would keep their word, and means were soon invented to hound the
wretched Boabdil from the principality they had granted. He crossed to
Africa, and settled in Fez, of which the Sultan was his kinsman. It is
pathetic to learn that there he built himself a palace in imitation of
the Alhambra. At last, after many years, he was killed in an obscure
battle fighting against the Sultan's rebels, and the Arab historian
finishes the account of him with these words: 'Wretched man! who could
lose his life in another's cause, though he dared not die in his own!
Such was the immutable decree of destiny. Blessed be Allah, who exalteth
and abaseth the kings of the earth according to His divine will, in the
fulfilment of which consists that eternal justice which regulates all
human affairs.'
In the day of El Makkary, the historian of the Moorish Empire, Boabdil's
descendants had so fallen that they were nothing but common beggars,
subsisting upon the charitable allowances made to the poor from the
funds of the mosques.
_One generation passeth away and another generation cometh: but the
earth abideth for ever._
XXXV
[Sidenote: Los Pobres]
People say that in Granada the beggars are more importunate than in any
other Spanish town, but throughout Andalusia their pertinacity and
number are amazing. They are licensed by the State, and the brass badge
they wear makes them demand alms almost as a right. It is curious to
find that the Spaniard, who is by no means a charitable being, gives
very often to beggars--perhaps from superstitious motives, thinking
their prayers will be of service, or fearing the evil eye, which may
punish a refusal. Begging is quite an honourable profession in Spain;
mendicants are charitably termed the poor, and not besmirched, as in
England, with an opprobrious name.
I have never seen so many beggars as in Andalusia; at every church door
there will be a dozen, and they stand or sit at each street corner,
halt, lame and blind. Every possible deformity is paraded to arouse
charity. Some look as though their eyes had been torn out, and they
glare at you with horrible bleeding sockets; most indeed are blind, and
you seldom fail to hear their monotonous cry, sometimes naming the
saint's day to attract particular persons: 'Alms for the love of God,
for a poor blind man on this the day of St. John!' They stand from
morning till night, motionless, with hand extended, repeating the words
as the sound of footsteps tells them some one is approaching; and then,
as a coin is put in their hands, say gracefully: '_Dios se lo pagara!_
God will repay you.'
In Spain you do not pass silently when a beggar demands alms, but pray
his mercy for God's love to excuse you: '_Perdone Usted por el amor de
Dios!_' Or else you beseech God to protect him: '_Dios le ampare!_' And
the mendicant, coming to your gate, sometimes invokes the Immaculate
Virgin.
'_Ave Maria purissima!_' he calls.
And you, tired of giving, reply: '_Y por siempre!_ And for ever.'
He passes on, satisfied with your answer, and rings at the next door.
It is not only in Burgos that Théophile Gautier might have admired the
beggar's divine rags; everywhere they wrap their cloaks about them in
the same magnificent fashion. The _capa_, I suppose, is the most
graceful of all the garments of civilised man, and never more so than
when it barely holds together, a mass of rags and patches, stained by
the rain and bleached by the sun and wind. It hangs straight from the
neck in big simple lines, or else is flung over one shoulder with a
pompous wealth of folds.
There is a strange immobility about Andalusian beggars which recalls
their Moorish ancestry. They remain for hours in the same attitude,
without moving a muscle; and one I knew in Seville stood day after day,
from early morning till midnight, with hand outstretched in the same
rather crooked position, never saying a word, but merely trusting to the
passer-by to notice. The variety is amazing, men and women and children;
and Seville at fair-time, or when the foreigners are coming for Holy
Week, is like an enormous hospital. Mendicants assail you on all sides,
the legless dragging themselves on their hands, the halt running towards
you with a crutch, the blind led by wife or child, the deaf and dumb,
the idiotic. I remember a woman with dead eyes and a huge hydrocephalic
head, who sat in a bath-chair by one of the cathedral doors, and
whenever people passed, cried shrilly for money in a high, unnatural
voice. Sometimes they protrude maimed limbs, feetless legs or arms
without hands; they display loathsome wounds, horribly inflamed; every
variety of disease is shown to extort a copper. And so much is it a
recognised trade that they have their properties, as it were: one old
man whose legs had been shot away, trotted through the narrow streets of
Seville on a diminutive ass, driving it into the shop-doors to demand
his mite. Then there are the children, the little boys and girls that
Murillo painted, barely covered by filthy rags, cherubs with black hair
and shining eyes, the most importunate of all the tribe. The refusal of
a halfpenny is followed impudently by demands for a cigarette, and as a
last resort for a match; they wander about with keen eyes for
cigar-ends, and no shred of a smoked leaf is too diminutive for them to
get no further use from it.
And beside all these are the blind fiddlers, scraping out old-fashioned
tunes that were popular thirty years ago; the guitarists, singing the
_flamenco_ songs which have been sung in Spain ever since the Moorish
days; the buffoons, who extract tunes from a broomstick; the owners of
performing dogs.
They are a picturesque lot, neither vicious nor ill-humoured. Begging is
a fairly profitable trade, and not a very hard one; in winter _el pobre_
can always find a little sunshine, and in summer a little shade. It is
no hardship for him to sit still all day; he would probably do little
else if he were a millionaire. He looks upon life without bitterness;
Fate has not been very kind, but it is certainly better to be a live
beggar than a dead king, and things might have been ten thousand times
worse. For instance, he might not have been born a Spaniard, and every
man in his senses knows that Spain is the greatest nation on earth,
while to be born a citizen of some other country is the most dreadful
misfortune that can befall him. He has his licence from the State, and a
charitable public sees that he does not absolutely starve; he has
cigarettes to smoke--to say that a blind man cannot enjoy tobacco is
evidently absurd--and therefore, all these things being so, why should
he think life such a woeful matter? While it lasts the sun is there to
shine equally on rich and poor, and afterwards will not a paternal
government find a grave in the public cemetery? It is true that the
beggar shares it with quite a number of worthy persons, doubtless most
estimable corpses, and his coffin even is but a temporary
convenience--but still, what does it matter?
XXXVI
[Sidenote: The Song]
But the Moorish influence is nowhere more apparent than in the Spanish
singing. There is nothing European in that quavering lament, in those
long-drawn and monotonous notes, in those weird trills. The sounds are
strange to the ear accustomed to less barbarous harmonies, and at first
no melody is perceived; it is custom alone which teaches the sad and
passionate charm of these things. A _malagueña_ is the particular
complaint of the maid sorrowing for an absent lover, of the peasant who
ploughs his field in the declining day. The long notes of such a song,
floating across the silence of the night, are like a new melody on the
great harpsichord of human sorrow. No emotion is more poignant than that
given by the faint sad sounds of a Spanish song as one wanders through
the deserted streets in the dead of night; or far in the country, with
the sun setting red in the cloudless sky, when the stillness is broken
only by the melancholy chanting of a shepherd among the olive-trees.
An heritage of Moordom is the Spanish love for the improvisation of
well-turned couplets; in olden days a skilful verse might procure the
poet a dress of cloth-of-gold, and it did on one occasion actually
raise a beggar-maid to a royal throne: even now it has power to secure
the lover his lady's most tender smiles, or at the worst a glass of
Manzanilla. The richness of the language helps him with his rhymes, and
his southern imagination gives him manifold subjects. But, being the
result of improvisation--no lady fair would consider the suit of a
gallant who could not address her in couplets of his own devising--the
Spanish song has a peculiar character. The various stanzas have no
bearing upon one another; they consist of four or seven lines, but in
either case each contains its definite sentiment; so that one verse may
be a complete song, or the singer may continue as long as the muse
prompts and his subject's charms occasion. The Spanish song is like a
barbaric necklace in which all manner of different stones are strung
upon a single cord, without thought for their mutual congruity.
Naturally the vast majority of the innumerable couplets thus invented
are forgotten as soon as sung, but now and then the fortuitous
excellence of one impresses it on the maker's recollection, and it may
be preserved. Here is an example which has been agreeably translated by
Mr. J. W. Crombie; but neither original nor English rendering can give
an adequate idea of the charm which depends on the oriental melancholy
of the music:
Dos besos tengo en el alma
Que no se apartan de mí:
El ultimo de mi madre,
Y el primero que te di.
_Deep in my soul two kisses rest,_
_Forgot they ne'er shall be:_
_The last my mother's lips impressed,_
_The first I stole from thee._
Here is another, the survival of which testifies to the Spanish extreme
love of a compliment; and the somewhat hackneyed sentiment can only have
made it more pleasant to the feminine ear:
Salga el sol, si ha de salir,
Y si no, que nunca salga;
Que para alumbrarme á mí
La luz de tus ojos basta.
_If the sun care to rise, let him rise,_
_But if not, let him ever lie hid;_
_For the light from my lady-love's eyes_
_Shines forth as the sun never did._
It is a diverting spectacle to watch a professional improviser in the
throes of inspiration. This is one of the stock 'turns' of the Spanish
music-hall, and one of the most popular. I saw a woman in Granada, who
was quite a celebrity; and the barbaric wildness of her performance,
with its accompaniment of hand-clapping, discordant cries, and twanging
of guitar, harmonised well with my impression of the sombre and mediæval
city.
She threaded her way to the stage among the crowded tables, through the
auditorium, a sallow-faced creature, obese and large-boned, with coarse
features and singularly ropy hair. She was accompanied by a fat small
man with a guitar and a woman of mature age and ample proportions: it
appeared that the cultivation of the muse, evidently more profitable
than in England, conduced to adiposity. They stepped on the stage,
taking chairs with them, for in Spain you do not stand to sing, and were
greeted with plentiful applause. The little fat man began to play the
long prelude to the couplet; the old woman clapped her hands and
occasionally uttered a raucous cry. The poetess gazed into the air for
inspiration. The guitarist twanged on, and in the audience there were
scattered cries of _Ole!_ Her companions began to look at the singer
anxiously, for the muse was somewhat slow; and she patted her knee and
groaned; at last she gave a little start and smiled. _Ole! Ole!_ The
inspiration had come. She gave a moan, which lengthened into the
characteristic trill, and then began the couplet, beating time with her
hands. Such an one as this:
Suspires que de mí salgan,
Y otros que de tí saldran,
Si en el camino se encuentran
Que de cosas se diran!
_If all the sighs thy lips now shape_
_Could meet upon the way_
_With those that from mine own escape_
_What things they'd have to say!_
She finished, and all three rose from their chairs and withdrew them,
but it was only a false exit; immediately the applause grew clamorous
they sat down again, and the little fat man repeated his introduction.
But this time there was no waiting. The singer had noticed a well-known
bull-fighter and quickly rolled off a couplet in his praise. The
subject beamed with delight, and the general enthusiasm knew no bounds.
The people excitedly threw their hats on the stage, and these were
followed by a shower of coppers, which the performers, more heedful to
the compensation of Art than to its dignity, grovelled to picked up.
* * *
Here is a lover's praise of the whiteness of his lady's skin:
La neve por tu cara
Paso diciendo:
En donde no hago falta
No me detengo.
_Before thy brow the snow-flakes_
_Hurry past and say:_
_'Where we are not needed,_
_Wherefore should we stay?'_
And this last, like the preceding translated by Mr. Crombie, shows once
more how characteristic are Murillo's Holy Families of the popular
sentiment:
La Virgen lava la ropa,
San José la esta tendiendo,
Santa Ana entretiene el niño,
Y el agua se va riendo.
_The Virgin is washing the clothes at the brook._
_And Saint Joseph hangs them to dry._
_Saint Anna plays with the Holy Babe,_
_And the water flows smiling by._
XXXVII
[Sidenote: Jerez]
Jerez is the Andalusian sunshine again after the dark clouds of Granada.
It is a little town in the middle of a fertile plain, clean and
comfortable and spacious. It is one of the richest places in Spain; the
houses have an opulent look, and without the help of Baedeker you may
guess that they contain respectable persons with incomes, and carriages
and horses, with frock-coats and gold watch-chains. I like the people of
Jerez; their habitual expression suggests a consciousness that the
Almighty is pleased with them, and they without doubt are well content
with the Almighty. The main street, with its trim shops and its _cafés_,
has the air of a French provincial town--an appearance of agreeable ease
and dulness.
Every building in Jerez is washed with lime, and in the sunlight the
brilliancy is dazzling. You realise then that in Seville the houses are
not white--although the general impression is of a white town--but, on
the contrary, tinted with various colours from faintest pink to pale
blue, pale green; they remind you of the summer dresses of women. The
soft tones are all mingled with the sunlight and very restful. But Jerez
is like a white banner floating under the cloudless sky, the pure white
banner of Bacchus raised defiantly against the gaudy dyes of teetotalism
and its shrieking trumpets.
Jerez the White is, of course, the home of sherry, and the whole town is
given over to the preparation of the grateful juice. The air is
impregnated with a rich smell. The sun shines down on Jerez; and its
cleanliness, its prosperity, are a rebuke to harsh-voiced contemners of
the grape.
You pass _bodega_ after _bodega_, cask-factories, bottle-factories. A
bottle-factory is a curious, interesting place, an immense barn, sombre,
so that the eye loses itself in the shadows of the roof; and the scanty
light is red and lurid from the furnaces, which roar hoarsely and long.
Against the glow the figures of men, half-naked, move silently,
performing the actions of their craft with a monotonous regularity which
is strange and solemn. They move to and fro, carrying an iron instrument
on which is the molten mass of red-hot glass, and it gleams with an
extraordinary warm brilliancy. It twists hither and thither in obedience
to the artisan's deft movements; it coils and writhes into odd shapes,
like a fire-snake curling in the torture of its own unearthly ardour.
The men pass so regularly, with such a silent and exact precision, that
it seems a weird and mystic measure they perform--a rhythmic dance of
unimaginable intricacy, whose meaning you cannot gather and whose
harmony escapes you. The flames leap and soar in a thousand savage
forms, and their dull thunder fills your ears with a confusion of sound.
Your eyes become accustomed to the dimness, and you discern more
clearly the features of those swarthy men, bearded and gnome-like. But
the molten mass has been put into the mould; you watch it withdrawn, the
bottom indented, the mouth cut and shaped. And now it is complete, but
still red-hot, and glowing with an infernal transparency, gem-like and
wonderful; it is a bottle fit now for the juice of satanic vineyards,
and the miraculous potions of eternal youth, for which men in the old
days bartered their immortal souls.
And the effect of a _bodega_ is picturesque, too, though in a different
way. It is a bright and cheerful spot, a huge shed with whitewashed
walls and an open roof supported by dark beams; great casks are piled
up, impressing you in their vast rotundity with a sort of aldermanic
stateliness. The whole place is fragrant with clean, vinous perfumes.
Your guide carries a glass and a long filler. You taste wine after wine,
in different shades of brown; light wines to drink with your dinner,
older wines to drink before your coffee; wines more than a century old,
of which the odour is more delicate than violets; new wines of the
preceding year, strong and rough; Amontillados, with the softest flavour
in the world; Manzanillas for the gouty; Marsalas, heavy and sweet;
wines that smell of wild-flowers; cheap wines and expensive wines. Then
the brandies--the distiller tells you proudly that Spanish brandy is
made from wine, and contemptuously that French brandy is not--old
brandies for which a toper would sell his soul; new brandies like
fusel-oil; brandies mellow and mild and rich. It is a drunkard's
paradise.
And why should not the drinker have his paradise? The teetotallers have
slapped their bosoms and vowed that liquor was the devil's own
invention. (Note, by the way, that liquor is a noble word that should
not be applied to those weak-kneed abominations that insolently flaunt
their lack of alcohol. Let them be called liquids or fluids or
beverages, or what you will. Liquor is a word for heroes, for the
British tar who has built up British glory--Imperialism is quite the
fashion now.) And for a hundred years none has dared lift his voice in
refutation of these dyspeptic slanders. The toper did not care, he
nursed his bottle and let the world say what it would; but the moderate
drinker was abashed. Who will venture to say that a glass of beer gives
savour to the humblest crust, and comforts Corydon, lamenting the
inconstancy of Phyllis? Who will come forward and strike an attitude and
prove the benefits of the grape? (The attitude is essential, for without
it you cannot hope to impress your fellow men.) Rise up in your might,
ye lovers of hop and grape and rye--rise up and slay the Egyptians. Be
honest and thank your stars for the cup that cheers. Bacchus was not a
pot-bellied old sot, but a beautiful youth with vine-leaves in his hair,
Bacchus the lover of flowers; and Ariadne was charming.
* * *
The country about Jerez undulates in just such an easy comfortable
fashion as you would expect. It is scenery of the gentlest and
pleasantest type, sinuous; little hills rising with rounded lines and
fertile valleys. The vines cover the whole land, creeping over the brown
soil fantastically, black stumps, shrivelled and gnarled, tortured into
uncouth shapes; they remind you of the creeping things in a naturalist's
museum, of giant spiders and great dried centipedes and scorpions. But
imagine the vineyards later, when the spring has stirred the earth with
fecundity! The green shoots tenderly forth; at first it is all too
delicate for a colour, it is but a mist of indescribable tenuity; and
gradually the leaves burst out and trail along the ground with
ever-increasing luxuriance; and then it is a rippling sea of passionate
verdure.
But I liked Jerez best towards evening, when the sun had set and the
twilight glided through the tortuous alleys like a woman dressed in
white. Then, as I walked in the silent streets, narrow and steep, with
their cobble-paving, the white houses gained a new aspect. There seemed
not a soul in the world, and the loneliness was more intoxicating than
all their wines; the shining sun was gone, and the sky lost its blue
richness, it became so pale that you felt it like a face of death--and
the houses looked like long rows of tombs. We walked through the
deserted streets, I and the woman dressed in white, side by side
silently; our footsteps made no sound upon the stones. And Jerez was
wrapped in a ghostly shroud. Ah, the beautiful things I have seen which
other men have not!
XXXVIII
[Sidenote: Cadiz]
I admire the strenuous tourist who sets out in the morning with his
well-thumbed Baedeker to examine the curiosities of a foreign town, but
I do not follow in his steps; his eagerness after knowledge, his
devotion to duty, compel my respect, but excite me to no imitation. I
prefer to wander in old streets at random without a guide-book, trusting
that fortune will bring me across things worth seeing; and if
occasionally I miss some monument that is world-famous, more often I
discover some little dainty piece of architecture, some scrap of
decoration, that repays me for all else I lose. And in this fashion the
less pretentious beauties of a town delight me, which, if I sought under
the guidance of the industrious German, would seem perhaps scarcely
worth the trouble. Nor do I know that there is in Cadiz much to attract
the traveller beyond the grace with which it lies along the blue sea and
the unstudied charm of its gardens, streets, and market-place; the echo
in the cathedral to which the gaping tripper listens with astonishment
leaves me unmoved; and in the church of _Santa Catalina_, which contains
the last work of Murillo, upon which he was engaged at his death, I am
more interested in the tall stout priest, unctuous and astute, who
shows me his treasure, than in the picture itself. I am relieved now and
again to visit a place that has no obvious claims on my admiration; it
throws me back on the peculiarities of the people, on the stray
incidents of the street, on the contents of the shops.
Cadiz is said to be the gayest town in Andalusia. Spaniards have always
a certain gravity; they are not very talkative, and like the English,
take their pleasures a little sadly. But here lightness of heart is
thought to reign supreme, and the inhabitants have not even the apparent
seriousness with which the Sevillan cloaks a somewhat vacant mind. They
are great theatre-goers, and as dancers, of course, have been famous
since the world began. But I doubt whether Cadiz deserves its
reputation, for it always seems to me a little prim. The streets are
well-kept and spacious, the houses, taller than is usual in Andalusia,
have almost as cared-for an appearance as those in a prosperous suburb
of London; and it is only quite occasionally, when you catch a glimpse
of tawny rock and of white breakwater against the blue sea, that by a
reminiscence of Naples you can persuade yourself it is as immoral as
they say. For, not unlike the Syren City, Cadiz lies white and cool
along the bay, with gardens at the water's edge; but it has not the
magic colour of its rival, it is quieter, smaller, more restful; and on
the whole lacks that agreeable air of wickedness which the Italian town
possesses to perfection. It is impossible to be a day in Naples without
discovering that it is the most depraved city in Europe; there is
something in the atmosphere which relaxes the moral fibre, and the
churchwarden who keeps guard in the bosom of every Englishman falls
asleep, so that you feel capable of committing far more than the seven
deadly sins. Of course, you don't, but still it is comfortable to have
them within reach.
* * *