Madrid Royal PalaceMadrid Royal Palace
Madrid Royal Palace
One chilly November afternoon, gray with a fog that had utterly swallowed the Eiffel Tower above its first huge uprights, which straddled disconsolately like legs forsaken of their giant, she explained in a sudden rush of words why Spain had been worsted in the war with America.
"Whom the Lord loveth, He chasteneth. As with persons, so with nations. Those that are not of His fold He gives over to their fill of vainglory and greed and power, but the Catholic nations He cleanses again and again in the bitter waters of defeat—ah, in fire and blood! Yet the end is not yet. The rod of His correction is upon Spain at this hour, and the Faithful are glad in the very heart of sorrow, for even so shall her sins be purged away, even so shall her coldness be quickened, even so shall she be made ready for her everlasting recompense."
"And the poor Protestant nations?" I asked, between a smile and a sigh.
The little sister smiled back, but the Catholic eyes, for all their courtly graciousness, were implacable.
She was of a titled family and had passed a petted childhood in Madrid. There she had been taken, on her seventhbirthday, to acorrida de toros, but remembered it unpleasantly, not because of the torture inflicted on the horses and bulls, but because she had been frightened by the great beasts, with their tossing horns and furious bellowing. Horns always made her think of the devil, she said. From her babyhood she had been afraid of horns.
One day a mischievous impulse led me to inquire, in connection with a chat about the Escorial, "And how do you like Philip II?"
The black eyes shot one ray of sympathetic merriment, but the Spaniard and the nun were on their guard.
"He was a very good Catholic," she replied demurely.
"So wasIsabel la Católica," I responded. "But don't you think she may have been a trifle more agreeable?"
"Perhaps she was a little moresimpática," admitted thehermanita, but that was her utmost concession. She would not even allow that Philip had a sorry end.
"If his body groaned, his soul was communing with the Blessed Saints and paid no heed."
At the corner of the street which led under the great garden wall to the heavily barred gate of the convent was a flower-stand. The shrewd, swift-tongued Madame in charge well knew the look of the unwary, and usually succeeded in selling me a cluster of drooping blossoms at twice the value of the fresh, throwing in an extra leaf or stem at the close of the bargain with an air of prodigal benevolence. The handful of flowers would be smilingly accepted by the little sister, but instantly laid aside nor favored with glance or touch until the close of the visit, when they would be lifted again with a winsome word of acknowledgment and carried away,probably to spend their sweetness at the marble feet of the Virgin. In vain I tried to coax from this scorner of God's earth some sign of pleasure in the flowers themselves.
"Don't you care for tea-roses?" "Ah, el mundo pasa.But their color is exquisite."
Yet her eyes did not turn to the poor posy for the two hours following.
"This mignonette has only the grace of sweetness."
"It is a delicate scent, but it will not last.El mundo pasa."
She held the sprays at arm's length for a moment, and then laid them down on a mantel at the farther end of the room.
"I am sorry these violets are not fresher."
"But no! The touch of Time has not yet found them. Still, it is only a question of to-morrow.El mundo pasa."
"Yes, the world passes. But is it not good while it lasts?"
"The world good! No, no, and a thousand times no. Behold it now at the end of the nineteenth century,—wars and sorrows and bitter discontents, evil deeds and evil passions everywhere. Do you see the peace of Christ in the faces on the Paris streets? The blossoms of this earth, the pleasures of this world, the affections of this life, all have the taste of death. But here in God's own garden we live even now His everlasting life."
"You are always glad of your choice? You never miss the friends of your childhood?"
"Glad, glad, glad. Glad of my choice. Glad to see no more the faces of father and mother. And for them, too, it is great joy. For Catholic parents it is supreme delight togive up their children to the Holy Church. The ways of the world are full of slippery places, but when they leave us here, they know that our feet are set on the very threshold of heaven."
Sometimes the slight form shivered in the violet habit, and the dark foreign face looked out with touching weariness from its frame of soft white folds.
"You are cold? You are tired? Will you take my cloak? Were the children troublesome to-day?"
It was always the same answer: "No importa. No importa.It matters not. Our life is not the life of flesh and blood."
And indeed, as I saw her in the Christmas service among the other Spanish sisters, those lovely figures in white and violet making obeisance before the altar until their veiled foreheads almost touched the pavement, bowing and rising again with the music like a field of lilies swaying in the breeze, I felt that she was already a being of another world, before she had known this. Over her had been chanted the prayers for the dead. The strange ceremony of taking the veil had been her burial rite. The convent seemed a ghost land between earth and heaven.
Myhermanitabelonged to one of the teaching orders, and despite the strange blanks in her knowledge, for secular lore had been, so far as possible, excluded from her education, she was representative of the finer and more intelligent class of Spanish nuns. In Granada I heard of the nuns chiefly as the makers of those deliciousdulces, sugared fruits, which were indispensable to a child's saint-day, and there I was taught the scoffing epitaph:—
The Royal FamilyThe Royal Family
The Royal Family
"Here lies Sister Claribel,Who made sweetmeats very well,And passed her life in pious follies,Such as dressing waxen dollies."
"Here lies Sister Claribel,
Who made sweetmeats very well,
And passed her life in pious follies,
Such as dressing waxen dollies."
To the spinster outside the nunnery Spain has little to offer. Small heed is paid to her except by St. Elias, who, on one day of Holy Week, walks about all Seville with a pen in his hand, peering up at the balconies and making note of the old maids. Since Andalusia expresses the theory of counterparts by saying, "Every one has somewhere in the world his half orange," the spinster can hardly hope for a well-rounded life. Careers are not open to her. There are "advanced women" in Spain, the most eminent being Emelia Pardo Bazan, novelist, lecturer, editor, who advocates for women equal educational and political privileges with men, but who has not yet succeeded in opening the doors. The voice of Spanish women, nevertheless, is sometimes heard by Spanish statesmen, as when delegation after delegation of señoras who had relatives held as prisoners by the Filipinos invaded the senate-house with petitions until they could no longer be ignored.
A more thorough and liberal education for Spanish women is the pressing need to-day. There is, of course, great lack of primary schooling. A girl in her late teens, wearing the prettiest of embroidered aprons and with the reddest of roses in her hair, once appealed to me in Toledo for help. She had been sent from a confectioner's to deliver a tray of wheaten rolls at a given address, and she could read neither the names of streets nor the numbers of houses. But the higher education will carry the lower with it. Spain is degeneratein this regard. The Moors used to have at Cordova an academy for girls, where science, mathematics, and history were taught. Schools for Spanish girls at present impart little more than reading and writing, needle-work, the catechism, the four rules of arithmetic, and some slight notion of geography. French and music, recognized accomplishments, are learned by daughters of the privileged class from their governesses or in the convents. Missionary work in Spain has largely concerned itself with the educational question, and Mrs. Gulick's project for the establishment of a woman's college in Madrid, a college without distinction of creed, is the fruit of long experience. Little by little she has proven the intellectual ability of Spanish girls. She established the International Institute at San Sebastian, secured State examination for herniñasand State recognition of their eminent success, and even won for a few of them admission to the University of Madrid, where they maintained the highest rank throughout the course. All that Spanish girls need is opportunity.
But if the señoritas are so charming now, with their roses and their graces and their fans, why not leave them as they are, a page of mediæval poetry in this strenuous modern world? If only they were dolls outright and did not suffer so! When life goes hard with these high-spirited, incapable creatures, it goes terribly hard. I can see yet the tears scorch in the proud eyes of three undowered sisters, slaving at their one art of embroidery from early till late for the miserable pittance that it brought them. "We shall rest when we are dead," said the youngest. The absolute lack of future for these brave, sensitive girls, well-born, well-bred, naturallyas keen as the keenest, but more ignorant, in matters of common education, than the children of our lowest grammar grade, is heart-breaking. If such girls were stupid, shallow, coarse, it would be easier; but the Spanish type is finely strung. Once I saw an impulsive beauty fly into that gust of angry passion which Spaniards term therabia española. A clumsy, well-intentioned young Austrian had said a teasing word, and in the fraction of a second the girl, overwrought with secret toils and anxieties, was in a tempest of tears; but the wrath that blazed across them burned the offender crimson. The poor fellow sent for his case of choice Asturian cider, cooling in the balcony, read the evening news aloud and discoursed on the value of self-control, but not even these tactful attentions could undo, for that evening at least, the work of his blundering jest. The girl flashed away to her chamber, her handkerchief bitten through and through, and the quick fierce sound of her sobs came to me across the hall deep into the night.
Wandering over Spain I found everywhere these winning, vivid, helpless girls, versed in needlework and social graces, but knowing next to nothing of history, literature, science, all that pertains to intellectual culture. Some were hungry to learn. More did not dream of the world of thought as a possible world for them. Among these it was delightful to meet, scattered like precious seed throughout the Peninsula, the graduates of the International Institute. So far as a stranger could see, education had enhanced in them the Spanish radiance and charm, while arming these with wisdom, power, and resource.
XXII
ACROSS THE BASQUE PROVINCES
"The Oak Tree of GuernicaWithin its foliage greenEmbraces the bright honorOf all the Basque demesne.For this we count thee holy,Our ancient seal and sign;The fibres of our freedomAre interlaced with thine."Castile's most haughty tyrantsBeneath thy solemn shadeHave sworn to keep the charterOur fearless fathers made;For noble on our mountainsIs he who yokes the ox,And equal to a monarchThe shepherd of the flocks."—National Song of the Basques.
"The Oak Tree of GuernicaWithin its foliage greenEmbraces the bright honorOf all the Basque demesne.For this we count thee holy,Our ancient seal and sign;The fibres of our freedomAre interlaced with thine.
"The Oak Tree of Guernica
Within its foliage green
Embraces the bright honor
Of all the Basque demesne.
For this we count thee holy,
Our ancient seal and sign;
The fibres of our freedom
Are interlaced with thine.
"Castile's most haughty tyrantsBeneath thy solemn shadeHave sworn to keep the charterOur fearless fathers made;For noble on our mountainsIs he who yokes the ox,And equal to a monarchThe shepherd of the flocks."—National Song of the Basques.
"Castile's most haughty tyrants
Beneath thy solemn shade
Have sworn to keep the charter
Our fearless fathers made;
For noble on our mountains
Is he who yokes the ox,
And equal to a monarch
The shepherd of the flocks."
—National Song of the Basques.
It did not seem to me historically respectful to take leave of Spain without having made a pilgrimage to the shrine of Santiago. A dauntless friend crossed the sea to bear me company. Hygienic pilgrim that she is, she came equipped not with cockle shells and sandal shoon, but with sleeping bags, coffee, and cereals. Many a morning, in traversing those northern provinces, where the scenery was better than the breakfast, we blessed her boxes of "grape nuts," and many a night, doomed to penitential beds, we were thankful to intrenchourselves against the stings and arrows of outrageous insects in those spacious linen bags, that gather close about the neck, or, when dangers thicken, above the head, leaving only a loophole for the breath.
Our point of departure was that city of nature's fancy-work, San Sebastian. Then, in the early half of July, it was all alive with expectancy, looking every day for the coming of the Court. It is reputed to be the cleanest town of the Peninsula, and is, in truth, as bright as a wave-washed pebble. Nevertheless, it is a favorite waltz hall of the fleas, which shamelessly obtrude themselves even into conversation.
The chief summer industry of San Sebastian is sea-bathing. The soldiers begin it at six o'clock in the morning, marching by regiments down to the Concha, clearing for action, and striking out into the gentle surf, all in simultaneous obedience to successive words of command. Some two hours later teams of oxen draw scores of jaunty bathing cars down near the white lip of this opalescent shell of water, and there the long day through all ages, sizes, and ranks of humanity sport in the curling foam or swim far out into the sparkling bay.
San Sebastian is the capital of Guipúzcoa, one of the three Basque provinces. These lie among the Cantabrian mountains, and are delightfully picturesque with wheat-growing valleys and well-wooded heights. As the train wandered on, in its pensive Spanish fashion, we found ourselves now in Scotland, in a beautiful waste of heather and gorse, now amid the English ivy and hawthorn, hearing the song of the English robin, and now in our own New England, with the hilly reaches of apple orchards and the fields upon fields of tasselled Indian maize.
The Basques are a thrifty folk, and have cultivated their scant acres to the utmost. The valleys are planted with corn, the lower hills are ridged and terraced for a variety of crops. Above are walnuts and chestnuts, and the flintiest summits serve for pasturage. It was curious to see men at work on those steep slopes that had been scooped out into a succession of narrow shelves, and more strange yet to catch glimpses of peasants ploughing the very mountain top, picturesque figures against the sky.
The reaping is of the cleanest. The harvest fields have a neat, scoured look, as if the women had been over them with scrubbing brushes. Yet this utilitarian soil admits of oaks and beeches, ferns and clover, morning glories, dandelions, pimpernel, and daisies.
All that sunny morning the train swung us blithely on from one charm of the eyes to another—from a ruined watch-tower, where red-handed Carlists had crouched, to a bright-kerchiefed maiden singing amid her beehives; from a range of abrupt peaks, cleft by deep gorges, to sycamore-shaded byways and poplar-bordered streams; from a village graveyard, the pathetic little parallelogram enclosed in high gray walls and dim with cypress shadows, to a tumbling, madcap torrent spanned by a time-gnawed Roman arch. Shooting the heart of some black hill, the train would run out on a mere ledge above a valley hamlet, and from pure inquisitiveness, apparently, ramble all around the circle, peering down from every point of view on the cluster of great, patriarchal houses, sometimes of timber and plaster, more often of stone, where whole clans dwell together under the same red-tiled roof. Queer old houses these, occasionally topped with blue chimneys,and now and then with a fantastic coat of arms sculptured over the door, or a fresco of saints and devils blazoned all across the front. Sometimes freshly whitewashed, these Basque houses have more often a weather-worn, dingy look, but, however black the timbers, lines of clean linen flutter airily from roofs and balconies.
They are a decent, self-respecting, prosperous people, these Basque mountaineers, of whose history my companion told me stirring tales. They are supposed, though not without dispute, to be the oldest race in Europe, descendants of those original Iberians whom the westward-trooping Aryans drove into the fastnesses of the Pyrenees. They have their own language, of Asiatic type. They themselves believe that it was spoken in the Garden of Eden. There are some twenty-five dialects of theVascuense, and it is so difficult for foreigners that even George Borrow spoke it "with considerable hesitation," and one exhausted student, abandoning the struggle, declared that the words were all "written Solomon and pronounced Nebuchadnezzar." The Basques attribute their hardy virtues to the crabbedness of their speech, telling how the devil, after slaving over their vocabulary for seven years, had succeeded in learning only three words, and threw up his lesson in a pet, so that to this day he remains unable to meddle with their peasant piety. What little literature there is in the Basque language is naturally of the popular cast—hero songs, dancing songs, dirges, hymns, and folk-lore.
The Basques are noted for their passionate love of liberty. The sturdy peasant is lord of his own rugged farm, and insists on tilling it in his own primitive way, breaking the soil withrude mattock more often than with plough. An English engineer, laying a railroad through Alava, tried his best to make his men abandon their slow, laborious method of carrying the earth in baskets on their heads. He finally had all the baskets removed by night, and wheelbarrows left in their places. But the unalterable Basques set the loaded wheelbarrows on their heads, and staggered about beneath these awkward burdens until, for very shame, he had to give them back their baskets.
The peasant drives over the mountain roads in a ponderous ox-cart, with two clumsy disks of wood for wheels. The platform is wrought of rough-hewn beams, five or seven, the middle one running forward to serve as pole. All the structure, except the iron tires and nails, is of wood, and the solid wooden wheels, as the massive axle to which they are riveted turns over and over, make a most horrible squeaking. It is a sound dear to the peasantry, for they believe the oxen like it, and, moreover, that it frightens away the devil; but once upon a time a town of advanced views voted a fine of five dollars for any man who should bring this musical abomination within its limits. Thereupon a freeborn Basque rose with the dawn, selected his best carved oaken yoke, draped the red-stained sheepskin a trifle more carefully than usual above the patient eyes of his great smooth oxen, and took his way, "squeakity-squeak, squeakity-squeak," straight to the door of theAyuntamiento, city hall, where he paid his twenty-fivepesetas, and then devoted the rest of the day to driving all about the streets, squeaking out his money's worth. This is no servile temper, and it was not until our own generation that the dearly cherished liberties of the Basques were wrested away.
The ManzanaresThe Manzanares
The Manzanares
These warders of the Pyrenees, for the Basques of Navarre and those now known as French Basques must not be forgotten, did good service in helping the Visigoths beat back the northward-pressing Moors and the southward-pressing Franks; but when the Basque provinces of Spain were incorporated with Leon and Navarre, and later with Castile, the mountaineers stood stubbornly for theirfuéros, or peculiar rights.
My comrade's lecture had reached this point, when, finding ourselves at Amorebieta, in the Province of Vizcaya, or Biscay, we suddenly descended from the train, and handed our bags to an honest Basque porter, who deposited them on the floor of an open waiting room, in full reach of an honest Basque population. For ourselves, we turned our faces toward the centre of Vizcayan glory, the famous Tree of Guernica. We entered a rustic train, that seemed entirely undecided which way to go. The station agent blew a little tin horn, green meadows and wattled fences began to glide past the car windows, and the interrupted discourse was resumed.
The lawmakers of Vizcaya were duly chosen by their fellow-nobles, for every Basque held the rank ofhidalgo, or "son of somebody." The deputies met every two years in the village of Guernica, sitting on stone benches in the open air beneath the sacred oak, and there elected theSeñores de Vizcaya. Even the kings of Spain were allowed no grander title, but had to come to the Tree of Guernica, at first in person, later by deputy, and there swear to observe thefuéros. To this green shadow came the peasant from his lonely farm-house, high on the mountainside, to answer before hispeers to such charges as might be brought against him; for within the sanctuary of his home the law could lay no hand on him or his.
It was the Carlist wars that changed all this. Thefuéros, of which a list dating from 1342 is still extant, granted the Basque provinces a Republican Constitution that almost realized an ideal democracy, with immunity from taxes save for their own needs, and from military service beyond their own boundaries. But when the dynastic strife broke out, the Basques put on the white cap of Don Carlos and bore the brunt of the conflict. We had already passed through Vergara, where, in 1839, Espartero ended the first Carlist war by a treaty which compelled the Basques to lay down their arms. But the cost of this rebellion was paid in blood. Their political status was practically unaffected. At the close of the second Carlist war, in 1876, Alfonso XII signalized his victory by meting out to them a terrible punishment, abrogating the preciousfuérosthat the Tree of Guernica had guarded for so many centuries. The Government imposed, moreover, its salt and tobacco monopolies, and made the Basques subject to military conscription. At every station we saw Spain's Vizcayan soldiers, red-capped and red-trousered, with blue-belted frock coats, under which beat hearts of doubtful loyalty. The son of Alfonso XII will have to reckon with the Basques, when the third Carlist war shall be declared, but it may be doubted whether thefuéros, which Don Carlos, of course, promises to restore, will ever come home to nest again in the Guernica Oak.
My erudite fellow-vagabond was just pointing out the typicalshape of the Basque head, with its broad forehead, long, narrowing face, curved nose, and pointed chin, when we reached Guernica. Such a sweet and tranquil village as it is, set in the beauty of the hills, with the dignity and pathos of its history pervading every hushed, old-fashioned street! The guide, whom two affable ladies, sharers of our carriage in the little picnic train, had taken pains to look up for us at the station, was not, we judged, a favorable specimen of the haughty Basquehidalgo. He was a dull, mumbling, slouchy lad, who sunk his voice to an awed whisper as we passed the escutcheon-carved palace of a count. But he led us by pleasant ways to the modernCasa de Juntas, or Senate House, where we were shown the assembly room, with its altar for mass, the library and other apartments, together with the portraits of the twenty-six firstSeñores de Vizcaya, from Lope the Pirate, who forced back the invading Galicians in 840, to the Infante Don Juan, under whom the Basque provinces were finally incorporated with Castile.
Close by theCasa de Juntas, which stands in a dreamy bit of park as fresh and trim as an English cathedral close, rises a pillared portico. There, where brown-eyed little Basque girls, their brown braids blowing in the breeze, were dangling green figs above their laughing mouths, used to sit, on those seven stone seats, the grave Basque fathers, making laws, meting out judgment, and regulating all the affairs of this simple mountain republic. The portico, bearing as joint devices the lion and castle of Spain and the three wolves of Vizcaya, was formerly enveloped in the leafy shadow of the Sacred Tree; but what rises behind it now is only the gaunt stem of a patriarchal oak, a very Abraham of plants,all enclosed in glass, as if embalmed in its casket. Before the portico, however, grows a lusty scion, for the Tree of Guernica is of unbroken lineage, shoots being always cherished to succeed in case the centuried predecessor fail.
In presence of this despoiled old trunk, majestic with memories, we felt an honest awe and longed to give it adequate salute. My comrade levelled her kodak and took front views, back views, and side views with such spendthrift enthusiasm that the custodian, deeply impressed, presented her with a dried leaf from the junior, cunningly pricked out so as to suggest the figure of the tree. The national song of the Basques, a matter of some dozen stanzas, written principally in "j's," "rr's," and "tz's," takes its theme, if one may trust the Castilian translation, from this symbolic oak.
The historian wished to do nothing more in Guernica but sit and gaze forever on that spectral trunk, but the reminder that piety was a hardly less marked Basque characteristic than political independence, finally induced her to follow our guide to the church. A Basque church has its distinctive features, including a belfry, a lofty, plain interior, with galleries, and often a votive ship, gayly painted and fully rigged, suspended from the ceiling. The lad bore himself with simple-minded devotion, offering us on stubby finger tips the holy water and making due obeisance before each gilded shrine.
But my attention was soon fascinated by a foot-square relief on a blue ground of Santiago—
"Good Saint James upon the milkwhite steed,Who leaves his bliss to fight for chosen Spain."
"Good Saint James upon the milkwhite steed,
Who leaves his bliss to fight for chosen Spain."
I had hardly anticipated such a stalwart, vigorous, not to say violent saint, with his white horse galloping, his gold-sandalled feet gripping the great stirrups, his gold-fringed, crimson robe and azure mantle streaming on the wind, his terrible sword glittering high in air. This was clearly not a person to be trifled with, and I looked about for the historian to tell her that we must be pressing forward on our pilgrimage. But she had stolen out, every sympathetic Basque image of the sculptured doorway conspiring to keep a stony silence and conceal her flight, and had sped back to the Tree of Guernica, from whose contemplation she was torn away only by a fairy-tale of supper.
Of the several Basque churches which we visited, including the bridal church of Louis XIV, far-famed San Juan de Luz, whose sides and west end are portioned off by three tiers of galleries, fairest in memory is the sixteenth-century church of Begoña in Bilbao. It abounds, as coast churches should, in suggestions of that mighty, mysterious neighbor, at once so cruel and so beneficent, the sea. Instead of votive ships, the walls are hung with paintings of vessels in scenes of appalling peril. One is scudding madly before a tropical gale; one has her rigging ragged by hurricane and her decks lashed with tempest; one, careened upon her side, lies at the mercy of the billows, which are sweeping over her and tumbling her crew like ninepins into the deep. But the presence of the pictures, bold dashes of the modern brush amid dim old paintings of saints and martyrs, tells that Our Lady of Begoña succored her sailors in distress, who, on their safe return, came hither to offer thanks for their preservation and to leave these mementos of their danger and her efficient aid.
"Is your Virgin so very powerful?" we asked of a chorister boy while he drew the cords to part the curtains that screened the jewelled image throned in a recess above the high altar.
"I should rather think she was," answered the little fellow in a glow. "Why, let me tell you! Robbers, the accursed ones, came here on a dark midnight to steal her precious stones. They entered by a window, those sons of wretched mothers, and put up a long ladder against the altar wall. The wickedest of them all, señoras, he climbed the ladder and raised his hand to take Our Lady's crown. And in that instant the great bells overhead began to ring, and all the bells of all Bilbao pealed with them, and the people waked and came running to the rescue of Our Lady, and the robbers were put to death."
Our expression did not quite satisfy his boyish ardor, and he pointed convincingly toward a handsome silver plaque. "And this, too, witnesses Our Lady's power. It was given in memory of the cholera time, when people were dying like flies in all the towns about. But after Our Lady was carried in procession through the streets of Bilbao, not one died here, except a sinful man who would not turn his head to look upon her."
"That is a painting of the procession, the large picture over there on the wall?"
"No, no, señoras. That picture commemorates another of Our Lady's wonderful deeds. The floods were threatening the city, but Our Lady, with many censers and candles, was borne down to the river bank, and she ordered the water to go back, and it obeyed her, and all the town was saved."
We retreated to the cloisters, from which one has a superb view of the valley of the Nervion, for Our Lady of Begoña dwells high upon a hilltop. Only the afternoon before we had been in serene Guernica, a strange contrast to this mining capital of Vizcaya, this bustling, noisy, iron-grimed Bilbao, in which the Basques take such delight. It is not a city to gratify the mere tourist, who expects the people of the lands through which he is pleased to pass to devote themselves to looking picturesque. But even Spain is something more than food for the kodak, and this sooty atmosphere of smelting works and factories, traffic and commerce, means life to Spanish lungs. It is little to my credit that I took more interest in the fact that Bilbao used to supply Shakespeare's cronies with rapiers, under the name of "bilboes," than in statistics regarding those millions of tons of ore which its iron mines are now annually exporting to Great Britain. The many English in Bilbao, miners and artisans, with the influence they shed around them, make the streets rougher and uglier than in purely Spanish towns. On the other hand, they bring a spirit of religious independence, so that it is not strange to find the Spanish Protestants of Bilbao a numerous and vigorous body, counting as a pronounced element in the community.
From the idle peace of the Begoña cloisters, as from the old-time world, we looked long on this Spanish city of to-day, seething with manifold activities. We seemed to understand how, to the middle-class Spaniard, hemmed in by all this mediæval encumbrance of barracks, cathedrals, castles, and thrones, such cities as Bilbao and Barcelona, pulsing with industrial energy and enterprise, are "more beautiful thanBeauty's self." The Basques, like the Catalans, take readily to business. They set their mountain cascades to turning mill-wheels, they canal their little Nervion till it can give passage to ships of four thousand tons burden, they paint the night with the flare of mighty furnaces. Every year they are building more wharves, more railroads, more electric tramways, and they are so prodigiously proud of their new iron bridge, with its flying ferry, which whisks passengers over from Portugalete to Las Arenas at the rate of two hundred a minute, that they stamp it on their characteristic jewelry. That cunning Eibar work of the Basque provinces displays again and again, on locket, bracelet, brooch, this incongruous design of thePuente Vizcayabeaten on chased steel in gold.
We looked regretfully out over those significant reaches of land which we would have liked to explore to the last hearthstone. The Basque provinces! We had not even set foot in Vitoria, the capital of Alava, where is preserved the grim oldmacheteby which Basque governors were sworn into office. "May my head be cut off with this knife," ran the oath, "if I do not defend thefuérosof my fatherland."
And we longed to attend one of the peasant festivals, to see the lads playpelotaand the lasses step Basque dances to the music of the village pipers, to hear the wild old marches and battle tunes that have roused the Roman and the Moor to arms. The mystery plays of the Basques were famous once, and although these naive dramas are now mainly confined to Christmas and Easter, who could say that we might not chance on some saint-day fragment? There was soon totake place, too, in one of the Vizcayan hamlets a "blessing of the fields," a processional harvest rite of pagan antiquity, formerly universal in Spain, but now confined to a few rural districts. We had a hundred reasons for lingering—but what are reasons? Pilgrims of St. James must put fresh peas in their shoes and be off for Compostela.
Spanish CemeterySpanish Cemetery
Spanish Cemetery
XXIII
IN OLD CASTILE
"With three thousand men of Leon from the city Bernard goes,To protect the soil Hispanian from the spear of Frankish foes;From the city which is planted in the midst between the seas,To preserve the name and glory of old Pelayo's victories."The peasant hears upon his field the trumpet of the knight,—He quits his team for spear and shield and garniture of might;The shepherd hears it 'mid the mist,—he flingeth down his crook,And rushes from the mountain like a tempest-troubled brook."—Lockhart:Spanish Ballads.
"With three thousand men of Leon from the city Bernard goes,To protect the soil Hispanian from the spear of Frankish foes;From the city which is planted in the midst between the seas,To preserve the name and glory of old Pelayo's victories.
"With three thousand men of Leon from the city Bernard goes,
To protect the soil Hispanian from the spear of Frankish foes;
From the city which is planted in the midst between the seas,
To preserve the name and glory of old Pelayo's victories.
"The peasant hears upon his field the trumpet of the knight,—He quits his team for spear and shield and garniture of might;The shepherd hears it 'mid the mist,—he flingeth down his crook,And rushes from the mountain like a tempest-troubled brook."—Lockhart:Spanish Ballads.
"The peasant hears upon his field the trumpet of the knight,—
He quits his team for spear and shield and garniture of might;
The shepherd hears it 'mid the mist,—he flingeth down his crook,
And rushes from the mountain like a tempest-troubled brook."
—Lockhart:Spanish Ballads.
The journey from Bilbao to Santander is a continuous glory of mountain views. The train runs saucily along under beetling crags, whence the gods of the hills may well look down in wonder and displeasure on this noisy invasion of their solitude. We almost saw those ancient majesties folding themselves grandly in mantles of purple shadow, but hardly less royal in bearing were the muffled figures of the lonely shepherds tending their flocks on the very summits.
The modern Province of Santander is the renowned Montaña, the mountain lair which nourished the chivalry of Old Castile, and from which they made wild sallies to the south, troop after troop, generation after generation, until the Moorish standards were beaten back from the plains about Toledo tothe Sierras of Andalusia. Its capital city, Santander, named from St. Andrew, was one of the four coast towns which rendered signal service to Fernando in the conquest of Seville. These towns, lying as they did over against the Cinque Ports of England, came into so frequent conflict with British mariners as to be made in the days of Edward III the subject of a special treaty.
A summer resort, however, is a summer resort the world over, and we found the historic city, which has gracefully fitted itself to the curve of its beautiful bay, crowded with idle people, elaborately dressed, who sat long at the noonday breakfast, and longer yet at the evening dinner, and then longest of all on the benches in the park, where bands clashed and fireworks flared, until the very stars began to blink for sleepiness.
Spaniards have a veritable passion for pyrotechnics, and our dreams until the dawn would be punctuated by the airy report of rockets, as if, so Galdós suggests, "the angels were cracking nuts in the sky." Every now and then in those soft warm nights there rose a shout of song from the street, and peeping down from the balcony, we would see half a dozen lads and lasses leaping along through the middle of the road, all abreast and hand in hand, in one of their boisterous peasant dances.
There are no fewer dangers and sorrows for girls in Spain than in the other Latin lands. In the low-vaulted, mighty-pillared, deep-shadowed crypt under the old cathedral, a crypt that is the very haunt of religious mystery and dread, we came upon a penitent kneeling before the altar, a bit of written paper pinned to her back. In a stir of the chill air thisfluttered to the ground, and as she, unconscious of its loss, bowed herself before another shrine, we picked up the paper with a half thought of restoring it; but seeing in the first glance that it was a rudely written prayer, entreating the Virgin's pity and pardon for her lover and herself, we let it fall again at Mary's feet. All manner of thank-offerings, waxen limbs, eyes, and ears, were hung in these candle-lit recesses, little spaces of gold amid the gloom. We had grown accustomed to such fragments of anatomy in the shop-windows, where even votive stomachs are displayed for sale.
Although Santander is a dawdler's paradise, the residents of the city to whom we had letters were no holiday makers, but Spaniards of the earnest, thoughtful, liberal type, busy with large tasks of their own, but never too busy, being Spaniards, to show unstinted kindness to the strangers within their gates. Our brief stay did not admit of a tithe of the excursions they had in mind for us, but my comrade achieved a trip to Santillana del Mar, birthplace of the doughty Gil Blas.
In the latest version of her adventures, she set forth from Santander under the bluest of skies, in company with the most bewitching of señoritas. They left the train at Torrelavega, where the shade of Garci Laso, one of King Pedro's victims, would doubtless have welcomed them, had not their attention been taken up with a picturesque coachman, who was standing dreamily on the station platform. This Adonis proved a complete paragon, who, as they took their romantic course over the hills, delightedly pointed out ivied tower, broken portcullis, and the like, as tidbits for the kodak.
Santillana is the shrine of Santa Juliana, a Roman martyr,whose body is said to have been carried thither in the ninth century. Her devotees among the mountain wilds built her in this green valley, overhung by a rude old fortress, a precious church, a jewel of the early Romanesque, about whose walls a thriving community soon gathered. Santillana was throughout the Middle Ages the most important place between Burgos and Oviedo, and gave name to all that part of the Montaña. The successive Marquises of Santillana were then great personages in Spain, playing a leading part at Court. One of the proudest families of Old Castile, they claimed descent from the Cid, and cherished the memory of another heroic ancestor, who, in 1385, sacrificed his life to save his king.
"'Your horse is faint, my King, my Lord! your gallant horse is sick,—His limbs are torn, his breast is gored, on his eye the film is thick;Mount, mount on mine, O mount apace, I pray thee mount and fly!Or in my arms I'll lift your Grace,—their trampling hoofs are nigh!
"'Your horse is faint, my King, my Lord! your gallant horse is sick,—
His limbs are torn, his breast is gored, on his eye the film is thick;
Mount, mount on mine, O mount apace, I pray thee mount and fly!
Or in my arms I'll lift your Grace,—their trampling hoofs are nigh!
"'Nay, never speak; my sires, Lord King, received their land from yours,And joyfully their blood shall spring, so be it thine secures;If I should fly, and thou, my King, be found among the dead,How could I stand 'mong gentlemen, such scorn on my gray head?'
"'Nay, never speak; my sires, Lord King, received their land from yours,
And joyfully their blood shall spring, so be it thine secures;
If I should fly, and thou, my King, be found among the dead,
How could I stand 'mong gentlemen, such scorn on my gray head?'
"So spake the brave Montañez, Butrago's lord was he;And turned him to the coming host in steadfastness and glee;He flung himself among them, as they came down the hill,—He died, God wot! but not before his sword had drunk its fill."
"So spake the brave Montañez, Butrago's lord was he;
And turned him to the coming host in steadfastness and glee;
He flung himself among them, as they came down the hill,—
He died, God wot! but not before his sword had drunk its fill."
The city of Santillana, whose lords once laid claim to the sovereignty of Santander, has shrunk to a forgotten village, and the neglected church is dropping into ruins; but the inhabitants have abated not a jot of that fierce local patriotism which blinds the provincial Spaniard to all defects of his birthplace and to all excellences of rival towns. A graybeard told the stranger ladies that Santillana was the oldest city in Spain and its cathedral the most beautiful. This latter statement they were almost ready to accept, so richly carven was the yellow stone and so harmonious the proportions of nave and aisle. When they arrived at this miniature Durham they found it closed and silent, with three little boys sleeping on the steps. Through the benevolence of the ever present Spanish loafers, the sacristan was sought out and a ragged escort formed for their progress from chapel to chapel, where rare old pictures and frescos glowed across the dusk. Best of all were the venerable cloisters, weed-grown and tumble-down, but lovely as a mediæval dream with mellow-tinted arch and column, and with capitals of marvellous device. This crumbling church still keeps a dazzling hoard of treasures. All the front of the high altar is wrought of solid silver, the reredos is a miracle of art, and the paintings of old masters that moulder here unseen would long since in any other land than Catholic Spain have been the spoils of gallery and museum.
The cathedral stands just outside the town, whose narrow, crooked streets daunted the carriage; but these enthusiastic sightseers were all the better pleased to foot the flagging that many a clinking tread had worn and to touch on either side, with their extended hands, the fortresslike houses built of heavy stone and dimly emblazoned with fierce armorial bearings.These grim dwellings were gladdened by the grace of vine-clad balconies, where children frolicked and women crooned quaint melodies over their needlework.
"Will no one tell me what she sings?Perhaps the plaintive numbers flowFor old, unhappy, far-off thingsAnd battles long ago."
"Will no one tell me what she sings?
Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow
For old, unhappy, far-off things
And battles long ago."
The inn was merely the customary Spanishventa, rough and poor, the darkness of whose long, low room clouds of tobacco smoke from clumps of gambling muleteers were making blacker yet; but lemonade was served to the ladies in the open porch with a charm of cordial courtesy far beyond Delmonico's.
As they quaffed this modest refreshment and watched the shifting groups about theventa, which seemed the centre of the social life, there suddenly appeared upon the scene a ghost from the modern world, an everyday gentleman in a straw hat, as citified and up to date as if he had that moment stepped out of a Madrid café. All the loungers within and without theventasprang to their feet, bared their heads, and bowed low to this anachronism with so profound a deference that the tourists began to wonder if the irrepressible Gil Blas had come alive again. Not he! This was the Marquis of Santillana, bearing under his arm instead of a sword a bundle of newspapers. The first Marquis of Santillana had been a famous warrior and troubadour. This latest "inheritor of old renown," seating himself in the midst of his thronging vassals, graciously proceeded, much like a University Extension lecturer, to read aloud, with simpleexplanations, the news of the day. Such is the final form ofnoblesse obligein the feudal valley of Santillana.
We were tempted to hunt out other nooks and eyries in the mountains of Santander, to see something of the famous sardine fisheries, to drive along the many-storied coast all the way to Gijon, paying our respects in passing to a noble oak of Asturias, one of the three largest trees of Europe; but always the uplifted sword of St. James drove us on. If we would reach Compostela in season for the annualfiesta de Santiago, there was no time to lose. So, in default of a nearer railway connection, we started due south for Palencia. Our route ran at first through a land of hills, maize, and stone walls that might have been New England, except for the women scratching away in the hay-fields, and politely saluting the train with a flourish of their pitchforks.
Then more and more the landscape became Spanish. Little stone hamlets dozed in ever shallower valleys, mule trains and solitary horsemen moved slowly down poplar-bordered highways, white as chalk; there was a slumbering peasant for every speck of shade. But while the men took their siestas, often sleeping where the drowsiness had befallen them, with arm thrown about the wooden plough or with head pillowed on the thrashing roller, there were always women at work—figures clad in the very colors of the harvest, red and gold and purple, binding sheaves, sweeping the fields with stout brush brooms, tending flocks and herds by the rivers, following stray sheep over the hills, with only a handkerchief at the most to protect their heads from the terrible noonday sun. As the afternoon wore on, we found ourselves in the melancholy reaches of brown Castilian plain, with the adobe towns, themiserable mud villages, open-air threshing floors, and arid, silent, Oriental look.