Southern Spain Part 1

Southern Spain.

by A.F. Calvert.

PREFACE

Few travellers have leisure enough to traverse the wide realm of tawny Spain in its every part. Those who must confine their attention to a single province naturally select Andalusia, where all the Northerner's preconceptions of the South find realization. The wild scenery of Southern Spain, the gay open-air life of the people, the monuments attesting the splendour of the extinct civilization of the Moor, the spell of romance which still holds its cities, makes this land one of the most interesting and fascinating in Europe to the artist, the archaeologist, and the dreamer.

The present volume, mainly the embodiment of personal impressions and observations, is intended partly to supply the place of a guide-book to this part of the Peninsula, and with that object I have brought together as much of history, art, and topography as the traveller is likely to a.s.similate. Into the descriptive matter I have introduced a little gossip, which will, I hope, be not found altogether irrelevant, and may serve to beguile the tedium of a bare recital of facts.

While I have endeavoured to make the book as useful to travellers as within the prescribed limits was possible, I have essayed to give it, by means of the ill.u.s.trations, a more permanent value. It is on the brush rather than on the pen that I have relied to convey an idea of the gorgeous panorama of Southern Spain, and to recall to the returned traveller his impressions of the land.

As a _vade-mec.u.m_, then, for the tourist, and as an alb.u.m and souvenir of the fairest portion of the realm of the Catholic King, I hope that the present volume will be of use to the public, despite the shortcomings it doubtless contains. For rendering these as few as possible, I have to thank several friends who have looked through the proofs. To one in particular, Mr. E. B. d'Auvergne, I am indebted for various sc.r.a.ps of original and entertaining information.

A. F. CALVERT.

CHAPTER I

CADIZ

Cadiz was the prettiest of all the towns of Spain, thought Byron. I would rather say that she was the most beautiful. She rises out of the sea--the boundless salt ocean that stretches from pole to pole--and the crests of the waves which lick her feet are not whiter than her walls.

And these by day are bathed in liquid gold, for the sun seems to linger here ere he says good-night to Europe. By night the city gleams like washed silver, and her sheen is more magical than that of the dark yet phosph.o.r.escent water. Of sun and sea, light and air, is Cadiz compounded. She is the Gateway of the West, not sultry and southern, but salt and windy and dazzling white. It is thus she appears to you, especially when you come to her over the sea--that sea which hereabouts has so often been splashed with British blood. How often the pale yellow cliffs of Spain to the southward, and those of the lovely sh.o.r.e of Algarve to the north, have reverberated with the booming of the cannon; how often the strand has been littered with dead men, whose gaping wounds the kindly ocean had washed clean! Browning's lines recur to the memory:

"n.o.bly, n.o.bly Cape St. Vincent to the north-west died away, Sunset ran, one glorious blood-red, reeking into Cadiz Bay."

For you can see the lighthouse on Cape Trafalgar, and the Bay of Cadiz itself has been the scene of some of England's most glorious and desperate feats of arms. There is little stirring now in the wide harbour, where the ships ride lazily at anchor, and their crews crowd to the bulwarks and exchange pleasantries with your boatman as he pulls you towards the quay. And so you step on sh.o.r.e, and enter the fair city.

It looks so fresh and fragrant that you would not think it ancient. But Cadiz is the first-born city of Spain, probably the first foothold of civilization on the sh.o.r.es of the Atlantic Ocean. It marks a new and tremendously important step forward in the world's progress. After Heaven knows how many attempts and false starts, the Phnicians dared what no people of the ancient world had dared before. The Pillars of Hercules were regarded as the western boundary of the world: beyond was nothingness. And one day, with the east wind filling his sails and fear in the hearts of his crew, some forgotten Columbus of Sidon or of Tyre pa.s.sed through the strait, and turning northward, beached his little galley on the peninsula where we stand. Civilization--arts and letters, commerce and social life, and all that makes life dear to modern men--had burst the narrow limits of the Middle Sea, and first hoisted its flag o'er Cadiz.

The thought is not uninspiring. It is not unreasonable to suppose that the first keel that ever ploughed the Atlantic grazed this strand. It is likely enough that the fleets of lost Atlantis, if that mystical isle possessed a ship, resorted hither, for the copper and precious metals of Tarshish. What voyages have begun from this port, from the little Phnician craft setting forth in quest of the Tin Islands of the far north, to brave Cervera leading out his squadron to its preordained doom!

"It may be that the gulfs shall wash us down, It may be we shall touch the happy isles."

And careless of fate, all these dauntless sailors have adventured forth into the deep.

In after years, the Phnicians and Carthaginians had settlements here, and built great ugly palaces overlooking the sea and the estuaries. With their curling black beards I seem to see them, robed in the real Tyrian purple, reclining on their terraces even as their forefathers are shown in that strange picture in our National Gallery, "The Eve of the Deluge."

Their deluge was the Roman Invasion, when, in a good hour for humanity, Latin superseded Semitic civilization, and the cruel G.o.ds of Sidon bowed before the young and beautiful G.o.ds of Rome. Gades or Gaddir--I give it its two oldest names--did not suffer by its change of masters. Its mart was crowded, its merchants known from Britain to the Fortunate Isles, from Lusitania to Arabia. Much wealth engendered luxury. Life in Gades was feverish and distempered. The people had not forgotten the worship of Astarte, and the Gaditane dancing-girls proved themselves worthy daughters of the G.o.ddess. When the G.o.ds were dethroned the sensual city pined; and under the austere yoke of Islam it languished and all but faded away. It is interesting to note that its Moslem inhabitants were drawn from the old race of Philistines, some of whose G.o.ds had probably been worshipped here in the Punic days.

When Seville fell, the port continued subject to the Almohade Emir of Fez. Alfonso the Learned subdued it without difficulty in 1262, and filled it with colonists from the north coast of Spain, from such places as Santander and Laredo. But the Philistine taint in two senses was never eradicated; Cadiz remained ever financial and commercial, and cared nothing for art. Her brightest and blackest days followed the discovery of America, when she soon eclipsed Seville as the mart for the produce of the New Indies. Her wealth, not once but many times, wellnigh proved her downfall. Threatened again and again by the Barbary corsairs, she saw a far more terrible foe before her walls in 1587, in the person of Sir Francis Drake, who inflicted incalculable injury on her shipping.

Worse was to come nine years later, when the English, under the command of the Earl of Ess.e.x, scaled the walls, sacked the city from end to end, slaughtered the inhabitants, profaned the churches and burnt the public buildings, and sailed away with enormous booty. Yet so quickly did Cadiz recover from this terrific catastrophe, that she again tempted the cupidity of our countrymen in 1625. But this time the Dons were well prepared and gave our fleet so warm a reception that we were compelled to retire with heavy loss.

The city attained its zenith of opulence in the first quarter of the eighteenth century, when it had become almost the exclusive entrepot for the traffic between Southern Europe and the Americas. Numerous royal privileges and concessions secured it almost a monopoly of the trade.

But no one organ can hope to escape an infection attacking the whole system. Spain in the eighteenth century was dying from that commonest of national diseases--dry-rot. Yet as late as 1770 Adam Smith did not hesitate to say that the merchants of London had not yet the wealth to compete with those of Cadiz, and a few years later the value of the bullion landed at its quays was estimated at 125 millions sterling.

Yet it was this bloated, purse-proud city, strangely enough, that proved the ark of refuge for Spain when the innumerable hosts of Napoleon swarmed over the land. Here were preserved the insignia of national independence, and here, amid the thunder of guns and in the lap of the ocean, was born the New and Free Spain. Cadiz proved a second Covadonga. The focus of the const.i.tutional movement, she was savagely a.s.sailed by the Absolutists and their French allies. The defence of Trocadero, on the other side of the bay, against the forces of the Duc d'Angouleme popularized the name of the place throughout Europe. The pages of Balzac abound in allusions to that mischievous and futile attempt of the Government of the Restoration to rivet on Spaniards fetters that no Frenchman would wear. Then came a French invasion of another sort, of the Romanticists--of De Musset and Gautier, and the long-haired followers of Byron.

It has often seemed to me that every city belongs to one particular age.

This being a fancy contrary to fact, I will put it this way--that in every city there is always some one period of human history more readily recoverable than any other. This may not be the period which has left its mark most conspicuously on the physiognomy of the place; more probably it will be determined by your own preconceptions, derived from study or chance reading. John Addington Symonds observed that an island near Venice, the name of which I have forgotten, immediately recalled to him not the great days of the Republic with which it had an historical connection, but the later and decadent days of bag-wig and hair powder.

At Cadiz I could have wished to think of the Phnicians, thus hardily adventuring into the wide ocean; or of Drake and his gentlemen adventurers, "bound wrist to bar, all for red iniquity"; but instead I fancied myself back in the 'thirties of last century, and thought of De Musset and his "Andalouse" and his lovely Spanish girls. Is it possible that Andalusia in those days of our grandfathers _was_ the Andalusia of the Romanticists? At Cadiz, I beguiled myself into believing so--why, I cannot explain. Perhaps it was due to the unexpected appearance of a native--a distinctively Andalusian--costume in the streets. Nowhere else in Spain is the mantilla more conspicuous or more gorgeous. A French writer gives a selection of toilettes worn at a _Corrida de toros_, which, as I never a.s.sisted at one of these functions in Cadiz, I repeat: "All pink, coral necklace, white lace mantilla, big bunches of carnations in the hair and corsage; a blond head seen beneath a transparent mantilla, like a frail spider's web, red corsage and white gown; coral ear-rings, with bunches of roses; all black, with a white mantilla; all white, with a black mantilla; pale green gown with a blue bolero and white roses; shawl draped, brocaded, with a wealth of carnations in the hair; black dress and mantilla, violets in the hair; gold coloured shawl, embroidered with red roses, comb like a tiara set with bright-hued flowers," etc., etc. With confections such as these dazzling the eyes, it is no wonder that I began to see visions of gentlemen in black silk tights, dark green frock coats, and snowy white cravats, stammering Castilian with a Parisian accent.

It would be hard, too, to keep the mind fixed on remoter and more heroic ages, for Cadiz is singularly dest.i.tute of antiquities. The descendants of the Philistines could not be expected to respect ancient monuments!

But what they spared our freebooter ancestors burned. The old Cathedral, built in the thirteenth century, was almost totally consumed by the flames. When I say that the new building dates from 1720, I fear that your interest in it will expire. But it is at least imposing; and the choir stalls are very fine. Then there is the Capuchin Convent, where Murillo met his death by falling from a scaffolding while painting the picture of the Espousals of St. Catherine. Another picture by the same master may be seen in this church--St. Francis receiving the Stigmata.

The little Academia de Bellas Artes contains some admirable specimens of the work of Zurbaran, brought from the Charterhouse of Jerez.

These are the only sights in the tourists' agent's acceptation of the word, and it is likely enough that you will think three hours devoted to the city amply sufficient. Yet its situation at the end of a narrow spit like that at the entrance to the Suez Ca.n.a.l--in mid-sea as it were--its a.s.sociations, and its brightness and cleanliness, make it for some the most charming of Spanish towns. Crenellated walls enclose it on all sides, the s.p.a.ce between them and the water's edge being devoted to quays, promenades, and gardens. There are forts at the extremity of the peninsula--the Isla de Leon, as it is called. The streets are all very straight, very narrow, and very clean. Through the _rejas_ across the doorways you obtain glimpses of trim little patios, bedecked with flowering plants. Occasionally you come out into a little square, prettily laid out with gardens, like the Plaza de Mina, where the loungers asleep on the seats irresistibly recall dear old busy London.

[Ill.u.s.tration: AYAMONTE (THE GATEWAY OF ANDALUSIA)]

The charming Parque Genoves, bordering the sea, reminds us of the great merchant race of Italy who had their warehouses here. It is exquisite to walk by night along the sea wall, which at some points rises sheer upwards from the water, and to inhale the breezes blown straight across, one would like to think, from the West Indies. You will crave for that cool wind afterwards, in the parched interior of Andalusia.

From Cadiz you may go to Seville by steamer up the Guadalquivir, but it is far from being an interesting trip. The river is about as picturesque, and in the same way, as the Dutch Rhine. However, in these days of distorted aesthetics--when all that we thought beautiful we are now told is ugly, and _vice versa_--it is quite possible that some rapturous travellers will extol the mystical loveliness of the plains of the Guadalquivir, rating their charms far above the vulgar, blatant scenery of Switzerland and the Riviera, which is at the disadvantage of being at once realized by the mere ordinary person. _En pa.s.sant_ I cannot refrain from expressing my wonder why superior people of this sort go abroad. If Rhenish and Italian panoramas are suggestive to them only of oleographs and Christmas numbers, have we not our Abanas and Pharpars in England--the Ess.e.x marshes, the treeless downs of Suss.e.x, the odoriferous banks of the Mersey, for instance?

But I digress--and I counsel you against doing so, but recommend you to proceed to Seville, if that be your destination, by rail direct. The journey occupies eight and a half hours, and is not among the most agreeable experiences of a lifetime. The railway runs right round the bay of Cadiz, touching several towns of importance. That any of them are worth a break of journey I doubt. Puerto Santa Maria is said to be much resorted to by toreros and their admirers. I have never heard what attracts them there, but indeed my interest in bull-killing was never more than languid. The country round the bay is marshy. It is traversed by the river Guadalete, beside which, it seems, Don Roderic was not slain, and the battle never took place. You must look for the scene of that epoch-making encounter farther towards the strait near the Rio Barbate.

Between Cadiz and Seville you stop at the buffet of Jerez to drink a gla.s.s of sherry in its native place. As most people know, all the good wine comes to England; but at Jerez I think, in all reason, the price of the wine might be a little lower and its quality a good deal higher. The city, of which I only caught a glimpse, looks like an inland Cadiz, very clean, white, sunny, and bright.

And so we creep onwards over dreary country--like the South African veld--to Lebrija, an old Moorish town with a great church on a height, apparently the only building of note in the place. Further on is Utrera, renowned for bulls and for possessing one of the thirty deniers for which Judas sold his Master. It should be an interesting town, with its Moorish castle and walls still extant. But the same individuality is not to be expected of the smaller Spanish as of the lesser Italian cities; for the history of the one country has been a record of steady centralization; of the other, obstinate decentralization. In Utrera, and Moron, and Lebrija--even in Cadiz and Granada--there were no independent princes or ambitious munic.i.p.alities to foster and to reward native art.

The genius and talent of Spain flocked to great centres like Seville, Toledo, Valladolid, and Zaragoza, and became ultimately concentrated in Madrid. We read the same story in our own country; and in fact it is impossible to resist the dangerous and obvious conclusion that centralization and unity are good things for nations but bad things for art.

CHAPTER II

THE PEARL OF ANDALUSIA

[Ill.u.s.tration: SEVILLE--A STREET]

Seville, in the glory of the Andalusian summer, is a city of white and gold. Her brilliancy dazzles you, as it dazzled those who wrote of her, a little wildly, as the eighth wonder of the world. Luis Guevara, a poet born within her walls, declared that she was not the eighth but the first of those wonders. In our own day, men of genius have felt her spell. "Seville," says Valdes, "has ever been for me the symbol of light, the city of love and joy." So much few northerners would feel justified in saying. To them this must be the city that most closely corresponds to their preconceived ideas of the sunny and romantic South.

To Seville belong the sweep of lute-strings, the click of the castanets, the serenade, and above all, the bull-fight. There is something feminine about the radiant city, compared with the masculine strength of Toledo and Avila, and the harsh decadence of Granada. You will agree that no town is prettier, except perhaps Cadiz. So Byron said, and by him and all the poets of his school--Alfred de Musset for one--the city by the Guadalquivir was ardently loved. Yet though so conventionally romantic of aspect, Seville is busy, prosperous, and well peopled, before all other Andalusian towns. The blood still courses hotly through her veins--her vitality intoxicates. If you come from Cordova or Granada, you feel as though you were returning to the world. Here is life, here is gaiety; yet your driver the next instant takes you into a narrow, winding street, no broader than an alley, where absolute silence reigns. The windows are shuttered, no one seems to stir in the patios.

There reigns a Sabbath-like calm. A minute later you are in a broad plaza, where electric cars boom and whirr, where all is animation and bustle. Such contrasts are very sharp in this city, where the streets exist simply for folk to dwell in, the squares and paseos for them to gather in and do their business. There are notable exceptions, it is true. There is no want of life in the Sierpes, the narrow street which is the Strand and Charing Cross of Seville. Here you return again and again, feeling it is the focus of the city's life. Little better than a lane is the Sierpes, where no wheeled traffic can pa.s.s. It is amazingly dark in the summer, when awnings are drawn right across it from roof to roof, and penetrating into it from the sunny plaza, it is a little time before you can accustom your eyes to the shadow. Here are the best shops, the banks, and those elegant and ostentatious casinos, where the aristocracy and leisured cla.s.s lounge and smoke, and survey at their ease the unceasing procession of pa.s.sers by. There are cafes here of a different sort, some of which are frequented by the bull-fighters and their admirers. Here too may be seen in all his glory that peculiar type of Andalusian, the "Majo," a curious blend of the English "masher" the "sporting man" and the "troubadour"! The people sit in the cafes to see the others pa.s.s, and the others walk down the street to see the people in the cafes. This is a form of amus.e.m.e.nt and exercise common on the Continent, and acclimatized already at our English seaside towns.

Selling lottery tickets is a great industry in the Sierpes, the sale of tickets for the next _Corrida de toros_ even more so. The boot-blacking saloons remind the American visitor of his native land. For his delectation the _New York Herald_ is displayed in the windows of the few booksellers. There is nothing about this gay little thoroughfare to remind us of the past. The history of Seville is more easily recoverable by the fancy, when you are seated by the Guadalquivir, in sight of the Torre del Oro, on the spot perhaps where George Borrow, in an unwonted fit of hysteria, wept over the beauty of the scene before him.

Phnician, Carthaginian, Roman, Vandal, Goth, and Moor--the city has known them all and outlived them all. There seems to have been a settlement of the t.u.r.detani here, before the first Phnicians came.

The name at all events was bestowed by the Tyrian traders, if it is really derived from "sephela," a plain. Then came the Carthaginians, whom the Spaniards accuse of having corrupted the pure and simple-minded natives. The city became known to the little world of civilization, and was spoken of by Grecian geographers as "Ispola" and "Hispalis." The terrible Hamilcar reduced the greater part of Spain to the Punic yoke. He and his successor Hasdrubal filled Andalusia with their ma.s.sive ungainly fortresses. Salambo, the Semitic Venus, was worshipped on the banks of the Guadalquivir. From time to time, we doubt not, human sacrifices stained the altars of Baal. One wonders if the descendants of the Carthaginians became identified with the other great Semitic people, and pa.s.sed as Jews. Certainly it is otherwise a little difficult to account for the presence in Spain of the Israelites in such numbers at a very early period.

The Carthaginians fought hard for the province of Baetica, but Punic force and fraud were alike powerless before the sword of Scipio. The dominion of the province of Iberia pa.s.sed to Rome. When the conquering hero turned his face homewards to claim his triumph, he was mindful of his warworn veterans. For them the journey back to Italy was too long and wearisome; they were content to die in the land they had conquered.

Outside Hispalis a place of rest and refreshment was found for them in the village of Sancios. Scipio laid there the foundation of a colony, bestowed it on his veterans, and named it Italica, in memory of their fatherland. And thus was founded the first Latin-speaking settlement outside Italy. It lies--all that remains of it--on the slopes of the hills that bound the prospect westwards.

Hispalis, not overshadowed by its new neighbour, flourished under the Roman sway. Julius Caesar besieged the city, which was garrisoned by Pompey's partisans, and inscribed the date of its capture in the calendar of the Republic (August 9, B.C. 45). His fleet, they say, lay in the river between the Torre del Oro and the Palace of San Telmo. The townsfolk were devoted to him, and he renamed the place Julia Romula. As a Roman colony the town had a senate and consuls, ediles and censors.