THE GAIETY OF MADRID.—THE IMPERATIVENESS OF TEETOTALISM THERE.—THE QUEEN AND THE ROYAL BIRTHDAY.—ROADS AND RIVER-BANKS.—APROPOS OF BULLS.
THE GAIETY OF MADRID.—THE IMPERATIVENESS OF TEETOTALISM THERE.—THE QUEEN AND THE ROYAL BIRTHDAY.—ROADS AND RIVER-BANKS.—APROPOS OF BULLS.
THERE is no more stir at the railway-station of Madrid than at that of Tunbridge Wells or Chelmsford; and as you rattle along the quiet streets, you ask yourself—Can this be the capital of so many great kingdoms? It is the fashion to represent Madrid as a dreary place, but, on the contrary, its first aspect is eminently cheerful. The streets are light and airy, the sky is generally without a cloud, and the population is a gay and unique one. I suppose Madrid is the only capital in Europe where the upper classes can be said to cling to anything like costume, for certainly the long cloaks of the men, and the mantillas and fans of the ladies, do meritthe name of costume still. In Spain it is possible for a man to be dainty about his dress, since every cloak can be lined in different styles of luxury, with silk, with velvet, with fur, or with brocade. The upper cape of the cloak is thrown over the left shoulder in such a manner as to expose the lining; and as you walk along the streets, you are lost in admiration of a dress so graceful, and think regretfully of the orthodox great-coat worn in London, when a little colour would be so pleasant to the eye. Put a Spanish cloak upon every man in Fleet Street and Piccadilly, and how the bits of creamy fur, of crimson silk, of purple velvet, of gold brocade, would enliven these sober thoroughfares! But the Madrilenians are not a majestic race, though so majestically equipped. Diminutive in size, sallow, shaven like monks, one never dreams of calling the men handsome. At the same time they have, for the most part, beautiful features and fine eyes. The ladies, tripping about fan in hand, are pretty; but, like the men, frail-looking and without dignity. Treacherous as is the climate, they go about bare-necked, bare-headed, and with only a fan to shade them from adangerous sun. Yet one sees the same thing everywhere—whilst the women wear tight-fitting clothes, and expose themselves to wind and sun, the men are wrapped up like Arabs in the easiest, most sensible dress possible. In England we are growing wiser, and we no longer kill our young girls by making them wear tight stays, thin shoes, and back-boards; but in Madrid—I suppose one of the unhealthiest places in the world—it never seems to enter into any one’s head that what is dangerous to a man is doubly so to a woman.
It will be easily understood why Madrid should be so unhealthy when a little consideration is given to its site. Built on a plateau 2412 feet above the sea, it is exposed to an African sun and a Siberian winter. Like Rome it stands in a treeless desert; and the icy winds may blow down from the chain of the Guadarrama, whilst the sun is scorching with fiery powers. You may pass in a moment from a cold climate to a hot one in Madrid; and at all times the air is so rarefied as to be terribly trying. I enjoy excellent health as a rule, but the climate of Madrid knocked me down in a day. I was tormented by a constantneuralgia; my face swelled up so that I could hardly see out of my eyes; and I became so languid that I could hardly set one foot before the other. Yet one must not take stimulants. Never shall I forget the dismay with which an English lady saw me take wine at dinner.
“Unless you are mad,” she said, “you will drink no wine here. When I first came to Madrid I felt as you do, feverish, listless, utterly good for nothing, and I tried a littlevin ordinaireas a remedy, but it acted like a poison. My face became covered with a terrible eruption, and if I had not abstained in time, I should have had thecolicoof Madrid. It is a terrible climate alike for body and mind, and thankful enough shall I be to get away.”
Every one coughs everywhere. The men cover their mouths and keep on the sunny side of the street, as if death lurked in a “shady place;” whilst the ladies (would to heaven they did cover their mouths when the icy wind blows from the mountains!), who go bareheaded, have a frightfully fragile look. Indeed it is the very rarest thing to see a really robust-looking person in Madrid.The curled darlings of society are pale as spectres, the waiters and shopmen are thin and cadaverous; a fresh, beautiful look of health one meets nowhere. I don’t think this matter of climate is sufficiently taken into account by those who write about Spain and the Spaniards; for there is no denying the fact that since Madrid became the capital of this great country, its greatness grew pale and wan. Bred in a hot-bed of consumption, of colic, and all sorts of diseases, is it any wonder that the Madrilenian degenerates both in body and in mind, till he no longer looks capable either of mental or physical exertion? Wherever we found ourselves, at the Prado, at a review, on the Puerto de Sol, or in the churches, we were always looking at the sickly, lethargic population around us, with the thought—Is this the stuff of which reformations and revolutions are to be made?
And then the dire effects of the Inquisition must be taken into account. Who can doubt that for some of the mental and physical debasement witnessed in Spain at the present day the system of Ignatius Loyola is alone responsible? Torture,enslave, terrify a dozen men and women, and see what their children and children’s children will become? But whether this reasoning may be received as a mere fancy or not, the fact remains incontestable,—the upper ten thousand of Madrilenian population is the most miserable-looking of any in the world. Of Madrilenian society we had no experience, for, though we were furnished with letters of introduction, more important objects claimed our time. It is the greatest mistake to do two things at once, and having come to Madrid to see and study the Velasquez Gallery, we had no inclination to neglect this end for any other. As a substitute for personal experience, we read Spanish newspapers, modern Spanish novels, and plays; and though, as far as the latter goes, it was rather hard work, we felt the curriculum to be instructive. Putting aside the charming stories of Caballero and Trueba, the modern Spanish novel is a poor affair, and the play a poor affair too; but any one who really wishes to be entertained and instructed should read the social sketches of such writers as Don Ramon Mesonero de Romanos, Pedro de Medrazo, and José de Larra, who describe theircountry and countrymen with inimitable grace, satire, and discrimination.
And the newspapers, what is to be said of them? I think this paragraph might be headed,—“There are no newspapers in Spain;” for except as mediums of advertisements and local gossip, they don’t exist. On first installing ourselves in the comfortable Hôtel de Paris, we used to fly eagerly to the reading-room, laying hands onLa Correspondencia de España,La Gaceta,La Regeneracion, &c., &c.; but very little did they tell us excepting the small-beer chronicles of every nation under the sun, and of Spain above all. Then there would befeuilletonsof very inferior quality, long lists of advertisements for wet-nurses, and invitations to the friends of the late Don or Doña So-and-so to attend his or her funeral obsequies.
Of anything like political news, much less political discussion, there was seldom a vestige.
But though the Government has succeeded in bridling the tongue of the press, there is abundance of contraband talk in Madrid. No matter with whom you converse, the topic is sure to be ofbloody revolutions and retributions unequalled in history. But mention the Royal name, and, whether you are among aristocrats or peasants, you will see dark looks, meaning shrugs of the shoulder, gestures significant of bitterest meaning.
“It must come soon,” people say to you; “and the sooner the better, though dire will be the coming of it. Never in history were such wrongs, such hatred, such tyranny, to be washed out in blood. We can only watch and wait.”
The acquaintance of a day,—nay, of an hour, is sufficient to warrant all sorts of confidences on public matters from a Spaniard, and this incautiousness, or rather candour, makes you forgive even his love of the bull-fight. It is, indeed, a most consolatory fact, that it is but a watching and waiting in Spain, and that underneath a semblance of indifference burns and rages a wholesome desire of liberty.
“We are at the present moment enduring a tyranny of which foreigners have no conception,” said a cultivated Spaniard to me, one day, in English; “and yet, despite of all that is going on secretly among us, no one can say when thingswill change. Change they must; we shall have the French Revolution acted over again in the streets of Madrid.”[2]
Again: we were taken to see the graves ofsome young officers of high family who were shot in prison during the disturbances of last year. A respectable man of the lower ranks was standing near, and he said, with tears in his eyes, but half-suppressed curses on his lips,—
“They were as innocent as new-born babes; though, thank God! this murder won’t long want vengeance.”
It would be almost impossible to convey any idea of the bitterness and hatred we found underlying the public mind at this epoch.
People gave us their confidences without any reason for doing so, confidences which all amounted to one and the same thing—contempt of the tyranny and resolutions to overturn the tyrants. “No one can tell how uncomfortable it is to live in Madrid now,” said an English lady to me one day. “It is the old fable of the sheep and the wolves over and over again. We are constantly laying in stores for three or four weeks’ siege; but I’ve done it so often in vain that I have determined never to do it again, and I daresay the consequence will be that a revolution will come and find my larder empty.”
And yet how gay it was in Madrid! Though the north-east wind blew from the mountains, ladies promenaded the streets bareheaded; and Opera-house, Plaza de Toros, Prado, and every other haunt of amusement, was crowded. We naturally tried each in turn. We saw a review on the Queen’s birthday, went to the Opera, drove on the Prado, and, much against my inclination, I spent twenty minutes at a bull-fight. The review was a spiritless affair, every one had prophesied some sort of outbreak on that day, but none came; and the Queen, who had been hissed at the theatre a few days before, did not appear. The King took her place, and very flushed and uncomfortable he looked. Not so le Père Claret, the Queen’s confessor. As he descended the palace steps to his handsome carriage drawn by four splendid mules, he looked quite contented with the existing order of things,—which I suppose is but natural,—and stepped along in his purple robes with as much dignity as if he had been the Pope himself. This man’s history and position are so extraordinary that one cannot but look after him with interest. By turns, soldier, ecclesiastic, missionary, and bishop, he has won acertain celebrity for his sermons and the publication of a coarse book calledLa Clave de Oro, and he has also won the royal ear. His rival in this latter respect is a nun, called Maria-Dolorès Patrocinio, abbess of the convent of St. Pascual d’Aranjuez, who was tried and condemned some time since by the tribunal, because she gave herself out to be the subject of a miracle, pretending to have the wounds of Christ on her hands. One can but pity the Queen, who has laid herself open to such unmitigated obloquy by her favouritism. No young sovereign ever passed through stormier ordeals than Isabella the Second. Pity that experience has not taught her wisdom, and that by her own hand she has undone, Penelope-wise, good deeds done in the gentleness of youth! There is a little book calledThe Attaché in Madrid, which gives some highly interesting sketches of the Spanish Court and capital during the eventful July of 1854. It was a reign of terror, and the Queen was as a shuttlecock driven hither and thither; but a Spanish mob is not a French mob, and always showed some threadbare kind of respect for royalty. An English writer on the affairs of Spain, says, “The Queen ofSpain is not unpopular with the bulk of her subjects” (which statement I doubt), “and her great failing is, that feminine one to which Dr. Reaumur attributes all Mary Queen of Scots’ errors, ‘Sie konnte nicht ohne Männer leben.’”But it seems to me that it is faults of both heart and head that have made the throne of Isabella the Second the bed of thorns it is. If, despite a bad government, Spain is making undeniable progress, who can doubt what she might be under a good? I think no one who has had opportunity of studying her domestic history during the last thirty years will be inclined to agree with Mr. Buckle’s sweeping assertions. He despaired of the regeneration of Spain, but slow though the process must be, it has undoubtedly commenced. In commerce, in education, in literature, it has commenced; and who shall stem the flow of that slow but inevitable tide?
The great hindrance is from the badness and uncertainty of the government. There is no security in the land, without which there can be no spirit of enterprise. Who can say what to-morrow will bring forth? “A Spanish cabinet,” an English writer wittily says, “may be compared to a Chilihouse, constructed on a calculation that an earthquake will occur within the year.” All the best energy of the nation is spent upon the unhealthy excitement of political transformations. It is like living in an atmosphere overcharged with electricity. One moment, there is a succession of lightning-flashes, all sorts of brilliant miraculous heralds of a tempest that is to clear the air; then comes a growl of thunder, an outburst of popular feeling in Barcelona or some distant part; and all is hushed again for a short space, when the symptoms occur again and again without coming to a crisis.
But this underlying suspense and unrest do not interfere with the gay, out-of-door life of Madrid. The weather is always fine, and the Prado is always crowded.
There is nothing livelier in Europe than this same Prado, with its crowd of pretty ladies, picturesque cavaliers, dear little carriages for babies drawn by spotlessly white lambs, nurses from Estramadura in short, brown petticoats, embroidered with gold, water-sellers in sombrero and leathern gaiters, and an infinity of equipages, costumes, and cries, to distract the eye and earof the foreigner. But if you are tired of gaiety, in ten minutes you can get into a scene so peaceful and quiet, that you might fancy yourself miles away from a capital. Drive down to the green banks of the Manzanares, where a thousand peasant women are beating linen in the afternoon sun. Their red and yellow skirts, and plentiful black hair, make quite a picture, and their blithe talk and singing never cease for a moment. Yet how tranquil and rustic it is here! One has a superb view of Madrid, with its background of blue and white mountains, palace and church and house-top flushing in the light of the setting sun, whilst the hum of its busy life seems silenced for a while. The river winds amid sloping banks of lustrous green, lightly sprinkled with yellow foliage, and team after team winds its sleepy way towards some village seen in the distance.
It sounds incredible, and yet it is true, that, within half-an-hour’s drive of Madrid, the roads are impracticabilities for any carriage having springs. I do not think there is a lane in Sussex, or in any heavy land district of Suffolk, where you could be so jolted in a tumbril as we werein a light cab just outside the Spanish capital. We found the same state of things throughout our journey. I suppose there is no functionary answering to that of our parish surveyor. No one seems to mind having his bones rattled over the stones, as if he were a “pauper whom nobody owns.”
I feel in duty bound to say a word about the Bull-fight, though let no one shut this book, thinking that I am about to describe that horror of horrors. Heaven knows, it is a sight that any one might make something of, for added to the accessories of a burning blue sky, and a picturesque assemblage of nine thousand people excited to the verge of frenzy, there are all the savage elements of the human and animal nature called into full play. But what I saw of “this bloody amphitheatre of Rome, with spectators in hats and coats,” as Ford calls it, so sickened me, that I never recur to the subject without repugnance. Before I left England I was told by an educated Spaniard that bull-fights were going out of fashion, and that his countrymen, at least those of the upper classes, no longerattended them. But what did personal experience teach me? It taught that Spanish ladies do go to bull-fights, and, moreover, that they take with them their young children, who clap their hands at the close of every bloody act, and watch the whole cruel drama as eagerly as their elders.
To judge fairly of those horrid amusements, you should go behind the scenes. There, in a dreary chapel, you see thematadors, thebanderilleros, and all the other wretched actors in the play, taken by turns to confess and receive absolution at the hands of a priest. How ghastly pale and craven they look in their tinselly dresses!—more like culprits going to execution than the proud heroes of great feats. Adjoining the chapel is a room fitted up as a hospital, which is too often called into requisition; and from this you are led to the stables, where stand wretched hacks, soon to be blindfolded and tortured to death. These poor animals, it is said,—let us hope without truth,—are often the discarded and superannuated favourites of gentlemen; but no matter what they may have been,they are brought on the stage to be gored by turns, and their blood and agony count for nothing.
The arena is by no means imposing till it is filled with spectators; and the procession is tawdry enough. The dogs and mules which figure in it, are alone worth looking at. The former are called into requisition to madden any bull that does not show game, the latter to drag away the dead horses and bulls. But as soon as the horrid play begins, the place becomes a veryinfernus. Men and women vie with each other in noises, screams, and cries; now it is some unfortunatechulowho is the butt of the whole assembly, because he has allowed the bull to attack the horse too soon; now it is apicador, who gets praised by shouts, clappings of the hand, and all sorts of uproarious applause; and now it is the bull who becomes the pet of the moment for having skilfully overturned horse and rider. If anything can be more unbearable than the spectacle itself, it is the behaviour of the spectators. The noise is deafening,—nay, maddening; and when the first act of the dramaended, we rushed away too horrified to put our horror into words.
The wide street leading to the Plaza de Toros was so crowded with people going to the bull-fight, that it was with some difficulty we could get along. All Madrid seemed turning out for the sight, and yet it was a weekly one; and, on this occasion, of no exceptional attractiveness. On grand festivals there are extra bulls killed and far greater crowds; but all who wish to know more about bull-fights, past and present, should go to that fountain-head of knowledge on Spanish affairs, Richard Ford.[3]There is one consideration apt to be overlooked by those who are studying the subject, and that is, the hand-to-hand struggle between man and brute. From the moment the show commencestill its close every player, whether he be chulo or banderillero, picador or matador, places his life in peril—not for the love of sport, mind, but for the sake of gain—and frequent occurrence of grave accidents, and the possibility of fatal ones, may well account for the pale faces of these desperate creatures. Only a few weeks before our arrival at Madrid, a well-known matador had been killed at Seville, and the whole horrid scene was described to us by an eye-witness. There was no show of sympathy made for the man; but cries of “Brava, toro! Bravo, toro!” filled the arena from end to end. The son of the murdered man took his father’s place!
For my part all my sympathies go with the bull. He, poor beast! is often the most peace-loving creature in the world, and, anyhow, suffers ten times more than the horse, which is not goaded into frenzy by shouts, arrows, fire-works, sword-pricks, and dogs, but is allowed to die quickly. The bull is tortured to the last as if he were a heretic. Pitiful it is to see him crawl into some quiet corner to die, withwhat regrets for his peaceful pastures, with what horror of his tormentors, with what quivering agony in every nerve, Heaven alone knows!
It sounds incomprehensible, and yet it is quite true, that bull-fights are often held for charitable purposes. A few years back a new church at Madrid was to be built. A committee was formed for the purpose, consisting of an archbishop, several bishops, noblemen, and others; the land was given, and the building commenced. But some money was wanting, and so they had a bull-fight, the proceeds of which helped them on a little. Later, their necessities were even more pressing, and they tried another bull-fight. This time, however, the owner of the bull-ring refused to give them a benefit, and other means had to be tried.
Cruelty begets cruelty, and as if the appetite for blood were not satisfied at the circus, the churches offer more in abundance. Anything more revolting than the bleeding, bruised Christs and saints, cannot be conceived. No shape nor symbol of suffering is left out of the dreary catalogue till one comes away, sick with the ghastly blasphemies witnessed on every side. This is all thesadder, since a real spirit of religious fervour seems predominant; and the brighter side of Romanism is never wholly hidden from the eyes of even the most superficial or prejudiced observer.
And what has not Murillo done to beautify this Church of Spain, whose annals are so stained with blood and tears?
VELASQUEZ, THE PAINTER OF MEN.—MURILLO, THE PAINTER OF ANGELS.—RIBERA, THE PAINTER OF INQUISITORS.—ZURBARAN, THE PAINTER OF MONKS.—GOZA, THE HOFFMAN OF SPANISH ART.—THE QUIETUDE OF THE GALLERIES.
VELASQUEZ, THE PAINTER OF MEN.—MURILLO, THE PAINTER OF ANGELS.—RIBERA, THE PAINTER OF INQUISITORS.—ZURBARAN, THE PAINTER OF MONKS.—GOZA, THE HOFFMAN OF SPANISH ART.—THE QUIETUDE OF THE GALLERIES.
WE had come ostensibly to Madrid to see the works of Velasquez, and we carried out our intention, not glancing at, but really looking into and studying them as we study Homer, or Shakespeare, or Cervantes. The journey from London to Madrid is costly and fatiguing; but I advise any one to make it who is desirous of receiving a good lesson in art. I own that no one has taught me such a lesson on the largeness of it, the perfectibility of it, the ease of it. Velasquez’ work is simple creation, and that is the truth of it. Where will you find work like it? He was no poet like Murillo or Raphael. Hesucked in no golden atmosphere that saints and seraphs breathe; he heard no music of the upper spheres, but he lived among ordinary men and women, and portrayed them, flesh and spirit, without an extravagance, without an idealism, without the hairbreadth of a deviation from the truth. Thus it happens that when you come away from his pictures, you forget the painter and the painting, and you remember only the subjects,—not elevated subjects, often quite the contrary, but æsthetically conceived by an intellect so unswerving, and touched with a hand so masterly, that they seem to “live, and move, and have their being.”
As has been truly said, “He drew the minds of men; they live, breathe, and seem ready to walk out of their frames. The dead come forth conjured up; we behold what written history cannot give—their actual semblance in life. His power of painting circumambient air, his knowledge of lineal and aërial perspective, the gradation of tones in light, and shadow, and colour, give an absolute concavity to the flat surface of his canvas; we look into space, into a room, into thereflexion of a mirror.” And elsewhere, “Aucun maître ne saisit comme lui un personnage pour le faire vivre, agir, respirer devant vous. En même temps, quelle tournure il lui donne! Comme il a le secret de cette fleur d’insolence et de ces belles rodomontades, dont à nos yeux l’hidalgo Castilien est le type!”
I suppose most people would prefer Murillo to Velasquez, because imagination is generally set on a pedestal above intellect. Murillo’s imagination is like an upsoaring fountain, ever sunny and ever luminous, whilst Velasquez did not dream, but reason. He is, indeed, the most logical of painters; and what makes his works so valuable to artists and lovers of art is the quality they have in common with the masterpieces of antiquity, and which has been well called the perfection of good sense. As a French author has said, “Velasquez écrit en prose, mais, pour le portrait, du moins, il est le premier des prosateurs.”
The Museo of Madrid contains more than sixty pictures of this great master,—the Voltaire of art, who tried his hand at everything and succeeded in everything,—portraits, landscapes, historic subjects,animals, interiors, flowers, fruit. There is nothing he left untried excepting the marine. It is quite astounding with what nobility he treated ignoble subjects, such as dwarfs, beggars, dull Infantas, and kings with “the foolish hanging of the nether lip,” painting all to the life; for though Velasquez was a courtier and a court-painter, he never flattered his royal patrons one iota. He treated ignoble subjects nobly, that is, faithfully, seeing and respecting in dwarfs, beggars, and foolish Infantas and kings, the same humanity that he saw in such lofty, stately Spaniards as he has elsewhere given.
Study one of Velasquez’ greatest pictures as a whole, as a creation in fact, and then set yourself to look into the manner of it, how much remains still to marvel at and admire. Moratin said, “Velasquez knew how to paint the air;” and nothing is more striking in his pictures than this clear, palpable, sunny atmosphere; one seems to breathe in it, and not in that of the galleries.
But when you have made this discovery, you will make others no less striking. Take, for instance, his colouring. Perhaps no painter ever employed fewer colours than he; he is as sparingof bright tints as a classic writer in the use of similes, yet his pictures glow with life and are perfect miracles of harmony and truth to nature. His painting has been well compared to a stately gentleman who maintains in his conduct, his actions and his words, a perfect and dignified equilibrium, and who avoids loud laughter or talking, or anything that might disturb the general harmony of his bearing and appearance.
His work, indeed, resembles his life, which was courtly, dignified, and complete. Though a courtier, he kept intact his pure manners and morals, his kindly nature, and his passionate love of art. All that is known of him redounds to his honour, from the period of his early youth, when he worked in the studio of Pacheco, and by his fine qualities of heart and brain won his master’s affection and the hand of his master’s daughter, to the fatal journey to Irun in 1660, where he brought on his death by overworking himself in preparing the ‘Ile de Faisans’ for the Infanta’s marriage. Of all noble Spaniards, hardly Cervantes seems to have been nobler than he.
It were worth any one’s while to make thejourney to Madrid, if only to see hisBorrachos; and there is a good story about our English Wilkie, who came to Madrid for the purpose of studying Velasquez, and went away having studied this one masterpiece only.
Wilkie used to visit the gallery every day, no matter what the weather might be, and to establish himself in a chair opposite this picture. After having contemplated it fixedly for three hours in silent ecstasy, he would utter a long and profound “ouf,” seize his hat, and rush away.
Hanging close (if I remember rightly) to the wonderful “Las Meninias,” is a religious picture, which every one should look at, for never had picture a stranger and more touching history.
Don Diego Rodriguez de Silva y Velasquez, the rich courtier, the familiar friend of the king, and the renowned artist, had a mulatto slave named Juan Pareja. It was Pareja’s office to mix the colours, to prepare the canvas, to clean the brushes, to arrange the palettes; and these occupations kept him perpetually in his master’s studio. He felt himself to be a born painter all the time that he exercised these humble duties, he watched his masterat work, he listened to the instruction he gave his pupils, he spent his nights in making sketches and copies secretly. At last, when he was forty-five years old, he thought himself sufficiently accomplished in his art to make his secret known. Accordingly, one day he placed a small picture of his own, with its face turned to the wall, among his master’s; and when the king came to the studio, as he often did, brought it forward. “That’s a beautiful picture,” said Philip; “whose work is it?” Upon which Pareja threw himself on his knees and avowed that it was his own. Velasquez freed him from slavery by a public act, and received him, from that day, among his pupils and equals. But poor Pareja was so used to service and so devoted to his master, that he would fain have served him as a freedman; and after the great painter’s death continued so to serve his daughter.
From Velasquez, who lived in an age when Spain was great, and interpreted the spirit of it with the faithfulness of photography, and an introspective power quite Shakspearian, one naturally turns to his friend and pupil, the divine Murillo.
At first sight, the blazing sun of Velasquez’genius would seem to obscure and dwarf the paler orb of Murillo’s. It is like passing from Cervantes to Calderon; and if the one paints men and manners with inimitable force and humours, the other takes us straight up to heaven, where we abide with saints and angels.
It is curious that the distinctive recognition of Murillo as a great religious painter should not yet have generally taken place in England. People who do not travel and read Mr. Ruskin’s criticisms, think of Murillo only or chiefly as a painter of dirty and vicious humanity, such as beggar boys and the like. Yet how unlike is such an impression, and how easy it is to know what Murillo really has done, even without going to Spain! There is one picture alone, in the possession of Mr. Tomline,[4]of Orwell Park, Ipswich, which tells you more about Murillo than anything English critics ever wrote. I did not see this picture till after I returned fromSpain, though I had endeavoured to do so (having ridden eighteen miles for the purpose), but other travellers will be wise to see everything they can, not only of Murillo, but of Velasquez and other Spanish masters, before starting for tawny Spain. Some of Murillo’s finest pictures are at Seville, but as the Gallery of Madrid contains forty-five of his works, it is not necessary to go to Seville to see what this man of such rare gifts could do.
Murillo’s life was very different to that of Velasquez; and if his works are unequal,—some being inferior both in conception and finish—it must be remembered that he was no favoured friend of royalty, working at his leisure, and never hurried into laboured or crude execution by the necessity of money. Murillo painted for the public and for his bread; and whilst some of his works are glorious achievements of fancy and skill, fullblown blossoms of beauty that have ripened in the sun, others have evidently been too hastily conceived and matured. A French author, who has written discriminately about Murillo, draws an admirable distinction between his works and those of Velasquez, Titian, or Da Vinci, when he says that achef d’œuvreof Murillo is only achef d’œuvrerelatively, and by comparison, whilst achef d’œuvreof the latter painter’s is achef d’œuvreabsolute, defying all comparison whatever. He says, and very truly, that the possessor of one canvas of Murillo, were it the most beautiful of all, would have but a very incomplete idea of this painter, whilst a single masterpiece of Raphael or Titian suffices to attest their genius to the full.[5]
But setting aside criticisms and comparisons, what a legacy of beauty has Murillo left the world! With what deep religious fervour and poetic feeling he has embodied all that was most divine in the Catholic religion! There is not a phase of heavenly contemplation, or fervid ecstasy, that he has not made incarnate and immortal in enchanted colours; and if you contemplate his pictures for awhile, you seem to drop your fleshly garments and float in golden ether with rapt virgins and smiling cherubs. His colour has well been called ravishing; it is something impossible to describe, and as much the soul of the picture as essence is the soul of the flower.
This colouring is so delicious that it is no less of a vision to seeing eyes than miraculous healing would be to the blind man. I ought, perhaps, to say to Northern eyes, since Murillo’s atmospheres are hardly less luminous and lovely than those of his native Andalusia. He painted Andalusian beauty too, like Velasquez preferring to portray real to ideal human nature, though, unlike Velasquez, he contented himself with loveliness only. “One might say,” says M. Viardot, “that Velasquez is the painter of earth, and Murillo the painter of heaven.” He should have added,—of heaven as peopled by the believing Catholic with beautiful beneficent Christs, with archangels, angels, seraphs, with the noble army of martyrs, with Virgins ever fair and ever young, with crowned saints, and heavenly hosts shining resplendent round celestial thrones.
To understand a great religious painter like Murillo, one must have some sympathy with the age in which he lived, and the public which was his patron. He was eminently the painter of the people, from the time of his unlettered and humble boyhood, when he sold little pictures of Virginsand Christs at a few rials the dozen in the streets of Seville, to the last years of his long, independent, prosperous, honoured life. It must be remembered that the Inquisition kept a strictsurveillanceon artists, their works and their patrons; and that Velasquez is almost an exception in his divergence from the only fair field open to all, an exception impossible perhaps except to a royal favourite. Murillo’s more plastic genius accommodated itself to the circumstances surrounding it, and the result is, these marvels of colour and celestial expression, that realize the spirit of the time at once.
Whilst Velasquez may be said to have embodied in his works the aristocratic spirit of the most aristocratic age of Spain, and Murillo the purely devotional, Zurbaran may be called the painter of the ascetic, and Ribera, better known as Spagnoletto, of the Inquisitorial. Amateurs will not, I think, care much for Ribera’s pictures, except in so far as they show the cruel side of the same religion that in Murillo’s hands was so sweet and lovely. Ribera, or, as he has been called, “this cruel forcible imitator of ordinary ill-selected nature,” may be well studied at Madrid.Here you have every form and fashion of suffering and repulsive humanity, such, as Ford said, could be conceived by a bull-fighter, and please a people whose sports are blood and torture; and if for the sake of the powerful in drawing, and the wonderful mastery of light and shadow, you can contemplate those terrible subjects one after the other, you will have more powers of endurance and more passion for art than the present writer. This Spanish Caravaggio, who obtained his name oflo Spagnoletto, the little Spaniard, when he was a begging student in the streets of Rome, lived so much in Italy, and had such a passion for the great Italian masters, Correggio and Caravaggio, whom he studied, that, except in Madrid, one hardly thinks of him as a Spaniard at all. His busy and afterwards prosperous life was mostly spent at Naples, then a province of Spain, though the greater part of his pictures have been recovered by his native country; but it was not a life to look into so fearlessly as that of Velasquez or Murillo, and one gladly turns alike from the master and his work to others less painful.
Zurbaran has left no story. Like so many of thegreatest Spanish painters, he arose from the humblest ranks, and that is almost all one knows of him. But he was a very great artist, and his pictures have the same historic interest as those of Murillo, portraying, as they do, a distinct phase of Catholic Spain. Indeed, a French critic has gone so far as to say that if by a miracle the remembrance of Spain were effaced from the universal human mind; and if we were ignorant of her moral and religious history, such pictures as these of Murillo, Zurbaran, Ribera, and Herrera, would lose half their worth. It is quite certain that Zurbaran’s pictures do owe much of their interest to the ascetic element prevailing in them, however far we may be from accepting the above conclusion. He saw a monk, and painted a monk introspectively, as no one else could do; and every one will do well to study his pictures, the finest of which are at Seville, and very few of which are at Madrid. They portray the austere element of the same religion which Murillo made so enticing with visions of light, loveliness, and colour. These three masters, Murillo, Ribera, and Zurbaran, may be said to express and eliminate the three vital principlesof Romanism, such as men like Loyola and women like St. Theresa had made it, namely, ecstatic vision, torture, and asceticism. It seems as if in Spain the Trinity must stand or fall together.
The schools of Spanish art are generally divided into three, the Castilian, the Valencian, and the Sevillian; properly speaking, the kingdom of Aragon possessed another, though little known. Gallegos, who introduced the style of Van Eyck and Albert Dürer; Moralès, whose Ecce Homos and Madonna Dolorosas are scattered all over Spain;El Mudo, the dumb, who brought from Italy something of the rich Venetian colouring; El Greco, who was at once an architect, a sculptor, and a painter, “truly Spanish, unequal and eccentric,” and whose “streaky lights,” as Mr. Stirling says, “are sharper than Toledo blades;”—may be said to represent the school of Castile; whilst that of Valencia, the most effeminate and superstitious province of Spain, is represented by Ribaeta, the disciple of L. Carracci and Domenichino, and Ribera, Orrente, the Bassano of Spain. Then we come to Seville, the capital of sunny, many-giftedAndalusia. The school of Seville boasts of other honourable names before we come to its greatest—Velasquez, Murillo, and Zurbaran. There was Herrera, the first master of Velasquez; Pacheco, his second master and afterwards father-in-law, not only a painter of some pretensions, but a learned writer on art,—“coldly correct and classically dull in whatever he did,” says a critic; but let that pass. There was Pablo de Cespedes, also famous for achievements of pen and pencil; Juan de las Ruelas, the worthy pupil of Correggio and Giorgione, whose pictures are only to be seen in Andalusia. Alonzo Cano, alike architect, sculptor, and painter, whose passion for art was so strong, that on his dying bed he impatiently put a crucifix from his lips because it was badly carved.
What a splendid muster-roll is this! Who will not be tempted to come and judge for himself? The works of many of these artists, however, are only to be seen in the churches and convents of their native provinces, where they remain “hanging like golden oranges on their native boughs.”
But before leaving Madrid, you must give a little time—not too much, since it is soprecious—among “these acres of canvas,” to the fantastic and not pleasing pictures of Goya, the last Spanish painter of any note, who died in 1828, at the age of eighty-six. Goya has been compared to Hogarth for his quality of humour; to Callot, for imagination; to Rembrandt, for vigour of execution, elsewhere to Velasquez and to Reynolds; but his pictures are so characterised by a sort of Hoffman-like revelling in the weird and the impossible, that it is difficult to understand and like them. Like Ribera he bids you sup on horrors.
And after this survey of all the Spanish painters, how much remains yet to see! Here are grand pictures of Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese, of Michel-Angelo, Andrea del Sarto, of Domenichino,—indeed, of all the Italian, Flemish, and French masters, and amongst so much to see, the only fear is of seeing nothing.
Our principal object in coming to Madrid was Velasquez, who is to be studied nowhere else, and we therefore saw many other pictures imperfectly. Other travellers may be less circumscribed as to time, and fortunate are they who, having leisure, can support the rarefied air of Madrid long enoughto do justice to the greatest picture-gallery in the world. It is not only the greatest but the best-arranged, the quietest and the most comfortable. You leave your carriage at the door and stroll in for an hour or so. All is quiet, and silent, and orderly as in a church; the rooms are unadorned and perfectly lighted; the pictures are never hidden by crowds of copyists; the place is never crowded or noisy; and after contemplating your favourite pictures or picture for a time, you leave the gallery, not tired and blinded by too many impressions, but refreshed and invigorated with a calm intellectual enjoyment that is as good and simple as it is deep and lasting.
A LEAR OF CITIES.—GOTHIC, ROMAN, AND MOORISH REMAINS.—COMMENTARIES ON STREET’S GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE, AND ON TOLEDAN LANDLORDS.—TILES, AND A DISCOURSE THEREON.
A LEAR OF CITIES.—GOTHIC, ROMAN, AND MOORISH REMAINS.—COMMENTARIES ON STREET’S GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE, AND ON TOLEDAN LANDLORDS.—TILES, AND A DISCOURSE THEREON.
THE railway journey from Madrid to Toledo is easy enough, occupying about eight hours. Time is given for refreshment on the way, and you are almost certain to be alone if you travel first-class, which, if you are a wise traveller, you will be sure to do. Every one knows how much easier it is to take long journeys in an uncrowded vehicle, and by following this precaution always we saved up strength for future ordeal.
Toledo looks imposing from the railway station, but it is the dirtiest, dreariest, most uncomfortable town in the world. We were driven from the station at a furious rate in the diligence drawn byfour mules, and the driver lashed them so furiously and vociferated so franticly that we thought he must be mad or drunk. Over the bridge we went at a galloping rate, and so on, up-hill, down-hill, till we reached the town. Here, at least, I thought, we should stop in our mad career, for the streets of Toledo, like all Moorish streets, are mere bridle-tracks, paved with flint-stone; and as the town, like Rome, is built on seven hills, you are always ascending or descending. But our driver never slackened whip or reins for one moment; and, wonderful to say, the cumbersome vehicle emerged safely from break-neck alleys which looked hardly wide enough for a wheelbarrow. With such dash, indeed, did we drive into the court-yard of the Hôtel de Leno that we had taken the flattering unction to our souls that we were very welcome guests. But on alighting no one took any notice of us; and, though the master of the house, with a staff of waiters and maids, were standing about, it never seemed to occur to them that we needed their services. There we stood in the midst of our luggage—two portmanteaus and ten packages ofsmaller dimensions—for about a quarter of an hour, when the landlord came up and with a civil manner conducted us to our rooms. This apparent uncourteousness meant nothing more than Spanish indifference, as we afterwards found out, for never were we better treated than in this same Fonda de Leno. Finding that we objected to dine in the smokysalle-à-manger, the master himself served us in our rooms, and served us, I believe, to the best of his ability. He was a heavy-looking man, and his manners at first were a little disconcerting, but we liked him on better acquaintance, and he chatted a good deal about English travellers. I think our patience and smattering of “Castellano” won his good graces. The house was scrupulously clean, and the food, though ultra-Spanish, quite good enough for any one excepting an epicure.
Toledo boasts of an excellent guide, without whom the traveller would fare ill there, despite clean beds and wholesome food. What a debt of gratitude do we not owe to you, good Señor Cabezas, for having guided us so well through this more than Cretan myth—not I am sure from gain’ssake only, but from an honest antiquarian love of it! “I am a son of Toledo,hijo de Toledo,” he said to us; “and there is not a stone of the place unknown to me:” and this speech was made without any self-arrogance or vanity. It was the simple truth. There is this good trait about the Spaniard of the lower ranks, that he never affects, and is consequently never a snob. He treats you—a little too familiarly, I daresay, to please aristocratic palates—but always with a quiet dignity and self-possession, reminding you of the Arabs, and most likely inherited from them. How much, indeed, has not the Spaniard inherited from the Arab?
Señor Cabezas is a slightly-built, prematurely old man, with eyes of extraordinary vivacity, very small hands and feet (a veritablecosa de España), and a chronic cough that makes one think the climate of Toledo does not suit her son. He carries a stick, with which he points out any precious relic that comes in the way, and is so peremptory and so like a schoolmaster in making you understand the history of it, that you dread lest the stick should descend upon your knuckles or shoulders if guilty of inattention. But only really idle peoplewould deserve the stick, for Cabezas thoroughly understands what he is talking about, and, like all wise men, reserves his talk for occasions worthy of it. You are never wearied by him, but follow his eyes and the point of the stick with unflagging interest.
Cabezas is always busy, and we had to accept thankfully as much of his time as he could spare.
“I have engaged myself this afternoon,” he said, “to an old French gentleman, a silk-merchant bound to Murcia, but, if you like, you can accompany us in our rounds.” This we did, and the silk-merchant proved not only an inoffensive, but a very amusing person.
The poor man seemed so tormented with the idea of seeing all the sights of Toledo that one would have fancied he was thereby doing penance for his sins. When he found himself in the Cathedral, his melancholy became overwhelming. The beautiful painted windows, the richly-carved stalls of the choir, the exquisite Retablo, the chapels, each so full of monuments and treasures, the pictures, relics, and jewels of the Sacristy, and thecoup d’œilsof the whole interior, could only elicit from him a dreary expression of regret that there was so much to see.
As we were led from chapel to chapel, he raised his hands and repeated, “Il y a trop à voir, il y a trop à voir”—which was perfectly true. There is too much to see, but then why not accept the fact cheerfully? To see every part of the Cathedral of Toledo would indeed require weeks, and to describe it, even in general terms, would fill a volume. I advise all travellers who have no time for a series of visits, or a scrupulous reading of many books, to go into the Cathedral alone and read nothing about it whatever. By following this plan you obtain one distinct and ineffaceable impression, whilst a hurried visit, with a garrulousciceroneat your heels, and a guide-book in your hands, results in very little but mortification. Grateful as we felt to good Señor Cabezas for his painstaking services, we were never so happy in the grand old place, as when we stole in by ourselves at early morning and twilight. Nothing then marred the prevailing impression of splendour and beauty; and we wandered up and down the quiet aisles, and looked atthe tiers of gorgeously-coloured windows, lost in a rapture of wonder and delight.
I do not remember to have seen any finer sight in Europe than the interior of Toledo Cathedral; the whole is so magnificent, the detail so harmonious, the colouring so beautiful; such an impression never fades from the mind’s eye, but remains “a thing of joy,” and a storehouse of beauty, for ever.
It is a great pity that the exquisite chapels are so disfigured with images and altars dressed up in every form and fashion of tinsel. You are taken too to see the jewels and wardrobe of the Virgin—the strangest sight. It is difficult to reconcile the character of the lowly Mother of Christ with these gorgeous robes of velvet and brocade, stiff with gold and pearls, with these necklets, rings, and bracelets; with these tiaras of diamonds and emeralds. But everywhere you see the same thing, only on a smaller scale; the Virgin is petted and pampered with costly gifts as if she were something below an ordinary woman, since even ordinary women aspire to higher things than a fine toilette.
There was a homely German lady in the Sacristywith us, who had surveyed the aisles very calmly, but went into raptures over these jewelled mantles and petticoats.
“Himmel!” she said, touching the rich stuffs gingerly with her fingers, “what a pity such beautiful things are not worn; the silks must have cost six thalers a-yard at least.”
Putting aside the idea of profanity, no one can help enjoying the blaze of so many gems. It is like walking in Aladdin’s enchanted garden. Diamonds, emeralds, pearls, sapphires, rubies, are here collected in such masses, that one’s eyes get too dazzled and blinded at last to see any more. Nor does the treasure-house of the Cathedral stop here. There is a fabulous amount of gold and silver in the form of candelabras, urns, reliquaries andincensarios, or vessels for holding incense; there is an altar composed of pure amber; there are banners heavy with gold and precious stones, relics of saints more precious to the good Catholic than any jewels, and last, not least, illuminated Bibles and missals blazing with gold.
Well might the silk-merchant raise his hands and sigh, “There is too much to see!” I think itwould take a month to see all these wonderful things fairly, and more than that to master their history. Then there are the sacred legends which would, doubtless, outnumber the Virgin’s pearls and diamonds, and are of infinite more comfort to the humblest of her worshippers. And how beautiful and tender are some of them! that, for instance, of the shrine of San Ildefonso. San Ildefonso was the primate of Toledo, and one day the Virgin came down from heaven to attend matins at the Cathedral. It all happened on a sudden, as miracles do. A moment before, the place had been empty, now it was filled—by whom? Could it be any other than the Mother of God, with those sweet eyes, that golden hair, that shining aureole around her head? Think of the awe, and bewilderment, and pious joy of the people worshipping there, especially the poor, who thrill with pride at sight of an earthly Queen. How they must have wept and wondered then! how they must have wept and smiled at repeating the story afterwards!
It is thirteen hundred years since this took place; the marble slab where the Virgin’s feet alighted has been hollowed with the kisses ofthousands of worshippers, and the story moves to tears of joy still. No one can help feeling the enduring power of these old church legends before such evidence, and no one can help being, for the time, carried away by their simple pathos or burning faith. You should never travel in Spain without a book about the saints and martyrs. Every step you take leads across some way watered with holy blood and tears. Every town is peopled with the sorrowful ghosts of men and women whom the Church has tried and crowned; and only those who are obstinately blind can deny the influence exercised by their names still. Often and often have I found myself, as in the convent ofLas Huelgas, realising the religious spirit of the middle ages in its vigour and purity. But, alas! only for a little while, and I think the most devout Romanist would hardly find Spain the country of his expectation.
Excepting the Cathedral, nearly all the glories of Toledo are Moorish. The Moors, those true artists and most conscientious workers, have here left an Alcazar, gateways, bridges, mosques, palaces, and towers, to perpetuate their golden age; and thoughthe grand old metropolitan church remains the crowning jewel of the desolate old city (a Lear of cities, deaf, blind, decaying), all these anticipate the marvels of Cordova and Granada. But the Cathedral takes you back to quite another epoch of art and religion. Pass along the tortuous street called the Calle de la Chapinerier, and enter the north transept, and you might fancy yourself in one of the early Gothic churches of France.
The view into the double aisles round the choir across the magnificent Capilla Mayor, and down the side aisles of the nave, is superb, whilst the atmosphere of the whole place, so dusky, and twilight always, gives wonderful solemnity to the whole. The windows are large and numerous, but all are filled with beautiful stained glass, so that not a ray falls that is not quite marvellous in beauty of colours. The choir and aisles are arranged in three gradations of height, and the effect of the three tiers of coloured windows is full of charm. It is in the intermediate aisle that the practised eye recognises at a glance the influence of the Moor,for the arcade of the triforium has the unmistakeable horse-shoe arch; and very beautiful is the effect, and testifying to the good sense of the architect who so wisely imitated what was good in foreign art.
Spend hours in wandering from aisle to aisle from chapel to chapel, till you have mastered the grand outline of the architect in all its simplicity and perfection, and then how much yet remains to study! There is the beautiful arrangement of columns, about which Mr. Street writes so enthusiastically, the noble rose-window of the transept, the doorway of St. Catharine with its elaborate mouldings, the screens round the Coro, the chapel of San Ildefonso with its richly-sculptured tombs, all remarkable as specimens of fourteenth century work; then there are the cloister and chapel of San Blas; the chapel of Santiago, great and interesting works of the fifteenth century; the massive brass and iron screens, the grand and gorgeous Retablos, and lastly, the beautiful stained glass medallions of all periods. What treasures of tradition, of thought, of time, are here! Who leaves Toledo withouta regret that none can be properly studied in a passing visit?
The cathedrals of Burgos and Toledo were all that we were able to see of Gothic architecture in Spain, but these more than fulfilled any expectations held out to us. Toledo, I presume, equals any church in Europe in the grandeur of its plan and the beauty of every part; and certainly surpasses any I have seen for solemnity. I would fain set out on another pilgrimage at some future time, to see the Cathedrals of Leon, Segovia, Salamanca, and the beautiful old churches of Cataluña. Indeed, so rich is Spain in ecclesiastical architecture, often exotic, but belonging to her by right of possession nevertheless, and so more than rich in church furniture, that such a journey would be unequalled in interest and instruction. Think for a moment of the treasures scattered by the way. There are the magnificent Retablos of Salamanca and Gerona, richly sculptured and covered with gold, with silver and with painting; there are the elaborately carved choir stalls of Toledo and Valencia, the sumptuous monumentsof Avila, Miraflores, and Burgos, the exquisite screens or Rejas in metal, so plentiful in all the churches, curious old organs, carved doors and ceilings, regal magnificence and abundant labour manifested everywhere.
What is very curious in the history of Moorish and Christian art in Spain, is their distinction from each other. The two arts ran in parallel lines; and whilst the Moors were building the Mosque at Cordova, the Alcazar and Giralda at Seville, and the Alhambra, the Christians were raising the beautiful Gothic churches so thickly scattered all over the country. To this rule there are, of course, exceptions; such for instance as the triforium of the choir at Toledo, which is decidedly Moorish in design, the Moorish carpentry plentifully found in late Gothic buildings, the Moorish battlement constantly seen on the walls of Spanish towns; and there are other examples, though none on the whole of importance. The Moors and Christians were alternately conquerors and vanquished, and always enemies; so that it was not to be expected that they should have copied each other’s art, however ready they might beto adopt modifications of it. The Moorish builders and architects often worked for and with their Christian masters; and this accounts for the Moorish elements predominant in the streets and buildings of such a city as Toledo. But the arts of the two people remained as separate as their languages.
Toledo is a most bewildering place, and without good Señor Cabezas, the traveller would find himself lost in every sense. The streets are thoroughly Moorish, tortuous, narrow, steep, and ill-paved; and you might fancy yourself in Algiers in any one of these dark alleys, so admirably built for coolness, seclusion, and security. You might fancy yourself in Algiers, or indeed, in any Eastern city, on other accounts, especially the singing,—that monotonous, dreary, interminable singing you hear everywhere among the Arabs. The Spaniard, among other things, has borrowed of the Oriental those dreary “howlings of Tarshish,”[6]which in Toledo, in Cordova, and in Granada, recall the East, if the East has come withinyour range of travel, and if not, set you wondering whence so lively a people acquired so melancholy a kind of recreation. Anything more depressing than these same “howlings of Tarshish” cannot be conceived. If you are in a thoroughly Spanish inn you hear them incessantly from morning to night. The servants begin hours before you rise, the children of the house take up the strain, master and mistress sing over their cookery and ledger-writing, stable-boy and gardener sing over their work without. Strive as you may, you cannot get away from the sound. It is better to sing yourself, and then you like it.
Again, setting aside the old Moorish houses still remaining, you find that the modern Toledans have built on the same plan, shutting themselves up within four walls like true Orientals, and delighting their eyes with foliage and fountain in sunny courts. But the beautiful precept of cleanliness is not imposed on the Toledans as it was on the Moors, and everywhere one regrets it. The streets are filthy, and so rugged that they make you lame in an hour; and yet there is so much to see that, lame or no, you must keep walking on.
What irritates you beyond endurance is the culpable neglect of everything valuable to both historian and antiquary. Ruin runs riot as she pleases, and not a hand is put forth to stay her progress. Inlaid ceilings of cedar-wood, delicate diapers of plaster-work, pavements of beautiful tiles,—all are allowed to go to ruin; and they go so fast, that my advice to all interested in the wonderful Moorish antiquities of Toledo is, that they should see them at once. A few years hence there will be none to see.
Cabezas, who has a genuine love of what is really good in art and curious in antiquities, bewailed with us this cruel contempt of both on the part of his countrymen. There was something quite touching in the way he lingered over every relic, as if it were a living thing fading before his eyes. It is the same with every kind of artistic or archæological treasure, Roman, Gothic, and Moorish, all share the same fate. I don’t think Spaniards, as a rule, care much for what the Moors left behind them; rather it is cavilled at and despised.
A few years ago a most precious treasure-trove was discovered near Toledo and sold—oh! indifferentSpain!—to the Emperor of the French. It consisted of five or six crowns, with crosses suspended to them, and three smaller ones without crosses,—all of pure gold, beautifully worked and adorned with jewels. These crowns, now exhibited in the Hôtel de Cluny, are relics of the Gothic kings of Spain, and are evidently votive crowns, of the age of Recesvinthus, and the episcopate of San Ildefonso; and, though belonging to a very early period of art, about 650-672, exhibit extraordinary knowledge of the goldsmith’s art. Doubtless, from time to time, otherreliquiæ, quite as interesting, will come to light; but what will become of them, Heaven only knows.
I don’t know which phase of Spanish history is most generally interesting—the Mahomedan, the Catholic, or the Aristocratic: the former being typified in the Alhambra, the second in the paintings of Murillo and Zurbaran, and the third in the splendid courts of the Philips. I confess that for me the Mahomedan phase, so graceful, so artistic, so beneficent as it was, surpasses in interest every other. Look a little into the history of Spain, andwhat do facts tell you? To whom is she indebted for her most sumptuous monuments, her most fertile districts, her most elegant arts, her most picturesque costumes, her most precious products?—To the Moors. Who brought down the cool waters from rocky prisons, turning whole wastes into sunny vineyards and gardens?—The Moors. Who built bridges, fortifications, and watch-towers?—The Moors. Who made the Spanish language what it is now, the most sonorous and picturesque of any in Europe?—The Moors. Who planted the orange-tree and the palm, the fig and the olive?—The Moors.
One cannot help crying out against the ingratitude of the Spaniards, who not only disclaim the good things thus inherited, but do their best to defile them. Nowhere is this defilement more obvious than at Toledo. It is as if everything Moorish were infected with the plague.
A wonderful lesson in history is this dreary old Spanish town, and offering food enough and to spare for the hungry antiquary. Toledo may be called a palimpsest; in its outermost surface is theSpanish writing, clear, and new, and plain; scratch it, and you see the Moorish, all glowing in colour and gold; scratch deeper, and you have the stately Roman; deeper, still, the rude Gothic; deeper still, the barbaric Carthaginian. Take up a handful of dust, and who can say what it is—ashes of Roman prætors, Gothic kings, or Moorish patrons of art and science? Or cast your eyes over the vast panorama of bridge and gateway, watch-tower and church, fort and pleasure-ground—which of these is not as much Roman as Moorish, more Moorish than Christian, and has not first belonged to an earlier civilization than either?
Nothing more forcibly recalls the East than the embroidered mule-trappings one meets at every step. Here in Toledo, as in all Moorish cities, the mules are as gorgeously dressed up as if each belonged to a prince; and, with that inexhaustible invention and love of ornament one finds among Orientals, no two trappings are made alike. These bits of colour in some measure redeem the monotony of the streets, which are tiring both to feet and eyes. All the beauties are hidden inugly backgrounds, like toads’ eyes, and without a good guide you would never find them out. With such helps as Ford, Street, and good Señor Cabezas, the intelligent traveller need not remain ignorant of any; and though the relics of Moorish art may not have the attractions for every one that they had for us, none can but admire the exquisite little mosque turned into a place for Christian worship, the superb ceilings of cedar-wood, blue and white, the arches, courts, doors, tiles, and otherdisjecta membraof the age of the royal race of Granada long passed away.
We were particularly interested in the beautiful encaustic tiles, of which one sees so many specimens here. Cabezas very obligingly took us to a private house rich in this sort of ornament, and we spent the whole afternoon in copying the prettiest specimens. The master and mistress were handsome young people who seemed to have nothing to do but laugh and talk in their balcony, overlooking thepatiowhere we sat. It was a very pretty place, so Eastern in colour and character. The court was open to the sky, the floor was of coloured tiles, the walls pure white above and gaywith tiles below, whilst overhead burned and glowed a bright blue Southern sky.
Our host and hostess watched us at our work with child-like curiosity, and quizzing us not a little. “What curious people are they, these English! What in the world do they want to copy our tiles for?” said the lady, and the husband answered, “To sell ’em, I suppose.” “Come now, Señor Cabezas,” said the lady, “and tell us who these ladies are, and what they come here to paint for? I should think they might find something better to do than paint a few old Moorish tiles.” Cabezas explained apologetically that we were tourists much interested in anything Moorish, that one of us had a house in Algiers, that we had come to Spain on purpose to see the beautiful ruins of Toledo and Granada, and so forth.
“But how queerly they dress! Do all English ladies wear those funny things on their heads instead of mantillas?—And then they don’t wear chignons: what frights they look, to be sure!”
To be sure there is no accounting for tastes: we had thought the immense lumps of wool andfalse hair worn by Spanish women of all classes anything but pretty.
The lady had a hundred more questions to ask, the great object of inquiry seeming to be the relationship between my companion and myself.
“It’s impossible they can be sisters,” she observed, “for one is twice as big as the other.”
“Oh! what has that to do with it?” rejoined her husband; “one often sees sisters as unlike each other as can be.”
“Well, I should say,” the lady went on, “that the tall one with the golden hair is no relation to the little one whatever—unless it be her brother’s wife.” And finally they settled it so.
Meantime we got on admirably with our work, and made copies of several very beautiful tiles. Before coming away, the lady of the house descended from the balcony to look at them and us.
“They are very pretty,” she said, turning over the drawings one by one; “but what are they good for?”
“We want to compare them with those in theAlhambra and in the old Moorish buildings in Algeria,” we said, “to see which are the prettiest.”
She seemed by no means convinced.
“But what does it matter which is the prettiest?”
To this, of course, we found no satisfactory answer. What, indeed, does anything about anything matter to some people? and to the little Spanish lady, like Peter Bell, a Moorish tile and a primrose was a Moorish tile and a primrose—nothing more.
My friend did a little sketching out-of-doors and was sure to have a little crowd round her. In most cases it would be grave, portly, well-dressed peasants, who came to look on, and their behaviour was always respectful and intelligent. I liked the look of these Castilian farmers and shepherds, who wear their sheepskin, or coarse brown woollen rug bordered with colours over their shoulders with quite a noble air. They would come up to us, say simply “Buenos dias,” and then stand by, without either impertinence or apology. This pleasant freedom of manner, alike removed from obsequiousness or vulgarity, strikesa foreigner as much as the fine, thoughtful Velasquez face he often sees among the Castilian peasantry.
Once it was a dozen schoolboys who gathered round the English Señora to see what she was drawing. They were just coming home from school, and, by way of keeping them out of my companion’s light, I drew them aside and asked to look at their books. This seemed to create no little amusement; but when I opened a grammar and began a random examination, there was a chorus of laughter. It was a very learned and dry grammar that these young Toledans, all apparently of the lower classes, had to learn; but they seemed to know it very well. And there were also dry books of a theological tendency, besides a catechism and a history. No wonder Toledo remains orthodox in religion and grammar, when the sons of artisans and peasants are instructed so exclusively in both. It is said that here the noble Castilian tongue is spoken in all its purity; a matter in which the passing traveller is hardly able to judge, but the multitude of priests thronging the streets bespeaks the thoroughgoing Catholicism ofthe place. Despite the railway and the increased number of travellers it brings, an English lady seems to be as much an object of curiosity here as ever; and though the curiosity is not ill-natured, it rather spoils the enjoyment of one’s walks. Yet one is obliged to walk from morning to night; there is so much to see, and asfiacresare not to be heard of, there is no other way of getting about. The streets are not picturesque in themselves, but the view of the vast, scattered, decayed, and decaying old city, with its grand gates, walls, and bridges, from the Alcazar to the river side, is extraordinarily fine. The Tagus is a narrow, deep green stream, which runs amid dark rocks of rugged and fantastic shape: or waters soft greenvegas, the sweeter, because so rare. Hardly the Tiber is more historic, and one leaves its banks lingeringly.