We had not seen half enough of Toledo when we came away, and should have stayed longer but for the cold. It was warm and brilliant all day long; but when evening came, and, tired and footsore, we reached our Fonda, the cold seemed insupportable. There were no fireplaces anywhere, andno other means of heating the room but a charcoal-pan, which is a wretched contrivance, never of use except when so heated as to be dangerous. We took refuge, as usual, in our soft, clean beds, and, by dint of rugs and wraps, contrived to get warm at last.
A MIDNIGHT HALT.—ITS CHARMS AND COUNTER-CHARMS.—DON QUIXOTE’S COUNTRY.—THE SLEEP AT CORDOVA.—THE WAKE IN THE EAST.—SHOPPING.
A MIDNIGHT HALT.—ITS CHARMS AND COUNTER-CHARMS.—DON QUIXOTE’S COUNTRY.—THE SLEEP AT CORDOVA.—THE WAKE IN THE EAST.—SHOPPING.
IT was with real regret we left Toledo, as one leaves some rare old book, only glanced at, but enticing months’ study. Notwithstanding the depressing gloom and stagnation of the old city, we loved it for its beautiful and precious monuments, and for the historic solemnity hanging round each. We liked the people too—Cabezas our invaluable guide; our hotel-keeper; Pepa, our bright little chambermaid; and the homely but respectful waiters, who were so slow to understand what we wanted, and so slow to bring it when understood. When you leave a Spanish Fonda there is none of that obsequious crowding round you that you find in Franceand England. Chambermaids and waiters never hover about you, hinting by their looks that they expect vails, but say simply “Adios, adios,” and go their ways.
But I especially dwell on the civility we met with at the Fonda de Leno, because we afterwards heard it so terribly abused. We were dining at thetable d’hôteat Granada, and a party of American travellers began talking of fondas in general, and of the fondas at Toledo in particular.
“I shan’t easily forget the boorishness of the landlord,” said one; “I really thought he would have turned us clean out-of-doors. Why, we civilly asked what there was for breakfast, and he said ‘Eel and chops,’ and turned on his heel without asking which we chose to have! And what cooking! everything tasted of tomatoes and garlic!”
“And what wretched rooms!” put in a young lady; “as bare of furniture as prisons.”
There were two young Frenchmen present who had also been at Toledo, and they now joined in the cry. They were starved, unhandsomely treated, badly housed, overcharged.
“But thereisa comfortable hotel at Toledo,” Isaid; “we found very good food, moderate charges, and such civil people, at the Hôtel de Leno.”
There was a general exclamation of surprise.
“That is the very place we are complaining of!” they all said; and we compared notes with as much perplexity as amusement.
I don’t at all understand the usual tone taken by tourists in describing Spanish inns. We never found anything to complain of, and yet how few people admit the possibility of ladies travelling comfortably in Spain! Carry with you a tolerable supply of patience and gold pieces, you will do very well. Carry with you, also, always ready for use, a little courteousCastellano, which will often stand in good stead of many more costly things, such as time, money, and temper. Moreover, reverse the Micawber principle, and never expect anything to turn up, for that will save many a discomfort to yourself and others. The Spaniards are terribly slow and procrastinating, but the fact must be accepted as it is, and made the best of; as well expect an American to be lethargic as a Spaniard to be quick.
From Toledo to Cordova is a very long railway journey. You have to wait from seven o’clock inthe evening till midnight to catch the down train from Madrid, which waiting might, of course, be easily avoided. Fancy waiting five or six hours at Didcot for the Leamington train! Butmañana, mañana, all the good changes will take place in time!
We found the waiting at Castilejo not so bad as might be. Tourists had said to us with a shrug of the shoulders, “It is a terrible ordeal to go through, that waiting at Castilejo. There will, very likely, be neither fire nor light, and you will have to choose between a dark hole of a waiting-room, full of men smoking, or get into an empty railway-carriage and wait there.”
We certainly were agreeably surprised to find a blazing fire; a room that, if not exceptionally clean, was at least airy and wholesome; and instead of the crowd of smokers we had been led to expect, a young Madrid lady with her maid and dog, two or three respectable servant girls, and one elderly railway guard, who might have been Don Quixote, he was so grim and so gallant. The girls dropped off to sleep one by one; the guard puffed away his inoffensive little cigarette deep in thought, andwe got out our books and amused ourselves very well. There was a livelier scene at the buffet just behind the waiting-room, for, when I went to beg an extra light and to ask for chocolate, I found a number of soldiers and peasants regaling on hot little bits of meat that came, as if by magic, from behind the counter.
The young woman in attendance was, as usual, civil but indifferent.
“Have you chocolate?” I asked.
“I don’t think we have, Señora,” she replied; “I’ll see by-and-by.”
“Have you chocolate?” I asked, when the by-and-by had come.
“I don’t think we have, Señora,” was the answer a second time; “I’ll see by-and-by.”
I waited a little while, and then repeated the question, always in the politest way possible. This time I added that the Señora with me was very tired, and sadly in need of refreshment, and that if there was chocolate to be had I should be very much obliged.
“The mistress of the Fonda is gone to bed, and I don’t know where she keeps the chocolate,” wasthe reply this time; ‘but I have sent to hear, and if there is any you shall be served.’
About two hours from the time of my first inquiry came two delicious little cups of chocolate, which, I am sure, we should never have got except by means of patience and pretty speeches. The traveller who has not a goodly supply of both these things would, I fear, fare very ill. After a time the sleepers woke up, and began to talk in very lively fashion. A smart young lady, who seemed to belong to the station, soon came in, wished everybody “buenas noches,” and sat down, evidently with the intention of being amused. The young lady and her maid did not hold aloof from the conversation, the grave-looking guard joined in occasionally, and the two English ladies were not excluded.
The young women, who wore black silk mantillas, and chignons as large as cocoa-nuts, were immensely inquisitive about English ladies in general, and ourselves in particular. When we had satisfied their curiosity, we talked ofCosas de España, mantillas, fans, bull-fights, &c.
“Now, tell me,” I said to the young lady belongingto the station, “do you really like bull-fights or no? I have never heard the opinion of a Spanish lady on the subject.”
“That is, because foreigners make such a fuss about bull-fights,” she replied, archly; “people are afraid to speak their minds about it. For my part, I own that the sight is a horrid one, but it amuses me.”
“It don’t amuse me,” put in one girl; “I get sick and frightened, and want to come away.”
“Well,” added another, “it’s all very well for people to say they don’t like it; they go all the same. These English Señoras went, I’ll be bound; and yet they’ll go back to England and talk about us.”
My companion shook her head. I pleaded guilty.
“But,” I said in extenuation, “I only went to convince myself, with my own eyes, that the sport is so popular as travellers report. I couldn’t have believed it otherwise.”
Meantime train after train came and went, the train to Badajoz, the train to Alicante, the train to Saragosa, and, at last, the one which was to bearus to Cordova. There it came, creeping through the darkness with its big red eyes, like some monster of Eastern fable, but much more kindly, for it gave us what we needed—quiet, and sleep, and solitude. As usual, we found the ladies’ coupé empty, and, as usual, we curled ourselves up in our rugs, wished each other “good night,” and went to sleep.
There is a cant phrase about railways having done away with the poetry of travelling. Was ever such an absurdity uttered and believed in? I think if ever the poetry of travel was realised, it is now, especially at night and in Spain. You are whirled from region to region apparently by elemental fire alone. You pass through new, sweet, starry atmospheres, like a bird; you go to sleep, and never know under what strange or happy auspices you will awake. This beautiful moonlight landscape of tiny homesteads lying on the banks of a silvery river, of green meadows skirting snow-tipped mountains, and long lines of fir-trees pricking against a blue-black sky,—is it real or a picture only? These dreary table-lands that seem to stretch into infinity, these sloping olive-grounds,these sharp sierras, these alternating scenes of loveliness, and grandeur, and desolation, seem more like the phantasmagoria of dreams than anything else.
And then the aspects of human life, though fleeting, are yet so full of charm. You see faces that tell their own story, and in a moment they have vanished. You are let into little domestic scenes touching, or comic, or painful, or passionate, as the case may be. You cannot stop five minutes at a village station, or linger five minutes in a village waiting-room, without being moved to smiles or tears.
For my part I have never taken a railway journey, however short, that has not had some incident worth remembering; but in Spain, which is a collection of kingdoms, each rich in different sorts of interest, one is troubled, like the silk-merchant at Toledo, with theembarras de richesses. You see a hundred landscapes in a day you would fain remember. You see a hundred faces and hear a hundred things, that seem too characteristic to forget. But, like the changing colours of the sunset, these impressions melt one into the other, and, unless seized at the moment, are utterly lost.When day broke we found that we were traversing a mountainous region of olive-orchards and bare brown fields made ready for sowing, some no larger than a cottager’s garden, others covering acres. A tawny land is this Spain, as Shakespeare says, a gipsy among gipsies, and a Moor by complexion.
We were now in Don Quixote’s country,—such a dreary country, that every one should take Cervantes’ book to read on the way. Then La Mancha, though a mere waste of steppes, with here and there wretched mud-hovels, becomes enchanted ground, and every village named on the map, as sacred as Mecca. “Never let Don Quixote be out of our reader’s saddle-bags,” saystheguide to Spain; “it is the bestHand-Bookto La Mancha, moral and geographical; there is nothing in it imaginary except the hero’s monomania.”
What is more real than fiction after all?
The battle-fields of Spain are not more interesting than the spots immortalized by Cervantes’ marvellous novel, and one longs to make a pilgrimage to each. As we glide through the charmed region, how familiar do the names and aspects ofplaces seem to us? We are near the village of El Toboso, where lived Dulcinea, whose real name was said to be Aldonza Corchuelo; we pass group after group of windmills, any of which are grim enough to appear like giants to a madman now; here the Don was knighted, there he did penance; amid those craggy heights of the Sierra Morena, he found Cardenio; there glides the stream in which beautiful Dorothea bathed her feet. New names, new faces, new associations, seem alone untrue, unreal, and out of place; and we live all day in Don Quixote’s country among Don Quixote’s friends; Dulcinea, the hospitable goatherd, the wicked little Duchess, the homely Maritornes, the curate and the niece, all are here; and we look across the brown lines of the table-land, and see, or seem to see, the Don himself, spare and spectre-like, followed by burly Sancho Panza, riding out in search of adventure.
There are some who say thatDon Quixoteshould be eaten and drunk on Spanish ground, or its delicate flavour is wholly lost. For my part, I think if ever a book could bear translation and transportation, it is Cervantes’ novel of novels.There is nothing like it in any literature,—so new, so true, and so wonderful. What would life be without it? Take away the charms of style and the beauties of a language rare in beauties, and yet all remains that we most care for. Don Quixote, Sancho Panza, as creations, are too simple and too true to stand or fall by the ordinary test. Why,Don Quixotetranslated into a language as rude as that of Fighi islanders, would be every inchDon Quixotestill, and of what other novel can so much be said? Few travellers will omit Cervantes’ Biography from their saddle-bags. He was the noblest of noble Spaniards, and his life shines like a diamond without one flaw. What a sad life, too! EvenDon Quixote, the blossom of his riper intellect, brought no good fortune with it.
We leave La Mancha, and now the scene wholly changes. The air becomes soft and balmy; we see a garden of roses here, a cluster of palms there; white villages at the feet of green hills; sunny streams and golden sunshine everywhere. We are in Andalusia!
We had been recommended by our hotel-keeper in Madrid to the Hôtel Suisse, and, notwithstandinghis recommendation, entered its walls with fear and trembling. The English gentleman’s words rang yet in our ears, “Don’t sleep at Cordova!” and we could hardly believe our eyes when we drove into a pretty Moorish court, with flowers and orange-trees and a fountain in the midst, and light galleries running round, all white and shining as if of marble. But, after all, this might be only the whitewashing of the sepulchre. We forbore any exclamation of surprise, and asked to see our rooms. A respectable-looking chambermaid led the way to three very well-furnished, clean, and airy rooms, in which we installed ourselves, feeling no longer any apprehension of discomfort.
Indeed, we found everything good at Cordova,—attendance, beds, and food; we had nice coffee or chocolate in our own rooms at seven o’clock, a breakfast of cold game, omelettes, cutlets, and fruit at mid-day, and an excellenttable d’hôtedinner in the evening. Of course, we did not get, or expect to get, anything like English dishes; but we found the Spanish ones eatable and nutritious, andquid multa? I only allude to this subject, because it is a fashion to rail against Spanish inns,and, I think, unjustly. The charges are not higher than in Paris or Vienna, and the accommodation, in most cases, very good. You are not mulcted largely in the matter of vails, and though the servants are slow, they are obliging, and we found them, at least, honest.
The dilatoriness is very amusing. For instance, on the eve of quitting Cordova, we rang for our bill, ordering, at the same time, a basket of provisions to take with us. The summons was answered pretty promptly, and we were assured that our orders should be obeyed forthwith. After waiting a good hour, we rang again, for we were to rise next morning at five o’clock, and wished to go to bed. This time another waiter appeared, who seemed, however, to have a clear notion of what we wanted; and vanished, promising to see to things himself. Another hour passed, no bill, no basket, no trace of either; and as it was now ten o’clock, a very late hour for travellers, we determined to countermand the order, and stand our chance of procuring provisions by the way. But the third ring was answered to more purpose.
First came the bill, borne by the head-waiter;secondly, came a pair of roast partridges, steaming hot; thirdly, a loaf of bread: then there was a solemn pause of about a quarter of an hour, at the end of which time we got our change, our basket with the remaining provisions, and quiet for the night! Fancy, a simple order like this requiring nearly three hours for its execution anywhere but in Spain!
The best plan is to carry about with you an amusing novel, and take it up whenever you have to wait for anything or anybody. Scolding does no good,—rather, I think, aggravates the evil. At least, we never found that we were worse off than other people who did scold.
But I must go back to the time of our arrival. Cordova is a brighter and more bustling place than Toledo, and more Oriental. The houses, the dress, the handicrafts, the tools, and the songs, are thoroughly Arab; the climate is soft, the sky clear and southern, and flowers are out as if it were June!
Here, too, one sees plenty of costume. The sheepskin jacket, the nationalsombrero, the brilliant sash, the beautifully-embroidered gaiters of Cordova leather. The women, for the most part,wear cheap cotton dresses that have evidently come from Manchester, but the mantilla and fan are always used at mass.
We were too late to see inside the Mosque that afternoon, and having looked longingly at its beautiful old walls, now mellowed to a deep orange by the setting sun, we strolled to the bridge. Never, I think, have I seen a picture more sweet and peaceful. The Guadalquivir (how Arabic does the word sound as pronounced here!) reflected an opal sky, that changed from violet to pink, and from pink to pale daffodil. The olive-clad slopes lay in tender shadow, and beyond river, and bridge, and roof, rose the dark ridge of the Sierra Morena. The air was so warm that we sat down by the river-side till the colours died out of the sky and landscape, and the grave and beautiful twilight enveloped all. Then we went home to our comfortable inn, and brought out our books, and read so much of the glories of Cordova, that we dreamed all night that we were living in the times of Haroun Al Raschid. Why describe what has been described so often and so well? In these days, when every one travels, and every one who does not travel, reads the experienceof others, it would seem, then, useless to supplement Ford, and Borrow, and Gautier, and all the clever writers who have gone over the same ground. But it is impossible to write of Spain, and leave out Cordova, the Carthaginian capital, the rival of Cadiz in wealth and traffic, the birthplace of the Senecas, of Lucan, and of Averroes; alike the Athens and the Bagdad of the West; and the seat of a Caliphate, whose story reads like a page of theArabian Nights. We can understand how the Moors came to love Andalusia, and make it their home, planting the palm, the orange, and the vine, building mosque, and palace, and tower, turning into a paradise the lovely land they had sought in exile. A thousand years ago, the Ommiad Caliphs, descendants of a lonely refugee, ruled in a splendid city containing a million of inhabitants, three hundred mosques, nine hundred baths, six hundred inns, and all the elegancies and refinements of the most graceful civilization the world has yet seen. The Arabian historian, Al-Makkari, describes, in glowing words, “the running streams, limpid waters, luxuriant gardens, stately buildings, magnificent palaces, throngs of soldiers, pages,eunuchs, and slaves of all nations and religions, sumptuously attired in robes of silk and brocade; crowds of judges and Katib, theologians and poets, walking with becoming gravity, through the magnificent halls, spacious ante-rooms, and ample courts of the palace;” and having gone on to describe the ruin that overtook all, adds, with true Mahomedan resignation, “There is no God but Allah, the great, the Almighty!” And what is Cordova now, once the learned, the luxurious, the aristocratic? “It withered under the Spaniard,” says Mr. Ford, with pardonable sarcasm, “and, rich and learned under Roman and Moor, is now a dirty, benighted, ill-provided, decaying place, with a population of about fifty-five thousand.” He says elsewhere, “Cordova, poetic Cordova! when seen from afar with its drooping palms, the banners of the clime, its Moorish towers, walls, and pinnacles, appears beautiful as in the days of the luxurious, high-bred Abderrahman.... Alas for poor Cordova!”
But the Mosque remains still, though how defiled and degraded! Many of the portals have been walled up; the beautiful seat of the Caliph is filled with all kinds of church finery; the walls,once so delicately and richly carved, are hidden by tawdry decorations. You feel inclined to cry out vengeance against the despoilers of a temple which Solomon’s could not have surpassed.
It is the most wonderful place, and one can understand what a grand religious conception the Moors must have had when inside this, their temple of temples. After all, the Mahomedans were much more tolerant and enlightened than the people they alternately ruled and served, and were Unitarians,pur et simple, praying to the universal God, in whose name never was raised a more fitting house of prayer.
To have seen the Mosque of Cordova forms an era in one’s life. It is so vast, so solemn, so beautiful. You seem to be wandering at sunset time in a large and dusky forest, intersected by regular alleys of tall, stately palms. No matter in what direction you turn your face, northward, southward, eastward, westward, the same beautiful perspective meets your eye, file after file of marble and jasper columns supporting the double horse-shoe arch. Nothing can be more imposing, and at the same time graceful, than this arrangementof transverse aisles; and the interlaced arches, being delicately coloured in red and white, may not inaptly be compared to foliage of a palm-forest, flushed with the rays of the setting sun. If so impressive now, what must this place have been in the glorious days of Abderrahman, the Al-Raschid of Cordova, when the roofs blazed with arabesques of red and blue and “patines of bright gold;” the floors were covered with gorgeous carpets, and the aisles swarmed with thousands of worshippers in their bright Eastern dresses? The richest imagination cannot ever paint the scene, the readiest fancy cannot embellish it, and only those who have imbibed the rich colours of the East can close their eyes and dream of it. When the dream is over, cast your eyes along the long lines of columns, and you will see where the shoulders of spectators and worshippers of ages have left an enduring mark—a touching sight!—and then go into the once exquisite Maksura or Caliph’s seat, and weep to see what becomes of beautiful things in Spain!
Words are not strong enough to condemn thedesecration of such a temple,—a temple worthy of the purest religion the world will ever know. Let the Catholic services be celebrated within its walls, let the priests preach from its altars, let the people kneel on its floors—but why, in heaven’s name, should every exquisite relic of Moorish art, and every vestige of Moorish devotion, be ruthlessly destroyed? One marvels to see even the pillars and horse-shoe arches left intact—who knows for how long? And there are still some inlaid ceilings of thuya wood, and some fragments of arabesque stucco, as remarkable for richness of design and delicacy of work as any of the Alhambra. But to those who are curious in such things, I say—See them soon, or you will be too late. It is always a question of Now or Never in Spain.
It is curious that Cespedes, the Spanish Crichton, or, as some call him, the Spanish Michel-Angelo, wrote a learned dissertation, trying to prove that, where this glorious Mosque now stands, a temple once stood dedicated to Janus, erected by the Romans after the conquest of Spain. Cespedes was a native of Cordova (hijo de Corduba),and a man of whom she has every reason to be proud. He was a scholar, an antiquary, a poet, a painter, a critic. Look at his pictures “if ever you should go to Cordova.”
When you have seen the Mosque you will have seen all that the Spaniards have left there. There were formerly Roman antiquities of no ordinary interest, aqueducts, an amphitheatre, and monuments, of which not a trace remains. Will it be believed that, in making the prisons of the Inquisition, some statues, mosaics, and inscriptions were found, all of which were covered again by the holy tribunal as being Pagan.[7]Of the Aladdin-like palaces of Abderrahman, there is not a vestige; mediæval Cordova, with its architecture, its arts, and its prosperity, is disappearing, bit by bit, whilst, like some physical manifestation of energetic disease, a large and splendid Plaza for bull-fights has sprung up!
A melancholy Italian acted ascicerone, and carried us to a lovely Eastern garden, justoutside the town. Here were orange-trees bearing blossom and fruit, and the paler lemon, bosquets of myrtle and cistus making the air heavy with sweetness; clusters of gorgeous tropical flowers, crimson and yellow and purple; palm-trees glowing against the deep blue sky; ponds full of gold and silver fish, and everything lovely and gracious to both eye and senses.
Then we went to the market-place—a picturesque sight, for it was covered from end to end with heaps of the pretty hand-painted pottery of Andujar and Talavera. My friend was so enchanted with the taste displayed in this ware, both as to form and colour, that she bought a great quantity of it,—jugs, plates, cups, and basins, all shaped and coloured differently, and each piece costing no more than a few rials. This and lace from La Mancha—Don Quixote’s country—was all we found worth buying at Cordova; for the leather-work was not nearly so elaborate, and much costlier, than that so plentiful in Algiers. The lace is made of coarse thread, but is very pretty, and is used plentifully in Andalusia for decorating sheets and pillow-cases. We couldbut notice the extreme civility of the humble sellers of pottery in the market-place, and the impertinentnonchalanceof the smart shopman who sold us the lace. The former, a well-to-do Andalusian peasant-woman, could not take too much pains about pleasing us, carried us home to her little house, in order to show us her stock-in-trade, introduced us to her daughter, and smiled alike whether we approved or no. The shopmen puffed away at their cigars, laughed and talked among themselves whilst attending to their customers, cared little whether we bought or no, and greeted us in quite a familiar fashion when we came away. Certainly the Spaniards play at business in a most amateur style, and can never be accused, as we are, of being a nation of shopkeepers. The ladies laugh and talk with the shopmen over their purchases; and if we may believe Mesonero and other satirists of the day, many a rendezvous is made under the pretext of “shopping.” You cannot take up a fashionable Spanish novel or play in which the ladies don’t talk of assignations and shops as if the one belonged to the other; and whilstthe scrupulous way in which young girls are chaperoned wherever they go, would seem to hint at some danger lurking in their favourite occupation.
Young Spanish ladies never walk out unattended, and whenever Englishwomen chose to do so, their deviation from social orthodoxy is severely commented upon. Spanish ladies too, I have read somewhere, when promenading the streetsen grande tenue, are flattered by the admiration, expressed or implied, of passers-by!—a notion so opposed to our English sense of delicacy that it is entertained with difficulty. Yet the bearing of the pretty, dark-eyed ladies we saw about us, coquetting with the fan, sweeping the ground with long trains only suitable for a ball or presentation, raising their skirts with ungloved jewelled hands, so as to show their pretty feet, go far to support the notion. A well-dressed English lady does not think of her dress; one cannot help seeing that a well-dressed Madrilenian does. She is very attractive, notwithstanding.
I would not advise any one to hurry awayfrom Cordova, especially if he is an artist. The place is so picturesque in itself, and so full of poetic association, that a few days may well be devoted to it, especially in the beautiful autumn, when all kinds of glories are cast about hill, and tower, and river.
“THE SWEETEST MORSEL OF THE PENINSULA.”—COB-WALLS OR THE HOUSE THAT CAIN BUILT.—PALMS.—THE GOOD WORKS OF THE SISTERS.—THE PRIESTS AND THE PEOPLE.—IS SPAIN UTOPIA?
“THE SWEETEST MORSEL OF THE PENINSULA.”—COB-WALLS OR THE HOUSE THAT CAIN BUILT.—PALMS.—THE GOOD WORKS OF THE SISTERS.—THE PRIESTS AND THE PEOPLE.—IS SPAIN UTOPIA?
THE journey from Cordova to Malaga lasts from six in the morning till five in the afternoon. You are, of course, aroused at four and carried off to the station at five; so that you are really on the way much longer. But the scenery of Andalusia is so varied and beautiful that you are almost sorry when the train reaches its destination.
Beautiful Andalusia! so quaintly called by a lover of it, “the sweetest morsel of the Peninsula.” Who can forget or over-praise its voluptuous southern sky, its rich brown plains, its glistening white villages peeping amid groves of the cistus,the ilex, and the cork-tree, its green slopes crowned with Moorish towers and palaces, its delicious climate, its trickling streams, its sweet-smelling flowers?
The railway is new and carries one through a most astounding bit of country. After passing leagues of olive orchards, we found ourselves suddenly in a wholly different world. First came range after range of cold grey mountains, then perpendicular columns of limestone of gigantic size, evidently thrown up by volcanic action. These rocks and their counterparts have been admirably drawn by Gustave Doré in his splendidDon Quixote, and are quite awful in their height and barrenness.
The train went at a snail’s pace right through the heart of the gorge, and during this part of the journey, most of the passengers got out and walked! I suppose the line was not quite safe, and indeed the soil is so light and sulphurous that it seems impossible ever to make it so. We kept our seats, however. What a slow journey it was! Sometimes we hardly seemed to move at all, and kept stopping at littlesignal stations so long that we read and wrote letters, worked, and sketched, as if at home in our own drawing-room.
The guards were most civil, as usual, and did their best to explain matters to us. The railway would go quickly enough by-and-by, they said, but the road was a difficult one to work, &c., &c.Mañana, mañana(to-morrow), everything will go quickly to-morrow, is the usual cry.
The villages of Andalusia are very picturesque, and remind you of the west of England, only here the foliage is richer, the skies are of a deeper blue, the landscape is wilder and more varied. Here the white cottages glisten, not amid groves of beech, elm, and willow, but amid the orange-tree, the ilex, and the olive; whilst the uncultivated plains, instead of being purple with heath and golden with gorse, are barren and sunburnt as the face of a gipsy, save where thickets of the cistus and the cork-tree break the dreary sameness.
But there is more than a fancied resemblance between the home of the Andalusian peasant and the Devonshire labourer. The walls of his cottageare constructed after precisely the same fashion, and of precisely the same materials—that primitive, cheap, durable mixture of earth and reeds, which, when whitewashed, tones down into a beautiful cream colour, surpassing the richest marble for softness and mellowness of tint. In beautiful Andalusia, “the poor cottager contents himself with cob for his walls, and thatch for his covering;” as quaintly says an old English writer, and what in England is called cob, with all its varieties of concrete cob, dry cob, rad and dab, &c., is only another variety of the tapia, or mud wall of the Arab and Moro-Andalusian. Of concrete cob indeed, that is, a mixture of lime, rough sand, pebbles, earth, and reeds rammed into cases, are formed not only the noble walls of Cordova and Granada, but the Moorish watch-towers oratalayas, that so grandly rise along the southern sea-coast. We might, if we were so disposed, trace this economical and excellent masonry down to Cain, the builder of the first city—at least, so says a learned authority on the subject.[8]And guided by the finger-markof learned authorities, we might follow its progress from east to west; for the simple art of cob-building links the cities and civilizations of theancient Egyptians and Phœnicians with those of the Devonshire peasant, the Andalusian, and the Moor of Barbary, of to-day. No one who travels through the south of Spain will fail to observe the picturesque aspect of its villages; and I have gone out of my way to notice this feature in them, because any relationship in the arts is interesting to a traveller. He will find traces of cob alike in India, in Mexico, in Greece, and in Italy; but nowhere is the original architecture of the Phœnicians more noteworthily copied than in the sunny plains of Andalusia.
After traversing this wilderness of limestone run mad, we glided into a warmer and lovelier zone. We fancied ourselves in Algeria. There were golden plumes of palm-trees waving against a deep blue sky; orange and lemon groves at the foot of bluer hills; hedges of aloe and wild cactus by the roadside; flowers and sunshine and sweetness everywhere. It was Sunday, too, and pretty it was to see the handsome Andalusian peasants in their gay dresses alight and descend at the different stations, with orange-branches, bearing golden fruit and glossy leaf, in their hands. Wherever westopped there came Murillo-like children to the door, bringing glasses of fresh water, saying, “Agua fresca, agua fresca.”
At the end of these beautiful Eastern pictures came Malaga, a large, white, dusty town, with a quiet blue sea at its feet, and above and around it the most wonderfully-coloured hills, purple, rose-colour, violet, blood-red, rainbow-hued in the sunset and colourless never.
We found Malaga, in spite of its delicious climate, its bright sea, its gorgeous hills, and its Eastern gardens, a disagreeable place. The streets always smelt of fish,—raw fish, cooked fish, fresh fish, dried fish, stale fish. The common people are dirty and unpleasant, a mongrel race, half-gipsy, half-bandit, with an evil look. The pavements are filthy, and all the time of our stay a sirocco was blowing, so that we were choked with dust wherever we went.
We stayed here several days nevertheless; and though we never liked Malaga, could not fail to be enchanted with the oriental look of the place. Just outside of the town were lovely gardens full of roses and geraniums in blossom, and here andthere clusters of palms overspreading white-domed Moorishalgibe, or wells; whilst we drove for miles along a road hedged in by the beautiful African reed, so like gigantic corn, that is golden in the sunshine and black as the cypress at twilight.
The colouring of the mountains is most delicious, and in part makes up for the fishiness and filthiness of the streets. A ray of the setting sun turns the whole wild sierra into a pageantry of pink, deepest violet, crimson, and amber, and makes you long to be an artist in order to transfix the wonderful scene. Mountain and palm, city and tower and sea, seen through the medium of so rare an atmosphere, might well tempt an artist to linger here.
The English Consul was very kind to us, and from him we learned a good deal that was interesting about the place. He took us to the Protestant Cemetery—a beautifully kept garden covering a hill by the sea-side, from whence we had a lovely view. It is a sweet spot; the graves lie in clusters around the chapel, and are half hidden by all kinds of tropic trees and flowers, the graceful pepper-tree, the orange, the lemon,the palmetto, the cistus, the lily; whilst above them stretch sunny slopes, newly planted with the vine and the fig. The soil is very red in colour and full of iron, which accounts for the beauty and the fertility of the landscape everywhere. I believe that for this boon of a burial-place, alike English and foreign Protestants are solely indebted to the father of the present Consul. Protestantism is an obnoxious weed in Catholic Spain, and all those unfortunate Protestants who died at Malaga before our Consul’s intervention, were buried like dogs in holes dug along the sea-shore. Now, no matter what a man’s faith and nation may be, if shut out of the Spanish burial-ground, he finds a resting-place here.
What gave us as much pleasure as anything in Malaga, was the sight of some orphanages, founded by a young, rich, and beautiful Spanish widow lady, who, having lost her husband and children by sudden deaths, devotes all her time and money to charitable works. The schools are under the direction of the Sisters of St. Vincent de Paul, and the letter of introduction we carried with us procured ready admittance. The Sisters who receivedus had beautiful faces, a little sad perhaps, but expressive of the utmost peace and piety. One was a girl of twenty, and she had the sweetest eyes, brown, soft, and shy, with a child’s complexion, all pink and white, and a child’s rosy mouth—though not a child’s gaiety.
“But you are a Frenchwoman,ma sœur,” we said; “and you too!” we added, turning to the elder sister. “How is this? Are there not Spanish women enough to work for their own poor and fatherless?”
The elder sister shook her head.
“There are plenty of good Spanish women devoted to charity,” she answered, “but they seem wanting in energy and the love of organisation. They are content to serve, but have no desire to act and to travel. Now, we go to the uttermost ends of the earth and like it.”
“Yes; you see plenty of the world,ma sœur, you are always busy on good works. It is an enviable lot.”
She smiled, part pleased, part sad.
“We are content if we can do a little in the service of the Virgin and the blessed Saviour; but, alas! how little!”
“Do not say that,ma sœur. We who stand outside the Church are made better for your example of self-denial and benevolence.”
“Ah! you are Protestants, of course. Many come here to see the children at work.”
We now made the round of the school-rooms andateliers, where we found children divided according to age. The little ones, from three to five, were seated on tiers of benches, as in our infant-schools, and were at lessons under the superintendence of a sweet-looking young woman, also a native of France. The system seemed admirable. The teacher held up a letter, and instantaneously every little hand waved, and every little mouth opened to say, “I see an A,” “I see a B,” “I see a C,” and so on, till the whole alphabet had been gone through. Their little lessons in spelling and arithmetic were gone through on the same plan, every response being accompanied by a gesture. The children seemed thoroughly to enjoy the lesson, and no wonder. It was as good as a game of gymnastics to them. I am sure this system is the only desirable one to pursue with very young children, who are like young animals, always wanting tofrisk about. Every one who has had anything to do with village schools knows how difficult it is for the mistress to keep the little ones still, and how they are scolded, sent to the corner, and kept over hours for sinning in this respect. But the Sisters have no troubles of this kind, and by keeping body and mind alike active no time or temper is wasted on either side.
From the infant-school we went into the class-room andateliersof the elder girls, and examined some very beautiful needlework, thread-lace, and embroidery, some completed and ready for sale, others in process. These children are all taken from the lowest classes; their work is sold and the proceeds set apart for them till such a time as they need a dowry, or outfit for service. Each child is, therefore, laying up a little nest-egg for herself, and is, at the same time, acquiring a profitable and womanly handicraft, and, what is even more important, a good moral training.
In a town like Malaga, where the lower ranks have been leavened with the yeast of brigandage, such an influence must be invaluable. I do not remember the average number of little scholarswho come daily to be fed and taught by the Sisters of St. Vincent de Paul, but it is a large one.
What Malaga must be in the summer-time I have no idea, not having lived in tropical climates; but whilst we were there, in the last week of November, the heat was very trying. The much-vaunted Alameda, which is really a pretty walk, was unbearable on account of the wind, and sun, and dust; and it was not till we had got a mile out of the town that the air was fresh and pure. There are some charming country-houses with gardens, around Malaga, but it is only within the last half-dozen years that the proprietors have been able to use or let them. The banditti ruled the country with a rod of iron; land was comparatively worthless; travelling unsafe. As late as 1857 murder and assassination were so common in the streets of Malaga that a resident[9]wrote home, “The country is in a miserable state. The streets are not safe for a single person late at night. Murder is not thought much more of here than pocket-picking in England.”
Later, however, government has been working with a will to put down the brigands, and with such success that purchasing land is become a profitable speculation. People may now build country-houses, plant groves, and vineyards in safety. It is a pity there is no good hotel in the suburbs, for I think few invalids could support the bad smells and heat of the town.
Besides the palms and the purple hills, Malaga possesses superb vineyards. Who does not associate the very name of the place with raisins and sweet wine? And those who want to know what a Spanish vintage is, should come here in the early autumn. Wherever we went, we came in contact with mules heavily laden with boxes of raisins, of which I believe a million are exported every year; but the vintage was over, and after a week we were ready to go into Granada. Whilst we are yet in Catholic Spain (for who thinks of anything but the Moors at Granada?) let me recur to a very important subject. Of course, the passing traveller through Spain has very little opportunity of judging such important questions as the practicalworking of the Church. But it is a question of the deepest interest, and cannot fail to rise in an earnest mind again and again. Spain is the country of all others which Romanists will be inclined to regard as the faithful child of the only true Church. Is she indeed as faithful as tradition warrants—as love takes on credence? Alas! I fear the most devoted Catholic would not be able to say, yes. The first thing that strikes you on coming into the country is the contemptuous tone taken by all classes when speaking of the priests. What wonder, indeed? The priesthood is recruited from the lowest ranks; the priest is uneducated, ill-paid, often reputed to be immoral, always without dignity. Confessional is a dead letter. Infidelity is found among the rich; immorality among the poor. Wherever we went, we noticed the coarse, dull faces of the priests, and the irreverence of the people towards them. Of course there are exceptions, but, as a rule, the priest is held in slight esteem, whether deserving or no. “Not even the courtesy of Spaniards can make them behave decently to a priest,” says a candid and careful writer, who spent several yearsin Spain, and published some admirable letters on the practical working of the Church there.[10]From these letters, and my own observations, I have come to the painful conclusion that good Romanists will find Spain far from being the orthodox Utopia of their imagination. The churches are falling into ruin, the clergy are miserably paid, partly by a tax, partly by fees, a parish priest receiving about £80 a year, abeneficiado, or curate, about £40. Confessional and Communion are neglected by the young; and, where orthodoxy exists, it goes hand in hand with the deepest ignorance. Mariolatry is carried to the highest pitch, and the most absurd stories of modern miracles are believed in, and the Scriptures are a sealed book. In a little volume called theManual of the Seminarista, is a chapter on the Scriptures which, the author states, “boys and women are not to have, because their natural simplicity is often mixed with ignorance and presumption, and leads them into heresies.” “Never shall I forget,” says the author first quoted, “the eagerness with which Don F—— borrowed my Spanish Testament when he found it was what hecalledpuro. “We only get garbled scraps here,” he said; and he gives some most interesting and valuable letters from a Spanish priest to an English clergyman, wherein occur the following passages: “As you well know, the true and genuine gospel of Christ cannot be preached in Spain, but the gospel of the Pope, which is a very different thing indeed from that. Here there is not the Spirit, for where the Spirit is there is liberty. Our very bishops have nothing in common with the Apostles: they do not preach the Word—they do not instruct the people. All they do is for hire; they accommodate everything to their sensual conceptions and earthly desires.... The Bishop of —— has never preached the word of God, and so ignorant is he that he knows nothing except the ceremonies, and this is all that he requires in a priest. At the last synod for providingcuras(priests) he forbade the theologians, as is the old custom, to test the candidates’ sufficiency by theological questions and dissertations! The Spaniards, having all these things before their eyes, laugh at the mission of the Christian priesthood, are losing their faith and morals, and sinking into atheism.... It cannotbe denied that the Spaniards of the present day are generally opposed to Roman practices, and rather agree with you and me in thinking and doing than with them; such is the force of reason and truth. However, while they are giving up the errors of Romanism, they have no rule of faith and morality to embrace, and, led as by a blind impulse, each has prescribed a liberal and irregular belief for himself, which sometimes he follows and sometimes relinquishes.... Will you, then, associate yourselves together for the work of the Gospel in these regions? Will you, in your charity, lead this people to the true faith of Christ? Will you recall them from atheism or indifferentism to the Church of God? Establish evangelical missions, and support them with your pious alms. The Romanists labour night and day to propagate their errors; they send their fanatical missionaries to go round the world, and all sorts of sectaries run eagerly to the work. But ye, who profess the true faith of Christ, will ye leave a thirsty people to perish, and give them naught out of your abundance when they ask?” These extracts, short as they are, throw floods of light upon the presentstate of religious feeling in Spain. I remember that we saw, with some surprise, a translation of Renan’sVie de Jésusin a bookseller’s shop at Madrid, and heard two young men discuss it over their purchases with no few heresies expressed or implied. I suppose infidelity is a lesser crime than Protestantism in Catholic Spain. Protestantism is, in fact, entirely forbidden. Foreigners, being Protestants, are allowed to meet together for religious purposes at the office or house of their respective Consuls; but any Spaniard found among the congregation would be liable to some punishment. In 1850, the Rev. James Meyrick was assured by a canon of Cordova Cathedral that, according to the existing law of Spain, any Spaniard departing from the Romish doctrine is liable to capital punishment, though he added that he thought no government would now attempt to enforce that law. Any Protestant reading the service of the Protestant Church, excepting under the protection of his flag, would, with his congregation, be liable to fines, imprisonment, or dismissal from the country.
A few years ago it was necessary to have a certificate of confession before holding any officeunder the government, and the certificates were bought and sold for tenpence! Of course the greatest ignorance exists regarding the Scriptures. People confound the legends of modern times with the sacred history, and have as much faith in the one as the other. Every one has read Borrow’s extraordinary adventures in Spain, and will recall the story of the Alcalde, who after discoursing learnedly about Bentham, Lope de Vega, and Plato, took up the New Testament and asked, “What book is this?” Upon Borrow answering him he said, “Ha, ha! how very singular!—yes, I remember. I have heard that the English highly prize this eccentric book. How very singular that the countrymen of the great Bentham should set any value upon that old monkish book!” Mariolatry is carried to the same excess one sees in Italy. Ford, in hisGatherings, gives a striking instance of this in describing the execution of the robber Veneno. “The criminal exclaimedViva la religion! Viva el rey! Viva el nombre de Jesus!All of which met no echo from those who heard him. His dying cry was,Viva la Virgen Santisima!At these words the devotion to the goddess ofSpain broke forth in one general acclamation,Viva la Santisima!”
In the reign of Charles III., 1759-1780, a law was enacted, requiring a declaration upon oath of a firm belief in the Immaculate Conception, from everybody taking his degree at the university, or being admitted into any corporation, civil or religious, or even into a mechanic’s guild. The Virgin’s altars, images, robes and jewels, are gorgeous beyond description. At her name both priest and congregation made reverence. It is to her altars that the people flock. It is she who is represented as the guide and ruler of the Church, and the intercessor between God and man. To her are addressed most of the hymns and prayers by which indulgences are obtained. There is one hymn in a little book of prayers called theNovena, the repetition of which will procure more indulgence than a year of rigorous penances. This indulgence clears you from penance, or the indefinite consequences of neglected penance in purgatory; and if by a certain number of litanies, rosaries, and hymns, so much indulgence is gained, who would fast or otherwise do penance?
One cannot but lament this state of things, and equally lamentable is the condition of the priests and the position of the priesthood. There are, doubtless, many good and devout men in their ranks, but, as a body, they have lost caste and influence. When the friars were all ejected from the monasteries, they were weighed in the balance and found wanting; and friars and priests alike suffer still from a tide of antagonistic opinion. “No one knows, and no one will know until a revolution takes place,” said a Spaniard to me, “how the priests are disliked.” We ourselves noticed on several occasions a very low type of face among the priests with whom we came in contact, and their appearance is slatternly and often dirty in the extreme. These circumstances are easily accounted for when one reads of the way in which the army of the church is recruited. Most of the ejected friars were sons of peasants; and such a prejudice exists against taking holy orders, that very few parents of any social standing care to dedicate their sons to a profession so poor and so despised. It is true that a begging student of Salamanca may become a bishop, but that is theexceptionable case, the usual fate of a Spanish priest is to end his days a parishcurawith an income of £40 a-year. I am sorry to say that the moral character of the clergy stands low.
It is pleasant to turn from such unsatisfactory prospects to the Sisters and their good works. Their predecessors had also their share of suffering. At the same time that the Government turned out the friars, many rich convents were confiscated too. There were three at Malaga that shared this fate. The nuns had entered with a dowry of from £120 to £400, which the abbess had spent on lands. They were living in the utmost comfort, each with her own apartments and servant. On a sudden, all was taken, and they were thrust out of their paradise as naked and helpless as Adam and Eve. Most of them had no home to go to, and gladly procured the humblest employment; some, it is said, perished of want. The worst of all was that the tide of public feeling had set so strongly against them, that they suffered torments of fear. No wonder that the priests were hated, for the memory of the Inquisition was still fresh, but the poor nuns had led harmlesslives, often charitable ones, nursing the sick, and teaching the ignorant.[11]
There is no doubt that the ill-judged favour of royalty does more than anything else to fan the flames of popular dislike towards both priest and nun. Who is the Père Claret, the Queen’s confessor? An adventurer, who has been alternately soldier, ecclesiastic, author, missionary, and who formerly gained a certain notoriety for having written a coarse book. Who is the Sœur Patrocinio, abbess of the convent of St. Pascual d’Aranjuez? An intriguing impostor, once condemned by the public tribunal for having pretended to the miraculous possession of the Stigmata, or wounds of Christ.
Alas! I think every impartial traveller in Catholic Spain must conclude his observations in the words of Pugin:—“Pleasant meadows, happy peasants, all holy monks, all holy priests, holy everybody. Such charity and such unity where every man was a Catholic. I once believed in this Utopia myself, but when tested by stern facts, it all melts away like a dream.”