red handed in the very act of laying flowers on a tomb, was annoyed. She
saw that I, too, looked with disfavor on the alert gray-haired lady with
the guidebook, and by mutual consent we made acquaintance beside the
tomb of Juana la Loca, the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabel, and her
husband, Philippe le Bel.
“Poor things!” said the girl who had laid the flowers between the two
marble figures lying side by side.
“Poor things! Tell me their story if you remember it.”
“They were married when Juana was seventeen, and Philippe eighteen. She
was very pretty, but he was the handsomest man in Europe. They only had
each other ten years; even then they were not allowed much peace! At
first they lived at his court in Brussels where they were very happy;
life was not quite so strict and straight laced as at the Spanish Court.
Isabel was a great queen, but I don’t think she could have been a nice
mother. She sent a priest to be Juana’s confessor, a grim Spanish bigot.
Phillippe laughed at him so much that Juana refused to confess to him.
That was the beginning of all their troubles! The priest came back to
Spain and told tales, set her mother against Juana. When she came home,
to be with her mother when her child was born, Isabel tried to prevent
her returning to her husband,--locked her up. Did you ever hear of such
a thing?”
She spoke as if it was happening now; her face was flushed; she clinched
and unclinched her hand.
“But they couldn’t keep Juana; she was like a raging lioness; they had
to let her go back to her husband. Then Isabel spread the report that
Juana was mad,--and made arrangements in her will to prevent her ever
reigning. Juana wouldn’t have cared about that; all she wanted was to be
let alone, to have a little peace and happiness in her life. After
Isabel’s death, those two poor things made their great mistake,--they
came back to Spain. Somebody who was jealous of their happiness poisoned
Philippe. Nobody knows whether Juana’s father Ferdinand was responsible
for the murder or the Inquisition. I think it was the Inquisition; those
cruel inquisitors did not want anybody to be happy, and Philippe was too
liberal, too open-minded to suit that terrible Cardinal Jimenez. Juana
and Philippe were at Burgos at the time. When it was all over, the
friends who were with her at the deathbed told Juana that her husband
was dead.
“No,” she said, “not dead, asleep!” You see, then, she really did go
mad. They had Philippe embalmed and put in a leaden coffin; from that
day Juana was never separated from his body. Wherever she went she took
it with her; for twenty years she travelled all over the country with
it. I saw her coach, the first that ever came to Spain, in Madrid. In
those days, when royalties travelled, they stopped at convents or
monasteries, if there was no royal residence near. Poor Juana was so
jealous she would never go into a convent, for fear the nuns might look
at her beloved! Philippe dead had his pages and his suite just as if he
had been alive. Finally, Juana was shut up at Tordesillas. There she had
the coffin placed in a chapel leading from her room, where she could
always see it.
[Illustration: MOORISH COLUMNS IN THE ALHAMBRA.]
Here is a photograph I bought of Pradilla’s picture of Juana.”
The picture shows the sad procession on a windswept hillside outside
Burgos just before dawn. The coffin stands on an iron bier, with two wax
candles at the head and foot. A priest reads the service from his book.
Juana’s ladies stand or sit exhausted on the ground. A group of pages
and gentlemen in furred dresses stand near a fire kindled in the open.
Juana, in a long black dress, stands beside the coffin looking down.
“Dead? No, asleep!” she seems to say.
“For forty-seven years Juana watched beside the body of her husband. He
died at twenty-eight; she lived to seventy-four. Their son, Charles V,
gave Juana as fine a tomb as Isabel’s. I think she deserved it. A great
lover is as rare as a great queen. Come with me and see the vault. That
old battered coffin is Philippe’s, the very one Juana carried about with
her. I touched it the other day. It made it all seem so real!”
We were standing by the royal vault, looking down through a grating at
the coffins, when a fair young man with blue eyes strolled through the
chapel and joined us.
“Haven’t you been here long enough, Joan?” he said. “Let’s get out of
this stuffy old church.”
“All ready, Philip; I was only waiting for you.” She looked at him with
adoring eyes, smiled kindly at me, and went off leaning on his arm. They
were as pretty a young couple as you could see, and their names were
Philip and Joan! It could hardly have been by chance that they were
here. I fancied that the bride had contrived to include a pilgrimage to
the tomb of the true lover, Joan the Mad, in their wedding journey.
_Amor es como el vino_
_guárdate á tiempo_
_y te sabrá más dulce_
_cuanto mas viejo._
Love is like wine;
Guarded with time
It shall taste to thee sweetest
When it is oldest.
IX
TANGIERS
We sailed from Algeciras for what Don Jaime called our “little crusade
to Morocco.” The Don could not go with us; he was called to Madrid, he
said, on important business. Patsy, who went down to Algeciras a day or
two before us, had something to tell about the Conference then in
session. The Moroccan delegates had arrived at night, bringing the
ladies of their harems with them. They had landed between two and three
in the morning, so the few curious persons waiting on the dock only
caught an unsatisfactory glimpse of muffled figures passing from the
vessel to the waiting carriages. Private houses had been prepared for
the Moorish delegates; most of the Europeans, and Mr. Henry White, the
American delegate, stayed at the Hotel Maria Cristina.
At the opening meeting of the Conference on the sixteenth of January,
1906, the president, the Duc d’Almodovar, declared that the reforms to
be introduced into Morocco must be based on the triple principle of the
sovereignty of the Sultan the integrity of his states, and the open
door. The poor Moroccan delegates, who did not want any reforms at all
introduced into their country, were only allowed to read their little
speech at the second session, and as it was in Arabic, nobody understood
much of it.
We had a perfect day for our trip across the Straits of Gibraltar from
Europe to Africa. It took two hours and a half, and seemed much shorter
than crossing the English channel. At one point we could see at the same
time the white houses of Tangiers, and the gray Moorish fortifications
of Tarifa, the southernmost point of Europe. The currents are very
strong between the two coasts. A French steamer lay wrecked upon the
rocks close to Tarifa Point light. The sea was like a silver shield. On
the Spanish coast there were long stretches of tawny sands among the
gray and purple rocks, with here and there an ancient Saracen
watch-tower.
“Trafalgar Bay lies in that direction,” said Patsy, pointing to the
northwest. “Nelson must have looked at these yellow cliffs, as he lay
dying on the deck of the Victory, thinking, perhaps, of the white cliffs
of England.”
The winds that blew over Trafalgar Bay caught the great Admiral’s last
command, “Anchor,
[Illustration: TANGIERS.]
Hardy, anchor,” and his last request whispered to his trusty Captain,
“Kiss me, Hardy!” If you ever sail that way, listen to the wind
whistling in the shrouds. If you have ears to hear such things, you may
catch the echo of that whisper.
The coast of Africa, as we approached it, was not more arid than the
opposite shore.
We anchored in the bay far out from Tangiers, a white town set like a
pearl on the edge of an emerald crescent. Near the right point of the
crescent, Tangiers climbs up the hill from the yellow sea sands to the
green heights of the foreign embassies and villas; at the extreme point
stands the lighthouse. America cleared the Mediterranean of Barbary
pirates; and the great European powers built the lighthouse, as they
have built the post-offices, the hospital, and every other modern thing
in Morocco. While waiting for the health officers, we watched the fish
darting through the clear, beryl-green water. Presently a lighter with a
load of bulls closely wedged together drew up alongside the steamer. A
rope was passed round the horns of two of the bulls, and they were
hoisted on board in pairs, in what seemed a cruel manner. The whole
weight came on their horns, their necks were stretched out, their poor,
frightened eyes, blank with terror haunt me still. They made no noise;
most of them hung limp; a few struggled and only succeeded in kicking
each other.
We and our luggage were rowed ashore in a small boat. The sea was alive
with half naked bronze men in sacking bournouses, who waded back and
forth, carrying enormous loads of terra cotta tiles from a lighter to
the land. On the pier a splendid person in a long blue garbardine, white
turban, and yellow slippers, met us with a card and a bouquet of
flowers.
“My name is Ali,” he said; “I am your friend.” He laid his hand to his
lips, then to his forehead with the grave and lovely salutation of the
East.
Ali led us before three magnificent, white-robed Moors, sitting
cross-legged on the floor of the custom-house, smoking long chibouks.
These officials paid no attention to us; indeed, they seemed unconscious
of our presence. The two younger men went on with their conversation;
the elder, kingly as Saul, looked silently across the sea towards that
lost paradise of his race, Andalusia. Our luggage was laid down at their
feet; they did not even glance at it. After a few minutes, the youngest
Moor took his pipe from his mouth, and waved his hand slightly in our
direction.
“All right,” said Ali, “good custom-house, yes?”
The bearers took up our portmanteaus, and we passed into the narrow
crowded street where no vehicle can go, and where Ali had hard work to
protect me from the surging crowd of heavily laden porters and donkeys.
It was market day. Ali piloted us through a maze of narrow, twisting
lanes, and markets thronged with strange figures: Moors in white
bournouses, Jews in black caftans, negro slaves with gashed faces, wild
looking hill men with blue eyes, who looked at us more fiercely than all
the rest. The buyers and sellers outshrieked each other. The long sharp
cry of the water-carriers, the braying of donkeys, the yelling of man,
woman and child, mingled with the hammering of the tin and coppersmiths
in the bazaars.
In the vegetable market we met a tall old Sheik with a long beard,
dressed in a lovely pea-green _jellabiyah_, with turban to match, and
salmon colored undergarments. Ali salaamed to him.
“Health be with you!”
“And with you be peace!” The Sheik’s voice was like distant thunder. He
carried a large basket. The seller of vegetables received him
respectfully, if less cordially than Ali. The Sheik cast a critical eye
over the vegetables, then laid his hand on a bunch of young carrots, a
string of fresh onions, some ruby radishes and some long green beans.
Whatever he touched, the dealer put into his basket, saying, “Take it,”
each time more faintly.
“God increase thy goods!” said the Sheik, when he had considerably
diminished them by half filling his own basket.
“And thy goods, also,” answered the dealer cheerfully, as the old man
pottered off to the butcher’s, next door.
“He is holy man,” said Ali; “they all give to him.”
The butcher’s gifts--a skinned sheep’s head, with awful staring eyes,
and other gruesome things, were too horrid to look at. We waited till
the Sheik passed on to the bread sellers, a group of white shrouded
women sitting against a wall. They were as carefully veiled as if they
had been young and lovely ladies. Each had a cushion before her with
flat loaves of bread. When the middle one gave the Sheik a loaf, there
was the rattle of bangles, and a glimpse of a hand that might have
belonged to the Cumaean sibyl.
Outside the market, in the midst of the mad hurly-burly, there appeared
an incarnation of that Oriental calm we had begun to believe the Moors
had left behind them in Cordova. Down the middle of an evil-smelling
lane, a man on horseback rode slowly towards us. The squalling crowd
made way for him, flattening itself against the wall.
“Welcome!” said Ali, as the stranger passed in the odor of sandalwood.
“Twice welcome,” answered the horseman. He was fairer than many
Spaniards; his brown beard and moustache were beautifully combed and
curled, he had a high aquiline nose, eyes like dark jewels, thin
pencilled eyebrows. He was dressed all in white; his _sulham_ of finest
wool had a silk braid round the edge, and tassel hanging from the hood
drawn over his head. He turned his horse to avoid us. Except for that
slight motion of laying the reins against the animal’s neck--the action
showed a slim brown hand with an ancient turquoise ring--he gave no sign
of having seen us. It is a sign of Arab as of British breeding, not to
look too much at strangers.
“That was an Arab gentleman,” said J.
“Now I know just how Abd-er Rahman looked!” murmured Patsy.
The horse was a spirited chestnut, with a skin so thin the veins showed
under it, and delicate, proud feet that he planted scornfully in the
unspeakable filth of the lane. Later, in Blacksmiths Square, where we
lingered to watch two men shoe an old white mare--one held her foot, the
other put on the shoe--a servant led the chestnut up to the smith. The
man stopped work, patted the chestnut and kissed it, while his helper
fed it with little cakes. Though there were a dozen horses and mules
waiting their turn to be shod, the chestnut took precedence over all.
Ali explained this favoritism. “That horse, he have been to Mecca,” he
said. “That make him very holy.”
For all his holiness the homely smell of the chestnut’s scorched hoof
when the hot shoe touched it was in no wise different from the old white
mare’s!
Seeing the horse fitted with a set of new shoes reminded J. and Patsy
that while in Morocco they must each buy a pair of real Morocco
slippers. Ali had a friend who was a slipper seller, so we hunted him up
in the quiet, back street where he lived. We found him in a tiny bazaar
like a big box, hung with slippers of every size and color. The others
were so long choosing their shoes, the street was so deserted, that I
ventured to walk on alone. From an open doorway came the drone of
childish voices reciting a lesson; an Arab school was in session. Twenty
very little boys sat upon the floor, rocking slowly back and forth,
reciting verses from the Koran in a sort of singsong chant. The
schoolroom was a dark, dank hole, its only light coming from the door.
Dazzled by the blinding light of the street, I did not at first see the
schoolmaster, a young man of eighteen. He sat near the door, writing
out sentences from the Koran with a reed pen, in a large book like a
ledger. He had just reached the bottom of the page, had dipped his reed
in a fascinating bronze inkstand worn in his sash, and I was silently
admiring his beautiful Arabic handwriting, when he looked up and saw me.
A tiny boy, who could not have been more than three, just then smiled at
me. He was such a bonny child, so like one of the children at home, that
I kissed my hand to him.
“Christian dog!” The master’s rattan whizzed through the air, and came
down whack, whack, on each side of the boy’s head. Then all the little
children scowled and bit their thumbs at me. The master tore the neatly
written page from the book, crumpled it up, threw it at me, and
retreated across the room, the book under his arm, cursing me as I
believe I was never cursed before.
At that moment Ali came running up, and after a few angry words with the
schoolmaster, hurried me away.
“They no like you,” he said. “I am your friend; I take care of you.”
The page had been torn from the book because the shadow of a Christian
had fallen upon it! After that, Ali became as my shadow. When I wanted
to stop and admire the tower of the great Mosque,--it has a poor,
far-away likeness to the Giralda--he would not let me stay, telling me
that it was not safe for Christians to linger near the mosque or the
tombs of saints.
The Great Socco, the big market-place outside the city gate, is the most
Oriental thing you can see without going to India. The bazaars of
Constantinople, the Muski of Cairo, even the streets of Jaffa, are
European compared to it. The Socco lies on a bare hillside; it is shut
in with walls, and entered through a handsome Moorish gate. A restless
stream of camels, asses, beggars, traders, fruit-sellers, veiled women,
jugglers and snake charmers pulses ceaselessly back and forth. A caravan
from Fez was starting that day, another had just arrived. The camels
snarled and grunted as the drivers unloaded their bales of merchandise
and dates. Near the gate, in a corner of comparative peace, an audience
had collected about the one-eyed story teller. He beat his drum as we
came up. Ali gave him a piece of silver, and we were allowed to stand on
the edge of the crowd and listen to the tale of the Fisherman and the
Genie told in Arabic with dramatic gestures, and listened to with
breathless interest.
There was an encampment at one end of the Socco, extending outside the
gate along the road to Vez. The tents were small and poor, the people
who lived in them wild, and, at the same time, wan
[Illustration: STREET IN TANGIERS.]
looking,--the most wretched of all the wretched people I have ever seen.
They belong to a tribe of Berbers from the country, driven by famine
into Tangiers. The blue eyes of those half-naked, half-starved hillmen
shone with a fierce light; the black-eyed Moors looked gentle beside
them. Blue eyes mean white blood! The wild hillmen have not forgotten
where it comes from. They remember that long and long ago, in Roman
days, a tribe of Vandals and Alans--some say eighty thousand
people--crossed the straits to Morocco and never came back, though three
hundred years later some of their descendants came over to Spain with
Tarik, our old friend of Tarik’s Hill, and conquered Christian Spain for
the Crescent.[2]
Outside the Socco, on the road leading up to the villas, we came upon a
white umbrella with an artist we knew by sight sketching under it,
guarded by a soldier. His was the first Christian face we had seen since
we left the steamer; it seemed an age, it was but a few hours ago. We
greeted each other as if we had been old friends! He knew Tangiers well,
had been here three months sketching, therefore he had a great deal to
tell us about Morocco and the Moors. I noticed during all our stay that
the people who had lived longest in Morocco were the least positive in
what they said about the Moors! My first question to the artist was
about the Berber tribe.
“During the Algeciras Conference,” he said, “the Sultan feeds them with
bread every day, so that it may not be said that he cannot take care of
his own. They tell me here that the day the Conference adjourns, there
will be no more bread given away in Tangiers.”
Before lunch time J. and Patsy adopted, or were adopted, by a Hebrew
Jew. Israel was his name; Christian, compared to the fierce Moslem
horde, was his nature. He was a neat young man, educated at the school
of the Israelite Alliance in Tangiers, pleasant and well mannered, his
chief defect being that he wore silly European clothes, when he might
have worn lovely Oriental robes. He quickly confided to us that he was
engaged to be married, and that his Rachel was suffering from acute
dyspepsia. He didn’t _say_ dyspepsia, but he illustrated it with
unmistakable sounds and gestures.
“Let her take one of these after every meal.” Patsy handed Israel a
bottle of soda mint tablets. Israel bent himself double with bowing.
Meanwhile he and Ali gabbled together; the word _hakem_ (physician) was
repeated several times. The soda mints worked well; they suited Rachel,
and Patsy’s reputation as a physician was made. That was the beginning
of all his glory, and our discomfort.
At luncheon there was quail for him, larks for us. When we rode out, he
had the best mount. The pillows of his bed were soft as down, ours hard
as brickbats. That night Ali consulted him about his daughter, who
seemed to be suffering from bronchitis. A box of Brown’s bronchial
troches was unearthed from my medicine chest and given to Ali. Though
the troches were mine, the credit was Patsy’s!
I saw three prisons in Tangiers: the prison of the Moors, the prison of
the Jews, and the prison of a Prominent Citizen’s wives. In the first
two, hideous and squalid past belief, criminals are kept; in the third,
the mothers of the prominent citizens of to-morrow, in whose hands lie
the future of Morocco. This prison, called a harem, was the most
dreadful of all, though it was clean, handsome, had a large patio,
marble columns, and whatever else passes in Morocco for luxury. I was
received by the Prominent Citizen’s four wives. The favorite, an
enormously fat young woman, sleek and sleepy as a cat, had painted eyes
and finger nails reddened with henna. After the first greeting, the
other women paid little attention to me; the favorite, who was younger,
had some questions to ask.
“Are you married? How many children have you? I have a son.
She”--looking at a woman who sat near, a sour-faced creature of Chinese
type--“has only daughters. This morning we saw you pass in the street. I
know that everything is different in your country. You travel, we stay
at home; you go out unveiled, we may not show our faces to any strange
man. There were two men with you this morning; were they your two
husbands?”
I tried to explain Patsy. It seemed stranger to her that he was only our
friend travelling with us, than if he had been an extra husband.
A servant brought in a copper machine like a Russian samovar, and the
Chinese looking wife made tea for us with fresh green tea leaves and
mint. It was very sweet, and not just what I am used to in the way of
tea, but I managed to drink one small tumblerful; the ladies of the
harem drank glass after glass. I had brought a present of some goodies,
and when these had been distributed the conversation became more
animated. The women all examined my dress, hat, gloves and jewels, with
greatest interest. The favorite cried out at the close fitting French
waist, held her hands to her own fat sides, and shook her head at the
very thought of confining those Atlas mountains of flesh with stiff
whalebone. I told her that I thought her dress much more comfortable,
and far prettier than mine; this pleased her more than anything I said.
From the corridor round the patio heavy green doors led to the women’s
sleeping rooms. They had no windows; no light or air could ever
penetrate those dreadful places, quite empty save for the
beds,--mattresses laid on the floor covered with gay quilts,--and
several large clocks hanging on the walls. In the part of the harem I
saw there was literally nothing except divans, beds, and little stands
for trays,--things to sit on, to sleep in, to eat from. There must have
been rooms where the cooking and housework goes on, but I did not see
them. The rooms were empty, the faces of the women were empty. It seemed
the height of irony that where time is of so little value there should
be so many timepieces. The English lady who arranged the visit for me
goes often to this and other harems.
“The women’s lives are so dull, any visitor is welcome,” she said. “One
rule I have had to make. I must choose the subject we talk
about,--otherwise, they would talk of unspeakable things. They are so
coarse and dull. Poor things!”
The poorer women seem better off than the well-to-do, because they have
more occupation. They cook, wash, and make the clothes for themselves
and their children. They must be very strong, for I saw women carrying
the most enormous loads of faggots. Divorce is not uncommon among them;
the divorced woman is always given back her dowry. A bride is brought to
her husband’s house heavily veiled. It is for her to lift the veil; if
she refuses, the marriage does not go on. I heard of a girl who for
three days kept her veil down, and was then sent back to her parent’s
house.
It was pleasant after a day spent in the muck and confusion of Tangiers,
to mount Zuleika, the big gray donkey, and ride up to the European
quarter for the sunset. My saddle was like a little chair set sideways
on the mule, with a swinging board to support my feet. Ali walked by my
side, Abdul, the mule driver, just behind.
“Arrree!” Abdul cried, and twisted Zuleika’s tail till the poor creature
screamed.