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 Soul of Spain, 
 
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THE 
 
 SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 BY 
 
 HAVELOCK ELLIS 
 
 FOURTH IMPRESSION 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 
 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
 
 LONDON: CONSTABLE & COMPANY, Ltd. 
 
 1914 
 
 f V. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 Many years ago, as a child of six, I was taken 
 by my father from Callao to spend the day in 
 Lima, the capital of Peru. It was the first 
 great foreign city I had seen, and the unfamiliar 
 features of its streets, such as elsewhere have 
 since become so familiar to me — the huge gate- 
 ways, the pleasant courtyards one looked into 
 beyond — made an ineffaceable impression on my 
 mind. It has since seemed to me a fact not 
 without significance that this first glimpse of 
 the non- Anglo -Saxon world should have been 
 of a foreign city founded on those Spanish 
 traditions which have since been so attractive 
 to me, so potent to thrill or to charm. 
 
 My acquaintance with Spain itself has been 
 confined to the past twenty years or less. 
 During this period I have visited the land five 
 times, traversing it in all directions, entering 
 and leaving it by all its chief portals, at Port- 
 
vi THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 Bou, at Algeciras, at Irun. I am convinced 
 that it is only by a succession of visits at 
 intervals that an unfamiliar country, of such 
 marked and strong character as Spain possesses, 
 can be comprehended ; it is necessary to meditate 
 over one's impressions at leisure, to start afresh, 
 again and again, with some old prejudice re- 
 moved, and a clearer vision of the essential 
 facts ; during a single visit, however lengthy, 
 this is difficult to effect. 
 
 Although I have in this way tried to 
 approach, as well as I can and from many 
 different sides, a few of the manifold aspects 
 of the Spanish spirit, I am well aware how 
 inadequate and superficial my attempt must 
 appear to those among us who have devoted 
 their lives to the study of Spain. My own 
 life-work is in other fields ; I cannot therefore 
 complain if more profound students should feel 
 that I have made but a feeble attempt to in- 
 terpret the Spanish spirit. 
 
 Let me say also, once and for all, that this 
 book is not put forward as an indiscriminate 
 recommendation to visit Spain. Spain is not 
 an easy land to comprehend, even for intelligent 
 visitors, and, taken as a whole, it is by no means 
 a land for those who attach primary importance 
 
PREFACE vii 
 
 to comfort and facile enjoyment. The common 
 notion that Spain is another Italy is false and 
 misleading. An acquaintance with Italy is, in- 
 deed, the worst preparation for entering Spain : 
 all we have learnt in Italy must be forgotten 
 when we cross the Pyrenees. Spain is not even 
 the equivalent of Italy. For all who inherit 
 European civilisation, Italy must always be the 
 chief and richest museum of antiquities, a sacred 
 land of pilgrimage. Spain is interesting and 
 instructive, in the highest degree fascinating 
 for those who can learn to comprehend her, but 
 these must always, I think, be comparatively 
 few. For these few, however, the fascination is 
 permanent and irresistible. It is a fascination 
 not hard to justify. 
 
 The political, industrial, and commercial 
 aspects of Spain, it will be seen, have little or 
 no place in these pages. Those are aspects of 
 Spain often dealt with by writers far more 
 competent to deal with them than I am, and 
 I recognise that they are aspects which are 
 gaining a larger importance to-day than they 
 have had for a long time past. But unless 
 we look very far back, it is not in those fields 
 that the genius of Spain has been conspicuously 
 shown. Spain represents, above all, the supreme 
 
Vlll 
 
 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 manifestation of a certain primitive and eternal 
 attitude of the human spirit, an attitude of heroic 
 energy, of spiritual exaltation, directed not chiefly 
 towards comfort or towards gain, but towards the 
 more fundamental facts of human existence. It 
 is this essential Spain that I have sought to 
 explore. 
 
 HAVELOCK ELLIS. 
 
'CONTENTS 
 
 1. Introduction 
 
 2. The Spanish People 
 . 3. The Women op Spain 
 
 4. The Art of Spain 
 
 5. Velazquez 
 
 6. Spanish Dancing 
 
 7. Ramon Lull at Palma 
 ^ 8. ' Don Quixote ' . 
 
 9. Juan Valera 
 
 10. Santa Maria del Mar 
 
 11. The Gardens of Granada 
 
 12. Segovia 
 
 13. Seville in Spring 
 
 14. Seville Cathedral . 
 
 15. Monserrat 
 
 16. Spanish Ideals op To-day 
 INDEX . 
 
 PAGE 
 
 1 
 
 29 
 61 
 106 
 134 
 170 
 191 
 223 
 244 
 273 
 306 
 321 
 338 
 355 
 369 
 386 
 
 415 
 
 IX 
 
2 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 achievement. Journeying in a little -visited 
 country, with few modern means of locomotion, 
 and no Baedeker in his hand (it is scarcely ten 
 years indeed since Baedeker recognised the 
 existence of Spain), Gautier in a few weeks 
 grasped all the more salient characteristics of the 
 people and the land, and set them down in the 
 clearest and firmest fashion. His book will 
 never cease to have its value, for it represents a 
 state of things which has largely vanished. No 
 one nowadays need make his Spanish tour in a 
 diligence, and no tourist now is likely to be 
 permitted, as Gautier was, to spread out his 
 mattress at night in the courts of the Alhambra. 
 The virginal romanticism of a splendid and 
 tattered Spain such as Gautier found has gone, 
 almost as completely as the splendidly ruinous 
 Eome that Goethe entered in his carriage 
 has to-day been swallowed up in the shoddy 
 capital of modern Italy. Spain, indeed, has 
 not yet attained the depressing exuberance of 
 renovated Italy, — and the peoples of the two 
 peninsulas are far too unlike to make any such 
 resemblance probable, — but the contrast between 
 Gautier's Spain of less than a century ago and 
 the state of Spain to-day is sufficiently striking 
 to dispel for ever the notion that we are here 
 concerned with a country which has been hope- 
 lessly left behind in the march of civilisation. 
 I have been able to realise the change in 
 
INTRODUCTION 3 
 
 Spain in the course of my own acquaintance 
 with the country during the past twenty years, 
 never more vividly than now as I return from 
 my fifth visit to a land which to me has long 
 seemed perhaps the most fascinating I know in 
 the Old World or the New. And when I com- 
 pare the Spain I have just left with the Spain 
 I first entered at Port-Bou nearly twenty years 
 ago, the magnitude of the changes which have 
 been effected in so brief a space seems to me very 
 remarkable. As soon as we leave the railway 
 track, indeed, we enter at once what may be 
 called the eternal Spain — the Spain sub species 
 ceternitdtis — which Cervantes immortalised. It 
 is in the cities and towns that the change has 
 chiefly been manifested. Spaniards are now 
 experiencing (though not for the first time, for 
 the same tendency was noted over a century 
 ago) the modern European tendency to crowd 
 into towns. All the recent consular reports, 
 from north and from south alike — from Barcelona 
 and Bilbao, from Malaga and Granada — con- 
 tain the same monotonous refrain that the towns 
 are becoming crowded, and that the expenses of 
 town life are increasing. Yet the population of 
 Spain, as the censuses show, is not expanding 
 at any inordinate rate and the movement of 
 emigration is active. What is happening is 
 that urban life is developing, and as it develops 
 its attractive power increases and it draws the 
 
4 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 country dwellers more and more within its circle. 
 The brothers Quintero, who rank high among 
 the Spanish dramatists of to-day, in one of the 
 best of their comedies, El Amor que Pasa, 
 have presented a delightful picture of an old- 
 world Andalusian village from which the tide of 
 life has receded, where men are scarce and where 
 strangers rarely come, and all the vivacity and 
 intelligence of the place are concentrated in a 
 few girls whom there is no one to woo. It was 
 not part of the dramatists' object to elucidate 
 this question of urban development, but it is 
 easy to see from their picture how the city has 
 impoverished the village, and how those who are 
 left only feel with the greater force the fascina- 
 tion of the city. 
 
 The more flourishing Spanish cities are nowa- 
 days full of life and animation. Not only are 
 the large and handsome caf^s crowded — that is 
 no novelty — but factories are springing up, the 
 signs of industrial and commercial activity 
 abound, and the streets swarm with electric cars. 
 In the use of electricity, indeed, Spain is before, 
 rather than behind most European countries. 
 Electric lighting is becoming universal, even the 
 smallest and most old-world cities are now 
 covered with networks of wires, and as the 
 massive old churches offer a tempting basis of 
 attachment, the most beautiful and picturesque 
 spots and buildings are everywhere being 
 
INTRODUCTION 5 
 
 desecrated and disfigured, to the disgust of the 
 travelling lover of the picturesque. The brill- 
 iance, vivacity, and modern activity of a large 
 Spanish city, a certain touch of almost Oriental 
 colour in it, suggest that the Spanish are taking 
 as their models the Hungarians of Buda-Pesth, a 
 city which, in the opinion of some, represents the 
 highest point of city development Europe has 
 yet attained. 
 
 The conservatism and traditionalism of the 
 Spaniard, we have to realise, are compatible not 
 only with an aptitude for change, but even with 
 an eager delight in novelty and a certain dis- 
 content with the past. An excessive admiration 
 for everything foreign is, indeed, by no means 
 a new Spanish characteristic ; more than a 
 century ago it was said that every educated 
 Spaniard speaks ill of his own country ; and 
 to-day an Anarchist writes from Barcelona that 
 "in no country have the workers shaken off 
 prejudice and tradition so completely as in 
 Spain." It would be surprising indeed if that 
 spirit of restless adventure which enabled 
 Spaniards to add America to the world, while 
 the Portuguese of the same Iberian race were 
 unveiling India and the farther East, had com- 
 pletely died out with the days of great adventure. 
 The Spaniard, even the Spaniard of the people, 
 is eager for reform. The more or less philo- 
 sophical Republicanism, so frequently found in 
 
6 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 Spain, as well as the Anarchism — a peaceful and 
 humanitarian Anarchism for the most part — 
 which flourishes to a greater extent in Spain 
 than elsewhere, alike testify to this desire. The 
 newspaper press of Spain — especially as repre- 
 sented by the Heraldo of Madrid and the new 
 ^Republican journal, La Nueva Espana — is 
 enlightened and intelligent, in the best sense 
 Liberal. The fermenting discontent with sacer- 
 dotal bigotry, and especially with the extreme 
 developments of monasticism, which has spread 
 among all classes in the country, even leading to 
 restriction of the freedom of public religious 
 processions — notwithstanding the firm manner 
 in which the Church is here rooted — is another 
 sign of the same kind, strikingly manifested a 
 few years ago when the Electro, of the popular 
 author Galdos was performed amid opposing 
 demonstrations of popular feeling all over Spain; 
 it is not necessarily a movement hostile to the 
 Church, certainly not in so far as Galdos is its" 1 
 representative, but it demands a purified and 
 humanised Catholicism which shall be in har- 
 mony with the claims of Nature and of social 
 progress. J The bull-fight, again, the national 
 pastime of Spain — long a mark for opprobrium 
 among English-speaking peoples, always so keen 
 to see the mote in other people's eyes — no longer 
 meets with universal acceptance, and lately, with 
 the approval of many prominent toreadors, a 
 
INTRODUCTION 7 
 
 movement has begun for the mitigation of its 
 more offensive features. 
 
 In all the practical appliances of domestic 
 and working life, although it is the Spaniard's 
 instinct to cultivate an austere simplicity, he 
 is yet adopting the devices and appliances of 
 more advanced nations, while in cleanliness 
 and convenience a Spanish city usually com- 
 pares favourably with a Provencal city. 1 The 
 Spaniard is honest ; he is sometimes a little slow 
 of comprehension ; he is proverbially proud of his 
 country's ancient glory, but is at the same time 
 deeply convinced that Spain has fallen behind in 
 the race of civilisation, and he is eager to see her 
 again to the front. I find the typical Spaniard 
 of to-day in an Aragonese peasant, elderly but 
 lithe, whom I lately saw jump from the train at 
 a little country station to examine a very com- 
 plicated French agricultural machine drawn up 
 in a siding ; he looked at it above and below 
 with wrinkled brows and intent eyes ; he ran all 
 round it ; he clearly could not quite make it out, 
 but there was no flippancy or indifference in his 
 attitude towards this new strange thing ; he 
 would never rest, one felt, until he reached 
 the meaning of it. And many of us will regret 
 that in this eager thirst for novelties the Spaniard 
 
 1 Peyron in 1777 drew a very unattractive picture of the posadas 
 which nearly everywhere were the only available kind of hostelry ; 
 they were expensive, having to pay high rents ; they were forbidden 
 by law to supply any kind of food, and bedsteads were usually absent. 
 
8 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 will cast aside not a few of the things which now 
 draw us to Spain. 
 
 There can be no doubt that this attitude of 
 the Spaniard of to-day, inevitable in any case, 
 has been greatly increased by the war. Thought- 
 ful observers of great movements have often felt 
 that the old cry " Vse victis ! " requires very 
 serious and even radical modification. This feel- 
 ing was indeed loDg ago expressed by Calderon 
 in his Magico Prodigioso : — 
 
 More 
 The battle's loss may profit those who lose 
 Than victory advantage those who win. 
 
 In many a war it has been the vanquished, not 
 the victor, who has carried off the finest spoils. 
 Cuba and the Philippines have been like a 
 tumour in the side of Spain and dragged her 
 down in the race of civilisation. They have 
 drained her life-blood and disturbed all her 
 national activities. Only a serious surgical 
 operation could remove this exhausting excres- 
 cence, and Spaniards themselves have been the 
 first to recognise that the operation, though 
 painful, was in the highest degree beneficial. 
 Not even the most patriotic of Spaniards dreams 
 of regaining these lost possessions. There was 
 indeed a passing moment of exasperation against 
 Columbus for having discovered the New World, 
 — on one occasion the mob stoned the Columbus 
 statue at Barcelona, — but the war was scarcely 
 
INTRODUCTION 9 
 
 over before Unamuno referred to it as that 
 famous encounter between Robinson Crusoe and 
 Don Quixote over an island. The war has been 
 beneficial in at least two different ways. It has 
 had a healthy economical influence because, 
 besides directing the manhood of Spain into 
 sober industrial channels, it has led to the 
 removal of artificial restrictions in the path of 
 commercial activity. It has been advantageous 
 morally because it has forced even the most 
 narrow and ignorant Spaniard to face the actual 
 facts of the modern world. 
 
 It can scarcely be expected that the lover of 
 Spain should view this new movement of progress 
 and reform with unmitigated satisfaction. No 
 traveller will complain that Spanish hotel-keepers 
 are beginning to obtain their sanitary fittings 
 from England, or that clerical and secular authori- 
 ties alike are putting down the national vice of 
 spitting. But the stranger can feel no enthusi- 
 asm when he finds that similar zeal is exercised 
 in suppressing, on the slightest pretext, the 
 national dances, unique in Europe for their 
 grace and charm and ancient descent, or in 
 discarding the beautiful and becoming national 
 costumes. It is a little depressing to find a 
 cinematographic show set up in the market-place 
 of even the remotest cities, to hear the squeak 
 of the gramophone where one has once heard 
 the haunting wail of the malaguena, or to have 
 
10 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 to admit that the barrel-organ is taking the place 
 of the guitar. Civilisation is good, and progress 
 is necessary for any people. But " civilisation " 
 and " progress " mean much more than a feverish 
 thirst for new things or a mad race for wealth, 
 and some of us think that, however salutary the 
 lessons that Spain may learn from the more 
 prosperous nations of to-day, there are still more 
 salutary lessons in the art of living which these 
 nations may learn from Spain. One would 
 grieve to see that in the attempt to purify her 
 national currency Spain should cast away her 
 gold with her dross. 
 
 A nation that is alive must needs borrow 
 from other nations. The process is vital and 
 altogether beneficial so long as the borrowed 
 elements are duly subordinated to the develop- 
 ment of the national genius. A nation that in 
 its anxiety to reach the level of other more 
 prosperous peoples moulds itself servilely on their 
 ways and lets go the hold of its own traditions, 
 condemns itself to hopeless mediocrity. To be a 
 great and fruitful power in the world a nation 
 must be true to its own instincts, and in Spain, 
 it is well to remember, we have a people of very 
 tenacious and independent fibre, crushed but 
 not destroyed by centuries of misrule and the 
 enfeeblement of the autonomous political apti- 
 tude it once possessed. 
 
 The Spaniard indeed, we may admit, always 
 
INTRODUCTION 11 
 
 is — and except to some extent in Catalonia 
 perhaps always will be — essentially unbusiness- 
 like, as we Anglo-Saxons reckon business. If 
 we enter a Spanish shop, as likely as not no one 
 will be forthcoming to attend to our wants ; on 
 going into a cafe" it may be difficult to attract 
 the attention of the two waiters who are too 
 deeply absorbed in their game of chess to be 
 conscious of any external distraction. Business 
 has never seemed in Spain to be the highest end 
 of man. "The grandest enterprises," Ganivet 
 makes Hernan Cortes say, in justification of the old 
 Spanish adventurers, "are those in which money 
 has no part, and the cost falls entirely on the 
 brain and heart." The Spaniard is constitution- 
 ally incapable of accepting the delusion that the 
 best things in the world may be bought by 
 money, or that a man's wealth consists in the 
 abundance of his possessions. 1 That is why, in a 
 passing phase of civilisation, the Spaniard seems 
 to belong to the past ; and that is why, to some 
 observers, he seems to belong also to the 
 future. 
 
 When I first entered Spain I said to myself 
 that here was a land where the manners and 
 
 1 "I will say for the Spaniards," Borrow wrote in The Bible in 
 Spain, " that in their social intercourse no people in the world exhibit 
 a juster feeling of what is due to the dignity of human nature, or 
 better understand the behaviour which it behoves a man to adopt 
 towards his fellow-beings. It is one of the few countries in Europe 
 where poverty is not treated with contempt, and, I may add, where 
 the wealthy are not blindly idolised." 
 
12 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 customs of mediaeval Europe still survived. 1 
 Spain seemed in many respects to be about three 
 hundred years behind the age. Now, when all 
 things are in flux, it is pleasant to find that that 
 early impression need not be absolutely effaced. 
 Spain is still the most democratic of countries. 
 The familiar and intimate relationship which we 
 know in the old comedies of Europe as subsisting 
 between master and servant, between gentleman 
 and peasant, is still universal. The waiter, even 
 in your modern hotel a few paces from the 
 Puerta del Sol, pats you on the back with 
 friendly intimacy as you step out of the lift on 
 the day after your arrival, and every low-class 
 Spaniard expects, as a matter of course, to be 
 treated as an equal. 2 We are not unfamiliar 
 
 1 Stendhal made the same remark nearly a century ago. "I 
 regard the Spanish people," he says {Be V 'Amour, ch. xlvii.), "as the 
 living representatives of the Middle Ages. They are ignorant of many 
 small truths of which their neighbours are childishly vain, but they 
 know deeply the great truths, and they have the character and 
 intelligence to follow them out to their most remote conclusions. 
 
 . Spanish character forms a fine opposition to French intelligence ; hard, 
 brusque, scarcely elegant, full of savage pride, not concerned with the 
 opinions of others, it is exactly the contrast of the fifteenth century 
 with the eighteenth." 
 
 2 In 1821 Pecchio wrote in his interesting letters from Spain : 
 " When the Spaniard presents himself before a powerful personage he 
 does not bend like a reed or stammer and become embarrassed ; he 
 salutes him and behaves as a man should before a fellow-man. When 
 I travelled through Spain with the Minister, Bardaxi, the post- 
 masters and alcaldes of the smallest villages, after saluting him with 
 natural frankness, sat beside him, asked him questions, lighted their 
 cigars at the Minister's, and in the warmth of conversation frequently 
 
 ■s slapped him on the shoulders." 
 
INTRODUCTION 13 
 
 with that attitude in more progressive countries, 
 but the Spaniard shows that he is entitled to 
 courtesy by knowing how to return it, and that 
 is a phenomenon we are less familiar with. 
 There is among Spanish people a friendly trust- 
 fulness towards all, even towards strangers and 
 foreigners, which belongs to an age when no fear 
 was necessary ; the man of progressive civilisa- 
 tion is always prepared to be suspicious ; he 
 scrutinises a stranger carefully and feels his way 
 slowly. That outcome of modern progress seems 
 unknown to the Spanish man or woman ; it is 
 always assumed that your attitude is friendly, 
 and on the strength of this trustfulness even the 
 instinct of modesty or the not less instinctive 
 fear of ridicule seems in Spain to become slightly 
 modified. 
 
 We realise how far we are from the present 
 when we enter a Spanish church. The ecstatic 
 attitude of devotion which the worshippers 
 sometimes fall into without thought of any 
 observer is equally unlike the elegant grace of 
 the French worshipper^or the rigid decorum of 
 the English, while perhaps, if it is a great 
 'festival, groups of women cluster on the ground 
 with their fans at the base of the piers, and 
 children quietly play about in corners with 
 unchecked and innocent freedom. Nor are the 
 dogs and cats less free than the children ; at 
 Tudela I have even seen a dog curled up in the 
 
14 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 most comfortable chair by the high altar, 
 probably left in charge of the church, for he 
 raised his head in a watchful manner when the 
 stranger entered ; and in Gerona Cathedral there 
 was a cat who would stroll about in front of the 
 capilla mayor during the progress of mass, 
 receiving the caresses of the passers - by. It 
 would be a serious mistake to see here any 
 indifference to religion; on the contrary, this 
 easy familiarity with sacred things is simply the 
 attitude of those who in Wordsworth's phrase 
 " he in Abraham's bosom all the year," and do 
 not, as often among ourselves, enter a church 
 once a week to prove how severely respectable, 
 for the example of others, they can on occasion 
 show themselves to be. It was thus that our 
 own ancestors, whose faith was assuredly less 
 questioning than ours, made themselves at home 
 in the aisles of Old St. Paul's. 
 
 It would be easy to enumerate many details 
 of life in Spain which remind us of a past we 
 have long left behind. Pepys in seventeenth- 
 century London days went out to a tavern for 
 his " morning draught," which was sometimes 
 chocolate, and in the smaller hotels of Andalusia 
 one is still expected to do the same. Our fore- 
 fathers in Shakespeare's day were familiar with 
 the fact that " good wine needs no bush," and 
 we are reminded of that fact when, as in Tarra- 
 gona, we everywhere see great clumps of green 
 
INTRODUCTION 15 
 
 bushes, usually fir branches with their cones, 
 suspended over the doors of low-class wine 
 shops. The England of Chaucer and the ballads 
 was familiar with the wandering figure of the 
 palmer with his cockle-shells. Once on arriving 
 at Zamora I found myself walking behind a dark, 
 quiet, bearded man, evidently just arrived from 
 Compostela, who had several large scollop shells 
 fastened to the back of his cloak, and two or 
 three little twisted shells hanging from the top 
 of the traditional palmer's staff he bore, an ancient 
 figure one supposed had passed from the earth 
 five centuries ago, walking through the streets of 
 a modern city, and not even attracting the atten- 
 tion of the bold and familiar children of Zamora. 
 It is pleasant to feel that such evidences of the 
 community of Old Spain with a world — in many 
 respects an excellent world — from which we 
 have ourselves emerged have not yet ceased to 
 exist. When we pass out of the beaten tracks 
 we still come in touch with it almost everywhere 
 in Spain. The stranger cannot perhaps more 
 easily catch a glimpse of the true and ancient 
 Spain than by acquiring the habit of travelling 
 third-class. The seats, indeed, are hard, but the 
 company usually is excellent, charming in its 
 manners, and not offensive to any sense. Here 
 a constant series of novel pictures is presented 
 to the traveller, who may quietly study them at 
 leisure. Perhaps it is a dozen merry girls on 
 
16 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 their way to a festival, packed tightly together 
 and laden with packages ; some, the more sedate 
 among them, wear mantillas, some bright hand- 
 kerchiefs on their heads or with hair uncovered, 
 but however they are dressed, to whatever class 
 they belong, they are all clean and sweet. They 
 carefully tie to the racks the little bunches of 
 carnations they bear — Spanish women always 
 treat carnations tenderly — and give themselves 
 up to unrestrained chatter and laughter; their 
 voices are apt to be somewhat piercingly vibrant 
 and metallic, but their delight is good to see ; 
 the younger girls, at the climax of their glee, 
 will perhaps stand up and flutter their arms like 
 wings, and the elder women, if any there be, join 
 in with only more restrained enjoyment. Or 
 perhaps it is a less crowded carriage one enters ; 
 there are two middle-class Spaniards and a 
 peasant group of three : a fat, jolly, middle-aged 
 man in a peasant's costume, but clean and new, 
 almost stylish ; a woman of like age, one of those 
 free, robust, kindly women whom Spain produces 
 so often ; and a pretty bare-headed girl, evidently 
 her daughter, though the man seems a friend or 
 relation who is escorting them on their journey. 
 By and by, when we have been some hours on 
 our journey, he lifts from the seat in front of him 
 the^ large, heavy, embroidered wallet,— that al- 
 forja which Sancho Panzawas always so anxious 
 to keep well filled,— unwinds it, draws out one 
 
INTRODUCTION 17 
 
 of the great flat delicious Spanish loaves and 
 throws it in the woman's lap. Then a dish of 
 stewed meat appears, and the bread is cut into 
 slices which serve as plates for the meat. But 
 before the meal is begun the peasant turns 
 round with a hearty " Gusta ? " It is the invita- 
 tion to share in the feast which every polite 
 Spaniard must make even to strangers who 
 happen to be present, and it is as a matter of 
 course politely refused: "Muchas gracias." 1 
 Before long the black leather wine -bottle is 
 produced from the wallet, and the meal pro- 
 ceeds. At its final stage some kind of sweet- 
 meat appears, and small fragments are offered to 
 the two middle-class Spaniards, and then — with 
 a slight half-movement, expressing a fine courtesy 
 restrained by the fear of offering any offensive 
 attention — to the foreign caballero also. It is 
 not improper to accept this time ; and now the 
 leather bottle is handed round, and the middle- 
 class Spaniards avail themselves of it, though 
 with awkward unfamiliarity, for it requires some 
 skill to drink from this vessel with grace. 2 You 
 
 1 The origin of this invitation, which has survived in Spain alone 
 of European civilised countries, is magical. "In Morocco," Wester- 
 marck observes ( The Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas, vol. i. 
 p. 561), " nobody would like to eat in the presence of other people 
 without sharing his meal with them ; otherwise they might poison 
 his food by looking at it with an evil eye." Similar ideas are found 
 among primitive peoples elsewhere. 
 
 2 One of the best passages in Ford's Gatherings from Spain 
 (chap, ix.) deals with the leather bottle or boia, the true and 
 original bottle. 
 
18 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 carefully fold over the belly of the vessel to the 
 angle demanded by the state of its repletion, 
 and as you apply the mouthpiece to your lips 
 you slowly elevate your eyes towards the zenith. 
 The two Spaniards quietly remark to each other 
 that the wine is of first-class quality, and even 
 without such an assurance one would know that 
 that peasant never drank anything that was not 
 of superior quality. Once more one enters a 
 carriage, this time second-class, where sits a 
 charming and beautiful Spanish lady with her 
 child, opposite to a man who, with little success, 
 is paying attention to the child with the object 
 of opening up conversation with the mother. 
 Two black-robed monks enter. They do not 
 look at the pretty lady, they seem unconscious 
 of her presence, and the elder of the two, a man 
 of gentle refined face, alone greets us with the 
 customary " Good-day." The other brother, 
 wearing gold-rimmed spectacles, is a larger man 
 of more stolid and impassive type, evidently of 
 lower grade in the order. The two exchange 
 very few words in the course of their three 
 hours' journey, and it is always the elder and 
 more intelligent man who takes the initiative. 
 He sits with folded hands, quietly but alertly 
 interested in every smallest incident, while the 
 younger man having placed his spectacles on the 
 seat beside him, leans back, calmly vegetative, 
 with arms folded within his sleeves. After a 
 
INTRODUCTION 19 
 
 while the other, with gentle feminine fingers, 
 touches him softly on the arm without a word. 
 He understands, and produces a bundle fastened 
 in a knotted blue check handkerchief. I imagine 
 for a moment that the holy men are about to 
 partake of a frugal repast ; but the bundle 
 contains a large book of devotions, which the 
 elder monk reads for a short time and then 
 fastens again in the bundle and pushes towards 
 his companion as its recognised guardian. A 
 little girl enters the carriage with her small 
 basket ; the elder monk looks at her with affec- 
 tionate interest, and when she passes him to get 
 out at the next station he smiles sweetly at her, 
 speaking a few words, to which she responds 
 with an "Adios." I seem to see here typified 
 the two varieties into which the discipline of the 
 cloister moulds men — the sensitively feminine 
 and the listlessly vegetative. The whole of the 
 lives of these men has marked itself upon them. 
 I realise how true are the words of the wise 
 physician, that " from him who has eyes to see" 
 and ears to hear no mortal can hide his secret ; 
 he whose lips are silent chatters with his finger- 
 tips and betrays himself through all his pores J /^_j 
 If I were asked to sum up the dominant 
 impression that the survival in Spain of old- 
 world medisevalism makes, I should say that 
 Spain is, in the precise and specific sense of 
 the word, the home of romance. The special 
 
20 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 character of the Spanish temperament and of 
 Spanish developments in literature and in art 
 are marked not by classic feeling — though Spain 
 owed so much to ancient Rome and Rome to 
 Spain — but by a quality, rising and sinking with 
 the rise and fall of Gothic, which we call the 
 romantic spirit — a mixture, that is, of the 
 /mysterious and grandiose with the grotesquely 
 | bizarre, of the soaringly ideal with the crudely 
 | real, a mixture which to us to-day has the 
 I cunning fascination of art, but was really on 
 | both sides the natural outcome of the experi- 
 ! ences and feelings of the men who created it. 
 This romantic spirit was once the common 
 possession of all Christendom, but the Spanish 
 temperament peculiarly lent itself to the romantic 
 attitude, and it is in Spain to-day that we may 
 catch its final vanishing echoes. It was certainly 
 no accident that Victor Hugo, the great repre- 
 sentative of the romantic renaissance in France, 
 went to Spain for his inspiration. It is some- 
 times said, and with truth, that Hugo had but 
 a slight knowledge of Spain : he went there 
 as a child of ten, that was all. But this child 
 of precocious genius was able even at that 
 age to receive impressions strong enough to 
 germinate in the fulness of time. The whole 
 of the earlier and more fruitful period of his 
 work may be said to have been touched by the 
 stimulus which came to Victor Hugo from Spain. 
 
INTRODUCTION 21 
 
 To-day it is the Church, always the most 
 powerful stronghold of tradition among any 
 people, where the stranger may most vividly 
 realise how well the romantic spirit has been 
 preserved in Spain. Notwithstanding invasions 
 from without and revolutions from within, 
 especially during the early years of the last 
 century, Spain is still the country where the 
 mediaeval spirit of romantic devotion is most 
 splendidly embodied and preserved. To the 
 English visitor, in whose churches nearly every 
 beautiful thing that royal despoilers had left 
 was battered and broken by still more energetic 
 Puritans, it is a perpetual miracle to find so, 
 much delicate work from remote ages which has/ 
 never been ravaged by revolutionists or restorers; 
 Moreover, there is no style of architecture which 
 so admirably embodies the romantic- spirit as 
 Spanish Gothic. Such a statement implies no 
 heresy against the supremacy of French Gothic, i 
 But the very qualities of harmony and balance, 
 of finely tempered reason, which make French 
 Gothic so exquisitely satisfying, softened the 
 combination of mysteriously grandiose splendour 
 with detailed realism in which lies the essence 
 of Gothic as the manifestation of the romantic 
 spirit. Spanish Gothic, at once by its massive- 
 ness and extravagance and by its realistic 
 naturalness, far more potently embodies the 
 spirit of mediaeval life. It is less aesthetically 
 
22 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 beautiful, but it is more romantic. -In Leon 
 Cathedral Spain possesses one of the very noblest 
 and purest examples of French Gothic, a church 
 which may almost be said to be the supreme 
 type of the Gothic ideal of a delicate house of 
 glass finely poised between buttresses, but there 
 is nothing Spanish about it. For the typical 
 Gothic of Spain we must go to Toledo and 
 Burgos, to Tarragona and Barcelona. Here we 
 find the elements of stupendous size, of mys- 
 terious gloom, of grotesque and yet realistic 
 energy which are the dominant characters 
 alike of Spanish architecture and of mediaeval 
 romance. We find the same characters in every 
 object which subserves the Church service and 
 ritual. The Spaniard has no fine instinct for 
 the aesthetic, but in the sphere of devotion his 
 romantic instinct is always right. The gloom 
 which pervades Spanish churches — so unlike 
 French churches, which are a blaze of light — 
 has its source in the need for tempering the 
 glare of the southern sun. But this gloom is 
 finely subdued to the purposes of devotion, 
 and exquisitely tempered not only by windows 
 which are always painted, but by the use of 
 candles as the only source of artificial illumina- 
 tion. Though here and there, as in Toledo 
 Cathedral, we find the hideous French device 
 of the electric light that pretends to be a candle, 
 Spaniards still understand not only that the 
 
INTRODUCTION 23 
 
 candle is the illuminant which symbolically best 
 lends itself to Christian worship, but that the 
 full and equable illumination necessary to reveal 
 the symmetry of classic buildings is worse than 
 useless in this more mysterious Gothic art which 
 demands the emphasis of its perspective, the 
 broken play of light and shade. 1 
 
 The affinity of the Spaniard for the romantic 
 spirit is far from being — in the common sense 
 of the word " romantic " — the expression of 
 a superficial sentimentality. The chivalry 
 peculiarly identified with Spain — the chivalry 
 embodied in the conception of the Cid, which 
 finally drove the Moor out of Spain — however 
 fantastic and extravagant it sometimes became, 
 was stern in its ideals and very practical in its 
 achievements. And alike in its practical and 
 its fantastic shapes, it was always peculiarly 
 congenial to the temper of the Spaniard. When 
 Loyola, the knight of a new chivalry, watched 
 over the weapons of his spiritual armour in his 
 long vigil at Monserrat, he was not artificially 
 aping the knight of old-world chivalry, but 
 
 1 The candle, as has been said by a writer on " Christmas as the 
 Feast of Candles" (Gentleman's Magazine, December 1906), is the 
 true symbol of the link between the soul of man and the Unseen. 
 Spain has always been noted for its devotion to candles, and is "not 
 only the land of sunshine but the land of candle-light." Nowhere 
 has the use of tapers in worship been so highly developed. More than 
 fifteen centuries ago the Synod of Elvira condemned the Spanish 
 custom of burning candles in cemeteries, apparently regarding it as a 
 relic of witchcraft, but the custom has none the less persisted even till 
 now on All Saints' Day. 
 
24 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 naturally satisfying the spiritual instinct of a 
 true Spaniard. 
 
 Interwoven with the manifestations of the 
 romantic spirit of Spain, indeed a part of its 
 texture, there is a perpetual insistence on suffer- 
 ing and death. A certain indifference to pain, 
 even a positive delight in it, was long ago 
 observed by Strabo to mark the Iberian. And 
 the deliberate insistence on the thought of death, 
 so congenial to the ethical temper of this people 
 that, it has been said, the Spaniard has a natural 
 passion for suicide, has always been a note of the 
 romantic mood. But while the favourite medi- 
 aeval conception of the dance of death, peculiarly 
 at home in Spain, 1 has elsewhere passed out of 
 the living traditions of European peoples, in 
 Spain the naked lugubrious fact of death is still 
 made part of the lesson of daily life. "Hie jacet 
 pulvis, cinis, nihil " : that inscription in huge 
 letters which alone serves to mark the grave of. 
 a great Archbishop on the pavement of Toledo 
 Cathedral, well expresses the Spaniard's haughty 
 humility. The Escorial, again, the Eoyal Spanish 
 Temple to Death, is unique in its elaborate and 
 
 1 The anonymous Spanish Danza de la Muerte of the fourteenth 
 century is said to be the oldest known Macabre Dance legend. Smile 
 Male, however, who has written an interesting study on the Dance 
 of Death, and the fascination exerted by the idea of Death in 
 mediaeval Europe after the thirteenth century (Revue des Deux Mondes, 
 April 1906), regards the Dance of Death as an entirely French concep- 
 tion, though he thinks its origin may probably be traced to Franciscan 
 or Dominican influence. 
 
INTRODUCTION 25 
 
 impressive circumstances ; the ruling Spanish 
 monarch may here descend the dark marble 
 staircase to the little vault below the high altar, 
 to view in its own small niche the sarcophagus 
 which was prepared for him centuries before he 
 was born. Even in Spain there is nothing more 
 impressive than this huge Escorial, the grey and 
 sombre Palace of Death, which Philip built on 
 this carefully chosen site, in the lonely village 
 amid the grey and sombre mountains. And in 
 the loftily magnificent pile there is nothing so 
 impressive, and nothing so essentially Spanish, 
 as the little suite of dark rooms with its plain 
 furniture which the greatest and richest of kings 
 built for himself, so that he might lie on his, 
 dying bed with its outlook on the high altar, 
 fingering the same crucifix as his father, the still 
 mightier monarch, Charles V., also held when he 
 too lay dying, in the same Spanish way, gazing 
 at the altar in the Convent of Yuste. Nowadays 
 a disconcerting little stream of cosmopolitan 
 tourists is for ever passing through the huge 
 temple — gaily dressed ladies from every clime, 
 the patient Yankee globe - trotter, the smug 
 English curate, the irrepressibly cheerful kttle 
 Frenchman who stands in the middle of the 
 solemn vault of the dead kings and quietly 
 sums up his impressions : " C'est joli, ga ! " — • 
 but it cannot wash away the deathly solemnity 
 of this ferocious Escorial. 
 
26 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 The Spaniard broods over and emphasises the 
 naked majesty of death. Very far from him is 
 the sunny and serene saying of the Spanish Jew, 
 Spinoza, that "There is nothing the wise man 
 thinks of less than of death." In Barcelona 
 Cathedral, the most solemnly impressive model 
 of Catalan architecture, the broad and stately 
 entrance to the crypt, the gloomy house of 
 death, is placed in the centre of the church, 
 between the capilla mayor and the choir. Every 
 Spanish sacristan seems to possess a well-polished 
 skull and a couple of thigh-bones, with which to 
 crown the catafalque it is his duty to erect — 
 a task in which we may sometimes find him 
 engaged in the silent church at twilight, pre- 
 paring for the funeral ceremony of the morrow. 
 In a church in the heart of the city of Zamora I 
 have found, prominently placed on a pedestal, a 
 skeleton of fine proportions holding an hour- 
 glass in one hand and a scythe in the other, 
 while high on the interior wall of Salamanca 
 Cathedral one discerns a skeleton of lesser pro- 
 portions with what seems to be the skin still 
 clingiug to the bones. 1 
 
 1 Since the above passage was written, I have read the Espa«a 
 Negra of the distinguished Belgian poet, Emile Verhaeren (translated 
 into Spanish, annotated, and illustrated by Dario de Regoyos, who 
 accompanied the poet on his journey). No tourist in Spain has seen 
 so vividly as Verhaeren the sombre violenco of the Spanish tempera- 
 ment, the insistent fascination of death, showing itself in the 
 unlikeliest places, even in Andalusian love -songs. Few tourists in 
 Spain seem to note these things. Even Ford, whose Gatherings from 
 
INTRODUCTION 27 
 
 The age of chivalry, as we know, is over, and 
 the romantic spirit is rooted in conceptions of 
 life and death which are not able to nourish 
 vitally in the soil of our time. It is inevitable 
 that, however firmly the mediaeval idea may 
 have persisted in Spain, its tendency must be if 
 not to die out, at all events to become attenuated, 
 overlaid, at the least transformed in its manifest- 
 ations. But a nation that at one moment led 
 the world and has always shown an aptitude for 
 bringing forth great personalities, cannot be 
 hastily dismissed as decadent, unable to exert 
 any influence on human affairs. The people of 
 Spain — still sound at the core, and with a vigour 
 of spirit which has enabled them to win strength 
 even out of defeat — showed at one period at least 
 in their history, from the conquest of Toledo to 
 the conquest of Seville, an incomparable strength, 
 freedom, and vitality ; even later, Spain still had 
 the energy to find and to colonise the other 
 hemisphere of the globe ; and later still, to bring 
 spiritual achievements of immortal value to the 
 treasure-house of humanity; while the forceful 
 and plastic genius of Spain has moulded one of 
 the strongest and most beautiful forms of human 
 
 Spain is so delightful and intimate, for the most part so accurate and 
 well-documented a picture of Spanish manners and customs, shows no 
 sign of any perception of the tragically intense and sombre aspect of 
 Spain. Verhaeren's special temperament makes him peculiarly 
 sensitive to this side of the Spanish soul, though Espaila Negra can 
 hardly be accepted as a completely adequate picture of Spanish life. 
 
2S THE SOUL OF SPAIX 
 
 speech and one of the most widely diffused. 
 The soul of Spain has i:s persistent and inde- 
 structible fibre inextricably woven into human 
 affairs. It has, moreover, its own special seal. 
 the mark of a lofty and unique personality. 
 which we cannot too patiently and reverently 
 study in all its various manifestations. For we 
 are but now growing ready to receive the inspira- 
 tions that it may yield us.. 
 
II 
 
 THE SPANISH PEOPLE 
 
 It has been said that a Spaniard resembles the 
 child of a European father by an Abyssinian 
 mother. Whether or not the statement is 
 literally true, the simile may be accepted as a 
 convenient symbol of the most fundamental fact 
 about Spain and her people. Just as Russia and 
 her people are the connecting link between 
 Europe and Asia, so Spain is the connecting link 
 between Europe and the African continent it 
 was once attached to and still so nearly adjoins. 
 That is the cause of the almost savage primitive- 
 ness and violence which we find in all the 
 burnt-brown soil of Spain, wherever it is most 
 characteristic, and of the independence, equally 
 savage in its aboriginal primitiveness, which we 
 may detect in the temper of its people. Spain 
 is a great detached fragment of Africa, and the 
 Spaniard is the first-born child of the ancient 
 
 29 
 
30 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 white North African, now widely regarded as 
 the parent of the chief and largest element in 
 the population of Europe. That is why the 
 people of Spain are nearer to the aboriginal 
 European racial type, as Ripley has truly said, 
 than are the people of any other civilised land in 
 the European continent. 
 
 The Berbers and Kabyles, hidden among the 
 hills of Morocco and Algeria, may well seem, to 
 one who has lived in North Africa, to have a 
 better claim than any other people to represent 
 the primitive European stock. In appearance 
 they are not seldom entirely European ; while 
 often as dark as men of Cadiz can be, they might 
 sometimes also pass as men of Aberdeen. Physic- 
 ally they are lithe and vigorous, with the dignity 
 that comes of lithe vigour. In character they 
 are serious yet cheerful, warlike yet according a 
 high place to women, extremely independent, and 
 preferring to live in small, clannish, closely knit 
 communities, jealous or hostile toward other 
 social units. They constitute an admirable 
 human material, though one that is peculiarly 
 difficult to tame to the ends of civilisation. In 
 nearly every respect the Spaniard seems to show 
 traces of relationship to this North African stock, 
 which he, of all European men, most closely 
 resembles. 
 
 It is now generally believed that the Basques 
 with their mysterious language represent the 
 
THE SPANISH PEOPLE 31 
 
 primitive Iberians of Berber stock. Once, as 
 place-names still show, this language was spoken 
 over the greater part of Spain, but now, in a 
 modified shape, it is confined to the people who 
 inhabit the north-east corner of Spain and the 
 adjoining region in France. The Basques them- 
 selves, as Telesforo de Aranzadi has shown in a 
 detailed anthropological study, correspond to the 
 primitive Iberians of Berber affinity, though 
 modified, he believes, by some admixture with 
 people, on the one hand, of Lapp and Finn type, 
 on the other hand, of Cymric or Germanic type. 
 Their isolation on the flanks of the Pyrenees has 
 enabled the Basques to retain their ancient 
 language and some of their primitive institutions, 
 — as, in some districts, precedence of the eldest 
 daughter over all the sons in inheritance, — but 
 the Iberians still, it is probable, form the funda- 
 mental material in the population all over Spain. 
 Moreover, it is a remarkable and significant fact 
 that nearly all the successful historical invasions 
 of Spain have been carried out by peoples who 
 were of North African or allied stock, and often 
 very largely of actual Berber race. The. Car- 
 thaginians, who played so large a part in the 
 early history of Spain, were mainly, it is prob- 
 able, of race allied to the Berbers. The Moslems, 
 who represent by far the most important invasion, 
 reached Spain from Morocco, and though their 
 leaders often came from farther east, the bulk of 
 
32 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 the Moorish invaders was usually made up, as 
 the name indicates, of Berbers from Morocco; 
 so that, notwithstanding the age-long warfare 
 between Spanish Christianity and Moorish 
 Islamism, Spaniards and Moors were yet in 
 blood closely related. 1 
 
 To this general rule there were two notable 
 exceptions. The Visigoths — a Germanic people 
 of Byzantine civilisation who were not alto- 
 gether typically Teutonic — dominated Spain for 
 several centuries and then more or less melted 
 away into the underlying mixed Iberian stock. 
 Of much earlier occurrence — before the fifth 
 century B.C., according to Jubainville — was the 
 invasion of the Asiatic and mid-European Celts, 
 who are still easy to trace in the Iberian penin- 
 sula, though much mixed with Iberian elements, 
 by their shorter heads. They probably entered 
 from France — where they are still firmly en- 
 trenched among the mountains of Auvergne — 
 and being unable to dislodge the tenacious 
 inhabitants of the Pyrenean heights, were com- 
 
 1 The readiness with which so obstinate and pugnacious a race as 
 the Spaniards received the Moslem invaders and made terms with 
 them, in large numbers even embracing Mohammedanism (being then 
 termed Muladies), shows that they regarded them as less alien than 
 their Gothic masters. Even when their Christian subjects retained 
 their religion (and were then termed Mozarabes) the Moors frequently 
 admitted them to high posts, even to the command of Moslem 
 armies. The fanatical spirit only began to appear at the beginning 
 of the twelfth century, and the intimate alliance and mingling of 
 Christian and Moor continued even to the last. (See, e.g., Lea, 
 History of the Inquisition in Spain, vol. i. pp. 52 et seq. ) 
 
THE SPANISH PEOPLE 33 
 
 pelled to proceed farther and found a congenial 
 home among the hills of Asturias and Galicia, 
 for everywhere these reserved and dreamy people 
 are attracted to the seclusion of hilly country ; 
 their descendants extend along the Portuguese 
 coast, and it may be said that the Celts have 
 had less to do with the making of Spain than of 
 Portugal, to which indeed Galicia really belongs, 
 by soil and climate, as well as by race and 
 language. Along the northern Spanish heights 
 Celts and Iberians seem to have mingled at 
 a very early period to form the vigorous and 
 obstinate Celtiberian stock. The Celts brought, 
 however, no very positive contribution to the 
 Spanish character; they doubtless heightened 
 the Spanish tenacity and domesticity, and prob- 
 ably diminished Spanish pugnacity, for crimes 
 of blood are comparatively infrequent in the Celtic 
 regions of Spain ; 1 they were certainly more apt 
 for menial labour ; even to-day the Gallegos in 
 Spain, like the Auvergnats in France, are known 
 all over the country as labourers and servants. 
 
 Partly owing to the predominance of the 
 primitive Iberian elements, partly to the racial 
 affinity of most of the elements of later introduc- 
 tion, the population of Spain reveals to-day a 
 singular anthropological uniformity. 2 It is quite 
 
 1 Bernaldo de Quiros, Criminologia, p. 52. 
 
 1 A similar uniformity seems to have prevailed even at the outset. 
 In a fragment of the old Greek historian, Herodorus of Heraclaea, it is 
 said that the Iberians are everywhere the same people, though they 
 
 D 
 
34 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 true that the inhabitants of many of the pro- 
 vinces of Spain are even now distinguished from 
 each other by various marked and obvious 
 peculiarities of appearance, costume, and dis- 
 position. If, for instance, we compare Spain 
 with France in this respect, we might be inclined 
 to say that the Spanish provinces are more un- 
 like each other to-day than the French provinces 
 probably were even a century ago. Yet the in- 
 habitants of many of the French provinces are 
 anthropologically of radically unlike race, while the 
 people of Spain are as uniform, anthropologically, 
 as those of Great Britain now are. This apparent 
 diversity, there seems to me little doubt, is due 
 to that tendency to clannishness, to local patriot- 
 ism, which the Spaniard has inherited from his 
 Berber ancestors. 
 
 The greater part of Spain is thus occupied by 
 a race which Deniker terms Ibero-insular, and is 
 sometimes called Homo Mediterraneus. 1 The 
 same race occupies the large islands of the 
 western Mediterranean, the south of Italy, and 
 some regions in central France, especially 
 Limousin and Perigord. The chief racial char- 
 acteristics of this people, as compared with 
 
 bear different names because they are divided into different tribes ; 
 and Pierre Paris, in his valuable study of primitive art and industry 
 in Spain, finds that among all the ancient works of art which have 
 been discovered throughout the great peninsula there is a certain 
 undeniable uniformity. 
 
 1 Deniker, Journal of the Anthropological Institute, July and 
 December, 1904, 
 
THE SPANISH PEOPLE 35 
 
 Europeans generally, are shortness, darkness, 
 and long-headedness. In stature they vary 
 within the same limits as Italians, but while 
 in Italy the short population is mainly in the 
 south, in Spain it is more to the north and in 
 the centre. In colour Spaniards are on the 
 average somewhat darker than Italians, and 
 though fair hair and light eyes are common in 
 many if not all parts of Spain, there appears to 
 be no large region of the country in which, as 
 illustrated by Deniker's chart of pigmentation, 
 the people of brown type fall below 30 per 
 cent of the population. Tacitus referred to 
 the curly hair and coloured complexion of the 
 Spaniards. The rich pigmentation of the skin 
 seems to be a marked characteristic of the 
 Iberian race (even in the branch that extends 
 to the south-western peninsula of England), for 
 Silius Italicus compared the Spaniard's skin to 
 the gold of his mines, and in its most delicate 
 modification it constitutes that " golden pallor " 
 which Grautier so greatly admired in the women 
 of Malaga. As regards head-shape, Spaniards, 
 as we should expect, though on the whole long- 
 headed, are distinctly less so than the Berbers. 
 The fairly uniform manner in which mixture has 
 taken place is decisively shown by the very 
 narrow limits within which the cephalic index 
 varies. The more long-headed people are in 
 the east and southrwest, the more broad-headed 
 
36 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 people in the north-west. The men and women 
 we see in the pictures of Murillo, and to some 
 extent those of Zurbaran, admirably illustrate 
 the chief anthropological types of Spain. 
 
 II 
 
 The land of Spain and the physical traits 
 of Spaniards lead us back to Africa. If we take 
 a more penetrating survey we shall find that 
 there is much in the character of the Spaniard 
 which we may also fairly count as African. 
 Indeed, the Spanish character is fundamentally, 
 it seems to me, not only African, but primitive, 
 and — in the best and not in any depreciative 
 sense of the word — savage. It is usual to say 
 that every nation passes successively "through 
 the three stages of savagery, barbarism, and 
 civilisation, and no doubt that is true. But 
 it has often seemed to me that certain peoples 
 have so natural an affinity for one or other of 
 these stages that something of its character 
 always clings to their national temper. Thus 
 France is not only the land of civilisation 
 to-day, but we clearly detect the same instinct 
 of civilisation in the Gauls described by Strabo 
 two thousand years ago; that premature instinct 
 of civilisation seems indeed the main reason why 
 they fell so easy a prey to the Eomans. Again, 
 the Eussian is and always has been a barbarian, 
 
THE SPANISH PEOPLE 37 
 
 not necessarily for evil, but also for good. And 
 the • Spaniard is, and remains to-day, in the 
 best sense of the word, a savage. His childlike 
 simplicity and intensity of feeling, his hardness 
 and austerity combined with disdain for the 
 superfluous, his love of idleness tempered by 
 the aptitude for violent action, his indifference 
 to persons and interests outside the circle of 
 his own life — these characteristics and the like, 
 which have always marked the Spaniard, mark 
 also the savage. The love of idleness, for 
 instance, as a background for the manifestation 
 of violent energy, everywhere noted among 
 savages, has always been pronounced in the 
 Spaniard ; he has little natural aptitude for . 
 sustained and detailed labour ; even the highest 
 efforts of Spanish genius have often had little 
 about them of "an infinite capacity for taking 
 pains," and none of the world's great literary 
 masterpieces show so many careless flaws in 
 matters of detail as Don Quixote, even though 
 high authorities maintain that Don Quixote is 
 written with great care. Except in Catalonia 
 and Galicia, work is a necessity, it may be, but 
 never a heart-felt impulse ; the shopkeeper and 
 the manual labourer are traditionally regarded 
 with contempt; even the poor Valencian boat-^ 
 man, in a novel of Blasco Ibanez's, could feel 
 nothing but contempt for men who cultivated 
 the ground : " they were labourers, and to 
 
38 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 Jrim that word sounded like an insult." The 
 Spaniard of an earlier age entrusted labour to 
 slaves, or to free Moors living under Christian 
 rule, and called Mudejares, who were frequently 
 men of much more skill and education than 
 their employers. So that the Castilian, whose 
 business was war, having left trade and com- 
 merce and craftsmanship to slaves, came to regard 
 them as slavish occupations. Hence it is that 
 in Spain a beggar can afford to feel proud — 
 indeed nowadays the beggar alone retains that 
 air of pride once attributed to the Spaniards 
 generally — and social parasitism, which gave rise 
 to the old picaresque literature, 1 under new forms 
 still remains a national institution. 
 
 It is true that in this matter a too absolute 
 statement may easily produce a false impression. 
 Spaniards themselves are reasonably annoyed 
 with the tourists who seem to see the population 
 of Spain symbolised in gipsies who dance or tell 
 fortunes and beggar boys who lie in the sun 
 eating oranges. Spain, Emilia Pardo Bazan 
 declares, is not merely the land of the gipsy 
 
 1 It ia noteworthy that the masterpieces of Spanish picaresque 
 literature were probably all written by men who had lived on the 
 verge of the nomadic life they described, and perhaps themselves felt 
 the impulses it tended to engender. The authorship of the first and 
 best, Lazarillo de Tormes, is unknown, but " it may have been written," 
 as Butler Clarke remarks, "in a camp, a pot-house, a lax student's 
 garret, or even in a prison." Mateo Aleman was a poor soldier ; Espinel 
 was a vagabond, a soldier, a sailor, and perhaps, like Cervantes, a 
 prisoner in Algiers ; Quevedo had mixed with all strata of society. 
 
THE SPANISH PEOPLE 3J 
 
 with his guitar, for there is "a youthful anc 
 muscular Spain, covered with sweat, wearing ; 
 blue blouse, and with face blackened by th< 
 smoke of the forge." This is undoubtedly thi 
 fact, and yet it remains true that the tempera 
 ment, the independence, the traditions of th 
 Spaniard, even his climate, all combine to rende 
 uncongenial the gospel of work for the love o 
 it which has commended itself to the nation 
 who are for ever inventing new wants in orde 
 to excuse to themselves their appetite for wort 
 To the Spaniard work is not so much a goo< 
 in itself as an evil to which he is inured, an< 
 he prefers to limit his wants rather than t 
 increase his labour. According to a Libyai 
 or Berber tradition, preserved by a Pindari 
 fragment, the first ancestor, Iarbas, of the rac 
 to which the Spaniard belongs, sprang directl; 
 from the sun-heated African soil. It was 
 natural belief. 'The plains of Castile, also, ar 
 hard to cultivate, and baked by the sun whe: 
 they are not frozen; the natural selectio: 
 exercised by ice, fire, and hunger has tendei 
 to produce a tough and dry race, extreme! 
 sober, temperate in all their physical demands 
 and too familiar with work to care to idealis 
 it. The poverty of the Spanish soil has mad 
 the Spaniard, as Unamuno puts it, the son c 
 Abel rather than of Cain, the agriculturalist, wh 
 slew him ; he prefers to breed cattle in the pasture 
 
40 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 and among the hillsj from such districts, rather 
 than from the rich and cultivated lowlands, came 
 conquistadores like Cortes or Pizarro, with many 
 others of the most vigorous children of Spain. 
 By environment as well as by temperament the 
 Spaniard is a nomad, a born adventurer. 1 
 f So that if we may say that there is in the 
 Spaniard a distaste for organised and constant 
 labour, there is also a great reserve of energy, 
 and also the heroic endurance of hardship when 
 the laborious acquisition of comfort is counted 
 a greater hardship. On the one hand, there 
 is the love of doing nothing, a contempt for 
 ordinary useful work, and a tendency among 
 the weaker social elements to parasitism ; on the 
 other hand, there is at times, and especially 
 in some elect individuals, a fury, almost an 
 ecstasy, of extravagant and untiring energy^ 
 It is this fascination of energy which leads in 
 Calderon, as Norman Maccoll has remarked, to 
 a special predilection for all daemonic types 
 of character, the natures full of restless energy 
 and eagerness for action, urged forward by an 
 impulse they are themselves unable to account 
 for, and regard as external. Even the poet 
 
 1 It has often seemed to me a curious proof of the persistence of 
 hereditary influences that Casanova should have been ultimately of 
 Spanish race ; it is scarcely fanciful, indeed, to find in him a special 
 affinity with the Mallorcans, among whom the name Oasanova has 
 long been common and indeed famous, since it is that of their chief 
 woman saint. Casanova is the Spanish picaro in excehis. (I may 
 refer to my study of £asanova in Affirmations.) 
 
THE SPANISH PEOPLE 41 
 
 of to-day, Ruben Dario, though penetrated alike 
 by the cosmopolitanism of the new world and 
 the old-world fragrance of Baudelaire and 
 Verlaine, remains a true child of Spain in his 
 admiration for energy, and sings — 
 
 " Yo soy el caballero de la humana energia." 
 
 In his^estas, also, as Salillas well remarks, the 
 Spaniard loves to expend an immense amount 
 of work, which may not indeed be useful work, 
 though it is capable of being transformed into use- 
 ful work, — and is to-day to some extent undergo- 
 ing this transformation, — for it has all the virility 
 of work ; and the chief national form of the jiesta, 
 the bull- fight, demands in the highest degree y 
 courage, strength, agility, intelligence, and grace. 1 
 
 This attitude of the Spaniard, his hardness, 5 
 the indifference to pain which is so often looked 
 upon as a love of cruelty, again allies the Spaniard 
 to the savage. From first to last the emotional 
 attitude underlying such manifestations is alien 
 to | the tenderness, fully as much egoistic as 
 alrtsuistic, which marks civilisation, but it is 
 perfectly intelligible to the savage mind. EveryJ 
 form of asceticism has been triumphantly ex- 
 hibited by Spaniards, and asceticism, sometimes 
 tempered by orgy, is always easy and often 
 necessary in the conditions of savage life. It is 
 only in this way that we can understand a 
 
 1 Salillas, ffampa, pp. 86 et seq., 114 et seq. 
 
42 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 characteristic so alien to the softness of civilisa- 
 tion. Spaniards have often indignantly repelled 
 the common charge of cruelty, and the accusation 
 that the existence of the Inquisition testified to 
 a special delight in religious persecution; the 
 town of Salem alone, Valera somewhere remarks, 
 was responsible for more torture in the name of 
 religion than can be put to the account of the 
 Holy Office from California to the Straits of 
 Magellan. Moreover, in an age when torture 
 was a recognised part of judicial procedure 
 nearly everywhere, 1 its use by the Inquisition in 
 Spain can only call for special comment if it can 
 be shown that the Spanish Inquisitors went 
 beyond their judicial contemporaries in its 
 application. This is the reverse of the fact. 
 In Aragon, though it admitted the Inquisition, 
 torture was even illegal, and it was only by 
 positive command of Clement V. that it was 
 applied in 1311 to the Templars. Later, when 
 torture was in daily use in Castile in the secular 
 courts, it was also used by the Inquisition, as 
 it then was in Aragon, though still not there 
 permitted in secular jurisprudence. The In- 
 quisition in Spain used the almost universally 
 accepted methods of torture for extracting 
 confession, but its use was jealously guarded, 
 and as a rule only a few of the simplest of the 
 
 1 Even in seventeenth -century England, Bacon, a man of the 
 highest genius, humanity, and temperamental moderation, accepted 
 torture as a matter-of-course element in English judicial proceedings. 
 
THE SPANISH PEOPLE 43 
 
 generally recognised mediaeval methods of torture 
 were applied, and not generally to any great 
 extent. The belief that the methods of torture 
 used by the Spanish Inquisition were exception- 
 ally cruel in their character or their degree is 
 due, remarks Lea in his very detailed study of 
 the Spanish Inquisition, to sensational writers 
 who have played on the credulity of their 
 readers. "The system was evil in conception 
 and in execution," he states, " but the Spanish 
 Inquisition, at least, was not responsible for its 
 introduction, and, as a rule, was less cruel than 
 the secular courts in its application, and con- 
 fined itself more strictly to a few well-known 
 methods. The comparison between the Spanish 
 and the Koman Inquisition is also eminently in 
 favour of the former." J Yet when we reflect on 
 the history of Spain, and the temperament of 
 the Spaniard, it is difficult not to realise a certain 
 indifference to pain, almost a love of it. Thej 
 early Iberians, even when nailed to the cross, 
 still chanted their national songs, unvanquished 
 in spirit, to the astonishment of their Eoman 
 conquerors, and Iberian mothers dashed their 
 children to death rather than that they should 
 live to be slaves. It is scarcely more than a 
 century since Spanish churches in Lent were 
 habitually bespattered with the blood of peni- 
 
 1 H. C. Lea, Eistory of the Inquisition Ml Spain, vol. iii. oh. i. ? 
 " Torture." 
 
44 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 tent worshippers, — just as across the Straits of 
 Gibraltar to-day the more fanatical sectarians of 
 Islam dance through the market-places during 
 the great Moorish festival in June, hacking 
 themselves till the blood flows down. Even 
 yet, it appears, a similar custom still lingers 
 here and there in Spain. Eegoyos has seen at 
 San Vicente de la Sonsierra, near Haro in 
 Bioja, a brotherhood who still flagellate them- 
 selves and each other till the blood flows, a 
 mediaeval survival amid electric lights and 
 railway trains. Just as bulls are pricked in the 
 bull-ring, so these men use a special instrument 
 armed with sharp pieces of broken glass. Not 
 every one feels called upon to be a picao in this 
 game, but those who have the courage to take 
 part in it are greatly admired by the girls and 
 much sought in marriage. Those who once 
 adopt this practice, which is an observance of 
 Good Friday, feel that they need it every spring 
 to cool the blood, and the authorities have not 
 been able to stop it, for even when prohibited 
 it still took place in private. 1 Two centuries 
 ago it was a common custom for lovers during 
 Holy Week to scourge themselves to a like 
 extremity in the streets, to win the pity and 
 admiration of their mistresses. 3 
 
 1 Emile Verhaeren and Dario de Regoyos, Espafla Negra, 1899, p. 72. 
 
 a In 1692 the Countess d'Aulnoy, in her Relation du Voyage 
 d'Espagne (vol. ii. pp. 158-164), gave a detailed account of such 
 flagellatory scenes and the admiration they aroused in the feminine 
 
THE SPANISH PEOPLE 45 
 
 "I suspect the Spaniards," Barres remarks, 
 "of finding pleasure in the sight of the sufferings 
 of Christ." It is certain that Spanish artists 
 have ever sought to achieve the most poignant 
 and agonised images of the suffering Christ, and 
 that Spanish worshippers have shown a peculiar 
 complacency in surrounding such images with 
 elegance and luxury. I recall, for instance, a 
 most sorrowful Christ which I came across not 
 long since over an altar in an aisle of Palencia 
 Cathedral. It was a large wooden image on a 
 crucifix, carved in the Spanish realistic muscular 
 style, and around the waist there was a charming 
 little embroidered skirt, very short, and below it 
 peeped out a delicate lace petticoat, a coquettish 
 disguise made to suggest and not to conceal, for 
 there was nothing to conceal. Such is the 
 piquant figure that Spanish religion devises for 
 the adoration of Spanish women, and the bent 
 dolorous face looks more dolorous than ever with 
 eyes turned to this ballet-girl's costume. 
 
 The Spanish interest in blood, and the satis- 
 faction in the shedding of it, has even intruded 
 itself not only into art, but also, as Ganivet 
 well points out, into medicine. Servetus's part 
 in the discovery of the circulation of the blood 
 is one of the most notable contributions of Spain 
 
 heart. When such a flagellant met a good-looking woman in the 
 street he would strike himself in such a way that she was sprinkled 
 by his blood ; it w,as a great honour, and the grateful lady would 
 thank him. 
 
46 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 to medical science, while Spain has surpassed 
 all other nations put together in the number 
 and excellence of its blood-letters. The supreme 
 Spanish doctor is Doctor Sangrado. 
 
 Stoicism, the instinctive philosophy of the 
 savage everywhere, is the fundamental philo- 
 sophy and almost the religion of Spain. Seneca, 
 the typical Spanish Stoic, it has been said, has 
 in Spain the air of a Father of the Church ; the 
 Spaniard, Marcus Aurelius, bears the imprint 
 of his native country ; and Lucan of Cordova 
 was the first of a long line of Spaniards. They 
 have taken so important a share in moulding 
 the later developments of Stoicism because that 
 philosophy answered to an instinct they already 
 felt in their veins. Even when most a Christian 
 the Spaniard has been a Stoic, one may say, 
 almost more than an ascetic. Torquemada 
 lived in palaces, surrounded by princely retinues 
 of armed horsemen, but he would not accept 
 the archbishopric of Seville, he wore his humble 
 Dominican habit, never wearing linen nor using 
 it on his bed, he ate no flesh, and he refused 
 to give a marriage portion to his indigent sister. 
 One recalls also the characteristic anecdote of 
 Fray Luis de Leon, who, after five years' suffer- 
 ing in prison at the hands of the Inquisition, 
 returned to his professorial chair at Sala- 
 manca — in the dark little lecture -theatre we 
 may still see there — and began, according to 
 
THE SPANISH PEOPLE 47 
 
 his usual custom : "As I said in my last 
 lecture." 
 
 This attitude of mind is associated with the 
 Spanish emphasis on character, on morals, on 
 practice. Pure intellectual curiosity has never 
 flourished in Spain. Spaniards have played no 
 prominent part in mathematics or geometry, 
 in astronomy or physics, though they have dis- 
 tinguished themselves in many departments of 
 applied science as well as in biology, and to-day 
 Kamon y Cajal, the neurologist, has a world- 
 wide reputation. They have also been greatly 
 occupied with metaphysics, but in Spain meta- 
 physics has been one with theology, a subject of 
 intensely practical concern. 1 
 
 It would be a mistake to suppose that the 
 hardness of the Spaniard and his instinctive 
 Stoicism in any degree exclude an aptitude for 
 real tenderness or the display of any of the 
 gentler human emotions. This result is not 
 reached even in the savage, and in the Spaniard 
 there is a very high degree of such human feel- 
 ing. Cervantes, the most typical of Spaniards, 
 is as sweetly humane as Chaucer. 2 What seems 
 to mark the gentler emotions of the Spaniard 
 
 1 Menendez y Pelayo, who brings out this point in his Ciencia 
 Espanola (3rd ed., 1887, vol. i. p. 94), refers to "the sad fact that our 
 Faculties of science are deserted. " 
 
 2 It is the humanity of the Spaniard which makes the plague of 
 beggars so difficult to suppress in Spain ; a considerable section of the 
 Spanish population of all classes feels that it is inhuman to refuse to 
 give alms. 
 
48 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 is simply a less effusive facility in their more 
 serious manifestations and a tendency to expend 
 them on those immediately around him rather 
 than on the world at large. 'For their friends, 
 said Strabo, the Iberians were ready to sacrifice 
 their lives. There is thus, as has sometimes been 
 pointed out, a certain apparent antagonism in 
 the attitude of the Spaniard towards the world. 
 On the one hand, he delights in a hard and rigid 
 formalism, an austere and abstract uniformity 
 in morals and religion, to which his own spirit 
 and that of others must be relentlessly broken. 
 But, on the other hand, to the individual sinner, 
 as to his friend and neighbour in all the rela- 
 tionships of life, the Spaniard is always indulgent, 1 
 a quality which was conspicuously displayed, in 
 the strictly theological field, by many Spanish 
 casuists. 2 The Spanish Qhurch, however stern 
 to the alien heretic outside, was always tender 
 to its own child within. Spain produced the 
 pitiless Torquemada, but also produced the piti- 
 ful Valencian monk who, six centuries ago, built 
 the first hospital for the insane. " We have an 
 
 1 It is noteworthy that the practice of allowing counsel to prisoners 
 in criminal cases, though comparatively recent in England, has in 
 Spain been customary for many centuries, defendants too poor to retain 
 counsel being supplied at the public expense (Lea, History of the 
 Inquisition in Spain, vol. iii. p. 43). 
 
 2 Caramuel, who, on account of the tendency of his teaching to 
 moral indulgence, has been termed the enfant terrible of theology, was 
 a Castilian. He was a man of great learning, very influential, and full 
 of practical energy. 
 
THE SPANISH PEOPLE 49 
 
 anomalous state of things," an acute Spanish 
 thinker has said, " in harmony with our character. 
 We punish with solemnity and rigour to satisfy 
 our desire for justice ; and then, without noise 
 or outcry, we pardon the condemned criminal to 
 satisfy our desire for mercy." 1 This attitude 
 of mind has been regarded as a Spanish outcome 
 of Christian sentiment and Senecan philosophy 
 at a point where they both concord. But the 
 tendency is probably more radical and instinctive 
 than such a suggestion would indicate. We 
 may find a similar mingling of strong notions 
 of abstract justice combined with merciful indul- 
 
 1 In the Spanish religious spirit there is an extreme tolerance as 
 well as an extreme intolerance. The austere spirit of intolerance 
 gained the upper hand during the late Middle Ages, just as the 
 austere spirit of Puritanism, a little later, gained the upper hand in 
 England, but it is not necessarily the most genuine and native impulse 
 of the race. The Visigoths were very tolerant. ' ' Never was there a 
 nation who so little deserved the reproach of bigotry as the Visigoths 
 of Spain " (H. Bradley, The Goths, p. 329). It was a Spanish Goth 
 who s"hocked Gregory of Tours by saying that it is a Christian's duty 
 to treat with respect whatever is reverenced by others, even by idolaters. 
 At a later period Castile, alone among Latin nations, refused to admit 
 the methods of persecution, notwithstanding all the prescriptions of 
 the Church. Aragon was more subservient to the Popes of Rome, 
 although its secular laws were enlightened and just, and Jaime the 
 Conqueror burnt obstinate heretics (Lea, History of the Inquisition of 
 the Middle Ages, vol. ii. pp. 180 et seq.). Early in the fourteenth 
 century the movement of religious intolerance spread among the 
 Castilian bishops after they returned from the Council of Vienne, and 
 at the Council of Zamora in 1313 they went beyond the French in the 
 ferocity of their movement against Jews and infidels, although the 
 people were far from sharing their feelings. The Inquisition, which 
 was the chief instrument of the impulse of intolerance, was political 
 even more than religious, and was mainly fostered by the political 
 genius of Ferdinand in his effort to attain unity and strong government. 
 
 E 
 
50 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 gence to offenders among the peasantry of Ire- 
 land, a land where, according to very ancient 
 tradition, which modern research tends to con- 
 firm, a primitive Iberian element is well marked. 
 As regards the Spanish peasant's attitude towards 
 his fellow-men, I found an instructive story, as 
 recorded by a Spanish magistrate, in an Ara- 
 gonese newspaper a few years ago, at a time 
 when there was much distress in Aragon. A 
 labourer out of work came on to the highroad 
 determined to rob the first person he met. This 
 was a man with a waggon. The labourer bade 
 him halt and demanded his money. " Here are 
 thirty dollars, all that I have," the detained man 
 replied. "There is nothing left for me but 
 robbery, my family are dying of hunger," the 
 aggressor said apologetically, and proceeded to 
 put the money in his pocket. But as he did 
 so his mind changed. "Take this, chico," he 
 said, handing back twenty-nine dollars, " one 
 is enough for me." "Would you like anything 
 I have in the cart ? " asked the waggoner, im- 
 pressed by this generosity. "Yes," said the 
 man ; " take this dollar back too, I had better 
 have some rice and some beans." The waggoner 
 handed over a bag of eatables, and then held 
 out five dollars, which, however, the labourer 
 refused. " Take them for luck-money," said the 
 waggoner, " I owe you that." And only so was 
 the would-be robber persuaded to accept. This 
 
THE SPANISH PEOPLE 51 
 
 authentic story is characteristic of the mixture of 
 impulses in the Spanish temperament. We are \ 
 not unaccustomed to find a veneer of humanity 
 and courtesy over an underlying violence and 
 hardness, but in this temperament it is the 
 violence and hardness which lie nearer to the 
 surface, and they fall away at once as soon as i 
 human relationships are established. 
 
 This tendency of the Spanish peasant, to- 
 gether with his HkiDg for abstract laws which 
 can be modified in concrete cases, his in- 
 dividualism, his love of independence, and his 
 clannish preference for small social groups, may 
 help to explain why it is that Spaniards, 
 peasants and workmen alike, are attracted to 
 the ideals of Anarchism. There is no country 
 in which Collectivist Socialism of the Marxian 
 school has made so little progress as in Spain, 
 and Anarchism so much progress. This has 
 been the case for at least forty years. 1 In 1868 
 Fanelli, an Italian member of the Bakunist 
 Alliance (the Anarchist section of the Inter- 
 national), went over to Spain, and two years 
 later, when an Anarchist Congress was held in 
 Barcelona, the movement was already beginning 
 to assume a convinced and determined character. 
 Since then Anarchism has steadily progressed in 
 Spain. It flourishes in Catalonia, where it 
 
 1 A brief sketch of the history of Spanish Anarchism, by Stoddard 
 I Dewey, was published in the Contemporary Review for May 1902. 
 
52 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 actively foments and supports the frequent 
 strikes in Barcelona; it finds a stronghold in 
 Andalusia, where the contrasts of wealth and 
 poverty are very marked ; while all the inter- 
 vening Mediterranean coasts, especially Valencia, 
 an important industrial region, are affected by 
 its influence. The more northern parts of the 
 country also show similar developments, but in a 
 less degree, and the Atlantic coast is not so 
 favourable to Anarchism as the Mediterranean ; 
 in Bilbao, the second great industrial centre of 
 Spain, the Labour Party has frequently been 
 hostile to Anarchism, but in most parts of Spain 
 the ideals of labour are largely the ideals of 
 Anarchism. 1 
 
 There is another Spanish characteristic which 
 is also characteristic of the savage attitude 
 towards life : the love of formalism aud ritual 
 and ceremony. No doubt in every stage of 
 human culture this ceremonial and ritualistic 
 element exists and must exist, but in savagery, 
 
 1 The ideals of Anarchism are by no means confined to the Spanish 
 peasant and labourer. In his DoOa Luz, Valera has a passage which, 
 although he ascribes it to "my famous friend Don Juan Fresco" (who 
 reappears in the background of so many of his novels), we may fairly 
 accept as embodying his own opinions : " I confess that I have an 
 ideal which, at the rate we are moving, will not be realised, if it is 
 realised at all, within ten or twelve centuries ; but it is necessary to 
 make our way towards it, even though at the tortoise's pace. My 
 ideal is the least government possible, almost the negation of govern- 
 ment, a mild anarchy compatible with order, an order born 
 harmoniously from the bosom of society and not by authority." 
 This is a genuinely Spanish creed. 
 
THE SPANISH PEOPLE 53 
 
 as well as in an ancient civilisation like that of 
 China, ilj is the external embodiment of all 
 philosophy and religion and social organisation. 
 Far from being free, a savage is" always bound by 
 a ceremonialism which is by no means a mere 
 convention, and may even be tragic in its reality. 
 For the Spaniard, also, ceremonialism is a real 
 and serious thing, extending over the whole of 
 life, not less formal and serious in the bull-ring 
 than it is in the Church. In ancient days this 
 conception of ceremony, as the supreme expres- 
 sion of the highest religious privileges, reached 
 its climax in the gorgeous spectacle of the auto- 
 de-fe, or "act of faith," the great festival of joy 
 in a glorious service to God, at which the In- 
 quisition publicly enacted the final scene in the 
 condemnation or reconciliation of the heretic, 
 before he was " relaxed," that is, abandoned to 
 the secular arm, to be burned at the quemadero 
 outside the city, the execution of heretics being 
 a matter entirely of secular law, and not pre- 
 scribed by the Church. It was not until the 
 beginning of the eighteenth century that the 
 auto-de-fe fell into disrepute. 1 
 
 The Spanish dance, again, in its ancient and 
 noble forms, is a solemn ritual. " What majesty, 
 what decorum, what distinction ! " exclaims 
 Valera, in old age, recalling the dances of Ruiz 
 and his daughter Conchita, "and what grace 
 
 1 Lea, History of the Inquisition in Spain, vol. Hi. bk. vii. oh. v. 
 
54 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 when both together danced the bolero ! There 
 is no more aristocratic dance. They seemed to 
 be princes or great personages." 
 
 To the man of Anglo-Saxon stock ceremonial 
 functions are for the most part an unreal and 
 uncongenial convention, which he carries through 
 to the best of his ability with awkward and 
 portentous solemnity. To the Spaniard cere- 
 monialism is so real that in his hands it becomes 
 gracious, simple, natural, almost homely. " All 
 my life I have carried myself gracefully," said 
 the Marquis de Siete Iglesias on the scaffold, 
 summing up the final apology of a Spanish 
 gentleman. This ritual tendency involves indeed 
 a faith in exteriority which is almost fetichism ; 
 it seems to have been a Spaniard, Eamon de 
 Penafort, who first mentions the pardon of 
 venial sin by aspersion with holy water, and 
 in one of Calderon's plays, the Devocion de la 
 Cruz, a man commits every crime yet retains 
 his respect for the cross, the symbol of redemp- 
 tion, and by that at the end he is saved ; he has 
 not violated his tabu. 
 
 Ill 
 
 When we thus survey the various aspects of 
 the Spanish temperament as revealed in daily 
 life, in history, in religion, in literature, and in 
 politics, we find that they coalesce into a more 
 
THE SPANISH PEOPLE 55 
 
 harmonious picture than is sometimes repre- 
 sented. They are all the manifestations of an 
 aboriginally primitive race which, under the 
 stress of a peculiarly stimulating and yet 
 hardening environment, has retained through 
 every stage of development an unusual degree 
 of the endowment of fresh youth, of elemental 
 savagery, with which it started. The brilliant 
 author of the Idearium Espanol, I may add, 
 puts the same point in a rather different manner 
 when he remarks that there is a profound reason 
 why Spain has always proclaimed and defended 
 the dogma of the Immaculate Conception : she 
 has herself been forced to undergo all the 
 pangs of maternity and has yet reached old 
 age with the virginal spirit still young within 
 her. 
 
 With this history and this outlook we see 
 how inevitable and how deep-rooted are alike 
 the fine qualities of Spain and her defects, 
 especially the combination of splendid initiative 
 with lack of sustained ability to follow it up 
 which Menendez y Pelayo regards as marking 
 the Spanish genius. We see how it is that the 
 point of honour always played so important a 
 part in Spanish ideas, even in the most brilliant 
 and fruitful period of Spain's history; we see 
 why the Cid, as popularly conceived, with his 
 thoroughly democratic air, his rough-and-ready 
 justice, almost as of a glorified Robin Hood, 
 
56 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 came to be the great hero of Spain. 1 "We realise 
 also how the prime virtue of the Spaniard has 
 ever been the primitive virtue of valour. " Our 
 most striking quality," Pascual Santacruz truly 
 says of his people, " is valour," though he admits 
 that it is a valour which has in it much of the 
 savagery and rashness which belong to the 
 infancy of civilisation. Whatever can be 
 achieved by the inspirations of sheer valour, 
 even carried to the pitch of heroism, has been 
 achieved by Spaniards. It is interesting to 
 observe that Brantdme — the Frenchman, Morel- 
 Fatio believes, who has best understood Spain — 
 was chiefly impressed by the warlike qualities of 
 the Spaniards. He saw them marching through 
 France to Flanders in the days when Spain was 
 still a great power in the world. " You would 
 have called them princes," he says, " they were so 
 set up, they marched so arrogantly, with so fine 
 a grace." 2 They were mostly indifferent to any 
 
 1 For a study of the character of the Cid, see H. Butler Clarke's 
 The Cid Campeador in Heroes of the Nations Series. 
 
 a It seems to have been as a caricature of the Spaniard as soldier 
 that the old conception of the Spaniard as braggart — which ran, and 
 indeed still runs, through so much of the adventurous literature of 
 France and England — originally arose. Shakespeare's Pistol has been 
 supposed to reflect this caricature. The conception is mistaken, for 
 the Spaniard's undoubted pride, which is by no means vanity, is apt 
 to be associated with discretion, a quality on which Cervantes much 
 insisted. "The extravagant, boastful posturer," Mr. Martin Hume 
 remarks in his interesting study of Spanish influences on English 
 literature, "which the French adopted as the Spanish type, was never 
 true to nature, except perhaps in the case of the Spanish soldier of 
 fortune in the sixteenth century." 
 
THE SPANISH PEOPLE 57 
 
 other virtue but valour. " They send books to 
 the devil," he adds, " save a few among them 
 •who, when they give themselves to study, 
 are rare and excellent therein, very admir- 
 able, profound, and subtle, as I have known 
 several." 
 
 Even, however, when he has directed his 
 energies into other channels, it is interesting to 
 observe how often the Spaniard has preserved 
 the same spirit of chivalrous valour, even the 
 very forms of warfare. This is so even in the 
 sphere of religion. Ramon Lull is happily termed 
 by Menendez y Pelayo " the knight-errant of 
 philosophy." St. Theresa began her career by 
 writing a romance of chivalry. The militant 
 friars of the Dominican order were organised by 
 a Spaniard, while the peaceable and scholarly 
 Benedictines, with a few notable exceptions, 
 soon ceased to flourish on Spanish soil. It 
 was to the military genius of another Spaniard, 
 Loyola, that the Church owed, as the Protestant 
 Macaulay pointed out, the reorganisation of the 
 forces of the Counter-Reformation, and the 
 effectual rampart that Catholicism was enabled 
 to erect against the further advance of the 
 movement started by Luther. Loyola had 
 been a soldier and he organised his order 
 in the spirit of a soldier ; everything was 
 based on implicit obedience and military dis- 
 cipline ; regulations and nomenclature were alike 
 
58 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 military; 1 the order constituted a compania; 
 they had a standard— a bleeding heart crowned 
 with thorns— and they were commanded by a 
 general. The soldier of Christ, elsewhere a 
 symbol, in Spain became, in the Company of 
 Jesus, an embodied reality. 
 
 Literature, again, an avocation which seems 
 far outside the soldier's profession, has in Spain 
 been almost monopolised by soldiers. 2 Cervantes, 
 the supreme literary figure of Spain, Camoens, 
 the supreme literary figure of Portugal, were 
 both men who spent a large part of their lives 
 in fighting and adventure. Sir Philip Sidney, a 
 unique figure in England, corresponds to the 
 general type in Spanish literary annals. The 
 poets of Spain, as well as the dramatists and 
 novelists, have frequently been fighting men who 
 have written in the intervals of their more 
 active life in courts and camps and affairs. The 
 Castilian Alvaro de Luna — r the best knight, 
 horseman, dancer, troubadour,, and diplomat in 
 the Spain of his day — represents the old Spanish 
 
 1 Here, again, we have evidence, if more were needed, of the per- 
 sistence of primitive tendencies among Spaniards, for the early Church 
 was profoundly impressed by military metaphors ; the sacrament was 
 the solemn promise of allegiance to his great Captain made by Christ's 
 faithful soldier and servant, and the early Christian's symbol or pass- 
 word, as he called his Creed, was a name taken from the military 
 vocabulary. 
 
 a This is clearly brought out in Mr. Fitzmaurice-Kelly's admirable 
 and delightful History of Spanish Literature, a work in which spirited 
 narrative and sympathetic enthusiasm are balanced by exact erudition. 
 It has been found worthy of translation into Spanish. 
 
THE SPANISH PEOPLE 59 
 
 ideal. In later days, the novelist Alarcon was 
 adventurer, journalist, free-lance, soldier, and 
 man of the world. Until recently the literary 
 man of the study, the writer who is nothing else 
 than a writer, was almost unknown in Spain. 
 Even yesterday the most conspicuous Spanish 
 man of letters, Valera, was a diplomatist and 
 cosmopolitan man of the world, while Blasco 
 Ibanez, the most remarkable novelist of the 
 younger generation to-day, is a politician and 
 revolutionist whose life has been full of daring 
 adventure. 
 
 The special qualities of the Spanish genius, 
 we cannot fail to recognise, found their most 
 splendid opportunities in a stage of the world's 
 history which, on the physical side at all events, 
 is now for ever gone. Spain has fallen on to an 
 age which is content to demand and to reward 
 the industrial and commercial tasks which require 
 a less brilliant initiative. Great, however, as is 
 the natural wealth of the country, we can 
 scarcely desire to see Spain occupying her fine 
 energies in no higher task than that of com- 
 peting, on a second-rate basis, with England and 
 Germany, accepting the petty bargains which the 
 greater industrial powers, first in the field, may 
 have disdained to touch. Spain is at last facing 
 the task before her of setting straight her 
 economic position and her domestic political 
 position. But beyond and beside that task 
 
60 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 there are problems in the future of human 
 progress in which we have a right to expect 
 that Spain should take as independent and as 
 valorous a pioneering part as she once took in 
 the problems of the physical world. It is by- 
 retaining and applying afresh her own primitive 
 and essential ideals, we may be sure, that Spain 
 will impart her finest spiritual gifts to the 
 world. 
 
Ill 
 
 THE WOMEN OF SPAIN 
 
 There are some countries, one is inclined to 
 assert, peculiarly apt to produce fine men, others 
 peculiarly apt to produce fine women. That 
 this is so on the physical side all who are familiar 
 with several countries have had occasion to 
 observe. It is so also on the mental side. I 
 have elsewhere pointed out, when investigating 
 the genius of Great Britain, that while the men 
 of Scotland have contributed more than their 
 share to the sum of British intellectual achieve- 
 ment, and the men of Ireland less, as regards 
 women the case is reversed, and the women of 
 Ireland have contributed more than the women 
 of Scotland. 1 
 
 The Spaniards, if we take their history as a 
 whole, have been a peculiarly virile people, yet 
 at the present day one is tempted to think that 
 the women of Spain are on the average superior 
 to the men. In the past, the men of Spain 
 
 1 Havelook Ellis, A Study of British Genius, p. 28. 
 61 
 
62 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 have been distinguished by the most brilliant 
 personal qualities. In the Spanish men of 
 to-day, however, it is sometimes difficult to 
 recognise the splendid and restless activities of 
 their forefathers. There is often a certain air of 
 lassitude about them which is reflected in the 
 comparative absence of brilliant adventurers or 
 highly endowed personalities among the men of 
 modern Spain when compared with the men of 
 the great ages. It cannot be said that this must 
 be set down to " degeneration," for then it would 
 affect the feminine half of the race ; but the women 
 are full of energy and vigour even to advanced age; 
 the Spaniards also are certainly a healthy people, 
 and centenarians are by no means rare. 1 
 
 While the problem is somewhat complicated, 
 we may perhaps appeal to selection for its 
 explanation. Everything has happened that 
 could happen to kill out the virile, militant, 
 independent elements of Spanish manhood. War 
 alone, if sufficiently prolonged and severe, suffices 
 
 1 Oloriz, who has made a special study of the distribution and 
 causes of longevity in Spain (summarised in British Medical Journal, 
 December 24, 1898, p. 1898), states that for the Peninsula and 
 adjacent islands generally the proportion of centenarians is twenty -five 
 per million, and that on the whole it rose during the past century. 
 The Andalusian provinces (especially Malaga) stand at the head of 
 the list, the second place being occupied by the Galician provinces, 
 while the more or less Basque provinces of the no>th-east stand 
 lowest ; the central regions also stand low ; on the whole, extreme 
 and ordinary longevity coincide, but not in Andalusia, where the 
 conditions seem to use up rapidly the energy of average members of 
 the race, but to be very favourable to those who reach old age. 
 Longevity is more oommon among Spanish women than men. 
 
THE WOMEN OF SPAIN 68 
 
 to deplete a people of its most vigorous stocks. 
 " The warlike nation of to-day," says President 
 Jordan, " is the decadent nation of to-morrow." * 
 The martial ardour and success of the Spaniards 
 lasted for more than a thousand years ; it was 
 only at very great cost that the Eomans subdued 
 the Iberians, and down to the sixteenth century 
 the Spaniards were great soldiers ; but the 
 struggle in the Netherlands against the Dutch 
 finally wasted their energies, and when at 
 Rocroy, in the middle of the seventeenth 
 century, the Spanish infantry that had been 
 counted the finest in Europe went down before 
 the French, the military splendour of Spain 
 finally vanished. 2 
 
 1 This writer has stated in a powerful manner the arguments which 
 t»nd to show that war permanently deprives a nation of warlike men, 
 that it is a people bred through long ages of peace which attains 
 heroism and success in war, and that the warlike spirit tends to kill 
 out itself ("The Blood of the Nation," Popular Science Monthly, 
 May and June 1901). 
 
 3 Among the Spanish women also, in ancient days, notwithstanding 
 their customs of almost Moorish seclusion, courage and warlike 
 qualities were common. A typical fifteenth century figure is that of 
 Dona Maria de Monroy, a widow of noble family with two sons. One 
 of these youths was slain in a quarrel over dice by two close friends, 
 who then slew the other brother to avoid his vengeance, thereupon 
 fleeing to Portugal. But the mother, in male attire and accompanied 
 by a band of twenty cavaliers, promptly took horse and tracked them 
 to a house where they lay concealed, entered with two of her men, and 
 was soon on horseback again with both heads suspended from her left 
 hand, never stopping until she had reached Salamanca and placed the 
 heads on her sons' tomb. She was a type, Lea states, of the 
 mugeres varoniles of the time, " who would take the field or maintain 
 their place in factious intrigue with as much ferocity as the men" 
 (H. C. Lea, History of the Inquisition im Spain, vol. i. p. 57). 
 
64 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 It is not war alone, however, that has tended 
 to crush Spain's manhood: the Inquisition, an 
 institution apparently alien to the spirit of the 
 race and only established — by Spaniards indeed 
 — with great difficulty, killed, banished, and 
 drove out all the varied, vigorous, and independ- 
 ent stocks on the intellectual side, just as war 
 had on the militant side. And a third great 
 cause of the depletion of manhood was the vast 
 colonial empire " on which the sun never set." 
 All the ardent adventurers, in search of gold or 
 fame or eager to convert the heathen, rushed to 
 the new world and made the old world poorer. 
 When Ferdinand and Isabella conquered Granada, 
 almost at the same moment that they succeeded 
 in firmly establishing the Inquisition and that 
 Columbus returned from his great expedition, 
 Spain seemed about to reach the summit of her 
 worldly glory, but at the same time she was 
 preparing to plunge into an abyss. 
 
 So it is that, as some one has said, the history 
 of Spain may be summed up in a single ancient 
 sentence : " This is Castile, she makes men and 
 wastes them." But the women of Spain have 
 not thus been wasted ; war, persecution, and 
 emigration have never borne heavily on them ; 
 there has been no powerful weeding out of the 
 best here. And it seems to me that we might 
 explain the fine qualities of Spanish women to-day 
 by supposing that, while the stocks that specially 
 
THE WOMEN OF SPAIN 65 
 
 tend to produce fine men have been largely killed 
 out, the stocks that tend to produce fine women 
 have not been subjected to this process. 
 
 Whether or no this is so, — for both facts 
 and theory are still doubtful, — the distinguished 
 qualities of Spanish women can scarcely be 
 questioned. Their beauty and grace are a theme 
 for rhapsody to every tourist. And if we dis- 
 regard the tourist, we find that a scientific 
 anthropologist like the Italian Mantegazza — 
 who has lived in many lands, and regards the 
 study of beauty as one of the anthropologist's 
 most serious duties — reaches the conclusion that 
 the most beautiful women, whether in the old 
 world or the new, are those of Spanish and of 
 British race, and that the finest Spanish women 
 and the finest English women are the most 
 perfectly beautiful types the world can show; 1 
 it is certainly a conclusion that an English lover 
 of Spain need not feel called upon to question. 
 
 "If any one can be found to question the 
 beauty of Spanish women, he should go to the 
 Feria at Seville. This is especially a woman's 
 festival, and the beautiful women of Andalusia, 
 and, indeed, of Spain generally, crowd to Seville 
 for the three days during which it is held. If 
 
 1 ' ' When an Andalusian woman attains the stately height of an 
 Englishwoman, and when an Englishwoman has small hands and feet, 
 they are both divine, the two highest forms of life, the most splendid 
 creatures in the human world " (Mantegazza, Fisiologia della Donna, 
 cap. iv.). 
 
 F 
 
66 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 the foreign visitor to the Prado de San Sebastian 
 at this time has ever before in his life anywhere 
 seen so many beautiful women beautifully dressed 
 he may count himself happy. The national 
 costumes of Spain may be dying out, but on 
 such an occasion as this the shawl and the 
 mantilla are universal, and in Seville, at all 
 events, the Andalusian woman betrays little 
 desire to seek for new fashions from Paris. It 
 is fortunate, for a Spanish woman in a Parisian 
 costume is nearly always badly dressed, while in 
 her native costume her distinction is perfect. In 
 the Sevillian temperament the aristocratic and 
 the democratic are united ; this is reflected in 
 the costume. Its simplicity, the universal love 
 it reveals for black — a colour so admirably fitted 
 to emphasise beauty and grace — introduce a note 
 of distinction which is equally within reach ol 
 poor and rich, so that it is often difficult for an 
 uninitiated stranger at a first glance to guess the 
 social class of the woman he meets. 1 
 
 The typical young Sevillian woman of the 
 people builds her hair up into a little fortress 
 with combs at the top of her head — in a way 
 that is substantially the same as that practised 
 by the women in this part of Spain more than 
 two thousand years ago * — and she adorns it with 
 
 1 It has doubtless always been so ; in 1623 Howell wrote from Spain 
 that "one can hardly distinguish a countess from a cobbler's wife." 
 
 2 Even in the sixth century before Christ Artemidorus described 
 the extravagant head-dresses of Iberian women. The manola's long 
 
THE WOMEN OF SPAIN 67 
 
 a carnation or a rose. She wears a shawl, as, 
 indeed, all Spanish women do, but the Sevillian 
 woman is distinguished by the manner of wearing 
 it ; she folds it in oblong, not triangular, shape, 
 so that it lies straight across the back and hangs 
 over each arm ; this method requires a little more 
 skill than the triangular method, but, so worn, 
 the shawl becomes a more expressive garment 
 and adds a distinction to the wearer. The Feria 
 is a marvellous display of beautiful and various 
 shawls — which are often, even when belonging 
 to the poor, very costly — and they are nearly 
 always worn in this way. There are, indeed, 
 exceptions to this rule ; some of the small and 
 more elaborate Manila shawls cannot thus be 
 worn, and the old women also wear the shawl 
 cross-wise with a point hanging down, and at 
 the same time do their hair at the back and not 
 at the top of the head. The peculiar erection of 
 the hair at the top of the head, the flowers that 
 adorn it, and the method of wearing the shawl 
 are a kind of coquettish war-paint, the appanage 
 of youth and vigour; and there is a certain 
 pathos in the resignation of the return to the 
 cross-wise method with its inelegant tail lying 
 motionlessly down the back. 
 
 comb covered by the black mantilla is a survival of those elevated 
 coiffures which we may still see in prehistoric statues, such as those 
 of the Cerro de los Santos. They are figured, for instance, by Engel 
 in the account of his archasological mission to Spain (Nouvelles 
 Archives dcs Missions Stientifiques, 1892, vol. iii. p. 180). 
 
68 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 This method, however, becomes more frequent 
 as we leave Seville in any direction, even at 
 Cordova, and still more so at Granada. When 
 we reach Aragon a totally different type of 
 costume prevails, a severely prim type — well 
 suited to the graver, more austere type of 
 feminine beauty prevailing here — with little or 
 no bright colour, one white flower alone perhaps 
 being worn in the hair, which is done at the 
 back and brought close down over the temples, 
 while an abundance of white petticoats are worn, 
 simulating a crinoline. The plain dark shawl 
 is worn cross-wise down the back, and instead 
 of being loudly striped the stockings are more 
 usually black ; altogether in this extreme sobriety 
 of visage and costume the Aragonese women are 
 absolutely unlike the brilliant stately Andalusians, 
 and, to English eyes at all events, present a quaint 
 old-fashioned air singularly recalling the women 
 of the early Victorian era. 
 
 Charming as is the costume of the most 
 typical Spanish woman— the Sevillana — that 
 charm is merely the expression of the physical 
 personality it clothes. It is certainly true that 
 the element of solemn ritual which runs through 
 everything Spanish has its part in the women's 
 dress also, and that the contrast, especially 
 among the middle class, between the Spanish 
 woman in the almost oriental seclusion of her 
 own house and the same woman when abroad in 
 
THE WOMEN OF SPAIN 69 
 
 the streets is often considerable. But there is a 
 proud, almost self-conscious, absence of artifice 
 in a Spanish woman's dress ; in Seville, at all 
 events, it is strictly expressive of the woman it 
 covers. The mantilla is in this respect truly char- 
 acteristic ; it is the type of the garment — more 
 common in the East than in the West — which 
 is itself meaningless and expressionless, gaining 
 all its meaning and expression through its en- 
 hancement of the special qualities of the wearer. 
 The Spanish woman is commonly spoken of as 
 a small brunette of sallow or " olive " complexion. 
 Such are indeed frequently found in Spain, as 
 also in Italy and France, and this description is 
 far from defining precisely the woman of Spain. 
 From an English point of view Spanish women 
 are, on the average, below medium height, with 
 small but well-shaped and vigorous hands and 
 feet. They are sometimes slender when young, 
 but bust and hips are generally well developed. 
 As they approach middle age they frequently 
 become very stout ; this tendency seems to me 
 specially marked in Catalonia, but is fairly 
 evident everywhere ; a type is thus produced to 
 which Spaniards themselves apply the term 
 jamona ; but this tendency by no means always 
 involves any considerable loss of agility. In old 
 age, when this excessive stoutness is no longer so 
 pronounced, the women are often singularly 
 vigorous and active. 
 
70 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 Beyond these main physical traits of the 
 Spanish woman, she possesses certain interesting 
 peculiarities. One of these lies in the shape of 
 the chest. Unlike the French and the Northern 
 woman, the Spanish woman's chest is found to be 
 shorter and broadest at the base — at the level, 
 that is, of the lower end of the breast-bone — so 
 that she requires, according to Carmandel, a 
 differently-shaped corset, while at the same time 
 there is greater amplitude and accentuation of 
 the hips in relation to the figure generally. 
 These characteristics of the Spanish woman are 
 well illustrated, it has been said, by a comparison 
 between the statue which Falguiere modelled 
 after Cl^o de Merode and the distinctively 
 national Spanish type represented in Goya's 
 Maja Desnuda now in the Prado. 1 
 
 The typical Spanish woman (as Duchenne 
 first pointed out in 1866) presents another 
 puzzling but well- authenticated peculiarity in 
 the heightened curves of her spine. The Spanish 
 woman's spine looks as if its curvature had been 
 increased by pressure applied to the two ends. 
 This indeed has by some been supposed to 
 be the actual cause of the peculiarity, and 
 
 1 It may be further noted that the Spanish woman's breasts (as is 
 shown and illustrated by Ploss and Bartels, Das Weib, vol. i. 
 ch. viii.) tend to have the peculiarity that the areola around the 
 nipple is raised and clearly separated from the surrounding skin ; the 
 same peculiarity is noted in Sicilian women, who are of allied race ; it 
 is a characteristic which recalls the breasts of black African women. 
 
THE WOMEN OF SPAIN 71 
 
 Spalikowski — who has found the ensellure or 
 saddle-back, as it is termed, well marked among 
 some of the most beautiful and vigorous of the 
 labouring women and fisher-folk near Boulogne 
 and Dieppe — states that it only occurs in women 
 who are accustomed to bear heavy burdens ; he 
 also remarks that it is frequently associated with 
 small feet and hands, well-modelled neck, grace- 
 ful bust, and lithe figures, usually in brown-eyed 
 women. This association of characters suggests 
 that the peculiarity is not an individual acquire- 
 ment, but a racial trait, and there is no difficulty 
 in believing that the Iberian element, which is 
 still strong in the south-west of France and 
 recognisable in the south-west of England, may 
 also have passed up the French coast. Lagneau 
 and others are distinctly of opinion that the 
 saddle-back is a racial Iberian trait. 1 This con- 
 clusion seems inevitable, and in any case there 
 can be no doubt that the special grace and 
 distinction of profile of the Spanish woman's 
 figure is associated with the saddle-back ; it is ' 
 this that gives the characteristic mark to her 
 bearing and carriage, while it emphasises much 
 that is most significant in Spanish dancing. In 
 
 1 Sr. Bernaldo de Quiros remarks (in a private letter) that the 
 saddle-back is not marked in the women of the northern coast, who 
 are accustomed to bear burdens on the head, but in those of the centre 
 and south, where weights are more usually supported on the hips. He 
 also refers to the curious fact that the horse of Andalusian race 
 possesses a very pronounced saddle-back. 
 
72 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 extreme cases it may sometimes involve a slight 
 simulation, in a more beautiful manner, of the 
 development typical of the Hottentot Venus, and 
 then the Spanish girl of the people may, if she 
 so pleases, adopt, like the Ogowe woman of 
 tropical Africa, that swaying movement from 
 side to side which was familiar to the author of 
 the old sixteenth century novel, La Lozana 
 Andaluza, as culeando. For it is a curious and 
 significant fact that the Iberian saddle-back has 
 not only been traced in a slight degree by 
 Hartmann among the Kabyle women of North 
 Africa, but has been found by accurate measure- 
 ments to mark many of the Negro tribes. 1 
 
 It is probably in some degree to her ana- 
 tomical peculiarities that we must attribute 
 something of the special character of the Spanish 
 woman's way of walking. This gait, which is 
 also seen wherever women are accustomed to 
 bear burdens on the head — as in the women in 
 Rome from the Alban hills and in some parts of 
 Ireland 2 — is the erect dignified carriage, with 
 
 1 6. Fritseh has carefully studied the natural lordosis of the 
 African's body (Zeitschrift fur Ethnologie, 1891, part iv. p. 470). 
 
 2 I well remember the surprise of a graceful Irishwoman, who had 
 lived long in Australia, when I told her that she must once have been 
 used to carrying heavy things on her head. Among the very ingenious 
 and elaborate gymnastic systems which have been invented for the 
 benefit or the torment of civilised women this method has no place, ! 
 probably because it is too simple to afford a living to its professors. 
 But it is an excellent method not only of ensuring a beautiful 
 distinction of carriage, but of imparting tonicity and control to a large 
 number of muscles throughout the body. 
 
THE WOMEN OF SPAIN 73 
 
 restrained movement, of a priestess who is 
 bearing the sacred vessels. At the same time, 
 the walk of Spanish women, while not lacking 
 in proud human dignity, has in it something of 
 the gracious quality of a feline animal, whose 
 whole body is alive and in restrained movement, 
 yet without any restless or meaningless excess 
 of movement. A beautiful walk seems to mark 
 all the races which have produced a fine type of 
 womanly beauty, and the fact that it is so rare 
 in England and America arouses some misgivings 
 as to the claim of our women to stand in quite 
 the first rank of beauty ; the Spanish woman, 
 like the Virgilian goddess, is known by her walk. 
 
 Perhaps an even rarer accomplishment than 
 that of walking well is that of sitting well. A 
 typical Sevillian woman of the people — sitting 
 squarely in an attitude of calm and easy, yet not 
 languid repose, her knees slightly separated, her 
 hands resting on her thighs — seems to assume 
 instinctively, as a friend once remarked to me, 
 the hieratic pose of a Byzantine Madonna. 
 
 The special features of the Spanish woman's 
 face that have always aroused admiration are 
 her eyes and her complexion ; in these respects 
 she is universally considered to excel the women 
 of other countries. The face varies greatly in 
 outline ; not seldom it is straight in the classic 
 manner, with beautiful brows ; the lower part of 
 the face, though often as beautiful as could be 
 
74 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 desired, is the part most liable to be unsatis- 
 factory ; it may become somewhat coarse and 
 thick. The nose also is sometimes defective; 
 there seems, indeed, to be a peculiar tendency 
 to arrested or irregular development in the 
 Spanish nose ; and Spanish women at times 
 have what we commonly call the Wellington 
 nose. The hair, again, though sometimes con- 
 sidered a special beauty of the Spanish woman, 
 does not, to me at least, stand in the first rank 
 of her charms ; it is not comparable, for in- 
 stance, to the beautiful and abundant hair 
 which one sees so often among Polish women 
 in the streets of Warsaw. The Spanish woman's 
 hair, in the south (it is not so in the north- 
 west), is frequently lacking in any tawny or 
 auburn tints, and it is too tightly dressed (often 
 with the aid of oil of sweet almonds) to be quite 
 charming ; but, with its prevailing tones of dull 
 brown to deep black — with blue reflections 
 rather than red — it supplies, at all events, a 
 perfect background to the white or preferably 
 red flower, the jasmine or carnation, which is 
 often the chief note of colour in the Spanish 
 woman's attire. 
 
 It is usual to say that the Spanish woman's 
 eyes are large and black, sometimes, it is added, 
 and bold. This is the first and most obvious 
 impression of the northerner, who realises that he 
 has come among a people of a higher degree of 
 
THE WOMEN OF SPAIN 75 
 
 pigmentation than he is accustomed to, who use 
 their eyes with a calm steadiness not unusual in 
 peoples with a dash of the East in their blood 
 and their habits — it is still more pronounced in 
 Hungary — but disconcerting to the foreigner 
 from England or France or Germany. The 
 impression, however, which the Spaniard himself 
 receives of the beautiful eyes of his own women, 
 as well as the impression of the foreigner who 
 has really lived in Spain, is not the same as 
 that of the casual tourist. In Spain, as Mateo 
 Aleman wrote four centuries ago, the mere 
 glance of a woman's eye is regarded as a high 
 favour, and the Spaniard is more affected by 
 the quality of the gaze than by the precise 
 colour of the eyes. Undoubtedly the brown 
 or pigmented eye seems more expressive than 
 the blue or unpigmented eye — a fact of which 
 physiologists have sought to give a precise 
 >■ explanation — but it is by no means the " black " 
 eye which is in chief honour. The black eye 
 is plebeian, and it is usually associated with 
 a plebeian style of beauty. The Spaniard, 
 whatever region of the country he belongs to, 
 has nearly always admired the "mixed" eye, 
 that of medium pigmentation, which — like the 
 men of Old France, who felt the same admiration 
 for it — he terms green. Calderon, it is true, 
 associated black eyes with beauty, but in the 
 Celestina green eyes with long lashes are one of 
 
76 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 the chief marks of supreme beauty. "lam per- 
 suaded," said Don Quixote also, " that Dulcinea's 
 eyes must be green emeralds, full and soft, with 
 two rainbows for eyebrows." Even to his 
 charming little gipsy, Preeiosa, Cervantes gives 
 locks of gold and eyes which are, as usual, like 
 emeralds. The same admiration exists to-day, 
 and is easily traceable in the chief and most 
 characteristic Spanish novelists. In Morsamor, 
 Valera, describing the beautiful and seductive 
 Olimpia, refers to "the magnetic force of her 
 green or glaucous eyes, like those of Minerva, 
 Medea, and Circe, and which might be compared 
 to two emeralds in burning flame." Blasco 
 Ibafiez also, in Cartas y Barro, says of Neleta, 
 the beautiful Valencian girl of the Albufera, 
 that she had " clear green eyes that shone like 
 two drops of Valencian absinthe." 
 
 The complexion can scarcely be passed over, 
 for it is a character of the first importance in the 
 Spanish beauty. The Spanish complexion has 
 sometimes been called "sallow," or, as Gautier 
 more happily and more correctly described it, 
 "a golden pallor." But whether the golden 
 element is present or not, there can be little 
 doubt that the Spanish skin is the most perfect 
 in Europe, and there is no need to hide it, as 
 was once the Spanish custom, by rouge, and now 
 by the unpleasant use of powder. The finest 
 English complexion is incomparable, but it is a 
 
THE WOMEN OF SPAIN 77 
 
 very delicate and transitory possession ; take it 
 into a hot, dry climate, like that of Australia, 
 and it is swiftly destroyed. But Spain is a very 
 hot and very dry country, and yet, even among 
 the peasantry, who are constantly exposed to the 
 weather without any sort of protection, one can 
 nowhere see better complexions, sometimes even 
 very fair; this skin seems to be not only of 
 finer, but also of firmer and more vital texture ; 
 it will not easily discolour ; it seldom congests ; 
 it never freckles. There is a quality about the 
 skin of a beautiful Spanish woman which always 
 instinctively suggests, alike to the foreigner and 
 to the Spaniard himself, the quality of the finest 
 and most exquisitely wrought metals. This had 
 not escaped Cervantes. " Sefior Don Quixote," 
 asked the duenna, "have you observed the 
 comeliness of my lady the Duchess, that smooth 
 complexion of hers like a burnished polished 
 sword ? " Blasco Ibaflez refers to the " metallic 
 reflections " of Neleta's skin, and Valera says of 
 Bosita, in Las Ulusiones del Doctor Faustino, 
 that at twenty-eight she was so full of health 
 and purity that " she seemed a statue of 
 burnished bronze; the weather had tarnished 
 neither her hands nor her face, which had; 
 something of the patina which the Anda-1 
 lusian sun gives to columns and other objects, 
 of art." Nothing could more accurately de- j 
 scribe the impression constantly given by j 
 
78 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 the Spanish, and especially the Andalusian, 
 woman. 
 
 Discussion has sometimes taken place as to 
 the proportion of fair-complexioned women in 
 Spain; it is certainly large, not only in the 
 seaport towns (there is always a ' tendency to 
 blondness by the sea), but in Madrid and other 
 inland centres. The proportion of notably fair- 
 complexioned women in Spain is decidedly larger 
 than in the south of France, in Toulouse, for 
 instance, or at Aries. The northerner, arriving 
 in Spain for the first time and noting the 
 presence of a very dark type, much darker than 
 can be found in France, is apt to overlook the 
 more familiar fair type and so to receive a false 
 impression. Over sixty years ago Gautier noted 
 that blondes were common in Madrid ; half a 
 century later they seemed to Mr. Finck to be 
 rare, and he contended that they are being dis- 
 placed by brunettes. Dona Emilia Pardo Bazan, 
 the distinguished Spanish novelist, writing at 
 about the same time as Mr. Finck, expressed an 
 entirely contrary opinion, remarking that what 
 she considers the national type of beauty — the 
 woman of middle height, slight yet rounded 
 form, undulating movements, swift and graceful, 
 black eyes, black hair, and olive complexion — is 
 slowly giving place to a fleshy blonde of the 
 Rubens type. If one may venture to express 
 an opinion in a matter concerning which such 
 
THE WOMEN OF SPAIN 79 
 
 learned authorities differ, I should be inclined to 
 say — in the absence of exact statistics — that 
 there has really been no change. My own 
 impressions to-day in Madrid correspond with 
 tolerable exactness to those of Gautier in the 
 early part of the nineteenth century. Eeally 
 blue eyes and very light hair are indeed, in most 
 regions, rare ; but light mixed eyes and medium 
 brown hair are by no means rare, while quite 
 fair complexions are common. The prevalence 
 of the very fair type, in the past as well as in 
 the present, is clearly reflected in Spanish 
 literature. It is sufficient to refer to Cervantes ; 
 throughout Don Quixote and The Exemplary 
 Novels a beautiful woman has golden hair just 
 as she has emerald eyes ; Luscinda, by way of 
 variety, has auburn (rubios) tresses. The fair 
 woman plays, indeed, in Spanish literature, a 
 much larger part than she is entitled to, for 
 fairness in Spain was not only part of the ideal 
 of beauty, but also the mark of aristocratic 
 birth, 1 
 
 Eyes and complexion are recognised traits of 
 
 1 The term "blue blood," or sangre assul, as indicating nobility, is 
 believed to be of Spanish origin. In Spain, as in most other countries, 
 the nobility are somewhat fairer than the ordinary population, and, as 
 Sir Lauder Brunton has pointed out {British Medical Journal, March 
 21, 1896), while in dark people the blood-vessels do not easily show 
 through the skin, in the fair the veins are distinctly seen and appear 
 of a blue colour, so that to have "blue blood" means to be fair. I 
 have discussed the European ideal of beauty in its history and 
 national modifications in my Studies in the Psychology of Sex, vol. iv. , 
 " Sexual Selection in Man." 
 
80 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 Spanish beauty, alike to native and foreigner. 
 There is another characteristic of the Spanish 
 woman which I have never seen mentioned, 
 but which seems to me very fundamental, very 
 significant of a special quality of nervous texture. 
 I refer to the comparative immobility of the 
 face, the absence of unnecessary movement. 
 The contrast in this respect with the face of 
 the average Englishwoman is considerable. If 
 one walks through a crowded English city and 
 looks at the women's faces, one notes that, in 
 many if not in most cases, the face is in constant 
 meaningless movement, the forehead wrinkling, 
 the eyes tremulous, the mouth twitching, the ex^ 
 pression suggesting obscure physiological distress; 
 in the better-bred people the restless movement 
 is less conspicuous, being replaced by an equally 
 painful sense of artificial tension. But the 
 Spanish woman exhibits the minimum of this 
 confused fluctuation of muscular movement. 
 Whether or not she is observed, she is serene, 
 motionless, self-possessed. Her face withstands 
 your gaze, graciously indeed, but coolly and 
 firmly as a marble statue. I have heard it 
 said that the English face with its fleshy pink- 
 ness looks positively indecent beside the finely 
 toned skin of the Spaniard, and one is almost 
 tempted to think that this complexion acts as 
 a shield, of which the northerner is deprived. It 
 is doubtless because of this muscular control 
 
THE WOMEN OF SPAIN 81 
 
 that to gaze on a woman in Spain is by no 
 means an offensive act ; it causes no embarrass- 
 ment ; it is a form of flattery well suited to a 
 dignified, silent, and intense race, and in Spanish 
 poems and novels the mirada, this long gaze, 
 plays an important part. 
 
 The adequate adjustment of nervous force 
 to muscular movement is, in the best sense, 
 an animal quality ; it is the quality which 
 gives animals, living in nature, their perfect 
 grace. In Northern France, in England, in 
 America, the influences of civilisation lead to 
 an excess of irritable nervous energy, which is 
 always overflowing, meaninglessly and there- 
 fore ungracefully and awkwardly, into all the 
 muscular channels of the body. In this excess 
 of restless nervous energy the qualities of 
 our modern civilised temperament largely lie, 
 and it is this probably, more than anything 
 else, which removes us so far from the 
 Spaniard. ' The existence of a general dis- 
 tinction is clearly as present to the Spanish as 
 to the foreign mind. It is often a little sur- 
 prising to the Englishman to find that he is 
 nearly always, in the first place, supposed to be 
 a Frenchman, or, as I heard myself described 
 by a more precise Spaniard, " that French or 
 English gentleman." To the average Spaniard 
 the difference is clearly small or none, and a 
 party of Catalan ladies, with whom I once found 
 
 G 
 
82 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 myself travelling, though they knew me to be 
 English, brought out their small stock of French 
 words in my honour, and sought to please me 
 by saying what a fine place Paris must be. 
 When, however, a few days later, I found myself 
 once more in Paris, I realised that this con- 
 fusion is not so absurd as at first it seems to 
 us. I felt at once that I belonged to these 
 people as I could not possibly belong to the 
 Spaniards. The differences between Englishmen 
 and northern Frenchmen are indeed very im- 
 portant, but they are slight differences, and to 
 the untravelled Spaniard, whose civilisation and 
 whose character — though not without its marked 
 affinities for the English character — has traits 
 and traditions which are Moorish, mediaeval, and 
 still more primitive, they may seem to have 
 scarcely any existence at all. 
 
 In connection with this special nervous quality 
 of the Spanish woman which seems to me so 
 significant, I may refer to her general attitude 
 towards men. In England, especially in any 
 urban centre, if one observes a young woman — 
 any ordinary young woman of the people — talk- 
 ing casually with a man in the street, one may 
 usually note that, though they are probably 
 speaking of the most indifferent subjects, her 
 face is full of the consciousness of her sex ; her 
 whole nervous system is instinctively affected 
 by the fact that she is a woman before a man- 
 
THE WOMEN OF SPAIN 83 
 
 In France, though more restrained and less 
 naively expressed, the same tendency is still 
 emphatically present. But it is seldom obvious 
 in the Spanish woman, whose manner towards 
 a man, gracious as it may be, is always cool 
 and self-possessed ; she sees the man but is not 
 embarrassingly conscious of the possible lover. 
 Dona Pardo Bazan remarks that it is a mistake 
 to suppose that the Spanish woman possesses 
 in a high degree what the French call " tem- 
 perament." Probably she is right. No doubt, 
 there are great possibilities of passion in the 
 Spanish woman — the Spanish qualities of mysti- 
 cism, ardour, and tenacity would alone indicate 
 this — and those possibilities not seldom lead to 
 tragic results ; but the very intensity of this 
 disposition is opposed to emotional facility. 
 All the old Spanish traditions show that the 
 women of this race required much wooing; a 
 certain chastity corresponding to their extreme 
 sobriety seems to lie in the temperament of the 
 people. 1 
 
 «- This proud reticence, the absence of any easy 
 erethic response to masculine advances, is the 
 probable source of that erotic superiority of 
 women, the sexual subjection of men, which has 
 
 -j 1 They also demanded much discretion in their lovers. "The 
 
 ! Spaniard," said Howell, " is a great servant of ladies, yet he never 
 
 : brags of, nor blazes abroad, his doings in that way, but is exceedingly 
 
 ' ' careful of the repute of any woman, a civility that we much want in 
 
 I England. " The same point is reported in Spanish countries to-day. 
 
84 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 often been noted as characteristic of Spain, and 
 is indeed symbolised in the profound Spanish 
 adoration for the Virgin Mary. It is probably 
 very primitive. Strabo, perhaps a little exces- 
 sively, even speaks of " gynecocracy " or rule 
 of women among the ancient Iberians, and Bloch 
 considers that a persistent relic of the early 
 matriarchal period was transformed into chival- 
 rous romance and supremely illustrated in the 
 great Spanish romance of Amadis of Gaul. 1 In 
 the Celestina, when Calisto is asked if he is a 
 Christian, he replies : " I am a Meliboean : I 
 worship Meliboea, I believe in Melibcea, and 
 I love Melibcea." At the end of the eighteenth 
 century, a thoughtful German observer in Spain, 
 after referring to the seeming lack of modesty in 
 the speech and the eyes of Spanish women, and 
 their " masculine boldness," adds that it is a 
 great mistake to imagine that they yield easily 
 to love, and any liberty on the part of a man 
 is not well taken, for they are proud. "They 
 wish to choose and not to be chosen, they play 
 the man's part, and it is for him to yield and 
 sacrifice himself. That is why a reticent, shy, 
 and cold man has more success with them than 
 an ardent and passionate lover." 2 This state- 
 ment may be put somewhat extravagantly, but 
 
 1 I wan Bloch, Be.itra.ge zur Aetiologie der Psychopathic/, Sescualis, 
 vol. ii. p. 150. 
 
 2 0. A. Fischer, Beise von Amsterdam ueber Madrid, 1799, pp. 195 
 et seq. 
 
THE WOMEN OF SPAIN 85 
 
 it doubtless corresponds to a real psychological 
 fact which in some degree still persists. 
 
 We may associate this position of women in 
 Old Spain with the recognition that was accorded 
 under many circumstances to unmarried mothers 
 and the relative absence of the social stigma else- 
 where generally attached to illegitimate children. 
 This was doubtless a survival of primitive matri- 
 archal conditions, but it was adhered to with 
 great tenacity by Spaniards, and even the not 
 uncommon practice of a legitimate son preferring 
 to use the name of his mother rather than that 
 of his father shows the absence of any ostenta- 
 tious preference for paternal descent. This is a 
 remarkable feature in the domestic life of medi- 
 aeval Spain, which has left ae impress on the 
 laws even to-day, and it is interesting to observe 
 how the women of what is commonly regarded as 
 the most bigoted Catholic country succeeded in 
 preserving a freedom and privilege which even 
 in the free Protestant countries has never yet 
 been established and only of late claimed. 1 
 
 Nowadays, Dona Pardo Bazan states, chivalry 
 towards women is in Spain nothing more than 
 a code of antiquated and empty formalities, 
 and she considers that the social position of the 
 
 1 See Burke, History of Spain, vol. i. Appendix II. : "On 
 customary concubinage or barraganeria," the recognised concubine 
 being called a barragana. In 1679 Innocent XI. felt called upon to 
 condemn formally the proposition of the Spanish theologian, Sanchez, 
 that concubines should not under all circumstances be cast forth. 
 
86 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 Spanish woman generally has been lowered by 
 the introduction of constitutionalism and the 
 accompanying modern institutions. [In the old 
 days the Spanish woman was more on a level 
 with the Spanish man ; what interested him 
 interested her ; she could engage in any activity 
 and occupy the highest place in the State, while 
 in the sphere of religious ardour men and women 
 could rival each other in saintliness. This state 
 of things has given place to a political system, 
 devoid of either religious or patriotic enthusiasm, 
 in which all the rights belong to men, and 
 women have nothing but duties. The social 
 position of women, their intellectual interests, 
 and their personal initiative have consequently 
 been depressed. 1 ■ 
 
 If this is the case, it is a transitory phase 
 which will pass with the inevitable expansion of 
 our modern political methods. There is indeed 
 no enthusiastic movement in Spain for conferring 
 the suffrage on women. " The suffrage in 
 Spain," as Posada remarks, " can scarcely be 
 called such ; it exists in law, but in practice it is 
 an indecorous and unworthy farce. How is it 
 possible for men to feel the necessity of giving 
 it to women, or for women to be anxious to 
 
 1 Emilia Pardo Bazan, "La Femme Eapagnole," Revue des Rewm, 
 February 1, 1896. Concepcion Arenal, one of the most eminent 
 of modern Spanish women, who had been appointed Inspector of 
 Prisons by Queen Isabella, was deprived of that post by the Revolu- 
 tionary Government, merely on the ground that she was a woman. 
 
THE WOMEN OF SPAIN 87 
 
 become, like the great majority of Spanish men, 
 merely honorary voters ? " 1 Spain has adopted 
 the English parliamentary system, which was not 
 "the outcome of her own history and which she 
 has not been able to assimilate. As her political 
 and social development enters a more vital stage, 
 no doubt the women of Spain will naturally and 
 inevitably take the part in the national life which 
 they are so well fitted to take. 
 
 Salillas, the Spanish sociologist, who has so 
 often discussed in an illuminative way the 
 psychology of his own people, somewhere 
 remarks that the Spanish woman is a tame 
 savage. Such a generalisation contains as 
 much truth as most attempts to reduce complex 
 phenomena to simplicity. It may be said that 
 the typical Spanish woman, as Spaniards see her, 
 is specially marked by sweetness and strength. 
 Just as the typical Italian woman seems to 
 suggest tenderness and maternity, the typical 
 Teutonic woman purity and reserve, so the 
 ideal Spanish woman is at once strong, inde- 
 pendent, self-contained, and at the same time 
 wholesomely gracious and gentle. She is, as 
 Valera says, angelic but robust. 
 
 In foreign representations the Spanish woman 
 is usually a brilliant and reckless creature, 
 passionate but cruel, peculiarly adapted to 
 occupy a place in novels and pictures, but on 
 
 1 Posada, Feminismo, p. 222. 
 
88 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 the reverse side ignorant, bigoted, lazy, and 
 dirty. MenmeVs and Bizet's Carmen — the 
 cigarrera who slashes the face of another 
 cigarrera, and who possesses over men a 
 maddening influence which she exerts to their 
 ruin — crystallises into a wk^Jg^^e more pic- 
 turesque elements of this* conception, and is 
 doubtless largely responsible for its' wide dis- 
 semination. It is true that Merimde rtfepresented 
 his Carmen as more or less of a gipsy, j But, as 
 he was himself well aware, in many respects his 
 Carmen was not and could not be a. gipsy. Louys, 
 again, in La Femme et le Prpntin, presents the 
 conventional picture of the bold and bad 
 Sevillian cigarrera, and represents the tobacco 
 factory itself in a somewhat appalling light, 
 while Baedeker speaks of it as an unpleasant 
 and malodorous spot, which no one should visit 
 for pleasure. Bearing this in mind, my own 
 visit to the Fabrica, together with a small party, 
 was planned not without some misgiving. So 
 far, however, from being unpleasant, the Fabrica 
 seemed to me one of the most delightful spots 
 in this delightful city, and one of the most 
 picturesque. The workrooms are vast chambers, 
 supported by great piers and resembling cathedral 
 crypts, airy, scarcely redolent even of tobacco, 
 and occupied by girls and women, who have 
 changed their out-door dresses, which hang all 
 round the walls, but remain fully dressed in 
 
THE WOMEN OF SPAIN 89 
 
 various costumes, and are so absorbed in their 
 work, except when they turn to the babies some 
 have brought with them, that even the hum of 
 conversation is scarcely heard and but few 
 workers look up as the strangers pass. Every 
 workroom has its duly decorated altar, and here 
 and there one notes a beautiful carnation placed 
 in water while its owner is at work. It is not 
 necessary to deny, and there is ample evidence 
 to show, that life in this Fabrica, as in the 
 factories elsewhere in which women are con- 
 fined together under undomestic conditions, 
 leads to the development in predisposed indi- 
 viduals of various evil passions and to quarrels 
 that , are sometimes even fatal. Yet a more 
 restful and charming scene of labour, and one more 
 typically Spanish, it could not be possible to find. 
 A few days after my visit to the Fabrica the 
 anhtjjal festival of the Sevillian cigarreras, the 
 Kerrrtksse, took place in the Eslava Gardens. 
 Imaginnagthat if I saw the cigarrera at play I 
 might find that the conventional traditions were 
 more exact than appeared from the contemplation 
 of the cigarrera at work, I duly visited the 
 Eslava Gardens. Nothing could be more remote 
 from the Flemish conception of a Kermesse. It 
 was really a kind of bazaar, for the benefit of the 
 workers, but quite free from the vulgarities of an 
 English bazaar. Every stall was presided over 
 by a group of shy, gracious, beautiful cigarreras 
 
90 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 — evidently the finest flowers of the factory — all 
 dressed in their very best Andalusian attire. 
 The Spaniard has none of the instincts of the 
 commercial traveller, and I could not see that 
 one of the girls ever offered her wares for sale, 
 or even addressed a stranger at all, though the 
 final results of the sale seem to have been con- 
 siderable. On a stage a number of the women 
 were sitting in a semicircle, and dancing from 
 time to time the characteristic sevillanas and 
 other dances, in a simple, unaffected, often, it 
 must be said, very amateurish way. So again I 
 went away confirmed in my first impression. 
 Clearly one was indeed far away here from the 
 typical English factory-girl, but one was scarcely 
 less remote from the insolent cigarrera of 
 legend. 
 
 If one distrusts one's own impressions, it is 
 interesting to see how the Spaniards themselves 
 depict their women. Dona Pardo Bazan has 
 chosen a cigarrera as the heroine of one of her best 
 as well as most realistic novels, La Tribuna. 1 
 Amparo is not only a cigarrera but the daughter 
 of a cigarrera, and having become a partisan of 
 republican opinions through reading the news- 
 papers, she takes a prominent local part in the 
 movements of 1868, as a sort of tribune of the 
 
 1 Dona Pardo Bazan has since stated that before writing this book 
 she spent two months, morning and afternoon, in the tobacco factory 
 of her own city of Corunna. 
 
THE WOMEN OF SPAIN 91 
 
 people, a woman " whose heart was softer than 
 silk, who could not hurt a fly, and yet was capable 
 of demanding the one hundred thousand heads 
 of those who live by sucking the blood of the 
 people." 1 At the same time, however, she falls 
 in love with a man of higher class than herself, 
 who seduces her under promise of marriage, and 
 finally, as the revolutionary movement dies out, 
 Amparo is left to become a mother, abandoned 
 but not crushed. 
 
 Amparo, notwithstanding her southern ardour 
 and impetuosity, belongs to Corunna, to 
 Northern Spain, Dona Bazan's own country. If, 
 however, we turn to the novels of Valera, who 
 has devoted himself to the delineation of the 
 women of his own Andalusian land, we find the„ 
 same qualities of energy, independence, and 
 courage — the firm resolve to lead one's own life 
 and possess one's own soul — that seem to me 
 to mark Spanish women in an unusually high 
 degree. In a book which he describes as less a 
 novel than " a mirror or photographic reproduc- 
 tion of the people and things of the province in 
 which I was born,!' Juanita la Larga, Valera's 
 most detailed portrait of a girl of the people, the 
 heroine reveals the same fundamental vigour and 
 
 1 I may remark that the cigarreras have strong political convic- 
 tions. The marriage of the Infanta, the Princess of Asturias, a few 
 years ago, was extremely unpopular in Spain, and when, in celehration 
 of this event, the authorities sent theatre tickets to the cigarreras 
 they were returned. j 
 
92 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 independence as Amparo, though in this case 
 united with the most solid common sense, and 
 exerted exclusively within the sphere of her own 
 personal everyday life. She is an illegitimate 
 child, but by force of her personal qualities she 
 wins the esteem and regard of all, and finally 
 marries one of the chief persons in the village, 
 a man much older than herself, whom she has 
 slowly learnt to love and respect. Juanita's 
 vigour and solidity are as marked on the physical 
 as on the mental side. At seventeen she could 
 run like a deer, throw stones with such precision 
 that she could kill sparrows, and leap on the 
 back of the wildest colt or mule, to ride not 
 astride but sideways ; while, a little later, when 
 the advances of a wealthy admirer became too 
 aggressive, she was able to lay him dexterously 
 on the floor and to render him henceforth her 
 humble servant. 1 In the same way Blasco Ibanez, 
 
 1 Elsewhere, in the course of a detailed and interesting essay on the 
 women of his own province of Cordova (" La Cordobesa"), Valerahas 
 some remarks on this aspect of the Spanish woman. After observing 
 that the poorest girl will talk of her honour like a heroine of Oalderon, 
 be adds : " When that is not sufficient, she neither screams nor makes 
 any disturbance or scandal, but defends herself like a Penthesilea ; she 
 wrestles as the angel wrestled with Jacob in the darkness of the night, 
 and, robust though angelic, she is able to trip and throw him and 
 even to give him a pummelling, and all this with an eloquence that 
 remains marvellously silent ; nor is this singular, for among poor 
 girls, even those of well-to-do families of the labouring class, there 
 is a notable robustness. They are harder than marble, not only 
 in their hearts, not only at the centre but all over the surface." 
 After narrating incidents in point from his own observation, Valera 
 adds : " I do not imply anything that would diminish or disfigure in 
 
THE WOMEN OF SPAIN 93 
 
 who has an incomparable knowledge of the 
 psychology of the Spanish people of to-day as 
 well as of their ways of life, describes in his 
 Flor de Mayo a young woman who could meet 
 " audacious proposals with gestures of contempt, 
 a pinch with a blow, and a stolen embrace with 
 a superb kick which had more than once felled to 
 the ground a big youth as strong and firm as the 
 mast of his boat." 
 
 While to-day we naturally find this attitude 
 described as more especially pertaining to women 
 of the people, it is essentially that of the ideal 
 Spanish woman throughout Spanish literature. 
 It is this type of woman which Cervantes delights 
 in throughout Don Quixote, as well as in The 
 Exemplary Novels. The " Illustre Fregona," for 
 instance, who is described as very beautiful, with 
 cheeks made of roses and jessamine, is yet, like 
 Valera's women, " as hard as marble." Sancho's 
 daughter was " as tall as a lance, and as fresh as 
 an April morning, and as strong as a porter." 
 " I know her well," said Sancho of the peasant 
 girl whom Don Quixote identified with Dulcinea, 
 "and let me tell you she can fling a crowbar as 
 well as the lustiest lad in all the town. She is a 
 brave lass and a right and stout one, and fit to 
 
 the least the beauty and charm of my fellow-countrywomen. Density 
 and firmness is one thing, unwieldy size another. The girl who works 
 from childhood, walks much, goes to the fountain to return with her 
 full pitcher resting on her hip or with the clothes she has washed in 
 the stream, is not fat, but she is strong. " 
 
94 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 be helpmate to any knight-errant that is or is to 
 be, who may make her his lady. What pith she 
 has, and what a voice ! And the best of her is 
 that she is not a bit prudish, for she has plenty 
 of affability, and jokes with everybody, and has 
 a grin and jest for everything." This ability 
 to " fling a crowbar" seems to have descended in 
 a but little changed form to the Spanish damsel 
 of to-day. Not long since I spent a Sunday in 
 the old Castilian city of Palencia and watched 
 how the women — stout and matronly as well as 
 young women — amused themselves with playing 
 at a game between bowls and ninepins, casting 
 the large heavy balls along the grass with un- 
 wearying satisfaction during the whole of a long 
 afternoon in the most business-like and yet 
 gleeful manner, while a few children stood 
 looking on at their elders. I have never seen 
 English women of the people, or indeed the 
 women of any other land, playing at anything 
 so vigorously healthy and innocent for the sheer 
 joy of muscular exertion, and a race whose 
 mothers have so much wholesome energy to 
 spare can scarcely be very exhausted or decadent. 
 It is of interest to note this aspect of the 
 Spanish ideal of women, in life and in literature, 
 for it is widely unlike that which has until 
 lately prevailed in England. Shakespeare often 
 found it convenient to put his heroines into 
 men's clothes, but it never occurs to him to 
 
THE WOMEN OF SPAIN 95 
 
 sum up their feminine charms in the epitaph — 
 which Cervantes has written over " Las Dos 
 Doncellas," who girded on swords and went out 
 into the world in search of their lovers — that 
 they were " as daring as they were virtuous," 
 although, rightly considered, with regard to the 
 special circumstances of women's lives, daring 
 is as much a feminine as a masculine virtue. 
 However much his women may seem to vary, 
 Shakespeare nearly always selects ultra-feminine 
 types, and clearly delights to dwell on their 
 gentleness, dependence, and weakness. It is the 
 same, though usually in a less pronounced degree, 
 with the other Elizabethan and Jacobean drama- 
 tists ; and for the original of their " Eoaring Girl," 
 who is a little in the Spanish manner, Middleton 
 and Dekker had to seek rather low in London 
 life. The heroines of the robust literature of the 
 eighteenth century were much more concerned 
 to achieve daintiness than vigour ; while Dickens 
 and Thackeray, the most popular and admired 
 novelists of the nineteenth century, were eager 
 to idealise the lowest stages of feminine feeble- 
 ness and inanity. Meredith, with his ideals of 
 robust and independent womanhood, Hardy, 
 with his spontaneous and autonomous heroines, 
 are the representatives of a more modern 
 spirit. It is of interest to find that the 
 more vigorous ideal, in harmony with our de- 
 veloping conception of the place of women, 
 
96 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 has always been held in honour in Spanish 
 literature. 1 
 
 In this matter Spanish literature corresponds 
 to the facts of Spanish life. There can be 
 no doubt that the vigour and independence 
 of character notable in the finest Spanish 
 women of to-day, and so often reflected in 
 Spanish literature, is a characteristic which 
 stretches very far back in the history of the 
 Spanish race, and is by no means entirely due, 
 as the considerations I brought forward at the 
 outset might suggest, to any modern effeminisa- 
 tion of the men. Even in the fourth century 
 Spanish women insisted on retaining their own 
 names after marriage, for we find the Synod of 
 Elvira trying to limit this freedom ; 2 while for 
 long afterwards it still remained possible for a 
 man to assume his mother's name. The greatest 
 of Spanish painters is only known to most of us 
 by the name of his mother, a Velazquez, and 
 even to-day it is not unusual for a Spaniard to 
 use the united names of both his parents. 
 
 I have emphasised the physical qualities of 
 
 1 Tirso de Molina, the great dramatist, has been said to represent 
 Spanish life and Spanish character more veraciously and more realistic- 
 ally than any other Spanish author. Dona Blanca de los Rios de 
 Lamperez, who has specially devoted herself to the study of Tirso's 
 life and works, after emphasising this point, remarks, that though 
 it is not true, as some have said, that " all his vigour is in his 
 women and all his weakness in his men," yet he seems to regard virility 
 as a quality apart from sex, and bestows it on women as well as on 
 men. 
 
 2 A. W. W. Dale, The Synod of Elvira, p. 172. 
 
THE WOMEN OF SPAIN 97 
 
 the Spanish woman, but it must always be 
 remembered that they are the expression of 
 corresponding qualities of intelligence and will. 
 The Spanish woman may be reticent and 
 reserved, as regards her most real self, but in 
 her most characteristic manifestations she is 
 prompt and witty and alert, like Altisidora in 
 Don Quixote, the ancestress of the girls whom 
 we meet again to-day in the plays of Serafin and 
 Joaquin Quintero, frank, independent, outspoken, 
 self-possessed, always charming. Even in the 
 most dubious avocations of life, the qualities of 
 Spanish women have been triumphantly vindi- 
 cated. In one of the earliest and most genuinely 
 Spanish of Spanish novels, La Lozana Andaluza, 
 which Francisco Delicado, a Spanish priest from 
 Cordova, wrote in Eome in the year 1524 for the 
 solace of his own sufferings, we have the whole 
 detailed and instructive history of a Cordovan 
 woman who was, as the author is careful to tell 
 us, the fellow-countrywoman of Seneca, not only 
 by birth but by intelligence and experience 
 and knowledge, while she was lozana, as he 
 also points out, in the full meaning of that 
 term, which implies beauty and elegance and 
 vivacity and frankness. Yet she was a courtesan. 
 At Carmona, near Seville, where she learnt the 
 occupation of a weaver, she was noted for her 
 beauty and her grace ; she was athletic also, for 
 we incidentally learn that she was in the habit 
 
 H 
 
98 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 of jumping over walls; and she had wit. 
 Aldonza was still young when she fell in love 
 with a handsome young Genoese merchant and 
 ran away with him, travelling much in the 
 Levant and elsewhere, and having several 
 children. He meant to marry her, but his 
 father interfered, separated them, and sent her 
 off, meaning her to be drowned, but she escaped 
 in her shift and holding a valuable ring in her 
 mouth, and came to Rome in the days of Pope 
 Leo X., when all the most pagan forms of 
 gallantry were held in honour. Aldonza here 
 falls in with a young valet, Rampin, who 
 becomes her lover as well as her servant, but 
 who is never jealous, and her career as a 
 courtesan begins. Delicado always insists on 
 the grace of his heroine, on her bold courage, on 
 her clever speech. She can be all things to all 
 men, " a Christian with Christians, a Jewess with 
 Jews, Turkish with the Turks, a hidalgo with 
 hidalgos, Genoese with the Genoese, and French 
 with the French." At the same time she is by 
 no means without the domestic virtues, and is 
 an excellent cook. Aldonza always remains very 
 Spanish even at Rome. " Spanish women are 
 the best and the most perfect," some one remarks 
 in this novel, even among courtesans. Aldonza 
 eays she believes it, for there are no such women 
 anywhere. Finally, she leaves Rome with her 
 old valet Rampin for the Island of Lipari ; here 
 
THE WOMEN OF SPAIN 99 
 
 she changes her name to Vellida, and finishes 
 her life in holy fashion — muy santamente — 
 according to the Spanish tradition, having, the 
 clerical author points out in a final defence of 
 his heroine, taken care always to earn her own 
 living, and never to offend God or injure her 
 neighbour. Thus nearly four centuries ago we 
 find clearly set forth in rough outline that type 
 of which Valera has given the finest and the 
 latest picture in Eafaela la Generosa. 
 
 La Lozana Andaluza, whether or not it 
 was founded on life, was quite true to life in 
 representing the success of Spanish women 
 as courtesans in the splendid Eome of the 
 Eenaissance. Tullia d' Aragona, the most dis- 
 tinguished among the Eoman courtesans of that 
 age, an almost austere figure indeed, commanding 
 the respect of the best men and women of her 
 time, is believed to have been Spanish, the 
 daughter of Cardinal d' Aragona, an illegitimate 
 scion of the Spanish royal family. 1 Isabella de 
 Luna, again, another famous Eoman courtesan of 
 the Eenaissance, was also Spanish. She had, 
 like Aldonza, travelled much, even in North 
 Africa, also following the Imperial Court to 
 Flanders, and she appears to have been a charming 
 and intelligent woman, much esteemed in Eome 
 and highly spoken of by Bandello. 2 
 
 1 G. Biagi, "Un Etera Romana," Nuova Antologia, 1886, pp. 655- 
 711. a A. Graf, Attraverso il Cinquecento, p. 234. 
 
100 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 It is so usual for writers on Spanish women 
 to dwell on the eminence they have attained as 
 queens and as saints, that it seemed as well to 
 point out that the great personal qualities of the 
 women of this race have been very far from 
 confining them to success in merely the more 
 honoured avocations of the throne and the con- 
 vent, or the more modern platform, but have 
 also enabled them to inspire respect and admira- 
 tion even in those walks of life which are counted 
 least honourable ; although it is perhaps a 
 significant fact that, as Emilia Pardo Bazan 
 remarks, the famous Spanish courtesans in the 
 sixteenth century, as well as to-day, have attained 
 fame and success in foreign lands, and been little 
 known in their own land. 
 
 Spanish women have likewise been pioneers 
 on the stage. According to Devrient, it was in 
 Spain that women first assumed women's parts, 
 although actresses appeared in Venice not much 
 later. Spanish actresses are mentioned in 1534, 
 in an ordinance of Charles V. 1 Shakespeare was 
 compelled to entrust his women's parts to boys, 
 but his Spanish contemporary, Lope de Vega, 
 could give his women's parts to women, to the 
 " divine " Antonia Granada and others. 
 
 Spanish women have often willingly sought 
 the convent and gained the highest fame there ; 
 St. Theresa, though sometimes counted the 
 
 1 Devrient, OescKichte der deutschen Schauspielkunst, 1848, vol. i. 
 
THE WOMEN OF SPAIN 101 
 
 victim of hysteria, 1 is deservedly considered the 
 greatest woman who ever lived in a cloister. 
 But if Spanish women have often willingly 
 entered the convent, they have sometimes will- 
 ingly left it, temporarily or for ever, for other 
 less spiritual occupations, even a military career 
 or the bull-ring, acquiring therein also both 
 success and fame. 2 Calderon was not violating 
 probability when, in the Devocion de la Cruz, he 
 represented a nun as escaping from the cloister 
 to become a captain of bandits, while the ex- 
 ploits of Emilia Pardo Bazan's heroine, Amparo, 
 
 1 The serious disorders which began to afflict St. Theresa at the 
 age of sixteen, and never entirely left her during the remaining fifty 
 years of her life, being doubtless also intimately connected with all 
 her activities and ways of feeling and thinking, are vaguely termed 
 "hysterical," but there is no exact agreement among even the most 
 competent medical authorities who have studied her history. Thus 
 while Georges Dunjas regards her as strictly hysterical, Pierre Janet 
 considers that she was a psychastheniac who, as it were, aspires to 
 hysteria, that is to say, seeks an automatism of action which she never 
 succeeds in attaining. (Discussion at the Soci^te de Psychologie, 
 Revue Scientifique, May 12, 1906.) But when morbid nervous and 
 psychic manifestations are combined with genius the results defy 
 even the most subtle analysis. An interesting picture of St. 
 Theresa's practical activities, it may be added, is presented in Mrs. 
 Cunninghame Graham's biography, Santa Teresa. 
 
 3 Thus Dona Maria de Gaucin, according to Mme. Dieulafoy 
 (Aragon et Valencia, 1901, p. 21), left the convent to become a torero, 
 in which career she was distinguished not only for her courage, but 
 also her beauty and virtue, and after a few years, during which she 
 attained renown throughout Spain, she peacefully returned to the 
 practice of religion in her convent, without, it appears, any reproaches 
 from the sisters, who enjoyed the reflected fame of her exploits in the 
 bull-ring. One of Goya's etchings in the Arte de Lidiar los Toros, I 
 may add, represents the " valor varonil " of " la celebre Pajuelera " in 
 the Plaza de Toros of Saragossa. 
 
102 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 in leading popular movements are strictly true to 
 life. When I was in Barcelona a few years ago, 
 during a great strike, when martial law was 
 proclaimed and sanguinary collisions took place 
 between the people and the military, it was 
 remarked that an unknown work-girl appeared 
 as an organiser and leader of the men on strike, 
 encouraging the waverers and bringing in new 
 recruits, finally disappearing, still unknown, into 
 the obscurity from which she had mysteriously 
 emerged. 
 
 It is not alone in movements of revolt that 
 Spanish women have been leaders. Concepcion 
 Arenal, one of the most distinguished women of 
 the nineteenth century, at first a poet and 
 novelist, then a collaborator with her husband, 
 a distinguished jurist, became a leader in various 
 social and moral reforms, more especially as they 
 affected Spain, and was marked by her sagacity 
 and good sense. Emilia Pardo Bazan — of aristo- 
 cratic origin, and belonging, like Concepcion 
 Arenal, to Galicia — is to-day the foremost woman 
 in Spain, and perhaps indeed the most notable 
 woman of letters in Europe. Above all a 
 novelist, she has in that field followed the 
 realistic traditions of Spain with some influences 
 from France, but with the versatility so usual 
 among the writers of her land, she has con- 
 cerned herself with criticism, sociology, and 
 many other subjects, always with brilliance, 
 
THE WOMEN OF SPAIN 103 
 
 insight, and sound knowledge. Like Conception 
 Arenal, she is vividly interested in the destinies 
 of her own country, and in all the questions 
 that affect its progress. 1 
 
 Spanish women are not highly educated, as 
 education is usually counted ; a large proportion 
 cannot even read or write. But there is perhaps 
 no European country where one realises so 
 clearly how little this really means. A Spanish 
 woman of the people, who finds it a laborious 
 task to write her own name, may yet show the 
 finest tact and knowledge in all the essential 
 matters of living. More than a century ago 
 Casanova remarked on the superiority of Spanish 
 women in intelligence. To-day Dona Pardo 
 Bazan similarly remarks that the women are 
 superior in intelligence to the men. She is 
 referring more especially to the upper classes, 
 but the same is perhaps true of the working 
 classes. Among these, as Posada observes, 2 
 whether in town or country, a woman receives 
 a preparation for life not inferior to a man's ; 
 she co-operates with men, and her work is often 
 identical with theirs and as capably accom- 
 plished, while among the middle classes the 
 women lead a life of marked inferiority, in 
 which it is extremely difficult for them to 
 
 1 Dona Pardo Bazan has written a long and interesting autobio- 
 graphical introduction to her novel Los Pazos de Ulloa. 
 
 2 Posada, Feminismo, p. 212. 
 
104 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 reveal their real qualities. It is probably among 
 the middle class that women appear to • least 
 advantage; lacking both the privileges of the 
 better classes and the freedom of the lower 
 classes, they are without opportunities for work 
 in the world, and are often reduced to a life 
 of cloistered vacuity. This is by no means a 
 survival of Moorish Spain, for the Moors not 
 only bestowed high honour on their women, but 
 a very thorough education. It is true that educa- 
 tion is open to women in Spain ; the universities 
 are not closed to them ; they may practise medi- 
 cine, although few have yet availed themselves of 
 this privilege. But opportunities for work are 
 few, and the ancient semi-oriental traditions in 
 favour of the secluded life of women still prevail 
 among the middle class. It requires great 
 courage and resolution for a Spanish woman 
 to strike out a path of her own. It is there- 
 fore all the more remarkable that women have 
 played a prominent part in Spain, and have had 
 the courage to face difficulties which are greater 
 than elsewhere, like Concepcion Arenal, who 
 adopted men's garments in order to gain a 
 university education, at that time not yet open 
 to women. 1 
 
 1 The adoption of male costume by women certainly occurs every- 
 where, but seems to be specially favoured in Spain by the difficulties 
 placed in the way of feminine careers. Not long ago, it is stated (in 
 1906), the authorities of Seville were surprised to discover that their 
 oldest and most respected police officer was really a woman. Nearly 
 
THE WOMEN OF SPAIN 105 
 
 It is noteworthy that, in spite of the efforts 
 of the Church, women have taken an enthusiastic 
 share in the progressive religious movements 
 which were symbolised a few years ago in 
 Perez G-aldos's play Electro, ; while in politics 
 they have always been ready to take the 
 advanced side. 1 As the social atmosphere be- 
 comes more favourable, we can scarcely doubt 
 that Spanish women will play their part in 
 directing the civilising influences of the twen- 
 tieth century. The very contrasts which they 
 present in character to the women of Anglo- 
 Saxon race, who have played so large a part in 
 the world, can only render their activities the 
 more valuable. The reckless self-abandonment 
 sometimes shown by the advanced woman in 
 pursuit of impersonal ends, her tendency to 
 unsex herself by imitating masculine methods, 
 are profoundly antagonistic to the temperament 
 of the Spanish woman, whose energy and good 
 sense are too solidly personal to be easily turned 
 aside into artificially masculine lines. 
 
 three centuries before, Dona Feliciana Enriquez de Guzman, a remark- 
 able lady of Seville, who wrote a dramatic poem and was an ardent 
 advocate of the most rigid school of classic poetry, pursued a course of 
 study, varied by love and adventure, in male costume at the Univer- 
 sity of Salamanca ; her life furnished suggestions for some old Spanish 
 plays, and was ultimately the origin of an episode in Gil Bias. 
 
 1 Thus in 1821 Pecchio wrote that all the pretty girls were Liberals 
 and in favour of the new Constitution, and he gives a delightful 
 picture of one, "a Spanish Corinne," who is engaged to a young 
 officer and loves Liberty as she loves her lover. 
 
IV 
 
 THE AKT OP SPAIN 
 
 Spain is not a land of great painters. That is a 
 fact we sometimes fail to realise at first. If we 
 come from Italy to the land of Velazquez we 
 perhaps expect to enter another paradise of 
 painting, strengthened in this by the knowledge 
 that even to-day Spain is producing brilliant 
 artists who rank high among European painters. 
 But it is not so. Spain has never been a 
 painter's paradise. Velazquez, one of the greatest 
 initiators in art, belonged to a race that showed 
 little artistic initiative, and the vigorous and 
 characteristic Spanish painters of to-day all 
 come from enterprising commercial communities 
 whose energies have chanced to overflow into 
 art. There has never been a time when Spanish 
 painting was really comparable to what, at 
 one time or another, Flemish, Tuscan, Venetian, 
 Dutch, and French painting have been. The 
 dominant note of the Spanish temperament, 
 even when Spain was a great world - power, 
 
 106 
 
THE ART OF SPAIN 107 
 
 was always character. ^Esthetic sensibility — 
 Velazquez always excepted — meets us nowhere 
 in Spanish art. The inspirations of art usually 
 came to Spain from outside. Keenly alive as 
 he was to the subtlest mysteries of religion, the 
 Spaniard disdained the refinements of artistic 
 delicacy ; he instinctively preferred a vigorous, 
 masculine, realistic grasp of things, even of 
 spiritual things. Spain is not the land of great 
 art but of great personalities, and Velazquez 
 towers as much above his fellow -painters as 
 Cervantes above his fellow-novelists. 1 
 
 Within the sphere of the plastic arts the real 
 predilection of the Spaniard is less for painting 
 than for architecture and sculpture. The Spanish 
 character has impressed itself on Spanish archi- 
 tecture with more complete and overwhelming 
 force than it has manifested in any other art, 
 although the essential ideas of this architecture 
 
 1 The great vogue which the Spanish school has always enjoyed 
 both in England and France is due to a succession of circumstances. 
 In the eighteenth century it was identified, not altogether unreason- 
 ably, with the late Italian schools and received the same high regard 
 as was accorded to them. When the romantic movement burst forth, 
 in literature with Victor Hugo and in painting with Delacroix, it was 
 instinctively attracted, and to some extent indeed inspired, by Spain, 
 the last home of romance, and Spanish painting was looked at with 
 fresh interest from another point of view. And when, later on, new 
 technical methods of painting appeared with Manet — who also in- 
 stinctively turned to Spanish painters and Spanish subjects long 
 before he paid his one brief visit to Spain — these new ways of approach- 
 ing the problems of light and colour led to the triumph of Velazquez, 
 who was found to have been the leader, three centuries ago, in the 
 most modern movement of the conquest of painting over Nature. 
 
108 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 have all been borrowed. In most countries 
 architecture, however national it may seem, has 
 expressed the ideals of a few choice spirits. We 
 must go back to ancient Rome, almost to Egypt, 
 to find a people who have affirmed themselves 
 in building so emphatically as the Spaniards. 
 For sculpture, also, the native taste is deep- 
 rooted. The Visigoths were atttracted to sculp- 
 ture. Even the prehistoric Iberians had a 
 vigorous school of sculpture, based on Greek 
 and Asiatic sources and attaining an individu- 
 ality of its own, though sculpture starting from a 
 similar combination is found in Etruria and in 
 Cyprus. 1 The best of these Iberian sculptures 
 are absolutely distinctive and original, though 
 founded on combined elements. The men, says 
 Professor Pierre Paris of Bordeaux, who has 
 more especially studied this field of prehistoric 
 art, are simple and virile, the women are dis- 
 tinguished by dignity of attitude and nobility of 
 face, expressive of deep religious gravity. In 
 the folds of their royally luxurious garments 
 and in their hieratic head-dresses, in their 
 priestess -like chastity, they betray Chaldsean 
 ideas transmitted through Egyptian channels and 
 with Greek influences in the general style. The 
 Lady of Elche, the bust in the Louvre which 
 Pierre Paris, in agreement with Eeinach, dates 
 
 1 Engel, Nouvelles Archives des Missions Scientifiques, 1892, tome iii. 
 p. 180. 
 
THE ART OF SPAIN 109 
 
 about 440 B.C., is the supreme type of primitive 
 Iberian sculpture, a work that is very attractive 
 in its curious originality and seems to have 
 come from the hand of a sculptor who was the 
 fellow-countryman of the captivating Spanish 
 woman whom he has immortalised. 1 How 
 genuinely Spanish the Lady of Elche is we 
 may realise by the resemblance she bears to 
 Velazquez's " Woman with the Fan," who, how- 
 ever, has grown older and more tired and is no 
 longer beautiful. 
 
 In more modern times none of the world's 
 famous sculptors have been Spaniards, but the 
 amount of beautiful or imposing sculpture to be 
 found throughout Spain in churches and cloisters 
 is extraordinary. Like the painting, it is seldom 
 exquisite — Spain has produced no Donatello — 
 but it is various, vigorous, romantic, in the 
 
 1 " In her enigmatic face," Pierre Paris writes, " ideal and yet real, 
 in her living eyes, on her voluptuous lips, on her passive and severe 
 forehead, are summed up all the nobility and austerity, the promises 
 and the reticences, the charm and the mystery of woman. She is 
 Oriental by her luxurious jewels and by a vague technical tradition 
 which the sculptor has preserved in the modelling ; she is Greek, even 
 Attic, by an inexpressible flower of genius which gives to her the same 
 perfume as to her sisters on the Acropolis ; she is above all Spanish, 
 not only by the mitre and the great wheels that frame her delicate 
 head, but by the disturbing strangeness of her beauty. She is indeed 
 more than Spanish : she is Spain itself, Iberia arising still radiant 
 with youth from the tomb in which she has been buried for more than 
 twenty centuries " (Pierre Paris, Essai sur VArt et V Industrie de 
 VEspagne Primitive, 1903-4, vol. ii. p. 308). By virtue of the symbolic 
 character which Professor Paris thus eloquently ascribes to her, the 
 Lady of Elche appears at the front of the present volume. 
 
110 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 highest degree. The wonderfully preserved 
 tombs in such cathedrals as those of Toledo, 
 Zamora, and Leon can hardly be matched else- 
 where for fine conception and interesting detail. 
 Spanish wood-carving is not less fascinating and 
 is even more distinctively Spanish, though its 
 first inspirations are believed to have come from 
 Flanders or Holland. 1 This medium lent itself 
 happily to the finely expressive and realistic 
 manner of the Spaniard, 2 and in this art he 
 found not only scope for his fantastic extrava- 
 gance and his naturalism, but he attained also a 
 delicacy and loveliness which we usually miss in 
 Spanish art. Nearly every great Spanish church 
 has carved walnut-wood stalls which are treasuries 
 of delight, each with its own special character. 
 It seems to have been the freedom and facility 
 of wood which enabled the Spaniard, whose aim 
 was ever expressiveness, to attain such success 
 in this medium. For a different reason he was 
 equally successful in the use of iron ; here ex- 
 travagance as well as grotesque realism is 
 
 1 Valladolid is specially rich in these sculptured wooden figures. 
 "There is," as Emilia Pardo Bazan truly says in describing this aspect 
 of that city, " a mingling of classicism in the modelling of the flesh 
 and draperies, of romanticism in the expression, of realism in the 
 colouring and details, which make of this sculpture in wood the seal 
 and symbol of our national genius and our religious ideal. " 
 
 2 The naturalistic tendencies of Spanish sculpture and wood-carving 
 have always been recognised. In an interesting pamphlet (summarised 
 in Nature, Nov. 2, 1899, p. 15) Dr. E. S. Fatigati shows, as is indeed 
 fairly obvious, that from the sixth century onwards a close study of 
 plant life and animal life is clearly reflected in Spanish sculpture, 
 
THE ART OF SPAIN 111 
 
 inevitably checked, and for the combination of 
 restrained boldness with harmony the ironwork 
 screens of Spanish churches, notably at Seville, 
 Toledo, and Granada, cannot be surpassed. 
 
 Spanish people, with their predominantly 
 serious character and their impulse for strong 
 expression, are innately dramatic. They have 
 produced a long succession of fine playwrights 
 and good actors, continued up to the present 
 day. They are instinctively dramatic even in 
 their gestures and speech. Nowhere, it seems 
 to me, is this more marked than in Aragon, and 
 Aragon is probably the chief focus of Spanish 
 sculpture. There can, I think, be little doubt 
 that the Spanish predilection for sculpture — for 
 the moulding of wood and stone and iron — and 
 the high level of accomplishment here reached, 
 are founded on impulses which are also expressed 
 in Spanish life and literature. They are the 
 natural artistic outcome of the predominance of 
 character in the Spanish temperament. 
 
 The seriously realistic and dramatic tendencies 
 of Spanish art may perhaps seem strange to those 
 who couple Spain vaguely with Italy as "the 
 South." Italy we are accustomed to regard — 
 not quite accurately, for among its greatest 
 poets Italy produced the sombre figures of 
 Lucretius and Dante — as a land of sunny idle- 
 ness and facile enjoyment, where lazy and 
 picturesque peasants bask in the sun by the 
 
112 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 blue sea, ready to be transferred to the drop- 
 scenes of theatres. That is a vision we must 
 not usually expect to see in Spain, either in the 
 actual Spanish landscape or in Spanish pictures. 
 It has indeed often seemed to me that the 
 meteorological effects of the climate of Central 
 Spain have had not merely an indirect but even 
 a direct influence on the most typical Spanish 
 painters. The hard and violent effects, the 
 sharp contrasts, the strong colours, the stained 
 and dusky clouds, looking as if soaked in pig- 
 ment, may well have affected the imaginations 
 of the artist, and a Castilian sunset often seems 
 to have a real affinity with many a canvas of 
 the most typical Spanish painters. However 
 this may be, we find in Spain a more extreme 
 south united to a more extreme north than Italy 
 ever shows us. And just as Norway and Africa 
 meet in the Spanish climate, and Visigoths and 
 Moors in the Spanish people, so Flanders and 
 Naples meet in Spanish painting. 
 
 The basis of Spanish painting is northern and 
 Flemish ; even Italian influences, it has been 
 pointed out, first reached Spain through Flemish 
 channels ; the spirit of Flemish art, its realism, 
 its dramatic veracity, its deep and serious feeling, 
 were altogether congenial to the Spanish tempera- 
 ment. We hear of Jan van Eyck travelling in 
 the peninsula ; Roger van der Weyden's pictures 
 were evidently greatly admired, for we find some 
 
THE ART OF SPAIN 113 
 
 of the finest in Spain to-day, and his dramatic 
 force and intense religious feeling could not 
 fail to make a strong appeal to the Spanish 
 temperament; Gherart David, who also has 
 strong Spanish affinities, may likewise be seen 
 in many parts of the country. 
 
 On this Flemish basis arose a long school 
 of painters whose names are little if at all 
 known ; they have been treated with undeserved 
 neglect by their fellow-countrymen, for while 
 Flemish in inspiration, they represent a really 
 Spanish development which, if it had not been 
 largely overwhelmed by other influences, might 
 have led to fine results in the line of the national 
 genius. The two chief representatives of this 
 movement are Luis de Dalmau of Barcelona and 
 Alejo Fernandez of Cordova. Dalmau's chief 
 work, the altar-piece now in the Museo Municipal 
 of Barcelona, was painted soon after the great 
 masterpiece of the van Eycks at Ghent, which 
 in some respects it recalls, and it has a generally 
 Flemish character, representing yellow - haired 
 and yellow-eyed women, and black-haired men, 
 as we often see them in Flemish paintings ; but 
 it remains a little stiff in its forcefulness, although 
 quite a beautiful, harmonious, decorative picture. 
 Fernandez, who painted somewhat later, at the 
 beginning of the sixteenth century, is a much 
 more charming and more individual artist. 
 His Madonna with Angels at Triana is the most 
 
 i 
 
114 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 delightful picture the early Spanish painters 
 have given us ; in its general aspect as well as 
 in much of its detail it is Flemish, without the 
 Flemish stiffness and indifference to beauty, for 
 there is an almost Italian grace and ease about 
 it, and the Angels recall Filippo Lippi. 
 
 But this orderly development on a Flemish 
 basis towards a Spanish ideal was roughly de- 
 stroyed by the eruption over Europe of that new 
 kind of art which had grown up in Italy. Early 
 Spanish art melted at the touch of this powerful 
 solvent as swiftly as the early Flemish art from 
 which it sprang. The Italians in their fine 
 climate, where any wall would do to paint on, 
 had had a long training, and their aesthetic 
 sensibility, their instinct for design, enabled 
 them to use with complete mastery the methods 
 of self-expression they had evolved. But their 
 slowly acquired freedom acted as a swift poison 
 on the artists trained in the sober and realistic 
 traditions of the Flemish school. Freed from 
 their bonds to tradition, and at the same time 
 losing their loving and reverent devotion to 
 Nature, they could not, like the Tuscans, trust 
 to their own happy inspiration ; they became 
 licentious in technique, shallow in feeling, 
 insipid and extravagant in design. It is rare 
 indeed to find any fine artistic personality 
 behind the wildly flowing draperies of the facile, 
 superficial canvases of these painters ; their art 
 
THE ART OF SPAIN 115 
 
 interests us scarcely more than that of Vasari. 
 Great as was the fascination exerted by the new 
 and free art of Italy, it seldom so far inspired 
 the Spaniards as to enable them to work truly in 
 its spirit. Here and there in sculpture we catch 
 a glimpse of that spirit, and the great sixteenth 
 century retablo of the church of San Jeronimo 
 at Granada is a beautiful and harmonious work 
 in the Italian manner, though without any obvi- 
 ous imitation. In painting, Eoelas of Seville has 
 a sweet and gracious charm which is also Italian 
 rather than Spanish. As we see his work in some 
 of the Seville churches, he combined something 
 of the Venetian spirit of Titian with the Anda- 
 lusian spirit which reached its climax in Murillo, 
 while yet retaining an attractive personality of 
 his own. 
 
 Another artist who was not only a Venetian 
 in artistic origin but a foreigner by birth and 
 race, Theotocopuli, commonly called El Greco, 
 ranks among the chief pioneers of Spanish 
 painting, and has even been regarded as the first 
 in time of the characteristically Spanish masters. 
 He came from Venice, and his early affinities 
 were mainly with Tintoret. He was already an 
 accomplished Venetian painter, but after he 
 had settled in Toledo, to spend a long life 
 there, he slowly acquired a new manner of 
 his own, highly individual, even morbidly 
 eccentric, yet at the same time in many respects 
 
116 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 genuinely Spanish. From being almost com- 
 pletely neglected, of recent years a reaction has 
 set in towards the opposite extreme, and by 
 some Spaniards Greco is now placed on nearly 
 as high a pinnacle as Velazquez. 1 His extreme 
 individuality, the sincerity with which he followed 
 his own mannerisms to the utmost, so that one 
 is inclined to say that even the smallest fragment 
 of a Greco canvas could be immediately recognised 
 as the work of the master, scarcely suffices, 
 however, to make a painter of the first order. 
 
 1 In 1906, when it was reported that Greco's most famous picture, 
 the "Burial of Count Orgaz," was to be sold and taken out of the 
 country, there was a great outcry in Spain at this " sacrilege and 
 profanation." The demand was made on this occasion that all tin 
 works of art in churches and monasteries should be declared national 
 property, or a law passed, on the lines of the Italian law, though less 
 extreme, to keep them in the country. Zorilla, when Minister of 
 Public Works in the Revolutionary Government of 1868, issued a 
 decree empowering the State to take possession of collections of art 
 and science belonging to religious bodies, to prevent them from being 
 diverted from public use or sold ; but the clergy were greatly agitated, 
 and threatened to assassinate the officials charged with the execution 
 of the decree, which was never carried out. A serious and difficult 
 problem is, indeed, presented by the immense amount of priceless and 
 unique artistic treasures whioh are stored in the churches throughout 
 Spain. Now that their value is becoming recognised, it is difficult 
 for their present possessors to guard them adequately even against 
 ordinary thieves, and many daring robberies have taken place (as 
 lately from the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela), while the 
 slowly growing antagonism between the Church and the people will 
 introduce more risks of devastation, such as occurred in England in 
 the seventeenth century and in France in the eighteenth. On the 
 other hand, the Church will certainly maintain its rights jealously in 
 this as in other respects, and it must be admitted that the artistic 
 loss would be great if the treasures of Spanish churches were to be 
 stacked in museums after the manner now followed in most other 
 countries. 
 
THE ART OF SPAIN 117 
 
 The reckless and frantic effort of his inspiration 
 lacks the genius which could alone justify it. 
 " His pictures might at times," as Mr. Eicketts 
 says, " have been painted by torchlight in a cell 
 of the Inquisition." He is lashed and tormented 
 by his vision, but is seldom able to embody it. 
 Even his generally acknowledged masterpiece, 
 the " Burial of Conde Orgaz," at Toledo, — 
 although comparatively restrained, full of fine 
 passages and ideas, and at the time of its 
 production as great a picture as had ever been 
 painted in Spain, 1 — can scarcely be said to be 
 among the great pictures of the world. The 
 general design of it — the group of bending 
 figures around- the supine form, and the super- 
 natural circle of figures in the clouds behind — 
 had been a familiar composition among Byzantine 
 artists centuries before, 2 as it remained after- 
 wards, well illustrated by Zurbaran's "Funeral 
 of a Bishop" in the Louvre. Powerful and 
 impressive as the work undoubtedly is, the 
 individual portraiture of the bystanders, and 
 the realistic detail of their costumes, clash with 
 the larger religious significance which the painter 
 has sought to give to his work ; the religious 
 
 1 Justi, usually temperate in his judgments, declares that this 
 picture is "in his worst style," surely a difficult opinion to maintain. 
 
 2 See, e.g., the " Dormition of the Mother of God," a fourteenth 
 century Byzantine fresco in the church of Santa Maria di Cerrati near 
 Lecce in Otranto, illustrated in Bertaux's great work, L'Art dans 
 Vltalie Miridionale, vol. i., and compare a pen-drawing by an eleventh 
 century Benedictine monk on p. 201 of the same volume. 
 
118 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 significance is unachieved, and, on the other 
 hand, the episode depicted and its supernatural 
 accompaniments are not felt to aid the singularly 
 fine row of portrait heads resting on their white 
 ruffs which chiefly draw our attention. In his 
 more purely religious and supernatural scenes, 
 Greco was sometimes imaginative but more 
 often bizarre in design and disconcerting in his 
 colouring, with its insistence on chalky white, 
 his violet shadows on pale faces, his love of 
 green. 1 Yet his colouring was his greatest and 
 best discovery. His distorted fever of move- 
 ment — the lean twisted bodies, the frenzied, 
 gesticulating arms, the mannerism of large 
 calves that taper down to pointed toes — usually 
 fails to convince us. But in the audacities of 
 his colouring he revealed the possibility of new 
 harmonies, of higher, brighter, and cooler keys 
 of colour than had before been achieved, and 
 along these lines he was destined to inspire a 
 more consummate artist than himself. Greco 
 was usually at his best in portraiture ; 2 here he 
 
 1 The predilection for green is interesting, and one of the numerous 
 points in which Greco anticipated the characteristics of the Spanish 
 school, for green has usually been prominent on the Spaniard's 
 palette, and has remained so — sometimes, as in Fortuny's pictures, 
 becoming very insistent. 
 
 2 In an interesting study of Greco ("A Study of Toledo," Monthly 
 Review, March 1901) Mr. Arthur Symonshas finely characterised these 
 portraits, in which " there is a certain subdued ecstasy, purely ascetic, 
 and purely temperamental in its asceticism, as of a fine Toledo blade, 
 wearing out its scabbard through the mere sharpness of inaction . . . . 
 Their faces are all nerves, distinguished nerves, quieted by an effort, the 
 
THE ART OF SPAIN 119 
 
 reached a high degree of distinction, refining on 
 the methods of Tintoret, bringing out the charm 
 of his women sitters and the aristocratic qualities 
 of his men, imparting to them something of that 
 consuming febrile and neurotic energy which is 
 the special characteristic of his own art and 
 doubtless his own personality — possibly the 
 source of the legend of his madness — while it 
 sorts so well with the city of his adoption. This 
 haughty and aristocratic quality in Greco — a 
 Spanish quality again, though most Spanish 
 painters revealed in their art their often plebeian 
 origin — led him to follow out his own aims in 
 disdain of the art around him, and together with 
 certain qualities in his colouring it may have 
 been an inspiration to Velazquez, who seems to 
 have learnt from Greco, although his sane and 
 solid genius instinctively rejected the bizarre 
 elements in his predecessor's work. Carrying 
 his own individuality to the utmost limits, Greco 
 was a real liberating force in Spanish art. 
 
 For the most part, as we have seen, the hard, 
 deep -feeling, individualistic, sometimes rather 
 violent temper of the Spaniard could not be 
 conciliated with the spirit of Italy. But at last 
 a really fertile seed from Italy was scattered 
 on Spanish soil. It was altogether of novel 
 
 faces of dreamers in action ; they have all the brooding Spanish soul 
 with its proud self-repression." The general characters of Greco's 
 art are discriminatingly set forth by Mr. Ricketts in his book on 
 The Prado (pp. 23-31). 
 
120 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 character, and it came from the south of the 
 Italian peninsula, a region allied to Spain, for 
 Naples and Sicily, unlike Northern Italy, are 
 African in their affinities ; they were, moreover, 
 for a long time under Moorish influence, and 
 they had subsequently become part of the great 
 domain of Spain. 1 
 
 The rough, stern, realistic art of Naples, 
 veracious and dramatic, but revealing little 
 delicacy of aesthetic sensibility — mainly em- 
 bodied for us in the work of Caravaggio and 
 Salvator Rosa — was a vigorous revolt against 
 the shallow and feeble forms of later North 
 Italian art, and the insipidities and inanities 
 into which that had at length fallen. 2 But it 
 is necessary to remember that the Neapolitan 
 school was only in a very slight degree made up 
 of South Italians ; nearly all its leaders reached 
 Naples from elsewhere. It must also be re- 
 marked that the Valencian school of Spain was 
 developing out of the Bolognese school along 
 the same lines as the Neapolitan school, and the 
 Valencian Bibalta — with his strong lighting and 
 vigorous modelling — was the master of Ribera. 
 
 1 "And truly in my opinion," wrote Howell from Naples in 1621, 
 "the King of Spain's greatness appears here more eminently than in 
 Spain itself." 
 
 2 This tendency was not, however, of late appearance. The mosaics 
 of Southern Italy (as illustrated in the first volume of Bertaux's 
 L'Art dans Vltalie M&ridionale), unlike those of Byzantine art 
 generally, are often singularly vigorous and dramatic, with figures 
 in high relief on a dark background. ■< 
 
THE ART OF SPAIN 121 
 
 The decisive factor, moreover, in concentrating 
 the realistic revolt of late Italian art in Naples 
 seems to have been the fact that Naples had 
 then long been under Spanish rule, and that to 
 the Spaniards this kind of art was as congenial 
 as it was alien to Italians generally. The 
 Neapolitan painters were thus in a double sense 
 a branch of the Spanish school. In this way it 
 came about that Eibera the Valencian — Lo 
 Spagnoletto, as he was called in Italy — a leader 
 of Neapolitan art, was not only born in Spain, 1 
 but is rightly counted as in every sense one of 
 the glories of Spanish art. 
 
 Eibera's best works are scattered, — though a 
 special room is now devoted to him in the Prado, 
 — but any one who has been able to obtain a 
 comprehensive vision of them as a whole can 
 scarcely fail to come to the conclusion that after 
 Velazquez there is no greater figure in Spanish 
 art. It may be admitted that Eibera is very 
 unequal, and that in facile and obvious charm 
 he is not usually conspicuous. It is possible to 
 turn away from many of his pictures with the 
 
 1 As Salazar has finally proved ("La Patria e la Famiglia dello 
 Spagnoletto," Atti del Congresso Internazionale di Scienze Storiche, 
 1903, vol. vii. sezione iv.), Ribera was born at Jativa in Valencia, of 
 Spanish parents, although the family shortly afterwards migrated to 
 Naples, where the painter married an Italian wife and eventually 
 died, probably at Posilippo, in 1652. Jativa, a fortress amid a 
 paradise of flowers and fruit, was also the home of the Borgias, and 
 at one time a stronghold of Valeneian revolt ; it is still a centre of 
 Anarchism. 
 
122 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 feeling that they are sombre, harsh, violent, if 
 not indeed sometimes brutal. We have to re- 
 member that he came first, and that Velazquez 
 followed him, while Murillo began by being 
 frankly his imitator. The profound originality 
 of Eibera is shown by the complete manner 
 in which, though seemingly inspired by foreign 
 influences, he expresses and works out the 
 genius of his own people. The qualities of 
 Spain, as we know, are the qualities of char- 
 acter. The art of Eibera is the manifestation 
 of this temper, earnest, profoundly emotional, 
 almost exclusively religious, yet nearly always 
 realistic, and invariably dramatic. So dramatic 
 is he, and so anxious to expend all the resources 
 of his art in bringing his figures into the 
 strongest relief, that we might regard him as 
 really, by instinct, a sculptor. He was born on 
 the confines of Aragon, a centre of sculpture, 
 the most national of the plastic arts of Spain, 
 and no other Spanish painter has so persistently 
 conceived the scene before him from the sculp- 
 tor's point of view, that is to say, as sculpture 
 has been understood by the dramatic and 
 realistic Spaniard, like Montanes, who designed 
 some of those noble and poignantly life-like 
 images which are still borne in procession at 
 Seville in Holy Week. The robust vigour of 
 Eibera's art is compensated and completed by 
 his essential tenderness. In the power of 
 
THE ART OF SPAIN 123 
 
 rendering loving devotion, of tender abandon- 
 ment, associated with religious emotion, Ribera 
 not only surpasses all his countrymen, but is 
 scarcely excelled outside Spain. His Magdalene 
 in the Prado caressing a skull succeeds in 
 imparting the simple sincerity of true feeling 
 to a stereotyped scene which the painter has 
 usually found it very difficult to realise con- 
 vincingly. In the National Gallery " Entomb- 
 ment " the attitude of the stooping St. John at 
 the Saviour's feet, with bowed head covered by a 
 waving wealth of golden hair, is singularly char- 
 acteristic of Ribera ; and not less so, in a well- 
 known picture in the Louvre, the dead Christ, 
 whose mass of brown-black hair mingles with 
 shadows of the same tint. In such pictures we 
 see those sombre and deep tones of emotional 
 colour, the rich dusky harmonies which have so 
 often haunted Spanish artists down to Gandara 
 and Zuloaga, but have never been so strongly 
 and splendidly achieved as by Ribera. He 
 remains the most superb and original colourist 
 of Spain, a strayed Venetian whose emotional 
 tone is yet entirely Spanish. The crowning 
 proof of Ribera's artistic strength and his power 
 of rendering ecstatic emotion is furnished by the 
 great " Conception " which hangs over the high 
 altar in the Church of the Augustinas Recoletas 
 in Salamanca. The fine blending of modesty 
 and pride in the Virgin's face and erect figure 
 
124 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 is here triumphantly attained ; in one effort 
 Eibera has not merely succeeded where Murillo 
 after him so often lavished his labour in vain, 
 but he challenges comparison with Titian. 1 
 
 It was not merely in painting ecstatic Virgins 
 in the clouds that Murillo sought to follow 
 Eibera. In much of his early work he moulded 
 himself on Eibera at every point. Before an 
 "Adoration of the Shepherds " in the Murillo room 
 at the Prado it is difficult to realise that we are 
 not in the presence of a characteristic work of 
 the earlier master ; there is the same colouring, 
 the same realism, the same type of Virgin's face ; 
 even the angel who seems so characteristic of 
 Murillo we find fully developed in the white- 
 winged angel, robed in golden brown and purple, 
 of the "San Pedro in vinculis" of the Eibera room. 
 Murillo, it is true, left out the occasional brutal 
 crudity of Eibera, but he also left out his force 
 and sincerity and dramatic veracity. 
 
 The supremacy of Velazquez — whose early 
 work also exhibits, though in a less definite 
 degree, the influence of Eibera — among the 
 painters of Spain is to-day unquestioned, nor is 
 there much question that among the artists of 
 the world he stands in the first rank, in certain 
 
 1 Eibera was often singularly happy, far beyond any other Spanish 
 painter, in the difficult task of combining nobility with fresh human 
 sweetness in his Virgins. This is, for instance, well illustrated in 
 the delightful " Holy Family " which is the most interesting picture in 
 the little visited Museo Provincial at Toledo. 
 
THE ART OF SPAIN 125 
 
 respects, indeed, unsurpassed and unsurpassable. 
 But Murillo, once counted as more than the 
 peer of Velazquez, has fallen from his high estate 
 in critical estimation, though his popularity 
 among the masses, in and out of Spain, remains 
 unaffected by the discussions of critics. His real 
 position, we shall probably not err in concluding, 
 is neither so high nor so low as opposing factions 
 have placed it, and we may agree with those who 
 would rank him not far from Andrea del Sarto. 
 He has suffered from his popularity and from the 
 critical reaction aroused by that popularity. But 
 as in the case of his in many respects greater 
 contemporary Vandyke, we must allow due 
 weight to real charm and genuine accomplish- 
 ment, however much we may be affected by the 
 absence of those qualities which are essential to 
 the making of the greatest art. Murillo was 
 lacking in original force : the methods, the aims, 
 even the favourite designs, of the first period of 
 his art were, as we see, largely impressed on him 
 by the puissant genius of Kibera ; and the modi- 
 fications which his style underwent later in life, 
 while doubtless more peculiarly personal, were of 
 no great artistic significance. He was an artist 
 of feminine and receptive temperament, a realist 
 indeed, but with no virile force, inapt to express 
 the vigorous dramatic qualities which most 
 natively find expression in Spanish art. But his 
 hand was highly accomplished and his taste 
 
126 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 showed a finer sensibility than is common in 
 Spain ; he was sensitive to beauty, especially to 
 the idyllic beauty of homely landscape scenes 
 (though he was here largely a follower of 
 Bassano), and to the plebeian charm of the Spanish 
 peasant. His quick eye and ready hand were 
 forced to adapt themselves to the needs of a city 
 in which beauty was dedicated almost altogether 
 to the service of religion. That circumstance, 
 though it led to the production of pictures which 
 made Murillo's fame, has yet been unfortunate 
 for his reputation in the highest sense. Of all 
 Spanish painters, Murillo alone, the genuine 
 child of Andalusia, may be said to represent the 
 spirit of what we term the " South." For that 
 very reason, perhaps, he was not so typically and 
 essentially Spanish as Eibera was. He was 
 without the Spanish dramatic aptitude, without 
 the sincerity of intense religious feeling. Murillo's 
 famous Virgins in the clouds, after the manner of 
 Ribera's great Salamanca " Conception," however 
 delicious the glowing haze in which they live, 
 are nearly always pretty peasant girls, posing in 
 beautiful robes that do not belong to them, and 
 simulating ecstatic emotions they have never felt. 
 His other religious pictures are similarly gracious 
 and charming, similarly unconvincing. When 
 we can forget that we are looking at a religious 
 picture, or when the painter was free to devote 
 himself to frankly secular subjects, we can better 
 
THE ART OF SPAIN 127 
 
 enjoy the qualities of his art. It is true that his 
 beggar-boys are just as deliberately and self- 
 consciously picturesque as his saints are de- 
 liberately and self-consciously holy. Still, no 
 other Spanish painter has so agreeably seized the 
 peasant life of Spain, or rather of Andalusia, at 
 the points where it fell in harmoniously with 
 his own pretty mannerisms ; in this field, indeed, 
 he sometimes seems both sensitive and sincere, 
 able to present life for what it is worth. Even 
 the absence of dramatic instinct helped him here. 
 His love of beauty and refinement, especially 
 when manifested in a plebeian shape, his idyllic 
 feeling for the beauty of pastoral repose in a 
 patriarchal age, — illustrated by many of the 
 pictures at the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, — his 
 softly bright and luminous colouring, his facile 
 skill in realistic detail — all these things must 
 make Murillo a fascinating and peculiar figure in 
 Spanish painting, though they cannot enable us 
 to place him beside Velazquez and Eibera. 
 
 His proper rank is more nearly with Zurbaran, 
 unlike as in many respects the two artists are — 
 Murillo, who came somewhat later, the more 
 skilled and versatile master of his art ; Zurbaran, 
 a more natively dramatic realist, and with a far 
 more sincere and profound religious instinct, the 
 finest type of the realist as religious visionary. 1 
 
 1 The significance and importance of Zurbaran have only been 
 realised during recent years. The comprehensive exhibition of his 
 
128 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 But they were alike in their refinement of 
 nature, the delicacy of their realism, their 
 genuine love of plebeian human nature, Zurbaran 
 always remaining more direct in his vision, more 
 unaffected in his execution, a man of very humble 
 soul, perhaps too humble for a great artist, con- 
 tent to be on the earth, and by preference in a 
 cloister, never eager to climb, as Murillo was, 
 on to a cloud. 
 
 Zurbaran was a native of Estremadura, the 
 province that lies between Castile on the north 
 and Andalusia on the south, and this position 
 seems accurately to account for his spiritual 
 attitude. He had much of the Andalusian 
 sweetness and cheerful contentment, but at the 
 same time in his dramatic vigour, his intense 
 fervour, his genuine preoccupation with religion, 
 he was intimately related to Castile. Technically, 
 his pictures are often uninteresting because he 
 
 works in Madrid during 1905 (which I was unfortunately unable to 
 see, although in Spain at the time) has largely contributed to this 
 recognition. Lord Leighton, however, a very well-informed and often 
 judicious critic of Spanish painting, wrote with enthusiasm nearly 
 twenty years ago of Zurbaran, as "a man of whom we have in this 
 country but little knowledge, a painter of conspicuously powerful 
 personality, in whom more than in any of his contemporaries the 
 various essential characteristics of his race were gathered up — its 
 defiant temper, its domestic bent, its indifference to beauty, its love of 
 fact, its imaginative force, its gloomy fervour, its poetry, in fact, and 
 its prose. Murillo was truly Spanish, no doubt, but had neither the 
 imagination nor the sustained virility of style of the son of the 
 peasant from Estremadura, the completest representative in art, I 
 think, of the genius of his race." There is, however, much in this 
 eloquent estimate which seems more accurately applicable to Eibera. 
 
THE ART OF SPAIN 129 
 
 is nearly always dominated by the instinct to 
 convey his religious feelings and ideas as simply 
 and sincerely as he can. Murillo was a religious 
 painter, because the age would not allow him to 
 be anything else. But Zurbaran was entirely in 
 harmony with the religious spirit of his age. He 
 is a Spanish Fra Angelico, that is to say, a very 
 realistic Angelico, whose knees rest always firmly 
 on the earth. 
 
 The great period of Spanish painting was 
 comprised within the first half of the seven- 
 teenth century. It died even more completely 
 and suddenly than the contemporaneous efflor- 
 escence of Spanish drama, and almost at the 
 same time. The life of Velazquez ended iu 1660, 
 and that of Calderon, who outlived most of his 
 fellow - dramatists, in 1681. The ancient and 
 vigorous school of Venice, with which the 
 Spaniards had so often come in touch, con- 
 tinued within narrowed channels alive and alert, 
 retaining its aptitude for new developments, 
 and in Guardi at all events stretching forwards 
 towards modern art, but Spanish art had lost 
 all vitality. Not one notable figure emerges 
 until we reach Goya towards the end of the 
 eighteenth century. In this man of Aragon, 
 the son of poor labourers, and showing in his 
 portrait the very type of the shrewd and keen 
 Aragonese peasant, we have a genuine and ener- 
 getic renascence of the Spanish spirit in art. 
 
130 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 He shows, indeed, some suggestions of French 
 influence ; for, with fundamental differences, it is 
 not difficult to feel now and again in his work 
 the hardness and pseudo-classicality of David, 
 while we miss also the substantial solidity of 
 the old masters and their aristocratic instinct. 
 But, on the whole, with his versatile aptitudes 
 and wide-reaching interests, Goya represents the 
 Spanish temper and Spanish interests more com- 
 prehensively than any other Spanish painter. 
 He has finally escaped from the control of the 
 Inquisition, which fettered his predecessors, and is 
 a little intoxicated with his freedom. Eeligion, 
 the prime interest of Old Spain, is a negligible 
 element in his art. It is, indeed, a fact of some 
 significance in estimating the spiritual outlook 
 of Spain, that since Zurbaran there has been no 
 great Spanish religious painter. Goya touched 
 Spanish life vividly and alertly on every other 
 side ; he has all the fantastic energy of Spain, 
 some of his pictures are like pungent political 
 pamphlets, he illustrated fully all the aspects 
 of Spanish popular and festive life, technically 
 in a versatile and experimental way which is 
 always interesting, though, except in a few 
 occasional sketches and etchings, it seldom 
 reaches consummate achievement. Some of his 
 drawings, in their superb dash and felicity, are 
 almost comparable to Eubens's sketches, though 
 again, in the Caprichos and other etchings, their 
 
THE ART OF SPAIN 131 
 
 beauty and spirit, their vigour of line and ex- 
 pression, tend often to fall into caricature. And 
 in his personal life he exhibited just the same 
 versatile and audacious temper, ready with his 
 sword, competent to play his part in the bull- 
 ring, at one time abducting a nun from her 
 convent, at another time carrying on a public 
 liaison with a duchess of the Court, and painting 
 her (according to an unproved tradition) in his 
 "Maja Desnuda," as Manet afterwards painted 
 the less distinguished "Olympia" of the Louvre. 
 And while he was at heart and in life a typical 
 Spaniard, Goya was also a nervous and restless 
 modern, indeed with some claim to be accounted 
 the earliest of modern painters. 
 
 Goya marked, however, a real revival in 
 Spanish painting, which has continued to the 
 present time, although, with the possible ex- 
 ception of Zuloaga, it has not produced any 
 figure of the first rank. For the most part the 
 Spanish painters have allied themselves with 
 those of France and have sought training and 
 fame in Paris. Such an approximation was 
 natural and inevitable, even apart from the 
 unique reputation which Paris has long enjoyed 
 as an art centre. France has been the last of 
 the great European countries to attain serious 
 and deliberate self-consciousness in painting, and 
 ever since that development has taken place the 
 French painters of the south-west have frequently 
 
132 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 shown characteristics of colouring and design 
 which recall the Spaniards. The influence of 
 France has not, however, destroyed the specifi- 
 cally national qualities of Spanish painters, not 
 even when they chanced to be born on French 
 soil. Thus Diaz, who played a prominent part 
 in the French romantic movement, remained 
 Spanish in the large and masculine effects of 
 his best work, and in the peculiar suppressed 
 richness of passionate colour which we may 
 sometimes note in the painters of Spain. 
 
 At the present day nearly all the Spanish 
 painters of repute, unlike their ancient pre- 
 decessors, are either Basques or, more especially, 
 Catalans ; belonging, that is to say, to the Spanish 
 populations which in other fields also are most 
 energetic and successful. The chief representa- 
 tive of the Basques is Zuloaga, to-day the most 
 distinguished of Spanish painters, the most 
 brilliant exponent of the finest Spanish tra- 
 ditions ; while first among the Catalans conies 
 Anglada-Camarasa, a great master of luxuriant 
 and yet refined colour, the Spanish violence 
 tempered harmoniously by Spanish sobriety. 
 Sorolla, another artist of European reputation, 
 belonging to Valencia, is also truly Spanish, 
 a master of broad and energetic effects. The 
 Luxembourg possesses a choice collection of 
 modern Spanish paintings, and in the Paris 
 Salons there is always much Spanish work, 
 
THE ART OF SPAIN 133 
 
 clearly characteristic, and mostly with that bold 
 and ostentatious brush-work, once the method 
 of Velazquez and after of Hals, which has since 
 become a fashionable acquirement rather than 
 the inevitable outcome of any psychological 
 necessity. In its origin, however, it seems the 
 expression in painting of a combative and war- 
 like temperament, the transformation into art of 
 valour, that fundamental quality of the Spaniard, 
 so that before it one may feel as Brantdme felt 
 when he saw the Spaniards riding to the wars 
 in Flanders, like princes in their arrogant and 
 insolent grace. 
 
V 
 
 VELAZQUEZ 
 
 In a little room of the Prado Museum, specially 
 constructed for this end, stands the large picture 
 of Velazquez's last period which has long been 
 known as "The Maids of Honour," Las Meninas. 
 It is a simple scene in the artist's studio, viewed 
 as the King and Queen, who stood at the same 
 point as the spectator now stands — we see them 
 reflected in the mirror in the background — once 
 viewed it during a moment of rest in the course 
 of a royal sitting. There in the centre is the 
 little princess about to accept the refreshment 
 offered by one of the charming maids of honour ; 
 there are the two court dwarfs with the big dog 
 who is stolidly reposing ; and there, on the left, 
 is the painter himself, erect, with his large canvas, 
 facing us and the royal couple. A typically 
 Spanish picture, indeed the most instructive 
 representation we possess of the life led by 
 
 134 
 
VELAZQUEZ 135 
 
 Philip IV., it is a natural, unstudied scene, painted 
 in a natural, unstudied way, with large, light, 
 seemingly careless strokes, yet with no parade 
 of assertive brush-work, so that at a little dis- 
 tance the picture presents a smooth surface. 
 Gently, calmly, neither as master nor as slave, 
 but courteously in the Spanish manner, as an 
 equal, the painter seems to stand face to face 
 with Nature. We feel that this is less a picture 
 that has been painted by a brilliant and deliberate 
 expenditure of pigments than a vision that has 
 been mysteriously evoked and that floats before 
 us in its own atmosphere. If by a " miracle " 
 we mean an event in which the effect is beyond 
 measure out of proportion with the seeming 
 simplicity of the cause, then we may say that of 
 all the great pictures of the world this may most 
 precisely be called miraculous. 
 
 Whether the men of Velazquez's day realised 
 that a miracle had here been performed there is 
 no evidence to tell ; more likely they considered 
 that the excellent Court painter had properly 
 done his duty, as every Court functionary, 
 whether painter, barber, or buffoon — they were 
 officially classed together — ought to. The 
 earliest known utterance concerning the picture 
 is indeed one that finely reveals a sense of its 
 greatness, but it was made thirty years after 
 Velazquez's death, and by a foreigner. When 
 Luca Giordano came to Madrid — an accomplished 
 
136 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 painter, but a man of a sensitive and receptive 
 temperament which was a fatal endowment in 
 an age of artistic decay — it is recorded that he 
 said to Charles II. : " Sire, this is the theology 
 of painting ! " But it is an utterance that 
 stands alone. At that time, and for long after- 
 wards, Velazquez had no real and deep influence 
 on art and artists. Frans Hals, indeed, in the 
 land that politically had shaken itself free of 
 Spain, while always possessing something of the 
 Spaniard's fiercely independent spirit, had illus- 
 trated the technical tendency of the painter's 
 craft along certain lines to follow spontaneously 
 the evolution revealed in Velazquez's work while 
 still almost his contemporary. There we see 
 something of the same qualities of brush-work 
 without the greater qualities of Velazquez, and 
 in the wonderful pictures of the Stadthuis in 
 Haarlem, painted at the age of ninety, the final 
 development of his art, Hals at last reaches up 
 towards Velazquez. The painter, we feel, is 
 physically aged and frail, his colouring is often 
 decomposed, here and there we are only conscious 
 of strange masses of pigment, but his intellect is 
 still sturdy and clear ; the old man's hand 
 trembles, but his vision has become, at last, as 
 the vision of Velazquez. Hals stands alone as 
 Velazquez stands alone. 
 
 To-day, when we see that every modern 
 movement in painting has been to some extent 
 
VELAZQUEZ 137 
 
 forestalled by Velazquez, when such great and 
 diverse initiators as Corot and Manet, whose 
 originality cannot be contested, may alike be 
 said to have conscious or unconscious points of 
 departure here, it is difficult to realise that in 
 the eighteenth century, when Raphael Meugs 
 revealed him to Europe, a hundred years after 
 his death, as " the first of naturalists," Velazquez 
 still seemed without significance. Reynolds, it 
 is true, admired a picture of Velazquez's ; it is 
 said that he pronounced the portrait of Inno- 
 cent X. " the finest picture in Rome " ; he copied 
 it; he also copied one other picture in Rome, 
 Guido's " St. Michael." I do not think there is 
 a single reference to Velazquez either in his 
 Discourses or his Notes of Travel ; he probably 
 regarded the Spaniard as a brilliant outside 
 member of the Venetian school, not worth any 
 special separate characterisation. Wilkie, in 
 1828, rediscovered Velazquez (but only appre- 
 ciated his earlier work), and twenty years later 
 Sir William Stirling - Maxwell wrote the first 
 notable biography of the artist. 1 Half a century 
 later, in 1899, the third centenary of Velazquez's 
 birth, henceforth become alike a national and 
 an international festival, was celebrated by the 
 construction of a new hall in the Prado for the 
 
 1 In later years R. A. M. Stevenson's fresh, charming, and finely 
 appreciative little study of Velazquez (1895) has probably done 
 much to make the painter popular and intelligible in England. 
 
138 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 reception of his chief pictures, and within it, this 
 special shrine for " Las Meninas," now for the 
 first time clearly to be seen. 
 
 Here, as of old to the shrine of Spain's patron 
 saint at Compostela, a ceaseless stream of 
 pilgrims nowadays arrives from all parts of 
 the world. The artists in every field come here, 
 with the mob which blindly follows their lead. 
 Here, on the one hand, might once be seen the 
 great actress, Eleanora Duse, spending hours, 
 day after day, during the time she was playing 
 in Madrid, before " Las Meninas," and on her last 
 visit, the longest of all, suddenly walking up to 
 a bewildered attendant to exclaim, before she 
 almost ran out of the long gallery, " Eso es un 
 teatro real ! " And here also, on the other hand, 
 may be seen the American tourists who are 
 driven up to the door in flocks, and march 
 rapidly through the Prado in the track of a 
 guide who hastily names the masterpieces in 
 broken English. The tramp of their weary 
 globe-trotting feet echoes afar, and once as they 
 pass two ladies for a moment sink down on the 
 bench before one of the greatest and loveliest of 
 these masterpieces, "Las Hilanderas." "How 
 interesting it all is ! " exclaims one lady with 
 seeming effusion to the other, who hastens to 
 agree. " But," rejoins the first lady — seriously, 
 evidently coming to the point — "do you like 
 it?" And then they rise to follow the loud 
 
VELAZQUEZ 139 
 
 metallic voice of the guide already receding into 
 the distance. That is what fame is. The artists 
 and the mob alike, in their own different ways, 
 bear witness to Velazquez's fame. 
 
 II 
 
 Like Cervantes and the other great figures of 
 a land which has ever been noted for strength 
 of character, for individuality, for the fine play 
 of spontaneous energy, Velazquez stands alone, 
 almost outside tradition, comparatively unrelated 
 to his predecessors, teachers, and fellows. Still, 
 no artist, however aboriginal his impulses may 
 be, can stand altogether free from the influences 
 of environment and tradition. Velazquez, re- 
 sistant as he was to even the most seductive 
 alien influence, was sensitively alive to every- 
 thing that could aid his own proper development. 
 
 We must always remember that Velazquez 
 belonged to Seville, the great commercial metro- 
 polis of Spain, practically a maritime city. The 
 other two great centres of painting in those 
 days, Venice and Antwerp — as Bruges earlier 
 and Amsterdam later — were also great seaports, 
 commercially linked with all that was rich and 
 strange and beautiful in the farthest East and 
 the farthest West. Such centres were naturally 
 the homes of great schools of painting; their 
 cosmopolitan atmosphere favoured an attitude of 
 
140 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 aesthetic detachment, their mercantile activity 
 brought in all the marvellous exotic products 
 which stimulate and develop artistic activity, 
 and the wealth of their merchants enabled the 
 painters who thus arose to work out to the full 
 the energy within them. The artists of each 
 race put into their work the spirit of their race 
 — the Fleming his excessive energy, his delight 
 in gorgeous colour, the Venetian his calm and 
 massive satisfaction in the sensuous beauty of 
 man and woman, in the joy of dreamful repose 
 — but only the splendour and wealth of great 
 maritime centres could stimulate the racial spirit 
 to embody a personal vision of the world in 
 pigments. 
 
 Seville was then at the height of its glory. 
 What it was once we may still judge by its 
 vitality and delightfulness even to-day. It was 
 not only the most living city in Spain, it was 
 at one moment the most conspicuous city of 
 Europe, the commercial metropolis of the New 
 World, the haven of those galleons whose almost 
 fabulously rich cargoes so mightily impressed at 
 once both the piratic and the poetic sides of the 
 English temper, that to our insular imaginations 
 they have passed into the realm of fairyland. 
 For a brief period Seville was the centre of the 
 commercial world, and for a race so uncom- 
 mercial as the Spanish, so swift to barter 
 merchandise for those causes of devotion or of 
 
VELAZQUEZ 141 
 
 pride that lay nearer to their hearts, this in- 
 evitably meant the profit of art, above all, of 
 religious art. The quiet eye and laborious 
 hands of the men of Bruges and Amsterdam 
 were largely devoted to reproducing the precise 
 lineaments of the strange and beautiful things 
 that their ships brought to their quays. The 
 indolent and haughty Spaniards showed no such 
 preoccupation. The art of Seville was mainly 
 religious art; the Madonna, then as now, was 
 worshipped there with peculiar fervour. The 
 Spanish pictures of that epoch scarcely show the 
 faintest signs of Spain's vast colonial empire — in 
 large measure, it may well be, because Spain 
 traded little with the more refined countries of 
 the East, but chiefly, we may be sure, because of 
 the temper of the race. Yet in the inevitable 
 cosmopolitan influences of such a centre of life 
 on so keen an eye and so profound an intellect 
 as Velazquez, lay certainly one of the factors in 
 the great artist's detachment from the world he 
 scrutinised so keenly. 
 
 To understand Velazquez, however, we must 
 not forget his race. On the mother's side he 
 was a Spaniard, an Andalusian hidalgo of 
 Seville, a Velazquez. 1 This maternal ancestry 
 
 1 I adopt, with some hesitation, the usual Spanish form of this 
 name, instead of the traditional English form, Velasquez, but I am 
 not prepared to dispute the use of the latter form. It was used by 
 Velazquez himself, and it doubtless corresponds to his own Andalusian 
 pronunciation. Even if we regard it as an Anglicised form, justifica- 
 
142 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 was certainly a primary factor in making him 
 a painter, for the Portuguese, though not with- 
 out instincts of art, have, somewhat strangely, 
 seldom shown any real aptitude for painting. 
 But at the same time it scarcely seems altogether 
 to account for the temper of his work. There 
 are qualities in Velazquez's work which we find 
 little if at all in the painters of Spain, while 
 some of the most conspicuous features of pure 
 Spanish art are lacking. Certainly, the Spanish 
 artists were realists, but no purely Spanish artist 
 was ever so radically and unfailingly naturalistic 
 as Velazquez. In the others there is usually 
 some other element which comes into conflict, 
 often rather disastrous conflict, with their 
 realism, especially excess of religious fervour 
 and excess of plebeianism. By both these traits, 
 Velazquez, though he lived in the atmosphere 
 that was peculiarly favourable to their develop- 
 ment in his friends and fellow-pupils, was wholly 
 untouched from first to last. He maintained 
 with absolute calm his own position of inde- 
 pendence, and developed with solid tenacity 
 and sobriety his own convinced and instinctive 
 naturalism. 
 
 Velazquez's father was a Silva, of noble and 
 ancient family, belonging to Oporto. The 
 
 tion may be found in many analogous cases. It is worth noting that 
 the English way of spelling Don Quixote, though it is not the modern 
 Spanish way, is yet the way that Cervantes wrote it. 
 
VELAZQUEZ 143 
 
 Northern Portuguese are a solid, large-bodied, 
 robust race, famed for the beauty of their 
 women, and distinguished by their fierce and 
 resolute spirit of freedom. Oporto first arose 
 to shake off the Moorish yoke, and the men 
 of Northern Portugal still to-day represent 
 the ancient Portuguese, a race of sturdy and 
 prosperous farmers, of fearless navigators who 
 preceded the English in sailing to far seas and 
 seizing strange lands. That Velazquez was the 
 son of a Portuguese father, of race alien to the 
 grave, indolent, sensuous Andalusians, was doubt- 
 less a significant factor in constituting the special 
 temper of his work. 
 
 Young Velazquez early learnt Latin and 
 philosophy, and showed a taste for the sciences. 
 But he chose to be a painter, and as the family 
 seems to have possessed some means, this resolve 
 indicates a real vocation. The youth was placed 
 with Herrera, a powerful painter, but too indi- 
 vidualistic a personality to be a good teacher ; 
 and Velazquez left him in a few months to go to 
 Pacheco, who, although he designed interesting 
 portraits, was scarcely a painter at all, but an 
 excellent teacher, a genuine lover of the art in 
 which he showed so little power to excel. An 
 adherent of the old-fashioned school of the 
 "Mannerists," who adored Baphael, Pacheco 
 was yet a man of wide culture and knowledge, 
 a sympathetic critic, an esteemed and influential 
 
144 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 person in Seville, where indeed - his house seems to 
 have been the chief intellectual centre, almost an 
 academy. He quickly realised both the personal 
 and the artistic worth of Velazquez ; he gave 
 him his daughter in marriage, and never ceased 
 to speak highly of him, coupling him, indeed, 
 with Caravaggio and with Bibera, whom he 
 rightly regarded as the greatest colourist of the 
 time. One is tempted, indeed, to think that 
 Eibera's art had a direct influence on Velazquez's 
 early work ; the " Aguador " of Apsley House, for 
 instance, the finest of his early works, distinctly 
 recalls the methods of Eibera, though it has a 
 calm dignity which is peculiarly personal to 
 Velazquez. But it is asserted that at this period 
 there were no pictures of Eibera's in Seville 
 for Velazquez to see, and if this is so all we 
 can say is that he began his artistic career in 
 the traditions of a school in which Eibera was 
 the supreme representative. He soon began to 
 grow out of these traditions, but never abruptly, 
 never do we find him making any sudden turns 
 in the wrong direction. He always moved 
 slowly and deliberately along the straight path 
 which his own temperament and genius marked 
 out. Not even the most powerful and seductive 
 artistic personalities with whom he came in con- 
 tact had any influence in drawing him out of 
 this path. Nearly every picture of Velazquez 
 has its own individuality and novelty, yet 
 
VELAZQUEZ 145 
 
 always remaining the spontaneous outcome of 
 his own genius. After the early days of his 
 apprenticeship to art only one painter, El Greco, 
 had any direct and definite influence in modify- 
 ing his technical processes ; and even this influ- 
 ence, which came late, after he had settled in 
 Castile, may be said to be in the line of his own 
 native growth. Greco had died before Velazquez 
 was born ; his master Pacheco had known the 
 strange Toledan painter in old age, and referred 
 to him as " a great philosopher," but it was not 
 until Velazquez had reached the point at 
 which Greco's example could be helpful that he 
 allowed himself to be influenced by it. His 
 earlier pictures are based on dull reddish pig- 
 ments, as commonly used by the Bologna 
 school ; these tend to darken and to come to 
 the surface, so that Velazquez's early pictures 
 have lost in quality. He slowly began to reject 
 this method, and after he had painted " Vulcan's 
 Forge," and probably also "Christ at the 
 Column," when approaching the age of forty, it 
 is evident that he turned seriously to the study 
 of Greco. He began to use a white or grey 
 ground as a basis (as indeed the old Flemings 
 had done also) ; he learnt the use of delicate 
 greys in flesh colour ; he adopted something of 
 Greco's freedom in draperies ; he enriched his 
 palette with several new colours, especially 
 carmine, which he found in Greco, and silvery 
 
 L 
 
146 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 tones succeeded the dryer and harder burnt 
 tones of his earlier work. And at length also 
 (after his second Italian visit) his figures became 
 bathed in atmosphere. Later, as he approached 
 his fiftieth year, he acquired his breadth of 
 touch, aided in this, no doubt, by the normal 
 presbyopia of advancing age, which made it 
 necessary to stand farther from the picture. At 
 the same time he evidently worked more and 
 more rapidly ; the preparation, in uniform grey, 
 became slighter and slighter, scarcely at last 
 covering the canvas, the texture of which, though 
 usually fine, may frequently be seen through 
 it ; latterly also he used very fluid colours, 
 obtaining almost the effect of water-colours. It 
 is to these technical methods that the freshness 
 and permanence of the pictures of the third 
 period are mainly due. But the three periods 
 merge into each other very gradually ; we may 
 probably, with Beruete, regard the " Borachos " as 
 the culmination of the first period, the " Lances " 
 as summing up the second, and " Innocent X." 
 (painted during the artist's second visit to Italy) 
 as the inauguration of the third. 
 
 If any further condition was necessary to 
 complete the good fortune of Velazquez, it was 
 that he became the privileged servant and 
 favourite painter of the King of Spain. Kings 
 have often been admirable connoisseurs of art, 
 and no other profession affords such an aesthetic 
 
VELAZQUEZ 147 
 
 braining as that of a king. It was always so to 
 some extent, for pillage and tribute have ever 
 brought the finest products of barbarism to royal 
 palaces, but it was especially so in the later days 
 of the Eenaissance. A seventeenth - century 
 royal palace was the haven of all lovely and 
 exquisite things. The promotion of art and the 
 patronage of artists, from Hampton Court to 
 Moscow, had become one of the chief duties 
 of a sovereign, and the final effervescence of 
 the Eenaissance, extending to every country 
 in Europe, furnished ample opportunity for the 
 exercise of such duties. Moreover, the life of 
 a king is largely taken up in the contemplation 
 of spectacular effects. During the whole of his 
 active career he is the chief witness, often a 
 passive witness for very prolonged periods, of 
 the most varied and gorgeous spectacular effects 
 which the skill of his age can devise. Thus he 
 is under the very best conditions for heightening 
 aesthetic perception, for breeding disgust of the 
 merely gaudy and vulgar. It may be doubted 
 whether any Englishman of his age had a finer 
 judgment in pictures than Charles I. There is 
 no reason to suppose that any Spaniard of his 
 age had more highly trained aesthetic perceptions 
 than Philip IV. Certainly we could have no 
 better proof of his taste than his unfailing allegi- 
 ance to the genius of Velazquez. It has taken 
 the world nearly three hundred years to reach 
 
148 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 a conclusion which Philip acted on from the first 
 and throughout. 
 
 An apartment of the old royal palace, the 
 Alcazar, was given to Velazquez as a studio, 
 and here he spent the greatest part of his life, 
 and painted all his most famous pictures. The 
 Alcazar — which occupied the site of the present 
 palace — was a vast and sombre building, dating 
 from Moorish times, and it was the seat not 
 only of the Court, but of the whole government 
 of the Spanish Empire. The rooms of the 
 palace, we are told, were large and very gloomy, 
 doubly contrived to shut out both the blazing 
 summer sun and the freezing winter blasts of 
 that lofty plain, whose keen air Charles V. found 
 so good, but which scarcely commends itself as a 
 wholesome climate for the rest of the world. 
 Even if we were without knowledge of the spot 
 where Velazquez was chiefly accustomed to live 
 and work, we should be tempted to find it in 
 the gloomy heights of ancient apartments, and 
 the long perspective of corridors and rooms 
 beyond, that enlarge and contract the area of 
 distant space. I have already insisted on the 
 peculiar aloofness and independence of Velazquez, 
 his strange impermeability to outside influence. 
 He never imitated his early teachers ; he lived 
 in close intercourse with Eubens, the most 
 fascinating and masterful painter of his time, 
 and developed indeed, but he was never tempted 
 
VELAZQUEZ 149 
 
 to try to paint as Rubens painted. He went 
 to Venice, which he probably regarded as the 
 supreme home of art, studying not only Titian 
 but also Tintoret, who had already grappled 
 with some of the problems that specially attracted 
 himself, and developed always, but always along 
 his own lines. He lived and painted in Eome, 
 whose imperial voice has drowned the native 
 inspirations of so many artists ; and he painted 
 some of his most original and most modern 
 works, of the seductive influence of Rome 
 showing no faintest traces. The gloomy Alcazar 
 alone left at last its impress on the least impres- 
 sionable of painters. Before he went to Madrid, 
 the problem of painting a room full of space 
 had never occupied him ; in the Alcazar that 
 problem occupied him more and more, and the 
 most triumphant achievements of his so-called 
 third period mark the final conquest of his 
 genius over the problems so persistently pre- 
 sented to him by the vast and sombre palace 
 in which most of his life was spent. Indeed, 
 the greater part of Velazquez's work may be 
 said to show this influence. The bare and lofty 
 rooms, filled with luminous gloom, in which the 
 human figures seem to play so small a part, and 
 leading not, like those De Hoogh delighted to 
 paint, into dazzling sunshine, but into a further 
 region of space only less dim, with many other 
 characteristics of Velazquez's work, must be 
 
150 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 traced to the old Moorish Alcazar. The long, 
 straight, vertical lines, which so often prevail 
 in his pictures of interiors, are those which are 
 inevitably conditioned by the vision of lofty 
 apartments seen in gloom. Velazquez delighted 
 in painting those narrow, high, many-pannelled 
 doors, such as we see anywhere in Spain to-day, 
 leading into the smallest rooms, and fashioned 
 by the Spaniard of old to the height of his 
 pride, rather than of his physical stature. Such 
 doors have moulded the scheme of some of the 
 painter's most characteristic works. The extreme 
 reticence of Velazquez's exquisite colouring, 
 though it was encouraged by such an environ- 
 ment as he found himself in, lay certainly deeper 
 than any influence of environment. There are, 
 in the ordinary sense, few great colourists in 
 Spanish art, when we have put aside Greco, who 
 was not a Spaniard, and Eibera, who worked 
 outside Spain. There is, indeed, little real sense 
 for colour in the Spanish genius, a fact that 
 is the more surprising when we remember the 
 unfailing instinct for colour shown to-day by 
 the Moors, in their costumes and many of their 
 industrial arts. In Spanish life the intoxication 
 of colour is certainly present, but for the most 
 part crude and heady, with the ring of tam- 
 bourines and castanets in the blaze of it. 
 
 The genius of Velazquez may even be said 
 to have been aided by the character of the royal 
 
VELAZQUEZ 151 
 
 models whom it was his chief duty to paint. 
 His brilliant and accomplished contemporary, 
 Vandyck, lived in England and painted the 
 fresh and handsome young cavaliers of the 
 Renaissance world that was soon to be sub- 
 merged, looking at them with eyes trained in 
 an exotic civilisation, and painting them witb 
 that touch of idealism that was needed to make 
 those barbarians altogether delightful in our 
 eyes. Velazquez painted that mournful house 
 of Hapsburg, and the strange creatures who 
 allied themselves with it. The Hapsburgs have 
 exhibited a more strongly marked facial type 
 than any other in history — a facial type that 
 dates, as Count Zichy, who has studied them, 
 shows, at least as far back as two great- 
 grandmothers of Charles V, both belonging to 
 the royal house of Portugal, and is still per- 
 petuated to-day. In Velazquez's day the Haps- 
 burgs were falling to a very low level, both of 
 mental and physical anomaly or decay. Philip 
 himself preserved mental integrity, but at what 
 effort and cost we may realise as we gaze at 
 the familiar face Velazquez has immortalised, the 
 unbalanced face with its unchanging aspect of 
 profound and hopeless melancholy. There is, at 
 least, distinction in such decadence ; the deca- 
 dence of his consort Mariana (who was also his 
 niece) is merely vulgar, with her thick nose s 
 infantine empty eyes, and haughty upraised 
 
152 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 lips — an almost imbecile little hoyden, bound 
 round by the iron hoops of court etiquette. The 
 outcome of such a union we see in the portrait 
 at Vienna — as painted by Velazquez's pupil, 
 Carreno — of Charles II., a young man with loose 
 feeble face, great fleshy nose, and, larger than 
 ever, the protruding lower jaw and lip, a pathetic 
 image of imperial idiocy. It was on these, and 
 such as these, that Velazquez spent his keen 
 intellect and unfailingly sincere eye, his special 
 genius for concentrating the maximum of truth 
 into an indubitable picture, an unquestionable 
 vision of loveliness. These terrible faces, these 
 sombre ugly garbs, seem to be specially contrived 
 to wring from such a nature as that of Velazquez 
 the most exquisite effects the art of painting can 
 yield. 
 
 Velazquez idealised these types in the only 
 way in which such types could be idealised, 
 not by attenuating or disguising their repulsive 
 or unamiable traits, but by realising them to 
 their fullest extent, sensitively, sincerely, 
 harmoniously, with penetrating intellectual 
 comprehension. It is the dignity of complete 
 realisation, never pushed to caricature, never 
 made an excuse for the artist's cleverness at 
 his model's expense, which ennobles even the ' 
 degraded dwarfs and buffoons whom Velazquez 
 so often painted. We see each of them here 
 absolutely himself, in every feature and gesture ; 
 
VELAZQUEZ 153 
 
 it is the triumphant assertion of Spanish gravity. 
 Beruete remarks that Velazquez spent a large 
 part of his career in chanting a hymn to 
 ugliness. But this reverent yet serene impar- 
 tiality in the face of all the manifestations of 
 life was far from involving any predilection for 
 ugliness. I even doubt whether Velazquez 
 knew what ugliness was. It was not ugliness 
 or beauty that he saw, but life and character, 
 the spirit vivifying every line and movement 
 of the body. He paints the inspired sculptor 
 Montanes with the same fine realisation as the 
 vacuous buffoon or the narrow-minded Pope ; 
 he is equally incomparable when he has before 
 him a gracious or noble woman. It is only 
 when his task calls him outside of life aiid 
 nature that we learn that there are limitations 
 to an intellect that seems so endlessly subtle 
 and a hand that answers to it so truly. He 
 painted life divinely, but when he undertook 
 to paint what men are pleased to consider as 
 the divine — the allegorical, the mythic, the 
 supernatural — the result is no longer divine. 
 Nothing shows this more clearly than the 
 " Coronation of the Virgin " ; here is the 
 boundary against which the art of Velazquez 
 beats in vain. No painter, except Leonardo, 
 gives so profound an impression of intellect, 
 but it is intellect that works exclusively 
 through the eyes. With closed eyes he could 
 
154 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 see nothing, so that all that world which we 
 call " ideal," and often think so important, 
 was almost a blank to him ; he became as 
 helpless, as artificial as the artists of third- 
 rate rank. His intellect came through his eyes, 
 which turned a new and living mirror on to 
 every new and living scene, and revealed it 
 as it is, but at its best. Conventions and 
 traditions, those tricks of the studio which even 
 the great artists had been content to accept, 
 for the most part fell away, nor were substituted 
 by any fresh mannerisms of his own. Each 
 new subject, each new scene, called for its own 
 interpretation. That is why any attempt of 
 later artists to build up a convention on the 
 basis of Velazquez is bound to be a failure. 
 Whistler, in one of his best -known pictures, 
 takes a pretty little Anglo-Saxon child and 
 places her chin stiffly in the air, like Queen 
 Mariana's, and puts her in an environment 
 that vaguely suggests the severity of a Spanish 
 palace, and we exclaim, " How like Velazquez ! " 
 Yet nothing could be less in the spirit of 
 Velazquez. 
 
 His royal model helped Velazquez further 
 by the speed with which it was necessary to 
 paint a monarch who was absorbed in affairs. 
 The swift, simple methods, the thin coats of 
 pigment, the daring contrasts, the impressionistic 
 manner which Velazquez slowly evolved, might 
 
VELAZQUEZ 155 
 
 possibly never have attained full development 
 except under stress of the necessity of per- 
 petually painting a busy monarch absorbed in 
 affairs of state and pleasure. Here, however, 
 there was probably another factor of more 
 organic character. Velazquez clearly was a 
 man of great personal charm. But he possessed 
 a temperament of passive indolent melancholy, — 
 phlegmatic apathy Philip IV. considered it, — a 
 haughtier form of that serious indolence which 
 everywhere marks the Andalusian, in painting 
 as in life generally. Whereas, however, that 
 indolence has often led to shallowness and 
 crudity in painting, in this case it was checked 
 by the veracity and profound artistic conscience, 
 the energetic Portuguese element in the man. 
 Velazquez expended tremendous energy in 
 acquiring the art of putting a minimum of 
 energy into his work. Progress in the practice 
 of art, as in the theories of science, may well 
 be by leaving out, by simplification, but nothing 
 is so laborious as learning what labour we may 
 omit. Scarcely one of the great painters of the 
 world has left less work behind than Velazquez. 
 Every picture that he painted may be said to 
 be an experiment, and in every case the problem 
 was to attain a more complete representation of 
 the visible world with an economy of pigment 
 and a more subtle appeal to the eye. 
 
 I have tried to indicate briefly what seem 
 
156 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 to me the sources of the main elements that 
 went to the making of this supreme manifesta- 
 tion of the art of painting. Race, ancestry, 
 birthplace, and all the circumstances of training 
 and environment and work, had their part in 
 making Velazquez the artist who now after 
 three centuries is only beginning to be realised 
 in his true significance. All these various 
 circumstances served to enhance that special 
 quality of distinction — of aristocratic reserve 
 and restraint of visible effort — which slowly 
 dominates the whole work of Velazquez, and 
 remains the last impression which the memory 
 of his pictures leaves on the beholder. 
 
 Ill 
 
 It is in the Prado alone that it is possible fully 
 to realise the genius of Velazquez. The works 
 of no other great painter have been so little 
 dispersed by the vicissitudes of time. Velazquez 
 painted for the Kings of Spain, and in the 
 Royal Gallery his pictures still remain. At 
 Vienna, indeed, there are some of his pictures, 
 and more that have been wrongly ascribed to 
 him. But outside Madrid, England alone can 
 be said to be rich in the possession of works 
 by Velazquez, in part owing to the admiration 
 which has here been felt for this great master 
 ever since the eighteenth century, and in part 
 
VELAZQUEZ 157 
 
 to the close connection of England with Spain 
 in the Peninsular War. If, as Justi says, al] 
 the works of Velazquez scattered over England 
 were brought together, London would possess 
 a collection worthy to compare even with that 
 in the Prado. 1 As it is, however, the National 
 Gallery may be said to contain distinctly the most 
 varied and interesting collection of Velazquez's 
 works outside Madrid, even apart from the fact 
 that it possesses in the " Venus and Cupid " the 
 greatest picture of his which has left Spain. 
 
 After Madrid, London is, then, the only place 
 in which it is possible to make any serious study 
 of Velazquez. In the case of a painter who 
 needs so much study before his charm can be 
 experienced, this is a fact that is well worth 
 emphasising. Any one can persuade himself 
 that he likes the Italians, even the early 
 Italians. The northern painters are more slow 
 to yield their secret ; it may be only by a 
 process comparable to religious conversion that 
 the greatness of Kubens can be grasped. But 
 Velazquez is the last of all to reveal his fascina- 
 tion; it is with him especially that we need 
 to remember the saying of Schopenhauer, that 
 
 1 In the Exhibition of Spanish Art at the New Gallery in 1895 
 there were forty-three pictures by, or attributed to, Velazquez, and in 
 the Exhibition of Spanish Pictures at the Guildhall in 1901 there 
 were forty-one, many not included in the previous exhibition ; while 
 Williamson enumerates over one hundred pictures in Great Britain 
 attributed to Velazquez, outside the National Gallery. 
 
158 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 before a great artist, as before a king, we must 
 remain silent until be speaks first. As not 
 all can go to Madrid, and tbose wbo go can 
 seldom stay long enougb to understand wbat 
 tbey see, tbe Spanish Eoom in the National 
 Gallery well deserves our attention, and pre- 
 sents, moreover, some obscure but attractive 
 problems which it may be worth while to 
 discuss, however briefly. 
 
 Three, at least, of the pictures in this room 
 rank among Velazquez's very fine work : the 
 superb " Venus and Cupid," the " Boar Hunt," — 
 though it has clearly lost much of its freshness 
 and charm through being burnt and darkened 
 in the disastrous fire at the Alcazar, and sub- 
 sequently repainted, 1 — and the bust portrait of 
 Philip IV., an exquisite example of the technical 
 qualities of Velazquez's late work in portraiture 
 which it is interesting to compare with the 
 commonplace full-length portrait of the Bang 
 of early date which hangs opposite. 
 
 Among the others there are several to which 
 no doubt or difficulty attaches. There is, for 
 instance, the very curious " Christ in the House 
 of Martha." This is one of the earliest of Velaz- 
 quez's extant pictures. Beruete puts it at the 
 head of his list of the authentic works, and 
 
 1 The "Boar Hunt" was repainted in England by Lance and 
 others, but in what portions, and to what extent, are questions that 
 have been much debated. 
 
VELAZQUEZ 159 
 
 Ricketts remarks that it shows the influence of 
 Pacheco ; the same model seems to have been 
 used as in the picture of about the same date, 
 also in England, of the " Old Woman making an 
 Omelet." For a long period the large and in 
 many respects rich and fine picture of the " Ador- 
 ation of the Shepherds" was, especially in 
 England, also considered to be an early Velaz- 
 quez. Armstrong regarded it as a work of 
 Velazquez in the manner of Eibera ; Ford called 
 it a copy of Eibera ; Justi was of the same 
 opinion, believing that only the Madonna re- 
 vealed Velazquez's own manner. In Spain, 
 however, even in the early part of the last 
 century, the picture was considered to be an 
 early work of Zurbaran ; so also Viardot re- 
 garded it. Beruete states that the Virgin's 
 figure, and that of the child Jesus and of the 
 young women in the foreground, show that the 
 picture is Zurbaran's, and that it must be classed 
 among his best works. Poynter, a former 
 Director of the National Gallery, after examining 
 much of Zurbaran's work in Spain, also came 
 to the conclusion that it must be assigned to 
 that master, and is responsible for its present 
 attribution, which now seems to be generally 
 accepted. It must be admitted that the picture, 
 fine and interesting as it is, by no means recalls 
 the typical work of Zurbaran's more personal 
 style, such as we see it in the Seville Museum 
 
160 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 or even in the two quite characteristic pictures 
 which stand beside the " Adoration " in this room. 
 It would appear that at the outset of his career 
 Zurbaran experienced the composite influence of 
 Ribera, of Velazquez, and of Bolognese artists 
 like Domenichino, who accepted the conventional 
 classic type of figures, such as one sees here in 
 the girl with the basket in the background on 
 the right. 
 
 The " Dead Warrior," a finely and soberly 
 painted work, which the National Gallery 
 authorities " ascribe " to Velazquez, is accepted 
 as his by Armstrong and many others who have 
 recognised the dignified and impressive quality 
 of the work, and could think of no one else but 
 Velazquez to attribute it to. Yet it is very 
 difficult indeed to accept this attribution, and 
 equally difficult to attribute the picture plausibly 
 to any one else. Some have mentioned the 
 name of Valdes Leal in this connection, yet the 
 muscular, energetic method of Valdes Leal in his 
 early work at Cordova, and the meretricious 
 restlessness of his better-known later pictures in 
 the Caridad at Seville, are alike far from this 
 solemn and harmonious picture, as is the loose 
 and sketchy painting of the same master which 
 hangs close by. Eicketts, remarking that the 
 ground in this picture is painted in a manner 
 totally unlike Velazquez, gives it to Zurbaran. 
 Beruete, on the other hand, while equally con- 
 
VELAZQUEZ 161 
 
 vinced that the " Dead Warrior " is not by Velaz- 
 quez, thinks that it is probably not of the Spanish 
 school at all. It is unsafe to say that a picture 
 is not by Velazquez simply because it is unlike 
 his other pictures, for it is very seldom that he 
 closely repeated himself; every picture of his 
 has its own individuality and intellectual vitality. 
 Yet the "Dead Warrior " is not only in a mood 
 unlike that of any other picture of Velazquez's, 
 it is outside the sphere in which his genius 
 moved. It is definitely in the romantic manner. 
 Velazquez often painted mythological subjects 
 and introduced into them emblematic features, 
 but always in an awkward and forced way, and 
 with instinctive insistence on their realism. But 
 this picture of the "Dead Warrior," with the 
 little burning lamp delicately suspended from 
 the branch above, and the skull and thigh-bones 
 beside the body, is harmoniously conceived and 
 carried out in a non-natural and romantic spirit, 
 which we can scarcely conceive Velazquez enter- 
 ing into, and still less realising successfully. It 
 may have been a Neapolitan picture showing the 
 influence of Eibera ; but, in any case, the ascrip- 
 tion to Velazquez must, it seems to me, be 
 decisively rejected. 
 
 The "Admiral Pulido Pareja," formerly at 
 Longford Castle and bought for the National 
 Gallery some years ago at a high price, is com- 
 monly regarded as a genuine and very fine work 
 
 M 
 
162 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 of Velazquez. Palomino, sixty years after Velaz- 
 quez's death, indeed, stated that he painted an 
 important portrait of the Admiral in 1639 — 
 about the period that he probably painted his 
 " Crucifixion " — and on the canvas of this picture 
 is an inscription stating that it is by Velazquez, 
 although this inscription, being in a form never 
 elsewhere used by Velazquez himself, is a dubious 
 guarantee of authenticity. It is a picture that 
 is without question very much in the manner 
 of Velazquez, and on the whole so fine that it is 
 difficult to assign it to any other Spanish painter 
 of the time. Yet, after an acquaintance of years 
 with this portrait, and a comparison of it with 
 the other portraits of Velazquez, a certain doubt 
 may arise as to whether we really have here a 
 work that is completely, or perhaps at all, by 
 Velazquez. The vigour and solidity of much of 
 the work scarcely counterbalance the awkward- 
 ness of other parts. Velazquez was not accus- 
 tomed to allow the head, firmly modelled as in 
 this case it no doubt is, to fall into so posterior 
 a plane of the picture ; nor is this balanced by 
 any compensating beauty in the limbs. We 
 miss that penetrative intellectuality, that sensi- 
 tive sympathy making realism exquisite, which is 
 always present in the portrait work of Velazquez, 
 especially at so advanced a period as 1637. It 
 would be idle to say that the model is at fault, 
 because Velazquez reveals these qualities even in 
 
VELAZQUEZ 163 
 
 painting dwarfs and buffoons. If also we examine 
 the quality of the painting more in detail, the 
 hand of Velazquez is again not clearly evident. 
 If the picture is by Velazquez, we cannot say 
 that it is in the early manner of the full-length 
 " Philip " which hangs near it ; the brush-work, 
 especially illustrated by the sleeves, is freer and 
 looser, as Velazquez's became during his second 
 period, but here is meaningless, unbeautiful, 
 boggled, as Velazquez's never is. 
 
 It was not until after I had formed my own 
 opinion about this picture that I read Beruete's 
 Life of Velazquez, and was interested to find the 
 same conclusion stated with much decision. 
 Beruete, whose judgments are usually well- 
 informed and judicious, discusses the authen- 
 ticity of this picture at greater length than 
 any other doubtful work of Velazquez's ; while 
 concluding that it cannot be by Velazquez, he 
 hazards no suggestion as to its authorship, but 
 in pointing out that it has hitherto always been 
 regarded as an original, he seems to suggest that 
 it may be a copy of a lost original. 
 
 The "Admiral" is the type of a simple and 
 direct kind of portraiture which more than one 
 Spanish painter of that age achieved a certain 
 measure of success in. Thus in the Prado there 
 is a fine portrait of Don Tiburcio Bedin — 
 standing erect, booted and spurred, and grasping 
 his hat like the Admiral, only much less 
 
164 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 gracefully — which was once attributed to Mazo, 
 and is now given to Juan Bizi. Again we have 
 in the National Gallery, opposite the " Admiral," 
 a smaller portrait, undoubtedly by Mazo, of 
 exactly the same type as the " Admiral," but very 
 far from so finely painted. Although one may 
 well hesitate to suggest that Mazo executed the 
 "Admiral," it must be remembered that there is 
 very often excellent reason for hesitating between 
 Velazquez and Mazo, and that the recent 
 tendency to attribute to the latter various works 
 once given to the former, far from being a mere 
 fashion, as some imagine, is based on a sounder 
 knowledge of Mazo's work and a better realisa- 
 tion of the relations between the two artists. 
 Mazo was Velazquez's pupil, and learnt all of his 
 methods that a sound though not highly dis- 
 tinguished artist could learn; he married his 
 daughter, he worked beside him in his studio, 
 he succeeded him as Court painter. The intimate 
 association of so good a pupil with so friendly 
 and helpful a painter as we can easily discern 
 Velazquez to have been, cannot fail to lead to 
 much doubt, especially when the two worked on 
 the same canvas. The respective parts of 
 Velazquez and Mazo in the fine view of Saragossa 
 in the Prado have caused much difference of 
 opinion among good critics, and the same diffi- 
 culty occurs in relation to the " Boar Hunt" here 
 — Armstrong, for instance, attributing the nobly 
 
VELAZQUEZ 165 
 
 painted landscape background to Mazo, and 
 Beruete to Velazquez. Whether this portrait of 
 Admiral Pulido Pareja is a good copy of a lost 
 original, or whether it is a work in which 
 Velazquez co-operated, or whether it represents 
 an unusually fine effort by an artist who had 
 acquired the external qualities of Velazquez's 
 style, there are no means of determining. 
 
 " Christ at the Column " is another fine but 
 somewhat enigmatic work. It was quite unknown 
 until a few years ago, and it is occasionally 
 denied that Velazquez had anything to do with 
 it. But here, it seems to me, the hand of 
 Velazquez is so convincingly shown that no 
 external guarantee of genuineness is required. 
 The colouring, the light brush-work, the in- 
 sistent naturalism with which Velazquez always 
 approached sacred and mythological subjects, 
 taken altogether, seem decisive. The figure of 
 Christ is conceived with a poignant originality 
 which is rare in Velazquez when he enters the 
 sphere of imagination, but, on the other hand, 
 all his literal veracity is embodied in the angel, 
 whose artificial wings, as Beruete points out, are 
 fastened to the body by crossed bands of drapery. 
 If, as Beruete also states, apparently with truth, 
 this angel is from the same model as the portrait 
 in the Prado supposed to be Velazquez's wife, 
 and painted about 1630, we have a proof of 
 authenticity which may carry weight with those 
 
166 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 who are not impressed by the peculiarly personal 
 qualities of this picture as a whole. 
 
 One other large and interesting picture, 
 attributed to Velazquez, remains in this room, 
 and presents, perhaps, the most curious puzzle 
 of all. The " Betrothal " has been for some 
 years in the Gallery, and I was formerly disposed 
 to accept it as an interesting and characteristic 
 work of Velazquez's third style, though indeed 
 presenting one or two features in which his 
 manner seemed to be tending to an uncharacter- 
 istic excess. But I was not then acquainted 
 with a passage in Beruete's Life of Velazquez 
 which, if reliable, entirely negatives any connec- 
 tion of Velazquez with the picture. Beruete 
 gives reasons for believing that the picture is 
 by the Italian artist Luca Giordano. It will be 
 remembered that Giordano arrived in Spain 
 thirty years after Velazquez's death, and that he 
 was apparently the first person who realised the 
 immense significance of his work, and especially of 
 its final development in the supreme "Meninas." 
 This alone suffices to prove his fine taste, and 
 although his own work, in the exuberant and 
 artificial Italian manner of that day, fails any 
 longer to interest us, it appears that he possessed 
 not only a fine taste but a receptive intelligence 
 and a very sensitive and accomplished hand. 
 He was a skilful imitator of the style of Bibera, 
 and in the Pinakothek at Munich a clever picture 
 
VELAZQUEZ 167 
 
 of his of the "Death of Seneca" was long 
 attributed to Ribera. Beruete believes that he 
 painted this " Betrothal," and he points out in 
 proof of this, — and in proof also, it might be 
 added, of the sincerity of this tribute from 
 Giordano to the greater painter, — that the 
 spectacled figure in the right foreground who 
 seems to be showing the scene to the spectator 
 is Giordano's own portrait, also to be seen in the 
 same painter's fresco on the ceiling of the sacristy 
 of Toledo Cathedral. I cannot confirm this, not 
 having felt sufficient interest in Giordano to 
 examine the ceiling of the sacristy when at 
 Toledo, but if correct it settles the question. I 
 would add that the general way of conceiving 
 the scene, so characteristically that of Velazquez, 
 was probably based by Giordano on a study of 
 " Las Hilanderas " ; that picture, and that only, 
 is remotely suggested by the " Betrothal." 
 
 On the whole, nothing could be more in 
 the style of Velazquez than this "Betrothal," 
 and the beautiful subdued colour harmonies of 
 several passages are entirely his, though it must 
 be admitted that Giordano has pushed the way 
 of Velazquez to an extreme. Velazquez painted 
 moments of life, but scarcely fractions of a second, 
 as here, where we see a dog in the air. The 
 aristocratic distinction of Velazquez, again, is 
 embodied in one or two of the figures, but 
 becomes at times almost a languorous affectation, 
 
168 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 as it never is in any of his undoubted works, and 
 the general composition of the picture, though 
 in the main that of Velazquez, is more hetero- 
 geneous and more artificial than we are accus- 
 tomed to in his work. 1 Yet it remains a beautiful 
 picture ; the child especially, who is the central 
 figure, is very finely painted, -^ altogether in 
 Velazquez's latest way, and if Giordano painted 
 it we may accept it thankfully as ,a lesson in the 
 art of Velazquez by a highly sympathetic and 
 accomplished artist who, since he has brought 
 himself into the scene as the visible teacher of 
 the lesson, seeming to say to us, "I also can 
 paint like Velazquez," can have had no intention 
 of fraud. 
 
 Only one slight picture remains, the sketch en- 
 titled "A Duel in the Prado." It is unimportant 
 and seems to have attracted little attention, but 
 its very slightness is not without interest, and 
 it shows the method of painting which, during his 
 second period, Velazquez tended more and more 
 to prefer. Even this sketch, however, is a little 
 puzzling. It hangs beside the " Boar Hunt," and 
 not only does it present a general resemblance 
 in pattern to the greater picture, but the group 
 of three persons in the foreground is exactly 
 
 1 The picture is not altogether intelligible. It has been suggested 
 to me by an artist that though it composes well as a whole, it has 
 the air of being cut down from a still larger picture, for it would be 
 difficult to paint the elaborate sleeve on the right in its present bisected 
 condition. This might be verified by examination of the canvas. 
 
VELAZQUEZ 169 
 
 repeated in the " Boar Hunt." It is possibly a 
 sketch which Velazquez utilised in painting the 
 " Boar Hunt." 
 
 To make the Velazquez collection of the 
 National Gallery fully representative one of his 
 beautiful portraits of women is needed. Here 
 the Louvre is more fortunate, but London also 
 supplies this defect of the National Gallery in 
 the most adequate manner, for in the " Lady 
 with a Fan " the Wallace Gallery possesses one 
 of the best of his women portraits, of which the 
 Duke of Devonshire also owns a fine version 
 with interesting variations. 
 
 It has seemed worth while to supplement a 
 general study of Velazquez's place in Spanish 
 art, and among the manifestations of the Spanish 
 spirit, by a more detailed discussion of an im- 
 portant group of pictures, by him and attri- 
 buted to him, which is less inaccessible to most 
 than the Prado. Velazquez must be known 
 intimately to be known at all, and no painter 
 is better worth knowing intimately ; none is 
 more educative, aesthetically, intellectually, one 
 may almost add, morally. The patient study 
 of a small group of his genuine works, the 
 impartial questioning of more dubious works, 
 is not only an avenue of approach to the most 
 reserved of the great masters, but will help us 
 to estimate aright what is significant, and what 
 is insignificant, in much of modern painting. 
 
VI 
 
 SPANISH DANCING 
 
 It is not always agreeable to the Spaniard to 
 find that dancing is regarded by the foreigner 
 as a peculiar and important Spanish institution. 
 Even Valera, with all his wide culture, could 
 not escape this feeling ; in a review of a book 
 about Spain by an American author, entitled 
 The Land of the Castanet — a book which he 
 recognised as full of appreciation for Spain — 
 Valera resented the title. 1 It is, he says, as 
 though a book about the United States should 
 be called The Land of Bacon. There is, it 
 need scarcely be said, no analogy. Spanish 
 
 1 Spanish dancers, although the best among them receive admiration 
 and homage throughout the world, are a little looked down upon in 
 their own country, almost as a set of vagabonds, mere azotacalles. 
 They always remain, however, passionately patriotic. Guerrero, 
 who happened to be performing in Vienna at the time of King 
 Alfonso's visit, spent, it is said, five hundred florins on violets to 
 scatter in the King's path, and made herself so hoarse with shouting 
 "Viva el Eey ! Viva Espaila!" that she was unable to sing that 
 night ; a somewhat similar story is told of Otero during the King's 
 visit to Berlin ; and Tortajada sings : 
 
 Patria mia ! io te adoro, 
 Y no te olvide un iDstaute ! 
 170 
 
SPANISH DANCING 171 
 
 dancing is not only an ever-delightful memory, 
 it is well worth study for the light it throws on 
 the Spanish people, their ways, and their spirit. 
 It is not surprising to find Valera himself, in 
 another mood — in the very latest volume of his 
 essays — expressing regret that the old custom 
 of introducing a national dance on the stage, 
 after the play, has died out, and calling for a 
 revival of " the highly important and serious 
 art of dancing." 
 
 Yet even at the present day Spanish dancing 
 is distinctive ; nothing like it is found elsewhere. 
 Nor can it be transplanted ; the Spanish dancers 
 who go abroad usually modify their methods by 
 infusing them with French or other traditions 
 that are altogether alien. A Spanish dance 
 seems unable, indeed, to survive even in the 
 atmosphere of another province. 
 
 While, however, the dancing of Spain, and 
 more especially of Andalusia, has long been 
 clearly distinct from that of any other country, 
 it was certainly not so always. Thus castanets 
 were used in Greek dancing, as vases and 
 figurines show, as well as ancient authors. 1 In 
 
 1 Athenseus (Bk. xiv. oh. xl.) discusses castanets, saying that they 
 are mentioned by Dicsearchus in his essay on the Manners and 
 Customs of Greece, where such instruments were formerly in very 
 frequent use to accompany women while dancing and singing, as is 
 shown by a hymn to Diana which speaks of singing in her honour 
 
 until 
 
 My comrade strikes with nimble hand, 
 The well-gilt, brazen-sounding castanets. 
 
172 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 Rome, also, castanets were employed, though they 
 now began to be associated with Spain rather 
 than with Greece, and Martial refers to " Betica 
 crusmata." In the fourth century Macrobius 1 
 says that formerly even noble ladies danced with 
 castanets, but that now there were no dancing- 
 girls even at banquets ; and he looks upon this 
 — as we are always apt to when we throw off the 
 customs of our fathers, however decadent our 
 own age may be — as a mark of progress. 
 
 The play of the arms and hands, the side- 
 ward turn, the extreme backward extension of 
 the head and body, movements that are all so 
 peculiarly Spanish, are yet all movements of 
 the Greek dance. 2 Even the active participa- 
 tion of the spectators in keeping time by clap- 
 
 Hermippus also, Athenaeus continues, in his play, The Gods, refers to 
 the rattling of castanets : 
 
 And beating down the limpets from the rocks, 
 They made a noise like castanets ; 
 
 while Didymus says that some people used actual oyster -shells or 
 cockle-shells to strike against each other in tune when accompanying 
 dances, as Aristophanes also intimates in his Frogs. 
 
 1 Macrobius, Saturnalia, iii. 13, 9. 
 
 2 See, e.g., Becker, Her Tanz, pp. 49-53, and Emmanuel's valuable 
 and detailed study, La Danse Orecque Antique. In an excellent 
 summary of the characteristics of Greek dancing Marcelle Hincks 
 states ("The Dance in Ancient Greece," Nineteenth Century, March 
 1906) that it was "pantomimic. It is the imitation of words by 
 gestures, the bodily expression of a feeling ; it comprises every variety 
 of action, quick and slow ; it deals with every subject, grave and gay, 
 religious and profane, decorous and indecorous ; nothing in nature is 
 too high or too low to be outside its scope ; it embraces the whole 
 scale of human passions. " 
 
SPANISH DANCING 173 
 
 ping their hands, so significant a feature of 
 Spanish dancing, seems also to be a survival 
 of Greek dancing. Indeed, in this marvellously 
 conservative and tenacious land of Spain, a kin- 
 ship with ancient Greece is preserved even in 
 the costume. One of the commonest types 
 among the Greek figurines, certainly represent- 
 ing the average Greek lady, might be supposed 
 to represent a Spanish lady, so closely do the 
 fan, the dress, the mantilla-like covering of the 
 head, the erect and dignified carriage, recall 
 modern Spain. 
 
 This affinity of Spanish dancing is not, 
 however, merely Greek, it is still wider. It 
 is part of that affinity of Spain with North 
 Africa which is in other respects so important. 
 As we may see in Egyptian monuments, the 
 movements of Spanish dances resemble those of 
 ancient Egypt, and Martial coupled Gaditanian 
 song- dances with those of the Nile. The 
 stringed instruments of North Africa resemble 
 those of Spain, and the cymbals attached by a 
 cord — as used by peasants in the country for 
 serenading at weddings — which I have picked 
 up among the old metal objects on a stall of 
 the market in the dry river-bed at Malaga, 
 exactly resemble the cymbals used two thousand 
 year ago by Ankh-Hapi, musician in one of the 
 temples of Thebes, and placed on his body after 
 death, where they still lie in the glass case at 
 
174 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 the British Museum which is the final resting- 
 place of his mummy. 1 
 
 While there is good reason to believe that 
 dancing resembling that which still persists in 
 Spain was in remote ages widely spread around 
 the shores of the Mediterranean, it is evident 
 that even two thousand years ago Spain was 
 already the pre-eminent centre of dancing on 
 the Mediterranean. The Romans went above 
 all to Spain, and especially Gades — the modern 
 Cadiz — for the dancing-girls whom they esteemed 
 so highly. The famous statue of the so-called 
 Venus Callipyge, representing a woman who 
 turns her head round as she bends backward, 
 is not, as the name and pose might suggest, a 
 representation of self-admiration, but undoubt- 
 edly the image of a Cadiz dancer in a charac- 
 teristic movement of a Spanish dance. 2 
 
 It is natural to inquire why it is that the 
 ancient dances of the Mediterranean should show 
 such persistence in Spain, and especially in 
 
 1 Still farther south, in Negro Africa, we find some of the same 
 affinities. The dancing of Swahili women recalls in some respects 
 flamenco-dancing, and the Fang of the Congo in their dances use 
 mollusc shells tied round their ankles as a sort of castanets. 
 
 2 The women of Cadiz maintained their reputation in this respect 
 down to modern times. At the end of the eighteenth century Peyron 
 found that they were celehrated for their seductive and voluptuous 
 dances, and at the beginning of the same century Marti stated that 
 the most virtuous and high-born ladies of Cadiz would dance the 
 fandango amid general applause. Baretti in 1770 described the 
 enthusiasm with which all classes of Spaniards danced, and mentions 
 that dancing was encouraged by the clergy in the interests of morality. 
 
SPANISH DANCING 175 
 
 Andalusia. In part the answer has already been 
 suggested ; it is due largely to natural gift and 
 to the peculiarly tenacious and conservative 
 character of the Spanish temperament. There 
 is, however, at least one other cause, and that 
 is the presence of gipsies in Spain. Dancing, 
 and especially what is called flamenco-dancing, 1 
 is so often the occupation of gipsies in Spain, 
 that a belief widely prevails that to some 
 extent Spanish dances are really gipsy dances. 
 This is a mistake. The gipsies brought with 
 them from India neither dances nor music. 
 The so-called " gipsy " dances of Spain are 
 Spanish dances which the Spaniards are tending 
 to relinquish but which the gipsies have taken 
 up with energy and skill. At this point we 
 touch upon a very interesting phenomenon, the 
 prominent place occupied by the gipsies in Spain. 
 The gipsies are an exotic race in Europe, and 
 for the most part they are entirely outside the 
 national life of the countries in which they live 
 and through which they move as strangers and 
 
 1 It is not quite obvious why the gipsy should be called a flamenco, 
 or Spanish soldier returned from the wars in Flanders. Salillas 
 (Hampa, p. 54) believes that in the later and less glorious period 
 of the war in the Low Countries, the soldier came to be looked upon 
 as a rowdy, boastful, dissipated type, and the flamenco, as he was 
 called, degenerated into a worthless braggart, only to be coupled and 
 at last confounded with the picaro and the gipsy. If, I may add, the 
 Spanish soldier who had been to the wars made this impression even 
 on his own countrymen, it is not surprising that he should play a 
 somewhat similar part in French and English literature. 
 
176 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 nomads. It is so in England and in France. 
 But there are certain peoples in Europe with 
 whom, on one side of their temperament, the 
 gipsies, by virtue of a common nervous tem- 
 perament, are able to come into sympathetic 
 contact. It is so in Russia, and Liszt wrote 
 an oft-quoted description of the intoxication of 
 the gipsy music in a Russian festival ; it is so 
 in Hungary, where the music of the gipsies has 
 become famous. And so also it is in Spain, 
 where the gitano has seized on the ancient 
 Spanish dances with such zeal, and danced 
 them with such fire and success, though some- 
 times with a touch of caricature, that many 
 people have come to think that the dances are 
 not Spanish at all but gipsy. In all these 
 countries the gipsy has been attracted by certain 
 congenial manifestations in the life of a nation, 
 mastered them and specialised them, and so 
 become on that side an appreciated element in 
 the life of the people. 
 
 In Spain, as Salillas shows, there is a special 
 affinity between the gipsy and the Andalusian 
 in the latter's nomadic tendency, in his social 
 parasitism, in his delight in music and motion. 1 
 Thus it is that the gipsy falls into line with the 
 Andalusian at the extreme end of the social scale, 
 
 1 The problem presented by the Spanish gipsies has been studied 
 with much knowledge and insight by the sociologist Salillas (ffampa, 
 pp. 90-111, 307). 
 
SPANISH DANCING 177 
 
 and as the old social customs sink more and more 
 into disrepute and to an ever lower class, they are 
 seized on by the gipsies with much energy and 
 with no false shame, the gipsies not being amen- 
 able to those ideals of respectability which affect 
 a genuinely European population even at the 
 lower end of the scale. Dancing, at all events 
 in its more ancient and characteristic modes, is 
 one of the customs that are falling into disrepute ; 
 it is no longer fashionable ; it is chiefly enjoyed 
 by the poorest classes ; the best cafes cantantes 
 are hidden away in back streets. The most ex- 
 quisite dancing may sometimes be found only 
 after many months, because no one thinks of 
 mentioning it. Such, for instance, was my ex- 
 perience as regards the Chinitas at Malaga some 
 years ago. Here, effectually concealed in a mal- 
 odorous alley near the Plaza, one went upstairs 
 to a charming old-world haunt, a scene as from 
 a seventeenth century Dutch picture, in which, 
 on the tiniest of stages and in the presence 
 of an intensely serious and entirely national 
 audience — while guardian mothers and aunts 
 of the performers sat solemnly around — some of 
 the most accomplished dancers of Spain danced 
 in their beautiful Manila shawls never-ending 
 cycles of characteristically Spanish dances. Since 
 then, I hear, the Chinitas, under some pretext, 
 has been shut up and swept away by the zealous 
 Spaniards, eager to join in the march of civilisa- 
 
 N 
 
178 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 tion, for it is so much easier to pull down than to 
 build up. The Chinitas may possibly have been 
 the last of its class in Spain. Nowadays the 
 Spaniard prefers places of amusement which 
 vacillate between the French cafe chantant and 
 the English music-hall ; they abound in Madrid 
 and flourish exuberantly in Barcelona, though 
 in Bilbao they seem to have no existence. At 
 all of them, among miscellaneous cosmopolitan 
 items, one may find Spanish dancers, good, bad, 
 or indifferent, more or less characteristic ; the 
 best, naturally, are to be found in Seville, chiefly 
 at the Novedades, now one of the oldest of these 
 places of amusement in Spain. 
 
 The special characteristics of Spanish dancing 
 may best be explained by describing its more 
 general features. 
 
 If we consider dancing as it takes place 
 throughout the world generally, it may be said that 
 there are three different kinds, according as the 
 performance is mainly entrusted to three different 
 regions of the body. There is the dancing in 
 which the legs are the chief performers; this 
 prevails in Europe generally, as well as in many 
 other parts of the world, and may be said to be 
 the only kind of dancing recognised in England 
 and in France ; its most pronounced form is 
 seen in the orthodox ballet. Then there is the 
 dancing which is performed solely by the arms 
 and hands ; this kind of dancing is carried to a 
 
SPANISH DANCING 179 
 
 high, degree of perfection by the Javanese, and 
 also prevails in Japan. Finally, there is the 
 dancing in which the muscles of the body itself 
 play the chief part ; this is found mainly in Africa 
 and western Asia. Spanish dancing cannot be 
 said to belong to any one of these three groups, 
 because it really includes them all. When one 
 watches an accomplished Spanish dancer, it is 
 seen that every part of the body at some moment 
 takes its share in the performance — the head, the 
 hands, the arms, even the muscles of the body. 
 The legs in some dances play an energetic part, 
 but more often a subdued part. The feet occupy 
 perhaps the smallest conscious place, and in this 
 the Italian ballet-dancer may be said to be the 
 complement to the Spanish dancer, for there we 
 sometimes seem to see nothing but marvellously 
 accomplished feet supporting a wooden marion- 
 ette. In an art which thus has so wide a range 
 of expression, bringing within its sphere the 
 whole body, it might be thought that strict 
 dancing could too easily degenerate into licence. 
 Occasionally this is so, but not often, although 
 when the dancer is a gipsy the dance may take 
 on a character of almost ferocious intensity. 
 Spanish dancing is saved by the special tem- 
 perament of the Spaniard, especially when com- 
 bined, as that temperament is in the Sevillian, 
 with esthetic sensitiveness. The instinctive 
 dignity and self-respect, the profound love of 
 
180 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 decorum and beautiful ritual, which, the Spaniard 
 displays in his religious functions, and even in 
 the bull-fight, become visible in dancing also. 
 Much of this dancing may be said to be a 
 symbolised and idealised representation of the 
 drama of love., but the sustained solemnity and 
 decorum of it carry the performers through even 
 those brief moments of the dance which in anv 
 other European country would threaten to fall 
 to the level of vulgarity. 
 
 Another characteristic of Spanish dancing, 
 and especially of the most typical kind, called 
 flamenco, lies in its accompaniments, and par- 
 ticularly in the fact that under proper conditions 
 all the spectators are themselves performers. 
 In flamenco dancing, among an audience of the 
 people, every one takes a part, by rhythmic 
 clapping' and stamping, and by the occasional 
 prolonged " oles " and other cries by which the 
 dancer is encouraged or applauded. Thus the 
 dance is not a spectacle for the amusement of a 
 languid and passive public, as with us. It is 
 rather the visible embodiment of an emotion in 
 which every spectator himself takes an active 
 and helpful part ; it is, as it were, a vision 
 evoked by the spectators themselves and up- 
 borne on the continuous wave; of rhythmical 
 sound which they generate. Thus it is that at 
 the end of a dance an absolute silence often 
 fails, with no sound of applause : the relation of 
 
SPANISH DANCING 181 
 
 performer and public has ceased to exist. So 
 personal is this dancing that it may be said that 
 an intimate association with the spectators is 
 required for its full manifestation. The finest 
 Spanish dancing is at once killed or degraded by 
 the presence of an indifferent or unsympathetic 
 public, and that is probably why it cannot be 
 transplanted, but remains local. 
 
 The varieties of dancing in Spain are 
 numerous, and the array of names of dances 
 long and puzzling. It is difficult to make out 
 many of these varieties. Dancing in Spain is 
 now a matter which few know anything about, 
 because every one takes for granted that he 
 knows all about it ; and any question on the 
 subject generally receives a very ready answer 
 which is usually of questionable correctness. 
 Nor can it be said that there is any literature 
 to supply the defect of popular knowledge. 1 In 
 any case, however, it is perhaps unnecessary to 
 discuss here the technical characteristics of the 
 various dances. Some certainly have a local 
 existence dating very far back into antiquity ; 
 
 1 I have not been able to see the JReglas Utiles published by Ferriol 
 y Boxeraus in 1745. There are interesting notes on dancing in 
 Soriano Fuertes's Historic:, de la Musica Espatlola, vol. i. ch. vi. Ford's 
 Handbook to Spain (1845, vol. i. pp. 186-193) contains some useful notes 
 which in the more popular Gatherings are abbreviated. In the Escenas 
 Andaluzas (1847) of Estebanez Calderon— a writer of pungently 
 national style and enthusiastic national interests— will be found 
 Beveral sketches describing and discussing Spanish dancing. As 
 regards the deeper significance of Spanish dancing, nothing is equal 
 to the psychological analysis given by Salillas in Hampa (1898). 
 
182 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 some owe much of their character to Arab 
 influences ; many were invented in the six- 
 teenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, 
 although these were nearly always modifications 
 of existing dances, like the sixteenth century 
 saraband, which had an ancient Gaditanian 
 character, and in later days was transformed 
 into the ole ; others, again, came in more recent 
 times from the Spanish "West Indian colonies 
 and betray negro influence, but these never 
 became acclimatised in Spain until they had 
 received the characteristic mark of the sober 
 and gracious Sevillian manner, tempering their 
 exuberance and rendering them truly national. 
 
 While, however, there seem to be much 
 uncertainty, fluctuation, and decay among many 
 of the individual Spanish dances, certain varie- 
 ties stand out as clearly and permanently de- 
 fined. This is above all the case with the 
 Aragonese jota, the most important and typical 
 dance outside Andalusia. It is danced by a 
 man and a woman, and is a kind of combat 
 between them ; most of the time they are facing 
 each other, both using the castanets and ad- 
 vancing and retreating in an apparently aggres- 
 sive manner, the arms alternately slightly raised 
 and lowered, and the legs, with a seeming at- 
 tempt to trip the partner, kicking out alter- 
 nately somewhat sidewise, as the body is rapidly 
 supported first on one foot and then on the 
 
SPANISH DANCING 183 
 
 other. It is a monotonous dance, with immense 
 rapidity and vivacity in its monotony, but it 
 has not the deliberate grace and fascination, 
 the happy audacities, of Andalusian dancing. 
 There "is, indeed, no faintest suggestion of 
 voluptuousness in it, but it may rather be said, 
 in the words of a modern poet, Salvador Eueda, 
 to have in it " the sound of helmets and plumes 
 and lances and banners, the roaring of cannon, 
 the neighing of horses, the shock of swords." 1 
 
 Very different from the Aragonese jota, with 
 the dazzling, monotonous glitter of its sustained 
 movement of arms and legs and garments, is an 
 Andalusian dance which is sometimes also called 
 a jota. It is a long dance, with many variations 
 in its course, danced by one woman alone, to a 
 marchlike, quiet, simple tune, which is yet a 
 very impressive accompaniment, because it sug- 
 gests a kind of overawed subordination to the 
 passionate intensity of the dance. The body is 
 at times bent back and, as it were, semi-revolved 
 on the axis of the hips ; sometimes the dancer 
 sinks backward, bending her head to the floor ; 
 
 1 Salillag (JETampa, p. 96) finds that the Aragonese jota is the 
 intimate translation of Aragonese personal activity. The Aragonese 
 walk, he says, is characterised by its exaggerated vertieality, its 
 resolnte and rather rigid straightforwardness, with head maintained 
 in a correct line with the trunk, and a comparative absence of all 
 those lateral movements of shoulders and spine and hips which give 
 grace to the figure. "And this is translated into the danee. They 
 dance as they walk, they walk as they sing, they sing as they 
 think." 
 
184 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 at one point the dance becomes swift and des- 
 perate, and the dancer flings her legs high in 
 the air, madly and rapidly. But there is yet 
 a gravity and intensity throughout, a kind of 
 dramatic progression, a possibility of personal, 
 individual character, which makes this the most 
 fascinating of castanet dances. 
 
 Not the least attractive dances, when per- 
 formed by a charming and accomplished dancer 
 — though to the stranger they sometimes seem 
 mere wriggling and contortion — are the flamenco 
 or so-called gipsy dances, which are really the 
 most primitive and African of all. Here the 
 castanets are replaced by the rhythmic clapping 
 or stamping of the assistants, the music of the 
 guitar, and by one singer — a man or a woman 
 whose part in the performance is limited to this 
 accompanying song. The music begins first, 
 and the rhythmic clapping; then after a few 
 moments, as the sound rises in intensity, one of 
 the semicircle of performers, as though suddenly 
 seized by the bacchante -like fury of dancing, 
 leaps up, comes to the centre of the semicircle, 
 and begins to dance. In this dance, which on 
 the whole is slow, there is room for infinite 
 personal modification and expression, and no 
 two dancers move quite alike. The dresses are 
 long, there is no high kicking, yet every normal 
 movement of the body is' harmoniously dis- 
 played in the course of the dance. Sometimes 
 
SPANISH DANCING 185 
 
 the dancer is facing the spectators, sometimes 
 she is sidewise, sometimes her back is to the 
 spectators, always in order to display more fully 
 this perpetual dance of the whole body, of legs 
 and arms and hands and head, even the varying 
 movements of the face, the whole often aided 
 by the swaying of the beautiful Manila shawl 
 which is usually worn. The dance thus even 
 includes, in the more expert performers, the 
 rhythmic movement of various parts of the 
 body, but these episodes are of very brief 
 duration — each occurring only once and for a 
 few seconds — and they are invariably introduced 
 with a charming deprecatory smile, as though 
 the dancer said, " I am sure you will forgive me 
 if I show you that I know this intimate little 
 secret of good dancing," and immediately the 
 dancer passes on to the next phase of the 
 dance, so that it is impossible to say that these 
 episodes are anything but perfectly correct and 
 harmonious elements in a dance which would be 
 incomplete if it were not to display the aptitude 
 for beautiful rhythmic movement which every 
 part of the body possesses. All the while the 
 dancer is surrounded by the waves of loud 
 sound produced by the hands, feet, voices, and 
 instruments of the assistants, whose sudden 
 cries seem intended to stimulate and support 
 her, and she herself claps rhythmically but 
 softly from time to time. Bach dance is made 
 
186 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 up of two parts, separated by a lull, without 
 actual cessation, but the two parts are not 
 greatly distinct, and the conclusion of the 
 dance is generally quiet, with no marked 
 climax. 
 
 Spaniards, I may remark, are peculiarly fasci- 
 nated by sound, especially by the loud, stridulous, 
 rhythmic classes of sound which may be said to 
 come midway between mere noise and music. It 
 is an intoxicant which they indulge in more in- 
 temperately than they do in wine. On people 
 of an essentially grave and silent race, loud 
 sound seems sometimes apt to exert this stimu- 
 lating influence, and to carry them out of 
 themselves. In this they resemble savages. 
 Castanets are nothing but a very primitive 
 device for producing loud, rhythmic sound, and 
 all sound of this type appeals to the Spaniard. 
 The revolving rattle, again — such as in the days 
 of our forefathers was supplied to night-watch- 
 men — is a favourite Spanish implement of 
 sound, if one may judge by the frequency with 
 which it is sold in the streets of Madrid and 
 elsewhere. The Spanish are, perhaps, the only 
 audiences in Europe who still talk loudly and 
 persistently during a concert ; the music seems 
 to be to them an irresistible stimulant'to activity, 
 and perhaps chiefly delightful on that account. 
 This impressionability of the Spaniards to loud 
 rhythmic sound explains how it is that such 
 
SPANISH DANCING 187 
 
 sound is an essential element in their character- 
 istic dances. 
 
 I have spoken of Spanish dancing mainly, 
 not as it may still be seen, usually in a rather 
 amateurish form, among country people, but as 
 it is executed, in its finest varieties, by those 
 accomplished professional dancers, now few in 
 number, whom one may sometimes have the 
 good fortune to see in some of the larger cities, 
 especially Seville, Malaga, Granada, and Madrid. 
 I have myself been most fortunate at Malaga, 
 though the dancers there were chiefly Sevillians; 
 Cadiz still produces a few dancers, but they have 
 not the fame of the Gaditanian dancers of two 
 thousand years ago, nor is there now any public 
 dancing to be seen at Cadiz. 
 
 While, however, the professional dancers 
 most clearly maintain the ancient traditions, 
 dancing still remains a universal instinct with 
 Spanish women. 1 In Madrid, once, I even saw 
 in the street a girl of some twelve years who, 
 although she was carrying her baby brother, 
 yet contrived at the same time not only to 
 execute crude dance-movements, but even to 
 use the castanets with both hands. The great 
 annual Feria at Seville is largely an orgy of 
 dancing. As evening approaches on these days, 
 
 1 Anna de Camargo — an epoch-making figure in the history of the 
 European ballet, and to whom is said to be due the introduction both 
 of the short skirt and the entrechat — was a Spaniard. 
 
188 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 everywhere one begins to hear the sound of 
 castanets and to see the gracious movements of 
 the seguidilla, the universal Andalusian dance 
 which all children are taught, and which they 
 often dance up to old age. "Take away the 
 charm of this Andalusian dance from the Feria," 
 a Spanish writer remarks, "and you have de- 
 prived the Sevillian festival of that essential 
 and typical something which makes it live." I 
 have heard of a young girl who through too 
 much dancing at this great festival was said to 
 have acquired St. Vitus's dance, and could never 
 cease dancing. Nor is it by any means only at 
 a " fiesta " that Spaniards dance. As we get 
 away from the cities, we are constantly able to 
 observe the hold which dancing still has on the 
 people, and not only in Andalusia. 
 
 But the fundamental instincts of the Spaniard 
 for dancing, and the serious and profound way 
 in which it expresses the temperament of the 
 people, are perhaps shown by nothing else so 
 much as by the existence of religious dancing in 
 Spain. In 1321 the Bishop of Lerida complained 
 of the dancing that took place in churches and 
 cemeteries. Even at the shrine of the Virgin of 
 Monserrat it appears that the pilgrims sometimes 
 sang and danced during their vigils. At the time 
 of St. Thomas of Villanueva, Bishop of Valencia, 
 it was still customary to dance before the sacred 
 elements in the churches of Seville, Toledo, 
 
SPANISH DANCING 189 
 
 Jerez, and Valencia, and that prelate encouraged 
 such dancing in spite of the prohibition of the 
 Pope of the day. Religious dancing continued 
 to be common, especially in Catalonia and in 
 Eoussillon (the most Spanish of the French 
 provinces), up to the seventeenth century. 
 When Cervantes's little gipsy entered Madrid on 
 St. Anne's Day she went into St. Mary's church 
 with her tambourine to dance before the saint's 
 image and to sing a hymn. The Villanicos de 
 Natividad, a sort of Christmas carols, are still 
 sung to the tune of seguidillas. But a real and 
 unique survival of religious dancing (doubtless 
 continued in virtue of a special bull of 
 Eugenius IV, which authorised it in 1439) is 
 the dance of the seises in Seville Cathedral, where, 
 on certain special festivals, the choristers, wear- 
 ing the same costume as they wore three hundred 
 years ago, perform a dance to the accompani- 
 ment of castanets in the space between the high 
 altar and the choir. 1 
 
 Dancing is something more than an amuse- 
 ment in Spain. It is part of that solemn ritual 
 which enters into the whole life of the people. 
 It expresses their very spirit. Thus it is that 
 
 1 A full account of the seises (of whom there are really ten) is 
 given in Los JUspafloles Pintados por si mismos (1851, pp. 287-291), a 
 book that contains many curious details regarding Spanish institutions. 
 The dance takes place at the octave of the Conception, at Corpus 
 Christi, and during the carnival, and consists of various simple 
 movements, danced in undulating line, in a waltzing step. 
 
190 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 when we have left Spain and recall our memories 
 of the land, the dancing that we have seen there 
 sometimes seems among the most persistent of 
 those memories and the most permanently 
 delightful. 
 
VII 
 RAMON LULL AT PALMA 
 
 For most people, probably, Eamon Lull is little 
 more than a romantic name. We vaguely recall 
 a remote mediaeval figure, at once troubadour 
 and alchemist and saint, or perhaps we remember 
 one of the legends which grow up so easily and 
 flourish so persistently around every great 
 personality of the far past. 
 
 During recent years, however, after an 
 interval of six centuries, the figure of Ramon 
 Lull has for the first time begun to assume 
 reality and definition. His authentic as dis- 
 tinguished from his spurious works are appearing 
 in a critical modern edition, while the extra- 
 ordinary significance of the man and his work 
 are being made clear through the investigations 
 of scholars. 1 Lull now stands forth as so 
 
 1 It is not, indeed, only as students that Spaniards approach 
 Kamon Lull to-day. Among the Catalan regionalists, eager to 
 
 191 
 
192 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 splendid a pioneer and initiator in so many 
 fields that we can well understand the enthusi- 
 astic verdict of those who declare that he is the 
 most remarkable figure of the Middle Ages. 
 For the philologist he is the first of Catalan 
 poets. In philosophy he is the great Spanish 
 schoolman, a daring and original thinker. In 
 religion he is on the spiritual side the founder of 
 Spanish mysticism, the father of all the Spanish 
 and many of the later European mystics, and on 
 the practical side the finest type of the modern 
 missionary, admiring and learning from those he 
 seeks to convert, even though he dies for his 
 own faith. But beyond and through all these 
 various aspects he was a Spaniard of Spaniards. 
 It is from that side that I wish to approach him, 
 for if we succeed in grasping the character of 
 Eamon Lull we touch the very essence of the 
 Spanish genius, and we realise the nature of the 
 part which that genius has played in human 
 civilisation. 
 
 II 
 
 For many years I had been haunted by the 
 vision of the Balearic Islands, an earthly para- 
 emphasise all the ancient signs of their national life, there is a move- 
 ment of return to Lull's teaching. An account of this modern revival 
 of Lullian philosophy is given by Palacios ("El Lulismo Exagerado," 
 Cultura EspaMola, 1906, ii. p. 533), and it finds enthusiastic expression 
 in a volume in Catalan entitled Bomenatge al Beat Ramon Llull (1901), 
 to which the chief Catalan writers of the day contributed. 
 
RAMON LULL AT PALMA 193 
 
 dise, I was told, which even for the Spanish 
 visitor has something strange and exotic about 
 it. Not the least charm of Majorca in my eyes 
 was that it had been the home of Eamon Lull, 
 and when at last I embarked at Barcelona for 
 Palma, it was by a curious coincidence on the 
 steamship Lulio, which bears witness to the fame 
 the romantic figure of the mediaeval schoolman 
 still possesses among his fellow-countrymen. As 
 we left Barcelona the palms along the Paseo de 
 Colon began to sway and rustle as I had never 
 known them to before ; a great gale raged during 
 the night, and when in the morning we reached 
 the wharf at Palma, a soft misty rain veiled the 
 landscape. 
 
 The first and perhaps the most abiding im- 
 pression made by Palma is its Moorish aspect. 
 This characteristic is not due to the presence of 
 any important Moorish antiquities such as we find 
 at Granada and Seville. Perhaps, indeed, it might 
 altogether escape a visitor who is not familiar 
 with Morocco. But it is none the less real because 
 it is subtle, and it seems to extend to innumerable 
 details of life. I know no city in Christendom 
 which so subtly suggests the persistence of 
 Moorish influence. At Granada, which owns 
 the most perfect relic of Moorish art, one is 
 conscious of a sudden break in the history of the 
 city; we feel everywhere the presence of the 
 fierce contest which resulted in the triumph of 
 
 o 
 
194 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 the Christian, the expulsion of the Moor, and 
 the contemptuous trampling down of all that he 
 had counted sacred. In Palma we are conscious 
 of no such break ; the old Moorish traditions 
 seem to have blended gently and imperceptibly 
 with the new Christian traditions. We see the 
 persistence of Moorish influence very significantly, 
 for instance, in the flat roofs on which the women 
 congregate when their work is done, in the 
 latticed galleries in the churches, in the universal 
 use of azulejo tiles for the staircases of the 
 houses and wherever else they can be introduced. 
 More significantly still we can see the Moor 
 in the people themselves. Balearic types, as 
 seen in Palma, are extremely marked and con- 
 siderably varied. Racial types may always be 
 best studied in the women of a people, and it is 
 well worth while to watch the women of Palma. 
 It is not hard to find women of all degrees of 
 ugliness in Palma, but the proportion of those 
 who are beautiful or charming or sweet seems 
 to me unusually large — though this was not the 
 opinion of George Sand, always, and not un- 
 naturally, a little prejudiced against the place. 
 It is a general law, verifiable in northern and 
 southern hemispheres alike, that islands breed 
 pretty women, and this rule is well maintained 
 by Majorca. The definite predominance of a 
 single type of beauty, such as is found at Aries, 
 cannot be asserted in Palma. There is, however, 
 
RAMON LULL AT PALMA 195 
 
 one peculiarity so common that it may fairly be 
 called characteristic : I mean a curious expression 
 of the eyes often seen here, but (so far as I have 
 observed) nowhere on the mainland of Spain ; 
 such eyes are rather dark, usually a little sunken, 
 apparently unseeing, somewhat as if they had 
 been crying, yet sweet and tender — it is an 
 appearance which seems to be chiefly due to 
 the veil of dark thick lashes. While there are 
 women with very dark, long North African faces 
 here, I have nowhere in Southern Spain, on the 
 other hand, seen such fair women, with light, 
 even flaxen hair — worn in long plaits down the 
 back — and such fair complexions. One even 
 sees, as seldom in Spain, rosy complexions which 
 remind one of England, though blue eyes are not 
 common, the eyes of fair women here being 
 merely mixed, or, as we commonly term it, 
 grey. Sometimes the faces are very beautifully 
 formed, quite classic in outline, and at the same 
 time sensitively mobile ; these generally belong 
 neither to the very fair nor the very dark type, 
 but are intermediate in character. The most 
 beautiful, distinguished, and sensitive faces often 
 belong, as I have also observed in Poland, to mere 
 market-girls ; and this presence of an aristocratic 
 type low down in the social scale is the sure 
 index to a very ancient civilisation. Unlike 
 Catalonian women, Mallorcan women are often 
 very slender, more like Provencal people. They 
 
196 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 are active and quick in their movements, the 
 rapid, jerky, business-like walk of the young 
 women up and down the fashionable evening 
 promenade, the Plaza de la Constitucion, is quite 
 English ; on the other hand many — and notably 
 those who wear mantillas and preserve Spanish 
 habits — often stand and move with exquisite 
 grace and beauty. 
 
 All the Balearic qualities, it seems to me, the 
 whole history of this highly composite yet ex- 
 tremely individual people, are imprinted in these 
 characteristics of the women of Palma. One of 
 the most splendid jewels of the Mediterranean, 
 Majorca has been near enough to the mainland 
 for invasion from many quarters, it has been far 
 enough for independent development along its 
 own wayward lines. Phoenicians and Car- 
 thaginians, Greeks and Eomans, Vandals (though 
 never the Goths) and the Eastern empire, all in 
 turn conquered and ruled, before, at the end of 
 the eighth century, the Moors came to raise the 
 island to the height of its power, and to leave an 
 ineffaceable mark on its population and its 
 customs. They developed here, as elsewhere 
 in Spain, their enlightened civilisation, their 
 humanity, their love of the arts, their sanitary 
 scrupulousness, their agricultural skill. They 
 cultivated, indeed, many fruits and plants which 
 their successors even to-day have neglected. Thus 
 the date-palm, which in the seventeenth century 
 
RAMON LULL AT PALMA 197 
 
 was still important enough to give the capital of 
 Majorca its name (previously it had the same 
 name as the island), no longer receives attention. 
 It was, moreover, under the Moors alone that for 
 four hundred years Majorca had a real and more 
 or less independent history as a powerful state. 
 At first governed by a Wali from Cordova, and 
 eventually constituting a Moorish kingdom, the 
 position of Majorca and the energetic temper of 
 its people made it a power in the Mediterranean. 
 "With its fleet it took part in the Moslem expedi- 
 tions of Mediterranean conquest, and excited the 
 terror of its Christian neighbours by its aggressive 
 and piratical exploits. It is even said that the 
 Mallorcan fleet once devastated Barcelona. The 
 Christian maritime powers of the western Medi- 
 terranean were at last aroused to a great effort. 
 Early in the twelfth century the Catalans under 
 the Count of Barcelona, together with the Pisans 
 and the Florentines, with a great armada, 
 succeeded for a time in taking the Balearic 
 capital, and gave a blow to the prestige of 
 Moslem Majorca. The final conquest of the 
 islands was achieved a century later, when Don 
 Jaime I., King of Aragon and Count of Barcelona, 
 with a great fleet of one hundred and fifty galleys, 
 conveying a large army, finally surmounted 
 Moslem resistance, and added the Balearic crown 
 to Aragon. Don Jaime's second son, indeed, 
 ruled the islands as a separate vassal kingdom, 
 
198 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 but under Pedro II. the islands were united with 
 Aragon, Valencia, and Barcelona, to become in 
 due course part of the great kingdom of Spain. 
 
 It may be worth while to pause a moment on 
 the ancient connection of Majorca with Valencia. 
 If the first vision of Palma seizes chiefly its 
 Moorish aspect, the second glimpse — so at least 
 it seemed to me — reveals its curiously Valencian 
 characteristics. For this one is scarcely prepared. 
 Proximity to Barcelona and constant intercourse 
 with that great centre of life and activity, one 
 supposes, would have made Majorca, on the 
 Spanish side, Catalonian rather than Valencian, 
 although Valencia is scarcely more distant than 
 Majorca. The civilisation of Majorca is, how- 
 ever, distinctly Valencian, and not Catalonian, 
 possibly it may be because the Valencians, 
 unlike the Catalonians, are strongly Moorish 
 in their affinities. The Mallorcans have the 
 personal energy and animation of the Valencians, 
 among whom we meet somewhat the same 
 contrasts of dark types and fair types, light- 
 haired and grey-eyed. They both have an 
 Oriental love of bright and violent colour ; in 
 both lands the men among the peasantry have 
 retained, though it is now dying out, the fashion 
 of loose and baggy trousers drawn in below, 
 such as women wear in the East. The water- 
 pot of Majorca — the vast unglazed double- 
 handled Greek amphora, often borne on the 
 
RAMON LULL AT PALMA 199 
 
 right shoulder and held by the left hand — is 
 the water-pot of Valencia also, and of no other 
 district of Spain, quite unlike the far less 
 beautiful but much more convenient water-pot 
 of Catalonia. And though the ecclesiastical 
 architecture of Majorca is related to that of 
 Catalonia, the old Lonja or Exchange, the 
 architectural gem of Palma, is only rivalled by 
 the similar though less perfect Lonja de Seda of 
 Valencia. 1 
 
 No doubt, also, the Aragonese conquerors of 
 Majorca have left their permanent impress on 
 these islands, though in external civilisation the 
 impress may be less obvious because the habits 
 and customs of Aragonese and Valencians at so 
 many points overlap. But without the special 
 moral characteristics of the Aragonese — the 
 intense energy, the proud independence, the 
 aptitude for absorbed devotion — we can scarcely 
 account for much in the history and in the 
 genius of Christian Majorca. I can never forget 
 the impression made, when I first visited 
 Saragossa, by these people of Aragon, a people, 
 it seemed, set apart from the rest of the world, 
 of curiously firm and hard temper, tenacious of 
 their own personal independence, and indifferent 
 
 1 Guillermo Sagrera, by a contract reproduced in Street's Gothic 
 Architecture in Spain, undertook in 1426 to build the Lonja at Palma 
 in twelve years at his own cost. Sagrera was the great architect of 
 Perpignan, who succeeded in persuading the chapter of Gerona Cathedral 
 to adopt the bold design of a vast aisleless nave. 
 
200 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 to the judgment of others. An Aragonese 
 woman at prayer, with her dramatic and self- 
 forgetful gestures, and an Aragonese couple 
 dancing their national jota, with its ecstatic 
 fury of concentrated muscular energy so utterly 
 unlike any Andalusian dance, alike manifest a 
 temperament of very special force and originality. 
 When we realise what they mean it no longer 
 seems surprising that these Aragonese people, 
 inspired by a few priests and peasants and 
 women, should have been able to hold the 
 unfortified city of Saragossa against the seasoned 
 troops of France led by the marshals of 
 Napoleon. Aragon certainly counted for much 
 in the constitution of the more aristocratic 
 qualities of the Mallorcan spirit. 
 
 As one mixes with the people, as one studies 
 the impress they have left of themselves during 
 many centuries on their capital city, a clear 
 conception of the Mallorcan character slowly 
 emerges. An independent, an original, almost 
 an eccentric race, one is tempted to call them, 
 self-centred, energetic, but not pushing, leaving to 
 others a liberty which they also claim for them- 
 selves. They are distinctly an active, even a 
 commercial people. An indolent old-world Eden, 
 Majorca seems to be in the pages of many who 
 have written of it. When George Sand and 
 Chopin came to Palma they found no hotel in 
 the whole city, and even in private houses none 
 
RAMON LULL AT PALMA 201 
 
 were found willing to board an invalid. There is 
 ample accommodation now ; the city is singularly 
 clean, well-kept, and free from evil odours, — a 
 state of things not always to be found even in 
 Catalonia ; newspaper boys hurry along the 
 streets ; the poorest inhabitant may listen to 
 the drone of the gramophone as he sips his 
 coffee or his vermouth. The prosperous energy 
 of Majorca is manifesting itself in a furious 
 mania for architectural restoration. The sixteenth 
 century Casa Consistorial, with its great project- 
 ing eaves, so characteristic of Palma, is in the 
 hands of workmen, and the famous cathedral 
 has been in course of restoration for many years 
 past. The ecclesiastical activity of Palma is 
 indeed very marked, and many religious con- 
 gregations, both of monks and nuns, have made 
 their home in the island. Nowhere in Spain 
 have I seen so many and, moreover, such 
 intelligent and distinguished priests ; every 
 moment a priest seems to pass ; it is so even 
 as I write the words. 
 
 The Mallorcans are, on one side of their 
 nature, genuine artists. They share in full 
 measure the love of music which distinguishes 
 the neighbouring Catalonian and Valencian 
 coasts from the rest of Spain. They have always 
 been poets in their own Catalan tongue, here 
 spoken more purely than elsewhere, and it not 
 infrequently happens that a Mallorcan poet 
 
202 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 receives the first prize, the " flor natural," at the 
 fiesta of the Juegos Florales, in which the Catalan 
 poets compete with one another in the science 
 of "gay saber." Above all, the Mallorcans are 
 architects and sculptors. Yet the curious latent 
 violence of their temperament — a persistent 
 kernel of Africanism — involves a singular lack of 
 aesthetic sensibility. I have never heard such 
 loud and shrill organs as the churches of Palma 
 possess, nor seen such loud and shrill church 
 windows of orange and scarlet in ugly tracery, 
 the hideous suggestions, it would seem, of a 
 kaleidoscope, and the more notable since the 
 rich stained windows which fill the great dark 
 churches of Catalonia are among the most 
 beautiful and impressive in the world. The 
 bold, almost eccentric originality of the Mallorcans 
 is manifested more happily in the carving in 
 which their artists, it is clear, have always 
 delighted. A singularly original example may 
 be seen in the north door of Santa Eulalia, 
 where the carving of the capitals is run along in 
 a continuous line of winged monsters in very 
 high relief. They are bold and original, these 
 people, though not always happily inspired in 
 their art, except in building, for their cathedral 
 is one of the most imposing examples of 
 Catalonian architecture. 
 
RAMON LULL AT PALMA 203 
 
 III 
 
 Eamon Lull was born a few years after the 
 Christian conquest of Majorca. It was a con- 
 quest that had been effected humanely. The 
 fanatical ferocity of a later age had not yet 
 developed. When the Moslems held the island 
 they tolerated Christians, and allowed the Bishop 
 of Barcelona to exercise jurisdiction over them, 
 and the Christians on their side had not yet 
 invented the instrument of the Inquisition which 
 was one day to be applied so remorselessly in 
 stamping out the exquisite civilisation of Islam. 
 This fact is memorable, for when we realise that 
 Eamon Lull was born in the most nearly 
 Moslem of Christian cities we understand how 
 it was that his life and actions were so in- 
 stinctively penetrated by Moorish and Arabic 
 influences. 
 
 His father was one of the knights who had 
 accompanied Jaime I. on his great enterprise in 
 Majorca. Thus Eamon Lull was bred in the 
 atmosphere of the chivalrous and romantic 
 Aragonese court, in the days when the knight 
 and the troubadour rivalled each other in 
 brilliant feats of war and love and song. Into 
 this current of life young Eamon threw himself 
 with all the impetuosity and fearless energy of 
 his Aragonese ancestry, all the intellectual 
 
204 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 brilliance of his own temperament. 1 He be- 
 came the first Catalan poet ; he was an accom- 
 plished player on the cithern, and equally skilled 
 in the arts of navigation, of horsemanship, and 
 of warfare. Appointed seneschal to the court 
 at Palma, he married and became the father 
 of children. Throughout life he was tenderly 
 devoted to his son, and one of the most re- 
 markable of his books, the Liber de Miraculis 
 Coeli et Mundi, a sort of romance, in which a 
 man takes his dearly loved son through woods 
 and mountains and plains, through towns and 
 castles and villages, to show him the wonders of 
 
 1 While this temperament is that of the finest and most typical 
 Spaniards everywhere, it seems to appear in a specially concentrated 
 and typical form in the hold and independent Balearic islanders. Five 
 centuries later these islands produced another man who, though in 
 very different fields, reveals exactly the same versatile and yet 
 vigorous temperament. Orfila, the distinguished professor of Medical 
 Jurisprudence in Paris, was born in Minorca in 1787 ; he learnt Latin 
 and much scholastic philosophy from his teacher, a Cordelier, and at 
 the age of fourteen was able to conduct a public disputation on the 
 highly metaphysical problem : " Can a thing be and not be at the 
 same time ? " He also acquired the chief modern languages as well as 
 mathematics, and then became a sailor ; but the ship he sailed in was 
 captured by Barbary pirates, who contemplated impaling and behead- 
 ing him. He left the sea to study medicine at Valencia, afterwards 
 at Barcelona, and later at Paris, became accomplished in chemistry, 
 and finally devoted himself to legal medicine, in which he was the 
 leading authority of his day, and the pioneer of scientific toxicology. 
 At the same time he was highly musical and possessed a very fine 
 voice, at the beginning of hi3 medical career refusing an offer of £1000 
 a year from the director of the Paris Opera. After the Revolution of 
 1848 he was summarily dismissed from his post of Dean of the 
 Faculty, and became the object of unremitting persecution until his 
 death, a few years later, from decay of the brain. 
 
RAMON LULL AT PALMA 205 
 
 God in the world, is surmised to have been 
 written for his own son. But at this early 
 period Lull had not awakened to the perception 
 of a spiritual world. " Lascivus et mundanus," 
 he describes himself in the few lines which are 
 almost the only reliable biography of him extant. 
 Indeed, the usual story of his conversion, the 
 anecdote by which to most people, perhaps, the 
 name of Eamon Lull alone survives, though by 
 no means impossible, is yet doubtful, for it was 
 not put on record during his life. According to 
 this well-known story, the young poet long 
 pursued with his passion and his poems an 
 exceedingly beautiful lady of Palma who per- 
 sistently rejected his addresses. On one occasion, 
 it was said, he followed her on horseback into 
 the church of Santa Eulalia, to the horror of the 
 worshippers. One day, at last, seeing no other 
 way to repel the ardour of her lover, she took 
 him aside and uncovered her breast, eaten by a 
 cancer. From that moment, according to the 
 story, so great was the revulsion of feeling in 
 the young troubadour's heart that he lost all 
 desire for earthly joy. Whether there is any 
 trace of truth in this legend, or whether it 
 happened that, in the midst of poetry and love- 
 making, an inner voice more spontaneously 
 called him to his true vocation, as happened in 
 the case of Francis of Assisi, whom in many 
 respects he so closely resembled, — though with 
 
206 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 less of childlike idyllic charm, and a far greater 
 intellectual force and originality, — it is certain 
 that he soon abandoned his worldly career and 
 most of his moderate fortune, and after seeking 
 spiritual guidance in a pilgrimage to the two great 
 shrines of Eoque d'Amadour and Compostela, 
 and intellectual proficiency at the great univer- 
 sities of Montpellier and Paris, became a Fran- 
 ciscan friar, and all his energies were turned into 
 new channels. 
 
 Eamon Lull is called the Doctor Illuminatus. 
 The epithet rightly classes him among the great 
 schoolmen. Abelard, Albert the Great, Aquinas, 
 Duns Scotus, were the great typical philosophers 
 of France, Germany, Italy, and England. Lull, 
 led into the paths of scholastic philosophy by his 
 inner illumination at a comparatively late period 
 of life, and never losing his strong and original 
 personal character, very typically represents the 
 Spaniard as schoolman. Lacking the discipline 
 of a monkish training, so that even his Latin 
 style constantly betrays the Catalan idioms of 
 his native tongue, he was largely self-taught, 
 partly in that cell over the sapphire sea, near 
 Valldemosa, on one of the loveliest spots of his 
 native island, partly by his perpetual wanderings 
 in the great cities of France and Italy, and not 
 least in Northern Africa. But it was a training 
 that gave a personal and unprejudiced character 
 to his vision that he might have missed had he 
 
RAMON LULL AT PALMA 207 
 
 been bred in a cloister, and he attained to a varied 
 culture of brain and heart, directed to practical 
 ends, which has caused him to be compared to 
 Anselm, though he was a less subtle thinker than 
 Anselm, and a far more brilliant and extra- 
 ordinary personality. 
 
 Most people who know Kamon Lull by the 
 vague rumour of tradition probably recall his 
 name as that of an alchemist. It is the in- 
 evitable legend that crystallises around every 
 seeker after knowledge in an age of ignorant 
 superstition. Many alchemistic writings were 
 in later days attributed to Lull, but though, with 
 that passionate and devouring energy which has 
 sometimes consumed the Spaniard, he wrote some 
 three hundred treatises on an immense variety of 
 topics, there is no reason to suppose that any of 
 them were devoted to the advocacy of alchemy. 
 Luanco, who has especially studied the question 
 of Lull's supposed connection with alchemy, 
 shows that from 1272 up almost to his death, 
 forty years later, nearly all the philosopher's 
 references to alchemy show a disbelief in it. He 
 repeatedly declares in his various writings that it 
 is no science at all, that the transmutation of 
 elements is impossible, that art cannot better the 
 operations of nature. In his Arbor Vitcs, a 
 voluminous compendium of all human know- 
 ledge, alchemy is treated as vain, and even 
 chemistry is ignored. 
 
208 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 The brilliant young Mallorcan knight, the 
 accomplished troubadour, had now become a 
 master of universal knowledge. It was an age 
 in which such knowledge was still just possible 
 to a man of flaming intellect and irresistible 
 energy. Yet the multiplicity of Lull's acquire- 
 ments remains astonishing. He wrote, as a 
 matter of course, of metaphysics, logic, rhetoric, 
 grammar, dogmatics, ethics ; these were within 
 the province of every schoolman. But, beyond 
 these, he dealt with geometry, astronomy, 
 physics, chemistry, anthropology, as well as law 
 and statecraft, navigation and warfare and 
 horsemanship. He foresaw the problem of 
 thermo-dynamics, the question of the expendi- 
 ture of heat in the initiation of movement ; he 
 discussed the essential properties of the elements; 
 he was acquainted with the property of iron 
 when touched by the magnet to turn to the 
 north ; he endeavoured to explain the causes 
 of wind, and rain, and ice ; he concerned him- 
 self with the problems of generation. He fore- 
 saw the Tartar invasion before the coming of the 
 Ottomans, and he firmly believed in the existence 
 of a great continent on the other side of the 
 world centuries before Columbus sailed out into 
 the west. He was not a great scientific dis- 
 coverer or investigator ; he had not the ex- 
 clusively scientific temperament of another great 
 Franciscan of that day, Roger Bacon ; but his 
 
RAMON LULL AT PALMA 209 
 
 keen and penetrating intelligence placed him at 
 the head and even in front of the best available 
 knowledge of his time, and we can but wonder 
 that a man who began life as the gay singer of a 
 remote centre of chivalry, and ended it as a 
 martyr to faith, should have possessed so much 
 cold, intellectual acumen, so much quiet energy, 
 to devote to the interpretation of the visible 
 world. 
 
 Beyond and below his philosophical studies 
 Lull was a creature of emotion and passion, and 
 it was not so much in science as in religion — 
 replacing his earlier devotion to love and song — 
 that he stands out as a great initiator. It is a 
 small matter that he is regarded as a forerunner 
 of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, 
 though it counts to his credit in the eyes of a 
 Church which has always been rather uncertain 
 whether to regard him as a heretic or a saint. 
 Eamon Lull is the acknowledged father of 
 Spanish mysticism, that is to say, of the most 
 potent and influential school of religious passion 
 which the European world can show. 
 
 It is at this point that we realise the singular 
 extent to which Ramon Lull, with all his flaming 
 personal individuality, had been influenced by 
 the Moslem environment in which he had grown 
 up. He had become a Franciscan friar, but his 
 personal taste led him to the life of a hermit, 
 and with all his frequent journeys through 
 
210 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 Europe and into Africa he evidently found long 
 spaces of time to spend in solitude, especially, 
 no doubt, in the beloved and exquisite solitude 
 of his cell among the hills of his native island. 
 He was never, however, the typical Christian 
 hermit of his day, anxious to macerate the lusts 
 of the flesh, or else content to vegetate, with 
 sensibilities deadened to all the appeals of the 
 world. Lull was far less the Christian hermit 
 than the Mohammedan Sufi. For the best of 
 the Arab Sufis a hermit's life meant a fine culti- 
 vation alike of the intellect and the religious 
 emotions. If Lull had ever read, as probably he 
 had, the charming philosophic romance, The 
 Self-taught Philosopher, in which the Spanish 
 Moslem, Ibn Tufail, set forth the history of a 
 spiritual Robinson Crusoe, cast as an infant on a 
 desert island in the Indian Ocean, suckled by a 
 compassionate roe, gradually developing through 
 observation and contemplation into a wise and 
 devout sage, he would have found an ideal that 
 singularly appealed to him. Divine illumination 
 was a reality to the Mohammedan mystics, and 
 they were accustomed, moreover, to symbolise 
 the relations of the Creator and the creature in 
 a bold and Oriental imagery of human love re- 
 lationships. 1 Lull, whose motto was, " He who 
 
 1 A brief account of Sufism by Probst-Biraben, who has studied its 
 manifestations in North Africa, will be found in the Mevue Phttoso- 
 phique, May 1906. 
 
RAMON LULL AT PALMA 211 
 
 loves not lives not," the enamoured troubadour, 
 who had left earthly love behind, seized on this 
 ecstatic aspect of religious adoration with eager 
 and inevitable instinct. He first wrested it from 
 the Moslem for Christian uses. 1 It is worth while 
 to note that the Sufi had himself learnt the secret 
 of this mysticism from Christian Neo-Platonists 
 of an earlier age, so that the Moslem handed on 
 to the Christian the torch he had himself received 
 from Christian hands. Menendez y Pelayo, in 
 his Historia de las Ideas Esteticas en Espana, 
 and Kibera, the Spanish scholar who has recently 
 set in a clear light the intimate connection be- 
 tween Lull and Moslem mysticism, have shown 
 that his most beautiful and characteristic work, 
 the Booh of the Friend and the Beloved (El 
 Libre d Amic e d Amat), which is the foundation 
 of Spanish mysticism, was written in direct imi- 
 tation of Mussulman hermits. Lull himself had 
 said so repeatedly ; he was a Sufi whose Beloved 
 was Christ. It was in the spirit of a Christian 
 Sufi that he poured contempt on religious orders, 
 and chose the life of a solitary hermit, sometimes 
 wandering in poverty from land to land, preach- 
 ing in streets and public places wherever he 
 
 1 It may be Doted that the typical Christian utterance of dis- 
 interested personal devotion to God, the sonnet "A Cristo Crucifiado" 
 (which appears in all the Protestant hymn-books, translated from a 
 Latin version wrongly ascribed to Xavier), was written by an unknown 
 Spaniard. (The authorship is discussed by Foulchi • Delbosc, Bevue 
 Sispanique, 1895 and 1899.) 
 
212 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 went, sometimes retiring to a cave for ecstatic 
 contemplation or the company of his Beloved. 
 It was a life which multitudes of Moors were 
 leading on the opposite coast of Africa. Even 
 Lull's special doctrine that all science is divine 
 illumination had been taught by Mohammedans 
 long before he was born. His tendency to pan- 
 theism, his quietism, the belief that the Friend, 
 the spiritual lover, is one in essence with the 
 Beloved, this also was a Moslem doctrine. The 
 philosopher Abensabin, the ascetic Abenhard, 
 and especially the mystic poet and universal 
 master, Mohidin Abenarabi, — all Spanish Mos- 
 lems from Murcia who had gone over to North 
 Africa, and all belonging to the period imme- 
 diately anterior to Lull, — present anticipations 
 of his own life and opinions and system which, 
 Eibera has shown, cannot be accidental. 1 The 
 Sufis wrote parables of divine love with the 
 symbolism of human love, and it would appear 
 that it was under the influence of an analogous 
 book of Mohidin's that Lull was inspired to 
 write the Book of the Friend and the Beloved, 
 the starting-point of that Christian Spanish 
 mysticism which four centuries later found its 
 greatest representative and supreme culmination 
 in Saint Theresa. 2 
 
 1 Eibera, " Origen de la Filosofia de Kaimundo Lulio " (Hommajc 
 & Menendez y Pelayo, vol. ii.). 
 
 a It may be noted that the conception of a passionate and mystical 
 devotion to abstract causes, as excluding earthly affection, is one that 
 
RAMON LULL AT PALMA 213 
 
 It is -on the practical religious side as a 
 great missionary pioneer that Lull appeals 
 chiefly to the Protestant mind. He is the 
 first among a class of missionaries, still rarely 
 found, who go out into the world not with any 
 notions of their own immense superiority to the 
 benighted heathen among whom their lot is cast, 
 but with the conviction that they are themselves 
 learning as much as they teach. Lull owed so 
 great a debt to the Moslem world, on the fringe 
 of which he had been born, that there seemed to 
 him but one pearl of great price, his Christian 
 faith, that he could impart in return. There 
 was no air of superiority about this attitude. 
 On the contrary, he had a special admiration 
 alike for the science and the virtues of the 
 Moors. In his Felix he remarks that they are 
 more sensible and sagacious in their manner of 
 life than Christians. He admired also their 
 orderly methods of devotion and their attention 
 to preaching. Eibera has not found a single 
 passage in which Lull speaks otherwise than 
 affectionately of Moslems, Mahomet alone ex- 
 cepted, and even of Mahomet he says we must 
 not speak ill if we wish to convert Moors. The 
 
 easily suggests itself to the Spanish mind, even outside the sphere of 
 religion. Pecchio tells in his Letters of a charming and enthusiastio 
 young Spanish woman, who said of the great Spanish popular hero, 
 Riego, in 1821: "I hear he is to marry; I am sorry, for does he 
 not live only for his country and only love liherty ? He ought not to 
 marry ; his marriage would be an infidelity to the Nation. Is he not 
 her lover ? " 
 
214 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 one thing lacking to the Moors, it seemed to Lull, 
 was the Christian faith, and by reasoning with 
 them, in their own tongue and on their own 
 ground, this ardent missionary hoped to achieve 
 the feat of converting them. It was the great 
 object of his life to establish teaching institu- 
 tions for living languages, especially Arabic, in 
 which competent missionaries might be trained. 
 For this end, he himself says, he worked during 
 forty-five years. Three times he went to Eome 
 to lay his plans before the Pope, who received 
 him kindly, but did nothing. In this matter 
 Lull was ahead of all the European universities, 
 while not till more than three centuries after his 
 death was the Seminarium de Propaganda Fide 
 established. Lull's personal efforts were, how- 
 ever, far from insignificant. Whether even his 
 skill and energy met with any success in convert- 
 ing Mohammedans we have no means of knowing, 
 and may be permitted to doubt. The religion of 
 Mahomet, we have to recognise, is a more youthful 
 religion than that of Christ, and it is seldom 
 indeed that a young religion yields before an old 
 one. To the present day Mohammedans have 
 seldom been converted to Christianity, even at 
 the point of the sword. The followers of a newer 
 faith refuse to take what seems a step backwards. 
 Lull had certainly prepared himself for this 
 mission with characteristic thoroughness. His 
 Arabic studies were far from superficial. He had 
 
RAMON LULL AT PALMA 215 
 
 learnt the language from an educated Saracen 
 slave, and lie must have known more than merely 
 colloquial Arabic. At his college of Miramar in 
 Majorca he instructed the friars not only in the 
 Arabic language, but also in the Arabic philo- 
 sophic systems. He is said to have written 
 more than one work, including his mystical 
 masterpiece, in Arabic. On one of his numerous 
 visits to Africa he disputed at Bona with fifty 
 Arabic doctors. At Bugia he discussed religious 
 questions with the profoundest Moslem thinkers. 
 But it is clear that he always carried his life in 
 his hands. On earlier visits he mentions that he 
 had been imprisoned and beaten. Against the 
 fanaticism of the mob no devotion can avail, and 
 it was at Bugia, in 1315, at the age of eighty, 
 that Lull was slain, and thence that his body 
 was carried to Palma, where, ever since, his 
 name has been held in reverence as the noblest 
 of Mallorcans. 
 
 Bamon Lull was the first of great Spaniards 
 — if we leave out of consideration those who 
 in an earlier age were merged in the history 
 of the Boman world — but no Spaniard since 
 has ever summed up in his own person so 
 completely and so brilliantly all the qualities 
 that go to the making of Spain. A lover, a 
 soldier, something of a heretic, much of a 
 saint, such has ever been the typical Spaniard. 
 A flaming energy for which obstacles do not 
 
216 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 exist, an aptitude for mystical passion alike 
 in love and religion, withal a certain hardness 
 which fears not to face pain and even death, 
 these are qualities that constantly reappear 
 in the men who made Spain great. Lull passed 
 successively through all the stages of the 
 Spanish soul, yet throughout his long life — 
 and herein he was most of all Spanish — he 
 retained the same fibre and temper unchanged. 
 The chivalrous young knight and poet who 
 loved music and women and horses, when by 
 a sudden emotional shock the course of his life 
 had been violently turned into a new channel, 
 retained the same chivalrous spirit, the same 
 eager devotion addressed to another love, and 
 even used the same language in its service. 
 In his hermit's cell and his ascetic separation 
 from the world, his knightly training and his 
 courtly career were still with him, and the most 
 memorable of his books, his Blanquerna (which 
 embodies the " Book of the Friend and the 
 Beloved"), as well as his Felix, is a kind of 
 Christian romance of chivalry. Throughout 
 all, the moving force of his life was passion; 
 for the troubadour and for the saint in Lull, 
 we may say, there was alike the same motto : 
 " He who loves not lives not." 
 
RAMON LULL AT PALMA 217 
 
 IV 
 
 In a gloomy side chapel of the church of the 
 Franciscans in Palma a dim lamp still burns 
 before the tomb of Eamon Lull. It is 
 an elaborate monument in alabaster, that a 
 skilful Mallorcan sculptor made more than 
 a century after Lull's death, and it covers all 
 the eastern wall of this little chapel. Above is 
 a sarcophagus, on which lies supine the figure of 
 Lull, but in the bizarre Balearic manner the 
 couch on which the figure rests is turned at 
 an impossible right angle to the sarcophagus, 
 so that the figure may be completely visible 
 to the spectator. 1 It is a grave, sedate, and 
 masculine face, with a long and venerable 
 beard; a skull-cap covers the head, which 
 rests on a cushion, while the figure is robed 
 in a long plain gown with a great rosary at 
 the girdle. So, we may well believe, the hermit 
 looked in life. 
 
 I am never weary of wandering over the 
 variegated uneven pavement of this long dark 
 church of the Franciscans. It is not one of 
 the noblest churches of Spain, but I know few 
 that are more interesting, nor can I conceive 
 
 1 Although this peculiar method is most common and pronounced 
 in Palma, I have also found a similar disposition of sepulchral effigies 
 at right angles in Zamora Cathedral ; more often it is attenuated (as 
 also at Salamanca) to half a right angle, which is less displeasing. 
 
218 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 any that would make for Ramon Lull so meet 
 a shrine. It lies in a quiet square in the heart 
 of his native city, and from the city itself it 
 looks an inconspicuous object. But when we 
 go beyond the walls on the road to Valldemosa 
 the tower of the Franciscans seems to dominate 
 the city, and we see from afar at its summit the 
 quaint little green-tiled turret with its balcony 
 that opens to the four quarters of the sky like 
 a muezzin minaret, a delightful reminiscence of 
 that Moslem world which Lull loved so greatly 
 and died for at last. 1 
 
 Nowadays, it would seem, the tide of popular 
 favour has receded from the church of San 
 Francisco. The present Mallorcan mania for 
 restoration has not touched it; a few much 
 needed repairs have been quietly effected, but 
 on the whole the church is rather dilapidated 
 and very much unspoilt. The worshippers are 
 few and poor, the cloisters with their delicate 
 and charming double row of arcades are almost 
 inaccessible and overgrown with weeds, there is 
 seldom any sacristan to guard or to exhibit the 
 treasures of the place. 2 For the most part the 
 
 1 A somewhat similar turret, with roof of glazed tiles, may be seen 
 at St. Paul's at Saragossa. 
 
 2 Part of this ancient monastery, including the beautiful cloisters, 
 is the property of the State. Some Franciscan friars have been 
 allowed to occupy the adjoining parts of the convent, and not long 
 since (in 1906), the year after my visit, they were violently accused in 
 a leading Mallorcan newspaper of effecting changes in the part of the 
 building belonging to the State ; the charge seems to have been 
 
RAMON LULL AT PALMA 219 
 
 large dark church is one's own, an antique 
 museum to enjoy, a home of romance to 
 dream in. 
 
 Once, however, it is clear, the church of 
 St. Francis must have been the most fashion- 
 able and popular in Palma. On every side 
 there are the ruined proofs of ancient wealth 
 and luxury. It is a rich collection of antiquities, 
 not artificially brought together, but as they 
 have grown up during many centuries, and as 
 they have remained untouched, it would almost 
 seem, for ages. Not notably beautiful or novel 
 in construction, the church is adorned with 
 plateresque sculpture without, and within with 
 various marbles here and there broken by the 
 ravages of time. The wealthy citizens of Palma 
 evidently desired to be buried here, for the 
 church is crowded with memorials of the dead ; 
 there are large monuments all around, and 
 gravestones are profusely scattered over the 
 worn pavement. The chapels, often irregularly 
 paved or dadoed with ancient azulejo tiles, are 
 occupied by elaborate altars and sumptuous old 
 tombs. Vast and quaint benches of various 
 pattern are placed about the church, a con- 
 cession to comfort we are surprised to find in 
 so ancient a sanctuary. No Mallorcan church 
 is richer in pictures, not only sacred pictures, 
 
 unfounded, and is chiefly interesting as an indication of the growing 
 resentment aroused by the religious orders in Spain. 
 
220 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 but secular, — notably a large ancient view of 
 Palma in the ambulatory behind the altar, — 
 of no great artistic value usually, but often 
 of considerable interest. And there is much 
 sculpture also of the bold and imposing type 
 common in Palma. 
 
 A deserted and delicious place to dream in 
 now, in the days of its prosperity the church 
 of San Francisco was not always an inviolate 
 sanctuary of peace. The waves of human 
 passion sometimes broke tumultuously through 
 even these doors. One tragic episode especially 
 in the history of Palma came to a climax in 
 this church. Late in the fifteenth century a 
 certain noble citizen of Palma was passing the 
 house of another citizen, when a servant-girl, 
 throwing the slops out of an upper window — as 
 is still the custom in the side streets of some 
 Spanish cities — emptied the jar on to the 
 passer's head. The irritated citizen entered, 
 and in spite of the remonstrances of the lady 
 of the house, insisted on personally chastising 
 the careless damsel. The master of the house, 
 insulted by this violation of his domicile, took 
 counsel with his friends, and with their aid 
 avenged the injury by slaying both the aggressor 
 and his wife. The criminals were arrested, 
 but finally pardoned. Meanwhile, however, 
 adherents had flocked to each side ; two 
 parties were formed, and the feud at last 
 
RAMON LULL AT PALMA 221 
 
 broke out in this church of San Francisco, 
 where both factions, numbering three hundred 
 persons, one day attacked each other furiously. 
 Blood flowed, many fell dead ; in vain the 
 friars sought to restore peace, and held the 
 sacrament up before the combatants. That is 
 the note of violence in the Balearic character, 
 the note that we still see in their art. 1 Now 
 friars and combatants, even worshippers, have 
 alike left the convent of the Franciscans to 
 peace. The memory of Lull alone remains 
 living in the church w T here the dim lamp 
 swings unextinguished before his tomb, and 
 from the delicious little green and red minaret 
 a silent muezzin still seems to proclaim his 
 message to the world. 
 
 It was a calm and lovely evening when, once 
 more on the Liclio, we sheered oil" from the 
 wharf at Palma. The sun was setting magni- 
 ficentlv over one horn of the crescent bay, and 
 over the other the full moon was softly sending 
 its silver shafts along the rippling waters. 
 Naples is but a vast miscellaneous water - 
 washed boulevard beside this smaller but most 
 exquisite bay, and now it seemed a mirage of 
 
 1 It is no longer marked in criminal activity ; according to the 
 latest statistics, the Balearic Isles stand better in respect to crimes of 
 violence than auy other Spanish region. 
 
222 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 enchantment On the left is the famous castle 
 of Bellver, the sentinel of Palma, firmly seated 
 on its hill; almost on the beach stands the 
 gracious and delicate Lonja, with the bold 
 indentations of its battlements against the 
 sky. To the right, rising from the massive 
 mediaeval walls, which with their gates still 
 surround the city, stands out superbly the 
 spiritual fortress of Palma, the vast pile of the 
 cathedral, and beneath it the long low Moorish 
 outline of the Almudaina, which has in all 
 ages been the palace of the temporal rulers of 
 Majorca. The undulating hills form a back- 
 ground to this vision, which dissolves into a 
 shimmering moonlit fairyland as the Lulio turns 
 northward under the walls of Bellver. 
 
 But for many hours longer we still hug the 
 coast. The grass-clad rocks reach to the silent, 
 tideless sea, little inlets now and again offer 
 their glimpses of idyllic peace ; we pass the 
 heights that just conceal Valldemosa and its 
 ruined Carthusian monastery, in which Chopin, 
 haunted and oppressed, composed his Preludes. 
 On the left the huge mass of Ivica looms in the 
 growing darkness, a mountain island. The sense 
 of enchantment is slowly passing away. My 
 fellow -passengers, mostly priests, quietly dis- 
 appear below before the hour grows too indis- 
 creetly late. In the morning we find ourselves once 
 more in the gay and busy world of Barcelona. 
 
VIII 
 •DON QUIXOTE' 
 
 Three centuries ago there appeared in Madrid 
 a novel entitled Don Quixote de la Mancha. 
 The book was carelessly printed in poor type 
 on bad paper. It aroused little admiration ; 
 most of the great literary men of the age looked 
 down on it contemptuously ; it seemed, indeed, 
 to satirise some of the most sacred ideals of 
 serious Spaniards. But, however it might be 
 regarded by orthodox literary critics or narrow- 
 minded patriots, the book was at once read 
 throughout Spain. Outside Spain, also, it was 
 very soon not only known and translated, but 
 highly praised, especially in England, where 
 leading men of letters, great philosophers, and 
 eminent physicians proclaimed their admiration. 1 
 
 1 "No foreign nation has equalled England in appreciating the 
 merit of Cervantes," writes Navarrete, one of the best of his bio- 
 graphers. Just as the first biography of Velazquez was written by 
 an Englishman, so it was at the request of an Englishman, Lord John 
 
 223 
 
224 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 More happy than its hero or its author, the 
 novel had set forth on a career of adventure in 
 which it finally conquered the world. 
 
 There can be no doubt about it, Don Quixote 
 is the world's greatest and most typical novel. 
 There are other novels which are finer works of 
 art, more exquisite in style, of more perfect 
 architectonic plan. But such books appeal less 
 to the world at large than to the literary critic ; 
 they are not equally amusing, equally profound, 
 to the men of all nations, and all ages, and all 
 degrees of mental capacity. Even if we put 
 aside monuments of literary perfection, like some 
 of the novels of Flaubert, and consider only the 
 great European novels of widest appeal and 
 deepest influence, they still fall short of the 
 standard which this book, their predecessor and 
 often their model, had set. Tristram Shandy, 
 perhaps the most cosmopolitan of English novels, 
 a book that in humour and wisdom often 
 approaches Don Quixote, has not the same 
 universality of appeal. Robinson Crusoe, the 
 most typical of English novels, the Odyssey of 
 the Anglo-Saxon on his mission of colonising 
 the earth — God-fearing, practical, inventive — is 
 equally fascinating to the simplest intellect and 
 the deepest. Yet, wide as its reputation is, it 
 
 Carteret, that the first biography of Cervantes was written in 1738, 
 while the first edition of Don Quixote prepared with the reverence due 
 to a classic was the work, in 1781, of another Englishman, the Rev. 
 John Bowie. 
 
'DON QUIXOTE' 225 
 
 has not the splendid affluence, the universal 
 humanity, of Don Quixote. Tom Jones, always 
 a great English novel, can never become a great 
 European novel ; while the genius of Scott, which 
 was truly cosmopolitan in its significance and its 
 influence, was not only too literary in its inspira- 
 tions, but too widely diffused over a wilderness 
 of romances ever to achieve immortality. La 
 Nouvelle Heloise, which once swept across Europe 
 and renewed the novel, was too narrow in its 
 spirit, too temporary in its fashion, to be endur- 
 ing. Wilhelm Meister, perhaps the wisest and 
 profoundest of books in novel form, challenges a 
 certain comparison, as the romance of the man 
 who, like Saul the son of Kish, went forth to 
 seek his father's asses and found a kingdom ; it 
 narrates an adventure which is in some sense 
 the reverse of Don Quixote's, but in its fictional 
 form it presents, like the books of Eabelais, far 
 too much that is outside the scope of fiction ever 
 to appeal to all tastes. The Arabian Nights, 
 which alone surpasses Don Quixote in variety 
 and universality of interest, is not a novel by 
 one hand, but a whole literature. Don Quixote 
 remains the one great typical novel. It is a 
 genuine invention ; for it combined for the first 
 time the old chivalrous stories of heroic achieve- 
 ment with the new picaresque stories of vulgar 
 adventure, creating in the combination something 
 that was altogether original, an instrument that 
 
 Q 
 
226 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 was capable of touching life at every point. It 
 leads us into an atmosphere in which the ideal and 
 the real are equally at home. It blends together 
 the gravest and the gayest things in the world. 
 It penetrates to the harmony that underlies the 
 violent contrasts of life, the only harmony which 
 in our moments of finest insight we feel to be 
 possible, in the same manner and, indeed, at the 
 same moment — for Lear appeared in the same 
 year as Don Quixote— that Shakespeare brought 
 together the madman and the fool on the heath 
 in a concord of divine humour. It is a story- 
 book that a child may enjoy, a tragicomedy that 
 only the wisest can fully understand. It has 
 inspired many of the masterpieces of literature ; 
 it has entered into the lives of the people of 
 every civilised land; it has become a part of 
 our human civilisation. 
 
 II 
 
 It was not to be expected that the author of 
 such a book as this, the supreme European novel, 
 an adventure book of universal human interest, 
 should be a typical man of letters, shut up in a 
 study, like Scott or Balzac or Zola. Cervantes 
 was a man of letters by accident. First of all, 
 he was a soldier and an adventurer ; it was as 
 such that he impressed his fellow-countrymen, 
 and to this fact we owe much of our knowledge 
 
'DON QUIXOTE' 227 
 
 of his life. The records of his life — apart from 
 his incidental notices of himself, and equally 
 apart from his later fame as an author — are 
 detailed, though broken and imperfect. We are 
 even able to frame a definite picture of the man 
 as he lived, — here, indeed, aided by his own 
 description in the Prologue to the Exemplary 
 Novels, — a more definite picture than we possess 
 of his great contemporary and spiritual kinsman, 
 Shakespeare, though, in this more unfortunate, 
 we have no authentic portrait of Cervantes. We 
 see him, a man of average height, with heavy 
 shoulders, light complexion, bright eyes, chestnut 
 hair, great moustache, and golden beard, a little 
 marred by short sight and an impediment of 
 speech, yet the type of the man of sanguine 
 temperament and audacious action. 
 
 Born in 1547, probably on Michaelmas Day, 
 in the ancient Castilian university town of 
 Alcala de Henares, near Madrid, Cervantes was 
 the youngest child of parents of hidalgo blood, 
 whose position in the world had fallen, but who 
 both belonged to Alcala and its neighbourhood. 
 Cervantes was fortunate, not only in his birth, 
 but in his breeding ; his schoolmaster was a 
 man of firm character, as well as of learning 
 and literary ability ; he conceived an affection 
 for his pupil, and was probably the means of 
 implanting or arousing those tastes which were 
 afterwards to develop so mightily. As a youth 
 
228 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 Cervantes wrote bad verse, which, perhaps helped 
 him to secure at the age of twenty -two the 
 friendship and patronage of Cardinal Acquaviva, 
 a man scarcely older than himself, with whom 
 he travelled to Rome. For some of his bio- 
 graphers there is a mystery about this sudden 
 departure from Madrid ; there was a quarrel, it 
 has been more than surmised, an intrigue with a 
 lady of high birth, swords drawn in the precincts 
 of the Court — a serious offence, for which the 
 penalty was loss of the right hand. But, what- 
 ever the episode, it served to bring Cervantes 
 into the main current of European life. It was, 
 indeed, a fine moment in the history of Europe. 
 The days of chivalry seemed to have come back 
 again. A great Crusade had been preached 
 against the infidel Turk, and under the in- 
 spiration of the Pope and the leadership of 
 Don John of Austria the united forces of Rome, 
 Spain, and Venice were preparing to put to sea 
 with an armament of unparalleled magnitude. 
 Cervantes, with the hereditary instincts of a 
 soldier and the personal impulse of a poet 
 enamoured of high adventure, shared the en- 
 thusiasm. He left the Cardinal's household and 
 enlisted as a common soldier. But the regiment 
 he entered, which admitted only young men of 
 good family, was one of great distinction ; it 
 represented the flower of Spanish infantry, 'held 
 to be invincible, until, a century later, it went 
 
• DON QUIXOTE ' 229 
 
 down for ever at the battle of Kocroi. This 
 wave of Christian chivalry that thus swept 
 Cervantes with it culminated in the famous 
 battle of Lepanto, one of the world's great 
 sea-fights. That day — the 7th of October 1571 
 — was the finest moment in the life of Cervantes. 
 He was weak and ill of a fever when the battle 
 began, he received three gunshot wounds in the 
 course of it, and his left hand was permanently 
 maimed, yet his share in the glory of that day 
 was ever afterwards a source of pride and joy. 
 Singularly enough, as contemporary evidence 
 amply shows, the part played by this private 
 soldier on board the Marquesa, one among 
 thirty thousand men, really won him high 
 honour. Nothing could better demonstrate the 
 extraordinary personal qualities of the man. 
 When, after some further service in an ex- 
 pedition against Tunis, he obtained leave of 
 absence to revisit Spain, he bore with him on 
 board the galley El Sol letters of recommenda- 
 tion to the King from the first generals of the 
 day, containing the highest eulogies of his valour 
 and merit, as well as of his amiable personal 
 qualities. But that irony of life which was 
 always to pursue Cervantes in the real world — 
 aided, as he himself admitted, by peculiarities 
 of personal temperament * — and which in old age 
 
 1 There is much in Cervantes's life to indicate defects of personal 
 character, not necessarily of an unlovable charaoter, but exactly what 
 
230 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 he was to translate so incomparably into the terms 
 of the ideal world, had already begun to follow 
 him. The Sol was captured almost in sight of 
 Spain by Algerine corsairs, and these letters led 
 the captors to form so high an opinion of the 
 importance of their captive that they demanded 
 a ransom out of proportion to his position or 
 his family's means. He became the slave of a 
 corsair captain of exceptional brutality, and was 
 carried to Algiers in chains, there to be detained 
 for five years. 
 
 In Algiers, as again we learn from much 
 independent evidence, Cervantes displayed, 
 under new and more difficult circumstances, 
 the same extraordinary personal qualities. He 
 was a slave, in chains, the property of a brutal 
 master. Yet he speedily became the leader and 
 inspirer of the Christian captives in Algiers. Id 
 devising methods of escape and in boldly seeking 
 to execute them, his courage and fertility of 
 resource were alike inexhaustible. Owing to the 
 treachery of others, rather than to any failure on 
 his own part, his plans always miscarried ; but he 
 accepted the responsibility, and he would im- 
 plicate no one else. It is astonishing that his 
 captors, so far from inflicting punishment upon 
 him, seem to have treated him with an increased 
 degree of consideration, but in Islam human worth 
 
 they were remains obscure. The problem has lately been interestingly 
 discussed in Hans Parlow's essay, Zu dem Leben des Cervantes. 
 
'DON QUIXOTE' 231 
 
 is recognised and esteemed wherever it may 
 appear ; that is one of the secrets of its vitality. 
 At last, by the exertions of a benevolent monk, 
 the amount of the ransom was gathered together 
 from various sources, and Cervantes returned to 
 Spain. But his services were now forgotten ; 
 Lepanto had proved a barren victory, and Don 
 John was dead. If Cervantes had chosen to 
 become a renegade Mohammedan, he could, 
 doubtless, have risen to any position he cared to 
 aspire to ; in Spain, the spirit of freedom and 
 all personal initiative were being crushed beneath 
 the arrogant hands of the Philips. Spain had 
 no uses for the best and bravest of her sons, and 
 Cervantes saw nothing before him but to do as 
 he had done ten years before, though not, we 
 may be sure, with the same enthusiasm : he 
 once more entered the ranks as a common 
 soldier. This time, again, he chose a highly 
 distinguished regiment, in which, it so chanced, 
 his rival, Lope de Vega, — then a boy of sixteen, 
 but soon to become the acknowledged prince of 
 Spanish letters, — was also at this time serving. 
 Cervantes was now, however, growing tired of 
 the hard, ill-paid, and brutal life of camps ; a 
 chivalrous enthusiasm, not the love of warfare, 
 had led him to become a soldier ; and, after 
 fighting under Alva a victorious campaign 
 against Portugal, he threw aside the pike for 
 the pen. 
 
232 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 It was a memorable epoch in his life. It 
 seems to have been in Portugal, about this time, 
 that he fell in love with a Portuguese woman, 
 said to have been of high birth, by whom he 
 had a natural daughter, his only child, who was 
 with him to the end of his life ; and perhaps it 
 was on this account that he retained a constant 
 affection for Portugal and the Portuguese. About 
 this time, in 1584, at the age of thirty-eight, 
 he wrote his first acknowledged work, the 
 pastoral poem of Galatea, and shortly after- 
 wards married the lady for whose sake it is 
 supposed to have been written, a woman much 
 younger than himself, belonging to his own 
 province, and of fairly good fortune ; with her 
 he appears to have lived happily till his death, 
 and she desired to be buried by his side. 1 Hence- 
 forth his life was divided between literature, 
 especially the writing of plays, and various petty 
 avocations, — sometimes as a collector of dues 
 for religious orders, sometimes as an agent for 
 buying grain and oil for the fleet, — whereby he 
 was enabled to become very familiar with every 
 aspect of country life in Spain. Once (in 1597) 
 he was imprisoned at Seville, by the default of 
 
 1 But it has been pointed out that her actions show an attitude of 
 reserve towards her husband and little inclination to assist him with 
 money. Perhaps this was the result of his defects of character; per- 
 haps she never forgot that she was a childless wife who had received 
 into the house the child born to her husband by another woman at the 
 very time he was courting her. 
 
'DON QUIXOTE' 233 
 
 a man to whom he had entrusted a large sum of 
 money belonging to the Government. In 
 literature he was always a pioneer, though as 
 yet he had written nothing that could gain for 
 him an immortal name. At last, if we may 
 follow the legend, for some unknown reason he 
 was incarcerated for a time in the cellar of a 
 house in the little town of Argamasilla in La 
 Mancha. Here, it is suggested, the germ of 
 Don Quixote arose in his mind, and Argamasilla 
 became the home of Don Quixote. 1 In 1605 
 the first part was published. Yet later, in 1613, 
 appeared the Novelas Exemplares, a delightful 
 collection of stories, which, as literature, may be 
 said in some respects to rank even above the 
 greater work. Finally, in 1615, at the age of 
 sixty-eight, he published the second part of Don 
 Quixote. During all these years Cervantes lived 
 with his wife, his daughter, his widowed sister 
 and his niece, whom he supported, sometimes 
 in Seville or Toledo, sometimes in Valladolid or 
 Madrid, 2 the chief cities of a country which was 
 
 1 TJndemonstrable traditions may sometimes have a basis of truth, 
 but there was no prison at Argamasilla at this time, and research has 
 yielded no shred of evidence to indicate that Cervantes was ever 
 detained here in any kind of way. It is true that his own statement 
 at the beginning of the Prologue, that his story is one that "might 
 well be engendered in a prison," may be held to support the tradition ; 
 it may also be held to be the source of it. Some writers, like Navarro 
 y Ledesma, in his life of Cervantes, anxious to preserve the prison 
 legend, maintain that it was during his unquestioned incarceration at 
 Seville that Cervantes conceived Don Quixote. 
 
 2 In some of these cities the houses in which Cervantes dwelt still 
 
234 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 at that moment the first in the world, the largest, 
 the richest, the most brilliant. He died in 
 Madrid, a popular author, but & poor and 
 unhonoured man, on April 23, 1616, departing 
 from the world but a little before his great 
 fellow-spirit, Shakespeare. 
 
 Ill 
 
 It was necessary to recapitulate the main facts 
 of the life of Cervantes — however familiar they 
 may be — because it is impossible to understand 
 Don Quixote unless we realise clearly the figure 
 of the man who stands behind it. We are 
 accustomed to say that the book is a satire of 
 the old romances of chivalry. In a limited 
 sense that is quite true. Cervantes ridiculed 
 the extravagances of chivalrous romance in its 
 decadence. But for Amadis and the other great 
 
 remain. Perhaps the most interesting spot associated with him is the 
 Posada de la Sangre at Toledo. It lies just outside the Zocodover, 
 beyond the horse-shoe archway that leads down to the Tagus. In 
 Cervantes's day it was one of the best inns in Toledo, and with its 
 old courtyard, its balcony around, with the rooms of the upper floor 
 opening on to it (as in the old English inns), and its columns of 
 older than Moorish age supporting the balcony, it may well have 
 remained unchanged since the time when, as we may well believe, 
 Cervantes stayed here and wrote. It was here that he placed the 
 scene of his delightful story of the illustrious kitchen-maid, perhaps 
 weaving his tale round some maid of the inn, seeming too beautiful and 
 refined for her tasks, such as Dona Emilia Pardo Bazan has found of 
 late in the same kitchen of the same inn, now only patronised by 
 carters and peasants, though occasionally, for love of Cervantes more 
 distinguished visitors stay here. 
 
'DON QUIXOTE' 235 
 
 old romances he had nothing but admiration and 
 affection. They were, indeed, a characteristic 
 product of Spain ; we may even say the same 
 of chivalry itself, for it lived on in Spain long 
 after it had died everywhere else, fostered by 
 the struggle against the infidel Moslem, himself 
 a chivalrous figure, and the more or less legendary 
 Cid is the supreme representative of chivalry. 
 Cervantes lived his whole life in the spirit of the 
 knight errant, and Don Quixote swept away the 
 romances of chivalry, not because it was a satire 
 of them, but because it was itself a romance of 
 chivalry and the greatest of them all, since its 
 action was placed in the real world. 
 
 Cervantes was only a man of letters by 
 accident. He was a soldier, a man of action, , 
 who would never have taken up the pen, except 
 in moments of recreation, if a long chain of 
 misfortunes had not closed the other avenues of 
 life. It is a singular fact that nearly every 
 great Spanish author has been a soldier or an 
 adventurer, at least as familiar with the pike as 
 with the pen. "The lance has never blunted 
 the pen, nor the pen the lance," said Don 
 Quixote, therein expressing the conviction of all 
 Spanish writers. Italian men of letters have 
 often been keen politicians, French men of 
 letters brilliant men of the world, English and 
 Americans good business men, or capable men of 
 affairs, but nowhere save in Spain do we find 
 
236 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 the soldier supreme in literature. To say 
 nothing of the writers of the golden age of 
 Spain in which Cervantes himself lived, we find 
 the soldier prominent in Spanish literature from 
 the first. Merobaudes, the Christian poet of the 
 fifth century, was also a distinguished soldier ; 
 Jaime the Conqueror, the great King of Aragon, 
 is almost as famous for his picturesque chronicle 
 as for his fighting qualities ; Bishop Roderic of 
 Toledo, the chief chronicler of the thirteenth 
 century, wielded his sword in the fight with the 
 same vigour as he wielded the pen afterwards in 
 describing the fight ; Santillana, the glory of 
 Spanish literature in the fifteenth century, was 
 equally great in camp, council, and court; 
 Garcilaso de la Vega, one of the most typical 
 of Spanish figures, described himself as dividing 
 his time between his sword and his pen, 
 " Tomando ora la espada, ora la pluma." 
 
 Spain has ever been the land of the sword : 
 the ancient rapier, perhaps even the name itself, 
 is Spanish ; Shakespeare's soldiers cherished their 
 Bilbo; the blades of Toledo, valued by the 
 Eomans, are still made in that ancient city. It 
 is perhaps not surprising that, with this famili- 
 arity with the sword and the rapier, Spanish 
 men of letters, and very notably Cervantes 
 himself, though he was a slow and careful 
 writer, were apt to neglect the more minute 
 graces of style, and to wield the pen with 
 
•DON QUIXOTE' 237 
 
 something of the same freedom and force which 
 they had acquired with the more brilliant, virile, 
 and flexible weapon. It is, perhaps, also not 
 surprising that they learned in the world of 
 action to feel and to express a humanity, an 
 insight, a depth, which are not learned in the 
 study. The swift, daring, poignant qualities 
 of Spanish literature seem to bear witness to 
 the fact that these men were trained for the pen 
 by the sword. 
 
 In this, as in all else, Cervantes was a typical 
 Spaniard. He was a great personality, a brilliant 
 soldier, long before he conceived Don Quixote. 
 It is interesting in this respect to compare 
 him with the greatest of his contemporaries in 
 literature, a man as typically English as he was 
 Spanish, and as immortal as himself. In temper 
 of intellect Shakespeare resembled Cervantes, 
 though he was incomparably the greater artist ; 
 they had passed through the same kind of 
 mental evolution, they had the same abounding 
 humanity, and both ultimately attained the same 
 sweet-natured, though profoundly ironic vision of 
 life. Yet, if neither of them had ever written, 
 how different, when the antiquaries had disin- 
 terred their histories, would be our conception 
 of the two men. They were alike in being of 
 somewhat poor parentage and yet of good 
 family, and both had to make their own way 
 in the world. But all we could say of Shake- 
 
238 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 speare would be that, after some rather dubious 
 episodes in early life, he became a third-rate 
 actor and a successful manager ; that, person- 
 ally, he was an amiable man, though punctilious 
 in business matters ; and that his chief ambition 
 in life was to retire early on a competency, and 
 to write " Gentleman " after his name. There 
 are millions of his fellow-countrymen of whom 
 one could say as much. But, if Cervantes had 
 never written a line, he would still have seemed 
 a remarkable man and a notable personality. 
 Before he wrote of life he had spent his best 
 years in learning the lessons of life. 
 
 Seldom has any great novel been written by 
 a young man : Tristram Shandy, Robinson 
 Crusoe, Tom Jones, La Nouvelle Heldise, 
 Wilhelm Meister, were all written by mature 
 men who had for the most part passed middle 
 age. Don Quixote — more especially the second 
 and finer part — was written by an old man, who 
 had outlived his ideals and his ambitions, and 
 settled down peacefully in a little home in 
 Madrid, poor of purse but rich in the wisdom 
 garnered during a variegated and adventurous 
 life. Don Quixote is a spiritual autobiography. 
 That is why it is so quintessentially a Spanish 
 book. 
 
 Cervantes was a Spaniard of Spaniards. The 
 great writers of a nation are not always its most 
 typical representatives. Dante could only have 
 
'DON QUIXOTE' 239 
 
 been an Italian, and Goethe only a German, but 
 we do not feel that either of them is the repre- 
 sentative man of his people. We may seek to 
 account for Shakespeare by appealing to various 
 racial elements in Great Britain, but Shakespeare 
 — with his volubility and extravagance, his 
 emotional expansiveness, his lightness of touch, 
 his reckless gaiety and wit — was far indeed 
 from the slow, practical, serious Englishman. 
 Cervantes, from first to last, is always Spanish. 
 His ideals and his disillusions, his morality and 
 his humour, his artistic methods as well as his 
 style — save that he took a few ideas from Italy 
 — are entirely Spanish. 1 Don Quixote himself 
 and Sancho Panza, his central personages, are 
 not only all Spanish, they are all Spain. Often 
 have I seen them between Madrid and Seville, 
 when travelling along the road skirting La 
 Mancha, that Cervantes knew so well : the long 
 solemn face, the grave courteous mien, the 
 luminous eyes that seemed fixed on some inner 
 vision and blind to the facts of life around ; 
 and there also, indeed everywhere, is the round, 
 wrinkled, good-humoured face of the peasant 
 
 1 Menendez y Pelayo, in an interesting lecture on Cervantes's 
 literary culture (published in the Sevista de Archivos, 1905), says that 
 no prose writer influenced Cervantes's prose so much as Boccaccio, but 
 it was a purely formal influence. In the main Cervantes follows the 
 Celestina and Lope de Rueda's comedies ; he never directly imitated 
 the picaresque novelists. Sancho had one prototype, and one only, 
 in late chivalrous literature, the Ribaido in a fourteenth century 
 Eistoria del Catallero de Dioa. 
 
240 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 farmer, imperturbably patient, meeting all the 
 mischances and discomforts of life with a smile 
 and a jest and a proverb. " Don Quixote ! " 
 I have always exclaimed to myself, " Sancho 
 Panza ! " They two make Spain in our day, 
 perhaps, even more than in Cervantes's day ; 
 for, sound as Spain still is at the core, the man 
 of heroic action and fearless spirit, the con- 
 quistador type of man, is nowadays seldom seen 
 in the land, and the great personalities of Spain 
 tend to become the mere rhetorical ornaments 
 of a rotten political system. Don Quixote, 
 with his idealism, his pride of race and ancestry, 
 his more or less dim consciousness of some 
 hereditary mission which is out of relation to 
 the world of to-day, is as inapt for the leader- 
 ship of the modern world as Sancho Panza, by 
 his very virtues, his brave acceptance of the 
 immediate duty before him, his cheerful and 
 uncomplaining submission to all the ills of life, 
 is inapt for the ordinary tasks of progress and 
 reform. The genius of Cervantes has written 
 the history of his own country. 
 
 Even in the minute details of his great book 
 we may detect the peculiarly national character 
 of the mind of Cervantes, and his thoroughly 
 Spanish tastes. To mention only one trifling 
 point, we may observe his preference for the 
 colour green, which appears in his work in so 
 many different shapes. Perhaps the Moors, for 
 
'DON QUIXOTE' 241 
 
 whom green is the most sacred of colours, be- 
 queathed this preference to the Spaniards, though 
 in any case it is the favourite colour in a dry 
 and barren land, such as is Spain in much of 
 its extent. Cervantes admires green eyes, like 
 many other Spanish poets, though unlike the 
 related Sicilians, for whom dark eyes alone are 
 beautiful ; Dulcinea's eyes are " verdes esme- 
 raldas." Every careful reader of Don Quixote, 
 familiar with Spain, cannot fail to find similar 
 instances of Cervantes's JEspanolismo. 1 
 
 And yet, on this intensely national basis, Don 
 Quixote is the most cosmopolitan, the most 
 universal of books. Not Chaucer or Tolstoy 
 shows a wider humanity. Even Shakespeare 
 could not dispense with a villain, but there is 
 no Iago among the six hundred and sixty -nine 
 personages who, it is calculated, are introduced 
 into Don Quixote. There is no better test of 
 a genuinely human spirit than an ability to 
 overcome the all-pervading influences of religious 
 and national bias. Cervantes had shed his blood 
 in battle against the infidel corsairs of Algiers, 
 and he had been their chained captive. Yet — 
 . although it is true that he shared all the national 
 prejudices against the Moriscoes in Spain — he 
 not only learned and absorbed much from the 
 
 1 The writer who adopts the pseudonym of "Dr. Thebussem" has 
 discussed Cervantes's love of green, "Lo Verde," Espafia Moderna, 
 March 1894. 
 
 R 
 
242 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 Eastern life in which he had been soaked for 
 five years, but he acquired a comprehension and 
 appreciation of the Moor which it was rare 
 indeed for a Spaniard to feel for the hereditary 
 foes of his country. Between Portugal and 
 Spain, again, there was then, to an even greater 
 extent than to-day, a spirit of jealousy and 
 antagonism ; yet Cervantes can never say too 
 much in praise of Portugal and the Portuguese. 
 If there was any nation whom Spaniards might 
 be excused for hating at that time it was the 
 English. Those pirates and heretics of the 
 north were perpetually swooping down on their 
 coasts, destroying their galleons, devastating 
 their colonial possessions; Cervantes lived through 
 the days of the Spanish Armada, yet his attitude 
 towards the English is courteous and considerate. 
 It was, perhaps, in some measure, this tole- 
 rant and even sympathetic attitude towards 
 the enemies of Spain, as well as what seemed 
 to many the ridicule he had cast upon Spanish 
 ideas and Spanish foibles, which so long stood 
 in the way of any enthusiastic recognition by 
 Spain of Cervantes' s supreme place in literature. 
 He was for some centuries read in Spain, as 
 Shakespeare was at first read in England, as an 
 amusing author before he was recognised as one 
 of the world's great spirits. In the meanwhile, 
 outside Spain, Don Quixote was not only finding 
 affectionate readers among people of all ages and 
 
♦DON QUIXOTE' 243 
 
 all classes ; it was beginning to be recognised as 
 a wonderful and many-sided work of art, — a 
 treasure-house in which each might find what 
 he sought, an allegory, even, which would lend 
 itself to all interpretations. Heine has recorded 
 how, as a boy by the Rhine, he had read Don 
 Quixote with laughter and tears, and how with 
 his own growth the meaning of the book grew 
 with him, a perpetual inspiration. It is not alone 
 the pioneer in life, the adventurous reformer, the 
 knight of the Holy Ghost, who turns to Don 
 Quixote ; the prudent and sagacious man of the 
 world turns thither also with a smile full of 
 meaning, as the wise and sceptical Sydenham 
 turned when an ambitious young practitioner 
 of medicine asked him what he should read : 
 " Read Don Quixote. It is a good book. I read 
 it still." And when we turn to the noble ode — 
 " Letania de Nuestro Sefior Don Quijote" — which 
 Ruben Dario, the most inspired poet of the 
 Spanish-speaking world of to-day, has addressed 
 to Don Quixote, we realise that beyond this 
 Cervantes has created a figure with even a 
 religious significance for the consolation of men. 
 Don Quixote is not only the type and pattern 
 of our greatest novels ; it is a vision of the 
 human soul, woven into the texture of the world's 
 spiritual traditions. The Knight of La Mancha 
 has indeed succeeded in his quest, and won a 
 more immortal Dulcinea than he ever sought. 
 
IX 
 
 JUAN VALERA 
 
 The death of Juan Valera a few years ago 
 attracted little attention in Spain, and was 
 scarcely noted in the world generally. In most 
 countries the passing away of a great writer is 
 the signal to a crowd of minor writers to bring 
 forward their tributes of appreciation. Except 
 one or two small pamphlets, and a magazine 
 article here and there — notably some slight 
 personal reminiscences by his old friend and 
 fellow - novelist, Emilia Pardo Bazan, in La 
 Lectura — I have been able to discover nothing 
 about Valera, no book, no biography, and on 
 the whole the critics have meted out their praise 
 with a keener eye for minor defects than for the 
 great qualities of style and personality. Yet 
 Valera should be an attractive subject to the 
 biographer, for he was not only a great writer, 
 but a brilliant and gracious personage who led 
 a varied and interesting cosmopolitan life, and 
 played a conspicuous part in the national affairs 
 
 244 
 
JUAN VALERA 245 
 
 of his time. It must, however, be admitted that 
 the same scanty appreciation was accorded to 
 Valera by his fellow-countrymen during life. 
 " I have, and shall always have, few readers," 
 he wrote in 1877. He was accustomed to say, I 
 have heard, that the profits of Pepita Jimenez, 
 his most popular novel, which has been trans- 
 lated into all the leading languages of the world, 
 had not enabled him to buy a new dress for his 
 wife. The story is no doubt apocryphal, but his 
 literary income was never large. Fortunately, 
 he was independent of it, and died, in old age, 
 cheerful, though blind, among his books. There 
 seems to be but one sign of any perception 
 among the Spaniards that in Valera they possess 
 one of the glories of their land : with that local 
 patriotism that is always so strong in Spain, in 
 the little Andalusian town of Cabra, where he 
 was born, it is proposed to establish in the house 
 that was his birthplace a museum devoted to 
 memorials of his life. 
 
 If we ask why it is that Valera yet meets 
 with so little recognition, I do not think the 
 answer is far to find. He always stood outside 
 the literary currents of his time. He was never 
 a disciple in any school ; he was never a master 
 in any school. There were many literary 
 fashions during his long life : romanticism, 
 naturalism, decadentism, symbolism. All these 
 currents successively carried away a large part 
 
246 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 of literary Spain. Zola and the naturalistic 
 current, more especially, disturbed the literary 
 equilibrium of Spain ; even Emilia Pardo Bazan, 
 though moving in the Catholic tradition, was 
 greatly influenced by the Goncourts and Zola, 
 while the most remarkable of recent novelists, 
 Blasco Ibanez, has been described as a Spanish 
 Zola. But from the first Valera remained 
 serenely unaffected by this as by every other 
 fashionable stream of tendency. "Human 
 documents," he said, " were out of place in 
 novels ; their proper place was the hospital 
 report or the asylum bulletin." Baudelaire, 
 again, seemed to Valera perverse and incom- 
 pletely human, while for Carducci, on the other 
 hand, even when chanting the praise of Satan, 
 he felt strong admiration, because Carducci 
 represents a vehement faith in human life and 
 human destiny. In an article on "La Moral en 
 el Arte," written in old age, Valera attempted, 
 not for the first time, to set forth his attitude in 
 this matter. Perfect poetry, he argues, — using 
 poetry in its widest sense, to cover all forms of 
 creative literary art, — must exist for its own sake ; 
 it has no duty save to be sincere and to avoid 
 affectation ; it must never pretend to teach 
 science ; it must never attempt to inculcate 
 morality. Yet at the same time he asserted 
 with equal emphasis — careless whether or not 
 there lay here any contradiction — that great art 
 
JUAN VALERA 247 
 
 is always true and always moral. There is no 
 discrepancy between morals and aesthetics, 
 between the good and the beautiful. " Wisdom, 
 beauty, and truth, when they attain perfection, 
 coincide and mingle." It is the soul of a good 
 man that is reflected in the beautiful mirror of 
 Don Quixote. Beauty and goodness melt into 
 one another, yet art must never seek morality. 
 
 It is easy to see how a writer who, in the 
 practice of his art, as well as in theory, con- 
 sistently maintained this attitude was little 
 likely to win either the applause of the multitude 
 or the admiration of the literary coteries. His 
 popular contemporary, Perez Galdos, who 
 occupies much the same position in contempo- 
 rary Spanish literature as Bjornson in Norwegian, 
 owes his great position largely, not to purely 
 artistic qualities, but to his enlightened and 
 helpful sympathy in all the national progressive 
 movements of his fellow - countrymen ; nearly 
 everything he has written may be said to have 
 a direct tendency — religious, moral, social, 
 patriotic — which appeals to thousands who care 
 nothing for art. The small band of the devotees 
 of art, on the other hand, could scarcely claim 
 Valera as an apostle, for he disdained modernity ; 
 there is no phrase-chiselling or love of neologisms 
 in the gracious flow of his large and simple 
 style, and he cannot be fitted into any literary 
 formula. There was thus always a certain 
 
248 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 distance between Valera and his contemporaries ; 
 they sometimes tried to account for this by 
 calling him " academical," and they bore witness 
 to its reality by instinctively acquiring the habit 
 — continued even after his death — of speaking 
 of him with formal respect as Don Juan 
 Valera. 
 
 He was not " academical," but there was 
 another epithet sometimes applied to him which, 
 rightly understood, may be accepted as fitting, 
 and was by himself accepted. He was not 
 "classical" in the narrow sense, though un- 
 doubtedly he experienced a vivid and sympa- 
 thetic delight in Greek literature, nor was his 
 serene optimism in the face of life that superficial 
 cheerfulness which, by some curious misunder- 
 standing, is commonly supposed to mark the 
 paganism of antiquity. Valera's Hellenism, it is 
 true, was less that of Pindar and Thucydides 
 than the later Alexandrian and cosmopolitan 
 type of Hellenism, that of Theocritus and the 
 Daphnis and Chloe which he translated into 
 Spanish. But he was none the less genuinely 
 classical, and even in a double sense. He 
 possessed by nature the simple strength and 
 breadth, the love of fine surface and clear depth, 
 the delicate taste and sense of measure, the 
 tendency to combine the real and ideal har- 
 moniously in presentation — instead of setting 
 them in violently picturesque contrast — which 
 
JUAN VALERA 249 
 
 marked ancient literature, and which therefore 
 always seems to us classic, in opposition to 
 romantic. He was, further, classic in a more 
 narrow and national sense. He represented, 
 more finely and more truly than any of his 
 contemporaries, the best ancient traditions of 
 Spanish literature. He was a genuine descendant 
 of Cervantes. 
 
 Don Juan Valera y Alcala Galiano was born 
 in 1824 at Cabra, a provincial town, known to 
 the Eomans and famous for its wines, situated 
 amid picturesque scenery thirty miles from 
 Cordova, the oldest seat of civilisation in Spain. 
 The finest-tempered brains of Andalusia have 
 always come from the keen air of this its 
 northernmost and in most respects its pre- 
 dominant city. There is a solemn quiet and 
 dignity about Cordova very impressive as com- 
 pared to the plebeian rush and noise of modern 
 Granada. Even the scurrying streams and 
 fountains of Granada seem a little vulgar beside 
 the broad, slow, deliberate flow of the Guadal- 
 quivir, with its smooth, almost mirror -like 
 surface. There is no haste about this city 
 which has lived for so many years ; for it is not 
 a dead city, only its life seems to have with- 
 drawn proudly within its innumerable palace- 
 like patios, rather than join in the competition 
 of the modern world. It is one of the most 
 venerable, one of the most aristocratic of cities, 
 
250 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 a Spanish Kome. Valera was always proud of 
 being an Andalusian ; most of his novels have 
 their scene in his native land ; nearly all his 
 heroes and heroines belong to Andalusia, and 
 especially to Cordova, even though, like Eafaela, 
 they live in South America. It is, perhaps, not 
 difficult to see how this Andalusian origin has 
 tempered Valera's literary personality. His 
 serene and sunny optimism, the amenity, the 
 quiet humour, the absence of violence throughout 
 his work, the instinctively artistic standpoint — 
 these are the characteristics which distinguish 
 the finest type of Andalusian from the man of 
 either the east or the north of Spain. 
 
 Valera was the son of a naval officer, and 
 aristocratically connected through his mother, 
 Dona Dolores Alcala Galiano, Marquesa de 
 Paniega. Concerning his early life the available 
 information is scanty. He was educated partly at 
 Malaga, partly at the College of the Sacro Monte 
 at Granada ; he studied jurisprudence and became 
 a licentiate in law in 1846. The Conde de las 
 Navas describes him in early life as having black 
 and abundant hair, and being short-sighted, — 
 gazing so fixedly through his glasses that those 
 who talked with him were obliged to lower their 
 own eyes, — while, the Conde adds, he always 
 dressed with immaculate correctness. 
 
 Through family influence Valera was ap- 
 pointed second secretary to the Spanish Legation 
 
JUAN VALERA 251 
 
 at Naples in 1847, under the Duke of Kivas, a 
 Spaniard of much intellectual distinction. The 
 two years he spent in Naples were not only, as 
 he wrote long after, the happiest of his life, they 
 were also its most critical period. It was here 
 that he found himself, and here that the spirit 
 which animated all his future work first became 
 clearly conscious. On the one hand the inspira- 
 tions of the land of Magna Grsecia induced him 
 to make a thorough study of Greek, and his 
 ideals in art and poetry were definitely moulded ; 
 on the other hand, the great year of 1848 — 
 when, as he wrote, " princesses and even the 
 Pope were revolutionary leaders " — determined 
 the Liberalism in politics to which he always 
 adhered, though he was never an ardent 
 politician. It was in Naples that his vocation 
 became clear to him. At the outset his literary 
 tendencies were cosmopolitan, but at this period 
 the influence of the quintessentially Spanish 
 style and Spanish spirit of Bstebanez Calderon — 
 who in 1847 published his Escenas Andaluzas — 
 made Valera a genuinely Castilian writer. 
 
 The most notable point in the evolution of 
 this young man of sensitive genius, who thus 
 awoke to spiritual life at the most vital moment 
 in the whole nineteenth century, was the manner 
 in which he escaped the most fascinating and 
 characteristic literary movement of that time. 
 The romantic wave was sweeping over Europe, 
 
252 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 but although it had received part of its 
 inspiration from Spain, and was now affecting 
 nearly all the Spanish men of letters, Valera, 
 then and always, remained absolutely untouched 
 by it. Beneath his suavity Valera possessed 
 in full measure the firm independence of the 
 Spaniard, and followed the inspiration of his 
 own native genius. In 1864, in the very 
 interesting Dedication of his Estudios Criticos 
 to the Duke of Kivas, he wrote : " Even in the 
 epoch of the chief fervour and supremacy of 
 romanticism I have never been a romantic, but in 
 my manner classical — a manner, certainly, very 
 different from the pseudo-classicism of France. 
 I worshipped form, but it was the internal and 
 spiritual form, not over-adorned, puerile, and 
 affected. I was a fervid believer in the 
 mysteries of style, in that simplicity and purity 
 by which style realises ideas and feelings, and 
 embodies in language of indestructible charm an 
 author's whole mind and heart." 
 
 Valera was, however, in no haste to be an 
 author, and although it would appear that he 
 began to write in verse at this time it was not 
 until 1858 that his first volume, Poesias, 
 appeared. Valera' s verse is of a deliberate and 
 somewhat learned order, revealing the influence 
 of the Greeks and also of the Italians. Leopardi 
 is the poet whom he more especially recalls, and 
 it has been said that he wrote like Leopardi 
 
JUAN VALERA 253 
 
 even before he knew his work and became a 
 passionate admirer of it. In this volume was 
 fully revealed that Platonism which subtly 
 penetrated the whole of his work. " Erotic 
 Platonism," said Menendez y Pelayo, " is the soul 
 of Valera's amatory verses " : love is to him a 
 continuous progress from beautiful bodies to 
 beautiful souls, and thence to the idea of beauty 
 itself, while he also hovers over the Platonic 
 doctrine of reminiscence and Plotinus's notion of 
 nature as the mirror of the formula of beauty. 
 Such Platonic suggestions occur again and again 
 throughout his novels even in the unlikeliest 
 places. In the Dedication of Dona Luz he 
 seeks a moral for his story — notwithstanding his 
 dislike of stories with morals — in a Platonic 
 passage from Bembo, and in Genio y Figura he 
 represents Eafaela la Generosa, after her bath, 
 kissing her image in the mirror, and explaining 
 the act in the spirit of a Platonism which would 
 scarcely have presented itself to the courtesan of 
 Cadiz. 1 
 
 It could not be expected that the public would 
 
 1 This spirit is, however, quite Spanish. Neo-Platonism, especially 
 in its relation to beauty and love, may be said to occupy the chief 
 place in the philosophy of the Spanish Renaissance ; it is studied at 
 length by Menendez y Pelayo in the second volume of his Historia de 
 las Ideas Esteticas en Espafia. The fifteenth century Leon Hebreo (or 
 Judah Abarbanel), a Neo-Platonic Spanish Jew soaked in Hellenism, is 
 regarded as one of the philosophic glories of Spain, and his influence 
 extends through the golden age of Spanish literature to Cervantes, 
 whose Galatea in its Neo-Platonism closely follows Leon Hebreo. 
 
254 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 be interested in the restrained and aristocratic art 
 of the Poesias. Valera now turned to criticism 
 for self-expression, but he always cherished a love 
 for poetry, and regarded himself as a poet even 
 in his novels, while to the last, also, he was very 
 susceptible to any praise of his verse. In the 
 Preface which he wrote at Washington in 1885 
 for the collected edition of his Romances, 
 Canciones y Poesias, he affirmed : " The prin- 
 cipal reason for writing is poetry. "Writings 
 become famous and immortal by their beauty 
 and not by the truth they teach. The pre- 
 tension of those who believe that it is possible 
 to teach by writing is nearly always vain. The 
 great masters of humanity write nothing, neither 
 Christ, nor Sakyamuni, nor Pythagoras, nor 
 Socrates." 
 
 In the meanwhile, in the course of his 
 diplomatic career, Valera was promoted to more 
 and more important posts, first to Lisbon 
 (1850), then to Brazil (1851), where he first 
 knew a charming child, the daughter of his 
 chief, who was, sixteen years later, to become 
 his wife. In 1854 he was at Dresden, in 1856 
 secretary to a special mission to Eussia, in 1865 
 plenipotentiary at Frankfort. 
 
 It was at this period of life, when he had 
 reached full maturity, that Valera became, 
 almost, it would seem, by accident, though his 
 ambition had long pointed in this direction, a 
 
JUAN VALERA 255 
 
 novelist. His earlier literary occupations, the 
 whole course of his life, were admirably fitted to 
 prepare him for the literary work which more 
 than all others demands a wide and mature 
 experience of the world. It seems to have been 
 out of the sympathetic interest which the poet 
 and artist in Valera felt towards mysticism, and 
 in the inspiration which his style received from 
 reading the old mystics, Luis de Granada and 
 Saint Theresa, that Pepita Jimenez was slowly 
 developed, although the sceptic and the cosmo- 
 politan in Valera saved him from any undue 
 insistence on this mystic interest. He at first 
 thought, we are told, of writing a kind of dis- 
 sertation or philosophic dialogue on the eternal 
 conflict between body and spirit, between nature 
 and mysticism, but the happy idea came of 
 making the dissertation a novel. The story is 
 that of a simple, sincere, and serious young 
 Spaniard, who is preparing himself whole- ' 
 heartedly for the career of a priest, but gradually 
 realises that he has no true avocation after he 
 meets a young widow of twenWeight, Pepita 
 Jimenez, who falls in love with him. With an 
 almost unconscious art, which is more than half 
 nature, and never for a moment robs her of her 
 feminine charm, Pepita cannot rest until, slowly 
 conquering the reserves of his temperament and 
 the scruples of his spurious vocation, she has 
 finally won him. The fine quality of the novel 
 
256 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 lies very largely in the delicate skill with which 
 Valera has avoided the pitfalls which beset such 
 a story, harmonising all the conflicting interests 
 and impulses involved, and infusing the whole 
 with the temper of his own mingled gaiety and 
 dignity. The book was in every respect a 
 triumphant achievement, and it placed its 
 author at once, for the first and perhaps it may 
 be said the last time, on a pinnacle of popular 
 success. In Spain Valera is still commonly 
 spoken of as the author of Pepita Jimenez. 
 
 In Pepita herself, who may almost be called 
 the hero of the story, we meet at the outset one 
 of the most typical of Valera's women. They 
 are not generally in their first youth, but they 
 retain the qualities of virginal youthfulness 
 combined with the energy and experience of 
 maturity. They belong to the country or to 
 small country towns, sometimes to the country 
 aristocracy, sometimes to the poorest elements 
 of the population, not seldom they are illegiti- 
 mate children, combining an aristocratic dis- 
 tinction with plebeian vigour ; in any case they 
 are represented as the finest flower of country 
 life. Their skill and discretion is always 
 emphasised as well as their physical energy. 
 Dona Luz could dance like a sylph, ride like an 
 Amazon, and in her walk resembled the divine 
 huntress of Delos, and Rosita is similarly com- 
 pared to Diana. Emilia Pardo Bazan has well 
 
JUAN VALERA 257 
 
 described the general character of Valera's 
 women. " Observe," she says, " that Valera's 
 heroines greatly resemble one another ; we notice 
 a family air, notwithstanding their difference in 
 position, behaviour, and birth, between Dona 
 Luz, Pepita, Calitea, Juanita, and Eafaela. 
 Many believe that all these women possess the 
 soul and mind of their author incarnated in a 
 feminine body. They personify women accord- 
 ing to the classic ideal, the women of the 
 sixteenth century and the Spanish Eenaissance, 
 discreet and even learned with all their womanli- 
 ness, delicate and resolute, philosophical, pre- 
 cieuse, not sentimental and nervous, more 
 theological than devout, free and bold in their 
 language, impetuous in love, but ardent in 
 defending their honour, very subtle, yet not 
 perverted, or if, like Eafaela, they become so, 
 knowing how to preserve a certain dignity 
 analogous to the feeling of honour in men. It 
 would be a mistake to suppose that Spanish 
 women in general to-day resemble Valera's 
 heroines, who are more virile, more intellectual, 
 more martial and decided, than most of their 
 fellow -countrywomen. We must seek their 
 ancestry in Tirso's plays and the novels of 
 Maria de Zayas." Certainly the average middle- 
 class woman of to-day has little resemblance to 
 Valera's women, but Valera himself would prob- 
 ably have been the first to admit this. He has 
 
 s 
 
258 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 chosen carefully selected types, occurring under 
 special yet peculiarly Spanish conditions out of 
 the beaten track. According to his method, he 
 mingled the real and the ideal, certainly utilising 
 — in Juanita la Larga, his most detailed portrait 
 of a woman, very fully and precisely — his own 
 observation and early reminiscence. The essential 
 qualities of Valera's women correspond to the 
 qualities we may see or divine in the ordinary 
 working-class women of Spain to-day, and the 
 fundamental veracity of the types he presents is 
 sufficiently evidenced by the likeness they 
 reveal to the heroines of Cervantes and Tirso de 
 Molina, of all Spanish writers those who have 
 most faithfully presented the genuine Spaniard. 1 
 Having at length found himself in literature, 
 and gathered together an audience, Valera began 
 to write with an energy and a slowly growing 
 freedom and personality of touch that he had 
 not before shown. Pepita Jimenez was quickly 
 followed by Dona Luz. Here, indeed, though 
 he writes in a less impersonal manner than in 
 the earlier novel, he clings a little timidly to the 
 same subject — the conflict between religion and 
 love. A pious friar in broken health returns 
 from a life devoted to good works in the 
 
 1 Dona Pardo Bazan herself, in a later criticism of Valera, recog- 
 nises the reality of Valera's women as portraits, — though not admit- 
 ting the Valerian style of their conversation, — and adds that she has 
 herself known various women like Pepita Jimenez even in a oity so 
 far from Andalusia as Santiago de Compostela, 
 
JUAN VALERA 259 
 
 Philippines to his native town in Andalusia, 
 and here gradually falls in love with a noble- 
 man's illegitimate daughter who has long lived 
 in seclusion in the same place. He never 
 declares his passion except in a manuscript 
 which chances to fall into the lady's hand after 
 his death ; she, on her side, felt for the gentle 
 monk a tender friendship which moved towards 
 the verge of love, but, as she was able to per- 
 suade herself, never entered that verge. It is 
 not a story which lends itself to the dramatic 
 and effective situations of Pepita Jimenez, but 
 it is developed with the same delicacy and skill, 
 — indeed, perhaps in an even greater degree, — 
 and takes high rank among Valera's books. 
 
 Las Rusiones del Doctor Faustino marks a 
 further progress along the path of freedom in 
 narrative, and in Valera's tendency to give a 
 more and more personal character to his books. 
 This was not entirely a sound tendency, for it 
 sometimes led to the introduction of a way- 
 wardly fantastic element as well as to many 
 scarcely relevant digressions. Doctor Faustino 
 is lengthier than usual ; it is a series of loosely 
 connected episodes, some of which for the first 
 time show a love of incidents lying on the border 
 of the mysterious, which in some later books, 
 especially Morsomor, becomes pronounced and 
 is associated with the weakest elements in his 
 work. There is, however, a seriously symbolic 
 
260 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 idea running through Las Husiones del Doctor 
 Faustino. The hero, a miniature Faust without 
 supernatural accompaniments, represents the 
 Spaniard of the contemporary generation, "a 
 man of noble and generous nature, though 
 vitiated by a perverse education and by the 
 environment in which he has lived." He com- 
 bines the three defects most apt to afflict the 
 educated middle-class Spaniard : pedantic philo- 
 sophy, uncombined with energy for the tasks of 
 life, political ambition with failure to distinguish 
 true liberty from tumult and disorder, the mania 
 ,-of noble descent united with complete lack of 
 aptitude for practical affairs. Apart from the 
 charm of certain figures and episodes in it, the 
 book thus has a serious interest as Valera's chief 
 contribution to the criticism of contemporary 
 Spanish conditions. 
 
 Valera's personality as an artist, as a master 
 of the novel, was now firmly established, and in 
 a number of shorter stories, at times contes 
 somewhat in the manner of Voltaire, as well as 
 in a constant succession of delightful essays, in 
 which usually some new book or topic of the 
 moment is made the excuse for discussing the 
 most various subjects, his philosophy and moral 
 personality now began to be clearly visible. 
 As a literary critic of modern writers it can 
 scarcely be said that Valera is at his best. A 
 very courteous and considerate gentleman, who 
 
JUAN VALERA 261 
 
 occupies a high social and intellectual position 
 and knows everybody, is not likely to be an 
 epoch-making critic. We see the impossibility 
 of real criticism under such conditions in the 
 futility of Sainte-Beuve's later work with its 
 excessive politeness towards everybody all round. 
 As Valera was incapable of saying a bitter or 
 cruel thing either in public or in private, and 
 happened to be out of sympathy with the chief 
 literary fashions of his day, he avoided concern- 
 ing himself with their representatives, carefully 
 neglecting to read some of the most popular con- 
 temporary novelists ; he usually confined him- 
 self to the sometimes rather extravagant eulogy 
 of minor writers, or else to classic books where 
 he was at his best as a critic. Once, indeed, he 
 had a famous controversy on poetry and meta- 
 physics with the distinguished poet Campoamor, 
 but, as Valera was careful to point out, their 
 polemics were of a purely playful kind and 
 revealed no violent difference of opinion. Cam- 
 poamor defends the utility of poetry and meta- 
 physics ; Valera, in accordance with the principles 
 he always maintained, affirms their inutility, 
 and denies even to the drama the right of 
 presenting moral lessons. As to metaphysics, 
 Valera declares that he has read many meta- 
 physical systems : they enchant him ; he marvels 
 at them ; but they do not convince him that 
 metaphysics is anything more than a science of 
 
262 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 ,/pure luxury. Valera carried something of the 
 same spirit of genial scepticism into all spheres 
 of thought. We may perhaps say of him as he 
 says of his heroine Calitea in La Buena Fama, 
 " sometimes she doubted about everything, 
 sometimes she believed a little, sometimes she 
 believed nothing." He might have added that 
 sometimes she believed everything, for Valera's 
 attitude was inconsistent with contempt or 
 indifference for any genuine human belief. He 
 objected to call anything " fabulous," because, 
 he said, " so bold and offensive a qualification 
 can to-day be applied to hardly anything. 
 There are no limits to the possible." So it was 
 that when, in 1899, the hour of Spain's dejection 
 in the war with the United States, Valera 
 turned back to the days when Spain was great 
 and wrote his Morsomor, the story of a 
 Franciscan monk in Seville in the early six- 
 teenth century, he introduced Mahatmas and 
 the paraphernalia of occultism, which latterly 
 acquired a peculiar fascination for him. 
 
 Valera, it has been said, was of the school of 
 Montaigne and of Goethe ; it might be added 
 that both in thought and in morals his attitude 
 was even closer to that of Renan. His scepticism 
 was always tolerant, even when it could not be 
 sympathetic, and always allied to the optimistic 
 temper. " The Muse that has inspired me," he 
 remarks in the prologue to his tales De Varios 
 
JUAN VALERA 263 
 
 Colores, " is neither melancholy nor tragic, but 
 joyous and cheerful, as is fitting to console me 
 for my real griefs, and not to increase their 
 weight by imaginary troubles." Valera remained 
 a child of Spain, where, if the sinners have some- 
 times been grave, even the saints have often been 
 gay, as they felt that it befitted them to be. 
 
 Valera's practical moral attitude towards his 
 fellow-men, what he himself called his Panphilism, 
 is well illustrated by the conte, somewhat in the 
 manner of Voltaire, called "Parsondes," published 
 in the volume of Cuentos, Dialogos y Fantasias. 
 Once upon a time, more than two thousand 
 six hundred years ago, there was a satrap at 
 Susa much loved by the great king of the Medes, 
 Arteo, for he was the gravest and most moral of 
 all the satraps. This holy and austere man, 
 whose name was Parsondes, knew and taught all 
 the wisdom of Zoroaster ; at last he disappeared, 
 and all good believers held that he had been 
 taken up into the highest circle of light ; his 
 memory, therefore, was almost worshipped. 
 When on earth he had often reproved Nanar, 
 king of Babylon, a tributary of the great king 
 of the Medes, for his dissolute manner of living, 
 and report was at length brought to Arteo that 
 Parsondes was killed or perhaps imprisoned by 
 Nanar. Thereupon Arteo sent one of Parsondes's 
 most faithful disciples to investigate the matter, 
 for he suspected that Parsondes might still be 
 
264 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 alive, even though perhaps undergoing insuffer- 
 able torments. At last, in self-defence, and to 
 the stupefaction of the faithful disciple, Nanar 
 produced the holy man, perfumed and dressed 
 like a king, in the midst of a band of lovely 
 women who accompanied him dancing and sing- 
 ing, "lam other than I was," Parsondes said. 
 " Return if you will to Susa, but say not that I 
 still live, lest the Magi be scandalised and lose so 
 recent an example of sanctity. Nanar avenged 
 himself on my rough and reckless virtue by 
 making me a prisoner, commanding that I should 
 be soaped and rubbed with towels. Since then I 
 have continued to bathe and perfume myself 
 twice a day, feasting as I might desire, and 
 forcing myself to accept the company of these 
 joyous ladies, at last forgetting Zoroaster and my 
 austere preaching, being convinced that we 
 should seek to spend this life in the best way 
 possible, and not concern ourselves with the faults 
 of others. Needless troubles kill the fool, and 
 no one is more a fool than he who worries himself 
 to censure the vices of others merely because he 
 has had no opportunity of falling into them him- 
 self, or else has failed to fall into them from 
 ignorance, bad taste, or rusticity." On hearing 
 these words the faithful disciple put his hands to 
 his ears and rushed away from the palace, de- 
 termined to advise the College of the Magi 
 to continue to maintain that Parsondes had 
 
JUAN VALERA 265 
 
 ascended into the empyrean, and never to reveal 
 that he was still alive among the dancing-girls 
 of Babylon. This delightful conte moral, in 
 which Valera playfully set forth the moral 
 temper which all his work reveals, may perhaps 
 recall L'Abbesse de Jouarre, in which Eenan, 
 also in old age, pointed a not dissimilar moral, 
 while we may remember how Goethe, even in 
 youth, had been impressed by the saying of the 
 humane and yet austere Thraseas : Qui vitia 
 odit homines odit, He who hates vices hates man- 
 kind. For, as the younger Pliny said, indulgence 
 is a part of justice. 
 
 While Valera was thus at the height of his 
 literary activity, and harmoniously developing 
 those conceptions of life and the world which 
 underwent no substantial change from first to 
 last, his diplomatic and political career pursued 
 its regular course of promotion. After the Eevolu- 
 tion of 1868, when Isabella lost the throne, he 
 became an Under-Secretary of State, and he was 
 one of the chief members of the deputation which 
 invited Amadeo to the throne of Spain. In 1881 
 he was plenipotentiary at Lisbon, in 1883 at 
 Washington, in 1886 at Brussels, and in 1893 he 
 was appointed ambassador in Vienna, Though 
 never a strenuous politician, he was at one time 
 a deputy in the Cortes and a member of several 
 Liberal Cabinets. At a later period he became 
 a senator for life. He had three children : the 
 
266 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 death of one son was a great grief; the other 
 has, to some extent, followed in his father's foot- 
 steps ; the daughter is married to a diplomatist. 
 Two novels — Juanita la Larga and Genio y 
 Figura — which belong to the most mature period 
 of Valera's art deserve special mention, because 
 they stand in the first rank of his work. Juanita 
 la Larga, the history of a young country girl 
 who by her own sterling personal qualities 
 surmounts all the difficulties in her path, is a 
 minute and delightful picture of rural Andalusian 
 life, avowedly founded on reminiscences of a 
 childhood and youth spent in the province of 
 Cordova. In the preface Valera remarks, indeed, 
 that he scarcely knows whether the book is or is 
 not a novel, for he is here a historian rather than 
 an inventive novelist. Juanita la Larga differs 
 from nearly all Valera's books by presenting 
 almost exclusively the lives of simple and 
 uncultivated persons, presenting them indeed 
 graciously, harmoniously, humorously, without 
 any of the crudity which was constitutionally 
 alien to Valera's temperament, but yet with a 
 realism which proves that, whatever his dislike 
 of the French naturalistic novel, he was still true 
 to the traditions of the Spanish novel. For in 
 the fundamental sense the Spanish novelists, 
 with Cervantes at their head, have always 
 been realists, in the same way in which in 
 England Fielding and Defoe were realists. 
 
JUAN VALERA 267 
 
 The same realism, combined with the same 
 wholesome and joyous vision of human life in a 
 more difficult situation, meet us in Genio y 
 Figura, the last in date of Valera's great novels, 
 the most mature, the most daring, perhaps the 
 finest. It is the story of a woman who, like 
 Juanita, and with similar high qualities of intelli- 
 gence and character, though not the same ideals 
 of conventional morality, springs from nothing, 
 and slowly living down social disapprobation wins 
 general esteem and respect. Rafaela la Generosa 
 is a beautiful and spirited young courtesan from 
 Cadiz, who has a charming voice and an accom- 
 plished way of dancing the fandango and the 
 jaleo. She is much admired by the dandies of 
 Lisbon, one of whom, impressed by her abilities, 
 helps her to go out to Brazil as a dancer, and 
 recommends her to the notice of a rich old 
 usurer at Rio de Janeiro. Under his protection 
 she appears in public at Eio as a dancer, but is 
 at first driven off the stage, for the old man's 
 sordid and ridiculous ways have made him 
 unpopular and discredited Rafaela. But with 
 her good sense and good humour Rafaela, who 
 has all the Spanish stoicism, accepts as a joke 
 the vegetables that are flung at her, slowly wins 
 her way, and gains the love of the old man, 
 whom she marries. Her task is still, however, 
 but beginning ; she has to acquire social con- 
 sideration not only for herself but for her 
 
268 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 husband; she teaches him good manners, in- 
 structs him in the mysteries of the toilet, and 
 puts him in the hands of the best tailors. At 
 the same time the influence of her sagacity and 
 economy are shown in his affairs generally, and 
 she helps him to employ his money wisely and 
 beneficently. The couple begin to overcome 
 indifference and hostility, and to win social 
 consideration and position ; the highest aristoc- 
 racy are eventually to be found in Eafaela's 
 salon. While, however, she is devoted to the 
 interests of her husband, it is esteem and friend- 
 ship that she gives him, not love. Her love 
 goes in other directions, but even in following 
 the impulses of her heart Rafaela shows her usual 
 skill and discretion, and is careful to spare her 
 husband's feelings. There is only one man whom 
 she truly loves, an Englishman, and by him she 
 has a child, a daughter named Lucia, whose birth 
 she keeps secret, for she considers it dishonour- 
 able to foist her child on her husband. Eafaela 
 has her daughter very carefully educated in a 
 convent, and when she becomes a widow she 
 settles in Paris and fixes all her hopes on this 
 girl, cherishing the notion that in her she may 
 realise the ideals that in her own struggling and 
 irregular life she has missed, though at times, 
 indeed, with her sagacious intelligence, she doubts 
 the value of an innocence never fortified by trial. 
 But her doubts are settled by Lucia, who, in a 
 
JUAN VALERA 269 
 
 moment of grief, due to the refusal of her father 
 to recognise her, takes the veil and shuts herself 
 in the convent for ever, whereupon Eafaela, 
 deprived of her one hope in life, takes poison and 
 dies. Such is the story of a novel in which 
 Valera has put the most personal and mature 
 spirit of his wisdom and humanity, a novel in 
 which realism and poetry are wrought together 
 with an art and a charm that may well entitle 
 it to rank as a masterpiece. 
 
 The novelist's last years were spent in 
 Madrid, surrounded by affectionate and dis- 
 tinguished friends, cheerful, amiable, dignified 
 to the end, though for several years before his 
 death he was blind from cataract of both eyes. 
 He was one of the few great men, says his 
 friend, the Conde de las Navas, who are such 
 even to their valets. He continued to live in 
 his study and to write essays, though now he 
 dictated them to a secretary, and his last 
 volume of essays, Terapeutica Social, was 
 published only a month before his death. His 
 habits were simple ; he liked the plain Cordovan 
 dishes of his own province, and he drank light 
 white wine ; like all Spaniards, he smoked much. 
 Notwithstanding his blindness, he would still 
 accompany his lady visitors to the door, and 
 he always made it a rule to be present at the 
 sittings of the Spanish Academy. The last task 
 entrusted to him was a discourse on Cervantes to 
 
270 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 be read before the Academy on the occasion of 
 the commemoration of the tercentenary of Don 
 Quixote. He was able to write most of his dis- 
 course, but not all. He died, just before the 
 festivities of the tercentenary, of apoplexy, on 
 the 18th of April 1905. 
 
 It has already been necessary to point out 
 that Valera stood a little aloof and alien 
 from the most popular men and movements of 
 his time. He was not a partizan, he was too 
 wise and clear-sighted to be a fanatic even on 
 behalf of the causes he believed in. Galdos, 
 his contemporary as a novelist, though much 
 younger in years, has again and again aroused 
 the enthusiasm of the more progressive Spanish 
 public who, except when Pepita Jimenez was 
 published, have always been unresponsive to the 
 wisdom of Valera. 1 Blasco Ibanez, the Valen- 
 cia^ the latest of the really significant novelists 
 of Spain, is still farther away from the spirit 
 of Valera. Rough, vigorous, not always even 
 grammatical, sometimes crudely naturalistic, 
 sometimes breaking out into impassioned lyri- 
 cism, always an uncompromising revolutionist, 
 
 1 Galdos was born in 1855 at Las Palmas in the Canaries, where 
 he lived till the age of eighteen, amid a population that was half 
 English. He knows English, and was much influenced by Dickens, 
 afterwards a little by Zola. He is said to be not quite sympathetic 
 in personal intercourse, silent, observant, and ironical, so that his 
 friends are in doubt whether to admire his Castilian gravity or to 
 wonder at his British phlegm. (See an article on Galdos by Marti- 
 nenche in the Revue des Deux Mondes, 15th April 1906.) 
 
JUAN VALERA 271 
 
 aggressive and combative, ardently concerned 
 with social problems, and a faithful painter of 
 the common people whose life he knows so well, 
 Blasco Ibanez is a great force in literature, but 
 he is far indeed from the sunny and serene 
 Greek temper of Valera. 1 
 
 " I have always been inspired," Valera once 
 wrote, " by the pure love of beauty." In a 
 certain sense his novels have the quality of 
 poetry, and it is not surprising that many 
 authoritative Spanish critics of to-day are 
 inclined to deny to him any high place as a 
 novelist. He is too cold and correct, they say ; 
 his characters speak as he would himself speak ; 
 he is more concerned with expressing himself 
 than with creating original types, or objectively 
 describing the real people of the real world 
 around him. Even Emilia Pardo Bazan, whose 
 own mastery of the craft entitles her opinion to 
 respect, considers that Valera was not a born 
 novelist like Dickens or Galdos, and somewhat 
 too bookish, Ubresco. There is a certain amount 
 of truth in these criticisms. Yet Valera is in 
 little need of apology ; his books are their 
 own sufficient justification ; they constitute an 
 achievement in Spanish literature. The Spanish 
 genius, though never gross and sensual, is some- 
 times sombre and violent. But if it burns 
 
 1 An interesting sketch of Blasco Ibafiez's turbulent and adven- 
 turous career will be found in Le Censeur, 6th April 1907. 
 
272 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 smokily in its lower ranges, in its higher reaches 
 it bursts into gay and lucent flame. It is so in 
 Velazquez ; it is so in Cervantes. Valera is not 
 indeed with these men ; his fine superficies and 
 breadth are not accompanied by the passion 
 and intensity needed for self-realisation in the 
 highest original achievement. But he has the 
 temperament of these supreme men, their vision, 
 their clarity, their serenity, their humanity. His 
 best works are a fine and permanent manifesta- 
 tion of the Spanish spirit, and the personality 
 that produced them is even finer than the 
 works. 
 
X 
 SANTA MARIA DEL MAR 
 
 "A great, famous, rich, and well-established 
 city" — so Barcelona seemed to Cervantes three 
 centuries ago. He made it the scene of Don 
 Quixote's final and most lamentable adven- 
 tures, and vividly described its exuberant life. 
 Cervantes clearly placed this city, though he 
 had little personal connection with it, above all 
 the cities of Spain, for again in Las Dos Don- 
 cellas, when the travellers approached Barcelona 
 towards sunset, " the lovely situation of the city 
 filled them with admiration, and they reckoned 
 it the flower of the beautiful cities of the 
 world." 
 
 Barcelona has developed since then ; it is not 
 only the greatest city in Spain, almost the 
 largest city of the Mediterranean, it is one 
 of the commercial centres of Europe, the 
 Spanish Manchester, of about the same size and 
 
 273 T 
 
274 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 population, but indeed unlike the English Man- 
 chester. Its modern eulogist can no longer 
 describe it altogether in the terms Cervantes 
 used. Yet still to-day the stranger may feel 
 something of the same enthusiasm about Bar- 
 celona ; one returns to this city again and again, 
 and always with new delight. I have seen it 
 under all aspects, and even under martial law 
 it has not been other than agreeable to live in. 1 
 One may say, indeed, that of all the great 
 commercial cities of Europe Barcelona is that 
 in which amenity of climate and the claims of 
 humane living have been least hidden and 
 crushed by the hurry and ugliness of business. 
 One most readily compares it with Marseilles, 
 but with all its human life and colour, Marseilles 
 is always restless and feverish, as Barcelona 
 never is, while in Naples, the other great city 
 of the Mediterranean, this restless feverishness 
 is still more pronounced, and more disconcerting 
 because more squalid. 
 
 The special characters of Barcelona may, 
 however, best be realised by comparing it with 
 
 1 On this occasion, directly after a series of sanguinary collisions 
 in the streets, a " state of war " was officially declared, the military 
 authorities took over the control of affairs, troops were poured in and 
 posted at every "strategic position," the newspapers were placed 
 under military censure, and forbidden to publish any news concerning 
 the events in progress. At last the trams began to run again down 
 the long Rambla, under the guard of mounted soldiers with drawn 
 sabres, while crowds gazed in silence, the cry of the Catalan ex- 
 tremists, " Down with Spain ! " for the time subdued. 
 
SANTA MARIA DEL MAR 275 
 
 the other great industrial seaports of Spain, 
 such as Bilbao and Malaga. Bilbao, which for 
 industrial energy and importance is naturally 
 coupled with Barcelona, presents a complete 
 contrast to it although only situated a few 
 hundred miles away. It is a city of the 
 Basques, a people of very different temperament 
 from the Catalans, and it is on the damp and 
 stormy shores of the Bay of Biscay ; those, 
 doubtless, are main factors in its special com- 
 plexion. The Basques are honest, serious, in- 
 dustrious, humane, home-loving people, perhaps 
 to even a greater extent than the Catalans, but 
 they lack the sense for the external side of life, 
 and tenacious as they are of their ancient rights 
 and privileges, they seem to possess no strong 
 impulse to assert themselves in the visible 
 splendour of urban life. The Basque is the 
 man of the mountain village, and Bilbao is 
 nothing more than an overgrown mountain 
 village. The broken and hilly site is naturally 
 picturesque, and the town seems to have 
 reverently adapted itself to the sinuosities of 
 its site, and to that extent only is it adequate 
 and satisfying. But more than that is needed 
 to make a great city. We demand the plastic 
 force of the collective community, creating for 
 itself a visibly beautiful and imposing home. 
 The Walloons of Liege — an industrial city of 
 somewhat similar character, though indeed 
 
276 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 much larger — are also beautifully situated amid 
 fine scenery, but they have not on that account 
 neglected the active creation of their city. 
 That we miss at Bilbao ; there are neither 
 splendid signs of antiquity nor attractive signs 
 of modernity. At Barcelona a magnificent site 
 has been wisely and spaciously planned to the 
 best advantage, while the precious remains of 
 antiquity have been, so far as possible, har- 
 moniously preserved without detriment to the 
 insistent demands of a modern community's life. 
 But in Bilbao all the signs of a vigorous urban 
 community's collective social life, — great parks 
 and splendid churches, markets, town-halls, 
 museums, theatres, music-halls, caf^s, — all the 
 things in which Barcelona reveals her abounding 
 splendour and vitality, are either so insignificant 
 that they scarcely catch our attention, or they 
 are not there at all. Let us turn to Malaga, 
 a Mediterranean city and therefore perhaps 
 more comparable to Barcelona. Malaga is still, 
 as it has been from the time of the Phoenicians, 
 a very important commercial and industrial 
 centre ; it has an almost supremely fine climatic 
 position, with the hottest and perhaps the most 
 perfect winter weather of Continental Europe. 
 Its people possess, too, a not uninteresting city, 
 and they reveal a certain aspiration for urban 
 development ; but that executive ability, so 
 marked in the Catalans, is here lacking. The 
 
SANTA MARIA DEL MAR 277 
 
 languor of their climate seems always to affect 
 the accomplishment of the Malaga people's great 
 designs. Alike under Moorish rule and under 
 Christian rule few great personalities have come 
 out of Malaga, for at Malaga it is so easy to 
 recline under the blue sky, amid the almost 
 tropical vegetation, and therewith to be content. 
 We must not expect to find people of the same 
 fibre as those who made Barcelona. 
 
 The Catalans are a sturdy and vigorous 
 people who from of old have been planted 
 firmly astride the eastern portion of the Pyrenees, 
 for it is still easy to trace the Catalan character- 
 istics of Roussillon. They are not French , they 
 are not completely Spanish, though both French 
 and Spanish characteristics may be found -here 
 blended, for an indomitable strength of fibre has 
 enabled them to preserve a high degree of in- 
 dependence. They were of old an adventurous, 
 seafaring people who compiled, indeed, the first 
 code of maritime law in the western world ; they 
 established free municipal institutions and an 
 enlightened political order, which could accept no 
 external restraint. 1 They have always succeeded 
 
 1 To-day it is the political and administrative control of Madrid 
 against which the Catalans protest. The Catalan question is, 
 especially, an economic question. The Catalans rebel against paying 
 the bureaucratic Castilian heavily for services which are very badly 
 performed, services which, they are well aware, they could perform 
 very much better for themselves. They have suffered seriously from 
 the necessities of a State centralised in remote Madrid, and they con- 
 sider, moreover, that they are entitled to fiscal autonomy. Their 
 
278 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 in the end in throwing back the French from the 
 Pyrenees, and they have never bowed willingly — 
 to-day less than ever — to the dictates of Madrid, 
 nor have they ever hesitated to accept radical 
 and subversive theories in the sphere of thought. 
 Superficial picturesqueness and charm are not 
 primary qualities among the Catalans. They 
 are not unaware of those qualities ; they can 
 devote, indeed, the busiest part of their busiest 
 thoroughfare to a flower market, and the market 
 woman who offers an artichoke for sale holds it 
 tenderly by the long stalk as if she knew the 
 beautiful flower it really is ; but they are always 
 prepared to sacrifice picturesqueness and charm 
 to practical usefulness and convenience. This 
 temperament has slowly moulded their water- 
 pot, which, instead of being, as in neigh- 
 bouring Valencia, a beautiful but inconvenient 
 jar of more or less classical shape, is here per- 
 fectly well adapted to its uses, although it has 
 thereby lost most of its grace. The Catalan 
 language, again, though closely related to Pro- 
 vencal, one of the most charming and musical of 
 tongues, is a characteristic creation of a rough 
 and vigorous race, somewhat careless of formal 
 
 commercial and industrial supremacy leads them to assign to Catalonia 
 a more than provincial rank, and they believe that the restoration of 
 Spain can best be accomplished with a Catalan hegemony, and increased 
 home-rule in all the regions of Spain. It is quite likely that such a 
 reform of the national constitution would lead to a state of things 
 more suitable to the genius of the Spanish character than the present 
 highly centralised system. 
 
SANTA MARIA DEL MAR 279 
 
 beauty, and willing to contract its speech into a 
 series of unpleasantly sibilant and dental mono- 
 syllables, which might have been invented by a 
 people whose mouths were habitually full. The 
 people themselves, indeed, are not beautiful, men 
 or women, that is in the great towns ; it is often 
 quite otherwise as regards the women when we 
 go to secluded inland spots, and even just out- 
 side Barcelona they are often charming and of a 
 type of fair regular beauty which, even among 
 women of the people, is often quite sensitive and 
 not of the Andalusian bronze or marble mould. 
 In the city, especially, the faces are more mobile, 
 the gestures are more dramatic, there is more 
 refinement of expression in the whole body. It 
 is the inevitable result of city life. They are 
 clearly a very mixed people, and to their making 
 many perhaps incongruous elements have gone ; 
 all sorts of types are met, on the whole more 
 often fair than dark, with blue or grey eyes and 
 rather light hair. In the main they are certainly 
 a physically robust race, both men and women ; 
 and the women, even more than elsewhere in 
 Spain, are often large, with great busts and hips, 
 though there are also slender types, with lively 
 round faces and sensitive everted nostrils, again 
 not beautiful, but alert and intelligent. 
 
 The essential and pronounced characteristics 
 of the Catalans are much less physical than 
 psychic. To a tenacity like that of their 
 
280 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 Aragonese neighbours they unite, what is not 
 found in the Aragonese, a close grip of the 
 material side of life, an executive energy which 
 enables them to organise, and bring to successful 
 issue, the practical schemes, and these are many, 
 to which they set themselves. They are business- 
 like, strictly honest, even in dealing with the most 
 helpless foreigners ; and that quality of urbanity, 
 of instinctively humane friendliness towards the 
 stranger, which had so impressed the sympathetic 
 Cervantes, remains still one of their most 
 characteristic features. To the traveller who 
 approaches Barcelona, whether from the Spanish 
 side or the French side, it may seem sometimes 
 that there is a somewhat insensitive coarseness 
 of fibre in the Catalonian. That impression 
 disappears, however, when we realise that the 
 fundamental Catalonian characteristic is a 
 humanity which is not always timidly seeking 
 to guard itself from hostile approaches. It is 
 the temper of a people singularly well fitted to 
 realise the claims of urban living and to organise 
 its modern developments. To the Englishman, 
 especially — scarcely yet beginning to realise that 
 living is an art, and accustomed to feel that he 
 is never comfortable except when he is uncom- 
 fortable — Barcelona cannot fail to be a revelation 
 of what a great commercial city may be when 
 humanely and harmoniously organised. In a 
 beautiful and exquisitely tempered climate, that 
 
SANTA MARIA DEL MAR 281 
 
 is seldom too hot and seldom too cold, a robustly 
 independent and clear -eyed population has here 
 freely expanded itself, loving work and loving 
 play, and combining these two fundamental 
 human impulses more completely and more 
 admirably than any other equally great city. 
 When it has achieved the highest degree of 
 economic and political freedom compatible with 
 the integrity of Spain, of which it is more than 
 any other region the executive brain and arm, 
 Barcelona will worthily appear as in some 
 essentials a model city, a place worthy of 
 municipal pilgrimage and urban inspiration. 
 We are accustomed to look upon Spain as a 
 country which has fallen behind in the race of 
 civilisation. But civilisation is largely a matter 
 of beautiful and humane urban development 
 under industrial conditions, and in Barcelona 
 we realise that, in many respects, this has been 
 attained in a degree which elsewhere we are 
 still vainly toiling to achieve. So it is that in 
 Barcelona we do not, as in so many cities that 
 are both ancient and modern, shun the new while 
 we seek out the old; we find the Bambla, the 
 wharves, all the haunts of men to-day, not less 
 delightful than the mysterious gloom of the 
 cathedral or the venerable church of the populace, 
 Santa Maria del Mar. 
 
282 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 II 
 
 The vigour and inventiveness of the Catalans 
 have been displayed in the sciences and the arts 
 from the earliest times. Barcelona has always 
 been an enlightened and liberal seaport. Arnold 
 of Villanueva and other intellectual pioneers 
 may be counted as Catalans, as may many 
 Spanish revolutionaries and freethinkers of later 
 times. The neighbouring monastery of Mon- 
 serrat was in early ages a centre of light where 
 all the artistic crafts were fostered. The Catalans 
 have always cherished their poetic gifts and 
 publicly rewarded their poets ; they are among 
 the most musical people in Spain ; in painting 
 they were pioneers of the Spanish school, and 
 still to-day produce the greatest number of 
 Spanish painters. 
 
 But while the Catalans have thus shown 
 energy and versatile aptitude in so many 
 fields, we have to admit, as we enumerate 
 those aptitudes, that seldom in any of those 
 fields have they achieved a supremacy which 
 invites the reverent study of the world in 
 general. There remains, however, one field of 
 art in which the Catalan genius has expressed 
 itself with a more notable emphasis and beauty, 
 and that is architecture. 
 
 I can never forget how, on my first approach 
 
SANTA MARIA DEL MAR 283 
 
 to Spain, many years ago, through Eoussillon, 
 I stopped to rest for the night, before crossing 
 the frontier, at the little city of Perpignan, once 
 Spanish, and with an agreeable Catalan flavour 
 still clinging to it. It was late afternoon, 
 almost dusk, and when I found myself before 
 the quiet and unostentatious cathedral, I 
 pushed open the small door and entered. The 
 church was very dark, it seemed the darkest 
 church I had ever seen, with only one small 
 red lamp twinkling through the gloom, but 
 it was light enough to realise the simple and 
 impressive plan of the building : a broad 
 and aisleless hall, of solemn and mysterious 
 simplicity, with that low - toned gravity and 
 sweetness which strikes the perfect note of 
 devotion in a church and veils its imperfection, 
 if such there be, in tender mist. I was in a 
 church of the Catalan type, although as yet 
 I knew not so much as that there was a Catalan 
 type of church. It had all the charm of a fresh 
 and incalculable revelation. 
 
 Taking a broad survey of Spain as a whole, 
 it seems to me, after traversing the country 
 in most directions, that the main focus of vital 
 feeling for architecture (excluding Moorish 
 architecture) is in Catalonia and Valencia (with 
 Majorca), while there is another minor focus 
 in the portions of Old Castile and Leon 
 immediately to the north of the Guadarrama 
 
284. THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 Mountains; these two foci, although unlike in 
 character, being approximately connected by 
 the valley of the Ebro, to Tudela and towards 
 Pamplona, which has always been so important 
 a channel of communication, and then falling 
 back along the Duero to Old Castile. Nearly 
 all the fundamental ideas of Spanish architec- 
 ture have been imported from without, usually 
 from France, but in Catalonia and Valencia 
 they have been developed brilliantly, vigorously, 
 sometimes luxuriantly, with a fine and often 
 original sense of architectural beauty, in 
 ecclesiastical, municipal, and domestic buildings, 
 while in Castile an impressive and yet delicate 
 form of church has been developed, a kind of 
 Renaissance Gothic, finding its best expression 
 perhaps in Segovia Cathedral, which is unique, 
 and corresponds to that subtlety and refinement 
 which seems to me to mark the people them- 
 selves and their spiritual productions generally. 
 The reality of the architectural impulse in 
 these two centres is indicated by the fact that 
 it is illustrated not only in the special develop- 
 ments of Gothic here found, but also in the 
 churches of the earlier Romanesque period. 
 Outside these centres there are many great 
 and splendid buildings, often expressing to 
 the utmost the special temper of the Spanish 
 people, but at the best they are not archi- 
 tecturally Spanish, and they have little or no 
 
SANTA MARIA DEL MAR 285 
 
 original beauty which is Spanish. Leon is 
 purely French, its exquisite beauty, its extreme 
 daring, still further heightened by the con- 
 tinuous reverence which, unlike its French 
 sisters, it has always received. Santiago de 
 Compostela, in a very different style, is the 
 fellow of Saint Sernin at Toulouse, and doubt- 
 less designed by the same Aquitanian architect ; 
 Toledo and Burgos, superbly Spanish as they 
 have become in their final effects, are funda- 
 mentally French ; Seville Cathedral, with all 
 the magnificence of its aim and its effect, 
 lacks purely architectural beauty, and was 
 planned and mainly built, one can well believe, 
 by German Gothic architects. 
 
 The earliest fine church of the transition 
 from Eomanesque of the type of St. Sernin 
 to Gothic in Eastern Spain is the colegiata 
 (formerly the cathedral) of Tudela, on the Ebro. 
 It was begun in 1135, and represents the 
 earliest Pointed style, developing on a still 
 strongly marked Eomanesque basis. The plain, 
 whitewashed cloisters, surrounding the closed 
 court full of dense, luxuriant vegetation, are 
 Romanesque, so are the interesting portals and 
 the varied and elaborate capitals. But from 
 this basis the church springs up in the very 
 early French Gothic manner, symmetrical and 
 simple in its fundamental construction, not 
 spacious, not imposing, and with no ambulatory 
 
286 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 in the choir, the eastern chapels being in a line 
 with the capilla mayor. Outside, the effect is 
 unsatisfactory, apart from the portals, and in 
 any case difficult to view ; while inside, the 
 virtue of primitively fine construction, scarcely 
 in itself sufficient to ensure beauty, has been 
 overlaid by ugly painting, and disturbed by 
 windows full of square coloured panes. We 
 are in the presence of a very French church 
 with an initial disharmony of style, which, 
 notwithstanding its constructional virtues and 
 its undoubted interest, has not attained to any 
 satisfying beauty and solemnity. 1 
 
 Passing by Lerida Cathedral, the next stage 
 in the evolution, which I have never seen, we 
 come to the great and fascinating church of 
 
 1 I naturally give my own impression, which is not that of an 
 architect. Street regarded this cathedral as one of the best churches 
 in Europe. It has been said that Street had " a sort of delight in 
 architectural uncomfortableness. " In his dislike of false ornament 
 and his enthusiasm, in season and out of season, for the bald virtues 
 of the earliest Pointed style, he represented a wholesome reaction, 
 though many architects, it is probable, would now bring a more 
 qualified admiration into this field. It may not, I trust, be im- 
 pertinent to express my admiration of Street's Gothic Architecture in 
 Spain, written more than forty years ago, when means of communi- 
 cation were more difficult than at present, with few guide-books or 
 manuals at hand (so that he was sometimes quite unprepared for what 
 he was to find). During the hurried vacations of a busy professional 
 life Street seems to have seen nearly every important. Gothic church 
 in Spain, accurately and precisely, with the illuminating vision of one 
 familiar with the architecture of Europe, while he sketches what he 
 has seen with the skill and rapidity to which his son has borne 
 witness. The volume in which his experiences are recorded has some- 
 thing of the fresh charm and excitement .of a book of pioneering 
 adventures. It surely deserves to be republished. 
 
SANTA MARIA DEL MAR 287 
 
 Tarragona, which may be said to represent the 
 finest development of the transitional stage 
 before we reach pure and unmixed Gothic, and 
 before the really specific tendencies of Catalan 
 architecture have begun to emerge. In the 
 early part of the twelfth century, Ordericus 
 Vitalis says the cathedral church of Tarragona 
 was overgrown with oaks and beeches which 
 had indeed overspread the whole city within 
 the walls, the Saracens having butchered or 
 driven away the inhabitants. Here the ener- 
 getic Catalans set to work, and on the top of 
 the hill, facing the steep street, they rebuilt 
 the cathedral, which, with its mighty mass of 
 masonry, yet remains the central and most 
 interesting object in this ancient city. With 
 Eomanesque details, and to some extent a 
 Romanesque atmosphere, and with something 
 of a luxuriance which belongs to a much later 
 date, it is in the main the expression of an 
 early Pointed style which has gained complete 
 mastery of its effects and full self-consciousness. 
 While interesting from outside, it is too closed 
 in to be effective as a whole ; it is from within, 
 as is the case with so many Catalan churches, 
 that its charm is alone fully revealed. Here 
 we find, for the first time, the characteristic 
 gloom of Catalan churches, so that it is many 
 minutes before the eye is in any degree able 
 to see clearly. It is here that we begin to 
 
288 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 see the working of the vigorous and ingenious 
 Catalan mind as applied to architecture. It 
 was the ideal of the French Gothic artists to 
 make a beautiful glass house scientifically 
 supported by buttresses. We see that, for 
 instance, at Leon, the most developed embodi- 
 ment of the French Gothic idea that can well 
 be conceived, the realisation of that ideal which 
 the French Gothic spirit attempted at Beauvais 
 and failed to achieve ; 1 even the triforium, 
 throughout nave and transept and choir, is all 
 glass, and all stained glass ; we are in a huge 
 and lovely house of three storeys of richly 
 painted windows ; and, fortunately, in the 
 northern climate of Leon it has been possible 
 to leave undisturbed that original arrangement, 
 though a little farther south, in Avila and 
 many other places, it has been found necessary 
 to fill in the superfluous windows of the French 
 Gothic builders, and to substitute blank and 
 awkward spaces of wall. But here at Tarra- 
 gona, even at this early period, the Catalans 
 had clearly grasped the problem of light in a 
 glaring southern atmosphere, and had learnt 
 how to deal with it. The windows are often 
 very small and always filled with richly stained 
 glass ; when large, as in the rose windows, the 
 tracery is very heavy, and the glass mostly in 
 
 1 Constructionally Leon Cathedral was made possible by the very 
 light stone used in building. 
 
SANTA MARIA DEL MAR 289 
 
 small patches of deep colour. Some of the round 
 window-openings, also, while rather larger both 
 at the exterior and the interior surfaces of the 
 massively thick walls, diminish by concentric 
 rings of ornamental moulding, the glass being 
 inserted at the most constricted point in the 
 centre of the wall. 1 
 
 While Tarragona is a large church largely 
 conceived and even characteristically Catalan, 
 with a beautiful transeptal dome awkwardly 
 placed on its arches, the specific constructional 
 ideas of the Catalan genius have scarcely yet 
 begun to appear ; it is mainly the details which 
 impress us here by their novelty, ingenuity, and 
 luxuriance, and more especially the sculpture. 
 From its earliest to its latest period, Tarragona 
 Cathedral, inside and outside, and especially in 
 the wonderful cloisters, — by far the most inte- 
 resting cloisters in existence belonging to so 
 early a date, — is a revel of Catalan sculpture, 
 Eomanesque and Gothic, sculpture that is 
 solemn or beautiful or fanciful or trivial, 
 always vigorous and interesting, always the 
 
 1 Street, referring to the remarkably wide splay externally from 
 the face of the wall to the glass, compares it to a similar feature of 
 early work in England due to the rarity of the use of glass. It is 
 doubtful if there is any real analogy ; it seems to me that at Tarragona 
 we are concerned with deliberate and artistic efforts, sometimes per- 
 haps of an experimental nature, to regulate and modify light effects, 
 the Catalan architepts also at the same time being affected by the 
 general Spanish tendency, quite unlike that of French architects, to 
 sacrifice exterior effects to interior effects. 
 
290 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 native outcome of the boldly fertile and realistic 
 Catalan mind. There has always been an 
 aptitude for sculpture here ; in the Museo 
 Arqueologico near the cathedral there are 
 delightful fragments of sculpture of Koman 
 and later date, while some of the latest pieces 
 in the Roman manner, though florid, are in a 
 bold and happily decorative style. Here, in the 
 cathedral, the sculptor's work, though not 
 always happy, always shows a fine sculptural 
 feeling ; sometimes it is exquisite, sometimes 
 merely trivial, as in the marble butterflies and 
 spiders of the retdblo ; sometimes it is broadly 
 humorous, as in the scene, in the cloisters, where 
 we see a solemn procession of rats joyfully bear- 
 ing on a bier a demurely supine cat, who, a little 
 farther on, is again seen vigorously alive and 
 seizing one of her unfortunate bearers while the 
 rest are put to flight — the most insignificant 
 sculpture in the cathedral, but perhaps the most 
 interesting, the sacristan observes smilingly. 
 But everywhere there are sculptured figure 
 scenes, serious or comic, realistic fruit and 
 foliage forms, nearly always as fresh and perfect 
 as though executed yesterday, and when at last 
 one is compelled to leave, and the most charming 
 and intelligent of young sacristans bows deeply 
 his adios at the western door, it is with the feeling 
 that nowhere has the Catalan soul revealed itself 
 so variously and so riotously as at Tarragona. 
 
SANTA MARIA DEL MAR 291 
 
 When we turn to Barcelona Cathedral, which 
 was begun at the end of the thirteenth, and 
 mainly built during the early years of the 
 following century, we reach at last the fully 
 developed Catalan church of the so-called tran- 
 sitional period. I say " so-called," because we 
 seem to realise at Barcelona, what we may 
 already vaguely feel at Tarragona, that, so far as 
 the Catalans were concerned, the retention of 
 Romanesque elements in conjunction with 
 Gothic is not the helpless result of a changing 
 fashion, but a deliberately adopted method, 
 carefully calculated for the attainment of definite 
 architectural and artistic effects. And Barcelona 
 is not, like Tarragona, a church mainly interest- 
 ing for brilliant experiments and predominantly 
 the triumphant achievement of the sculptor. It 
 has a firmly designed beauty, as strong and 
 attractive a personality of its own as Notre 
 Dame of Paris. A church of such decided 
 individuality suggests the moulding force of 
 a great master-mind, and it seems probable 
 that such a creative artist is to be found in 
 Jaime Fabre, a very famous Mallorcan architect 
 and builder of that time, to whom Barcelona 
 Cathedral was entrusted. The genius of Fabre, 
 we may judge, moved strictly within the Catalan 
 limits. He imported no foreign spirit or method, 
 but he worked out the specifically Catalan con- 
 ception of a church with greater insight and 
 
292 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 executive ability than had ever been displayed 
 before, and he began to move towards those 
 ideals which were afterwards triumphantly 
 attained in the final form reached by the 
 Catalan church. 
 
 Externally Barcelona Cathedral is not especi- 
 ally impressive, much less so even than 
 Tarragona, and it is so hemmed in by build- 
 ings that only here and there are we able to 
 approach it. Like Seville it is not even finished. 
 In this subordination of exterior effects Barce- 
 lona resembles so many of even the finest 
 Spanish cathedrals, and differs from the Gothic 
 churches of Northern France. The French 
 architects, like the old Greek architects, seem to 
 have had in their heads the idea that a church 
 is like a precious casket which must, above all, 
 be beautiful, as a casket must be beautiful, to 
 honour the treasure it contains within. The 
 Spaniards, less artists, more personal in their 
 point of view, with minds mainly set on the 
 practical object for which a church is designed, 
 were primarily concerned with the worshipper 
 inside, and comparatively indifferent to every 
 consideration which had no bearing on him. At 
 Amiens, although it is not externally the most 
 perfectly planned of French Gothic churches, yet 
 perhaps the most delightful part of one's visit is 
 the walk on the roofs. Only then can we fully 
 realise the exquisite beauty and finish of the 
 
SANTA MARIA DEL MAR 293 
 
 building ; and by comparison the interior, 
 beautifully planned as it is, a little chills us 
 by its roughness and bareness. But in ap- 
 proaching a Spanish church there is seldom 
 much temptation, except at the portals, to 
 linger outside. 
 
 "When we enter it by the west door Barcelona 
 Cathedral is found to be darker even than Tar- 
 ragona ; it is perhaps the darkest of all great 
 churches. We realise here, indeed, how much 
 the northern Gothic artists sacrificed when, in 
 making their churches, they so much overpassed 
 the necessary threshold of light and flooded their 
 interiors with it from every side. Here the 
 lighting is firmly poised on the necessary 
 threshold of illumination. Before we have been 
 here long we are able to see that this has been 
 deliberately planned and finely achieved, and in 
 such a manner, moreover, that what is really 
 by no means a large, though a superbly planned 
 church, is enabled to add to its fine proportions 
 all the mysterious charm, the broken and varied 
 lights, of unmeasured vastness. 
 
 The spiritual gaiety, the bold aspiration, the 
 logic and symmetry of French Gothic, the ex- 
 pression of the people who created it, always 
 seem to disappear even in the most genuinely 
 French churches of Spain, at Burgos or Toledo, 
 and are but barely retained at Leon. At Bar- 
 celona there is no attempt to retain them. The 
 
294 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 designer has deliberately chosen to impress the 
 massive Komanesque spirit on his work, the 
 spirit that more truly expresses the grave and 
 sombre spirit of Spain, and has used Gothic 
 methods of construction, in so far as he has used 
 them, not to disturb that spirit, but rather, by 
 the added power it gives the builder, to heighten 
 that effect, and to impart mystery to its 
 sombre and massive solidity. Though there is 
 never extravagance, there is a boldness which 
 springs out of underlying sobriety ; there is con- 
 struction that is always simple, broad, and 
 harmonious. The upper arches of the nave are 
 round ; the arches beneath the vaulting beyond 
 the aisles are pointed, the windows slightly 
 pointed, and the columns are clustered. The 
 church is very wide between its main piers, — a 
 characteristic which was later to become so 
 prominent in Catalan churches, — and the side 
 chapels are situated, in the Catalan manner, 
 between the buttresses, which are within the 
 church. There is scarcely any transept. The 
 triforium is small ; the clerestory windows of the 
 nave are small and round, and such windows are 
 continued round the capilla mayor. There is 
 an ambulatory, marking a notable advance on 
 Tarragona, where it is impossible to walk round 
 the capilla mayor, and in this eastern end 
 of the church there are very large windows 
 above and small windows below. In front of 
 
SANTA MARIA DEL MAR 295 
 
 the capilla mayor or high altar — another very 
 solemn and impressive feature of this church — 
 there is a broad flight of steps down to the iron 
 screen which is the entrance to the crypt, a 
 feature specially emphasised in this church, 
 because here is the shrine which contains the 
 remains of Santa Bulalia, the patron saint of 
 the city. 
 
 Such, baldly stated, are the main characters 
 of this noble church, but its final charm is that 
 of light and shade and colour. The nave in its 
 lower part is dark, for its windows are narrow 
 and obscured. Above, the clerestory windows, 
 though small and round, admit more light, 
 while, beyond, the apse, which is full of large 
 windows above and small windows below, lets in 
 what is, comparatively, a blaze of light. That 
 admirable adjustment of light is the normal con- 
 dition in this church, but the effects vary 
 delightfully with the position of the sun. 
 Towards evening, for instance, when the sun- 
 light enters directly through the west windows, 
 the nave is somewhat lighter than the capilla 
 mayor, and the brilliant colour patterns of the 
 windows are thrown on walls and piers and 
 vaults. Many of the windows are old and very 
 beautiful, and even those that are modern are 
 not offensive, as they sometimes are in Spain as 
 well as elsewhere. One realises here not merely 
 the immense effectiveness of windows as colour 
 
296 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 patterns, and the fascination which guided 
 the Gothic builders of Northern France, but the 
 extreme care required by windows apt to become 
 so emphatic and definite. In this dark church 
 the windows stand out with a tremendously bril- 
 liant emphasis in the surrounding gloom, because 
 they themselves yield the only light by which 
 they are illuminated, and windows not finely 
 fitted to play so exacting a part would ruin the 
 effect. Here they are right, and impart its final 
 charm to one of the most beautiful and perfectly 
 planned of Christian churches. 
 
 Ill 
 
 To study the Catalan church in its final and 
 completed development we cannot do better than 
 go to the ancient city of Gerona. It is a city 
 that on all accounts is well worth a visit, finely 
 and picturesquely situated among the hills, itself 
 irregularly perched on their slopes. The note 
 of Gerona is a solid though dilapidated 
 sumptuosity. Its citizens of the old time seem 
 to have eagerly taken advantage of their city's 
 peculiar site to emphasise the grandiose effects 
 they loved. Very characteristic seems the fine 
 and broad flight of one hundred steps, in several 
 stages with their balustrades, leading up to the 
 north door of the cathedral. At San Feliu, 
 again, while one door of the church is level with 
 
SANTA MARIA DEL MAR 297 
 
 the street, another opens on to a long flight of 
 steps leading down to another street. It is this 
 love of the people of Gerona for great and 
 excessive effects which has given their cathedral 
 a special place of its own in the history of 
 architecture. 
 
 The story of the construction of Gerona 
 Cathedral is known to an extent quite unusual 
 with ancient buildings, and it is worth while to 
 follow it. The apse was built first, early in the 
 fourteenth century, by architects from Narbonne, 
 who followed the model of Barcelona Cathedral. 
 No doubt it was taken for granted that the body 
 of the church would also be built after much the 
 same admirable pattern. But by the beginning 
 of the fifteenth century the church was still 
 uncompleted, and by that time a new and daring 
 idea had occurred to Guillelmo Boffiy, the 
 architect who had been selected by the chapter. 
 Why not adapt to this beautiful apse which 
 already existed a church simply in one vastly 
 broad, unbroken nave, supported by the inner 
 buttresses which were already an accepted 
 principle of Catalan construction ? This concep- 
 tion had already been realised on a smaller scale 
 in the closely allied French architectural centre 
 of Aquitaine, for Albi Cathedral, begun in 1282, 
 though not finished until 1476, is an unbroken 
 vaulted hall, fifty-five feet wide, with buttresses 
 inside, — a Gothic church, as Fergusson remarks, 
 
298 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 on principles almost diametrically opposed to 
 those regarded as essential to the style. This 
 movement evidently, indeed, began in Aquitaine, 
 but Catalonia was so closely related to that 
 centre, that we can scarcely say with Fergusson 
 that it " borrowed" architectural motives which 
 developed so naturally and gradually in its own 
 architecture. The chapter of Gerona Cathedral 
 evidently hesitated ; but they were not prepared 
 to condemn the proposal, startling as it was, — 
 were indeed, perhaps, inclined to favour it on the 
 important ground that it would be less expensive. 
 They wisely decided to take the advice of all 
 the leading architects of Catalonia and the 
 neighbouring French region, and submit to them 
 certain questions. As might be expected, the 
 architects expressed quite opposite opinions ; the 
 majority were in favour of the safe, old-fashioned 
 plan of a nave with aisles, as the original builder of 
 the cathedral had designed it. But a considerable 
 minority, especially the architects from Perpignan 
 and Narbonne, gave a support to Boffiy which 
 was founded on their own experience, and 
 emphatically declared that a single nave without 
 aisles would be a grander, more beautiful, better 
 proportioned, and less costly work. The chapter 
 chose the latter opinion, though it was that of 
 the minority, and thus endowed their city with 
 " the widest Pointed vault in Christendom," 
 though it still took two centuries more to com- 
 
SANTA MARIA DEL MAR 299 
 
 plete. The exact width is seventy -three feet, 
 nearly double that usual in French and English 
 cathedrals. 
 
 Gerona Cathedral was a splendid and 
 triumphant experiment which remains unique. 
 The change of plan, the length of time in build- 
 ing, and much that was tentative or unhappily 
 planned in important details (such as the 
 extremely large clerestory windows, now all 
 but two filled in with stone to attain the 
 requisite gloom), prevent it from taking rank as 
 a perfect church. It fails to bear the impress of 
 a single bold yet deliberate and far-seeing master- 
 mind, such as we seem to recognise in Barcelona 
 Cathedral. Yet it remains highly impressive. 
 
 Equally impressive, however, is the large and 
 somewhat similar cathedral of Palma, though it 
 has unobtrusive aisles marked by simple hexa- 
 gonal piers. It is, indeed, even more obviously 
 impressive than Gerona, for here there is now 
 no huge choir in the midst of the church to 
 block the view and disguise the impression of 
 splendid breadth and spaciousness which the 
 Catalans have so finely succeeded in imparting to 
 their churches. In this stately and picturesque 
 cathedral, however disfigured it is by minor 
 blemishes, and perhaps by the ardour of the 
 energetic Mallorcans in restoration, we realise 
 at last the ideal which the Catalans had been 
 striving towards for centuries in a vast simple 
 
300 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 and noble edifice enclosing a great open space per- 
 fectly adapted for worship and for preaching, for 
 here, however enormous the assembled multitude, 
 all could see and all could hear. There is no 
 internal indication of transepts, although 
 externally on the north side there is a square 
 transeptal tower in the manner of Exeter ; the 
 church is lighter than is usual in these Catalan 
 edifices, though all the great windows have been 
 blocked up, and small round or square openings 
 made in them filled with plain glass. There is 
 no true apse, but three eastern chapels, the 
 central one (the capilla real) — the oldest part 
 of the church — having a brightly lighted little 
 apse, high up, which is charmingly effective. 
 
 If, finally, we desire to see the Catalan 
 church in the last and most accomplished stage, 
 though not in its largest or stateliest form, we 
 may go back to Barcelona, to fifteenth century 
 Santa Maria del Pino. This is the perfected 
 type of the broad and aisleless Catalan church. 
 There is a fine medium light, not bright, coming 
 from long windows of clerestory type, many of 
 them very beautiful, while there is also a 
 beautiful rose window at the west over a stone 
 gallery. There is an eastern apse. There are no 
 columns, but the internal buttresses make spaces 
 which, as usual, constitute chapels. No choir 
 blocks the view ; the altar is raised and fully 
 visible. All the interior is beautifully simple 
 
SANTA MARIA DEL MAR 301 
 
 and definite ; the arches are high, and rather 
 narrow, almost Early English ; there is little or 
 no decorative detail, beyond large but not 
 obtrusive bosses on the vaulting. 
 
 As we stand in the great cathedral of Gerona, 
 or in this smaller but more completely realised 
 church of Santa Maria del Pino, we understand 
 the impulse which has moved the Catalans 
 through three centuries in this long architectural 
 evolution. They have ever stood between the 
 two great sources of architectural inspiration: 
 Eome and the Gothic of Northern France. 
 With instincts that allied them to both these 
 centres, yet nearly overwhelmed by the Gothic 
 current to which they were so exposed, the 
 Catalans slowly asserted within the Gothic field 
 their equally imperative southern instincts. 
 They craved a firm strength and simplicity, 
 largeness and energy, with a fine economy in 
 the adaptation of means to practical ends. 
 Possessing great boldness in construction, to- 
 gether with a sound underlying sobriety, through 
 which they were saved from all extravagant 
 incoherence, they succeeded in moulding out of 
 unlike elements a finely and deliberately blended 
 style which expresses their own instincts and 
 temperament. The old Eoman basilica had 
 remained as a half-divined ideal for ever within 
 them ; slowly they carved their way towards it. 
 On the border-land between Eoman architecture 
 
302 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 and Gothic architecture they achieved the satis- 
 faction of their complex frontier impulses in the 
 creation of what we may, I think, term a Gothic 
 basilica, a large, aisleless, internally buttressed 
 hall which is one of the very fittest and finest 
 types of the Christian Church. 
 
 IV 
 
 Santa Maria del Mar has no place in a sketch 
 of the evolution of the Catalan church, because 
 it marks no phase in the growth, and presents 
 no single character of the type in peculiar per- 
 fection. Though large it is not the largest of 
 Catalan churches, nor the boldest, nor the most 
 exquisite. Yet it may well seem the most 
 characteristic, the most representative of its 
 style at the point of greatest architectural 
 energy, the richest in all the combined elements 
 that go to make up that style. It is, moreover, 
 of all these churches that which most livingly 
 preserves its original character as a great focus 
 of popular worship. It stands far from the 
 modern centre of commercial Barcelona, but, as 
 of old, in the midst of the life of the people, near 
 the sea, near the great popular Plaza, close to the 
 outdoor market of the people. Here it arises 
 serenely, with the restrained beauty of its western 
 portal and the fine austerity of its long walls, 
 from amid the little booths and sheds that nestle 
 
SANTA MARIA DEL MAR 303 
 
 around its base, still the church of the sailors and 
 of the market people, with an endless stream of 
 the poor passing in and out of its doors. 
 
 Santa Maria del Mar seems to have been 
 built from the first to be, what it still remains, 
 the great parish church of a busy seaport. For 
 the State and its wealthier citizens there was the 
 solemn and splendid cathedral in the heart of 
 the city ; for the seafarers, for the toilers on the 
 wharves, for the market women who ministered 
 to them, here in their midst was Our Lady of 
 the Sea. The two churches, with their widely 
 differing purpose and marked difference of detail 
 in structure, were both built mainly at the same 
 time, in the early years of the fourteenth century, 
 though the cathedral was begun first, and the 
 architect of both, in Street's opinion, was 
 probably the great Mallorcan, Jaime Fabre. 
 
 Externally Santa Maria del Mar possesses in 
 a high degree that noble simplicity which re- 
 presents the ultimate ideal of the Catalan in 
 architecture, though it contrasts with the riotous 
 extravagance in sculptural detail which, in the 
 cloisters of Tarragona and Gerona, and the 
 portals of many churches, the Catalan genius also 
 delighted in. In its external simplicity and 
 unity of plan, in its fine economy of decora- 
 tion, Santa Maria del Mar has a rare, even a dis- 
 tinctive beauty of its own. 
 
 In internal structure the church strongly 
 
304 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 recalls Palma Cathedral. It has not its vast- 
 ness, and the lighting is of lower intensity, but 
 the principle is the same, and there are two aisles, 
 with piers which are of the same simple hexa- 
 gonal type. If Palma Cathedral was designed 
 by Fabre — who seems to have possessed a full 
 measure of that prodigious energy which the 
 great Spaniards have often displayed — one can 
 well believe that he was also the architect of 
 Santa Maria del Mar. Perhaps the supremely 
 beautiful feature of this church — here unlike 
 Palma, but recalling Barcelona Cathedral — lies 
 in the windows. The light is never bright, yet 
 the church is full of windows, often in three tiers, 
 for the most part heavily traceried, of the richly 
 coloured and thick glass that never admits an 
 excess of light, always remaining through every 
 change of the sun brilliant and jewelled in the 
 dark church. One never seems to have seen 
 church windows before coming to Spain. 
 
 But it is as a centre of worship that Santa 
 Maria del Mar holds its chief charm. The fine 
 skill of the architect, the Spanish genius for 
 ritual, the familiar piety of the men and women 
 and children of the people who look upon this 
 house as their own, combine to make Santa 
 Maria del Mar a place where one lingers, and 
 still desires to linger. Elsewhere the Catalan 
 spirit may be revealing its audacious energies in 
 new fields of thought or action. Here we are 
 
SANTA MARIA DEL MAR 305 
 
 still in a corner of the old Barcelona that Cer- 
 vantes loved, " the haven of strangers, the 
 asylum of the poor." It is more than this. To 
 be in a church so complete and satisfying in 
 itself, so adequate to the needs it is intended to 
 fulfil, is itself an act of worship. For worship 
 is a natural form of human energy, the satisfac- 
 tion of a human need, of which, indeed, the forms 
 may grow antiquated, but the underlying essence 
 remains undying. And when in Santa Maria 
 del Mar the great windows blaze gloriously by 
 turns towards evening, and the sharp, clear voices 
 of the girls chant sweetly in the western gallery, 
 we are still as much amid the essential mani- 
 festations of life, human or divine, as when we 
 enter the vast market close by, that palace full 
 of movement and delight, where the piles of fruits 
 down the long aisles form symphonies of colour, 
 and two women sing in the midst to the 
 accompaniment of a violin. 
 
XI 
 
 THE GARDENS OF GRANADA 
 
 What is the place of the Moor in Spanish 
 national life ? Was he, as so much in the 
 civilisation and manners of the people suggests, 
 an integral part of that life ? Or was he, as the 
 fierce religious and political struggle between 
 Christian and Moslem suggests, an alien and 
 hostile element? That is a question concern- 
 ing which, even to-day, in Spain and still 
 more outside Spain, people are apt to become 
 partisans, even violent partisans. 
 
 It will, I hope, be fairly evident to those 
 who have followed me through the preceding 
 pages, that we can scarcely understand Spain 
 unless we realise that the Moor was in very 
 large measure, notwithstanding political and 
 religious divergencies, a part of what we know 
 as Spain. The points of contact in racial origins 
 and in culture were great. It was religion alone 
 
 306 
 
THE GARDENS OF GRANADA 307 
 
 that effaced them, for religion has always brought 
 a sword among men. Calderon and the other 
 Spanish poets represent a Moorish knight as in 
 every respect like a Spanish knight, except that 
 he calls on the name of Allah instead of Christ. 
 This was more than a common poetic license, 
 it was entirely legitimate. The Moor took from 
 the Spaniard, and he gave to him. During 
 the most vigorous period of national develop- 
 ment Moor and Spaniard were two players who 
 in every field of life and of art, even in religion, 
 were perpetually tossing the ball back from one 
 to the other. The Moor, indeed, was in many 
 respects a more alert and delicate player, for he 
 belonged to a race which, though allied, was 
 immigrant, and migration to a new soil generally 
 tends to evoke qualities of finer intelligence than 
 the more stolid aboriginals of the soil possess. 
 But even though Moor and Christian to some 
 extent stood apart, and though the Moor could 
 not always compete with the Christian in energy, 
 nor the Christian with the Moor in refinement, 
 they alike contributed to the same common work 
 of national civilisation ; the conquered Moor, as 
 well as the persecuted Jew, was still playing his 
 part even in the golden age of Spain. 
 
 An interesting illustration of the fusion and 
 the reciprocal influence of Christian and Moslem 
 is furnished by the women of Moorish Spain. 
 These enjoyed a far greater freedom than the 
 
308 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 Islamic women of Africa and the East, and dis- 
 tinguished themselves by their literary and other 
 achievements. This is attributed by Simonet, 
 the eminent Arabic scholar (in his interesting 
 study La Muger Ardbigo-Hispana), to the 
 permeating influence of the native Spanish 
 Christian women, who were preferred by the 
 Moors as wives to their own women, and were 
 thus able to demand very favourable conditions 
 on marriage. Many of the most distinguished 
 Moorish women were of Christian descent. But 
 their Christian sisters, apart from Moorish in- 
 fluence, usually played a much less brilliant part 
 in life. 
 
 Just as in religion the Moor borrowed from 
 the Christian, and the Christian again from 
 the Moor — Christian Neo-Platonism becoming 
 Sufism, and Sufism through Eamon Lull 
 Christian mysticism — so it was in the arts, 
 and notably in architecture. All the ideas of 
 the Moors were borrowed, say some, and their 
 work was always false. The Moors were the 
 exquisite and consummate craftsmen without 
 whose aid the Christians could do nothing, others 
 say. There is. some truth in both these views. 
 The history of the horse-shoe arch, for instance, 
 shows how intimately each side contributed to a 
 common effect. The horse -shoe arch in its 
 elemental form was not Moorish, for it existed in 
 the East before the rise of Islam ; it was intro- 
 
THE GARDENS OF GRANADA 309 
 
 duced into Spain by the Visigoths, whose interest- 
 ing and still little known civilisation was of 
 Byzantine origin, like that of the Moors. When 
 the Moors came to Spain they found the horse- 
 shoe arch already there, and they adopted it, 
 exaggerated it, twisted it into graceful and 
 fantastic shapes. When the Christians used it 
 again they may well have been indebted to the 
 Moors, yet they were merely carrying on their 
 own ancient traditions. 1 
 
 When we thus find that each owes so much to 
 the other, it becomes futile to adopt a partisan 
 attitude in this matter. To do so is to ignore 
 not only the common origins, but the funda- 
 mental resemblances of Moorish and Christian 
 work. Christian plateresque work is sometimes 
 almost as delicate as Moorish work, Christian 
 churrigueresque almost as fantastic, while, on the 
 other hand, with all its licentious and luxuriant 
 caprice, Moorish art knew how to be simple, 
 dignified, and harmonious. There are students 
 of Moorish architecture who have emphasised its 
 lawlessness, its instability, its defiance of the laws 
 of architectural construction. 2 Yet the great 
 
 1 Gomez-Moreno ("Excursion a traves del arco de herradura," 
 Cultura Hspanola, vol. iii. 1906, p. 785) has an interesting illustrated 
 article on the early history of the horse-shoe arch. See also L. Higgin, 
 " Visigothic Art," Fortnightly Review, May 1907. 
 
 2 This view of the fundamentally weak and fantastic character of 
 Moorish and allied architecture is well illustrated by an interesting 
 though one-sided article by L. March Phillips, "The Arab in Archi- 
 tecture," Contemporary Review, May 1907. 
 
310 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 solid Gothic buildings, as we learn from the old 
 chronicles, were continually toppling down, 
 sometimes directly they were put up, while the 
 fragile Alhambra, whatever its defiance of con- 
 structional principles, is standing still, triumph- 
 antly emerging from sudden onslaughts and long 
 neglect which have reduced the later Kenaissance 
 palace of Charles V. within its precincts to a 
 mere ruin. Nor is it true that the Moor in 
 architecture sacrificed everything to trivial and 
 fantastic detail. To show his firm and restrained 
 sense of dignity, harmony, and proportion, it is 
 enough to point to the Hall of the Ambassadors 
 at Granada, where exquisite detail is always 
 subordinated to the effect of the whole. The 
 Sinagoga del Transito, again, at Toledo, that 
 long and beautiful hall, so finely proportioned, 
 so perfectly well lighted by its charming window 
 openings high up beneath the ceiling, though its 
 detail is less exquisite, still shows Moorish 
 tradition persisting, and proves that the 
 Hall of the Ambassadors was not an acci- 
 dent. Christian and Moor overlapped in the 
 manifestation of qualities that were common to 
 both. Yet at the extremes the individuality of 
 each emerges, strong, isolated, and independent. 
 In Toledo Cathedral we feel nothing of the 
 Moor, in the most characteristic chambers of 
 the Alhambra we can with difficulty trace the 
 Christian. 
 
THE GARDENS OF GRANADA 311 
 
 II 
 
 The lover of Spain must always visit Granada ■ 
 with mixed emotions. The Granada of the 
 imagination is the chief home of Spanish 
 romance. From our early years Granada has 
 been a magic name to so many of us. The Cid, 
 the gate Elvira, the Bibbarambla, the luckless 
 Boabdil driven out from the last and loveliest 
 seat of Moorish civilisation — all these have from 
 childhood brought before us a city which could 
 be like no other city in the world. 
 
 But it has been the inevitable effect of the 
 beauty and the power of Granada to evoke those 
 reactionary forces which have devastated alike 
 its beauty and its force. There are three ways 
 especially in which this inevitable reaction has 
 manifested itself. There was, first, the long 
 delay in its capture by the Christians due to its 
 strength and position. Majorca, Cordova, 
 Seville, all great Moorish centres, were captured 
 in rapid succession early in the thirteenth 
 century. They were captured in days when 
 not only on the Moorish, but also on the 
 Christian side chivalrous feelings of toleration 
 and respect were mutually displayed. In all 
 these places no spirit of ferocious destruction 
 was exerted, and' in all three much of the 
 Moorish spirit has survived even till to-day. 
 
312 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 But by the end of the fifteenth century feeling 
 on both sides had grown embittered ; with the 
 Moors it was now a struggle for life, and on the 
 Christian side a furious eagerness to complete a 
 conquest which had taken so long to achieve. 
 Moreover, the terrible weapon of the Inquisition 
 had been invented, or rather refurbished, and 
 the unscrupulous Ferdinand, the able but bigoted 
 Isabella, between them devastated Granada so 
 ruthlessly that it has never since recovered from 
 the blow. The Christian conquerors sought 
 indeed to build up where they had destroyed, 
 but Christian art had then reached a period of 
 fantastic decadence. From the Christian point of 
 view, notwithstanding the noble figures which 
 have been associated with it, Granada is among 
 the least attractive of Spanish cities ; in the 
 church of San Jeronimo alone, where the Gran 
 Capitan lies buried, can we realise something of 
 the grandeur that once was Spain. 
 , Granada has been devastated by another 
 invasion. At the time of the Peninsular War 
 it was discovered by the English, who had come 
 to the assistance of the Spanish against the 
 French. The Duke of Wellington arrived, 
 planted trees, and laid out the grounds of the 
 Alhambra in the English manner, creating a 
 glen haunted by nightingales, which is unques- 
 tionably delightful, but neither typically Spanish 
 nor in any degree Moorish. Then Washington 
 
THE GARDENS OF GRANADA 313 
 
 Irving came, a spiritual Wellington, and con- 
 quered Granada for literature, as later Regnault 
 by his stay here consecrated it for art. In the 
 meanwhile the Spaniards themselves awoke to 
 the treasure they possessed in the Alhambra, 
 drove out the tramps and washerwomen who 
 were in possession, and slowly began a work of 
 restoration which still continues. Now a con- 
 tinuous stream of tourists — English, American, 
 French, German — pours through Granada. 
 The inflexible Spanish temperament has slowly 
 adapted itself to this state of things. Almost 
 alone of Spanish cities, Granada makes the ex- 
 ploitation of the stranger a more or less obtrusive 
 industry. Even the children have learnt to ask 
 the strangers for coppers, an indecorum of which 
 few other Spanish children would be guilty. 1 
 The Alhambra, the supreme pearl of Moorish 
 art, has become a show-place, a carefully kept 
 museum. Every year it grows more rejuvenated, 
 and though this restoration is carried out with 
 all reverence, it is never beautiful to see in the 
 aged the signs of artificial youth. 
 
 A third and still later development has com- 
 pleted the destruction of Granada. From being 
 a dead city which scarcely existed save for the 
 tourist, it has during recent years acquired a 
 
 1 Begging in the streets has now been prohibited by the munici- 
 pality in Granada (as it has long been in Seville), and a system of 
 outdoor relief provided for the really suffering poor. 
 
314 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 certain amount of industrial life as a manufactur- 
 ing town, with a consequent outburst of municipal 
 energy. A petty bourgeois activity, which 
 seems singularly at variance with its traditions 
 now animates the streets, still sparing indeed 
 the ancient and picturesque district of Albaicin 
 while spasmodic and irregular attempts have 
 been made to modernise the city. A large 
 portion has been destroyed, and a dreary and 
 unfinished expanse of would-be boulevard has 
 been driven through its centre. It is difficult 
 not to feel that the industrial activity of Granada 
 is parasitic, and this is really the case. The 
 Granadine population of to-day is largely 
 descended from Galician and Catalan immigrants, 
 and, as Oloriz has shown, is not typically 
 Andalusian. 
 
 It thus comes about that the lover of Spain 
 can with difficulty find himself at home in 
 Granada. He may still climb the hill — if the 
 electric tramway is not yet completed — to the 
 old Moorish stronghold and palace, to take 
 refuge in the Alhambra. Nothing can dim the 
 exquisite beauty of those courts and halls. The 
 most delicate and fragile of all human architec- 
 tural construction, they have yet outlived all 
 the revolutionary cataclysms which have over- 
 taken Spain. In these courts and halls, in 
 innumerable corners and by-ways, it is always 
 delightful to wander, for here we catch a faint 
 
THE GARDENS OF GRANADA 315 
 
 reflection of one of the most exquisite civilisa- 
 tions that the world has seen. Every one finds 
 something which makes a special appeal to him. 
 For my own part I delight in the Byzantine 
 lions who stand in a ring in the midst of the 
 court which bears their name. No photograph 
 does justice to these delicious beasts. They are 
 models of a deliberately conventional art which yet 
 never becomes extravagant or grotesque. They 
 are quite unreal, and yet they have a real life of 
 their own. Their heads are rounded and flattened, 
 their nostrils form semi-circles, their eyes con- 
 sist of two concentric eye-shaped slits, the ears 
 are all harmoniously semi-circular ; the manes 
 form regular loops ; the legs are squarish, and 
 the bodies taper somewhat towards the tail, 
 which each animal carries between his hind legs 
 and holds in a curve close against his left flank. 
 They are altogether deliberately conventionalised 
 to an extreme extent, and yet they are vigorous 
 and robust creatures, each perfectly able to 
 fulfil his function of supporting a pillar of the 
 great basin, and spouting a large jet of water 
 from his mouth. Byzantine as their conception 
 may be in origin, nothing could be more finely 
 in keeping with the highly conventionalised 
 manner of Moorish architecture. 
 
316 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 III 
 
 As we learn to know Granada better, how- 
 ever, there are certain recurring features of the 
 place, apart from its jewels of Moorish architec- 
 ture, which begin to leave an agreeable impression 
 on the mind. In time what is harsh and un- 
 pleasant falls into the background, and at last 
 Granada becomes to us above all a city of 
 gardens and waters. Like the Alhambra itself 
 these also are reminiscences of the Moors. 
 Gardens and waters remain delicious wherever 
 the Moor has left his impress. In Cordova there 
 are no spots that one haunts so persistently as 
 the splendid court into which the cathedral 
 opens, the Court of the Oranges to which the 
 women come to draw water, 1 and the ancient and 
 solitary garden of the ruined Alcazar. The 
 
 1 When the edifice was entirely open to the court on this side, as 
 was the case before the mosque became a church, the effect from within 
 and from without must have been still more delightful. I refer 
 especially to the beauty of this aspect of the mosque, because on the 
 whole it seems to me that much indiscriminating enthusiasm has 
 been expended on this building. The tourist seems to arrive here with 
 an accumulated stock of rapturous rhetoric which he is unwilling to 
 throw away. Cordova is a great city with a great and glorious 
 history, and the mosque is a fascinatingly interesting object to study, 
 for it enables us to understand the evolution of Moorish art, still 
 moved by almost Christian ideas, feeling its way from Visigothic 
 sources, even using at random much of the material the Goths had 
 left. But, nothwithstanding the charm and beauty of parts, its 
 aesthetic value as a whole is not considerable. It is interesting to 
 find that so appreciative a student of Moorish antiquity as Talera, 
 himself a Cordovan, expresses no great admiration for the mosque. 
 
THE GARDENS OF GRANADA 317 
 
 Christians who hastened to wipe out the hated 
 civilisation of the Moors in Granada for the 
 most part spared their gardens and their streams, 
 even though only in a spirit of careless disdain. 
 So it is that as one passes along the streets of 
 this city, built on the banks of two rivers, one 
 seldom loses the sound of splashing and gushing 
 waters, or the sight of jetting and flowing 
 streamlets, while there are few cities of its size 
 which hold so many quaint and exquisite 
 gardens. At Malaga, not far off, a land of 
 perpetual summer, it can scarcely be said that 
 there is one public garden, though many 
 luxurious private gardens, and even in Moorish 
 Cordova gardens are few. But here the 
 Moorish influence has persisted, in the end it 
 has even triumphed. The luxuriant Alameda 
 of the Alhambra, in the manner of an English 
 park, and the splendid Paseo along the banks 
 of the Genii in the Spanish manner, are alike 
 comparatively modern and both in their way 
 admirable. In the Jardin de los Adarves, a 
 terrace on the verge of the Alhambra hill, we 
 have a more ancient and more typically Moorish 
 garden. This trellised retreat, entered by its 
 massive gate covered with iron scallop shells, 
 shut off from the world, yet — like so many of 
 the gardens of Granada — with a wide and ex- 
 quisite outlook over the plain and the delicate 
 snow-capped hills in the distance, might well be 
 
318 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 the home of an Arab sufi, an ideal spot for 
 devout or philosophic meditation on the prob- 
 lems of the world. 
 
 Here and there throughout Granada and in 
 its environs one comes upon fragments of garden 
 in which the Moorish tradition is maintained, in 
 some cases it would seem almost undisturbed. 
 But the most admirable and typical Moorish 
 gardens in Granada are those of the Generalife, 
 — the summer garden palace of the Moorish 
 princes, on the heights towards the Silla del 
 Moro, — and these at last seem the most 
 delightful haunt in Granada, for in this almost 
 deserted and neglected spot one escapes the 
 oppression of a show-place which so often weighs 
 on one in the courts of the Alhambra. The 
 buildings of the Generalife are indeed of much 
 less extent than those of the Alhambra, and its 
 interiors have in the past been very much spoilt, 
 though the whole place is now preserved in a 
 conservative spirit of agreeable negligence. We 
 mount the pleasant path from the Alhambra, 
 which we see spread out beneath us, to the 
 Generalife with its gardens, perched on terraces 
 on a slope, and really occupying a very small 
 space, yet one may wander about them for a 
 long time continually finding new features. The 
 Moor — in this unlike the Christian Spaniard who 
 has chiefly sought the vast, the mysterious, the 
 majestical — was enamoured of small and delicate 
 
THE GARDENS OF GRANADA 319 
 
 things. He might have said with Cowley, " I 
 love littleness almost in all things : a little 
 convenient estate, a little cheerful house, a little 
 company, and a very little feast." Herein, let 
 us be sure, the Moors showed their insight into 
 the art of living. The largest feature of the 
 Generalife meets us as we enter, a charming 
 court, full of trees and flowers, a homely and 
 smaller version of the Court of the Myrtles at 
 the Alhambra. A flight of steps brings us to 
 another still smaller court, recalling the Court 
 of the Reja at the Alhambra. Here is a very 
 large old cypress. Above this court again, and 
 reached by brick and stone steps, are five 
 terraces, each containing one or more little 
 gardens of diversified character, often with 
 fountains, and with walls which seem to increase 
 enormously the apparent extent of the grounds, 
 yet are never in the way, and always covered by 
 luxuriant vegetation. The pathway, extending 
 from the lowest terrace but one up to the top, 
 is almost purely Moorish ; it consists of short 
 flights of brick steps, each flight opening out 
 into a circle, with semicircular balustrades at 
 each side, paved with pebbles in mosaic patterns 
 after the fashion so common in Granada, with a 
 fountain in the middle, and water running in a 
 channel of inverted tiles along the top of the 
 whole length of the balustrades. The gardens 
 are for the most part laid out in the formal 
 
320 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 manner familiar in the gardening art of many 
 countries, with symmetrically designed flower- 
 beds and high box edges clipped flat at the top 
 and straight at the sides. Everywhere there is 
 the sound of water ; and on Sundays not only 
 the fountains, which are always playing, but the 
 little jets everywhere are squirting out their 
 playful cooling streamlets in all directions. Here 
 we realise, perhaps better even than in the 
 Alhambra, the more homely charm of Moorish 
 life and Moorish ideals — the love of pure air and 
 all-present water, of small and circumscribed, but 
 elaborately wrought garden plots, looking out on 
 a large and lovely expanse of scenery. 
 
 Here, too, with the great red towers of the 
 Alhambra on their height below us, we forget 
 that Granada which represents the victory of 
 the least amiable moment of Christianity over 
 the most exquisite moment of Islam. We are 
 amid the relics of one of the finest civilisations 
 the world has known, a civilisation we can only 
 learn to know perfectly in the pages of the 
 Thousand and One Nights. 
 
XII 
 SEGOVIA 
 
 It sometimes happens to the traveller that a 
 place he had all his life looked forward to visit 
 fails entirely to make on him the overwhelming 
 impression he anticipated. I experienced this 
 disillusion in the Blue Grotto at Capri, a spot 
 which from childhood had framed itself in my 
 imagination as a vision of wondrous beauty. 
 Once again this was my experience at Granada, 
 a city which had embodied in my dreams a 
 whole world of romance and chivalry. Segovia, 
 on the other hand, I approached with an open 
 mind. The name indeed, with the ancient 
 Eoman ring in the sound of it, had long been 
 familiar to me. I knew also that it was a city 
 on a hill, like a great ship with sails set towards 
 the west, the mediaeval Alcazar at the prow and 
 the mighty Eoman aqueduct stretching far to 
 stern. But I reached Segovia with no romantic 
 
 321 Y 
 
322 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 illusions to be realised or destroyed. Now tl 
 I leave it, after too brief a stay, I feel that I ; 
 leaving what is to-day still one of the m< 
 delightful of Spanish cities. The charm thai 
 once missed in Granada I have found in Segov 
 Here is the real type of a "dead city," si 
 serenely sleeping, in a dream of which the sp 
 has been broken neither by the desecrating ha 
 of the tourist crowd, nor by the inrush of co 
 mercial activity, nor by any native anxiety : 
 self- exploitation. How deeply Segovia slet 
 the bats well know, and as evening falls tt 
 almost dare to enter one's window in the he; 
 of the city. Toledo, Granada, Avila have be 
 awakened from their charmed sleep ; they i 
 learning the lessons of modern kfe, and at 1 
 least they are beginning to know how to util 
 the tourist, so that the stranger can no Ion; 
 wander at peace in their streets dreaming of 1 
 past. Segovia is still only a goal for travell 
 who are few and for the most part fit. 
 
 II 
 
 Segovia bears a general resemblance to Tole 
 which is, indeed, the supreme type of the Span 
 city; but it is still more loftily placed, it 
 more exactly girdled by waters — though its t 
 clamorous Uttle streams in no degree approi 
 the majesty of the Tagus — and it is surroun< 
 
SEGOVIA 323 
 
 by a still fresher expanse of verdure. It is a 
 natural fortress accidentally placed in an unusu- 
 ally delightful site. 
 
 This character of Segovia as in a very com- 
 plete degree a natural fortress, made its repu- 
 tation at the beginning of Spanish history, and 
 indeed earlier, for its name is said to be of 
 primitive Iberian origin. The Eomans expressed 
 their sense of the importance of Segovia by 
 planting here for ever the solidest of their 
 monuments, the mighty aqueduct which brings 
 the pure, cold waters of the Fuenfria from the 
 Guadarrama Mountains ten miles away. The 
 Moors held Segovia for an unknown period, and 
 the palace-fortress or Alcazar, which they doubt- 
 less erected on what is the inevitable site for 
 such a structure, became, in a remodelled and 
 rebuilt form, the home of Alfonso the Wise, who 
 here uttered the famous saying that he could 
 have suggested improvements in the universe 
 had the Creator- consulted him, whereupon, 
 according to the monkish chronicler, a terrific 
 thunderstorm burst over the Alcazar and warned 
 the audacious monarch of his wickedness. The 
 destruction which Alfonso's repentance arrested 
 seems, however, only to have been temporarily 
 delayed, for half a century ago the incomparable 
 beauty and antiquity of the interior of the 
 Alcazar was totally destroyed by fire, and work 
 — the finest production of fifteenth-century artists 
 
324 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 and craftsmen — which is recorded to have left 
 on the minds of all who saw it "an ideal memory 
 of magic splendour," vanished from earth for 
 ever, leaving nothing behind but a few inscrip- 
 tions, a few arabesque friezes. To outward 
 view, however, even to-day, when it is merely 
 a receptacle of military archives, the Alcazar 
 stands as superbly as ever, one of the most 
 interesting examples that remain of a mediaeval 
 fortress. 
 
 As long as strong places were necessary Segovia 
 was prosperous, but when at length Spain became 
 united, Segovia's part in its life was played. It 
 remains to-day a city that is mainly Eoman, 
 Romanesque, and mediaeval. There is nothing 
 in it of importance later than the sixteenth 
 century, and the only great contribution which 
 that century made was the cathedral. That, 
 certainly, was no minor addition, for the dome 
 of the cathedral crowns Segovia afc its highest 
 and most central point, and is for its own 
 architectural sake, moreover, of great interest. 
 It represents the finest ultimate development of 
 a peculiarly Spanish movement in architecture. 
 Long before its erection, at Zamora, the ancient 
 small Eomanesque church of early Spain had 
 begun to grow to larger and airier shapes, and 
 its development manifested itself most character- 
 istically in the formation of a central dome, or 
 cimborio, over the transepts, as peculiar a feature, 
 
SEGOVIA 325 
 
 both internally and externally, of the fully 
 evolved northern Spanish church, especially in 
 Castile, as the square central tower — superbly 
 manifested in the Bell-Harry tower of Canterbury 
 — is a typical external character of large English 
 churches that have attained their full natural de- 
 velopment. This Spanish type of church, which 
 slowly evolved in the region between Zamora, 
 Astorga, Salamanca, and Segovia, afterwards 
 becoming more widely extended, is counted as 
 a development of Gothic, but it was a Gothic 
 development which arose in a land where Eoman- 
 esque elements had always been strong, and at 
 a period when the Kenaissance movement had 
 already reintroduced the classic modes of archi- 
 tecture. It is scarcely surprising that — though, 
 according to Fergusson, Segovia Cathedral is 
 hardly a Renaissance work in any respect — this 
 type of Gothic produces a peculiarly classic 
 impression ; its most conspicuous character, 
 indeed, the dome, is altogether aside from 
 Gothic ideals, and in harmony with Eoman- 
 esque. The old Gothic principles are there, 
 but attenuated, modified, transformed ; the spirit 
 is no longer truly Gothic, the details are no 
 longer characteristically Gothic. The new cathe- 
 dral of Salamanca is almost a Eenaissance edifice 
 outside, and if Segovia Cathedral must be counted 
 as Gothic, it is perhaps, as Street remarks, the 
 last Gothic building erected. Yet it is a genuine 
 
326 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 growth, beautiful and harmonious, a natural 
 hybrid. Salamanca Cathedral is a splendid and 
 impressive example of this final manifestation 
 of decadent Gothic; but Segovia, which is a 
 later work of the same brilliant and accom- 
 plished architect, seems to me an even finer and 
 more faultless example of the style. He found 
 at Segovia, in the cloisters that had been added 
 to the old cathedral half a century before — and 
 were a little later to be carried by the indefati- 
 gable Segovians, stone by stone, to the new site 
 where they still stand — a piece of work that 
 may well have stimulated his finest efforts. 
 These cloisters are certainly one of the finest 
 things in advanced Gothic to be found in Spain, 
 flamboyant yet restrained, a delicate and digni- 
 fied late Gothic without any of the florid excesses 
 into which it so easily fell. This is the spirit- 
 which seems to rule the cathedral. It is far less 
 exuberant than Salamanca ; the west end is 
 severe in its almost bald but dignified simplicity ; 
 the east end, with its chevet, is a masterpiece 
 of gracious felicity. There is nowhere any irri- 
 tating excess of restless detail to jar the note 
 of sober gaiety which dominates the whole. The 
 tendency to nimiety, as Coleridge would have 
 called it, the excessiveness of the Spanish 
 temperament, has for one happy moment been 
 held in due restraint. It may well have been 
 that Juan Gil, rich in the experience of a life- 
 
SEGOVIA 327 
 
 time of great work, deliberately intended to 
 do over again better, with more swift and sure 
 inspiration, what he had already attempted at 
 Salamanca, for he followed somewhat the same 
 plan, although he had been given a free hand. 
 It is also very probable that the greater unity 
 and simplicity of the building were aided by 
 lack of money, for, unlike Salamanca, the city 
 was nearing the end of its long career of vigorous 
 life, and the Segovians made incredible sacrifices 
 for the sake of their new cathedral, mainly built, 
 indeed, by the efforts of the poor. Poverty, one 
 suspects, may account for the flat and blank 
 west front, admired as it is, facing the beautiful 
 and usually deserted courtyard, such as Astorga 
 and the other great churches of this region often 
 possess. The cathedral was opened, with much 
 rejoicing, in 1558, but its final completion lan- 
 guished in the general languor that overtook 
 Segovia, though then a centre of Spanish woollen 
 manufacture, and it was not until the middle of 
 the eighteenth century — but yesterday in the 
 city's long history — that it was possible to 
 consecrate the cathedral as a whole. It is the 
 last great monument of essential art at Segovia, 
 though the first to strike our attention. The 
 real ecclesiastical history of Segovia belonged 
 to an earlier age. Like Zamora and like Avila, 
 Segovia was at the height of its prosperity 
 before the ideals of Gothic had conquered Castile, 
 
328 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 and Segovia is now one of the chief homes in 
 Spain of the Eomanesque church. 
 
 To understand the splendid efflorescence of 
 Eomanesque architecture in Segovia we must try- 
 to understand a little of the obscure mediaeval 
 history of the city. For a very long period 
 Segovia was on the border-land between Moors 
 and Christians. The Christians had their base 
 in Asturias and Burgos to the north ; the Moors 
 were planted on the heights of Toledo to the 
 south. Segovia, the capital of an intervening 
 Entremadura district — which means the region 
 to the south of the Douro, with its apex at the 
 junction of the Sierras of Avila and Guadarrama 
 — was sometimes in the hands of one party, 
 sometimes in the hands of the other. It was 
 a process which seems to have had a hardening 
 and invigorating effect on the men of this region, 
 though it devastated their country. The people 
 of the Entremadura became, as described in a 
 doggerel Latin poem, innumerable as locusts, 
 robust and reckless, so hardy that they despised 
 the heats of summer, could bear any excess in 
 wine, and had no fear even of death itself. But 
 as a centre of civilisation Segovia could hardly 
 nourish under these harassing and ever shifting 
 conditions. When it fell finally into Christian 
 hands is not definitely known. In 960 it was 
 still Moorish, as we learn from the Cufic inscrip- 
 tion on a beautiful marble capital of Corinthian 
 
SEGOVIA 329 
 
 type but Moorish workmanship — the one ex- 
 quisite relic of a lost edifice — which was found 
 with its jasper column not far from the Alcazar. 
 But in the first half of the following century 
 there was, we know, a general increase in 
 Christian activity, and it seems probable, since 
 there is no record of any great struggle here, 
 that the Moors quietly abandoned Segovia as 
 part of a strategic movement towards threatened 
 Toledo. " It was many years desolate," an old 
 chronicle says, and probably not until Toledo 
 itself fell was there an end to the desolating 
 ebb and flow of Moor and Christian over this 
 region. During that long period old Christian 
 and late Moorish civilisation had alike been 
 washed away. In the Segovia we see to-day 
 a great gulf of a thousand years lies between 
 the aqueduct and the Eomanesque churches 
 which now, when another thousand years are 
 almost passed, impart to Segovia its remote air 
 of ruined antiquity. In Christian hands the city 
 was almost born anew. It was populated with 
 Entremadurans from outside, mostly moun- 
 taineers from the north. They were a turbulent 
 population at first, it seems, these new Segovians, 
 accustomed to fighting and breeding cattle, — 
 in which latter occupation the men of this 
 district still excel, — but the work of civilisation 
 progressed. Early in the twelfth century the 
 mighty and magnificent Alcazar was solidly 
 
330 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 raised under the inspiration of the three Alfonsos, 
 who spent much of their time here, and during 
 the twelfth and at latest the thirteenth century 
 the great array of parochial churches now slowly 
 falling to decay, all Eomanesque, were built. 
 That was the flowering time for Segovia. Alfonso 
 the Wise, the thirteenth-century monarch who 
 made his favourite home in the splendid Alcazar 
 of the proud city he filled with churches to the 
 honour of the God whose creative skill legend 
 says that he questioned, marks the supreme 
 moment of Segovia's glory. Afterwards nothing 
 was left to do but to place the beautiful crown 
 of the cathedral dome on the central summit 
 of the city. In the six centuries that have since 
 elapsed Segovia has otherwise remained practi- 
 cally untouched ; there was nothing more to 
 do ; she has reclined in this lovely air, beneath 
 her sunny skies and amid her green and snowy 
 hills, holding her antique garments around her 
 still, though with a loose and careless grasp, 
 sinking ever into a deeper and more peaceful 
 sleep. 
 
 HI 
 
 It thus comes about that when we wander 
 to-day through the streets of Segovia we feel 
 ourselves back in a Eomanesque city. It is 
 still full of parish churches, not one of them 
 said to be later than the thirteenth century, 
 
SEGOVIA 331 
 
 and the slow shrinkage of the population, com- 
 pensated by no such modern industrial expan- 
 sion as we find in Granada and Toledo — for 
 the presence of a barracks and some associated 
 military avocations alone seem to give Segovia 
 any simulacrum of life — has left nearly all these 
 churches more or less untouched, some still in 
 use, some locked up and abandoned, one or two 
 used as museums or for other secular purposes, 
 and a considerable number in a more or less 
 advanced state of ruin and decay. The most 
 important of them, indeed, San Esteban, is 
 undergoing a sort of restoration ; its mighty 
 square four - storey ed tower — " the queen of 
 Spanish Byzantine towers" — has been taken 
 down because it threatened to fall, and at 
 present only a high mass of scaffolding marks 
 what was once a chief landmark of the city. 
 That is the one stirring of life among the for- 
 saken churches of Segovia. 
 
 The special characteristic of the Eomanesque 
 churches of Segovia is the cloister -like corridor 
 which frequently runs along one or more of their 
 external walls. No other Spanish city that I 
 am acquainted with shows this feature in so 
 marked and persistent a way. It admirably fits 
 the Eomanesque style, relieving the edifice of 
 the somewhat heavy and sepulchral character 
 it is apt to assume, and it adds a new charm 
 and grace to the city, for these arcades and 
 
332 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 colonnades bridge over the sacred and secular 
 aspects of social life, and admirably harmonise 
 the vista. 1 Here, at San Esteban, we have a 
 fine antique example, untouched in the task 
 of pulling down the great tower. San Martin, 
 however, conspicuously placed on a height in 
 the main street, has perhaps the most notable 
 of these arcades within the city walls, but though 
 it was once, doubtless, crowded by clergy and 
 people, it is now inaccessible and deserted, save 
 for a few stray feet when service is proceeding. 
 
 It is the silent desolation of these old churches 
 which, more vividly than anything else, in a land 
 that is still so pious as Spain, makes us realise 
 that we are in a dead city. Often in ruins, some 
 of them are still locked, and in one or two rare 
 cases a guardian faintly jingles the keys as he 
 sees the stranger approach, but otherwise remains 
 impassive ; for the most part not a solitary 
 person is to be seen near these old churches. 
 One passes out through the northern gate in 
 the city walls, and descends to the little round 
 church of the Templars, the Vera Cruz, beneath 
 the heights of the Alcazar. The fine little church 
 is still seated firmly on its rocky foundation ; the 
 deserted road winds by towards the hills ; across 
 the path lies the silent, peaceful monastery founded 
 by San Juan de la Cruz, the holy mystic whose 
 
 1 Street considers that these external cloisters had the practical object 
 of keeping the church cooL 
 
SEGOVIA 333 
 
 name stands beside that of his friend St. Theresa, 
 and whose body now lies in its marble urn on 
 the altar within. But the beautiful church was 
 locked up, deprived of the fragment of " true 
 cross " of which it was the casket, and deserted 
 nearly three centuries ago, and no sound is heard 
 save now and again the clang of the neighbour- 
 ing convent bell. Or, once more, we turn out 
 of a Segovian street into the little square which 
 is almost filled with the small church of San 
 Pablo, and we wander around it and around, 
 to find no entrance and no soul to inquire of, 
 until we realise that this church, too, was 
 abandoned maybe centuries ago, and we feel 
 like those wanderers in strange lands who, as 
 the Arabian Nights tells us, sometimes found 
 themselves in dead and deserted cities which 
 offered no clue to their mystery. Or, once 
 again, we turn down an alley and reach a rough 
 plateau on the northern edge of the city over- 
 looking the plain below, where stands San Juan, 
 half-ruinous and solitary, enclosing within locked 
 doors, beneath the splendid wrecks of their tombs, 
 some of the chief of Segovia's sons, not least 
 some of the conquistadores who had gone out 
 into the world in quest of adventure, and quietly 
 returned at last to seek repose in the sunny and 
 sombre silence of this ragged edge of the Dead 
 City, unlearned adventurers, but ready to say, 
 no doubt, in the old Eoman manner, which is 
 
334 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 also Spanish, of their fellow-citizen, the learned 
 physician of popes and emperors, Andrea Laguna, 
 now lying in San Miguel, in the market-place : 
 
 Inveni portum : spes et fortuna valete : 
 Nil mihi vobiscum : ludite nunc aliis. 
 
 Fortune and Hope farewell ! With others you may sport : 
 I need you now no more : I am come into port. 
 
 IV 
 
 In one's final impression of Segovia there 
 stands out not alone, or perhaps even chiefly, 
 the lofty city itself, in its pride that has grown 
 silent and its splendour that is now tattered. 
 One thinks at least as much of the delightful 
 setting in which this rough mediaeval jewel is 
 placed, as it hangs suspended by the links of 
 its aqueduct from the Guadarrama Mountains. 
 Here and there, indeed, from within the city 
 itself, we catch fascinating glimpses of the 
 country below and around ; there is a splendid 
 outlook from the great Esplanade — the site of 
 the early vanished Byzantine cathedral — which 
 separates the Alcazar from the city ; and the 
 Paseo, scooped out on the southern side of the 
 height — whither the military band on Sunday 
 evenings attracts the women of beauty and 
 fashion in Segovia, mostly, it would seem, the 
 wives and daughters of the officers quartered 
 here — gives us another vision of the environing 
 
SEGOVIA 335 
 
 hills. They are not rugged or forbidding in aspect, 
 these softly undulating hills, and they shelter, not 
 far off, the palace gardens of La Granja, one of 
 the chief summer resorts of Spanish kings, yet 
 they are high enough to be covered with snow 
 even in early summer. That superb white mantle 
 which cloaks the loftier undulations to the south- 
 east, and seems so strangely near in this clear air, 
 gives a deliciously keen edge to the hot sun ; and 
 we feel here the presence, for once in harmonious 
 conjunction, of those two purities of ice and flame 
 which penetrate and subdue all this land of Castile, 
 and are also of the very essence of its soul. 
 
 It is equally tempting to descend the zigzag 
 roads and issue by the old gates on the one side 
 or the other of the city, on the north across the 
 Eresma, or on the south across the Clamores. 
 If we descend on the north side by the steep 
 but pleasant roads, amid the sound of running 
 waters in the shaded cliffs by the side, we reach, 
 just outside the walls, the abandoned monastery 
 of Santa Cruz, built over the dark cave in which 
 the austere Do min go de Guzman lived. Torque- 
 mada was once prior here, and many saints and 
 kings and princes came hither to worship ; now 
 its decayed splendour forms an asylum for the 
 poor, and in front of the beautiful portal an old 
 man sits motionless in the sun. We cross the 
 Eresma and pass the old Fabrica de Moneda, to 
 reach in a few minutes the ruined monastery of 
 
336 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 Parral, once a flourishing centre of civilisation 
 and advanced agriculture, but with little to 
 show now but its locked and mutilated church, 
 its broken cloisters and conventual buildings, 
 its beautiful site along the river. We leave it 
 behind to enter the shaded avenue of the long 
 and delightful Alameda, more or less parallel 
 with the river below and the city above, where 
 one may wander and dream at will, meeting no 
 one, even on Sunday, and undisturbed by the 
 women who are washing their clothes by the 
 stream. No Spanish city offers so perfect a 
 haunt to the solitary dreamer and student. 
 
 Once more we descend from Segovia, this 
 time by the ancient gate of the south, and 
 cross the swift little Clamores to the green 
 slopes with their clumps of trees beyond. This 
 is the only side from which one may obtain a 
 fairly complete view of Segovia. To the right 
 one sees the long stretch of the ancient aqueduct 
 with the snow-covered hills beyond it ; then the 
 walls of the city supported by their towers and 
 clinging to the rock, half-concealed by the in- 
 tervening trees ; within, churches innumerable ; 
 to the extreme left on its sheer height the 
 Alcazar ; and crowning all the beautiful soft 
 golden brown mass of the cathedral, concen- 
 trating in finest tincture that Spanish tone of 
 colour which is the note of all Segovia, and in 
 some degree, indeed, of all Castile. 
 
SEGOVIA 337 
 
 There is one day of the week when the dead 
 city of Segovia is awakened to life, not, indeed, 
 by any exertions of its own, but by invasion 
 from outside. Early on Sunday morning varied 
 family groups of peasants, some on foot, some 
 on their donkeys or mules, come climbing up 
 the zigzag roads from all directions. They are, 
 as ever, a notable population, pretty women and 
 fine intelligent men, and to a degree that is rare 
 among the peasants of modern Spain they have 
 preserved, men and women alike, the ancient 
 costumes which alone really express the special 
 and peculiar qualities of the race. It is not the 
 least charm of this dead mediaeval city that at 
 the moments when it awakes to life it becomes a 
 city of mediaeval peasants. 
 
 The peasants have all set out for home again, 
 as gravely and quietly as they came, long before 
 evening. Here, on the slopes above the Clamores, 
 as the Sunday afternoon declines, I lie watching 
 the city, while fragmentary strains of music 
 float across from the Paseo, and little family 
 groups of Segovians are scattered among the 
 trees or on the heights. The lofty and ship-like 
 city lies majestically at anchor ; its raggedness 
 and dusty aridity are harmonised by distance, 
 and the setting sun heightens its rich warm 
 Castilian tones. It is the finest revelation of 
 Segovia's beauty. 
 
XIII 
 
 SEVILLE IN SPRING 
 
 "Thanks be to God," exclaimed the great 
 admiral, Christopher Columbus, as he approached 
 the new Indies on the 8th of October 1492, 
 "the air is very soft, as of April in Seville, 
 and it is a pleasure to be there ! " There can, 
 indeed, be no place where it is a greater 
 pleasure to be than in Seville in April, as 
 every Spaniard well knows. " What would 
 you do if you came in for a fortune?" a 
 Spaniard was asked. " Give half to the poor, 
 and with the other half buy a house in Seville 
 and spend the spring there," this true Spaniard 
 replied. In summer Seville is too hot, the 
 narrow serpentining Sierpes — the main artery 
 of life in the city and reserved for foot- 
 passengers — becomes a furnace, although 
 covered by awnings, and no breath of air 
 is felt save in the great Plaza Nueva. In 
 winter, indeed, it is often pleasant, but even 
 jn Seville it is sometimes cold, and then the 
 
 338 
 
SEVILLE IN SPRING 339 
 
 Spaniard has no resource but his great cloak, 
 which he folds more closely across his breast 
 and mouth. But at the beginning of April 
 spring comes to Seville in a flash with the 
 heat of a northern summer. The acacias and 
 other deciduous trees seem to burst into radiant 
 verdure in a day ; the orange trees throughout 
 the city leap into blossom and scatter their 
 deep perfume everywhere ; and everywhere, 
 too, in the street and in the hair and bosoms 
 of the women, there are roses and carnations, 
 the two preferred flowers of Spain, so tenderly 
 and lovingly treated that they scarcely seem 
 the mere flowers we know them elsewhere. 
 
 If Barcelona may be described as the brain 
 and the arm of Spain, Seville may be called the 
 heart of Spain. Every Spaniard is proud of 
 Seville and glad to go there ; every woman in 
 Spain is happy to be mistaken for a Sevillian. 
 To assert the prominence of Barcelona as a 
 centre of modern Spanish life by no means 
 implies that Seville is a dead city. Seville is 
 even alive commercially, and from its wharves 
 among the trees sea-going vessels convey abroad 
 its wines, and its oil, and its oranges. With 
 the discovery of the New World it became one 
 of the great cities of Europe, and though it was 
 for the time eclipsed by Cadiz, so far as trade 
 is concerned, it has again asserted its old vigour. 
 It might, indeed, at one time have become the 
 
340 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 capital of Spain, had not political reasons placed 
 this in the centre of the peninsula when Castile 
 and Aragon were united, and we may be thank- 
 ful that the natural growth and character of 
 Seville have not been swamped by the artificial 
 and cosmopolitan elements which are attracted 
 to every capital. Seville has in many respects 
 been peculiarly favoured : an inland city which 
 is yet by its broad and easily navigable river 
 practically a seaport, it has been saved alike 
 from that excess of sterilising conservatism 
 liable to overtake cities outside the great 
 routes of communication, and from that excess 
 of restless and featureless variety which tends 
 to mark a busy seaport. Even the extreme 
 heat from which Seville suffers in summer has 
 helped to preserve its character as a typical 
 southern city, while at the same time, doubtless, 
 it has held aloof those foreign crowds whose 
 presence might blur the city's gracious aspects. 
 
 The Sevillians may be said to be the 
 Parisians of Spain. They possess a certain 
 well -poised gaiety, — alegria, as they them- 
 selves call it, — a fine sense of temperance and 
 harmony. They have that wit which is 
 the sign of an alert intelligence ; they are 
 sufficient to themselves, and they are a people 
 of artists. In most of these respects they differ 
 from their fellow-countrymen in temperament. 
 Spaniards generally are a grave and silent 
 
SEVILLE IN SPRING 341 
 
 people, tending to run to extremes, by no 
 means artists, with fine moral qualities indeed, 
 but, while very honest, also, it must be said, 
 sometimes lacking in quick intelligence. The 
 Sevillians, and especially the women of Seville, 
 possess a quality which, like the ancient 
 Eomans, the Spaniards call " salt," a sapid 
 and antiseptic quality of bright intelligence 
 which permeates all that they are and all that 
 they do. They do nothing quite in the same 
 way as other people, and are thus placed, 
 perhaps a little consciously, apart from other 
 people. The meanest girl of the people in 
 Seville has an easy consciousness and pride 
 in this superiority, and in every movement 
 shows a gracious dignity which we mostly 
 seek in vain elsewhere, even in the cities that 
 lie nearest. 1 If we go to Cordova we feel that 
 we are among a people from whom the tide 
 of life has retired, and who have proudly shut 
 themselves up within their palatial and beauti- 
 fully various patios. If we go to Granada 
 we find ourselves among a busy bourgeois set 
 of small tradesmen. The distinction of Seville 
 
 1 It is this spirit of Seville which has given the real impress to 
 the most beautiful Spanish dances. Many of these dances, while 
 originally of Spanish origin, have returned to Spain with renewed 
 vigour from America. But before they are accepted they must pass 
 through Seville. Seville, as Estebanez Calderon has said in his 
 Escenas Andaluzas, is the workshop in which they are melted, 
 modified, and recomposed, purged of any sediment of exaggeration, 
 impudence, and vulgarity they may have brought from over sea. 
 
342 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 is at once aristocratic and democratic. We 
 feel here the presence of an ancient civilisation 
 that has been matured through many genera- 
 tions and has penetrated the whole people. 
 Everything at Seville bears the touch of a 
 finely tempered race, and the imprint is always 
 gracious, noble, harmonious. We see this indi- 
 cated even in the varied colouring of the houses. 
 Sevillian houses, while very charming inside, 
 are very simple outside, and it is usual to give 
 them a coloured wash according to the taste 
 of the owner. At Granada, where the same 
 custom prevails, the colouring is often harsh, 
 with a preference for an unpleasant brown, but 
 at Seville an instinctive feeling for harmony 
 seems everywhere to have presided over its 
 arrangement. Again, Spain is a land where 
 wrought iron has always been largely used. 
 The iron rejas or gratings outside the windows, 
 the iron gates of the patios or courtyards, the 
 great iron screens enclosing the chapels in the 
 churches, have everywhere offered scope for the 
 development of skill in such work, but nowhere 
 in Spain is the ironwork so bold and yet so 
 felicitous as in Seville. And the same qualities 
 we find in the highest degree in the people 
 themselves, more especially in the women. The 
 men and women whom Seville has produced, 
 or whose names have been associated with the 
 city, unlike as they may be, seem to mingle 
 
SEVILLE IN SPRING 343 
 
 harmoniously in this Andalusian atmosphere. 
 From the hotel windows one may look out on 
 one side at the house where St. Theresa lived, 
 and on the other at the spot where legend 
 places the famous statue of Don Juan's com- 
 mander. In Seville we think, on the one hand, 
 of Isidoro, the patron of the city, the first 
 saint, philosopher, and scholar of his day ; 
 of Velazquez, the supreme artist; of Murillo, 
 most typical of Sevillians ; of St. Theresa, the 
 greatest of women saints ; and on the other 
 hand we think of Mateo Aleman, the creator 
 of the picaresque Guzman de Alfarache, of 
 Beaumarchais's and Mozart's Figaro, of M£ri- 
 mee's and Bizet's Carmen, and of a still more 
 immortal type, the Don Juan Tenorio of 
 Tirso de Molina. 1 The artist in every field 
 
 1 The Don Juan legend, which is comparable in importance to that 
 of Faust, and has penetrated European literature, is founded on El 
 Burlador de Sevilla, the play written by the great Spanish dramatist 
 Tirso de Molina (who was a priest, really named Gabriel Tellez) in 
 1630. There is no reason to suppose that the play was based on 
 any real event. The Tenorio family is one of the most ancient in 
 Andalusia, but no Don Juan Tenorio corresponding to the story is 
 known. The legend has grown up that the real hero was a certain 
 Don Miguel de Manara of Seville, whose exploits had a faint resem- 
 blance to Don Juan's. Maurice Barres, for instance, in his Visite a 
 Don Juan solemnly accepts this legend. But Don Miguel de Manara 
 was only four years old when Tirso wrote his play. It was the 
 excellence of the play that led to the belief that it was founded on 
 fact. "The proud and impulsive character of the race," Reynier 
 remarks, "was so well recognised in Don Juan that the fiction was 
 instinctively made a reality." Possibly, as Reynier suggests, the 
 austere monk and master in theology of the University of Aleak, who 
 wrote the play, was here expressing his personal opinion concerning 
 
344 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 has always found at Seville a finely fibred and 
 finely tempered human type, the like of which 
 elsewhere in Europe is mostly sought in vain. 
 Saints or sinners, grave or gay, there is for 
 the most part a certain heroic and noble 
 distinction about the great figures of Seville; 
 the saints are gay and the sinners are grave; 
 they have alike drunk extremely of the cup of 
 life and — in the spiritual world also it is true 
 — les extrSmes se touchent. In that indeed 
 they are true Spaniards ; but they preserve at 
 the same time a fine measure and distinction 
 in their way of taking life, and in that they 
 are true Sevillians. 
 
 It is in the most perfect season of spring 
 that the Sevillians have wisely chosen to con- 
 centrate their chief festivals. The Carnival is 
 comparatively disregarded here ; it is held with 
 much more vigour and animation in some of 
 the other large Andalusian cities like Cadiz and 
 Malaga. At Seville the great festival is that 
 in which all the chief splendours of the Church 
 are displayed, at Easter and the preceding days 
 
 the popular doctrine of the inexhaustible mercy of God, the favourite 
 Spanish idea that there is no sin that cannot be pardoned ; the old 
 master of theology wished to show in his drama that men go to hell 
 by the road of vain hope as well as by the road of despair. (Many 
 studies of the Don Juan legend have been written. See, e.g., Farinelli, 
 "Cuatro Palabras sobre Don Juan," Homenaje a Menendez y Pelayo, 
 vol. i. p. 205 ; G. Reynier, " Les Origines de la Legende de Don 
 Juan," Bevue de Paris, May 15, 1906 ; and the exhaustive work by 
 G. de Bevotte, La Legende de Don Jvan, 1907.) 
 
SEVILLE IN SPRING 345 
 
 of Holy Week ; the first and best bull-fights of 
 the year take place at this season ; and the 
 Feria, the great outdoor festival, unique even 
 in Spain, in which Sevillians of every class take 
 an active part, is held in the middle of April. 
 
 The religious processions bring home to the 
 spectator much more vividly even than the 
 ceremonies in the church the genuinely religious 
 instincts of the people. The fervour and reality 
 of the emotions they call out is unquestionable. 
 The clergy play no part in these processions ; it 
 is the spontaneous and active devotion of the 
 people themselves that maintains and carries 
 them out on the lines of immemorial tradition. 
 
 The anti-clerical progressive movement re- 
 presented in literature by Galdos, and embodied 
 a few years ago in his play Electra, seems very 
 far away when the colossal Virgins, sometimes 
 gracious and beautiful figures, are carried in 
 procession among the bare-headed crowds of 
 Seville. We have, indeed, to remember that here 
 there is no active propaganda of anti-religious 
 and progressive views, although a considerable 
 amount of quiet scepticism. At Granada and 
 some other towns the street processions are now 
 omitted on one pretext or another, for fear lest 
 disturbances should occur. It may well be that 
 every year now will bring some further shrinking 
 in the imposing magnitude of these spectacles, 
 and that, like the picturesque costumes of the 
 
 v 
 
346 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 people, they will tend slowly to disappear from 
 the streets. The growing indifference or hostility 
 of one section of the population seems to render 
 this course of events inevitable. But we cannot 
 well imagine the religious element in the Spanish 
 people dying out. It is too deeply engrained in 
 the very fibre of the race. If Catholicism had 
 no existence in Spain one feels that Spaniards 
 would invent it. Mysticism, even monasticism, 
 is part of their very temperament, a temperament 
 at once so ardent and sensuous, so ascetic and 
 unflinching. Let the shrewd Sancho Panza in 
 the Spanish temperament mock as he will, Don 
 Quixote will still pursue the inspirations of his 
 own imagination. The enthusiasm aroused by 
 Electra cannot make us forget that St. Dominic 
 and St. Theresa, even Loyola himself, whose 
 followers are now arousing such antagonism in 
 the land, were Spaniards, and very typical 
 Spaniards. One may recall that it was in Spain 
 that the celibacy of the secular clergy was first 
 established, a century before it was adopted 
 elsewhere, and that the north-west of Spain in 
 the early Christian centuries rivalled even 
 Palestine in the number of its saints and its 
 sanctuaries. And to-day it is difficult not to 
 feel that Spain still naturally produces all the 
 genuinely and naturally monastic types of men — 
 from the alert, courteous, supple persons, with an 
 inborn instinct for ceremonial and for intrigue, 
 
SEVILLE IN SPRING 347 
 
 to those mystical, simple - minded, sometimes 
 perhaps rather dull-witted persons who are often 
 the stuff out of which saints are made. I recall 
 a brown-frocked friar of the latter type I once 
 met in the train, near Cordova — a huge man, with 
 bushy black beard, full, rather sleepy dark eyes, 
 knotted brown hands, big bare feet in his sandals, 
 very slow of speech, yet not unintelligent when 
 he began to speak, and though very robust, with 
 no suggestion of keen appetites or sensual 
 passions ; I have never come across a man who 
 reminded me so much of a tree, full, as it were, 
 of the vegetative sap of some vigorous oak. 
 
 On the Saturday before Easter Sunday the 
 ceremonies of Holy Week may be said to come 
 to an end, not without a feeling of relief on the 
 part of the visitor. At 10 o'clock on that morn- 
 ing the veil of the temple is rent in twain, in 
 other words, the vast purple curtain which has 
 been hanging in front of the high altar almost 
 from the vaulting is swiftly drawn away ; the 
 signal is thus given for the bells all over the city 
 to ring out joyously, while the people shout, 
 guns are fired, and vehicular traffic, suspended 
 during Holy Week, is resumed. On Sunday 
 morning the women, who have all been dressed 
 in black, with black mantillas, now appear in 
 white lace mantillas and costumes predominantly 
 white. In the afternoon a considerable section 
 of the population, including some of its most 
 
348 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 characteristically Sevillian elements (also, it must 
 be added, a large proportion of the British and 
 American visitors, for it is only here their 
 presence becomes obtrusive), are finding their 
 way to the Plaza de Toros to witness the first 
 bull-fight of the year. 
 
 It may seem a long way from the cathedral 
 to the bull-ring. In Seville one feels that it is 
 not so. The Giralda, the cathedral tower, is 
 the one outside object that we see towering above 
 the walls into the cloudless sky as we sit in 
 the ring, and it introduces no clash of discord. 
 When the toreadors enter, — grave, lithe, hand- 
 some men, in their varied and beautiful costume, 
 — and walk with hieratic grace and dignity of 
 carriage to salute the president in his box, we 
 feel at once that we are still in presence of 
 the same spirit — in a slightly different form — 
 which has dominated the proceedings of the 
 whole week. One recognises afresh that funda- 
 mental harmony in apparent opposites, which, 
 though part of the Spanish temperament 
 generally, may be said to reach its finest and 
 deepest embodiment in the atmosphere of Seville. 
 Gorgeous ceremony, elaborate ritual, solemnly 
 accepted, we are just as much in the presence of 
 here, as when we witnessed the Archbishop con- 
 secrating the holy oil or washing the feet of the 
 thirteen old men. The whole process by which 
 the death of the bull is compassed is nothing but 
 
SEVILLE IN SPRING 349 
 
 an elaborate ritual, the detail of which the 
 stranger is altogether unable to appreciate. 1 In 
 the church the ceremonies of every divine office 
 gain their solemnity by association with the 
 highest conceptions of the Christian faith ; in the 
 Plaza the sense of solemnity is gained by the 
 possible imminence of death. But in both 
 cases, ceremony, and a poignantly emotional 
 background, furnish the deepest element of 
 fascination. The bull -fight is Spanish, and 
 appeals to Spaniards, quite as much because it 
 is a sacred ritual as because it is a sport. 
 
 As a sport many hard things have been said 
 about it, and not without justice. In Spain 
 itself only a section of the public cares for bull- 
 fights ; very many Spaniards of all classes do not 
 go, and do not like it ; the party of religion and 
 the party of progress are equally opposed to it. 
 Certainly it is the national sport of Spain, just 
 as horse -racing and betting constitute the 
 national sport of England; in both cases alike 
 we must not identify the whole nation with the 
 national sport. Apart from its repulsive ele- 
 ments — which are as objectionable to many 
 Spaniards as to the stranger — the bull-fight is a 
 fascinating exhibition of skill, and since the 
 contest with the bull is very rapid, and the 
 
 1 Some common misconceptions are corrected in an article by 
 Laurent Tailhade, "Toros de Muerte," Mercure de France, June 15, 
 1907. 
 
350 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 animal's death swift and certain, it must be said 
 that if sport is to be defended at all, this kind of 
 sport compares favourably with fox-hunting or 
 pheasant-shooting. 1 The element of risk also, 
 the fact that the would-be slayer may himself be 
 slain, adds an element of dignity which is wanting 
 in nearly every other form of European sport. 
 At the same time the bull-fight, reminiscent as 
 it is of the feelings and habits of Roman times 
 (though it is not actually a direct Eoman 
 survival), 2 is an anachronism under the conditions 
 of modern civilisation. The continued vitality 
 of such a spectacle, though rooted in the national 
 temperament on more than one side, witnesses to 
 the defects of the fine qualities of the Spanish 
 character, to a certain hardness of fibre, a certain 
 cruelty, if indifference to what is regarded as 
 necessary pain, in oneself as well as in others, 
 can properly be called cruelty. 3 
 
 1 See, e.g., an article by an English sportsman, Basil Tozer, " The 
 Abuse of Sport," Fortnightly Eeview, October 1906. 
 
 2 The bull-fight was established in the eleventh or twelfth century, 
 and has been traced to Moorish influence. "The bulls may have 
 come from Africa," Ulick Burke observes, "the cavaliers may have 
 had their origin in Damascus ; but the savage solemnity, the orderly 
 excitement, the whole form and feeling of the modern spectacle, are 
 the heritage of Imperial Rome." 
 
 8 These aspects of bull-fights were very temperately discussed by 
 Valera in one of the last volumes of his essays. While praising the 
 bull-fight, and realising the advantages of possessing such fine types 
 of harmonious proportion as the torero presents — in opposition to the 
 wretched and ugly jockey type — Valera still concluded with saying 
 that the spectacle of the disembowelled horses is extremely repugnant, 
 and that he preferred the Portuguese bull-fight, from which this 
 
SEVILLE IN SPRING 351 
 
 In the middle of April the climax of the 
 spring festival in Seville is reached during the 
 Feria. Thousands arrive from Madrid and other 
 parts of Spain to take part in or to witness this 
 great picnic, and those who come late have to 
 sleep where they can, on dining -tables or in 
 corridors, for all rooms have been engaged. The 
 Feria lasts three days, but for many weeks 
 beforehand preparations have been going on in 
 the Prado de San Sebastian, an open space just 
 outside the city, close to its finest parks and 
 promenades, and appropriately named after a tor- 
 tured martyr, for this was once the Quemadero, 
 where the Inquisition burnt heretics. Here are 
 erected rows of wooden buildings, casetas or 
 little houses, consisting mainly of one room — 
 usually furnished chiefly with chairs, a piano, 
 and flowers — entirely open to view on the front 
 side. Hither during the afternoon the people of 
 Seville drive out in their carriages, each family 
 proceeding to its own caseta. As evening comes 
 on the sound of castanets and guitars begins to 
 be heard in all directions, and ladies and children 
 in nearly every caseta are seen dancing the 
 gracious Sevillian seguidilla, while the paths are 
 crowded with onlookers. 1 This is the centre of 
 
 element is absent, as indeed it shortly seems likely to be from the 
 Spanish bull-fight also, in which it has never been really essential. 
 
 1 I have read an account of this scene by a lady who described it 
 as a wearisome and spiritless routine. This it certainly is not, though 
 there is a complete absence of boisterous hilarity. The same writer 
 
352 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 the Feria, and hither the people flock ; the broad 
 avenues radiating in various directions — each 
 softly lit up by its thousands of Chinese lanterns, 
 a different scheme of colour prevailing in each 
 avenue, and fragrant with the blossoming orange 
 trees — are almost deserted, though delightful as 
 a scene from the Arabian Nights. 
 
 Towards midnight the lights have begun to 
 fail, and the Sevillians are quietly returning 
 home. One hastens to walk away in the 
 silence, under the wonderful southern sky, lest 
 one should spoil the perfect sensation of this 
 scene of gracious and sustained alegria, that 
 quality which gives, sometimes a little proudly 
 and self-consciously, so fine a distinction to 
 the Sevillian. Yet as one recalls the impres- 
 sions of Holy Week, of the whole of this spring 
 festival, one feels that there has really been 
 no break. The fair, like the bull-fight, has 
 been no orgy in which the Sevillian seeks to 
 drown and compensate the penances of Lent. 
 " There is something traditional and sacred 
 about these Sevillian holidays," a Spaniard 
 casually remarks. "Something sacred" — even 
 these domestic spring outings have not taken 
 us beyond the region of ceremonial ; even here 
 we are in presence of an ostentatious though 
 
 regretfully exclaimed that there was not one white cap, and no sabots ! 
 That any one could desire an Andalusian woman to exchange so perfect 
 a head-dress as the mantilla for a stiff, expressionless cap, or to encase 
 her beautiful feet in thick wooden clogs, is indeed strange. 
 
SEVILLE IN SPRING 353 
 
 easy ritual ; a holiday is here really a holy day. 
 We are far away from those northern lands, 
 whether Britain or Russia, where excesses 
 of strenuous effort are followed by excesses of 
 relaxing orgy. On Sundays and great moral 
 occasions we people of northern race exhibit a 
 tense and rigid virtue, like Sir Walter Scott's 
 heroes, draw ourselves up to our full height, 
 and then, in the blessed consciousness of that 
 painful effort, we feel free to collapse in a 
 heap. Here people neither hold themselves 
 stiffly at full moral height nor awkwardly 
 collapse. During Holy Week, in the Church 
 ceremonies, one might note the vestmented 
 dignitaries talking and smiling even beneath 
 the Archbishop's eyes ; and once, at a side altar, 
 a kneeling young woman, whom I had supposed 
 lost in devotion, slowly lifted and critically 
 examined the lace border of the white altar- 
 cloth ; it was typical of the Spaniard's easy 
 familiarity with divine things. 1 But, on the 
 other hand, at the Feria it was impossible to 
 detect the faintest sign of drunkenness or the 
 slightest impulse to rowdiness or indecorum ; 
 strenuous tension may be absent from the 
 Sevillian temperament, but so also is any 
 
 1 In La Tribuna, Emilia Pardo Bazan, describing how the cigarreras 
 in the Galician tobacco-factory placed their shawls, umbrellas, and 
 dinners on the altar, adds : " But this kind of familiarity revealed no 
 lack of respect for the holy altar, before which not one passed without 
 making the sign of the cross and a genuflexion." 
 
 2 A 
 
354 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 instinct or habit of vulgarity. It would be 
 fruitless to discuss which of these two methods 
 of facing the problems of life is the more worthy 
 of admiration. We may at least be thankful 
 that, whatever men may elsewhere do or leave 
 undone, this " something traditional and sacred" 
 is still preserved in Seville. 
 
XIV 
 
 SEVILLE CATHEDKAL 
 
 The largest of all Gothic churches, and indeed, 
 after St. Peter's at Rome, the largest church 
 in Christendom, Seville Cathedral during recent 
 years has practically been closed. In 1888, 
 as the result of a series of earthquake shocks, 
 the dome fell in with a mighty crash, every 
 precious object below, from the east end of 
 the choir to the screen of the capilla mayor 
 or high altar, being inevitably destroyed, and 
 the pavement was covered by a vast mass of 
 confused masonry. On a former visit to Seville 
 I had been unable to obtain any conception of 
 the interior, for although one could penetrate 
 at certain points, the way was blocked in every 
 direction, and no vista left open. Now, the 
 cathedral has been really opened ; the cere- 
 monies of Holy Week are no longer robbed 
 of their splendour, and the remains of Columbus 
 have found a last resting-place in the city which 
 has the best right to claim them. Fortunately 
 
 365 
 
356 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 it is possible to compliment the Sevillians on 
 their skill in church restoration. Whatever 
 views one may hold on restoration, here 
 certainly was a case where every one must 
 admit its necessity, and this inevitable restora- 
 tion seems to have been accomplished in the 
 most judicious manner possible. The fine taste 
 of the Sevillians, and the conservatism natural 
 to all Spaniards, have here at all events been 
 happily united ; nothing has been done that 
 was not absolutely necessary to preserve the 
 harmony of the edifice, and no foolish attempt 
 has been made either to extend the operations 
 beyond the field of damage, or to do anything 
 better than the original builders. Seville 
 Cathedral still remains to us a focus of the 
 religious spirit of Spain, a great vessel full of 
 mystery and romance. 
 
 It is more than five hundred years since 
 Seville Cathedral was planned. In 1401 the 
 chapter resolved to build a basilica "so 
 magnificent that coming ages should call them 
 mad for attempting it." The cathedral was 
 designed by foreign architects, possibly German, 
 who took a century to complete the work, 
 though externally some of the portals are not 
 completed even yet. In some respects one 
 may compare it with another Gothic church, 
 the cathedral of Cologne. Each was meant 
 to be stupendous, and each represented an 
 
SEVILLE CATHEDRAL 357 
 
 essentially foreign idea, for alike on the banks 
 of the Ehine and in Andalusia, though not 
 everywhere in Germany nor everywhere in 
 Spain, Gothic architecture is an exotic art. It 
 is this exotic character which enabled both 
 churches to preserve their unity of design, and 
 in the case of Cologne even of detail, over a 
 very long period of construction, unaffected by 
 the developments which always modify every 
 living form of architecture in its own home. 
 But with these points of resemblance there could 
 not be a greater contrast. Cologne Cathedral, 
 though in design and on paper it seems to be 
 one of the most perfect and impressive works of 
 man, is in reality to an extreme degree artificial, 
 cold, uninspiring, dead. One feels that in form 
 and in spirit it is utterly alien to the men of 
 the Ehine, and that they have never even 
 attempted to make it live. Catholicism in 
 Germany has itself a distinctly Protestant 
 character, and Cologne Cathedral, with its 
 French nobility and harmonious logic, is even 
 more foreign to the Ehine than the Eenaissance 
 temple of St. Paul's is to foggy Protestant 
 London. But Seville Cathedral is alive, after 
 half a millennium alive with a full exuberance 
 of life which, it seems to me, can be found in 
 no other great church. To make the vast 
 expanse of St. Peter's alive with worship 
 would be beyond human faculty. And if we 
 
358 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 turn to a great French and Gothic church, like 
 Notre Dame of Paris, again we feel the lack of 
 life. Cologne and St. Peter's can never have 
 been alive ; at Notre Dame the life has departed. 
 Once it may have been filled with splendid 
 ritual. Now it is shrunken and cold. Notre 
 Dame has been swept bare by the Eevolution, 
 and has never quite recovered from the effects 
 of that storm ; the very orderliness, elegance, 
 and comfort of the worship now carried on 
 there are an incongruity, and indicate an 
 attenuation of the true spirit of worship. But 
 Seville Cathedral is still alive ; if less so than 
 once it was, the difference is one which in our 
 time cannot be perceived. 
 
 The arrangement of a typical large Spanish 
 church, which we find at Seville in its completely 
 developed form, is unlike that we are familiar 
 with in England and France. The northern 
 Gothic church is shaped like a cross, the eastern 
 arm of which is the most sacred, most filled 
 with light, most exquisitely decorated. All the 
 active functions of the church are concentrated 
 into the eastern end ; here is at once the stage 
 and the orchestra of that great sacred drama 
 which every religious office, and above all the 
 Mass, essentially is. The mystery and solemnity 
 of divine service is thus secured by distance, 
 by placing the sacred ceremonial in a remote 
 blaze of light, as far away as possible from 
 
SEVILLE CATHEDRAL 359 
 
 the worshippers in the body of the church. 
 The worshippers are scattered and isolated, in 
 comparative gloom, throughout the building, 
 an arrangement which probably has its source 
 in the northerner's love of solitude. Very 
 different is the arrangement in a cathedral 
 like that of Seville. Here the whole object 
 of the very construction of the church is to 
 attain that filling of the edifice with active 
 worship which is in fact so perfectly attained. 
 The building is strictly of a broad, oblong 
 shape, without projecting transepts, without 
 more than a rudimentary apse. The choir is 
 almost in the centre of the church, slightly to 
 the west, and the capilla mayor containing 
 the high altar is slightly to the east. In the 
 early days of the Christian Church the choir 
 was enclosed in the nave, though the enclosure 
 was not usually very high, and the Spanish 
 custom (though this is not Street's opinion) 
 may possibly be a survival of the primitive 
 practice ; we may see a somewhat similar 
 arrangement, though here of modern introduc- 
 tion, in Westminster Abbey. Between the 
 choir and the capilla mayor is a square space, 
 underneath the dome, which can be enclosed 
 as required, and in which some of the most 
 characteristic ceremonies take place, such as 
 the consecration of the holy oil and the washing 
 of feet. Choir and capilla mayor are alike 
 
360 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 massively enclosed, and constitute a church 
 within a church Thus the choral part of the 
 service is completely separated from the cere- 
 monial function, from which it is naturally 
 distinct, and yet the whole actively dramatic 
 movement of the service takes place in the 
 centre of the edifice. The sense of mystery is 
 here attained, not by distance, but by enclosure 
 and height, and at the same time the conditions 
 are secured for filling the vast edifice with 
 the maximum effect of worship. Such an 
 arrangement perfectly fits this cathedral for 
 the uses of Spanish ritual ; the noble simplicity 
 of the building in its elements of construction, 
 and the boldly flowing rhetoric of its decoration, 
 lend themselves admirably to that mysteriously 
 grandiose and romantic quality which is the 
 note of these functions, and expresses itself in 
 every detail and every various appeal to the 
 senses. 
 
 As the great festivals of the year come round 
 the whole of this vast edifice is not too vast for 
 its part in the functions ; it seems to live, to 
 change perpetually with the changes in the rich 
 and varied atmosphere that fills it, the one 
 great and conspicuous object in this city built 
 on a plain, seated broadly and solidly in the 
 midst of the city, as the beauties of Seville know 
 how to seat themselves, alert and robust under 
 the semblance of languor. 
 
SEVILLE CATHEDRAL 361 
 
 The elements that go to make up the charm 
 of this building are highly complex, even if we 
 disregard the worship and the worshippers it is 
 so admirably fitted for. I have spent many 
 hours — morning, afternoon, and night — during 
 several weeks within its walls, and at the end 
 it seemed as elusively delightful, as full of novel 
 surprises, as at the first. One learns to detect, 
 however, certain of the elements of the place's 
 charm. It is perfectly lighted ; the light is of 
 medium intensity, midway between the clearness 
 of a northern cathedral, which detracts from the 
 sense of mystery, and the extreme and sombre 
 gloom of a typically southern cathedral like 
 Barcelona or Perpignan, where the obscurity, 
 however impressive it may be, renders all details 
 invisible. The prevailingly medium light in 
 this vast edifice is really made up of a number 
 of kinds of light from many sources, separately 
 of a wide range of intensity, and the atmosphere 
 itself thus becomes here a visible component 
 in the structural harmony of the place. Its 
 varieties of atmospherical effect, its long vistas 
 of light, are produced by various planes of air 
 coming from the doors in every direction, from 
 the veiled and unveiled stained windows at 
 different angles and at different heights, never 
 too dazzling to neutralise altogether the illumina- 
 tion of candles and lamps. 
 
 While all the main constructional features 
 
362 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 of the building are bold and harmoniously 
 planned and proportioned, it has to be confessed 
 that Seville Cathedral is not, and as an exotic 
 phenomenon could not be, a model of exquisite 
 Gothic workmanship in its decorative details, 
 either internally or externally. Any one who 
 comes fresh to Seville from those great Gothic 
 buildings which arose among a people with a 
 genius for architecture, whether in Amiens and 
 Chartres, or in Barcelona and Tarragona, may 
 easily find cause for offence here. But where 
 the builders have fallen short in delicate archi- 
 tectural sense, they have made up in their fine 
 artistic felicity, in their instinct for bold and 
 noble proportion ; and in the end even the 
 somewhat coarse, peculiar, or meaningless decora- 
 tive detail in the stone, which is, indeed, always 
 restrained and never obtrusive, takes its place 
 as an element in the whole effect. 
 
 Apart from architecture proper, the decorative 
 feeling becomes right at once. Here, for instance, 
 we see everywhere the bold and splendid iron 
 'screens, or rejas, which the Sevillians use so 
 frequently, and design with so fine, varied, 
 and happy a decorative feeling. The stained 
 windows, again, are an element in the character 
 of the church. Every one of the windows, 
 nearly a hundred in number, is stained, and 
 they are for the most part harmonious, usually 
 in the rich and florid Flemish manner of the 
 
SEVILLE CATHEDRAL 363 
 
 seventeenth century, which is here entirely in 
 place. These windows are often veiled by semi- 
 transparent curtains, and are generally very 
 highly placed, the clerestory being at a great 
 height, and they are by no means very large. 
 The varied patches of colour which they throw 
 on the walls and piers and pavement, bringing 
 out the crystalline texture of the marble, 
 harmonise happily with the impression of the 
 whole place. All the accessories, moreover, of 
 the cathedral's equipment are on the same scale 
 of harmonious vastness as the edifice itself. The 
 great candles, the bells clanged in the choir at 
 the elevation of the Host, the immense choir- 
 books, the enormous font for the consecrated oil, 
 the huge iron-bound chests to hold the contribu- 
 tions of the faithful, — all these and the like 
 accessories are on the same grandiose scale. 1 
 
 While romantic and mysterious splendour, 
 and a harmonious rhetoric, confidently and 
 happily bold, are the dominant notes of Seville 
 Cathedral, there is yet a certain negligence 
 and familiarity, a certain homeliness, about the 
 splendour that is not the least part of its 
 effectiveness. Merely as a museum of pictures 
 and antiquities it would rank high among the 
 galleries of Europe. Yet it is not mainly or 
 
 1 Thus there are as many as two hundred choir-books, over throe 
 feet in height by over two feet in breadth, many dating from the 
 fifteenth century, with varied and beautiful miniatures, borders, and 
 capitals. 
 
364 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 primarily a show-place, like St. Peter's with its 
 cold and vacuous magnificence, or our painfully 
 well-kept English cathedrals. There is no 
 extreme care for spotless cleanliness, for the 
 perfect repair of every detail, for rigid neatness 
 and orderliness. Here and there the marble is 
 broken and the stone -work crumbled away; 
 fragments have fallen out of some of the 
 gorgeous stained windows. But a faint crum- 
 bling of decay seems part of the very vitality 
 of Seville Cathedral ; a spotlessly neat and trim 
 church is scarcely likely to be put to much 
 use. This church is a place of real and constant 
 use ; people of all classes frequent it ; the flutter 
 of ceremonial, the sound of worship, seem seldom 
 to cease within its walls. There are eighty-two 
 altars besides the high altar, and one hesitates 
 to say that there are too many. 
 
 The cathedral is the chief scene of all the 
 great Church ceremonies, as well as the centre 
 towards which the characteristic popular re- 
 ligious processions, the pasos, are naturally 
 directed. These pasos take place everywhere 
 and all day long on Good Friday, and to some 
 extent on the two preceding days. The whole 
 city is given up to them, all vehicular traffic is 
 stopped, and every one, from the mayor and 
 civic dignitaries downwards, is present, either in 
 special seats in the public squares or at the 
 windows or in the streets. It is impossible to 
 
SEVILLE CATHEDRAL 365 
 
 cross or penetrate the main arteries of traffic ; 
 the visitor must see the pasos, for he cannot see 
 anything else. Every procession consists of a 
 single sacred figure, or a group representing a 
 scene from the Passion, of more than life-size 
 proportions, 1 borne on the heads of some twenty- 
 five invisible men at an extremely slow pace, 
 and accompanied by the members of the cofradia, 
 or lay brotherhood, to whom it belongs, dressed 
 in their peculiar costume, which varies in colour 
 in the different brotherhoods, but is essentially 
 a long gown with a tall, stiff, peaked cowl, 
 covering the face, with loopholes for the eyes, 
 while each brother carries a great lighted candle. 
 Many of the figures are very finely conceived, 
 and are dramatic in expression ; some of them 
 are the work of Montanes, the seventeenth 
 century Sevillian sculptor, and the best and 
 most characteristic exponent of the Sevillian 
 spirit as applied to polychrome carving. More 
 impressive, and to the crowd also more peculiarly 
 sacred, are some of the single figures of the 
 Virgin, in which the quality of the carving is 
 not visible. Such is the Virgen de Eegla, — a 
 
 1 It is noteworthy that there is some reason to think that the 
 Christian adoration of images first became marked in Spain ; this is 
 indicated by a famous canon (36) against such worship, passed by 
 the Council of Elvira (the ancient Granada) in 306, while Pope 
 Damasus, who, by giving a new impulse to Christian art, exerted 
 an influence in the same direction, was also a Spaniard of this period 
 (see A. W. W. Dale, The Synod of Elvira, p. 292 ; also Glover, Life 
 and Letters in the Fourth Century, p. 250). 
 
366 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 gracious Virgin, slightly bowed forward, with a 
 delicate lace handkerchief in her hand, and 
 enfolded in a vast and gorgeous mantle of dark 
 velvet, gold-embroidered in a large flowing 
 decorative scheme. Candles and bouquets are 
 placed in front of her ; a few marigolds (a flower 
 in England also dedicated to the Virgin, as the 
 name still bears witness) are sprinkled on the 
 edge of her mantle, and now and then from 
 among the crowd a child or young girl, in a 
 timid yet ardent voice, sings a brief saeta with 
 eyes fixed on the Virgin's face. As the gracious 
 hieratic goddess is thus borne towards the 
 cathedral on the heads of men, through the 
 reverent bareheaded crowd, to the sound of 
 music, with exceeding slowness and a tremulous 
 vibratory movement which seems to impart 
 to her a kind of personal life, one begins to 
 realise Ashtaroth and the great Mediterranean 
 goddess of spring, of which the Virgin is in- 
 deed the last lineal descendant, the Berecynthian 
 mother, borne, as Virgil describes her, on a car 
 through Phrygian cities. One remembers, indeed, 
 that Seville was the only city of the western 
 world that held a temple of Salammbo, whence 
 every year at her festival the goddess went 
 through the city in procession on the shoulders 
 of noble ladies. Justina and Eufina, the young 
 Christian market-girls, refused to do her homage 
 and were martyred by the pious crowd, be- 
 
SEVILLE CATHEDRAL 367 
 
 coming in their turn the tutelary saints of 
 Seville. Yet in the end Salammbo has con- 
 quered, and the ancient Sevillians could not 
 fail to recognise and reverence their goddess in 
 the streets to-day. As one gazes on her one 
 begins to understand the potent life with which 
 custom and faith and art can endow a mere 
 symbol, and the fascination with which such a 
 symbol can hold the imaginations of men. 
 
 If Seville Cathedral is ceaselessly rich and 
 interesting in daylight, it gains a new and 
 profound impressiveness at night. Nothing 
 could exceed the overwhelming impression pro- 
 duced by the cathedral at night during the 
 days before Easter Sunday. All the vast doors 
 were opened wide, and at one corner a bril- 
 liant glimpse of the electrically lighted streets 
 streamed in. Yet the cathedral was very dim, 
 for the most part only lighted by a few candles 
 placed high against the great piers of the nave ; 
 all round the choir the crowd was impassable ; 
 in the rest of the church characteristic Spanish 
 groups crouched at the bases of the great clus- 
 tered shafts, and chattered and used their fans 
 familiarly, as if in their own homes, while dogs 
 ran about unmolested. The Miserere of Eslava 
 was being performed, and the vast church lent 
 itself superbly to the music and to the scene. 
 It was a scene, as the artist-friend who accom- 
 panied me remarked, stranger than the designs 
 
368 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 of Martin, as bizarre as something out of Poe 
 or Baudelaire. In the dim light the huge piers 
 seemed larger and higher than ever, while the 
 faint altar-lights dimly lit up the iron screen of 
 the capilla mayor, as in Rembrandt's conception 
 of the Temple at Jerusalem. In this scene of 
 enchantment one felt that Santa Maria of 
 Seville had delivered up the last secret of her 
 mystery and romance. 
 
XV 
 
 MONSEKRAT 
 
 The mystic shrine that was the home of the 
 Holy Grail, borne away from human strife to a 
 remote corner of the world, long haunted the 
 mediaeval mind, and when in modern times 
 that legend again emerges in the crowning 
 achievement of Wagner's genius, the Grail is 
 still preserved by a religious order at Monsalvat, 
 in Gothic Spain, not far from the land of the 
 Moslems. 
 
 The northerners who dreamed of Monsalvat 
 in their moments of fervent devotion or 
 romantic exaltation had heard a rumour, but 
 for the most part they knew little or nothing 
 of its kernel of fact. Yet the rumour itself 
 is the most potent evidence of the world-wide 
 fascination which the ancient mountain shrine 
 of Monserrat exerted over the imaginations of 
 men for more than a thousand years, and, 
 
 369 2 B 
 
370 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 indeed, still exerts even to-day. It is in vain 
 that one climbs the heights of Monserrat with 
 memories of Amfortas and the "pure fool." 
 When we have made our way up, beyond even 
 the shrine and the monastery, to the great 
 ravine which is said to have rent the summit 
 of the mountain at the moment of the cruci- 
 fixion, and when we have passed the fantastic 
 row of rocky pinnacles to which the name of 
 " Guardians of the Holy Grail " has been 
 assigned, we have seen all that there is to 
 connect the real Monserrat with the legendary 
 Monsalvat. 1 Perhaps we should be well content 
 that so sublime a symbol has long been borne 
 away to an invisible home, and that the Holy 
 Grail should have its sole and immortal shrine 
 in the human imagination. 
 
 But the real and still living legend of 
 Monserrat, though of no profound imaginative 
 significance, has yet sufficed to give an incom- 
 parable spiritual halo to a spot which, even if 
 it had not become a shrine of faith, must always 
 be a shrine of Nature. It is said that St. Luke 
 — by tradition regarded as the most accom- 
 plished of the first Christians — once fashioned a 
 wooden image of the Virgin Mary. Whoever 
 the sculptor may have been, however, it seems 
 
 1 It may be worth noting that not very far away from Monserrat, 
 in Valencia Cathedral, there is a chalice, the Santa Caliz, — carved 
 out of sardonyx, and belonging to the Imperial Roman epoch, — which 
 is traditionally held to be the cup used at the Last Supper. 
 
MONSERRAT 371 
 
 to be agreed that the image, still venerated 
 here, was counted as sacred at a period anterior 
 even to legend. In the eighth century — and 
 how much earlier it is impossible to say — monks 
 would seem to be settled in the mountain, and 
 on the coming of the Moors to have concealed 
 the image in a grotto and fled. Towards the 
 end of the ninth century — when the history of 
 Monserrat, heightened by legend, really opens 
 — the image was accidentally discovered by 
 shepherds. Nuns were then planted here, soon 
 to give place to Benedictine monks from the 
 great abbey of Ripoll. Through many vicissi- 
 tudes the Virgin of Monserrat always emerged 
 triumphant ; early in the fifteenth century her 
 shrine, from being only a priory under Ripoll, 
 became an independent abbey. From the first, 
 probably, it was the haunt of hermits. The 
 serrated mountain was as naturally formed to 
 be the home of hermits as the devout Spaniard 
 is formed to make a hermit ; every hermit could 
 here find his solitary eyrie in the cliff over the 
 great plain, and no hermitage was ever without 
 its inmate. Slowly, too, as the fame of the 
 Lady of Monserrat grew, a mighty army of 
 pilgrims began to march up the winding path 
 to this high shrine, to present their offerings 
 and to receive the hospitality of the monks. 
 In the sixteenth century, it is said, they num- 
 bered half a million a year. Kings and princes 
 
372 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 and nobles joined in the procession ; once a 
 queen, Violante, the wife of Don Juan I., 
 climbed up barefoet ; Charles V. came here nine 
 times ; a great conqueror, Don John of Austria, 
 came here to lay at the feet of the Virgin the 
 spoils of Lepanto and to cover the whole church 
 with gold ; most memorable visit of all, it was 
 here that the soldier Loyola came to bid fare- 
 well to earthly camps, to spend the night before 
 the Virgin, to leave his sword on her altar, to 
 watch over his new spiritual weapons like a 
 knight of chivalry in Amadis de Gaul, con- 
 secrating himself as a soldier of the Church — the 
 first general of the best-organised and most 
 famous army that has ever fought in her 
 service. 
 
 It was not alone in the spiritual sphere that 
 Monserrat stood forth resplendent above the 
 world around. Like every great Benedictine 
 monastery, it was a focus of work and enlighten- 
 ment. Its abbots were sometimes fine architects, 
 and they knew also where to find the best 
 sculptors and craftsmen in Spain to beautify 
 their splendid Byzantine church. They founded 
 a school of music. They set up a famous 
 printing-press when printing was still a novelty 
 in the world. If men brought here in profusion 
 their precious things for love of the Virgin, the 
 guardians of her shrine in the days of its pros- 
 perity were never unmindful of their own re- 
 
MONSERRAT 373 
 
 sponsibilities. The giffc8 of natural site and 
 scenery, antiquity and legend, the adoration of 
 a large part of Europe, the skill and energy of 
 its own monks, thus combined to render Mon- 
 serrat a shrine of almost unparalleled magni- 
 ficence, although from its natural position it 
 always preserved a certain aristocratic aloofness, 
 and never enjoyed the immense vulgar fame 
 throughout Christendom of the other great 
 Spanish shrine, that of St. James of Com- 
 postela. 
 
 Then at last in the early years of the nine- 
 teenth century came the War of Independence. 
 Monserrat is a natural fortress — a tempting one, 
 moreover, to seize, for the French scented a rich 
 booty. They climbed the mountain, slew or 
 dispersed the monks, trampled down the shrine, 
 melted or carried off its precious things. What 
 the French left was overturned by that internal 
 revolution, a few years later, which made every 
 great religious house in Spain the picturesque 
 ruin which we see it to-day. When Ford visited 
 Monserrat he found it "an abomination of de- 
 solation," in which it was hard even to secure a 
 resting-place. 
 
 Now once again, though its old splendour 
 has departed, Monserrat is alive. The great 
 church has been restored ; large buildings cluster 
 around to furnish the pilgrim and the visitor 
 with a lodging that is, nominally at all events, 
 
374 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 free ; the old shrines are well kept, and the 
 Brothers who guard this ancient home of Our 
 Lady have re-established the School of Music. 
 The Virgin of Monserrat is still the battle-cry 
 of the Catholics of Catalonia. At a meeting 
 held not long ago in Barcelona to protest 
 against the law of association proposed by 
 the Liberal Government, amid cries of " Viva 
 Espana ! " and " Viva Cataluna ! " arose the 
 opposing Catholic cry of " Viva la Virgen de 
 Monserrat ! " For there is an indestructible 
 vitality in this mountain shrine. It was once 
 the Koman Estorcil and a temple of Venus. 
 Even before that, we may well believe, some 
 Iberian deity was reverenced here. Many a 
 faith may have alighted on this misty height 
 and silently winged its way into the darkness 
 when the twilight of its godhead arrived. And 
 if in the ages to come a new faith should arise 
 in the world, a new goddess embody the human 
 dream of adorable grace, we may be sure she 
 will be worshipped at Monserrat. 
 
 II 
 
 Nowadays not only is Monserrat a centre of 
 activity once more, but the path of the pilgrim 
 has even been made easy. When first I saw 
 Monserrat from afar, fifteen years ago, there was 
 no way of access to the monastery but by the 
 
MONSERRAT 375 
 
 ancient though excellent roads made by the 
 monks. Since then the ascetic Spaniard has so 
 far condescended to modern ideas of comfort as 
 to make a little mountain railway from Monistrol 
 up almost to the very spot below the monastery 
 where, as the inscription shows, — " Aqui se hizo 
 immovil la Santa Imagen en 880," — the image 
 of the Virgin on its discovery refused to be 
 borne away from her mountain, and so indicated 
 the magnificent site on which the monastery was 
 to be erected. 
 
 At last, one day early in May, I stepped into 
 the train which was to bear me beyond the river 
 Llobregat, and so up the face of the mountain, 
 somewhat awed at the prospect of at last visiting 
 a sacred spot towards which my thoughts had so 
 often been set. I was at first surprised to find 
 that my only companions were two loving young 
 couples belonging to the people. It had not 
 occurred to me that the shrine of Our Lady of 
 Monserrat should be a fitting place for a honey- 
 moon. I had forgotten, what I was soon to 
 realise, that in the simple, ardent, and austere 
 temperament of the Spaniard love and religion 
 are two forms of passion that naturally merge 
 into each other, and that the conditions for 
 gratifying the one instinct may very well be 
 adequate to gratify the other ; in Spain a 
 holiday is still, as it once was with us in the 
 north, a holy day. 
 
376 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 Imagine a vaster and more gracious Gibraltar, 
 piled and clustered masses of conglomerate rock, 
 with bushes and small trees growing on the 
 ledges and in the clefts, rising — sheerly, it seems 
 in the distance — from an immense undulating 
 plain through which winds the river Llobregat, 
 dotted along its banks with towns and villages, 
 while in the distance lie the hills, and far beyond, 
 dim and shadowy, the snow-capped Pyrenees, of 
 which Monserrat itself is really a separate out- 
 lying eminence. Too far from any strategic 
 position to have played a great part in history as 
 a fortress, Monserrat has been a spiritual citadel, 
 and this holy mountain with its divine lady and 
 her servants has dominated the land from before 
 the dawn of history. 
 
 The little train has arrived, and I follow in 
 the wake of the two young couples, for whom 
 the way seems not unfamiliar, to an office, where a 
 young man, a lay Brother, enters my name and 
 place of abode in a book, and without further 
 question hands a key to another similarly 
 habited youth, who, with two sheets and a 
 towel over his arm, precedes me to a barrack-like 
 building bearing the name of Santa Teresa de 
 Jesus, unlocks the door of a third-storey room, 
 and leaves me absolutely and in every respect to 
 my own devices for the three days during which 
 Our Lady of Monserrat grants me the hospitality 
 of her lodging. 
 
MONSERRAT 377 
 
 I look around the little whitewashed cell which 
 for this brief space will be all my own. It is 
 scrupulously clean and neat, furnished with abso- 
 lute simplicity. I note — an indication that I am 
 not actually within a duly constituted monastery 
 — that there are two little beds, separated from 
 the rest of the cell by a brillant curtain, the one 
 touch of colour and gaiety my cell reveals. A 
 little table, a chair, a basin, an empty water-pot, 
 and a candlestick without a candle, complete the 
 equipment entrusted to my care. When I have 
 made my bed, taken my water-pot to fill it 
 below, and bought a candle at the provision- 
 store which supplies those pilgrims who find the 
 one restaurant here beyond their means, I feel at 
 last free to put the key of my cell in my pocket 
 and give all my thoughts to Monserrat. 
 
 It is now evening ; from the ledge on which 
 the little group of buildings stands, the final 
 summits of Monserrat, above the monastery, are 
 to-night wreathed with delicate mist. As I 
 wander up and down the silent deserted terrace, in 
 front of the small group of buildings which makes 
 Monserrat an abode of the living, and breathe 
 the exquisite air, and gaze out into the mysterious 
 depths below, or up at the rocky pinnacles which 
 alone remain bright, I feel at last that I have 
 indeed reached the solemn shrine that I have 
 long dreamed of finding at Monserrat. The 
 absolute peace, the absence of any sign of life, 
 
378 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 becomes at last a little puzzling ; but the puzzle 
 is solved when I make my way in the gloom to 
 the church, and pushing open a little door, find 
 myself amid the scattered worshippers in the 
 obscurity of the great church. The gloom here, 
 indeed, is far deeper than outside ; the fine 
 Spanish instinct for devotion has always known, 
 what in the north the glorification of light has 
 made it so hard for us to realise, that a light 
 subdued to gloom alone befits the attitude of 
 prayer or of adoration ; that a church is the last 
 place where we should wish to become acutely 
 conscious of the petty details which mark the 
 individualities of our fellow - creatures. An 
 atmosphere of mystery, a vaguely glowing 
 splendour that envelops and conceals all the 
 world's distinctions, alone befits the attitude of 
 approach to the supreme mystery. 
 
 It is the hour of Oracion, almost the only 
 hour of the day when the church is open to the 
 pilgrims, and the exquisite voices of the boys are 
 chanting the Ave Maria, with the restrained and 
 deliberate modulation that comes of good train- 
 ing, as I grope to a seat. If the glare of day 
 could penetrate the church, it might reveal, one 
 feels, a painfully brilliant spectacle of tinselled 
 tawdry, which now is subdued to a vague 
 shimmer of gold, setting forth the massive 
 proportions of the aisleless Eomanesque church, 
 while the scattered lamps the better emphasise 
 
MONSERRAT 379 
 
 the duly ordered candles that burn in the shrine, 
 high up in the apse above the altar, enclosing 
 the sacred image. In this atmosphere of 
 mellowed spiritual exaltation one's mood blends 
 insensibly and harmoniously with that of the 
 unceasing company of human souls which for 
 more than a thousand years has climbed up to 
 pray in this mountain. Here at last the 
 pilgrimage to Monserrat is accomplished. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Sleep is quickly banished by the air of this 
 height, and to arise at five in the fresh morning 
 and stroll along the mountain paths when few or 
 none are yet stirring is the best way to realise 
 that Monserrat, far from being the mere home 
 of the Santa Imagen, was a shrine of Nature's 
 making long before it became a shrine of man's. 
 
 It seems to be the special distinction of 
 Monserrat that it achieves the sheer altitude, 
 the solemnity, the aloofness of a mountain, and 
 yet retains a certain accessibility and amenity 
 which bring it into communion with humanity. 
 Within certain narrow limits its aspects are 
 infinitely varied, — every time revealing some 
 new and impressive spectacle of jutting pro- 
 montory, or serried and mighty rock columns, or 
 dark ravine, — but its main characteristics remain 
 uniform. It is always a huge rock reared high 
 
380 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 in the clouds, but trees and plants in immense 
 variety grow almost to the summits ; pleasant 
 paths lie in every direction, and for the fairly 
 intelligent wanderer no guide is necessary. 
 There are no hardships the pilgrim here need 
 surmount. Now and again one hears the distant 
 sound of youthful laughter ; for the note of 
 Monserrat is one of laughter as well as of prayer, 
 and on this keen and radiant height, which 
 seems in a very literal sense so near the sky, it 
 strikes no discord. 
 
 The paths that wind round the mountain 
 towards the summit reveal here and there a 
 neglected chapel, a cave that was once inhabited, 
 a ruined hermitage. Every such spot once had 
 its hermit, and when he died there were always 
 eager candidates for the vacant post. Very 
 sacred is the little cave associated with the name 
 of Garin — a ninth-century saint whose sins were 
 grievous and his life here, it is said, of awful 
 austerity. " It is a common and indeed a com- 
 mendable custom among the Spaniards," wrote 
 James Howell from Madrid, in 1622, in his 
 Familiar Letters, " when he hath passed his 
 Grand Climacterie to make a voluntary Resigna- 
 tion of Offices, be they never so great and 
 profitable, and sequestering and weaning them- 
 selves, as it were, from all mundane Negotiations 
 and Incumbrances, to retire to some Place of 
 Devotion, and spend the Residue of their Days 
 
MONSEKRAT 381 
 
 in Meditation." * Very certainly, however, the 
 lives of the world-weary men who came to spend 
 their last years here were not usually without 
 their joys. Even this cave of Garin's, small as 
 it is, stands in an admirably chosen spot and 
 commands a magnificent view. It is impossible 
 not to believe that the men who retired from the 
 conflicts and anxieties of the world to this serene 
 height were not entirely moved, as it seemed to 
 the ignorant mob, by an unquenchable thirst for 
 suffering, or a resolute determination to expiate 
 their sins at all costs. That would have been 
 far better accomplished in less exquisite spots. 
 For many a weary and sensitive soul, we may 
 be sure, it was not the thirst for suffering but 
 the thirst for joy that led them to Our Lady of 
 Monserrat. When they let the heavy burden of 
 the world slide from off their shoulders — the 
 cares of a household, the hardships of camps, the 
 restraints of courts — and climbed to a new home 
 in this mountain, it was not with a sinking, but 
 with a rising heart, with the exhilaration of 
 St. Francis, with the glad new sense of delicious 
 freedom which once filled the men who went into 
 the Thebaid. To lie in the sunshine, and teach 
 
 1 This impulse has by no means died out from the Spanish tempera- 
 ment. Thus Ruiz Zorrilla, the celebrated Republican leader, who 
 played a great part in the revolution of 1868 and the subsequent reign 
 of Amadeo, in his later years at Paris virtually became a monk, 
 experiencing the influence of the Dominicans, and being a fervent 
 admirer of the memory of Lacordaire. 
 
382 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 the birds to feed from the hand, to know how 
 delicate is the taste of the water one has one's 
 self fetched from the spring, and the herbs one 
 has gathered with care ; to watch the superb and 
 ever-changing procession of day and night, of 
 summer and winter ; to gaze on the towns and 
 villages that lie along the banks of the Llobregat 
 below and look so insignificant — here was an un- 
 failing source of spiritual joy to men who knew 
 how bitterly tasted the dregs of the cup of life. 1 
 
 Such thoughts are natural at Monserrat as 
 one wanders from holy place to holy place, or 
 spends a day in a long solitary ramble among 
 the ever-varied delights of the path that leads 
 to the extreme summit of the mountain at San 
 Jeronimo. It would be an error, however, to 
 assume that even when the shrine of Our Lady 
 of Monserrat was at the height of its glory, even 
 when the mountain was the goal of innumerable 
 pilgrims, the hermit's life was altogether without 
 hardship. But here it is that the peculiar 
 temperament of the Spaniard comes into play. 
 A certain ardour and at the same time a certain 
 hardness lie at the heart of that temperament. 
 In love and in religion, in the life of the crowd or 
 in solitude, whatever the excess of his fervour, he 
 
 1 Peyron, who came here before Monserrat was devastated, wrote that 
 " each of the solitary hermitages, though from afar they seem to lack 
 everything, has its chapel, its cell, a well hollowed out in the rock, 
 and a little garden ; the hermits are for the most part men of good 
 family." 
 
MONSERRAT 383 
 
 retains the instincts of a spiritual athlete — that 
 is to say, in the strict sense, of an ascetic. That 
 is indeed the secret of the curious unity and 
 simplicity of the Spanish soul — it ever has the 
 ardent and unsparing simplicity of flame. Santa 
 Teresa de Jesus and Don Juan Tenorio, unlike 
 representatives of the Spanish soul in life and 
 legend as they may seem, yet alike reveal this 
 flame-like quality. It is equally visible in the 
 lowliest and the greatest spirits. Even Lope de 
 Vega, with all his passionate exuberance of 
 literary production, and all his reckless dis- 
 soluteness of living, to the end of his long life 
 never shook himself free from his inborn spiritual 
 asceticism. He never ate meat on Fridays, we 
 are told, though for his health's sake he had a 
 dispensation to do so, and on that day also he 
 always flagellated himself; even on the Friday 
 before he died, it is recorded, the walls of his 
 room and the discipline he had used to scourge 
 himself were found stained with fresh blood. 1 It 
 is the preoccupation with passion, the predomin- 
 ance of the lover and the saint, which makes it 
 so easy for the Spaniard to treat with a light and 
 easy negligence the heavy burden of material 
 comfort which hangs like a millstone round the 
 necks of northern people. 2 
 
 1 Rennert's full and authoritative life of Lope de Vega is well worth 
 study for the light it throws on some aspects of Spanish character. 
 
 2 On the literary side Coventry Patmore, in a review of Valera's 
 Pepita Jimenez (Religio Poetce, p. 73), ha9 well summed up what is 
 
384 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 Thus it is that a large part of the charm of 
 Monserrat lies in its freedom, in the exclusion of 
 all demands which are not essentially necessary. 
 The ascetic temperament of the Spaniard renders 
 few things necessary, while his individualism 
 makes it easy for him, in no unkindly spirit, to 
 leave the stranger alone. I cannot remember 
 that any one during the whole of my stay made 
 any attempt to hamper my movements, to offer 
 his services or his wares, or to demand any 
 gratuity. There are guides, indeed, but they do 
 not proffer their services, and there is a little 
 bureau where post-cards are sold, but it is nearly 
 always closed. One reflected on all that would 
 be seen here if some evil fate had placed Our 
 Lady of Monserrat's shrine in one's own country 
 
 quintessential in this aspect of the Spanish soul: "Alike in 
 Calderon and in this work of Juan Valera, we find that complete 
 synthesis of gravity of matter and gaiety of manner which is the 
 glittering crown of art, and which out of Spanish literature is to be 
 found only in Shakespeare, and even in him in a far less obvious 
 degree. > It is only in Spanish literature, with the one exception of 
 Dante, that religion and art are discovered to be not necessarily hostile 
 powers ; and it is in Spanish literature only, and without any 
 exception, that gaiety of life is made to appear as being not only 
 compatible with, but the very flower of that root which in the best 
 works of other literatures hides itself in the earth, and only sends its 
 concealed sap through stem and leaf of human duty and desire. The 
 reason of this great and admirable singularity seems mainly to have 
 been the singular aspect of most of the best Spanish minds towards 
 religion. With them, religion has been, as it was meant to be, a 
 human passion." Patmore seems to have made no special study of 
 Spanish things, but he was himself, though without strain of Spanish 
 blood, akin to the Spanish temperament, amima naturaliler Iberica, 
 narrow and yet deep, individualistic and daring, passionate and 
 mystical. 
 
MONSERRAT 385 
 
 — of the huge and gaudy hotels, with their 
 liveried flunkies, of the tea-garden which would 
 replace the cross on the Mirador, of the innumer- 
 able shops and booths where the stranger would 
 be pestered to buy altogether unnecessary 
 articles, of the gigantic advertisements of 
 whiskies and liver -pills which would defile 
 every exquisite point of rock. As one thinks 
 of these things one realises how far we 
 have yet to travel before we attain to the 
 Spaniard's insight into the art of living, his 
 fine parsimony in life, lest for life's sake he 
 should lose the causes for living, his due sub- 
 ordination of dull material claims to the larger 
 spiritual claims of joy and freedom. 
 
 That, indeed, is the final lesson of Monserrat, 
 and the last thought as we leave this shrine in 
 the sky where the Spaniard comes for a brief 
 season to pray and to laugh and to make love. 
 It is but a little thing to have seen the old 
 wooden image of the Virgin, laden as it may be 
 with the memories of a dozen centuries. But it 
 is a great thing to have been lifted for a moment 
 into a larger spiritual air, to have caught 
 a glimpse of a finer ideal of life, to have learnt 
 a lesson in the art of living. The symbolic 
 quest of the Grail, after all, may still be pursued 
 in Monserrat. 
 
 2o 
 
XVI 
 
 SPANISH IDEALS OF TO-DAY 
 
 The war which deprived Spain of the last relics 
 of that empire on which once " the sun never 
 set," has exerted a twofold influence on the 
 Spanish people. On the one hand, it has had a 
 definite material effect in enabling Spaniards to 
 devote their energies to the task of working out 
 their own economic salvation. On the other 
 hand, it has had a less obvious influence of a 
 more spiritual character. It has induced those 
 Spaniards who hold that a nation can only be 
 great by its moral and intellectual distinction, 
 by its fidelity to its own best instincts, to set 
 themselves a task of national self-analysis and 
 self-criticism. What is the real spirit of Spain? 
 these men seem to ask themselves ; what is the 
 nature of her great traditions ? how can we 
 modern Spaniards learn to become faithful to 
 that spirit and those traditions ? to what extent 
 are we wise in doing so ? The men who ask 
 these questions — a small group of university 
 
 386 
 
SPANISH IDEALS OF TO-DAY 387 
 
 professors, novelists, journalists, belonging to all 
 parts of Spain — play in their own land to-day 
 the same prophetic part which was played in a 
 more sonorous manner nearly a century ago by 
 Carlyle in England and Emerson in America. 
 The new growth of material prosperity in Spain 
 has received attention from many writers in 
 many places, but, so far as I am aware, this 
 corresponding movement of spiritual self-ques- 
 tioning has attracted little or no notice outside 
 Spain ; and it may be worth while to attempt to 
 describe its character and tendencies. 
 
 The writer of the group who on many grounds 
 deserves to be mentioned first, perhaps as the 
 leader, — for his book appeared before the war, and 
 has not been excelled by any that has appeared 
 since, — is Angel Ganivet. It is not a name that 
 seems ever to be mentioned outside Spain, even 
 by those who concern themselves with Spanish 
 literature, but to serious Spaniards of the 
 younger generation Ganivet is well known, and 
 with reason, for his little masterpiece, Idearium 
 Espanol, contains more good thinking and good 
 writing than any book that has come out of 
 Spain during recent years. It was not, indeed, 
 written in Spain, and to that fact, doubtless, its 
 fine quality of detachment, of deliberate and 
 discriminate insight into the genius of Spain, 
 is in large measure owing. After a highly 
 distinguished academical career Ganivet had 
 
388 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 entered the consular service, and a consul's 
 duties have not rarely, from the days of Haw- 
 thorne onward, been found compatible with even 
 the best literary work. A consul, moreover, 
 though he is in a specially favourable position 
 to obtain an objective vision of his own land, 
 can scarcely be described as an exile ; he is still 
 living under the flag of his own country, and is 
 daily brought into contact with its people and 
 its interests. For a long time Ganivet was 
 stationed at Antwerp ; his Idearium was com- 
 pleted at Helsingfors in 1897. Two years later, 
 when only thirty-three, he was dead by his own 
 hand, under obscure and tragical circumstances. 1 
 G-anivet's diagnosis of the disease from which 
 his country is suffering — for nearly all intellectual 
 Spaniards seem to agree that there is a disease, 
 though they differ as to its nature and gravity 
 — is aboulia, or lack of will power. And though 
 his training was so cosmopolitan, he seeks the 
 remedy in Spain's own native force. " The 
 central motive of my idea," he declares, " is the 
 restoration of the spiritual life of Spain." In 
 the possibility of that restoration he has no sort 
 of doubt. Parodying St. Augustine, he lays 
 down the injunction : " Noli foras ire ; in 
 interiore Hispaniae habitat Veritas." It is within, 
 
 1 An interesting account of Ganivet by his friend Navarro y 
 Ledesma is prefixed to a volume of his letters, Epistolario, though 
 the letters themselves are of no great interest. 
 
SPANISH IDEALS OF TO-DAY 389 
 
 and not without, that Spain must seek salva- 
 tion • close with locks and padlocks the doors 
 through which the spirit of Spain issues, to be 
 wasted at the four quarters of the horizon. This 
 attitude was no doubt the outcome of Ganivet's 
 personal temperament. " There is such a thing," 
 he wrote to his friend Navarro y Ledesma, " as 
 spiritual acclimatisation, and there are people 
 who have no aptitude for it; I am one of them." 
 The war which immediately followed the publica- 
 tion of the Idearium gave point to its moral 
 by rendering that moral one with the logic of the 
 moment's facts. In this way it came about that 
 Ganivet, whose book would in any case have been 
 memorable — though it attracted little notice 
 until Unamuno called attention to it — became 
 the prophet of a movement of spiritual renais- 
 sance in Spain. 
 
 Most of the books, indeed, which were 
 immediately called forth by the war, were too 
 hasty and superficial to show the direct influence 
 of so subtle and quietly suggestive a thinker as 
 the author of Idearium, Espanol. Some of them, 
 reflecting the profound dejection which was the 
 first effect of the struggle on many Spanish 
 minds, reveal an almost unmitigated pessimism. 
 A favourable example of this class is El Prdb- 
 lema National, which Ricardo Macias Picavea 
 published, just after the war, in 1899 ; for while 
 it presents a very gloomy picture of the national 
 
r 
 
 390 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 character, there is in it a considerable element of 
 truth. Macias Picavea reproaches his fellow- 
 countrymen with their excesses of arbitrary 
 individualism and their centrifugal tendencies; 
 therein he sees the source of all Spanish evils. 
 He would probably agree with another Spaniard, 
 Donoso Cortes, that " every country has the 
 government it deserves." " We have produced 
 a thousand rebellions and seditions," he declares, 
 " but not one fruitful revolution." This cap- 
 ricious and facile expenditure of energy, Macias 
 Picavea more definitely traces in the form of 
 two original defects of character : an original 
 dynamic defect in the predominance of passion 
 over will (in which he may be said to be at one 
 with Ganivet), and an original moral defect in 
 the substitution of the principle of justice by the 
 socially inadequate sentiment of friendship and 
 affection. By the first defect he accounts for 
 the Spanish tendency to live in the present and 
 put off every inconvenient task to a remote 
 manana, the impulse to convert life into a 
 lottery, the subjectivism that is content with 
 imaginary possibilities in place of solid and 
 prudent motives. The second quality is the 
 source of the administrative immorality of 
 Spain, which consists, not so much in venality 
 or theft as in the domestic and neighbourly 
 feeling which is always inclined to favour a 
 friend because he is a friend, and which erects 
 
SPANISH IDEALS OF TO-DAY 391 
 
 impunity almost into law. Undoubtedly Macias 
 Picavea here touches on the real source of a real 
 evil, felt by all foreigners who have come into 
 contact with administrative Spain. But the 
 reason is that the Spaniard, more perhaps than 
 any man in the civilised world, is devoted to his 
 family, his friend, his guest, his neighbour, and 
 on behalf of the remote and invisible persons 
 outside that circle he feels no intrinsic motive 
 for action ; in the case of such some extrinsic 
 motive is necessary. It is an anti-social attitude 
 so far as society in the larger sense is concerned, 
 though it has its very lovable and admirable 
 side. We have to reconcile it as well as we can 
 with the equally undoubted fact that Spain has 
 always been prolific, not only in rhetoricians, but 
 in moralists. So far as Macias Picavea was con- 
 cerned, he saw little hope for his countrymen, 
 and regarded the national problem as almost or 
 quite desperate. He died in the same year in 
 which his book appeared, at Valladolid, before 
 any signs of a brighter future had appeared on 
 the horizon. 
 
 This book, it may be noted in passing, illus- 
 trates the assumption, so often tacitly made both 
 by Spaniards and foreigners, that the defects in 
 the Spanish national character are necessarily of 
 recent growth, and due to a supposed decadence. 
 Let us, for instance, consider a characteristic 
 which is to-day very familiar both to natives 
 
392 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 and visitors — the tendency to delay everything 
 to a remote to-morrow. To every demand the 
 Spaniard responds with a cheerful Mariana! 
 When the International Medical Congress met a 
 few years ago at Madrid nothing was ready on 
 the opening day, and even the invitations were 
 by many only received after the Congress was 
 over. Perhaps it was this incident which 
 suggested to the satirist who writes under the 
 name of " Azorin," to play on the dilatoriness 
 of his compatriots in La Ruta de Don Quijote, 
 by imagining a distinguished English surgeon 
 who comes to Madrid, full of enthusiasm, and 
 eager to write a book about a country which 
 seems to him the best in the world ; but as he 
 pursues his studies he is met on every side by 
 procrastination, the most trifling action cannot 
 be accomplished without delays, and he finally 
 resolves to call his book The Time they Lose in 
 Spain. But exactly three centuries ago, in 
 1607, Sir Francis Bacon referred in an official 
 memorandum to the notorious delays of the 
 Spaniards in negotiation, and records the opinion 
 of the Secretary of State, Lord Salisbury, that it 
 was not due to " malice or alienation of mind 
 from us," but in part to the multiplicity of 
 Spanish tribunals, and in part to a psychological 
 cause, to " the nature of the people and nation, 
 which is proud and therefore dilatory, for all 
 proud men are full ©f delays and must be waited 
 
SPANISH IDEALS OF TO-DAY 393 
 
 on." l " All which," Bacon adds, for his own part, 
 " have made the delays of Spain to come into a 
 by-word throughout the world : wherein I think 
 his Lordship mought allude to the proverb of 
 Italy, Mi venga la morte di Spagna, Let my 
 death come from Spain ; for then it is sure to 
 be long a-coming." Yet this was in the midst 
 of the great age of Spain, when in every depart- 
 ment of life and of art Spaniards were displaying 
 an energy and resolution in fine achievement 
 which have made their names immortal. Ques- 
 tions of national psychology are more com- 
 plicated than we sometimes realise, and the 
 incalculable men who make a country great 
 may often display qualities unlike, and even the 
 opposite of those which permanently mark the 
 mass of their fellow-countrymen. 
 
 With Macias Picavea's ably written book may 
 be coupled a lecture delivered by Dofia Emilia 
 Pardo Bazan in the same year, La Espana de 
 Ayer y La de Hoy, for it reflects a very similar 
 mood of depression, and scarcely seems altogether 
 to correspond to the lecturer's habitual attitude. 
 In agreement with Macias Picavea she considers 
 that the most serious Spanish defect is "an 
 instinct of individualistic anarchy," — quite dis- 
 tinct from the spirit of independence, — which 
 
 1 Van Aerssen, a few years later, alluding to these Spanish delays, 
 attributed them not to pride but to policy, to a "judicious obstinacy " 
 which slowly wore out opposition. 
 
394 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 has dispersed the national force and tended to 
 discord. The Spanish people was formed into a 
 nation by Ferdinand and Isabella, but while 
 under the earlier conditions there was vigour 
 and sap everywhere, the nation grew weaker and 
 weaker ; " the higher we go back up the stream 
 of history the more we find progress, liberty, 
 toleration, faith, work, virile effort." 1 Spain has 
 long been content to live on that old legend, but 
 now it is no longer possible to do so, and 
 Spaniards must seek to replace the legend by an 
 ideal of renovation, of work, and of effort. 
 
 A more hopeful tone is adopted by Eamiro 
 de Maetzu in his Hacia Otra Espana, also 
 published in 1899. He realises, indeed, that 
 Spain is at the beginning of a great economic 
 struggle, and he is not quite sure how far she is 
 adapted for success in the paths of industrial 
 progress. But it is along such paths that he 
 sees signs of progress. By energetically pro- 
 gressing in this direction Spain may again be- 
 come great, and we may again hope for a new 
 renaissance of the Spanish spirit. A still more 
 facile optimism is represented by the book on 
 " The Lesson of the Defeat," La Moral de la 
 
 1 The inevitable conclusion is that the ancient Spanish individualism 
 was the best strength of the people, though it held the germ of serious 
 defects. Saavedra (La Invasion de los Arabes en Espana) concludes 
 that the Moorish conquest was due to the indiscipline and particularism 
 of the Christian resistance. It might be added that the final defeat of 
 the Moors was due to their exhibition of the same defects. 
 
SPANISH IDEALS OF TO-DAY 395 
 
 Derrota, which Luis Morote published in 1900. 
 Morote is a journalist, and was a correspondent 
 in Cuba, where he was taken prisoner by the 
 rebels and condemned to death as a spy. But 
 he lived to return to Spain, and to write a series 
 of books marked by fervid patriotism and enthu- 
 siastic faith in the new Spain of the future. All 
 that Spain needs, he believes, is to learn the 
 lesson of experience, to abandon the vain policy 
 of adventure abroad, and to work for the happi- 
 ness and civilisation of her own peninsula. That 
 is "the moral of the defeat." It is the less 
 necessary, he thinks, for Spain to concern her- 
 self with foreign expeditions since she has already 
 conquered her place in the wide world, and estab- 
 lished one of the four world-languages. " Our 
 speech, civilisation, art, genius, and racial spirit 
 will last for ever and constitute the Greater 
 Spain of the planet, the moral and mental 
 country of eighteen nationalities, nearly a whole 
 continent, which, however politically separate, 
 must still, for writing and for speech, for song 
 and for love, continue to use the tongue of Cas- 
 tile." In a subsequent book, published in 1904, 
 Los Frailes en Espana, Morote deals with a 
 question which, in common with many progres- 
 sive Spaniards, he regards as at the root of the 
 regeneration of Spain, — the question of religious 
 communities. " If we could only get rid of our 
 monks as easily as of our colonies ! " a Spaniard is 
 
396 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 represented as declaring in one of the comic papers 
 of Madrid during the war. It was certainly an 
 aspiration breathed by many Spaniards of all 
 classes. A century and a half ago there was 
 one priest to every thirty inhabitants in Spain. 
 At the beginning of the nineteenth century 
 Portugal, Home, Sicily, and Turkey were still 
 the only spots in Europe which showed a larger 
 proportion of ecclesiastics than Spain. Shortly 
 afterwards, indeed, there followed the revolu- 
 tionary reform which has filled Spain with the 
 noble ruins of monasteries, but Morote's book 
 serves to show that Spaniards are still troubled 
 by the existence of their mostly unproductive 
 monks and nuns. 
 
 It is a little difficult to define precisely where 
 Spain stands to-day in relation to this question 
 of religious communities. In one direction there 
 is clearly, among both men and women, a large 
 amount of faith, of religious observance, even of 
 passionate devotion, and sometimes also of in- 
 tolerant bigotry, the whole supported by a mass 
 of superb tradition, of magnificent architecture 
 and ritual, of ecclesiastical organisation and 
 wealth, to-day unsurpassed in any country. 
 But in another direction we have the subtly 
 penetrating influences of Liberalism and Re- 
 publicanism and Anarchism, of the revolt 
 against the ancient and inert forces which are 
 believed to be impeding the advance of Spain, 
 
SPANISH IDEALS OF TO-DAY 397 
 
 The extent and reality of this movement is 
 shown by the vigorous efforts of the Liberal 
 party in Spain to follow the example of France 
 and secure a national control of religious associa- 
 tions. 1 This discrepancy is reflected in the 
 opinions of Spaniards to-day. On one side we 
 have, for instance, one of the most modern of 
 Spanish literary critics, Manuel Bueno, declaring 
 
 1 The Conde de Eomanones, the political leader of the anti- 
 clericals, and Minister of the Interior in the last Liberal cabinet, is by 
 no means opposed to Christianity, or even to Catholicism of the demo- 
 cratic school of Cardinal Gibbons and Archbishop Ireland. He fights 
 only against a Church which refuses to keep in touch with social progress, 
 and calls political weapons to its aid instead of relying on spiritual 
 force. This is clearly brought out in a paper by Romanones lately 
 contributed to the Mercure de France (April 15, 1907) : "The Chris- 
 tian world," he remarks, "is making towards higher conceptions 
 of its faith, and perhaps no historical epoch, not even the thirteenth 
 century, has been so profoundly Christian as the present. The ethical 
 essence of the doctrine of Jesus is rapidly being incorporated in social 
 aspiration, and the principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity, the 
 heart of contemporary democracies and the ideals to which political 
 evolution is tending, are the echo of Christian preaching. " Similarly, 
 on the literary side, Perez Galdos, although his Electro, once became 
 the watchword of many belonging to the most extreme anti-religious, 
 free-thinking, and revolutionary parties in Spain, is himself by no 
 means an extremist. He is fully able to sympathise with all that is 
 best and freest in the mystical, religious temper of his countrymen. 
 He is not opposed to the Church, he tells us ; on the contrary, he 
 thinks the Church should be preserved, but he wishes to check the 
 growth of monasticism, which has, he believes, attained alarming 
 dimensions during the past century, and to restrain the undue influ- 
 ence of the Church on secular life. "Do not touch the secular 
 clergy ! " he exclaims, and even among the monastic orders he is will- 
 ing to uphold those which, like the Augustinians and the Carmelites, 
 retain an atmosphere of poetry, reserving his indignation for those, 
 more especially the Jesuits, who preach a barren ideal of gloomy virtue, 
 and whose " diabolical inspiration " tends to dry up the fountains of 
 life. 
 
398 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 that " no philosophy opposed to Christian piety 
 will ever find a favourable atmosphere in Spain." 
 On the other, another thoughtful observer, 
 Pascual Santacruz, asserts that the Spanish 
 people are now largely at bottom sceptical, even 
 indifferent, and that in so far as they are still 
 religious they are ceasing to regard the actual 
 Catholicism of to-day as the legitimate outcome 
 of the gospel of Christ. Emilia Pardo Bazan, 
 also, though personally sympathetic towards 
 Catholicism, similarly writes : " Our religiosity 
 is part of our legend. We are no longer a 
 religious people, even in observance." 
 
 It may surprise us to hear such statements 
 concerning a people who once played so fervid 
 and imposing a part in the development of 
 Catholicism. But we may remember that 
 France, once the most Catholic of countries 
 and the land of saints, has since taken the lead 
 in throwing off any official connection with reli- 
 gion, and that even so fervidly devout a region 
 as Brittany is also characterised by the fervour 
 of its freethinkers. The old wine is poured into 
 new bottles, and the spirit of the fathers is 
 renewed in the sons under other forms. That it 
 should disappear we cannot expect. The tem- 
 peramental passion of the Spaniard and his 
 fundamental mysticism — the force that lay be- 
 hind Raymond Lull and Loyola and St. Theresa 
 — are inherent in the race. Ganivet considered 
 
SPANISH IDEALS OF TO-DAY 399 
 
 that the Spaniard's tendency to mysticism, or 
 exaltation of religious feeling, is a sanctification 
 of his primitive African sensuality, and that his 
 tendency to fanaticism, or exaltation of practical 
 action, is a turning towards himself of the fury 
 accumulated during eight centuries of battle 
 between Christian and Moor. However that 
 may be, these qualities cannot fail to persist, 
 even though they cease to inspire the Catholicism 
 which was once their supreme manifestation. 
 
 It is unnecessary to occupy ourselves in more 
 detail with the rather superficial manifestations 
 of the Spanish spirit represented in the pessi- 
 mistic shape by Macias Picavea, and the optimistic 
 by Morote. Of greater interest are the more 
 penetrating efforts of the best thinkers of modern 
 Spain to ascertain what really are the funda- 
 mental and permanent traits of the Spanish 
 character. A notable attempt to clear the path 
 in this direction, careful and deliberate, although 
 the direct outcome of the war, is furnished by 
 the Psicologia del Pueblo Espanol, published 
 by Professor Kafael Altamira of the University 
 of Oviedo in 1902. Altamira is not, indeed, a 
 subtle psychologist like Ganivet, but as a student 
 of law and sociology and the history of civilisa- 
 tion he is far too familiar with the events and 
 the opinions of the past to fall into any extra- 
 vagant attitude in face of the problems of the 
 present. He represents the best type of modern 
 
400 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 Spanish professor, erudite and cautious, but 
 enlightened and progressive, an enthusiast for 
 educational advance, and a fervent advocate for 
 its popular form of " university extension," of 
 which his own university has already set the 
 example in Asturias. As might be anticipated 
 in the case of a man with the historian's habit, 
 Altamira is less inclined to find the source of 
 Spain's present social and political weakness in 
 personal defects, such as lack of persistency to 
 which Costa traces it, or excess of individuality 
 to which Ganivet attaches importance, than in 
 more slowly and complexly working causes of 
 economic order. He finds the explanation not 
 so much, according to the old theory, in the 
 demoralisation produced by " American gold," 
 as in depopulation, to which many causes con- 
 tributed, in national impoverishment, and in the 
 erroneous direction taken by religious sentiment. 
 The combined tendency of these influences 
 during recent centuries, Altamira believes, has 
 interposed obstacles which have so dispersed the 
 energies of Spain that at critical moments they 
 have been unable to concentrate on the solution 
 of internal crises. Like the waters of the 
 Guadiana in part of its course, the stream of 
 national vigour has been diverted and swallowed 
 up in the soil. Altamira concludes that national 
 regeneration is possible, though only on the basis 
 of the natural conditions demonstrated by the 
 
SPANISH IDEALS OF TO-DAY 401 
 
 study of the past. As essential to this re- 
 generation, he regards a renewed faith in the 
 native qualities of the people and its aptitudes 
 for civilised life, but with due care to avoid the 
 attempt at any mere archaeological revival of 
 the forms of the past, for it is only by contact 
 with modern civilisation that the national genius 
 can be vivified and rendered apt for the tasks 
 before it. 
 
 For a combined historical and psychological 
 analysis of the Spanish spirit, with a touch of 
 irony superadded, we may finally turn to a 
 writer who to-day occupies a more distinguished 
 place in Spanish letters than any of the other 
 living writers we have encountered. Miguel de 
 Unamuno, a Basque by birth, and now Eector of 
 the University of Salamanca, is one of the most 
 brilliant of Spanish writers and a penetrative 
 critic, especially the critic, caustic more often 
 than sympathetic, of his countrymen's charac- 
 teristics and shortcomings. His recent Vida de 
 Don Quijote y Sancho is a curious attempt to 
 present an essay of Spanish philosophy expressed 
 in terms of the two figures who together sum up 
 the whole attitude of the Spanish mind towards 
 life. Of more significance, however, from our 
 present point of view, is the volume entitled En 
 Torno al Casticismo, published in 1902, although 
 it was really written in substance during 1895, 
 and thus belongs to the same period as Ganivet's 
 
 2d 
 
402 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 Idearium Espanol, to which it forms an 
 interesting counterpart. Ganivet, living a cos- 
 mopolitan life outside his country, concentrated 
 his devout reflections on the permanently vital 
 and precious elements in the Spanish spirit, the 
 sole source, it seemed to him, of any national 
 regeneration. Unamuno, a less deliberate writer 
 perhaps, a less fascinatingly individual thinker, 
 possesses a larger outlook, the charm of a spon- 
 taneous and ardent style, a wide acquaintance as 
 well with books as with the younger generation 
 of Spaniards, and an eager impatience with the 
 obstacles in the road of progress which leads him 
 to throw an air of satire even over his serious 
 attempts to define precisely the essence of the! 
 Castilian spirit. The word casticismo by which 
 he designates this spirit — a word which occurs 
 so often in the writings of Spanish critics — may , 
 be said to correspond to our " breed " or " race " , 
 in the more popular use of the words as an indi- 
 cation of approval. It is in the golden age of 
 Castilian literature, especially in the drama, and 
 above all in Calderon, — the " poeta espanolis- 
 simo," as Menendez y Pelayo terms him, — that 
 Unamuno finds the purest manifestations of 
 casticismo. In that word are concentrated the 
 special valour and virtue of Castile, just as some 
 have attempted to concentrate the special valour 
 and virtue of Japan in the word bushido. But 
 Unamuno, while by no means wishing to cast 
 
SPANISH IDEALS OF TO-DAY 403 
 
 contempt on what is castizo, reveals that he is 
 not himself a true child of Castile, by pointing 
 out how largely it is characterised by sterility 
 and impracticability. It is plebeianly realistic on 
 the one hand, and formally idealistic on the other, 
 seldom able to effect any vital union of those two 
 unlike elements. The grave Hurtado de Mendoza 
 (if we may believe the improbable story of his 
 authorship) narrates the tricks of Lazarillo de 
 Tormes, and Quevedo turns from Marcus Brutus 
 to write of Don Pablos. Unamuno contrasts the 
 narrow sterility of this casticismo with the uni- 
 versally human spirit of Cervantes, and urges 
 his countrymen to recognise that it is only in 
 the larger and more vital ideas of old Spain that 
 they can find help to grapple with the problems, 
 of the modern world. 1 
 
 When we seek to compare the ideals of pro- 
 gress maintained by these preachers of Spanish 
 regeneration, we find various individual differ- 
 ences, but they are all agreed as to the direction 
 
 1 In a more recent essay Unamuno goes farther, and declares that 
 the apparent idealism of Spaniards, even in religion, is really 
 materialism, a lack of ideality and of the poetic spirit, which he by 
 no means identifies with the literary spirit. " If in Spain there is an 
 absence of what is called the practical spirit, it is because there is a 
 lack of the poetic spirit, the most practical of all. Other peoples excel 
 us in business because they have a freer play of imagination and apply 
 it to business. Literature will not help us to make railways, har- 
 bours, factories, or agriculture, but without poetry they are impossible." 
 Unamuno is here writing in a hortatory rather than a scientific spirit, 
 but it may no doubt be maintained that the English, who are one of the 
 most practical of peoples — in so far as commerce and industry can be 
 termed practical — are also one of the most poetic and idealistic. 
 
404 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 in which they would desire the new generation of 
 Spaniards to walk. Ganivet, indeed, may seem 
 to stand somewhat apart, with his emphatic 
 advice to his fellow-countrymen to look within, 
 to seek salvation in themselves and in their own 
 best traditions. His consular experiences in 
 progressive countries had taught Ganivet that 
 the glorification of political and commercial 
 activities, which make up the contemporary 
 notion of civilisation, only leads to the triumph 
 of the commonplace and vulgar elements in 
 society, and is far from constituting an ideal 
 worthy of imitation. It must also be remem- 
 bered, on the one hand, that Ganivet wrote 
 before the war, when Spain's limited energies 
 were still being wasted in the fruitless struggle 
 to maintain what was supposed to be Spain's 
 honour in Cuba, and that, on the other hand, 
 Ganivet's conception of the Spanish soul by no 
 means corresponded to that narrow Castilian 
 casticismo which Unamuno cruelly analyses ; 
 he included as a permanent element of it the 
 Arab influences of the Spanish Moslem world, 
 and believed that those who deny or abstract 
 those influences not only show themselves un- 
 able to comprehend the Spanish character, but 
 " commit a psychological crime." This opinion 
 concerning the relation of Moorish and Spanish 
 civilisation, it may be noted in passing, although 
 opposed to some popular traditions, is supported 
 
SPANISH IDEALS OF TO-DAY 405 
 
 by many modern scholars. The invading Moors 
 — for the most part Berbers mixed with a few 
 Arabs — brought no civilisation with them; they 
 had scarcely emerged from savagery. But they 
 acquired in Spain a peculiar receptivity which 
 they have not often manifested at home, and 
 slowly absorbed and developed the elements of 
 the Christian and classic traditions they found 
 around them. 1 " Averroes," Valera remarks, 
 " was as much a Spaniard as Seneca." " The 
 Cid himself," says Dozy, with perhaps a little 
 exaggeration, " was rather a Mussulman than a 
 Christian." In spirit, and very often, there 
 seems little doubt, in blood, the great names of 
 Moorish civilisation belong to Spain. It must 
 also be remembered that while the Moors 
 tolerated Christianity, the great Christian cities 
 of Spain, on their part, welcomed Moorish men 
 of science and Moslem philosophy. It was to 
 Eaimundo, Archbishop of Toledo and Chancellor 
 of Castile, Renan has said, that Christendom 
 owes the introduction of Arabic texts into its 
 schools, and the initiation of a new scientific 
 and philosophic movement which deeply affected 
 the fate of Europe. Ganivet is not widely at 
 variance, therefore, with Unamuno and the 
 others who urge that Spain is suffering from 
 
 1 Simonet, for instance, has emphasised the extraordinary aptitude 
 of the Moors for absorbing the best elements of the life of the peoples 
 around them. 
 
406 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 lack of receptivity to foreign influences. The 
 learned Altamira — who desires to " harmonise 
 the ideals and the genius of Spain with all that 
 is good and sound in modern civilisation " — is 
 careful to point out that the greater Spain of an 
 earlier age was singularly alive to all foreign 
 currents of influence, Christian and Moslem 
 alike, and that the fecundation of its native 
 genius by these relationships was manifested in 
 mediaeval Spanish literature, in the Spanish 
 humanism of the Renaissance, and in many 
 elements of Spanish law. Not only was this 
 so, he adds, but Spaniards deliberately sought to 
 multiply their points of contact with the world, 
 both by attracting foreign professors to their 
 universities, and by themselves going abroad 
 to study, while the canons of many Spanish 
 churches were compelled by ecclesiastical statutes 
 to pursue a part of their studies at foreign 
 universities, a state of things not entirely upset 
 by the efforts of Philip II. to isolate Spain 
 intellectually. We are accustomed to regard all 
 Spanish thought as cast in a mould of rigid 
 uniformity, but, as Altamira remarks, here 
 following Menendez y Pelayo, this was not the 
 case even in the sphere of religion ; within the 
 Church there was wide liberty of speculation in 
 all matters that were not matters of faith, while 
 outside the pale of orthodoxy^ the various mani- 
 festations of rationalistic thought were not rare. 
 
SPANISH IDEALS OF TO-DAY 407 
 
 So marked, indeed, was the variety of theo- 
 logical opinion in Spain, that an Italian traveller 
 observed that the Inquisition, though not re- 
 quired in his own country, was a necessity in 
 Spain. The violent opposition which the estab- 
 lishment of the Spanish Inquisition encountered, 
 an opposition which made martyrs of some 
 of the early inquisitors, points in the same 
 direction. 
 
 Unamuno, although a writer of different 
 temperament and interests, reaches conclusions 
 similar to Altamira's. He deprecates the Spanish 
 emphasis on individuality and distinguishes be- 
 tween individuality and personality. 1 San Juan 
 de la Cruz, who represents the culminating point 
 of Spanish mysticism, the essence of Castilian 
 casticismo, was in the highest degree individual, 
 but his spirit was anti-personal, and it is rich 
 personality, instinctively feeling that each is in 
 all, and all in each, which can alone prove 
 fruitful. A narrow and rigid historical casti- 
 cismo can but be the instrument of spiritual 
 impoverishment. The Castilian soul was great 
 only when it opened itself to the four winds and 
 scattered itself across the world. It is only by 
 opening our windows to the winds of Europe, 
 
 1 Excess of individuality has certainly nowhere been so highly 
 honoured as in Spain. Van Aerssen, nearly three centuries ago, 
 alluded to the psychological significance of the fact that in adopting 
 the word bizarro, which in Spanish has an entirely noble sense, the 
 French instinctively gave it an eccentric and ridiculous tinge. 
 
408 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 Unamuno finally repeats, in the faith that we 
 shall not thereby lose our own personality, that 
 we can hope to regenerate the exhausted moral 
 soil of Spain. 
 
 That Spain has for a long time past been 
 suffering from an attack of spiritual marasmus, 
 every one of the typical Spaniards whose opinion 
 has been passed in review clearly admits, and 
 indeed for the most part emphasises. As to the 
 chief cause of this moral disease they differ. 
 For one it is found in the prolonged influence 
 of unfortunate economic and political circum- 
 stances. For another it is largely due to 
 adherence to a too narrow historical tradition 
 of past greatness. For a third much signifi- 
 cance is to be found in a temperamental dis- 
 crepancy between an extravagant impulse to 
 great designs and an inadequate executive apti- 
 tude. For yet another the nation is overcome 
 by the disease of loss of will power. To the 
 outsider who takes a comprehensive view of 
 the situation it may well seem that — admitting 
 the existence of a defect of vitality in the 
 spiritual state of Spain — both external circum- 
 stances and temperamental reaction to them 
 have contributed to bring about and to main- 
 tain this state. A succession of chilling mor- 
 tifications, of failures largely imposed from 
 without during many centuries, may produce 
 even on a fervent and high-spirited people the 
 
SPANISH IDEALS OF TO-DAY 409 
 
 auto-suggestion of its own ineffectiveness and 
 the hopelessness of effort. 1 Even Altamira, who 
 finds the real source of the trouble in economic 
 conditions, compares the intellectual element of 
 the Spanish population to Turgueneff's Dmitri 
 Kudin, the victim of a distrust in his powers, 
 himself creating an atmosphere of pessimism in 
 which faith and energy cannot breathe. 
 
 Yet, in this sphere at all events, it is men's 
 beliefs that mould reality, and he is strong who 
 feels that he is strong. It is difficult for the 
 outsider to see anything more fundamentally 
 wrong in the spiritual life of Spain than the 
 Spaniard's belief that it is wrong. Every 
 foreign student of Spain has been impressed by 
 the sterling and noble qualities possessed by the 
 peasants and working people of Spain ; "as fine 
 a race as one might wish to meet with," has 
 truly said one who knows them well. The 
 people of Spain are still sound at the core ; 
 they have suffered as much from their virtues 
 as from their vices, — from their idealisms, their 
 indifference to worldly advantage, their cheer- 
 ful good -nature, their stoical resignation. If J 
 Spaniards could but realise the unused reservoir 
 
 1 We have in English several good books on the history of Spain : 
 for the early period Uliok Burke's History of Spain to the Death of 
 Ferdinand the Catholic ; for the latest period Mr. Martin Hume's 
 Modem Spain, and the late H. Butler Clarke's Modern Spain. For 
 the intervening period I may mention Mr. Hume's recent illuminative 
 hook, The Court of Philip. 
 
410 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 of original energy which is still stored within 
 their race, quietly manifested in the details of 
 everyday life, their problem would be solved. 
 They have but to educate and utilise the excel- 
 lent human material they possess. The self- 
 styled decadent insists on lying down in the 
 belief that he is hopelessly paralysed. Some 
 day, we can scarcely doubt, the voice of a more 
 potent prophet than we hear to-day will compel 
 him to take up his bed and walk. On that day 
 he will find that his spiritual state is no more 
 hopeless than are his economic and industrial 
 conditions. 
 
 We are apt to forget, however, — and the 
 Spanish pessimists of to-day seem peculiarly apt 
 to forget, — that in any country in any age the 
 men who arise and walk, strongly and fearlessly, 
 in accordance with the inspirations of their own 
 souls, can be but a very small minority. The 
 majority, always and everywhere, are lame 
 and weak, timid and conventional. Unamuno 
 is grieved because the youth of Madrid are suffer- 
 ing from ideophobia, the horror of ideas ; but it 
 is a disease by no means confined to Madrid ; in 
 London, for instance, it is endemic. National 
 indolence or social parasitism, which Spanish 
 reformers seek to battle with to-day, is ever 
 present in some form, a more respectable or 
 a less respectable form ; in its more respectable 
 Spanish form it finds refuge in officialdom, 
 
SPANISH IDEALS OF TO-DAY 411 
 
 in its less respectable forms it inspired the 
 picaresque literature which is among the achieve- 
 ments of Spain's golden age. It is not the 
 existence of such an element in the national 
 life which is the main concern, — for not every 
 one can be a Vasco da Gama or a Hernan 
 Cortes, a Cervantes or a Calderon, a Velazquez 
 or a Goya, — but the freedom and vigour with 
 which the elect few can live and move in the 
 national life and dominate its currents. That is 
 never an easy task, even for the most indomitable 
 and audacious persons, even in the ages most 
 favourable for their achievements. 
 
 If we bear in mind all the difficulties — 
 political, economic, and religious — with which 
 the Spanish people have so long been struggling, 
 and not on the whole ineffectively, it can scarcely 
 seem to us that in Spain the elect few have ever 
 quite failed to make themselves felt. As we 
 have seen again and again, the Spaniard has 
 always possessed character. Spain has always 
 been a land of great personalities. In art and 
 literature, more especially, Spain to-day — as well 
 as that larger Spain beyond the ocean which is 
 coming more closely into touch with the mother 
 country than it has ever been before — still 
 emphatically embodies those ideals which, ele- 
 mentary as they are, have never been more 
 potently and influentially asserted than by 
 Spaniards. In art there is no more supreme 
 
412 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 representative of nature and realism than Velaz- 
 quez, for whom the truthful presentation of life, 
 and of the air in which life breathes and moves, 
 was lifted to a beauty and perfection beyond 
 and above that of ideal art. In the supreme 
 Spanish novelist, again, in Cervantes, we find the 
 same equally triumphant achievements, the same 
 complex picture of real life transcending the 
 ideal. 
 
 It is naturalism, the passion of life, the 
 stimulating appeal of aspiring and inexhaustible 
 energy, in harmony with the movement of life 
 itself, that has for ever moved the Spanish soul. 
 There is no more inspiring moralist, it has often 
 been said, than the old Spaniard Seneca. Even 
 the Spanish mystics have been practical, with 
 energies directed towards action, and instead 
 of following the misty iridescent paths of a 
 Bohme or a Euysbroeck, they have written with 
 a clearness, vigour, and balance which place 
 them in the ranks of classics. The fury of life 
 moves in this grave and passionate Spanish soul, 
 alike in its national philosophy and its national 
 dancing. Trompetas de Organo is the title 
 given to a collection of his verse by one of the 
 most characteristic writers of Spain to-day, 
 Salvador Rueda. It cannot be said that the 
 finest utterances in song, even from Homer at 
 one end to Verlaine at the other, are fittingly 
 called Trompetas de Organo. But the Spanish 
 
SPANISH IDEALS OF TO-DAY 413 
 
 genius is seldom aesthetically exquisite ; it seeks 
 above all the emphasis of character in its 
 naturalistic grasp of life, the emphasis that 
 Rueda seeks, enamoured of the earth and of all 
 natural things. It is in the characteristic spirit 
 of moral valour, again, that Nunez de Arce, a 
 writer of the like temper in the previous genera- 
 tion, called his chief volume " battle-cries," 
 Gritos del Combate. Trompetas de Organo, 
 again, or Gritos del Combate, with the like lack 
 of exquisite aesthetic quality, are many of the 
 most notable volumes and plays of the day, 
 with all the long historical series of Episodas 
 Nacionales, in which G-aldos, the most repre- 
 sentative literary force on the side of progressive 
 reform, has sought to picture the national life. 
 Blasco Ibanez reveals the same qualities in a still 
 more emphatic shape ; in his life and in his 
 works this son of indomitable Aragon has dis- 
 played all the typical Spanish virility, the 
 free -ranging personal energy, the passion for 
 independence which of old filled Saragossa with 
 martyrs and heroes. And in art, with a still 
 wider human appeal, the modern painters 
 of Spain, — Sorolla, Zuloaga, and Anglada- 
 Camarasa at their head, — have translated these 
 same personal and moral qualities into pigment, 
 imparting to their Spanish vision of the world 
 its own special savour, its exhilarating vigour, 
 its heroic execution. It has been by passion, 
 
414 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 by virility, by moral energy carried to the 
 farthest point, that the firm-fibred soul of Spain 
 has achieved its place in the world, and in his 
 own way the Spaniard of to-day still carries on 
 the traditions of the race. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Actresses, Spanish, 108 
 
 Aerssen, van, 393, 407 
 
 African affinities of Spain, 29, 36, 
 
 173, 184 
 Alaicon, S9 
 Albi Cathedral, 297 
 Aleman, Mateo, 38, 75 
 Al ham bra, 313 et seq. 
 Altamira, E., 399, 406, 409 
 Anarchism in Spain, 51 ' 
 Andalusia, 62, 65, 176, 338 et seq. 
 Anglada-Camarasa, 132 
 Anthropology of Spain, 33 
 Aragon, 68, 183, 199 
 Architecture, Spanish, 21, 107, 199, 
 
 202, 282 et seq., 309, 324 et seq. 
 Arenal, Concepcion, 86, 102, 104 
 Argamasilla, 233 
 Armstrong, Sir Walter, 159, 164 
 Arnold of Villanueva, 1 282 
 Art of Spain, 106 et seq. 
 Artemidorus, 66 
 
 Asceticism, Spanish, 41, 380 et seq. 
 Astorga, 327 
 Athenaeus, 171 
 Auto-de-fe, 53 
 Averroes, 405 
 Azorin, 392 
 
 Bacon, Francis, 42, 392 
 Balearic Islands, 192 et seq. 
 Bandello, 99 
 Barcelona, 273 et seq., 291 et seq., 
 
 300, 302 
 Baretti, 174 
 Barraganeria, 85 
 Barres, Maurice, 45, 343 
 
 Bartels, 70 
 
 Basques, 30, 275 
 
 Bazan, Emilia Pardo, 38, 78, 83, 85, 
 
 86, 90-100, 101, 102, 103, 110, 
 
 234, 244, 256, 353 393, 398 
 Beauty, Spanish type of, 65, 78 
 Becker, 172 
 Beggars, 38, 47 
 Berbers, 30, 34, 39 
 Bertaux, 117 
 Beruete, A., 146, 153, 159, 160, 
 
 163, 164, 165, 167 
 Bevotte, G. de, 344 
 Biagi, G., 99 
 Bilbao, 52, 275 
 Bizet, 88 
 
 Black, Spanish love of, 66 
 Blasco Ibaflez, 37, 59, 76, 77, 92 
 
 270, 413 
 Bloch, Iwan, 84 
 Blondes in Spain, 78 
 Blood, Spanish interest m, 44 et seq 
 Blue blood, 79 
 Boffiy, 297 
 Bolognese art, 120 
 Borrow, G., 11 
 Bowie, Eev. John, 224 
 Bradley, H., 49 
 
 Braggart as Spanish type, 56, 175 
 Brant6me, 56, 133 
 Breasts of Spanish women, 70 
 Brunettes in Spain, 78 
 Brunton, Sir Lauder, 79 
 Buda-Pesth, 5 
 Bueno, Manuel, 397 
 Bull-fight, the, 41, 101, 348 et seq. 
 Burke, Ulick, 85, 350, 409 
 
 415 
 
416 
 
 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 Bush over wine-shops, 14 
 Business, Spanish attitude towards, 
 
 11 
 Byzantine influence, 117 
 
 Cadiz, 174, 187 
 
 Calderon, 8, 54, 75, 101, 307, 402 
 
 Caliz, the Santa, 370 
 
 Camargo, Anna de, 187 
 
 Camoens, 58, 101, 307, 402 
 
 Candles in worship, 23 
 
 Caramuel, 48 
 
 Carmandel, 70 
 
 Carmona, 97 
 
 Cartaret, Lord John, 224 
 
 Carthaginians, 31 
 
 Casanova, 40 
 
 Castanets, 171, 186 
 
 Casticismo, 402, 404, 407 
 
 Catalonia, 51, 277 
 
 Oelestina, 75, 84 
 
 Celts in Spain, 32 
 
 Cephalic index of Spaniards, 35 
 
 Ceremony, Spanish love of, 52, 68 
 
 Cervantes, 3, 37, 38, 47, 56, 58, 76, 
 
 77, 79, 93, 97, 189, 223 et seq., 
 
 253, 273, 403 
 Character, Spanish, 11 et seq., 36 et 
 
 seq., 390 et seq. 
 Charles II., 152 
 Chest of Spanish women, 70 
 Chivalry, 23, 157 
 Chopin, 222 
 
 Christ, Spanish feeling towards, 45 
 Church, Spanish attitude to, 6, 396 
 
 et seq. 
 Churches, Spanish, 13, 21, 116, 
 
 273 et seq., 324 et seq., 355 
 
 et seq. 
 Cid, 23, 55, 405 
 Oigarreras, 88, 353 
 Clarke, H. Butler, 38, 56, 409 
 Cologne Cathedral, 356 
 Columbus, 8, 338, 355 
 Complexion, Spanish, 35, 69, 76 
 
 Cordova, 68, 92, 97, 249, 316 
 
 Corot, 137 
 
 Cortes, Donoso, 390 
 
 Cortes, Hernan, 40 
 
 Costa, J., 400 
 
 Costume, Spanish, 66 
 
 Counter-Reformation, 57 
 Courtesans, Spanish, 97 et seq. 
 Criminality in Spain, 33, 221 
 Cuba, 8 
 Cymbals, 173 
 
 Dale, A. W. W., 96, 365 
 
 Dalmau, Luis de, 113 
 
 Damasus, Pope, 365 
 
 Dance of Death, 24 
 
 Dancing, Spanish, 9, 53, 170 et 
 
 seq., 341 
 D' Aragona, Tullia, 99 
 Dario, Ruben, 41, 243 
 D'Aulnoy, Countess, 44 
 David, G., 113 
 
 Death, Spanish emphasis on, 24 
 Delicado, 72, 97 
 Deniker, 34 
 Devrient, 100 
 Dewey, Stoddard, 51 
 Diaz, 132 
 
 Dominicans, 57, 381 
 Dozy, 405 
 
 Duchenne of Bologne, 70 
 Dumas, G., 101 
 Duse, E., 138 
 
 Easter in Seville, 347 et seq., 364 
 
 et seq. 
 Education of Spanish women, 103 
 Egyptian influences, 108, 173 
 Elche, the Lady of, 108 
 Electricity in Spain, 4 
 Ellis, Havelock, 40, 61, 79 
 Elvira, Synod of, 23, 96, 365 
 Emmanuel, 172 
 Energy, Spanish, 40, 412 
 Engel, 67, 108 
 England compared to Spain, 35, 
 
 42, 46, 65, 71, 81, 83, 87, 89, 
 
 353, 358, 384, 403 
 Ensettwe, 71 
 Escorial, 24 
 Espinel, 38 
 
 Estebauez Calderon, 181, 251 
 Ethnic characters of Spain, 34 
 Eyck, Jan van, 112 
 Eyes of Spanish women, 74, 78 
 
 Fabre, Jaime, 291, 303, 304 
 Fandango, 174 
 
INDEX 
 
 417 
 
 Fanelli, 51 
 
 Farinelli, 344 
 
 Fatigati, E. S., 110 
 
 Fergusson, 297, 325 
 
 Feria at Seville, 65, 188, 351 et seq. 
 
 Fernandez, Alejo, 113 
 
 Fiesta, the, 41 
 
 Finck, 78 
 
 Fischer, C. A., 84 
 
 Fitzmaurice-Kelly, J., 58 
 
 Flamenco, origin of the term, 175 
 
 Flamenco-dancing, 180, 184 
 
 Flemish influence in Spanish art, 
 
 112 
 Ford, E., 17, 26, 159, 181, 373 
 Fortuny, 118 
 Foulche-Delbosc, 211 
 France compared to Spain, 34, 36, 
 
 71, 181 
 Fritsch, G., 72 
 Fuertes, Soriano, 181 
 
 Gait of Spanish women, 73 
 Galdos, Perez, 6, 105, 247, 270, 
 
 397, 413 
 Gallegos, 33 
 Gandara, 123 
 Ganivet, A., 11, 45, 49, 55, 387, 
 
 400, 402, 404 
 Gaucin, Maria de, 101 
 Gautier, T., 1, 35, 78 
 Generalife, 318 et seq. 
 Germany compared to Spain, 87, 
 
 357 
 Gerona, 14, 296 et seq. 
 Gil, Juan, 326 
 Giordano, Luca, 135, 166 
 Gipsies, Spanish, 175 et seq. 
 Glover, 365 
 Gomez-Moreno, 309 
 Gothic, Spanish, 20, 282 et seq., 
 
 324 et seq., 355 et seq. 
 Goya, 70, 101, 129 et seq. 
 Graf, A., 99 
 
 Graham, Mrs. Cunningham e, 101 
 Granada, 68, 111, 115, 193, 306 
 
 et seq., 321 
 Granada, Luis de, 255 
 Greco, El, 115 et seq., 145 
 Greek influence, 171 
 Green, Spanish love of, 75, 118, 
 
 240 
 
 Guerrero, Eosita, 170 
 Guzman, Feliciana de, 105 
 
 Hair of Spanish women, 74 
 
 Hals, F., 133, 136 
 
 Hapsburgs, the, 151 
 
 Head, effects of hearing burdens on 
 
 72 
 Head-dress, Spanish, 66 
 Herodorus, 33 
 Herrera, 143 
 Higgin, L., 309 
 Hincks, Marcelle, 172 
 Holy Week observances, 44 
 Horse-shoe arch, 308 
 Hotels, Spanish, 7, 9 
 Howell, J., 66, 83, 120, 380 
 Hugo, V., 20 
 
 Humane qualities of Spaniards, 47 
 Hume, Major Martin, 56, 409 
 
 Iarbas, 39 
 
 Iberians, 31, 39, 43, 48, 50, 66 
 
 71, 84, 108 
 Ibn Tufail, 210 
 
 Illegitimate children in Spain, 85 
 Individualism, Spanish, 394, 406 
 Inquisition, the Spanish, 42, 50 
 
 64, 407 
 Intolerance of Spaniards, 49 
 Ireland compared to Spain, 49 
 Ironwork screens, Spanish, 110 
 
 342 
 Irving, Washington, 313 
 Italy compared to Spain, 2, 35 
 
 Jaime I., 49 
 Janet, Pierre, 101 
 Jativa, 121 
 Jordan, President, 63 
 Jota, the, 182, 200 
 Juan, legend of Don, 343 
 Juan de la Cruz, 332, 407 
 Jubainville, 32 
 Justi, 117, 157 
 
 Kabyles, 30, 72 
 
 Lagneau, 71 
 Laguna, A., 334 
 Lamperez, Blanca de. 96 
 Lance, G., 158 
 
 2 E 
 
418 
 
 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 Lamrillo de Tormes, 38 
 
 Lea, H. C, 32, 43, 48, 49, 53, 63 
 
 Leal, Valdes, 160 
 
 Leather bottle in Spain, 17 
 
 Leighton, Lord, 128 
 
 Leon Cathedral, 22, 110, 285, 288 
 
 Leon, Hebreo, 253 
 
 Leon, Luis de, 46 
 
 Lighting of Spanish churches, 22 
 
 Literature in Spain, 58 
 
 Longevity in Spain, 62 
 
 Louys, 88 
 
 Love in Spain, 83 
 
 Loyola, 23, 57, 372 
 
 Lucan, 46 
 
 Luis de Granada, 255 
 
 Lull, Ramon, 57, 191 et seq. 
 
 Luna, Alvaro de, 58 
 
 Luna, Isabella de, 99 
 
 Maocoll, Norman, 40 
 
 Macias Picavea, E., 389 et seq. 
 
 Macrobius, 172 
 
 Maetzu, Ramiro de, 394 
 
 Majorca, 192 et seq. 
 
 Malaga, 35, 177, 187, 276 
 
 Male, E., 24 
 
 Male costume among Spanish 
 women, 104 
 
 Manet, 107, 157 
 
 Mantegazza, 65 
 
 Mantilla, 69 
 
 Marcus Aurelius, 46 
 
 Mariana, Queen, 151 
 
 Marti, 174 
 
 Martial, 172 
 
 Martinenche, 270 
 
 Matriarchal survivals, 84 
 
 Mazo, 164 
 
 Meals, the invitation to share, 17 
 
 Mediaeval survivals, 12 et seq. 
 
 Menendez y Pelayo, 47, 55, 57, 
 211, 239, 253, 402, 406 
 
 Mengs, R., 137 
 
 Merimfe, 88 
 
 Mohidin, 212 
 
 Monasticism, Spanish attitude to- 
 wards, 6, 395 et seq. 
 
 Monks, Spanish, 18 
 
 Monroy, Maria de, 63 
 
 Monserrat, 188, 369 et seq. 
 
 Montanes, 122, 153 
 
 Moors, 31, 104, 193 et seq., 306 et 
 
 seq., 328, 404 
 Morel-Fatio, 56 
 
 Morocco and Spain, 17, 44, 212 
 Morote, L., 394 
 Momrabes, 32 
 Mudejares, 38 
 Muladies, 32 
 Murillo, 36, 124 et seq. 
 
 National Gallery Velazquez in, 
 
 156 et seq. 
 Naturalism, Spanish, 110, 142 
 
 412 
 Navarrete, 223 
 Navarro y Ledesma, 233, 388 
 Neapolitan art, 120 
 Negroes compared to Spaniards, 
 
 70, 72 
 Newspaper press of Spain, 6 
 Nunez de Aroe, 413 
 Nuns, Spanish, 101 
 
 Oloriz, 62 
 Oporto, 142 
 Ordericus Vitalis, 287 
 Orfila, 204 
 Otero, 170 
 
 Pacheco, 143, 159 
 
 Pain, Spanish indifference to, 41 
 
 Painting in Spain, 106 et seq. 
 
 Palacios, 192 
 
 Palencia, 45, 94 
 
 Palma, 193 et seq., 299, 304 
 
 Palma in Spain, 15 
 
 Palomino, 162 
 
 Parasitism, Spanish, 40, 410 
 
 Paris, Pierre, 108, 109 
 
 Parlow, Hans, 230 
 
 Patmore, Coventry, 383 
 
 Pecchio, 12, 105, 213 
 
 Peflafort, Ramon de, 54 
 
 People, the Spanish, 29 et seq. 
 
 Pepys, 14 
 
 Perpignan, 283 
 
 Peyron, 7, 174, 382 
 
 Philip II., 25 
 
 Philip IV., 147 
 
 Philippines, 8 
 
 Phillips, L. March, 309 
 
 Picaresque literature, 38 
 
INDEX 
 
 419 
 
 Pigmentation of Spaniards, 35, 69, 
 
 75 
 Pizarro, 40 
 Ploss, 70 
 Population, movement of Spanish, 
 
 3 
 Portugal, 33, 58 
 Posada, 86, 103 
 Poynter, 159 
 Pride, Spanish, 38, 392 
 Probst-Biraben, 210 
 Progress in Spain, 1 et seq. 
 Prostitution, Spanish, 77 et seq. 
 
 Quevedo, 38, 403 
 Quintero, A. and S., 4, 97 
 Quiros, C. Bernaldo de, 33, 71 
 
 Racial characters of Spaniards, 34 
 
 Railway travelling in Spain, 15 
 
 Ramon y Cajal, 47 
 
 Reform in Spain, 5 
 
 Regoyos, Dario de, 26, 44 
 
 Reinach, 108 
 
 Religion in Spain, 22, 49, 57, 188, 
 
 345, 380 et seq., 395 et seq. 
 Renan, 405 
 Rennert, 383 
 Reynier, G., 343 
 Reynolds, Sir J., 137 
 Ribalta, 120 
 Ribera, Josef, 121 et seq., 144, 
 
 159 
 Ribera, Julian, 211 
 Ricketts, 117, 119, 159, 160 
 Ripley, 30 
 Ritual, Spanish, 22, 52, 68, 189, 
 
 349, 352 
 Rizi, Juan, 164 
 Roelas, 115 
 
 Romance, Spain the home of, 19 
 Romanones, Conde de, 397 
 Rome, 2 
 Roussillon, 277 
 Rubens, 149, 157 
 Rueda, Salvador, 413 
 Russia compared to Spain, 36, 
 
 353 
 
 Saavedra, 394 
 
 Saddle-back of Spanish women, 71 
 
 Sagrera, Guillermo, 199 
 
 St. Theresa, 57, 100, 212, 255 
 
 Salamanca Cathedral, 26, 325 
 
 Salammbo, 366 
 
 Salazar, 121 
 
 Salillas, 41, 87, 175, 176, 181, 
 
 183 
 Sand, George, 194, 200 
 Santacruz, Pascual, 56, 398 
 Santiago de Compostela, 285, 373 
 Saragossa, 199 
 Science in Spain, 47 
 Sculpture, Spanish, 107 et seq. 
 Segovia, 284, 321 et seq. 
 Seises, the, 189 
 Seneca, 46, 49, 412 
 Servetus, 45 
 Seville, 65, 139 et seq., 178, 188, 
 
 285, 338 et seq., 355 et seq. 
 Shakespeare, 237 
 Shawl, the Spanish, 67 
 Sidney, Sir P., 58 
 Silius Italicus, 35 
 Simonet, 308, 405 
 Simplicity, Spanish love of, 7, 381 
 Sky-effects in Castile, 112 
 Social intercourse in Spain, 11 
 Socialism in Spain, 51 
 Soldier in Spanish literature, 58, 235 
 Sorolla y Bastida, 132 
 Sound, Spanish love of rhythmic, 
 
 186 
 Spalikowski, 71 
 Spine of Spanish women, 70 
 Spinoza, 26 
 Stendhal, 12 
 Stevenson, R. A. M., 137 
 Stirling-Maxwell, Sir W., 137 
 Stoicism, Spanish, 41, 46 
 Strabo, 1, 48, 84 
 Street, 199, 286, 289, 325, 332 
 Suflsm, 210 et seq. 
 Suffrage in Spain, 86 
 Symons, Arthur, 118 
 
 Tailhade, L., 349 
 Tarragona, 14, 286 et seq. 
 Telesforo de Aranzadi, 31 
 Thebussem, Dr., 241 
 Theresa, St., 57, 100, 212, 255 
 Tirso de Molina, 95, 343 
 Toledo, 22, 110, 111, 115, 310, 329 
 Tolerance of the Spaniards, 49 
 2 E 2 
 
420 
 
 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 Torquemada, 46, 335 
 
 Tortajada, La, 170 
 
 Torture in judicial proceedings, 42 
 
 Tozer, Basil, 350 
 
 Tudela, 13, 285 
 
 Unamuno, Miguel de, 9, 39, 389, 
 
 401 et seq., 410 
 Urban development, 3 
 
 Valencian art, 120, 198 
 
 Valera, 42, 52, 53, 76, 77, 91, 170, 
 
 2iietseq., 316, 350, 383, 405 
 Valladolid, 110 
 Valour, Spanish, 56, 59 
 Vandyck, 151 
 
 Vega, Lope de, 100, 231, 383 
 Velazquez, 106, 109, 119, 134 et 
 
 seq. 
 Venetian influence, 129, 137 
 Venus Callipyge, 174 
 Verhaeren, E., 26, 44 
 
 Viardot, 159 
 Vinci, L. da, 153 
 Visigoths, 32, 49, 108, 309 
 
 War, influence of Spanish- American 
 
 8 
 Water-pots, 198, 278 
 Westermarek, 17 
 Weyden, Roger van der, 112 
 Whistler, 154 
 Williamson, 157 
 Women, Spanish, 35, 61 et seq., 194 
 
 213, 256 et seq., 279, 307, 341 
 Wood-carving, Spanish, 110 
 Work, Spanish attitude towards, 37, 
 
 40 
 
 Zamora, 15, 26, 110, 324 
 Zorilla, Ruiz, 116, 381 
 Zuloaga, 123, 131, 132 
 Zurbaran, 36, 117, 127 et seq., 130 
 159, 160 
 
 THE END 
 
 Printed by R. & R. Clark, Limited, Edi7iburg7i. 
 
Portions of this volume have appeared in a preliminary 
 form, in the Fortnightly, Contemporary , and North 
 American Reviews, the Atlantic Monthly, Harper's 
 Magazine, the Twentieth Century Home, etc. An 
 article on the Genius of Spain, which was published 
 in the Nineteenth Century and After for May 1902, 
 is not here included, having been written to appear 
 ultimately in another volume. 
 
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