Katharine Lee Bates

“ The first coffin we saw in Spain was bright lilac, a baby's casket, placed on gilt trestles in the 248 centre of a great chill church, with chanting priests sprinkling holy water about it to frighten off the demons, and a crowd of black-bearded men waiting to follow it to the grave. Such a little coffin and not a woman near! The poor mother was decently at home, weeping in the midst of a circle of relatives and neighbors, and counting it among her comforts that the family had so many masculine friends to walk in the funeral procession and show sympathy with the household grief. ”

“ One was a middle-aged, sun-browned, stubby little man, whom during the ensuing week we saw again and again in the cathedral, but never begging, with the most of the pilgrims, at the portals, nor taking his ease in the cloisters,—a social promenade where the laity came to gossip and the clergy to puff their cigarettes. This humble worshipper seemed to pass all the days of the festival in enraptured adoration, on his knees now before one shrine, now before another. We found him first facing the supreme architectural feature of the cathedral, that sublime and yet most lovely Portico de la Gloria. ”

“ We had been stunned at Burgos, blind to all save the Moorish features of Cordova, almost untouched by the cold splendors of Granada, but to Seville, as later to Toledo, we surrendered utterly. Beauty, mystery, sublimity—these are Seville cathedral. Five centuries have gone to the rearing and enriching of those solemn aisles and awful choir. The colossal structure, second in size only to St. Peter's, is a majesty before which Luther himself might well have trembled. Within a Spanish cathedral one begins to understand the mighty hold of Roman Catholicism on Spain. ”

“ All that Spanish girls need is opportunity.
But if the señoritas are so charming now, with their roses and their graces and their fans, why not leave them as they are, a page of mediæval poetry in this strenuous modern world? If only they were dolls outright and did not suffer so! When life goes hard with these high-spirited, incapable creatures, it goes terribly hard. I can see yet the tears scorch in the proud eyes of three undowered sisters, slaving at their one art of embroidery from early till late for the miserable pittance that it brought them. ”

“ I would rather die in the wrath of battle like a toro bravo. Oh, it is not cruel. Do not think it. For these bulls feel no fear. It is fear that degrades. They may feel pain, but I doubt—I doubt. They feel the wildness of anger, and they charge and charge again until the estocada, the death stab. That is not so bad a way to die, is it? Any man would choose it rather than to stand in terror, bound and helpless, hearing the others fall under the axe and seeing his turn draw near. Yes, yes! The bull-ring rather than the slaughter-house for me! ”

“ As you loiter down the lane, be you wide-eyed shepherd from the provinces, or elegant grandee from Madrid, or haughty foreigner from London or Vienna, the sturdy sirens rush upon you, seize you by arm or neck, and by main force tug you into their tented prisons, from which you must gnaw your way out through a heap of hot buñuelos. Or you may compromise on a cup of Spanish chocolate, flavored with cinnamon and thick as flannel, or perhaps win your liberty by gulping down a cupful of warm goat's milk. ”

“ Only the afternoon before we had been in serene Guernica, a strange contrast to this mining capital of Vizcaya, this bustling, noisy, iron-grimed Bilbao, in which the Basques take such delight. It is not a city to gratify the mere tourist, who expects the people of the lands through which he is pleased to pass to devote themselves to looking picturesque. But even Spain is something more than food for the kodak, and this sooty atmosphere of smelting works and factories, traffic and commerce, means life to Spanish lungs. ”

“ The frank sound of the kissing within is accompanied by the tooting of pitos without. We stand at one side, looking at the priests and wondering how their consciences are put together, but half ashamed to watch with heretic eyes the tears of joy, the fervors of prayer, the ecstasies of faith, that are to be seen in many of these simple, passionate faces filing by. Here comes a little girl treading as if on air and clasping her picture of the saint to her lips, brows, and heart with such abandon of delighted adoration as one must go to Spain to see. ”

“ It is in such places as the grim Roman amphitheatre of Italica, whose grass-grown arena has flowed so red with martyrdoms of men and beasts, that one despairs most of Spanish ability to give up the bull-fight. It is in the air, in the soil, in the blood; a national institution, an hereditary rage. "But it is the link that holds your country bound to barbarism. The rest of the world is on the forward move. I tell you, the continuance of the bull-fight means the ruin of Spain," urged a gigantic young German, in our hearing, on his Spanish friend. ”

“ The scimitar of the Turk flashes down on the Spanish neck, while the upturned eyes are still too fierce for terror; the turbaned chief leans from his gold-wrought saddle to scan the severed heads that two blood-stained sons of the prophet are emulously holding up to his survey, hoping to recognize in those ghastly faces enemies of rank; white-robed women on the strand, their little ones clinging to their knees, reach arms of helpless anguish toward the smitten galley of their lords, who are leaping into the waves for refuge from the Christian cannonade. ”

“ Spain has let the most of his beggar-boy pictures go to foreign collections, but she has cherished his Holy Families and cherub-peopled Annunciations. Such ecstatic rogues as those Andalusian cherubs are! Their restless ringlets catch azure shadows from the Virgin's mantle; they perch tiptoe on the edges of her crescent moon; they hold up a mirror to her glory and peep over the frame to see themselves; they pelt St. Francis with roses; they play bo-beep from behind the fleecy folds of cloud; they try all manner of aerial gymnastics. ”

“ One cannot look for long. It is well to lift the eyes from the niche graves of Granada to the glory of the Sierra Nevada that soars beyond, and turn from the patios of San Isidro to the cheerful picture of Madrid across the Manzanares, even though, prominent in the vista, rises the cupola of San Francisco el Grande. This is the National Pantheon, and within, beneath the frescoed dome, all aglow with blue and gold, masses are chanted for the dead whom Spain decrees to honor, as, so recently, for Castelar. ”

“ Here, as in the Élysées, baby-wagons are seldom seen. The nurses carry in arms the black-eyed infants, who bite away at their coral necklaces quite like little Yankees.
But Spanish traits soon declare themselves. In the centre of the park is an artificial pond, where lads in their first teens, too old for play, lean languidly over the iron railings, and, while they throw crumbs to the flock of forlorn-looking ducks or watch the dip of the red oar-blades that impel the pleasure boats, brag of their amorous adventures and exchange the scandal of the Prado. ”

“ Spaniards have a veritable passion for pyrotechnics, and our dreams until the dawn would be punctuated by the airy report of rockets, as if, so Galdós suggests, "the angels were cracking nuts in the sky." Every now and then in those soft warm nights there rose a shout of song from the street, and peeping down from the balcony, we would see half a dozen lads and lasses leaping along through the middle of the road, all abreast and hand in hand, in one of their boisterous peasant dances.
There are no fewer dangers and sorrows for girls in Spain than in the other Latin lands. ”

“ The children in the carriages, however, were often costumed in the picturesque habits of the provinces—the scarlet cap and striped shawl of the Catalan peasant, the open velvet waistcoat, puffed trousers, and blue or red sash of the Valencian, the gayly embroidered mantle of the Andalusian mountaineer, the cocked hat and tasselled jacket of the gypsy. Moors, flower girls, fairies, French lords and ladies of the old régime, even court fools with cap and bells, were brightly imaged by these little people, to whom the maskers on foot seemed to have left the monopoly of beauty. ”

“ For there are two sides to the Spanish Inquisition. If Spaniards were the inquisitors, Spaniards, too, were the dauntless sufferers. The sombre gaze of the torturer was met, as steel meets iron, by the unflinching eye of the tortured. But "the unimaginable touch of Time" transforms all tragedy to beauty, and red poppies, blowing on the grassy plain of the Quemadero, translate into poetry to-day that tale of blazing fagots. ”

“ But the Andalusian ladies made amends for everything. By some prehistoric agreement, Spanish women have yielded the rainbow to the men, reserving for their own attire the quiet elegance of black or the festive beauty of pure white. The dress that evening, even in the principal boxes, was conspicuously simple. But the clear brunette complexions, the delicate contours, the rich black hair worn high and crowned with natural flowers, the waving fans and flashing glances, cast a glamour over the whole scene. ”

“ Not far away the market women covered the flags with red and golden fruit. A saucy beggar-wench, with the blackest eyes in Spain, demanded alms, and when we had yielded up the usual toll of coppers, loudly prayed to Santiago to pardon us for not having given her more on this his holy festival. At last out sallied the band, followed by those inevitable giants, and amid mad ringing of bells and fizzing of invisible rockets, forth from the venerable portals issued standards, crosses, tapers, priests in white and gold, and platformed effigies of pilgrims, saints, and deities. ”

“ In such a square, we read, was once a mighty bonfire of Jews; beneath our feet, we are told, is a mass of human bones and cinders. This sunshiny Seville, with her parks and patios, her palms and orange groves, a city seemingly fashioned only for love and song, had her army of nearly twoscore thousand martyrs, who, dressed in the hateful San Benitos, yellow coats painted with flames and devils, were burned to death here in our gay Plaza de la Constitución, then known as the Plaza de San Francisco, and in the Quemadero beyond the walls. ”

“ That grim necropolis of Glasgow, with its few shy gowans under its lowering sky, those tender, turf-folded, church-shadowed graveyards of rural England, those trains of mourners, men by themselves and women by themselves, walking behind the bier in mid-street through the mud and rain of wintry Paris to the bedizened Père Lachaise or Montparnasse—such sights interpret a nation as truly as its art and history; but the burial customs of Spain, especially distinctive, are, like most things Spanish, contradictory and baffling to the tourist view. ”

“ Such wrath can easily be the seamy side of love, and, in a way, the man's national pride was measured by his national shame; but always over these outbursts there brooded that something hopelessly resigned, drearily fatalistic, which seems to vitiate the Spanish indignation for any purposes of practical reform. To suggestions of sympathy he responded with a pathetic weariness of manner, this handsome young Hercules, so radiant with the joy of life, who, in his normal mood, sprinkled mirth and mischief from him as a big dog shakes off water drops. ”

“ Muffled cavaliers, with cloaks drawn up and hats drawn down till 17 only the dance of coal-black eyes, full of fire and fun, was visible between, saluted our balcony with Carnival impertinence. Beggars of both sexes, equally wound about with tattered shawls, reached up expectant hands as if we were made of Spanish pennies. A funeral procession passed, with the pale light of tapers, the chanting of priests, with purple-draped coffin, and mourners trooping on foot—men only, for in Spain women never accompany their dead either to church or grave. ”

“ The habit of begging, that plague of tourist resorts, is an incessant nuisance on the Alhambra hill. Half-grown girls and young women were the most shameless and persistent of our tormentors. Age can be discouraged, and babyhood diverted, while the Spanish boy, if his importunities are met by smile and jest, will break into a laugh in the midst of his most pathetic appeals and let you off till next time. ”

“ Yet the rich prefer their own pantheons, sculptured like little chapels, or their own vaults, over which rise tall marbles of every device, the shaft, the pyramid, the broken column; while a poor family, or two or three neighboring households, often make shift to pay for one large earth grave, in which their dead may at least find themselves among kith and kin. Spanish cemeteries are truly silent cities, with streets upon streets enclosed between these solemn walls, which open out, at intervals, now for the ornamented patios of the rich, now for the dreary squares peopled by the poor. ”

“ No importa. It matters not. Our life is not the life of flesh and blood."
And indeed, as I saw her in the Christmas service among the other Spanish sisters, those lovely figures in white and violet making obeisance before the altar until their veiled foreheads almost touched the pavement, bowing and rising again with the music like a field of lilies swaying in the breeze, I felt that she was already a being of another world, before she had known this. ”

“ If in Madrid the desert blossoms like the rose, it is a leafless rose, for the city has no suburbs. It lacks both the charm of environment so potent in Granada and Seville and the charm of ancient story, which these share with those other bygone courts—Toledo, Valladolid, Valencia, Saragossa. It is not a vital organ of modern European civilization, like artistic Paris or strenuous London. ”

“ The parks of San Sebastian were gay with maskers and music, tickling brushes and showers of confetti, on our last day there, but the peculiar feature of the festivity in this Basque city is "the baiting of the ox." On that Carnival-Sunday afternoon we found ourselves looking down, from a safe balcony, upon the old Plaza de la Constitución, with its arcaded sides. The genuine bull-fights, which used to take place here, have now a handsome amphitheatre of their own, where, when the summer has brought the court to San Sebastian, the choicest Andalusian bulls crimson the sand of the arena. ”

“ In such a throng one sees not only the typical "eyes of midnight," but those "emerald eyes" which Cervantes knew, and veritable pansy-colored eyes dancing with more than pansy mischief. But the voices! In curious contrast to the tones of Spanish men, soft, coaxing, caressing, the voices of the women are too often high and harsh, suggesting, in moments of excitement, the scream of the Andalusian parrot. ”

“ The jam of equipages on the Bridge of Toledo gives us abundant time to observe the statue of the Holy Peasant, in a stone niche, lifting his baby from the well, and the companion statue of Mary of the Skull. And there is the Manzanares to look at, that sandy channel along which dribble a few threads of water—threads that the washerwomen of Madrid seek after like veins of silver. Small boys are wading from one bank to the other, hardly troubling themselves to roll up their trousers. ”

“ Through the multitude the glittering palms and purple robes swept on back into the cathedral, where the silent and remote archbishop, an image of gold in his splendid apparel, shed his benediction not only over the proud palms, but over every spray of "little gray leaves," like those of Gethsemane. These blessed palms, sprinkled with holy water and wafting strange fragrances of incense, would be carried home and kept in myriad balconies all the year through, to protect the house from "the all-dreaded thunder-stone." ”

“ The morning light made havoc with the glamour of the pageants. Something frank and practical in the sunshine stripped those candle-lighted litters of their dignity. Busy people dodged through the procession lines, and one Nazarene after another might be seen slipping out of the ranks and hurrying awkwardly, in his cumbersome dress, with the half-burned taper under his arm, to the refuge of his own mosquito-netting and orange tree. The tired crowd grew critical and irreverent, and openly railed upon the Virgin of this ghostly cofradia because her velvet mantle was comparatively plain. ”

“ Our coachman, reverting to his dolorous chant, appealed to all the saints. The top fares shrilled in on the chorus; the Spanish gentlemen lighted cigarettes, and after some twenty minutes of dramatic altercation, a soldier sprang on our top step and mounted guard, while the coach rattled through the gates and on to the 407 aduana. Here we were deposited, bag and baggage, on the pavement, and a drowsy, half-clad old dignitary was brought forth to look at us. The coachman, all his social graces restored, imaginatively presented the three Anglo-Saxons as a French party travelling for pleasure. ”

“ Here loitered a messenger boy in vivid scarlet; there passed a waiter with a silver tray gleaming on his head; here a market woman bent beneath her burden of russet sacks bursting with greens; there stood a priest in shovel hat and cassock, smelling a great red rose; here a gallant in violet cape escorted a lady flaming in saffron; there a beaming old peasant, with an azure scarf tied over his white head, threw an orange to attract the attention of a plodding porter, whose forehead was protected from the cords binding the boxes to his back by several folds of purplish carpeting. ”