XXIII Toledo and el Greco
The fame of El Greco116 has of late years spread and deepened, although the full fascination of his pictures will perhaps never be understood, except by a few. Of his life we have but one or two threadbare details, and this is the more tantalizing because we feel that his life and character were of a strange, alluring interest. Before his coming to Spain, the most interesting fact we learn concerning him is contained in a letter of the artist Julio Clovio, written in November, 1570: “There has arrived in Rome a young Cretan, a disciple of Titian, and, in my opinion, an excellent painter—parmi raro nella pittura.” The date of El Greco’s birth is uncertain, but if he was a giovine in 1570, he would hardly have been seventy-seven at the time of his death in 1614. This assertion as to his age was made when the date of his death was given as 1625. It has been conjectured that it arose from an easy confusion between sesenta and setenta, and that he was not seventy-seven but sixty-seven; the year of his birth would then be 1547. The exact date of his arrival at Toledo is unknown, but it was about the year 1575; certainly in or before 1577. Toledo had ceased to be the capital and court of Spain, yet still remained the home not only of princes of the Church, but of many men of letters, and the Arabic MS. of “Don Quixote” was discovered in its market-place. Its cathedral was “the richest church in Christendom.” An Italian work published at Venice in 1563 records that “the priests reign triumphant in Toledo—trionfano—and give themselves up to good living, and no one reproves them.” The power of the Inquisition was at its height. From the gloom of the Escorial, Philip II.’s narrow, unbending spirit found many echoes in the stern cities of Castille. El Greco lived to see the expulsion of the Moriscos, and the utter decay of the trade and industry of Toledo and other cities. Antonelli’s project to make the Tagus navigable as far as Toledo was rejected scornfully: would not God have made it navigable had it been His will? Yet it was the golden age of Spanish letters, and during El Greco’s sojourn at Toledo the most humorous and broadly human figure of all literature was being elaborated in Cervantes’ brain. El Greco died at Toledo two years before the death of Cervantes and Shakespeare.
Pacheco says of El Greco that he was “in all things as singular as in his paintings.” Other stray notices represent him as “a great philosopher,” “eloquent in discourse,” a witty, acute speaker—de agudos dichos—a writer on painting, sculpture and architecture. We are further told that he earned many ducats but spent them in pomp and display, even keeping musicians to play to him during his meals. He would seem to have retained the soft atmosphere of Italian luxury amid the narrow, gloomy Toledo streets, and to have introduced an alien note of pleasure into the cold, intense existence of Castille. But if his life preserved about it a certain tinge of Venice (Venice that spent what Venice earned), his art was essentially Spanish. The mannerism of his painting might be deemed extravagant, as his caprices might not be understood, by many Spaniards. He was, they might say, “too picked, too spruce, too affected, too odd, as it were, too peregrinate.” They are the epithets of Holofernes describing a Spaniard; and what could be more Spanish than El Greco’s mingling of keen vision and realistic power as a portrait painter with an intense, unfailing spiritualism; than his vehement, almost tortured desire to shun the common and the vulgar—not the mere seeking after originality but a wish to be sincere, to express his own soul? His manner has not the sensuous richness of Italy but a Castilian, nay, a Toledan austerity. It is as “a sword of Spain, the ice-brook’s temper.” Already in his famous “Expolio” (in the Sacristy of Toledo Cathedral), painted not long after he had arrived in Spain, he had, as Señor Cossío says, abandoned the reds and golds of Italy for blue and carmine and ashen grey. As to the price of this picture he had a quarrel with the Chapter of Toledo Cathedral.117 Assessors were appointed to value it and they found that, though the picture was beyond all price—no tiene prescio ni estimación—a verdict with which all who have seen the “Expolio” will readily agree, yet, having regard to “these poverty-stricken times,” they assessed it at nine hundred ducats, an extraordinarily high price for that period. The Chapter, on the other hand, offered a much smaller sum, and that under the condition that he should remove certain “improprieties”—ynpropiedades—from the picture, among them the figures of “the Virgin and the saints—las marias y nuestra señora—whose presence in the picture is contrary to the gospel, seeing that they were not actually present.” El Greco held out for his own price, but the Mayor, siding with the Chapter, decreed that he must either give up the picture or go to prison, and the painter submitted. The exquisitely beautiful figures that he was to have removed are, however, still in the picture, as well as the other ynpropiedades, so that he seems at least to have defied the narrow spirit of the letter in the priests who “reigned triumphant” at Toledo. Perhaps—in the temper of Alonso Cano towards the Chapter of Granada Cathedral—he threatened to destroy the “Expolio,” and the Chapter, having given him a hundred and fifty ducats on account, would be unwilling to lose their picture. Certainly El Greco would not say to himself with Frà Lippo Lippi—
“they must know!
Don’t you think they’re the likeliest to know,
They, with their Latin? so I swallow my rage,
Clench my teeth, suck my lips in tight, and paint
To please them.”
El Greco painted to please no one but himself and his individual vision. His next great picture, the “San Mauricio,” was painted by command of Philip II., but it did not please the King and in his lifetime was not placed in the Escorial, where it now is. No le contentó á su Magestad, says Sigüenza, and he goes on to say, “and this is small wonder, since it pleases but few, though it is said that it shows much art, aunque dizen es de mucho arte.” It is conceivable that the picture as a whole might seem ugly, and repel, especially on a first view, before the eye had embraced its wealth of beautiful details. The real reason, however, of its “not pleasing” was not the exaggerated drawing nor the harsh colouring, the dominant note of yellow and blue, but the realistic portrayal of the group of martyrs in the foreground. “Saints,” proceeded Sigüenza, “should be painted in such a manner that they may not take away the desire to pray, but may rather incite to devotion.”
“‘Ay, but you don’t so instigate to prayer,’
Strikes in the Prior! ‘when your meaning’s plain
It does not say to folks—remember matins—
Or, mind you fast next Friday.’”
The Spanish Church would willingly have reduced art to skull and bones. But El Greco saw that his Saints must be human before they could be divine. He had now inaugurated that realism which was to find its highest expression in the art of Velázquez, but which is evident also in the Saints and Madonnas of Murillo.
El Greco has not the immediate attraction and universal appeal of Velázquez; some of his pictures may displease at first and only gradually make their charm felt. What, then, we may ask, is El Greco’s peculiar fascination, the dominating power to attract or to repel in his pictures so great that it is apt to become almost an obsession? Is it the truth to life, or the aloofness from life, the clear expression of character or the spiritual submission to divine will? Does it lie in his fondness for those cold, simple colours, the pale greens and lilacs, grey and the blue of hydrangeas or of the surface of ice, that delight the soul of “primitive” and “decadent” alike; in the pervading life and movement, the slender, lengthened limbs and tapering figures; in the subtle permanence of expressions and attitudes that were “so fugitive”? Is it the passionate sincerity and striving that disdains rest and mere complacency of work accomplished, the noble discontent with effects achieved, the ceaseless longing to reach yet higher levels, till ultimately, as in his “Asunción,” the whole picture is moulded to a perfect realization of the soul’s desire, a harmonious unity of aspiration, “toccando un poco la vita futura”? Or is it the exquisite sadness, the air of acquiescence in suffering and fate unshunnable, or the wonderful peace and serene joy of some of his faces? It is a rare combination of all this that gives the essence of El Greco’s potent charm; it is the richness of contrast so truly Spanish, the marvellous rendering alike of heavenly things and things terrestrial, the wild magic of his imagination, the sober individual alchemy of his style. In these delicate lines, thin faces, long white limbs and restrained colours there is a spiritual intensity that impassions and consumes with a light and fire reaching beyond dim mortal vision. But in the expression there is, moreover, a softness of lingering pity, of linked sweetness and tears for earthly sorrows, that makes his art not cold and distant, appealing merely to the intellect, but lovable and human; “a thing ensky’d and sainted,” yet still bound by gold chains about the feet of man.
The little church of Santo Tomé, with its beautiful old tower, stands but a few hundred yards from El Greco’s house at Toledo, and for this church he painted perhaps the most beautiful and certainly the most important of all his works—“El Entierro del Conde Orgaz.” For an artist the “Entierro” has almost as much interest and instruction as “Las Meninas” of Velázquez. The subject is a local legend. Saint Augustine and Saint Stephen come down to carry to burial the corpse of the charitable Conde de Orgaz—of whom we read that he “employed his life in holy works and so came to a holy death”—and the chief citizens of Toledo mourn him. In this long line of faces El Greco shows his full mastery as a portrait-painter. And we may see in them all the race of Castille—Castilian dignity, frankness, nobility, sadness, resignation, pride, haughtiness, intensity, ascetic mysticism. We seem, as we look, to hear the solemn rhythm of Jorge Manrique’s verses—118
“Este mundo es el camino
Para el otro, que es morada
Sin pesar;
Mas cumple tener buen tino
Para andar esta jornada
Sin errar.
Partimos cuando nacemos,
Andamos mientras vivimos,
Y llegamos
Al tiempo que fenecemos;
Así que cuando morimos
Descansamos.”
The light of the torches burning in long thin flame and the upward look of the priest in plain surplice draw the eye up to the second part of the picture, the Gloria, where the Conde de Orgaz appears before Christ and the Virgin in a heaven thronged with apostles and saints and supported by angels. The beauty of the lower part is as easily recognizable as that of a picture of Velázquez, but the Gloria takes longer to appreciate, having a fuller measure of El Greco’s mannerism. Partly for this reason the picture may displease at first, permanently displease if seen once only in a cursory glance, but on a more leisured study it assumes its right place as one of the wonderful and most beautiful pictures of the world. It requires time, too, to realize the infinite beauty of detail, the figures on St. Augustine’s robe, the scene of St. Stephen’s stoning on that of St. Stephen, and the skill with which all monotony is avoided in the mourners, in spite of their being nearly all of the same height, and nearly all wearing white ruffs and pointed beards.
In his later pictures El Greco increased the mannerism of his style; the figures are longer, more angular, the intensity of expression becomes an obsession, a paroxysm: he paints as one for whom the whole world has ceased to exist. Sometimes, as in the “Baptism” at Toledo, these exaggerations seriously spoil the beauty of his work; but the “Asunción” of the church of San Vicente, at Toledo, also belongs to his later style, and is not the least beautiful of his pictures: in no other work of art has the sense of motion been so marvellously expressed—the Virgin, saints, and angels seem actually floating upwards before our eyes. El Greco’s mannerism, jene unglaubliche Manier, Herr Carl Justi calls it, is more evident in some of his pictures, in others less; but there is not a sufficiently wide gulf between them to justify the saying that “they are so different that they appear not to be painted by the same hand,”119 nor to countenance Palomino’s statement that “What he did well no one did better, and what he did badly no one did worse.”
It was not carelessly nor ignorantly that El Greco drew his figures out of proportion, making them preternaturally long and thin. He did so deliberately, just as Bacon said deliberately that “In all beauty there is some strangeness of proportion,” and the effect in El Greco’s pictures often, indeed as a rule, justifies his boldness. We see him
“Pouring his soul...
Reaching, that Heaven might so replenish him,
Above and through his art—for it gives way;
That arm is wrongly put—and there again—
A fault to pardon in the drawing’s lines,
Its body, so to speak! its soul is right.”
Naturally the peculiarity of his style has at once struck all observers. So the French have spoken of his “maladresses enfantines, audaces troublantes,” his “attitudes strapassées,” his “draperies cassées et chiffonnées á plaisir,” his “dessin fantastique.” So Sir Edmund Head wrote of some of El Greco’s pictures as “extravagant in length, of an ashen-grey tone, most singular in so fine a colourist.” If only glanced at once, this is perhaps the impression that the majority of his pictures would leave, and he thus remains a sphinx to many. “He will always remain caviare to the multitude,” wrote Sir J. C. Robinson in 1868; “the uninitiated observer passes over [his pictures] with wonder and bewilderment, the grim angular figures and draperies and the flickering unrest of all the details affecting him as would a harsh tumult of discordant sounds.”
Palomino said of El Greco that “he ended by making his painting despicable and ridiculous alike by extravagance of drawing and harshness of colour.” His contemporaries explained the singularity of his work either as due to madness or to craving for effect, por valentía, para salir del día, or to a wish to prevent them from being confused with those of Titian!
Not less than his drawing, El Greco’s colouring has been a stumbling-block and an offence. We read of his “teintes presque cadavériques,” “coloris grisâtre, pâle blafard,” “symphonies en bleu mineur;” and Ford characteristically wrote that his pictures were often “as leaden as cholera morbus.” After the rich reds and golds of Italian painting, the subtler tints of El Greco, evolved by him partly under Tintoretto’s influence, partly under the influence of Toledo, could not please his contemporaries, but we feel now that they are no slight ingredient of his charm. In colouring El Greco largely influenced Velázquez, and through Velázquez all subsequent painting. Velázquez learnt from him, in the words of Señor Cossío, “his harmony of silver greys and the use of certain carmines.” But it was not only El Greco’s colouring that affected him. Señor Cossío sees in the construction of “The Surrender of Breda” vague reminiscences of the “San Mauricio,” and one may also see in it reminiscences of the “Expolio.” Palomino, in his Life of Velázquez, says that “in his portraits he imitated Domenico Greco, for he considered that his heads could not be sufficiently praised.” Velázquez rejected El Greco’s mystic intellectuality, but possibly without El Greco’s influence the realism of Velázquez might have been excessively exact and less inspired.
Toledo, in the words of a modern Spanish poet, stands “dark, ruinous, forgotten and alone;” but Domenico120 Theotocopuli, who lay there unremembered for three centuries, now rises to spread his fame through the world—
“Tout passe. L’art robuste
Seul a l’éternité,
Le buste
Survit à la cité.”
Foreigners from many lands climb up and down the cobbled lanes and passages, in search of hidden churches here and there with pictures by El Greco—Santo Tomé, San José, San Vicente, Santa Leocadia, San Nicolás, and many more:
“The sanctuary’s gloom no longer wards
Vain tongues from where his pictures stand apart.”
He loved to paint the city, and, besides his famous view of it, we find it in the background of his pictures. The Cathedral and the Bridge of Alcántara and the Castle of San Servando are perfectly distinct in the “Asunción” of the Church of San Vicente. The city figures again, though less clearly, in the magnificent picture of St. Martin (of Tours) dividing his cloak, an act of charity that certainly receives a new significance in this bleak, unsheltered Toledo country. And Toledo, not Troy, appears in the “Laocoon,” the only picture by El Greco that has a classical subject. El Greco, the Cretan, lived at Toledo for some forty years, and the charm of Toledo seems to have entered into his soul. His house was not in one of the smothered streets, but in an open space high above the Tagus, opposite the Synagogue of the Jews.121 It has a cool patio with a floor of red bricks and glazed tiles, and four white pillars, with a tiny well near the entrance, and a grey wooden gallery above, resting on the pillars, and open on one side, so that in spring swallows occasionally enter and whirl round the court. To the right a door leads to a quaint, old-fashioned kitchen, with its immense open fireplace and seats on either side beneath the chimney. That El Greco, a foreigner, should have become the most Spanish of Spanish painters, was due no doubt to the influence exercised over him by this stern yet luring city of Castille. It is impossible to dissociate his colouring from the many greens and greys and browns of the city and surrounding country, the rust-coloured soil of the Cigarrales thinly covered with many greens that are not green, grey hill-plants, dull tints of thyme and olive, the shriller green of pomegranate and other fruit-trees, the grass sun-parched to patches of yellow. And perhaps it is not altogether fanciful to connect the metallic gleams visible in certain lights on the surface of the Tagus with the glazed effects so frequent in El Greco’s pictures, or even the ragged, wind-tormented elms by the river with some of his more extravagant figures. The city points upward like a grey sword; and whether seen in shafts and foils of orange light against a stormy sunset, or fainting and crumbling greyly beneath a relentless sun and sky of cloudless blue, it has the austere intensity that we find in El Greco’s work. Yet, as in the greyest pictures of El Greco occurs some relieving touch of colour, so Toledo is not merely a monotonous symmetry of brown or grey. A procession, white and gold and red and purple, passes through the narrow streets under a shower of roses from the balconies of houses gaily hung in white and red, red and yellow; or the bright colours of peasants’ dresses are to be seen against the ancient Alcántara bridge as they come in to market; or in some street of stifling, windowless walls that lead up to a line of blue sky by day, and at night to a ribbon of stars, comes a glimpse, through doors of massive ancient stone, of a patio of bright flowers—carnations, nasturtiums, geraniums—as one may find a picture of El Greco in some old forgotten Church; and beneath the yellow-brown walls and grey rocks of the city are gardens of fruit-trees, where in spring nightingales sing from pomegranates in scarlet flower. It is a city of continual surprises, not to be understood or appreciated in a single day or a single visit; it gives, like El Greco’s pictures, a strong original impression at a first glance, but its inner being, its softer moments, its true significance and charm it reveals only to a patient study. Its attitude is indeed that of reserve; it seems to be holding judgment on modern civilization. It represents all that is noblest, most individual, and unbendingly austere in the spirit of Spain.
Footnotes
1 The distinction still holds good, and those Spaniards who have travelled, e.g. to Buenos Aires, differ by a certain practical energy and optimism from those who have never left the Peninsula.
2 “The Ingenious and Diverting Letters of the Lady——. Travels into Spain.” English translation. Second edition. London. 1692.
3 Villefranche. “État présent d’Espagne.” 1717.
4 Edward Clarke. “Letters concerning the Spanish Nation.” London. 1763.
5 This pessimism “is based on our recent disasters; on the fact that we are fallen, a terrible fact in the implacable merciless logic of international life; on the momentary lack of will from which we are suffering; and on the anachronism of certain vices and ideals which, since they can no longer, as in past ages, be excused on the ground that other nations share them, seem to show that we are incorrigible.” Rafael Altamira, “Psicología del Pueblo Español” (Madrid. 1902), in which will be found several of the opinions quoted above.
6 “Los Males de la Patria.”
7 “Idearium Español.”
8 “La Voluntad.” Barcelona. 1902: “La intuición de las cosas, la visión rápida no falta, pero falta, en cambio, la co-ordinación reflexiva, el laboreo paciente, la voluntad.”
9 “Alcalá de los Zegríes.” Madrid. 1910.
10 Saints in other countries have carried their heads in their hands, but there is a legend of a saint in Spain who, not content to walk a league with his head under his arm, continued to talk the while without ceasing. He was, no doubt “concealing the poverty of his action,” like Bertram dal Bornio, carrying his head “a guisa di lanterna” in the Inferno.
11 “Comedia Sentimental.” 1909.
12 One may apply to it the words of Santa Teresa—
“Tiene tan divinas mañas
Que en un tan acerbo trance
Sale triunfando del lance
Obrando grandes hazañas.”
13 Ford considered the Basque to be as “proud as Lucifer and as combustible as his matches,” and there is a proverb, “En nave y en castillo no más que un vizcaino.” Cf. Camões. Os Lusiadas:
A gente biscainha que carece
De polidas razões e que as injurias
Muito mal dos estranhos compadece.
14 The Castilians, said King James I. of Aragon, are very haughty and proud: de gran ufania e erguylhosos. In the Lusiads the Castilian is “grande e raro.”
15 The line of Dante is well known: “l’avara povertà di Catalogna.” Napier speaks of “the Catalans, a fierce and constant race.”
16 The Gallegan, “o Gallego cauto” and “sordidos Gallegos duro bando,” in Camões, ever remains the butt of Spanish wit. The inhabitants of the Montaña are considered almost equally dense: “El montañés para defender una necedad dice tres” and again “From Burgos to the sea all is stupidity.” The Asturian, of the region between Galicia and the Montaña has, rather, the reputation of a business-like shrewdness, he is the Astur avarus of Martial and Silius Italicus; in return for his boast that he has never had any infecting contact with the Moors, a proverb says: “El asturiano, loco y vano, poco fiel y mal cristiano.”
17 “Para cantar los navarros, para llorar los franceses, para pegar cuatro tiros los mozos aragoneses.”
18 In “El Imparcial.”
19 It is true that he was a Spanish Basque and was merely reproducing in modern dress the scene in “Don Quixote,” in which the Biscayan leaves his mistresses unprotected in their carriage and fights in order to show that he is by birth a caballero.
20 Drunkenness is especially rare in Spain. Their sobriety has been made a reproach, as being based on laziness and lack of initiative. The second half of their proverb: “Goza de tu poco mientras busca más el loco—Enjoy the little you have, and let the fool seek more” is, indeed, as foolish as the first half is wise.
21 Cf. the “altos pensamientos,” of Quevedo’s famous Pablos of Segovia and his father, the barber-thief, and the latter’s remark: “Esto de ser ladron no es arte mecánica sino liberal”—the thief’s is no base mechanical trade, but a liberal profession.
22 “Drudgery they will do none at all.” Sir R. Wynn, “A brief relation of what was observed by the Prince’s servants in their journey into Spain.” 1623.
23 They have that momentary isolated intensity which M. Anatole France ascribes to men of action: “Ils sont tout entiers dans le moment qu’ils vivent et leur génie se ramasse sur un point. Ils se renouvellent sans cesse et ne se prolongent pas.”
24 Episodios Nacionales. Narváez. 1902.
25 Cf. Joseph Townsend. “A journey through Spain in the years 1786 and 1787,” 3 vols. London. 1792: “We must not imagine that the Spaniards are naturally indolent; they are remarkable for activity, capable of strenuous exertions and patient of fatigue.” Another noteworthy judgment of the same author concerning the Spaniards is that “Their ambition aims in everything at perfection, and by seeking too much they often obtain too little.”
26 “Non hi ha res al mon que vosaltres non faessetz exir de mesura.”
27 “La letra con sangre entra,” is a sad proverb of the Spanish and in the modern education of the printed page they are deficient.
28 Cf. the sayings, Poderoso caballero es don Dinero; Dadivas quebrantan peñas; Dineros son calidad, etc. Sancho goes to govern the island of Barataria “with a very great desire to make money.” The tendency is still to hoard, rather than invest, as did Don Bernard de Castil Blazo in Gil Blas, keeping 50,000 ducats in a chest in his house.
29 Spaniards prefer to enjoy time as a gift sent by the gods, than to waste it in trying to spend it too nicely. El tiempo lo da Dios; Dios mejora las horas; Con el tiempo maduran las uvas. To a peasant two o’clock on a day of March is “four more hours of sun.” Time is not parcelled out mechanically into tiny divisions by clocks. Distances are given by hours—an hour to a league. The Catalans are less lavish of the minutes; to a stranger asking the distance to a village near Tarragona, a peasant answered cannily in Catalan, “un cuart y mitj”—that is, the village was a quarter of an hour and half a quarter of an hour distant. Curiously the Catalans give the hour as in German, e.g. half-past eight is dos cuarts de nou—halb Neun.
30 “El Caballero encantado,” 1909: “Viven en un mundo de ritualidades, de fórmulas, de trámites y recetas. El lenguaje se ha llenado de aforismos, de lemas y emblemas; las ideas salen plagadas de motes, y cuando las acciones quieren producirse andan buscando la palabra en que han de encarnarse y no acaban de elegir.” The Spaniards speak with conviction of the great gulf fixed between word and deed:—del dicho al hecho hay gran trecho; Los dichos en nos, los hechos en Dios.
31 Cf. a speaker in the Cortes in June, 1910: “Aquí no hay nada tan alto como las clases bajas.”
32 Don Ramiro de Maeztu has written of the aggressive assertion of personality—innecesária afirmación de las personas—in Spain.
33 Lo que no lleva Cristo lo llera el fisco—“What the Church leaves, the Treasury receives,” says an old proverb.
34 An author in Pérez Galdós’ Fortunata y Jacinta says that the Spaniards, that pícara raza, are unaware of the value of time and of the value of silence. “You cannot make them understand that to take possession of other people’s silence is like stealing a coin.” “It is a lack of civilization.” By such un-Spanish criticisms Señor Pérez Galdós betrays the fact that he was not born in Spain.
35 The historian, Mariana, displayed more patriotism than accuracy when he wrote that Spain “is not like Africa, which is burnt by the violence of the sun nor is it assailed, as is France, by winds and frosts and humidity of air and earth.”
36 So Fr. Alonso de Espina wrote that, were an Inquisition established, “serían innumerables los entregados al fuego, los cuales si no fuesen aquí... cruelmente castigados... habrán de ser quemados en el fuego eterno.” La Fortaleza de la Fe. 1459.
37 “This spectacle,” says an admiring Englishman in 1760, “is certainly one of the finest in the world, whether it is considered merely as a coup-d’œil or as an exertion of the bravery and infinite agility of the performer.”
38 Yet certainly no Englishman should attend a bull-fight while the modern custom prevails of leading out a cruelly gored horse, sewing it up, and bringing it in again for fresh sufferings. This is done to save the contractors of the plaza a few shillings and is a disgrace to Spain. Those who have not seen a bull-fight and can scarcely believe that so sordid and outrageous a practice is possible may, if they have the courage, read all the details in Señor Blasco Ibáñez’ novel Sangre y Arena (1908).
39 The Inquisition was a tyranny universally feared, though in principle supported by the people. In Pepys we read of “the English and Dutch who have been sent for to work (in the manufacture of certain stuffs) being taken with a Psalm-book or Testament and so clapped up and the house pulled down; and the greatest Lord in Spayne dare not say a word against it if the word Inquisition be mentioned.” Cf. the groundless terror of the old woman in Quevedo’s El Buscón, or the story of the man who, when asked for a few pears by an Inquisitor, pulled up and presented him with the whole tree. Attacks on and ridicule of priests in Spain are not exclusively modern; the following verse of Juan Ruiz (14th century) is but one of countless instances throughout Spanish literature:
“Como quier que los frayles et clerigos disen que aman a Dios servir
Si barruntan que el rico está para morir
Quando oyen sus dineros que comienzan a retenir
Qual de ellos lo levará comienzan luego a rennir.”
But recently the number of those believing in religion has diminished, and the anti-Clericals have been driven by certain abuses of the Church to a more or less crude parade of atheism. It is felt that the Church has crushed life rather than sought its fuller, nobler expression. Thus a writer, E. L. André (“Ética Española,” 1910), says: “We conceive life solely as a preparation for death,” and speaks of the slight espíritu territorial possessed by Spaniards. Cf. Berceo, in the 13th century: “Quanto aquí vivimos en ageno moramos”—our life on earth is a sojourn in a strange land.
40 Honesty is a common attribute of Spaniards, but they have perhaps no very accurate regard for the value of truthfulness or honesty in words.
41 La mujer y el fraile mal parecen en la calle. In the South, as at Seville, the percentage of women to be seen in the streets is noticeably small.
42 “El consejo de la mujer es poco,” said Sancho, “y el que no lo toma es loco.” The women maintain their influence, but it is thus not properly their own, but rather that of the Church.
43 The phrase Seguir sin novedad is still used to imply that everything is going on well. But an ever-increasing number of politicians are now advocating “new things” with a somewhat crude violence. It is a reaction against the apathy that waited with crossed hands—
“Vuolsi così colà dove si puote
Ciò che si vuole, e più non dimandare.”
44 Cf. the characteristic trait mentioned by Samuel Pepys: “They will cry out against their King, and Commanders, and Generals, none like them in the world, and yet will not hear a stranger say a word of them but will cut his throat.”
45 It is true, however, that the mass of the Spanish nation has still to develop on really Spanish lines: hence its present weakness and its potential strength in the future, when a civilization of a truly national character shall have imposed itself upon the artificial civilization of culture imported from France, and religion imported from Rome.
46 The ethereally lovely Cathedral of León is more remote.
47 Some of the secondary roads of Andalucía are excellent, and motorable, though narrow. But between the roads of most provinces there is little to choose. No wonder that there is in Spain a saint invoked as the protector of “way-farers and the dying.” Ford remarked that while the rest of Spain calls the Milky Way “the road to Santiago,” the Gallegans themselves know better, and call it “the road to Jerusalem.” The roads from small towns to their stations, at charge of the municipios, are notably bad, and amaze the newly arrived foreigner. But, indeed, the roads in the immediate neighbourhood of such important industrial cities as Valencia and Barcelona are often in a deplorable state, and it is no infrequent sight to see carts of fruit or vegetables stuck fast in deep ruts of mud.
48 Ticknor, in 1818, speaks of Spain as “a country such as this where all comfortable or decent modes of travelling fail,” of the “abominable roads,” and of the inns as “miserable hovels,” destitute of provisions. A century and a half earlier Mme. d’ Aulnoy said: “You enter not any inn to dine but carry your provisions with you.” But the centuries pass not for Spanish inns.
49 A peasant woman near Almería wore a long yellow and pink kerchief, a bright red shawl, light blue bodice, skirt of white and mauve, dark blue apron with a white line, red stockings, yellow sandals, and carried a second shawl of brilliant orange colour, yet all blent harmoniously under the glaring sunlight.
50 Especially in the matter of letters, the ignorance, indifference, errors, and delays of the officials are, to an Englishman, past belief, and not least so at Madrid, where a letter has been kept for two months and handed over, after repeated inquiries, with the date of the Madrid post-mark, seventy days earlier, clearly visible. Reforms are, however, in contemplation. Foreign letters as a rule fare better than others. A card posted at Granada on May 15, and a letter posted in France on May 26, both arrived at Barcelona on May 27 (1911).
51 The former importance of St. Jean de Luz (in Basque Donibane Lohitzune) is shown by the lines—
“Saint Jean de Luz, petit Paris
Bayonne, son écurie.”
Similar is the proud boast of Almería:
“Cuando Almería era Almería
Granada era su alquería.”
Victor Hugo quaintly describes St. Jean de Luz in 1843 as “un village cahoté dans les anfractuosités de la montagne.”
52 English translation of 1692.
53 In 1623 Sir R. Wynn describes the country near “Bilbo” as “all infinite Rocky, cover’d onely with Furrs and a few Juniper Trees.”
54 At St. Jean de Luz, where Louis XIV. was married to the Infanta, a house still hears the inscription—
“L’Infante je reçus l’an mil six cent soixante
On m’appelle depuis le Chasteau de l’Infante.”
55 “Par Vocation.” Paris. 1905.
56 “Vulnerant omnes, ultima necat.—All hours wound, the last kills.”
57 Cf. Mme. d’Aulnoy: “We were here very well entertain’d so that our Tables were covered with all sorts of Wild Fowls.”
58 The Basque poem, “Altabiscarraco Kantua,” singing of victory, was considered magnificent when it was thought to be centuries old, and though it has been proved beyond all doubt to be modern, we may still venture to consider it to be magnificent: “A cry is heard among the Basque mountains, and the Etchecojauna, standing before his door, listens and says: ‘What is it? who is there?’ and the dog asleep at his master’s feet, rises and fills the region of Altabiscar with his barking.” One line is, “Cer nahi zuten gure menditarik Norteko gizon horiek?—What do these men of the North want in our mountains?” and another, “Why have they come to disturb our peace?” The Basques must often have asked a like question as they have seen the foreigners of younger races crowd around their mountains; but in spite of these inroads, the Basques have succeeded in keeping a part of their language and customs, like the waters of their proverb which, after a thousand years, still run in their old course: “Mila urthe igaro eta ura bere bidean—Después de años mil, vuelve el rio á su cubil.”
59 Rymer, “Foedera.”
60 S A R A R I
BALHOREA
RENETALE
YALTASSUN
AREN SARIA
EMANA LUIS
XIV. 1693.
The words balhorea (valour) and leyaltassuna (loyalty) are typical of the absence of truly Basque abstract words.
61 The mountain La Rhune or Larrhun, is half in France, half in Spain. Its name is Basque, derived from larre, pasture, and on, good (in Navarre there is a river Larron and a village Larraona); but the first syllable has become the French article, and a lower flank of the mountain is known as “La petite Rhune.”
62 Napier, who had no gift of spelling, writes Atchuria, or Atchubia. The word means White Rock (aitz, rock, and churi, white) and its Spanish name is Peña Plata, Silver Mountain.
63 The badness of their French has been ridiculed in the proverb, “Parler français comme une vache (i.e. Basque) espagnole.”
64 Yet in a codex of the twelfth century occur eighteen Basque words, all of which, except four, are still used, if in slightly altered forms. The Basque language gives many proofs of the extreme antiquity of the Basques. The words for “knife,” “axe,” etc., are derived from aitz, meaning “stone.” The words for “Monday” (astelehena, “first day of the week”), “Tuesday” (asteartea, “middle of the week”), “Wednesday” (asteazkena, “last of the week”) point to a week of three days. The counting is vigesimal: “forty” is berrogoi (twice twenty); “sixty,” hirogoi (thrice twenty). The word for “twenty,” hogoi, has a curious similarity with the Greek εἲκοτι and the sheepscoring gigget. There are no general terms—no word for “tree” (for which arbola is used), but for different kinds of trees; no word for “sister,” but for “brother’s sister,” “sister’s sister;” and no abstract terms (karitatea, prudentzia, etc., being used).
65 The best account of the Basques is to be found in the late Mr. Wentworth Webster’s “Loisirs d’un Étranger au Pays Basque,” and in his “The Basques, the Oldest People of Western Europe;” in M. Julien Vinson’s “Les Basques et le Pays Basque” and Francisque Michel’s “Les Basques.”
66 A French writer, Le Pays, speaks thus of the Basque country in the seventeenth century: “La joye y commence avec la vie et n’y finit qu’avec la mort. Elle paroist en toutes leurs actions. Les prestres en ont leur part aussi bien que les autres. J’ai remarqué qu’aux nopces c’est toûjours le curé qui mene le branle.” Another Frenchman of the same period says that the Basques of Labourd are “des gens toujours fols et souvent yvres.” Similarly, Larramendi says that the Basques are “muy inclinados á ver fiestas.”
67 Cf. their proverbs, “Lan lasterra, lan alferra—Rapid work, idle work;” and “Geroa, alferraren leloa—To-morrow is the refrain of the idle.”
68 The great game at Irun, between French and Spanish Basques, about the year 1840, has become a legend, and is still spoken of by the peasants. Gascoña, the chief French player, was offered 10,000 francs “pour faire trahison,” but refused, were it ten times the sum. Oxen, crops, fields and houses were freely betted. The ball, we are told, was slily wetted for service, tintacks were scattered in the court, and Gascoña, accustomed to play barefoot, called for a pair of heavy wooden sabots, and continued the game. The French won, and were obliged to escape across the frontier without changing, and chistera on arm. Those were the times when the peasants left their farms to play for the love of the game. To-day the game is in the hands of a few professionals, for the benefit of foreigners, the result often arranged beforehand. “Aujourd’hui,” said an aged player of the frontier, “les joueurs rient quelquefois: nous ne riions pas, nous.”
69 Antaño, en los antaños, dans le temps.
70 Corografía de Guipúzcoa: “No es creible si no se ve el mucho pan y cera que se ofrece.... Además en tales grandes funerales por modo de ofrenda se trae á la puerta de la iglesia un buey vivo en unos lugares y en otros un carnero también vivo que, acabado el oficio, se vuelve á la casería ó carnicería, y por esto se paga al cura una cantidad determinada en dinero.” He estimates the house expenses at 500 duros (or dollars), and the Church expenses at another 500, truly an immense sum for those days. When the burials took place in the church, the offerings of bread and wax would be made on the tomb.
71 The music and words are by Iparraguirre.
72 Sare.
73 Urrugne, above the sun-dial on the church.
74 Saint Jean de Luz.
75 Saint Pée, formerly Stus. Petrus de Ivarren. “There is a little village called St. Pé, where I was stopped a day or two by very bad weather. I was lodged at the Curé’s, a good old man, from whose conversation about the state of France I received light which had important results. He was very clever and very well-informed, and took not only right, but large views of things.”—The Duke of Wellington to J. W. Croker.
76 Near Louhossoa.
77 “Remember death.”—Ossès.
78 Vizcaya and Guipúzcoa are, with Barcelona and Pontevedra, the most densely populated provinces in Spain. The Basques have a genius for administration which is not to be found in other parts of the Peninsula. Their excellent roads and cleanly kept towns form a striking contrast. They have a true love of local independence, and in the eighteenth century we find two Basque frontier villages, Vera and Sare, styling themselves in a treaty the “two Republics.” The treaty concerned Yerbas y Aguas y Bellotas; grass, water and acorns. Similarly, to-day, in the Basque provinces groups of small villages and houses are joined in free “hermandades,” “universidades,” “anteiglesias,” “valles.” The few privileges that remain are jealously guarded. The Navarrese will tell you with pride that theirs is the only province where a man is allowed to find a substitute in the conscriptions.
79 The Spanish Premier himself has said in the Senate (October, 1910), that if the Basque Provinces are more advanced than other parts of Spain this is due not to their merits, but to the favouritism of governments. A knowledge of the Basques, however, hardly warrants this statement. Since the abolition of the fueros, says the late Mr. Butler Clarke, in “Modern Spain,” “their efforts are restricted to making the administration of their provinces a model for the rest of Spain.”
80 The Basques took their revenge by the hand of M. l’Abbé d’Iharce de Bidassouet. In his “Histoire des Cantabres,” tom. I. Paris, 1825 (vol. ii. was not published), he derives all names of places from Basque, as the original language of the world. “Je ne serai pas assez hardi,” he says, “pour soutenir que le Père Éternel parlât basque,” but he is really convinced that it is so. L’Andalousie, with the help of the article, he derives from two Basque words, “landa lusia,” long land. Versailles is a Basque word, so is Athens, so is Helicon. Norway puzzles him for a moment, but soon with the remark that “Norvège est un mot altéré et corrompu,” he tosses it aside and proceeds on his reckless etymological course. Certainly to the irresponsible philologist Basque offers a delightful field. For instance, the name of the desolate salt lake of Kevir in Persia has been derived from a word “gavr” or “gav” (“hollow,” “depression”). In Basque “gabe” means without, and the word for night is also “gabe” (no doubt as being a hollow without light). Then we have the Gaves, de Pau, d’Oloron, etc.; the Spanish “gaveta” (a pigeonhole), “gavia” (pit dug for planting a tree); “cavus,” “cave” and so forth. But to draw inferences as to the origin of the Iberians, as to whether the same or different peoples inhabited the Caucasus and the Pyrenees, or even as to whether “le Père Éternel parlât Basque,” is a very different matter, beset with pitfalls innumerable.
81 See Wentworth Webster, “Les Loisirs d’un Étranger au Pays Basque.” 1901. This was a common practice of the Romans who, meeting words so rough and horrid to their Latin pronunciation in the land of the Basques, “quorum nomina,” according to Pomponius Mela, “nostro ore concipi nequeunt,” would smooth and round these names and give them a Latin derivation. The Spaniards may have done the same in the case of Valencia Island, Co. Kerry. The form in old maps is Ballinish (Innish, “island,” and ball, “home” or perhaps “mouth”—the harbour the mouth of the island), and the peasants still pronounce the name Valinch.
82 Yet those who connect Barcelona with the smoke and gloom of an industrial city, having heard it spoken of as the Manchester of Spain, are mistaken. Barcelona is still worthy of the praise of the Venetian ambassador in the sixteenth century, who called it a “bellissima città,” with “copia di giardini bellisimi,” and of the praises of Cervantes in “Don Quixote,” and in “Las Dos Doncellas,” where it is the “flower of the beautiful cities of the world and an honour to Spain.”
83 “España: Hombres y paisajes.” 1909.
84 A Spanish proverb says: “When it rains, it rains; when it snows, it snows; but ’tis bad weather when it blows.” Agriculture in many parts of Spain is literally “ἀπάνευθεν ἐπ’ ἀγροῦ πήυατα πάσχειν—to suffer woes apart upon the land.”
85 Cf. Pío Baroja, “César ó Nada.” Madrid, 1910: “Hay una hora en estos pueblos castellanos, adustos y viejos, de paz y serenidad ideales. Es el comenzar de la mañana. Todavía los gallos cantan, las campanadas de la iglesia se derraman por el aire y el sol comienza á penetrar en las calles en ráfagas de luz. La mañana es un diluvio de claridad que se precipita sobre el pueblo amarillento. El cielo está azul, el aire limpio, puro y diáfano; la atmósfera transparente no da casi efectos de perspectiva, y su masa etérea hace vibrar los contornos de las casas, de los campanarios y de los remates de los tejados. El viento frío y sutil juega en las encrucijadas y se entretiene en torcer los tallos de los geranios y de los claveles que llamean en los balcones. Hay por todas partes un olor de jara y de retama quemada que viene de los hornos donde se cuece el pan, y un olor de alhucema que viene de los zaguanes.” Castille has been a little neglected by the novelists in comparison with other regions. But recently Ricardo León (in “El Amor de los Amores,” 1910), has sung the praises of the ancha, heróica tierra de Castilla, its austere simplicity and strength, its serene atmosphere, its golden crops, its flocks of sheep, clear streams, thyme-scented solitudes, and far horizons. And Azorín, in a short study, “En la Meseta” (La Vanguardia of Barcelona, January 4, 1911), as in his books “España,” “El Alma Castellana,” “Los Pueblos,” skilfully portrays the inner spirit of Castille: “Por la ventana se columbra un paisaje llano, seco, desmantelado; á lo lejos se divisan unas montañas con las cimas blanqueadas por la nieve.... Todo el silencio, toda la rigidez, toda la adustez de esta inmoble vida castellana está concentrada en los rebaños que cruzan la llanura lentamente y se recogen en los oteros y los valles de las montañas. Mirad ese rabadán, envuelto en su capa récia y parda, contemplando un cielo azul sin nubes, ante el paisaje abrupto y grandioso de la montaña, y tendréis explicado el tipo del campesino castellano castizo, histórico: noble, austero, grave y elegante en el ademán, corto, sentencioso y agudo on sus razones.”
86 Señor Gasset, Minister of Public Works, now proposes (in a scheme explained to the Congress on March 9, 1911) to spend twenty-seven million pesetas on afforestation in ten years.
87 Martial, referring to the frequency of winds of Spain, says—
“Debes non aliter timere risum
Quam ventum Spanius.”
88 El Conde Lucanor, “Enxemplo 30:” “...el rey Abenabet de Sevilla era casada con Romayquia et amábala muy mas que á cosa del mundo, et ella era muy buena mujer, et los moros han della muy buenos enxemplos: pero una manera habia que non era muy buena, esto era, que á las vegadas tomaba algunos antojos á su voluntad. Et acaesció que un dia, estando en Córdoba en el mes de febrero, cayó una nieve, et cuando Romayquia esto vió comenzó á llorar, et el rey preguntóle porque lloraba, et ella dijó que porque nunca la dejaba estar en tierra que hubiese nieve. Et el rey, por le facer placer, fize poner almendrales por toda la tierra de Córdoba, porque pues Córdoba es tan caliente tierra et non nieva y cada año, que en el febrero paresciesen los almendrales floridos et le semejasen nieve, por le facer perder aquel deseo de la nieve.”
89 George Eliot, “The Spanish Gypsy.” The purple shadows are the effect of dark patches of rock seen through the transparent blue water.
90 “Papel y tinta y poca justicia, paper, ink, and little justice,” say the people, in one of their proverbs. They feel that, in Spain, if revenge is a kind of wild justice, so too frequently is justice.
91 Barretti’s Dictionary (edition of 1778) quaintly renders socarrón as “a crafty, subtle fellow; an arch wag.”
92 On the road from Tortosa to Valencia there is a stone cross with the pathetic, ill-spelt inscription: “Aqui murió instantáneamente al tirarse del carro por habersele desembocado el mulo Dominco Cugat Jardi el 30 agosto de 1894. R.I.P. Carrateros ya veis lo que paso este infelis.” “Carters, you see what happened to this unhappy man.” But the carters throughout Spain continue to sleep away the long hours of the road.
93 The latest statistics available show that, while 90 and 80 per cent. of the electors in some northern provinces of Spain can read and write, in Andalucía the highest averages are 51 and 50 (provinces of Cadiz and Seville), that of the province of Córdoba being but 41, of Almería 38, of Granada and Jaen 35, of Málaga 34.
94 “Chapters on Spanish Literature.” 1908.
95 “N’uma mão a penna e n’outra a lança.”
96 M. Boris de Tannenberg, speaking of “Sotileza,” has said excellently: “C’est que plus une œuvre a un caractère local marqué, plus elle a de chance de devenir universelle, à condition que l’écrivain, sous la particularité des mœurs et du langage, ait pénétre jusqu’au fond commun d’humanité.” And Don Marcelino Menéndez y Pelayo, who represented King Alfonso on January 23, 1911, in the ceremony of unveiling at Santander the statue of Pereda by Señor Collaut Valera (nephew of the novelist, Juan Valera), said in his speech: “His books, so local that even the inhabitants of the mountain require a glossary, and as Spanish as the most Spanish writings since Cervantes and Quevedo, are profoundly human owing to the intensity of life which they contain, and the quiet majesty with which it is developed.”
97 We are apt to forget that men in the Middle Ages, if they dwelt insistently on the sinister “Dance of Death,” also felt to the full the joys of living. The “Poema del Cid” sings no variations on the theme “How good is man’s life, the mere living,” but the feeling itself appears in every line.
98 The King had sent “letters to León and Sanctiague, to Portuguese and Galicians, to those of Carrión and the Men of Castille,” to announce a Cort dentro en Tolledo, in order to judge between the Cid and the Counts of Carrión. “Since I was King,” he says, “I have held but two Cortes, one in Burgos, the other in Carrión, this third in Tolledo have I come to hold to-day.”
99 James Fitzmaurice-Kelly. “Chapters on Spanish Literature,” p. 231.
100 See pp. 151, 222-238. Pereda is, perhaps, the least read outside Spain of all Spanish novelists; yet it is scarcely too much to say that he who cannot appreciate Pereda cannot understand the spirit or feel the true savour of Spain.
101 “Chapters on Spanish Literature,” p. 246.
102 Andrés González-Blanco, “Historia de la novela en España desde el romanticismo hasta nuestros días.” Madrid. 1909.
103 La Primera República. Madrid. 1911.
104 See page 214.
105 Señor Picón, whose writings are rather exquisite than voluminous, is the author of “Dulce y Sabrosa,” and several short stories. A Spanish critic, Señor Gómez de Baquero, has said of him that while “his thoughts look to the future, his style listens to the golden music of the past.” His latest work is “Juanita Tenorio,” a long novel (published as vol. 3 of his Complete Works in the autumn of 1910), in which his art, skilful and delicate as it is, has not been entirely successful in eclipsing the sordidness of the subject by the magic of the style. The following quotation—a description of Madrid seen from an attic-window at night—will give some idea of his restrained and clear-cut style: “Era noche cerrada. En primer término no percibía la vista más que las grandes masas angulosas y obscuras de muros, parodones y tejados: descollando por encima de ellos surgían los contornos de torres y campanarios, cuyos puntiagudos chapiteles, cubiertos de pizarra, recogían el escaso claror de las estrellas; acà y allà rompían la superficie negra de las fachadas los rectángulos de luz amarillenta que forman los balcones alumbrados interiormente, y al través de algun vidrio brillaba el resplandor solitario de una lámpara con su pantalla de color; de las chimeneas salían nubecillas de humo, que, flotando como manchas fugaces en la lobreguez del ambiente, se desvanecían en la altura; por entre las manzanas de casas, á lo largo de las calles rectas, divisabanse las hileras de los faroles, cuyas llamas reverberaban en cristales y vidrieras, ó á trechos algún arco voltáico irradiaba intenso fulgor blanquecino; y de aquel conjunto de sombras esmaltadas de toques luminosos so alzaba el rumor confuso de mil ruidos diversos; rodar de vehículos, vocear de vendedores, gritar de chicos y cantar de criadas; ya el tecleo de un piano, ya el lento sonar de las campanadas de un reloj.”
106 “César ó Nada” is the first of a trilogy entitled “Las Ciudades”; another trilogy, “El Mar,” is begun with “Las Inquietudes de Shanti Andía” (1911), a vivid disconnected narrative concerning the lives of adventurous sailors of the Basque coast in the little fishing-harbour of Luzaro and in their distant voyages. The style, or absence of style, is clear, transparent, as it were brittle with the shock of abrupt short sentences, interspersed with sonorous Basque names and rough snatches of Basque song. In Basque, too, are the indications of the site in which lie buried the coffers of gold coins hoarded by a miserly slave trader. But the book ends with the sad reflection: “No one now in Luzaro is willing to be a sailor. Los vascos se retiran del mar.”
107 Six years after Galdós, sixteen before Blasco Ibáñez, one before Alas and Picón, and two before Palacio Valdés.
108 F. Vézinet, “Les Maîtres du Roman Espagnol Contemporain,” Paris, 1907.
109 Indeed, in reading the more recent novels by Señora Pardo Bazán, “La Quimera,” or “La Sirena Negra,” or “Dulce Dueño” (1911), striking and original as they are, one cannot help looking back from them somewhat regretfully to her Galician novels of the eighties.
110 “Le trait essentiel du réalisme de Pereda c’est la sympathie avec laquelle il décrit les mœurs populaires, sans optimisme outré, mais avec une divination profonde de leur poésie intime. Pereda aime le peuple par tempérament d’artiste, pour ce que celui-ci a de pittoresque et d’original; il l’aime aussi en homme et en chrétien, comme une humanité plus simple, aux sentiments spontanés et naïfs. Il ne nous dissimule pas sa grossièreté et ses misères mais il nous ouvre les yeux sur ses vertus ignorées; jusque chez les êtres dégradés par le vice, il nous montre quelque noble instinct qui survit et se réveille à l’occasion. Et ce réalisme, qu’illumine toujours un rayon d’idéal, respecte l’homme en le peignant même dans ses vulgarités ou ses laideurs.” Boris de Tannenberg. L’Espagne littéraire. Paris, 1903.
111 The country between Burgos and the Atlantic, known as the “Montaña” with Santander for its capital, is a district of continuous mountains and hills and steep meadows and maize-fields, with scarcely an inch of level ground. The hills far up are covered with chestnut and oak, beech, walnut and sycamore; rushing streams are hidden in deep wooded clefts, and rough walls of stones divide field from field, where the reapers, with difficulty wielding their scythes, have but a precipitous foothold. The villages and scattered farms are of massive yellow stone, with roofs of deep-brown tiles and wide balconies suspended by grey wooden posts from the projecting eaves.
112 Even so, however, the clear splendour of the sky of Castille must have cast a charm over the place. The dominant impression at Madrid to-day is, indeed, that of light and of open spaces, the Puerta del Sol in a radiance of sunshine, the Carrera de San Jeronymo going off apparently into space, the surrounding country far-seen and treeless, the clear blue mountains, and the sky from verge to zenith clothed with a brilliance of dazzling light so that “ogni parte ad ogni parte splende.”
113 “La Montálvez” (1888) and “Nubes de Estío” (1891) are perhaps his weakest works. “Nubes de Estío” is rather wearisome till the Duque de Cañaveral arrives, “falling like a Jupiter among little gods.” “Al Primer Vuelo” (1890) is a novel of the Cantabrian coast, but without the full salt and vigour of “Sotileza.”
114 M. Boris de Tannenberg speaks of “l’âpre saveur de sa langue, un peu rude et fruste, mais solide, musclée et haute en couleur.”
115 The difference between these artists in prose may be best illustrated by quotation: “El Cura abrió la ventana y miró al cielo. Apenas brillaban las estrellas. Estúvose quieto y meditando, con los ojos fijos en la sombra de los montes. Bajo la bóveda de la noche, todos los rumores parecían llenos de prestigio. El ladrido de los perros, el paso de las patrullas, el agua del río en las presas, eran voces religiosas y misteriosas, como esos anhelos ignotos que estremecen á las almas en su noche oscura.” (Valle-Inclán, “Gerifaltes de Antaño.”) Here we have the clear thin outlines, the studied restraint of the admirer of El Greco. In the following passage, from León’s “Alcalá de los Zegríes,” we find the more sensuous glowing imagination of the Andalusian novelist: “Fué Alfonso hacia la ventana y apoyó la ardorosa frente en los cristales. Todo era silencio y soledad. Las estrellas oscilaban en el cielo; la ancha bóveda, oscura, estaba acribillada de lucecillas trémulas. Una fogata brillaba á lo lejos en el campo. Y en el silencio grave, en la callada sombra, las puertas de bronce del misterio se abrían de par en par.” In the hands of both writers Castilian yields a full measure of its magic.
116 Señor Cossío published his well-known work, “El Greco,” 2 tom. Madrid, in 1908. The second volume consists of illustrations of El Greco’s pictures; most of the reproductions are, however, unfortunately somewhat indistinct. The reproductions from photographs in a little book, “El Greco,” by A. F. Calvert and C. Gasquoine Hartley. London: John Lane, 1909, are much clearer. The illustrations are excellent in “Le Greco.” Par Maurice Barrès et Paul Lafond. Paris: Floury, as also those of pictures by El Greco in Herr Meier Graefe’s “Spanische Reise,” Berlin, 1910. In October, 1910, appeared a short scholarly study, “El Greco en Toledo.” Por Francisco de Borja de San Román y Fernández. Madrid: Suárez. It contains eighty-eight original documents of great interest, especially the inventory of El Greco’s possessions (vienes), drawn up by his son, Jorge Manuel, on April 12, 1614, five days after El Greco’s death, the discovery and publication of which will, as the author says, give intense pleasure to all lovers of El Greco. This contains over 100 pictures by El Greco (some unfinished), 200 prints, 150 drawings, 15 sketches, 20 plaster models, 30 models in clay and wax, etc. Among the Greek books are Josephus, Xenophon, Demosthenes, Isocrates, Homer, Aristotle’s Politics and Physics, the Old and New Testaments, Lucian, Plutarch (bite di Plutarco), Æsop, Euripides. The Italian include Petrarca and Ariosto, but fifty more Italian books, with seventeen in romance and nineteen on architecture, are uncatalogued. The commonest articles receive a quaint dignity in the old ringing Castilian, as “quatro pares de escarpines” (four pair of socks), “un cajón grande de pino con cinco gabetas” (a large chest of pine with five drawers), “una alacena de madera grande” (a large wooden cupboard), “una espada y una daga con tiros y pretina” (a sword and dagger with their belts).
117 Cf. his dispute with the Church of Santo Tomé as to the price of “El Entierro,” of which dispute a most interesting account is to be found in the documents of Señor San Román’s book.
118 The temptation is great to quote the Coplas from beginning to end. They have been excellently translated by Longfellow, but all who read them in the original will be ready to say with the shepherd of Camões: “Quam bem que sôa o verso castelhano.”
119 “Son tan disonantes unas de otras que no parecen ser de la misma mano” (Jusepe Martínez).
120 Or Dominico. Sometimes he signed Domyco or Domco at the end of documents. The fourth letter of the signature (in Greek characters) on the “Baptism” in the Prado Gallery has all the air of a Greek eta.
121 Even though the house now known and shown as “la Casa del Greco” is not that in which El Greco lived, it occupies very much the same open situation; for by the disappearance of the block of houses belonging to the Marqués de Villena, El Greco’s landlord, it steps into the first place above the river.