Part 8 (1/2)
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE TOILET TOWER.
From a photograph by J. Laurent & Co., Madrid.]
The Hall of Amba.s.sadors is a.s.signed to the epoch of the caliphate.
Certainly the Court of Lions is invested with a somewhat different character. Its arches are more pointed, more nearly Gothic, and are hung upon a maze of exquisitely slight columns, presenting, as you look in, an opulent confusion of crinkled curves and wavering ellipses, bordered with dropping points and brief undulations that look like festoons of heavy petrified lace: as lace, heavy; but as architecture, light. There is incalculable diversity in the proportions, unevenness in the grouping of the pillars, irregularity in the cupolas; yet through all persists an unsurpa.s.sable harmony, a sensitive equilibrium. The Hall of Justice, which opens from it, and contains--contrary to Mohammedan principles--some mysterious early Italian frescoes depicting Moorish and Christian combats, is a grotto of stalact.i.tes. All this part of the palace, one would say, might have sprung from the spray of those hidden ca.n.a.ls which brought the snow-water hither, spouting up, then falling and crystallizing in shapes of arrested motion; so perfect is the geometrical balance, so suave are the flowing lines. The un-Moorish lions sustaining the central basin are meagre and crude, and the size of the court is disappointing; but it is a miniature labyrinth of beauty.
From one side you may pa.s.s into the Hall of the Abencerages, under the fine star-shaped roof of which a number of those purely Arab-blooded knights are said to have been, at the instigation of their half-Christian rivals, the Zegris, a.s.sembled at a banquet and then murdered. An invitation to dinner in those days was a doubtful compliment, which a gentleman had to think twice about before accepting.
On the other side lies the access to the Chamber of the Two Sisters, a lovely apartment, having a grooved bed in the marble floor for a current of water to course through and run out under the zigzag-carven cedar door. Everything is exactly as you would have it, and you seem to be straying through embodied reveries of Bagdad and Damascus. But it would be futile to describe the myriad traceries of these rooms; the bevelled entablatures, the elastic ceilings, displaying an order and multiplicity of tiny relief as systematic as the cells and tissues in a cut pomegranate; or the dadoes of colored tiles, still dimly glistening with glaze, and chameleonizing the base of the part.i.tions. The culmination of microscopic refinement comes, with a sigh of relief from such an overplus of sensuous delight, in the boudoir of Lindaraxa, which overlooks from a superb embayed window a little oasis of fountained court, blooming with citrons and lemons, and bedded with violets. That small garden, green and laughing, and interspersed with dark flower-mould, lies clasped in the branching wings of masonry, as simple and refres.h.i.+ng as a dew-drop. It is shut in on the other side by some mediaeval rooms fitted up in heavy oak panelling for Philip V. and his second bride, Elisabetta, when with rare judgment they chose this Islamitic spot for their honey-moon--a crescent, I suppose. It was in one of these rooms--the Room of the Fruits--that, to quote Senor Contreras again, ”the celebrated poet Was.h.i.+ngton Irving harbored, composing there his best works.” From which it will be inferred that the gallant Spaniard has not probed deeply the ”Knickerbocker History of New York,” the ”Sketch-book,” and the ”Life of Was.h.i.+ngton.”[9]
[Ill.u.s.tration: BOUDOIR OF LINDARAXA]
One may prolong one's explorations to the Queen's Toilet Tower--who ”the queen” was remains decidedly vague--poised like a lofty palm on the verge commanding the Darro gorge. In one corner of its engirdling colonnade are some round punctures, through which perfume was wafted to saturate the queen's garments while she was dressing. Or one may descend to the Baths, vaulted in below the general level. Their antechamber is the only portion which has been completely restored to its pristine magnificence of blue and gold, vermilion-flecked and overspreading the polygonal facets of stucco-work. I could imagine the Sultan coming there with stately step to be robed for the bath by female slaves, then pa.s.sing on wooden clogs into the inner chamber of heated marble, and at a due interval emerging to take his place on one of the inclined slabs in an outer alcove, enveloped in a _tcherchef_--his head bound with a soft silk m.u.f.fler--there to devote himself to rest, sweetmeats, and lazy conversation.
The Alhambra Palace is remarkable as being more Persian than Turkish, and reproducing many features that crop up in the architecture of India, Syria, Arabia, and Turkey, yet incorporating them in an independent total. The horseshoe arch is not the prevailing one, though it occurs often enough to renew and deepen the impression of its unique effect.
What makes this arch so adroitly significant of the East? Possibly the fact that it suggests a bow bent to the extremest convexity. It is easy to imagine stretched between the opposite sides a bow-string--that handy implement of conjugal strangulation which no Sultan's family should be without.
Part of the populous ancient settlement on the hill still exists in a single street outside of the palace, now inhabited by a more respectable population than that riffraff of silk-weavers, vagabonds, potters, smugglers, and broken-down soldiers who flourished there half a century since. A church stands among the dwellings. Strolling up the street one moonlit night, we bought some blue and white wine-pitchers of Granada-ware at a little drinking-shop, and saw farther on a big circle of some twenty people sitting together in the open air--one of those informal social clubs called _tertulias_, common among neighbors and intimate friends in all ranks of Spanish society. At another spot a man was sleeping in the moonlight on a cot beside the parapet, with his two little Indian-looking boys dreaming on a sheet laid over the ground.
Mateo Ximenes, the son of Irving's ”Son of the Alhambra,” lives in this quarter, officiating as a guide. Thanks to ”Geoffrey Crayon” he is prosperous, and has accordingly built a new square house which is the acme of commonplace. Beyond the street, across some open ground where figs and p.r.i.c.kly-pears are growing, stands the Tower of the Captive, where Isabella de Solis, a Christian princess, being captured, was imprisoned, and became the wife of Abul Ha.s.san. She was, in fact, the Zoraya who became Ayeshah's rival. Dense ivy mats the wall between this and the Tower of the Princesses--a structure utilized by Irving in one of his prettiest tales. Both towers are incrusted interiorly with a perfection rivalling the palace chambers, and perhaps even more enchanting, but no vestige of coloring is left in them. To me this wan aspect of the walls is more poetic than any restoration of the original emblazonments. The pale white-brown surface seems compounded of historic ashes, and is imbued with a pathos,
”Like a picture when the pride Of its coloring hath died,”
which one would be loath to lose.
The sunlit and vine-clad decrepitude that sits so lightly on this magic stronghold--this ”fortress and mansion of joy,” as one of the mural mottoes calls it--is among its main charms. The most bitter opponent of any Moorish return to power in Granada would, I think, be the modern aesthetic tourist. I rambled frequently close under the old rufous-mottled walls, from which young trees sprout up l.u.s.tily, and enjoyed their decay almost as much as I did the palace. At one point near the Tower of Seven Stories (which has never quite recovered from being blown up by the French) there was a long stretch of garden where phlox and larkspur and chrysanthemums, that would not wait for autumn, grew rank among the fruit-trees. A Moorish water-pipe near the top of the wall had broken, and, bursting through the brick-work, its current had formed a narrow cascade that tumbled into the garden through wavering loops of maiden-hair, and over mosses or water-plants which it had brought into life on the escarpment. Grapes and figs rose luxuriantly about rings of box enclosing fountains, and at sunset some shaft of fire would level itself into the greenery, striking the gorgeous pomegranate blossoms into prominence, like scarlet-tufted birds' heads. All day there was a loud chir of cicadas, and a rain of white-hot light sifted through the leaves. But at night everything died away except the rush of water, which grew louder and louder till it filled the whole air like a ghostly warning. I used to wake long after midnight, and hear nothing but this chilling whisper, unless by chance some gypsies squatted on the road were singing _Malaguenas_, or the strange, piercing note of the tree-toad that haunts the hill rung out in elfin and inhuman pipings of woe. For the builders who laid them here these running streams make a fit memorial--unstable as their power that has slipped away, yet surviving them, and remaining here as an echo of their voices, a reminder of the absent race which not for an hour can one forget in Granada.
But the supreme spell of the Alhambra reserves itself for moonlight.
When the Madonna's lamp shone bright amid the ingulfing shadows of the Tower of Justice, while its upper half was cased in steely radiance, we pa.s.sed in by Charles's Palace, where the moon, s.h.i.+ning through the roofless top, made a row of smaller moons in the circular upper windows of the dark gray wall. In the Court of the Pond a low gourd-like umbellation at the north end sparkled in diamond l.u.s.tre beneath the quivering rays; while the whole Tower of Comares behind it repeated itself in the gray-green water at our feet, with a twinkle of stars around its reversed summit. This image, dropped into the liquid depth, has dwelt there ever since its original was reared, and it somehow idealized itself into a picture of the tower's primitive perfection. The coldness of the moonlight on the soft cream-colored plaster, in this warm, stilly air, is peculiarly impressive. As for sound, absolutely none is heard but that of dripping water; nor did I ever walk through a profounder, more ghost-like silence than that which eddied in Lindaraxa's garden around the fountain, as it mourned in silvery monotones of neglected grief. The moon-glare, coming through the lonely arches, shaped gleaming cuira.s.ses on the ground, or struck the out-thrust branches of citron-trees, and seemed to drip from them again in a dazzle of snowy fire; and when I discovered my two companions looking out unexpectedly from a pointed window, they were so pale in the brilliance which played over them that for a moment I easily fancied them white-stoled apparitions from the past. As we glanced from the Queen's Peinador, where the black trees of the s.h.a.ggy ascent sprung toward us in swift lines or serpentine coilings as if to grasp at us, we saw long shadows from the towers thrown out over the sleeping city, which, far below, caked together its squares of hammered silver, dusked over by the dead gray of roofs that did not reflect the light. But within the Hall of Amba.s.sadors reigned a gloom like that of the grave.
Gleams of sharp radiance lay in the deep embrasures without penetrating; and, at one, the intricacies of open-work above the arch were mapped in clear figures of light on a s.p.a.ce of jet-black floor. Another was filled nearly to the top by the blue, weirdly luminous image of a mountain across the valley. Through all these openings, I thought, the spirits of the departed could find entrance as easily as the footless night breeze.
I wonder if the people who lived in this labyrinth of art ever smiled?
In the palpitating dusk, robed men and veiled women seemed to steal by with a rustle no louder than that of their actual movement in life; silk hangings hung floating from the walls; scented lamps shed their beams at moments through the obscurity, and I saw the gleam of enamelled swords, the s.h.i.+ne of bronze candlesticks, the blur of colored vases in the corners; the _kasidas_ of which poetry-loving monarchs turned the pages.
But in such a place I could not imagine laughter. I felt inclined to prostrate myself in the darkness before I know not what power of by-gone yet ever-present things--a half tangible essence that expressed only the solemnity of life and the presentiment of change.
IV.
It is not surprising that Isabella the Catholic, who had so completely thrown her heart into the conquest of Granada, should have wished to be buried in that city, though dying far away. Her marble semblance rests beside that of Ferdinand in the Royal Chapel, which serves as vestibule to the ugly Renaissance cathedral. The statues are peculiarly impressive, and sleep on high sepulchres of alabaster, beautifully chased. Both of them are placed with their heads where, if sentient, they might contemplate the astonis.h.i.+ng reredos of the altar--a wooden ma.s.s piled to the roof, and containing many niches filled by figures carved, gilded, and painted with flesh-color. Among them is John the Baptist standing upright, with blood gus.h.i.+ng from his severed neck, while the head which has just quitted it is being presented on a charger to Herodias's daughter. There are other hideous things in this strange and brutal church ornament, which is a museum of monstrosities; but parts of it depict the triumphs of the royal pair, and it was no doubt accordant with their taste. Their bodies lie in a black vault under the floor, which we visited by the light of a single candle. Two long bulks of lead, with a simple letter F. on one and an I. on the other; that was all that marked the presence of two great monarchs' earthly part. Juana the Mad, Charles V.'s mother, rests in another leaden casket--the poor Queen, whom her famous son probably reported crazy for his own political purposes, but whose supposed mania of watching her dead husband's body, in jealous fear that he could still be loved by other women, has been effectively treated in Padilla's picture. Her husband, Philip the Fair, lies on the opposite side. Hardly could there be a more impressive contrast than that between this tomb under the soft, musty shadows of the chapel--all that is left of the conqueror--and that glorious sun-imbued ruin on the hill--all that is left of the conquered. Two mighty forces met and clashed around Granada in 1492; and, when the victory was won, both receded like spent waves, leaving the Alhambra to slow burial in rubbish and oblivion, under which Was.h.i.+ngton Irving literally rediscovered it. How fine a coincidence that the very spot from which Isabella finally despatched Columbus on his great quest should owe so much to a son of the new continent which Columbus discovered!
Another edifice of no small interest, although seldom heard of at a distance, is La Cartuja, the Carthusian church and monastery, lying upon a hill-slope called Hinadamar, across the city and on its outskirts, due west from the Alhambra. The monks who formerly occupied it have, in common with those of other orders, been driven out of Spain; so that we approached the church-steps through an old arched gate-way, no longer guarded, and by way of a gra.s.s-grown enclosure that bore the appearance of complete neglect. The interior, however, is very well preserved. It was curious to walk through it, under the guidance of a pursy old woman, and, afterward, of the lame sacristan, who did his best with chattering gossip to rob the place of whatever sanct.i.ty remained to it. The refectory (fitly inhabited by an echo) stands bare and empty, save for the reading-desk, from which the monks used to be refreshed with Scripture while at their meals; and on the wall at one end of this long, high hall hangs apparently a wooden cross, which at first it is impossible to believe is only painted there. The barren, round-arched cloisters are frescoed with an interminable series of scenes by Cotan, the same artist who painted the cross; and in this case he was given a free commission, of which he availed himself to the utmost in depicting the most distressing incidents of Carthusian martyrology. Especially does he seem to have delighted in the persecutions inflicted by English Protestants under Henry VIII. on San Bruno, the founder of this order.
How strange the conception of a holy and exalted life which led men in religious retirement to keep before their eyes, in these corridors meant for mild exercise and recreation, representations so full of blood and horror! In fact, one cannot escape the impression, stamped more vividly on the mind here in Granada than anywhere else, except perhaps in Toledo, that Christianity in Spain meant barbarism. But where it was released from the immediate purposes of ecclesiastic dogma, Christian art showed a taste not so much barbarous as barbaric, and the results of its activity were often beautiful. In this same monastery is a splendid example of that tendency. The church is not remarkably fine or impressive; but the sacristy is a marvel of sumptuous decoration, and decoration very peculiar in kind. Its walls are wholly incased in a most effective species of green and white marble, cut in smooth, polished slabs, the natural veinings of which present grotesque resemblances to human and other forms, which are somewhat trivially insisted upon by the custodian and guide, and should be allowed to lose themselves in the general richness of aspect. The great doors of this sacristy are inlaid with ebony, silver, mother-of-pearl, and tortoise-sh.e.l.l, in designs of much intricacy and richness; and all around the room (which is provided with an altar, so that it becomes a sort of sub-church or chapel, adjoining the main church) are low closets fitted into the wall. These were originally used for holding the vestments of the brotherhood. Made of sweet-scented cedar, they are adorned on the outside with the same inlaid work that appears on the doors. The dim, veiled s.h.i.+mmer of the mother-of-pearl, the delicate, translucent browns of the tortoise-sh.e.l.l, and the wandering threads of silver, form a decorative surface wonderful in its refinement, its perfection of elegance. I scarcely know how to give an idea of its appearance, unless I say that it was somewhat as if layers of spider-webs had been spread, with all their mystery of exact curves and angles, over the wood-work, and then had had their fibres changed by some magic into precious and enduring materials. The frail but well-adjusted fabric has outlasted the dominion of those for whose selfish and secluded pride of wors.h.i.+p it was made; and, seeing it, one may pardon them some of their mistakes. It is pleasant also to find that the art of making this inlay, after having long fallen out of use, has been revived in Granada; for in these days of enlightened adaptation and artistic education there seems to be no reason why such a handicraft should be lost or even confined to Spain.
The gypsies of Granada are disappointing, apart from their peculiar quivering dance, performed by _gitanas_ in all Spanish cities under the name of _flamenco_.[10] Their hill-caves, so operative with one's curiosity when regarded from across the valley, gape open in such dingy, sour, degraded foulness on a nearer view, that I found no amount of theory would avail to restore their interest. Yet some of the fortune-telling women are spirited enough, and the inextinguishable Romany spark smoulders in their black eyes. Perhaps it was an interloping drop of Celtic blood that made one of them say to me, ”Senorito, listen. I will tell you your fortune. But I speak French--_I come from Africa!_” And to clinch the matter she added, ”You needn't pay me if every word of the prediction isn't true!” Much as I had heard of the Spanish bull, I never knew until then how closely it resembled the Irish breed.
Fortuny's model, Marinero, who lives in a burrow on the Alhambra side, occasionally starts up out of the earth in a superb and expensive costume, due to the dignity of his having been painted by Fortuny. Dark as a negro, with a degree of luminous brown in his skin, and very handsome, he plants himself immovably in one spot to sell photographs of himself. His nostrils visibly dilate with pride, but he makes no other bid for custom. He expands his haughty nose, and you immediately buy a picture. Velveteen chanced upon Marinero's daughter, and got her to pose. When he engaged her she was so delighted that she took a rose from her hair and presented it to him, with a charming, unaffected air of grat.i.tude, came an hour before the time, and waited impatiently. She wore a wine-colored skirt, if I remember, a violet jacket braided with black, and a silk neckerchief of dull purple-pink silk. But that was not enough: a blue silk kerchief also was wound about her waist, and in among her smooth jet locks she had tucked a vivid scarlet flower. The result was perfect, for the rich pale-brown of her complexion could harmonize anything; and in Spain, moreover, combinations of color that appear too harsh elsewhere are paled and softened by the overpowering light.
[Ill.u.s.tration: GYPSIES.]