chance in your wanderings. You can never be lost; the town is so small
that a short walk always brings you to the river or the wall, and there
you can take a new departure. If you do not know where you are going,
you have every moment the delight of some unforeseen pleasure. There is
not a street in Toledo that is not rich in treasures of
architecture,--hovels that once were marvels of building, balconies of
curiously wrought iron, great doors with sculptured posts and lintels,
with gracefully finished hinges, and studded with huge nails whose
fanciful heads are as large as billiard balls. Some of these are still
handsome residences, but most have fallen into neglect and abandonment.
You may find a beggar installed in the ruined palace of a Moorish
prince, a cobbler at work in the pleasure-house of a Castilian
conqueror. The graceful carvings are mutilated and destroyed, the
delicate arabesques are smothered and hidden under a triple coat of
whitewash. The most beautiful Moorish house in the city, the so-called
Taller del Moro, where the grim governor of Huesca invited four hundred
influential gentlemen of the province to a political dinner, and cut off
all their heads as they entered (if we may believe the chronicle, which
we do not), is now empty and rapidly going to ruin. The exquisite
panelling of the walls, the endlessly varied stucco work that seems to
have been wrought by the deft fingers of ingenious fairies, is
shockingly broken and marred. Gigantic cacti look into the windows from
the outer court. A gay pomegranate-tree flings its scarlet blossoms in
on the ruined floor. Rude little birds have built their nests in the
beautiful fretted rafters, and flutter in and out as busy as brokers.
But of all the feasting and loving and plotting these lovely walls
beheld in that strange age that seems like fable now,--the vivid,
intelligent, scientific, tolerant age of the Moors,--even the memory has
perished utterly and forever.
We strolled away aimlessly from this beautiful desolation, and soon came
out upon the bright and airy Paseo del Transito. The afternoon sunshine
lay warm on the dull brown suburb, but a breeze blew freshly through the
dark river-gorge, and we sat upon the stone benches bordering the bluff
and gave ourselves up to the scene. To the right were the ruins of the
Roman bridge and the Moorish mills; to the left the airy arch of San
Martin's bridge spanned the bounding torrent, and far beyond stretched
the vast expanse of the green valley refreshed by the river, and rolling
in rank waves of verdure to the blue hills of Guadalupe. Below us on the
slippery rocks that lay at the foot of the sheer cliffs, some luxurious
fishermen reclined, idly watching their idle lines. The hills stretched
away, ragged and rocky, dotted with solitary towers and villas.
A squad of beggars rapidly gathered, attracted by the gracious faces of
Las Senoras. Begging seems almost the only regular industry of Toledo.
Besides the serious professionals, who are real artists in studied
misery and ingenious deformity, all the children in town occasionally
leave their marbles and their leap-frog to turn an honest penny by
amateur mendicancy.
A chorus of piteous whines went up. But La Senora was firm. She checked
the ready hands of the juveniles. "Children should not be encouraged to
pursue this wretched life. We should give only to blind men, because
here is a great and evident affliction; and to old women, because they
look so lonely about the boots." The exposition was so subtle and
logical that it admitted no reply. The old women and the blind men
shuffled away with their pennies, and we began to chaff the sturdy and
rosy children.
A Spanish beggar can bear anything but banter. He is a keen
physiognomist, and selects his victims with unerring acumen. If you
storm or scowl at him, he knows he is making you uncomfortable, and
hangs on like a burr. But if you laugh at him, with good humor, he is
disarmed. A friend of mine reduced to confusion one of the most
unabashed mendicants in Castile by replying to his whining petition,
politely and with a beaming smile, "No, thank you. I never eat them."
The beggar is far from considering his employment a degrading one. It is
recognized by the Church, and the obligation of this form of charity
especially inculcated. The average Spaniard regards it as a sort of tax
to be as readily satisfied as a toll-fee. He will often stop and give a
beggar a cent, and wait for the change in maravedises. One day, at the
railway station, a muscular rogue approached me and begged for alms. I
offered him my _sac-de-nuit_ to carry a block or two. He drew himself up
proudly and said, "I beg your pardon, sir; I am no Gallician." An old
woman came up with a basket on her arm. "Can it be possible in this far
country," said La Senora, "or are these--yes, they are, deliberate
peanuts." With a penny we bought unlimited quantities of this levelling
edible, and with them the devoted adherence of the aged merchant. She
immediately took charge of our education. We must see Santa Maria la
Blanca,--it was a beautiful thing; so was the Transito. Did we see those
men and women grubbing in the hillside? They were digging bones to sell
at the station. Where did the bones come from? Quien sabe? Those
dust-heaps have been there since King Wamba. Come, we must go and see
the Churches of Mary before it grew dark. And the zealous old creature
marched away with us to the synagogue built by Samuel Ben Levi,
treasurer to that crowned panther, Peter the Cruel. This able financier
built this fine temple to the God of his fathers out of his own purse.
He was murdered for his money by his ungrateful lord, and his synagogue
stolen by the Church. It now belongs to the order of Cala-trava.
But the other and older synagogue, now called Santa Maria la Blanca, is
much more interesting. It stands in the same quarter, the suburb
formerly occupied by the industrious and thriving Hebrews of the Middle
Ages until the stupid zeal of the Catholic kings drove them out of
Spain. The synagogue was built in the ninth century under the
enlightened domination of the Moors. At the slaughter of the Jews in
1405 it became a church. It has passed through varying fortunes since
then, having been hospital, hermitage, stable, and warehouse; but it is
now under the care of the provincial committee of art, and is somewhat
decently restored. Its architecture is altogether Moorish. It has three
aisles with thick octagonal columns supporting heavy horseshoe arches.
The spandrels are curiously adorned with rich circular stucco figures.
The soil you tread is sacred, for it was brought from Zion long before
the Crusades; the cedar rafters above you preserve the memory and the
odors of Lebanon.
A little farther west, on a fine hill overlooking the river, in the
midst of the ruined palaces of the early kings, stands the beautiful
votive church of San Juan de los Reyes. It was built by Ferdinand and
Isabella, before the Columbus days, to commemorate a victory over their
neighbors the Portuguese. During a prolonged absence of the king, the
pious queen, wishing to prepare him a pleasant surprise, instead of
embroidering a pair of impracticable slippers as a faithful young wife
would do nowadays, finished this exquisite church by setting at work
upon it some regiments of stone-cutters and builders. It is not
difficult to imagine the beauty of the structure that greeted the king
on his welcome home. For even now, after the storms of four centuries
have beaten upon it, and the malignant hands of invading armies have
used their utmost malice against it, it is still a won-drously perfect
work of the Gothic inspiration.
We sat on the terrace benches to enjoy the light and graceful lines of
the building, the delicately ornate door, the unique drapery of iron
chains which the freed Christians hung here when delivered from the
hands of the Moors. A lovely child, with pensive blue eyes fringed with
long lashes, and the slow sweet smile of a Madonna, sat near us and sang
to a soft, monotonous air a war-song of the Carlists. Her beauty soon
attracted the artistic eyes of La Senora, and we learned she was named
Francisca, and her baby brother, whose flaxen head lay heavily on her
shoulder, was called Jesus Mary. She asked, Would we like to go into the
church? She knew the sacristan and would go for him. She ran away like a
fawn, the tow head of little Jesus tumbling dangerously about. She
reappeared in a moment; she had disposed of mi nino, as she called it,
and had found the sacristan. This personage was rather disappointing. A
sacristan should be aged and mouldy, clothed in black of a decent
shabbiness. This was a Toledan swell in a velvet shooting-jacket, and
yellow peg-top trousers. However, he had the wit to confine himself to
turning keys, and so we gradually recovered from the shock of the
shooting-jacket.
The church forms one great nave, divided into four vaults enriched with
wonderful stone lace-work. A superb frieze surrounds the entire nave,
bearing in great Gothic letters an inscription narrating the foundation
of the church. Everywhere the arms of Castile and Arragon, and the
wedded ciphers of the Catholic kings. Statues of heralds start
unexpectedly out from the face of the pillars. Fine as the church is, we
cannot linger here long. The glory of San Juan is its cloisters. It may
challenge the world to show anything so fine in the latest bloom and
last development of Gothic art. One of the galleries is in ruins,--a sad
witness of the brutality of armies. But the three others are enough to
show how much of beauty was possible in that final age of pure Gothic
building. The arches bear a double garland of leaves, of flowers, and of
fruits, and among them are ramping and writhing and playing every figure
of bird or beast or monster that man has seen or poet imagined. There
are no two arches alike, and yet a most beautiful harmony pervades them
all. In some the leaves are in profile, in others delicately spread upon
the graceful columns and every vein displayed. I saw one window where a
stone monkey sat reading his prayers, gowned and cowled,--an odd caprice
of the tired sculptor. There is in this infinite variety of detail a
delight that ends in something like fatigue. You cannot help feeling
that this was naturally and logically the end of Gothic art. It had run
its course. There was nothing left but this feverish quest of variety.
It was in danger, after having gained such divine heights of invention,
of degenerating into prettinesses and affectation.
But how marvellously fine it was at last! One must see it, as in these
unequalled cloisters, half ruined, silent, and deserted, bearing with
something of conscious dignity the blows of time and the ruder wrongs of
men, to appreciate fully its proud superiority to all the accidents of
changing taste and modified culture. It is only the truest art that can
bear that test. The fanes of Paestum will always be more beautiful even
than the magical shore on which they stand. The Parthenon, fixed like a
battered coronet on the brow of the Acropolis, will always be the
loveliest sight that Greece can offer to those who come sailing in from
the blue Aegean. It is scarcely possible to imagine a condition of
thought or feeling in which these master-works shall seem quaint or
old-fashioned. They appeal, now and always, with that calm power of
perfection, to the heart and eyes of every man born of woman.
The cloisters enclose a little garden just enough neglected to allow the
lush dark ivy, the passionflowers, and the spreading oleanders to do
their best in beautifying the place, as men have done their worst in
marring it. The clambering vines seem trying to hide the scars of their
hardly less perfect copies. Every arch is adorned with a soft and
delicious drapery of leaves and tendrils; the fair and outraged child of
art is cherished and caressed by the gracious and bountiful hands of
Mother Nature.
As we came away, little Francisca plucked one of the five-pointed leaves
of the passion-flowers and gave it to La Senora, saying reverentially,
"This is the Hand of Our Blessed Lord!"
The sun was throned, red as a bacchanal king, upon the purple hills, as
we descended the rocky declivity and crossed the bridge of St. Martin.
Our little Toledan maid came with us, talking and singing incessantly,
like a sweet-voiced starling. We rested on the farther side and looked
back at the towering city, glorious in the sunset, its spires aflame,
its long lines of palace and convent clear in the level rays, its ruins
softened in the gathering shadows, the lofty bridge hanging transfigured
over the glowing river. Before us the crumbling walls and turrets of the
Gothic kings ran down from the bluff to the water-side, its terrace
overlooking the baths where, for his woe, Don Roderick saw Count
Julian's daughter under the same inflammatory circumstances as those in
which, from a Judaean housetop, Don David beheld Captain Uriah's wife.
There is a great deal of human nature abroad in the world in all ages.
Little Francisca kept on chattering. "That is St. Martin's bridge. A
girl jumped into the water last year. She was not a lady. She was in
service. She was tired of living because she was in love. They found her
three weeks afterwards; but, Santisima Maria! she was good for nothing
then."
Our little maid was too young to have sympathy for kings or servant
girls who die for love. She was a pretty picture as she sat there, her
blue eyes and Madonna face turned to the rosy west, singing in her sweet
child's voice her fierce little song of sedition and war:--
"Arriba los valientes!
Abajo tirania!
Pronto llegara el dia
De la Restauracion.
Carlistas a caballo!
Soldados en Campana!
Viva el Rey de Espana,
Don Carlos de Borbon!"
I cannot enumerate the churches of Toledo,--you find them in every
street and by-way. In the palmy days of the absolute theocracy this
narrow space contained more than a hundred churches and chapels. The
province was gnawed by the cancer of sixteen monasteries of monks and
twice as many convents of nuns, all crowded within these city walls.
Fully one half the ground of the city was covered by religious buildings
and mortmain property. In that age, when money meant ten times what it
signifies now, the rent-roll of the Church in Toledo was forty millions
of reals. There are even yet portions of the town where you find nothing
but churches and convents. The grass grows green in the silent streets.
You hear nothing but the chime of bells and the faint echoes of masses.
You see on every side bolted doors and barred windows, and, gliding over
the mossy pavements, the stealthy-stepping, long-robed priests.
I will only mention two more churches, and both of these converts from
heathendom; both of them dedicated to San Cristo, for in the democracy
of the calendar the Saviour is merely a saint, and reduced to the level
of the rest. One is the old pretorian temple of the Romans, which was
converted by King Sizebuto into a Christian church in the seventh
century. It is a curious structure in brick and mortar, with an apsis
and an odd arrangement of round arches sunken in the outer wall and
still deeper pointed ones. It is famed as the resting-place of Saints
Ildefonso and Leocadia, whom we have met before. The statue of the
latter stands over the door graceful and pensive enough for a heathen
muse. The little cloisters leading to the church are burial vaults. On
one side lie the canonical dead and on the other the laity, with bright
marble tablets and gilt inscriptions. In the court outside I noticed a
flat stone marked _Ossuarium._ The sacristan told me this covered the
pit where the nameless dead reposed, and when the genteel people in the
gilt marble vaults neglected to pay their annual rent, they were taken
out and tumbled in to moulder with the common clay.
This San Cristo de la Vega, St. Christ of the Plain, stands on the wide
flat below the town, where you find the greater portion of the Roman
remains. Heaps of crumbling composite stretched in an oval form over the
meadow mark the site of the great circus. Green turf and fields of
waving grain occupy the ground where once a Latin city stood. The Romans
built on the plain. The Goths, following their instinct of isolation,
fixed their dwelling on the steep and rugged rock. The rapid Tagus
girdling the city like a horseshoe left only the declivity to the west
to be defended, and the ruins of King Wamba's wall show with what
jealous care that work was done. But the Moors, after they captured the
city, apparently did little for its defence. A great suburb grew up in
the course of ages outside the wall, and when the Christians recaptured
Toledo in 1085, the first care of Alonso VI. was to build another wall,
this time nearer the foot of the hill, taking inside all the accretion
of these years. From that day to this that wall has held Toledo. The
city has never reached, perhaps will never reach, the base of the steep
rock on which it stands.
When King Alonso stormed the city, his first thought, in the busy half
hour that follows victory, was to find some convenient place to say his
prayers. Chance led him to a beautiful little Moorish mosque or oratory
near the superb Puerta del Sol. He entered, gave thanks, and hung up his
shield as a votive offering. This is the Church of San Cristo de la Luz.
The shield of Alonso hangs there defying time for eight centuries,--a
golden cross on a red field,--and the exquisite oratory, not much larger
than a child's toy-house, is to-day one of the most charming specimens
of Moorish art in Spain. Four square pillars support the roof, which is
divided into five equal "half-orange" domes, each different from the
others and each equally fascinating in its unexpected simplicity and
grace. You cannot avoid a feeling of personal kindliness and respect for
the refined and genial spirit who left this elegant legacy to an alien
race and a hostile creed.
The Military College of Santa Cruz is one of the most precious specimens
extant of those somewhat confused but beautiful results of the
transition from florid Gothic to the Renaissance. The plateresque is
young and modest, and seeks to please in this splendid monument by
allying the innovating forms with the traditions of a school outgrown.
There is an exquisite and touching reminiscence of the Gothic in the
superb portal and the matchless group of the Invention of the Cross. All
this fine facade is by that true and genuine artist, Enrique de Egas,
the same who carved the grand Gate of the Lions, for which may the gate
of paradise be open to him.
The inner court is surrounded by two stories of airy arcades, supported
by slim Corinthian columns. In one corner is the most elaborate
staircase in Spain. All the elegance and fancy of Arab and Renaissance
art have been lavished upon this masterly work.
Santa Cruz was built for a hospital by that haughty Cardinal Mendoza,
the Tertius Rex of Ferdinand and Isabella. It is now occupied by the
military school, which receives six hundred cadets. They are under the
charge of an inspector-general and a numerous staff of professors. They
pay forty cents a day for their board. The instruction is gratuitous and
comprehends a curriculum almost identical with that of West Point. It
occupies, however, only three years.
The most considerable Renaissance structure in Toledo is the Royal
Alcazar. It covers with its vast bulk the highest hilltop in the city.
From the earliest antiquity this spot has been occupied by a royal
palace or fortress. But the present structure was built by Charles V.
and completed by Herrera for Philip II. Its north and south facades are
very fine. The Alcazar seems to have been marked by fate. The Portuguese
burned it in the last century, and Charles III. restored it just in time
for the French to destroy it anew. Its indestructible walls alone
remain. Now, after many years of ruinous neglect, the government has
begun the work of restoration. The vast quadrangle is one mass of
scaffolding and plaster dust. The grand staircase is almost finished
again. In the course of a few years we may expect to see the Alcazar in
a state worthy of its name and history. We would hope it might never
again shelter a king. They have had their day there. Their line goes
back so far into the mists of time that its beginning eludes our utmost
search. The Roman drove out the unnamed chiefs of Iberia. The
fair-haired Goth dispossessed the Italian. The Berber destroyed the
Gothic monarchy. Castile and Leon fought their way down inch by inch
through three centuries from Covadonga to Toledo, halfway in time and
territory to Granada and the Midland Sea. And since then how many royal
feet have trodden this breezy crest,--Sanchos and Henrys and
Ferdinands,--the line broken now and then by a usurping uncle or a
fratricide brother,--a red-handed bastard of Trastamara, a star-gazing
Alonso, a plotting and praying Charles, and, after Philip, the dwindling
scions of Austria and the nullities of Bourbon. This height has known as
well the rustle of the trailing robes of queens,--Berenguela, Isabel the
Catholic, and Juana,--Crazy Jane. It was the prison of the widow of
Philip IV. and mother of Charles II. What wonder if her life left much
to be desired? With such a husband and such a son, she had no memories
nor hopes.
The kings have had a long day here. They did some good in their time.
But the world has outgrown them, and the people, here as elsewhere, is
coming of age. This Alcazar is built more strongly than any dynasty. It
will make a glorious school-house when the repairs are finished and the
Republic is established, and then may both last forever!
One morning at sunrise, I crossed the ancient bridge of Alcantara, and
climbed the steep hill east of the river to the ruined castle of San
Cervantes, perched on a high, bold rock, which guards the river and
overlooks the valley. Near as it is to the city, it stands entirely
alone. The instinct of aggregation is so powerful in this people that
the old towns have no environs, no houses sprinkled in the outlying
country, like modern cities. Every one must be huddled inside the walls.
If a solitary house, like this castle, is built without, it must be in
itself an impregnable fortress. This fine old ruin, in obedience to this
instinct of jealous distrust, has but one entrance, and that so narrow
that Sir John Falstaff would have been embarrassed to accept its
hospitalities. In the shade of the broken walls, grass-grown and gay
with scattered poppies, I looked at Toledo, fresh and clear in the early
day. On the extreme right lay the new spick-and-span bull-ring, then the
great hospice and Chapel of St. John the Baptist, the Convent of the
Immaculate Conception, and next, the Latin cross of the Chapel of Santa
Cruz, whose beautiful fagade lay soft in shadow; the huge arrogant bulk
of the Alcazar loomed squarely before me, hiding half the view; to the
left glittered the slender spire of the Cathedral, holding up in the
pure air that emblem of august resignation, the triple crown of thorns;
then a crowd of cupolas, ending at last near the river-banks with the
sharp angular mass of San Cristobal. The field of vision was filled with
churches and chapels, with the palaces of the king and the monk. Behind
me the waste lands went rolling away untilled to the brown Toledo
mountains. Below, the vigorous current of the Tagus brawled over its
rocky bed, and the distant valley showed in its deep rich green what
vitality there was in those waters if they were only used.
A quiet, as of a plague-stricken city, lay on Toledo. A few mules wound
up the splendid roads with baskets of vegetables. A few listless
fishermen were preparing their lines. The chimes of sleepy bells floated
softly out on the morning air. They seemed like the requiem of municipal
life and activity slain centuries ago by the crozier and the crown.
Thank Heaven, that double despotism is wounded to death. As Chesterfield
predicted, before the first muttering of the thunders of '89, "the
trades of king and priest have lost half their value." With the decay of
this unrighteous power, the false, unwholesome activity it fostered has
also disappeared. There must be years of toil and leanness, years
perhaps of struggle and misery, before the new genuine life of the
people springs up from beneath the dead and withered rubbish of temporal
and spiritual tyranny. Freedom is an angel whose blessing is gained by
wrestling.
THE ESCORIAL