ear,--he stood nearest the church door; his hat was knocked off his
head. “Take that, and that, and that!” He was hit in the face three
times with a fan by a small lady in black satin.
The Argentino drew us quickly aside, as a procession of priests came out
of the door. One carried something that was hidden by the rich vestment
hunched over his shoulders and covering his hands.
“They are taking the sacrament to some sick person,” the Argentino
explained. At that moment Don Jaime, who had come up without our seeing
him, tried to pour oil upon the troubled waters.
“These are strangers, Señora, they did not know that his divine majesty
was about to pass.”
The little old lady was nothing appeased; she gave us one last furious
look, and muttering “Accursed heretic Jews!” followed the priests with
the sacrament.
“That’s the same spirit that more than once has drenched this city in
the blood of its best people,” said the Argentino. “In Abd-er-Rahman’s
time the church of St. Vicente that stood here, on the site of the
Temple of Janus, was divided between Christians and Musselmans. They
worshipped under the same roof till Abd-er-Rahman bought the Christians
out and built this Mosque. The Christian priests left the church
peaceably, in procession, carrying the pictures and relics of the
saints. Afterwards the Mohammedan Marabouts and the Christian fanatics
stirred up all the strife; they are equally responsible for the throat
slitting, burning, and torturing; there’s not a pin to choose between
them. That old lady would send us to the stake to-day if she could.
Priest and woman, the old allies! Do you know, Señor, that the future of
Spain depends upon the education you give your women.” His eyes flashed
as he asked Jaime the question. The Don looked back at him with
withering scorn.
“The _ladies_ of Spain receive the education best suited to them,” he
said gravely.
“They know how to use their fans,” said Patsy; his nose had begun to
bleed. “That I should be assaulted for the first time in my life by a
little old lady with a fan,--wonderful! I will say she’s the livest
thing I’ve seen in Cordova.”
“You saw who she was?” said J. “The lady with the silver curls who
didn’t want to pay duty on the ham, and who gives bread to the beggars
of Cordova every Saturday.”
[Illustration: GATE OF JUSTICE, ALHAMBRA.]
VIII
GRANADA
_Quiero vivir en Granada_
_porque me gusta el oir_
_la campana de la Vela_
_quando me voy a dormir._
I like to live in Granada
Because it pleases me to hear
The bell of the Vela
When I am going to sleep.
“Who’s there?”
“People of peace.”
Encarnacion opened the door of the bell tower just a crack. Though the
sun had not set, it was already dark inside the watch-tower of the
Alhambra. The walls are six feet thick; the windows, narrow slits on the
winding stair, let in very little light. Encarnacion carried a classic
brass lamp for olive oil. She shaded the flame from her eyes with a
long, hairy hand, and the light shining through showed how thin it was.
Maria, the younger sister, as grim looking, though more timid in her
bearing, stood behind, peering over Encarnacion’s shoulder.
“It is the young _caballero_ and his friends,” she whispered.
Encarnacion threw the door wide open, the two sisters smiled hospitably
upon us like a pair of kind ogresses.
“But come in.”
“Come in.”
They echoed each other as if they were singing a perpetual duet.
“They are welcome.”
“Welcome.”
“Will they be pleased to enter?”
“To enter!”
We followed the sisters to a square room with enormously thick walls. A
range was built into one corner, a charcoal fire smouldered under a tiny
grate, where something that smelt very good bubbled in an earthenware
pot. Four cages of canaries hung against the wall. A brindled cat stole
in behind us, licked its whiskers, fixed fierce, unwinking eyes on the
birds. Maria threatened him with her finger.
“Bad little cat! Who killed the young robin in the myrtle hedge? And now
you make eyes at these? He knows too much to touch them; he looks and
looks at them, and then goes out and chases the wild birds.”
In the middle of the room stood a round worktable covered with sewing. A
jacket, half cut out of red cotton, lay near a pair of shears. From an
[Illustration: COURT OF LIONS, THE ALHAMBRA.]
[Illustration: GARDEN OF THE GENERALIFE, GRANADA.]
opening in the dark, vaulted ceiling over the worktable, dangled a long
knotted cord.
“That is the rope of the _campana de la Vela_!” said Encarnacion.
“Is it true that it is you who ring the bell of the Vela?”
“Yes, once every half hour, from eight o’clock in the evening till four
in the morning, we ring the bell in the watch-tower.”
“You sit up all night to do it? Isn’t it dreadfully cold?”
“Yes, it is often very cold. In winter we have a fire.” Encarnacion drew
aside the chintz curtains that hid the lower part of the table, and
showed a copper brazier covered with a wire netting that stood
underneath.
“We kindle the charcoal, put our feet close to the brazier on this
wooden shelf, and wrap ourselves up in heavy shawls and hoods. We manage
very well, we are so used to it.”
“What do you do with yourselves through the long winter nights? How do
you pass the time?”
“There is always plenty of work; we take in sewing. Sometimes one of us
reads aloud to the other.”
“Do you two live here quite alone?”
“Sometimes our brother is with us, not always,” sighed Encarnacion. “I
have been the portress of the Torre de la Vela since the night the
tower was struck by lightning and our father and mother, now in glory,
were killed.”
“Now in glory were killed!” echoed Maria.
“What a terrible thing! When did it happen?”
“Long and long ago,--the year Maria made her first communion. We were
waked by a great crash. The tower shook, the bell rang as never before,
there was a thick smoke. It was easy for us to escape, we slept below;
our brother slept above, near our parents. He saved his life by clapping
a towel over his mouth, and creeping down-stairs on his hands and
knees.”
“On his knees,” Maria crossed herself. “Virgin mine! May the Lord
receive them into Paradise in their shoes!”
“The bell gives the signal for opening the sluices,” Encarnacion went
on; “it regulates the irrigation of the vega. Each piece of land has its
hour for letting on the water. On still nights you can hear the bell
thirty miles away.”
High up in the Sierra Nevada Mountains over Granada, the Darrow, a
mountain torrent flowing down from the eternal snows on the summits, is
caught, tamed, and led off into small channels that spread, like the
veins of a man’s body, all over the vega. Moors’ work this; perhaps the
greatest part of their legacy to Spain, for water
[Illustration: WINDOW, TOWER OF CAPTIVE, ALHAMBRA.]
is wealth. Thanks to the Moors, the vega of Granada is the garden of the
Peninsula; the hemp grown here is the finest, the olives and grapes are
the best. The land bears three crops a year in succession,--wheat, beans
and corn. Part of it is now given over to the new sugar beet industry;
the beets grown here are enormous. The soil is light and clean; you will
not find a stone in a whole field. The regulation of the complicated
system of irrigation, the life blood of Granada, is in the hands of
Encarnacion and Maria. To live in a tower, of all others in a tower of
the Alhambra, and spend your life helping to make Granada green and
beautiful, seems a pleasant existence, even if it be a lonely one. To
wake when others sleep, and sleep when all the world’s awake, always
seems a hard fate.
“Your birds must be a great company to you,” I said to Maria.
“_Claro._ We raise them ourselves. Would you like to see the little
ones? We keep them in our bedroom where it is warmer.”
“Do me the favor,” Encarnacion relighted the lamp, and showed the way up
the heavy stone stairway.
The neat upper room where the sisters slept had three beds. In spite of
the thick whitewash on the walls, we could still make out the graceful
lines of the old Moorish arches and windows. A palm branch, a crucifix,
and a chromo of the Madonna of Lourdes appearing to Bernadette, hung
between the beds. At one end of the room was a long table with the
breeding cages of the canaries, whose loves and nurseries the sisters of
the tower guard so tenderly.
“See this little one;” Maria put her face close to the cage and made a
little singing sound. “He’s getting strong now; he was weakly at first,
and I thought we should lose him. It would be a pity; his father is our
best singer.” The canaries, all in a flutter at being waked up,
chattered and scolded at her.
“Maria will take them up to see the view,” said Encarnacion; “if they
will excuse me, I will go down in case some one else should call.” I am
afraid Encarnacion knew we liked Maria best.
Down in the town of Granada the bells were ringing like mad, the
nightingales were singing in the Duke of Wellington’s elms, that shade
the long, steep road leading from the town to the red city of the
Alhambra, perched high above it. At the foot of the tower was a carpet
of wild flowers, anemones, wild callas, and many other blossoms I did
not know.
“Is the snow always there?” J. asked, pointing to the Sierra Nevada.
“I was born in the tower,” said Maria; “I have lived here all my life,
and I have never seen those mountains without snow. That is the _campana
de la Vela_,” she pointed to a huge bronze bell hanging in the turret.
“You should see the tower on the day after New Year. How many girls come
up to see the view that day! They believe, foolish ones, that she who
rings the bell on the second of January will get a husband before the
year is over.” Maria smiled, with grim close-shut lips. Had she ever
been weak enough to try the charm? For Encarnacion it was unthinkable.
“When Don Alfonzo was here we asked him to ring the bell. Though he
laughed very much, he would not. From what we hear, he will be married
before New Year all the same.”
In the Torre de la Vela they know all that is going on. It was growing
dark; the stars were pricking through the blue; down in the city of
Granada the lights seemed to reflect them.
“Is that the Gypsy quarter?” I asked Maria. I could just make out doors
like the one leading to Aladdin’s cave, in the face of a hillside far
below.
“Yes, that is the Albaicin. You have been there?”
“Not yet; to-morrow we shall go to see some Gypsy dancing.”
Maria shrugged scornful shoulders. “Take care they don’t pick your
pockets. The Gitanos are great thieves; they are taught to steal from
the time they are babies. You may like what you will see. When there are
no ladies,” she held up her hands in horror, “their dances are not to be
imagined or described. Do not let him go by himself.” She looked at
Patsy, leaning over the parapet absorbed in the view. “They are
deceitful hussies! The dances they dance when men go alone are very
different from what you will see!”
“That would be a hot walk without the shade of those trees,” said Patsy.
“Pleasant that we should remember the Iron Duke in Spain most of all for
his elms. Who loves his fellow men, plants trees. The English _are_
civilized, confound ’em! The longer you’re in Europe, the more you have
to think of England as the Great Friend.”
There was no excuse to linger longer. The sisters had invited us to sup,
and we had declined.
“Go you with God,” said Encarnacion, she came with us to the door.
“To-night when you hear the _campana_ de la Vela, think of Maria and me
in the tower.”
“In the tower,” echoed Maria over her shoulder.
The next day we drove to the Albaicin, by the road of the Sacred
Mountain. The base of the mountain is honeycombed with gypsy cave
dwellings. The caves are built, or rather excavated,
[Illustration: GIPSIES OF GRANADA.]
at four different levels, and entered from rough terraces. The gypsy
settlement seemed a sort of primitive community, like those from which
Tangiers and Naples must have developed into the terraced cities they
are to-day. Higher up the mountains are the sacred caves where hermits
once lived. On the summit is a large church and a religious house.
“That old gentleman Don Jaime gave me the letter to,” said Patsy, “told
me that the priests who live up there are no end of swells. They can’t
‘get in’ on anything but merit, not even royal patronage. They must show
that they have the goods; must pass a stiff examination. Each one has
his separate establishment, with his own house and garden and servants,
and draws a pension of from three to five thousand pesetas a year. Most
of them are great ‘orators’; they are sent for from all over Spain to
preach, and jolly well paid for it. They always get twenty-five dollars
a sermon, and have been known to get forty! Spain’s the place for
priests; when I take orders I shall come here to live!”
The gypsy King met us at the entrance of his cave; a swart hulk of a
man, with the voice of a bull and bold piercing eyes. Behind him stood
his son, looking just as the King must have looked at twenty. The boy
had a mop of coarse black hair--the King’s was iron gray--low forehead,
strong white teeth, that curious veiled eye that later in life grows
fierce and bright; body, hands, feet, exquisitely turned, color a rich
olive, the look of race that is better than beauty, and the glow of
youth that is best of all. It was small wonder the two ragged girls
plaiting straw in the dust of the hot yellow road looked at him with
longing eyes.
The door of the cave, fitted flat against the hillside, seemed to lead
into the bowels of the earth. The cave, literally scooped out of the
mountain, was divided into four decent whitewashed rooms, comfortable
and clean enough. We went directly from the road into the largest; it
was of fair size, with rough beams running across the ceiling and with a
tiled floor. We were expected; great preparations had been made for our
visit. A row of rush-bottomed chairs stood against the wall. Beautifully
polished copper saucepans of many sizes were placed on a shelf, with
some wild peonies stuck in a beer bottle. I somehow fancied that the
saucepans would be for sale if we took a fancy to them. A small inner
room, perfectly dark, led from the living room; it had a bed with a
white crocheted quilt. On the left of the entrance was a cave room that
served as a kitchen; on the right, a sort of property room,--where half
a dozen women and girls with powdered faces and fresh flowers in their
hair were waiting. The eldest, a fierce old woman with a beak like a
parrot’s, dusted a chair for me.
“This is my house,” she said. Pointing to the King, “He is my son, these
are all my family.” She seemed surprised at my asking if there was any
other cave as good as hers.
“No,” she said, “this is the best; cool in summer, warm in winter, and
clean, as you can see.”
The musicians, the King’s son and another youth with oiled hair and
clean new jackets, took their places, twanged their guitars and the
_fiesta flamanca_ began. First a dance by two women, while the others
sat by, clapping their hands, tapping with their feet, keeping time to
the music.
“More power!” cried the King.
“_Dalé, dalé_,” droned the chorus. The guitars twanged louder, the
hand-clapping redoubled. Little by little the dancers woke up. The
youngest woman was sixty, the oldest girl ten. This was a little
disappointing to Patsy, though they all did their best and gave us good
measure. The children were evidently students being carefully trained;
the old women were all good artists, and intent on preserving and
handing down the traditions of their art,--but the thing was somehow
curiously academic! The old mother took a tambourine from the wall and
shook out the music from it in fine style. “Tire yourselves!” she
cried. After the second dance, she handed a tray with glasses of wine.
Each succeeding dance was better than the last. The best of all was the
one the old woman gave us at the end. Only once was there an approach to
what Maria had hinted at. A woman with a bad face gave us a Jaleo, a
gross, wriggling dance with unpleasant contortions of the body,
wonderful as an exhibition of skill and strength, but not quite decent,
and lacking the grace, the beauty, and the dignity of the old woman’s
performance.
“Haven’t we had enough?” said Patsy, at the end of half an hour. “You
saw those men tip the wink to our coachman as we passed? The whole
village is on its good behavior. We are not to be shocked, annoyed, or
begged from; it’s all put down in the bill we must pay the ruffian King
for protecting us from his tribe, preventing us from seeing the real
thing and giving us this fake show.”
Patsy was all wrong--because he was disappointed in the age of the
performers! You can see a young and handsome Spanish dancing girl in any
music hall in Madrid. The gypsy cave in the mountainside, where the
dancers of the past and the dancers of the future meet, was worth a trip
to Granada!
[Illustration: LA PUERTA DEL VINO, GRANADA.]
[Illustration: A COURT OF THE ALHAMBRA.]
Of course we spent most of our time in Granada at the Alhambra. Some
things must be experienced to be understood. Falling in love is one,
Niagara Falls another, going down a toboggan slide a third, the Alhambra
a fourth. The old simile of the oyster came to mind as freshly as if we
had invented it,--just as every pair of young lovers imagine they have
invented love! The heavy walls are the outside of the oyster; the fairy
courts and halls painted with the tints of rainbow, dawn, sea, and
moonlight are the inside of the shell. The pearl? In the room of the Two
Sisters the winter apartment of the sultana, I had a vision of Irving’s
Linderaxa. I could not remember how he described his pearl of the harem,
but the face I saw or dreamed of as I sat in that fairy palace was the
fairest woman’s face I ever saw. Her skin was like warm ivory, her hair
an aureole of flame, her eyes, gray stars, her smile, the smile of the
imperishable child.
I asked Patsy if he was disappointed in the Alhambra.
“Yes,” he said, “disappointed the right way. After the Acropolis, it is
the best thing I ever saw. The lovely color, the movement of it all!
Will you tell me how any people could invent a written language as
decorative as this?” We were in one of the great halls looking at the
Cuffik inscriptions that form one of the most fascinating and
characteristic of the wall ornamentations.
“It is all based on Persian art, but it is even more joyous, don’t you
think? You know the Koran discourages, if it does not forbid, the
representation of any living creature in art. That is like the ‘Thou
shalt make no graven image.’ Man and beast are practically ruled out of
Arab art. Do you miss them? I don’t. After the gross use of men and
animals,--remember the great bearded bullmen of the Assyrians, and the
hawk and cat headed gods of Egypt,--this endless variation of leaf and
flower and geometric design is refreshing. Why it is like a vegetarian
diet to a sailor man who has had scurvy from living on salt beef.”
The guardian, who had long tracked us, here buttonholed J., and poured
out a flood of familiar information. We listened mechanically, as he
talked, until he said something we had not heard twenty times before.
“Last week two Moors from the Algeciras Conference were here. I myself
took them about. They showed no enthusiasm. In this room the older one
said to me, ‘These are sentences from the Koran,’ as if I did not know
that before! In spite of all their pretended indifference, I knew very
well what those Moors were feeling. It is a very deceitful race; they
always hide their emotions.” The guardian spoke as scornfully of the
Moors as Maria had spoken of the gypsies.
“Do you notice how they all dislike what they call deceit? The Spaniard
is a truthful person, and honest. I don’t know why it is surprising, but
after some of the countries we have traveled in, it comes like a shock!”
said Patsy.
A long straight path of gold sand between two lines of tall, black
cypresses leads to the old Moorish garden of the Generalife, near the
Alhambra. Every other tree is clipped square at the top, the alternate
one towering to a pointed spire. There is always a sound of gliding
waters; in the early morning and evening, when the birds’ matins and
lauds are sung, you can hear the nightingales and the merles. In the
patio of the cypresses, under the shade of immemorial trees, is a great
sheet of still green water like a vast chrysophrase, where you can study
the cloud shadows, or your own reflection--if you are handsome--like
Narcissus, or watch the greedy gudgeon and gold fish devour the bread
you throw them. We passed through a long, flower-bordered path with a
thicket of laurel, aloes and pomegranate for a background. A hundred
tiny jets of water, like white aigrettes, waved among the green, and
lost themselves in the shrubbery. We climbed the long Stairway of the
Cascades, cheered by the babble of the little streams of water that run
down the tops of the balustrade on either side. In the mirador at the
top we rested, and looked down on the wonderful garden with its
terraces, cedars, clipped myrtle hedges, thousand and one fountains.
“The Bankshires are only beginning here; in Seville the rose madness was
at its height,” said Patsy. “We have travelled with the rose; we
couldn’t have managed better if we had tried.”
From the mirador you see the Sierras with the eternal snow fields
glistening on their summits. “The Moors certainly understood the use of
water,” said J. “I have never seen anything quite so good as this garden
even in Italy.”
There was music in the air, the rushing sound of water from those
melting snows cunningly led down the mountainside and set here to dance
and sing, to cool the heat and beguile the leisure hours of long, hot,
summer days. Patsy watched with fascinated eyes a joyous _saldadore_ of
water leaping and singing under the shade of an oak.
“Water is to these people of the south what fire is to us northerners,”
he said. “They are the two living elements, and they both dance. Dancing
is the natural expression of joy in life; it is copied from dancing
spray and dancing flame. David was quite right to dance before the ark.
I had a
[Illustration: RETABLO, CARVED IN HIGH AND LOW RELIEF. _Roldan_]
Shaker nurse who danced with me when I cried; I suppose that is why I’m
so fond of it.”
Granada cathedral is so hemmed in with trumpery little buildings that it
is impossible to get an impression of it as a whole. The mushroom growth
will have to go. Each succeeding tourist wave sweeping over Europe, as
the Goths and Vandals swept before them, sweeps away some such trash,
and uncovers hidden gems of architecture. The interior of the cathedral,
though over ornate, has some splendid architectural effects, and is rich
in every sort of treasure ecclesiastical. I remember a curious white
marble statue of the Virgin with a black marble cloak, and a very
charming painted wood group of St. Anne, St. Joachim and Mary, a good
example of one of the arts you must come to Spain to see. Painted wood
statuary, wrought iron work, ecclesiastical embroidery and--dancing have
all been carried farther in Spain than anywhere else in Europe.
Montañes, Roldan, and Alonzo Cano, succeeded in making their painted
wood statues and bas-reliefs as dignified as if they had worked in
bronze or marble. Just as Luca della Robbia did with terra cotta. There
is a polychrome carved retablo of the Entombment in Seville, by Roldan,
that is a true masterpiece of sculpture. The outer figures are modelled
in such high relief they seem almost free; those in the middle distance
are in ordinary high relief, the more distant in low, almost flat
relief; the background is a painted wood panel. This does not sound
encouraging, but the material a masterpiece is made of is of little
consequence; it may be wood, marble, iron, gold or woven wool,--if a
master uses it, a masterpiece is produced.
As I was sketching the wonderful wrought iron screen that shuts off the
tombs from the main part of the chapel royal, I heard two women’s
voices: “You have made a mistake, I think. The tombs of Ferdinand and
Isabel are on the right,” said an alert, gray-haired woman.