Patio

“ After lunch, Doña Emilia and the Señor Doctor came slowly through the inner gateway of the patio. The large gardens of the Casa Gould, surrounded by high walls, and the red-tile slopes of neighboring roofs, lay open before them, with masses of shade under the trees and level surfaces of sunlight upon the lawns. ”

“ Another patio, its walls covered with ivy, and a line of niches containing statuettes and urns. I hurry to a third door. A patio with its walls adorned with mosaic, a palm in the centre, and all around a mass of flowers. A fourth door. Behind the patio another vestibule, and then a second patio, in which one sees other statues, columns, and fountains. And all these rooms and gardens are clean66 and tidy, so that you could pass your hands over the walls and along the floor without leaving a mark; and they are fresh and fragrant, lighted with a dim light which heightens their beauty and mystery. ”

“ Behind the Moorish columns, graceful as palm trees, were walls lined with azulejos, blue, green, yellow glazed tiles of fascinating design, bewildering color. In the middle of the patio a jet of water leapt from an urn, danced in the sun, broke into a shower of living diamonds, fell laughing to a marble basin.
“In summer we practically live in this patio, that long bamboo chair is my favorite place. I{137} lie there and read, or puzzle out the designs on those tiles,—they’re over a hundred,—and listen to the fountain and the birds. What more does a man want in hot weather? ”

“ Through open doors, green patios are seen filled with plants and palms, which cover much of the accumulated dirt, rubbish, and garbage. It is amidst these surroundings that families sit and take their siestas or oily smelling repasts. The rooms are dirty and the kitchens full of smoke or odours, so that with the freely circulating air the patio is the most desirable part of the house. ”

“ Of the triple row of arches, supported by the pillars round the patio, the outside row was a plain horse-shoe, the inner toothed, the inmost carved. Through an avenue of pillars the rooms all round the patio look out upon the fountain and the orange-trees. Slaves occupied them. The kitchen also and the hummum are always on the ground floor. ”

“ The low house, with recesses and galleries, built round an inner court, or patio, which, however small, would fill the whole interior with sunshine and the scent of flowers, is the sort of dwelling that would suit the climate and the habit of life here. But the present occupiers have taken no hints from the natives. In village and country they have done all they can, in spite of the maguey and the cactus and the palm and the umbrella-tree and the live-oak and the riotous flowers and the thousand novel forms of vegetation, to give everything a prosaic look. ”

“ The building on each side was covered by trellis-work; and beautiful creepers, vines, and parasite flowers, now in the full magnificence of the early summer, grew up and clustered round the windows. Every inch of wall was covered, so that none of the glaring whitewash wounded the eye. In the four corners of the patio were four large orange-trees, covered with fruit. ”

“ They drove up to the door of a large house, painted in various colours, and with gaily-striped blinds and balconies; while through the ornamental iron gates they caught glimpses of the patio, gay with flowers. ”

“ In place of the wide dark entry to a Castilian house, a passage, scrupulously clean, leads through the building to the interior square, or patio, which is separated from the passage by a handsome, ornamented, and often gilded, cast-iron door; through which, every one who passes along the street, may see into the patio. The patio is the luxury of a hot climate; it is open to the sky, but the sun scarcely reaches it; and there is always a contrivance, by which an awning may be drawn over it. The floor is of marble, or of painted Valencia tiles ”

“ The house, which is the shape of an “E” without the middle stroke, has a green-sodded patio between the two wings, with a small fountain and a stained marble basin at the center. There are shade-trees and date-palms and shrubs and Romanesque-looking stone seats about narrow walks, for this is the only really formalized portion of the entire property. ”

“ It was one of those blinding effects of southern light and color which would be called an exaggeration of nature if any artist should attempt to reproduce in full its crude and dazzling truth.
We sought a refuge from the fiery sun shower in the patio of The Three Moorish Kings. A patio, as all the world knows, is an inside court surrounded by arcades, whose arrangement reminds one of the ancient impluvium. In place of a roof it is shaded by a linen awning striped with gay colors, called in Spanish a velarium, which is kept constantly wet, in order to secure greater coolness. ”

“ If it happen to be a Saturday morning a busy throng is congregated on the square; the ground is strewn with displays of glass and crockery, of coarse green and brown pottery and graceful waterjars, while the sellers of young orange-trees, of toys and jewellery, of cheap rocking chairs and folding trestle bedsteads, vie with one another in attracting the attention of possible purchasers.
“The patio in some houses is merely a plain courtyard enclosed by whitewashed walls, with perhaps a clump of bananas growing in the centre.” ”

“ It was in the patio that we took our meals, read, and lived. We used our room for hardly anything but to dress and sleep in. Were it not for the patio, an architectural arrangement which reminds you of the ancient Roman cavædium, the houses in Andalusia would not be inhabitable. The sort of hall which precedes it is generally paved with small pebble-stones of various colours, forming designs in rough mosaic-work, now representing vases of flowers, now soldiers and caltrops, or simply stating the time when the patio was constructed. ”

“ The outer room or passage—ceiled with open timbers, boarded or panelled between—opens into the patio or central court, over which in hot weather an awning or curtain could be hung. This patio is surrounded by open passages on all sides, supported by wooden posts, or sometimes on granite columns, and the staircase to the upper floors rises from one angle of it. The woodwork is generally well wrought with moulded ends to the joists and moulded plates. ”

“ The patio is a central court off which numerous rooms open, always including the summer dining-room and the summer kitchen, their winter counterparts being on the floor above. There is also a sala or reception-room, and in old houses this may have beautifully carved Arabic roof-beams, filled in with fine fifteenth- or sixteenth-century lustre tiles: for while the upper stories are frequently modernised and sometimes brought quite up to date in the matter of bathrooms, ample windows, and effective ventilation, the patio with the dark rooms surrounding it is very seldom reconstructed. ”

“ A north-country house should have a summer heart, which is a fountain, and a winter heart which is a fireplace. I wanted both. The thought of it became clearer and clearer—a blend of patio and broad hearth—running water and red firelight—built of stone and decorated with ivy. A stone house with a roof of wired glass over a patio paved with brick ”

“ The patio looked inviting; and, directing Holingsworth to remain outside with the men, and the Texan lieutenant to follow me, I headed my horse for the great archway, and rode in.
Chapter Eight. Don Ramon.
On entering the courtyard, a somewhat novel scene presented itself—a Spanish picture, with some transatlantic touches. The patio of a Mexican house is its proper front. Here you no longer look upon jail-like door and windows, but façades gaily frescoed, curtained verandahs, and glazed sashes that reach to the ground. The patio of Don Ramon’s mansion was paved with brick. ”

“ Each house is surrounded by its own patio, or yard, generally inclosed in a fence of "tasistas," in which the bush is allowed to grow to a considerable height in order to provide a convenient latrine for the women and children. Dogs, pigs, and vultures serve as scavengers. ”

“ Whenever I enter these beautiful marble patios, set out with shrubs and flowers, refreshed by fountains, sheltered with awnings from the sun; where the air is cool at noonday, the ear delighted in sultry summer by the sound of falling water; where, in a word, a little paradise is shut up within the walls of home, I think on the poor Moors, the inventors of all these delights. ”

“ The second patio, or the larger one, is entered by a narrow passage, and here you find horses and saddles and punchers coming and going, saddling and unsaddling their horses, and being bucked about or dragged on a rope. In the little doorways to the rooms of the men stand women in calico dresses and blue cotton rebozos, while the dogs and pigs lie about, and little brown vaqueros are ripening in the sun. In the rooms you find pottery, stone metates for grinding the corn, a fireplace, a symbol of the Catholic Church, some serapes, some rope, and buckskin. ”

“ As the houses are almost all built in flats, many of the windows open into patios, or court-yards, large or small, as the case may be. You may reckon on always having two or three servants, male or female, at work in the patio, the women washing or scrubbing, the men probably cleaning their horses, carriages, or harness; but whatever else they may be doing, you may be quite certain they will all be singing, though it is equally certain that, by the greatest exercise of amiability, you could scarcely call the result a song ”

“ The vestibules of the tenement-houses, and the patios, or courts, in the centre of each, which invariably furnish a cool loafing-place, are commonly paved with the knuckle-bones of sheep, arranged in fantastic designs like mosaic-work. ”

“ Nothing can be more picturesque or better suited to the climate than these Patios, since owing to the deep arcades which surround the open part (the Cavædium) of the court-yard upon more stories than one, there is always some portion of the arcade in which shelter can be obtained from sun, rain, or wind, and in which the occupants of the several apartments can sit and work, or lounge and smoke, in abundant but not unbearable light, and perfect comfort. ”

“ In the houses of the rich, great plantain trees spread their enormous leaves, and cactus plants in green wooden pots, decorated the entrance. In some of the poorer houses, the patios could be seen overflowing with light at the end of very long and shadowy corridors. ”

“ I inhabit a suburb, built in terraces against the rock—at my feet lies a wonderfully pretty valley. A garden thirty feet square and full of roses, and a terrace extensive enough for you to walk along it in ten steps, are my drawing-room, my study, and gallery. My bed-room is rather large—it is decorated with a red cotton curtained bed—a real peasant's bed, hard and flat, two straw chairs, and a white wooden table. My window is situated six feet above the terrace. ”

“ This morning I took a brisk walk along the sunny terrace, where, from under the shining shelter of holly, laurel, cedar, and all other evergreen shrubs and trees, one looks over a garden—that even now, with its graceful vases, its terraces, its ivy winter dressing, is gay and beautiful—to a lawn that slopes gently to a sheet of water, losing itself like a lake among irregular wooded banks, whose brown feathery outline borrows from the winter's sun a golden tinge of soft sad splendor. ”

“ This narrow band of grass followed the carriage-road up to the lodge-gate.
Around the paved yard in the rear stood the coach-house, stables, kitchen, laundry, scullery, larder, and other offices, and still farther to the rear of the house, behind the yard, were the flower and kitchen gardens. To the rear of all, surrounding all, and binding all in like suffocating bondage, was the Park of gnarled oaks and rank lush undergrowth and slimy soil. ”

“ On the kitchen porch he had paused again, for a little, because he could not see the steps; then had gone on to the well, the garden, the woodhouse, the shop, the barn, and so out into the orchard that shaded the gently rising slope of the hill beyond the house. At the farther side of the orchard, on the brow of the hill, he had climbed the rail fence and had seated himself on the ground where he could look out and away over the familiar meadows and fields and pastures. ”

“ A terrace, midway up the hill, runs through the midst of these plantations; and a walk, in a zigzag direction down the rocks, conducts to numerous points of view, exhibiting an extraordinary variety of romantic scenery, which is equally beautiful in all seasons of the year. The flower garden is at the bottom of the lawn, in front of the house, close to the water’s edge, which, being the narrowest part of the channel that forms the entrance to the harbour, ships of war of the first rate pass close to it. ”

“ And on every hill-slope and steep, terrace after terrace of vine, and olive, and lemon with golden fruit, and mimosa in golden bloom, or pine woods in clefts and on abrupt steeps. And everywhere small houses, growing smaller as they rose on the heights, with ruddy brown roofs and walls of clean pink and blue and white; and all this bathed and flooded and steeped in such transparence and clarity of sunlight as the Children of the Mist see never in their own dim poetic shores. ”

“ Nothing so perfectly sets off a cottage, in external appearance, as the presence of plants and shrubbery around it. A large tree or two, by giving an air of protection, is always in place; and creeping vines, and climbing shrubs about the windows and porch, are in true character; while a few low-headed trees, of various kinds, together with some simple and hardy annual and other flowers—to which should always be added, near by, a small, well-tended kitchen garden—fill up the picture. ”