Matilda Betham-Edwards

“ Put a Spanish cloak upon every man in Fleet Street and Piccadilly, and how the bits of creamy fur, of crimson silk, of purple velvet, of gold brocade, would enliven these sober thoroughfares! But the Madrilenians are not a majestic race, though so majestically equipped. Diminutive in size, sallow, shaven like monks, one never dreams of calling the men handsome. At the same time they have, for the most part, beautiful features and fine eyes. The ladies, tripping about fan in hand, are pretty; but, like the men, frail-looking and without dignity. ”

“ Everything takes a supernatural shape in the ghastly lamplight; the horses that have brought us here seem, on a sudden, slim and spectral; the long lines of railway carriages have a funereal look; the men, waiting about in their long black cloaks, become brigand-like and terrible to look at; one’s own shadow is mysteriously long and dark; one’s own voice sounds hollow and unearthly. It is like reading a scene from Mrs. Radcliff’s novels. But when once the train moves slowly off, and the blessed sun warms you, it is the very poetry of railway-travelling. ”

“ Toledo is a most bewildering place, and without good Señor Cabezas, the traveller would find himself lost in every sense. The streets are thoroughly Moorish, tortuous, narrow, steep, and ill-paved; and you might fancy yourself in Algiers in any one of these dark alleys, so admirably built for coolness, seclusion, and security. You might fancy yourself in Algiers, or indeed, in any Eastern city, on other accounts, especially the singing,—that monotonous, dreary, interminable singing you hear everywhere among the Arabs. ”

“ You should never travel in Spain without a book about the saints and martyrs. Every step you take leads across some way watered with holy blood and tears. Every town is peopled with the sorrowful ghosts of men and women whom the Church has tried and crowned; and only those who are obstinately blind can deny the influence exercised by their names still. Often and often have I found myself, as in the convent of Las Huelgas, realising the religious spirit of the middle ages in its vigour and purity. ”

“ I do not think English ladies would find second and third-class travelling pleasant, on account of the smoking.
Thus we travelled through the brown deserts of Old Castille to Madrid. Treeless, tawny, and interminable, anything more dreary than these same Spanish steppes cannot well be conceived. Yet there was contrast and colour for the artistic eye. There was mass after mass of cool, grey limestone against a bright blue sky; and when the sun set over the undulating table-lands, a weird, fiery, unimagined splendour not to be put into any words! ”

“ You see a hundred landscapes in a day you would fain remember. You see a hundred faces and hear a hundred things, that seem too characteristic to forget. But, like the changing colours of the sunset, these impressions melt one into the other, and, unless seized at the moment, are utterly lost.{117} When day broke we found that we were traversing a mountainous region of olive-orchards and bare brown fields made ready for sowing, some no larger than a cottager’s garden, others covering acres. A tawny land is this Spain, as Shakespeare says, a gipsy among gipsies, and a Moor by complexion. ”

“ You are taken too to see the jewels and wardrobe of the Virgin—the strangest sight. It is difficult to reconcile the character of the lowly Mother of Christ with these gorgeous robes of velvet and brocade, stiff with gold and pearls, with these necklets, rings, and bracelets; with these tiaras of diamonds and emeralds. But everywhere you see the same thing, only on a smaller scale; the Virgin is petted and pampered with costly gifts as if she were something below an ordinary woman, since even ordinary women aspire to higher things than a fine toilette. ”

“ Let the Catholic services be celebrated within its walls, let the priests preach from its altars, let the people kneel on its floors—but why, in heaven’s name, should every exquisite relic of Moorish art, and every vestige of Moorish devotion, be ruthlessly destroyed? One marvels to see even the pillars and horse-shoe arches left intact—who knows for how long? And there are still some inlaid ceilings of thuya wood, and some fragments of arabesque stucco, as remarkable for richness of design and delicacy of work as any of the Alhambra. ”

“ If you go farther back into history, you find Tclemcen was christened “Pomaria” by the Romans, on account of its orchards and fruit-gardens, but the Tclemcen of to-day is far more interesting. It is indeed the Moorish Athens. The modern city lies at the foot of green hills, its minarets standing out against the sky, its terraced houses surrounded by belts of lustrous foliage, whilst beyond stretches a plain as grandly covered with ruins as the seven hills of Toledo; only unlike the hills of Toledo, green, and sunny, and gay.
The life of the streets is intoxicating to an artist. ”

“ What would life be without it? Take away the charms of style and the beauties of a language rare in beauties, and yet all remains that we most care for. Don Quixote, Sancho Panza, as creations, are too simple and too true to stand or fall by the ordinary test. Why, Don Quixote translated into a language as rude as that of Fighi islanders, would be every inch Don Quixote still, and of what other novel can so much be said? Few travellers will omit Cervantes’ Biography from their saddle-bags. He was the noblest of noble Spaniards, and his life shines like a diamond without one flaw. ”

“ One grows so rooted to the place, for sake of its many-sided beauty,—beauty of art, of atmosphere, of everything, that one never wishes to leave it. That is to say, if one were an intellectual being one would never wish to leave it; but the material part of every poor person and every Protestant must make the thought of dying at Granada simply horrible. I never felt such a distaste for Catholic Spain, and{181} such a respect for Mahomedan Spain, as here. The Moors made Granada the paradise we find it, and it was an evil hour for the civilised world when their enlightened rule came to an end. ”

“ It will be easily understood why Madrid should be so unhealthy when a little consideration is given to its site. Built on a plateau 2412 feet above the sea, it is exposed to an African sun and a Siberian winter. Like Rome it stands in a treeless desert; and the icy winds may blow down from the chain of the Guadarrama, whilst the sun is scorching with fiery powers. You may pass in a moment from a cold climate to a hot one in Madrid; and at all times the air is so rarefied as to be terribly trying. I enjoy excellent health as a rule, but the climate of Madrid knocked me down in a day. ”

“ But if it is a Palace of Aladdin now, what must it have been when the fountains were shedding floods of pearl in the sunlight; when all the courts were filled with perfume of myrtle, of oleander, and of orange-blossom; when the glistening white floors were partly hidden by gorgeous carpets; when the delicate columns were covered with gold, and the fretted domes blazed with colour, orange, purple, and red; when the Caliph administered justice, surrounded by his courtiers, a second Solomon with more than Solomon’s glory ”

“ No one who travels through the south of Spain will fail to observe the picturesque aspect of its villages; and I have gone out of my way to notice this feature in them, because any relationship in the arts is interesting to a traveller. He will find traces of cob alike in India, in Mexico, in Greece, and in Italy; but nowhere is the original architecture of the Phœnicians more noteworthily copied than in the sunny plains of Andalusia.
After traversing this wilderness of limestone run mad, we glided into a warmer and lovelier zone. We fancied ourselves in Algeria. ”

“ Nothing more forcibly recalls the East than the embroidered mule-trappings one meets at every step. Here in Toledo, as in all Moorish cities, the mules are as gorgeously dressed up as if each belonged to a prince; and, with that inexhaustible invention and love of ornament one finds among Orientals, no two trappings are made alike. These bits of colour in some measure redeem the monotony of the streets, which are tiring both to feet and eyes. All the beauties are hidden in{101} ugly backgrounds, like toads’ eyes, and without a good guide you would never find them out. ”

“ Who can forget or over-praise its voluptuous southern sky, its rich brown plains, its glistening white villages peeping amid groves of the cistus,{135} the ilex, and the cork-tree, its green slopes crowned with Moorish towers and palaces, its delicious climate, its trickling streams, its sweet-smelling flowers?
The railway is new and carries one through a most astounding bit of country. After passing leagues of olive orchards, we found ourselves suddenly in a wholly different world. ”

“ You pass in five minutes from a land of sleepy, blissful lethargy to a stirring, bustling, look-alive sea-port and garrison town. I dare say Gibraltar would not be a pleasant place to live in, but after spending so many weeks among people who think nothing in the world worth hurrying about, and no one’s time of the slightest importance whatever, it was delightful to breathe the business-like, martial air of the place. ”

“ The acquaintance of a day,—nay, of an hour, is sufficient to warrant all sorts of confidences on public matters from a Spaniard, and this incautiousness, or rather candour, makes you forgive even his love of the bull-fight. It is, indeed, a most consolatory fact, that it is but a watching and waiting in Spain, and that underneath a semblance of indifference burns and rages a wholesome desire of liberty. ”

“ We had come to Spain with very definite objects, and though we could not help feeling that the sooner a revolution came for the Spaniards the better, we hoped that it might not come till we were safely at Gibraltar, at least. The pictures of Velasquez, and the Moorish relics of Cordova, Seville, and Granada, were the loadstones that drew us to Spain; at the same time we could not but be alive to the great political and social questions agitating a country once so glorious, and still so capable of glorious things. ”

“ We were alone in the coupé of the diligence, and the only passenger in the rotunda was a stately Caïd, magnificently dressed in purple gaudoura and white bernous of softest, silkiest Algerian manufacture. But what was the magnificence of his dress to the magnificence of his complexion? To understand what an Arab complexion is, one must have seen it, as we saw it, bronzing and glowing under a southern sky. Transported to canvas or cold climates, the rich hue loses half its life and warmth and beauty. ”

“ The colouring of the mountains is most delicious, and in part makes up for the fishiness and filthiness of the streets. A ray of the setting sun turns the whole wild sierra into a pageantry of pink, deepest violet, crimson, and amber, and makes you long to be an artist in order to transfix the wonderful scene. Mountain and palm, city and tower and sea, seen through the medium of so rare an atmosphere, might well tempt an artist to linger here. ”

“ I have called the building a city in itself, and if a census were made of its silent population, there might seem some reason in such a simile. Who can doubt that these sculptured saints, archangels, kings, apostles, and monks without, these bleeding Christs, Virgins, infants, and martyrs within, would equal in number the living, moving world of Burgos? And this multitude, stony, silent, dead, though it seems, is not without a power and force that stand in good stead of vitality. ”

“ Great chalk hills, each crowned with its little mosque or marabout, rise round the town, and, when you have climbed these{279} hills, you come upon broad belts of half wild, half cultivated country, flanked with settlers’ huts or Arab tents. The colouring of the place is thoroughly Eastern; you get here, as in Andalusia, long lines of wild cactus and aloe standing out against a burning blue sky, and those indescribable effects of yellow and white that are only seen where every building is whitewashed and every bit of ground is toasted and bronzed and baked by a blazing sun. ”

“ We found Malaga, in spite of its delicious climate, its bright sea, its gorgeous hills, and its Eastern gardens, a disagreeable place. The streets always smelt of fish,—raw fish, cooked fish, fresh fish, dried fish, stale fish. The common people are dirty and unpleasant, a mongrel race, half-gipsy, half-bandit, with an evil look. The pavements are filthy, and all the time of our stay a sirocco was blowing, so that we were choked with dust wherever we went. ”

“ At first one is quite unable to take in the wonderful simplicity, and strength, and finish of the building, or rather mass of buildings, for it is a city in itself; but later you feel, as it were, a child of the place, loving and living in every part. The colour of the outside is of a soft deep grey, and is unspeakably rich when seen, as we saw it, against quite an Eastern sky. We never grew tired of wandering about the Cathedral, with Street’s Gothic Architecture in hand to help us{34} through its history ”

“ It takes a day to get from Mascara to Saïda, but not a long day. If there were only tolerable roads and saddle-horses, the journey would be trifling. As it is, you are shaken up and down in a way that turns you sick and blackens and bruises you, and, though a halt of five minutes and a breath of the sweet air of the Desert revives and heals, you get to Saïda tired enough. ”