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THE LAND OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN
SKETCHES AND IMPRESSIONS IN ANDALUSIA
BY
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
(WITH FRONTISPIECE)
LONDON WILLIAM HEINEMANN
MCMV
_All rights reserved_
[Illustration]
TO
VIOLET HUNT
Contents
I. The Spirit of Andalusia
II. The Churches of Ronda
III. Ronda
IV. The Swineherd
V. Medinat Az-Zahra
VI. The Mosque
VII. The Court of Oranges
VIII. Cordova
IX. The Bridge of Calahorra
X. Puerta del Puente
XI. Seville
XII. The Alcazar
XIII. Calle de las Sierpes
XIV. Characteristics
XV. Don Juan Tenorio
XVI. Women of Andalusia
XVII. The Dance
XVIII. A Feast Day
XIX. The Giralda
XX. The Cathedral of Seville
XXI. The Hospital of Charity
XXII. Gaol
XXIII. Before the Bull-Fight
XXIV. Corrida de Toros--I.
XXV. Corrida de Toros--II
XXVI. On Horseback
XXVII. By the Road--I.
XXVIII. By the Road--II.
XXIX. Ecija
XXX. Wind and Storm
XXXI. Two Villages
XXXII. Granada
XXXIII. The Alhambra
XXXIV. Boabdil the Unlucky
XXXV. Los Pobres
XXXVI. The Song
XXXVII. Jerez
XXXVIII. Cadiz
XXXIX. El Genero Chico
XL. Adios
I
[Sidenote: The Spirit of Andalusia]
After one has left a country it is interesting to collect together the
emotions it has given in an effort to define its particular character.
And with Andalusia the attempt is especially fascinating, for it is a
land of contrasts in which work upon one another, diversely, a hundred
influences.
In London now, as I write, the rain of an English April pours down; the
sky is leaden and cold, the houses in front of me are almost terrible in
their monotonous greyness, the slate roofs are shining with the wet. Now
and again people pass: a woman of the slums in a dirty apron, her head
wrapped in a grey shawl; two girls in waterproofs, trim and alert
notwithstanding the inclement weather, one with a music-case under her
arm. A train arrives at an underground station and a score of city folk
cross my window, sheltered behind their umbrellas; and two or three
groups of workmen, silently, smoking short pipes: they walk with a dull,
heavy tramp, with the gait of strong men who are very tired. Still the
rain pours down unceasing.
And I think of Andalusia. My mind is suddenly ablaze with its sunshine,
with its opulent colour, luminous and soft; I think of the cities, the
white cities bathed in light; of the desolate wastes of sand, with their
dwarf palms, the broom in flower. And in my ears I hear the twang of the
guitar, the rhythmical clapping of hands and the castanets, as two girls
dance in the sunlight on a holiday. I see the crowds going to the
bull-fight, intensely living, many-coloured. And a thousand scents are
wafted across my memory; I remember the cloudless nights, the silence of
sleeping towns, and the silence of desert country; I remember old
whitewashed taverns, and the perfumed wines of Malaga, of Jerez, and of
Manzanilla. (The rain pours down without stay in oblique long lines, the
light is quickly failing, the street is sad and very cheerless.) I feel
on my shoulder the touch of dainty hands, of little hands with tapering
fingers, and on my mouth the kisses of red lips, and I hear a joyous
laugh. I remember the voice that bade me farewell that last night in
Seville, and the gleam of dark eyes and dark hair at the foot of the
stairs, as I looked back from the gate. '_Feliz viage, mi Inglesito._'
It was not love I felt for you, Rosarito; I wish it had been; but now
far away, in the rain, I fancy, (oh no, not that I am at last in love,)
but perhaps that I am just faintly enamoured--of your recollection.
* * *
But these are all Spanish things, and more than half one's impressions
of Andalusia are connected with the Moors. Not only did they make
exquisite buildings, they moulded a whole people to their likeness; the
Andalusian character is rich with Oriental traits; the houses, the mode
of life, the very atmosphere is Moorish rather than Christian; to this
day the peasant at his plough sings the same quavering lament that sang
the Moor. And it is to the invaders that Spain as a country owes the
magnificence of its golden age: it was contact with them that gave the
Spaniards cultivation; it was the conflict of seven hundred years that
made them the best soldiers in Europe, and masters of half the world.
The long struggle caused that tension of spirit which led to the
adventurous descent upon America, teaching recklessness of life and the
fascination of unknown dangers; and it caused their downfall as it had
caused their rise, for the religious element in the racial war
occasioned the most cruel bigotry that has existed on the face of the
earth, so that the victors suffered as terribly as the vanquished. The
Moors, hounded out of Spain, took with them their arts and
handicrafts--as the Huguenots from France after the revocation of the
Edict of Nantes--and though for a while the light of Spain burnt very
brightly, the light borrowed from Moordom, the oil jar was broken and
the lamp flickered out.
* * *
In most countries there is one person in particular who seems to typify
the race, whose works are the synthesis, as it were, of an entire
people. Bernini expressed in this manner a whole age of Italian society;
and even now his spirit haunts you as you read the gorgeous sins of
Roman noblemen in the pages of Gabriele d'Annunzio. And Murillo, though
the expert not unjustly from their special point of view, see in him but
a mediocre artist, in the same way is the very quintessence of Southern
Spain. Wielders of the brush, occupied chiefly with technique, are apt
to discern little in an old master, save the craftsman; yet art is no
more than a link in the chain of life and cannot be sharply sundered
from the civilisation of which it is an outcome: even Velasquez, sans
peer, sans parallel, throws a curious light on the world of his day, and
the cleverest painters would find their knowledge and understanding of
that great genius the fuller if they were acquainted with the plays of
Lope de la Vega and the satires of Quevedo. Notwithstanding Murillo's
obvious faults, as you walk through the museum at Seville all Andalusia
appears before you. Nothing could be more characteristic than the
religious feeling of the many pictures, than the exuberant fancy and
utter lack of idealisation: in the contrast between a Holy Family by
Murillo and one by Perugino is all the difference between Spain and
Italy. Murillo's Virgin is a peasant girl such as you may see in any
village round Seville on a feast-day; her emotions are purely human, and
in her face is nothing more than the intense love of a mother for her
child. But the Italian shows a creature not of earth, an angelic maid
with almond eyes, oval of face: she has a strange air of unrealness, for
her body is not of human flesh and blood, and she is linked with mankind
only by an infinite sadness; she seems to see already the Dolorous Way,
and her eyes are heavy with countless unwept tears.
One picture especially, that which the painter himself thought his best
work, _Saint Thomas of Villanueva distributing Alms_, to my mind offers
the entire impression of that full life of Andalusia. In the splendour
of mitre and of pastoral staff, in the sober magnificence of
architecture, is all the opulence of the Catholic Church; in the worn,
patient, ascetic face of the saint is the mystic, fervid piety which
distinguished so wonderfully the warlike and barbarous Spain of the
sixteenth century; and lastly, in the beggars covered with sores, pale,
starving, with their malodorous rags, you feel strangely the swarming
poverty of the vast population, downtrodden and vivacious, which you
read of in the picaresque novels of a later day. And these same
characteristics, the deep religious feeling, the splendour, the poverty,
the extreme sense of vigorous life, the discerning may find even now
among the Andalusians for all the modern modes with which, as with coats
of London and bonnets of Paris, they have sought to liken themselves to
the rest of Europe.
And the colours of Murillo's palette are the typical colours of
Andalusia, rich, hot, and deep--again contrasting with the enamelled
brilliance of the Umbrians. He seems to have charged his brush with the
very light and atmosphere of Seville; the country bathed in the
splendour of an August sun has just the luminous character, the haziness
of contour, which characterise the paintings of Murillo's latest manner.
They say he adopted the style termed _vaporoso_ for greater rapidity of
execution, but he cannot have lived all his life in that radiant
atmosphere without being impregnated with it. In Andalusia there is a
quality of the air which gives all things a limpid, brilliant softness,
the sea of gold poured out upon them voluptuously rounds away their
outlines; and one can well imagine that the master deemed it the
culmination of his art when he painted with the same aureate effulgence,
when he put on canvas those gorgeous tints and that exquisite
mellowness.
II
[Sidenote: The Churches of Ronda]
That necessity of realism which is, perhaps, the most conspicuous of
Spanish traits, shows itself nowhere more obviously than in matters
religious. It is a very listless emotion that is satisfied with the
shadow of the ideal; and the belief of the Andaluz is an intensely
living thing, into which he throws himself with a vehemence that
requires the nude and brutal fact. His saints must be fashioned after
his own likeness, for he has small power of make-believe, and needs all
manner of substantial accessories to establish his faith. But then he
treats the images as living persons, and it never occurs to him to pray
to the Saint in Paradise while kneeling before his presentment upon
earth. The Spanish girl at the altar of _Mater Dolorosa_ prays to a
veritable woman, able to speak if so she wills, able to descend from the
golden shrine to comfort the devout worshipper. To her nothing is more
real than these Madonnas, with their dark eyes and their abundant hair:
_Maria del Pilar_, who is Mary of the Fountain, _Maria del Rosario_, who
is Mary of the Rosary, _Maria de los Dolores_, _Maria del Carmen_,
_Maria de los Angeles_. And they wear magnificent gowns of brocade and
of cloth-of-gold, mantles heavily embroidered, shoes, rings on their
fingers, rich jewels about their necks.
In a little town like Ronda, so entirely apart from the world,
poverty-stricken, this desire for realism makes a curiously strong
impression. The churches, coated with whitewash, are squalid, cold and
depressing; and at first sight the row of images looks nothing more than
a somewhat vulgar exhibition of wax-work. But presently, as I lingered,
the very poverty of it all touched me; and forgetting the grotesqueness,
I perceived that some of the saints in their elaborate dresses were
quite charming and graceful. In the church of _Santa Maria la Mayor_ was
a Saint Catherine in rich habiliments of red brocade, with a white
_mantilla_ arranged as only a Spanish woman could arrange it. She might
have been a young gentlewoman of fifty years back when costume was gayer
than nowadays, arrayed for a fashionable wedding or for a bull-fight.
And in another church I saw a youthful Saint in priest's robes, a
cassock of black silk and a short surplice of exquisite lace; he held a
bunch of lilies in his hand and looked very gently, his lips almost
trembling to a smile. One can imagine that not to them would come the
suppliant with a heavy despair, they would be merely pained at their
helplessness before the tears of the grief that kills and the woe of
mothers sorrowing for their sons. But when the black-eyed maiden knelt
before the priest, courtly and debonair, begging him to send a husband
quickly, his lips surely would control themselves no longer, and his
smile would set the damsel's cheek a-blushing. And if a youth knelt
before Saint Catherine in her dainty _mantilla_, and vowed his heart was
breaking because his love gave him stony glances, she would look very
graciously upon him, so that his courage was restored, and he promised
her a silver heart as lovers in Greece made votive offerings to
Aphrodite.
At the Church of the _Espirito Santo_, in a little chapel behind one of
the transept altars, I saw, through a huge rococo frame of gilded wood,
a _Maria de los Dolores_ that was almost terrifying in poignant realism.
She wore a robe of black damask, which stood as if it were cast of
bronze in heavy, austere folds, a velvet cloak decorated with the old
lace known as _rose point d'Espagne_; and on her head a massive imperial
diadem, and a golden aureole. Seven candles burned before her; and at
vespers, when the church was nearly dark, they threw a cold, sharp light
upon her countenance. Her eyes were in deep shadow, strangely
mysterious, and they made the face, so small beneath the pompous crown,
horribly life-like: you could not see the tears, but you felt they were
eyes which would never cease from weeping.
I suppose it was all tawdry and vulgar and common, but a woman knelt in
front of the Mother of Sorrows, praying, a poor woman in a ragged shawl;
I heard a sob, and saw that she was weeping; she sought to restrain
herself and in the effort a tremor passed through her body, and she drew
the shawl more closely round her.
I walked away, and came presently to the most cruel of all these images.
It was a _Pietà_. The Mother held on her knees the dead Son, looking in
His face, and it was a ghastly contrast between her royal array and His
naked body. She, too, wore the imperial crown, with its golden aureole,
and her cloak was of damask embroidered with heavy gold. Her hair fell
in curling abundance about her breast, and the sacristan told me it was
the hair of a lady who had lost her husband and her only son. But the
dead Christ was terrible, His face half hidden by the long straight
hair, long as a woman's, and His body thin and all discoloured: from the
wounds thick blood poured out, and their edges were swollen and red; the
broken knees, the feet and hands, were purple and green with the
beginning of putrefaction.
III
[Sidenote: Ronda]
Ronda is set deep among the mountains between Algeciras and Seville;
they hem it in on all sides, and it straggles up and down little hills,
timidly, as though its presence were an affront to the wild rocks around
it. The houses are huddled against the churches, which look like portly
hens squatting with ruffled feathers, while their chicks, for warmth,
press up against them. It is very cold in Ronda. I saw it first quite
early: over the town hung a grey mist shining in the sunlight, and the
mountains, opalescent in the morning glow, were so luminous that they
seemed hardly solid; they looked as if one could walk through them. The
people, covering their mouths in dread of a _pulmonia_, hastened by,
closely muffled in long cloaks. As I passed the open doors I saw them
standing round the _brasero_, warming themselves; for fireplaces are
unknown to Andalusia, the only means of heat being the _copa_, a round
brass dish in which is placed burning charcoal.
The height and the cold give Ronda a character which reminds one of
Northern Spain; the roofs are quite steep, the houses low and small,
built for warmth rather than, as in the rest of Andalusia, for
coolness.
But the whitewash and the barred windows with their wooden lattice-work,
remind you that you are in Moorish country, in the very heart of it; and
Ronda, indeed, figures in chronicles and in old ballads as a stronghold
of the invaders. The temperature affects the habits of the people, even
their appearance: there is no lounging about the squares or at the doors
of wine-shops, the streets are deserted and their great breadth makes
the emptiness more apparent. The first setters out of the town had no
need to make the ways narrow for the sake of shade, and they are, in
fact, so broad that the houses on either side might be laid on their
faces, and there would still be room for the rapid stream which hurries
down the middle.
The conformation of a Spanish town, even though it lack museums and fine
buildings, gives it an interest beyond that of most European places. The
Moorish design is always evident. That wise people laid out the streets
as was most convenient, tortuous and narrow at Cordova or broad as a
king's highway in Ronda. The Moors stayed their time, and their hour
struck, and they went; the houses had fallen to decay and been more than
once rebuilt. The Christians returned and Mahomet fled before the
Saints; (it was no shame since they grossly out-numbered him;) the
mosque was made a church, and the houses as they fell were built again,
but on the same foundations and in the same way. The streets have
remained as the Moors left them, the houses still are built round little
courtyards--the _patio_--as the Moors built them; and the windows are
barred and latticed as of old, the better to protect beauty whose dark
eyes flash too meaningly at wandering strangers, whose red lips are over
ready to break into a smile for the peace of an absent husband.
* * *
After the busy clamour of Gibraltar, that ant-nest of a hundred
nationalities, Ronda impresses you by its peculiar silence. The lack of
sound is the more noticeable in the frosty clearness of the atmosphere,
and is only emphasised by an occasional cry that floats, from some vast
distance, along the air. The coldness, too, has pinched the features of
the people, and they seem to grow old even earlier than in the rest of
Andalusia. Strapping fellows of thirty with slim figures and a youthful
air have the faces of elderly men, and their skin is hard, stained and
furrowed. The women, ageing as rapidly, have no gaiety. If Spanish girls
have frequently a beautiful youth, their age too often is atrocious: it
is inconceivable that a handsome woman should become so fearful a hag;
the luxuriant hair is lost, and she takes no pains to conceal her grey
baldness, the eye loses its light, the enchanting down of the upper lip
turns to a bristly moustache; the features harden, grow coarse and
vulgar; and the countenance assumes a rapacious expression, so that she
appears a bird of prey; and her strident voice is like the shriek of
vultures. It is easily comprehensible that the Spanish stage should have
taken the old woman as one of its most constant, characteristic types.
But in Ronda even the girls have a weary look, as though life were not
so easy a matter as in warmer places, or as the good God intended; and
they seem to suffer from the brevity of youth, which is no sooner come
than gone. They walk inertly, clothed in sombre colours, their hair not
elaborately arranged as would have it the poorest cigarette-girl, but
merely knotted, without the flower which the Sevillan is popularly said
to insist upon even at the cost of a dinner. And when they go out the
grey shawls they wrap about their heads add to their unattractiveness.
IV
[Sidenote: The Swineherd]
But if Ronda itself is a somewhat dull and unsympathetic place with
nothing more for the edification of the visitor than a melodramatic
chasm, the surrounding country is worthy the most extravagant epithets.
The mountains have the gloomy barrenness, the slate-grey colour of
volcanic ranges; they encircle the town in a gigantic amphitheatre,
rugged and overbearing like Titans turned to stone. They seem, indeed,
to wear a sombre insolence of demeanour as though the aspect of human
kind moved them to lofty contempt. And in their magnificent desolation
they offer a fit environment for the exploits of Byronic heroes. The
handsome villain of romance, seductive by the complexity of his
emotions, by the persistence of his mysterious grief, would find himself
in that theatrical scene most thoroughly at home; nor did Prosper
Mérimée fail to seize the opportunity, for the mountains of Ronda were
the very hunting-ground of Don Josè, who lost his soul for Carmen. But
as a matter of history they were likewise the haunts of brigands in
flesh and blood--malefactors in the past had that sense of the
picturesque which now is vested in the amateur photographer--and this
particular district was as dangerous to the travelling merchant as any
in Spain.
The environs of Ronda are barren and unfertile, the olive groves bear
little fruit. I wandered through the lonely country, towards the
mountains; the day was overcast and the clouds hung sluggishly overhead.
As I walked, suddenly I heard a melancholy voice singing a peasant song,
a _malagueña_. I paused to listen, but the sadness was almost
unendurable; and it went on interminably, wailing through the air with
the insistent monotony of its Moorish origin. I struck into the olives
to find the singer and met a swineherd, guarding a dozen brown pigs, a
youth thin of face, with dark eyes, clothed in undressed sheep-skins;
and the brown wool gave him a singular appearance of community with the
earth about him. He stood among the trees like a wild creature, more
beast than man, and the lank, busy pigs burrowed around him, running to
and fro, with little squeals. He ceased his song when I approached and
looked up timidly. I spoke to him but he made no answer, I offered a
cigarette but he shook his head.
I went my way, and at first the road was not quite solitary. Two men
passed me on donkeys. '_Vaya Usted con Dios!_' they cried--'Go you with
God': it is the commonest greeting in Spain, and the most charming; the
roughest peasant calls it as you meet him. A dozen grey asses went
towards Ronda, one after the other, their panniers filled with stones;
they walked with hanging heads, resigned to all their pain. But when at
last I came into the mountains the loneliness was terrible. Not even
the olive grew on those dark masses of rock, windswept and sterile;
there was not a hut nor a cottage to testify of man's existence, not
even a path such as the wild things of the heights might use. All life,
indeed, appeared incongruous with that overwhelming solitude.
Daylight was waning as I returned, but when I passed the olive-grove,
where many hours before I had heard the _malagueña_, the same monotonous
song still moaned along the air, carrying back my thoughts to the
swineherd. I wondered what he thought of while he sang, whether the sad
words brought him some dim emotion. How curious was the life he led! I
suppose he had never travelled further than his native town; he could
neither write nor read. Madrid to him was a city where the streets were
paved with silver and the King's palace was of fine gold. He was born
and grew to manhood and tended his swine, and some day he would marry
and beget children, and at length die and return to the Mother of all
things. It seemed to me that nowadays, when civilisation has become the
mainstay of our lives, it is only with such beings as these that it is
possible to realise the closeness of the tie between mankind and nature.
To the poor herdsman still clung the soil; he was no foreign element in
the scene, but as much part of it as the stunted olives, belonging to
the earth intimately as the trees among which he stood, as the beasts he
tended.
* * *
When I came near the town the sun was setting. In the west, tempestuous
clouds were massed upon one another, and the sun shone blood-red above
them; but as it sank they were riven asunder, and I saw a great furnace
that lit up the whole sky. The mountains were purple, unreal as the
painted mountains of a picture. The light was gone from the east, and
there everything was chill and grey; the barren rocks looked so desolate
that one shuddered with horror of the cold. But the sun fell gold and
red, and the rift in the clouds was a kingdom of gorgeous light; the
earth and its petty inhabitants died away, and in the crimson flame I
could almost see Lucifer standing in his glory, god-like and young;
Lucifer in all majesty, surrounded by his court of archangels,
Beelzebub, Belial, Moloch, Abaddon.
* * *
I had discovered in the morning, from the steeple of _Santa Maria_, a
queer ruined church, and was oddly impressed by the bare façade, with
the yawning apertures of empty windows. I went to it, but every entrance
was bricked up save one, which had a door of rough boards fastened by a
padlock; and in a neighbouring house I found an old man with a key. It
was a spot of utter desolation; the roof had gone or had never been. The
custodian could not tell whether the church was the wreck of an old
building or a framework that had never been completed; the walls were
falling to decay. Along the nave and in the chapels trees were growing,
shrubs and rank weeds; it was curious the utter ruin in the midst of the
populous town. Pigs ran hither and thither, feeding, with noisy grunts,
as they burrowed about the crumbling altar.
The old man inquired whether I wished to buy the absolute uselessness
of the place fascinated me. I asked the price. He looked me up and down,
and seeing I was foreign, suggested a ridiculous sum. And while I amused
myself with bargaining, I wondered what on earth one could do with a
ruined church in Ronda. Half a dozen fantastic notions passed through my
mind, but they were really too melodramatic.
And now when the sun had set I returned. Notwithstanding his suspicions,
I induced the keeper to give me his key; he could not understand what I
desired at such an hour in that solitary place, and asked if I wished to
sleep there! But I calmed his fears with a _peseta_--money goes a long
way in Spain--and went in alone. The pigs had been removed and all was
silent. A few bats flitted to and fro quickly. The light fell away
greyly, the cold descended on the ruin, and it became very strange and
mysterious. Presently, the roofless chapels seemed to grow alive with
weird invisible things, the rank weeds exhaled chill odours; and in the
lonely silence a mass began. At the ruined altar ghostly priests
officiated, passing quietly from side to side, with bows and
genuflections. The bell tinkled as they raised an invisible host. Soon
it became quite dark, and the moon shone through the great empty windows
of the façade.
V
[Sidenote: Medinat Az-Zahra]
In what you divine rather than in what you see lies half the charm of
Andalusia, in the suggestion of all manner of delicate antique things,
in the vivid memory of past grandeur. The Moors have gone, but still
they inhabit the land in spirit and not seldom in a spectral way seem to
regain their old dominion. Often towards evening, as I rode through the
desolate country, I thought I saw an half-naked Moor ploughing his
field, urging the lazy oxen with a long goad. Often the Spaniard on his
horse vanished, and I saw a Muslim knight riding in pride and glory, his
velvet cloak bespattered with the gold initial of his lady, and her
favour fluttering from his lance. Once near Granada, standing on a hill,
I watched the blood-red sun set tempestuously over the plain; and
presently in the distance the gnarled olive-trees seemed living beings,
and I saw contending hosts, two ghostly armies silently battling with
one another; I saw the flash of scimitars, and the gleam of standards,
the whiteness of the turbans. They fought with horrible carnage, and the
land was crimson with their blood. Then the sun fell below the horizon,
and all again was still and lifeless.
And what can be more fascinating than that magic city of Az-Zahra, the
wonder of its age, of which now not a stone remains? It was made to
satisfy the whim of a concubine by a Sultan whose flamboyant passion
moved him to displace mountains for the sake of his beloved; and the
memory thereof is lost so completely that even its situation till lately
was uncertain. Az-Zahra the Fairest said to Abd-er-Rahm[=a]n, her lord:
'Raise me a city that shall take my name and be mine.' The Khalif built
at the foot of the mountain which is called the Hill of the Bride; but
when at last the lady, from the great hall of the palace, gazed at the
snow-white city contrasting with the dark mountain, she remarked: 'See,
O Master! how beautiful this girl looks in the arms of yonder
Ethiopian.' The jealous Khalif immediately commanded the removal of the
offending hill; and when he was convinced the task was impossible,
ordered that the oaks and other mountain trees which grew upon it should
be uprooted, and fig-trees and almonds planted in their stead.
Imagine the _Hall of the Khalif_, with walls of transparent and
many-coloured marble, with roof of gold; on each side were eight doors
fixed upon arches of ivory and ebony, ornamented with precious metals
and with precious stones; and when the sun penetrated them, the
reflection of its rays upon the roof and walls was sufficient to deprive
the beholders of sight! In the centre was a great basin filled with
quicksilver, and the Sultan, wishing to terrify a courtier, would cause
the metal to be set in motion, whereupon the apartment would seem
traversed by flashes of lightning, and all the company would fall
a-trembling.
The old author tells of running streams and of limpid water, of stately
buildings for the household guards, and magnificent palaces for the
reception of high functionaries of state; of the thronging soldiers,
pages, eunuchs, slaves, of all nations and of all religions, in
sumptuous habiliments of silk and of brocade; of judges, theologians,
and poets, walking with becoming gravity in the ample courts.... Alas!
that poets now should rush through Fleet Street with unseemly haste,
attired uncouthly in bowler hats and in preposterous tweeds!
* * *
From the celebrated legend of Roderick the Goth to that last scene when
Boabdil handed the keys of Granada to King Ferdinand, the history of the
Moorish occupation reads far more like romance than like sober fact. It
is rich with every kind of passionate incident; it has all the strange
vicissitudes of oriental history. What career could be more wonderful
than that of Almanzor, who began life as a professional letter-writer,
(a calling which you may still see exercised in the public places of
Madrid or Seville,) and ended it as absolute ruler of an Empire! His
charm of manner, his skill in flattery, the military genius which he
developed when occasion called, his generosity and sense of justice, his
love of literature and art, make him a figure to be contemplated with
admiration; and when you add his utter lack of scruple, his selfishness,
his ingratitude, his perfidy, you have a character complex enough to
satisfy the most exacting.
Those who would read of these things may find an admirable account in
Mr. Lane-Poole's _Moors in Spain_; but I cannot renounce the pleasure of
giving one characteristic detail. After the death of Abd-er-Rahm[=a]n,
the builder of that magnificent city of Az-Zahra, a paper was found in
his own handwriting, upon which he had noted those days in his long
reign which had been free from all sorrow: they numbered fourteen.
Sovereign lord of a country than which there is on earth none more
delightful, his life had been of uninterrupted prosperity; success in
peace and war attended him always; he possessed everything that it was
possible for man to have. These are the observations of Al Makkary, the
Arabic historian, when he narrates the incident:
_O man of understanding! Wonder and observe the small portion of real
happiness the world affords even in the most enviable position. Praise
be given to Him, the Lord of eternal glory and everlasting empire! There
is no God but He the Almighty, the Giver of Empire to whomsoever He
pleases._
VI
[Sidenote: The Mosque]
But Cordova, from which Az-Zahra was about four miles distant, has
visible delights that can vie with its neighbour's vanished pomp. I know
nothing that can give a more poignant emotion than the interior of the
mosque at Cordova; and yet I remember well the splendour of barbaric and
oriental magnificence which was my first sight of St. Mark's at Venice,
as I came abruptly from the darkness of an alley into the golden light
of the Piazza. But to me at least the famous things of Italy, known from
childhood in picture and in description, afford more than anything a
joyful sense of recognition, a feeling as it were of home-coming, such
as may hope to experience the devout Christian on entering upon his
heritage in the Kingdom of Heaven. The mosque of Cordova is oriental and
barbaric too; but I had never seen nor imagined anything in the least
resembling it; there was no disillusionment possible, as too often in
Italy, for the accounts I had read prepared me not at all for that
overwhelming impression. It was so weird and strange, I felt myself
transported suddenly to another world.
They were singing Vespers when I entered, and I heard the shrill voices
of choristers crying the responses; it did not sound like Christian
music. The mosque was dimly lit, the air heavy with incense; and I saw
this forest of pillars, extending every way, as far as the eye could
reach. It was mysterious and awe-inspiring as those enchanted forests of
one's childhood in which huge trees grew in serried masses and where in
cavernous darkness goblins and giants of the fairy-tales, wild beasts
and monstrous shapes, lay in wait for the terrified traveller who had
lost his way. I wandered, keeping the Christian chapels out of sight,
trying to lose myself among the columns; and now and then gained views
of horseshoe arches interlacing, decorated with Moorish tracery.
At length I came to the _Mihrab_, which is the Holy of Holies, the most
exquisite as well as the most sacred part of the mosque. It is
approached by a vestibule of which the roof is a miracle of grace, with
mosaics that glow like precious stones, ultramarine, scarlet, emerald,
and gold. The arch between the chambers is ornamented with four pillars
of coloured marble, and again with mosaic, the gold letters of an Arabic
inscription forming on the deep sapphire of the background a decorative
pattern. The _Mihrab_ itself, which contained the famous Koran of
Othman, has seven sides of white marble, and the roof is a huge shell
cut from a single block.
I tried to picture to myself the mosque before the Christians laid their
desecrating hands upon it. The floor was of coloured tiles, tiles such
as may still be seen in the Alhambra of Granada and in the Alcazar at
Seville. The columns are of marble, of porphyry and jasper; tradition
says they came from Carthage, from pagan temples in France and Christian
churches in Spain; they are slender and unadorned, they must have
contrasted astonishingly with the roof of larch wood, all ablaze with
gold and with vermilion.
There were three hundred chandeliers; and eight thousand lamps--cast of
Christian bells--hung from the roof. The Arab writer tells of gold
shining from the ceiling like fire, blazing like lightning when it darts
across the clouds. The pulpit, wherein was kept the Koran, was of ivory
and of exquisite woods, of ebony and sandal, of plantain, citron and
aloe, fastened together with gold and silver nails and encrusted with
priceless gems. It needed six Khalifs and Almanzor, the great Vizier, to
complete the mosque of which Arab writers, with somewhat prosaic
enthusiasm, said that 'in all the lands of Islam there was none of equal
size, none more admirable in its workmanship, in its construction and
durability.'
* * *
Then the Christians conquered Cordova, and the charming civilisation of
the Moors was driven out by monks and priests and soldiers. First they
built only chapels in the outermost aisles; but in a little while, to
make room for a choir, they destroyed six rows of columns; and at last,
when Master Martin Luther had rekindled Catholic piety, they set up a
great church in the very middle of the mosque. The story of this
vandalism is somewhat quaint, and one detail at least affords a
suggestion that might prove useful in the present time; for the Town
Council of Cordova menaced with death all who should assist in the work:
one imagines that a similar threat from the Lord Mayor of London might
have a salutary effect upon the restorers of Westminster Abbey or the
decorators of St. Paul's. How very much more entertaining must have been
the world when absolutism was the fashion and the preposterous method of
universal suffrage had never been considered! But the Chapter, as those
in power always are, was bent upon restoring, and induced Charles V. to
give the necessary authority. The king, however, had not understood what
they wished to do, and when later he visited Cordova and saw what had
happened, he turned to the dignitaries who were pointing out the
improvements and said: 'You have built what you or others might have
built anywhere, but you have destroyed something that was unique in the
world.' The words show a fine scorn; but as a warning to later
generations it would have been more to the purpose to cut off a dozen
priestly heads.
Yet oddly enough the Christian additions are not so utterly discordant
as one would expect! Hernan Ruiz did the work well, even though it was
work he might conveniently have been drawn and quartered for doing.
Typically Spanish in its fine proportion, in its exuberance of fantastic
decoration, his church is a masterpiece of plateresque architecture. Nor
are the priests entirely out of harmony with the building wherein they
worship. For an hour they had sung Vespers, and the deep voices of the
canons, chaunting monotonously, rang weird and long among the columns;
but they finished, and left the choir one by one, walking silently
across the church to the sacristy. The black cassock and the scarlet
hood made a fine contrast, while the short cambric surplice added to the
costume a most delicate grace. One of them paused to speak with two
ladies in _mantillas_, and the three made a picturesque group,
suggesting all manner of old Spanish romance.
VII
[Sidenote: The Court of Oranges]
I went into the cathedral from the side and issuing by another door,
found myself in the Court of Oranges. The setting sun touched it with
warm light and overhead the sky was wonderfully blue. In Moorish times
the mosque was separated from the court by no dividing-wall, so that the
arrangement of pillars within was continued by the even lines of
orange-trees; these are of great age and size, laden with fruit, and in
their copious foliage stand with a trim self-assurance that is quite
imposing.
In the centre, round a fountain into which poured water from jets at the
four corners, stood a number of persons with jars of earthenware and
bright copper cans. One girl held herself with the fine erectness of a
Caryatid, while her jar, propped against the side, filled itself with
the cold, sparkling water. A youth, some vessel in his hand, leaned over
in an attitude of easy grace; and looking into her eyes, appeared to pay
compliments, which she heard with superb indifference. A little boy ran
up, and the girl held aside her jar while he put his mouth to the spout
and drank. Then, as it overflowed, she lifted it with comely motion to
her head and slowly walked away.
By now the canons had unrobed, and several strolled about the court in
the sun, smoking cigarettes. The acolytes with the removal of their
scarlet cassocks, were become somewhat ragged urchins playing pitch and
toss with much gesture and vociferation. Two of them quarrelled fiercely
because one player would not yield the halfpenny he had certainly lost,
and the altercation must have ended in blows if a corpulent, elderly
cleric had not indignantly reproved them, and boxed their ears. A row of
tattered beggars, very well contented in the sunshine, were seated on a
step, likewise smoking cigarettes, and obviously they did not consider
their walk of life unduly hard.
And the thought impressed itself upon me while I lingered in that
peaceful spot, that there was far more to be said for the simple
pleasures of sense than northern folk would have us believe. The English
have still much of that ancient puritanism which finds a vague
sinfulness in the uncostly delights of sunshine, and colour, and ease of
mind. It is well occasionally to leave the eager turmoil of great cities
for such a place as this, where one may learn that there are other, more
natural ways of living, that it is possible still to spend long days,
undisturbed by restless passion, without regret or longing, content in
the various show that nature offers, asking only that the sun should
shine and the happy seasons run their course.
An English engineer whom I had seen at the hotel, approaching me,
expressed the idea in his own graphic manner. 'Down here there are a
good sight more beer and skittles in life than up in Sheffield!'
One canon especially interested me, a little thin man, bent and
wrinkled, apparently of fabulous age, but still something of a dandy,
for he wore his clothes with a certain air, as though half a century
before, byronically, he had been quite a devil with the ladies. The
silver buckle on his shoes was most elegant, and he protruded his foot
as though the violet silk of his stocking gave him a discreet pleasure.
To the very backbone he was an optimist, finding existence evidently so
delightful that it did not even need rose-coloured spectacles. He was an
amiable old man, perhaps a little narrow, but very indulgent to the
follies of others. He had committed no sin himself--for many years: a
suspicion of personal vanity is in itself proof of a pure and gentle
mind; and as for the sins of others--they were probably not heinous, and
at all events would gain forgiveness. The important thing, surely, was
to be sound in dogma. The day wore on and the sun now shone only in a
narrow space; and this the canon perambulated, smoking the end of a
cigarette, the delectable frivolity of which contrasted pleasantly with
his great age. He nodded affably to other priests as they passed, a pair
of young men, and one obese old creature with white hair and an
expression of comfortable self-esteem. He removed his hat with a great
and courteous sweep when a lady of his acquaintance crossed his path.
The priests basking in the warmth were like four great black cats. It
was indeed a pleasant spot, and contentment oozed into one by every
pore. The canon rolled himself another cigarette, smiling as he inhaled
the first sweet whiffs; and one could not but think the sovereign herb
must greatly ease the journey along the steep and narrow way which leads
to Paradise. The smoke rose into the air lazily, and the old cleric
paused now and again to look at it, the little smile of
self-satisfaction breaking on his lips.
Up in the North, under the cold grey sky, God Almighty may be a hard
taskmaster, and the Kingdom of Heaven is attained only by much
endeavour; but in Cordova these things come more easily. The aged priest
walks in the sun and smokes his _cigarillo_. Heaven is not such an
inaccessible place after all. Evidently he feels that he has done his
duty--with the help of Havana tobacco--in that state of life wherein it
has pleased a merciful providence to place him; and St. Peter would
never be so churlish as to close the golden gates in the face of an
ancient canon who sauntered to them jauntily, with the fag end of a
cigarette in the corner of his mouth. Let us cultivate our cabbages in
the best of all possible worlds; and afterwards--_Dieu pardonnera; c'est
son métier_.
* * *
Three months later in the _Porvenir_, under the heading, 'Suicide of a
Priest,' I read that one of these very canons of the Cathedral at
Cordova had shot himself. A report was heard, said the journal, and the
Civil Guard arriving, found the man prostrate with blood pouring from
his ear, a revolver by his side. He was transported to the hospital, the
sacrament administered, and he died. In his pockets they found a
letter, a pawn-ticket, a woman's bracelet, and some peppermint lozenges.
He was thirty-five years old. The newspaper moralised as follows: 'When
even the illustrious order to which the defunct belonged is tainted with
such a crime, it is well to ask whither tends the incredulity of society
which finds an end to its sufferings in the barrel of a revolver. Let
moralists and philosophers combat with all their might this dreadful
tendency; let them make even the despairing comprehend that death is not
the highest good but the passage to an unknown world where, according to
Christian belief, the ill deeds of this existence are punished and the
virtuous rewarded.'
VIII
[Sidenote: Cordova]
Ronda, owing its peculiarities to the surrounding mountains, was not
really very characteristic of the country, and might equally well have
been an highland townlet in any part of Southern Europe. But Cordova
offers immediately the full sensation of Andalusia. It is absolutely a
Moorish city, white and taciturn, so that you are astonished to meet
people in European dress rather than Arabs, in shuffling yellow
slippers. The streets are curiously silent; for the carriage, as in
Tangiers, is done by mules and donkeys, which walk so quietly that you
never hear them. Sometimes you are warned by a deep-voiced '_Cuidado_,'
but more often a pannier brushing you against the wall brings the first
knowledge of their presence. On looking up you are again surprised to
see not a great shining negro in a burnouse, but a Spaniard in tight
trousers, with a broad-brimmed hat.
And Cordova has that sweet, exhilarating perfume of Andalusia than which
nothing gives more vividly the complete feeling of the country. Those
travellers must be obtuse of nostril who do not recognise different
smells, grateful or offensive, in different places; no other peculiarity
is more distinctive, so that an odour crossing by chance one's sense is
able to recall suddenly all the complicated impressions of a strange
land. When I return from England it is always that subtle fragrance
which first strikes me, a mingling in warm sunlight of orange-blossom,
incense, and cigarette smoke; and two whiffs of a certain brand of
tobacco are sufficient to bring back to me Seville, the most enchanting
of all my memories. I suppose that nowhere else are cigarettes consumed
so incessantly; for in Andalusia it is not only certain classes who use
them, but every one, without distinction of age or station--from the
ragamuffin selling lottery-tickets in the street to the portly, solemn
priest, to the burly countryman, the shop-keeper, the soldier. After
all, no better means of killing time have ever been devised, and
consequently to smoke them affords an occupation which most thoroughly
suits the Spaniard.
* * *
I looked at Cordova from the bell-tower of the cathedral. The roofs,
very lovely in their diversity of colour, were of rounded tiles, fading
with every variety of delicate shade from russet and brown to yellow and
the tenderest green. From the courtyards, here and there, rose a tall
palm, or an orange-tree, like a dash of jade against the brilliant sun.
The houses, plainly whitewashed, have from the outside so mean a look
that it is surprising to find them handsome and spacious within. They
are built, Moorish fashion, round a _patio_, which in Cordova at least
is always gay with flowers. When you pass the iron gates and note the
contrast between the snowy gleaming of the street and that southern
greenery, the suggestion is inevitable of charming people who must rest
there in the burning heat of summer. With those surroundings and in such
a country passion grows surely like a poisonous plant. At night, in the
starry darkness, how irresistible must be the flashing eyes of love, how
eloquent the pleading of whispered sighs! But woe to the maid who admits
the ardent lover among the orange-trees, her head reeling with the sweet
intoxication of the blossom; for the Spanish gallant is fickle, quick to
forget the vows he spoke so earnestly: he soon grows tired of kissing,
and mounting his horse, rides fast away.
The uniformity of lime-washed houses makes Cordova the most difficult
place in the world wherein to find your way. The streets are exactly
alike, so narrow that a carriage could hardly pass, paved with rough
cobbles, and tortuous: their intricacy is amazing, labyrinthine; they
wind in and out of one another, leading nowhither; they meander on for
half a mile and stop suddenly, or turn back, so that you are forced to
go in the direction you came. You may wander for hours, trying to find
some point that from the steeple appeared quite close. Sometimes you
think they are interminable.
IX