BÉJAR, ÁVILA, AND ESCORIAL
There were "Bulls at Salamanca" (so ran the placards) on the day when we
were to resume our journey towards the south; and the _Señor Patron_
seemed quite crestfallen at realising that we had no intention of
deferring our departure in order to witness the fun. Bull-fighting was
_not_ cruel, he protested. That was all our inexplicable British
prejudice. And as patrons of prize-fights and football we ought to be
the last to throw stones. We were rather expected to sympathise with the
national sport of Spain.
His conclusion was truer than his reasoning. There are certain thrilling
forms of playing with death amiably tolerated by the British public
which are logically no whit better than bull-fighting: and it is not
humanity but fashion that dictates to us which to condemn. Only a few
days earlier an unfortunate woman had been killed at Madrid while
"looping the loop" on a motor; and the Spanish papers (those eager
reporters of bull-fights) were all most properly indignant at the
dangerous and degrading character of this new-fangled foreign show. Our
British high-toned repugnance is distinctly less moral than squeamish.
But we did not want our feelings harrowed in the midst of a holiday
tour.
Bull-fighting is one of the many sports that have been ruined by
professionalism. In the days when the young gallants of the court
encountered the bull themselves, on their own horses, before the eyes of
their lady-loves in the _Plaza Mayor_, there was a spice of chivalry
about the proceeding that half redeemed its brutality. It was truly a
sport then, albeit a savage one; but now it is merely a show.
Moreover, even our host admitted that this time the _Corrida_ would be
shorn of its foremost attraction. It was to have been inaugurated by a
bull-fighting _Pierrot_ who was wont to await the first rush of the
monster motionless upon a tub in the centre of the arena. The bull would
charge headlong upon him,--check, sniff, and turn away. No doubt he owed
his immunity to his apparent lifelessness; but it was billed as the
"power of the human eye." Alas! on the last occasion his programme had
miscarried. Just at the critical moment a fly had settled on his nose;
and for one infinitesimal fraction of a second the entire voltage of the
human eye was switched upon that miserable insect. The effect on the fly
was not stated, but it markedly reassured the bull. Poor _Pierrot_ had
been tossed as high as a rocket, and apparently was not expected down
again in time for the performance to-day.
The two English visitors to Salamanca also failed to figure at the
function. They had crossed the bridge very early in the morning, and
were heading for the mountains of Grédos by the highway leading to
Béjar. The actual battlefield was passed upon the left, about four miles
distant from Salamanca, subtending the angle formed by the roads to Alba
and Béjar; and the olive woods which so hampered Clausel spread wide
around us over the hills behind. It was a just Nemesis which overtook
the invaders on this occasion, for the destruction of olive trees for
fuel had been one of their most gratuitous outrages during the war. The
olive is a slow grower, and a few hours' reckless cutting might take
half a century to repair.
At first the road rises gradually and the country is open and
undulating; but soon it gets deeply involved in a labyrinth of
mountains, and tacks despairingly backwards and forwards in vain
endeavours to twist itself free from the toils. Finally it extricates
itself by a frantic rush up a long steep hill, and resumes its journey
at first-floor level along the shoulders of the range. Some distance
further west it manages to discover a passage across the main ridge into
the province of Estremadura; but the town of Béjar itself lies four or
five miles upon the hither side.
[Illustration: BÉJAR
An Approach to the Town.]
Hope had told us a flattering tale concerning the attractions of Béjar.
A Salamanca gentleman to whom we confided our intention of visiting it
had kissed his finger-tips ecstatically at the mere mention of its name.
"_Muy bonita!_"[25] he exclaimed. "_Preciosa!!_" And truly his
adjectives were excusable; for a more charming situation for a mountain
township it is almost impossible to conceive. A long knife-edged ridge
is thrown out from the range at right angles. The one street is carried
along its crest, and the houses cling to either side of it like panniers
on the back of a mule. A great snowclad peak, one of the minor
summits of the Sierra, towers above the head of the ridge and gravely
surveys the street from end to end; while the extreme point looks out
over the wild hummocky country towards Ciudad Rodrigo, with the great
masses of the Sierra de Gata and Peña de Francia surging up truculently
above the lower hills. Béjar is a fragment of Tyrolean scenery dropped
accidentally on the borders of Estremadura. Its buildings are nothing
remarkable, but its situation is irreproachably picturesque.
The town was holding a little _Fiesta_ of its own upon the day of our
visit, and the advent of two pedlars with knapsacks was naturally
accepted as a part of the show. Several anxious enquirers stopped us in
the street to ascertain "what our honours were selling"; and the
prevalent notion appeared to be that we were vendors of edible snails!
Many of the country-folk had come in from the remoter villages and were
attired in the quaintest of costumes. The women wore very brief skirts,
which gave an exceedingly squat appearance to their sturdy thick-set
figures. The men had tight black breeches and jerkins adorned with
polished metal buttons; enormously broad leather belts something like
the cuirasses of the Roman legionaries, and forked leather aprons
loosely strapped down their thighs. This weird type of dress we had
already noticed at Salamanca; and for a hot climate it must be about the
most unsuitable ever conceived by man.
The journey from Salamanca to Ávila entails a longer spell of Duero
valley scenery than that from Salamanca to Béjar; and for the best part
of a day we were perseveringly reeling off league after league of the
same dry red plough lands which had already wearied us in the North. It
was not till towards evening that the road at last began swerving and
plunging upon the great ground-swell which ripples out into the plain
from the feet of the Sierra de Guadarrama; and the huge granite boulders
littered about among the stunted ilex and gorse which clothed the shaggy
ridges apprised us that we had drawn within reach of the derelict
_moraines_. Still as we held our course each successive wave bore us
higher than its predecessor, till at last we looked down into a wide
upland basin, and beheld the towers of Ávila rising proudly upon their
daïs in the midst.
[Illustration: BÉJAR
A Corner in the Market-place.]
There is no other walled town of my acquaintance that flaunts its
defences quite so defiantly as Ávila. Its circlet of tower and curtain
crests its great natural _glacis_ like the substantialised vision
of a mural crown. The walls themselves are only about twelve feet in
thickness, which is, of course, a mere trifle compared to Lugo and
Astorga; but it is height that tells, and their commanding situation
gives them an incomparably finer effect.[26] Only on the further side
has the city begun to overflow its ancient cincture; and with its core
of tightly-packed houses clustering round its great cathedral-fortress
which crowns the brow of the eminence, it still receives its latter-day
visitors in the same garb that it donned for the Cid. Doubtless the old
rebel barons had an eye to its scenic capabilities when they selected it
as the theatre for their mock deposition of Henrique IV. This thing was
not to be done in a corner, and the impudent pageant which they enacted
under its walls must have been visible for miles round.
But the chief pride and glory of Ávila is the boast that it was the
birthplace of Sta Theresa, the "seraphic" lady whom a more emotional
epoch has preferred to the martial Santiago, and almost matched with the
Virgin herself as the modern patroness of Spain.
Sta Theresa was quite a modern saint; and, like her contemporary
Ignatius Loyola, much more truly saintly than hagiologists would have us
infer. They would rather persist in belauding her visionary ecstasies
and ascetic self-mortification. Her practical common-sense and her
gentle resolution are dismissed as earthlier virtues: yet it was these
that made her a power.
She certainly lost no time in beginning the practice of her profession,
for at the age of seven she persuaded her baby brother to run away with
her to Barbary to get martyred by the Moors. Being captured and brought
home by their distracted parents, they next decided upon becoming
hermits. But this notable scheme was also vetoed;--poor little mites!
Maybe we know other small children who have started somewhat similarly
on the road to canonization; but Theresa's romantic devotion outlasted
this fanciful stage. At the age of sixteen she assumed the veil--a step
which in wiser years she was not so eager to advocate, but in which she
found ample opportunity for the exercise of her piety and her zeal. Her
reform of the Carmelite nunneries was achieved in the teeth of great
opposition from the hierarchy of the day; and her literary work is of an
excellence that places her high among the classical writers of Spain.
It is to such as her and Loyola, rather than to Torquemada and Ximenes,
that the Roman Church owes its hold upon the people. And by these she is
dowered with the attributes which belong to Catherine of Siena in
another land.
But perhaps the most remarkable honour ever accorded to her is the fact
that two hundred years after her death she was actually gazetted
commander-in-chief of the Spanish armies in the Peninsula war! Certainly
Louis XI. had previously honoured Our Lady of Embrun with the colonelcy
of his Scottish Guards. But here was a popular assembly, in the
nineteenth century, which could "see him and go one better"; a far more
deliberate extravagance than the whim of a fetish-cowed king. Of course
there was more method in their madness than appears on the surface. They
did not really want a commander-in-chief at all. What they did want was
a Name which should fire the enthusiasm of the peasantry, as the
citizens of Zaragoza had been fired by the name of Our Lady of the
Pillar. At the same time it must be admitted that matters seemed to move
more smoothly when she was superseded by the Duke of Wellington.
The cathedral is a most massive structure of stern grey granite, with
its apse bulging out beyond the city walls--battlemented, loop-holed,
and machicolated like the profanest bastion of them all. It looks every
inch a castle, and has not served amiss when so utilised; for in the
great western tower the infant King Alfonso XI. (Father of Pedro the
Cruel) was kept safe from his would-be guardians during his long
minority, by the Bishop and people of Ávila. The interior of the
building is one of the noblest in Spain--severe, gloomy and solemn; but
furnished with that surpassing magnificence which only Spanish
cathedrals can boast.
The old town itself is full of quaint nooks and corners, and most of its
streets and houses are as unalterably medieval as the walls. A county
council inspector would probably play sad havoc with them, for even if
they are sanitary they are terribly out of repair. There is a smell
which lingers distinctive in these old Spanish townships. Not indeed
altogether unpleasant, but rather grateful from association, like the
smell of the stone walls of the West country after a summer shower. It
is compounded of many simples, and its leading ingredient is garlic. But
it would be hard to prove its innocency before our stern courts of
hygiene.
[Illustration: ÁVILA
From the North-west.]
A Spaniard, however, takes his risks more lightly than an Englishman.
Like Sancho Panza, he argues that the physician is worse than the
disease. Life is a shockingly hazardous business even on wafers and
_membrillo_, and perhaps, after all, roast partridge is not quite so
deadly as Hippocrates supposed.
Perhaps the most notable of the many monasteries and churches of Ávila
is the Convent of San Tomas at the foot of the hill to the south. As in
many important Spanish churches, the choir is placed in a great stone
gallery at the west end, and in this instance the arrangement is
balanced by a similar gallery for the High Altar at the east. The floor
is occupied by the beautiful marble monument of Prince Juan, the only
son of Ferdinand and Isabella. The Catholic kings, fortunate in all
else, desired in vain that greatest blessing of all, the happiness of
their children. Juan, the hope of their kingdom, died a few months after
his marriage, and his posthumous child was still-born. Isabella, their
eldest daughter, torn from the cloister to give an heir to the crown,
was married to the Crown Prince of Portugal. Her young husband was
killed by a fall from his horse; and though she was again married to his
successor, she died in child-birth; and her infant son, heir to the
whole Peninsula, did not long survive. Poor mad Juana, crazed by the
neglect of her worthless husband, was the second daughter of the
ill-starred family, and the youngest was Catherine of Aragon.
Ávila lies at an extremely lofty elevation, three thousand feet above
sea level; and both here and at Segóvia snow frequently falls as late as
the middle of May. The mountains immediately behind it, however, are but
the connecting link between the Sierras of Grédos and Guadarrama, and
all the loftier peaks lie at some distance east and west. A road leads
through the gap to Talavera de la Reyna (a circumstance, it may be
remembered, which was extremely fortunate for Sir John Moore).[27] But
we, being bound for Madrid, set our course along the north of the
mountains, heading eastward to join the main road from Vigo at the
little town of Villacastin.
Our course lay over a brown and undulating moorland, with the Duero
plains to the left of us and the broken ridges of the Sierra rising up
boldly upon the right. The scene might well be matched in Scotland,
Donegal, or Connemara; for the granite mountains are very similar in
formation, and the purple hardhead which clothes them is an excellent
imitation of heather, though of a deeper shade, suggestive of royal
mourning. Here and there great tracts of the moorland, many acres in
extent, are thickly strewn with gigantic boulders, singly or in heaps,
like huge natural cairns. Doubtless these are _blocs perchés_, the
relics of extinct glaciers, like the similar blocks on the road from
Salamanca, or those near Ribadávia above the Miño vale. The road, as
usual, was almost deserted, but conscientiously patrolled by two very
large and splendid _carabineros_ mounted on humble asses, which could
scarcely raise their riders off the ground.
At Villacastin we struck the great royal road for which we had been
making, and the mountains stretched out their arms to receive us as we
turned our faces towards the south. The day had been well advanced when
we quitted Ávila, and now it was nearly dusk. The mountains were of
indigo darkness, and the deep, closed valley into which we were plunging
was as black as the throat of a wolf. But the white road led us on
surely and steadily; and we knew that somewhere in the chasm before us
was the shelter upon which we were counting for the night.
The _Fonda San Rafael_ is a long, low, straggling building, very similar
to our own old coaching inns, but much more primitive in style. The
village aristocracy were engaged at dominoes in the kitchen; and the
time which we wasted in dining they attempted to utilise more profitably
by mastering the English tongue. They borrowed our pocket dictionary and
started their task with enthusiasm. But this laudable access of energy
did not win the success it deserved. Unluckily they commenced operations
among the _sn's_--a combination which no Spaniard can ever pronounce
without an antecedent e. And they came such amazing croppers over
"_es-na-îl_," "_es-nâ-ké_" and "_es-ne-êzé_," that their bewildered
interpreters got as much at sea as themselves.
[Illustration: ÁVILA
A Posada Patio.]
The ascent of the _Puerto de Guadarrama_ begins immediately beyond the
village; a series of long steep zigzags well shaded by slender pine
trees--the "spindles of Guadarrama," to which Don Quixote likened
Dulcinea. The climb in itself is not particularly arduous, but no doubt
it is an ugly place in a December snowstorm; and so Napoleon found
to his cost, when he forced the passage in 1808, rushing northwards from
Madrid to fall upon the adventurous Moore. Marbot has left us a grisly
description of its snow-drifts and precipices; and the furious eddies of
whirlwind which swept horse and man to destruction as they struggled up
the icy paths. But probably his account is a little over-painted; for
precipices should be perennial both in summer and winter; but the
steepest which we could identify were about of tobogganing pitch.
Viewed from the north, the pass is a saddle at the end of a long deep
valley; but its southern face forms an embrasure in a great mountain
wall. The whole valley of the Tagus seemed spread beneath us as we gazed
down from the summit; the plains all shimmering in a sea of purple heat
haze, and the blue Toledan mountains rising faint and ethereal upon the
further shore. So "Lot lifted up his eyes and looked and beheld all the
Vale of Jordan." The text seems singularly appropriate to many of these
vistas of Spain. A little later in the day, when the haze had been
lifted by the sunshine, every detail of the country would have shown up
as clearly as on a map.
At the foot of the descent we swung to the right along a pleasant
undulating road amid trees and meadows and hedgerows. And here, as in
private duty bound, let us record our gratitude to Don Fernando, who
erected the noble fountain whereat we refreshed ourselves by the way.
Don Fernando's fountain is a great stone cistern, with the water gushing
into it from an upright pillar behind. Verily his spirit is at rest if
the wayfarers' prayers may avail him; for nowhere is water more
appreciated than in this land of wine.
Don Fernando (_requiescat in pace_) is by no means the only benefactor
who has conferred such a boon on his countrymen. Almost every village
near the mountains is dowered with a tank in the _plaza_, and a generous
jet of water beneath which you may seethe your hissing head. Would that
we were as well off in England! For our fountains can furnish no more
than a miserable trickle, and even that is frequently dry. How often
have we raged unsatisfied from one faithless nozzle to another, while
the yokels mocked our agonies with commendations of the beer! Beer is
excellent in its way--but not when one is thirsty. Then _on revient
toujours à ses premiers amours_. [Greek: ARISTON MEN UDÔR].
The famous palace of Escorial opened suddenly before us as we rounded a
shoulder of the mountain, and there can be few palaces in the world
which occupy so imposing a site. It is often referred to as standing
upon a plain, but the description is entirely misleading. It rises upon
the lap of the mountains, high above the level of Madrid. Our first
view, moreover, much discounted our preconceived notions regarding its
gloomy appearance; for bathed in a flood of southern sunshine, it had
rather a cheerful aspect. But the very sunshine itself grew chilled as
we narrowed the radius; and the bare rude walls, vast, grey, and
featureless, like an enormously exaggerated Newgate, seemed to crush out
all the gladness of nature with their cold, unalterable frown.
"First a tomb, next a convent, last a palace," was the ideal at which
the founder was aiming; and the massive asceticism of the building is an
apt reflection of his mood. It boasts itself the finest of all the great
monasteries: and if tested by weight or by measure, the claim could
hardly be denied. But this vast gloomy prison is a thing which has
nothing in common with the staid beauty of Poblet,[28] or the
Aladdin-like brilliance of the Certosa at Pavia. Yet the extreme
severity of its style is by no means inappropriate to the great church
which forms the central feature; and none that remember its grim
associations would wish to see the Escorial other than it is.
The memory of Philip the Prudent is still held in honour by Spaniards,
for he reigned in the days of their glory, and was probably the most
powerful autocrat who ever occupied the throne. But history's more
equable judgment has condemned the reign as a failure, and the monarch
as one of the scourges of mankind. True, he has not lacked apologists;
for there is an uncanny fascination about his grim personality; and it
is not difficult to show some redeeming quality even in a Louis XI. or a
Richard III. But most of us prefer our history broadly coloured, with
good strong lights and shadows. We must be allowed a real villain
occasionally; and, till such time as we get Iago incarnate, Philip II.
will do very sufficiently well. "A rake in his youth, a monster in his
manhood, a miser in his old age;"--the bitter epitaph scribbled up over
his deathbed paints his character in three lines.
[Illustration: ESCORIAL
From the East.]
And yet none who has once visited the Escorial will thereafter think of
Philip without some glimmerings of respect. Our loathing for his
selfish and cruel tyranny is tempered with a kind of shuddering pity for
that other side of his character;--his gloomy religious mania, the taint
inherent in his blood. There was something of gruesome greatness in the
mind which could conceive such a building, "reserving for himself but a
cell in the house he was erecting for God."
The Escorial was Philip's most cherished creation. Probably he had a
large share in designing it; certainly he watched it stone by stone as
it grew. Here he dwelt as "Brother Philip," a monk in his own monastery,
"ruling two worlds with a scrap of paper, from a cell on a mountain
side." Here he was worshipping when he received the news of Lepanto, and
of the destruction of the Armada. And it was with the same resolute
stoicism that he learned of the victory and of the defeat. Here he
died--the death of Herod Agrippa; sustaining his two months' agony with
a constancy worthy of de Seso himself.[29] And all that is left of him
rests in the little octagonal chapel beneath the High Altar, where his
sire and his successors share his tomb. His portrait by Pantoja hangs on
the walls of the library. A dreadful visage,--heartless, deceitful,
obstinate,--miserable beyond the power of words to express. But no
picture ever painted, no statue ever carved, could reveal his character
more vividly than the great gloomy pile of hard grey granite which he
himself has bequeathed as a legacy to posterity.
Yet on one point the tyrant-hermit claims our unreserved approbation. He
displayed a most excellent taste in the matter of selecting a site. Here
we can feel no shadow of sympathy for his critics. His choice was
unexceptionable: and those who impugn it are blind. Indeed, this whole
range of Sierras is a region of singular beauty, and the charming old
towns which lie on the foot hills beneath it,--Béjar and Plaséncia,
Ávila and Segóvia,--give it an added interest which mountain districts
do not often possess. Charles V. was drawn hither to Yuste, as Philip to
Escorial: yet each held an ample dominion and neither was an incapable
_connoisseur_. The jaded soldier and statesman could wish for no
pleasanter resting-place than these grave highland solitudes which form
the backbone of Spain.
The road which leads plainwards from Escorial to Madrid--"that splendid
road constructed regardless of cost for the gratification of a royal
caprice"--seems now scarce worthy of Macaulay's eulogies. Many of the
roads to the northward have had to encounter far greater engineering
difficulties, and show quite excellent results. Yet this and all other
Madrid roads are uniformly villanous; and when they amalgamate they
produce the Madrid paving, which is a thing to remember in bad dreams.
The capital itself, however, does not show up badly when approached from
the northward; and the Royal Palace which dominates it, on the hill
above the Manzanares, is an exceedingly imposing pile. Aránjuez (we were
given to understand) considers itself equal to Windsor; but no one of
our acquaintance would dare mention Buckingham Palace in competition
with the _Palacio Real_ at Madrid.