begins--ruin and flies. The heat becomes intense; the air itself seems
to be cooked through and through; the flies rejoice with a malicious
joy, and the dry sandy hills, bearing nothing but tufts of blackened
weeds, resemble large mounds of pepper and salt. Here and there in the
valley is the skeleton of a stone or brick farm-house withering away,
and perhaps near by a small round defensive hut, recalling times of
disorder. Between the hills, however, are fields still prolific in rye,
though wholly destitute of trees. Verdure re-asserts itself wherever
there is the smallest water-course; and a curve of the river Tagus is
sure to infold fruit orchards and melon vines, while the parched soil
briefly revives and puts forth delightful shade-trees. But although the
river-fed lands around Toledo are rich in vegetation, the ancient city
itself, with the Tagus slung around its base like a loop, rises on a
sterile rock, and amid hills of bronze. So much are the brown and
sun-imbued houses and the old fortified walls in keeping with the massy
natural foundation that all seem reared together, the huge form of the
Alcazar, or castle--where the Spanish national military academy is
housed--towering like a second cliff in one corner of the round,
irregularly clustered city. Our omnibus scaled the height by a road
perfectly adapted for conducting to some dragon stronghold of misty
fable, and landed us in the Zocodover, the sole open space of any
magnitude in that tangle of thread-like streetlets, along which the
houses range themselves with a semblance of order purely superficial.
Most of Toledo is traversable only for pedestrians and donkeys. These
latter carry immense double baskets across their backs, in which are
transported provisions, bricks, coal, fowls, water, bread,
crockery--everything, in short, down to the dirt occasionally scraped
from the thoroughfares. I saw one peasant, rather advanced in years,
helping himself up the steep rise of a street on the hill-side by means
of a stout cane in one hand and the tail of his heavy-laden donkey
grasped in the other. To make room for these useful beasts and their
broad panniers, some of the houses are hollowed out at the corners; in
one case the side wall being actually grooved a foot deep for a number
of yards along an anxious turning. Otherwise the panniers would touch
both sides of the way, and cause a blockade as obstinate as the animal
itself.
[Illustration: THE NARROW WAY.]
[Illustration: SPANISH PEASANT.
From a Drawing by William M. Chase.]
Coming from the outer world into so strange a labyrinth, where there is
no echo of rolling wheels, no rumble of traffic or manufacture, you
find yourself in a city which may be said to be without a voice. Through
a hush like this, history and tradition speak all the more powerfully.
Toledo has been a favorite with the novelists. The Zocodover was the
haunt of that typical rogue Lazarillo de Tormes; and Cervantes, oddly as
it happens, connects the scene of _La ilustre Fregonde_ with a shattered
castle across the river, which by a coincidence has had its original
name of San Servando corrupted into San Cervantes.
Never shall I forget our walk around the city walls that first afternoon
in Toledo. A broad thoroughfare skirts the disused defences on the south
and west, running at first along the sheer descent to the river, and a
beetling height against which houses, shops, and churches are crammed
confusedly. I noticed one smithy with a wide dark mouth revealing the
naked rock on which walls and roof abutted, and other houses into the
faces of which had been wrought large granite projections of the hill.
After this the way led through a gate of peculiar strength and
shapeliness, carrying up arches of granite and red brick to a
considerable height--a stout relic of the proud Moorish dominion so long
maintained here; and then, when we had rambled about a church of
Santiago lower down, passing through some streets irregular as
foot-paths, where over a neglected door stood a unique announcement of
the owner's name--"I am Don Sanchez. 1792"--we came to the Visagra, the
country gate. This menacing, double-towered portal is mediæval; so that
a few steps had carried us from Mohammedan Alimaymon to the Emperor
Charles V. Just outside of it again is the Alameda, the modern garden
promenade, where the beauty and idleness of Toledo congregate on Sunday
evenings to the soft compulsion of strains from the military academical
band. Thin runnels of water murmur along through the hedges and
embowered trees, explaining by their presence how this refreshing
pleasure-ground was conjured into being; for on the slope, a few feet
below the green hedges, you still see the sun-parched soil just as it
once spread over the whole area. The contrast suggests Eden blossoming
on a crater-side.
At the open-air soirées of the Alameda may be seen excellent examples of
Spanish beauty. The national type of woman appears here in good
preservation, and not too much hampered by foreign airs. Doubtless one
finds it too in Burgos and Madrid, and in fact everywhere; and the grace
of the women in other places is rather fonder of setting itself off by a
fan used for parasol purposes in the street than in Toledo. But on the
_pasco_ and _alameda_ all Spanish ladies carry fans, and it is
something marvellous to see how they manage them. Not for a moment is
the subtle instrument at rest: it flutters, wavers idly, is opened and
shut in the space of a second, falls to the side, and again rises to
take its part in the conversation almost like a third person--all
without effort--with merely a turn of the supple fingers or wrist, and
contributing an added charm to the bearer. The type of face which beams
with more or less similarity above every fan in Spain is difficult to
describe, and at first difficult even to apprehend. One has heard so
much about its beauty that in the beginning it seems to fall short; but
gradually its spell seizes on the mind, becoming stronger and stronger.
The tint varies from tawny rose or olive to white: ladies of higher
caste, from their night life and rare exposure to the sun, acquire a
deathly pallor, which is unfortunately too often imitated with powder.
Chestnut or lighter hair is seen a good deal in the south and east, but
deep black is the prevalent hue. And the eyes!--it is impossible to more
than suggest the luminous, dreamy medium in which they swim, so large,
dark, and vivid. But, above all, there is combined with a certain
child-like frankness a freedom and force, a quick mobility in the lines
of the face, equalled only in American women. To these elements you must
add a strong arching eyebrow and a pervading richness and fire of nature
in the features, which it would be hard to parallel at all, especially
when the whole is framed in the seductive folds of the black mantilla,
like a drifting night-cloud enhancing the sparkle of a star.
As we continued along the Camin de Marchan we looked down on one side
over the fertile plain. The pale tones of the ripe harvest and dense
green of trees contrasted with the rich brown and gray of the city, and
dashes of red clay here and there. In a long field rose detached
fragments of masonry, showing at different points the vast ground-plan
of the Roman Circus Maximus, with a burst of bright ochre sand in the
midst of the stubble, while on the left hand we had an old Arab gate
pierced with slits for arrows, and on the crest above that a
nunnery--St. Sunday the Royal--followed by a line of palaces and
convents half ruined in the Napoleonic campaign of 1812. Out in the
plain was the roof of the sword factory where "Toledo blades" are still
forged and tempered for the Spanish army; although in the finer details
of damascening and design nothing is produced beyond a small stock of
show weapons and tiny ornamental trinkets for sale to tourists. Nor was
this all; for a little farther on, at the edge of the river, close to
the Bridge of St. Martin and the Gate of Twelve Stones, the broken
remains of an old Gothic palace sprawled the steep, lying open to heaven
and vacant as the dull eye-socket in some unsepulchred skull. Our stroll
of a mile had carried us back to the second century before Christ, the
path being strewn with relics of the Roman conquest, the Visigothic
inroad, the Moorish ascendency, and the returning tide of Christian
power. But the Jews, seeking refuge after the fall of Jerusalem,
preceded all these, making a still deeper substratum in the marvellous
chronicles of Toledo; and some of their later synagogues, exquisitely
wrought in the Moorish manner, still stand in the Jewish quarter for the
wonderment of pilgrim connoisseurs.
[Illustration: SINGING GIRL.]
It was from a terrace of this old Gothic palace near the bridge that,
according to legend, Don Roderick, the last of the Goths in Spain, saw
Florinda, daughter of one Count Julian, bathing in the yellow Tagus
under a four-arched tower which still invades the flood, and goes by the
name of the Bath of Florinda. From his passion for her, and their mutual
error, the popular tale, with vigorous disregard of chronology, deduces
the fall of Spain before the Berber armies; and as most old stories here
receive an ecclesiastical tinge, this one relates how Florinda's sinful
ghost continued to haunt the spot where we now stood, until laid by a
good friar with cross and benediction. The sharp fall of the bank at
first glance looked to consist of ordinary earth and stones, but on
closer scrutiny turned out to contain quantities of brick bits from the
old forts and towers which one generation after another had built on the
heights, and which had slowly mouldered into nullity. Even so the firm
lines of history have fallen away and crumbled into romance, which sifts
through the crannies of the whole withered old city. As a lady of my
acquaintance graphically said, it seems as if ashes had been thrown over
this ancient capital, covering it with a film of oblivion. The rocks,
towers, churches, ruins, are just so much corporeal mythology--object,
lessons in fable. A little girl, becomingly neckerchiefed, wandered by
us while we leaned dreaming above the river; and she was singing one of
the wild little songs of the country, full of melancholy melody:
"Fair Malaga, adios!
Ah, land where I was born,
Thou hadst mother-love for all,
But for me step-mother's scorn!"
[Illustration: CLOISTER OF ST. JOHN OF THE KINGS.]
All unconscious of the monuments around her, she stopped when she saw
that we had turned and were listening. Then we resumed our way, passing,
I may literally say, as if in a trance up into the town again, where we
presently found ourselves in front of St. John of the Kings, a venerable
church, formerly connected with a Franciscan monastery which the French
burnt. On the outer wall high up hangs a stern fringe of chains, placed
there as votive tokens by released Christian captives from Granada, in
1492; and there they have remained since America was discovered!
To this church is attached a most beautiful cloister, calm with the
solitude of nearly four hundred years. Around three sides the rich
clustered columns, each with its figures of holy men supported under
pointed canopies, mark the delicate Gothic arches, through which the
sunlight slants upon the pavement, falling between the leaves of
aspiring vines that twine upward from the garden in the middle. There
the rose-laurel blooms, and a rude fountain perpetually gurgles, hidden
in thick greenery; and on the fourth side the wall is dismantled as the
French bombardment left it. Seventy years have passed, and though the
sculptured blocks for restoration have been got together, the vines grow
over them, and no work has been done. We mounted the bell-tower part way
with the custodian, and gained a gallery looking into the chapel,
strangely adorned with regal shields and huge eagles in stone. On our
way, under one part of the tower roof, we found a hen calmly strutting
with her brood. "It was meant for celibacy," said the custodian, "but
times change, and you see that family life has established itself here
after all."
[Illustration: A BIT OF CHARACTER.]
I don't know whether there is anything particularly sacred about the
hens of this district, but after seeing this one in the church-tower I
began to think there might be, especially as on the way home we
discovered another imprisoned fowl disconsolately looking down at us
from the topmost window of a venerable patrician residence.
II.
[Illustration: SPANISH SOLDIERS PLAYING DOMINOS.]
Its antiquities are not the queerest thing about Toledo. The sights of
the day, the isolated existence of the inhabitants, are things peculiar.
The very sports of the children reflect the prevailing influences. A
favorite diversion with them is to parade in some dark hall-way with
slow step and droning chants, in imitation of church festivals; and in
the street we found boys playing at _toros_. Some took off their coats
to wave as mantles before the bull, who hid around the corner until the
proper time for his entry. The bull in this game, I noticed, had a nice
sense of fair play, and would stop to argue points with his
antagonists--something I should have been glad to see in the real arena.
Once the old rock town accommodated two hundred thousand residents. Its
contingent has now shrunk to twenty thousand, yet it swarms with
citizens, cadets, loafers, and beggars. Its tortuous wynds are full of
wine-shops, vegetables, and children, all mixed up together. Superb old
palaces, nevertheless, open off from them, frequently with spacious
courts inside, shaded by trellised vines, and with pillars at the
entrance topped by heavy stone balls, or doors studded with nails and
moulded in rectangular patterns like inlay-work. One day we wandered
through a sculptured gate-way and entered a paved opening with a carved
wood gallery running around the walls above. Orange-trees in tubs stood
about, and a brewery was established in these palatial quarters. We
ordered a bottle, but I noticed that the brewer stood regarding us
anxiously. At last he drew nearer, and asked, "Do you come from Madrid?"
"Yes."
"Ah, then," said he, in a disheartened tone, "you won't like our beer."
[Illustration: A NARROW STREET.]
We encouraged him, however, and at last he disappeared, sending us the
beverage diplomatically by another hand. He was too faint-spirited to
witness the trial himself. Though called "The Delicious," the thin,
sweet, gaseous liquid was certainly detestable; but in deference to the
brewer's delicate conscientiousness we drank as much as possible, and
then left with his wife some money and a weakly complimentary remark
about the beer, which evidently came just in time to convince her that
we were, after all, discriminating judges.
[Illustration: WOMAN WITH BUNDLE.]
The people generally were very simple and good-natured, and in
particular a young commercial traveller from Barcelona whom we met
exerted himself to entertain us. The chief street was lined with awnings
reaching to the curb-stone in front of the shops, and every public
door-way was screened by a striped curtain. Pushing aside one of these,
our new acquaintance introduced us to what seemed a dingy bar, but, by a
series of turnings, opened out into a spacious concealed café--that of
the Two Brothers--where we frequently repaired with him to sip chiccory
and cognac or play dominos. On these occasions he kept the tally in
pencil on the marble table, marking the side of himself and a friend
with their initials, and heading ours "The Strangers." All travellers in
Spain are described by natives as "Strangers" or "French," and the
reputation for a pure Parisian accent which we acquired under these
circumstances, though brief, was glorious. To the Two Brothers resorted
many soldiers, shop-keepers, and well-to-do housewives during fixed
hours of the afternoon and evening, but at other times it was as
forsaken as Don Roderick's palace. Another place of amusement was the
Grand Summer Theatre, lodged within the ragged walls of a large building
which had been half torn down. Here we sat under the stars, luxuriating
in the most expensive seats (at eight cents per head), surrounded by a
full audience of exceedingly good aspect, including some Toledan ladies
of great beauty, and listened to a _zarzuela_, or popular comic opera,
in which the prompter took an almost too energetic part. The ticket
collector came in among the chairs to receive everybody's coupons with
very much the air of being one of the family; for while performing
his stern duty he smoked a short brier pipe, giving to the act an
indescribable dignity which threw the whole business of the tickets into
a proper subordination. In returning to our inn about midnight we were
attracted by the free cool sound of a guitar duet issuing from a dark
street that rambled off somewhere like a worm track in old wood, and,
pursuing the sound, we discovered by the aid of a match lighted for a
cigarette two men standing in the obscure alley, and serenading a couple
of ladies in a balcony, who positively laughed with pride at the
attention. The men, it proved, had been hired by some admirer, and so
our friend engaged them to perform for us at the hotel the following
night.
[Illustration: THE SERENADERS.]
The skill these thrummers of the guitar display is delicious, especially
in the treble part, which is executed on a smaller species of the
instrument, called a _mandura_. Our treble-player was blind in one eye,
and with the carelessness of genius allowed his mouth to stay open, but
managed always to keep a cigarette miraculously hanging in it; while his
comrade, with a disconsolate expression, disdained to look at the
strings on which his proud Castilian fingers were condemned to play a
mere accompaniment. For two or three hours they rippled out those
peculiar native airs which go so well with the muffled vibrations and
mournful Oriental monotony of the guitar; but the bagman varied the
concert by executing operatic pieces on a hair-comb covered with thin
paper--a contrivance in which he took unfeigned delight. Some
remonstrance against this uproar being made by other inmates of the
hotel, our host silenced the complainants by cordially inviting them in.
One large black-bearded guest, the exact reproduction of a stately
ancient Roman, accepted the hospitality, and listened to that ridiculous
piping of the comb with profound gravity and unmoved muscles, expressing
neither approval nor dissatisfaction. But the white-aproned waiter, who,
though unasked, hung spellbound on the threshold, was, beyond question,
deeply impressed. The relations of servants with employers are on a very
democratic footing in Spain. We had an admirable butler at Madrid who
used to join in the conversation at table whenever it interested him,
and was always answered with good grace by the conversationists, who
admitted him to their intellectual repast at the same moment that he was
proffering them physical nutriment. These Toledan servitors of the Fonda
de Lino were still more informal. They used to take naps regularly twice
a day in the hall, and could not get through serving dinner without an
occasional cigarette between the courses. To save labor, they would
place a pile of plates in front of each person, enough to hold the
entire list of viands. That last phrase is a euphemism, however, for the
meal each day consisted of the same meat served in three separate relays
without vegetables, followed by fowl, an allowance of beans, and
dessert. Even this they were not particular to give us on the hour.
Famished beyond endurance, one evening at eight o'clock, we went
down-stairs and found that not the first movement toward dinner had been
made. The _mozos_ (waiters) were smoking and gossiping in the street,
and rather frowned upon our vulgar desire for food, but we finally
persuaded them to yield to it. After we had bought some tomatoes, and
made a salad at dinner, the management was put on its mettle, and
improved slightly. Fish in this country is always brought on somewhere
in the middle of dinner, like the German pudding, and our landlord
astonished us by following the three courses of stewed veal with
sardines, fried in oil and ambuscaded in a mass of boiled green peppers.
After that we forbore to stimulate his ambition any farther.
[Illustration: A PLENTIFUL SUPPLY OF PLATES.]
The hotel guest, however, is on the whole regarded as a necessary
evil--a nuisance tolerated only because some few of the finest race in
the world can make money out of him. The landlord lived with his family
on the ground-floor, and furnished little domestic tableaux as we passed
in and out; but he never paid any attention to us, and even looked
rather hurt at the intrusion of so many strangers into his hostelry. Nor
did the high-born sewing-women who sat on the public stairs, and left
only a narrow space for other people to ascend or descend by, consider
it necessary to stir in the least for our convenience. The fonda had
more of the old tavern or posada style about it than most hotels
patronized by foreigners. The entrance door led immediately into a
double court, where two or three yellow equipages stood; and from this
the kitchen, storerooms, and stable all branched off in some clandestine
way. Above, at the eaves, these courts were covered with canvas awnings
wrinkled in regular folds on iron rods--sheltering covers which remained
drawn from the first flood of the morning sun until after five in the
afternoon. Early and late I used to look down into the inner court,
observing the men and women of the household as they dressed fish and
silently wrung the necks of chickens, or sat talking a running stream of
nothingness by the hour, for love of their own glib but uncouth voices.
People of this province intone rather than talk: their sentences are set
to distinct drawling tunes, such as I never before encountered in
ordinary speech, and their thick lisping of all sibilants, combined with
the usual contralto of their voices, gives the language a sonorous burr,
for which one soon acquires a liking. Sunday is the great hair-combing
day in Toledo, if I may judge from the manner in which women carried on
that soothing operation in their door-ways and _patios_; and in this
inner court below my window one of the servants, sitting on a stone
slab, enjoyed the double profit of sewing and of letting a companion
manipulate her yard-long locks of jet, while others sat near, fanning
themselves and chattering. Another time a little girl, dark as an
Indian, came there in the morning to wash a kerchief at the stone tank,
always brimming with dirty water; after which she executed, unsuspicious
of my gaze, a singularly weird _pas seul_, a sort of shadow dance, on
the pavement, and then vanished.
[Illustration: THE TOILET--A SUNDAY SCENE.]
All the houses are roofed with heavy curved tiles, which fit together so
as to let the air circulate under their hollow grooves; and a species of
many-seeded grass sprouts out of these baked earth coverings, out of the
ledges of old towers and belfries, and from the crevices of the great
cathedral itself, like the downy hair on an old woman's cheek.