Gautier Théophile
Wanderings in Spain
You ascend the Giralda by a series of inclined ramps, so easy and gentle, that two men on horseback could very well ride up to the summit, whence you enjoy an admirable view. At your feet lies Seville, brilliantly white, with its spires and towers, endeavouring, but in vain, to reach the rose-coloured brick girdle of the Giralda. Beyond these stretches the plain, through which the Guadalquiver flows, like a piece of watered silk, and scattered around are Santi-Pouce, Algaba, and other villages. Quite in the background is the Sierra Morena, with its outlines sharply marked, in spite of the distance, so great is the transparency of the air in this admirable country. On the opposite side, the Sierras de Gibram, Zaara, and Morou, raise their bristling forms, tinged with the richest hues of lapis lazuli and amethyst, and completing this magnificent panorama, which is inundated with light, sunshine, and dazzling splendour.
A great number of fragments of columns, shaped into posts, and connected with each other by chains, except where spaces are left for persons to pass, surround the cathedral. Some of these columns are antique, and come either from the ruins of Italica, or from the remains of the ancient mosque, whose former site is now occupied by the cathedral, and of which the only remaining vestiges are the Giralda, a few old walls, and one or two arches, one of which serves as the entrance to the courtyard de los Nanjeros. The Lonja (Exchange) is a large and perfectly regular edifice, built by the heavy and wearisome Herrera, that architect of ennui, to whom we owe the Escurial, which is decidedly the most melancholy building in the world; the Lonja, also, like the cathedral, is surrounded by the same description of posts. It is completely isolated, and presents four similar façades; it stands between the cathedral and the Alcazar. In it are preserved the archives of America, and the correspondence of Christopher Columbus, Pizarro, and Fernand Cortez; but all these treasures are guarded by such savage dragons, that we were obliged to content ourselves with looking at the outside of the pasteboard boxes and portfolios, which are stowed away in mahogany compartments, like the goods in a draper's shop. It would be a most easy thing to place five or six of the most precious autographs in glass-cases, and thus satisfy the very legitimate curiosity of travellers.
The Alcazar, or ancient palace of the Moorish kings, is very fine and quite worthy of its reputation, but it does not surprise any one who has seen the Alhambra at Granada. You meet the same small white marble columns, the painted and gilt capitals, the heart-shaped arcades, the panels with mottoes from the Koran entwined with arabesques, the doors of larch and cedar wood, the stalactite cupolas, and the fountains ornamented with carving, which may vary in appearance, but of whose endless details and minute delicacy no description can convey an idea. The Hall of Ambassadors, the magnificent doors of which have been preserved in all their integrity, is perhaps more beautiful and rich than that at Granada; unfortunately, the authorities have hit upon the idea of hanging between the slender columns which support the roof, a series of portraits of the kings of Spain from the most ancient times of the monarchy down to the present day. Nothing could be more ridiculous. The old kings, with their breastplates and iron crowns, manage to make a respectable appearance, but the more modern ones, with their powdered hair and uniforms produce a most grotesque effect. I shall never forget a certain queen with a pair of spectacles on her nose and a small dog upon her knees; she must feel very much out of her element. The baths, named after Maria Pedrilla, the mistress of the king, Don Pedro, who resided in the Alcazar, are still in the same state as in the time of the Arabs. The vaulted roof of the bath-room has not undergone the slightest alteration. Charles V. has left far too many marks of his presence in the Alcazar of Seville, as he did in the Alhambra of Granada. This mania of building one palace in another is as frequent as it is deplorable; we must for ever regret the number of historical monuments it has destroyed, to substitute insignificant edifices in their stead. The Alcazar contains gardens laid out in the old French style, with yew-trees tortured into the strangest shapes imaginable.
Since we have come with the purpose of visiting all the public buildings, let us enter, for a few moments, the manufactory of tobacco, which is only two paces distant. This vast building is very well adapted to the business carried on in it, and contains a great number of machines for scraping, chopping, and grinding the tobacco; these machines make a noise like that of a multitude of windmills, and are set in motion by two or three hundred mules. It is here that they manufacture el palbo Sevilla, which is an impalpable, pungent powder, of a yellowish gold colour, with which the marquises of the time of the Regent were so fond of sprinkling their laced shirt-frills; its strength and volatility are so great that you begin sneezing the moment you put your foot into the rooms where it is prepared. It is sold by the pound and half-pound, in tin canisters. We were also shown into the workshops, where the tobacco-leaves are rolled up into cigars. Five or six hundred women are employed in this branch of the trade. Immediately we entered this room, we were stunned by a perfect tempest of noise; they were talking, singing, and disputing, in the same breath. I never in my life heard such a disturbance. Most of them were young, and several very pretty. The extreme carelessness of their dress allowed us to contemplate their charms at our ease. Some of them had got the end of a cigar boldly stuck in the corner of their mouth, with all the coolness of an officer of hussars, while some – O Muse, come to my assistance! – were chewing away like old sailors, for they are allowed to take as much tobacco as they can consume on the spot. They earn from four to six reals a day. The Cigarera of Seville is a type, as just like the Manala of Madrid. She is worth seeing, on Sundays or the days of the bull-fights, with her short basquina decorated with enormous flounces, her sleeves ornamented with jet buttons, and the puro, which she passes, from time to time, to her admirer, after having first inhaled its smoke herself.
Let us finish this inspection of the public buildings, by a visit to the celebrated Hospital de la Caridad, founded by the famous Don Juan de Marana, who is by no means a fabulous being, as the reader might suppose. An hospital founded by Don Juan! – Ay! – it may appear strange, but it is true. The following circumstance was the cause of its being erected. One night, as Don Juan was returning from some orgy or other, he met a funeral procession going to the Church of Sant-Isidore, with black penitents masked, yellow wax tapers, and, in a word, with something more lugubrious and sinister about it than an ordinary burial. "Who is dead? Is it a husband killed in duel by his wife's lover? or an honest father, who lived too long before his wealth came to his heir?" asked Don Juan, excited by the wine he had drunk. "The deceased," replied one of those who were bearing the coffin, "is no other than Don Juan de Marana, whose funeral service we are now going to perform. Come, and pray for him with us." Don Juan having approached, saw by the light of the torches (for in Spain the face of the deceased is always left exposed to view) that the corpse resembled himself, and, in fact, was himself. He followed his own bier to the church, and recited the usual prayers with the mysterious monks: the next morning he was found lying insensible on the stones of the choir. The circumstance produced such an impression on him, that he renounced his roystering life, assumed the monkish cowl, and founded the hospital in question, where he died almost in the odour of sanctity. The Caridad contains some very beautiful Murillos – namely, Moses Striking the Rock, The Multiplication of the Loaves, two immense compositions of the richest disposition, and San Juan de Dios carrying a dead body, and supported by an angel, a masterpiece of colouring and chiar'-oscuro. Here, too, is the picture, by Juan Valdes, known under the name of Los Dos Cadaveres, a strange and terrible painting, compared to which the blackest conceptions of Young may be looked upon as exceedingly jovial facetiæ.
The Circus was shut, to our great regret, for according to the aficionados the bull-fights at Seville are the most brilliant in all Spain. The circus here is remarkable from the fact of its forming a semicircle, at least as far as the audience portion of it is concerned, for the arena is round. It is said that a violent storm threw down all one side, which has not since been rebuilt. This arrangement enables you to obtain a marvellous view of the cathedral, and forms one of the finest sights imaginable; especially when the benches are filled with a brilliant crowd, resplendent with the brightest colours. Ferdinand VII. founded at Seville a School of Tauromachia, where the pupils were first exercised on pasteboard bulls, then on novillos, whose horns were tipped with balls, and lastly, on bulls in good earnest, until they were worthy of appearing in public. I am not aware whether the Revolution has respected this royal and despotic institution. Our hopes having been deceived, we had nothing left but to depart. Our places were already taken by the Cadiz steamer, and we embarked in the midst of the tears, the sobs, and the lamentations of the sweethearts or wives of some soldiers, who were changing their garrison, and going in the same vessel as ourselves. I do not know whether all this grief was sincere, but never did antique despair, or the desolation of the Jewish women in the days of their captivity, reach such a pitch.
CHAPTER XIV
FROM CADIZ TO BARCELONA – AND HOME
Cadiz – Visit to the brig "Le Voltigeur" – The Rateros – Jeres – Bull-fights – The Steamer – Gibraltar – Carthagena – Valencia – The Lonja de Seda – The Convent de la Merced – The Valencians – Barcelona – The Return to France.
After we had been travelling so long on horseback, on mules, in carts, and in galeras, the steamer struck us as something miraculous, in the style of the magic carpet of Fortunatus, or the staff of Abaris. The power of devouring space with the rapidity of an arrow, and that, too, without any trouble, fatigue, or jolting, while you quietly pace the deck, and see the long lines of the shore glide past you, in defiance of the caprices of wind and tide, is certainly one of the finest inventions of the human mind. For the first time, perhaps, I was of opinion that civilization had its good points, I do not say its attractive ones, for all that it produces is disfigured by ugliness, and thus betrays its complicated and diabolical origin. Compared to a sailing-vessel, a steamer, however convenient it may be, appears hideous. The former looks like a swan spreading its white wings to the gentle breeze, while the latter resembles a stove running away as fast as it can, on the back of a water-mill.
But however this may be, the floats of the wheels, assisted by the stream, were driving rapidly towards Cadiz. Seville was beginning to fade away behind us, but, by a magnificent optical effect, in the same proportion as the roofs of the houses appeared to sink into the ground and become confounded with the distant lines of the horizon, the cathedral increased, and seemed to assume the most enormous size, like an elephant standing up in the midst of a flock of sheep lying down all around; it was not till that moment that I gained a just idea of its immensity. The highest church-steeples did not rise above the nave. As for the Gualda, distance gave its rose-coloured bricks an amethyst, adventurine tint, which seems to me incompatible with our dull climate. The statue of Faith glittered on the summit like a golden bee on the top of a large blade of grass. Shortly afterwards, a turn in the river concealed Seville from our sight.
The banks of the Guadalquiver, at least as you descend the river towards the sea, do not possess that enchanting aspect that the descriptions of travellers and poets attribute to them. I have not the remotest idea where these gentlemen have got the groves of orange and pomegranate-trees, with which they perfume their songs. In reality, you see nothing but low, sandy, ochre-coloured banks, and yellow, troubled water, whose earthy tint cannot be attributed to the rains, since the latter are so rare. I had already remarked a similar want of limpidity in the Tagus; it arises, perhaps, from the large quantity of dust that the wind carries into the water, and from the friable nature of the soil through which the river passes. The strong blue of the sky, also, has some share in producing this effect, and by its extreme intensity, causes the tones of the water, which are always less vivid, to appear dirty. The sea alone can dispute the palm of transparency and azure with such a sky. The river continued to become broader and broader, and the banks flatter and smaller, while the general aspect of the scenery reminded me forcibly of the physiognomy of the Scheldt about Antwerp and Ostend. This recollection of Flanders in the heart of Andalusia, seems rather strange in connexion with the Moorish-named Guadalquiver, but it suggested itself to my mind so naturally, that the resemblance must have been very striking; for I can assure my readers that I was not then troubling myself about the Scheldt nor my voyage to Flanders, some six or seven years ago. Besides, the river presented no very animated appearance, and the country which we could see beyond the banks appeared uncultivated and deserted. It is true that we were in the middle of the dog-days, during which Spain is hardly anything more than a vast cinder-heap, without vegetation or verdure. The only living creatures visible were herons and storks, standing with one leg tucked under their breast and the other one half immersed in the water, watching for some fish to pass, and so perfectly motionless that they might almost have been mistaken for wooden birds stuck upon a stick. Barks with lateen sails, diverging from each other, floated up and down the stream, impelled by the same wind – a phenomenon I could never understand, although I have had it explained to me several times. Some of these vessels had a third and smaller sail, in the shape of an isosceles triangle, placed between two larger sails, a kind of rig which is highly picturesque.
About four or five o'clock in the afternoon we passed San Lucar, which is situated on the left bank. A large modern building, built in that regular, hospital, or barrack style, which constitutes the charm of all the edifices of the present day, had on its front some inscription or other which we could not read, a circumstance that we regretted but slightly. This square many-windowed affair was built by Ferdinand VII., and must be a custom-house, or warehouse, or something of the kind. Beyond San Lucar the Guadalquiver becomes very broad, and begins to assume the proportions of an arm of the sea. The banks form only a continually decreasing line between the water and the sky. The view is certainly grand, but rather monotonous, and we should have found the time hang heavily on our hands, had it not been for the games, the dancing, the castagnettes, and the tambourines of the soldiers. One of them, who had witnessed the performances of an Italian company, counterfeited the words, singing, and gestures of both actors and actresses, especially the latter, with great gaiety and talent. His comrades were obliged to hold their sides for laughter, and appeared to have entirely forgotten the touching scene which accompanied their departure. Perhaps their weeping Ariadnes had also dried their tears, and were laughing quite as heartily. The passengers on board the steamer entered fully into the general hilarity, and seemed to vie with each other as to who should prove most successfully the fulness of that reputation for imperturbable gravity that the Spaniards enjoy in all the countries of Europe. The time of Philip II., with its black costume, its starched ruffs, its devout looks, and its proud cold faces, is much more passed than is generally imagined.
After leaving San Lucar behind us, we entered the open sea by an almost imperceptible transition; the waves became transformed into long, regular volutes, the water changed colour, and so did the faces of the persons on board. Those doomed to suffer that strange malady which is termed sea-sickness, began to seek out the most solitary corners, and to lean in a melancholy manner against the rigging. As for myself, I took my seat valiantly on the top of the cabin, near the paddle-box, determined to study my sensations conscientiously; for, never having made a sea-voyage, I did not know whether I was fated to suffer the same indescribable torture or not. The first few see-saw movements of the vessel surprised me slightly, but I soon felt better, and resumed all my usual serenity. On leaving the Guadalquiver we kept to the left, and coasted along the shore, but at such a distance as only to be enabled to distinguish it with difficulty; for evening was approaching, and the sun was descending majestically into the sea by a glittering staircase formed of five or six steps of the richest purple clouds.
It was perfectly dark when we reached Cadiz. The lanterns of the ships and smaller craft at anchor in the roads, the lights in the town, and the stars in the sky, literally covered the waves with millions of golden, silver, and fiery spangles; where the water was calmer, the reflection of the beacons, as it stretched over the sea, formed long columns of flame of the most magical effect. The enormous mass of the ramparts loomed strangely through the thick darkness.
In order to land, it was necessary for ourselves and our luggage to be shifted into small boats, the boatmen fighting with one another, and vociferating in the most horrible manner, for the passengers and trunks, in about the same style as that which was formerly patronised at Paris by the drivers of the Coucons for Montmorency and Vincennes. My companion and myself had the utmost difficulty not to be separated from each other, for one boatman was pulling us to the right, and another to the left, with a degree of energy that was not at all calculated to inspire us with any great confidence, especially as all this contention took place in cockle-shells, that oscillated like the swings at a fair. We were deposited on the quay, however, without accident, and, after having been examined by the custom-house officers, whose bureau was situated under the archway of the city gates, in the thickness of the wall, we went to lodge in the Calle de San Francisco.
As may easily be imagined, we rose with the dawn. The fact of entering, for the first time, a town at night, is one of the things which most excites the curiosity of a traveller: he makes the most desperate endeavours to distinguish the general appearance of the streets, the form of the public buildings, and the physiognomies of the few people he meets in the dark, so that he has at least the pleasure of being surprised, when, the next morning, the town suddenly appears all at once before him, like the scene in a theatre when the curtain is raised.
Neither the palette of the painter nor the pen of the writer possesses colours sufficiently bright, nor tints sufficiently luminous, to convey any idea of the brilliant effect that Cadiz produced upon us that glorious morning. Two unique tints struck our view; blue and white – the blue as vivid as turquoises, sapphires, or cobalt, in fact the very deepest azure that can be imagined, and the white as pure as silver, snow, milk, marble, or the finest crystallized sugar! The blue was the sky repeated by the sea; the white was the town. It is impossible to conceive anything more radiant and more dazzling – to imagine light more diffused, and, at the same time, more intense. In sober truth, what we term the sun in France is, in comparison, nothing but a pale night-lamp at the last gasp, by the bedside of a sick man.
The houses at Cadiz are much loftier than those in the other towns of Spain. This is explained by the conformation of the ground, which is a small narrow island connected with the continent by a mere strip of land, as well as from the general desire to have a view of the sea. Each house stands on tiptoe with eager curiosity, in order to look over its neighbour's shoulder, and raise itself above the thick girdle of ramparts. This, however, is not always found sufficient, and at the angle of nearly all the terraces, there is a turret, a kind of belvedere, sometimes surmounted by a little cupola. These aërial miradores enrich the outline of the town with innumerable dentations, and produce a most picturesque effect. Every building is whitewashed, and the brilliancy of the façades is increased still more by long lines of vermilion which separate the houses and mark out the different stories: the balconies, which project very far, are enclosed in large glass cages, furnished with red curtains and filled with flowers. Some of the cross streets terminate on the open space, and seem to end in the sky. These stray bits of azure charm you by their being so totally unexpected. Apart from this gay, animated and dazzling appearance, Cadiz can boast of nothing particular in the way of architecture. Although its cathedral, which is a vast building of the sixteenth century, is wanting neither nobleness nor beauty, it presents nothing to astonish, after the prodigies of Burgos, Toledo, Cordova, and Seville; it is something in the same style as the cathedrals of Jaen, Granada, and Malaga; it is a specimen of classic architecture only rendered more slim and tapering, with that skill for which the artists of the Renaissance were so famed. The Corinthian capitals, more elongated than those of the consecrated Greek form, are very elegant. The pictures and ornaments are specimens of overcharged bad taste and meaningless richness, and that is all. I must not, however, pass over in silence, a little crucified martyr of seven years old, in carved, painted wood, most beautifully conceived, and carried out with exquisite delicacy. Enthusiasm, faith, and grief are all united on the beautiful face, in childlike proportions and the most touching manner.
We went to see the Plaza de Toros, which is small, and reckoned one of the most dangerous in Spain. In order to reach it, you pass through gardens planted with gigantic palm-trees of various kinds. Nothing is more noble and more royal than the palm-tree. Its large sun of leaves at the top of its grooved column, glitters so splendidly in the lapis-lazuli of an eastern sky! Its scaly trunk, as slender as if it were confined within a corset, reminds you so much of a young maiden's waist, its bearing is so majestic and so elegant. The palm-tree and the oleander are my favourite trees: the sight of one of them causes me to feel a degree of gaiety and joy that is truly astonishing. It seems to me as if no one could be unhappy under their shade.
The Plaza de Toros at Cadiz has no continuous tablas. There are kinds of wooden screens, at certain intervals, behind which the toreros take refuge when too closely pursued. This arrangement struck us as presenting less security than that in the other bull-rings.
Our attention was directed to the boxes in which the bulls are confined during the fight: they are a kind of cages, formed of massive beams, and shut by a door which is raised like the shuttle of a mill or the sluice of a pond. It is the custom here to goad the bulls with sharp-pointed darts and rub them with nitric acid, in order to render them furious: in short, all possible means are employed to exasperate their natural disposition.
On account of the excessive heat, the bull-fights were discontinued; a French acrobat had arranged his trestles and tight-rope in the middle of the arena for a performance that was to take place the next day. It was in this circus that Lord Byron saw the bull-fight which he describes in the first canto of "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage;" the description is poetical, but does not say much for his knowledge of Tauromachia.
Cadiz is surrounded by a tight girdle of ramparts, which laces in its waist like a granite corset: a second girdle of shoals and rocks defends it from the attacks of the waves, and yet, some few years since, a frightful tempest rent in twain and threw down, in several places, these formidable walls, which are more than twenty feet thick, and immense masses of which still strew the shore here and there. The ramparts are furnished at intervals with stone sentry-boxes; you can walk on the glacis all round the town, from which there is only one gate leading to the mainland, and, as you go along, view, out at sea or on the roadstead, the boats, feluccas, and fishing-smacks coming, going, describing graceful curves, crossing one another, tacking about, and playing like so many albatrosses; on the horizon, they appear nothing more than a number of dove's feathers, carried through the air by the capricious breeze; some of them, like the ancient Greek galleys, have on each side of the cutwater at the prow a large eye painted so as to resemble nature, and which appears to watch over the vessel's progress, imparting to this part of it something that bears a vague resemblance to the human profile. Nothing can be more animated, more lively, and more gay than this view.
On the mole, near the gateway of the custom-house, the scene is one of unequalled activity. A motley crowd, in which every nation of the globe has its representative, is hurrying, at every hour of the day, to the foot of the columns, surmounted by statues, which decorate the quay. From the white skin and red hair of the Englishman, down to the bronzed hide and black hair of the African, including all the intermediate shades, such as coffee-colour, copper, and golden-yellow, all the varieties of the human race are assembled there. In the roads, a little further on, the three-deckers, the frigates, and the brigs ride proudly at anchor, hoisting every morning, to the sound of the drum, the flags of their respective nations; the merchantmen and steamers, whose funnels belch forth a bicoloured smoke, approach nearer to the shore, in consequence of their drawing less water, and form the first plan of this grand naval picture.
I had a letter of introduction to the commander of the French brig-of-war Le Voltigeur, then stationed in Cadiz Roads. On my presenting it, Monsieur Lebarbier de Linan politely invited me, and two other gentlemen, to dine on board his vessel, the next day about five o'clock. At four o'clock we were on the mole, looking out for a bark and a boatman to take us from the quay to the vessel, which it required fifteen or twenty minutes, at most, to reach. I was very much astonished at the boatman's demanding a douro instead of a piacetta which was the ordinary fare. In my ignorance of nautical matters, seeing the sky perfectly clear and the sun shining as on the first day of the creation, I very innocently imagined that the weather was fine. Such was my conviction. The weather was, on the contrary, atrocious, as I did not fail to perceive at the very first broadsides we encountered. There was a short, chopping sea, that was frightfully rough, while the wind was sufficient to blow our heads off our shoulders. We were tossed about as if we had been in a nutshell, and shipped water every instant. At the expiration of a few minutes we were enjoying a foot-bath, which threatened to become very speedily a hip-bath. The foam of the waves entered between my neck and the collar of my coat, and trickled down my back. The skipper and his two companions were swearing, vociferating and snatching the sheets and the helm out of each other's hands. One wanted this thing and the other that, and there was one moment when they were on the point of coming to fisticuffs. Our situation at last became so critical that one of them began to mumble the end of a prayer to some saint or other. Luckily we were now near the brig, that was calmly riding at anchor, and apparently looking down with an air of contemptuous pity on the convulsive evolutions of our little skiff. At length we came alongside, and it took us more than ten minutes ere we could succeed in catching hold of the man-ropes and scramble upon deck. "This is what I call being courageous and punctual," said the commander, with a smile, on seeing us climb up out the gangway, dripping with water, and with our hair streaming about us, like the beard of some marine deity. He then gave each of us a pair of trousers, a shirt, a waistcoat – in fact, a complete suit. "This will teach you," he continued afterwards, "to put faith in the descriptions of poets. You thought that every tempest must necessarily be accompanied with thunder, and waves mingling their foam with the clouds, and rain, and lightning darting through the murky darkness. Undeceive yourselves; in all probability, I shall not be able to send you on shore for two or three days."
The wind was, indeed, blowing with frightful violence; the rigging quivered like the strings of a fiddle under the bow of a frantic player; the flag kept flapping with a kind of harsh sound, and its bunting threatened every moment to be rent into shreds and fly away to sea; the blocks creaked, groaned, and whistled, sometimes emitting shrill cries, which seemed to proceed from the breast of some human being: two or three sailors who had been mast-headed, for some offence or other, had all the trouble in the world to prevent themselves from being blown away.
