Part 18 (1/2)
CHAPTER XX.
What to observe in Spain--How to observe--Spanish Incuriousness and Suspicions--French Spies and Plunderers--Sketching in Spain--Difficulties, How Surmounted--Efficacy of Pa.s.sports and Bribes--Uncertainty and Want of Information in the Natives.
[Sidenote: DIFFICULTIES OF OBSERVING.]
Now that the most approved methods of travelling, living, and being buried in Spain have been touched on, our kind readers will naturally inquire, what are the peculiar attractions which should induce gentlemen and ladies who take their ease at home, to adventure into this land of roughing it, in which _rats_ rather than hares jump up when the least expected. ”What to observe” is a question easier asked than answered; who indeed can cater for the mult.i.tudinous variety of fancies, the differences by which Nature keeps all nature right? Who shall decide when doctors disagree, as they always do, on matters of taste, since every one has his own way of viewing things, and his own hobby and predilection? Say not, however, with Smellfungus, that all is a wilderness from Dan to Beersheba,--nor seek for weeds where flowers grow. The search for the excellent is the high road to excellence, as not to appreciate it when found is the surest test of mediocrity. The refining effort and habit teaches the mind to think; from long pondering on the beautiful world without, s.n.a.t.c.hes are caught of the beautiful world within, and a glimpse is granted to the chosen few, of glories hidden from the vulgar many. They indeed have eyes, but see not; nay, scarcely do they behold the things of external nature, until told what to look for, where to find it, and how to observe it; then a new sense, a second sight, is given. Happy, thrice happy those from whose eyes the film has been removed, who instead of a previous vague general and unintelligent stare, have really learnt to _see_! To them a fountain of new delights, pure and undefiled, welling up and overflowing, is opened; in proportion as they comprehend the infinite form, colour, and beauty with which Nature clothes her every work, albeit her sweetest charms are only revealed to the initiated, reserved as the rich reward of those who bow to her shrine with singleness of purpose, and turn to her wors.h.i.+p with all their hearts, souls, and understandings.
It was with these beneficent intentions that our good friend John Murray first devised Handbooks; and next, by writing them himself, taught others how to dip into inkstands for red books, which tell man, woman, and child what to observe, to the ruin of _laquais de place_, and discomfiture of authors of single octavos and long vacation excursions.
Few gentlemen who publish the notes of their Peninsular gallop much improve their light diaries by discussing heavy handbook subjects; skimming, like swallows, over the surface, and in pursuit of insects, they neither heed nor discern the gems which lurk in the deeps below; they see indeed all the sc.u.m and straws which float on the surface, and write down on their tablets all that is rotten in the state of Spain.
Hence the sameness of some of their works; one book and bandit reflects another, until writers and readers are imprisoned in a vicious circle.
Nothing gives more pain to Spaniards than seeing volume after volume written on themselves and their country by foreigners, who have only rapidly glanced at one-half of the subject, and that half the one of which they are the most ashamed, and consider the least worth notice.
This constant prying into the nakedness of the land and exposing it afterwards, has increased the dislike which they entertain towards the _impertinente curioso_ tribe: they well know and deeply feel their country's decline; but like poor gentlefolks, who have nothing but the past to be proud of, they are anxious to keep these family secrets concealed, even from themselves, and still more from the observations of those who happen to be their superiors, not in blood, but in worldly prosperity. This dread of being shown up sharpens their inherent suspicions, when strangers wish to ”observe,” and examine into their ill-provided a.r.s.enals and inst.i.tutions, just as Burns was scared even by the honest antiquarian Grose; so they lump the good and the bad, putting them down as book-making Paul Prys:--
[Sidenote: DISLIKE TO OBSERVERS.]
”If there's a hole in a' your coats, I rede ye tent it; A chiel's amang ye, taking notes, And faith! he'll prent it.”
The less observed and said about these Spanish matters, these _cosas de Espana_--the present tatters in her once proud flag, on which the sun never set--is, they think, the soonest mended. These comments heal slower than the knife-gash--”_Sanan cuchilladas, mas_ NO _malas palabras_.” Let no author imagine that the fairest observations that he can take and make of Spain as she is, setting down nought in malice, can ever please a Spaniard; his pride and self-esteem are as great as the self-conceit and low consequence of the American: both are morbidly sensitive and touchy; both are afflicted with the notion that all the world, who are never troubling their heads about them, are thinking of nothing else, and linked in one common conspiracy, based in envy, jealousy, or ignorance; ”you don't understand us, I guess.” Truth, except in the shape of a compliment, is the greatest of libels, and is howled against as a lie and forgery from the Straits to the Bidasoa; Napier's history, for example. The Spaniard, who is hardly accustomed to a free, or rather a licentious press, and the scavenger propensity with which, in England and America, it rakes into the sewers of private life and the gangrenes of public, is disgusted with details which he resents as a breach of hospitality in strangers. He considers, and justly, that it is no proof either of goodness of breeding, heart, or intellect, to be searching for blemishes rather than beauties, for toadstools rather than violets; he despises those curmudgeons who see motes rather than beams in the brightest eyes of Andalucia. The productions of strangers, and especially of those who ride and write the quickest, must savour of the pace and sources from whence they originate. Foreigners who are unacquainted with the language and good society of Spain are of necessity brought the most into contact with the lowest scenes and the worst cla.s.s of people, thus road-sc.r.a.pings and postilion information too often const.i.tute the raw-head-and-b.l.o.o.d.y-bones material of their composition. All this may be very amusing to those who like these subjects, but they afford a poor criterion for descanting on whatever does the most honour to a country, or gives sound data for judging its real condition. How would we ourselves like that Spaniards should form their opinions of England and Englishmen from the Newgate calendars, the reports of cads, and the annals of beershops?
[Sidenote: DISLIKE TO OBSERVERS.]
Various as are the objects worth observing in Spain, many of which are to be seen there only, it may be as well to mention what is _not_ to be seen, for there is no such loss of time as finding this out oneself, after weary chace and wasted hour. Those who expect to meet with well-garnished a.r.s.enals, libraries, restaurants, charitable or literary inst.i.tutions, ca.n.a.ls, railroads, tunnels, suspension-bridges, steam-engines, omnibuses, manufactories, polytechnic galleries, pale-ale breweries, and similar appliances and appurtenances of a high state of political, social, and commercial civilization, had better stay at home.
In Spain there are no turnpike-trust meetings, no quarter-sessions, no courts of _justice_, according to the real meaning of that word, no treadmills, no boards of guardians, no chairmen, directors, masters-extraordinary of the court of chancery, no a.s.sistant poor-law commissioners. There are no anti-tobacco-teetotal-temperance-meetings, no auxiliary-missionary-propagating societies, nothing in the blanket and lying-in asylum line, nothing, in short, worth a revising-barrister of three years' standing's notice, unless he be partial to the study of the laws of bankruptcy. Spain is no country for the political economist, beyond affording an example of the decline of the wealth of nations, and offering a wide topic on errors to be avoided, as well as for experimental theories, plans of reform and amelioration. In Spain, Nature reigns; she has there lavished her utmost prodigality of soil and climate, which Spaniards have for the last four centuries been endeavouring to counteract by a culpable neglect of agricultural speeches and dinners, and a non-distribution of prizes for the biggest boars, a.s.ses, and labourers with largest families.
[Sidenote: WHAT TO OBSERVE.]
The landed proprietor of the Peninsula is little better than a weed of the soil; he has never observed, nor scarcely permitted others to observe, the vast capabilities which might and ought to be called into action. He seems to have put Spain into Chancery, such is the general dilapidation. The country is little better than a terra incognita, to naturalists, geologists, and all other branches of ists and ologists.
Everywhere there, the material is as superabundant as native labourers and operatives are deficient. All these interesting branches of inquiry, healthful and agreeable, as being out-of-door pursuits, and bringing the amateur in close contact with nature, offer to embryo authors who are ambitious to _book something new_, a more worthy subject than the old story of dangers of bull-fights, bandits, and black eyes. Those who aspire to the romantic, the poetical, the sentimental, the artistical, the antiquarian, the cla.s.sical, in short, to any of the sublime and beautiful lines, will find both in the past and present state of Spain, subjects enough in wandering with lead-pencil and note-book through this singular country, which hovers between Europe and Africa, between civilization and barbarism; this land of the green valley and barren mountain, of the boundless plain and the broken sierra; those Elysian gardens of the vine, the olive, the orange, and the aloe; those trackless, vast, silent, uncultivated wastes, the heritage of the wild bee;--in flying from the dull uniformity, the polished monotony of Europe, to the racy freshness of that original, unchanged country, where antiquity treads on the heels of to-day, where Paganism disputes the very altar with Christianity, where indulgence and luxury contend with privation and poverty, where a want of all that is generous or merciful is blended with the most devoted heroic virtues, where the most cold-blooded cruelty is linked with the fiery pa.s.sions of Africa, where ignorance and erudition stand in violent and striking contrast.
[Sidenote: WHAT TO OBSERVE.]
”There,” says the Handbook, in a style which qualifies the author for the best bound and fairest edited alb.u.m, ”let the antiquarian pore over the stirring memorials of many thousand years, the vestiges of Phnician enterprise, of Roman magnificence, of Moorish elegance, in that storehouse of ancient customs, that repository of all elsewhere long forgotten and pa.s.sed by; there let him gaze upon those cla.s.sical monuments, unequalled almost in Greece or Italy, and on those fairy Aladdin palaces, the creatures of Oriental gorgeousness and imagination, with which Spain alone can enchant the dull European; there let the man of feeling dwell on the poetry of her envy-disarming decay, fallen from her high estate, the dignity of a dethroned monarch, borne with unrepining self-respect, the last consolation of the innately n.o.ble, which no adversity can take away; let the lover of art feed his eyes with the mighty masterpieces of ideal Italian art, when Raphael and t.i.tian strove to decorate the palaces of Charles, the great emperor of the age of Leo X. Let him gaze on the living nature of Velazquez and Murillo, whose paintings are truly to be seen in Spain alone; let the artist sketch frowning forms of the castle, the pomp and splendour of the cathedral, where G.o.d is wors.h.i.+pped in a manner as nearly befitting his glory as the arts and wealth of finite man can reach. Let him dwell on the Gothic gloom of the cloister, the feudal turret, the vasty Escorial, the rock-built alcazar of imperial Toledo, the sunny towers of stately Seville, the eternal snows and lovely vega of Granada; let the geologist clamber over mountains of marble, and metal-pregnant sierras; let the botanist cull from the wild hothouse of nature plants unknown, unnumbered, matchless in colour, and breathing the aroma of the sweet south; let all, learned and unlearned, listen to the song, the guitar, the castanet; or join in the light fandango and spirit-stirring bullfight; let all mingle with the gay, good-humoured, temperate peasantry, free, manly, and independent, yet courteous and respectful; let all live with the n.o.ble, dignified, high-bred, self-respecting Spaniard; let all share in their easy, courteous society; let all admire their dark-eyed women, so frank and natural, to whom the voice of all ages and nations has conceded the palm of attraction, to whom Venus has bequeathed her magic girdle of grace and fascination; let all--but enough on starting on this expedition, 'where,' as Don Quixote said, 'there are opportunities, brother Sancho, of putting our hands into what are called adventures up to our elbows.'”
[Sidenote: SUSPICION OF OBSERVERS.]
Nor was the La Manchan hidalgo wrong in a.s.signing a somewhat adventurous character to the searchers in Spain for useful and entertaining knowledge, since the natives are fond, and with much reason, of comparing themselves and their country to _tesoros escondidos_, to hidden treasures, to talents buried in napkins; but they are equally fond of turning round, and falling foul of any pains-taking foreigner who digs them up, as Le Sage did the soul of Pedro Garcias. Nothing throughout the length and breadth of the land creates greater suspicion or jealousy than a stranger's making drawings, or writing down notes in a book: whoever is observed _sacando planes_, ”taking plans,” _mapeando el pais_, ”mapping the country,”--for such are the expressions of the simplest pencil sketch--is thought to be an engineer, a spy, and, at all events, to be about no good. The lower cla.s.ses, like the Orientals, attach a vague mysterious notion to these, to them unintelligible, proceedings; whoever is seen at work is immediately reported to the civil and military authorities, and, in fact, in out-of-the-way places, whenever an unknown person arrives, from the rarity of the occurrence, he is the observed of all observers. Much the same occurs in the East, where Europeans are suspected of being emissaries of their governments, as neither they nor Spaniards can at all understand why any man should incur trouble and expense, which no native ever does, for the mere purpose of acquiring knowledge of foreign countries, or for his own private improvement or amus.e.m.e.nt. Again, whatever particular investigations or questions are made by foreigners, about things that to the native appear unworthy of observation, are magnified and misrepresented by the many, who, in every place, wish to curry favour with whoever is the governor or chief person, whether civil or military.
The natives themselves attach little or no importance to views, ruins, geology, inscriptions, and so forth, which they see every day, and which they therefore conclude cannot be of any more, or ought not to be of more, interest to the stranger. They judge of him by themselves; few men ever draw in Spain, and those who do are considered to be professional, and employed by others.
[Sidenote: OFFICIAL SUSPICION.]
One of the many fatal legacies left to Spain by the French, was an increased suspicion of men with the pencil and notebook. Previously to their invasion spies and agents were sent, who, under the guise of travellers, reconnoitred the land; and then, casting off the clothing of sheep, guided in the wolves to plunder and destruction. The aged prior of the Merced, at Seville, observed to us, when pointing out the empty frames and cases from whence the Messrs. Soult and Co. had ”removed” the Murillos and sacred plate,--”_Lo creira usted_--Will your Grace believe it, I beheld among the _ladrones_ a person who grinned at me when I recognised him, to whom, some time before the invaders' arrival, I had pointed out these very treasures. _Tonto de mi!_ Oh! simpleton that I was, to take a _gabacho_ for an honest man.” Yet this worthy individual was decorated with the legion of honour of Buonaparte, whose ”first note in his pocket-book” of agenda, _after_ the conquest of England, was to ”carry off the Warwick vase;” as Denon, who too had spoiled the Egyptians, told Sir E. Tomason. We English, whose shops, ”bursting with opulence into the streets,” have not yet been visited, although the temptation is held out by royal pamphleteers, can scarcely enter into the feelings of those whose homes are still reeking with blood, and blighted by poverty. The Castilian cat, who has been scalded, flies even from cold water.
Some excuse, therefore, may be alleged in favour of Spanish authorities, especially in rarely visited districts, when they behold a strange barbarian eye peeping and peering about. Their first impression, as in the East, is that he may be a Frank: hence the shaking, quaking, and ague which comes over them. At Seville, Granada, and places where foreign artists are somewhat more plentiful, the processes of drawing may be pa.s.sed over with pity and contempt, but in lonely localities the star-gazing observer is himself the object of argus-eyed, official observation. He is, indeed, as unconscious of the portentous emotions and ill-omened fears which he is exciting, as was the innocent crow of the meanings attached to his movements by the Roman augurs, and few augurs of old ever rivalled the Spanish alcaldes of to-day in quick suspicion and perception of evil, especially where none is intended.
Witness what actually occurred to three excellent friends of ours.
[Sidenote: DRAWING IN SPAIN.]