Aubrey F. G. Bell

“ Summer is the great weeder in Portugal: it robs both roofs and cobbled squares of their pleasant green. Alfama from a distance has the look of a tumble-down fishing-village above the Tagus. At close quarters it is found to be an intricate maze of streets so narrow that they never let in the sun, and a man’s stretched-out arms touch either wall, and so steep that they are built often in the form of stairs. ”

“ Then the mist of cloud melts away, and, one by one, the snow summits appear, till the whole immense range stands bare, looking incredibly high in a heaven of clear, faint green. It is a sight to make men hold their breath. The ship, night’s shadows scarce driven from her deck, passes slowly, almost noiselessly through the water as if she, too, understood that here is some enchanted country. The view of the Sierra Nevada from Granada, lovely as it is, gives no hint of a sight so incomparable as this. The range is of such vast length, the snow is so deep and soft. ”

“ But in its position on the sea, its lines of low houses washed in many light hues, its inner harbour, like some still sky-reflecting lagoon, its markets and the shifting scenes that enliven its streets and praças, it is one of the most charming of Portugal’s towns, and gives the traveller one of those lively impressions of contrast in which the whole land of Portugal abounds. Surely no other combines in so small a space so many varieties of natural scenery and of architecture. ”

“ The stars are strangely bright, Sirius burns large and intense, and Orion nightly stalks the sky in all his glory till the sun catches him in mid-heaven. The sea is alive with phosphorus, and far out are seen the lights of fishing-boats, while on land the glow-worms are almost as many as the stars. The orange and purple sunrises and sunsets of pink and amethyst are very lovely, and the sails of the fishing-boats continue white, and the sea retains its blue for some time after the light of the after-glow is gone. ”

“ The character of a Portuguese is much more rarely than that of a Spaniard all of one piece. The Spaniard’s, clear-cut and angular, admits less readily of contrasts and contradictions, whereas the very vagueness of the Portuguese enables it to combine opposing elements. Certainly, at least, there would seem to be many puzzling inconsistencies in the character of the Portuguese people. For they are like a quiet stream with sudden falls. They are fatalists, but with moments of heroic rebellion and effort, apathetic, with bursts of energy in private and revolution in public life ”

“ After the treeless, unsheltered mountains and plains, and the compact villages of Castille or Navarre, the villages of the Basque country, set in green, and, to quote the phrase of a Spanish novelist, “all in the peace of prayer,” are a delightful contrast. The sky has no longer the harsh intensity of the Castilian, and everywhere is a softness of outlines; everywhere, too, is green—the green of chestnut and oak, of maize and trefoil, meadow and cider-orchard. ”

“ There comes a time, about the end of July, when Lisbon is like Oxford in vacation. The glory is departed, and here there is no secondary reflected splendour of besundayed scouts to take its place. The smart carriages and motor-cars are few and far between, the steady flow of the well-dressed and fashionable passing up and down the Rua do Carmo, the Chiado, the Rua Nova de Almada, the Rua de S. Nicolau, and the Rua do Oiro, dries up like the summer streams. ”

“ In Spain the sharpness of contrasts precludes any feeling of weariness or satiety. There are regions of luxuriant growth and African sun bounded by mountains of eternal snow. Through the plain a river glides among orange groves and grey olives; in the shaded patios of the city silver fountains keep the air cool and fresh, and on the coldest night in winter the temperature is still some degrees above the freezing-point. Yet here, in the most fiery heat of summer, we may lift up our eyes to the hills and look on the snowy sierra against the deep blue of the sky ”

“ It is in the strip of country between Tagus and Mondego that Portugal has massed her most famous and beautiful buildings, and the hurried traveller can thus within a space of about a hundred miles see Belem and Cintra and Mafra, Alcobaça, Batalha, and Thomar, Santarem, Leiria and Coimbra. But Portugal possesses a hundred other towns and towers so splendidly situated as to need little art for their beauty’s heightening. ”

“ The sea beyond is silver, and on the other side every wrinkle in the rocks of the grey mountains is distinctly visible. There is no sound but the occasional voices of children, the clink and clang of a forge-hammer, the crowing of a cock, or a faint crystal crash of waves breaking; but from time to time there is a dry rumour of wheels, and the cry of a man to his mule as he passes down the road in his cart. Wrapped in their plaids against the keen morning air, the peasants pass leisurely in carts and on mules to work in the fields until the evening. ”

“ He would be a very unreasonable critic, or a very ignorant party politician, who should expect the Republic to transform the financial situation inherited from the Monarchy from a desert into a garden of roses at the mere wave of a magic wand. What is expected of any Government worthy of the name is that it should be a firm and stable Government, that it should maintain order, promote private initiative and wealth, and inspire confidence by giving the country not doses of mystification and paper money, but a straightforward account of the state of its finances. ”

“ Seville is lovely in winter, when the sky is a cold, serene blue, and night by night{133} the stars glint and glitter; lovely in spring, when everywhere, in roof and patio and garden, is a triumph of green, when the oranges still hang on the orange-trees in flower—like yellow crocuses peering from the snow—and the corn is already high in the olives beyond the river ”

“ And since most other parties are engaged in importing high-sounding programmes from abroad, this new party might well call itself the Portuguese Party, and its newspaper the Portuguese People. The peasants of Portugal, witty, intelligent, eager to learn, will respond to words that mean something to their daily lives, and are not merely pompous polysyllables and the beating of the big political drum. The future of Portugal lies with them, and the party which succeeds in improving the people’s health in body and soul will have paved the way for better times. ”

“ Yet some welcome patches of colour are to be found, if it is only a line of chicory or of huge purple thistles along a stubble-field, or a blue-bloused peasant jogging down the dusty road on a mule with crimson trappings. And on the threshing-floors around the villages, where work is carried on far into the night, often by lightning flash, the white shirts and blue blouses of the men, and the pink and red dresses and long white headkerchiefs of the women form a picturesque and beautiful scene through the clouds of flying chaff and ruddy golden grain falling in heavier, more compact masses. ”

“ It is the steep right bank of the Douro which has provided Oporto with its most curious and conservative quarters. There is here little scope for change. The narrow streets descend so sheerly that they have become in places mere flights of stone steps, and the coal smoke of Oporto gives them a coat of blackness. It is the most northern in look of all southern cities. If you were to transport a part of the City or some town of the North of England to the radiant sunshine and crushing heat of Portugal, you might have a like effect. ”

“ We see the hills and more hills veiled in mist, the flocks of white and black sheep, the mills, the white smoke rising from the houses among the fig-trees, the distant blue mountains tipped with the first snows, a flight of doves against green fields above the tower of a Pazo, a stony bridle-path with its bramble hedges and great pools of water at which oxen drink, the peasants arriving to pay their tribute of corn at the Palacio, the shepherds coming down from the hills wearing their capes of reeds. ”

“ It would almost seem as if there were two writers to every reader in Portugal. “Every passing season inundates the bookshops with a flood of brochures in verse and prose, the proof of an exaggerated output of books. It seems as if even the illiterates must be authors” (Diario de Noticias, 6th April, 1914) . What most amazes the foreigner is to see the Lisbon bookshops parade a crowd of foreign books, while those in Portuguese are often tucked away in some obscure corner. Modern Portuguese literature is, unhappily, like finance and politics, largely of artificial growth, imported from abroad. ”

“ Sometimes the country is all grey-pinched and icy, and but a little further (as near snow-white Arcos de la Frontera) are great hedges of shrubs and aloes and brambles and cactus, with a sound of bees, and hovering white and yellow butterflies, and wide spaces of tall branched flowers of asphodel and grey scented rosemary. Or in a corner of windswept hills you may find a sheltered huerta with thick hedge of tall black cypresses; the oranges crowd the trees with gold, and the almond-trees shed across the dusty road a thick carpet of broken flowers, pink and white. ”

“ Everywhere is decay, and the trace of vanished splendour. So these old ruined hidalgos live out their grey, monotonous lives in some ancient town or village of Castille, amid the immense plains with “distances of radiant sky and faint blue lines of mountains.” The blue smoke rises from scented fires of rosemary, and, as the bells ring to Matins, the doves swerve and circle, the grey doves sweep slowly across the sky perpetually blue. And night and day the doors of the houses are kept continually closed, with a deserted air beneath the broad coats-of-arms carved in stone. ”

“ Many priests were liberal in politics, and only a few of them—in some remote parts of the country—were fanatics. The mass of the people is equally unfanatic. But only a section of the population of a single city—Lisbon—is non-Catholic. Indeed, according to one computation, there are only six thousand [64] non-Catholics in Portugal, or one in every thousand inhabitants. To the mass of the people religion is a pleasant show, and a refuge from the grinding reality of their lives, the Church ceremonies, the processions and pilgrimages are the notes of holiday and gaiety in the villages. ”

“ It is difficult to believe that Toledo has at all changed since the Cid’s horse miraculously stayed before the burning light hidden in the wall of one of its streets, and the water-carriers to-day go leisurely down to the river, their donkeys’ panniers laden with earthen jars, as when Cervantes wrote “La Ilustre Fregona.” And, indeed, Spanish cities are little liable to change. The steep uneven ways of Toledo and Salamanca and Segovia scorn modern traffic. The passing of a carriage is possible in the main streets, but is a rare event that rattles and reverberates along the walls. ”

“ But indeed the idea of Spain permanently conquering Portugal is as far removed from practical politics as the idea cherished by not a few Portuguese—of Portugal conquering Spain. Iberian unity may be a pleasant dream, but when a country has won for itself so definite and distinguished a position as Portugal in history, literature and language, it is too late for it to coalesce with another nation, unless as one of a federation of free States, the Basque Provinces and Asturias, Portugal and Galicia, Catalonia, Aragon, Valencia, Andalucía, Castille. ”

“ In the lovely gardens of the Alcázar the sun draws a deliciously mingled scent from the box-hedges, myrtles and oranges.
Occasionally—still in unclouded weather—the wind is cold and piercing and all go muffled to the eyes, the men in their capas, the women with long shawls. In the Patio de los Naranjos, beneath the trees laden with oranges, the wind sweeps across the pavement of rough bricks, intergrown with grass and the duller green of mosses, and rattles the fallen leaves in lines and circles. Far above, the great Giralda tower stands pink and creamy grey in the clear winter sky. ”

“ It has always been one of the anomalies of Portuguese finance that it is possible to have a full exchequer in a ruined country. To take but one instance, if the crops in Portugal fail a huge additional amount of wheat must be imported, and while the peasant is starving the Exchequer rakes in a surplus in Customs duties. Dr. Costa’s narrow methods—his great bid for popularity and a surplus—really increased the artificial character of Portuguese finance, and its tendency to live from hand to mouth and let the future take care of itself. ”

“ A narrow strip of fertile land along the rivers stands out in contrast to the desolate country beyond. Thus the Ebro flows through Aragon, among woods of silver birch and poplars, and plantations of olives and vines and maize; but on either side appears the barren country of perfectly bare reddish or brown hills of crumbling earth, like great sand-dunes, without a plant, curiously folded and scored by rushing water, with intricate, abrupt hollows and catacombs. The villages are the colour of the soil, and at no great distance are scarcely distinguishable from a bare hill-side. ”

“ A Republic of principles so excellent would not, however, suit the character of the Portuguese very well—a people that still looks askance at manual labour as illiberal, even to the carrying of a parcel in the street, and loves the liberal professions and idleness-with-a-sense-of-importance. Yet if Portugal wishes to be really revolutionary she would adopt this programme of manual labour (with alternative of military service) for all under sixty years of age from Minister to miner, from President to ploughman, the only sure remedy for a great many modern social problems. ”

“ The sun rising lights up the housetops so that they gleam like snow between the dark spaces of bronze or green or blue glazed tiles, slender-springing towers, and infrequent roofs, covered thickly in spring with grass, like small fields. Or on a night of moon the city has a phantom look of whited sepulchres, and if no moon{132} looks round her with delight when the heavens are bare, there is an uninterrupted view of stars in the whole sky, as from a ship’s deck. ”

“ But the discoveries and conquests followed, the magic of the sea, the mystery of the East wove a spell over the imagination of the Portuguese, the country was drained of men, devastated by plague and famine. Lisbon and the East absorbed energies hitherto given to the soil. Portugal, moreover, was doomed to share Spain’s losses during the period 1580-1640, and later was ravaged by frequent civil wars. In fine one might expect to find a dwindling miserable population, dying out from sheer exhaustion. ”

“ Yet the slower trains are invaded by a merry throng of pleasant, courteous, good-looking peasants, oval-faced, with splendid teeth and eyelashes, who speed the journey with gay conversation and shrill singing, and pass constantly from one carriage to another to greet friends or to avoid the officials who inquire awkwardly after tickets. They have plenty of life and cheerfulness, and it is with renewed wonder that one looks at the dead, crumbling villages where they live, and remembers the piercing force of the Castilian sun in summer and the icy, penetrating winter winds. ”

“ And this is the tragedy of Spain to-day—a great-hearted people in the toils of civilization. In Pérez Galdós’ “El Caballero Encantado,” the spirit of Spain thus addresses one of her sons: “The capital defect of the Spaniards of your time is that you live exclusively the life of words, and the language is so beautiful that the delight in the sweet sound of it woos you to sleep. You speak too much; you lavish without stint a wealth of phrases to conceal the poverty of your actions.” ”

“ Every great—or small—landowner who takes a personal interest in his property, every non-political politician—the phrase is no contradiction in terms—who studies not rhetoric but reality, every Portuguese, however humble, who cultivates his own garden, whether that garden be the Portuguese language or literature or soil or subsoil or industry, will go a step towards constituting a real Portugal of the Portuguese, and will deserve as many laurels of his country as crown the brows of the old Conquistadores. ”

“ Below the snow-line, a high range of bare grey-purple mountains seems to sink into the sea, though there is, in fact, a line of level coast. Far or near no tree is to be seen; a white lighthouse stands on the coast, and on the silken blue sea gleams an occasional white sail or the flash of a seagull’s wing. As the sun rises higher the softly folding mountains beneath the Sierra Nevada grow more purple above the sea, and the shadows of their dimpling hollows blacken. ”

“ Few peoples respect themselves more than the Spanish, and they look for respect from others. “The sensitive Spaniard bristles up like a porcupine against the suspicion of a disdain.” They do not forget that they were once the greatest people in Europe, and they regard it as an accident that the march of modern civilization has left them behind, being, indeed, too mechanical for their pride to adopt. And still the golden rule for the traveller in Spain is never to be in a hurry or never to show that he is in a hurry, for by doing so he will increase delays and defeat his object. ”

“ From Montoro one may follow the Guadalquivir, now a majestic river, through its olive groves to the famous bridge of Alcolea, and the low white line beneath bare hills and wooded mountains which is Córdoba, seen from the East. Everywhere on the roads and in the inns of Andalucía the peasants are courteous, pleasant, intelligent, picturesque; always ready to give any service in their power, often immensely ignorant. They will ask if “Ingalaterra” is not Spain’s border-country and confuse it with Gibraltar, or if the Queen was a Christian before her marriage. ”

“ The city points upward like a grey sword; and whether seen in shafts and foils of orange light against a stormy sunset, or fainting and crumbling greyly beneath a relentless sun and sky of cloudless blue, it has the austere intensity{258} that we find in El Greco’s work. Yet, as in the greyest pictures of El Greco occurs some relieving touch of colour, so Toledo is not merely a monotonous symmetry of brown or grey. A procession, white and gold and red and purple, passes through the narrow streets under a shower of roses from the balconies of houses gaily hung in white and red, red and yellow ”

“ An almost harsh flavour of originality is found in Spanish humour, a sly and malicious irony, a biting wit, full of gaiety and good-humour, but of great force and directness. Their courtesy is proverbial, and it is not simply a superficial politeness, brittle as glass, but goes to the very core of the man. A knowledge of Spain would seem to show that the mere forms of politeness have no little effect in maintaining the dignity of a nation. ”

“ A path leads through green fields and clumps of orange-trees to the village. In some fields further south the last oranges have been gathered, and thousands of pearl-shaped buds tell that the trees before long will be covered with a glistening snow of scented blossoms. But in many the oranges still reign resplendent: on a grey day they stand out with more vivid distinctness than when the sun blurs them in a luminous haze, leaving them clearly visible only in the level light of its rising or its setting. ”

“ The reason given by Señor Pérez Galdós is, however, excellent: “To this sad dwelling (the silent depths of the Tagus) come those who by their loquacity have drowned the will and thought of Spanish life in an ocean of words. Nearly all those here present are orators. They spoke much, and did nothing. Some of them are masters of high-sounding phrases, conjurers who, by the magic of their art and the vanity of their rhetoric, transformed the tower of eloquence into a tower of Babel.” ”

“ That El Greco, a foreigner, should have become the most Spanish of Spanish painters, was due no doubt to the influence exercised over him by this stern yet luring city of Castille. It is impossible to dissociate his colouring from the many greens and greys and browns of the city and surrounding country, the rust-coloured soil of the Cigarrales thinly covered with many greens that are not green, grey hill-plants, dull tints of thyme and olive, the shriller green of pomegranate and other fruit-trees, the grass sun-parched to patches of yellow. ”

“ No other country and no other language could have produced a piece of realism so cynically bare, so completely charming. It has the caustic pithiness of Spanish proverbs, the bitter flavour of harsh Iberia. It belongs to life rather than to literature, but life portrayed with the restraint and force of a consummate art. ”

“ Troops of donkeys arrive at sunset, with immense, sweet-smelling loads, that entirely hide the red or purple tassels and fringes of their harness. The oranges now gleam in myriads along the eastern coast; sometimes the icy winds from inland freeze them, and fires of smouldering straw are burnt round and in the orange groves, after the wind has ceased, that a dense smoke may hang about the trees and warm them. Weeks before Christmas the turroneros from Jijona, noticeable for their small peaked hats of black velvet, appear in nearly every city and town of Spain. ”

“ It is a city of continual surprises, not to be understood or appreciated in a single day or a single visit; it gives, like El Greco’s pictures, a strong original impression at a first glance, but its inner being, its softer moments, its true significance and charm it reveals only to a patient study. Its attitude is indeed that of reserve; it seems to be holding judgment on modern civilization. ”