CHAPTER VI.

GRANADA AND THE ALHAMBRA AND CORDOBA.

The journey from Seville to Granada is a fearful affair. The distance is only 179 miles, but it takes all day. Directly you come into the province of Granada the train is besieged with beggars. At every station ragged boys leap up on the steps of the carriages and whine for alms. When you arrive at the terminus, beggars by dozens pounce upon you. You get into an omnibus to go to the town (I selected a real Spanish hotel to escape from the English), and you are rattled over stones so huge that they throw the omnibus up several feet from the ground. Suddenly you stop. You look out and find yourself in the centre of a dirty, half-lighted square. You are in the middle of the roadway. Round you dance dozens of weird forms with bare legs and arms, clad in ragged cloaks. The door is opened, and you are requested to descend. You look in vain for a hotel, and before you can ask a question your luggage is thrown off the roof into the mud. The dozen beggars scream and shout and gesticulate. One seizes your rugs, another your portmanteau, another your bag. In vain you protest and shriek to the bus-driver. In self-defence you rush after the procession of beggars who have seized your property. Then you see that they are wading through the mud on to a pavement, and that there is a hotel in the distance. The roads of Granada are so constructed that a deep ditch separates the road from the pavement. This causes everybody in a carriage to be set down in the middle of the roadway.

I followed the beggars who had seized my luggage, and found myself presently in the hotel. Here the beggars grouped themselves round me until I had been given a number, and then up they filed barefooted and dirty to my sleeping apartment. The hotel people didn’t say anything; so I presumed it was usual for the porterage of the hotel to be performed in this way. A handful of coppers relieved me of my attendants, and I counted my packages and found them all safe; but it will be a long time before I forget being turned out on a dark night in the middle of a dark square, and having all my belongings seized and carried off by the beggars of Granada.

Granada is the Alhambra! But for the Alhambra, Granada would be left to the gipsies and the mendicants. But the Alhambra makes the town the Mecca of all travelling Christians. To behold the palace on the hill, the ‘red fortress,’ the last stronghold of the Moors, it is worth while enduring a good deal more than the persecutions of the most degraded population in all Spain. As one wanders through these world-renowned ruins and gazes in admiration and awe at the glorious handiwork of a race that was swept out of Spain hundreds of years ago, one pinches one’s self to see if it is a dream or a reality. One walks upon enchanted ground. Here the genii have been at work. It is too utterly prosaic to imagine that this fairy palace was built by mortal hands. For my own part, I don’t believe it. I am as sure as I am of anything that one day a gentleman out of ‘The Arabian Nights’ was sojourning in Granada and he rubbed a ring, or muttered an incantation, and a djin appeared, and, after a short conversation, the palace and fortress of the Alhambra rose from the ground. I don’t dispute the fact that it was afterwards inhabited by mortals, that here ‘King Boabdil’ and his brave garrison were starved out, and yielded the keys to the Christian conquerors, and so passed away for ever. The splendid marble tombs of Ferdinand and Isabella stand in the Royal Chapel of Granada, and relics of the last defeat of the Moors are everywhere around. Even the banner that the Christians bore as they entered the gates of the Alhambra on January 2, 1492, still hangs, faded and tattered, in a glass case in the chapel. And near it are the crown and sceptre of their most Catholic Majesties; and in a little corner, all by itself, is a golden casket, once the property of a gentleman named Columbus, who has been handed down to posterity in connection with a yarn about cracking eggs to make them stand upright, and is also the hero of other American stories. All these things are solid and substantial realities; but the Alhambra itself is the airy fabric of a vision, an artist’s fantasy, a poet’s dream, a----

I am checked in my rhapsody by the remembrance of what I heard as I wandered through these halls of heavenly beauty, and floated back along the centuries until I was a Moor myself, and formed one of the proud Sultan’s glittering train, and lived in the Alhambra in all its pristine glory of Moorish arch and marble pillar, its masonry of transparent lace-work, its softened hues of red and blue lit up with glowing gold, its glistening Oriental tiles, its pomp, its splendour, its majesty and might. And while I dreamed, and stood aside in the beautiful Court of Lions to let the veiled beauties of the harem pass with their escort of negro guards, a voice broke in upon my dreams, and brought me with an earthquake shock back from the dead centuries to the pulsing, breathing ‘time by the clock'--and this is what the voice said: ‘H’m! it _is_ rather like the place in Leicester Square, isn’t it?’

With a cry of horror I looked up and beheld an ulster and a billycock and a red guide-book. And presently one of the officials of the Alhambra approached the ulster and the billycock, and showed it a book of photographs of other ulsters and billycocks, taken on the spot, leaning against the pillars of the Alhambra. Would the gentleman and his friend like to be taken in the Alhambra? They would--and they were. I fled from the scene of desecration. Ulsters and billycocks, with their hands in their pockets, leaning against the marble pillars of the Alhambra! O Moors, that wrought this fairy fabric, beautiful for ever, and to be hallowed until all taste is dead, and barbarians--not from Barbary, but from Europe--have made the world a rubbish-heap of the vulgar, the gross, and the commonplace, if your disembodied spirits ever visit your lost kingdom in the pale glimpses of the moon, what must you think of these billycocks and ulsters, and of the people who wear them, and loll in mustard-coloured tourists’ suits against your dainty walls, and are taken like that and duly exhibited to other billycocks and ulsters in a soot-begrimed hole called London, that I don’t suppose any Moor ever heard of, and pointed to with pride as ‘Me and Jack taken in the Alhambra--don’t you know!’

I saw everything in Granada as quickly as I could, for the town is cold and the people are uncouth, and have a habit of looking upon the foreigner as their legitimate prey. Extortion, robbery, cheating, and imposition are rampant. To get about at all one must strew the ground with pesetas. Difficulties are made specially by the guides, in order that the silver key may be produced as often as possible. Being in a hurry to get away, I took a little man and bade him take me everywhere at once. But I told him if he took me to see a Murillo I would put my navaja into him. (I have seen 7,482 Murillos, all genuine, in Spain, and I am getting a little tired of them.) My little man took me everywhere; but every five minutes he turned round and exclaimed, ‘Aqui es costumbre dar una propina,’ which meant, ‘Here it is customary to give a tip.’ That wretched little man made me give pesetas to gardeners, servants, coachmen, doorkeepers, officials, watchmen, porters, and every person, male and female, who happened to be in the places or grounds I visited. And I know as well as possible that he afterwards returned and went ‘whacks’ with the lot. I protested once or twice, and tried to make him ashamed of himself, but he swore by all the saints that it _was_ ‘costumbre.’ He admitted that it was an imposition, but he insisted that the people were paid no wages, and so had to live on what visitors gave them. When I had finished with him, however, I read him a long moral lecture, and gave him to understand that he must not take all the people who were not born in Granada for idiots. I’m afraid my protests were in vain. The motto of Granada will still remain, ‘Aqui es costumbre to fleece the foreigner.’

That which filled me with the greatest astonishment in Granada, after the Alhambra, was the way in which all the dogs of the town attended mass in the cathedral. Quite half the ladies who came in and knelt down brought dogs with them. The dogs didn’t sit still, but went on excursions into the different chapels, and visited the altars, and certainly, when there, their actions could not be interpreted as showing reverence or respect. I stood petrified to the spot when I saw a big retriever who came in with an old lady deliberately ascend the steps of the high altar, and sniff at the calves of the officiating priests. Nobody took any notice, except a little acolyte, who pulled the dog’s tail and then patted his head. Several cats being also in the sacred edifice, there were times when some of the dogs left off sniffing around and joined in a merry scamper after a startled tom, who fled and leapt for refuge on to some upper portion of an altar, and looked down and spat at his enemies. I have been in a good many cathedrals, but I never saw dogs enjoy so much liberty in one before. The people of Granada are exceptionally devout, which made me wonder all the more at the custom. But to admit dogs is the custom, and, being the custom, I suppose nobody thinks anything of it.

After the Alhambra, the great Mosque of Cordova is the most beautiful thing in Spain. Built by the Moors in 796, it still stands a monument of their glorious architecture. Charles V., in 1526, allowed a portion of it to be destroyed to make room for an ugly cathedral in the centre of it. When he saw the act of vandalism that the priests had persuaded him to permit he was deeply grieved, and exclaimed, ‘You have built here what you or anyone might have built anywhere, but you have destroyed what was unique in the world!’ You can imagine how beautiful it must be for the man who knocked down half the Alhambra to build himself a hideously ugly drab-stone palace to be grieved at its partial destruction. This mosque is the finest type in Europe of a temple of Islam. It is a forest of beautiful marble pillars, supporting the most exquisite Moorish arches. I spent a whole day in the mosque with an intelligent little Italian, who knew every nook and corner of it.

When you get to Cordova you are never sure that you will see the mosque. You may not find it. Cordova is built on the principle of the maze at Hampton Court, but there is no nice kind gentleman on a raised platform to extricate you from the labyrinth of lanes. Even the inhabitants occasionally get lost, and wander up this street and down that for hours until they accidentally get to their homes again. Many of the dogs in Cordova have their owners’ names and addresses on their collars. This is a great help to the inhabitants. When a Cordovan gets lost he waits about and looks on all the dogs’ collars who run past him. When he sees a dog who has his (the lost inhabitant’s) street on its collar, he follows him, and is so guided home.

These things are not romances, but facts. Every street is exactly alike, and every street is crossed and recrossed by dozens of other streets, and they all wind in and out, and they are all about three feet wide--some of them are not two feet wide. Woe betide the stranger who ventures out alone, and does not know enough Spanish to ask to be guided home again! He may spend a week easily in trying to find his way back to the hotel.

The hotel in Cordova is one of the best in Spain, and is always crammed with foreigners. The best time to study the guests is at _table d’hôte_. I have always my ears and eyes open then. I am much amused by a young Frenchman who has been to London, and is entertaining the other French guests with an account of the marvels he has seen there. The English live entirely on mutton-chops and beefsteaks, and always have sauce out of bottles. They even put this sauce, which is black, over their pudding and into their tea. On Sundays the English have no dinner. They only have tea and cold meat. The French ladies hold up their hands and cry out that never will they venture into such a horrible country. The Frenchman then sends them into fits by describing the feet and boots of English young ladies. Their feet are enormous, and they wear big cloth boots with no heels to them. Many girls of only sixteen already have the gout. Englishmen drink beer out of pewter pots in the highest society. The Prince of Wales, even at his grand dinners at Marlborough House, always has beer in a pewter pot by his side.

Near the Frenchman who has been to London and gathered so much information sit an extraordinary family, who are the wonder of the hotel. There is an old gentleman who speaks nothing but English, and is married to a widow who speaks nothing but French, with two daughters by a former husband who speak nothing but German. It is the oddest family arrangement that I ever came across in my life.

Then there is a Russian gentleman who is three feet high and four feet across. His head is a big dumpling with two eyes and something that with the aid of a powerful magnifying glass you make out to be a nose. By way of compensation he has a mouth that goes right across his face and turns round each corner. His body is a larger dumpling, and for legs he has two boiled jam rolls.

We sit down 150 at _table d’hôte_, and 149 people leave off eating and sit in blank amazement when this little Russian commences operations upon an orange. With a series of snorts and a couple of wriggles he gets the peel off. He then puts the orange between his teeth and forces it into his mouth by hitting it hard with both his fists. During this operation the people opposite and on either side are continually ducking their heads to avoid squirts of orange-juice in the eye.

As soon as the little Russian succeeds in closing his mouth he goes black in the face, and remains so for about two minutes. At the end of this time there is a loud gurgle; then the great mouth slowly opens, and calmly and passively the owner allows the pulp from which the juice has been extracted to fall upon his plate in portions. Horrible as this description may sound, it falls far short of the actual truth.

The commencement of the last act of the Russian gentleman’s orange tragedy is the signal for everybody to jump up from the table and rush from the room.

There is another gentleman at _table d’hôte_--a Spaniard--who wouldn’t be a bad fellow if, after he had eaten a couple of olives between each course, he would put the stones anywhere except on the tablecloth. This gentleman is short-sighted, and has a pair of eye-glasses two sizes too large for the bridge of his nose. They drop into his soup, they come off into his wine, and they sometimes fall into the gravy of the dish the waiter is handing round. While the gentleman is fishing out his eye-glasses he drops his napkin. When the waiter picks up the napkin and presents it to him he drops his fork. By the time his fork has been restored to him his eye-glasses are in the dish again.

As the process is repeated with every course that comes to him, the gentlemen and ladies below him have several long waits during _table d’hôte_.

Many people will remember the case of the English doctor who shot a gipsy at Cordova. The gipsy was a well-known guide, who used to take foreigners to see the great mosque, from the tower of which an excellent view of Cordova can be obtained. Several tourists who had ascended the tower with him on previous occasions had either been seized with giddiness and fallen off, or committed suicide by throwing themselves over the parapet. The suicide theory was the one most generally adopted in the case of Englishmen, because the Spaniards still believe that all Englishmen suffer from a malady called El Spleen, and that El Spleen compels the sufferer to end his days and his sufferings in a violent manner. There are no coroners’ inquests in Spain, and so no one ever troubled much to inquire into the deaths, which, as far as public opinion was concerned, were easily accounted for by El Spleen.

It was while turning to descend from the tower that Dr. Middleton found himself suddenly grasped round the throat by the gipsy guide, Heredia, and in such a manner that nothing but a shot from a pistol, which luckily enough he carried in a back pocket, could free him from his assailant. The doctor was acquitted, and the verdict was received with applause by a crowded court. There can be no doubt of the impartiality of Spanish judges, and of the friendly feeling which exists among Spaniards for Englishmen. That this feeling should have been expressed in loud applause in an open court in Cordova is all the more remarkable when we bear in mind that the gipsies who swarm in the city were actually thirsting for the blood of the Englishman who had taken the life of one of their race, and were threatening revenge on all those who ventured to express sympathy for Dr. Middleton. The gipsies of the south of Spain have always been a power in the country, and there are instances on record which prove that the Government has on more than one occasion been compelled to conciliate them by granting them small privileges. In the days following the revolution which led to the flight of Queen Isabella the gipsies became for a time a terror to all law-abiding and inoffensive citizens, and it was only by executing summary justice upon gipsy culprits that their power was broken.

The gipsies both of Cordova and Granada still, however, maintain the privilege of acting as guides to those who are foolish enough to take them. Outside the Hotel Suizo in Cordova there are always dozens of them hanging about. The reason of this is that it is utterly impossible for a stranger to find his way about Cordova alone. The narrow streets cross and recross each other in a perfect maze, and they are all exactly alike, so that there is no landmark for the pedestrian to steer by, and, as the streets are too narrow to admit carriages, a guide is a sheer necessity.