attempted an excursion beyond our strength and got well punished; the
moral is, avoid all diligence journeys in Spain, they are only for those
who have the nerves of oxen. The real reason why we had come into this
little-visited province was because that old emperor born in Italica
near Seville, Trajan, the bridge builder, had in the year A.D. 105 put
up one of his bridges at Alcántara, a town now on the Portuguese
frontier. Such a reason sounds slightly absurd, but many who read
certain descriptions of the bridge must feel the same impulse to hunt it
up. Richard Ford calls it one of the wonders of Spain, "the work of men
when there were giants on the earth," worth going five hundred miles out
of one's way to see as it rises in lonely grandeur two hundred feet
above the Tagus River. So it no doubt appeared to the English traveler
who stumbled on it eighty years ago, for it was then an unrestored,
picturesque ruin, probably unused since one of its arches had been blown
up by the English in the Peninsula War. At any rate, it was such glowing
words that enticed us into the wilderness of Estremadura.
It is strange in Spain how little they know of districts that lie at no
appreciable distance. At the inn at Cáceres we asked for information
about Alcántara, and they could give none. The landlord himself came
over to our table to look at us in astonishment. "But there is nothing
to see there!" he assured us, too polite to ask the question that showed
in his voice,--why were two ladies seeking a dismal spot such as
Alcántara? I positively blushed as I answered there was a bridge. "A
bridge!" He beat a hasty retreat to his wife in the office, where their
merriment burst out. The next day he told us, that having inquired, he
found we could take the train to Arroyo, an hour away, whence a
diligence ran in a short time to Alcántara. We left the train at Arroyo,
and on the other side of the station found the smallest diligence ever
seen, so packed already with big countrymen that we could just force our
unwilling selves in. When we were well started, we found to our
consternation that we did not reach Alcántara before ten hours, the
distance being about thirty miles. _Una legua una hora_ runs the saying,
and this part of the world is ruled by its wise old proverbs. Too late
to turn back, we tried to make the best of it. When in each of the
desolate villages long pauses were made, we got out to visit the market
or church. In the first village the altar was dressed with coarsest but
freshest linen. Artistic pewter, unconscious of its charm, held the
water and wine, and a score of sturdy young peasants came in from
selling in the plaza outside, knelt on the very steps of the altar, then
having made their serious preparation, each bashfully approached a
white-haired priest who sat there all market day in readiness to hear
confessions. The dismallest corner of Spain has compensations.
The first ten miles of the journey reminded me of New England, with its
stone walls and semi-cultivated land. The next ten miles were indeed the
proverbial desolation of Estremadura; hardly an inhabitant was to be
found on those bleak hills. We had stumbled on one of the three days of
the yearly fair of Brozas, so we passed flocks of sheep, cattle with a
royal spread of horns, and dozens of the nervous Andalusian horses. Even
automobiles went by, and one Portuguese noble drove abreast three truly
glorious cream-white mules. Seeing them, one could understand how a mule
here can cost more than a horse. The fair was held in meadows outside
the town, and it looked so animated that we should have liked to stop,
but no time was given us. A mile outside Brozas we found we had to
change from the tiny diligence, a primitive enough way of travel, and to
continue the remaining miles to Alcántara in the mail cart, which
consisted of a board laid across two wheels, and that one seat had to be
shared with the driver. Fuming did no good, not another vehicle would
take us. The cold wind howled across the treeless upland, our umbrellas
could not break its biting force, and we were far too thinly clad from
the warm Seville winter; I could feel the chill seize on me that was to
lead to a month's bad illness. The final touch was when the young scamp
who drove the mail cart found it impossible to forego his eternal
cigarette, which, despite remonstrance, he smoked continuously. That
evening (we had left Cáceres in the pitch dark at 5 A.M.) we were set
down at an inn whose spacious rooms and staircase told of former
prosperity, but so shrunken was its hospitality that it could offer
nothing fit to eat; yet, curiously enough, the old landlady made the
best coffee I have tasted in Europe. We kept her busy grinding and
boiling it.
Alcántara is one of the most God-forsaken places in the world. Pigs walk
the ill-kept streets, and the vast buildings of the monkish-knights who
formerly guarded the frontier pass are crumbling into such universal
ruin that the lanes are a mass of broken rubbish. They are not romantic
ruins, but depressing and almost terrifying. When we climbed down the
precipitous hill that led to the bridge, our shoes were cut to pieces by
the flinty stones.
And the bridge, that lode-star of our pilgrimage, worth going five
hundred miles to see! We thought with exasperation of the sixty we were
wasting on it. No doubt Trajan did build it eighteen centuries ago, but
they have chipped off the beautiful gray toning of ages, filled in with
mortar the boulders after they had stood unaided till our time, and made
a modern boulevard from Portugal. All solitude and sublimity are well
eliminated from the scene. We sat on the benches of that banal little
park and glared at the disappointing thing. The Tagus, Lope de Vega's
_hidalgo Tajo_, was here a low stream, yellow with mud, flowing beneath
bleak, unimposing hills. The bridge, in spite of its two hundred feet of
height, did not appear as high as the aqueduct at Mérida, an effect due
probably to the arches standing on stilts. And it may sound blatant, but
a memory of once passing under that superb thing the Brooklyn Bridge, at
dawn, made this ancient monument suffer in comparison. The ludicrousness
of our having traveled out of our way to see this sight struck us at
last, and when we recalled the Cáceres landlord's astonishment, and that
of Brazilian friends at Seville who had tried to persuade us our
Estremadura plan was quite mad, we too burst into a hearty laugh, soon
sobered at the prospect of the next day's weary return to Arroyo. We
climbed back to the inn and dined on _glasses_ of coffee.
The following morning, after some more glasses of our only modus
vivendi, we explored the decayed town. In it is a pearl of architecture
built by the Benedictine knights in 1506, the now ruined church of San
Benito, with lofty slender piers, one of the most gracefully
proportioned of semi-Renaissance things. Truly was the transition from
Gothic to Renaissance a most harmonious moment in Spanish architecture.
This interesting discovery could not do away with the fever and cold of
the awful drive back to Arroyo. Such petty miseries are best passed
over. More dead than alive, late the second night we reached again the
comfortable hotel at Cáceres, where we were glad to pause a few days to
pick up strength to push on.
Our plans had been to go to Trujillo, the birthplace of Pizarro. It was
Estremadura that produced many of the rude, energetic _conquistadores_
of Peru and Mexico, and the province never has recovered from that drain
on its population. Just as the number of Jewish and Moorish exiles and
the loss to their country's vitality has been exaggerated for partisan
reasons, so there has been an underestimation of the more serious drain
which Spain suffered when hoards of sturdy adventurers set out for the
New World. The emigration was untimely; it came a century too early. The
country had just been brought from political chaos to law and order by
Isabella's great reign; but before the fruit of her planting could ripen
(by peace and its natural sequence of settled trade) it was plucked
from the bough. I have never been able to see that the expulsion of two
hundred thousand Jews, the execution of thirty-five thousand heretics,
and the exile of under a million Moriscoes, are sufficient causes to
explain Spain's decay. Other countries of Europe, prosperous to-day,
suffered from evils quite as bad. Why did Segovia, with an "old
Christian" population independent of Moorish banishment, have
thirty-five thousand weavers of cloth in the beginning of the
seventeenth century and but a few hundred in the next generation? A
score of questions similar to this can be asked to which the hackneyed
explanation of the Inquisition and the expulsion of the Moors gives no
answer.
The causes of Spain's decay must be sought farther afield than in single
acts of bad government which crippled the country for a time but were
not irremediable. Through emigration, just when with the ending of the
seven hundred years' crusade the nation should have turned to peaceful
industries, she lost her agriculturists and her possible traders. And
following swift on this, for emigration does not permanently weaken a
strong race, Spain was bled of her best blood by Charles V's senseless
European wars. She profited nothing by them, in fact they lowered her to
the position of a mere province in the Empire. The treasure that poured
in from the New World was poured out over Europe, it merely passed
through Spain. American gold was a curse for her; it undermined the
national character; the spirit of adventure, not of patient work, was
fostered. The policy of the Emperor was continued by his descendants,
and for two hundred years more Spain was at war. Anæmia of the whole
race followed: so true is it that the nation of fighters to-day runs the
risk of being the nation of weaklings to-morrow.
Good government might have helped the ill, but Charles V pursued in that
line a policy as fatal as his continental wars. He tried to force on
these subjects whom he never understood an iron autocratic rule,
ruthlessly crushing their tenacious spirit of independence. The death of
Ximenez and the execution of the Comuneros leaders may be said to mark
the ending of the sensible old régime of self-centering her resources,
exclusive and provincial perhaps, but it had been Spain's salvation. To
meet the expenses of ceaseless wars in Europe, when the first influx of
colonial gold ceased, the Peninsula was heavily taxed: a fourteen per
cent tariff on all commodities will soon kill trade. For the same
reason, to pay for wars, the currency was debased under Philip III; and
the Crown held monopolies on spirits, tobacco, pottery, glass, cloth,
and other necessities, a system always bad for commerce. The agrarian
laws were neglected, too much land was in pasturage, which tends to
lower the census, and too vast tracts were held by single nobles. The
loss of population went on; in 1649 an epidemic carried off two hundred
thousand people. The economic discouragement was aggravated by a host of
minor reasons, such as the insecurity of property along the coast from
African pirates; a too generous allowance of holidays; the prejudice
against trading inherited from crusading ancestors; and there being no
alien element--for this Moor or Jew would have served--to give the spur
of competition which keeps a nation in health. Hapsburg and Bourbon
misgovernment and wars blighted Spain for three centuries. But to-day
new life is stirring in her. She is returning to Ximenez's wise rule of
not scattering but of concentrating her powers. Happily those unhealthy
growths, the colonies, are lopped off at last:
"Passed into peace the heavy pride of Spain.
Back to her castled hills and windy moors!"
In the mountains, not far from Trujillo, lay Yuste, the solitary
monastery to which retired that dominating figure of his age, Charles V,
who was so decidedly interesting as a man, but so pernicious as a ruler.
When he came to this distant inheritance he could scarcely speak the
Castilian tongue; he did all in his power to stifle the indomitable
character of the race,--and alas! he succeeded but too well in starting
her downward course. Yet the magical something in the soul of Spain
vanquished even him, as it had impermeated the conquering Roman, the
Goth, the Israelite, and the Arab. With all Europe from which to choose,
Charles came back voluntarily to the Peninsula, to its most untamed
province, to spend the last days of his jaded life.
Reading at home accounts of Yuste, it had been easy to plan a trip
there, and to Guadalupe, the famous monastery which also lay among these
hills; but one diligence drive can quench all further foolhardy
adventuring. With a feeling that illness was threatening, and it was
wiser to get away from this "extrema ora," we again took the local line
to Arroyo, and there gladly boarded the express that passed through from
Lisbon to Madrid.
ARAGON
"O World thou chooseth not the better part!
It is not wisdom to be only wise
And on the inward vision close the eyes,
But it is wisdom to believe the heart.
Columbus found a world, and had no chart
Save one that faith deciphered in the skies,
To trust the soul's invincible surmise
Was all his science and his only art.
Our knowledge is a torch of smoky pine
That lights the pathway but one step ahead
Across a void of mystery and dread.
Bid, then, the tender light of faith to shine,
By which alone the mortal heart is led
Unto the thinking of the thought divine."
GEORGE SANTAYANA.
If it is one of the coveted sensations of a traveler to stumble
unexpectedly on some rare spot that is overlooked and unheralded, as was
our experience at Cáceres, there is a second emotion that is close to
it,--the return to a favorite picture gallery, especially if in the
meantime one has gone further afield, has learned to know other schools,
and adjusted ideas by comparison. A return to the Prado can give this
coveted sensation.
The winter in the south had familiarized us with the Spanish painters;
Murillo now seemed more than a sentimentalist, had he painted for
different patrons he had been a decided realist; Toledo had showed that
El Greco was to be taken seriously. No sooner were we back in Madrid
than I hurried off to the Museum, and, looking neither to the right nor
left, to give freshness to the impression, walked straight to the
Velasquez room. In the autumn the last look had been for the "Surrender
of Breda," and to that unforgettable, soul-stirring picture I paid my
first return homage. It impressed me even more powerfully than before.
Never was there a more sensitively-rendered expression of a high-minded
soul than that of the Marquis Spínola[35] as he bends to meet his enemy.
It is intangible and supreme, only equalled by some of Leonardo da
Vinci's expressions. For those who hold enshrined a height to which man
can rise, the face of this Italian general will ever be a stimulus; he
would appeal to the English sense of honor, the chivalry of a Nelson;
the heart-history of such a man could be told only by a novelist of true
distinction, such as Feuillet; there is something in Spínola's reserved
tenderness that Loti might seize in words. Velasquez shows us a man of
the world, but he has conveyed as only genius could how this warrior for
_España la heróica_ kept himself unspotted from the world, and this the
painter could convey, because he himself was nobly idealistic, realist
of the realists though he was. Not only in her mystics and novelists but
in her painters and sculptors, Spain shows this union of the real with
the ideal.
Hours in the Velasquez room slip by unnoticed. The portrait of the
sculptor Montañés was of more interest now that we had seen his
polychrome statues in Seville, those especially memorable ones of St.
Ignatius Loyola and St. Francis Borgia in the University Church. The
hidalgo heads by El Greco, the flesh tints, alas, turned to a deathly
green, called up Professor Domenech's words on the grave Spanish
gentlemen in their ruffs--"sad with the nostalgia for a higher world,
the light in their eyes holds memories of a fairer age that will not
return; images of the last warrior ascetics." This eccentric artist has
in the Prado a striking study of St. Paul, an intensity in his face on
the verge of fanaticism, a true Israelite, such as only a semi-oriental
like El Greco could seize. Another picture that struck me with even
profounder admiration than before was Titian's Charles V on horseback.
And again I studied long the portraits of the pale Philip II, of his
dainty little daughters, his sisters, his most lovely mother, and that
pathetic English wife of his. Probably no northerner can see fairly both
sides of Philip's strange character, just as I suppose no Spaniard can
judge Elizabeth Tudor as does an Englishman. Nevertheless, there is a
trait in Philip that all can admire--his filial loyalty.
We could have lingered in Madrid for weeks just for this gallery, but we
had to tear ourselves away. A journey south to Murcia and Valencia had
been planned, but the necessity of passing a cold night on the train
made us decide now against it. Those two provinces, with Navarre, are
the gaps of our tour in Spain: health and weather will change the
firmest of plans. We left Madrid for Aragon, pausing in a couple of the
Castilian cities to the east.
In the capital the parks had been bursting into leaf, but it was still
chill winter outside on the plains. Treeless and verdureless Alcalá, the
city of Ximenez and birthplace of Cervantes, looked far from inviting.
When we left the train at Guadalajara, the landscape was so depressing
that its Arab name, "river of stones," seemed dismally appropriate.
Again, as at Segovia in the autumn, a wind _de todos los demonios_ was
blowing over the land,--raging would be the more exact word. The town
was melancholy, so was the weather, and we had a distressing personal
experience. When the diligence set us down at the inn, we were told
there was not a bed to be had that night in all Guadalajara, for it was
the election, and even the hotel corridors would be used; we would have
to go on to Sigüenza by the night train. The wind and the cold made the
prospect a dismal one; early spring travel in northern Spain is not a
bed of roses.
We went out to explore Guadalajara and its chief lion, the Mendoza
palace, built by the Mæcenas family of the Peninsula whose history has
been called the history of Spain for four hundred years, so prominent
were they as statesmen, clerics, and writers. The palace is in the
Mudéjar style, the exterior studded with projecting knobs; the inner
courtyard is coarsely carved with lions and scrolls, capriciously
extravagant and yet within bounds enough to be effective. The Duke del
Infantado entertained Francis I here, and surely the French king with
memories of Blois and the chaster styles which his race follows, must
have examined with curiosity this very different architecture of his
neighbor, the intense individuality of whose conceptions could almost
silence criticism. The Mendoza palace is now a school for the orphans of
officers, and when the little nun, happy and fond of laughter as the
cloistered usually are, showed us about, we saw pleasant circles of
young girls sewing under the forgotten gorgeousness of the _artesonado_
ceilings.
Then at midnight, wind howling and rain pelting, we crossed the muddy
square that lay between the Sigüenza station and the town's most
primitive inn. There they did the best they were able for us, but
nothing could lessen the glacial damp of those linen sheets: the illness
begun at Alcántara went on increasing. With chattering teeth and beating
our frozen hands together to put some sensation into them, we realized
we were back again on the truncated mountain which is central Spain,
thousands of feet above the roses and oranges of Seville.
The following day was Sunday, with a sacred concert of stringed
instruments in the Cathedral, a good Gothic church, noticeably rich in
sepulchers. In one chapel especially, that dedicated to St. Thomas of
Canterbury by an English bishop who accompanied Queen Eleanor to Spain,
when you stand among the tombs of those warriors, bishops, and knights
of Santiago, you feel the thrill of the past. Cardinal Mendoza, "Tertius
Rex," was at one time bishop of this Cathedral, having for vicar-general
the priest Ximenez: Don Quixote's friend, the delightful _cura_, was
"_hombre docto graduado en Sigüenza_."
[Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL OF SINGÜENZA]
The chill, little city was far from stimulating; at another time it may
appear differently, impressions are so dependent on weather and health.
The peasants wrapped in their blankets had a beggarly aspect after the
dandy _majo_ of Andalusia. I daresay were Seville three thousand feet
above the sea, the bolero would be worn less jauntily. The Cathedral
visited, there was little to detain us, so we bade a ready farewell to
glacial sheets and ice-crusted water pitchers to continue the route to
Aragon, west past Medinaceli, where a Roman arch stood boldly on the
edge of its hill.
The semi-royal family of Cerda, Dukes of Medinaceli, has possessions all
over the country: forests near Avila, the _Casa de Pilatos_ in Seville,
lands near Cordova, a castle at Zafra, and vast tracts in Catalonia. It
descends from Alfonso _el Sabio_, whose eldest son, called _la Cerda_,
from a tuft of hair on his face, was married to a daughter of St. Louis
of France, and left two infant sons, who were dispossessed by their
uncle, Sancho _el Bravo_. For generations they continued to put forward
their claims on every fresh coronation.
After entering Aragon the climate grew warmer. We were descending
gradually, and soon fruit trees in blossom, and vineyards, appeared
among the broken, irregular hills. Calatayud, birthplace of the Roman
poet Martial, was extremely picturesque, with castle and steeples. The
long hours of the journey were whiled away watching the Sunday crowds in
the stations, many of the men and women in the astonishingly original
costume of the province. By the time we had reached Saragossa we had
descended to about five hundred feet altitude, and it was pleasantly
warm.
The capital of Aragon is commonplace in appearance, flat, modern, and
prosperous. The noisy electric cars and the bustling streets made it an
abrupt change from the small Castilian cities just left. As always, our
first walk was to the Cathedral--Saragossa has two, and the chapter
lives for six months in each alternately. The _Seo_ is an ancient and
beautiful structure, the _Pilar_ is a tawdry, cold-hearted object, such
as the eighteenth century knew how to produce, a mixture of the styles
of Herrera and Churriguera. It is a pity that one of the most revered
shrines in Spain should be housed in such vulgarity. Outside, seen from
the bridge over the Ebro, the many domes of different sizes, covered
with glazed tiles of green, yellow, and white, are not bad, but within
is a soul-distressing mass of plaster walls, and ceilings of
Sassoferrato-blue. The High Altar, however, has a treasure, the
celebrated alabaster _retablo_ of Damián Forment, one of the best of
national sculptors, who worked between the Gothic and Renaissance
periods, and who was helped to ease of expression by Berruguete, lately
returned from Italy.
The holy of holies of this new Cathedral is, of course, the chapel of
the _Pilar_, and about it are always gathered devotional crowds. To a
Spaniard it is naturally a sacred spot, associated as it is with his
earliest memories; there is not a hut in all Aragon that has not an
image of the _Pilar_ Madonna; but to the Catholic of another land, who
never heard of this cult till coming to Spain, it is impossible to feel
the same devotion, especially when it is surrounded with such bad taste.
I tried to arouse imagination by recalling what the _Pilar_ had meant
for this city in its hours of danger, how during the siege of 1808 they
kept up courage by exclaiming, "The holy _Virgen del Pilar_ is still
with us!": one of the witticisms of the siege was: