory +over the forces of Pompeii at Munda. The tree no longer exists, but +neither does Caesar, or the thirty thousand enemies whom he slew there, +or the sons of Pompeii who commanded them. These were so near beating +Casar at first that he ran among his soldiers "asking them whether they +were not ashamed to deliver him into the hands of boys." One of the boys +escaped, but two days after the fight the head of the elder was brought +to Caesar, who was not liked for the triumph he made himself after the +event in Rome, where it was thought out of taste to rejoice over the +calamity of his fellow-countrymen as if they had been foreign foes; the +Romans do not seem to have minded his putting twenty-eight thousand +Cordovese to death for their Pompeian politics. If I had remembered all +this from my Plutarch, I should certainly have gone to see the place +where Caesar planted that plane tree. Perhaps some kind soul will go to +see it for me. I myself do not expect to return to Cordova. + + + + +IX + +FIRST DAYS IN SEVILLE + + +Cordova seemed to cheer up as much as we at our going. We had +undoubtedly had the better night's sleep; as often as we woke we found +Cordova awake, walking and talking, and coughing more than the night +before, probably from fresh colds taken in the rain. From time to time +there were church-bells, variously like tin pans and iron pots in tone, +without sonorousness in their noise, or such wild clangor as some +Italian church-bells have. But Cordova had lived through it, and at the +station was lively with the arriving and departing trains. The morning +was not only bright; it was hot, and the place babbled with many voices. +We thought one voice crying "Agua, agua!" was a parrot's and then we +thought it was a girl's, but really it was a boy with water for sale in +a stone bottle. He had not a rose, white or red, in his hair, but if he +had been a girl, old or young, he would have had one, white or red. Some +of the elder women wore mantillas, but these wore flowers too, and were +less pleasing than pathetic for it; one very massive matron was less +pleasing and more pathetic than the rest. Peasant women carried bunches +of chickens by the legs, and one had a turkey in a rush bag with a +narrow neck to put its head out of for its greater convenience in +gobbling. At the door of the station a donkey tried to bite a fly on its +back; but even a Spanish donkey cannot do everything. There was no +attempt to cheat us in the weight of our trunks, as there often is in +Italy, and the _mozo_ who put us and our hand-bags into the train was +content with his reasonable fee. As for the pair of Civil Guards who +were to go with us, they were of an insurpassable beauty and propriety, +and we felt it a peculiar honor when one of them got into the +compartment beside ours. + +We were to take the mail-train to Seville; and in Spain the _correo_ is +next to the Sud-Express, which is the last word in the vocabulary of +Peninsular railroading. Our _correo_ had been up all night on the way +from Madrid, and our compartment had apparently been used as a +bedchamber, with moments of supper-room. It seemed to have been occupied +by a whole family; there were frowsy pillows crushed into the corners of +the seats, and, though a porter caught these away, the cigar stubs, and +the cigarette ashes strewing the rug and fixed in it with various +liquids, as well as some scattering hair-pins, escaped his care. But +when it was dried and aired out by windows opened to the sunny weather, +it was by no means a bad compartment. The broad cushions were certainly +cleaner than the carpet; and it was something--it was a great deal--to +be getting out of Cordova on any terms. Not that Cordova seems at this +distance so bad as it seemed on the ground. If we could have had the +bright Monday of our departure instead of the rainy Sunday of our stay +there we might have wished to stay longer. But as it was the four hours' +run to Seville was delightful, largely because it Was the run from +Cordova. + +We were running at once over a gentle ground-swell which rose and sank +in larger billows now and then, and the yellow Guadalquivir followed us +all the way, in a valley that sometimes widened to the blue mountains +always walling the horizon. We had first entered Andalusia after dark, +and the scene had now a novelty little staled by the distant view of the +afternoon before. The olive orchards then seen afar were intimately +realized more and more in their amazing extent. None of the trees looked +so old, so world-old, as certain trees in the careless olive groves of +Italy. They were regularly planted, and most were in a vigorous middle +life; where they were old they were closely pollarded; and there were +young trees, apparently newly set out; there were holes indefinitely +waiting for others. These were often, throughout Andalusia, covered to +their first fork with cones of earth; and we remained in the dramatic +superstition that this was to protect them against the omnivorous hunger +of the goats, till we were told that it was to save their roots from +being loosened by the wind. The orchards filled the level foregrounds +and the hilly backgrounds to the vanishing-points of the mountainous +perspectives; but when I say this I mean the reader to allow for wide +expanses of pasturage, where lordly bulls were hoarding themselves for +the feasts throughout Spain which the bulls of Andalusia are happy +beyond others in supplying. With their devoted families they paraded the +meadows, black against the green, or stood in sharp arrest, the most +characteristic accent of the scene. In the farther rather than the +nearer distance there were towns, very white, very African, keeping +jealously away from the stations, as the custom of most towns is in +Spain, beyond the wheat-lands which disputed the landscape with the +olive orchards. + +One of these towns lay white at the base of a hill topped by a yellow +Moorish castle against the blue sky, like a subject waiting for its +painter and conscious of its wonderful adaptation to water-color. The +railroad-banks were hedged with Spanish bayonet, and in places with +cactus grown into trees, all knees and elbows, and of a diabolical +uncouthness. The air was fresh and springlike, and under the bright sun, +which we had already felt hot, men were plowing the gray fields for +wheat. Other men were beginning their noonday lunch, which, with the +long nap to follow, would last till three o'clock, and perhaps be rashly +accounted to them for sloth by the industrious tourist who did not know +that their work had begun at dawn and would not end till dusk. Indolence +may be a vice of the towns in Spain, but there is no loafing in the +country, if I may believe the conclusions of my note-book. The fields +often looked barren enough, and large spaces of their surface were +covered by a sort of ground palm, as it seemed to be, though whether it +was really a ground palm or not I know no more than I know the name or +nature of the wild flower which looked an autumn crocus, and which with +other wild flowers fringed the whole course of the train. There was +especially a small yellow flower, star-shaped, which we afterward +learned was called Todos Santos, from its custom of blooming at All +Saints, and which washed the sward in the childlike enthusiasm of +buttercups. A fine white narcissus abounded, and clumps of a mauve +flower which swung its tiny bells over the sward washed by the Todos +Santos. There were other flowers, which did what they could to brighten +our way, all clinging to the notion of summer, which the weather +continued to flatter throughout our fortnight in Seville. + +I could not honestly say that the stations or the people about them were +more interesting than in La Mancha. But at one place, where some +gentlemen in linen jackets dismounted with their guns, a group of men +with dogs leashed in pairs and saddle-horses behind them, took me with +the sense of something peculiarly native where everything was so native. +They were slim, narrow-hipped young fellows, tight-jerkined, +loose-trousered, with a sort of divided apron of leather facing the leg +and coming to the ankle; and all were of a most masterly Velasquez +coloring and drawing. As they stood smoking motionlessly, letting the +smoke drift from their nostrils, they seemed somehow of the same make +with the slouching hounds, and they leaned forward together, giving the +hunters no visible or audible greeting, but questioning their will with +one quality of gaze. The hunters moved toward them, but not as if they +belonged together, or expected any sort of demonstration from the men, +dogs, and horses that were of course there to meet them. As long as our +train paused, no electrifying spark kindled them to a show of emotion; +but it would have been interesting to see what happened after we left +them behind; they could not have kept their attitude of mutual +indifference much longer. These peasants, like the Spaniards everywhere, +were of an intelligent and sagacious look; they only wanted a chance, +one must think, to be a leading race. They have sometimes an anxiety of +appeal in their apathy, as if they would like to know more than they do. + +There was some livelier thronging at the station where the train stopped +for luncheon, but secure with the pretty rush-basket which the head +waiter at our hotel, so much better than the hotel, had furnished us at +starting, we kept to our car; and there presently we were joined by a +young couple who were unmistakably a new married couple. The man was of +a rich brown, and the woman of a dead white with dead black hair. They +both might have been better-looking than they were, but apparently not +better otherwise, for at Seville the groom helped us out of the car with +our hand-bags. + +I do not know what polite offers from him had already brought out the +thanks in which our speech bewrayed us; but at our outlandish accents +they at once became easier. They became frankly at home with themselves, +and talked in their Andalusian patter with no fear of being understood. +I might, indeed, have been far apter in Spanish without understanding +their talk, for when printed the Andalusian dialect varies as far from +the Castilian as, say, the Venetian varies from the Tuscan, and when +spoken, more. It may then be reduced almost wholly to vowel sounds, and +from the lips of some speakers it is really no more consonantal than if +it came from the beaks of birds. They do not lisp the soft _c_ or the +_z,_ as the Castilians do, but hiss them, and lisp the _s_ instead, as +the readerwill find amusingly noted in the Sevillian chapters of _The +Sister of San Sulpice,_ which are the most charming chapters of that +most charming novel. At the stations there were sometimes girls and +sometimes boys with water for sale from stone bottles, who walked by the +cars crying it; and there were bits of bright garden, or there were +flowers in pots. There were also poor little human flowers, or call them +weeds, if you will, that suddenly sprang up beside our windows, and +moved their petals in pitiful prayer for alms. They always sprang up on +the off side of the train, so that the trainmen could not see them, but +I hope no trainman in Spain would have had the heart to molest them. As +a matter of taste in vegetation, however, we preferred an occasional +effect of mixed orange and pomegranate trees, with their perennial green +and their autumnal red. We were, in fact, so spoiled by the profusion of +these little human flowers, or weeds, that we even liked the change to +the dried stalk of an old man, flowering at top into a flat basket of +pale-pink shrimps. He gave us our first sight of sea-fruit, when we had +got, without knowing it, to Seville Junction. There was, oddly enough, +no other fruit for sale there; but there was a very agreeable-looking +booth at the end of the platform placarded with signs of Puerto Rico +coffee, cognac, and other drinks; and outside of it there were +wash-basins and clean towels. I do not know how an old woman with a +blind daughter made herself effective in the crowd, which did not seem +much preoccupied with the opportunities of ablution and refection at +that booth; but perhaps she begged with her blind daughter's help while +the crowd was busy in assorting itself for Cadiz and Seville and Malaga +and Cordova and other musically syllabled mothers of history and +romance. + + + + +II + + +A few miles and a few minutes more and we were in the embrace of the +loveliest of them, which was at first the clutch on the octroi. But the +octroi at Seville is not serious, and a walrus-mustached old porter, who +looked like an old American car-driver of the bearded eighteen-sixties, +eased us--not very swiftly, but softly--through the local customs, and +then we drove neither so swiftly nor so softly to the hotel, where we +had decided we would have rooms on the _patio._ We had still to learn +that if there is a _patio_ in a Spanish hotel you cannot have rooms in +it, because they are either in repair or they are occupied. In the +present case they were occupied; but we could have rooms over the +street, which were the same as in the _patio,_ and which were perfectly +quiet, as we could perceive from the trolley-cars grinding and squealing +under their windows. The manager (if that was the quality of the patient +and amiable old official who received us) seemed surprised to see the +cars there, perhaps because they were so inaudible; but he said we could +have rooms in the annex, fronting on the adjoining plaza and siding on +an inoffensive avenue where there were absolutely no cars. The +interior, climbing to a lofty roof by a succession of galleries, was +hushed by four silent senoras, all in black, and seated in mute ceremony +around a table in chairs from which their little feet scarcely touched +the marble pavement. Their quiet confirmed the manager's assurance of a +pervading tranquillity, and though the only bath in the annex was +confessedly on the ground floor, and we were to be two floors above, the +affair was very simple: the chambermaid would always show us where the +bath was. + +With misgiving, lost in a sense of our helplessness, we tried to think +that the avenue under us was then quieting down with the waning day; and +certainly it was not so noisy as the plaza, which, resounded with the +whips and quips of the cabmen, and gave no signs of quiescence. +Otherwise the annex was very pleasant, and we took the rooms shown us, +hoping the best and fearing the worst. Our fears were wiser than our +hopes, but we did not know this, and we went as gaily as we could for +tea in the _patio_ of our hotel, where a fountain typically trickled +amidst its water-plants and a noiseless Englishman at his separate table +almost restored our lost faith in a world not wholly racket. A young +Spaniard and two young Spanish girls helped out the illusion with their +gentle movements and their muted gutturals, and we looked forward to +dinner with fond expectation. To tell the truth, the dinner, when we +came back to it, was not very good, or at least not very winning, and +the next night it was no better, though the head waiter had then, made +us so much favor with himself as to promise us a side-table for the rest +of our stay. He was a very friendly head waiter, and the dining-room was +a long glare of the encaustic tiling which all Seville seems lined with, +and of every Moorish motive in the decoration. Besides, there was a +young Scotch girl, very interestingly pale and delicate of face, at one +of the tables, and at another a Spanish girl with the most wonderful +fire-red hair, and there were several miracles of the beautiful obesity +which abounds in Spain. + +When we returned to the annex it did seem, for the short time we kept +our windows shut, that the manager had spoken true, and we promised +ourselves a tranquil night, which, after our two nights in Cordova, we +needed if we did not merit. But we had counted without the spread of +popular education in Spain. Under our windows, just across the way, +there proved to be a school of the "Royal Society of Friends of their +Country," as the Spanish inscription in its front proclaimed; and at +dusk its pupils, children and young people of both sexes, began +clamoring for knowledge at its doors. About ten o'clock they burst from +them again with joyous exultation in their acquirements; then, shortly +after, every manner of vehicle began to pass, especially heavy market +wagons overladen and drawn by horses swarming with bells. Their +succession left scarcely a moment of the night unstunned; but if ever a +moment seemed to be escaping, there was a maniacal bell in a church near +by that clashed out: "Hello! Here's a bit of silence; let's knock it on +the head!" + +We went promptly the next day to the gentle old manager and told him +that he had been deceived in thinking he had given us rooms on a quiet +street, and appealed to his invention for something, for anything, +different. His invention had probably never been put to such stress +before, and he showed us an excess of impossible apartments, which we +subjected to a consideration worthy of the greatest promise in them. Our +search ended in a suite of rooms on the top floor, where we could have +the range of a flat roof outside if we wanted; but as the private family +living next door kept hens, led by a lordly turkey, on their roof, we +were sorrowfully forced to forego our peculiar advantage. Peculiar we +then thought it, though we learned afterward that poultry-farming was +not uncommon on the flat roofs of Seville, and there is now no telling +how we might have prospered if we had taken those rooms and stocked our +roof with Plymouth Rocks and Wyandottes. At the moment, however, we +thought it would not do, and we could only offer our excuses to the +manager, whose resources we had now exhausted, but not whose patience, +and we parted with expressions of mutual esteem and regret. + +Our own grief was sincerer in leaving behind us the enthusiastic +chambermaid of the annex who had greeted us with glad service, and was +so hopeful that when she said our doors should be made to latch and lock +in the morning, it was as if they latched and locked already. Her zeal +made the hot water she brought for the baths really hot, _"Caliente, +caliente,"_ and her voice would have quieted the street under our +windows if music could have soothed it. At a friendly word she grew +trustful, and told us how it was hard, hard for poor people in Seville; +how she had three dollars a month and her husband four; and how they had +to toil for it. When we could not help telling her, cruelly enough, what +they singly and jointly earn in New York, she praised rather than +coveted the happier chance impossible to them. They would like to go, +but they could not go! She was gay with it all, and after we had left +the hotel and come back for the shawl which had been forgotten, she ran +for it, shouting with laughter, as if we must see it the great joke she +did; and she took the reward offered with the self-respect never wanting +to the Spanish poor. Very likely if I ransacked my memory I might find +instances of their abusing those advantages over the stranger which +Providence puts in the reach of the native everywhere; but on the spur +of the moment, I do not recall any. In Spain, where a woman earns three +dollars a month, as in America where she earns thirty, the poor seem to +abound in the comparative virtues which the rich demand in return for +the chances of Heaven which they abandon to them. There were few of +those rendering us service there whom we would not willingly have +brought away with us; but very likely we should have found they had the +defects of their qualities. + +When we definitely turned our backs on the potential poultry-farm +offered us at our hotel, we found ourselves in as good housing at +another, overlooking the length and breadth of the stately Plaza San +Fernando, with its parallelogram of tall palms, under a full moon +swimming in a cloudless heaven by night and by day. By day, of course, +we did not see it, but the sun was visibly there, rather blazing hot, +even in mid-October, and showing more distinctly than the moon the +beautiful tower of the Giralda from the waist up, and the shoulder of +the great cathedral, besides features of other noble, though less noble, +edifices. Our plaza was so full of romantic suggestion that I am rather +glad now I had no association with it. I am sure I could not have borne +at the time to know, as I have only now learned by recurring to my +Baedeker, that in the old Franciscan cloister once there had stood the +equestrian statue of the Comendador who dismounts and comes unbidden to +the supper of Don Giovanni in the opera. That was a statue which, seen +in my far youth, haunted my nightmares for many a year, and I am sure it +would have kept me from sleep in the conditions, now so perfect, of our +new housing if I had known, about it. + + + + +III + + +The plaza is named, of course, for King Fernando, who took Seville from +the Moors six hundred years ago, and was canonized for his conquests and +his virtues. But I must not enter so rashly upon the history of Seville, +or forget the arrears of personal impression which I have to bring up. +The very drive from the station was full of impressions, from the narrow +and crooked streets, the houses of yellow, blue, and pink stucco, the +flowered and fountained _patios_ glimpsed passingly, the half-lengths of +church-towers, and the fleeting facades of convents and palaces, all +lovely in the mild afternoon light. These impressions soon became +confluent, so that without the constant witness of our note-books I +should now find it impossible to separate them. If they could be +imparted to the reader in their complexity, that would doubtless be the +ideal, though he would not believe that their confused pattern was a +true reflex of Seville; so I recur to the record, which says that the +morning after our arrival we hurried to see the great and beautiful +cathedral. It had failed, in our approach the afternoon before, to +fulfil the promise of one of our half-dozen guide-books (I forget which +one) that it would seem to gather Seville about it as a hen gathers her +chickens, but its vastness grew upon us with every moment of our more +intimate acquaintance. Our acquaintance quickly ripened into the +affectionate friendship which became a tender regret when we looked our +last upon it; and vast as it was, it was never too large for our +embrace. I doubt if there was a moment in our fortnight's devotion when +we thought the doughty canons, its brave-spoken founders, "mad to have +undertaken it," as they said they expected people to think, or any +moment when we did not revere them for imagining a temple at once so +beautiful and so big. + +Our first visit was redeemed from the commonplace of our duty-round of +the side-chapels by two things which I can remember without the help of +my notes. One, and the great one, was Murillo's "Vision of St. Anthony," +in which the painter has most surpassed himself, and which not to have +seen, Gautier says, is not to have known the painter. It is so glorious +a masterpiece, with the Child joyously running down from the clustering +angels toward the kneeling saint in the nearest corner of the +foreground, that it was distinctly a moment before I realized that the +saint had once been cut out of his corner and sent into an incredible +exile in America, and then munificently restored to it, though the seam +in the canvas only too literally attested the incident. I could not well +say how this fact then enhanced the interest of the painting, and then +how it ceased from the consciousness, which it must always recur to with +any remembrance of it. If one could envy wealth its chance of doing a +deed of absolute good, here was the occasion, and I used it. I did envy +the mind, along with the money, to do that great thing. Another great +thing which still more swelled my American heart and made it glow with +patriotic pride was the monument to Columbus, which our suffering his +dust to be translated from Havana has made possible in Seville. There +may be other noble results of our war on Spain for the suzerainty of +Cuba and the conquest of Puerto Rico and the Philippines, but there is +none which matches in moral beauty the chance it won us for this Grand +Consent. I suppose those effigies of the four Spanish realms of Castile, +Leon, Aragon, and Navarre, which bear the coffin of the discoverer in +stateliest processional on their shoulders, may be censured for being +too boldly superb, too almost swagger, but I will not be the one to +censure them. They are painted the color of life, and they advance +colossally, royal-robed and mail-clad, as if marching to some proud +music, and would tread you down if you did not stand aside. It is +perhaps not art, but it is magnificent; nothing less stupendously +Spanish would have sufficed; and I felt that the magnanimity which had +yielded Spain this swelling opportunity had made America her equal in +it. + +We went to the cathedral the first morning after our arrival in Seville, +because we did not know how soon we might go away, and then we went +every morning or every afternoon of our fortnight there. Habitually we +entered by that Gate of Pardon which in former times had opened the +sanctuary to any wickedness short of heresy; but, as our need of refuge +was not pressing, we wearied of the Gate of Pardon, with its beautiful +Saracenic arch converted to Christianity by the Renaissance bas-relief +obliterating the texts from the Koran. We tried to form the habit of +going in by other gates, but the Gate of Pardon finally prevailed; there +was always a gantlet of cabmen to be run beside it, which brought our +sins home to us. It led into the badly paved Court of Oranges, where the +trees seem planted haphazard and where there used also to be fountains. +Gate and court are remnants of the mosque, patterned upon that of +Cordova by one of the proud Moorish kings of Seville, and burned by the +Normans when they took and sacked his city. His mosque had displaced the +early Christian basilica of San Vicente, which the still earlier temple +to Venus Salambo had become. Then, after the mosque was rebuilt, the +good San Fernando in his turn equipped it with a Gothic choir and +chapels and turned it into the cathedral, which was worn out with pious +uses when the present edifice was founded, in their _folie des +grandeurs,_ by those glorious madmen in the first year of the fifteenth +century. + + + + +IV + + +Little of this learning troubled me in my visits to the cathedral, or +even the fact that, next to St. Peter's, it was the largest church in +the world. It was sufficient to itself by mere force of architectural +presence, without the help of incidents or measurements. It was a city +in itself, with a community of priests and sacristans dwelling in it, +and a floating population of sightseers and worshipers always passing +through it. The first morning we had submitted to make the round of the +chapels, patiently paying to have each of them unlocked and wearily +wondering at their wonders, but only sympathizing really with the stern +cleric who showed the ceremonial vestments and jewels of the cathedral, +and whose bitter face expressed, or seemed to express, abhorrence of our +whole trivial tourist tribe. After that morning we took our curiosity +into our own keeping and looked at nothing that did not interest us, and +we were interested most in those fellow-beings who kept coming and going +all day long. + +Chiefly, of course, they were women. In Catholic countries women have +either more sins to be forgiven than the men, or else they are sorrier +for them; and here, whether there was service or not, they were dropped +everywhere in veiled and motionless prayer. In Seville the law of the +mantilla is rigorously enforced. If a woman drives, she may wear a hat; +but if she walks, she must wear a mantilla under pain of being pointed +at by the finger of scorn. If she is a young girl she may wear colors +with it (a cheerful blue seems the favorite), but by far the greater +number came to the cathedral in complete black. Those somber figures +which clustered before chapel, or singly dotted the pavement everywhere, +flitted in and out like shadows in the perpetual twilight. For far the +greater number, their coming to the church was almost their sole escape +into the world. They sometimes met friends, and after a moment, or an +hour, of prayer they could cheer their hearts with neighborly gossip. +But for the greater part they appeared and disappeared silently and +swiftly, and left the spectator to helpless conjecture of their history. +Many of them would have first met their husbands in the cathedral when +they prayed, or when they began to look around to see who was looking at +them. It might have been their trysting-place, safeguarding them in +their lovers' meetings, and after marriage it had become their social +world, when their husbands left them for the clubs or the cafes. They +could not go at night, of course, except to some special function, but +they could come by day as often as they liked. I do not suppose that the +worshipers I saw habitually united love or friendship with their +devotions in the cathedral, but some certainly joined business with +devotion; at a high function one day an American girl felt herself +sharply nudged in the side, and when she turned she found the palm of +her kneeling neighbor stretched toward her. They must all have had their +parish churches besides the cathedral, and a devotee might make the day +a social whirl by visiting one shrine after another. But I do not think +that many do. The Spanish women are of a domestic genus, and are +expected to keep at home by the men who expect to keep abroad. + +I do not know just how it is in the parish churches; they must each have +its special rite, which draws and holds the frequenter; but the +cathedral constantly offers a drama of irresistible appeal. We +non-Catholics can feel this even at the distance to which our +Protestantism has remanded us, and at your first visit to the Seville +cathedral during mass you cannot help a moment of recreant regret when +you wish that a part in the mystery enacting was your birthright. The +esthetic emotion is not denied you; the organ-tide that floods the place +bears you on it, too; the priests perform their rites before the altar +for you; they come and go, they bow and kneel, for you; the censer +swings and smokes for you; the little wicked-eyed choir-boys and +mischievous-looking acolytes suppress their natures in your behalf as +much as if you were a believer, or perhaps more. The whole unstinted +hospitality of the service is there for you, as well as for the children +of the house, and the heart must be rude and the soul ungrateful that +would refuse it. For my part, I accepted it as far as I knew how, and +when I left the worshipers on their knees and went tiptoeing from +picture to picture and chapel to chapel, it was with shame for the +unscrupulous sacristan showing me about, and I felt that he, if not I, +ought to be put out and not allowed back till the function was over. I +call him sacristan at a venture; but there were several kinds of guides +in the cathedral, some in the livery of the place and some in civil +dress, willing to supplement our hotel interpreter, or lying in wait for +us when we came alone. I wish now I had taken them all, but at the time +they tired me, and I denied them. + +Though not a day passed but we saw it, I am not able to say what the +cathedral was like. The choir was planted in the heart of it, as it +might be a celestial refuge in that forest of mighty pillars, as great +in girth as the giant redwoods of California, and climbing to a Gothic +firmament horizoned round as with sunset light from near a hundred +painted windows. The chapels on each side, the most beautiful in Spain, +abound in riches of art and pious memorials, with chief among them the +Royal Chapel, in the prow, as it were, of the ship which the cathedral +has been likened to, keeping the bones not only of the sainted hero, +King Fernando, but also, among others, the bones of Peter the Cruel, and +of his unwedded love, Maria de Padilla, far too good for Peter in life, +if not quite worthy of San Fernando in death. You can see the saint's +body on certain dates four times a year, when, as your Baedeker will +tell you, "the troops of the garrison march past and lower their colors" +outside the cathedral. We were there on none of these dates, and, far +more regretably, not on the day of Corpus Christi, when those boys whose +effigies in sculptured and painted wood we had seen in the museum at +Valladolid pace in their mystic dance before the people at the opposite +portal of the cathedral. But I appoint any reader, so minded, to go and +witness the rite some springtime for me. There is no hurry, for it is +destined to endure through the device practised in defeating the pope +who proposed to abolish it. He ordained that it should continue only as +long as the boys' actual costumes lasted; but by renewing these +carefully wherever they began to wear out, they have become practically +imperishable. + +If we missed this attraction of the cathedral, we had the high good +fortune to witness another ceremony peculiar to it, but perhaps less +popularly acceptable. The building had often suffered from earthquakes, +and on the awful day, _dies irae,_ of the great Lisbon earthquake, +during mass and at the moment of the elevation of the Host, when the +worshipers were on their knees, there came such a mighty shock in +sympathy with the far-off cataclysm that the people started to their +feet and ran out of the cathedral. If the priests ran after them, as +soon as the apparent danger was past they led the return of their flock +and resumed the interrupted rite. It was, of course, by a miracle that +the temple was spared, and when it was realized how scarcely Seville had +escaped the fate of Lisbon it was natural that the event should be +dramatized in a perpetual observance. Every year now, on the 1st of +November, the clergy leave the cathedral at a chosen moment of the mass, +with much more stateliness than in the original event, and lead the +people out of one portal, to return with them by another for the +conclusion of the ceremonial. + +We waited long for the climax, but at last we almost missed it through +the overeagerness of the guide I had chosen out of many that petitioned. +He was so politely, so forbearingly insistent in his offer to see that +we were vigilantly cared for, that I must have had a heart harder than +Peter the Cruel's to have denied him, and he planted us at the most +favorable point for the function in the High Chapel, with instructions +which portal to hurry to when the movement began, and took his peseta +and went his way. Then, while we confidingly waited, he came rushing +back and with a great sweep of his hat wafted us to the door which he +had said the procession would go out by, but which he seemed to have +learned it would come in by, and we were saved from what had almost been +his fatal error. I forgave him the more gladly because I could rejoice +in his returning to repair his error, although he had collected his +money; and with a heart full of pride in his verification of my theory +of the faithful Spanish nature, I gave myself to the shining +gorgeousness of the procession that advanced chanting in the blaze of +the Sevillian sun. There was every rank of clergy, from the archbishop +down, in robes of ceremonial, but I am unable honestly to declare the +admiration for their splendor which I would have willingly felt. The +ages of faith in which those vestments were designed were apparently not +the ages of taste; yet it was the shape of the vestments and not the +color which troubled the eye of unfaith, if not of taste. The +archbishop in crimson silk, with his train borne by two acolytes, the +canons in their purple, the dean in his gold-embroidered robes, and the +priests and choristers in their black robes and white surplices richly +satisfied it; and if some of the clerics were a little frayed and some +of the acolytes were spotted with the droppings of the candles, these +were details which one remembered afterward and that did not matter at +the time. + +When the procession was housed again, we went off and forgot it in the +gardens of the Alcazar. But I must not begin yet on the gardens of the +Alcazar. We went to them every day, as we did to the cathedral, but we +did not see them until our second morning in Seville. We gave what was +left from the first morning in the cathedral to a random exploration of +the streets and places of the city. There was, no doubt, everywhere some +touch of the bravery of our square of San Fernando, where the public +windows were hung with crimson tapestries and brocades in honor of St. +Raphael; but his holiday did not make itself molestively felt in the +city's business or pleasure. Where we could drive we drove, and where we +must we walked, and we walked of course through the famous Calle de las +Sierpes, because no one drives there. As a rule no woman walks there, +and naturally there were many women walking there, under the eyes of the +popular cafes and aristocratic clubs which principally abound in Las +Sierpes, for it is also the street of the principal shops, though it is +not very long and is narrower than many other streets of Seville. It has +its name from so commonplace an origin as the sign over a tavern door, +with some snakes painted on it; but if the example of sinuosity had been +set it by prehistoric serpents, there were scores of other streets which +have bettered its instruction. There were streets that crooked away +everywhere, not going anywhere, and breaking from time to time into +irregular angular spaces with a church or a convent or a nobleman's +house looking into them. + + + + +VI + + +The noblemen's houses often showed a severely simple facade to the +square or street, and hid their inner glories with what could have been +fancied a haughty reserve if it had not been for the frankness with +which they opened their _patios_ to the gaze of the stranger, who, when +he did not halt his carriage before them, could enjoy their hospitality +from a sidewalk sometimes eighteen inches wide. The passing tram-car +might grind him against the tall grilles which were the only barriers to +the _patios,_ but otherwise there would be nothing to spoil his +enjoyment of those marble floors and tiled walls and fountains potted +round with flowering plants. In summer he could have seen the family +life there; and people who are of such oriental seclusion otherwise will +sometimes even suffer the admiring traveler to come as well as look +within. But one who would not press their hospitality so far could +reward his forbearance by finding some of the _patios_ too new-looking, +with rather a glare from their tiles and marbles, their painted iron +pillars, and their glass roofs which the rain comes through in the +winter. The ladies sit and sew there, or talk, if they prefer, and +receive their friends, and turn night into day in the fashion of +climates where they are so easily convertible. The _patio_ is the place +of that peculiarly Spanish rite, the _tertulia,_ and the family nightly +meets its next of kin and then its nearer and farther friends there with +that Latin regularity which may also be monotony. One _patio_ is often +much like another, though none was perhaps of so much public interest as +the _patio_ of the lady who loved a bull-fighter and has made her +_patio_ a sort of shrine to him. The famous _espada_ perished in his +heroic calling, no worse if no better than those who saw him die, and +now his bust is in plain view, with a fit inscription recognizing his +worth and prowess, and with the heads of some of the bulls he slew. + +Under that clement sky the elements do not waste the works of man as +elsewhere, and many of the houses of Seville are said to be such as the +Moors built there. We did not know them from the Christian houses; but +there are no longer any mosques, while in our wanderings we had the +pretty constant succession of the convents which, when they are still in +the keeping of their sisterhoods and brotherhoods, remain monuments of +the medieval piety of Spain; or, when they are suppressed and turned to +secular uses, attest the recurrence of her modern moods of revolution +and reform. It is to one of these that Seville owes the stately Alameda +de Hercules, a promenade covering the length and breadth of aforetime +convent gardens, which you reach from the Street of the Serpents by the +Street of the Love of God, and are then startled by the pagan presence +of two mighty columns lifting aloft the figures of Caesar and of the +titular demigod. Statues and pillars are alike antique, and give you a +moment of the Eternal City the more intense because the promenade is of +an unkempt and broken surface, like the Cow-field which the Roman Forum +used to be. Baedeker calls it shady, and I dare say it is shady, but I +do not remember the trees--only those glorious columns climbing the +summer sky of the Andalusian autumn, and proclaiming the imperishable +memory of the republic that conquered and the empire that ruled the +world, and have never loosed their hold upon it. We were rather newly +from the grass-grown ruin of a Roman town in Wales, and in this other +Iberian land we were always meeting the witnesses of the grandeur which +no change short of some universal sea change can wholly sweep from the +earth. Before it Goth and Arab shrink, with all their works, into the +local and provisional; Rome remains for all time imperial and universal. + +To descend from this high-horsed reflection, as I must, I have to record +that there did not seem to be so many small boys in Seville as in the +Castillian capitals we had visited; in the very home of the bull-feast +we did not see one mimic _corrida_ given by the _torreros_ of the +future. Not even in the suburb of Triana, where the small boys again +consolingly superabounded, was the great national game played among the +wheels and hoofs of the dusty streets to which we crossed the +Guadalquivir that afternoon. To be sure, we were so taken with other +things that a boyish bull-feast might have rioted unnoticed under our +horses' very feet, especially on the long bridge which gives you the far +upward and downward stretch of the river, so simple and quiet and empty +above, so busy and noisy and thronged with shipping below. I suppose +there are lovelier rivers than that--we ourselves are known to brag of +our Pharpar and Abana--but I cannot think of anything more nobly +beautiful than the Guadalquivir resting at peace in her bed, where she +has had so many bad dreams of Carthaginian and Roman and Gothic and Arab +and Norman invasion. Now her waters redden, for the time at least, only +from the scarlet hulls of the tramp steamers lying in long succession +beside the shore where the gardens of the Delicias were waiting to +welcome us that afternoon to our first sight of the pride and fashion of +Seville. I never got enough of the brave color of those tramp steamers; +and in thinking of them as English, Norse, French, and Dutch, fetching +or carrying their cargoes over those war-worn, storied waters, I had +some finer thrills than in dwelling on the Tower of Gold which rose from +the midst of them. It was built in the last century of the Moorish +dominion to mark the last point to which the gardens of the Moorish +palace of the Alcazar could stretch, but they were long ago obliterated +behind it; and though it was so recent, no doubt it would have had its +pathos if I could ever have felt pity for the downfall of the Moslem +power in Spain. As it was, I found the tramp steamers more moving, and +it was these that my eye preferably sought whenever I crossed the Triana +bridge. + + + + +VII + + +We were often crossing it on one errand or other, but now we were +especially going to see the gipsy quarter of Seville, which disputes +with that of Granada the infamy of the loathsomest purlieu imaginable. +Perhaps because it was so very loathsome, I would not afterward visit +the gipsy quarter in Granada, and if such a thing were possible I would +willingly unvisit the gipsy quarter of Seville. All Triana is pretty +squalid, though it has merits and charms to which I will try eventually +to be just, and I must even now advise the reader to visit the tile +potteries there. If he has our good-fortune he may see in the manager of +one a type of that fusion of races with which Spain long so cruelly and +vainly struggled after the fall of the last Moorish kingdom. He was +beautifully lean and clean of limb, and of a grave gentleness of manner; +his classically regular face was as swarthy as the darkest mulatto's, +but his quiet eyes were gray. I carried the sense of his fine decency +with me when we drove away from his warerooms, and suddenly whirled +round the corner of the street into the gipsy quarter, and made it my +prophylactic against the human noisomeness which instantly beset our +course. Let no Romany Rye romancing Barrow, or other fond fibbing +sentimentalist, ever pretend to me hereafter that those persistent +savages have even the ridiculous claim of the North American Indians to +the interest of the civilized man, except as something to be morally and +physically scoured and washed up, and drained and fumigated, and treated +with insecticides and put away in mothballs. Our own settled order of +things is not agreeable at all points; it reeks and it smells, +especially in Spain, when you get down to its lower levels; but it does +not assail the senses with such rank offense as smites them in the gipsy +quarter with sights and sounds and odors which to eye and ear, as well +as nose, were all stenches. + +Low huts lined the street, which swarmed at our coming with ragged +children running beside us and after us and screaming, "Minny, niooney, +_ money!"_ in a climax of what they wanted. Men leaned against the +door-posts and stared motionless, and hags, lean and fat, sat on the +thresholds and wished to tell our fortunes; younger women ranged the +sidewalks and offered to dance. They all had flowers in their hair, and +some were of a horrible beauty, especially one in a green waist, with +both white and red flowers in her dusky locks. Down the middle of the +road a troop of children, some blond, but mostly black, tormented a +hapless ass colt; and we hurried away as fast as our guide could +persuade our cabman to drive. But the gipsy quarter had another street +in reserve which made us sorry to have left the first. It paralleled the +river, and into the center of it every manner of offal had been cast +from the beginning of time to reek and fester and juicily ripen and rot +in unspeakable corruption. It was such a thoroughfare as Dante might +have imagined in his Hell, if people in his time had minded such +horrors; but as it was we could only realize that it was worse than +infernal, it was medieval, and that we were driving in such putrid +foulness as the gilded carriages of kings and queens and the prancing +steeds and palfreys of knights and ladies found their way through +whenever they went abroad in the picturesque and romantic Middle Ages. I +scarcely remember now how we got away and down to the decent waterside, +and then by the helpful bridge to the other shore of the Guadalquivir, +painted red with the reflections of those consoling tramp steamers. + +After that abhorrent home of indolence, which its children never left +except to do a little fortune-telling and mule and donkey trading, eked +out with theft in the country round, any show of honest industry looked +wholesome and kind. I rejoiced almost as much in the machinery as in the +men who were loading the steamers; even the huge casks of olives, which +were working from the salt-water poured into them and frothing at the +bung in great white sponges of spume, might have been examples of toil +by which those noisome vagabonds could well have profited. But now we +had come to see another sort of leisure--the famous leisure of fortune +and fashion driving in the Delicias, but perhaps never quite fulfilling +the traveler's fond ideal of it. We came many times to the Delicias in +hope of it, with decreasing disappointment, indeed, but to the last +without entire fruition. For our first visit we could not have had a +fitter evening, with its pale sky reddening from a streak of sunset +beyond Triana, and we arrived in appropriate circumstance, round the +immense circle of the bull-ring and past the palace which the Duc de +Montpensier has given the church for a theological seminary, with long +stretches of beautiful gardens. Then we were in the famous Paseo, a +drive with footways on each side, and on one side dusky groves widening +to the river. The paths were lit with gleaming statues, and among the +palms and the eucalyptuses were orange trees full of their golden +globes, which we wondered were not stolen till we were told they were of +that bitter sort which are mostly sent to Scotland, not because they are +in accord with the acrid nature of man there, but that they may be +wrought into marmalade. On the other hand stretched less formal woods, +with fields for such polite athletics as tennis, which the example of +the beloved young English Queen of Spain is bringing into reluctant +favor with women immemorially accustomed to immobility. The road was +badly kept, like most things in Spain, where when a thing is done it is +expected to stay done. Every afternoon it is a cloud of dust and every +evening a welter of mud, for the Iberian idea of watering a street is to +soak it into a slough. But nothing can spoil the Paseo, and that evening +we had it mostly to ourselves, though there were two or three carriages +with ladies in hats, and at one place other ladies dismounted and +courageously walking, while their carriages followed. A magnate of some +sort was shut alone in a brougham, in the care of footman and coachman +with deeply silver-banded hats; there were a few military and civil +riders, and there was distinctly a young man in a dog-cart with a groom, +keeping abreast the landau of three ladies in mantillas, with whom he +was improving what seemed a chance acquaintance. Along the course the +public park gave way at times to the grounds of private villas; before +one of these a boy did what he could for us by playing ball with a +priest. At other points there were booths with chairs and tables, where +I am sure interesting parties of people would have been sitting if they +could have expected us to pass. + + + + +VIII + + +The reader, pampered by the brilliant excitements of our American +promenades, may think this spectacle of the gay world of Seville dull; +but he ought to have been with us a colder, redder, and sadder evening +when we had the Delicias still more to ourselves. Afterward the Delicias +seemed to cheer up, and the place was fairly frequented on a holiday, +which we had not suspected was one till our cabman convinced us from his +tariff that we must pay him double, because you must always do that in +Seville on holidays. By this time we knew that most of the Sevillian +rank and riches had gone to Madrid for the winter, and we were the more +surprised by some evident show of them in the private turnouts where by +far most of the turnouts were public. But in Spain a carriage is a +carriage, and the Sevillian cabs are really very proper and sometimes +even handsome, and we felt that our own did no discredit to the +Delicias. Many of the holiday-makers were walking, and there were +actually women on foot in hats and hobble-skirts without being openly +mocked. On the evening of our last resort to the Delicias it was quite +thronged far into the twilight, after a lemon sunset that continued to +tinge the east with pink and violet. There were hundreds of carriages, +fully half of them private, with coachmen and footmen in livery. With +them it seemed to be the rule to stop in the circle at a turning-point a +mile off and watch the going and coming. It was a serious spectacle, but +not solemn, and it had its reliefs, its high-lights. It was always +pleasant to see three Spanish ladies on a carriage seat, the middle one +protruding because of their common bulk, and oftener in umbrella-wide +hats with towering plumes than in the charming mantilla. There were no +top-hats or other formality in the men's dress; some of them were on +horseback, and there were two women riding. + +Suddenly, as if it had come up out of the ground, I perceived a tram-car +keeping abreast of the riding and walking and driving, and through all I +was agreeably aware of files of peasants bestriding their homing donkeys +on Jhe bridle-path next the tram. I confess that they interested me more +than my social equals and superiors; I should have liked to talk with +those fathers and mothers of toil, bestriding or perched on the cruppers +of their donkeys, and I should have liked especially to know what passed +in the mind of one dear little girl who sat before her father with her +bare brown legs tucked into the pockets of the pannier. + + + + +X + +SEVILLIAN ASPECTS AND INCIDENTS + + +It is always a question how much or little we had better know about the +history of a strange country when seeing it. If the great mass of +travelers voted according to their ignorance, the majority in favor of +knowing next to nothing would be overwhelming, and I do not say they +would be altogether unwise. History itself is often of two minds about +the facts, or the truth from them, and when you have stored away its +diverse conclusions, and you begin to apply them to the actual +conditions, you are constantly embarrassed by the misfits. What did it +avail me to believe that when the Goths overran the north of Spain the +Vandals overran the south, and when they swept on into Africa and melted +away in the hot sun there as a distinctive race, they left nothing but +the name Vandalusia, a letter less, behind them? If the Vandals were +what they are reported to have been, the name does not at all +characterize the liveliest province of Spain. Besides, the very next +history told me that they took even their name with them, and forbade me +the simple and apt etymology which I had pinned my indolent faith to. + + + + +I + + +Before I left Seville I convinced a principal bookseller, much against +his opinions, that there must be some such brief local history of the +city as I was fond of finding in Italian towns, and I took it from his +own reluctant shelf. It was a very intelligent little guide, this +_Seville in the Hand,_ as it calls itself, but I got it too late for use +in exploring the city, and now I can turn to it only for those +directions which will keep the reader from losing his way in the devious +past. The author rejects the fable which the chroniclers delight in, and +holds with historians who accept the Phosnicians as the sufficiently +remote founders of Seville. This does not put out of commission those +Biblical "ships of Tarshish" which Dr. Edward Everett Hale, in his +graphic sketch of Spanish history, has sailing to and from the +neighboring coasts. Very likely they came up the Guadalquivir, and lay +in the stream where a few thousand years later I saw those cheerful +tramp-steamers lying. At any rate, the Phoenicians greatly flourished +there, and gave their colony the name of Hispalis, which it remained +content with till the Romans came and called the town Julia Romula, and +Julius Ctesar fenced it with the strong walls which the Moorish +conquerors, after the Goths, reinforced and have left plain to be seen +at this day. The most casual of wayfaring men must have read as he ran +that the Moorish power fell before the sword of San Fernando as the +Gothic fell before their own, and the Roman before the Gothic. But it +is more difficult to realize that earlier than the Gothic, somewhere in +between the Vandals and the Romans, had been the Carthaginians, whose +great general Hamilcar fancied turning all Spain into a Carthaginian +province. They were a branch of the Phoenicians as even the older, +unadvertised edition of the _Encyclopedia Britannica_ will tell, and the +Phoenicians were a sort of Hebrews. Whether they remained to flourish +with the other Jews under the Moors, my _Sevilla en la Mano_ does not +say; and I am not sure whether they survived to share the universal +exile into which Islam and Israel were finally driven. What is certain +is, that the old Phoenician name of Hispalis outlived the Roman name of +Julia Romula and reappeared in the Arabic as Ishbiliya (I know it from +my Baedeker) and is now permanently established as Seville. + +Under the Moors the city was subordinate to Cordova, though I can +hardly bear to think so in my far greater love of Seville. But it was +the seat of schools of science, art, and agriculture, and after the +Christians had got it back, Alfonso the Learned founded other schools +there for the study of Latin and Arabic. But her greatest prosperity and +glory came to Seville with the discovery of America. Not Columbus only, +but all his most famous contemporaries, sailed from the ports of her +coasts; she was the capital of the commerce with the new world, ruling +and regulating it by the oldest mercantile tribunal in the world, and +becoming the richest city of Spain. Then riches flowered in the letters +and arts, especially the arts, and Herrera, Pacheco, Velasquez, Murillo, +and Zurburan were born and flourished in Seville. In modern times she +has taken a prominent part in political events. She led in the patriotic +war to drive out the armies of Napoleon, and she seems to have been on +both sides in the struggle for liberal and absolutist principles, the +establishment of the brief republic of 1868, and the restoration of the +present monarchy. + +Through all the many changes from better to Worse, from richer to +poorer, Seville continued faithful to the ideal of religious unity which +the wise Isabel and the shrewd Ferdinand divined was the only means of +consolidating the intensely provincial kingdoms of Spain into one nation +of Spaniards. Andalusia not being Gothic had never been Aryan, and it +was one of her kings who carried his orthodoxy to Castile and +established it inexpugnably at Toledo after he succeeded his heretical +father there. When four or five hundred years later it became a +political necessity of the Catholic Kings to expel their Jewish and +Moorish subjects and convert their wealth to pious and patriotic uses, +Andalusia was one of the most zealous provinces in the cause. When +presently the inquisitions of the Holy Office began, some five hundred +heretics were burned alive at Seville before the year was out; many +others, who were dead and buried, paid the penalty of their heresy in +effigy; in all more than two thousand suffered in the region round +about. Before he was in Valladolid, Torquemada was in Seville, and +there he drew up the rules that governed the procedure of the +Inquisition throughout Spain. A magnificent _quemadero,_ or crematory, +second only to that of Madrid, was built: a square stone platform where +almost every day the smoke of human sacrifice ascended. This crematory +for the living was in the meadow of San Sebastian, now a part of the +city park system which we left on the right that first evening when we +drove to the Delicias. I do not know why I should now regret not having +visited the place of this dreadful altar and offered my unavailing pity +there to the memory of those scores of thousands of hapless martyrs who +suffered there to no end, not even to the end of confirming Spain in the +faith one and indivisible, for there are now, after so many generations +of torment, two Protestant churches in Seville. For one thing I did not +know where the place of the _quemadero_ was; and I do not yet know where +those Protestant churches are. + + + + +II + + +If I went again to Seville I should try to visit them--but, as it was, +we gave our second day to the Alcazar, which is merely the first in the +series of palaces and gardens once stretching from the flank of the +cathedral to the Tower of Gold beside the Guadalquivir. A rich +sufficiency is left in the actual Alcazar to suggest the splendor of the +series, and more than enough in the gardens to invite our fatigue, day +after day, to the sun and shade of its quiet paths and seats when we +came spent with the glories and the bustling piety of the cathedral. In +our first visit we had the guidance of a patriotic young Granadan whose +zeal for the Alhambra would not admit the Alcazar to any comparison, but +I myself still prefer it after seeing the Alhambra. It is as purely +Moorish as that and it is in better repair if not better taste. The +taste in fact is the same, and the Castilian kings consulted it as +eagerly as their Arabic predecessors in the talent of the Moslem +architects whom they had not yet begun to drive into exile. I am not +going to set up rival to the colored picture postals, which give a +better notion than I could give of the painted and gilded stucco +decoration, the ingenious geometrical designs on the walls, and the +cloying sweetness of the honeycombing in the vaulted roofs. Every one +will have his feeling about Moorish architecture; mine is that a little +goes a great way, and that it is too monotonous to compete with the +Gothic in variety, while it lacks the dignity of any form of the Greek +or the Renaissance. If the phrase did not insult the sex which the faith +of the Moslem insufferably insults, one might sum up one's slight for it +in the word effeminate. + +The Alcazar gardens are the best of the Alcazar. But I would not ignore +the homelike charm of the vast court by which you enter from the street +outside to the palace beyond. It is planted casually about with rather +shabby orange trees that children were playing under, and was decorated +with the week's wash of the low, simple dwellings which may be hired at +a rental moderate even for Seville, where a handsome and commodious +house in a good quarter rents for sixty dollars a year. One of those +two-story cottages, as we should call them, in the ante-court of the +Alcazar had for the student of Spanish life the special advantage of a +lover close to a ground-floor window dropping tender nothings down +through the slats of the shutter to some maiden lurking within. The +nothings were so tender that you could not hear them drop, and, besides, +they were Spanish nothings, and it would not have served any purpose for +the stranger to listen for them. Once afterward we saw the national +courtship going on at another casement, but that was at night, and here +the precious first sight of it was offered at ten o'clock in the +morning. Nobody seemed to mind the lover stationed outside the shutter +with which the iron bars forbade him the closest contact; and it is +only fair to say that he minded nobody; he was there when we went in and +there when we came out, and it appears that when it is a question of +love-making time is no more an object in Spain than in the United +States. The scene would have been better by moonlight, but you cannot +always have it moonlight, and the sun did very well; at least, the lover +did not seem to miss the moon. + +He was only an incident, and I hope the most romantic reader will let me +revert from him to the Alcazar gardens. We were always reverting to them +on any pretext or occasion, and we mostly had them to ourselves in the +gentle afternoons when we strayed or sat about at will in them. The +first day we were somewhat molested by the instruction of our patriotic +Granadan guide, wtho had a whopper-jaw and grayish blue eyes, but +coal-black hair for all his other blondness. He smoked incessant +cigarettes, and he showed us especially the pavilion of Charles the +Fifth, whom, after that use of all English-speaking Spanish guides, he +called Charley Fift. It appeared that the great emperor used this +pavilion for purposes of meditation; but he could not always have +meditated there, though the frame of a brazier standing in the center +intimated that it was tempered for reflection. The first day we found a +small bird in possession, flying from one bit of the carved wooden +ceiling to another, and then, taking our presence in dudgeon, out into +the sun. Another day there was a nursery-girl there with a baby that +cried; on another, still more distractingly, a fashionable young French +bride who went kodaking round while her husband talked with an +archaeological official, evidently Spanish. In his own time, Charley +probably had the place more to himself, though even then his thoughts +could not have been altogether cheerful, whether he recalled what he had +vainly done to keep out of Spain and yet to take the worst of Spain with +him into the Netherlands, where he tried to plant the Inquisition among +his Flemings; he was already much soured with a world that had cloyed +him, and was perhaps considering even then how he might make his escape +from it to the cloister. + + + + +III + + +We did not know as yet how almost entirely dramatic the palace of the +Alcazar was, how largely it was representative of what the Spanish +successors of the Moorish kings thought those kings would have made it +if they had made it; and it was prohably through an instinct for the +genuine that we preferred the gardens after our first cries of wonder. +What remains to me of our many visits is the mass of high borders of +box, with roses, jasmine, and orange trees, palms, and cypresses. The +fountains dribbled rather than gushed, and everywhere were ranks and +rows of plants in large, high earthen pots beside or upon the tiled +benching that faced the fountains and would have been easier to sit on +if you had not had to supply the back yourself. The flowers were not in +great profusion, and chiefly we rejoiced in the familiar quaintness of +clumps of massive blood-red coxcombs and strange yellow ones. The walks +were bordered with box, and there remains distinctly the impression of +marble steps and mosaic seats inlaid with tiles; all Seville seems +inlaid with tiles. One afternoon we lingered longer than usual because +the day was so sunnily warm in the garden paths and spaces, without +being hot. A gardener whom we saw oftenest hung about his flowers in a +sort of vegetable calm, and not very different from theirs except that +they were not smoking cigarettes. He did not move a muscle or falter in +his apparently unseeing gaze; but when one of us picked a seed from the +ground and wondered what it was he said it was a magnolia seed, and as +if he could bear no more went away. In one wilding place which seemed +set apart for a nursery several men were idly working with many pauses, +but not so many as to make the spectator nervous. As the afternoon waned +and the sun sank, its level rays dwelt on the galleries of the palace +which Peter the Cruel built himself and made so ugly with harsh brown +stucco ornament that it set your teeth on edge, and with gigantic +frescos exaggerated from the Italian, and very coarse and rank. + +It was this savage prince who invented much of the Alcazar in the soft +Moorish taste; but in those hideous galleries he let his terrible nature +loose, though as for that some say he was no crueler than certain other +Spanish kings of that period. This is the notion of my unadvertised +_Encyclopaedia Britannica,_ and perhaps we ought to think of him +leniently as Peter the Ferocious. He was kind to some people and was +popularly known as the Justiciary; he especially liked the Moors and +Jews, who were gratefully glad, poor things, of being liked by any one +under the new Christian rule. But he certainly killed several of his +half-brothers, and notably he killed his half-brother Don Fadrique in +the Alcazar. That is, if he had no hand in the butchery himself he had +him killed after luring him to Seville for the tournaments and forgiving +him for all their mutual injuries with every caressing circumstance. One +reads that after the king has kissed him he sits down again to his game +of backgammon and Don Fadrique goes into the next room to Maria do +Padilla, the lovely and gentle lady whom Don Pedro has married as much +as he can with a wedded wife shut up in Toledo. She sits there in terror +with her damsels and tries with looks and signs to make Don Fadrique +aware of his danger. But he imagines no harm till the king and his +companions, with their daggers drawn, come to the curtains, which the +king parts, commanding, "Seize the Master of Santiago!" Don Fadrique +tries to draw his sword, and then he turns and flies through the halls +of the Alcazar, where he finds every door bolted and barred. The king's +men are at his heels, and at last one of them fells him with a blow of +his mace. The king goes back with a face of sympathy to Maria, who has +fallen to the floor. + +The treacherous keeping is all rather in the taste of the Italian +Renaissance, but the murder itself is more Roman, as the Spanish +atrocities and amusements are apt to be. Murray says it was in the +beautiful Hall of the Ambassadors that Don Fadrique was killed, but the +other manuals are not so specific. Wherever it was, there is a +blood-stain in the pavement which our Granadan guide failed to show us, +possibly from a patriotic pique that there are no blood-stains in the +Alhambra with personal associations. I cannot say that much is to be +made of the vaulted tunnel where poor Maria de Padilla used to bathe, +probably not much comforted by the courtiers afterward drinking the +water from the tank; she must have thought the compliment rather nasty, +and no doubt it was paid her to please Don Pedro. + +We found it pleasanter going and coming through the corridor leading to +the gardens from the public court. This was kept at the outer end by an +"old rancid Christian" smoking incessant cigarettes and not explicitly +refusing to sell us picture postals after taking our entrance fee; the +other end was held by a young, blond, sickly-looking girl, who made us +take small nosegays at our own price and whom it became a game to see if +we could escape. I have left saying to the last that the king and queen +of Spain have a residence in the Alcazar, and that when they come in the +early spring they do not mind corning to it through that plebeian +quadrangle. I should not mind it myself if I could go back there next +spring. + + + + +IV + + +We had refused with loathing the offer of those gipsy jades to dance for +us in their noisome purlieu at Triana, but we were not proof against the +chance of seeing some gipsy dancing in a cafe-theater one night in +Seville. The decent place was filled with the "plain people," who sat +with their hats on at rude tables smoking and drinking coffee from tall +glasses. They were apparently nearly all working-men who had left nearly +all their wives to keep on working at home, though a few of these also +had come. On a small stage four gipsy girls, in unfashionably and +untheatrically decent gowns of white, blue, or red, with flowers in +their hair, sat in a semicircle with one subtle, silent, darkling man +among them. One after another they got up and did the same twisting and +posturing, without dancing, and while one posed and contorted the rest +unenviously joined the spectators in their clapping and their hoarse +cries of "Ole!" It was all perfectly proper except for one high moment +of indecency thrown in at the end of each turn, as if to give the house +its money's worth. But the real, overflowing compensation came when that +little, lithe, hipless man in black jumped to his feet and stormed the +audience with a dance of hands and arms, feet and legs, head, neck, and +the whole body, which Mordkin in his finest frenzy could not have +equaled or approached. Whatever was fiercest and wildest in nature and +boldest in art was there, and now the house went mad with its +hand-clappings and table-hammerings and deep-throated "Oles!" + +Another night we went to the academy of the world-renowned Otero and saw +the instruction of Sevillian youth in native dances of the _haute +ecole._ The academy used to be free to a select public, but now the +chosen, who are nearly always people from the hotels, must pay ten +pesetas each for their pleasure, and it is not too much for a pleasure +so innocent and charming. The academy is on the ground floor of the +_maestro's_ unpretentious house, and in a waiting-room beyond the +shoemaker's shop which filled the vestibule sat, patient in their black +mantillas, the mothers and nurses of the pupils. These were mostly quite +small children in their every-day clothes, but there were two or three +older girls in the conventional dancing costume which a lady from one of +the hotels had emulated. Everything was very simple and friendly; Otero +found good seats among the _aficionados_ for the guests presented to +him, and then began calling his pupils to the floor of the long, narrow +room with quick commands of "_Venga_!" A piano was tucked away in a +corner, but the dancers kept time now with castanets and now by snapping +their fingers. Two of the oldest girls, who were apparently graduates, +were "differently beautiful" in their darkness and fairness, but alike +picturesquely Spanish in their vivid dresses and the black veils +fluttering from their high combs. A youth in green velvet jacket and +orange trousers, whose wonderful dancing did him credit as Otero's prize +pupil, took part with them; he had the square-jawed, high-cheek-boned +face of the lower-class Spaniard, and they the oval of all Spanish +women. Here there was no mere posturing and contortioning among the +girls as with the gipsies; they sprang like flames and stamped the floor +with joyous detonations of their slippers. It was their convention to +catch the hat from the head of some young spectator and wear it in a +figure and then toss it back to him. One of them enacted the part of a +_torero_ at a bull-fight, stamping round first in a green satin cloak +which she then waved before a man's felt hat thrown on the ground to +represent the bull hemmed about with _banderillas_ stuck quivering into +the floor. But the prettiest thing was the dancing of two little girl +pupils, one fair and thin and of an angelic gracefulness, and the other +plump and dark, who was as dramatic as the blond was lyrical. They +accompanied themselves with castanets, and, though the little fatling +toed in and wore a common dress of blue-striped gingham, I am afraid she +won our hearts from her graceful rival. Both were very serious and gave +their whole souls to the dance, but they were not more childishly +earnest than an older girl in black who danced with one of the gaudy +graduates, panting in her anxious zeal and stopping at last with her +image of the Virgin she resembled flung wildly down her back from the +place where it had hung over her heart. + + + + +V + + +We preferred walking home from Senor Otero's house through the bright, +quiescing street, because in driving there we had met with an adventure +which we did not care to repeat. We were driving most unaggressively +across a small plaza, with a driver and a friend on the box beside him +to help keep us from harm, when a trolley-car came wildly round a corner +at the speed of at least two miles an hour and crossed our track. Our +own speed was such that we could not help striking the trolley in a +collision which was the fault of no one apparently. The front of the car +was severely banged, one mud-guard of our victoria was bent, and our +conversation was interrupted. Immediately a crowd assembled from the +earth or the air, but after a single exchange of reproaches between the +two drivers nothing was said by any one. No policeman arrived to +_constater_ the facts, and after the crowd had silently satisfied or +dissatisfied itself that no one was hurt it silently dispersed. The car +ambled grumbling off and we drove on with some vague murmurs from our +driver, whose nerves seemed shaken, but who was supported in a somewhat +lurching and devious progress by the caressing arm of the friend on the +seat beside him. + +All this was in Seville, where the popular emotions are painted in +travel and romance as volcanic as at Naples, where no one would have +slept the night of our accident and the spectators would be debating it +still. In our own surprise and alarm we partook of the taciturnity of +the witnesses, which I think was rather fine and was much decenter than +any sort of utterance. On our way home we had occasion to practise a +like forbearance toward the lover whom we passed as he stood courting +through the casement of a ground floor. The soft air was full of the +sweet of jasmine and orange blossoms from the open _patios._ Many people +besides ourselves were passing, but in a well-bred avoidance of the dark +figure pressed to the grating and scarcely more recognizable than the +invisible figure within. I confess I thought it charming, and if at some +period of their lives people must make love I do not believe there is a +more inoffensive way of doing it. + +By the sort of echo notable in life's experience we had a reverberation +of the orange-flower perfume of that night in the orange-flower honey at +breakfast next morning. We lived to learn that our own bees gather the +same honey from the orange flowers of Florida; but at the time we +believed that only the bees of Seville did it, and I still doubt whether +anywhere in America the morning wakes to anything like the long, rich, +sad calls of the Sevillian street hucksters. It is true that you do not +get this plaintive music without the accompanying note of the hucksters' +donkeys, which, if they were better advised, would not close with the +sort of inefficient sifflication which they now use in spoiling an +otherwise most noble, most leonine roar. But when were donkeys of any +sort ever well advised in all respects? Those of Seville, where donkeys +abound, were otherwise of the superior intelligence which throughout +Spain leaves the horse and even the mule far behind, and constitutes the +donkeys, far beyond the idle and useless dogs, the friends of man. They +indefinitely outnumber the dogs, and the cats are of course nowhere in +the count. Yet I would not misprize the cats of Seville, which +apparently have their money price. We stopped to admire a beautiful +white one, on our way to see the market one day, praising it as +intelligibly as we could, and the owner caught it up, when we had passed +and ran after us, and offered to sell it to us. + +That might have been because it was near the market where we experienced +almost the only mercantile zeal we had known in Spain. Women with ropes +and garlands of onions round their necks invited us to buy, and we had +hopeful advances from the stalls of salads and fruits, where there was a +brave and beautiful show of lettuces and endives, grapes, medlars, and +heaps of melons, but no oranges; I do not know why, though there were +shining masses of red peppers and green, peppers, and vast earthen bowls +with yellow peas soaking in them. The flowers were every gay autumnal +sort, especially dahlias, sometimes made into stiff bouquets, perhaps +for church offerings. There were mounds of chestnuts, four or five feet +high and wide; and these flowers and fruits filled the interior of the +market, while the stalls for the flesh and fish were on the outside. +There seemed more sellers than buyers; here and there were ladies +buying, but it is said that the mistresses commonly send their maids for +the daily provision. + +Ordinarily I should say you could not go amiss for your profit and +pleasure in Seville, but there are certain imperative objects of +interest like the Casa de Pilatos which you really have to do. Strangely +enough, it is very well worth doing, for, though it is even more +factitiously Moorish than the Alcazar, it is of almost as great beauty +and of greater dignity. Gardens, galleries, staircases, statues, +paintings, all are interesting, with a mingled air of care and neglect +which is peculiarly charming, though perhaps the keener sensibilities, +the morbider nerves may suffer from the glare and hardness of the tiling +which render the place so wonderful and so exquisite. One must complain +of something, and I complain of the tiling; I do not mind the house +being supposed like the house of Pontius Pilate in Jerusalem. + +It belongs to the Duke of Medina-Celi, who no more comes to it from +Madrid than the Duke of Alva comes to his house, which I somehow +perversely preferred. For one thing, the Alva palace has eleven +_patios,_ all far more forgotten than the four in the House of Pilate, +and I could fully glut my love of _patios_ without seeing half of them. +Besides, it was in the charge of a typical Spanish family: a lean, +leathery, sallow father, a fat, immovable mother, and a tall, silent +daughter. The girl showed us darkly about the dreary place, with its +fountains and orange trees and palms, its damp, Moresque, moldy walls, +its damp, moldy, beautiful wooden ceilings, and its damp, moldy +staircase leading to the family rooms overhead, which we could not see. +The family stays for a little time only in the spring and fall, but if +ever they stay so late as we had come the sunlight lying so soft and +warm in the _patio_ and the garden out of it must have made them as +sorry to leave it as we were. + +I am not sure but I valued the House of Alva somewhat for the chance my +visit to it gave me of seeing a Sevillian tenement-house such as I had +hoped I might see. One hears that such houses are very scrupulously kept +by the janitors who compel the tenants to a cleanliness not perhaps +always their nature. At any rate, this one, just across the way from the +Alva House, was of a surprising neatness. It was built three stories +high, with galleries looking into an open court and doors giving from +these into the several tenements. As fortune, which does not continually +smile on travel, would have it that morning, two ladies of the house +were having a vivid difference of opinion on an upper gallery. Or at +least one was, for the other remained almost as silent as the spectators +who grouped themselves about her or put their heads out of the windows +to see, as well as hear, what it was about. I wish I knew and I would +tell the reader. The injured party, and I am sure she must have been +deeply injured, showered her enemy with reproaches, and each time when +she had emptied the vials of her wrath with much shaking of her hands in +the wrong-doer's face she went away a few yards and filled them up again +and then returned for a fresh discharge. It was perfectly like a scene +of Goldoni and like many a passage of real life in his native city, and +I was rapt in it across fifty years to the Venice I used to know. But +the difference in Seville was that there was actively only one combatant +in the strife, and the witnesses took no more part in it than the +passive resistant. + + + + +VI + + +As a contrast to this violent scene which was not so wholly violent but +that it was relieved by a boy teasing a cat with his cap in the +foreground, and the sweet singing of canaries in the windows of the +houses near, I may commend the Casa de los Venerables, ecclesiastics +somehow related to the cathedral and having their tranquil dwelling not +far from it. The street we took from the Duke of Alva's palace was so +narrow and crooked that we scraped the walls in passing, and we should +never have got by one heavily laden donkey if he had not politely pushed +the side of his pannier into a doorway to make room for us. When we did +get to the Casa de los Venerables we found it mildly yellow-washed and +as beautifully serene and sweet as the house of venerable men should be. +Its distinction in a world of _patios_ was a _patio_ where the central +fountain was sunk half a story below the entrance floor, and encircled +by a stairway by which the humble neighbor folk freely descended to fill +their water jars. I suppose that gentle mansion has other merits, but +the fine staircase that ended under a baroque dome left us facing a +bolted door, so that we had to guess at those attractions, which I leave +the reader to imagine in turn. + +I have kept the unique wonder of Seville waiting too long already for my +recognition, though in its eight hundred years it should have learned +patience enough for worse things. From its great antiquity alone, if +from nothing else, it is plain that the Giralda at Seville could not +have been studied from the tower of the Madison Square Garden in New +York, which the American will recall when he sees it. If the case must +be reversed and we must allow that the Madison Square tower was studied +from the Giralda, we must still recognize that it is no servile copy, +but in its frank imitation has a grace and beauty which achieves +originality. Still, the Giralda is always the Giralda, and, though there +had been no Saint-Gaudens to tip its summit with such a flying-footed +nymph as poises on our own tower, the figure of Faith which crowns it is +at least a good weather-vane, and from its office of turning gives the +mighty bell-tower its name. Long centuries before the tower was a belfry +it served the mosque, which the cathedral now replaces, as a minaret for +the muezzin to call the faithful to prayer, but it was then only +two-thirds as high. The Christian belfry which continues it is not in +offensive discord with the structure below; its other difference in form +and spirit achieves an impossible harmony. The Giralda, however, chiefly +works its enchantment by its color, but here I must leave the proof of +this to the picture postal which now everywhere takes the bread out of +the word-painter's mouth. The time was when with a palette full of +tinted adjectives one might hope to do an unrivaled picture of the +Giralda; but that time is gone; and if the reader has not a colored +postal by him he should lose no time in going to Seville and seeing the +original. For the best view of it I must advise a certain beautifully +irregular small court in the neighborhood, with simple houses so low +that you can easily look up over their roofs and see the mighty bells of +the Giralda rioting far aloof, flinging themselves beyond the openings +of the belfry and deafeningly making believe to leap out into space. If +the traveler fails to find this court (for it seems now and then to be +taken in and put away), he need not despair of seeing the Giralda fitly. +He cannot see Seville at all without seeing it, and from every point, +far or near, he sees it grand and glorious. + +I remember it especially from beyond the Guadalquivir in the drive we +took through Triana to the village of Italica, where three Roman +emperors were born, as the guide-books will officiously hasten to tell, +and steal away your chance of treating your reader with any effect of +learned research. These emperors (I will not be stopped by any +guide-book from saying) were Trajan, Hadrian, and Theodosius; and Triana +is named for the first of them. Fortunately, we turned to the right +after crossing the bridge and so escaped the gipsy quarter, but we +paused through a long street so swarming with children that we wondered +to hear whole schoolrooms full of them humming and droning their lessons +as we made our way among the tenants. Fortunately, they played mostly in +the gutters, the larger looking after the smaller when their years and +riches were so few more, with that beautiful care which childhood +bestows on babyhood everywhere in Europe. To say that those Spanish +children were as tenderly watchful of these Spanish babies as English +children is to say everything. Now and then a mother cared for a babe as +only a mother can in an office which the pictures and images of the Most +Holy Virgin consecrate and endear in lands where the sterilized bottle +is unknown, but oftenest it was a little sister that held it in her arms +and crooned whatever was the Spanish of-- + + Rack back, baby, daddy shot a b'ar; + Rack back, baby, see it hangin' thar. + +For there are no rocking-chairs in Triana, as there were none in our +backwoods, and the little maids tilted to and fro on the fore legs and +hind legs of their chairs and lulled their charges to sleep with seismic +joltings. When the street turned into a road it turned into a road a +hundred feet wide; one of those roads which Charles III., when he came +to the Spanish throne from Naples, full of beneficent projects and +ideals, bestowed upon his unwilling and ungrateful subjects. These roads +were made about the middle of the eighteenth century, and they have been +gathering dust ever since, so that the white powder now lies in the one +beyond Triana five or six inches deep. Along the sides occasional +shade-trees stifled, and beyond these gaunt, verdureless fields widened +away, though we were told that in the spring the fields were red with +flowers and green with young wheat. There were no market-gardens, and +the chief crop seemed brown pigs and black goats. In some of the +foregrounds, as well as the backgrounds, were olive orchards with olives +heaped under them and peasants still resting from their midday +breakfast. A mauve bell-shaped flower plentifully fringed the wayside; +our driver said it had no name, and later an old peasant said it was +"bad." + + + + +VII + + +We passed a convent turned into a prosperous-looking manufactory and we +met a troop of merry priests talking gayly and laughing together, and +very effective in their black robes against the white road. When we came +to the village that was a _municipium_ under Augustus and a _colonia_ +under Hadrian, we found it indeed scanty and poor, but very neat and +self-respectful-looking, and not unworthy to have been founded by Scipio +Africanus two hundred years before Christ. Such cottage interiors as we +glimpsed seemed cleaner and cozier than some in Wales; men in wide +flat-brimmed hats sat like statues at the doors, absolutely motionless, +but there were women bustling in and out in their work, and at one place +a little girl of ten had been left to do the family wash, and was doing +it joyously and spreading the clothes in the dooryard to dry. We did not +meet with universal favor as we drove by; some groups of girls mocked +our driver; when we said one of them was pretty he answered that he had +seen prettier. + +At the entrance to the ruins of the amphitheater which forms the +tourist's chief excuse for visiting Italica the popular manners softened +toward us; the village children offered to sell us wild narcissus +flowers and were even willing to take money in charity. They followed us +into the ruins, much forbidden by the fine, toothless old custodian who +took possession of us as his proper prey and led us through the +moldering caverns and crumbling tiers of seats which form the +amphitheater. Vast blocks, vast hunks, of the masonry are broken off +from the mass and lie detached, but the mass keeps the form and dignity +of the original design; and in the lonely fields there it had something +august and proud beyond any quality of the Arena at Verona or the +Colosseum at Rome. It is mostly stripped of the marble that once faced +the interior, and is like some monstrous oval shaped out of the earth, +but near the imperial box lay some white slabs with initials cut in them +which restored the vision of the "grandeur that was Rome" pretty well +over the known world when this great work was in its prime. Our +custodian was qualified by his toothlessness to lisp like any old +Castilian the letters that other Andalusians hiss, but my own Spanish +was so slight and his _patois_ was so dense that the best we could do +was to establish a polite misunderstanding. On this his one word of +English, repeated as we passed through the subterranean doors, "Lion, +lion, lion," cast a gleam of intelligence which brightened into a vivid +community of ideas when we ended in his cottage, and he prepared to sell +us some of the small Roman coins which formed his stock in trade. The +poor place was beautifully neat, and from his window he made us free of +a sight of Seville, signally the cathedral and the Giralda, such as +could not be bought for money in New York. + +Then we set out on our return, leaving unvisited to the left the church +of San Isidore de Campo, with its tombs of Guzman the Good and that +Better Lady Dona Urraca Osorio, whom Peter the Cruel had burned. I say +better, because I hold it nobler in Urraca to have rejected the love of +a wicked king than in Guzman to have let the Moors slay his son rather +than surrender a city to them. But I could only pay honor to her +pathetic memory and the memory of that nameless handmaid of hers who +rushed into the flames to right the garments on the form which the wind +had blown them away from, and so perished with her. We had to take on +trust from the guide-books all trace of the Roman town where the three +emperors were born, and whose "palaces, aqueducts, and temples and +circus were magnificent." We had bought some of the "coins daily dug +up," but we intrusted to the elements those "vestiges of vestiges" left +of Trajan's palaces after an envious earthquake destroyed them so lately +as 1755. + +The one incident of our return worthy of literature was the dramatic +triumph of a woman over a man and a mule as we saw it exhibited on the +parapet of a culvert over a dry torrent's bed. It was the purpose of +this woman, standing on the coping in statuesque relief and showing +against the sky the comfortable proportions of the Spanish housewife, to +mount the mule behind the man. She waited patiently while the man slowly +and as we thought faithlessly urged the mule to the parapet; then, when +she put out her hands and leaned forward to take her seat, the mule +inched softly away and left her to recover her balance at the risk of a +fall on the other side. We were too far for anything but the dumb show, +but there were, no doubt, words which conveyed her opinions unmistakably +to both man and mule. With our hearts in our mouths we witnessed the +scene and its repetitions till we could bear it no longer, and we had +bidden our cabman drive on when with a sudden spring the brave woman +launched herself semicircularly forward and descended upon the exact +spot which she had been aiming at. There solidly established on the +mule, with her arms fast round the man, she rode off; and I do not think +any reader of mine would like to have been that mule or that man for the +rest of the way home. + +We met many other mules, much more exemplary, in teams of two, three, +and four, covered with bells and drawing every kind of carryall and +stage and omnibus. These vehicles were built when the road was, about +1750, and were, like the road, left to the natural forces for keeping +themselves in repair. The natural forces were not wholly adequate in +either case, but the vehicles were not so thick with dust as the road, +because they could shake it off. They had each two or four passengers +seated with the driver; passengers clustered over the top and packed the +inside, but every one was in the joyous mood of people going home for +the day. In a plaza not far from the Triana bridge you may see these +decrepit conveyances assembling every afternoon for their suburban +journeys, and there is no more picturesque sight in Seville, more +homelike, more endearing. Of course, when I say this I leave out of the +count the bridge over the Guadalquivir at the morning or evening hour +when it is covered with brightly caparisoned donkeys, themselves covered +with men needing a shave, and gay-kerchiefed women of every age, with +boys and dogs underfoot, and pedestrians of every kind, and hucksters +selling sea-fruit and land-fruit and whatever else the stranger would +rather see than eat. Very little outcry was needed for the sale of these +things, which in Naples or even in Venice would have been attended by +such vociferation as would have sufficed to proclaim a city in flames. + +On a day not long after our expedition to Italica we went a drive with a +young American friend living in Seville, whom I look to for a book about +that famous city such as I should like to write myself if I had the time +to live it as he has done. He promised that he would show us a piece of +the old Roman wall, but he showed us ever so much more, beginning with +the fore court of the conventual church of Santa Paula, where we found +the afternoon light waiting to illumine for us with its tender caress +the Luca della Robbia-like colored porcelain figures of the portal and +the beautiful octagon tower staying a moment before taking flight for +heaven: the most exquisite moment of our whole fortnight in Seville. +Tall pots of flowers stood round, and the grass came green through the +crevices of the old foot-worn pavement. When we passed out a small boy +scuffled for our copper with the little girl who opened the gate for us, +but was brought to justice by us, and joined cheerfully in the chorus of +children chanting "Mo-ney, mo-ney!" round us, but no more expecting an +answer to their prayer than if we had been saints off the church door. + +We passed out of the city by a gate where in a little coign of vantage a +cobbler was thoughtfully hammering away in the tumult at a shoe-sole, +and then suddenly on our right we had the Julian wall: not a mere +fragment, but a good long stretch of it. The Moors had built upon it and +characterized it, but had not so masked it as to hide the perdurable +physiognomy of the Roman work. It was vastly more Roman wall than you +see at Rome; but far better than this heroic image of war and waste was +the beautiful old aqueduct, perfectly Roman still, with no visible touch +from Moor, or from Christian. before or after the Moor, and performing +its beneficent use after two thousand years as effectively as in the +years before Christ came to bless the peacemakers. Nine miles from its +mountain source the graceful arches bring the water on their shoulders; +and though there is now an English company that pipes other streams to +the city through its underground mains, the Roman aqueduct, eternally +sublime in its usefulness, is constant to the purpose of the forgotten +men who imagined it. The outer surfaces of the channel which it lifted +to the light and air were tagged with weeds and immemorial mosses, and +dripped as with the sweat of its twenty-centuried toil. + +We followed it as far as it went on our way to a modern work of peace +and use which the ancient friend and servant of man would feel no +unworthy rival. Beyond the drives and gardens of the Delicias, where we +lingered our last to look at the pleasurers haunting them, we drove far +across the wheat-fields where a ship-canal five miles long is cutting to +rectify the curve of the Guadalquivir and bring Seville many miles +nearer the sea than it has ever been before; hitherto the tramp steamers +have had to follow the course of the ships of Tarshish in their winding +approach. The canal is the notion of the young king of Spain, and the +work on it goes forward night and day. The electric lights were shedding +their blinding glare on the deafening clatter of the excavating +machinery, and it was an unworthy relief to escape from the intense +modernity of the scene to that medieval retreat nearer the city where +the _aficionados_ night-long watch the bulls coming up from their +pastures for the fight or the feast, whichever you choose to call it, of +the morrow. These amateurs, whom it would be rude to call sports, lurk +in the wayside cafe over their cups of chocolate and wait till in that +darkest hour before dawn, with irregular trampling and deep bellowing, +these hapless heroes of the arena pass on to their doom. It is a great +thing for the _aficionados_ who may imagine in that bellowing the the +gladiator's hail of _Morituri salutant._ At any rate, it is very chic; +it gives a man standing in Seville, which disputes with Madrid the +primacy in bull-feasting. If the national capital has bull-feasting +every Sunday of the year, all the famous _torreros_ come from Andalusia, +with the bulls, their brave antagonists, and in the great provincial +capital there are bull-feasts of insurpassable, if not incomparable, +splendor. + +Before our pleasant drive ended we passed, as we had already passed +several times, the scene of the famous Feria of Seville, the cattle show +which draws tens of thousands to the city every springtime for business +and pleasure, but mostly pleasure. The Feria focuses in its greatest +intensity at one of the entrances to the Delicias, where the street is +then so dense with every sort of vehicle that people can cross it only +by the branching viaduct, which rises in two several ascents from each +footway, intersecting at top and delivering their endless multitudes on +the opposite sidewalk. Along the street are gay pavilions and cottages +where the nobility live through the Feria with their families and +welcome the public to the sight of their revelry through the open doors +and windows. Then, if ever, the stranger may see the dancing, and hear +the singing and playing which all the other year in Seville disappoints +him of. + + + + +VIII + + +On the eve of All Saints, after we had driven over the worst road in the +world outside of Spain or America, we arrived at the entrance of the +cemetery where Baedeker had mysteriously said "some sort of fair was +held." Then we perceived that we were present at the preparations for +celebrating one of the most affecting events of the Spanish year. This +was the visit of kindred and friends bringing tokens of remembrance and +affection to the dead. The whole long, rough way we had passed them on +foot, and at the cemetery gate we found them arriving in public cabs, as +well as in private carriages, with the dignity and gravity of +smooth-shaven footmen and coachmen. In Spain these functionaries look +their office more solemnly even than in England and affect you as +peculiarly correct and eighteenth-century. But apart from their looks +the occasion seemed more a festivity than a solemnity. The people bore +flowers, mostly artificial, as well as lanterns, and within the cemetery +they were furbishing up the monuments with every appliance according to +the material, scrubbing the marble, whitewashing the stucco, and +repainting the galvanized iron. The lanterns were made to match the +monuments and fences architecturally, and the mourners were attaching +them with a gentle satisfaction in their fitness; I suppose they were to +be lighted at dark and to burn through the night. There were men among +the mourners, but most of them were women and children; some were +weeping, like a father leading his two little ones, and an old woman +grieving for her dead with tears. But what prevailed was a community of +quiet resignation, almost to the sort of cheerfulness which bereavement +sometimes knows. The scene was tenderly affecting, but it had a +tremendous touch of tragic setting in the long, straight avenue of black +cypresses which slimly climbed the upward slope from the entrance to the +farther bound of the cemetery. Otherwise there was only the patience of +entire faith in this annually recurring visit of the living to the dead: +the fixed belief that these should rise from the places where they lay. +and they who survived them for yet a little more of time should join +them from whatever end of the earth in the morning of the Last Day. + +All along I have been shirking what any right-minded traveler would feel +almost his duty, but I now own that there is a museum in Seville, the +Museo Provincial, which was of course once a convent and is now a +gallery, with the best, but not the very best, Murillos in it, not to +speak of the best Zurburans. I will not speak at all of those pictures, +because I could in no wise say what they were, or were like, and because +I would not have the reader come to them with any opinions of mine which +he might bring away with him in the belief that they were his own. Let +him not fail to go to the museum, however; he will be the poorer beyond +calculation if he does not; but he will be a beggar if he does not go to +the Hospital de la Caridad, where in the church he will find six +Murillos out-Murilloing any others excepting always the incomparable +"Vision of St. Anthony" in the cathedral. We did not think of those six +Murillos when we went to the hospital; we knew nothing of the peculiar +beauty and dignity of the church; but we came because we wished to see +what the repentance of a man could do for others after a youth spent in +wicked riot. The gentle, pensive little Mother who received us carefully +said at once that the hospital was not for the sick, but only for the +superannuated and the poor and friendless who came to pass a night or an +indefinite time in it, according to the pressure of their need; and +after showing us the rich little church, she led us through long, clean +corridors where old men lay in their white beds or sat beside them +eating their breakfasts, very savory-looking, out of ample white bowls. +Some of them saluted us, but the others we excused because they were so +preoccupied. In a special room set apart for them were what we brutally +call tramps, but who doubtless are known in Spain for indigent brethren +overtaken on their wayfaring without a lodging for the night. Here they +could come for it and cook their supper and breakfast at the large +circular fireplace which filled one end of their room. They rose at our +entrance and bowed; and how I wish I could have asked them, every one, +about their lives! + +There was nothing more except the doubt of that dear little Mother when +I gave her a silver dollar for her kindness. She seemed surprised and +worried, and asked, "Is it for the charity or for me?" What could I +do but answer, "Oh, for your Grace," and add another for the charity. +She still looked perplexed, but there was no way out of our +misunderstanding, if it was one, and we left her with her sweet, +troubled face between the white wings of her cap, like angel's wings +mounting to it from her shoulders. Then we went to look at the statue of +the founder bearing a hapless stranger in his arms in a space of flowers +before the hospital, where a gardener kept watch that no visitor should +escape without a bunch worth at least a peseta. He had no belief that +the peseta could possibly be for the charity, and the poverty of the +poor neighborhood was so much relieved by the mere presence of the +hospital that it begged of us very little as we passed through. + + + + +IX + + +We had expected to go to Granada after a week in Seville, but man is +always proposing beyond his disposing in strange lands as well as at +home, and we were fully a fortnight in the far lovelier capital. In the +mean time we had changed from our rooms in the rear of the hotel to +others in the front, where we entered intimately into the life of the +Plaza San Fernando as far as we might share it from our windows. It was +not very active life; even the cabmen whose neat victorias bordered the +place on three sides were not eager for custom; they invited the +stranger, but they did not urge; there was a continual but not a rapid +passing through the ample oblong; there was a good deal of still life on +the benches where leisure enjoyed the feathery shadow of the palms, for +the sun was apt to be too hot at the hour of noon, though later it +conduced to the slumber which in Spain accompanies the digestion of the +midday meal in all classes. As the afternoon advanced numbers of little +girls came into the plaza and played children's games which seemed a +translation of games familiar to our own country. One evening a small +boy was playing with them, but after a while he seemed to be found +unequal to the sport; he was ejected from the group and went off +gloomily to grieve apart with his little thumb in his mouth. The sight +of his dignified desolation was insupportable, and we tried what a +copper of the big-dog value would do to comfort him. He took it without +looking up and ran away to the peanut-stand which is always steaming at +the first corner all over Christendom. Late in the evening--in fact, +after the night had fairly fallen--we saw him making his way into a +house fronting on the plaza. He tried at the door with one hand and in +the other he held an unexhausted bag of peanuts. He had wasted no word +of thanks on us, and he did not now. When he got the door open he backed +into the interior still facing us and so fading from our sight and +knowledge. + +He had the touch of comedy which makes pathos endurable, but another +incident was wholly pathetic. As we came out of an antiquity shop near +the cathedral one afternoon we found on the elevated footway near the +Gate of Pardon a mother and daughter, both of the same second youth, who +gently and jointly pronounced to us the magical word _encajes._ Rather, +they questioned us with it, and they only suggested, very forbearingly, +that we should come to their house with them to see those laces, which +of course were old laces; their house was quite near. But that one of us +twain who was singly concerned in _encajes_ had fatigued and perhaps +overbought herself at the antiquity shop, and she signified a regret +which they divined too well was dissent. They looked rather than +expressed a keen little disappointment; the mother began a faint +insistence, but the daughter would not suffer it. Here was the pride of +poverty, if not poverty itself, and it was with a pang that we parted +from these mutely appealing ladies. We could not have borne it if we had +not instantly promised ourselves to come the next day and meet them and +go home with them and buy all their _encajes_ that we had money for. We +kept our promise, and we came the next day and the next and every day we +remained in Seville, and lingered so long that we implanted in the +cabmen beside the curbing the inextinguishable belief that we were in +need of a cab; but we never saw those dear ladies again. + +These are some of the cruel memories which the happiest travel leaves, +and I gratefully recall that in the case of a custodian of the Columbian +Museum, which adjoins the cathedral, we did not inflict a pang that +rankled in our hearts for long. I gave him a handful of copper coins +which I thought made up a peseta, but his eyes were keener, and a sorrow +gloomed his brow which projected its shadow so darkly over us when we +went into the cathedral for one of our daily looks that we hastened to +return and make up the full peseta with another heap of coppers; a whole +sunburst of smiles illumined his face, and a rainbow of the brightest +colors arched our sky and still arches it whenever we think of that +custodian and his rehabilitated trust in man. + +This seems the crevice where I can crowd in the fact that bits of family +wash hung from the rail of the old pulpit in the Court of Oranges beside +the cathedral, and a pumpkin vine lavishly decorated an arcade near a +doorway which perhaps gave into the dwelling of that very custodian. At +the same time I must not fail to urge the reader's seeing the Columbian +Museum, which is richly interesting and chiefly for those Latin and +Italian authors annotated by the immortal admiral's own hand. These give +the American a sense of him as the discoverer of our hemisphere which +nothing else could, and insurpassably render the New World credible. At +the same time they somehow bring a lump of pity and piety into the +throat at the thought of the things he did and suffered. They bring him +from history and make him at home in the beholder's heart, and there +seems a mystical significance in the fact that the volume most abounding +in marginalia should be _Seneca's Prophecies._ + +The frequent passing of men as well as women and children through our +Plaza San Fernando and the prevalence of men asleep on the benches; the +immense majority of boys everywhere; the moralized _abattoir_ outside +the walls where the humanity dormant at the bull-feast wakes to hide +every detail of slaughter for the market; a large family of cats basking +at their ease in a sunny doorway; trains of milch goats with wicker +muzzles, led by a milch cow from door to door through the streets; the +sudden solemn beauty of the high altar in the cathedral, seen by chance +on a brilliant day; the bright, inspiriting air of Seville; a glorious +glimpse of the Giralda coming home from a drive; the figure of a girl +outlined in a lofty window; a middle-aged Finnish pair trying to give +themselves in murmured talk to the colored stucco of the Hall of the +Ambassadors in what seems their wedding journey; two artists working +near with sketches tilted against the wall; a large American lady who +arrives one forenoon in traveling dress and goes out after luncheon in a +mantilla with a fan and high comb; another American lady who appears +after dinner in the costume of a Spanish dancing-girl; the fact that +there is no Spanish butter and that the only good butter comes from +France and the passable butter from Denmark; the soft long veils of pink +cloud that trail themselves in the sky across our Plaza, and then +dissolve in the silvery radiance of the gibbous moon; the yellowish-red +electric Brush lights swinging from palm to palm as in the decoration of +some vast ballroom; a second drive through Triana, and a failure to +reach the church we set out for; the droves of brown pigs and flocks of +brown sheep; the goatherds unloading olive boughs in the fields for the +goats to browse; a dirty, kind, peaceful village, with an English +factory in it, and a mansion of galvanized iron with an automobile +before it; a pink villa on a hillside and a family group on the shoulder +of a high-walled garden; a girl looking down from the wall, and a young +man resting his hand on the masonry and looking up at her; the good +faces of the people, men and women; boys wrestling and frolicking in the +village streets; the wide dust-heap of a road, full of sudden holes; the +heat of the sun in the first November week after touches of cold; the +tram-cars that wander from one side of the city street to the other, and +then barely miss scraping the house walls; in our drive home from our +failure for that church, men with trains of oxen plowing and showing +against the round red rayless sun; a stretch of the river with the +crimson-hulled steamers, and a distant sail-boat seen across the fields; +the gray moon that burnishes itself and rides bright and high for our +return; people in balconies, and the air full of golden dust shot with +bluish electric lights; here is a handful of suggestions from my +note-book which each and every one would expand into a chapter or a +small volume under the intensive culture which the reader may well have +come to dread. But I fling them all down here for him to do what he +likes with, and turn to speak at more length of the University, or, +rather the University Church, which I would not have any reader of mine +fail to visit. + + + + +X + + +With my desire to find likeness rather than difference in strange +peoples, I was glad to have two of the students loitering in the _patio_ +play just such a trick on a carter at the gate as school-boys might play +in our own land. While his back was turned they took his whip and hid it +and duly triumphed in his mystification and dismay. We did not wait for +the catastrophe, but by the politeness of another student found the +booth of the custodian, who showed us to the library. A noise of +recitation from the windows looking into the _patio_ followed us +up-stairs; but maturer students were reading at tables in the hushed +library, and at a large central table a circle of grave authorities of +some sort were smoking the air blue with their cigarettes. One, who +seemed chief among them, rose and bowed us into the freedom of the +place, and again rose and bowed when we went out. We did not stay long, +for a library is of the repellent interest of a wine-cellar; unless the +books or bottles are broached it is useless to linger. There are eighty +thousand volumes in that library, but we had to come away without +examining half of them. The church was more appreciable, and its value +was enhanced to us by the reluctance of the stiff old sacristan to +unlock it. We found it rich in a most wonderful _retablo_ carved in wood +and painted. Besides the excellent pictures at the high altar, there are +two portrait brasses which were meant to be recumbent, but which are +stood up against the wall, perhaps to their surprise, without loss of +impressiveness. Most notable of all is the mural tomb of Pedro Enriquez +de Ribera and his wife: he who built the Casa de Pilatos, and as he had +visited the Holy Land was naturally fabled to have copied it from the +House of Pilate. Now, as if still continuing his travels, he reposes +with his wife in a sort of double-decker monument, where the Evil One +would have them suggest to the beholder the notion of passengers in the +upper and lower berths of a Pullman sleeper. + +Of all the Spanish cities that I saw, Seville was the most charming, not +for those attributive blandishments of the song and dance which the +tourist is supposed to find it, but which we quite failed of, but for +the simpler and less conventional amiabilities which she was so rich in. +I have tried to hint at these, but really one must go to Seville for +them and let them happen as they will. Many happened in our hotel where +we liked everybody, from the kindly, most capable Catalonian head waiter +to the fine-headed little Napoleonic-looking waiter who had identified +us at San Sebastian as Americans, because we spoke "quicklier" than the +English, and who ran to us when we came into the hotel and shook hands +with its as if we were his oldest and dearest friends. There was a Swiss +concierge who could not be bought for money, and the manager was the +mirror of managers. Fancy the landlord of the Waldorf-Astoria, or the +St. Regis, coming out on the sidewalk and beating down a taxicabman from +a charge of fifteen pesetas to six for a certain drive! It is not +thinkable, and yet the like of it happened to xis in Seville from our +manager. It was not his fault, when our rear apartment became a little +too chill, and we took a parlor in the front and came back on the first +day hoping to find it stored full of the afternoon sun's warmth, but +found that the _camerera_ had opened the windows and closed the shutters +in our absence so that our parlor was of a frigidity which no glitter of +the electric light could temper. The halls and public rooms were chill +in anticipation and remembrance of any cold outside, but in otir parlor +there was a hole for the sort of stove which we saw in the reading-room, +twice as large as an average teakettle, with a pipe as big around as the +average rain-pipe. I am sure this apparatus would have heated us +admirably, but the weather grew milder and milder and we never had +occasion to make the successful experiment. Meanwhile the moral +atmosphere of the hotel was of a blandness which would have gone far to +content us with any meteorological perversity. When we left it we were +on those human terms with every one who ruled or served in it which one +never attains in an American hotel, and rarely in an English one. + +At noon on the 4th of November the sun was really hot in our plaza; but +we were instructed that before the winter was over there would be cold +enough, not of great frosty severity, of course, but nasty and hard to +bear in the summer conditions which prevail through the year. I wish I +could tell how the people live then in their beautiful, cool houses, but +I do not know, and I do not know how they live at any season except from +the scantiest hearsay. The women remain at home except when they go to +church or to drive in the Delicias--that is to say, the women of +society, of the nobility. There is no society in our sense among people +of the middle classes; the men when they are not at business are at the +cafe; the women when they are not at mass are at home. That is what we +were told, and yet at a moving-picture show we saw many women of the +middle as well as the lower classes. The frequent holidays afford them +an outlet, and indoors they constantly see their friends and kindred at +their _tertulias._ + +The land is in large holdings which are managed by the factors or agents +of the noble proprietors. These, when they are not at Madrid, are to be +found at their clubs, where their business men bring them papers to be +signed, often unread. This sounds a little romantic, and perhaps it is +not true. Some gentlemen take a great interest in the bull-feasts and +breed the bulls and cultivate the bull-fighters; what other esthetic +interests they have I do not know. All classes are said to be of an +Oriental philosophy of life; they hold that the English striving and +running to and fro and seeing strange countries comes in the end to the +same thing as sitting still; and why should they bother? There is +something in that, but one may sit still too much; the Spanish ladies, +as I many times heard, do overdo it. Not only they do not walk abroad; +they do not walk at home; everything is carried to and from them; they +do not lift hand or foot. The consequence is that they have very small +hands and feet; Gautier, who seems to have grown tired when he reached +Seville, and has comparatively little to say of it, says that a child +may hold a Sevillian lady's foot in its hand; he does not say he saw it +done. What is true is that no child could begin to clasp with both hands +the waist of an average Sevillian lady. But here again the rule has its +exceptions and will probably have more. Not only is the English +queen-consort stimulating the Andalusian girls to play tennis by her +example when she comes to Seville, but it has somehow become the fashion +for ladies of all ages to leave their carriages in the Delicias and walk +up and down; we saw at least a dozen doing it. + +Whatever flirting and intriguing goes on, the public sees nothing of it. +In the street there is no gleam of sheep's-eying or any manner of +indecorum. The women look sensible and good, and I should say the same +of the men; the stranger's experience must have been more unfortunate +than mine if he has had any unkindness from them. One heard that Spanish +women do not smoke, unless they are _cigarreras_ and work in the large +tobacco factory, where the "Carmen" tradition has given place to the +mother-of-a-family type, with her baby on the floor beside her. Even +these may prefer not to set the baby a bad example and have her grow up +and smoke like those English and American women. The strength of the +Church is, of course, in the women's faith, and its strength is +unquestionable, if not quite unquestioned. In Seville, as I have said, +there are two Spanish Protestant churches, and their worship, is not +molested. Society does not receive their members; but we heard that with +most Spanish people Protestantism is a puzzle rather than offense. They +know we are not Jews, but Christians; yet we are not Catholics; and +what, then, are we? With the Protestants, as with the Catholics, there +is always religious marriage. There is civil marriage for all, but +without the religious rite the pair are not well seen by either sect. + +It is said that the editor of the ablest paper in Madrid, which +publishes a local edition at Seville, is a Protestant. The queen mother +is extremely clerical, though one of the wisest and best women who ever +ruled; the king and queen consort are as liberal as possible, and the +king is notoriously a democrat, with a dash of Haroun al Rashid. lie +likes to take his governmental subordinates unawares, and a story is +told of his dropping in at the post-office on a late visit to Seville, +and asking for the chief. He was out, and so were all the subordinate +officials down to the lowest, whom the king found at his work. The +others have since been diligent at theirs. The story is characteristic +of the king, if not of the post-office people. + +Political freedom is almost grotesquely unrestricted. In our American +republic we should scarcely tolerate a party in favor of a monarchy, but +in the Spanish monarchy a republican party is recognized and +represented. It holds public meetings and counts among its members many +able and distinguished men, such as the novelist Perez Galdos, one of +the most brilliant novelists not only in Spain but in Europe. With this +unbounded liberty in Andalusia, it is said that the Spaniards of the +north are still more radical. + +Though the climate is most favorable for consumptives, the habits of the +people are so unwholesome that tuberculosis prevails, and there are two +or three deaths a day from it in Seville. There is no avoidance of +tuberculous suspects; they cough, and the men spit everywhere in the +streets and on the floors and carpets of the clubs. The women suffer for +want of fresh air, though now with the example of the English queen +before them and the young girls who used to lie abed till noon getting +up early ta play tennis, it will be different. Their mothers and aunts +still drive to the Delicias to prove that they have carriages, but when +there they alight and walk up and down by their doctor's advice. + +I only know that during our fortnight in Seville I suffered no wound to +a sensibility which has been kept in full repair for literary, if not +for humanitarian purposes. The climate was as kind as the people. It is +notorious that in summer the heat is that of a furnace, but even then it +is bearable because it is a dry heat, like that of our indoor furnaces. +The 5th of November was our last day, and then it was too hot for +comfort in the sun, but one is willing to find the November sun too hot; +it is an agreeable solecism; and I only wish that we could have found +the sun too hot during the next three days in Granada. If the 5th of +November had been worse for heat than it was it must still remain dear +in our memory, because in the afternoon we met once more these Chilians +of our hearts whom we had met in San Sebastian and Burgos and +Valladolid and Madrid. We knew we should meet them in Seville and were +not the least surprised. They were as glad and gay as ever, and in our +common polyglot they possessed us of the fact that they had just +completed the eastern hemicycle of their Peninsular tour. They were +latest from Malaga, and now they were going northward. It was our last +meeting, but better friends I could not hope to meet again, whether in +the Old World or the New, or that Other World which we hope will somehow +be the summation of all that is best in both. + + + + +XI + +TO AND IN GRANADA + + +The train which leaves Seville at ten of a sunny morning is supposed to +arrive in Granada at seven of a moonlight evening. This is a mistake; +the moonlight is on time, but the train arrives at a quarter of nine. +Still, if the day has been sunny the whole way and the moonlight is +there at the end, no harm has really been done; and measurably the +promise of the train has been kept. + + + + +I + + +There was not a moment of the long journey over the levels of Andahisia +which was not charming; when it began to be over the uplands of the last +Moorish kingdom, it was richly impressive. The only thing that I can +remember against the landscape is the prevalence of olive orchards. I +hailed as a relief the stubble-fields immeasurably spread at times, and +I did not always resent the roadside planting of some sort of tall +hedges which now and then hid the olives. But olive orchards may vary +their monotony by the spectacle of peasants on ladders gathering their +fruit into wide-mouthed sacks, and occasionally their ranks of +symmetrical green may be broken by the yellow and red of poplars and +pomegranates around the pleasant farmsteads. The nearer we drew to +Granada the pleasanter these grew, till in the famous Vega they thickly +dotted the landscape with their brown roofs and white walls. + +We had not this effect till we had climbed the first barrier of hills +and began to descend on the thither side; but we had incident enough to +keep us engaged without the picturesqueness. The beggars alone, who did +not fail us at any station, were enough; for what could the most +exacting tourist ask more than to be eating his luncheon under the eyes +of the children who besieged his car windows and protested their famine +in accents which would have melted a heart of stone or of anything less +obdurate than travel? We had always our brace of Civil Guards, who +preserved us from bandits, but they left the beggars unmolested by +getting out on the train next the station and pacing the platform, while +the rabble of hunger thronged us on the other side. There was especially +a hoy who, after being compassionated in money for his misfortune, +continued to fling his wooden leg into the air and wave it at our window +by some masterly gymnastics; and there was another boy who kept +lamenting that he had no mother, till, having duly feed and fed him, I +suggested, "But you have a father?" Then, as if he had never seen the +case in that light before, he was silent, and presently went away +without further insistence on his bereavement. + +The laconic fidelity of my note-book enables me to recall here that the +last we saw of Seville was the Cathedral and the Giralda, which the +guide-books had promised us we should see first; that we passed some +fields of alfalfa which the Moors had brought from Africa and the +Spanish have carried to America; that in places men were plowing and +that the plowed land was red; that the towns on the uplands in the +distance were white and not gray, or mud-colored, as in Castile; that +the morning sky was blue, with thin, pale clouds; that the first station +out was charmingly called Two Brothers, and that the loungers about it +were plain, but kind-looking men-folk with good faces, some actually +clean-shaven, and a woman with a white rose in her hair; that Two +Brothers is a suburb of Seville, frequented in the winter, and has +orange orchards about it; that farther on at one place the green of the +fields spread up to the walls of a white farm with a fine sense of +color; that there were hawks sailing in the blue air; that there were +grotesque hedges of cactus and piles of crooked cactus logs; that there +were many eucalyptus trees; that there were plantations of young olives, +as if never to let that all-pervading industry perish; that there were +irregular mountain ranges on the right, but never the same kind of +scenery on both sides of the track; that there was once a white cottage +on a yellow hill and a pink villa with two towers; that there was a +solitary fig tree near the road, and that there were vast lonely fields +when there were not olive orchards. + +Taking breath after one o'clock, much restored by our luncheon, my +note-book remembers a gray-roofed, yellow-walled town, very suitable for +a water-color, and just beyond it the first vineyard we had come to. +Then there were pomegranate trees, golden-leaved, and tall poplars +pollarded plume fashion as in southern France; and in a field a herd of +brown pigs feeding, which commended itself to observance, doubtless, as +color in some possible word-painting. There now abounded pomegranates, +figs, young corn, and more and more olives; and as if the old olives and +young olives were not enough, the earth began to be pitted with holes +dug for the olives which had not yet been planted. + + + + +II + + +At Bobadilla, the junction where an English railway company begins to +get in its work and to animate the Spanish environment to unwonted +enterprise, there was a varied luncheon far past our capacity. But when. +a Cockney voice asked over my shoulder, "Tea, sir?" I gladly closed with +the proposition. "But you've put hot milk into it!" I protested. "I +know it, sir. We 'ave no cold milk at Bobadilla," and instantly a +baleful suspicion implanted itself which has since grown into a upas +tree of poisonous conviction: goat's milk does not keep well, and it was +not only hot milk, but hot _goat's_ milk which they were serving us at +Bobadilla. However, there were admirable ham sandwiches, not of goat's +flesh, at the other end of the room, and with these one could console +oneself. There was also a commendable pancake whose honored name I never +knew, but whose acquaintance I should be sorry not to have made; and all +about Bobadilla there was an agreeable bustle, which we enjoyed the more +when we had made sure that we had changed into the right train for +Granada and found in our compartment the charming young Swedish couple +who had come with us from Seville. + +Thoroughly refreshed by the tea with hot goat's milk in it, by the +genuine ham sandwiches and the pancakes, my note-book takes up the tale +once more. It dwells upon the rich look of the land and the comfort of +the farms contrasting with the wild irregularity of the mountain ranges +which now began to serrate the horizon; and I have no doubt that if I +had then read that most charming of all Washington Irving's Spanish +studies, the story, namely, of his journey over quite the same way we +had come seventy-five years later, my note-book would abound in lively +comment on the changed aspect of the whole landscape. Even as it is, I +find it exclamatory over the wonder of the mountain coloring which it +professes to have found green, brown, red, gray, and blue, but whether +all at once or not it does not say. It is more definite as to the plain +we were traversing, with its increasing number of white cottages, +cheerfully testifying to the distribution of the land in small holdings, +so different from the vast estates abandoned to homeless expanses of +wheat-fields and olive orchards which we had been passing through. It +did not appear on later inquiry that these small holdings were of +peasant ownership, as I could have wished; they were tenant farms, but +their neatness testified to the prosperity of the tenants, and their +frequency cheered our way as the evening waned and the lamps began to +twinkle from their windows. At a certain station, I am reminded by my +careful mentor, the craggy mountain-tops were softened by the sunset +pink, and that then the warm afternoon air began to grow cooler, and the +dying day to empurple the uplands everywhere, without abating the charm +of the blithe cottages. It seems to have been mostly a very homelike +scene, and where there was a certain stretch of woodland its loneliness +was relieved by the antic feat of a goat lifting itself on its hind legs +to browse the olive leaves on their native bough. The air was thinner +and cooler, but never damp, and at times it relented and blew lullingly +in at our window. We made such long stops that the lights began to fade +out of the farm-windows, but kept bright in the villages, when at a +station which we were so long in coming to that we thought it must be +next to Granada, a Spanish gentleman got in with us; and though the +prohibitory notice of _No Fumadores_ stared him in the face, it did not +stare him out of countenance; for he continued to smoke like a +locomotive the whole way to our journey's end. From time to time I +meditated a severe rebuke, but in the end I made him none, and I am now +convinced that this was wise, for he probably would not have minded it, +and as it was, when I addressed him some commonplace as to the probable +time of our arrival he answered in the same spirit, and then presently +grew very courteously communicative. He told me for one thing, after we +had passed the mountain gates of the famous Vega and were making our way +under the moonlight over the storied expanse, drenched with the blood of +battles long ago, that the tall chimneys we began to see blackening the +air with their volumed fumes were the chimneys of fourteen beet-root +sugar factories belonging to the Duke of Wellington. Then I divined, as +afterward I learned, that the lands devoted to this industry were part +of the rich gift which Spain bestowed upon the Great Duke in gratitude +for his services against the Napoleonic invasion. His present heir has +imagined a benevolent use of his heritage by inviting the peasantry of +the Vega to the culture of the sugar-beet; but whether the enterprise +was prospering I could not say; and I do not suppose any reader of mine +will care so much for it as I did in the pour of the moonlight over the +roofs and towers that were now becoming Granada, and quickening my slow +old emotions to a youthful glow. At the station, which, in spite of +Boabdil el Chico and Ferdinand and Isabel, was quite like every other +railway station of southern Europe, we parted friends with our Spanish +fellow-traveler, whom we left smoking and who is probably smoking still. +Then we mounted with our Swedish friends into the omnibus of the hotel +we had chosen and which began, after discreet delays, to climb the hill +town toward the Alhambra through a commonplace-looking town gay with the +lights of cafes and shops, and to lose itself in the more congenial +darkness of narrower streets barred with moonlight. It was drawn by four +mules, covered with bells and constantly coaxed and cursed by at least +two drivers on the box, while a vigorous boy ran alongside and lashed +their legs without ceasing till we reached the shelf where our hotel +perched. + + + + +III + + +I had taken the precaution to write for rooms, and we got the best in +the house, or if not that then the best we could wish at a price which I +could have wished much less, till we stepped out upon our balcony, and +looked down and over the most beautiful, the most magnificent scene that +eyes, or at least my eyes, ever dwelt on. Beside us and before us the +silver cup of the Sierra Nevada, which held the city in its tiled +hollow, poured it out over the immeasurable Vega washed with moonshine +which brightened and darkened its spread in a thousand radiances and +obscurities of windows and walls and roofs and trees and lurking +gardens. Because it was unspeakable we could not speak, but I may say +now that this was our supreme moment of Granada. There were other fine +moments, but none unmixed with the reservations which truth obliges +honest travel to own. Now, when from some secret spot there rose the +wild cry of a sentinel, and prolonged itself to another who caught it +dying up and breathed new life into it and sent it echoing on till it +had made the round of the whole fairy city, the heart shut with a pang +of pure ecstasy. One could bear no more; we stepped within, and closed +the window behind us. That is, we tried to close it, but it would not +latch, and we were obliged to ring for a _camerero_ to come and see what +ailed it. + +The infirmity of the door-latch was emblematic of a temperamental +infirmity in the whole hotel. The promises were those of Madrid, but the +performances were those of Segovia. There was a glitter, almost a glare, +of Ritz-like splendor, and the rates were Ritz-like, but there the +resemblance ceased. The porter followed us to our rooms on our arrival +and told us in excellent English (which excelled less and less +throughout our stay) that he was the hall porter and that we could +confidently refer all our wants to him; but their reference seemed +always to close the incident. There was a secretary who assured us that +our rooms were not dear, and who could not out of regard to our honor +and comfort consider cheaper ones; and then ceased to be until he +receipted our bill when we went away. There was a splendid dining-room +with waiters of such beauty and dignity, and so purple from clean +shaving, that we scarcely dared face them, and there were luncheons and +dinners of rich and delicate superabundance in the menu, but of an +exquisite insipidity on the palate, and of a swiftly vanishing Barmecide +insubstantiality, as if they were banquets from the _Arabian Nights_ +imagined under the rule of the Moors. Everywhere shone silver-bright +radiators, such as we had not seen since we left their like freezing in +Burgos; but though the weather presently changed from an Andalusian +softness to a Castilian severity after a snowfall in the Sierra, the +radiators remained insensible to the difference and the air nipped the +nose and fingers wherever one went in the hotel. The hall porter, who +knew everything, said the boilers were out of order, and a traveler who +had been there the winter before confirmed him with the testimony that +they were out of order even in January. There may not have been any fire +under them then, as there was none now; but if they needed repairing now +it was clearly because they needed repairing then. In the corner of one +of our rooms the frescoed plastering had scaled off, and we knew that if +we came back a year later the same spot would offer us a familiar +welcome. + +But why do I gird at that hotel in Granada as if I knew of no faults in +American hotels? I know of many and like faults, and I do not know of a +single hotel of ours with such a glorious outlook and downlook as that +hotel in Granada. The details which the sunlight of the morrow revealed +to us when we had mastered the mystery of our window-catch and stood +again on our balcony took nothing from the loveliness of the moonlight +picture, but rather added to it, and, besides a more incredible scene of +mountain and plain and city, it gave us one particular tree in a garden +almost under us which my heart clings to still with a rapture changing +to a fond regret. At first the tree, of what name or nature I cannot +tell, stood full and perfect, a mass of foliage all yellow as if made up +of "patines of bright gold." Then day by day, almost hour by hour, it +darkened and the tree shrank as if huddling its leaves closer about it +in the cold that fell from the ever-snowier Sierra. On the last morning +we left its boughs shaking in the rain against the cold, + + Bare, ruined choir where late the sweet birds sang. + + + + +IV + + +But we anticipate, as I should say if I were still a romantic novelist. +Many other trees in and about Granada were yellower than that one, and +the air hung dim with a thin haze as of Indian summer when we left our +hotel in eager haste to see the Alhambra such as travelers use when they +do not want some wonder of the world to escape them. Of course there was +really no need of haste, and we had to wait till our guide could borrow +a match to light the first of the cigarettes which he never ceased to +smoke. He was commended to us by the hall porter, who said he could +speak French, and so he could, to the extreme of constantly saying, with +a wave of his cigarette, "_N'est ce pas?"_ For the rest he helped +himself out willingly with my small Spanish. At the end he would have +delivered us over to a dealer in antiquities hard by the gate of the +palace if I had not prevented him, as it were, by main force; he did not +repine, but we were not sorry that he should be engaged for the next +day. + +Our way to the gate, which was the famous Gate of Justice and was lovely +enough to be the Gate of Mercy, lay through the beautiful woods, mostly +elms, planted there by the English early in the last century. The birds +sang in their tops, and the waters warbled at their feet, and it was +somewhat thrillingly cold in their dense shade, so that we were glad to +get out of it, and into the sunshine where the old Moorish palace lay +basking and dreaming. At once let me confide to the impatient reader +that the whole Alhambra, by which he must understand a citadel, and +almost a city, since it could, if it never did, hold twenty thousand +people within its walls, is only historically and not artistically more +Moorish than the Alcazar at Seville. Far nobler and more beautiful than +its Arabic decorativeness in tinted stucco is the palace begun by +Charles V., after a design in the spirit of the supreme hour of the +Italian Renaissance. It is not a ruin in its long arrest, and one hears +with hopeful sympathy that the Spanish king means some day to complete +it. To be sure, the world is, perhaps, already full enough of royal +palaces, but since they return sooner or later to the people whose +pockets they come out of, one must be willing to have this palace +completed as the architect imagined it. + +We were followed into the Moorish palace by the music of three blind +minstrels who began to tune their guitars as soon as they felt us: see +us they could not. Then presently we were in the famous Court of the +Lions, where a group of those beasts, at once archaic and puerile in +conception, sustained the basin of a fountain in the midst of a graveled +court arabesqued and honeycombed round with the wonted ornamentation of +the Moors. + +The place was disappointing to the boy in me who had once passed so much +of his leisure there, and had made it all marble and gold. The floor is +not only gravel, and the lions are not only more like sheep, but the +environing architecture and decoration are of a faded prettiness which +cannot bear comparison with the fresh rougeing, equally Moorish, of the +Alcazar at Seville. Was this indeed the place where the Abencerrages +were brought in from supper one by one and beheaded into the fountain at +the behest of their royal host? Was it here that the haughty Don Juan de +Vera, coming to demand for the Catholic kings the arrears of tribute due +them from the Moor, "paused to regard its celebrated fountain" and "fell +into discourse with the Moorish courtiers on certain mysteries of the +Christian faith"? So Washington Irving says, and so I once believed, +with glowing heart and throbbing brow as I read how "this most Christian +knight and discreet ambassador restrained himself within the limits of +lofty gravity, leaning on the pommel of his sword and looking down with +ineffable scorn upon the weak casuists around him. The quick and subtle +Arabian witlings redoubled their light attacks on the stately Spaniard, +but when one of them, of the race of the Abencerrages dared to question, +with a sneer, the immaculate conception of the blessed Virgin, the +Catholic knight could no longer restrain his ire. Elevating his voice +of a sudden, he told the infidel he lied, and raising his arm at the +same time he smote him on the head with his sheathed sword. In an +instant the Court of Lions glistened with the flash of arms," insomuch +that the American lady whom we saw writing a letter beside a friend +sketching there must have been startled from her opening words, "I am +sitting here with my portfolio on my knees in the beautiful Court of the +Lions," and if Muley Aben Hassan had not "overheard the tumult and +forbade all appeal to force, pronouncing the person of the ambassador +sacred," she never could have gone on. + + + + +V + + +I did not doubt the fact when I read of it under the level boughs of the +beechen tree with J. W., sixty years ago, by the green woodland light of +the primeval forest which hemmed our village in, and since I am well +away from the Alhambra again I do not doubt it now. I doubt nothing that +Irving says of the Alhambra; he is the gentle genius of the place, and I +could almost wish that I had paid the ten pesetas extra which the +custodian demanded for showing his apartment in the palace. On the +ground the demand of two dollars seemed a gross extortion; yet it was +not too much for a devotion so rich as mine to have paid, and I advise +other travelers to buy themselves off from a vain regret by giving it. +If ever a memory merited the right to levy tribute on all comers to the +place it haunts, Washington Irving's is that memory. His _Conquest of +Granada_ is still the history which one would wish to read; his _Tales +of the Alhambra_ embody fable and fact in just the right measure for the +heart's desire in the presence of the monuments they verify or falsify. +They belong to that strange age of romance which is now so almost +pathetic and to which one cannot refuse his sympathy without sensible +loss. But for the eager make-believe of that time we should still have +to hoard up much rubbish which we can now leave aside, or accept without +bothering to assay for the few grains of gold in it. Washington Irving +had just the playful kindness which sufficed best to deal with the +accumulations of his age; if he does not forbid you to believe, he does +not oblige you to disbelieve, and he has always a tolerant civility in +his humor which comports best with the duty of taking leniently a +history impossible to take altogether seriously. Till the Spaniards had +put an end to the Moorish misrule, with its ruthless despotism and +bloody civil brawls, the Moors deserved to be conquered; it was not till +their power was broken forever that they became truly heroic in their +vain struggles and their unavailing sorrows. Then their pathetic +resignation to persecution and exile lent dignity even to their +ridiculous religion; but it was of the first and not the second period +that Irving had to treat. + + + + +VI + + +The Alhambra is not so impressive by its glory or grandeur as by the +unparalleled beauty of its place. If it is not very noble as an effect +of art, the inspiration of its founders is affirmed by their choice of +an outlook which commands one of the most magnificent panoramas in the +whole world. It would be useless to rehearse the proofs by name. Think +of far-off silver-crested summits and of a peopled plain stretching away +from them out of eye-shot, dense first with roofs and domes and towers, +and then freeing itself within fields and vineyards and orchards and +forests to the vanishing-point of the perspective; think of steep and +sudden plunges into chasms at the foot of the palace walls, and one +crooked stream stealing snakelike in their depths; think of whatever +splendid impossible dramas of topography that you will, of a tremendous +map outstretched in colored relief, and you will perhaps have some +notion of the prospect from the giddy windows of the Alhambra; and +perhaps not. Of one thing we made memorably sure beyond the gulf of the +Darro, and that was the famous gipsy quarter which the traveler visits +at the risk of his life in order to have his fortune told. At the same +moment we made sure that we should not go nearer it, for though we knew +that it was insurpassably dirty as well as dangerous, we remembered so +distinctly the loathsomeness of the gipsy quarter at Seville that we +felt no desire to put it to the comparison. + +We preferred rather the bird's-eye study of the beautiful Generalife +which our outlook enabled us to make, and which we supplemented by a +visit the next day. We preferred, after the Barmecide lunch at our +hotel, taking the tram-car that noisily and more noisily clambers up and +down, and descending into the town by it. The ascent is so steep that at +a certain point the electric current no longer suffices, and the car +bites into the line of cogs with its sort of powerful under-jaw and so +arrives. Yet it is a kindly little vehicle, with a conductor so +affectionately careful in transporting the stranger that I felt after a +single day we should soon become brothers, or at least step-brothers. +Whenever we left or took his car, after the beginning or ending of the +cogway, he was alert to see that we made the right change to or from it, +and that we no more overpaid than underpaid him. Such homely natures +console the traveler for the thousand inhospitalities of travel, and +bind races and religions together in spite of patriotism and piety. + +We were going first to the Cartuja, and in the city, which we found +curiously much more modern, after the Latin notion, than Seville, with +freshly built apartment-houses and business blocks, we took a cab, not +so modern as to be a taxicab, and drove through the quarter said to have +been assigned to the Moors after the fall of Granada. The dust lay thick +in the roadway where filthy children played, but in the sunny doorways +good mothers of families crouched taking away the popular reproach of +vermin by searching one another's heads. Men bestriding their donkeys +rode fearlessly through the dust, and one cleanly-looking old peasant +woman, who sat hers plumply cushioned and framed in with a chair-back +and arms, showed a patience with the young trees planted for future +shade along the desperate avenue which I could wish we had emulated. +When we reached the entrance of the old Carthusian Convent, long since +suppressed and its brothers exiled, a strong force of beggarmen waited +for us, but a modest beggar-woman, old and sad, had withdrawn to the +church door, where she shared in our impartial alms. We were admitted to +the cloister, rather oddly, by a young girl, who went for one of the +remaining monks to show us the church. He came with a newspaper (I hope +of clerical politics) in his hand, and distracted himself from it only +long enough to draw a curtain, or turn on a light, and point out a +picture or statue from time to time. But he was visibly anxious to get +back to it, and sped us more eagerly than he welcomed us in a church +which upon the whole is richer in its peculiar treasures of painting, +sculpture, especially in wood, costly marble, and precious stones than +any other I remember. According to my custom, I leave it to the +guide-books to name these, and to the abounding critics of Spanish art +to celebrate the pictures and statues; it is enough for me that I have +now forgotten them all except those scenes of the martyrdom inflicted by +certain Protestants on members of the Carthusian brotherhood at the time +when all sorts of Christians felt bound to correct the opinions of all +other sorts by the cruelest tortures they could invent. When the monk +had put us to shame by the sight of these paintings (bad as their +subjects), he put us out, letting his eyes fall back upon his newspaper +before the door had well closed upon us. + +The beggarmen had waited in their places to give us another chance of +meriting heaven; and at the church door still crouched the old +beggarwoinan. I saw now that the imploring eyes she lifted were +sightless, and I could not forbear another alms, and as I put my copper +big-dog in her leathern palm I said, _"Adios, madre."_ Then happened +something that I had long desired. I had heard and read that in Spain +people always said at parting, "Go with God," but up to that moment +nobody had said it to me, though I had lingeringly given many the +opportunity. Now, at my words and at the touch of my coin this old +beggarwoman smiled beneficently and said, "Go with God," or, as she put +it in her Spanish, "_Vaya vested con Dios."_ Immediately I ought to have +pressed another coin in her palm, with a _"Gracias, madre; muchas +gracias,"_ out of regard to the literary climax; but whether I really +did so I cannot now remember; I can only hope I did. + + + + +VII + + +I think that it was while I was still in this high satisfaction that we +went a drive in the promenade, which in all Spanish cities is the +Alameda, except Seville, where it so deservedly is the Delicias. It was +in every way a contrast to the road we had come from the Cartuja: an +avenue of gardened paths and embowered driveways, where we hoped to join +the rank and fashion of Granada in their afternoon's outing. But there +was only one carriage besides our own with people in it, who looked no +greater world than ourselves, and a little girl riding with her groom. +On one hand were pretty villas, new-looking and neat, which I heard +could sometimes be taken for the summer at rents so low that I am glad I +have forgotten the exact figures lest the reader should doubt my word. +Nothing but the fact that the winter was then hanging over us from the +Sierras prevented my taking one of them for the summer that had passed, +the Granadan summer being notoriously the most delightful in the world. +On the other hand stretched the wonderful Vega, which covers so many +acres in history and romance, and there, so near that we look down into +them at times were "the silvery windings of the Xenil," which glides +through so many descriptive passages of Irving's page; only now, on +account of recent rain, its windings were rather coppery. + +At the hotel on the terrace under our balcony we found on our return a +party of Spanish ladies and gentlemen taking tea, or whatever drink +stood for it in their custom: no doubt chocolate; but it was at least +the afternoon-tea hour. The women's clothes were just from Paris, and +the men's from London, but their customs, I suppose, were national; the +women sat on one side of the table and talked across it to the men, +while they ate and drank, and then each sex grouped itself apart and +talked to its kind, the women in those hardened vowels of a dialect from +which the Andalusians for conversational purposes have eliminated all +consonants. The sun was setting red and rayless, with a play of many +lights and tints, over the landscape up to the snow-line on the Sierra. +The town lay a stretch of gray roofs and white walls, intermixed with +yellow poplars and black cypresses, and misted over with smoke from the +chimneys of the sugar factories. The mountains stood flat against the +sky, purple with wide stretches of brown, and dark, slanting furrows. +The light became lemon-yellow before nightfall, and then a dull crimson +under pale violet. + +The twitter of the Spanish women was overborne at times by the voices of +an American party whose presence I was rather proud of as another +American. They were all young men, and they were making an educational +tour of the world in the charge of a professor who saw to it that they +learned as much of its languages and history and civilization as +possible on the way. They ranged in their years from about fifteen to +twenty and even more, and they were preparing for college, or doing what +they could to repair the loss of university training before they took up +the work of life. It seemed to me a charming notion, and charming the +seriousness with which they were fulfilling it. They were not so serious +in everything as to miss any incidental pleasure; they had a large table +to themselves in our Barmecide banquet-hall, where they seemed always to +be having a good time, and where once they celebrated the birthday of +one of them with a gaiety which would have penetrated, if anything +could, the shining chill of the hostelry. In the evening we heard them +in the billiard-room below lifting their voices in the lays of our +college muse, and waking to ecstasy the living piano in the strains of +our national ragtime. They were never intrusively cheerful; one might +remain, in spite of them, as dispirited as the place would have one; but +as far as the _genius loci_ would let me, I liked them; and so far as I +made their acquaintance I thought that they were very intelligently +carrying out the enterprise imagined for them. + + + + +VIII + + +I wish now that I had known them well enough to ask them what they +candidly thought of the city of which I felt the witchery under the +dying day I have left celebrating for the moment in order to speak of +them. It seems to me at this distance of time and space that I did not +duly reflect that in places it was a city which smelled very badly and +was almost as dirty as New York in others, and very ill paved. The worst +places are in the older quarters, where the streets are very crooked and +very narrow, so narrow that the tram-car can barely scrape through them. +They are old enough to be streets belonging to the Moorish city, like +many streets in Cordova and Seville, but no fond inquiry of our guides +could identify this lane or that alley as of Moorish origin. There is +indeed a group of picturesque shops clearly faked to look Moorish, which +the lover of that period may pin his faith to, and for a moment I did +so, but upon second thought I unpinned it. + +We visited this plated fragment of the old Moorish capital when we +descended from our hotel with a new guide to see the great, the +stupendous cathedral, where the Catholic kings lie triumphantly entombed +in the heart of their conquest. It is altogether unlike the other +Spanish cathedrals of my knowledge; for though the cathedral of +Valladolid is of Renaissance architecture in its austere simplicity, it +is somehow even less like that of Granada than the Gothic fanes of +Burgos or Toledo or Seville. All the detail at Granada is classicistic, +but the whole is often of Gothic effect, especially in the mass of those +clustered Corinthian columns that lift its domes aloof on their +prodigious bulk, huge as that of the grouped pillars in the York +Minster. The white of the marble walls, the gold of altars, the colors +of painted wooden sculpture form the tones of the place, subdued to one +bizarre richness which I may as well leave first as last to the reader's +fancy; though, let his fancy riot as it will, it never can picture that +gorgeousness. Mass was saying at a side altar as we entered, and the +music of stringed instruments and the shrill voices of choir-boys +pierced the spaces here and there, but no more filled them than the +immemorable plastic and pictorial facts: than a certain very lively +bishop kneeling on his tomb and looking like George Washington; or than +a St. Jerome in the Desert, outwrinkling age, with his lion curled +cozily up in his mantle; or than the colossal busts of Adam and Eve and +the praying figures of Ferdinand and Isabel, richly gilded in the +exquisite temple forming the high altar; or than the St. James on +horseback, with his horse's hoof planted on the throat of a Moor; or +than the Blessed Virgins in jeweled crowns and stomachers and brocaded +skirts; or than that unsparing decapitation of John the Baptist bloodily +falling forward with his severed gullet thrusting at the spectator. +Nothing has ever been too terrible in life for Spanish art to represent; +it is as ruthlessly veracious as Russian literature; and of all the +painters and sculptors who have portrayed the story of Christianity as a +tale of torture and slaughter, the Spaniards seem to have studied it +closest from the fact; perhaps because for centuries the Inquisition +lavished the fact upon them. + +The supreme interest of the cathedral is, of course, the Royal Chapel, +where in a sunken level Ferdinand and Isabel lie, with their poor mad +daughter Joan and her idolized unfaithful husband Philip the Fair, whose +body she bore about with her while she lived. The picture postal has +these monuments in its keeping and can show them better than my pen, +which falters also from the tremendous _retablo_ of the chapel dense +with the agonies of martyrdom and serene with the piety of the Catholic +Kings kneeling placidly amid the horrors. If the picture postal will not +supply these, or reproduce the many and many relics and memorials which +abound .there and in the sacristy--jewels and vestments and banners and +draperies of the royal camp-altar--there is nothing for the reader but +to go himself and see. It is richly worth his while, and if he cannot +believe in a box which will be shown him as the box Isabel gave Columbus +her jewels in merely because he has been shown a reliquary as her +hand-glass, so much the worse for him. He will not then merit the +company of a small choir-boy who efficiently opens the iron gate to the +crypt and gives the custodian as good as he sends in back-talk and +defiantly pockets the coppers he has earned. Much less will he deserve +to witness the homely scene in an area outside of the Royal Chapel, +where many milch goats are assembled, and when a customer comes, +preferably a little girl with a tin cup, one of the mothers of the flock +is pinioned much against her will by a street boy volunteering for the +office, and her head held tight while the goatherdess milks the measure +full at the other end. + + + + +IX + + +Everywhere about the cathedral beggars lay in wait, and the neighboring +streets were lively with bargains of prickly pears spread open on the +ground by old women who did not care whether any one bought or not. +There were also bargains in palmistry; and at one place a delightful +humorist was selling clothing at auction. He allured the bidders by +having his left hand dressed as a puppet and holding a sparkling +dialogue with it; when it did not respond to his liking he beat it with +his right hand, and every now and then he rang a little bell. He had a +pleased crowd about him in the sunny square; but it seemed to me that +all the newer part of Granada was lively with commerce in ample, +tram-trodden streets which gave the shops, larger than any we had seen +out of Madrid, a chance uncommon in the narrow ways of other Spanish +cities. Yet when I went to get money on my letter of credit, I found the +bank withdrawn from the modernity in a seclusion reached through a +lovely _patio._ We were seated in old-fashioned welcome, such as used +to honor a banker's customers in Venice, and all comers bowed and bade +us good day. The bankers had no such question of the different +signatures as vexed those of Valladolid, and after no more delay than +due ceremony demanded, I went away with both my money and my letter, +courteously seen to the door. + +The guide, to whom we had fallen in the absence of our French-speaking +guide of the day before, spoke a little English, and he seemed to grow +in sympathetic intelligence as the morning passed. He made our +sightseeing include visits to the church of St. John of God, and the +church of San Geronimo, which was built by Gonsalvo de Cordova, the +Great Captain, and remains now a memorial to him. We rang at the door, +and after long delay a woman came and let us into an interior stranger +ever than her being there as custodian. It was frescoed from floor to +ceiling everywhere, except the places of the altars now kept by the +painted _retablos_ and the tombs and the statues of the various saints +and heroes. The _retablo_ of the high altar is almost more beautiful +than wonderful, but the chief glory of the place is in the kneeling +figures of the Great Captain and his wife, one on either side of the +altar, and farther away the effigies of his famous oompanions-in-arms, +and on the walls above their heraldic blazons and his. The church Was +unfinished when the Great Captain died in the displeasure of his +ungrateful king, and its sumptuous completion testifies to the devotion +of his wife and her taste in choosing the best artists for the work. + +I have still the sense of a noonday quiet that lingered with us after we +left this church and which seemed to go with us to the Hospital of St. +John of God, founded, with other hospitals, by the pious Portuguese, +who, after a life of good works, took this name on his well-merited +canonization. The hospital is the monument of his devotion to good +works, and is full of every manner of religious curio. I cannot remember +to have seen so many relics under one roof, bones of both holy men and +women, with idols of the heathen brought from Portuguese possessions in +the East which are now faded from the map, as well as the body of St. +John of God shrined in silver in the midst of all. + +I do not know why I should have brought away from these two places a +peacefulness of mind such as seldom follows a visit to show-places, but +the fact is so; perhaps it was because we drove to and from them, and +were not so tired as footworn sight-seers are, or so rebellious. One who +had seen not only the body of St. John of God, but his cane with a +whistle in it to warn the charitable of his coming and attune their +minds to alms-giving, and the straw basket in which he collected food +for the poor, now preserved under an embroidered satin covering, and an +autograph letter of his framed in glass and silver, might even have been +refreshed by his experience. At any rate, we were so far from tired that +after luncheon we walked to the Garden of the Generalife, and then +walked all over it. The afternoon was of the very mood for such a visit, +and we passed it there in these walks and bowers, and the black cypress +aisles, and the trees and vines yellowing to the fall of their leaves. +The melancholy laugh of water chasing down the steep channels and +gurgling through the stone rails of stairways was everywhere, and its +dim smile gleamed from pools and tanks. In the court where it stretched +in a long basin an English girl was painting and another girl was +sewing, to whom I now tardily offer my thanks for adding to the charm of +the place. Not many other people were there to dispute our afternoon's +ownership. I count a peasant family, the women in black shawls and the +men wearing wide, black sashes, rather as our guests than as strangers; +and I am often there still with no sense of molestation. Even the reader +who does not conceive of a garden being less flowers and shrubs than +fountains and pavilions and porches and borders of box and walls of +clipped evergreens, will scarcely follow me to the Generalife or outstay +me there. + +The place is probably dense with history and suffocating with +association, but I prefer to leave all that to the imagination where my +own ignorance found it. A painter had told me once of his spending a +summer in it, and he showed some beautiful pieces of color in proof, but +otherwise I came to it with a blank surface on which it might photograph +itself without blurring any earlier record. This, perhaps, is why I love +so much to dwell there on that never-ending afternoon of late October. +It was long past the hour of its summer bloom, but the autumnal air was +enriching it beyond the dreams of avarice with the gold which prevails +in the Spanish landscape wherever the green is gone, and we could look +out of its yellowing bowers over a landscape immeasurable in beauty. Of +course, we tried to master the facts of the Generalife's past, but we +really did not care for them and scarcely believed that Charles V. had +doubted the sincerity of the converted Moor who had it from Ferdinand of +Aragon, and so withheld it from his heirs for four generations until +they could ripen to a genuine Christianity at Genoa, whither they +withdrew and became the patrician family now its proprietors. The arms +of this family decorate the roof and walls of the colonnaded belvedere +from which you look out over the city and the plain and the mountains; +and there are remnants of Moorish decoration in many places, but +otherwise the Generalife is now as Christian as the noble Pallavicini +who possess it. There were plenty of flower-beds, box-bordered, but +there were no flowers in them; the flowers preferred standing about in +tall pots. There was an arbor overhung with black forgotten grapes +before the keeper's door and in the corner of it dangled ropes of +fire-red peppers. + +This detail is what, with written help, I remember of the Generalife, +but no loveliness of it shall fade from, my soul. From its embowered and +many-fountained height it looks over to the Alhambra, dull red, and the +city wall climbing the opposite slope across the Darro to a church on +the hilltop which was once a mosque. The precipice to which the garden +clings plunges sheer to the river-bed with a downlook insurpassably +thrilling; but the best view of the city is from the flowery walk that +runs along the side of the Alcazaba, which was once a fortress and is +now a garden, long forgetful of its office of defending the Alhambra +palace. From this terrace Granada looks worthy of her place in history +and romance. We visited the Alcazaba after the Generalife, and were very +critical, but I must own the supremacy of this prospect. I should not +mind owning its supremacy among all the prospects in the world. + + + + +XI + + +Meanwhile our shining hotel had begun to thrill with something besides +the cold which nightly pierced it from the snowy Sierra. This was the +excitement pending from an event promised the next day, which was the +production of a drama in verse, of peculiar and intense interest for +Granada, where the scene of it was laid in the Alhambra at one of the +highest moments of its history, and the persons were some of those +dearest to its romance. Not only the company to perform it (of course +the first company in Spain) had been in the hotel overnight, and the +ladies of it had gleamed and gloomed through the cold corridors, but the +poet had been conspicuous at dinner, with his wife, young and beautiful +and blond, and powdered so white that her blondness was of quite a +violet cast. There was not so much a question of whether we should take +tickets as whether we could get them, but for this the powerful +influence of our guide availed, and he got tickets providentially given +up in the morning for a price so exorbitant I should be ashamed to +confess it. They were for the afternoon performance, and at three +o'clock we went with the rest of the gay and great world of Granada to +the principal theater. + +The Latin conception of a theater is of something rather more barnlike +than ours, but this theater was of a sufficiently handsome presence, and +when we had been carried into it by the physical pressure exerted upon +us by the crowd at the entrance we found its vastness already thronged. +The seats in the orchestra were mostly taken; the gallery under the roof +was loud with the impatience for the play which the auditors there +testified by cries and whistlings and stampings until the curtain +lifted; the tiers of boxes rising all round the theater were filled with +family parties. The fathers and mothers sat in front with the children +between them of all ages down to babies in their nurses' arms. These +made themselves perfectly at home, in one case reaching over the edge of +the box and clawing the hair of a gentleman standing below and openly +enjoying the joke. The friendly equality of the prevailing spirit was +expressed in the presence of the family servants at the back of the +family boxes, from which the latest fashions showed themselves here and +there, as well as the belated local versions of them. In the orchestra +the men had promptly lighted their cigars and the air was blue with +smoke. Friends found one another, to their joyful amaze, not having met +since morning; and especially young girls were enraptured to recognize +young men; one girl shook hands twice with a young man, and gurgled with +laughter as long as he stood near her. + +As a lifelong lover of the drama and a boyish friend of Granadan +romance, I ought to have cared more for the play than the people who had +come to it, but I did not. The play was unintentionally amusing enough; +but after listening for two hours to the monotonous cadences of the +speeches which the persons of it recited to one another, while the +ladies of the Moorish world took as public a part in its events as if +they had been so many American Christians, we came away. We had already +enjoyed the first entr'acte, when the men all rose and went out, or +lighted fresh cigars and went to talk with the Paris hats and plumes or +the Spanish mantillas and high combs in the boxes. The curtain had +scarcely fallen when the author of the play was called before it and +applauded by the generous, the madly generous, spectators. He stood +bowing and bowing on tiptoe, as if the wings of his rapture lifted him +to them and would presently fly away with him. He could not drink deep +enough of the delicious draught, put brimming to his lips, and the +divine intoxication must have lasted him through the night, for after +breakfast the next morning I met him in our common corridor at the hotel +smiling to himself, and when I could not forbear smiling in return he +smiled more; he beamed, he glowed upon me as if I were a crowded house +still cheering him to the echo. It was a beautiful moment and I realized +even better than the afternoon before what it was to be a young poet and +a young Spanish poet, and to have had a first play given for the first +time in the city of Granada, where the morning papers glowed with praise +so ardent that the print all but smoked with it. We were alone in the +corridor where we met, and our eyes confessed us kindred spirits, and I +hope he understood me better than if I had taken him in my arms and +kissed him on both cheeks. + +I really had no time for that; I was on my way down-stairs to witness +the farewell scene between the leading lady and the large group of young +Granadans who had come up to see her off. When she came out to the +carriage with her husband, by a delicate refinement of homage they +cheered him, and left him to deliver their devotion to her, which she +acknowledged only with a smile. But not so the leading lady's +lady's-maid, when her turn came to bid good-by from our omnibus window +to the assembled upper servants of the hotel. She put her head out and +said in a voice hoarse with excitement and good-fellowship, _"Adios, +hombres!"_ ("Good-by, men!"), and vanished with us from their applausive +presence. + +With us, I say, for we, too, were leaving Granada in rain which was snow +on the Sierra and so cold that we might well have seemed leaving +Greenland. The brave mules which had so gallantly, under the lash of the +running foot-boy beside them, galloped uphill with us the moonlight +night of our coming, now felt their anxious way down in the dismal +drizzle of that last morning, and brought us at last to the plaza before +the station. It was a wide puddle where I thought our craft should have +floundered, but it made its way to the door, and left us dry shod within +and glad to be quitting the city of my young dreams. + + + + +XII + +THE SURPRISES OF RONDA + + +The rain that pelted sharply into the puddle before the station at +Granada was snow on the Sierra, and the snow that fell farther and +farther down the mountainsides resolved itself over the Vega into a fog +as white and almost as cold. Half-way across the storied and fabled +plain the rain stopped and the fog lifted, and then we saw by day, as we +had already seen by night, how the Vega was plentifully dotted with +white cottages amid breadths of wheat-land where the peasants were +plowing. Here and there were fields of Indian corn, and in a certain +place there was a small vineyard; in one of the middle distances there +spread a forest of Lombardy poplars, yellow as gold, and there was +abundance of this autumn coloring in the landscape, which grew lonelier +as we began to mount from the level. Olives, of course, abounded, and +there were oak woods and clumps of wild cherry trees. The towns were far +from the stations, which we reached at the rate of perhaps two miles an +hour as we approached the top of the hills; and we might have got out +and walked without fear of being left behind by our train, which made +long stops, as if to get its breath for another climb. Before this the +sole companion of our journey, whom we decided to be a landed proprietor +coming out in his riding-gear to inspect his possessions, had left us, +but at the first station after our descent began other passengers got +in, with a captain of Civil Guards among them, very loquacious and very +courteous, and much deferred to by the rest of us. At Bobadilla, where +again we had tea with hot goat's milk in it, we changed cars, and from +that on we had the company of a Rock-Scorpion pair whose name was +beautifully Italian and whose speech was beautifully English, as the +speech of those born at Gibraltar should rightfully be. + + + + +I + + +It was quite dark at Ronda when our omnibus drove into the gardened +grounds of one of those admirable inns which an English company is +building in Spain, and put us down at the door of the office, where a +typical English manageress and her assistant appointed us pleasant rooms +and had fires kindled in them while we dined. There were already fires +in the pleasant reading-room, which did not diffuse a heat too great for +health but imparted to the eye a sense of warmth such as we had +experienced nowhere else in Spain. Over all was spread a quiet and +quieting British influence; outside of the office the nature of the +service was Spanish, but the character of it was English; the Spanish +waiters spoke English, and they looked English in dress and manner; +superficially the chambermaid was as English as one could have found her +in the United Kingdom, but at heart you could see she was as absolutely +and instinctively a Spanish _camerera_ as any in a hotel of Madrid or +Seville. In the atmosphere of insularity the few Spanish guests were +scarcely distinguishable from Anglo-Saxons, though a group of +magnificent girls at a middle table, quelled by the duenna-like +correctness of their mother, looked with their exaggerated hair and eyes +like Spanish ladies made up for English parts in a play. + +We had our breakfast in the reading-room where all the rest were +breakfasting and trying not to see that they were keeping one another +from the fire. It was very cold, for Ronda is high in the mountains +which hem it round and tower far above it. We had already had our first +glimpse of their summits from our own windows, but it was from the +terrace outside the reading-room that we felt their grandeur most after +we had drunk our coffee: we could scarcely have borne it before. In +their presence, we could not realize at once that Ronda itself was a +mountain, a mere mighty mass of rock, cleft in twain, with chasmal +depths where we saw pygmy men and mules creeping out upon the valley +that stretched upward to the foot of the Sierra. Why there should ever +have been a town built there in the prehistoric beginning, except that +the rock was so impossible to take, and why it should have therefore +been taken by that series of invaders who pervaded all Spain--by the +Phoenicians, by the Carthaginians, by the Romans, by the Goths, by the +Moors, by the Christians, and after many centuries by the French, and +finally by the Spaniards again--it would not be easy to say. Among its +many conquerors, the Moors left their impress upon it, though here as +often as elsewhere in Spain their impress is sometimes merely a +decoration of earlier Roman work. There remains a Roman bridge which the +Moors did not make over into the likeness of their architecture, but +built a bridge of their own which also remains and may be seen from the +magnificent structure with which the Spaniards have arched the abyss +where the river rushes writhing and foaming through the gorge three +hundred feet below. There on the steps that lead from the brink, the eye +of pity may still see the files of Christian captives bringing water up +to their Moslem masters; but as one cannot help them now, even by the +wildest throe, it is as well to give a vain regret to the architect of +the Spanish bridge, who fell to his death from its parapet, and then +push on to the market hard by. + + + + +II + + +You have probably come to see that market because you have read in your +guide-books that the region round about Ronda is one of the richest in +Spain for grapes and peaches and medlars and melons and other fruits +whose names melt in the mouth. If you do not find in the market the +abundance you expect of its picturesqueness you must blame the lateness +of the season, and go visit the bull-ring, one of the most famous in the +world, for Ronda is not less noted for its _toreros_ and _aficionados_ +than for its vineyards and orchards. But here again the season will have +been before you with the glory of those _corridas_ which you have still +hoped not to witness but to turn from as an example to the natives +before the first horse is disemboweled or the first bull slain, or even +the first _banderillero_ tossed over the barrier. + +The bull-ring seemed fast shut to the public when we approached it, but +we found ourselves smilingly welcomed to the interior by the kindly +mother in charge. She made us free of the whole vast place, where eight +thousand people could witness in perfect comfort the dying agonies of +beasts and men, but especially she showed us the chamber over the gate, +full of bullfighting properties: the pikes, the little barbed pennons, +the long sword by which the bull suffers and dies, as well as the +cumbrous saddles and bridles and spears for the unhappy horses and their +riders. She was especially compassionate of the horses, and she had +apparently no pleasure in any of the cruel things, though she was not +critical of the sport. The King of Spain is president of the Ronda +bull-fighting association, and she took us into the royal box, which is +the worthier to be seen because under it the bulls are shunted and +shouted into the ring from the pen where they have been kept in the +dark. Before we escaped her husband sold us some very vivid postal cards +representing the sport; so that with the help of a large black cat +holding the center of the ring, we felt that we had seen as much of a +bull-fight as we could reasonably wish. + +We were seeing the wonders of the city in the guidance of a charming boy +whom we had found in wait for us at the gate of the hotel garden when we +came out. He offered his services in the best English he had, and he had +enough of it to match my Spanish word for word throughout the morning. +He led us from the bull-ring to the church known to few visitors, I +believe, where the last male descendant of Montezuma lies entombed, +under a fit inscription, and then through the Plaza past the college of +Montezuma, probably named for this heir of the Aztec empire. I do not +know why the poor prince should have come to die in Ronda, but there are +many things in Ronda which I could not explain: especially why a certain +fruit is sold by an old woman on the bridge. Its berries are threaded on +a straw and look like the most luscious strawberries but taste like +turpentine, though they may be avoided under the name of _madrones._ But +on no account would I have the reader avoid the Church of Santa Maria +Mayor. It is so dark within that he will not see the finely carved choir +seats without the help of matches, or the pictures at all; but it is +worth realizing, as one presently may, that the hither part of the +church is a tolerably perfect mosque of Moorish architecture, through +which you must pass to the Renaissance temple of the Christian faith. + +Near by is the Casa de Mondragon which he should as little miss if he +has any pleasure in houses with two _patios_ perching on the gardened +brink of a precipice and overlooking one of the most beautiful valleys +in the whole world, with donkey-trains climbing up from it over the face +of the cliff. The garden is as charming as red geraniums and blue +cabbages can make a garden, and the house is fascinatingly quaint and +unutterably Spanish, with the inner _patio_ furnished in bright-colored +cushions and wicker chairs, and looked into by a brown wooden gallery. A +stately lemon-colored elderly woman followed us silently about, and the +whole place was pervaded by a smell that was impossible at the time and +now seems incredible. + + + + +III + + +I here hesitate before a little adventure which I would not make too +much of nor yet minify: it seems to me so gentle and winning. I had long +meant to buy a donkey, and I thought I could make no fitter beginning to +this end than by buying a donkey's head-stall in the country where +donkeys are more respected and more brilliantly accoutred than anywhere +else in the whole earth. When I ventured to suggest my notion, or call +it dream, to our young guide, he instantly imagined it in its full +beauty, and he led us directly to a shop in the principal street which +for the richness and variety of the coloring in its display might have +been a florist's shop. Donkeys' trappings in brilliant yellow, +vermillion, and magenta hung from the walls, and head-stalls, +gorgeously woven and embroidered, dangled from the roof. Among them and +under them the donkeys' harness-maker sat at his work, a short, brown, +handsome man with eyes that seemed the more prominent because of his +close-shaven head. We chose a headstall of such splendor that no heart +could have resisted it, and while he sewed to it the twine muzzle which +Spanish donkeys wear on their noses for the protection of the public, +our guide expatiated upon us, and said, among other things to our +credit, that we were from America and were going to take the head-stall +back with us. + +The harness-maker lifted his head alertly. "Where, in America?" and we +answered for ourselves, "From New York." + +Then the harness-maker rose and went to an inner doorway and called +through it something that brought out a comely, motherly woman as alert +as himself. She verified our statement for herself, and having paved the +way firmly for her next question she asked, "Do you know the Escuela +Mann?" + +As well as our surprise would let us, we said that we knew the Mann +School, both where and what it was. + +She waited with a sort of rapturous patience before saying, "My son, our +eldest son, was educated at the Escuela Mann, to be a teacher, and now +he is a professor in the Commercial College in Puerto Rico." + +If our joint interest in this did not satisfy her expectation I for my +part can never forgive myself; certainly I tried to put as much passion +into my interest as I could, when she added that his education at the +Escuela Mann was without cost to him. By this time, in fact, I was so +proud of the Escuela Mann that I could not forbear proclaiming that a +member of my own family, no less than the father of the grandson for +whose potential donkey I was buying that headstall, was one of the +architects of the Escuela Mann building. + +She now vanished within, and when she came out she brought her daughter, +a gentle young girl who sat down and smiled upon us through the rest of +the interview. She brought also an armful of books, the Spanish-English +Ollendorff which her son had used in studying our language, his +dictionary, and the copy-book where he had written his exercises, with +two photographs of him, not yet too Americanized; and she showed us not +only how correctly but how beautifully his exercises were done. If I did +not admire these enough, again I cannot forgive myself, but she seemed +satisfied with what I did, and she talked on about him, not too +loquaciously, but lovingly and lovably as a mother should, and proudly +as the mother of such a boy should, though without vainglory; I have +forgotten to say that she had a certain distinction of face, and was +appropriately dressed in black. By this time we felt that a head-stall +for such a donkey as I was going to buy was not enough to get of such +people, and I added a piece of embroidered leather such as goes in Spain +on the front of a donkey's saddle; if we could not use it so, in final +defect of the donkey, we could put it on a veranda chair. The saddler +gave it at so low a price that we perceived he must have tacitly abated +something from the visual demand, and when we did not try to beat him +down, his wife went again into that inner room and came out with an +iron-holder of scarlet flannel backed with canvas, and fringed with +magenta, and richly inwrought with a Moorish design, in white, yellow, +green, and purple. I say Moorish, because one must say something, but if +it was a pattern of her own invention the gift was the more precious +when she bestowed it on the sister of one of the architects of the +Escuela Mann. That led to more conversation about the Escuela Mann, and +about the graduate of it who was now a professor in Puerto Rico, and we +all grew such friends, and so proud of one another, and of the country +so wide open to the talents without cost to them, that when I asked her +if she would not sometime be going to America, her husband answered +almost fiercely in his determination, "I am going when I have learned +English!" and to prove that this was no idle boast, he pronounced some +words of our language at random, but very well. We parted in a glow of +reciprocal esteem and I still think of that quarter-hour as one of my +happiest; and whatever others may say, I say that to have done such a +favor to one Spanish family as the Escuela Mann had been the means of +our nation doing this one was a greater thing than to have taken Cuba +from Spain and bought the Philippines when we had seized them already +and had led the Filipinos to believe that we meant to give their islands +to them. + + + + +IV + + +Suddenly, on the way home to our very English hotel, the air of Ronda +seemed charged with English. We were already used to the English of our +young guide, which so far as it went, went firmly and courageously after +forethought and reflection for each sentence, but we were not quite +prepared for the English of two polite youths who lifted their hats as +they passed us and said, "Good afternoon." The general English lasted +quite overnight and far into the next day when we found several natives +prepared to try it on us in the pretty Alameda, and learned from one, +who proved to be the teacher of it in the public school, that there were +some twenty boys studying it there: heaven knows why, but the English +hotel and its success may have suggested it to them as a means of +prosperity. The students seem each prepared to guide strangers through +Ronda, but sometimes they fail of strangers. That was the case with the +pathetic young hunchback whom we met in Alameda, and who owned that he +had guided none that day. In view of this and as a prophylactic against +a course of bad luck, I made so bold as to ask if I might venture to +repair the loss of the peseta which he would otherwise have earned. He +smiled wanly, and then with the countenance of the teacher, he submitted +and thanked me in English which I can cordially recommend to strangers +knowing no Spanish. + +All this was at the end of another morning when we had set out with the +purpose of seeing the rest of Ronda for ourselves. We chose a back +street parallel to the great thoroughfare leading to the new bridge, and +of a squalor which we might have imagined but had not. The dwellers in +the decent-looking houses did not seem to mind the sights and scents of +their street, but these revolted us, and we made haste out of it into +the avenue where the greater world of Ronda was strolling or standing +about, but preferably standing about. In the midst of it, at the +entrance of the new bridge we heard ourselves civilly saluted and +recognized with some hesitation the donkey's harness-maker who, in his +Sunday dress and with his hat on, was not just the work-day presence we +knew. He held by the hand a pretty boy of eleven years, whom he +introduced as his second son, self-destined to follow the elder brother +to America, and duly take up the profession of teaching in Puerto Rico +after experiencing the advantages of the Escuela Mann. His father said +that he already knew some English, and he proposed that the boy should +go about with us and practise it, and after polite demur and insistence +the child came with us, to our great pleasure. He bore himself with fit +gravity, in his cap and long linen pinafore as he went before us, and we +were personally proud of his fine, long face and his serious eyes, dark +and darkened yet more by their long lashes. He knew the way to just such +a book store as we wanted, where the lady behind the desk knew him and +willingly promised to get me some books in the Andalusian dialect, and +send them to our hotel by him at half past twelve. Naturally she did not +do so, but he came to report her failure to get them. We had offered to +pay him for his trouble, but he forbade us, and when we had overcome his +scruple he brought the money back, and we had our trouble over again to +make him keep it. To this hour I do not know how we ever brought +ourselves to part with him; perhaps it was his promise of coming to +America next year that prevailed with us; his brother was returning on a +visit and then they were going back together. + + + + +V + + +Our search for literature in Ronda was not wholly a failure. At another +bookstore, I found one of those local histories which I was always +vainly trying for in other Spanish towns, and I can praise the _Historia +de Ronda par Federico Lozano Gutierrez_ as well done, and telling all +that one would ask to know about that famous city. The author's picture +is on the cover, and with his charming letter dedicating the book to his +father goes far to win the reader's heart. Outside the bookseller's a +blind minstrel was playing the guitar in the care of a small boy who was +selling, not singing, the ballads. They celebrated the prowess of Spain +in recent wars, and it would not be praising them too highly to say that +they seemed such as might have been written by a drum-major. Not that I +think less of them for that reason, or that I think I need humble myself +greatly to the historian of Ronda for associating their purchase with +that of his excellent little book. If I had bought some of the blind +minstrel's almanacs and jest-books I might indeed apologize, but ballads +are another thing. + +After we left the bookseller's, our little guide asked us if we would +like to see a church, and we said that we would, and he took us into a +white and gold interior, with altar splendors out of proportion to its +simplicity, all in the charge of a boy no older than himself, who was +presently joined by two other contemporaries. They followed us gravely +about, and we felt that it was an even thing between ourselves and the +church as objects of interest equally ignored by Baedeker. Then we +thought we would go home and proposed going by the Alameda. + +That is a beautiful place, where one may walk a good deal, and drive, +rather less, but not sit down much unless indeed one likes being swarmed +upon by the beggars who have a just priority of the benches. There +seemed at first to be nobody walking in the Alameda except a gentleman +pacing to and from the handsome modern house at the first corner, which +our guide said was this cavalier's house. He interested me beyond any +reason I could give; he looked as if he might represent the highest +society in Ronda, but did not find it an adequate occupation, and might +well have interests and ambitions beyond it. I make him my excuses for +intruding my print upon him, but I would give untold gold if I had it to +know all about such a man in such a city, walking up and down under the +embrowning trees and shrinking flowers of its Alameda, on a Sunday +morning like that. + +Our guide led us to the back gate of our hotel garden, where we found +ourselves in the company of several other students of English. There was +our charming young guide of the day before and there was that sad +hunchback already mentioned, and there was their teacher who seemed so +few years older and master of so little more English. Together we looked +into the valley into which the vision makes its prodigious plunge at +Ronda before lifting again over the fertile plain to the amphitheater of +its mighty mountains; and there we took leave of that nice boy who would +not follow us into our garden because, as he showed us by the sign, it +was forbidden to any but guests. He said he was going into the country +with his family for the afternoon, and with some difficulty he owned +that he expected to play there; it was truly an admission hard to make +for a boy of his gravity. We shook hands at parting with him, and with +our yesterday's guide, and with the teacher and with the hunchback; they +all offered it in the bond of our common English; and then we felt that +we had parted with much, very much of what was sweetest and best in +Ronda. + + + + +VI + + +The day had been so lovely till now that we said we would stay many days +in Ronda, and we loitered in the sun admiring the garden; the young +landlady among her flowers said that all the soil had to be brought for +it in carts and panniers, and this made us admire its autumn blaze the +more. That afternoon we had planned taking our tea on the terrace for +the advantage of looking at the sunset light on the mountains, but +suddenly great black clouds blotted it out. Then we lost courage; it +appeared to us that it would be both brighter and, warmer by the sea +and that near Gibraltar we could more effectually prevent our steamer +from getting away to New York without us. We called for our bill, and +after luncheon the head waiter who brought it said that the large black +cat which had just made friends with us always woke him if he slept late +in the morning and followed him into the town like a dog when he walked +there. + +It was hard to part with a cat like that, but it was hard to part with +anything in Ronda. Yet we made the break, and instead of ruining over +the precipitous face of the rock where the city stands, as we might have +expected, we glided smoothly down the long grade into the storm-swept +lowlands sloping to the sea. They grew more fertile as we descended and +after we had left a mountain valley where the mist hung grayest and +chillest, we suddenly burst into a region of mellow fruitfulness, where +the haze was all luminous, and where the oranges hung gold and green +upon the trees, and the women brought grapes and peaches and apples to +the train. The towns seemed to welcome us southward and the woods we +knew instantly to be of cork trees, with Don Quixote and Sancho Panza +under their branches anywhere we chose to look. + +Otherwise, the journey was without those incidents which have so often +rendered these pages thrilling. Just before we left Ronda a couple, +self-evidently the domestics of a good family, got into our first-class +carriage though they had unquestionably only third-class tickets. They +had the good family's dog with them, and after an unintelligible appeal +to us and to the young English couple in the other corner, they remained +and banished any misgivings they had by cheerful dialogue. The dog +coiled himself down at my feet and put his nose close to my ankles, so +that without rousing his resentment I could not express in Spanish my +indignation at what I felt to be an outrageous intrusion: servants, we +all are, but in traveling first class one must draw the line at dogs, I +said as much to the English couple, but they silently refused any part +in the demonstration. Presently the conductor came out to the window for +our fares, and he made the Spanish pair observe that they had +third-class tickets and their dog had none. He told them they must get +out, but they noted to him the fact that none of us had objected to +their company, or their dog's, and they all remained, referring +themselves to us for sympathy when the conductor left. After the next +station the same thing happened with little change; the conductor was +perhaps firmer and they rather more yielding in their disobedience. Once +more after a stop the conductor appeared and told them that when the +train halted again, they and their dog must certainly get out. Then +something surprising happened: they really got out, and very amiably; +perhaps it was the place where they had always meant to get out; but it +was a great triumph for the railway company, which owed nothing in the +way of countenance to the young English couple; they had done nothing +but lunch from their basket and bottle. We ourselves arrived safely soon +after nightfall at Algeciras, just in time for dinner in the comfortable +mother-hotel whose pretty daughter had made us so much at home in Ronda. + + + + +XIII + +ALGECIRAS AND TARIFA + + +When we walked out on the terrace of our hotel at Algeciras after +breakfast, the first morning, we were greeted by the familiar form of +the Rock of Gibraltar still advertising, as we had seen it three years +before, a well-known American insurance company. It rose beyond five +miles of land-locked water, which we were to cross every other day for +three weeks on many idle and anxious errands, until we sailed from it at +last for New York. + +Meanwhile Algeciras was altogether delightful not only because of our +Kate-Greenaway hotel, embowered in ten or twelve acres of gardened +ground, with walks going and coming under its palms and eucalyptuses, +beside beds of geraniums and past trellises of roses and jasmines, all +in the keeping of a captive stork which was apt unexpectedly to meet the +stranger and clap its formidable mandibles at him, and then hop away +with half-lifted wings. Algeciras had other claims which it urged day +after day more winningly upon us as the last place where we should feel +the charm of Spain unbroken in the tradition which reaches from modern +fact far back into antique fable. I will not follow it beyond the +historic clue, for I think the reader ought to be satisfied with knowing +that the Moors held it as early as the seven hundreds and as late as the +thirteen hundreds, when the Christians definitively recaptured it and +their kings became kings of Algeciras as well as kings of Spain, and +remain so to this day. At the end of the eighteenth century one of these +kings made it his lookout for watching the movements of the inimical +English fleets, and then Algeciras slumbered again, haunted only by "a +deep dream of peace" till the European diplomats, rather unexpectedly +assisted by an American envoy, made it the scene of their famous +conference for settling the Morocco question in. 1906. + +I think this is my whole duty to the political interest of Algeciras, +and until I come to our excursion to Tarifa I am going to give myself +altogether to our pleasure in the place unvexed by any event of history. +I disdain even to note that the Moors took the city again from the +Christians, after twenty-five years, and demolished it, for I prefer to +remember it as it has been rebuilt and lies white by its bay, a series +of red-tiled levels of roof with a few church-towers topping them. It is +a pretty place, and remarkably clean, inhabited mostly by beggars, with +a minority of industrial, commercial, and professional citizens, who +live in agreeable little houses, with _patios_ open to the passer, and +with balconies overhanging him. It has of course a bull-ring, enviously +closed during our stay, and it has one of the pleasantest Alamedas and +the best swept in Spain, where some nice boys are playing in the +afternoon sun, and a gentleman, coming out of one of the villas +bordering on it, is courteously interested in the two strangers whom he +sees sitting on a bench beside the walk, with the leaves of the plane +trees dropping round them in the still air. + +The Alameda is quite at the thither end of Algeciras. At the end next +our hotel, but with the intervention of a space of cliff, topped and +faced by summer cottages and gardens, is the station with a train +usually ready to start from it for Ronda or Seville or Malaga, I do not +know which, and with the usual company of freight-cars idling about, +empty or laden with sheets of cork, as indifferent to them as if they +were so much mere pine or spruce lumber. There is a sufficiently +attractive hotel here for transients, and as an allurement to the marine +and military leisure of Gibraltar, "The Picnic Restaurant," and "The +Cabin Tea Room," where no doubt there is something to be had beside +sandwiches and tea. Here also is the pier for the Gibraltar boats, with +the Spanish custom-house which their passengers must pass through and +have their packages and persons searched for contraband. One heard of +wild caprices on the part of the inspectors in levying duties which were +sometimes made to pass the prime cost of the goods in Gibraltar. I +myself only carried in books which after the first few declarations were +recognized as of no imaginable value and passed with a genial tolerance, +as a sort of joke, by officers whom I saw feeling the persons of their +fellow-Spaniards unsparingly over. + +We had, if anything, less business really in Algeciras than in +Gibraltar, but we went into the town nearly every afternoon, and +wantonly bought things. By this means we proved that the Andalusian +shopmen had not the proud phlegm of the Castilians across their +counters. In the principal dry-goods store two salesmen rivaled each +other in showing us politeness, and sent home our small purchases as +promptly as if we had done them a favor in buying. We were indeed the +wonder of our fellow-customers who were not buying; but our pride was +brought down in the little shop where the proprietress was too much +concerned in cooking her dinner (it smelled delicious) to mind our wish +for a very cheap green vase, inestimably Spanish after we got it home. +However, in another shop where the lady was ironing her week's wash on +the counter, a lady friend who was making her an afternoon call got such +a vase down for us and transacted the negotiation out of pure good will +for both parties to it. + +Parallel with the railway was a channel where small fishing-craft lay, +and where a leisurely dredging-machine was stirring up the depths in a +stench so dire that I wonder we do not smell it across the Atlantic. +Over this channel a bridge led into the town, and offered the convenient +support of its parapet to the crowd of spectators who wished to inhale +that powerful odor at their ease, and who hung there throughout the +working-day; the working-day of the dredging-machine, that is. The +population was so much absorbed in this that when we first crossed into +the town, we found no beggar children even, though there were a few +blind beggarmen, but so few that a boy who had one of them in charge was +obliged to leave off smelling the river and run and hunt him up for us. +Other boys were busy in street-sweeping and b-r-r-r-r-ing to the donkeys +that carried off the sweepings in panniers; and in the fine large plaza +before the principal church of Algeciras there was a boy who had plainly +nothing but mischief to do, though he did not molest us farther than to +ask in English, "Want to see the cathedral?" Then he went his way +swiftly and we went into the church, which we found very whitewashed and +very Moorish in architecture, but very Spanish in the Blessed Virgins on +most of the altars, dressed in brocades and jewels. A sacristan was +brushing and dusting the place, but he did not bother us, and we went +freely about among the tall candles standing on the floor as well as on +the altars, and bearing each a placard attached with black ribbon, and +dedicated in black letters on silver "To the Repose of This or That" one +among the dead. + +The meaning was evident enough, but we sought something further of the +druggist at the corner, who did his best for us in such English as he +had. It was not quite the English of Ronda; but he praised his grammar +while he owned that his vocabulary was in decay from want of practise. +In fact, he well-nigh committed us to the purchase of one of those +votive candles, which he understood we wished to buy; he all but sent to +the sacristan to get one. There were several onlookers, as there always +are in Latin pharmacies, and there was a sad young mother waiting for +medicine with a sick baby in her arms. The druggist said it had fever of +the stomach; he seemed proud of the fact, and some talk passed between +him and the bystanders which related to it. We asked if he had any of +the quince jelly which we had learned to like in Seville, but he could +only refer us to the confectioner's on the other corner. Here was not +indeed quince jelly, but we compromised on quince cheese, as the English +call it; and we bought several boxes of it to take to America, which I +am sorry to say moulded before our voyage began, and had to be thrown +away. Near this confectioner's was a booth where boiled sweet-potatoes +were sold, with oranges and joints of sugar-cane, and, spitted on +straws, that terrible fruit of the strawberry tree which we had tasted +at Honda without wishing to taste it ever again. Yet there was a boy +boldly buying several straws of it and chancing the intoxication which +over-indulgence in it is said to cause. Whether the excitement of these +events was too great or not, we found ourselves suddenly unwilling, if +not unable, to walk back to our hotel, and we took a cab of the three +standing in the plaza. One was without a horse, another without a +driver, but the third had both, as in some sort of riddle, and we had no +sooner taken it than a horse was put into the first and a driver ran out +and got on the box of the second, as if that was the answer to the +riddle. + + + + +II + + +It was then too late for them to share our custom, but I am not sure +that it was not one of these very horses or drivers whom we got another +day for our drive about the town and its suburbs, and an excursion to a +section of the Moorish aqueduct which remains after a thousand years. +You can see it at a distance, but no horse or driver in our employ could +ever find the way to it; in fact, it seemed to vanish on approach, and +we were always bringing up in our hotel gardens without having got to +it; I do not know what we should have done with it if we had. We were +not able to do anything definite with the new villas built or building +around Algeciras, though they looked very livable, and seemed proof of a +prosperity in the place for which I can give no reason except the great +natural beauty of the nearer neighborhood, and the magnificence of the +farther, mountain-walled and skyed over with a September blue in +November. I think it would be a good place to spend the winter if one +liked each day to be exactly like every other. I do not know whether it +is inhabited by English people from Gibraltar, where there are of course +those resources of sport and society which an English colony always +carries with it. + +The popular amusements of Algeciras in the off season for bull-feasts +did not readily lend themselves to observance. Chiefly we noted two +young men with a graphophone on wheels which, being pushed about, +wheezed out the latest songs to the acceptance of large crowds. We +ourselves amused a large crowd when one of us attempted to sketch the +yellow facade of a church so small that it seemed all facade; and +another day when that one of us who held the coppers, commonly kept +sacred to blind beggars, delighted an innumerable multitude of +mendicants having their eyesight perfect. They were most of them in the +vigor of youth, and they were waiting on a certain street for the +monthly dole with which a resident of Algeciras may buy immunity for all +the other days of the month. They instantly recognized in the stranger a +fraudulent tax-dodger, and when he attempted tardily to purchase +immunity they poured upon him; in front, behind, on both sides, all +round, they boiled up and bubbled about him; and the exhaustion of his +riches alone saved him alive. It must have been a wonderful spectacle, +and I do not suppose the like of it was ever seen in Algeciras before. +It was a triumph over charity, and left quite out of comparison the +organized onsets of the infant gang which always beset the way to the +hotel under a leader whose battle-cry, at once a demand and a promise, +was "Penny-go-way, Penny-go-way!" + +Along that pleasant shore bare-legged fishermen spread their nets, and +going and coming by the Gibraltar boats were sometimes white-hosed, +brown-cloaked, white-turbaned Moors, who occasionally wore Christian +boots, but otherwise looked just such Moslems as landed at Algeciras in +the eighth century; people do not change much in Africa. They were +probably hucksters from the Moorish market in Gibraltar, where they had +given their geese and turkeys the holiday they were taking themselves. +They were handsome men, tall and vigorous, but they did not win me to +sympathy with their architecture or religion, and I am not sure but, if +there had been any concerted movement against them on the landing at +Algeciras, I should have joined in driving them out of Spain. As it was +I made as much Africa as I could of them in defect of crossing to +Tangier, which we had firmly meant to do, but which we forbore doing +till the plague had ceased to rage there. By this time the boat which +touched at Tangier on the way to Cadiz stopped going to Cadiz, and if we +could not go to Cadiz we did not care for going to Tangier. It was +something like this, if not quite like it, and it ended in our seeing +Africa only from the southernmost verge of Europe at Tarifa. At that +little distance across it looked dazzlingly white, like the cotton +vestments of those Moorish marketmen, but probably would have been no +cleaner on closer approach. + + + + +III + + +As a matter of fact, we were very near not going even to Tarifa, though +we had promised ourselves going from the first. But it was very charming +to linger in the civilization of that hotel; to wander through its +garden paths in the afternoon after a forenoon's writing and inhale the +keen aromatic odors of the eucalyptus, and when the day waned to have +tea at an iron table on the seaward terrace. Or if we went to Gibraltar, +it was interesting to wonder why we had gone, and to be so glad of +getting back, and after dinner joining a pleasant international group in +the long reading-room with the hearth-fires at either end which, if you +got near them, were so comforting against the evening chill. Sometimes +the pleasure of the time was heightened by the rain pattering on the +glass roof of the _patio,_ where in the afternoon a bulky Spanish mother +sat mute beside her basket of laces which you could buy if you would, +but need not if you would rather not; in either case she smiled +placidly. + +At last we did get together courage enough to drive twelve miles over +the hills to Tarifa, but this courage was pieced out of the fragments of +the courage we had lost for going to Cadiz by the public automobile +which runs daily from Algeciras. The road after you passed Tarifa was so +bad that those who had endured it said nobody could endure it, and in +such a case I was sure I could not, but now I am sorry I did not +venture, for since then I have motored over some of the roads in the +state of Maine and lived. If people in Maine had that Spanish road as +far as Tarifa they would think it the superb Massachusetts state road +gone astray, and it would be thought a good road anywhere, with the +promise of being better when the young eucalyptus trees planted every +few yards along it grew big enough to shade it. But we were glad of as +much sun as we could get on the brisk November morning when we drove out +of the hotel garden and began the long climb, with little intervals of +level and even of lapse. We started at ten o'clock, and it was not too +late in that land of anomalous hours to meet peasants on their mules and +donkeys bringing loads of stuff to market in Algeciras. Men were plowing +with many yoke of oxen in the wheat-fields; elsewhere there were green +pastures with herds of horses grazing in them, an abundance of brown +pigs, and flocks of sheep with small lambs plaintively bleating. The +pretty white farmhouses, named each after a favorite saint, and +gathering at times into villages, had grapes and figs and pomegranates +in their gardens; and when we left them and climbed higher, we began +passing through long stretches of cork woods. + +The trees grew wild, sometimes sturdily like our oaks, and sometimes +gnarled and twisted like our seaside cedars, and in every state of +excoriation. The bark is taken from them each seventh year, and it +begins to be taken long before the first seventh. The tender saplings +and the superannuated shell wasting to its fall yield alike their bark, +which is stripped from the roots to the highest boughs. Where they have +been flayed recently they look literally as if they were left bleeding, +for the sap turns a red color; but with time this changes to brown, and +the bark begins to renew itself and grows again till the next seventh +year. Upon the whole the cork-wood forest is not cheerful, and I would +rather frequent it in the pages of _Don Quixote_ than out; though if the +trees do not mind being barked it is mere sentimentality in me to pity +them. + +The country grew lonelier and drearier as we mounted, and the wind blew +colder over the fields blotched with that sort of ground-palm, which +lays waste so much land in southern Spain. When we descended the winding +road from the summit we came in sight of the sea with Africa clearly +visible beyond, and we did not lose sight of it again. Sometimes we met +soldiers possibly looking out for smugglers but, let us hope, not +molesting them; and once we met a brace of the all-respected Civil +Guards, marching shoulder to shoulder, with their cloaks swinging free +and their carbines on their arms, severe, serene, silent. Now and then a +mounted wayfarer came toward us looking like a landed proprietor in his +own equipment and that of his steed, and there were peasant women +solidly perched on donkeys, and draped in long black cloaks and hooded +in white kerchiefs. + + + + +IV + + +The landscape softened again, with tilled fields and gardened spaces +around the cottages, and now we had Tarifa always in sight, a stretch of +white walls beside the blue sea with an effect of vicinity which it was +very long in realizing. We had meant when we reached the town at last to +choose which _fonda_ we should stop at for our luncheon, but our driver +chose the Fonda de Villanueva outside the town wall, and I do not +believe we could have chosen better if he had let us. He really put us +down across the way at the _venta_ where he was going to bait his +horses; and in what might well have seemed the custody of a little +policeman with a sword at his side, we were conducted to the _fonda_ and +shown up into the very neat icy cold parlor where a young girl with a +yellow flower in her hair received us. We were chill and stiff from our +drive and we hoped for something warmer from the dining-room, which we +perceived must face southward, and must be full of sun. But we reckoned +without the ideal of the girl with the yellow flower in her hair: in the +little saloon, shining round with glazed tiles where we next found +ourselves, the sun had been carefully screened and scarcely pierced the +scrim shades. But this was the worst, this was all that was bad, in that +_fonda._ When the breakfast or the luncheon, or whatever corresponds in +our usage to the Spanish _almuerzo,_ began to come, it seemed as if it +never would stop. An original but admirable omelette with potatoes and +bacon in it was followed by fried fish flavored with saffron. Then there +was brought in fried kid with a dish of kidneys; more fried fish came +after, and then boiled beef, with a dessert of small cakes. Of course +there was wine, as much as you would, such as it was, and several sorts +of fruit. I am sorry to have forgotten how little all this cost, but at +a venture I will say forty cents, or fifty at the outside; and so great +kindness and good will went with it from the family who cooked it in the +next room and served it with such cordial insistence that I think it was +worth quite the larger sum. It would not have been polite to note how +much of this superabundance was consumed by the three Spanish gentlemen +who had so courteously saluted us in sitting down at table with us. I +only know that they made us the conventional acknowledgment in refusing +our conventional offer of some things we had brought with us from our +hotel to eat in the event of famine at Tarifa. + +When we had come at last to the last course, we turned our thoughts +somewhat anxiously to the question of a guide for the town which we felt +so little able to explore without one; and it seemed to me that I had +better ask the policeman who had brought us to our _fonda._ He was +sitting at the head of the stairs where we had left him, and so far from +being baffled by my problem, he instantly solved it by offering himself +to be our guide. Perhaps it was a profession which he merely joined to +his civic function, but it was as if we were taken into custody when he +put himself in charge of us and led us to the objects of interest which +I cannot say Tarifa abounds in. That is, if you leave out of the count +the irregular, to and fro, up and down, narrow lanes, passing the blank +walls of low houses, and glimpsing leafy and flowery _patios_ through +open gates, and suddenly expanding into broader streets and unexpected +plazas, with shops and cafes and churches in them. + +Tarifa is perhaps the quaintest town left in the world, either in or out +of Spain, but whether it is more Moorish than parts of Cordova or +Seville I could not say. It is at least pre-eminent in a feature of the +women's costume which you are promised at the first mention of the +place, and which is said to be a survival of the Moslem civilization. Of +course we were eager for it, and when we came into the first wide +street, there at the principal corner three women were standing, just as +advertised, with black skirts caught up from their waists over their +heads and held before their faces so that only one eye could look out at +the strangers. It was like the women's costtime at Chiozza on the +Venetian lagoon, but there it is not claimed for Moorish and here it was +authenticated by being black. "Moorish ladies," our guide proudly +proclaimed them in his scanty English, but I suspect they were Spanish; +if they were really Orientals, they followed us with those eyes single +as daringly as if they had been of our own Christian Occident. + +The event was so perfect in its way that it seemed as if our guiding +policeman might have especially ordered it; but this could not have +really been, and was no such effect of his office as the immunity from +beggars which we enjoyed in his charge. The worst boy in Tarifa (we did +not identify him) dared not approach for a big-dog or a little, and we +were safe from the boldest blind man, the hardiest hag, however +pockmarked. The lanes and the streets and the plazas were clean as +though our guide had them newly swept for us, and the plaza of the +principal church (no guide-book remembers its name) is perhaps the +cleanest in all Spain. + + + + +VI + + +The church itself we found very clean, and of an interest quite beyond +the promise of the rather bare outside. A painted window above the door +cast a glare of fresh red and blue over the interior, and over the +comfortably matted floor; and there was a quite freshly carved and +gilded chapel which the pleasant youth supplementing our policeman for +the time said was done by artists still living in Tarifa. The edifice +was of a very flamboyant Gothic, with clusters of slender columns and a +vault brilliantly swirled over with decorations of the effect of peacock +feathers. But above all there was on a small side altar a figure of the +Child Jesus dressed in the corduroy suit and felt hat of a Spanish +shepherd, with a silver crook in one hand and leading a toy lamb by a +string in the other. Our young guide took the image down for us to look +at, and showed its shepherd's dress with peculiar satisfaction; and then +he left it on the ground while he went to show us something else. When +we came back we found two small boys playing with the Child, putting its +hat off and on, and feeling of its clothes. Our guide took it from them, +not unkindly, and put it back on the altar; and whether the reader will +agree with me or not, I must own that I did not find the incident +irreverent or without a certain touchingness, as if those children and +He were all of one family and they were at home with Him there. + +Rather suddenly, after we left the church, by way of one of those +unexpectedly expanding lanes, we found ourselves on the shore of the +purple sea where the Moors first triumphed over the Goths twelve hundred +years before, and five centuries later the Spaniards heat them back from +their attempt to reconquer the city. There were barracks, empty of the +Spanish soldiers gone to fight the same old battle of the Moors on their +own ground in Africa, and there was the castle which Alfonso Perez de +Guzman held against them in 1292, and made the scene of one of those +acts of self-devotion which the heart of this time has scarcely strength +for. The Moors when they had vainly summoned him to yield brought out +his son whom they held captive, and threatened to kill him. Guzman drew +his knife and flung it down to them, and they slew the boy, but Tarif a +was saved. His king decreed that thereafter the father should be known +as Guzman the Good, and the fact has gone into a ballad, but the name +somehow does not seem quite to fit, and one wishes that the father had +not won it that way. + +We were glad to go away from the dreadful place, though Tangier was so +plain across the strait, and we were almost in Africa there, and hard +by, in the waters tossing free, the great battle of Trafalgar was +fought. From the fountains of my far youth, when I first heard of +Guzman's dreadful heroism, I endeavored to pump up an adequate emotion; +I succeeded somewhat better with Nelson and his pathetic prayer of "Kiss +me, Hardy," as he lay dying on his bloody deck; but I did not much +triumph with either, and I was grateful when our good little policeman +comfortably questioned the deed of Guzman which he said some doubted, +though he took us to the very spot where the Moors had parleyed with +Guzman, and showed us the tablet over the castle gate affirming the +fact. + +We liked far better the pretty Alameda rising in terraces from it with +beds of flowers beside the promenade, and boys playing up and down, and +old men sitting in the sun, and trying to ignore the wind that blew over +them too freshly for us. Our policeman confessed that there was nothing +more worth seeing in Tarifa, and we entreated of him the favor of +showing us a shop where we could buy a Cordovese hat; a hat which we had +seen nourishing on the heads of all men in Cordova and Seville and +Granada and Ronda, and had always forborne to buy because we could get +it anywhere; and now we were almost leaving Spain without it. We wanted +one brown in color, as well as stiff and flat of brim, and slightly +conical in form; and our policeman promptly imagined it, and took us to +a shop abounding solely in hats, and especially in Cordoveses. The +proprietor came out wiping his mouth from an inner room, where he had +left his family visibly at their _almuerzo;_ and then we were desolated +together that he should only have Cordoveses that were black. But +passing a _patio_ where there was a poinsettia in brilliant bloom +against the wall, we found ourselves in a variety store where there were +Cordoveses of all colors; and we chose one of the right brown, with the +picture of a beautiful Spanish girl, wearing a pink shawl, inside the +crown which was fluted round in green and red ribbon. Seven pesetas was +the monstrous asking price, but we beat it down to five and a half, and +then came a trying moment: we could not carry a Cordovese in +tissue-paper through the streets of Tarifa, but could we ask our guide, +who was also our armed escort, to carry it? He simplified the situation +by taking it himself and bearing it back to the _fonda_ as proudly as if +he had not also worn a sword at his side; and we parted there in a +kindness which I should like to think he shared equally with us. + +He was practically the last of those Spaniards who were always winning +my heart (save in the bank at Valladolid where they must have +misunderstood me), and whom I remember with tenderness for their +courtesy and amiability. In little things and large, I found the +Spaniards everywhere what I heard a Piedmontese commercial traveler say +of them in Venice fifty years ago: "They are the honestest people in +Europe." In Italy I never began to see the cruelty to animals which +English tourists report, and in Spain I saw none at all. If the reader +asks how with this gentleness, this civility and integrity, the +Spaniards have contrived to build up their repute for cruelty, +treachery, mendacity, and every atrocity; how with their love of +bull-feasts and the suffering to man and brute which these involve, they +should yet seem so kind to both, I answer frankly, I do not know. I do +not know how the Americans are reputed good and just and law-abiding, +although they often shoot one another, and upon mere suspicion rather +often burn negroes alive. + +THE END + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Familiar Spanish Travels, by W. D. 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