NC
Toulouse
farbes
Narbonne
Gulf
of
Lions
R-Bidaso
Fuenterrab
Sebastians
BISCAY
Vittoria
Miranda.
OLD
Dax
NAVARRE
The Pyrene
TILE
IEW
LE
MANCHA
Cuenca
CATALONIA
Saragossa ferida
REbro
NCI
Valencia
Barcelona
Tarragona
Iviza
Majorca
MURCIA
Bara fat
Guadix
Nevada
Murcia
Elches Alicante
Cartagena
MEDITERRANEAN
SEA
*AMAP x
to illustrate ad
"THE CITIES
"OF SPAIN"
LIBRARY OF THE
UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA

UNIVERSITY
1819
OF
VIRGINIA
PRESENTED BY
Linton Massey
THE CITIES OF SPAIN
ㄱㅅ
​
CATHEDRAL OF SANTIAGO DI COMPOSTELA-SOUTH DOORWAY
THE
CITIES OF SPAIN
BY
EDWARD HUTTON
WITH 24 ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR BY
A. WALLACE RIMINGTON, A.R.E., R.B.A.
20 OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS AND A MAP
NEW EDITION
NEW YORK
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1927
DP
42
.HB
1927
Copyl
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
ΤΟ
MY FRIEND
PAUL DE REUL
1
1
INTRODUCTION
I. ON THE WAY
II. BURGOS
III. VALLADOLID.
IV. SALAMANCA
V. ZAMORA
•
CONTENTS
VI. AVILA
VII. THE GRAVE OF TORQUEMADA
VIII. SEGOVIA
IX. MADRID TO-DAY
PAGR
xiii
12
32
44
58
55
60
70
74
91
X. IN OLD MADRID
•
XI.
1. THE PRADO GALLERY
·
106
2008
97
II. THE ITALIAN SCHOOLS IN THE PRADO GALLERY
114
III. EL GRECO
138
IV. RIBERA
144
V. VELASQUEZ
•
148
VI. A NOTE ON GOYA
XII. THE ESCORIAL
XIII. TOLEDO
XIV. CÓRDOVA
161
165
169
192
2
viii
THE CITIES OF SPAIN
PAGE
XV. SEVILLE
196
XVI. LA CORRIDA
•
207
XVII. EARLY SPANISH PAINTING AND THE SCHOOL OF SEVILLE
218
XVIII. JEREZ.
230
XIX. CADIZ.
·
250
XX. TO MOROCCO
·
253
XXI. TANGIER
·
257
XXII. MÁLAGA
264
XXIII. GRANADA
·
271
XXIV. MURCIA, ALICANTE, AND VALENCIA
289
XXV. TARRAGONA •
299
306
XXVI. BARCELONA
·
INDEX
•
315
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
IN COLOUR
CATHEDRAL OF SANTIAGO DI COMPOSTELA: SOUTH
DOORWAY
A STREET OF FUENTARABÍA
Property of Mrs. Joseph Boord
SUNSET.
AMBULATORY, BURGOS CATHEDRAL
Property of W. W. Howard, Esq.
Frontispiece
•
To face page 4
10
19
22
99
PUERTA S. MARÍA, BURGOS.
"
30
Property of John Heywood, Esq.
BRIDGE AT LEÓN.
"9
32
Property of Mrs. Ewan-Smith
NAVE, AVILA Cathedral
99
64
Property of Pryce Weedon, Esq.
ALCÁZAR, SEGOVIA
99
84
Property of Rev. J. Wayley
PUERTA DEL CAMBRÓN, Toledo.
99
176
Property of Mrs. Clerk
PUERTA DEL Zocodover, TOLEDO
•
99
178
A TOWN OF LA MANCHA
•
•
29
190
COURT OF ORANGES, MOSQUE OF CÓRDOVA
Property of J. Clay, Esq.
"
194
AT SEVILLE
•
OUTSIDE THE CITY WALLS, Seville
WAYSIDE CROSS NEAR GRANADA.
Property of E. A. Morshead, Esq.
99
198
212
99
•
•
99
262
ix
THE CITIES OF SPAIN
A SHEPHERD-BOY OF ANDALUSIA
Property of Rev. G. H. West
IN A GARDEN OF ANDALUSIA
Property of Miss H. Glover
IN A GARDEN OF THE ALHAMBRA
IN THE ALBAICIN, GRANADA
·
PREHISTORIC CAVE AT ANTEGUERA
OUTSIDE VALENCIA
THE MIGUELETE, VALENCIA
•
To face page 264
"9
276
280
99
286
•
19
290
•
•
49
294
296
99
308
Property of C. P. Johnson, Esq.
LÉRIDA .
THE MOUNTAINS OF MONSERRAT FROM MANRESA
NEAR BARCELONA.
99
312
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
IN MONOTONE
Dona Maria, Daughter of PhiILIP III. Velasquez. To face page 102
From a Photograph by J. Lacoste
MARY TUDOR OF ENGLAND. Antonio Moro
From a Photograph by W. A. Mansell & Co.
PORTRAIT OF A CARDINAL. Raphael
From a Photograph by the Berlin Photographic Co.
AND S. ROCH. Giorgione
A BACCHANAL. Titian.
•
MADONNA AND CHILD, WITH S. ANTHONY OF PADUA
From a Photograph by Leoy et ses fils
·
From a Photograph by the Berlin Photographic Co.
CHARLES V. AT THE BATTLE OF MÜHLBERG.
From a Photograph by the Berlin Photographic Co.
112
19
120
93
122
99
126
19
Titian
99
130
PRINCE PHILIP, afterwARDS PHILIP II. Titian
From a Photograph by the Berlin Photographic Co.
134
PORTRAIT OF A MAN. El Greco
•
99
140
From a Photograph by the Berlin Photographic Co.
THE RESURRECTION. El Greco
99
142
From a Photograph by J. Lacoste
ST. MARY MAGDALEN. Ribera
•
19
146
IN THE GARDEN OF THE VILLA MEDICI, ROMB.
Velasquez
99
154
From a Photograph by the Berlin Photographic Co.
INFANTA MARÍA TERESA. Velasquez.
From a Photograph by J. Lacoste
LAS MENIÑAS. Velasquez
·
From a Photograph by the Berlin Photographic Co.
"
156
160
99
xi
xii
THE CITIES OF SPAIN
FAMILY OF THe Duke of Osuna. Goya
•
•
To face page 162
From a Photograph by J. Lacoste
BLIND MAN'S BUFF. Goya .
99
164
From a Photograph by J. Lacoste
TOLEDO .
THE BRIDGE of CórdoVA
184
99
192
CADIZ
•
99
250
GRANADA FROM THE ALHAMBRA.
From a Photograph by F. Linares, Granada
THE COURT OF THE LIONS, GRANADA
From a Photograph by F. Linares, Granada.
99
33
272
278
As
INTRODUCTION
SI rode carelessly in the earliest dawn out of the
city of Zamora I overtook a poor man who watered
his mule by the wayside; and by chance he greeted me
and asked me whither I was going. I named the city of
the great Saint that lies on the other side of the desert
of Salamanca towards the mountains; and since his way
was mine, and I was a stranger, he offered me service and
guidance for a certain distance. He was a man of some
fifty years, a peasant who worked in the fields; the
father of many sons, he told me, and one daughter who
was married and who lived in the city of the great Saint
whither I was bound. Now and then he crossed the
desert to see her, and since it was but yesterday he had
heard that a little son had been born to her, it was
necessary, in spite of the summer heat, that he should go
to see her. 'You understand, señor,' he said, 'that she
has no mother, and I love her.'
The sun was just rising over that boundless plain full
of dust. In spite of the monotony of the landscape, the
view was very beautiful under the level light of the sun;
and the sky was full of a fragile glory that gives always
a kind of enchantment to the dawn in the South. Not
far away Zamora stood on her hilltop, just a group of
golden, Romanesque buildings falling into decay, sur-
rounded by infinite light and dust. Looking on her in
the dawn, it was as though one heard a cry in the desert.
Far, far away I descried the outlines of mountains, and
nearer, but still far away across that burning plain, a great
xiii
xiv
THE CITIES OF SPAIN
མ་།
cloud of dust rose where a herd of swine moved from one
hill to another. Gently the wind came towards us out
of the south with that almost inaudible whisper, so
common in this noiseless country, that I find is made
by the passing of even the softest breath of air over
millions of dead wildflowers; and, indeed, one may
often see a harebell dead and shrivelled under that
terrible sun ringing frantically in the wind of one's cloak
at evening, and if one stoops down and listens, even that
tiny, sorrowful music may be heard in the loneliness.
All the morning we crept, under the hard blue sky
and pitiless sun, slowly, slowly, across the desert where
there is neither tree nor grass, only the dead wildflowers
of last spring. A great languor had fallen upon me; for
two days now the sun had seemed to bruise me, and the
immense horizons were full of wonders.
At midday we halted for the meal under the shadow
of some rocks, that seemed rather to radiate the heat
than to bring us coolness and rest. In the afternoon we
came very thirsty and covered with dust to the Douro,
a great river that was full of infinite refreshment.
My companion spoke but rarely, and when he spoke
at all it was rather of the desert or of nature or of God
than of anything particular to himself. And yet I think,
indeed, he was nearer to these three mysteries than I
knew. After all, they were his companions, and in the
immense loneliness of Spain, or at least of Castile, he had
come to know them as a man of twoscore and ten should
know his friends. 'And so,' he said to me when he saw
that I was very weary-' And so we must never forget
that God has given us the hour after the sunset.' And
indeed it is the most precious hour of the day. But at
the sunset of that day we were still far from home, and
the languor I had felt in the morning, that had gradually
increased all day, fell on me with double force. Great
INTRODUCTION
XV
shadows stole out of the north, and far away in the
burning west I saw the perfect rose-coloured towers of
the city for which I was bound. It was not till my mule
stumbled that I realised that I was falling from my
saddle.
Night fell-a night of large, few stars-and covered
us with her coolness; even yet we were far from any
city. And at last I could go no further, and told my
guide so, who without any expression of surprise lifted
me from my beast, laid me under a great rock, covered
me with my rug, tethered the mules, and began to pre-
pare supper. I shall not forget the beauty of that night,
nor the silence under those desert stars. From afar I
could hear faintly the sound of the river and the quiet
breathing or champing of the mules: there was no other
sound. And then suddenly I saw my companion a little
way off on his knees, between the immense horizons,
praying. As I watched the rugged, picturesque figure of
the old man, his head buried on his breast, his hands.
clasped before him, I thought it was Spain that I had
seen, alone, talking with God in the desert.
E. H.
August 1904
I
THE CITIES OF SPAIN
I
ON THE WAY
I
AM in Spain at last. For years I have promised my-
self this adventure-for in spite of the railway it is
an adventure still, in a way that a journey through Italy,
where almost every other person one sees is a foreigner,
has ceased to be for ever-and at last I am here in the
land of Spain. The journey from Paris was a nightmare
hideous and full of horrors: the continual noise of the
train, the groans and attitudes of the sleepers, the shriek-
ing as of lost souls that came now and again out of the
darkness, the heat of the long night spent with seven
strangers, the inevitable contact with that grotesque,
weary, fetid humanity, in so small a space, for so long a
time, the brutality of all that. For to me sleepless,
in all the reticence of consciousness, the gesture, the
rhetoric of that animal in humanity set free by sleep, its
inarticulate noises and struggles, its indifference to human
dignity, its brutal obliteration of everything in man but
the flesh, were a kind of vision, in which I saw all the
achievements of the years swept away in a moment,
and primitive man, filthy and covered with sweat, un-
conscious of anything but weariness, seeking his lair
at nightfall with the beasts with whom he shared the
A
www
THE CITIES OF SPAIN
world. Gradually the carriage came to be a prison; for
there was no corridor in which I might have found an
escape from the rancid stench of life that had long since
loaded the air with débris which now seemed to be falling
upon me, crushing me beneath its foulness where I lay
surrounded by darkness, astonished and aghast at the
terms on which we must accept life.
Before me, in the sickly light of the partly covered lamp,
a man of some fifty years, fat and disgusting, crouched in
the attitude of a wild beast, his mouth open, snoring, while
the saliva dripped over the sensual, pathetic lips. Every
now and then as the train swayed a grotesque shadow
leaped upon his face, flabby and swollen with all the
excesses that sleep had recalled and made so visible,
dragging it into the horrible contortions of a madman.
There were three women in the compartment; one in the
farthest corner with colourless, thin hair, still young, her
face in the deepest shadow, was asleep, I make no doubt,
since her body seemed to have collapsed within itself, so
that she seemed a sort of cripple or dwarf misshapen and
hideous. Another, her arms dropped over her knees,
seemed as though she were in despair; while the third
from time to time suckled her child. Of the rest of my
companions I took no notice-in every sort of attitude
they lay at the mercy of the train, subject to the grotesque
dances of the lamplight, unconscious of the meanness
and disaster that their own contrivance had thrust upon
them. I alone in all that endless night was waking,
conscious of the frightful brutality that we suffered, slaves
as we are to our own inventions. Three times I opened
the window; but each time some one stirred, rushed back
from the delights of oblivion, and half awake, half asleep,
thrust himself in front of me and shut out the sweetness
of the night. And once, as I stood up to open it a little
way just for a moment, she who held her child so tightly
ON THE WAY
3
under her bowed shoulders looked up at me quickly,
piteously I thought, and covered her shapeless treasure
with the cape of her cloak. And I, not to add to my
torture, fell back into my seat, helpless to deliver myself
from the body of that death. So night passed slowly,
slowly, and at last the summer stars, so large, so few,
began to pale, and I saw the faint grey lines of dawn far,
far away across the world.
II
In the quiet streets so old, so silent, of Fuentarabía,
grapes were to be had for a halfpenny a pound and
melons at a penny apiece; it was gloriously fine, I was
in Spain, and it was hot; so at last I found a cool
doorway where I might rest and eat my grapes in the
quiet, that seems always to surround this little city by
the sea.
I have entered Spain by Irún, that classical gateway
through which how many of our fathers, on their way to
the wars in defence of Don Carlos or on some other ad-
venture that called them out of the dreamy North, have
passed into Castile. Far away below me the Bidassoa,
that little river, divides France from Spain, and farther
away still the Pyrenees, perhaps the most beautiful hills
in the world, rise into the sky, that seems to lend them.
something of its serenity, its calmness, its quiet loveli-
ness. Somewhere across those hills my way lies towards
the sounding cities-Burgos, Valladolid, Salamanca,
Avila, and the rest. To-morrow I shall set out.
I know nothing of Spain-nothing of the Spaniards.
I am come to see this race which has suffered so much
from treason, from corruption, from poverty, and the evil
chance of war. And it seems to me that my only chance
2
THE CITIES OF SPAIN
world. Gradually the carriage came to be a prison; for
there was no corridor in which I might have found an
escape from the rancid stench of life that had long since
loaded the air with débris which now seemed to be falling
upon me, crushing me beneath its foulness where I lay
surrounded by darkness, astonished and aghast at the
terms on which we must accept life.
Before me, in the sickly light of the partly covered lamp,
a man of some fifty years, fat and disgusting, crouched in
the attitude of a wild beast, his mouth open, snoring, while
the saliva dripped over the sensual, pathetic lips. Every
now and then as the train swayed a grotesque shadow
leaped upon his face, flabby and swollen with all the
excesses that sleep had recalled and made so visible,
dragging it into the horrible contortions of a madman.
There were three women in the compartment; one in the
farthest corner with colourless, thin hair, still young, her
face in the deepest shadow, was asleep, I make no doubt,
since her body seemed to have collapsed within itself, so
that she seemed a sort of cripple or dwarf misshapen and
hideous. Another, her arms dropped over her knees,
seemed as though she were in despair; while the third
from time to time suckled her child. Of the rest of my
companions I took no notice-in every sort of attitude
they lay at the mercy of the train, subject to the grotesque
dances of the lamplight, unconscious of the meanness
and disaster that their own contrivance had thrust upon
them. I alone in all that endless night was waking,
conscious of the frightful brutality that we suffered, slaves
as we are to our own inventions. Three times I opened
the window; but each time some one stirred, rushed back
from the delights of oblivion, and half awake, half asleep,
thrust himself in front of me and shut out the sweetness
of the night. And once, as I stood up to open it a little
way just for a moment, she who held her child so tightly
ON THE WAY
3
for
an
nce
ing
lay
the
mp,
1 in
under her bowed shoulders looked up at me quickly,
piteously I thought, and covered her shapeless treasure
with the cape of her cloak. And I, not to add to my
torture, fell back into my seat, helpless to deliver myself
from the body of that death. So night passed slowly,
slowly, and at last the summer stars, so large, so few,
began to pale, and I saw the faint grey lines of dawn far,
far away across the world.
hile
ery
low
the
ble,
Ian.
the
her
bt.
E, so
and
ees,
ird
my
ude
que
ess
Don
ng,
ves
ned
ack
ep,
ess
tle
tly
II
In the quiet streets so old, so silent, of Fuentarabía,
grapes were to be had for a halfpenny a pound and
melons at a penny apiece; it was gloriously fine, I was
in Spain, and it was hot; so at last I found a cool
doorway where I might rest and eat my grapes in the
quiet, that seems always to surround this little city by
the sea.
I have entered Spain by Irún, that classical gateway
through which how many of our fathers, on their way to
the wars in defence of Don Carlos or on some other ad-
venture that called them out of the dreamy North, have
passed into Castile. Far away below me the Bidassoa,
that little river, divides France from Spain, and farther
away still the Pyrenees, perhaps the most beautiful hills.
in the world, rise into the sky, that seems to lend them
something of its serenity, its calmness, its quiet loveli-
ness. Somewhere across those hills my way lies towards
the sounding cities-Burgos, Valladolid, Salamanca,
Avila, and the rest. To-morrow I shall set out.
I know nothing of Spain-nothing of the Spaniards.
I am come to see this race which has suffered so much
from treason, from corruption, from poverty, and the evil
chance of war. And it seems to me that my only chance
4
THE CITIES OF SPAIN
of learning something of these people, so full of sadness
and pride, is that in my baggage, fortunately so small,
I should make no room for any prejudices. I shall set
down what I see, and with a certain carefulness judge, if
I must, accordingly, remembering that it is better to
understand than to censure, and that to love is the best
of all. And, indeed, already I find them a most courteous
and a most grave people. The carabineros who examined
my baggage at Irún apologised for putting me to the
inevitable inconvenience, and I had not been five minutes
in a Spanish train when my companion offered me a
cigarette, as he proposed to light his own, for in Spain, as
they say, 'a cigarette is never lighted for one.'
It was, as it were, in spite of myself that I spent my
first night in Spain at San Sebastián. I had hoped to
stay at Irún, itself the first town of Spain, but the inn
was little more than a hovel, pigs and chickens occupied
the restaurant, and the bed was even that which Don
Quixote, my dear darling, used at the inn where Mari-
tornes, that Asturian, was serving-wench: that is to say,
it consisted of four not very smooth boards upon two
not very equal tressels, and a flock-bed no thicker than
a quilt and full of knobs, which, if one had not seen
through the breaches that they were wool, by the hard-
ness might have been taken for pebble stones; with
two sheets like the leather of an old target, and a rug the
threads of which, if you had a mind, you might number
without losing one of the account." So I went to San
Sebastián.
Before setting out, however, I journeyed on foot so far
as Fuentarabía, where I found grapes and much quiet, and,
above all, the sea. Figure to yourself a little city set on
a hill, above a river with a name so beautiful as the
Bidassoa. The streets are too steep and too stony for
any wheeled traffic, and the sun is almost excluded by

A STREET OF FUENTARABIA
ON THE WAY
S
the roofs and balconies of the houses. It is a scene out
of Romeo and Juliet.' But on that Sunday afternoon
those shadowy streets were full of women and children
passing from church to church; the women wearing
always the beautiful black mantilla, which is so much more
charming than any hat can ever be. After a time I
followed them and came into the cathedral, a huge and
rather gloomy building in the Gothic manner spoiled by
restoration. An old priest was preaching very earnestly
to a congregation composed, for the most part, of women
and children and certain old men bowed with years.
And as I listened to the splendid syllables of the
Castilian tongue that rang eloquently through the
twilight, I remembered the saying of that old Spanish
doctor of whom James Howell tells us in his Instructions
for Forreine Travell, to wit that Spanish, Italian, and
French, these three daughters of the Latin language, were
spoken in Paradise: that God Almighty created the
world in Spanish, the Tempter persuaded Eve in Italian,
and Adam begged pardon in French.
At last I made my way up to the great castle that
towers over the little city, that has seen a thousand sum-
mers go by, and heard the horns of Charlemagne, and
watched the English under the great duke ford the river
towards the sea. For it seems that on October 8, 1813,
the Duke of Wellington, being hard pressed by the
French, not much more than a month after the fearful
business of San Sebastián, was anxious to cross the river
into France; but the French had fortified all the posi-
tions along their own shore, the bridges were destroyed,
and every known ford was commanded by the cannon of
Soult. Some fishermen, however, had spoken to the
duke of a ford close to the sea opposite the city of
Fuentarabía, which could only be used at low tide, and
then for but three hours. The duke waited his time,
•
6
THE CITIES OF SPAIN
and one night of thunder the English troops crossed the
river by the ford of Fuentarabía, and by sunrise had
outflanked the French, speedily gained their positions,
and driven them before them, winning at last the great
Rhune mountain, the very centre and heart of the French
defence. And yet it was not any memory of England and
her victories that came to my mind on that quiet Sunday
afternoon in the strong castle of Fuentarabía; but a
vision, as it were, of the immensity of this country, the
beautiful burnt-up hills so strong, so calm, so quiet,
the immobility of everything-the brightness and the
silence. Africa seemed to lie only just beyond that line
of mountains, Africa with all its promises of heat and
desert and thirsty days, full of silence and dust. Far
and far away lay the sea like an immense shell of
mother-of-pearl; and at my feet the Bidassoa seemed
to await some signal to continue on its way, and lo, in
its depths I discovered marvellous cities, golden with
forgotten sunsets, the towers of Charlemagne, the fort-
resses of Roland. And out of the silence the great
words of a song seemed to come to me, a song I had
known and loved as a boy in a country so different from
this, but which lies, after all, beside this very sea.
'O for the voice of that wild horn
On Fontarrabian echoes borne,
The dying heroes call,
That told imperial Charlemagne
How Paynim sons of swarthy Spain
Had wrought his champion's fall.'
One by one the words came to me full of the infinite
regret of evening; and then, suddenly, out of the twilight
the few melancholy notes of a Basque pipe reached me.
from the marshes; and as I passed from her, there upon
her ruined gateway I found the broken letters of her
beautiful names, 'Muy Noble, Muy Leal, Muy Vale-
ON THE WAY
7
rosa'; it was as though I had come upon some lost
diadem, or in the waters of the beautiful river had found
some ancient sword.
III
And indeed Fuentarabía keeps still her ancient trust,
still under the hot July sun she elects year by year the
'Mayor of the Sea,' with much simple ceremony and by-
gone magnificence. Up her narrow, stony streets that
were before the coming of any wheeled cart, the proces-
sion winds to the castle, there to elect the Alcalde del
Mar. First come the musicians in order, playing—well,
modern music; and then a woman, very beautiful, dressed
in white, passes bearing a great casquet aloft in her
arms, moving, as only Spanish women can move, with the
divine footsteps of Aphrodite, who went to meet Paris
long and long ago. Behind her a lad bears an ancient
banner red and emblazoned; and after come the fisher-
men, an orderly crowd, touched by the distinction of the
sea, its strange refinement, its strength and beauty; their
bronzed faces, simple and clear, blessed by the sea wind.
Soon that ancient banner floats from the antique iron of
the balcony, and then in reverent silence the casquet is
opened, and its treasures produced: a Crucifix and
Chalice of silver, certain small rods, and an ancient
parchment covered with Gothic writing.
After the ceremony they feast, these simple folk, in the
house of the new alcalde, under the shadow of the plane-
trees. Beside the door they plant the sacred banner;
within, the table is spread under the simple family
pictures of Christ and Madonna. And all before the
house, under the plane-trees, on the beach, there is
dancing and music; not such dancing as we know to-day
in England, but true dancing in the moonlight, the Fan-
8
THE CITIES OF SPAIN
dango, the Bolero, the Danza Prima; while behind the
swaying bodies of the dancers, the uplifted arms, the
perfect poses of antiquity, stretches the sea far away past
the sleeping ships of the fishermen to the iron coast of
the Basque country under the infinite sky.
IV
After all, I found but little to see in San Sebastián. It
is just a modern seaside place, where the young king
amuses himself in the hot weather when Madrid is a
furnace. After much search I found the graves of my
countrymen who fell in the Peninsular war, and for Don
Carlos in 1836. They lie in a place of great beauty on
the side of the cliff, where the foam from the sea is often
strewn upon the grass, finer than hair, which covers
them.
And then, one day, I set out soon after noon, begin-
ning my journey through Spain at fifteen miles an hour.
It is as near posting as we are ever likely to come; but
for me, at least, it was not discouraging. I knew that the
train went no faster; I was not disappointed, I had
looked for nothing else, and above all one could smoke
cigarettes and see Spain. And indeed that is almost all
there is to do, I find. Every one smokes everywhere,
and at all times. In this wonderful country one carriage
is reserved in each train for those who do not smoke, not,
as with us, for those who do. At every station there is a
pleasant delay; one gets out and lights a fresh cigarette;
and it is only when hour after hour has gone by, and the
train is later and later, that one grows angry. But then
what would you? It is true the train consumed nine
hours in journeying the one hundred and sixty-seven
miles between San Sebastián and Burgos; but at my
first gesture of irritation and weariness (for properly we
ON THE WAY
9
should have been but seven hours on the way) a young
Spaniard sitting opposite me gave me a cigarette, and at
my second bought me a box of sweet cakes and insisted
on my acceptance of them. 'You have come to see our
ancient and decayed grandeur,' said he, 'I am sure you
will not be disappointed; excuse us, then, if in the little
matter of railway contrivance we are a year or two
behind the times.' And as a charming excuse for his
country, he offered me that box of sweet Alsásua cakes.
And, indeed, who could be angry, however bad the
railway; the shame being truly that there is a railway
at all.
V
There are countries in the world that to the least
imaginative traveller instantly evoke an image, in which
he discerns, as it were, the true character of the land he is
about to see. Thus who among us that in early youth
saw Italy for the first time, perhaps, at dawn from the
heights of Mont Cenis, or maybe at sunset as we drew
near to Genoa, but understood at once that she was, as it
were, a fair woman forlorn upon the mountains.
It is under no such sweet and gracious form that
Spain appears to the traveller who, having seen the
world, it may be, comes to her last of all, expecting
almost nothing, or perhaps looking for a country softer
and more voluptuous than Italy, where under the palms
and the tall vines many waters flow, while the luxuriant
landscape stretches away in vistas of happy valleys, in
which they sing the songs of Andalucía, under the eternal
snows of the great mountains. But behind the Pyrenees,
which as seen from Fuentarabía are so strangely beauti-
ful, so delicate in their fragile peaks, there is no land full of
vines and many waters, and any dance or song is seldom
10
THE CITIES OF SPAIN
heard. It is a figure of exaltation and strength, emaci-
ated, profoundly ascetic, marvellous with self-inflicted
wounds, kneeling in the desert, that you discover with a
great surprise behind those mountains; and instead of
the soft, smiling, languorous eyes of Mona Lisa, you see
the naked form of John Baptist praying alone between
the immense horizons.
As you enter Spain to-day at Irún between the
mountains and the sea, you linger for a time in a country
very like Devon in a certain luxuriance of fern and
heather, of oak and ash, which covers the lower slopes
of the mountains; and, indeed, you cross many a pleasant
river, where in the infinite calm silence the great shadows
of the mountains lie among the stones and grow, and
lessen, and grow again, as dawn passes into sunset over
the bridge of the day. But this country so full of obvious
refreshment is scarcely Spanish at all. It is the country
of the Basques, that strange people who speak a tongue
no man can learn, and who, in spite of Roman, Moorish,
and Gothic conquest, have maintained their language,
their manners, and their institutions, and to some extent
their physical characteristics also, even till to-day. It is
not here you will find the true Spain, but in the Castiles
in León and in Andalucía.
Coming from the north by train at fifteen miles an
hour, you enter Old Castile at sunset, at a little city
called Miranda de Ebro. But even at Vitoria the
country is a little less dressed, a little bare, and much
more passionate than among the mountains; and from
there to Miranda you find all your desire in the sad and
tragic landscape that is gradually unfolded before you.
If you are so fortunate as to come to Castile for the first
time, thus, at sunset, you will in a moment understand
everything-the ruined splendour of Spain, the exalta-
tion and the glory. As I watched the sunset burning

SUNSET
the tawny
hour of th
that you w
del Ebro.
ruined spl
Mycenae
Aeschylos
of burning
melanchol
that Euri
great poet
is the ver
the midst
nightfall
expressio
another a
be like t
It wa
Burgos.

ON THE WAY
11
e tawny plains, I remembered that the most beautiful
ur of the day begins at sundown. It is in that hour
at you will pass the ancient and ruined city of Miranda
el Ebro. Ah, but I cannot express the splendour, the
ined splendour of this world. Figure to yourself the
Iycenae of Euripides-of Euripides, not of Sophocles or
Aeschylos-a city surrounded by a marvellous plain, full
of burning dust red and tawny, with vague stretches of
melancholy, fierce sierra far, far away; and then remember
that Euripides makes of the Tragedy of the Atridae no
great poetical tragedy, but just a clan murder. Well, it
is the very place. And that ruined city which I saw in
the midst of the immense and infinite plain just before
nightfall seems to me to be the expression, the perfect
expression of Spain. I find myself already longing for
another and clearer sight of that desert. Will all Castile
be like that, and what of Spain?
It was quite dark when at last the train crept into
Burgos.
NOT
BURGOS
OT altogether out of the world, yet having but few
dealings with it, Burgos stands upon her hillside
waiting, perhaps, for the coming of Jesus. For whereas
the world at large has forgotten Him, being busy with
the occupations and rivalries of life, Burgos, in spite of
herself almost, cannot rase out that remembrance. So
she stands a noble city, her gaze fixed on the stars,
unconscious of her loneliness among her yellow hills,
undismayed by storm or sunshine, waiting for the sign of
the Son of Man.
Figure to yourself a country of low, sweeping hills,
immense, voluminous, tawny under a blue sky, and
searched by an impartial sun; and in a valley so wide as
almost to be a plain, a splendid city, white and red and
smokeless. Her river is shrunken with age and cannot
fill his banks, on which avenues of poplars guard the
monotonous walks of the dreamers from the sun, lest they
grow weary or forgetful in the sunshine. Walking down
one of these avenues beyond the river, one sees, really
for the first time, the true Burgos, its heart, as it were, the
centre of its being-the cathedral.
There is no ecstasy so profound that it cannot be
expressed in stone, so that it may endure for ever; and
in a kind of reaction, as it were, the cathedral seems to
have captured the people's hearts so that they too look
for some divine thing, and are strangers outside the gates
of their city. And indeed it is true-there is little else to
12
BURGOS
13
S
orld, yet having but few
ands upon her hillside
f Jesus. For whereas
im, being busy with
Burgos, in spite of
remembrance. So
fixed on the stars,
her yellow hills,
Eng for the sign of
sweeping hills,
blue sky, and
Jey so wide as
and red and
e and cannot
s guard the
un, lest they
king down
ees, really
were,
the
not be
er; and
ems to
po look
e gates
else to
think of in so isolated a place save the emotions of its
own heart, full of an enthusiasm that has pierced so far
towards the stars, and that is in itself, as has been said of
architecture generally, song made visible.
Coming to Burgos from the rather obvious beauty of
the country at the base of the Pyrenees, I saw her first
under a sky of few stars and without the airiness and
light that the moon lends even to nature. And yet there
was an added beauty in the calm and profound depth of
a sky too deep for the moon's light; for I found the
open-work towers of the great church studded with stars,
so that, as one might think, nature had lent her diamonds
not from the earth, the which she, alas, held but as
worthless, but from the sky itself, in which she thought
her home to be. And it is indeed as the 'work of the
angels' that one comes to think of the cathedral ever
afterwards, not confining that perfection they so naturally
would lend her to the lantern alone, but finding every-
where, in tower and chapel and relief and screen, some
scrupulous though not simple beauty, not quite natural or
to be explained, even by ourselves, as part of the influence
of that English bishop, Maurice by name, whose tomb
is never lonely in the great choir. For, indeed, in the
enthusiasm of its ornament, in the passionate swift flight
of its arches, in, the unlimited desire of its height and
depth and breadth, there is nothing of England at all,
nothing of those 'plain grey walls pierced with long
lancet windows, overlooking the lowlands of Essex or
the meadows of Kent or Berkshire.' For after all Burgos
itself is a part of its cathedral, in a way that no English
city can ever be part of its own great church, the which
is really antagonistic to everything around it, the houses
of the citizens, the modern life of the people, and even
the religion that she too has learned to tolerate as a
sufficient excuse for preservation from time.
II
BURGOS
NOT
OT altogether out of the world, yet having but few
dealings with it, Burgos stands upon her hillside
waiting, perhaps, for the coming of Jesus. For whereas
the world at large has forgotten Him, being busy with
the occupations and rivalries of life, Burgos, in spite of
herself almost, cannot rase out that remembrance. So
she stands a noble city, her gaze fixed on the stars,
unconscious of her loneliness among her yellow hills,
undismayed by storm or sunshine, waiting for the sign of
the Son of Man.
Figure to yourself a country of low, sweeping hills,
immense, voluminous, tawny under a blue sky, and
searched by an impartial sun; and in a valley so wide as
almost to be a plain, a splendid city, white and red and
smokeless. Her river is shrunken with age and cannot
fill his banks, on which avenues of poplars guard the
monotonous walks of the dreamers from the sun, lest they
grow weary or forgetful in the sunshine. Walking down
one of these avenues beyond the river, one sees, really
for the first time, the true Burgos, its heart, as it were, the
centre of its being-the cathedral.
There is no ecstasy so profound that it cannot be
expressed in stone, so that it may endure for ever; and
in a kind of reaction, as it were, the cathedral seems to
have captured the people's hearts so that they too look
for some divine thing, and are strangers outside the gates
of their city. And indeed it is true-there is little else to
12

BURGOS
13
isolated a place save the emotions of its
of an enthusiasm that has pierced so far
ars, and that is in itself, as has been said of
enerally, song made visible.
Burgos from the rather obvious beauty of
the base of the Pyrenees, I saw her first
of few stars and without the airiness and
moon lends even to nature. And yet there
beauty in the calm and profound depth of
p for the moon's light; for I found the
wers of the great church studded with stars,
might think, nature had lent her diamonds
earth, the which she, alas, held but as
from the sky itself, in which she thought
be. And it is indeed as the 'work of the
one comes to think of the cathedral ever
t confining that perfection they so naturally
er to the lantern alone, but finding every-
er and chapel and relief and screen, some
ough not simple beauty, not quite natural or
d, even by ourselves, as part of the influence
sh bishop, Maurice by name, whose tomb
y in the great choir. For, indeed, in the
its ornament, in the passionate swift flight
in the unlimited desire of its height and
eadth, there is nothing of England at all,
ose 'plain grey walls pierced with long
's, overlooking the lowlands of Essex or
of Kent or Berkshire.' For after all Burgos
of its cathedral, in a way that no English
e part of its own great church, the which
onistic to everything around it, the houses
, the modern life of the people, and even
hat she too has learned to tolerate as a
se for preservation from time.
P
14
THE CITIES OF SPAIN
But the landscape of Burgos has no mildness nor
comfort; it is bare and sombre, and one of the saddest
and most ardent countries of the worid. For the city is
solitary, without the melodramatic relief of mountains or
torrents, or even the sweetness of a river. Her only
companions are the tragic and magnificent sierras, tawny
ruins that nature has forgotten since the world was void.
Ah, I speak as a child, for she is beautiful to me and
my words are not worthy of her. The country is harsh
to her, whilst she, immaculate, inflexible, secret, is really
the first city I have seen that verily believes in Christ.
She is an image of Faith, of Exaltation in a world that
is overheated and full of lies and greatly desirous. Not
energy nor even passion fills her eyes, but Faith. Is this
so plentiful in the world that one should be offended? or
so contemptible that one should laugh in passing by?
Faith for her at least merits no semi-darkness, she is not
ashamed to let the world see her tears as they fall at the
remembrance of her sins. Light-it is the very first
surprise for the Northerner on entering that vast and
splendid church. There is nothing hidden; the choir is
set far away from the high altar, and the screens are of
bronze; there is no crypt as at Chartres for the earliest
Mystery; even the Holy Christ of Burgos is vistaed in an
avenue of light; so that we are never deceived, we are not
stupefied with twilight and the burning glass, we are not
deceived at all. It is as though we were on the hillside
almost, as indeed we are a hillside covered with the
work of angels-angels of light.
And so it is that I have seen on the evening of Sunday
the people of Burgos gather in their cathedral, while the
sun is setting, to watch the choir and the aisles grow
mysterious with a kind of wonder and terror almost,
coming at last under the great lantern where the sun
shines for a full half-hour after the rest of the church is
dark. Tha
treating the
or mounta
sympathy,
by man, i-
that has
we have
impalpabl
so kind to
It is p
that, the
which, li
light of
sunrise
revealed
our rea!
it rema
less be
It is i
signa
and 1
natio
he de
loveli
in bu
gran
is bi
Itali
in a
Age
rhe
Le
upc
the
in t
BURGOS
15
dark. That delight in the tricks of nature-the sun
treating the cathedral as though it were a great hill
or mountain, recognising, as it were, not without
sympathy, the rearrangement of the stones of the hills
by man, is, it seems to me, characteristic of a people
that has not been materially successful. In England
we have not the time nor the desire to care for so
impalpable a thing as that, and indeed the sun is not
so kind to us.
It is perhaps in just such fortunate natural things as
that, the church itself being a sort of exquisite casket in
which, like some precious antique jewel, the very ancient
light of the world is imprisoned, only revealed to us by
sunrise and sunset as the true Light of the World is
revealed to us by the mysterious words of the Mass, that
our real delight lies. For the cathedral of Burgos, while
it remains one of the chief glories of Spain, is how much
less beautiful than the cathedrals of Chartres or Amiens!
It is indeed in architecture that the Spaniard seems most
signally to have failed. The most practical of the arts,
and perhaps the most perfect means of expression for
national, as distinct from individual emotion and genius,
he desired above all things to excel in it, to possess the
loveliest buildings in the world-he has succeeded only
in building the least restrained, the least simple, the most
grandiose. For there is no Spanish architecture; there
is but a Spanish translation of French, of German, of
Italian styles, a capricious following of different manners
in a feverish, prolonged enthusiasm for grand buildings.
Age has lent something of its repose to churches so
rhetorical, so wildly enthusiastic as those of Burgos,
León, and Toledo; they escape the vulgarity that falls
upon the brutal erections of yesterday and to-day; but
they are not Spanish at all, or if they be, it is as it were
in their excessive ornament, their recklessness, their super-
16
THE CITIES OF SPAIN
ficial differences from the masterpieces of Amiens or
Beauvais; so that we find, with a sort of wonder at first,
that this proud and reticent people is in its architecture
the least reserved, the most superficial of peoples, content
to express itself very garrulously in stone that after all
cannot lie, for the most part without the repose that
waits only upon the steadfast, assured mind and with all
the gesticulations so necessary in translation or to one
expressing himself in a foreign tongue. And it may
well be that the cause of all this lies in the fact that
architecture is always the expression of national and not of
individual ideas, religion and the desire of beauty. And
so, while it is true that religion welded Spain out of an
anarchical mass of peoples, it betrays its terrible excesses
as much in her cathedrals as in her history; and thus,
gradually, the church of San Pablo in Valladolid, for
instance, becomes for us as terrible, as expressive as
the Plaza Mayor there. Nor do I wish to accuse the
Spaniard of barbarism, even in those autos played out
in Valladolid, still less to consider art as the handmaid of
morality; only the character of a people easily subject
to excesses might seem to be as obvious in the one as
in the other.
Those forgotten builders of the great Gothic churches
of France were but the tools, as it were, which a whole
people used in creating a new style. And so it is that
with the Greeks the perfect temple, the Parthenon,
neither too large nor too small, comprising in itself the
perfection of construction, of proportion, of ornament, of
colour, summed up in itself, was as it were the consum-
mate expression of, their sure and precise desire for
beauty; the apprehension of it in perfection and in
sanity, rather than in mysticism or suggestion. And
again with the Roman, the immortal round arch, so
strong, so compulsory, so inevitable, uninterrupted by
BURGOS
17
any capricious angle or swift aspiring multitude of lines,
is expressive of the profound and definite law, the ever-
lasting dominion of a people whose character has formed
and inspired the history of Europe. And what is the
Romanesque but a perfect reminiscence of all that old
civilisation in which East and West are friends; an
expression of love, as it were, for all that marvellous
world which was just then passing away? And so when
we come to Gothic architecture we find in the praying,
uplifted hands of its arches, in the soaring enthusiasm of
its towers and spires, in the windows that shut out the
sun, in the form as of a ship, that the Gothic insists upon,
and in the idealism, the mysticism, of those lines that
lead us ever upward out of the world to annihilation in
God, the perfect expression of the Teutonic peoples,
just overwhelmed by the individualism of Jesus, those
northern races who have lived in the gloom of the great
forests, and slept by their fires on the mountains, and
seen the eyes of wild beasts, and in the cold and rain of
northern Europe have conceived of another and a fairer
world behind the blue sky, that lies beyond the clouds
and the mist, and was the one thing that was very
precious in their lives. No Latin people has been able to
understand, to express itself in pointed architecture. In
France it is confined to the north, where Flemish and
German influence was strong; in Italy there is no single
fine Gothic church, as we understand the term; the
so-called Gothic of Italy being, indeed, a translation of
pointed work into the terms of the Latin genius-a
translation and nothing more. And at the first oppor-
tunity how eagerly Italy returned to old forms, how
perfectly she used them, with a consummate understand-
ing of the old classical delights of man in space and light,
the perfection of the sunshine and the blue sky. How
feeble, how vulgar, how full of misunderstanding is the
B
18
THE CITIES OF SPAIN
Duomo of Milan, in all its rhetorical, grimacing mimicry,
in comparison with that little perfect church of S. Mary
outside the gates of Todi; how much less than nothing
is S. Maria sopra Minerva beside S. Maria Maggiore; or
the exquisite goldsmith's work of the façade at Orvieto
beside the Romanesque of S. Pietro in Spoleto! And so
it is that the Spaniard, full of strange, obscure Latinisms,
cannot reconcile Gothic architecture with his own dreams.
Always he has employed foreigners to build his greatest
churches in this manner at Burgos, at León, at Toledo,
spoiling their work by reason of his own real dislike of
it, with his strange caprices, his desire for space, and the
more emotional expression of his dreams, the which he
learnt from the Moor and his own heart.
Thus, for me at least, the Gothic churches of Spain
are full of that over-emphasis which spoils beauty, as
it were, of its modesty. Loaded with every sort of
ornament, how easily the beautiful thirteenth-century
work which may be found here in Burgos passes into the
'plateresque'-a kind of metal work in stone, capricious
and full of excitement, in which all the wildest dreams
of this strange people seem to be expressed, till, as in
the new cathedral at Salamanca, we find an immense,
grandiose, over-loaded church really blotting out and
annihilating the ancient and quiet beauty of the smaller
Romanesque building, the old cathedral, which hides
itself, still lovely and perfect, though dismantled, behind
the new church. Was it Moorish influence that brought
the Spaniard to love intricate splendour before sim-
plicity, or was it just the gradual decay of inspira-
tion in art seeking here too to hide itself under an
immense labour, a superficial loveliness of ornament?
At least we know that for many years Moorish and
European art go side by side in Spain with, as it were,
a great gulf fixed between them; nor do we find in
BURGOS
19
the Court of the Lions in the Alhambra-a building
of the fourteenth century-any real influence of such
Gothic work as that at Burgos done in the thirteenth
century. And yet it seems to me that even as the
Moor was unable to exclude from his work all know-
ledge of what his enemy was doing not far away, so the
Spaniard, in spite of all his hatred, was subject to Moorish
influence, which may be found in a gradual substitution
of an ideal of intricate splendour, richness, and infinite
ornament for an ancient simplicity. In the Cristo de
la Luz at Toledo you will find in a chamber, some
twenty-one feet square, nine vaulting compartments
covered with various vaults; that, to the European mind,
in spite of a certain measure of success, is a fault against
temperance, against a due sense of proportion, and
against simplicity. Built probably about the middle of
the eleventh century, it no doubt had its effect on such
Gothic work as we find in Spain. Something of the
difficulty, however, of understanding the history of
architecture in Spain may be found in the fact that
different styles seem to have flourished there at the
same period. Thus we might say roughly that the
Mosque of Córdova was of the ninth century, the
Alcázar and Giralda of Seville of the thirteenth,
the Court of the Lions in the Alhambra of the four-
teenth, and certain Moorish houses in Toledo of the
fifteenth. And again, the Romanesque cathedral of
Salamanca belongs to the twelfth century, as does the
cathedral of Tarragona; the cathedrals of Lérida and
of Valencia to the thirteenth; and all these beautiful
Romanesque churches might be the work of the same
man, so uniform are they in design and inspiration.
But when we come to consider that the cathedrals of
Toledo, Burgos, and León were all building in the thir-
teenth century-that is to say, at the same time as the
20
THE CITIES OF SPAIN
Romanesque cathedrals of Lérida and Valencia, and the
Moorish Alcázar and Giralda at Seville-while it is not
altogether a surprise to us to find that the work of the
Moors went on side by side with that of the Spaniards
without either influencing other, it is nevertheless one
of the most confusing facts in the history of art, that
the Gothic cathedrals of Toledo, Burgos, and León
should have been built at the same time as the Roman-
esque cathedrals of Lérida and Valencia. And, indeed,
our only escape from this seeming contradiction of history
is to be found in the fact, to which the buildings them-
selves bear witness, that the churches of Toledo, Burgos,
and León were built by foreigners, who copied the great
churches of France, and were really scarcely Spanish at
all, in their construction at any rate, though modified to
some extent at the time, and certainly later, by Spanish
artists who had felt the beauty of the strange and
intricate ornament of the Moors. In the cathedral of
León, for instance, which is usually given to a Spanish
architect, the evidence of an imitation of French work is
extraordinary, so that it might seem difficult to doubt
the genesis of this beautiful church.
The cathedral of Burgos stands, as most Gothic
churches do, in the midst of houses a little confused
by their outlines, so that it is impossible to see it in its
completeness from any point, whether from hill or valley.
It is like a ship overwhelmed by the waves of the sea.
Built on a hillside that slopes precipitously to the river,
all that we really see is late work, some of it quite modern
-indeed, of the eighteenth century, as the west front,
before which the hill itself has been hewn away to form
a plaza. Those towers and steeples with the lantern
and the great chapel at the eastern end seem to us to
be almost the whole church, and yet not one of them
properly belongs to the church at all, which is really of
BURGOS
21
the thirteenth century. The chapel of the Condestable
in some strange way dominates the whole cathedral,
thrusting upon it all its intricate and restless splendour,
its difficult modern music that has forgotten the peace of
the plainsong. And however great at first our delight
may be in the lantern, that 'work of the angels,' we soon
grow a little weary of it, and find ourselves wondering
what simple beauty has been destroyed to make way for
all that elegance, that fragile glory of delicate pinnacle
and carved goldsmith's work. Well, it was something
more masculine than that, be sure, which Bishop Luis
de Ancona y Osorno tried to lift into the sky-in vain,
for it fell, destroyed for ever by those who could not
understand. And it may well be that in the lantern of
the great church of Las Huelgas we see to-day a thing
as beautiful, as simple, and as strong as that old cimborio
that fell in 1539.
In any distant view of Burgos how glorious she
appears; so that when we come nearer and look at
her from her own hillside we are disappointed. Yes,
it is true; we had expected something, I think more
sincere than she, loaded with every sort of architectural
ornament, seems to be. Yet the true church is of the
thirteenth century, added to in the fourteenth, altered
again in the fifteenth, and yet again in the sixteenth
century. And somewhere beneath all the later work, if
we look with a certain care, we may find still the old
thirteenth-century church full of truth, beauty, and sweet-
There is little doubt that that early church con-
sisted of just a nave and aisles of six bays with choir
and apse, and it may be with chapels round it, and of
two transepts very deep and spacious, with their chapels
on the east sides-only one of which remains. To-day
we may find the north transept with its beautiful door-
ways still unchanged; while so late as 1860 the approach
ness.
22
THE CITIES OF SPAIN
to the south transept was, we are told, perfect and
beautiful, but is so no longer by reason of certain
'restorations' which made necessary among other things
the sacrifice of a part of the bishop's palace. The south
transept itself, however, is still quite perfect of the
thirteenth century, and, indeed, the two transepts are
the only parts of the old church easily visible from the
outside, for the western steeples are of the end of the
fifteenth century, the central lantern and the Condestable
chapel are of the early Renaissance.
It is with a certain wonder that one passes through
those modern west doors and comes out of the sunshine
of Spain, not into one of the great twilight churches of
the north, but into a church full of a light only more
serene than that which is so sweet under the sky. One
seems to be in a place full of precious things, among
which not the least is that very precious and ancient
light that fills the nave and aisles, the choir and the
chapels, with a sort of benediction. The nave is the
nave of a great French church, spoiled, it is true, as just
that by reason of the trespass of the coro upon it,-a
church, as it were, within a church, so that no view of
the altar or the church itself, as a whole, is possible from
the west end. And indeed the nave does not really
exist, beautiful though it be; it is not there the people
kneel to hear the Mass, but under the lantern between
the rejas or screens of bronze, where I have seen them
on many a quiet Sunday-shepherds in skins, from the
plains and the hills, peasants wrapt in a kind of blanket
worn as the Romans used to wear the toga; the women
in black, wearing the black mantilla, sitting on the floor
on reed mats of many colours, very devout, and yet not
without a certain exquisite distraction, caused perhaps
by the inattention, the heedlessness at so ancient a
service of the Burgalés youth, who, as in old days, have

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AMBULATORY, BURGOS CATHEDRAL
BURGOS
23
come to Mass to see the world and the world's wife, and
to greet their friends, among whom, it may well be, Jesu-
cristo is not the least.
And even as outside the church you are impressed
chiefly by the later work, so here, too, you are over-
whelmed by the immense number of chapels of all
shapes, styles, and dates. And again it is to the beauti-
ful transepts you turn in their simplicity-a simplicity
that would be richness anywhere else-wondering a little
at the exquisite staircase that leads far up the wall to
the great door on the north, till you remember that
precipitous hillside on which the church is built.
That choir set so far from the high altar is certainly
an innovation, invented partly for warmth, partly for
convenience, leaving the people free to pursue their
own devotions, not expecting them to be interested
in anything so 'professional' as the choir offices-the
long, beautiful Latin psalms, the lections, and the
prayers. In its exclusiveness, its privacy, the coro of
these Spanish cathedrals, for almost everywhere the
great choir half fills the nave, is like the choir of West-
minster Abbey shutting off the nave from the altar,
so that it is almost impossible for a great number to
assist at Mass or, indeed, at any service at all without
dividing the clergy from the altar. Here at Burgos,
however, the choir is not so unfortunate in its obstruction
as at Westminster by reason of the innumerable altars
that surround the church, so that while it may be difficult
to approach the high altar, the worshipper at least has
certain consolations. While at Westminster it is really
impossible to use the church at all for any great service
other than a mere state function, since so few ever catch
sight of the altar at all, and the great nave, so solemn
and lovely, is now a useless outer court, since the
Anglican Church prefers to keep still the arrangement
24
THE CITIES OF SPAIN
of old days when a religion so different was to be found
there.
Those great bronze screens that guard the coro and
capilla mayor, as here in Spain they call the chancel, are
on Sundays and, indeed, every day at Mass thrown open
wide so that the people may enter in under the lantern;
thus, it is true, they come between the clergy and the
altar; but lest this should be inconvenient, lesser screens
have been set up, leaving a narrow passage from the
coro to the steps of the altar, so that the clergy may pass
to and fro. But, indeed, however convenient it may be,
the great coro is a mistake, a mistake of the Renais-
sance. The bishop, almost invisible save when he pro-
ceeds to the altar, has his throne at the west end of the
choir, where it may well be a reja used to open a vista
of the altar from the farthest church. To-day nothing
is visible but a blank wall, with its tawdry altar trying in
vain to make excuse for what we have lost. And, indeed,
inside the choir itself there is really nothing of interest
save the beautiful monument, a thirteenth-century
work of Bishop Maurice, that Englishman, as is sup-
posed, who built the church. Strangely enough, it is said
that in 1512 Bishop Ampudia placed this monument to
the west of the reja that shut in the west end of the
choir. It is certain that since then it has not been
removed, and yet to-day it lies in the midst of the choir;
the which might seem to prove, once and for all, that of
old the coro occupied a position less prejudicial to the
church. No doubt the choir stalls were originally in the
capilla mayor.¹
The chapels are, as I have said, innumerable; chief
among them for size is that of Santiago, which is used as
the parish church, but there is little remarkable in it.
It is to the chapel of the Condestable, built about 1487
1 Ponz: Viaje de España. Madrid, 1787.
BURGOS
25
by Juan de Colonia, that every traveller will hasten.
And yet, indeed, I think there are three chapels in the
church more worthy of attention: one of them, that in
the north transept, is of the thirteenth century; the two
other are Capilla S. Gregorio and that one immediately
to the west of it; they are of the fourteenth century. It
is true they are beautiful, simple, full of grace, built for
the worship of God, but all the world prefers rather to
wonder at Juan of Colonia than to be satisfied with the
beauty he failed to understand. Juan was of German
birth, and is generally supposed to have been brought to
Burgos by Bishop Alfonso de Cartagena on his return
from the council of Basle. The upper part of the western
steeples of the cathedral, the great Carthusian monastery
of Miraflores not far away, and S. Pablo of Valladolid are
all the work of this foreigner. Of him Street¹ says, 'His
work is very peculiar. It is essentially German in its
endless intricacy and delicacy of detail, but has features
that I do not remember to have seen in Germany, which
may be fairly attributed either to the Spaniards who
worked under him or to an attempt on his part to accom-
modate his work to Spanish tastes.' However that may
be, his work is of the most rich and florid sort. That it is
delightful it is difficult to deny, that it is fitting or sincere
I think is much easier. It has neither gravity nor humour,
it is full of gesticulation, a little obvious, a little blatant.
To pray in such a place if one were sorry might seem
impossible, and if one were glad one would go to the
hills. To sleep there in death would be more terrible
than to be buried in a great city, since it lacks the poor
humanity even of so mean a place as a London cemetery.
And so it is reduced at last, since all else is refused it, to
rejoice in the wonder of the stranger who, guide-book in
¹ Some Account of Gothic Architecture in Spain, by G. E. Street. London,
1865.
26
THE CITIES OF SPAIN
hand, thinks the thoughts most probably spoken by
another German; and since these two are in agreement,
what can he do but rejoice in his bewildered way and
return home convinced in his heart that he has seen a
wonder, as indeed he has. But it is not, be sure, in any
such insincere rhetoric that the greatness of Burgos lies,
but in the simpler thirteenth and fourteenth century work,
the cloisters, the nave of the great church, the trifo-
rium, which is so unique a feature in its strange capri-
cious design, and in certain small chapels which, unnoticed
by the guide-book, are really the perfect works of the
old masters.
And yet in spite of all its eloquent renown, its beauti-
ful name, its vistaed loveliness, Burgos and its cathedral
are-well, not quite all we had expected. We had wished,
it may be, for a simpler thing, and indeed we may find
it in the great church of Las Huelgas that lies not far
from the city in the midst of a little village that has
grown up around it on the banks of the Arlanzón. It
stands really in the water meadows that in summer time
are just a part of the great arid, dusty plain that stretches
away across the world. It would be difficult to find a
more desolate, a more silent place. All its splendour has
departed from it, its greatness is a tale that is told, its
beauty is a ruin; and yet here you may have that satis-
faction which I at least looked for in vain in Burgos itself.
As to-day you read of the immense heritages, the cities, the
villages, the sovereign 'rights, privileges, and immunities'
conferred on the abbey, the long list of its almost royal
possessions, its vineyards, olive gardens, fields and corn-
lands, the gifts of many kings, and then at a turning of
the way in the silence of the sunshine come upon a place
so still, so desolate, and so beautiful, you seem to under-
stand something of the tragedy that is Spain. Only the
storks have not deserted the beautiful tower that guards
BURGOS
27
the abbey still, and when the bell sounds for vespers
even yet a few old nuns lift their trembling voices in
praise of Him who having given has taken away every-
thing but His love.
Founded by Alfonso VIII. the abbey was begun in
1180, and nineteen years later established as a Cistercian
house. The first abbess, whose name I know not, ruled
till 1203, when Doña Constanza, daughter of Alfonso,
was elected, and from that time the abbey gained in
splendour and glory, many noble persons taking the veil
there, while 'kings were knighted, crowned, and buried
before its altars.' Therefore it is no wonder that, as
Street says, 'the postern gate-a simple thirteenth-cen-
tury archway-leads not at once into the convent, but
into the village which has grown up round it.' It is a
little difficult to see the church, which is generally closed
after the early hours of the morning, and even at service
time much of it is closed to the traveller. But it is not
in any examination of its architecture that the true value
and delight of so quiet a place lie, but in its aspect of
repose, its beauty, its steadfastness, forlorn in that im-
mense world. And yet indeed it is very valuable to the
antiquary if only for the lantern of the church, the
vault of which is reproduced line for line in the little
chapel of the north transept of the cathedral. Some-
thing very like to it in its noble simplicity and strength
must once, as it seems to me, have covered the choir of
the great church where now the strange beautiful lantern
of Juan de Colonia rises into the sky; and it may well be
that, as Street among others suggests, it was in trying to
raise a thing so perfect that it was destroyed, as it were
by its own weight, falling into the church below, a ruined
miracle.
There is not much to see at Las Huelgas: a few tombs,
as that of Alfonso VIII. in the choir and those of Alfonso
28
THE CITIES OF SPAIN
VII. and Sta. Catalina in the nave; and one reminds
oneself that it was here, too, in 1254, that Don Alfonso
el Sabio knighted Edward I. of England before the high
altar, and that in 1367, after the battle of Navarrete,
Edward the Black Prince lodged here. But it is not for
such memories one comes to Las Huelgas, but for its
own sake, and the satisfaction to be found in its quietness
and repose after the extraordinary excitement of the
cathedral and the inevitable vulgarity that little by little
the modern world is thrusting upon Burgos.
It is into quite another world that one comes on enter-
ing the convent of Miraflores. The way thither is a
pleasant way, passing at first along the banks of the river
under the trees, coming before long out on to the lonely
sierra, whence the whole world seems to lie before you.
In bare, uplifted hills like the waves of a great sea the
country of Castile stretches endlessly away to the horizon,
tawny and arid, without a tree or a village or even a
building, save where a ruined castle, tiny but clear in the
lurid light, breaks the monotony of the plain. It is a
thing established for ever, secure in its own strange beauty,
passionate and serene, that cannot change, that as I feel
cannot wish to change. It is the temple of a great spirit,
strong, severe, not to be overcome, that has moulded and
formed the spirit of man. Is it God who dwells in this
immense loneliness, this beautiful solitude, this crystal
silence? Ah, how may I ever know. I have come to
Spain a stranger, full of regrets; and it is this she offers.
me, this profound enigma of desert and sky and sun,
fulfilled with an indestructible simplicity, in which, how
easily, I may lose myself or find for true what I had
but half suspected. And after the trumpery cities of the
North, where life has almost refined itself away, or ex-
pressed itself so feverishly and brutally that but little is
left for silence or remembrance, it is life itself, simple
BURGOS
29
and passionate as of old, controlled by the great exterior
symbols, day and night, the sun and the stars, winter
and summer, that I have found again between two heart-
beats in the desert.
It is in the midst of a scene thus full of eternal and
simple things that the Carthusians have built a monastery
and named it Miraflores. But they are not any natural
flowers that we find in a place that might have been
so sweet, but rather a fantastic garden of architectural
blossoms, gaudy and full of the capricious, sensual
thoughts of fortunate people who have possessed every-
thing. The deserted court, the silent church echoing
to every footfall, might seem to have preserved those
superficial regrets and thoughts about death that follow
so many to the grave, and die on the first day of sun-
shine scattered by the wind. But here we find them.
gathered and immortal round the tombs of King Juan 11.
and Isabella his wife, sculptured in rich marble by Gil
de Siloe and gilded with the very gold of Columbus.
'Among the finest things of the kind in Europe,' the
guide-book tells you; and even Street, that precise critic
grows enthusiastic. The monument of Juan and Isa-
bella,' he says, 'is as magnificent a work of its kind as I
have ever seen, richly wrought all over. The heraldic
achievements are very gorgeous and the dresses are
everywhere covered with very delicate patterns in low
relief. The whole detail is of the nature of the very best
German third pointed work rather than flamboyant, and
I think for beauty of execution, vigour, and animation of
design, finer than any other work of the age.' 'Finer than
any other work of the age,' and yet, as we may discover
even from so enthusiastic a critic, without simplicity. To
one less taken with all the gorgeous richness of the detail
-'the best German third pointed work'-it might seem
that of that age, too, were the early Tuscan sculptors,
30
THE CITIES OF SPAIN
men like Mino da Fiesole, Verrocchio, Luca della
Robbia, Donatello even, whose work, profoundly expres-
sive as it is, and full of that 'intimate impress of an
indwelling soul' which is the peculiar fascination of the art
of Italy in that century, is yet as winsome as the flowers,
full of expression, as I have said-the passing of a smile
over a face, the stirring of the wind in the hair, the
pathos of death, its bitterness lost as it were in its sweet-
ness, its rest and repose. How little of just that is to
be found here in 'the finest work of that age.'
Almost nothing is known of Gil de Siloe, who made
these tombs together with the monument to the Infante
Alfonso in the north wall of the sacrarium, and the
retablo over the high altar. His work at Miraflores
seems to have been begun in 1489 and finished by 1493.
In the cathedral, in the chapel of the Annunciation, he
made the tomb of that Bishop Alonso de Cartagena who
is said to have brought Juan de Colonia to Burgos.
Work by his son, Diego de Siloe, is to be found in some
profusion in the churches of Granada, Seville, and Málaga.
Indeed, there is much that is pathetic in the fate that has
fallen on his work. A courtier and evidently a man of
the world caring for the elaborate ritual of life, the
curiously sumptuous habits of the great in those days
of the early Renaissance, something of a barbarian, too,
in his love for intricate splendour, his work seems pathe-
tically humorous in this windy, desolate place, where
now no great religious ceremony surrounds it with the
prayers of captains or the tears of princes. No great
community guards the tireless labour, the beautiful super-
ficial thoughts that went to make so immense, so fragile
a sepulture. For there are no more any monks in Spain,
and the inexorable silence that always surrounds it, the
empire of day and night, the quiet indifferent sun it cannot
bear, for it was not made for these and has no part with

PUERTA S. MARIA, BURGOS
E
BURGOS
31
the indestructible mountains. Nothing in all that laboured
work is left of that which came from the earth, every-
thing has been moulded by the hand of man. The rough,
beautiful places kissed by the sun, washed by the rain,
veined by the wind, have been smoothed away or tor-
tured into a meaningless mimicry of actual life, trained
and twirled like green osiers, moulded like common clay
into a perfect and lifeless thing, in which there is left no
single fragment that has ever really seen the sky.
As I came back into Burgos under the trees, for fear
of the sun, to spend a last hour in the cathedral, I came
for love by the longest way, so that I might pass again
Over the Bridge of Saint Mary and so under the great
Puerta de Santa María; for me at least Burgos will ever
remain the city I have seen from there. Climbing up
her hillside, crowned by the old Moorish castle, her hands
lifted in prayer, still her bells ring at dawn, at noon,
and at sunset, and in spite of her prosperity she is beauti-
ful and has not forgotten the days when she was the
capital. Nor is she so modern as she seems, for often
she has wakened me with her antique prayers and cheered
me with news of the night, so that I too have whispered
in my heart' Mary, Queen of Angels, and all you clouds
on clouds of saints, orate pro nobis.'
III
VALLADOLID
T was already evening when I set out from Burgos.
choly desert of Castile, immense, infinite-was gradually
folded in the magical splendour of the hour after the
sunset. It is an hour here in Spain full of a peculiar
glory, when heaven and earth flame with the fiercer fires
of an invisible sun. And beautiful as the summer sunset
almost always is here in this desolate land, I for one find
it nothing in comparison of this strange after-glow that
reveals all the latent groinings of the hills, the contours
of the plains, the little dusty valleys, the dry water-
courses, and the framework, as it were, of the earth
itself which is hidden from one under the glare of full
sunlight.
For hours in the cool evening we crept over that
boundless plain, past many little cities almost invisible at
midday, by reason of their likeness to the rocks and the
plain itself; built with the stones and the dust that are
everywhere, and that have never felt the shadow of a
tree, or even a shrub, or the tenderness of the grass; but
visible in the evening by their lights, which glow in a
window here and there, or before the almost numberless
shrines, which serve at once to light our footsteps in
the difficult streets, and to remind us of the goodness
of God.
Clustered generally around some little hill, these
32

BRIDGE AT LEÓN
VALLADOLID
33
townships and villages-for they are little more than a
handful of houses—seem the most desolate and forsaken
places in the world. They are like heaps of dust and
stones fashioned into certain fantastic shapes by children,
and abandoned on the verge of the desert. Passing
them at nightfall, it is difficult to express in words the
fascination they possessed for me, though often I did not
know even their names, and not once did I see a single
inhabitant; and, indeed, in all that desolation the only
living things I saw, were a few goats that wandered
slowly in search of food and shelter far away against the
glow of the sky. After many hours of this silence and
desolation, suddenly and without warning we came to
Valladolid.
I drove across a great square almost surrounded by
modern buildings, a little Parisian in their preciseness,
their spacious air-entering the old city at last by a
narrow and stony street, in which I found the Fonda.
Of that gay but dilapidated hostelry how can I speak
well? My host, an amiable and discreet character,
worthy of a better inn, I found awaiting me on the first
floor: that is to say, he was engaged in teaching his
daughter, a señorita, of some six years, one of the in-
numerable national dances, while my hostess with an
immense satisfaction thundered some strange hesitating
air on the piano. At my appearance he bowed, and
straight appealed to me on some question of the dance,
while the child came towards me with open arms. Was
ever traveller more charmingly welcomed? Yet I confess
the night I spent under that roof was one of the most
horrible I ever remember. My host presently showed
me a room very large, and, so far as I could see, without
windows; and having wished me good night, left me in
darkness. He disappeared with such unusual haste,
that almost before I was aware, I was alone,
It was
C
34
THE CITIES OF SPAIN
long before I learnt that the electric light had failed, and
that I must go to bed in the dark, since for the moment
he had but one candle, the which I knew well was
burning on the piano. The horror of the toilet, in an
unknown room, the search for the bed with the help of a
match, I will not describe. The weariness of the day
soon brought me sleep; yet it could not have been long
-for still somewhere far away I heard the ancient notes
of the piano, and the applause of my host-before I was
awakened to find myself being devoured by vermin. A
kind of despair seized me. How was I to fight these
enemies of sleep, almost invisible even by daylight, in
the dark? I rang and rang again, but no one marked
me. Towards dawn, wearier than ever, and utterly
defeated, I fell asleep on the floor wrapped in my rug.
Why should I recount all this, I ask myself? For if it
be to warn others, why, I have not named the inn, and if
it be for malice, I bear the reproach of the noblest
traveller who ever suffered indignities, and was be-
wildered by the knavery of venteros, for 'there be
travellers,' says he, 'who are in some sort pagans, or at
least no good Christians, for they never forget an injury
once done them; but it is inherent in generous and
noble breasts to lay no stress upon trifles.'
It was early when I set out to see Valladolid, and to
speak truth, I found but little to see. The city has
become commercial and uninteresting, at least to the
lover of art. The cathedral, which remains a fragment,
to me at least is not the disgusting failure that it seems
to so many travellers. Begun on a grand scale, and in
the Renaissance manner by Herrera, in the sixteenth
century, it might have been a sombre and dignified
example of the art of that age, something as tremendous
and as noble as the Escorial for which it was abandoned,
but it has suffered from those who have tried to finish
VALLADOLID
35
Herrera's work without understanding it. It was to have
been as great as Toledo, but to-day it remains a huge
fragment of splendid stone, scratched and spoiled by
the vulgarity of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Inside it is whitewashed and scarcely impressive, but
from without how much more restful and dignified it
appears than such a church as San Pablo in this city.
Here are immense spaces of stone on which the eyes
may rest, finding there all the strength and majesty of
the hills, while at San Pablo one is continually disgusted
by the vulgarity of the ornament and the intricacy of the
tracery work, that seem in Spain at least to have been
born already decadent and weak, and without simplicity.
And in looking at San Pablo, it does not surprise us to
learn that it was for Cardinal Torquemada that the
church was built by Juan of Colonia, and his son; the
façade being, as is supposed, the work of Gil de Siloe;
while not far away, in a house facing the little Plaza,
Philip II. was born. Something of the excessive en-
thusiasm for religion, in the one case at any rate for its
less worthy part, to be found in Torquemada and Philip,
might seem to be expressed in that church of San Pablo,
where it is impossible to be happy in any simple way, so
complex, so self-conscious, so introspective as it were, is
every thing around one, the very doorway of a place so
unquiet being tortured into endless expressions of en-
thusiasm, it may be, at the nearness of the birthplace
of a king, or the immortal honour of possessing such a
patron, forgetting in its vulgar excitement that every
church, howsoever humble, poor, and simple, is as it
were the birthplace of the king of kings, who was born
not in any king's palace, but in a stable, a thing you
might think likely to be understood in Spain, where the
stable is so necessary, so simple, and so spacious.
But indeed Valladolid is poor in churches of any
36
THE CITIES OF SPAIN
beauty, and one turns with relief from the simpering
insincerity of San Pablo to the lovely Romanesque tower
of S. María la Antigua. Not far from the cathedral, this
lovely tower dominates the whole city, and is indeed in
any distant view of it the one thing of great beauty that
we see. Built in the end of the twelfth century, it re-
mains together with the cloisters with their round arches,
a little ruined, a little destroyed, the loveliest building in
Valladolid. While it claims, to some extent with truth
as we may think, to be a building of the twelfth century,
it is to-day, after the alterations of the fourteenth century
have made of it something less lovely than it was so
long ago, a Byzantine church, and yet Gothic at least.
in its interior, so that it is groined throughout with a
gallery for coro at the west end, supported by a wide
arch, where the stalls and organ still remain, as at the
Renaissance. The retablo, that carved and gilded or
coloured reredos, peculiar to Spain, and to my mind,
admirable though it may be, seldom a thing of great
beauty, and in its immensity, with its multitude of com-
partments, almost invisible, is the work of a certain Juan
de Juni, an artist of the middle of the sixteenth century,
who was no Spaniard, but an Italian or a Fleming, who
is said to have studied under Michelangelo. In spite
of the praises of Ford and others, I confess, not without
a certain humility, that I find but little that is beautiful
in his gaudy and rather violent work. That he was the
pupil of Michelangelo may well be, but all the pupils
of Michelangelo failed to understand the master. One
and all they imitated those things which are least
admirable in his work-the excess, the violence that
his strength only was sufficient to curb, the expres-
siveness, that in them became just gesticulation—and
Juan de Juni does not seem to me to have been an
exception. But in two chapels, quite small and insigni-
VALLADOLID
37
ficant on the south side of the church, there are two
retablos, simpler and more beautiful, it seems to me, in
their anonymous humility than anything in the famous
work of Juan de Juni.
As you wander in and out of the churches of Valla-
dolid, partly from curiosity and partly it may be to enjoy
their quietness and coolness after the heat and noise of
the city, you pass many times the old great square,
Plaza Mayor, in which the Inquisition held its horrid
orgies. To-day it is certainly the most homely and
cheerful place in Valladolid, beautiful still with its
arcades and picturesque market, its concern with the
simple things of life. For here almost the whole city
comes early in the morning to buy food, figs, and pome-
granates, grapes and apples, eggs, and green stuff for the
day, to talk of business or the coming bull fight. In old
days it was here that were lighted the terrible fires of the
Inquisition, here were held the bull-fights and the ferias,
while to-day after so renowned a past it is just a market
place where no king mad with dreams, tortured by the
spiritual life, no cardinal minister eager for universal
dominion, ready to set fire to the world that Catholic
Spain might not think but save its soul alive, ever passes,
but just common people whom we may love; peasants
with beautiful things from the country, scarlet fruit and
purple figs and grapes more precious than fabulous uncut
stones, potters with earthen flagons, firkins, pipkins, and
ewers wherein one may keep the agua fresca cool in the
darkness, old women who sell every sort of kerchief, and
who sit like idols before their bright stalls, cheap Jacks
who will sell you sovran remedies for every known
disease, and over all the noise and bargaining you hear
him who sells fresh water proclaiming himself not with-
out music: Agua, agua, ¿ quien quiere agua? Agua helada
fresquita, como la nieve. Before the cafés under the
38
THE CITIES OF SPAIN
arcades sit those who in this transitory life are busy with
such things as one may buy but never see,-stocks, shares,
a gold mine in El Dorado, a merchant ship in Cadiz, a
cargo from the Indies. As they sip their Horchata or
Sarsaparilla, eagerly, yet with a certain dignity they
discuss affairs as their fathers did, be sure, and as they
have not forgotten. For the Plaza Mayor of Valladolid is
not without its importance in the history of Spain. It
was here in the year 1217 that the Queen of Castile
gave the crown to her son, S. Ferdinand, King of León,
the conqueror of Córdova and Seville; close by,
Ferdinand and Isabella were married on 19th of
October, 1469, and in her honour, and to amuse the ten
thousand guests, bull fights lasting a whole week were
fought out in the Plaza. And not far away on Ascension
Day, 1506, Isabella's friend, Christopher Columbus, died.
It was here too that the feria in honour of the birth of
Philip II. was celebrated, while he, that melancholy
Monk King, was lying a tiny child almost within hearing;
nor is it only as his birthplace that Philip II. knew
Valladolid. His father, the Emperor Charles V., stayed
in the city-it was the last he ever saw-before he
forsook the world and buried himself in the Convent at
Yuste. And yet, again, it was here in this very place
that the first of those strange autos da Fé was celebrated,
things infamous enough we may think yet famous too by
reason of the great men who wrote the plays for them.
It was on May 21, 1559, that the first 'Auto' took place
in Valladolid under the presidency of Doña Juana, the
Infanta, and young Don Juan of Austria. Seats, we are
told, were sold for the immense sum of five pesetas; half
Spain was in the Plaza, and the very roofs of the houses
were crowded. Fourteen wretched Protestants were
killed, and the bones of a dead woman who had been
suspected of heresy in her life were burned. Philip II.,
VALLADOLID
39
however, witnessed a more fearful sight later in his reign
when thirteen suspected persons were here burned alive.
The Auto da Fé, or act of Faith, was the last scene in
a terrible and useless tragedy, in which the soul, the
mind, and the body of man were offered as a sacrifice to
a narrow political and religious ambition. In some way
at least among this nation of mystics, it was intended to
represent the 'terrors' of the Day of Judgment. 'The
proudest grandees of the land,' says Prescott, here per-
haps a somewhat prejudiced witness, though indeed it is
difficult to keep one's head amid all the horrors of these
brutal assemblies-'The proudest grandees of the land
on these occasions putting on the sable livery of the
familiars of the Holy Office, and bearing aloft its banners,
condescended to act as the escort of its ministers; while
the ceremony was not unfrequently countenanced by the
Royal presence. . . The effect was further heightened
by the concourse of ecclesiastics in their sacerdotal robes
and the pompous ceremonial which the Church of Rome
knows so well how to display on fitting occasions, and
which was intended to consecrate as it were this bloody
sacrifice by the authority of a religion which has ex-
pressly declared that it desires mercy and not sacrifice.
The most important actors in the scene were the unfor-
tunate convicts who were now disgorged for the first
time from the dungeons of the tribunal. They were clad
in coarse woollen garments, styled San-benitos, brought
close round the neck and descending like a frock down
to the knees. These were of a yellow colour, embroidered
with a scarlet cross, and well garnished with figures of
devils and flames of fire, which, typical of the heretic's
destiny hereafter, served to make him more odious in the
eyes of the superstitious multitude.¹ The greater part of
1 Reader, you are angry! You do well. Those who, while they punish or
torture him who is in their power, make him also ridiculous, are indeed
40
THE CITIES OF SPAIN
the sufferers were condemned to be reconciled, the mani-
fold meanings of which soft phrase have been already
explained. Those who were to be relaxed, as it was
called, were delivered over as impenitent heretics to the
secular arm in order to expiate their offence by the most
worthy of your scorn. Those prisoners and captives, so absurd in their
San-benitos, somehow remind you of Him who, for the sport of the soldiery
long ago, was clothed with a purple robe and crowned with thorns. Is it not
so? Yet it was but yesterday I read in a book that is not without a certain
fame, though published within this year of grace, that you, too, are not free
from blame in this matter. Was it not one of your prisoners and captives who,
in the book he has called De Profundis, writes as follows:-'I have lain in
prison for nearly two years, out of my nature has come wild despair; an
abandonment to grief that was piteous to look at; terrible and impotent
rage; bitterness and scorn; anguish that wept aloud; misery that could
find no voice; sorrow that was dumb. I have passed through every possible
suffering.. . .' And, again, ‘our very dress makes us grotesque. We are
the zanies of sorrow. We are clowns, whose hearts are broken. We are
specially designed to appeal to the sense of humour. On November 13th,
1895, I was brought down here from London. From ten o'clock to half-
past two on that day I had to stand on the centre platform of Clapham
Junction in convict dress and handcuffed for the world to look at.... Of
all possible objects I was the most grotesque. When people saw me they
laughed. Each train as it came in swelled the audience. Nothing could exceed
their amusement. That was of course before they knew who I was. As soon
as they had been informed they laughed still more. For half an hour I
stood there in the grey November rain surrounded by a jeering mob. For a
year after that was done to me I wept every day at the same hour and for
the same space of time.' But for sure I am quoting from an old book of the
sixteenth century; it was not Clapham Junction but Valladolid that saw
that crime! The victim was not Oscar Wilde but some poor Protestant ; nor
will I remember the words of Jesus: Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one
of the least of these my brethren ye have done it unto me.' Not Englishmen
but Spaniards, not Protestants but Catholics were the torturers named!
Ah no-it is not so. And those devils and so forth that were painted on the
San-benitos so long ago, typical of the heretics' destiny hereafter, and serving
to make him more odious in the eyes of the 'superstitious multitude' are
now changed to arrows-the King's mark-arrows shod with iron that has
entered into the soul. And so, reader, it is true in these spacious times, we
do well to be angry when we read of the hideous tortures which the Spaniards
inflicted on those they made ridiculous before they killed them. Believe me,
I too join in the chorus howsoever hoarse it be with a cheer for ourselves, ⚫
our civilisation, our methods, not of barbarism, but of wisdom and of mercy,
"
VALLADOLID
41
painful of deaths, with the consciousness still more
painful, that they were to leave behind them names
branded with infamy and families involved in irretriev-
able ruin.'
For the most part we are content to assure ourselves
that the fires of the Inquisition were lighted by the Pope
and the Vatican. It is not so. Many times indeed
Rome placed on record her emphatic protest against the
proceedings of the Spanish Government and Church. It
was the Spanish people kept the Inquisition alive, fed the
fires with enthusiasm, applauded the grotesque plays of
Lope de Vega, of Calderón, of Cervantes, and of a host of
lesser men, the which the wretched victims were compelled
to attend. And if we ask ourselves what was the reason
of this strange madness, I think we shall find a reply in
the political situation of that time. Catholicism had
welded Spain into a nation. The expulsion of the Moors
which, in the hundreds of years that have followed it, we
have come to deplore, was no less a crusade than those
of which we profess ourselves so proud. No whit less
splendid, it may be, no whit less disastrous. But it is
difficult to govern men, and racial hatred is a strange and
unappeasable passion. It may well be that the Spanish
people, realising dimly that they had their power, their
unity, from their religion, were eager to preserve it at any
cost, since in it lay the secret not only of heaven but of
their nationality. And for that cause, in that name, what
crimes have not been committed! It is not that I wish,
even though it were possible, to excuse the Spaniards or
to blot history, but that I wish to understand. The same
people, who burned so many thousands at the stake, were
and are still among the bravest in the world. Even in
our fathers' time, without a king, without a government
without arms, they rose against Napoleon and flung him
back into France. In old days in Italy when the German
42
THE CITIES OF SPAIN
and Swiss troops were sulking because they had no pay,
the Spaniards, 'proud of their individual glory,' though
no whit better off, flung them their very cloaks to stop their
whining. They were invincible; they marched through
Europe; you might not tire their courage, and it was
only to death they surrendered. Brave men are not
cowards and bullies, neither do they torture the weak
and defenceless, nor make war on women and children.
And it is in this that I find an explanation of the In-
quisition. It must have seemed to them that it was of an
indestructible necessity to Spain. Nor, on the other hand,
can it be denied that it is to S. Dominic, in the first place,
that we owe the idea of the Inquisition. The founder of
the Dominican Order-which proved itself so excellent a
watch-dog of God-was himself a Spaniard, educated at
Salamanca. That he ever contemplated the lengths to
which his idea would be carried, the immense crimes which
would be committed by his followers, is, I think, not to be
believed. He was the friend of S. Francis, and wore the
same cord that girded the Apostle of Humanity. It is not
to be thought of. And so in spite of the strange, almost
incredible mysticism that is a part of the Spanish nature
to-day, as in the sixteenth century, in spite of patriotism
and necessity, there is no excuse possible to be made for
the Inquisition. How quiet that old Plaza seems now in
Valladolid! Just there it may be we seem to discern a
crime more terrible than any of those that have gone
before. That the stones which cried out at their agony
should ever be silent again, that the sun should shine
where once it was ashamed at the sight of our blood, that
the tender grass should grow in the places where their
fires were kindled, that men should laugh where so
many have cried in anguish, that all the pain, valour and
beauty should not be so much as remembered any more,
and that God should send his rain and dew to refresh us
VALLADOLID
43
where cruelty sat enthroned: this is what can never be
understood or reconciled with us, if we forget, being so
happy, that it is necessary to be merciful to those who
know not mercy; for when we understand their ideas of
good and evil-and it is these which have made them
cruel-we are compelled to pity them, and at last to
forgive. And I have sometimes thought that it is not
enough to love God, one must love men also.
IV
SALAMANCA
HE sun was just rising over that boundless plain
THE
full of dust, where the little cities are so hard to
find, when I set out on my journey for Salamanca, that
lies scarcely fifty miles away from Medina del Campo,
a little wretched village that lends its name to the
junction of the lines from Salamanca and Segovia. In
spite of the monotony of the landscape, the view was
very beautiful under the level light of the sun, that gave
to that limitless desert an infinite wideness and immensity
that were hidden at midday. A great old tower of brick,
rosy in the sunrise, stood on a little hill behind the
station; far far away I descried the faint outlines of blue
mountains, and nearer but still far away a cloud of dust
rose where a herd of swine moved from one hill to
another. So I watched day dawn upon that silent
golden world.
The coach in which I travelled, divided by low wooden
barriers into five compartments, was full of men and
women who continually passed in and out at the in-
numerable little stations at which we stopped. A
strange, a delightful company; for all without exception
were in some indefinable way beautiful. I know not how
it was, but in every face, and especially in the old, I found
a certain distinction, as it were, a raciness that was more
than a mere absence of vulgarity. They were simple
people who had not lost touch with the eternal things:
44
SALAMANCA
45
day and night still ruled their lives; the sun for them
was a kind of god; the rain, a sweet mercy from
heaven; and for them, too, the seasons were even yet
a pageant; and autumn was for sowing and summer for
reaping. It is impossible for me to compare them with
an English crowd of third-class passengers; they were
not a crowd, they were just men and women. Not one
of them had ever seen that which we call a city; not
one of them had ever been able to forget what we
have perhaps lost for ever; not one of them had suffered
the tyranny of the machine, or the newspaper, nor seen
the sky covered by anything but the clouds. And so
they were beautiful, it may be, because they were quite
natural people whom it would have been impossible to
imagine in the distress of our trumpery cities. Nor were
they without a certain gentleness of manners. Though
I was a foreigner and foreigners are rare in third-class
carriages in Spain, and especially on the road to Sala-
manca, I must confess that it was I who stared. And
yet every now and then I would catch the last glimpse of
a smile fading from a girl's face or from the eyes of an
old man, at my strange appearance, my horrible tight
clothes, my English hat, my absurd and hideous collar
and hard shirt. So the time passed, as slowly we crept
over that immense plain while the summer sun rose out
of the east in his greatness and strength, scattering his
burning gold over the dust, that without a single green
blade or shrub or shady tree stretched away for ever
across the low hills and shallow thirsty valleys.
It was a long journey; and when at last I saw the
tower of the cathedral and the great and ancient city
rising out of the plain, I was ready for the walk that it
seems necessary to take from the station to the city
almost everywhere in Spain.
It was along a road six inches deep in dust that I
46
THE CITIES OF SPAIN
came at last to the ruined ancient gates of Salamanca.
How rosy everything was! And indeed the city is the
colour of a Gloire de Dijon just before it drops its first
petal. Over all that vast melancholy country she seems
to look with an inscrutable smile. Around her are the
desolate places; she is the Rose of the desert.
She lies upon two hillsides, and fills the valley between
them. Her streets are narrow and steep with many turn-
ings, and the traffic is, for the most part, just the continual
passing to and fro of many mules and asses. Should a
cart pass by, or more rarely still a carriage, the noise is
deafening, echoing again and again between the tall
houses in those narrow streets paved with rough stones.
Pass through this city so beautiful and so desolate,
past the cathedral, the Colegio Viejo, the University,
the Casa de las Conchas, the Convent of Santo Domingo,
down at last to the old Roman bridge, that still strides
over the Tormes; everywhere you will find her smiling
that inscrutable smile, at sunrise, at noon or at sunset,
over the barren miles of dust, that it might seem, will one
day overwhelm her, like a forgotten sphinx, an unremem-
bered idol.
It is thus in summer she stands, a tawny inscrutable
statue upon her hills, dead or asleep or dreaming, I know
not, who have loved her in the long languorous days, be-
cause she is all of rose and gold. And in spring when
the desert lays at her feet all his treasures, infinite fields
of corn, green, and scarlet with poppies, and gold, all day
long I have heard the wind come to her over the priceless
fields, and seen his white footsteps tumultuous as on the
sea, and I have listened with the desert that has blos-
somed for her, that has brought her his gifts, waiting for
the word that the wind shall bring from her, till the
flowers have died under the sun, and the corn is reaped,
and the wind has passed on his way, and all I heard was
SALAMANCA
47
the word of eternal patience of indestructible silence-
'Hush' ...
It is to the cathedrals that the traveller first goes,
having seen their great cupolas, it may be far away.
And indeed from afar they are beautiful on the one side
or on the other, but in any closer view it is really only
the old Romanesque building, quite dismantled now, that
is not disappointing; the newer pretentious Gothic
church being full of ineffectual work, overloaded with
ornament and late decoration. They stand side by side,
the smaller and older building indeed, priceless, though
not built of precious stone, supporting, as it were, the
newer church. That old golden house through whose
walls the sunshine has filtered for eight hundred years,
till it seems to be built of stone, that the sun has stained
with its life and made precious, is a building, for the most
part, of the twelfth century; the first Mass being said
here in the year 1100. Cruciform in its design, it origin-
ally consisted of nave and aisles with five bays, three
eastern apses, and a dome or lantern over the crossing, a
thing very lovely and original, if we consider it carefully,
lifted into the sky on pillars, between which the sunlight
falls, as among the carved lines of the windows where the
shadows are so cool and the wind sings to itself in the
long hot days. 'Fortis Salamantia,' an old Spanish writer
calls the church, summing up for us in the phrase really
the chief characteristic of the place, its strength consist-
ing not only in the solidity of its stones but in a certain
indestructible spirit also that informs it even to-day when
it is dismantled. It is as though you had wandered by
chance into some monastic church where everything
passed quietly, and with a certain precision and order
in which you might seek in vain for the enthusiasm of a
great congregation, the immense emotion of the world.
48
THE CITIES OF SPAIN
And for those indeed to whom stone is of all things the
most beautiful in architecture, the surface precious as it
were with the bloom of the centuries, and beautiful, too,
since it holds still something of the simplicity of the hills,
the 'old' cathedral will remain how much more lovely than
the 'new' where everywhere you may trace the ambitious
thoughts, the insincere laborious workmanship of the
Renaissance, in which natural things have so little part it
might seem, anxious as men at that time seem to have
been, here in Spain at least, to bring all things under
their feet. Time that most subtle artist has made the
old church beautiful with all his infinite thoughts, laying
upon pillar and gateway the gold and delight of his
sunsets, of the flowers that he has gathered in all the
springs. And indeed he is a master whom a true archi-
tect, a true painter, will always in due measure trust; it
is only for those who are not simple enough, or not
patient enough that he can do nothing. Something of
that want of simplicity, of humility, is to be found, I
think, in all the later buildings of Spain, where the
architect has so covered everything with tracery and
ornament, that the utmost time can do, is to destroy bit
by bit, piece by piece, the dainty lace work, the restless
ornament, making a little space of plain stone on which
he may contrive to leave the beauty of his passing.
As you return from the ruined cloisters and certain
late chapels among which is one where the Mozarabic
ritual is still used six times in the year, you enter the
new cathedral by a door at the top of a flight of steps in
the south aisle. It is as though you had suddenly
stepped from the woods into an eighteenth century
garden full of topiary work. A certain broad Gothic
manner informs the church, here, it is true, yet it
is spoiled as just that to any sensitive eye it may
be by the complexity of everything, the futile labour,
SALAMANCA
49
the immense ambition, the absence of simplicity. From
outside we may see how unfortunate the church really
was in its birth, how restless it is in its impotence for
anything but rhetoric, towering into the sky a mag-
nificent failure covered with decorations, content with its
own grandiose immensity; happiest at night under the
stars that are powerless to discover its insincerity, its real
vulgarity; most miserable when the sun in his fierce
impartial way strips it before the world, laying bare to
the desert and the hills every gesticulating crocket and
scroll, every shouting pinnacle and fantastic empty
niche.
Not far away you may find the University, founded by
Alfonso, King of León. It is rather a sad world you
discover in that little old college. For here, where once
all the world was proud to send its sons, is now a school
devoted, it might seem, to a system of almost primary
education and to theology. Children as of old, for noth-
ing seems to change in old Spain, sparely fill the benches
that should hold undergraduates. Never have I seen a
ruin so terrible. One of the oldest Universities in the
world, though Oxford takes precedence of it by a decree
of the Council of Constance in 1414, in old days its
students were more than ten thousand in number, its
professors had a great reputation not only in Spain but
throughout Europe. Among its famous sons were Saints
like S. Domingo and S. Ignazio Loyola; poets like Fray
Luis of León and Calderón de la Barca; to-day it
numbers some four hundred pupils. A letter of Peter
Martyr gives a vivid picture of the literary enthusiasm of
the place in the fifteenth century; for it seems that the
throng was so great to hear his introductory lecture on
some Satire of Juvenal that every avenue to the hall
was blocked by the crowd, and the professor, who later
calls Salamanca the 'new Athens' was borne into his
D
50
THE CITIES OF SPAIN
lecture room on the shoulders of the students.
In 1594
a member of the Council of the Inquisition, Juan de
Zuñiga, as royal commissioner reorganised the schools,
founding a Faculty of Mathematics such as no other
University in Europe could boast; and indeed the works
of Copernicus were used as text books. Yet Diego de
Torres, writing in the first half of the eighteenth century,
says that he had been five years at Salamanca before he
discovered, quite by chance, that there was such a thing
as a science of mathematics.
To-day as you pass under the little gateway that faces
the cathedral, coming into the great cloister with its
beautiful but ruined gallery out of which you pass into
the class rooms so meagre and bare, the tragedy that has
fallen upon Spain seems to find expression very pathetic-
ally in the fate of this college once so splendid. And
indeed we are in the home of the 'poor bachelor,' the
student who for the sake of learning is willing to content
himself with very few of the material comforts of life.
The more fortunate among these undergraduates live
on three or four pesetas a day, but it would seem such
are rare; the many find lodging with the burgesses of
Salamanca, who receive them 'a pupilo,' for which they
pay a peseta or a peseta and a half a day. The strait-
ness of their surroundings, the modesty of these homes
may better be imagined than described. But there are
students even poorer, the veritable brothers of Don Cheru-
bini, who pay for their lodging, their food and the neces-
saries of life-those things which seem to be so few in
Spain-not more than ten pesetas a month, and I have
been told of those who live for five. They come at the be-
ginning of term, bringing with them their beds and certain
necessary provisions, such as a basket of garbanzos, some
dried fish, certain little Spanish sausages, chorizos, and it
may be a little-home grown wine; but for the most part
SALAMANCA
51
they drink water, that agua fresca which is so precious in
Spain that it is sold in the streets.
How strange, how impossible Salamanca might seem
to any one coming from Oxford or Cambridge! How
splendid is the courage that is willing to suffer such
poverty for the sake of learning! Is it visible anywhere in
England? Poor splendid bachelor, you are one of the
heroes that Spain keeps ever in an abject world. In your
strong heart I will believe lies the future of Spain. You
are of the ancient race who at Lepanto neither slept nor
quenched its thirst till it had accomplished its desire.
And yet is it learning you get after all in exchange for your
privations? I know not. But if all I was told may pass
for truth, even that pearl for which you have sacrificed
everything is denied you: the old great learning lost, the
new dreams of science, of philosophy, passed over in
silence, while the great tradition is gone for ever save
that you in your poverty have preserved what you could
in your heart. But as you journey homeward over the
great vague roads, they are yours, the immense beautiful
dreams that are left in your heart; while, O fortunate,
there remains still the earth, your only bed, the sky
your blue curtain, it is still easy to love, to sing, to pray,
to believe, and to trust in God.
Among the rest there may still be seen at Salamanca
certain figures almost English in their neatness; they are
the students of the Irish College. Housed, as it is, in one
of the loveliest palaces in a city of palaces, that Irish
College is I think just a survival, very valuable as just
that it may be, yet still something that is a little fantastic
when one remembers that in Ireland itself better learning
may be had without difficulty, and, if we ignore for a
moment the influence of so old, so venerable a place as
this sweet fallen city, a larger view of the world a
stronger sense of life. And yet I for one would not
52
THE CITIES OF SPAIN
have that Irish College suppressed for the world. It is
still a witness, when all have forgotten, to the greatness
of Spain, and I will believe that in spite of every mis-
fortune those are fortunate who live in so old, so beautiful
a city. Yet it is true there are misfortunes. Before I
left Salamanca for good I wished to possess a book, an
edition of Homer, a book of Virgil, a play of Sophocles,
whose title should bear the imprint of the University, as
who should say at Salamanca at the University Press
was this book printed; but it was not to be. In vain I
searched every bookshop, every counter; no edition of
the classics, no edition of Fray Luis' poems has within
living memory been printed for the University, and, if
you will believe me, all that the booksellers of Salamanca.
seemed to possess were certain foreign works and the
little cheap reprints Biblioteca Universal printed at
Madrid.
It was owing to the kindness of the Librarian to
the University that I was able to see perhaps the most
precious possession of the city, the manuscript of the
poems of Fray Luis of León whose ashes are in the
little chapel in the cloister. Born at Belmonte de
Cuenca in 1529, Fray Luis entered the Augustinian
Order when he was eighteen years old, and in 1561
became Professor of Theology at Salamanca. I wish
only to recall here his encounter with León de Castro
who in those days held the Greek Chair in the
University, and with whom Fray Luis was not friends.
During some public discussion Fray Luis, it seems,
threatened the Greek Professor with the Inquisition and
with the public burning of his treatise on Isaiah, which,
for what we know, may have been a villainous produc-
tion. However, Castro anticipated him, denounced him
as a Jew to the Dominicans, and since he had, poet as he
was, translated the Song of Songs into the Castilian
SALAMANCA
53
tongue-a grave offence it might seem-he was arrested
in March 1572, and imprisoned here in Salamanca for
four years or more. In spite of his enemies, however, he
was acquitted at last on December 7, 1576, and on his
return to the University, where the Chair of Theology
had been kept for him, he began his first lecture in these
words: 'Señores, as we were saying the other day. . .
It was so they ruled the world.
It was, however, a greater matter that in 1482 was
being debated in the hall of the great Dominican Convent
of San Esteban. The University Professors, ecclesiastics,
for the most part, to whom the matter had been referred
by the King, had pronounced against the proposed
voyage of Don Cristóbal Colon as a thing 'vain,
impracticable, and resting on grounds too weak to merit
the support of the Government.' It was this pronounce-
ment that the Dominicans with the Archbishop of Seville,
Diego de Deza, at their head were debating. Deza, later
the successor of Torquemada, as head of the Inquisition,
in those days certainly was one of the most liberal and
intelligent men in Spain. He and his Dominicans, to
their undying glory, were too enlightened to acquiesce in
the sentence of the professors: they offered Don Cristóbal
their hospitality and their friendship, and 'moved by the
cogency of his arguments, and affected by the elevation
and grandeur of his views,' not only cordially embraced
his idea, but obtained for him a promise from the
Catholic kings that at the conclusion of the war they
would find 'both time and inclination to treat with him.'
That old convent restored though it be, for the most
part, might seem to hold even yet some remembrance of
that splendid presence, some deathless grace or greatness
from those days so long ago. As I wandered through
its passages, up its immense staircases, through number-
less empty and deserted cells, out at last to the poor
54
THE CITIES OF SPAIN
forsaken garden where on a little hill a great lonely
Crucifix, black in the sunset blesses the desert, it was
of him, the great adventurer, I talked, with an old Friar
who accompanied me.
'His genius was so great that, although I have never
seen the sea, when I remember him and his dreams I
seem to understand everything: the promise of the
sunset, the immensity of the ocean, the visions that must
be true.'
The old Friar with his long white beard blown over
his shoulders by the wind seemed in the twilight to be
speaking as much to himself as to me. Far away over
the desert the bells of Salamanca recalled the birth of
Christ. But he was thinking of other things; in his eyes
was the light of the great enthusiasm, his old worn hand
trembled as he stretched it out over that sad and
beautiful world.
'I have heard that he would discern the nearness of land
in a piece of floating seaweed, or in the flight of a bird, or in
the strength of the wind. When one speaks of him cities,
clouds, mountains, disappear, and only what is formed
by the spirit remains. Like the greatest Saints he
seemed ever to be listening to a voice silent for other
men.' Then he was silent. Out of the desert night was
coming. When at last we turned and made our way
slowly back to the convent, it was quite dark.
V
ZAMORA
N the midst of a desert that has blossomed, Zamora
a group
stands upon her hill, just a group of golden Roman-
esque buildings, falling into decay, surrounded by infinite
dust and light. And around her the thirsty land has
brought forth springs of water with reeds and rushes.
I came to her first at sunset from the vague solitary way
that passes over the desert of Salamanca. In all the
mysterious loneliness of the still summer day, parched
with thirst, covered with dust, I had seen none like her,
Alone at midday, in the silence of the wilderness,
it seemed to me that I had prayed for such a place, and
at evening God led me to her beautiful golden towers.
So it was as a city of refuge, perhaps from the heat and
silence of the sunshine, or it may be from the loneliness
of the night that she appeared to me beside the waters
in the midst of the desert.
The world has forgotten Zamora for many a city less
fair, for many a vision less lovely; but few find her out
in her ruin and her solitude. Golden and naked she
stands on her hill, and only the sun and the wind of the
desert have loved her these many years. It is to them
she has told all the ardour and passion of her life: the
battle at the gates at sunset, when Ramiro, king of León,
for love of her, slew forty thousand Moors within her
seven walls; and again when Al Mansúr, that great
Prince, came with many banners, and, since another had
55
56
THE CITIES OF SPAIN
possessed her, laid her to sleep for a hundred years, till
King Ferdinand awakened her, and gave her as a great
gift to his daughter Doña Urraca. But she was ever im-
pregnable, not to be lightly won-á Zamora, no se ganó
en una hora-as all her lovers had learned. Yet him who
feared no man, she could not deny; so Ruy Diaz Cid
Campeador found her and won her, and to her brought
five Kings with tribute. And she who has been loved by
Kings, whose streets have been crimson with the blood of
Princes, while the fight ebbed and flowed through her
gates, and in the valley by the Douro, the lilies were
lopped by the bright swords, and the corn was trodden
by the battle, and the splendid banners floated over the
desert, has now become one with the eternal things, the
sun, the wind, and the stars.
As you come to Zamora to-day across that old and
beautiful bridge of the thirteenth century, over the Douro,
you pass into the city by a long and weary road that
leads from the valley up the hillside, coming at last to
the ridge of rock on which Zamora stands. The same
narrow winding street passes through the city itself to
the cathedral, that, like a fortress almost, is built on the
last crag of the great hill, where it falls sheer down to
the river, and the green woods and the sweet vine-clad
valley. That strong temple, one might think, was ever
impregnable, since the whole city must first be won, and
the enemy, tired at last, must hesitate before a thing so
persistent, so splendid. And, indeed, it would seem that
Time alone has been able to destroy what all men have
left unbroken, so that to-day, ruined though it be, it is
still beautiful in spite of the wounds of the centuries.
For the most part of the twelfth century, since Dávila
asserts that it was finished in 1174, its great Romanesque
tower, which might seem to be all of gold, remains the
dominant feature of the church, giving too, to the city
ZAMORA
57
herself, a character of exaltation and strength that she
would lack without it, in spite of the invincible persistence
of the dome, perhaps the most perfectly beautiful thing
in all the city, rising over the crossing, like that of the old
cathedral at Salamanca, of which it is the parent, more
ancient and more fortunate, in that no enthusiast of the
Renaissance has hidden it behind a dream less noble.
And it is true-the cathedral has for ever stamped the
city with its own beauty and immortality; separate from
the city as it is, it rises not as a Gothic church would
most likely do from a maze of the narrowest streets, like
some immense worn and fretted rock, against which the
sea of houses has beaten for centuries; but on the
furthest point of the scarped hill, not in the midst of the
life of the city, but in the great silence between the sky
and the desert, gazing ever eastwards and south over
the immense sierras of Castile, watching for the coming
of the Son of man. Something monastic, something
withdrawn and separate, you find there, as in so many
Romanesque buildings that seem ever to prefer solitude
to the poverty, the overcrowded mean surroundings of
the more popular and Christian Gothic churches, places
where, after all, one may think, enthusiasm and vitality are
most needed, and it may be are most in place.
Within, the church is small and not very perfect,
since the coro is a restoration or rather a design of
the fifteenth century: it is not here we shall find the
splendour that still informs the great tower and the
dome, and the beautiful doorway of the south transept,
but in such a building as La Magdalena, that little
Romanesque church of the templars, built too in the
twelfth century. How different in its sincere and pas-
sionate beauty, is the late rich work of the south door-
way here in La Magdalena from the late Gothic work in
the new cathedral of Salamanca! How to explain the
58
THE CITIES OF SPAIN
success of the one, the frightful failure of the other? It
is, it might seem, here in Zamora, a success of life we
find, while in Salamanca, and indeed in all the late
Gothic churches of Spain, it is a failure of just that; and
yet it may be after all that we may not question the
'life' of such a place as the cathedral at Salamanca, and
that it is rather that this old 'byzantine' work, even in
its decadence, retained something of the orderliness, the
immense self-respect that gave it birth; nor has it been
able to forget or to lose a certain gift for decoration that
we find everywhere in the Latin genius, and that may
be seen to-day in all its splendour in such a church as
S. Maria Maggiore in Rome, in the pavement there, which
looks as mosaic work is apt to do, its best in old age.
However it may be, something has kept Romanesque
work from expressing itself so fluidly, so exuberantly as
the Gothic came to do, when it fell under the influence
of the Renaissance. And so, while in the one, old age,
that gradual failing and falling away of fundamental
energies, is accompanied by an immense wealth and
richness, that serve without any undue loss of dignity to
hide the weakness that is sapping the life there, in the
other it seems to have brought as it were a second
childhood, in which, loaded with jewels, with much
strange fantastic natural life, and with every tiny beauty
of the goldsmith, Gothic Architecture dies in the midst
of a supreme gesticulation.
Within, La Magdalena is to-day perhaps the most
beautiful church in Zamora, retaining still the flat roof in
the nave, the wagon vault in the chancel, whose beautiful
arches are not the least lovely part of the church. And
here you may find two high canopied tombs of the early
thirteenth century, very strange and lovely, and unlike
anything else of the kind to be found in Spain. Native
work you might think, perhaps, in spite of certain
ZAMORA
59
French and Italian details that point to a knowledge at
least of what had been done in those countries. In the
western monument you find the tomb closed by a
'coffin-shaped' stone, on which a great cross is carved.
While above, a figure is lying in a bed carved from a
block of stone that projects from the wall, and still
higher, under the canopy, angels bear away the soul of
him who lies there.
La Magdalena is, it might seem very obviously, the
daughter of the cathedral, whose great Romanesque
tower has been copied, or at least consulted, not only
here at La Magdalena, but also at S. Leonardo and
S. Maria de la Huerta, where too you may find the
wagon vault in the chancels, though the roofs of the
naves are not flat but semi-circular. It is really only in
S. Vicente that the influence of the cathedral is nowhere
to be found, its beautiful tower rising into the sky, a very
perfect example of early Gothic work.
But it is not in the mere framework, as it were, of a
city so lovely that we shall find the true expression of
Zamora, but rather in its aspect there on the verge of the
desert, by the side of a great river, along whose banks
the flowers dance in the dawn, and the rushes whisper
together, among whose vines we seem ever about to
surprise spring. High above the sweetness of the river
she stands gazing over the desert that stretches far away
across the world to the faint and beautiful mountains.
It is so, I have watched with her often far into the night,
when all her bells are silent, and she is so still that she
seems to be sleeping; when only the wind is awake,
singing softly to itself over the sands of the desert, lapping
sadly against her ancient and ruined walls,
VI
AVILA
IT
T was already midday, when I came at last within
sight of the city of Avila. I had been in the saddle
since dawn for many days the tawny passionate land-
scape of Castile had unfolded itself before me, sierra
rolling after sierra more barren than the waves of the
most desolate sea. All the morning the mountains,
which at dawn were just blue wreaths on the horizon,
had been climbing higher and higher into the sky; and
the road, which at first was scarcely more than a track,
had gradually become well defined, beaten into a broad
stony gully by the hoofs of the mules that pass to and
fro between Avila and Salamanca. Weary with the heat
and dust of the way, where the sun was so hot that I
was afraid, I was thinking that I would rest at a little
chapel, whose roof, topped by a cross, appeared, as I told
myself, scarcely more than a mile away over the farthest
billow of the plain, when suddenly, like a vision, at a
turning of the way, Avila rose before me on her hill a
beautiful mediaeval city, surrounded by perfect rose-
coloured granite walls—a city out of a Missal, as it were,
forlorn in the wilderness, indestructible amid the ruin of
a world. Around her, some ancient civilisation seems
to have been destroyed; everywhere immense titanic
rocks, strange and fantastic, piled one upon another as
though commemorating some wild, forgotten religion, or
strewn on the hills, the last remnant of some colossal
60
AVILA
61
palace, or solitary, prostrate on the plain, as though
hurled from heaven in some battle of archangels, sur-
round her, as in a world before the creation of the first
five days. It is impossible for me to convey in words to
you anything of that immense ruin or its strength. It is
like a passionate and difficult silence over everything.
But the aspect of the city upon the infinite stretches of
sierra, in a country as stony as Judaea, I shall never
forget. She seems to sum up in herself, and to express
with a sort of tragic precision, as it were, all the chaos
and ruin that lie about her in that world of rocks and
stones. Where the very boulders are writhing in agony to
find expression, she alone has understood everything and
been reconciled. She is the visible image of the word
Amen.
What she means to those, who come to her by railway,
I know not, who saw her like a mirage in the desert after
many days. Lost in the infinite silence, under the sun
and the sky, I had longed for her as of old men longed for
the Holy City, and when I found her at last, I came to
her on foot leading my mule over the stones. And in
that hour, in some little way I seemed to understand her
solitude and her sanctity, indestructible and holy as she
is that fortress which was the birthplace of the great
Saint. But you who come by rail and, if you do not
pass her by, stay just for a day within her walls, before
you set out for the capital, how should you care, or love
her who have come to her so easily? To you she is just
another curiosity in a world that in your heart, perhaps,
you pity, but for sure you despise. Ah, but it is you
who are unfortunate, though you came de luxe, and I,
in the sweat of my brow leading a mule, and with but an
old man, unlearned and a peasant, for my companion.
You come to the station and with a certain weariness
and disgust, find the shabby omnibus that takes you to
62
THE CITIES OF SPAIN
the hotel, that you already fear to see. It is, through a
mist of prejudice that you first see the city of which
presently your guide-book will inform you. But for me
it was not so. I saw her in the sunshine from the last
billow of the desert, and almost before I realised that
indeed it was she, my companion was at my side, his hat
in hand, his head bowed, saluting her the holy city of
Castile. 'It is,' said he softly, 'It is the city of the great
Saint.'
It is only after many days spent in the solitude of her
stony campagna, in the twilight of her many churches, in
the quietness of her old deserted convents, that she
reveals herself as just that, as really incredible but for
that she is the city of the great Saint. And even as
Assisi is nothing without the life of St. Francis of which
she is the almost perfect expression, so Avila is a ruin, a
beautiful, a curious ruin it is true, but still just a ruin
without the life of S. Teresa which is as it were the soul
of this fierce solitary place. She is the fortress which
flung back the Reformation: within her walls was born.
that splendid and sad soul which was to vanquish the
German Destroyer, and to restore once more to the world
in all its orderliness and beauty, its immense power over
the soul of man, the Catholic religion, vindicating and
avenging the Latin genius upon the barbarians. Every-
where in that marvellous city you find her, the streets
live because of her footsteps, the churches are beautiful
since she has prayed there, the walls are indestructible
because she has passed by. She was christened in S.
Juan, that little parish church, not far from her home,
over which a great sanctuary has arisen; and you may
still pass out of the city by the very gate through which
she went to seek martyrdom among the Moors. In the
great convent of the Encarnacion, where she spent so
many years of her youth, the first Mass was said on the
AVILA
63
day of her birth; while on the other side of the city,
facing the great apse of the Cathedral, her own convent
of Las Carmelitas Descalzas rises in the valley, guard-
ing the tomb of her brother Lorenzo, where under the
apple-trees that, as it is said, she herself planted, her
little nuns still walk and keep her memory as the most
lovely and precious thing in the world. Su amigo Tere-
siano-Thy Teresian friend, we are told, they sign them-
selves in writing to one another. It is but another
witness to her immortality.
The perfect expression, the soul of this fierce solitary
place I said in speaking of her; and indeed the whole
city is an expression of sweetness and strength. For
you find behind the great walls, hedges of sweet briar,
that notwithstanding their sweetness, as she would have
reminded herself, hide thorns. And they tell you in
Avila, that Christ shed tears when He passed by and
saw the barrenness of the naked sierra, and these tears
are the rocks that are everywhere in the streets. It is as
though one were always about to discover the bitterness
of things too sweet. And yet in some unaccountable
way, the city is ever lovely and sweet in that desolate
land, by reason of the nimble air that flows through her
ways from the mountains, and seems to impart some
strong ascetic beauty or temperance, not only to the
people who dwell there, the beautiful slim women, the
tall grave men, but to the buildings too that have re-
mained, in that pure clear atmosphere, almost perfect
till to-day. Beauty and persistence, a persistence in
beautiful ways, in the old Faith, a certain exquisite con-
servatism, only to be found among the mountains, very
different from any mere indifferent clinging to old ways—
they might seem to be the gifts of S. Teresa to her own city.
It is into a city that is really a fortress that you pass
through her ten gateways; for her walls begun in 1090,
64
THE CITIES OF SPAIN
and finished in nine years, are held by eighty-six towers
more than forty feet high, rising indeed at the gates,
which are formed by bringing together two of the towers
at ten irregular intervals, round the city to a height of
more than sixty feet, while the walls themselves are
fourteen feet in thickness. In almost any distant view
they gird her round about so high that nothing is
visible of the city save the towers of the cathedral.
Begun, as it is said, in 1091, and finished sixteen years
later, all that remains of that old cathedral is the apse,
that has thrust itself beyond the walls, and is just one of
the great bastions that guard the city. A tower rather
than an apse you might think, as you stand under the
strong and beautiful battlements, beside that immense
semi-circle of masonry in which many chapels have been
hewn. And, indeed, it is a tower, a tower of defence
flanked by the great walls of the city, behind which the
citizens may rest in peace. Within you find a beautiful
Gothic church, very noble and lovely in spite of the late
work, a little English perhaps in its strength, its stead-
fastness. And yet with all the beauty of the nave, the
splendour of the coro and the transepts, it is always
to the apse you return again and again, finding there in
the narrow 'recessed' aisle, something almost perfect in
grace and sweetness. Ex forti dulcedo-sweetness and
strength, and here certainly one finds that sweetness which
is never so valuable as when it is the result of great
strength. That marvellous apse in all its fortitude and
energy, thrusting itself into the van to guard the city,
might seem to have broken through all conditions of
beauty, content to have expressed itself once and for all
in its mere strength; but it is saved from just that by
the loveliness-a loveliness that is so often found in the
simplest natural things-of the recessed' aisle, that like
I know not what magical corridor, leads one delicately

NAVE, AVILA CATHEDRAL
AVILA
65
through the pillars, past the tremendous bastion, hewn
into perfect grottos, where sweetness and simplicity are
married in the gracious thirteenth-century work of the
pillars and roof. It is as though the later architect that
we find at work here, had taken pity on the mere brutality
of a thing so monstrous and so strong, and had redeemed
it, had given it a soul, as it were, by the fortunate accident
of beauty, carving in the thickness of the wall those
chapels of so delicate a perfection, with a certain careful-
ness of the material, really enriching it by far more than
the weight of precious stuff he has hewn away.
The church itself has to-day, by reason of its orna-
ment, much of the character of a fourteenth-century
building, and it is perhaps only in the beautiful north-
western tower that we find the fine and simple spirit
of the thirteenth century altogether unspoiled by any
later hand. The cloister ruined and destroyed is of the
early fourteenth century, but in its present condition it is
hardly worth examination. It is said that the retablo
over the high altar is a fine work of Juan of Borgoña,
Pedro Berruguete, and Santos Cruz, but I was not able to
see it, the courtesy of the Chapter not extending so much
to a stranger.
It is strange that in a city so ancient the oldest churches
should have been built outside the walls, so that to-day
it is there we find, in S. Vicente for instance, or in S.
Pedro, buildings as old as the more ancient parts of the
cathedral or as the walls themselves. It is true that S.
Vicente has a certain reason for its position without the
city, for it was there on a stone, over which the church
stands, that S. Vicente and his sisters were martyred in
October 303. Their bodies were cast to the dogs, but
when a Jew (so the story goes) came by mocking the
poor tortured humanity, a serpent 'flew from a hole there,'
frightening him from the holy place, and for long it was
E
66
THE CITIES OF SPAIN
the custom of the people of Avila, when they took an
oath, to place their hands in that place, which to-day you
may see in the crypt of the church. Cruciform as it is,
with three eastern apses, a lantern, nave and aisles of six
bays with two western steeples, S. Vicente is really one
of the finest Romanesque buildings in Spain. Rebuilt,
or it may be only restored, by S. Ferdinand in 1252-84,
the effect of the church is not thirteenth century at all,
but earlier, of the most delicate sort of Romanesque such
as we find in Segovia. The apses are very high, the
ground sloping away over the brow of the hill, so that
the windows of the crypt are pierced in the wall just
above the plinth.
It is, it seems to me, in the south doorway, older
as it is than the great west entrance, that we see per-
haps the most beautiful thing in Avila. Those 'terra-
cotta' statues that fill the jambs are said to be of the
thirteenth century, but they are so beautiful that they
might be Greek work, that has suffered some change,
refining its comeliness, till we find a profound spiritual
beauty in it, that is a little ascetic, a little less than fair
to 'our brother' the body. Nothing quite so fine is to be
found in the more imposing western façade with its
splendid arch; and it might seem that the people of
Avila have especially valued that south door through
which to-day you pass into the church, for they have
built there a surprising and delicate loggia, doubtless
in order to preserve so precious and so old a thing as
that beautiful gate of their temple. And although it
spoils the effect' that the church should make as
seen from the city gate, it has certainly served its pur-
pose in so busy a place, where the mules and asses
continually pass by, and all the life of the city seems
to congregate.
The western front, more massive and yet more delicate
AVILA
67
by reason of its exquisite carving, is protected by
an immense porch, flanked by two towers, built in three
stages, consisting respectively of work of the twelfth,
thirteenth and fifteenth centuries, the upper parts, accord-
ing to Dávila, having been paid for by alms in 1440.
The doorway with its two round arches enclosed by a
greater, round also, has, like the southern door, in the
jambs and against the central pier, statues of saints;
and in the tympana you will find reliefs of Dives and
Lazarus, and of a death-bed, where angels are carrying
the soul to paradise. And, indeed, though inferior in
merit to the older south doorway, this western porch is a
very noble work, full of the delicacy and strength of the
late Romanesque work that here in Spain is so simple, so
lovely, and so sane beside the delirium of the late Gothic
architecture.
Within, the church is very simple and severe; lovely
and impressive too, by reason of a certain serenity that
dwells there, where behind the later pointed work we may
discern the older round arches. The chief glory of the
church, however, is the magnificent tomb of the martyrs
Vicente, Sabina, Cristeta, which stands very beautifully,
not in the midst, but on one side under the lantern. It
is thirteenth-century work of the best sort, 'like an
early Italian Gothic work,' says Street, always so full of
understanding where anything 'Gothic' has to be con-
sidered. 'It is a thirteenth-century erection,' he tells us
in his professional way, 'standing on detached shafts
within which appears to be a tomb, which is always kept
covered with a silken pall. Over this is a lofty canopy
carried on four bold shafts at the angles, and consisting
of a deep square tester, above which is a lofty pyramidal
capping, with its sides slightly concave and crockets at
the angles. . . . The inner tomb or shrine is the really
important work, the outer canopy or tester being evi-
68
THE CITIES OF SPAIN
dently a much later addition. . . . A series of subjects is
carved in panels all along the sides of the shrine, which
seems to have reference to three saints and martyrs-
probably S. Vicente and his companions. Figures of the
twelve Apostles are introduced, two and two, at the
angles, and other figures sitting and reading between the
subjects. . . . I take the shrine to be a work of the thir-
teenth century, though the baldachin is, no doubt, of
later date.'
It might seem that in all these older churches of Avila
something of that tradition, which is always so powerful
in art, and certainly in architecture, is to be found actually
at work, compelling the artist, even in matters not, it
might seem, of essential importance, to conform to ancient
practice; for here in S. Vicente, as in the cathedral, you
find the doorways of the north and south placed in the
aisle a little to the west of the transepts, not in the tran-
septs themselves as at Burgos, for instance, or S. Isidoro
of León, a church of the same period, or in the cathedral
there. You may find the same peculiarity in the church
of S. Pedro, a sister church to S. Vicente, on the other
side of Avila, beyond the Alcázar gate in the Mercado.
Grande. There, too, you will find a beautiful western
doorway under a plain round arc And, indeed, it is the
'romanesque' of Avila that is so well worth looking for.
You find it again in the old Ermita of S. Esteban, in
Santo Domingo, and in the two strange Toros, beasts or
gods or savage hermae, I know not, in the Plaza there.
All these buildings, which to-day we are apt to look upon
as beautiful 'specimens' merely, preserved by a miracle
for us to admire from so long ago, were for S. Teresa
holy places, and to-day as then, and for years before she
was born, their walls echo with the same words, almost
the same music, set to the profound, sonorous, Latin
tongue, that in its everlasting beauty and strength is
AVILA
69
really the only living language of the world; all the rest
being just dialects, beautiful wildflowers that will fade
and die, while she, the spirit of music and thought, is still
as universal as light, as necessary, as indestructible.
At sunset, as you return to the city, perhaps a little
sadly, from the desolation that surrounds her, she seems
to lift up her eyes to the hills, those beautiful mountains
of Guadarrama, whose child she is, whose help she has
invoked so often, whose profound and silent life has in-
formed all her dreams; and as you pass through her
narrow, stony streets up and down the city, in the lament-
able places where the walls are wounded and ruinous, or
perhaps as you wander at evening along the Rastro, or
over the barren deserted hills, it is not any city of to-day
that you see, but rather the very dream that is hidden in
the word, made visible. Truly, at such an hour, she
seems the only one left to us from the splendid and
fugitive centuries.
VII
THE GRAVE OF TORQUEMADA
T was in the hottest hour of the day, when returning
I
great silent monastery of Santo Tomás, that lies in the
plain below Avila. Weary with the heat and the dust of
the way, I thought I would rest in the church before.
entering the city. Having tied my mule in the shade, I
passed into the coolness of the church under the great
western coro where it is always twilight, past the high
altar on its arch, across the transept where in a beautiful
ruined tomb Prince Juan, the only son of the Catholic
kings, lies sleeping, into the sacristy where I thought to
find a priest, of whom I might ask a cup of water. As I
opened the door I saw a white frock disappear a little
hastily through the passage that led, as I supposed, to the
monastery. It must be, thought I, that I have disturbed
a siesta; but before I had time to think what to do, an
old man in the Dominican habit came towards me and
very courteously and kindly asked me what I needed.
When I had told my tale he led me, with a certain familiar
gentleness, that is, I think, peculiar to Spain, into the
monastery, where he insisted upon my partaking of some
bread and fish-for it was Friday-with a little wine
mixed with water.
After I had thanked him he offered to show me the
church and the house, which he explained was now used
as a seminary for the education of those friars who go to
70
1
THE GRAVE OF TORQUEMADA
71
the Philippines. The time passed quickly in his com-
pany, so that the bell began to ring for Vespers before he
had shown me all.
'And is there nothing, Father,' I ventured to ask, 'in
your sacristy that is old, curious, or holy?'
He did not reply for a time, and then quite suddenly
the bell stopped, and he turned towards me.
'Nothing you would care for,' he said quickly; 'perhaps,
to-morrow .,' and then, after he had made me promise
to return there to sleep that night, he bade me good-bye.
After Vespers I set out for Avila, scarcely more than
a mile away on her hill. As I passed the great Convento
de Agustinas, coming into the city at last, as I always
preferred to do, by the Puerta S. Teresa, it was of the
great saint I was thinking, and it seemed to me for a
moment that it was easy to renounce the world in a land
without trees, flowers, or birds.
I came to the inn at last, to find it full of tourists,
Americans, who under the guidance of one of their
number had been 'doing' the city, as they informed me.
They seemed to think I should be glad of their company.
At dinner, which is an early meal in Avila, they told
each other of their adventures. But he who was the
leader and guide began to speak of Santo Tomás in a
loud voice, so that we all might benefit by his knowledge.
I did not hear the beginning of his discourse, for I was
talking with an old Spaniard who sat beside me; but my
attention was caught when I heard him say, '. . . so I
spat right there on the tomb, and the monk didn't dare
say anything, but he just looked: I can't tell you easily
how he looked.'
My Spanish friend moved in his seat and asked me,
'It is of the tomb of Torquemada that he speaks?' I
did not know, but at his request I asked.
'Yes, sir, I'm telling you, aren't I? I spat right there
72
THE CITIES OF SPAIN
"
on the tomb. I'm a free-born American, a liberty-loving,
educated Independent minister, and I'm glad to have the
chance to show these Spanish idolaters what I think of
their man-burning devils.' And so say all of us,' said a
young man across the table, with a laugh, while the
others smiled and seemed to enter into the spirit of the
thing.
A small part of this I told my neighbour; but, alas, he
had understood.
'But it is too long ago, surely it is too long ago—to
bear malice,' he said, in a quiet but agitated voice. 'We
are Christians; it is very necessary to forgive, is it not
so?' ...
But that strident voice that was used to domineer over
many congregations would not have it so.
'And yet,' said my friend to me in the hubbub that
followed, and yet it was us he burned; if we have for-
given, why should he remember?'..
It was night when I returned to Santo Tomás, but the
Father was waiting for me in the sacristy. After a minute
he said, 'My son, you are troubled, you are angry, what
has happened? It is not well to sleep when one is
angry.' And somehow I told him all. Once or twice he
smiled, but there were tears in his eyes as he led me, in
the midst of that great room, to the bare slab of slate
beneath which Torquemada sleeps. 'It is true,' he said,
'we have forgiven him.' There was a long silence, and
then with a great deference he turned towards me and
said, 'If you will, señor, we will pray for him and for us
all, because-is it not so?-where one who is in trouble
is left unaided, there passes an executioner; and where
two or three are gathered together in unkindness, there
is the Inquisition.' As we knelt I saw him wipe away
the mark of scorn from the grave with the sleeve of
his cloak.
THE GRAVE OF TORQUEMADA
73
It is said that when a certain woman collected for
interment the insulted remains of Nero, the pagan world
surmised that she must be a Christian-only a Christian
would have been likely to conceive so chivalrous a
devotion toward mere wretchedness. Something of this
kind came into my mind as I knelt with the old Father
beside that rude slab of slate, and tried to pray as of old
that it might please Him to have mercy upon all men.
Jo
f
!
IT.
VIII
SEGOVIA
T was already evening when I set out for Segovia in
the company of a muleteer who, his business in Avila
over, was returning to his home near S. Ildefonso in the
Sierra de Guadarrama. Leaving the city by the Alcázar
gate, night fell as we came through the last suburb out
on to the Madrid road, which we were to follow for a
certain distance. On every side the stony wilderness of
Avila stretched far away, littered with strange fantastic
ruins that in the luminous darkness of the southern
night seemed every now and then to rise up by the
roadside like threatening mutilated statues, or perhaps
an immense multitude of lepers that in unfriendly silence
watched us pass by. My companion spoke but little,
and I, overwhelmed by the strange and almost sinister
desolation, could not bring myself to break the immense
silence. So we went almost in fear on that lonely road
under the stars, passing at times through the cork woods
that fill the little valleys and cover the lower hills, where
the wind passing among the leaves seemed full of voices
beseeching impossible help, with unforgettable cries shrill
with disaster a world awakened in the night by the
fear of death.
For many hours we rode thus without speaking, my
companion a little in advance, the reins loose on his
mule's back, asleep as I thought, while I, excited by
the whisper of the wind or the beauty of the night or
the strangeness of that ancient way, sat upright in my
74
SEGOVIA
75
saddle, my nerves throbbing, attentive to every undertone
of the world. The wind came softly over the plain
among the rocks, sometimes with a sweep and rush that
were like the irresistible flow of the tide on a stony
beach; sometimes with hesitation and soft murmuring
sighs that were like the sobbing of a child; and again
sometimes sweeping through the woods like a great
company of Bacchae, heard but not seen, sleepless upon
the hills in quest of Dionysus. And yet it was something
more profound than that to which I found myself listen-
ing in the hours before dawn when man is so seldom
waking, or if awake is dreaming in the careless end of
of the night it was as though I heard the voice of
Nature about her immortal business, comforting the dead
or encouraging the living, ruthlessly extinguishing life,
pitilessly engendering it, indifferent to everything but
her own energy, her own agony of restlessness. And
once, as we passed through a wood thicker than usual, I
heard the scream of a hare in the power of her enemy,
and often the cooing of some wood pigeon; but ever over
the world the wind sang that song full of strange incom-
prehensible intervals in which I heard the beating of my
own heart.
:
At last, at a turning of the way, my companion waited:
-'a fine night and a sweet wind,' he said when I came
up with him; 'our way lies here to the left.'
'The night is full of voices,' said I, 'all the woods are
singing.'
'They sing for the Lord Christ,' he said, smiling at me.
'The Lord Christ who is often wandering about as of old
with his friends, or it may be alone.'
'But,' said I,' He is in heaven,' and I looked where the
milky way led over the arch of the sky.
'Yes,' said my companion as we went on together. 'Yes
-He is in heaven; yet sometimes, as of old, He comes
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THE CITIES OF SPAIN
back to us, and here in Spain, so they say, it is often
that He weeps.'.
'I have heard,' said I, 'that He passed once by Avila
and wept because the world was so bare and the flowers
so few there; but tell me, then, has He passed more than
once along this way?'
'More than once, more than once, I assure you, señor.
But have you not heard how He took shelter with the
charcoal-burner in these very hills?'
'Tell me,' said I, 'for, as we say in England, a com-
panion is better than a coach on a long journey.'
'Well,' said he, 'I make no doubt your worship will
understand it better than myself; but for the tale, I
believe it, though many do not-they do not know the
roads as I do and I have heard it said that it is not
certain He was ever in Spain at all. Be good enough,
then, when you have heard the story to give me your
opinion. For I see you are a caballero of good under-
standing and worship the saints. Not as many Inglés I
have heard of, who, as they tell me, are all Jews and spit
on María Santisima.'
'Peace,' said I, 'let me hear the story.' He looked
straight in front of him between the ears of his mule, as
though collecting his thoughts; after a time he began :-
'It was one night of winter not so long ago, as my
mother, from whom I heard the tale, has often told
me, when Jesucristo on his way to Avila with S. Pedro
found himself at nightfall on the northern slopes of the
Sierra de Guadarrama far from any city. It was a bad
night to be out, señor, for the snow lay deep already
and more was coming, and the wind was already howling
among the stones; so that, as your worship may imagine,
S. Pedro was glad indeed when he spied not so far away
a little light, which he knew to be that of a candle in
the hut of a certain charcoal-burner, of whom he knew
SEGOVIA
77
nothing but good. And since they had come far, he
turned to Jesucristo and, "Señor," said he, "let us
rest here in this poor man's hut, as we used to do in
those days that we are not likely to forget." And the
Lord Christ gave him leave to ask this charity. So
S. Pedro knocked at the door of the charcoal-burner's
hut, and they waited there in the snow till it should be
opened for them to enter. Now this charcoal-burner,
whose name was Miguel, was a true Spaniard, and more-
over he led a lonely life, so that he opened his door to
travellers not unwillingly, and on such a night even one
less free with his hospitality would not have refused
shelter to a dog. He was much taken, it might seem, with
his two guests, for he built up the fire till the hut was as
full of light and warmth as a king's palace, and he did not
grudge even the logs of cork-wood, so much he liked his
guests; and as your worship knows, there is nothing like
the root of the cork-tree for a cheerful blaze. Well, as for
food he had not much, for those people live on very little,
but he gave them a little goat's milk that by good luck
he had that one day, and some garbanzos, and made also
as good a puchero as he was able with the broken food
he had left. So they two sat down to eat, while Miguel
set about getting the paja against bedtime. Outside the
wind still bellowed through the woods, battered at the
door of the hut, and tried to lift off the roof, and the
snow fell too and drifted in the wind. Presently above
all this noise he seemed to hear again a faint knocking
at the door, and when he opened behold two more way-
farers, whom he admitted with a certain fear, which
your worship will understand was not for meanness, but
lest he should be unable to find food for these also.
But S. Pedro, who is ever eager to aid those of good
disposition, said to him—“ Be careful for nothing, Miguel,
they are our friends."
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THE CITIES OF SPAIN
'But it is hardly surprising that the charcoal-burner
was a little embarrassed, and put the pot on the fire
again with a consciousness that it was but half filled.
Scarcely had he done this when he heard again a knock-
ing without, and, as he thought, a soft voice singing an
Ave. S. Pedro heard it too and went to the door before
him, for he had recognised the voice of S. Juan, his friend,
one whom Jesucristo loved well, as it is written in the
Gospel which, doubtless, your worship, who must be
a Cristiano viejo as I have said, knows better than I
do. Well, señor, you may imagine the embarrassment
of the poor charcoal-burner, for there was not enough to
feed a rat in the place, much less hungry travellers who,
he began to supect, were used to better fare than he
could put before them. But S. Pedro let them in, for,
said he, they are friends of ours, and the charcoal-burner
busied himself to entertain them as best he could.
all night they continued to come till there were twelve of
them with the Lord Christ in that poor man's dwelling.
All night Miguel could not sleep for thinking on his
guests, for he knew who they were indeed, since he had
seen his puchero, that was scarce enough for two, feed all
of them, and had found his milk that was already sour
sweeter than the milk of the cows in the valleys of Ebro.
So much honour robbed him of sleep, as it did me, your
worship will well understand, when the young king
stopped to drink wine at my house when he was hunting.'
And
He was silent as though recalling the emotion that
honour had brought him. Presently he went on: 'Well,
señor, in the morning they rose up, and the sun shone
and they went forth. Only S. Pedro stayed for a little
to acknowledge the hospitality of the charcoal-burner,
and having thanked him, bade him ask what he would for
a payment and it should be his. But, señor, what would
you, he was an old Christian and no ventero, he wanted
SEGOVIA
79
no payment; as well might I ask payment for the com-
pany of your worship, which is my pleasure Moreover
Miguel wanted for nothing, since he had all that was
necessary and was contented. Nevertheless, lest S. Pedro
should think him proud-and pride is a deadly sin-he
thanked him, and begged that since a game of cards
with such of his acquaintance as happened to come to
see him was his amusement and pleasure, he would per-
mit him always to win whatever the particular game
might be.
'Wooh! your worship may imagine how grave S. Pedro
looked, for I may tell you much suspicion attaches to
card games in heaven, where, since S. Ignacio went there,
they have been suppressed, cast forth, and entirely dis-
graced. But S. Pedro knew the world and the heart,
and the heart of Miguel pleased him well, and, moreover,
he had promised, and again, as he stood there tapping
with his foot on the floor, thinking, thinking, he bethought
him how discouraged those who lost would be, so he
consented.
'Well, señor, He is blessed who expects nothing, and
the charcoal-burner thought to himself: "how many
would have given their ears for my chance-yes, even
those who want for nothing." So the tale goes-Miguel
used his luck well and robbed no one-no one was
much poorer, nor was he richer by his gift. So he
died. And as his angel bore him to that place we must
all pass through before we see the Lord Christ and all
the saints, and S. Teresa too, he begged him to stay
at the bedside of the first poor dying soul whom the
Devil was sure of, for he feared in his heart that
he had made no good use of S. Pedro's gift, though
he had done no evil with it neither-yet it seemed to
him that it was not given him to play with. And the
angel flew to a certain house in a great city-and some
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THE CITIES OF SPAIN
say that it was Madrid itself-where an escribano, a
lawyer, lay at his last gasp. Señor, we know these
lawyers you and I, no lack of wickedness there, plenty of
it, we may be sure. And as your worship might expect
there sat the Devil himself beside the escribano, while on
the other side knelt the lawyer's wife and a poor priest
praying to all the saints, and especially to S. Ignacio, all
to no purpose, for that escribano's soul was rotten with sin.
""By the God in whom I live," said the charcoal-burner;
"did not the Lord Christ die for all without excluding
even escribanos ?" But the lawyer was asleep, or so near
dead that he heard nothing, and the Devil sat there
waiting for his soul.
Come, come, Señor Devil," said the charcoal-burner,
"you cannot do your business while he sleeps: to pass
the time I propose to you a game of cards." And the
Devil smiled, thinking perhaps of his luck in that game,
for it was his own invention. "And the stakes ?" said he.
"I will give you something better than money," said the
charcoal-burner. "See here, your worship," says he; "my
soul against the soul of the escribano, which you are so
sure of, but which is not more than three parts yours
already." The Devil smiled again, for he thought he had
made the bargain of his life. The charcoal-burner let
him shuffle, cut, and shuffle again, and be sure it was the
Devil himself who dealt, chuckling the while. But Car-
amba! in less than an hour the Devil was beggared, and
twitching his ears back, as Rosarito is doing now, for she
sniffs the sunrise, and, lashing frightfully with his tail, he
leapt out of the window and was gone.
'But the lawyer in the meantime had awakened, con-
fessed, received the ministrations of the Church, and as
the Devil fled, his angel received his soul and flew with
it up to the gate with the angel of the charcoal-burner,
who made bold to knock there.
SEGOVIA
81
'¿Quien vive?' said S. Pedro peering over the battle-
ments of jasper. 'It is I of the mountains,' said the
charcoal-burner.
'Ah,' said S. Pedro; 'yes, yes, I know you, but what
is that black thing you have with you?'
'Señor,' said the charcoal-burner, 'it is a friend of mine;
and, Señor, he is only black because being a lawyer' (and
that he said very low), 'some of his ink has spattered
him.'
'No admittance here for escribanos,' said S. Pedro;
'why, we never heard of such a thing.'
'But, Señor, it was not so I greeted you when you
came to me on that night of snow, on the mountains
with twelve others, of whom one was the Lord Christ.
Then it was Be careful for nothing-and here is it not
so too?'
'And so, as your worship has doubtless foreseen, S.
Pedro could say no more. He turned his back and
began to talk with great earnestness to the angel of
Miguel, while the charcoal-burner took up the soul of
the escribano and crept in under the shade of the orange
trees which, as they say, are finer than any in Andalucia.'
'That is a good story,' said I; 'and I thank you.
May be the escribanos are not so bad as they say.'
'One swallow makes no summer,' said the muleteer;
and the road being difficult thereabout he rode a little in
advance leaving me to my own thoughts. Not long
after, where two ways met, he bade me farewell. I
watched him for a time as he went without looking back,
a lonely picturesque figure, along that silent, beautiful
way, in the earliest dawn. Then when the twilight had
hidden him I went on my way.
Dawn was breaking. The wind had fallen and over
the world lay a deep languorous silence. Now and then
a leaf stirred or a sudden sweet twitter told me a bird
F
82
THE CITIES OF SPAIN
was waking; and then like some delicate spirit the fragile
light crept over the immense world. Far away to the
south and east the great beautiful mountains lifted their
heads in a sky that was infinitely faint and distant. To
the north and west lay the desert still sleeping, covered
with a violet mist that gradually changed to amethyst
and gold, till suddenly the sun rose over a shoulder of
the Guadarrama and smote the plain, as it were, with a
golden sword, cleaving the curtain of mist and revealing
the arid tawny wilderness, with its uncertain wandering
roads, its old dry watercourses, and the very framework
of that austere ascetic world. And then far away before
me I saw Segovia like a ship for ever a-sail in the
mountains, among whose eternal bastions she seemed to
rise like some exquisite forgotten argosy.
You come to her at last through a dusty suburb that
straggles down the almost precipitous hillside into the
plains, entering Segovia herself at a breach in the old walls,
coming in the Plaza del Azoquejo upon the real gateway
as it were, the great Roman Aqueduct built, as is supposed,
by Trajan, not ruinous as that other which passes under
his name and is still one of the noblest monuments of
the Roman Campagna, but in use to-day bringing as in
Roman times water for the city from the Sierra de Fuen-
fría. And its presence there in that lonely forgotten
place seems to give to Segovia a distinction that no
other city of Castile can claim; a title not of antiquity
alone, which Toledo or Avila might well dispute with her,
but of humanism and civilised life that Greek or Roman
work seems always to confer upon its possessors, that we
shall hardly find anywhere else in Spain. Partly de-
stroyed by the Moors in 1071 when they were besieging
the city, the Puente, as it is called to-day, was rebuilt by
Juan Escovedo, a monk of El Parral, in 1483, under the
Catholic kings. Like all classical work, which was known
SEGOVIA
83
to the people of the Middle Ages, it fell into disrepute
and was attributed to magic or El Diablo. For as the
story ran, the devil, not for the first time, became ena-
moured of a certain maiden of Segovia, whose daily task
it was to fetch water from the valley; and this she found
altogether wearying, so that when the devil in hope of
favours, and indeed in exchange for the promise of her
hand, offered to give her whatever she might desire, she
bade him build a bridge in one night, so that she might
find water in the city at daybreak. And he showed her
in the morning the 'Devil's Bridge' stretching far away
across the country bringing fresh and clear water into
Segovia. But she, that silly maid, was in despair, anxious
lest she must give the devil his due, seeing no chance of
escape. But at last a young man of that city who for long
had cast a sheep's eye at the girl found that indeed the
Puente was not finished, that some few stones were lack-
ing at the far end. So the church held the maid free of
her promise, and she married the young man instead of
the devil and, as they still say in Old Spain, lived happy
ever after.
It is through a picturesque maze of steep and narrow
streets, where the houses seem to support one another,
and to have been carved as it were from a single
many-coloured shell, that you come at last into the Plaza
Mayor, a great square almost surrounded by balconied
houses, with upper stories of wooden loggias. It is only
in one corner that the Plaza opens revealing the apse of
the cathedral, like some exquisite casket or fantastic
rock, crannied by the sea and the delicate immemorial
work of the wind. As you continue on the way to the
Alcázar you pass by the cathedral itself, and later the
little Romanesque church of S. Andrés, with its beautiful
thirteenth century tower, coming at last on to the rock
of the Alcázar, where beyond a desolate plaza a great
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THE CITIES OF SPAIN
modern building in the Gothic manner crowns the height
on which the old castle of Alfonso VI., built in imitation
of the Alcázar of Toledo, used to stand. You look thence
upon a new country, as it were, across the wooded valley
of the Eresma, a country of running waters. To the
westward a deep valley, wooded and beautiful, divides
the hills, only itself to be cleft by the rock of Segovia,
the Alcázar, that rises like the prow of some splendid
ship on the crest of the waves, thrusting the waters
aside as she sails over the immense billows. The old
walls surround the city like great bulwarks, broken and
destroyed a little by rain and tempest, while far away the
towers and cupolas of the cathedral rise into the sky,
the masts and splendid sails of some great galleon still
adventurous on the seas. Beyond the river on the burn-
ing sierra is the little round church of Vera Cruz, and not
so far away on the right bank of the river stands La
Moneda, the mint where till 1730 all the money of Spain
was struck, while over against it the old monastery of
El Parral rises among its gardens.
You reach the cool valley by the Puerta de Santiago,
the oldest gate of the city. High over it, built above the
arch is a 'refugio,' an asylum for children, little people
who have no friends and so must be befriended by all,
therefore their house is set up over the beautiful city
gate, where they can see the travellers passing in and
out all day long, on mules or on foot, driving asses before
them laden with wine, or garden stuff, or corn for the
use of the city. All the long summer day the river sings
softly in the valley, and the poplar trees whisper together,
and the children stand at their window watching the
world. And all they see is beautiful and simple, gay
with colour under the good sun, and solemn with labour
as of old. Thinking of them now in London, ah! how
I envy them that refuge over the gate of Segovia.

ALCAZAR, SEGOVIA
SEGOVIA
85
The little 'round' church of Vera Cruz stands by the
wayside. Consecrated in 1208, it is a Templar church
in the later Romanesque manner. In its perfect beauty,
all of rose and gold, it seems in that bare and arid place,
for it stands on the bare hill-side above the valley, like
a flower almost, a flower born of the sunshine and the
wind, the one lovely thing in all that desolation. Beside
it a low tower, itself a chapel, very strong and simple,
stands on guard, fulfilled, as one might think, by the
spirit of some old way-worn knight which has passed
into that indestructible watch-tower. A'round' church
we say in speaking of the chapels that remain to us of
those built long ago, in imitation of the sanctuary which
rises over the sepulchre of Jesus; but Vera Cruz is
really composed of twelve sides buttressed at the angles,
between which twelve little windows under the eaves
look out on to the sierra; while to the north and east are
doorways in great round arches, very simply sculptured.
Within, the ambulatory which passes round the church
retains its twelve-sided form, enclosing a small chamber
two stories high, whose walls, broken by certain arches,
shut in the chancel. A flight of steps leads to the upper
chamber over the chancel itself whence seven small
windows look into the church.
Not far away the Geronimite monastery of El Parral
sleeps among its vines. Founded in the fifteenth century
by the Marqués de Villena, it was built by Juan Gallego
of Segovia, altered in 1494-the coro was heightened—by
Juan de Ruesgua, and in 1529 Juan Campero raised the
tower dome thirty feet. It is almost a ruin, for the Order
was suppressed in the sixteenth century and it is now
cared for by a few Franciscan nuns, who, poor as they
are, do their best to keep the place in order.
The plan of the church is very strange, fashioned as
it is rather after the pattern of a gridiron, where the
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THE CITIES OF SPAIN
two narrow western bays serve for handle. It is there
that the coro is set in a deep gallery as at Santo
Tomás outside Avila; then the church broadens to
double the width of the two western bays, and on either
side the nave there are two chapels, one to each bay.
The transepts are as broad as the nave and chapels, and
the east end is five-sided. The distribution of light in
the church is, too, very curious, almost melodramatic in
its artificiality. For since the coro on its arch fills half
the nave, and there are no windows at the west end, it
is always twilight there, while the east end is just one
great window, through which the sun streams on to the
altar in all his splendour, almost blinding you for a
moment if you turn suddenly towards it from the west
end of the church. 'Las huertas del Parral, paraiso
terrenal,' says the proverb, repeated in every guide-book,
but to-day they are a wilderness of wild flowers, lovelier
by far than long ago, when the monks kept them so
orderly and all the walks were trim and neat.
As you
lie here among the vine leaves in the green shade on a
summer's day, the song of the river is louder and more
insistent than the children hear in their refuge over the
city gate, by reason of a little weir that falls just below
the convent. It was there in a place fit for meditation
and refreshment that I first read the poems of S. Teresa,
verses as strange and full of mystery, as simple, as fragile
as the flowers that we fear to touch lest we destroy them.
The way back to Segovia is a pleasant way under the
trees; it leads you at last into the city by the same
beautiful gate of Santiago, and thence past S. Esteban to
the Plaza Mayor and the cathedral.
S. Esteban is a ruin. Its beautiful tower, one of the
glories of Segovia, has been pulled down of necessity, I
was told, since it threatened to fall.
'I have seldom seen a better work than this,' says
SEGOVIA
87
'It is
Street, writing in 1865 of the tower of S. Estéban.
evidently one of a large class, most of the other steeples
here reproducing the unusual arrangement of the angles.
They are boldly splayed off, and in the middle of the
splay is set a shaft which finishes with a sculptured
capital. The effect of this design is to give great softness
of contour to the whole steeple, and yet to mark boldly
and broadly the importance of the angles. The arcading
of the various stages is richly and admirably managed,
and the details throughout are very pure and good. I
have found no evidence of its exact date, though it is
evidently a work of the first half of the thirteenth
century.'
Not far away is the cathedral, begun in 1522 by Juan
Gil de Hontañon and his son, the architects of the new
cathedral at Salamanca. It is the last Gothic building
of Spain. Built by the same men, it has been thought
possible that the very plans of the Salamanca cathedral
were used, only instead of the square east end of
Salamanca, here in Segovia you find a chevet of surpris-
ingly good Gothic detail. Curiously impressive from
afar it fails to satisfy us on closer examination; loaded
with every sort of exquisite ornament, carved like a
casket, it seems to stand there a witness to the truth
uttered by Leonardo da Vinci, Quanto più un' arte porta
seco fatica di corpo tanto più è vile. It is not here nor in
S. Miguel, which may well be from the same hand, that
we shall find the true expression of a city so old and so
noble, bearing as she does the indestructible mark of
Rome, but rather in a church like S. Millán, for instance,
in the valley to the south of the city not far from the
aqueduct, where the round arches of the Romanesque
style, so simple and so strong, seem to reveal the city
herself, not only as of a certain unaffected simplicity and
beauty, but as of a quiet serenity and strength also, funda-
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1
mentally opposed, as indeed is the grave character of the
Castilian, to anything hysterical or excessive. The most
beautiful church in Segovia, S. Millán, outside the walls
as it is, as S. Vicente is at Avila, consists of nave and
aisles with three apses, as simple a building, you might
think, as it were possible to build. And yet what
splendour there is in those golden walls, unteased by
the laborious goldsmiths' work of the later Gothic
sculptors, but made precious by the sun, where the wind
has passed over the surface 'like the point of some fine
etcher,' and the rain and the frost have laboured so
delicately and so long. Without, beside the aisles, there
are cloisters, placed there, it may be, for coolness in the
long summer heat; and to the south the old transept
still remains, though on the north it has been destroyed
to make way for the great tower, which seems to have
been an afterthought.
Within, the church has been spoiled, only the arcades
between the nave and aisles remaining as they were first
built, to suggest the beauty of the church before it was
modernised. The roof of the nave is flat, but Street
seems to think that it must originally have been 'a
cylindrical vault, with quadrant vaults in the aisles,'
though he admits, what I confess I venture to think more
likely, that it may have had a flat wooden ceiling.
The exact date of this church, one of the most inter-
esting and beautiful monuments in Spain, is not known,
but that it was built before 1270 would seem to be
certain. Much of it is indeed almost certainly older
than Vera Cruz, which was dedicated in 1205, but as
Street points out, certain details, those of the external
cornices, for instance, cannot be earlier than the middle
of the thirteenth century. Said to have been founded
in 923, nothing to be found in S. Millán to-day allows
us to accept a date so early, though the greater part of
SEGOVIA
89
the main church may well have been built in the twelfth
century.
Whether or no we are justified in thinking of S. Millán
as a building of the twelfth century, it was certainly the
pattern after which the old Romanesque churches of
Segovia were built. In S. Martin, for instance, within
the city, you find similar cloisters, only there they are
continued across the west end; and spoiled though the
church is, it is easy to see its close relationship to
S. Millán. Nor is S. Martin alone in the debt it owes
to that old and beautiful church without the walls, for in
S. Roman, S. Facundo, now the Museo, S. Trinidad,
S. Lorenzo, S. Juan, S. Tomás, S. Eulalia, S. Clemente,
S. Salvador, S. Justo, and others, ruined though they
be, one may still find something of the indestructible
beauty and strength of S. Millán. It is in the desecrated
splendour of these Romanesque buildings, rather than in
any later Gothic work which indeed has, as it happens
here in Segovia, suffered even more from chance and
time, that the true spirit of the city still dwells. To-day
little more than a deserted provincial city, almost dead
for the greater part of the year, alive really only in the
long summer days when the people come to her for air
and coolness from the furnace of Madrid, she seems
ever to be surrounded by thoughts, some of them fantastic
enough and sadly changed, of that Rome whose far-
stretched greatness has ennobled her. After all, her most
perfect monument, her most indestructible trophy, that
which she finds most useful and practical to-day, is the
Roman Aqueduct which brings water from afar for the
people within her gates. And beyond any other build-
ing, Romanesque or Gothic, it is that which gives her her
character, and is what we chiefly remember in any mental
picture we have of her. To-day as of old, it is under
those triumphal arches all of us must pass on entering or
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leaving the city. Long after we have forgotten the sweet
bravura of the cathedral, the profound sadness of those
ruined Romanesque churches, the gaiety of the shady
summer streets, and even the beauty of the lonely city
herself, abandoned there like a ship in full sail stranded
among the mountains, those great Roman arches
remain with us, symbols of some majesty that was once
in the world, the shadow of which she has so strangely
been able to preserve. And so when all the tumult of
the day is hushed, hushed the footsteps of men in the
streets of the city, and all is silenced in sleep, and we,
who yet are awake, seem to move as it were in a dream,
while across the desert or over the mountains the wind
passes by, that never dies away, or forgets, or is lost in a
thousand meadows, or on the sea, it is that profound and
human architecture we seek, as elsewhere we might seek
the hills or the autumn fields or the sea itself, feeling at
that moment the supreme need of our mother the earth.
Well, here in Segovia it is that indestructible work of the
Romans built out of the mountains, that seems to stand
as a symbol as it were of the immortality and strength
of nature and natural things, their immense power of
renewal and re-creation; in the loneliest minutes of the
soul it is not in vain you will come to that well of
water, for it shares with the simplest things, the flowers,
the sea, and the earth, something of Him, in whom one
day we shall find all our desire.
IX
MADRID TO-DAY
THE way from Segovia to Madrid lies at first among
the mountains of the Guadarrama, those beautiful
strongholds of grey rock that separate the two Castiles.
Passing the little towns of S. Ildefonso and Guadarrama
itself, it is not till you come to Villalba that you find that
you have crossed the mountains, and that before you lies
an immense plain, in which Madrid lies hid, really in the
centre of Spain, guarded by desert and mountain and the
immense desolations of winter and summer, here in this
lofty southern land, from any easy approach whether of
friend or enemy. More lonely and more silent than the
Campagna of Rome, the greatest treasure of Madrid is
this immense desert, where she stands the youngest of all
the capitals of Spain. Few among those who have come
to her, for the most part a little hurriedly, have under-
stood the strong masculine beauty of this country, in the
midst of which she rises on her hills. She has no great
tradition to plead her cause in our hearts as Rome has,
for, while the Campagna is still mysterious, strewn with
great dead things among which a new nation is struggling
for life, the desert of Madrid seems without significance,
just an immense desolation that has brought forth nothing
save blades of grass and the wind. And yet, indeed, as
you traverse that wilderness, breaking in great billows
over immense boulders of rock, overwhelming every
obstruction, discovering in its terrible energy and rest-
lessness the very structure of the land, the bones, as it
91
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were, the skeleton of the earth, till it flings itself in fury
against the white capital herself, something of the satis-
faction of the sea comes to you, and in its very desolation
and energy, it appears as splendid as the locus of any other
city of the world—as beautiful as the Campagna of Rome,
as ardent as the Vega of Toledo.
But Madrid herself has failed to understand the signi-
ficance of that voracious desert. She is unworthy of it,
and, for the most part, being content to ape afar off the
logical beauty of Paris, she is unconscious of the grandeur
and terror that lie buried in that silent desert, which
awaited in her expression and resurrection. She is so
little aware of her destiny, that, alone in Spain, she has
preferred to ignore her nationality, and to imitate the
lighter and more lucid loveliness of France. You will
not find in Madrid anything of the sad ascetic dignity or
the bravura of Spain. And if you compare her with
Paris, how infinitely must she fall short of that beautiful
city of spaces, where is the sweetness of a river, where
the sun is lovely in its temperance, and the playing of
the light upon the water is like the music of the flute,
and the bridges bear you over almost like a sigh,
though one of them has flung itself across the gulf
with the joy of a perfect thought. And does she not
hold herself back, as it were, from the river, so that a
certain breadth and largeness, wanting in the Seine
itself, may be added to it, by means of a due sense of
proportion, of form? There the lucid streets that run
like streams beneath the trees, lead ever towards some
vistaed loveliness, and the buildings are like thoughtful
prayers, perfectly expressive, or like the immense laughter
of youth, or like the gorgeous unfulfilled boasts of a
young man.
Ah! Paris, city of light, the capital of the modern world,
what Athens was, what Rome was, you are to the world
MADRID TO-DAY
93
to-day, the centre of our civilisation, where the arts are
considered of a due importance, and you yourself are a
beloved being to be adorned and cared for by your citi-
zens. How should we imitate you in our solid heaviness,
our sordid poverty, our blatant wealth; we who have
gathered ourselves together into an immense formless
crowd, and dubbed our frightful heaps of bricks and
mortar, a city; our crowd of thoughtless inarticulate
breadwinners, citizens. How different is life in your
streets, from that of London or any other city! I have
watched Spring pass up the streets, gay with the so
various life of the City of Light. It is enough, I have seen
the last wonder of the world. For there abide these three,
Rome, London and Paris-the first is Prospero, who has
known many tragedies; the second is Caliban, beastly
and inarticulate; the last is Miranda, my dear darling,
from whose lips has fallen the word-humanity. And if
Rome who gave her life, and London who is envious
in her mire, bow down to her, who is the City of Light;
how should Madrid look but ridiculous when she com-
pares herself with her.
Lacking the gravity, the reticence and the glory of the
great dying cities, that have gathered an incommunicable
beauty from the desert and the mountains, she alone, in
Spain, is of the modern world. In those gay and thought-
less streets, you will search in vain for any building,
cathedral, palace, or ayuntamiento, that is not modern,
debased and feeble. Her streets are ill-paved and filthy,
her people noisy, miserable, and rapacious, her climate
the worst in Spain. Without the antiquity and nobility
that lend their beauty to even the most dilapidated ways
of Burgos, Valladolid and Toledo, she has but little of
the vitality which is so valuable a quality of the modern
city, to console us for the lack of tradition and physical
loveliness. Then, while she is often as sordid as London,
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"
she has nothing of that immense life, that tragic and tire-
less energy, in which, not so infrequently after all, you
may surprise moments of fleeting but marvellous beauty.
It is not life she has desired but that beauty, too often
divorced from life, which is the magical virtue of Paris,
and to this she has failed to attain. She is the most pro-
vincial capital of the world; a city whom no one loves.
'The sentiment in vogue in Madrid,' says Signor Valdés
in his novel Maxima,- The sentiment in vogue in
Madrid is hate, and even if it is not felt, it is the fashion
to pretend to show it, at least in public.' Something of
this is, I think, most evident in the summer evenings in
the Prado, when the whole fashionable world drives or
strolls or lounges there under the shadow of the trees,
while the lights passing through the green leaves give to
the scene a certain delicate fantastic beauty very delight-
ful; so that the stranger coming there for the first time
feels almost, that he is looking on some scene in the
theatre, where the figures on the stage come forward and
fade again into obscurity in the intervals of some myster-
ious ballet. At every moment you expect the music will
cease, as, with a scream of laughter, Harlequin bounds on
to the stage followed by Pantaleone, eager and tottering,
and after him a wild rush of figures of all classes and
orders, amidst which, to the quick movement of violins,
Columbine suddenly appears pursued by Pierrot. And
everywhere the aguadores call their Agua fresca, and the
old women sell azucarillos, while far away the band plays
the music of Gounod, or the latest valse, or comic opera.
As you pass among this great crowd of fashionable
people, who, after the heat of the day have come here
for air and refreshment, you are surprised by their
contempt for one another, the impudence and licence
of the gaze of the men, the hardness and sensuality of
the faces of the women. The young Madrileños stand
MADRID TO-DAY
95
together in groups, or lounge on the seats or chairs,
remarking very audibly on the women and young girls
who pass and repass before them; it is as though they
appraised their beauty, and would cheapen it with
fantastic compliments. Beneath all the extraordinary
etiquette that hedges in a woman of the fashionable
world in Madrid, there is, as it seems to me, a sentiment
of brutality, so that at times it might seem that, though
in old days, for a woman to show so much as the tip of
her shoes in public, was considered immodest, to-day the
licence of public comment on any woman who may pass
by is so great, that a pretty woman may be stripped in
public with impunity, under the subtlest contrivance of
compliment and innuendo. It is not any kindly looks
you will encounter in that tired exhausted crowd, but
wide eyes full of contempt and dislike of the stranger as
of each other; eyes that encountering those of a woman
will make her flush with anger, or appeased vanity as the
case may be, since she has understood that they have
dared to value her in a moment as human flesh, splendid
and valuable, in which every superfluity, every deficiency,
every secret beauty or defect, has been noted with the
eyes of a vandal, who would destroy her, or of a satyr,
who has already enjoyed her in his heart.
But there is no city, and, if there be, it is certainly not
to be found in Spain, that is without one unique and
splendid gift, hard to find though it may be. And so in
Madrid, though the streets are hideous and but half
alive, the cafés noisy and unbearable, day a languid
despised thing, and night a vision of pandemonium, at
sunset if you pass from the Puerta del Sol, down the
Calle del Arenal, coming at last into the Plaza del Oriente
and the Palacio Real, you will see from the great terrace
built there before the palace on immense foundations of
masonry and granite, the deep valley of the Manzanares,
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THE CITIES OF SPAIN
with its gardens and parks, that are gradually lost
in the desert that surges round the city far away to
the distant mountains of the Guadarrama. Sometimes
this strange Campagna seems like a great sullen sea,
strong and beautiful, that will one day overwhelm the
city. Under another sky it is like some terrible passage
of Dante, shaking the heart with its stony yellow stare,
its aspect as of an abandoned graveyard, an insatiable
morass. But it is quite another scene that you may sur-
prise when night has fallen, and the winds are at peace,
and the calm and pure sky, where the large few stars are
like roses fallen from the bowed heads, the hurrying feet
of angels, leans over all that tragic desert, like the spirit-
ual life over the barrenness of asceticism. It is as though
God had hushed that marvellous world by a gesture of
silence and of benediction in which are conceived the wild
flowers of the spring.
'I
X
IN OLD MADRID
AM safely come to the Court of Spain,' writes James
Howell to a friend in London, in December 1622,
'and although we stayed three weeks behind my lord
Ambassador, yet we came hither time enough to attend
him to Court at his first Audience.'
It was at a time when Madrid was especially interest-
ing to Englishmen, that James Howell came to the
English Embassy there, for the 'Spanish Match,' which
was to have united Prince Charles of England with the
Infanta of Spain, was just proposed. A keen observer,
few things escaped Howell's observation, and his garrulity
was such that we may believe, but little of what he saw
escaped the telling. Nor was it alone the society of the
capital that he observed. Speaking of Spain generally
we may find how little things have changed since his day.
Thus he writes of the Spaniard :
'Touching the People, the Spaniard looks as high
though not so big as a German; his excess is in too much
gravity, which some, who know him not well, hold to be
pride; he cares not how little he labours, for poor
Gascons and Morisco slaves do most of his work in field
and vineyard: he can endure much in the war, yet he
loves not to fight in the dark, but in open day, or upon a
stage, that all the world might be witnesses of his valour;
so that you shall seldom hear of Spaniards employed in
Night service, nor shall one hear of a duel here in an
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THE CITIES OF SPAIN
with its gardens and parks, that are gradually lost
in the desert that surges round the city far away to
the distant mountains of the Guadarrama. Sometimes
this strange Campagna seems like a great sullen sea,
strong and beautiful, that will one day overwhelm the
city. Under another sky it is like some terrible passage
of Dante, shaking the heart with its stony yellow stare,
its aspect as of an abandoned graveyard, an insatiable
morass. But it is quite another scene that you may sur-
prise when night has fallen, and the winds are at peace,
and the calm and pure sky, where the large few stars are
like roses fallen from the bowed heads, the hurrying feet
of angels, leans over all that tragic desert, like the spirit-
ual life over the barrenness of asceticism. It is as though
God had hushed that marvellous world by a gesture of
silence and of benediction in which are conceived the wild
flowers of the spring.
'I
X
IN OLD MADRID
AM safely come to the Court of Spain,' writes James
Howell to a friend in London, in December 1622,
'and although we stayed three weeks behind my lord
Ambassador, yet we came hither time enough to attend
him to Court at his first Audience.'
It was at a time when Madrid was especially interest-
ing to Englishmen, that James Howell came to the
English Embassy there, for the 'Spanish Match,' which
was to have united Prince Charles of England with the
Infanta of Spain, was just proposed. A keen observer,
few things escaped Howell's observation, and his garrulity
was such that we may believe, but little of what he saw
escaped the telling. Nor was it alone the society of the
capital that he observed. Speaking of Spain generally
we may find how little things have changed since his day.
Thus he writes of the Spaniard :
'Touching the People, the Spaniard looks as high
though not so big as a German; his excess is in too much
gravity, which some, who know him not well, hold to be
pride; he cares not how little he labours, for poor
Gascons and Morisco slaves do most of his work in field
and vineyard: he can endure much in the war, yet he
loves not to fight in the dark, but in open day, or upon a
stage, that all the world might be witnesses of his valour;
so that you shall seldom hear of Spaniards employed in
Night service, nor shall one hear of a duel here in an
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THE CITIES OF SPAIN
age. He hath one good quality, that he is wonderfully
obedient to Government; for the proudest Don of Spain
when he is prancing upon his ginnet in the street, if an
Alguazil (a sergeant) show him his Vare, that is a little
white staff he carrieth as a badge of his office, my Don
will down presently off his horse and yield himself his
prisoner. He hath another commendable quality, that
when he giveth alms, he pulls off his hat and puts it in
the beggar's hands with a great deal of humility. His
gravity is much lessened, since the late Proclamation came
out against ruffs, and the King himself showed the first
example; they were come to that height of excess herein
that twenty shillings were used to be paid for starching
of a ruff; and some, though perhaps he had never a shirt
to his back, yet he would have a toting huge swelling ruff
about his neck. He is sparing in his ordinary diet, but
when he makes a feast, he is free and bountiful. As to
temporal Authority, especially Martial, so is he very
obedient to the Church, and believes all with an implicit
faith. He is a great servant of Ladies, nor can he be
blamed, for, as I said before, he comes of a goatish race;
yet he never brags of, nor blazes abroad his doings that
way, but is exceedingly careful of the repute of any
woman-a civility that we want much in England. He
will speak high words of Don Philippo, his king, but will
not endure a stranger should do so: I have heard a
Biscayner make Rodomontado that he was as good a
Gentleman as Don Philippo himself, for Don Philippo
was half a Spaniard, half a German, half an Italian, half
a Frenchman, half I know not what, but he was a pure
Biscayner without mixture. ..
'The Spaniard is generally given to gaming, and that
in excess; he will say his prayers before, and if he win,
he will thank God for his good fortune after. Their
common game at cards (for they very seldom play at
1
1
IN OLD MADRID
99
dice) is Primera, at which the king never shows his game,
but throws his cards with their faces down on the table
He is merchant of all the cards and dice thro' all the
kingdom; he hath them made for a penny a pair and he
retails them for twelve pence; so that 'tis thought he
hath £30,000 a year by this trick at cards.
'The Spaniard is very devout in his way, for I have
seen him kneel in the very dirt when the Ave Mary bell
rings; and some, if they spy two straws or sticks lie
cross-wise in the street, they will take them up and kiss
them and lay them down again. He walks as if he
marched, and seldom looks on the ground, as if he con-
temn'd it. I was told of a Spaniard who having got a
fall by a stumble, and broke his nose, rose up, and in a
disdainful manner said, Voto a tal esto es caminar por la
tierra: This it is to walk upon earth
...
'Touching their women, Nature hath made a more
visible distinction 'twixt the two sexes here than else-
where; for the men for the most part are swarthy and
rough, but the women are of a far finer mould; they are
commonly little; and whereas there is a saying that
makes a complete woman, let her be English to the neck,
French to the waste, and Dutch below; I may add for
hands and feet let her be Spanish, for they have the least
of any. They have another saying: A Frenchwoman in
a dance, a Dutchwoman in the kitchen, an Italian in a
window, an England-woman at board and the Spanish
a-bed. When they are married they have a privilege to
wear high shoes and to paint, which is generally practised
here; and the Queen useth it herself. They are coy
enough, but not so froward as our English; for if a Lady
go along the street (and all women going here veiled and
their habit so generally alike, one can hardly distinguish
a countess from a cobbler's wife), if one should cast an
odd ill-sounding word, and ask her a favour, she will not
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take it ill, but put it off and answer you with some witty
retort.
'Money will do miracles here . . . though this be the
country of money, for it furnisheth well near all the world
besides, insomuch that one may say the coin of Spain is as
Catholic as her King. Yet though he be the greatest
king of gold and silver Mines in the world (I think), yet
the common current coin here is copper . . . But I fear
to be injurious to this great king to speak of him in so
narrow a compass: a great king indeed, tho' the French
in a slighting way compare his Monarchy to a Beggar's
Cloak made up of Patches. They are Patches indeed
but such as he hath not the like: the East-Indies is a
Patch embroidered with Pearls, Rubies and Diamonds:
Peru is a Patch embroidered with massy gold, Mexico
with silver, Naples and Milan are Patches of cloth of
tissue; and if these patches were in one piece, what would
become of his cloak embroidered with Flower-de-luces ?'
It was into this world so lightly summed up by James
Howell, that in March 1623, Prince Charles came in the
company of the Duke of Buckingham, they having travelled
from England it seems as Mr. John and Mr. Thomas Smith.
'The great business of the match,' Howell writes to his
friend Sir Thomas Savage, 'was tending to a period... and
there wanted nothing to consummate all things, when to
the wonderment of the World, the Prince and the Marquis
of Buckingham, arrived at this Court on Friday last upon
the close of the evening: They alighted at my Lord of
Bristol's House and the Marquis (Mr. Thomas Smith),
came in first with a portmanteau under his arm; then
the Prince (Mr. John Smith) was sent for, who stay'd
awhile on t'other side of the street in the dark. My Lord
of Bristol, in a kind of astonishment, brought him up to
his Bedchamber, where he presently called for Pen and
Ink, and dispatched a Post that night to England, to
IN OLD MADRID
101
acquaint His Majesty, how in less than sixteen days he
was come to the Court of Spain; that Post went lightly
laden, for he carried but three letters. The next day
came Sir Francis Cottington and Mr. Porter, and dark
rumours ran in every corner how some great man was
come from England; and some would not stick to say
among the vulgar it was the king: but towards evening
on Saturday, the Marquis went in a close coach to Court,
where he had private Audience of this King, who sent
Olivares to accompany him back to the Prince, where he
kneeled and kissed his hands and hugged his thighs, and
delivered how immeasurably glad his Catholick Majesty
was of his coming, with other high compliments, which
Mr. Porter did interpret. About ten a clock that night
the King himself came in a close coach with intent to
visit the Prince, who hearing of it, met him half-way; and
after salutations and divers embraces which passed in the
first interview, they parted late. . . On Sunday following
the King in the Afternoon came abroad to take the air
with the Queen, his two brothers and the Infanta, who
were all in one coach; but the Infanta sat in the Boot
with a blue ribbon about her arm of purpose that the
Prince might distinguish her. And now it was quickly
known among the vulgar that it was the Prince of Wales
who was come. . . .
As soon as the Infanta saw the Prince
her colour rose very high, which we hold to be an impres-
sion of Love and Affection. .
'There are many excellent Poems made here since the
Prince's arrival . . . I will venture to send you this one
stanza of Lope de Vega's:-
'Carlos Estuardo Soy
Que siendo Amor mi guia,
Al cielo d'España voy
Por ver mi Estrella Maria.
'There are comedians once a week come to the
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THE CITIES OF SPAIN
Palace, where under a great Canopy the Queen and the
Infanta sit in the middle, our Prince and Don Carlos on
the Queen's right hand, the King and the little Cardinal
on the Infanta's left hand. I have seen the Prince have
his eyes immoveably fixed upon the Infanta half an hour
together in a thoughtful speculative posture which sure
would needs be tedious, unless affection did sweeten it:
it was no handsome comparison of Olivares that he
watched her as a cat doth a mouse. Not long since the
Prince, understanding that the Infanta was used to go
some mornings to the Casa de Campo, a summer house
the King hath on t'other side the River, to gather May-
dew, he rose betimes and went thither, taking Mr.
Porter with him; they were let into the House and into
the Garden, but the Infanta was in the Orchard: and
there being a high partition wall between, and the door
doubly bolted, the Prince got on the top of the wall
and sprang down a great height, and so made towards
her; but she spying him first of all the rest, gave a shriek
and ran back the old Marquis that was then her Guar-
dian, came towards the Prince, and fell on his knees,
conjuring His Highness to retire, in regard he hazarded
his Head if he admitted any to her company; so the
door was opened and he came out under that wall over
which he had got in. I have seen him watch a long hour
together in a close coach in the open street, to see her as
she went abroad: I cannot say that the Prince did ever
talk with her privately, yet publickly often, my Lord of
Bristol being Interpreter; but the King always sat hard
by to overhear all. Our cousin Archy hath more privilege
than any, for he often goes with his Fool's-coat where the
Infanta is with her meniñas and Ladies of Honour, and
keeps a-blowing and blustering among them, and flurts
out what he lists. One day they were discussing what a
marvellous thing it was that the D. of Bavaria with less.

DONA MARÍA, DAUGHTER OF PHILIP III, BETROTHED TO CHARLES
PRINCE OF WALES
VELASQUEZ
1
IN OLD MADRID
103
than 15,000 Men after a long toilsome march, should dare
to encounter the Palsgrave's Army consisting of above
25,000, and to give them an utter discomfiture, and take
Prague presently after: Whereunto Archy answered, that
he would tell them a stranger thing than that: was it
not a strange thing 'quoth he, that in the Year 88 there
should come a Fleet of 140 Sail from Spain to invade
England and that ten of these could not go back to tell
what became of the rest? . . . '
'The Duke of Buckingham,' he writes later, 'lies sick
at Court where the Prince hath no public exercise of
Devotion, but only Bedchamber Prayers; and some think
that his lodging in the King's house is like to prove a
disadvantage to the main business: for whereas most
sorts of People here hardly hold us to be Christians, if
the Prince had a Palace of his own and been permitted
to have used a room for an open chapel to exercise the
Liturgy of the Church of England it would have brought
them to have a better opinion of us; and to this end
there were some of our best Church-plate and Vestments
brought hither but never used . . .
There was a great Show lately here of baiting of Bulls
with Men, for the entertainment of the Prince; it is the
chiefest of all Spanish Sports; commonly there are Men
killed at it, therefore there are priests appointed to be
there ready to confess them. It hath happened often-
times that a Bull hath taken up two men upon his horns
with their guts dangling about them; the horsemen run
with lances and swords, the foot with goads. As I am told
the Pope hath sent divers Bulls against this sport of
Bulling, yet it will not be left, the Nation hath taken such
an habitual delight in it.'
But still the 'business of the Match' got no further, a
Junta of Divines considering the matter. At last it re-
ported.
104
THE CITIES OF SPAIN
'The long-winded Junta delivered their opinions and
fell at last upon this result: that his Catholic Majesty for
the satisfaction of S. Peter, might oblige himself in that
behalf of England for the performance of those Capitula-
tions which related to the Roman Catholics in that
Kingdom; and in case of non-performance, then to right
himself by war; since that the matrimonial articles were
solemnly sworn to by the K. of Spain and His Highness,
the two favourites, our two Ambassadors, the Duke of
Infantado and other Counsellors of State being present:
Hereupon the eighth day of September next is appointed
to be the day of Desposorios, the day of Affiance or the
Betrothing-day . . . But there is an unlucky Accident
hath intervened, for the King gave the Prince a solemn
visit since, and told him Pope Gregory was dead, who
was so great a friend to the match ... The Prince
answered and pressed his necessity of his speedy return
with divers reasons; he said there was a general kind of
murmuring in England for his so long Absence, that the
King, his Father, was old and sickly, that the Fleet of his
Ships were already, he thought, at Sea to fetch him, the
winter drew on, and withal that the Articles of the Match
were signed in England, with this Proviso, that if he be
not come back by such a month they should be of no
validity. The King replied that since His Highness was
resolved upon so sudden a departure, he would please
to leave a Proxy behind to finish the Marriage, and he
would take it for a favour if he would depute Him to
personate him; and ten days after the Ratification shall
come from Rome the business shall be done, and after-
wards he might send for his Wife when he pleased. The
Prince rejoined that among those multitudes of royal
Favours which he had received from His Majesty this
transcended all the rest; therefore he would most will-
ingly leave a Proxy for his Majesty, and another for Don
IN OLD MADRID
105
Carlos to this effect: So they parted for that time with-
out the least umbrage of discontent, nor do I hear of any
engendered since.'
The Prince embarked for England not long after;
Philip accompanying him as far as the Escorial. The
Infanta appears to have set about learning English from
a certain Father Boniface, and to have had Mass sung
every day for the Prince's good voyage; while the
Spaniards themselves confessed that never was Princess
so bravely wooed.
But as we know the 'Spanish Match' came to nothing,
and Prince Charles's adventure into Spain was useless,
just another romance of old Spain.
XI
I. THE PRADO GALLERY
HE Prado Gallery is a foundation of Ferdinand VII.
'The real history of the gallery,' says Ford, 'is this:
When Ferdinand married his second and best wife La
Portuguesa, one Monte Allegre, who had been a Spanish
Consul in France, persuaded him to refurnish the palace
with French papers and ormolu clocks and chandeliers-
his particular fancy; thereupon the quaint original
cinquecento furniture, much of which was of the period
even of Charles V. and Philip II., was carted out, and
the pictures taken down and stowed away in garrets and
corridors, exposed to wind, weather, and the usual
plunderings of Spanish Custodes. They were fast
perishing and disappearing when the Marques de Sta.
Cruz, Mayordomo, Mayor or Lord Steward, and the
Duque de Gor, one of the few Grandees blessed with a
particle of taste or talent (and our authority for this
anecdote) persuaded the queen to remove the pictures to
the Prado. She advanced 40l. a-month towards repair-
ing a few rooms for their reception, and by November,
1819, these saloons were got ready, and 311 pictures
exhibited to the public; the extraordinary quality of
which, especially of Velasquez, instantly attracted the
admiring eyes of foreigners who appreciate the merits of
the old masters of Spain much better than the natives.¹
It is said that during the Carlist War in 1830 the Spanish Government,
being in dire need of money, offered the whole collection to the English
106
THE PRADO GALLERY
107
Ferdinand VII., seeing that renown was to be obtained,
now came forward with 240%. a-month, and the Museo
was slowly advanced, one more saloon being opened in
1821. Thus he earned the title of Augustus, as cheaply
as our George IV. has the credit of "presenting to the
public" the fine library formed by his father. This he
had bargained to sell to Russia, when one of his brothers
put in a claim for a share of the proceeds; His Majesty
thereat, having graciously condemned him and his books
to a warmer place than St. Petersburg, bundled them off
in a huff to Great Russell Street.'
To-day the Real Museo de Pintura del Prado is a
gallery of masterpieces, a more catholic Pitti Palace, an
immense Salon Carré. And, unlike the Louvre, for
instance, or our own National Gallery, while it possesses
almost the whole work of Velasquez, it is very poor in
early Italian pictures, is without an example of the
English school, and possesses but one example, a poor
and early picture enough, of the supreme work of
Rembrandt, the perfect work of Holbein.
And yet
while a host of critics and archaeologists deny any
historical value to the Prado Gallery, its worth as a
Museum, as that which, alas, a museum so often becomes,
a mere record of work, good or bad, done from time to
time; to me, at least, it is valuable for that virtue not
less than for the beauty of the pictures hung there so
thoughtfully; for while, in so many galleries in Europe it
is possible to trace the art of painting from the earliest
time even to yesterday or to-day, here, in the Prado,
you may see, not without surprise perhaps, the marvellous
Government for £30,000, the sole condition being that the transaction was
not to be discussed in Parliament. If the story is true, we should like to
know the reason why the offer was not accepted. Was it indifference, or
the feeling that it would have been a shameful bargain? Let us hope it was
this latter reason.—Spectator, 9th December 1905.
108
THE CITIES OF SPAIN
and immortal art of Titian surrounded by the work of
his disciples, some of the greatest artists of all time.
The Father of the Prado is Titian; his work perfect in
sweetness and strength and wisdom; the sweetness of
youth with all its perfection; the strength of manhood,
its endless desire, its achievement; the wisdom of old
age, its renunciation, its passionate sincerity and peace;
was the nucleus, as it were, of this almost matchless collec-
tion, and it is the work of those painters who own him as
their master, Greco, Velasquez, Rubens, Vandyke, Poussin,
and Watteau, that, for the most part, we may find to-day,
hanging beside his splendid and fading canvases, wit-
nesses to the immortal beauty and vitality of his genius
the necessity for his art.
Critics of Titian have sometimes spoken as if the only
characteristic of his genius were a wonderful sensual, or
at least sensuous, strength expressing itself in colour, and
apparent, for instance, in such a picture as La Bella
in the Pitti Gallery. Others have found in him an
extraordinary vitality running to coarseness, from which
ideas are excluded, in which we see merely the delight of
one so strong, so full of life, in flesh, that under his hand
has certainly put on immortality, but that is how much
less than the clear truthful work of Velasquez, the un-
happy profound work of Rembrandt. But for some of
us, it may be, his work seems still the most beautiful and
the most vital that has ever been given to us by any
artist. He seems to have summed up the Renaissance
for us just as it was passing away, and in a more splendid
and living fashion than Raphael in his perfect and
learned way, a little pedantic, a little fearful perhaps
of the immense vitality of life; or than Michelangelo, that
great sorrowful genius, whose work seems ever to be
about to rise from the dead, were able or willing to do.
He has created with joy. The beauty of his work is
THE PRADO GALLERY
109
always an expression of life, he has never permitted
thought to kill life till it is little more than a suggestion,
as Michelangelo has done so often. Without the
humility of Raphael, without the overwhelming and
fastidious taste of that divine epicurean, whose con-
science was, as it were, a faculty of the intellect, his genius
was only to be held by his own will; he is never reticent,
never almost meaningless, almost just a decorative
painter as Raphael too often is, in his easel pictures at
any rate; he is always expressive, and while not always
as splendid as in his greatest pictures, the Bacchus and
Ariadne, for instance, or the Young Englishman, he is
always, as it were, at the height of the situation; nothing
has come from his hand that does not live-legions of
figures, men and women and children, splendidly naked,
beautifully clothed, horses and dogs and bulls and trees,
and mountains and the sea. He is like a natural force
in his profound energy, he is like a god without a rival in
his creative power. He makes ugly things and brutal
things and mediocre things, and they are all beautiful.
So passionate was his conception of life, so extraordinary
his apprehension of everything that is vital, that people
who have never lived, or who have been dead many
years, or who have missed life in some blind mediocrity
receive life from him, really live because of him, and yet
his virtue is not less. His work is immense, fabulous in
its quantity; yet he was an artist in life too, and under-
stood the value, the extraordinary richness of such a
nature as Aretino's, was wise enough to find pleasure
therein, and to seize life with both hands, and to enjoy it
to the utmost. Yet it seemed that he might live for ever,
for he did not die till he was ninety-nine years old, and
then it was by chance that death found him, coming to
him promiscuously as it were, since he could not tire him
out, in the midst of a plague that devastated the city.
IIO
THE CITIES OF SPAIN
Beside him those disciples of his, Rembrandt, Rubens,
Velasquez, and the rest, are just pupils, each with some-
thing of the virtue of the master, some side, as it were,
of his character developed at the expense of the rest.
Thus Rembrandt almost unrepresented in the Prado-
just there perhaps is its chief defect-is too sombre, too
gloomy to stand for a moment beside the splendid
laughter, the profound joy of Titian's work. That
northern painter, unfortunate in so much, so intense a
student of nature, of life in its more sombre moments,
joyful only with an almost brutal laughter, insolent as a
barbarian, full of the insane light of the North, is ashamed
before the pagan loveliness, the human beauty and
perfect joy of Titian, whose profound smile, lighting
the world, might have made him afraid as no sorrow or
gloom or brutality that came to him, that he found
everywhere in the world, was able to do. And if you
find Rubens, that man of the world who painted for love
or for fame, armed with an immense sensuality that he
had learned from his master, how insane his work is,
how merely technically beautiful, beautiful that is as art
rather than as life, if you compare it for one moment
with the sincere human delight in the body, everywhere
to be found in Titian's painting, that passion has
redeemed from lust as from mere delight in the flesh.
Beside the marvellous women of Titian, those beautiful,
nude courtesans and fine ladies, whose golden flesh has
excited the love and pity of the world, Rubens' Three
Graces, for instance, seem like poseuses, painted by a
fanfaron; they are as decorative as three exquisite
vases, and can never die; they are without the immense
pathos of life that you find here in Madrid, even in so
thoughtlessly brutal a picture as the Danaë, and in their
perfection of paint, their wonderful bravura, they proclaim
their barbarian origin, being rather perfect animals than
THE PRADO GALLERY
III
human beings, capable of thought or emotion, of love or
sorrow.
On coming to the exquisite work of Velasquez here in
the Prado it is quite another side of Titian's genius you
see, developed further, and with a more fastidious dis-
tinction than he had time for perhaps; and while in his
cool and grave pictures you will find less originality
of thought than you may discover almost anywhere in
Rembrandt's work, and certainly a less profound vitality
than that which informs the work of the great Dutchman
and of Rubens, you will find a perfection there which is
wanting in both those great men, and which you will
come upon but seldom in the work of Titian himself.
How fastidious, how distinguished Velasquez always is!
Just there, it might seem, is the virtue that has entranced
the modern world, so that you find painters to-day so in
love with their art, so satisfied with just that, that
recognising this reverence in Velasquez for the material
as it were of his work, his contentment with it as
sufficient for him to express just what his eyes have seen,
they have been willing to call him 'the master,' the
greatest painter of all time-ignoring not unwillingly a
certain lack of originality, of just genius, as it were, that
no perfection of technique, no dignity of thought, no
distinction of manner, may altogether hide. His work is
so truthful that we are content to forget everything else
while we are with him; and, indeed, it is part of his secret
that the charm of his work, in the true sense of the word,
its magical truthfulness, for instance, obliterates our
dreams, and for the first time perhaps we see ourselves,
not as we really are, scarcely ever that, but as we appear
in a perfectly felt, a perfectly expressed impression, in a
moment of languor, or pride, or gracious forgiveness. He
is a painter who is always lurking in the shadow, whose
light is so refined that he scarcely dares to bring the
112
THE CITIES OF SPAIN
sunshine into it, lest something of its distinction, its
temperance should be lost in the splendour of the world,
in the strength of the sun or beside the energy of the sea.
You will find almost no studies of the nude here, scarcely
any women at all, but queens and princesses and little
children and men, who are so full of pride, that they
seem to thrust the ground away with their feet, or to
beat it with the hoofs of their horses in contempt, a
contempt that is not passionate at all, but a sort of
coldness as though they were unaware of anything but
their own gravity or importance.
Quite by chance, on leaving the room where the beauti-
ful picture of Philip IV. on Horseback hangs, you come in
the long gallery on Titian's Charles v. Entering the Battle
of Mühlberg. Beside it are two theatrical compositions
by Rubens, masterly and full of the immense sensuous
vigour that is sometimes a little wearying in that
Fleming. It is as though the monotony of his low and
mediocre land, which submitted so easily to every
tyranny that only he has made beautiful, had forced
him into an over emphasis of life. Well, to-day in the
Prado you look at Titian's Charles v. on Horseback,
really the original of all equestrian portraits, beside the
work of this sumptuous barbarian. The quiet serene
everlasting strength that is present always, even in
Titian's slightest work, is, in this magnificent canvas, con-
summate in its perfection. And it vanquishes, if we may
use a word so disastrous, even the great equestrian
portraits of Velasquez by means of just beauty. It is
life, while the work of Velasquez only continually seems
to be life; it is more than life, it is truth, it is beauty.
How fortunate Titian was, you may think, perhaps,
fortunate beyond Rembrandt or Rubens or Velasquez,
in having people so much greater to paint, a city so much.
more beautiful to live in, a world so much more living,

S
MARY TUDOR OF ENGLAND
BY ANTONIO MORO
THE PRADÓ GALLERY
113
so much more human, as it were, than those painters who
followed him enjoyed. Well, 'the ages are all equal,
says William Blake, 'but genius is always above its age';
and if this be so, certainly in Titian's genius the age of
the Renaissance expressed itself so completely that any-
thing which came after had the sense of a repetition
almost, a variation, as it were, on the work of the great
Venetian. And yet how original and how wise was
Rembrandt, and willing, too, to express so much that
is but indicated in Titian's work, anxious, above all,
to express himself, since he seems to lurk, yes, the very
rugged, beautiful, strong face itself, in so many of his
pictures. And if with Rubens we seem to come upon
something less sincere or less racy, as it were, than with
Rembrandt, how perfectly musical is every line, every
contour, how full of well-being and delight, a little
boisterous it may be, but full of strength and the joy that
enjoys itself, is his work here in the Prado, naturally
almost without effort, as a bird sings. While, after all,
to look at Velasquez is to understand the truth, that so
various thing, light dancing on the water, that is gone
before you can say it is there. He is so truthful that for
the moment everything else seems beside the point.
Something like this seems to me to be my impression
of the Prado Gallery; to be what that collection of
masterpieces means to me. And if pictures are, as it
were, 'receptacles of so many powers or forces,' if they
'possess, like the products of nature, so many virtues or
qualities,' to discover not their value compared with one
another, but their ultimate value for oneself, is the first
step of all true criticism whatever, useful and necessary
on our way to see them, as in themselves they really are.¹
1 Of the work of Holbein, of Dürer, of the early Flemish painters, and of
Moro and Vandyke I say nothing. Their work is, it seems to me, not to be
dealt with in the Prado where they are not well represented.
H
114
THE CITIES OF SPAIN
II. THE ITALIAN SCHOOLS IN THE PRADO
Italian painting is represented in the Prado both
by the work of Titian, so splendid in its quality and
abundance, and by the work of Raphael, which here
time seems to have robbed of nearly all its fame. And
splendid as are these two painters of the high Renais-
sance, their work scarcely makes up to us for the entire
absence of any painter of the fourteenth century in Italy,
while the fifteenth century is only represented by ex-
amples from the work of two men, Fra Angelico and
Mantegna. Here and there in these almost numberless
rooms, you come upon work so flower-like as Giorgione's,
so unimpassioned as Correggio's, so innumerable as
Veronese's, so ineffectual as Andrea del Sarto's, so charm-
ing as Tiepolo's; but, for the most part, Italy is here just
Venice at its best in Titian, or Rome dowered with all
the beautiful learned work of Raphael, the imitative work
of his pupils.
That early Tuscan painter who dreamed continually
of Mary Madonna, to whose keeping God had confided
the desire of the world; who seems to have built up in
his pictures the kingdom of heaven on earth, so that he
finds the same flowers by the wayside of those streets of
gold as in the valleys of Tuscany, the same sweet light
upon the hills there as he had seen in a vision at evening,
or heard of from an angel who surely stayed his flight
during some still half-hour at noonday, so that those
naïve eyes might never forget the least fold of his gar-
ments, the most secret thread of golden hair; may be
found here so far away in Spain, that has understood
scarcely at all the perfect humanism that is everywhere
in his work, in a panel of the Annunciation, that reminds
one in some far-off fashion of the fresco of the same
ITALIAN SCHOOLS IN THE PRADO
115
both
and
here
And
nais-
ntire
taly,
ex-
and
less
e's,
as
m-
st
all
-k
subject in S. Marco, different in colour though it may be,
and in the addition here in the Prado picture of an ex-
pulsion from Paradise, while below, in five octagonal
compartments, you find certain scenes from the life of
Madonna.
In Mantegna's picture¹ of the Death of the Virgin, a
small panel from the collection of Charles I. of England,
you have a work so much more initiated, so much less
a chance falling of sunlight upon the wall, in which
Angelico, for instance, seems to have seen a vision, than
that beautiful and holy picture of the Annunciation.
So much more initiated I said, and it is really just that,
an initiation, as it were, into the world, so noble, so
splendid, so full of great things, that you discern in the
really profound work of the great Paduan. His work is
full of intellectual strength, joyful too, as happy indeed
in its way as Fra Angelico's, only where Angelico has
divined something that he cannot understand, that he
accepts absolutely as a child might do, Mantegna has
always understood, has mastered everything that he
expresses, first of all with his mind; it is a nobility in
him, a duty almost from which he will not excuse him-
self. It is strange, remembering the delight of his work,
his love for sumptuous things, saved always from a too
great fondness for them by his perfect sanity, his intel-
lectual rectitude, that in this picture some strange
asceticism, some unfortunate, unnecessary self-denial, as
it were, is to be discerned; unnecessary and therefore
unfortunate, since in denial in itself, for its own sake,
there is nothing admirable or beautiful; it is merely a
cruelty to oneself that having suffered, to-morrow we
shall be ready to inflict on another.
In these two pictures we seem to discover the awaken-
ing of the spirit of man from its long sleep, that was, after
1 Morelli has thrown doubt on this picture, needlessly perhaps.
116
THE CITIES OF SPAIN
all, but a preparation for the dawn that is already risen
in Fra Angelico, and, still a little bewildered by dreams,
has seen the beauty of the world; that in Mantegna is
even now aware of the whole long day of love and
thought to come, that in him at any rate is already
awaiting it, with the serenity of a child, the courage of a
young man.
To turn to the work of Andrea del Sarto from these
sincere and simple pictures, is to understand how ineffec-
tual a painter he really is. The 'faultless' painter he
has been called; in truth, he seems to be incapable of
fault, to be really a little effeminate, a little vague, too
bewildered by his own sfumato as it were, lost in enervat-
ing, sentimental dreams. It is no intellectual passion you
find in that soft, troubled work, where from every canvas
Lucrezia del Fede looks out at you, posing as Madonna
or Magdalen, or just herself, and even there, beautiful,
unsatisfactory, discontented, unhappy, because she is too
stupid to be happy at all. If she were Andrea's tragedy,
one might think that even without her his life could
scarcely have been different. In the best of his pictures
here, she is Madonna,¹ seated on a flight of steps per-
haps, holding the Child, who stretches out his arms to an
angel who kneels before him, holding an open book,
while St. Joseph gazes at Madonna, and in the back-
ground a woman hurries away leading a child by the
hand. It is a characteristic picture, insignificant as it
were, facile without depth or force. Andrea can do better
than this and worse, and while in this picture you may
discern something of that Michelangelesque manner that
was so unfortunate in one who was a colourist, the only
1 Of the pictures here in the Prado, Mr. Berenson (The Florentine Painters,
1898, p. 98) only accepts, as Andrea's, the Sacrifice of Isaac-a copy of
the Dresden picture. Mr. Ricketts, in his admirable work (The Prado,
Constable, 1904, p. 113), accepts only the two pictures I name.
ITALIAN SCHOOLS IN THE PRADO
117
colourist of the Florentine school, it is not so mannered,
so futile an imitation as the Madonna dell' Arpie, or
the Assumption, in Florence. Yet it is how much less
than the beautiful Dispute as to the Trinity, or the
wonderful series of portraits of himself or his wife. Just
there he seems to touch life as never or almost never in
his compositions. How simple and straightforward, for
instance, is the portrait of a sculptor in the National
Gallery, how vivid, how truthful his portraits of himself;
how expressive those of his wife. That damaged but
still lovely picture, here in the Prado, of Lucrezia del
Fede really redeems him for once from a charge of
insincerity, grandiosity, or sentimentalism. How beauti-
ful she is, how living, how full of possibilities, still young
and unacquainted with the sacrifices that her mediocrity
will presently demand of her. It is thus as a portrait
painter, who, after all, has left in his pictures 'an auto-
biography as complete as any in existence,' that Andrea
del Sarto comes to his own; almost a great painter, he is
seldom a great artist, anxious rather to make his confes-
sion to a world that was so ready to excuse him, and to
worship him, just because he failed to show his superiority
to it. As a Florentine painter, he seems ever among
strangers; and it is really as a Venetian, exiled in
Florence, one who had been forced by some irony of
circumstance to forgo his birthright in the invigorating
and worldly city that might have revealed to him just
the significance of life which we miss in his pictures, that
he appeals to us; a failure difficult to explain, a weak but
beautiful nature spoiled by mediocrity.
It is something less admirable that you find in the
majority of pictures that bear in this Gallery the most
'beloved name in art,' the beautiful name of Raphael,
Something, I know not what, seems to have befallen
them, they are so much less lovely than their reputation.
118
THE CITIES OF SPAIN
It is as though on a day in the sunshine of the long
summer, that makes of the noisiest of cities the most
silent place in the world, gradually little by little they
had died, had suffered that extraordinary change that at
first seems to make so little difference, even to add some
beauty by a sort of simplification, as it were, an oblitera-
tion of everything but the necessary and elemental
things of character, of individual life, and then suddenly
to destroy for ever the loveliness that had only blossomed
to die, after many years of impassioned effort. Those
famous pictures, Lo Spasimo,¹ The Virgin of the Fish,
The Visitation, La Perla (from the gallery of Charles I.
of England), the Holy Family del Lagarto, seem to-
day almost inexplicable as the work of Raphael; they
are dead pictures, from which the beauty has fled away,
leaving only the brutal signature of death, the hideous
suggestion of the skeleton. And while in such a picture
as The Virgin of the Fish, for instance, we may find the
hand, the clever imitative hand of Giulio Romano, it is yet
difficult to explain our indifference to most of Raphael's
easel pictures which are not portraits. La Perla, for
instance, 'the pearl,' as Philip IV. said of his Gallery at
the Escorial, when he bought it for £2000 at the brutal
sale of the Crown property by Cromwell-how may we
excuse ourselves for finding it so hard, so impossible, as
the work of the man who painted La Donna Velata at
Florence, or the magnificent portrait of a Cardinal in this
gallery. It has not even the marvellous decorative
qualities, the splendour and learning, as it were, of the
frescoes in the stanze of the Vatican. It cannot move us
1 The only thing of which we may be certain is that neither in composi-
tion nor in execution is Raphael's hand visible in this picture. It is, as it
seems to me, a picture full of 'lamentable obscurities,' in which many sug-
gestions from Raphael's work have been remembered and reproduced; only
the figure of Christ may be from Raphael's design.
ITALIAN SCHOOLS IN THE PRADO
119
with its hard perfection, it seems to be scarcely painting
at all, to possess some dreadful mechanical origin, in its
crudity, its callousness. And again, in the Christ bearing
the Cross, Lo Spasimo, we are moved only by surprise
that anything painted as it might seem with brick-dust,
informed with so grimacing an insincerity, should ever
bear the name of Raphael. No, these pictures can never
have been painted by Raphael at all, it is impossible to
pronounce his name before them; they are the work of
those disciples who were his chief enemies; they are the
brutal interpretation that the neophyte always thrusts
upon the work of the master. It was with the same mad
passion that S. Paul destroyed the beautiful thoughts of
Jesus, it is from a like enthusiastic imitation, careful, done
with much labour, that virtue which in Art, at any rate,
is by itself so utterly useless, so vicious, that every artist
has suffered, and will continue to suffer, since imitation
is an attribute of man. That Raphael should have
signed these works is impossible; in every line you may
discern a forgery, in every colour a mockery, a mimicry
aping him in every gesture. Something it may be,
a perfection of space as it were, a certain quietness
characteristic of Raphael, that you will find even in his
most dramatic work, still suggest themselves to you as
you look at these old hard pictures; but if you compare
them for a moment with the Holy Family here in the
Prado, in which the child plays with a lamb, or with the
beautiful and almost miraculous portrait of a Cardinal, or
even with the Madonna of the Fish, in which Raphael's
part is seemingly so small, and yet visible enough in
a certain delicacy and perfection, shining there be-
hind the hard academic work of Giulio Romano, you
1 Mr. Ricketts, op. cit., p. 109, denies Giulio Romano's part in this
picture. He suggests Penni as the painter. Mr. Berenson, The Central
Italian Painters, p. 173, gives it to Giulio Romano,
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•
will understand in a moment either that something has
befallen them, that they have been repainted or spoiled
by cleaning, really skinned as it were, in which brutal
process, so delightful to the old professors who ruled the
galleries not so long ago, their beauty has vanished
away; or that they were never the work of Raphael at all,
merely passing as his with Princes, since they came from
his Bottega; and one was so anxious to boast, so eager to
believe, that among the lesser pictures that make the
background of the Royal Gallery, a Raphael had really
blossomed at last, it may be after much effort, and the
sacrifice of not a few priceless things.
It is in the portrait of a Cardinal that you really come
face to face with Raphael's work at its highest. With
what clarity of mind and art he has painted that un-
known figure, how perfectly he has expressed everything,
simply concealing the subtlety of his art. It is almost a
miracle of simplicity, living there in the beautiful painted
panel, by some means hidden from all, about which we
may know nothing, perfect as a flower, or any other
thought of God. It is not often you may find Raphael
so easily master of the art of his time; in his quiet and
humble way, he seems at last to have expressed every-
thing in a quiet, assured voice after the rather terrible
gestures, the exquisite insinuations of his fellow-painters,
who have really failed to convince us, not so much of life
as of its perfection, its sufficiency, its beauty, that after
all will content us only because it is living.
It is a lesser painter, or at least a younger, less com
plete and learned, one who has not yet known how to
transform everything in life into art, but still speaks with
an accent, here assuredly Leonardo's, that you find in the
Madonna of the Lamb. He has been too much im-
pressed by the St. Anne of the Louvre; he cannot forget
the gesture of those beautiful hands, and the smile, that

e
O
PORTRAIT OF A CARDINAL
RAPHAEL
ITALIAN SCHOOLS IN THE PRADO 121
still lights up that faded old picture, flickers shyly,
pensively, with a certain suggestion of assent in this
small panel that is painted, well, almost like a minia-
ture, and without forgetfulness of the wide valleys
and soft hills of Umbria, the devotion to all that, so
visible in his master, Il Perugino. And yet while
Leonardo has understood that every living thing is our
brother, that the very flowers have loved us, and we
must love them too, so that we find him adding certain
blades of beautiful grass, irresistibly as it were, to
Verrocchio's dry, cold picture of the Baptism of Christ;
Raphael, even with Leonardo's picture before him, fails to
understand that others beside men and women, less
articulate even than children, have life, and move beauti-
fully with as subtle a rhythm as ourselves. How
wooden the lamb which the Child bestrides, with so
dainty an eagerness, really is! Painted in 1507, just
after the Ansidei Madonna of the National Gallery, and
just before his departure for Rome, something of that
larger life seems to overshadow this picture, in a kind of
prevision, faint enough it may be, but assuredly to
suggest itself nevertheless in a certain charm of matur-
ity, as though he had here taken the first step in a new
life really before it was necessary, to please himself,
as it were, to make sure of himself, of his power to
assimilate, not to be overwhelmed by, the great world,
or those strong and immortal artists he was about to
encounter with so much gladness and expectancy and
yet so humbly withal.
It is to quite another school of painting you come in
the work of Correggio, that joyful painter who always
seems about to burst into song, as though paint, less
expressive than words maybe, was not quite adequate
to the lyrical impulse that possessed him. Born in 1494
he belongs to the North Italian school of Bologna,
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THE CITIES OF SPAIN
Ferrara, and Parma, is indeed, as Mr. Berenson¹ has
pointed out, the great painter of that district, holding
'the same place there as Raphael holds among the
painters of Central Italy.' His chief work here in
Madrid, a Noli me tangere,' is, as it might seem, a
rather strange rendering of a subject so 'spectral,' so
suggestive of tragedy. And yet it is a lovely picture
certainly, into which all the still beauty of the woods
and fields at dawn enters not without a solemn sort of
gladness. A lesser picture, the Virgin, the Infant Jesus,
and St. John, is, if it must be given to Correggio, a
feeble work, dark and repainted perhaps, and without
the delight common to all his work; while the other
pictures here that pass under his name, even the catalogue
of the Gallery repudiates.
In passing now to the Venetian pictures, we come upon
the great Italian treasure of the gallery, without which
the Prado would rank certainly much lower than it does
among the galleries of Europe. If we miss the work of
the earlier Venetians, Carpaccio, Jacopo Bellini, and
his two sons, Gentile and Giovanni, we have yet in a
genuine work of Giorgione, that dayspring of the Renais-
sance in Venice, one of the rarest things in the world,
which, while it may not compensate us for our disap-
pointment at finding the so-called Giovanni Bellini here
a copy, is itself so precious a thing, that looking on it we
forget that grotesque forgery altogether in the surprise
and joy of finding Giorgione at last almost justified in his
reputation. That almost fabulous painter, whose work
continually eludes us in the galleries of Europe, and is
quite faded, as a vision might fade, from the Palazzo
Tedeschi in Venice, has gradually been robbed by critic
1 The Study and Criticism of Italian Art, by Bernhard Berenson, London,
1901, p. 40.
2 No. 135 in the Long Gallery.

MADONNA AND CHILD, WITH S. ANTHONY OF PADUA AND S. ROCH
GIORGIONE
ITALIAN SCHOOLS IN THE PRADO
123
after critic of almost all that used to pass under his name,
so that now only some fifteen pictures, scattered up and
down the world remain to us, in his birthplace, the little
town of Castelfranco, not far from Padua; in Berlin; in
Dresden, where Morelli discovered his Venus under I
know not what over painting; in Vienna; in Buda-Pesth;
in Florence, where three pictures still pass as his; in
Venice, where there are four, one of them in private hands;
in Vicenza; in Rome; in the Villa Borghese; in Paris;
and at Hampton Court, where A Shepherd with a Pipe,¹
all that is left perhaps of a larger picture, shines like a
precious stone among much that is worthless, much that
is only less rare than itself. But indeed one might think
that even with Morelli, Crowe and Cavalcaselle, and Mr.
Berenson against us, not to name others who have done
as much for the history of painting in Italy, we may still
believe, not altogether without reason, that Giorgione had
some part in The Concert of the Pitti Palace, which,
after all, passed as his altogether for two hundred and
fifty years; was bought indeed as his in 1654 by Cardinal
Leopoldo de' Medici from Paolo del Sera, a collector of
Venice. That figure of a youth, so ambiguous in its
beauty, could any other hand than Giorgione's have
painted it; does it ever appear in Titian's innumerable
masterpieces at all? Dying as he did at the age of
thirty-three, Giorgione must have left many pictures
unfinished, which Titian, his friend and disciple almost,
may well have finished, and even signed in an age when
works, almost wholly untouched by a master, were
certainly sold as his. However this may be, whether
indeed all the Giorgionesque Titians that now pass
1 Mr. Ricketts (op. cit., p. 123) tells us that he was able to see a suit of
armour beneath the 'spurious' drapery of the shepherd. Myself, I cannot
see it, though I have tried several times. I have not, however, examined
the picture without its glass,
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THE CITIES OF SPAIN
under his name are really his, or whether some of them,
The Concert, for instance, and the Ariosto of the
National Gallery, were his only in part, really finished by
him, but begun by Giorgione, there is yet remaining to
us enough work incontestably Giorgione's own, or rather
for the most part uncontested as his, for us to understand
in some measure the enthusiasm that has always sur-
rounded his name, the immense fame that followed him
to the grave. Here, in Madrid, there is a precious panel,
Madonna enthroned with the Child between St. Anthony
and St. Roch.¹ Dressed in a long robe that trails over
the marble step, where the throne in which she sits
stands, Madonna holds the child standing on her knees,
a little languidly rapt in some divine contemplation,
as indeed are all the figures, as though an angel were
about to pass by, or God were about to declare Himself.
Behind her, as in a picture by Bellini, a curtain hangs;
only, over the curtain a white figured stole falls behind
her head, bringing a new delight into the picture, a
certain delicate superiority that is emphasised by a
branch of white Madonna lilies that seems to have fallen
there on the floor before her from the eager worshipping
hands of Gabriel, or the timid brown fingers of some
little child who has just passed by. It is a picture full
of attention to some influence unseen, unheard by the
spectator, of which he is aware only by chance. It is
as though we had surprised these people, and overheard
their prayer. And while, certainly, some mystery dis-
engages itself from that sweet improvisation, in which
for once, as Pater foretold of it, painting has attained to
the condition of music; so that you feel not only the
beauty, obvious enough both in the painting and in the
matter of a thing that is really a divine interval, but
you are puzzled too by the symbolism that is suggested
¹ This picture was first discovered to be by Giorgione by Signor Morelli,
ITALIAN SCHOOLS IN THE PRADO
125
so unobtrusively, in the scattered leaves on the marble
the fallen lilies, the closed book. And why has St. Roch
a fragment of rough, unhewn marble beneath his foot?
Some of those whom the gods love die young; but
Titian, because the gods loved him, lived to be very
old, fabulously old almost, till he had accomplished
everything that was possible for him in his day, carrying
the art of painting really as far as it could go, always
within its own strict limitations, apprehending them per-
fectly as indeed did all the school, never for a moment
going beyond them in search of effects really unlawful,
as how many a painter since has tried to do. To-day
in the Prado you may see his work at first so youthful,
so lovely with dreams in the Giorgionesque Madonna
with St. Bridget and St. Hulfus, passing into the en-
thusiasm and joy of the Garden of Venus and the
Bacchanal, the strength and wisdom of the portraits of
Charles V., the profound passion of the Entombment; and
while you miss, for instance, a portrait in the Giorgione
manner, such as the Ariosto, of the National Gallery,
broadly speaking, you will find here examples of the
work of his whole life closed very beautifully by the
magnificent portrait of himself.
Titian was born about 1476-1482, the exact date is
uncertain, in Pieve di Cadore, a little town of the Venetian
Alps. He appears to have been the pupil of Gentile
Bellini, that strangely intellectual Venetian painter, whose
work is so decorative and so cold, and yet lovely too by
reason of a certain intellectual aσkηous you discern in it,
that is not to be found in the work of his brother Giovanni,
whose emotion, a certain apprehension of just beauty, is
so much stronger than anything of the sort to be found
in Gentile's work. Nothing remains to us that shows
Titian at work in Gentile's studio; but there is little
doubt that he met there the great painter, only a little
126
THE CITIES OF SPAIN
older than himself perhaps, who was to influence him so
profoundly, whose friend he became, whose executor he
was, too soon, to be. That beautiful Madonna and Child
between St. Bridget and St. Hulfus, how loyally it
suggests the work of Giorgione, work that was the object
of an immense enthusiasm, it might seem, an enthusiasm
it was so natural, so incumbent upon one, so easy too,
to feel, for a thing as lovely as that Giovanelli picture,
for instance, or the Fête Champêtre of the Louvre,
just then come into the world, and full of a strange
new beauty, long sought after, and only dimly appre-
hended till then, but for once magically expressed, really,
as it might seem, by a miracle, in a serener sort of genre-
painting, full of new superiorities; and then what poetry,
what humanism, as well as a certain unity of the arts of
painting, music, sculpture, one might, if one would, find
therein. If Titian is really the sole painter of The
Concert, the Ariosto, the Lady of the Crespi Collection
in Milan, how loyal he has been to that new spirit, how
perfectly he has understood all that Giorgione was able
to express. Here, in the Prado, so fortunately preserved
among the many pictures of later date, that precious
panel of Madonna and Child between St. Bridget and
St. Hulfus is of the same company, almost perfect in
preservation, while the others have suffered so grievously.
And even after Titian has passed under a very different
influence, is indeed beginning to emancipate himself from
what had been the dream of another after all, you find
a certain remembrance of Giorgione in the Sacred and
Profane Love of the Borghese Gallery. That period in
which he produced the Adoration of the Shepherds, and
the Noli me Tangere, both in the National Gallery, to
name no others, is not represented in the Prado; but the
years that immediately follow give us the Bacchanal
and the Worship of Venus, two works in a manner which

A BACCHANAL
TITIAN
ITALIAN SCHOOLS IN THE PRADO 127
was only completely expressed by the Bacchus and
Ariadne of the National Gallery. The Bacchanal,
spoiled by some too brutal process of restoration, in
which the sky, for instance, has been entirely repainted,
is even to-day one of the great treasures of the Prado,
full of the immense joy and strength of youth, of youth
that is about to pass into maturity, that is sure of itself at
last just for a moment before it is gone for ever.
'Chi
boist et ne reboit, ne çais que boir soit,' he has written on
the leaf of music that is spread out before the beautiful
woman who holds a bowl aloft to be filled with wine.
What is this company of men and women that has
passed singing over the hills, and is come to the sea-
shore? In the background a naked figure, shaggy and
splendid, has fallen upon the primitive wine-press, and
the juice of the grapes, pressed by his weight, flows down
to the sea. It is from this purple stream they are drink-
ing, as they dance or throw themselves on the ground in
the shadow of the trees. Who are they that are so
joyful on a summer's day, so thirsty in the genial heat?
And, above all, who is she, that beautiful, nude woman,
whom they seem to have come upon by chance, as it
were, while she is wrapped in 'a passion of sleep'? Is it
Ariadne? One might almost think so, for far away a
ship with beautiful white sails seeks the horizon. Has
Theseus stolen away while she slept; will she awake
before long to find him gone? The picture is like a
gesture of joy, irresistible in its beauty and delight, that
is about to be interrupted by an irreparable disaster.
In the slightly earlier picture, The Garden of Venus, we
see an immense crowd of little Loves, winged really with
the wings of the sky, playing together furiously, beneath
great trees, in a garden, before the statue of Venus. It
is as though you heard an exquisite, incomprehensible
laughter in the woods at midday. Two women are just
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THE CITIES OF SPAIN
within the picture; one is about to fling herself before the
statue in some joy of mad worship; the other, more
serious, less frantic, looks away as though doubtful of
her desire. Something of Rubens' work seems to be sug-
gested in the exuberant vitality of this picture, and yet
it has a certain sunny reserve and sweetness, a simplicity
too that is so often lacking in the work of that painter.
It is really but a shadow of itself, its shape having been
changed, though it is less repainted and cleaned than the
Bacchanal.
When we next see Titian's work here, more than ten
years of his life have passed away, ten years in which he
has produced the Assunta of the Accademia of Venice,
the Altar-piece of Ancona, the Altar-piece of the Vatican,
the Assunta of Verona, the Entombment of the Louvre.
For the first time he has come into touch with the Court
of Spain. Charles V., on a visit to Mantua, in the end of
of the year 1532, may well have received the so-called
portrait of Alfonso d'Este¹-here in the Prado-as a
present. We know at least, that it was a portrait of the
Marquis of Mantua by Titian that gave him the desire
to possess a portrait of himself from Titian's hand. He
had met Titian in 1530 at Bologna, without much en-
thusiasm we may believe, since the Mantuan envoy
complained in the Senate at Venice of the Emperor's
want of liberality; but the portrait of the Marquis of
Mantua, which may well be the Alfonso d'Este of the
Prado, and which the Emperor saw two years later, when
he visited Federigo Gonzaga at Mantua, seems to have
converted him in a moment to a belief in the extra-
ordinary merit of Titian's work. However this may be,
Charles V. sat to Titian in Bologna in 1533, when two
portraits were painted; one of these perished later in
1 Gronau, Titian (London, 1904), p. 302, thinks this is a portrait of
Federigo, Marquis of Mantua.
ITALIAN SCHOOLS IN THE PRADO 129
Spain, while the other is the beautiful full-length portrait
of Charles in the Prado to-day. This magnificent
portrait of the Emperor in gala costume, his right hand
resting on a dagger, his left on the collar of a great
hound, and with some strange suggestion of weariness
in his face, was almost certainly for a time in the collec-
tion of Charles I. of England. Given to him by Philip IV.
on his adventurous journey to Spain in the company of
Buckingham, at the sale of the Royal pictures which
followed his death it was bought by Sir Balthasar
Gerbier for £150, who sold it later to Cardenas, the
Spanish ambassador. This was but the beginning of
Charles's lifelong friendship for Titian. In a patent
dated from Barcelona, on the 13th of May 1533, he
created him Count Palatine, 'Count of the Lateran
Palace of our Court, and of the Imperial Consistory.'
Other honours too came to him; he was dubbed Knight
of the Golden Spur with certain privileges, that of
legitimising illegitimate children, for instance; and the
Emperor tells him that these honours are in recognition
of 'your gifts as an Artist, and your genius for painting
persons from life, the which appear to us so great that
you deserve to be called the Apelles of this age.
Therefore, following the example of our predecessors,
Alexander the Great, and Octavianus Augustus, of the
which one would be painted by none but Apelles, the
other only by the greatest Masters, we have had Ourself
painted by you, and have so well proved your skill and
success that it seemed good to us to distinguish you
with imperial honours as a mark of our opinion of you,
and as a record of the same for posterity.' There ap-
pears about this time to have been some question of
Titian going to Spain, both the Emperor and the
Empress persuading him to undertake this journey. But
Titian excused himself; and though he met Charles
I
130
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again in 1536 at Asti, and again at Milan in 1541, and at
Busseto in 1543, nothing of what was then accomplished
has come down to us; it was not until after their meeting
at Augsburg, in 1545, that we have any record in Titian's
work of his friendship for the Emperor he has im-
mortalised. During the period from 1533 to 1548,
several pictures now in the Prado seem to have been
painted the historical picture, the Marchese del Vasto
Addressing his Troops, for instance, the portrait of
Isabella of Portugal, the Ecce Homo, and the Venus
(No. 459), once in the collection of Charles I. of England.
Not a very interesting or very splendid group we may
think when we remember that to this period belong the
marvellous 'Young Englishman,' the portrait of Cardinal
Ippolito de' Medici in Florence, and find that the
Marchese del Vasto picture is a ruin; the portrait of
Isabella of Portugal, a mere restoration; the Ecce Homo,
so disappointing, that we suspect the intervention of
another hand; and Venus with the Young Man playing
an organ, so coarse, that even its colour, its naturalistic
power, its truthfulness and strength, are not enough to
redeem it from a sort of brutality.
It was in January 1548, when Titian was about seventy
years old, with nearly thirty years of work still before
him, that at the command of the Emperor he went to
Augsburg 'per far qualche opera,' to do some work, as a
letter from Count Girolamo della Torre, introducing him
to the Cardinal of Trent at Augsburg, tells us. It was
the first time that he had journeyed out of Italy, though
he had wandered as far as Rome not long before, meeting
there, among others, Michelangelo himself, who praised
his work, and yet seems to have been dissatisfied with it,
not unnaturally as we may believe, when we remember
that Michelangelo was rather a sculptor than a painter,
one of the greatest draughtsmen that ever lived, not

CHARLES V AT BATTLE OF MÜHLBERG
TITIAN
ITALIAN SCHOOLS IN THE PRADO
131
because his drawing is always correct or perfect, but
because it is always expressive, and by it he lived.
Perhaps the first picture Titian made on his arrival at
Augsburg was the magnificent equestrian portrait of
Charles V. at the Battle of Mühlberg, which to-day hangs
in the Long Gallery of the Prado, between two great
canvases by Rubens. There is but little to describe, after
all, in a picture that is the prototype of all equestrian
portraits that have since been painted. In a rich and
beautiful landscape on the verge of certain sweet miles
of park, the Emperor rides alone to battle. With what
sadness he seems to go, like a solitary prisoner, the
prisoner of himself in his own dream of a world; how
melancholy is that pallid grey face, hardened by ambi-
tion, and the inevitable sacrifice that one must make in
order to realise even the tiniest of one's dreams! He sits
his horse easily, is, indeed, perfectly a part of it, firmly
grasping his spear; an immense dignity, the tragic
splendour of all his house, seems to isolate him almost
from the world, to have thrust upon him divine honours.
And, indeed, he is like some sorrowful, opposed God, so
alone that we are made afraid, about to make a gesture
of command, of attack in some battle, to the result of
which he is really indifferent. And yet how human in
its impotence against disease and death, which have
already looked him in the face steadily enough, and
without relenting, that noble dignity, which isolates him
even from the sympathy of man, really is. He seems to
have understood everything, to have been unable to
decide with himself, or to find any satisfaction, save in
the scornful silence that alone is worthy of us, since
our enemies, who will demand of us the utmost we
may give, are so implacable, so much stronger than
we. It is thus he has understood the vanity of glory,
the noisiness of fame, since God has drawn near to
132
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him, and driven him mad with promises that he has
dared to believe.
Mr. Ricketts¹ finds certain restorations in the picture,
but where so much remains that is still splendid in spite
of the darkness that has crept almost like twilight over
the canvas, it is but a thankless task to point out the
spoliation of fools. Titian is at his greatest in this
miraculous work, perhaps the finest picture in the Prado
Gallery. To compare it with the work of Velasquez or
Rubens, while a thankless task indeed, is but to realise
that he had forgotten more than they had been able to
learn, that even with this picture before them, they were
not able to produce a composition equal to it in decora-
tive beauty, or to endow their work with the same strong
and profound suggestion of life.
It was for Mary, Queen-Dowager of Hungary, that the
two immense figures, the Prometheus and the Sisyphus,
now in the Prado, were painted. Taken to Spain in 1556,
when the Emperor definitely returned there, originally
there were four of these pictures, but the Ixion and
Tantalus perished in the great fire at the Prado Palace,2
and for many years the Prometheus and Sisyphus have
passed as Spanish copies of Titian's work by Sanchez
Coello. To-day, however, since they are visible really
for the first time, we may assure ourselves that in the
Prometheus, at any rate, we have a really fine work from
Titian's hand, and if the Sisyphus is less satisfying, it
can hardly have been the work of any other painter,
1 Op. cit., p. 141.
3
2 Crowe and Cavalcaselle state that the four pictures perished.
3 Ricketts, op. cit., p. 142, gives them to Titian, for instance.
The Sisyphus and the lost Ixion and Tantalus were painted in the first
part of 1549; in August of that year, they were already in place in the
Summer Palace at Binche. The Prometheus was not painted till 1553. The
Queen took them with her to Madrid, where they hung in the Alcázar,
naming the room there Pieza de las Furias.
ITALIAN SCHOOLS IN THE PRADO 133
since its colour is so suggestive, already hinting at the
miracle of the St. Margaret.
The splendid and beautiful portrait of Prince Philip
belongs to the year 1550, when Titian, who had re-
turned to Venice in November 1548, again crossed the
Alps to Augsburg. It remains one of the most beautiful
portraits in the world, with a magic of colour-Mr.
Ricketts calls attention to the 'astonishing use made of
the whites,' so characteristic of Titian-a profound charm,
interesting us by some subtle beauty of vitality that
seems to disengage itself from the dark old picture.
It was that very canvas that was sent to England
when the marriage of Philip with Mary Tudor of
England was being arranged. To-day it might seem as
though nothing we know or may read of Philip, the
recluse of the Escorial, is so full of understanding as this
picture. Already he seems condemned to the solitude
that was his birthright, and that he hugged to him more
closely as he grew older, that at last he really 'embraced
as a bride,' dying daily to a world that had already
deserted him. He stands there so coldly listless, his
hands on his sword and on his helmet, like a ghost
almost, with all the dignity of the dead, their immense
indifference, their distinction. And it is really as the
son of Charles V., passionate about nothing save God, as
it were, that he appears to us with his father and Isabella
of Portugal in that strangely beautiful picture, La Gloria,
where before the Holy Trinity, among a crowd of Saints
and Martyrs, the King of Spain, the Emperor of Rome,
wrapped in a winding-sheet with his crown at his feet,
really just risen from the dead, worships the Omnipotent
and Divine God, the Mysterious Trinity that seems to
have haunted both father and son so unfortunately
almost all their lives. In all that crowd of figures, Moses,
who holds aloft, not without assistance, one of the Tables
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THE CITIES OF SPAIN
of the Law; Noah, who thrusts the Ark, typical of the
world's salvation, towards the mysterious, cold majesty of
God, there is but one who still keeps a certain humanity
about her, Mary Madonna, who hesitates not far from the
feet of Christ. Much that is strange in this immense
picture, so full of energy, the equal majesty of Father¹
and Son, their aloofness from humanity may be explained
perhaps as the will of Charles, here for once, at any rate,
imposing itself on the old painter. And if it is here
rather than in such a picture as the Prometheus, for
instance, that he touches the colossal dreams of Michel-
angelo, as a painter he still excels him as light excels
twilight, though as a draughtsman he may be said to
fall short of him who was the greatest. Yet, in painting
at least, Michelangelo has scarcely produced anything so
magnificent in its daring energy as the Moses of the
Gloria; and while in the Last Judgment, that tremendous
and restless fresco, in which Man seems to accuse God,
he has forgotten the world and the visible loveliness of the
earth, losing himself in thought, Titian has remembered
just that, unable to forget it even in heaven, since for him
those outward things were so important, and as we might
say, for Titian, rather than for any other painter in history,
the visible world exists. In 1552 Titian had painted the
S. Margaret, where a beautful, distracted woman in olive-
green garments flees from a dragon over the rocks, while
far away stretches a landscape as lovely as any he has
painted. It has the very gesture of life this beautiful
picture, impassioned and desolate.
In the Danaë, painted in 1554, which is so superb and
1 There is, so far as I am acquainted with it, nothing else in Italian art at
all like this picture in its religious idea. Charles v. kept the Gloria with
him to the end of his life, taking it to Madrid in 1556, and to Yuste too,
where he died, and was buried. It accompanied his body to the Escorial,
where it remained till the beginning of the nineteenth century.
1

PRINCE PHILIP, AFTERWARDS PHILIP
TITIAN
ITALIAN SCHOOLS IN THE PRADO 135
yet so coarse in its splendid sensuality, you find the
same passionate and tragic reluctance to forgo the
exterior things of the world, to make the sacrifices that
age was demanding so insistently, even of so splendid
a vitality as Titian's, as in the Actæon and Diana, so
suggestive in its subject, at any rate, of the price that
must be paid for having overmuch loved anything that
rust and moth doth corrupt. Painted in 1559 for Philip
II., the Acteon and Diana was given, in 1704, to the Duc
de Grammont by Philip V., from whose hands it passed
to the Galerie d'Orléans, sold in London in 1798, when
it was bought with three other Titians by the Duke of
Bridgewater. It is strange to find a picture so profoundly
religious, so full of a passionate eagerness of love, as the
Entombment belonging to the same year as the Acteon.
It is as though amid all the splendour of a world he at
least had found so splendid, an immense grief had swept
over his soul, overwhelming everything but life itself,
just for a moment: some incredible disaster seems to
have befallen, incredible in any other hand than Titian's.
If you compare it for a moment with the 'eloquence' of
that earliest Entombment in the Louvre, you will under-
stand at once the simple and yet profound way in which
at last Titian has come to understand that tragedy, all
tragic things, that is; as though for a moment he had
really understood that he must die. It is too grievous
for eloquence, this hiding away of the body of the
Saviour of the world, in the new tomb of Joseph, of the
body of Man too in the earth where horrible things await
it, things that will insist upon confounding its beauty
with themselves. And is it in a sort of explanation
chiefly to himself, perhaps, of what, after all, is inexplic-
able, or in a sort of rebellion against so unspeakable a
disaster, that we find Titian painting The Fall of Man,
really a hymn to Physical Beauty that has ever some-
136
THE CITIES OF SPAIN
thing fatal about it; perfectly happy during a single
heart's beat, while Eve, reminded by Adam, hesitates
to take the fruit not from a devil but from Love, yes it
has come to that, in the midst of the garden among the
flowers? Spoiled though they be, these two beautiful,
naked figures, against the immense and spacious sky,
surrounded by the sweet and nimble air, about to kiss
one another, seem to explain everything in a moment,
and to reconcile us with death too, since it was the price
of love, of an illuminating kiss of recognition, without
which how lonely would have been our happiness, how
poor a thing the beautiful, unsmiling world.
Something like this seems to me to be suggested,
dimly enough, it may be, in that sad, eager, impassioned
old face, that seems about to speak, in Titian's portrait
of himself, painted with an 'impressionism' achieved in
a moment, really foreseeing there, as it were, the work of
Velasquez, the truthful, distinguished work of that pupil
we have so loved. He seems to have created life with
something of the ease and facility of a natural force, to
have desired always Beauty as the only perfect flower of
life, and while he was not content with the mere truth,
and never with beauty divorced from life, he has created
life in such abundance that his work may well be larger
than the achievement of any two other men, even the
greatest in painting; yet in his work, in the work that is
really his, you will find nothing that is not living, nothing
that is not an impassioned gesture, reaching above and
beyond our vision into the realm of that force which
seems to be eternal.
To turn to the other Venetian painters after Titian is a
little difficult. Yet, in Lorenzo Lotto, born in 1480, you
have often a fine portrait painter, and if, as has been
suggested, his work is overrated, it is sometimes fine
enough to excuse the praise it has received. The picture
ITALIAN SCHOOLS IN THE PRADO 137
of a Marriage is not one of his best works, though it is
characteristic enough of a painter, who so often seems to
have missed his way, to be worth attention.
It is impossible to examine here in any detail the
innumerable work of Tintoretto. He is not seen at his
best in the Prado. He seems ever to be overacting, as
it were, to be over-expressive, always to be speaking at the
top of his voice. In searching for 'the design of Michel-
angelo and the colour of Titian,' as he wrote on the wall
of his studio, he has missed both so impetuously that
we forgive him. In the two pictures by Veronese, the
Christ and the Centurion and the Finding of Moses,
the first is what we might expect almost, simple,
splendid, and worldly so unconsciously, so naturally,
as it were, that it charms you, if at all, by just that.
It is the work of a man who was able to feel only in the
manner of the Renaissance. If the Finding of Moses is
his, as Mr. Ricketts believes, it is certainly one of his
loveliest smaller pictures; and although Veronese is
really only to be understood when he is seen 'at play
among the fantastic chequers of the Venetian ceilings,'
as Ruskin reminds us, we may yet find a certain
delight in his work here in Madrid, seeing that the art
of the most delightful pagan of the Renaissance was
appreciated by that cold, fanatic Court, preoccupied
with the extremes of Christian asceticism, with what
Christianity had become in the hands of a people
whose whole worldly advantage seemed to lie in ex-
ploiting it.
The great pupil of Veronese, Tiepolo, whose force and
movement certainly lack something of the splendour,
the 'candour,' of his master, suggests here in Spain, at
any rate, the beautiful, scornful work of Goya, its im-
1 Mr Berenson, The Venetian Painters of the Renaissance, 1902, p. 147,
questions the right of Veronese to this picture.
138
THE CITIES OF SPAIN
patience, its haughty contempt of a world that was not
sufficiently aware of itself, as we may think. The burden
of etiquette, of meaningless ceremonial, so unnatural to
an Italian, that the Spanish Court had thrust upon Italy,
spoiling a certain naïveté and frank simplicity or candour
in dealing with life, as characteristic of Italy in the time
of Giotto, for instance, as in the high Renaissance, and as
visible to-day almost as ever, was not able to ruin the
work of Veronese; but you may find it easily enough
in the weaker, more sophisticated paintings of Tiepolo.
And if Goya's work, so fascinating in its rebellious
energy, its far-fetched beauty, is really a return to
nature and to life, it is by I know not what devious
ways he has been compelled to pass, almost through
an under-world, the strange, dim alleys or the far
horizons of Baudelaire, that even to-day much of our
painting has been unable to forget.
III. EL GRECO
Spanish painting, hitherto so dependent upon Flemish
or German or Italian work, seems really to have expressed
itself at last in the work of El Greco, a foreigner who passed
the greater part of his life at Toledo. We know almost
nothing of the life of Domenico Theotocópuli. Pacheco
tells us that he was a student of various things, a philo-
sopher, an architect, a painter, and a sculptor. He him-
self tells us, in signing a picture still in San José in
Toledo, that he came from Crete-AoμývIKOS PEOTOKÓ-
πουλος Κρής ἔποιει; and vaguely indeed, we hear of him
in Italy, in Venice as the pupil we may think rather of
Tintoretto than of Titian, though Palomino insists that
it was Titian he imitated. And at last we find him in
1577, still a young man, in Toledo, where he built the
EL GRECO
139
Church of Santo Domingo el Antiguo and painted for
it the Assumption of the Virgin, now in the Borbon col-
lection. A few words that he spoke to Pacheco, an
account of two pieces of litigation in which he involved
himself, certain rumours of his pride or his eccentricity,
and at last the date of his death, the place of his burial,
discovered by Señor de Beruete¹-that is all that has
come down to us of the life of the most original painter
of Spain. We do not know what brought him to Toledo.
Perhaps some rumour of the generosity of the Spanish
Court to artists had reached him in Italy. However that
may be, he came to Toledo about the year 1575, as is
supposed, and began to paint there first the Retablo
that is to-day in a private collection, its place in
Santo Domingo being filled by a copy, and later, to
the order of the chapter of the cathedral, the beautiful
altar-piece still in the Sacristía there, the Parting of
Christ's Raiment. It is certainly the work of a pupil of
the Venetian school that we see in this picture, inspired
by I know not what eagerness, a sort of naïve eloquence,
very expressive and romantic. It is as though Tintoretto,
still a little incoherent, had found a new inspiration, an
anxious sort of sincerity, which in reality never came to
him even in his moments of astonishing power. Lovely
as the picture is, it seems to have brought nothing but
trouble to the painter; for the canons, shocked, as they
asserted, at the presence there of the three Maries, which
was not according to the tradition preserved by the
Spanish Church, refused to accept the picture unless the
figures were painted out. This Theotocópuli refused to
do, asserting on his side that 'it did not matter, as they
1 The entry is as follows :-'En siete del Abril 1614, falescio Dominico
Greco. No hizo testamento, recibio los sagramentos, enterose en Santo
Domingo el Antiguo. Dio velas.-Libro de entierros de Santo Tomé de
1601-1614.'
140
THE CITIES OF SPAIN
were a long way off.' But the chapter was not satisfied
and refused to pay him the price agreed upon. A law-
suit followed, tedious and long drawn out, in which at
last El Greco was victorious. It might seem, however,
that the opinion freely expressed at the time, that he
had imitated Titian in this picture, really decided his
future for him. Proud and conscious of his genius, of
his individuality at any rate, a personality and force
that had already helped him to maintain his case against
the criticism of the Church, he began to paint the pictures
that are so unmistakably his own in Toledo, in the Prado,
in the Escorial, and in many private collections in and out
of Spain. And in doing so, he assures us that he was
the pupil of Tintoretto; that painter so obstinately ego-
tistical, so much more eager to astonish us by his origin-
ality, than to delight us with the beauty of his work,
often full of power, that yet fails, inexplicably perhaps,
but certainly nevertheless to justify the impetuous man-
nerism he thrusts upon 'the forms of art' which Titian
had surprised into moments of passionate beauty. And
so while Theotocópuli was the first painter in Spain to
give to painting a certain appearance of life, its move-
ment as it were, its reality, with something of its colour too,
colour that is with him always so personal an expression of
beauty; his design is his own, possessing only the reality
of something seen in a vision, the vivid, haunting aspect
of a spectre seen in a nightmare when the soul is dis-
armed and utterly alone.
It was in 1581 that Philip II. sent for Theotocópuli to
come to the Escorial to paint in the Chapel of St. Maurice
the martyrdom of the saint and his companions. As we
look at that old picture to-day in the Salas Capitulares,
it is really a new vision of life that we see there, some-
thing that is not quite sane as we say, full of strangeness,
that is not beautiful, only perverse perhaps, wilfully con-

1
PORTRAIT OF A MAN
EL GRECO
I
EL GRECO
141
cerning itself not with the due proportion of things, the
order and beauty of life, but with the effect rather of
certain bitter colours, those strange, few colours that we
find on his palette preserved in S. Telmo in Seville, white,
black, vermilion, lake, yellow ochre. And remembering
the pictures that already hung in the Escorial, we are not
surprised that Philip would have none of his work, that
though he paid him for it, and kept the picture, he placed
over the altar of St. Maurice the work of an obscure
Italian, Romulo Cincinnato.
It is from this time that Theotocópuli's figures seem
to lose touch with the actual world; they are ghosts that
no longer feel the proportions of the earth, beings that
tower into a life that is no longer human. You find
them everywhere in the old churches of Toledo, vague
and eager faces peering into the dark; terrible, insistent
figures, tortured by some extraordinary restlessness,
oblivious of everything but the barrenness of life, a
sort of cruelty that is too brutal to be borne. What
passionate despair you find in the figure of the dead
Conde de Orgaz, in that picture, painted some three
years after the Martyrdom of St. Maurice, reputed to be
his masterpiece, in the little Church of S. Tomé in Toledo!
It is as though he had discerned a sort of indescribable
impatience of the flesh, yes, in his own soul, that had
striven so with reality. Above all the renunciation of
the mere self-consciousness of the soul that is already in
the presence of God which he has expressed so simply, we
seem to feel a sort of compassion expressed in every
tender line of that drooping body, a profound under-
standing of the defeat he too has already suffered since
he must come to just that. In the strong, ascetic, mascu-
line faces that are like a series of portraits, each with its
own individual life, we discern some strange original
thought about death, the misfortune it holds for us, its
142
THE CITIES OF SPAIN
unforgivable cruelty, its unappeasable regret, that sug-
gests a perfect intellectual rectitude, something dry and
hard and full of despair, that is not to be found in Spanish
painting again till almost ourown time, when we come upon
it in Goya, still with a sort of surprise. And as we watch
these his creatures, furtively almost, we cannot but ask
ourselves what had befallen him. Was he really mad as
the sacristans assert, mad with mortification as they say,
at having been thought a mere pupil of Titian, or is he
really an original painter, a colourist perhaps—for we hear
that he thought little of drawing, of design-who has not
been able to content himself with the mere beauty of the
Venetian school, but has really dreamed a dream and
seen as in a vision a new world, yes, Toledo itself perhaps,
receiving a really personal impression from that ardent
and arid city that was already beginning to be an appari-
tion, that had already been deserted? How passionate
his work is, how eagerly he has sought for his strange,
nervous impression of the man, reprieved for so short a
time from death, in that series of portraits in the Prado!
His work seems to be full of a sort of enthusiasm, or excite-
ment, in which everything has been consumed but the
expression of it. And since he seems to have despised
anything less expressive than colour, his work is without
design, and so really without a sort of integrity, an artistic
truthfulness, which his intellect seems to have retained
to the last. Thus while he always sees the truth, he is
often incapable of expressing it, not because he does not
think it important, but because he is only true to himself,
to his own peculiar method, as it were, of expressing just
that. He is always self-conscious, always striving to be
original even at the expense of the truth at last, or at
least over-emphasising his own expression of what he
came to think the truth to be. Even as a colourist he
has not hesitated to disintegrate colour into its original

THE RESURRECTION
EL GRECO
EL GRECO
143
values, to make over again for himself new harmonies,
to insist that we shall do the same when looking at his
work.
Gradually as you look at his later work, at what,
perhaps too confidently, I take to have been his later
pictures, The Baptism of Christ, and The Ascension of
the Prado, the Assumption of S. Vicente in Toledo, for
instance, it almost seems as though, great as he was, he
had remembered the old Byzantine work of his country-
men, had returned to it indeed after much wandering, not
altogether with satisfaction, giving life to that which had
always been dead till then, a strange, fantastic life, full of
a cold, vivid colour, but keeping still the impotent hands,
the hard, unseeing eyes, the gestures of despair, the
crippled, towering bodies, no longer wrapt in death, but
living or moving now so unfamiliarly in a world that is
altogether out of proportion to them, Saints, Apostles,
Warriors that have wandered for the first time out of
the old, cavernous churches into the sunlight and the
spring.
'A mad painter'-they tell you in Toledo; and yet
one who seems, after all, foreigner though he was, to
have created Spanish painting: finding no satisfaction
in the expression of anything that is beautiful or true
unless he has transformed it by the energy of his own
genius, his own personality: unfortunate only in this, that
in his strength he was not always able to find sweetness,
nor out of his energy invariably to bring forth beauty;
yet fortunate, too, in that he prepared the way for
Velasquez, who has understood his prophecy and ful-
filled it.
144
THE CITIES OF SPAIN
IV. RIBERA
You might think, as you pass through the room de-
voted to the works of Ribera, in the Prado, that he
was a painter whose only characteristic was a wonderful
strength, sometimes almost brutal in its energy, occupied
with a sort of realism that is not always fortunate or
true. Often really dramatic, as we say, he surprises us
by the strangeness of his subjects, his pre-occupation,
as we may think, perhaps, rather with the brutality of
man than with life or beauty; but, on closer examination,
his work remains one of the most remarkable achieve-
ments of a Spaniard in the art of painting, only less true,
less disinterested than the work of Velasquez, and with
moments too of real tenderness and beauty, amid the
profound energy we discern in the pain, the frightful
despair of his tortured men and women. And for us, at
least, wearied even in the Prado with the sweetness, the
ineffectual ingenuousness of Murillo, the mere incoherence
of much of El Greco's work, what is really valuable is just
the fact that man is revealed to us in the works of Ribera,
that he has painted and expressed the body, at least,
with an attention and a patience that, even in his most
strenuous or excited moments, never altogether deserted
him. Something like this seems to me to be sufficient
excuse for speaking of a painter so much greater than
his reputation.
Born, not, as Dominici and Paolo de Matteis assert, at
Gallipoli in 1593, but, as Cean Bermudez has told us, at
S. Felipe de Játiva, some twenty-five miles from Valencia,
Jusepe¹ de Ribera, called Lo Spagnoletto, was sent early
to Valencia itself, to the university there, to be educated.
¹ He signs himself José Espiñol Accademico Romano, f. 1650, on a picture
in the Louvre.
RIBERA
145
We know almost nothing of his youth, but while still very
young he seems to have found his vocation, for we hear
of him as the pupil of Francisco Ribalta, the Valencian
painter. After some years of apprenticeship, he left his
master and set out alone for Italy, perhaps urged thereto
by Ribalta himself. Arrived in Rome he came near to
starvation, for he had no recommendations or friends;
but willingly, for the sake of his art, he endured every
privation, with something, we may believe, of the in-
domitable energy so characteristic of what we know of
his life as of his art. Cean Bermudez tells us that one
day as Lo Spagnoletto was working in the streets of
Rome, even then intent, it might seem, rather on reality
than on such learning as might be had in the Vatican,
for instance, a Cardinal passed by, and, seeing him so
eager at his work, carried him off to his house and made
a page of him. But he was not content for long to forgo
the practice of his art there, where it seemed that alone it
could find true nourishment, in the streets of the city.
And yet we hear of him as a student of Raphael, and
again as copying the work of the Caracci in the Farnese
Palace, and later still as in the north of Italy, in Parma,
where the work of Correggio seems to have had a real
influence upon him, so that ever after he is unable to
forget him. And at last we find him in Naples, still poor,
but full of eagerness nevertheless, now for the work of
Caravaggio, lately dead, the last great influence in his
art, we may think.
It was in Naples, really a Spanish city then, and
almost the only great city in Italy without a school of
painting, that Ribera seems to have found himself, as it
were, at last; marrying there a certain Leonora Cortese,
the daughter of a picture-dealer, and painting, among
other things, the Martyrdom of St. Bartholomew, now in
the Prado, one of those realistic, dramatic pictures which
K
146
THE CITIES OF SPAIN
seem always to have delighted him. And it was this
picture, so full of the very movement of life, its energy
and ruthlessness, that brought him fame after those
years of wretchedness. For it seems that his father-in-
law caused the picture to be placed on the balcony of his
house, which was close to the palace of the Spanish vice-
gerent, the Duke of Osuna. And, indeed, what the old
picture-dealer had foreseen came to pass; for a crowd full
of noisy appreciation—that excited Neapolitan crowd—
gathered round the picture, so that it became necessary
to send a guard to disperse the people; and, as the tale
goes, the Duke himself, coming on the scene, found, not
a murdered man but a great picture, beautiful and strong,
that seemed, perhaps, the most real thing in all that
fantastic, miserable city: a picture, moreover, painted by
the young Spaniard, Jusepe Ribera. Thus, what genius
had not been able to achieve, business ability accom-
plished in a moment. Ribera's fortune was made, and
Leonora Cortese was the wife of a man already almost
famous. Success had come to him. We hear of him as
delighting in display; working the while with almost
feverish energy, till he was compelled by his failing
health to give but six hours a day to his art; he who had
been used to serve it with all his might. During this
time he was oblivious of everything but his work, so that
he ordered a servant to call to him every hour in a loud
voice, 'Another hour is passed, Signor Cavaliere!' And
it was here in Naples where he soon became an absolute
despot in the world of art, if we are to believe his bio-
graphers, driving Domenichino, Annibale Caracci, and
others from the city, that all the really great work which
we find in Naples, in the Prado, in Berlin to-day, was
accomplished.
Those heads of apostles, and old men that in their
strength, their technical splendour, their expressiveness

ST. MARY MAGDALEN
RIBERA
RIBERA
147
-an expressiveness that is always strong enough to
restrain itself-are so strange a contrast here in the
Prado to the work of El Greco;-it is there and in certain
larger pictures-the St. Bartholomew, for instance--that
we seem to find something new in Spanish painting, a
sort of integrity, an acceptance of mere beauty for
the sake of truth. So you find Ribera drawing each
muscle precisely, following the beautiful lines of the
bones of man, excusing himself from nothing for the sake
of sentiment or religion, anxiously mindful even of the
wrinkles in the faces of old people, telling us, as it were,
the actual truth that is not always ugly after all, and
in which it is the business of an artist to find beauty.
Only, with all his passionate insistence upon actual
things, their appearance, their superficial aspect,¹ he
has no gift of selection, as it might seem, and is quite
without the distinction of Velasquez. Sometimes his
taste will fail him altogether, and though his inspiration
seems never to have left him-for the more ghastly his
subject, the more ghastly his truthful work will be-at
such moments it is as though he had been too much
alone with actual things to remember that he was an
artist.
And yet, amid all this eagerness for the truth that
sometimes, though not often, degenerates into a mere
copying of the model, in which beauty is forgotten
altogether-for there are other things besides bones and
muscles that he refused to pass over, wounds, for instance,
and the brutal havoc of decrepitude-there is in his work
a residue of beauty that will never allow us to forget
him. The Dream of Jacob-a weary man asleep under
a shadowless tree on the verge of the desert; the Mag-
dalene of the Prado and of the Cathedral at Granada, and
¹ Ricketts, op. cit., p. 32, notices, for instance, that he will not excuse
himself even from the dirty finger-nails or feet of his men or women,
148
THE CITIES OF SPAIN
the Conception of Salamanca. But life is too much in
its immense mediocrity for all but the greatest artists,
and Ribera is not one of them. He is a very strong,
fine painter, whose taste is not always equal to his talent,
whose genius, perhaps, never found him out.
In a woman's head now in the Prado, rescued from
the fire of 1734 at the Escorial, we seem to have a more
perfect study than usual, perhaps, of a noble, passionate
face, full of sensibility, wilfulness, and disaster; that he
has painted over and over again. Is it his daughter,
Maria Rosa, who is said to have deserted him, seduced
by Don Juan of Austria, bringing him disgrace, the
remembrance of which caused his death? It may well
be; and if all be true that his biographers have told us
concerning him, we may easily believe that a man so
proud and merciless might die of shame and rage at this
last misfortune, expecting nothing but laughter from
those he had always treated scornfully. Yet Velasquez
who visited him in Naples in 1649, spoke well of him,
and found him full of courtesy, and it relieves us, in
thinking of him thus wretched at the last, to know that
such an one had honoured him with friendship.
7
V. VELASQUEZ
The pictures of Velasquez as we now see them,
gathered together, for the most part, into one room
of the Prado Gallery, are by far the greater part of
his work, really representative of a man who is among
the great painters of the world, and incomparably the
greatest artist Spain has produced. A few pictures in
England; ten or eleven, named by Carl Justi, in Vienna;
about the same number in Germany and in Italy; six or
even seven in Russia-that is really all that we possess,
VELASQUEZ
149
outside the Prado collection, of the work of one who
has influenced modern art so profoundly, for whose sake
many a painter of our own day has made pilgrimage to
Madrid, finding there almost the Mecca of his art. Nor
is it in number alone that the Prado is incomparably richer
than any other gallery in the works of Velasquez, but in
the completeness of its examples also, their perfection
too, their importance in the history of his art. And
while it is true that in the Venus of the National Gallery
England possesses an unique and lovely picture that is
quite alone in his work, not in England, nor in France,
nor in Germany, nor in Austria, nor in these countries
together neither, is there, from the historical or from the
artistic point of view, a series as fine or as complete as
that which has been hung with so much pride and care in
the Prado Gallery.
The life of Velasquez, so uneventful, so occupied with
his art-not, indeed, to the exclusion of life, but to the
exclusion, certainly, of an eventful or adventurous life;
less full of action, for instance, than Rubens's, less im-
passioned than Titian's—was spent for the most part in
the company of Philip IV., with whose strangely un-
interesting face he has made us more familiar almost
than we are with any other king who ever lived. Really
a court painter, he has painted for us just the life of the
king, of his family, of his ministers, in a way so truthful,
so bold almost, and with so profound an understanding
of the mere humanity of all that, that beside his work
the pictures of Vandyck, for instance, seem merely
charming—too romantic for reality, too exquisite for life.
The perfect truthfulness of Velasquez's work seems to
accuse all other courtiers of a sort of insincerity, as
though they had taken refuge in compliments. And
then his painting achieves a universality reserved for the
greatest artists, his sincerity being more valuable to us
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THE CITIES OF SPAIN
than the originality of many a less coherent painter, just
because in it lay the last originality of all, enabling him
to pass from masterpiece to masterpiece, as Titian does,
almost without fatigue. And while he is continually
painting beautiful things, not with the immense vitality
and energy of Titian, it is true, for he lacked a certain
creative force that is characteristic of the great Venetian,
but without loss of virtue nevertheless, he is never really
content unless he is able to find beauty in life, just for a
moment, as in Las Meniñas; and though he is not always
able to do this, or is only able to do it in part, it is always
his conscious aim and desire, so profoundly apprehended
that he is continually refusing beauty if it be divorced
from life, if he has not drawn it from life, as it were, by
the power of his art.
Born in Seville in 1599, Diego Roderiguez Velasquez
was the son of Juan Roderiguez de Silva and Geronima
Velasquez, whose name he took; on his father's side he
was of Portuguese origin, while his mother came of an
old family of Seville. So early as 1612 we find him in the
studio of Francisco Herrera, a painter who seems also to
have been an architect, a somewhat hasty tempered man,
whom Velasquez, it is said, soon left, placing himself
under Francisco Pacheco, whose daughter, Juana de
Miranda, he married in 1618. Pacheco-a dry, somewhat
pedantic painter, as his pictures in the Museo of Seville
tell us is known to us chiefly in his Art of Painting,
where he lays claim to be practically the sole master
of Velasquez, ignoring altogether any part Herrera may
have had in forming the living style of a painter, whose
real master, after all, was Life-the world coming to him
without littleness, as it were, and so without deceit,
receiving from him a sort of distinction that we find so
difficult to analyse, so impossible not to understand and
appreciate, certainly, at its full value.
VELASQUEZ
151
Of his student days in Seville three or four pictures
remain to us, notably El Aguador de Sevilla, now in the
possession of the Duke of Wellington; the Adoration
of the Shepherds, in the National Gallery; and the
Adoration of the Kings, in the Prado, in which we seem
to discern some faint remembrance of the work of Ribera.
His debt to Pacheco is not very obvious, consisting rather,
as Professor Justi has suggested, in following the precept
than the practice of that pedant. And yet it was certainly
owing to Pacheco that, in 1622, Velasquez set out for
Madrid, there to meet Don Juan de Fonseca, Canon of
Seville, sumiller de cortina in the royal household, who intro-
duced him to the Count-Duke Olivares, another Sevillian,
just then become minister to the new king, Philip IV.
Olivares is said to have spoken to the king on the young
painter's behalf, suggesting, indeed, that Philip should sit
to him; however this may be, Velasquez was soon back
in Seville. But early in 1623 Fonseca sent for him to
return to Madrid, which he appears to have done eagerly
enough, painting a portrait of the canon, which was shown
to the king, who immediately sat to him for an equestrian
portrait, since lost; though we may find more than a
hint of it, perhaps, in a study now in the Prado (1071).
Pleased with the likeness, as it is said, the king made
him court painter. Just then Philip was the host of
Prince Charles of England and the Duke of Buckingham,
and there is a rumour of a portrait of Charles, painted at
this time, which has most unfortunately disappeared. It
is to this, his first period, as we may say, between 1623
and 1629, when he set out for Italy-a period summed up
very perfectly in such a work as Los Borrachos-that such
pictures as the portrait of Góngora (1055), the portrait of
Juana de Miranda, his wife (1086), belong, together with
the beautiful full-length portrait of the Infante Don
Carlos, a young man holding a glove in his right hand,
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full of a certain dry capacity, a little discontented with
itself, and yet so distinguished, as it were-a distinction
that is not less attractive, only more fastidious than
the romance you may find in Vandyck's portraits, the
prettiness almost of much of his work; and the portrait
of Philip himself (1070) as a young man of some twenty
years, which is almost a replica of the supposed study
(1071) for the equestrian portrait.
It was in September 1628 that Rubens came to Spain
for the second time. He seems to have painted there
almost incessantly, copying Titian's work, among other
things, and painting many pictures for the king. How did
the advent of so strong a personality, already famous
throughout Europe, affect the young Velasquez? It is a
little difficult to say, for the influence of Rubens is almost
as hard to find in Velasquez's work as the influence of
Pacheco. Rubens commends him for his modesty, and
must have known him well, since we hear of them working
together at the Escorial, sketching the palace from the
sierra round about. But, in reality, the work of a painter
so intent on expressing just himself seems to have in-
fluenced Velasquez very little. Content only with Nature,
to paint what he had really seen, as it were, without
mannerism or any suggestion of his own dream of a
world, he may well have seen with surprise those legions
of strong and sensual figures, a little mad with life, pass
on to the canvas from the brain of Rubens-women full
of vitality and happiness, who are really always the same
woman, the creation of the painter, that has never really
lived, that has been born only in his heart; men who are
so full of energy and a sort of exuberant health, a little
Teutonic in its naïve delight in the sunshine they have
really only dreamed of, after all, in the misty north. It
was not such things, splendid though they be, that could
influence one whose mind was set rather on truth than
VELASQUEZ
153
mere painting. And, indeed, in Los Borrachos, painted
almost certainly under the eyes of Rubens, there is no
trace of the work of that painter; it is a more perfect
example than Ribera had ever been able to produce of
Ribera's method: that reference to Nature, the sufficiency
of actual things, life as it appeared at that very moment,
painted simply and without mannerism, as it were, claim-
ing our attention really as just that; the mere fortunate
fact stated with reserve, and more tactfully than ever
before, but with nothing added, nothing that is invented
for the sake of the artist or on our account. Full of
limitations, it is true, and yet with a certain novelty for
us, in its intention at least, this picture sums up very
fortunately the work of Velasquez during his first period;
suggesting an assured purpose in his art, a sort of in-
tegrity that was able to refuse all that was less than
truth, less real than that, just as it was able to maintain
itself before the exaggerated, exuberant joy and beauty
of Rubens's work. It was not so much in painting, it
might seem, as in the practical study of it, a fine sort of
worldly advice, that the great Fleming influenced him,
even as Pacheco had done; for, as Pacheco sent him to
Madrid, so Rubens sent him to Italy at last, in the
company of Spinola, the conqueror of Breda, just then
appointed Governor of Milan. He left Barcelona on
August 10, 1629, going first to Genoa, and then, as is
supposed, to Milan, coming at last to Venice at an
unfortunate time, as it happened; for Venice, the only
absolutely free state left in Italy, seemed to be preparing
for war with Spain. All we really know of Velasquez's
visit is a reference in Palomino: 'He was much pleased,'
says the 'Vasari of Spain,' 'with the paintings of Titian,
Tintoretto, Paolo, and other artists of that school; there-
fore he drew incessantly the whole time he was there,
and especially he made studies from Tintoretto's famous
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THE CITIES OF SPAIN
Crucifixion, and made a copy of the Communion of the
Apostles, which he presented to the king. The war alone
prevented him from staying there longer.' We hear of
him again later in Rome, having avoided Florence at the
last moment in his eagerness to see the capital of the
world, though he had intended staying there, and, indeed,
found time to visit Loretto, a little city on the Adriatic,
which the Santa Casa makes the holiest place in Italy.
For the most part, while in Rome, he lived at the Villa
Medici. 'After visiting the palace and the vineyard of
the Medici on Trinità dei Monti, he found that this would
be the best spot for his studies and summer residence,'
says Pacheco. 'He remained there two months, until
compelled by a tertian fever to remove to the neighbour-
hood of the dwelling of the Count [Monterey].' Another
illustrious foreign painter was in Rome at the time,
Nicolas Poussin, but we do not know whether Velasquez
met him. Two mementos, at any rate, of his stay at the
Villa Medici have come to us in the delicate and lovely
landscapes, the two views taken in the garden there, now
in the Prado Gallery (1106, 1107), while it may well be
that, in the portrait now in the Capitoline Museum, we
have, as Justi has suggested, that portrait of himself spoken
of by Pacheco. But in those two landscapes we seem
to discern some new thing, only really to be understood
in our own day with the help of the art of Corot and the
delicate, nervous work of Whistler. And it is, perhaps, in
these two pictures that we see the real Velasquez at last :
his manner, as it were, his fresh 'brush-work,' as we say,
so characteristic of him ever after. He has seen Nature
with a modern eye almost for the first time, seen that
beautiful arch under the cypresses, the garden filled with
boards and rubbish-yes, as we might see it ourselves,
almost without an afterthought or the desire to make it
appear other than it is. Rumour ascribes two works—

IN THE GARDEN OF THE VILLA MEDICI, ROME
VELASQUEZ
VELASQUEZ
155
the Forge of Vulcan, now in the Prado (1059), and the
Joseph's Coat, in the Escorial—to this time in Rome, and
certainly we perceive in them a new delight in form,
observed, not with the minute eye of Ribera, but in
another and broader fashion, more true to the appearance,
that is the only fact he cared to establish for himself. It
is as though he had caught these people almost unawares
in a moment of anguish or surprise, and had been content
to paint them—well, as they appeared to be. And while
we know that Titian, for instance, or Rubens would have
given us a greater picture, full of a stronger vitality, a
more overwhelming beauty, perhaps, we are delighted in
Velasquez's work by the unexaggerated almost northern
note we find there-a sort of refusal of the mere splendour
a Venetian certainly would have given us.
It was towards the end of the year 1630 that Velasquez
set out for Naples, really on the king's business, since he
had ordered from him a portrait of his sister, the Infanta
Maria, whom Prince Charles of England had sought in
marriage, now Queen of Hungary, staying in Naples on
her way northwards. You may see the canvas to-day in
the Prado (1074), as it is believed, though some have
thought the full-length portrait in Berlin is a work of
this time; but it might seem that the bust of the Prado
has the better claim, since Velasquez would scarcely have
had time to paint an elaborate full-length portrait since
he was back in Madrid early in 1631. There is no doubt,
however, that he met Ribera in Naples, and received
many courtesies from him.
On his return to the Spanish Court, where he was to
live for the next eighteen years, we perceive at once a
change in his art, visible enough, perhaps, in his Roman
work, certainly in the views in the garden of the Villa
Medici. To this period belong the Crucifixion, of the
Prado (1055), the portraits of Philip IV., of Don Fernando,
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of Prince Don Balthasar Carlos (1074, 1075, 1076); the
portrait of the Infanta Maria Teresa of Austria (1084),
the great equestrian portraits (1066, 1067, 1068, 1069),
and the full-length portrait of Don Balthasar (1053),
together with the Surrender of Breda (1060), and the
portrait of the Admiral in the National Gallery. To
speak of all these beautiful pictures within the space I
have marked out for myself is impossible. And, indeed,
it might seem there is but little to say that may be
conveyed in words. More than any other painter,
Velasquez explains himself to the attentive observer:
he delights you with the aspect of life; he refuses to
generalise, contenting himself with what he has seen,
with what he sees. In one sense he is the subtlest of all
artists, because he asks you to forget so much; in another
way he is the simplest of all, for he is content to tell you
just what he has seen-ah, with the clearest, the rarest
sight, with truthful eyes that nothing can deceive. If you
will wait on him, it is really a new vision he will show
you
of the real world at last; yes, of the men and women
in it, not in their moments of passion or grief-scarcely
ever that—but in their more quiet days, their moments
of ennui, when you may surprise a sort of candour in
even the most guarded, without the mask of emotion to
disguise them, or the distraction of a story in which they
are actors and must play their part. Their story is life,
their part is that of men and women-real, actual people,
whose individuality is insistent, not to be denied; who
really live and are no mere symbols. They come to us
as real people might come whom we do not observe too
closely, do not suffer ourselves to examine as an
anatomist might do, as Ribera did all his life. In the
Surrender of Breda, for instance, perhaps 'the only
historical picture in the world,' you see the people in
the crowd as they appear to you really there, not as

INFANTA MARIA TERESA
BY VELASQUEZ
VELASQUEZ
157
individuals but as faces in a multitude. And while, in
the work of so many painters, you seem always to be
meeting the same people, with Velasquez it is not so; for
each picture is with him really a new and actual im-
pression, a thing by itself, in painting which he has not
permitted himself to remember that there is any truth
beyond just that impression, that appearance. To record
that perfectly-it is his art.
And in painting his portraits it is the same. He works
at his impression, is content if he may record it, with a
certain sensitive care and a gift for selection. He thinks
only of the reality of the appearance; it is the integrity
of his art. He has not planned a composition to fill a
certain given space, the space must give way to his
impression of the thing itself; thus sometimes he finds
the space is not enough for his impression, and so in the
Philip IV. on horseback, for instance, he sews a strip
of canvas on each side of the picture, and is not over
anxious to hide this miscalculation, as it were. It is
impossible to think of Raphael being content to do that;
for his art was really a decoration, an exquisite arrange-
ment of lines and colours in a given space, the space
itself being conjured into beauty. And yet, in the
Surrender of Breda, the decorative beauty of the picture
is not the least lovely thing in it: the lances that have
named the picture for many, rising there, reasonable and
perfect in their motive, out of the reality of the picture,
as beauty will do out of life. But for me, certainly, the
most delightful picture in the room is little Maria Teresa,
so helpless in those beautiful, ugly hoops-perhaps the
loveliest of all his portraits.
This objective vision of the world, of life, might seem
to leave Velasquez almost without passion. You find
yourself continually wondering, always in vain, what sort
of man he might be. How many women did he love,
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how many has he created? Almost none, since he has
told us of so many that really lived once; only he has
given us for ever a remembrance of the work of God,
that was but for a moment. His life seems to have been
a continual observation, full of curiosity and the desire of
beauty of life; only he seems never to have expressed
himself as Titian has done, as Rubens and Rembrandt
do nearly all their lives. We might almost say that he
watched life so intently that he was scarcely aware it was
passing him by. Now and then we catch sight of him,
only almost never in his art; at one time as the friend of
Murillo, whom apparently he liked, advising him to study
Nature and to go to Italy; at another as the friend of
Alonso Cano, whom he recommended to Olivares, and
whose tragedy, one might think, must have moved him.
And then, in the midst of the misery that was falling so
gradually upon Spain, with the war raging in Cataluña
and the plague in Valencia and Alicante, he left Madrid
in November 1648 for Málaga, embarking there in
January for Genoa, where he landed in February 1649.
He went to Milan, where he saw Da Vinci's, Last Supper;
to Padua, and then to Venice, really to buy pictures, as
we may think. He was not very successful; he managed
to obtain, however, among other things, a study by
Tintoretto for the Paradiso of the Gran Consiglio, and
the Venus and Adonis, by Veronese, now in the Prado.
But he had come to Venice too soon to redeem his
promise to Philip, that he would 'secure him some of
the best things by Titian, Paolo Veronese, Bassano,
Raphael, Parmigiano, and the like.' Had he come to
Venice a few years later he might have bought all he
desired.
From Venice he went to Rome, and then, almost
immediately, to Naples, where he found Ribera, and was
with him, perhaps, when the old Spaniard heard of his
VELASQUEZ
159
daughter's elopement with Don Juan of Austria; but in
1650 he was back in Rome, coming there on the eve of
the Jubilee that had already filled the city with pilgrims.
Innocent X. was Pope-a Pamphili, as we are reminded by
the wonderful portrait still in the Palazzo Doria-Pamphili,
which Velasquez then painted. Looking on the strong,
virile figure, full of cunning and pride, we may well
understand that he cared little for painters or men of
letters; that, statesman as he was, 'wary and sceptical in
his judgments of men,' the world of affairs was what
chiefly interested him. So Velasquez found him, and
has told us of him in his truthful way. That portrait of
Innocent X. was really the only work he left behind him
in Italy. In June 1651 he landed, coming from Genoa,
at Barcelona, and at once proceeded to Madrid. The
last period of his life, nine years, from the time of his
return to Spain, had begun. We find him enjoying
closer intimacy than ever with the king, his master
and friend; appointed, at his own request, unfortunately
enough, we may think, Aposentador major de palacio
del Rey-marshal of the palace-a post that had many
duties; and at last given the Red Cross of Santiago some
twelve months before his death in 1660. And the last
phase of his art—that style, we may say, which we find in
the portrait of Mariana of Austria (1078), in the King
Philip in half-armour' (1077), in the King Philip at
Prayer (1081), in the Martinez Montañéz (1091), the
portrait of a Buffoon (1092), the portrait of a Juggler
(1094), the Æsop (1100), the Dwarf Don Antonio (1097),
the Menippus (1101), the Mars (1102), the Meniñas (1062),
the Coronation of the Virgin (1056), the St Anthony
Abbot visiting St. Paul (1057), among others, is really
only the perfection of his early and middle work, a
development, logical and natural, of that first truthful
manner. His pictures, more than ever before, are just
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THE CITIES OF SPAIN
It
an impression; he has decided, as it were, is quite sure of
what he sees; is content at last, more than content, to
paint just that, without adding anything whatsoever.
is almost as though he held a mirror up to Nature, as
Shakespeare has said, only he never does so without
meaning and intention. Thus, for him at least, the
appearance is the only reality; he refuses to direct it,
or to ask from it anything more than that it should lend
itself to him, so that what was so fleeting in its beauty
may, through him, be made immortal. And his distinc-
tion, that quality that every one has found in his work, is
really just a courtesy towards Nature, a real humility in
the presence of the created work of God; if he may
reflect that-re-present it, as it were-it is all he desires.
And sometimes he has caught this passing and marvellous
life so delicately that it seems to you as though he had
not quite captured it, since it is unspoiled by any sugges-
tion of the personality of the painter, for 'where another
thinks he has made a beginning, Velasquez considers he
has given the last touch.'
As a colourist he seems rather definite than splendid;
he is always a true Spaniard, a little sombre and severe,
and yet with a profound understanding of light: first, as
in the Borrachos, for instance, the artificial light of the
studio, that he has not yet quite understood is not the
open air; then, as in the Philip IV. on horseback, the very
light of the sierra, so sombrely lucent, a little hard among
the hills of that uplifted land; and at last, of the light and
shadow imprisoned in houses, in great rooms and halls
whose height is lost in gloom.
Some of his work-the Meniñas, for instance-has
a sort of magic about it that the least error would have
broken. That simple and exquisite moment that he has
betrayed into captivity can never be repeated, and a
copy falls into a thousand hidden difficulties that it might

LAS MENINAS
VELASQUEZ
VELASQUEZ
161
seem impossible to avoid or make plain. And, thinking
of the whole of his work, we seem to understand that his
art was not creative, as we certainly find Titian's to be,
but rather representative, that in it you may find just real
people, for the most part, who actually lived, and were
sometimes tired and sometimes sorry; no dream of the
painter's brain, no creatures of his delight or agony, but
men and women whom he had seen with his eyes, the eyes
of the body, those infinitely sensitive eyes that discerned
so truthfully that sober and proud world in which he
lived. So delicate are his visions that he desires cool
and delicate colours-colours that we live with and may
bear at all times, rather than the riot of Rubens, the
splendour of Titian. He has refused so much that his
mere refusal would have given his work a sort of dis-
tinction, a certain austerity that is really temperance, a
perfect sense of the due proportion of things that he
had caught, perhaps, from Nature herself, his true master,
or divined there.
To write of such an one as we might write of Raphael,
apportioning praise and blame with so much earnest
futility, seems impossible. I have preferred to set down
the main facts of his life, to group his pictures into three
periods, to point out, so far as I understand it, the in-
tention of his art, in order that the reader may be the
less distracted in his study of his beautiful and truthful
work,
VI. A NOTE ON GOYA
One comes upon the paintings of Goya as upon
something new and revolutionary in the quiet world
of the Prado. The classics, those great painters before
whose works in Italy, we are told, he would remain
sometimes for whole days together in contemplation
L
1
162
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have at last but stirred him to rebellion.
Fantastical
and bitter where others would have been reverent, he is
the one true anarchist among the great painters of the
world. That he is among them no one can doubt, I
think, who has seen his work here in the Prado, full of
strength and contempt, and a strange, perverse, angry
sort of love. For him the attitude of Raphael-pre-
eminently the scholar, always at attention-is impossible.
He seeks to give us the truth as he sees it, yes, the very
truth, to the dregs, passing the world, humanity, his age,
Nature herself, through his own temperament, changing
it strangely in the process, and giving us at last, well,
'his own dream of a world.'
An anarchist, a revolutionary, he yet lived among
princes, and in his really profound hatred of any disguise
life chooses to assume, that sometimes becomes hatred
of life itself, he jeers at mankind, his whole life long, is
incapable of understanding authority in anything or any
one. Sometimes his visions are terrible enough; as, for
instance, when he permits us to see in his Tauromachia
the bull as master of the situation among a crowd of
human beings, mean and afraid, who had come to slay
him for sport. A bull-fighter himself, he understood the
malice, the humour of that. And again, in one of his
later works, we see the dead man permitted for a moment
to raise his gravestone and look out from that unthink-
able underworld of decay and desolation, occupying this
so tiny interval in scrawling 'Nada' in the dust, to daunt,
if it be possible, a dauntless world.
In the portrait of
But here in the Prado we see another Goya. Here is
an artist as devoted as Leonardo. Has he not said that
painting 'consists of sacrifices'?
Queen Maria Louisa, in the Family of Charles IV., and
in the picture of a young woman lying so delicately on
a mighty couch, we find at last that great artist who

J
S
1
THE FAMILY OF THE DUKE OF OSUNA
GOYA
A NOTE ON GOYA
163
fascinated the nobility of Spain, so that he painted them,
not so nobly as Velasquez, but with a certain subtle
vitality that seems to me different from anything I have
seen elsewhere in painting. 'Painting consists of sacri-
fices'; well, he proved it so in his fantastic and unruly
life. Gradually he sacrificed everything-his country,
too, at last. And if indeed he believed that in Nature
there was no colour, no line, but only light and shade,'
he was perhaps but a pioneer on the highway of much
modern French art. And yet how merely delightful are
those designs for tapestry which he painted on his return
from Italy in 1776, it would seem with such ease; that
scene of vintage, for instance, how delightful it is, how
charming is the girl in a black dress, how naturally her
pose is beautiful. Or again, it is a scene of blind man's
buff, where eight people hold hands, while one strikes
at random: how full of life is the little figure, who, in
a white dress and black mantilla, has thrown herself
backwards. And yet again, how modern is the effect of
the design The Parasol.
Inequality of a kind there is in his work, as though for
a moment in some of his portraits some terrible need for
haste, some inexplicable passion had mastered him to
the detriment of his work; so that at times he seems to
have been unable to compose himself to sufficient tran-
quillity for the exercise of his art. But he was the
last of the great artists who were always surrounded
by a picturesque life. You see the last of it, perhaps,
in the marvellous Family of Charles IV., where certain
vulgar persons, very complacent too, are sitting for their
portraits with a real and bourgeois trust in the painter
to make them appear charming, that is almost Victorian.
And then it is delightful to compare with this exquisite
exposure of stupidity the really distinguished painting
of the Duke of Osuna and his Family. And in looking
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on these works painted not much more than a hundred
years ago, we remember that much of the ritual of
existence that was not without its effect upon him,
perhaps, in spite of the dislike with which he seems to
have regarded it, has disappeared since his day.
A subtle brevity of wit enabled him to compose his
portraits, as it were, at a sitting; and so, though none of
his work is very perfect, though perhaps he was incapable
of perfectness, he has a profound strength and vitality
and passion that are very splendid, that sum up, as it
were, even with some magnificence, the old art of Spain.
'In Goya's grave ancient Spanish art lies buried,' said
Gautier.
Having forgone the consolations of the Catholic
Church, at least so far as was possible in his day, his
restlessness only increased. It is in all his work. Con-
sider that portrait, La Tirana. How suddenly she has
stopped to gaze at the painter, how short is the interval
between one scene of stage passion and the next! The
shadow on the paper in her hand will scarcely be still for
the throbbing of her pulses, the excitement of the delicate
nerves of the fingers.
It was perhaps in a failure to understand a world that
had ceased to be passionate about anything that his
restlessness, his anarchy, lay. Spain was prostrate
beneath the bayonets of France.

BLIND-MAN'S BUFF
GOYA
I
XII
THE ESCORIAL
WAS yesterday,' writes James Howell in his Familiar
Letters, 'I was yesterday at the Escorial to see the
monastery of St. Lawrence, the eighth wonder of the
World; and truly considering the site of the place, the
state of the thing, and the symmetry of the structure,
with divers other varieties, it may be called so; for what
I have seen in Italy and other places are but baubles
to it. It is built amongst a company of craggy, barren
hills, which makes the Air the hungrier and wholesomer:
it is built of freestone and marble, and that with such
solidity and moderate height that surely Philip II.'s chief
design was to make a sacrifice of it to Eternity, and to
contest with the Meteors and Time itself. It cost eight
millions, it was twenty-four years a building, and the
Founder himself saw it finished, and enjoyed it twelve
years after, and carry'd his Bones himself thither to be
buried.
'The reason that moved King Philip to waste so
much treasure, was a vow he had made at the battell
of St. Quintin, where he was forced to batter a monastery
of St. Lawrence Friers, and if he had the Victory, he
would erect such a monastery to St. Lawrence that the
World had not the like; therefore the form of it is like
a gridiron, the handle is a huge Royal Palace, and the
body a vast Monastery or Assembly of quadrangular
Cloysters; for there are as many as there be months in
the year. There be a hundred Monks, and every one
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THE CITIES OF SPAIN
hath his man and his mule, and a multitude of Officers.
Besides, there are three Libraries there full of the choicest
Books for all Sciences. It is beyond expression what
grots, gardens, walks, and Aqueducts there are there, and
what curious Fountains in the upper Cloysters, for there
be two stages of Cloysters: in fine, there is nothing that's
vulgar there. To take a view of every Room in the
House, one must make account to go ten miles; there's
a Vault called Pantheon under the highest Altar, which
is all paved, walled, and arched with Marble; there be a
number of huge silver candlesticks taller than I am;
Lamps three yards' compass, and divers Chalices and
Crosses of massy Gold: there is one Quire made all of
burnished Brass, Pictures and Statues like Giants, and a
world of glorious things, that purely ravished me. By
this mighty monument, it may be inferred that Philip II.,
though he was a little man, yet had vast gigantick
thoughts in him to leave such a huge Pile for posterity
to gaze upon and admire his memory.'
And yet it was this 'mighty monument' that Street,
writing in the middle of the nineteenth century, tells us
he did not stop to see. 'As far as the building is con-
cerned,' he says, 'it is enough, I think, to know that
Herrera designed it, to be satisfied that it will be cold
and insipid and formal in character. . . . The glimpses
I had of it,' he adds, 'amply justified this expectation.'
But it is not any wonder of architecture that you find in
that vast gigantic place, but the melancholy soul of a
dead King, the restless and sombre spirit of Philip II.
It is a great solitary palace hewn out of the mountains;
a mausoleum that is indifferent alike to the splendour of
life or the pitifulness of death, and is unmoved by the
greatness of man or the beauty of the sun or the tender-
ness of the wildflowers, that have never dared to grow
among its stones; a tomb created with fury, despair, and
THE ESCORIAL
167
fear, built with the terrifying precision and orderliness
of death, fastened with cold as with an inviolate jewel,
and there Silence is established, and Death is God.
What was the splendour of Lepanto or the ruin of the
Armada to him who had become the spirit of all this?
It is founded upon the flowers, and its stones are locked
with the dust of men. The mountains do not dwarf it
or annihilate it as they would do any other palace or
cathedral built among them. For it is, as it were, their
monument, since they alone of natural things are the
eternal enemy of life; starving it with cold, maddening
it with solitude, mocking it with stones; for in the utter-
most part of the sea some ship has flown a sail, some
bird has kissed the waters, and all the deserts blossom in
the spring, but the mountains know no life, they have
soared so far that none may abide the height, the rare-
ness, and the silence so near to God. Only immortal
things lost in the shadowless light surround them always
where God has annihilated all things in Himself. And
so it is as the tomb of Humanity that the Escorial stands
there among the mountains; within, everything is immortal
in Death. No spring or summer, autumn or winter, in
their beauty and their pride move through those immense
corridors, only some God passes, jealous of all things
that he has not immortalised with his icy touch. For
there are no seasons there, nor decay nor refreshment;
only the immense weariness, the perfect sterility of im-
mortality. A thousand chambers do not sum its dwell-
ings, yet it has but one inhabitant, Death, whose basilisk
eye forces us all to our knees while he kisses us with his
cold, immortal lips. Of that communion all must partake
and eat the white wafer of immortality. And therein is
the apotheosis of the Saints, the satisfaction of the last
curiosity. For this they have longed and suffered every
violation, and contemned themselves so sore; for this they
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THE CITIES OF SPAIN
have forgone the sunlight and enclosed themselves in
a narrow house, lest in the spring-time or among the
autumn fields, or in the beautiful ways of a city, or
between the hands of a woman, they should forget that
sacrament of immortality.
O beauties that never tarnish, O lights which know not
what it is to be eclipsed, O house of God, O temple of
unbreakable silence, how should I love you, I who have
cared for the dying day and the sweet mortal ways of
the world? For me there remain the flowers that are
presently fled away, the world which dies, and anon is
beautiful with resurrection, and life like a lily towering
to its own destruction, and love that falls into the heart
like a blossom and fades, and is enough. How should
I relinquish these that I have loved for an unwondering
immortality, an unmemoried silence?
Ah, as I wandered through those miles of corridors,
where even the tapestries have not faded and the strange
correct frescoes have escaped oblivion, and the dead are
imprisoned in imperishable marbles, and even the pictures
have put on immortality, I was thinking of the spring far
far away in the world where the peach-blossoms flutter
over the gardens like pink butterflies, and the willows are
laughing together beside the rivers, and the wind is blow-
ing over the sea; and I was weary because I was so far
away.
IT
XIII
TOLEDO
I
T is through a country fulfilled with an immense
energy, the energy of silence, that you come to the
greatest and most ancient of the cities of Castile. Toledo
is like a beautiful thought in a barren heart. Standing
aloft on a rugged precipitous hill, beneath which the
Tagus glides like a gorgeous golden snake, she is sur-
rounded on the one side by low barren mountains, while
on the other the desert sweeps past her from horizon to
horizon. A city of dust colour, desolate, proud, and
beautiful, she is isolated from the surrounding country
as though by an earthquake, so that you approach her
by the magnificent and haughty bridge of Alcántara
that she has, almost reluctantly one may think, cast
over the mysterious and brutal gorge through which
the Tagus slinks more terrifying than the moody Styx.
In the midst of this silent, tawny land, where the bones,
as it were, of the lean and beautiful hills are very visible,
she seems like a spirit, like some passionate and hopeless
dream, like the voice of one crying in the wilderness.
Long and long ago I have loved her in the summer
evenings as I watched the sunset from the Puerta del
Sol-sunsets more terrible than I have ever seen kindle
over Rome and the Campagna-when from the immense
and lonely desert with its uncertain and wandering roads
huge columns of dust would rise, some near, some a long
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THE CITIES OF SPAIN
way off, choking everything, blinding everything. Some-
times, golden and white, lit up by the sun, shaped
like the wings of birds, great clouds would float over
the desert; I have watched them, I have watched them;
but in that terrible summer they bring no showers,
though the whole country is thirsty, and in every church
and by the wayside men are praying for rain. For every-
where there is dearth, silence, and barrenness, and the
wind carries the dust to a great height from the desert
to the desert. Ah, in that sad and passionate hour
Toledo is like a blind and mutilated statue, some
marvellous, emaciated sphinx that is about to be con-
sumed by the desert and the sun. Then it is that
I have seen the mountains couched before her like
lionesses, and I have discerned in her eyes the glory that
has haunted her like a passion and entrenched her brow
with its terrible scars. Curved and beautiful as the
sword of an archangel, the Tagus lies at her feet like
a treasure, an endless tribute poured out before her by
the secret springs of the desert over which her name is
more wonderful than that of the greatest king.
You who come to her because you are sorry, when
you have lived within her walls even for a day, you will
forget your sadness, you will remember only beauty and
death. If you seek to read there the beautiful grave
Latin of the De Imitatione, or the lovely austere lines of
Dante, your eyes will too often leave the page to find
in the city herself all, and more than all, that you seek
in those sad solitary books. Secret and inflexible, what
arid and passionate beauty, what longing, what renuncia-
tion, what desire, what pride and loftiness of soul will
you not find in her nakedness! She has stripped her-
self of everything that she may save her soul alive, she
is dying for an idea: an outcast in a despicable world,
she has surrounded herself with silence and hidden her-
TOLEDO
171
self in the desert. And thus she has possessed herself
of everything, even of wisdom and beauty.
It is a fierce and bitter world at most times that
Toledo thus broods over; a country with little else to
be proud of; so that we seem to see in those spare
articulated mountains, those tawny barren hills, that
lonely forsaken desert, where the wind wanders like
some strange beautiful mood in the soul, the ruins of
a physical beauty very masculine and splendid, that has
been devoured by the life of the spirit, consumed by
the energy and fierceness of the soul-Toledo indeed,
having transmuted, as it were, all the visible loveliness
of that world into her own mysterious vitality that in
the end will destroy everything, even itself.
As you pass through her streets, that seem to be just
the corridors of some immense convent, you find that
little by little, bit by bit, life is falling from her, she is
passing away soon she will be but a fragment of
scarped cliff, a scarred hill-top, a forgotten sign, in
the midst of a land where there is only silence. Her
churches are fragments like the statues: there lies an
exquisite spoiled limb, here a lovely mutilated head;
and sometimes you will find just a little hand, perhaps—
all that is left of something so perfect and lovely, that
it will haunt you for days, and looking on it you will
forget everything that has been achieved by the modern
world, so full of vitality and beauty is that little relic of
a vanished dream. And so it is, as it were, always with
a sort of spiritual exaltation that you pass through those
shadowy rough ways, coming upon El Cristo de la Luz,
for instance, or the view over the Puente S. Martin, with
the same wonder, the same disturbance of spirit that you
would experience if, waking on a sunny morning, you
were to find some vestige in your room of that which
had only an existence in your dreams. For the Goths
172
THE CITIES OF SPAIN
have flung down their crowns and thundered by into
oblivion; one by one the Moors have crept away into
the desert; the kings and captains of Castile have
departed. She alone in a hostile world has kept her
ancient days about her, days that are forgotten, days
that are gone, clutching with old and worn fingers her
marvellous figured royalties, her robes of gold, her tissues
of needlework that are but rags now, wrapt as she is in
a profound dream, an immense contemplation, watching
anxiously every day to see the priest make Christ out of
Bread and Wine, very precious things in themselves in
a land so poor as this. Is it perhaps that faith in Christ
has devoured all faith in herself, so that without Him she
cannot lift her head or draw her sword? If only one
might rouse her a little from her contemplation! Is it
only contemplation; or is she dying there in her silence
under the blind dust-storm, the mighty limbs flung
mightily and the riding of war forgotten?
II
As one passes over the ancient bridge of Alcántara on
entering or leaving Toledo, one is always profoundly
moved, I think, by the tragic and naked desolation of
that deep sword-cut in the lean hills through which the
Tagus rushes towards some unknown disaster. Even
the banks of that yellow river are arid and unstable as
the sands of the sea; no green thing ever grows there,
only here and there, in the shadow of some fissure in the
tawny rocks, you may discover a few wretched and filthy
tents, in which a race half human and half brute, entirely
naked, burned by the sun and bitten by the wind, lurks
sullenly hidden from the world, living for the most part
on the fish that may be found in those terrible waters, or
TOLEDO
173
on the berries that grow here and there on the barren
hills. A more strange and mysterious spectacle you will
not find at the gates of any city in the world. In the
evening I have watched them, half ashamed of my
curiosity, when, in a storm of wind that flung the dust
against the city like rain, the Tagus confined within its
brutal walls of living rock rushed on its way, barking
with fury like some winged beast of Hades. Then this
strange people seemed to become possessed by the lost
soul of that monstrous river. With strange cries and
music they pursued some unseen deity up and down the
shore, rushing into the water that ravenously licked away
the yielding sands, flinging their arms aloft and cursing
the swift lowering clouds, clutching the dusty earth in
their fists and pouring it as water on their heads. With
shrieks and horrible contortions they seemed to seek to
propitiate some ancient obscene genius whom they
pursued relentlessly, even the children kneeling on the
shore burying their poor emaciated faces in the sand,
praying and cursing with a loud voice. But the river
swept on unheeding, while the white fingers of the dead,
of which Homer speaks, seemed to reach out of the yellow
flood clutching at the insubstantial dust that had fallen
through the ages from the wasting hills. Nor was I able
to discover who these wild and sorrowful folk might be,
that at the gates of the dead city worshipped the storm
and the yellow flood.
It is past the encampment of that strange and wretched
people that every one must pass on the way to Toledo.
After crossing the Puente Alcántara the road turns
sharply to the right, leading upwards at last to the Puerta
del Sol. Built by the Moors more than eight hundred
years ago of rough and rosy granite, it is to-day perhaps
the most lovely monument left in Toledo of that marvel-
lous enigmatic people. Puerta del Sol, the Gate of the
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THE CITIES OF SPAIN
Sun, they said; and it is really just that, the sun stream-
ing beneath its beautiful horse-shoe arch just before it
sinks into the desert, passing out of the world by this
gate, as it were, leaving behind it a sense of loss and
regret as though some infinite splendour had departed
for ever; a sorrow only to be understood in the South,
where everything becomes precious in the sun, so that
the meanest material, as stucco or whitewash, seems to
be indeed rich marble or alabaster, the brickwork all of
crushed jewels, while all the towers are lilies red and
white, and the very débris and ruins roses that have fallen
at last. Standing there at sunrise or sunset, for at mid-
day the whole earth is hidden in light, all that passionate
tawny world is before you. Far, far away stretches the
strong devouring desert, like an immense and bitter sea,
beating at the foot of the mountains starved and beautiful,
and very old. On the other side lies the Tagus, not the
strange and terrible flood that rushes under the Puente
Alcántara, but a lordly and golden river bringing refresh-
ment and life to the Vega, that follows it with garlands
green and grey, and many woods and fields rejoicing in
the wind. It is like a landscape by Rubens, as splendid
as that, as green and full of light; as artificial too, for it
has been hardly won as a great tribute from the desert,
and remains the one beautiful thing that mere industry
has produced, and even so not without a certain limita-
tion, its loveliness being for the most part not its own,
but lent to it by the desert itself, that will one day burn
it up again in its own fierce beauty. For it is not any
natural joy of wood and stream or broad meadow land
that you will find in the Vega of Toledo, but rather a
beauty of contrast, as it were, as though even here, too,
man had imposed for a moment his will, his tireless
ambition, on the desert itself, so that it had blossomed,
ah, not like the rose, but with a certain mortal splendour
TOLEDO
175
nevertheless, full of reassurance and comfort; a splendour
that is beginning to fade away, that is already at times
full of despair, that is about to be consumed by the desert
and the sun.
Something of this you will find, too, in Toledo herself,
in her terrible scarped bastions, that guard her so fiercely,
and yet in whose aspect we may often surprise an
unutterable fear of some enemy, some dauntless legion
that shall cross the desert under the thunder of innumer-
able banners, some fortunate merciless tyrant, or the
despicable footsteps of the modern world. Is it the
return of the Goth, or the vengeance of the Moor, or the
immense tyranny of democracy that she fears in her
loneliness? Ah, no army full of brutality and lust,
splendid with the blood of its victims, about to be over-
whelmed by its victories, will ever turn aside to enjoy
that old and precious body, preserved with unguents,
almost embalmed with balsams. Day by day she has
lifted up her eyes over that thirsty land and nothing
breaks the silence, no footsteps in the desert, no cry upon
the mountains, no rumour in the gate. At daybreak the
women gather at the fountains and the doors are not shut
in the streets; and at noon the sound of the grinding is
low in the byways, and all is hushed save for the voice of
one who sings of love in that long strange chant that is so
beautiful and sorrowful, and that ceases as suddenly as it
begins, while in the stillness the orange blossoms, that fill
the Patios with their fragrance, fall more softly than kisses
into the fountains, and all men are weary in the heat and
take their rest; and at evening the lovers go about the
city, and in all the gardens the roses are falling, and
desire is a burden; so dawn grows to sunset and sunset
dreams till dawn, and the days pursue one another, and
the years are spent and lie down in peace with the
flowers. And ever the enemy that she sees not, for
176
THE CITIES OF SPAIN
whom she is so watchful, draws nearer; already he is
encamped about her, battalion on battalion, legion on
legion, multitude on multitude, millions of grains of sand
that will one day bring her silence, death, and oblivion,
and give her dust for dust, when she who rose out of the
desert must return to it again.
Those walls that guard the city towards the Vega,
where nature has not left her impregnable, ruined though
they be, are certainly not the least interesting among her
treasures. For the older and narrower fortification, passing
from the Puerta del Sol by the Cambrón gate to the
Puente de S. Martin, was built before 711 by Wamba, the
greatest of the Gothic kings; it is perhaps all that is left
to us in Toledo of that age so obscure and confused.
The outer wall, built by Alfonso VI. in 1109, leaving the
older bastions where Puerta Nueva once stood, includes
the suburb of Antequeruela and joins the old Gothic
fortifications again at the Hospital de Dementes. It is
in these walls are set the great gates of the city, Puerta
del Sol, the more beautiful, in the old fortification, Puerta
de Visagra Antigua, a Moorish building of about 1108,
now disused, in the wall of Alfonso VI., a second entrance,
as it were, securing the Puerta del Sol. To-day it has
been superseded by the Puerta Visagra Actual, built in
1500 and dedicated by the people of Toledo to the great
Emperor Charles V.
As you enter Toledo to-day by the Puerta del Sol, and
climbing still, come at last into the Plaza de Zocodover,
you find yourself really in the midst of the city, life
having fled thither, as it were to a last stronghold, just
within the gates. Every way thence as you depart
further from that old and splendid Plaza, you meet with
desolation, silence, and ruin. How narrow these old
streets of Toledo are; the Zocodover itself, that magical

WATCACE RINGTO
PUERTA DEL CAMBRON, TOLEDO
TOLEDO
177
place where Cervantes walked, how small it is, though
full of life still in the cool evenings, when the whole city
seems to gather there under the arcades to listen to the
music, or to drink Horchatas, or to talk with a friend.
Among that throng of grave and restless people, priests
and beggars, light women and soldiers, the world and his
wife, simpler perhaps, but scarcely more picturesque than
in London or Paris, he who is blessed with the seeing eye
may discern, I think, many a familiar figure, and among
them surely Doña Tolosa herself, she who was no better
than she should have been, but in whom Don Quixote
saw nothing but modesty and perfection. For the most
wonderful history of the world, and the most blessed
and wise book that we may ever read, tells us how on
that first quest, before Don Quixote was made a knight,
he came to a certain inn and found there two strolling
wenches with the landlord, and among them they dubbed
him knight. And afterwards 'he ordered one of the
ladies to gird on his sword, which she did with the most
obliging freedom and discretion too, of which not a little
was needful to keep them from bursting with laughter at
every period of the ceremonies. . . . At girding on of the
sword the good lady said, 'God make you a fortunate
knight, and give you success in battle!' Don Quixote
asked her name, that he might know thenceforward to
whom he was indebted for the favour received, for he
intended her a share of the honour he should acquire by
the valour of his arm. She replied with much humility,
that she was called Tolosa, and was a cobbler's daughter,
of Toledo, who lived at the little shops of Sancho
Benegas; and wherever she was she would serve and
honour him as her lord. Don Quixote then desired her
for his sake thenceforward to add to her name the Don
and to call herself Doña Tolosa; which she promised to
do.' Not far away you may still find the place where
M
...
178
THE CITIES OF SPAIN
Cervantes lived and wrote the Ilustre Fregona; and as
he has told us himself, was it not while walking in the
Exchange here that he bought for a real divers old quires
and scrolls of books, among which was that greatest of
all books of the world, 'The History of Don Quixote of the
Mancha, written by Cid Hamet Benengeli, an Arabical
historiographer'?
To-day the Zocodover cannot be very different from
what it was in the sixteenth century; a little more dila-
pidated, a little less crowded, it may be, but substantially
the same at least, for it still retains its curious triangular
shape, where one side is like a bow, and the houses are
old and for the most part beautiful.
Not far away, on one of those seven hills on which
Toledo stands, the Alcázar towers over the city and the
Tagus; and while the Zocodover has remained much as it
was in old times, the Alcázar, built on the ruins of a
Roman castellum, used as a palace by Alfonso the Learned,
rebuilt by John II., by the Catholic Kings, by Charles V.,
and by Philip II., burned in 1710 during the War of the
Succession, rebuilt again by Cardinal Lorenzana in 1772,
burned once more, by the French, in 1810, and again so
lately as 1887, is a modern building, for the most part, in
course of restoration, a restoration that threatens to
destroy even that which the flames have left us. Only
the eastern façade, frowning over the Tagus, built by
Alfonso the Learned, and the northern front built by
Enrique de Egas in the sixteenth century, remain to tell
us of its ancient strength and beauty.
But in any general examination of the buildings of
Toledo it is not Christian work that chiefly interests us
at all, but the beautiful intricate work of the Moors in
their own mosque, in the synagogues, and in the churches.
Those votive crowns, discovered at Fuente de Guarrazar
and preserved to-day in the Musée de Cluny, are really

S
PUERTA DEL ZOCODOVER, TOLEDO
TOLEDO
179
all we possess of the old Gothic city; exquisite fragments
of precious metal, they interest us, after all, infinitely less
than the treasure-trove of Mycenae, that marvel strewn
on the bodies of the King of Kings and the daughter of
Priam, so fittingly dug up out of the brute earth in our time
by the fat Schliemann. However beautiful they may be,
those Gothic crowns mean how much less to us than just
one of those golden cups ornamented with little doves of
which Homer has told us. And so, since we may know
almost nothing of the Gothic kings, since we may find
Toledo to-day almost without a vestige of their royalty,
it is really a Moorish city we see, only less Oriental than
Córdova or Granada; discerning there at least, in any
attentive examination of her architecture, something
of the reticence, the unapproachable soul of the Arab
that lends to her image so tragic, so ambiguous an
aspect.
Conquered by the Moors in 711, Toledo remained in
their hands till Alfonso VI. wrested her from them in
1085, but in reality they possessed her much longer than
any such method of history will admit; for though in
1085 Alfonso entered by the Visagra gate, and had that
first Mass said in El Cristo de la Luz, the citizens re-
mained almost as Moorish, as Oriental, as before, and with
a certain eagerness continued to build for their conquerors
not less splendidly than they had done for themselves.
A tolerant people, in love with culture, one might think,
in a way that it has never been the fortune of Spain to
understand; for during their rule Mass was permitted to
be said in more than seven churches, while Prescott¹
tells us that 'the Christians in all matters exclusively
relating to themselves were governed by their own laws,
administered by their own judges. Their churches and
monasteries (rosae inter spinas) were scattered over the
1 Prescott, History of Ferdinand and Isabella, vol. i. p. 5.
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THE CITIES OF SPAIN
principal towns, and their clergy were allowed to display
the costume and celebrate the pompous ceremonial of
the Romish religion.' After the Christian conquest till
the time of the Inquisition, that gigantic and terrible
mistake for which Spain still pays the penalty, a certain
tolerance, while never anywhere at any time a note, as it
were, of Christianity, seems to have been practised; for
the Moors, really at that time the only civilised people
in Spain, continued to build, not only for themselves,
but for the Jews and for their conquerors. It is with a
certain surprise that the traveller discovers that nearly
all the buildings of the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth
centuries are more or less Moorish, in character at least;
while though the greatest building of all, the cathedral, is
an exception being entirely Gothic in style and feeling,
it is to be explained as the work, for the most part, of
foreigners, and not as any sudden energy or mastery on
the part of the Spaniards, who may certainly be said at
that time, as ever after, to have been incapable of building
a cathedral that will compare with Amiens and Notre
Dame de Paris. And so it is that with the exception
of the cathedral, which was the work of a certain
'Petrus Petri,' in the reign of Ferdinand III., who laid
the first stone in August 1227, all the really ancient
work in Toledo is Moorish, designed at least by Moorish
artists.
The only mosque which remains, El Cristo de la Luz,
is really the oldest building in Toledo. Built, as the
Arabic inscription asserts, in 922, it was certainly standing
in 1085, when Alfonso VI. entered the city, for it was here
that the first Mass of victory was celebrated. A legend
assures us that the Cid, as ever to the front in Spanish
history, passing this way on horseback, in the van of the
1 For further discussion of this difficult subject see Street, Gothic Archi
tecture in Spain, pp. 232-235. London, 1865.
TOLEDO
181
troops about to enter the conquered city, his horse fell on
its knees before the door of this mosque, and not long after
it was discovered that a crucifix, before which a little light
was burning, was embedded in the wall; so they named
the church the Christ of the Light. However this may
be, the Christians did not hesitate, first, to seize this
sanctuary of an alien religion, and later to spoil it by
adding an apse for their altar; and, indeed, that is but one
example of what the Christians have continually done in
Spain, their religion here, at any rate, seeming to prove
an insuperable obstacle to any reverence for beauty or
fitness.
To-day, however, in spite of desecration, the little mosque
remains a very beautiful casket of Oriental workmanship,
for the most part in the state in which Alfonso found
it in 1085. Measuring only some twenty-one feet by
twenty, it is divided into nine tiny spaces by four low
round columns of marble, the capitals of which are each
carved after a different design. Four horseshoe arches
spring from each capital, while the intermediate walls,
pierced with various arcades supported on pillars, are
carried up to the roof. Intricate beyond anything in
European architecture, it is rather as a piece of carving,
some wonderful shell on which a goldsmith has spent
his genius and his leisure, that it appears to us, than as
a building laboriously contrived with stones and plaster.
The two synagogues S. María la Blanca, founded in
the twelfth century, and Del Tránsito, built by Samuel
Levi, a rich Jew, treasurer to Pedro El Cruel, and finished
in 1366, are both Moorish works of great interest. They
seem to have been seized and desecrated by S. Vicente
Ferrar in 1405. This mad fanatic, who here in Spain is
in public estimation the equal of S. Teresa, is said to have
converted four thousand Jews in Toledo in the course of
one day. His brutality and cruelty should be proverbial,
182
THE CITIES OF SPAIN
but at Salamanca I heard the story of his great deeds
from the mouth of the superior of one of the colleges
there. That he roused the people of Toledo to fury till
they massacred the Jews was certainly in the mind of
this man, the servant of a Jew, the deluded disciple of
Him who was called Love, a mark of election to be
counted to him for righteousness. That such men still
hold the most precious youth of the country in their
hands is surely one of the most tragical things in Spain.
That temple of the spirit, the soul of the youth of a
nation, has suffered more terrible violation at the hands
of the priests than S. María la Blanca has done: they have
spoiled it as they spoiled the Mosque of Córdova, they have
destroyed its sincerity, and in their stupidity built up in-
stead a fantastic and intricate sophistry, that is but a poor
imitation of simple learning-let the Mosque of Córdova
stand as the symbol of their desecration of a nation.
In S. María la Blanca we may ignore their work, they
have not been able to rob so beautiful a thing of all its
sweetness. It is true that the exterior is entirely ruined,
but within, in spite of the sixteenth-century Christian
chancel, the genius of the Moors, so elaborate in its
economy of material, so delicate in its intricate splendour,
remains.
It is as though the very humility of the material,
mere plaster or stucco, had encouraged them to redeem
it from commonness by the splendour of their art, the
enthusiasm of their talent. They have cut and carved
the plaster, treating it with the same respect as they
would treat stone or marble, not casting it mechanically
as we should do. And thus, out of the simplest and most
homely substance, they have created a marvellously lovely
decoration, limited, if we may so express it, only in this,
that nowhere is there a single expression of life. To
create life was forbidden them by their religion; and even
TOLEDO
183
as, we may think, later, Spanish art died so soon, because
it could not sustain itself without the study of the nude,
without life, that is, in its most perfect essence, and
Spanish religion forbade it that refreshment, so Moorish
art perished in an immense elaboration of the hieroglyphic
ever struggling in agony to express itself in creation, ever
forbidden that relief and recreation by something stronger
than itself.
To-day, however, S. María la Blanca is in the hands
of the Government, which after so long has at last rescued
it from the Church of Spain. Much the same might be
said of Del Tránsito, a synagogue, finished in 1266. In
1492 it was given to the Knights of Calatrava, an order,
the first in Spain, founded in 1158 to fight against the
Moors. It appears to have been suppressed in 1495 by
the Catholic kings, but it still exists as a titular dignity.
This chamber, so splendid in proportion, has perhaps
been less easily spoiled than a more intricate building
would have been. The roof is the finest example in
Toledo of Moorish artesinado.' 'It is impossible,' says
Street, 'to deny the grandeur of the internal effect of this
room. The details are entirely unlike what I should wish
to see repeated; but the proportions, the contrasted
simplicity and intricacy of the lower and upper part of
the walls, the admission of all the light from above, and
the magnificence of the roof, might all be emulated in a
Gothic building. . . .
Nor in speaking of the mosque and the two synagogues of
Toledo have we exhausted the work of the Moors. Even to-
day the ordinary type of Toledan house is really Moorish,
consisting as it generally does of a long entrance passage
which an immense door, studded with nails, shuts off from
the street. Beyond this, and as it were in the midst of
the house, you come into the Patio, a court often cloistered,
sometimes in two stages, open to the sky. Here, where
184
THE CITIES OF SPAIN
you may generally find a well in the midst, the house-
holder and his family spend the hot summer days, living,
and sleeping for the siesta, in the cool shadows or even
under the trees that sometimes grow there. An awning
is, in the hottest months, stretched over this court, and all
around are set chairs and couches and carpets, brought
out of the house into the coolness of the open air and the
shade. Everywhere out of this court doors open into
the house, while in some of the finest palaces a fountain
plays sweetly through the hours.
And since the Moors taught so much wisdom and
civilisation to their enemies, it is not altogether with
surprise that we find them ready to make beautiful those
Christian chuches where, so soon after, they were to be
denounced. The tower of S. Roman, for instance, like
that of S. Tomé and many others, is Moorish work,
so lovely, so radiant, that nothing we may find later in
the cathedral, however beautiful it may be, comes to
us so fittingly, as it were, so precisely. We seem to
discern just there a kind of eloquence that makes even
the simplest Gothic work appear far-fetched, unnatural,
rhetorical. Those numberless pinnacles pointing up-
wards seem always a little ungrateful for the sun, a
little eager to insist upon that country where they need
no sun, as though any one could remember that without
sadness! And, indeed, in the south, it seems to me at
least, that the Gothic is always unsatisfying. It needs
the clouds and the sad-coloured days of the north to
reconcile us with anything but earth. And so, while in
a sense the cathedral is the glory of Toledo, being,
indeed, the chief work of art within its walls, it is really
a great northern building, a little artificial here in the
south, though beautiful too, with something of the
strangeness that seems to accompany all beautiful things,
informing them with a sort of surprise. And here, at any

TOLEDO
TOLEDO
185
rate, under a sky so different, in an atmosphere so clear
and lucid, while you might think that you were looking
upon some great French church, Amiens or Chartres,
perhaps, all the enthusiasm, the intensity of that longing
for another world, as it were, is emphasised, and, the
earth being so fair, the very spirit which has inspired
pointed architecture, in itself the expression of idealism,
of individualism and discontent, seems excessive, almost
absurd, since in the sunshine and the heat it is so difficult
to desire anything fairer than the world. And, indeed,
that candid, impartial sun lays bare all the infinite self-
deception and contrivance of a style not quite sane, a little
wilful in its inverted home-sickness. In the north, where
so often the mist and the rain spoil the sky, and drive the
spirit of man back on itself, as it were, the moodiness,
the hatred of just natural material things, as they are in
Northern Europe, implied in a cathedral such as that of
Chartres, for instance, is easy to explain; it is a mood of
the soul, that child of the light, which cannot be reconciled
out of the sun, which is the smile of God. But in Spain,
where the sky is infinite and the sun shines for so long,
all the weakness of that dislike of the world is exposed,
with a certain profound humour, it is true, but ruthlessly,
nevertheless, by those absolute elemental things which
are, as it were, the brothers of the spirit of man that is so
wilfully unregardful of them. For it is not a dissatis-
faction with what man has made of the world-a sort of
hatred of his own work, as it were-that we find ex-
pressed in the Gothic genius, but a denial of life, a real
anger at the sunlight that it should be so fair, at the
great beautiful mountains, at the energy of Nature about
her own immortal business, continually producing life.
It is an expression of the desire of the mind in certain
moods for an annihilation in God; an expression of
anarchy, too, seeing that it desires to undo the work of
186
THE CITIES OF SPAIN
the Creator, and to resolve everything into its elements,
to thrust us back into the helplessness from which we
And, in spite of itself almost, it is redeemed, as it
were, from this unforgivable sin by its own beauty. The
humour of just that! Here in Toledo it is indeed as
though you came upon a very beautiful woman in love
with death—a little mad about death-finding this her
greatest consolation: that her beauty was mortal, and
that it must soon suffer some change, must soon be lost
altogether in the profound and splendid vitality of a very
different perfection. It is then, as the equal of the finest
French churches, that we see the cathedral of Toledo,
and yet as less than they after all, since here the sky has
betrayed her.
The first stone of the church was laid with great
ceremony on August 14, 1227, by Fernando III., who had
also laid the first stone of Burgos Cathedral in 1221
when the Englishman, Maurice, was Bishop there. And
while in Burgos no architect's name has come down to us
here where we may find it in an interesting inscription
preserved, as it is said, in the Chapel of S. Catherine,'
it is unfortunately in the Latin form-Petrus Petri-so
that we are ignorant of his nationality. Street speaks
very definitely of the French work everywhere to be
found here, and suggests Pierre le Pierre as the real
name of the artist. 'The church,' he says, 'is thoroughly
French in its ground plan, and equally French in all its
details for some height from the ground; and it is not
until we reach the triforium of the choir that any other
influence is visible; but even here the work is French
work, only slightly modified by some acquaintance with
Moorish art, and not to such an extent as to be recog-
nised as Moresque anywhere else but here, in the close
neighbourhood of so much which suggests the probability
¹ See Street, Gothic Architecture in Spain, 1865, p. 234; op. cit., p. 235
TOLEDO
187
of its being so. The whole work is, indeed, a grand
protest against Mohammedan architecture, and I doubt
whether any city in the middle ages can show anything
so distinctly intended, and so positive in its opposition
to what was being done at the same time by other
architects, as this.'
However this may be, and coming from so learned an
architect it is a valuable piece of criticism, from the
advent of Petrus Petri in 1227 to 1425 the name of no
architect engaged on the cathedral has come down to
us;¹ yet, undoubtedly, this was the most important
period in the history of the church. The original
plan of the cathedral, we are told, 'consisted of a nave
with double aisles, seven bays in length, transepts of the
same projection as the aisles; a choir of one bay; and
the chevet formed by an apse to the choir of five bays,
with double aisles continued round it, and small chapels,
alternately square and circular in plan, between the
buttresses in its outer wall. Two western towers were
to have been erected beyond the west ends of the outer
aisles.' Only one tower was built, however, and even this
so late as the fifteenth century; while the great cloister
on the north, and all the chapels but one or two in the
apse, are additions; and, indeed, the whole of the exterior
of the church belongs now to the sixteenth, seventeenth,
eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, so that it is only
the interior which really interests us, ancient as it is
beyond anything we may find in all the exterior mag-
nificence of porch and pinnacle. Like most Gothic
churches in Spain, the cathedral of Toledo is almost
invisible; nor in any distant view of the city is it seen to
advantage, though it is true that from the Convent of
Nuestra Señora de la Valle, above the bridge of S. Martin,
beyond the Tagus, it seems to rise out of the city like a
¹ Cean-Bermudez, Arq. de Esp., vol. i. pp. 253-4.
188
THE CITIES OF SPAIN
casket of antique jewels, a piece of goldsmith's work,
fretted and chiselled and made beautiful by the labour of
the file.
If we confine ourselves to the ancient building itself,
ignoring for a moment its later incrustations, we find
ourselves in a very simple building, as simple, for
instance, as Notre Dame de Paris, the whole church
being really confined within its walls, which neither
transepts nor chapels are permitted to break. A sim-
plicity almost classic and very delightful, we may think,
as, passing into the church to-day, we see the uniformity
of a plan so self-contained and precise. That in itself,
perhaps, betrays its French genius, so lucid, so logical,
that is as opposed to the enthusiastic exuberance of the
Spaniard as to the more sober, melancholy, less precise
virtue of English work.
To-day, as you pass up and down that immense temple,
bewildered by the variety and number of the chapels, the
multitude of the altars, sculptures, ornaments, screens,
relics, pictures, jewels, lecterns, service-books, embroi-
deries, painted copes, gold and silver chalices, crucifixes,
monstrances inlaid with precious stones, banners heavy
with gold leaf, censers of the priceless silver of the
fifteenth century, ivory Madonnas of the fourteenth
century from France, glass of many colours, some of it
of great antiquity, together with rare carpets, altar
frontals, exquisite fine linen, lace, and musical instru-
ments, it is, I think, to the simple, ancient work in the
church itself that you return again and again, almost with
relief. And though, after all, no true lover of art would
venture to destroy a single statue, however churru-
ginesque, having come at last to see that even El
Transparente, that extraordinary monument of lunacy, a
little pathetic in its grimacing, insincere agony, is an
interesting expression of that strange madness which
TOLEDO
189
falls on all art just before it is about to destroy itself;
yet it is not the temperament but just the intellect that
is moved by these things, while from the beautiful church.
itself we receive a genuine and simple emotion as direct
as that which Greek work gives us, with much of the
beatitude that is always to be found in the old great
masters.
In the coro screens, however, we come upon work that
is as wonderful as anything to be found in Spain. It is
impossible, in a book such as this, to describe in any
detail work so elaborate and so various in subject as these
fourteenth-century sculptures. As fine as the statues in
the great Gothic churches of France, certainly here in
Spain they are the finest works of that age; and, while
a few similar sculptures are to be found in the western
doors at Burgos and at León,¹ they are really very rare,
and, perhaps, never so fine as here in Toledo. In the
north doorway of the cathedral similar work may be
found, a little less fresh, a little less naïve, it may
be, than those scenes from the Old Testament, but
very delightful too in its vigour, its simplicity—its
sweetness.
In the Sala Capitular, Juan of Borgoña has painted, in
fresco, the Last Judgment, with the Descent from the
Cross, a Pietà and Resurrection, and other subjects, very
much in the manner of Ghirlandajo, especially in the
Meeting of the Virgin and S. Elizabeth, where the round
faces, the gestures, and the folds of the dress seem to
suggest a pupil of the Italian master. In the sacristy is
an admirable painting, the Casting of Lots for Christ's
Raiment, by El Greco, whose work is not rare in this
city. I speak of El Greco elsewhere in this book, but
At Burgos: the Birth, the Assumption, and the Coronation of the B. V.M.
At León: Scenes from the Life of Christ, and the Virgin, the Last Judg.
ment, and the Coronation of the B. V.M.
186
THE CITIES OF SPAIN
the Creator, and to resolve everything into its elements,
to thrust us back into the helplessness from which we
came. And, in spite of itself almost, it is redeemed, as it
were, from this unforgivable sin by its own beauty. The
humour of just that! Here in Toledo it is indeed as
though you came upon a very beautiful woman in love
with death-a little mad about death-finding this her
greatest consolation: that her beauty was mortal, and
that it must soon suffer some change, must soon be lost
altogether in the profound and splendid vitality of a very
different perfection. It is then, as the equal of the finest
French churches, that we see the cathedral of Toledo,
and yet as less than they after all, since here the sky has
betrayed her.
The first stone of the church was laid with great
ceremony on August 14, 1227, by Fernando III., who had
also laid the first stone of Burgos Cathedral in 1221
when the Englishman, Maurice, was Bishop there. And
while in Burgos no architect's name has come down to us
here where we may find it in an interesting inscription
preserved, as it is said, in the Chapel of S. Catherine,'
it is unfortunately in the Latin form-Petrus Petri-so
that we are ignorant of his nationality. Street speaks
very definitely of the French work everywhere to be
found here, and suggests Pierre le Pierre as the real
name of the artist. 'The church,' he says, 'is thoroughly
French in its ground plan, and equally French in all its
details for some height from the ground; and it is not
until we reach the triforium of the choir that any other
influence is visible; but even here the work is French
work, only slightly modified by some acquaintance with
Moorish art, and not to such an extent as to be recog-
nised as Moresque anywhere else but here, in the close
neighbourhood of so much which suggests the probability
¹ See Street, Gothic Architecture in Spain, 1865, p. 234; op. cit., p. 235
TOLEDO
187
of its being so. The whole work is, indeed, a grand
protest against Mohammedan architecture, and I doubt
whether any city in the middle ages can show anything
so distinctly intended, and so positive in its opposition
to what was being done at the same time by other
architects, as this.'
However this may be, and coming from so learned an
architect it is a valuable piece of criticism, from the
advent of Petrus Petri in 1227 to 1425 the name of no
architect engaged on the cathedral has come down to
us; yet, undoubtedly, this was the most important
period in the history of the church. The original
plan of the cathedral, we are told, 'consisted of a nave
with double aisles, seven bays in length, transepts of the
same projection as the aisles; a choir of one bay; and
the chevet formed by an apse to the choir of five bays,
with double aisles continued round it, and small chapels,
alternately square and circular in plan, between the
buttresses in its outer wall. Two western towers were
to have been erected beyond the west ends of the outer
aisles.' Only one tower was built, however, and even this
so late as the fifteenth century; while the great cloister
on the north, and all the chapels but one or two in the
apse, are additions; and, indeed, the whole of the exterior
of the church belongs now to the sixteenth, seventeenth,
eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, so that it is only
the interior which really interests us, ancient as it is
beyond anything we may find in all the exterior mag-
nificence of porch and pinnacle. Like most Gothic
churches in Spain, the cathedral of Toledo is almost
invisible; nor in any distant view of the city is it seen to
advantage, though it is true that from the Convent of
Nuestra Señora de la Valle, above the bridge of S. Martin,
beyond the Tagus, it seems to rise out of the city like a
¹ Cean-Bermudez, Arq. de Esp., vol. i. pp. 253-4.
188
THE CITIES OF SPAIN
casket of antique jewels, a piece of goldsmith's work,
fretted and chiselled and made beautiful by the labour of
the file.
If we confine ourselves to the ancient building itself,
ignoring for a moment its later incrustations, we find
ourselves in a very simple building, as simple, for
instance, as Notre Dame de Paris, the whole church
being really confined within its walls, which neither
transepts nor chapels are permitted to break. A sim-
plicity almost classic and very delightful, we may think,
as, passing into the church to-day, we see the uniformity
of a plan so self-contained and precise. That in itself,
perhaps, betrays its French genius, so lucid, so logical,
that is as opposed to the enthusiastic exuberance of the
Spaniard as to the more sober, melancholy, less precise
virtue of English work.
To-day, as you pass up and down that immense temple,
bewildered by the variety and number of the chapels, the
multitude of the altars, sculptures, ornaments, screens,
relics, pictures, jewels, lecterns, service-books, embroi-
deries, painted copes, gold and silver chalices, crucifixes,
monstrances inlaid with precious stones, banners heavy
with gold leaf, censers of the priceless silver of the
fifteenth century, ivory Madonnas of the fourteenth
century from France, glass of many colours, some of it
of great antiquity, together with rare carpets, altar
frontals, exquisite fine linen, lace, and musical instru-
ments, it is, I think, to the simple, ancient work in the
church itself that you return again and again, almost with
relief. And though, after all, no true lover of art would
venture to destroy a single statue, however churru-
ginesque, having come at last to see that even El
Transparente, that extraordinary monument of lunacy, a
little pathetic in its grimacing, insincere agony, is an
interesting expression of that strange madness which
TOLEDO
189
falls on all art just before it is about to destroy itself;
yet it is not the temperament but just the intellect that
is moved by these things, while from the beautiful church
itself we receive a genuine and simple emotion as direct
as that which Greek work gives us, with much of the
beatitude that is always to be found in the old great
masters.
In the coro screens, however, we come upon work that
is as wonderful as anything to be found in Spain. It is
impossible, in a book such as this, to describe in any
detail work so elaborate and so various in subject as these
fourteenth-century sculptures. As fine as the statues in
the great Gothic churches of France, certainly here in
Spain they are the finest works of that age; and, while
a few similar sculptures are to be found in the western
doors at Burgos and at León,¹ they are really very rare,
and, perhaps, never so fine as here in Toledo. In the
north doorway of the cathedral similar work may be
found, a little less fresh, a little less naïve, it may
be, than those scenes from the Old Testament, but
very delightful too in its vigour, its simplicity—its
sweetness.
In the Sala Capitular, Juan of Borgoña has painted, in
fresco, the Last Judgment, with the Descent from the
Cross, a Pietà and Resurrection, and other subjects, very
much in the manner of Ghirlandajo, especially in the
Meeting of the Virgin and S. Elizabeth, where the round
faces, the gestures, and the folds of the dress seem to
suggest a pupil of the Italian master. In the sacristy is
an admirable painting, the Casting of Lots for Christ's
Raiment, by El Greco, whose work is not rare in this
city. I speak of El Greco elsewhere in this book, but
At Burgos: the Birth, the Assumption, and the Coronation of the B. V.M.
At León: Scenes from the Life of Christ, and the Virgin, the Last Judg.
ment, and the Coronation of the B. V.M.
190
THE CITIES OF SPAIN
here, at any rate, we may see him as still a pupil of
Titian, without his later mannerisms that, save in his
portraits, might seem to spoil his work for us.
It is not difficult to leave the cathedral of Toledo, for
here in Spain I think we learn to ignore monuments, to
be a little unregardful of churches, to care more for the
soft sky and the lines of the hills, the wideness of the
plains. And, standing over the bridge of S. Martin, or
on the heights beyond the Tagus, you may see the
history of the city, as it were, written in stone, the walls
of the Visigoths, the gates and mosque and towers of the
Moors, the cathedral of the Christians, and at last the
strange, boastful handiwork of the persecutors, those
Catholic kings who seem to have crowned Spain with
such marvellous and splendid ceremony, but with thorns,
S. Juan de los Reyes. Built to commemorate a victory
that, as victory always seems to be, was more disastrous
for the victors than for the vanquished, S. Juan occupies,
perhaps, the finest site in the city, and is in itself a
complete monument of barbarism. Here, undeterred
by the taste of the Moor or the intellect of France,
the Spanish kings expressed themselves in a vernacular,
as it were, so degenerate, so full of strange oaths and
feeble indecencies, that to-day, with much that is
noble lying in ruins around it, it is the most brutal
grotesque in Spain. With a gesture half imbecile, half
obscene, it expresses nothing but lust and the glory that
is so soon turned to ashes. So it might seem Toledo
ends in a kind of ineffectual gesticulation, destroyed
by the intoxication of her own glory, overwhelmed by
victories that were worthless. Like a suicide, already
in another world, she lingers beside the river ere she
makes the final decision. It is so you might think of
her as you look on this church-the last expression of
her glory. But if you stand over her on her own hills

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TOLEDO
191
towards sunset, and, with strained eyes, sad at heart with
the eternal sadness of the dying day, watch the shadows
cover mountain and plain and river, and at last, too, the
dear city over the valley, even this thing, too, is to be
understood, not with resentment but with a heart lifted
to welcome the stars.
сове
XIV
CÓRDOVA
ÓRDOVA is an image of desolation, tragic and
lamentable. She is like a ruined sepulchre for-
gotten in the midst of the desert from which even the
dead have stolen away. She is a dead city of the dead,
an immense catacomb of pallid gold bleached to the
whiteness of the unburied bones of man, a shining and
wasted Golgotha on which the sun beats all day long,
while the thirsty dust curls up in little tongues like
flames to taste the freshness of the wind.
Before her, shrunken and thirsty, a river passes into
the exaltation of the desert; and here and there on its
banks tall and ragged palms stand like huge skeletons
that seem about to fall to the earth, and from which
time has eaten away the grave-clothes and the flesh,
soaked though they were in unguents and preserving
oils. If you pass into her dilapidated palaces, barred but
empty like rifled tombs, everywhere there is the odour
of death, a strange and bitter smell, graveolent of the
rancid oil of the ointments, the pungent odour of the
unguents, the faded sweetness of the perfumes; and over
all, suffocating in its horror, the empty odour of death
itself, that will at last overpower bitter and sweet alike
in its own oblivion. And if you pass into the desert
that surrounds her with an old voluptuous silence, even
there too you will find nothing but dust and ashes; for
there is no more learning where the dead inhabit and
192

THE BRIDGE OF CORDOVA
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CÓRDOVA
193
that death's head should kiss death's head, it is not
to be thought of. . . .
It was dawn when I first saw Córdova from the old
dilapidated Roman bridge that still crosses the river
before the Gate of Triumph. In that hour, very early
in the morning, she seemed to me to be just a ruined
tomb where there was only sun, dust, and silence. Far,
far away the Guadalquivir, yellow and thirsty, with-
out the freshness of a river, slunk through the desert
that surrounds her always; while here and there on its
great banks of slime and sand a palm-tree rose into
the immense and quiet sky. It was as though I had
come upon some old dead city of Egypt, forgotten beside
the Nile.
Presently in the dawn an immense caravan of asses
and mules laden with white cement piled in pyramids
on their backs, began to pass over the bridge and to
enter the city. For long I watched them come through
the terrible dust and heat, driven by men with long
sticks, uttering strange and lamentable cries. Almost
suffocated, in the midst of the confusion of noise and
sun and dust which seemed to be just a dream, a vision
of some antique African daybreak, I turned to the city
herself, and there, amid a heap of gold-coloured ruined
walls, churches, and palaces—all ruined, ruined, ruined—
I saw the Mosque of Córdova.
You enter by the Court of Oranges: an immense
deserted Patio, planted with orange-trees, where the
song of the fountains is the only sound that breaks the
silence; and then passing through the Gate of the Palms
you find yourself in the Mosque itself, of which originally
the Patio, without wall or door or any let or hindrance,
was just a beautiful chapel, the trees, as it were, continuing
It is a garden enclosed, an orchard
the sanctuary.
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1
E
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THE CITIES OF SPAIN
among the tombs, an oasis among the ruins. As you
pass between those nine hundred columns from Carthage,
from Rome, from Byzantium, that uphold this beautiful
and holy place, where the perfume of the orange-blossoms,
the song of the fountains drift always like an endless
melody, it is as though you had suddenly come upon
some marvellous and ancient sepulture, the unique tomb
of a line of fabulous kings. The pillars stand there like
lilies fading in the coolness and the stillness of an im-
mortal evening, the very earth is precious with their
petals, and above are wreathed together the violet and
the vine.
Ah, I forgot the city, I forgot the desolation, I forgot
the dust that seems to have crumbled from innumerable
civilisations as I wandered in that holy and secret place;
I lost myself in a new contemplation; I kissed the old
voluptuous marbles; I touched the strange, precious
inscriptions, and with my finger I traced the name of
God. I remembered only beautiful things and joy, and
in the worn and sacred Mihrab where the knees of so
many who once cared for the soft sky have worn away
the marble, I went softly, softly, because of them.
But not enough, not enough were beauty and delight
for them who despised everything but the kingdom of
Heaven. In the broken heart of this beautiful temple
they have built their church; in the midst of this forest, so
strange and lovely, they have hidden the most brutal and
vulgar of their dreams; on the lilies, on the lilies trodden
under foot they have founded their heart's desire. Are
not these prowesses worthy to be written in the gold they
have so loved, and to be expressed to the view of all
ages? That obscene Baroque Cathedral in its fantastic
madness, its vulgar ostentation, its ruthless sacrifice of
even the loveliest thoughts to its own lust, is rather a
brothel than a church. Built in the midst of ruins made

COURT OF ORANGES MOSQUE OF CORDOVA
194
THE CITIES OF SPAIN
among the tombs, an oasis among the ruins. As you
pass between those nine hundred columns from Carthage,
from Rome, from Byzantium, that uphold this beautiful
and holy place, where the perfume of the orange-blossoms,
the song of the fountains drift always like an endless
melody, it is as though you had suddenly come upon
some marvellous and ancient sepulture, the unique tomb
of a line of fabulous kings. The pillars stand there like
lilies fading in the coolness and the stillness of an im-
mortal evening, the very earth is precious with their
petals, and above are wreathed together the violet and
the vine.
Ah, I forgot the city, I forgot the desolation, I forgot
the dust that seems to have crumbled from innumerable
civilisations as I wandered in that holy and secret place;
I lost myself in a new contemplation; I kissed the old
voluptuous marbles; I touched the strange, precious
inscriptions, and with my finger I traced the name of
God. I remembered only beautiful things and joy, and
in the worn and sacred Mihrab where the knees of so
many who once cared for the soft sky have worn away
the marble, I went softly, softly, because of them.
But not enough, not enough were beauty and delight
for them who despised everything but the kingdom of
Heaven. In the broken heart of this beautiful temple
they have built their church; in the midst of this forest, so
strange and lovely, they have hidden the most brutal and
vulgar of their dreams; on the lilies, on the lilies trodden
under foot they have founded their heart's desire. Are
not these prowesses worthy to be written in the gold they
have so loved, and to be expressed to the view of all
ages? That obscene Baroque Cathedral in its fantastic
madness, its vulgar ostentation, its ruthless sacrifice of
even the loveliest thoughts to its own lust, is rather a
brothel than a church. Built in the midst of ruins made

COURT OF ORANGES MOSQUE OF CORDOVA
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CÓRDOVA
195
by Christian priests it is an everlasting memorial of
their loyalty and devotion to Him who said 'Resist not
evil.' Verily they have told us that they are not men,
that the world is only evil continually; day and night
they have warned us that their hearts are desperately
wicked. So they have conceived of God as of one of
themselves to whom torture is a pleasant thing, whose
praise is the agony of men. For they have cut them-
selves with stones, they have lashed themselves with
scourges, they have made themselves eunuchs, not for
Him alone, but that they may assure themselves of the
kingdom of Heaven, that they may possess it utterly,
that they may spoil it of beauty and joy as they have
spoiled the world. And this kingdom has walls four-
square and high, and the streets thereof are set with
cruelty and jewels, and since they have loved gold,
there is much therein. But it is not with a multitude
of diamonds scattered with rubies that the ways are
set in it, but with the tears of men mingled with drops
of blood; for it is founded upon the pain of those who
fell by the way; its winds are the sighs of the weary, its
music is mixed of cries and agony, its gates are shut
against our friends. O lilies of the field, O flowers along
the meadows, O beasts and birds of the air, O sons of men,
how shall we forgive and forget them whose memory in
our hearts is written in scars and living fear, and in our
brains in hatred, pity, and contempt? Not here can we
rase out their remembrance, where their cathedral, like
a lewd laugh, interrupts a meditation and a prayer; but
in the fields among those who are bowed with labour,
in the company of women whom they despise and fear,
on the mountains and by the sea, and in life and in the
future that knows them not, in which they have no
part but that of a half-remembered catastrophe, a half-
forgotten shame.
XV
SEVILLE
HAT almost morbid impression of stillness and
THA
Talence that the traveller finds everywhere in
Córdova remains with him to the very gates of Seville,
where it vanishes before the curious smile, the languor-
ous gaiety, the subtle, unsatisfied excitement of the
greatest city of Andalusia. For after leaving Córdova
on the way southward, the landscape seems even more
arid than before, more melancholy in its immense
weariness and immobility, and while it has something
of the vastness of the sea, its melancholy and barren-
ness, there is nothing in those tawny plains of the
freshness and vitality of the ocean, but everywhere the
very fever and aspect of thirst, the only green things
being the ruined hedges of aloes and agaves bristling
with thorns, or a long line of sad-coloured olives, bitter
and grotesque, furiously twisted in an agony of thirst.
Now and then you come upon a cornfield, but it, too,
seems to be dying for want of water; and at nightfall
when the relief of evening passes over the world in a breath
of wind, it seems to whisper harshly, but so low that you
must bend your head to catch the sound, of the torture of
the day, the immense burden of life; while at dawn deeper
and deeper grows the sky till it is like a vast, hard jewel,
an inverted cup that has fallen over the world; and in all
that intensity of light, giddy almost with its own ecstasy,
and from which the slightest movement of the hand
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SEVILLE
197
would strike sparks and waves of light as one may make
bubbles and waves by dropping a stone in water, the
eyes dazzle so that the distant houses, the far hills, the
desert and the trees seem to be visionary, unreal, wrapped
in some glittering sort of mist, and even the shadow of
the train is saturated with colour, a long band of violet
on the tawny earth.
To enter Seville, beautiful among her orange-groves,
her acacias, her palms and fountains, beside a river that
is like the sea almost, and on which great merchantmen
ride at anchor, where there is always life, music, shade,
and refreshment, is like a recovery from sickness almost,
or the passing of a fever, like waking in perfect health
after a troubled night; and it might seem that it is this
immense relief from reality, as it were, which she offers
to all who come to her, that has made her so beloved.
For in spite of her fame she is not so marvellous as Avila,
nor so lamentable as Córdova, nor so beautiful as Toledo;
she is a strange, sweet sorceress, a little wise perhaps, in
whom love has degenerated into desire; but she offers
her lovers sleep, and in her arms you will forget every-
thing but the entrancing life of dreams; the quietness of
the gardens where there are only flowers and shade; the
pleasure of the fountains.
Her streets are narrow and tortuous, and some are so
quiet that you may catch the very words of a song sung
in an upper chamber at midday, and, if you will, you may
answer it from the street; in others you will hear nothing
but voices-in the chief thoroughfare, La Calle de las
Sierpes, for instance, which in summer-time is entirely
covered in with awnings, and through which no carriage
or wheeled traffic is permitted to pass. It is strange and
beautiful that sound of life, the whisper of many foot-
steps, the eager voices of men and women uninterrupted
by the deadening rumble of wheels; and it suggests
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THE CITIES OF SPAIN
again the dreaminess of the city, for indeed in sleep all
sounds come to us with hushed footsteps daintily down
the vista of a vision. And it is, I think, to the Calle de
las Sierpes, with its cafés and casinos open to the street
like caves almost, so that those without may speak with
and salute those within, that the traveller returns again
and again, finding there a quiet animation, an excite-
ment that overwhelms him, it is true, but not rudely
nor obviously, that is very characteristic of this city of
pleasure, a little weary of its own enchantment, and yet
convinced of its perfection, growing more subtle, less
naïve, less natural perhaps, and with a closer hold on
external things, just because they seem to be losing their
satisfaction.
On a summer evening after the terrible heat of the
day, Seville opens like some sweet night flower. In the
gardens, in the Plaza Nueva, in Las Delicias, and beside
the river people assemble to listen to music, to talk, and
to meet their friends, or just to breathe the air that under
the stars is not really fresher, only less dazzling, than in
the sunshine. Everywhere under the palms and orange-
trees seats are placed, and whole families come there to
spend many hours of the night. If at that hour you
walk through the city you will find it almost deserted;
here and there at a great barred window you may catch
sight for a moment of the pale faces of two lovers-the
man patiently standing in the street leaning against the
huge curved reja of the window, the woman within
guarded by those iron bars on which her little hands are
like flowers, whispering for hours; and more rarely you
may come upon some nocturne, as it were, where in some
tiny Plaza, or in the vista of a street, you will see a
beautiful cloaked figure playing a guitar before a house
that seems to be built of pearl, in the moonlight, and
something in the words or the music so sad, so unsatisfy.

AT SEVILLE
SEVILLE
199
ing, so passionate, will bring tears to your eyes because-
well, just because there are such things left in the world.
And by day and by night, as you pass along those narrow,
crooked streets, you will find yourself compelled to look
in at those great windows, to become aware of the life
of those who live in those immense houses like caverns,
where there is no privacy, unapproachable though they
be. No blinds or curtains of any sort hinder you from
looking into the quiet rooms or the patios, cool in the
fierce heat, where a fountain plays and the plain walls are
restful, and only seem to hear the song of the fountains,
or the beautiful syllables of the Castilian tongue, or music,
or the soft voices of young women. Passing by, you may
chance to see two girls seated playing music: the one in
the background, a little like a Madonna, is at the piano;
she is so still that she looks like a statue, a coloured bust
of sixteenth-century work; the girl in the foreground is
seated too, but her back is towards the window. She is
playing the violoncello, or perhaps she is waiting on some
divine interval; a spirit seems to have passed over her
soul in the notes of the music. Or again, you will chance
upon a family at dinner; great rugs are on the stones,
and the tiniest child is playing at the fountain, while the
mother looks anxiously towards it, smiling vaguely, with-
out eating anything, while the rest are busy with their
meal. Or again, you will see a little girl in the midst of
a lesson on the guitar; she is seated on a low chair, her
mouth puckered up and drawn a little to one side, her
forehead frowning, while her black hair has fallen over
her cheek; a crimson carnation is about to fall from her
hair, her little hands can hardly hold the instrument;
the master beats time with his foot, smiling at her; the
mother is busy sewing in a deep chair.
It is like paying visits in a dream, to walk through
the streets of Seville on a spring or summer night; and
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THE CITIES OF SPAIN
you may see there all the life of the city: women more
beautiful than flowers, in their summer dresses, lying on
couches-women admirable and strong, whose gowns hide
but to express the beauty of their bodies that seem to
live, to possess in themselves, as it were, some exquisite
vitality, that are as vivid as flames and more expressive
in form than I have ever seen in the north. Everywhere
in Seville you meet these women-in Triana, in Las
Delicias, in the houses of the wealthy, in the little shops
of the poor; for Seville seems to me to be, as it were,
a city of women; certainly the women are the most
beautiful and the most expressive of its marvels. They
are more grave than the deepest and coldest pools, they
are quieter than the darkest roses that turn away from
the sun; an extraordinary simplicity surrounds them
with an immense dignity, and their mysterious and rest-
ful spirit seems ever to keep something to itself, some
priceless secret, some superb gift, that, as I think, is never
quite given even to a lover or a husband. So simple and
sincere, that in the presence of the most beautiful you
are, as it were, unaware of, or at any rate untroubled by the
consciousness of sex; away from her you are overwhelmed
by just that, embarrassed by it in every thought of her;
so that in remembering some incident of the day in her
company you are full of wonder that at a touch of her
hands, those extraordinary, cool hands-or at the parting
of her lips when she was about to speak, you did not
tremble, or at least were not aware of the immense
physical appeal she appears now to have made to you.
But no, she belongs to herself. If you watch her walk
or dance, every movement, every gesture, conscious or
unconscious, will seem to you admirable, easy, full of
beauty and delight, intoxicating in its directness, its
subtle provocation. But if you speak to her a little later
you will be astonished that you saw anything but the
SEVILLE
201
sweetness and dignity of her spirit, in a self-possession
that is a charm in itself, and a perfect comprehension
that you are a friend, to whom she wishes to be kind.
She is not looking for your admiration. She is careless
of the impression she makes, because in no conceivable
circumstances can she imagine herself as being made
love to by you. If she loves you she will surprise you,
because she will love with all that dignity, sweetness,
abandonment, and sincerity that you have found in her;
but she will not flirt. In some way, I think, she might
find it vulgar, and certainly unworthy or very dangerous;
she is too sincere, too elemental, too passionate for that
common amusement.
It is perhaps a more sullen beauty that you discover
in the faces of the women of Triana or Macarena; often,
indeed, it is not beauty at all, but the ugliness of misery
and toil. How hard are the faces of some of the
Cigarreras who, morning and evening, cross the Triana
bridge on their way to or from their work! They are
employed, some five thousand of them, at the Fábrica
de Tabacos, a huge building between the Jardines del
Alcázar and the Jardin del Palacio. It is like a harem
this immense house full of women, and certainly the
most melancholy and distressing spectacle in Seville.
As you enter a strange odour of life almost over-
whelms you, penetrated as it is by a curious pungent
smell of tobacco and of closeness. After a few minutes
you are admitted to the Fábrica itself, where women
of every age, and every sort of ugliness and mediocrity-
some fat and disgusting, some thin or almost skeletons,
some enceintes, some with babies in cradles--are over-
whelmed by the immense crowd of women who are just
that, and do not call for your attention individually.
Some of these are so young as to be even yet children,
some are so old that you might think to-day must be their
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THE CITIES OF SPAIN
last. It is a herd, a legion, an army that is broken, and
you are at its mercy. And, indeed, that warning of your
approach which is sent to the forewomen before you enter,
is very necessary, for in the heat these poor people are
almost naked, and even when you enter they are little more
than half-clothed-you may see here and there one of the
less pretty furtively buttoning her chemise, or pinning a
handkerchief over her bosom. And you will be ashamed
that you have reminded her of life, that you have added
to her wretchedness even so wretched a remembrance.
It is a spectacle lamentable and disgusting, of an impos-
sible and shameful simplicity. Just in that simplicity,
I think, the traveller becomes aware of his vulgarity.
That intrusion made from curiosity grows hideous under
the strange scrutiny of those thousands of eyes. 'Do
not look, do not look,' they seem to say; and indeed
the hardness of their looks, their brazen courage, is more
pathetic than their tears would be. For in spite of the
brutality of many of these women, their impudent
callousness, their quite naïve animalism, it is, I think,
Woman herself you discover there in the midst, gazing
with great angry eyes, full of tears after all, at you who
have spied upon her, have overheard her, as it were, and
have despised her, or laughed at her misery, or brutally
enjoyed her in your heart. And so the dominant feel-
ing on coming from this dreadful place without air or
ventilation, where even the healthiest and strongest soon
become pale and ill, is one of discomfort, of fear, of shame,
in which pity for oneself almost overwhelms pity for
those poor people, whom it would not surprise one to
see leap up and, like a pack of hounds, tear the intruder
in pieces.
That melancholy simplicity which we have so little
understood is to be found almost everywhere in Seville;
life is naked, and if it is unashamed it is only because it
1
SEVILLE
203
is too proud and too unconscious to be aware, till we with
our strange eyes remind it of our vulgarity. And since
it is chiefly of women that the traveller is compelled to
think in this beautiful city that is full of them, where in
the narrow streets you feel the wind of their shawls, on
the Triana bridge where you are caught by the sensuous
and profound rhythm of their movement, in Triana itself
where you are surprised by their sullen smouldering
beauty, a little stupefied by dust and sun, in the Palacios
where you feel the cold passion of every gesture, every
glance, or in the Alcázar where you are overtaken by the
memory of one who walked or bathed there long and
long ago, and plucked the flowers and was much beloved,
and even in the Cathedral where on all sides Murillo's
Madonnas, full of a distracting and sensual loveliness,
smile, and smile pathetic in temptation; it is at last as a
divine woman, sufficient for us and yet so unsatisfying,
full of sweetness that is about to become wearying, that
you come to think of the city herself. If you go to the
Alcázar, for instance, expecting some great and stern
beauty, some altogether strong and lovely thing, you will
be disappointed; everywhere you will find flowers that
whisper together as though some one had but just passed
by, and as you enter room after room, court after court,
patio after patio, full of silence and sunlight, you
will almost hear the soft footsteps of some one who
has but just gone out, leaving a faint trace of some
presence in an inexplicable trouble on the threshold,
a suggestion of scent in the air, the trembling of a
curtain that has just felt the touch of a hand, a
fading breath on the window-pane through which some
one has glanced a moment before, a blossom fallen on
the pathway, the fluttering of a leaf on a tree where
some one has just plucked a fruit. And you remember
that María Padilla often passed through these gardens
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THE CITIES OF SPAIN
that under these very trees she trembled in the arms of
her lover, that these cold pavements have felt the tender-
ness of her feet, this marble the wealth and sweetness of
her body.
And seeing that Seville is so full of the memory of
women, of women's laughter like the song of a bird full
of delight, that you may often hear in the evenings in
Triana, of the voices of women singing children to sleep,
of their hands that float like lilies in the Sevillana dance, of
their movements full of languor and grace, it is after all
just their delight which is the charm of the city herself,
an infinite variety in which you will find everything you
desire. Something pensive, spell-bound, but half-real in
the strait, winding Moorish streets, the delicate, sleeping
patios, through which the moonlight creeps like a ghost,
combines inconsequently but not unfortunately at all
with the melancholy of the Fábrica or the Pottery sheds,
the romance of the busy Guadalquivir, the noise and
beauty of the quays, the groups of foreign sailors you
may see there; while the freedom of the sulky gipsies of
Triana, who seem ever about to cry out at you or to
spring upon you, contrasts strangely enough with the
dignity and seclusion of the women of Andalusia, their
immense ennui and calmness, as it were, their look of
exhausted delight, stupefied by their own stupidity.
And so in the spring or autumn evenings, and in
winter too, if after the strangely elaborate frugality of
the Spanish dinner you enter the Café de Novedades, for
instance, you may see the Andalusian women dancing
very beautifully, though a little wearily, to the clapping
of hands, the throb of the guitar, the eagerness of the
castanets. Just there, I think, you will find the most
perfect and the most natural expression of life in
Andalusia. It is not a joyful thing at all, this strange,
vivid struggle, in a dance that is like a battle in the soul
1
SEVILLE
205
that has communicated itself to the flesh. It is really
a passionate, almost a religious, expression of life, full
of an extraordinary seriousness that will produce tears
rather than laughter. It is as though in those few subtle
movements of the body an art very racy and national-
a dying art, it is true, but the only one left in Spain
that is even yet alive,—had sought to sum up and express,
as it were, in a beautiful allegory, the fundamental truths
of life, of love, of the creative enthusiasm of man, so
pitiful, so involuntary. The dancer stands before her
fellows who are seated in a semicircle behind her; she
wears a long dress that falls in folds to the ground.
After a time, while some sing intermittently, some now
and then play a guitar, some beat time with their hands
and stamp with their feet, she begins to dance to the
maddening thunder of the castanets. It is a dance of
the body, of the arms, of the fingers, of the head, in
which the feet have almost no active part. At first she
stands there like a flower that is almost overcome by the
sun, sleepy and full of languor; her arms seem like the
long stalks of the water-lilies that float in the pools.
Suddenly she trembles, something seems to have towered
in her heart and to be about to burst into blossom.
whole body is shaken in ecstasy; wave after wave of
emotion, of pure energy, as it were, sweeps over her
limbs; she is like a rose at dawn that, gazing at the
sunrise, has shaken the dew from the cup of its petals,
trembling with adoration. Her head leans on her
shoulder, she is awakening, the castanets have awakened
her; she undulates her hips almost imperceptibly. Life
has caught her in his arms, he has strained back her
head; slowly she has opened her eyelids, she rounds her
arms as though to embrace him, she holds out her mouth
heavy with an ungiven kiss. Without moving her feet
without bending her knees, slowly she turns her body to
Her
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THE CITIES OF SPAIN
follow him. At first she dances gravely, intermingling
her beautiful arms; her soul suffers in her body, her
body suffers in its sheath, she breathes deeply, she
cannot close her eyelids, and her mouth is like a red
rose about to fall. She strains voluptuously, she is free;
her body is all joyful, is overwhelmed by the splendour
of joy; it is as though she were caught in a profound and
serious laughter. With an immense energy life possesses
her, wrings from her cries that are as lamentable as those
of women at child-birth, cries that are drowned in the
thunder of innumerable hands, hands that seem to stretch
forth eagerly to touch life as it passes. Slowly she seems
to subside into herself, the undulations of her body grow
less and less violent; she seems to be weeping, she
seems about to fall, she is quite still: it is finished. In
a fierce frenzy, serious, grave, and passionate, the thunder
of applause, mingled with extraordinary and beautiful
cries, grows and dies away into silence in the shabby
room.
Just there it seems to me Seville is in her most charac-
teristic mood, finding in so trivial a thing as the dance
seems to us to be a means of expression for the most
profound simplicities of Nature; dancing being, indeed,
the only expression of life for which she cares, since it
sums up, as it were, all the rest in its symbolism, and
in its perfect marriage of matter and form shadows forth
in a mortal minute the whole activity of man.
XVI
LA CORRIDA DE TOROS
IF there is one thing in Spain which the traveller has
fully decided beforehand is intolerable and de-
grading, it is the bull-fight, which as a rule he hastens
to see. He excuses his extraordinary eagerness to assist
at a spectacle that is stupid and brutal, because he assures
himself it is so characteristic of Spain that to omit it is
almost to stay at home. But, indeed, his curiosity will
avail him little; the bull-fight is only to be enjoyed by
the instructed. As well might a man knowing nothing
of sport or games, hope to enjoy the equally brutal
fascination of a fox-hunt, a stag-hunt, a battue, or the
marvellous stupidity of a football match on a wet
November day, when your enthusiast will delight in a
game that to us is but little different from a filthy fight
in the mud. Even so the unflannelled fool revels in
the frightful idleness and ennui of a game of bat and
ball that endures inexplicably for three days. And so
the traveller, scornful of the bull-fight, though he will
not forgo it for the world, since, as he tells you, without
it he would not understand Spain, has made up his mind
long and long ago that foxes rather like being hunted,
pheasants rather enjoy a battue, especially if royalty be
present there in the October woods, that were so quiet
and so mysterious with life only a few hours ago. And
yet it seems never to have occurred to one so convincing
in his arguments, that if he really wish to understand
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THE CITIES OF SPAIN
Spain, the best way would be to learn the Castilian
tongue, for as yet he is unable to express his simplest
wants to his fellows, and has even failed to convince
them of his horror of the Corrida; so that they may
be pardoned if they gather from his frantic gestures
that he went there to be confirmed in his excellent
opinion of himself, his country, already determined in
his heart not to try to understand the Spaniard in his
love of it at all, but to be assured of his own pitifulness
and mercy.
The Englishman, in his quiet, superior way, is generally
a little bewildered by the noise and hurry and dust of
the Fiesta; he is not quite sure of himself, he does not
speak the language, he is disgusted already by the
confusion; but long before the end he is really ill, as
a rule very sorry for himself, and glad if possible to
make his escape. The brutality and cruelty he has
witnessed are not the cruelty and brutality he is used
to. Certainly he would pick up a rabbit he has wounded
and bend it back and kill it with his hands; he would
stand by and see a stag, after the torture of the chase,
bleed to death under the knife of the huntsman; but a
horse is another matter; he thinks well of the horse, and
cannot bear to see it suffer.
I confess frankly I am no judge of such things, being
no sportsman. Tell me then, you who are, if there be
any difference, and whether the rabbit suffers less than
the horse, the stag than the bull?
On the other hand, there is the American who is in
no doubt whatever as to the inferiority of all peoples,
and especially of the Latin races, to himself. He
condemns Spain altogether as an 'effete' country; its
people are to his quite material mind utterly worth-
less, superstitious, ignorant folk, who have failed just
where he looks for all success, in money-making. He
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209
goes to the Corrida and returns as disgusted as the
Englishman, but much more violent in his expression
of his loathing and contempt of such sport. At such
moments he is a spectacle for us all. But by chance,
in the midst of his denunciation, I opened the English-
paper to excuse myself from listening to his eloquent
tribute to his own country, 'My country,' as he said.
I read as follows: 'The reign of terror in the States-
borough region of Georgia is increasing in violence. The
excitement is spreading for miles in every direction,
throughout a rich agricultural district. Well-to-do
farmers are deliberately organising for the purposes of
ridding the community of obnoxious negroes, whose
continued existence is considered to be a public menace.
News comes through with difficulty, but it is admitted
that two negroes were shot and two hanged yesterday;
and a father and son were shot this morning. Numbers
are flogged daily till they become unconscious.'
I confess frankly I am no judge of such things, being
no sportsman. Tell me then, you who are, if there be
any difference, and whether the negro suffers less than
the horse, the flogged men than the bull?
It is not that I hate bull-fighting less, but that I hate
hypocrisy and stupidity more, so that it is difficult for
me not to doubt the sanity or the honesty of him who
defends pheasant-shooting, for instance, but condemns
the Spanish sport. But such an attitude is common
enough. Not long since in England I stood one Sunday
morning in a great field full of coops, where was a great
pheasant-run. My companion was the sportsman who
was rearing these little birds, hatching them in the
common way under hens, that he might kill them in
the autumn. It was a lovely spring day, everywhere
the earth rejoiced in the sun and the wind, the woods
were newly clad. My companion went among his
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nurslings with a great care and tenderness; some of
them were a little hunchbacked, a little consumptive;
the cold wet weather of the last week or two had con-
demned them. How sorry he was! As we stood there,
I, about to set out for Spain, began to speak of the bull-
fight, knowing him to be so keen a sportsman. I shall
not easily forget what he said of it, nor his contempt
for such a thing, there among his little birds, that he
was rearing so carefully under hens to kill in the autumn.
Yes, it is true some of them were a little consumptive.
Ah, how sorry he was. So many less to shoot, thought
he, so much less sport, he said.
Nor is the Englishman alone in his hypocrisy. Last
summer by chance I was staying, almost in my own
county, on the verge of Exmoor. Stag-hunting-not
the torture of some poor carted creature that only brutes
could be found to hunt week after week, but the chase
of the wild red deer-a thing that, as I have seen, cheers
the heart, and when the scent is high, breast high some-
times, is, if for perfect joy it be necessary to kill some-
thing, not altogether unworthy of the west country.
Now, while the run is often a sudden glory, a splendid
half-hour of animal life, rejoicing the heart of man and
beast, the death-for here, too, it is death you are set
on-is not a fine and splendid thing as the death of
the bull is. No man adventures his life against the life
of the stag, nor is your skill set against the strength
and fury of the deer. In few, the huntsman not unaided
cuts the stag's throat, and he dies suffocated in his own.
blood and before he is cold his legs are broken before
all, the 'slot' pocketed, and every one satisfied. Yet this
is a thing men and women are proud to see; you may
watch them munching sandwiches the while, and it
is not any expression of disgust you will hear. But I
confess some disgust was expressed when some American
:
LA CORRIDA DE TOROS
211
ladies asked to be 'blooded '-to be smeared with the
warm blood of the poor beast who had just coughed him-
self to death before their eyes-though their request
was granted.
All this being as it is, I confess that the horror of men
and women, English and American, for the bull-fight
puzzles me. It seems to me not more cruel-but in a
matter of cruelty who will split hairs ?-than the sports
in which they delight, and it is more skilful, more
splendid, managed with more art than any of them.
Moreover, we may remind the utilitarian Pharisee that
the bulls are slain for food also. However, since it
might seem in this matter that my reader and I are like
to part company, let us hear the Spaniard on his own
sport.
'It is no doubt,' says Valera, perhaps a little scorn-
fully, in his excellent novel Don Braulio, 'It is no
doubt a sublime spectacle to see a brave fellow with
no more defence or shield than a waving red scarf,
clothed in silk more fitting for a ball or fiesta than for
a terrible combat, stand up to face an angry and
powerful brute, bring it down on him, and give it its
death with a few inches of cold steel. If by ill-fortune
it should prove to be the human combatant that falls,
his death, though not moral, has a touch of grandeur,
and the pity and terror occasioned by it are purified by
beauty in due conformity with the laws of tragedy laid
down by the great Greek philosopher. The worst of it
is, that to reach this supreme moment of death we must
first look on at the coarse and brutal torture of the
noble creature which is doomed to die; we must see
its hide pierced with darts and spikes, which remain in
it unless they are torn out with fragments of the hide,
and look on at the atrocious cruelty inflicted on the
hapless horses. They vary the show by the convulsions
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and snortings of their death agony; their blood and
entrails are spilled on the sand; trampling on their
own bowels, on they go nevertheless, under the spurs
of the picador and the blows on their hollow flanks
dealt by a villainous rascal who ignominiously and
grotesquely comes behind, belabouring them as they
go, to increase their anguish and wring a remnant of
motion and energy from a dying beast which, even
though it cannot think, has nerves and can feel as we
do.... In short, the death of the bull is fine if the
matador strike true and give it no more than two or
three stabs; but frankly-and I am speaking in all
sincerity, nor am I given to rodomontado or senti-
mentality-all the preliminaries are an abomination,
view them as we may. And yet, and in spite of this,
bull-fights will not cease. We ourselves would not dare
to demand their suppression, for there is something
national and romantic about them that appeals to us.
We should be content with certain reforms if such were
possible.'
Thus the late Juan Valera, the best of modern Spanish
writers; he at least is no hypocrite, but says sincerely
what he thinks.
It is in Seville that you will find the home of the bull-
fight. The Plaza de Toros, a great amphitheatre on the
Marina by the Guadalquivir, holds some fourteen thousand
persons. The seats are arranged in palcos, asientos de
grada, asientos de barrera, and you pay more to sit in
the shade than in the sun. The best Corridas are run
at Easter. If you are an aficionado of the art you will
certainly go to Tablada on the eve of the bull-fight to
see the bulls. The way thither leads you along Las
Delicias to the open country across wide level fields
to the south of the city. Far away stretch the fields,
green and golden in the spring, it is true, utterly barren

OUTSIDE THE CITY WALLS, SEVILLE
LA CORRIDA DE TOROS
213
and thirsty at other times, with here a line of olives
gray and green, there a dark grove of orange-trees full
of golden fruit. In the midst of a great field far away
you first catch sight of the bulls, a whole herd of them,
unloosed and for the most part uncontrolled. There
are many admirers, among them half the gipsies and
idlers of Seville. An immense literature has sprung
up round the Corrida, and two newspapers devote them-
selves exclusively to the sport. Popular toreros are
millionaires and perhaps the best-known men in Spain,
though I do not think the Spanish press would find, in
their prowess in the bull-ring, promise of success at the
head of a government department as the English press
did with a famous cricketer.
The Corrida itself is certainly one of the sights of the
world. The great amphitheatre, half in shadow, is full
of people in every sort of splendid costume. Above is
the soft sky, below, as in Rome of old, the golden
sand of the arena, and everywhere around you the
people of Seville. Before you, on the sunny side of the
circus, thousands upon thousands of poor folk, splendid
in many colours, with yellow, red, green, and crimson
handkerchiefs, parasols, mantillas embroidered with
flowers. On the shady side thousands and again thou-
sands in every sort of costume, the white mantilla pre-
dominating among the women, though it is overwhelmed
by the innumerable sombreros of the men. Everywhere
the aguadores, with their great jars and jingling glasses,
push their way through the multitude, selling water;
all sorts of merchants crying oranges, newspapers, fans,
strange kinds of shellfish, and pictures of the toreros,
elbow their way among the crowd; but over all is the
immense inarticulate voice of the people, joyful with
laughter, uncertain and high with excitement, full of
expectation. Every sort of person is come to see the
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sport of Seville: and perhaps it is only at Easter you
may see this uncontrollable beast, as it really is,
passionately enjoying itself, not merely good humoured,
but furiously joyful in its expectation of pleasure, such
pleasure as it really understands and has in common
with the brutes-the spectacle of death, of destruction,
an acknowledged desire to see blood spilt there on the
ground, to see life destroyed, not without a sort of dis-
gusting terror and sensual satisfaction in the risk some
one will have to run for its pleasure, in the violence and
despair of that which must die for its delight: and if
it be the man who falls it thinks itself the more fortunate.
As I watched these people file in through the passage-
way, respectable families mixed for a moment with the
demi-monde, the father perhaps a rich shopkeeper full
of importance, the mother vulgarly overdressed, the
children bewildered and suspicious; or saw a group
of officers overwhelmed by the shouting of the hoarse
merchant of shellfish, or a stout and wealthy woman
of the middle class with her rings sunk into her fat
fingers, her frightful undulations, her jingling bangles,
her air of a successful bandit, a retired procuress, pass
by, full of scorn for these people more pitiful and more
stupid; or watched again the gilded youth of Seville
attired like bull-fighters swaggering and winking at the
frail beauties not far away, it seemed to me that I under-
stood the mere stupidity of this crowd which had come
to watch others play, play dangerously as I knew, and
for whose pleasure it was necessary for some brute
to die.
A long cry rose from the people, and then silence fell
upon the circus. Quite suddenly a trumpet-call was
flung out like an immense scarlet banner, and again
there was silence. The arena was cleared, and from
behind a door in the barriers came a fantastic and splendid
LA CORRIDA DE TOROS
215
procession of figures: first the three matadores in coloured
satin and gold followed by their cuadrillas, capeadores,
banderilleros, with the picadores on horseback, and last
of all the chulos to bear away the dead bull. All halted
before the president and saluted him. He flung a key
into the arena which the alguacil appointed caught, and
delivered to the torilero, who ran to a great door and
flung it open, while the rest seemed to be changing their
more gorgeous clothes for others less splendid.
There was a breathless silence, one could hear the
chulos walking towards the barrier over the sand. Then
very quietly in came the bull, looking about him a little
and snuffing suspiciously. An immense roar of applause
greeted him, but he marked it not, only the light con-
fused him, and the gay flaunting colours of the arena, the
threatening spears of the picadores. And it was with
them he had to fight; he seemed to realise it at last, to
resent the gaudiness of their uniforms, their gestures of
contempt, for suddenly he lowered his head and rushed
blindly at the nearest, a little to the left, who dexterously
swung his horse, half dead with fear already, so that he
almost avoided the charge, but the horns for all that
entered the horse's belly just before the stirrup, and
ripped it open. One of the toreros rushed forward,
thrusting his cloak in the bull's face, distracting him
from his enemy, but a frightful and sickening shriek
came to me over the maddening shouts of the people;
and I saw the horse, staggering wildly, its lips drawn
back baring its teeth, plunge, rise, and plunge again, and
at last fall on its knees and roll over. Immediately the
chulos rushed at it, dragged its rider to his feet, and
began to beat and kick it with fury, but it could not
rise. Then there came to me, over the noise of the
shouting that cry like the horrible motif of this spectacle;
it rose above the tumult, and, almost without ceasing,
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continued to the end. Sangre Sangre-they shouted,
for the picador had missed his blow. And yet there
was but little need to shout for blood, since already in
the arena certain great red stains were blackening in the
sun; while another picador, more skilful in his aim, had
pierced the bull's shoulder, and, unable to stop his onset,
had thrust his horse broadside between him and danger.
In vain the matador waved his cloak; again that fearful
shriek maddened the people, that nothing might satisfy,
for they still cried for blood. Nor were they long kept
waiting. Already one horse lay dying, writhing in
agony, covered with blood and offal, about to be des-
patched by the chulos, while another, ridiculous in its
pain, leaped madly about the arena, its bowels gushing
out, torn by its own hoofs, while the people laughed.
'A good bull,' said a man near me to his neighbour.
Then the trumpets sounded, and the first act was over.
The second act was less disgusting, though certainly
not less brutal. The picadores rode out, it was the turn
of the banderilleros. Armed with darts some three feet
long, these men have to place three pairs of banderillas
in the bull's neck. It is done somewhat in this way.
One of the two who are attached to each matador walks
towards the maddened brute till he is some ten feet
or so from him; stamping his foot he jeers at him, till
the bull, infuriated and stupid with pain, rushes at him
head down. Skilfully the banderillero plants his darts
and dodges the horns. Twice more this is done, till
there are six darts in place. When I looked again, after
an interval, it was thus they were torturing him before
they killed him, and on his breast, as he bellowed over
the sand, a stream of crimson, shameful in the sunlight,
dripped to the earth. And still the people shouted, and
there were among them women not less eager than the
rest, though, for the most part, I think, indeed, they
LA CORRIDA DE TOROS
217
turned away to hide the sight with their fans. At last it
was over, and the third act began, the one thing redeemed
a little by the valour of the matador from the infamy of
the rest. He advanced before the president, bowed,
spoke eloquently so that the people applauded, swore
to kill the bull even at the cost of his life, and at last
prepared to do it. Silence fell on the crowd. The
matador, his sword in hand, quite alone stepped forward,
a fine and splendid figure all in gold. Over a stick he
hung his muleta so that it concealed the sword. Care-
fully and fearlessly he went to the bull, in his left hand
was the scarlet cloth. Suddenly the bull was on him,
every one stood up, but by some perfect feint he passed
the muleta over the brute's head, and was safe for the
moment. The bull stopped, turned, charged again, and
so on perhaps many times. At last he decided to kill
him, having shown his art to perfection; he drew out
his sword from its hiding, and having forced the bull
by his skill to take the position he required, waited till he
charged again, and then with all his force thrust the
sword through the spine between the shoulders of his
adversary, who fell on its knees, and at last rolled over on
its side dead.
There were five more bulls to be killed before sunset,
but I made my way out without reluctance. Outside a
crowd of people, soldiers, and women of the town, who,
doubtless, could not afford to pay for admission, were
jeering at an old man who stood gesticulating in the sun.
As I passed by I caught these words: 'Fools and children
of fools! You are starving: will you shout only for the
blood of bulls? Bah, you are not worthy of Liberty.'
XVII
EARLY SPANISH PAINTING AND THE
A
SCHOOL OF SEVILLE
MONG a people that was a creation of the Church,
only really united by its religion, so peculiar in the
sincerity and fierceness of its hatred of the infidel, the
heretic, not strong enough, as it were, to tolerate the
smallest shortcoming in the observance of its Faith,
since just there lay the secret of its nationality; Art,
too, was, just a religious, vowed to God. And since the
national religion of Spain, the religion of the majority,
was really for so long rather a matter of hatred than of
love, of hatred of those it was treason to love, since they
seemed to have forfeited everything, even their humanity
in a denial of the truth that must be believed all the more
utterly since it cannot be known, or to have wandered
beyond the realms of sanity in a misapprehension of just
that, you have in Spanish art for the most part a grave and
almost brutal insistence upon the mere facts of those things
which seemed to be important, so terribly; the agony of
Christ, for instance, the dreadful physical torture of the
Divine Body that is already wasted away to a corpse in
many a picture of the Crucifixion, where you may see
really that agony and bloody sweat, stated with an
insistence and a simplicity that are pitiful in their pre-
occupation with the mere truth of a religion that was fast
materialising itself into just facts. If there is anything
there of the mysticism of S. Teresa or S. Juan de la Cruz,
which after all, maybe, was only a more strict attention
218
EARLY SPANISH PAINTING
219
to those truths than was possible for the people them-
selves, a continual contemplation of them, as it were; it is
not yet freed from all its coldness, and from much of its
horror, by the ardent beauty of spirit everywhere to be
found in the work as in the lives of those two poets who
were saints almost by chance, and because nothing that
was less difficult, no expression of their restlessness less
perfect, could have occupied them a whole life long be-
tween the silences that will not be questioned. They
seem to insist upon nothing but love in a world already
devoured by hate, and, in despair of something they
cannot understand, to urge God continually to hide them
in Himself, to cover them with His own most royal
silence. Personal as their achievement is, as all the
greatest achievements of Spain seem to have been, the
work of Loyola, the art of Velasquez, of Cervantes, they
fulfilled their dreams by sheer force of genius, of an
immense and passionate vitality; and while in Velasquez
we see the very lovely and perfect expression of his
own dream of a world, in other Spanish painters we
discern more clearly the dreams of Spain herself, of the
Spanish people, just because their genius does not obscure
the nationalism of their work. And so, whether it be in
Toledo or in Seville or in Estremadura or in Valencia,
Spanish art, already a hundred years later in its develop-
ment than the art of Italy, is just a religious hampered
by all the dogmatism of the Spanish ecclesiastic, ob-
livious not of life but of laughter, of the gaiety, for
instance, which you may find implicit almost, in Fra
Angelico's work, really just a drudge of the Church that,
so she said, set no store by things which rust and moth
doth corrupt. Thus it comes about that the Spanish
painter is the slave of his subject, a kind of lay preacher
repeating the words of the priest, illustrating them,
as it were, without any freedom whatsoever, since in a
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THE CITIES OF SPAIN
"
picture of the Crucifixion, for instance, there must be
four nails, not three, the Cross itself must be so high, so
broad, it must be made of flat wood even, not of round
or knotted. Madonna, too, must be of such an age, must
be dressed in a certain way prescribed by the Inquisition;
even to show her feet is heresy. An Art censorship was
established by the Church, which appointed a Familiar of
the Inquisition to watch these painters lest they should
offend. 'We give him commission and charge him
henceforth,' we read, 'that he take particular care to
inspect and visit all paintings of sacred subjects which
may stand in shops or in public places; if he find any-
thing to object to in them he is to take the picture before
the Lords of the Inquisition.' And the penalty for
making immodest paintings' was excommunication
and exile, Stirling-Maxwell tells us, while a painter of
Córdova, for instance, was imprisoned for representing
the Virgin in an embroidered petticoat; and the sculptor
Torrigiano died in the cells of the Inquisition for having
broken in a gust of passion one of his own statues of the
Virgin and Child.' All through the fifteenth and six-
teenth centuries, at any rate, the study of the Nude, that
'immodest painting,' as we may suppose, was absolutely
forbidden, and it was perhaps in thus cutting art off, as it
were, from its chief inspiration and delight that religion,
the frantic and powerful superstition which in Spain
passed for religion, really crippled art at its birth, from
which calamity it seems only to have recovered for a
moment in order to pronounce the beautiful secular name
of Velasquez, before it died in the arms of a Church which
had suddenly become merely sentimental. Thus the
Spanish Church gathered all things to herself; and
having already robbed one of the noblest peoples in
Europe of its intellect, and poisoned the springs of
learning, she proceeded with an ignorant brutality with-
EARLY SPANISH PAINTING
221
out precedent in Europe to spoil art, too, of all its
treasures, divorcing it from life, the which in its splen-
dour and nobility she had ever feared and denounced,
enslaving it and enforcing upon it in her service every
menial task, setting it to illustrate every disgraceful and
stupid lie, every abominable ugliness that here in Spain
she has been able successfully to thrust upon the world.
All power seems to have been given to her in heaven and
in earth, nor has she hesitated to use it for her own
advantage to the utmost, against humanity; and now the
Day of Judgment is at the dawn, not before the great
white Throne of God, but at the tribunal of man, who,
remembering old and beloved words, passes his sentence:
Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of
these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.
While much of the nameless work that remains at
Toledo, certain figures of saints that are still fading on
the wall, was painted there perhaps in the twelfth
century, it is really in Seville that the history of
Spanish painting may be said to begin with the work
of Juan Sanchez de Castro, the founder of the Seville
school. Almost nothing has come down to us of the
life of de Castro; we know merely that he was painting
in Seville between 1454 and 1516. The immense
grotesque S. Cristóbal that covers the wall near the
door of the old church of S. Julian in Seville, 'a child's
dream of a picture,' as Mr. Arthur Symons calls it, in his
illuminating study of the painters of Seville,¹ is spoiled
for us by the repainting of 1775. Many times the size
of life, stretching from floor to ceiling, all that remains
of the work of de Castro is the signature and the date
1484. In such smaller works of this painter as remain
1 The Painters of Seville, by Arthur Symons: Fortnightly Review,
January, 1901.
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THE CITIES OF SPAIN
to us, in that panel, for instance, of the Madonna with
S. Peter and S. Jerome now in the cathedral, we see the
immense debt Spanish painting owed to Flemish art, its
dependence upon it, as it were, for a means of expression.
It is an art that is intent on telling a story in detail, that
is dependent on a sort of realism, degrading beauty till
it is lost in something which seems to the majority to be
the truth: that cold and tortured Christ, for instance, who
looks so indifferently, so scornfully almost, from many an
old panel and altar piece up and down Spain. Was He
not scornful of the infidel whom He had just defeated
under their very eyes? they seem to ask themselves; was
He not cruel too, ah, in the flames of the Inquisition, to
the Jew, to the heretic, to all who would not believe in
Him? In that fresco of the Virgin painted in the four-
teenth century, in the Capilla de la Antigua, with so
naïve an apprehension of the beauty of decoration, of
pattern almost, you may see the last of Byzantine art in
Spain. Something has happened; it is no longer possible
to be satisfied with just that among a people who are
beginning to pay the penalty for having understood
Christianity as a mere fact to which they owe victories,
material greatness, military success; it is possible to
speak in beautiful symbols no longer; Christ and the
saints must be realised, must appeal to the soul really
through the torture, the emaciation of the body, their
physical pitifulness as it were, since the strength and
splendour of outward things, always so useful to the
Church, were beginning to be necessary to the true under-
standing, it might seem, of a religion that was already
almost a sort of patriotism. Those fires of the Inquisition
had made men acquainted with cruelty, with physical
torture, and so Jesus, who was hurt too, must have suffered
even more grievously, must have suffered the utmost, as
they assure us in their pictures. Flemish art, discontented
EARLY SPANISH PAINTING
223
for once with its own mediocre flat country, has contrived
for our delight a whole kingdom, as it were, full of exquisite
details, in which men wind in companies between the hills
or are gathered together, or work alone in the fields or
in a garden. Where in Spanish painting will you find
the happiness of all that? But it is this art, nevertheless,
so full of emphasis, of detail, of a sort of realism that
taught Spain the way to insist upon her own thoughts,
that excused her from nothing, and that, while it often
happened to be beautiful, was not really concerned with
that at all, content if it might express what it had seen
with its eyes, the eyes of the body, of the soul, without
omitting anything whatsoever. Spanish art is thus not
concerned with life in its delight, its splendid disaster,
but with life shorn of everything but its force in a world
haunted by the remembrance of Christ, of Christ who
has been murdered. Something of all this, that was only
completely expressed later, you may see perhaps in the
Entombment by Pedro Sanchez, in a private collection in
Seville, and in the Pietà of Juan Nuñez, a pupil of de Castro,
which may still be found in the cathedral. Even yet there
lingers in these pictures a certain decorative beauty obscur-
ing the mere horror of a scene that the thoughts of men,
the words of those who loved Him, have made beautiful.
And though this preoccupation with grief seems to be
forgotten for a moment in another picture by Nuñez, where
he has painted the archangels Michael and Gabriel gaily
almost, their wings bright with strange and brilliant
feathers, it is characteristic of the whole school of Spanish
painting, from the time of de Castro to the time of Goya,
with the exception of Velasquez, while Murillo's art is a
mere sentimental interlude, the one sincere insincerity
in the history of Spanish painting, that, as Mr. Ricketts
has pointed out, apart from the achievement of an exile
such as Ribera, of a foreigner like Greco, and of the court
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painter Velasquez, was the work of peasants patronised
by the Church, whose priests were peasants, too, for the
most part.
Of the work of Alejo Fernandez, the most important
Spanish painter of this early period, much remains in
the old churches of Seville. He was born, it might seem,
in Córdova, and worked there in the cathedral, though
three altar pieces he painted 'of the Life of Christ' have
been lost. He appears to have gone to Seville in 1508,
where his work in the Sacristía Alta, the Meeting of St.
Joachim and St. Anna, the Birth and Purification of the
Virgin, may still be seen in the cathedral.
You may find much of his work in the Sacristía itself,
an Adoration of the kings, for instance; and in S. Ana in
Triana, the Virgen de la Rosa, certainly his most lovely
picture, is still on the Trascoro. It is really an Italian
influence you find in his pictures, something which recalls
the delight of fifteenth-century Florentine work, spoiled of
its perfection by a remembrance of Flemish work perhaps,
that, as it might seem, was so unfortunately sombre, so
full of realistic details, of details only just redeemed from
realism, that first influenced Spanish painting. And
yet in the Virgen de la Rosa, for instance, the mere
strength of much of this Spanish work, its harshness, its
self-denial as it were, seems to be about to pass into just
sweetness, in the sumptuously dressed Madonna, who so
simply, so naturally almost, holds out a white rose for the
delight of a little child, while two angels a little embar-
rassed lean on the arms of her throne. It is in this
picture, perhaps, that you may see the first hint of the
Renaissance; and even as the cathedral of Seville seems
to sum up in itself that ambiguous period of belated
mediævalism that is about to be lost in the modern world,
so the work of Alejo Fernandez, much of it painted for
that great church, reminds you of the old Gothic work
EARLY SPANISH PAINTING
225
that had gone before it, while it expresses simply enough,
it may be, but with certainty nevertheless, the new
Italian influence that was just then dawning upon Spain.
If the work of Pedro de Campaña, that Dutchman whose
real name was Kempeneer, seems to come to nothing, to
be a false dawn, as it were, that foresees nevertheless the
marvellous work of Ribera, it is in Luis de Vargas, born
in Seville in 1502, that we find a Spaniard really for the
first time submitting himself to the Italian influence, to
the influence of Raphael. His work, as we may see it
to-day in the cathedral, or in the Convent of the Miseri-
cordia, is frankly Raphaelesque, and yet full of I know
not what fervour and religious exaltation, so that we are
not surprised to learn that he scourged himself, and that
by his bedside stood a coffin in which he often laid him-
self down to meditate upon death. In his portrait of
Contreras in the cathedral, you find a certain Flemish
realism still, an insistence upon detail, a minute northern
work full of character and sincerity. Perhaps it is just
that sincerity which he lost under the influence of
Raphael; certainly in La Gamba, for instance, the
Temporal Generation of Jesus Christ, something affirma
tive seems to have been lost in a composition full of
an uncertain futile gesticulation. It is not that he
does not mean what he says with so much over-emphasis,
but that he has felt it not in itself, but by means of
the emotion of another, and because another has told
him of it.
It is in Morales that we come upon Spanish painting
at last expressing itself, not in any collaboration with
Fleming or Italian, but originally and almost without an
accent. Luis de Morales was born in Badajoz about the
year 1509, he died in his native city in 1586, having lived
there all his life, save for a short visit to Madrid in 1564,
when he was past fifty years of age. Who his masters
P
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may have been in that far-away city we do not know,
only we seem to discern in his work, under the laboured,
slow craftmanship of the early Flemings, a sort of pre-
occupation with an art so living and full of energy as the
work of Michelangelo. And yet it is not anything pas-
sionate that is expressed in Morales' pictures, but a
melancholy and sorrow almost too brutal to be borne-
over which he has brooded until they have become a
sort of madness. El divino Morales, the Spaniards call
him, and indeed his pictures are concerned with nothing
but religion. In looking at his work, which is like a
series of terrible and distracting illustrations of the Via
Crucis, the Ecce Homo, the Christ at the Column, the
Pietà, the Virgin of Sorrows, for instance, we seem to
understand that here is the first painter of the Spanish
school, a man who was concerned only with the most
poignant and bitter memories of the life of Christ and
the Blessed Virgin, as unconcerned with life as a monk
might be, solitary in the immense cell that is the land-
scape of Estremadura, shut in from the world by league
after league of desolate pasture, where there is nothing
but sheep and goats. And while in some of his pictures,
in the Presentation of the Virgin, now in the Prado, for
instance, a certain sweetness has overwhelmed for a
moment the sorrow that he never really forgets; in those
sixteen works that still remain, neglected and dirty, in the
church of Arroyo del Puerco in Estremadura, the lament-
able agony of Christ and the Virgin is scarcely forgotten
for a moment, and we are face to face with a genuine and
sincere expression of Spanish art at last, its pessimism,
its preoccupation as it were with religion, with that fierce
unforgiving religion which still desired to avenge Christ
upon those who did not believe in Him.
In Juan de las Roelas-el Clerigo-the parson, born at
Seville in 1558, you may see very clearly how little Spain
EARLY SPANISH PAINTING
227
was able to understand the art of Venice. Just as she had
failed to understand the art of Raphael and of Michel-
angelo, so she failed to learn anything from the Bellini;
only here her failure seems to have been more lamentable.
Roelas is a man of a certain sensitiveness for art, only he
is incapable of any creative effort whatsoever, content
if he may translate the soft warm colours of Venice, as
far as he dare, into the terms of an art which has already
suffered every violation. A perfectly capable painter, you
might think, and just there is his damnation, in that he
is merely that and nothing more.
All that old world, so fiercely medieval for so long,
seems to be summed up in the work of Pacheco, in that
book about painting in which he defines so narrowly, as
we may think, the aims of art, and in the pictures of
Zurbarán, where the passion of the middle age passes
into a mere realism at last, tiresome and wholly without
sincerity. Zurbarán has been called 'All Spain,' and
though at first we may see but little that is characteristic
of a people so reserved, so distinguished, so democratic
in the work of a painter, who for Mr. Symons is just 'a
passionate mediocrity,' for Lord Leighton a painter
without 'fancy or imagination,' he is, as it seems to me,
just the expression of all that is common to the average
Spaniard, as it were-his delight in actual things, his
gloominess, his contempt for mere beauty, his love of
detail, expressed so wonderfully in the late Gothic work
of his cathedrals, his love of spectacle and ceremony.
Of all the Spanish painters Zurbarán seems to me to
have been without individuality, to be merely the mouth-
piece, as it were, of the majority, to have been content to
be just that. Born in Estremadura in 1598, a peasant, as
we might suppose, a rigid and well-trained servant of the
Church, he is really at his best when painting ecclesiastics
or monks, as in the Carthusian pictures in the Museo at
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Seville. In a picture of Christ crucified, now in the
Museo, you have a dramatic, religious, orthodox, and
realistic study that is not beautiful at all or sincere, but
merely a religious picture painted, as he was expected to
paint it, to impress the crowd.
Of Murillo so much has been written by those who
have loved him with enthusiasm, that in a chapter so
inadequate, where there is so much omitted that should
have been set down, and what there is seems now to be
but ill expressed, I hesitate to speak of a man that I have
not been able to love. But since an entire room has been
devoted to his work in the Prado, and the Museo of
Seville is full of his pictures, it may well be that I
am mistaken, and that he is a great painter after all,
and not merely a sincere, self-willed, and vulgar soul,
stupidly sentimental, sensual so sentimentally, as he
has seemed to me. Actual obvious things seem to have
overwhelmed him; he is delighted with the obviously
pretty ways of angels, the physical loveliness, bountifully
Spanish, of the Virgin, who even in this, too, has not
disappointed the world that he seems ever to have found
easily satisfied, full of superficial thankfulness. And
thus, not without a certain southern tactfulness, he
becomes a realist for whom the visible world does not
exist. He can create a sort of life, too, just for a
moment, while you are looking, as it were, but after-
wards you find the picture has escaped you. And he
was content with just that; he was always winning
applause, his works are so full of a kind of superficial
characterisation that the people loved them. When
Velasquez told him, kindly enough, to go to Venice to
study the great masters, he did not quite understand,
was really incapable of understanding, so he returned
to Seville, and continued to paint, over and over again,
just the same things, in his three manners.
EARLY SPANISH PAINTING
229
'How perfectly sweet Murillo always is,' I heard an
American lady say before one of his pictures in the
Prado. Even an American could not say that before
Titian, or Rembrandt, or Rubens, or Velasquez. But
it is quite true. Murillo is always sweet, at all times, in
every picture. And sometimes he is so moved by his
own sweetness that he seems about to burst into tears.
Emotion, yes, it is that which you will find in his work
before anything else; emotion neither profound nor
simple, but continually radiant, ecstatic almost, a little
confusing at first, because it is so sincere, so exactly
what he could not but mean it to be. And at last we
seem to discern the truth of the whole matter in just that
continual ecstasy. His work is without reserve, without
any suggestion of intellect; he has felt keenly but not
profoundly very many emotions, very many thoughts,
but they are always the thoughts of every one else, and
there is not an idea in the whole of his work. There is
no 'fundamental brain work' in his pictures, he is always
smiling, or tearful, or weeping, and so he has never a
moment to think.
It is thus, it seems to me, that Spanish art came to end,
in a kind of emotionalism, characteristic enough of Seville
herself, which was ever the true home of art, such as it was,
in Spain.
It remained for El Greco, Ribera, and Velasquez, to
place Spanish painting among the great schools of
European art; and it is their names that are to-day
first in our minds when we speak of the Spanish school
of painting.
THE
XVIII
JEREZ
from Seville to Cadiz passes at first through
way
groves of oranges, pomegranates, and olives, coming
at last out on to an immense heath, very lonely and
desolate, where the only living things are the herds of
bulls, almost black in the sunset that fills the desert
with its glory. Sometimes in the twilight you may
see some of them come down together to the water
to drink, and something in the forsaken and savage
loneliness of this arid and burning land will remind
you of Morocco, where the leopards come down to
drink at the pools at evening and bark at the moon.
And if at midday this sad and forsaken country
is invisible under the summer sun, in the dawn or
at sunset or in the night it is full of mystery and
enchantment, since the world itself is so little with you,
and your real companions are the great solitary stars
that hang like lamps in heaven to light you, alone of all
men, on your way. For the sun has set; even the colour
of the earth is hidden from you, and all you may see is a
mystery of blue and gold. Now and then you may hear
the wind walking in the gardens of olives, sometimes in
the deep sky a star leans across the shoulder of the
mountains; at that time, really alone with God, you
may, perhaps, understand something of the profound
susceptibility of the Spaniard to religion; face to face
with your own soul you will be eager to save yourself,
by any means, from annihilation, from the immense
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JEREZ
231
silence that you cannot break. And when dawn comes
at last, already a little weary, and really without fresh-
ness or youth, it may be, you will see a few white houses
far, far away, or a solitary horseman, gigantic against the
sky, or a man asleep, sitting far back on his ass, or a
herd of swine at a distance, moving in a cloud of dust,
or a great bird, motionless in heaven, hovering over the
carcase of a dead mule; but they will all seem strange to
you, a mirage in the dawn, things of a dream that soon
fade away into the immense horizons.
It is quite another impression that you receive in
Jerez, the busy town where for three hundred years
Englishmen have suffered and prospered, lived and died.
It was of one of these I was reading, on a long
afternoon I spent there on my way to the sea; and
since his tale is one of those which can never be old,
and again because he was my countryman, being a good
western man, whose name was Richard Peake, born in
Tavistock, in Devon, in the seventeenth century, I beg
my reader's leave to set down his naïve, heroic story, as
he wrote it.
RICHARD PEAKE'S TALE
Loving Countrymen! Not to weary you with long
preambles, unnecessary for you to read, troublesome
for me to set down; I will come roundly to the matter:
entreating you, not to cast a malicious eye upon my
actions, nor rashly to condemn them, nor to stagger in
your opinions of my performance; since I am ready with
my life to justify what I set down, the truth of this
relation being warranted by noble proofs and testimonies
not to be questioned.
I am a Western man; Devonshire my country, and
Tavistock my place of habitation.
I know not what the court of a King means, nor what
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the fine phrases of silken courtiers are. A good ship I
know, and a poor cabin, and the language of a cannon:
and therefore, as my breeding has been rough, scorning
delicacy; and my present being consisteth altogether
upon the soldier (blunt, plain, and unpolished), so must
my writings be, proceeding from fingers fitter for the
pike than the pen. And so, kind Countrymen! I pray
you to receive them.
Neither ought you to expect better from me, because
I am but the chronicler of my own story.
After I had seen the beginning and ending of the
Algiers voyage; I came home somewhat more acquainted
with the world but little amended in estate: my body
more wasted and weather-beaten; but my purse, never
the fuller, nor my pockets thicker lined.
Then the drum beating up for a new expedition, in
which many noble gentlemen and heroical spirits were
to venture their honour, lives, and fortunes; cables could
not hold me: for away I would, and along I vowed to go,
and did so.
The design opening itself at sea for Cadiz, proud I
was to be employed there; where so many gallants and
English worthies did by their examples encourage the
common soldiers to honourable darings. The ship I
went in was called the Convertine, one of the Navy
Royal; the Captain, Thomas Portar.
On the two-and-twentieth day of October, being a
Saturday, 1625; our fleet came into Cadiz, about three
o'clock in the afternoon : we, being in all, some 110 sail.
The Saturday night, some sixteen sail of the Hol-
landers, and about ten White Hall Men (who in England
are called colliers), were commanded to fight against the
Castle of Punthal, standing three miles from Cadiz:
who did so accordingly; and discharged in that service,
at the least, 1600 shot,
JEREZ
233
On the Sunday morning following, the Earl of Essex,
going up very early, and an hour at least before us, to
the fight; commanded our ship, the Convertine, being of
his squadron, to follow him: the Castle playing hard and
hotly upon his Lordship.
Captain Portar and the master of our ship, whose
name is Master Hill, having, upon sight of so fierce an
encounter, an equal desire to do something worthy of
themselves and their country; came up so close to the
Castle as possibly men in such a danger either could or
durst adventure, and there fought bravely. The Castle
bestowed upon us a hot salutation (and well becoming
our approach) with bullets; whose first shot killed three
of our men, passing through and through our ship; the
second killed four; and the third two more at least, with
great spoil and battery to our ship: the last shot flying
so close to Captain Portar that, with the windage of
the bullet, his very hands had almost lost the sense of
feeling, being struck into a sudden numbness.
Upon this, Captain Portar perceiving the danger we
and our ship were in, commanded a number of us
to get upon the upper deck; and with our small shot
to try if we could not force the cannoniers from their
ordnance.
We presently advanced ourselves, fell close to our
work and plied them with pellets. In which hot and
dangerous service, one Master William Jewell behaved
himself both manly and like a noble soldier, express-
ing much valour, ability of body, and readiness: with
whom and some few more (I, among the rest) stood the
brunt, which continued about three hours.
Our ship lay all this while with her starboard side to
the fort; which beat us continually with at least two
hundred muskets, whose bullets flew so thick that our
shrouds were torn in pieces, and our tacklings rent to
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THE CITIES OF SPAIN
nothing and when she came off, there were to be seen
five hundred bullets, at the least, sticking in her side. I,
for my part (without vain-glory be it spoken) discharged
at this time, some threescore and ten shot; as they
recounted to me, who charged my pieces for me.
In the heat of this fight, Sir William Saint Leger,
whether called up by my Lord of Essex or coming of
himself I know not, seeing us so hardly beset, and that
we had but few shot upon our deck in regard of the
enemy's numbers which played upon us: came, with a
valiant and noble resolution, out of another ship into
ours; bringing some forty soldiers with him. Who there
with us, renewed a second fight as hot or hotter than the
former where in this fight, one of our bullets was shot
into the mouth of a Spanish cannon, where it sticketh
fast and putteth that roarer to silence.
Upon this bravery, they of the fort began to wax
calmer and cooler: and in the end, most part of their
gunners being slain, gave over shooting; but yielded not
the fort until night.
Whilst this skirmish continued, a company of Spaniards
within the castle, by the advantage of a wall whose end
jutted out, they still as they discharged retired behind it,
saving themselves and extremely annoying us: I removed
into the forecastle of our ship, and so plied them with
hailshot, that they forsook their stand. What men on
our own part were lost by their small shot I cannot well
remember, but sure I am, not very many: yet the
Spaniards afterwards before the Governor of Cadiz, con-
fessed they lost about fifty; whose muskets they cast into
a well because our men should not use them, throwing
the dead bodies in after.
My hurts and bruises here received, albeit they were
neither many nor dangerous, yet were they such that
when the fight was done; many gentlemen in our ship,
JEREZ
235
for my encouragement, gave me money. During this
battle the Hollanders and White Hall Men, you must
think, were not idle, for their great pieces went off con-
tinually from such of their ships as could conveniently
discharge their fire, because our ships lay between them
and the fort: and they so closely plied their work that
at this battery were discharged from their ordnanc、 at
least four thousand bullets.
The castle being thus quieted, though as yet not
yielded; the Earl of Essex, about twelve at noon, landed
his regiment close by the fort, the Spaniards looking over
the walls to behold them. Upon the sight of which,
many of those within the castle (to the number of six
score) ran away; we pursuing them with shouts, hallo-
ings, and loud noises, and now and then a piece of
ordnance overtook some of the Spanish hares, and stayed
them from running further.
Part of our men being thus landed, they marched up
not above a slight shot off, and there rested them-
selves. Then, about six at night, the castle yielded
upon composition to depart with their arms and colours
flying, and no man to offend them; which was performed
accordingly.
The Captain of the fort, his name was Don Francisco
Bustamente; who presently upon the delivery, was carried
aboard the Lord General's ship, where he had a soldierly
welcome: and the next day, he and all his company were
put over to Puerto Real upon the mainland, because they
should not go to Cadiz, which is an island.
On the Monday, having begun early in the morning,
all our forces about noon were landed, and presently
marched up to a bridge between Punthal and Cadiz.
In going up to which some of our men were unfor-
tunately and unmanly surprised; and before they knew
their own danger had there their throats cut. Some
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THE CITIES OF SPAIN
had their brains beaten out with the stocks of muskets,
others their noses sliced off; whilst some heads were
spurned up and down the streets like footballs; and
some ears worn in scorn in Spanish hats. For when I
was in prison in Cadiz, whither some of these Spanish
picaroes were brought in for flying from the castle, I
was an eyewitness of Englishmen's ears being worn in
that despiteful manner.
What the forces being on shore did or how far they
went up I cannot tell, for I was no land soldier, and
therefore all that while kept aboard. Yet about twelve
o'clock, when they were marched out of sight, I (knowing
that other Englishmen had done the like the very same
day) ventured on shore likewise, to refresh myself: with
my sword only by my side, because I thought that the
late storms had beaten all the Spaniards in, and therefore
I feared no danger.
On therefore I softly walked, viewing the desolation
of such a place: for I saw nobody. Yet I had not gone
far from the shore, but some Englishmen were come even
almost to our ships; and from certain gardens had
brought with them many oranges and lemons. The
sight of these sharpened my stomach the more to go on,
because I had a desire to present some of those fruits
to my Captain. Hereupon I demanded of them, 'what
danger there was in going?' They said, 'None, but that
all was hushed, and not a Spaniard stirring.' We parted;
they to the ships, I forward.
And before I had reached a mile, I found (for all their
talking of no danger) three Englishmen stark dead; being
slain lying in the way, it being full of sandy pits, so that
I could hardly find the passage: and one, some small
distance from them, not fully dead. The groans which
he uttered led me to him; and finding him lying on his
belly; I called to him, and turning him on his back saw
JEREZ
237
his wounds, and said, 'Brother, what villain hath done
this mischief to thee?' He lamented in sighs and doleful
looks; and casting up his eyes to heaven, but could not
speak. I then resolved, and was about it, for Christian
charity's sake and for country's sake; to have carried him
on my back to our ships, far off though they lay; and
there, if by any possible means it could have been done,
to have recovered him.
But my good intents were prevented. For on a sudden,
came rushing in upon me a Spanish horseman, whose
name, as afterwards I was informed, was Don Juan of
Cadiz, a knight. I seeing him make speedily and fiercely
at me with his drawn weapon, suddenly whipped out
mine, wrapping my cloak about mine arm. Five or six
skirmishes we had; and for a pretty while, fought off
and on.
At last, I getting with much ado, to the top of a sandy
hillock, the horseman nimbly followed up after. By good
tortune to me (though bad to himself) he had no petronel
or pistols about him: and there clapping spurs to his
horse's sides; his intent, as it seemed, was with full career
to ride over me, and trample me under his horse's feet.
But a providence greater than his fury, was my guard.
Time was it for me to look about warily and to lay
about lustily; to defend a poor life so hardly distressed.
As therefore his horse was violently breaking in upon
me, I struck him in the eyes with a flap of my cloak.
Upon which, turning sideward, I took my advantage; and,
as readily as I could, stepping in, it pleased God that I
should pluck my enemy down and have him at my mercy
for life: which notwithstanding I gave him, he falling on
his knees, and crying out in French to me. 'Pardonnez-
moi, je vous prie, je suis un bon Chrêtien' ('Pardon me,
sir, I am a good Christian ').
I, seeing him brave, and having a soldier's mind to
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THE CITIES OF SPAIN
rifle him, I searched for jewels but found none, only five
pieces of eight about him in all, amounting to twenty
shillings English. Yet he had gold, but that I could not
come by. For I was in haste to have sent his Spanish
knighthood home on foot, and to have taught his horse
an English pace. Thus far my voyage for oranges had
sped well; but in the end, it proved a sour sauce to me:
and it is harder to keep a victory than to obtain one. So
here it fell out with mine.
For fourteen Spanish musketeers spying me so busy
about one of their countrymen, bent all the mouths
of their pieces to kill me; which they could not well
do, without endangering Don Juan's life. So that I was
enforced (and glad I escaped so too) to yield myself
their prisoner. True valour, I see, goes not always in
good clothes. For he, whom before I had surprised,
seeing me fast in the snare; and as the event proved,
disdaining that his countrymen should report him so
dishonoured; most basely, when my hands were in a
manner bound behind me, drew out his weapon, which
the rest had taken from me to give him, and wounded
me through the face, from ear to ear: and had there killed
me had not the fourteen musketeers rescued me from his
rage. Upon this I was led in triumph into the town of
Cadiz: an owl not more wondered and hooted at; a dog
not more cursed.
In my being led thus along the streets, a Fleming
spying me cried out aloud, 'Whither do you lead this
English dog? Kill him! kill him! he is no Christian.'
And with that breaking through the crowd in upon those
who held me; ran me into the body with a halbert, at the
reins of my back, at the least four inches.
One Don Fernando, an ancient gentleman, was sent
down this summer from the King at Madrid with soldiers :
but before our fleet came, the soldiers were discharged;
JEREZ
239
they of Cadiz never suspecting that we meant to put in
there.
Before him, was I brought to be examined: yet few or
no questions at all were demanded of me; because he
saw that I was all bloody in my clothes, and so wounded
in my face and jaws that I could hardly speak. I was
therefore committed presently to prison, where I lay
eighteen days: the noble gentleman giving express
charge that the best surgeons should be sent for: lest
being so basely hurt and handled by cowards, I should
be demanded of his hands.
I being thus taken on the Monday when I went on
shore, the fleet departed the Friday following from Cadiz,
at the same time when I was there a prisoner. Yet thus
honestly was I used by my worthy friend Captain Portar.
He, above my deserving, complaining that he feared that
he had lost such a man; my Lord General, by the solici-
tation of Master John Glanville, Secretary to the Fleet,
sent three men on shore to inquire in Cadiz for me; and
to offer, if I were taken, any reasonable ransom. But the
town thinking me to be a better prize than indeed I was;
denied me, and would not part from me. Then came a
command to the Terniente or Governour of Cadiz to have
me sent to Sherrys, otherwise called Xerez, lying three
leagues from Cadiz.
Wondrously unwilling, could I otherwise have chosen,
was I to go to Xerez, because I feared I should then be
put to torture.
Having therefore a young man (an Englishman and a
merchant, whose name was Goodrow), my fellow prisoner
who lay there for debt, and so I thinking there was no
way with me but one (that I must be sent packing to my
long home); thus I spake unto him, 'Countryman! what
my name is our partnership in misery hath made you
know, and with it, know that I am a Devonshire man
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THE CITIES OF SPAIN
born, and Tavistock the place of my once abiding. I
beseech you! if God ever send you liberty, and that
you sail into England; take that country in your way.
Commend me to my wife and children made wretched
by me; an unfortunate husband and father. Tell them
and my friends (I entreat you, for God's cause) that
if I be, as I suspect I shall be, put to death in Sherris,
I will die a Christian soldier: no way, I hope, dishonour-
ing my King, country, or the justice of my cause, or
my religion.' Anon after, away was I conveyed with a
strong guard by the Governor of Cadiz and brought to
Xerez on a Thursday about twelve at night.
On the Sunday following, two friars were sent to me;
both of them being Irishmen, and speaking very good
English. One of them was called Padre Juan. After a
sad and grave salutation, 'Brother,' quoth he, 'I come in
love to you and charity to your soul to confess you;
and if to us, as your spiritual ghostly fathers, you will lay
open your sins, we will forgive them and make your way
to heaven for to-morrow you must die.'
I desired them that they would give me a little respite
that I might retire into a private chamber; and instantly
I would repair to them, and give them satisfaction.
Leave I had; away I went; and immediately returned.
They asked me if I had yet resolved, and whether I
would come to my confession?' I told them, that 'I had
been at confession already.' One of them answered,
'With whom?' I answered, 'With God the Father.'
'And with nobody else?' said the other. 'Yes,' quoth I,
'and with Jesus Christ my Redeemer; who hath both
power and will to forgive all men their sins, that truly
repent. Before these Two have I fallen on my knees, and
confessed my grievous offences; and trust They will give
me a free absolution and pardon.'
'What think you of the Pope?' said Father John. I
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241
answered, 'I knew him not.' They hereupon, shaking
their heads, told me they were sorry for me' and so
departed.
Whilst thus I lay at Xerez, the Captain of the fort (at
Punthal), Don Francisco Bustamente, was brought in
prisoner for his life, because he delivered up the castle;
but whether he died for it or not, I cannot tell. My day
of trial being come, I was brought from prison into the
town of Xerez by two drums and a hundred shot, before
three Dukes, four Condes or Earls, four Marquises,
besides other great persons. The town having in it, at
least, five thousand soldiers.
At my first appearing before the Lords, my sword lying
before them on a table, the Duke of Medina asked me
'if I knew that weapon.' It was reached to me. I took
it and embraced it with mine arms; and, with tears in
mine eyes, kissed the pummel of it. He then demanded,
'how many men I had killed with that weapon?' I told
him, 'If I had killed one, I had not been there now before
that princely assembly: for when I had him at my foot,
begging for mercy, I gave him life; yet he, then very
poorly, did me a mischief.' Then they asked Don John
(my prisoner) 'what wounds I gave him?' He said
'None.' Upon this he was rebuked, and told 'That if
upon our first encounter he had run me through, it had
been a fair and noble triumph; but so to wound me, being
in the hands of others, they held it base.'
Then said the Duke of Medina to me, 'Come on,
Englishman! what ship came you in?' I told him
'The Convertine.' 'Who was your Captain?' 'Captain
Portar.' 'What ordnance carried your ship?' I said
'Forty pieces.' But the Lords looking all this while
on a paper which they held in their hands, the Duke
of Medina said, 'In their note there were but thirty-
eight.'
Q
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THE CITIES OF SPAIN
In that paper-as after I was informed by my two
interpreters-there was set down the number of our ships,
their burden, men, munition, victuals, captains, etc., as
perfect as we ourselves had them in England.
'Of what strength,' quoth another Duke,' is the fort at
Plymouth?' I answered,' Very strong.' 'What ordnance
in it?' 'Fifty,' said I. 'That is not so,' said he, 'there
are but seventeen.' 'How many soldiers in the fort?'
I answered, 'Two hundred.' That is not so,' quoth a
Conde, 'there are but twenty.'
"
The Marquis Alquenezes asked me, 'Of what strength
the little island was before Plymouth?' I told him, ‘I
knew not.' 'Then,' quoth he, 'we do.'
'Is Plymouth a walled town?' 'Yes, my Lords.' 'And
a good wall?' 'Yes,' said I, 'a very good wall.' 'True,'
says a Duke, 'to leap over with a staff!' 'And hath
the town,' said the Duke of Medina, 'strong gates?'
'Yes.' 'But,' quoth he, 'there was neither wood nor iron
to those gates, but two days before your fleet came away.'
Now before I go any further, let me not forget to tell
you, that my two Irish confessors had been here in
England the last summer, and when our fleet came from
England, they came for Spain; having seen our King at
Plymouth when the soldiers there showed their arms, and
did then diligently observe what the King did, and how
he carried himself.
'How did it chance,' said the Duke Giron, 'that you
did not in all this bravery of the fleet, take Cadiz as you
took Punthal?' I replied, 'That the Lord General might
easily have taken Cadiz, for he had near a thousand
scaling ladders to set up, and a thousand men to lose;
but he was loth to rob an almshouse, having a better
market to go to. Cadiz,' I told them, 'was held poor,
unmanned, and unmunitioned.' What better market?'
said Medina. I told him, 'Genoa or Lisbon.' And as
JEREZ
243
I heard there was instantly, upon this, an army of six
thousand soldiers sent to Lisbon.
'Then,' quoth one of the Earls, 'when thou meetest me
in Plymouth, wilt thou bid me welcome?' I modestly
told him, 'I could wish they would not too hastily come
to Plymouth, for they should find it another manner of
place than as now they slighted it.'
Many other questions were put to me by these great
Dons; which so well as God did enable me I answered.
They speaking in Spanish, and their words interpreted
to me by those two Irishmen before spoken of, who also
related my several answers to the Lords.
And by the common people, who encompassed me
round, many jeerings, mockeries, scorns, and bitter jests
were to my face thrown upon our nation; which I durst
not so much as bite my lip against, but with an enforced
patient ear stood still, and let them run on in their
revilings.
At the length, amongst many other reproaches and
spiteful names, one of the Spaniards called Englishmen
Gallinas (hens). At which the great Lords fell a laugh-
ing. Hereupon one of the Dukes, pointing to the Spanish
soldiers, bade me note how their King kept them-and
indeed they were all wondrously brave in apparel; hats,
bands, cuffs, garters, etc., and some of them in chains of
gold-and asked further, 'If I thought these would
prove such hens as our English, when next year they
should come into England?' I said, 'No.' But being
somewhat emboldened by his merry countenance, I told
him as merrily, 'I thought they would be within one
degree of hens.' 'What meanest thou by that?' said a
Conde. I replied, 'They would prove pullets or chickens.'
'Darest thou then,' quoth the Duke of Medina, with a
brow half angry, 'fight with one of these Spanish pullets?'
'O my Lord!' said I, 'I am a prisoner and my life at
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stake; and therefore dare not to be so bold as to ad-
venture upon any such action. There were here of us
English, some fourteen thousand; in which number, there
were above twelve thousand better and stouter men than
ever I shall be: yet with the license of this princely
assembly, I dare hazard the breaking of a rapier.' And
withal told him, 'He is unworthy of the name of an
Englishman, that should refuse to fight with one man of
any nation whatsoever.' Hereupon my shackles were
knocked off; and my iron ring and chain taken from my
neck.
Room was made for the combatants; rapier and
dagger were the weapons. A Spanish champion pre-
sented himself, named Signior Tiago: when, after we
had played some reasonable good time, I disarmed him,
as thus, I caught his rapier betwixt the bars of my
poniard and there held it, till I closed with him; and
tripping up his heels, I took his weapons out of his hands
and delivered them to the Dukes.
I could wish that all you, my dear Countrymen, who
read this relation had either been there, without danger,
to have beheld us: or that he with whom I fought were
here in person, to justify the issue of that combat.
I was then demanded, 'If I durst fight against an-
other?' I told them, 'My heart was good to adventure;
but humbly requested them to give me pardon, if I
refused.'
For to myself I too well knew that the Spaniard is
haughty, impatient of the least affront; and when he
receives but a touch of any dishonour, disgrace or blemish
(especially in his own country and from an Englishman),
his revenge is implacable, mortal and bloody.
Yet being by the noblemen pressed again and again,
to try my fortune with another; I (seeing my life in the
lion's paw, to struggle with whom for safety there was
JEREZ
245
no way but one, and being afraid to displease them) said
'that if their Graces and Greatnesses would give me
leave to play at mine own country weapon called the
quarterstaff, I was then ready there, an opposite against
any comer, whom they would call forth and would
willingly lay down my life before those Princes to do
them service; provided my life might by no foul means
be taken from me.'
Hereupon, the head of an halbert, which went with a
screw, was taken off, and the steel delivered to me;
the other butt end of the staff having a short iron pike
in it. This was my armour: and in my place I stood,
expecting an opponent.
At the last, a handsome and well-spirited Spaniard
steps forth, with his rapier and poniard. They asked me
'What I said to him?' I told them, 'I had a sure friend
in my hand that never failed me, and therefore made
little account of that one to play with: and should show
them no sport.'
Then a second, armed as before, presents himself. I
demanded, 'If there would come no more?' The Dukes
asked, 'How many I desired?' I told them, 'Any num-
ber under six.' Which resolution of mine, they smiling
at in a kind of scorn; held it not manly, it seemed, not
fit for their own honours, and the glory of their nation,
to worry one man with a multitude: and therefore ap-
pointed three only, so weaponed, to enter into the lists.
Now, Gentlemen, if here you condemn me for pluck-
ing, with mine own hands, such an assured danger upon
mine own head, accept of these reasons for excuse.
To die, I thought it most certain; but to die basely, I
would not. For three to kill one had been to me no dis-
honour; to them, weapons considered, no glory. An
honourable subjection, I esteemed better than an ignoble
conquest. Upon these thoughts I fell to it.
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The rapier men traversed their ground; I, mine.
Dangerous thrusts were put in, and with dangerous
hazard avoided. Shouts echoed to heaven to encourage
the Spaniards: not a shout nor hand to hearten the poor
Englishman. Only heaven I had in mine eye, the honour
of my country in my heart, my fame at the stake, my
life on a narrow bridge, and death both before me and
behind me. It was not now a time to dally. They still
made full at me; and I had been a coward to myself,
and a villain to my nation, if I had not called up all that
weak manhood which was mine to guard my own life,
and overthrow my enemies.
Plucking up therefore a good heart, seeing myself faint
and wearied, I vowed to my soul to do something, ere
she departed from me: and so setting all upon one cast,
it was my good fortune (it was my God that did it for
me), with the butt end, where the iron pike was, to kill
one of the three; and within a few bouts after, to disarm
the other two; causing the one of them to fly into the
army of soldiers then present, and the other for refuge
fled behind the bench.
I hope, if the braving Spaniards set upon England as
they threaten, we shall every One of us give repulse to
more than Three. Of which good issue for the public, I
take this my private success to be a pledge.
Now was I in greater danger, being, as I thought, in
peace, than before when I was in battle. For a general
murmur filled the air, with threatenings at me: the
soldiers especially bit their thumbs, and was it possible
for me to escape?
Which the noble Duke of Medina Sidonia seeing, called
me to him; and instantly caused proclamation to be
made that none, on pain of death, should meddle with
me: and by his honourable protection I got off, not only
with safety but with money. For by the Dukes and
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247
Condes were given me in gold, to the value of four pounds,
ten shillings sterling: and by the Marquis Alquenezes
himself, as much; he, embracing me in his arms, and
bestowing upon me that long Spanish russet cloak I now
wear; which he took from one of his men's backs, and
withal furnished me with a clean band and cuffs. It
being one of the greatest favours a Spanish Lord can do
to a mean man to reward him with some garment, as
recompense of merit.
After our fight in Xerez, I was kept in the Marquis
Alquenezes' house; who, one day, out of his noble
affability, was pleasant in speech with me: and, by my
interpreter, desired I would sing.
I, willing to obey him (whose goodness I had tasted)
did so; and sang this psalm,
'When as we sate in Babylon,' etc.
The meaning of which being told, he said to me,
'Englishman, comfort thyself; for thou art in no captivity.'
After this, I was sent to the King of Spain, lying
at Madrid. My conduct being four gentlemen of the
Marquis of Alquenezes': he allowing unto me in the
journey twenty shillings a day when we travelled, and
ten shillings a day when we lay still.
At my being in Madrid, before I saw the King, my
entertainment by the Marquis Alquenezes' appointment,
was at his own house; where I was lodged in the most
sumptuous bed that ever I beheld: and had from his
noble Lady a welcome far above my poor deserving, but
worthy the greatness of so excellent a woman. She
bestowed upon me whilst I lay in her house a very fair
Spanish shirt, richly laced: and at my parting from
Madrid, a chain of gold and two jewels for my wife, and
other pretty things for my children.
And now that her noble courtesies, with my own
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thankfulness, lead me to speak of this honourable Spanish
Lady; I might very justly be condemned of ingratitude,
if I should not remember with like acknowledgement,
another rare pattern of feminine goodness to me a dis-
tressed miserable stranger: and that was the Lady of
Don Juan of Cadiz. She, out of a respect she bare me
for saving her husband's life, came along with him to
Xerez; he being there to give evidence against me: and
as before when I lay prisoner in Cadiz, so in Xerez, she
often relieved me with money and other means. My
duty and thanks ever wait upon them both!
Upon Christmas Day I was presented to the King, the
Queen, and Don Carlos the Infante.
Being brought before him: I fell, as it was fit, on my
knees. Many questions were demanded of me; which,
so well as my plain wit directed me, I resolved.
In the end, His Majesty offered me a yearly pension
(to a good value) if I would serve him either at land
or at sea. For which his royal favours, I (confessing
myself infinitely bound and my life indebted to his
mercy), most humbly intreated, that with his Princely
leave, I might be suffered to return unto mine own
country: being a subject only to the King of England,
my sovereign.
And besides that bond of allegiance, there was another
obligation due from me to a wife and children: and
therefore I most submissively begged that His Majesty
would be so Princely minded as to pity my estate, and
let me go. To which he, at last, granted; bestowing
upon me one hundred pistolets to bear my charges.
And thus endeth my Spanish pilgrimage. With thanks
to my good God, that in this extraordinary manner pre-
served me, amidst these desperate dangers.
Therefore most gracious God! Defender of men
JEREZ
249
abroad! and Protector of them at home! how am I
bounden to thy Divine Majesty, for thy manifold mercies!
On my knees I thank Thee! with my tongue will I
praise Thee! with my hands fight Thy quarrel! and all
the days of my life serve Thee!
Out of the Red Sea I have escaped; from the lion's
den been delivered, aye rescued from death and snatched
out of the jaws of destruction, only by Thee! O my
God! Glory be to Thy Name for ever and ever! Amen.
XIX
CADIZ
As
S you come to Cadiz from the terrible dust and heat
of Seville in summer-time, she seems to rise up
out of the sea, a white city of watch-towers-miradores
-a city of the East almost, full of a strange sweetness
and refreshment. I watched her thus one long after-
noon from the shady, vine-covered doorway of a cottage
at Puerta S. María, where I waited for the cool hours and
the long shadows. It is really an island on which she
stands, in the midst of the beautiful bay that bears her
name- -an island joined to the mainland by the most
slender strip of land, curved like an arm, but so slight
that there is only room for the railway between the
waters. Wherever you may be within her walls you
are never far from those waters that really surround her,
like a vast blue lagoon, out of which she towers in the
dawn, into which she will sink at sunset, folding all her
sweetness up, so that when night falls she is just a ghost,
a dream, a vision, on the sea. And so at last as you pass
up
and down her ways, or among the palms of the Parque
Génoves, where the sea wind slumbers, it is really of some
eastern city you are aware, whose quays and gardens are
always a little languid with everlasting summer, with
endless afternoon.
It was already evening when I found myself within her
gates, coming just at sunset on to the old great ramparts
that, looking south and west, stood up out of the sea
250

LOU
CADIZ
CADIZ
251
rugged and colossal, built of immense blocks of hewn
stone; while behind them rose the cathedral like a tawny
mosque rude and splendid, and all above them, flushed
with light, stooped the sky, and all before them lay the
sea. It was as though I beheld in a dream the lamentable
city of Algiers in the time of the Deys.
As I watched the city thus smouldering in the level
light, suddenly, and in a moment, the whole world was
overwhelmed in the tragedy of sunset. Never have I
seen a sight so solemn and so splendid. Gradually the
old ramparts stark and slimy, the great cathedral golden
and forsaken, the soft sky that was already trembling
with stars, and the sea that was sobbing among the stones,
and that flung itself in unutterable grief against the rocks,
were flooded by the blood of the sun that stained every-
thing with its splendid life. And it seemed to me that
it was in such a night that Cristóbal Colon, the great
Italian, set sail yonder for the Indies; in the forlorn
splendour of such a sunset that the Conquistadores put
out southward and west never to return; in such an hour
that Essex and Raleigh and Drake swept down suddenly
and fired the beautiful galleons laden with bars and
crowns of gold, with chalices and dishes of gold, with
daggers and spears whose hilts were of silver and gold,
with swords and crucifixes of gold and silver, with purple
banners splashed with scarlet and crusted with precious
stones.
The sun has set; night is coming over the sea. Like a
great yellow flower heavy with perfume, the moon droops
in the sky; the world has wrapped herself in the blue
mantle of night; the sea is like a great platter of silver.
In the silence I hear a woman singing; I cannot under-
stand the words she sings. Presently I catch sight of
her; she is quite alone. She is walking in the shadow
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among the coils of rope and the great chains; in her
hand is a red rose. Nearer and nearer she comes,
singing to herself that strange song which I cannot
understand. She seems to be looking at the moon,
but she never stumbles; carefully she finds her way
among the boulders, the débris, and the iron chains.
At my feet the moonlight streams, a broad band of silver
between the shadow and the sea. When she is close
to me she stops singing, almost in the middle of a note,
but still she comes on towards me, slowly, without
looking towards me. At last as her foot touches
the moonlight she hesitates; and after a moment she
falls on her knees and kisses the shining stones, then
dropping the rose and lifting up her hands towards the
moon that covers her with light, she prays in a low
voice,' Have pity on the blind, if you please; have pity
on the blind.'
As I went homewards, at a street corner under the
shrine of Madonna a gust of wind scattered the falling
petals of the red rose. I do not know why I was
sorry.
IT
XX
TO MOROCCO
T was scarcely dawn when, still a little sleepy, I found
myself on a stone pier among bearded, black-haired
sailors, waiting for the little boat that was to take me to
the steamer; for at sunrise I sailed for Tangier. There
was a hush on the water; far away over the sea I heard
the desolate cries of the sea-birds calling to one another,
while from the city came the crowing of cocks, a proud
and cheerful sound. After a time I climbed into the little
laden boat, and lazily the sailors rowed me more than
a mile into the bay, shining here and there under
the sea-wind. They sang too, as they pulled slowly,
rhythmically, such songs as I am sure they used to
sing when they were Phoenicians thousands of years
ago. In the boat beside me were skins of wine and
baskets of figs, and in the bows a great heap of
pomegranates bursting and bleeding like red wounds.
And all the time I was sleepily conscious of everything,
eating yellow bread and white and purple grapes for
my breakfast, tears in my eyes because of the beauty,
the only absurd object in all that simple world. Presently
we came to the ship lying asleep on the deep clear
water; the sky was cloudless, and for a time the only
sound I could hear was the wet kisses of the little waves
as they danced round the ship. Then with many addios
we set sail. I was the only passenger.
Cadiz was like the sound of a trumpet.
In the sunrise
The water sang
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THE CITIES OF SPAIN
past the bows, and we swept almost completely round
the white, splendid city; and then like a sigh, like some
divine and fragile breath, like I know not what holy
thing, the wideness of all the sea came to us, the cold
great billows, the strength, and the immense patience
of the ocean; and as a bride by her husband, as the
soul by God, as the rose by the earth, we were gathered
by the sea.
For hours we sailed till Cadiz became just a white
maiden dreamily standing on the verge of the sea gazing
southward and west; it was as though I had seen
Ariadne, just aware of her loneliness, looking for Theseus.
Then past the immense, heroic victories of England we
met the east wind, and for that hour the sea was mine. . . .
Sometimes we met a ship flying before the wind,
beautiful with joy, her great sails white in the sun, bound
for the Americas. Sometimes we were alone in the
immense solitude of the ocean, leaning across the waves,
part of the profound life of the sea, splendid under the
wind, strong and immortal. And once, lying in the stern,
I heard the voice of the look-out hailing the steers-
man, and often I heard him singing those strange,
lamentable songs-malagueñas-that were made at dawn
or sunset thousands of years ago. At last we swept by
the heroic, immortal cliffs of Trafalgar: far and far
away I descried the first faint outline of Africa:
and always God spread out the heavens, perfect and
serene, a stainless cave of winds.
So the hours came to us over the sea till dawn burst
into morning, and morning passed into noon; and the
wind freshened, and the sea showed his fangs and rose
up in his strength till we, big as we were, were dancing
like a drunken gay lady.
In the afternoon we came to a land of mountains, very
fierce and strong. The wind had grown to a gale, and
TO MOROCCO
255
when at last we came in sight of Tangier there was
some confusion on board. Presently the captain found
me and began to make excuse. 'Let your worship have
no fear,' said he, 'though it is too rough to land; and
indeed it is too rough to go on to Gibraltar; so since
God wills it so, we must lie to all night and to-morrow-
yes, be sure, to-morrow your worship will land in a
serene weather.' But I would not agree; for indeed I
was afraid of nothing save of staying on his ship; since,
to speak truth, I was too ill to fear anything at all. He
looked at me sadly, much as he would have looked at
a child who persists in wickedness; while all the sea
was subject to the wind, and the wide bay was full of
great racing waves, and the sky was filled with the sun.
And it happened that not long after some Moors put
off from shore in a small boat that I could see now and
then on the heights of waves. Slowly, not without
difficulty, during more than half, an hour they made
way towards us, past the four great warships that lay
there watching Tangier. And at last they came within
hail, and then slowly and carefully, with shouting and
the immense laughter of sailors, they crept alongside
inch by inch almost. Figure to yourself a small boat
roughly made, manned by seven tall and beautiful men,
golden brown in colour, almost naked, who were pulling
for dear life, and shouting in the sunshine and the wind
like I know not what crew of the ancient world. At
last we threw them a rope, and I climbed down the
rough rope-ladder that hung from the bulwarks of the
ship. I shall not forget how deep the sea seemed to
to me then, nor how beautiful the sky; and then, always
with a strange joyful singing, wave after wave swept over
me as I clung to that little rope-ladder while my fingers
were almost broken against the side of the ship in the
swing of the sea. At last two huge arms were round me,
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THE CITIES OF SPAIN
for a moment I hung between sea and sky, then a great
wave covered me-it was green, green, and full of light;
and then we were rolling in the bottom of the boat.
Not without difficulty we sheered off at last and began
to make the land; while the sailors on the warships, that
were rising and falling with so ruthless a dignity during
our wild career, roared at us; and indeed it was the most
splendid moment of my life that came to me among those
strong men pulling for dear life, full of laughter and
shouting, while the salt sea dripped from their heads
and their beards, and their golden limbs were wet and
shining in the sun. Too short, too short was that little
moment of splendid danger when we escaped out of
the hands of the sea. Too soon we made in safety the
little pier, where every sort of person seemed to be
assembled the Moor, a king of men in white burnous
and turban, the hideous Riff pirate, the Soudanese slaves,
the people of desert naked and unashamed, the sombre,
melancholy Jew, and the Spaniard, here certainly at a
disadvantage. How can I speak of the noise and the
strangeness and the magnificence of these people who,
if they were dressed, were clothed beautifully. And
indeed at that moment, full of the self-consciousness of
an Englishman and a stranger in a strange land, the
only land that was not Christian, where the European
tradition was ignored, in which I had ever set foot, I
seemed to become aware suddenly of my own vulgarity
in those hideous tight clothes, of the vulgarity of all
European men, not our women but ourselves, beside
these splendid people so beautiful and tall and strong.
To them we must seem colourless, bleached, without
the virility of the desert, ignorant of the strength of the
hills. I was almost glad that it was already dusk when
I entered the city gate in the company of one who told
me his name was Muhammed Dukali.
XXI
TANGIER
HE little city of Tangier, rising from a hillside of
huge waves all white and intense blue, is a sight that,
seen for the first time, is an impression for ever. Behind
the city are the mountains and the desert, and away to
the right and left a fierce rocky coast thrusts back the
sea, which in the wind is like the hosts of an archangel.
Within the city, if you will, you may find all your
dreams. It is as though suddenly you had half-re-
membered something that for a lifetime you had for-
gotten. And for me, at least, it was as though I had
seen all that strange Arab life before, perhaps in my
early childhood, when I used to dream over the stories
in the Bible, and really feel the heat of Palestine in the
anæmic sunshine of an English Good-Friday, or even
before that in another life. And so it seems to me that
Tangier itself is either the most wonderful place we
have ever seen, or it is nothing. Certainly those who tell
you they know the East, tell you too at all times that
Tangier is nothing; just a semi-European city full of
filth. But for me it was the very East; and for the
Europeans, I saw them not.
I entered the city of Tangier by the eastern gate;
Muhammed Dukali carrying a little lantern to guide my
feet, for it was night. I shall not easily forget the dark-
ness and the immense silence as we made our way along
R
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the beach; nor the beauty of that night of stars. As we
went softly over the sand trodden all day by hundreds
of donkeys and mules, and I was thinking how low the
Bear was in the northern sky, I became aware of an
indescribable figure wearily dragging itself towards us;
it did not crawl over the loose sand of the way, but
really dragged itself almost on its belly, till suddenly,
with a cry, it thrust out its hand before me and asked
an alms. I cannot express the weariness and the
mournfulness of that human voice in the silence; and
almost before I was fully aware Muhammed swiftly
dragged me aside, and cursed the beggar in his own
tongue. Then I saw that indeed it was a leper 'as white
as snow,' who still thrust a mutilated hand towards me,
a hand that glistened in the starlight.... I was breath-
less when at last we came to the city gate. Within, the
silence was broken. Every sort of person may be found
in the streets of Tangier, naked and clothed, bond and
free, Gentile and Israelite; and I have seen, as it were,
Christ and his disciples sleeping on the stones of the
street.
It was Sunday when I first saw the city under the
sun. I made my way into the narrow steep streets by
that same eastern gate which had seemed so beautiful
to me on the night before. Nor was I disappointed in
the sunlight. For beside the gate there is a fountain,
and at the fountain five nude Soudanese were filling
their goatskins with water. It was a scene from the
ancient world, full of simplicity, an aspect of life that
was, almost by chance, quite beautiful; beautiful really,
just because it was life simple and real, and without
affectation or excuse. And to me, who have to put up
for the most part with mere mediocrity and ugliness, or
at the best with beauty quite divorced from life, the
TANGIER
259
splendour of the attitudes, the strength, assurance, and
freedom of the gestures of those men naked in the sun-
shine, was a kind of revelation, emancipating me in a
moment, as it were, from the materialism of the modern
world. And, indeed, something of this absence of
mediocrity in a life where just to live appears so easy
and so pleasant, seems to me to be perhaps the great
characteristic of Tangier. The Arabs flit to and fro,
like ghosts almost, their feet slippered, dressed for the
most part in white, their shaved heads wrapped in
turbans that give I know not what new dignity to the
face. Everywhere, too, the Jews pass and repass, sombre,
silent men in dark-coloured gaberdines, and the curious
round cap that they are compelled to wear in this
country, where even among a kindred race they seem to
have no friends; a strange people, without vulgarity for
once, as silent and as full of dignity as the Moor, but
scarcely so inaccessible, their women at any rate passing
up and down the streets quite freely without hiding
their faces, which, however, are seldom beautiful. And
everywhere among that crowd of Negroes, Soudanese,
Bedouins; and half-breeds, innumerable asses doggedly
pushed their way laden with merchandise, pricked on
by boys in fez and white garments, or by huge blacks
from the interior, who, with one great hand on the
flank of their beasts, really thrust it through the
crowd, uttering strange cries, seemingly unconscious of
the Europeans, whom their asses shoulder out of the
way.
It is in the Sokko or market-place, just outside the
southern gate of the city, that one becomes conscious
that one is at last really in Africa, that Europe is far
away, only dimly to be seen over the sea. It is a huge
bare brown hillside, this Sokko, covered with little
triangular tents and stalls, where old and hideous women
260
THE CITIES OF SPAIN
squat before a pile of faggots, that they have brought
a great distance, almost bent double under their loads, as
you may see them almost anywhere in the country round
the city. Thousands of people were assembled there on
that Sunday morning when I first saw the place, and
the noise was like the voice of a great city of the desert.
Everywhere there was life, real life, sweating under that
fierce sun, and often as beautiful as in the ancient
world. In some of these tiny tents sat men in gorgeous
caftans, selling every sort of apparel, velvet drawers
from the harems of Fez and Mekinez, beautiful soutanes
and swords, and shoes of red or yellow leather, or basins
of burnished brass or tin kettles and hardware from
Europe. Everywhere the water-carriers went about
selling water 'in the name of Allah,' or men almost
overwhelmed by some horrible disease, cripples, blind
people, men in every condition of putrefaction, covered
with sores, begged again in the name of Allah from
those who passed by. A little to one side a noble-
looking old man in soutane and turban, with bare feet
and legs, and beautiful expressive hands, recited to a
listening circle of people the acts of the Prophet. Every
now and then he would pause and play a little desert
air, the formless tune of a nomad people, on his tiny
Arab guitar. His face was pure and splendid: he was a
poet. And, indeed, it was Homer that I saw in the midst
of that attentive throng, Homer reciting the 'Wrath of
Achilles' to the people of Chios, in days that we cannot
forget. Not far away I found the snake-charmer piping
to his swaying serpents; and the air he played was sad
and full of the melancholy of the desert, such an air as
Wagner wrote for the shepherd in the third act of
'Tristan und Isolde'; so like it indeed that it is difficult
to believe that he never heard this Arab music.
I heard the same air again in that limitless country
TANGIER
261
that is everywhere around Tangier, without roads, with-
out houses, without life, where are only the uplifted hills
and the strength of the desert, as I watched a caravan of
twenty-five camels crossing the desert from Fez many
days later, and it seemed to me that in that music all
the tragedy of the Arabs, that people of the desert who
have no abiding city, is hidden and expressed.
•
The mosques, those strangely silent, reticent sanctu-
aries of Islam, are, in Morocco at any rate, forbidden to
the infidel. Almost as simple as the houses which shut
them in, they are, as seen from the outside at least,
beautiful, because of their towers, from which five times
in the day you may hear the call to prayer float out over
the city like a violet banner, a great beautiful plainsong,
in which you may discern all the fatalism and mystery
of the Arab soul. The chief mosque in Tangier stands.
not far from the eastern gate, and indeed not far from
the centre of the European town. Past its doors all day
streams the whole life of Tangier, that sinister life where
in every man's heart almost you may discover hatred of
his brother. And, indeed, that is after all the great
characteristic of the city; for wherever you may be, as
you pass through the Sokko, or through the dingy
streets of the city itself, or warily, almost keeping your
eyes for the most part on the ground, you hardly know
why, in the white kasaba that rises like a tomb out of the
city, some Jew will scowl at you since you are not of his
race; some Arab will spit and curse you as an infidel
and dog, since his prophet is not yours; some negro will
thrust you out of the way because he is the slave of a
great lord; some woman will cross the street lest you,
Christian as she thinks you, should defile her with the
wind of your coat. It is a city of hatred. Even your
own heart accuses you; for here the European tradition,
262
THE CITIES OF SPAIN
that priceless dream which we have saved from the ruins
of Athens, the débris of Rome, the mysticism of the
Middle Age, the brutality and barbarism of the Reforma-
tion, the commercialism of to-day, has no place, and
you yourself are an intruder, and an unwelcome guest.
Greeks, Romans, Phoenicians, Spaniards, and English,
one after another Tangier has imperturbably tired them
out, overwhelmed them with hatred, watched them
depart with satisfaction. Unlike Tetuan, she has even
forgotten Spain and the city of Granada: she is content
to wait for the moment when there shall be indeed in
all Morocco no God but Allah; and in the meantime the
European, overwhelmed by the sinister reticence of those
about him, awaits his opportunity to repay hatred with
hatred, scorn with scorn, and in place of the inviolate
temples of Islam to set up, not the Church of Jesus, but
the brutal warehouses of the modern world, marking the
road to Fez with the placards of his own contrivances,
when even the desert shall blossom with advertisements
written again over the grave of man in three tongues, in
English and French and German.
But I, who have seen the ragged splendid army of the
Sultan, cannot but smile when I remember those uplifted
hills to the south, and the strong silent dignity of the
Arab; that people of the mountains whom even the
Romans failed to bring under their yoke. And now that
I am far away, it is the sad unchangeable voice of the
muezzin I seem to hear, calling, calling from the towers of
the mosques, calling the children of the desert to defend
their own.
•
•
As I was riding at sunset along the last cliffs of Africa
beyond Cap Spartel, by chance I met a goat-herd who,
in the cool of the evening, was leading his goats to a
fresh pasture. He was clothed about the shoulders and

WAYSIDE CROSS, NEAR GRANADA
TANGIER
263
the loins with a rough sheepskin, in his hand was a long
staff, and as he went slowly among the flowers he sang,
to one of those strange tones so like a sorrowful plain-
song, the following verses :—
" How bitter is my heart. . .
For the days that are fled away,
For the days of my joy,
O fair land of Andalusia, that I have lost,
I will never forget thee.
Allah... remember me-
I have dwelt in Granada,
In the house of the Falconers;
And a woman taught me love
In the evenings before night-fall.
And I planted a garden
With all kinds of flowers,
To rejoice the eyes of love;
---
But she too, my gazelle, is fled away,
Who was fairer than the dawn,
Who was sweeter than the morning.
How bitter is my heart . . .
O fair land of Andalusia that I have lost,
In the desert I will remember thee.-
Allah.
Out of thy favour
• •
!
The song, that came to me on the wind, slowly died
away; night was coming over the sea, and already, far
away in the west, a great star hung in the sky. And it
was with this song in my heart that I set out not many
days later for 'that fair land of Andalusia,' great with
ruins, over whose gates the name of Allah has been
hidden by the tender name Mary, in whose streets now
there is so seldom a song.
XXII
MÁLAGA
O come to Málaga from Tangier is to enter Spain
where are
to be found all the sunshine, the fruits, and flowers of the
forgotten garden where man caught his first glimpse
of woman and presently loved her. And after many
days spent in idleness in that white city by the blue sea,
it is really as the last outpost in Europe which the Arab
still possesses, not materially it may be, but certainly in
spirit nevertheless, that you come to think of her, a city
where there is nothing at all to see, save the city herself.
She still keeps something of the simple unbewildered
life that one has observed with so much uneasiness, as it
were, in Tetuan, for instance, or, if one is fortunate, in
Fez itself, that city of running waters in the midst of
the desert. So you pass through the Alameda to the
Cathedral, and thence to the Alcazaba and the Gibralfaro
without interest almost, certainly without emotion, your
attention all the time being really caught by the strange
life of the port, the oldest and most famous Spanish port
of the Mediterranean, as you remind yourself, by the life
of the streets, the beauty of the hills covered with vines,
of the valleys scattered with flowers, of the sea that
brings I know not what ancient beauty to the city which
for so long has lived by it, and of the sky that it seems
is here always serene and clear with a sort of beatitude,
an almost pagan blessedness, the mere absence of the
1
}
1
1
264

A SHEPHERD-BOY OF ANDALUSIA
MÁLAGA
265
distress of rain, of the mediocrity that overwhelms every-
thing on a rainy day in the north. And certainly Málaga,
which enjoys the finest climate in Europe, with but
thirty-nine days in the whole year on which a drop of
rain falls, is destined, as it were, by nature for a city of
pleasure where just to live is enough, that you may be
glad of the hot sun and the cold sea, and know the relief
of evening after the languor of the day. And so, while
you will find but little art in Málaga, almost no archi-
tecture or painting, and but little sculpture after all; for,
in spite of the interest of those carved wooden statues of
saints by Pedro de Mena in the cathedral, they are
rather realistic than beautiful, and while they remain
perhaps the most significant expression of the Spaniard
in sculpture, they are so much less than we had expected,
so much less satisfying than the simple sincere work
of the Tuscans, Luca della Robbia, for instance, or Mino
da Fiesole, that we soon grow weary of their vain effort
to express life divorced from beauty; it is yet as the
home, as it were, of a very characteristic and living art
that Málaga will remain in the memory of those who
are fortunate enough to have discovered it.
Those strange songs, half chant, half love-song, lyrical
so sullenly, so sadly almost, and with a new sort of
rhythm that is in reality but the oldest music of all, greet
you everywhere in Southern Spain, and strangely enough,
as we may think of anything so difficult for the modern
ear, are more popular than the national songs, are indeed
fast taking their place with the people, even in so con-
servative a country as La Mancha. Malagueñas they
call them, songs of Málaga, and indeed in Málaga you
hear almost nothing else. Sung to the guitar, the strings
have often a more important place in them than the
voice itself; for after a long introduction in which you
learn, perhaps for the first time, the extraordinary beauty
266
THE CITIES OF SPAIN
that may be drawn by skilful fingers from an instrument
seemingly so limited, the voice breaks in suddenly, on a
high note long drawn out, almost startling in its fierce-
ness, its profound and passionate sadness. It is like
some tragic thing that has befallen in the desert, like
a mood of the soul that has at last become unbearable
agony, that must express itself, like a sudden apprehen-
sion of fate which is about to overwhelm everything.
Gradually, with many swift or reluctant turns, the voice
descends into the melody itself, almost a Gregorian
tone, and yet without the assurance, the precision
of that chant which is the foundation of everything
that has been accomplished in music since the sixth
century, and it may be even before that, and which in its
perfect intervals assured Europe of her musical future.
But while something may be found in the simpler
Malagueñas, certainly, of the third Gregorian tone, it is
really a music more primitive than the plainsong that
you come upon, quite by chance, in the cities of Anda-
lusia. That it has much in common with Greek music,
perhaps through the Moor, perhaps through the Pho-
nician, is, I think, capable of proof; but whether it be
more than the common likeness that is to be found in all
primitive music, in the resemblance, for instance, that
you may discover in so northern a thing as an old Scottish
air to the Eastern music of swords and gongs accom-
panying a plaintive sort of chant, in the likeness of the
curious wail of the bagpipe itself to much Arab music,
it is difficult to determine; for indeed almost nothing has
been written by musicians at any rate, of the Malagueña,
and it is only with difficulty you may find one noted
down truly, or as truly as may be, in modern notation.¹
1 Grove, Dictionary of Music and Musicians, under 'Song' says that
P. Lacome has noted a Malagueña in Échos d'Espagne (Durand et fils, Paris);
for me, at least, it is a poor specimen, anæmic and attenuated.
MÁLAGA
267
You come upon this music quite by chance, I said, in
speaking of the Malagueña; and indeed that is one of
its greatest delights; it is almost always by chance that
you hear them. Here in Málaga, for instance, not one
traveller in a thousand ever discovers the Chinitas, that
little café in the Caleta, which is certainly, in its irrespon-
sible perverse way, the one real school of art in Spain.
There, it is true, you may hear the Malagueña sung or
danced and played by artists, unconscious of their per-
fection, anxious it may be to better themselves, to go to
Madrid, to Paris, to Berlin, where in a minute they will
be quite spoiled by the vulgarity of the music-hall that
will take the place of the racy freedom and robustness of
the little dancing-hall of Málaga. Yes, within those
dingy, disreputable walls, something seems to have been
expressed, to have escaped from its captivity; and yet,
while you have still all the colour and passion of so rare
a thing, some nuance, I know not what, I know not
why, seems to have vanished away, to have lost itself in
that narrow room, so that really the song is less beautiful
there than when sung on the quays or in some patio at
midday.
There are other arts beside those of singing and dan-
cing that you will find at the Chinitas, better almost than
anywhere else in Spain: the art of poetry, for instance,
really in its primitive form, a kind of impromptu wrung
from the poet half intoxicated by music, by emotion, by
the curious giddy madness of the castanets. Peculiar, it
might seem, to a land so languid about art as Spain, so
little aware of anything that it has not made its own, so
indifferent to mere beauty, so anxious for life, those
curiously fascinating moments in which you may see, as
it were, the very art of the poet practised before you, the
delicate handling of words that have really been born
out of a vision, are to the Spaniard in their excite-
268
THE CITIES OF SPAIN
ment, in their rather terrible energy, their extraordinary
promise of beauty, much akin to the more brutal but not
less eager moments of the bull-fight, when some extra-
ordinarily beautiful feat of sword play or daring is about
to take place.
Through a frankly noisy crowd full of laughter, amid
all the freedom of the café, two women and an old man
thread their way to a sort of platform at the end of the
One of the women, old and ugly, and yet not
without that distinction which seems always to wait on
old age here in Spain, sits beside the old man, who tunes
his guitar at the back of the stage; the other, still young,
with a sad and eager face, sits before them on a chair,
alone, facing the noisy crowd. For a minute or two the
old man continues to tune his guitar, and then quite
suddenly he strikes a beautiful and suggestive chord that
dies away into a kind of chant, played with much art on
that instrument, so little known out of Spain. The old
woman beats time with her foot, clapping her hands, and
from time to time uttering strange cries, cries that in
some way, I cannot explain, seem to excite that motley
crowd, which has suddenly grown so silent, till they, too,
are full of eagerness, of energy. Now and again from
among them some one cries out in answer. The girl
seated alone in the midst of the stage seems to be asleep,
a sort of drowsiness has overwhelmed her; her arms
hang listlessly at her sides, her head has fallen on her
breast. Still the old woman beats her hands together
passionately, angrily almost, her cries seem to burst from
a heart, full of rage and fury, that is about to break. Now
and then the girl rocks a little in her chair, the old man
continues his endless melody, passionate and sad, on the
guitar. An immense seriousness has fallen upon the
crowd. Near me is a woman, her hand lying in the hand
of a man, still young, who sits beside her; there are tears
MÁLAGA
269
in her eyes, and his fingers have ceased to press hers; he
has forgotten her, he is waiting almost with anxiety for
something to declare itself, for some revelation, it might
seem. Everywhere around me are eager faces, that for a
moment seem to have lost the harshness that daily life
has pressed upon them, that have forgotten everything,
and have attained to a sort of simplicity that you may
often find in the faces of those who are sleeping. The
figure in the midst of the stage seems almost to have
collapsed, to have fallen on to itself, and then, suddenly,
as the old woman furiously cries out, and in frenzy beats
her hands together with a sort of menace, almost
threatening in its intensity, a shiver passes over the
girl, the red carnation in her black hair trembles, in a
moment a mask seems to have fallen from her face, her
eyes are wide open, dilated, her mouth widens, becomes
almost immense, almost terrible in its effort of articula-
tion; closes a little, and becomes beautiful as she is
about to utter the beautiful words; and then, as it were
thrusting back the excited, panting crowd with her
hands, at last she speaks:-
'Thou art dead who wast my love but yesterday,
I am alone, alone, in the world that has lost thee,
I am a flower born in the shadow of a sepulchre. .
Ah, let me die.'
...
The lamentable cry of the old woman bears the last
note away; a splendid and beautiful chord throbs on the
guitar; the girl is transfigured, her eyes are burning in
her pallid face, she leans forward, and again in a higher
and more passionate melody, slowly like falling rose-
leaves, the words drop from her lips :-
'Let me press my mouth to the wound of thy mouth,
For my arms ache for thee, and thou shalt come between them,
And our souls shall be confounded in a kiss..
...
Ah, let me die.'
270
THE CITIES OF SPAIN
Gradually the melody falls again into the lower key;
like an immense curtain falling over life, the last words
come to us; her eyes are dying, her lids are so heavy
that she can hardly hold them open :-
'Neither with thee can I live, nor without thee,
And for my trouble there is no remedy,
When I was with thee thou killedst me-without thee I shall die.—
Ah, let me die.'
With an immense shout of applause the audience hurl
hats, pence, and flowers on to the stage at her feet, but
she seems to be sleeping; the old woman grovels for the
halfpence, slowly the guitar sobs into silence.
GR
XXIII
GRANADA
RANADA is a dead city, the colour of dust,
shrunken and thirsty, continually burning away,
at the foot of a hill on the confines of a great plain.
Above her, like a beautiful acropolis, the Alhambra rises
among the woods, where there is always the sound of
living waters, and where in springtime the nightingales
sing all day from dawn till dusk, from sunset till morning.
A city of furious and arid heat, almost surrounded by
snow mountains, though palm-trees grow in her streets,
before her stretches the Vega like a sea almost, very
fertile and beautiful, watered still by the wonderful con-
trivance of the Moors, who here at any rate have made the
very desert bring forth abundance.
Granada herself, utterly fallen from her high estate,
without learning, without self-respect, without trade, full
of vanity, has but little of interest for the traveller. The
cathedral, it is true, is a fine building in the Renaissance
style, where among other glories you may find the tombs
of the Catholic kings, pictures by Alonso Cano of the
life of the Virgin-his masterpiece, as it is said—a St.
Francis by Greco, a Magdalen by Ribera, and most
surprising, and perhaps most delightful of all, a triptych
by Dietrich Bouts of the Descent from the Cross, with the
Crucifixion and the Resurrection on either side; while not
far away, though really without the city, is the desecrated
Cartuja, the Charter-house, as we should say, a plateresque
271
272
THE CITIES OF SPAIN
building full of rubbish where an eighteenth-century
sacristy, vulgar and gaudy, is shown to the traveller as
the 'chief sight' of the monastery. It is not really in
Granada at all that our delight lies, but in the hill of the
Alhambra, that hill of running waters, where the palace
of the Moors, sadly mutilated and spoiled, but still
exquisite though destroyed, rewards us for our difficult
journey hither.
It is impossible to express the strange sensuous impres-
sion that this burning city, surrounded by far-away snow
and full of the music of many waters, makes on one. You
seem ever to be wandering in a ruined, forsaken garden.
where the only living things are the fountains that have
not yet been silenced, the flowers that have not yet had
time to die. As you stand at sunset on the ramparts by
the old 'vermilion towers,' Torres Bermejas, the city at
your feet seems to be built of ivory, of ivory perhaps a
little tarnished, fragile and full of silence, about to be
overtaken by some new disaster. Far away the Alpu-
jarras, capped with snow, and the Sierra de Alhama rise
like an ardent and savage cry into the profound heaven;
in the distance of evening you may even see the gorge of
Loja, the round mountain of Parapanda, 'the barometer
of the Vega.' Beyond the valley of the Darro, rocky and
covered with gleaming stones and caves like old tombs,
rises the Albaicin, in whose holes the gipsies live; to the
right behind you lies the palace of the Alhambra and the
Generalife, and beyond these a little to the left over the
valley is the Sacro Monte and then San Miguel el Alto;
while far away to the west stretches the Vega, thirty
miles in length, 'guarded like Eden by a wall of moun-
tains.' Below lies the dying city shining, now that the
sun has set, in the twilight, like an antique moonstone, im-
mense and almost spectral in its mystery. And as you
pass homeward through the cool woods where all night

GRANADA FROM THE ALHAMBRA
GRANADA
273
long you may listen to the song of the fountains, it is
ever of that tragic city that you think, a place so old and
so miserable, where every one is unhappy with hatred,
envy, despair, and poverty. ...
Coming in the morning perhaps to the Alameda de
la Alhambra from the city itself, you pass those vermilion
towers again that guard the Monte Mauror, entering the
Alhambra at last by the Puerta de las Granadas; and
immediately you are in the woods, a beautiful park of
elm-trees planted by the Duke of Wellington in 1812.
Three avenues meet there: that to the left leading at
once to the Alhambra Palace, while the middle roadway
passes the hotels and the Generalife, coming at last to
the cemetery far away in the sierra; the pathway to the
right leads to the Torres Bermejas, and then passing up
and down through the woods gains the crest of the hill,
affording on the way many a view of the city, rejoining
the roadway at last close to the hotels. Following the
pathway to the left, the Cuesta Empedrada, really the
oldest approach to the Alhambra, you come at last along
a somewhat rough way to the Puerta Judiciaria, the Gate
of Judgment, a tower and a gateway-the Bábu-sh-
sharia'h of the Moors-the Gate of the Law, where the
Moor met his enemy before those judges and officers
who sat there in judgment 'to judge the people with just
judgment,' as you may read of the Jews in the Bible.
Built by Yusuf I. in 1348, it is really a double gate, such a
place perhaps as that in which David waited for news of
Absalom, sitting' between the two gates' while the watch-
man went up on to the roof waiting for the messenger.
Beautiful in its simplicity and strength, three men might
here defeat an army, for the way turns and turns within
the tower so that not more than two may come in to-
gether. To-day it is empty, for over the arch the figure
of Mary has hidden the name of Allah, and there is no
274
THE CITIES OF SPAIN
justice in Spain; yet still the 'key by which God opens
the heart of believers,' that mystical symbol of the Sufis,
remains in the shadow of the inner arch. Within is
another gate, and then you come upon the immense
Renaissance Palace of Charles V., already a ruin, built
with tribute paid by the Moors. It stands like a Vandal
amid the flower-like work of the Arab, that architecture
delicate and strong which it sought to humble by its
mere size, its ridiculous seriousness, its immensity, its
ignorant contempt.
Not far away across the Plaza Nueva rises the
Alcazába―the citadel-built on the sheer side of the hill,
an unconquerable fortress you might think, which to-day
is just a garden full of flowers: roses, lilies, forget-me-nots
and magnolias surrounding the great Torre de la Vela,
a watch-tower eighty-five feet high, from which you may
see all the kingdom of Granada from the mountains to
the desert.
It is not a simple monument, that Moorish palace which
crowns the hill of the Alhambra; it is like a city rising
into the sunlight from the immense shadow that girds it
round about, a 'quarter' through whose streets ever
passes the wind that has just blown over the snow, and in
whose courts and patios ever burns the sun of Africa.
Everywhere there is silence-a silence really only more
profound since it is broken by the song of the fountains
that still remember the purity, the coldness, of the eternal
snows. As you pass through room after room, court
after court, in which there is only music, the endless
music of running water, the persistent voluptuous throb
of the fountains seems to express everything that has
befallen a place so fair, so unfortunate. And, indeed, in
some way I cannot explain, the Alhambra is the saddest
place in Spain, full of the melancholy of satisfied desire
of a dream that has come true, that has, as it were, been
GRANADA
275
spoiled by just that. In every room there is nothing
but our dreams; no space on the wall, the roof or the
floor, not a foot of pavement but man has redeemed it
from silence, has separated it from the brute earth by the
labour of his hands. And yet it is not overloaded with
ornament as every plateresque building of the Spaniard
always is; for the decoration here is nothing but a
pleasing roughness upon the wall, an accidental play
almost of the thoughts and dreams of men, at least to
eyes that cannot read what is written there on the walls
between which men have sung songs, on the floors where
girls have danced for them, on the roofs that have listened
to their laughter, their weeping, their vows of love, their
eager or tired voices. We may place the Mosque of Cór-
dova beside Greek work and still perhaps find it splendid;
and though I, at least, cannot do that with the Alhambra,
it yet remains perhaps the most lovely monument in
Spain, certainly the most delightful, the most fascinating;
the memorial of a people greater, after all, in every virtue
of civilisation than those fierce fanatics who expelled them.
•
To attempt to describe the palace of the Alhambra
again since it has been done so often and nearly always
in vain, might seem to be a thankless task enough. I
shall content myself therefore with an account, the best I
ever read in English, written by Henry Swinburne in
the eighteenth century, which is not only as full of detail
as may well be, but a very interesting description of the
Alhambra as it was a hundred and fifty years ago;
so that while I despair of evoking for the reader any
vision of the place as it is, if by chance he visit it and in
his idle time should read my book there, he may be able
to compare the palace to-day with what it was in the
eighteenth century.
'Passing round the corner of the Emperor's Palace,'
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says Henry Swinburne, 'you are admitted at a plain,
unornamented door in a corner.' It is the same to-
day. On my first visit, I confess, I was struck with
amazement, as I stepped over the threshold, to find
myself on a sudden transported into a species of fairy-
land. The first place you come to is the court called the
communa, or del mesucar, that is, the common baths. An
oblong square, with a deep basin of clear water in the
middle, two flights of marble steps leading down to the
bottom, on each side a parterre of flowers and a row of
orange-trees. Round the court runs a peristyle paved
with marble; the arches bear upon every flight pillars, in
proportions and style different from all the regular orders
of architecture. The ceilings and walls are incrustated with
fretwork in stucco, so minute and intricate, that the most
patient draughtsman would find it difficult to follow it
unless he made himself master of the general plan. This
would facilitate the operation exceedingly, for all this
work is frequently and regularly repeated at certain
distances, and has been executed by means of square
moulds applied successively, and the parts joined to-
gether with the utmost nicety. In every division are
Arabic sentences of different lengths, most of them
expressive of the following meanings: "There is no
conqueror but God," or "Obedience and honour to our
Lord Abouabdoulah." The ceilings are gilt or painted,
and time has caused no diminution in the freshness of
their colours, though constantly exposed to the air. The
lower part of the walls is mosaic, disposed in fantastic
knots and festoons. A work so new to me, so exquisitely
finished, and so different from all I had ever seen, afforded
me the most agreeable sensations, which, I assure you,
redoubled every step I took in this magic ground. The
porches at the ends are more like grotto-work than any-
thing else I can compare them to. That on the right

Wallet Remay n
IN A GARDEN OF ANDALUSIA
GRANADA
277
hand opens into an octagon vault, under the Emperor's
Palace, and forms a perfect whispering-gallery meant to
be a communication between the offices of both houses.
'Opposite to the door of the communa through which
you enter, is another leading into the Quarto de los leones,
or apartment of the lions, which is an oblong court one
hundred feet in length and fifty in breadth, environed
with a colonnade seven feet broad on the sides and ten
at the end. Two porticos or cabinets, about fifteen feet
square, project into the court at the two extremities.
The square is paved with coloured tiles, the colonnade
with white marble. The walls are covered five feet up
from the ground with blue and yellow tiles, disposed
chequerwise. Above and below is a border of small
escutcheons, enamelled blue and gold, with an Arabic
motto on a bend, signifying, "No conqueror but God."
The columns that support the roof and gallery are of
white marble, very slender and fantastically adorned.
They are nine feet high, including base and capital, and
eight inches and an half diameter. They are very
irregularly placed, sometimes singly, at others in groups
of three, but more frequently two together. The width
of the horse-shoe arches above them is four feet two
inches for the large ones, and three for the smaller. The
ceiling of the portico is finished in a much finer and more
complicated manner than that of the communa, and the
stucco laid on the walls with inimitable delicacy; in the
ceiling it is frosted and handled with astonishing art.
The capitals are of various designs, though each design
is repeated several times in the circumference of the
court, but not the least attention has been paid to
placing them regularly or opposite to each other. You
will form a much clearer idea of their style, as well as
disposition, from the drawings, than from the most
elaborate description I can pen. Not the smallest
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representation of animal life can be discovered amidst
the varieties of foliages, grotesques, and strange orna-
ments. About each arch is a large square of arabasques,
surrounded with a rim of characters that are generally
quotations from the Koran. Over the pillars is another
square of delightful filigree work. Higher up is a
wooden rim, or kind of cornice, as much enriched with
carving as the stucco that covers the part underneath.
Over this projects a roof of red tiles, the only thing that
disfigures this beautiful square. This ugly covering is
modern, put on by order of Mr. Wall, the late prime
minister, who a few years ago gave the Alhambra a
thorough repair. In Moorish times the building was
covered with large painted and glazed tiles, of which
some few are still to be seen. In the centre of the
court are twelve ill-made lions muzzled, their fore-parts
smooth, their hind-parts rough, which bear upon their
backs an enormous basin, out of which a lesser rises.
While the pipes were kept in good order, a great volume
of water was thrown up, that, falling down into the
basins, passed through the beasts and issued out of
their mouths into a large reservoir, where it communi-
cated by channels with the jets d'eau in the apartments.
This fountain is of white marble, embellished with many
festoons, and Arabic distichs, thus translated:
"Seest thou not how the water flows copiously, like
the Nile?"
"This resembles a sea washing over its shores,
threatening shipwreck to the mariner."
"This water runs abundantly, to give drink to the lions."
"Terrible as the lion is our king in the day of battle."
"The Nile gives glory to the king, and the lofty
mountains proclaim it."
"This garden is fertile in delights; God takes care
that no noxious animal shall approach it."

THE COURT OF THE LIONS, GRANADA
GRANADA
279
"The fair princess that walks in this garden, covered
with pearls, augments its beauty so much, that thou
may'st doubt whether it be a fountain that flows, or the
tears of her admirers." 1
Passing along the colonnade, and keeping on the south
side, you come to a circular room used by the men as a
place for drinking coffee and sorbets in. A fountain
in the middle refreshed the apartment in summer.
The form of this hall, the elegance of its cupola, the
cheerful distribution of light from above, and the ex-
quisite manner in which the stucco is designed, painted,
and finished, exceed all my powers of description.
Everything in it inspires the most pleasing, voluptuous
ideas. Yet in this sweet retreat they pretend that
Abouabdoulah assembled the Abencerrages, and caused
their heads to be struck off into the fountain. Our
guide, with a look expressive of implicit faith, pointed
out to us the stains of their blood in the white marble
slabs, which is nothing more than the reddish marks
of iron-water in the quarry, or, perhaps, the effect of
being long exposed to the air. Continuing your walk
round, you are next brought to a couple of rooms at
the head of the court, which are supposed to have been
tribunals, or audience-chambers. In the ceiling are three
historical paintings, executed with much strength, but
great stiffness in the figures and countenances. One
of them seems to be a cavalcade; the other the entrance
of some princess; and the third a divan. When these
were painted, and what they are meant to represent, I
could not make out; but our Cicerone naturally adapted
them to the history of the Sultana and her four
Christian knights. If they are representations of that
doubtful story, they must have been painted in the
¹ This passage is very obscure in the Latin translation. I have endeavoured
to make something of it, but it still remains a forced conceit.
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emperor's time, or a little before, for it cannot be
supposed that Abouabdoulah would wish to perpetuate
the memory of a transaction in which he bore so
very weak and dishonourable a part; and, besides, the
anathema denounced by the Koran against all repre-
sentations of living creatures, renders it next to im-
possible that these pieces should have existed previous
to the conquest. The lions of the great fountain may
be brought as an argument against my last reason; and,
indeed, they show that the Granadine princes, as well as
some of the oriental caliphs, who put their own effigy on
their coin, ventured now and then to place themselves
above the letter of the law. Be this as it will, if these
pictures really represent that subject, and their antiquity
can be proved to go as far back as the reign of Ferdinand,
or at least the beginning of that of Charles, which I take
to be no very difficult matter to make out, I should have
much greater respect for the authority of Giles Peres
than many think him entitled to. It can scarce be
supposed that the events of the reign of Abouabdoulah
could be so totally forgotten so soon after, that a
painter should dare to invent a trial and combat, at
which many still living in Granada might have assisted
as spectators. Opposite to the Sala de los Abencerrages
is the entrance into the Torre de las dos hermanas, or
the tower of the two sisters, so named from two very
beautiful pieces of marble laid as flags in the pavement.
This gate exceeds all the rest in profusion of ornaments
and in beauty of prospect, which it affords through a range
of apartments, where a multitude of arches terminate in
a large window open to the country. In a gleam of
sunshine, the variety of tints and lights thrown upon
this ensilade are uncommonly rich. I employed much
time in making an exact drawing of it from the fountain,
and hope it will help you to comprehend what I am

TIHT
IN A GARDEN OF THE ALHAMBRA
GRANADA
281
labouring to explain by my narrative. The first hall is
the concert-room, where the women sate; the musicians
played above in four balconies. In the middle is a jet
d'eau. The marble pavement I take to be equal to the
finest existing, for the size of the flags and evenness of the
colour. The two sisters, which give name to the room,
are slabs that measure fifteen feet by seven and a half,
without flaw or stain. The walls, up to a certain height,
are mosaic, and above are divided into very neat com-
partments of stucco, all of one design, which is also
followed in many of the adjacent halls and galleries.
The ceiling is a fretted cove. To preserve this vaulted
roof, as well as some of the other principal cupolas, the
outward walls of the towers are raised ten feet above the
top of the dome, and support another roof over all, by
which means no damage can ever be caused by wet
weather, or excessive heat and cold. From this hall you
pass round the little myrtle-garden of Lindaraxa into an
additional building made to the east end by Charles V.
The rooms are small and low: his dear motto, Plus
outre, appears on every beam. This leads to a little
tower, projecting from the line of the north wall, called
El Tocador, or the dressing-room of the Sultana. It is a
small, square cabinet, in the middle of an open gallery,
from which it receives light by a door and three corridors.
The look-out is charming. In one corner is a large marble
flag, drilled full of holes, through which the smoke of
perfumes ascended from furnaces below; and here, it is
presumed, the Moorish queen was wont to sit to fumigate
and sweeten her person. The emperor caused this pretty
little room to be painted with representations of his wars,
and a great variety of grotesques, which appear to be
copies, or at least imitations, of those in the loggie of
the Vatican. They have been shamefully abused by idle
scribblers; what remains shows them to be the work of
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able artists. From hence you go through a long passage
to the hall of ambassadors, which is magnificently de-
corated with innumerable varieties of mosaics, and the
mottos of all the kings of Granada. This long, narrow
antechamber opens into the communa on the left hand,
and on the right into the great audience-hall in the
tower of Comares, a noble apartment, thirty-six feet
square, thirty-six high up to the cornice, and eighteen
from thence to the centre of the cupola. The walls on
three sides are fifteen feet thick, on the other nine; the
lower range of windows thirteen feet high. The whole
hall is inlaid with mosaic of many colours, disposed in
intricate knots, stars, and other figures. In every part
are repeated certain Arabic sentences, the principal of
which are the following:
"The counsel of God and a speedy increase, and give
joy to true believers."
""Praise to God, and to His vicegerent Nazar,' who
gave this empire, and to our king Abouabdoulah, to
whom be peace, elevation, and glory."
"There is no God but God."
"Valour, success, and duration to our king Abulha-
ghagh, king of the Moors; God guide his state and
elevate his power!"
""Praise be to God, for I enliven this dwelling of princes
with my beauty and with my crown. I strike firm root;
I have fountains of purest water, and handsome apart-
ments; my inhabitants are lords of mighty puissance.
May God, who guides His people, protect me, for I
attend to the sayings of the holy! I am thus adorned
by the hand and liberality of Abulhaghagh, who is a
bright moon that casts forth his light over the face of
heaven."
1 Nazar is an appellation of eminence, and supposed to mean the famous
Emirmoumelin Jacob Almanzar,
GRANADA
283
'These inscriptions, and many others dispersed over
the palace, prove that there is very little of it re-
maining that is not the work of Abulhaghagh or of
Abouabdoulah.
'Having thus completed the tour of the upper apart-
ments, which are upon a level with the offices of the new
palace, you descend to the lower floor, which consisted
of bedchambers and summer-rooms: the back-stairs and
passages, that facilitated the intercourse between them,
are without number. The most remarkable room below
is the king's bedchamber, which communicated, by
means of a gallery, with the upper story. The beds
were placed on two alcoves, upon a raised pavement of
blue and white tiles; but as it has been repaired by
Philip V., who passed some time here, I cannot say how
it may have been in former times. A fountain played
in the middle, to refresh the apartment in hot weather.
Behind the alcoves are small doors that conduct you to
the royal baths. These consist in one small closet, with
marble cisterns for washing children, two rooms for
grown-up persons, and vaults for boilers and furnaces,
that supplied the baths with water and the stoves with
vapour. The troughs are formed of large slabs of white
marble; the walls are beautified with parti-coloured
earthenware; light is admitted by holes in the coved
ceiling.
'Hard by is a whispering-gallery, and a kind of laby-
rinth, said to have been made for the diversion of women
and children.
'One of the passages of communication is fenced off
with a strong iron grate, and called the prison of the
Sultana; but it seems more probable that it was put up
to prevent anybody from climbing up into the women's
quarter.
'Under the council-room is a long slip, called the king's
284
THE CITIES OF SPAIN
study; and adjoining to it are several vaults, said to be
the place of burial of the royal family. In the year
1574 four sepulchres were opened, but as they contained
nothing but bones and ashes, were immediately closed
again.
I shall finish this description of the Alhambra, by
observing how admirably everything was planned and
calculated for rendering this palace the most voluptuous
of all retirements; what plentiful supplies of water were
brought to refresh it in the hot months of summer; what
a free circulation of air was contrived, by the judicious
disposition of doors and windows; what shady gardens
of aromatic trees; what noble views over the beautiful
hills and fertile plains! No wonder the Moors regretted
Granada; no wonder they still offer up prayers to God
every Friday for the recovery of this city, which they
esteem a terrestrial paradise.'
It is strange to wander out of this palace, which is a
garden, into the real gardens of the Generalife, built in
terraces, where there are innumerable fountains, and
staircases, and flights of steps, down the balustrades of
which water continually flows, very musical in the heat.
And these fountains, so full of beauty and sensuality,
throbbing in the sunlight, are really useless, for no one
ever seems to wander there, under the orange-trees and
magnolias, or to climb the many staircases, to sit in the
loggias, or loiter on the shady terraces. I always went
there alone, and I met no one there all the time I was in
Granada.
To walk there at midday, in perfect silence save for
the music of the fountains that came from far and near,
utterly alone with the flowers, was like wandering in a
dream. If a fruit dropped, even a long way off, I heard
it fall; and if, among the many grasshoppers that sang
GRANADA
285
all day, one ceased to sing, I was aware; and, indeed, I
could almost hear the wind enter the garden at sunset
and pass along the alleys or among the trees, and when
it passed me I looked up, not without expectation. And
most strange it was, since I loved every living thing that
lived there the water and the butterflies, the trees, the
wind, and the blossoms and the leaves, and the very
stones of the paths that seemed always about to burst
forth into delight; that I was aware that every flower
in the garden stirred as I entered the gate; that the
fountains listened for a moment, and the green leaves
whispered together, and the lilies nodded to the roses,
and the roses turned away their heads, for all were afraid.
And why they were afraid I do not know; only I am sure
that they eyed me uneasily and were glad when I was
gone. Why were they afraid? why are they always
afraid? Shall we ever know?
To come down into Granada at sunset from the
Alhambra and the Generalife is like passing from a
dream into the brutal reality of life. The streets are
noisy and full of beggars, who follow you with threats,
and thrust out their hands demanding alms, and curse
you under their breath; and the women watch you
sullenly, with envy, curiosity, and hatred. But it is on
the Albaicin, among the gipsies, that you will see the
most disgusting and piteous sight in Granada. This
strange and shameless folk, some five hundred of them,
live there, under government supervision, in the holes
and caves of the hill. And this dreadful spectacle of
degradation and poverty is really the most famous in
Granada. You cannot remain half an hour in the city
but some miserable citizen, who lives by showing the
horrors of his dying city to the stranger, will try to
force you, by his importunity, to visit this scene of
shame also. And if you are persuaded, your last illusion
286
THE CITIES of spaIN
will vanish when you find that the gipsies are 'on the
telephone'; that he—your guide—who has promised you
every sort of primitive wonder, marvellous dances as old
as Egypt, strange and lovely songs, and a glimpse of
beautiful women, makes arrangement for your visit, as a
matter of course, through the telephone; and at last, by
the same means, orders for himself an ass, since, as he
said indeed, the way is steep. I shall not forget the
sight of this great, strong man sitting astride the little
ass he had hired to impress me, and, of course, to
help him cheat me the more easily. And, indeed, the
whole affair was full of a brutal sort of humour, racy
of the soil, that reconciled me almost to the mere
impudence of it.
It was nightfall when we set out, and after a climb of
some twenty minutes came, high up on the hill-side, to
a cave hewn out of the rock, closed by a door. Within
several people were sleeping; the air was fetid; and, in
the dim light of a metal lamp, I saw eight persons
lying on the floor in every sort of undress, while from the
wretched and filthy bed two old women leered at me,
and, sitting up, thrust out their hands and demanded
money. My guide smiled. 'Gipsies,' said he; 'dogs of
gipsies,' and smiled again. We passed on, and came to
another cave. Within some one thrummed a guitar. We
entered and sat down. Presently seven women, the
youngest about seventeen, the oldest more than fifty
years old, dressed in horrible cast-off garments from
some Spanish music-hall, began to dance by the light
of four candles. It was at once an absurd and disgusting
sight. Some of the dances-the morongo, the tango, for
instance-if danced by pretty girls in trailing dresses,
the dress of the Cigarreras of Seville, might have been-
how shall I say?-beautiful, alluring, full of provocation
and suggestion; but danced by these dreadful, frightful

IN THE ALBAICIN, GRANADA
GRANADA
287
All the time one was
They were pitiful, and
people, they were just obscene.
between laughing and crying.
brutally disgusting, these old women of fifty, serious
and intent on their work, compelling their old, haggard
faces to a smile when they caught you watching them,
but for the most part merely half-conscious, shambling,
twittering, tremulously shaking themselves for pesetas.
I cannot describe how disgusting, how pathetically
ridiculous it was, and almost unbearable. For there
was nothing of art, nothing of joy in a beautiful thing
-how could there be?-but it was just so much a lurch
for my benefit-mine, who was all the time between
laughter and tears. But I cannot express the absurdity
of it, the ugliness of this spectacle, which many
watched with shouts, and the good humour of the poor
among themselves; quite oblivious, too, of any shame
there might be in such an exhibition, yet with a sort
of fierceness after all that, it may be, shame had put into
their hearts!
'Is your worship satisfied?' asked my guide, from
behind the dancers.
'You must confess,' said I brutally, 'that they are a
little old, these houris; that while they might well have
pleased the Great Captain—
'Let us not stand upon trifles, Señor,' said my guide
cheerfully. 'We know it is the dance that is of impor-
tance. Everywhere there are old women who forget
they are not what they may have been; they have tried
to please you. Ah, Señor! since we know they are old,
consider how difficult it must be for them.'
'But you told me, Manuel-'
'For me,' said Manuel, 'I am a good Christian and a
philosopher; I can bear something less than the best of
all-
At last I came out into the fresh air and the starlight,
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and I was able to breathe, and to feel ashamed and
angry. But when I turned to abuse Manuel, I found
him fondling the ass and feeding it with sugar, making
excuses to it for the infidel whom, as he said, 'we have
brought hither.'
XXIV
MURCIA, ALICANTE, AND VALENCIA
HE way from Granada to Murcia and Alicante is
long and wearying in the hot weather, and indeed
the little eastern cities among the palm-trees, between
the mountains and the sea, hardly repay you for the weari-
ness of the way. And yet, since it is still necessary to take
the diligence between Guadix and Baza, while almost
anywhere else in Spain you may if you will depend on
the railway, to pass this way has still a faint semblance
of adventure, of the romance of the road, the immense
toil and satisfaction of travel, that is so valuable to those
who are, for the most part, compelled to travel hurriedly
from one place to another hundreds of miles away,
between sunrise and sunrise. Leaving Granada early in
the morning, you come to Guadix, a little city in the
midst of mulberry groves, just before noon, to find the
diligence waiting to start for Baza. Dilapidated and
dirty-looking, before the end of the day you find it
a prison, in which every sort of torture pursues you
relentlessly: mercilessly you are dragged by the mules,
over a road that in parts is scarcely more than a track,
through one of the strangest and most desolate countries
of the world. Before you stretches an immense desert,
covered by tall esparto grass, in which forgotten tribes
of gipsies hide themselves, really burrowing homes for
themselves in the dry undergrowth among the sand-
hills, or in the thirsty watercourses that have no water.
T
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The whole country is broken up like an angry sea almost
into great billows of rock and sand. To come to Baza
at nightfall, from the sadness and brutality of that desert,
is to experience one of the most exquisite joys known to
the traveller. For though the view is of an unspeakable
wretchedness, to have found any city in that desolate place
is like coming home. All day, for my comfort, I reminded
myself continually how near I was to Madrid; and, at last,
to convince myself of safety, of the nearness of that civili-
sation I seemed to have lost so completely, to relieve
myself of the immense loneliness that seemed to have
imprisoned me, in spite of the horrible jolting of the
diligence, the terrible heat of the sun, the suffocating dust
of the way, with agony and delight I made out a time-table,
to prove to myself how soon I could be in Madrid!
Even the tourist, I suppose, knows those bad moments
that the traveller experiences, not so frequently after all,
in which he would give all he possesses to be for a single
night in his own bed, to spend but one evening with those
he loves, to feel, if only for a moment, the pressure of a
beloved hand. In the immense loneliness that surrounds
us always, only the familiarity of the scenes around us,
the love we have been able to save, entice us to forget
that each soul, 'as a solitary prisoner,' keeps its own
dream of a world; that we are always far away and alone.
But in strange cities, or by some river under the trees or
at the saddest part of a road, how often on a far journey
are we compelled to look into our own hearts, as it were, to
realise that we are utterly alone, to understand that we
are but a solitary and forgotten soldier in any army that
is passing, and that for us, after all, there is no abid-
ing city. In such moments it is easy to understand how
little we mean by the brotherhood of man. And yet,
indeed, how absurd it is to permit the remembrance of
death to persuade us that we should rightly fear to die

PREHISTORIC CAVE, ANTEGUERA

her
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MURCIA, ALICANTE, AND VALENCIA 291
here rather than there: since to die at last is necessary, even
delicious in its oblivion of sweet and sour alike. But
whether it be absurd or no, it is the shadow that is ever
eager to touch the traveller on the shoulder, in every
moment of weariness or ennui. It is always with a
certain sadness that I find my way for the first time
through the street of any city howsoever dazzling or
famous. Who knows what may come into my heart at
a turning of the way where I have never been before?
how may I be sure that something that has been asleep
in my soul may not be awakened by some familiar silence,
here or there; some aspect of the evening in this far city;
some strange music that is only to be heard in these
streets; or by the immense sadness that seems to over-
whelm certain parts of the highway? Who knows what
agony of the spirit, what desolation and foreboding, may
not devour me before evening, since I am inviting some-
thing new to come to me; and to be eager for delight,
after all, is but to throw open the gates of our being to
whatever may pass by; and among the motley throng
that enters into possession of the soul, as of a citadel that
has capitulated, there will surely be some solitary figure
more powerful than all the rest, who will come as Jonah
came to Nineveh and drive us mad. There is not one of
us who is in such secure possession of his soul that he may
always be sure of ruling there; at any moment he may
have to reason with himself, lest he be too much afraid;
and it is not often, perhaps, that reasoning will avail.
To-day a very sad thing has come to me indirectly; I
just met it on the way, and for me, at least, no horror re-
mains from it, but an impression of great beauty. On
the way from Baza to Murcia the train in which I
happened to be a passenger ran over and killed a woman
of about fifty years old. It was evidently suicide, and I
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THE CITIES OF SPAIN
am sure, for her at least, suicide was right, a fortunate
escape from some calamity too brutal to be borne. In
the midst of this frightful thing, which no one understood,
I saw two women, peasants, come and look at the one who
had made her escape. In the face of the elder there was
no understanding, she was shocked, that was all; but the
younger woman gazed with great charity upon the heap
that was so pitiful. Just then the husband of this younger
woman came towards them. He seemed a kind of
peasant farmer. She went up to him—but with a gentle-
ness-and laid her hand on his arm and explained, as it
were broke the news, the rather terrible news, to him. I
cannot express the impression this made on me.
It was
a divine thing, quite simple, natural even, but for me an
absolutely divine impression of the protection a woman
offers to a man, that he nearly always does not see, does
not understand. It was as though she wanted to save
him from the brutality of all that. She had been touched
by a kind of divinity in death, she understood and saw
the pitifulness of life-oh yes, unconsciously-just for a
moment, and she knew that he would see only the horror
there. So she touched him: it was as though she desired
to convey a certain humanity by that gesture of love.
No, I cannot explain what I mean. It is necessary that
you should understand: for it is these women who will
save Spain. Nor was it any sentimental emotion that
came to me from an action as simple in its humanity as
the kiss which a mother gives her child, really protecting
him ever after from I know not what disasters that may
assail the soul. It was not sentiment in the weak modern
sense at all. It was, as it were, a vision of truth and love,
of the profound instinct of the brotherhood of man, a
sudden glimpse of reality seen in a flash by the wayside:
and of such is the kingdom of heaven.
MURCIA, ALICANTE AND VALENCIA 293
Murcia is a Moorish city lying in the midst of a garden
at the foot of the Montañía de Fuensanta. There is almost
nothing there to interest the tourist, save the cathedral
perhaps, built in 1358, a Gothic building spoiled in the
sixteenth century by Herrera and his fellows. Hot in
summer, indeed the thermometer stood in the shade at
115 degrees Fahrenheit during the time I spent there, in
winter it is colder than you might think, even ten degrees
of frost being not unknown. Full of gipsies and beggars,
it is at once melancholy and full of sunshine, that quiet
and burning light always so full of mystery, and in its
effect, as it seems to me in some inexplicable way, always
so religious. And that the people of Murcia delight in
religion, the strange and beautiful spectacle of a proces-
sion in honour of some saint, the ever-moving miracle
play of the Mass, so tragic, and yet so full of reassurance,
you are continually reminded by the series of Pasos made
by Francisco Zarcillo, that you may find in the Ermita
de Jesús. Up and down the city, in S. Juan de Dios, in
S. Miguel, in S. Bartolomé, and in S. Juan Baptista, you
come upon Zarcillo's statues, and, eighteenth-century work
though they be, they are more worthy of study than any-
thing else to be found in Murcia. A Neapolitan born in
Murcia, you find in his work something of the excess of
the Neapolitan school, together with something of a real
gravity, that Spanish intensity, a desire for reality, for
the truth perhaps, that its very sincerity redeems from
any charge of mannerism, so easily brought against the
Neapolitans. Something profound, a real depth of feeling,
you discover there beneath the gorgeous and hideous
draperies with which the priests, those simple savages in
whose hearts art is ever the drudge of religion, have
clothed them. Here in Spain, where the baroque style
was for so long dominant, it is such work as Zarcillo's
that really redeems it from our contempt and our indif-
294
THE CITIES OF SPAIN
ference. At Cartagena too, in the church of S. María,
there is an altar-piece from his hand, really the one beauti-
ful thing in a city so forlorn, so utterly overwhelmed, by
the beauty of the hills, the splendour of the sea.
Another of these eastern cities, Alicante, has not even
so much to offer the traveller in return for the weariness
of his way. A certain melancholy loveliness haunts all
these white Mediterranean towns with their shady Paseos,
their Castles on the heights, their aspect of immense
antiquity, among the vines, the palms, the olives, the tall
esparto grass, the thorny grey agaves of their gardens.
Something of Africa you find in them always, perhaps in
their immense ennui, their indolent beauty, their fatal-
ism and hopelessness, as it were, that make you ever
anxious for departure. At evening, as you come back
into the city, your eyes seem always to turn with a
certain expectancy towards the towers as though you
awaited something, as though something were about to
stream from the white turrets. Is it the white flag of
Islam you expect on the top of the minarets, the little
white flag that flies over the mosques at the hour of
prayer? Certainly it is with a certain uneasiness you
expect that cry 'Allah Akbar, Allah Akbar,' a cry really
of despair, of the immense and childish faith of the
dying which never reaches you from the towers of the
city.
Elche too, that city of palms, where a whole forest of
them begins at the city gate, is certainly an African city,
not in its melancholy alone, so inexplicable under that
perfect sky. I cannot explain, even to myself, why these
southern cities should seem to me so sad, save that they
are so silent that in the long days there is always time.
for remembrance. A sort of nostalgia, inexplicable,
inverted almost, possesses one in these quiet places where
you can hear only the sound of running water or a tragic

OUTSIDE VALENCIA
MURCIA, ALICANTE, AND VALENCIA 295
Malagueña at noonday, when man rests from his immense
labour in the shadow of his house. Yes, it is true I am
not yet able to understand what all this means to me, or
why these gardens, these vines, the white wall golden in
the sun should bring tears to my eyes. It is as though
the south were reminding me of something I had for-
gotten and have not yet been able to remember.
I came to Valencia in a covered cart, a tartana, slung
between two great wheels, gay with crimson curtains.
Almost a modern city, with tramways and three railway
stations, without any building of great value, it is yet
full of interest, the centre of a school of painting, the
Medinat-al, 'the city of fertility,' of the Moors whom the
Cid, that boastful barbarian, expelled in 1094. 'Behold
the glorious country!' he writes to his wife Ximena with
an eloquence he seems to have bequeathed to Sancho
Panza, 'see what a garden is here! Enjoy thou its
beauties; revel in its delights: for I, the Cid, Rodrigo Diaz,
have made myself its mighty Lord and Ruler.' The Cid
ruled here till 1099, when he died, and the Moors regained
possession of the city which, in the year 1238, finally
came into the possession of the Spaniard. To-day it is a
gay and noisy city, the seat of a university, the capital of
the most prosperous agricultural province in Spain pos-
sessing also among its other glories the largest bull-ring
in the country, a great amphitheatre capable of holding
some seventeen thousand persons. Valencia is really an
Eastern city where people are always working, making
brass cups or shoes or clothing in little shops like caves,
whole streets of them, huddled one on another, in that
maze of tall irregular houses, of little narrow crooked ways,
and tiny squares that make up Valencia-an Eastern city,
only gayer by far than any city of the East, and really
without the gravity that almost every other city of Spain
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THE CITIES OF SPAIN
so obviously possesses. Inside those broad modern boule-
vards that seem a little out of place here in the south,
that are indeed in summer intolerable by reason of the
heat that the narrow old ways keep out so delightfully,
you find really a mediæval city that has been surrounded
by the modern world. There this city of balconies and
brightly dressed people is charming, delicate with the
passing mood of the day, quiet in the noon, a little
solemn still at evening, and so gay by night. And it is,
of course, in the older parts of a city, that is so surely
transforming itself into a modern provincial town, that
all that is really worth seeing will be found; the
cathedral, begun in 1262 and finished, as it is said, in 1452,
which is to-day so invisible from the outside, by reason of
the crowded houses that surround it, and within, since it
is overlaid everywhere with plaster work. But even in
a place so spoiled of all its loveliness, a certain living
beauty and simplicity remains, if only in that 'tribunal
of the waters' that gathers in the gateway of the Apostles
every Thursday morning. It is one of the few Moorish
customs that have continued to this day; and in itself,
curiously enough, one of the most democratic institutions
in a country socially the most democratic in the world,
whatever doubts we may permit ourselves of the political
system. The whole irrigation of the Huerta, that garden
which surrounds Valencia, is in the hands of this guild,
an elected body of farmers and peasants who hold in
trust really the prosperity of the city, for against their
judgment there is no appeal. It is without surprise that
one passes from so picturesque a government through the
narrow streets to the Plaza del Mercado, where the Lonja,
that casket of fifteenth-century Gothic work, is still used
as the exchange of the city. It faces in all its delicate
splendour a church so atrocious in its barbaric baroque as
Los Santos Juanes, perhaps the most brutal building in
S

ICT
THE MIGUELETE VALENCIA
MURCIA, ALICANTE, AND VALENCIA 297
Valencia. One passes out of the city at last by the
Puerta de Serranos, which Ford tells you was built in
1349; a very noble gateway flanked by two great towers,
with the exception of the Puerta del Cuarte on the other
side of the city, which is much like it, it is the last of the
great gates that once guarded Valencia. The walls,
stupidly destroyed to give work to the unemployed, are
now just a few ruins here and there; nor do the people
regret this vandalism, they are all on the side of
modernity and, as they declare with a delicious sim-
plicity,' of progress'; and indeed it is true, as one of them
said to me, not without pride, 'modern cities do not
possess walls,-is there then a wall round London ?'
Just outside the Puerta de Serranos is the Turia, that
river without water, between whose banks the garrison
drills, shabbily splendid in its modern uniform. But
however proud the Valencian people may be of their
modernity' and their progress,' it is still an impression
of medievalism that the stranger carries away from those
gay, thoughtless, balconied streets that are so full of
colour, where every one is gaily dressed, and almost
every one is singing or shouting, or making a noise. For
in their heart of hearts this people, so eager for happiness
and pleasure, is, as indeed we might suppose, and for that
reason if for no other, very religious, really moved by
the remembrance of things which they do not forget,
shall never pass away. And so, if the stranger happens
to be in the church of the Colegio del Patriarca any
Friday in the year about ten o'clock, he may see the
people of Valencia in another mood, as sincere and
as expressive as that he will find always in the
streets. At nine o'clock High Mass has been sung
to old and beautiful music, and for the service which
follows all the fashionable world of Valencia seems to
have assembled, the women at any rate all in black with
298
THE CITIES OF SPAIN
the black mantilla. All are on their knees, grave and
even beautiful, at the remembrance of One who died so
long ago. Slowly the choir chants the psalm, and then
over the high altar the purple veil is drawn aside, dis-
covering another of a grey colour, which in its turn
disappears too, revealing a veil of black that is, as it were,
that veil of the temple which was rent in twain. There
is a stir among the throng, and then suddenly the black
veil is torn asunder and the crucifix is seen. A little
murmur of prayer and pity passes through the crowd,
genuinely moved by so simple, so familiar a spectacle as
one might be by the sudden remembrance of a friend one
had loved. The music ceases and the service is at an
end, every one passes out into the streets; and as it
seemed to me, amid all that immense gaiety in which
heaven is so fair an accomplice, for that one day in the
week there was a certain plaintive note, not gravity nor
even seriousness, but I know not what suggestion of
fraternity, since on that day He, who is every one's
brother, had died to help us.
XXV
TARRAGONA
T is through a country very like Provence that you
and beautiful as it is in its sweet, soft, southern loveliness,
how much less strong it seems than those arid deserts of
Castile with their great and stern beauty, melancholy and
forsaken, that now, when we have left them for ever, we
begin to long for and to regret.
Tarragona is set on a high hill, some eight hundred
feet above the sea, that sweeps away to the east and west
in a series of little bays and capes bastioned with huge
boulders. A desolate place enough, you think, as you
look about you at the station, not far from the harbour
guarded from the waves by a long curved mole where the
fishermen spread their nets in the wind, and the spray
leaps up for joy in the sunshine. But Tarragona herself
on her high hill, crowned by the cathedral, is one of the
oldest and most beautiful cities in Spain, a golden city
with walls all of gold, a cathedral of gold and towers that
are redder than the sunset, while all before her shines
the sea, and far away behind her rises a wild country of
heather where, hedged off from the world by little stone
walls or hedges of agaves, gardens and vineyards smile
here and there, not far from the city; little pleasant
places that are lost at last in that vast, dark country that
stretches away over plain and valley where a great Roman
aqueduct, all of gold too, still stands, a very precious
299
300
THE CITIES OF SPAIN
vessel in which the Romans brought water for their city
from the great impregnable hills.
It is not at first sight that Tarragona gives herself
to you, though even on your first coming to her she
seems to smile, to welcome you with a certain sweet-
ness and serenity of air or aspect. Starting early from
Valencia, I had stayed at Tortosa on my way under the
guidance of one who lived there, so that it was already
late afternoon when I drew near to Tarragona. The
evening came as I passed into the city, along the steep,
white road from the station, and it was almost dark when
I came to the inn. A wonderful quietness seemed to
have fallen on everything, a calm serenity that was a
refreshment in itself after the noise and garish colour of
Valencia-that city so pleasant and yet so wearying in its
tireless pursuit of pleasure. In climbing the long hill into
Tarragona I seemed really to have risen out of all that
rather obvious merry-making, a gaiety that was sincere
enough, it is true, but that seemed to have forgotten
everything else. And yes, it was really with pleasure
that I seemed to feel a certain freshness in the mere
height, a nimbleness in the air that was of old so famous.
After dinner I went out again into the quiet streets, and
passing along the Rambla de San Juan, came on to the
Paseo, a great platform built on the hillside, looking
over the sea east and west. Something, I know not
what, in the beauty of the night, the sanity of air, the
quietness of a place so much nearer the stars than that
desert seemed to be in which I had wandered so long,
reassured me, so that it was into a dreamless sleep, one
of those nights of childhood that come rarely and more
rarely as we grow older, that I fell that night in a little
room that looked on to a tiny plaza where the trees
whispered together. When I awoke again in the morning,
still with that strange confidence in my heart, at peace
TARRAGONA
301
with myself as I had not been for many days, some con-
fusion of mind, some dryness of heart, some anxiety,
perhaps only half realised, but already about to have its
way with me, seemed to have passed away. As I made
my way along the Rambla in the sunlight and turned
again as on the night before into the Paseo de Santa
Clara, the wind came to me over the sea, bringing all
England in its arms, and in a moment I was quite cured,
no longer feverish or restless at all; simply to be alive
and here was a delight. How inexplicable those moods
that come to us so stealthily in our travels seem to us
afterwards; how ground less our fears, how foolish our
flight!
The great treasure of Tarragona is the cathedral, a
half-romanesque building of beautiful, golden-coloured
stone. In its own gracious expressive way it remains
one of the greater glories of Spain, a more 'humane'
building, as it were, than anything which came later,
more beautiful too in its temperance, both of size and
style, than the melodramatic temples of Segovia, of
Salamanca, or Seville, which the traveller is taught to
admire with so little discrimination, chiefly because they
are big and imposing, very rich in ornament, but quite
without the sincere and simple loveliness of the cathe-
dral of Lérida, for instance, or this forgotten church of
Tarragona.
Begun early in the twelfth century, the name of the
architect is unknown to us, but the greater part of the
church is twelfth and thirteenth century work, and in the
'necrology' of the cathedral, on the 4th March 1256, Street
tells us that mention is made of a certain 'Frater
Bernardus magister operis hujus ecclesiae,' who may
well have been the architect of the larger part of the
church and cloister as they exist to-day. However that
may be, the See of Tarragona is one of the oldest in
302
THE CITIES OF SPAIN
Spain, claiming equality with that of Toledo, and though
in reality the Archbishop of Tarragona has not the power
of the Primate of the Spains, he is yet very jealous of
his rights, carrying 'the assertion of his dignity so far
that I noticed,' says the same writer, 'a mandamos of the
Cardinal Archbishop of Toledo hung up in the Coro, in
which his title "Primada de las Españas" and the same
word in "Santa Iglesia Primada" were carefully scratched
through in ink.' Certainly, so early as 1089, the Pope
urged the faithful to restore the church just won from
the Moors. And in 1116 Ramon Berenguer el Grande
granted the See to San Oleguer, who began to build the
present church with the help of Norman architects and
workmen, brought there by El Conde Roberto. As you
pass round the church to-day by devious and narrow
ways in which often you lose sight of it altogether, it is
always with new joy that you come upon that Norman
apse with its wide-splayed, round-arched windows, its
gracious strength, its security, and sense of tradition, as it
were, that make the exuberant, uncontrolled work of the
fifteenth and sixteenth century builders here in Spain at
any rate, for all their boasted learning and freedom,
seem so inexpressive, so full of meaningless gesticulation.
The great Romanesque tower on the south side, added to
unfortunately, we may think perhaps, in 1300-1350, when
the octagonal steeple was added, remains solitary without
its twin on the north side, which was probably destroyed
when the north aisle of the choir was rebuilt in the
fourteenth century.
The church stands, as is not uncommon in Cataluña,
on a platform built up on foundations, to which you
climb here, at any rate, from the city beneath by a great
flight of steps. The beautiful façade with its two
Romanesque doors with double arches and sculptures of
the Dream of Joseph and the Adoration of the Kings, its
TARRAGONA
303
magnificent rose-window of the twelfth century, remains
the most splendid fragment in Tarragona, unfinished it is
true, but in its simplicity and beauty it may be more
lovely than if the fifteenth century had left there three
'elegant pinnacles crowning the upper piers,' or that
great, high, pointed triangular arch that was to crown the
whole. If in the main entrance with its deep and wide-
pointed arch we find something less serene, less sure of
itself, already as it were a little restless, a little eager
for disaster, it is at least full of simplicity; and the
statues, thirteenth-century work by Maestro Bartolomé,
are in their golden beauty still unspoiled by the brutal
realism of the fifteenth century that at last made all
architectural sculpture impossible. The simplicity which
you find everywhere in the stones that have not been
spoiled by man, in the exterior work of the church, you
find again with a sort of surprise in the church itself
under the beautiful, early, pointed roof, where a certain
majesty and severity almost, the temperate asceticism of
the early builders, remind you really of nothing else in
Spain, and are indeed so rare in that country where the
gravity and the simplicity of the people have found but
little expression in architecture. And while it is true
that in the nave, for instance, you are aware, though
scarcely more than that, of a certain heaviness almost
gloomy in the mere mass of piers and arches that have
not the sense of life, of the life that it is the business of
art to give to its creations, and that is never without a
certain joy, you have but to pass into the cloisters to
forget everything but the delight that disengages itself
from the exquisite thirteenth-century work there, so
lively and so happy in its pure beauty of form and detail.
That Byzantine door through which you pass from the
sanctuary into the cloisters is, even with these perfect
cloisters themselves before one, perhaps the loveliest thing
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THE CITIES OF SPAIN
in the church. A great pillar divides it, resting on a base.
of writhing serpents carved there so decoratively in the
stone, while on the beautiful and strange capital you find
again among other reliefs the Adoration of the Kings.
Of the cloisters themselves, for the most part of very
pure Romanesque work, it is difficult to speak; they are
too lovely to describe in the dead technical terms that
mean almost nothing to us, that can but shadow forth
even to the architect the mere skeleton of a thing living
and flushed with delight. In the midst is set a beautiful
garden where the cypress, the ilex, the palm, and the
oleander clothe the place with various green, while in the
midst a fountain plays, scattering its song.
Wherever you may go in Tarragona, to S. Pablo or to
the deserted plaza outside the city, where the walls of
Cyclopean and Roman work are so marvellously strong,
or to the Paseo de S. Clara, where after all you find your-
self most often of all, since the sea is there so spacious
and splendid, and the sky so wonderful with clouds, a
remembrance of that quiet serene cloister colours all
your thoughts, so that even in so dilapidated a city, a
city really built out of ruins, just falling into ruin itself,
a city of the hills by the sea that is always changing,
where even from day to day the rocks are being eaten
away, the ruins themselves are being destroyed, it is ever
a remembrance of something precious, something that is
old and still beautiful, that haunts you, as Oxford might
haunt one in the midst of London, after but a few days
spent within the shadow of her towers. And it is really
just such a beautiful representative of the whole kingdom
of such things that is needed to keep one from being
over sorry at the mere brutality of much here: the life of
the port, for instance, or that prison which like a white
cenotaph, horrid with the injustice, or at any rate the
mere hatred of punishment, shines and shines so callously
TARRAGONA
305
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in the sun between the city and the sea. You may see
the prisoners working there, or walking about at exercise,
so close to the sea and yet so far from it, unable to see
it even for a moment, though they must listen to it
always, its endless free song, with what patience they
may command. Many people in Tarragona seem to feel
the fascination of the view over the sea, where the coast
breaks away in little bays, and the shore slopes down to
the water's edge in long promontories; where the colour
is so imaginative, as it were, so full of suggestion. Very
often I found myself drawn back there from the Museo,
for instance, where there are two magnificent torsos of
Pomona and of Bacchus, or from the country where so
much lies hidden that is worth seeing. Every time I
returned I found a few persons there, people who after a
little time would, one by one, get up from the long stone
parapet and go away, only to be replaced by others. It
was a place of continual and solitary pilgrimage for the
people of Tarragona. They would sit there for a long or
short while, gazing out to sea across the harbour where
the mole curves so strangely towards the shore, and the
sea is desolate, or up the coast towards Barcelona, where
there is nothing but little rocks and the surf beyond, and
over all the immensity of the sea. They seemed not to
notice one another, and after a time, often after only a
moment, they would go away, always alone. I cannot
explain the fascination of that view, where as in an
immense amphitheatre the sea and the clouds perform a
marvellous tragedy before the city of Tarragona.
I
XXVI
BARCELONA
CANNOT understand how it is that sometimes,
when I am come to a strange city, I desire so
eagerly to be in some other place which, it may be, I
know well; so that the city I am in is spoiled for me,
and I pass up and down its streets like an exile distracted
by the remembrance of some place far away that I have
loved, or of some companion who was then still with me
and whom I cannot now forget. Who will explain the
stupidity of our desires? It happened so to me in
Barcelona; for on my arrival presently all the peace and
refreshment I had found in Tarragona vanished away,
and a sudden longing came to me for Florence and the
serene temperance of a Tuscan spring, the mere happi-
ness I have always found there, that is not to be had in
Spain, seek how you may. And I do not know why this
befell me, unless it was that I heard a man and woman
speaking Tuscan as I came into the Rambla. And it was
for this reason perhaps, that, alone of all the cities of
Spain, I found Barcelona hateful; and even now I cannot
think of it without a sort of distress. It is a city of the
North, full of restlessness, an unnatural energy, haunted
by the desire for gain, absolutely modern in its expres-
sion, that has made of one of the oldest cities in Spain
a sort of Manchester, almost without smoke it is true,
but full of mean streets and the immense tyranny of
machinery, that for the most part Spain has escaped so
806
BARCELONA
307
fortunately. Barcelona has nothing in common with any
other Mediterranean city, unless indeed it be Marseilles;
but it lacks the lucidity of that great French city. It seems
always in the shadow of the Montjuic, and the light and
the sea approach it reluctantly almost, never quite frankly
at any rate, for unless you climb the hills beyond the
city you are scarcely aware of the sea at all, the port
being so great, greater far than the harbour of Marseilles,
for instance, though smaller than that of Genoa; and if
you walk in the Rambla, the one beautiful street in the
city, where all day long and far into the night pedlars
sell their wares, men discuss business, and all Barcelona
continually seems to pass and repass, the great avenue
of trees that leads through the heart of the city, and the
houses on either side, keep out the sun, necessarily per-
haps, but still unfortunately, obscuring the light; while as
a promenade it is almost quite spoiled by the electric
trams, which rush past you on both sides, noisy with
gongs and the shriek of wires. And if you go to the
cathedral, expecting some splendid thing, you will be
surprised, rather, perhaps, after all, in coming from Spain
than from France, by its vast darkness, in which the
beauty of its architecture is lost, and all that is really
visible is an altar here and there before which a light
glistens, making the solitude deeper. This feeling of
gloom, of depression, that I have always experienced in
Barcelona, is caused perhaps by its business; it is the
one city in Spain that is devoted to commerce. And,
indeed, it is not really Spanish at all, this great port on
the Mediterranean; still less, as it seems to me, is it French:
it is the restless capital of Cataluña, a place apart by
itself, eager as no other city of Spain has cared to be for
wealth, for trade, for success in business. Coming here
from the cities of the true South, where the sun does so
much to reconcile poverty with riches, almost the first
308
THE CITIES OF SPAIN
thing that strikes one is that old northern contrast of rich
and poor, the inevitable comparison of those who have
everything with those who have nothing. Here again
poverty begins to be hideous and ridiculous, to lose its
humanity almost, certainly its human dignity, in the
brutality that so often accompanies it in the North, the
ugliness of those who are always hungry, their hatred
too of those who are so indifferent to them, who have
exploited them, and are now contemptuous. And again
I find in Barcelona that middle class, which has already
swallowed up my own country, but that one misses so
gladly in Spain, where every one is equally sure of himself
since he is content to be proud of his birth, whatever it
may be, seeing that to be Spanish is enough, and to be
a Christian is to be under authority in the only way, as it
seems to me, any Spaniard has ever cared to suffer it.
But here in Barcelona you are in a new world. The city
is quite modern, the shops are full of foreign goods, the
people are restless, even energetic; you hear of political
clubs, of labour meetings, of outrages, of thefts, of bank-
ruptcies, of great commercial ventures, of bad faith, of
republicanism, of socialism and anarchism, of free thought,
and all the blessings of modern civilisation. Barcelona
is very discontented with the rest of Spain. 'Look you,'
said a tradesman to me, 'these Spaniards are a lazy lot;
here in Barcelona we work-my faith!'
It is pleasing to turn from all this enthusiasm for
modern ways, and, out of hearing of the electric trams,
to remember that, after all, Barcelona is a very old city,
founded by Hercules 'four hundred years to a day before
the foundation of Rome.' Much that was once hers in
the days when she rivalled Tarragona, and divided the
trade of the Mediterranean with Genoa and Venice, must
have been beautiful, and while she has swept almost all
of it away in her desire for life and wealth, there yet

S
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BARCELONA
309
remains, in certain obscure places, enough to remind us
of her former greatness, that if we may judge by the art
it produced would seem in some subtle way to be so
different from that which she now enjoys so feverishly.
The oldest, and perhaps the most beautiful church in
Barcelona, San Pablo del Campo, lies far away to the
western part of the city, beyond the walls that have been
destroyed. It is said to have been founded in the tenth
century by a certain Wilfred, Count of Barcelona, and
we read of it as being restored in the twelfth century. A
small cruciform building with three apses, vaulted with
half domes, a nave and transept crossed with a wagon-
vault roof, and an octagonal cupola over the crossing, the
only perfect part of the old church which remains to-day,
after many restorations, is the western façade, and even
there the great circular window might seem to be a later
addition, taking the place of a round arched window
similar to the two which still remain on either side below
the round window and above the doorway. The door-
way itself is very beautiful under its Romanesque arch
supported by pillars, while in the tympanum Christ and
St. Peter and St. Paul are carved, and above, the eagle
of St. John, the angel of St. Matthew, and a hand in
benediction.
These figures, so rude and simple, mere first attempts
to represent life in stone, are among the earliest sculp-
tures in Spain; they do not give us a very splendid idea
of the artistic capacity of the city.
To the south-east of the church is the cloister, built
possibly in the eleventh century. It is very small and
eastern with its sculptured capitals and arches.
It is in quite another part of the city, not far from the
Salón de San Juan, to the eastward, that S. Pedro de las
Puellas, a church which Cean-Bermudez tells us was
rebuilt in the year 980 by Sunario, Count of Barcelona,
310
THE CITIES OF SPAIN
and his wife, may be found. It was consecrated in the
year 983, and while it has the same general plan as
S. Pablo, it is in a much worse state of preservation :
nothing so lovely as the façade of S. Pablo remains
there to-day.
To the north of the city, close to the Plaza de Cataluña,
is the church of S. Ana, built, according to Ford,¹ in
1146, in the form of a cross, by Guillermo II., Patriarch of
Jerusalem, and in imitation of the church of the Holy
Sepulchre. But perhaps the most interesting part left
in S. Ana are the fourteenth-century cloisters, two stages
in height, set askew to the church, and very Spanish in
character. The pillars are quatrefoil in section, and it
is strange that the capitals, while all else seems to be of
the fourteenth century, retain the Byzantine character of
those at S. Pedro del Campo; perhaps these solid capitals
did not always rest on these light pillars, but are part of
a cloister built at the same time as the church, that has
been destroyed to make way for the fourteenth-century
building.
It is by such steps as these that the unhurried traveller
will wish to approach the cathedral, which has been so
greatly praised. Though the greater part of this small
and dark church, which seems so much larger than it
really is, cannot be earlier, we may think, than the four-
teenth century, a church of some kind certainly stood
here in 1058. The two inscriptions on the wall beside
the north transept doorway state that the cathedral was
begun in 1298 and was still in progress in 1329. The
architect seems to have been a certain Jaime Falve, a
native of the island of Mallorca, who came to Barcelona
in 1318. The plan of the church is cruciform, but the
transepts project very little, forming as they do the base
of the great towers, as at Exeter. The whole church
¹ Handbook for Spain, by Richard Ford, 1845, vol. i. 489.
S
2
1
BARCELONA
311
seems to have been designed for coolness and shadow,
and, indeed, so dark is it that it is almost impossible to
see the detail that seems to be characteristic rather than
beautiful. Just in that gloom and darkness we seem to
discern a certain barbarism which Spain has not often
permitted herself. It is a success of mystification rather
than of mysticism that you find in the church: as though
for a people engaged in business all day long God were
a long way off, were no longer to be met quite frankly,
but only mysteriously, in semi-darkness. It is not as the
Romanesque builders have conceived of the house of God;
nor has the Renaissance, creating for us those churches
that are full of light and space, where man may really
believe for a moment in his own divinity, cared to
remember that twilight quietness in which every one is
alone face to face with his own soul, while very far off in
the vista of the pillars, dimly, mysteriously, God descends
to the altar. For the Romanesque builder Christ seemed
a King, though a little child; for the Renaissance He
seemed indeed the Son of Man, so that He was present
everywhere, and the sight of the autumn fields brought
tears to the eyes, and beautiful things had power to heal
men of their infirmities and make them well, by reason
of some divinity in them. For both these ages it might
seem men were brethren, since in congregation they met
together and rejoiced in the light, that first created thing,
finding in it something that made glad the heart; and
out of this grew the Plainsong, a music that had not
utterly forgotten the old gods, that we had not banished
altogether from the world but had deprived of their
divinity, that a little child, Love by name as of old,
but in a certain diviner fashion, might lead them, not
without a certain joy and chanting of music. After all,
it was only the northern peoples, loath to understand
Love, that happy thing, that preferred to meet God in
312
THE CITIES OF SPAIN
privacy and recount to Him all the evil in their hearts,
to accuse themselves with tears, in a dark place, out of
the sunshine, lest they should forget to be sorry any
more, and seeing the laughter of the world and the
flowers, forgetting themselves for a moment, be friends.
That experiment which was Gothic architecture, at its
best in Notre-Dame d'Amiens, for instance, where you
find a certain novelty and splendour of light and space
-space for a vast congregation-has here become little
more than an expression of the individualism to be found
in Christianity, perhaps most of all in Spain, where the
greatest saints have been mystics, concerned with the
experience of the individual soul with God. In the
cathedral of Barcelona, though the church were full of
people, one would still be alone; and while, unlike the
later Gothic churches, the choir is confined to the two
eastern bays of the nave, there is, as Street has noted,
'no proper provision for a crowd of worshippers joining
in any one common act of prayer or worship.'
There is nothing extraordinary in the apse, which is
built after the French manner, and consists of an aisle
and chapels; and though the detail may be Catalan, it is
too dark even at midday for me to be able to examine it
carefully. It is really in the chapel of S. Eulalia, under
the choir, approached by a great flight of steps downward,
set between the two narrow flights that lead up to the
High Altar, that the most interesting work of the church.
is hidden. Brought here in 1339, as an inscription
records, the body of S. Eulalia lies in the ugliest chapel
in the cathedral, in a very beautiful shrine hidden behind.
the High Altar. The shrine, sculptured on all sides with
scenes from the life of the saint, is a 'steep-roofed ark of
alabaster,' upon eight ancient columns. Carved on the
roof you may see her soul borne aloft by angels. This
shrine of alabaster, carved in 1327, serves to recall, in

THE MOUNTAINS OF MONSERRAT FROM MANRESA, NEAR BARCELONA
BARC
some dim, far-off way, Pisa
is very far from attaining t
vitality and beauty of
perhaps the best piece
day, characteristic too
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or eagerness.
S. Eulalia's body lay
1339, when it was bro
perhaps, in that chur
smaller building, tha
satisfying than the c
obscure, so vague in
us. Built by the p
really characteristi
Street thinks that I
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BARCELONA
313
some dim, far-off way, Pisano's work at Pisa, and while it
is very far from attaining to the precision and astonishing
vitality and beauty of that masterpiece, it is yet
perhaps the best piece of sculpture in Barcelona to-
day, characteristic too in that it satisfied a people
who seem never to have cared for art with any passion
or eagerness.
S. Eulalia's body lay in S. Maria del Mar till the year
1339, when it was brought to the cathedral; and it is,
perhaps, in that church, built in 1329 on the site of a
smaller building, that you may find something more
satisfying than the cathedral, where the best work is so
obscure, so vague in the twilight, as scarcely to exist for
us. Built by the people, very simple in its plan, and
really characteristic of the work of the Catalan architects,
Street thinks that Falve, the first architect of the cathedral,
constructed it, though he has little or no evidence to
support his theory. But as it seems to me, there is a
simplicity and dignity in the church, that disdains the
somewhat theatrical effects of light and shadow that
haunt the cathedral, which point to a less sophisticated
artist, really popular, perhaps—a man of the people-in
those days when a whole community, as at Amiens,
'invested their civic pride' in a great church, promoting
then the new revolutionary Gothic manner. Those long
unbroken lines of wall, which you find in S. Maria del
Mar, seem to have been understood by the artists of
Barcelona, and while modern life and business has some-
what marred the beauty and dignity that such simplicity
never fails to attain, the church remains, perhaps, the
most characteristic and expressive in Barcelona-ruined
within, it is true, for the most part by the brutal erections
of the eighteenth century, but still a splendid example
of what could be done in the fourteenth century, even in
a city so languid in matters of art as Barcelona. Some-
314
THE CITIES OF SPAIN
thing of the same simplicity may be found in the church
of S. Justo y S. Pastor, called Los Martires, or in
S. Maria del Pino; and in the Casa Consistorial, the north
side of which is old, you may find a civic building not
unworthy of the fame of the city; but little by little, in
passing up and down Barcelona, Spain falls away from
you, and you find yourself in a cosmopolitan city of the
modern world, still with traces of its ancient splendour
lingering here and there in the Rambla, perhaps, and in
the old churches, but for the most part so different from
all that you have seen in Spain itself, that you are com-
pelled almost to think of Barcelona as a city apart, given
over to business, without character, perhaps, certainly
without anything of the raciness that in Castile, in León,
in Andalucia or Valencia, give to even the tiniest villages
something virile and splendid in which you discern
always the strong and unfortunate land that we have
loved.
INDEX
ALHAMBRA, 273-284.
Henry Swinburne's account of, 275-284.
Alicante, 294.
Angelica, Fra, 114-116.
Annunciation, 114-115.
Architecture in Spain, 16-20, 58.
Difficulty of understanding, 20.
Auto da Fé, 38-43.
Avila, 60-73.
Aspect of, 60-61.
Churches-
Cathedral, 63, 64, 65.
Apse, 64-65.
Cloisters, 65.
Retablo, 65.
Ermita de S. Esteban, 68.
Las Carmelitas Descalzas, 63.
S. Domingo, 68.
S. Pedro, 68.
S. Vicente, 65-68, 88.
City of S. Teresa, 62, 63.
Walls, 63.
BARCELONA, 306-314-
Churches-
Cathedral, 310-313.
Los Martires, 314.
S. Ana, 310.
S. Maria del Mar, 313-314.
S. Pablo del Campo, 309.
Not a Spanish city, 306-308.
Baza, 289, 290, 291.
Bellini, the, 122.
Berruguete, Pedro de, 65.
Burgos, 12-31.
Churches-
Cathedral, 12-26.
Chapels, 24-25.
Coro, 23, 24.
Nave, 22.
Tomb of Bishop Maurice, 24.
Transepts, 23.
Las Huelgas, 26-28.
Miraflores, 25, 28-31.
Landscape of, 14.
Moorish Castle, 3
Puerta S. Maria, 31.
CADIZ, 250-252, 254.
Campaña, Pedro de, 225.
Calderón, 41, 49.
Carpaccio, 122.
Castile, 10, 32, 33, 60.
Castro, Juan Sanchez de, 221-222.
Catholicism, 41, 62.
Cervantes, 41, 177-178.
Charles V., 38.
Charles, Prince of Wales in Spain, 97.
105.
Colonia, Juan de, 25, 27, 35.
Columbus, 38, 53-54.
Córdova, 192-195.
Aspect of, 192-193.
Mosque, 19, 193-195.
Roman bridge, 193.
Correggio, 114, 121-122.
Noli me tangere, 122.
Virgin and Child with St. John, 122.
Bidassoa, fording of, by Duke of Welling- Corrida de Toros, 207-217.
ton, 5.
Borgoña, Juan de, 65, 189.
Bull Fight, 207-217. See Corridą,
Compared with other sports, 207-209.
Foreign opinion of, 207-209.
Juan Valera on, 211-213.
316
CITIES OF SPAIN
Cruelty, 39-43, 207-211.
Cruz, Santos, 65.
DANCING, 7, 8, 204-206.
Desert, the, 10, 11, 28, 32, 33, 46, 55, 59,
60, 75.
Dominic, St., 42, 49.
ELCHE, 294-295.
Escorial, the, 34, 165-168.
FERNANDEZ, Alejo, 224.
Ferrar, S. Vicente, 181-182.
Flemish painting, 222.
Fuentarabia, 3-8.
Castle, 5.
Mayor of the Sea, 7.
GIORGIONE, 114, 122-124.
And Titian, 122-124.
Madonna Enthroned, 124.
Gothic architecture in Spain, 16-20, 58.
Foreign influence in, 18.
Goya, 138, 161-164.
Designs for Tapestry, 163.
Blind man's buff, 163.
Duke of Osuna, 163.
Family of Charles IV., 162-163.
La Maja, 162.
La Tirana, 164.
HERRERA, 34.
Huelgas, Las, convent of, 26-28.
INQUISITION, 37.
And learning, 49-50.
And painting, 218-221.
Irún, 3-4.
Bed at, 4.
Richard Peake's Tale, 231-249.
JEREZ, 230-249.
Journey to Spain, 1-3.
Juni, Juan de, 36, 37.
KEMPENEER. See Campaña, Pedro de
LEÓN CATHEDRAL, 20.
Leon, Fray Luis de, 49, 52.
Lérida Cathedral, 20.
Lotto, Lorenzo, 136.
Loyola, S. Ignazio, 49.
MADRID, 91-164.
B
P
Qu
RA
Campagna of, 91-92, 95-96.
In old, 97-105.
H
Paris and London, 92-93.
Prado, 94.
L
Prado Gallery.
See under Prado
L
Gallery.
И
Maria Luisa, 162.
To-day, 91-96.
Vi
'Nada,' 162.
Tauromachia, 162.
Granada, 271-288. See also Alhambra.
Aspect of, 271-273.
Albaicin, 272, 285-288.
Generalife, 272, 284-285.
Gipsies, 285-288.
Greco, El (Theotocópuli), 138-143, 189.
Ascension, 143.
Valdés on, 94.
Málaga, 264-270.
Chinitas, 267-270.
Improvisatore, 267-270,
Malagueñas, 265-267.
Mena, Pedro de, 265.
Malagueñas, 265-267.
Rem
Riber
Hi
Сол
Dre
Hed
Ma
Mantegna, 114, 115.
Mar
Death of the Virgin, 115.
Wo
Assumption, 143.
'Marriage, The Spanish,' 100-105.
Roelas
Baptism, 143.
Mena, Pedro de, 265.
Roman
Conde de Orgáz, 141.
Martyrdom of S. Maurice, 140.
Michelangelo, 108, 109, 130, 134.
Miraflores, convent of, 25, 28-31.
Roman
Rubens
Parting of Christ's Raiment, 139, 189. Miranda de Ebro, 10, II.
Thre
Portraits by, 141-142.
Morales, Luis de, 225-226.
His Palette, 141.
Toledo and, 142.
Guadarrama Mountains, 69, 91.
Guadix, 289.
Morocco, To, 253-256. See Tangier.
Murcia, 293-294.
SALAMA
Cathe
Murillo, 228-229.
Colum
Music Halls, Spanish, 204-206, 267-270.
Irish C
INDEX
317
NUÑEZ, JUAN, 223,
ON THE WAY, I-II.
Oxford, 49.
PAINTING, EARLY SPANISH, 218-229.
Compared with Flemish School, 222.
Entirely religious, 218-221.
Influence of Inquisition on, 218-221,222.
Preoccupied with pain, 223.
See under Prado and under painters'
names.
pedro, San, and the charcoal-burner,
75-81.
Philip II., 35, 38.
Prado Gallery, 106-164.
General view, 106-113.
Italian schools, 114-138.
painters, 138-164.
Spanish
See under painters' names.
QUIXOTE,
DON, 4, 177-178.
RAPHAEL, 108, 109, 114, 117-121.
Cardinal, portrait of, 119, 120.
Salamanca-
S. Esteban, 53-54.
Undergraduates, 50.
University, 42, 49-52.
Sanchez, Pedro, 223.
San Sebastián, 4, 8.
Sarto, Andrea del, 114, 116-117.
Assumption, 117.
Dispute as to the Trinity, 117.
Madonna and Child, 116.
Madonna dell' Arpie, 117.
Portraits, 117.
Segovia, 74-90.
Alcázar, 83, 84.
Aqueduct, 82-83, 89-90.
Cathedral, 87.
El Parral, 84, 85-86.
Plaza Mayor, 83.
Puerta de Santiago, 84.
S. Andrés, 83.
S. Esteban, 86-87.
S. Martin, 89.
S. Miguel, 87.
S. Millán, 87, 88-89.
Holy Family del Lagarto, 118, 119, Seville, 196-206.
120-121.
La Perla, 118,
Lo Spasimo, 118, 119.
Virgin of the Fish, 118, 119.
Visitation, 118.
Rembrandt, 110, 111, 113.
Ribera, 144-148, 153.
His realism, 147
Conception, 148.
Dream of Jacob, 147.
Heads of Apostles, 146.
Magdalen, 147.
Martyrdom of S. Bartholomew, 145.
Woman's Head, 148.
Roelas, Juan de las, 226-227.
Romanesque Architecture in Spain, 17.
Romano Giulio, 119.
Rubens, 110, 111, 112, 113, 152-153.
Three Graces, 110.
SALAMANCA, 44-54.
Cathedrals, 47-48.
Columbus in, 53.
Irish College, 51.
Alcázar, 19, 203-204.
Calle de las Sierpes, 197.
Dancing, 204-206.
Fábrica de Tabacos, 201-202.
Giralda, 19.
Las Delicias, 198.
Maracena, 201.
Plaza Nueva, 198.
School of Painting, 218-229.
Triana, 201, 203.
Women of, 199-206.
Siloe, Diego de, 30.
Gil de, 29-30.
Spain, 9.
Ignorance of, 3.
Like Africa, 6.
Spaniards, alleged cruelty of, 39-43,207-211
Spanish Character, 41, 44-45, 97-100.
Courtesy, 3, 4, 9.
Trains, 9, 44-45.
TANGIER, 257-263.
Tarragona, 299-305.
318
CITIES OF SPAIN
Tarragona-
Aspect of, 299-301.
Cathedral, 301-304.
Look-Out, 305.
Museo, 305.
Prison, 304.
Roman Aqueduct, 299.
Teresa, Santa, 61, 62, 63, 86.
Theotocópuli. See Greco.
Tiepolo, 114, 137-138.
Tintoretto, 137.
Titian, 108-113, 123, 124-136.
And Giorgione, 122-124.
Bacchanal, 125, 126, 127.
Charles V., 125, 129.
Charles V. at battle of Mühlberg, 112,
125, 131-132.
Danaë, 134-135.
Ecce Homo, 130.
Entombment, 135.
Fall of Man, 135-136.
Garden of Venus, 125, 127-128.
Isabella of Portugal, 130.
La Gloria, 133-134.
Toledo-
Puerta del Sol, 173-174.
S. Domingo el Antiguo, 139.
S. Juan de los Reyes, 190.
S. Maria la Blanca, 181-183.
S. Roman, 184.
S. Tomé, 141, 184.
Tagus, 172-173.
Vega, 174.
Walls, 176.
Zocodover, 176-177.
Torrigiano, 220.
Travel, unhappiness of, 290-291.
VALENCIA, 295-298.
Cathedral, 20.
Religion in, 297.
Tribunal of the waters, 296.
Valladolid, 32-43.
Cathedral, 34.
Inn at, 33-34.
Plaza Mayor, 37-43.
S. Maria la Antigua, 36.
S. Pablo, 35.
Madonna with S. Bridget and S. Vega, Lope de, 41.
Hulfus, 125, 126.
Marchese del Vasto, 130.
Marquis of Mantua, 128.
Portrait of Himself, 136.
Prince Philip, 133.
Prometheus, 132.
Sisyphus, 132.
St. Margaret, 133, 134.
Venus (459), 130.
Toledo, 169-191.
Aspect of, 169-172.
Alcázar, 178.
Del Transitó, 181-183.
El Cristo de la Luz, 19, 171, 179, 180-1.
Gates, 176.
Gothic Crowns, 178-179.
Houses, 183-184.
Moors in, 179-184.
Puente Alcántara, 172, 173, 174.
Puente S. Martin, 171.
Velasquez, 108, 110, 111, 112, 113, 148-161
And Rubens, 152-153.
First visit to Italy, 153.
Second visit to Italy, 158.
Works in Prado, 149-161.
Works outside the Prado, 148-149.
Veronese, 114, 137.
WOMEN OF ANDALUSIA, 199-206, 291-
292.
XERES. See Jerez.
YUSTE, Convent of, 38.
ZAMORA, 55-59-
Cathedral, 56-58.
La Magdalena, 58-59.
S. Maria de la Huerta, 59.
S. Vicente, 59.
Zurbarán, 227-228.
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