_The old Spanish Capital, once and now_
The tale of Toledo's rough and broken history, ending as I have shown
with the last struggle of the _Comuneros_, will have amply prepared the
reader for the town's present physiognomy. Few cities in Europe that for
so long were accustomed to opulence and power, have known a reverse so
instantaneous, so complete, an extinction against which all effort, all
hope, all aspiration have proved vain, as that which Toledo was crushed
beneath, when Felipe Segundo chose miserable, ugly, undistinguished
Madrid for his country's capital. Until then the vicissitudes, the
fortunes of Toledo were those of all Spain. Even now in her ruin, the
violent and imperious character of the race remains imperishably stamped
on the harsh, sad mixture of beauty and ugliness of her conservative
features. But the country itself takes no note of her. She has lived,
she lives no more, except in the memory of historians, for the fugitive
admiration of the traveller.
Unchanged I have said she is in all respects; a perfect mediæval picture
in high relief against the background of civilised Europe. Nothing less
civilised will you find along the least traversed byways of our modern
world. Of her ancient splendours she presents such vestiges as to shame
all that the ages have done for us. In beauty, alas, we have not
progressed. That remains behind along with many other divine things,
the portion of this sadly-used old world's bright morning. Such vast
centres as London and Paris are mean enough compared with what such a
town as Toledo must have been when her semi-royal archbishops flourished
and kings were proud and delighted if she but smiled upon them, more
used as they were to her frowns and her visage of haughty revolt; when
the Jews throve, great capitalists, and ruled the Exchange, when the
Muezzin was heard over her narrow streets and the crescent floated from
her towers, and her weekly markets in the Zocodover were so thronged
that magistrates had to preside at the coming and going of strangers,
such was the influx on all sides. If the town wears so unique and
imposing an aspect after centuries of silence and decay, what must it
not have been in each of its great hours of domination, under Goth,
Moor, and Christian?
Would that Toledo were but the mausoleum of regrets and memories. There
is a dignity and charm in noble widowhood, a grandeur in unobtrusive
poverty. But such is not her portion. She has become the home of the
most shameless and persecuting beggary it has been my lot to see. All
over Italy and Spain beggars thrive in the sun of winter and in the
shade of summer. But here they are worse than a plague of mosquitoes.
Castillian good-nature, a grand manner in money matters, and courtesy,
vanish at Toledo, where a sullen discourtesy and importunate mendicity
reign. The people reverse every notion travels in North Spain and Old
Castille had led me to form of the Spaniards, of their kindliness, of
distinguished honesty, and of disinterestedness. The Toledans regard the
foreigner with the eye of the bird of prey. The instant his foot touches
their ground they pounce upon him, and he knows neither rest nor
freedom from their mercenary and dishonest attentions till the train
carries him away from their mean little station. It is not safe to ask a
question of even a well-dressed Toledan. If he tells you to take the
right instead of the left, he is sure to ask you either for a tip or
alms. But you may rest assured he regards himself entitled to one or the
other. All the boys of whatever class, bourgeois or artizan, coming out
from the Institute with sachels slung over their shoulders, or running
errands, well-shod and clothed, along the streets, at the sight of a
foreigner shriek out "Un canki sou" if they imagine they know French,
and "cinco centimes" when they are content with Castillian. If you take
no notice, they will pursue you in a vituperative procession, and not
scruple to fling their caps, ay, even stones at you. Other Spanish towns
are proud and noble in their decay, Toledo is unhappily degraded and
brutalised. She has no commerce, no stir, no money. She has no
communication with the outer world except through the travellers who
briefly pass her way, and upon whose exploitation she lives. She has no
standard of civilisation. Her object is to make every foreigner pay for
every step he takes along her rude and inhospitable pavements. The
people have no desire whatever to make a good impression, no pride in
the hope that the stranger shall go away and speak them fair in remote
parts. They neither want his good opinion nor his sympathy; but they
want as much of his money as they can get. The ill-will is general.
Canons, citizens, sacristans, guides, interpreters--all appear to be in
a secret league to multiply difficulties and exact tips. Only the common
women, all over Spain the cream of the race, retain something of Spanish
good-nature and courtesy. If Spain should ever be redeemed and lifted
once again to her old position as a nation of the earth--for now she is
but a squalid and disorderly province--it will be due to the persistent
amiability and kindliness of the women of the people. These want nothing
but intelligence to make them the equals of the French, and here the
intelligence is only dormant. It would take so little to develop it, and
they are so unconsciously the better half, in such pathetic and humble
ignorance of their superiority to their pretentious mates. So little
love have the people for anything that is graceful, or charming or
pleasant, that the guitar-players would not dream, as they wander down
the dark romantic streets at night, of thrumming their guitar for mere
pleasure. They must be paid a real (2-1/2d.) before they will play a
single air, and then of the shortest, and if you wish them to continue
you must continue producing reals at intervals. I have not heard any
good playing here, and the music is of the vulgarest, but such as it is,
in a dead town without a single distraction or break in the night's
monotony, one would gladly pay a peseta to hear undisturbed a little
Toledan music. But no. They have no artistic desire to please before
receiving payment. Their mean terror is of playing a bar that shall go
unpaid for, and for this reason they stop in the middle of an air and
spoil their effect.
But perhaps we should not grumble, great a blot on an impressive
landscape and down streets that have not altered since the spurred and
belted centuries, as this grasping and mendicant race is.[13] With a
different people Toledo must surely have changed her physiognomy, and
taken on a more civilised and prosperous air. And though this would be
her gain, it would assuredly be our eternal loss. The city as it stands
is one of the oldest and most interesting of Europe. Coming straight to
it from Nuremberg, a painter has told me that Nuremberg seemed new and
artificial beside it. The streets, so terrible for the modern shod foot,
could not well be other than they are, taking into consideration the
fact that the town is built upon seven rocky peaks 1820 feet above the
sea. Perched so high, one has no right, even in the face of electric
light, with which we could better dispense, to expect comfortable
circulation. As a matter of fact, you do not circulate. You tumble down,
and you climb up; you twist round high-walled passages the natives call
streets and seem to understand, and your walk is little better than an
undignified limp. The feet of the people through the influence of
centuries, no doubt, appear to be impervious to the lacerating effect of
pointed stones, and you have nothing to do but rise superior to the
sensation of pain if you can; if not, to groan in private. But you are
so well repaid by every step you take, that you have no claim upon
sympathy.
Was ever city so strongly placed, so superbly fortressed as Toledo must
have been in Roman, Gothic and Moorish days? We need nothing but her
gates to tell us this, though all her great successive walls have been
thrown down. Let us gather from her historian of the beginning of the
last century, Dr Francisco Pisa, some idea of the town's features after
the Christian conquest, since we can only hope to seize fragmentary
notions of the splendours of Moorish rule, and the rudest suggestion of
Gothic sway. The life of the city then, as now, spread from the
Zocodover, word of inexplicable charm, said to be Arabian and to
signify "Place of the Beasts." To-day even it offers us quite a fresh
and startling study of the famous picaresca novel. Down the picturesque
archway, cut in deep yellow upon such a blue as only southern Europe can
show at all seasons, a few steps lead you to the squalid ruin where
Cervantes slept, ate and wrote the _Ilustre Fregona_. So exactly must it
have been in the days Cervantes suffered and smiled, offering to his
mild glance just such a wretched and romantic front. In the courtyard
muleteers and peasants sit about, and above runs a rude wooden balcony,
in the further corner of which was Cervantes' room, where he sat looking
down upon the beasts being fed and watered, cheerfully writing, we may
imagine, in the din of idle clatter, in the dense and evil atmosphere of
an age and land when the nose was not an inconvenience. If he were no
more comfortable than I presume the guests must be to-day, he cannot
have suffered more in the prison of Argamasilla, or in slavery to the
Turk. Stepping upon the Plaza, there would not now be much that is novel
to shock his eye beyond the dress. The Plaza has preserved its old
triangular form, two sides straight, and the third curved, with the
single broad path that leads to the Alcázar. The shops still run inside
the rough arcade that makes the circuit of the place, and loafers and
gossips loll upon the stone benches, while water-laden mules amble by,
and girls, effective and unimaginably graceful, with well-dressed heads
and brilliant eyes, in groups saunter into view, carrying on their hips
earthen amphoras, which they have filled at the public fountain. These
are features that have not changed since the grave sweet humourist trod
this broken pavement. Visit it in the dropping twilight, when the early
stars are out, and you will find it alive with promenaders, uniforms in
excess among the males. Priests, soldiers and beggars abound, and
dwelling on the dulness of Toledo, it can be no
[Illustration: MOORISH ARCH LEADING TO ZOCODOVER]
[Illustration: HOUSE CERVANTES STAYED IN, TOLEDO]
wonder to us that the spruce young officers of Madrid detest being
quartered here. What have they to do in a town where there is not even a
decent café, and social existence is not partially understood? And the
pleasures of walking round a romantic city cannot be offered them as
adequate distraction. For us, of course, it suffices as long as taste
keeps us at Toledo, and each walk has its fresh surprise, if not a fresh
enchantment. Impossible to find a more intricate, maze-like arrangement
of streets, and some of the passages behind the Alcázar, and round by
the Cathedral look so dreadful and perilous that the marvel is there are
to be found persons with sufficient courage to dwell in such places.
One is disposed to agree with Robida the French artist, who attributes
the excellence of Toledan steel in bygone ages to the desperate danger
of the streets, since nobody then but a citizen armed to the teeth would
be insane enough to leave his house.
But if the main features of the Zocodover have not changed, the fulness
of its life has diminished. In the sixteenth century the Tuesday markets
of the place were widely famous. Don Enrique IV. granted the citizens a
free market every Tuesday in return for Toledo's gracious reception of
him. For Toledo, as I have shown, did not spoil her rulers, and like all
ill-tempered persons, she received a disproportionate acknowledgment of
her rare soft moods. Fruit, flowers, provisions of every kind, birds,
fish, oil, honey, bacon and cheese were sold, and the exceeding
moderation of the prices, owing to the untaxed sales, attracted crowds
from all parts. The influx of trade even at this period, though the Jews
and Moors, source of her wealth, art and civilisation, had been
destituted and expelled, was enormous, so that the magistrates held
audience every Tuesday to judge the cases of purchase and sale, and see
that the peace was kept. Trade was then so important an affair in
Toledo, that priests and magistrates kept the interests of the traders
in view in the settlement of church and legal matters, and mass was
celebrated over the archway leading to Cervantes' inn and Cardinal
Mendoza's most beautiful hospital (see façade of Santa Cruz) in a little
chapel dedicated to The Precious Blood, expressly set aside for the
market people, at the earliest hour of day to suit them, and the
audience chamber timed its hearing of civil cases at an hour in the
interest of the same class, so that business should not be interfered
with. There was a smaller market up near Santo Tomé, ruled and protected
like that of the Zocodover, with also a high chapel for service for
[Illustration: THE ZOCODOVER]
the market folk. One side was given over to the butchers' shops, above
which was inscribed: "Reigning in Spain the most high and powerful
Felipe II., he has ordered in the town of Toledo these butchers' shops
with the concurrence of Perafande Ribera, his magistrate. Year
MDLXXXIX." There was another little meat market down in the old place of
Sanchez Minaya, near the hospital of the Misericordia. The
slaughter-houses were in the wide place close to the Puertas del
Cambron and San Martin, where, as Pisa says, "The air of the open
country came to cleanse away the evil odour of the dead remains." Grain
and wheat were sold near the Alcázar, down by the Cardinal's hospital.
The Exchange of Toledo was the most important of Spain. It was founded
by Martin Ramirez, in the parish of St Nicholas, near San José. Near
here the gilders and silversmiths worked, and their work was as prized
as it was costly; while the tanners, leather-cutters and dyers were
relegated to the barriers above the river, between the mills of the
Hierro and San Sebastian. The potters lived at the top of the town,
under San Isidro, and spread everywhere were countless weavers of cloth,
and silk and fine embroiderers. Running from the Zocodover to the Puerta
de Perpiñan was the famous street of arms where the sword-makers, the
armourers, the iron and damascene-workers lived, and in the wide street
opposite (now the _calle del Comercio_) the shoemakers and jewellers had
their shops. The Jews had their own barrier before their expulsion, one
of the wealthiest and most important of the city.
The four streets on the further side of the Cathedral were called the
_Alcayzerias_, and here dwelt the silk-sellers, the hosiers, the
linen-sellers, the clothiers and haberdashers. These shopkeepers did an
enormous trade with Valencia, Xativa, Murcia; with Medina del Campo,
Medina del Rioseca, Sevilla, Cádiz and Ecija, even as far as Portugal.
After the discovery of America all the ships that went out laden with
Spanish goods purchased these at Toledo. The scriveners dwelt round the
Ayuntamiento.
In early days the Ayuntamiento was an insignificant body, and all the
power lay between the sovereign and the mighty archbishop. But after the
conquest of the Saracens, the kings of Castille found their realm too
large and complicated for anything so minute as mere civic rule, and
gradually the magistrature increased in power, till this Ayuntamiento,
with its president, came to be the important body it was, and rivalled
the Archbishopric in semi-royal powers. Pedro the Cruel was the first to
grant it the privilege of the arms of Castille, and it was to the famous
Corregidor, Gomez Manrique, who had his namesake's famous inscription
painted on the staircase, that Isabel the Catholic, on her first visit,
gave the castles and gates of the city. Under the Corregidor were four
mayors, who judged civil cases, one of whom sat only in the Zocodover to
settle disputes between the traders. These magistrates were usually
powerful nobles, such as the Toledos--the present dukes of Alba--the
Castillas, the Silvas, the Ayalas, Montemayors and Fuensalidas, all
great historic names. The city jury, half Latin, half Mozarabe, in
religion, was furnished by all the parishes. As well as the
Ayuntamiento, there was the Santa Hermandad behind the Plaza Mayor, with
its prison and officers. To-day it is a muleteer's inn, the _Posada de
la Hermandad_, and the big kitchen, once the judgment chamber of the
Inquisition, and the wooden benches around have not been changed, nor
the dark-beamed ceiling within the Gothic façade, with the royal arms
and the statues of the archers and members of the brotherhood.
The town prison was situated at San Roman, and was rebuilt and improved
in 1575 by one of Toledo's most enlightened corregidors, Juan Guttierrez
Tello. Less joyous and profitable than the Tuesday fairs of the
Zocodover were the terrible autos-da-fé, and, indeed, so agreeably
wedded is the memory of this quaint little triangular plaza to the
picture of heroes of _capa_ and _espada_, to betitled loafers and
dinnerless dons, that the mind with difficulty conceives it made over to
gloomy and flaming images of the most solemn and atrocious hour of
Spanish cruelty. More in keeping with the bright and busy scene are the
bull-fights that used to be held here, when there were no seats or trees
in the middle as now.
A curious document is the charter to Toledo of Alfonso the Emperor,
after the conquest of the Moors: "In the name of God and His Grace, I,
Aldefonso, by the will of God, Emperor of Spain, conjointly with my
wife, the Empress, Doña Berenguela, with an agreeable spirit, and of our
own will, without being forced by anyone, give this letter of donation
and confirmation to all Christians who to this day have come to people
Toledo, or will come, Mozarabe, Castillian and French, that they may pay
toll neither on entering nor on leaving the city, nor in any part of my
lands. They shall be free of duty on all the things they purchase and
sell, except those who carry to or bring from the land of the Moors
articles of trade, which shall be taxed according to their weight and
value." This little touch of spite against the vanquished Moor is the
more intolerable when we remember the old relations of Alfonso's
predecessor with that same generous enemy; remember that the man he had
conquered and exiled was the son of his benefactor and host when he was
himself conquered and exiled by an unnatural brother; that the king, on
whose throne he sat, had been his loyal and kindly comrade, and that the
conquest his successor so grandiloquently recalls in this charter was
the basest act of ingratitude perpetrated in the record of Castillian
treachery.
From such slight indications it will be seen that the commerce of Toledo
flourished upon a large scale. There is something stately and commanding
about this method of confining each trade and business to its own
quarter. How dearly now one would like to evoke the street of arms, and
follow some slim young knight down from the royal Alcázar on the higher
hill-point, with slashed sleeves, cloak flung jauntily from shoulder,
and plumed cap, on his way to this deadly and interesting street to
purchase a "trusty Toledo," and linger over an exquisitely-wrought
poniard. Or earlier still, and more delightful, accompany a turbaned
Turk, wonderfully arrayed, and gaze with him in ecstasy upon the rows of
damascened scimitars.
Toledo was used to travellers in the days of her greatness for, near all
the gates, Pisa tells us, there were inns for strangers. Not strangers
only, but the bishops and great lords, and sovereigns even, seem to have
patronised the inns of Toledo. Alfonso the Perfidious stayed at a posada
near the town gates when he came to visit his old protector and host,
Almenor, whom he invited to dinner here. More astonishing still than
this hospitable provision for travellers, is the fact we learn that
there was not only a foundling hospital for unclaimed children, but also
several homes for lost or strayed animals. Spain was more advanced in
this respect centuries ago than now, for it is pretty certain the race
shows no concern that we know of on behalf of forlorn and unprotected
brutes.
If you would have some dim notion of the castellated and walled aspect
of Toledo in Pisa's days, you have only to thread your way through his
prolix geographical history of the town. He begins with the magnificent
Puerta de Visagra, and when we examine this double gate in its present
battered and defaced condition, we cannot carp at the word "sumptuous"
which he applies to it. Sumptuous it must have been then, if now it is
magnificent. It holds the imperial arms, two eagles and a crown, with
castles and lions of middle size gilt, and an inscription. Outside this
gate, which, Pisa tells us, was shut at night, there was a broad space,
and another entrance without. Entering the city on this side, you came
by the parish of Santiago and San Isidro, and the barrier of La Granja.
The ascent was made by the old hermitage of the Cross to the Zocodover.
Here were two gates in a strong wall, probably half Roman and half
Gothic, and this was the entrance to the town. Pisa calls these gates
intermediary. Between the Puerta de Visagra and this latter gate in the
great tower, he describes another, smaller and less important, which was
always closed, and was called the gate of Almohada. Beyond this was
another called the gate of the twelve stones, descending from the
monastery of the Carmen by the Bridge of Alcántara. Before Pisa's time,
this gate was lower, and the twelve stones around obtained it the odd
name of _Doce Cantos_, there being supposed twelve fountains once here.
Another gate anciently called _Adabazim_, and afterwards _Hierro_, was
near the bridge and the mills, on the limits of the lovely gardens of
Alcurnia. Above the old hermitage of the Cross were the tower and gate
of King Aquila, and above Santo Domingo el Real, the tower of Alarcon,
with another intermediate between it and the Zocodover. From this ran
round a castellated wall, and here you entered the street of arms by the
Puerta de Perpiñan.
The gardens of the Alcurnia were famed all over Spain, as beautiful as
any of Valencia or Granada, or Cordova, laid down by the Moors between
the bridges of St Martin and Alcántara. The Tagus was used here as the
Turia is used still at Valencia, for purposes of irrigation, so that
fruit and flowers and trees abounded. At the time of the conquest, these
lovely grounds became the property of the Christian monarchs, until King
Alonso the Good, in 1158, granted them to the Archbishop Rodrigo, who
built the mills and greatly improved the grounds. The name is said to
signify "horn-shaped," on account of the curves the river takes as it
runs under the bridge of Alcántara. But a fierce inundation swept away
all this loveliness from the eyes of the dismayed Toledans in Cardinal
Tavera's time. The ungrateful waters of the Tagus laid waste this green
and flowery paradise upon a burnt and rocky hill-side, and Tavera died
before he could carry out his project of restoring it.
True, even then, the Cigarrales beyond the town walls were noted spots
of refreshment, whither the jaded citizens and nobles betook themselves
to their country houses for the enjoyment of orchards, gardens and
trees. The apricots of the Cigarrales have always been famous. But they
constituted small comfort for the loss of such radiance and perfume,
such oriental splendour as the _Huerta de Alcurnia_. They spread still
from the river bank up among the cool hill breezes, and make a charming
walk towards sunset. In the huerta del Rey was one of the palacios de
Galiana, known through the legend of Galafre's fair daughter and
Charlemagne, the other having served as Wamba's palace or _prætorium_,
and later still as the palace in which the Cortes sat to judge the case
between the immortal Cid and his wretched sons-in-law. Westward from
Santa Leocadia ran a long, broad space of foliaged and flowered land,
vines, and pleasant country houses. The rich cigarrel of Cardinal
Quiroga was here, and the dean and chapter of the Cathedral possessed on
the other side gardens and orchards nearly as beautiful.
When you left all this cultivated brilliance of nature, that showed the
passage of the Moors, narrow and stony streets and lanes confronted you
in your upward road from the bridges and gates. Then as now! _Cuestas_
and harsh passages, built upon peaks of rock and iron, Pisa calls them;
twisted and narrow laneways. He accuses the Moors of having spoiled the
town, of having obliterated the lustre and loveliness Roman and Goth
bestowed upon it. This is an ill-tempered charge. The Moors gave in
Spain everywhere more than the Christians lost, and the trial is, seeing
the sad use the Christians made of what they received, to hold one's
soul in patience, and not cry out against their philistinism. He
believes that in Christian hands, "fine places, wide and noble streets,
churches and hospitals will spread." Churches and convents, yes. But the
streets remain the same, an expiation of the sins of civilisation, as
twisted, as narrow, as stony as ever, good Dr Pisa, after eight
centuries of Christian rule.
The present Alcázar, which dominates the city, was first built by the
Cid's sovereign, Alfonso, while the Moorish palace stood on the site of
the monastery of St Augustine. In the parish of San Martin was the
Alcázar of the infante Fadique, Sancho the Brave's uncle, within a
magnificent view of the river and the Vega, its walls running as far as
the Puerta del Cambron. It fell into the hands of Maria de Molina,
Sancho's widow, and she gave the property to Gonzalo Ruiz de Toledo,
lord of Orgaz, tutor of King Alonso and the infanta Beatrix. Gonzalo
Ruiz, on his death, bequeathed it to the Augustines. In the time of
Gothic rule the councils of Toledo were held in this Alcázar. A wall ran
then from the Alcázar to the Palacio de Galiana, and continued from the
Zocodover to the gate of Perpignan to separate the dwellings of the
Moors from those of their conquerors. The Christians lived between the
arch under the Chapel of the Precious Blood and the bridge of Alcántara.
Later on Isabel and Fernando embellished the royal Alcázar, which was
guarded by a thousand castillian hidalgoes, and Carlos V. built the
great staircase, one of the most regal of the world, while a superb
salon, richly wrought in arabesque, was the introduction of the
Constable of Castillo, Alvaro de Luna, at an earlier period. All these
glories are departed, negligently burnt. The first subject to occupy the
Alcázar in state was the Cid, Ruiz Diaz, whom Alfonso named first
governor of Toledo after its capture from the Moors. But the Cid chose
to build his own house near it, and installed a cavalier therein in his
place. The Cid's house is now San Juan de los Caballeros. True, Rasis el
Moro, in the beautiful copy of his Arabian manuscript,[14] translated
into Castillian by Ambrosio de Morales from the Portuguese translation
ordered by King Denys of Portugal, of Maestre Mahomed and Gil Perez,
says that Caesar was the first governor of Toledo, and built the bridge
over the Tagus, and Caesar, he tells us, came hither upon his tour in
Spain, and in a quarrel with the praetor, Aulus, was beaten and departed
"feeling a great weight on his heart, and longed for great power to come
back and vanquish Aulus, and revenge himself of his wrongs." Rasis also
mentions "the marvellous bridge of Toledo" at the time of the Moorish
conquest, "most subtly wrought, that in truth he saw nothing to equal it
in all Spain." The town he describes as "a very good city, extremely
pleasant, and very strong and well fortified." Every man was well off,
and the workmen were paid. The air was so sanative and dry that wheat
could remain ten years in cover without rotting.
Alcocer describes Toledo, the head of Spain, as a town mightily
privileged by nature, placed in the centre of the land "like the heart
in the human body"; a city, "high, rough, most firm and inexpugnable,
founded upon a high mountain and on brave and hard rocks, round which
turns the most famous Tagus, which forms a horse shoe, the town thus
being nearly an island." He waxes eloquent on the theme of the land's
fertility and freshness, the abundance of fruit trees, the mines of
various metals, the quantities of stone, lime, wood, and every facility
for building. Theodoric, the King of Italy, he tells us, came to Toledo
to see for himself if report had not exaggerated its wonders, if it
really were the strong and noble city rumour described it. So delighted
with both town and people was this Ostrogothic sovereign that he took
for second wife a wealthy lady of Toledo, Sancha, and was married in
great pomp in the city. But we are less inclined to believe Alcocer when
he assures us that Toledo declined from the hour of Moorish conquest,
"for those barbarians knew nothing of architecture(!), and laid out
narrow, little streets, and built vile little houses, no less ugly and
filthy." O worthy Alcocer, if he could but know that now the very
Spaniards themselves, in the interests of art and loveliness, lament the
expulsion of the Moors, and humbly admit that all they learnt of
civilisation came from those same adorable "barbarians!"
The Tagus then, as now, was always the great natural charm of the town.
Like the Arno, it takes on every hue; some mornings just after dawn, it
is the palest blue, again is a still sleepy jade, or silver like a
curled mirror, and as stirless as it gives back the ardent flash of the
sunrays; or after sunset, when all the rich hues have faded from sky and
earth, and crimson and russet gold have waved into an indigo dusk, you
will see a white mist rise and travel in flakes from the bosom of the
enazured water over the dim landscape. Capricious as these cold or
fervent hours may be, the permanent colour of the tranquil untravelled
Tagus is yellow. All poets and writers see but the yellow in it, as in
the Tiber, though its blue and green and silvered hours are much more
beautiful. "Del dorado Tago ausente," sings the old _Romancero General_,
as far back as 1605, and continues to describe Toledo above her golden
river:
"Dize ay cristal del Tago
Que con murmurio entre arenas
Vais regando amenos sotos
de Agradable primavera.
[Illustration: THE TAGUS]
Hasto do bates los muros
de aquella cuidad soberbio,
tans alebrada en el mundo
Por tu artífio y nobleza.
Que entre peñas levantada
de inexpugnable firmeza,
Y de torres coronada
compitos con las estrellas.
Y luego vañas los prados
de tu elana y ancha vega,
Que de ninfas adornada
es nueva gloria en la tierra."
The most witching element in the enchantment of this river is its
stillness, its unfathomable, unbroken quietude. In the sixteenth century
it was navigable as far as Toledo, but the mills upon its banks are now
for ever silent; no traffic has deflowered its legendary charms; neither
boat nor barge cuts a way along its inactive waters. In an age when
every resource of nature is feverishly applied to the service of
commerce or luxury, there is something majestic in such uselessness.
When the wherry that plies sleepily from bank to bank floats into view,
the sight is a positive shock to artistic sensibilities. It seems an
idle desecration. Only the gold-seekers--symbol of eternal illusion,
ever nourished and ever elusive to the grasp of man, who builds fresh
illusions of the ashes of past deceptions--may continue to trouble its
wild untamed depths. So from time to time these children of tradition,
believing in the tale of its golden sands, go down to the reedy banks,
after an inundation, with sifters, and industriously gather up the sand
the river has flung from its bottom. They pour water over it, shake it
well, and then hungrily examine the grains that remain in the vain hope
of finding gold. Before Ponz's time the dean of the Church of the
Infantas was said to possess a piece of gold cast up by the Tagus, and
the complaint then was that many another piece had been carelessly
broken and scattered by the silversmiths. But Ponz doubts the golden
legend even so early as the last century. To explain the undoubted fact
that the river had at different times cast up treasure, he assumes that
in each reversal and exodus of race brought about by the evolution of
Toledo's history, Roman, Gothic, Moorish, Hebrew, and Christian, the
fugitives had the habit of burying near the river treasure in provision
for the expected return. Even this is no supposition to be scorned, and
adds to the romantic interest of the deserted Tagus.
[Illustration: MILL ON THE TAGUS]
Garcilaso de la Vega has chanted the golden charms of the Tagus, and
Cervantes writes of "the delicate works wrought by the four nymphs who,
from their crystal dwelling, lifted their heads above the waves of the
Tagus, and sat on the green meadow to work at those rich stuffs which
the ingenious poet paints for us, and which were fashioned of gold and
silk and pearls." Now, as then, like Lope the Asturian, aquadores
descend to the river-brink with their donkeys laden with water-jars,
which they fill below, and bridge the upward rocky paths shouting: _Agua
fresca_. The plays of Cervantes were acted at Toledo, which permitted
Lope de Vega, who lived then in the royal city, to make an ill-natured
reference to the great biographer of the ingenious Hidalgo in his
correspondence, and jeering at his plays, call him a "nescio."[15] Lope
little dreamed in his bitterness and jealousy that the "nescio" would
forever stand before posterity as the sole representative of Castillian
genius, and that the miserable little inn he dwelt in at Toledo would be
forever a spot of pious pilgrimage.
A more substantial source of wealth than the gold of Tagus was the
valuable lead and mineral mines of the Montes de Toledo, forty leagues
distance. In the bright days of civic power they belonged to the
municipality. King Fernando, the saint, sold them to the town for the
sum of 400,000 golden ducats, but the city little by little disposed of
a considerable part of this property to private individuals for
exploitation, and, like everything else, here the mines to-day have lost
in value.
In his few succinct pages on Toledo, Mr Street gives us a very excellent
bit of sober impressionism, which merits quotation: "The road from the
famous bridge of Alcántara, passing under the gateway which guards it
into a small walled courtyard, turns sharply to the right under another
archway, and then rises slowly below the walls until, with another sharp
turn, it passes under the magnificent Moorish Puerta del Sol, and so on
into the heart of the city.
"The Alcázar is the only important building seen on entering on this
side; but from the other side of the city, where the bridge of San
Martin crosses the Tagus, the cathedral is a feature in the view, though
it never seems to be so prominent as might be expected with a church of
its grand scale.[16] From both these points of view, indeed, it must be
remembered that the effect is not produced by the beauty or grandeur of
any one building; it is the desolate sublimity of the dark rocks that
bound the river; the serried phalanx of wall, and town, and house that
line the cliffs; the tropical colour of sky and earth, and masonry; and
finally the forlorn, decaying and deserted aspect of the whole that
makes the views so impressive and so unusual. Looking away from the city
walls towards the north, the view is much more _riant_, for there the
Tagus, escaping from its rocky defile, meanders across a fertile vega,
and long lines of trees, with here a ruined castle, and there the repose
of the curious Church of the Cristo de la Vega, and there again the
famous factory of arms, give colour and incident to a view which would
anywhere be thought beautiful, but is doubly grateful by comparison with
the sad dignity of the forlorn old city."
Toledo's finest hour is at sunset, especially in the month of October.
Nowhere have I seen the setting sun cast such a rich and lovely flush
over the earth. The brown visage of the town for one intense moment is
made radiant by the deep crimson flames, and the red light sheds a
glorious beauty upon empty hill-sides and river-washed plains. Magic
enfolds city and land, and space is so abridged by the matchless purity
of the atmosphere that the eye is tricked into the belief that distant
objects are quite close. Painters complain of this singular deception,
which makes it so difficult to seize and reproduce the features of town
and landscape. But the mere observer will naturally rejoice in an
attraction the more.
Sunset is the hour for a divine walk along the jagged and broken
precipices above the river. You follow the steep Calle de la Barca
behind the Cathedral down to the ferry, where a few lazy oar strokes
take you across the narrow Tagus. The effect midway is surprising.
Looking towards the bridge of Alcántara and San Servando, the waters
seem to force their way between the immense brown rocks from the castle
ruins, and lie steep and still like a mountain tarn. Little splashes of
green and flowery bloom high up among the rocks give a pretty touch to
the grim picture, and over the harsh remains of the city walls you will
note a common but bright little suggestion of garden life. On the road
above, rounding the superb curve of Antiquerela, a boy on mule-back is a
slight silhouette of vanishing grace, and the evening bells in the upper
air sound thin and ethereal above the sea-like roar of the water breaks
below the silent Moorish mills. Not even the modern hint of existence
and the squalid little galleries, with linen hanging out to dry over a
broken bit of castellated wall, will disturb your feeling of reverie
among the forgotten ages. Nor will the living light upon the trees,
flashing rose and yellow through their branches and across the reeds
along the river, nor the quaint figures moving lazily up the mule-path
that cuts its crooked way over the naked rocks to the Valle, in the
least disturb your bemused sensation of enchanted negation. The beauty
of the hour and scene will trouble you less than its strangeness and
quietude. Go further up, until you reach Nuestra Señora de la Valle, and
from this point the old city will show you its most admirable grouping.
At your feet, far down the precipitous shore line, a broken mirror of
jade or muddy gold, zig-zagged by lines of foam along the breakwaters,
and above the opposite bank, mapped upward, roof against roof, in
[Illustration: TOLEDO FROM LEFT BANK OF TAGUS]
pale brown, with spaces of green here and there where the gardens show,
the town reveals itself in all its magnificent eccentricity. Here some
notion of the Cathedral from outside may be gathered. The Gate of Lions
directly fronts you, and the apse stands out from its crowd of
buildings, while the bell tower dominates the scene in all its majestic
isolation. From the flat roofs rise a mass of upper domes and mudejar
towers that add an Arabian note to the great Gothic picture, and the
immense square of the Alcázar with its three towers, bold, undecorated,
and monotonous, is perched in odd supremacy above the girdling path that
now runs under the mutilated wall. The hills lie backward,
reddish-purple, silent, perfumed, and sombre, and the Vega with its
broad bright smile of verdure and bloom travels beyond the famous bridge
of San Martin. Between the rocky shore and the ruins of a Roman bridge
are big sandy reaches, and every step you take among the brushwood
scents the air with the strong aromatic odours of the herbs. About here
Perez Bayen tells us,[17] the Roman Cañeria ran, carrying water from San
Servando by the bridge of San Martin. The little tower, _el horno del
Vidro_, near the monastery of La Sisla, he suggests, was a Roman
_Castellum Aquarium_. The steep waterway of La Sisla, called the Valle
de la Desgollada (in honour of the customary legend of a lover's broken
neck for love's sake), was probably used for the aqueduct, as the ruins
of the arches below, along the old road of La Plata, indicate. The water
must have been conducted into the city by the gate of the twelve stones,
where the bridge was high. Now, alas, the aqueduct, like the wonderful
artifice of Juanelo Turriano of Cremona, in Charles V.'s reign, has
vanished. The water-works of Toledo nowadays are sadly deficient after
the Roman, Moor, and even early Castillian, though the glory of this
period belongs to Lombardy and not to Castille. Juanelo, as well as
giving his name to his famous "artifice," was the means of bestowing a
quaint and striking name on a street below the cathedral, so-called
to-day, _Hombre de Palo_ (man of wood) where he lived. He fabricated a
wooden statue that went from his house to the archbishop's for bread and
meat, bowing and nodding, first in gracious overtures and then in
obsequious thanks, and carried back the offerings to Juanelo's house.
Few Toledanos, dawdling in and out of this little curved street, now
remember why it is so oddly named, or bestow a thought upon the
ingenious Italian who dwelt there in the sixteenth century, and whose
fame drew admiring travellers even from remote Oxford.
[Illustration: FUENTE S. MARTINO OF BANO DE LA CAVA]
Entering the city by the striking bridge of San Martin, you pass the
picturesque ruin of the _Baño de la Cava_, where the too charming
Florinda is supposed to have bathed for the doom of Don Rodrigo and the
ruin of Gothic Spain. Rodrigo's castle, of which not a trace now
remains, was built on the high rock above, and indiscreet eyeshot sent
down upon this sacred spot is said to have revealed to him a seductive
vision of a beautiful bare limb. The ruin is probably that of a towered
bridge, suggested by the big grey stone on the opposite bank. The spot
is, however, romantic enough for any legend, and those who prefer
tradition to fact will say, if Florinda did not bathe there, she ought
to have done so. The view on this side is more beautiful than even on
the other. A Spanish friend, whose privilege it is to paint Toledo in
all her wild and sad enchantment, in a big house above the Puerta del
Cambron, overlooking the wavy water-line from the bridge of San Martin
and the exquisite diversity of orchard and meadow-land, has offered me
many delightful moments of contemplation of this unique view from his
broad terrace. It combines in the rarest form a light and smiling charm
with a superb and matchless melancholy. From this point of entrance you
twist up and down through the most mysterious streets of the world. Who
designed them, who fashioned them? How came any town to be so built?
Streets so narrow that hand may touch hand from either side, and soft
converse be held through opposite windows; so rounded that an enemy
advancing might fall upon you unperceived. How many lovely façades,
alas! eaten away, a sullen magnificent protest against modern times,
with divine arches showing here and there through miserable plaster!
Everywhere Moorish faience, and curious Toledan doors in Arabian or
Gothic porches, for all the world like the doors of palaces in
fairyland, ornamented with huge carved iron nails. And when the doors
stand open, glimpses of bright clean patios, with their gleaming bands
of _azulejos_, their centre well and little stunted trees. All so dull,
so still, so silent. Now and then you may chance to meet a woman
following a mule laden with fruit and vegetable, which she sells from
house to house, or a water-carrier, or an itinerant pedlar shouting the
value and nature of his wares up to the balconies. Some of the street
effects of grouping and colouring are of an indescribable witchery.
Where will you match such a corner as that of the old palace of the
Cardinal D. Pascual de Aragon, now a convent? Words are useless to
convey an idea of its quaintness, the effect of pink and green, of iron
balcony, of wrought stone, of broken façade and charming variety of
line. These are things that even a painter can hardly hope to reproduce.
And such corners abound in Toledo. The foot treads the very pavement of
romance and legend, where everything is a gratification for the eye, and
the dream of the mourner of departed centuries is remorselessly
realised. Of commerce hardly a hint. Here and there an offer to supply
daily wants of the simplest kind, and, in the Calle del Comercio, a few
shop-fronts with belated appointments. The most interesting is that of
Alvarez, the best maker of damascene. Murray's guide-book recommends
travellers to purchase this famous Toledo work at the Fabrica de Armas,
the Government enterprise. This is wrong advice. The Fabrica produces
inferior work, and charges twenty-five per cent. more than the private
factories. Some of the work in Alvarez's shop is exquisite, and, when
you have entered his workshop behind, and watched the men slowly and
carefully produce this minute art,
[Illustration: A STREET CORNER, TOLEDO]
the wonder is not that it should be so expensive, but that it should not
cost more. The Fabrica outside the town is only interesting to the
lovers of steel. It is quite a vulgar and modern institution, dating
from the days of Charles III., the bourgeois monarch, whom a Spanish
writer contemptuously described as "an excellent mayor." In the middle
ages, the armourers worked in their own houses, and each master had a
band of apprentices. They formed a corporation, and were exempt from
taxes and duties in the purchase of materials for this art. The
sword-makers of Toledo were a company of European importance, and even
the mere sellers of daggers and blades were privileged citizens, whom
the very sovereigns and archbishops respected. Toledan steel was
renowned in France and England, as well as in Italy. On his way to
captivity in Madrid, Francis of France cried, seeing beardless boys with
swords at their sides, "Oh! most happy Spain, that brings forth and
brings up men already armed." The steel used by the _espaderos_ of
Toledo came from the iron mines of Mondragon in the Basque provinces.
Palomario explains its peculiar excellence by the virtues of the sand
and water of the Tagus. When the metal was red-hot, it was covered with
sand, and, the blade then formed, it was placed in a hollow of sixty
centimetres, and red-hot, was plunged into a wooden tank full of Tagus
water. The most celebrated _espadero_ of Toledo was _Guiliano el Moro_,
a native of Granada, in the fifteenth century. He became converted after
the surrender of Boabdil, and King Ferdinand being his sponsor, was also
called Guiliano _el rey_. Cervantes mentions his mark, which was a
little dog. Other great _espaderos_ were--Joannes de la Horta, Tomás de
Ayala, Sagahun, Dionisio Corrientes, Miguel Cantera, whose motto was
_opus laudat artificem_, Tomás Ghya, Hortensio de Aguerre and Menchaca
Sebastian Hernandez. The decline of Toledan steel is traced to the
introduction of French costume; and though attempts have been made to
revive it, the old art, in all its unrivalled beauty, has forever
vanished.
Gone forever, too, all traces of the great Toledan palaces, except a
wall, a doorway here and there, or maybe the degraded remains of a
beautiful chamber or courtyard, or, as in the case of the house of the
great family of the Toledos (to-day, the Dukes of Alba), just an
impressive façade. But of the Villena palace nothing, of the Fuensalida
nothing to give us to-day a definite notion of its former splendour.
Nothing of the great houses of the Montemayors, the Ayalas, the Silvas,
Maqueda, Cifuentes, Count Orgaz, and so many others who rivalled the
mighty archbishops in power, and whose followers clashed steel so
noisily once in these dim, deserted streets. Sadder still, beyond what
remains of the Palacios de Galiana, in the king's garden, little of
Moorish beauty, nothing of their sway but floating, vaporous impressions
and cherished suggestions, never absent, though ever vague and full of
the mystery and charm of the uncertain and the elusive.