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Gautier Théophile
Wanderings in Spain

The people you meet dressed in modern costumes, wearing broad-brimmed hats and long frock-coats, involuntarily produce on you a disagreeable effect, and appear more ridiculous than they really are; for, after all, they cannot be expected to walk about, for the sake of the local colouring, in the Moorish albornoz of the time of Boabdil, or in the iron armour of the time of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic. Like nearly all the citizens of every town in Spain, they think it necessary for their honour to show that they are not at all picturesque, and to prove, by the means of trousers and straps, their progress in civilization. Such is the prevailing idea which occupies their minds; they are afraid of appearing barbarous or backward; and when you admire the wild beauty of their country, they humbly beg you to excuse them for having no railways yet, and for being without steam-engines in their manufactories. One of these honest citizens, to whom I was extolling the charms of Granada, replied, "It is the best lighted city in Andalusia. Just look at the number of its lamps; but what a pity it is that they are not gas ones!"

Granada is gay, smiling, animated, although much fallen from its former splendour. The inhabitants are everywhere, and well merit the name of a numerous population; the carriages are handsomer and more plentiful than at Madrid. The sprightliness of the Andalusians fills the streets with bustle and life – things unknown to the grave Castilian, who, as he goes along, makes no more noise than his shadow: this remark particularly applies to the Carrera del Darro, the Zacatin, the Plaza Nueva, the Calle de los Gomeles, which leads to the Alhambra, to the square before the theatre, to the entrances to the parade, and to all the leading thoroughfares. The rest of the city is intersected in all directions by inextricable lanes of three or four feet in width, through which no vehicles can pass, and which remind you of the Moorish streets of Algiers. The only sound heard there is the noise made by the hoof of a donkey or a mule, which strikes a light every now and then on the glittering flints which pave the road, or the monotonous tinkling of a guitar which some one is playing at the bottom of a yard.

The balconies, furnished with blinds and ornamented with shrubs and vases of flowers, the vine-runners creeping from one window to another, the rose-bays raising their blooming flowers above the garden walls, the curious effect of the sun and shade, whose fantastic frolics remind you of Decamps's pictures representing Turkish villages, the women seated before the doors, the half-naked children playing and rolling about at their sides, the donkeys going backwards and forwards loaded with feathers and woollen tufts, give these lanes, which are nearly always up-hill and sometimes intersected with steps, a peculiar appearance which has a certain charm about it, and which compensates – nay, more than compensates for their want of regularity, by the novel and unlooked-for things you see.

Victor Hugo, in his charming "Orientale," says of Granada, —

 
"Elle peint ses maisons de plus riches couleurs."
 

This is perfectly true. The houses of persons at all well off are painted outside in the most fantastic manner with imitations of architectural embellishments, sham cameos on grey grounds, and false bas-reliefs. You have before you a medley of mouldings, modillions, piers, urn-like vessels, volutes, medallions ornamented with rose-coloured tufts, ovoloes, bits of embroidery, pot-bellied cupids supporting all sorts of allegorical figures, on apple-green, bright flesh-colour, or fawn-tinted backgrounds, all which, high art tells us, argues bad taste carried to its utmost limits. At first, you have some difficulty to bring yourself to look upon these illuminated façades as real dwelling-houses. You fancy you are walking among the scenery of a theatre. We had already seen houses illuminated in this manner at Toledo, but they are very much behind those of Granada in the extravagance of their decorations and the strangeness of their colours. As for myself, I do not dislike this fashion, which pleases the sight and forms a happy contrast with the chalky colour of the whitewashed walls.

We just now mentioned the adoption by the upper classes of the French style of dress; but the man of the people does not, luckily, study Parisian fashions. He has still kept the pointed hat with a velvet brim, adorned with silk tassels, or the one of stunted form with a wide flap, like a turban, the jacket ornamented at the elbows, the cuffs, and the collar, with embroidery, and pieces of cloth of all colours, and which vaguely reminds you of the Turkish jackets, the red or yellow sash, the breeches furnished with filigrane buttons, or with small coins soldered to a shank, with the leather gaiters open up the side to let the leg be seen; the whole being more striking, more gorgeous, more flowered, more dazzling, more loaded with tinsel and gewgaws, than the costume of any other province. You see also many other costumes known by the name of vestido de cazador (hunter's dress), made of Cordova leather and blue or green velvet, and ornamented with aiglets. It is considered highly fashionable to carry a cane (vara) or white stick, four feet long, slit up at the end, and on which the person carrying it leans negligently when he stops to speak to any one. No majo possessing the least respect for himself would ever dare appear in public without a vara. Two handkerchiefs, with their ends hanging out of the jacket pockets, a long navaja stuck in the sash, not in front, but in the middle of the back, constitute the height of elegance for these coxcombs of the people.

This costume so pleased my fancy, that my first care was to order one. They took me to Don Juan Zafata, a person who had a great reputation for national costumes, and who had as great a hatred for black dress-coats and frock-coats as I have. Seeing that my antipathy coincided with his own, he gave free course to his sorrow, and poured into my breast his elegies on the decline of art. With grief that found an echo in myself did he remind me of the happy time when foreigners dressed in the French fashion would have been hooted through the streets and pelted with orange-peel; when the toreadores wore jackets embroidered with gold and silver, which were worth more than five hundred piécettes; and when the young men of good family had trimmings and aiglets of an enormous price. "Alas! sir, the English are the only persons who buy Spanish clothes now," said he, as he finished taking my measure.

This Señor Zapata was, with respect to his clothes, something like Cardillac with respect to his jewels. He was always sorely grieved at having to give them up to his customers. When he came to try on my suit, he was so delighted with the splendid appearance of the flower-pot he had embroidered in the middle of the back on the brown cloth ground, that he broke out into exclamations of the most frantic joy, and began to commit all sorts of extravagances. But all at once the thought that he should have to leave this chef-d'œuvre in my hands put a stop to his hilarity, and his features suddenly became overcast. Under the pretext of making I know not what alteration, he wrapped the garment up in a handkerchief, gave it to his apprentice, for a Spanish tailor would think himself dishonoured if he carried his own parcels, and casting at me a fierce, ironical look, hurried away as if a thousand demons were pursuing him. The next day he came back alone, and, taking from a leathern purse the money I had paid him, he told me that it grieved him so much to part with his jacket, that he preferred to return me my duros. It was only after I had observed that this costume would give the Parisians a great idea of his talent, and create him a reputation in Paris, that he consented to let me have it.

The women have had the good taste not to discard the mantilla, the most delicious style of head-dress for the display of Spanish features; gracefully enveloped in their black lace, they go about the streets and public walks, with nothing on their heads but the mantilla, and a red pink at each temple, and glide along the walls, while skilfully using their fans, with the most incomparable grace and agility. A bonnet is a rare thing in Granada. The women of fashion have, it is true, some jonquil, or poppy-coloured thing, carefully put away in a bonnet-box, to be kept for grand occasions; but such occasions, thank Heaven, are very rare, and the horrible bonnets only see the light on the saint's day of the Queen, or at the solemn sittings of the Lyceum. May our fashions never invade the city of the caliphs, and may we never see realized the terrible menace contained in the two words, "Modista Francesa," painted in black at the entrance of a public square! Persons of a grave character will, doubtless, think us very futile, and ridicule our grief about the extinction of the picturesque, but then we are of opinion, that patent leather boots and mackintoshes contribute very little to civilization, and we even look upon civilization itself as a thing far from desirable. It is a melancholy spectacle for a poet, an artist, and a philosopher, to see both form and colour disappear from the world, lines become confused, tints confounded, and the most disheartening uniformity invade everything, under the pretext of I know not what progress. When all things are alike, there will be no further need for travelling, but, by a happy coincidence, that will be the very time when railways will be in full activity. What will be the good of making a long journey at the rate of ten leagues an hour, to go and look at a number of streets lighted, like the Rue de la Paix, with gas, and full of well-to-do citizens? We do not think that it was for this that Nature modelled each country in a different shape, supplied it with plants peculiar to itself, and peopled the world with races dissimilar to each other in conformation, colour, and language. It is giving a bad interpretation to the meaning for which the world was created, to wish it to force the same livery on men of every climate; and yet this is one of the errors of European civilization: a coat with long narrow tails makes a man look much uglier than any other costume would, and keeps him quite as barbarous. The poor Turks of Sultan Mahmoud have certainly cut a fine figure since the reform made in their old Asiatic costume, and the progress of knowledge among them has been prodigious indeed!

In order to reach the parade, you must go along the Carrera del Darro and cross the Plaza del Teatro, where there is a funereal column raised to the memory of Joaquin Maïquez by Julian Romea, Matilda Diez, and other dramatic artistes: the façade of the Arsenal, a structure of bad taste, besmeared with yellow and decorated with statues of grenadiers painted mouse-grey, looks on the square.

The Alameda of Granada is certainly one of the most agreeable places in the world; it is called the Saloon, a singular name for a parade; fancy a long walk furnished with several rows of trees of a verdancy unique in Spain, and terminating at each end by a monumental fountain, the top basins of which support on their shoulders aquatic gods, curious by their deformity, and delightfully barbarous. These fountains, contrary to the custom of such constructions, throw out the water in large sheets, which, evaporating in the form of fine rain and mist, spreads around a most delicious coolness. In the side walks run streams of crystalline transparency, encased in beds of different coloured pebbles. A large parterre, ornamented with jets of water and crowded with shrubs and flowers, myrtles, roses, jasmines, with all the riches, in fact, of the Granadian Flora, occupies the space between the Saloon and the Xenil, and stretches as far as the bridge constructed by General Sebastiani at the time of the French invasion. The Xenil runs from the Sierra Neveda in its marble bed, through woods of laurel of the most incomparable beauty. Glass and crystal form comparisons too opaque and too thick to give a true idea of the purity of the water which, but the evening before, was still flowing in sheets of silver on the white shoulders of the Sierra Neveda. It is like a torrent of diamonds in a state of fusion.

The fashionable world of Granada assemble on the Saloon, between seven and eight in the evening; the carriages follow along the road, but they are for the most part empty, as the Spaniards are very fond of walking, and in spite of their pride, deign to use their own legs. Nothing can be more charming than to see the young women and young girls pass to and fro in little groups, dressed in their mantillas, with their arms bare, real flowers in their hair, satin shoes on their feet, and a fan in their hand, followed at some distance by their friends and sweethearts, for, as we have already said, when speaking of the Prado at Madrid, it is not customary in Spain for the women to take the arms of the men. This habit of walking alone gives them a bold, elegant, and free deportment unknown to our women, who are always hanging to some arm or other. As artists say, they carry themselves beautifully. This perpetual separation of the men from the women, at least in public, already smacks of the East.

A sight of which the people of the North can have no idea, is the Alameda of Granada at sunset. The Sierra Neveda, whose denticulated ridges face the city on this side, assumes the most unimaginable hues. Its whole steep and rugged flank and all its peaks, struck by the light, become of a rose-colour, dazzling to behold; ideal, fabulous, shot with silver, and streaked with iris and opal-like reflections, which would make the freshest tints on the artist's palette appear thick and dirty: the hues of mother-of-pearl, the transparency of the ruby, and veins of agate and advanturine that would defy all the fairy jewellery of the "Thousand-and-one Nights," are to be seen there. The hollows, crevices, anfractuosities, and all the places which the rays of the setting sun cannot reach are of a blue colour which vies with the azure of the sky and sea, with the lapis-lazuli and the sapphire; this contrast of hue between light and shade produces a wonderful effect: the mountain seems to have put on an immense robe of shot silk spangled and bordered with silver; little by little, the bright colours disappear and turn to violet mezzotintos, darkness invades the lower ridges, the light withdraws towards the summit, and all the plain has long since been in obscurity, while the silver diadem of the Sierra still shines out in the serenity of the sky, beneath the parting kiss sent it by the sun.

The company take a turn or two more and then disperse, some going to take sherbet or agraz at the café of Don Pedro Hurtado, where you get the best ice in Granada, and others to the tertulia at their friends' and acquaintances' houses.

This is the gayest and most lively part of the day at Granada. The shops of the aguadores and sellers of ices in the open street are illuminated by a multitude of lamps and lanterns; the street lamps and the lights placed before the images of the madonnas vie in splendour and number with the stars, and this is saying something: if it happens to be moonlight, you can easily see to read the most microscopical print. The light is blue instead of being yellow, and that is all.

Thanks to the lady who had saved me from dying of hunger in the diligence, and who introduced us to several of her friends, we were soon well known in Granada. We led a delicious life there. It would be impossible to receive a more cordial, frank, and amiable welcome than we did; at the end of five or six days we were on the most intimate terms with every one, and according to the Spanish custom, we were always called by our Christian names; at Granada I was Don Teofilo, my friend gloried in the appellation of Don Eugenio, and we were both at liberty to designate the ladies and young girls of the houses in which we were received, by the familiar names of Carmen, Teresa, Gala, &c.; this familiarity clashes in no way with the most polished manners and the most respectful attention.

We went to tertulia every evening from eight o'clock till twelve; to-day at one house, to-morrow at another. The tertulia is held in the patio, surrounded by alabaster columns and ornamented by a jet of water, the basin of which is encircled with pots of flowers and boxes of shrubs, down whose leaves the water falls in large beads. Five or six lamps are hung up along the walls: sofas, and straw or cane-bottomed chairs furnish the galleries, with here and there a guitar. The piano occupies one corner, and in another stand card-tables. Every one, on entering, goes to pay his compliments to the mistress and master of the house, who never fail to offer you a cup of chocolate, that good taste tells you to refuse, and a cigarette, which is sometimes accepted. When this duty is over, you retire to a corner of the patio, and join the group which has most attraction for you. The parents and old people play at trecillo, the young men talk with the young girls, recite the octaves and the decastichs they have composed during the day, and are scolded and forced to do penance for the crimes they may have committed the evening before; such, for instance, as having danced too often with a pretty cousin, or cast too ardent a glance towards a proscribed balcony, with numerous other peccadilloes. If, on the contrary, they have been very good, they are rewarded for the rose they have brought with the pink in the young girls' breast or hair, and their squeeze of the hand is replied to by a gentle look and a slight pressure of the fingers, when all go up into the balcony to listen to the Retreat beaten by the troops. Love seems to be the sole business of Granada. You have only to speak two or three times to a young girl, and the entire city immediately declare you to be novio and novia, – that is, affianced, and make a thousand innocent jokes about the passion they have invented for you; which jokes, innocent though they be, do not fail, however, to make you somewhat uneasy, by bringing visions of conjugal life before your eyes. All this gallantry is, however, more apparent than real; in spite of languishing glances, burning looks, tender or impassioned conversations, pretty little shortenings of your name, and the querido (beloved) with which it is preceded, you must not conceive any too flattering ideas. A Frenchman to whom a woman of the world were to say the quarter of what a young Granadian girl says to one of her numerous novios, without the least importance being attached to it, would think himself already in Paradise; but he would soon find his mistake, for if he became too bold, he would be instantly called to order, and summoned to state his matrimonial intentions before the nearest relatives. This honest liberty of language, so far removed from the forced and artificial manners of the nations of the north, is preferable to hypocrisy of speech, which always hides, at bottom, some coarse thought or other. At Granada, to pay attentions to a married woman seems quite extraordinary; while nothing appears more natural there than to pay court to a young girl. It is the contrary in France: no one ever addresses, there, a word to young, unmarried ladies, and this is what so often renders marriages unhappy. In Spain, a novio sees his novia two or three times a day, speaks to her without witnesses, accompanies her in her walks, and comes to talk with her in the evening through the bars of the balcony, or the window of the ground-floor. He thus has time to become acquainted with her, to study her character, and does not buy, as the saying is, a pig in a poke.

When the conversation flags, one of the gentlemen takes down a guitar, and, scratching the cords with his nails and keeping time with the palm of his hand on the centre of the instrument, begins to sing some gay Andalusian song or some comic couplet, interspersed with Ay! and Ola! curiously modulated and productive of a very singular effect. Then a lady sits down to the piano, and plays a morceau from Bellini, who appears to be the favourite maestro of the Spaniards, or sings a romance of Breton de los Herreros, the great versifier of Madrid. The evening is terminated by a little extempore ball, at which, alas! they dance neither jota, nor fandango, nor bolero, these dances being abandoned to peasants, servants, and gipsies; but they dance quadrilles, rigadoons, and sometimes they waltz. At our request, however, two young ladies of the house volunteered to execute the bolero one evening; but, before they commenced, they took care to close the door and windows of the patio, which are generally left open, so afraid were they of being accused of bad taste and local colouring. In general, the Spaniards grow angry on being spoken to of cachuchas, castanets, majos, manolas, monks, smugglers, and bull-fights, though they have, in reality, a great liking for all these things, so truly national and characteristic. They ask you, with an air of apparent vexation, if you do not think that they are as far advanced in civilization as yourself? To such an extent has the deplorable mania of imitating everything, French or English, penetrated everywhere! At present, Spain represents the Voltaire-Touquet system and the Constitutionnel of 1825; that is, it is hostile to all colouring and to all poetry. Be it remembered, however, that we are only speaking of the self-styled enlightened class inhabiting the cities.

As soon as the quadrilles are over, you take your leave by saying, "A los pies de vd." to the lady of the house, and "Beso à vd. la mano" to her husband; to which they reply, "Buenas noches," and "Beso à vd. la suya:" and then again on the threshold, as a last adieu, "Hasta mañana" (till to-morrow); which is an invitation to return. In spite of their familiar ways, the people of even the lower classes, the peasants and vagrants, make use towards one another of the most exquisite urbanity, which forms a strong contrast with the uncouthness of our own rabble. It is true that a stab might be the result of an offensive expression, and this is certainly one way of making all interlocutors use a good deal of circumspection. It is worthy of remark that French politeness, formerly proverbial, has disappeared since swords have ceased to be worn. The laws against duelling will end by making us the rudest nation in the world.

On returning home, you meet, under the windows and balconies, numbers of young gallants enveloped in their hooded cloaks, and staying there to pelar la paba (pluck the turkey), that is, to talk with their novias through the bars. These nocturnal conversations often last till two or three o'clock in the morning, which is nothing astonishing, since the Spaniards spend a part of the day in sleep. You sometimes tumble also on a serenade composed of three or four musicians, but more generally of the sighing swain only, who sings couplets as he accompanies himself on the guitar, with his sombrero drawn over his eyes, and his feet resting on a stone or a step. Formerly two serenades in the same street would not have been tolerated. The first comer claimed the right of remaining there alone, and forbade every other guitar, except his own, to tinkle in silence of the night. Such pretensions were maintained at the point of the sword, or by the knife, unless the patrol happened to be passing. In this case the two rivals coalesced, in order to charge the patrol, with the understanding that they were to renew their own private combat by and by. The susceptibility of serenaders has greatly diminished, and every one can at present tranquilly rascar el jamon (scrape the ham) under the window of his mistress.

If the night is dark you must take care not to put your foot into the stomach of some honourable hidalgo, rolled up in his mantle, which serves him for garment, bed, and house. During the summer nights the granite steps of the theatre are covered with a mass of blackguards who have no other place to go to. Each of them has his particular step, which serves as his apartment, where he is always sure to be found. They sleep there under the blue vault of heaven, with the stars for night lights, with no bugs to annoy them, and defy the sting of the mosquito by the coriaceous nature of their tanned skin, which is bronzed by the fiery sun of Andalusia, and certainly quite as dark as that of the darkest mulattoes.

The following is, without much variation, the life we led. The morning was devoted to visiting different parts of the city, to a walk to the Alhambra or the Generalife; we then went, of necessity, to call on the ladies at whose houses we had passed the previous evening. When we called but twice a day they told us we were ungrateful, and received us with so much kindness that we came to the conclusion that we really were fierce savage beings, and extremely negligent.

Our passion for the Alhambra was such that, not satisfied with visiting it every day, we were desirous of altogether taking up our abode there; not, however, in the neighbouring houses, which are let at very high prices to the English, but in the palace itself; and, thanks to the interest of our Granadian friends, the authorities, without giving us formal permission, promised not to perceive us. We remained there four days and four nights, which constituted, without any doubt, the happiest moments of my existence.

In order to reach the Alhambra, we will pass, if you please, through the square of the Vivarambla, where Gazal, the valiant Moor, used to hunt the bull, and where the houses, with their wooden balconies and miradores, present a vague appearance of so many hen-coops. The fish-market occupies one corner of the square, the middle of which forms an open space, surrounded with stone seats, peopled with money-changers, vendors of alcarrazas, earthen pots, water melons, mercery, ballads, knives, chaplets, and other little articles that can be sold in the open air. The Zacatin, which has preserved its picturesque name, connects the Vivarambla with the Plaza Nueva. It is in this street, bordered by lateral lanes, and covered with canvass tendidos, that all the commerce of Granada moves and buzzes; hatters, tailors, and shoemakers, lacemen and cloth merchants, occupy nearly all the shops, which possess as yet nothing of the improvements of modern art, and remind you of the old pillars of the Paris markets.

The Zacatin is always crowded. Now you meet a group of students on a tour from Salamanca, playing the guitar, the tambourine, castanets, and triangle, while they sing couplets full of fun and animation; then again your eye encounters a gang of gipsy women, with their blue flounced dresses studded with stars, their long yellow shawls, their hair in disorder, and their necks encircled with big coral or amber necklaces, or a file of donkeys loaded with enormous jars, and driven by a peasant from the Vega, as sun-burnt as an African.

The Zacatin leads into the Plaza Nueva, one side of which is taken up by the splendid palace of the Chancellor, remarkable for its columns of rustic order and the severe richness of its architecture. As soon as you have crossed the place, you begin to ascend the Calle de los Gomeres, at the end of which you find yourself on the limits of the jurisdiction of the Alhambra, and face to face with the Puerta de Granada, named Bib Leuxar by the Moors, with the Vermilion Towers on its right, built, as the learned world declares, on Phœnician sub-structures, and inhabited at present by basket-makers and potters.

Before proceeding further, we ought to warn our readers, who may perhaps think our descriptions, though scrupulously exact, beneath the idea they have formed of the Alhambra, that this palace and fortress of the ancient Moorish kings is very far from presenting the appearance lent to it by the imagination. We expected to see terrace superposed on terrace, open-worked minarets, and rows of boundless colonnades. But nothing of all this really exists: outside, there are only to be seen large massive towers of the colour of bricks or toasted bread, built at different epochs by Arabian princes; and within, all you see is a suite of chambers and galleries, decorated with extreme delicacy, but with nothing grand about them. Having made these remarks, we will continue our route.

After having passed the Puerta de Granada, you find yourself within the bounds of the fortress and under the jurisdiction of a special governor. There are two routes marked out in a wood of lofty trees. Let us take the one to the left, which leads to the fountain of Charles the Fifth: it is the steeper of the two, but then it is the shorter and the more picturesque. Water flows along rapidly in small trenches paved with kelp, and spreads around the bottom of the trees, which nearly all belong to species peculiar to the north, and the verdancy of which is of such moisture as to be truly delicious at so short a distance from Africa. The noise of the murmuring water joins itself to the hoarse hum of a hundred thousand grasshoppers or crickets, whose music never ceases, and which forcibly reminds you, in spite of the coolness of the place, of southern and torrid climes. Water springs forth everywhere; from beneath the trunks of the trees and through the cracks in the old walls. The hotter it is, the more abundant are the springs, for it is the snow which supplies them. This mixture of water, snow, and fire, renders the Granadian climate unparalleled throughout the world, and makes Granada a real terrestrial paradise; without being Moors, we might well have had applied to us, when we appeared oppressed by deep melancholy, the Arabian saying – "He is thinking of Granada."