The Magic of Spain
Date: 2016-09-07T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Spain -- Description and travel; Spanish literature -- History and criticism

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Title: The Magic of Spain

Author: Aubrey F. G. Bell

Release date: September 7, 2016 [eBook #53001]
Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

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Contents.
Index:

A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, Z

(etext transcriber's note)

THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

THE   MAGIC
OF   SPAIN

BY   AUBREY   F.   G.   BELL

Or vous aurez loisir
Cheminant en Espagne
Bien que maintes montagnes
Il vous faudra monter.
Pilgrims’ Song.

LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD,
NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY. MCMXII.

WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES.

NOTE

THIS is rather a collection of stray notes on Spain than a connected study—of notes from many pleasant hours of Spanish literature and travel, but perhaps of too individual an interest to appear without some apology. No reference will be found to those great social and political problems which disturb Spanish life. To fill the idler moments of a Spanish holiday, and possibly to help the reader to feel that “parfum du terroir” which pervades Spain, is the unambitious object of these pages. Better still, if he turns from them in dissatisfaction to authoritative writers on Spanish life and letters, and to the magic-land of Spanish literature itself. For permission to reprint some of these short essays in slightly altered form the author has to thank the Editors of the Morning Post, the Outlook, and the Queen.

PREFACE

IT is not easy in a few words to account for the strange Oriental spell that Spain has exercised over many minds nor to explain the potency of its attraction. For indeed the great Peninsula possesses a special spice and flavour. It has not the immemorial culture of Italy, nor the pleasant smiling landscapes of France with her green meadows and crystal streams. The old Iberia, that dura tellus, has a peculiar raciness. Its colour is often harsh and crude; many of its districts are barren and discomfortable. The bleak and rocky uplands and the ragged sierra ridges cut the country into sharp divisions and cause it to be thinly and variously populated. On those uplands the breath of the wind is often icy and the sun strikes with a biting force. Great parched and desolate plains extend treeless and unprotected two thousand feet above the sea. The villages at distant intervals are of the colour of the soil, and scarcely to be distinguished from a mass of yellow-brown rocks. Morning and evening a string of mules may be seen outlined on the horizon, for the peasants set out in bands to till their distant fields; or a shepherd with his flock of sheep, or goats, relieves the strange monotony of this dust-laden windy desert. Nothing could be sadder or less harmonious than the peasants’ harsh and strident singing, the very peculiarity of which has, however, a piquancy and charm. Hard too is their language, with its clean gutturals, far rougher and manlier than the musical sister-tongue of Italy. All points to a like conclusion, that this is no country of comfort and soft languorous delight, but of a quaint and forcible originality, where the most jaded mind may be braced and inspirited and find a fresher and more stirring life.

In Spain the sharpness of contrasts precludes any feeling of weariness or satiety. There are regions of luxuriant growth and African sun bounded by mountains of eternal snow. Through the plain a river glides among orange groves and grey olives; in the shaded patios of the city silver fountains keep the air cool and fresh, and on the coldest night in winter the temperature is still some degrees above the freezing-point. Yet here, in the most fiery heat of summer, we may lift up our eyes to the hills and look on the snowy sierra against the deep blue of the sky; and if a shower, in this region of little rain, falls upon the low-lying districts, it adds but another coat of whiteness to the neighbouring range. It is indeed a strange and fascinating land, a Land voll Sonnenschein and fierce blinding light, yet a land of shrill, piercing blasts and icy air, a land of many various elements both of climate and population. It is no wonder that its inhabitants are of a character strongly individual and preserve the original Iberian strain. A racy pithiness of speech is theirs. In no country are proverbs more common, and a string of them can indeed form a peasant’s conversation, pungent as the rosaries of red piments that hang on the balconies of farms.

It was in Spain that the rogue-story, the novela de pícaros, originated, and the Spanish novelists of the last thirty years have given free rein to the local types of various parts of Spain. Nowhere has provincialism continued to be so clearly marked. In other countries better communications have corrupted the local manners into a conformity of excellence. In Spain the nature of the country, with its rough mountain barriers and turbulent unnavigable rivers, still protects originality and keeps the character of the provinces distinct, and the native of Andalucía continues to despise the native of Galicia and to be ridiculed by the native of Castille. This does not make for material prosperity, but it constitutes a country of the picturesque and unexpected, a country where imagination is not dead, and where the artist and poet find their true home. Not the least attraction to them perhaps is the Spanish improvidence and absence of method, and the gay living from hand to mouth. An unwary traveller in the wilder districts may easily find himself half-perishing from scarcity of food, and lost in an intricate labyrinth of ways between far-distant villages. “A bad thing, sirs, it is to have a lack of bread,” sang the poet of the twelfth-century Poema del Cid. The hardy peasant of the poorer regions lives scantily from day to day on the product of the niggard soil, won by patient labour. The peasant in more fertile parts does not necessarily fare better, but he labours magnificently less. The deliberate method of prosperity and success is held in small esteem. The mighty Empire of Spain was in fact the affair of a generation only. From the time of Philip II. onwards the Spanish Empire might aptly be compared with the Cid’s corpse, for, though by its prestige and the favour of heaven it might continue to reap fresh victories, it was nevertheless irrevocably dead and awaiting dissolution. And it is the improvidence of Spain that has charmed the foreigner. For, eager as he is to admire its poetic aspects, in his inmost soul he often regards himself as incomparably superior, and hurries home to civilization with a sheaf of curious details negligently gleaned.

The courteous Spaniard conceals his contempt for the foreigner, but were he privileged to read the numerous sketches, scenes, and saunterings published yearly of Spain, he would have some scope for legitimate amusement. A faint remonstrance has indeed been heard in the Peninsula against the idea of Spanish grandees lying in wait at dark corners to rob a French journalist of his fortune. But mostly they are content to let the foreigner continue in his ignorance. For stern and melancholy Spain retains her secret, and is not to be won from her Oriental impenetrable mystery by any wiles. Unchanging and impassive, her cities seem to mock the stranger, and the roughness of the intervening wildernesses discourages him. But he returns again and again to this remote and mediæval country, that in his practical eyes should be so rich and is so poor. The repulses he receives whet his curiosity and increase his ardour. Yet Spain is not, in spite of its many tourists, a country of foreign colonies. To the Englishman this fact brings a striking novelty, for he may visit Switzerland and Italy and France and scarcely leave the atmosphere of England, but in Spain he will find no difficulty in following Bacon’s advice to the traveller in foreign countries to “sequester himself from the company of his countrymen.”

CONTENTS

| | PAGE
| Note | v
| Preface | vii
I. | Spanish Character—
| i. Some Stray Opinions | 17
| ii. Vain Generalities | 25
II. | Travelling in Spain | 47
III. | On the Spanish Frontier | 57
IV. | Eskual-Erria—
| i. Basque Country | 66
| ii. Basque Customs | 72
V. | In Remote Navarre | 80
VI. | Spanish Cities | 85
VII. | In Old Castille | 92
VIII. | The Desert and the Sown | 97
IX. | The Coast of Catalonia in Autumn | 104
X. | An Eastern Village | 108
XI. | Off the East Coast of Spain | 112
XII. | The Judging of the Waters | 120
XIII. | Seville in Winter | 125
XIV. | From a Seville Housetop | 129
XV. | February in Andalucía | 134
XVI. | Some Characteristics of Spanish Literature | 142
XVII. | The Poem of the Cid—
| i. A Primitive Masterpiece | 153
| ii. Valencia del Cid | 157
XVIII. | A Prisoner of the Spanish Inquisition—
| i. Novedades | 163
| ii. Salamanca University | 165
| iii. In a Valladolid Dungeon | 169
| iv. Ex forti dulcedo | 178
XIX. | The Modern Spanish Novel—
| i. Revival. Fernán Caballero | 185
| ii. 1870-1900 | 191
| iii. In the Twentieth Century | 201
XX. | Novels of Galicia | 214
XXI. | Novels of the Mountain
| i. “Savour of the Soil” | 222
| ii. “On the Heights” | 231
XXII. | Castilian Prose | 239
XXIII. | Toledo and El Greco | 244
| Index: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, Z | 259

THE   MAGIC   OF   SPAIN

I

SPANISH CHARACTER

I.—Stray Opinions

TO collect a mass of isolated and contradictory opinions concerning the Spanish is a comparatively simple task, although it is difficult or impossible to derive from them a consistent picture of Spanish character. To Wellington they are “this extraordinary and perverse people,” to whom to boast of Spain’s strength was a natural weakness. “Procrastination and improvidence are their besetting sins,” says Napier, and of their conduct in the Peninsular War: “Of proverbially vivid imagination and quick resentments, the Spaniards act individually rather than nationally, and, during this war, what appeared constancy of purpose was but a repetition of momentary fury generated like electric sparks by constant collision with the French.” “The Spaniards are perfect masters of saying everything and doing nothing.” They have dignified sentiments and lofty expressions, but taken with their deeds these are “but a strong wind blowing shrivelled leaves.” “In the arrangement of warlike affairs difficulties are always overlooked by the Spaniards, who are carried on from one phantasy to another so swiftly that the first conception of an enterprise is immediately followed by a confident anticipation of complete success.” Though they are “hasty in revenge and feeble in battle,” they are “patient to the last degree in suffering.” To the peasants he allows “a susceptibility of grand sentiments.” They “endure calamity, men and women alike, with a singular and unostentatious courage. But their virtues are passive, their faults active, and, instigated by a peculiar arrogance, they are perpetually projecting enterprises which they have not sufficient vigour to execute.” “To neglect real resources and fasten upon imaginary projects is peculiarly Spanish.” A French writer of the same period, General Marbot, contents himself with observing that the Spanish “ont beaucoup conservé du caractère des Arabes et sont fatalistes; aussi répétaient-ils sans cesse ‘Lo que ha de ser no puede faltar,’” but adds that “ils ont un mérite immense, c’est que, bien que battus, ils ne se découragent jamais.” Turning to earlier centuries we find that in Livy and Strabo the Spaniards are obstinate, unsociable, silent, dressed in black, despisers of death, very sober. In the centuries of Spain’s greatness the comments naturally thicken, although they are often not easily reconcilable. To an Italian, Paolo Cortese, at the beginning of the sixteenth century the Spanish are, in a shower of epithets, “ambitious, good-natured, curious, greedy, contentious, tenacious, magnificent, suspicious, sly.” Another Italian, Paolo Tiepolo, later draws a distinction[1] between those who have travelled and those who have not left Spain, those former being “per la maggior parte avvisati, diligenti, tolleranti.” In Pepys we read of the “ceremoniousness of the Spaniards,” and that “the Spaniards are the best disciplined foot in the world; will refuse no extraordinary service if commanded, but scorn to be paid for it as in other countries,” and of “the plain habit of the Spaniards, how the King and Lords themselves wear but a cloak of Colchester bayze, and the ladies mantles in cold weather of white flannell.” To a learned Spaniard, Masdeu, they are, to quote but a few of his judgments, “lively, swift in conception, slow and thoughtful in coming to a resolution, active and effectual in carrying it into execution. They are the stoutest defenders of religion, and masters in asceticism.” “Their disinterestedness and honesty in commerce is known to all. They are frugal at table, especially averse from any excess in drinking. In conversation they are serious and taciturn, not giving to biting speech, courteous, affable, and pleasant; they hate flattery, but they respect others and look to be respected themselves. They speak with majesty, but without affectation. They are generous, serviceable, kindly, and have a pleasure in conferring benefits, and they exalt things foreign more than their own. They have envy, pride, and a love of glory, but with noble, redeeming qualities. In their attire they are neat and moderate; when they go abroad they are dressed well and smartly, but with a befitting gravity.” “They spend with magnificence and extravagance.” A French traveller, Mme. d’Aulnoy,[2] in the seventeenth century, says of the Spanish that “Nature has been kinder to them than they are to themselves; they are born with more wit than others; they have a great quickness of mind join’d with great solidity; they speak and deliver their words with ease; they have a great memory; their style is neat and concise, and they are quick of apprehension; it is easie to teach them whatever they have a mind to; they are perfect masters in Politicks, and when there is a necessity for it they are temperate and laborious.”... “They are patient to excess, obstinate, idle, singular philosophers; and, as to the rest, men of honour, keeping their words tho’ it cost them their lives.” She considers their greatest defect to be a “passion for revenge,” and speaks of “their fantastick grandeur.” A short account by an Englishman in 1701, has little good to say of the Spanish, except that they “have an incomparable Zeal to plant the Catholick Religion.” He notes their sluggishness, their immorality, and it is, moreover, impossible to distinguish a Spanish Cavalier from a Cobler, while most of their houses are “of earth and like Mole-hills, but one storey high.” They have an “esprit orgueilleux,” and treat strangers “de turc à maure,” says a Frenchman of the same period,[3] so that the Englishman may have had some slight, some turc à maure experience in Spain. Another Englishman,[4] half a century later, writes that the Spanish are “generous, liberal, magnificent, and charitable; religious without dispute, but devout to the greatest excess of superstition.”... “If they have any predominant fault it is perhaps that of being rather too high-minded; hence they have entertained, at different times, the most extravagant conceits.”... “Their cloaths are usually of a very dark colour, and their cloaks almost black. This shows the natural gravity of the people.”... “There are no soldiers in the whole world braver than the Spanish.” Reclus, in his estimate of the Spanish, has boldly allowed the contrasts and contradictions of Spanish character to stand side by side. They are “apathetic in daily life, but of a quick resolution, persistent courage and unwearying tenacity. They are vain, but if any one has a right to be so, they have. In spite of their pride they are simple and pleasant in their manners. They esteem themselves highly, but they are equally ready to recognize the merit of others. They are very swift and keen to lay a finger on the weak side or the vices of other people, but never bemean themselves by despising them. They have a great store of seriousness, a rare firmness of character. They are contented with their lot and are fatalists. A mixture of superstition and ignorance, common-sense, and subtle irony; they are at times ferocious, though naturally of a magnanimous generosity, fond of revenge, yet forgetting injuries, fond of equality, yet guilty of oppression.” The verdicts of modern Spanish thinkers have been mostly pessimistic.[5] Spaniards in the twentieth century have been busily occupied with analytical introspection, the result of their national misfortunes and injured pride. They prefer to speak atrociously of themselves than that foreigners should speak of them only moderately well. Señor Mallada holds[6] his countrymen to be “idle, unpractical dreamers.” In Spain, says Ángel Ganivet,[7] “there are many who have no will, hay muchos enfermos de la voluntad”—there is a lack of concentration, that is of persistent concentration, and a lack of proportion, of the power to consider more than one idea, more than one aspect of a question. So Azorín complains that “there is plenty of insight and rapid vision, but no co-ordination of ideas or steady fulfilment or will.”[8] In a book by Ricardo León[9] we read that the Spanish are hostile to their rulers, whoever they may be, and of the evils of el Caciquismo. But the author sees little hope of change in a country where men live between two extremes, “two fires, two fanaticisms,” either reactionaries or demagogues; where the currents of activity and passion are unregulated, where thought is either stagnant or enmeshed in a gossamer woof of subtle distinctions, and the golden mean of common-sense is not attained. The inhabitants of Alcalá are “strong, hard, brave, and stubborn, rigorous in their virtues and their vices, violent in their loves and hates, tenacious alike of good and of evil.” To counterbalance their clear intelligence, greatheartedness, quick imagination and eloquence they have serious defects, “and especially a certain unrestfulness of spirit, a nervous irritability which prevents them from living in peace or comfort with themselves or with others, a true Spanish failing, peculiarly attached both of old and at the present day to that harsh, turbulent, strongly original character of the race which has never allowed us rest, but kept us perpetually at strife, taking umbrage at our very shadows.”... “While there were infidels to fight, strongholds to defend, vows to fulfil, or even when there were civil wars and vigorous smuggling and bands of brigands,” there was scope for the virtues and vices of a people “born and bred for action and passionate deeds,” “fashioned in battle”; but “on the advent of the moderate customs of modern times” they find themselves “out of their natural atmosphere, idle, poor, disconcerted, cramped.” And this is the tragedy of Spain to-day—a great-hearted people in the toils of civilization. In Pérez Galdós’ “El Caballero Encantado,” the spirit of Spain thus addresses one of her sons: “The capital defect of the Spaniards of your time is that you live exclusively the life of words, and the language is so beautiful that the delight in the sweet sound of it woos you to sleep. You speak too much; you lavish without stint a wealth of phrases to conceal the poverty of your actions.”[10] In an earlier book[11] Señor León deplores the fashion prevailing in Spain “to depreciate all that is Spanish, and to bestow great praise on all that is foreign. A wave of moral cowardice and utilitarian baseness is passing over Spain.” But Spanish character is not permanently weakened nor shorn of its dignity and independence, the eclipse is but temporary and, indeed, partial, not affecting the humbler classes. The spirit of Spain will revive, as in “El Caballero Encantado,” when it is being carried from the death-bed to the grave,[12] and may be aptly likened, as by Don Rafael Altamira, to the waters of the Guadiana which, after flowing for a space underground, return once more to the surface.

II.—Vain Generalities.

“And indeed,” wrote Pepys, “we do all naturally love the Spanish and hate the French,” and if, since his day, we have learned to love the French, the character of the Spanish has not ceased to attract and interest Englishmen. Yet any attempt to generalize concerning Spanish character would seem a vain and foolish task, since Spain is the country of Europe which has most stringently preserved its local differences of race and language, and it is still true, as in Ford’s time, that “the rude agricultural Gallician, the industrious manufacturing artisan of Barcelona, the gay and voluptuous Andalucian, the sly vindictive Valencian are as essentially different from each other as so many distinct characters at the same masquerade,” and the Basque[13] and andaluz, for instance, are as far apart as Frenchman and Spaniard. It is possible to take the various ingredients, Castilian pride,[14] Catalan thrift,[15] Andalusian imagination, Gallegan dullness,[16] the grimness of Navarre, the stubbornness of Aragon,[17] Valencian or Murcian cunning, and, tying them into a convenient bundle, to speak of the Spanish as proud, thrifty, etc., or, in a more pessimistic key, as haughty, avaricious, untruthful, stolid, cruel, obstinate, malicious. But, though such a judgment is notoriously false, a few qualities may perhaps be attributed to the whole of Spain as in some measure common to her various peoples. Foremost among these qualities are independence and personal dignity. The Spaniards are a nation of individualists, each a law unto himself, and they are thus as a nation frequently misunderstood and their pride has not suffered them to correct errors concerning them, while at the same time it would perhaps be difficult to find in any other nation so great a number of individuals whom one may admire and respect. The dramatist Don Jacinto Benavente has said[18] that in Spain “each of us would like to be the only great man in a nation of fools, the only honest man in a tribe of knaves,” and speaks of “our unbridled individualism.” No one is a more thorough individualist than Don Pío Baroja, and the principal character of his novel, César ó Nada, declares that the Spanish, “as individualists require, more than a democratic, federal organization, an iron military discipline.” “Democracy, Republicanism, Socialism have in reality little root in our country.... Moreover we admit no superiorities and do not willingly accept king or president, priest or prophet.” It is this refractoriness which has made the Spanish so hard a people to govern, and wrought permanent mischief to their prosperity as a nation. They would seem to have still to learn the true dignity of loyalty and service. Every Spaniard, of however humble a position, considers that he is well qualified to criticize the measures of his rulers, and still more the fancied measures that he chooses to attribute to them. Thus in a Republic every citizen would believe himself to be capable of conducting the affairs of the nation better than the President, as Sancho was convinced that he could govern his island as well or better than any; nevertheless Spaniards are inclined to acquiesce in a firm unquestioned authority with a kind of heroical submission, accepting its decisions as they accept the inevitable decrees of fate, and for this reason an old-established system of government, such as the Monarchy, is infinitely the best suited to the Spanish temperament. No doubt they would prefer to have no system of government, if that were possible, being restive and tumultuous under restraint. On one occasion a Spanish chauffeur while driving his mistress considered that he had been insulted by a passer in the street and, leaving mistress and motor, proceeded to punish the offender till the police interfered.[19] And if the Spanish find it difficult to work harmoniously under the orders of others, it is no easier for them to maintain a joint authority; they can never co-operate for long, their political parties and commercial unions rapidly fall asunder like the seeds of a pomegranate. Similarly one may see at a glance of any Spanish crowd that it is not a fused mass but a collection of units remaining aloof and separate; if the individual gains, the State suffers, and Spanish politics sometimes have an air of cramping angularities and crude ambitions. But this individualism and independence has its nobler and more pleasant side, for even in extreme poverty and distress, dignity and an accompanying courtesy, honesty, and sobriety,[20] rarely desert the Spaniard. Each is king in his own house, be it miserable attic or merely the space of sun that his shadow covers; mientras en mi casa me estoy rey me soy. The following dialogue bears intrinsic evidence of its nationality, it could not belong to any country but Spain: “Is your worship a thief?”—“Yes, to serve God and all good people.”[21] Thus personal dignity and individual pride may be said to be the dominant notes of Spain. So the beggars in the street address one another as Sir, señor, lord, and if you cannot give them an alms for the good of your soul you must at least give excuses—perdone Vd. por Dios. While we admire this independence we cannot help seeing that it is a false dignity, which prefers to starve, like one of the characters in Pérez Galdós’ Fortunata y Jacinta, because “mi dinidá y sinificancia no me permiten—my dignity and importance do not allow me,” to accept employment. The fair outward show given to garret poverty is pathetic, but it is liable to deceive and to create distrust. Mme. d’Aulnoy remarked that the Spanish “bear up under this Indigency with such an air of gravity as would cheat one.”

In Love’s Labour’s Lost Don Adriano de Armado says to Moth that he is “ill at reckoning; it fitteth the spirit of a tapster,” but to Moth’s observation, “You are a gentleman and a gamester, Sir,” he answers well-pleased, “I confess both; they are both the varnish of a complete man” (todo un hombre). The Spanish have ever shown themselves to be ill at reckoning, they are careless of details and have indeed an Oriental incuriousness of facts and figures; in no country is it more difficult to obtain accurate returns or consecutive statistics. Against all drudgery the Spanish temperament rebels[22]; they act by impulse, in disconnected moments without persistency; their concentration is of instants,[23] without consequence; and it has been observed that “Spain has developed her life and art by means of spiritual convulsions.” What is said in one of Pérez Galdós’ novels[24] of Narváez might with truth be applied to many Spaniards: “He has a great heart and a great intelligence, but they manifest themselves only by fits and starts, by impulses, por arranques.” There is plenty of intelligence among Spaniards but little continuity of judgment; no perseverance. They are enthusiastic for a project and, their thoughts outrunning action, they see the matter begun, in progress, finished, so that their very keenness prevents accomplishment, and finally nothing is done. Don Quixote, we remember, thought little of the winning of a kingdom and cutting off a giant’s head: “all that I consider already done, que todo esto doy ya for hecho.” Or sometimes their intelligence mars their labour and, not content with doing a simple thing simply, they spoil it by being a little too clever, or decide a matter too readily by a swift judgment that may happen to be false. The Spanish are a people of immense and abiding energy,[25] but their energy is often dormant or misdirected. Two Spaniards in the twentieth century have been seen to converse with so fierce an intensity that it seemed over and over again in the course of a protracted and loud discussion that they must come from words to blows; and the matter in dispute, conducted with a heat that would have exhausted less energetic natures, was whether it was right or wrong to expel the Moriscos from Spain at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Yet it is not certain that the Spanish can be called unpractical; they are often idle, indifferent, aloof from the events of daily life, but when a matter truly interests them, they would seem to be sufficiently shrewd and practical. King James I. of Aragon aimed an accusation at the Castilians which has often been applied to all Spaniards: “You do nothing without extravagance.[26]” But a fundamental ingredient of Spanish character is realism and clear vision; it is their birthright of transparent subtle air and unclouded skies. They are keen to detect all falseness and hypocrisy, and display a shrewd insight into character; but their study has been ever of persons rather than of books and things,[27] so that they may act extravagantly themselves even while they are the first to see another’s extravagance, keenly practical, it may be said, in the affairs of others, strangely abstract and improvident in their own. Their realism, if it drives them by reaction into a barren love of words and visions of impossible ideals, expresses itself in a directness which is very characteristic of all classes of Spaniards, in the pregnant brevity of countless proverbs, in concentrated intensity at a given moment, in humour and satire and a strong love of ridicule. Their proverbs show a thriftiness and practical good sense very different from the prudence that enriches, but equally far removed from the romantic view of Spaniards sometimes held by foreigners. In noble lines Calderón has said of life that it is “a shadow, a fantasy, and the greatest good is of small worth, since all life is a dream and dreams themselves a dream”:—

¿qué es la vida? Un frenesí.
¿qué es la vida? Una ilusión,
una sombra, una ficción,
y el mayor bien es pequeño,
que toda la vida es sueño
y los sueños sueño son;

but we may doubt whether the following lines of Lope de Vega are not as truly Spanish in spirit:—

Nada me parece bien,
Todos me son importunos.—
¿Teneis dineros?—Ningunos.—
Pues procurad que os los den.

“I see no good in anything; all men weary me.—Have you money?—None—Then see that you get some given you.”[28] An almost harsh flavour of originality is found in Spanish humour, a sly and malicious irony, a biting wit, full of gaiety and good-humour, but of great force and directness. Their courtesy is proverbial, and it is not simply a superficial politeness, brittle as glass, but goes to the very core of the man. A knowledge of Spain would seem to show that the mere forms of politeness have no little effect in maintaining the dignity of a nation. The Spaniard, writing from his own house, speaks of it as esta su casa, this your house, and to a tradesman he will sign himself, “Your sure servant, who kisses your hands” (S.S.S., Q.B.S.M. which is shorter than the corresponding English, “Yours faithfully”); mere forms, it will be said, but forms that show the spirit and betray the lordly and generous magnificence of the men who once ruled the world, and of whom Bacon wrote: “I have marvelled sometimes at Spain, how they clasp and contain so large dominions with so few natural Spaniards.” As a kind of magnificent disregard of human life has earned for Spaniards the charge of cruelty, so their attitude towards time has led many to look upon them as lazy and utterly unbusinesslike.[29] “The Spartans and Spaniards have been noted to be of small dispatch,” says Bacon, and this procrastination and delay was as prominent in the spacious times of Spain’s greatness as at the present day. We need but think of the endless trailing procedure of Inquisition trials, or of books waiting on the frontier for inspection with a man hired to dust them once a month. In ordinary life it is due perhaps rather to indifference and disdain than to an innate sluggishness; in official transactions formalism, and the inability to co-operate with others often bring matters to an intricate pass of papers, from which there is no issue but by a patient and slow unravelling. Even to-day a rigid centralization carries the pettiest affair to Madrid for settlement, and lays upon the Prime Minister a crushing load of work. Etiquette is carried to excess, and there are in Spain many “formal natures,” men who would perish upon a ceremony rather than come to a quick and common-sense conclusion. But the true defect of Spanish politics is that they have a tendency to become abstract, with many excellent formulas and catchwords, but divorced from reality, a kind of up-to-date scholasticism. Sometimes they appear to be a game of dialectics, carried on by a few skilful players, sometimes a “rushing splendour of rhetoric,” carrying away many. Spaniards are fond of what Butler calls “that idle and not very innocent employment of forming imaginary models of the world and schemes of governing it.” Spanish politicians, says Señor Pérez Galdós, “live in a world of rituals and formulas, recipes and expedients. The language has filled with aphorisms and mottos and emblems. Ideas become stereotyped, and contemplated actions go seeking to embody themselves in words and cannot make their choice of them.”[30] It would seem indeed that reality has shown itself so angular and hard-featured to the Spanish that they gladly make efforts to escape from it. While no nation shows so great a courage, endurance and patient endeavour in misfortune and defeat, they are not equally successful in success, they are often spoilt by prosperity and become weak, dissolute and frivolous; they must have something to fight, and fall when they no longer press against opposition. This may account for the fact that the poorer classes are still, as in Ford’s time, “by no means the worst portion of the population.” The peasants are courteous, intelligent, patient, energetic and persevering: their praises have been sung by many writers.[31] But a pathetic fatalism and apathy prevail, and a great bitterness against those in authority. Pobreza nunca alza cabeza, poverty never raises its head, they say, la cárcel y la cuaresma para los pobres es hecha, prison and Lent are for the poor; they look for no bettering of their lot, but for pan y paciencia y muerte con penitencia—bread and patience and death with repentance. But it must be said that the fault is not only of those “on top,” but of those also who, brooking no superiorities of any kind,[32] thus reduce differences between man and man to the brutal divisions of wealth and poverty and make life a race for riches. It remains true, however, that the peasants of Spain are ground down by taxes,[33] and work incessantly only to hover on the fringes of starvation; todo sea por Dios, they say, and content themselves with the observation that honesty and riches do not fit into one sack—honra y provecho no caben en un saco. There is a certain elemental hardness in the Spanish which helps them to support hardships stoically and, indeed, to be scornful of modern comforts and luxury. Their indifference towards disquiet and discomfort and noisy uproar[34] often dismays the foreigner, but it is not that they are inconsiderate of the feelings of others, they have a deep sensitiveness and refinement, but they have not been enervated and rendered over-sensitive by a luxurious civilization. Their climate, with its harsh extremes of cold and heat,[35] produces a people like that of León’s Alcalá de los Zegríes, “rigorous in their virtues and their vices, violent in their loves and hates.” They go easily to extremes; Spanish intellects are apt to be either totally undeveloped, or else over-subtle in nice distinctions, and action in the same way, when it comes, comes with violence and excess, like the rivers of Spain which, parched all summer, pour down after rain in rushing torrents. The charges of cruelty and fanaticism, the bull-fight and the auto-de-fé, have fixed themselves upon the Spanish. They are by nature inflexible and uncompromising, and like to carry out their principles without looking to the many delicate shades of grey between white and black. But they are not by nature cruel; they support bodily sufferings with courage and inflict them upon others as the lesser of two evils, burning the heretics to prevent the spread of their heresy; and indeed to men convinced that these “pertinacious schismaticks” were to burn for ever and ever in another place, a touch of fire in this life could hardly seem an excessive punishment.[36] Cruelty to animals on the roads of Spain is extremely rare, and at the bull-fights[37] it is only fair to observe that, while the foreigner’s attention is directed to the sufferings of the horses, the whole mind of the Spaniard is bent on intricacies of the conflict between man and bull, and nice passes which escape the foreigner.[38] The autos-de-fé and the Inquisition have cast over Spain a reputation for fanaticism and obscurantist bigotry. But the Spanish, while eager supporters of their faith, are too independent to bow down for long to a Clerical predominance; they cannot be called a priest-ridden nation.[39] Ni buen fraile por amigo, ni malo por enemigo, says one of their proverbs—make no friend of a good monk, nor enemy of a bad; and again, Haz lo que dice el fraile no lo que hace—follow the monk’s precept, not his example. They believe uncompromisingly in the Roman Catholic religion, but have a ready eye for the faults of its ministers; they love and reverence the Church as a refuge from reality, but continue to be realists in their mysticism. The Church in Spain has done noble work, but it has been a retreat more than a morality, encouraging hollow shows rather than love of truth,[40] patience and submission rather than enterprise and a persistent search for remedies. The anti-Clericals complain that the influence of the priest in the family is excessive, but when the women are kept in a semi-Oriental seclusion, while the men chatter together in street and casino and café, as still happens in many parts of Spain,[41] it is but natural for the women to turn from the discomfort and isolation of their homes to the magnificent ceremonies of the Church.[42] The Spaniards are naturally inclined to generosity and a love of magnificence, but, their poverty preventing, this too often degenerates to shams and hollowness. To poverty and the proud concealment of poverty, much of the feeling of suspicion which prevails in Spain may be attributed. A large number of Spaniards may be said to be well-to-do in the street, poverty-stricken in the home. The family in Pereda’s Bocetos al temple which chooses without a moment’s hesitation to live on potatoes in order to be able to dress luxuriously, is no solitary instance, and in Madrid many live in bare rooms who drive abroad in carriages. The Spanish are more careful of outward show than any other nation. The universal neatness and soldierly smartness of their dress must excite admiration. But watch a poor man fold and refold the brilliantly lined outer edge of his capa that the more worn portions of the velvet may not appear—the capa which may itself cover a multitude of sins (la capa todo lo tapa) that recalls the passage in Shakespeare:—

“Armado: The naked truth of it is I have no shirt. I go woolward for penance.

Boyet: True, and it was enjoined him in Rome for want of linen.”

Or follow a smart officer through the streets to his house. The position and entrance of the house will not prepare you for its decreasing splendour as you climb stair after stair to the bare rooms where he lives. There is much that is postizo, false and artificial, in the exterior view, as Spaniards will themselves bitterly confess. Appearances must be maintained. So Bacon says that “It hath been an opinion that the Frenchmen are wiser than they seem and the Spaniards seem wiser than they are,” and many of their houses are built not to live in but to look on. Hence, partly, a disquieting element of mistrust, of “suspicions that ever fly by twilight” foreign to the frank and open nature of true Spaniards. “Of every Spanish undertaking,” writes Señor Benavente in 1909, “it may be said as of the famous Cortes that it is ‘dishonoured while yet unborn.’ The result is that he who is jealous of his good name shuns contact with all business affairs like pitch, and the affairs fall into the hands of men who are untroubled by scruples.... All these suspicions and distrusts are a sign rather of our poverty than of our morality. There is so great a scarcity of money that it becomes unintelligible that any one who has the handling of it should fail to keep a part for himself.... We are, moreover, so firmly attached to old-fashioned ideas of nobility—rancias hidalguías—that, in spite of our pressing need of money, we still consider its acquisition contemptible; so we prefer to seek it by subterranean channels as if it were a crime to seek it in the light of day.”

Suspicion of new things has ever been at once the strength and the weakness of Spain.[43] In the nineteenth century this suspicion expressed itself in patriotism carried to its extreme logical conclusion. Were Napoleon’s reforms of a nature to benefit Spain in an inestimable degree? To the Spaniard they were the tyrannical and insidious measures of a usurper. Was his brother Joseph intelligent, well-intentioned, conciliatory? To the Spaniard he was ever the squint-eyed drinker, Pepe Botellas, and it was idle to insist that he did not squint, and did not drink. Was King Amadeo an enlightened, courageous, and self-effacing ruler? To the Spaniard he was an intruder, to be treated with neglect, insolence or disdain. This distrust may have been foolish and harmful to the interests of Spain, but it was in many respects noble and admirable. To-day, however, we have rather the reverse side of the picture, a pessimism about all things Spanish, and a foolish tendency to imitate things foreign. Beneath his outer capa of haughty pride the Spaniard is keenly aware of his limitations; he has no confidence in his own actions or in his country, or, rather, his confidence is merely momentary and is never sustained. It is, no doubt, a sign not of progress but degeneracy to exchange the Spanish capa, peculiarly suited to a climate of hot sun and cold air, for English overcoats or the becoming mantilla for the newest fashion in Parisian hats. It is not necessarily a sign of progress to exchange old-fashioned Spanish piety for the latest shades of scepticism, or to leave the simple life of an hidalgo in the provinces for the idler, dissipated life in the only capital and court. The desire to be very modern is at present a good thing in Spain, yet it need not consist in casting aside old traditions and diffidently rejecting Spanish customs that are excellent. This exalting of foreign customs and depreciation of their own which has been frequently observed of Spaniards, is due rather to an inverted pride than to humility; at the beginning of the nineteenth century it was considered a mark of culture in Spain to despise things Spanish and to worship things French, but all the time the Spanish believe at heart in themselves,[44] they praise foreign countries with their lips, but continue to place Spain first, and if they imitate, they cast a peculiarly Iberian flavour over their imitations. The late Bishop Creighton, looking at Spain historically, remarked that it “leaves the curious impression of a country which never did anything original—now the Moors, now France, now Italy, have influenced it.” If this is so, certainly the Moors, and France, and Italy have wrought some of their most original works in Spain; and it can hardly be said that the great Spanish discoverers and conquerors, painters, philosophers, and poets of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries were not original, whether they were influenced by Moors, Frenchmen, or Italians.[45] But, indeed, the Spaniard more readily repels than assimilates, it is his virtue and his defect; he remains isolated and alone, difficult to convince, impossible to govern. New political and social theories from France are spread in Spain, but they there serve progress less than disquiet and the rancour of those who have not towards those who have. The reforms needed by Spain will not be furthered by riots and disorder, and the demagogues who encourage them are perhaps less patriotic than they profess to be. For Spain needs peace, long periods of tranquillity in which to develop her resources and to learn the more difficult task of maintaining in prosperity that strength and independent nobility of character which have shone out so clearly in misfortune. The conclusion then, if so desultory a study warrants a conclusion, is that the Spanish are a fundamentally noble, courteous, and independent people, energetic and brave, with a natural tendency to grandeur and generosity, whom poverty often leads to hollow display and the consequent suspicion and distrust. They will be at immense pains to “bear up under their indigency,” but have a greater consideration for the semblance than for the reality and substance of well-being, for artificial show, supported by infinite care and ingenuity, than for a more solid prosperity, based on serious effort. Their realism, throwing into relief the apparent pettiness of daily life, causes them to dream dreams and weave fragile abstract palaces of fair-sounding phrases; they have not that useful quality of accuracy, an understanding of the value and importance of details and gradual effort, of pennies and minutes: they will smite a stone in twain at a great blow, but the idea that it might be pierced by drops of water saepe cadendo is foreign to them, and often they aim at a million and miss a unit. They are a nation of strongly original characters, acting on impulses and intermittently, and thinking in extremes; often failing in the face of prosperity, but proud, resolute, and patient in misfortune; often magnificently imprudent, but never despicable, except to those whose worship is of riches and success; an admirable but discomfortable people, not adapting itself readily to modern conditions, but ever to be reckoned with as an energetic, vital force, not bowing permanently before defeat.

II

TRAVELLING IN SPAIN

IT was, of course, Samuel Johnson who said, “There is a good deal of Spain that has not been perambulated,” and the remark still holds good for those who, like Don Quixote, wish to “go seeking adventures.” The brigand stories, “got up,” as Ford would say, “for the home market,” are now slightly exploded, and few travellers expect to find at every turn—

“Cent coupe-jarrets à faces renégates
Coiffés de montéras et chaussés d’alpargates.”

Yet even to-day few foreigners realize that they may cross and recross the Peninsula from north to south and from east to west in perfect security. They will meet with no cloak-and-sword episodes; their adventures must be of another order. It is true that the Spaniard can use his knife, but the knife comes into play in quarrels of cards and love and jealousy, in which the passing traveller can have no part. Those, however, who measure culture by comfort, and wish to journey as consistent first-class passengers through life, should certainly narrow their Spanish travels to the round of a few cities—

“Erret et extremos scrutetur alter Iberos,”

and, however rapid and conventional, a journey that includes the Alhambra, the Mosque of Córdoba, the Cathedrals of Seville, Toledo, and Burgos,[46] and the picture-galleries of Seville and Madrid, can scarcely be said to have been in vain. But to know Spain and the Spaniards it is necessary to go further afield, to the small towns and villages of Andalucía and Castille, for here, rather than in the larger towns, is to be found the true spirit of the race. Some five thousand villages are still to be reached only by bridle-paths, and in these there has been little change since Cervantes went his rounds collecting taxes; so that for those who care to leave the beaten track there still remain many unexplored districts, and much first-hand knowledge to glean of the country and its inhabitants. To many, no doubt, Spain is the country of dance and song and sun-burnt mirth, of the flutter of fans and the flash of dark eyes; the country of the bull-fight and the white mantilla and carnations in the hair; of Roman ruins and Moorish palaces set in groves of myrtle and orange; of—

“Cloaked shapes, the twanging of guitars,
A rush of feet and rapiers clashing,
Then silence deep with breathless stars,
And overhead a white hand flashing.”

and if any shadows fall across the picture they are those of the brigand and the priest-inquisitor. Then comes the inevitable reaction. Those who visit Spain find that it is for them indeed un pays de l’imprévu. The former image in their mind soon perishes, and they cry out upon this “ciel insalubre,” this—

“pays endiablé;
Nous y mangions, au lieu de farine de blé,
Des rats et des souris et pour toutes ribotes
Nous avons dévoré beaucoup de vieilles bottes.”

But, to judge from many books published about Spain, most European countries would seem to have entered into a league to look upon the Peninsula solely as a land of a poetical unreality, its inhabitants divided into inquisitors, monks, brigands, and conspirators, lending—

“the colour of romance
To every trivial circumstance.”

A well-balanced and accurate account of the country is singularly rare. It is true that in some respects Spain has changed little since the sixteenth century, but, on the other hand, during the twentieth century, while she has been making laborious progress, foreign ideas of Spain have remained stationary, with the prejudices and fixed opinions of fifty years ago. No error or exaggeration concerning Spain is too ridiculous to be affirmed and readily believed, and those who take no thought to study the Peninsula in quiet days save as a land of vague romance, when trouble occurs are officious with wise criticisms and stern common-sense, based on ignorance. Quite recently the hysterical visions of prisoners tortured in Spanish dungeons, and of priestly cruelty and greed, might persuade one that Mr. Kipling’s “Little Foxes” was written not before, but after, the events of 1909 in Spain. One forgets that it is of Ethiopia, not Spain, that Mr. Lethabie Groombride, M.P., exclaims, “What callous oppression! The dark places of the earth are full of cruelty!” Like the natives of Ethiopia, the courteous Spaniards are “much pleased at your condescensions;” but they too have a sense of humour, and note with amusement the ignorance of nations which declare that Spain’s chief need is more education and culture.

For the traveller who wishes to explore the remote parts of Spain, and to escape from Spanish trains, the simplest method is to proceed on horseback. Walking and bicycling and motoring are possible in the North, and especially in the Basque Provinces, where the inns are good and the roads excellent. But in most parts of Spain they are practically impossible; the roads are too stony or too dusty even for walking, and, moreover, in fifty kilometres you may find hardly one inn. There remains the diligencia—coche, tartana, diabla, call it what you will—but a single experience of it will probably be sufficient. It rolls and lurches heavily to the loud, continuous shouting of the driver to his horses: Caballo-allo-allo-allo, Mula-ula-ula-ula. The traveller, if he has the misfortune to be in the interior, is beaten against the wooden sides, the windows rattle, the bells jingle, the vehicle sways slowly on its way, groaning and complaining of the breadth, as well as the length, of the road[47]—nosotros tambien llegaremos, si Dios quiere, as a driver said when passed by more rapid travellers, “if it is the will of Heaven.” Occasionally at a country railway station may be seen a boy who is a pillar of dust or mud. He is the zagal of the diligencia, who runs by its side through dirt and mire, urging on the horses, or stands to rest on the step at the back. Sometimes the diligencia descends into river-beds, usually dry; and after much rain it is apt to stay there, and darkness falls and the frogs croak mockingly, while more mules are fetched to help in the work of extrication. Often it proceeds by night, throwing strange, fantastic shadows in the narrow streets of sleeping villages. The driver must undergo not only extremes of heat and cold, but is often in danger of snowdrifts and swollen torrents and rocks from the hill-sides. A Navarrese innkeeper, an old soldier of Santa Cruz, introduced a driver of a diligencia as “the bravest man of my acquaintance.” Spanish travellers accept all these discomforts with a marvellous, fatalistic resignation and equanimity; but even a pedestrian will go further and fare better in an afternoon than a traveller in diligencia during a whole day. Still, as a unique experience, a diligencia drive must be undertaken; and the driver is good company, sparing time from the loud praise and blame meted out to his mules to bestow pithy comments on the living and the dead—

“The crosses in the mountain pass,
Mules gay with tassels, the loud din
Of muleteers, the tethered ass
That crops the dusty wayside grass,
And cavaliers with spurs of brass
Alighting at the inn.”

The inns, mesones, ventorrillos, ventas, posadas, paradores, are still much the same as in the times of Cervantes, moderately clean, immoderately uncomfortable, bare alike of furniture and food.[48] Still to your first inquiry the answer is, “Hay de todo, we have everything,” still to your further inquiry the abstract todo shrinks to nada. But for an understanding of the Spanish people, nothing is more interesting and one may add, more pleasant than to listen to their talk as they sit round some great inn fire of crackling scented twigs burning on the stone floor of the court and kitchen. The discomfort and hardships of travel in remote parts of Spain are repaid in flowing measure. Here a solitary peasant is seen ploughing land so precipitous and steep that the stones rattle down as he advances; there the mules stand hour by hour at the plough while the peasants—in this case servants on some great estate—play cards, the large earthenware botijos of water standing ready to their hand; or a group of workers in the fields stand shivering in early morning round a great common puchero, dipping their spoons in turn, and in turn raising the bota high above their heads to drink; or one has a glimpse of some peasant’s dress[49] of brilliant colouring, of some ancient vanishing costume of leather or velvet, silk embroidery or silver buttons—at every turn some quaint custom, some curious picturesque scene and colour appears, and the talk of the peasants is a delight. The two most successful English travellers in Spain were beyond doubt, Ford and Borrow. They won the respect of all classes of Spaniards, and saw practically the whole of Spanish life three-quarters of a century ago. Borrow describes himself on one occasion as “dressed in the fashion of the peasants of the neighbourhood of Segovia in Old Castile, namely, I had on my head a species of leather helmet or montera, with a jacket and trousers of the same material.” And Ford says: “In all out-of-the-way districts the traveller may adopt the national costume of the road, to wit, the peaked hat (sombrero gacho), the jacket of fur (zamarra).” But without the peaked hat, now almost extinct, or Borrow’s leathern helmet, a few changes of dress and especially what Ford calls “a graceful and sleeveless Castilian manta” or rather capa, excellently suited to the climate, will bring many advantages. For to the ordinary traveller, with red book and camera, the Spaniard will hardly disclose his true nature, and remains an impenetrable mystery; not that the foreigner often realizes the existence of the unsolved riddle, the Spaniard presenting a sufficient number of striking aspects to make a swift superficial impression. The best guides to Spain are still Ford’s “Gatherings,” and a thorough acquaintance with “Don Quixote,” a fluent knowledge of Spanish, and, lastly, the advice of Spaniards, since as Sancho sagely observed, “más sabe el necio en su casa que el cuerdo en casa ajena.” The traveller in Spain may in the heat of summer listen to the silver plashing of fountains in marble patios, and feel the coolness of snowy Sierras; he may in early morning gather frozen oranges to be eaten later beneath a burning sun; but it is this sun which with the cold winds tends to limit his wanderings to a brief period of spring or autumn. Martial indeed says—

“Aestus serenos aureo franges Tago
Obscurus umbris arborum.”

but under the fierce Castilian sun—and there are said to be 3600 hours of sunshine in the year—the imagination produces no golden tints in the Tagus, and trees are few. Comfort the traveller will scarcely find, but serviceableness and courtesy on all sides. If he is wise, he will, however, imitate the Spaniards not only a little in their dress, but greatly in their manners. He will arm himself with an inalienable fund of patience. He will be courteous even while chafing at delay. His courtesy will never go unanswered. “La cortesía tenerla con quien la tenga, Courtesy to him who has it,” as one of Calderón’s characters says. Money often obtains much, but the offer of a cigarette or a cigar is often not less effective. Without a courteous manner the money will be treated as an insult and the cigar refused. Calderón says again: “El sombrero y el dinero son los que hacen amigos, Raising the hat and money make most friends.” Few peoples respect themselves more than the Spanish, and they look for respect from others. “The sensitive Spaniard bristles up like a porcupine against the suspicion of a disdain.” They do not forget that they were once the greatest people in Europe, and they regard it as an accident that the march of modern civilization has left them behind, being, indeed, too mechanical for their pride to adopt. And still the golden rule for the traveller in Spain is never to be in a hurry or never to show that he is in a hurry, for by doing so he will increase delays and defeat his object. He must learn the Spanish proverb thoroughly—Paciencia y barajar, “Patience, and shuffle the cards.” Patience and courtesy he will find to be above rubies. The Spaniard, so sensitive and excitable, remains unmoved by delays and petty official tyrannies which drive an Englishman into a kind of despair and fury of impatience.[50] But the lower officials in Spain are apt to be ignorant and self-important, very official, and curt inquiries only remind them that they represent the whole majesty of the Law and the State; they multiply their shrugs and inscrutable No se puede’s. On the other hand, a polite speech, though it occupy several of the few minutes that the traveller may have to spare, is in Spain time well spent and performs miracles;—if, that is, he still persists in considering the value of time, and has not found it simpler to accept the less accurate methods of the Spaniard. For he may ask in a cathedral, “When is Mass going to be celebrated?” and the answer is, “No sé, Señor; Cuando vengan los canónigos”—when it is the good pleasure of the Canons to appear; or he may ask in a station, “When does the train start?” and must not be surprised if the answer is again, “No sé, Señor.” He had best content himself once and for all to breakfast at five-o’clock tea, and will find consolation in the thought that here at least there is no unseemly rush and strain, in this original and exquisite land of To-morrow—Mañana por la mañana.

III

ON THE SPANISH FRONTIER

THE Bidasoa, in the last part of its course, divides Spain from France. It further divides Basque from Basque. It has thus a local and an historic interest. It is the scene of smuggling between French and Spanish Basques and, as a frontier river, it has seen many a quaint and solemn episode in the past—the passage of Wellington’s troops, for instance, in 1813, or the exchange in boats of Francis I. against two hostages (his sons) in 1526, the King showing an eager haste to win across the river and reach the friendly inhabitants of St. Jean de Luz[51] and the sheltering walls of Bayonne. But it is the passing beauty of the whole Bidasoa valley that attracts the visitor, the loveliness of the river and the hills and the villages by the river. The Bidasoa is beautiful during its whole course from where it rises near the village of Maya, a little mountain stream running swiftly through woods of oak and chestnut. At times the hills break abruptly down, the water lies deep and dark-green beneath, and there is a look of Ullswater about both hills and river. A little above Endarlaza the road leaves the river, and from here may be had a glimpse of the Bidasoa of unrivalled beauty. For it runs in a long, irregular stretch, irregular for the rough backbones of hill covered with boulders and bushes of box. At each hill-ridge one might expect the river to bend and vanish, but still it appears beyond. Nearer the village of Vera it contracts to a narrower flow, and the water lashes over rocks, magnificently white and green. The river is known to fishermen as well as to smugglers and Carlists and lovers of Nature. Certainly the wisest travellers, before passing on to the bleak uplands of Castille, will stay to explore this little strip of green country, with its fresh woods and valleys and villages full of state and ancientry. Vera, in a sunny hollow, has an especial fascination. The vine-covered balconies and projecting roofs keep the houses in shade, and on two sides is the rustle and flow of water. The houses stand on different levels, several storeys of them mounting roof above roof from the river to the church. They are curious in their sculptured stone, their quaint carved buttresses, their nail-studded doors or rounded arches leading to the outer court, their crazy wooden balconies, their coats-of-arms, their inscriptions. At the very entrance of the Bidasoa stands Fuenterrabía, beneath gently sloping Jaizquibel. It is a little town of marvellous, narrow streets, steep and crooked, and overjutting houses carved in wood and stone. In front is a little bay, black with fishing-boats, and seen from across the water, Fuenterrabía’s clustered group of houses, yellow and brown and grey, crowned by the ancient church and tenth-century castle, is of a rare and enchanting beauty. Not only a narrow strip of river, but several centuries separate it from Hendaye opposite, with its shore on the Bidasoa and its shore on the sea, and its woods above the river, crowded in spring with daffodils. The sudden change from everything that is French to everything that is Spanish cannot but be surprising. It is due, no doubt, to the fact that beneath the French and the Spanish civilization and language, the people have an older language and civilization common to either side. The Basque spoken varies but little, being merely a little broader in Spain than in France. Mme. d’Aulnoy noticed the abrupt change wrought by a few yards of travel. “It’s certain, as soon as I past the little river of Bidassoa, I was not understood unless I spake Castilian; and not above a quarter of an Hour before I should not have been understood had I not spoke French.”[52] Obstacles and delays begin: “Here are Toll-gatherers who make you pay for everything you carry with you, not excepting your Cloaths. This Tax is demanded at their Pleasure and is excessive on Strangers.” Letters are no longer received in a well-ordered service: “There is in this country a very ill order touching commerce, and when the French carrier arrives at St. Sebastian, all the letters he brings are deliver’d to others who are good footmen and ease one another. They put their packets into a sack tied with rotten cords to their shoulder, by which means it oft happens that the secrets of your heart and family are open to the first curious body who makes drunk the Footpost.” Mme. d’Aulnoy is irritated by the unintelligibility of Basque: “This country called Biscaye is full of high mountains where are several iron mines.[53] The Biscays climb up the rocks as easily and with as great swiftness as stags. Their language (if one may call such jargon language) is very poor, seeing one word signifies abundance of things. There are none but those born in the country that can understand it; and I am told that to the end it may be more particularly theirs they make no use of it in writing: they make their children learn to read and write French and Spanish according to which King’s subjects they are.” “They are said to understand one another,” said Scaliger of the Basques, “but, for my part, I doubt it.” The most famous scene of peace witnessed by the Bidasoa was the meeting held in the Île des Faisans, or de la Conférence, a narrow island, now worn to a mere strip by the flow of the tide, between Philip IV. of Spain and Louis XIV. of France in 1660. It was a scene of lavish splendour and magnificence, and Velázquez, then in the last year of his life, superintended the decorations and assisted at the interview.[54] But most often we hear of the Bidasoa as a scene of strife and anxiety, escape and pursuit. The very river was an object of dispute between the Governments of France and Spain, until it was decided that the one half of it belonged to France, the other to Spain; in the centre of the bridge of Béhobie is the dividing line, marked in blue for France and red for Spain. Many a time has the sight of its waters, flowing swiftly to the sea, been welcomed by men in danger of life and liberty. Colonel Péroz[55] has graphically described his escape by swimming the river during the last Carlist war. On May 5, 1808, Marbot reached the Bidasoa, after riding day and night through hostile country to bring the Emperor (then at the Château de Marrac, near Bayonne) news of the Dos de Mayo rising at Madrid. At the beginning of November Napoleon himself crossed the frontier, and as he rode rapidly along the route d’Espagne and beneath the Church of Urrugne, with its ancient, sad inscription,[56] little thought that the enterprise upon which he was now engaged was to be a main cause in bringing him swiftly to the last hour that kills.

In the Middle Ages the pilgrims to the shrine of Santiago went through the Basque country and across the frontier in fear of their lives. The Basques were fierce and brave, and fond of plunder. In 1120 a Bishop was obliged to lay aside his episcopal robes, and taking with him only two servants and a guide who understood the “barbarous tongue of the Basques,” so passed through to Compostella. In later times the pilgrims would sing, as they left Irun,—

“Adieu la France jolie
Et les nobles fleurs de lys
Car je m’en vais en Espagne,
C’est un étrange pays,”

and would look back with sighs to the good cheer of France:

“Quand nous fûmes á Saint Jean de Luz[57]
Les biens de Dieu en abondance,
Car ce sont gens de Dieu élus,
Des charités ont souvenance.”

The older way into Spain was the Roman road from Dax to S. Jean Pied de Port and Roncesvalles—where, indeed, and not “by Fontarabia,” Charlemagne was attacked by the Basques;[58] but often this road was rendered impassable by war. In the middle of the 12th century the French Basque country passed, with the rest of Aquitaine, into the possession of the English Crown, and henceforth many were the battles and frontier raids between the Basques on either side. In 1296 we read of a truce in the quarrels between San Sebastian and “Fuent Arrabia,” and of an agreement made between them not to “send or take bread, or wine, or meat, or arms or horses, or other merchandise to Bayonne, or England, or Flanders while the war lasts between the King of France and the King of England.” On July 19, 1311, a peace is made between Bayonne and Biarritz (Beiarritz) on the one hand, and Laredo, Castro-Urdiales, and Santander on the other. A few years later we find the King of Castille writing to the King of England to complain of the seizure of the goods of his vassals of Biscay by the Seneschal of Aquitaine, “against all right and reason.” As often before and after “en ce temps avoit grand rancune entre le roy d’Angleterre et les Espagnols.” In 1352 a treaty is formed between “England and the people of the coast of Cantabria,” who were famous for their prowess in catching whales, as well as in frontier warfare, and came into rivalry with English fishermen. In 1482 “amicable intelligences” are concluded at Westminster between “Edward, by the Grace of God King of England and France and Lord of Ireland” and “the inhabitants of the noble and loyal Province of Guipúzcoa.”[59] During the 17th century the frontier raids continued, and in 1636 (as before in 1558) the town of St. Jean de Luz was taken and pillaged by the Spaniards. Up in the hills, near the little village of Sare, the Spaniards of Vera were defeated, and Sare still displays on the walls of its mairie the coat-of-arms given by Louis XIV. after the victory won by the bravery of its inhabitants, with the following inscription in Basque:—“Reward of courage and loyalty, given to Sare by Louis XIV. in 1693.”[60] In the Peninsular War, Sare and its mountain, La Rhune, played a prominent part, and many a vivid description, such as the following, occurs in Napier:—“Day had broken with great splendour, and three guns were fired as signal of attack from Atchuria. The French were driven from La Rhune, Sare was carried, and the enemy brushed away from Ainhoa and Urdax: “It was now eight o’clock, and from the smaller Rhune[61] a splendid spectacle of war opened upon the view. On the left the ships of war, slowly sailing to and fro, were exchanging shots with the fort of Socoa, and Hope, menacing all the French lines on the low ground, sent the sound of a hundred pieces of artillery bellowing up the rocks, to be answered by nearly as many from the tops of the mountains. On the right the summit of the great Atchuria[62] was just lighted by the rising sun, and fifty thousand men rushing down its enormous slopes with ringing shouts seemed to chase the receding shadows into the deep valley.” The description of the passage of the Bidasoa in October, 1813, is equally graphic: “From San Marcial seven columns could now be seen at once, moving on a line of five miles, those above bridge plunging at once into the fiery contest, those below appearing in the distance like huge, sullen snakes winding over the heavy sands.” The mountainous character of the frontier, causing Spain to be entered by one or two narrow passages, has indeed concentrated upon a few points a picturesque variety of traffic through the centuries—a historical pageant of soldiers, pilgrims, smugglers, Kings and Queens dethroned or released from imprisonment, wily agents, gorgeous ambassadors, fugitive politicians, exiled Jesuits, heretic missionaries, Carlist conspirators, with a large sprinkling of visitors and adventurers from many lands.

IV

ESKUAL-ERRIA

I.—Basque Country

THERE are few peoples more deserving of study than the Basques, and few countries more pleasant to visit and to live in than the Basque Provinces. After the treeless, unsheltered mountains and plains, and the compact villages of Castille or Navarre, the villages of the Basque country, set in green, and, to quote the phrase of a Spanish novelist, “all in the peace of prayer,” are a delightful contrast. The sky has no longer the harsh intensity of the Castilian, and everywhere is a softness of outlines; everywhere, too, is green—the green of chestnut and oak, of maize and trefoil, meadow and cider-orchard. The maize is the principal crop of the year, providing the heavy, yellow bread, artoa, as well as food for the oxen and material for mats, mattresses, and even cigarette-papers. The fields are divided by slabs of stone, and in the mists of the early mornings the Angelus rings from hidden towers; and the only other sound is that of scythes cutting the drenched grass or trefoil. Every true Basque is of noble, ancient family, and the Basque farmhouse, with its wooden façade and carved projecting buttresses, its wide balcony and deep ornamented eaves, is handed down from father to son without change. It stands surrounded by orchards and fields of maize, and often overshadowed by an immense fig-tree or a group of splendid walnut-trees. The roof slopes down on one side till it nearly reaches the ground. The lower part of the front is hollowed into a court, and on one side of this a door leads straight into the spacious kitchen, with its huge fireplace and many vessels of scoured bronze and copper, which forms the principal room of the house. A dark, narrow staircase leads to the bedrooms; through the cracks of the floors may often be seen the oxen in their stalls beneath. Large chests of oak, some of them beautifully carved, are to be found in most Basque farms. In Vizcaya a large vine-trellis, running forward on posts from the inner court beneath the balcony, further deepens the dark velvet spaces in the whitewashed front of the farm; in Guipúzcoa many houses have no balcony or trellis, but are overgrown with heavy vines, that often entirely cover all the windows. From the windows hang long strings of red piments or white onions; above the door there is frequently an ancient stone coat-of-arms or an inscription with the name of the founders and the date, and above this a cross or the letters I. H. S. The house is thus half sacred. After the father’s death, the eldest son becomes “Lord of the house, etcheco-jauna,” while the younger sons often emigrate.

It was from their farms, so dear to them, that the Basques formerly took their names, so that they are called not Smith or Collier, but At-the-head-of-the-hill (Mendiburu) or Under-the-new-road (Bideberripe). Even now a Basque in the country is never called by his surname, but either by his Christian name or a nickname, or the name of his house or property. Etche (“house”) is perhaps the commonest compound. Etcheberri (“newhouse”) has numerous variants—Echeverri, Echevarri, Echavarri (in Vizcaya and Alava, where the Basque spoken is broader than in Guipúzcoa, new is “barri”), Chavarri, Echarri, Echave, Xavier, Javer, etc. The number of Basque-speaking people can now but little exceed half a million, and only very rarely is a Basque found who is unable to speak Spanish or French.[63] Of the three Spanish-Basque provinces, Guipúzcoa (capital San Sebastián) alone is entirely Basque. At Bilbao, the capital of Vizcaya, no Basque is spoken; and long before reaching Vitoria, the capital of Alava, the language spoken is Castilian. Nor is Basque spoken at Pamplona, the capital of Navarre, though it reaches almost to its walls, and till quite recently had a wider extension in Navarre, names of places such as Mendigorria (“red mountain”) surviving. The difficulty of the language has been somewhat exaggerated; there is a well-known story that the Devil spent three years in the Basque country, and only succeeded in learning two words: Bai, “yes;” and Es, “no.” But it remains true that the immense and complicated system of Basque conjugations is for a foreigner almost impossible to master; and at the same time the Basque literature to reward the learner is of the scantiest. Interesting indeed are the proverbs, some of the songs, and the pastorales, which have been compared in more than one particular with the Greek drama, but which are now acted only in the province of Soule. The stage, in the open air, is formed of plain planks, supported most often on barrels. A curtain cuts off a part for the actors to change their costumes, the same person often taking several parts in a play. The curtain has two doors, one for the good and one for the wicked. The good and the wicked are kept strictly separate. The pastorale is always in honour of Christianity and the Roman Catholic religion, and the wicked are the heathen, the Turks, the English, etc. Red is the colour of the wicked, that of the good is blue; in this respect no change is ever made. The good always walk slowly and solemnly, but when the wicked come on the stage the music is immediately changed to a lively air, and they never remain long quiet, their movements continuing quick and agitated. The acting is very simple; a journey, for instance, is represented by walking up and down the stage several times. The characters are usually taken exclusively by men and boys, but there are a few pastorales acted by women only; the sexes are never mingled. Strange and amusing anachronisms abound. In the pastorale entitled Abraham, Abraham appears in high boots and felt hat; Sarah in a modern, bright-coloured dress, with hat, veil, and fan; Isaac carries one or two sticks on his shoulder for the sacrifice; the Angel is a little boy in white. Then there are the heathen and the Christian kings, the former dressed in red, with high crowns arrayed with plumes and ribbons, the latter in blue with crowns of gold. In the middle of the play one of the Christian kings leaves the stage, and presently appears above the curtain and speaks with Abraham. He represents the “Eternal Father.” The verses are spoken in a loud monotonous chant, each verse being literally measured out by motion up and down the stage, the only change being when the music becomes faster or slower. The music is composed of the two Basque instruments the churula, a shrill pipe, and the tamboril, a kind of guitar with six strings, played by the same person. The strangeness of the scene, the loud chanting of the actors as the tone rises and falls, the fantastic costumes, the dances of the “Satans,” the prayers of the Christians, and especially the slow march and action of the blues, dignified and majestic, and the turbulent, restless movements of the reds, are not soon forgotten.

The Basque language, Eskuara, was described by the Spanish historian, Mariana, as “coarse and barbarous,” and a traveller among the Basques in the Middle Ages recorded that to hear them speak one would say they were dogs barking. In English, the word “jingo” has been said to derive from the Basque Jincoa, “God,” introduced by Wellington’s troops after the Peninsular War. The Basque word is an abbreviation of Jaungoicoa, “the Lord on high,” jauna, “lord,” being the common form of greeting between peasant and peasant. It becomes more and more rare to hear pure Basque spoken; foreign words creep in and, with the definite article “a” suffixed, hide under a Basque form: dembora (Lat. tempus) thus ousting the Basque word eguraldia for “weather,” gorphuntza (Lat. corpus) being “body,” and so on.[64] Pure Basque recedes to remote villages in the mountains, and there the Basque maintains his ancient customs, as averse from change to-day as when Horace described him as “Cantabrum indoctum juga ferre nostra.”[65]

II.—Basque Customs

An old Latin account speaks of the Basques as going nowhere—not even to church—without arms, usually a bow and arrows, and says that they are “gens affabilis, elegans et hilaris—courteous, graceful, and light-hearted;”[66] but, in spite of their known hospitality, their distrust of the foreigner and their hatred of intrusion are shown in more than one of their proverbs, as “The stranger-guest does not work himself, and prevents you from working.” The Basques are, indeed, the most energetic, as they are the most ancient people of the Peninsula. “Naguia bethi lansu—The idle man is ever busy,” says another of their proverbs; and, again, “Idle youth brings needy old age.”[67] Their fields are well and economically cultivated, and if their methods are antiquated, this is partly due to the mountainous nature of the country and the smallness of the holdings, making it simpler, e.g., to thresh corn by beating it sheaf by sheaf against a stone. Numerous small factories—of cloth as at Vergara, of paper at Tolosa, of iron and steel at Eibar and Elgoibar, of furniture at Azpeitia—and many quarries and tile-factories prove their industry; and entering a small Basque town such as Elgoibar, one may hear in tiny shops on all sides the sound of sandal-makers and workers in wood and leather. They know how to work, and they know how to enjoy themselves with thoroughness at the village fêtes. From dawn to dusk the ball is to be heard against the wall of the pelota court on Sundays, with intervals of dancing to the shrill pipe and drum of the chunchunero. Voltaire, thinking of their love of dancing, described them as “un petit peuple qui danse sur les Pyrénées,” and certain dances still survive. The sword-dance, ezpata danza, is one of the most remarkable, and has been described by Pierre Loti in “Figures et choses qui passaient;” and other dances are those representing the primitive methods of agriculture, the vintage, weaving, etc. The Basque pelota has, unfortunately, become, of recent years, a game of professionals, and as played, e.g., at Madrid, the interest is rather in the betting than in the play. The enthusiasm formerly excited among the Basques by the game is illustrated by the story that several Basque soldiers left the Army of the Rhine, returned to their country to play a game of ball, and, having played and won it, rejoined the army in time to take part in the battle of Austerlitz.[68] A game played in the immense court of a small Basque village is still a splendid sight, though it has lost much of its splendour, and the old Rebot is fast dying out. Pierre Loti has described a game of Blaid, as seen in a French-Basque village, in his novel of the Basque country, “Ramuntcho”; and this form of the game has been played in Paris and London. But old peasants will shake their heads and say it is no longer “as of old.” The expression “of old” is common on the lips of both French and Spanish Basques;[69] they willingly praise the past, and are intensely conservative of all their customs, their immemorial language, their games, privileges, religion. The ox-carts, with wheels of solid wood, to be seen under the vine-trellises of Basque farms, seem as old as the withered trunk of the oak of Guernica, and similarly many ancient customs have been retained. In some parts, at funerals, the men wear long cloaks reaching to the feet, the women also wearing long, full cloaks with hoods, that completely hide the face. The men go first, and then all the women—men and women in single file—the chief mourners coming last. Both at weddings and funerals, feasts were formerly given on such an extensive scale that the family was often nearly ruined, and a law (fuero) was passed forbidding to invite any but relations to the third degree. But the wedding-feast is still sufficiently imposing; it continues for many hours, and immediately afterwards the young begin dancing, while the old play cards. As to the offerings at funerals, “none but an eye-witness,” says Larramendi, in the eighteenth century, “could believe the quantity of bread and wax that is offered. Moreover, at these big funerals, in some places a live ox, and in others a sheep, is brought as an offering to the church door, and when the service is over it is taken away, and a fixed sum of money is given to the priest.”[70] This curious custom, a survival of the offerings to the dead and a trace of ancestor-worship, has not yet wholly died out. In one village at least (Arriba, on the borders of Navarre and Guipúzcoa) it is customary at funerals to offer bread and wax, and to bring to the church either a quarter of veal or a live sheep, which is afterwards given to the priest. The Basques are intensely religious, and it is characteristic of them that before they were converted to Christianity they were the terror of the Christians—indeed, the pilgrims to Santiago de Compostella at all times feared the passage through the Basque Provinces, the strange language adding to their difficulties (“La Biscaye,” they said, “où il y a d’étrange monde, où l’on n’entend pas les gens”). The Basques troop in to early Mass every Sunday, often by rough mountain paths, from farms lying a league away. Yet it must not be thought that the Basques are priest-ridden; the priests are respected, and often take part in their games or walk many miles across the hills to visit the sick. But though the Basques are often narrow and fanatical, they have far too much dignity and independence to be the blind followers of the priests. In the Carlist wars they fought chiefly for their old privileges, or fueros, and the result of the wars was that nearly all their fueros were lost, in 1839 and 1876. “Nothing is so fair as liberty,” says one of their songs, and their national song, “Guernikako Arbola,”[71] with its stirring air, celebrates “the holy tree of Guernica, loved by all the Basques.” In the little green-set town of Guernica a fine new oak, some forty years old, has taken the place of the old tree, now a mere trunk protected by glass, while in the little pillared temple are still to be seen the seven marble seats on which assembled—

“Peasant and lord in their appointed seat,
Guardians of Biscay’s ancient liberty.”

These are the two last lines of Wordsworth’s sonnet to the

“Oak of Guernica! Tree of holier power
Than that which in Dodona did enshrine,
So faith too fondly deemed, a voice divine.”

Noble, handsome, graceful in all their movements, hardy and shrewd, the Basques are active and untiring whether as farmers, smugglers, soldiers, or pelotaris. They live aloof in scattered farms, a healthy open-air life (their word for rich is aberatz, from abere, head of cattle), and, indeed, in a town they tend to lose some of their good qualities. Their dress has always an air of careful neatness and distinction, with the béret, white shirt (without a tie), dark blue or black coat thrown over shoulder (or long blouse), silent sandals and the peculiar makhila, a stout iron-pointed stick of medlar. They are shrinking into their mountains, a race doomed to perish, “un peuple qui s’en va.” They have watched during thousands of years new races spring up and prosper around them, and in the twentieth century they see trains and motors penetrate to the inaccessible places where the Roman legions were checked, or Charlemagne with all his peerage fell. An inscription here and there shows them bowing to destiny and the relentless march of time in saddened resignation, or betaking themselves to the consolation of their religion—the following inscriptions, for instance, along the frontier: “Man is beaten by every hour, and the last leads him to the grave.”[72] “Vulnerant omnes, ultima necat.”[73] “Ici fait l’home cequi pevt et fortune ce que elle vevt.”[74] “Post fata resurgo.”[75] “Deum time, Mariam invoca.”[76] “Orhoit hilcea.”[77] The privileges that remain to the Basques are few, consisting in a slightly less acute centralization than obtains in other provinces of Spain.[78] They have no fueros left to make it worth their while to take up arms afresh, and they still have vivid memories of their wasted fields and desolate farms in the last Carlist war. But were their ancient religion to be really attacked, or were an attempt made to expel the monks from the Basque provinces, the peasants could be counted upon to make a desperate resistance, more in defence of their independence than on behalf of the monks themselves. Foreigners have often misunderstood the Basques,[79] for they are reserved and silent towards the new-comer (“Gizonciki arabotz andi,” they say—“Little man, much noise”; “the empty barrel makes the most noise,” and so on). But there is no suspicion of commercialism about their love of liberty such as has often been attributed to the Catalans: they love their beautiful land, the Eskual-erria, for its own sake and the religion and customs of their forefathers, and the strangers who visit their country soon learn to love and admire its broad healing power and spirit of ancient peace. It is a country of civilization without great cities, where exists an intimate and ennobling relation between the soil and the inhabitants.

V

IN REMOTE NAVARRE

NAVARRE is held to be one of the chief bulwarks of Clericalism in Spain, and so remote and isolated are its villages, so primitive its life and agriculture, so few its means of communication, that it might seem that no breath of modern times could have penetrated to this province. Lying on the frontier of France, it is defended from the inroads of civilization by its mountains and wide wastes of desert land. In those lonely groups of houses of massive yellow-brown stone, clustered around their church, and crowning rocky hills of the same colour, there is no room for differences of opinion, and he who does not attend Mass at least once in the year is forced to go and live elsewhere. Should you ask how he can be forced to go, the answer you will receive is, “By the law, by public opinion.” Quite recently a traveller, arriving famished at one of these villages of Navarre, with no smaller change than a French napoleon, went from door to door in vain. No one would accept this doblón de oro (gold doubloon). Finally, a woman who had lived for a time at Salies de Béarn consented to receive it, and sent it later to be changed at the capital, Pamplona. Yet even here in Navarre there is an appreciable body of liberal opinion, and even in the heart of the Carlist country, at Estella, the Club Carlista is faced by the ensign of the Círculo Liberal; even here in all but the smaller villages opinion is divided, and the policy of Clericals and anti-Clericals discussed with animation. Those who served in the second Carlist war recognize that the times have altered, and that leaders, or cabecillas, are no longer forthcoming to lead them in swift night marches across the hills, willing though they might be to follow. At Estella a fort taken by the Carlists is now a peaceful covered market-place, and the palace where Don Carlos held his court is a pleasant fonda with a cool patio of flowers. Those who enter Navarre by the Convent of Roncesvalles and the Pass where Roland was slain, and which Byng a thousand years later, in 1813, was forced to evacuate with ten thousand troops, may be easily deceived into imagining that Navarre is a land of meadows and green woods and pleasant streams. The swift river Urrobi runs through passes of rugged hills, but overgrown with box and beech trees and pines. Steep walls of rock are in summer covered with foxgloves and bramble and broom, scabious, St. John’s wort, mallow, bell heather, and many other flowers and ferns, and in places the hills are red with wild strawberries. The Urrobi forces its way through barriers of grey rock and over ledges in green pools and white rushing torrents. But this is not the true Navarre. There no trees are to be seen, and one is perpetually in a wide circle of bare hills. The country is the most desolate imaginable, formed by bare, ashen-grey hills (scored and gashed by dry torrent-beds) and valleys equally barren. The wind hisses, and crickets chatter loudly in a few stunted elms by the roadside. All is greyness without colour, and in late summer the stubble-fields far and near add a new note of desolation, and it seems out of keeping with the character of the country that these fields should ever be a fresh green in spring. Indeed, the occasional hollows of olives and plots of vineyards have an air of unreality in the surrounding wilderness of crumbling dust and shale. Yet some welcome patches of colour are to be found, if it is only a line of chicory or of huge purple thistles along a stubble-field, or a blue-bloused peasant jogging down the dusty road on a mule with crimson trappings. And on the threshing-floors around the villages, where work is carried on far into the night, often by lightning flash, the white shirts and blue blouses of the men, and the pink and red dresses and long white headkerchiefs of the women form a picturesque and beautiful scene through the clouds of flying chaff and ruddy golden grain falling in heavier, more compact masses. For here the threshing is all done by hand with the help of mules, oxen, and horses, which are driven round and round, drawing all the children of the village on little wooden sledges. When the grain has been thus sifted, the process is completed by throwing it into the air from long wooden shovels and close-pronged wooden forks. The corn is grown on precipices and sheer mountain-sides, and is brought down to the threshing-floors on donkeys, which disappear beneath their rustling load. The men who live in this grim country are also stern and grim, harsh featured, hard, and strong; and, though hospitable and not unkindly, they are fierce and obstinate upon occasion, and sometimes cruel to their animals. Their food is rough, but not unplentiful; of wheat there is no lack, and with some vines and olives they are content to have the three necessities of a Spanish peasant’s life. The villages would often pass unnoticed on their rocky hills were it not for the outstanding feature of their grim, massive churches; the church of Gallipienzo dominates a mountain, and is so solid and fine that it seems to dwarf it. These churches are to be seen for very many miles across the completely bare country, and at night the lights of the village streets form, from long distances, strange, irregular letters on a mountain-side, making the village far more conspicuous than it would be by day. Sansol, a little village not far from Logroño, looks from some distance like a great fortress of brown stone with tiny black loop-holes (the glassless windows); behind is a long backbone of grey, rocky hill, and beyond the purple-black Monte Jura with a glimpse of white road. Bitter and fierce are the winters in Navarre, and pitiless the sun in summer; but for all its forbidding aspects it repays the discomforts of a visit to its remote districts. Lumbier is like a miniature Toledo, on its bare hill above the winding river, and Sanguesa, of brown yellow stone, on the Aragón, of the same colour, has its magnificently sculptured church of Santa María, and other beautiful carvings on private houses. And after a few weeks’ acquaintance with the harsh country and the proud inhabitants, the traveller will realize the possibility of those relentless Carlist wars which still send a thrill through those who recall them, and the difficulty of hunting down cabecillas who knew the country and of bringing the war to an end.

VI

SPANISH CITIES

SPAIN is pre-eminently a land of cities. Often they stand conspicuous in an arid and treeless tract of country, glancing like jewels in a sunburnt land. The pleasant and fertile strip of country, on the French frontier is not properly Spanish, but Basque. On the other hand, nothing could be more Spanish than the little quaint old town of Fuenterrabía. The original name was Basque—Ondarrabia, “The two banks of sand.” The Romans, hearing the name, but ignorant of its meaning and seeing, moreover, the swift flow of the tide beneath the walls of the town, called it Unda Rapida.[80] From the Latin Unda Rapida or Fons Rapidus came the Spanish Fuenterrabía,[81] and the French in their turn, connecting it with the Arabs, called it Fontarabie. The Basque name is, however, still in use, and one of the streets of Irun where, as in many other towns and villages, the street names are written up both in Spanish and Basque, has the full-sounding name Ondarrabiko Karreka—the street of Ondarrabia. If one may compare small things with great, the cities of Northern Spain are like castles built by children in the sand, and left high and dry by the receding tide. City after city stood walled and bulwarked on the extreme fringe of the Christian territory, for a time the court and capital of Spain, till a fresh conquest drove back the Moors a lap further south. This in part accounts for the grim and wonderful Spanish cities, with their magnificent buildings and fortifications, that still exist, but exist with no longer the stir of a great destiny within their walls, but merely as it were the mighty shells of an extinct life. So Burgos, León, Toledo, were capital cities for a space, thronged with the busy traffic of courtiers and warriors, and Avila, the city of saints, has the great fortifications of a frontier town. It is difficult to believe that Toledo has at all changed since the Cid’s horse miraculously stayed before the burning light hidden in the wall of one of its streets, and the water-carriers to-day go leisurely down to the river, their donkeys’ panniers laden with earthen jars, as when Cervantes wrote “La Ilustre Fregona.” And, indeed, Spanish cities are little liable to change. The steep uneven ways of Toledo and Salamanca and Segovia scorn modern traffic. The passing of a carriage is possible in the main streets, but is a rare event that rattles and reverberates along the walls. More suitable are the stately processions, their banners showing brightly against the brown-yellow buildings. Segovia has been called the queen of Castilian cities, as Toledo is the king. And Segovia must ever remain mediæval, a city of a hundred levels, sinking by terraces of half-ruinous walls, tufted with grass and flowers, from the Cathedral down to the foot of its mighty Roman aqueduct. A Latin author three hundred years ago wrote that “in Segovia nemo otiosus, nemo mendicus”—there were no beggars at Segovia. It would be unsafe to assert this of any Spanish town to-day. Spain is no country of “neat cities and populous towns full of most industrious artificers.” Such towns—Barcelona,[82] Bilbao—there are, but mostly the cities are, in the words of Burton, “cities decayed,” which contain many “Spanish loiterers,” though they are not “base and poor towns,” nor are the people “squalid, ugly, uncivil.” The southern cities show a softer influence. The surrounding country is less abrupt and harsh, and the stern features of the north are forgotten. Cadiz lies out into the sea, a Spanish Venice, cut in straight white streets, like the slices of an iced cake. Seville is wonderful at all times, a maravilla to foreigners and Spaniards. The Spanish novelist Palacio Valdés, in “La Hermana San Sulpicio,” has described it during nights of midsummer, when to go through the city was to visit the interior of the houses, for from the patios, where the families were assembled, great rays of light shot through the iron screen-doors into the dark and stifled streets, and guitar and song broke the stillness: “Seville at such an hour had a magical look, a charm that disturbed the mind.” But of all the cities of the south Granada has a peculiar fascination. This is largely due to its many contrasts. It is a city of orange groves and fountains, yet it lies over two thousand feet above sea-level, and is a summer rather than a winter city; the fiercest heat is relieved by cool air from the eternal snows of the Sierra Nevada, and the gardens of the Alhambra and the Generalife, with their myrtles, cypresses and cedars, give a delicious shade. In winter icy cold strikes through the marble halls of the Alhambra; yet it is never more beautiful than seen in February from San Cristobal, or from the cactus-covered hill beneath San Miguel, or from where the Darro flows rapidly far below. For it rises above the slender branches of elms and poplars, grey and in parts purple from their swelling buds—the red and yellow-brown towers, the crumbling walls of red earth and brick and large smooth rounded stones of white, or black, or red, the trailing ivy, the open white-pillared galleries. A few almond-trees are in flower, and above to the left stand the long lines of cypresses of the grey-white Generalife, where flower celandines and daffodils. Many of these Spanish cities are visited chiefly for their great ancient buildings and Cathedrals; yet the most part of them deserve a more patient study for their own sake, for their memories of old, and for the life of their narrow winding streets. The Spanish writer Azorín (Martínez Ruiz), in a book of few pages,[83] conveys some wonderfully clear-cut impressions of Spain. He turns with preference to details of the centuries of Spain’s greatness, when Murcia, Valencia, and Seville were famous for their silks, Talavera for its earthenware, Toledo for its swords, when the gloves of Ocaña or the spurs of Ajofrín were unrivalled; or to the survival of old Spain in a picture, or a building, or a city. Thus he loves to wander through León with its spirit of ancient Spain and its classical street-names—here a cobbled grass-grown plaza with pale acacias and ancient walls, the slow flight of doves and the wind rustling torn pieces of paper; there a quiet convent patio with bays and rigid cypresses. For him the narrow streets of Córdoba have a deeper charm than those of any other Spanish city. He wanders through the labyrinth of intricate winding ways, with glimpses of small pillared patios of flowers and fountains, and finds everywhere silence and a deep serene melancholy, restfulness, oblivion, and a harmony of soft shades, nowhere the light-hearted frivolity conventionally attributed to Andalucía. Azorín’s originality consists in forcing a few apparently insignificant details to yield the whole spirit of a city, a country, a people. If he mentions the Mosque of Córdoba, it is but to note the beggars taking the sun in the Patio de los Naranjos, the sparrows twittering in the orange-trees, the sound of pitchers filling at the fountain. He gives us poignant descriptions of dead provincial cities and ruined ancestral houses. The decadence of Spain brought flourishing cities to low estate: Spain’s revival menaces them with a fresh ruin. Old narrow passages and intricate courts and sculptured houses make place for the introduction of tramways and broad asphalt streets. The old Santander described by Pereda survives only in his books, the old parts of Barcelona and Valencia are fast disappearing, and happy is the city such as Toledo whose position on abrupt rocks with no level spaces seems to promise an eternity of mediævalism and individuality.

VII

IN OLD CASTILLE

IT is with astonishment and a kind of fear that the traveller passes through the high-lying plains of Old Castille, journeying swiftly from city to city, to

“Old towns whose history lies hid
In monkish chronicle or rhyme,
Burgos, the birthplace of the Cid,
Zamora and Valladolid....”

for in these intervening tracts, sun-parched and windswept, it seems scarcely possible that men should live. The villages are closely huddled together, little compact masses of low, unwhitewashed houses, without a tree or garden, so colourless, and clinging to the soil as sometimes to pass unnoticed. Rivers flow between low, bare banks without bush or tree, like streaks of mother-of-pearl inlaid in earthenware. And there are wide tracts of land without a house or boundary, a continuous desolation with no signs of life, except here and there a flock of sheep or herd of goats, or a line of peasants returning at sunset from their work. Surely life here can have but few attractions; there can be no joy of the soil, little temptation for Berceo’s “mal labrador” of the thirteenth century, who “loved the earth more than he loved the Creator,” and “would alter landmarks to enlarge his estate”—cambiaba los mojones por ganar eredat. Yet the slower trains are invaded by a merry throng of pleasant, courteous, good-looking peasants, oval-faced, with splendid teeth and eyelashes, who speed the journey with gay conversation and shrill singing, and pass constantly from one carriage to another to greet friends or to avoid the officials who inquire awkwardly after tickets. They have plenty of life and cheerfulness, and it is with renewed wonder that one looks at the dead, crumbling villages where they live, and remembers the piercing force of the Castilian sun in summer and the icy, penetrating winter winds. All day they must work without the shelter of a single hedge or tree in the searching wind[84] that sifts the soil, or under a sun that parches and shrivels it into dust. But a nearer acquaintance reveals a certain charm[85] about these villages of hard, clear names: Campillo, Cantalapedra, Pedroso, Madrigal—a charm of clean-swept spaces, and clear, luminous air and silent intensity; and the country ceases to be uniformly colourless. Here a woman in a dress of light-blue linen, with long flowing headkerchief of white, passes on a donkey through fields of golden ripe corn; there, from narrow windows in a street of yellow-brown houses, hang bright patches of geraniums and carnations in flower. And the doorways of square or round or pointed arches give entrance to cool, silent courts. Azorín has described the old Castilian hidalgo, who has never left his ancestral house, with its large rooms, many of them unfurnished, and old portraits consigned to an attic and covered with the dust of centuries: “His lands have disappeared, his furniture has disappeared; he does nothing; he has a sad intensity of expression,” and when further misfortune befalls him he says, “There is no help for it—qué le vamos á hacer!” Everywhere is decay, and the trace of vanished splendour. So these old ruined hidalgos live out their grey, monotonous lives in some ancient town or village of Castille, amid the immense plains with “distances of radiant sky and faint blue lines of mountains.” The blue smoke rises from scented fires of rosemary, and, as the bells ring to Matins, the doves swerve and circle, the grey doves sweep slowly across the sky perpetually blue. And night and day the doors of the houses are kept continually closed, with a deserted air beneath the broad coats-of-arms carved in stone. Azorín describes minutely a Castilian town, standing among cornfields and olives—one of those towns that the foreigner rarely has the courage to visit. Its streets are narrow and tortuous. It contains three ancient inns, four churches, three hermitages, two convents. It has no industries save a few ruined cloth manufactures, and only the usurer flourishes. It contains fourteen students (who have not taken their degree), four doctors, twelve lawyers (only six of whom earn a living, and this by slandering one another, and from time to time bringing a blackmail suit against some poor-spirited inhabitant). There is a Guild of the Christ of the Dying, and when a member dies a messenger goes through the streets ringing a bell and crying: “At such an hour the funeral of Don Fulano.” The summers are fiery, the winters are long and cruel. No visits are paid; doors and windows remain closed; few persons go through the streets, but in the plazas, on clear days of winter, dense groups of men may be seen taking the sun, wrapped in their brown plaids and capas. Nothing happens; the deep silence is broken by the clang of a forge-hammer or by the crowing of a cock. In time of Carnival a few “masks” pass, dressed up with mats and carrying old brooms. The labourers are poverty-stricken, and meat is the luxury of a few “rich” inhabitants. Azorín notes the Castilian’s “fundamental energy, aloofness, indifference, and lofty disdain, with sudden inspirations of heroism”; and we may count it no small heroism to live on, proudly uncomplaining, in surroundings so harsh and discomfortable.

VIII

THE DESERT AND THE SOWN

THE French soldiers, looking at the trifling Manzanares and its mighty bridges, may have exclaimed, “So even the Spanish rivers ran away.” But those who, at sight of tiny threads of water in immense river-beds, are inclined to ask, with Don Pedro in Much Ado about Nothing, “What need the bridge much broader than the flood?” find their answer after a few days of heavy rain. Marks six feet and more high on houses many hundreds of yards from the banks of the Ebro record the rising of the waters. Thus, in many districts, crops which have survived the summer drought are swept away by the autumn deluge, and those who have cried for rain are mocked with ruin when the waters “prevail exceedingly upon the earth.” Spain’s agriculture perishes for lack of water, yet water abounds, whether subterranean, as in parts of Castille, or in the copious snows of the high-lying regions, where the snow is sometimes preserved in snow-pits, pozos de nieve, or in these periodical floods; and it would seem that the philologist had Spain in his mind who connected the Basque adjective idorra, meaning “dry,” with ὓδωρ, the Greek for water. To utilize, extend, and regulate the water supply is a problem of vital importance to Spain—a problem which has long occupied the thoughts of Spanish statesmen. Alfonso the Learned, in his “Crónica General,” says, “This Spain, then, of which we speak is as the paradise of God.... For the most part, it is watered with streams and fountains, and wells are never lacking in all places that have need of them;” but Strabo, more impartial, had remarked of Spain that, “For the most part, it yields but a poor sustenance. For large districts are composed of mountains and woodland and plains, with thin and, moreover, not uniformly well-watered soil—οὐδἐ ταὐτην ὁμαλῶς εὔυδρον.” And since Strabo’s time many have been the alterations for the worse. Turdetania, for instance, the country between Seville and Huelva, is no longer marvellously prosperous—θαυμα-στῶς εὐτυχεῖ; in fact South Estremadura, of old one of Rome’s granaries, is now one of the most desolate regions in Spain. But the worst decay is that of the forests. The woods have fallen and fallen, and still the axe rings avidly in those woods that remain. The very words for a wood, bosque or selva, have become rare and poetical. Thus the soil is further parched and impoverished, while towns and villages stand unsheltered from wind and sun. The Escorial, which grew up among woods, may now be seen from afar in its almost sinister magnificence across grey hills and plains without a tree; and Madrid, though a tree figures prominently in the city arms, looks out upon plains from which all traces of former oak and chestnut forests have long since vanished. The absence of trees in Spain increases both the dryness and the floods, and afforestation is therefore quite as important as irrigation. The canalization of rivers may diminish the floods, but while there is no soil on the hill-sides—or soil so light that it is swept away by heavy rainfalls—the rain must continue to be a blessing strangely disguised. It is calculated that in six or eight years the trees would knit the soil together, and give it sufficient staying power to resist and absorb the rains, though, of course, there would as yet be no actual profit of timber. Outlay of toil and money for so distant a remuneration is not congenial to the Spanish temperament. The great land-owners do nothing. The State spends a few thousand pesetas every year; but at the present rate afforestation will need hundreds of years, bearing a resemblance to that long-desired map of Spain, which is to be issued in some eleven hundred sections, and of which from two to three sections appear annually.[86] The advantages of irrigation have been amply proved in Spain, justifying the juxtaposition of water and gold in Pindar’s ode; but only about a fiftieth of Spain’s total area—and especially the plain of Granada and the strip of coast of Málaga and Valencia—can at present show the immense productiveness due to irrigation, combined with the swift-maturing sun of Spain. There are, of course, immense difficulties, and not the least are the ignorance and the poverty of the peasants. Water added to a poor soil will be of little value if the peasants are not taught artificial means of enriching the soil, and modern methods of cultivating it. The extreme poverty of the peasants would, however, prevent them at present from employing any but the simplest methods; in many districts they mortgage their land in order to be able to sow their crops, and Spanish farmers are often in the hands of the usurers. The usurer has been their only resource in moments of distress, and finally they are driven to emigrate, leaving their land to the usurer. A narrow strip of fertile land along the rivers stands out in contrast to the desolate country beyond. Thus the Ebro flows through Aragon, among woods of silver birch and poplars, and plantations of olives and vines and maize; but on either side appears the barren country of perfectly bare reddish or brown hills of crumbling earth, like great sand-dunes, without a plant, curiously folded and scored by rushing water, with intricate, abrupt hollows and catacombs. The villages are the colour of the soil, and at no great distance are scarcely distinguishable from a bare hill-side. Or desert plains are thinly covered with grey thyme, and in the more fertile parts produce dwarfed vines and corn, so that in autumn one looks across immense, undivided plains of stubble and yellowing vineyards to the distant horizon of dim blue hills. The cruel winds[87] of Spain blow straight from the iced mountain ridges, unstemmed by any barrier of woods. The first snows fall early round Avila and on the uplands, but in the towns snow at Christmas is rare. The foreigner sometimes has a capricious wish to see these wide, tawny plains covered with snow—après la plaine blanche une autre plaine blanche, like the Queen Romayquia, wife of Abenabet, Moorish King of Seville, who could find no solace in her longing for the sight of snow. The King ordered almond-trees to be planted all about the city of Córdoba, that in early spring at least, if not at Christmas, the Queen might beguile her fancy with the snow-white almond blossoms.[88] But even in Andalucía, towards the end of December, one may see several comparatively low mountain ranges thickly coated with snow. Stores of firing are then brought down to the villages from the treeless hills. Further north the vines have been pruned, and the vine-twigs brought in for burning; but here the vines have not yet lost their leaves, and the firing consists of thyme and whin and rosemary, mint and lavender and other scented hill-plants. Troops of donkeys arrive at sunset, with immense, sweet-smelling loads, that entirely hide the red or purple tassels and fringes of their harness. The oranges now gleam in myriads along the eastern coast; sometimes the icy winds from inland freeze them, and fires of smouldering straw are burnt round and in the orange groves, after the wind has ceased, that a dense smoke may hang about the trees and warm them. Weeks before Christmas the turroneros from Jijona, noticeable for their small peaked hats of black velvet, appear in nearly every city and town of Spain. In porches or in large bare shops they set out their layers of white wooden boxes, and samples of the turrón, or almond-paste, which is an essential part of Spanish Christmas fare. For the time, Jijona, the grey town in the hills, is deserted, though but a few weeks ago every house was a busy scene of turrón making, and nailing thin white planks into boxes. The snow will soon lie deep on the Carrasqueta hill-range above the town. The almond-trees, whose pink flowers in February form a solitary belt of colour between Jijona and the rocky mountains, are now as bare and grey as the surrounding country. Some of the inhabitants have gone to the warmer south, taking the diligencia to Alicante; others have scaled the steep, winding road past the Barranco de la Batalla, where once the Cid wrought havoc of the Moors, and now herds of goats feed apparently on nothing, and have taken train at Alcoy for the cold, high-lying cities of the north. But not in the northern uplands only are Spanish winters cruel; the dehesas of Andalucía are equally unprotected, the silent, icy winds blow subtle and fierce and penetrating over the undulating hill country round Córdoba, and one may see shepherd boys, closely muffled in their plaids, standing frozen and motionless, the sheep pressing around them and against one another for shelter.

IX

THE COAST OF CATALONIA IN AUTUMN

A FIRST view of Catalonia from the sea shows at any rate the stones from which, according to the proverb, the Catalans make bread. For great spines of rust-coloured rock, covered here and there by pines of a crude green, run to the sea and break off in abrupt cliffs. In the valleys of these ridges towns and villages skirt the shore, Rosas, Palamos, San Feliú de Guixols with its cork industry, and lace-making Arenys de Mar. Towards Barcelona both soil and villages become greyer, but Barcelona itself has colour in plenty. The Spanish and foreign ships in the harbour, the palm-trees near the quay, above them the tall white and yellow houses with shutters of green and brown, and above these again a view of the great Cathedral—all this, bounded by the purple mountains, makes the sight of Barcelona from the sea very picturesque and attractive.

The coast to the south of Barcelona is very fertile. There are hedges of reeds twenty feet high, of cactus and of aloe, aloes of that exquisite blue-green which is so often the colour of the Mediterranean in September. Through yellowing orchards of magnificent peaches, of figs and apples in great abundance, come glimpses of the intense leaden-blue hill-ranges to the west. The grapes have already for the most part been gathered for wine, but there are still many vines that, earlier in the year, are cut back to the ground, and have the look of blighted potato-plants, and that now, grown to the size of currant-bushes and unstaked, are laden with large yellow grapes. Occasionally, too, one sees tall date-palms and orange-trees.

After Casteldefels the hills are covered with pines, and the nights, which are warm but have heavy dew, bring out their scent so strongly that it is at times almost oppressive. The nights are silent but for the continual chirping of crickets and the sound of the unquiet sea. The stars are strangely bright, Sirius burns large and intense, and Orion nightly stalks the sky in all his glory till the sun catches him in mid-heaven. The sea is alive with phosphorus, and far out are seen the lights of fishing-boats, while on land the glow-worms are almost as many as the stars. The orange and purple sunrises and sunsets of pink and amethyst are very lovely, and the sails of the fishing-boats continue white, and the sea retains its blue for some time after the light of the after-glow is gone. A little further south the cliffs are covered with dwarf palms, rosemary in flower, and other shrubs. The road here is good, but one meets no pedestrians, for a path along the railway is the accepted thoroughfare between village and village in spite of the notices that forbid its use. The men for the most part wear a black peaked cap, a long blouse, and trousers of brown or blue. The sash is nearly always black and is worn wide, the sandals have a tip and heel covering only, with fastenings of leather or black cloth from the tip. The women wear handkerchiefs that entirely cover the head. The predominant colours are blue and black. A kilomètre or more before wine-making Sitges the road is bounded by rough terraces of stone with vines and dark green carob-trees. A succession of terraces on the one side runs far up the hills, and on the other the rude-walled vineyards stretch to the edge of the sea. Sitges, a village of less than four thousand inhabitants, is prettily placed, its octagonal-towered church rising from a rock in the sea. A few kilomètres further Villanueva y Geltrú is but a fairly large and rather ordinary provincial town, though it has its picturesque corners, with its houses washed in various shades of blue, pink, green, or yellow, and views of vineyard country appearing at the end of many of its long, straight streets. After Villanueva the hills recede further inland, and there is a little more flat country, but it is occupied largely by great marshes, loud with the croaking of frogs.

It is not till one reaches Roda and Creixell that any villages have a really Spanish, or rather Castilian, look. Creixell, especially, with its massive church and great square building of stone standing haughtily on a hill of wall-terraces sprinkled with carob-trees, and with its houses the colour of the soil, has all the air of a little Toledo. Early on an autumn morning it may be seen reflected, with every house and window, in a blue lagoon hundreds of yards from the village and separated by sandbanks from the sea. The olives and vineyards now extend to the shore, and above San Vicente great white country-houses stand among orchards and olives. After Creixell there are but two villages, Torredenbarra and Altafulla, before Tarragona, the second coast-town of Catalonia. Here, indeed, the sun beats with a fiery strength; here, indeed, the Mediterranean is “crystalline,” and “the lightning of the noon-tide ocean flashes.” Here is excellent firm sand for bathing and, swimming far out, the sun is still seen shining through the transparent water on the waved sand below. At the end of September the season is over, yet the days are still almost too hot, and the deep blue of the bay and the long purple line of hills to the north-west are indescribably beautiful. Tarragona, the favoured city of the Romans, is the possessor of many noble Roman ruins, and wonderful Cyclopean walls, and its outline, seen against the sky from the road leading to Tortosa, is one of the most magnificent in Spain. The town and its neighbourhood, as well as the whole coast of Catalonia is, perhaps, not as well known as it deserves. In autumn, if the days and even the nights are hot, there is always a refreshing coolness in the early mornings; the people are, as a rule, pleasant and courteous; in some villages many speak Catalan only, and at times, catching a word here and there, one may think oneself to be in Italy.

X

AN EASTERN VILLAGE

THERE is no cloud in the clear March sky, filled with radiant light. Beyond the dark green of orange-trees and grey olives lies the sea, a faint line of blue. And, to the west, the mountains of bare rock are faintly purple, looking frail and brittle in their clear but distant outlines. A herd of goats passes slowly down a wide river-bed of smooth white stones, with no shred or vestige of water. Lines of aloes and tall reeds grow along its banks, and on either side peasants dressed in black are at work in the fields, ploughing with single mules between the brown stems of vines recently pruned, or pruning the orange-trees and olives. Bundles of vine and olive twigs lie ready to be carted to the village for fuel. Women in dresses of white and pink and scarlet are hoeing the green corn. The pear- and peach-trees are in flower, and the almond-trees fully arrayed in freshest green. At intervals, wells or norias explain the green fresh look of the country, so different from the burnt desolation of the waterless regions further north. For Oropesa, the neighbouring village, is but some sixty miles north of Valencia, and is bordered on the one side by the full fertility of the Valencian plain, though on the other it is surrounded by barren hills. In each noria a long crooked branch forms the handle to the iron wheel and to this a mule is tied, and as the mule turns, the wheel revolves with a slow clinking sound, and the long earthenware jars (arcaduces) attached to the wheel gush water into a trough and so by small channels of dry earth into the fields of brown and reddish soil. A path leads through green fields and clumps of orange-trees to the village. In some fields further south the last oranges have been gathered, and thousands of pearl-shaped buds tell that the trees before long will be covered with a glistening snow of scented blossoms. But in many the oranges still reign resplendent: on a grey day they stand out with more vivid distinctness than when the sun blurs them in a luminous haze, leaving them clearly visible only in the level light of its rising or its setting. The trees are bowed with fruit, and the laden branches are propped up from the ground. The thronging oranges glow in myriad spheres of gold, here and there lie golden mounds of gathered oranges, and below the trees the ground is a strewn pavement of gold. On every side beneath the trees may be seen a magic land of myriad golden lamps; single or in trefoils and clusters of seven and ten and twenty, the oranges hang within a few inches of the ground. Hundreds of yards away through intervals of trees appears the same foison of gleaming fruit, and the air is all scented with oranges. From time to time a light wind blows beneath the trees, and the twigs with their burdens of crowding oranges sway heavily to and fro, like slowly swung censers of burning gold. But near Oropesa the oranges are comparatively few. The village is built on a steep precipitous hill of grey rock, crowned by the ruinous walls of a great castle. The houses clamber roof over roof, in ragged disarray up the rock. They are of yellowish-brown stone with rough cement, and mostly innocent of glass, but have a touch of whitewash in front, so that they wear shining morning faces to the rising sun. In the mistless radiant mornings the village stands out clearly, its sharp rock rising sheer from the plain. The sea beyond is silver, and on the other side every wrinkle in the rocks of the grey mountains is distinctly visible. There is no sound but the occasional voices of children, the clink and clang of a forge-hammer, the crowing of a cock, or a faint crystal crash of waves breaking; but from time to time there is a dry rumour of wheels, and the cry of a man to his mule as he passes down the road in his cart. Wrapped in their plaids against the keen morning air, the peasants pass leisurely in carts and on mules to work in the fields until the evening. At dusk the slow procession returns, with many a greeting and bona nit and smiles of sunburnt wrinkled faces. Thin lines of blue smoke go up from swiftly flaring fires of vine twigs and rosemary and dry plants gathered from the hills, and an hour or two hours later Oropesa is given over to sleep and the silence of the stars, broken only by the deep rhythmic cry of the sereno calling the hours. To the south a road goes up through grey rocky hills with thyme and dwarf-palms and cistus. The bare smooth rocks have a metallic ring, and there is no sign of life save for a herd of goats far above, the goat-herd with his plaid and wide felt hat clearly outlined on the sky, and the sound of his flute distinct in the solitude of the hills, utterly silent save for the silver tinkling of goat-bells. No water can remain on these rocky hills, it pours immediately away to the plains beyond, where, by a stream bed barely a yard wide, a pillar tells of those who perished there in 1850, in “the diligencia carried away by the waters of the torrent.” Though Oropesa now has a railway station, the diligencias still ply between it and Castellón and Torreblanca, and it might be fifty miles from any railway, so primitive and self-centred is its life. Occasionally comes a sunless morning with a quiet grey sky, rare on the east coast of Spain except in the days of early spring. The sea lies motionless and grey, with pale reflections of light in coils and patches of gold. So still is the air that the quiet piping of birds among the olives falls like a stone in hushed waters. As the day advances the mountains, which earlier were mingled and lost in the grey of the sky, grow more distinct, till towards sunset every line and crevice in their sharp ranges becomes marked, and the overhanging mist of cloud melts away into the grey of evening, sprinkled with the gold-dust of the stars.

XI

OFF THE EAST COAST OF SPAIN

THE Mediterranean off the coast of Spain is not always calm. Sometimes the east wind, the Llevant, lashes the waves to fury, and the shores along the villages and towns are black with lines of fishing-boats that dare not put out to sea. But for weeks together it is “lulled in the coil of its crystalline streams,” and the sun rises and sets across a silken plain of blue. In such weather a journey along the coast has a wonderful freshness and a fascinating charm. Again and again the traveller recalls the magic of those lines of the old romance:

“Quién hubiese tal ventura,
Sobre las aguas del mar,
Como hubo el conde Arnaldos,
La mañana de San Juan!”

“Oh for a chance as happy,
Where the deep sea waters swell,
As on the morn of St. John’s Day,
Count Arnaldos befel,” etc.

By St. John’s Day, however, the sun flashes its rays too fiercely, and it is in late spring or early autumn that the voyage is most enjoyable. A land journey can give no idea of the loveliness of these coasts, and towns such as Alicante and Almería lose much of their beauty if deprived of their background of mountains, which can only be seen fully out at sea. The sea and sky are unfailingly beautiful, and the life of the ports, full of colour and movement, never loses its interest. Almería, fallen from its ancient greatness, is yet active in its “purple-shadowed bay,”[89] and exports every year two million barrels, a hundred million pounds, of grapes, chiefly to America and England. Torrevieja, further north, is a small town or village of some seven thousand inhabitants, at which steamers touch to take in a cargo of salt, but which the tourist, on his way from Elche to Murcia, rarely turns aside to visit. It has a thoroughly African look, with its flat-roofed, grey-white houses on a bare, level strip of sandy coast, with no trees except palms, that stand conspicuous like trees of the desert; the sand in places is thinly covered with grass, of lightest, almost yellow, green. To the left, seen from the sea, is a long line of gleaming salt, drawn from the sea-water by evaporation under the summer sun, and now ready to be exported. Beyond the line of salt is a distant range of bare mountains, faintly purple. The town has one or two small towers, four factory chimneys, and half a dozen round mills, with arms as slender as the cranes on the loading steamers in the harbour. A continual rosary of barges, yellow, white, green, or black, carries the salt across the bay. The heavy load weighs the barge to the water’s edge, and the glistening white salt seems to float on the blue surface. In the barge, at either end, go as many as twenty or even thirty men, some sitting rowing, others facing them and standing to row, and others punting with their poles of immense length that taper away at the top to the slight girth of a fishing rod. The shirts of the men, mauve, pink, white, red, or purple, their light blue or black coats, red sashes, trousers of velvet or velvet corduroy of many shades, from bright yellow to dark brown, the long shining yellow punt poles, and the white pyramids of salt on the sea of sapphire, combine to form a strange and beautiful sight. The empty barges return high in the water, with little mounds of salt left along their ledges. At midday the houses seem to faint and grow indistinct, the mountains fade to a hardly perceptible outline, only the salt reflects the sun in every facet of its countless grains, and glitters whiter than snow. In the sunset the lines resume their sharpness, and the mountains are grey or blue-grey or intense leaden blue or purple, according to their distances. The Murcian sky is famous for its clear serenity, and the sunsets and sunrises are of surpassing fairness. Alicante, too, which is nearer to Murcia than to Valencia, has a wonderful sky and a wonderful sea, and here, too, the “sunrise is a glorious birth.” “Alicante aux clochers mêle les minarets,” says Victor Hugo in one of the poems of “Les Orientales,” and from the sea Alicante has an Oriental look, with its lines of palms, stories of flat roofs, and bare background of hills and mountains. But it is at evening that Alicante is one of the most beautiful cities in the world. The lights shine softly through the four lines of palm-trees along the Paseo de los Mártires, and are reflected across the water; in the harbour the last radiance of evening sets the tracery of masts and cranes and rigging in clear relief. To the west the sea is already dark, almost wine-coloured, the οἲνψ of the Greeks, but in the east it is a most exquisite blue, a blue that seems to be a transparent surface of turquoise covering a layer of white chalk. The eastern horizon is faintly purple, and against it the sails of a fleet of fishing-boats are whiter than at any other time, and gleam long after the sun has set. Later the sea catches for an instant the faint purple of the sky, the sky loses its colour, and finally a mistiness of softest grey merges them together, so that one may no longer distinguish where the sky ceases or the sea begins. On the rocks of the coast the waves at night break, filled with phosphorus, in a luminous spray, “like light dissolved in star showers thrown.” The low line of pale lights along El Grao, Valencia’s harbour, if approached at night, has a look, from some distance at sea, of such a phosphorus wave. By day the harbour is seen to be a forest of masts, and far away the towers of Valencia, round the tall Miguelete, appear as numerous, and in the distance almost as slender as the masts of the harbour: “les clochers de ses trois cents églises.” Along the coast of the Huerta, especially to the south of Valencia, glisten a number of snow-white pyramids, that seem at first to be more salt, having the exact look of the mounds that lie along the bay of Cadiz. They are the whitewashed, triangular fronts of the peasants’ thatched cottages or barracas, standing in the fertile plain, “Spain’s Orchard.”

One of the most lovely and original sights along the whole coast is that of the high range of bare, treeless mountains south of Cartagena, falling sheer into the sea, a delicate purple above the light blue water. There is not the merest rim of coast, in fact the sea flows round the mountains’ flanks, and they continue far out from the land, their tops occasionally appearing as small islands.

But especially will the traveller who has the happy chance to find himself at dawn of a cloudless day in a boat an hour west of Almería—especially then will he be ready to repeat the lines:

“Quién hubiese tal ventura
Sobre las aguas del mar.”

A slight gleam in the east warns the moon that its reign of quiet light is to finish, and begins the long prelude of day. Above a dark line of sea a faint orange creeps into the sky, deepening to orange-purple, and soon fringing off in pale yellow, saffron, and daffodil. Then, later, above this, widens a space of clearest green, and at last the body of the sky changes from grey to a light blue. In the west all is still grey, as with a soft woof of hanging mists. The sails of a boat going out to sea are white in the first glow of dawn, and the gently swelling sea eastwards reflects the light in level gleams of gold, like smooth, burnished meadows of buttercups. Then the sun rises, red-orange, on a cloudless sea line, the sea becomes light blue, and along the rest of the horizon lie spaces of pearl and opal, while in the east a dim, silver moon fades slowly. The scene is of such enchanting loveliness, like the birth of a new world, that if the Sierra Nevada chances to be for the most part hidden in a long cloud of mist, the traveller scarcely notices one or two peaks that seem to be floating snow-white clouds. Then the mist of cloud melts away, and, one by one, the snow summits appear, till the whole immense range stands bare, looking incredibly high in a heaven of clear, faint green. It is a sight to make men hold their breath. The ship, night’s shadows scarce driven from her deck, passes slowly, almost noiselessly through the water as if she, too, understood that here is some enchanted country. The view of the Sierra Nevada from Granada, lovely as it is, gives no hint of a sight so incomparable as this. The range is of such vast length, the snow is so deep and soft. Long, almost level lines, huge, abrupt crags, gently sloping gullies, smooth, pyramid-shaped peaks, shelves and pinnacles, crevices and ledges, are all entirely wrapped in deep, much-sunned snow, without a break. Each look, after turning for a moment to the grey western horizon or the waving, crystalline surface of blue sea, brings a new wonder and a fresh surprise; so marvellous is the radiance of white appearing in the full glow from the east, and such is the infinite clearness and subtlety of the outlines on a sky varying from blue-grey to transparent green. The long massive range, seen from some distance out at sea, gives the impression of a height of twenty thousand feet, whereas from Granada it is difficult to realize that the highest peak is over eleven thousand. Below the snow-line, a high range of bare grey-purple mountains seems to sink into the sea, though there is, in fact, a line of level coast. Far or near no tree is to be seen; a white lighthouse stands on the coast, and on the silken blue sea gleams an occasional white sail or the flash of a seagull’s wing. As the sun rises higher the softly folding mountains beneath the Sierra Nevada grow more purple above the sea, and the shadows of their dimpling hollows blacken. Above, the wide, smooth spaces and the deep ravines present their broad surplice of glistening white to the sun without a shadow. It is all unimaginably lovely, with a breathless purity of things primeval—

“Die unbegreiflich hohen Werke
Sind herrlich wie am ersten Tag.”

This and other hours of delight during a coasting voyage in the Spanish Mediterranean are not soon forgotten, and, though they cannot be translated into words—

“They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude.”

The voyage may be prolonged on the south coast, and, from the time when, on his left, Tarifa lies along the sea, like a line of melting snow under smoothly moulded hills of green, and, on the right, Tangiers shows its white houses indistinctly beneath the bare, grey mountains of Africa, to the time when at Port Bou he bids farewell to the Catalan coast and to Spain, the traveller will not have a dull or unenjoyable moment; if only the gods send him propitious, cloudless days—

“Quién hubiese tal ventura
Sobre las aguas del mar!”

XII

THE JUDGING OF THE WATERS

IT was a cloudless day of November. The Cathedral of Valencia stood grey against a sky of soft blue. In the Plaza de la Constitución the sun shone on the central fountain and marked in dark lines the shadows of the houses and the Cathedral. From the great “Door of the Apostles” came a smell of incense as people went out and in. Surmounted by its large rose-window, the doorway has a worn and ancient air, and the plants growing here and there in the wall add to its look of venerable splendour. Some of the apostles stand there headless, some without arms, some mere trunks of stone. Above, the tall Miguelete tower rises conspicuous here, as it is conspicuous far and wide across the Valencian plain. A few priests passed, a few carts drawn by long strings of mules, a newspaper-seller cried the Heraldo de Madrid, and some peasants in black or blue-grey groups talked together, leaning on their sticks. Shortly after eleven a long, green sofa was set up on the pavement immediately in front of the Cathedral door, and a narrow space round it was enclosed with an iron railing. Sofa and railing, carried across the street in sections, bore the inscription Tribunal de las Aguas. For it was Thursday, the meeting-day of the tribunal which judges disputes arising from the irrigation of the Huerta.

To the peasant of the Valencian Huerta loss of water for his land means starvation, and the hours at which each is allowed to draw off water from the narrow channels that cross his land are carefully regulated. If one takes water out of his turn the fields of another must suffer, and the case must be brought before the judges sitting in weekly council. Against their sentence there is no protest or appeal; it is absolutely final, and though there must be cases of injustice, the peasants are very proud of their tribunal. There is no writing—the cases are not even recorded—the matter is decided on the spot and in the open air between man and man; there are no clerks or advocates; no table, ink, or papers to confuse the simple;[90] no fees or anxious delays, and the judges, moreover, chosen by and from the peasants themselves, thoroughly understand the questions brought before them. It is a strange sight, the sitting of this all-powerful institution, centuries old, in the Plaza de la Constitución, in the twentieth century. There is a dignified simplicity about it, a lack of display which is imposing. The peasants have a conscious pride in being able to arrange their own affairs without interference of the men of learning, just as they are ready to settle their more private quarrels without recourse to the law. The man who has been stabbed in a quarrel will conceal the name of his assailant from the police, always reserving for himself the pleasure of taking vengeance later on. The character of the peasants of the Huerta is indeed a mixture of haughtiness and cunning, of simplicity and shrewdness, and the word that best describes them is the Spanish socarronería—a certain malicious humour.[91] Living isolated in the vast open plain, they form a community apart, and resent external interference. Their tribunal is entirely primitive and rustic; in all its years of city life it has adopted none of the city’s ways, and has not even the shelter of a roof.

In the present instance there was but a single question to be settled, and the proceedings lasted less than five minutes, passing all but unnoticed. At about a quarter to twelve the judges, five in number, and dressed in black as ordinary peasants, walked slowly into the enclosure and occupied their places on the official sofa, taking off their black felt hats. The full body of the judges is seven, chosen from different districts to represent the principal canals of irrigation. Another peasant, officer of the tribunal (on his cap is written A. de T. Aguas, the alguacil, that is, of the Tribunal of Waters), standing at the small gate in the railing, formally declared the tribunal open: S’obri el tribunal are the consecrated words. He then introduced the plaintiff and defendant, who stood bareheaded and without their sticks at half a yard’s distance from the judges. After each had stated his case—and any interruption is rigorously fined—one of the judges at once passed sentence. The verdict was against the old man, and he turned without a word to leave the enclosure. His wife, however, without the railing, though he put his finger to his lips to silence her, was not to be overawed, and in a shrill torrent of words reproached the judges as they filed solemnly into the Plaza. The Tribunal de las Aguas was closed; the judges dispersed to their silent fields, to meet again in the rattle and clamour of the crowded city on the following Thursday. Every Thursday throughout the year the plain green sofa and circular railing are brought out in sections, and the judges make their appearance in the Plaza. They do not always enter the enclosure, for sometimes there is no dispute pending, or the disputants have come to an agreement in the Plaza without recourse to the tribunal, and when the clock strikes twelve, railing and sofa are carried back. The judges help to bring about a settlement, and this perhaps explains that their official verdicts are given instantaneously, with no pause for thought or consultation; they have no doubt heard every detail of the case and come to a decision beforehand.

Readers of Don Vicente Blasco Ibáñez’ gloomy but delightful novel, “La Barraca,” will remember the scene at the “Door of the Apostles” when Batiste, unable to check his indignation at the unjust charge brought against him, is fined for his excited interruptions and fined too for the misdeed which he had not committed. But as a rule the scene is a quiet and almost a solemn one. The tribunal has the sanctity of years; the peasant respects an institution which was the same in his father’s time and in his grandfather’s, and in that of his ancestors five centuries ago. The judges who before and after are simple peasants, are, for the moment invested with the power of settling matters of vital importance; for disregarding the sentence of the tribunal they may deprive a man entirely of his right of water, and so render him and his family penniless. They represent the whole Huerta, embodying alike its independent spirit and its conservative traditions. A few minutes after the judges have risen, and sometimes before the Cathedral clock has struck twelve, sofa and railing have disappeared, and it is hard to realize that the time-honoured Judging of the Waters, so primitive and impressive, has actually been held in this city of two hundred thousand inhabitants, and in this paved square where now there are but few wayfarers, and the central fountain flows and trickles in silence.

XIII

SEVILLE IN WINTER

IT is in spring, from March to May, that Seville is chiefly visited; the warm air and hot sun, the orange-trees in flower, the great religious festivals, the famous bull-fights, attract a host of foreigners, and the city has an animation unwonted even in the gay and lively capital of Andalucía. In winter Seville has a quieter, but perhaps not less potent charm. Winter often brings with it a succession of cool clear days, when the sky is of a serene, almost transparent blue, with golden sunsets. The white lines of flat-roofed houses seen against the blue of the evening sky have the soft light and colouring of opals, while the distant hills of the horizon are faintly purple. On these still days the motionless river reflects the lines of leafless silver birch and yellow tamarisks in all the tracery of their slender branches. A few yards further from the bank on either side thousands of dark orange-trees are hung with gleaming fruit, circling the city with a fringe of lamps. Above and through the trees, now bare and grey, of the Paseo de las Delicias show the various greens of the tall eucalyptus-trees and palms, the orange-trees and cypresses of the Santelmo gardens. On the quay lie immense mounds of oranges ready to be packed: the hot sun fills the air with their scent, children make flying attacks and retire precipitately with an orange apiece, while an occasional beggar also receives his dole from the apparently inexhaustible store. In the ever-crowded Calle de las Sierpes small open stalls display fresh violets and magnificent carnations and roses, and in some gardens one may see roses and geraniums in flower. In the lovely gardens of the Alcázar the sun draws a deliciously mingled scent from the box-hedges, myrtles and oranges.

Occasionally—still in unclouded weather—the wind is cold and piercing and all go muffled to the eyes, the men in their capas, the women with long shawls. In the Patio de los Naranjos, beneath the trees laden with oranges, the wind sweeps across the pavement of rough bricks, intergrown with grass and the duller green of mosses, and rattles the fallen leaves in lines and circles. Far above, the great Giralda tower stands pink and creamy grey in the clear winter sky. By the Gate of Pardon, in a corner of hot sun and sheltered from the wind, a few beggars sit warming themselves and watching with Oriental patience and immobility. The streets are mostly too narrow to let in the sun, but in the plazas and any open space men are seen basking in sunshine, tomando el sol. Along the bridge that leads to the suburb of Triana the seats on both sides are crowded. Triana, better than Seville, corresponds to Cervantes’ description of a city where adventures are to be met at every street corner, and Triana supplies an army of loiterers whose life’s mission in winter is to “take the sun.”

On the eve of high festivals in winter, such as the Epiphany, it is already growing dark when services are held, and the vast Cathedral is faintly lit with hundreds of candles and dim hanging lamps, though the last daylight still lingers awhile in the deep reds and purples, green, orange, and every colour of the windows overhead. There is no procession of the Three Kings through the city; at Alcoy, in the province of Valencia, the Three Kings come riding, laden with presents, into the town from beyond the grey mountains that surround it, and half the population goes out to meet them, but Seville is too “civilized” for this.

Even in Seville not all the winter days are cloudless and serene. On some of them the sky is a uniform grey, and the rain falls unceasingly till the centre of the narrower, unevenly cobbled streets, raised at either side and without a pavement, becomes a running stream. But when the Andalusian sun reappears, the houses have an added freshness in their glowing white, or in their coats of faint green or red, yellow or purple (though even these usually have a line of white along the roof), and in the air is a feeling of spring. There is an ancient Andalusian song that makes March say to January—

“Con tres días que me quedan
Y tres que me preste mi compadre Abríl
He de poner tus ovejas
Que te acordarás de mí.”

(With the three days that are left me and three lent me by my friend April, I will put your sheep in such a plight that you will remember me.) This is the Cumbrian:—

“March said to Aperill
‘I see three haggs [sheep] upon a hill.
And if you will lend me dayes three
I’ll find a way to make them dee.’”

But the rigour of the days that follow in Cumberland has no place or parallel in the low-lying districts of Andalucía:—

“The first of them was wind and weet,
The second of them was snaw and sleet,
The third of them was sic a freeze
It froze the birds’ nebs to the trees;
When the three days were past and gane
The three silly haggs came hirpling hame.”

At Seville a few weeks after the Day of the Kings winter is really over: in February the sky has an intenser blue, and with the longer sunshine the warmth increases. The spring days follow in their matchless splendour, till finally the sun’s fiery heat drives all who can leave the city to the cooler refuge of the sea or the hills.

XIV

FROM A SEVILLE HOUSETOP

IN winter Seville’s sky is sometimes for weeks entirely cloudless. Day after day opens and dies peacefully away like a perfect flower; or, if a strong cold wind drives across the day, it still blows in a heaven of limitless clear blue. But in early spring the sky is often veiled in a floating canopy of grey, or one may watch the white masses of clouds thin and melt on the blue. And the blue is no longer fixed, distant, and serene; even when apparently clear it has a vague movement of dissolving mists, an intangible white softness interlacing it. It is this quality of the sky, harmonizing so well with the soft lines and delicate colours of the city, that gives to Seville in spring its unfailing charm. Especially is that charm felt in the hour when men’s cigarettes begin to glow and dot the streets with tiny fire-flies, distinct as the white flowers worn by the women in their hair. The deep-red carnations and dark violets of the open flower-stalls fade into shadow; the light greens, lilacs, yellows, browns, and blues of the houses take a greyer tinge. The last sunshine throws its thinner radiance along the white lines of flat roofs that stand out in many levels and angles on the blue or blue-and-white sky, and the effect is of pearls and opals, not the flash of polished opals, but, as it were, blue veins of opal in white chalk. The west is filled with a level radiance of pure gold, and presently the eastern sky also changes from blue to a faint golden grey. One by one the hanging street lamps begin to shed their soft glow of white light, and overhead the first stars shine faintly and vanish and reappear. The bells of goats and the mellower note of cowbells are heard as they go their evening round to be milked, driven by a boy astride his donkey, or by an old man with faded-pink umbrella; or a donkey passes laden with oranges, the fruit’s gold gleaming through the twilight afterglow from between the netting of the panniers. A breath of country air invades the city; the day’s work is ended, and perhaps from some church or convent you may hear “a distant bell that seems to mourn the dying of the day”:

“Squilla di lontano
Che paia ’l giorno pianger che si muore.”

The swift Southern twilight soon dies, but this short hour more than any other embodies the magic of a Seville spring. For Seville at other times is “a city full of stirs, a tumultuous city, a joyous city.” It wakes to a discordant music of many street cries. All kinds of wares are hawked shrilly, with loud shouts, or slow, dirge-like chants. Later in the day come the more melodious cries of “Oranges! Water! Violets! Carnations!—¡Qué buenas naranjas! Agua, quien quiere agua! Violetas! Claveles!” But to the flat brick-paved housetops, surrounded with walls of different height, from three to twenty feet, all whitewashed to their level tops, these sounds of the street come faintly. The rattle of wheels over the cobbles is deadened, the bells of slowly driven cows and goats chime distantly; sometimes one hears the intricate whistle of the knife-grinder, or a barrel-organ plays an interminable dance to the clacking of castañets, that fascinates by its ceaseless repetition. But the sounds are vague and muffled, without harshness or stridency, and here reigns more uninterrupted quiet than in the cool marble patios below, with the frequent goings out and in through the door’s iron reja. On the walls or in the line of shade beneath them stand rows of plants—roses, geraniums, heliotrope, and especially carnations. From here the street sellers fill their open stalls and baskets with the huge carnations of spring, the smaller early carnations coming chiefly from Málaga. And the carnations never look more beautiful than seen, dark red or pink or yellow, against these walls of glistening white; one is fain to call them by their German or “soft Spanish name”—Nelken, claveles. The sun rising lights up the housetops so that they gleam like snow between the dark spaces of bronze or green or blue glazed tiles, slender-springing towers, and infrequent roofs, covered thickly in spring with grass, like small fields. Or on a night of moon the city has a phantom look of whited sepulchres, and if no moon looks round her with delight when the heavens are bare, there is an uninterrupted view of stars in the whole sky, as from a ship’s deck. At midday, when the sun is all fire and narrows the lines of shadow to mere rims of black, one may not look for more than an instant across the glaring radiance of white. In the morning there is an exquisite freshness. Little smoke rises from the houses—only an occasional tiny wraith of grey—but, beyond, a dense line goes up from the Cartuja factory of azulejos, and hangs black-purple on the blue sky—the morning sky streaked with waving outdrawn wisps of white mist-like cloud. There is a flapping of pigeons’ wings as they flutter from wall to wall, and the twittering of innumerable sparrows. The hours are marked by the crystal striking of many clocks that are heard only dim and intermittently from below in the street traffic. But it is at evening that the housetop has an almost magical charm, when the sun has set in a sky of delicate gold, and in the east long thin lines of white and faint purple cloud lie across a sky of lightest blue. Then the flowers along the wall give out all their scent. Swallows whirl and swerve far overhead or lightly skim the hundred levels of whitewashed turret and wall. The claveles fade slowly in the growing dusk; the wide, uneven plain of glowing walls gradually becomes indistinct and blurred; finally the sky, too, is moulded to a perfect symmetry of grey, and perhaps an immense orange-coloured moon climbs slowly above the city. Seville is lovely in winter, when the sky is a cold, serene blue, and night by night the stars glint and glitter; lovely in spring, when everywhere, in roof and patio and garden, is a triumph of green, when the oranges still hang on the orange-trees in flower—like yellow crocuses peering from the snow—and the corn is already high in the olives beyond the river; lovely in summer, when the greens are parched and shrivelled, and a hot wind blows heavily across the fainting housetops, or in nights of sultry stillness the intense glow from many a lighted patio falls across the velvet darkness of the narrow streets. Lovely at all times, but never more lovely than in the temperate days of spring, when a hundred bells are ringing for the Feast of Resurrection, and the flowers from countless roofs are gathered for the fête; when, in scenes of fairy magic, the slow pasos move with their myriad candles burning through the twilight, along the crowded streets and plazas to the Cathedral, while still peacefully above its Court of Oranges the tall Giralda looks across the city that hems it in, to the wide dehesas of Andalucía, to the green fields and olive-covered hills beyond the gently flowing Guadalquivir, and to the distant line of the Sierra Morena.

XV

FEBRUARY IN ANDALUCÍA

NOT one perhaps in a hundred of those who visit Seville and Granada sees more than a glimpse of the beautiful country and curious villages of Andalucía; yet there is much pleasure and interest to be had from a journey through all this region. In February an early start with the sun will enable the traveller on horseback or on foot to accomplish a fair day’s journey, since the sun has not yet begun to burn and force him to rest for some six central hours of the day, as later in the year. And the outlines on every side are exquisitely clear, the sky usually cloudless, and streams flow where later there will be but dry channels. In parts the fields and roadside spaces are blue and purple with dwarf-irises (the peasants call them simply lirios, lilies), and the almond-trees are in flower; and at no time of the year is there a greater and more delightful contrast between spring in the valley and winter on the hills. Near Seville the immense plains stretch interminably to the faint mountains, brown and dull-green pastures of heather and dwarf-palm, flecked with silver-white streaks of water; herds of cattle, glossy black with white horns, pigs, horses, and great flocks of sheep graze there. Or the country is gently undulating like Sussex downs, but with softlier-moulded outlines and a horizon of faint blue mountains, in February exquisitely distinct in faintness. A village often entirely covers one of the small hills, not a house venturing forward to form an outskirt, but all clustered and compact. Steep, perfectly straight streets of sharp narrow cobbles, without side pavements, run up to the church at the top through rows of low, whitewashed houses, of a single storey and of a dazzling whiteness. At evening the labourers come in from the far distant fields in a continuous line, on foot or on mules and donkeys, and children go out to meet them and are given a ride back into the village. Sometimes their return is of several kilomètres, over deep earthy or stony paths, and, with their gleaming mattocks (pioches, azadones) over their shoulders, they are now to be seen clearly outlined on the evening sky, and now are lost from view in one of the many hollows of the hills. Far and near there is no tree, “neither bush nor shrub to bear off any weather at all,” and the winds seem to have sifted and moulded the hills into softly folding mounds and hollows. In February the winds still blow occasionally with icy breath, and you will meet men on crimson and magenta-tasselled mules and donkeys, closely wrapped in old-fashioned capas of brown, only their eyes visible. On the road there are few travellers—charcoal-burners coming down with troops of laden donkeys from the hills, or a slow cart drawn by a string of mules, the driver lazily asleep, and the reins appearing from between the soles of his sandals,[92] or a troop of gipsies, or orange sellers with the panniers of their mules brimmed with oranges, now selling at six reales, a little over a shilling, the hundred. Sometimes the country is all grey-pinched and icy, and but a little further (as near snow-white Arcos de la Frontera) are great hedges of shrubs and aloes and brambles and cactus, with a sound of bees, and hovering white and yellow butterflies, and wide spaces of tall branched flowers of asphodel and grey scented rosemary. Or in a corner of windswept hills you may find a sheltered huerta with thick hedge of tall black cypresses; the oranges crowd the trees with gold, and the almond-trees shed across the dusty road a thick carpet of broken flowers, pink and white. To Grazalema leads only a steep and narrow foot-path after one has left the road not far from Algodonales (pronounced by the peasants in a torrent of vowels Aooae) and crossed the river Guadalete. In the valley the oranges gleam in myriads, and the hills immediately above are coloured with a continuous spray of almond-trees in flower, entirely covering their sides, and sometimes crowning them in triumph. And far above, over woods of cork and evergreen oak from which rise frail blue lines of smoke from charcoal-burners’ fires, appear two or three peaks of snow clear against a pale blue sky. The path goes up along hedges of brambles through asphodels and hundreds of trailing periwinkles, with stepping-stones and flowing streams; here and there a snow-white olive-oil mill with sentinel cypresses. And, below, the pale snow-fed Guadalete flows swiftly over white stones through groves of oranges. From a distance Grazalema gives the fanciful idea of broken shells on a stony shore, with its houses of white and pink and brown, many of them overhanging and seeming to grow out of steep rocks. From the village a path leads through corkwoods, the stripped trunks of the trees a deep maroon colour, to Ronda on its sheer hill. From Antequera to Málaga by road is some fifty kilomètres, and here, too, are wonderful contrasts and sudden change from winter to summer. In the unsheltered plains round Bobadilla the almond-trees show no sign of flower, and the grey mountains above the stern frowning towers of Antequera are ice-bound. Turning the pass, appears a magnificent view of six or seven serrated hill-ranges to the line of sea beyond hidden Málaga—on the left a fantastically jagged range, sprinkled in parts with snow; on the right a long line of snow-mountains that ends in a bare range rising purple from the sea. And the ice soon grows thin and vanishes, giving place to irises, tiny jonquils, and periwinkles, and descending half-way down the mountain side, to Villanueva, the almond-trees have already lost half their blossoms, grass and white dusty road and dark new-ploughed soil are thickly strewn with their petals, and the fields of broad beans are in scented black and white flower. Along the coast full summer reigns, the balconies are heavy with trailing flowers, the sea is deepest blue, and the wind blows half-sultrily across the fields of beans and the faded-green leaves of sugar-cane, with their scent of hay. Sometimes the road is lined with poplars, and ox-carts go laden with grass and trefoil and leaves from the sugar-canes. Elsewhere the road winds inland through grey rocky hills and woods of strong-scented pines, with glimpses of blue sea; or passes high above cliffs, the sea swelling dull green immediately below or foaming round dark rocks. From Motril or some other point one may go up to Granada, the Sierra Nevada appearing and altering continually; and thoughts of the Alhambra and other names of magic shorten the road, though it has many a beautiful view and village, such as Pino to the left on the mountain side, with its white houses and deep red-brown roofs. But of the many fair districts of Andalucía perhaps the most delightful in scenery is that lying between the Guadalquivir and La Mancha, a region of brushwood and mountain. The road from Marmolejo runs up through hills covered with shrubs of every shade of green, from grey-blue to shrill yellow, many of them scented, lentiscus, escalonia, adelfa, cistus, rosemary, and a hundred more; even in February the mid-day sun scents the whole air with them. Near the village of Cardeña, some thirty miles from Marmolejo, a ruin is supposed to be that of the inn where many scenes of “Don Quixote” occurred, but only a few stones remain. Leaving the village in early morning in frost and ice in order to go down to Montoro on the Guadalquivir, the road at first is wild, bordered by oak-trees, with flocks of sheep, a few patches of corn, many magpies, the plaining of birds and the occasional whirr of a partridge. Yet even here in a few hollows are vines and almond-trees, and spaces of scented plants and wild yellow jonquils, with white or brown or yellow butterflies, a humming of bees and rustling of lizards. The road now cuts through hills of scented shrubs, so various and ordered with such careful harmony as could be rivalled by no garden planted by man. On either side are range and range of hills shrub-covered, dull green, brown and blue, brown where the shrubs have been cut for firing. To the right is a wide deep gorge with tiny river far below, and glimpses of blue distances and valleys of more hills. To the left more hills, and across a blue distance of hill valleys the Sierra de Jaen with its beautiful pyramid-shaped peak of deepest snow, and far to the right of it the two more pointed peaks of Granada’s Sierra Nevada, marvellously clear in distance. Between them and the Sierra de Jaen runs the snow-sprinkled range above the village of Los Villares de Jaen. In the transparent might of even a February noon the more distant and the higher of the near hills are purple, and the great snow-mountains below the snow-line grow faint and grey. Montoro is a beautiful quaint town rising above the Guadalquivir in seven or eight storeys of houses of red stone and whitewash. The tall church-tower, also of red stone, stands massively above the town, and precipitously steep and cobbled streets lead up to it. Houses look sheer down from windows, balconies, and gardens to the river far below, which flows over a weir above and below the town, so that there is a perpetual sound of rushing water. From Montoro one may follow the Guadalquivir, now a majestic river, through its olive groves to the famous bridge of Alcolea, and the low white line beneath bare hills and wooded mountains which is Córdoba, seen from the East. Everywhere on the roads and in the inns of Andalucía the peasants are courteous, pleasant, intelligent, picturesque; always ready to give any service in their power, often immensely ignorant. They will ask if “Ingalaterra” is not Spain’s border-country and confuse it with Gibraltar, or if the Queen was a Christian before her marriage. For the most part they cannot read or write;[93] yet they converse willingly on the most various subjects, especially on politics and religion, the mayor and the priest. Here a woman complains: “Nine children I had, and the nine are dead; it’s better so in these times of misery”; there a peasant describes the snowy Sierra in the month of August, how it glows whiter than lilies across the plain—más blanca, que una azucena; or tells how beautiful is the country in later spring when the quinces, apples, and pomegranates are in flower, que es un paraiso—a very paradise. As they sit round the candela, in the cold evenings of early spring, talk flows on into the night, always pleasant and courteous, as of one gran señor to another.

XVI

SOME CHARACTERISTICS OF SPANISH LITERATURE

THERE is not a literature in Europe more individual than that of Spain. It has been influenced greatly at various times by other countries, especially Italy and France, but in its many masterpieces it has a flavour of the soil, a local colouring that is all its own. Even when Spanish authors have borrowed most freely they have usually succeeded in casting their own individuality over their “honourable kind of thieving.” Who has a more individual genius than Juan Ruiz, the merry Archpriest of Hita? Yet it has been shown that his debt to French, Latin, and other authors is very considerable. In this form of borrowing—practised by Shakespeare—which is not a direct imitation but a loan of bricks to make them marble, there is in fact a high originality. The phrase in which the merits of the Marqués de Santillana have been summed up might be applied to the whole of Spanish literature: when it ceases to imitate it is inimitable. Santillana’s mountain songs—his serranillas are scented as it were with the thyme of the Castilian hills, whereas his sonnets in the Italian manner are colourless and artificial.

Mr. Fitzmaurice-Kelly speaks of “that forcible realistic touch, that alert vision, that intense impression of the thing seen and accurately observed which give to Spanish literature its peculiar stamp of authenticity.” The clear atmosphere of Spain, in which distant mountains seem to be close at hand, is also the atmosphere of Spanish literature. The Spaniard may have little subtlety of insight or critical judgment, but he has a directness of vision that has manifested itself in bigotry, brutality, and cynical satire, as well as in keen humour, straight-forwardness, and dignity of character. The realism which has produced the terrible Christs of the Cathedrals, with their long human hair and life-like wounds, or the polychrome statues of Spanish carvers, with a presentation of pain on the human face in all and more than all its horror—this realism may be due either to a hatred of all that is false and factitious or to a lack of sensibility, an inability to sympathize without a harsh shock, a thrill of terrified awe. What would the Greeks have said to these tortured features, these agonizing brows and flowing wounds? It is as false art to perpetuate in wood or stone the agony of a few culminating moments as it is to picture a face laughing or yawning, from whose perpetually open mouth we will soon turn with a laugh or a yawn. This realism has found a less harsh expression in Spanish literature, as in the sane and brilliant art of Velázquez. The brutality occasionally makes itself felt, as in some of Quevedo’s bitter writings, but most often the spirit is nobler and more human. In the twelfth-century “Poema del Cid” all the figures stand out in wonderful clearness, from the Cid himself to the nine years’ old child at Burgos, who tells the Cid that they dare not open their doors to him for fear of the King’s edict. And the events of the poem are brought to pass before our eyes with a joyful zest and rapidity and a stamp of truth that are worthy of Homer. We see the Cid ride with a hundred chosen knights across the Bridge of Alcántara and up Toledo’s narrow streets. We see him knocking at the gate of San Pedro de Cardeña to bid farewell to his wife Doña Jimena, and the abbot, who was saying Mass for the return of dawn, running out with lights and torches to welcome “him who was born in happy hour.” We see him again in battle as the pennants rise and fall, we hear “the sword’s griding screech” and the trampling of the horses at which the earth trembles. In “Celestina,” the long prose drama of the end of the fifteenth century, we have the same truth to life, though in very different scenes. Here it is not knights and battles, but common people of the street—the old hag Celestina, or Calisto’s servants—that are drawn with a master hand.

“Celestina” gives some inkling of the picaresque novels to come, of which the flower and cream is “Lazarillo de Tormes” (1554 is the date of our earliest edition), to be followed by “Guzmán de Alfarache,” “El Buscón,” and a long posterity in Spain, France, and England. This is no tale of true love like the “Celestina,” but of gnawing hunger and of the ingenious efforts of Lazarillo to procure himself bread. His successive masters, the blind beggar, the miserly priest, the penniless Castilian gentleman, the rascally seller of Papal bulls, are sketched in the autobiography of their servant Lazarillo, with the keen eye of famine, and are unforgettable, as is Lazarillo himself, whose name has become the common name in Spain for a blind man’s guide, just as Victor Hugo’s immortal Gavroche gave his name to the Paris gamin. It is, in fact, a masterpiece of seven short chapters, lively in every sentence, of a direct and biting humour, perhaps the most graphic story ever penned. A few terse phrases throw a scene or a character into amazingly high relief, and the picture is as fresh and living to-day as when it first appeared three and a half centuries ago. No other country and no other language could have produced a piece of realism so cynically bare, so completely charming. It has the caustic pithiness of Spanish proverbs, the bitter flavour of harsh Iberia. It belongs to life rather than to literature, but life portrayed with the restraint and force of a consummate art. It was early translated into English as “The Marvelus Dedes and the Lyf of Lazaro de Tormes.” The authorship of “Lazarillo” has been ascribed to this man and to that, and there has been great argument about it and about, without the least degree of certainty. The name of Hurtado de Mendoza is frequently to be found upon the title-page. Born in 1503, he was alive when the novel appeared; he was an author; he could write in trenchant, nay, in scurrilous style, as his letters concerning the Pope show—he calls him an old rascal, vellaco; but these are hardly conclusive proofs. Whoever the author, the work still reigns supreme, though many may have thought with Ginés de Pasamonte in “Don Quixote” that it would be an evil moment for “Lazarillo” when their memoirs appeared. Half a century after “Lazarillo” the same faithfulness to picaresque reality, with a broader outlook and a more universal sympathy, is to be found in the “Novelas Ejemplares” of Cervantes. Rinconete and Cortadillo, the eponymous heroes of one of his best-known stories, are closely related to Lazarillo; they are in fact the Lazarillos of the South of Spain. On the realism of “Don Quixote” it is unnecessary to lay stress. Mr. Fitzmaurice-Kelly, referring to its immediate triumph, says: “To contemporary readers the charm of ‘Don Quixote’ lay in its amalgamation of imaginative and realistic elements, in its accumulated episodes, in its infinite sympathy and its persuasive humour. There was no question, then, as to whether ‘Don Quixote’ was a well of symbolic doctrine. The canvas was crowded with types familiar to every one who had eyes to see his companions on the dusty highways of Spain. The wenches who served Don Quixote with stockfish and black bread; the lad Andrés, flayed in the grove of oaks by Juan Haldudo the Rich of Quintanar; the goatherds seated round the fire on which the pot of salted goat was simmering; the three lively needle-makers from the Colt of Córdoba; the midnight procession escorting the dead body from Baeza to Segovia, and chanting dirges on the road; the dozen galley-slaves tramping on, strung together like beads on an iron chain; all these are observed and presented with masterly precision of detail.”[94]

In spite of Censors and Inquisitors Spanish literature was free and outspoken, for it portrayed life as it was. If it shows devotion to Church and King it is because these were deeply-rooted national convictions. But the priests sometimes meet with less respect. The Cid threatens to make of the Pope’s vestments trappings for his horse, and we have seen that Hurtado de Mendoza, the King of Spain’s ambassador in Rome, speaks of his Holiness in terms that call to mind Benvenuto Cellini’s passionate outbursts. We have seen, too, the unflattered portraits of priest and pardon-seller in “Lazarillo de Tormes.” Cervantes, who “respects and adores the Church as a Catholic and faithful Christian,” does not fail to thrust fun at the fat alforjas, the well-provisioned saddle-bags of the señores clérigos, “who rarely allow themselves to fare ill,” and he deals more sternly with the household priests who “govern princes’ houses, and, not being of princely birth themselves, are unable to guide the conduct of those who are,” and who “in trying to teach those they govern to be narrow and limited make them miserable.” He gives us the picture of the false pilgrims who travel through the length and breadth of Spain, “and there is not a village in which they do not receive meat and drink and at least a real in money, and at the end of their journey they leave the country with a treasure of over a hundred ducats,” and he even allows himself to wonder why Ginés de Pasamonte’s clever monkey has not been arraigned before the gentlemen of the Inquisition.

There are in Spanish literature occasional signs of a distorted imagination, a restless longing to materialize the invisible, which is not a fanciful dreaming, but rather a kind of super-realism, a strained and persistent effort to attain a tangible perfection—the spirit which in some Spanish buildings has added ornament to ornament till the result is a rich magnificence in an infinity of details but hideousness as a whole. One form of this we have in such works as Quevedo’s “Sueños,” another, the Churrigueresque, in the later style of Góngora. On the other hand, we have the great Spanish mystics in their sincerity, reflected in the exquisite simplicity of their style, one of the noblest glories of the literature of their country. Yet they, too, as has often been pointed out, were pre-eminently practical; Luis de León, for instance, energetic head of the Augustinian Order; Santa Teresa, the wise, untiring administrator. Their writings have the fiery transparency of Pascal, and all the clear and vivid precision of military writers of many countries, in whose case, as in that of so large a number of Spaniards, “the lance has not blunted the pen.”[95] The mystics rise to noble heights of sublimity, but the virtue of their writing is that it is to the point, with no vague rhetoric; and no advocate could surpass the lucidity with which Luis de León conducted his own defence before the Inquisition.

Perhaps the weakest side of Spanish literature is its deficiency in critical insight. Few, indeed, are the Spanish authors of whom it might be said, as Ticknor said long ago of Luis de León, that there is scarcely a line of their poetry that is not exquisite. Espronceda’s undeniable genius, for instance, shatters itself on that unwieldy fragment “El Diablo Mundo.” Excessive facility of composition has been the stumbling-block of the authors as it has been the stumbling-block of the orators of Spain. Hardly a speaker in the Spanish Cortes is ever at a loss for words to give expression to his ideas or to conceal the lack of them. Each, as Don Adriano de Armado in “Love’s Labour’s Lost,” is one

“That hath a mint of phrases in his brain,
One whom the music of his own vain tongue
Doth ravish like enchanting harmony.”

Even so marvellous an orator as Emilio Castelar was at times carried away by the magnificent eloquence that flowed unfailingly from his lips. In the same way Lope de Vega could throw off a play in a few days. Over 2000 plays and autos are ascribed to him, and in the 450 that remain his most ardent admirers confess that there are arid tracts. And, ordinarily, this copiousness has been a fault, telling against Spanish literature, and it continues to be a fault: Señor Blasco Ibáñez writes his brilliant novels in evident haste; Señor Perez Galdós has entered on the fifth series of ten of his “Episodios Nacionales,” and his other novels and plays are very numerous. Such wealth of production could not but be harmful to critical judgment. In the nineteenth century Spain produced one or two excellent critics, especially Larra and Clarín, the pseudonym of Leopoldo Alas, author of “La Regenta,” one of the most striking psychological novels of the century. Generally, however, if German literary criticism is circular and, however illuminating the by-paths of its learning, wanders round the point without ever quite touching it, Spanish literary criticism is superficial, and either veils the point in a polite mesh of words, or is prevented by this very rhetoric from seeing the point at all. Even Valera, who so carefully limned his own prose, and whose verse, though not inspired, is always delicate and polished, was far from being a good critic. He praised effusively works that at best deserved silence, and this insincerity in literary matters is, it is to be feared, a common weakness in Spain.

The characteristic of Spanish literature that unites it in a special bond of sympathy with English literature is its large store of humour. It meets us in the “Poema del Cid,” in the character of the Cid, and in the quick detection of the ludicrous; the poems of the Archpriest of Hita are full of merriment and of humorous portrayal of character; the humour of the Archpriest reappears in “Lazarillo de Tormes,” but without his jovial gaiety; with Quevedo its vein becomes cruelly satirical. Humour did not desert Luis de León when ill and solitary in the dark Valladolid prison of the Inquisition; and it is to be found in a large majority of Spanish authors, being but another side of their direct, unclouded observation. In the most humorous of all books, even Don Quixote, the Knight of the Sad Countenance, is constrained to laugh: at the sight of Sancho, we read, his melancholy was not strong enough to prevent him from joining in his laughter—and the whole world laughs with, not at him.

It is because Spanish literature is intensely national that it has so universal an interest, and in its most recent phase, the novel, it has a local character that is full of charm. José María de Pereda, for instance, scarcely ever left his native Cantabrian province. He wrote of the places and people that he understood and loved. Yet no one who has read his great novels, “El Sabor de la Tierruca,” or “Sotileza,” or “Peñas Arriba,” will contend that they are provincial, or that their interest is merely local.[96] His characters are universal, and Pereda is another instance of the truth that he who digs a little land deep reaps a better reward than he who works shallowly over a wide extent. So Señor Blasco Ibáñez is read with most delight when he cultivates his own garden—the city and province of Valencia.

XVII

THE POEM OF THE CID

1.—A Primitive Masterpiece

THE national hero of Spain has been presented in many guises, but is nowhere more intensely Spanish than in the “Poema del Cid.” Here are no marvellous events and miracles, no journeyings out of Spain to Paris and Rome; everything occurs naturally and simply in Spanish surroundings, and this the first great masterpiece of Spanish letters has a strong flavour of the soil. After winning a “victory marvellous and great” over the Moors in Spain, the Cid says, “I give thanks to God who is Master of the world; I was in want before, now I am rich, for I have goods and land and gold and honour.... Moors and Christians live in great fear of me. There, inland in Morocco, where the Mosques are, they look to have some night an inroad from me. It is but their fear, for I think not of it. I shall not go to seek them, in Valencia shall I be.” The Cid is chivalrous, brave, magnanimous, simple, with a strong sense of humour and love of fair-play. With simple good faith the poet sees no need to explain or excuse actions of his hero that may seem blameworthy to a later age, such as the deceit practised upon the two Jews. Though not historical, the poem has an air of truth and sincerity deeply impressive. It was probably composed in the middle of the twelfth century, not much more than fifty years after the Cid’s death in 1099. It has been attributed to the beginning of the thirteenth century, but intrinsic evidence warrants the earlier date. The language is more archaic than that of thirteenth-century writers. Traces of the Latin chrysalis appear. “To-morrow morning” is cras á la mañana, half Latin and half Spanish, and “each” in the same way is quiscadauno, while the word huebos, which frequently occurs in the sense of menester, is but the Latin opus thinly disguised. The poem, as it has come down to us incomplete, has nearly four thousand verses. It is written in long assonant lines of unequal number of syllables. “The poet,” as Tomas Antonio Sánchez, who first edited the “Poema del Cid” in 1779, remarks, “thought nothing of giving two or three syllables more to a line as his sentence might require,” and lines of eleven and lines of eighteen syllables occur indifferently. From beginning to end the story moves on without flagging; the style is so rapid and direct that it carries the reader with it. There is a joy and freshness in the narrative that have rarely been surpassed.[97] These events may not have happened, or may have happened differently, but that matters little, since, owing to the skill of the unknown poet, they stand out with a vividness that imprints them indelibly on the mind of the reader and proves that nothing is so real as that which has not happened. Who can forget, for instance, the arrival of King Alfonso and the Cid at Toledo, when the King passes on into the town, but the Cid remains on the further side of the Tagus, in the castle of San Serván (now a beautiful ruin with two Moorish windows still left, and surrounded by dwarf-asphodels in spring). He says to the King: “I with mine will rest in San Serván; this evening will my followers arrive. I will hold vigil in that holy place; to-morrow morning I will enter the city.” Here he and his followers “said matins and prime until the dawn,” and next day they enter Toledo, the Cid splendidly attired and accompanied by a hundred knights, riding across the bridge of Alcántara and up the steep and narrow street to the Court or Parliament.[98] Every detail of his dress is given, purple and gold and silver. But fresh and quaintly vivid details are frequent in the poem. When the counts of Carrión have outraged and abandoned their wives the poet pauses to exclaim, “What good fortune were the Cid Campeador to appear.” Félez Muñoz, on finding the Cid’s daughters almost at the point of death, brings them water in his hat: “new it was and fresh, and he had brought it from Valencia.” Mass is said “at half cock-crow, before the dawn.” The Moor Abengalvon upbraids the treachery of his guests in planning his murder as follows: “Tell me what have I done to you, Counts of Carrión? I serving you without guile, and you took counsel for my death, Hyo sirviendovos sin art, E vos conseiastes para mi muert.” Nothing could be more spontaneous and direct. With equal directness honest Pero Bermuez calls one of the Counts of Carrión “a tongue without hands,” “a mouth without truth,” and we read of Asur González, who “would breakfast before he went to prayer,” that “purple he came for he had breakfasted, and reckless was his speech.” The account of the battle is well known: “they clasp their shields before their breasts, they lower their lances with their banners, they bow their faces over the saddles, they went to smite them with bold hearts. With loud voice calls he who was born in happy hour, ‘Strike them, knights, for the love of charity. I am Ruy Diaz, the Cid Campeador of Bibar.’ All strike in the group where is Pero Bermuez. Three hundred lances are there, all with their banners. A Moor apiece they killed at a single blow, and as they turned about they kill as many more. There would you see many lances rise and fall, many a shield pierced and riddled, many a breastplate broken through, many white banners come out red with blood, many good steeds go without a rider. The Moors call on Mahomet, the Christians on St. James. In a short space a thousand and three hundred of the Moors are slain.” No version can give an idea of the vigour of the original. But it is not only battle scenes that are treated forcibly and thrown into high relief. We may take the arrival of the Cid at San Pedro de Cardeña as an example of the amazing vividness given to more quiet episodes: “The cocks are crowing and the dawn is trying to break, when the good Campeador arrived at San Pedro. The Abbot Don Sancho, servant of the Creator, was saying Matins for the return of dawn. And Doña Jimena, with five noble ladies, was praying St. Peter and the Creator: ‘O Thou who guidest all, be with my Cid the Campeador.’ He was calling at the gate and they heard the summons. Heavens! how glad was the Abbot Don Sancho! With lights and with candles they ran into the courtyard. With such joy they receive him who was born in happy hour. ‘I thank God, my Cid,’ said the Abbot Don Sancho, ‘since I see you here, accept my hospitality.’”

II. Valencia del Cid.

The poem opens abruptly with the exile of the Cid from Castille. He rides to his house at Burgos but finds all closed against him. Only a nine-year-old girl is found to tell him that “last night came the King’s letter. We dare not open or receive you, else would we lose our goods and houses, and moreover the eyes of our heads.”

To obtain money the Cid fills two chests with sand, and on these “covered with red leather, and studded with nails well-gilt,” he obtains six hundred marks from the Jews Rachel and Vidas. They are not to open the chests for a year. On the wall in the cloister of the Cathedral at Burgos still hangs an ancient chest known as the Cofre del Cid. Thus furnished, the Cid leaves Castille, and he prays solemnly to God and the glorious Saint Mary, “for here I leave Castille, since the King is wrath with me, and I know not if in all my days I shall enter it again.” He takes leave of his wife and children at the Convent of San Pedro de Cardeña, and, after early Mass said by the Abbot Don Sancho, departs, wistfully turning his head to look back. Doña Jimena, his wife, prays for his safety to the “glorious Lord the Father, who madest Heaven and Earth, and thirdly, the sea, who madest stars and moon and the sun to give heat.” Already men were flocking to the Cid’s banner, and his first exploit is the capture of the town of Castejon. He lies in ambush before it: “The dawn is breaking, and morning was at hand. The sun went forth, Heavens! how beautiful it rose. In Castejon all were awaking. They open the gates, and quickly went forth to see their work in the fields and their possessions.” When they were all gone forth, the Cid took the town. The next town, Alcocer, he also captures by a wile. “The news grieves those of Teca, the men of Teruel it does not please; it pleases not the men of Calatayud.” A host of Moors besieges the Cid in Alcocer, and after three weeks, the provisions failing, he goes forth and gains a great victory. At the sound of the drums of the Moorish host “the earth was like to crack.” He pursues the enemy to the walls of Calatayud. Fata Calatayuth duró el segudar. He sends Alvar Fáñez to Castiella la gentil with a present of thirty horses for King Alfonso and money for Doña Jimena, and for a thousand masses at Santa María de Burgos. Zaragoza agrees to pay tribute to the Cid. Don Remont Berenger, Count of Barcelona, goes out against him, and persists in coming to an engagement, though the Cid sends him a message: “I have nothing of his, bid him let me go in peace.” The result is a crushing defeat of the “army of the Franks,” and the Count is taken prisoner. The account of his captivity is entertaining. The Count refuses all food: “‘I will not eat a mouthful for all there is in Spain. I will rather die (lit. lose my body and leave my soul) since such ill-equipped men have beaten me in battle.’ You will hear what said my Cid Ruy Diaz: ‘Eat, Count, of this bread and drink this wine; if you do as I say you shall be free, if not in all your days you shall not see Christian land.’” The Count eats nothing for three days: “They dividing these great spoils cannot make him eat a piece of bread.” Then the Cid renews his promise to give him liberty: “But of what you have lost and I won in the field know that I will not give you any part, but what you have lost I will not give you, for I have need of it for me and for my vassals, and will not give it you.” At length the Count yields. “The Count is eating, Heavens! with what good will. Over against him sat he who was born in happy hour: ‘If you eat not well, Count, and I am not satisfied, here we shall remain, we shall not part.’... The Cid, who is watching him, is satisfied, so quickly did Count Remont move his hands,” and he escorts him on his way. The Count takes his leave and “goes turning his head and looking back; with fear he went that the Cid will repent, that which he would not do for all that is in the world.” Fresh victories follow. The Cid carries the war “over against the salt sea” and takes among other towns Murviedro (the old Saguntum and modern Sagunto). Here he is besieged by the Valencians, but sallies forth and defeats them. Fata Valencia duró el segudar. For three years he continues to wage war and take towns. “The fame of my Cid, know well, is noised abroad.” “The inhabitants of Valencia know not what to do. From no quarter came bread, father and son are without counsel, friend cannot comfort friend. A bad thing, Sirs, it is to have a lack of bread.” After a siege of nine months the Cid takes Valencia. He establishes a Christian bishopric in his new town, and sends a present of a hundred horses to King Alfonso. Alvar Fáñez on his return escorts Doña Jimena and her daughters Elvira and Sol to Valencia. The Cid bids them welcome to the city: “‘You, loved and honoured wife, and both my daughters, my heart and my soul, enter with me the city of Valencia, the possession that I have won you.’ Mother and daughters kissed his hands, with such honour entered they Valencia. My Cid went with them to the Citadel: he led them up to the highest part. Velvet eyes glance on all sides. They look at Valencia, how the city lies, and on the other side they have the sea. They look on the plain, luxuriant, and large. They raise their hands to pray to God. So glad is my Cid and his companions for this good and great spoil. The winter is departing, and March is about to come in....” The Moorish King Jucef, with “fifty times a thousand” Moors, comes up against the Cid, but is defeated with great slaughter. “There escaped not more than a hundred and four.” A fresh present of two hundred horses is sent to King Alfonso. The Counts of Carrión now determine to ask for the Cid’s daughters in marriage, and the King proposes an interview with the Cid “above the Tagus, which is a principal river.” The marriage is arranged, and the Counts return with the Cid to Valencia, where the wedding festivities last a full fortnight. The guests depart laden with presents from the Cid. “Rich return to Castille those who had come to the wedding.” And here there is a very definite division in the poem. “The verses of this song have here an ending. May the Creator be with you and all his Saints” (lines, 2286, 7). The remainder of the poem tells of the treachery and punishment of the Counts of Carrión. It begins with the incident of the lion. A lion that was kept in the court of the Cid’s house escaped one day as the Cid lay asleep. His trusty followers drew round him to keep him from harm, but of the Counts of Carrión one scrambled under the Cid’s bench, the other ran out by the door crying: “I shall not see Carrión,” and hid behind the beam of a wine-press, so that his cloak and doublet were all soiled. The Cid, having cowed the lion, “asked for his sons-in-law, but found them not. They call aloud for them, but none answers. When they found them and they came, they came all pale. You have not seen such jests as went about the Court. My Cid the Campeador ordered that they should cease.” Further events showed the small spirit and treachery of the Cid’s sons-in-law, and his daughters are ultimately betrothed to nobler men, the Infantes of Navarre and Aragon. The poem, as we have it, ends with a prayer that God may give Paradise to him who wrote (i.e. copied) it, and with a request for money or a glass of wine for its reciters: “Dat nos del vino si non tenedes dineros.”

XVIII

A PRISONER OF THE SPANISH INQUISITION

I.—Novedades

THE poetry of Luis de León is not voluminous; he has no great variety of theme; he sings “the quiet life of him who shuns the world’s uproar;” but there is, as has been said, scarcely a line of it that is not exquisite. And if, as a lyric poet, Luis de León stands in the front of Spanish literature, as a writer of eloquent and well-moulded Castilian prose he has had few equals. His “Nombres de Cristo” is one of the masterpieces of the Spanish language. The sentences are perhaps occasionally too prolix, lengthening out in a rich profusion of words and images. He had, as Ticknor said, a Hebrew soul, and he delighted in similes. It is indeed partly this that gives to his style a colour and a sound which rank him among the greatest prose-writers of any age. But as a writer Luis de León is too well known to need comment. And to himself his literary works were of a secondary importance, and held a subordinate place in his strenuous and energetic life. Born in 1527, of a well-known family at Belmonte in La Mancha, he was sent by his father at the age of fourteen to the University of Salamanca with the advice to “follow the common opinion in letters, que siguiese la opinión comun en las letras.” The precept was not unneeded in that age, for the Reformation had unhinged men’s beliefs and left them a prey to many fears. Intolerance on the side of reformers was answered by fresh intolerance. In Spain one might least expect any dissent from the accepted religion. Even in Spain, however, the general ferment of the rest of Europe had found an echo, the spirit of doubt and inquiry had penetrated to the Spanish Universities, and men’s minds were opening to new lines of thought. There was indeed ample scope for reform. Scholasticism had become a dry and stilted system, well qualified to call down ridicule on all learning. Its professors delighted in hairsplitting and quibbles. Luis de León speaks with a scathing sarcasm of the type of professor who said that he was ... “content with a knowledge of St. Thomas and the Saints ... and had no wish for any new learning (novedades);” of those who “flatter themselves and fancy that, because they have in their rooms a score of books covered with dust, and have obtained the degree of master of arts, they have well earned the name of men of letters, and may for the rest give themselves up quite securely to sleep and good living ... and they consider that the mere fact of having the books and dipping into some part of them once a year bestows on them a knowledge of St. Thomas and the Saints.” But the new spirit of inquiry and reform led those who belonged to the old school to fence themselves the more closely with narrow and bigoted beliefs, to cling to conventionalities of dogma, and to cry out on the most innocent innovations. Violent attacks on Scholasticism had the effect of showing more moderate attempts at reform in an odious light. Suspicions were everywhere rife, and it required no little care to avoid the accusation of being anxious for “new things.” The highest ecclesiastics were not exempt from attack. Carranza, the Archbishop of Toledo, had spent a certain number of years in England. In 1556 he had visited Oxford and found it Catholic, la encontró católica, but in the following year at Cambridge he burnt many heretical books and English Bibles. On his return to Spain he was thought to have been contaminated by contact with so many heretics, though he boasted that he had done more than any other in discovering them.

II.—Salamanca University

In the Universities especially accusations of every kind hung fire over men marked out by their position or abilities. The University of Salamanca had always been eminently conservative. Popes and Kings were anxious for its welfare. Philip II. saw in the University a stronghold of religion and loyalty. Pedro Chacon tells how “in the year 1560, on the return of our sovereign Don Philip to Spain after an absence of several years spent in reducing and governing the kingdom of England, he at once confirmed all the privileges which the University had received from his predecessors.” He intervened personally in the general affairs and particular disputes of the University, and seems to have considered no trouble too great to preserve the ancient purity of its opinions. Luis de León became deeply attached to the University, “the light,” as he said, “not of Spain only, but of all Europe,” and to Salamanca as student and professor he devoted his entire life. He entered the Augustinian order a few months after arriving at Salamanca, and by so doing renounced a very considerable income which he would otherwise have inherited as his father’s eldest son. His success was rapid. He obtained the chair of philosophy, and afterwards that of theology, and this latter chair he still held when he was arrested in the beginning of 1572 and detained for nearly five years in the prison of the Inquisition at Valladolid. The most serious charges against him were that he had translated the Song of Solomon into the vulgar tongue, and that he had depreciated the authority of the Vulgate. But it was a question primarily between two schools of thought in the University, between the rival Greek and Hebrew scholars, between the members of the order of St. Dominic and the members of the order of St. Augustine, and the case only came under the authority of the Inquisition through the denunciations of Luis de León’s enemies, such as León de Castro. León de Castro was a professor of the old school. He was an excellent Latin and Greek scholar, and was possessed of great energy and perseverance. By his learning, and partly by sheer force of character, he had won a position of high authority in the University, and he guarded his authority with a jealous care. Intolerant of opposition, he sought to crush all who by their talents or popularity might throw him into the shade. He wished to reign supreme. He was easily roused to such a pitch of anger that he lost all control of himself; “when engaged in a dispute,” says Luis de León, “he does not know what he is doing or saying.” He was hasty in his judgment of men and opinions, and supplied deficiencies in his own knowledge by a fierce positiveness. It is said that if he found an opinion in the work of a saint or philosopher, he would at once say, “This is the opinion of all the saints, of all the philosophers.” To him the Vulgate was the final and irrefragable authority, and he opposed with the utmost vigour those scholars who went back to the Hebrew original. Such Hebrew scholars he called “Jews,” a name that smelt of fire in that age. (Against Luis de León the accusation was actually brought of being a Jew, and descended from Jews.) If it was shown that the Hebrew text differed from the Vulgate, Castro answered that the Hebrew text had been altered by the “Jews” since the translation had been made. His position was thus impregnable. He would listen to no arguments, but shouted down his opponents. In a narrow age he might persuade himself that in thus asserting his opinions he was doing good service to the Church. His influence was without doubt great, and it needed no little courage to oppose him. Luis de León, however, was not a man to lie flat and love Setebos. He was frank and open by nature, even to rashness and indiscretion, and in his eagerness for reform was not afraid of making enemies. When he took his degree he attacked certain abuses in a Latin speech of Ciceronian violence, and on another occasion he publicly upbraided the Dominicans with the heresies of their order, and the thrust seems to have gone home, for he himself says that they felt it keenly, “sintieronse fieramente.” Above all, he had no sympathy with pedantry and intolerance. It was impossible that two men of characters so different should not come into collision, and in fact the discussions between professors were often marked by boisterous disputes and all the venom of ill-feeling and discourtesy that sometimes strangely enough creeps into the daily life of the learned. On one occasion Luis de León threatened to have Castro’s book—a commentary on Isaiah—burnt by the Inquisition. On this book Castro had spent much trouble and much money, and the threat cut him to the quick, so that he answered that he would have Luis de León himself burnt. And such threats were not empty words, or the thoughtless bickering of an idle hour. That Luis de León had many malignant enemies was amply shown at his trial.

III.—In a Valladolid Dungeon.

The order of imprisonment was issued on the 26th of February, 1572. His goods were to be confiscated with the exception of a bed and forty ducats to provide for his food in prison. He was to be seized, wherever found, “in church, monastery, or other sacred place,” and he was to bring with him nothing but clothes and linen. A curious clause adds that “beasts of burden to carry him and his bed, etc., are to be provided at the customary price, and the price is not to be raised.” He was thus arrested and conducted to Valladolid. The following description of the prison is given in the trial of Carranza, Archbishop of Toledo, who had been confined there some ten years before. “The prison consisted of two rooms, one for him and one for two servants. They were so remote that the Archbishop heard nothing of a fire which broke out on the 21st of September, 1561, and, lasting for a day and a half, consumed more than four hundred houses, some of them close to the secret prison. The stench was so intolerable that they were obliged at times to beg that the doors might be opened, or they would be suffocated. The infection of the place rendered both master and servants seriously ill, and the doctors of the Holy Office reported that it was indispensable to bathe the apartment in pure air morning and evening. In consequence the Inquisitors arranged that a grating should be made in the door, a device which the Archbishop scorned as adding insult to injury. The rooms were not swept ... the shutters of the windows were kept closed, and on some days the Archbishop had to light a candle at nine in the morning. The food was brought on broken plates; the sheets served as table-cloth....” In a letter written to Philip II., after two years of imprisonment, the Archbishop says, “I fear and expect death daily, and to this end my treatment seems to have been directed ever since I came here.” The loss of sun and light, and the actual dirtiness and horror of the place must have been utterly repulsive to a man of Luis de León’s temperament. In one of his writings, “La Perfecta Casada,” he says, “Is not cleanliness the fountain head of beauty—the first and greater part of it?” He loved the open air, and was wont to regret the loss of liberty which even his duties as professor at Salamanca entailed. But to the actual and severe hardships to be undergone there was added, for the devout Catholic, the more subtle and indefinite torture of the mind. For he could not be certain that by some involuntary sin he had not incurred degradation in this life, and punishment unceasing in the next, and in the loneliness and gloom of the prison these doubts would often recur. Luis de León acknowledged the full authority of the Inquisition, and his unqualified submission was not forced or hypocritical, but the fruit of a sincere conviction. The extreme clearness of his intellect was his safeguard, and, though he bowed himself in all things to the will of the Church, he was well assured of his own innocence. Shortly after his arrest he drew up a profession of faith, declaring that he lived and died “now and in the future in the faith and belief of the Holy Catholic Church, and confessing his sins con entrañable dolor.” His defence was conducted throughout in a masterly way. During these five years of suffering he showed a fine sincerity and a clearness of argument that remind one very strongly of Pascal. Never was his style more trenchant and lucid, his reasoning more subtle than in the numerous “Unpublished Documents” that have come down to us. On no occasion was the patience and humility of the man more clearly shown. It is a strange reflection that many of these documents, in accordance with the secrecy of the Inquisition’s proceedings, were kept hidden from Luis de León himself, and that he probably never knew, as we know, that he came within a little of being examined upon the rack. In spite of his ingenious and elaborate defence, Luis de León’s trial was a long one, and one must shudder to think of the sufferings and despair of men of weaker metal and less subtle intellect, such as his intimate friend Grajal, who died in prison. The Inquisition proceeded as usual in an extremely slow and thorough fashion. “Recato y secreto,” caution and secrecy, were indeed its watchwords. Witnesses concerning Luis de León’s case were examined in many parts of Spain, and even at Cuzco, in Peru. It were easy to declaim against the cruelty and tyranny of the Inquisition, but on closer view it would seem unjust to lay the blame entirely at its door. The times, as we have noted, called for the utmost vigilance on the part of the upholders of the true and Catholic faith. They might hold themselves bound to investigate with unwearied diligence the most trifling disputes concerning the doctrine of the Church. Already unorthodox books had been filtering into Spain. A translation of the Psalms had been received at Cadiz, and one man alone, a kind of sixteenth-century Borrow, had brought two bales of heretical books to Seville. The life of the bookseller was rendered anxious and difficult by such proceedings. In a letter to the Inquisitors of Valladolid we read: “The booksellers of this town (Salamanca) have received and continue daily to receive bales of books from France and other parts. These they dare not open for sale without permission.” The evil must be stopped before it spread contagion through the country. It may be argued plausibly that the firmness of the Inquisition saved Spain from the religious dissensions that raged so fiercely in France, Germany, and England, nor may it be forgotten that the centuries of the Inquisition’s most rigorous power were the centuries of Spain’s greatest literary glory.

Perhaps the harm of the Inquisition was, rather, not that it affected original thought and research, but that it created in everyday life an intolerable spirit of suspicion and distrust. It was to the animosity of their private enemies that the imprisonment of both Archbishop Carranza and Luis de León was due, and it is difficult to believe in the sincerity of the witnesses who, “without being cited” and “for the discharge of their conscience,” laid their accusations before the Inquisition. In the University of Salamanca there was much prying and spying, fostered by the rivalries and enmity of the professors. The professors were elected by the votes of the students after a public discussion between the candidates on a given theme, and this system naturally led to considerable ill-feeling and many abuses. During discussions in the University there would be always some one on the watch for any specious subject of accusation. Thus, when Luis de León maintained that “marriage was not in itself an evil but only a less blessed state than celibacy,” León de Castro had written it down in order to denounce it to the Inquisition, and in the same way another professor had gone hastily out during a discussion in order to fetch pen and ink. On one occasion, when Zuñiga was in Luis de León’s cell at Salamanca, the latter mentioned a book which his friend, the celebrated Arias Montano, had sent him. Zuñiga thereupon displayed suspicions of Montano which Luis de León resented. A few days afterwards, to quote Luis de León’s own words, “he seemed to me to be still suspicious and, knowing that he was of a morose spirit and ever inclined to see things in their worst light, I said to him laughingly: ‘You are indeed a pessimist; it seems you still think ill of Montano.’ He said, ‘No; of the man I do not think ill, but I am not certain that it is not my duty to denounce the book.’” Luis de León goes on to say that more than two years afterwards he also “had a fit of pessimism, and, considering the number of heretics who had been discovered and were being discovered daily in Spain,” determined himself to lay the matter before the Inquisition—a common way of forestalling an accusation. Again, Medina examined with most holy zeal (con santísimo celo) Luis de León’s lectures and other papers. The result would be all the more fruitful in that he would not omit the notes taken by students at the lectures, and, as Luis de León was well aware, “ignorant students often put a quite wrong interpretation on what the lecturer said.” Medina did, in fact, call a meeting of students in his cell and inquired of them if they had heard or knew of any suspicious or perverted doctrines of Luis de León. Such methods must multiply means of attack and further spin out a trial. Of one witness Luis de León, in his defence, said, “This witness is the Bachelor of Arts Rodríguez, nicknamed ‘Doctor Subtle’ in the University. I think it is he because he says I left him without an answer, and he was the only person of that University with whom this happened. For as he was a man of unsound judgment and sometimes asked impertinent questions and from what he heard and did not understand collected nonsensical answers, I grew angry and called him a fool. And at other times, in order not to become angry and out of humour on his account, I would give him no answer but flee from him. And he is so witless and importunate that I remember trying to escape him both indoors and in the Schools and in the streets, he following and asking absurd questions, I hurrying on without answering, until at last some of my companions or other students would push him aside and hold him back by force.” A little picture of academic life which for vividness it would be hard to surpass. Luis de León, indeed, was not sparing in his criticism of his various accusers. Their names, in accordance with the custom of the Inquisition, were kept from him, but on reading the anonymous accusations, he referred each one to its true author with unfailing judgment and was thus enabled to refute them with a sure hand. Of one of the witnesses who belonged to his own order he said: “He is known among us as a man who never speaks the truth except by accident.” Of another he speaks satirically as “most spiritual,” espiritualísimo, and says that the words “kisses,” “embraces,” “bright eyes,” and other words in the Spanish rendering of the Song of Songs scandalized him; words, that is, which had not struck him when he read them in Latin, shocked him now that they were written in the romance. Luis de León was not unaware that the worst interpretation would be put on his sayings, or reported sayings, and he was led by this fear himself to lay many trivial details before the Inquisition. Thus he confessed that at a lecture “the students furthest from me bade me speak louder, for I was hoarse and they could not hear me well, and I said: ‘I am hoarse and, you know, it is better to speak low that the gentlemen of the Inquisition may not hear.’” He was full of life and humour, and many a chance word spoken in jest might be twisted by the malicious to an uncatholic implication. He felt in prison that he was fighting blindfold against many enemies and asked more than once to be brought face to face with his accusers. “And thus,” he says, “they speak from afar as men in safety and free, while I, blind and in prison, cannot see who is attacking me.” Many absurd charges were brought against him. According to one witness he “always said low mass, even on a feast day, and no one could hear what he said as he mumbled ‘tu, tu, tu,’ and made an end very speedily.” Another accusation seems to have been based on a mere quibble between the words vino, “wine,” and vinó, “came.” For at a dinner some one seems to have asked for wine and Fray Luis to have said that it was doubtful if it had come; but, according to the witness, all understood his answer to refer to the coming of Christ! Another witness said that he was “a very clever theologian, but somewhat bold in his lectures”—a charge less petty than the preceding, but from its vagueness scarcely less ridiculous. In the same spirit Castro “had heard say,” “thought that he had heard”; Medina “thought that he saw in Fray Luis an inclination to new things.” Such charges coming from enemies made his innocence, as he said, “clearer than the light of noon.” Minute points were elaborately dealt with. For instance, the sale of Castro’s book on Isaiah had been spoilt, he said, by the Jews (Luis de León and his friends); according to Luis de León, the real reason of its failure was its size and costliness. As to the accusation of being, in fact, by descent a Jew, it would appear that Fray Luis’ great-grandmother, or rather the second wife of his great-grandfather, was of Jewish origin.

The one serious charge was, indeed, that he did not give due authority to the Vulgate. It is probable that his attitude had been inopportune at a time when the Vulgate was being attacked on all sides by the heretics, and that the numerous students who attended his lectures were apt to exaggerate his doctrine.

And so the trial dragged on. Luis de León began to lose patience. “If only,” he exclaims, “the sun were divided fairly between me and my accusers”—a metaphor borrowed from duelling. He complains frequently of unnecessary delay. He writes to the Inquisitors, “You are delaying the conclusion of my trial without just cause,” “without cause and to the one end of lengthening out my imprisonment, and with the wish to put a term to my life, since you find me without fault.” He begs that there be no more delay “considering the length of time I have been here, and the small cause there was for bringing me here, and the enmity and notorious calumnies that began and occasioned this scandal.” His imprisonment, he says, is “a long, harsh and cruel torment.” Partly constant communications between Valladolid and Madrid caused delay. Thus a request of Fray Luis, made on the 20th of August, did not receive an answer from the Supreme Tribunal at Madrid till the 20th of September. Partly, too, it must be admitted that after the scandal and excitement caused by his imprisonment at Salamanca, where he had a host of friends and followers, it would seem almost as if the Inquisitors were unwilling to release him with the confession that the whole matter had been smoke without a fire; and the longer the trial continued the greater, naturally, would become their embarrassment.

He was allowed some books and a few other articles. Thus he asks for a crucifix, a brass candlestick, a knife, “to cut what I eat,” the works of St. Leon, a Hebrew Bible, a Sophocles in Greek, a Pindar in Greek and Latin, etc. He complains that he is not properly attended, and “it has happened that I have fainted with hunger from having no one to give me food, and I beg that I may be given a monk of my order to serve me if you do not wish to allow me to die alone between four walls.” He was not allowed the use of the Sacraments, and in his frequent illness this was a constant torture. “You persist,” he says, “in keeping me in prison as if I were a heretic, deprived of the use of the Sacraments, with manifest danger to my life and to my soul, though you bring no fresh charge against me.” He therefore begs them, pending the sentence, to “allow me at least a free death among my monks.” Seeing that the conclusion of his case was delayed from day to day he implores, in another petition, to be transported to some monastery in Valladolid that he may die there as a Christian. “This is the only thing that I solicit or desire, since the passion of my enemies and my own sins have taken from me all that one desires in life.”

IV.—Ex Forti Dulcedo.

On the 28th September, 1576, the sentence is at length pronounced. The majority of the judges “are of opinion that Fray Luis de León be put to the torture as to his meaning, and as to what has been witnessed against him, and as to the propositions that have been noted as heretical, in spite of the fact that the theologians profess finally to be satisfied with them and to give them the meaning that Fray Luis would have them bear; and that the torture to be applied to him be moderate, seeing that the accused is of delicate health; and that the results obtained be then further examined.” This was the verdict of four out of the seven judges; one gave no decision; the remaining two were of opinion that the accused should be reprimanded in the Court of the Holy Office, and that in the general hall of the greater Schools of Salamanca, in the presence of the students and other persons of the University, he should declare his propositions to be suspicious and ambiguous; that he should be forbidden to lecture in the Schools or elsewhere, and that his translation of the Song of Solomon should be prohibited and withdrawn from circulation.

The superior and more impartial tribunal of Madrid quashed the sentence, and Luis de León was not questioned on the rack. It ordered (7th December, 1576) that Fray Luis de León should be acquitted and admonished in the Court of the Holy Office to be careful in future how he treated of matters so dangerous as those implicated in the trial. The sentence pronounced runs as follows: “We find, in accordance with the decrees and on the merits of the said suit, that it is our duty to absolve and we do absolve the said Fray Luis de León from the burden of this trial.” He requested and obtained a declaration that he had been acquitted without penance or stain whatsoever, and was free to exercise all his duties in the University.

Luis de León’s health had never been robust, and the hardships of his imprisonment broke it completely. That he survived is probably due to his fortitude and mystic faith. In a dedication to Cardinal Quiroga, he says: “When I was on trial, owing to the intrigues of certain of my enemies, and was branded as suspicious in the faith, and was cut off not only from the conversation but from the intercourse and very sight of men, and was buried in a prison for five years, in the midst of all this I felt a peace and joyfulness of spirit which I often miss now that I am restored to the light of day and to my friends.”

These years spent in prison were not passed in idleness. Besides the business of his defence, he wrote several of his poems during this time and his long treatise “Los Nombres de Cristo.” Many know his short poem beginning, “Here falsehood and wrong kept me imprisoned,” and ending with the line so often quoted in Spanish literature, “ni envidiado ni envidioso.” And we may refer to this time of his imprisonment such passages as “No pinta el prado aquí la primavera”—

“Here with the spring the meadows are not gay
Nor the clouds golden in the rising sun;
No nightingale pours forth its plaintive lay:
But here the night is sleepless, and the day
Is full of tears and unconsoling sorrow,
And the sad present has a sadder morrow....”

Or the beautiful poem beginning “Virgen que el sol más pura”—

“Virgin purer than the sun,
Glory of mortals, of the heavens light,
Whose pity is not less than thy great might,...”

Without the enforced leisure of these years we cannot doubt that his “Nombres de Cristo” would never have been written, and Spanish prose would have lacked one of its most luminous and brilliant jewels.

Spanish literature owes him a great gratitude for having written in Spanish, contrary to the prejudices of the learned, who held that a writing to be profound must be obscure, and “marvelled that a theologian of whom they expected some great treatise full of deep questions had ended by writing a book in romance.” But Luis de León wished, he says, to open the “new path” of good style, that consists “both in what is said and in the way of saying it, and in the task of choosing the best words of those in common use, and considering the sound of them, and even at times of counting the letters, and weighing and measuring and mingling them, that the matter be presented not only with clearness but with softness and harmony.”

Nearly five years after his arrest Luis de León returned to Salamanca. He returned entirely justified, and the University welcomed him back with rejoicing. Over the Augustinian Order especially his trial had hung like a cloud, and the condemnation of so distinguished a professor must have been felt as a disgrace by the whole University. The legend is well known. When Luis de León resumed his lectures the entire University thronged to hear him. He was enjoined by the Inquisition to preserve complete silence as to its proceedings, but this was an occasion at least for subtle and indirect allusions, and for the excitement of general sympathy. Luis de León rose in the crowded room and began his lecture with the words: “Gentlemen, we were saying yesterday,” and so continued his course. The intervening five years were obliterated. The story is so thoroughly in keeping with the character of the man, whose simplicity and sincere humility produced an effect unattainable by the most studious artifice, that we would willingly maintain its truth. We would thrust aside the prosaic facts that Luis de León did not resume his lectures, the chair having been occupied in his absence, and he acquiescing in this on his return (la daba por bien empleada), and that, when he was assigned another course of lectures, a long dispute arose in the University as to the hour at which he should deliver them. We may say at least that, if the story is not literal in the facts, in spirit it is essentially true. The quaint kind of pulpit from which the words were spoken, and the lecture-room with its rough-hewn benches, are still preserved in the University at Salamanca, and the sublime words, “Decíamos ayer,” form part of the repertoire of the tourist’s cicerone.

Luis de León, on the recovery of his freedom, might exclaim, in the words of the Persiles of Cervantes (Cervantes, who professed himself Luis de León’s “reverent votary and follower,” á quien yo reverencio, adoro y sigo): “I give you thanks, immense and merciful Heavens, that you have brought me to die where your light may look upon my death, and not in the shades of the dark prison-house which I now leave.” He survived for fifteen years, dying on the 23rd of August, 1591, nine days after being promoted from Vicar-General to Provincial of his Order. His good humour and natural gaiety, his unselfishness and common-sense, won for him many and strong friendships—we feel, indeed, that he was a man not without failings, but entirely lovable. He had been commanded by the Inquisitor-General to publish his own works, and was entrusted with the publication of those of Santa Teresa. His second Inquisition trial arose apparently from a lecture on the vexed question of predestination and freewill. It was declared that the University of Salamanca was greatly scandalized at the boldness with which he maintained that the contrary of his own opinion was heresy. The matter, however, ended by his being “benevolently and lovingly admonished” at Toledo. Besides these and many other occupations, he gave ungrudging help to the Carmelite nuns in asserting their independence, which was threatened by a reform sanctioned by Philip II. The Pope, indeed, was favourable to the nuns, but the King opposed the Papal Brief, and Luis de León is reported to have said: “It is impossible to carry out a single order of His Holiness in Spain.” The story that Fray Luis died of grief on account of the King’s anger at this opposition is certainly untrue, although it is likely enough that the King was annoyed. He is said to have exclaimed: “Quien le mete á Frai Luis en estas cosas?—What has Fray Luis to do in this galère?” Luis de León’s life was thus not without many turmoils. But we may like best to think of him, as in the description in his “Nombres de Cristo,” “in the month of June, after the Feast of St. John when the Salamanca term breaks up,” retiring from a long year of work to the country house possessed by his monastery on the banks of the Tormes. There, in the great garden of trees growing without order, with a stream “running and pausing as if in laughter,” and with the winding river Tormes in sight—“a place far better than the professor’s chair”—he would meditate alone or converse with friends “in the cool of the morning, on a day most calm and bright;” “for,” he says elsewhere in the same work, “it may be that in towns there is more refinement of speech, but fineness of sentiment is of the country and of solitude.”

XIX

THE MODERN SPANISH NOVEL

I.—Revival. Fernán Caballero

THE success of “Don Quixote” might have been expected to fire a host of imitators, but the seventeenth century in Spain was given rather to the drama than to the novel, and the eighteenth century “was an age of barrenness in Spain, so far as concerns romance.”[99] In the first half of the nineteenth century the Spanish novel was for the most part a pale imitation of Sir Walter Scott, and these somewhat insipid romances, in spite of the wealth of subjects afforded by Spanish history, were not genuinely Spanish; they were due to a taste imported by returning exiles, and were not a natural growth of the soil. Thus the Condesa Pardo Bazán could say that in Spain the novel has no yesterday, only an anteayer, a day before yesterday, and the appearance of Fernán Caballero’s “La Gaviota” was hailed by a Spanish critic as a link between Cervantes and the nineteenth century. It marked, indeed, the revival of realistic fiction in Spain. Cecilia Böhl von Faber, daughter of a distinguished German settled in Spain, was born in Switzerland in 1796, but passed nearly the whole of her life in Spain, and chiefly at Seville. She combined German depth with the wit and clear vision of Andalucía. A discerning Madrid critic reviewing “La Gaviota,” the first published work of the then unknown Fernán Caballero—it had been written first in French, and now appeared in Spanish in the pages of “El Heraldo” (1848-49)—said that it displayed a mixture of the German and Andalusian Schools, the pencil of Dürer, and the colouring of Murillo. A character in “La Gaviota” observes: “Were I Queen of Spain, I would command a novel of customs to be written in every province.” It was the novela de costumbres that Fernán Caballero wrote with such brilliant success. She wished, she said, to show Spain as it really was, and not as it was commonly painted by foreigners.

Cecilia Böhl von Faber was thrice married—to Spaniards—and it was as Marquesa de Arco Hermoso, living on her husband’s estate at Dos Hermanas, a small village near Seville, that the idea first occurred to her to collect the fast-disappearing customs and traditions of the peasants. She came into frequent touch with them owing to her wish to learn their individual needs, and know how best to administer her charity. The thirteen years from her second marriage in 1822, to the death of the Marqués de Arco Hermoso, in 1835, were spent mainly at Seville, at their house in the Plaza de San Vicente, or in the neighbourhood. The story La Familia de Albareda, the scene of which is Dos Hermanas, was then written, from events that actually occurred in this village, although it was not published till later. It was when her third husband was absent in Australia that she thought of publishing her stories, and took her nom de plume from a small village of La Mancha, called Fernán Caballero. The appearance of “La Gaviota,” which is, indeed, one of the best, if not the best, of Fernán’s novels, aroused considerable surprise and enthusiasm, and many surmises as to who might be the author. It was a work so unlike the romantic tales and insipid imitations then in vogue; it showed so fresh and spontaneous an inspiration. Here were no echoes of older novelists; all was written from keen personal observation, and the reader was enabled by the author’s art to realize in words scenes and characters which he had known and felt, but had been unable to express.

After the tragic death of her third husband, in 1859, Fernán Caballero was firmly resolved to enter a convent, but her friends did their utmost to dissuade her, and she believed, moreover, that the only books she would be allowed to read would be those of devotion. Finally she gave up this idea, and lived for nearly ten years in one of the houses of the Patio de las Banderas in the Seville Alcázar, granted to her by Queen Isabel II. It would be difficult to imagine a more pleasant home for a writer. On one side the beautiful gardens of the Alcázar, with their myrtles, palms, and oranges, clipped box-hedges, and white marble fountains; on the other the Plaza del Triunfo, planted with orange-trees, acacias and palms, and the Cathedral and wonderful Giralda tower. The Revolution of 1868 came to destroy this peace. The Alcázar became for the time the property of the nation, and Fernán Caballero was driven to seek a home elsewhere. She was for other reasons, as a devout Roman Catholic and Royalist, deeply distressed by the Revolution and its sacrilegious results in Seville. The pettiness of many revolutionary measures was shown by the fact that the night-watchmen—the serenos—of Seville were forbidden, in calling out the hours, to use the traditional preface “Ave María Purísima.” Fernán Caballero obtained the reversal of this decree. She lived to listen with tears of joy to the bells of the Giralda, as they rang out the news of the Restoration and the beginning of Alfonso XII.’s reign. She was then living in the curving, silent bye-steet that now bears her name. No. 14 is distinguished from the other houses by having, besides the patio, a garden with a large lemon-tree, and other shrubs. Here she died in the spring of 1877, in her eighty-first year. The Queen came to visit her here, and a memorial tablet was placed above the entrance of the house by her friends the Duke and Duchess of Montpensier.

The quality that gives imperishable value to Fernán’s work is its truth: the scenes are at once felt to be real, the characters are living. She reproduces the lively mirth and malicious wit of the andaluz peasant, the gay laughter-loving nature of the Sevillians, with their keen perception of the false and the ridiculous. She describes a Seville patio (in “Elia”), or a bull-fight (in “La Gaviota”), or a country house, quinta (in “Clemencia”), or a deserted convent (in “La Gaviota”) with a delicate minuteness of detail that brings them vividly before us. Writing of simple, everyday events, as in the preface she characterizes those of “Elia,” she paints them with unsurpassed clearness and vigour, and much of the piquancy and charm, the sal y pimienta, of the South is in her pages. There are in her works some scenes that in sobriety and psychological skill are worthy of Stendhal. Her characters are drawn from life with the sure and penetrating analysis of genius. Perhaps the best example of all is the character of Marisalada in “La Gaviota,” but the slighter figures, the conservative General Santa María and the bull-fighter Pepe Vera, in the same novel, the vivacious, charitable Asistenta in “Elia” (having much in common with Fernán’s own character), who is unmoved by the discovery of a Roman epitaph on one of her farms and refuses to believe that there is a land where bishops marry, Marcial and Jenaro in “Lágrimas”—all these and many more are sketched with masterly skill. It is when they treat of country scenes and peasant life that the novels of Fernán Caballero are at their best, as the first half of “La Gaviota” in the village of Villamar, or a part of “Clemencia” (1852) in the village of Villa-María. The character of Don Martín of Villa-María and the scene of his interview with the importunate Tía Latrana are thoroughly in the manner of Pereda. So, too, is the wife of the village mayor in “Lágrimas.” “Haber gastadu mis cuartus” she exclaims—and the use of dialect, so freely employed by Pereda, is noticeable—“en facere de esse fillu meu un hulgazán! Non me lo dejú para esu mi tíu Bartulumé, es verdad.” The foreigners at Seville are portrayed with less sympathy; so we have Sir John Burnwood, who has come to Seville in order to ride up the Giralda, and, finding this impossible, proposes to buy the Alcázar, or Sir George Percy, who is admitted to have noble qualities, but allowed to show unmistakably bad taste.

Fernán Caballero is not afraid of interrupting her story by digressions, whether their object be to inculcate virtue, to exalt the Roman Catholic religion, or to ridicule the importers of foreign fashions and foreign phrases into Spain. Sometimes, as in “Lágrimas,” this is carried to excess and rather spoils the effect of the story, but in most of her works the digressions are never altogether wearisome; the original and fascinating character that won for Cecilia Böhl von Faber a host of friends is not often or for long absent from the novels and relaciones of Fernán Caballero. It has been observed that “La Gaviota,” though it contains scarcely any action, has not a line too much. “No aspiramos á causar efecto,” says the preface of “La Familia de Albareda,” and it is this very absence of thrilling action or melodramatic effect that gives so permanent a charm to Fernán’s works. For a proper appreciation of Seville and Andalucía they are invaluable: there is not one of them in which some trait explanatory of the Sevillian and andaluz characters does not appear. A recent Spanish writer quite unjustly denies that Fernán Caballero shows any of the sal andaluza, and is of opinion that her work has not left a deep trace in Spanish literature, but must be considered rather as a preparation for the higher flights of the novelists who followed. It is difficult to agree with this view. Fernán Caballero not only hoisted the flag of true Spanish realism, and pointed to a land of promise, but carved for herself a very real and abiding empire in this land of her rediscovery.

II.—1870-1900.

In 1864 Pereda published his first work, “Escenas montañesas,” and ten years later, and three before the death of Fernán Caballero, appeared Valera’s first novel, “Pepita Jiménez,” and Alarcón’s “El Sombrero de tres picos.” Since 1874 scarcely a year has passed without producing a Spanish novel that deserves a high rank in literature. Yet Pereda[100] did not at once impose himself, and early in 1874 Pérez Galdós could put the following words into the mouth of one of the characters in Napoleón en Chamartín: “In the matter of novels we are so far astray that, after producing the source of all the novels of the world, and the most entertaining book ever written by man, Spain is now unable to compose a novel of more worth than a grain of mustard seed, and translates these sentimental French stories.”

Similarly, Señor Menéndez y Pelayo remarks that “about the year 1870, the date of Pérez Galdós’ first book, the Spanish novel was slumbering in the arms of insipid or monstrous productions, entre ñoñerías y monstruosidades.” There is little insipidity or sentimentalism in the more modern Spanish novel. Realism is the dominant note of Spanish literature. The very atmosphere of Spain makes for clear vision. Its artists are realistic, even brutally realistic, as Goya occasionally is; even its mystics have not been wrapped wholly from the world: they do not live in a cloud, insensible to the real facts of life. And in the same way the great Spanish novelists are realistic. There is, however, a true Castilian dignity about their realism. They do not, in George Meredith’s phrase, mistake the “muddy shallows” for the depths of Nature. They may treat of the vulgar and the base, but they do not treat of them in a way that is vulgar and base. They may be as outspoken as Martial, but their realism is eminently sane and clean.

The modern fashion, strongly in favour of realism, should do justice to the merits of Spanish novels. It is no doubt guided by the love of contrast that caused Stendhal, a romantic and an enthusiast at heart, to read pages of the “Code Civil” before writing his novels, and to adopt a style mathematically cold and thin, and Flaubert, a poet, to analyse a subject so vulgar as that of Madame Bovary. A simpler age may delight in works of a fantastic imagination, but a more complex and perhaps hypocritical age must have truth and away with vagueness and pretence.

Minds so complicated and many-sided as to be rarely themselves, admire the simple and concrete, and the Spanish genius, which is essentially objective, answers to this taste both in its literature and in its art. Yet it is characteristic that in many Spanish novels realism and mysticism go hand in hand. That peculiarly Spanish mysticism which shows its false side in Clarín’s “La Regenta,” its practical spirit in Palacio Valdés’ “Marta y María,” its sadness in Azorín’s “La Voluntad,” is by no writer more sympathetically treated than by Juan Valera, in “Pepita Jiménez” and other novels. Valera was too great an artist to belong to any school. He repeated in many prefaces that his aim was not to instruct or to edify, but rather to give pleasure. The old heresy that works of art should edify has had great influence in Spain, and it makes its presence felt in modern novels with a set purpose, romans à thèse. It cast its shadow over the work of Fernán Caballero and Pereda, and, passing to the enemy, reappears at intervals in Pérez Galdós and Blasco Ibáñez. But Valera would have none of it. A novel, he said, “should be poetry, not history, that is, it should paint things not as they are but fairer than they are, illuminating them with a light that may cast over them a certain charm.” The magic of his style, which he caught by his own confession from the great Spanish mystics of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, supplied this charm, and is sufficient to make his work imperishable. It is a charm that is exquisite and escapes analysis, reminding of that metallic lustre in ancient Spanish azulejos, or glazed tiles, of which modern manufacturers in vain seek to recapture the secret. Valera was not, in a strict sense, a great novelist. The construction of his stories is often weak, and the characters all speak the language of Don Juan Valera. “In Valera,” it has been said, “there are no Sanchos, all are Valeras.” He was himself aware of these limitations. He would sometimes say in a preface that he was not certain if his book were or were not a novel, and as to the invariably polished speech of his characters, the conversation of the nurse Antoñona with Luis de Vargas, in “Pepita Jiménez,” is accounted for by the fact that she had prayed that it might be given her to speak on this occasion, not in grotesque language, as was her wont, but in elegant and cultured style. Similarly, Juana la Larga says to her discreet daughter Juanita, “All that you have said seems to be taken from the books that Don Pascual gives you to read.”

But Valera could delineate characters skilfully. In his longest novel, “Las Ilusiones del Doctor Faustino,” the hero, Señor Don Faustino López y Mendoza, is in some degree a typical figure of modern Spain. Living in his half ruinous ancestral house in the village of Villabermeja, he feels himself to be capable of great deeds, but achieves nothing. He laments not being of humble birth to become a brigand like the great José María, he laments not having been born in the eleventh or twelfth century to carve out for himself a kingdom with his sword, and he ends by obtaining a modest post at Madrid, which brings him little over £100 a year. Valera’s creations have only seemed unreal because, through the alchemy of his style, he is a King Midas, turning all to gold, and the excellence of his art raises his figures to the level of statues in Parian marble. They are not, therefore, less lifelike; because he has an “exquisite adjustment of word to thought,”[101] it does not follow that he is “without life and passion”[102]—rather the passion is raised to a white heat, with the flames no longer visible. And in his descriptions he is a true realist, giving us the light and laughter of Andalucía. His “Juanita la Larga” is a charming sketch of life in an Andalusian village that may recall Alarcón’s “El Sombrero de tres picos.” Some of the most laughter-rousing scenes of “El Sombrero de tres picos” pass in the little stone-paved court in front of a flour mill, a quarter of a league from a certain cathedral town in Andalucía. The court is shaded by a huge vine-trellis, sufficiently thick and solid for the miller to sleep—or pretend to sleep—unnoticed among its leaves. It is a brief, delightful sketch, coloured and malicious, of Andalusian life in the first years of the nineteenth century. To Andalucía also belong two novels by Palacio Valdés, “La Hermana San Sulpicio” and “Los Majos de Cádiz.” But it is Andalucía described not by a native but by a stranger, for Palacio Valdés is of the North. He has a sense of humour rather English than Spanish, and he is, indeed, almost as well known out of Spain as within the Peninsula. It is a humour less bitter and aggressive than that of another Asturian, Leopoldo Alas, with whom Valdés collaborated in a volume of critical essays. As a sketcher of character, Valdés is admirable. Gloria, the typically Andalusian girl, and the Gallegan Sanjurjo are both excellently drawn in “La Hermana San Sulpicio.” The scene of his “Marta y María” is laid in an old town of Astúrias—the author is now in his native country—surrounded by a wide level of meadows and gently sloping hills to the ría, bordered by immense pine woods and the sea. It is a novel even more delightful than “La Hermana San Sulpicio.” The scene of “La Aldea perdida” is also Astúrias. It is a pastoral symphony, an Asturian counterpart to Pereda’s “El Sabor de la Tierruca,” a charming story—in spite of its theatrical ending—of village rivalries and reconciliations in a land wooded with chestnuts and oaks and cider-apples, a land of maize and cool green fields of trefoil, and mountain paths hedged with honeysuckle. But in other works Palacio Veldés has not maintained this Spanish inspiration. In “La Espuma,” “Maximina,” “La Fe,” the influence is that of the French naturalistic School. Clarín (Leopoldo Alas), though born at Zamora also an Asturian, was likewise deeply influenced by France in his long work “La Regenta.” In one of his critical essays Clarín wrote that “Spanish realism is very Spanish; it is in the race. But it has its defects, no todo en él es flores; it is deficient in psychology and the poetry of passion.” In “La Regenta” we have passion and psychological analysis and epigrammatic wit. The scene is the old cathedral city of Vetusta (or rather Oviedo). The treatment is not characteristically Spanish. Vetusta is here a typical provincial town, such as Flaubert might have described and hated, and its inhabitants are almost all represented as ignorant, vulgar, or vicious. Their stupidity and vulgarity are lashed with an ingenious subtlety that is unsparing, and the motives guiding their actions are laid bare with an amazing skill. Clarín’s humour is often a little cruel, and the novel is crowded with terse and biting phrases. One of the readers of the Vetusta casino—the worthiest of them, Clarín is careful to assure us—is thus pilloried in a few lines: “He arrived at nine o’clock every evening without fail, took Le Figaro and The Times, which he placed over Le Figaro, put on his gold spectacles, and, lulled by the sound of the gas, fell gently asleep over the foremost paper of the world, a privilege which no one sought to dispute. Shortly after his death of apoplexy, over The Times, it was discovered that he knew no English.”

The most prominent figure among living Spanish novelists is undoubtedly Don Benito Pérez Galdós. In his “Episodios Nacionales,” the troubled history of Spain in the nineteenth century, from the wars against Napoleon to the death of Prim, passes before us in a Spanish human comedy. We see the noble death of Churruca in the battle of Trafalgar, we witness the brief, feverish defence of Madrid before Napoleon, the heroic sieges of Zaragoza and Gerona, the stubborn resistance of Bilbao to the troops of Zumalacárregui in the first Carlist war; later we see Isabel II. silently crossing the French frontier at Irun, the effect of Castelar’s eloquence in the Cortes, Prim landing at Cadiz—these and a hundred more principal actors and events are marshalled in a succession of novels now numbering over forty. Pérez Galdós continues to write with undiminished vigour. The forty-second episode, “España Trágica” (1909), pictures Madrid opinion in street and café during the year 1870, when Spain was “in high fever,” choosing a king. The book ends with a vivid account of the assassination of Prim. His long and difficult task was crowned with success, but his presence was needed now more than ever to check the hostility of the federalists on the one hand, of the aristocracy on the other. It was the 27th December, 1870, and on the following day he was to travel to Cartagena in order to receive the Duke of Aosta. He had just left the Congreso. The night was bitterly cold and the carriage rolled silently through the snow in almost deserted streets. It was noticed that first one man and then a second stopped in the street to light a cigar. This was apparently a signal. A little further on, in the Calle del Turco, a carriage blocked the way, and almost immediately the windows of Prim’s carriage crashed in on both sides and he fell back, wounded by more than one bullet. The forty-third Episode, “Amadeo I.” (1910), describes the reign of the Italian prince which began thus tragically with the murder of Prim, continued for two years in a tragi-comedy, and ended with the dignified withdrawal of the loyal and disinterested “rey caballero,” who had been wilfully and persistently misunderstood and slighted by the subjects who had invited him to reign over them. With the Queen and their three children, including the infant Duke of the Abruzzi, he descended the steps of the Palacio del Oriente for the last time “entre alabarderos rígidos, sin música ni voces que turbaran el fúnebre silencio. Sólo el rumor de las pisadas marcaba el lento caminar de una época” (February, 1873). With this and a volume on the first Spanish Republic,[103] the fifth and final series of the Episodes marches rapidly towards completion. For forty years novels and plays from Pérez Galdós’ pen have appeared at the rate of two or more a year, and some of the novels are of considerable length—“Fortunata y Jacinta” has something like two thousand pages. Well-drawn characters and skilfully reconstructed scenes abound, but a weariness sometimes overcomes the reader. For these novels scarcely seem to have an end or a beginning; there is no plot or concentration of interest. Perhaps for this very reason they are an extremely faithful presentation of life. No one would dispute Pérez Galdós’ great talent as a writer, but his admirers may regret that he does not pause to draw more complete pictures with finished art. In his anti-clerical novel, “Doña Perfecta,” Don Inocencio represents the influence of the priest in the family. Doña Perfecta, in league with the priest, secretly sets the whole force of her wealth and power in mediæval Orbajosa in the scale against her nephew, Pepe, who wishes to marry her only child, Rosario. Pepe is looked upon in Orbajosa as an atheist and hors la loi, although he is merely a modern man of science. There is no acknowledged opposition: Doña Perfecta meets him invariably with a pleasant smile; but his letters are opened and confiscated, he finds a spirit of steady though veiled hostility in Doña Perfecta’s house and in Orbajosa, he is assured that Rosario does not love him, and he cannot convince or overcome insidious enemies who never come into the open. Finally, Doña Perfecta becomes the murderess of her nephew, though in such a way that her conscience is entirely free from sense of guilt. The end justifies the means. The character of Doña Perfecta is developed with consummate skill; Palacio Valdés thirteen years later drew a slighter sketch on the same lines—Doña Tula, Gloria’s mother (in “La Hermana San Sulpicio,” 1889). No doubt there are towns in Spain such as Orbajosa, where the spirit of the Church is bigoted and Jesuitical, opposed to all progress; or such as Nieva, in “Marta y María,” where the people consider María to be a saint who can work miracles, and bring children for her to cure them with a look, and her confessor encourages the belief; or such as Vetusta, in “La Regenta,” where Don Fermín combines a high position in the Chapter of the Cathedral with a steady traffic in Church furniture and ornaments. Yet one may sometimes wonder whether the anti-Clericals are not too inclined to attribute all the ills of Spain to the influence of the priests. “Valgame Dios y qué vida nos hemos de dar, Sancho amigo,” they seem to say, as if the dissolution of the religious orders and the separation of Church and State would at once spell prosperity in Spain. The religious communities are numerous and rich; beggars, as at Orbajosa, are also numerous (and occasionally rich), but it would be unfair to lay the blame of poverty and backwardness entirely on the Church. There are many other causes, one of them the dissipated, careless life of society in the large towns, sketched by el padre Luis Coloma in his novel “Pequeñeces,” and by Pérez Galdós himself in “El Caballero Encantado.”

III.—In the Twentieth Century.

The novel continues to hold the field in Spanish literature. The early years of the twentieth century saw the death of two splendid writers, Valera (1824-1905), and Pereda (1833-1906), and Leopoldo Alas died in 1901. Of the older novelists, Pérez Galdós, the Condesa Pardo Bazán,[104] Palacio Valdés, and Jacinto Octavio Picón[105] still remain, and a brilliant group of younger writers is ready to pass on the torch undimmed. Pérez Galdós’ “El Caballero Encantado” is dated July-December, 1909. Writing immediately after the Barcelona riots, it was natural that the condition and future of Spain should be in his thoughts, and an allegorical figure representing Spain or the spirit of the race plays a prominent part in the book. The novel has, indeed, a little too much of the marvellous and the symbolical, and when the hero by a last transformation becomes a fish in the river Tagus, we are uncomfortably reminded of the spurious and fantastical continuation of Lazarillo de Tormes, in which Lázaro is transformed into a tunny-fish. The reason given by Señor Pérez Galdós is, however, excellent: “To this sad dwelling (the silent depths of the Tagus) come those who by their loquacity have drowned the will and thought of Spanish life in an ocean of words. Nearly all those here present are orators. They spoke much, and did nothing. Some of them are masters of high-sounding phrases, conjurers who, by the magic of their art and the vanity of their rhetoric, transformed the tower of eloquence into a tower of Babel.” The theme of the book is that Don Carlos de Tarsis, the young Marqués de Mudarra, deputy for a district of the geographical existence of which he has but a vague idea, who lives at Madrid, and spends with both hands the money drained from his estates, is magically changed into a farm-labourer on his land, or rather, on the land that was his, and now belongs in part to his agent, in part to his usurer. For to meet the expenses of his idle and dissipated life he must have money at any cost; but when the rents of his tenants are raised they emigrate, and his agent, who attributes the backwardness of agriculture in Spain to the fact that “the great land-owners live far from their estates as though they were ashamed of them,” supplies him with ever-diminishing sums, till he is reduced to penury and usurers. Tarsis recognizes that he is a most unworthy acolyte of Idleness, and that his only merit is “the brutal sincerity of his pessimism,” but he “would rather die than work.” So far the character is drawn from life, and it is only in the vagueness of the subsequent enchantments that the effect of the novel becomes veiled and uncertain. From a farm-labourer he successively becomes shepherd, quarryman, tramp, and criminal—all with much needless magic—till, by the final ordeal of silence in the golden Tagus, he is restored to his original being as Marqués de Mudarra, a chastened and a wiser marquis. Stress is laid on the miserable state of the poor, compared with the immunity of the rich. Famishing men are dragged off to prison for rooting up onions on a rich man’s estate, and shot down by the Guardia Civil when they try to escape—the official report runs: “the prisoners attempted to escape, and were overtaken by an accident from which a natural death ensued.” There is perhaps a greater air of reality about the account of the rich Caciques, owners of vast estates or latifundios, who pay to the Treasury but a tenth part of the proper land-tax, who falsify returns at elections, protect criminals, and assault honest folk, while the judges are their creatures. This Caciquismo is part of the deplorable administration of Spain. Señor Pérez Galdós who, as a native of the Canary Islands, has the double advantage of looking at Spain as it were from within and from without, returns to the question of words and deeds, the wealth of words and the scantiness of action, with an insistence which must be excessively annoying to a Spanish reader. Yet he does not despair of Spain’s future. He sees hope in the proved vitality of the race, in its quick recoveries after misfortune, its heroism even under self-inflicted sufferings: “The ineffable follies of my sons have plunged me (i.e. Spain) in despair, and in the darkness of despair my death has seemed certain and inevitable. And then in some terrible crisis that appeared to ensure my destruction, I have revived when they were carrying me from the death-bed to the grave.”

The best work of Pereda was of the Mountain, Valera and Fernán Caballero write of Andalucía, Palacio Valdés of Astúrias, and similarly the Gallegans, Valle-Inclán and Señora Pardo Bazán have found their best inspiration in Galicia, and Vicente Blasco Ibáñez in his native Valencia. Valencia is a fertile land of fierce heat and dazzling light—the light so wonderfully reflected in the work of the Valencian painter Joaquín Sorolla. Blasco Ibánez has written some striking novels that have no connection with Valencia, but his best and most delightful work is steeped in the life of the immense Valencian plain (in “La Barraca,” an intense story of a boycott of the Huerta); of the city of Valencia (in “Arroz y Tartana”); of the rice-growing, fever-stricken marshes of the Albufera, famous for its fishing and shooting, near Valencia (“Cañas y Barro”); of the fishermen and smugglers of El Grao and the Valencian coastline (“Flor de Mayo”); of love among the oranges in the orchard of Spain (“Entre Naranjos”). Blasco Ibáñez excels in portraying the lives and thoughts and struggles of the simple fisherman and peasant—hardworking as Batiste, or magnificently idle as Pimentó; and in describing popular customs and traditions,—a simple procession in floodtime (as in “Entre Naranjos”) or the dances and festeigs, courtings, of the atlóts and atlotas of Ibiza (in “Los Muertos mandan”). The hero of “Los Muertos mandan” (1909), Don Jaime or Chaume, is not a peasant, but a member of an ancient family of Mallorcan nobles, hemmed in by tradition and inherited instincts. The background, however, of descriptions of Mallorca and lawless peasant life in Ibiza, with its woods and orchards and white farms girt by a green transparent sea, contribute more powerfully to the charm of the book than the wrestling of Don Jaime against the clinging influence of the innumerable dead, who still prevail. But, indeed, Blasco Ibáñez’ presentation of any strenuous life-struggle is forcible and imposing. It reflects his own personality. His creed is one of restless striving and discontent with the apathy too frequent in Spain. His activity is immense: though little over forty years of age, his novels are already many in number, short stories and articles are continually appearing from his pen, he lectures, travels, translates, publishes, controls a Valencian paper, El Pueblo, and till the autumn of 1908 represented Valencia in Parliament as a Republican; now his energies are occupied in founding two towns—to be called New Valencia and Cervantes—for colonies of Valencians in the Argentine.

Blasco Ibáñez once wrote a long novel of the French Revolution, “Viva la República!” and in his ideas and in his art the influence of France has, no doubt, been very strong. His ideas sometimes trespass on his art, as in “La Catedral,” where, in the person of Gabriel Luna, he declaims tediously and without mercy. His novels, as a rule, show an admirable unity. In each of his heroes we see Blasco Ibáñez: but Blasco Ibáñez entirely identified with the peasant Batiste (in “La Barraca”), or the painter Renovales (in “La Maja Desnuda”), or the Socialist Luna (in “La Catedral”), or the bull-fighter Gallardo (in “Sangre y Arena”). His very manner catches the atmosphere and colour of the surroundings he describes. He becomes vulgar in the descriptions of commercial, crowded Valencia, wearisome in details of the feasts of its bourgeois and the various foods of its market-place (in “Arroz y Tartana”); he can be magnificently simple, with the soul of a peasant or a fisherman (in “La Barraca” and “Flor de Mayo”), and the fertile Huerta gives free scope to his luxuriant art, his overflow of poetry and imagination. This power of concentration, which Blasco Ibáñez possesses in so high a degree, is rare in Spanish literature. The heroes of Blasco Ibáñez’ novels are men strong to labour, persistent before defeat. They are almost always defeated and die, Gallardo in the arena, Luna assassinated in Toledo Cathedral, the Pascuals, fishermen of three generations, drowned in storms off the Valencian coast. But the dominant note of his novels is still “E pur si muove,” and in spirit his heroes are as unconquerable as Don Quixote. He has Zola’s power of describing crowds; in “La Horda” appears the multitude of hucksters and street-sellers that haunt the Madrid Rastro; and similarly the background of “Luna Benamor” (1909) is formed by a vivid description of Gibraltar, with its motley crowd of Spaniards and Jews and Moors and Englishmen. His prose is suited to these descriptions; it is living, coloured, tumultuous, sometimes hurried and careless—a Spanish critic speaks of his barbarismos gramaticales. From so voluminous and passionate a writer we should expect nothing of the polished or the exquisite, his work is in the rough; in a sense its incorrect ardour is Spanish, but its persistent energy is a refreshing note in Spain, and may well cover an occasional fault of taste or an ungrammatical sentence here and there. His works are nearly always striking and original, however hurried may have been their composition.

It has been remarked that the younger Spanish novelists are rather thinkers than artists, and Pío Baroja, Martínez Ruiz (Azorín) and Valle-Inclán have introduced an almost alien note into Spanish literature. It is significant that two at least of these writers, Azorín and Pío Baroja, are keen admirers of the essentially intellectual art of El Greco: Theotocopuli has cast over them the spell of his ascetically thin figures and cold attenuated tints. Pío Baroja is almost Russian in his pitilessly accurate descriptions, in his rebellion against the facts of life and his championship of the persecuted—outcasts, criminals, and vagabonds. In “La Ciudad de la Niebla” (1909), “The City of Fog,” he brings his clear, almost photographic, vision to bear on London, and chiefly on the dingier districts, Bloomsbury, Covent Garden, the squalid labyrinth of streets off Shaftesbury Avenue, the Docks, the Embankment. Similarly in “César ó Nada” (1910) he continues to write in a spirit of mocking reckless individualism. The narrative is but a slender thread to string together his observations of men and places.[106] Azorín, again, is not concerned with the form of his novels. He is a thinker, a psychological analyst, who deliberately disregards construction. Yuste, in “La Voluntad,” voices the author’s opinions; “Particularly,” he says, “the novel must have no plot; life itself has no plot: it is varied, many-sided, floating, contradictory—everything except symmetrical, geometrical, rigid, as it appears in novels.” The novel must give fragments, separate sensations. In “Las Confesiones de un pequeño filósofo” Azorín gives us his original impressions, his fragmentary sensations of “figures et choses qui passaient” in a style full of poetry and charm. His “La Voluntad” is a book very modern in its restless thought and individualistic philosophy. It has that originality of which Yuste, the philosopher of the book, speaks as consisting in “something undefinable, a secret fascination of thought, a mysterious suggestiveness of ideas.” The rare charm of Azorín’s style and his skill in descriptions, emoción del paisaje, imaginatio locorum, clothe with serenity his “obstinate questionings of sense and outward things,” and with peace his purely intellectual spirit and disquieting irony. With Ramón del Valle-Inclán, again, construction and plot are secondary. The action is slightly sketched in his novels, but incidents and persons are thrown into high relief by the delicate and original character of his style. It is a style built up of all that is rare and exquisite, with a sobriety that chisels a finished picture in a single phrase. In “El Resplandor de la Hoguera,” for instance, a green path leading from a small Basque village to its cemetery is simply described as “todo en paz de oratión,” and such lonely word pictures abound in his writings. His latest work, a trilogy, is “La Guerra Carlista,” and the action of the first part, “Los Cruzados de la Causa” (1908), passes in a village of Galicia. The haughty, great-hearted Gallegan hidalgo Don Juan Manuel, perhaps the best of Valle-Inclán’s vivid character-sketches, appears in this as in many others of his novels. The second part, “El Resplandor de la Hoguera” (1909), follows the broken movements of the guerilla fighting in the intricate Basque country; and the third part (each part forming, however, a separate novel), “Gerifaltes de Antaño” (1909), describes the furtive but daring tactics of that sinister Carlist cabecilla, Manuel Santa Cruz, priest of Hernialde, leading his men at night, “swift and silent as a wolf,” by labyrinthine mountain paths, past maize-fields and chestnut-trees and vineyards, and scented meadows under the stars, or ordering execution after execution of men and women “with a mystical coldness and internal peace.” His cruelty was that of the peasant who lights a fire to destroy the plagues of his vineyard. He watched the smoke go up as an evening sacrifice—

“Lo que á unos encendía en amor, á los otros los encendía en odio, y el cabecilla pasaba entre el incendio y el saqueo, anhelando el amanecer de paz para aquellas aldeas húmedas y verdes, que regulaban su vida por la voz de las campanas, al ir al campo, al yantar, al cubrir el fuego de ceniza y llevar á los pesebres el recado de yerba. Era su crueldad como la del viñador que enciende hogueras contra las plagas de su viña. Miraba subir el humo como en un sacrificio, con la serena esperanza de hacer la vendimia en un día del Señor, bajo el oro del sol y la voz de aquellas campanas de cobre antiguo, bien tañidas.”

It is difficult to analyse the fascination of these novels. Their incidents seem trivial enough and the characters speak in thin, broken sentences; but the effect is a marvellously vivid picture of the flickering scenes of the last Carlist war and the hill tactics of the cabecillas. The thin lines are due not to any poverty of inspiration but to the restraint of a consummate artist. The most recent Spanish novelist of note is Ricardo León, a young writer from Málaga, whose first novel, “Casta de Hidalgos,” was published in the autumn of 1908, followed by “Comedia Sentimental” in 1909, and “Alcalá de los Zegríes,” “La Escuela de los Sofistas” (a volume of dialogues), and “El Amor de los Amores” in 1910. These books are the work of a writer who has read and assimilated the best of Spanish literature from its earliest beginnings, chronicles, legends, serranillas, fervent religious treatises. His style is, indeed, not unworthy of the Spanish mystics. It has at once richness and sobriety, it is steeped in archaic humanism, but tinged with modern sadness and disillusion; it is, as the author might himself call it, “un castellano de clásico sabor.” It has in it nothing strained or artificial, being, rather, the flowing expression of a mystical intensity. He gives admirable pictures of the thoughts and lives of old-fashioned proud hidalgos, “after the pattern of the ancient hidalgos of Castille,” such as Don Juan Manuel, who lives in ruinous Santillana with its sadness of centuries, tristeza milenaria, in “Casta de Hidalgos;” or of serious, reserved philosophers, such as Don Juan Antonio in “Comedia Sentimental.” “Alcalá de los Zegríes” contains many passages of noble Spanish prose, and others of psychological interest; but it is for the most part concerned with politics and party strife. The Spaniards, as a rule, are more interested in politics than in literature. Valera’s celebrated “Pepita Jiménez” brought him no more than eight thousand reales, or under £80, and Señor Unamuno, the Rector of Salamanca University, a prominent Spanish thinker and writer, has declared that literary opinion in Spain is formed by some five hundred persons, “quinientas personas mal contadas.” The novelists may protest, but the novel gains. There is no temptation to write in order to please the taste of a public which does not exist. If there is something commercial in the methodical output of Pérez Galdós’ or Blasco Ibáñez’ novels, commercialism has certainly, hitherto, had but little part in Spanish literature. Limited, unliterary Spain has had this advantage. The world’s debate has not vulgarized it; a half-culture has not dragged down the novel to flamboyant, self-advertising methods. The novel in Spain is at its best when it rejects, or has not come into contact with, foreign influences. It can be realistic without thought of this or that school. It fascinates by its original flavour and scent of the soil.

XX

NOVELS OF GALICIA

THE inhabitants of Galicia have been held to be the Boeotians of Spain, yet the fact that in the political world many eminent persons are Gallegans seems to show that Galicia has been maligned. To Galicia, too, belong two gifted modern writers, the Condesa Emilia Pardo Bazán and Don Ramón del Valle-Inclán. Señora Pardo Bazán belongs to the older group of Spanish novelists; born in 1851,[107] she published her two well-known novels of Galicia, “Los Pazos de Ulloa,” and “La Madre Naturaleza,” in 1886 and 1887, and “De mi tierra,” a book of scenes and essays of Galicia, in 1888. It is as a regional novelist that Señora Pardo Bazán has won her most glorious laurels. “Galicienne ella adore les choses de la Galice,” says M. Vézinet,[108] and he adds that she develops the same subjects as French naturalists, but avoids the licentiousness of which they are so fond. The multitude of her tasks and interests has necessarily hampered her art as a novelist. “She has unfortunately diffused her energies in all directions,” says Mr. Fitzmaurice-Kelly. “No one can succeed in everything—as a poet, a romancer, an essayist, a critic, a lecturer, and a politician. Yet the Condesa Pardo Bazán is all this, and more. We would gladly exchange all her miscellaneous writings for another novel like ‘Los Pazos de Ulloa.’”[109]

“Los Pazos de Ulloa” is a novel impregnated with the atmosphere of Galicia. Los Pazos is a large country-house in a remote valley of maize and vines and chestnuts, reached on horseback through a desolate wolf-country, país de lobos. Its furniture is rickety, its window-frames have no glass, though it is not so ruinous as Los Pazos de Limioso some leagues away, which lacks even window-frames. The village priest of Ulloa has but two devotions, those of the jarro and the escopeta, the wine-jar and the gun; the drinking of water and the use of soap he holds alike to be effeminate. The Marqués de Ulloa, too, frank, noble at heart, but cynical, often brutal, spends much of his time at village fairs, and shooting partridges in the maize or among pines and scented hill-plants. He is totally in the power of his servant Primitivo, who manages his estates. Primitivo, too, holds the peasants, as he says, in the palm of his hand. They are patient workers who, however, in the opinion of the Marqués de Ulloa, need a strong hand to control them—some one like Primitivo que les dé ciento de ventaja en picardía, that is, who will know two tricks to their one. When the Marqués disburdens himself to the new chaplain, Don Julián, in the wild neglected garden, on the subject of Primitivo, he becomes aware by a rustling in the undergrowth that Primitivo has been listening to the outburst. When, as a first step to freedom, he determines to leave Los Pazos on a visit to his uncle at Santiago de Compostella, Primitivo makes no open opposition, but the mare is unshod, the donkey has been mysteriously wounded. The Marqués and Julián determine to go on foot to Cebre, where they will take the diligence. The path grows wilder, the woods close in more thickly, a cross shows where a man has been killed, there is no sound but that of the woodcutters among the chestnuts. The Marqués, keenly alert, sees the glint of a gun’s barrel in the brushwood pointing at the chaplain, who is held to be the instigator of this rebellion. It is Primitivo “out shooting.” The book is a gloomy picture of a rich country ruined by mismanagement, underhand dealing, and ignorance. The Marqués de Ulloa’s agent has the peasants so completely in his power that he is able to turn the scale of an election. He began by methodically robbing his master in the administration of his estate, and the money so obtained he lends to the peasants, who are driven to borrow that they may be able to continue to work their land. Primitivo charges an interest of eight per cent. (per month), and in years of famine he raises the interest. The country and its inhabitants are described with a master-hand. Don Ramón del Valle-Inclán is one of the new school of Spanish novelists, and properly belongs to the twentieth century. He is above all things a stylist. In his sutiles prosas there is an exquisite restraint, with here and there a tinge of archaism and a haunting music of soft languid cadences. He loves the rare, the delicate, the costly, and his art is to write of luxury in sober phrases, instinct with sadness and the magic of regret. It is a style of silk and cut crystal, as of silver-work or polished ivory handled by thin ascetic fingers. In his four “Sonatas” (Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter) we have the memoirs of the Marqués de Bradomín, the recollections of his former loves. The scene of “Sonata de Primavera” is an Italian palazzo with the lilacs in flower along its terraces and roses filling the garden between the cypresses, while the scene of “Sonata de Estío” is Mexico in all the luxurious growth of its summer vegetation. In the “Sonata de Invierno” the scene is the Carlist Court at Estella and the setting is more gloomy. The Marquis loses an arm in the service of King Charles VII., and from the window of his sick-room at Villareal de Navarra looks out on a road lined with leafless poplars and mountains flecked with snow. But these novels do not equal “Sonata de Otoño,” the scene of which is in Señor Valle-Inclán’s native Galicia. Two lines of Verlaine in some way describe the novel:—

“Dans le vieux parc solitaire et glacé
Deux spectres ont évoqué le passé.”

It is a book that may be read in little more than an hour, yet it has many arresting pages. A few short sentences, words thrown here and there at random with concealed art, give a wonderfully clear picture of green, rainy Galicia, with its hills and streams. We see the hills and more hills veiled in mist, the flocks of white and black sheep, the mills, the white smoke rising from the houses among the fig-trees, the distant blue mountains tipped with the first snows, a flight of doves against green fields above the tower of a Pazo, a stony bridle-path with its bramble hedges and great pools of water at which oxen drink, the peasants arriving to pay their tribute of corn at the Palacio, the shepherds coming down from the hills wearing their capes of reeds. Women return singing from the fountain, an old man drives on his cows as they stop to graze, a half-witted woman gathers scented herbs and simples that have mickle grace to “give health to the soul and cure the ills of the herd.” And there is the Palacio de Bradomín, with its flight of wide granite steps; a path leads to it through the green, drenched countryside, and the autumn sun lights up its windows among tall chestnut-trees. A fountain trickles and birds sing in the old garden of myrtle, cedar, and cypress, still in late autumn brimmed with roses, though “the paths were covered with dry and yellow leaves that the wind swept with a slow rustling; the snails, motionless como viejos paralíticos, as old paralytics, were taking the sun on the seats of stone.” The passages of the Palacio are long and gloomy, and cold strikes through the large silent rooms, so that in all of them logs of wood burn brightly, stirred with tongs of “ancient bronze, elaborately worked.” The bare branches of the trees graze the windows of the library, where, among the parchment bindings, reigns a monastic peace, un sueño canónico y doctoral.

It is in a minute chiselling of details that lies Señor Valle-Inclán’s strength. The snails in the garden, the shape of the glasses, the silver chains of a hanging-lamp—nothing is passed over as insignificant. But the details are given in few words, with the clear precision of a skilled craftsman. And he has the power to set his characters in strong relief. Thus in “Sonata de Otoño” we have that muy gran señor Don Juan Manuel, who on his first appearance hurries away “to Villa del Prior, to thrash a clerk.” It is his custom to ride over from his country-house, his Pazo, two leagues away, tie his horse to the Palacio garden-gate, enter and call to a servant for wine—for that excellent vino de la Fontela which would be the best in the world, he says, if pressed from selected grapes—drink and fall asleep, and then waking up call loudly for his horse, whether it chances to be night or day, and ride back to his Pazo. There is a glimpse of the mother of Concha, who would tell the children stories of the saints, and with “mystic, noble fingers” slowly turn the pages to show them the pictures of the Christian Year; of the mother of Xavier, who would pass her days in the recess of a wide balcony spinning for her servants, in a chair of crimson velvet studded with silver nails. There is thin, white Concha, so saintly and so frail; there is Xavier, Marqués de Bradomín, himself, the gallant, cynical sceptic; there is the page Florisel, the old servant Candelaria, with their rare and far-sought names.

In “Flor de Santidad,” perhaps the best of Señor Valle-Inclán’s books, we have the same delicate descriptions of Galicia—the sinister inn, solitary in a gloomy brown Sierra; the shepherdess, keeping her flock and seeing mystic visions among the Celtic stones, yellowed with ancient lichens, líquenes milenarios; the simple greeting of the peasants: Alabado sea Dios, “Glory be to God”; pilgrims and witches; charms and magical incantations to preserve the flocks from evil; cunning and simplicity, superstition and crime. The same charm of mystical simplicity and innocence that surrounds Adega, the girl shepherdess of “Flor de Santidad,” surrounds all the heroines of Señor Valle-Inclán’s novels; Maximina, for instance, of the sorrowful, velvet eyes, ojos aterciopelados y tristes, in “Sonata de Invierno.” It is in “Flor de Santidad” that occurs the picture, repeated in “Jardín Novelesco,” of the old peasant woman going with her little grandson to find him a master. They meet the Archpriest of Lestrove, who is riding leisurely—de andadura mansa y doctoral—to preach at a village festival. “May God give us a holy and good day.” The Archpriest draws in his mare. “Are you going to the fair?” he asks. “The poor have nothing to do at the fair. We are going to look for a master for the boy.” “And does he know his catechism?” “Yes, Señor, he knows it. Poverty does not prevent from being a Christian.” The grandmother leaves the nine-year-old child in the service of a blind beggar. “To be the servant of a blind man is a position many would like to have,” says the beggar, and the new Lazarillo answers sorrowfully, “Sí, Señor, sí.” As she watches them go slowly away along the road through the wet green country, she murmurs, drying her tears: “Nine years old and already earning the bread he eats. Glory be to God.”

Incidents and characters are thrown into the relief given by the peculiar and original magic of Señor Valle-Inclán’s delicately chiselled prose. There is in this prose something icily fresh, something of lilacs and hydrangeas, vague reminiscences of the silver tinkling of voices in a glass-roofed market, or of the swish of a scythe in wet grass. The words are cunningly weighed and chosen and set as gouttes d’argent d’orfévrerie. And the transparent freshness of his style is admirably suited to describe the primitive simplicity and freshness of Galicia.

XXI

NOVELS OF THE MOUNTAIN

I.—“Savour of the Soil”

FIFTY years ago, before Zola and the naturalistic school were on the lips of men, a Spanish novelist, José María de Pereda, was beginning to write who can only not be called a naturalist, because of the associations given to the name in France. Humour and frankness run through Spanish literature; there is less artificial refinement and more vigour and broadly human sympathy than in the literature of France. The very language is frank and outspoken rather than subtle and insinuating. And the nobly independent character of Spaniards of all classes counts for much in the admirable sanity of Spanish realism. “Our lowest social strata,” says the Condesa Pardo Bazán, “differ not a little from those described by Zola and the Goncourts.” The Spanish realist has thus no cause to dissect common people and vulgar events from a superior point of view, putting on gloves, as it were, to keep his hands clean. He knows that virtue perches in strange places and learns to see le sublime d’en bas, and there is a wide gulf between French naturalism and Spanish realism. Pereda,[110] a hidalgo of the old school, born at Santander on the 6th of February, 1833, spent the greater part of his life in the Montaña, at Santander, or at his country estate of Polanco, only leaving Cantabria to study for a few years at Madrid, and later to sit for a few months in the Cortes as a Carlist. The rest of his life he passed among his family and books and friends in his beloved Montaña.[111] His friend in private life, Señor Pérez Galdós, describes him as dark, sunburnt, of medium height, with moustache and pointed beard, of a character fundamentally Spanish, and of very nervous temperament, with a horror of conventionality and pretence. It was about the year 1859 that custom and character sketches from Pereda’s pen began to appear in a Santander paper, La Abeja Montañesa. They were collected in 1864, and published under the title of “Escenas montañesas.” “Escenas montañesas” gives the essence of Pereda’s art, and, though he later wrote long novels and occasionally attained an admirable unity of treatment, the delight is still in the descriptions of fast-vanishing customs and in the characters of his peasants and fishermen rather than in the thread of the action, which is generally slight; and the strength of his novels lies not in their heroes and heroines but in the secondary figures and the side-shows. “Escenas montañesas” shows us life in Santander and the neighbouring mountain-country as it was half a century ago, and as it now lives permanently in Pereda’s art. Scenes and people are presented to us with extraordinary vividness, and only now and then the sketches read almost too much like observations taken directly from the note-book. We have the picaresque sketch of the raquero, the Santander gamin who lives by petty larceny from ships along the quays; the old-fashioned household in a mountain village—by a hereditary privilege Saint John is looked upon as one of the family, and the Saint’s procession raiment figures in the washing list; the wake at a village funeral, with the frequent toast, “to the glory of the dead,” á la buena gloria del defunto; tía Nisca, going her long homeward journey on foot after bidding farewell to her son on a ship bound for “the Indies,” and reproaching the unfertile soil that causes its sons to emigrate, though there is a song that men who go to the Indies in order to get rich would find the Indies at home, were they but willing to work:—

“A las Indias van los hombres
A las Indias por ganar,
Las Indias aquí las tienen
Si quisieran trabajar;”

and especially the noble figure of tío Tremontorio (the first and foremost of Pereda’s long line of masterly portraits in humble life, and the last of that race of hardy fishermen who, with the Basques, rivalled English whalers in the North Seas and made treaties with English kings during the Middle Ages), net-making, or eating his bread and raw bacalao on his balcony in the squalid Calle Alta, or consoling the wives and mothers of fishermen on the Muelle Anaos (in “La Leva”), and dying cheerfully (in “El fin de una raza”), after many hours of battling with the waves, glad to die quietly in his house, although he had nearly perished in the storm owing to his unwillingness to lose an escapulario of the Vírgen del Carmen. “We are all sailors of that further sea,” he says, in his rough language, as he lies dying, “all bound for the same port. If the devil does not block it against us, I to-morrow and you another day will cast anchor there.” “Suum cuique” is the longest and not the least excellent of these Escenas. A poor hidalgo of the mountain, Don Silvestre Seturas, visits a powerful friend at Madrid, and is speedily disillusioned of the capital and only court. His friend in turn accompanies him to his ancestral country-house, and is delighted at first with the country and its idyllic peace. But the rat de ville begins to discover, after some months, that the country has neither peace nor poetry—“Barbarus híc ego sum quia non intelligor ulli”—and returns to Madrid. Several incidents contribute to his change of opinion, incidents which reveal the character of the peasants and illustrate the fact that Pereda, while he makes us love the peasants of the Montaña, is never blind to their faults and weaknesses. The rich madrileño had decided to give a clock for the tower of the village church. But distrust occupies a large place in the character of the villagers, and they fear the rich even when bringing gifts. What hidden intention is there in this unwonted generosity? The Mayor calls the Council together, and the result is a long document for the donor to sign. He is to undertake to place the clock in the tower at his own cost; he is to give an annuity of two thousand reales to meet any expenses connected with the clock; he is to build another tower if the present one falls down “in my time or in that of all the generations and heirs that may come after me”; he is to pay for all lawsuits arising from the clock in the village, or in the neighbourhood. When he tears up the paper, the villagers’ suspicion of some afterthought in his gift is irrefragably confirmed. Lawsuits are the passion of the Mountain. One has continued in Don Silvestre’s family for seven generations, and he himself, having through poverty to choose between remaining a bachelor all his life and giving up the lawsuit, chooses the former without wavering. The last straw in his friend’s patience is a lawsuit drawn up against him because, when he was out shooting, part of a wall of loose stones round a peasant’s fields crumbled down shortly after he happened to have fired at a bird.

“Bocetos al temple” (1876), and “Tipos Trashumantes” (1877), show the same power of keen observation. Pereda, who treats the failings of the peasants with unsparing, but withal benevolent humour, becomes merciless and even cruel when dealing with the pretentiousness of the vulgar and the inanity of rich désœuvrés. It has been wittily said of him that “he reverses the apostolic precept: so far from suffering fools gladly, he gladly makes fools suffer.” Without going outside his province he found matter ready to his hand in the veraneantes, the flâneurs from Madrid, who passed the hot months in Santander.

Thus in “Tipos Trashumantes” he pillories the sabio, the learned man, who allows that Cervantes was not an entirely common man, but regrets that neither Cervantes nor Calderón possessed the “philosophy of æsthetics,” or who despises the inhabitants of Santander because they have not heard of Jeeéguel (Hegel); the literato or journalist who, because a speaker in Cortes had rendered Dante popular by a quotation, murmurs, “come corpo morto cade” if he drops his stick or cigar; the barber who misses in Santander that indefinable “air” of Madrid;—in fact, a procession of quacks and knaves, and fools and snobs: perhaps the only “sympathetic” figure is that of the Barón de la Rescoldera, who “has never a good word nor a bad deed.” It is pleasant to turn back to village scenes in “Tipos y Paisajes” (forming a second part of “Escenas montañesas,” 1871). Here we find the enriched “Indian” (that is a montañés who has returned to his country after making a fortune in South America); the schoolmaster, in a serviceable coat of black, who writes letters for the whole village, and shuts himself up in his house to get, if not drunk, at least very intoxicated; the peasant Blas, who, after inheriting thirty thousand dollars, is miserable, but feels that he must live como un señor now that he is rich, and dismisses as a temptation to be resisted the wish to go as of old, with goad on shoulder, along the high-road by the side of his oxen; the practical, rough, kindly priest, Don Perfecto; Don Robustiano, an old-fashioned hidalgo, who does not allow the modern use of matches in his household, and who, from the experiences of his own poverty, is not easily misled, when he visits a neighbouring hidalgo, by the excuses for “my wife and daughter at church.” “I see through you,” says Don Robustiano to himself, “no doubt they are hidden away in some corner of the house for lack of clothes.” But especially is the sketch entitled El Amor de los tizones admirable and worthy of Cervantes. It is a description of a rustic gathering or tertulia in the kitchen of one of the poor houses of a mountain village. The peasants—each of them a clearly defined character—enter one by one with the greeting, “Dios nos acompañe” or, “Dios sea aquí,” and round the log fire, the flicker of the flames lighting up their faces against the immense smoke-blackened chimney, they pray a rosario for the dead, or tell stories of brigands, and witches, and enchantments. “Los hombres de pró” (originally published with “Bocetos al temple”) and “El Buey Suelto” (written in 1877) are still collections of sketches, the first of a canvassing for an election in rural parts of Spain, the second, of the miseries of bachelors, and the scenes in both are touched with Pereda’s vividness and humour. Pereda, as a novelist proper, begins with “Don Gonzalo González de la Gonzalera” (written in 1878), which describes the effects of the revolution of 1868 on a small village of the Mountain, with “De tal palo tal astilla” (1879), an answer to Pérez Galdós’ “Doña Perfecta,” “El Sabor de la Tierruca” (1882) and “Pedro Sánchez” (1883). “El Sabor de la Tierruca” (Savour of the Soil) is a whole-hearted book of the Montaña; its serenity is scarcely disturbed by the frequent village fights and rivalries in which the weapons are stout sticks cut from the mountain-side. The book is filled with a fresh and acrid smell of the earth and autumn scents, and has the peace of still days when not a leaf stirs, and there is no movement in the ripe and yellow maize-fields. It is a life lived and felt by the author and not superficially observed, so that there is no trace of artificiality or false sentiment in the descriptions. Cumbrales and Rinconeda are rival villages, Cumbrales lying high among orchards, Rinconeda lower down on the edge of the plain, in thick oak and chestnut woods. Rinconeda rejoices when the raging ábrego, the south wind, sweeps in furious gusts from the hills and ravages Cumbrales; Cumbrales rejoices when the rain turns every street of Rinconeda into a rushing torrent. The characters of the inhabitants of Cumbrales are drawn with all Pereda’s skill; Juanguirle, for instance, a rich, hard-working peasant, the simple, sensible Mayor of Cumbrales; Baldomero, who “cannot understand how doing nothing, thinking of nothing, troubling about nothing, can be unpleasant to any sensible person”; his father, Don Valentín, “hero of Luchana” and worshipper of Espartero, who, after a frugal meal, says to his son that it is not the part of good Liberals to be so indulging themselves when the Carlists are flaunting “the black flag of tyranny,” to which Baldomero answers laconically that it would have sounded more convincing before the meal. There is an epic fight between the two villages which rages so violently that the Mayor, Juanguirle, in vain attempts to stop it “in the name of la Josticia, in the name of the law, of la Costitución, of God Himself, if necessary, since, for lack of a better, I am now His representative here.” A few moments afterwards sad to relate, Juanguirle, stung by an insult hurled at Cumbrales, is in the very thickest of the fray. In “Escenas montañesas” Pereda had slightly sketched a deshoja, the harvest task of separating the ripe cob of maize from its sheath. A certain number of cobs (from two to six) are set aside from each large basketful for the poor, for the souls in purgatory, and other pious purposes. In “El Sabor de la Tierruca” the scene is described more fully. The workers, over fifty in number, sing songs and slow ballads as the heaps of shining yellow cobs and the heaps of crisp, white leaves grow and grow, and their singing is accompanied at intervals by the noise of torrents of maize-cobs emptied from the baskets. We have, too, a description of a derrota, when flocks and herds are turned out promiscuously to graze, of the game of cachurra, a kind of rustic hockey, and the simple feasts of roasted chestnuts with a bota of wine. Yet all is not “jest and youthful jollity.” The peasants, in their prudent distrust, have a keen eye for witches, and a weak old woman, of few words, poor and lonely, and in league with the Devil, plays a sadly large part in the history of Cumbrales. So in “Tipos y Paisajes,” the witch is feared not only by the boys whom she surprises stealing the grapes in the garden of her hut, but by the whole village. If a cow dies, it is the fault of the witch; if a man spends his days drinking in the tavern, the misery of his family is traced, not to him, but to the witch.

II.—“On the Heights”

In “Pedro Sánchez” Pereda, not without trepidation, travelled outside his native region to Madrid, then, in 1854, “a large tumbledown village, parched, old, and dirty;”[112] but Pedro Sanchez is a montañés, and the first part of the book, before he leaves his native Montaña, in style far exceeds the rest. The chief[113] works of Pereda, after “El Sabor de la Tierruca” and “Pedro Sánchez,” were “Sotileza” (1885), “La Puchera” (1889), and “Peñas arriba” (1895). “Sotileza” is a novel of the old, now vanished, Santander. Both in the characters and the language it is the most local of Pereda’s novels, and it is perhaps the one which has become most famous. It has an atmosphere of pitch and tar and sea-weed, and in the Calle Alta nets and tattered rags hang from the balconies, fishwives quarrel shrilly, and the strident, piercing cry of the sardine-seller rends the air. Andrés, Muergo, and Cleto are all in love with Silda, and Silda, growing up slight and graceful, and called Sotileza from the name for the thin wire or gut to which the fish-hook is attached, is not naturally prone to let her feelings appear. But Andrés, the son of a prosperous captain in the merchant service, cannot marry beneath him; Muergo, the half-brutish, half-childish nephew of tío Mechelín and tía Sidora, with whom Sotileza, an orphan, lives, is conveniently drowned in a storm; and we leave Sotileza engaged to Cleto, the honest son of tío Mocejón, who, with his wife, la Sargüeta, and his daughter, Carpia, are the terror of the Calle Alta and of el pae Polinar. El padre Apolinar is a charitable, homely priest who receives his poor petitioners with gruff words, but ends by giving them the little that he possesses. One night, as he is writing his important sermon, he is interrupted—not for the first time—by a poor woman whose husband is ill. “Let her go to the doctor,” he exclaims; but when he finds they are starving, “Ave María Purísima,” he cries twice, “and he has three children and a wife, and there is no more honest man.” He orders his old servant to bring the puchero containing potatoes and a little meat—the priest’s evening meal. After sniffing it deliciously, he sends it off to the sick man, and as he resumes his sermon he says to himself: “I have certainly read somewhere that to keep in good health when engaged on so difficult a task as the one I now have in hand, there is nothing better than to go to bed hungry. Well, there is no doubt as to my being hungry, wolfishly hungry, to-night.” Sotileza leaves an impression of wind-driven spray and tossing seas, of manly courageous effort and vigour and zest of living; the difficulty of the language and the roughness of the life described alike contribute to the power and convincing character of the work. Pereda never showed more admirably his capacity to raise the commonest lives, the most vulgar incidents and the language of the street—of the strident Calle Alta from which pae Polinar fled in comical dismay—to the region of high art. There is something epical about his figures, in the clamorous feuds of the fishwives not less than in the serene heroism of the deep-sea fishermen. “La Puchera” is only half a sea-novel. The inhabitants of Robleces only go sea-fishing to eke out the miserable pittance won by cultivation of the soil. Thus in the house of Juan Pedro (called El Lebrato) and Pedro Juan, his son (nicknamed El Josco, from his ferocious shyness), fishing-tackle and oars mingle with agricultural tools. Juan Pedro is a widower, and father and son are entirely devoted to one another, but their house is untidy and uncomfortable for lack of a woman’s care. Pedro Juan is in love with Pilara, Pilara is in love with Pedro Juan, her family encourages the match, his father asks for nothing better, but Pedro Juan cannot break through his timidity and bring himself to speak. At last, however, he is emboldened when Pilara at the haymaking, in scarlet skirt, bodice of striped blue, and headkerchief of many colours, arranging the hay on the cart as he forks it up to her, leaps laughingly from the last hay-cart into his arms. “Pilara, from here to the Church for the señor priest to marry us. Will you agree to it?” And she answers, “We might have been back long ago, hijo de mi alma, if you had been different.” Though the miser of the book, Don Baltasar, is most skilfully drawn, its interest centres more especially in the life of Juan Pedro and Pedro Juan: Juan Pedro, gay and talkative, appearing on festival days with his famous sea-boots, his Cochin-China medal, and a silk necktie; Pedro Juan, who at his wedding, when asked by the priest, Don Alejo, if he will have Pilara to be his wife, answers: “And will I not indeed? She knows well I will, and you know it too.”

In 1895 appeared “Peñas arriba” (On the heights), the crown and masterpiece of Pereda’s work. It is a novel of the high mountain, as “Sotileza” is a novel of the sea. Don Celso lives in Tablanca in his ancestral house which holds lordship over a whole valley and has had the honour of lodging two prelates, the Bishops of León and Santander; but Don Celso is old and in failing health, and he so urgently begs his nephew Marcelo to come to him that, against his will, the latter leaves Madrid and his comfortable rooms in the Calle del Arenal. After a long ride on and on over high mountain passes and narrow, precipitous paths and haunts of bears, he reaches Tablanca after nightfall. A whistle from his attendant, Chisco, the barking of dogs, an uncertain light moving to and fro, black shapes round the light, a sound of voices, and Marcelo is received into his uncle’s arms. Next day, from the wide balconies, he discovers the mountains on one side nearly touching the house, on the other a chequer-work of green meadows and yellow stubble-fields of maize against a background of mountains green and brown and grey, and the village among rocks and brushwood and intricate paths. There is a saying in the village that the largest piece of flat ground is the floor of Don Celso’s dining-room. Of the characters of the book Don Sabas belongs to that noble army of humble parish priests described by Pereda—the village priest in “De tal palo tal astilla”; Don Frutos, discreet and talkative, in “Don Gonzalo”; the joyous priest of Robleces, regocijado de humor, in “La Puchera,” whose only vice is to go out to sea twice a week with the fishing-boats; and the incomparable pae Polinar in “Sotileza.” Don Sabas has a passion for the mountain, and, once upon the heights, the exact word and the right phrase come to him in which to express his enthusiasm and his deep knowledge of their plants and animals. To have given him a bishopric in a flat country would have meant death to him. He is fearless and untiring whether he is tracking a bear, or out in a snow-blizzard on the heights to rescue some peasant or herdsman who has not returned to the village, or visiting the sick on a black night of storm. Don Celso is also a noble figure, practical and imposing, and in his immense kitchen of an evening he holds a patriarchal gathering of peasants. We have, too, the splendid Tolstoian figure of the hidalgo of ancient race, Gómez de Pomar, the author of many books, unloading a cart of hay in his simple peasant’s dress. He is a model of noble courtesy—hidalga cortesía, his style is “spirited and vigorous, pure Castilian untainted, as the blood that flows in his veins.” Consciously or unconsciously, it is a self-portrait of Pereda. The book abounds in impressive scenes and characters; it was a subject dear to Pereda’s heart, and he produced a work which ranks among the great novels of the world. There is a certain solidity in Pereda’s writing well suited to describe the stern deep-shadowed mountain-country, while his unlatin love of the wild and desolate rejoices in the hurricanes that tear up trees and whirl the snow-drifts on the mountain-side. “Peñas arriba” represents the whole life and being of the author and gives us a full measure of the true sabor de la tierruca, the savour of the soil. In “Esbozos y Rasguños” Pereda ridicules those mad Cervantists who prove that Cervantes was omniscient, an excellent theologian, a cook, a sailor, a geographer, a freethinker, and who will soon prove that neither is Cervantes Cervantes, nor Don Quixote Don Quixote. But of the true spirit of Cervantes he had imbibed a large part, even though he never attained to his great-hearted tolerance and the wider outlook of those more spacious times. His prose[114] is robust and austerely free from foreign idioms, laden with dialect and phrases native to the soil. It has caught the vigorous freshness of the mountain air, and the scent of earth and woods and moors, the rush of the sea and the elemental simplicity of men ennobled by constant contact with earth and ocean. Pereda wrote out of the fulness of his heart, without seeking popularity. His rough grandeur, rugged as the country of “Peñas arriba,” his frequent use of dialect, his untranslatableness, make for few readers. But those who, like Don Sabas, care to leave the level country and climb the mountain height, will find in Pereda a classic, high and steadfast as the hills. Blindly though the iniquity of oblivion scattereth her poppy, it is perhaps not “prodigiously temerarious” to suspect that Pereda may still be read when Zola is forgotten.

XXII

CASTILIAN PROSE

“THE Spanish language,” said an English writer in 1701, “is properly none at all, for if the Spaniards were to restore to the Egyptians, Grecians, Arabians, Moors, Jews, Romans, Vandals, Huns, Goths, French, and, lastly, Italians, the words they have taken from them, they must of necessity remain dumb.” And, again, the Spanish language “consists of a’s and o’s, and nothing else but mouthing and grimace.” Another Englishman, sixty years later, says of the Spanish language, that “As there is something pompous and magnificent in the length of its words and the sound of them, so there is also a peculiarity in the turn and manner of their phrases and expressions.” In the time of Spain’s greatness a larger measure of justice is bestowed on the Spanish language. “It is expressive, noble, and grave,” says Mme. d’Aulnoy; “it is only our own (i.e. French) which excels it.” But with the decay of Spain’s material prosperity the language seems to have fallen into a disrepute; can a nation that possesses no gold currency and no battleships possess a language or literature worthy of the name? It may be admitted that many modern Spaniards themselves do not write correct or idiomatic Spanish; the language has been crowded with foreign importations, and while it is the easiest language to learn superficially, it is, by reason of its immense wealth of words and baffling reserves of idioms, one of the most difficult to learn well. “The best Castilian is here spoken,” said Mme. d’Aulnoy of Burgos, and it is still in Castille that the purest Spanish is to be learnt, in regions, i.e. where, owing to the climate, the foreigner makes but a briefest stay. Toledo is more likely to be visited for two days to see its churches, than for two months to learn the language; it gives no inviting impression of comfort to the stranger. In “Don Quixote” we read that “They cannot speak so well who are brought up in the Zocodover as those who spend the day walking to and fro in the cloisters of the Cathedral, yet all are Toledans.” But although among the peasants of Spain there are many prevaricadores del buen lenguaje, with reckless transposition of consonants (such as probe for pobre), their language is often essentially purer and more idiomatic, with “a peculiarity in the turn and manner of their phrases,” than that of the reprochadores de voquibles, who cast it in their teeth, and who would die rather than offend la grammaire, but allow themselves the constant use of foreign words and expressions in the construction of their sentences. True Castilian has a combined softness and vigour, enabling it to be at once impassioned and concise, a harmony and strength scarcely to be found in any other language, and a pithiness which springs from the soil and has not its origin in books. Many of Spain’s greatest writers have wielded lance and pen alternately; they are not “grammarians who hack and slash for the genitive case,” but in the clear shock and flow of vowels, scarcely interrupted by their setting of slurred consonants, we seem to hear a rumour of battle, and their words can be, like those of St. Francis of Assisi preaching, a modo che saette acute—very sharp arrows. This native vigour corrects the tendency to rich magnificence and trailing growth of words; while without this richness the Castilian language might be like staccato Catalan—a succession of quick pistol-shots, as it were, not the stately tones of an organ. It is not too much to say that Castilian—not the miserable Castilian of many of the newspapers and many modern authors, but Castilian at its best—has been excelled only by Greek. It is thus a language truly worth studying, and it is easily learnt; it has, next to English, the widest extension in the world, and it possesses a splendid literature of eight centuries, continued at the present day in a number of characteristic and fascinating novels. Yet the Castilian language, literarily, is so little studied that it seems to be considered to be “properly none at all;” and these novels when read in translations lose their savour. Cervantes prophesied that “Don Quixote” would be translated into all nations and languages, but, as Dante said that poetry cannot be translated “senza rompere tutta sua dolcezza e armonia,” so Cervantes likens translations to the reverse side of Flemish tapestries—the figures still visible, but obscured by a crowd of thread-ends. The best Spanish is still to be found in the writers of the golden age of Spanish literature, and especially in the writings of the mystics.

The style of Cervantes changes with his characters, who are allowed to murder Castilian in Spanish-Basque or Gascon-Catalan, but he is a master at will of the purest Castilian, in him never divorced from the full flavour of life, and he refers scornfully to the spurious continuation of “Don Quixote” as “written in Aragonese.” Equally castizo, hardily idiomatic and flavoured pungently, is the style of Quevedo. Of modern writers, Valera and Pereda, differing so widely, are alike in this, that they are both masters of noble Castilian prose, and have nothing to say to the imported phraseologies which pervade a large proportion of modern Spanish writing. Pérez Galdós, too, has a thoroughly Spanish style, robust and vigorous, rich in words, idiomatic. The most recent Spanish writers in a novellizing spirit tread more delicately; they resemble Sancho Panza, who, “when he was Governor, learnt to eat fastidiously, á lo melindroso, so that he would eat grapes and even the seeds of a pomegranate with a fork.” The style of León, indeed, is full and fine-sounding, and, like that of Valera, carries us back to the writings of the mystics in the sixteenth century; but Valle-Inclán (guilty only very occasionally of words such as madama or dandy) and Azorín have a mastery of deliberately thin, exquisitely clear-cut prose.[115] “Llovía menudo y ligero en aquella fertil valle del Baztan....”; in this passage of Valle-Inclán’s “Gerifaltes de Antaño” (1909), as in so many others, we have a delicate finished picture, reached after much labour of rejection and compression, though he has the art to conceal his affres du style. In a language so inexhaustibly rich as the Spanish, and with the tendency of Spaniards to write in hurried, copious fashion, this choice and sifting of words is welcome, and is in no danger of being carried to excess.

XXIII

TOLEDO AND EL GRECO

THE fame of El Greco[116] has of late years spread and deepened, although the full fascination of his pictures will perhaps never be understood, except by a few. Of his life we have but one or two threadbare details, and this is the more tantalizing because we feel that his life and character were of a strange, alluring interest. Before his coming to Spain, the most interesting fact we learn concerning him is contained in a letter of the artist Julio Clovio, written in November, 1570: “There has arrived in Rome a young Cretan, a disciple of Titian, and, in my opinion, an excellent painter—parmi raro nella pittura.” The date of El Greco’s birth is uncertain, but if he was a giovine in 1570, he would hardly have been seventy-seven at the time of his death in 1614. This assertion as to his age was made when the date of his death was given as 1625. It has been conjectured that it arose from an easy confusion between sesenta and setenta, and that he was not seventy-seven but sixty-seven; the year of his birth would then be 1547. The exact date of his arrival at Toledo is unknown, but it was about the year 1575; certainly in or before 1577. Toledo had ceased to be the capital and court of Spain, yet still remained the home not only of princes of the Church, but of many men of letters, and the Arabic MS. of “Don Quixote” was discovered in its market-place. Its cathedral was “the richest church in Christendom.” An Italian work published at Venice in 1563 records that “the priests reign triumphant in Toledo—trionfano—and give themselves up to good living, and no one reproves them.” The power of the Inquisition was at its height. From the gloom of the Escorial, Philip II.’s narrow, unbending spirit found many echoes in the stern cities of Castille. El Greco lived to see the expulsion of the Moriscos, and the utter decay of the trade and industry of Toledo and other cities. Antonelli’s project to make the Tagus navigable as far as Toledo was rejected scornfully: would not God have made it navigable had it been His will? Yet it was the golden age of Spanish letters, and during El Greco’s sojourn at Toledo the most humorous and broadly human figure of all literature was being elaborated in Cervantes’ brain. El Greco died at Toledo two years before the death of Cervantes and Shakespeare.

Pacheco says of El Greco that he was “in all things as singular as in his paintings.” Other stray notices represent him as “a great philosopher,” “eloquent in discourse,” a witty, acute speaker—de agudos dichos—a writer on painting, sculpture and architecture. We are further told that he earned many ducats but spent them in pomp and display, even keeping musicians to play to him during his meals. He would seem to have retained the soft atmosphere of Italian luxury amid the narrow, gloomy Toledo streets, and to have introduced an alien note of pleasure into the cold, intense existence of Castille. But if his life preserved about it a certain tinge of Venice (Venice that spent what Venice earned), his art was essentially Spanish. The mannerism of his painting might be deemed extravagant, as his caprices might not be understood, by many Spaniards. He was, they might say, “too picked, too spruce, too affected, too odd, as it were, too peregrinate.” They are the epithets of Holofernes describing a Spaniard; and what could be more Spanish than El Greco’s mingling of keen vision and realistic power as a portrait painter with an intense, unfailing spiritualism; than his vehement, almost tortured desire to shun the common and the vulgar—not the mere seeking after originality but a wish to be sincere, to express his own soul? His manner has not the sensuous richness of Italy but a Castilian, nay, a Toledan austerity. It is as “a sword of Spain, the ice-brook’s temper.” Already in his famous “Expolio” (in the Sacristy of Toledo Cathedral), painted not long after he had arrived in Spain, he had, as Señor Cossío says, abandoned the reds and golds of Italy for blue and carmine and ashen grey. As to the price of this picture he had a quarrel with the Chapter of Toledo Cathedral.[117] Assessors were appointed to value it and they found that, though the picture was beyond all price—no tiene prescio ni estimación—a verdict with which all who have seen the “Expolio” will readily agree, yet, having regard to “these poverty-stricken times,” they assessed it at nine hundred ducats, an extraordinarily high price for that period. The Chapter, on the other hand, offered a much smaller sum, and that under the condition that he should remove certain “improprieties”—ynpropiedades—from the picture, among them the figures of “the Virgin and the saints—las marias y nuestra señora—whose presence in the picture is contrary to the gospel, seeing that they were not actually present.” El Greco held out for his own price, but the Mayor, siding with the Chapter, decreed that he must either give up the picture or go to prison, and the painter submitted. The exquisitely beautiful figures that he was to have removed are, however, still in the picture, as well as the other ynpropiedades, so that he seems at least to have defied the narrow spirit of the letter in the priests who “reigned triumphant” at Toledo. Perhaps—in the temper of Alonso Cano towards the Chapter of Granada Cathedral—he threatened to destroy the “Expolio,” and the Chapter, having given him a hundred and fifty ducats on account, would be unwilling to lose their picture. Certainly El Greco would not say to himself with Frà Lippo Lippi—

“they must know!
Don’t you think they’re the likeliest to know,
They, with their Latin? so I swallow my rage,
Clench my teeth, suck my lips in tight, and paint
To please them.”

El Greco painted to please no one but himself and his individual vision. His next great picture, the “San Mauricio,” was painted by command of Philip II., but it did not please the King and in his lifetime was not placed in the Escorial, where it now is. No le contentó á su Magestad, says Sigüenza, and he goes on to say, “and this is small wonder, since it pleases but few, though it is said that it shows much art, aunque dizen es de mucho arte.” It is conceivable that the picture as a whole might seem ugly, and repel, especially on a first view, before the eye had embraced its wealth of beautiful details. The real reason, however, of its “not pleasing” was not the exaggerated drawing nor the harsh colouring, the dominant note of yellow and blue, but the realistic portrayal of the group of martyrs in the foreground. “Saints,” proceeded Sigüenza, “should be painted in such a manner that they may not take away the desire to pray, but may rather incite to devotion.”

“‘Ay, but you don’t so instigate to prayer,’
Strikes in the Prior! ‘when your meaning’s plain
It does not say to folks—remember matins—
Or, mind you fast next Friday.’”

The Spanish Church would willingly have reduced art to skull and bones. But El Greco saw that his Saints must be human before they could be divine. He had now inaugurated that realism which was to find its highest expression in the art of Velázquez, but which is evident also in the Saints and Madonnas of Murillo.

El Greco has not the immediate attraction and universal appeal of Velázquez; some of his pictures may displease at first and only gradually make their charm felt. What, then, we may ask, is El Greco’s peculiar fascination, the dominating power to attract or to repel in his pictures so great that it is apt to become almost an obsession? Is it the truth to life, or the aloofness from life, the clear expression of character or the spiritual submission to divine will? Does it lie in his fondness for those cold, simple colours, the pale greens and lilacs, grey and the blue of hydrangeas or of the surface of ice, that delight the soul of “primitive” and “decadent” alike; in the pervading life and movement, the slender, lengthened limbs and tapering figures; in the subtle permanence of expressions and attitudes that were “so fugitive”? Is it the passionate sincerity and striving that disdains rest and mere complacency of work accomplished, the noble discontent with effects achieved, the ceaseless longing to reach yet higher levels, till ultimately, as in his “Asunción,” the whole picture is moulded to a perfect realization of the soul’s desire, a harmonious unity of aspiration, “toccando un poco la vita futura”? Or is it the exquisite sadness, the air of acquiescence in suffering and fate unshunnable, or the wonderful peace and serene joy of some of his faces? It is a rare combination of all this that gives the essence of El Greco’s potent charm; it is the richness of contrast so truly Spanish, the marvellous rendering alike of heavenly things and things terrestrial, the wild magic of his imagination, the sober individual alchemy of his style. In these delicate lines, thin faces, long white limbs and restrained colours there is a spiritual intensity that impassions and consumes with a light and fire reaching beyond dim mortal vision. But in the expression there is, moreover, a softness of lingering pity, of linked sweetness and tears for earthly sorrows, that makes his art not cold and distant, appealing merely to the intellect, but lovable and human; “a thing ensky’d and sainted,” yet still bound by gold chains about the feet of man.

The little church of Santo Tomé, with its beautiful old tower, stands but a few hundred yards from El Greco’s house at Toledo, and for this church he painted perhaps the most beautiful and certainly the most important of all his works—“El Entierro del Conde Orgaz.” For an artist the “Entierro” has almost as much interest and instruction as “Las Meninas” of Velázquez. The subject is a local legend. Saint Augustine and Saint Stephen come down to carry to burial the corpse of the charitable Conde de Orgaz—of whom we read that he “employed his life in holy works and so came to a holy death”—and the chief citizens of Toledo mourn him. In this long line of faces El Greco shows his full mastery as a portrait-painter. And we may see in them all the race of Castille—Castilian dignity, frankness, nobility, sadness, resignation, pride, haughtiness, intensity, ascetic mysticism. We seem, as we look, to hear the solemn rhythm of Jorge Manrique’s verses—[118]

“Este mundo es el camino
Para el otro, que es morada
Sin pesar;
Mas cumple tener buen tino
Para andar esta jornada
Sin errar.
Partimos cuando nacemos,
Andamos mientras vivimos,
Y llegamos
Al tiempo que fenecemos;
Así que cuando morimos
Descansamos.”

The light of the torches burning in long thin flame and the upward look of the priest in plain surplice draw the eye up to the second part of the picture, the Gloria, where the Conde de Orgaz appears before Christ and the Virgin in a heaven thronged with apostles and saints and supported by angels. The beauty of the lower part is as easily recognizable as that of a picture of Velázquez, but the Gloria takes longer to appreciate, having a fuller measure of El Greco’s mannerism. Partly for this reason the picture may displease at first, permanently displease if seen once only in a cursory glance, but on a more leisured study it assumes its right place as one of the wonderful and most beautiful pictures of the world. It requires time, too, to realize the infinite beauty of detail, the figures on St. Augustine’s robe, the scene of St. Stephen’s stoning on that of St. Stephen, and the skill with which all monotony is avoided in the mourners, in spite of their being nearly all of the same height, and nearly all wearing white ruffs and pointed beards.

In his later pictures El Greco increased the mannerism of his style; the figures are longer, more angular, the intensity of expression becomes an obsession, a paroxysm: he paints as one for whom the whole world has ceased to exist. Sometimes, as in the “Baptism” at Toledo, these exaggerations seriously spoil the beauty of his work; but the “Asunción” of the church of San Vicente, at Toledo, also belongs to his later style, and is not the least beautiful of his pictures: in no other work of art has the sense of motion been so marvellously expressed—the Virgin, saints, and angels seem actually floating upwards before our eyes. El Greco’s mannerism, jene unglaubliche Manier, Herr Carl Justi calls it, is more evident in some of his pictures, in others less; but there is not a sufficiently wide gulf between them to justify the saying that “they are so different that they appear not to be painted by the same hand,”[119] nor to countenance Palomino’s statement that “What he did well no one did better, and what he did badly no one did worse.”

It was not carelessly nor ignorantly that El Greco drew his figures out of proportion, making them preternaturally long and thin. He did so deliberately, just as Bacon said deliberately that “In all beauty there is some strangeness of proportion,” and the effect in El Greco’s pictures often, indeed as a rule, justifies his boldness. We see him

“Pouring his soul ...
Reaching, that Heaven might so replenish him,
Above and through his art—for it gives way;
That arm is wrongly put—and there again—
A fault to pardon in the drawing’s lines,
Its body, so to speak! its soul is right.”

Naturally the peculiarity of his style has at once struck all observers. So the French have spoken of his “maladresses enfantines, audaces troublantes,” his “attitudes strapassées,” his “draperies cassées et chiffonnées á plaisir,” his “dessin fantastique.” So Sir Edmund Head wrote of some of El Greco’s pictures as “extravagant in length, of an ashen-grey tone, most singular in so fine a colourist.” If only glanced at once, this is perhaps the impression that the majority of his pictures would leave, and he thus remains a sphinx to many. “He will always remain caviare to the multitude,” wrote Sir J. C. Robinson in 1868; “the uninitiated observer passes over [his pictures] with wonder and bewilderment, the grim angular figures and draperies and the flickering unrest of all the details affecting him as would a harsh tumult of discordant sounds.”

Palomino said of El Greco that “he ended by making his painting despicable and ridiculous alike by extravagance of drawing and harshness of colour.” His contemporaries explained the singularity of his work either as due to madness or to craving for effect, por valentía, para salir del día, or to a wish to prevent them from being confused with those of Titian!

Not less than his drawing, El Greco’s colouring has been a stumbling-block and an offence. We read of his “teintes presque cadavériques,” “coloris grisâtre, pâle blafard,” “symphonies en bleu mineur;” and Ford characteristically wrote that his pictures were often “as leaden as cholera morbus.” After the rich reds and golds of Italian painting, the subtler tints of El Greco, evolved by him partly under Tintoretto’s influence, partly under the influence of Toledo, could not please his contemporaries, but we feel now that they are no slight ingredient of his charm. In colouring El Greco largely influenced Velázquez, and through Velázquez all subsequent painting. Velázquez learnt from him, in the words of Señor Cossío, “his harmony of silver greys and the use of certain carmines.” But it was not only El Greco’s colouring that affected him. Señor Cossío sees in the construction of “The Surrender of Breda” vague reminiscences of the “San Mauricio,” and one may also see in it reminiscences of the “Expolio.” Palomino, in his Life of Velázquez, says that “in his portraits he imitated Domenico Greco, for he considered that his heads could not be sufficiently praised.” Velázquez rejected El Greco’s mystic intellectuality, but possibly without El Greco’s influence the realism of Velázquez might have been excessively exact and less inspired.

Toledo, in the words of a modern Spanish poet, stands “dark, ruinous, forgotten and alone;” but Domenico[120] Theotocopuli, who lay there unremembered for three centuries, now rises to spread his fame through the world—

“Tout passe. L’art robuste
Seul a l’éternité,
Le buste
Survit à la cité.”

Foreigners from many lands climb up and down the cobbled lanes and passages, in search of hidden churches here and there with pictures by El Greco—Santo Tomé, San José, San Vicente, Santa Leocadia, San Nicolás, and many more:

“The sanctuary’s gloom no longer wards
Vain tongues from where his pictures stand apart.”

He loved to paint the city, and, besides his famous view of it, we find it in the background of his pictures. The Cathedral and the Bridge of Alcántara and the Castle of San Servando are perfectly distinct in the “Asunción” of the Church of San Vicente. The city figures again, though less clearly, in the magnificent picture of St. Martin (of Tours) dividing his cloak, an act of charity that certainly receives a new significance in this bleak, unsheltered Toledo country. And Toledo, not Troy, appears in the “Laocoon,” the only picture by El Greco that has a classical subject. El Greco, the Cretan, lived at Toledo for some forty years, and the charm of Toledo seems to have entered into his soul. His house was not in one of the smothered streets, but in an open space high above the Tagus, opposite the Synagogue of the Jews.[121] It has a cool patio with a floor of red bricks and glazed tiles, and four white pillars, with a tiny well near the entrance, and a grey wooden gallery above, resting on the pillars, and open on one side, so that in spring swallows occasionally enter and whirl round the court. To the right a door leads to a quaint, old-fashioned kitchen, with its immense open fireplace and seats on either side beneath the chimney. That El Greco, a foreigner, should have become the most Spanish of Spanish painters, was due no doubt to the influence exercised over him by this stern yet luring city of Castille. It is impossible to dissociate his colouring from the many greens and greys and browns of the city and surrounding country, the rust-coloured soil of the Cigarrales thinly covered with many greens that are not green, grey hill-plants, dull tints of thyme and olive, the shriller green of pomegranate and other fruit-trees, the grass sun-parched to patches of yellow. And perhaps it is not altogether fanciful to connect the metallic gleams visible in certain lights on the surface of the Tagus with the glazed effects so frequent in El Greco’s pictures, or even the ragged, wind-tormented elms by the river with some of his more extravagant figures. The city points upward like a grey sword; and whether seen in shafts and foils of orange light against a stormy sunset, or fainting and crumbling greyly beneath a relentless sun and sky of cloudless blue, it has the austere intensity that we find in El Greco’s work. Yet, as in the greyest pictures of El Greco occurs some relieving touch of colour, so Toledo is not merely a monotonous symmetry of brown or grey. A procession, white and gold and red and purple, passes through the narrow streets under a shower of roses from the balconies of houses gaily hung in white and red, red and yellow; or the bright colours of peasants’ dresses are to be seen against the ancient Alcántara bridge as they come in to market; or in some street of stifling, windowless walls that lead up to a line of blue sky by day, and at night to a ribbon of stars, comes a glimpse, through doors of massive ancient stone, of a patio of bright flowers—carnations, nasturtiums, geraniums—as one may find a picture of El Greco in some old forgotten Church; and beneath the yellow-brown walls and grey rocks of the city are gardens of fruit-trees, where in spring nightingales sing from pomegranates in scarlet flower. It is a city of continual surprises, not to be understood or appreciated in a single day or a single visit; it gives, like El Greco’s pictures, a strong original impression at a first glance, but its inner being, its softer moments, its true significance and charm it reveals only to a patient study. Its attitude is indeed that of reserve; it seems to be holding judgment on modern civilization. It represents all that is noblest, most individual, and unbendingly austere in the spirit of Spain.

INDEX

A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, Z

A
Abenabet, King of Seville, 101
Afforestation, 99
Agriculture, 97, 203
Ajofrín, 90
Alarcón (Pedro Antonio de), 195
Alas (Leopoldo) Clarín, 150, 193, 196, 197
Alfonso, el Sabio, quoted, 98
Alhambra, The, 89
Alicante, 113, 114, 115
Almería, 57, 113
Altabiscar, Poem of, 62
Altamira (Rafael), quoted, 22, 25
Amadeo I., King of Spain, 43, 198-199
Andalucía, 103, 128, 134-141, 186, 195
Andalusians, 25, 26, 90, 140, 188, 190
André (E. L.), 39
Antequera, 137
Anti-Clericals, 39, 40, 81, 199, 200
Aragon, 26, 100
Arenys de Mar, 104
Arriba, 75
Asturians, 26, 196
Asturias, 196
Atchuria, 64, 65
Avila, 87
Augustinians, 166, 181
Aulnoy, Mme. d’, quoted, 20, 29, 52, 59, 60, 62, 239, 240
Azorín. See Martínez Ruiz.
Azulejos, 132, 194

B
Bacon (Francis), quoted, xi, 33, 34, 41, 252
Barcelona, 88, 91, 104
Baroja (Pío), 27, 93, 208, 209
Basque Provinces, 50, 63, 66-79, 210-211
Basques, 25, 28, 61, 62, 66-79, 209, 225
Bayonne, 63
Beggars, 29, 87, 126
Béhobie, bridge of, 61
Benavente (Jacinto), 27, 41
Berceo (Gonzalo de), 39, 93
Berenger (Remont), Count of Barcelona, 159-160
Betting, 73, 74
Biarritz, 63
Bidasoa, 57-61, 65
Bilbao, 60, 88
Blasco Ibáñez (Vicente), 38, 123, 149, 152, 193, 205-208
Böhl von Faber (Cecilia). See Fernán Caballero.
Booksellers, 172
Borrow (George), 53
Brigands, 47, 194
Browning (Robert), quoted, 248, 249, 253, 256
Bullfights, 38
Burgos, 87, 158, 240
Burton’s Anatomy, quoted, 88
Butler, Bishop, quoted, 35
C
Caciquismo, 23, 204
Cadiz, 88
Calderón de la Barca (Pedro), 32, 55, 227
Cambridge, 165
Camões (Luiz), quoted, 25, 26, 251
Cantabria, 63, 223-238
Cardeña, 139
Carlists, 76, 78, 81, 84, 210, 211, 223, 230
Carranza, Archbishop, 165, 169, 170
Cartagena, 116
Castejon, 158
Castelar (Emilio), 149, 198
Castilian language, viii, 24, 163, 181, 193, 202, 212, 221, 222, 237, 239-243, 245
Castilians, 26, 93, 94, 95, 96, 212 251
Castille, 48, 54, 66, 92-96, 232, 246
Castro (León de), 166, 167, 168, 173
Catalan language, 241
Catalans, 26, 34, 79
Catalonia, 104-107
Celestina, La, 144
Cervantes, 48, 146, 147, 182, 227, 237, 241, 242, 246
“Don Quixote,” 28, 88, 139, 146, 185, 240, 242, 245
Don Quixote, 30, 151, 207
Sancho, 27, 33, 40, 54, 242
Charlemagne, 62
Church in Spain, the, 39, 40, 200, 201, 245-246, 249
Cid, Poema del, 144, 150, 153-162
Cid, the, 87, 102, 144, 153-162
Clarín. See Alas (L.)
Clarke (Edward), quoted, 21, 239
Clarke (Henry Butler), 79
Claudian, quoted, 48
Climate, viii, 37, 54, 93, 100
Clovio (Julio), 245
Coloma (Luis), 201
Córdoba, 90, 101, 103, 140
Cortese (Paolo), quoted, 18
Creighton (Mandell), Bishop of London, quoted, 44
Creixell, 106-107

D
Dances, Basque, 73
Dante, quoted, 26, 130, 241, 250
Deshoja, A, 230-231
Díaz de Bivar (Rodrigo). See Cid.
Diligencias, 50, 51, 52
Dominicans, 166, 168
Dress, 53, 54, 77, 106, 135

E
Ebro, the, 100
Education, 140
Edward II., King of England, 63
Eibar, 73
Elgoibar, 73
Emigration, 100, 203, 225
England and Spain, 25, 63, 166
Escorial, the, 98
Eskuara, 59, 60, 62, 64, 68, 70-71, 76, 85-86
Espronceda (José de), 149
Estella, 81, 217
Estremadura, 98

F
Fernán Caballero, 185-191, 193
Fitzmaurice-Kelly (James), quoted, 142, 143, 146-147, 185, 195, 215, 227
Flaubert (Gustave), 192, 197
Ford (Richard), 25, 36, 47, 51, 53, 253
France (Anatole), quoted, 30
Francis of Assisi, Saint, 241
Francis I., King of France, 57
Fuenterrabía, 58, 62, 63, 85-86
Fueros, 76, 78, 79
Funeral offerings, 75

G
Galicia, 214-221
Gallegos, 25, 26, 214, 216, 220
Ganivet (Ángel), 22
Gallipienzo, 83
Gasset (Rafael), 99
Gautier (Théophile), quoted, 254, 256
Generalife, the, 89
Gibraltar, 207
Giralda, the, 126, 133, 188
Gómez de Baquero (E.), 201
Góngoray Argote (Luis), 148
Goya [Francisco Goya y Lucientes], 192
Granada, 88-89
Grao, El, 115, 205
Grazalema, 136, 137
Greco, El, 208, 243, 244-258
Guadalete, the, 137
Guadalquivir, the, 133, 140
Guernica, 76
Guernicaco Arbola, 76, 77
Guipúzcoa, 64, 67, 68, 78

H
Hendaye, 59
Heresy, 38, 172, 173
Horace, quoted, 71
Houses, 21
Huerta, the Valencian, 115-116, 121, 122, 124, 161, 205
Hugo (Victor), quoted, 47, 49, 57, 114, 115
Hurtado de Mendoza (Diego), 145

I
Ibiza, 205, 206
Idearium Español, 22
Île des Faisans, 60
Inns, 52, 140-141
Inquisition, the, 34, 38, 39, 147, 148, 168-184, 246
Inscriptions, 58, 60, 61, 64, 67, 77-78
Irrigation, 98, 99, 121-124
Irun, 62, 73, 198
Isabel II., Queen of Spain, 187, 188, 198

J
James I., King of Aragon, quoted, 26, 31
Jews, 167, 176
Jijona, 102
Jimena, wife of El Cid, 157, 158, 160
Johnson (Samuel), quoted, 47
Joseph, King of Spain, 42
Juan Manuel, Infante, quoted, 101

K
Kipling (Rudyard), quoted, 50

L
La Rhune, 64
Larramendi (Manuel de), 72, 74
Lazarillo de Tormes, 144, 145, 150, 202
León, 48, 87, 90
—— (Luis de), 148, 149, 151, 163-184
—— (Ricardo), 23, 24, 94, 211, 212, 242-243
Longfellow (H. W.), quoted, 52, 92
Loti (Pierre) [Julien Viaud], 73, 74
Louis XIV., King of France, 60, 64
Lumbier, 83

M
Madrid, 99, 198, 202, 203, 207, 228, 231, 232
Maeztu (Ramiro de), quoted, 36
Makhilas, 77
Málaga, 137, 138
Mallada (Lucas), quoted, 22
Manrique (Jorge), 251
Marbot, General, 61
——, quoted, 18
Mariana (Juan de), 37, 70
Martial, quoted, 26, 54, 100
Martínez Ruiz (J.), Azorín, 22, 89-90, 94-96, 193, 208, 209
Masdeu, quoted, 19
Menéndez y Pelayo (Marcelino), 151, 192
Montaña, La, 26, 223, 226, 228-238
Montano (Arias), 173
Montoro, 140
Moors in Spain, the, 26, 31, 86, 101, 161, 246
Murcia, 90, 114
Murillo (Bartolomé Esteban), 249
Mystics, 148, 149, 192, 193, 194, 242

N
Napier (Sir W.), Lieut.-General, quoted, 17, 18, 26, 64
Napoleon, 42, 61
Narváez (Ramón María), General, 30
Navarre, 80-84
Navarrese, 26, 83
Norias, 108-109
Novels, ix, 144, 151, 185-238, 241

O
Ocaña, 90
Ondarrabia, 85, 86
Oranges, Court of, 90, 126
Oropesa, 108-111
Oviedo, 197
Ox-carts, 74
Oxford, 165

P
Pacheco (Francisco), 245
Palacio Valdés (Armando), 88, 193, 195-196, 200
Papal authority in Spain, 146, 147, 183
Pardo Bazán (Emilia), 185, 205, 214-217, 222
Parish Priests, 76, 215, 233, 236
Pascal (Blaise), 148, 171
Pastorales, Basque, 69-70
Patios, viii, 54, 88, 90, 131, 133, 189, 256
Peasants, 71, 82, 83, 94, 100, 110, 120-124, 135, 140, 141, 205, 215-216, 226-227, 229-230, 240
Pelota, Basque, 73, 74
Peninsular War, the, 17, 64, 65, 81
Pepys (Samuel), quoted, 19, 25, 39, 44
Pereda (José María de), 40, 91, 151, 152, 189, 190, 191, 193, 222-238, 242
Pérez Galdós (Benito), 24, 29, 30, 35, 37, 150, 191, 192, 193, 197, 204, 223, 242
Péroz, Colonel, 61
Philip II., King of Spain, 165, 246, 248
Philip IV., King of Spain, 60
Picón (Jacinto Octavio), 201-202
Pilgrims, 61, 62, 76, 147
Pino, 138
Place-names, 64, 65, 68, 78, 85, 86
Politics, 28, 35, 212
Pomponius Mela, quoted, 86
Post, 56, 59
Prim (Juan), General, Conde de Reus, 198
Processions, 87, 127, 133
Proverbs, ix, 26, 28, 29, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 39, 40, 63, 69, 72, 79, 93, 121, 145

Q
Quevedo [Francisco Gómez de Quevedo y Villegas], 29, 39, 144, 148, 150, 242

R
Reclus (Elisée), quoted, 21
Religion, 38, 39, 40, 44, 76, 80, 147, 200
Roads, 50, 51, 52
Romayquia, Queen, 101
Roncesvalles, 62
Ruiz (Juan), 39, 142, 150

S
Sagunto, 160
Saint-Jean-de-Luz, 57, 60, 62, 64, 78
Saint-Pée, 78
Salamanca, 87, 164-168, 173-175, 181-183
Sánchez (Tomás Antonio), 154
San Feliú de Guixols, 104
Sanguesa, 84
San Sebastian, 63
Sansol, 83
Santa Cruz (Manuel), 210, 211
Santander, 91, 224, 232-233
Santiago de Compostella, 61, 62
Santillana, Marqués de [Iñigo López de Mendoza], 142, 143
San Vicente, 107
Sare, 64, 78
Scaliger, quoted, 60
Scott (Sir Walter), 185
Segovia, 87
Serenos, 111, 188
Seville, 88, 90, 125-133, 187, 188
Shakespeare, quoted, 29, 41, 149, 246
Sierra de Jaen, 139
Sierra Nevada, 117, 118, 138, 139, 141
Sitges, 106
Smuggling, 57, 58, 77, 205
Socialism, 27
Socoa, 65
Song of Solomon, the, 166, 175
Sorolla (Joaquín), 205
Stendhal [Henri Beyle], 189, 192
Strabo, quoted, 98

T
Tagus, the, 54, 161, 202-203
Talavera, 90
Tannenberg (Boris de), 151, 223, 237
Tarifa, 118
Tarragona, 107
Teresa, Santa, 25, 148, 183
Theotocopuli (Dominico). See Greco.
Threshing, 72, 82
Ticknor (George), quoted, 52 149, 163
Tiepolo (Paolo), quoted, 19
Tintoretto, 255
Titian, 245, 254
Toledo, 87, 90, 91, 155, 240, 244-258
Torrevieja, 113-114
Townsend (Joseph), quoted, 31
Translations, 241-242
Travelling, 47-56
Turroneros, 102

U
Unamuno (Miguel de), 212
Urrobi, 81
Urrugne, 61
Usury, 95, 100, 203, 217

V
Valencia, 90, 91, 115, 120, 160, 161, 205, 206
Valencia Island, 86
Valencians, 25, 26, 122
Valera (Juan), 150, 191, 193-195, 212, 242
Valle-Inclán (Ramón del), 205, 208, 210, 211, 217-221, 242-243
Vega (Lope Félix de), 33, 149
Velázquez [Diego Velázquez de Silva], 60, 144, 248, 253, 254
Vera, 58, 64, 78
Vézinet (F.), 214
Villages, 48, 80, 83, 92, 94, 100, 107, 135, 138, 229
Villanueva y Geltrú, 106
Vinson (Julien), 71
Vizcaya, 60, 63, 68, 76, 78
Voltaire, quoted, 73
Vulgate, the, 166, 167, 176-177

W
Webster (Wentworth), 71
Wellington, the Duke of, 17, 78
Whale-fishing, 63, 225
Witches, 231
Women, influence of, 40
Wordsworth (William), quoted, 76, 77
Wynn (Sir R.), quoted, 30, 60

Z
Zagal, the, 51
Zola (Émile), 207, 222, 238

THE SPANISH SERIES.

Edited by ALBERT F. CALVERT.

A Series dealing with the Arts of Spain.

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FOOTNOTES:

[1] The distinction still holds good, and those Spaniards who have travelled, e.g. to Buenos Aires, differ by a certain practical energy and optimism from those who have never left the Peninsula.

[2] “The Ingenious and Diverting Letters of the Lady——. Travels into Spain.” English translation. Second edition. London. 1692.

[3] Villefranche. “État présent d’Espagne.” 1717.

[4] Edward Clarke. “Letters concerning the Spanish Nation.” London. 1763.

[5] This pessimism “is based on our recent disasters; on the fact that we are fallen, a terrible fact in the implacable merciless logic of international life; on the momentary lack of will from which we are suffering; and on the anachronism of certain vices and ideals which, since they can no longer, as in past ages, be excused on the ground that other nations share them, seem to show that we are incorrigible.” Rafael Altamira, “Psicología del Pueblo Español” (Madrid. 1902), in which will be found several of the opinions quoted above.

[6] “Los Males de la Patria.”

[7] “Idearium Español.”

[8] “La Voluntad.” Barcelona. 1902: “La intuición de las cosas, la visión rápida no falta, pero falta, en cambio, la co-ordinación reflexiva, el laboreo paciente, la voluntad.”

[9] “Alcalá de los Zegríes.” Madrid. 1910.

[10] Saints in other countries have carried their heads in their hands, but there is a legend of a saint in Spain who, not content to walk a league with his head under his arm, continued to talk the while without ceasing. He was, no doubt “concealing the poverty of his action,” like Bertram dal Bornio, carrying his head “a guisa di lanterna” in the Inferno.

[11] “Comedia Sentimental.” 1909.

[12] One may apply to it the words of Santa Teresa—

“Tiene tan divinas mañas
Que en un tan acerbo trance
Sale triunfando del lance
Obrando grandes hazañas.”

[13] Ford considered the Basque to be as “proud as Lucifer and as combustible as his matches,” and there is a proverb, “En nave y en castillo no más que un vizcaino.” Cf. Camões. Os Lusiadas:

A gente biscainha que carece
De polidas razões e que as injurias
Muito mal dos estranhos compadece.

[14] The Castilians, said King James I. of Aragon, are very haughty and proud: de gran ufania e erguylhosos. In the Lusiads the Castilian is “grande e raro.”

[15] The line of Dante is well known: “l’avara povertà di Catalogna.” Napier speaks of “the Catalans, a fierce and constant race.”

[16] The Gallegan, “o Gallego cauto” and “sordidos Gallegos duro bando,” in Camões, ever remains the butt of Spanish wit. The inhabitants of the Montaña are considered almost equally dense: “El montañés para defender una necedad dice tres” and again “From Burgos to the sea all is stupidity.” The Asturian, of the region between Galicia and the Montaña has, rather, the reputation of a business-like shrewdness, he is the Astur avarus of Martial and Silius Italicus; in return for his boast that he has never had any infecting contact with the Moors, a proverb says: “El asturiano, loco y vano, poco fiel y mal cristiano.”

[17] “Para cantar los navarros, para llorar los franceses, para pegar cuatro tiros los mozos aragoneses.”

[18] In “El Imparcial.”

[19] It is true that he was a Spanish Basque and was merely reproducing in modern dress the scene in “Don Quixote,” in which the Biscayan leaves his mistresses unprotected in their carriage and fights in order to show that he is by birth a caballero.

[20] Drunkenness is especially rare in Spain. Their sobriety has been made a reproach, as being based on laziness and lack of initiative. The second half of their proverb: “Goza de tu poco mientras busca más el loco—Enjoy the little you have, and let the fool seek more” is, indeed, as foolish as the first half is wise.

[21] Cf. the “altos pensamientos,” of Quevedo’s famous Pablos of Segovia and his father, the barber-thief, and the latter’s remark: “Esto de ser ladron no es arte mecánica sino liberal”—the thief’s is no base mechanical trade, but a liberal profession.

[22] “Drudgery they will do none at all.” Sir R. Wynn, “A brief relation of what was observed by the Prince’s servants in their journey into Spain.” 1623.

[23] They have that momentary isolated intensity which M. Anatole France ascribes to men of action: “Ils sont tout entiers dans le moment qu’ils vivent et leur génie se ramasse sur un point. Ils se renouvellent sans cesse et ne se prolongent pas.”

[24] Episodios Nacionales. Narváez. 1902.

[25] Cf. Joseph Townsend. “A journey through Spain in the years 1786 and 1787,” 3 vols. London. 1792: “We must not imagine that the Spaniards are naturally indolent; they are remarkable for activity, capable of strenuous exertions and patient of fatigue.” Another noteworthy judgment of the same author concerning the Spaniards is that “Their ambition aims in everything at perfection, and by seeking too much they often obtain too little.”

[26] “Non hi ha res al mon que vosaltres non faessetz exir de mesura.”

[27] “La letra con sangre entra,” is a sad proverb of the Spanish and in the modern education of the printed page they are deficient.

[28] Cf. the sayings, Poderoso caballero es don Dinero; Dadivas quebrantan peñas; Dineros son calidad, etc. Sancho goes to govern the island of Barataria “with a very great desire to make money.” The tendency is still to hoard, rather than invest, as did Don Bernard de Castil Blazo in Gil Blas, keeping 50,000 ducats in a chest in his house.

[29] Spaniards prefer to enjoy time as a gift sent by the gods, than to waste it in trying to spend it too nicely. El tiempo lo da Dios; Dios mejora las horas; Con el tiempo maduran las uvas. To a peasant two o’clock on a day of March is “four more hours of sun.” Time is not parcelled out mechanically into tiny divisions by clocks. Distances are given by hours—an hour to a league. The Catalans are less lavish of the minutes; to a stranger asking the distance to a village near Tarragona, a peasant answered cannily in Catalan, “un cuart y mitj”—that is, the village was a quarter of an hour and half a quarter of an hour distant. Curiously the Catalans give the hour as in German, e.g. half-past eight is dos cuarts de nou—halb Neun.

[30] “El Caballero encantado,” 1909: “Viven en un mundo de ritualidades, de fórmulas, de trámites y recetas. El lenguaje se ha llenado de aforismos, de lemas y emblemas; las ideas salen plagadas de motes, y cuando las acciones quieren producirse andan buscando la palabra en que han de encarnarse y no acaban de elegir.” The Spaniards speak with conviction of the great gulf fixed between word and deed:—del dicho al hecho hay gran trecho; Los dichos en nos, los hechos en Dios.

[31] Cf. a speaker in the Cortes in June, 1910: “Aquí no hay nada tan alto como las clases bajas.”

[32] Don Ramiro de Maeztu has written of the aggressive assertion of personality—innecesária afirmación de las personas—in Spain.

[33] Lo que no lleva Cristo lo llera el fisco—“What the Church leaves, the Treasury receives,” says an old proverb.

[34] An author in Pérez Galdós’ Fortunata y Jacinta says that the Spaniards, that pícara raza, are unaware of the value of time and of the value of silence. “You cannot make them understand that to take possession of other people’s silence is like stealing a coin.” “It is a lack of civilization.” By such un-Spanish criticisms Señor Pérez Galdós betrays the fact that he was not born in Spain.

[35] The historian, Mariana, displayed more patriotism than accuracy when he wrote that Spain “is not like Africa, which is burnt by the violence of the sun nor is it assailed, as is France, by winds and frosts and humidity of air and earth.”

[36] So Fr. Alonso de Espina wrote that, were an Inquisition established, “serían innumerables los entregados al fuego, los cuales si no fuesen aquí ... cruelmente castigados ... habrán de ser quemados en el fuego eterno.” La Fortaleza de la Fe. 1459.

[37] “This spectacle,” says an admiring Englishman in 1760, “is certainly one of the finest in the world, whether it is considered merely as a coup-d’œil or as an exertion of the bravery and infinite agility of the performer.”

[38] Yet certainly no Englishman should attend a bull-fight while the modern custom prevails of leading out a cruelly gored horse, sewing it up, and bringing it in again for fresh sufferings. This is done to save the contractors of the plaza a few shillings and is a disgrace to Spain. Those who have not seen a bull-fight and can scarcely believe that so sordid and outrageous a practice is possible may, if they have the courage, read all the details in Señor Blasco Ibáñez’ novel Sangre y Arena (1908).

[39] The Inquisition was a tyranny universally feared, though in principle supported by the people. In Pepys we read of “the English and Dutch who have been sent for to work (in the manufacture of certain stuffs) being taken with a Psalm-book or Testament and so clapped up and the house pulled down; and the greatest Lord in Spayne dare not say a word against it if the word Inquisition be mentioned.” Cf. the groundless terror of the old woman in Quevedo’s El Buscón, or the story of the man who, when asked for a few pears by an Inquisitor, pulled up and presented him with the whole tree. Attacks on and ridicule of priests in Spain are not exclusively modern; the following verse of Juan Ruiz (14th century) is but one of countless instances throughout Spanish literature:

“Como quier que los frayles et clerigos disen que aman a Dios servir
Si barruntan que el rico está para morir
Quando oyen sus dineros que comienzan a retenir
Qual de ellos lo levará comienzan luego a rennir.”

But recently the number of those believing in religion has diminished, and the anti-Clericals have been driven by certain abuses of the Church to a more or less crude parade of atheism. It is felt that the Church has crushed life rather than sought its fuller, nobler expression. Thus a writer, E. L. André (“Ética Española,” 1910), says: “We conceive life solely as a preparation for death,” and speaks of the slight espíritu territorial possessed by Spaniards. Cf. Berceo, in the 13th century: “Quanto aquí vivimos en ageno moramos”—our life on earth is a sojourn in a strange land.

[40] Honesty is a common attribute of Spaniards, but they have perhaps no very accurate regard for the value of truthfulness or honesty in words.

[41] La mujer y el fraile mal parecen en la calle. In the South, as at Seville, the percentage of women to be seen in the streets is noticeably small.

[42] “El consejo de la mujer es poco,” said Sancho, “y el que no lo toma es loco.” The women maintain their influence, but it is thus not properly their own, but rather that of the Church.

[43] The phrase Seguir sin novedad is still used to imply that everything is going on well. But an ever-increasing number of politicians are now advocating “new things” with a somewhat crude violence. It is a reaction against the apathy that waited with crossed hands—

“Vuolsi così colà dove si puote
Ciò che si vuole, e più non dimandare.”

[44] Cf. the characteristic trait mentioned by Samuel Pepys: “They will cry out against their King, and Commanders, and Generals, none like them in the world, and yet will not hear a stranger say a word of them but will cut his throat.”

[45] It is true, however, that the mass of the Spanish nation has still to develop on really Spanish lines: hence its present weakness and its potential strength in the future, when a civilization of a truly national character shall have imposed itself upon the artificial civilization of culture imported from France, and religion imported from Rome.

[46] The ethereally lovely Cathedral of León is more remote.

[47] Some of the secondary roads of Andalucía are excellent, and motorable, though narrow. But between the roads of most provinces there is little to choose. No wonder that there is in Spain a saint invoked as the protector of “way-farers and the dying.” Ford remarked that while the rest of Spain calls the Milky Way “the road to Santiago,” the Gallegans themselves know better, and call it “the road to Jerusalem.” The roads from small towns to their stations, at charge of the municipios, are notably bad, and amaze the newly arrived foreigner. But, indeed, the roads in the immediate neighbourhood of such important industrial cities as Valencia and Barcelona are often in a deplorable state, and it is no infrequent sight to see carts of fruit or vegetables stuck fast in deep ruts of mud.

[48] Ticknor, in 1818, speaks of Spain as “a country such as this where all comfortable or decent modes of travelling fail,” of the “abominable roads,” and of the inns as “miserable hovels,” destitute of provisions. A century and a half earlier Mme. d’ Aulnoy said: “You enter not any inn to dine but carry your provisions with you.” But the centuries pass not for Spanish inns.

[49] A peasant woman near Almería wore a long yellow and pink kerchief, a bright red shawl, light blue bodice, skirt of white and mauve, dark blue apron with a white line, red stockings, yellow sandals, and carried a second shawl of brilliant orange colour, yet all blent harmoniously under the glaring sunlight.

[50] Especially in the matter of letters, the ignorance, indifference, errors, and delays of the officials are, to an Englishman, past belief, and not least so at Madrid, where a letter has been kept for two months and handed over, after repeated inquiries, with the date of the Madrid post-mark, seventy days earlier, clearly visible. Reforms are, however, in contemplation. Foreign letters as a rule fare better than others. A card posted at Granada on May 15, and a letter posted in France on May 26, both arrived at Barcelona on May 27 (1911).

[51] The former importance of St. Jean de Luz (in Basque Donibane Lohitzune) is shown by the lines—

“Saint Jean de Luz, petit Paris
Bayonne, son écurie.”

Similar is the proud boast of Almería:

“Cuando Almería era Almería
Granada era su alquería.”

Victor Hugo quaintly describes St. Jean de Luz in 1843 as “un village cahoté dans les anfractuosités de la montagne.”

[52] English translation of 1692.

[53] In 1623 Sir R. Wynn describes the country near “Bilbo” as “all infinite Rocky, cover’d onely with Furrs and a few Juniper Trees.”

[54] At St. Jean de Luz, where Louis XIV. was married to the Infanta, a house still hears the inscription—

“L’Infante je reçus l’an mil six cent soixante
On m’appelle depuis le Chasteau de l’Infante.”

[55] “Par Vocation.” Paris. 1905.

[56] “Vulnerant omnes, ultima necat.—All hours wound, the last kills.”

[57] Cf. Mme. d’Aulnoy: “We were here very well entertain’d so that our Tables were covered with all sorts of Wild Fowls.”

[58] The Basque poem, “Altabiscarraco Kantua,” singing of victory, was considered magnificent when it was thought to be centuries old, and though it has been proved beyond all doubt to be modern, we may still venture to consider it to be magnificent: “A cry is heard among the Basque mountains, and the Etchecojauna, standing before his door, listens and says: ‘What is it? who is there?’ and the dog asleep at his master’s feet, rises and fills the region of Altabiscar with his barking.” One line is, “Cer nahi zuten gure menditarik Norteko gizon horiek?—What do these men of the North want in our mountains?” and another, “Why have they come to disturb our peace?” The Basques must often have asked a like question as they have seen the foreigners of younger races crowd around their mountains; but in spite of these inroads, the Basques have succeeded in keeping a part of their language and customs, like the waters of their proverb which, after a thousand years, still run in their old course: “Mila urthe igaro eta ura bere bidean—Después de años mil, vuelve el rio á su cubil.”

[59] Rymer, “Foedera.”

[60]

S A R A R I
BALHOREA
RENETALE
YALTASSUN
AREN SARIA
EMANA LUIS
XIV.   1693.

The words balhorea (valour) and leyaltassuna (loyalty) are typical of the absence of truly Basque abstract words.

[61] The mountain La Rhune or Larrhun, is half in France, half in Spain. Its name is Basque, derived from larre, pasture, and on, good (in Navarre there is a river Larron and a village Larraona); but the first syllable has become the French article, and a lower flank of the mountain is known as “La petite Rhune.”

[62] Napier, who had no gift of spelling, writes Atchuria, or Atchubia. The word means White Rock (aitz, rock, and churi, white) and its Spanish name is Peña Plata, Silver Mountain.

[63] The badness of their French has been ridiculed in the proverb, “Parler français comme une vache (i.e. Basque) espagnole.”

[64] Yet in a codex of the twelfth century occur eighteen Basque words, all of which, except four, are still used, if in slightly altered forms. The Basque language gives many proofs of the extreme antiquity of the Basques. The words for “knife,” “axe,” etc., are derived from aitz, meaning “stone.” The words for “Monday” (astelehena, “first day of the week”), “Tuesday” (asteartea, “middle of the week”), “Wednesday” (asteazkena, “last of the week”) point to a week of three days. The counting is vigesimal: “forty” is berrogoi (twice twenty); “sixty,” hirogoi (thrice twenty). The word for “twenty,” hogoi, has a curious similarity with the Greek εἲκοτι and the sheepscoring gigget. There are no general terms—no word for “tree” (for which arbola is used), but for different kinds of trees; no word for “sister,” but for “brother’s sister,” “sister’s sister;” and no abstract terms (karitatea, prudentzia, etc., being used).

[65] The best account of the Basques is to be found in the late Mr. Wentworth Webster’s “Loisirs d’un Étranger au Pays Basque,” and in his “The Basques, the Oldest People of Western Europe;” in M. Julien Vinson’s “Les Basques et le Pays Basque” and Francisque Michel’s “Les Basques.”

[66] A French writer, Le Pays, speaks thus of the Basque country in the seventeenth century: “La joye y commence avec la vie et n’y finit qu’avec la mort. Elle paroist en toutes leurs actions. Les prestres en ont leur part aussi bien que les autres. J’ai remarqué qu’aux nopces c’est toûjours le curé qui mene le branle.” Another Frenchman of the same period says that the Basques of Labourd are “des gens toujours fols et souvent yvres.” Similarly, Larramendi says that the Basques are “muy inclinados á ver fiestas.”

[67] Cf. their proverbs, “Lan lasterra, lan alferra—Rapid work, idle work;” and “Geroa, alferraren leloa—To-morrow is the refrain of the idle.”

[68] The great game at Irun, between French and Spanish Basques, about the year 1840, has become a legend, and is still spoken of by the peasants. Gascoña, the chief French player, was offered 10,000 francs “pour faire trahison,” but refused, were it ten times the sum. Oxen, crops, fields and houses were freely betted. The ball, we are told, was slily wetted for service, tintacks were scattered in the court, and Gascoña, accustomed to play barefoot, called for a pair of heavy wooden sabots, and continued the game. The French won, and were obliged to escape across the frontier without changing, and chistera on arm. Those were the times when the peasants left their farms to play for the love of the game. To-day the game is in the hands of a few professionals, for the benefit of foreigners, the result often arranged beforehand. “Aujourd’hui,” said an aged player of the frontier, “les joueurs rient quelquefois: nous ne riions pas, nous.”

[69] Antaño, en los antaños, dans le temps.

[70] Corografía de Guipúzcoa: “No es creible si no se ve el mucho pan y cera que se ofrece.... Además en tales grandes funerales por modo de ofrenda se trae á la puerta de la iglesia un buey vivo en unos lugares y en otros un carnero también vivo que, acabado el oficio, se vuelve á la casería ó carnicería, y por esto se paga al cura una cantidad determinada en dinero.” He estimates the house expenses at 500 duros (or dollars), and the Church expenses at another 500, truly an immense sum for those days. When the burials took place in the church, the offerings of bread and wax would be made on the tomb.

[71] The music and words are by Iparraguirre.

[72] Sare.

[73] Urrugne, above the sun-dial on the church.

[74] Saint Jean de Luz.

[75] Saint Pée, formerly Stus. Petrus de Ivarren. “There is a little village called St. Pé, where I was stopped a day or two by very bad weather. I was lodged at the Curé’s, a good old man, from whose conversation about the state of France I received light which had important results. He was very clever and very well-informed, and took not only right, but large views of things.”—The Duke of Wellington to J. W. Croker.

[76] Near Louhossoa.

[77] “Remember death.”—Ossès.

[78] Vizcaya and Guipúzcoa are, with Barcelona and Pontevedra, the most densely populated provinces in Spain. The Basques have a genius for administration which is not to be found in other parts of the Peninsula. Their excellent roads and cleanly kept towns form a striking contrast. They have a true love of local independence, and in the eighteenth century we find two Basque frontier villages, Vera and Sare, styling themselves in a treaty the “two Republics.” The treaty concerned Yerbas y Aguas y Bellotas; grass, water and acorns. Similarly, to-day, in the Basque provinces groups of small villages and houses are joined in free “hermandades,” “universidades,” “anteiglesias,” “valles.” The few privileges that remain are jealously guarded. The Navarrese will tell you with pride that theirs is the only province where a man is allowed to find a substitute in the conscriptions.

[79] The Spanish Premier himself has said in the Senate (October, 1910), that if the Basque Provinces are more advanced than other parts of Spain this is due not to their merits, but to the favouritism of governments. A knowledge of the Basques, however, hardly warrants this statement. Since the abolition of the fueros, says the late Mr. Butler Clarke, in “Modern Spain,” “their efforts are restricted to making the administration of their provinces a model for the rest of Spain.”

[80] The Basques took their revenge by the hand of M. l’Abbé d’Iharce de Bidassouet. In his “Histoire des Cantabres,” tom. I. Paris, 1825 (vol. ii. was not published), he derives all names of places from Basque, as the original language of the world. “Je ne serai pas assez hardi,” he says, “pour soutenir que le Père Éternel parlât basque,” but he is really convinced that it is so. L’Andalousie, with the help of the article, he derives from two Basque words, “landa lusia,” long land. Versailles is a Basque word, so is Athens, so is Helicon. Norway puzzles him for a moment, but soon with the remark that “Norvège est un mot altéré et corrompu,” he tosses it aside and proceeds on his reckless etymological course. Certainly to the irresponsible philologist Basque offers a delightful field. For instance, the name of the desolate salt lake of Kevir in Persia has been derived from a word “gavr” or “gav” (“hollow,” “depression”). In Basque “gabe” means without, and the word for night is also “gabe” (no doubt as being a hollow without light). Then we have the Gaves, de Pau, d’Oloron, etc.; the Spanish “gaveta” (a pigeonhole), “gavia” (pit dug for planting a tree); “cavus,” “cave” and so forth. But to draw inferences as to the origin of the Iberians, as to whether the same or different peoples inhabited the Caucasus and the Pyrenees, or even as to whether “le Père Éternel parlât Basque,” is a very different matter, beset with pitfalls innumerable.

[81] See Wentworth Webster, “Les Loisirs d’un Étranger au Pays Basque.” 1901. This was a common practice of the Romans who, meeting words so rough and horrid to their Latin pronunciation in the land of the Basques, “quorum nomina,” according to Pomponius Mela, “nostro ore concipi nequeunt,” would smooth and round these names and give them a Latin derivation. The Spaniards may have done the same in the case of Valencia Island, Co. Kerry. The form in old maps is Ballinish (Innish, “island,” and ball, “home” or perhaps “mouth”—the harbour the mouth of the island), and the peasants still pronounce the name Valinch.

[82] Yet those who connect Barcelona with the smoke and gloom of an industrial city, having heard it spoken of as the Manchester of Spain, are mistaken. Barcelona is still worthy of the praise of the Venetian ambassador in the sixteenth century, who called it a “bellissima città,” with “copia di giardini bellisimi,” and of the praises of Cervantes in “Don Quixote,” and in “Las Dos Doncellas,” where it is the “flower of the beautiful cities of the world and an honour to Spain.”

[83] “España: Hombres y paisajes.” 1909.

[84] A Spanish proverb says: “When it rains, it rains; when it snows, it snows; but ’tis bad weather when it blows.” Agriculture in many parts of Spain is literally “ἀπάνευθεν ἐπ’ ἀγροῦ πήυατα πάσχειν—to suffer woes apart upon the land.”

[85] Cf. Pío Baroja, “César ó Nada.” Madrid, 1910: “Hay una hora en estos pueblos castellanos, adustos y viejos, de paz y serenidad ideales. Es el comenzar de la mañana. Todavía los gallos cantan, las campanadas de la iglesia se derraman por el aire y el sol comienza á penetrar en las calles en ráfagas de luz. La mañana es un diluvio de claridad que se precipita sobre el pueblo amarillento. El cielo está azul, el aire limpio, puro y diáfano; la atmósfera transparente no da casi efectos de perspectiva, y su masa etérea hace vibrar los contornos de las casas, de los campanarios y de los remates de los tejados. El viento frío y sutil juega en las encrucijadas y se entretiene en torcer los tallos de los geranios y de los claveles que llamean en los balcones. Hay por todas partes un olor de jara y de retama quemada que viene de los hornos donde se cuece el pan, y un olor de alhucema que viene de los zaguanes.” Castille has been a little neglected by the novelists in comparison with other regions. But recently Ricardo León (in “El Amor de los Amores,” 1910), has sung the praises of the ancha, heróica tierra de Castilla, its austere simplicity and strength, its serene atmosphere, its golden crops, its flocks of sheep, clear streams, thyme-scented solitudes, and far horizons. And Azorín, in a short study, “En la Meseta” (La Vanguardia of Barcelona, January 4, 1911), as in his books “España,” “El Alma Castellana,” “Los Pueblos,” skilfully portrays the inner spirit of Castille: “Por la ventana se columbra un paisaje llano, seco, desmantelado; á lo lejos se divisan unas montañas con las cimas blanqueadas por la nieve.... Todo el silencio, toda la rigidez, toda la adustez de esta inmoble vida castellana está concentrada en los rebaños que cruzan la llanura lentamente y se recogen en los oteros y los valles de las montañas. Mirad ese rabadán, envuelto en su capa récia y parda, contemplando un cielo azul sin nubes, ante el paisaje abrupto y grandioso de la montaña, y tendréis explicado el tipo del campesino castellano castizo, histórico: noble, austero, grave y elegante en el ademán, corto, sentencioso y agudo on sus razones.”

[86] Señor Gasset, Minister of Public Works, now proposes (in a scheme explained to the Congress on March 9, 1911) to spend twenty-seven million pesetas on afforestation in ten years.

[87] Martial, referring to the frequency of winds of Spain, says—

“Debes non aliter timere risum
Quam ventum Spanius.”

[88] El Conde Lucanor, “Enxemplo 30:” “...el rey Abenabet de Sevilla era casada con Romayquia et amábala muy mas que á cosa del mundo, et ella era muy buena mujer, et los moros han della muy buenos enxemplos: pero una manera habia que non era muy buena, esto era, que á las vegadas tomaba algunos antojos á su voluntad. Et acaesció que un dia, estando en Córdoba en el mes de febrero, cayó una nieve, et cuando Romayquia esto vió comenzó á llorar, et el rey preguntóle porque lloraba, et ella dijó que porque nunca la dejaba estar en tierra que hubiese nieve. Et el rey, por le facer placer, fize poner almendrales por toda la tierra de Córdoba, porque pues Córdoba es tan caliente tierra et non nieva y cada año, que en el febrero paresciesen los almendrales floridos et le semejasen nieve, por le facer perder aquel deseo de la nieve.”

[89] George Eliot, “The Spanish Gypsy.” The purple shadows are the effect of dark patches of rock seen through the transparent blue water.

[90] “Papel y tinta y poca justicia, paper, ink, and little justice,” say the people, in one of their proverbs. They feel that, in Spain, if revenge is a kind of wild justice, so too frequently is justice.

[91] Barretti’s Dictionary (edition of 1778) quaintly renders socarrón as “a crafty, subtle fellow; an arch wag.”

[92] On the road from Tortosa to Valencia there is a stone cross with the pathetic, ill-spelt inscription: “Aqui murió instantáneamente al tirarse del carro por habersele desembocado el mulo Dominco Cugat Jardi el 30 agosto de 1894. R.I.P. Carrateros ya veis lo que paso este infelis.” “Carters, you see what happened to this unhappy man.” But the carters throughout Spain continue to sleep away the long hours of the road.

[93] The latest statistics available show that, while 90 and 80 per cent. of the electors in some northern provinces of Spain can read and write, in Andalucía the highest averages are 51 and 50 (provinces of Cadiz and Seville), that of the province of Córdoba being but 41, of Almería 38, of Granada and Jaen 35, of Málaga 34.

[94] “Chapters on Spanish Literature.” 1908.

[95] “N’uma mão a penna e n’outra a lança.”

[96] M. Boris de Tannenberg, speaking of “Sotileza,” has said excellently: “C’est que plus une œuvre a un caractère local marqué, plus elle a de chance de devenir universelle, à condition que l’écrivain, sous la particularité des mœurs et du langage, ait pénétre jusqu’au fond commun d’humanité.” And Don Marcelino Menéndez y Pelayo, who represented King Alfonso on January 23, 1911, in the ceremony of unveiling at Santander the statue of Pereda by Señor Collaut Valera (nephew of the novelist, Juan Valera), said in his speech: “His books, so local that even the inhabitants of the mountain require a glossary, and as Spanish as the most Spanish writings since Cervantes and Quevedo, are profoundly human owing to the intensity of life which they contain, and the quiet majesty with which it is developed.”

[97] We are apt to forget that men in the Middle Ages, if they dwelt insistently on the sinister “Dance of Death,” also felt to the full the joys of living. The “Poema del Cid” sings no variations on the theme “How good is man’s life, the mere living,” but the feeling itself appears in every line.

[98] The King had sent “letters to León and Sanctiague, to Portuguese and Galicians, to those of Carrión and the Men of Castille,” to announce a Cort dentro en Tolledo, in order to judge between the Cid and the Counts of Carrión. “Since I was King,” he says, “I have held but two Cortes, one in Burgos, the other in Carrión, this third in Tolledo have I come to hold to-day.”

[99] James Fitzmaurice-Kelly. “Chapters on Spanish Literature,” p. 231.

[100] See pp. 151, 222-238. Pereda is, perhaps, the least read outside Spain of all Spanish novelists; yet it is scarcely too much to say that he who cannot appreciate Pereda cannot understand the spirit or feel the true savour of Spain.

[101] “Chapters on Spanish Literature,” p. 246.

[102] Andrés González-Blanco, “Historia de la novela en España desde el romanticismo hasta nuestros días.” Madrid. 1909.

[103] La Primera República. Madrid. 1911.

[104] See page 214.

[105] Señor Picón, whose writings are rather exquisite than voluminous, is the author of “Dulce y Sabrosa,” and several short stories. A Spanish critic, Señor Gómez de Baquero, has said of him that while “his thoughts look to the future, his style listens to the golden music of the past.” His latest work is “Juanita Tenorio,” a long novel (published as vol. 3 of his Complete Works in the autumn of 1910), in which his art, skilful and delicate as it is, has not been entirely successful in eclipsing the sordidness of the subject by the magic of the style. The following quotation—a description of Madrid seen from an attic-window at night—will give some idea of his restrained and clear-cut style: “Era noche cerrada. En primer término no percibía la vista más que las grandes masas angulosas y obscuras de muros, parodones y tejados: descollando por encima de ellos surgían los contornos de torres y campanarios, cuyos puntiagudos chapiteles, cubiertos de pizarra, recogían el escaso claror de las estrellas; acà y allà rompían la superficie negra de las fachadas los rectángulos de luz amarillenta que forman los balcones alumbrados interiormente, y al través de algun vidrio brillaba el resplandor solitario de una lámpara con su pantalla de color; de las chimeneas salían nubecillas de humo, que, flotando como manchas fugaces en la lobreguez del ambiente, se desvanecían en la altura; por entre las manzanas de casas, á lo largo de las calles rectas, divisabanse las hileras de los faroles, cuyas llamas reverberaban en cristales y vidrieras, ó á trechos algún arco voltáico irradiaba intenso fulgor blanquecino; y de aquel conjunto de sombras esmaltadas de toques luminosos so alzaba el rumor confuso de mil ruidos diversos; rodar de vehículos, vocear de vendedores, gritar de chicos y cantar de criadas; ya el tecleo de un piano, ya el lento sonar de las campanadas de un reloj.”

[106] “César ó Nada” is the first of a trilogy entitled “Las Ciudades”; another trilogy, “El Mar,” is begun with “Las Inquietudes de Shanti Andía” (1911), a vivid disconnected narrative concerning the lives of adventurous sailors of the Basque coast in the little fishing-harbour of Luzaro and in their distant voyages. The style, or absence of style, is clear, transparent, as it were brittle with the shock of abrupt short sentences, interspersed with sonorous Basque names and rough snatches of Basque song. In Basque, too, are the indications of the site in which lie buried the coffers of gold coins hoarded by a miserly slave trader. But the book ends with the sad reflection: “No one now in Luzaro is willing to be a sailor. Los vascos se retiran del mar.”

[107] Six years after Galdós, sixteen before Blasco Ibáñez, one before Alas and Picón, and two before Palacio Valdés.

[108] F. Vézinet, “Les Maîtres du Roman Espagnol Contemporain,” Paris, 1907.

[109] Indeed, in reading the more recent novels by Señora Pardo Bazán, “La Quimera,” or “La Sirena Negra,” or “Dulce Dueño” (1911), striking and original as they are, one cannot help looking back from them somewhat regretfully to her Galician novels of the eighties.

[110] “Le trait essentiel du réalisme de Pereda c’est la sympathie avec laquelle il décrit les mœurs populaires, sans optimisme outré, mais avec une divination profonde de leur poésie intime. Pereda aime le peuple par tempérament d’artiste, pour ce que celui-ci a de pittoresque et d’original; il l’aime aussi en homme et en chrétien, comme une humanité plus simple, aux sentiments spontanés et naïfs. Il ne nous dissimule pas sa grossièreté et ses misères mais il nous ouvre les yeux sur ses vertus ignorées; jusque chez les êtres dégradés par le vice, il nous montre quelque noble instinct qui survit et se réveille à l’occasion. Et ce réalisme, qu’illumine toujours un rayon d’idéal, respecte l’homme en le peignant même dans ses vulgarités ou ses laideurs.” Boris de Tannenberg. L’Espagne littéraire. Paris, 1903.

[111] The country between Burgos and the Atlantic, known as the “Montaña” with Santander for its capital, is a district of continuous mountains and hills and steep meadows and maize-fields, with scarcely an inch of level ground. The hills far up are covered with chestnut and oak, beech, walnut and sycamore; rushing streams are hidden in deep wooded clefts, and rough walls of stones divide field from field, where the reapers, with difficulty wielding their scythes, have but a precipitous foothold. The villages and scattered farms are of massive yellow stone, with roofs of deep-brown tiles and wide balconies suspended by grey wooden posts from the projecting eaves.

[112] Even so, however, the clear splendour of the sky of Castille must have cast a charm over the place. The dominant impression at Madrid to-day is, indeed, that of light and of open spaces, the Puerta del Sol in a radiance of sunshine, the Carrera de San Jeronymo going off apparently into space, the surrounding country far-seen and treeless, the clear blue mountains, and the sky from verge to zenith clothed with a brilliance of dazzling light so that “ogni parte ad ogni parte splende.”

[113] “La Montálvez” (1888) and “Nubes de Estío” (1891) are perhaps his weakest works. “Nubes de Estío” is rather wearisome till the Duque de Cañaveral arrives, “falling like a Jupiter among little gods.” “Al Primer Vuelo” (1890) is a novel of the Cantabrian coast, but without the full salt and vigour of “Sotileza.”

[114] M. Boris de Tannenberg speaks of “l’âpre saveur de sa langue, un peu rude et fruste, mais solide, musclée et haute en couleur.”

[115] The difference between these artists in prose may be best illustrated by quotation: “El Cura abrió la ventana y miró al cielo. Apenas brillaban las estrellas. Estúvose quieto y meditando, con los ojos fijos en la sombra de los montes. Bajo la bóveda de la noche, todos los rumores parecían llenos de prestigio. El ladrido de los perros, el paso de las patrullas, el agua del río en las presas, eran voces religiosas y misteriosas, como esos anhelos ignotos que estremecen á las almas en su noche oscura.” (Valle-Inclán, “Gerifaltes de Antaño.”) Here we have the clear thin outlines, the studied restraint of the admirer of El Greco. In the following passage, from León’s “Alcalá de los Zegríes,” we find the more sensuous glowing imagination of the Andalusian novelist: “Fué Alfonso hacia la ventana y apoyó la ardorosa frente en los cristales. Todo era silencio y soledad. Las estrellas oscilaban en el cielo; la ancha bóveda, oscura, estaba acribillada de lucecillas trémulas. Una fogata brillaba á lo lejos en el campo. Y en el silencio grave, en la callada sombra, las puertas de bronce del misterio se abrían de par en par.” In the hands of both writers Castilian yields a full measure of its magic.

[116] Señor Cossío published his well-known work, “El Greco,” 2 tom. Madrid, in 1908. The second volume consists of illustrations of El Greco’s pictures; most of the reproductions are, however, unfortunately somewhat indistinct. The reproductions from photographs in a little book, “El Greco,” by A. F. Calvert and C. Gasquoine Hartley. London: John Lane, 1909, are much clearer. The illustrations are excellent in “Le Greco.” Par Maurice Barrès et Paul Lafond. Paris: Floury, as also those of pictures by El Greco in Herr Meier Graefe’s “Spanische Reise,” Berlin, 1910. In October, 1910, appeared a short scholarly study, “El Greco en Toledo.” Por Francisco de Borja de San Román y Fernández. Madrid: Suárez. It contains eighty-eight original documents of great interest, especially the inventory of El Greco’s possessions (vienes), drawn up by his son, Jorge Manuel, on April 12, 1614, five days after El Greco’s death, the discovery and publication of which will, as the author says, give intense pleasure to all lovers of El Greco. This contains over 100 pictures by El Greco (some unfinished), 200 prints, 150 drawings, 15 sketches, 20 plaster models, 30 models in clay and wax, etc. Among the Greek books are Josephus, Xenophon, Demosthenes, Isocrates, Homer, Aristotle’s Politics and Physics, the Old and New Testaments, Lucian, Plutarch (bite di Plutarco), Æsop, Euripides. The Italian include Petrarca and Ariosto, but fifty more Italian books, with seventeen in romance and nineteen on architecture, are uncatalogued. The commonest articles receive a quaint dignity in the old ringing Castilian, as “quatro pares de escarpines” (four pair of socks), “un cajón grande de pino con cinco gabetas” (a large chest of pine with five drawers), “una alacena de madera grande” (a large wooden cupboard), “una espada y una daga con tiros y pretina” (a sword and dagger with their belts).

[117] Cf. his dispute with the Church of Santo Tomé as to the price of “El Entierro,” of which dispute a most interesting account is to be found in the documents of Señor San Román’s book.

[118] The temptation is great to quote the Coplas from beginning to end. They have been excellently translated by Longfellow, but all who read them in the original will be ready to say with the shepherd of Camões: “Quam bem que sôa o verso castelhano.”

[119] “Son tan disonantes unas de otras que no parecen ser de la misma mano” (Jusepe Martínez).

[120] Or Dominico. Sometimes he signed Domyco or Domco at the end of documents. The fourth letter of the signature (in Greek characters) on the “Baptism” in the Prado Gallery has all the air of a Greek eta.

[121] Even though the house now known and shown as “la Casa del Greco” is not that in which El Greco lived, it occupies very much the same open situation; for by the disappearance of the block of houses belonging to the Marqués de Villena, El Greco’s landlord, it steps into the first place above the river.

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Table of Contents

- THE MAGIC OF SPAIN
- NOTE
- PREFACE
- CONTENTS

- I SPANISH CHARACTER

- I.—Stray Opinions

- II.—Vain Generalities.

- II TRAVELLING IN SPAIN

- III ON THE SPANISH FRONTIER

- IV ESKUAL-ERRIA

- I.—Basque Country

- II.—Basque Customs

- V IN REMOTE NAVARRE
- VI SPANISH CITIES
- VII IN OLD CASTILLE
- VIII THE DESERT AND THE SOWN
- IX THE COAST OF CATALONIA IN AUTUMN
- X AN EASTERN VILLAGE
- XI OFF THE EAST COAST OF SPAIN
- XII THE JUDGING OF THE WATERS
- XIII SEVILLE IN WINTER
- XIV FROM A SEVILLE HOUSETOP
- XV FEBRUARY IN ANDALUCÍA

- XVI SOME CHARACTERISTICS OF SPANISH LITERATURE

- XVII THE POEM OF THE CID

- 1.—A Primitive Masterpiece

- II. Valencia del Cid.

- XVIII A PRISONER OF THE SPANISH INQUISITION

- I.—Novedades

- II.—Salamanca University

- III.—In a Valladolid Dungeon.

- IV.—Ex Forti Dulcedo.

- XIX THE MODERN SPANISH NOVEL

- I.—Revival. Fernán Caballero

- II.—1870-1900.

- III.—In the Twentieth Century.

- XX NOVELS OF GALICIA

- XXI NOVELS OF THE MOUNTAIN

- I.—“Savour of the Soil”

- II.—“On the Heights”

- XXII CASTILIAN PROSE
- XXIII TOLEDO AND EL GRECO
- INDEX
- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE