GRANADA AND THE ALHAMBRA AND CORDOBA.
The journey from Seville to Granada is a fearful affair. The distance is
only 179 miles, but it takes all day. Directly you come into the
province of Granada the train is besieged with beggars. At every station
ragged boys leap up on the steps of the carriages and whine for alms.
When you arrive at the terminus, beggars by dozens pounce upon you. You
get into an omnibus to go to the town (I selected a real Spanish hotel
to escape from the English), and you are rattled over stones so huge
that they throw the omnibus up several feet from the ground. Suddenly
you stop. You look out and find yourself in the centre of a dirty,
half-lighted square. You are in the middle of the roadway. Round you
dance dozens of weird forms with bare legs and arms, clad in ragged
cloaks. The door is opened, and you are requested to descend. You look
in vain for a hotel, and before you can ask a question your luggage is
thrown off the roof into the mud. The dozen beggars scream and shout and
gesticulate. One seizes your rugs, another your portmanteau, another
your bag. In vain you protest and shriek to the bus-driver. In
self-defence you rush after the procession of beggars who have seized
your property. Then you see that they are wading through the mud on to a
pavement, and that there is a hotel in the distance. The roads of
Granada are so constructed that a deep ditch separates the road from the
pavement. This causes everybody in a carriage to be set down in the
middle of the roadway.
I followed the beggars who had seized my luggage, and found myself
presently in the hotel. Here the beggars grouped themselves round me
until I had been given a number, and then up they filed barefooted and
dirty to my sleeping apartment. The hotel people didn’t say anything; so
I presumed it was usual for the porterage of the hotel to be performed
in this way. A handful of coppers relieved me of my attendants, and I
counted my packages and found them all safe; but it will be a long time
before I forget being turned out on a dark night in the middle of a dark
square, and having all my belongings seized and carried off by the
beggars of Granada.
Granada is the Alhambra! But for the Alhambra, Granada would be left to
the gipsies and the mendicants. But the Alhambra makes the town the
Mecca of all travelling Christians. To behold the palace on the hill,
the ‘red fortress,’ the last stronghold of the Moors, it is worth while
enduring a good deal more than the persecutions of the most degraded
population in all Spain. As one wanders through these world-renowned
ruins and gazes in admiration and awe at the glorious handiwork of a
race that was swept out of Spain hundreds of years ago, one pinches
one’s self to see if it is a dream or a reality. One walks upon
enchanted ground. Here the genii have been at work. It is too utterly
prosaic to imagine that this fairy palace was built by mortal hands. For
my own part, I don’t believe it. I am as sure as I am of anything that
one day a gentleman out of ‘The Arabian Nights’ was sojourning in
Granada and he rubbed a ring, or muttered an incantation, and a djin
appeared, and, after a short conversation, the palace and fortress of
the Alhambra rose from the ground. I don’t dispute the fact that it was
afterwards inhabited by mortals, that here ‘King Boabdil’ and his brave
garrison were starved out, and yielded the keys to the Christian
conquerors, and so passed away for ever. The splendid marble tombs of
Ferdinand and Isabella stand in the Royal Chapel of Granada, and relics
of the last defeat of the Moors are everywhere around. Even the banner
that the Christians bore as they entered the gates of the Alhambra on
January 2, 1492, still hangs, faded and tattered, in a glass case in the
chapel. And near it are the crown and sceptre of their most Catholic
Majesties; and in a little corner, all by itself, is a golden casket,
once the property of a gentleman named Columbus, who has been handed
down to posterity in connection with a yarn about cracking eggs to make
them stand upright, and is also the hero of other American stories. All
these things are solid and substantial realities; but the Alhambra
itself is the airy fabric of a vision, an artist’s fantasy, a poet’s
dream, a----
I am checked in my rhapsody by the remembrance of what I heard as I
wandered through these halls of heavenly beauty, and floated back along
the centuries until I was a Moor myself, and formed one of the proud
Sultan’s glittering train, and lived in the Alhambra in all its pristine
glory of Moorish arch and marble pillar, its masonry of transparent
lace-work, its softened hues of red and blue lit up with glowing gold,
its glistening Oriental tiles, its pomp, its splendour, its majesty and
might. And while I dreamed, and stood aside in the beautiful Court of
Lions to let the veiled beauties of the harem pass with their escort of
negro guards, a voice broke in upon my dreams, and brought me with an
earthquake shock back from the dead centuries to the pulsing, breathing
‘time by the clock'--and this is what the voice said: ‘H’m! it _is_
rather like the place in Leicester Square, isn’t it?’
With a cry of horror I looked up and beheld an ulster and a billycock
and a red guide-book. And presently one of the officials of the Alhambra
approached the ulster and the billycock, and showed it a book of
photographs of other ulsters and billycocks, taken on the spot, leaning
against the pillars of the Alhambra. Would the gentleman and his friend
like to be taken in the Alhambra? They would--and they were. I fled from
the scene of desecration. Ulsters and billycocks, with their hands in
their pockets, leaning against the marble pillars of the Alhambra! O
Moors, that wrought this fairy fabric, beautiful for ever, and to be
hallowed until all taste is dead, and barbarians--not from Barbary, but
from Europe--have made the world a rubbish-heap of the vulgar, the
gross, and the commonplace, if your disembodied spirits ever visit your
lost kingdom in the pale glimpses of the moon, what must you think of
these billycocks and ulsters, and of the people who wear them, and loll
in mustard-coloured tourists’ suits against your dainty walls, and are
taken like that and duly exhibited to other billycocks and ulsters in a
soot-begrimed hole called London, that I don’t suppose any Moor ever
heard of, and pointed to with pride as ‘Me and Jack taken in the
Alhambra--don’t you know!’
I saw everything in Granada as quickly as I could, for the town is cold
and the people are uncouth, and have a habit of looking upon the
foreigner as their legitimate prey. Extortion, robbery, cheating, and
imposition are rampant. To get about at all one must strew the ground
with pesetas. Difficulties are made specially by the guides, in order
that the silver key may be produced as often as possible. Being in a
hurry to get away, I took a little man and bade him take me everywhere
at once. But I told him if he took me to see a Murillo I would put my
navaja into him. (I have seen 7,482 Murillos, all genuine, in Spain, and
I am getting a little tired of them.) My little man took me everywhere;
but every five minutes he turned round and exclaimed, ‘Aqui es costumbre
dar una propina,’ which meant, ‘Here it is customary to give a tip.’
That wretched little man made me give pesetas to gardeners, servants,
coachmen, doorkeepers, officials, watchmen, porters, and every person,
male and female, who happened to be in the places or grounds I visited.
And I know as well as possible that he afterwards returned and went
‘whacks’ with the lot. I protested once or twice, and tried to make him
ashamed of himself, but he swore by all the saints that it _was_
‘costumbre.’ He admitted that it was an imposition, but he insisted that
the people were paid no wages, and so had to live on what visitors gave
them. When I had finished with him, however, I read him a long moral
lecture, and gave him to understand that he must not take all the people
who were not born in Granada for idiots. I’m afraid my protests were in
vain. The motto of Granada will still remain, ‘Aqui es costumbre to
fleece the foreigner.’
That which filled me with the greatest astonishment in Granada, after
the Alhambra, was the way in which all the dogs of the town attended
mass in the cathedral. Quite half the ladies who came in and knelt down
brought dogs with them. The dogs didn’t sit still, but went on
excursions into the different chapels, and visited the altars, and
certainly, when there, their actions could not be interpreted as showing
reverence or respect. I stood petrified to the spot when I saw a big
retriever who came in with an old lady deliberately ascend the steps of
the high altar, and sniff at the calves of the officiating priests.
Nobody took any notice, except a little acolyte, who pulled the dog’s
tail and then patted his head. Several cats being also in the sacred
edifice, there were times when some of the dogs left off sniffing around
and joined in a merry scamper after a startled tom, who fled and leapt
for refuge on to some upper portion of an altar, and looked down and
spat at his enemies. I have been in a good many cathedrals, but I never
saw dogs enjoy so much liberty in one before. The people of Granada are
exceptionally devout, which made me wonder all the more at the custom.
But to admit dogs is the custom, and, being the custom, I suppose nobody
thinks anything of it.
After the Alhambra, the great Mosque of Cordova is the most beautiful
thing in Spain. Built by the Moors in 796, it still stands a monument of
their glorious architecture. Charles V., in 1526, allowed a portion of
it to be destroyed to make room for an ugly cathedral in the centre of
it. When he saw the act of vandalism that the priests had persuaded him
to permit he was deeply grieved, and exclaimed, ‘You have built here
what you or anyone might have built anywhere, but you have destroyed
what was unique in the world!’ You can imagine how beautiful it must be
for the man who knocked down half the Alhambra to build himself a
hideously ugly drab-stone palace to be grieved at its partial
destruction. This mosque is the finest type in Europe of a temple of
Islam. It is a forest of beautiful marble pillars, supporting the most
exquisite Moorish arches. I spent a whole day in the mosque with an
intelligent little Italian, who knew every nook and corner of it.
When you get to Cordova you are never sure that you will see the mosque.
You may not find it. Cordova is built on the principle of the maze at
Hampton Court, but there is no nice kind gentleman on a raised platform
to extricate you from the labyrinth of lanes. Even the inhabitants
occasionally get lost, and wander up this street and down that for hours
until they accidentally get to their homes again. Many of the dogs in
Cordova have their owners’ names and addresses on their collars. This is
a great help to the inhabitants. When a Cordovan gets lost he waits
about and looks on all the dogs’ collars who run past him. When he sees
a dog who has his (the lost inhabitant’s) street on its collar, he
follows him, and is so guided home.
These things are not romances, but facts. Every street is exactly alike,
and every street is crossed and recrossed by dozens of other streets,
and they all wind in and out, and they are all about three feet
wide--some of them are not two feet wide. Woe betide the stranger who
ventures out alone, and does not know enough Spanish to ask to be guided
home again! He may spend a week easily in trying to find his way back to
the hotel.
The hotel in Cordova is one of the best in Spain, and is always crammed
with foreigners. The best time to study the guests is at _table d’hôte_.
I have always my ears and eyes open then. I am much amused by a young
Frenchman who has been to London, and is entertaining the other French
guests with an account of the marvels he has seen there. The English
live entirely on mutton-chops and beefsteaks, and always have sauce out
of bottles. They even put this sauce, which is black, over their pudding
and into their tea. On Sundays the English have no dinner. They only
have tea and cold meat. The French ladies hold up their hands and cry
out that never will they venture into such a horrible country. The
Frenchman then sends them into fits by describing the feet and boots of
English young ladies. Their feet are enormous, and they wear big cloth
boots with no heels to them. Many girls of only sixteen already have the
gout. Englishmen drink beer out of pewter pots in the highest society.
The Prince of Wales, even at his grand dinners at Marlborough House,
always has beer in a pewter pot by his side.
Near the Frenchman who has been to London and gathered so much
information sit an extraordinary family, who are the wonder of the
hotel. There is an old gentleman who speaks nothing but English, and is
married to a widow who speaks nothing but French, with two daughters by
a former husband who speak nothing but German. It is the oddest family
arrangement that I ever came across in my life.
Then there is a Russian gentleman who is three feet high and four feet
across. His head is a big dumpling with two eyes and something that with
the aid of a powerful magnifying glass you make out to be a nose. By way
of compensation he has a mouth that goes right across his face and turns
round each corner. His body is a larger dumpling, and for legs he has
two boiled jam rolls.
We sit down 150 at _table d’hôte_, and 149 people leave off eating and
sit in blank amazement when this little Russian commences operations
upon an orange. With a series of snorts and a couple of wriggles he gets
the peel off. He then puts the orange between his teeth and forces it
into his mouth by hitting it hard with both his fists. During this
operation the people opposite and on either side are continually ducking
their heads to avoid squirts of orange-juice in the eye.
As soon as the little Russian succeeds in closing his mouth he goes
black in the face, and remains so for about two minutes. At the end of
this time there is a loud gurgle; then the great mouth slowly opens, and
calmly and passively the owner allows the pulp from which the juice has
been extracted to fall upon his plate in portions. Horrible as this
description may sound, it falls far short of the actual truth.
The commencement of the last act of the Russian gentleman’s orange
tragedy is the signal for everybody to jump up from the table and rush
from the room.
There is another gentleman at _table d’hôte_--a Spaniard--who wouldn’t
be a bad fellow if, after he had eaten a couple of olives between each
course, he would put the stones anywhere except on the tablecloth. This
gentleman is short-sighted, and has a pair of eye-glasses two sizes too
large for the bridge of his nose. They drop into his soup, they come off
into his wine, and they sometimes fall into the gravy of the dish the
waiter is handing round. While the gentleman is fishing out his
eye-glasses he drops his napkin. When the waiter picks up the napkin and
presents it to him he drops his fork. By the time his fork has been
restored to him his eye-glasses are in the dish again.
As the process is repeated with every course that comes to him, the
gentlemen and ladies below him have several long waits during _table
d’hôte_.
Many people will remember the case of the English doctor who shot a
gipsy at Cordova. The gipsy was a well-known guide, who used to take
foreigners to see the great mosque, from the tower of which an excellent
view of Cordova can be obtained. Several tourists who had ascended the
tower with him on previous occasions had either been seized with
giddiness and fallen off, or committed suicide by throwing themselves
over the parapet. The suicide theory was the one most generally adopted
in the case of Englishmen, because the Spaniards still believe that all
Englishmen suffer from a malady called El Spleen, and that El Spleen
compels the sufferer to end his days and his sufferings in a violent
manner. There are no coroners’ inquests in Spain, and so no one ever
troubled much to inquire into the deaths, which, as far as public
opinion was concerned, were easily accounted for by El Spleen.
It was while turning to descend from the tower that Dr. Middleton found
himself suddenly grasped round the throat by the gipsy guide, Heredia,
and in such a manner that nothing but a shot from a pistol, which
luckily enough he carried in a back pocket, could free him from his
assailant. The doctor was acquitted, and the verdict was received with
applause by a crowded court. There can be no doubt of the impartiality
of Spanish judges, and of the friendly feeling which exists among
Spaniards for Englishmen. That this feeling should have been expressed
in loud applause in an open court in Cordova is all the more remarkable
when we bear in mind that the gipsies who swarm in the city were
actually thirsting for the blood of the Englishman who had taken the
life of one of their race, and were threatening revenge on all those who
ventured to express sympathy for Dr. Middleton. The gipsies of the south
of Spain have always been a power in the country, and there are
instances on record which prove that the Government has on more than one
occasion been compelled to conciliate them by granting them small
privileges. In the days following the revolution which led to the flight
of Queen Isabella the gipsies became for a time a terror to all
law-abiding and inoffensive citizens, and it was only by executing
summary justice upon gipsy culprits that their power was broken.
The gipsies both of Cordova and Granada still, however, maintain the
privilege of acting as guides to those who are foolish enough to take
them. Outside the Hotel Suizo in Cordova there are always dozens of them
hanging about. The reason of this is that it is utterly impossible for a
stranger to find his way about Cordova alone. The narrow streets cross
and recross each other in a perfect maze, and they are all exactly
alike, so that there is no landmark for the pedestrian to steer by, and,
as the streets are too narrow to admit carriages, a guide is a sheer
necessity.