George Parsons Lathrop

“ We dropped asleep in the rough, time-worn regions of Old Castile, and in the morning found ourselves amid the glare and bustle of reconstructed Spain, as it displays itself on the great square called the Gate of the Sun—a spot with no hint of poetry about it other than its name. Madrid adopts largely the Parisian style of street architecture, and has in portions a resemblance to Boston. The sense of remoteness aroused in the north here suddenly fades, though the traits that mark a foreign land soon re-assemble and take shape in a new framework. ”

“ But it is not with these past splendors, still full of hopes for new futures, that the Castilian gentlemen and ladies of our varnished period concern themselves. The opera, the circus, and the Corrida de Toros—the irrepressible bull-fight—are to them of far more consequence.
In every crowd and café you see the tall, shapely, dark-faced, silent men, with a cool, professionally murderous look like that of our border desperadoes, whose enormously wide black hats, short jackets, tight trousers, and pigtails of braided hair proclaim them chulos, or members of the noble ring. ”

“ Again, breadths of citron and lemon, followed by extensive rice farms, where the cultivators stood dressing the unripe plantations, up to their ankles in the water of a feathery green swamp. Not a rood of earth is unimproved, excepting where some thriving red-roofed village is hemmed in by the fragrant paradise. In one place you will see, perhaps, a mouldering red tower like those of the Alhambra, or a church spire lifted amid the trees, and, high above the other greenery, clusters of date-palms leaning together, as if they whispered among themselves of other days. ”

“ But although the river-fed lands around Toledo are rich in vegetation, the ancient city itself, with the Tagus slung around its base like a loop, rises on a sterile rock, and amid hills of bronze. So much are the brown and sun-imbued houses and the old fortified walls in keeping with the massy natural foundation that all seem reared together, the huge form of the Alcazar, or castle—where the Spanish national military academy is housed—towering like a second cliff in one corner of the round, irregularly clustered city. ”

“ From the Plaza Mayor again an arch leads into Toledo Street—old meandering mart full of mantles and sashes, blankets and guitars, flannel dyed in the national colors of red and yellow, basket-work and wood-work, including the carved sticks known as molinillos (little mills) , with which chocolate is mixed by a dexterous spinning motion. The donkey feels himself at home once more in these narrow thoroughfares; the evil sewage smell, which oozes through even the most pretentious edifices in the new quarters, diffuses itself again in full vigor, and the cafés become dingy and unconventional. ”

“ But this spot, lovely as it is, becomes insignificant beside the glorious Huerta of Valencia, stretching for more than thirty miles from the olive-clad hills around Jativa to that city, which is the pleasantest in Mediterranean Spain, and the most characteristic of all, after Toledo, Granada, and Sevilla. There one travels through an unbroken tract of superb cultivation—a garden in exact literalness, yet a territory in size. ”

“ THE cathedral of Toledo, long the seat of the Spanish primate, stands in the first rank of cathedrals, and is invested with a ponderous gloom that has something almost savage about it. For six centuries art, ecclesiasticism, and royal power lavished their resources upon it; and its dusky chapels are loaded with precious gems and metals, tawdry though the style of their ornamentation often is. The huge pillars that divide its five naves rise with a peculiar inward curve, which gives them an elastic look of growth. They are the giant roots from which the rest has spread. ”

“ Madrid is now the head-quarters of the national game, as it is of everything else. It is outwardly flourishing, it is adorned with statues, its parks are green, and its fountains spout gayly. Nevertheless, the impression it makes is melancholy. Beggary is importunate on its public ways. Palaces and poverty, great wealth and wretched penury, are huddled close together. Its assumption of splendor is in startling contrast with the desolate and uncared-for districts that surround it from the very edge of the city outward. ”

“ They are people of leisure, and, after their manner, of pleasure. How they swarm in the cafés in the Gate of the Sun—where they keep up the Moorish custom of calling waiters by two claps of the hands—or on the one great thoroughfare, Calle de Alcalá, or in the bull-ring of a Sunday! They are never at rest, yet never altogether active. They never sleep, or, if they do, others take their places in the public resorts. ”

“ The whole great round, peopled by at least ten thousand beings, is divided exactly by the sun and the shadow—sol y sombra; and from our cool place we look at the vivid orange sand of the half arena in sunlight, and the tiers of seats beyond, where swarms of paper fans (red, yellow, purple, and green) are wielded to shelter the eyes of those in the cheaper section, or bring air to their lungs. No connected account of a bull tourney can impart the vividness, the rapid changes, the suspense, the skill, the picturesqueness, or horror of the actual thing. ”

“ Fierce sunlight smote upon me, spattering the leaves like metal in flux; but the snow-fields mantling the blue wall of the Sierra loomed over the landscape so distinct as to seem within easy hail, and I felt their breath in a sweet coolness that drifted by from time to time. The other mountains were bare and golden brown. But in their midst the mild Vega, inlaid with curves of the River Genil, receded in breadths of alternate green orchard and mellow rye, where distant villages are scattered "like white antelopes at pasture," says Señor Don Contreras, the accomplished curator of the Alhambra. ”

“ Barcelona is not only the industrious city, it is also the cultivated one of the Peninsula. The opera there is one of the best in the world, and was once carried off bodily to Madrid by an ardent manager, who for his pains received the scorn of the envious Madrid people: they would not come to his performances, and he was almost ruined in consequence.
The old cathedral of the city is a temple singularly impressive by simple means—a sober Spanish-Gothic structure bathed in a perpetual gloom, through which the stained windows show with a jewelled splendor almost supernatural. ”

“ From climate and history, nevertheless, from art and the mingling of antipodal races, Sevilla received those influences which have shaped her into the bizarre and eminently Spanish creation that she is—a visible memory of the past, and a sparkling embodiment of the present. Society, amusement, and religious awe are the controlling aims of the people, blended with revolutionary politics, and great liveliness in their increasing commerce. The songs of Andalusia pervade the whole kingdom ”

“ Episodes like these tinged our dreams of the Alhambra with novel dashes of living reality. Even the tedious bustle of a Spanish town, too, has its attractions. The moving figures on the steep Albaycin streets, that perpetually break into flights of steps; the blocks of pressed snow brought in mule panniers every night from the Sierra to cool sugar-water and risadas of orange at the cafés; peasants coming in to the beautiful old grain market with gaudy mantles over their shoulders, stuffing into their sashes a variety of purchases, and becoming corpulent with a day's transactions ”

“ Above this busy scene towered a luminous sienna-tinted cliff, sustaining the castle of Santa Barbara poised in the white air like a dream-edifice; though a rift high up in the hill marks the spot where the French exploded a mine during the Peninsular war. All these Mediterranean towns are guarded by some such eagle's eyry overlooking the sea, and the old monarchs showed a fine poetic sense in granting them for municipal arms their local castle resting on a wave. Close to the lapping waters lay the serried houses, bordered by an esplanade planted with rows of short palms. ”

“ And what bloodshed they get! A horse or two, say, lies lifeless and crumpled on the earth; the others, with bandaged eyes, and sides hideously pierced and red-splashed, are spurred and whacked with long sticks to make them go. But it is time for the banderilleros, and after that for the swordsman. He advances, glittering, with a proud, athletic step, the traditional chignon fastened to his pigtail, and holding out his bare sword, makes a brief speech to the president: "I go to slay this bull for the honor of the people of Madrid and the most excellent president of this tourney." ”

“ Miles of carefully-tended growth, thousands of orchards linked together in one series, acres upon acres of fields where every square inch is made to yield abundantly—such is the Huerta of Valencia. We passed endless orange-groves, each single tree in which had its circle of banked earth to hold the water when let on from the canals of tile that coursed everywhere like veins of silver, carrying life to the harvests. ”

“ Churches and castles, rich in delicate workmanship and all manner of historic association, crop up everywhere. The very shards in the fields, you fancy, may suddenly unfold something of that full and varied past which was once as real as to-day's meridian glow. Yet at any moment you may lose sight of all this in the brilliant, stimulating, yet softly modified beauty of the landscape's colors, and your whole mind is absorbed by the vague neutral hues of a treeless hill-side, or the rich, positive blue of the sea, in which the white sail of a chalupa seems to be inlaid like a bit of ivory. ”

“ Nor is the fascinating mantilla quite extinct among women, in spite of their more than Parisian grace and splendor of modern robing. There are humble old women squatted on the sidewalk at street corners, who sell water and liquors and shrub from bottles kept in a singular little stand with brass knobs like an exaggerated pair of casters; and when one sees the varied types of peasant, soldier, citizen, or priest, with perhaps a veiled woman of the middle class, gathered around one of these, the Spanish quality of the town re-asserts itself distinctly. ”

“ We breakfasted at ten in a room hospitably put at our disposal, the windows of which admitted a delicious breeze and opened upon a magnificent view of the plain far below, where the distant city rested like a white mist—an impalpable thing. Brother José brought some olives, to add to the refection which our sumpter-mule had carried to this height. They had a ripe, acid, oily flavor, which made one think of homely things and of patient housewives in remote American hills, who lead lives as monotonous, as self-denying and unnoticed as those which pass on this ridge of the Sierra in Andalusia. ”

“ She wore a wine-colored skirt, if I remember, a violet jacket braided with black, and a silk neckerchief of dull purple-pink silk. But that was not enough: a blue silk kerchief also was wound about her waist, and in among her smooth jet locks she had tucked a vivid scarlet flower. The result was perfect, for the rich pale-brown of her complexion could harmonize anything; and in Spain, moreover, combinations of color that appear too harsh elsewhere are paled and softened by the overpowering light. ”

“ IT is not surprising that Isabella the Catholic, who had so completely thrown her heart into the conquest of Granada, should have wished to be buried in that city, though dying far away. Her marble semblance rests beside that of Ferdinand in the Royal Chapel, which serves as vestibule to the ugly Renaissance cathedral. The statues are peculiarly impressive, and sleep on high sepulchres of alabaster, beautifully chased. ”

“ How strange the conception of a holy and exalted life which led men in religious retirement to keep before their eyes, in these corridors meant for mild exercise and recreation, representations so full of blood and horror! In fact, one cannot escape the impression, stamped more vividly on the mind here in Granada than anywhere else, except perhaps in Toledo, that Christianity in Spain meant barbarism. But where it was released from the immediate purposes of ecclesiastic dogma, Christian art showed a taste not so much barbarous as barbaric, and the results of its activity were often beautiful. ”

“ At apt corners old women have set up their frying-pans under Bedouin tents, and are cooking calentitos—long coils of dough browned in hot olive oil—which are much sought as a relish for the matutinal chocolate. Omnipresent, of course, are those water stalls that, in Sevilla especially, acquire eminent dignity by their row of stout jars, and their complicated cordage rigged across from one house-top to another, so as to sustain shadowing canvas canopies. There is a great crowd, but even the fair is comparatively quiet, like the other phases of local life. ”

“ A wilderness, a cool, dark labyrinth of pillars from which light horseshoe arches rise, broken midway for the curve of another arch surmounting each of these, spreads itself out under the roof on every hand—grove of stone in a cave of stone stretching so far that the eye cannot follow its intricate regularity, its rare harmony of confusion. The rash Christian renovators who, overruling the protest of the city, undertook to remodel so exceptional a monument, covered the arches with whitewash; but many of them have been restored to the natural hues of their red and white marble. ”