Albert Frederick Calvert

“ Decline and decay are writ large on the face of the city. From a distance its noble situation and fine buildings, built of beautiful creamy stone, gives the place an imposing and picturesque appearance. But though the shell of Salamanca remains, its spirit has departed. The ravages of the Romans, the Goths, the Moors, the Spaniards, and the ruin which the neighbourly French inflicted less than a hundred years ago, have left their cruel marks upon its historic walls. Salamanca is but a broken hulk spent by the storms that, from time to time, have devastated her. ”

“ This monotony is broken by the famous Alameda, which, with its rows of immense trees whose foliage meets and interlaces overhead, its handsome fountains, its garden filled with roses, myrtle and jessamine, and its glimpses of the snowy Sierra Nevada from amid the tropical vegetation, makes it one of the finest and most picturesque promenades in Spain. During the daytime the Alameda is deserted, but in the evening it is crowded with a laughing, bustling multitude; and, in the habit of keeping late hours,{136} the people of Granada are every bit as fashionable as those of Madrid or Seville. ”

“ Indeed, when one makes one’s first acquaintance with it, it is difficult to believe that it is the boastedly first city of Spain. Yet the boast is not unjustified in so far, at least, as the concerns of every-day life, polity and progress are concerned. When once the visitor is within the circle of her brighter ways, he will look in vain for any of the smudginess whose kingdom and on-coming have been heralded by smudge; he will speedily recognise the fact that here is rolling by him a greater volume of trade than in all the other great centres of Spanish commercial life put together. ”

“ Poetry, as a national characteristic, is an accident of climate. Here is Barcelona, the Manchester of Spain, a hive of manufacturing industry, rejoicing in one of the most lovely sites in Europe, possessed of a climate equal to that of Naples, and with its beauty untarnished by the hand of time, or the artificer. Such an atmosphere, such skies, such stars make a people poets against their wills. ”

“ The casual visitor cannot hope to detect the specks of modernity in this vast temple of the antique. Its ancient grandeur is comparatively impervious to the pretty wiles of modern improvement. One’s eyes wander from the newly-built emporiums to the immensity of its enduring monuments, and one’s mind flings back instinctively into the past, out of which they arose to defy the hand of Time himself. And so the majority of book-makers, who take Spain for their subject, overlook the present condition of the country; the instant life that rushes before their eyes escapes their notice. ”

“ The sunshine reflected from the walls and the houses darts through the labyrinth of narrow streets, peers into fairy-like patios, and floods the orange trees, palms, and acacias that grow in every open space and square of the city. Here is all gaiety, and mirth, and roses which blossom all the year round in a climate which is claimed to be one of the most delightful in Europe. And the sun is in the blood of the people. They pursue pleasure as the serious business of life; bustle, love, and laughter fill their days and nights, and the air is ever abuz with soft sounds. ”

“ The site of the city is excellent; its harbour is one of the best in the kingdom; and in importance it ranks next to Barcelona among the commercial centres of Spain. Its merchants are men of substance, and their villas are objects of beauty in suburbs that are naturally beautiful. But Malaga does not appeal to the heart of the visitor as does Cadiz or Córdova. The certain grandeur that one notes from a distance dwindles almost to vanishing point as one comes nearer; and when one plunges into the narrow, ill-kept, malodorous streets of the lower town, the delusion is dispelled altogether. ”

“ It has a charm that fills the heart with a sad pleasure; a mysterious spell that one cannot resist. The cathedral is a fortress from without, but within it is a palace of enchantment; the town is a citadel become a pleasure garden; it is a museum of Roman and Arabian antiquities, peopled with blithesome men and women. Within a mile or two of Córdova once flourished Medina Az-zahra, which was one of the most marvellous works of architecture, the most superb earthly palace, and the most delicious garden in the world, and Zahira, built by the powerful Almansur, the governor of the kingdom. ”

“ So, while the atmosphere of Toledan greatness was still hot in my veins, I hastened across the broad, bare, sandy plains of the celebrated Mancha—the immortal theatre of the adventures of Don Quixote—past Argasamilla—where Don Quixote was born, and died, and where his great creator, Cervantes, was imprisoned for debt—across the Sierra Morena to the land of the valley of the Guadalquiver—“the garden of Spain, the Eden of the Arabs, the paradise of poets and painters”—to Andalucia. ”

“ These streets are traversed by happy, light-hearted people, who would seem to have no memory of the past, and no thought for the morrow. But the city contains a mosque which gives one a better idea of the power and magnificence of the Moors than anything else in Spain, not excepting even the Alhambra. This wondrous Arab temple—huge, wonderful, fairy-like in its Eastern gorgeousness—with its thousand marble columns, is unique in beauty as it is in curious detail. ”

“ SOME of the oldest and most truly national cities of Spain are situated in the two Castiles—silent cities peopled by silent men, in the midst of a mountainous, silent country. It is no light thing to bear the stamp of Castile. The men, reserved, well bred, loyal, and proud, carry their Castilian origin in their faces, their habits, and their cast of mind; and the cities are Castilian in their strength and their uncompromising severity. One sees it in the Toledo of New Castile, and finds it in the Burgos of the older province. ”

“ So the visitor leaves sleepy Granada in peace in the hollow, and breasts the hill, on the summit of which the Alhambra mounts guard over the city. From the distance it presents, as do so many Oriental palaces, the appearance of a fortress, and the approach is so planned that one comes right under the shadow of its walls without obtaining another view of it. A curve in the road brings one suddenly at the entrance to a grove, the trees of which are so thickly planted that a man may scarcely pass between them, and their mighty branches interlacing overhead defy the sun to penetrate their foliage. ”

“ Spain still retains all those old world, social, and personal graces with which poetry, painting, and romance have made the untravelled familiar. Grace is not necessarily a virtue, but it is a flower often found on the path that leads to it. And these flowers spring as naturally from racial instincts as do the more prominent traits exhibited in etiquette and statecraft. Spanish character is touched; nay, it is entirely imbued with the “grace of a day that is dead.” The very beggars, whom you encounter in every bye-way, do not lack this native grace which no mere acquirement could exhibit. ”

“ One returns from the mountain to Barcelona with one’s mind crowded with wonderful sights, and one’s senses stirred with a new idea of the beautiful. Where shall one look, one asks oneself, for its equal? But Spain is full of spots of almost dazzling beauty. Within a hundred miles to the southward, following the coast-line, is situated Tarragona. To know Tarragona is to love her, for her natural self first, her oak forests, soft verdure and park-like land, then for her treasures of infinitely beautiful architectural work ”

“ A NATIVE OF MURCIA.
with me an impression of sunshine, and roses, and soft airs. The country is intersected with swiftly flowing brooks, that part in and out beneath the tall palms. Here the dark-complexioned and Oriental-looking Murcian washerwomen, dressed in brightly-coloured garments, assemble to follow their daily avocations; and the chatter, the laughter, and the brilliant hues of the many shawls are a perpetual delight to the ear and the eye. The men have the reputation of being the most ill-disposed and revengeful of any in Spain. ”

“ The assembled multitude rend the air with their cheers, the men yell applause, and every face is distorted with excitement and enthusiasm. The only indifferent person in the building is the espada. With a graceful and unassertive turn of his wrist, he waves the sword over his fallen foe, wipes the hot blood from the blade, and turning on his heel, approaches the President’s box, and bows with admirable sang-froid. The team of jingling mules enter, and the dead bull is carried off at a rapid gallop. The espada walks composedly away, without another glance at the result of his handiwork. ”

“ In Madrid you hear, “The Sevillians! Ah, they can do nothing but make love!” And in Seville they declare that the Madrileños can make nothing—but mistakes.
But whatever the shortcomings of Seville may be, no town in the south of Spain receives more visitors. All sorts of people go there, with all sorts of motives. The artist goes to fill his portfolio with the picturesque forms and showy costumes of Majo and Maja. The lover of painting makes a pilgrimage there to see Murillo in all his glory. ”

“ Without the logical traditions of buying and selling, raised up through generations, Spain could hardly avoid the errors of government which the want of such traditions bring. She could scarcely hope not to become the victim of each and every scheme for a financial millennium, as a nation, which we are all accustomed to smile at when played in the more self-evident form of personal charlatanry. And, most of all, the dignity of work has been lost. The Spanish labourer pitied himself—and was pitied. ”

“ The mineral wealth of the Peninsula was responsible for the origination of the African slave trade, for the demolition of Carthage, for the decline of Rome, for the sacrifice of lives innumerable, for tortures unspeakable, for crimes that are without parallel in the annals of the world. In ancient times Spain was ravaged, plundered, and depopulated to provide Carthage with the spoils that were to make her the prey of the Romans, who, in their turn, were to be lulled by wealth and luxury into the deadly sleep of degeneracy that precedes decay. ”

“ In point of fact, the effect of the spectacle upon the spectator is not so much a matter of sensibility as custom. The Spaniard grows up to the sport as our Elizabethan ancestors grew to bull-baiting—even as the present generation of Englishman grows to pugilism. To the Spaniard, the cruelty of the craft of tauromachy does not appeal; the spectacle inflames his blood, and stirs not a chord of compassion in his nature. ”

“ Their guitar playing has little but mere form; and their dancing—the dancing of the working-classes who picnic by the wayside and dance for the sheer love of it and the joy of living—is governed, or seems to be, by the whim of the performer. When the children are not playing at bullfights, they are indulging in one or other of their innumerable singing and dancing games.
Besides the interest it affords in itself, Barcelona is within hail of Monserrat, the pride of Catalonia, and one of the natural wonders of Spain, which lies some thirty miles north from the city. ”

“ The Cathedral of Granada is a splendid pile, but I did not inspect it during my visit. There is a Cathedral in every Spanish city one enters, but there is only one Alhambra in the world. Yet here are the tombs of Ferdinand and Isabella, here is the casket in which Isabella sent her jewels to the pawnbroker—the jewels that were disposed of in order to furnish Christopher Columbus with the money for the arming of the ships in which he sailed to discover the New World. ”

“ The safety of property and life in Spain is in their keeping; and it may be said without exaggeration that they have done more to establish order in the Peninsula than any other body.
Barcelona, besides being a busy, wide-awake, and rapidly-growing commercial and industrial centre, contrasting strongly with some other Spanish cities that still seem to be shrouded in the mists of the middle ages, has also acquired the reputation of being a beautiful city—beautiful, of course, in the modern sense; for, where modern enterprise rules, the old-time beauty is apt to take flight. ”

“ For dead as it now appears to be, with the hand of death on its crooked, branching streets, and its crazy, deformed squares, which echo the pilgrims’ footfalls to the deaf ears of the dead, it was at one time the most celebrated religious centre in Spain—the goal of fanatics from every corner of Europe, the Mecca of countless thousands of theologians, and the tomb of one of the personal companions of Christ. ”

“ We had left Madrid in our winter overcoats and rugs; when we stepped out into the soft sunshine of Almeria we could have dispensed with our under coats and waistcoats. We are in the land of the spring roses and early oranges, and the nipping and eager air of the capital is forgotten. Our visit is regarded by the community with general interest, for the townsfolk look to El Monte Minado, as the copper mines are known locally, to make the fortunes of Huercal-Overa. Many of the leading people here are shareholders in the mines, and all the labour employed on the property is drawn from the town. ”

“ And so, although it is February when I am in Madrid, I am not to forego an experience of a promising corrida.
Although I have seen bull-fights in some of the best rings in Spain, including those of San Sebastian, Valencia, Barcelona, and Madrid, it is more particularly of my experiences at the latter place that I shall write.
During the fashionable months, a boletin de Sombra, or “ticket for the shade,” is a luxury to be prized; but in February, in Madrid, we need all the warmth and glare that the sun can give us. ”

“ Dark, mysterious, and imposing, the Gothic Cathedral is worthy of a place by the most beautiful of Spain. After the great Cathedral of Seville, I know no other that impresses one in the same way as the Cathedral of Barcelona. The fine proportions and carefully-arranged lighting are common to them both. At Tarragona, Salamanca, Toledo, Burgos, Leon, and Santiago, we can see work that will bear more close analysis and confer great teaching; but the Catalan here teaches us his school of stern, solid, domestic architecture, and he conveys his lesson by the finest of examples. ”

“ Wörmann has well described Toledo as “a gigantic open-air museum of the architectural history of early Spain, arranged upon a lofty and conspicuous table of rock;” and Street has declared: “Few cities I have ever seen can compete in artistic interest with it; and none, perhaps, come up to it in the singular magnificence of its situation, and the endless novelty and picturesqueness of its every corner.” And the grandeur is emphasised by the silence that serves to enhance the awe that the place inspires in the heart of the visitor. ”