Ximenes, to form, from their numbers at least, a very important part.
His boast of being a son of the Alhambra is not unfounded. His family has
inhabited the fortress ever since the time of the Conquest, handing down
an hereditary poverty from father to son; not one of them having ever been
known to be worth a _maravedi_. His father, by trade a ribbon-weaver, and
who succeeded the historical tailor as the head of the family, is now near
seventy years of age, and lives in a hovel of reeds and plaster, built
by his own hands, just above the iron gate. The furniture consists of a
crazy bed, a table, and two or three chairs; a wooden chest, containing,
besides his scanty clothing, the "archives of the family." These are
nothing more nor less than the papers of various lawsuits sustained
by different generations; by which it would seem that, with all their
apparent carelessness and good-humour, they are a litigious brood. Most of
the suits have been brought against gossiping neighbours for questioning
the purity of their blood, and denying their being _Christianos viejos_,
_i.e._ old Christians, without Jewish or Moorish taint. In fact, I doubt
whether this jealousy about their blood has not kept them so poor in
purse: spending all their earnings on _escribanos_ and _alguazils_. The
pride of the hovel is an escutcheon suspended against the wall, in which
are emblazoned quarterings of the arms of the Marquis of Caiesedo, and of
various other noble houses, with which this poverty-stricken brood claim
affinity.
[Illustration]
As to Mateo himself, who is now about thirty-five years of age, he has
done his utmost to perpetuate his line and continue the poverty of the
family, having a wife and a numerous progeny, who inhabit an almost
dismantled hovel in the hamlet. How they manage to subsist, He only who
sees into all mysteries can tell; the subsistence of a Spanish family of
the kind is always a riddle to me; yet they do subsist, and what is more,
appear to enjoy their existence. The wife takes her holiday stroll on the
Paseo of Granada, with a child in her arms and half a dozen at her heels;
and the eldest daughter, now verging into womanhood, dresses her hair with
flowers, and dances gaily to the castanets.
[Illustration]
There are two classes of people to whom life seems one long holiday,--the
very rich and the very poor; one, because they need do nothing; the other,
because they have nothing to do; but there are none who understand the art
of doing nothing and living upon nothing, better than the poor classes of
Spain. Climate does one half, and temperament the rest. Give a Spaniard
the shade in summer and the sun in winter, a little bread, garlic, oil,
and _garbances_, an old brown cloak and a guitar, and let the world roll
on as it pleases. Talk of poverty! with him it has no disgrace. It sits
upon him with a grandiose style, like his ragged cloak. He is a _hidalgo_,
even when in rags.
The "sons of the Alhambra" are an eminent illustration of this practical
philosophy. As the Moors imagined that the celestial paradise hung over
this favoured spot, so I am inclined at times to fancy that a gleam of
the golden age still lingers about this ragged community. They possess
nothing, they do nothing, they care for nothing. Yet, though apparently
idle all the week, they are as observant of all holy days and saints' days
as the most laborious artisan. They attend all _fêtes_ and dancings in
Granada and its vicinity, light bonfires on the hills on St. John's eve,
and dance away the moonlight nights on the harvest-home of a small field
within the precincts of the fortress, which yield a few bushels of wheat.
Before concluding these remarks, I must mention one of the amusements of
the place, which has particularly struck me. I had repeatedly observed a
long lean fellow perched on the top of one of the towers, manœuvring
two or three fishing-rods, as though he were angling for the stars. I
was for some time perplexed by the evolutions of this aërial fisherman,
and my perplexity increased on observing others employed in like manner
on different parts of the battlements and bastions; it was not until I
consulted Mateo Ximenes that I solved the mystery.
It seems that the pure and airy situation of this fortress has rendered
it, like the castle of Macbeth, a prolific breeding-place for swallows
and martlets, who sport about its towers in myriads, with the holiday
glee of urchins just let loose from school. To entrap these birds in
their giddy circlings, with hooks baited with flies, is one of the
favourite amusements of the ragged "sons of the Alhambra," who, with the
good-for-nothing ingenuity of arrant idlers, have thus invented the art
of angling in the sky.
[Illustration]
THE HALL OF AMBASSADORS
In one of my visits to the old Moorish chamber where the good Tia Antonia
cooks her dinner and receives her company, I observed a mysterious
door in one corner, leading apparently into the ancient part of the
edifice. My curiosity being aroused, I opened it, and found myself in
a narrow, blind corridor, groping along which I came to the head of a
dark winding staircase, leading down an angle of the tower of Comares.
Down this staircase I descended darkling, guiding myself by the wall
until I came to a small door at the bottom, throwing which open, I was
suddenly dazzled by emerging into the brilliant antechamber of the Hall
of Ambassadors; with the fountain of the court of the Alberca sparkling
before me. The antechamber is separated with the court by an elegant
gallery, supported by slender columns with spandrels of openwork in the
Morisco style. At each end of the antechamber are alcoves, and its ceiling
is richly stuccoed and painted. Passing through a magnificent portal, I
found myself in the far-famed Hall of Ambassadors, the audience chamber
of the Moslem monarchs. It is said to be thirty-seven feet square, and
sixty feet high; occupies the whole interior of the Tower of Comares; and
still bears the traces of past magnificence. The walls are beautifully
stuccoed and decorated with Morisco fancifulness; the lofty ceiling was
originally of the same favourite material, with the usual frostwork
and pensile ornaments or stalactites; which, with the embellishments
of vivid colouring and gilding, must have been gorgeous in the extreme.
Unfortunately it gave way during an earthquake, and brought down with it
an immense arch which traversed the hall. It was replaced by the present
vault or dome of larch or cedar, with intersecting ribs, the whole
curiously wrought and richly coloured; still Oriental in its character,
reminding one of "those ceilings of cedar and vermilion that we read of
in the Prophets and the _Arabian Nights_."[2]
From the great height of the vault above the windows, the upper part of
the hall is almost lost in obscurity; yet there is a magnificence as well
as solemnity in the gloom, as through it we have gleams of rich gilding
and the brilliant tints of the Moorish pencil.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
The royal throne was placed opposite the entrance in a recess, which still
bears an inscription intimating that Yusef I. (the monarch who completed
the Alhambra) made this the throne of his empire. Everything in this noble
hall seems to have been calculated to surround the throne with impressive
dignity and splendour; there was none of the elegant voluptuousness which
reigns in other parts of the palace. The tower is of massive strength,
domineering over the whole edifice and overhanging the steep hillside. On
three sides of the Hall of Ambassadors are windows cut through the immense
thickness of the walls and commanding extensive prospects. The balcony
of the central window especially looks down upon the verdant valley
of the Darro, with its walks, its groves, and gardens. To the left it
enjoys a distant prospect of the Vega; while directly in front rises the
rival height of the Albaycin, with its medley of streets, and terraces,
and gardens, and once crowned by a fortress that vied in power with the
Alhambra. "Ill fated the man who lost all this!" exclaimed Charles V., as
he looked forth from this window upon the enchanting scenery it commands.
[Illustration]
The balcony of the window where this royal exclamation was made, has of
late become one of my favourite resorts. I have just been seated there,
enjoying the close of a brilliant long day. The sun, as he sank behind
the purple mountains of Alhama, sent a stream of effulgence up the valley
of the Darro, that spread a melancholy pomp over the ruddy towers of the
Alhambra; while the Vega, covered with a slight sultry vapour that caught
the setting ray, seemed spread out in the distance like a golden sea.
Not a breath of air disturbed the stillness of the hour, and though the
faint sound of music and merriment now and then rose from the gardens of
the Darro, it but rendered more impressive the monumental silence of the
pile which overshadowed me. It was one of those hours and scenes in which
memory asserts an almost magical power: and, like the evening sun beaming
on these mouldering towers, sends back her retrospective rays to light up
the glories of the past.
[Illustration: Mountains of Alhambra.]
As I sat watching the effect of the declining daylight upon this Moorish
pile, I was led into a consideration of the light, elegant, and voluptuous
character prevalent throughout its internal architecture, and to contrast
it with the grand but gloomy solemnity of the Gothic edifices reared by
the Spanish conquerors. The very architecture thus bespeaks the opposite
and irreconcilable natures of the two warlike people who so long battled
here for the mastery of the Peninsula. By degrees I fell into a course
of musing upon the singular fortunes of the Arabian or Morisco-Spaniards,
whose whole existence is as a tale that is told, and certainly forms one
of the most anomalous yet splendid episodes in history. Potent and durable
as was their dominion, we scarcely know how to call them. They were a
nation without a legitimate country or name. A remote wave of the great
Arabian inundation, cast upon the shores of Europe, they seem to have all
the impetus of the first rush of the torrent. Their career of conquest,
from the rock of Gibraltar to the cliffs of the Pyrenees, was as rapid and
brilliant as the Moslem victories of Syria and Egypt. Nay, had they not
been checked on the plains of Tours, all France, all Europe, might have
been overrun with the same facility as the empires of the East, and the
Crescent at this day have glittered on the fanes of Paris and London.
[Illustration: _Tomb of St. Ferdinand, Seville._]
[Illustration]
Repelled within the limits of the Pyrenees, the mixed hordes of Asia and
Africa, that formed this great irruption, gave up the Moslem principle
of conquest, and sought to establish in Spain a peaceful and permanent
dominion. As conquerors, their heroism was only equalled by their
moderation; and in both, for a time, they excelled the nations with whom
they contended. Severed from their native homes, they loved the land given
them as they supposed by Allah, and strove to embellish it with everything
that could administer to the happiness of man. Laying the foundations of
their power in a system of wise and equitable laws, diligently cultivating
the arts and sciences, and promoting agriculture, manufactures, and
commerce, they gradually formed an empire unrivalled for its prosperity
by any of the empires of Christendom; and diligently drawing round them
the graces and refinements which marked the Arabian empire in the East, at
the time of its greatest civilisation, they diffused the light of Oriental
knowledge through the western regions of benighted Europe.
The cities of Arabian Spain became the resort of Christian artisans,
to instruct themselves in the useful arts. The universities of Toledo,
Cordova, Seville, and Granada were sought by the pale student from other
lands to acquaint himself with the sciences of the Arabs and the treasured
lore of antiquity; the lovers of the gay science resorted to Cordova and
Granada, to imbibe the poetry and music of the East; and the steel-clad
warriors of the North hastened thither to accomplish themselves in the
graceful exercises and courteous usages of chivalry.
[Illustration: _Court of Mosque, Cordova._]
If the Moslem monuments in Spain, if the Mosque of Cordova, the Alcazar
of Seville, and the Alhambra of Granada, still bear inscriptions fondly
boasting of the power and permanency of their dominion, can the boast
be derided as arrogant and vain? Generation after generation, century
after century, passed away, and still they maintained possession of the
land. A period elapsed longer than that which has passed since England
was subjugated by the Norman Conqueror, and the descendants of Musa and
Taric might as little anticipate being driven into exile across the same
straits, traversed by their triumphant ancestors, as the descendants of
Rollo and William, and their veteran peers, may dream of being driven back
to the shores of Normandy.
With all this, however, the Moslem empire in Spain was but a brilliant
exotic, that took no permanent root in the soil it embellished. Severed
from all their neighbours in the West by impassable barriers of faith and
manners, and separated by seas and deserts from their kindred of the East,
the Morisco-Spaniards were an isolated people. Their whole existence was
a prolonged, though gallant and chivalric struggle for a foothold in a
usurped land.
[Illustration: _Garden of Alcazar, Seville._]
They were the outposts and frontiers of Islamism. The Peninsula was the
great battle-ground where the Gothic conquerors of the north and the
Moslem conquerors of the East met and strove for mastery; and the fiery
courage of the Arab was at length subdued by the obstinate and persevering
valour of the Goth.
Never was the annihilation of a people more complete than that of
the Morisco-Spaniards. Where are they? Ask the shores of Barbary and
its desert places. The exiled remnant of their once powerful empire
disappeared among the barbarians of Africa, and ceased to be a nation.
They have not even left a distinct name behind them, though for nearly
eight centuries they were a distinct people. The home of their adoption,
and of their occupation for ages, refuses to acknowledge them, except as
invaders and usurpers. A few broken monuments are all that remain to bear
witness to their power and dominion, as solitary rocks, left far in the
interior, bear testimony to the extent of some vast inundation. Such is
the Alhambra;--a Moslem pile in the midst of a Christian land; an Oriental
palace amidst the Gothic edifices of the West; an elegant memento of a
brave, intelligent, and graceful people, who conquered, ruled, flourished,
and passed away.
[Illustration: _Cadiz._]
FOOTNOTE:
[2] Urquhart's _Pillars of Hercules_.
[Illustration]
THE MYSTERIOUS CHAMBERS
As I was rambling one day about the Moorish halls, my attention was, for
the first time, attracted to a door in a remote gallery, communicating
apparently with some part of the Alhambra which I had not yet explored. I
attempted to open it, but it was locked. I knocked, but no one answered,
and the sound seemed to reverberate through empty chambers. Here then was
a mystery. Here was the haunted wing of the castle. How was I to get at
the dark secrets here shut up from the public eye? Should I come privately
at night with lamp and sword, according to the prying custom of heroes of
romance; or should I endeavour to draw the secret from Pépe the stuttering
gardener; or the ingenuous Dolores, or the loquacious Mateo? Or should
I go frankly and openly to Dame Antonia the chatelaine, and ask her all
about it? I chose the latter course, as being the simplest though the
least romantic; and found, somewhat to my disappointment, that there was
no mystery in the case. I was welcome to explore the apartment, and there
was the key.
[Illustration]
Thus provided, I returned forthwith to the door. It opened, as I had
surmised, to a range of vacant chambers; but they were quite different
from the rest of the palace. The architecture, though rich and antiquated,
was European. There was nothing Moorish about it. The first two rooms were
lofty; the ceilings, broken in many places, were of cedar, deeply panelled
and skilfully carved with fruits and flowers, intermingled with grotesque
masks or faces.
The walls had evidently in ancient times been hung with damask; but now
were naked, and scrawled over by that class of aspiring travellers who
defile noble monuments with their worthless names. The windows, dismantled
and open to wind and weather, looked out into a charming little secluded
garden, where an alabaster fountain sparkled among roses and myrtles,
and was surrounded by orange and citron trees, some of which flung their
branches into the chambers. Beyond these rooms were two saloons, longer
but less lofty, looking also into the garden. In the compartments of
the panelled ceilings were baskets of fruit and garlands of flowers,
painted by no mean hand, and in tolerable preservation. The walls also
had been painted in fresco in the Italian style, but the paintings were
nearly obliterated; the windows were in the same shattered state with
those of the other chambers. This fanciful suite of rooms terminated in
an open gallery with balustrades, running at right angles along another
side of the garden. The whole apartment, so delicate and elegant in its
decorations, so choice and sequestered in its situation along this retired
little garden, and so different in architecture from the neighbouring
halls, awakened an interest in its history. I found on inquiry that it was
an apartment fitted up by Italian artists in the early part of the last
century, at the time when Philip V. and his second wife, the beautiful
Elizabetta of Farnese, daughter of the Duke of Parma, were expected at the
Alhambra. It was destined for the queen and the ladies of her train. One
of the loftiest chambers had been her sleeping-room. A narrow staircase,
now walled up, led up to a delightful belvidere, originally a mirador of
the Moorish sultanas, communicating with the harem; but which was fitted
up as a boudoir for the fair Elizabetta, and still retains the name of
_el tocador de la Reyna_, or the queen's toilette.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: _Garden of Lindaraxa_]
[Illustration: _Fountain of Lindaraxa._]
One window of the royal sleeping-room commanded a prospect of the
Generalife and its embowered terraces; another looked out into the
little secluded garden I have mentioned, which was decidedly Moorish
in its character, and also had its history. It was in fact the garden
of Lindaraxa, so often mentioned in descriptions of the Alhambra, but
who this Lindaraxa was I had never heard explained. A little research
gave me the few particulars known about her. She was a Moorish beauty
who flourished in the court of Muhamed the Left-Handed, and was the
daughter of his loyal adherent, the _alcayde_ of Malaga, who sheltered
him in his city when driven from the throne. On regaining his crown, the
_alcayde_ was rewarded for his fidelity. His daughter had her apartment
in the Alhambra, and was given by the king in marriage to Nasar, a young
Cetimerien prince descended from Aben Hud the Just. Their espousals were
doubtless celebrated in the royal palace and their honeymoon may have
passed among these very bowers.[3]
Four centuries had elapsed since the fair Lindaraxa passed away, yet
how much of the fragile beauty of the scenes she inhabited remained! The
garden still bloomed in which she delighted; the fountain still presented
the crystal mirror in which her charms may once have been reflected;
the alabaster, it is true, had lost its whiteness; the basin beneath,
overrun with weeds, had become the lurking-place of the lizard, but there
was something in the very decay that enhanced the interest of the scene,
speaking as it did of that mutability, the irrevocable lot of man and all
his works.
The desolation too of these chambers, once the abode of the proud and
elegant Elizabetta, had a more touching charm for me than if I had beheld
them in their pristine splendour, glittering with the pageantry of a
court.
When I returned to my quarters, in the governor's apartment, everything
seemed tame and commonplace after the poetic region I had left. The
thought suggested itself: Why could I not change my quarters to these
vacant chambers? that would indeed be living in the Alhambra, surrounded
by its gardens and fountains, as in the time of the Moorish sovereigns. I
proposed the change to Dame Antonia and her family, and it occasioned vast
surprise. They could not conceive any rational inducement for the choice
of an apartment so forlorn, remote, and solitary. Dolores exclaimed at
its frightful loneliness; nothing but bats and owls flitting about,--and
then a fox and wildcat, kept in the vaults of the neighbouring baths,
roamed about at night. The good Tia had more reasonable objections. The
neighbourhood was infested by vagrants: gipsies swarmed in the caverns
of the adjacent hills; the palace was ruinous and easy to be entered in
many places; the rumour of a stranger quartered alone in one of the remote
and ruined apartments, out of the hearing of the rest of the inhabitants,
might tempt unwelcome visitors in the night, especially as foreigners were
always supposed to be well stocked with money. I was not to be diverted
from my humour, however, and my will was law with these good people. So,
calling in the assistance of a carpenter, and the ever officious Mateo
Ximenes, the doors and windows were soon placed in a state of tolerable
security, and the sleeping-room of the stately Elizabetta prepared for
my reception. Mateo kindly volunteered as a body-guard to sleep in my
antechamber; but I did not think it worth while to put his valour to the
proof.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: _Prospect from the Hall of Ambassadors._]
With all the hardihood I had assumed and all the precautions I had taken,
I must confess the first night passed in these quarters was inexpressibly
dreary. I do not think it was so much the apprehension of dangers from
without that affected me, as the character of the place itself, with
all its strange associations: the deeds of violence committed there; the
tragical ends of many of those who had once reigned there in splendour. As
I passed beneath the fated halls of the tower of Comares on the way to my
chamber, I called to mind a quotation that used to thrill me in the days
of boyhood:
"Fate sits on these dark battlements and frowns;
And, as the portal opens to receive me,
A voice in sullen echoes through the courts
Tells of a nameless deed!"
The whole family escorted me to my chamber, and took leave of me as of one
engaged in a perilous enterprise; and when I heard their retreating steps
die away along the waste antechambers and echoing galleries, and turned
the key of my door, I was reminded of those hobgoblin stories, where the
hero is left to accomplish the adventure of an enchanted house.
Even the thoughts of the fair Elizabetta and the beauties of her court,
who had once graced these chambers, now, by a perversion of fancy, added
to the gloom. Here was the scene of their transient gaiety and loveliness;
here were the very traces of their elegance and enjoyment; but what and
where were they? Dust and ashes! tenants of the tomb! phantoms of the
memory!