Spanish Vistas Part 1

Spanish Vistas.

by George Parsons Lathrop.

PREFACE.

The two great Mediterranean peninsulas which, in opposite quarters, jut southward where--as George Eliot says, in her "Spanish Gypsy"--

"Europe spreads her lands Like fretted leaflets, breathing on the deep,"

may not inaptly be likened to a brother and sister, instead of taking their places under the usual similitude of "sister countries." They have points of marked resemblance, in their picturesqueness, their treasures of art, their a.s.sociations of history and romance; but, just as the physical aspect of Spain and its shape upon the map are broader, more thick-set and rugged than the slender form and flowing curves of Italy, so the Spanish language--with its Arabic gutturals interspersed among melodious linguals and vowel sounds--has been called the masculine development of that Southern speech of which the Italian presents the feminine side. The people of both countries exhibit a similar excitable, ardent quality in their characters; but the national temperament of the Spaniards is, perhaps, somewhat hardier, more virile, and st.u.r.dier in its pa.s.sionateness.

It seems to be true that, while the Greek spirit transferred itself to Italy in the days of Augustus, renewing its influence at the period of the Renaissance, and leaving upon people and manners an impress never since quite effaced--an influence tending toward a certain feminine refinement--the spirit of Rome also transferred itself to the subject country, Hispania, and imbued that region with the strong, austere, or wilful characteristics of purely Latin civilization, which are still traceable there.

But, however we may account for the phenomena, it is likely that the mingled contrasts and resemblances of Italy and Spain will more and more induce travellers to visit the Iberian Peninsula. Italy has now been so thoroughly depicted in all its larger phases, from the foreigner's point of view, that investigation must hereafter chiefly be concerned with the study of special and local features. Spain, on the other hand, offers itself to the general observer and to the tourist as a field scarcely more explored than Italy was forty or fifty years ago; and the evidence is abundant that the current of travel is setting vigorously in this direction. With the extension of a railroad system and the incursion of sight-seeing strangers in larger number, we must of course expect that many of the most interesting peculiarities of the people will undergo modification and at length disappear. This, however, cannot be helped; and the following chapters, at the same time that they may encourage and aid those who are destined to bring about such changes, may also serve to arrest and preserve for future reference the actual appearance of Spain to-day.

Much might be written, with the certainty of an eager audience, concerning the present political condition of the country, by any one who had had opportunities for examining it; and Mr. John Hay, a few years ago, gave some glimpses of it in his charming volume, "Castilian Days." My own brief sojourn afforded no adequate opportunity for such observation. But it may be not inadmissible to record here one of the casual remarks which came to my notice in this connection. On a Mediterranean steamer I met with an exceedingly bright and healthy man of the middle cla.s.s, fairly well educated--one of those specimens of solid, temperate, active manhood fortunately very common in Spain, on whom the future of the country really depends--and, noticing from my lame speech that I was not a native, he asked me, guardedly, if I was an Englishman.

"No," I said; "I am an American of the North, of the United States."

His manner changed at once; he thawed: more than that, his face lighted with hope, as if he had found a powerful friend, and he gazed at me with a certain delighted awe, attributing to my humble person a glory for which I was in no way responsible. "You are a republican, then!" he exclaimed.

"Yes."

He gave me another long, silent look, and then confessed that he, too, was a firm believer in republicanism.

"Are there many Spaniards now of that party?" I inquired.

His reply showed that he appreciated the difficulties of the national problem. "Party!" he cried. "Listen: in Spain there is a separate political party for every man." After a slight pause he added, bitterly, "Sometimes, _two_!"

It may still be said with a good deal of accuracy, though not of course with the literalness and the sweeping application that Paul de Saint Victor gave the words, in speaking of the French Charles II.'s reign, that "Spain no more changes than the arid zone that encircles a volcano.

Kings pa.s.s, dynasties are renewed, events succeed each other, but the foundation remains immobile, and Philip II. still rules."

I have not attempted to review political matters; and neither have I tried to give an exhaustive account of the country in any other respect.

The pictures which I have given I have endeavored to make vivid and faithful; and, if I have succeeded, they will present the essential characteristics of Spain. What has thus been the object of the text has certainly been attained in the drawings by Mr. Reinhart, which supply much the greater part of the ill.u.s.trations in this volume. Made after sketches from life, which were prepared with unflagging zeal, and often under great difficulties, they frequently tell more than language can convey. Their graphic touch, their variety and humor, their technical merit, give them the best of recommendations; but a word of distinct recognition is due here to the artist for the fidelity and spirit with which he has reproduced so many scenes peculiar to the country.

It is hoped that the concluding chapter of "Hints to Travellers" will prove useful, as supplying certain information not always accessible in guide-books, and also as condensing the practical particulars of the subject in a convenient form.

THE WAYSIDE, _Concord_, _April 1, 1883._

SPANISH VISTAS.

_FROM BURGOS TO THE GATE OF THE SUN._

I.

[Ill.u.s.tration: W]

We took our places, for the performance was about to begin. The scene represented a street in Burgos, the long-dead capital of old Castile.

Time: night.

Ancient houses on either side the stage narrow back to an archway in the centre, opening through to a pillared walk and a dimly moonlit s.p.a.ce beyond. m.u.f.fled figures occasionally pa.s.s the aperture.

Suddenly enters Don Ramiro--or Alvar Nunez, I really don't know which--and advances toward the front. To our surprise he does not open the play with a set speech or any explanation, but continues to advance until he disappears somewhere under our private box, as if he were going from this street of the play into some other adjoining street, just as in actual life. A singular freak of realism! He is closely pursued, however, by two a.s.sa.s.sins in long cloaks, who, like all the other figures we have seen, move noiselessly in soft shoes or canvas sandals.

Presently a shriek resounds from the quarter toward which Don Ramiro betook himself. Have they succeeded in catching him, and is that the sound of his mortal agony? We have just concluded that this is the meaning of the clamor, when, after a second or two, the shriek resolves itself into laughter. Then we begin to recall that we didn't pay anything on entering; and, as we glance up toward the folded curtain above the scene, discover that its place is occupied by the starry sky.

The houses, too, have a singularly solid look, and do not appear to be painted. While all this has been dawning upon us, we become conscious that the mixed sound of agony or mirth just heard was merely the signal of amus.e.m.e.nt caused to certain wandering Spaniards by some convulsingly funny episode; and the next moment their party comes upon the scene at about the point where the foot-lights ought to be. They exchange a good-night; some go off, and others thunder at sundry doors with ancient knockers, awaking mediaeval echoes in the dingy thoroughfares, without causing any great surprise to the neighborhood.

[Ill.u.s.tration: TWO a.s.sa.s.sINS IN LONG CLOAKS.]

In truth, we had simply been looking from the window of an inn at which we had just arrived; but everything had grouped itself in such a way that it was hard to comprehend that we were not at the theatre. That day we had been hurled over the Pyrenees, and landed in the dark at our first Peninsular station; then, facing a crowd of fierce, uncouth faces at the depot door, we had somehow got conveyed to the Inn of the North through narrow, cavernous streets, brightened only by the feeble light of a few lost lanterns, and so found ourselves staring out upon our first picturesque night in Spain. The street or plazuela below us, though now deserted, went on conducting itself in a most melodramatic manner. Big white curtains hung in front of the iron balconies, flapping voluminously, or were drawn back to admit the cool night air. Crickets chirped loudly from hidden crevices of masonry, and a well-contrived bat sailed blindly over the roofs in the penumbral air, through which the moon was slowly rising. Lights went in and out; some one was seen cooking a late supper in one dwelling; windows were opened and shut, and a general appearance of haunting ghosts was kept up. Now and then a woman came to the balcony and chatted with unseen neighbors across the way about the festival of the morrow. By-and-by one side of the street blew its lamps out and prepared for bed; but the wakeful side insisted on talking to the sleepy one for some time longer, until warned by the cry of the night-watch that midnight had come. Anything more desolate and peculiar than this cry I have never heard. It was a long-drawn, melancholy sounding of the hour, with a final "All's well!" terminating in a minor cadence which seemed to drop the voice back at once into the Middle Ages. This same chant may have resounded from the days of Lain Calvo and the old judges of Castile unaltered, and for a time it made me fancy that the little Gothic town had returned to its musty youth. We were walled into a sleepy feudal stronghold once more, and perhaps at that very moment the Cid was celebrating his nuptials with Ximena, daughter of the count he had murdered for an insult, in the old ruined citadel up there on the hill, above the cathedral spires. But the watchman came and went, and the present resumed its sway. He pa.s.sed with slow step, in a big cloak and queer cap, carrying a long bladed staff, and a lantern which cast swaying squares of light around his feet; silent as a black ghost, and seeming to have been called into life only with the lighting of his lamp-wick. But, after he had disappeared, the lonely quaver of his cry returned to us from farther and farther away, penetrating into the comfortless apartment to which we now retired for sleep.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE NIGHT-WATCH.]

The Inn of the North was dirty and unkempt; a frightful odor from the donkey-stable and other sources streamed up into our window between shutters heavy as church doors; and the descant of the watch, relieved by violent c.o.c.k-crows, disturbed us all night. Nevertheless, we awoke with a good deal of eagerness when the alert young woman with dark pink cheeks and snapping eyes who served us came to the door with chocolate and bread, water and _azucarillos_, betimes next morning. It was the festival of Corpus Christi; but although every one was going to see the procession, no one could tell us anything about it. Unless he be extraordinarily shrewd, a foreigner can hardly help arriving in Spain on some kind of a feast-day. When the people cannot get up a whole holiday, they will have a fractional one. You go about the streets cheerfully, thinking you will buy something at leisure in the afternoon; but when you approach the shop commerce has vanished, and is out taking a walk, or drinking barley-water in honor of some obscure saint. You engage a guide and carriage to visit some public building, and both guide and carriage are silent as to the religious character of the day until you arrive and find the place shut, when full price, or at least half, is confidently demanded. Church feasts are a matter of course, but you are expected to know about them, and questions are considered out of place.

In this case we had kept Corpus Christi in mind, and as Burgos is a small place, the "function" could not by any possibility escape us.

The garrison turned out, and military music played in the procession, but otherwise it was a quaint reproduction of the antique. The quiet streets, innocent of traffic, were filled with peasants whose garments, odoriferous with age and dirt, made a dazzle of color, especially the bright yellow flannel skirts of the women, and the gay handkerchief which men and women alike employ here. Sometimes it is worn around the shoulders, sometimes around the head, and sometimes both: but everywhere and always handkerchiefs are brought into play as essentials. From almost every balcony, too, hung bedquilts, or sheets scalloped with red and blue, in emulation of the tapestries and banners that once graced these occasions. Amid a tumultuous tumbling of bells up amid the carven gray stone-work of the cathedral, the candles and images and tonsured priests, clad in resplendent copes, moved forth, attended by civil functionaries in swallow-tailed coats or old crimson robes of the twelfth century. But the prettiest sight, and a much more striking one than the gilt effigies of St. Lawrence and St. Stephen and the rest, under toy canopies and wreathed with false flowers, was that of two little boys, nude except for the snowy lamb-skins they wore, who personated Christ and St. John. The Christ rode on a lamb, and kept his head very steady under a big curled wig made after the old masters. We saw him afterward in his father's arms, still holding his hands prayerfully, as he had been drilled, with a look of sweet, childish awe in his face.

[Ill.u.s.tration: DANCING BOYS.]

When the procession was about to return, we were amazed, in gazing at the small street from which it should emerge, to behold eight huge figures, looking half as high as the houses, in long robes, and with placidly unreal expressions on their gigantic faces, advancing with that peculiar unconscious gait due to human leg-power when concealed under papier-mache monsters. It took but a glance, as they filed out and aligned themselves on the small sunny square, to recognize in them the Kings of the Earth, come in person to do homage before the Christ. One bore a crown and ermine as insignia of the Castilian line; others were Moors; and even China was represented. After them danced a dozen boys, in pink tunics and bell-crowned hats of drab felt quaintly beribboned, throwing themselves about fantastically, with snapping fingers and castanets. They formed in two ranks, just under the grand shadowy entrance arch, to receive the pageant. A drummer and two _flautistas_ in festive attire accompanied them; and whenever a monstrance or holy image was borne past, the flutes mingled with the drum eccentric bagpipe discords, at which the boys broke into a prancing jig and rattled their castanets to express their devout joy. Two other men in harlequin dress, wearing tall, pointed hats, stood on the edge of the eager crowd, and belabored those who pressed too close with horse-hair switches attached by a long cord to slender sticks. This part of the performance was conducted with great energy and seriousness, and seemed to be received with due reverence by the thick heads which got hit. A more heathenish rite than this jig at the sanctuary gate could hardly be imagined.

"Are these things possible, and is this the nineteenth century?"

exclaimed my friend and companion, who, however, had been guilty of an indigestion that day.

I confess that for myself I enjoyed the dance, and could not help being struck by the contrast of this boyish gayety with the heavy gorgeousness of the priests and the immobile frown of the sculptured figures on the ma.s.sive ogee arch.[1] Then when the Host was carried by in the _custodia_, and the motley crowd kneeled and bared their heads, we sunk to the pavement with them, our knees being a.s.sisted possibly by the statement we had heard that, a few years since, blows or knives were the prompt reward of non-conformity. Afterward, when secular amus.e.m.e.nts ensued, our boys went about, stopping now and then in open places to execute strange dances, with hoops and ribbons and wooden swords, for the general enjoyment. A gleeful sight they made against backgrounds of old archways, or perhaps the mighty Arch of Santa Maria, one of the local glories, peopled with statues of ancient counts and knights and rulers.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE ARCH OF ST. MARY.]

No Spanish town is without its paseo--its public promenade; and in Burgos this is supplied by The Spur--a broad esplanade skirting the shrunken river, with borders of chubby shade trees and shrubbery. On Corpus Christi the citizens also turned out in the arcades of the Main Plaza. Here, and later in the dusty dusk of The Spur, they crowded and chatted, in accordance with native ideas of enjoyment; and except that their mantillas and shoulder-veils[2] made a difference, the senoras and senoritas might have pa.s.sed for Americans, so delicate were their features, so trim their daintily-attired figures, though perhaps they hadn't a coin in their pockets. The men had the universal Iberian habit of carrying their light overcoats folded over the left shoulder; but their quick nervous expression and spare faces would have been quite in place on Wall Street. Spanish ladies are allowed far more liberty than the French or English in public; but though they walked without male escort, they showed remarkable skill in avoiding any direct look at men from their own l.u.s.trous eyes. During the accredited hours of the paseo, however, gallants and friends are suffered to walk close behind them--so close that the entire procession often comes to a stand-still--and to whisper complimentary speeches into their ears; no one, not even relatives of the damsels, resenting this freedom.

At Las Huelgas, a famous convent near the town, much resorted to by nuns of aristocratic family (even the Empress Eugenie it was thought would retire thither after her son's death), the fete was renewed next day; and it was here that we saw beggars in perfection. A huge stork's nest was perched high on one end of the chapel, as on many churches of Spain.

Bombs were fired above the crowd from the high square tower that rose into the hot air not far from the inner shrine; and in the chapel below the nuns were at their devotions, caged behind heavy iron lattices that barely disclosed their picturesque head-dress. Meanwhile peasants and burghers wandered aimlessly about, looking at pictures, relics, and inscriptions in an outer arcade; after which the holiday of the people began. Holiday here means either walking or sleeping. In a sultry, dusty little square by the convent, covered with trees, the people went to sleep, or sat talking, and occasionally eating or drinking with much frugality. The first object that had greeted us by daylight in Burgos was a marvellous mendicant clad in an immense cloak, one ma.s.s of patches--in fact, a monument of indigence--carrying on his head a mangy fur cap, with a wallet at his waist to contain alms. The beggars a.s.sembled at Las Huelgas were quite as bad, except that they mostly had the good taste to remain asleep. In any att.i.tude, face down or up, on stone benches or on the gra.s.s, they dozed at a moment's notice, reposing piously. One sat for a long time torpid near us, but finally mustered energy to come and entreat us. He received a copper, whereupon he kissed the coin, murmured a blessing, and again retreated to his shadow.

Another, having acquired something from some other source, halted near us to find his pocket. He searched long among his rags, and plunged fiercely into a big cavity which exposed his dirty linen; but this proved to be only a tear in his trousers, and he was at last obliged to tie his treasure to a voluminous string around his waist, letting it hang down thence into some interior vacancy of rags.

It may not be generally known that beggars are licensed in Spain.

Veteran soldiers, instead of receiving a pension, are generously endowed with official permission to seek charity; the Church gives doles to the poor, and citizens consider it a virtue to relieve the miserable objects who pet.i.tion for pence at every turn. As we came from Las Huelgas we saw the maimed and blind and certain more robust paupers creeping up to the door of a church, where priests were giving out food. A little farther on an emaciated crone at a bridge-head, with eyes shut fast in sleep, lifted her hand mechanically and repeated her formula. We were convinced that, since she could do this in her slumbers, she must have been satisfied with merely dreaming of that charity we did not bestow.

It was a favorable season for the beggars, and many of them sunned their bodies, warped and scarred by hereditary disease, on the cathedral steps. But professional enterprise with them was constantly hindered by the tendency to nap. One old fellow I saw who, feeling a brotherhood between himself and the broken-nosed statues, had mounted into a beautiful niche there and coiled himself in sleep, first hauling his wooden leg up after him like a drawbridge.

Meanwhile the peasants kept on swarming into the town, decorating it with their blue and red and yellow kerchiefs and kirtles, as with a ma.s.s of small moving banners. The men wore vivid sashes, leather leggings, and laced sandals. It was partly for enjoyment they came, and partly to sell produce. All alike were to be met with at noon, squatting down in any sheltered coigne of street or square, every group with a bowl in its midst containing the common dinner. There were also little eating-houses, in which they regaled themselves on bread and sardines, with a special cupful of oil thrown in, or on salt meat. A lively trade in various small articles was carried on in the Main Plaza; among them loaves of tasteless white bread, hard as tiles, and delicious cherries, recalling the farms of New York. Another product was offered, the presence of which in large quant.i.ty was like a sarcasm. This was Castile soap. It must have taken an immense effort of imagination on the part of these people to think of manufacturing an article for which they have so little use. I am bound to add that I did not see an ounce of it sold; and I have my suspicions that the business is merely a traditional one--the same big cheese-like chunks being probably brought out at every fair and fete, as a time-honored symbol of Castilian prosperity. But, after all, so devout a community must be convinced that it possesses G.o.dliness; and having that, what do they need of the proximate virtue?