When we had visited this church there remained only the house of the
painter known as El Greco, for whom we had formed such a distaste,
because of the long features of the faces in his pictures, that our
guide could hardly persuade us his house was worth seeing. Now I am glad
he prevailed with us, for we have since come to find a peculiar charm
in these long features and the characteristic coloring of El Greco’s
pictures. The little house full of memorials and the little garden full
of flowers, which ought to have been all forget-me-nots, were entirely
delightful. As every one but I knew, and even I now know, he was born a
Greek with the name of Theotocopuli, and studied tinder Titian till he
found his account in a manner of his own, making long noses and long
chins and high narrow foreheads in ashen gray, and at last went mad in
the excess of his manner. The house has been restored by the Marquis de
la Vega, according to his notion of an old Spanish house, and has the
pleasantest small _patio_ in the world, looked down into from a carved
wooden gallery, with a pavement of red tiles interset with Moorish tiles
of divers colors. There are interesting pictures everywhere, and on one
wall the certificate of the owner’s membership in the Hispanic Society
of America, which made me feel at home because it was signed with the
name of an American friend of mine, who is repressed by prosperity from
being known as a poet and one of the first Spanish scholars of any time.
The whole place is endearingly homelike and so genuinely hospitable that
we almost sat down to luncheon in the kitchen with the young Spanish
king who had lunched with the Marquis there a few weeks before. There
was a veranda outside where we could linger till the rain held up,
and look into the garden where the flowers ought to have been
forget-me-nots, but were as usual mostly marigolds and zinnias. They
crowded round tile-edged pools, and other flowers bloomed in pots on the
coping of the garden-seats built up of thin tiles carved on their edges
to an inward curve. It is strongly believed that there are several
stories under the house, and the Marquis is going some day to dig them
up or out to the last one where the original Jewish owner of the house
is supposed to have hid his treasure. In the mean time we could look
across the low wall that belted the garden in, to a vacant ground a
little way off where some boys were playing with a wagon they had
made. They had made it out of an oblong box, with wheels so rudely and
imperfectly rounded, that they wabbled fearfully and at times gave way
under the body; just as they did with the wagons that the boys I knew
seventy years ago used to make.
I became so engrossed in the spectacle, so essentially a part of the
drama, that I did not make due account of some particulars of the
subterranean six stories of El Greco’s house. There must have been other
things worth seeing in Toledo, thousands of others, and some others we
saw, but most we missed, and many I do not remember. It was now coming
the hour to leave Toledo, and we drove back to our enchanted castle for
our bill, and for the omnibus to the station. I thought for some time
that there was no charge for the fire, or even the smoke we had the
night before, but my eyes were holden from the item which I found later,
by seeing myself addressed as Milor. I had never been addressed as
a lord in any bill before, but I reflected that in the proud old
metropolis of the Goths I could not be saluted as less, and I gladly
paid the bill, which observed a golden mean between cheapness and
dearness, and we parted good friends with our host, and better with
our guide, who at the last brought out an English book, given him by an
English friend, about the English cathedrals. He was fine, and I could
not wish any future traveler kinder fortune than to have his guidance
in Toledo. Some day I am going back to profit more fully by it, and
to repay him the various fees which he disbursed for me to different
doorkeepers and custodians and which I forgot at parting and he was too
delicate to remind me of.
When all leaves were taken and we were bowed out and away our horses,
covered with bells, burst with the omnibus through a solid mass of
beggars come to give us a last chance of meriting heaven by charity
to them, and dashed down the hill to the station. There we sat a long
half-hour in the wet evening air, wondering how we had been spared
seeing those wretches trampled under our horses’ feet, or how the long
train of goats climbing to the city to be milked escaped our wheels. But
as we were guiltless of inflicting either disaster, we could watch
with a good conscience the quiescent industry of some laborers in the
brickyard beyond the track. Slowly and more slowly they worked,
wearily, apathetically, fetching, carrying, in their divided skirts of
cross-barred stuff of a rich Velasquez dirt color. One was especially
worthy of admiration from his wide-brimmed black hat and his thoughtful
indifference to his task, which was stacking up a sort of bundles of
long grass; but I dare say he knew what it all meant. Throughout I
was tormented by question of the precise co-racial quality of some
English-speaking folk who had come to share our bone-breaking return to
Madrid in the train so deliberately waiting there to begin afflicting
us. English English they certainly were not; American English as
little. If they were Australian English, why should not it have been a
convention of polite travel for them to come up and say so, and save us
that torment of curiosity? But perhaps they were not Australians.