The Project Gutenberg EBook of Castilian Days, by John Hay 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: Castilian Days Author: John Hay Release Date: February, 2005 [EBook #7470] Last Updated: August 24, 2012 Language: English Character set encoding: *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CASTILIAN DAYS *** Produced by Eric Eldred and David Widger
[Cover: Castilian Days]
SEGOVIA FROM THE
CORNER TOWER
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
BY JOSEPH PENNELL
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
COPYRIGHT 1871 AND
1899 BY JOHN HAY
COPYRIGHT 1903 BY
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN 8t CO.
ALL RIGHTS
RESERVED
Published November
1903
PUBLISHERS'
NOTE
IN this Holiday
Edition of Castilian Days it has been thought advisable to
omit a few chapters that appeared in the original edition. These
chapters were less descriptive than the rest of the book, and not
so rich in the picturesque material which the art of the
illustrator demands. Otherwise, the text is reprinted without
change. The illustrations are the fruit of a special visit which
Mr. Pennell has recently made to Castile for this
purpose.
BOSTON, AUTUMN,
1903
CONTENTS
MADRID AL
FRESCO
SPANISH LIVING AND
DYING
INFLUENCE OF
TRADITION IN SPANISH LIFE
TAUROMACHY
RED-LETTER
DAYS
AN HOUR WITH THE
PAINTERS
A CASTLE IN THE
AIR
THE CITY OF THE
VISIGOTHS
THE
ESCORIAL
A MIRACLE
PLAY
THE CRADLE AND THE
GRAVE OF CERVANTES
LIST OF
ILLUSTRATIONS
The Cathedral of
Toledo
Segovia from the
Corner Tower
The St.
Christopher of Toledo
Inn of
Cervantes, Toledo
Gallery of the
Prado
The Fountain
playing at La Granja
Puerta del Sol,
Madrid
The Palace,
Madrid
The Courtyard of
the Palace, Madrid
The Squares of
the Statues, Madrid
A Summer Day in
Madrid
The Bridge of
Toledo, Madrid
Delightful
Pictures of Domestic Life
In the Garden of
the Prince, Aranjuez
x LIST OF
ILLUSTRATIONS
Gardens of the
Royal Palace, Madrid
The Bridge of
Segovia, Madrid
Madrid
Market
The Promenades
of Madrid
The Royal
Palace, Madrid
Salon de los
Reyes Catolicos, Aranjuez
New
Madrid
Madrid al
Fresco
Cloak-Play
Entrance to
Bull-Ring, Madrid
The
Procession
Banderillas
Cloak-Dance
Espada
La
Granja
The Shrine of
San Isidro
Paula, La
Granja
The Plaza Major,
Madrid
In the Park, La
Granja
The Garden of
the Island, Aranjuez
Entrance to the
Velazquez Room, the Prado
Velazquez
Room
The Grand
Gallery of the Prado
The Long Gallery
of the Prado
La Granja
Fountain
The Palace. La
Granja
San
Ildefonso
Approach to
Segovia
The Aqueduct
from the Market, Segovia. Segovia
LIST OF
ILLUSTRATIONS
The Alcazar,
Segovia
San Juan de los
Reyes and Valley of Tagus The Alcazar, Toledo
The Cathedral of
Toledo
The Gilded
Organ-Pipes
The Zocodover,
Toledo
Cloisters, San
Juan de los Reyes
Interior of San
Juan, Toledo
Porta
Viragia
The Bridge,
Toledo
Endless
Escorial
Court of the
Temple, Escorial
High Altar,
Escorial
Interior of
Church, Escorial
Sacristy,
Escorial
Side Chapels,
the Cathedral of Toledo
A Street of
Toledo
Mozarabic
Chapel, Toledo
The Cheerful
Gothic Cloisters, Toledo
The Choir,
Toledo
An Inn Door,
Toledo
Chapel of the
University, Alcald
The University,
Alcald
The Gorgeous
Sarcophagus of Ximenez
Calle Major,
Alcald
Baptismal Font
of Cervantes, Alcald
House of
Cervantes, Madrid
The Tomb of
Cervantes
MADRID AL
FRESCO
MADRID is a capital
with malice aforethought. Usually the seat of government
is established in some important town from the force of
circumstances. Some cities have an attraction too powerful for
the court to resist. There is no capital of England possible but
London. Paris is the heart of France. Rome is the predestined
capital of Italy in spite of the wandering flirtations its
varying governments in different centuries have carried on with
Ravenna, or Naples, or Florence. You can imagine no Residenz for
Austria but the Kaiserstadt, -- the gemüthlich Wien. But
there
4 CASTILIAN
DAYS
are other capitals
where men have arranged things and consequently bungled them. The
great Czar Peter slapped his imperial court down on the marshy
shore of the Neva, where he could look westward into civilization
and watch with the jealous eye of an intelligent barbarian the
doings of his betters. Washington is another specimen of the
cold-blooded handiwork of the capital builders. We shall think
nothing less of the clarum et venerabile nomen of its
founder if we admit he was human, and his wishing the seat of
government nearer to Mount Vernon than Mount Washington
sufficiently proves this. But Madrid more plainly than any other
capital shows the traces of having been set down and properly
brought up by the strong hand of a paternal government; and like
children with whom the same regimen has been followed, it
presents in its maturity a curious mixture of lawlessness and
insipidity.
Its greatness was
thrust upon it by Philip II. Some premonitory symptoms of the
dangerous honor that awaited it had been seen in preceding
reigns. Ferdinand and Isabella occasionally set up their pilgrim
tabernacle on the declivity that overhangs the Manzanares.
Charles V. found the thin,
MADRID AL FRESCO
5
fine air comforting
to his gouty articulations. But Philip II. made it his court. It
seems hard to conceive how a king who had his choice of Lisbon,
with its glorious harbor and unequalled communications; Seville,
with its delicious climate and natural beauty; and Salamanca and
Toledo, with their wealth of tradition, splendor of architecture,
and renown of learning, should have chosen this barren mountain
for his home, and the seat of his empire. But when we know this
monkish king we wonder no longer. He chose Madrid simply because
it was cheerless and bare and of ophthalmic ugliness. The royal
kill-joy delighted in having the dreariest capital on earth.
After a while there seemed to him too much life and humanity
about Madrid, and he built the Escorial, the grandest ideal of
majesty and ennui that the world has ever seen. This vast mass of
granite has somehow acted as an anchor that has held the capital
fast moored at Madrid through all succeeding years.
It was a dreary and
somewhat shabby court for many reigns. The great kings who
started the Austrian dynasty were too busy in their world
conquest to pay much attention to beautifying Madrid, and their
weak successors, sunk in ignoble
6 CASTILIAN
DAYS
pleasures, had not
energy enough to indulge the royal folly of building. When the
Bourbons came down from France there was a little flurry of
construction under Philip V., but he never finished his palace in
the Plaza del Oriente, and was soon absorbed in constructing his
castle in cloud-land on the heights of La Granja. The only real
ruler the Bourbons ever gave to Spain was Charles III., and to
him Madrid owes all that it has of architecture and civic
improvement. Seconded by his able and liberal minister, Count
Aranda, who was educated abroad, and so free from the trammels of
Spanish ignorance and superstition, he rapidly changed the
ignoble town into something like a city. The greater portion of
the public buildings date from this active and beneficent reign.
It was he who laid out the walks and promenades which give to
Madrid almost its only outward attraction. The Picture Gallery,
which is the shrine of all pilgrims of taste, was built by him
for a Museum of Natural Science. In nearly all that a stranger
cares to see, Madrid is not an older city than Boston.
There is
consequently no glory of tradition here. There are no cathedrals.
There are no
THE PALACE,
MADRID
MADRID AL FRESCO
7
ruins. There is
none of that mysterious and haunting memory that peoples the air
with spectres in quiet towns like Ravenna and Nuremberg. And
there is little of that vast movement of humanity that possesses
and bewilders you in San Francisco and New York. Madrid is larger
than Chicago; but Chicago is a great city and Madrid a great
village. The pulsations of life in the two places resemble each
other no more than the beating of Dexter's heart on the
home-stretch is like the rising and falling of an oozy tide in a
marshy inlet.
There is nothing
indigenous in Madrid. There is no marked local color. It is a
city of Castile, but not a Castilian city, like Toledo, which
girds its graceful waist with the golden Tagus, or like Segovia,
fastened to its rock in hopeless shipwreck.
But it is not for
this reason destitute of an interest of its own. By reason of its
exceptional history and character it is the best point in Spain
to study Spanish life. It has no distinctive traits itself, but
it is a patchwork of all Spain. Every province of the Peninsula
sends a contingent to its population. The Gallicians hew its wood
and draw its water; the Asturian women nurse its
babies
8 CASTILIAN
DAYS
at their deep
bosoms, and fill the promenades with their brilliant costumes;
the Valentians carpet its halls and quench its thirst with orgeat
of chufas; in every street you shall see the red bonnet and
sandalled feet of the Catalan; in every café, the shaven
face and rat-tail chignon of the Majo of Andalusia. If it have no
character of its own, it is a mirror where all the faces of the
Peninsula may sometimes be seen. It is like the mockingbird of
the West, that has no song of its own, and yet makes the woods
ring with every note it has ever heard.
Though Madrid gives
a picture in little of all Spain, it is not all Spanish. It has a
large foreign population. Not only its immediate neighbors, the
French, are here in great numbers, -- conquering so far their
repugnance to emigration, and living as gayly as possible in the
midst of traditional hatred, -- but there are also many Germans
and English in business here, and a few stray Yankees have
pitched their tents, to reinforce the teeth of the Dons, and to
sell them ploughs and sewing-machines. Its railroads have waked
it up to a new life, and the Revolution has set free the thought
of its people to an extent which would
MADRID AL FRESCO
9
have been hardly
credible a few years ago. Its streets swarm with newsboys and
strangers, -- the agencies that are to bring its people into the
movement of the age.
It has a superb
opera-house, which might as well be in Naples, for all the
national character it has; the court theatre, where not a word of
Cas-tilian is ever heard, nor a strain of Spanish music. Even
cosmopolite Paris has her grand opera sung in French, and
easy-going Vienna insists that Don Juan shall make love in
German. The champagny strains of Offenbach are heard in every
town of Spain oftener than the ballads of the country. In Madrid
there are more pilluelos who whistle Bu qui
s'avance than the Hymn of Riego. The Cancan has taken its
place on the boards of every stage in the city, apparently to
stay; and the exquisite jota and cachucha are giving way to the
bestialities of the casino cadet. It is useless perhaps to fight
against that hideous orgie of vulgar Menads which in these late
years has swept over all nations, and stung the loose world into
a tarantula dance from the Golden Horn to the Golden Gate. It
must have its day and go out; and when it has passed, perhaps we
may see that it was not so utterly
10 CASTILIAN
DAYS
causeless and
irrational as it seemed; but that, as a young American poet has
impressively said, "Paris was proclaiming to the world in it
somewhat of the pent-up fire and fury of her nature, the
bitterness of her heart, the fierceness of her protest against
spiritual and political repression. It is an execration in
rhythm, -- a dance of fiends, which Paris has invented to express
in license what she lacks in liberty."
This diluted
European, rather than Spanish, spirit may be seen in most of the
amusements of the politer world of Madrid. They have classical
concerts in the circuses and popular music in the open air. The
theatres play translations of French plays, which are pretty good
when they are in prose, and pretty dismal when they are turned
into verse, as is more frequent, for the Spanish mind delights in
the jingle of rhyme. The fine old Spanish drama is vanishing day
by day. The masterpieces of Lope and Calderón, which
inspired all subsequent playwriting in Europe, have sunk almost
utterly into oblivion. The stage is flooded with the washings of
the Boulevards. Bad as the translations are, the imitations are
worse. The original plays produced by the geniuses of
the
MADRID AL FRESCO
n
Spanish Academy,
for which they are crowned and sonneted and pensioned, are of the
kind upon which we are told that gods and men and columns look
austerely.
This infection of
foreign manners has completely gained and now controls what is
called the best society of Madrid. A soiree in this circle is
like an evening in the corresponding grade of position in Paris
or Petersburg or New York in all external characteristics. The
toilets are by Worth; the beauties are coiffed by the deft
fingers of Parisian tiring-women; the men wear the penitential
garb of Poole; the music is by Gounod and Verdi; Strauss inspires
the rushing waltzes, and the married people walk through the
quadrilles to the measures of Blue Beard and Fair Helen, so
suggestive of conjugal rights and duties. As for the suppers, the
trail of the Neapolitan serpent is over them all. Honest eating
is a lost art among the effete denizens of the Old World.
Tantalizing ices, crisped shapes of baked nothing, arid
sandwiches, and the feeblest of sugary punch, are the only
supports exhausted nature receives for the shock of the cotillon.
I remember the stern reply of a friend of mine when I asked him
to go with me to a
12 CASTILIAN
DAYS
brilliant
reception,--"No! Man liveth not by biscuit-glace alone!" His
heart was heavy for the steamed cherry-stones of Harvey and the
stewed terrapin of Augustin.
The speech of the
gay world has almost ceased to be national. Every one speaks
French sufficiently for all social requirements. It is sometimes
to be doubted whether this constant use of a foreign language in
official and diplomatic circles is a cause or effect of paucity
of ideas. It is impossible for any one to use another tongue with
the ease and grace with which he could use his own. You know how
tiresome the most charming foreigners are when they speak
English. A fetter-dance is always more curious than graceful. Yet
one who has nothing to say can say it better in a foreign
language. If you must speak nothing but phrases, Ollendorff's are
as good as any one's. Where there are a dozen people all speaking
French equally badly, each one imagines there is a certain
elegance in the hackneyed forms. I know of no other way of
accounting for the fact that clever people seem stupid and stupid
people clever when they speak French. This facile language thus
becomes the missionary of mental equality,--the principles
of
THE COURTYARD OF THE
PALACE, MADRID
MADRID AL FRESCO
13
'89 applied to
conversation. All men are equal before the
phrase-book.
But this is
hypercritical and ungrateful. We do not go to balls to hear
sermons nor discuss the origin of matter. If the young grandees
of Spain are rather weaker in the parapet than is allowed in the
nineteenth century, if the old boys are more frivolous than is
becoming to age, and both more ignorant of the day's doings than
is consistent with even their social responsibilities, in
compensation the women of this circle are as pretty and amiable
as it is possible to be in a fallen world. The foreigner never
forgets those piquant, mutines faces of Andalusia and
those dreamy eyes of Malaga,--the black masses of Moorish hair
and the blond glory of those graceful heads that trace their
descent from Gothic demigods. They were not very learned nor very
witty, but they were knowing enough to trouble the soundest
sleep. Their voices could interpret the sublimest ideas of
Mendelssohn. They knew sufficiently of lines and colors to dress
themselves charmingly at small cost, and their little feet were
well enough educated to bear them over the polished floor of a
ball-room as lightly as swallows' wings. The flirting of
their
14 CASTILIAN
DAYS
intelligent fans,
the flashing of those quick smiles where eyes, teeth, and lips
all did their dazzling duty, and the satin twinkling of those
neat boots in the waltz, are harder to forget than things better
worth remembering.
Since the beginning
of the Revolutionary regime there have been serious schisms and
heart-burnings in the gay world. The people of the old situation
assumed that the people of the new were rebels and traitors, and
stopped breaking bread with them. But in spite of this the palace
and the ministry of war were gay enough,--for Madrid is a city of
office-holders, and the White House is always easy to fill, even
if two thirds of the Senate is uncongenial. The principal
fortress of the post was the palace of the spirituelle and
hospitable lady whose society name is Duchess of
Peñaranda, but who is better known as the mother of the
Empress of the French. Her salon was the weekly rendezvous of the
irreconcilable adherents of the House of Bourbon, and the
aristocratic beauty that gathered there was too powerful a
seduction even for the young and hopeful partisans of the powers
that be. There was nothing exclusive about this elegant
hospitality. Beauty and good manners have
MADRID AL FRESCO
15
always been a
passport there. I have seen a proconsul of Prim talking with a
Carlist leader, and a fiery young democrat dancing with a
countess of Castile.
But there is
another phase of society in Madrid which is altogether
pleasing,--far from the domain of politics or public affairs,
where there is no pretension or luxury or conspiracy,--the
old-fashioned Tertulias of Spain. There is nowhere a kindlier and
more unaffected sociableness. The leading families of each little
circle have one evening a week on which they remain at home.
Nearly all their friends come in on that evening. There is
conversation and music and dancing. The young girls gather
together in little groups,--not confined under the jealous guard
of their mothers or chaperons,--and chatter of the momentous
events of the week--their dresses, their beaux, and their books.
Around these compact formations of loveliness skirmish light
bodies of the male enemy, but rarely effect a lodgment. A word or
a smile is momently thrown out to meet the advance; but the long,
desperate battle of flirtation, which so often takes place in
America in discreet corners and outlying boudoirs, is never seen
in this
16 CASTILIAN
DAYS
well-organized
society. The mothers in Israel are ranged for the evening around
the walls in comfortable chairs, which they never leave; and the
colonels and generals and chiefs of administration, who form the
bulk of all Madrid gatherings, are gravely smoking in the library
or playing interminable games of tresillon, seasoned with
temperate denunciations of the follies of the time.
Nothing can be more
engaging than the tone of perfect ease and cordial courtesy which
pervades these family festivals. It is here that the Spanish
character is seen in its most attractive light. Nearly everybody
knows French, but it is never spoken. The exquisite Castilian,
softened by its graceful diminutives into a rival of the Italian
in tender melody, is the only medium of conversation; it is rare
that a stranger' is seen, but if he is, he must learn Spanish or
be a wet blanket forever.
You will often
meet, in persons of wealth and distinction, an easy degenerate
accent in Spanish, strangely at variance with their elegance and
culture. These are Creoles of the Antilles, and they form one of
the most valued and popular elements of society in the capital.
There is a gallantry and
MADRID AL FRESCO
17
dash about the men,
and an intelligence and independence about the women, that
distinguish them from their cousins of the Peninsula. The
American element has recently grown very prominent in the
political and social world. Admiral Topete is a Mexican. His wife
is one of the distinguished Cuban family of Arrieta. General Prim
married a Mexican heiress. The magnificent Duchess de la Torre,
wife of the Regent Serrano, is a Cuban born and bred.
In one particular
Madrid is unique among capitals,--it has no suburbs. It lies in a
desolate table-land in the windy waste of New Castile; on the
north the snowy Guadarrama chills its breezes, and on every other
side the tawny landscape stretches away in dwarfish hills and
shallow ravines barren of shrub or tree, until distance fuses the
vast steppes into one drab plain, which melts in the hazy verge
of the warm horizon. There are no villages sprinkled in the
environs to lure the Madrileños out of their walls for a
holiday. Those delicious picnics that break with such enchanting
freshness and variety the steady course of life in other capitals
cannot here exist. No Parisian loves la bonne ville so
much that he does not call those
18 CASTILIAN
DAYS
the happiest of
days on which he deserts her for a row at Asniéres, a
donkey-ride at Enghien, or a bird-like dinner in the vast
chestnuts of Sceaux. "There is only one Kaiserstadt," sings the
loyal Kerl of Vienna, but he shakes the dust of the Graben from
his feet on holiday mornings, and makes his merry pilgrimage to
the lordly Schoen-brunn or the heartsome Dornbach, or the wooded
eyry of the Kahlenberg. What would white-bait be if not eaten at
Greenwich? What would life be in the great cities without the
knowledge that just outside, an hour away from the toil and dust
and struggle of this money-getting world, there are green fields,
and whispering forests, and verdurous nooks of breezy shadow by
the side of brooks where the white pebbles shine through the
mottled stream,--where you find great pied pan-sies under your
hands, and catch the black beady eyes of orioles watching you
from the thickets, and through the lush leafage over you see
patches of sky flecked with thin clouds that sail so lazily you
cannot be sure if the blue or the white is moving? Existence
without these luxuries would be very much like life in
Madrid.
Yet it is not so
dismal as it might seem. The
MADRID AL FRESCO
19
Grande Duchesse of
Gerolstein, the cheeriest moralist who ever occupied a throne,
announces just before the curtain falls, "Quand on n'a pas ce
qu'on aime, il faut aimer ce qu'on a." But how much easier it is
to love what you have when you never imagined anything better!
The bulk of the good people of Madrid have never left their natal
city. If they have been, for their sins, some day to Val-lecas or
Carabanchel or any other of the dusty villages that bake and
shiver on the arid plains around them, they give fervid thanks on
returning alive, and never wish to go again. They shudder when
they hear of the summer excursions of other populations, and
commiserate them profoundly for living in a place they are so
anxious to leave. A lovely girl of Madrid once said to me she
never wished to travel,--some people who had been to France
preferred Paris to Madrid; as if that were an inexplicable
insanity by which their wanderings had been punished. The
indolent incuriousness of the Spaniard accepts the utter
isolation of his city as rather an advantage. It saves him the
trouble of making up his mind where to go. Vamonos al
Prado! or, as Browning says,--
"Let's to the Prado and
make the most of time."
20 CASTILIAN
DAYS
The people of
Madrid take more solid comfort in their promenade than any I
know. This is one of the inestimable benefits conferred upon them
by those wise and liberal free-thinkers Charles III. and Aranda.
They knew how important to the moral and physical health of the
people a place of recreation was. They reduced the hideous waste
land on the east side of the city to a breathing-space for future
generations, turning the meadow into a promenade and the hill
into the Buen Retiro. The people growled terribly at the time, as
they did at nearly everything this prematurely liberal government
did for them. The wise king once wittily said: "My people are
like bad children that kick the shins of their nurse whenever
their faces are washed."
But they soon
became reconciled to their Prado,--a name, by the way, which runs
through several idioms,--in Paris they had a
Pré-aux-clercs, the Clerks' Meadow, and the great park of
Vienna is called the Prater. It was originally the favorite scene
of duels, and the cherished trysting-place of lovers. But in
modern times it is too popular for any such selfish
use.
The polite world
takes its stately promenade in
THE SQUARES OF THE
STATUES. MADRID
MADRID AL FRESCO
21
the winter
afternoons in the northern prolongation of the real Prado, called
in the official courtier style Las delicias de Isabel
Segunda, but in common speech the Castilian Fountain, or
Castellana, to save time. So perfect is the social
discipline in these old countries that people who are not in
society never walk in this long promenade, which is open to all
the world. You shall see there, any pleasant day before the
Carnival, the aristocracy of the kingdom, the fast young hopes of
the nobility, the diplomatic body resident, and the flexible
figures and graceful bearing of the high-born ladies of Castile.
Here they take the air as free from snobbish competition as the
good society of Olympus, while a hundred paces farther south,
just beyond the Mint, the world at large takes its plebeian
constitutional. How long, with a democratic system of government,
this purely conventional respect will be paid to blue-ness of
blood cannot be conjectured. Its existence a year after the
Revolution was to me one of the most singular of
phenomena.
After Easter Monday
the Castellana is left to its own devices for the summer. With
the warm long days of May and June, the evening walk in the Salon
begins. Europe affords no scene more
22 CASTILIAN
DAYS
original and
characteristic. The whole city meets in this starlit
drawing-room. It is a vast evening party al fresco, stretching
from the Alcalá to the Course of San Gerónimo. In
the wide street beside it every one in town who owns a carriage
may be seen moving lazily up and down, and apparently envying the
gossiping strollers on foot. On three nights in the week there is
music in the Retiro Garden,--not as in our feverish way beginning
so early that you must sacrifice your dinner to get there, and
then turning you out disconsolate in that seductive hour which
John Phoenix used to call the "shank of the evening," but opening
sensibly at half past nine and going leisurely forward until
after midnight. The music is very good. Sometimes Arban comes
down from Paris to recover from his winter fatigues and bewitch
the Spains with his wizard baton.
In all this vast
crowd nobody is in a hurry. They have all night before them. They
stayed quietly at home in the stress of the noontide when the
sunbeams were falling in the glowing streets like javelins,--they
utilized some of the waste hours of the broiling afternoon in
sleep, and are fresh as daisies now. The women are not
haunted
MADRID AL FRESCO
23
by the thought of
lords and babies growling and wailing at home. Their lords are
beside them, the babies are sprawling in the clean gravel by
their chairs. Late in the small hours I have seen these family
parties in the promenade, the husband tranquilly smoking his
hundredth cigarette, his placens uxor dozing in her chair,
one baby asleep on the ground, and another slumbering in her
lap.
This Madrid climate
is a gallant one, and kindlier to the women than the men. The
ladies are built on the old-fashioned generous plan. Like a
Southern table in the old times, the only fault is too abundant
plenty. They move along with a superb dignity of carriage that
Banting would like to banish from the world, their round white
shoulders shining in the starlight, their fine heads elegantly
draped in the coquettish and always graceful mantilla. But you
would look in vain among the men of Madrid for such fulness and
liberality of structure. They are thin, eager, sinewy in
appearance,--though it is the spareness of the Turk, not of the
American. It comes from tobacco and the Guadarrama winds. This
still, fine, subtle air that blows from the craggy peaks over the
treeless plateau seems to take all superfluous moisture
out
24 CASTILIAN
DAYS
of the men of
Madrid. But it is, like Benedick's wit, "a most manly air, it
will not hurt a woman." This tropic summer-time brings the
halcyon days of the vagabonds of Madrid. They are a temperate,
reasonable people, after all, when they are let alone. They do
not require the savage stimulants of our colder-blooded race. The
fresh air is a feast. As Walt Whitman says, they loaf and invite
their souls. They provide for the banquet only the most spiritual
provender. Their dissipation is confined principally to starlight
and zephyrs; the coarser and wealthier spirits indulge in ice,
agraz, and meringues dissolved in water. The climax of their
luxury is a cool bed. Walking about the city at midnight, I have
seen the fountains all surrounded by luxurious vagabonds asleep
or in revery, dozens of them stretched along the rim of the
basins, in the spray of the splashing water, where the least
start would plunge them in. But the dreams of these Latin beggars
are too peaceful to trouble their slumber. They lie motionless,
amid the roar of wheels and the tramp of a thousand feet, their
bed the sculptured marble, their covering the deep, amethystine
vault, warm and cherishing with its breath of summer
winds,
A SUMMER DAY IN
MADRID
MADRID AL FRESCO
25
bright with its
trooping stars. The Providence of the worthless watches and
guards them!
The chief commerce
of the streets of Madrid seems to be fire and water, bane and
antidote. It would be impossible for so many match-venders to
live anywhere else, in a city ten times the size of Madrid. On
every block you will find a wandering merchant dolefully
announcing paper and phosphorus,--the one to construct cigarettes
and the other to light them. The matches are little waxen tapers
very neatly made and enclosed in pasteboard boxes, which are sold
for a cent and contain about a hundred fosforos. These
boxes are ornamented with portraits of the popular favorites of
the day, and afford a very fair test of the progress and decline
of parties. The queen has disappeared from them except in
caricature, and the chivalrous face of Castelar and the heavy
Bourbon mouth of Don Carlos are oftener seen than any others. A
Madrid smoker of average industry will use a box a day. They
smoke more cigarettes than cigars, and in the ardor of
conversation allow their fire to go out every minute. A young
Austrian, who was watching a señorito light his
wisp of paper for the fifth time, and mentally comparing it with
the
26 CASTILIAN
DAYS
volcano volume and
kern-deutsch integrity of purpose of the meerschaums of
his native land, said to me: "What can you expect of a people who
trifle in that way with the only work of their lives?
"
It is this habit of
constant smoking that makes the Madrileños the thirstiest
people in the world; so that, alternating with the cry of "Fire,
lord-lings! Matches, chevaliers!" you hear continually the drone
so tempting to parched throats, "Water! who wants water? freezing
water! colder than snow!" This is the daily song of the Gallician
who marches along in his irrigating mission, with his brown
blouse, his short breeches, and pointed hat, like that Aladdin
wears in the cheap editions; a little varied by the Valentian in
his party-colored mantle and his tow trousers, showing the
bronzed leg from the knee to the blue-bordered sandals. Numerous
as they are, they all seem to have enough to do. They carry their
scriptural-looking water-jars on their backs, and a smart tray of
tin and burnished brass, with meringues and glasses, in front.
The glasses are of enormous but not extravagant proportions.
These dropsical Iberians will drink water as if it were no
stronger than beer. In the winter-time, while the cheerful
invi-
MADRID AL FRESCO
27
tation rings out to
the same effect,--that the beverage is cold as the snow,--the
merchant prudently carries a little pot of hot water over a
spirit-lamp to take the chill off for shivery
customers.
Madrid is one of
those cities where strangers fear the climate less than
residents. Nothing is too bad for the Castilian to say of his
native air. Before you have been a day in the city some kind soul
will warn you against everything you have been in the habit of
doing as leading to sudden and severe death in this subtle air.
You will hear in a dozen different tones the favorite proverb,
which may be translated,--
The air of Madrid is as
sharp as a knife,--
It will spare a candle
and blow out your life:--
and another where
the truth, as in many Spanish proverbs, is sacrificed to the
rhyme, saying that the climate is tres meses invierno y nueve
infierno,--three months winter and nine months Tophet. At the
first coming of the winter frosts the genuine son of Madrid gets
out his capa, the national full round cloak, and never leaves it
off till late in the hot spring days. They have a way of throwing
one corner over the left shoulder, so that a bright strip of gay
lining falls outward and pleasantly
28 CASTILIAN
DAYS
relieves the sombre
monotony of the streets. In this way the face is
completely covered by the heavy woollen folds, only the eyes
being visible under the sombrero. The true Spaniard breathes no
out-of-doors air all winter except through his cloak, and they
stare at strangers who go about with uncovered faces enjoying the
brisk air as if they were lunatics. But what makes the custom
absurdly incongruous is that the women have no such terror of
fresh air. While the hidalgo goes smothered in his wrappings his
wife and daughter wear nothing on their necks and faces but their
pretty complexions, and the gallant breeze, grateful for this
generous confidence, repays them in roses. I have sometimes
fancied that in this land of traditions this difference might
have arisen in those days of adventure when the cavaliers had
good reasons for keeping their faces concealed, while the
señoras, we are bound to believe, have never done anything
for which their own beauty was not the best excuse.
Nearly all there is
of interest in Madrid consists in the faces and the life of its
people. There is but one portion of the city which appeals to the
tourist's ordinary set of emotions. This is the old
THE BRIDGE OF TOLEDO,
MADRID
MADRID AL FRESCO
29
Moors'
quarter,--the intricate jumble of streets and places on the
western edge of the town, overlooking the bankrupt river. Here is
St. Andrew's, the parish church where Isabella the Catholic and
her pious husband used to offer their stiff and dutiful prayers.
Behind it a market-place of the most primitive kind runs
precipitately down to the Street of. Segovia, at such an angle
that you wonder the turnips and carrots can ever be brought to
keep their places on the rocky slope. If you will wander through
the dark alleys and hilly streets of this quarter when twilight
is softening the tall tenement-houses to a softer purpose, and
the doorways are all full of gossiping groups, and here and there
in the little courts you can hear the tinkling of a guitar and
the drone of ballads, and see the idlers lounging by the
fountains, and everywhere against the purple sky the crosses of
old convents, while the evening air is musical with slow chimes
from the full-arched belfries, it will not be hard to imagine you
are in the Spain you have read and dreamed of. And, climbing out
of this labyrinth of slums, you pass under the gloomy gates that
lead to the Plaza Mayor. This once magnificent square is now as
squalid and forsaken as the Place
30 CASTILIAN
DAYS
Royale of Paris,
though it dates from a period comparatively recent. The mind so
instinctively revolts at the contemplation of those orgies of
priestly brutality which have made the very name of this place
redolent with a fragrance of scorched Christians, that we
naturally assign it an immemorial antiquity. But a glance at the
booby face of Philip III. on his round-bellied charger in the
centre of the square will remind us that this place was built at
the same time the Mayflower's passengers were laying the massive
foundations of the great Republic. The Autos-da-Fe, the plays of
Lope de Vega, and the bull-fights went on for many years with
impartial frequency under the approving eyes of royalty, which
occupied a convenient balcony in the Panadería, that
overdressed building with the two extinguisher towers. Down to a
period disgracefully near us, those balconies were occupied by
the dull-eyed, pendulous-lipped tyrants who have sat on the
throne of St. Ferdinand, while there in the spacious court below
the varied sports went on,--to-day a comedy of Master Lope,
to-morrow the gentle and joyous slaying of bulls, and the next
day, with greater pomp and ceremony, with banners hung from the
windows,
MADRID AL FRESCO
31
and my lord the
king surrounded by his women and his courtiers in their bravest
gear, and the august presence of the chief priests and their idol
in the form of wine and wafers,--the judgment and fiery sentence
of the thinking men of Spain.
Let us remember as
we leave this accursed spot that the old palace of the
Inquisition is now the Ministry of Justice, where a liberal
statesman has just drawn up the bill of civil marriage; and that
in the convent of the Trinitarians a Spanish Rationalist, the
Minister of Fomento, is laboring to secularize education in the
Peninsula. There is much coiling and hissing, but the fangs of
the ser-pent are much less prompt and effective than of
old.
The wide Calle
Mayor brings you in a moment out of these mouldy shadows and into
the broad light of nowadays which shines in the Puerta del Sol.
Here, under the walls of the Ministry of the Interior, the quick,
restless heart of Madrid beats with the new life it has lately
earned. The flags of the pavement have been often stained with
blood, but of blood shed in combat, in the assertion of
individual freedom. Although the govern-
32 CASTILIAN
DAYS
ment holds that
fortress-palace with a grasp of iron, it can exercise no control
over the free speech that asserts itself on the very sidewalk of
the Principal. At every step you see news-stands filled with the
sharp critical journalism of Spain,--often ignorant and unjust,
but generally courteous in expression and independent in thought.
Every day at noon the northern mails bring hither the word of all
Europe to the awaking Spanish mind, and within that massive
building the converging lines of the telegraph are whispering
every hour their persuasive lessons of the world's essential
unity.
The movement of
life and growth is bearing the population gradually away from
that dark mediaeval Madrid of the Catholic kings through the
Puerta del Sol to the airy heights beyond, and the new, fresh
quarter built by the philosopher Bourbon Charles III. is becoming
the most important part of the city. I think we may be permitted
to hope that the long reign of savage faith and repression is
broken at last, and that this abused and suffering people is
about to enter into its rightful inheritance of modern freedom
and progress.
SPANISH LIVING AND
DYING
NOWHERE is the
sentiment of home stronger than in Spain. Strangers, whose ideas
of the Spanish character have been gained from romance and
comedy, are apt to note with some surprise the strength and
prevalence of the domestic affections. But a moment's reflection
shows us that nothing is more natural. It is the result of all
their history. The old Celtic population had scarcely any
religion but that of the family. The Goths brought in the pure
Teutonic regard for woman and marriage. The Moors were
distinguished by the patriarchal structure of their
soci-
34 CASTILIAN
DAYS
ety. The Spaniards
have thus learned the lesson of home in the school of history and
tradition. The intense feeling of individuality, which so
strongly marks the Spanish character, and which in the political
world is so fatal an element of strife and obstruction, favors
this peculiar domesticity. The Castilian is submissive to his
king and his priest, haughty and inflexible with his equals. But
his own house is a refuge from the contests of out of doors. The
reflex of absolute authority is here observed, it is true. The
Spanish father is absolute king and lord by his own hearthstone,
but his sway is so mild and so readily acquiesced in that it is
hardly felt. The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who
resists it, and the Spanish family seldom calls for the harsh
exercise of parental authority.
This is the rule. I
do not mean to say there are no exceptions. The pride and
jealousy inherent in the race make family quarrels, when they do
arise, the bitterest and the fiercest in the world. In every
grade of life these vindictive feuds among kindred are seen from
time to time. Twice at least the steps of the throne have been
splashed with royal blood shed by a princely hand.
Duels
SPANISH LIVING AND DYING 35
between noble
cousins and stabbing affrays between peasant brothers alike
attest the unbending sense of personal dignity that still infects
this people.
A light word
between husbands and wives sometimes goes unexplained, and the
rift between them widens through life. I know some houses where
the wife enters at one door and the husband at another; where if
they meet on the stairs, they do not salute each other. Under the
same roof they have lived for years and have not spoken. One word
would heal all discord, and that word will never be spoken by
either. They cannot be divorced,--the Church is inexorable. They
will not incur the scandal of a public separation. So they pass
lives of lonely isolation in adjoining apartments, both thinking
rather better of each other and of themselves for this devilish
persistence.
An infraction of
parental discipline is never forgiven. I knew a general whose
daughter fell in love with his adjutant, a clever and amiable
young officer. He had positively no objection to the suitor, but
was surprised that there should be any love-making in his house
without his previous suggestion. He refused his consent, and the
young
36 CASTILIAN
DAYS
people were married
without it. The father and son-in-law went off on a campaign,
fought, and were wounded in the same battle. The general was
asked to recommend his son-in-law for promotion. "I have no
son-in-law!" "I mean your daughter's husband." "I have no
daughter." "I refer to Lieutenant Don Fulano de Tal. He is a good
officer. He distinguished himself greatly in the recent affair."
"Ah! otra cosa!" said the grim father-in-law. His hate could not
overcome his sense of justice. The youth got his promotion, but
his general will not recognize him at the club. It is in the
middle and lower classes that the most perfect pictures of the
true Spanish family are to be found. The aristocracy is more or
less infected with the contagion of Continental manners and
morals. You will find there the usual proportion of wives who
despise their husbands, and men who neglect their wives, and
children who do not honor their parents. The smartness of
American "pickles" has even made its appearance among the little
countesses of Madrid. A lady was eating an ice one day, hungrily
watched by the wide eyes of the infant heiress of the house. As
the latter saw the last hope vanishing before
SPANISH LIVING AND
DYING 37
the destroying
spoon, she cried out, "Thou eatest all and givest me
none,--maldita sea tu alma!" (accursed be thy soul). This
dreadful imprecation was greeted with roars of laughter from
admiring friends, and the profane little innocent was smothered
in kisses and cream.
Passing at noon by
any of the squares or shady places of Madrid, you will see dozens
of laboring-people at their meals. They sit on the ground, around
the steaming and savory cocido that forms the peasant
Spaniard's unvaried dinner. The foundation is of
garbanzos, the large chick-pea of the country, brought
originally to Europe by the Carthaginians,--the Roman
cicer, which gave its name to the greatest of the Latin
orators. All other available vegetables are thrown in; on days of
high gala a piece of meat is added, and some forehanded
housewives attain the climax of luxury by flavoring the compound
with a link of sausage. The mother brings the dinner and her
tawny brood of nestlings. A shady spot is selected for the feast.
The father dips his wooden spoon first into the vapory bowl, and
mother and babes follow with grave decorum. Idle loungers passing
these patriarchal groups, on their way to a vapid
French
38 CASTILIAN
DAYS
breakfast at a
restaurant, catch the fragrance of the olla and the
chatter of the family, and envy the dinner of herbs with
love.
There is no people
so frugal. We often wonder how a Washington clerk can live on
twelve hundred dollars, but this would be luxury in expensive
Madrid. It is one of the dearest capitals in Europe. Foreigners
are never weary decrying its high prices for poor fare; but
Castilians live in good houses, dress well, receive their
intimate friends, and hold their own with the best in the
promenade, upon incomes that would seem penury to any country
parson in America. There are few of the nobility who retain the
great fortunes of former days. You can almost tell on your
fingers the tale of the grandees in Madrid who can live without
counting the cost. The army and navy are crowded with general
officers whose political services have obliged their promotion.
The state is too much impoverished to pay liberal salaries, and
yet the rank of these officers requires the maintenance of a
certain social position. Few of them are men of fortune. The
result is that necessity has taught them to live well upon
little, I knew widows who went everywhere in society,
SPANISH LIVING AND
DYING 39
whose daughters
were always charmingly dressed, who lived in a decent quarter of
the town, and who had no resources whatever but a husband's
pension.
The best proof of
the capacity of Spaniards to spread a little gold over as much
space as a goldbeater could is the enormous competition for
public employment. Half the young men in Spain are candidates
for places under government ranging from $250 to $1000. Places of
$1500 to $2000 are considered objects of legitimate ambition even
to deputies and leading politicians. Expressed in reals these
sums have a large and satisfying sound. Fifty dollars seems
little enough for a month's work, but a thousand reals has the
look of a most respectable salary. In Portugal, however, you can
have all the delightful sensations of prodigality at a
contemptible cost. You can pay, without serious damage to your
purse, five thousand reis for your breakfast.
It is the smallness
of incomes and the necessity of looking sharply to the means of
life that makes the young people of Madrid so prudent in their
love affairs. I know of no place where ugly heir-esses are such
belles, and where young men with
40 CASTILIAN
DAYS
handsome incomes
are so universally esteemed by all who know them. The stars on
the sleeves of young officers are more regarded than their
dancing, and the red belt of a field officer is as winning in the
eyes of beauty as a cestus of Venus. A. subaltern offered his
hand and heart to a black-eyed girl of Castile. She said kindly
but firmly that the night was too cloudy. "What," said the
stupefied lover, "the sky is full of stars." "I see but one,"
said the prudent beauty, her fine eyes resting pensively upon his
cuff, where one lone luminary indicated his rank.
This spirit is
really one of forethought, and not avarice. People who have
enough for two almost always marry from inclination, and
frequently take partners for life without a penny.
If men were never
henpecked except by learned wives, Spain would be the place of
all others for timid men to marry in. The girls are bright,
vivacious, and naturally very clever, but they have scarcely any
education whatever. They never know the difference between
b and v. They throw themselves in orthography
entirely upon your benevolence. They know a little music and a
little French, but they have never crossed, even in a
school-day
SPANISH LIVING AND
DYING 41
excursion, the
border line of the ologies. They do not even read novels. They
are regarded as injurious, and cannot be trusted to the daughters
until mamma has read them. Mamma never has time to read them, and
so they are condemned by default. Fernán Caballero, in one
of her sleepy little romances, refers to this illiterate
character of the Spanish ladies, and says it is their chief
charm,--that a Christian woman, in good society, ought not to
know anything beyond her cookery-book and her missal.' There
is-an old proverb which coarsely conveys this idea: A mule that
whinnies and a woman that talks Latin never come to any
good.
There is a
contented acquiescence in this moral servitude among the fair
Spaniards which would madden our agitatresses. (See what will
become of the language when male words are crowded out of the
dictionary!)
It must be the
innocence which springs from ignorance that induces an occasional
coarseness of expression which surprises you in the conversation
of those lovely young girls. They will speak with perfect freedom
of the état-civil of a young unmarried mother. A
maiden of fifteen said to me: "I must go to a party this evening
décolletée, and I hate
42 CASTILIAN
DAYS
it. Benigno is
getting old enough to marry, and he wants to see all the girls in
low neck before he makes up his mind." They all swear like
troopers, without a thought of profanity. Their mildest
expression of surprise is Jesus Maria! They change their oaths
with the season. At the feast of the Immaculate Conception, the
favorite oath is Maria Purissima. This is a time of especial
interest to young girls. It is a period of compulsory
confession,--conscience-cleaning, as they call it. They are all
very pious in their way. They attend to their religious duties
with the same interest which they displayed a few years before in
dressing and undressing their dolls, and will display a few years
later in putting the lessons they learned with their dolls to a
more practical use.
The visible
concrete symbols and observances of religion have great influence
with them. They are fond of making vows in tight places and
faithfully observing them afterwards. In an hour's walk in the
streets of Madrid you will see a dozen ladies with a leather
strap buckled about their slender waists and hanging nearly to
the ground. Others wear a knotted cord and tassels. These are
worn as the fulfilment of vows, or penances.
IN THE GARDEN OF THE
PRINCE, ARANJUEZ
SPANISH LIVING AND
DYING 43
I am afraid they
give rise to much worldly conjecture on the part of idle youth as
to what amiable sins these pretty penitents can have been guilty
of. It is not prudent to ask an explanation of the peculiar
mercy, or remorse, which this purgatorial strap commemorates. You
will probably not enlarge your stock of knowledge further than to
learn that the lady in question considers you a great
nuisance.
The graceful lady
who, in ascending the throne of France, has not ceased to be a
thorough Spaniard, still preserves these pretty weaknesses of her
youth. She vowed a chapel to her patron saint if her firstborn
was a man-child, and paid it. She has hung a vestal lamp in the
Church of Nótre Dame des Victoires, in pursuance of a vow
she keeps rigidly secret. She is a firm believer in relics also,
and keeps a choice assortment on hand in the Tuileries for sudden
emergencies. When old Baciocchi lay near his death, worn out by a
horrible nervous disorder which would not let him sleep, the
empress told the doctors, with great mystery, that she would cure
him. After a few preliminary masses, she came into his room and
hung on his bedpost a little gold-embroidered sachet containing
(if the evidence
44 CASTILIAN
DAYS
of holy men is to
be believed) a few threads of the swaddling-clothes of John the
Baptist. Her simple childlike faith wrung the last grim smile
from the tortured lips of the dying courtier.
The very names of
the Spanish women are a constant reminder of their worship. They
are all named out of the calendar of saints and virgin martyrs. A
large majority are christened Mary; but as this sacred name by
much use has lost all distinctive meaning, some attribute, some
especial invocation of the Virgin, is always coupled with it. The
names of Dolores, Mercedes, Milagros, recall Our Lady of the
Sorrows, of the Gifts, of the Miracles. I knew a hoydenish little
gypsy who bore the tearful name of Lagrimas. The most appropriate
name I heard for these large-eyed, soft-voiced beauties was
Peligros, Our Lady of Dangers. Who could resist the comforting
assurance of "Consuelo"? "Blessed," says my Lord Lytton, "is
woman who consoles." What an image of maiden purity goes with the
name of Nieves, the Virgin of the Snows! From a single cotillon
of Castilian girls you can construct the whole history of Our
Lady; Conception, Annunciation, Sorrows, Solitude, Assumption. As
young ladies are never
SPANISH LIVING AND
DYING 45
called by their
family names, but always by their baptismal appellations, you
cannot pass an evening in a Spanish tertulia without being
reminded of every stage in the life of the Immaculate Mother,
from Bethlehem to Calvary and beyond.
The common use of
sacred words is universal in Catholic countries, but nowhere so
striking as in Spain. There is a little solemnity in the French
adieu. But the Spaniard says adiós instead of
"good-morning." No letter closes without the prayer, "God guard
your Grace many years!" They say a judge announces to a murderer
his sentence of death with the sacramental wish of length of
days. There is something a little shocking to a Yankee mind in
the label of Lachryma Christi; but in La Mancha they call
fritters the Grace of God.
The piety of the
Spanish women does not prevent them from seeing some things
clearly enough with their bright eyes. One of the most bigoted
women in Spain recently said: "I hesitate to let my child go to
confession. The priests ask young girls such infamous questions,
that my cheeks burn when I think of them, after all these years."
I stood one Christmas Eve in the cold midnight
46 CASTILIAN
DAYS
wind, waiting for
the church doors to open for the night mass, the famous misa
del gallo. On the steps beside me sat a decent old woman with
her two daughters. At last she rose and said, "Girls, it is no
use waiting any longer. The priests won't leave their
housekeepers this cold night to save anybody's soul." In these
two cases, taken from the two extremes of the Catholic society,
there was no disrespect for the Church or for religion. Both
these women believed with a blind faith. But they could not help
seeing how unclean were the hands that dispensed the bread of
life.
The respect shown
to the priesthood as a body is marvellous, in view of the
profligate lives of many. The general progress of the age has
forced most of the dissolute priests into hypocrisy. But their
cynical immorality is still the bane of many families. And it
needs but a glance at the vile manual of confession, called the
Golden Key, the author of which is the too well known Padre
Claret, confessor to the queen, to see the systematic moral
poisoning the minds of Spanish women must undergo who pay due
attention to what is called their religious duties. If a
confessor obeys the injunctions of this high ecclesiastical
authority, his
SPANISH LIVING AND
DYING 47
fair penitents will
have nothing to learn from a diligent perusal of Faublas or
Casanova. It would, however, be unjust to the priesthood to
consider them all as corrupt as royal chaplains. It requires a
combination of convent and palace life to produce these finished
specimens of mitred infamy.
It is to be
regretted that the Spanish women are kept in such systematic
ignorance. They have a quicker and more active intelligence than
the men. With a fair degree of education, much might be hoped
from them in the intellectual development of the country. In
society, you will at once be struck with the superiority of the
women to their husbands and brothers in cleverness and
appreciation. Among small tradesmen, the wife always comes to the
rescue of her slow spouse when she sees him befogged in a
bargain. In the fields, you ask a peasant some question about
your journey. He will hesitate, and stammer, and end with,
"Quien sabe?" but his wife will answer with glib
completeness all you want to know. I can imagine no cause for
this, unless it be that the men cloud their brains all day with
the fumes of tobacco, and the women do not.
The personality of
the woman is not so entirely
48 CASTILIAN
DAYS
merged in that of
the husband as among us. She retains her own baptismal and family
name through life. If Miss Matilda Smith marries Mr. Jonathan
Jones, all vestige of the former gentle being vanishes at once
from the earth, and Mrs. Jonathan Jones alone remains. But in
Spain she would become Mrs. Matilda Smith de Jones, and her
eldest-born would be called Don Juan Jones y Smith. You ask the
name of a married lady in society, and you hear as often her own
name as that of her husband.
Even among titled
people, the family name seems more highly valued than the titular
designation. Everybody knows Narvaez, but how few have heard of
the Duke of Valencia! The Regent Serrano has a name known and
honored over the world, but most people must think twice before
they remember the Duke de la Torre. Juan Prim is better known
than the Marques de los Castillejos ever will be. It is perhaps
due to the prodigality with which titles have been scattered in
late years that the older titles are more regarded than the new,
although of inferior grade. Thus Prim calls himself almost
invariably the Conde de Reus, though his grandeeship came with
his investiture as marquis.
There is something
quite noticeable about this
SPANISH LIVING AND
DYING 49
easy way of
treating one's name. We are accustomed to think a man can have
but one name, and can sign it but in one way. Lord Derby can no
more call himself Mr. Stanley than President Grant can sign a
bill as U. Simpson. Yet both these signatures would be perfectly
valid according to Spanish analogy. The Marquis of Santa Marta
signs himself Guzman; the Marquis of Albaida uses no signature
but Orense; both of these gentlemen being Republican deputies. I
have seen General Prim's name signed officially, Conde de Reus,
Marques de los Castillejos, Prim, J. Prim, Juan Prim, and Jean
Prim, changing the style as often as the humor strikes
him.
Their forms of
courtesy are, however, invariable. You can never visit a Spaniard
without his informing you that you are in your own house. If,
walking with him, you pass his residence, he asks you to enter
your house and unfatigue yourself a moment. If you happen upon
any Spaniard, of whatever class, at the hour of repast, he always
offers you his dinner; if you decline, it must be with polite
wishes for his digestion. With the Spaniards, no news is good
news; it is therefore civil to ask a Spaniard if his lady-wife
goes on without novelty,
50 CASTILIAN
DAYS
and to express your
profound gratification on being assured that she does. Their
forms of hospitality are evidently Moorish, derived from the
genuine open hand and open tent of the children of the desert;
now nothing is left of them but grave and decorous words. In the
old times, one who would have refused such offers would have been
held a churl; now one who would accept them would be regarded as
a boor.
There is still
something primitive about the Spanish servants. A flavor of the
old romances and the old comedy still hangs about them. They are
chatty and confidential to a degree that appalls a stiff and
formal Englishman of the upper middle class. The British servant
is a chilly and statuesque image of propriety. The French is an
intelligent and sympathizing friend. You can make of him what you
like. But the Italian, and still more the Spaniard, is as gay as
a child, and as incapable of intentional disrespect. The
Castilian grandee does not regard his dignity as in danger from a
moment's chat with a waiter. He has no conception of that
ferocious decorum we Anglo-Saxons require from our manservants
and our maidservants. The Spanish servant seems to regard it as
part of his
GARDENS OF THE ROYAL
PALACE, MADRID
SPANISH LIVING AND
DYING 51
duty to keep your
spirits gently excited while you dine by the gossip of the day.
He joins also in your discussions, whether they touch lightly on
the politics of the hour or plunge profoundly into the depths of
philosophic research. He laughs at your wit, and swings his
napkin with convulsions of mirth at your good stories. He tells
you the history of his life while you are breaking your egg, and
lays the story of his loves before you with your coffee. Yet he
is not intrusive. He will chatter on without waiting for a reply,
and when you are tired of him you can shut him off with a word.
There are few Spanish servants so uninteresting but that you can
find in them from time to time some sparks of that ineffable
light which shines forever in Sancho and Figaro.
The traditions of
subordination, which are the result of long centuries of tyranny,
have prevented the development of that feeling of independence
among the lower orders, which in a freer race finds its
expression in ill manners and discourtesy to superiors. I knew a
gentleman in the West whose circumstances had forced him to
become a waiter in a backwoods restaurant. He bore a deadly
grudge at the profession that kept him from starv-
52 CASTILIAN
DAYS
ing, and asserted
his unconquered nobility of soul by scowling at his customers and
swearing at the viands he dispensed. I remember the deep sense of
wrong with which he would growl, "Two buckwheats, begawd!" You
see nothing of this defiant spirit in Spanish servants. They are
heartily glad to find employment, and ask no higher good-fortune
than to serve acceptably. As to drawing comparisons between
themselves and their masters, they never seem to think they
belong to the same race. I saw a pretty grisette once stop to
look at a show-window where there was a lay-figure completely
covered with all manner of trusses. She gazed at it long and
earnestly, evidently thinking it was some new fashion just
introduced into the gay world. At last she tripped away with all
the grace of her unfettered limbs, saying, "If the fine ladies
have to wear all those machines, I am glad I am not made like
them."
Whether it be from
their more regular and active lives, or from their being unable
to pay for medical attendance, the poorer classes suffer less
from sickness than their betters. An ordinary Spaniard is sick
but once in his life, and that once is enough,--'twill serve. The
traditions of the old satires
SPANISH LIVING AND
DYING 53
which represented
the doctor and death as always hunting in couples still survive
in Spain. It is taken as so entirely a matter of course that a
patient must die that the law of the land imposed a heavy fine
upon physicians who did not bring a priest on their second visit.
His labor of exhortation and confession was rarely wasted. There
were few sufferers who recovered from the shock of that solemn
ceremony in their chambers. Medical science still labors in Spain
under the ban of ostracism, imposed in the days when all research
was impiety. The Inquisition clamored for the blood of Vesalius,
who had committed the crime of a demonstration in anatomy. He was
forced into a pilgrimage of expiation, and died on the way to
Palestine. The Church has always looked with a jealous eye upon
the inquirers, the innovators. Why these probes, these lancets,
these multifarious drugs, when the object in view could be so
much more easily obtained by the judicious application of masses
and prayers?
So it has come
about that the doctor is a Pariah, and miracles flourish in the
Peninsula. At every considerable shrine you will see the walls
covered with waxen models of feet, legs, hands, and
arms
54 CASTILIAN
DAYS
secured by the
miraculous interposition of the genius loci, and scores of
little crutches attesting the marvellous hour when they became
useless. Each shrine, like a mineral spring, has its own especial
virtue. A Santiago medal was better than quinine for ague. St.
Veronica's handkerchief is sovereign for sore eyes. A bone of St.
Magin supersedes the use of mercury. A finger-nail of San Frutos
cured at Segovia a case of congenital idiocy. The Virgin of
Oña acted as a vermifuge on royal infantas, and her girdle
at Tortosa smooths their passage into this world. In this age of
unfaith relics have lost much of their power. They turn out their
score or so of miracles every feast-day, it is true, but are no
longer capable of the tours de force of earlier days.
Cardinal de Retz saw with his eyes a man whose wooden legs were
turned to capering flesh and blood by the image of the Pillar of
Saragossa. But this was in the good old times before newspapers
and telegraphs had come to dispel the twilight of
belief.
Now, it is
excessively probable that neither doctor nor priest can do much
if the patient is hit in earnest. He soon succumbs, and is laid
out in his best clothes in an improvised chapel and duly
sped
SPANISH LIVING AND
DYING 55
on his way. The
custom of burying the dead in the gown and cowl of monks has
greatly passed into disuse. The mortal relics are treated with
growing contempt, as the superstitions of the people gradually
lose their concrete character. The soul is the important matter
which the Church now looks to. So the cold clay is carted off to
the cemetery with small ceremony. Even the coffins of the rich
are jammed away into receptacles too small for them, and hastily
plastered out of sight. The poor are carried off on trestles and
huddled into their nameless graves, without following or
blessing. Children are buried with some regard to the old
Oriental customs. The coffin is of some gay and cheerful color,
pink or blue, and is carried open to the grave by four of the
dead child's young companions, a fifth walking behind with the
ribboned coffin-lid. I have often seen these touching little
parties moving through the bustling streets, the peaceful small
face asleep under the open sky, decked with the fading roses and
withering lilies. In all well-to-do families the house of death
is deserted immediately after the funeral. The stricken ones
retire to some other habitation, and there pass eight days in
strict and inviolable seclusion. On
56 CASTILIAN
DAYS
the ninth day the
great masses for the repose of the soul of the departed are said
in the parish church, and all the friends of the family are
expected to be present. These masses are the most important and
expensive incident of the funeral. They cost from two hundred to
one thousand dollars, according to the strength and fervor of the
orisons employed. They are repeated several years on the
anniversary of the decease, and afford a most sure and nourishing
revenue to the Church. They are founded upon those feelings
inseparable from every human heart, vanity and affection. Our
dead friends must be as well prayed for as those of others, and
who knows but that they may be in deadly need of prayers! To
shorten their fiery penance by one hour, who would not fast for a
week? On these anniversaries a black-bordered advertisement
appears in the newspapers, headed by the sign of the cross and
the Requiescat in Pace, announcing that on this day twelve months
Don Fulano de Tal passed from earth garnished with the holy
sacraments, that all the masses this day celebrated in such and
such churches will be applied to the benefit of his spirit's
repose, and that all Christian friends are hereby requested to
commend his
THE BRIDGE OF SEGOVIA,
MADRID
SPANISH LIVING AND
DYING 57
soul this day unto
God. These efforts, if they do the dead no good, at least do the
living no harm.
A luxury of grief,
in those who can afford it, consists in shutting up the house
where a death has taken place and never suffering it to be opened
again. I once saw a beautiful house and wide garden thus
abandoned in one of the most fashionable streets of Madrid. I
inquired about it, and found it was formerly the residence of the
Duke of------. His wife had died there many years before, and
since that day not a door nor a window had been opened. The
garden gates were red and rough with rust. Grass grew tall and
rank in the gravelled walks. A thick lush undergrowth had overrun
the flower-beds and the lawns. The blinds were rotting over the
darkened windows. Luxuriant vines clambered over all the mossy
doors. The stucco was peeling from the walls in unwholesome
blotches. Wild birds sang all day in the safe solitude. There was
something impressive in this spot of mould and silence, lying
there so green and implacable in the very heart of a great and
noisy city. The duke lived in Paris, leading the rattling life of
a man of the world. He never would sell or let that Madrid house.
Perhaps in his heart also, that battered
58 CASTILIAN
DAYS
thoroughfare worn
by the pattering boots of Ma-bine and the Bois, and the Quartier
Breda, there was a green spot sacred to memory and silence, where
no footfall should ever light, where no living voice should ever
be heard, shut out from the world and its cares and its
pleasures, where through the gloom of dead days he could catch a
glimpse of a white hand, a flash of a dark eye, the rustle of a
trailing robe, and feel sweeping over him the old magic of love's
young dream, softening his fancy to tender regret and his eyes to
a happy mist--
"Like that which
kept the heart of Eden green Before the useful trouble of the
rain."
INFLUENCE OF
TRADITION IN SPANISH LIFE
INTELLIGENT
Spaniards with whom I have conversed on political matters have
often exclaimed, "Ah, you Americans are happy! you have no
traditions." The phrase was at first a puzzling one. We Americans
are apt to think we have traditions,--a rather clearly marked
line of precedents. And it is hard to see how a people should be
happier without them. It is not anywhere considered a misfortune
to have had a grandfather, I believe, and some very good folks
take an innocent pride in that very natural fact. It was not easy
to con-
60 CASTILIAN
DAYS
ceive why the
possession of a glorious history of many centuries should be
regarded as a drawback. But a closer observation of Spanish life
and thought reveals the curious and hurtful effect of tradition
upon every phase of existence.
In the commonest
events of every day you will find the flavor of past ages
lingering in petty annoyances. The insecurity of the middle ages
has left as a legacy to our times a complicated system of
obstacles to a man getting into his own house at night. I lived
in a pleasant house on the Prado, with a minute garden in front,
and an iron gate and railing. This gate was shut and locked by
the night watchman of the quarter at midnight,--so
conscientiously that he usually had everything snug by half past
eleven. As the same man had charge of a dozen or more houses, it
was scarcely reasonable to expect him to be always at your own
gate when you arrived. But by a singular fatality I think no man
ever found him in sight at any hour. He is always opening some
other gate or shutting some other door, or settling the affairs
of the nation with a friend in the next block, or carrying on a
chronic courtship at the lattice of some olive-cheeked soubrette
around the corner. Be that as
INFLUENCE OF TRADITION
61
it may, no one ever
found him on hand; and there is nothing to do but to sit down on
the curbstone and lift up your voice and shriek for him until he
comes. At two o'clock of a morning in January the exercise is not
improving to the larynx or the temper. There is a tradition in
the very name of this worthy. He is called the Sereno, because a
century or so ago he used to call the hour and the state of the
weather, and as the sky is almost always cloudless here, he got
the name of the Sereno, as the quail is called Bob White, from
much iteration. The Sereno opens your gate and the door of your
house. When you come to your own floor you must ring, and your
servant takes a careful survey of you through a latticed
peep-hole before he will let you in. You may positively forbid
this every day in the year, but the force of habit is too strong
in the Spanish mind to suffer amendment.
This absurd custom
comes evidently down from a time of great lawlessness and
license, when no houses were secure without these precautions,
when people rarely stirred from their doors after nightfall, and
when a door was never opened to a stranger. Now, when no such
dangers exist, the
62 CASTILIAN
DAYS
annoying and
senseless habit still remains, because no one dreams of changing
anything which their fathers thought proper. Three hundred
thousand people in Madrid submit year after year to this nightly
cross, and I have never heard a voice raised in protest, nor even
in defence of the custom.
There is often a
bitterness of opposition to evident improvement which is hard to
explain. In the last century, when the eminent naturalist Bowles
went down to the Almadén silver-mines, by appointment of
the government, to see what was the cause of their exhaustion, he
found that they had been worked entirely in perpendicular shafts
instead of following the direction of the veins. He perfected a
plan for working them in this simple and reasonable way, and no
earthly power could make the Spanish miners obey his orders.
There was no precedent for this new process, and they would not
touch it. They preferred starvation rather than offend the memory
of their fathers by a change. At last they had to be dismissed
and a full force imported from Germany, under whose hands the
mines became instantly enormously productive.
I once asked a very
intelligent English contractor
INFLUENCE OF TRADITION
63
why he used no
wheelbarrows in his work. He had some hundreds of stalwart
navvies employed carrying dirt in small wicker baskets to an
embankment. He said the men would not use them. Some said it
broke their backs. Others discovered a capital way of amusing
themselves by putting the barrow on their heads and whirling the
wheel as rapidly as possible with their hands. This was a game
which never grew stale. The contractor gave up in despair, and
went back to the baskets. But it is in the official regions that
tradition is most powerful. In the budget of 1870 there was a
curious chapter called "Charges of Justice." This consisted of a
collection of articles appropriating large sums of money for the
payment of feudal taxes to the great aristocracy of the kingdom
as a compensation for long extinct seigniories. The Duke of Rivas
got thirteen hundred dollars for carrying the mail to Victoria.
The Duke of San Carlos draws ten thousand dollars for carrying
the royal correspondence to the Indies. Of course this service
ceased to belong to these families some centuries ago, but the
salary is still paid. The Duke of Almodovar is well paid for
supplying the baton of office to the Alguazil of Cordova.
The Duke of
64 CASTILIAN
DAYS
Osuna--one of the
greatest grandees of the kingdom, a gentleman who has the right
to wear seventeen hats in the presence of the Queen--receives
fifty thousand dollars a year for imaginary feudal services. The
Count of Altamira, who, as his name indicates, is a gentleman of
high views, receives as a salve for the suppression of his fief
thirty thousand dollars a year. In consideration of this sum he
surrenders, while it is punctually paid, the privilege of hanging
his neighbors.
When the budget was
discussed, a Republican member gently criticised this chapter;
but his amendment for an investigation of these charges was
indignantly rejected. He was accused of a shocking want of
Españolismo. He was thought to have no feeling in his
heart for the glories of Spain. The respectability of the Chamber
could find but one word injurious enough to express their
contempt for so shameless a proposition; they said it was little
better than socialism. The "charges" were all voted. Spain,
tottering on the perilous verge of bankruptcy, her schoolmasters
not paid for months, her sinking fund plundered, her credit gone
out of sight, borrowing every cent she spends at thirty per
cent., is proud
THE ROYAL PALACE,
MADRID
INFLUENCE OF TRADITION
65
of the privilege of
paying into the hands of her richest and most useless class this
gratuity of twelve million reals simply because they are
descended from the robber chiefs of the darker ages. There is a
curious little comedy played by the family of Medina Celi at
every new coronation of a king of Spain. The duke claims to be
the rightful heir to the throne. He is descended from Prince
Ferdinand, who, dying before his father, Don Alonso X., left his
babies exposed to the cruel kindness of their uncle Sancho, who,
to save them the troubles of the throne, assumed it himself and
transmitted it to his children,--all this some half dozen
centuries ago. At every coronation the duke formally protests; an
athletic and sinister-looking court headsman comes down to his
palace in the Carrera San Gerónimo, and by threats of
immediate decapitation induces the duke to sign a paper
abdicating his rights to the throne of all the Spains. The duke
eats the Bourbon leek with inward profanity, and feels that he
has done a most clever and proper thing. This performance is
apparently his only object and mission in life. This one
sacrifice to tradition is what he is born for.
66 CASTILIAN
DAYS
The most important
part of a Spaniard's signature is the rubrica or flourish
with which it closes. The monarch's hand is set to public acts
exclusively by this parafe. This evidently dates from the
time when none but priests could write. In Madrid the mule-teams
are driven tandem through the wide streets, because this was
necessary in the ages when the streets were narrow.
There is even a
show of argument sometimes to justify an adherence to things as
they are. About a century ago there was an effort made by people
who had lived abroad, and so become conscious of the possession
of noses, to have the streets of Madrid cleaned. The proposition
was at first received with apathetic contempt, but when the
innovators persevered they met the earnest and successful
opposition of all classes. The Cas-tilian savans gravely
reported that the air of Madrid, which blew down from the snowy
Guadarra-mas, was so thin and piercing that it absolutely needed
the gentle corrective of the ordure-heaps to make it fit for
human lungs.
There is no nation
in Europe in which so little washing is done. I do not think it
is because the Spaniards do not want to be neat. They are,
on
INFLUENCE OF TRADITION
67
the whole, the
best-dressed people on the Continent. The hate of ablutions
descends from those centuries of warfare with the Moors. The
heathens washed themselves daily; therefore a Christian should
not. The monks, who were too lazy to bathe, taught their
followers to be filthy by precept and example. Water was never to
be applied externally except in baptism. It was a treacherous
element, and dallying with it had gotten Bathsheba and Susanna
into no end of trouble. So when the cleanly infidels were driven
out of Granada, the pious and hydrophobic Cardinal Ximenez
persuaded the Catholic sovereigns to destroy the abomination of
baths they left behind. Until very recently the Spanish mind has
been unable to separate a certain idea of immorality from
bathing. When Madame Daunoy, one of the sprightliest of
observers, visited the court of Philip IV., she found it was
considered shocking among the ladies of the best society to wash
the face and hands. Once or twice a week they would glaze their
pretty visages with the white of an egg. Of late years this
prejudice has given way somewhat; but it has lasted longer than
any monument in Spain.
These, however, are
but trivial manifestations
68 CASTILIAN
DAYS
of that power of
tradition which holds the Spanish intellect imprisoned as in a
vice of iron. The whole life of the nation is fatally influenced
by this blind reverence for things that have been. It may be said
that by force of tradition Christian morality has been driven
from individual life by religion, and honesty has been supplanted
as a rule of public conduct by honor,--a wretched substitute in
either case, and irreconcilably at war with the spirit of the
age.
The growth of this
double fanaticism is easily explained; it is the result of
centuries of religious wars. From the hour when Pelayo, the first
of the Asturian kings, successfully met and repulsed the hitherto
victorious Moors in his rocky fortress of Covadonga, to the day
when Boabdil the Unlucky saw for the last time through streaming
tears the vermilion towers of Alhambra crowned with the banner of
the cross, there was not a year of peace in Spain. No other
nation has had such an experience. Seven centuries of constant
warfare, with three thousand battles; this is the startling
epitome of Spanish history from the Mahometan conquest to the
reign of Ferdinand and Isabella. In this vast war there was laid
the foundation of the national character of to-day.
INFLUENCE OF TRADITION
69
Even before the
conquering Moslem crossed from Africa, Spain was the most deeply
religious country in Europe; and by this I mean the country in
which the Church was most powerful in its relations with the
State. When the Council of Toledo, in 633, received the king of
Castile, he fell on his face at the feet of the bishops before
venturing to address them. When the hosts of Islam had overspread
the Peninsula, and the last remnant of Christianity had taken
refuge in the inaccessible hills of the northwest, the richest
possession they carried into these inviolate fastnesses was a
chest of relics,--knuckle-bones of apostles and splinters of true
crosses, in which they trusted more than in mortal arms. The
Church had thus a favorable material to work upon in the years of
struggle that followed. The circumstances all lent themselves to
the scheme of spiritual domination. The fight was for the cross
against the crescent; the symbol of the quarrel was visible and
tangible. The Spaniards were poor and ignorant and credulous. The
priests were enough superior to lead and guide them, and not so
far above them as to be out of the reach of their sympathies and
their love. They marched with them. They shared their
toils
70 CASTILIAN
DAYS
and dangers. They
stimulated their hate of the enemy. They taught them that their
cruel anger was the holy wrath of God. They held the keys of
eternal weal or woe, and rewarded subservience to the priestly
power with promises of everlasting felicity; while the least
symptom of rebellion in thought or action was punished with swift
death and the doom of endless flames. There was nothing in the
Church which the fighting Spaniard could recognize as a reproach
to himself. It was as bitter, as brave, as fierce, and revengeful
as he. His credulity regarded it as divine, and worthy of blind
adoration, and his heart went out to it with the sympathy of
perfect love.
In these centuries
of war there was no commerce, no manufactures, no settled
industry of importance among the Spaniards. There was
consequently no wealth, none of that comfort and ease which is
the natural element of doubt and discussion. Science did not
exist. The little learning of the time was exclusively in the
hands of the priesthood. If from time to time an intelligent
spirit struggled against the chain of unquestioning bigotry that
bound him, he was rigorously silenced by prompt and bloody
punishment. There seemed
INFLUENCE OF TRADITION
71
to be no need of
discussion, no need of inculcation of doctrine. The serious work
of the time was the war with the infidel. The clergy managed
everything. The question, "What shall I do to be saved?" never
entered into those simple and ignorant minds. The Church would
take care of those who did her bidding.
Thus it was that in
the hammering of those struggling ages the nation became welded
together in one compact mass of unquestioning, unreasoning faith,
which the Church could manage at its own good
pleasure.
It was also in
these times that Spanish honor took its rise. This sentiment is
so nearly connected with that of personal loyalty that they may
be regarded as phases of the same monarchical spirit. The rule of
honor as distinguished from honesty and virtue is the most
prominent characteristic of monarchy, and for that reason the
political theorists from the time of Montesquieu have pronounced
in favor of the monarchy as a more practicable form of government
than the republic, as requiring a less perfect and delicate
machinery, men of honor being far more common than men of virtue.
As in Spain, owing to special conditions, monarchy attained
the
72 CASTILIAN
DAYS
most perfect growth
and development which the world has seen, the sentiment of honor,
as a rule of personal and political action, has there reached its
most exaggerated form. I use this word, of course, in its
restricted meaning of an intense sense of personal dignity, and
readiness to sacrifice for this all considerations of interest
and morality.
This phase of the
Spanish character is probably derived in its germ from the Gothic
blood of their ancestors. Their intense self-assertion has been,
in the Northern races, modified by the progress of intelligence
and the restraints of municipal law into a spirit of sturdy
self-respect and a disinclination to submit to wrong. The Goths
of Spain have unfortunately never gone through this civilizing
process. Their endless wars never gave an opportunity for the
development of the purely civic virtues of respect and obedience
to law. The people at large were too wretched, too harried by
constant coming and going of the waves of war, to do more than
live, in a shiftless, hand-to-mouth way, from the proceeds of
their flocks and herds. There were no cities of importance within
the Spanish lines. There was no opportunity for the growth of the
true burgher spirit.
SALON DE LOS REYES
CATÓLICOS, ARANJUEZ
INFLUENCE OF TRADITION
73
There was no law to
speak of in all these years except the twin despotism of the
Church and the king. If there had been dissidence between them it
might have been better for the people. But up to late years there
has never been a quarrel between the clergy and the crown. Their
interests were so identified that the dual tyranny was stronger
than even a single one could have been. The crown always lending
to the Church when necessary the arm of flesh, and the Church
giving to the despotism of the sceptre the sanction of spiritual
authority, an absolute power was established over body and
soul.
The spirit of
individual independence inseparable from Gothic blood being thus
forced out of its natural channels of freedom of thought and
municipal liberty, it remained in the cavaliers of the army of
Spain in the same barbarous form which it had held in the
Northern forests,--a physical self-esteem and a readiness to
fight on the slightest provocation. This did not interfere with
the designs of the Church and was rather a useful engine against
its enemies. The absolute power of the crown kept the spirit of
feudal arrogance in check while the pressure of a com-
74 CASTILIAN
DAYS
mon danger existed.
The close cohesion which was so necessary in camp and Church
prevented the tendency to disintegration, while the right of life
and death was freely exercised by the great lords on their
distant estates without interference. The predominating power of
the crown was too great and too absolute to result in the
establishment of any fixed principle of obedience to law. The
union of crozier and sceptre had been, if anything, too
successful. The king was so far above the nobility that there was
no virtue in obeying him. His commission was divine, and he was
no more confined by human laws than the stars and the comets. The
obedience they owed and paid him was not respect to law. It
partook of the character of religious worship, and left untouched
and untamed in their savage hearts the instinct of resistance to
all earthly claims of authority.
Such was the
condition of the public spirit of Spain at the beginning of that
wonderful series of reigns from Ferdinand and Isabella to their
great-grandson Philip II., which in less than a century raised
Spain to the summit of greatness and built up a realm on which
the sun never set. All the events of these prodigious reigns
contributed to
INFLUENCE OF TRADITION
75
increase and
intensify the national traits to which we have referred. The
discovery of America flooded Europe with gold, and making the
better class of Spaniards the richest people in the world
naturally heightened their pride and arrogance. The long and
eventful religious wars of Charles V. and Philip II. gave
employment and distinction to thousands of families whose vanity
was nursed by the royal favor, and whose ferocious self-will was
fed and pampered by the blood of heretics and the spoil of
rebels.
The national
qualities of superstition and pride made the whole cavalier class
a wieldy and effective weapon in the hands of the monarch, and
the use he made of them reacted upon these very traits,
intensifying and affirming them.
So terrible was
this absolute command of the spiritual and physical forces of the
kingdom possessed by the monarchs of that day, that when the
Reformation flashed out, a beacon in the northern sky of
political and religious freedom to the world, its light could not
penetrate into Spain. There was a momentary struggle there, it is
true. But so apathetic was the popular mind that the effort to
bring it into sympathy with the vast movement
76 CASTILIAN
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of the age was
hopeless from the beginning. The axe and the fagot made rapid
work of the heresy. After only ten years of burnings and
beheadings Philip II. could boast that not a heretic lived in his
borders.
Crazed by his
success and his unquestioned omnipotence at home, and drunken
with the delirious dream that God's wrath was breathing through
him upon a revolted world, he essayed to crush heresy throughout
Europe; and in this mad and awful crime his people undoubtingly
seconded him. In this he failed, the stars in their courses
fighting against him, the God that his worship slandered taking
sides against him. But history records what rivers of blood he
shed in the long and desperate fight, and how lovingly and
adoringly his people sustained him. He killed, in cold blood,
some forty thousand harmless people for their faith, besides the
vastly greater number whose lives he took in battle.
Yet this horrible
monster, who is blackened with every crime at which humanity
shudders, who had no grace of manhood, no touch of humanity, no
gleam of sympathy which could redeem the gloomy picture of his
ravening life, was be-
INFLUENCE OF TRADITION
77
loved and
worshipped as few men have been since the world has stood. The
common people mourned him at his death with genuine unpaid sobs
and tears. They will weep even yet at the story of his edifying
death,--this monkish vampire breathing his last with his eyes
fixed on the cross of the mild Nazarene, and tormented with
impish doubts as to whether he had drunk blood enough to fit him
for the company of the just!
His successors
rapidly fooled away the stupendous empire that had filled the
sixteenth century with its glory. Spain sank from the position of
ruler of the world and queen of the seas to the place of a
second-rate power, by reason of the weakening power of
superstition and bad government, and because the people and the
chieftains had never learned the lesson of law.
The clergy lost no
tittle of their power. They went on, gayly roasting their
heretics and devouring the substance of the people, more
prosperous than ever in those days of national decadence. Philip
III. gave up the government entirely to the Duke of Lerma, who
formed an alliance with the Church, and they led together a
joyous life. In the succeeding reign the Church had become
such
78 CASTILIAN
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a gnawing cancer
upon the state that the servile Cortes had the pluck to protest
against its inroads. There were in 1626 nine thousand monasteries
for men, besides nunneries. There were thirty-two thousand
Dominican and Franciscan friars. In the diocese of Seville alone
there were fourteen thousand chaplains. There was a panic in the
land. Every one was rushing to get into holy orders. The Church
had all the bread. Men must be monks or starve. Zelus domus
tuae come-dit me, writes the British ambassador, detailing
these facts.
We must remember
that this was the age when the vast modern movement of inquiry
and investigation was beginning. Bacon was laying in England the
foundations of philosophy, casting with his prophetic
intelligence the horoscope of unborn sciences. Descartes was
opening new vistas of thought to the world. But in Spain, while
the greatest names of her literature occur at this time, they
aimed at no higher object than to amuse their betters. Cervantes
wrote Quixote, but he died in a monk's hood; and Lope de Vega was
a familiar of the Inquisition. The sad story of the mind of Spain
in this momentous period may be written in
INFLUENCE OF TRADITION
79
one
word,--everybody believed and nobody inquired.
The country sank
fast into famine and anarchy. The madness of the monks and the
folly of the king expelled the Moors in 1609, and the loss of a
million of the best mechanics and farmers of Spain struck the
nation with a torpor like that of death. In 1650 Sir Edward Hyde
wrote that "affairs were in huge disorder." People murdered each
other for a loaf of bread. The marine perished for want of
sailors. In the stricken land nothing flourished but the rabble
of monks and the royal authority.
This is the curious
fact. The Church and the Crown had brought them to this misery,
yet better than their lives the Spaniards loved the Church and
the Crown. A word against either would have cost any man his life
in those days. The old alliance still hung together firmly. The
Church bullied and dragooned the king in private, but it valued
his despotic power too highly ever to slight it in public. There
was something superhuman about the faith and veneration with
which the people, and the aristocracy as well, regarded the
person of the king. There was somewhat of
80 CASTILIAN
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gloomy and
ferocious dignity about Philip II. which might easily bring a
courtier to his knees; but how can we account for the equal
reverence that was paid to the ninny Philip III., the debauched
trifler Philip IV., and the drivelling idiot Charles
II.?
Yet all of these
were invested with the same attributes of the divine. Their
hands, like those of Midas, had the gift of making anything they
touched too precious for mortal use. A horse they had mounted
could never be ridden again. A woman they had loved must enter a
nunnery when they were tired of her.
When Buckingham
came down to Spain with Charles of England, the Conde-Duque of
Olivares was shocked and scandalized at the relation of
confidential friendship that existed between the prince and the
duke. The world never saw a prouder man than Olivares. His
picture by Velazquez hangs side by side with that of his royal
master in Madrid. You see at a glance that the count-duke is the
better man physically, mentally, morally. But he never dreamed
it. He thought in his inmost heart that the best thing about him
was the favor of the worthless fribble whom he
governed.
INFLUENCE OF TRADITION
81
Through all the
vicissitudes of Spanish history the force of these married
superstitions--reverence for the Church as distinguished from the
fear of God, and reverence for the king as distinguished from
respect for law--have been the ruling characteristics of the
Spanish mind. Among the fatal effects of this has been the
extinction of rational piety and rational patriotism. If a man
was not a good Catholic he was pretty sure to be an atheist. If
he did not honor the king he was an outlaw. The wretched story of
Spanish dissensions beyond seas, and the loss of the vast
American empire, is distinctly traceable to the exaggerated
sentiment of personal honor, unrestrained by the absolute
authority of the crown. It seems impossible for the Spaniard of
history and tradition to obey anything out of his sight. The
American provinces have been lost one by one through petty
quarrels and colonial rivalries. At the first word of dispute
their notion of honor obliges them to fly to arms, and when blood
has been shed reconciliation is impossible. So weak is the
principle of territorial loyalty, that whenever the Peninsula
government finds it necessary to overrule some violence of its
own soldiers, these find no difficulty in marching
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over to the
insurrection, or raising a fresh rebellion of their own. So
little progress has there been in Spain from the middle ages to
to-day in true political science, that we see such butchers as
Caballero and Valmaseda repeating to-day the crimes and follies
of Cortes and Pamfilo Narvaez, of Pizarro and Almagro, and the
revolt of the bloodthirsty volunteers of the Havana is only a
question of time.
It is true that in
later years there has been the beginning of a better system of
thought and discussion in Spain. But the old tradition still
holds its own gallantly in Church and state. Nowhere in the world
are the forms of religion so rigidly observed, and the precepts
of Christian morality less regarded. The most facile beauties in
Madrid are severe as Minervas on Holy Thursday. I have seen a
dozen fast men at the door of a gambling-house fall on their
knees in the dust as the Host passed by in the street. Yet the
fair were no less frail and the señoritos were no less
profligate for this unfeigned reverence for the outside of the
cup and platter.
In the domain of
politics there is still the lamentable disproportion between
honor and honesty. A
NEW MADRID
INFLUENCE OF TRADITION
83
high functionary
cares nothing if the whole Salon del Prado talks of his
pilferings, but he will risk his life in an instant if you call
him no gentleman. The word "honor" is still used in all
legislative assemblies, even in England and America. But the idea
has gone by the board in all democracies, and the word means no
more than the chamberlain's sword or the speaker's mace. The only
criterion which the statesman of the nineteenth century applies
to public acts is that of expediency and legality. The first
question is, "Is it lawful?" the second, "Does it pay?" Both of
these are questions of fact, and as such susceptible of
discussion and proof. The question of honor and religion carries
us at once into the realm of sentiment where no demonstration is
possible. But this is where every question is planted from the
beginning in Spanish politics. Every public matter presents
itself under this form: "Is it consistent with Spanish honor?"
and "Will it be to the advantage of the Roman Catholic Apostolic
Church?" Now, nothing is consistent with Spanish honor which does
not recognize the Spain of to-day as identical with the Spain of
the sixteenth century, and the bankrupt government of
Madrid
84 CASTILIAN
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as equal in
authority to the world-wide autocracy of Charles V. And nothing
is thought to be to the advantage of the Church which does not
tend to the concubinage of the spiritual and temporal power, and
to the muzzling of speech and the drugging of the mind to
sleep.
Let any proposition
be made which touches this traditional susceptibility of race, no
matter how sensible or profitable it may be, and you hear in the
Cortes and the press, and, louder than all, among the idle
cavaliers of the cafés, the wildest denunciations
of the treason that would consent to look at things as they are.
The men who have ventured to support the common-sense view are
speedily stormed into silence or timid self-defence. The sword of
Guzman is brandished in the Chambers, the name of Pelayo is
invoked, the memory of the Cid is awakened, and the proposition
goes out in a blaze of patriotic pyrotechnics, to the intense
satisfaction of the unthinking and the grief of the judicious.
The señoritos go back to the serious business of their
lives--coffee and cigarettes--with a genuine glow of pride in a
country which is capable of the noble self-sacrifice of cutting
off its nose to spite somebody else's face.
INFLUENCE OF TRADITION
85
But I repeat, the
most favorable sign of the times is that this tyranny of
tradition is losing its power. A great deal was done by the
single act of driving out the queen. This was a blow at
superstition which gave to the whole body politic a most salutary
shock. Never before in Spain had a revolution been directed at
the throne. Before it was always an obnoxious ministry that was
to be driven out. The monarch remained; and the exiled outlaw of
to-day might be premier to-morrow. But the fall of Novaliches at
the Bridge of Alcolea decided the fate not only of the ministry
but of the dynasty; and while General Concha was waiting for the
train to leave Madrid, Isabel of Bourbon and Divine Right were
passing the Pyrenees.
Although the moral
power of the Church is still so great, the incorporation of
freedom of worship in the constitution of 1869 has been followed
by a really remarkable development of freedom of thought. The
proposition was regarded by some with horror and by others with
contempt. One of the most enlightened statesmen in Spain once
said to me, "The provision for freedom of worship in the
constitution is a mere abstract proposition,--
86 CASTILIAN
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it can never have
any practical value except for foreigners. I cannot conceive of a
Spaniard being anything but a Catholic." And so powerful was this
impression in the minds of the deputies that the article only
accords freedom of worship to foreigners in Spain, and adds,
hypothetically, that if any Spaniards should profess any other
religion than the Catholic, they are entitled to the same liberty
as foreigners. The Inquisition has been dead half a century, but
you can see how its ghost still haunts the official mind of
Spain. It is touching to see how the broken links of the chain of
superstition still hang about even those who imagine they are
defying it. As in their Christian burials, following unwittingly
the example of the hated Moors, they bear the corpse with
uncovered face to the grave, and follow it with the funeral torch
of the Romans, so the formula of the Church clings even to the
mummery of the atheists. Not long ago in Madrid a man and woman
who belonged to some fantastic order which rejected religion and
law had a child born to them in the course of things, and
determined that it should begin life free from the taint of
superstition. It should not be christened, it should be named, in
the Name of
INFLUENCE OF TRADITION
87
Reason. But they
could not break loose from the idea of baptism. They poured a
bottle of water on the shivering nape of the poor little
neophyte, and its frail life went out in its first wheezing
week.
But in spite of all
this a spirit of religious inquiry is growing up in Spain, and
the Church sees it and cannot prevent it. It watches the liberal
newspapers and the Protestant prayer-meetings much as the old
giant in Bunyan's dream glared at the passing pilgrims, mumbling
and muttering toothless curses. It looks as if the dead sleep of
uniformity of thought were to be broken at last, and Spain were
to enter the healthful and vivifying atmosphere of
controversy.
Symptoms of a
similar change may be seen in the world of politics. The
Republican party is only a year or two old, but what a vigorous
and noisy infant it is! With all its faults and errors, it seems
to have the promise of a sturdy and wholesome future. It refuses
to be bound by the memories of the past, but keeps its eyes fixed
on the brighter possibilities to come. Its journals, undeterred
by the sword of Guzman or the honor of all the Caballeros,--the
men on horseback,--are advo-
88 CASTILIAN
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eating such
sensible measures as justice to the Antilles, and the sale of
outlying property, which costs more than it produces. Emilio
Castelar, casting behind him all the restraints of tradition,
announces as his idea of liberty "the right of all citizens to
obey nothing but the law." There is no sounder doctrine than this
preached in Manchester or Boston. If the Spanish people can be
brought to see that God is greater than the Church, and that the
law is above the king, the day of final deliverance is at
hand.
TAUROMACHY
THE bull-fight is
the national festival of Spain. The rigid Britons have had their
fling at it for many years. The effeminate badaud of Paris
has declaimed against its barbarity. Even the aristocracy of
Spain has begun to suspect it of vulgarity and to withdraw from
the arena the light of its noble countenance. But the Spanish
people still hold it to their hearts and refuse to be weaned from
it.
"As Panem et
Circenses was the cry Among the Roman populace of old, So Pan y
Toros is the cry in Spain."
It is a tradition
which has passed into their national existence. They received it
from nowhere. They
90 CASTILIAN
DAYS
have transmitted it
nowhither except to their own colonies. In late years an effort
has been made to transplant it, but with small success. There
were a few bull-fights four years ago at Havre. There was a
sensation of curiosity which soon died away. This year in London
the experiment was tried, but was hooted out of existence, to the
great displeasure of the Spanish journals, who said the ferocious
Islanders would doubtless greatly prefer baiting to death a half
dozen Irish serfs from the estate of Lord Fritters,--a gentle
diversion in which we are led to believe the British peers pass
their leisure hours.
It is this monopoly
of the bull-fight which so endears it to the Spanish heart. It is
to them conclusive proof of the vast superiority of both the
human and taurine species in Spain. The eminent torero, Pepe
Illo, said: "The love of bulls is inherent in man, especially in
the Spaniard, among which glorious people there have been
bull-fights ever since bulls were, because," adds Pepe, with that
modesty which forms so charming a trait of the Iberian character,
"the Spanish men are as much more brave than all other men, as
the Spanish bull is more savage and valiant than all other
bulls."
TAUROMACHY
91
The sport permeates
the national life. I have seen it woven into the tapestry of
palaces, and rudely stamped on the handkerchief of the peasant.
It is the favorite game of children in the street. Loyal Spain
was thrilled with joy recently on reading in its Paris
correspondence that when the exiled Prince of Asturias went for a
half-holiday to visit his imperial comrade at the Tuileries, the
urchins had a game of "toro" on the terrace, admirably conducted
by the little Bourbon and followed up with great spirit by the
little Montijo-Bonaparte.
The bull-fight has
not always enjoyed the royal favor. Isabel the Catholic would
fain have abolished bathing and bull-fighting together. The
Spaniards, who willingly gave up their ablutions, stood stoutly
by their bulls, and the energetic queen was baffled. Again when
the Bourbons came in with Philip V., the courtiers turned up
their thin noses at the coarse diversion, and induced the king to
abolish it. It would not stay abolished, however, and Philip's
successor built the present coliseum in expiation. The spectacle
has, nevertheless, lost much of its early splendor by the
hammering of time. Formerly the gayest and bravest gentlemen of
the court, mounted on the best horses
92 CASTILIAN
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in the kingdom,
went into the arena and defied the bull in the names of their
lady-loves. Now the bull is baited and slain by hired artists,
and the horses they mount are the sorriest hacks that ever went
to the knacker.
One of the most
brilliant shows of the kind that was ever put upon the scene was
the Festival of Bulls given by Philip IV. in honor of Charles
I.,
"When the Stuart
came from far, Led by his love's sweet pain, To Mary, the guiding
star That shone in the heaven of Spain."
And the memory of
that dazzling occasion was renewed by Ferdinand VII. in the year
of his death, when he called upon his subjects to swear
allegiance to his baby Isabel. This festival took place in the
Plaza Mayor. The king and court occupied the same balconies which
Charles and his royal friend and model had filled two centuries
before. The champions were poor nobles, of good blood but scanty
substance, who fought for glory and pensions, and had quadrilles
of well-trained bull-fighters at their stirrups to prevent the
farce from becoming tragedy. The royal life of Isabel of Bourbon
was inaugurated by the spilled blood of
TAUROMACHY
93
one hundred bulls
save one. The gory prophecy of that day has been well sustained.
Not one year has passed since then free from blood shed in her
cause.
But these
extraordinary attractions are not necessary to make a festival of
bulls the most seductive of all pleasures to a Spaniard. On any
pleasant Sunday afternoon, from Easter to All Souls, you have
only to go into the street to see that there is some great
excitement fusing the populace into one living mass of sympathy.
All faces are turned one way, all minds are filled with one
purpose. From the Puerta del Sol down the wide Alcalá a
vast crowd winds, solid as a glacier and bright as a
kaleidoscope. From the grandee in his blazoned carriage to the
manóla in her calico gown, there is no class
unrepresented. Many a red hand grasps the magic ticket which is
to open the realm of enchantment to-day, and which represents
short commons for a week before. The pawnbrokers' shops have been
very animated for the few preceding days. There is nothing too
precious to be parted with for the sake of the bulls. Many of
these smart girls have made the ultimate sacrifice for that
coveted scrap of paper. They would leave
94 CASTILIAN
DAYS
one their mother's
cross with the children of Israel rather than not go. It is no
cheap entertainment. The worst places in the broiling sun cost
twenty cents, four reals; and the boxes are sold usually at
fifteen dollars. These prices are necessary to cover the heavy
expenses of bulls, horses, and gladiators.
The way to the
bull-ring is one of indescribable animation. The cabmen drive
furiously this day their broken-kneed nags, who will soon be
found on the horns of the bulls, for this is the natural death of
the Madrid cab-horse; the omnibus teams dash gayly along with
their shrill chime of bells; there are the rude jests of clowns
and the high voices of excited girls; the water-venders droning
their tempting cry, "Cool as the snow!" the sellers of fans and
the merchants of gingerbread picking up their harvests in the hot
and hungry crowd.
The Plaza de Toros
stands just outside the monumental gate of the Alcalá. It
is a low, squat, prison-like circus of stone, stuccoed and
whitewashed, with no pretence of ornament or architectural
effect. There is no nonsense whatever about it. It is built for
the killing of bulls and for no other purpose. Around it, on a
day of battle, you
ENTRANCE TO THE
BULL-RING, MADRID
TAUROMACHY
95
will find encamped
great armies of the lower class of Madrileños, who, being
at financial ebb-tide, cannot pay to go in. But they come all the
same, to be in the enchanted neighborhood, to hear the shouts and
roars of the favored ones within, and to seize any possible
occasion for getting in. Who knows? A caballero may come out and
give them his check. An English lady may become disgusted and go
home, taking away numerous lords whose places will be vacant. The
sky may fall, and they may catch four reals' worth of larks. It
is worth taking the chances.
One does not soon
forget the first sight of the full coliseum. In the centre is the
sanded arena, surrounded by a high barrier. Around this rises the
graded succession of stone benches for the people; then numbered
seats for the connoisseurs; and above a row of boxes extending
around the circle. The building holds, when full, some fourteen
thousand persons; and there is rarely any vacant space. For
myself I can say that what I vainly strove to imagine in the
coliseum at Rome, and in the more solemn solitude of the
amphitheatres of Capua and Pompeii, came up before me with the
vividness of life on entering the bull-ring
96 CASTILIAN
DAYS
of Madrid. This,
and none other, was the classic arena. This was the crowd that
sat expectant, under the blue sky, in the hot glare of the South,
while the doomed captives of Dacia or the sectaries of Judea
commended their souls to the gods of the Danube, or the Crucified
of Galilee. Half the sand lay in the blinding sun. Half the seats
were illuminated by the fierce light. The other half was in
shadow, and the dark crescent crept slowly all the afternoon
across the arena as the sun declined in the west.
It is hard to
conceive a more brilliant scene. The women put on their gayest
finery for this occasion. In the warm light, every bit of color
flashes out, every combination falls naturally into its place. I
am afraid the luxuriance of hues in the dress of the fair
Iberians would be considered shocking in Broadway, but in the
vast frame and broad light of the Plaza the effect was very
brilliant. Thousands of party-colored paper fans are sold at the
ring. The favorite colors are the national red and yellow, and
the fluttering of these broad, bright disks of color is
dazzlingly attractive. There is a gayety of conversation, a quick
fire of repartee, shouts of recognition and salutation, which
altogether make up a bewildering confusion.
TAUROMACHY
97
The weary young
water-men scream their snow-cold refreshment. The orange-men walk
with their gold-freighted baskets along the barrier, and throw
their oranges with the most marvellous skill and certainty to
people in distant boxes or benches. They never miss their mark.
They will throw over the heads of a thousand people a dozen
oranges into the outstretched hands of customers, so swiftly that
it seems like one line of gold from the dealer to the
buyer.
At length the blast
of a trumpet announces the clearing of the ring. The idlers who
have been lounging in the arena are swept out by the alguaciles,
and the hum of conversation gives way to an expectant silence.
When the last loafer has reluctantly retired, the great gate is
thrown open, and the procession of the toreros enters. They
advance in a glittering line: first the marshals of the day, then
the picadors on horseback, then the matadors on foot surrounded
each by his quadrille of chulos. They walk towards the box which
holds the city fathers, under whose patronage the show is given,
and formally salute the authority. This is all very classic,
also, recalling the Ave Caesar, morituri, etc., of the
gladiators. It lacks, however, the solemnity
98 CASTILIAN
DAYS
of the Roman
salute, from those splendid fellows who would never all leave the
arena alive. A bullfighter is sometimes killed, it is true, but
the percentage of deadly danger is scarcely enough to make a
spectator's heart beat as the bedizened procession comes flashing
by in the sun.
The municipal
authority throws the bowing alguacil a key, which he catches in
his hat, or is hissed if he misses it. With this he unlocks the
door through which the bull is to enter, and then scampers off
with undignified haste through the opposite entrance. There is a
bugle flourish, the door flies open, and the bull rushes out,
blind with the staring light, furious with rage, trembling in
every limb. This is the most intense moment of the day. The
glorious brute is the target of twelve thousand pairs of eyes.
There is a silence as of death, while every one waits to see his
first movement. He is doomed from the beginning; the curtain has
risen on a three-act tragedy, which will surely end with his
death, but the incidents which are to fill the interval are all
unknown. The minds and eyes of all that vast assembly know
nothing for the time but the movements of that brute. He stands
for an instant recovering
THE
PROCESSION
TAUROMACHY
99
his senses. He has
been shot suddenly out of the darkness into that dazzling light.
He sees around him a sight such as he never confronted before,--a
wall of living faces lit up by thousands of staring eyes. He does
not dwell long upon this, however; in his pride and anger he sees
a nearer enemy. The horsemen have taken position near the gate,
where they sit motionless as burlesque statues, their long ashen
spears, iron-tipped, in rest, their wretched nags standing
blindfolded, with trembling knees, and necks like dromedaries,
not dreaming of their near fate. The bull rushes, with a snort,
at the nearest one. The picador holds firmly, planting his
spear-point in the shoulder of the brute. Sometimes the bull
flinches at this sharp and sudden punishment, and the picador, by
a sudden turn to the left, gets away unhurt. Then there is
applause for the torero and hisses for the bull. Some indignant
amateurs go so far as to call him cow, and to inform him that he
is the son of his mother. But oftener he rushes in, not caring
for the spear, and with one toss of his sharp horns tumbles horse
and rider in one heap against the barrier and upon the sand. The
capeadores, the cloak-bearers, come fluttering around and
divert
100 CASTILIAN
DAYS
the bull from his
prostrate victims. The picador is lifted to his feet,--his iron
armor not permitting him to rise without help,--and the horse is
rapidly scanned to see if his wounds are immediately mortal. If
not, the picador mounts again, and provokes the bull to another
rush. A horse will usually endure two or three attacks before
dying. Sometimes a single blow from in front pierces the heart,
and the blood spouts forth in a cataract. In this case the
picador hastily dismounts, and the bridle and saddle are stripped
in an instant from the dying brute. If a bull is energetic and
rapid in execution, he will clear the arena in a few moments. He
rushes at one horse after another, tears them open with his
terrible "spears" ("horns" is a word never used in the ring), and
sends them madly galloping over the arena, trampling out their
gushing bowels as they fly. The assistants watch their
opportunity, from time to time, to take the wounded horses out of
the ring, plug up their gaping rents with tow, and sew them
roughly up for another sally. It is incredible to see what these
poor creatures will endure,--carrying their riders at a lumbering
gallop over the ring, when their thin sides seem empty of
entrails.
TAUROMACHY
101
Sometimes the bull
comes upon the dead body of a horse he has killed. The smell of
blood and the unmoving helplessness of the victim excite him to
the highest pitch. He gores and tramples the carcass, and tosses
it in the air with evident enjoyment, until diverted by some
living tormentor. You will occasionally see a picador nervous and
anxious about his personal safety. They are ignorant and
superstitious, and subject to presentiments; they often go into
the ring with the impression that their last hour has come. If
one takes counsel of his fears and avoids the shock of combat,
the hard-hearted crowd immediately discover it and rain
maledictions on his head. I saw a picador once enter the ring as
pale as death. He kept carefully out of the way of the bull for a
few minutes. The sharp-eyed Spaniards noticed it, and commenced
shouting, "Craven! He wants to live forever!" They threw
orange-skins at him, and at last, their rage vanquishing their
economy, they pelted him with oranges. His pallor gave way to a
flush of shame and anger. He attacked the bull so awkwardly that
the animal, killing his horse, threw him also with great
violence. His hat flew off, his bald head struck the hard soil.
He lay there as
102 CASTILIAN
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one dead, and was
borne away lifeless. This mollified the indignant people, and
they desisted from their abuse.
A cowardly bull is
much more dangerous than a courageous one, who lowers his head,
shuts his eyes, and goes blindly at everything he sees. The last
refuge of a bull in trouble is to leap the barrier, where he
produces a lively moment among the water-carriers and orange-boys
and stage-carpenters. I once saw a bull, who had done very little
execution in the arena, leap the barrier suddenly and toss an
unfortunate carpenter from the gangway sheer into the ring. He
picked himself up, laughed, saluted his friends, ran a little
distance and fell, and was carried out dying. Fatal accidents are
rarely mentioned in the newspapers, and it is considered not
quite good form to talk about them.
When the bull has
killed enough horses, the first act of the play terminates. But
this is an exceedingly delicate matter for the authorities to
decide. The audience will not endure any economy in this respect.
If the bull is enterprising and "voluntary," he must have as many
horses as he can dispose of. One day in Madrid the bulls operated
with such activity that the supply of horses was
exhausted
TAUROMACHY
103
before the close of
the show, and the contractors rushed out in a panic and bought a
half dozen screws from the nearest cab-stand. If the president
orders out the horses before their time, he will hear remarks by
no means complimentary from the austere groundlings.
The second act is
the play of the banderilleros, the flag-men. They are beautifully
dressed and superbly built fellows, principally from Andalusia,
got up precisely like Figaro in the opera. Theirs is the most
delicate and graceful operation of the bull-fight. They take a
pair of barbed darts, with little banners fluttering at their
ends, and provoke the bull to rush at them. At the instant he
reaches them, when it seems nothing can save them, they step
aside and plant the banderillas in the neck of the bull. If the
bull has been cowardly and sluggish, and the spectators have
called for "fire," darts are used filled with detonating powder
at the base, which explode in the flesh of the bull. He dances
and skips like a kid or a colt in his agony, which is very
diverting to the Spanish mind. A prettier conceit is that of
confining small birds in paper cages, which come apart when the
banderilla is planted, and set the little fluttering captives
free.
104 CASTILIAN
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Decking the bull
with these torturing ornaments is the last stage in the
apprenticeship of the chulo, before he rises to the dignity of
matador, or killer. The matadors themselves on special occasions
think it no derogation from their dignity to act as
banderilleros. But they usually accompany the act with some
exaggeration of difficulty that reaps for them a harvest of
applause. Frascuelo sits in a chair and plants the irritating
bannerets. Lagartijo lays his handkerchief on the ground and
stands upon it while he coifs the bull. A performance which never
fails to bring down the house is for the torero to await the rush
of the bull, and when the bellowing monster comes at him with
winking eyes and lowered head, to put his slippered foot between
the horns, and vault lightly over his back.
These chulos
exhibit the most wonderful skill and address in evading the
assault of the bull. They can almost always trick him by waving
their cloaks a little out of the line of their flight. Sometimes,
however, the bull runs straight at the man, disregarding the
flag, and if the distance is great to the barrier the danger is
imminent; for swift as these men are, the bulls are swifter. Once
I saw the bull strike the torero at the instant he
vaulted
BANDERILLAS
TAUROMACHY
105
over the barrier.
He fell sprawling some distance the other side, safe, but
terribly bruised and stunned. As soon as he could collect himself
he sprang into the arena again, looking very seedy; and the crowd
roared, "Saved by miracle." I could but think of Basilio, who,
when the many cried, "A miracle," answered, "Industria!
Industria!" But these bullfighters are all very pious, and glad
to curry favor with the saints by attributing every success to
their intervention. The famous matador, Paco Montes, fervently
believed in an amulet he carried, and in the invocation of Our
Lord of the True Cross. He called upon this special name in every
tight place, and while other people talked of his luck he stoutly
affirmed it was his faith that saved him; often he said he saw
the veritable picture of the Passion coming down between him and
the bull, in answer to his prayers. At every bull-ring there is a
little chapel in the refreshment-room where these devout ruffians
can toss off a prayer or two in the intervals of work. A priest
is always at hand with a consecrated wafer, to visa the torero's
passport who has to start suddenly for Paradise. It is not
exactly regular, but the ring has built many churches and endowed
many chapels, and must not be too rigidly
106 CASTILIAN
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regarded. In many
places the chief boxes are reserved for the clergy, and prayers
are hurried through an hour earlier on the day of
combat.
The final act is
the death of the bull. It must come at last. His exploits in the
early part of his career afford to the amateur some indication of
the manner in which he will meet his end. If he is a generous,
courageous brute, with more heart than brains, he will die
gallantly and be easily killed. But if he has shown reflection,
forethought, and that saving quality of the oppressed, suspicion,
the matador has a serious work before him. The bull is always
regarded from this objective standpoint. The more power of reason
the brute has, the worse opinion the Spaniard has of him. A
stupid creature who rushes blindly on the sword of the matador is
an animal after his own heart. But if there be one into whose
brute brain some glimmer of the awful truth has come,--and this
sometimes happens,--if he feels the solemn question at issue
between him and his enemy, if he eyes the man and not the flag,
if he refuses to be fooled by the waving lure, but keeps all his
strength and all his faculties for his own defence, the soul of
the Spaniard rises up in hate and loathing. He calls on
the
TAUROMACHY
107
matador to kill him
any way. If he will not rush at the flag, the crowd shouts for
the demi-lune; and the noble brute is houghed from behind, and
your soul grows sick with shame of human nature, at the hellish
glee with which they watch him hobbling on his severed
legs.
This seldom
happens. The final act is usually an admirable study of coolness
and skill against brute force. When the banderillas are all
planted, and the bugles sound for the third time, the matador,
the espada, the sword, steps forward with a modest consciousness
of distinguished merit, and makes a brief speech to the
corregidor, offering in honor of the good city of Madrid to kill
the bull. He turns on his heel, throws his hat by a dexterous
back-handed movement over the barrier, and advances, sword and
cape in hand, to where his noble enemy awaits him. The bull
appears to recognize a more serious foe than any he has
encountered. He stops short and eyes the newcomer curiously. It
is always an impressive picture: the tortured, maddened animal,
whose thin flanks are palpitating with his hot breath, his coat
one shining mass of blood from the darts and the spear-thrusts,
his massive neck still decked as in
108 CASTILIAN
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mockery with the
fluttering flags, his fine head and muzzle seeming sharpened by
the hour's terrible experience, his formidable horns crimsoned
with onset; in front of this fiery bulk of force and courage, the
slight, sinewy frame of the killer, whose only reliance is on his
coolness and his intellect. I never saw a matador come carelessly
to his work. He is usually pale and alert. He studies the bull
for a moment with all his eyes. He waves the blood-red
engaño, or lure, before his face. If the bull rushes at it
with his eyes shut, the work is easy. He has only to select his
own stroke and make it. But if the bull is jealous and sly, it
requires the most careful management to kill him. The disposition
of the bull is developed by a few rapid passes of the red flag.
This must not be continued too long: the tension of the nerves of
the auditory will not bear trifling. I remember one day the crowd
was aroused to fury by a bugler from the adjoining barracks
playing retreat at the moment of decision. All at once the
matador seizes the favorable instant. He poises his sword as the
bull rushes upon him. The point enters just between the left
shoulder and the spine; the long blade glides in up to the hilt.
The bull reels and staggers and dies.
TAUROMACHY
109
Sometimes the
matador severs the vertebrae. The effect is like magic. He lays
the point of his sword between the bull's horns, as lightly as a
lady who touches her cavalier with her fan, and he falls dead as
a stone.
If the blow is a
clean, well-delivered one, the enthusiasm of the people is
unbounded. Their approval comes up in a thunderous shout of "Well
done! Valiente! Viva!" A brown shower of cigars rains on the
sand. The victor gathers them up: they fill his hands, his
pockets, his hat. He gives them to his friends, and the aromatic
shower continues. Hundreds of hats are flung into the ring. He
picks them up and shies them back to their shouting owners.
Sometimes a dollar is mingled with the flying compliments; but
the enthusiasm of the Spaniard rarely carries him so far as that.
For ten minutes after a good estocada, the matador is the most
popular man in Spain.
But the trumpets
sound again, the door of the Toril flies open, another bull comes
rushing out, and the present interest quenches the past. The play
begins again, with its sameness of purpose and its infinite
variety of incident.
It is not quite
accurate to say, as is often said,
110 CASTILIAN
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that the
bull-fighter runs no risk. El Tato, the first sword of Spain,
lost his leg in 1869, and his life was saved by the coolness and
courage of Lagartijo, who succeeded him in the championship, and
who was terribly wounded in the foot the next summer. Arjona
killed a bull in the same year, which tossed and ruptured him
after receiving his death-blow. Pepe Illo died in harness, on the
sand. Every year picadors, chulos, and such small deer are
killed, without gossip. I must copy the inscription on the sword
which Tato presented to Lagartijo, as a specimen of tauromachian
literature:--
"If, as
philosophers say, gratitude is the tribute of noble souls,
accept, dear Lagartijo, this present; preserve it as a sacred
relic, for it symbolizes the memory of my glories, and is at the
same time the mute witness of my misfortune. With it I killed my
last bull named Peregrino, bred by D. Vicente
Martínez, fourth of the fight of the 7th June, 1869, in
which act I received the wound which has caused the amputation of
my right leg. The will of man can do nothing against the designs
of Providence. Nothing but resignation is left to thy
affectionate friend, Antonio Sánchez [Tato]."
TAUROMACHY
111
It is in
consideration of the mingled skill and danger of the trade, that
such enormous fees are paid the principal performers. The leading
swordsmen receive about three hundred dollars for each
performance, and they are eagerly disputed by the direction of
all the arenas of Spain. In spite of these large wages, they are
rarely rich. They are as wasteful and improvident as gamblers.
Tato, when he lost his leg, lost his means of subsistence, and
his comrades organized one or two benefits to keep him from want.
Cuchares died in the Havana, and left no provision for his
family.
There is a curious
naíveté in the play-bill of a bull-fight, the only
conscientious public document I have seen in Spain. You know how
we of Northern blood exaggerate the attractions of all sorts of
shows, trusting to the magnanimity of the audience. "He warn't
nothing like so little as that," confesses Mr. Magsman, "but
where 's your dwarf what is?" There are few who have the moral
courage to demand their money back because they counted but
thirty-nine thieves when the bills promised forty. But the
management of the Madrid bull-ring knows its public too well to
promise more
112 CASTILIAN
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than it is sure of
performing. It announces six bulls, and positively no more. It
says there will be no use of bloodhounds. It promises two
picadors, with three others in reserve, and warns the public that
if all five become inutilized in the combat, no more will be
issued. With so fair a preliminary statement, what crowd, however
inflammable, could mob the management?
Some industrious
and ascetic statistician has visited Spain and interested himself
in the bullring. Here are some of the results of his researches.
In 1864 the number of places in all the taurine establishments of
Spain was 509,283, of which 246,813 belonged to the cities, and
262,470 to the country.
In the year 1864,
there were 427 bull-fights, of which 294 took place in the
cities, and 13 3 in the country towns. The receipts of
ninety-eight bullrings in 1864 reached the enormous sum of two
hundred and seventeen and a half millions of reals (nearly
$11,000,000). The 427 bull-fights which took place in Spain
during the year 1864 caused the death of 2989 of these fine
animals, and about 7473 horses,--something more than half the
number of the cavalry of Spain. These wasted victims
CLOAK-DANCE
TAUROMACHY
113
could have ploughed
three hundred thousand hectares of land, which would have
produced a million and a half hectolitres of grain, worth eighty
millions of reals; all this without counting the cost of the
slaughtered cattle, worth say seven or eight millions, at a
moderate calculation.
Thus far the
Arithmetic Man; to whom responds the tauromachian aficionado:
That the bulk of this income goes to purposes of charity; that
were there no bull-fights, bulls of good race would cease to be
bred; that nobody ever saw a horse in a bull-ring that could
plough a furrow of a hundred yards without giving up the ghost;
that the nerve, dexterity, and knowledge of brute nature gained
in the arena is a good thing to have in the country; that, in
short, it is our way of amusing ourselves, and if you don't like
it you can go home and cultivate prize-fighters, or kill
two-year-old colts on the racecourse, or murder jockeys in
hurdle-races, or break your own necks in steeple-chases, or in
search of wilder excitement thicken your blood with beer or burn
your souls out with whiskey.
And this is all we
get by our well-meant effort to convince Spaniards of the
brutality of bullfights. Must Chicago be virtuous before I
can
114 CASTILIAN
DAYS
object to Madrid
ale, and say that its cakes are unduly gingered?
Yet even those who
most stoutly defend the bull-fight feel that its glory has
departed and that it has entered into the era of full decadence.
I was talking one evening with a Castilian gentleman, one of
those who cling with most persistence to the national traditions,
and he confessed that the noble art was wounded to death. "I do
not refer, as many do, to the change from the old times, when
gentlemen fought on their own horses in the ring. That was
nonsense, and could not survive the time of Cervantes. Life is
too short to learn bull-fighting. A grandee of Spain, if he knows
anything else, would make a sorry torero. The good times of the
art are more modern. I saw the short day of the glory of the ring
when I was a boy. There was a race of gladiators then, such as
the world will never see again,--mighty fighters before the king.
Pepe Illo and Costillares, Romero and Paco Montes,--the world
does not contain the stuff to make their counterparts. They were
serious, earnest men. They would have let their right arms wither
before they would have courted the applause of the mob by killing
a bull outside of the severe
TAUROMACHY
115
traditions. Compare
them with the men of to-day, with your Rafael Molina, who allows
himself to be gored, playing with a heifer; with your frivolous
boys like Frascuelo. I have seen the ring convulsed with laughter
as that buffoon strutted across the arena, flirting his muleta as
a manóla does her skirts, the bewildered bull not knowing
what to make of it. It was enough to make Illo turn in his bloody
grave.
"Why, my young
friend, I remember when bulls were a dignified and serious
matter; when we kept account of their progress from their pasture
to the capital. We had accounts of their condition by couriers
and carrier-pigeons. On the day when they appeared it was a high
festival in the court. All the sombreros in Spain were there, the
ladies in national dress with white mantillas. The young queen
always in her palco (may God guard her). The fighters of that day
were high priests of art; there was something of veneration in
the regard that was paid them. Duchesses threw them bouquets with
billets-doux. Gossip and newspapers have destroyed the romance of
common life.
"The only pleasure
I take in the Plaza de Toros now is at night. The custodians know
me and let
116
CASTILIAN
DAYS
me moon about in
the dark. When all that is ignoble and mean has faded away with
the daylight, it seems to me the ghosts of the old time come back
upon the sands. I can fancy the patter of light hoofs, the
glancing of spectral horns. I can imagine the agile tread of
Romero, the deadly thrust of Montes, the whisper of long-vanished
applause, and the clapping of ghostly hands. I am growing too old
for such skylarking, and I sometimes come away with a cold in my
head. But you will never see a bull-fight you can enjoy as I do
these visionary festivals, where memory is the corregidor, and
where the only spectators are the stars and I."
RED-LETTER
DAYS
NO people embrace
more readily than the Spaniards the opportunity of spending a day
without work. Their frequent holidays are a relic of the days
when the Church stood between the people and their taskmasters,
and fastened more firmly its hold upon the hearts of the ignorant
and overworked masses, by becoming at once the fountain of
salvation in the next world, and of rest in this. The government
rather encouraged this growth of play-days, as the Italian
Bourbons used to foster mendicancy, by way of keeping the people
as unthrifty as possible. Lazzaroni are so much more easily
managed than burghers!
118 CASTILIAN
DAYS
It is only the holy
days that are successfully celebrated in Spain. The state has
tried of late years to consecrate to idle parade a few
revolutionary dates, but they have no vigorous national life.
They grow feebler and more colorless year by year, because they
have no depth of earth.
The most
considerable of these national festivals is the 2d of May, which
commemorates the slaughter of patriots in the streets of Madrid
by Murat. This is a political holiday which appeals more strongly
to the national character of the Spaniards than any other. The
mingled pride of race and ignorant hate of everything foreign
which constitutes that singular passion called Spanish
patriotism, or Españolismo, is fully called into play by
the recollections of the terrible scenes of their war of
independence, which drove out a foreign king, and brought back
into Spain a native despot infinitely meaner and more injurious.
It is an impressive study in national character and thought, this
self-satisfaction of even liberal Spaniards at the reflection
that, by a vast and supreme effort of the nation, after countless
sacrifices and with the aid of coalesced Europe, they exchanged
Joseph Bonaparte for Ferdinand VII. and the Inquisition. But the
victims of the
RED-LETTER DAYS
119
Dos de Mayo fell
fighting. Daoiz, Velarde, and Ruiz were bayoneted at their guns,
scorning surrender. The alcalde of Mostoles, a petty village of
Castile, called on Spain to rise against the tyrant. And Spain
obeyed the summons of this cross-roads justice. The contempt of
probabilities, the Quixotism of these successive demonstrations,
endear them to the Spanish heart.
Every 2d of May the
city of Madrid gives up the day to funeral honors to the dead of
1808. The city government, attended by its Maceros, in their
gorgeous robes of gold and scarlet, with silver maces and long
white plumes; the public institutions of all grades, with
invalids and veterans and charity children; a large detachment of
the army and navy,--form a vast procession at the Town Hall, and,
headed by the Supreme Government, march to slow music through the
Puerta del Sol and the spacious Alcalá street to the
granite obelisk in the Prado which marks the resting-place of the
patriot dead. I saw the regent of the kingdom, surrounded by his
cabinet, sauntering all a summer's afternoon under a blazing sun
over the dusty mile that separates the monument from the
Ayuntamiento. The Spaniards are
120 CASTILIAN
DAYS
hopelessly
inefficient in these matters. The people always fill the line of
march, and a rivulet of procession meanders feebly through a
wilderness of mob. It is fortunate that the crowd is more
entertaining than the show.
The Church has a
very indifferent part in this ceremonial. It does nothing more
than celebrate a mass in the shade of the dark cypresses in the
Place of Loyalty, and then leaves the field clear to the secular
power. But this is the only purely civic ceremony I ever saw in
Spain. The Church is lord of the holidays for the rest of the
year.
In the middle of
May comes the feast of the ploughboy patron of Madrid,--San
Isidro. He was a true Madrileño in tastes, and spent his
time lying in the summer shade or basking in the winter sunshine,
seeing visions, while angels came down from heaven and did his
farm chores for him. The angels are less amiable nowadays, but
every true child of Madrid reveres the example and envies the
success of the San Isidro method of doing business. In the
process of years this lazy lout has become a great saint, and his
bones have done more extensive and remarkable miracle-work than
any equal amount of phosphate in ex-
THE SHRINE OF SAN
ISIDRO
RED-LETTER DAYS
121
istence. In
desperate cases of sufficient rank the doctors throw up the
sponge and send for Isidro's urn, and the drugging having ceased,
the noble patient frequently recovers, and much honor and profit
comes thereby to the shrine of the saint. There is something of
the toady in Isidro's composition. You never hear of his curing
any one of less than princely rank. I read in an old chronicle of
Madrid, that once when Queen Isabel the Catholic was hunting in
the hills that overlook the Manzanares, near what is now the
oldest and quaintest quarter of the capital, she killed a bear of
great size and ferocity; and doubtless thinking it might not be
considered lady-like to have done it unassisted, she gave San
Isidro the credit of the lucky blow and built him a nice new
chapel for it near the Church of San Andrés. If there are
any doubters, let them go and see the chapel, as I did. When the
allied armies of the Christian kings of Spain were seeking for a
passage through the hills to the Plains of Tolosa, a shepherd
appeared and led them straight to victory and endless fame. After
the battle, which broke the Moorish power forever in Central
Spain, instead of looking for the shepherd and paying him
handsomely for his
122 CASTILIAN
DAYS
timely
scout-service, they found it more pious and economical to say it
was San Isidro in person who had kindly made himself flesh for
this occasion. By the great altar in the Cathedral of Toledo
stand side by side the statues of Alonso VIIL, the Christian
commander, and San Isidro brazenly swelling in the shepherd garb
of that unknown guide who led Alonso and his chivalry through the
tangled defiles of the Sierra Morena.
His fete is the
Derby Day of Madrid. The whole town goes out to his Hermitage on
the further banks of the Manzanares, and spends a day or two of
the soft spring weather in noisy frolic. The little church stands
on a bare brown hill, and all about it is an improvised village
consisting half of restaurants and the other half of toyshops.
The principal traffic is in a pretty sort of glass whistle which
forms the stem of an artificial rose, worn in the button-hole in
the intervals of tooting, and little earthen pig-bells, whose
ringing scares away the lightning. There is but one duty of the
day to flavor all its pleasures. The faithful must go into the
oratory, pay a penny, and kiss a glass-covered relic of the saint
which the attendant ecclesiastic holds in his hand.
The
RED-LETTER DAYS
123
bells are rung
violently until the church is full; then the doors are shut and
the kissing begins. They are very expeditious about it. The
worshippers drop on their knees by platoons before the railing.
The long-robed relic-keeper puts the precious trinket rapidly to
their lips; an acolyte follows with a saucer for the cash. The
glass grows humid with many breaths. The priest wipes it with a
dirty napkin from time to time. The multitude advances, kisses,
pays, and retires, till all have their blessing; then the doors
are opened and they all pass out,--the bells ringing furiously
for another detachment. The pleasures of the day are like those
of all fairs and public merrymaking. Working-people come to be
idle, and idle people come to have something to do. There is much
eating and little drinking. The milk-stalls are busier than the
wine-shops. The people are gay and jolly, but very decent and
clean and orderly. To the east of the Hermitage, over and beyond
the green cool valley, the city rises on its rocky hills, its
spires shining in the cloudless blue. Below on the emerald
meadows there are the tents and wagons of those who have come
from a distance to the Romería. The sound of guitars
and
124 CASTILIAN
DAYS
the drone of
peasant songs come up the hill, and groups of men are leaping in
the wild barbaric dances of Iberia. The scene is of another day
and time. The Celt is here, lord of the land. You can see these
same faces at Donnybrook Fair. These large-mouthed, short-nosed,
rosy-cheeked peasant-girls are called Dolores and Catalina, but
they might be called Bridget and Kathleen. These strapping
fellows, with long simian upper lips, with brown leggings and
patched, mud-colored overcoats, who are leaping and swinging
their cudgels in that Pyrrhic round are as good Tipperary boys as
ever mobbed an agent or pounded, twenty to one, a landlord to
death. The same unquestioning, fervent faith, the same
superficial good-nature, the same facility to be amused, and at
bottom the same cowardly and cruel blood-thirst. What is this
mysterious law of race which is stronger than time, or varying
climates, or changing institutions? Which is cause, and which is
effect, race or religion?
The great Church
holiday of the year is Corpus Christi. On this day the Host is
carried in solemn procession through the principal streets,
attended by the high officers of state, several battalions
of
RED-LETTER DAYS
125
each arm of the
service in fresh bright uniforms, and a vast array of
ecclesiastics in the most gorgeous stoles and chasubles their
vestiary contains. The windows along the line of march are gayly
decked with flags and tapestry. Work is absolutely suspended, and
the entire population dons its holiday garb. The Puerta del
Sol--at this season blazing with relentless light--is crowded
with patient Madrileños in their best clothes, the
brown-cheeked maidens with flowing silks as in a ball-room, and
with no protection against the ardent sky but the fluttering fan
they hold in their ungloved hands. As everything is behind time
in this easy-going land, there are two or three hours of broiling
gossip on the glowing pavement before the Sacred Presence is
announced by the ringing of silver bells. As the superb structure
of filigree gold goes by, a movement of reverent worship vibrates
through the crowd. Forgetful of silks and broadcloth and gossip,
they fall on their knees in one party-colored mass, and, bowing
their heads and beating their breasts, they mutter their
mechanical prayers. There are thinking men who say these shows
are necessary; that the Latin mind must see with bodily eyes
the
126 CASTILIAN
DAYS
thing it worships,
or the worship will fade away from its heart. If there were no
cathedrals and masses, they say, there would be no religion; if
there were no king, there would be no law. But we should not
accept too hurriedly this ethnological theory of necessity, which
would reject all principles of progress and positive good, and
condemn half the human race to perpetual childhood. There was a
time when we Anglo-Saxons built cathedrals and worshipped the
king. Look at Salisbury and Lincoln and Ely; read the history of
the growth of parliaments. There is nothing more beautifully
sensuous than the religious spirit that presided over those
master works of English Gothic; there is nothing in life more
abject than the relics of the English love and fear of princes.
But the steady growth of centuries has left nothing but the
outworn shell of the old religion and the old loyalty. The
churches and the castles still exist. The name of the king still
is extant in the constitution. They remain as objects of taste
and tradition, hallowed by a thousand memories of earlier days,
but, thanks be to God who has given us the victory, the English
race is now incapable of making a new cathedral or a new
king.
RED-LETTER DAYS
127
Let us not in our
safe egotism deny to others the possibility of a like
improvement.
This summery month
of June is rich in saints. The great apostles, John, Peter, and
Paul, have their anniversaries on its closing days, and the
shortest nights of the year are given up to the riotous eating of
fritters in their honor. I am afraid that the progress of luxury
and love of ease has wrought a change in the observance of these
festivals. The feast of midsummer night is called the Verbena of
St. John, which indicates that it was formerly a morning
solemnity, as the vervain could not be hunted by the youths and
maidens of Spain with any success or decorum at midnight. But of
late years it may be that this useful and fragrant herb has
disappeared from the tawny hills of Castile. It is sure that
midsummer has grown too warm for any field work. So that the
Madrileños may be pardoned for spending the day napping,
and swarming into the breezy Prado in the light of moon and stars
and gas. The Prado is ordinarily the promenade of the better
classes, but every Spanish family has its John, Paul, and Peter,
and the crowded barrios of Toledo and the Peñue-las pour
out their ragged hordes to the popular
128 CASTILIAN
DAYS
festival. The scene
has a strange gypsy wildness. From the round point of Atocha to
where Cybele, throned among spouting waters, drives southward her
spanking team of marble lions, the park is filled with the merry
roysterers. At short intervals are the busy groups of fritter
merchants; over the crackling fire a great caldron of boiling
oil; beside it a mighty bowl of dough. The buñolero, with
the swift precision of machinery, dips his hand into the bowl and
makes a delicate ring of the tough dough, which he throws into
the bubbling caldron. It remains but a few seconds, and his grimy
acolyte picks it out with a long wire and throws it on the tray
for sale. They are eaten warm, the droning cry continually
sounding, "Buñuelos! Calientitos!" There must be millions
of these oily dainties consumed on every night of the Verbena.
For the more genteel revellers, the Don Juans, Pedros, and Pablos
of the better sort, there are improvised restaurants built of
pine planks after sunset and gone before sunrise. But the greater
number are bought and eaten by the loitering crowd from the tray
of the fritterman. It is like a vast gitano-camp. The hurrying
crowd which is going nowhere, the blazing fires, the
cries
PAULA, LA
GRANJA
RED-LETTER DAYS
129
of the venders, the
songs of the majos under the great trees of the Paseo, the
purposeless hurly-burly, and above, the steam of the boiling oil
and the dust raised by the myriad feet, form together a striking
and vivid picture. The city is more than usually quiet. The stir
of life is localized in the Prado. The only busy men in town are
those who stand by the seething oil-pots and manufacture the
brittle forage of the browsing herds. It is a jealous business,
and requires the undivided attention of its professors. The ne
sutor ultra crepidam of Spanish proverb is "Buñolero
haz tus buñuelos,"--Fritterman, mind thy fritters. With
the long days and cooler airs of the autumn begin the different
fairs. These are relics of the times of tyranny and exclusive
privilege, when for a few days each year, by the intervention of
the Church, or as a reward for civic service, full liberty of
barter and sale was allowed to all citizens. This custom, more or
less modified, may be found in most cities of Europe. The
boulevards of Paris swarm with little booths at Christmas-time,
which begin and end their lawless commercial life within the
week. In Vienna, in Leipsic, and other cities, the same
waste-weir of irregular trade is periodic-
130 CASTILIAN
DAYS
ally opened. These
fairs begin in Madrid with the autumnal equinox, and continue for
some weeks in October. They disappear from the Alcalá to
break out with renewed virulence in the avenue of Atocha, and
girdle the city at last with a belt of booths. While they last
they give great animation and spirit to the street life of the
town. You can scarcely make your way among the heaps of gaudy
shawls and handkerchiefs, cheap laces and illegitimate jewels,
that cumber the pavement. When the Jews were driven out of Spain,
they left behind the true genius of bargaining.
A nut-brown maid is
attracted by a brilliant red and yellow scarf. She asks the
sleepy merchant nodding before his wares, "What is this rag
worth? "
He answers with
profound indifference, "Ten reals."
"Hombre! Are you
dreaming or crazy?" She drops the coveted neck-gear, and moves
on, apparently horror-stricken.
The chapman calls
her back peremptorily. "Don't be rash! The scarf is worth twenty
reals, but for the sake of Santisima Maria I offered it to you
for half price. Very well! You are not suited. What will you
give?"
RED-LETTER DAYS
131
"Caramba! Am I
buyer and seller as well? The thing is worth three reals; more is
a robbery."
"Jesus! Maria!
José! and all the family! Go thou with God! We cannot
trade. Sooner than sell for less than eight reals I will raise
the cover of my brains! Go thou! It is eight of the morning, and
still thou dreamest."
She lays down the
scarf reluctantly, saying, "Five?"
But the outraged
mercer snorts scornfully, "Eight is my last word! Go
to!"
She moves away,
thinking how well that scarf would look in the Apollo Gardens,
and casts over her shoulder a Parthian glance and bid,
"Six!"
"Take it! It is
madness, but I cannot waste my time in bargaining."
Both congratulate
themselves on the operation. He would have taken five, and she
would have given seven. How trade would suffer if we had windows
in our breasts!
The first days of
November are consecrated to all the saints, and to the souls of
all the blessed dead. They are observed in Spain with great
solemnity; but as the cemeteries are generally of the
dreariest
132
CASTILIAN
DAYS
character, bare,
bleak, and most forbidding under the ashy sky of the late autumn,
the days are deprived of that exquisite sentiment that pervades
them in countries where the graves of the dead are beautiful.
There is nothing more touching than these offerings of memory you
see every year in Mont Parnasse and Pere-la-Chaise. Apart from
all beliefs, there is a mysterious influence for good exerted
upon the living by the memory of the beloved dead. On all hearts
not utterly corrupt, the thoughts that come by the graves of the
departed fall like dew from heaven, and quicken into life purer
and higher resolves.
In Spain, where
there is nothing but desolation in graveyards, the churches are
crowded instead, and the bereaved survivors commend to God their
departed friends and their own stricken hearts in the dim and
perfumed aisles of temples made with hands. A taint of gloom thus
rests upon the recollection and the prayer, far different from
the consolation that comes with the free air and the sunshine,
and the infinite blue vault, where Nature conspires with
revelation to comfort and cherish and console.
Christmas
apparently comes in Spain on no other
THE PLAZA MAJOR,
MADRID
RED-LETTER DAYS
133
mission than that
referred to in the old English couplet, "bringing good cheer."
The Spaniards are the most frugal of people, but during the days
that precede their Noche Buena, their Good Night, they seem to be
given up as completely to cares of the commissariat as the most
eupeptic of Germans. Swarms of turkeys are driven in from the
surrounding country, and taken about the streets by their rustic
herdsmen, making the roads gay with their scarlet wattles, and
waking rural memories by their vociferous gobbling. The great
market-place of the season is the Plaza Mayor. The ever-fruitful
provinces of the South are laid under contribution, and the
result is a wasteful show of tropical luxuriance that seems most
incongruous under the wintry sky. There are mountains of oranges
and dates, brown hillocks of nuts of every kind, store of every
product of this versatile soil. The air is filled with nutty and
fruity fragrance. Under the ancient arcades are the stalls of the
butchers, rich with the mutton of Castile, the hams of
Estremadura, and the hero-nourishing bull-beef of Andalusian
pastures.
At night the town
is given up to harmless racket. Nowhere has the tradition of the
Latin Saturnalia
134 CASTILIAN
DAYS
been fitted with
less change into the Christian calendar. Men, women, and children
of the proletariat--the unemancipated slaves of necessity--go out
this night to cheat their misery with noisy frolic. The owner of
a tambourine is the equal of a peer; the proprietor of a guitar
is the captain of his hundred. They troop through the dim city
with discordant revel and song. They have little idea of music.
Every one sings and sings ill. Every one dances, without grace or
measure. Their music is a modulated howl of the East. Their
dancing is the savage leaping of barbarians. There is no lack of
couplets, religious, political, or amatory. I heard one ragged
woman with a brown baby at her breast go shrieking through the
Street of the Magdalen,--
"This is the eve of
Christmas, No sleep from now till morn, The Virgin is in travail,
At twelve will the child be born!"
Behind her stumped
a crippled beggar, who croaked in a voice rough with frost and
aguardiente his deep disillusion and distrust of the
great:--
"This is the eve of
Christmas, But what is that to me? We are ruled by thieves and
robbers, As it was and will always be."
RED-LETTER DAYS
135
Next comes a
shouting band of the youth of Spain, strapping boys with bushy
locks, crisp and black almost to blueness, and gay young girls
with flexible forms and dark Arab eyes that shine with a
phosphorescent light in the shadows. They troop on with clacking
castinets. The challenge of the mozos rings out on the frosty
air,--
"This is the eve of
Christmas, Let us drink and love our fill!"
And the saucy antiphon
of girlish voices responds,--
"A man may be
bearded and gray, But a woman can fool him still!"
The Christmas and
New-Year's holidays continue for a fortnight, ending with the
Epiphany. On the eve of the Day of the Kings a curious farce is
performed by bands of the lowest orders of the people, which
demonstrates the apparently endless naivete of their class. In
every coterie of water-carriers, or mozos de cordel, there will
be one found innocent enough to believe that the Magi are coming
to Madrid that night, and that a proper respect to their rank
requires that they must be met at the city gate. To perceive the
coming of their feet, beautiful upon the mountains, a ladder is
necessary, and the poor victim of the comedy is
136 CASTILIAN
DAYS
loaded with this
indispensable "property." He is dragged by his gay companions,
who never tire of the exquisite wit of their jest, from one gate
to another, until suspicion supplants faith in the mind of the
neophyte, and the farce is over.
In the burgher
society of Castile this night is devoted to a very different
ceremony. Each little social circle comes together in a house
agreed upon. They take mottoes of gilded paper and write on each
the name of some one of the company. The names of the ladies are
thrown into one urn, and those of the cavaliers into another, and
they are drawn out by pairs. These couples are thus condemned by
fortune to intimacy during the year. The gentleman is always to
be at the orders of the dame and to serve her faithfully in every
knightly fashion. He has all the duties and none of the
privileges of a lover, unless it be the joy of those "who stand
and wait." The relation is very like that which so astonished M.
de Gramont in his visit to Piedmont, where the cavalier of
service never left his mistress in public and never approached
her in private.
The true Carnival
survives in its naive purity only in Spain. It has faded in Rome
into a romp-
IN THE PARK, LA
GRANJA
RED-LETTER DAYS
137
ing day of clown's
play. In Paris it is little more than a busier season for dreary
and professional vice. Elsewhere all over the world the Carnival
gayeties are confined to the salon. But in Madrid the whole city,
from grandee to cordwainer, goes with childlike earnestness into
the enjoyment of the hour. The Corso begins in the Prado on the
last Sunday before Lent, and lasts four days. From noon to night
the great drive is filled with a double line of carriages two
miles long, and between them are the landaus of the favored
hundreds who have the privilege of driving up and down free from
the law of the road. This right is acquired by the payment of ten
dollars a day to city charities, and produces some fifteen
thousand dollars every Carnival. In these carriages all the
society of Madrid may be seen; and on foot, darting in and out
among the hoofs of the horses, are the young men of Castile in
every conceivable variety of absurd and fantastic disguise. There
are of course pirates and Indians and Turks, monks, prophets, and
kings, but the favorite costumes seem to be the Devil and the
Englishman. Sometimes the Yankee is attempted, with indifferent
success. He wears a ribbon-wreathed Italian bandit's hat, an
embroidered
138 CASTILIAN
DAYS
jacket, slashed
buckskin trousers, and a wide crimson belt,--a dress you would at
once recognize as universal in Boston.
Most of the maskers
know by name at least the occupants of the carriages. There is
always room for a mask in a coach. They leap in, swarming over
the back or the sides, and in their shrill monotonous scream they
make the most startling revelations of the inmost secrets of your
soul. There is always something impressive in the talk of an
unknown voice, but especially is this so in Madrid, where every
one scorns his own business, and devotes himself rigorously to
his neighbor's. These shrieking young monks and devilkins often
surprise a half-formed thought in the heart of a fair Castilian
and drag it out into day and derision. No one has the right to be
offended. Duchesses are called Tu! Isabel! by chin-dimpled
school-boys, and the proudest beauties in Spain accept bonbons
from plebeian hands. It is true, most of the maskers are of the
better class. Some of the costumes are very rich and expensive,
of satin and velvet heavy with gold. I have seen a distinguished
diplomatist in the guise of a gigantic canary-bird, hopping
briskly about in the mud with bedraggled
RED-LETTER DAYS
139
tail-feathers,
shrieking well-bred sarcasms with his yellow beak.
The charm of the
Madrid Carnival is this, that it is respected and believed in.
The best and fairest pass the day in the Corso, and gallant young
gentlemen think it worth while to dress elaborately for a few
hours of harmless and spirituelle intrigue. A society that enjoys
a holiday so thoroughly has something in it better than the blase
cynicism of more civilized capitals. These young fellows talk
like the lovers of the old romances. I have never heard prettier
periods of devotion than from some gentle savage, stretched out
on the front seat of a landau under the peering eyes of his lady,
safe in his disguise, if not self-betrayed, pouring out his young
soul in passionate praise and prayer; around them the laughter
and the cries, the cracking of whips, the roll of wheels, the
presence of countless thousands, and yet these two young hearts
alone under the pale winter sky. The rest of the Continent has
outgrown the true Carnival. It is pleasant to see this gay relic
of simpler times, when youth was young. No one here is too
"swell" for it. You may find a duke in the disguise of a
chimney-sweep, or a butcher-boy in the dress of
140 CASTILIAN
DAYS
a Crusader. There
are none so great that their dignity would suffer by a day's
reckless foolery, and there are none so poor that they cannot
take the price of a dinner to buy a mask and cheat their misery
by mingling for a time with their betters in the wild license of
the Carnival.
The winter's gayety
dies hard. Ash Wednesday is a day of loud merriment and is
devoted to a popular ceremony called the Burial of the Sardine. A
vast throng of workingmen carry with great pomp a link of sausage
to the bank of the Manzanares and inter it there with great
solemnity. On the following Saturday, after three days of death,
the Carnival has a resurrection, and the maddest, wildest ball of
the year takes place at the opera. Then the sackcloth and ashes
of Lent come down in good earnest and the town mourns over its
scarlet sins. It used to be very fashionable for the genteel
Christians to repair during this season of mortification to the
Church of San Gines, and scourge themselves lustily in its
subterranean chambers. A still more striking demonstration was
for gentlemen in love to lash themselves on the sidewalks where
passed the ladies of their thoughts. If the blood from
the
RED-LETTER DAYS
141
scourges sprinkled
them as they sailed by, it was thought an attention no female
heart could withstand. But these wholesome customs have decayed
of late unbelieving years.
The Lenten piety
increases with the lengthening days. It reaches its climax on
Holy Thursday. On this day all Spain goes to church: it is one of
the obligatory days. The more you go, the better for you; so the
good people spend the whole day from dawn to dusk roaming from
one church to another, and investing an Ave and a Pater-Noster in
each. This fills every street of the city with the pious crowd.
No carriages are permitted. A silence like that of Venice falls
on the rattling capital. With three hundred thousand people in
the street, the town seems still. In 1870, a free-thinking cabman
dared to drive up the Calle Alcalá. He was dragged from
his box and beaten half to death by the chastened mourners, who
yelled as they kicked and cuffed him, "Que bruto! He will wake
our Jesus."
On Good Friday the
gloom deepens. No colors are worn that day by the orthodox. The
señoras appear on the street in funeral garb. I saw a
group of fast youths come out of the jockey club,
142 CASTILIAN
DAYS
black from hat to
boots, with jet studs and sleeve-buttons. The gayest and
prettiest ladies sit within the church doors and beg in the holy
name of charity, and earn large sums for the poor. There are
hourly services in the churches, passionate sermons from all the
pulpits. The streets are free from the painted haunters of the
pavement. The whole people taste the luxury of a sentimental
sorrow.
Yet in these heavy
days it is not the Redeemer whose sufferings and death most
nearly touch the hearts of the faithful. It is Santísima
Maria who is worshipped most. It is the Dolorous Mother who moves
them to tears of tenderness. The presiding deity of these final
days of meditation is Our Lady of Solitude.
But at last the
days of mourning are accomplished. The expiation for sin is
finished. The grave is vanquished, death is swallowed up in
victory. Man can turn from the grief that is natural to the joy
that is eternal. From every steeple the bells fling out their
happy clangor in glad tidings of great joy. The streets are
flooded once more with eager multitudes, gay as in wedding
garments. Christ has arisen! The heathen myth of the
awak-
RED-LETTER
DAYS
143
ening of nature
blends the old tradition with the new gospel. The vernal breezes
sweep the skies clean and blue. Birds are pairing in the budding
trees. The streams leap down from the melting snow of the hills.
The brown turf takes a tint of verdure. Through the vast frame of
things runs a quick shudder of teeming power. In the heart of man
love and will mingle into hope. Hail to the new life and the
ever-new religion! Hail to the resurrection morning!
AN HOUR WITH THE
PAINTERS
AS a general thing
it is well to distrust a Spaniard's superlatives. He will tell
you that his people are the most amiable in the world, but you
will do well to carry your revolver into the interior. He will
say there are no wines worth drinking but the Spanish, but you
will scarcely forswear Clicquot and Yquem on the mere faith of
his assertion. A distinguished general once gravely assured me
that there was no literature in the world at all to be compared
with the productions of the Castilian mind. All others, he said,
were but pale imitations of Spanish master-work.
AN HOUR WITH THE
PAINTERS 145
Now, though you may
be shocked at learning such unfavorable facts of 'Shakespeare and
Goethe and Hugo, you will hardly condemn them to an Auto da fe,
on the testimony even of a grandee of Spain.
But when a Spaniard
assures you that the picture-gallery of Madrid is the finest in
the world, you may believe him without reserve. He probably does
not know what he is talking about. He may never have crossed the
Pyrenees. He has no dream of the glories of Dresden, or Florence,
or the Louvre. It is even possible that he has not seen the
matchless collection he is boasting of. He crowns it with a
sweeping superlative simply because it is Spanish. But the
statement is nevertheless true.
The reason of this
is found in that gigantic and overshadowing fact which seems to
be an explanation of everything in Spain,--the power and the
tyranny of the House of Austria. The period of the vast increase
of Spanish dominion coincided with that of the meridian glory of
Italian art. The conquest of Granada was finished as the divine
child Raphael began to meddle with his father's brushes and
pallets, and before his short life ended Charles, Burgess of
Ghent, was emperor and king.
146 CASTILIAN
DAYS
The dominions he
governed and transmitted to his son embraced Spain, the
Netherlands, Franche-Comté, the Milanese, Naples, and
Sicily; that is to say, those regions where art in that age and
the next attained its supreme development. He was also lord of
the New World, whose inexhaustible mines poured into the lap of
Europe a constant stream of gold. Hence came the riches and the
leisure necessary to art.
Charles V., as well
as his great contemporary and rival, Francis I., was a munificent
protector of art. He brought from Italy and Antwerp some of the
most perfect products of their immortal masters. He was the
friend and patron of Titian, and when, weary of the world and its
vanities, he retired to the lonely monastery of Yuste to spend in
devout contemplation the evening of his days, the most precious
solace of his solitude was that noble canvas of the great
Venetian, where Charles and Philip are borne, in penitential
guise and garb, on luminous clouds into the visible glory of the
Most High.
These two great
kings made a good use of their unbounded opportunities. Spain
became illuminated with the glowing canvases of the
incom-
AN HOUR WITH THE
PAINTERS 147
parable Italians.
The opening up of the New World beyond seas, the meteoric career
of European and African conquest in which the emperor had won so
much land and glory, had given an awakening shock to the
intelligent youth of Spain, and sent them forth in every avenue
of enterprise. This jealously patriotic race, which had remained
locked up by the mountains and the seas for centuries, started
suddenly out, seeking adventures over the earth. The mind of
Spain seemed suddenly to have brightened and developed like that
of her great king, who, in his first tourney at Val-ladolid,
wrote with proud sluggishness Nondum--not yet--on his
maiden shield, and a few years later in his young maturity
adopted the legend of arrogant hope and promise,--Plus
Ultra. There were seen two emigrations of the young men of
Spain, eastward and westward. The latter went for gold and
material conquest into the American wilds; and the former, led by
the sacred love of art, to that land of beauty and wonder, then,
now, and always the spiritual shrine of all
peoples,--Italy.
A brilliant young
army went out from Spain on this new crusade of the beautiful.
From the plains
148 CASTILIAN
DAYS
of Castile and the
hills of Navarre went, among others, Berruguete, Becerra, and the
marvellous deaf-mute Navarrete. The luxurious city of
Valentía sent Juan de Juanes and Ribalta. Luis de Vargas
went out from Seville, and from Cordova the scholar, artist, and
thinker, Paul of Céspedes. The schools of Rome and Venice
and Florence were thronged with eager pilgrims, speaking an alien
Latin and filled with a childlike wonder and
appreciation.
In that stirring
age the emigration was not all in one direction. Many
distinguished foreigners came down to Spain, to profit by the new
love of art in the Peninsula. It was Philip of Burgundy who
carved, with Berruguete, those miracles of skill and patience we
admire to-day in the choir of Toledo. Peter of Champagne painted
at Seville the grand altar-piece that so comforted the eyes and
the soul of Murillo. The wild Greek bedouin, George
Theotocopouli, built the Mozarabic chapel and filled the walls of
convents with his weird ghost-faces. Moor, or Moro, came from the
Low Countries, and the Carducci brothers from Italy, to seek
their fortunes in Madrid. Torrigiani, after breaking Michael
Angelo's nose in Florence, fled
AN HOUR WITH THE
PAINTERS 149
to Granada, and
died in a prison of the Inquisition for smashing the face of a
Virgin which a grandee of Spain wanted to steal from
him.
These immigrations,
and the refluent tide of Spanish students from Italy, founded the
various schools of Valentia, Toledo, Seville, and Madrid. Madrid
soon absorbed the school of Toledo, and the attraction of Seville
was too powerful for Valentia. The Andalusian school counts among
its early illustrations Vargas, Roelas, the Castillos, Herrera,
Pacheco, and Moya, and among its later glories Velazquez, Alonzo
Cano, Zurbaran, and Murillo, last and greatest of the mighty
line. The school of Madrid begins with Berruguete and Na-varrete,
the Italians Caxes, Rizi, and others, who are followed by
Sánchez Coello, Pantoja, Collantes. Then comes the great
invader Velazquez, followed by his retainers Pareja and
Carreño, and absorbs the whole life of the school. Claudio
Coello makes a good fight against the rapid decadence. Luca
Giordano comes rattling in from Naples with his whitewash-brush,
painting a mile a minute, and classic art is ended in Spain with
the brief and conscientious work of Raphael Mengs.
There is therefore
little distinction of schools
15O CASTILIAN
DAYS
in Spain. Murillo,
the glory of Seville, studied in Madrid, and the mighty
Andalusian, Velazquez, performed his enormous life's work in the
capital of Castile.
It now needs but
one word to show how the Museum of Madrid became so rich in
masterpieces. During the long and brilliant reigns of Charles V.
and Philip II., when art had arrived at its apogee in Italy, and
was just beginning its splendid career in Spain, these powerful
monarchs had the lion's share of all the best work that was done
in the world. There was no artist so great but he was honored by
the commands of these lords of the two worlds. They thus formed
in their various palaces, pleasure-houses, and cloisters a
priceless collection of pictures produced in the dawn of the
Spanish and the triumphant hey-day of Italian genius. Their
frivolous successors lost provinces and kingdoms, honor and
prestige, but they never lost their royal prerogative nor their
taste for the arts. They consoled themselves for the slings and
arrows of outrageous fortune by the delights of sensual life, and
imagined they preserved some distant likeness to their great
forerunners by encouraging and protecting Velazquez and Lope
de
AN HOUR WITH THE
PAINTERS 151
Vega and other
intellectual giants of that decaying age. So while, as the result
of a vicious system of kingly and spiritual thraldom, the
intellect of Spain was forced away from its legitimate channels
of thought and action, under the shadow of the royal prerogative,
which survived the genuine power of the older kings, art
flourished and bloomed, unsuspected and unpersecuted by the
coward jealousy of courtier and monk.
The palace and the
convent divided the product of those marvellous days. Amid all
the poverty of the failing state, it was still the king and
clergy who were best able to appropriate the works of genius.
This may have contributed to the decay of art. The immortal
canvases passed into oblivion in the salons of palaces and the
cells of monasteries. Had they been scattered over the land and
seen by the people, they might have kept alive the spark that
kindled their creators. But exclusiveness is inevitably followed
by barrenness. When the great race of Spanish artists ended,
these matchless works were kept in the safe obscurity of palaces
and religious establishments. History was working in the
interests of this Museum. The pictures were held by the
clenched
152 CASTILIAN
DAYS
dead hand of the
Church and the throne. They could not be sold or distributed.
They made the dark places luminous, patiently biding their
time.
It was long enough
coming, and it was a despicable hand that brought them into the
light. Ferdinand VII. thought his palace would look fresher if
the walls were covered with French paper, and so packed all the
pictures off to the empty building on the Prado, which his
grandfather had built for a museum. As soon as the glorious
collection was exposed to the gaze of the world, its
incontestable merit was at once recognized. Especially were the
works of Velazquez, hitherto almost an unknown name in Europe,
admired and appreciated. Ferdinand, finding he had done a clever
thing unawares, began to put on airs and poser for a patron of
art. The gallery was still further immensely enriched on the
exclaustration of the monasteries, by the hidden treasures of
the Escorial, and other spoils of mortmain. And now, as a
collection of masterpieces, it has no equal in the
world.
A few figures will
prove this. It contains more than two thousand pictures already
catalogued,--all of them worth a place on the walls.
Among
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these there are ten
by Raphael, forty-three by Titian, thirty-four by Tintoret,
twenty-five by Paul Veronese. Rubens has the enormous contingent
of sixty-four. Of Teniers, whose works are sold for fabulous sums
for the square inch, this extraordinary museum possesses no less
than sixty finished pictures,--the Louvre considers itself rich
with fourteen. So much for a few of the foreigners. Among the
Spaniards the three greatest names could alone fill a gallery.
There are sixty-five Velazquez, forty-six Murillos, and
fifty-eight Riberas. Compare these figures with those of any
other gallery in existence, and you will at once recognize the
hopeless superiority of this collection. It is not only the
greatest collection in the world, but the greatest that can ever
be made until this is broken up.
But with all this
mass of wealth it is not a complete, nor, properly speaking, a
representative museum. You cannot trace upon its walls the slow,
groping progress of art towards perfection. It contains few of
what the book-lovers call incunabula. Spanish art sprang
out full-armed from the mature brain of Rome. Juan de Juanes
came back from Italy a great artist. The schools of
154 CASTILIAN
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Spain were budded
on a full-bearing tree. Charles and Philip bought masterpieces,
and cared Jittle for the crude efforts of the awkward pencils of
the necessary men who came before Raphael. There is not a
Perugino in Madrid. There is nothing Byzantine, no trace of
Renaissance; nothing of the patient work of the early
Flemings,--the art of Flanders comes blazing in with the full
splendor of Rubens and Van Dyck. And even among the masters, the
representation is most unequal. Among the wilderness of Titians
and Tintorets you find but two Domenichinos and two Correggios.
Even in Spanish art the gallery is far from complete. There is
almost nothing of such genuine painters as Zurbaran and
Herrera.
But recognizing all
this, there is, in this glorious temple, enough to fill the least
enthusiastic lover of art with delight and adoration for weeks
and months together. If one knew he was to be blind in a year,
like the young musician in Auerbach's exquisite romance, I know
of no place in the world where he could garner up so precious a
store of memories for the days of darkness, memories that would
haunt the soul with so divine a light of consolation, as in that
graceful Palace of the Prado.
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It would be a
hopeless task to attempt to review with any detail the gems of
this collection. My memory is filled with the countless canvases
that adorn the ten great halls. If I refer to my notebook I am
equally discouraged by the number I have marked for special
notice. The masterpieces are simply innumerable. I will say a
word of each room, and so give up the unequal contest.
As you enter the
Museum from the north, you are in a wide sturdy-columned
vestibule, hung with splashy pictures of Luca Giordano. To your
right is the room devoted to the Spanish school; to the left, the
Italian. In front is the grand gallery where the greatest works
of both schools are collected. In the Spanish saloon there is an
indefinable air of severity and gloom. It is less perfectly
lighted than some others, and there is something forbidding in
the general tone of the room. There are prim portraits of queens
and princes, monks in contemplation, and holy people in antres
vast and deserts idle. Most visitors come in from a sense of
duty, look hurriedly about, and go out with a conscience at ease;
in fact, there is a dim suggestion of the fagot and the rack
about many of the Spanish masters. At one end of this
gallery
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the Prometheus of
Ribera agonizes chained to his rock. His gigantic limbs are flung
about in the fury of immortal pain. A vulture, almost lost in the
blackness of the shadows, is tugging at his vitals. His brow is
convulsed with the pride and anguish of a demigod. It is a
picture of horrible power. Opposite hangs one of the few
Zurbarans of the gallery,--also a gloomy and terrible work. A
monk kneels in shadows which, by the masterly chiaroscuro of this
ascetic artist, are made to look darker than blackness. Before
him in a luminous nimbus that burns its way through the dark, is
the image of the crucified Saviour, head downwards. So remarkable
is the vigor of the drawing and the power of light in this
picture that you can imagine you see the resplendent crucifix
suddenly thrust into the shadow by the strong hands of invisible
spirits, and swayed for a moment only before the dazzled eyes of
the ecstatic solitary.
But after you have
made friends with this room it will put off its forbidding
aspect, and you will find it hath a stern look but a gentle
heart. It has two lovely little landscapes by Murillo, showing
how universal was that wholesome genius. Also one of the largest
landscapes of Velazquez, which,
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when you stand near
it, seems a confused mass of brown daubs, but stepping back a few
yards becomes a most perfect view of the entrance to a royal
park. The wide gate swings on its pivot before your eyes. A court
cortege moves in,--the long, dark alley stretches off for miles
directly in front, without any trick of lines or curves; the
artist has painted the shaded air. To the left a patch of still
water reflects the dark wood, and above there is a distant and
tranquil sky. Had Velazquez not done such vastly greater things,
his few landscapes would alone have won him fame enough. He has
in this room a large number of royal portraits,--one especially
worth attention, of Philip III. The scene is by the shore,--a
cool foreground of sandy beach,--a blue-gray stretch of rippled
water, and beyond, a low promontory between the curling waves and
the cirrus clouds. The king mounts a magnificent gray horse, with
a mane and tail like the broken rush of a cascade. The keeping is
wonderful; a fresh sea breeze blows out of the canvas. A
brilliant bit of color is thrown into the red, gold-fringed scarf
of the horseman, fluttering backward over his shoulder. Yet the
face of the king is, as it should
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be, the principal
point of the picture,--the small-eyed, heavy-mouthed, red-lipped,
fair, self-satisfied face of these Austrian despots. It is a
handsomer face than most of Velazquez, as it was probably painted
from memory and lenient tradition. For Philip III. was gathered
to his fathers in the Escorial before Velazquez came up from
Andalusia to seek his fortune at the court. The first work he did
in Madrid was to paint the portrait of the king, which so pleased
his majesty that he had it repeated ad nauseam. You see
him served up in every form in this gallery,--on foot, on
horseback, in full armor, in a shooting-jacket, at picnics, and
actually on his knees at his prayers! We wonder if Velazquez ever
grew tired of that vacant face with its contented smirk, or if in
that loyal age the smile of royalty was not always the sunshine
of the court?
There is a most
instructive study of faces in the portraits of the Austrian line.
First comes Charles V., the First of Spain, painted by Titian at
Augsburg, on horseback, in the armor he wore at Muhl-berg, his
long lance in rest, his visor up over the eager, powerful
face,--the eye and beak of an eagle, the jaw of a bull-dog, the
face of a born
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ruler, a man of
prey. And yet in the converging lines about the eyes, in the
premature gray hair, in the nervous, irritable lips, you can see
the promise of early decay, of an age that will be the spoil of
superstition and bigotry. It is the face of a man who could make
himself emperor and hermit. In his son, Philip II., the soldier
dies out and the bigot is intensified. In the fine portrait by
Pantoja, of Philip in his age, there is scarcely any trace of the
fresh, fair youth that Titian painted as Adonis. It is the face
of a living corpse; of a ghastly pallor, heightened by the dull
black of his mourning suit, where all passion and feeling have
died out of the livid lips and the icy eyes. Beside him hangs the
portrait of his rickety, feebly passionate son, the unfortunate
Don Carlos. The forehead of the young prince is narrow and
ill-formed; the Austrian chin is exaggerated one degree more; he
looks a picture of fitful impulse. His brother, Philip III., we
have just seen, fair and inane,--a monster of cruelty, who burned
Jews and banished Moors, not from malice, but purely from vacuity
of spirit; his head broadens like a pine-apple from the blond
crest to the plump jowls. Every one knows the head of Philip
IV.,--he was fortunate in being the friend
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of Velazquez,--the
high, narrow brow, the long, weak face, the yellow, curled
mustache, the thick, red lips, and the ever lengthening Hapsburg
chin. But the line of Austria ends with the utmost limit of
caricature in the face of Charles the Bewitched! Carreño
has given us an admirable portrait of this unfortunate,--the
forehead caved in like the hat of a drunkard, the red-lidded eyes
staring vacantly, a long, thin nose absurd as a Carnival
disguise, an enormous mouth which he could not shut, the
under-jaw projected so prodigiously,--a face incapable of any
emotion but fear. And yet in gazing at this idiotic mask you are
reminded of another face you have somewhere seen, and are
startled to remember it is the resolute face of the warrior and
statesman, the king of men, the Kaiser Karl. Yes, this pitiable
being was the descendant of the great emperor, and for that
sufficient reason, although he was an impotent and shivering
idiot, although he could not sleep without a friar in his bed to
keep the devils away, for thirty-five years this scarecrow ruled
over Spain, and dying made a will whose accomplishment bathed the
Peninsula in blood. It must be confessed this institution of
monarchy is a luxury that must be paid for.
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We did not intend
to talk of politics in this room, but that line of royal effigies
was too tempting. Before we go, let us look at a beautiful
Magdalen in penitence, by an unknown artist of the school of
Murillo. She stands near the entrance of her cave, in a listening
attitude. The bright out-of-door light falls on her bare shoulder
and gives the faintest touch of gold to her dishevelled brown
hair. She casts her eyes upward, the large melting eyes of
Andalusia; a chastened sorrow, through which a trembling hope is
shining, softens the somewhat worldly beauty of her exquisite and
sensitive face. Through the mouth of the cave we catch a glimpse
of sunny mountain solitude, and in the rosy air that always
travels with Spanish angels a band of celestial serenaders is
playing. It is a charming composition, without any depth of
sentiment or especial mastery of treatment, but evidently painted
by a clever artist in his youth, and this Magdalen is the
portrait of the lady of his dreams. None of Murillo's pupils but
Tobar could have painted it, and the manner is precisely the same
as that of his Divina Pastora.
Across the hall is
the gallery consecrated to Italian artists. There are not many
pictures of the first
162 CASTILIAN
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rank here. They
have been reserved for the great central gallery, where we are
going. But while here, we must notice especially two glorious
works of Tintoret,--the same subject differently treated,--the
Death of Holofernes. Both are placed higher than they should be,
considering their incontestable merit. A full light is needed to
do justice to that magnificence of color which is the pride of
Venice. There are two remarkable pictures of Giordano,--one in
the Roman style, which would not be unworthy of the great Sanzio
himself, a Holy Family, drawn and colored with that scrupulous
correctness which seems so impossible in the ordinary products of
this Protean genius; and just opposite, an apotheosis of Rubens,
surrounded by his usual "properties" of fat angels and genii,
which could be readily sold anywhere as a specimen of the
estimate which the unabashed Fleming placed upon himself. It is
marvellous that any man should so master the habit and the
thought of two artists so widely apart as Raphael and Rubens, as
to produce just such pictures as they would have painted upon the
same themes. The halls and dark corridors of the Museum are
filled with Giordano's canvases. In less than ten years'
residence in Spain he covered the
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walls of dozens of
churches and palaces with his fatally facile work. There are more
than three hundred pictures recorded as executed by him in that
time. They are far from being without merit. There is a singular
slap-dash vigor about his drawing. His coloring, except when he
is imitating some earlier master, is usually thin and poor. It is
difficult to repress an emotion of regret in looking at his
laborious yet useless life. With great talents, with
indefatigable industry, he deluged Europe with paintings that no
one cares for, and passed into history simply as Luca Fa
Presto,--Luke Work-Fast.
It is not by mere
activity that great things are done in art. In the great gallery
we now enter we see the deathless work of the men who wrought in
faith. This is the grandest room in Christendom. It is about
three hundred and fifty feet long and thirty-five broad and high.
It is beautifully lighted from above. Its great length is broken
here and there by vases and statues, so placed between doors as
nowhere to embarrass the view. The northern half of the gallery
is Spanish, and the southern half Italian. Halfway down, a door
to the left opens into an oval chamber, devoted to an eclectic
set
164 CASTILIAN
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of masterpieces of
every school and age. The gallery ends in a circular room of
French and German pictures, on either side of which there are two
great halls of Dutch and Flemish. On the ground floor there are
some hundreds more Flemish and a hall of sculpture.
The first pictures
you see to your left are by the early masters of Spain,--Morales,
called in Spain the Divine, whose works are now extremely rare,
the Museum possessing only three or four, long, fleshless faces
and stiff figures of Christs and Marys,--and Juan de Juanes, the
founder of the Valentian school, who brought back from Italy the
lessons of Raphael's studio, that firmness of design and
brilliancy of color, and whose genuine merit has survived all
vicissitudes of changing taste. He has here a superb Last Supper
and a spirited series of pictures illustrating the martyrdom of
Stephen. There is perhaps a little too much elaboration of
detail, even for the Romans. Stephen's robes are unnecessarily
new, and the ground where he is stoned is profusely covered with
convenient round missiles the size of Vienna rolls, so exactly
suited to the purpose that it looks as if Providence sided with
the persecutors. But what a wonderful vari-
AN HOUR WITH THE
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ety and truth in
the faces and the attitudes of the groups! What mastery of
drawing, and what honest integrity of color after all these ages!
It is reported of Juanes that he always confessed and prayed
before venturing to take up his pencils to touch the features of
the saints and Saviours that shine on his canvas. His
conscientious fervor has its reward.
Across the room are
the Murillos. Hung together are two pictures, not of large
dimensions, but of exquisite perfection, which will serve as fair
illustrations of the work of his youth and his age; the frio and
the vaporoso manner. In the former manner is this charming
picture of Rebecca at the Well; a graceful composition, correct
and somewhat severe drawing, the greatest sharpness and clearness
of outline. In the Martyrdom of St. Andrew the drawing and the
composition are no less absolutely perfect, but there hangs over
the whole picture a luminous haze of strangeness and mystery. A
light that never was on sea or land bathes the distant hills and
battlements, touches the spears of the legionaries, and shines in
full glory on the ecstatic face of the aged saint. It does not
seem a part of the scene. You see the picture
166 CASTILIAN
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through it. A step
further on there is a Holy Family, which seems to me the ultimate
effort of the early manner. A Jewish carpenter holds his
fair-haired child between his knees. The urchin holds up a bird
to attract the attention of a little white dog on the floor. The
mother, a dark-haired peasant woman, looks on the scene with
quiet amusement. The picture is absolutely perfect in detail. It
seems to be the consigne among critics to say it lacks
"style." They say it is a family scene in Judaea, voilá
tout. Of course, and it is that very truth and nature that
makes this picture so fascinating. The Word was made flesh, and
not a phosphorescent apparition; and Murillo knew what he was
about when he painted this view of the interior of St. Joseph's
shop. What absurd presumption to accuse this great thinker of a
deficiency of ideality, in face of these two glorious Marys of
the Conception that fill the room with light and majesty! They
hang side by side, so alike and yet so distinct in character. One
is a woman in knowledge and a goddess of purity; the other,
absolute innocence, startled by the stupendous revelation and
exalted by the vaguely comprehended glory of the future. It is
before this picture that the
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visitor always
lingers longest. The face is the purest expression of girlish
loveliness possible to art. The Virgin floats upborne by rosy
clouds, flocks of pink cherubs flutter at her feet waving
palm-branches. The golden air is thick with suggestions of dim
celestial faces, but nothing mars the imposing solitude of the
Queen of Heaven, shrined alone, throned in the luminous azure.
Surely no man ever understood or interpreted like this grand
Andalusian the power that the worship of woman exerts on the
religions of the world. All the passionate love that has been
poured out in all the ages at the feet of Ashtaroth and Artemis
and Aphrodite and Freya found visible form and color at last on
that immortal canvas where, with his fervor of religion and the
full strength of his virile devotion to beauty, he created, for
the adoration of those who should follow him, this type of the
perfect Feminine,--
"Thee! standing
loveliest in the open heaven! Ave Maria! only Heaven and
Thee!"
There are some
dozens more of Murillo here almost equally remarkable, but I
cannot stop to make an unmeaning catalogue of them. There is a
charming Gypsy Fortune-teller, whose wheedling voice and smile
were caught and fixed in some
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happy moment in
Seville; an Adoration of the Shepherds, wonderful in its happy
combination of rigid truth with the warmest glow of poetry; two
Annunciations, rich with the radiance that streams through the
rent veil of the innermost heaven,--lights painted boldly upon
lights, the White Dove sailing out of the dazzling background of
celestial effulgence,--a miracle and mystery of theology repeated
by a miracle and mystery of art.
Even when you have
exhausted the Murillos of the Museum you have not reached his
highest achievements in color and design. You will find these in
the Academy of San Fernando,--the Dream of the Roman Gentleman,
and the Founding of the Church of St. Mary the Greater; and the
powerful composition of St. Elizabeth of Hungary, in her hospital
work. In the first, a noble Roman and his wife have suddenly
fallen asleep in their chairs in an elegant apartment. Their
slumber is painted with curious felicity,--you lower your voice
for fear of waking them. On the left of the picture is their
dream: the Virgin comes in a halo of golden clouds and designates
the spot where her church is to be built. In the next picture the
happy couple kneel before the pope and
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expose their high
commission, and outside a brilliant procession moves to the
ceremony of the laying of the corner-stone. The St. Elizabeth is
a triumph of genius over a most terribly repulsive subject. The
wounds and sores of the beggars are painted with unshrinking
fidelity, but every vulgar detail is redeemed by the beauty and
majesty of the whole. I think in these pictures of Murillo the
last word of Spanish art was reached. There was no further
progress possible in life, even for him. "Other heights in other
lives, God willing."
Returning to the
Museum and to Velazquez, we find ourselves in front of his
greatest historical work, the Surrender of Breda. This is
probably the most utterly unaffected historical painting in
existence. There is positively no stage business about it. On the
right is the Spanish staff, on the left the deputation of the
vanquished Flemings. In the centre the great Spinola accepts the
keys of the city from the governor; his attitude and face are
full of dignity softened by generous and affable grace. He lays
his hand upon the shoulder of the Flemish general, and you can
see he is paying him some chivalrous compliment on the gallant
fight he has lost. If your eyes wander through the
170 CASTILIAN
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open space between
the two escorts, you see a wonderful widespread landscape in the
Netherlands, which would form a fine picture if the figures all
were gone. Opposite this great work is another which artists
consider greater,--Las Meninas. When Luca Giordano came from
Italy he inquired for this picture, and said on seeing it, "This
is the theology of painting." If our theology were what it should
be, and cannot be, absolute and unquestionable truth, Luca the
Quick-worker would have been right. Velazquez was painting the
portrait of a stupid little infanta when the idea came to him of
perpetuating the scene just as it was. We know how we have wished
to be sure of the exact accessories of past events. The modern
rage for theatrical local color is an illustration of this
desire. The great artist, who must have honored his art,
determined to give to future ages an exact picture of one instant
of his glorious life. It is not too much to say he has done this.
He stands before his easel, his pencils in his hand. The little
princess is stiffly posing in the centre. Her little maids are
grouped about her. Two hideous dwarfs on the right are teasing a
noble dog who is too drowsy and magnanimous
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to growl. In the
background at the end of a long gallery a gentleman is opening a
door to the garden. The presence of royalty is indicated by the
reflection of the faces of the king and queen in a small mirror,
where you would expect to see your own. The longer you look upon
this marvellous painting, the less possible does it seem that it
is merely the placing of color on canvas which causes this
perfect illusion. It does not seem possible that you are looking
at a plane surface. There is a stratum of air before, behind, and
beside these figures. You could walk on that floor and see how
the artist is getting on with the portrait. There is space and
light in this picture, as in any room. Every object is detached,
as in the common miracle of the stereoscope. If art consist in
making a fleeting moment immortal, if the True is a higher ideal
than the Beautiful, then it will be hard to find a greater
painting than this. It is utterly without beauty; its tone is a
cold olive green-gray; there is not one redeeming grace or charm
about it except the noble figure of Velazquez himself,--yet in
its austere fidelity to truth it stands incomparable in the
world. It gained Velazquez his greatest triumph. You see on his
breast a sprawl-
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ing red cross,
painted evidently by an unskilful hand. This was the gracious
answer made by Philip IV. when the artist asked him if anything
was wanting to the picture. This decoration, daubed by the royal
hand, was the accolade of the knighthood of Santiago,--an honor
beyond the dreams of an artist of that day. It may be considered
the highest compliment ever paid to a painter, except the one
paid by Courbet to himself, when he refused to be decorated by
the Man of December.
Among Velazquez's
most admirable studies of life is his picture of the Borrachos. A
group of rustic roysterers are admitting a neophyte into the
drunken confrérie. He kneels to receive a crown of
ivy from the hands of the king of the revel. A group of older
tipplers are filling their cups, or eyeing their brimming
glasses, with tipsy, mock-serious glances. There has never been a
chapter written which so clearly shows the drunkard's nature as
this vulgar anacreontic. A thousand men have painted drunken
frolics, but never one with such distinct spiritual insight as
this. To me the finest product of Jordaens' genius is his Bohnen
Koenig in the Belvedere, but there you see only
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the incidents of
the mad revel; every one is shouting or singing or weeping with
maudlin glee or tears. But in this scene of the Borrachos there
is nothing scenic or forced. These topers have come together to
drink, for the love of the wine,--the fun is secondary. This
wonderful reserve of Velazquez is clearly seen in his conception
of the king of the rouse. He is a young man, with a heavy, dull,
somewhat serious face, fat rather than bloated, rather pale than
flushed. He is naked to the waist to show the plump white arms
and shoulders and the satiny skin of the voluptuary; one of those
men whose heads and whose stomachs are too loyal ever to give
them Katzenjammer or remorse. The others are of the
commoner type of haunters of wine-shops,--with red eyes and
coarse hides and grizzled matted hair,--but every man of them
inexorably true, and a predestined sot.
We must break away
from Velazquez, passing by his marvellous portraits of kings and
dwarfs, saints and poodles,--among whom there is a dwarf of two
centuries ago, who is too like Tom Thumb to serve for his twin
brother,--and a portrait of Aesop, which is a flash of
intuition,
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an epitome of all
the fables. Before leaving the Spaniards we must look at the most
pleasing of all Ribera's works,--the Ladder-Dream of Jacob. The
patriarch lies stretched on the open plain in the deep sleep of
the weary. To the right in a broad shaft of cloudy gold the
angels are ascending and descending. The picture is remarkable
for its mingling the merits of Ribera's first and second manner.
It is a Caravaggio in its strength and breadth of light and
shade, and a Correggio in its delicacy of sentiment and refined
beauty of coloring. He was not often so fortunate in his Parmese
efforts. They are usually marked by a timidity and an attempt at
prettiness inconceivable in the haughty and impulsive master of
the Neapolitan school.
Of the three great
Spaniards, Ribera is the least sympathetic. He often displays a
tumultuous power and energy to which his calmer rivals are
strangers. But you miss in him that steady devotion to truth
which distinguishes Velazquez, and that spiritual lift which
ennobles Murillo. The difference, I conceive, lies in the moral
character of the three. Ribera was a great artist, and the others
were noble men. Ribera passed a youth of
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struggle and hunger
and toil among the artists of Rome,--a stranger and penniless in
the magnificent city,--picking up crusts in the street and
sketching on quiet curbstones, with no friend, and no name but
that of Spagnoletto,--the little Spaniard. Suddenly rising to
fame, he broke loose from his Roman associations and fled to
Naples, where he soon became the wealthiest and the most arrogant
artist of his time. He held continually at his orders a faction
of bravi who drove from Naples, with threats and insults
and violence, every artist of eminence who dared visit the city.
Car-racci and Guido only saved their lives by flight, and the
blameless and gifted Domenichino, it is said, was foully murdered
by his order. It is not to such a heart as this that is given the
ineffable raptures of Murillo or the positive revelations of
Velazquez. These great souls were above cruelty or jealousy.
Velazquez never knew the storms of adversity. Safely anchored in
the royal favor, he passed his uneventful life in the calm of his
beloved work. But his hand and home were always open to the
struggling artists of Spain. He was the benefactor of Alonzo
Cano; and when Murillo came up to Madrid, weary and footsore with
his
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long tramp from
Andalusia, sustained by an innate consciousness of power, all on
fire with a picture of Van Dyck he had seen in Seville, the rich
and honored painter of the court received with generous kindness
the shabby young wanderer, clothed him, and taught him, and
watched with noble delight the first flights of the young eagle
whose strong wing was so soon to cleave the empyrean. And when
Murillo went back to Seville he paid his debt by doing as much
for others. These magnanimous hearts were fit company for the
saints they drew.
We have lingered so
long with the native artists we shall have little to say of the
rest. There are ten fine Raphaels, but it is needless to speak of
them. They have been endlessly reproduced. Raphael is known and
judged by the world. After some centuries of discussion the
scorners and the critics are dumb. All men have learned the habit
of Albani, who, in a frivolous and unappreciative age, always
uncovered his head at the name of Raphael Sanzio. We look at his
precious work with a mingled feeling of gratitude for what we
have, and of rebellious wonder that lives like his and Shelley's
should be extinguished in their glorious
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dawn, while kings
and country gentlemen live a hundred years. What boundless
possibilities of bright achievement these two divine youths owed
us in the forty years more they should have lived! Raphael's
greatest pictures in Madrid are the Spasimo di Sicilia, and the
Holy Family, called La Perla. The former has a singular history.
It was painted for a convent in Palermo, shipwrecked on the way,
and thrown ashore on the gulf of Genoa. It was again sent to
Sicily, brought to Spain by the Viceroy of Naples, stolen by
Napoleon, and in Paris was subjected to a brilliantly successful
operation for transferring the layer of paint from the worm-eaten
wood to canvas. It came back to Spain with other stolen goods
from the Louvre. La Perla was bought by Philip IV. at the sale of
Charles I.'s effects after his decapitation. Philip was fond of
Charles, but could not resist the temptation to profit by his
death. This picture was the richest of the booty. It is, of all
the faces of the Virgin extant, the most perfectly beautiful and
one of the least spiritual.
There is another
fine Madonna, commonly called La Virgen del Pez, from a fish
which young Tobit holds in his hand. It is rather tawny in color,
as if
178 CASTILIAN
DAYS
it had been painted
on a pine board and the wood had asserted itself from below. It
is a charming picture, with all the great Roman's inevitable
perfection of design; but it is incomprehensible that critics, M.
Viardot among them, should call it the first in rank of Raphael's
Virgins in Glory. There are none which can dispute that title
with Our Lady of San Sisto, unearthly and supernatural in beauty
and majesty.
The school of
Florence is represented by a charming Mona Lisa of Leonardo da
Vinci, almost identical with that of the Louvre; and six
admirable pictures of Andrea del Sarto. But the one which most
attracts and holds all those who regard the Faultless Painter
with sympathy, and who admiring his genius regret his errors, is
a portrait of his wife Lucrezia Fede, whose name, a French writer
has said, is a double epigram. It was this capricious and wilful
beauty who made poor Andrea break his word and embezzle the money
King Francis had given him to spend for works of art. Yet this
dangerous face is his best excuse,--the face of a man-snarer,
subtle and passionate and cruel in its blind selfishness, and yet
so beautiful that any man might yield to it against the cry
of
AN HOUR WITH THE
PAINTERS 179
his own warning
conscience. Browning must have seen it before he wrote, in his
pathetic poem,--
"Let my hands frame
your face in your hair's gold, You beautiful Lucrezia, that are
mine!"
Nowhere, away from
the Adriatic, is the Venetian school so richly represented as in
Madrid. Charles and Philip were the most munificent friends and
patrons of Titian, and the Royal Museum counts among its
treasures in consequence the enormous number of forty-three
pictures by the wonderful centenarian. Among these are two upon
which he set great value,--a Last Supper, which has unfortunately
mouldered to ruin in the humid refectory of the Escorial, equal
in merit and destiny with that of Leonardo; and the Gloria, or
apotheosis of the imperial family, which, after the death of
Charles, was brought from Yuste to the Escorial, and thence came
to swell the treasures of the Museum. It is a grand and masterly
work. The vigorous genius of Titian has grappled with the
essential difficulties of a subject that trembles on the balance
of ridiculous and sublime, and has come out triumphant. The
Father and the Son sit on high. The Operating Spirit hovers above
them. The Virgin in robes of azure stands in the blaze
of
180 CASTILIAN
DAYS
the Presence. The
celestial army is ranged around. Below, a little lower than the
angels, are Charles and Philip with their wives, on their knees,
with white cowls and clasped hands,--Charles in his premature
age, with worn face and grizzled beard; and Philip in his youth
of unwholesome fairness, with red lips and pink eyelids, such as
Titian painted him in the Adonis. The foreground is filled with
prophets and saints of the first dignity, and a kneeling woman,
whose face is not visible, but whose attitude and drapery are
drawn with the sinuous and undulating grace of that hand which
could not fail. Every figure is turned to the enthroned Deity,
touched with ineffable light. The artist has painted heaven, and
is not absurd. In that age of substantial faith such achievements
were possible.
There are two
Venuses by Titian very like that of Dresden, but the heads have
not the same dignity; and a Danaé which is a replica of
the Vienna one. His Salome bearing the Head of John the Baptist
is one of the finest impersonations of the pride of life
conceivable. So unapproachable are the soft lights and tones on
the perfect arms and shoulders of the full-bodied maiden, that
Tintoret
AN HOUR WITH THE
PAINTERS 181
one day exclaimed
in despair before it, "That fellow paints with ground
flesh."
This gallery
possesses one of the last works of Titian,--the Battle of
Lepanto, which was fought when the artist was ninety-four years
of age. It is a courtly allegory,--King Philip holds his little
son in his arms, a courier angel brings the news of victory, and
to the infant a palm-branch and the scroll Majora tibi.
Outside you see the smoke and flash of a naval battle, and a
malignant and tur-baned Turk lies bound on the floor. It would
seem incredible that this enormous canvas should have been
executed at such an age, did we not know that when the pest cut
the mighty master off in his hundredth year he was busily at work
upon a Descent from the Cross, which Palma the Elder finished on
his knees and dedicated to God: Quod Titianus inchoatum reliquit
Palma reverenter absolvit Deoque dicavit opus.
The vast
representation of Titian rather injures Veronese and Tintoret.
Opposite the Gloria of Yuste hangs the sketch of that stupendous
Paradise of Tintoret, which we see in the Palace of the
Doges,--the biggest picture ever painted by mortal, thirty feet
high and seventy-four long.
182 CASTILIAN
DAYS
The sketch was
secured by Velazquez in his tour through Italy. The most charming
picture of Veronese is a Venus and Adonis, which is finer than
that of Titian,--a classic and most exquisite idyl of love and
sleep, cool shadow and golden-sifted sunshine. His most
considerable work in the gallery is a Christ teaching the
Doctors, magnificent in arrangement, severely correct in drawing,
and of a most vivid and dramatic interest.
We pass through a
circular vaulted chamber to reach the Flemish rooms. There is a
choice though scanty collection of the German and French schools.
Albert Dürer has an Adam and Eve, and a priceless portrait
of himself as perfectly preserved as if it were painted
yesterday. He wears a curious and picturesque costume,--striped
black-and-white,--a graceful tasselled cap of the same. The
picture is sufficiently like the statue at Nuremberg; a long
South-German face, blue-eyed and thin, fair-whiskered, with that
expression of quiet confidence you would expect in the man who
said one day, with admirable candor, when people were praising a
picture of his, "It could not be better done." In this circular
room are four great Claudes, two of which, Sunrise and Sunset,
otherwise called the Embar-
AN HOUR WITH THE
PAINTERS 183
cation of Sta.
Paula, and Tobit and the Angel, are in his best and richest
manner. It is inconceivable to us, who graduate men by a
high-school standard, that these refined and most elegant works
could have been produced by a man so imperfectly educated as
Claude Lorrain.
There remain the
pictures of the Dutch and the Flemings. It is due to the causes
we have mentioned in the beginning that neither in Antwerp nor
Dresden nor Paris is there such wealth and profusion of the
Netherlands art as in this mountain-guarded corner of Western
Europe. I shall have but a word to say of these three vast rooms,
for Rubens and Van Dyck and Teniers are known to every one. The
first has here a representation so complete that if Europe were
sunk by a cataclysm from the Baltic to the Pyrenees every
essential characteristic of the great Fleming could still be
studied in this gallery. With the exception of his Descent from
the Cross in the Cathedral at Antwerp, painted in a moment of
full inspiration that never comes twice in a life, everything he
has done elsewhere may be matched in Madrid. His largest picture
here is an Adoration of the Kings, an overpowering exhibition of
wasteful luxuriance
184 CASTILIAN
DAYS
of color and
fougue of composition. To the left the Virgin stands
leaning with queenly majesty over the effulgent Child. From this
point the light flashes out over the kneeling magi, the
gorgeously robed attendants, the prodigality of velvet and jewels
and gold, to fade into the lovely clear-obscure of a starry night
peopled with dim camels and cattle. On the extreme right is a
most graceful and gallant portrait of the artist on horseback. We
have another fine self-portraiture in the Garden of Love,--a
group of lords and ladies in a delicious pleasance where the
greatest seigneur is Peter Paul Rubens and the finest lady is
Helen Forman. These true artists had to paint for money so many
ignoble faces that they could not be blamed for taking their
revenge in painting sometimes their own noble heads. Van Dyck
never drew a profile so faultless in manly beauty as his own
which we see on the same canvas with that of his friend the Earl
of Bristol. Look at the two faces side by side, and say whether
God or the king can make the better nobleman.
Among those
mythological subjects in which Rubens delighted, the best here
are his Perseus and Andromeda, where the young hero comes
glori-
AN HOUR WITH THE
PAINTERS 185
ously in a
brand-new suit of Milanese armor, while the lovely princess, in a
costume that never grows old-fashioned, consisting of sunshine
and golden hair, awaits him and deliverance in beautiful
resignation; a Judgment of Paris, the Three Graces,--both
prodigies of his strawberries-and-cream color; and a curious
suckling of Hercules, which is the prototype or adumbration of
the ecstatic vision of St. Bernard. He has also a copy of
Titian's Adam and Eve, in an out-of-the-way place downstairs,
which should be hung beside the original, to show the difference
of handling of the two master colorists.
Especially happy is
this Museum in its Van Dycks. Besides those incomparable
portraits of Lady Oxford, of Liberti the Organist of Antwerp, and
others better than the best of any other man, there are a few
large and elaborate compositions such as I have never seen
elsewhere. The principal one is the Capture of Christ by Night in
the Garden of Gethsemane, which has all the strength of Rubens,
with a more refined study of attitudes and a greater delicacy of
tone and touch. Another is the Crowning with Thorns,--although of
less dimensions, of profound significance in
expression,
186 CASTILIAN
DAYS
and a flowing and
marrowy softness of execution. You cannot survey the work of Van
Dyck in this collection, so full of deep suggestion, showing an
intellect so vivid and so refined, a mastery of processes so
thorough and so intelligent, without the old wonder of what he
would have done in that ripe age when Titian and Murillo and
Shakespeare wrought their best and fullest, and the old regret
for the dead,--as Edgar Poe sings, the doubly dead in that they
died so young. We are tempted to lift the veil that hides the
unknown, at least with the furtive hand of conjecture; to imagine
a field of unquenched activity where the early dead, free from
the clogs and trammels of the lower world, may follow out the
impulses of their diviner nature,--where Andrea has no wife, and
Raphael and Van Dyck no disease,--where Keats and Shelley have
all eternity for their lofty rhyme,--where Ellsworth and Koerner
and the Lowell boys can turn their alert and athletic
intelligence to something better than war.
A CASTLE IN THE
AIR
I HAVE sometimes
thought that a symptom of the decay of true kinghood in modern
times is the love of monarchs for solitude. In the early days
when monarchy was a real power to answer a real want, the king
had no need to hide himself. He was the strongest, the most
knowing, the most cunning. He moved among men their acknowledged
chief. He guided and controlled them. He never lost his dignity
by daily use. He could steal a horse like Diomede, he could mend
his own breeches like Dagobert, and never tarnish the lustre of
the crown by it. But in later times
188 CASTILIAN
DAYS
the throne has
become an anachronism. The wearer of a crown has done nothing to
gain it but give himself the trouble to be born. He has no claim
to the reverence or respect of men. Yet he insists upon it, and
receives some show of it. His life is mainly passed in keeping up
this battle for a lost dignity and worship. He is given up to
shams and ceremonies.
To a life like this
there is something embarrassing in the movement and activity of a
great city. The king cannot join in it without a loss of
prestige. Being outside of it, he is vexed and humiliated by it.
The empty forms become nauseous in the midst of this honest and
wholesome reality of out-of-doors.
Hence the necessity
of these quiet retreats in the forests, in the water-guarded
islands, in the cloud-girdled mountains. Here the world is not
seen or heard. Here the king may live with such approach to
nature as his false and deformed education will allow. He is
surrounded by nothing but the world of servants and courtiers,
and it requires little effort of the imagination to consider
himself chief and lord.
A CASTLE IN THE AIR
189
It was this spirit
which in the decaying ripeness of the Bourbon dynasty drove the
Louis from Paris to Versailles and from Versailles to Marly.
Millions were wasted to build the vast monument of royal fatuity,
and when it was done the Grand Monarque found it necessary to fly
from time to time to the sham solitude and mock retirement he had
built an hour away.
When Philip V. came
down from France to his splendid exile on the throne of Spain, he
soon wearied of the interminable ceremonies of the Cas-tilian
court, and finding one day, while hunting, a pleasant farm on the
territory of the Segovian monks, flourishing in a wrinkle of the
Guadarrama Mountains, he bought it, and reared the Palace of La
Granja. It is only kings who can build their castles in the air
of palpable stones and mortar. This lordly pleasure-house stands
four thousand feet above the sea level. On this commanding
height, in this savage Alpine loneliness, in the midst of a
scenery once wildly beautiful, but now shorn and shaven into a
smug likeness of a French garden, Philip passed all the later
years of his gloomy and inglorious life.
190 CASTILIAN
DAYS
It has been ever
since a most tempting summer-house to all the Bourbons. When the
sun is calcining the plains of Castile, and the streets of Madrid
are white with the hot light of midsummer, this palace in the
clouds is as cool and shadowy as spring twilights. And besides,
as all public business is transacted in Madrid, and La Granja is
a day's journey away, it is too much trouble to send a courier
every day for the royal signature,--or, rather, rubric, for
royalty in Spain is above handwriting, and gives its majestic
approval with a flourish of the pen,--so that everything waits a
week or so, and much business goes finally undone; and this is
the highest triumph of Spanish industry and skill.
We had some formal
business with the court of the regent, and were not sorry to
learn that his highness would not return to the capital for some
weeks, and that consequently, following the precedent of a
certain prophet, we must go to the mountain.
We found at the
Estación del Norte the state railway carriage of her late
majesty,--a brilliant creation of yellow satin and profuse
gilding, a bovidoir on wheels,--not too full of a
distinguished
THE PALACE, LA
GRANJA
A CASTLE IN THE AIR
191
company. Some of
the leading men of New Spain, one or two ministers, were there,
and we passed a pleasant two hours on the road in that most
seductive of all human occupations,--talking politics.
It is remarkable
that whenever a nation is remodelling its internal structure, the
subject most generally discussed is the constitutional system of
the United States. The republicans usually adopt it solid. The
monarchists study it with a jealous interest. I fell into
conversation with Señor------, one of the best minds in
Spain, an enlightened though conservative statesman. He said: "It
is hard for Europe to adopt a settled belief about you. America
is a land of wonders, of contradictions. One party calls your
system freedom, another anarchy. In all legislative assemblies of
Europe, republicans and absolutists alike draw arguments from
America. But what cannot be denied are the effects, the results.
These are evident, something vast and grandiose, a life and
movement to which the Old World is stranger." He afterwards
referred with great interest to the imaginary imperialist
movement in America, and raised his eyebrows in polite
incredulity when I assured him
192 CASTILIAN
DAYS
there was as much
danger of Spain becoming Mohammedan as of America becoming
imperialist.
We stopped at the
little station of Villalba, in the midst of the wide brown
table-land that stretches from Madrid to the Escorial. At
Villalba we found the inevitable swarm of beggars, who always
know by the sure instinct of wretchedness where a harvest of
cuartos is to be achieved. I have often passed Villalba and have
seen nothing but the station-master and the water-vender. But
to-day, because there were a half dozen excellencies on the
train, the entire mendicant force of the district was on parade.
They could not have known these gentlemen were coming; they must
have scented pennies in the air.
Awaiting us at the
rear of the station were three enormous lumbering diligences,
each furnished with nine superb mules,--four pairs and a leader.
They were loaded with gaudy trappings, and their shiny coats, and
backs shorn into graceful arabesques, showed that they did not
belong to the working-classes, but enjoyed the gentlemanly
leisure of official station. The drivers wore a smart postilion
uniform and the royal crown on their caps.
We threw some
handfuls of copper and bronze
A CASTLE IN THE AIR
193
among the
picturesque mendicants. They gathered them up with grave
Castilian decorum, and said, "God will repay your graces." The
postilions cracked their whips, the mules shook their bells
gayly, the heavy wagons started off at a full gallop, and the
beggars said, "May your graces go with God!"
It was the end of
July, and the sky was blue and cloudless. The fine, soft light of
the afternoon was falling on the tawny slopes and the
close-reaped fields. The harvest was over. In the fields on
either side they were threshing their grain, not as in the
outside world, with the whirring of loud and swift machinery, nor
even with the active and lively swinging of flails; but in the
open air, under the warm sky, the cattle were lazily treading out
the corn on the bare ground, to be winnowed by the wandering
wind. No change from the time of Solomon. Through an infinity of
ages, ever since corn and cattle were, the Iberian farmer in this
very spot had driven his beasts over his crop, and never dreamed
of a better way of doing the work.
Not only does the
Spaniard not seek for improvements, he utterly despises and
rejects them.
194 CASTILIAN
DAYS
The poorer classes
especially, who would find an enormous advantage in increased
production, lightening their hard lot by a greater plenty of the
means of life, regard every introduction of improved machinery as
a blow at the rights of labor. When many years ago a Dutch
vintner went to Valdepeñas and so greatly improved the
manufacture of that excellent but ill-made wine that its price
immediately rose in the Madrid market, he was mobbed and
plundered by his ignorant neighbors, because, as they said, he
was laboring to make wine dearer. In every attempt which has been
made to manufacture improved machinery in Spain, the greatest
care has to be taken to prevent the workmen from maliciously
damaging the works, which they imagine are to take the bread from
the mouths of their children.
So strong is this
feeling in every department of national life, that the mayoral
who drove our spanking nine-in-hand received with very ill humor
our suggestion that the time could be greatly shortened by a Fell
railroad over the hills to La Granja. "What would become of
nosotros?" he asked. And it really would seem a pity to
annihilate so much picturesqueness and color at the bidding
of
A CASTLE IN THE AIR
195
mere utility. A
gayly embroidered Andalusian jacket, bright scarlet silk
waistcoat,--a rich wide belt, into which his long knife, the
navaja, was jauntily thrust,--buckskin breeches, with Valentian
stockings, which, as they are open at the bottom, have been aptly
likened to a Spaniard's purse,--and shoes made of Murcian
matting, composed his natty outfit. By his side on the box sat
the zagal, his assistant, whose especial function seemed to be to
swear at the cattle. I have heard some eloquent imprecation in my
day. "Our army swore terribly" at Hilton Head. The objuration of
the boatmen of the Mississippi is very vigorous and racy. But I
have never assisted at a session of profanity so loud, so
energetic, so original as that with which this Castilian
postilion regaled us. The wonderful consistency and perseverance
with which the role was sustained was worthy of a much better
cause.
He began by yelling
in a coarse, strident voice, "Arre! arre!" (Get up!) with a
vicious emphasis on the final syllable. This is one of the
Moorish words that have remained fixed like fossils in the
language of the conquerors. Its constant use in the mouths of
muleteers has given them the name
196 CASTILIAN
DAYS
of arrieros. This
general admonition being addressed to the team at large, the
zagal descended to details, and proceeded to vilipend the
galloping beasts separately, beginning with the leader. He
informed him, still in this wild, jerking scream, that he was a
dog, that his mother's character was far from that of Caesar's
wife, and that if more speed was not exhibited on this down
grade, he would be forced to resort to extreme measures. At the
mention of a whip, the tall male mule who led the team dashed
gallantly off, and the diligence was soon enveloped in a cloud of
dust. This seemed to excite our gay charioteer to the highest
degree. He screamed lustily at his mules, addressing each
personally by its name. "Andaluza, arre! Thou of Arragon, go!
Beware the scourge, Manchega!" and every animal acknowledged the
special attention by shaking its ears and bells and whisking its
shaven tail, as the diligence rolled furiously over the dull drab
plain.
For three hours the
iron lungs of the muleteer knew no rest or pause. Several times
in the journey we stopped at a post-station to change our cattle,
but the same brazen throat sufficed for all the threatening and
encouragement that kept them
A CASTLE IN THE AIR
197
at the top of their
speed. Before we arrived at our journey's end, however, he was
hoarse as a raven, and kept one hand pressed to his jaw to
reinforce the exhausted muscles of speech.
When the wide and
dusty plain was passed, we began by a slow and winding ascent the
passage of the Guadarrama. The road is an excellent one, and
although so seldom used,--a few months only in the year,--it is
kept in the most perfect repair. It is exclusively a summer road,
being in the winter impassable with snow. It affords at every
turn the most charming compositions of mountain and wooded
valley. At intervals we passed a mounted guardia civil, who sat
as motionless in his saddle as an equestrian statue, and saluted
as the coaches rattled by. And once or twice in a quiet nook by
the roadside we came upon the lonely cross that marked the spot
where a man had been murdered.
It was nearly
sunset when we arrived at the summit of the pass. We halted to
ask for a glass of water at the hut of a gray-haired woman on the
mountain-top. It was given and received as always in this pious
country, in the name of God. As we descended, the mules seemed to
have gained new vigor from the prospect of an easy stretch of
fací-
198 CASTILIAN
DAYS
lis
descensus, and the zagal employed what was left of his voice
in provoking them to speed by insulting remarks upon their
lineage. The quick twilight fell as we entered a vast forest of
pines that clothed the mountain-side. The enormous trees looked
in the dim evening light like the forms of the Anakim, maimed
with lightning but still defying heaven. Years of battle with the
mountain winds had twisted them into every conceivable shape of
writhing and distorted deformity. I never saw trees that so
nearly conveyed the idea of being the visible prison of tortured
dryads. Their trunks, white and glistening with oozing resin,
added to the ghostly impression they created in the uncertain and
failing light.
We reached the
valley and rattled by a sleepy village, where we were greeted by
a chorus of outraged curs whose beauty-sleep we had disturbed,
and then began the slow ascent of the hill where St. Ildefonso
stands. We had not gone far when we heard a pattering of hoofs
and a ringing of sabres coming down the road to meet us. The
diligence stopped, and the Introducer of Ambassadors jumped to
the ground and announced, "El Regente del Reino!" It was the
regent, the
SAN ILDEFONSO
A CASTLE IN THE AIR
199
courteous and
amiable Marshal Serrano, who had ridden out from the palace to
welcome his guests, and who, after hasty salutations, galloped
back to La Granja, where we soon arrived.
We were assigned
the apartments usually given to the papal nuncio, and slept with
an episcopal peace of mind. In the morning, as we were walking
about the gardens, we saw looking from the palace window one of
the most accomplished gentlemen and diplomatists of the new
regime. He descended and did the honors of the place. The system
of gardens and fountains is enormous. It is evidently modelled
upon Versailles, but the copy is in many respects finer than the
original. The peculiarity of the site, while offering great
difficulties, at the same time enhances the triumph of success.
This is a garden taught to bloom upon a barren mountain-side. The
earth in which these trees are planted was brought from those dim
plains in the distance on the backs of men and mules. The pipes
that supply these innumerable fountains were laid on the bare
rocks and the soil was thrown over them. Every tree was guarded
and watched like a baby. There was probably never a garden that
grew under such circumstances,
200 CASTILIAN
DAYS
--but the result is
superb. The fountains are fed by a vast reservoir in the
mountain, and the water they throw into the bright air is as
clear as morning dew. Every alley and avenue is a vista that ends
in a vast picture of shaggy hills or far-off plains,--while
behind the royal gardens towers the lordly peak of the
Peñalara, thrust eight thousand feet into the thin blue
ether.
The palace has its
share of history. It witnessed the abdication of the uxorious
bigot Philip V. in 1724, and his resumption of the crown the next
year at the instance of his proud and turbulent Parmesan wife.
His bones rest in the church here, as he hated the Austrian line
too intensely to share with them the gorgeous crypt of the
Escorial. His wife, Elizabeth Farnese, lies under the same
gravestone with him, as if unwilling to forego even in death that
tremendous influence which her vigorous vitality had always
exercised over his wavering and sensual nature. "Das
Ewig-Weibliche" masters and guides him still.
This retreat in the
autumn of 1832 was the scene of a prodigious exhibition of
courage and energy on the part of another Italian woman,
Doña Louisa Carlota de Borbon. Ferdinand VIL,
A CASTLE IN THE AIR
201
his mind weakened
by illness, and influenced by his ministers, had proclaimed his
brother Don Carlos heir to the throne, to the exclusion of his
own infant daughter. His wife, Queen Christine, broken down by
the long conflict, had given way in despair. But her sister,
Doña Louisa Carlota, heard of the news in the south of
Spain, and, leaving her babies at Cadiz (two little
urchins, one of whom was to be king consort, and the other was to
fall by his cousin Montpensier's hand in the field of
Carabanchel), she posted without a moment's pause for rest or
sleep over mountains and plains from the sea to La Granja. She
fought with the lackeys and the ministers twenty-four hours
before she could see her sister the queen. Having breathed into
Christine her own invincible spirit, they succeeded, after
endless pains, in reaching the king. Obstinate as the weak often
are, he refused at first to listen to them; but by their womanly
wiles, their Italian policy, their magnetic force, they at last
brought him to revoke his decree in favor of Don Carlos and to
recognize the right of his daughter to the crown. Then, terrible
in her triumph, Doña Louisa Carlota sent for the Minister
Calomarde, overwhelmed him with the
202 CASTILIAN
DAYS
coarsest and most
furious abuse, and, unable to confine her victorious rage and
hate to words alone, she slapped the astounded minister in the
face. Calomarde, trembling with rage, bowed and said, "A white
hand cannot offend."
There is nothing
stronger than a woman's weakness, or weaker than a woman's
strength.
A few years later,
when Ferdinand was in his grave, and the baby Isabel reigned
under the regency of Christine, a movement in favor of the
constitution of 1812 burst out, where revolutions generally do,
in the south, and spread rapidly over the contiguous provinces.
The infection gained the troops of the royal guard at La Granja,
and they surrounded the palace bawling for the constitution. The
regentess, with a proud reliance upon her own power, ordered them
to send a deputation to her apartment. A dozen of the mutineers
came in, and demanded the constitution.
"What is that?"
asked the queen.
They looked at each
other and cudgelled their brains. They had never thought of that
before.
"Caramba!" said
they. "We don't know. They say it is a good thing, and will raise
our pay and make salt cheaper."
A CASTLE IN THE AIR
203
Their political
economy was somewhat flimsy, but they had the bayonets, and the
queen was compelled to give way and proclaim the
constitution.
I must add one
trifling reminiscence more of La Granja, which has also its
little moral. A friend of mine, a colonel of engineers, in the
summer before the revolution, was standing before the palace with
some officers, when a mean-looking cur ran past.
"What an ugly dog!"
said the colonel.
"Hush!" replied
another, with an awe-struck face. "That is the dog of his royal
highness the Prince of Asturias."
The colonel
unfortunately had a logical mind, and failed to see that
ownership had any bearing on a purely aesthetic question. He
defined his position. "I do not think the dog is ugly because he
belongs to the prince. I only mean the prince has an ugly
dog."
The window just
above them slammed, and another officer came up and said that the
Adversary was to pay. "THE QUEEN was at the window and heard
every word you said."
An hour after the
colonel received an order from the commandant of the place,
revoking his
204 CASTILIAN
DAYS
leave of absence
and ordering him to duty in Madrid. It is not very surprising
that this officer was at the Bridge of Alcolea.
At noon the day
grew dark with clouds, and the black storm-wreath came down over
the mountains. A terrific fire of artillery resounded for a
half-hour in the craggy peaks about us, and a driving shower
passed over palace and gardens. Then the sun came out again, the
pleasure-grounds were fresher and greener than ever, and the
visitors thronged in the court of the palace to see the fountains
in play. The regent led the way on foot. The general followed in
a pony phaeton, and ministers, adjutants, and the population of
the district trooped along in a party-colored mass.
It was a good
afternoon's work to visit all the fountains. They are twenty-six
in number, strewn over the undulating grounds. People who visit
Paris usually consider a day of Grandes Eaux at Versailles the
last word of this species of costly trifling. But the waters at
Versailles bear no comparison with those of La Granja. The sense
is fatigued and bewildered here with their magnificence and
infinite variety. The vast reservoir in the bosom of the
mountain, filled with the purest
A CASTLE IN THE AIR
205
water, gives a
possibility of more superb effects than have been attained
anywhere else in the world. The Fountain of the Winds is one,
where a vast mass of water springs into the air from the foot of
a great cavernous rock; there is a succession of exquisite
cascades called the Race-Course, filled with graceful statuary; a
colossal group of Apollo slaying the Python, who in his death
agony bleeds a torrent of water; the Basket of Flowers, which
throws up a system of forty jets; the great single jet called
Fame, which leaps one hundred and thirty feet into the air, a
Niagara reversed; and the crowning glory of the garden, the Baths
of Diana, an immense stage scene in marble and bronze, crowded
with nymphs and hunting-parties, wild beasts and birds, and
everywhere the wildest luxuriance of spouting waters. We were
told that it was one of the royal caprices of a recent tenant of
the palace to emulate her chaste prototype of the silver bow by
choosing this artistic basin for her ablutions, a sufficient
number of civil guards being posted to prevent the approach of
Castilian Actaeons. Ford aptly remarks of these extravagant
follies: "The yoke of building kings is grievous, and especially
when, as St. Simon said of Louis
206 CASTILIAN
DAYS
XIV. and his
Versailles, 'II se plut á tyranniser la
nature.'"
As the bilious
Philip paused before this mass of sculptured extravagance, he
looked at it a moment with evident pleasure. Then he thought of
the bill, and whined, "Thou hast amused me three minutes and hast
cost me three millions."
To do Philip
justice, he did not allow the bills to trouble him much. He died
owing forty-five million piastres, which his dutiful son refused
to pay. When you deal with Bourbons, it is well to remember the
Spanish proverb, "A sparrow in the hand is better than a bustard
on the wing."
We wasted an hour
in walking through the palace. It is, like all palaces, too fine
and dreary to describe. Miles of drawing-rooms and boudoirs, with
an infinity of tapestry and gilt chairs, all the apartments
haunted by the demon of ennui. All idea of comfort is sacrificed
to costly glitter and flimsy magnificence. Some fine paintings
were pining in exile on the desolate walls. They looked homesick
for the Museum, where they could be seen of men.
The next morning we
drove down the mountain and over the rolling plain to the fine
old city of Segovia. In point of antiquity and historic
inter-
APPROACH TO
SEGOVIA
A CASTLE IN THE AIR
207
est it is inferior
to no town in Spain. It has lost its ancient importance as a seat
of government and a mart of commerce. Its population is now not
more than eleven thousand. Its manufactures have gone to decay.
Its woollen works, which once employed fourteen thousand persons
and produced annually twenty-five thousand pieces of cloth, now
sustain a sickly existence and turn out not more than two hundred
pieces yearly. Its mint, which once spread over Spain a Danaean
shower of ounces and dollars, is now reduced to the humble office
of striking copper cuartos. More than two centuries ago this
decline began. Boisel, who was there in 1669, speaks of the city
as "presque desert et fort pauvre." He mentions as a mark of the
general unthrift that the day he arrived there was no bread in
town until two o'clock in the afternoon, "and no one was
astonished at it."
Yet even in its
poverty and rags it has the air of a town that has seen better
days. Tradition says it was founded by Hercules. It was an
important city of the Roman Empire, and a great capital in the
days of the Arab monarchy. It was the court of the star-gazing
King Alonso the Wise. Through a dozen centuries it was the flower
of the moun-
208 CASTILIAN
DAYS
tains of Castile.
Each succeeding age and race beautified and embellished it, and
each, departing, left the trace of its passage in the abiding
granite of its monuments. The Romans left the glorious aqueduct,
that work of demigods who scorned to mention it in their
histories; its mediaeval bishops bequeathed to later times their
ideas of ecclesiastical architecture; and the Arabs the science
of fortification and the industrial arts.
Its very ruin and
decay makes it only more precious to the traveller. There are
here none of the modern and commonplace evidences of life and
activity that shock the artistic sense in other towns. All is
old, moribund, and picturesque. It lies here in the heart of the
Guadarramas, lost and forgotten by the civilization of the age,
muttering in its senile dream of the glories of an older world.
It has not vitality enough to attract a railroad, and so is only
reached by a long and tiresome journey by diligence. Its solitude
is rarely intruded upon by the impertinent curious, and the red
back of Murray is a rare apparition in its winding
streets.
Yet those who come
are richly repaid. One does not quickly forget the impression
produced by the first view of the vast aqueduct, as you drive
into
THE AQUEDUCT FROM THE
MARKET, SEGOVIA
A CASTLE IN THE AIR
209
the town from La
Granja. It comes upon you in an instant,--the two great ranges of
superimposed arches, over one hundred feet high, spanning the
ravine-like suburb from the outer hills to the Alcázar.
You raise your eyes from the market-place, with its dickering
crowd, from the old and squalid houses clustered like shot
rubbish at the foot of the chasm, to this grand and soaring
wonder of utilitarian architecture, with something of a fancy
that it was never made, that it has stood there since the morning
of the world. It has the lightness and the strength, the absence
of ornament and the essential beauty, the vastness and the
perfection, of a work of nature.
It is one of those
gigantic works of Trajan, so common in that magnificent age that
Roman authors do not allude to it. It was built to bring the cool
mountain water of the Sierra Fonfria a distance of nine miles
through the hills, the gulches, and the pine forests of Valsain,
and over the open plain to the thirsty city of Segovia. The
aqueduct proper runs from the old tower of Caserón three
thousand feet to the reservoir where the water deposits its sand
and sediment, and thence begins the series of one hundred and
nineteen arches, which traverse
210 CASTILIAN
DAYS
three thousand feet
more and pass the valley, the arrabal, and reach the citadel. It
is composed of great blocks of granite, so perfectly framed and
fitted that not a particle of mortar or cement is employed in the
construction.
The wonder of the
work is not so much in its vastness or its beauty as in its
tremendous solidity and duration. A portion of it had been cut
away by barbarous armies during the fifteenth century, and in the
reign of Isabella the Catholic the monk-architect of the Parral,
Juan Escovedo, the greatest builder of his day in Spain, repaired
it. These repairs have themselves twice needed repairing since
then. Marshal Ney, when he came to this portion of the monument,
exclaimed, "Here begins the work of men's hands."
The true Segovian
would hoot at you if you assigned any mortal paternity to the
aqueduct. He calls it the Devil's Bridge, and tells you this
story. The Evil One was in love with a pretty girl of the upper
town, and full of protestations of devotion. The fair Segovian
listened to him one evening, when her plump arms ached with the
work of bringing water from the ravine, and promised eyes of
favor if his Infernal Majesty would build an
A CASTLE IN THE AIR
211
aqueduct to her
door before morning. He worked all night, like the Devil, and the
maiden, opening her black eyes at sunrise, saw him putting the
last stone in the last arch, as the first ray of the sun lighted
on his shining tail. The Church, we think very unfairly, decided
that he had failed, and released the coquettish contractor from
her promise; and it is said the Devil has never trusted a
Sego-vian out of his sight again.
The bartizaned keep
of the Moorish Alcázar is perched on the western
promontory of the city that guards the meeting of the streams
Eresma and Clamores. It has been in the changes of the warring
times a palace, a fortress, a prison (where our
friend--everybody's friend--Gil Blas was once confined), and of
late years a college of artillery. In one of its rooms Alonso the
Wise studied the heavens more than was good for his orthodoxy,
and from one of its windows a lady of the court once dropped a
royal baby, of the bad blood of Trasta-mara. Henry of Trastamara
will seem more real if we connect him with fiction. He was the
son of "La Favorita," who will outlast all legitimate princesses,
in the deathless music of Donizetti.
Driving through a
throng of beggars that en-
212 CASTILIAN
DAYS
cumbered the
carriage wheels as grasshoppers sometimes do the locomotives on a
Western railway, we came to the fine Gothic Cathedral, built by
Gil de Ontañon, father and son, in the early part of the
sixteenth century. It is a delight to the eyes; the rich
harmonious color of the stone, the symmetry of proportion, the
profuse opulence and grave finish of the details. It was built in
that happy era of architecture when a builder of taste and
culture had all the past of Gothic art at his disposition, and
before the degrading influence of the Jesuits appeared in the
churches of Europe. Within the Cathedral is remarkably airy and
graceful in effect. A most judicious use has been made of the
exquisite salmon-colored marbles of the country in the great
altar and the pavement.
We were met by
civil ecclesiastics of the foundation and shown the beauties and
the wonders of the place. Among much that is worthless, there is
one very impressive Descent from the Cross by Juan de Juni, of
which that excellent Mr. Madoz says "it is worthy to rank with
the best masterpieces of Raphael or--Mengs;" as if one should say
of a poet that he was equal to Shakespeare or Southey.
SEGOVIA
A CASTLE IN THE AIR
213
We walked through
the cloisters and looked at the tombs. A flood of warm light
poured through the graceful arches and lit up the trees in the
garden and set the birds to singing, and made these cloisters
pleasanter to remember than they usually are. Our attendant
priest told us, with an earnest credulity that was very touching,
the story of Maria del Salto, Mary of the Leap, whose history was
staring at us from the wall. She was a Jewish lady, whose husband
had doubts of her discretion, and so threw her from a local
Tarpeian rock. As she fell she invoked the Virgin, and came down
easily, sustained, as you see in the picture, by her faith and
her petticoats.
As we parted from
the good fathers and entered our carriages at the door of the
church, the swarm of mendicants had become an army. The word had
doubtless gone through the city of the outlandish men who had
gone into the Cathedral with whole coats, and the result was a
levee en masse of the needy. Every coin that was thrown to
them but increased the clamor, as it confirmed them in their idea
of the boundless wealth and munificence of the givers. We
recalled the profound thought of Emerson, "If the rich were only
as rich as the poor think them!"
214 CASTILIAN
DAYS
At last we drove
desperately away through the ragged and screaming throng. We
passed by the former home of the Jeronomite monks of the Parral,
which was once called an earthly paradise, and in later years has
been a pen for swine; past crumbling convents and ruined
churches; past the charming Romanesque San Millan, girdled with
its round-arched cloisters; the granite palace of his Reverence
the Bishop of Segovia, and the elegant tower of St. Esteban,
where the Roman is dying and the Gothic is dawning; and every
step of the route is a study and a joy to the
antiquarian.
But though enriched
by all these legacies of an immemorial past, there seems no hope,
no future for Segovia. It is as dead as the cities of the Plain.
Its spindles have rusted into silence. Its gay company is gone.
Its streets are too large for the population, and yet they swarm
with beggars. I had often heard it compared in outline to a
ship,--the sunrise astern and the prow pointing westward,--and as
we drove away that day and I looked back to the receding town, it
seemed to me like a grand hulk of some richly laden galleon,
aground on the rock that holds it, alone, abandoned to its fate
among the barren billows of the
A CASTLE IN THE
AIR
215
tumbling ridges,
its crew tired out with struggling and apathetic in despair,
mocked by the finest air and the clearest sunshine that ever
shone, and gazing always forward to the new world and the new
times hidden in the rosy sunset, which they shall never
see.
THE CITY OF THE
VISIGOTHS
EMILIO CASTELAR
said to me one day, "Toledo is the most remarkable city in Spain.
You will find there three strata of glories,--Gothic, Arab, and
Castilian,--and an upper crust of beggars and
silence."
I went there in the
pleasantest time of the year, the first days of June. The early
harvest was in progress, and the sunny road ran through golden
fields which were enlivened by the reapers gathering in their
grain with shining sickles. The borders of the Tagus were so cool
and fresh that it was hard to believe one was in the arid land
of
THE CITY OF THE
VISIGOTHS 217
Castile. From
Madrid to Aranjuez you meet the usual landscapes of dun hillocks
and pale-blue vegetation, such as are only seen in nature in
Central Spain, and only seen in art on the matchless canvas of
Velazquez. But from the time you cross the tawny flood of the
Tagus just north of Aranjuez, the valley is gladdened by its
waters all the way to the Primate City.
I am glad I am not
writing a guide-book, and do not feel any responsibility resting
upon me of advising the gentle reader to stop at Aranjuez or to
go by on the other side. There is a most amiable and praiseworthy
class of travellers who feel a certain moral necessity impelling
them to visit every royal abode within their reach. They always
see precisely the same things,--some thousand of gilt chairs,
some faded tapestry and marvellous satin upholstery, a room in
porcelain, and a room in imitation of some other room somewhere
else, and a picture or two by that worthy and tedious young man,
Raphael Mengs. I knew I would see all these things at Aranjuez,
and so contented myself with admiring its pretty site, its
stone-cornered brick facade, its high-shouldered French roof, and
its general air of the Place Royale, from the
218 CASTILIAN
DAYS
outside. The
gardens are very pleasant, and lonely enough for the most
philosophic stroller. A clever Spanish writer says of them, "They
are sombre as the thoughts of Philip II., mysterious and gallant
as the pleasures of Philip IV." To a revolutionary mind, it is a
certain pleasure to remember that this was the scene of the
emeute that drove Charles IV. from his throne, and the
Prince of Peace from his queen's boudoir. Ferdinand VII., the
turbulent and restless Prince of Asturias, reaped the immediate
profit of his father's abdication; but the two worthless
creatures soon called in Napoleon to decide the squabble, which
he did in his leonine way by taking the crown away from both of
them and handing it over for safe-keeping to his lieutenant
brother Joseph. Honor among thieves!--a silly proverb, as one
readily sees if he falls into their hands, or reads the history
of kings.
If Toledo had been
built, by some caprice of enlightened power, especially for a
show city, it could not be finer in effect. In detail, it is one
vast museum. In ensemble, it stands majestic on its hills, with
its long lines of palaces and convents terraced around the rocky
slope, and on the height
THE ALCAZAR,
TOLEDO
THE CITY OF THE
VISIGOTHS 219
the soaring
steeples of a swarm of churches piercing the blue, and the huge
cube of the Alcázar crowning the topmost crest, and
domineering the scene. The magnificent zigzag road which leads up
the steep hillside from the bridge of Alcántara gives an
indefinable impression, as of the lordly ramp of some fortress of
impossible extent.
This road is new,
and in perfect condition. But do not imagine you can judge the
city by the approaches. When your carriage has mounted the hill
and passed the evening promenade of the To-ledans, the quaint
triangular Place,--I had nearly called it Square,--"waking
laughter in indolent reviewers," the Zocodover, you are lost in
the dae-dalian windings of the true streets of Toledo, where you
can touch the walls on either side, and where two carriages could
no more pass each other than two locomotives could salute and go
by on the same track. This interesting experiment, which is so
common in our favored land, could never be tried in Toledo, as I
believe there is only one turnout in the city, a minute omnibus
with striped linen hangings at the sides, driven by a young
Castilian whose love of money is the root of much discussion when
you pay his bill. It is a most
220 CASTILIAN
DAYS
remarkable
establishment. The horses can cheerfully do their mile in fifteen
or twenty minutes, but they make more row about it than a
high-pressure Mississippi steamer; and the crazy little trap is
noisier in proportion to its size than anything I have ever seen,
except perhaps an Indiana tree-toad. If you make an excursion
outside the walls, the omnibus, noise and all, is inevitable; let
it come. But inside the city you must walk; the slower the
better, for every door is a study.
It is hard to
conceive that this was once a great capital with a population of
two hundred thousand souls. You can easily walk from one end of
the city to the other in less than half an hour, and the houses
that remain seem comfortably filled by eighteen thousand
inhabitants. But in this narrow space once swarmed that enormous
and busy multitude. The city was walled about by powerful stone
ramparts, which yet stand in all their massy perfection. So there
could have been no suburbs. This great aggregation of humanity
lived and toiled on the crests and in the wrinkles of the seven
hills we see to-day. How important were the industries of the
earlier days we can guess from the single fact that John of
Padilla, when he rose in defence
THE CITY OF THE
VISIGOTHS 221
of municipal
liberty in the time of Charles V., drew in one day from the
teeming workshops twenty thousand fighting men. He met the usual
fate of all Spanish patriots, shameful and cruel death. His
palace was razed to the ground. Successive governments, in
shifting fever-fits of liberalism and absolutism, have set up and
pulled down his statue. But his memory is loved and honored, and
the example of this noblest of the comuneros impresses powerfully
to-day the ardent young minds of the new Spain.
Your first walk is
of course to the Cathedral, the Primate Church of the kingdom.
Besides its ecclesiastical importance, it is well worthy of
notice in itself. It is one of the purest specimens of Gothic
architecture in existence, and is kept in an admirable state of
preservation. Its situation is not the most favorable. It is
approached by a network of descending streets, all narrow and
winding, as streets were always built under the intelligent rule
of the Moors. They preferred to be cool in summer and sheltered
in winter, rather than to lay out great deserts of boulevards,
the haunts of sunstroke and pneumonia. The site of the Cathedral
was chosen from strategic reasons by St.
222 CASTILIAN
DAYS
Eugene, who built
there his first Episcopal Church. The Moors made a mosque of it
when they conquered Castile, and the fastidious piety of St.
Ferdinand would not permit him to worship in a shrine thus
profaned. He tore down the old church and laid, in 1227, the
foundations of this magnificent structure, which was two
centuries after his death in building. There is, however, great
unity of purpose and execution in this Cathedral, due doubtless
to the fact that the architect Pérez gave fifty years of
his long life to the superintendence of the early work. Inside
and outside it is marked by a grave and harmonious majesty. The
great western facade is enriched with three splendid
portals,--the side ones called the doors of Hell and Judgment;
and the central a beautiful ogival arch divided into two smaller
ones, and adorned with a lavish profusion of delicately
sculptured figures of saints and prophets; on the chaste and
severe cornice above, a group of spirited busts represents the
Last Supper. There are five other doors to the temple, of which
the door of the Lions is the finest, and just beside it a heavy
Ionic portico in the most detestable taste indicates the feeling
and culture that survived in the reign of Charles IV.
THE CATHEDRAL OF
TOLEDO
THE CITY OF THE
VISIGOTHS 223
To the north of the
west facade rises the massive tower. It is not among the tallest
in the world, being three hundred and twenty-four feet high, but
is very symmetrical and impressive. In the preservation of its
pyramidal purpose it is scarcely inferior to that most consummate
work, the tower of St. Stephen's in Vienna. It is composed of
three superimposed structures, gradually diminishing in solidity
and massiveness from the square base to the high-springing
octagonal spire, garlanded with thorny crowns. It is balanced at
the south end of the facade by the pretty cupola and lantern of
the Mozarabic Chapel, the work of the Greek
Theotocopouli.
But we soon grow
tired of the hot glare of June, and pass in a moment into the
cool twilight vastness of the interior, refreshing to body and
soul. Five fine naves, with eighty-four pillars formed each of
sixteen graceful columns,--the entire edifice measuring four
hundred feet in length and two hundred feet in breadth,--a grand
and shadowy temple grove of marble and granite. At all times the
light is of an unearthly softness and purity, toned by the
exquisite windows and rosaces. But as evening draws on, you
should linger till
224 CASTILIAN
DAYS
the sacristan grows
peremptory, to watch the gorgeous glow of the western sunlight on
the blazing roses of the portals, and the marvellous play of rich
shadows and faint gray lights in the eastern chapels, where the
grand aisles sweep in their perfect curves around the high altar.
A singular effect is here created by the gilded organ pipes
thrust out horizontally from the choir. When the powerful choral
anthems of the church peal out over the kneeling multitude, it
requires little fancy to imagine them the golden trumpets of
concealed archangels, who would be quite at home in that
incomparable choir.
If one should speak
of all the noteworthy things you meet in this Cathedral, he would
find himself in danger of following in the footsteps of Mr.
Parro, who wrote a handbook of Toledo, in which seven hundred and
forty-five pages are devoted to a hasty sketch of the basilica.
For five hundred years enormous wealth and fanatical piety have
worked together and in rivalry to beautify this spot. The
boundless riches of the Church and the boundless superstition of
the laity have left their traces here in every generation in
forms of magnificence and beauty. Each of the
chapels--and
THE GILDED ORGAN
PIPES
THE CITY OF THE
VISIGOTHS 225
there are
twenty-one of them--is a separate masterpiece in its way. The
finest are those of Santiago and St. Ildefonso,--the former built
by the famous Constable Alvaro de Luna as a burial-place for
himself and family, and where he and his wife lie in storied
marble; and the other commemorating that celebrated visit of the
Virgin to the bishop, which is the favorite theme of the artists
and ecclesiastical gossips of Spain.
There was probably
never a morning call which gave rise to so much talk. It was not
the first time the Virgin had come to Toledo. This was always a
favorite excursion of hers. She had come from time to time,
escorted by St. Peter, St. Paul, and St. James. But on the
morning in question, which was not long after Bishop Ildefonso
had written his clever treatise, "De Virginitate Stae Mariae,"
the Queen of Heaven came down to matin prayers, and, taking the
bishop's seat, listened to the sermon with great edification.
After service she presented him with a nice new chasuble, as his
own was getting rather shabby, made of "cloth of heaven," in
token of her appreciation of his spirited pamphlet in her
defence. This chasuble still exists in a chest in Asturias. If
you
226 CASTILIAN
DAYS
open the chest, you
will not see it; but this only proves the truth of the miracle,
for the chroniclers say the sacred vestment is invisible to
mortal eyes.
But we have another
and more palpable proof of the truth of the history. The slab of
marble on which the feet of the celestial visitor alighted is
still preserved in the Cathedral in a tidy chapel built on the
very spot where the avatar took place. The slab is enclosed in
red jasper and guarded by an iron grating, and above it these
words of the Psalmist are engraved in the stone, Adorabimus in
loco ubi steterunt pedes ejus.
This story is cut
in marble and carved in wood and drawn upon brass and painted
upon canvas, in a thousand shapes and forms all over Spain. You
see in the Museum at Madrid a picture by Murillo devoted to this
idle fancy of a cunning or dreaming priest. The subject was
unworthy of the painter, and the result is what might have been
expected,--a picture of trivial and mundane beauty, without the
least suggestion of spirituality.
But there can be no
doubt of the serious, solemn earnestness with which the worthy
Castilians from that day to this believe the romance. They came
up in groups and families, touching their fingers to
THE CITY OF THE
VISIGOTHS 227
the sacred slab and
kissing them reverentially with muttered prayers. A father would
take the first kiss himself, and pass his consecrated finger
around among his awe-struck babes, who were too brief to reach to
the grating. Even the aged verger who showed us the shrine, who
was so frail and so old that we thought he might be a ghost
escaped from some of the mediaeval tombs in the neighborhood,
never passed that pretty white-and-gold chapel without sticking
in his thumb and pulling out a blessing.
A few feet from
this worship-worn stone, a circle drawn on one of the marble
flags marks the spot where Santa Leocadia also appeared to this
same favored Ildefonso and made her compliments on his pamphlet.
Was ever author so happy in his subject and his gentle readers?
The good bishop evidently thought the story of this second
apparition might be considered rather a heavy draught on the
credulity of his flock, so he whipped out a convenient knife and
cut off a piece of her saint-ship's veil, which clinched the
narrative and struck doubters dumb. That great king and crazy
relic-hunter, Philip II., saw this rag in his time with profound
emotion,--this tiger heart, who could
228 CASTILIAN
DAYS
order the murder of
a thousand innocent beings without a pang.
There is another
chapel in this Cathedral which preaches forever its silent
condemnation of Spanish bigotry to deaf ears. This is the
Mozarabic Chapel, sacred to the celebration of the early
Christian rite of Spain. During the three centuries of Moorish
domination the enlightened and magnanimous conquerors guaranteed
to those Christians who remained within their lines the free
exercise of all their rights, including perfect freedom of
worship. So that side by side the mosque and the church
worshipped God each in its own way without fear or wrong. But
when Alonso VI. recaptured the city in the eleventh century, he
wished to establish uniformity of worship, and forbade the use of
the ancient liturgy in Toledo. That which the heathen had
respected the Catholic outraged. The great Cardinal Ximenez
restored the primitive rite and devoted this charming chapel to
its service. How ill a return was made for Moorish tolerance we
see in the infernal treatment they afterwards received from king
and Church. They made them choose between conversion and death.
They embraced Christianity to save their
THE CITY OF THE
VISIGOTHS 229
lives. Then the
priests said, "Perhaps this conversion is not genuine! Let us
send the heathen away out of our sight." One million of the best
citizens of Spain were thus torn from their homes and landed
starving on the wild African coast. And Te Deums were sung in the
churches for this triumph of Catholic unity. From that hour Spain
has never prospered. It seems as if she were lying ever since
under the curse of these breaking hearts.
Passing by a world
of artistic beauties which never tire the eyes, but soon would
tire the chronicler and reader, stepping over the broad bronze
slab in the floor which covers the dust of the haughty primate
Porto Carrero, but which bears neither name nor date, only this
inscription of arrogant humility, HIC JACET PULVIS CINIS ET
NIHIL, we walk into the verdurous and cheerful Gothic cloisters.
They occupy the site of the ancient Jewish markets, and the
zealous prelate Tenorio, cousin to the great lady's man Don Juan,
could think of no better way of acquiring the ground than that of
stirring up the mob to burn the houses of the heretics. A fresco
that adorns the gate explains the means employed, adding insult
to the
230 CASTILIAN DAYS
|
old injury. It is a
picture of a beautiful child hanging upon a cross; a
fiendish-looking Jew, on a ladder beside him, holds in his hand
the child's heart, which he has just taken from his bleeding
breast; he holds the dripping knife in his teeth. This brutal
myth was used for centuries with great effect by the priesthood
upon the mob whenever they wanted a Jew's money or his blood.
Even to-day the old poison has not lost its power. This very
morning I heard under my window loud and shrill voices. I looked
out and saw a group of brown and ragged women, with babies in
their arms, discussing the news from Madrid. The Protestants,
they said, had begun to steal Catholic children. They talked
themselves into a fury. Their elf-locks hung about their fierce
black eyes. The sinews of their lean necks worked tensely in
their voluble rage. Had they seen our mild missionary at that
moment, whom all men respect and all children instinctively love,
they would have torn him in pieces in their Maenad fury, and
would have thought they were doing their duty as mothers and
Catholics.
This absurd and
devilish charge was seriously made in a Madrid journal, the organ
of the Mod-
THE ZOCODOVER,
TOLEDO
THE CITY OF THE
VISIGOTHS 231
erates, and caused
great fermentation for several days, street rows, and debates in
the Cortes, before the excitement died away. Last summer, in the
old Murcian town of Lorca, an English gentleman, who had been
several weeks in the place, was attacked and nearly killed by a
mob, who insisted that he was engaged in the business of stealing
children, and using their spinal marrow for lubricating telegraph
wires! What a picture of blind and savage ignorance is here
presented! It reminds us of that sad and pitiful "blood-bath
revolt" of Paris, where the wretched mob rose against the
wretched tyrant Louis XV., accusing him of bathing in the blood
of children to restore his own wasted and corrupted
energies.
Toledo is a city
where you should eschew guides and trust implicitly to chance in
your wanderings. You can never be lost; the town is so small that
a short walk always brings you to the river or the wall, and
there you can take a new departure. If you do not know where you
are going, you have every moment the delight of some unforeseen
pleasure. There is not a street in Toledo that is not rich in
treasures of architecture,--hovels that once were marvels of
building, balconies of
232
CASTILIAN
DAYS
curiously wrought
iron, great doors with sculptured posts and lintels, with
gracefully finished hinges, and studded with huge nails whose
fanciful heads are as large as billiard balls. Some of these are
still handsome residences, but most have fallen into neglect and
abandonment. You may find a beggar installed in the ruined palace
of a Moorish prince, a cobbler at work in the pleasure-house of a
Castilian conqueror. The graceful carvings are mutilated and
destroyed, the delicate arabesques are smothered and hidden under
a triple coat of whitewash. The most beautiful Moorish house in
the city, the so-called Taller del Moro, where the grim governor
of Huesca invited four hundred influential gentlemen of the
province to a political dinner, and cut off all their heads as
they entered (if we may believe the chronicle, which we do not),
is now empty and rapidly going to ruin. The exquisite panelling
of the walls, the endlessly varied stucco work that seems to have
been wrought by the deft fingers of ingenious fairies, is
shockingly broken and marred. Gigantic cacti look into the
windows from the outer court. A gay pomegranate-tree flings its
scarlet blossoms in on the ruined floor. Rude little birds have
built their nests in
THE CITY OF THE
VISIGOTHS 233
the beautiful
fretted rafters, and flutter in and out as busy as brokers. But
of all the feasting and loving and plotting these lovely walls
beheld in that strange age that seems like fable now,--the vivid,
intelligent, scientific, tolerant age of the Moors,--even the
memory has perished utterly and forever.
We strolled away
aimlessly from this beautiful desolation, and soon came out upon
the bright and airy Paseo del Transito. The afternoon sunshine
lay warm on the dull brown suburb, but a breeze blew freshly
through the dark river-gorge, and we sat upon the stone benches
bordering the bluff and gave ourselves up to the scene. To the
right were the ruins of the Roman bridge and the Moorish mills;
to the left the airy arch of San Martin's bridge spanned the
bounding torrent, and far beyond stretched the vast expanse of
the green valley refreshed by the river, and rolling in rank
waves of verdure to the blue hills of Guadalupe. Below us on the
slippery rocks that lay at the foot of the sheer cliffs, some
luxurious fishermen reclined, idly watching their idle lines. The
hills stretched away, ragged and rocky, dotted with solitary
towers and villas.
234
CASTILIAN
DAYS
A squad of beggars
rapidly gathered, attracted by the gracious faces of Las
Señoras. Begging seems almost the only regular industry of
Toledo. Besides the serious professionals, who are real artists
in studied misery and ingenious deformity, all the children in
town occasionally leave their marbles and their leap-frog to turn
an honest penny by amateur mendicancy.
A chorus of piteous
whines went up. But La Señora was firm. She checked the
ready hands of the juveniles. "Children should not be encouraged
to pursue this wretched life. We should give only to blind men,
because here is a great and evident affliction; and to old women,
because they look so lonely about the boots." The exposition was
so subtle and logical that it admitted no reply. The old women
and the blind men shuffled away with their pennies, and we began
to chaff the sturdy and rosy children.
A Spanish beggar
can bear anything but banter. He is a keen physiognomist, and
selects his victims with unerring acumen. If you storm or scowl
at him, he knows he is making you uncomfortable, and hangs on
like a burr. But if you laugh at him, with good humor, he is
disarmed. A friend of mine
THE CITY OF THE
VISIGOTHS 235
reduced to
confusion one of the most unabashed mendicants in Castile by
replying to his whining petition, politely and with a beaming
smile, "No, thank you. I never eat them." The beggar is far from
considering his employment a degrading one. It is recognized by
the Church, and the obligation of this form of charity especially
inculcated. The average Spaniard regards it as a sort of tax to
be as readily satisfied as a toll-fee. He will often stop and
give a beggar a cent, and wait for the change in maravedises. One
day, at the railway station, a muscular rogue approached me and
begged for alms. I offered him my sac-de-nuit to carry a
block or two. He drew himself up proudly and said, "I beg your
pardon, sir; I am no Gallician." An old woman came up with a
basket on her arm. "Can it be possible in this far country," said
La Señora, "or are these--yes, they are, deliberate
peanuts." With a penny we bought unlimited quantities of this
levelling edible, and with them the devoted adherence of the aged
merchant. She immediately took charge of our education. We must
see Santa Maria la Blanca,--it was a beautiful thing; so was the
Transito. Did we see those men and women grubbing in the
hillside? They
236
CASTILIAN
DAYS
were digging bones
to sell at the station. Where did the bones come from? Quien
sabe? Those dust-heaps have been there since King Wamba. Come, we
must go and see the Churches of Mary before it grew dark. And the
zealous old creature marched away with us to the synagogue built
by Samuel Ben Levi, treasurer to that crowned panther, Peter the
Cruel. This able financier built this fine temple to the God of
his fathers out of his own purse. He was murdered for his money
by his ungrateful lord, and his synagogue stolen by the Church.
It now belongs to the order of Cala-trava.
But the other and
older synagogue, now called Santa Maria la Blanca, is much more
interesting. It stands in the same quarter, the suburb formerly
occupied by the industrious and thriving Hebrews of the Middle
Ages until the stupid zeal of the Catholic kings drove them out
of Spain. The synagogue was built in the ninth century under the
enlightened domination of the Moors. At the slaughter of the Jews
in 1405 it became a church. It has passed through varying
fortunes since then, having been hospital, hermitage, stable, and
warehouse; but it is now under the care of the provin-
THE CITY OF THE
VISIGOTHS 237
cial committee of
art, and is somewhat decently restored. Its architecture is
altogether Moorish. It has three aisles with thick octagonal
columns supporting heavy horseshoe arches. The spandrels are
curiously adorned with rich circular stucco figures. The soil you
tread is sacred, for it was brought from Zion long before the
Crusades; the cedar rafters above you preserve the memory and the
odors of Lebanon.
A little farther
west, on a fine hill overlooking the river, in the midst of the
ruined palaces of the early kings, stands the beautiful votive
church of San Juan de los Reyes. It was built by Ferdinand and
Isabella, before the Columbus days, to commemorate a victory over
their neighbors the Portuguese. During a prolonged absence of the
king, the pious queen, wishing to prepare him a pleasant
surprise, instead of embroidering a pair of impracticable
slippers as a faithful young wife would do nowadays, finished
this exquisite church by setting at work upon it some regiments
of stone-cutters and builders. It is not difficult to imagine the
beauty of the structure that greeted the king on his welcome
home. For even now, after the storms of four centuries have
beaten upon it, and the
238 CASTILIAN
DAYS
malignant hands of
invading armies have used their utmost malice against it, it is
still a won-drously perfect work of the Gothic
inspiration.
We sat on the
terrace benches to enjoy the light and graceful lines of the
building, the delicately ornate door, the unique drapery of iron
chains which the freed Christians hung here when delivered from
the hands of the Moors. A lovely child, with pensive blue eyes
fringed with long lashes, and the slow sweet smile of a Madonna,
sat near us and sang to a soft, monotonous air a war-song of the
Carlists. Her beauty soon attracted the artistic eyes of La
Señora, and we learned she was named Francisca, and her
baby brother, whose flaxen head lay heavily on her shoulder, was
called Jesus Mary. She asked, Would we like to go into the
church? She knew the sacristan and would go for him. She ran away
like a fawn, the tow head of little Jesus tumbling dangerously
about. She reappeared in a moment; she had disposed of mi
niño, as she called it, and had found the sacristan. This
personage was rather disappointing. A sacristan should be aged
and mouldy, clothed in black of a decent shabbiness. This was a
Toledan swell in a velvet shooting-jacket, and yellow peg-top
trousers. How-
CLOISTERS, SAN JUAN DE
LOS REYES
THE CITY OF THE
VISIGOTHS 239
ever, he had the
wit to confine himself to turning keys, and so we gradually
recovered from the shock of the shooting-jacket.
The church forms
one great nave, divided into four vaults enriched with wonderful
stone lace-work. A superb frieze surrounds the entire nave,
bearing in great Gothic letters an inscription narrating the
foundation of the church. Everywhere the arms of Castile and
Arragon, and the wedded ciphers of the Catholic kings. Statues of
heralds start unexpectedly out from the face of the pillars. Fine
as the church is, we cannot linger here long. The glory of San
Juan is its cloisters. It may challenge the world to show
anything so fine in the latest bloom and last development of
Gothic art. One of the galleries is in ruins,--a sad witness of
the brutality of armies. But the three others are enough to show
how much of beauty was possible in that final age of pure Gothic
building. The arches bear a double garland of leaves, of flowers,
and of fruits, and among them are ramping and writhing and
playing every figure of bird or beast or monster that man has
seen or poet imagined. There are no two arches alike, and yet a
most beautiful harmony pervades them
240 CASTILIAN
DAYS
all. In some the
leaves are in profile, in others delicately spread upon the
graceful columns and every vein displayed. I saw one window where
a stone monkey sat reading his prayers, gowned and cowled,--an
odd caprice of the tired sculptor. There is in this infinite
variety of detail a delight that ends in something like fatigue.
You cannot help feeling that this was naturally and logically the
end of Gothic art. It had run its course. There was nothing left
but this feverish quest of variety. It was in danger, after
having gained such divine heights of invention, of degenerating
into prettinesses and affectation.
But how
marvellously fine it was at last! One must see it, as in these
unequalled cloisters, half ruined, silent, and deserted, bearing
with something of conscious dignity the blows of time and the
ruder wrongs of men, to appreciate fully its proud superiority to
all the accidents of changing taste and modified culture. It is
only the truest art that can bear that test. The fanes of Paestum
will always be more beautiful even than the magical shore on
which they stand. The Parthenon, fixed like a battered coronet on
the brow of the Acropolis, will always be the loveliest sight
that
INTERIOR OF SAN JUAN,
TOLEDO
THE CITY OF THE
VISIGOTHS 241
Greece can offer to
those who come sailing in from the blue Aegean. It is scarcely
possible to imagine a condition of thought or feeling in which
these master-works shall seem quaint or old-fashioned. They
appeal, now and always, with that calm power of perfection, to
the heart and eyes of every man born of woman.
The cloisters
enclose a little garden just enough neglected to allow the lush
dark ivy, the passionflowers, and the spreading oleanders to do
their best in beautifying the place, as men have done their worst
in marring it. The clambering vines seem trying to hide the scars
of their hardly less perfect copies. Every arch is adorned with a
soft and delicious drapery of leaves and tendrils; the fair and
outraged child of art is cherished and caressed by the gracious
and bountiful hands of Mother Nature.
As we came away,
little Francisca plucked one of the five-pointed leaves of the
passion-flowers and gave it to La Señora, saying
reverentially, "This is the Hand of Our Blessed Lord!"
The sun was
throned, red as a bacchanal king, upon the purple hills, as we
descended the rocky declivity and crossed the bridge of St.
Martin.
242 CASTILIAN
DAYS
Our little Toledan
maid came with us, talking and singing incessantly, like a
sweet-voiced starling. We rested on the farther side and looked
back at the towering city, glorious in the sunset, its spires
aflame, its long lines of palace and convent clear in the level
rays, its ruins softened in the gathering shadows, the lofty
bridge hanging transfigured over the glowing river. Before us the
crumbling walls and turrets of the Gothic kings ran down from the
bluff to the water-side, its terrace overlooking the baths where,
for his woe, Don Roderick saw Count Julian's daughter under the
same inflammatory circumstances as those in which, from a Judaean
housetop, Don David beheld Captain Uriah's wife. There is a great
deal of human nature abroad in the world in all ages.
Little Francisca
kept on chattering. "That is St. Martin's bridge. A girl jumped
into the water last year. She was not a lady. She was in service.
She was tired of living because she was in love. They found her
three weeks afterwards; but, Santísima Maria! she was good
for nothing then."
Our little maid was
too young to have sympathy for kings or servant girls who die for
love. She
THE CITY OF THE
VISIGOTHS 243
was a pretty
picture as she sat there, her blue eyes and Madonna face turned
to the rosy west, singing in her sweet child's voice her fierce
little song of sedition and war:--
"Arriba los valientes!
Abajo tiranía!
Pronto llegara el dia
De la Restauracion.
Carlistas á caballo!
Soldados en Campaña!
Viva el Rey de España,
Don Carlos de Borbon!"
I cannot enumerate
the churches of Toledo,--you find them in every street and
by-way. In the palmy days of the absolute theocracy this narrow
space contained more than a hundred churches and chapels. The
province was gnawed by the cancer of sixteen monasteries of monks
and twice as many convents of nuns, all crowded within these city
walls. Fully one half the ground of the city was covered by
religious buildings and mortmain property. In that age, when
money meant ten times what it signifies now, the rent-roll of the
Church in Toledo was forty millions of reals. There are even yet
portions of the town where you find
244 CASTILIAN
DAYS
nothing but
churches and convents. The grass grows green in the silent
streets. You hear nothing but the chime of bells and the faint
echoes of masses. You see on every side bolted doors and barred
windows, and, gliding over the mossy pavements, the
stealthy-stepping, long-robed priests.
I will only mention
two more churches, and both of these converts from heathendom;
both of them dedicated to San Cristo, for in the democracy of the
calendar the Saviour is merely a saint, and reduced to the level
of the rest. One is the old pretorian temple of the Romans, which
was converted by King Sizebuto into a Christian church in the
seventh century. It is a curious structure in brick and mortar,
with an apsis and an odd arrangement of round arches sunken in
the outer wall and still deeper pointed ones. It is famed as the
resting-place of Saints Ildefonso and Leocadia, whom we have met
before. The statue of the latter stands over the door graceful
and pensive enough for a heathen muse. The little cloisters
leading to the church are burial vaults. On one side lie the
canonical dead and on the other the laity, with bright marble
tablets and gilt inscriptions. In the court outside I noticed a
flat stone marked Ossua-
THE CITY OF THE
VISIGOTHS 245
rium. The
sacristan told me this covered the pit where the nameless dead
reposed, and when the genteel people in the gilt marble vaults
neglected to pay their annual rent, they were taken out and
tumbled in to moulder with the common clay.
This San Cristo de
la Vega, St. Christ of the Plain, stands on the wide flat below
the town, where you find the greater portion of the Roman
remains. Heaps of crumbling composite stretched in an oval form
over the meadow mark the site of the great circus. Green turf and
fields of waving grain occupy the ground where once a Latin city
stood. The Romans built on the plain. The Goths, following their
instinct of isolation, fixed their dwelling on the steep and
rugged rock. The rapid Tagus girdling the city like a horseshoe
left only the declivity to the west to be defended, and the ruins
of King Wamba's wall show with what jealous care that work was
done. But the Moors, after they captured the city, apparently did
little for its defence. A great suburb grew up in the course of
ages outside the wall, and when the Christians recaptured Toledo
in 1085, the first care of Alonso VI. was to build another wall,
this time nearer the foot of the hill, taking inside all the
accretion of
246 CASTILIAN
DAYS
these years. From
that day to this that wall has held Toledo. The city has never
reached, perhaps will never reach, the base of the steep rock on
which it stands.
When King Alonso
stormed the city, his first thought, in the busy half hour that
follows victory, was to find some convenient place to say his
prayers. Chance led him to a beautiful little Moorish mosque or
oratory near the superb Puerta del Sol. He entered, gave thanks,
and hung up his shield as a votive offering. This is the Church
of San Cristo de la Luz. The shield of Alonso hangs there defying
time for eight centuries,--a golden cross on a red field,--and
the exquisite oratory, not much larger than a child's toy-house,
is to-day one of the most charming specimens of Moorish art in
Spain. Four square pillars support the roof, which is divided
into five equal "half-orange" domes, each different from the
others and each equally fascinating in its unexpected simplicity
and grace. You cannot avoid a feeling of personal kindliness and
respect for the refined and genial spirit who left this elegant
legacy to an alien race and a hostile creed.
The Military
College of Santa Cruz is one of the
THE CITY OF THE
VISIGOTHS 247
most precious
specimens extant of those somewhat confused but beautiful results
of the transition from florid Gothic to the Renaissance. The
plateresque is young and modest, and seeks to please in this
splendid monument by allying the innovating forms with the
traditions of a school outgrown. There is an exquisite and
touching reminiscence of the Gothic in the superb portal and the
matchless group of the Invention of the Cross. All this fine
facade is by that true and genuine artist, Enrique de Egas, the
same who carved the grand Gate of the Lions, for which may the
gate of paradise be open to him.
The inner court is
surrounded by two stories of airy arcades, supported by slim
Corinthian columns. In one corner is the most elaborate staircase
in Spain. All the elegance and fancy of Arab and Renaissance art
have been lavished upon this masterly work.
Santa Cruz was
built for a hospital by that haughty Cardinal Mendoza, the
Tertius Rex of Ferdinand and Isabella. It is now occupied by the
military school, which receives six hundred cadets. They are
under the charge of an inspector-general and a numerous staff of
professors. They pay forty
248 CASTILIAN
DAYS
cents a day for
their board. The instruction is gratuitous and comprehends a
curriculum almost identical with that of West Point. It occupies,
however, only three years.
The most
considerable Renaissance structure in Toledo is the Royal
Alcázar. It covers with its vast bulk the highest hilltop
in the city. From the earliest antiquity this spot has been
occupied by a royal palace or fortress. But the present structure
was built by Charles V. and completed by Herrera for Philip II.
Its north and south facades are very fine. The Alcázar
seems to have been marked by fate. The Portuguese burned it in
the last century, and Charles III. restored it just in time for
the French to destroy it anew. Its indestructible walls alone
remain. Now, after many years of ruinous neglect, the government
has begun the work of restoration. The vast quadrangle is one
mass of scaffolding and plaster dust. The grand staircase is
almost finished again. In the course of a few years we may expect
to see the Alcázar in a state worthy of its name and
history. We would hope it might never again shelter a king. They
have had their day there. Their line goes back so far into the
mists of time that its
THE CITY OF THE
VISIGOTHS 249
beginning eludes
our utmost search. The Roman drove out the unnamed chiefs of
Iberia. The fair-haired Goth dispossessed the Italian. The Berber
destroyed the Gothic monarchy. Castile and León fought
their way down inch by inch through three centuries from
Covadonga to Toledo, halfway in time and territory to Granada and
the Midland Sea. And since then how many royal feet have trodden
this breezy crest,--Sanchos and Henrys and Ferdinands,--the line
broken now and then by a usurping uncle or a fratricide
brother,--a red-handed bastard of Trastamara, a star-gazing
Alonso, a plotting and praying Charles, and, after Philip, the
dwindling scions of Austria and the nullities of Bourbon. This
height has known as well the rustle of the trailing robes of
queens,--Berenguela, Isabel the Catholic, and Juana,--Crazy Jane.
It was the prison of the widow of Philip IV. and mother of
Charles II. What wonder if her life left much to be desired? With
such a husband and such a son, she had no memories nor
hopes.
The kings have had
a long day here. They did some good in their time. But the world
has outgrown them, and the people, here as elsewhere,
is
250 CASTILIAN
DAYS
coming of age. This
Alcázar is built more strongly than any dynasty. It will
make a glorious school-house when the repairs are finished and
the Republic is established, and then may both last
forever!
One morning at
sunrise, I crossed the ancient bridge of Alcántara, and
climbed the steep hill east of the river to the ruined castle of
San Cervantes, perched on a high, bold rock, which guards the
river and overlooks the valley. Near as it is to the city, it
stands entirely alone. The instinct of aggregation is so powerful
in this people that the old towns have no environs, no houses
sprinkled in the outlying country, like modern cities. Every one
must be huddled inside the walls. If a solitary house, like this
castle, is built without, it must be in itself an impregnable
fortress. This fine old ruin, in obedience to this instinct of
jealous distrust, has but one entrance, and that so narrow that
Sir John Falstaff would have been embarrassed to accept its
hospitalities. In the shade of the broken walls, grass-grown and
gay with scattered poppies, I looked at Toledo, fresh and clear
in the early day. On the extreme right lay the new spick-and-span
bull-ring, then the great
PORTA VIRAGIA,
TOLEDO
THE CITY OF THE
VISIGOTHS 251
hospice and Chapel
of St. John the Baptist, the Convent of the Immaculate
Conception, and next, the Latin cross of the Chapel of Santa
Cruz, whose beautiful fagade lay soft in shadow; the huge
arrogant bulk of the Alcázar loomed squarely before me,
hiding half the view; to the left glittered the slender spire of
the Cathedral, holding up in the pure air that emblem of august
resignation, the triple crown of thorns; then a crowd of cupolas,
ending at last near the river-banks with the sharp angular mass
of San Cristóbal. The field of vision was filled with
churches and chapels, with the palaces of the king and the monk.
Behind me the waste lands went rolling away untilled to the brown
Toledo mountains. Below, the vigorous current of the Tagus
brawled over its rocky bed, and the distant valley showed in its
deep rich green what vitality there was in those waters if they
were only used.
A quiet, as of a
plague-stricken city, lay on Toledo. A few mules wound up the
splendid roads with baskets of vegetables. A few listless
fishermen were preparing their lines. The chimes of sleepy bells
floated softly out on the morning air. They seemed like the
requiem of municipal
252
CASTILIAN
DAYS
life and activity
slain centuries ago by the crozier and the crown.
Thank Heaven, that
double despotism is wounded to death. As Chesterfield predicted,
before the first muttering of the thunders of '89, "the trades of
king and priest have lost half their value." With the decay of
this unrighteous power, the false, unwholesome activity it
fostered has also disappeared. There must be years of toil and
leanness, years perhaps of struggle and misery, before the new
genuine life of the people springs up from beneath the dead and
withered rubbish of temporal and spiritual tyranny. Freedom is an
angel whose blessing is gained by wrestling.
THE ESCORIAL
THE only battle in
which Philip II. was ever engaged was that of St. Quentin, and
the only part he took in that memorable fight was to listen to
the thunder of the captains and the shouting afar off, and pray
with great unction and fervor to various saints of his
acquaintance and particularly to St. Lawrence of the Gridiron,
who, being the celestial officer of the day, was supposed to have
unlimited authority, and to whom he was therefore profuse in
vows. While Egmont and his stout Flemings were capturing the
Constable Montmorency and cutting his army in pieces,
this
254 CASTILIAN
DAYS
young and
chivalrous monarch was beating his breast and pattering his
panic-stricken prayers. As soon as the victory was won, however,
he lost his nervousness, and divided the entire credit of it
between himself and his saints. He had his picture painted in
full armor, as he appeared that day, and sent it to his doting
spouse, Bloody Mary of England. He even thought he had gained
glory enough, and while his father, the emperor-monk, was
fiercely asking the messenger who brought the news of victory to
Yuste, "Is my son at Paris?" the prudent Philip was making a
treaty of peace, by which his son Don Carlos was to marry the
Princess Elizabeth of France. But Mary obligingly died at this
moment, and the stricken widower thought he needed consolation
more than his boy, and so married the pretty princess
himself.
He always prided
himself greatly on the battle of St. Quentin, and probably soon
came to believe he had done yeoman service there. The childlike
credulity of the people is a great temptation to kings. It is
very likely that after the coup-d'état of December, the
trembling puppet who had sat shivering over his fire in the
palace of the Elysée while Morny and Fleury and St. Arnaud
and the
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255
rest of the cool
gamblers were playing their last desperate stake on that fatal
night, really persuaded himself that the work was his, and that
he had saved society. That the fly should imagine he is
moving the coach is natural enough; but that the horses, and the
wooden lumbering machine, and the passengers should take it for
granted that the light gilded insect is carrying them all,--there
is the true miracle.
We must confess to
a special fancy for Philip II. He was so true a king, so vain, so
superstitious, so mean and cruel, it is probable so great a king
never lived. Nothing could be more royal than the way he
distributed his gratitude for the victory on St. Lawrence's day.
To Count Egmont, whose splendid courage and loyalty gained him
the battle, he gave ignominy and death on the scaffold; and to
exhibit a gratitude to a myth which he was too mean to feel to a
man, he built to San Lorenzo that stupendous mass of granite
which is to-day the visible demonstration of the might and the
weakness of Philip and his age.
He called it the
Monastery of San Lorenzo el Real, but the nomenclature of the
great has no authority with the people. It was built on a
site
256 CASTILIAN
DAYS
once covered with
cinder-heaps from a long abandoned iron-mine, and so it was
called in common speech the Escorial. The royal seat of San
Ildefonso can gain from the general public no higher name than La
Granja, the Farm. The great palace of Catharine de Medici, the
home of three dynasties, is simply the Tuileries, the
Tile-fields. You cannot make people call the White House the
Executive Mansion. A merchant named Pitti built a palace in
Florence, and though kings and grand dukes have inhabited it
since, it is still the Pitti. There is nothing so democratic as
language. You may alter a name by trick when force is unavailing.
A noble lord in Segovia, following the custom of the good old
times, once murdered a Jew, and stole his house. It was a pretty
residence, but the skeleton in his closet was that the stupid
commons would not call it anything but "the Jew's house." He
killed a few of them for it, but that did not serve. At last, by
advice of his confessor, he had the facade ornamented with
projecting knobs of stucco, and the work was done. It is called
to this day "the knobby house."
The conscience of
Philip did not permit a long delay in the accomplishment of his
vow. Charles
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257
V. had charged him
in his will to build a mausoleum for the kings of the Austrian
race. He bound the two obligations in one, and added a third
destination to the enormous pile he contemplated. It should be a
palace as well as a monastery and a royal charnel-house. He chose
the most appropriate spot in Spain for the erection of the most
cheerless monument in existence. He had fixed his capital at
Madrid because it was the dreariest town in Spain, and to envelop
himself in a still profounder desolation, he built the Escorial
out of sight of the city, on a bleak, bare hillside, swept by the
glacial gales of the Guadarrama, parched by the vertical suns of
summer, and cursed at all seasons with the curse of barrenness.
Before it towers the great chain of mountains separating Old and
New Castile. Behind it the chilled winds sweep down to the Madrid
plateau, over rocky hillocks and involved ravines,--a scene in
which probably no man ever took pleasure except the royal recluse
who chose it for his home.
John Baptist of
Toledo laid the corner-stone on an April day of 1563, and in the
autumn of 1584 John of Herrera looked upon the finished work, so
vast and so gloomy that it lay like an incubus
258 CASTILIAN
DAYS
upon the breast of
earth. It is a parallelogram measuring from north to south seven
hundred and forty-four feet, and five hundred and eighty feet
from east to west. It is built, by order of the fantastic bigot,
in the form of St. Lawrence's gridiron, the courts representing
the interstices of the bars, and the towers at the corners
sticking helpless in the air like the legs of the supine
implement. It is composed of a clean gray granite, chiefly in the
Doric order, with a severity of facade that degenerates into
poverty, and defrauds the building of the effect its great bulk
merits. The sheer monotonous walls are pierced with eleven
thousand windows, which, though really large enough for the
rooms, seem on that stupendous surface to shrink into musketry
loopholes. In the centre of the parallelogram stands the great
church, surmounted by its soaring dome. All around the principal
building is stretched a circumscribing line of convents, in the
same style of doleful yellowish-gray uniformity, so endless in
extent that the inmates might easily despair of any world beyond
them.
There are few
scenes in the world so depressing as that which greets you as you
enter into the
COURT OF THE TEMPLE,
ESCORIAL
THE ESCORIAL
259
wide court before
the church, called El Templo. You are shut finally in by these
iron-gray walls. The outside day has given you up. Your feet slip
on the damp flags. An unhealthy fungus tinges the humid corners
with a pallid green. You look in vain for any trace of human
sympathy in those blank walls and that severe facade. There is a
dismal attempt in that direction in the gilded garments and the
painted faces of the colossal prophets and kings that are perched
above the lofty doors. But they do not comfort you; they are
tinselled stones, not statues.
Entering the
vestibule of the church, and looking up, you observe with a sort
of horror that the ceiling is of massive granite and flat. The
sacristan has a story that when Philip saw this ceiling, which
forms the floor of the high choir, he remonstrated against it as
too audacious, and insisted on a strong pillar being built to
support it. The architect complied, but when Philip came to see
the improvement he burst into lamentation, as the enormous column
destroyed the effect of the great altar. The canny architect, who
had built the pillar of pasteboard, removed it with a touch, and
his majesty was comforted. Walking forward to the
260
CASTILIAN
DAYS
edge of this
shadowy vestibule, you recognize the skill and taste which
presided at this unique and intelligent arrangement of the choir.
If left, as usual, in the body of the church, it would have
seriously impaired that solemn and simple grandeur which
distinguishes this above all other temples. There is nothing to
break the effect of the three great naves, divided by immense
square-clustered columns, and surmounted by the vast dome that
rises with all the easy majesty of a mountain more than three
hundred feet from the decent black and white pavement. I know of
nothing so simple and so imposing as this royal chapel, built
purely for the glory of God and with no thought of mercy or
consolation for human infirmity. The frescos of Luca Giordano
show the attempt of a later and degenerate age to enliven with
form and color the sombre dignity of this faultless pile. But
there is something in the blue and vapory pictures which shows
that even the unabashed Luca was not free from the impressive
influence of the Escorial.
A flight of veined
marble steps leads to the beautiful retable of the high altar.
The screen, over ninety feet high, cost the Milanese
Trezzo
THE HIGH ALTAR,
ESCORIAL
THE ESCORIAL
261
seven years of
labor. The pictures illustrative of the life of our Lord are by
Tibaldi and Zuccaro. The gilt bronze tabernacle of Trezzo and
Herrera, which has been likened with the doors of the Baptistery
of Florence as worthy to figure in the architecture of heaven, no
longer exists. It furnished a half hour's amusement to the
soldiers of France. On either side of the high altar are the
oratories of the royal family, and above them are the kneeling
effigies of Charles, with his wife, daughter, and sisters, and
Philip with his successive harem of wives. One of the few
luxuries this fierce bigot allowed himself was that of a new
widowhood every few years. There are forty other altars with
pictures good and bad. The best are by the wonderful deaf-mute,
Navarrete, of Logroño, and by Sánchez Coello, the
favorite of Philip.
To the right of the
high altar in the transept you will find, if your tastes, unlike
Miss Rider-hood's, run in a bony direction, the most remarkable
Reliquary in the world. With the exception perhaps of Cuvier,
Philip could see more in a bone than any man who ever lived. In
his long life of osseous enthusiasm he collected seven thousand
four hundred and twenty-one genuine relics,--
262
CASTILIAN
DAYS
whole skeletons,
odd shins, teeth, toe-nails, and skulls of martyrs,--sometimes by
a miracle of special grace getting duplicate skeletons of the
same saint. The prime jewels of this royal collection are the
grilled bones of San Lorenzo himself, bearing dim traces of his
sacred gridiron.
The sacristan will
show you also the retable of the miraculous wafer, which bled
when trampled on by Protestant heels at Gorcum in 1525. This has
always been one of the chief treasures of the Spanish crown. The
devil-haunted idiot Charles II. made a sort of idol of it,
building it this superb altar, consecrated "in this miracle of
earth to the miracle of heaven." When the atheist Frenchmen
sacked the Escorial and stripped it of silver and gold, the pious
monks thought most of hiding this wonderful wafer, and when the
storm passed by, the booby Ferdinand VII. restored it with much
burning of candles, swinging of censers, and chiming of bells.
Worthless as it is, it has done one good work in the world. It
inspired the altar-picture of Claudio Coello, the last best work
of the last of the great school of Spanish painters. He finished
it just before he died of shame and grief at seeing Giordano, the
nimble Neapolitan, emptying his
THE ESCORIAL
263
buckets of paint on
the ceiling of the grand staircase, where St. Lawrence and an
army of martyrs go sailing with a fair wind into
glory.
The great days of
art in the Escorial are gone. Once in every nook and corner it
concealed treasures of beauty that the world had nearly
forgotten. The Perla of Raphael hung in the dark sacristy. The
Cena of Titian dropped to pieces in the refectory. The Gloria,
which had sunk into eclipse on the death of Charles V., was
hidden here among unappreciative monks. But on the secularization
of the monasteries, these superb canvases went to swell the
riches of the Royal Museum. There are still enough left here,
however, to vindicate the ancient fame of the collection. They
are perhaps more impressive in their beauty and loneliness than
if they were pranking among their kin in the glorious galleries
and perfect light of that enchanted palace of Charles III. The
inexhaustible old man of Cadora has the Prayer on Mount Olivet,
an Ecce Homo, an Adoration of the Magi. Velazquez one of his rare
scriptural pieces, Jacob and his Children. Tintoretto is rather
injured at the Museo by the number and importance of his pictures
left in this monkish twilight; among them
264 CASTILIAN
DAYS
is a lovely Esther,
and a masterly Presentation of Christ to the People. Plenty of
Giordanos and Bassanos and one or two by El Greco, with his weird
plague-stricken faces, all chalk and charcoal. A sense of duty
will take you into the crypt where the dead kings are sleeping in
brass. This mausoleum, ordered by the great Charles, was slow in
finishing. All of his line had a hand in it down to Philip IV.,
who completed it and gathered in the poor relics of royal
mortality from many graves. The key of the vault is the stone
where the priest stands when he elevates the Host in the temple
above. The vault is a graceful octagon about forty feet high,
with nearly the same diameter; the flickering light of your
torches shows twenty-six sarcophagi, some occupied and some
empty, filling the niches of the polished marble. On the right
sleep the sovereigns, on the left their consorts. There is a
coffin for Doña Isabel de Bourbon among the kings, and one
for her amiable and lady-like husband among the queens. They were
not lovely in their lives, and in their deaths they shall be
divided. The quaint old church-mouse who showed me the crypt
called my attention to the coffin where Maria Louisa, wife of
Charles
THE ESCORIAL
265
IV.,--the lady who
so gallantly bestrides her war-horse, in the uniform of a
colonel, in Goya's picture,--coming down those slippery steps
with the sure footing of feverish insanity, during a severe
illness, scratched Luisa with the point of her scissors
and marked the sarcophagus for her own. All there was good of her
is interred with her bones. Her frailties live on in scandalized
history.
Twice, it is said,
the coffin of the emperor has been opened by curious hands,--by
Philip IV., who found the corpse of his great ancestor intact,
and observed to the courtier at his elbow, "An honest body, Don
Luis!" and again by the Ministers of State and Fomento in the
spring of 1870, who started back aghast when the coffin-lid was
lifted and disclosed the grim face of the Burgess of Ghent, just
as Titian painted him,--the keen, bold face of a
world-stealer.
I do not know if
Philip's funeral urn was ever opened. He stayed above ground too
long as it was, and it is probable that people have never cared
to look upon his face again. All that was human had died out of
him years before his actual demise, and death seemed not to
consider it worth
266
CASTILIAN
DAYS
while to carry off
a vampire. Go into the little apartment where his last days were
passed; a wooden table and book-shelf, one arm-chair and two
stools--the one upholstered with cloth for winter, the other with
tin for summer--on which he rested his gouty leg, and a low chair
for a secretary,--this was all the furniture he used. The rooms
are not larger than cupboards, low and dark. The little oratory
where he died looks out upon the high altar of the Temple. In a
living death, as if by an awful anticipation of the common lot it
was ordained that in the flesh he should know corruption, he lay
waiting his summons hourly for fifty-three days. What tremendous
doubts and fears must have assailed him in that endless agony! He
had done more for the Church than any living man. He was the
author of that sublime utterance of uncalculating bigotry,
"Better not reign than reign over heretics." He had pursued error
with fire and sword. He had peopled limbo with myriads of rash
thinkers. He had impoverished his kingdom in Catholic wars. Yet
all this had not sufficed. He lay there like a leper smitten by
the hand of the God he had so zealously served. Even in his mind
there was no
THE ESCORIAL
267
peace. He held in
his clenched hand his father's crucifix, which Charles had held
in his exultant death at Yuste. Yet in his waking hours he was
never free from the horrible suggestion that he had not done
enough for salvation. He would start in horror from a sleep that
was peopled with shapes from torment. Humanity was avenged at
last.
So powerful is the
influence of a great personality that in the Escorial you can
think of no one but Philip II. He lived here only fourteen years,
but every corridor and cloister seems to preserve the souvenir of
his sombre and imperious genius. For two and a half centuries his
feeble successors have trod these granite halls; but they flit
through your mind pale and unsubstantial as dreams. The only
tradition they preserved of their great descent was their
magnificence and their bigotry. There has never been one
utterance of liberty or free thought inspired by this haunted
ground. The king has always been absolute here, and the monk has
been the conscience-keeper of the king. The whole life of the
Escorial has been unwholesomely pervaded by a flavor of holy
water and burial vaults. There was enough of the repressive
influ-
268
CASTILIAN
DAYS
ence of that savage
Spanish piety to spoil the freshness and vigor of a natural life,
but not enough to lead the court and the courtiers to a moral
walk and conversation. It was as profligate a court in reality,
with all its masses and monks, as the gay and atheist circle of
the Regent of Orleans. Even Philip, the Inquisitor King, did not
confine his royal favor to his series of wives. A more reckless
and profligate young prodigal than Don Carlos, the hope of Spain
and Rome, it would be hard to find to-day at Mabille or
Cremorne. But he was a deeply religious lad for all that, and
asked absolution from his confessors before attempting to put in
practice his intention of killing his father. Philip, forewarned,
shut him up until he died, in an edifying frame of mind, and then
calmly superintended the funeral arrangements from a window of
the palace. The same mingling of vice and superstition is seen in
the lessening line down to our day. The last true king of the old
school was Philip IV. Amid the ruins of his tumbling kingdom he
lived royally here among his priests and his painters and his
ladies. There was one jealous exigency of Spanish etiquette that
made his favor fatal. The object of
INTERIOR OF THE CHURCH,
ESCORIAL
THE ESCORIAL
269
his adoration, when
his errant fancy strayed to another, must go into a convent and
nevermore be seen of lesser men. Madame Daunoy, who lodged at
court, heard one night an august footstep in the hall and a
kingly rap on the bolted door of a lady of honor. But we are
happy to say she heard also the spirited reply from within, "May
your grace go with God! I do not wish to be a nun!"
There is little in
these frivolous lives that is worth knowing,--the long inglorious
reigns of the dwindling Austrians and the parody of greater days
played by the scions of Bourbon, relieved for a few creditable
years by the heroic struggle of Charles III. against the hopeless
decadence. You may walk for an hour through the dismal line of
drawing-rooms in the cheerless palace that forms the gridiron's
handle, and not a spirit is evoked from memory among all the
tapestry and panelling and gilding.
The only cheerful
room in this granite wilderness is the library, still in good and
careful keeping. A long, beautiful room, two hundred feet of
bookcases, and tasteful frescos by Tibaldi and Carducho,
representing the march of the liberal sciences. Most of the older
folios are bound in
270
CASTILIAN
DAYS
vellum, with their
gilded edges, on which the title is stamped, turned to the front.
A precious collection of old books and older manuscripts, useless
to the world as the hoard of a miser. Along the wall are hung the
portraits of the Escorial kings and builders. The hall is
furnished with marble and porphyry tables, and elaborate glass
cases display some of the curiosities of the library,--a copy of
the Gospels that belonged to the Emperor Conrad, the Suabian
Kurz; a richly illuminated Apocalypse; a gorgeous missal of
Charles V.; a Greek Bible, which once belonged to Mrs. Phoebus's
ancestor Cantacuzene; Persian and Chinese sacred books; and a
Koran, which is said to be the one captured by Don Juan at
Lepanto. Mr. Ford says it is spurious; Mr. Madoz says it is
genuine. The ladies with whom I had the happiness to visit the
library inclined to the latter opinion for two very good
reasons,--the book is a very pretty one, and Mr. Madoz's head is
much balder than Mr. Ford's. Wandering aimlessly through the
frescoed cloisters and looking in at all the open doors, over
each of which a cunning little gridiron is inlaid in the
woodwork, we heard the startling and unexpected sound of boyish
voices and laughter. We ap-
THE ESCORIAL
271
proached the scene
of such agreeable tumult, and found the theatre of the monastery
full of young students rehearsing a play for the coming holidays.
A clever-looking priest was directing the drama, and one juvenile
Thespis was denouncing tyrants and dying for his country in
hexameters of a shrill treble. His friends were applauding more
than was necessary or kind, and flourishing their wooden swords
with much ferocity of action. All that is left of the once
extensive establishment of the monastery is a boys' school, where
some two hundred youths are trained in the humanities, and a
college where an almost equal number are educated for the
priesthood.
So depressing is
the effect of the Escorial's gloom and its memories, that when
you issue at last from its massive doors, the trim and terraced
gardens seem gay and heartsome, and the bleak wild scene is full
of comfort. For here at least there is light and air and
boundless space. You have emerged from the twilight of the past
into the present day. The sky above you bends over Paris and
Cheyenne. By this light Darwin is writing, and the merchants are
meeting in the Chicago Board of Trade. Just below you winds the
railway which
272
CASTILIAN
DAYS
will take you in
two hours to Madrid,--to the city of Philip II., where the
nineteenth century has arrived; where there are five Protestant
churches and fifteen hundred evangelical communicants. Our young
crusader, Professor Knapp, holds night schools and day schools
and prayer meetings, with an active devotion, a practical and
American fervor, that is leavening a great lump of apathy and
death. These Anglo-Saxon missionaries have a larger and more
tolerant spirit of propaganda than has been hitherto seen. They
can differ about the best shape for the cup and the platter, but
they use what they find to their hand. They are giving a tangible
direction and purpose to the vague impulse of reform that was
stirring, before they came, in many devout hearts. A little while
longer of this state of freedom and inquiry, and the shock of
controversy will come, and Spain will be brought to
life.
Already the signs
are full of promise. The ancient barriers of superstition have
already given way in many places. A Protestant can not only live
in Spain, but, what was once a more important matter, he can die
and be buried there. This is one of the conquests of the
revolution. So delicate
SACRISTY,
ESCORIAL
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273
has been the
susceptibility of the Spanish mind in regard to the pollution of
its soil by heretic corpses that even Charles I. of England, when
he came a-wooing to Spain, could hardly gain permission to bury
his page by night in the garden of the embassy; and in later days
the Prussian Minister was compelled to smuggle his dead child out
of the kingdom among his luggage to give it Christian burial.
Even since the days of September the clergy has fought manfully
against giving sepulture to Protestants; but Rivero, alcalde of
Madrid and president of the Cortes, was not inclined to waste
time in dialectics, and sent a police force to protect the
heretic funerals and to arrest any priest who disturbed them.
There is freedom of speech and printing. The humorous journals
are full of blasphemous caricatures that would be impossible out
of a Catholic country, for superstition and blasphemy always run
in couples. It was the Duke de Guise, commanding the pope's army
at Civitella, who cried in his rage at a rain which favored Alva,
"God has turned Spaniard;" like Quashee, who burns his fetish
when the weather is foul. The liberal Spanish papers overflowed
with wit at the proclamation of infallibility. They announced
that
274 CASTILIAN
DAYS
his holiness was
now going into the lottery business with brilliant prospects of
success; that he could now tell what Father Manterola had done
with the thirty thousand dollars' worth of bulls he sold last
year and punctually neglects to account for, and other levities
of the sort, which seemed greatly relished, and which would have
burned the facetious author two centuries before, and fined and
imprisoned him before the fight at Alcolea. The minister having
charge of the public instruction has promised to present a law
for the prohibition of dogmatic doctrine in the national schools.
The law of civil registry and civil marriage, after a desperate
struggle in the Cortes, has gone into operation with general
assent. There is a large party which actively favors the entire
separation of the spiritual from the temporal power, making
religion voluntary, and free, and breaking its long concubinage
with the crown. The old superstition, it is true, still hangs
like a malarial fog over Spain. But it is invaded by flashes and
rays of progress. It cannot resist much longer the sunshine of
this tolerant age.
Far up the
mountain-side, in the shade of a cluster of chestnuts, is a rude
block of stone, called
THE ESCORIAL
275
the "King's Chair,"
where Philip used to sit in silent revery, watching as from an
eyry the progress of the enormous work below. If you go there,
you will see the same scene upon which his basilisk glance
reposed,--in a changed world, the .same unchanging scene,--the
stricken waste, the shaggy horror of the mountains, the fixed
plain wrinkled like a frozen sea, and in the centre of the
perfect picture the vast chill bulk of that granite pile, rising
cold, colorless, and stupendous, as if carved from an iceberg by
the hand of Northern gnomes. It is the palace of vanished
royalty, the temple of a religion which is dead. There are kings
and priests still, and will be for many coming years. But never
again can a power exist which shall rear to the glory of the
sceptre and the cowl a monument like this. It is a page of
history deserving to be well pondered, for it never will be
repeated. The world which Philip ruled from the foot of the
Guadarrama has passed away. A new heaven and a new earth came in
with the thunders of 1776 and 1789. There will be no more
Pyramids, no more Versailles, no more Escoriáis. The
unpublished fiat has gone forth that man is worth more than the
glory of princes. The better religion of the future
276
CASTILIAN
DAYS
has no need of
these massive dungeon-temples of superstition and fear. Yet there
is a store of precious teachings in this mass of stone. It is one
of the results of that mysterious law to which the genius of
history has subjected the caprices of kings, to the end that we
might not be left without a witness of the past for our warning
and example,--the law which induces a judged and sentenced
dynasty to build for posterity some monument of its power, which
hastens and commemorates its ruin. By virtue of this law we read
on the plains of Egypt the pride and the fall of the Pharaohs.
Before the fagade of Versailles we see at a glance the grandeur
of the Capetian kings and the necessity of the Revolution. And
the most vivid picture of that fierce and gloomy religion of the
sixteenth century, compounded of a base alloy of worship for an
absolute king and a vengeful God, is to be found in this colossal
hermitage in the flinty heart of the mountains of
Castile.
A MIRACLE
PLAY
IN the windy month
of March a sudden gloom falls upon Madrid,--the reaction after
the folie gaieté of the Carnival. The theatres are
at their gayest in February until Prince Carnival and his jolly
train assault the town, and convert the temples of the drama into
ball-rooms. They have not yet arrived at the wonderful expedition
and despatch observed in Paris, where a half hour is enough to
convert the grand opera into the masked ball. The invention of
this process of flooring the orchestra flush with the stage and
making a vast dancing-hall out of both is due to
278
CASTILIAN
DAYS
an ingenious
courtier of the regency, bearing the great name of De Bouillon,
who got much credit and a pension by it. In Madrid they take the
afternoon leisurely to the transformation, and the evening's
performance is of course sacrificed. So the sock and buskin, not
being adapted to the cancan, yielded with February, and the
theatres were closed finally on Ash Wednesday.
Going by the
pleasant little theatre of Lope de Rueda, in the Calle Barquillo,
I saw the office-doors open, the posters up, and an unmistakable
air of animation among the loungers who mark with a seal so
peculiar the entrance of places of amusement. Struck by this
apparent levity in the midst of the general mortification, I went
over to look at the bills and found the subject announced serious
enough for the most Lenten entertainment,--Los Siete Dolores de
Maria,--The Seven Sorrows of Mary,--the old mediaeval Miracle of
the Life of the Saviour.
This was bringing
suddenly home to me the fact that I was really in a Catholic
country. I had never thought of going to Ammergau, and so, when
reading of these shows, I had entertained no more hope of seeing
one than of assisting at an
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auto-da-fé
or a witch-burning. I went to the box-office to buy seats. But
they were all sold. The forestallers had swept the board. I was
never able to determine whether I most pitied or despised these
pests of the theatre. Whenever a popular play is presented, a
dozen ragged and garlic-odorous vagabonds go early in the day and
buy as many of the best places as they can pay for. They hang
about the door of the theatre all day, and generally manage to
dispose of their purchases at an advance. But it happens very
often that they are disappointed; that the play does not draw, or
that the evening threatens rain, and the Spaniard is devoted to
his hat. He would keep out of a revolution if it rained. So that,
at the pleasant hour when the orchestra are giving the last tweak
to the key of their fiddles, you may see these woebegone wretches
rushing distractedly from the Piamonte to the Alcalá,
offering their tickets at a price which falls rapidly from double
to even, and tumbles headlong to half-price at the first note of
the opening overture. When I see the forestaller luxuriously
basking at the office-door in the warm sunshine, and scornfully
refusing to treat for less than twice the treasurer's figures, I
feel a
280
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divided indignation
against the nuisance and the management that permits it. But when
in the evening I meet him haggard and feverish, hawking his
unsold places in desperate panic on the sidewalk, I cannot but
remember that probably a half dozen dirty and tawny descendants
of Pelayo will eat no beans to-morrow for those unfortunate
tickets, and my wrath melts, and I buy his crumpled papers, moist
with the sweat of anxiety, and add a slight propina, which I fear
will be spent in aguardiente to calm his shattered
nerves.
This day the sky
looked threatening, and my shabby hidalgo listened to reason, and
sold me my places at their price and a petit
verre.
As we entered in
the evening the play had just begun. The scene was the interior
of the Temple at Jerusalem, rather well done,--two ranges of
superimposed porphyry columns with a good effect of oblique
perspective, which is very common in the Spanish theatres. St.
Simeon, in a dress suspiciously resembling that of the modern
bishop, was talking with a fiery young Hebrew who turns out to be
Demás, the Penitent Thief, and who is destined to play a
very noticeable part in the evening's entertainment. He has
received some slight
A STREET OF
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from the government
authorities and does not propose to submit to it. The aged and
cooler-blooded Simeon advises him to do nothing rash. Here at the
very outset is a most characteristic Spanish touch. You are
expected to be interested in Demás, and the only crime
which could appeal to the sympathies of a Castilian crowd would
be one committed at the promptings of injured dignity.
There is a soft,
gentle strain of music played pianissimo by the orchestra, and,
surrounded by a chorus of mothers and maidens, the Virgin Mother
enters with the Divine Child in her arms. The Madonna is a
strapping young girl named Gutiérrez, a very clever
actress; and the Child has been bought in the neighboring
toy-shop, a most palpable and cynical wax-doll. The doll is
handed to Simeon, and the solemn ceremony of the Presentation is
performed to fine and thoughtful music. St. Joseph has come in
sheepishly by the flies with his inseparable staff crowned with a
garland of lilies, which remain miraculously fresh during thirty
years or so, and kneels at the altar, on the side opposite to
Miss Gutiérrez.
As the music
ceases, Simeon starts as from a trance and predicts in a few
rapid couplets the
282 CASTILIAN
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sufferings and the
crucifixion of the child. Mary falls overwhelmed into the arms of
her attendants, and Simeon exclaims, "Most blessed and most
unfortunate among women! thy heart is to be pierced with Seven
Sorrows, and this is the first." Demás rushes in and
announces the massacre of the innocents, concluding with the
appropriate reflection, "Perish the kings! always the murderers
of the people." This sentiment is so much to the taste of the
gamins of the paraíso that they vociferously demand an
encore; but the Roman soldiers come in and commence the pleasing
task of prodding the dolls in the arms of the chorus.
The next act is the
Flight into Egypt. The curtain rises on a rocky ravine with a
tinsel torrent in the background and a group of robbers on the
stage. Gestas, the impenitent thief, stands sulky and glum in a
corner, fingering his dagger as you might be sure he would, and
informing himself in a growling soliloquy that his heart is
consumed with envy and hate because he is not captain. The
captain, one Issachar, comes in, a superbly handsome young
fellow, named Mario, to my thinking the first comedian in Spain,
dressed in a flashy suit of leopard hides, and
announces
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283
the arrival of a
stranger. Enters Demás, who says he hates the world and
would fain drink its foul blood. He is made politely welcome. No!
he will be captain or nothing. Issachar laughs scornfully and
says he is in the way of that modest aspiration. But
Demás speedily puts him out of the way with an Albacete
knife, and becomes captain, to the profound disgust of the
impenitent Gestas, who exclaims, just as the profane villains do
nowadays on every well-conducted stage, "Damnation! foiled
again!"
The robbers pick up
their idolized leader and pitch him into the tinsel torrent. This
is also extremely satisfactory to the wide-awake young Arabs of
the cock-loft. The bandits disperse, and Demás indulges in
some fifty lines of rhymed reflections, which are interrupted by
the approach of the Holy Family, hotly pursued by the soldiery of
Herod. They stop under a sycamore tree, which instantly, by very
clever machinery, bends down its spreading branches and
miraculously hides them from the bloodthirsty legionaries. These
pass on, and Demás leads the saintly trio by a secret pass
over the torrent,--the Mother and Child mounted upon an ass and
St. Joseph trudging on behind
284 CASTILIAN
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with his
lily-decked staff, looking all as if they were on a short leave
of absence from Correggio's picture-frame.
Demás comes
back, calls up his merrymen, and has a battle-royal with the
enraged legionaries, which puts the critics of the gallery into a
frenzy of delight and assures the success of the spectacle. The
curtain falls in a gust of applause, is stormed up again,
Demás comes forward and makes a neat speech, announcing
the author. Que salga! roar the gods,--"Trot him out!" A shabby
young cripple hobbles to the front, leaning upon a crutch, his
sallow face flushed with a hectic glow of pride and pleasure. He
also makes a glib speech,--I have never seen a Spaniard who could
not,--disclaiming all credit for himself, but lauding the
sublimity of the acting and the perfection of the scene-painting,
and saying that the memory of this unmerited applause will be
forever engraved upon his humble heart.
Act third, the Lost
Child, or Christ in the Temple. The scene is before the Temple on
a festival day, plenty of chorus-girls, music, and flowers.
Demás and the impenitent Gestas and Barabbas, who, I was
pleased to see, was after all a very
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285
good sort of
fellow, with no more malice than you or I, were down in the city
on a sort of lark, their leopard skins left in the mountains and
their daggers hid under the natty costume of the Judaean dandy of
the period. Demás and Gestas have a quarrel, in which
Gestas is rather roughly handled, and goes off growling like
every villain, qui se respecte,--"I will have r-revenge."
Barabbas proposes to go around to the cider-cellars, but
Demás confides to him that he is enslaved by a dream of a
child, who said to him, "Follow me--to Paradise;" that he had
come down to Jerusalem to seek and find the mysterious infant of
his vision. The jovial Barabbas seems imperfectly impressed by
these transcendental fancies, and at this moment Mary comes in
dressed like a Madonna of Guido Reni, and soon after St. Joseph
and his staff. They ask each other where is the Child,--a scene
of alarm and bustle, which ends by the door of the Temple flying
open and discovering, shrined in ineffable light, Jesus teaching
the doctors.
In the fourth act,
Demás meets a beautiful woman by the city gate, in the
loose, graceful dress of the Hetairai, and the most wonderful
luxuriance
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CASTILIAN
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of black curls I
have ever seen falling in dense masses to her knees. After a
conversation of amorous banter, he gives her a golden chain,
which she assumes, well pleased, and gives him her name, La
Magdalena. A motley crowd of street loafers here rushed upon the
scene, and I am sure there was no one of Northern blood in the
theatre that did not shudder for an instant at the startling
apparition that formed the central figure of the group. The world
has long ago agreed upon a typical face and figure for the
Saviour of men; it has been repeated on myriads of canvases and
reproduced in thousands of statues, till there is scarcely a man
living that does not have the same image of the Redeemer in his
mind. Well, that image walked quietly upon the stage, so perfect
in make-up that you longed for some error to break the terrible
vraisemblance. I was really relieved when the august appearance
spoke, and I recognized the voice of a young actor named Morales,
a clever light comedian of the Bressant type.
The Magdalene is
soon converted by the preaching of the Nazarene Prophet, and the
scene closes by the triumphant entry into Jerusalem amid the
waving of palm-branches, the strewing of flowers,
MOZARABIC CHAPEL,
TOLEDO
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287
and "sonorous metal
blowing martial sounds." The pathetic and sublime lament,
"Jerusalem! Jerusalem! thou that killest the prophets!" was
delivered with great 'feeling and power.
The next act brings
us before the judgment-seat of Pontius Pilate. This act is almost
solely horrible. The Magdalene in her garb of penitence comes in
to beg the release of Jesus of Nazareth. Pontius, who is
represented as a gallant old gentleman, says he can refuse
nothing to a lady. The prisoner is dragged in by two ferocious
ruffians, who beat and buffet him with absurd and exaggerated
violence. There is nothing more hideous than the awful
concreteness of this show,--the naked helplessness of the
prisoner, his horrible, cringing, overdone humility, the coarse
kicking and cuffing of the deputy sheriffs. The Prophet is
stripped and scourged at the pillar until he drops from
exhaustion. He is dragged anew before Pilate and examined, but
his only word is, "Thou hast said." The scene lasts nearly an
hour. The theatre was full of sobbing women and children. At
every fresh brutality I could hear the weeping spectators say,
"Pobre Jesus!" "How wicked they are!" The bulk of the audience
was of people who do not
288 CASTILIAN
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often go to
theatres. They looked upon the revolting scene as a real and
living fact. One hard-featured man near me clenched his fists and
cursed the cruel guards. A pale, delicate-featured girl who was
leaning out of her box, with her brown eyes, dilated with horror,
fixed upon the scene, suddenly shrieked as a Roman soldier struck
the unresisting Saviour, and fell back fainting in the arms of
her friends.
The Nazarene
Prophet was condemned at last. Gestas gives evidence against him,
and also delivers Demás to the law, but is himself
denounced, and shares their sentence. The crowd howled with
exultation, and Pilate washed his hands in impotent rage and
remorse. The curtain came down leaving the uncultivated portion
of the audience in the frame of mind in which their ancestors a
few centuries earlier would have gone from the theatre determined
to serve God and relieve their feelings by killing the first Jew
they could find. The diversion was all the better, because safer,
if they happened to the good luck of meeting a Hebrew woman or
child.
The Calle de
Amargura--the Street of Bitterness--was the next scene. First
came a long pro-
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cession of official
Romans,--lictors and swordsmen, and the heralds announcing the
day's business. Demás appears, dragged along with vicious
jerks to execution. The Saviour follows, and falls under the
weight of the cross before the footlights. Another long and
dreary scene takes place, of brutalities from the Roman soldiers,
the ringleader of whom is a sanguinary Andalusian ingeniously
encased in a tin barrel, a hundred lines of rhymed sorrow from
the Madonna, and a most curious scene of the Wandering Jew. This
worthy, who in defiance of tradition is called Samuel, is sitting
in his doorway watching the show, when the suffering Christ begs
permission to rest a moment on his threshold. He says churlishly,
Anda!--"Begone!" "I will go, but thou shalt go forever until I
come." The Jew's feet begin to twitch convulsively, as if pulled
from under him. He struggles for a moment, and at last is carried
off by his legs, which are moved like those of the walking dolls
with the Greek names. This odd tradition, so utterly in
contradiction with the picture the Scriptures give us of the meek
dignity with which the Redeemer forgave all personal injuries,
has taken a singular hold upon the imaginations of all peoples.
Under varying names,---
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Ahasuerus,
Salathiel, le Juif Errant, der ewige Jude,--his story is the
delight and edification of many lands; and I have met some worthy
people who stoutly insisted that they had read it in the
Bible.
The sinister
procession moves on. The audience, which had been somewhat
cheered by the prompt and picturesque punishment inflicted upon
the inhospitable Samuel, was still further exhilarated by the
spectacle of the impenitent traitor Gestas, staggering under an
enormous cross, his eyes and teeth glaring with abject fear, with
an athletic Roman haling him up to Calvary with a new hempen
halter.
A long intermission
followed, devoted to putting babies to sleep,--for there were
hundreds of them, wide-eyed and strong-lunged,--to smoking the
hasty cigarette, to discussing the next combination of Prim or
the last scandal in the gay world. The carpenters were busy
behind the scenes building the mountain. When the curtain rose,
it was worth waiting for. It was an admirable scene. A genuine
Spanish mountain, great humpy undulations of rock and sand,
gigantic cacti for all vegetation, a lurid sky behind, but not
over-colored. A group
THE CHEERFUL GOTHIC
CLOISTERS, TOLEDO
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of Roman soldiers
in the foreground, in the rear the hill, and the executioners
busily employed in nailing the three victims to their crosses.
Demás was fastened first; then Gestas, who, when undressed
for execution, was a superb model of a youthful Hercules. But the
third cross still lay on the ground; the hammering and disputing
and coming and going were horribly lifelike and real.
At last the victim
is securely nailed to the wood, and the cross is slowly and
clumsily lifted and falls with a shock into its socket. The
soldiers huzza., the fiend in the tin barrel and another
in a tin hat come down to the footlights and throw dice for the
raiment. "Caramba! curse my luck!" says our friend in the tin
case, and the other walks off with the vestment.
The Passion begins,
and lasts an interminable time. The grouping is admirable, every
shifting of the crowd in the foreground produces a new and
finished picture, with always the same background of the three
high crosses and their agonizing burdens against that lurid sky.
The impenitent Gestas curses and dies; the penitent Demás
believes and receives eternal rest. The Holy
292 CASTILIAN
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Women come in and
group themselves in picturesque despair at the foot of the cross.
The awful drama goes on with no detail omitted,--the thirst the
sponge dipped in vinegar, the cry of desolation, the
spear-thrust, the giving up of the ghost. The stage-lights are
lowered. A thick darkness--of crape--comes down over the sky.
Horror falls on the impious multitude, and the scene is deserted
save by the faithful.
The closing act
opens with a fine effect of moon and stars. "Que linda luna!"
sighed a young woman beside me, drying her tears, comforted by
the beauty of the scene. The central cross is bathed in the full
splendor that is denied the others. Joseph of Abarimathea (as he
is here called) comes in with ladders and winding-sheets, and the
dead Christ is taken from the cross. The Descent is managed with
singular skill and genuine artistic feeling. The principal actor,
who has been suspended for an hour in a most painful and
constrained posture, has a corpse-like rigidity and numbness.
There is one moment when you can almost imagine yourself in
Antwerp, looking at that sublimest work of Rubens. The Entombment
ends, and the last tableau is of the Mater Dolorosa
A MIRACLE PLAY
293
in the Solitude. I
have rarely seen an effect so simple, and yet so striking,--the
darkened stage, the softened moonlight, the now Holy Rood
spectral and tall against the starry sky, and the Dolorous
Mother, alone in her sublime sorrow, as she will be worshipped
and revered for coming aeons.
A curious
observation is made by all foreigners, of the absence of the
apostles from the drama. They appear from time to time, but
merely as supernumeraries. One would think that the character of
Judas was especially fitted for dramatic use. I spoke of this to
a friend, and he said that formerly the false apostle was
introduced in the play, but that the sight of him so fired the
Spanish heart that not only his life, but the success of the
piece was endangered. This reminds one of Mr. A. Ward's account
of a high-handed outrage at "Utiky," where a young gentleman of
good family stove in the wax head of "Jewdas Iscarrit,"
characterizing him at the same time as a "pew-serlanimous
cuss."
"To see these
Mysteries in their glory," continued my friend, "you should go
into the small
294 CASTILIAN
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towns in the
provinces, uncontaminated with railroads or unbelief. There they
last several days The stage is the town, the Temple scene takes
place in the church, the Judgment at the city hall, and the
procession of the Via Crucis moves through all the principal
streets. The leading roles are no joke,--carrying fifty kilos of
wood over the mud and cobble-stones for half a day. The Judas or
Gestas must be paid double for the kicks and cuffs he gets from
tender-hearted spectators,--the curses he accepts willingly as a
tribute to his dramatic ability. His proudest boast in the
evening is Querían matarme,--' They wanted to kill
me!' I once saw the hero of the drama stop before a wine-shop,
sweating like rain, and positively swear by the life of the
Devil, he would not carry his gallows a step farther unless he
had a drink. They brought him a bottle of Valdepeñas, and
he drained it before resuming his way to Golgotha. Some of us
laughed thoughtlessly, and narrowly escaped the knives of the
orthodox ruffians who followed the procession."
The most striking
fact in this species of exhibition is the evident and
unquestioning faith of the audience. To all foreigners the show
is at first
THE CHOIR,
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295
shocking and then
tedious; to the good people of Madrid it is a sermon, full of
absolute truth and vivid reality. The class of persons who attend
these spectacles is very different from that which you find at
the Royal Theatre or the Comic Opera. They are sober, serious
bourgeois, who mind their shops and go to mass regularly, and who
come to the theatre only in Lent, when the gay world stays away.
They would not dream of such an indiscretion as reading the
Bible. Their doctrinal education consists of their catechism, the
sermons of the curas, and the traditions of the Church. The
miracle of St. Veronica, who, wiping the brow of the Saviour in
the Street of Bitterness, finds his portrait on her handkerchief,
is to them as real and reverend as if it were related by the
evangelist. The spirit of inquiry which has broken so many idols,
and opened such new vistas of thought for the minds of all the
world, is as yet a stranger to Spain. It is the blind and fatal
boast of even the best of Spaniards that their country is a unit
in religious faith. Nunca se disputó en
España,--"There has never been any discussion in
Spain,"--exclaims proudly an eminent Spanish writer. Spectacles
like that which we have just seen
296 CASTILIAN
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were one of the
elements which in a barbarous and unenlightened age contributed
strongly to the consolidation of that unthinking and ardent faith
which has fused the nation into one torpid and homogeneous mass
of superstition. No better means could have been devised for the
purpose. Leaving out of view the sublime teachings of the large
and tolerant morality of Jesus, the clergy made his personality
the sole object of worship and reverence. By dwelling almost
exclusively upon the story of his sufferings, they excited the
emotional nature of the ignorant, and left their intellects
untouched and dormant. They aimed to arouse their sympathies, and
when that was done, to turn their natural resentment against
those whom the Church considered dangerous. To the inflamed and
excited worshippers, a heretic was the enemy of the crucified
Saviour, a Jew was his murderer, a Moor was his reviler. A
Protestant wore to their bloodshot eyes the semblance of the
torturer who had mocked and scourged the meek Redeemer, who had
crowned his guileless head with thorns, who had pierced and slain
him. The rack, the gibbet, and the stake were not enough to glut
the pious hate this priestly trickery in-
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297
spired. It was not
enough that the doubter's life should go out in the blaze of the
crackling fagots, but it must be loaded in eternity with the
curses of the faithful.
Is there not food
for earnest thought in the fact that faith in Christ, which led
the Puritans across the sea to found the purest social and
political system which the wit of man has yet evolved from the
tangled problems of time, has dragged this great Spanish people
down to a depth of hopeless apathy, from which it may take long
years of civil tumult to raise them? May we not find the
explanation of this strange phenomenon in the contrast of
Catholic unity with Protestant diversity? "Thou that killest the
prophets!"--the system to which this apostrophe can be applied is
doomed. And it matters little who the prophets may be.
THE CRADLE AND THE
GRAVE OF CERVANTES
IN Rembrandt
Peale's picture of the Court of Death a cadaverous shape lies for
judgment at the foot of the throne, touching at either extremity
the waters of Lethe. There is something similar in the history of
the greatest of Spanish writers. No man knew, for more than a
century after the death of Cervantes, the place of his birth and
burial. About a hundred years ago the investigations of Rios and
Pellicer established the claim of Alcalá de Henares to be
his native city; and last year the researches of the Spanish
Academy have
CERVANTES
299
proved conclusively
that he is buried in the Convent of the Trinitarians in Madrid.
But the precise spot where he was born is only indicated by vague
tradition; and the shadowy conjecture that has so long hallowed
the chapel and cloisters of the Calle Cantarranas has never
settled upon any one slab of their pavement.
It is, however,
only the beginning and the end of this most chivalrous and genial
apparition of the sixteenth century that is concealed from our
view. We know where he was christened and where he died. So that
there are sufficiently authentic shrines in Alcalá and
Madrid to satisfy the most sceptical pilgrims.
I went to
Alcalá one summer day, when the bare fields were brown and
dry in their after-harvest nudity, and the hills that bordered
the winding Henares were drab in the light and purple in the
shadow. From a distance the town is one of the most imposing in
Castile. It lies in the midst of a vast plain by the green
water-side, and the land approach is fortified by a most
impressive wall emphasized by sturdy square towers and flanking
bastions. But as you come nearer you see this wall is a
tradition. It is almost in ruins.
300 CASTILIAN
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The crenellated
towers are good for nothing but to sketch. A short walk from the
station brings you to the gate, which is well defended by a gang
of picturesque beggars, who are old enough to have sat for
Murillo, and revoltingly pitiable enough to be millionaires by
this time, if Castilians had the cowardly habit of sponging out
disagreeable impressions with pennies. At the first charge we
rushed in panic into a tobacco-shop and filled our pockets with
maravedís, and thereafter faced the ragged battalion with
calm.
It is a fine,
handsome, and terribly lonesome town. Its streets are wide, well
built, and silent v as avenues in a graveyard. On every hand
there are tall and stately churches, a few palaces, and some two
dozen great monasteries turning their long walls, pierced with
jealous grated windows, to the grass-grown streets. In many
quarters there is no sign of life, no human habitations among
these morose and now empty barracks of a monkish army. Some of
them have been turned into military casernes, and the bright red
and blue uniforms of the Spanish officers and troopers now
brighten the cloisters that used to see nothing gayer than the
gowns of cord-girdled friars. A
CERVANTES
301
large garrison is
always kept here. The convents are convenient for lodging men and
horses. The fields in the vicinity produce great store of grain
and alfalfa,--food for beast and rider. It is near enough to the
capital to use the garrison on any sudden emergency, such as
frequently happens in Peninsular politics.
The railroad that
runs by Alcalá has not brought with it any taint of the
nineteenth century. The army is a corrupting influence, but not
modern. The vice that follows the trail of armies, or sprouts,
fungus-like, about the walls of barracks, is as old as war, and
links the present, with its struggle for a better life, to the
old mediaeval world of wrong. These trim fellows in loose
trousers and embroidered jackets are the same race that fought
and drank and made prompt love in Italy and Flanders and
butchered the Aztecs in the name of religion three hundred years
ago. They have laid off their helmets and hauberks, and use the
Berdan rifle instead of the Roman spear. But they are the same
careless, idle, dissolute bread-wasters now as then.
The town has not
changed in the least. It has only shrunk a little. You think
sometimes it must
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CASTILIAN
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be a vacation, and
that you will come again when people return. The little you see
of the people is very attractive. Passing along the desolate
streets, you glance in at an open door and see a most delightful
cabinet picture of domestic life. All the doors in the house are
open. You can see through the entry, the front room, into the
cool court beyond, gay with oleanders and vines, where a group of
women half dressed are sewing and spinning and cheering their
souls with gossip. If you enter under pretence of asking a
question, you will be received with grave courtesy, your doubts
solved, and they will bid you go with God, with the quaint
frankness of patriarchal times.
They do not seem to
have been spoiled by overmuch travel. Such impressive and
Oriental courtesy could not have survived the trampling feet of
the great army of tourists. On our pilgrim-way to the cradle of
Cervantes we came suddenly upon the superb facade of the
university. This is one of the most exquisite compositions of
plateresque in ' existence. The entire front of the central body
of the building is covered with rich and tasteful ornamentation.
Over the great door is an enormous escutcheon of the arms of
Austria, supported
THE UNIVERSITY,
ALCALÁ
CERVANTES
303
by two finely
carved statues,--on the one side a nearly nude warrior, on the
other the New World as a feather-clad Indian woman. Still above
this a fine, bold group of statuary, representing, with that
reverent naivete of early art, God the Father in the work of
creation. Surrounding the whole front as with a frame, and
reaching to the ground on either side, is carved the knotted cord
of the Franciscan monks. No description can convey the charming
impression given by the harmony of proportion and the loving
finish of detail everywhere seen in this beautifully preserved
fagade. While we were admiring it an officer came out of the
adjoining cuartel and walked by us with jingling spurs. I asked
him if one could go inside. He shrugged his shoulders with a
Quien sabe? indicating a doubt as profound as if I had asked him
whether chignons were worn in the moon. He had never thought of
anything inside. There was no wine nor pretty girls there. Why
should one want to go in? We entered the cool vestibule, and were
ascending the stairs to the first court, when a porter came out
of his lodge and inquired our errand. We were wandering
barbarians with an eye to the picturesque, and would fain see
the
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university, if it
were not unlawful. He replied, in a hushed and scholastic tone of
voice, and with a succession of confidential winks that would
have inspired confidence in the heart of a Talleyrand, that if
our lordships would give him our cards he had no doubt he could
obtain the required permission from the rector. He showed us into
a dim, claustral-looking anteroom, in which, as I was told by my
friend, who trifles in lost moments with the integral calculus,
there were seventy-two chairs and one microscopic table. The wall
was decked with portraits of the youth of the college, all from
the same artist, who probably went mad from the attempt to make
fifty beardless faces look unlike each other. We sat for some
time mourning over his failure, until the door opened, and not
the porter, but the rector himself, a most courteous and polished
gentleman in the black robe and three-cornered hat of his order,
came in and graciously placed himself and the university at our
disposition. We had reason to congratulate ourselves upon this
good fortune. He showed us every nook and corner of the vast
edifice, where the present and the past elbowed each other at
every turn: here the boys' gymnasium, there the
CERVANTES
305
tomb of Valles;
here the new patent cocks of the water-pipes, and there the
tri-lingual patio where Alonso Sánchez lectured in Arabic,
Greek, and Chaldean, doubtless making a choice hash of the three;
the airy and graceful paraninfo, or hall of degrees, a
masterpiece of Moresque architecture, with a gorgeous panelled
roof, a rich profusion of plaster arabesques, and, horresco
referens, the walls covered with a bright French paper. Our
good rector groaned at this abomination, but said the Gauls had
torn away the glorious carved panelling for firewood in the war
of 1808, and the college was too poor to restore it. His
righteous indignation waxed hot again when we came to the
beautiful sculptured pulpit of the chapel, where all the delicate
details are degraded by a thick coating of whitewash, which in
some places has fallen away and shows the gilding of the time of
the Catholic kings.
There is in this
chapel a picture of the Virgin appearing to the great cardinal
whom we call Ximenez and the Spaniards Cisneros, which is
precious for two reasons. The portrait of Ximenez was painted
from life by the nameless artist, who, it is said, came from
France for the purpose,
306
CASTILIAN
DAYS
and the face of the
Virgin is a portrait of Isabella the Catholic. It is a good
wholesome face, such as you would expect. But the thin, powerful
profile of Ximenez is very striking, with his red hair and florid
tint, his curved beak, and long, nervous lips. He looks not
unlike that superb portrait Raphael has left of Cardinal
Medici.
This university is
fragrant with the good fame of Ximenez. In the principal court
there is a fine medallion of the illustrious founder and
protector, as he delighted to be drawn, with a sword in one hand
and a crucifix in the other,--twin brother in genius and fortune
of the soldier-priest of France, the Cardinal-Duke Richelieu. On
his gorgeous sarcophagus you read the arrogant epitaph with which
he revenged himself for the littleness of kings and
courtiers:--
"Praetextam junxi
sacco, galeamque galero, Frater, dux, praesul, cardineusque
pater. Quin, virtute mea junctum est diadema cucullo, Dum mihi
regnanti patuit Gesperia."
By a happy chance
our visit was made in a holiday time, and the students were all
away. It was better that there should be perfect solitude and
silence as we walked through the noble system of
THE GORGEOUS SARCOPHAGUS
OF XIMENEZ, ALCALÁ
CERVANTES
307
buildings and
strove to re-create the student world of Cervantes's time. The
chronicle which mentions the visit of Francis I. to
Alcalá, when a prisoner in Spain, says he was received by
eleven thousand students. This was only twenty years before the
birth of Cervantes. The world will never see again so brilliant a
throng of ingenuous youth as gathered together in the great
university towns in those years of vivid and impassioned greed
for letters that followed the revival of learning. The romance of
Oxford or Heidelberg or Harvard is tame compared with that
electric life of a new-born world that wrought and flourished in
Padua, Paris, and Alcalá. Walking with my long-robed
scholarly guide through the still, shadowy courts, under
Renaissance arches and Moorish roofs, hearing him talking with
enthusiasm of the glories of the past and never a word of the
events of the present, in his pure, strong, guttural Castilian,
no living thing in view but an occasional Franciscan gliding
under the graceful arcades, it was not difficult to imagine the
scenes of the intense young life which filled these noble halls
in that fresh day of aspiration and hope, when this Spanish
sunlight fell on the marble and the granite bright and sharp from
the chisel of the builder, and
308 CASTILIAN
DAYS
the great Ximenez
looked proudly on his perfect work and saw that it was
good.
The twilight of
superstition still hung heavily over Europe. But this was
nevertheless the breaking of dawn, the herald of the fuller day
of investigation and inquiry.
It was into this
rosy morning of the modern world that Cervantes was ushered in
the season of the falling leaves of 1547. He was born to a life
of poverty and struggle and an immortality of fame. His own city
did not know him while he lived, and now is only known through
him. Pilgrims often come from over distant seas to breathe for
one day the air that filled his baby lungs, and to muse among the
scenes that shaped his earliest thoughts.
We strolled away
from the university through the still lanes and squares to the
Calle Mayor, the only thoroughfare of the town that yet retains
some vestige of traffic. It is a fine, long street bordered by
stone arcades, within which are the shops, and without which in
the pleasant afternoon are the rosy and contemplative
shopkeepers. It would seem a pity to disturb their dreamy repose
by offering to trade; and in justice to Castilian taste
and
CALLE MAJOR,
ALCALÁ
CERVANTES
309
feeling I must say
that nobody does it. Halfway down the street a side alley runs to
the right, called Calle de Cervantes, and into this we turned to
find the birthplace of the romancer. On one side was a line of
squalid, quaint, gabled houses, on the other a long garden wall.
We walked under the shadow of the latter and stared at the
house-fronts, looking for an inscription we had heard of. We saw
in sunny doorways mothers oiling into obedience the stiff
horse-tail hair of their daughters. By the grated windows we
caught glimpses of the black eyes and nut-brown cheeks of maidens
at their needles. But we saw nothing to show which of these
mansions had been honored by tradition as the residence of
Roderick Cervantes.
A brisk and
practical-looking man went past us.
I asked him where
was the house of the poet. He smiled in a superior sort of way,
and pointed to the wall above my head: "There is no such house.
Some people think it once stood here, and they have placed that
stone in the garden-wall to mark the spot. I believe what I see.
It is all child's play anyhow, whether true or false. There is
better work to be done now than to honor Cervantes.
310 CASTILIAN
DAYS
He fought for a
bigot king, and died in a monk's hood."
"You think lightly
of a glory of Castile."
"If we could forget
all the glories of Castile it would be better for us."
"Puede ser," I
assented. "Many thanks. May your grace go with God!"
"Health and
fraternity!" he answered, and moved away with a step full of
energy and dissent. He entered a door under an inscription,
"Federal Republican Club."
Go your ways, I
thought, radical brother. You are not so courteous nor so learned
as the rector. But this Peninsula has need of men like you. The
ages of belief have done their work for good and ill. Let us have
some years of the spirit that denies, and asks for proofs. The
power of the monk is broken, but the work is not yet done. The
convents have been turned into barracks, which is no improvement.
The ringing of spurs in the streets of Alcalá is no better
than the rustling of the sandalled friars. If this Republican
party of yours cannot do something to free Spain from the triple
curse of crown, crozier, and sabre, then Spain is in doleful
case. They are at last divided, and the first
CERVANTES
311
two have been
sorely weakened in detail. The last should be the easiest
work.
The scorn of my
radical friend did not prevent my copying the modest tablet on
the wall:--
"Here was born
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, author of Don Quixote. By his fame
and his genius he belongs to the civilized world; by his cradle
to Alcalá de Henares."
There is no doubt
of the truth of the latter part of this inscription. Eight
Spanish towns have claimed to have given birth to Cervantes, thus
beating the blind Scian by one town; every one that can show on
its church records the baptism of a child so called has made its
claim. Yet Alcalá, who spells his name wrong, calling him
Carvantes, is certainly in the right, as the names of his father,
mother, brothers, and sisters are also given in its records, and
all doubt is now removed from the matter by the discovery of
Cervantes's manuscript statement of his captivity in Algiers and
his petition for employment in America, in both of which he
styles himself "Natural de Alcalá de Henares."
Having examined the
evidence, we considered ourselves justly entitled to all the
usual emotions in visiting the church of the parish, Santa
Maria
312
CASTILIAN
DAYS
la Mayor. It was
evening, and from a dozen belfries in the neighborhood came the
soft dreamy chime of silver-throated bells. In the little square
in front of the church a few families sat in silence on the
massive stone benches. A few beggars hurried by, too intent upon
getting home to supper to beg. A rural and a twilight repose lay
on everything. Only in the air, rosy with the level light, flew
out and greeted each other those musical voices of the bells rich
with the memories of all the days of Alcalá. The church
was not open, but we followed a sacristan in, and he seemed too
feeble-minded to forbid. It is a pretty church, not large nor
imposing, with a look of cosy comfort about it. Through the
darkness the high altar loomed before us, dimly lighted by a few
candles where the sacristans were setting up the properties for
the grand mass of the morrow,--Our Lady of the Snows. There was
much talk and hot discussion as to the placing of the boards and
the draperies, and the image of Our Lady seemed unmoved by words
unsuited to her presence. We know that every vibration of air
makes its own impression on the world of matter. So that the
curses of the sacristans at their work, the prayers
THE BAPTISMAL FONT OF
CERVANTES, ALCALÁ
CERVANTES
313
of penitents at the
altar, the wailing of breaking hearts bowed on the pavement
through many years, are all recorded mysteriously, in these rocky
walls. This church is the illegible history of the parish. But of
all its ringing of bells, and swinging of censers, and droning of
psalms, and putting on and off of goodly raiment, the only show
that consecrates it for the world's pilgrimage is that humble
procession that came on the gth day of October, in the year of
Grace 1547, to baptize Roderick Cervantes's youngest child. There
could not be an humbler christening. Juan Pardo--John Gray--was
the sponsor, and the witnesses were "Bal-tazar Vázquez,
the sacristan, and I who baptized him and signed with my name,"
says Mr. Bachelor Serrano, who never dreamed he was stumbling
into fame when he touched that pink face with the holy water and
called the child Miguel. It is my profound conviction that Juan
Pardo brought the baby himself to the church and took it home
again, screaming wrathfully; Neighbor' Pardo feeling a little
sheepish and mentally resolving never to do another good-natured
action as long as he lived.
As for the
neophyte, he could not be blamed
314 CASTILIAN
DAYS
for screaming and
kicking against the new existence he was entering, if the
instinct of genius gave him any hint of it. Between the font of
St. Mary's and the bier at St. Ildefonso's there was scarcely an
hour of joy waiting him in his long life, except that which comes
from noble and earnest work.
His youth was
passed in the shabby privation of a poor gentleman's house; his
early talents attracted the attention of my Lord Aquaviva, the
papal legate, who took him back to Rome in his service; but the
high-spirited youth soon left the inglorious ease of the
cardinal's house to enlist as a private soldier in the sea-war
against the Turk. He fought bravely at Lepanto, where he was
three times wounded and his left hand crippled. Going home for
promotion, loaded with praise and kind letters from the generous
bastard, Don Juan of Austria, the true son of the Emperor Charles
and pretty Barbara Blumberg, he was captured with his brother by
the Moors, and passed five miserable years in slavery, never for
one instant submitting to his lot, but wearying his hostile fate
with constant struggles. He headed a dozen attempts at flight or
insurrection, and yet his thrifty owners
CERVANTES
315
would not kill him.
They thought a man who bore letters from a prince, and who
continued cock of his walk through years of servitude, would one
day bring a round ransom. At last the tardy day of his redemption
came, but not from the cold-hearted tyrant he had so nobly
served. The matter was presented to him by Cervantes's comrades,
but he would do nothing. So that Don Roderick sold his estate and
his sisters sacrificed their dowry to buy the freedom of the
captive brothers.
They came back to
Spain still young enough to be fond of glory, and simple-hearted
enough to believe in the justice of the great. They immediately
joined the army and served in the war with Portugal. The elder
brother made his way and got some little promotion, but Miguel
got married and discharged, and wrote verses and plays, and took
a small office in Seville, and moved with the Court to
Valladolid; and kept his accounts badly, and was too honest to
steal, and so got into jail, and grew every year poorer and
wittier and better; he was a public amanuensis, a business agent,
a sub-tax-gatherer,--anything to keep his lean larder garnished
with scant ammunition against the wolf hunger. In these few lines
you have the pitiful
316 CASTILIAN
DAYS
story of the life
of the greatest of Spaniards, up to his return to Madrid in 1606,
when he was nearly sixty years old.
From this point his
history becomes clearer and more connected up to the time of his
death. He lived in the new-built suburb, erected on the site of
the gardens of the Duke of Lerma, first minister and favorite of
Philip III. It was a quarter much affected by artists and men of
letters, and equally so by ecclesiastics. The names of the
streets indicate the traditions of piety and art that still
hallow the neighborhood. Jesus Street leads you into the street
of Lope de Vega. Quevedo and Saint Augustine run side by side. In
the same neighborhood are the streets called Cervantes, Saint
Mary, and Saint Joseph, and just round the corner are the
Magdalen and the Love-of-God. The actors and artists of that day
were pious and devout madcaps. They did not abound in morality,
but they had of religion enough and to spare. Many of them were
members of religious orders, and it is this fact which has
procured us such accurate records of their history. All the
events in the daily life of the religious establishments were
carefully recorded, and the manuscript archives of the
HOUSE OF CERVANTES,
MADRID
CERVANTES
317
convents and
brotherhoods of that period are rich in materials for the
biographer.
There was a special
reason for the sudden rise of religious brotherhoods among the
laity. The great schism of England had been fully completed under
Elizabeth. The devout heart of Spain was bursting under this
wrong, and they could think of no way to avenge it. They would
fain have roasted the whole heretical island, but the memory of
the Armada was fresh in men's minds, and the great Philip was
dead. There were not enough heretics in Spain to make it worth
while to waste time in hunting them. Philip could say as Narvaez,
on his death-bed, said to his confessor who urged him to forgive
his enemies, "Bless your heart, I have none. I have killed them
all." To ease their pious hearts, they formed confraternities all
over Spain, for the worship of the Host. They called themselves
"Unworthy Slaves of the Most Holy Sacrament." These grew at once
very popular in all classes. Artisans rushed in, and wasted half
their working days in processions and meetings. The severe Suarez
de Figueroa speaks savagely of the crowd of Narcissuses and
petits maitres (a word which is delicious in its Spanish dress of
peti-
CASTILIAN
DAYS
metres) who entered
the congregations simply to flutter about the processions in
brave raiment, to be admired of the multitude. But there were
other more serious members,--the politicians who joined to stand
well with the bigot court, and the devout believers who found
comfort and edification in worship. Of this latter class was
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, who joined the brotherhood in the
street of the Olivar in 1609. He was now sixty-two years old, and
somewhat infirm,--a time, as he said, when a man's salvation is
no joke. From this period to the day of his death he seemed to be
laboring, after the fashion of the age, to fortify his standing
in the other world. He adopted the habit of the Franciscans in
Alcalá in 1613, and formally professed in the Third Order
in 1616, three weeks before his death.
There are those who
find the mirth and fun of his later works so inconsistent with
these ascetic professions, that they have been led to believe
Cervantes a bit of a hypocrite. But we cannot agree with such.
Literature was at that time a diversion of the great, and the
chief aim of the writer was to amuse. The best opinion of
scholars
CERVANTES
319
now is that
Rabelais, whose genius illustrated the preceding century, was a
man of serious and severe life, whose gaulish crudeness of style
and brilliant wit have been the cause of all the fables that
distort his personal history.
No one can read
attentively even the Quixote without seeing how powerful an
influence was exerted by his religion even upon the noble and
kindly soul of Cervantes. He was a blind bigot and a devoted
royalist, like all the rest. The mean neglect of the Court never
caused his stanch loyalty to swerve. The expulsion of the Moors,
the crowning crime and madness of the reign of Philip III., found
in him a hearty advocate and defender. Non facit monachum
cucullus,--it was not his hood and girdle that made him a
monk; he was thoroughly saturated with their spirit before he put
them on. But he was the noblest courtier and the kindliest bigot
that ever flattered or persecuted.
In 1610, the Count
of Lemos, who had in his grand and distant way patronized the
poet, was appointed Viceroy of Naples, and took with him to his
kingdom a brilliant following of Spanish
320 CASTILIAN
DAYS
wits and scholars.
He refused the petition of the greatest of them all, however, and
to soften the blow gave him a small pension, which he continued
during the rest of Cervantes's life. It was a mere pittance, a
bone thrown to an old hound, but he took it and gnawed it with a
gratitude more generous than the gift. From this time forth all
his works were dedicated to the Lord of Lemos, and they form a
garland more brilliant and enduring than the crown of the Spains.
Only kind words to disguised fairies have ever been so
munificently repaid, as this young noble's pension to the old
genius.
It certainly eased
somewhat his declining years. Relieving him from the necessity of
earning his daily crust, it gave him leisure to complete and
bring out in rapid succession the works which have made him
immortal. He had published the first part of Don Quixote in the
midst of his hungry poverty at Valladolid in 1605. He was then
fifty-eight, and all his works that survive are posterior to that
date. He built his monument from the ground up, in his old age.
The Persiles and Sigis-munda, the Exemplary Novels, and that most
masterly and perfect work, the Second Part of Quix-
CERVANTES
321
ote, were written
by the flickering glimmer of a life burnt out.
It would be
incorrect to infer that the scanty dole of his patron sustained
him in comfort. Nothing more clearly proves his straitened
circumstances than his frequent change of lodgings. Old men do
not move for the love of variety. We have traced him through six
streets in the last four years of his life. But a touching fact
is that they are all in the same quarter. It is understood that
his natural daughter and only child, Isabel de Saavedra, entered
the Convent of the Trinitarian nuns in the street of
Cantarranas--Singing Frogs--at some date unknown. All the
shifting and changing which Cervantes made in these embarrassed
years are within a small half-circle, whose centre is his grave
and the cell of his child. He fluttered about that little convent
like a gaunt old eagle about the cage that guards his callow
young.
Like Albert Duerer,
like Raphael and Van Dyck, he painted his own portrait at this
time with a force and vigor of touch which leaves little to the
imagination. As few people ever read the Exemplary Novels,--more
is the pity,--I will translate this passage from the
Prologue:--
322 CASTILIAN
DAYS
"He whom you see
there with the aquiline face, chestnut hair, a smooth and open
brow, merry eyes, a nose curved but well proportioned, a beard of
silver which twenty years ago was of gold, long mustaches, a
small mouth, not too full of teeth, seeing he has but six, and
these in bad condition, a form of middle height, a lively color,
rather fair than brown, somewhat round-shouldered and not too
light on his feet; this is the face of the author of Galatea and
of Don Quixote de la Mancha, of him who made the Voyage to
Parnassus, and other works which are straying about without the
name of the owner: he is commonly called Miguel de Cervantes
Saavedra."
There were, after
all, compensations in this evening of life. As long as his dropsy
would let him, he climbed the hilly street of the Olivar to say
his prayers in the little oratory. He passed many a cheerful hour
of gossip with Mother Francisca Romero, the independent superior
of the Trinitarian Convent, until the time when the Supreme
Council, jealous of the freedom of the good lady's life, walled
up the door which led from her house to her convent and cut her
off from her nuns. He sometimes dropped into the studios of
Carducho
CERVANTES
323
and Caxes, and one
of them made a sketch of him one fortunate day. He was friends
with many of the easy-going Bohemians who swarmed in the
quarter,--Cristóbal de Mesa, Quevedo, and Mendoza, whose
writings, Don Miguel says, are distinguished by the absence of
all that would bring a "blush to the cheek of a young
person,"--
"Por graves, puros,
castos y excelentes."
In the same street
where Cervantes lived and died,the great Lope de Vega passed his
edifying old age. This phenomenon of incredible fecundity is one
of the mysteries of that time. Few men of letters have ever won
so marvellous a success in their own lives, few have been so
little read after death. The inscription on Lope's house records
that he is the author of two thousand comedies and twenty-one
million of verses. Making all possible deductions for Spanish
exaggeration, it must still be admitted that his activity and
fertility of genius were prodigious. In those days a play was
rarely acted more than two or three times, and he wrote nearly
all that were produced in Spain. He had driven all competitors
from the scene. Cervantes, when he published his collection of
plays, admitted the impossibility of getting a hearing in the
theatre
324 CASTILIAN
DAYS
while this "monster
of nature" existed. There was a courteous acquaintance between
the two great poets. They sometimes wrote sonnets to each other,
and often met in the same oratories. But a grand seigneur like
Frey Lope could not afford to be intimate with a shabby genius
like brother Miguel. In his inmost heart he thought Don Quixote
rather low, and wondered what people could see in it. Cervantes,
recognizing the great gifts of De Vega, and, generously giving
him his full meed of praise, saw with clearer insight than any
man of his time that this deluge of prodigal and facile genius
would desolate rather than fructify the drama of Spain. What a
contrast in character and destiny between our dilapidated poet
and his brilliant neighbor across the way! The one rich,
magnificent, the poet of princes and a prince among poets, the
"Phoenix of Spanish Genius," in whose ashes there is no flame of
resurrection; the other, hounded through life by unmerciful
disaster, and using the brief respite of age to achieve an
enduring renown; the one, with his twenty millions of verses, has
a great name in the history of literature; but the other, with
his volume you can carry in your pocket, has caused the world to
call the
CERVANTES
325
Castilian tongue
the language of Cervantes. We will not decide which lot is the
more enviable. But it seems a poet must choose. We have the high
authority of Sancho for saying,--
"Para dar y tener
Seso ha menester."
He is a bright boy
who can eat his cake and have it.
In some incidents
of the closing scenes of these memorable lives there is a curious
parallelism. Lope de Vega and Cervantes lived and died in the
same street, now called the Calle de Cervantes, and were buried
in the same convent of the street now called Calle de Lope de
Vega. In this convent each had placed a beloved daughter, the
fruit of an early and unlawful passion. Isabel de Saavedra, the
child of sin and poverty, was so ignorant she could not sign her
name; while Lope's daughter, the lovely and gifted Marcela de
Carpió, was rich in the genius of her father and the
beauty of her mother, the high-born Maria de Lujan. Cervantes's
child glided from obscurity to oblivion no one knew when, and the
name she assumed with her spiritual vows is lost to tradition.
But the mystic espousals of the sister Marcela de San Felix to
the eldest son
326
CASTILIAN
DAYS
of God--the
audacious phrase is of the father and priest Frey Lope--were
celebrated with princely pomp and luxury; grandees of Spain were
her sponsors; the streets were invaded with carriages from the
palace, the verses of the dramatist were sung in the service by
the Court tenor Florian, called the "Canary of Heaven;" and the
event celebrated in endless rhymes by the genteel poets of the
period.
Rarely has a
lovelier sacrifice been offered on the altar of superstition. The
father, who had been married twice before he entered the
priesthood, and who had seen the folly of errant loves without
number, twitters in the most innocent way about the beauty and
the charm of his child, without one thought of the crime of
quenching in the gloom of the cloister the light of that rich
young life. After the lapse of more than two centuries we know
better than he what the world lost by that lifelong imprisonment.
The Marquis of Mo-lins, director of the Spanish Academy, was
shown by the ladies of the convent in this year of 1870 a volume
of manuscript poems from the hand of Sor Marcela, which prove her
to have been one of the most vigorous and original poets of the
time. They
CERVANTES
327
are chiefly
mystical and ecstatic, and full of the refined and spiritual
voluptuousness of a devout young heart whose pulsations had never
learned to beat for earthly objects. M. de Molins is preparing a
volume of these manuscripts; but I am glad to present one of the
seguidillas here, as an illustration of the tender and ardent
fantasies of virginal passion this Christian Sappho embroidered
upon the theme of her wasted prayers:--
Let them say to my Lover That here I lie!
The thing of his pleasure, His slave am I.
Say that I seek him
Only for love,
And welcome are tortures
My passion to prove.
Love giving gifts
Is suspicious and cold; I have all, my Beloved,
When thee I hold.
Hope and devotion
The good may gain, I am but worthy
Of passion and pain.
So noble a Lord
None serves in vain,--
328 CASTILIAN
DAYS
For the pay of my love
Is my love's sweet pain.
I love thee, to love thee,
No more I desire,
By faith is nourished
My love's strong fire.
I kiss thy hands
When I feel their blows,
In the place of caresses
Thou givest me woes.
But in thy chastising
Is joy and peace,
O Master and Love,
Let thy blows not cease!
Thy beauty, Beloved,
With scorn is rife!
But I know that thou lovest me,
Better than life.
And because thou lovest me,
Lover of mine,
Death can but make me
Utterly thine!
I die with longing
Thy face to see;
Ah! sweet is the anguish
Of death to me!
CERVANTES
329
This is a long
digression, but it will be forgiven by those who feel how much of
beautiful and pathetic there is in the memory of this mute
nightingale dying with her passionate music all unheard in the
silence and shadows. It is to me the most purely poetic
association that clings about the grave of Cervantes.
This vein of
mysticism in religion has been made popular by the recent
canonization of Saint Theresa, the ecstatic nun of Avila. In the
ceremonies that celebrated this event there were three prizes
awarded for odes to the new saint. Lope de Vega was chairman of
the committee of award, and Cervantes was one of the competitors.
The prizes it must be admitted were very tempting: first, a
silver pitcher; second, eight yards of camlet; and third, a pair
of silk stockings. We hope Cervantes's poem was not the best. We
would rather see him carry home the stuff for a new cloak and
pourpoint, or even those very attractive silk stockings for his
shrunk shank, than that silver pitcher which he was too Castilian
ever to turn to any sensible use. The poems are published in a
compendium of the time, without indicating the
330
CASTILIAN
DAYS
successful ones;
and that of Cervantes contained these lines, which would seem
hazardous in this colder age, but which then were greatly
admired:--
"Breaking all bolts
and bars, Comes the Divine One, sailing from the
stars,
Full in thy sight to
dwell: And those who seek him, shortening the road,
Come to thy blest
abode, And find him in thy heart or in thy cell."
The anti-climax is
the poet's, and not mine.
He knew he was
nearing his end, but worked desperately to retrieve the lost
years of his youth, and leave the world some testimony of his
powers. He was able to finish and publish the Second Part of
Quixote, and to give the last touches of the file to his favorite
work, the long pondered and cherished Persiles. This, he assures
Count Lemos, will be either the best or the worst work ever
produced by mortal man, and he quickly adds that it will not be
the worst. The terrible disease gains upon him, laying its cold
hand on his heart. He feels the pulsations growing slower, but
bates no jot of his cheerful philosophy. "With one foot in the
stirrup," he writes a last farewell of noble gratitude to the
viceroy of Naples. He makes his
CERVANTES
331
will, commanding
that his body be laid in the Convent of the Trinitarians. He had
fixed his departure for Sunday, the 17th of April, but waited six
days for Shakespeare, and the two greatest souls of that age went
into the unknown together, on the 23d of April, 1616.
The burial of
Cervantes was as humble as his christening. His bier was borne on
the shoulders of four brethren of his order. The upper half of
the coffin-lid was open and displayed the sharpened features to
the few who cared to see them: his right hand grasped a crucifix
with the grip of a soldier. Behind the grating was a sobbing nun
whose name in the world was Isabel de Saavedra. But there was no
scenic effort or display, such as a few years later in that same
spot witnessed the laying away of the mortal part of Vega-Carpio.
This is the last of Cervantes upon earth. He had fought a good
fight. A long life had been devoted to his country's service. In
his youth he had poured out his blood, and dragged the chains of
captivity. In his age he had accomplished a work which folds in
with Spanish fame the orb of the world. But he was laid in his
grave like a pauper, and the spot where he lay was quickly
forgotten. At that very
332
CASTILIAN
DAYS
hour a vast
multitude was assisting at what the polished academician calls a
"more solemn ceremony," the bearing of the Virgin of the Atocha
to the Convent of San Domingo el Real, to see if peradventure
pleased by the airing, she would send rain to the parching
fields.
The world speedily
did justice to his name. Even before his death it had begun. The
gentlemen of the French embassy who came to Madrid in 1615 to
arrange the royal marriages asked the chaplain of the Archbishop
of Toledo in his first visit many questions of Miguel Cervantes.
The chaplain happened to be a friend of the poet, and so replied,
"I know him. He is old, a soldier, a gentleman, and poor." At
which they wondered greatly. But after a while, when the whole
civilized world had trans-lated and knew the Quixote by heart,
the Spaniards began to be proud of the genius they had neglected
and despised. They quote with a certain fatuity the eulogy of
Montesquieu, who says it is the only book they have; "a
proposition" which Navarrete considers "inexact," and we agree
with Navarrete. He has written a good book himself. The Spaniards
have very frankly accepted the judgment of the world, and
although they do not read Cervantes
CERVANTES
333
much, they admire
him greatly, and talk about him more than is amusing. The Spanish
Academy has set up a pretty mural tablet on the facade of the
convent which shelters the tired bones of the unlucky immortal,
enjoying now their first and only repose. In the Plaza of the
Cortes a fine bronze statue stands facing the Prado, catching on
his chiselled curls and forehead the first rays of morning that
leap over the hill of the Retiro. It is a well-poised, energetic,
chivalrous figure, and Mr. Ger-mond de Lavigne has criticised it
as having more of the sabreur than the savant. The objection does
not seem well founded. It is not pleasant for the world to be
continually reminded of its meannesses. We do not want to see
Cervantes's days of poverty and struggle eternized in statues. We
know that he always looked back with fondness on his campaigning
days, and even in his decrepit age he called himself a soldier.
If there were any period in that troubled history that could be
called happy, surely it was the time when he had youth and valor
and hope as the companions of his toil. It would have been a
precious consolation to his cheerless age to dream that he could
stand in bronze, as we hope he may stand for centuries, in the
un-
334
CASTILIAN
DAYS
changing bloom of
manhood, with the cloak and sword of a gentleman and soldier,
bathing his Olympian brow forever in the light of all the
mornings, and gazing, at evening, at the rosy reflex flushing the
east,--the memory of the day and the promise of the
dawn.
INDEX
INDEX
Adoration of the
Shepherds, Murillo's, 168.
Alcalá de
Henares, birthplace of Cervantes, 298; appearance of, 299, 300;
garrison of, 301; people of, 302; university of, 302-307; church
of Santa Maria la Mayor, 312.
Alcázar,
Toledo, vicissitudes of, 248, 249.
Alguaciles, part of,
in bull-fights, 97, 98.
Alonso VI.,
uniformity of worship demanded by, 228; wall built by, around
Toledo, 245; Moorish mosque used by, 246.
Alonso VIII., statue
of, at Toledo,
122.
America, effect of
discovery of, 75;
Spanish emigration
to, 147. American element, prominence of, in
Madrid,
17.
Andalusians, in
Madrid, 8. Andrew, St., Murillo's painting of the
martyrdom of,
165.
Anglo-Saxons,
religious forms outgrown by, 126.
Annunciation,
Murillo's, 168. Aranda, Count, debt of Madrid to, 6,
20.
Aranjuez, royal
palace of, 217, 218. Arjona, famous bull-fighter, no. Arrieros,
origin of name, 196. Art, development of, in Spain,
145;
Spanish students of,
in Italy, 148;
foreign students of,
in Spain, 148;
various schools and
masters of, in
Spain, 149; decline
of, 151. Ash Wednesday, a popular ceremony
of, 140. Austria,
House of, influence of, in
Spain, 145;
portraits of Spanish
kings of, 158-160;
profligacy of
Spanish kings of,
268, 269.
Baciocchi, anecdote
of, 43.
Banderilleros, part
of, in bull-fights, 103.
Bathing, dislike of,
66, 67; discouraged by Isabella the Catholic, 91.
Beggars, 117, 192,
211, 213, 234, 300.
Berruguete, carvings
of, 148.
Boisel, anecdote of
Segovia by, 207.
Borbon, Louisa
Carlota de, 200-202.
Borrachos, painting
of the, by Velazquez, 172, 173.
Bouillon,----de,
pension of, 278.
Breda, Surrender of,
painting by Velazquez, 169.
Bull-fights, vain
ettort to transplant, 90; royal attempts to abolish, 91; two
famous, 92; sacrifices made to attend, 93; danger from cowardly
bulls in, 102; play-bills of, 111,112; statistics of, 112;
defense of, 113; decadence of, 114; former splendors of, 115,
116. See also Alguaciles, Banderilleros, Chulos, Matadors,
Picadors.
Burial, lack of
ceremony attending, 55; heathen rites attending, 86; right of,
denied to Protestants, 273.
Burial of the
Sardine, an Ash Wednesday ceremony, 140.
Caballero,
Fernán, illiteracy of Spanish women approved by,
41.
Calderón,
decline of interest in masterpieces of, io.
Calomarde, Minister
of Ferdinand VII., 201, 202.
Capa, use of, 27,
28.
Capital cities,
reasons for choice of,
3» 4-Carlos
V., Don, son of Philip II.,
portrait of, 159;
character of, 268. Carlos VII., Don, portrait of, on
cigarette boxes,
25.
338
INDEX
Carnival, survival
of the true, in Madrid, 136; costumes of, 137, 138; outgrown by
the rest of the continent, 139; renewal of, in Lent,
140.
Carpió,
Marcela de, daughter of Lope de Vega, 325; gifts of, 326; poem
by, 327, 328.
Carreño,
portrait of Charles the Bewitched by, 160.
Castelar, Emilio,
portrait of, on cigarette boxes, 25; idea of liberty of, 88;
comments of, on Toledo, 216.
Castellana, winter
promenades in the,
21.
Catalans, in Madrid,
8.
Catholic unity,
method of attaining, 229, 295-297.
Celts, in Ireland
and in Iberia, 124.
Cemeteries,
desolation of, in Spain, 131, '32.
Cervantes,
birth-place of, 298, 309-311; burial-place cf, 299, 331; sketch
of life of, 314-316; religious life of, 318; bigotry of, 319;
pension of, 320; late works of, 320, 330; poverty of, 321;
daughter of, 321, 325; description of himself, 322; friends of,
322, 323; relations of, with Lope de Vega, 324; memorials to,
333-
Chapels, in the
bull-rings, 105.
Charity, proceeds of
Spanish carnival for, 137.
Charles I., of
England, famous bullfight in honor of, 92.
Charles III., of
Spain, debt of Madrid to, 6; establishment of the Prado by, 20;
growing importance of work done by, 32.
Charles V. of
Germany, I. of Spain, art encouraged by, 146, 150; portrait of,
by Titian, 158; opening of coffin of, 265.
Charles the
Bewitched, portrait of, 160.
Chicago, compared
with Madrid, 7.
Christine, Queen of
Ferdinand VII., 201; meeting of, as Regent, with revolutionists,
202.
Christmas,
celebration of, by the proletariat, 132-135.
Church. See
Priesthood.
Church and State,
identified interests of, 69, 73, 75, 79, 84; movement favoring
separation of, 274.
Chulos, part of, in
bull-fights, 104.
Cicer, modern use of
the Roman, 37.
Cigarettes.
See Tobacco.
Claret, Padre,
46.
Claude, paintings
by, at Madrid, 182, 183.
Clergy. See
Priesthood.
Coello, Claudio,
altar-picture by, in Escorial, 262.
Competition, for
public employment, 39- _
Constitution of
1812, movement in favor of, 202; proclaimed by Christine, as
Regent, 203.
Corpus Christi,
festival of, 124, 125.
Costillares, famous
bull-fighter, 114.
Courbet, refusal of,
to be decorated, 172.
Courtesy, invariable
forms of, 49, 50.
Creoles, of the
Antilles, characteristics of, 16, 17.
Cuchares, famous
bull-fighter, m.
Daunoy, Madame,
observations of, 67; anecdote of Philip IV., told by,
268.
Dead, ceremonies in
memory of the, 131, 132.
Devil's Bridge,
Segovian legend of, 210.
Domesticity, strong
feature of Spanish life, 33, 34-
Drama, French
influence on, in Madrid, 10.
Dream of the Roman
Gentleman, 168.
Diirer, Albert,
paintings by, at Madrid, 182.
Dyck, Sir Anthony
van, paintings by, at Madrid, 185, 186.
Egas, Enrique de,
work of, in Toledo,
247. Elizabeth
Farnese, wife of Philip V.,
200. Elizabeth, St.,
ol Hungary, Murillo's,
168, 169. Epiphany,
farce performed by the
lowest orders on eve
of the, 135;
celebration in
burgher society, 136.
INDEX
339
Escorial, reasons
for building, 5, 255; situation of, 257; form of, 258; church of,
259-265; reliquary of, 261; miraculous wafer of, 262; pictures
of, 263; crypt of, 264, 265; library of, 269; schools of, 271;
teachings of, 276.
Escovedo, Juan,
aqueduct of Segovia repaired by, 210.
Españolismo,
64, 118.
Eugene, St., first
cathedral of Toledo built by, 222.
Eugenic, empress of
the French, belief of, in relics, 43.
Fairs, street,
129-131.
Family life.
See Domesticity; Parental discipline.
Family names.
See Names, family.
Fede, Lucrezia,
portrait of, 178.
Ferdinand VII.,
famous bull-fight given by, 92; establishment of Madrid gallery
by, 152; decree in favor of Don Carlos revoked by,
201.
Festival of Bulls,
92.
Feudal taxes,
continued payment of, 63, 64.
Forestallers.
See Speculators.
Forman, Helen, wife
of Rubens, 184.
Frascuelo,
bull-fighter, 104, 115.
Freedom of the
press, 273, 274.
Freedom of worship,
85.
French language, the
missionary of mental equality, 12.
Fritters,
consumption of, during Verbena of St. John, 127, 128.
Frugality of the
Spaniards, 38.
Gallicians, in
Madrid, 7, 26.
Garbanzos, great use
of, 37.
Giordano, Luca,
imitation of Raphael and Rubens by, 162; vast number of pictures
by, 163; frescoes by, in church of the Escorial, 260,
262.
Gloria, Titian's, at
Madrid, 129, 180.
Golden Key, the
manual of confession, 46.
Good Friday,
observance of, 141.
Goths, wall built
by, around Toledo, 245.
Government
positions, competition for, 39.
Grain, manner of
threshing, 193.
Granja, La, castle
of Philip V., 6; situation of, 189; approach to, 197, 198;
gardens of, 199; history of, 200-202; fountains of, 204, 205;
interior of, 206.
Graveyards.
See Cemeteries.
Gutiérrez,
Miss, Spanish actress, 281.
Gypsy
fortune-tellers, Murillo's, 167,
Henry of Trastamara
(Henry II., of
Castile), 211.
Holidays, frequency of, 117; political,
118. See also
Corpus Christi;
Fairs; St. John,
Verbena of; San
Isidro.
Holofernes,
paintings of death of, 162. Holy Family, Giordano's painting
of,
162; Murillo's, 166.
Holy Thursday, observance of, 141. Honor, Spanish idea of, 71;
effect of,
81, 83. Horses, use
of, in bull-fights, 94, 99-
103.
Hospitality, Moorish
origin of Spanish, 50.
Ildefonso, San,
visit of the Virgin to, 225, 226; visit of Santa Leocadia to,
227; burial-place of, 244.
Illo, Pepe, famous
bull-fighter, 90, "4-
Imperialism, Spanish
expectation of, in America, 191.
Individuality,
intense feeling of, 34; expression of, 73.
Inquisition, old
palace of the, Madrid, 31.
Isabella I., the
Catholic, opposed to bathing and bull-fights, 91; chapel to San
Isidro built by, 121; church of San Juan de los Reyes finished
by, 237-
Isabella II. of
Bourbon, expulsion of, 85; bull-fight in honor of, 92;
recognition of rights of, to the throne, 201.
Isidro, San,
festival of, 120, 122-124 i miracles of, 121; statue of, at
Toledo, 122.
Italy, Spanish
emigration to, 147.
340
INDEX
Jacob, Ribera's
painting of Ladder-Dream of, 174.
Jews, Spanish hatred
of, 229, 288; mediaeval synagogues built by, in Toledo,
236.
John, St., Verbena
of, 127.
Jordaens, painting
by, in the Belvedere, 172.
Juanes, Juan de,
paintings by, 164.
Juni, Juan de,
painting by, at Segovia,
212.
King, divine
attributes of Spanish, 74, 77, 80.
Laboring classes, in
Madrid, 37; revels of, at Christmas, 134; at Epiphany,
135.
Lagartijo,
inscription on sword of, no.
Language, democracy
of, 256.
Last Supper, by
Juanes, 164; by Titian, 179.
Latin races, demand
of outward religious forms by, 125.
La Torre, Duchess
of, of Cuban origin, 17-
Lemos, Count of,
Cervantes pensioned by, 320-
Lent, former
ceremonies of, 140, 141; present observances of, 141.
Leocadia, Santa,
visit of, to San Ildefonso, 227; burial-place of, 244.
Leonardo, Mona Lisa
of, at Madrid, 178.
Lepanto, Titian's
picture of the Battle of, 181.
Lerma, Duke of,
power of, 77.
Liberti, Van Dyck's
portrait of, 185.
Lisbon, superiority
of, over Madrid as a capital, 5.
London, only
possible capital for England, 3.
Lorraine, Claude.
See Claude.
Luna, Alvaro de,
burial-place of, 225.
Machinery, Spanish
scorn for improved, 193, 194.
Madrid, choice of,
as capital of Spain, 3-5; natural characteristics of, 5; debt of,
to Charles III., 6; inferior natural attractions of, 6, 7;
best
point to study
Spanish life, 7; for-eign population of, 8; foreign influence on
music and drama of, 9, 10; on manners of, 11; on language
of,
12; characteristics
of best society of,
13: social schisms
in, 14; social life of Tertulias of, 15, 16; Creoles of, 16 >
American element in, 17; unattractive environs of, 17;
satisfaction of inhabitants with, 19; Prado of, 20; winter
promenades in the Castellana of, 2i; summer evenings in the Salon
of, 21, 22; differing effect of climate of, on men and women, 23,
24, 27; vagabonds of, 24; match-venders of, 25; water-venders of,
26; Moors' quarter, 29; Plaza Mayor, 29, 30; Puerta del Sol. 37;
picture-gallery of, 145, 150, 152-154; names of streets of,
316.
Magdalen, a possible
painting by Tobar, 161.
Maria del Salto,
legend of, 213.
Maria Louisa, wife
of Charles IV., anecdote of, 262.
Mario, Spanish
comedian, 282.
Market-place,
Madrid, 29.
Marriage, prudence
governing, 39, 40.
Mary of the
Conception, Murillo's, 166, 167.
Masses, for the
dead, 56.
Matadors, part of,
in bull-fights, 104, 107, 108; rewards of, 109, in; improvidence
of, in.
Match-venders,
prevalence of, in Madrid, 25.
Medical science, ban
upon, 53.
Medina Celi, Dukes
of, periodical claims to throne by, 65.
Mendicancy.
See Beggars.
Mendoza, Cardinal,
Military College of Santa Cruz, Toledo, built by, 247.
Meninas, Las, by
Velazquez, 170-172.
Military College of
Santa Cruz, Toledo, 247.
Mining, effect of
tradition on, 62.
Miracle-plays,
account of one, 278-293; staging of, 280, 282, 284, 290, 292;
appearance of Christ in, 286; horrible realism in, 287, 291;
introduction of the Wandering Jew into, 289; absence of Apostles
from, 293; per-
INDEX
341
formance of, in
country towns, 294; character of audience, 294.
Miracles,
53.
Missionaries,
Anglo-Saxon, in Spain, 272.
Molina, Rafael,
bull-fighter, 115.
Mona Lisa,
Leonardo's, at Madrid, 178.
Monarchs, modern,
love of, for solitude, 187.
Monarchy, perfect
form of, in Spain,
71
Montes, Paco, famous
matador, 105, 114, 116.
Moors, expulsion of
(1609), 79; streets laid out by, in Toledo, 221; toleration of,
228; banishment of, 229.
Moors' quarter,
Madrid, 29.
Morales, paintings
by, 164.
Muleteers, profanity
of, 195-197.
Murat,
commemorations of slaughter by, 118-120.
Murillo, paintings
by, in Madrid Museum, 165-168; in Academy of San Fernando, 168,
169; character of, 174, 175; kindness of Velazquez to,
176.
Music, French
influence on, in Madrid, 9.
Names, Christian, 44;
family, 48.
Olivares, Count-duke
of, 80. Ontañon, Gil de, Cathedral of Segovia
built by, 212.
Oxford, Lady, Van Dyck's portrait of.
185.
Padilla, John of,
fate of, 221. Palma, the Klder, Titian's Descent
from the Cross
finished by, 181. Panaderia, Madrid, 30. Pantoja, portrait of
Philip II. by,
159-
Parental discipline,
among Spaniards, 35, 36.
Paris, logical
capital of France, 3; influence of, on Spanish music and drama,
9, 10.
Peñaranda,
Duchess of, Salon of, 14.
Pérez,
architect of Cathedral of Toledo, 222.
Perla, La, history
of Raphael's, 177.
Peter of Champagne,
paintings of, in Seville, 148.
Peter the Great,
choice of capital by, 4.
Philip II., court
established at Madrid by, 4, 5; brutalities of, 76; protection of
art by, 150; portraits of, 159; part of, in Battle of St.
Quen-tin, 253; marriage of, to Elizabeth of France, 254; building
of Escorial by, 255, 256; relics collected by, 261; manner of
death of, 266; powerful personality of, 267.
Philip III., statue
of, at Madrid, 30; portraits of, 157, 158, 159.
Philip IV., Festival
of Bulls given by, 92; portrait of, 159, 160; decoration of
Velazquez by, 172; last true king of the old school,
268.
Philip V., building
undertaken by, 6; bull-fights abolished by, 91; building of La
Granja by, 189; burial-place of, 200; debts of, 206.
Philip of Burgundy,
carvings of, 148.
Phoenix, John,
quoted, 22.
Picadors, part of,
in bull-fights, 99, 100: anxiety of, 101.
Plaza de Toros,
Madrid, 94, et seq.
Plaza del Oriente,
Madrid, palace of Philip V. in, 6.
Plaza Mayor, Madrid,
present character of, 29; used as Christmas marketplace,
133.
Political science,
small progress in, 82, 83-
Prado, appearance of
the word in other languages, 20; scene of Verbena of St. John,
127-129.
Priesthood, respect
shown to, 46; power of, 69,70, 77, 85; methods of,
296.
Prim, General, wife
of, 17; signatures used by, 49.
Profanity,
commonness of, 41, 195, 196.
Protestants, Spanish
hatred of, 230, 231, growing toleration for, 272,
273-Puerta del Sol,
Madrid, 31.
Rabelais, opinion of
scholars regarding, 319.
342
INDEX
Raphael, pain tings
by, in Madrid, 176, 177.
Rebecca, Murillo's
painting of, 165.
Reformation, Spain not
penetrated by, 75
Relics, declining
virtue of, 54.
Religious forms,
regard for, 42, 82;
necessity of, for
Latin mind, 125; outgrown by Anglo-Saxons, 126.
Religious orders,
reason for sudden rise of, 317.
Religious wars, result
of, in Spain, 68, 75
Republican party, in
Spain, 87.
Retiro Garden, music
in the, 22,
Retz, Cardinal de,
54.
Ribera, the
Prometheus of, 156; Ladder-Dream of Jacob by, 174;
characteristics of, 174; early life of,
174, 175-
Romans, relics of,
in Toledo, 244, 245.
Rome, predestined
capital of Italy, 3.
Romero, famous
bull-fighter, 114, 116. Rubens, paintings by, at Madrid,
183-185.
Rubrica, importance
of, 66, 190.
Saavedra, Isabel de,
daughter of Cervantes, 321, 325.
Sacred words, common
use of, 45. St. Andrew's, parish church of, Madrid, 29. St.
Quentin, part of Philip II. in the Battle of, 253, 254.
Salamanca, better fitted for capital than Madrid, 5.
Salome, Titian's, at
Madrid, 180.
Salon del Prado,
summer evening walks in the, 21,22. Samuel Ben Levi, synagogue
built by, in Toledo, 236.
San Cervantes,
castle of, Toledo, 250. San Cristo de la Luz, church of, Toledo,
246.
San Cristo de la
Vega, church of, Toledo, 244, 245.
San Fernando,
Academy of, Murillo's paintings in, 168.
San Gines, Lenten
scourges in church of, 140.
San Ildefonso, royal
palace of. See Granja, La.
San Juan de los
Reyes, church of, Toledo, 237-241.
San Lorenzo el Real,
monastery of. See Escorial.
Santa Maria la
Mayor, church of, Alcalá, 312.
Sanzio, Raffaello.
See Raphael.
Sarto, Andrea del,
paintings by, in Madrid, 178.
Segovia, historic
interest of, 206; present poverty of, 207; monuments of, 208;
aqueduct of, 208-211; Moorish Alcázar of, 211; cathedral
of, 212, 213.
Sereno, duties of
the, 61.
Servants, Spanish,
50.
Seville, superior
fitness for a capital, 5.
Shrines, virtues of,
54.
Smoking. See
Tobacco.
Solitude, love of
modern monarchs for, 187.
Spain, growth of,
74; decline of, 77, 79; intellectual life of, in the 17th
century, 78; loss of American Colonies by, 81; small progress of
political science in, 82, 83; freedom of worship in, 85, 86;
spirit of religious inquiry in, 87; Republican party in, 87;
development of art in, 145-149.
Spaniards,
domesticity of, 33, 34; intense individuality of, 34, 73; family
quarrels among, 34, 35; parental discipline, 35; life of middle
and lower classes, 36, 37; frugality of, 38; competition for
government positions among, 39; outward forms of religion
observed by, 42, 82; use of sacred words by, 45; little illness
among lower classes of, 52; domination of the Church over, 69,
70; idea of honor among, 71, 72, 81-83; emigration of, 147, 148.
See also Women.
Spanish Academy,
plays produced by members of, 10, 11.
Spasimo di Sicilia,
history of Raphael's, 177.
Speculators in
theatre tickets, 279, 280.
Stephen, St.,
pictures illustrating martyrdom of, by Juanes, 164.
Street-cleaning,
objections to, 66.
INDEX
343
Suburbs, value of,
to great cities, 17, 18.
Superlatives,
Spanish use of, 144.
Superstitions,
ruling, of the Spanish mind, 68, 81.
Synagogues, of
Toledo, 236.
Tandem driving, a
survival, 66.
Tato, El, famous
bull-fighter, 110, 111.
Taxes, feudal,
continued payment of, 63, 64.
Tertulias, social
life among, 15, 16.
Theotocopouli,
George, chapel built by, 148, 223.
Threshing, manner
of, 193.
Tintoret, paintings
by, in Madrid gallery, 162; sketch of the Paradise of, 181;
paintings by, in Escorial, 263.
Titian, protected by
Charles V., 146; portrait of Charles V. by, 158; of Philip II.,
159; paintings by, in Madrid, 179-181; in the Escorial,
263.
Titles, slight use
of, 48.
Tobacco, effect of,
on men of Madrid, 23, 47; constant use of, 26.
Tobar, possible
painting by, 161.
Toledo, better
fitted than Madrid for capital, 5; Castelar's comment on, 216;
approach to, 218; streets of, 219; former population of, 220;
Cathedral of, 221-229; Mozarabic Chapel of, 228; architectural
beauties of, 231, 232; beggars of, 234; synagogues of, 236;
church of San Juan de los Reyes, 237-241; other churches of,
244-246; old walls of, 245; Military College of Santa Cruz, 247;
Alcázar of, 248, 249; castle of San Cervantes,
250.
Toleration, growth
of, in Spain, 272-274.
Topete, Admiral, of
Mexican origin,
17-
Torrigiani, fate of,
148, 149.
Trajan, aqueduct of
Segovia built by, 209.
Travel,
disinclination of the Madrileños to, 19,
Trinitarians,
Convent of the, present use of, 31; visits of Cervantes to 321,
322.
Jnited States,
foreign discussion of constitutional system of,
191.
Vagabonds, halcyon
days of, in Madrid, 24.
Valentians, in
Madrid, 8, 26.
Van Dyck. See
Dyck, Sir Anthony van.
Vega, Lope de,
decline of interest in masterpieces of, 10; marvellous industry
of, 323; relations of, with Cervantes, 324; daughter of, 325,
326.
Velazquez, paintings
by, in Madrid gallery, 156, 157, 160, 169-173; character of, 174,
175; kindness of, to Murillo, 176; painting by, in Escorial,
263.
Venus, two pictures
of, by Titian, at Madrid, 180.
Veronese, paintings
by, at Madrid, 182.
Vervain, former
hunting of, 127.
Vesalius,
persecution of, 53.
Vienna, natural
capital of Austria, 3.
Villalba,
192.
Vinci, Leonardo da.
See Leonardo.
Virgen del Pez, La,
Raphael's, 177.
Wandering Jew,
introduction of, into Spanish miracle-play, 289.
Washington, not a
natural capital, 4.
Water-venders, in
Madrid, 26.
Wheelbarrows,
Spanish use of, 63.
Wien. See
Vienna.
Women, Spanish,
Asturiano in Madrid, 7, 8; charms of, 13, 14; physical
characteristics of, 23; small education of, 40; coarseness of
expression among, 41; penances performed by, 42; Christian names
of, 44; piety of, 45; natural superiority of, 47; retention of
maiden name by, after marriage, 48.
Ximenes, Cardinal,
Moorish baths destroyed by, 67; portrait of, in University of
Alcalá, 305; founder of the university, 306.
Yankee, the, of the
Spanish carnival, 137-
Zurbaran, painting by,
156.
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