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HEROIC SPAIN
[Illustration: A SPANISH HIDALGO, BY EL GRECO]
HEROIC SPAIN
BY
E. BOYLE O'REILLY
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
DUFFIELD AND COMPANY
1910
COPYRIGHT, 1910
BY DUFFIELD AND COMPANY
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION: PRACTICAL HINTS 1
ESPAÑA LA HEROICA: VERSES 12
IN THE BASQUE COUNTRY: LOYOLA 13
BURGOS AND THE CID 33
VALLADOLID 55
OVIEDO IN THE ASTURIAS 79
THE SLEEPING CITIES OF LEON 104
GALICIA 121
SALAMANCA 142
SEGOVIA 159
SAINT TERESA AND AVILA 183
EVENING IN AVILA: VERSES 212
MADRID AND THE ESCORIAL 213
TOLEDO 229
CORDOVA AND GRANADA 258
VIGNETTES OF SEVILLE 274
A CHURCH FEAST IN SEVILLE 293
HOLY WEEK IN SEVILLE 302
CADIZ 316
A FEW MODERN NOVELS 326
ESTREMADURA 351
ARAGON 369
MINOR CITIES OF CATALONIA 385
BARCELONA 395
GERONA AND FAREWELL TO SPAIN 420
ILLUSTRATIONS
Page
A Spanish Hidalgo, by El Greco Frontispiece
Burgos Cathedral from the Castle Hill 36
The Façade of San Gregorio, Valladolid 58
The Cathedral of León 108
View of Salamanca from the Roman Bridge 142
Façade of the University Library, Salamanca 154
The Alcázar of Segovia 182
House of the Duque de la Roca, Avila 196
Isabella of Portugal, by Titian 223
Prado Gallery, Madrid
Tomb of Bishop San Segundo, by Berruguete, Avila 256
Los Seises, Cathedral of Seville 299
St. Francis of Assisi 327
A wood-carving by Carmona, Museum of León
A Roadside Scene in Spain 354
The Cathedral of Sigüenza 374
Cloisters of San Pablo del Campo, Barcelona 403
A Street Stairway, Gerona 420
_HEROIC SPAIN_
"_Let nothing disturb thee,_
_Nothing affright thee,_
_All things are passing,_
_God never changeth._
_Patient endurance_
_Attaineth to all things,_
_Who God possesseth_
_In nothing is wanting,_
_Alone God sufficeth._"
MAXIMS OF SAINT TERESA
"All national criticism in bulk is misleading and foolish, and I look on
the belief of Spaniards that Spain ought to be great and strong as the
most promising agency of her future regeneration."
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
_As Minister to Spain, in a letter Oct. 20, 1877_
INTRODUCTION
PRACTICAL HINTS
Travel in Spain to-day is attended with little hardship and no danger
whatever. Even if one barely knows a word of the language, it is not
foolhardy to explore the distant provinces. Commit a few simple
sentences to the memory and have courage in using them, for Spanish is
pronounced just as it is spelled, with a few exceptions soon observed.
The merest beginner is understood.
When a trip into Spain is planned it would be well to send for
information about the kilometric ticket to the _Chemins de Fer
Espagnols_, 20 Rue Chauchat, Paris. They will mail you, gratis, a
pamphlet with a map of the country, where is marked the number of
kilometers between the cities; from this it is easy to calculate how
large a ticket to buy. The more kilometers taken at one time, the
cheaper it is. Thus a ticket of 2,000 k. costs 165 pesetas; one of 5,000
k. costs 385 p., and so on. We got a 10,000 kilometric ticket for two
people, first class, good for ten months, paying for it 682 pesetas. If
the ticket is bought outside of Spain you pay for it in francs, whereas
if bought in Spain, you pay in pesetas, which are about fifteen per cent
less than francs. Provide yourself with your photograph, and at the
first Spanish town--Irún, if you come from Paris, and Port-Bou if from
Marseilles--as there is always a pause of some hours on the frontier for
the customs, it is a simple matter to buy your _carnet kilométrique_ in
the station. It is only on one or two short local lines that these
tickets are not accepted. Unfortunately the new rail from Gibraltar up
to Bobadilla, by way of which many tourists enter Spain, is one of these
disobliging minor lines. In fact many who start their trip from the
south have found difficulty in procuring a kilometric ticket till they
reached Seville or Granada; this confuses the traveler, and makes him
decide the ticket is too complicated for practical use. If he comes to
visit merely the southern province of Andalusia, which is what most
people see of Spain, with a run up to Madrid for the pictures, then,
unless several are traveling as one family, there is little gained by
the _carnet_, since a few hundred unused miles are sometimes wasted. But
for the complete tour of Spain the kilometric ticket is the most
satisfactory arrangement. Besides the reduction it makes in the fare, it
saves the confusion of changing money in the stations. You go to the
ticket office before boarding a train, have the coupons to be used torn
off, and are given a complementary ticket to hand to the conductor on
the train. It is well to buy the official railway guide as it saves
asking questions, for Spanish trains, though they crawl at a snail's
pace, start at the hour announced, and arrive on the minute set down in
the time-table.
Thirty kilos, about sixty-six pounds, are allowed free in the luggage
van, but for an extensive tour it is better to send trunks ahead by some
agency, and travel with only the valises taken with you in the carriage.
These the _mozo_, or porter, carries directly from the train to the
hotel omnibus, which--another good custom of the country--is always in
waiting, no matter at what hour the arrival. First class travel in Spain
is about the same as second class elsewhere; second class is like third
class in France, except on the express route from Paris to Madrid, and
in Catalonia, where second class is comfortable.
A hasty sketch of our tour may help later travelers. We entered from the
north, by Biarritz, a far better way of seeing the country in its
natural sequence than the usual landing at Gibraltar. One feels that the
north of Spain, in the truest degree national, untouched by the Moor,
has never had justice done it. If a transatlantic liner touched at one
of the northern ports, such as Vigo, Santander, Bilbao, it would open
up an untrodden Switzerland with fertile valleys and noble hills. No
pleasanter summer tour, on bicycle or afoot, could be made than through
the Basque provinces, Asturias, the national cradle of Spain, or in
beautiful Galicia with its trout rivers. In summer the climate is cool
and pleasant, and the most isolated valleys are so safe that any two
women could travel alone with security.
Our first stop was at Loyola in the Basque country; then a week in
Burgos; a short stay at Valladolid and Palencia; over the Asturian
Mountains to Oviedo; back to León City, and from there across other
hills to Galicia, seeing Lugo, Coruña, and Santiago in that province;
from Coruña to Santiago by diligence, as no rail yet connects the two
cities. We returned to León province from Galicia, skirting the Miño
River which divides Spain and Portugal; stopped a night at Astorga, some
days in Salamanca, and made a short pause in Zamora.
Time must not be a consideration in touring these unfrequented cities of
middle Spain, for their local trains are few and far between. Only twice
a week is there direct communication between Salamanca and Medina del
Campo, the junction station on the express route. But if you accept once
for all the slowness of the trains, the occasional odd hour of arrival
or starting, the inconvenience of a distantly-set station, you cease to
fret and scold as do most hurried travelers. We ended by finding the
long railway journeys rather restful than otherwise. Usually we had the
_Reservado para Señoras_ carriage to ourselves, except on the express
line from Paris to Madrid, and we soon learned how to make ourselves
comfortable for a whole day's journey, seizing the chance of taking
exercise during the long pauses in the stations, and enjoying the
human-hearted scenes there witnessed; for a Spaniard greets and bids
farewell with the same unconsciousness, the same absence of mauvaise
honte as when he prays or makes love.
Also I found the topography of the country of endless interest during
the long train trips; to climb up to the great truncated mountain which
is central Spain, to see how the still higher ranges of mountains
crossed it, how the famous rivers flowed, the setting of the historic
cities,--I never tired of looking out on it all. Somehow I have got
tucked away a distinct picture of Spain's physical geography, no doubt
due to the leisurely railway journeys, which are not so slow that the
proportion of the whole is lost, as foot or horse travel would be, nor
yet so fast as to jumble the picture, as with the express trips in some
countries.
Spain is not beautiful like Italy, nor of the orderly finished type of
England or France; she has few of Germany's grand forests. There is no
denying she is a gaunt, denuded, tragic land; the desolation of the vast
high steppes of Castile is terrible. Only the fringing coasts along the
Atlantic and the Mediterranean are fertile. Nevertheless, unbeautiful as
is the landscape, it possesses an unaccountable magnificence that grips
the mind; we never took a night trip unless forced to it, so strangely
interesting were the hours spent in looking from the car window.
After Salamanca we went to Segovia, then across the Guadarramas to the
Escorial, and slightly back north by the same mountains to Avila.
Segovia and Avila are true old mediæval cities of the inmost heart of
the race, _España la heróica_ incarnate. Again passing through the
hills, whose cold blue atmosphere Velasquez has made immortally real, we
went to Madrid. From there, south, we struck the beaten tourist track
with pestering guides and higher prices in the hotels. Up to this we had
driven, on arrival in a town, to the first or second hotel mentioned in
Baedeker, and the average charge had been seven pesetas a day, all
included. The provincial hotels gave a surprisingly good table;
excellent soups, fresh fish, the meats fair, and all presented in a
savory way; the fact that many men of the town use the hotel as a
restaurant has much to do with the generous menu. The rooms were cold
and bare, but clean, for not one night of distress did we spend during
the eight months' tour. Of course certain modern comforts were
completely lacking, but we were grateful enough for clean beds and
wholesome food. The taking of money for hospitality is thought degrading
by this chivalrous people, so the traveler should not judge them by the
innkeeper class with whom he comes in contact. I found courtesy as a
rule and honesty even in the inns; having valises that could not lock, I
yet lost nothing. From Toledo on, we began to go, not to the best hotel
mentioned in the guide book, for that now had an average charge of
twenty-five francs a day, but we chose some minor inn, such as the Fonda
da Lino, in Toledo, once the first hostelry in the city before the
"Palace" variety was started for the American tourist.
We had spent October and November in seeing the northern provinces whose
piercing cold made us only too glad to settle for the four winter months
in Andalusia; a day at Cordova, a fortnight in Granada, a trip to Cadiz,
and the bulk of the time in Seville, the best city in Spain for a
prolonged stay, though Barcelona also can offer good winter quarters. In
April we went north into Estremadura to see the Roman remains, then
returned to Madrid for another sight of its unrivaled gallery, and also
because all routes focus from the capital like the spokes of a wheel. We
continued east to Guadalajara and Sigüenza, stopped some days at
Saragossa, then descended by Poblet to the warm fertile coast again, to
tropical Tarragona and that industrial anomaly in an hidalgo land,
Barcelona. After spending some weeks there, in the beginning of June we
left Spain by the Port-Bou frontier, stopping at Gerona on the way out.
Thus we had seen some twenty-five Spanish cities--some twenty-five
glorious cathedrals!--in a leisurely journey of eight months. Any spot
along the southern fringe is suitable for the winter, any spot along the
northern coast for the summer, but in high cold middle-Spain travel for
pleasure must be limited to early autumn or late spring: we froze to
death in Burgos and Salamanca during October, and again shivered and
chattered with the April cold of Guadalajara and Sigüenza.
As to guide books, Baedeker is as good as any, though the Baedeker for
Spain is not equal to that firm's guides for the rest of Europe.
Murray's "Hand-book" is more entertaining, but is rather to be kept as
amusing literature than used as a guide book, much of it being the
personal opinions and prejudices of Richard Ford, and bristling all over
with slurs at Spain's religion. It does not seem reasonable for
English-speaking travelers to see this original country through the eyes
of a clever but crochety Englishman who wandered over it on horseback
eighty years ago: we should not like a European to judge America by
Dickens' notebook dating back to the forties.
There are two bits of advice I would give to those who would thoroughly
enjoy traveling in the Peninsula. Pick up as soon as possible something
of the tongue or you miss shadings that give depth and strength to the
impression. If one knows Latin or French or Italian, it is easy to read
Spanish. And I would beg every unhurried traveler to carry in his pocket
the "Romancero del Cid," Spain's epic, and "Don Quixote," her great
novel, the truest-hearted book ever written. I defy a man to while away
a winter in Spain with _el ingenioso hidalgo_ his daily companion, or
sit reading the "Cid" above the Tajus gorge at Toledo, and not learn to
love this virile, ascetic, realistic, exalted, and passionate land,
where a peasant is instinctively a gentleman, where a grandee is in
practice a democrat, where certain small meanesses, such as
snobbishness, close-fisted love of money, are unknown.
The second advice is to bring to Spain some smattering of architectural
knowledge, or half the charm of lingering in her old cities is
lost,--also is lessened one's chance to catch unaware the soul of this
mystic, profoundly religious race. Here I should end, as I head these
lines of introduction with the words: _Practical hints_. And yet, just
as it is well nigh impossible in Spain to dissociate the churches
themselves from the religious scenes daily witnessed under their
Romanesque or Gothic arches, so I cannot help begging the traveler,
along with his smattering of architecture to bring a little liberality
toward a faith different perhaps from his own, a little openness of
mind. To one who goes to Spain in the holier-than-thou attitude, she is
dumb and repellent,--she who can be so eloquent!
In each of her cities is a cathedral built when faith was gloriously
generous and untamable, and in them one feels, unless blinded by
prejudices of early environment or birth, that here indeed man is bowed
in the humble self-abasement of worship, here is not only æsthetic
beauty but a burning soul; the incense, the lights, the inherited lavish
wealth speak with the spirituality of symbols, of ritual, that utterance
of the soul older than hymns or voiced prayer.
This record of the journey through Spain will be called too partial, and
yet I started without the slightest intention of liking or praising her.
A month before going to Spain, on reading in the Bodleian Library
certain accounts of St. Teresa, about whom I had but vague ideas, I
exclaimed in distress, "What a morbid mind!" I went far from
sympathetic, but bit by bit my prejudices dropped away. With the cant
and smug self-conceit of northern superiority, I expected among other
jars a shock to my religious belief. And after eight months I left Spain
with the conviction that magnificently faulty though she is with her
bull-fights, a venal government, and city loafers, she can give us
lessons in mystic spirituality, in an unpretentious charity, in heroic
endurance, in a very practical not theoretic democracy.
ESPAÑA LA HEROICA
Deep learned are the poor in many ways,
Their hearts are mellowed by sweet human pain,
And she has learned the lesson of the waifs,
This sadly-ravaged, stern, soul-moving Spain!
Rugged and wild, wind-swept, and bleak, and drear,
She has a ruined splendor all her own,
It seizes even while you ask in fear
The reason man should choose this waste for home.
Her cities rise, ascetic, lofty, proud,
Forever haunted by high souls that dare,
And from her wondrous churches rings aloud
A heaven-storming radiance of prayer;
With psalm, with dance, with ecstasy's white thrill,
Her mystics dared to lose themselves in God,
Theirs was unflinching faith, fierce, _varonil_,
A force as true to nature as the sod.
Reward must come: perhaps from her to-day
May spring the needed saint, to think, to feel,
To grope triumphantly, to point the way
To altars where both Faith and Science kneel.
Upon her ashy mountain height she stands,
Eager to step into the forward strife,
Her eyes are wide with hope, outstretched her hands
To meet the promise of new coursing life:
Steadfast her cities to the desert face,
Snow mountains loom across the silent plain:
Take courage, O exalted tragic race!
Courage! Christ's always faithful grand old Spain!
Castile, 1908.
IN THE BASQUE COUNTRY: LOYOLA
"The only happy people in the world are the good man, the sage, and
the saint; but the saint is happier than either of the others, so
much is man by his nature formed for sanctity."--JOUBERT.
"Whoever has been in the land of the Basques wishes to return to
it; it is a blessed land."--VICTOR HUGO.
The Basque is still one of the sturdy untouched peoples of the earth;
they make still the unmixed aborigines of Spain. Their difficult dialect
remains a perplexity to the etymologist, some believe it to be of Tartar
origin. They themselves claim to be the oldest race in Europe and that
their language came to Spain before the confusion of tongues at Babel.
They derive their name from a Basque phrase meaning "We are enough,"
that fittingly describes their character of self-sufficiency; the mere
fact of being born in the province confers nobility. Life for centuries
in the isolated valleys that never were conquered by Moor or foreign
invader has bred in the Basque a passionate independence. He would never
join with the neighboring kingdoms of Navarre and León until his
special privileges were ratified; and though these privileges were the
important ones of exemption from taxes and military service, he
succeeded in keeping them intact until his sympathies with the
Pretenders in the Carlist wars lost him his ancient rights. To-day the
Basques must pay taxes and serve in the army like the rest of Spain, but
their soldiers are usually employed in the customs, or as aids to the
local police. Their red cap, like the French béret, and brilliant red
trousers are a familiar sight among the valleys.
Of the three Basque provinces with their 600,000 people, the smallest,
Guipúzcoa, is a good epitome of national characteristics. The sinuous
valleys now serve as the passageway for the rushing mountain river, now
spread out into a plain where the villages are set. Each town has its
shady _alameda_, its plaza, and a court for playing _pelota_, a kind of
tennis, the game of the province. There are frequent _casas solares_,[1]
or family manor houses; one of these I remember wedged in with its
neighbors, in Azcoitia, unnoticed by the guide book, only by chance we
looked up and found it looming above the narrow pavement; blackened with
age and scarred as if crashed with blows of warring times, it was a
speaking record of old Basque life. In any other country but Spain, the
carelessly rich and unrecorded, such a fortress-house would be a lion in
the district,--from this very unexpectedness Spanish travel is of
unflagging charm. The strong primitive Guipúzcoans cling to their
patriarchal customs. The men and boys sit before their doors making the
cord soles used in peasants' shoes; the women in groups of twenty or
more, wash clothes in the public trough or down by the river. The
industry of all is unflagging. The roads are among the best built in
Spain, along them go creaking carts, each wheel made of a solid block of
wood bound in iron and emitting a prolonged agonizing squeak. The
cream-colored oxen that drag them have their yokes covered with
sheepskin, another century-old custom. The carts sometimes carry
pigskins filled with wine, three legs in the air, and the unique casks
are mended with a kind of pitch that lends a disagreeable flavor to the
wine, but these highlanders will not yield an old usage.
No sooner did we cross the _Puente Internacional_ that connects France
with its neighbors over the Bidassoa River--scene of historic
meetings--than we found ourselves in the wooded Basque provinces of the
northern Pyrenees. The country was fertile, the small farms cultivated
with activity; on the hills were heavily-laden chestnut trees, in the
valleys, orchards: we often passed trainloads of red apples carried
unpacked in the open cars like coal. Not far from the frontier the train
skirted what appeared to be an inland lake surrounded by hills, when
suddenly I noticed an ocean steamer and some fishing smacks lying at
anchor, and looking closer I saw that a narrow passage led through the
hills to the ocean breaking outside,--another of Spain's unheralded
effects. This was the beautiful inland Bay of Pasajes, the port from
which young Lafayette sailed for America.
At San Sebastián, the most fashionable summer resort in Spain, and still
gay with Madrid people, for the season holds till October, we saw the
first bull-ring, a circular building of red and yellow brick in the
Moorish style. To find a _plaza de toros_ here in the north was
disconcerting. Spain's national game has withstood the will of kings,
Papal bulls, the dislike of a large proportion of the Spanish people who
petitioned the Cortes in 1878 for its abolishment, and the odium of
foreign races. Until this debased _cosa de España_ is done away with it
will remain a stumbling block to even the most sympathetic of travelers.
At Irún, the frontier town behind us, we had taken our tickets for
Zumárraga, two hours away. There we were to leave the railway and drive
into the valleys to Loyola, where in an old castle the hidalgo
vizcaíno, Don Iñigo de Loyola, was born. Our guide book gave but the
slightest information. It was raining drearily. With trepidation and
sinking hearts we looked out at Zumárraga as the train drew near. Would
this, the first night in Spain, cold and wet, be spent in some miserable
tavern in a town of a thousand inhabitants, and perhaps the next morning
would a rickety diligence take us up the valley? We stepped from the
train reluctantly; at the last minute we were tempted to turn back. But
a porter had seized our valises, and muttering something
incomprehensible about Loyola and an automobile hurried us through the
station. And there, beyond, stood the wonderful thing, sign manual of
modern comfort--a great red automobile with a gallant chauffeur! We sat
down on our luggage and burst into a hearty laugh. It began to dawn on
us that perhaps the tour of Spain was not going to be the series of
hardships and privations we anticipated.
For the sum of three pesetas each (fifty-four cents) we were whirled up
the winding valley. The mountains rose precipitously from the road and
its accompanying river, reminding me of the valley in the Pistoiese
Apennines that leads down to the Bagni di Lucca. In the motor diligence
with us were a few courteous Basques; an elderly architect, with the
finely-chiseled features of the country, pointed out a sight here and
there, among others the birthplace and statue of Legazpi, conqueror of
the Philippines. I think he took us for countrywomen of his young queen,
and, trying to emulate his politeness, we were silent as to our
nationality; later we discovered that this was quite unnecessary, for
there is not the slightest prejudice in Spain against the United States.
We passed a building by the river and were told it was an electric
power-house; almost every part of the country is now lighted by
electricity. "You are very up-to-date!" we exclaimed. He replied by a
shrug of delighted self-depreciation, a proud smile of conscious
superiority aping the humble, not out of place in a Basque whose
mysterious language Adam spoke, so ancient and difficult a tongue that
the devil who once tried to learn it, they say, had to give up in
despair. Our opposite neighbors in the diligence, countrymen whose loss
of teeth made them appear aged, sought also to show some courtesy. Each
wayside shrine was named with glistening eyes,--St. Anthony; the
hermitage on the hill above, St. Augustine; here, St. John. One began to
understand religion was no mere Sunday morning service with this people.
After six miles the valley opened out and we came to Azcoitia, a town of
some five thousand inhabitants where is manufactured the _bóina_, the
typical cap of the province. The automobile went slowly through the
narrow cobbled streets, under the high houses and the cliff-like church,
then sped over two miles of a beautiful valley, with mountain rising
behind mountain in the evening light, and at length we reached Loyola.
Here one of the great discoverers of new strength, of untried powers in
the human soul, one of the holiest men of Christendom, saw the light in
1491, the year before the discovery of America: in the life of St.
Ignatius are several coincidental dates to give us pause. Surely it was
to these peaceful Basque hills that his thoughts turned when, a knight
in the worldly court that surrounded Ferdinand and his second wife
Germaine de Foix, Ignatius in gazing at the stars would feel with sudden
potency the pettiness of man's grandeur, and during his religious life,
when he craved at the sunset hour to be alone to meditate, he must have
recalled this lovely valley of his birth. With emotion I saw in the
distance the huge quadrangle of the convent that now surrounds the
_Santa Casa_: the thought of what this spot has given to the world, of
the thousands of chosen souls linked to-day by one will to work for good
in every land, can well make Loyola a place to stir the heart.
At a little past six we left the automobile which was to run farther up
the valley, and a porter from the inn led us through the park the
Jesuits have planted for the people. The _Hospedería de Loyola_ was a
large building with a porticoed entrance at right angles to the convent,
more like a monastery than a hotel, with polished staircase and
corridors, neat bare rooms, and a long white refectory. The table was
excellent, one course followed another at the one o'clock luncheon and
the eight o'clock dinner. There was fresh fish from San Sebastián (to
which daily another motor diligence ran), there were home-made
preserves, and we had our first taste of the universal _garbanzos_[2] of
Spain, a chickpea shaped like a ram's head. The waitress, the first of
many Carmens and Dolores, was a wonderful old woman who grew so intent
on teaching us her language that she would insistently repeat the name
of each dish she passed. She managed to convey to us by pantomime, for
our Spanish as yet was of the meagerest, that there were eight ladies
from Madrid in the hotel, living upstairs in retirement as they were
making a Retreat. They had come last Saturday;--talk, talk, talk,--and
the animated little woman gesticulated to show. Then the Retreat
began,--did we know what "the Exercises" were? Off she walked with bowed
head and downcast eyes. So it would be all week. The next Monday we
should see them, they would come to table with us, and it would be talk,
talk, talk again. During the week we occasionally saw a lady in black,
her head covered with a veil, cross from the hotel to the _Santa Casa_
where the meditations were held. In the convent the Jesuits were
conducting another Retreat attended by fifty men from different Spanish
cities: these lived in the seminary with the priests.
At table with us were some Spanish people of a kind the tourist does not
usually meet. One of them, a deeply religious man from Barcelona, on his
first visit to the _Santa Casa_, following the example of St. Francis
Borgia, knelt to kiss the floor of the room in which the patron of the
Basques was born. Another, an elderly woman fond of lace and jewels, and
probably longing for the gayeties of San Sebastián, was waiting in this
quiet spot while her daughter made the Retreat. When the eight days were
ended we met this daughter, a beautiful girl with the charm of manner
and quickness of intelligence that we found as a rule among Spanish
women. The afternoon the two Retreats closed was a pleasant sight. The
valley was fragrant from the rain, on the mountains the chalets stood
out strangely near in the clear air. Carriages and touring-cars rolled
up, pretty wives to fetch their husbands to claim their wives. All were
happy and natural, but one felt around one the atmosphere of the higher
things of life, an exaltation that only religion can give. Religion is
ineradicably woven into the every-day life of this race: a Spaniard is
half mystic by inheritance. The power to understand the spiritual is not
the gift of a few but of all. It gives to the peasant woman, to the
uncouth lad serving Mass, an intelligence above themselves.[3] Before
the late dinner that last evening in Loyola, a tall Spanish woman with
her four daughters automobiled over from San Sebastián; she came to join
her husband who had been following the "Exercises." He now sat with us
at table, a man of the grave dignity and fine presence we were later to
meet frequently. That night when passing through the corridors we heard
the sounds of prayer in their rooms, the wife and children making the
responses to the man's deeper voice.
The convent of Loyola is the center of civilization for the countryside.
All day there is a ceaseless come and go to the church, or to the
_Santa Casa_ for silent prayer. At one each day troops of children go to
the door of the convent with baskets and tins, and food is given them to
carry to the aged and decrepit of the town. An hour later some dozens of
lads in blue smock and _bóina_, playing their ceaseless _pelota_, flock
into the building for a half hour of _doctrina_. Then at three the young
novices come out gayly for their ramble over the mountains and as they
pass before the church each instantly removes his hat as walking they
repeat together a prayer. Happy those whose formative years are passed
in hardy discipline among these uncontaminated Basque hills! The
peasants of the valley, when the bell sounds the hours, pause to remove
their caps in salutation. Every morning they cross the fields from
Azpeitia on the raised path beside the river, or they come from
Azcoitia, two miles down the valley, to attend the morning services. No
one who has not seen a Spanish priest's attitude of devotion can
understand its appealing beauty. These Jesuits and their attendant young
novices (there are about two hundred students in the seminary) approach
the altar with solemn reverence, without a trace of self-consciousness,
and slowly and beautifully say the Mass. "The Jesuit seems to love God
from pure inclination, out of admiration, gratitude, tenderness, for the
pleasure of loving Him," wrote that subtle critic, Joubert: "In their
books of devotion you find joy because with them nature and religion go
hand in hand." A Basque congregation is worthy of such ministers. All
kneel without bench or chair, the men on folded handkerchiefs, the women
on the circular straw mats scattered over the pavement. We were
fortunate enough to attend a late Benediction, not a customary service
in Spain as we found later. The thrilled exaltation of the singing in
which all joined, the aged as well as children, is impossible to
describe. It was a triumphant full-hearted adoration trying to voice the
inexpressible; the organ ran riot, strained to its utmost, to accompany
the ecstatic singing.
Every Sunday the peasants drive in from the mountains to attend the
afternoon service, and after it they stand to chat for a placid hour on
the wide steps of the church. Arm in arm the young girls stroll up and
down in the park before the convent. I looked on at this scene of
contentment that told of frugal, upright living, with the sad thought of
France deprived of such wholesome beauty, of the peasants round the
Grande-Chartreuse, poverty-stricken and desolate since the industrial
monastery was closed. Happily for the future of Spain, she has at hand a
neighbor to give her the lesson in time.
The convent of Loyola was built by the Austrian wife of Philip IV to
enclose and preserve the _Santa Casa_, and it was by her presented to
the Jesuits. The church whose dome overtops the convent is in imitation
of the Pantheon. Unfortunately, as are most Jesuit churches in Europe,
it was erected in a bad period, and overloaded with ornament. The
Company of Jesus was not founded until the golden age of architecture
was well past; Churriguera, archmaster of bad taste, was in vogue when
they built. But at Loyola if the twisted pillars of decorated marble are
hideous, the ample flowing staircase that leads to the church is a
beautiful feature, reminiscent of Italian villas.
The soul of the valley is naturally the _Santa Casa_ itself, the _casa
solar_ of the saint's fore-fathers. The lower story is of rough-hewn
stone, and once the whole building was the same, but a jealous king
leveled the fortress-houses of the Basque nobles and the upper stories
were rebuilt in ancient brick. Above the entrance door the arms of the
family are carved, two wolves and a pot. The tradition is that the
knights of Loyola were so generous to their retainers that even the
wolves came to share their hospitality. In many of the rooms daily
Masses are said; the four stories have been inlaid with mosaic, carved
wood, and gold leaf, the gifts of devotees of the Basque patron. One
room is pointed out as the saint's before his conversion, another as
the one in which St. Francis Borgia said his first Mass, giving up a
brilliant career, as viceroy, admiral, Duke of Gandía by inheritance,
favorite of Charles V, to consecrate himself to the service of the
altar. At this memorable Mass he gave communion to one of his sons,
married to an inheritor of the _Santa Casa_, a niece of St. Ignatius. So
many were the communicants another day that the Mass lasted from nine to
three. Such rare instances of Christian perfection make the ancient
house a chosen spot.
The story of St. Ignatius' life is told throughout his _casa solar_. On
the staircase is a window showing him as a courtier. He was skilled in
knightly exercises, fond of the saddle and equally fond of rich attire:
good-looking, high-spirited, truthful, and brave, he was a favorite with
his soldiers. The scene of his wounding at the siege of Pamplona is
given; he lies on the ground with his leg shattered. A long year of
convalescence followed, and we see him reading the books that wrought
his marvelous change of heart. He sought the monastery of Montserrat,
above Barcelona, to beg counsel of a learned man concerning the vocation
he felt within him. His military training made him dream of forming a
spiritual knighthood to battle for the salvation of souls: "Company of
Jesus" is a military term. At Montserrat he performed the vigil of the
armor, like a true knight watching till dawn before the altar; then
exchanging his fine robes with a beggar he went forth, "_el pobre ignoto
peregrin_." In a cave of Manresa he lived in seclusion and prayer,
verifying on himself in agony of spirit the knowledge which was later to
guide the troubled souls of others who sought light. "His experience in
this solitude was an epitome of the psychology of the saints; and it
smote him all the more intimately because he was utterly without
foreknowledge of the spiritual life, and fought out his fight alone,
like the first Fathers of the Desert." In the cave of Manresa was forged
his Excalibur (to use again the vivid phrase of Francis Thompson, own
brother to Crashaw in his flashes of celestial intuition), there
originated the "Spiritual Exercises," the work used to-day in the
Retreats. "It has converted more souls to God," wrote St. Francis de
Sales, "than it contains letters."
Eighteen years were to pass before St. Ignatius founded his Order. They
were years filled with wanderings in Spain and Europe, a student at
universities, a humble but joyous pilgrim to Jerusalem. One day while he
was reading the eighteenth chapter of St. Luke the words, "And they
understood none of these things" brought before him with sudden force
the realization of his own untrained mind, the fact that he must be
educated himself before he could help others. So at thirty this
remarkable man began his scholastic studies in Barcelona, in Cardinal
Ximenez's famous university of Alcalá, in Salamanca. One day, in the
streets of Alcalá, as he was led to prison on a false accusation, the
proud young grandee of Gandía passed him. This was the first sight
Francis Borgia had of the man who later was to lead his life. Then
followed some years of study in Paris. 1530 found him in London at the
time of the agitation of Henry VIII's divorce from Catherine of Aragon,
again a coincidence in Ignatius' life that he should visit at this
critical moment the land soon to desert a church for which he was
destined to raise so powerful a defense. There was another notable
Spaniard in England then, not a humble summer student begging his way
like the Basque hidalgo, but a scholar of Corpus Christi College,
distinguished and lauded, to attend whose lectures the King and Queen
used sometimes to spend a few days in Oxford. This was Juan Luis de
Vives, born in the great year 1492, the precursor of Bacon and
Descartes, a man of such vast erudition and impartial judgment that he
has been called with Erasmus and the French prodigy, Budé, the intellect
of his century. Vives stood forth courageously as defender of his
country-woman when the divorce question arose; he was imprisoned for a
short time, forfeited his position and pension, and finally left England
altogether.
Loyola now took his degree as Master of Arts in Paris, and gathering
round him some young men of earnest life--among them the future apostle
and martyr in the East, St. Francis Xavier from Navarre--the memorable
band of seven students made the vows of poverty and chastity in the
crypt of a church on Montmartre on the Feast of the Assumption, 1534.
Thirty years later the remembrance of that hour made one of the seven,
Rodríguez, feel his heart swell with ineffable consolation. Literally
these ardent souls fulfilled the letter of the Gospel for the way of
perfection: "If thou wilt be perfect go sell what thou hast, and give to
the poor." "If any man will come after me let him deny himself, and take
up his cross and follow me." "Ye shall be hated of all men for my name's
sake." Their founder with superhuman perspicacity prayed it might be so.
The world's hate is their alembic of purification.
Ignatius returned to Spain to arrange with Xavier's family--he also was
of the northern mountain race of Spain--and with the kindred of three
others of his followers. He crossed the Pyrenees by footpaths, and
descending to his own valley of Loyola preached down by the river in
Azpeitia. Later in Italy the band of Montmartre met again, working in
hospitals, preaching, and converting souls to God. It was in Venice,
many years after his wounding at Pamplona, that Ignatius Loyola was at
length ordained priest, and in Rome, in the church of Santa Maria
Maggiore said his first Mass. When the projects of the small band were
submitted to the Pope, he had the inspired wisdom to discern in humble
beginnings a future great movement and exclaimed: "_Digitus Dei est
hic!_"--truly the finger of God. The new Order approved, Loyola was
elected its general; like a military company, the first law was the
unhesitating obedience of the soldier to his leader, the unbreakable
power that lies in many working as one. The _Compañía_ spread over the
world, reforming monasteries, giving help to the poor, persuading the
rich to purer lives, reconciling husbands and wives. Within a few years
Francis Borgia gave up his dukedom to join them, and his accession
brought to the Order many Spaniards of high rank. The founder continued
to live in Italy between Rome at the Gesù and Tivoli: he died in Rome in
1556.
In the _Santa Casa_ we followed this remarkable life in scene after
scene. There is a touching picture of the grown man at school among
lads half his age, of the crypt of Montmartre, and of the final scene
in Rome. His face was said by St. Philip Neri to have shone with
compelling personality. In speech he was grave and admirable, a
never-tiring student of the Bible; that, and the "Imitation of Christ"
were the only books he much valued. "To see Father Ignatius was like
reading a chapter of the 'Imitation,'" they used to say of him.
We lingered for some days in the beautiful Basque valley, following the
winding paths among the mountains, loitering in the two little towns
near by in the pleasant discovery of rare old windows and portals. Most
of the houses had a picture of the Saviour on the entrance door. Each
new-born child is brought to the parish church of Azpeitia where St.
Ignatius was baptized, and each boy is called by his name, though only
the eldest in a family has the privilege of using it. The saint's hymn
is the national hymn of the Basques.
It was a raw autumn morning when we left Loyola. The light was just
filling the valleys as we passed the sweeping steps of the church up
which the peasants were mounting to beg a blessing on their working
hours. The influence of their loved patron is as vivid as if he had
lived but yesterday, so truly can one human mind, touched by divine
grace, with no thought of self, in sublime earnestness, rouse mankind
to shake off its apathy, to aspire to the highest. If only another such
knight might arise to-day to fight the modern battle of Christianity!
BURGOS AND THE CID
"The epochs in which faith prevails are the marked epochs of human
history, full of heart-stirring memories and of substantial gains
for all after times. The epochs in which unbelief prevails, even
when for the moment they put on the semblance of glory and success,
inevitably sink into insignificance in the eyes of posterity which
will not waste its thoughts on things barren and
unfruitful."--GOETHE.
Passing through the fertile Basque valleys, the train mounts the
Pyrenees by a series of skillfully-engineered tunnels. This natural
barrier between France and Spain, is far from being the straight rampart
of school geographies. It is a wide expanse of ramifying hills and
intricate valleys, a jumble of mountains that explains why Spain
remained isolated from northern Europe until the days of the railway.
When we reached the crest of this watershed between the Bay of Biscay
and the Mediterranean, we had a noble view of the villages far beneath.
Around us was a strange outcrop of white rock, and the descent to
Vitoria was barren too: with every mile the scene grew bleaker till the
rustling woods of the Basque valleys behind seemed a dream.
Beyond Miranda, the first town of old Castile, the desolate scene
appeared in its full awfulness. The plain lay like brown dunes of sand,
"as for the grass, it grew as scant as hair in leprosy." It was indeed
the haunting landscape of "Childe Roland." Passing over this wide
stretch, the train again mounted, this time not to cross another range
of hills, but to climb to the great truncated mountain which forms the
center of Spain. Three-fourths of the area of this imagined orange-laden
land is this tragic central plateau, comprising Old and New Castile,
León, and Estremadura. Most of the historic cities are on this bleak
upland, almost 3,000 feet above the sea, wind-swept, wintry, and made
still colder by the snow mountains that cross it from east to west.
Riding for days through the monotonous scene you begin to wonder not
that Spain should be poor, but rather that she, an agricultural land,
should have made so good a fight against such heavy odds. The guide
books that so harshly criticise, saying hers is a land where Nature has
lavished her prodigalities of soil and climate yet shiftless man has
refused her bounty, seem to forget that only one-fourth of the country
is the traditional rich south. The fruitful provinces form but the
fringe of the Peninsula.
It was early October when we mounted the Pass of Pancorbo. A fierce wind
was blowing. It suddenly blew open the door of our compartment, and
flung it back, smashing the glass. It was impossible to draw it to in
the fierce gale, and this little incident added to the desolation round
us. We looked down through the open door on the white road of the Pass,
over which Napoleon's armies poured a hundred years before to plunder
Spain with ruthless cruelty, and yet, so hidden is the guidance of
things, that seeming disaster waked the country from its long abasement.
Having reached the great central steppes, the same melancholy scene
continued. The land was scorched and calcined. Everything was a dull
brown. Villages were undistinguishable from the plain, and the churches
from the villages; man, his ass, and his dog, were all the same dull
tone. Even the brown deserts of Egypt failed to give me as powerful a
sensation of the forsaken. The plateau was treeless, except for an
occasional wind-threshed poplar, and an isolated moth-eaten poplar can
be the final touch of desolation. At times, miles from any village, a
solitary figure guided his oxen and plow in a stony field, or
silhouetted against the sky a tandem of five or six mules slowly crawled
along. Since the villages are far apart, each worker must leave his home
long before dawn to reach his distant field, and after sunset plod back
patiently to the _aldea_.
Forlorn as it all appeared one saw that every inch of the soil was
under cultivation. The peasants are as attached to their cheerless
tract, which has its one hour of green bloom in the spring, as are the
Basques to their beautiful valleys. The fields are passed from father to
son, and are acquired with the same zest as are teeming English farms; a
stern soil and still sterner climate has made a peasantry full of grit
and courage. Hardy and undepressed they gathered round the train with
pleasant greetings, for the long pauses in the stations are moments of
sociability from one end of Spain to another. The sad landscape
continued up to Burgos, one might say to its very gates if it were not
that the townspeople have planted avenues of trees near the city.
As we approached we had a splendid view of the Cathedral towers
dominating the town. There was something magnificent in the souls of the
old builders who made a temple such as this in the midst of a desert, as
if they defied the arid desolation to conquer their soaring faith. The
great structure rose doubly impressive from the juxtaposition of
richness and sterility, of the spirit's triumph over the material that
makes Burgos as impressive in its way as Toledo with its more imposing
setting.
[Illustration: _Copyright, 1910 by Underwood & Underwood_
BURGOS CATHEDRAL FROM THE CASTLE HILL]
"_Nuestro país es el país de las anomalías_" says the critic De Larra,
and the first step in Spain strikes this note. She is a land of
violent contrasts; level plain and broken sierra, elysian garden of
Andalusia and tractless wastes of Castile, frosty Burgos and sunny
Seville. She is the home of the hidalgo and home of the strongest
existing democracy between man and man, only equaled by early Rome. It
was in Burgos we first noticed what we later saw frequently, the
_labrador_ who drove his master's carriage, enter the inn with him and
sit at the same table to eat, master and man alike in their dignity. She
has a peasantry beyond praise for its virile industry, and she has a
class of city loafers the idlest that ever encumbered a plaza. Cradle of
exalted mystics and mother of realistic painters, this land of racy
personalities never allows one's interest to flag.