board and lodging; and as I am easily pleased, I find my fare excellent;
while the merry-hearted little Dolores keeps my apartment in order, and
officiates as handmaid at meal-times. I have also at my command a tall,
stuttering, yellow-haired lad, named Pépe, who works in the gardens, and
would fain have acted as valet; but in this he was forestalled by Mateo
Ximenes, “the son of the Alhambra.” This alert and officious wight has
managed, somehow or other, to stick by me ever since I first encountered
him at the outer gate of the fortress, and to weave himself into all my
plans, until he has fairly appointed and installed himself my valet,
cicerone, guide, guard, and historiographic squire; and I have been
obliged to improve the state of his wardrobe, that he may not disgrace
his various functions; so that he has cast his old brown mantle, as a
snake does his skin, and now appears about the fortress with a smart
Andalusian hat and jacket, to his infinite satisfaction, and the great
astonishment of his comrades. The chief fault of honest Mateo is an
over-anxiety to be useful. Conscious of having foisted himself into my
employ, and that my simple and quiet habits render his situation a
sinecure, he is at his wit’s ends to devise modes of making himself
important to my welfare. I am in a manner the victim of his
officiousness; I cannot put my foot over the threshold of the palace,
to stroll about the fortress, but he is at my elbow, to explain
everything I see; and if I venture to ramble among the surrounding
hills, he insists upon attending me as a guard, though I vehemently
suspect he would be more apt to trust to the length of his legs than the
strength of his arms, in case of attack. After all, however, the poor
fellow is at times an amusing companion; he is simple-minded and of
infinite good-humor, with the loquacity and gossip of a village barber,
and knows all the small-talk of the place and its environs; but what he
chiefly values himself on, is his stock of local information, having the
most marvellous stories to relate of every tower, and vault, and gateway
of the fortress, in all of which he places the most implicit faith.
Most of these he has derived, according to his own account, from his
grandfather, a little legendary tailor, who lived to the age of nearly a
hundred years, during which he made but two migrations beyond the
precincts of the fortress. His sloop, for the greater part of a century,
was the resort of a knot of venerable gossips, where they would pass
half the night talking about old times, and the wonderful events and
hidden secrets of the place. The whole living, moving, thinking, and
acting of this historical little tailor had thus been bounded by the
walls of the Alhambra; within them he had been born, within them he
lived, breathed, and had his being, within them he died and was buried.
Fortunately for posterity his traditionary lore died not with him. The
authentic Mateo, when an urchin, used to be an attentive listener to the
narratives of his grandfather, and of the gossiping group assembled
round the shopboard, and is thus possessed of a stock of valuable
knowledge concerning the Alhambra, not to be found in books, and well
worthy the attention of every curious traveller.
Such are the personages that constitute my regal household; and I
question whether any of the potentates, Moslem or Christian, who have
preceded me in the palace, have been waited upon with greater fidelity,
or enjoyed a serener sway.
When I rise in the morning, Pépe, the stuttering lad from the gardens,
brings me a tribute of fresh-culled flowers, which are afterwards
arranged in vases by the skilful hand of Dolores, who takes a feminine
pride in the decoration of my chambers. My meals are made wherever
caprice dictates; sometimes in one of the Moorish halls, sometimes under
the arcades of the Court of Lions, surrounded by flowers and fountains:
and when I walk out, I am conducted by the assiduous Mateo to the most
romantic retreats of the mountains, and delicious haunts of the adjacent
valleys, not one of which but is the scene of some wonderful tale.
Though fond of passing the greater part of my day alone, yet I
occasionally repair in the evenings to the little domestic circle of
Doña Antonia. This is generally held in an old Moorish chamber, which
serves the good dame for parlor, kitchen, and hall of audience, and
which must have boasted of some splendor in the time of the Moors, if we
may judge from the traces yet remaining; but a rude fireplace has been
made in modern times in one corner, the smoke from which has discolored
the walls, and almost obliterated the ancient arabesques. A window, with
a balcony overhanging the valley of the Darro, lets in the cool evening
breeze; and here I take my frugal supper of fruit and milk, and mingle
with the conversation of the family. There is a natural talent or
mother-wit, as it is called, about the Spaniards, which renders them
intellectual and agreeable companions, whatever may be their condition
in life, or however imperfect may have been their education: add to
this, they are never vulgar; nature has endowed them with an inherent
dignity of spirit. The good Tia Antonia is a woman of strong and
intelligent, though uncultivated mind; and the bright-eyed Dolores,
though she has read but three or four books in the whole course of her
life, has an engaging mixture of naïveté and good sense, and often
surprises me by the pungency of her artless sallies. Sometimes the
nephew entertains us by reading some old comedy of Calderon or Lope de
Vega, to which he is evidently prompted by a desire to improve as well
as amuse his cousin Dolores; though, to his great mortification, the
little damsel generally falls asleep before the first act is completed.
Sometimes Tia Antonia has a little levee of humble friends and
dependants, the inhabitants of the adjacent hamlet, or the wives of the
invalid soldiers. These look up to her with great deference, as the
custodian of the palace, and pay their court to her by bringing the news
of the place, or the rumors that may have straggled up from Granada. In
listening to these evening gossipings I have picked up many curious
facts illustrative of the manners of the people and the peculiarities of
the neighborhood.
These are simple details of simple pleasures; it is the nature of the
place alone that gives them interest and importance. I tread haunted
ground, and am surrounded by romantic associations. From earliest
boyhood, when, on the banks of the Hudson, I first pored over the pages
of old Gines Perez de Hytas’s apocryphal but chivalresque history of the
civil wars of Granada, and the feuds of its gallant cavaliers, the
Zegries and Abencerrages, that city has ever been a subject of my waking
dreams; and often have I trod in fancy the romantic halls of the
Alhambra. Behold for once a day-dream realized; yet I can scarce credit
my senses, or believe that I do indeed inhabit the palace of Boabdil,
and look down from its balconies upon chivalric Granada. As I loiter
through these Oriental chambers, and hear the murmur of fountains and
the song of the nightingale; as I inhale the odor of the rose, and feel
the influence of the balmy climate, I am almost tempted to fancy myself
in the paradise of Mahomet, and that the plump little Dolores is one of
the bright-eyed houris, destined to administer to the happiness of true
believers.
INHABITANTS OF THE ALHAMBRA
I have often observed that the more proudly a mansion has been tenanted
in the day of its prosperity, the humbler are its inhabitants in the day
of its decline, and that the palace of a king commonly ends in being the
nestling-place of the beggar.
The Alhambra is in a rapid state of similar transition. Whenever a tower
falls to decay, it is seized upon by some tatterdemalion family, who
become joint-tenants, with the bats and owls, of its gilded halls; and
hang their rags, those standards of poverty, out of its windows and
loopholes.
I have amused myself with remarking some of the motley characters that
have thus usurped the ancient abode of royalty, and who seem as if
placed here to give a farcical termination to the drama of human pride.
One of these even bears the mockery of a regal title. It is a little old
woman named Maria Antonia Sabonea, but who goes by the appellation of la
Reyna Coquina, or the Cockle-queen. She is small enough to be a fairy;
and a fairy she may be for aught I can find out, for no one seems to
know her origin. Her habitation is in a kind of closet under the outer
staircase of the palace, and she sits in the cool stone corridor, plying
her needle and singing from morning till night, with a ready joke for
every one that passes; for though one of the poorest, she is one of the
merriest little women breathing. Her great merit is a gift for
story-telling, having, I verily believe, as many stories at her command
as the inexhaustible Scheherezade of the Thousand and One Nights. Some
of these I have heard her relate in the evening tertulias of Dame
Antonia, at which she is occasionally a humble attendant.
That there must be some fairy gift about this mysterious little old
woman, would appear from her extraordinary luck, since, notwithstanding
her being very little, very ugly, and very poor, she has had, according
to her own account, five husbands and a half, reckoning as a half one a
young dragoon, who died during courtship. A rival personage to this
little fairy queen is a portly old fellow with a bottle-nose, who goes
about in a rusty garb, with a cocked hat of oil-skin and a red cockade.
He is one of the legitimate sons of the Alhambra, and has lived here all
his life, filling various offices, such as deputy alguazil, sexton of
the parochial church, and marker of a fives-court established at the
foot of one of the towers. He is as poor as a rat, but as proud as he is
ragged, boasting of his descent from the illustrious house of Aguilar,
from which sprang Gonzalvo of Cordova, the grand captain. Nay, he
actually bears the name of Alonzo de Aguilar, so renowned in the history
of the Conquest; though the graceless wags of the fortress have given
him the title of _el padre santo_, or the holy father, the usual
appellation of the Pope, which I had thought too sacred in the eyes of
true Catholics to be thus ludicrously applied. It is a whimsical caprice
of fortune to present, in the grotesque person of this tatterdemalion, a
namesake and descendant of the proud Alonzo de Aguilar, the mirror of
Andalusian chivalry, leading an almost mendicant existence about this
once haughty fortress, which his ancestor aided to reduce; yet such
might have been the lot of the descendants of Agamemnon and Achilles,
had they lingered about the ruins of Troy!
Of this motley community, I find the family of my gossiping squire,
Mateo Ximenes, to form, from their numbers at least, a very important
part. His boast of being a son of the Alhambra is not unfounded. His
family has inhabited the fortress ever since the time of the Conquest,
handing down an hereditary poverty from father to son; not one of them
having ever been known to be worth a maravedi. His father, by trade a
ribbon-weaver, and who succeeded the historical tailor as the head of
the family, is now near seventy years of age, and lives in a hovel of
reeds and plaster, built by his own hands, just above the iron gate. The
furniture consists of a crazy bed, a table, and two or three chairs; a
wooden chest, containing, besides his scanty clothing, the “archives of
the family.” These are nothing more nor less than the papers of various
law-suits sustained by different generations; by which it would seem
that, with all their apparent carelessness and good-humor, they are a
litigious brood. Most of the suits have been brought against gossiping
neighbors for questioning the purity of their blood, and denying their
being _Christianos viejos_, _i.e._ old Christians, without Jewish or
Moorish taint. In fact, I doubt whether this jealousy about their blood
has not kept them so poor in purse: spending all their earnings on
escribanos and alguazils. The pride of the hovel is an escutcheon
suspended against the wall, in which are emblazoned quarterings of the
arms of the Marquis of Caiesedo, and of various other noble houses, with
which this poverty-stricken brood claim affinity.
As to Mateo himself, who is now about thirty-five years of age, he has
done his utmost to perpetuate his line and continue the poverty of the
family, having a wife and a numerous progeny, who inhabit an almost
dismantled hovel in the hamlet. How they manage to subsist, he only who
sees into all mysteries can tell; the subsistence of a Spanish family of
the kind is always a riddle to me; yet they do subsist, and what is
more, appear to enjoy their existence. The wife takes her holiday stroll
on the Paseo of Granada, with a child in her arms and half a dozen at
her heels; and the eldest daughter, now verging into womanhood, dresses
her hair with flowers, and dances gayly to the castanets.
There are two classes of people to whom life seems one long
holiday,--the very rich and the very poor; one, because they need do
nothing; the other, because they have nothing to do; but there are none
who understand the art of doing nothing and living upon nothing, better
than the poor classes of Spain. Climate does one half, and temperament
the rest. Give a Spaniard the shade in summer and the sun in winter, a
little bread, garlic, oil, and garbances, an old brown cloak and a
guitar, and let the world roll on as it pleases. Talk of poverty! with
him it has no disgrace. It sits upon him with a grandiose style, like
his ragged cloak. He is a hidalgo, even when in rags.
The “sons of the Alhambra” are an eminent illustration of this practical
philosophy. As the Moors imagined that the celestial paradise hung over
this favored spot, so I am inclined at times to fancy that a gleam of
the golden age still lingers about this ragged community. They possess
nothing, they do nothing, they care for nothing. Yet, though apparently
idle all the week, they are as observant of all holy days and saints’
days as the most laborious artisan. They attend all fêtes and dancings
in Granada and its vicinity, light bonfires on the hills on St. John’s
eve, and dance away the moonlight nights on the harvest-home of a small
field within the precincts of the fortress, which yield a few bushels of
wheat.
Before concluding these remarks, I must mention one of the amusements of
the place, which has particularly struck me. I had repeatedly observed a
long lean fellow perched on the top of one of the towers, manœuvring
two or three fishing-rods, as though he were angling for the stars. I
was for some time perplexed by the evolutions of this aërial fisherman,
and my perplexity increased on observing others employed in like manner
on different parts of the battlements and bastions; it was not until I
consulted Mateo Ximenes that I solved the mystery.
It seems that the pure and airy situation of this fortress has rendered
it, like the castle of Macbeth, a prolific breeding-place for swallows
and martlets, who sport about its towers in myriads, with the holiday
glee of urchins just let loose from school. To entrap these birds in
their giddy circlings, with hooks baited with flies, is one of the
favorite amusements of the ragged “sons of the Alhambra,” who, with the
good-for-nothing ingenuity of arrant idlers, have thus invented the art
of angling in the sky.
THE HALL OF AMBASSADORS
In one of my visits to the old Moorish chamber where the good Tia
Antonia cooks her dinner and receives her company, I observed a
mysterious door in one corner, leading apparently into the ancient part
of the edifice. My curiosity being aroused, I opened it, and found
myself in a narrow, blind corridor, groping along which I came to the
head of a dark winding staircase, leading down an angle of the Tower of
Comares. Down this staircase I descended darkling,
[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO THE HALL OF AMBASSADORS]
guiding myself by the wall until I came to a small door at the bottom,
throwing which open, I was suddenly dazzled by emerging into the
brilliant antechamber of the Hall of Ambassadors; with the fountain of
the Court of the Alberca sparkling before me. The antechamber is
separated from the court by an elegant gallery, supported by slender
columns with spandrels of open work in the Morisco style. At each end of
the antechamber are alcoves, and its ceiling is richly stuccoed and
painted. Passing through a magnificent portal, I found myself in the
far-famed Hall of Ambassadors, the audience chamber of the Moslem
monarchs. It is said to be thirty-seven feet square, and sixty feet
high; occupies the whole interior of the Tower of Comares; and still
bears the traces of past magnificence. The walls are beautifully
stuccoed and decorated with Morisco fancifulness; the lofty ceiling was
originally of the same favorite material, with the usual frostwork and
pensile ornaments or stalactites; which, with the embellishments of
vivid coloring and gilding, must have been gorgeous in the extreme.
Unfortunately it gave way during an earthquake, and brought down with it
an immense arch which traversed the hall. It was replaced by the present
vault or dome of larch or cedar, with intersecting ribs, the whole
curiously wrought and richly colored; still Oriental in its character,
reminding one of “those ceilings of cedar and vermilion that we read of
in the Prophets and the Arabian Nights.”[4]
From the great height of the vault above the windows, the upper part of
the hall is almost lost in obscurity; yet there is a magnificence as
well as solemnity in the gloom, as through it we have gleams of rich
gilding and the brilliant tints of the Moorish pencil.
The royal throne was placed opposite the entrance in a recess, which
still bears an inscription intimating that Yusef I. (the monarch who
completed the Alhambra) made this the throne of his empire. Everything
in this noble hall seems to have been calculated to surround the throne
with impressive dignity and splendor; there was none of the elegant
voluptuousness which reigns in other parts of the palace. The tower is
of massive strength, domineering over the whole edifice and overhanging
the steep hill-side. On three sides of the Hall of Ambassadors are
windows cut through the immense thickness of the walls, and commanding
extensive prospects. The balcony of the central window especially looks
down upon the verdant valley of the Darro, with its walks, its groves,
and gardens. To the left it enjoys a distant prospect of the Vega; while
directly in front rises the rival height of the Albaycin, with its
medley of streets, and terraces, and gardens, and once crowned by a
fortress that vied in power with the Alhambra. “Ill fated the man who
lost all this!” exclaimed Charles V., as he looked forth from this
window upon the enchanting scenery it commands.
The balcony of the window where this royal exclamation was made, has of
late become one of my favorite resorts. I have just been seated there,
enjoying the close of a long brilliant day. The sun, as he sank behind
the purple mountains of Alhama, sent a stream of effulgence up the
valley of the Darro, that spread a melancholy pomp over the ruddy towers
of the Alhambra; while the Vega, covered with a slight sultry vapor that
caught the setting ray, seemed spread out in the distance like a golden
sea. Not a breath of air disturbed the stillness of the hour, and though
the faint sound of music and merriment now and then rose from the
gardens of the Darro, it but rendered more impressive the monumental
silence of the pile which overshadowed me. It was one of those hours and
scenes in which memory asserts an almost magical power, and, like the
evening sun beaming on these mouldering towers, sends back her
retrospective rays to light up the glories of the past.
As I sat watching the effect of the declining daylight upon this Moorish
pile, I was led into a consideration of the light, elegant, and
voluptuous character prevalent throughout its internal architecture, and
to contrast it with the grand but gloomy solemnity of the Gothic
edifices reared by the Spanish conquerors. The very architecture thus
bespeaks the opposite and irreconcilable natures of the two warlike
people who so long battled here for the mastery of the Peninsula. By
degrees I fell into a course of musing upon the singular fortunes of the
Arabian or Morisco-Spaniards, whose whole existence is as a tale that is
told, and certainly forms one of the most anomalous yet splendid
episodes in history. Potent and durable as was their dominion, we
scarcely know how to call them. They were a nation without a legitimate
country or name. A remote wave of the great Arabian inundation, cast
upon the shores of Europe, they seem to have all the impetus of the
first rush of the torrent. Their career of conquest, from the rock of
Gibraltar to the cliffs of the Pyrenees, was as rapid and brilliant as
the Moslem victories of Syria and Egypt. Nay, had they not been checked
on the plains of Tours, all France, all Europe, might have been overrun
with the same facility as the empires of the East, and the Crescent at
this day have glittered on the fanes of Paris and London.
Repelled within the limits of the Pyrenees, the mixed hordes of Asia and
Africa, that formed this great irruption, gave up the Moslem principle
of conquest, and sought to establish in Spain a peaceful and permanent
dominion. As conquerors, their heroism was only equalled by their
moderation; and in both, for a time, they excelled the nations with whom
they contended. Severed from their native homes, they loved the land
given them as they supposed by Allah, and strove to embellish it with
everything that could administer to the happiness of man. Laying the
foundations of their power in a system of wise and equitable laws,
diligently cultivating the arts and sciences, and promoting agriculture,
manufactures, and commerce, they gradually formed an empire unrivalled
for its prosperity by any of the empires of Christendom; and diligently
drawing round them the graces and refinements which marked the Arabian
empire in the East, at the time of its greatest civilization, they
diffused the light of Oriental knowledge through the western regions of
benighted Europe.
The cities of Arabian Spain became the resort of Christian artisans, to
instruct themselves in the useful arts. The universities of Toledo,
Cordova, Seville, and Granada were sought by the pale student from other
lands to acquaint himself with the sciences of the Arabs and the
treasured lore of antiquity; the lovers of the gay science resorted to
Cordova and Granada, to imbibe the poetry and music of the East; and the
steel-clad warriors of the North hastened thither to accomplish
themselves in the graceful exercises and courteous usages of chivalry.
If the Moslem monuments in Spain, if the Mosque of Cordova, the Alcazar
of Seville, and the Alhambra of Granada, still bear inscriptions fondly
boasting of the power and permanency of their dominion, can the boast be
derided as arrogant and vain? Generation after generation, century after
century, passed away, and still they maintained possession of the land.
A period elapsed longer than that which has passed since England was
subjugated by the Norman Conqueror, and the descendants of Musa and
Taric might as little anticipate being driven into exile across the same
straits, traversed by their triumphant ancestors, as the descendants of
Rollo and William, and their veteran peers, may dream of being driven
back to the shores of Normandy.
With all this, however, the Moslem empire in Spain was but a brilliant
exotic, that took no permanent root in the soil it embellished. Severed
from all their neighbors in the West by impassable barriers of faith and
manners, and separated by seas and deserts from their kindred of the
East, the Morisco-Spaniards were an isolated people. Their whole
existence was a prolonged, though gallant and chivalric struggle for a
foothold in a usurped land.
They were the outposts and frontiers of Islamism. The Peninsula was the
great battle-ground where the Gothic conquerors of the North and the
Moslem conquerors of the East met and strove for mastery; and the fiery
courage of the Arab was at length subdued by the obstinate and
persevering valor of the Goth.
Never was the annihilation of a people more complete than that of the
Morisco-Spaniards. Where are they? Ask the shores of Barbary and its
desert places. The exiled remnant of their once powerful empire
disappeared among the barbarians of Africa, and ceased to be a nation.
They have not even left a distinct name behind them, though for nearly
eight centuries they were a distinct people. The home of their adoption,
and of their occupation for ages, refuses to acknowledge them, except as
invaders and usurpers. A few broken monuments are all that remain to
bear witness to their power and dominion, as solitary rocks, left far in
the interior, bear testimony to the extent of some vast inundation. Such
is the Alhambra;--a Moslem pile in the midst of a Christian land; an
Oriental palace amidst the Gothic edifices of the West; an elegant
memento of a brave, intelligent, and graceful people, who conquered,
ruled, flourished, and passed away.
THE JESUITS’ LIBRARY