Part 15
Truly that age was past rivalry in the appealingly noble characters it produced, fine spirits of heroism, fit inheritors of Isabella's period that had prepared the soil for such a flowering. A Garcilaso de la Vega is the bosom friend of a Francis Borgia, a Francis Borgia communes with a Teresa de Jesús with the intense pleasure of feeling souls akin, an Ignatius Loyola serves as guide to a Francis Xavier, and so on, these noted lives touch and overlap. What an array the first fifty years of the sixteenth century can show! 1503 Garcilaso was born, also Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, the noted diplomat and patron of letters; 1504 Luis de Granada, the religious writer; 1506 St. Francis Xavier of Navarre, who died the great missionary of the East; 1510 St. Francis Borgia; 1515 St. Teresa, "fair sister of the seraphim"; 1529 Luis de León, Spain's best lyric poet; 1534 Fernando de Herrera, another poet; 1542, St. John of the Cross, that mystic flame of Divine love; 1545, the dashing hero of Lepanto, Don John of Austria; and final glory of this half century, and of all centuries, 1547, Miguel de Cervantes. The opening of the next century was fecund in men of creative genius: 1599, Velasquez; 1616, Calderón; 1617, Murillo, but to one who loves _España la heróica_, the earlier age is dearer.
The gray city on the Tagus is worthy of such citizens, "fit compeer for such high company." So many are her associations that one turns aside in irresistible digressions. In a palace near Santo Tomé, Isabella of Portugal, Charles V's wife, died: to those who know Titian's portrait of her in the Prado, she is a beautiful, living presence. Francis Borgia who in early youth had married one of her ladies in waiting, was the equerry appointed to escort her dead body to Granada, where it was to be laid in the Chapel Royal. When the coffin was opened to verify the Empress, she who had been all loveliness so short a time before was changed to so horrible a sight that the Marquis de Lombay is said to have exclaimed, "Never more will I serve a master who can die!" The Hound of Heaven was in pursuit of grand quarry here. A few years before, the death of Garcilaso his friend had sobered Francis. Now came the loss of his cherished wife, with whom he had lived in truly holy wedlock: in Catalonia where he was the Emperor's viceroy, a lady asked the Marquesa one day why she of such high standing and beauty dressed so plainly, and she answered how could she do otherwise when her husband wore a hair-shirt beneath his velvet. Lombay succeeded to his father's estates and the title of Duke of Gandía, his children--who eventually rose to distinction--were a natural temptation to stifle the higher call of which he was conscious:
"For, though I knew His love who followed, Yet was I sore adread Lest, having Him, I must have naught beside."
It was a tremendous decision to make, completely to relinquish a future of international influence; relentlessly the heavenly Feet pursued:
"I fled Him, down the nights and down the days; I fled Him, down the arches of the years; I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways Of my own mind; and in the midst of tears I hid from Him, and under running laughter. Up vistaed hopes I sped; And shot, precipitated Adown Titanic glooms of chasmed fears, From those strong Feet that followed, followed after. But with unhurried chase, And unperturbèd pace, Deliberate speed, Majestic instancy, They beat--and a Voice beat More instant than the Feet-- 'All things betray thee who betrayest Me.'"[26]
The compelling Voice won. Having settled his children, the Duke of Gandía gave up titles and estates to enter the Company of Jesus, of which he has been called the second founder, so fruitful were the years of his generalship.
The death of Isabella of Portugal is connected with another foremost member of the _Compañía_. The Pope sent Cardinal Farnese to carry his condolences to the Emperor, and the papal suite lodged in a house of Toledo near that of a widow named Ribadeneyra. Her willful, high-spirited and captivating boy Pedro attached himself voluntarily to the embassy, and so won the notice of the Cardinal that he was taken back to Rome, where, by another hap-hazard in his life, he fell under the influence of St. Ignatius Loyola, became his loved pupil and future biographer. The books of this delightful Pedro, telling the early history of the Jesuit Order make as solidly interesting a bout of reading as can while away a month. He was not only the confidant of the first General, but of his two successors, Lainez and Borgia, he helped St. Charles Borromeo in his reforms at Milan, and lived long enough to rejoice on the day of his great master's beatification, 1609.
In Toledo many a time Cervantes strolled, here he has set several of the interesting "Novelas Exemplares"; St. Teresa founded one of her houses here, described in her "Libro de las Fundaciones," a companion book to the "Novelas"; that prodigy of improvization, Lope de Vega, also placed some dramas in these dark winding streets; and in the Jesuit house the historian Mariana, a friend of Ribadeneyra, browsed over his work, called by Ticknor "the most remarkable union of picturesque chronicling with sober fact that the world has ever seen."
Our days in Toledo sped all too fast. For me it is one of those few fascinating cities of the world that rouses a recurrent longing to return. The impressive, solitary walk above the Tagus gorge at the hour of sunset is an unforgettable memory. Another walk leads to San Cristo-in-the-fields, the legend of whose crucifix, with one arm hanging pendant, has been told by Bécquer; beyond this church, across the _vega_, where the Tagus spreads out in relief from the confining gorge behind, is the _Fábrica de Armas_, where good Toledan blades are made, so elastic that they are packed in boxes curled up like the mainspring of a watch. Within the town the rambles are endless, now down the step-cut hill, past the Plateresque façade of Santa Cruz hospital, founded by Cardinal Mendoza; now out by the one sloping side of the city to another hospital, where the sculptor Berruguete died, and lies buried near his last work, the marble tomb of the founder, Cardinal Tavera. One day in the narrow street, hearing the sound of singing, I entered a monastery church, to listen for an enchanted hour to a choir of male voices admirably trained.[27] There is about this town an atmosphere that makes you sure that real peace and holiness lie within the looming convent walls under which you pass. The wise Chinese statesman, Kang Yu Wei, who has toured the world studying its religions, said he found in a monastery of Toledo an impressive spirit of devout silence.
We carried away a beautiful last picture of the "Crown of Spain," as her loyal son Padilla called her. We were to catch the night train to Andalusia, at Castillejo on the express route. It was a night with an early moon. So white and romantic lay the city streets that we sent the luggage by the diligence and went on foot to the distant station. When we crossed the Alcántara bridge, we turned to look back at the climbing mass of houses and churches. With a feeling of sadness we gazed at the old mediæval city, so far from the fret of modern life. This was to be, we thought, our last impression of the Castiles. Andalusia, enticing, warm in the sun, facile, impudent, lay ahead. Farewell to the grave, courteous Castilian! Farewell to the valorous stoic-heart of Spain!
CORDOVA AND GRANADA
"The art of the Alhambra is eminently decorative, light, and smiling; it expresses the well being, the repose, the riches of life; its grace lay almost entirely in its youth. Not having the severe lines that rest the eye, these works paled when their first freshness faded. Theirs was a delicate beauty that has suffered more than others from the deterioration of its details."
RENÉ BAZIN.
In his "Terre d' Espagne," M. René Bazin speaks of the faded city of Cordova, and the term is singularly exact. It is a tranquil, faded ghost, not a nightmare ghost, but an aloof, melancholy specter. I have been haunted by it often since the day and night spent there. Dull and unimportant as it now is, hard to be imagined as the Athens of the West with almost a million inhabitants and an enlightened dynasty of Caliphs, yet, like a true ghost, vague in feature, Cordova succeeds in making itself unforgettable. The past covers it like a mist. It gave me more the sensation of the Moslem than any other spot in Spain: Allah, not Christ, is its brooding spirit.
We strolled hither and thither through its preternaturally quiet streets which are lined with two-storied white or pinkish houses. Every few minutes we stopped with exclamations of delight to gaze through the iron grilles at the tiled and marble patios, here seen for the first time. "A patio! How shall I describe a patio!" exclaimed De Amicis, when he first came into Andalusia. "It is not a garden, it is not a room, it is not a courtyard, it is the three in one,--small, graceful, and mysterious." They are so spotless a king could eat off their paving-stones. Isolated from the stir of the world, they breathe that intimate quiet of the spirit felt in the pictures of the Primitives. To wander for the first time over a city filled with these oases, gives that exhilaration of novelty which as a rule the traveler has long since lost with his first journeys.
I should not say our very vivid impression of Cordova depended on chance details,--the hour of arrival, a personal mood, the weather. Of course the strangeness was heightened by our coming from the north, through a cold night of travel on the train that made the transition from the central plateau of the Castiles to the semi-tropical coast belt of Andalusia, an abrupt one. Toledo, the last seen Castilian town, had been so distinctly Christian in spite of Moorish remains, and our night-flitting over the level sea of La Mancha was so possessed by that _español neto_, the adventuresome Don, that suddenly to awake among palm trees and oranges gave the sensation of another race and climate. It was this province with its astonishing fertility that had been the land of Elysium of the ancients.
Having grown familiar with the orderly streets of Cordova by day, it was quite without fear that we took a night ramble. Not a soul was astir. What were they doing, these cloistered people? It was as deserted as Stamboul at night, more lonely even, for here was not a single yellow cur to bay the moon, nor the iron beat of the watchman's staff; and though like the Orient in some aspects, these streets were far too orderly and the houses too spotless. Perhaps there lay the source of the indefinable fascination; this was neither East nor West, but a place stranded in time, made by circumstances that never will be repeated. The Oriental influenced the Spaniard deeply, a psychological as well as a racial influence. I often felt that the dignified gravity which so distinguishes a Spaniard from his fellow Latins is a trait acquired unconsciously from his Arab neighbors: nothing like it is found except among races whose ancestors dwelt in the desert. Also the excessive generosity and hospitality of the Spaniard are oriental virtues, just as the Andalusian procrastination and acceptance of fate are oriental failings. We too often forget that there were generations when, religious hatred quieting down, the two peoples lived side by side in friendly consideration. If the Christian gained from the Moslem, the Moor in Spain was influenced no less potently by the standards of the European. He became a very different being from his brother in northern Africa. He learned to gather libraries, to express himself in buildings where he translated his nomad carpet into colored stucco; much of his traditional jealousy was laid aside and Moorish ladies appeared at the tournaments to applaud their Moorish cavaliers who tilted with the same rules of romantic chivalry as the Christian knights. Moslem civilization could even boast some femmes savantes. The stimulus of the two opposing races gave Spain just the impetus she needed, and the conqueror lost with his very victory. When all men think the same way without the spur of competition, inaction and ill-health are sure to follow. Perhaps the upholders of law and order need not worry too much to-day over the anarchists and socialists in the commercial districts of Spain: is not the health of a nation quickened by struggle?
The soul of a Spanish city is always the Cathedral, and Cordova has what it called one, but it is no more a Christian church than the Caaba at Mecca. The canons in Charles V's time tore out the center of the Mosque and built a Plateresque-Gothic _capilla mayor_ and _coro_. It was an ignorant thing to do, and when the Emperor saw their work he exclaimed in disgust, "You have built here what anyone might have built elsewhere, but you have destroyed what was unique in the world!" Nevertheless, those old canons had some excuse. They felt that they could not pray in a proper Christian manner under the low, oppressing roof of Islam. Instead of "Christe Eleison," it was "Allah illal allah, ve Mahommed recoul" that came to their lips in abominable heresy, so in desperation they put up the incongruous enclosure and tried to shut Islam out.
A building every one of whose stones has been laid in earnest faith, seems to have a spirit that will never desert it, let the ritual change as it may. Santa Sophia is Christian in spite of eight thousand Mussulmans prostrated there on the 27th of Ramazan: the Gregorian chant still echoes in Westminster Abbey. So here the canons' efforts were in vain, the Mezquita makes heretics of us all, we turn to the Mihrab as the holy of holies, not to the High Altar.
The Mihrab is a dream of art, the mosaics are richer and softer in hue than an eastern rug. Leo, the Christian Emperor on the Bosphorus, sent Byzantine workmen to teach the Caliph this art. The enclosing carvings have the distinction of being in marble, not in the customary plaster, also a Christian innovation. "Let us rear a mosque which shall surpass that of Bagdad, of Damascus, and of Jerusalem, a mosque which shall become the Mecca of the West," said the founders in the eighth century; and there is a tradition that the Caliph himself worked an hour a day with the builders. It is truly "unique in the world," for nothing was ever like these myriad aisles, forty in one direction crossed by twenty in another, with nine hundred short pillars of every kind of marble--green, red, gray, brown, fluted white--holding up the roof. These pillars are baseless and only thirteen feet in height; and arches of an ugly red and yellow spring in two tiers from column to column. The effect is incredibly original and eccentric,--a veritable forest of pillars. The fatalist spirit of Mohammed, the acceptance of life's limitation, is insistent here, the desert Arab's attitude of adoration, forehead prone to earth, is forced on you: to kneel with upraised face is impossible under so low a roof; were there the usual hanging balls and roc's eggs, even the Inquistor-General himself would have genuflected toward Mecca! As I wandered about the Mezquita, the two creeds seemed to formulate themselves more distinctly for me: one, soaring and idealistic, channel for the loftiest aspirations of the soul, the other a magnificent step forward from the lower forms of worship about it in the East, nevertheless limited, so far and not beyond, not cleaving to the impossible, to the unattainable. "Be perfect even as your Father in heaven is perfect" was not taught by Mohammed. Islamism is a very noble average, and perhaps because men in general are the average, it may seem better to satisfy them. Christianity is a religion for the chosen souls of humanity, only by aiming at the impossible can the best in man develop. The majority of us are not chosen souls, hence we have the bitter inconsistencies between the theory and the practice of our faith to-day; and yet, once the vision of the unspeakable soul-paradise of the mystic has been conceived of, to rest satisfied with an average religion is impossible. Islam makes men happy with a dreaming bliss that veils the sun, Christianity bids you look up at the sun whether it blinds you or not, and here and there arise souls that can bear the vision and help weak eyes to see.
When we left the Mosque, the obsession of the East still continued in the courtyard, where about the fountain sat groups of idlers only wanting the fez and turban for completion. Once the Mezquita opened on this court, there was no dividing wall, the trees planted in symmetrical lines carried on the rows of columns within, and an absolutely enchanting sight it must have been to look from this orange grove far into the dim interior of the Mosque, lighted every evening with some five thousand hanging lamps.
All tourists in Spain go to Granada, so they know the confusing station of Bobadilla where trains from north, south, east, and west, meet and exchange passengers; the journey from there on to Granada gives a beautiful glimpse of Andalusia; picturesquely set towns, scattered white villas, olive groves, even in winter the grass as green as spring. As apples, in the Basque provinces, and carrots at Toledo, so here oranges were piled up in masses. The last thirty miles of the journey were through the historic _vega_, a veritable garden of Eden in fertility. Before we reached Granada it was dark and above the city was rising an early moon as big as one in a Japanese print. The proprietor of the Pension-Villa Carmona in the Alhambra grounds was there to meet us, and we soon rattled off for the long drive up to the Moorish citadel.
A night arrival at Granada enhances the romantic effect. It is mysterious to turn in from the noisy streets of the town at the Carlo Quinto gate and under the heavy foliage of elm trees slowly to mount the Alhambra hill; there is a gurgle and rush of running water on every side, one has the feeling of being in a thick Alpine forest. The horses mount slowly, wind and turn, pass through various gates and at length you are in the small village of the citadel, and in three minutes can walk right into the Caliph's palace. Spain cannot show many such beautiful northern parks, with a growth of ivy and a shimmer of arrow-headed leaves under the elm trees where nightingales sing in season.
It was Ford I think who started the statement which most guide books have gone on repeating that the Duke of Wellington planted these elms ("the Duke" occupies more space in Murray's Hand-book than _los Reyes Católicos_ themselves!) He may have planted some, but a certain old book of travels, yellow with age, tell us that just these same elm trees were growing and just the same kind of songster singing in 1789. "The ascent toward the Alhambra," wrote the Rev. Joseph Townsend in that year, "is through a shady and well watered grove of elms abounding with nightingales whose melodious warbling is not confined to the midnight hour; here, incessant, it is equally the delight of noon."
This part of Granada is charming. But the city below is so dirty and ill-conditioned that it would spoil the Alhambra for a long stay. Even in the darkness on the night of our arrival it was easy to discern what a different aspect it had from most Spanish towns, which, while they are often poor, are frugally clean and self-respecting. In Granada the people appeared ill-tempered, if you paused anywhere, diseased children gathered in a persistent begging circle, and the fierce copper-colored gypsies were so diabolically bold in glance and act that they made a walk in any of the suburbs too dangerous to be repeated. We had often turned off the beaten track in the Asturias, in Galicia, and Castile, without the least fear, but Granada will remain for me the one thoroughly disagreeable, frightening spot in Spain.
Described as the Alhambra has been, it would be fatuous to try it again. I can only give superficial personal impressions. There is no use in disguising that this style of architecture disappointed me enormously. I could admire its extreme elegance, the details of the _artesonado_ ceilings, the _ajimez_ windows, I could acknowledge it was fairy-like, a charming caprice, exquisite jewel-box work: as a whole it left me quite cold. It was too small, it lacked height, there was no grandeur about it,--and all so newly done up with restorations! The first visit gave me an effect of trumpery, and even after I had seen it daily for two weeks, I could not forget that these mathematically correct designs, one yard very like the next, were imprinted by an iron mold on wet plaster. This was skilled artisan's work, not the intellectual thought of the architect; here was no cutting of enduring, masculine stone with the individual freedom of genius. Decorations of Cufic mottoes are effective, but they can never compete with a Parthenon frieze, with a Chartres or Santiago portal. Fantasy was here, not imagination; again I felt the bound limit of Islam.
Enough for the negative side. For praise, if the Alhambra itself is disappointing, its setting is imperial. The view on which you look out from its romantic _ajimez_ windows has few equals in the world, and accounts easily for the supremacy of this spot in man's thought. You look down on the ravine of the Darro, the white Generalife near by, across the river, the piled-up houses of Granada backed by near hills covered with cactus. From the Torre de la Vela is a grander view. The _vega_ with towns and historic battlefields lies below, and you try to pick out Santa Fé, which sprang up in eighty days to house the Christian troops, or Zubia, where Isabella was almost captured, or Puente de Pinos, which the discouraged Columbus had reached when the Queen's messenger brought him back to arrange for the great voyage. On this tower, after seven and a half centuries of Moorish rule, the first Christian standard was hoisted by Cardinal Mendoza, on January 2d, 1492, festival still of the countryside, when the fountains play again in the Alhambra, and down in the Royal Chapel the Queen's illuminated missal is used on the altar. All Christian Europe rejoiced with Spain, and Henry VII in England had a special _Te Deum_ chanted in gratitude. While on one side is this tropical _vega_ on the other is the glorious Sierra Nevada, clothed in perpetual snow. So close are the mountains that on certain days it seemed as if a short hour's walk could reach them, closer than the Jungfrau to Mürren. It is the most untarnished expanse of snow I have seen on any mountains. We often climbed the tower for the sunset, and one evening a genuine Alpine glow made the Sierras magnificent past description. "Ill-fated the man who lost all this!" Charles V exclaimed.
There was a lesser view we grew attached to, that from the strip of garden called the _Adarves_, warm in the sun under the vine-covered bastions. It was laid out by the Emperor, and it fronts the snow range looming above the green mass of park trees. Almost every day we would bring books and sewing there--December, with mountains 12,000 feet high beside us!--and the gardener would set chairs for us at the stone table. Work and books would be dropped for long minutes to look out on those astonishingly noble mountains. If only the city below were well-ordered and clean like Avila or Segovia or Seville, this would be the spot of all Spain for a long stay.