more assiduous. Pianoforte teachers may be counted by the hundred; and a
Conservatorium, besides academies due to private initiative, offers a
thorough musical training to the student. Elegant pianos, characterized by
great delicacy of tone and low price, are a leading feature of Barcelona
manufacture, notably of the firm Bernareggi.
The University, attended by two thousand five hundred students, was
founded so long ago as 1430, and rebuilt in 1873.
A technical school--the only complete school of arts and sciences existing
in Spain--was opened under the same roof in 1850; and, in connection with
it, night classes are held. Any workman provided with a certificate of
good conduct can attend these classes free of cost. Schools of
architecture and navigation are also attached to the University.
Thirst after knowledge characterizes all classes of the community. A
workman's literary club, or Athenæum, founded a few years back, is now a
flourishing institution, aided by municipal funds. No kind of recreation
is allowed within its walls. Night-schools opened here are attended by
several hundred scholars. Barcelona also boasts of an Academy of _Belles
Lettres_, the first founded in Spain; schools of natural science,
chemistry, agriculture, of medicine and surgery, of jurisprudence, an
academy devoted to the culture of the Catalonian language, and containing
library and museum. This society has greatly contributed to the protection
of ancient buildings throughout the province, besides amassing valuable
treasure, legend, botanical and geological specimens and antiquities. The
Archæological Society of Barcelona has also effected good work: to its
initiative the city is mainly indebted for the charming little collection
of antiquities known as the "Museo Provincial," before alluded to.
In places of public entertainment Barcelona is unusually rich. Its Opera
House, holding four thousand spectators, equals in spaciousness the
celebrated house of Moscow. The unpretentious exterior gives no idea of
the splendor within. A dozen theaters may be counted besides. Bull-fights,
alas! still disgrace the most advanced city of the Peninsula. The
bull-ring was founded in 1834, and the brutal spectacle still attracts
enormous crowds, chiefly consisting of natives. The bull-fight is almost
unanimously repudiated by foreign residents of all ranks.
A few words must now be said about the history of this ancient place. The
city founded here by Hamilcar Barco, father of the great Hannibal, is
supposed to stand on the site of one more ancient still, existing long
before the foundation of Rome. The Carthaginian city in 206 B. C. became a
Roman colonia, under the title of "Faventia Julia Augusta Pia Barzino,"
which was eclipsed in importance, however, by Tarragona, the Roman
capital. In 409 A. D. it was taken by the Goths, and under their
domination increased in size and influence, coining its own money stamped
with the legend "Barcinona." On the destruction of Tarragona by the Moors
Barcelona capitulated, was treated with clemency, and again became a
metropolis. After many vicissitudes it was ruled in the ninth century by a
Christian chief of its own, whose descendants till the twelfth governed it
under the title of Counts of Barcelona, later assuming that of Kings of
Aragon, to which kingdom the province was annexed. During the Middle Ages
Barcelona played a foremost part in the history of commerce. In the words
of Ford, "Like Carthage of old, it was the lord and terror of the
Mediterranean. It divided with Italy the enriching commerce of the East.
It was then a city of commerce, conquest, and courtiers, of taste,
learning, and luxury--the Athens of the troubadour."
Its celebrated commercial code, framed in the thirteenth century, obtained
acceptance throughout Europe. Here one of the first printing-presses in
Spain was set up, and here Columbus was received by Ferdinand and Isabella
after his discovery of a new world. A hundred years later a ship was
launched from the port, made to move by means of steam. The story of
Barcelona is henceforth but a catalogue of tyrannies and treacheries,
against which the brave, albeit turbulent, city struggled single-handed.
In 1711 it was bombarded and partly ruined by Philip V.; a few years
later, after a magnanimous defense, it was stormed by Berwick, on behalf
of Louis XIV., and given up to pillage, outrage, fire, and sword.
Napoleon's fraudulent seizure of Barcelona is one of the most shameful
pages of his shameful history. The first city--the key of Spain, as he
called it--only to be taken in fair war by eighty thousand men, was basely
entrapped, and remained in the hands of the French till the Treaty of
Paris in 1814. From that time Barcelona has only enjoyed fitful intervals
of repose. In 1827 a popular rising took place in favor of Don Carlos. In
1834 Queen Christina was opposed, and in 1840 public opinion declared for
Espartero. In 1856 and 1874 insurrections occurred, not without bloodshed.
Barcelona is a great gathering-place of merchants from all parts of
Europe. In its handsome hotels is heard a very Babel of tongues. The
principal manufactures consist of woolen stuffs--said to be inferior to
English in quality--silk, lace, firearms, hats, hardware, pianos; the
last, as has been already stated, of excellent quality, and low in price.
Porcelain, crystal, furniture, and inlaid work, must be included in this
list, also ironwork and stone blocks.
Beautifully situated on the Mediterranean between the mouths of two
rivers,--the Llobregat and the Besos--and possessing one of the finest
climates in the world, Barcelona is doubtless destined ere long to rival
Algiers as a health resort. Three lines of railway now connect it directly
with Paris, from which it is separated by twenty-eight hours' journey. The
traveller may leave Barcelona at five o'clock in the morning and reach
Lyons at midnight with only a change of carriages on the frontier. The
route _viâ_ Bordeaux is equally expeditious; that by way of
Clermont-Ferrand less so, but more picturesque. Hotels in the capital of
Catalonia leave nothing to desire on the score of management, hygiene,
comfort, and prices strictly regulated by tariff. The only drawback to be
complained of is the total absence of the feminine element--not a woman
to be seen on the premises. Good family hotels, provided with lady clerks
and chambermaids, is a decided desideratum. The traveller wishing to
attain a knowledge of the Spanish language, and see something of Spanish
life and manners, may betake himself to one of the numerous
boarding-houses.
Barcelona is very rich in philanthropic and charitable institutions.
Foremost of these is its Hospital of Santa Cruz, numbering six hundred
beds. It is under the conjoint management of sisters and brothers of
charity and lay nurses of both sexes. An asylum for the insane forms part
of the building, with annexes for the convalescent. The Hospital del
Sagrado Corazon, founded by public subscription in 1870 for surgical
cases, also speaks volumes for the munificence of the citizens. The only
passport required of the patient is poverty. One interesting feature about
this hospital is that the committee of management consists of ladies. The
nursing staff is formed of French Sisters of St. Vincent de Paul. Besides
these must be named the orphanage for upwards of two thousand children of
both sexes--Casa de Caridad de la Provincia de Barcelona--asylums for
abandoned infants, for the orphaned children of seamen, maternity
hospitals, crêches, etc. There is also a school for the blind and deaf
mutes, the first of the kind established in Spain. Here the blind of both
sexes receive a thorough musical training, and deaf mutes are taught
according to the system known as lip-speech. All teaching is gratuitous.
Barcelona possesses thirty-eight churches, without counting the chapels
attached to convents, and a vast number of conventual houses. Several
evangelical services are held on Sundays both in the city and in the
suburb of Barceloneta. The Protestant communities of Spain, England,
France, Germany, Sweden, and other countries, have here their
representative and organization. Sunday-schools and night-schools for
adults are held in connection with these churches. The Protestant body
seems active. We find here a branch depôt of the Religious Tract Society;
various religious magazines, many of them translations from the English
and German, are published. Among these are the "Revista Christiana,"
intended for the more thoughtful class of readers; "La Luz," organ of the
Reformed Church of Spain; and several illustrated periodicals for
children. Will Protestantism ever take deep root in the home of the
Inquisition? Time will show.
That very advanced political opinions should be held here need hardly
surprise us. We find the following Democratic clubs in existence: The
Historic Republican Club ("Centro Republicano Historico"), the Possibilist
Republican Club ("Circulo Republicano Possibilista"), the Democratic
Progressist Club, the Federal Republican Club, and many others. When next
a great popular movement takes place in Spain--and already the event looms
in the distance--without doubt the first impulse will be given at
Barcelona.
Electric lighting was early introduced here, a company being founded so
long back as 1880, and having branches in the capital, Seville, Valencia,
Bilbao, and other towns. The importance of Barcelona as a center of
commerce is attested by the extraordinary number of banks. At every turn
the stranger comes upon a bank. "Compared to the mighty hives of English
industry and skill, here everything is petty," wrote Ford, fifty years
ago. Very different would be his verdict could he revisit the Manchester
and Liverpool of Catalonia in our own day.
One curious feature of social life in Spain is the extraordinary number of
religious fête days and public holidays. No Bank Holiday Act is needed, as
in the neighboring country of France. Here is a list of days during which
business is for the most part suspended in this recreation-loving city:
Twelfth-cake Day is the great festival of the little ones--carnival is
kept up, if with less of former splendor, nevertheless with much spirit;
on Ash Wednesday rich and poor betake themselves to the country; Holy
Thursday and Good Friday are celebrated with great pomp in the churches;
on Easter Eve takes place a procession of shepherds in the park; Easter
Monday is a day given up to rural festivity; the 19th of March St. José's
Day--is a universal fête, hardly a family in Spain without a José among
its number. The first Sunday in May is a feast of flowers and poetic
competitions; the days consecrated to St. Juan and St. Pedro are public
holidays, patronized by enormous numbers of country-folks; All Saints' and
All Souls' Days are given up, as we have seen, to alternate devotion and
festivity. On the 20th of December is celebrated the Feast of the
Nativity, the fair and the displays of the shops attracting strangers from
all parts. But it is especially the days sacred to the Virgin that are
celebrated by all classes. Balls, banquets, processions, miracle-plays,
illuminations, bull-fights, horse-races, scholastic fêtes, industrial
exhibitions, civic ceremonial, besides solemn services, occupy old and
young, rich and poor. Feasting is the order of the day, and the
confectioners' windows are wonderful to behold.
Although many local customs are dying out, we may still see some of the
curious street sights described by Ford fifty years ago, and the
Mariolatry he deplored is still as active as ever. The goodly show of
dainties in the shops, however, belie his somewhat acrimonious description
of a Spanish reception. "Those who receive," he wrote, "provide very
little refreshment unless they wish to be covered with glory; space,
light, and a little bad music, are sufficient to amuse these merry,
easily-pleased souls, and satisfy their frugal bodies. To those who, by
hospitality and entertainment, can only understand eating and
drinking--food for man and beast--such hungry proceedings will be more
honored in the breach than in the observance; but these matters depend
much on latitude and longitude." Be this as it may, either the climate of
Barcelona has changed, or international communication has revolutionized
Spanish digestion. Thirty years ago, when travelling in Spain, it was no
unusual sight to see a spare, aristocratic hidalgo enter a restaurant,
and, with much form and ceremony, breakfast off a tiny omelette. Nowadays
we find plenty of Spanish guests at public ordinaries doing ample justice
to a plentiful board. English visitors in a Spanish house will not only
get good music, in addition to space and light, but abundant hospitality
of material sort.
The Spain of which Ford wrote so humorously, and, it must be admitted,
often so maliciously, is undergoing slow, but sure, transformation. Many
national characteristics remain--the passion for the brutal bull-fight
still disgraces a polished people, the women still spend the greater
portion of their lives in church, religious intolerance at the beginning
of the twentieth century must be laid to the charge of a slowly
progressive nation. On the other hand, and nowhere is the fact more
patent than at Barcelona, the great intellectual and social revolution,
described by contemporary Spanish novelists, is bringing the peninsula in
closer sympathy with her neighbors. Many young Spaniards, _for_ instance,
are now educated in England, English is freely spoken at Malaga, and its
literature is no longer unknown to Spanish readers. These facts indicate
coming change. The exclusiveness which has hitherto barred the progress of
this richly-dowed and attractive country is on the wane. Who shall say? We
may ere long see dark-eyed students from Barcelona at Girton College, and
a Spanish society for the protection of animals prohibiting the torture of
bulls and horses for the public pleasure.
Already--all honor to her name--a Spanish woman novelist, the gifted
Caballero, has made pathetic appeals to her country-folks for a gentler
treatment of animals in general. For the most part, it must be sadly
confessed, in vain!
In spite of its foremost position, in intellectual and commercial
pre-eminence, Barcelona has produced no famous men. Her noblest monument
is raised to an alien; Lopez, a munificent citizen, honored by a statue,
was born at Santander. Prim, although a Catalan, did not first see the
light in the capital. By some strange concatenation of events, this noble
city owes her fame rather to the collective genius and spirit of her
children than to any one. A magnanimous stepmother, she has adopted those
identified with her splendor to whom she did not herself give birth.
Balzac wittily remarks that the dinner is the barometer of the family
purse in Paris. One perceives whether Parisians are flourishing or no by a
glance at the daily board. Clothes afford a nice indication of
temperature all the world over. We have only to notice what people wear,
and we can construct a weather-chart for ourselves. Although the late
autumn was, on the whole, favorable, I left fires, furs, and overcoats in
Paris. At Lyons, a city afflicted with a climate the proper epithet of
which is "muggy," ladies had not yet discarded their summer clothes, and
were only just beginning to refurbish felt hats and fur-lined pelisses.
At Montpellier the weather was April-like--mild, blowy, showery;
waterproofs, goloshes, and umbrellas were the order of the day. On
reaching Barcelona I found a blazing sun, windows thrown wide open, and
everybody wearing the lightest garments. Such facts do duty for a
thermometer.
Boasting, as it does of one of the finest climates in the world, natural
position of rare beauty, a genial, cosmopolitan, and strikingly handsome
population, and lastly, accessibility, Barcelona should undoubtedly be a
health resort hardly second to Algiers. Why it is not, I will undertake to
explain.
In the first place, there is something that invalids and valetudinarians
require more imperatively than a perfect climate. They cannot do without
the ministrations of women. To the suffering, the depressed, the nervous,
feminine influence is ofttimes of more soothing--nay, healing--power than
any medical prescription.
Let none take the flattering unction to their souls--as well look for a
woman in a Bashaw's army, or on a man-of-war, as in the palatial,
well-appointed, otherwise irreproachable hotels of Barcelona! They boast
of marble floors, baths that would not have dissatisfied a Roman epicure,
salons luxurious as those of a West-end club, newspapers in a score of
languages, a phalanx of gentlemanly waiters, a varied ordinary, delicious
wines, but not a daughter of Eve, old or young, handsome or ugly--if,
indeed, there exists an ugly woman in Barcelona--to be caught sight of
anywhere! No charming landlady, as in French hotels, taking friendliest
interest in her guests, no housemaids, willing and nimble as the Marys and
Janes we have left at home, not even a rough, kindly, garrulous charwoman
scrubbing the floors. The fashionable hotel here is a vast barrack
conducted on strictly impersonal principles. Visitors obtain their money's
worth, and pay their bills. There the transaction between innkeeper and
traveller ends.
Good family hotels or "pensions," in which invalids would find a home-like
element, are sadly needed in this engaging, highly-favored city. The next
desideratum is a fast train from Port Bou--the first Spanish town on the
frontier. An express on the Spanish line would shorten the journey to
Lyons by several hours. New carriages are needed as much as new iron
roads. Many an English third-class is cleaner and more comfortable than
the so-called "first" here. It must be added that the officials are all
politeness and attention, and that beyond slowness and shabbiness the
traveller has nothing to complain of. Exquisite urbanity is still a
characteristic of the Barcelonese as it was in the age of Cervantes. One
exception will be mentioned farther on.
If there are no women within the hotel walls--except, of course, stray
lady tourists--heaven be praised, there are enough, and to spare, of most
bewitching kind without. Piquancy is, perhaps, the foremost charm of a
Spanish beauty, whether a high-born señora in her brougham, or a
flower-girl at her stall. One and all seem born to turn the heads of the
other sex, after the fashion of Carmen in Merimée's story. Nor is outward
attraction confined to women. The city police, cab-drivers,
tramway-conductors, all possess what Schopenhauer calls the best possible
letter of introduction, namely, good looks.
The number of the police surprise us. These bustling, brilliant streets,
with their cosmopolitan crowds, seem the quietest, most orderly in the
world. It seems hard to believe that this tranquillity and contentment
should be fallacious--on the surface only. Yet such is the case, as shown
by the recent outbreak of rioting and bloodshed.
"I have seen revolution after revolution," said to me a Spanish gentleman
of high position, an hidalgo of the old school; "I expect to see more if
my life is sufficiently prolonged. Spain has no government; each in power
seeks but self-aggrandizement. Our army is full of Boulangers, each ready
to usurp power for his own ends. You suggest a change of dynasty? We could
not hope to be thereby the gainers. A Republic, say you? That also has
proved a failure with us. Ah, you English are happy; you do not need to
change abruptly the existing order of things, you effect revolutions more
calmly."
I observed that perhaps national character and temperament had something
to do with the matter. He replied very sadly, "You are right; we
Southerners are more impetuous, of fiercer temper. Whichever way I look, I
see no hope for unhappy Spain."
Such somber reflections are difficult to realize by the passing traveller.
Yet, when we consider the tremendous force of such a city as Barcelona,
its progressive tendencies, its spirit of scientific inquiry, we can but
admit that an Ultramontane regency and reactionary government must be out
of harmony with the tendencies of modern Spain.
There is only one occupation which seems to have a deteriorating effect
upon the Spanish temper. The atmosphere of the post-office, at any rate,
makes a Catalan rasping as an east wind, acrimonious as a sloe-berry. I
had been advised to provide myself with a passport before revisiting
Spain, but I refused to do so on principle.
What business have we with this relic of barbarism at the beginning of the
twentieth century, in times of peace among a friendly people? The taking a
passport under such circumstances seemed to me as much of an anachronism
as the wearing of a scapular, or seeking the royal touch for scrofula. By
pure accident, a registered letter containing bank notes was addressed to
me at the Poste Restante. Never was such a storm in a teacup, such
groaning of the mountain before the creeping forth of a tiny mouse! The
delivery of registered letters in Spain is accompanied with as much form
as a marriage contract in France. Let future travellers in expectation of
such documents provide themselves, not only with a passport, but a copy of
their baptismal register, of the marriage certificate of their parents,
the family Bible--no matter its size--and any other proofs of identity
they can lay hands upon. They will find none superfluous.
V
MARSEILLES
Its Greek founders and early history--Superb view from the sea--The
Cannebière--The Parado and Chemin de la Corniche--Château d'If and
Monte-Cristo--Influence of the Greeks in Marseilles--Ravages by plague
and pestilence--Treasures of the Palais des Arts--The chapel of Notre
Dame de la Garde--The new Marseilles and its future.
About six hundred years before the birth of Christ, when the
Mediterranean, ringed round with a long series of commercial colonies, was
first beginning to transform itself with marvelous rapidity into "a Greek
lake," a body of adventurous Hellenic mariners--young Columbuses of their
day--full of life and vigor, sailed forth from Phocæa in Asia Minor, and
steered their course, by devious routes, to what was then the Far West, in
search of a fitting and unoccupied place in which to found a new trading
city. Hard pressed by the Persians on their native shore, these free young
Greeks--the Pilgrim Fathers of modern Marseilles--left behind for ever the
city of their birth, and struck for liberty in some distant land, where no
Cyrus or Xerxes could ever molest them. Sailing away past Greece and
Sicily, and round Messina into the almost unknown Tyrrhenian Sea, the
adventurous voyagers arrived at last, after various false starts in
Corsica and elsewhere, at some gaunt white hills of the Gaulish coast,
and cast anchor finally in a small but almost land-locked harbor, under
the shelter of some barren limestone mountains. Whether they found a
Phoenician colony already established on the spot or not, matters as
little to history nowadays as whether their leaders' names were really
Simos and Protis or quite otherwise. What does matter is the indubitable
fact that Massalia, as its Greek founders called it, preserved through all
its early history the impress of a truly Hellenic city; and that even to
this moment much good Greek blood flows, without question, in the hot
veins of all its genuine native-born citizens.