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ROMANTIC SPAIN:
_A RECORD OF PERSONAL EXPERIENCES._
ROMANTIC SPAIN:
A Record of Personal Experiences.
BY
JOHN AUGUSTUS O'SHEA,
AUTHOR OF
"LEAVES FROM THE LIFE OF A SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT,"
"AN IRON-BOUND CITY," ETC.
"Oh, lovely Spain! renowned, romantic land!"
CHILDE HAROLD.
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. II.
LONDON:
WARD AND DOWNEY,
12, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN, W.C.
1887.
[_All Rights Reserved._]
CONTENTS OF VOL. II.
CHAPTER I.
Page
A Tidy City--A Sacred Corpse--Remarkable Features
of Puerto--A Calesa--Lady Blanche's Castle--A
Typical English Engineer--British Enterprise--"Success
to the Cadiz Waterworks!"--Visit to a
Bodega--Wine and Women--The Coming Man--A
Strike 1-18
CHAPTER II.
The Charms of Cadiz--Seville-by-the-Sea--Cervantes--Daughters
of Eve--The Ladies who Prayed and
the Women who Didn't--Fasting Monks--Notice to
Quit on the Nuns--The Rival Processions--Gutting
a Church--A Disorganized Garrison--Taking it Easy--The
Mysterious "Mr. Crabapple"--The Steamer
_Murillo_--An Unsentimental Navvy--Bandaged
Justice--Tricky Ship-Owning--Painting Black
White 19-41
CHAPTER III.
Expansion of Carlism--A Pseudo-Democracy--Historic
Land and Water Marks--An Impudent Stowaway--Spanish
Respect for Providence--A Fatal
Signal--Playing with Fire--Across the Bay--Farewell
to Andalusia--British Spain 42-50
CHAPTER IV.
Gabriel Tar--A Hard Nut to Crack--In the Cemetery--An
Old Tipperary Soldier--Marks of the Broad
Arrow--The "Scorpions"--The Jaunting-Cars--Amusements
on the Rock--Mrs. Damages' Complaint--The
Bay, the Alameda, and Tarifa--How
to Learn Spanish--Types of the British Officer--The
Wily Ben Solomon--A Word for the Subaltern--Sunset
Gun--The Sameness of Sutlersville 51-75
CHAPTER V.
From Pillar to Pillar--Historic Souvenirs--Off to
Africa--The Sweetly Pretty Albert--Gibraltar by
Moonlight--The Chain-Gang--Across the Strait--A
Difficult Landing--Albert is Hurt--"Fat Mahomet"--The
Calendar of the Centuries Put Back--Tangier:
the People, the Streets, the Bazaar--Our Hotel--A
Coloured Gentleman--Seeing the Sights--Local
Memoranda--Jewish Disabilities--Peep at a Photographic
Album--The Writer's Notions on Harem
Life 76-102
CHAPTER VI.
A Pattern Despotism--Some Moorish Peculiarities--A
Hell upon Earth--Fighting for Bread--An Air-Bath--Surprises
of Tangier--On Slavery--The
Writer's Idea of a Moorish Squire--The Ladder of
Knowledge--Gulping Forbidden Liquor--Division
of Time--Singular Customs--The Shereef of Wazan--The
Christian who Captivated the Moor--The
Interview--Moslem Patronage of Spain--A Slap for
England--A Vision of Beauty--An English Desdemona:
Her Plaint--One for the Newspaper Men--The
Ladies' Battle--Farewell--The English Lady's
Maid--Albert is Indisposed--The Writer Sums up
on Morocco 103-135
CHAPTER VII.
Back to Gibraltar--The Parting with Albert--The
Tongue of Scandal--Voyage to Malaga--"No Police,
no Anything"--Federalism Triumphant--Madrid _in
Statu Quo_--Orense--Progress of the Royalists--On
the Road Home--In the Insurgent Country--Stopped
by the Carlists--An Angry Passenger is
Silenced 136-151
CHAPTER VIII.
On the Wing--Ordered to the Carlist Headquarters--Another
_Petit Paris_--Carlists from Cork--How
Leader was Wounded--Beating-up for an Anglo-Irish
Legion--Pontifical Zouaves--A Bad Lot--Oddities
of Carlism--Santa Cruz Again--Running
a Cargo--On Board a Carlist Privateer--A Descendant
of Kings--"Oh, for an Armstrong Twenty-Four
Pounder!"--Crossing the Border--A Remarkable
Guide--Mountain Scenery--In Navarre--Challenged
at Vera--Our Billet with the Parish Priest--The Sad
Story of an Irish Volunteer--Dialogue with Don
Carlos--The Happy Valley--Bugle-Blasts--The
Writer in a Quandary--The Fifth Battalion of
Navarre--The Distribution of Arms--The Bleeding
Heart--Enthusiasm of the Chicos 152-187
CHAPTER IX.
The Cura of Vera--Fueros of the Basques--Carlist Discipline--Fate
of the _San Margarita_--The Squadron
of Vigilance--How a Capture was Effected--The
Sea-Rovers in the Dungeon--Visit to the Prisoners--San
Sebastian--A Dead Season--The Defences of a
Threatened City--Souvenirs of War--The Miqueletes--In
a Fix--A German Doctor's Warning 188-210
CHAPTER X.
Belcha's Brigands--Pale-Red Republicans--The Hyena--More
about the _San Margarita_--Arrival of a Republican
Column--The Jaunt to Los Pasages--A
Sweet Surprise--"The Prettiest Girl in Spain"--A
Madrid Acquaintance--A Costly Pull--The Diligence
at Last--Renteria and its Defences--A Furious Ride--In
France Again--Unearthing Santa Cruz--The
Outlaw in his Lair--Interviewed at Last--The Truth
about the Endarlasa Massacre--A Death-Warrant--The
Buried Gun--Fanaticism of the Partisan-Priest 211-238
CHAPTER XI.
An Audible Battle--"Great Cry and Little Wool"--A
Carlist Court Newsman--The Religious War--The
Siege of Oyarzun--Madrid Rebels--"The Money of
Judas"--A Manifesto from Don Carlos--An Ideal
Monarch--Necessity of Social and Political Reconstruction
Proclaimed--A Free Church--A Broad
Policy--The King for the People--The Theological
Question--Austerity in Alava--Clerical and Non-Clerical
Carlists--Disavowal of Bigotry--A Republican
Editor on the Carlist Creed--Character of
the Basques--Drill and Discipline--Guerilleros _versus_
Regulars 239-268
CHAPTER XII.
Barbarossa--Royalist-Republicans--Squaring a Girl--At
Irun--"Your Papers?"--The Barber's Shop--A
Carlist Spy--An Old Chum--The Alarm--A Breach
of Neutrality--Under Fire--Caught in the Toils--The
Heroic Thomas--We Slope--A Colleague Advises
Me--"A Horse! a Horse!"--State of Bilbao--Don
Carlos at Estella--Sanchez Bregua Recalled--Tolosa
Invites--Republican Ineptitude--Do not Spur a Free
Horse--Very Ancient Boys--Meditations in Bed--A
Biscay Storm 269-299
CHAPTER XIII.
Nearing the End--Firing on the Red Cross--Perpetuity
of War--Artistic Hypocrites--The Jubilee Year--The
Conflicts of a Peaceful Reign--Major Russell--Quick
Promotion--The Foreign Legion--The Aspiring
Adventurer--A Leader's Career--A Piratical
Proposal--The "Ojaladeros" of Biarritz--A Friend
in Need--Buying a Horse--Gilpin Outdone--"Fred
Burnaby" 300-317
FOOTNOTES
NOTES OF THE TRANSCRIBER
ROMANTIC SPAIN.
CHAPTER I.
A Tidy City--A Sacred Corpse--Remarkable Features of Puerto--A
Calesa--Lady Blanche's Castle--A Typical English Engineer--British
Enterprise--"Success to the Cadiz Waterworks!"--Visit to a
Bodega--Wine and Women--The Coming Man--A Strike.
PUERTO de Santa Maria has the name of being the neatest and tidiest city
in Spain, and neatness and tidiness are such dear homely virtues, I
thought I could not do better than hie me thither to see if the tale
were true. With a wrench I tore myself from the soft capital of
Andalusia, delightful but demoralizing. I was growing lazier every day I
spent there; I felt energy oozing out of every pore of my body; and in
the end I began to get afraid that if I stopped much longer I should
only be fit to sing the song of the sluggard:--"You have waked me too
soon, let me slumber again." Seville is a dangerous place; it is worse
than Capua; it would enervate Cromwell's Ironsides. Happily for me the
mosquitoes found out my bedroom, and pricked me into activity, or I
might not have summoned the courage to leave it for weeks, the more
especially as I had a sort of excuse for staying. The Cardinal
Archbishop had promised a friend of mine to let him inspect the body of
St. Fernando, and my friend had promised to take me with him. Now, this
was a great favour. St. Fernando is one of the patrons of Seville; he
has been dead a long time, but his corpse refuses to putrefy, like those
of ordinary mortals; it is a sacred corpse, and in a beatific state of
preservation. Three times a year the remains of the holy man are
uncovered, and the faithful are admitted to gaze on his incorruptible
features. This was not one of the regular occasions; the Cardinal
Archbishop had made an exception in compliment to my friend, who is a
rising young diplomat, so that the favour was really a favour. I
declined it with thanks--very much obliged, indeed--pressure of
business called me elsewhere--the cut-and-dry form of excuse; but I
never mentioned a word about the mosquitoes. I told my friend to thank
the prelate for his graciousness; the prelate expressed his sorrow that
my engagements did not permit me to wait, and begged that I would oblige
him by letting the British public know the shameful way he and his
priests were treated by the Government They had not drawn a penny of
salary for three years. This was a fact; and very discreditable it was
to the Government, and a good explanation of the disloyalty of their
reverences. If a contract is made it should be kept; the State
contracted to support the Church, but since Queen Isabella decamped the
State had forgotten its engagement.
Puerto de Santa Maria deserves the name it has got. It is a clean and
shapely collection of houses, regularly built. People in England are apt
to associate the idea of filth with Spain; this, at least in Andalusia,
is a mistake. The cleanliness is Flemish. Soap and the scrubbing-brush
are not spared; linen is plentiful and spotless, and water is used for
other purposes than correcting the strength of wine. Walking down the
long main street with its paved causeways and pebbly roadway, with its
straight lines of symmetric houses, coquettish in their marble balconies
and brightly-painted shutters and railings, one might fancy himself in
Brock or Delft but that the roofs are flat, that the gables are not
turned to the street, and that the sky is a cloudless blue. I am
speaking now of fine days; but there are days when the sky is cloudy and
the wind blows, and the waters in the Bay of Cadiz below surge up sullen
and yeasty, and there are days when the rain comes down quick, thick,
and heavy as from a waterspout, and the streets are turned for the
moment into rivulets. But the effects of the rain do not last long;
Spain is what washerwomen would call a good drying country. Beyond its
neatness and tidiness, Puerto has other features to recommend it to the
traveller. It has a bookseller's shop, where the works of Eugene Sue and
Paul de Kock can be had in choice Spanish, side by side with the Carlist
Almanack, "by eminent monarchical writers," and the calendar of the
Saragossan prophet (the Spanish Old Moore); but it is not to that I
refer--half a hundred Andalusian towns can boast the same. It has its
demolished convent, but since the revolution of '68 that is no more a
novelty than the Alameda, or sand-strewn, poplar-planted promenade,
which one meets in every Spanish hamlet. It has the Atlantic waves
rolling in at its feet, and a pretty sight it is to mark the feluccas,
with single mast crossed by single yard, like an unstrung bow, moored by
the wharf or with outspread sail bellying before the breeze on their way
to Cadiz beyond, where she sits throned on the other side of the bay,
"like a silver cup" glistening in the sunshine, when sunshine there is.
The silver cup to which the Gaditanos are fond of comparing their city
looked more like dirty pewter as I approached it by water from Puerto;
but I was in a tub of a steamer, there was a heavy sea on and a heavy
mist out, and perhaps I was qualmish. Not for its booksellers' shops,
for its demolished convent, or for its vulgar Atlantic did this Puerto,
which the guide-books pass curtly by as "uninteresting," impress me as
interesting, but for two features that no seasoned traveller could,
would, or should overlook; its female population is the most attractive
in Andalusia, and it is the seat of an agreeable English colony. I
happened on the latter in a manner that is curious, so curious as to
merit relation.
I had intended to proceed to Cadiz from Seville after I had taken a peep
at Puerto, but that little American gentleman whom I met at Cordoba was
with me, and persuaded me to stop by the story of a wonderful castle
prison, a sort of _Tour de Nesle_, which was to be seen in the vicinity,
where the _bonne amie_ of a King of Spain had been built up in the good
old times when monarchs raised favourites from the gutter one day, and
sometimes ordered their weazands to be slit the next. This show-place is
about a league from Puerto, in the valley of Sidonia, and is called El
Castillo de Dona Blanca. We took a calesa to go there. My companion
objected to travelling on horseback; he could not stomach the peculiar
Moorish saddle with its high-peaked cantle and crupper, and its
catch-and-carry stirrups. We took a calesa, as I have said. To my dying
day I shall not forget that vehicle of torture. But it may be necessary
to tell what is a calesa. Procure a broken-down hansom, knock off the
driver's seat, paint the body and wheels the colour of a roulette-table
at a racecourse, stud the hood with brass nails of the pattern of those
employed to beautify genteel coffins, remove the cushions, and replace
them with a wisp of straw, smash the springs, and put swing-leathers
underneath instead, cover the whole article with a coating of liquid
mud, leave it to dry in a mouldy place where the rats shall have free
access to the leather for gnawing practice, return in seven years, and
you will find a tolerably correct imitation of that decayed machine, the
Andalusian calesa. It is more picturesque than the Neapolitan
_corricolo_; it is all ribs and bones, and is much given to inward
groaning as it jerks and jolts along. Such a trap we took; the driver
lazily clambered on the shafts, and away hobbled our lean steed.
The road to Lady Blanche's Castle is like that to Jordan in the nigger
songs; it is "a hard road to travel"--a road full of holes and quagmires
and jutting rocks; and yet the driver told me it had once been a good
road, but that was in the reign of Queen Isabella. Everything seems to
have been allowed to go to dilapidation since. On the outskirts of
Puerto we passed an English cemetery; I am glad to say it is almost
uninhabited. If there is an English dead settlement there ought to be a
live one, I reasoned, unless those who are buried here date from
Peninsular battles. The first part of the road to Blanche's Castle is
level, and bordered with thick growths of prickly pear; there is a view
of the sea, and of the Guadalate, spanned by a metal bridge--a Menai on
a small scale. Farther on, as we get to a district called La Piedad, the
country is diversified by swampy flats at one side and sandy hills at
the other. Blanche's Castle was a commonplace ruin, a complete "sell,"
and we turned our horse's head rather savagely. As we were coming back,
the little American shortening the way by Sandford and Merton
observations of this nature--"Prickly pear makes a capital hedge; no
cattle will face it; the spikes of the plant are as tenacious as
fish-hooks. The fibres of the aloe are unusually strong; they make
better cordage than hemp, but will not bear the wet so well"--a sight
caught my eyes which caused me to stare. A tall young fellow, with his
trousers tucked up, was wading knee-deep in the bottoms beside the road.
He wore a suit of Oxford mixture.
"Who or what is that gentleman?" I asked the driver.
"An English engineer," was the answer.
I stopped the calesa, hailed him, and inquired was he fond of rheumatic
fever. He laughed, and pronounced the single word, "Duty." A little
word, but one that means much. A Spanish engineer would never have done
this; they are great in offices and at draughting on paper, but they
seldom tuck up their sleeves, much less their trousers, to labour out of
doors as the young Englishman was doing. I made his acquaintance, and he
willingly consented to show me over the works in which he was engaged,
which were intended to supply Cadiz with water. In England water is to
be had too easily to be estimated at its proper value. At Cadiz it is a
marketable commodity. Even the parrots there squeak "agua." Every drop
of rain that falls is carefully gathered in cisterns, and the
conveyance of water in boatloads from Puerto across the Bay is a regular
trade. An English company had been formed to supply the parched seaport
and the ships that call there with fresh water, and its reservoirs were
situated at La Piedad. In the bowels of the flats below, where the
snipe-shooting ought to be good, our countryman told me the water was to
be sought. Galleries had been sunk in every direction in land which the
company had purchased, and pumps and engines are soon to be erected that
will raise the liquid collected there up to the reservoirs which have
been hewn out of the hills above. These reservoirs, approached by
passages excavated out of the rough sandstone, are stout and solid
specimens of the mason's craft directed by the engineer's skill. Here we
met a second gentleman superintending the labours of the men, but he was
surely a Spaniard; he spoke the language with the readiness of one born
on the soil; still, he had a matter-of-fact, resolute quickness about
him that was hardly Spanish. Doubts as to his nationality were soon
dispelled; the engineer we had surprised in the swamp presented us to
his colleague Forrest, engineer to Messrs. Barnett and Gale, of
Westminster, the contractors, as thoroughbred an Englishman as ever came
out of the busy town of Blackburn.
Mr. Forrest at once stood to cross-examination by the American, who had
all the inquisitiveness of his race.
"We employ a couple of hundred men, on an average, here," he said, "all
of whom, with but two exceptions, are Spaniards, and very fair
hard-working fellows they are; in the town below we have a small colony
of English, and if you don't take it amiss I shall be happy to present
you to our society."
I know little of the technicalities of engineering, but I saw enough of
this work to be certain that it was well and truly done, and I heard
enough of the scarcity of water in Cadiz to be convinced it will be a
great boon when finished. The reservoirs are constructed in colonnades,
supported by ashlar pillars and roofed with rubble; for the water must
be shaded from the sun in this hot climate; the pillars are buttered
over with cement, and there is over a foot of cement concrete on the
flooring, to guard against filtration. As we paced about the sombre
aisles, echo multiplied every syllable we uttered; the repetition of
sound is as distinct as in the whispering gallery of St. Paul's, and I
could not help remarking, "What a splendid robber's cave this would
make!"
"Too tell-tale," said the practical American; "make a better cave of
harmony."
"The only pipes that are ever likely to blow here are water-pipes,"
smilingly put in the engineer; "we intend to lay them from this to
Cadiz, some twenty-eight miles distant. Roughly speaking, we are about
ninety feet above the level of the place, so that the highest building
there can be supplied with ease."
The Romans were benefactors to many portions of this dry land of Spain;
they built up aqueducts which are still in use, but they neglected
Cadiz. The town has been dependent on these springs of La Piedad for its
water supply, except such as dropped from heaven, for three hundred
years, and attempts to obtain water from wells or borings in the
neighbourhood have invariably failed. The water which is found in this
basin, held by capillary attraction in the permeable strata through
which it soaks till the hard impermeable stratum is met--retained, in
short, in a natural reservoir--is excellent in quality, limpid and
sparkling. Puerto has been supplied from the place for time out of mind,
and Puerto has been so well supplied that it could afford to sell
panting Cadiz its surplus. With English capital and enterprise putting
new life into those old hills, and cajoling the precious beverage out of
their bosom, which unskilled engineers let go to waste, Cadiz should
shortly have reason to bless the foreign company that relieves its
thirst. Clear virgin water, such as will course down the tunnels to
bubble up in the Gaditanian fountains, is the greatest luxury of life
here; "Agua fresca, cool as snow," is the most welcome of cries in the
summer, and temperate Spain is as devoted to the colourless liquid that
the temperance lecturer Gough and his compeers call Adam's ale, as ever
London drayman was to Barclay's Entire. Success, then, to the Cadiz
Waterworks Company: we drank the toast on the hill-side of "Piety" they
were making fruitful of good, drank it in tipple of their and nature's
brewing, but had latent hopes that Forrest or his colleague would help
us to a bumper of the generous grape-juice for which the district is
famed, when we got down to the pleasant companionship of the English
colony below.
Nor were our hopes disappointed. There are innumerable bodegas, or
wine-vaults, in the town, in which bottles and barrels of wine are
neatly caged in labelled array, according to age, quality, and kind.
Very clean and roomy these stores of vinous treasure are, with an
indescribable semi-medicinal odour languidly pervading them. We visited
a bodega belonging to an Englishman, who ranks as a grandee of the
first-class, the Duke of Ciudad Rodrigo and eke of Vitoria, but who is
better known as the Duke of Wellington. The natural wine of this
district is too thin for insular palates. They crave something fiery,
and, by my word, they get it. Like that Irish car-driver who rejected my
choicest, oily, mellow "John Jameson," but thanked me after gulping a
hell-glass of new spirit, violent assault liquefied, they want a drink
that will catch them by the throat and assert its prerogative going
down. What a beamy old imposition is that rich brown sherry of city
banquets, over which the idiot of a connoisseur cunningly smacks his
lips and rolls his moist eyes. If he were only told how much of it was
real and how much artificial, would he not gasp and crimson! It would be
unmerciful to inform him that his pet cordial is charged with sulphuric
acid gas, that it is sweetened with cane-sugar, that it is flavoured
with "garnacha dulce," that it is coloured with plastered _must_ and
fortified with brandy, before it is shipped. Let us leave him in
blissful ignorance. We tasted many samples before we left, but I own I
have no liking for sherries, simple or doctored. Among Spanish wines I
far prefer the full-bodied astringent sub-acidity of the common Val de
Penas, beloved of Cervantes. But the Queen of wines is sound Bordeaux.
To that Queen, however, a delicate etherous Amontillado might be
admitted as Spanish maid-of-honour, preceding the royal footsteps, while
the syrupy Malaga from the Doradillo grape might follow as attendant in
her train.
From wine to women is an easy transition. Both are benedictions from on
high, and I have no patience with the foul churl who cannot enjoy the
one with proper continence, and rise the better and more chivalrous from
the society of the other. Wine well used is a good familiar
creature--kindles, soothes, and inspirits: the cup of wine warmed by the
smile of woman gives courage to the soldier and genius to the minstrel.
With Burns--and he was no ordinary seer--I hold that the sweetest hours
that e'er we spend are spent among the lasses. I will go farther and say
the most profitable hours. And some sweet and profitable hours 'twas
mine to spend among the fawn-orbed lasses of Puerto, with their
childlike gaiety, their desire to please, and their fetching freedom
from affectation. Would that the wines exported from the district were
half as unsophisticated! These lasses were not learned in the "ologies"
or the "isms," but they were sincere; and their locks flowed long and
free, and when they laughed the coral sluices flying open gave scope to
a full silvery music cascading between pales of gleaming pearl. An
admixture of this strain with the fair-skinned men of the North should
produce a magnificent race; and, indeed, if we paid half the attention
to the improvement of the human animal which we do to that of the equine
or the porcine, the experiment would not have been left untried so long.
In-and-in breeding is a mistake, and can only commend itself, and that
for selfish reasons, to the Aztec in physique and the imbecile in mind.
The families which take most pride in their purity are the most
degenerate; the stock which is the most robust and handsome is that
which has in it a liberal infusion of foreign bloods. In my opinion, the
coming man, the highest form of well-balanced qualities--moral,
intellectual, and masculine--the nearest approach to perfection, must
ultimately be developed in the United States.
Puerto has a wide-spread reputation as the nursery-ground for
bull-fighters. To the arena it is what Newmarket is to the British turf.
Everybody there walks about armed, but murder is not more rife in
proportion than in London. As it happened, a fellow was shot while I was
there, but that would not justify one in coming to the conclusion that
homicide was a flourishing indigenous product. Still, the natives did
not escape the contagion of unrest of their countrymen. For example, the
last news I heard before leaving my English friends was that the men in
the vineyards had struck work. These lazy scoundrels had the impudence
to demand that they should have half an hour after arrival on the
ground, and before beginning work, to smoke cigarettes, the same grace
after the breakfast hour, two hours for a siesta in the middle of the
day, another interval for a bout of smoking in the afternoon, and
finally that each should be entitled to an arroba (more than three and a
half gallons English) of wine per acre at the end of the season. They go
on the same basis as some trades' unions we are acquainted
with--reduction of hours of labour and increase of wages. "Will you give
in to them?" I asked of an English settler, in the wine trade. "Give
in------" but it is unnecessary to repeat the expletive; "I'll quietly
shut up my bodega."