That necessity of realism which is, perhaps, the most conspicuous of Spanish traits, shows itself nowhere more obviously than in matters religious. It is a very listless emotion that is satisfied with the shadow of the ideal; and the belief of the Andaluz is an intensely living thing, into which he throws himself with a vehemence that requires the nude and brutal fact. His saints must be fashioned after his own likeness, for he has small power of make-believe, and needs all manner of substantial accessories to establish his faith. But then he treats the images as living persons, and it never occurs to him to pray to the Saint in Paradise while kneeling before his presentment upon earth. The Spanish girl at the altar of Mater Dolorosa prays to a veritable woman, able to speak if so she wills, able to descend from the golden shrine to comfort the devout worshipper. To her nothing is more real than these Madonnas, with their dark eyes and their abundant hair…
[…]
Notwithstanding Murillo's obvious faults, as you walk through the museum at Seville all Andalusia appears before you. Nothing could be more characteristic than the religious feeling of the many pictures, than the exuberant fancy and utter lack of idealisation: in the contrast between a Holy Family by Murillo and one by Perugino is all the difference between Spain and Italy. Murillo's Virgin is a peasant girl such as you may see in any village round Seville on a feast-day; her emotions are purely human, and in her face is nothing more than the intense love of a mother for her child. But the Italian shows a creature not of earth, an angelic maid with almond eyes, oval of face: she has a strange air of unrealness, for her body is not of human flesh and blood, and she is linked with mankind only by an infinite sadness; she seems to see already the Dolorous Way, and her eyes are heavy with countless unwept tears.
One picture especially, that which the painter himself thought his best work, Saint Thomas of Villanueva distributing Alms, to my mind offers the entire impression of that full life of Andalusia. In the splendour of mitre and of pastoral staff, in the sober magnificence of architecture, is all the opulence of the Catholic Church; in the worn, patient, ascetic face of the saint is the mystic, fervid piety which distinguished so wonderfully the warlike and barbarous Spain of the sixteenth century; and lastly, in the beggars covered with sores, pale, starving, with their malodorous rags, you feel strangely the swarming poverty of the vast population, downtrodden and vivacious, which you read of in the picaresque novels of a later day. And these same characteristics, the deep religious feeling, the splendour, the poverty, the extreme sense of vigorous life, the discerning may find even now among the Andalusians for all the modern modes with which, as with coats of London and bonnets of Paris, they have sought to liken themselves to the rest of Europe.
[…]
...toreador is an unknown word, good
for comic opera and persons who write novels of Spanish life and cannot be
bothered to go to
[…]
The English humanity to animals is one
of the best traits of a great people, and they justly thank God they are not as
others are. Can anything more horrid be imagined than to kill a horse in the
bull-fight, and can any decent hack ask for a better end when he is broken
down, than to be driven to death in
[…]
There were about two hundred in the patio [of the prison], and really they did not seem to have so bad a time. There was one large group gathered round a man who read a newspaper aloud; it was Monday morning, and all listened intently to the account of a bull-fight on the previous day, bursting into a little cry of surprise and admiration on hearing that the matador had been caught and tossed. Others lay by a pillar playing draughts for matches, while half a dozen more eagerly watched, giving unsolicited advice with much gesticulation. The draught-board consisted of little squares drawn on the pavement with chalk, and pieces were scraps of white and yellow paper. One man sat cross-legged by a column busily rolling cigarettes; he had piles of them by his side arranged in packets, which he sold at one penny each; it was certainly an illegal offence, because the sale of tobacco is a government monopoly, but if you cannot break the laws in prison where can you break them? Others occupied themselves by making baskets or nets. But the majority did nothing at all, standing about, sitting when they could, with the eternal cigarette between their lips; and the more energetic watched the blue smoke curl into the air. Altogether a very happy family!
[…]
One canon especially interested me, a
little thin man, bent and wrinkled, apparently of fabulous age, but still
something of a dandy, for he wore his clothes with a certain air, as though
half a century before, byronically, he had been quite a devil with the ladies.
The silver buckle on his shoes was most elegant, and he protruded his foot as
though the violet silk of his stocking gave him a discreet pleasure. To the
very backbone he was an optimist, finding existence evidently so delightful
that it did not even need rose-coloured spectacles. He was an amiable old man,
perhaps a little narrow, but very indulgent to the follies of others. He had
committed no sin himself - for many years: a suspicion of personal vanity is in
itself proof of a pure and gentle mind; and as for the sins of others - they
were probably not heinous, and at all events would gain forgiveness. The
important thing, surely, was to be sound in dogma. The day wore on and the sun
now shone only in a narrow space; and this the canon perambulated, smoking the
end of a cigarette, the delectable frivolity of which contrasted pleasantly
with his great age. He nodded affably to other priests as they passed, a pair
of young men, and one obese old creature with white hair and an expression of
comfortable self-esteem. He removed his hat with a great and courteous sweep
when a lady of his acquaintance crossed his path. The priests basking in the
warmth were like four great black cats. It was indeed a pleasant spot, and
contentment oozed into one by every pore. The canon rolled himself another
cigarette, smiling as he inhaled the first sweet whiffs; and one could not but
think the sovereign herb must greatly ease the journey along the steep and
narrow way which leads to
Up in the North, under the cold grey
sky, God Almighty may be a hard taskmaster, and the
[…]
To go from Seville to Granada is like coming out of the sunshine into deep shadow. I arrived, my mind full of Moorish pictures, expecting to find a vivid, tumultuous life; and I was ready with a prodigal hand to dash on the colours of my admiration. But Granada is a sad town, grey and empty; its people meander, melancholy, through the streets, unoccupied. It is a tradeless place living on the monuments which attract strangers, and like many a city famous for stirring history, seems utterly exhausted. Granada gave me an impression that it wished merely to be left alone to drag out its remaining days in peace, away from the advance of civilisation and the fervid hurrying of progress: it seemed like a great adventuress retired from the world after a life of vicissitude, anxious only to be forgotten, and after so much storm and stress to be nothing more than pious. There must be many descendants of the Moors, but the present population is wan and lifeless. They are taciturn, sombre folk, with nothing in them of the chattering and vivacious creatures of Arab history.
[…]
The great charm of the Andalusian country is that you seize romance, as it were, in the act. In northern lands it is only by a mental effort that you can realise the picturesque value of the life that surrounds you; and, for my part, I can perceive it only by putting it mentally in black and white, and reading it as though between the covers of a book. Once, I remember, in Brittany, in a distant corner of that rock-bound coast, I sat at midnight in a fisherman's cottage playing cards by the light of two tallow candles. Next door, with only a wall between us, a very old sailor lay dying in the great cupboard-bed which had belonged to his fathers before him; and he fought for life with the remains of that strenuous vigour with which in other years he had battled against the storms of the Atlantic. In the stillness of the night, the waves, with the murmur of a lullaby, washed gently upon the shingle, and the stars shone down from a clear sky. I looked at the yellow light on the faces of the players, gathered in that desolate spot from the four corners of the earth, and cried out: 'By Jove, this is romance!' I had never before caught that impression in the very making, and I was delighted with my good fortune.
The answer came quickly from the American: 'Don't talk bosh! It's your deal.'
But for all that it was romance, seized fugitively, and life at that moment threw itself into a decorative pattern fit to be remembered. It is the same effect which you get more constantly in Spain, so that the commonest things are transfigured into beauty. For in the cactus and the aloe and the broad fields of grain, in the mules with their wide panniers and the peasants, in the shepherds' huts and the straggling farm-houses, the romantic is there, needing no subtlety to be discovered; and the least imaginative may feel a certain thrill when he understands that the life he leads is not without its aesthetic meaning.
[…]
Then the Christians conquered Cordova,
and the charming civilisation of the Moors was driven out by monks and priests
and soldiers. First they built only chapels in the outermost aisles; but in a
little while, to make room for a choir, they destroyed six rows of columns; and
at last, when Master Martin Luther had rekindled Catholic piety, they set up a
great church in the very middle of the mosque. The story of this vandalism is
somewhat quaint, and one detail at least affords a suggestion that might prove
useful in the present time; for the Town Council of Cordova menaced with death
all who should assist in the work: one imagines that a similar threat from the
Lord Mayor of London might have a salutary effect upon the restorers of
Westminster Abbey or the decorators of St. Paul's. How very much more
entertaining must have been the world when absolutism was the fashion and the
preposterous method of universal suffrage had never been considered! But the
Chapter, as those in power always are, was bent upon restoring, and induced
Charles V. to give the necessary authority. The king, however, had not
understood what they wished to do, and when later he visited Cordova and saw
what had happened, he turned to the dignitaries who were pointing out the
improvements and said: 'You have built what you or others might have built
anywhere, but you have destroyed something that was unique in the world.' The
words show a fine scorn; but as a warning to later generations it would have been
more to the purpose to cut off a dozen priestly heads.
[...]
But if what I have said of Granada
seems cold, it is because I did not easily catch the spirit of the place. For
when you merely observe and admire some view, and if industrious make a note of
your impression, and then go home to luncheon, you are but a vulgar tripper,
scum of the earth, deserving the ridicule with which the natives treat you. The
romantic spirit is your only justification; when by the comeliness of your life
or the beauty of your emotion you have attained that, (Shelley when he visited Paestum
had it, but Théophile Gautier, flaunting his red waistcoat tras los montes, was perhaps no better than a Cook's tourist,) then
you are no longer unworthy of the loveliness which it is your privilege to see.
When the old red brick and the green trees say to you hidden things, and the vega and the mountains are stretched
before you with a new significance, when at last the white houses with their
brown tiles, and the labouring donkey, and the peasant at his plough, appeal to
you so as to make, as it were, an exquisite pattern on your soul, then you may
begin to find excuses for yourself. But you may see places long and often
before they are thus magically revealed to you, and for myself I caught the
real emotion of Granada but once, when from the Generalife I looked over the
valley, the Generalife in which are mingled perhaps more admirably than
anywhere else in Andalusia all the charm of Arabic architecture, of running
water, and of cypress trees, of purple flags and dark red roses. It is a spot,
indeed, fit for the plaintive creatures of poets to sing their loves, for Paolo
and Francesca, for Juliet and Romeo; and I am glad that there I enjoyed such an
exquisite moment.
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