"With three thousand men of Leon from the city Bernard goes,
To protect the soil Hispanian from the spear of Frankish foes;
From the city which is planted in the midst between the seas,
To preserve the name and glory of old Pelayo's victories.
"The peasant hears upon his field the trumpet of the knight,--
He quits his team for spear and shield and garniture of might;
The shepherd hears it 'mid the mist,--he flingeth down his crook,
And rushes from the mountain like a tempest-troubled brook."
--LOCKHART: _Spanish Ballads_.
The journey from Bilbao to Santander is a continuous glory of mountain
views. The train runs saucily along under beetling crags, whence the
gods of the hills may well look down in wonder and displeasure on this
noisy invasion of their solitude. We almost saw those ancient
majesties folding themselves grandly in mantles of purple shadow, but
hardly less royal in bearing were the muffled figures of the lonely
shepherds tending their flocks on the very summits.
The modern Province of Santander is the renowned Montana, the mountain
lair which nourished the chivalry of Old Castile, and from which they
made wild sallies to the south, troop after troop, generation after
generation, until the Moorish standards were beaten back from the
plains about Toledo to the Sierras of Andalusia. Its capital city,
Santander, named from St. Andrew, was one of the four coast towns
which rendered signal service to Fernando in the conquest of Seville.
These towns, lying as they did over against the Cinque Ports of
England, came into so frequent conflict with British mariners as to be
made in the days of Edward III the subject of a special treaty.
A summer resort, however, is a summer resort the world over, and we
found the historic city, which has gracefully fitted itself to the
curve of its beautiful bay, crowded with idle people, elaborately
dressed, who sat long at the noonday breakfast, and longer yet at the
evening dinner, and then longest of all on the benches in the park,
where bands clashed and fireworks flared, until the very stars began
to blink for sleepiness.
Spaniards have a veritable passion for pyrotechnics, and our dreams
until the dawn would be punctuated by the airy report of rockets, as
if, so Galdos suggests, "the angels were cracking nuts in the sky."
Every now and then in those soft warm nights there rose a shout of
song from the street, and peeping down from the balcony, we would see
half a dozen lads and lasses leaping along through the middle of the
road, all abreast and hand in hand, in one of their boisterous peasant
dances.
There are no fewer dangers and sorrows for girls in Spain than in the
other Latin lands. In the low-vaulted, mighty-pillared, deep-shadowed
crypt under the old cathedral, a crypt that is the very haunt of
religious mystery and dread, we came upon a penitent kneeling before
the altar, a bit of written paper pinned to her back. In a stir of the
chill air this fluttered to the ground, and as she, unconscious of
its loss, bowed herself before another shrine, we picked up the paper
with a half thought of restoring it; but seeing in the first glance
that it was a rudely written prayer, entreating the Virgin's pity and
pardon for her lover and herself, we let it fall again at Mary's feet.
All manner of thank-offerings, waxen limbs, eyes, and ears, were hung
in these candle-lit recesses, little spaces of gold amid the gloom. We
had grown accustomed to such fragments of anatomy in the shop-windows,
where even votive stomachs are displayed for sale.
Although Santander is a dawdler's paradise, the residents of the city
to whom we had letters were no holiday makers, but Spaniards of the
earnest, thoughtful, liberal type, busy with large tasks of their own,
but never too busy, being Spaniards, to show unstinted kindness to the
strangers within their gates. Our brief stay did not admit of a tithe
of the excursions they had in mind for us, but my comrade achieved a
trip to Santillana del Mar, birthplace of the doughty Gil Blas.
In the latest version of her adventures, she set forth from Santander
under the bluest of skies, in company with the most bewitching of
senoritas. They left the train at Torrelavega, where the shade of
Garci Laso, one of King Pedro's victims, would doubtless have welcomed
them, had not their attention been taken up with a picturesque
coachman, who was standing dreamily on the station platform. This
Adonis proved a complete paragon, who, as they took their romantic
course over the hills, delightedly pointed out ivied tower, broken
portcullis, and the like, as tidbits for the kodak.
Santillana is the shrine of Santa Juliana, a Roman martyr, whose body
is said to have been carried thither in the ninth century. Her
devotees among the mountain wilds built her in this green valley,
overhung by a rude old fortress, a precious church, a jewel of the
early Romanesque, about whose walls a thriving community soon
gathered. Santillana was throughout the Middle Ages the most important
place between Burgos and Oviedo, and gave name to all that part of the
Montana. The successive Marquises of Santillana were then great
personages in Spain, playing a leading part at Court. One of the
proudest families of Old Castile, they claimed descent from the Cid,
and cherished the memory of another heroic ancestor, who, in 1385,
sacrificed his life to save his king.
"'Your horse is faint, my King, my Lord! your gallant horse is
sick,--
His limbs are torn, his breast is gored, on his eye the film is
thick;
Mount, mount on mine, O mount apace, I pray thee mount and fly!
Or in my arms I'll lift your Grace,--their trampling hoofs are
nigh!
* * * * *
"'Nay, never speak; my sires, Lord King, received their land from
yours,
And joyfully their blood shall spring, so be it thine secures;
If I should fly, and thou, my King, be found among the dead,
How could I stand 'mong gentlemen, such scorn on my gray head?'
* * * * *
"So spake the brave Montanez, Butrago's lord was he;
And turned him to the coming host in steadfastness and glee;
He flung himself among them, as they came down the hill,--
He died, God wot! but not before his sword had drunk its fill."
The city of Santillana, whose lords once laid claim to the sovereignty
of Santander, has shrunk to a forgotten village, and the neglected
church is dropping into ruins; but the inhabitants have abated not a
jot of that fierce local patriotism which blinds the provincial
Spaniard to all defects of his birthplace and to all excellences of
rival towns. A graybeard told the stranger ladies that Santillana was
the oldest city in Spain and its cathedral the most beautiful. This
latter statement they were almost ready to accept, so richly carven
was the yellow stone and so harmonious the proportions of nave and
aisle. When they arrived at this miniature Durham they found it closed
and silent, with three little boys sleeping on the steps. Through the
benevolence of the ever present Spanish loafers, the sacristan was
sought out and a ragged escort formed for their progress from chapel
to chapel, where rare old pictures and frescos glowed across the dusk.
Best of all were the venerable cloisters, weed-grown and tumble-down,
but lovely as a mediaeval dream with mellow-tinted arch and column, and
with capitals of marvellous device. This crumbling church still keeps
a dazzling hoard of treasures. All the front of the high altar is
wrought of solid silver, the reredos is a miracle of art, and the
paintings of old masters that moulder here unseen would long since in
any other land than Catholic Spain have been the spoils of gallery and
museum.
The cathedral stands just outside the town, whose narrow, crooked
streets daunted the carriage; but these enthusiastic sightseers were
all the better pleased to foot the flagging that many a clinking tread
had worn and to touch on either side, with their extended hands, the
fortresslike houses built of heavy stone and dimly emblazoned with
fierce armorial bearings. These grim dwellings were gladdened by the
grace of vine-clad balconies, where children frolicked and women
crooned quaint melodies over their needlework.
"Will no one tell me what she sings?
Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow
For old, unhappy, far-off things
And battles long ago."
The inn was merely the customary Spanish _venta_, rough and poor, the
darkness of whose long, low room clouds of tobacco smoke from clumps
of gambling muleteers were making blacker yet; but lemonade was served
to the ladies in the open porch with a charm of cordial courtesy far
beyond Delmonico's.
As they quaffed this modest refreshment and watched the shifting
groups about the _venta_, which seemed the centre of the social life,
there suddenly appeared upon the scene a ghost from the modern world,
an everyday gentleman in a straw hat, as citified and up to date as if
he had that moment stepped out of a Madrid cafe. All the loungers
within and without the _venta_ sprang to their feet, bared their
heads, and bowed low to this anachronism with so profound a deference
that the tourists began to wonder if the irrepressible Gil Blas had
come alive again. Not he! This was the Marquis of Santillana, bearing
under his arm instead of a sword a bundle of newspapers. The first
Marquis of Santillana had been a famous warrior and troubadour. This
latest "inheritor of old renown," seating himself in the midst of his
thronging vassals, graciously proceeded, much like a University
Extension lecturer, to read aloud, with simple explanations, the news
of the day. Such is the final form of _noblesse oblige_ in the feudal
valley of Santillana.
We were tempted to hunt out other nooks and eyries in the mountains of
Santander, to see something of the famous sardine fisheries, to drive
along the many-storied coast all the way to Gijon, paying our respects
in passing to a noble oak of Asturias, one of the three largest trees
of Europe; but always the uplifted sword of St. James drove us on. If
we would reach Compostela in season for the annual _fiesta de
Santiago_, there was no time to lose. So, in default of a nearer
railway connection, we started due south for Palencia. Our route ran
at first through a land of hills, maize, and stone walls that might
have been New England, except for the women scratching away in the
hay-fields, and politely saluting the train with a flourish of their
pitchforks.
Then more and more the landscape became Spanish. Little stone hamlets
dozed in ever shallower valleys, mule trains and solitary horsemen
moved slowly down poplar-bordered highways, white as chalk; there was
a slumbering peasant for every speck of shade. But while the men took
their siestas, often sleeping where the drowsiness had befallen them,
with arm thrown about the wooden plough or with head pillowed on the
thrashing roller, there were always women at work--figures clad in the
very colors of the harvest, red and gold and purple, binding sheaves,
sweeping the fields with stout brush brooms, tending flocks and herds
by the rivers, following stray sheep over the hills, with only a
handkerchief at the most to protect their heads from the terrible
noonday sun. As the afternoon wore on, we found ourselves in the
melancholy reaches of brown Castilian plain, with the adobe towns,
the miserable mud villages, open-air threshing floors, and arid,
silent, Oriental look.
[Illustration: TOLEDO]
The only cloud in sight was that which rested for a moment on my
comrade's face. She had so newly come from our clean and wholesome
fatherland that certain features of the Spanish inns still shook her
high serenity of soul, and she had suddenly discovered that Baedeker
significantly characterized the Palencia hotel as "an indifferent
Spanish house." In the discreet language of our excellent guidebook
this was no less than a note of warning, a signal of alarm. But even
Baedeker is fallible, and on arriving at the _Gran Hotel Continental_,
we were met by all the Castilian dignity and grave kindliness of
greeting, and led to rooms whose floors shone with oil and scrubbing,
whose curtains, towels, and sheeting were white as mountain snow, and
whose furnishings were resplendent with two dozen chairs upholstered
in orange satin. We seated ourselves in rapture on one saffron throne
after another, drank fresh milk from polished glasses, and slept, for
this only night of all our Santiago pilgrimage, the sleep of the
unbitten. A sweet-voiced _sereno_ intoning the hours set our dreams to
music.
The following morning we spent in the cathedral, which, though of
plain exterior, except for the many-imaged "Door of the Bishop," is
all lightness, grace, and symmetry within. The organ was pealing and
women were kneeling for the mass as we went softly down the
high-vaulted nave, our spirits played upon now by the dignity of
pointed arches and of clustered columns and now by delicate beauties
in tracery and carving. Only here and there were we aware of a jarring
note, as in chancing upon a great crucifix whose Christ was decked
out in two elegant lace petticoats and a white silk crinoline
embroidered over with silver thread.
When the chant had died away, an affectionate old sacristan, in a
curious red and black coat, delivered us with sundry farewell pats and
pinches over to the charge of a subordinate, who proceeded to display
the hidden treasures. These are far from overwhelming, after the
glittering hoards of Burgos, Seville, and Toledo, but they are as odd
an assortment as sacristy ever sheltered. There was an absurd portrait
of Charles I, a freak of foreshortening. At first sight it seemed to
be the skeleton of a fish, but on viewing it through a peephole the
creature had become a human face. Even so, it was hardly a flattering
likeness of the founder of the Austrian line; but as it was Charles I
who stripped Palencia of her original powers and dignities, one would
not expect to find him complimented here.
We turned our attention to the vestments, which, though few, are
peculiarly artistic, with devices, stitched in gold thread and in
jewel reds and greens, of pomegranates, roses, ecclesiastical coats of
arms, angels, Maries, Nativities, and Adorations. These were
appropriate enough, but even our reserved conductor, a monastic youth
who wore a white, openwork tunic over his black suit, smiled
disdainfully as he put before us a time-yellowed ivory box arabesqued
with men and lions, the jewel casket of some pet sultana. "But why
should it be here?" He shrugged his shoulders. "In truth, it is not
holy--a woman's thing! Nor do I know how it came to us, but what we
have we keep."
The sacristy certainly seems to have kept more than its share of
_custodias_. Our guide first brought out a dainty structure, where
grieving angels uplift the cross, and the Sufferer's halo is wrought
of pearls and gems. This was replaced by another, a marvel of
goldsmith's craft, turreted and crocketed with fine gold, while all
about the base are figured Annunciations, Visitations, and other
mysteries. Rich as they were, neither of these could compare with that
famous pyx of the Escorial, inlaid with ten thousand precious stones.
Then our conductor took us with a mighty turning of monster keys,
pulling of rusty bolts, and fall of clanging chains, to see the
supreme _custodia_ of all, one great dazzle of silver from fretted
base to dome and pinnacle, save as among the Corinthian columns of the
first stage glisten golden forms of the Apostles, and of the second,
winged shapes of cherubim and seraphim. This shining tower, some three
or four centuries old, is beheld by Palencia only on Corpus Christi
Day, when, holding at its heart the golden monstrance which holds the
Host, it passes as a triumphal car throughout the city. Priests
walking on either side make a feint of drawing it by tasselled cords,
but "little would it budge for that," said our guide, in high disdain,
opening a door in the frame beneath to reveal the benches where strong
men sit concealed and toil at a motor crank. He had much more to show
us, including precious old tapestries of the Netherlands, and a St.
Katharine by Zurbaran, with a light on the kneeling figure as pure and
bright as a moonbeam; but we had to press the fee on his Castilian
pride, when at last the vulgarity of luncheon summoned us away.
For the historian, basking in this last smile of civilization, the
afternoon passed blissfully among the orange chairs, but I sallied
forth once more, attended by our benignant landlady. The rays of the
sun flashed down like deadly arrows and I had pleaded for a carriage,
but longed to beg its pardon when it came, so faded, rheumatic, and
yet august was that fat old chariot, groaning and tottering as it
rolled, but lowering the pomp of a velvet-carpeted staircase whenever
we desired to alight.
Our progress made a grand sensation in those drowsy streets and
squares, a retinue soon gathered, and nobody seemed surprised when,
after a round of Jesuit and Dominican churches, we drew up before the
madhouse. I had wished to look upon this building, because it is
reputed to have been a dwelling of the Cid; but the hero of Castile
was as unknown to my gentle escort as to the medical priest whom she
must needs call forth to meet me, or to the hapless lunatics whom he,
in turn, insisted on my seeing. A town which had forgotten its chief
citizen naturally fails to keep on sale photographs of its cathedral,
so we packed our memories in default of anything more substantial and
took the evening train to the northwest.
Four hours of hushed, moonlit plain, and then Leon! This is a name of
thrilling memories, and we stepped out into the midnight silence of
that once royal capital whose kingdom "stretched from the Atlantic
Ocean to the Rhone," so awed that even a rickety 'bus, and a smuggler
who tried to hide his trunk behind our honest luggage, hardly broke
the spell. My comrade, still new to Spanish ways, had fears that the
illustrated card which I had forgotten to stamp would not have reached
the hotel. She asked me why I did not telegraph; but some days later,
when we sent a telegram at noon, took a way-train at five, and reached
our destination at ten, simultaneously with the telegram which I might
as well have brought in my pocket, she was set free from New World
prejudices. The unstamped card went through without question, a
picture of a pretty mountain maid being quite as acceptable to the
postal clerks as the portrait of their young king.
We were expected at the hotel, the best in town, but so dirty and
malodorous that we would better have camped under the stars. There had
been some attempt to sweep the floor of our dingy chamber, as we could
see by comparing it with stairs and corridors. Sour milk and sour
bread were served with a compensating sweetness of manner, but the
experiences of that night belong to oblivion.
The joy of the morning! Guided by a shy little scullery lad, smooched
of face and ragged of raiment, but with all the instincts of a
cavalier, we stepped out into those stately streets, with their
haughty old houses, balconies, coats of arms, arches, and battlements,
as into an animated picture book. It was Saturday, and the town was
all astir with peasants come to market, every peasant as good as a
romance. Such brightness of figured kerchiefs, homespun petticoats,
trunk hose, jackets, sashes! The little girls were quaintest of all,
dressed precisely like their mammas, even to those brilliant skirts
edged with one color and slashed with another. Many of the women were
carrying loads of greens, others plucked fowls, and some had indignant
chickens, in full possession of chicken faculties, snuggled under the
arm.
As the chief city in a far reach of luxuriant plain, Leon becomes the
focus, every Saturday, of flocks of sheep, droves of pigs, and herds
of cattle, together with innumerable mules and donkeys bringing in
grain, fruit, and all manner of garden produce. We chanced upon the
market itself in the arcaded _Plaza Mayor_, under shadow of the
towered court-house, with the tapering spire of the cathedral
overlooking all. The great square hummed like a beehive and sparkled
with shifting color like a field of butterflies. We found ourselves
first in the bread market. Under wide umbrellas of canvas set on poles
women were perched high on wooden benches, with their gayly shod feet
supported on stools. Beside each woman, on her rude seat, was a
brightly woven basket heaped with the horny Spanish loaves. Close by
was the fruit market, with its piles of red and purple plums, pears,
grapes, green peppers, lemons, and, beyond, patches of melons,
cucumbers, cabbages, potatoes, beans, and that staff of Spanish life,
chick pease, or _garbanzos_.
The meat market appeared to be itinerant. A man in blue blouse, short
brown breeches, and dove-colored hose adorned with green tassels, was
leading a cow by its crumpled horn; an old woman, with giant silver
hoops in her ears, a lavender shawl knotted about her body, her
scarlet skirt well slashed so as to show the gamboge petticoat
beneath, and so short for all its purple frill as to display the
clockwork of her variegated stockings, was carrying a black lamb,
nestled like a baby in her arms; another walking rainbow bore a live
turkey; and a lad, whose rosy-hued kerchief, shawl, and sash floated
like sunrise clouds about him, balanced on his erect young head an
immense basket of eggs. There was a pottery section, too,--square rods
of cups, plates, and jars in all manner of russet tints and graceful
shapes.
The various divisions were intermingled and blent into one great
open-air market, the cheeriest sort of neighborhood picnic, where
gossip, jest, and laughter were accompanied by the cackling of fowls,
braying of donkeys, and cooing of babies. Here fluttered a colony of
bantams cast, their legs well tied, down on the cobble-stones; there
stood carts laden with bunches of the yellowish dried heather; here
two patient oxen had laid themselves out for a snooze; there a wicked
little ass was blinking at the greens; here squatted a damsel in gold
kerchief, garnet bodice, and beryl skirt, weighing out fresh figs;
there sat a cobbler pegging away at his stall, his patrons waiting
with bare feet while he mended their shoes; stands of cheeses, coops
of chickens, children sleeping among the sacks of grain, a boy waving
a rod on which was strung a gorgeous assortment of garters; loitering
soldiers, limping beggars, bargaining ladies attended by their maids,
all gave notes to the harmony. Yet with all that trampling, small
weeds were growing green amid the slippery stones that pave the
square.
The Leon peasantry is said to be the finest in all Spain, and surely
no concourse of people could have been more honest, courteous, and
dignified than this. The women wore ornamented wallets beneath the
skirt, and warned us gravely against carrying money in exposed
pockets; but we moved freely among the press with notebook and kodak,
always the centre of curious groups, and our purses were not touched.
Indeed we found it difficult to spend even a _peseta_, so modest were
the prices. For as large a jar as our little squire could well carry
we paid the value of three cents. The men often rebuked the children
for staring and questioning, but stood themselves at gaze, and asked
us frankly what we were about. When we replied that we had never seen
so beautiful a market, and were taking notes and photographs that we
might not forget, the peasants smilingly passed the word from one side
of the _plaza_ to the other, and all, even to the chief of police, who
was strutting about waving an unnecessary staff, were eager to offer
information and to point out picturesque subjects.
But the morning was slipping away, and we had almost forgotten the
oracle of a Spanish gentleman in Palencia: "Leon has three sights for
the visitor, and only three--the Cathedral, San Isidoro, and San
Marcos." We proceeded to take these illustrious churches in order. The
Leon Cathedral, closely analogous to the Gothic masterpieces of
northern France, is far beyond all poor praises of mine. Now in
process of repair and stripped of the garish shrines of modern
worship, it may be enjoyed purely as architecture--a temple of high
beauty. Let artists tell of its towers and finials, flying buttresses,
gables, cornices, galleries, piers, facades. Yet one need not be an
artist to delight in the glow of its great rose windows, or to spend
fascinated hours poring over the chiselled story book of portals,
stalls, and cloisters. Such inimitable glass, burning still with the
fervors of the mediaeval faith! And such a world of divinity and
humanity, even down to childish mischief, in those multitudinous
carvings! The Passion scenes are repeated over and over, creation and
judgment are there, the life, death, and ascension of the Virgin, hero
legends, animal fables, and folk-lore. Gothic energy is abundantly
manifest. St. George smites the dragon, St. Michael tramples the
devil, Samson splits the lion's jaws, and Santiago, carved in ebony on
a door in the mellow-hued old cloisters, is riding down the Moors
with such contagious fury that the very tail of his horse is
twisted into a ferocious quirk. On angel-guarded tombs pictures of
ancient battle, murder, vengeance, are graven in the long-remembering
stone. But marble birds peck at the marble fruit, the ivory peasant
drives his pigs, the alabaster shepherd watches his flock, the lad
leads his donkey, the monk feeds the poor at the abbey gates, and
plump stone priests, stowed away in shadowy niches, make merry over
the wine.
[Illustration: TOLEDO CATHEDRAL. DOOR OF LIONS]
If we had revelled overmuch in the art values of the cathedral, San
Isidoro administered a prompt corrective. This Romanesque church,
dating from the beginning of the eleventh century and a forerunner of
the Escorial in that it was founded by the first Fernando of Castile
as a royal mausoleum, is excessively holy. Not merely are the bones of
the patron saint kept on the high altar, but the Host is on constant
exhibition there. Unaware of these especial sanctities, we were
quietly walking toward the choir, when an angry clamor from behind
caused us to turn, and there, stretching their heads out over the
railing of an upper gallery, was a line of furious priests. In vain
the sacristan strove to excuse us, "foreigners and ladies," who did
not know that we were expected to fall upon our knees on first
entering the door. We had been guilty of no irreverence beyond this
omission, and even under the hail of priestly wrath did our best to
withdraw correctly without turning our backs to the altar. But nothing
would appease that scandalized row of gargoyles, whose violent
rudeness seemed to us the greater desecration. Thus it was that we did
not enter the frescoed chambers of the actual Panteon, said to be
imposing yet, although the royal tombs were broken up by the French
in 1808. Very wrong in the French, but unless the manners of San
Isidoro's bodyguard have degenerated, the soldiers of Napoleon may
have had their provocation.
It was now high noon, and the market-place had poured all its peasants
out upon the streets. Groups of them were lying at luncheon under the
trees, passing the pigskin bottle of wine from mouth to mouth. Beggars
were standing by and blessing them in return for scraps of the coarse
and scanty fare. "May God repay! May the saints prosper thy harvest!"
A woman riding home, sitting erect on the red-striped donkey-bag,
handed a plum to her husband, who trudged beside her in gray linen
trunks and green velveteen waistcoat, with a white square of cloth
set, for ornament, into the middle of the back. He divided the fruit
with a pleading cripple, who called after them as devoutly as a man
with half a plum in his cheek well could, "May the Blessed Virgin ride
forth with you and gladden all your way!"
We had, because of the increasing heat, conjured up a carriage, a
species of invalid stage-coach, and were therefore the envy of little
schoolboys in blue pinafores. Their straw satchels bobbed on their
backs as they gave chase to our clattering ark and clung to steps and
door. This mode of locomotion did not save us time, for our coachman
had domestic cares on his mind and drew up to bargain for a chicken,
which finally mounted with a squall to the box seat; but in due
Spanish season we stopped before the plateresque facade of San Marcos.
This is a still unfinished convent, rich in artistic beauties and
historic memories. Here, for instance, is a marvellously human head
of St. Francis, a triumph of the polychrome sculpture, and here is the
little cell where the poet Quevedo, "colossal genius of satire," was
imprisoned for over three years by Philip IV, the patron of Velazquez.
It is not so easy to cage a mocking-bird, though the satire-pencilled
walls have been well whitewashed.
But San Marcos was originally a hospital for pilgrims on the road to
Compostela, and conch shells are the central ornamentation of arch and
vault and frieze. We accepted the rebuke; we would loiter no more.
Early that afternoon we took train for Coruna, after which some agency
other than steam must transport us to the mediaeval city of St. James.