THE CITIES OF SPAIN BY THE SAME AUTHOR Frederic Uvedale : A Romance Studies in the Lives of tjhe Saints Italy and the Italians The Cities of Umbria Rome. In preparation St. Francis of Assist : A Study. In preparation 1 CATHEDKAL OK SANTIAGO DI COMPOSTELA— SOUTH DOOUWAY THE CITIES OF SPAIN BY EDWARD HUTTON WITH 24 illustrations IN COLOUR BY A. WALLACE RIMINGTON, A.R.E., R.B.A. AND 20 OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS NEW YORK THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1906 All rights reserved First Published in igo6 TO MY FRIEND PAUL DE REUL CONTENTS INTRODUCTION ..... I. ON THE WAY II. BURGOS ..... III. VALLADOLID IT. SALAMANCA V. ZAMORA VI. AVILA ..... VII. THE GRAVE OF TORQUEMADA VIII. SEGOVIA ..... IX. MADRID TO-DAY X. IN OLD MADRID ..... XI. I. THE PRADO GALLERY II. THE ITALIAN SCHOOLS IN THE PRADO GALLERY III. EL GRECO ..... IV. RIBERA .... V. VELASQUEZ VI. A NOTE ON GOYA XII. THE ESCORIAL XIII. TOLEDO ...... XIV. c6rdova ...... vm THE CITIES OF SPAIN XV. SEVILLE XVI. LA CORRIDA . XVII. EARLY SPANISH PAINTING AND THE SCHOOL OF SEVILLE XVIII. JEREZ .... XIX. CADIZ .... XX. TO MOROCCO . XXI. TANGIER XXII. mAlaga XXIII. GRANADA XXIV. MURCIA, ALICANTE, AND VALENCIA XXV. TARRAGONA . XXVI. BARCELONA CONCLUSIONINDEX PAGE 196 207 218 230250 253 2S7 264 271 289 299306315 321 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR Cathedral of Santiago di Compostela: South Doorway .... A Street of FuentarabJa Property of Mrs. Joseph Boord Sunset Ambulatory, Burgos Cathedral Property of W. W. Howard, Esq. PuERTA S. Mar^a, Burgos . Property of John Heywood, Esq. Bridge at Le6n .... Property of Mrs. Ewan-Smith Nave, Avila Cathedral . Property of Pryce Weedon, Esq. AlcAzar, Segovia Property of Rev. J. Wayley PUERTA DEL CaMBr6n, TOLEDO . Property of Mrs. Clerk PUERTA DEL ZOCODOVER, TOLEDO A Town of La Mancha Court of Oranges, Mosque of C6rdova Property of J. Clay, Esq. At Seville Outside the City Walls, Seville . Wayside Cross near Granada . Property of E. A. Morshead, Esq. Frontispiece To face page 4 10 ,, 2230 32 „ 64 84 176178 190 194198 212 ,, 262 X 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 Property of C. P. Johnson, Esq. To face page 264 276280 286290 294296 Lerida The Mountains of Monserrat from Manresa near Barcelona . . . . . 308 312 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS IN MONOTONE Dona Maria, Daughter of Philip hi. Velasquez . To face page 102 From a Photograph by J. Lacoste Mary Tudor of England. Antonio Moro From a Photograph hy W. A. Mansell & Co. Portrait of a Cardinal. Raphael . From a Photograph by the BerliniPhotographic Co. Madonna and Child, with S. Anthony of Padua and S. Roch. Giorgione From a Photograph by Leoy et ses fits A Bacchanal. Titian From a Photograph by the Berlin Photographic Co. Charles v. at the Battle of Muhlberg. Titian From a Photograph by the Berlin Photographic Co. Prince Philip, afterwards Philip ii. Titian From a Photograph by the Berlin Photographic Co. Portrait of a Man. El Greco . From a Photograph by the Berlin Photographic Co. The Resurrection. El Greco .... From a Photograph by J. Lacoste St. Mary Magdalen. Ribera In the Garden of the Villa Medici, Rome. Velasquez From a Photograph by the Berlin Photographic Co. Infanta MarIa Teresa. Velasquez . From a Photograph by J. Lacoste Las Meninas. Velasquez .... From a Photograph by the Berlin Photographic Co. 122 126 130 1341401421461 54 156 160 xii THE CITIES OF SPAIN Family of the Duke of Osuna. Goya . From a Photograph by J. Lacoste Blind Man's Buff. Goya From a Photograph by J. Lacoste Toledo The Bridge of C6rdova . . . . Cadiz .... ... Granada from the Alhambra . From a Photograph by F. Linares, Granada The Court of the Lions, Granada ... ,, 278 From a Photograph by F. Linares, Granada Toface page 162 164 J» 184 )J 192 JJ 250 JJ 272 INTRODUCTION AS I 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, senor,' 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 xiv THE CITIES OF SPAIN 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 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 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 debris 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 ofthe 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 tirae 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 Fuentarabfa, 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 Irun, 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 flnd them a most courteous and a most grave people. The carabineros who examined my baggage at Iriin 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 flrst night in Spain at San Sebastidn. I had hoped to stay at Iriin, 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 Sebastian. Before setting out, however, I journeyed on foot so far as Fuentarabia, 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 in fuentarakia ON THE WAY 5 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, 181 3, the Duke of Wellington, being hard pressed by the French, not much more than a month after the fearful business of San Sebastian, 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 Fuentarabfa, 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 Fuentarabia, 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 Fuentarabfa ; 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. Ill And indeed Fuentarabfa 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 reflnement, 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 waying 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 Sebastidn. 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 Sebastian 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 Alsisua 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 Andalucfa, under the eternal snows of the great mountains. But behind the Pyrenees, which as seen from Fuentarabfa 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 Iriin 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 flnd the true Spain, but in the Castiles in Le6n and in Andalucfa. 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 55 ON THE WAY ii the tawny plains, I remembered that the most beautiful hour of the day begins at sundown. It is in that hour that you will pass the ancient and ruined city of Miranda del Ebro. Ah, but I cannot express the splendour, the ruined splendour of this world. Figure to yourself the Mycenae 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. II BURGOS NOT 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 thdr city. And indeed it is true — there is little else to 12 BURGOS 13 think of in so isolated a place save the emotions of its own heart, full of an enthusiasm that has pie/ced 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. 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 world. 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 BURGOS IS 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, Le6n, 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- i6 THE CITIES OF SPAIN ficial differences from the masterpieces of Amiens or Beauvais ; so that we flnd, with a sort of wonder at first, that this proud and reticent people is in its architecture the least reserved, the most superflcial 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, jiist 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 flne 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 i8 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 fa9ade 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 Le6n, 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 Cordova was of the ninth century, the Alcazar 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 Lerida 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 Le6n 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 Lerida and Valencia, and the Moorish Alcizar 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 Le6n should have been built at the same time as the Roman esque cathedrals of Lerida 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 Leon 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 Leon, 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 ness. 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 i860 the approach 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 niantilla, 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 Burgalds youth, who, as in old days, have THE A.MHULATOKV, UURGO.S CAIHEDRAL 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.i 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 ' Ponz : Viaje de EspaHa. 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 Street ^ 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 ' 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 Arlanz6n. 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 viil. the abbey was begun in 1 1 80, and nineteen years later established as a Cistercian house. The first abbess, whose name I know not, ruled till 1203, when Dona 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 vin. 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 ofthe 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 flnished 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 Malaga, 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 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 Marfa ; 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! Ill VALLADOLID IT was already evening when I set out from Burgos. The sun was set, and the world — that barren melan 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 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 senorita, 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 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 flnd 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 frora 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, flnding 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 facade 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. Marfa 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, oflo c6rdova 193 that death's head should kiss death's head, it is not to be thought of . . : It was dawn when I first saw Cordova 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 C6rdova. 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 the sanctuary. It is a garden enclosed, an orchard 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 MihrSb 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 THE COURT OF ORANGE.S, MOSQUE OF CORDOVA c6rdova I9S 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 THAT almost morbid impression of stillness and silence that the traveller finds everywhere in Cdrdova 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 C6rdova 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 196 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 Cordova, 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 198 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 caf6s 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, flnding 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 naive, 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 \yithin 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 200 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 thera 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, fuU 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 Fibrica de Tabacos, a huge building between the Jardines del Alcazar 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 Fdbrica 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 202 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 naive 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 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 Alcdzar 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 Alcdzar, 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 Maria Padilla often passed through these gardens. 204 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 Fdbrica 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 Cafd de Novedades, for instance, you may see the Andalusian women dancing very beautifuHy, 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 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 flngers, 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. Her 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 2o6 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 Httle ; 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 marveUous 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 207 2o8 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 LA CORRIDA DE TOROS 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 o 2IO THE CITIES OF SPAIN 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 kUl 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 ofthe 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 everyone 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 1 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 212 THE CITIES OF SPAIN 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 CITV 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 flnd, 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 innnmerable 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 shellfbh, 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, unc^ertain ar;xi hig^ with excitement, full of expectation. Every sort of person is come to see the 214 THE CITIES OF SPAIN 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-caU 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. 2i6 THE CITIES OF SPAIN 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 sunhght, 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 SCHOOL OF SEVILLE AMONG 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 sUence. 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 220 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 Cdrdova, 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 14S4 and 15 16. The immense grotesque S. Cristdbal 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,^ is spoiled for us bythe 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 ^ The Painters of Seville, by Arthur Symons: Fortnightly Review, January, 1901. 222 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 infldel 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 naive 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 reaUy 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 Pieta of Juan Nunez, a pupil of de Castro, which may still be found in the cathedral. Even yet there lingers in these pictures a certain decorative beautyobscur- 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 Nufiez, 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 224 THE CITIES OF SPAIN 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 Cdrdova, 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 Sacristfa 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 Sacristfa 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 flnd 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 mediaevalism 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 Campana, 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 flnd 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 226 THE CITIES OF SPAIN 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 Pieta, 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 mediaeval 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 Zurbardn, where the passion of the middle age passes into a mere realism at last, tiresome and wholly without sincerity. Zurbaran 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 Zurbardn 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 228 THE CITIES OF SPAIN 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 MuriUo 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. XVIII JEREZ THE way from Seville to Cadiz passes at first through 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, almo'st 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 wUl be eager to save yourself, by any means, from annihilation, from the immense 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 naive, heroic story, as he wrote it. RICHARD PEAKE'S TALE Loving Countrymen 1 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 232 THE CITIES OF SPAIN the fine phrases of sUken 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 1 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 1 10 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 foUowing, 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 234 THE CITIES OF SPAIN nothing : and when she came off, there were to be seen flve 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 flght. 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 ordnance, 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 thera with shouts, hallo- ings, and loud noises, and now and then a piece of ordnance overtook some of the Spanish hares, arid 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 236 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 fortune 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 Hfe 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 Chretien ' (' Pardon me, sir, I am a good Christian '). I, seeing him brave, and having a soldier's mind to 238 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 weU 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 I 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 240 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 1 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 wiU give me a free absolution and pardon.' ' What think you of the Pope ? ' said Father John. I JEREZ 241 answered, ' I knew hira not' They hereupon, shaking their heads, told me ' they were sorry for me ' and so departed. WhUst 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 thera 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 242 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 ray 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,' 1 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 thera — 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 ray Lord I ' said I, ' I ara a prisoner and my life at 244 THE CITIES OF SPAIN 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 ray 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 rae 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. 246 THE CITIES OF SPAIN 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 tirae to dally. They stiU raade 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 hira ; 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 JEREZ 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 rae 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 248 THE CITIES OF SPAIN 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 deraanded 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 frora 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 ray 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 1 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 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. Maria, 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 Gdnoves, 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 CADIZ 251 rugged and colossal, built of immense blocks of hewn stone ; while behind thera rose the cathedral like a tawny mosque rude and splendid, and all above them, flushed with light, stooped the sky, and all before thera 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 Crist6bal 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 252 THE CITIES OF SPAIN 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 ddbris, 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. XX TO MOROCCO IT 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 caUing 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. In the sunrise Cadiz was like the sound of a trumpet. The water sang 253 254 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. . . . Sometiraes we met a ship flying before the wind, beautiful with joy, her great sails white in the sun, bound for the Americas. Sometiraes we were alone in the iramense 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 — malaguenas — 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 sraall boat that I could see now and then on the heights of waves. Slowly, not without difficulty, during raore than half an hour they raade 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, 256 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 Httle 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, 1 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 thera 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 THE little city of Tangier, rising from a hillside of red earth which ends a great bay covered with 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 anaemic 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 serai-European city full of filth. But for rae 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 258 THE CITIES OF SPAIN 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 rae 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 ughness, or at the best with beauty quite divorced from Hfe, 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 materialisra 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 26o 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 frora Europe. Everywhere the water-carriers went about selling water ' in the name of Allah,' or men almost overwhelmed by some horrible disease, cripples. Wind 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 rausic. 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 upHfted 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 frora 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 debris 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 araong 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 MALAGA TO come to Mdlaga from Tangier is to enter Spain really through the gate of Paradise, where are still to be found all the sunshine, the fruits, and flowers ofthe 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 A SHEPHERD BOY QV ANDALUSIA mAlaga 265 distress of rain, of the mediocrity that overwhelms every thing on a rainy day in the north. And certainly Mdlaga, which enjoys the flnest 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 Milaga, 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 MAlaga 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 raore popular than the national songs, are indeed fast taking their place with the people, even in so con servative a country as La Mancha. Malaguefias they call thera, songs of Malaga, and indeed in Mdlaga 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 Malaguenas, 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 coraraon with Greek music, perhaps through the Moor, perhaps through the Phoe 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 raay 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 Malaguena, and it is only with difficulty you may find one noted down truly, or as truly as may be, in modern notation.^ ^ Grove, Dictionary of Music and Musicians, under ' Song ' says that P. Lacome has noted a Malaguena in iichos d'Espagne (Durand et fils, Paris); for me, at least, it is a poor specimen, ansemic and attenuated. MALAGA 267 You come upon this music quite by chance, I said, in speaking of the Malaguena ; and indeed that is one of its greatest delights ; it is almost always by chance that you hear them. Here in Mdlaga, for instance, not one traveller in a thousand ever discovers the Chinitas, that little caf6 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 Malaguefia 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 Malaga. 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 forra, 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 caf6, two women and an old man thread their way to a sort of platform at the end of the room. 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 faUen 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 MALAGA 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 frora her face, her eyes are wide open, dilated, her raouth widens, becomes almost iraraense, alraost 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 thera 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. XXIII GRANADA GRANADA is a dead city, the colour of dust, shrunken and thirsty, continually burning away, at the foot of a hill on the conflnes 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, frora 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 alraost, very fertile and beautiful, watered still by the wonderful con trivance of the Moors, who here at any rate have raade the very desert bring forth abundance. Granada herself, utterly fallen frora 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 torabs 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 frora 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 Hes, 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. Yon 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 ofthe 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, Hke an antique moonstone, im mense and alraost spectral in its mystery. And as you pass homeward through the cool woods where all night < ,^ THE MIGNELETE, 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 Hke 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 uniforra. But however proud the Valencian people may be of their ' modernity ' and their ' progress,' it is still an impression of mediaevalism that the stranger carries away from those gay, thoughtless, balconied streets that are so full of colour, where every one is gaily dressed, and alraost 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 IT is through a country very like Provence that you come to Tarragona from Valencia or Zaragoza; 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 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 calra 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 rae, 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 carae 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 corae to us so stealthily in our travels seem to us afterwards ; how groundless 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 siraple loveliness of the cathe dral of Lerida, 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 1 2 56, Street teUs 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 ofthe Cardinal Archbishop of Toledo hung up in the Coro, in which his title " Primada de las Espaiias " 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 11 16 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 Cataluiia, 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 fagade with its two Romanesque doors with double arches and sculptures of the Dream of Joseph and the Adoration of the Kings, its TARRAGOI^A 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 flfteenth 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 Bartolom6, are in their golden beauty still unspoiled by the brutal realism of the fifteenth century that at last made all architectural sculpture irapossible. 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 buUders, 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 304 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 raarvellously 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 30S 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 imraensity of the sea. They seemed not to notice one another, and after a tirae, 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. XXVI BARCELONA I 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 exUe 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, alraost 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 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 Catalufia, 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 flnd 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