Spanish Vistas Part 2

Madrid is now the head-quarters of the national game, as it is of everything else. It is outwardly flourishing, it is adorned with statues, its parks are green, and its fountains spout gayly.

Nevertheless, the impression it makes is melancholy. Beggary is importunate on its public ways. Palaces and poverty, great wealth and wretched penury, are huddled close together. Its a.s.sumption of splendor is in startling contrast with the desolate and uncared-for districts that surround it from the very edge of the city outward. The natural result of extremes in the distribution of property, with a country impoverished, is public bankruptcy; and public bankruptcy stares surely enough through the city's gay mask. There is another unhappy result from the undue concentration of resources at this artificial capital. Madrid prides itself on being the spot at which all the avenues of the land converge equally, the exact centre of Spain being close beyond the city's confines, and marked--how appropriately--by a church! But Madrid is, notwithstanding, a national centre only in name. It enjoys a false luxury, while too many outlying provinces sustain a starveling existence. And, seeing the alien, imitative manners adopted here, one feels sharply the difficult contrasts that exist between the metropolis and the provinces: no hearty bond of national unity appears. We looked back over the ground we had traversed, and thought of the gray bones of Burgos cathedral, lying like some stranded mammoth of another age, far in the north. Oh, bells of Burgos, mumbling in your towers, what message have you for these sophisticated ears? And what intelligible response does the heart of the country send back to you?

"Come," said I to Velveteen. "It is useless to resist longer. Let's surrender to these two white-capped guards who have dogged us so, and be carried away."

[Ill.u.s.tration]

THE LOST CITY.

I.

[Ill.u.s.tration: I]

It was of Spain's past and present that we were speaking, and "What," I asked, "have we given her in return for her discovery of our New World?"

"The sleeping-car and the street tramway," answered Velveteen, with justifiable pride.

He was right; for we had seen the first on the railroad, and the second skimming the streets of Madrid. Still, the reward did not appear great, measured by the much that Spain's ventures in the Western hemisphere had cost her, and by the comparative desolation of her present. The devoted labors of Irving and Prescott, which Spaniards warmly appreciate, are more in the nature of an adequate return.

"It strikes me, also," I ventured to add, "that we are rendering a service in kind. She discovered us, and now we are discovering her."

If one reflects how some of the once great and powerful places of the Peninsula, such as Toledo and Cordova, have sunk out of sight and perished to the modern world, this fancy applies with some truth to every sympathetic explorer of them. It had been all very well to imagine ourselves conversant with the country when we were in Madrid, and even an occasional slip in the language did not disturb that supposition. When I accidentally asked the chamber-maid to swallow a cup of chocolate instead of "bringing" it, owing to an unnecessary resemblance of two distinct words, and when my comrade, in attending to details of the laundry, was led by an imperfect dictionary to describe one article of wear as a _pintura de noche_, or "night scene," our confidence suffered only a momentary shock. But, after all, it was not until we reached Toledo that we really pa.s.sed into a kind of forgotten existence, and knew what it was to be far beyond reach of any familiar word.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ENTRANCE TO TOLEDO.]

With the first plunge southward from the capital the reign of ruin begins--ruin and flies. The heat becomes intense; the air itself seems to be cooked through and through; the flies rejoice with a malicious joy, and the dry sandy hills, bearing nothing but tufts of blackened weeds, resemble large mounds of pepper and salt. Here and there in the valley is the skeleton of a stone or brick farm-house withering away, and perhaps near by a small round defensive hut, recalling times of disorder. Between the hills, however, are fields still prolific in rye, though wholly dest.i.tute of trees. Verdure re-a.s.serts itself wherever there is the smallest water-course; and a curve of the river Tagus is sure to infold fruit orchards and melon vines, while the parched soil briefly revives and puts forth delightful shade-trees. But although the river-fed lands around Toledo are rich in vegetation, the ancient city itself, with the Tagus slung around its base like a loop, rises on a sterile rock, and amid hills of bronze. So much are the brown and sun-imbued houses and the old fortified walls in keeping with the ma.s.sy natural foundation that all seem reared together, the huge form of the Alcazar, or castle--where the Spanish national military academy is housed--towering like a second cliff in one corner of the round, irregularly cl.u.s.tered city. Our omnibus scaled the height by a road perfectly adapted for conducting to some dragon stronghold of misty fable, and landed us in the Zocodover, the sole open s.p.a.ce of any magnitude in that tangle of thread-like streetlets, along which the houses range themselves with a semblance of order purely superficial.

Most of Toledo is traversable only for pedestrians and donkeys. These latter carry immense double baskets across their backs, in which are transported provisions, bricks, coal, fowls, water, bread, crockery--everything, in short, down to the dirt occasionally sc.r.a.ped from the thoroughfares. I saw one peasant, rather advanced in years, helping himself up the steep rise of a street on the hill-side by means of a stout cane in one hand and the tail of his heavy-laden donkey grasped in the other. To make room for these useful beasts and their broad panniers, some of the houses are hollowed out at the corners; in one case the side wall being actually grooved a foot deep for a number of yards along an anxious turning. Otherwise the panniers would touch both sides of the way, and cause a blockade as obstinate as the animal itself.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE NARROW WAY.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: SPANISH PEASANT.

From a Drawing by William M. Chase.]

Coming from the outer world into so strange a labyrinth, where there is no echo of rolling wheels, no rumble of traffic or manufacture, you find yourself in a city which may be said to be without a voice. Through a hush like this, history and tradition speak all the more powerfully.

Toledo has been a favorite with the novelists. The Zocodover was the haunt of that typical rogue Lazarillo de Tormes; and Cervantes, oddly as it happens, connects the scene of _La il.u.s.tre Fregonde_ with a shattered castle across the river, which by a coincidence has had its original name of San Servando corrupted into San Cervantes.

Never shall I forget our walk around the city walls that first afternoon in Toledo. A broad thoroughfare skirts the disused defences on the south and west, running at first along the sheer descent to the river, and a beetling height against which houses, shops, and churches are crammed confusedly. I noticed one smithy with a wide dark mouth revealing the naked rock on which walls and roof ab.u.t.ted, and other houses into the faces of which had been wrought large granite projections of the hill.

After this the way led through a gate of peculiar strength and shapeliness, carrying up arches of granite and red brick to a considerable height--a stout relic of the proud Moorish dominion so long maintained here; and then, when we had rambled about a church of Santiago lower down, pa.s.sing through some streets irregular as foot-paths, where over a neglected door stood a unique announcement of the owner's name--"I am Don Sanchez. 1792"--we came to the Visagra, the country gate. This menacing, double-towered portal is mediaeval; so that a few steps had carried us from Mohammedan Alimaymon to the Emperor Charles V. Just outside of it again is the Alameda, the modern garden promenade, where the beauty and idleness of Toledo congregate on Sunday evenings to the soft compulsion of strains from the military academical band. Thin runnels of water murmur along through the hedges and embowered trees, explaining by their presence how this refreshing pleasure-ground was conjured into being; for on the slope, a few feet below the green hedges, you still see the sun-parched soil just as it once spread over the whole area. The contrast suggests Eden blossoming on a crater-side.

At the open-air soirees of the Alameda may be seen excellent examples of Spanish beauty. The national type of woman appears here in good preservation, and not too much hampered by foreign airs. Doubtless one finds it too in Burgos and Madrid, and in fact everywhere; and the grace of the women in other places is rather fonder of setting itself off by a fan used for parasol purposes in the street than in Toledo. But on the _pasco_ and _alameda_ all Spanish ladies carry fans, and it is something marvellous to see how they manage them. Not for a moment is the subtle instrument at rest: it flutters, wavers idly, is opened and shut in the s.p.a.ce of a second, falls to the side, and again rises to take its part in the conversation almost like a third person--all without effort--with merely a turn of the supple fingers or wrist, and contributing an added charm to the bearer. The type of face which beams with more or less similarity above every fan in Spain is difficult to describe, and at first difficult even to apprehend. One has heard so much about its beauty that in the beginning it seems to fall short; but gradually its spell seizes on the mind, becoming stronger and stronger.

The tint varies from tawny rose or olive to white: ladies of higher caste, from their night life and rare exposure to the sun, acquire a deathly pallor, which is unfortunately too often imitated with powder.

Chestnut or lighter hair is seen a good deal in the south and east, but deep black is the prevalent hue. And the eyes!--it is impossible to more than suggest the luminous, dreamy medium in which they swim, so large, dark, and vivid. But, above all, there is combined with a certain child-like frankness a freedom and force, a quick mobility in the lines of the face, equalled only in American women. To these elements you must add a strong arching eyebrow and a pervading richness and fire of nature in the features, which it would be hard to parallel at all, especially when the whole is framed in the seductive folds of the black mantilla, like a drifting night-cloud enhancing the sparkle of a star.

As we continued along the Camin de Marchan we looked down on one side over the fertile plain. The pale tones of the ripe harvest and dense green of trees contrasted with the rich brown and gray of the city, and dashes of red clay here and there. In a long field rose detached fragments of masonry, showing at different points the vast ground-plan of the Roman Circus Maximus, with a burst of bright ochre sand in the midst of the stubble, while on the left hand we had an old Arab gate pierced with slits for arrows, and on the crest above that a nunnery--St. Sunday the Royal--followed by a line of palaces and convents half ruined in the Napoleonic campaign of 1812. Out in the plain was the roof of the sword factory where "Toledo blades" are still forged and tempered for the Spanish army; although in the finer details of damascening and design nothing is produced beyond a small stock of show weapons and tiny ornamental trinkets for sale to tourists. Nor was this all; for a little farther on, at the edge of the river, close to the Bridge of St. Martin and the Gate of Twelve Stones, the broken remains of an old Gothic palace sprawled the steep, lying open to heaven and vacant as the dull eye-socket in some unsepulchred skull. Our stroll of a mile had carried us back to the second century before Christ, the path being strewn with relics of the Roman conquest, the Visigothic inroad, the Moorish ascendency, and the returning tide of Christian power. But the Jews, seeking refuge after the fall of Jerusalem, preceded all these, making a still deeper substratum in the marvellous chronicles of Toledo; and some of their later synagogues, exquisitely wrought in the Moorish manner, still stand in the Jewish quarter for the wonderment of pilgrim connoisseurs.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SINGING GIRL.]

It was from a terrace of this old Gothic palace near the bridge that, according to legend, Don Roderick, the last of the Goths in Spain, saw Florinda, daughter of one Count Julian, bathing in the yellow Tagus under a four-arched tower which still invades the flood, and goes by the name of the Bath of Florinda. From his pa.s.sion for her, and their mutual error, the popular tale, with vigorous disregard of chronology, deduces the fall of Spain before the Berber armies; and as most old stories here receive an ecclesiastical tinge, this one relates how Florinda's sinful ghost continued to haunt the spot where we now stood, until laid by a good friar with cross and benediction. The sharp fall of the bank at first glance looked to consist of ordinary earth and stones, but on closer scrutiny turned out to contain quant.i.ties of brick bits from the old forts and towers which one generation after another had built on the heights, and which had slowly mouldered into nullity. Even so the firm lines of history have fallen away and crumbled into romance, which sifts through the crannies of the whole withered old city. As a lady of my acquaintance graphically said, it seems as if ashes had been thrown over this ancient capital, covering it with a film of oblivion. The rocks, towers, churches, ruins, are just so much corporeal mythology--object, lessons in fable. A little girl, becomingly neckerchiefed, wandered by us while we leaned dreaming above the river; and she was singing one of the wild little songs of the country, full of melancholy melody:

"Fair Malaga, adios!

Ah, land where I was born, Thou hadst mother-love for all, But for me step-mother's scorn!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: CLOISTER OF ST. JOHN OF THE KINGS.]

All unconscious of the monuments around her, she stopped when she saw that we had turned and were listening. Then we resumed our way, pa.s.sing, I may literally say, as if in a trance up into the town again, where we presently found ourselves in front of St. John of the Kings, a venerable church, formerly connected with a Franciscan monastery which the French burnt. On the outer wall high up hangs a stern fringe of chains, placed there as votive tokens by released Christian captives from Granada, in 1492; and there they have remained since America was discovered!

To this church is attached a most beautiful cloister, calm with the solitude of nearly four hundred years. Around three sides the rich cl.u.s.tered columns, each with its figures of holy men supported under pointed canopies, mark the delicate Gothic arches, through which the sunlight slants upon the pavement, falling between the leaves of aspiring vines that twine upward from the garden in the middle. There the rose-laurel blooms, and a rude fountain perpetually gurgles, hidden in thick greenery; and on the fourth side the wall is dismantled as the French bombardment left it. Seventy years have pa.s.sed, and though the sculptured blocks for restoration have been got together, the vines grow over them, and no work has been done. We mounted the bell-tower part way with the custodian, and gained a gallery looking into the chapel, strangely adorned with regal shields and huge eagles in stone. On our way, under one part of the tower roof, we found a hen calmly strutting with her brood. "It was meant for celibacy," said the custodian, "but times change, and you see that family life has established itself here after all."

[Ill.u.s.tration: A BIT OF CHARACTER.]

I don't know whether there is anything particularly sacred about the hens of this district, but after seeing this one in the church-tower I began to think there might be, especially as on the way home we discovered another imprisoned fowl disconsolately looking down at us from the topmost window of a venerable patrician residence.

II.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SPANISH SOLDIERS PLAYING DOMINOS.]

Its antiquities are not the queerest thing about Toledo. The sights of the day, the isolated existence of the inhabitants, are things peculiar.

The very sports of the children reflect the prevailing influences. A favorite diversion with them is to parade in some dark hall-way with slow step and droning chants, in imitation of church festivals; and in the street we found boys playing at _toros_. Some took off their coats to wave as mantles before the bull, who hid around the corner until the proper time for his entry. The bull in this game, I noticed, had a nice sense of fair play, and would stop to argue points with his antagonists--something I should have been glad to see in the real arena.

Once the old rock town accommodated two hundred thousand residents. Its contingent has now shrunk to twenty thousand, yet it swarms with citizens, cadets, loafers, and beggars. Its tortuous wynds are full of wine-shops, vegetables, and children, all mixed up together. Superb old palaces, nevertheless, open off from them, frequently with s.p.a.cious courts inside, shaded by trellised vines, and with pillars at the entrance topped by heavy stone b.a.l.l.s, or doors studded with nails and moulded in rectangular patterns like inlay-work. One day we wandered through a sculptured gate-way and entered a paved opening with a carved wood gallery running around the walls above. Orange-trees in tubs stood about, and a brewery was established in these palatial quarters. We ordered a bottle, but I noticed that the brewer stood regarding us anxiously. At last he drew nearer, and asked, "Do you come from Madrid?"

"Yes."

"Ah, then," said he, in a disheartened tone, "you won't like our beer."

[Ill.u.s.tration: A NARROW STREET.]

We encouraged him, however, and at last he disappeared, sending us the beverage diplomatically by another hand. He was too faint-spirited to witness the trial himself. Though called "The Delicious," the thin, sweet, gaseous liquid was certainly detestable; but in deference to the brewer's delicate conscientiousness we drank as much as possible, and then left with his wife some money and a weakly complimentary remark about the beer, which evidently came just in time to convince her that we were, after all, discriminating judges.

[Ill.u.s.tration: WOMAN WITH BUNDLE.]

The people generally were very simple and good-natured, and in particular a young commercial traveller from Barcelona whom we met exerted himself to entertain us. The chief street was lined with awnings reaching to the curb-stone in front of the shops, and every public door-way was screened by a striped curtain. Pushing aside one of these, our new acquaintance introduced us to what seemed a dingy bar, but, by a series of turnings, opened out into a s.p.a.cious concealed cafe--that of the Two Brothers--where we frequently repaired with him to sip chiccory and cognac or play dominos. On these occasions he kept the tally in pencil on the marble table, marking the side of himself and a friend with their initials, and heading ours "The Strangers." All travellers in Spain are described by natives as "Strangers" or "French," and the reputation for a pure Parisian accent which we acquired under these circ.u.mstances, though brief, was glorious. To the Two Brothers resorted many soldiers, shop-keepers, and well-to-do housewives during fixed hours of the afternoon and evening, but at other times it was as forsaken as Don Roderick's palace. Another place of amus.e.m.e.nt was the Grand Summer Theatre, lodged within the ragged walls of a large building which had been half torn down. Here we sat under the stars, luxuriating in the most expensive seats (at eight cents per head), surrounded by a full audience of exceedingly good aspect, including some Toledan ladies of great beauty, and listened to a _zarzuela_, or popular comic opera, in which the prompter took an almost too energetic part. The ticket collector came in among the chairs to receive everybody's coupons with very much the air of being one of the family; for while performing his stern duty he smoked a short brier pipe, giving to the act an indescribable dignity which threw the whole business of the tickets into a proper subordination. In returning to our inn about midnight we were attracted by the free cool sound of a guitar duet issuing from a dark street that rambled off somewhere like a worm track in old wood, and, pursuing the sound, we discovered by the aid of a match lighted for a cigarette two men standing in the obscure alley, and serenading a couple of ladies in a balcony, who positively laughed with pride at the attention. The men, it proved, had been hired by some admirer, and so our friend engaged them to perform for us at the hotel the following night.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE SERENADERS.]

The skill these thrummers of the guitar display is delicious, especially in the treble part, which is executed on a smaller species of the instrument, called a _mandura_. Our treble-player was blind in one eye, and with the carelessness of genius allowed his mouth to stay open, but managed always to keep a cigarette miraculously hanging in it; while his comrade, with a disconsolate expression, disdained to look at the strings on which his proud Castilian fingers were condemned to play a mere accompaniment. For two or three hours they rippled out those peculiar native airs which go so well with the m.u.f.fled vibrations and mournful Oriental monotony of the guitar; but the bagman varied the concert by executing operatic pieces on a hair-comb covered with thin paper--a contrivance in which he took unfeigned delight. Some remonstrance against this uproar being made by other inmates of the hotel, our host silenced the complainants by cordially inviting them in.

One large black-bearded guest, the exact reproduction of a stately ancient Roman, accepted the hospitality, and listened to that ridiculous piping of the comb with profound gravity and unmoved muscles, expressing neither approval nor dissatisfaction. But the white-ap.r.o.ned waiter, who, though unasked, hung spellbound on the threshold, was, beyond question, deeply impressed. The relations of servants with employers are on a very democratic footing in Spain. We had an admirable butler at Madrid who used to join in the conversation at table whenever it interested him, and was always answered with good grace by the conversationists, who admitted him to their intellectual repast at the same moment that he was proffering them physical nutriment. These Toledan servitors of the Fonda de Lino were still more informal. They used to take naps regularly twice a day in the hall, and could not get through serving dinner without an occasional cigarette between the courses. To save labor, they would place a pile of plates in front of each person, enough to hold the entire list of viands. That last phrase is a euphemism, however, for the meal each day consisted of the same meat served in three separate relays without vegetables, followed by fowl, an allowance of beans, and dessert. Even this they were not particular to give us on the hour.

Famished beyond endurance, one evening at eight o'clock, we went down-stairs and found that not the first movement toward dinner had been made. The _mozos_ (waiters) were smoking and gossiping in the street, and rather frowned upon our vulgar desire for food, but we finally persuaded them to yield to it. After we had bought some tomatoes, and made a salad at dinner, the management was put on its mettle, and improved slightly. Fish in this country is always brought on somewhere in the middle of dinner, like the German pudding, and our landlord astonished us by following the three courses of stewed veal with sardines, fried in oil and ambuscaded in a ma.s.s of boiled green peppers.

After that we forbore to stimulate his ambition any farther.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A PLENTIFUL SUPPLY OF PLATES.]

The hotel guest, however, is on the whole regarded as a necessary evil--a nuisance tolerated only because some few of the finest race in the world can make money out of him. The landlord lived with his family on the ground-floor, and furnished little domestic tableaux as we pa.s.sed in and out; but he never paid any attention to us, and even looked rather hurt at the intrusion of so many strangers into his hostelry. Nor did the high-born sewing-women who sat on the public stairs, and left only a narrow s.p.a.ce for other people to ascend or descend by, consider it necessary to stir in the least for our convenience. The fonda had more of the old tavern or posada style about it than most hotels patronized by foreigners. The entrance door led immediately into a double court, where two or three yellow equipages stood; and from this the kitchen, storerooms, and stable all branched off in some clandestine way. Above, at the eaves, these courts were covered with canvas awnings wrinkled in regular folds on iron rods--sheltering covers which remained drawn from the first flood of the morning sun until after five in the afternoon. Early and late I used to look down into the inner court, observing the men and women of the household as they dressed fish and silently wrung the necks of chickens, or sat talking a running stream of nothingness by the hour, for love of their own glib but uncouth voices.

People of this province intone rather than talk: their sentences are set to distinct drawling tunes, such as I never before encountered in ordinary speech, and their thick lisping of all sibilants, combined with the usual contralto of their voices, gives the language a sonorous burr, for which one soon acquires a liking. Sunday is the great hair-combing day in Toledo, if I may judge from the manner in which women carried on that soothing operation in their door-ways and _patios_; and in this inner court below my window one of the servants, sitting on a stone slab, enjoyed the double profit of sewing and of letting a companion manipulate her yard-long locks of jet, while others sat near, fanning themselves and chattering. Another time a little girl, dark as an Indian, came there in the morning to wash a kerchief at the stone tank, always br.i.m.m.i.n.g with dirty water; after which she executed, unsuspicious of my gaze, a singularly weird _pas seul_, a sort of shadow dance, on the pavement, and then vanished.