A Supplementary Chapter to the Bible in Spain

But here before us is a Hand-book for Spain. From what we have written above it will have been seen that we are not altogether unacquainted with the country; indeed we plead guilty to having performed the grand tour of Spain more than once; but why do we say guilty – it is scarcely a thing to be ashamed of; the country is a magnificent one, and the people are a highly curious people, and we are by no means sorry that we have made the acquaintance of either. Detestation of the public policy of Spain, and a hearty abhorrence of its state creed, we consider by no means incompatible with a warm admiration for the natural beauties of the country, and even a zest for Spanish life and manners. We love a ride in Spain, and the company to be found in a Spanish venta; but the Lord preserve us from the politics of Spain, and from having anything to do with the Spaniards in any graver matters than interchanging cigars and compliments, meetings upon the road (peaceable ones of course), kissing and embracing (see above). Whosoever wishes to enjoy Spain or the Spaniards, let him go as a private individual, the humbler in appearance the better: let him call every beggar Cavalier, every Don a Señor Conde; praise the water of the place in which he happens to be as the best of all water; and wherever he goes he will meet with attention and sympathy. ‘The strange Cavalier is evidently the child of honourable fathers, although, poor man, he appears to be, like myself, unfortunate’ – will be the ejaculation of many a proud tatterdemalion who has been refused charity with formal politeness – whereas should the stranger chuck him contemptuously an ounce of gold, he may be pretty sure that he has bought his undying hatred both in this world and the next.

Here we have a Hand-book for Spain – we mean for travellers in Spain – and of course for English travellers. The various hand-books which our friend Mr. Murray has published at different times are very well known, and their merit generally recognized. We cannot say that we have made use of any of them ourselves, yet in the course of our peregrinations we have frequently heard travellers speak in terms of high encomium of their general truth and exactness, and of the immense mass of information which they contain. There is one class of people, however, who are by no means disposed to look upon these publications with a favourable eye – we mean certain gentry generally known by the name of valets de place, for whom we confess we entertain no particular affection, believing them upon the whole to be about the most worthless, heartless, and greedy set of miscreants to be found upon the whole wide continent of Europe. These gentry, we have reason to know, look with a by no means favourable eye upon these far-famed publications of Albemarle-street. ‘They steal away our honest bread,’ said one of them to us the other day at Venice, ‘I Signori forestieri find no farther necessity for us since they have appeared; we are thinking of petitioning the government in order that they may be prohibited as heretical and republican. Were it not for these accursed books I should now have the advantage of waiting upon those forestieri’ – and he pointed to a fat English squire, who with a blooming daughter under each arm, was proceeding across the piazza to St. Marco with no other guide than a ‘Murray,’ which he held in his hand. High, however, as was the opinion which we had formed of these Hand-books from what we had heard concerning them, we were utterly unprepared for such a treat as has been afforded us by the perusal of the one which now lies before us – the Hand-book for Spain.

It is evidently the production of a highly-gifted and accomplished man of infinite cleverness, considerable learning, and who is moreover thoroughly acquainted with the subject of which he treats. That he knows Spain as completely as he knows the lines upon the palm of his hand, is a fact which cannot fail of forcing itself upon the conviction of any person who shall merely glance over the pages; yet this is a book not to be glanced over, for we defy any one to take it up without being seized with an irresistible inclination to peruse it from the beginning to the end – so flowing and captivating is the style, and so singular and various are the objects and events here treated of. We have here a perfect panorama of Spain, to accomplish which we believe to have been the aim and intention of the author; and gigantic as the conception was, it is but doing him justice to say that in our opinion he has fully worked it out. But what iron application was required for the task – what years of enormous labour must have been spent in carrying it into effect even after the necessary materials had been collected – and then the collecting of the materials themselves – what strange ideas of difficulty and danger arise in our minds at the sole mention of that most important point! But here is the work before us; the splendid result of the toil, travel, genius, and learning of one man, and that man an Englishman. The above is no overstrained panegyric; we refer our readers to the work itself, and then fearlessly abandon the matter to their decision. We have here all Spain before us; mountain, plain, and river, poblado y desploblado– the well known and the mysterious – Barcelona and Batuecas.

Amidst all the delight and wonder which we have felt, we confess that we have been troubled by an impertinent thought of which we could not divest ourselves. We could not help thinking that the author, generous enough as he has been to the public, has been rather unjust to himself – by publishing the result of his labours under the present title. A Hand-book is a Hand-book after all, a very useful thing, but still – The fact is that we live in an age of humbug, in which every thing to obtain much note and reputation must depend less upon its own intrinsic merits than on the name it bears. The present work is about one of the best books ever written upon Spain; but we are afraid that it will never be estimated at its proper value; for after all a Hand-book is a Hand-book. Permit us, your Ladyship, to introduce to you the learned, talented, and imaginative author of the – shocking! Her Ladyship would faint, and would never again admit ourselves and our friends to her soirées. What a pity that this delightful book does not bear a more romantic sounding title – ’Wanderings in Spain,’ for example; or yet better, ‘The Wonders of the Peninsula.’

But are we not ourselves doing our author injustice? Aye surely; the man who could write a book of the character of the one which we have at present under notice, is above all such paltry considerations, so we may keep our pity for ourselves. If it please him to cast his book upon the waters in the present shape, what have we to do but to be grateful? – we forgot for a moment with what description of man we have to do. This is no vain empty coxcomb; he cannot but be aware that he has accomplished a great task; but such paltry considerations as those to which we have alluded above are not for him but for writers of a widely different stamp with whom we have nothing to do.

What to observe in Spain

Before we proceed to point out the objects best worth seeing in the Peninsula, many of which are to be seen there only, it may be as well to mention what is not to be seen: there is no such loss of time as finding this out oneself, after weary chace and wasted hour. Those who expect to find well-garnished arsenals, libraries, restaurants, charitable or literary institutions, canals, railroads, tunnels, suspension-bridges, steam-engines, omnibuses, manufactories, polytechnic galleries, pale-ale breweries, and similar appliances and appurtenances of a high state of political, social, and commercial civilisation, had better stay at home. In Spain there are no turnpike-trust meetings, no quarter-sessions, no courts of justice, according to the real meaning of that word, no treadmills, no boards of guardians, no chairmen, directors, masters-extraordinary of the court of chancery, no assistant poor-law commissioners. There are no anti-tobacco-teetotal-temperance meetings, no auxiliary missionary propagating societies, nothing in the blanket and lying-in asylum line, nothing, in short, worth a revising barrister of three years’ standing’s notice. Spain is no country for the political economist, beyond affording an example of the decline of the wealth of nations, and offering a wide topic on errors to be avoided, as well as for experimental theories, plans of reform and amelioration. In Spain, Nature reigns; she has there lavished her utmost prodigality of soil and climate which a bad government has for the last three centuries been endeavouring to counteract. El cielo y suelo es bueno, el entresuelo malo, and man, the occupier of the Peninsula entresol, uses, or rather abuses, with incurious apathy the goods with which the gods have provided him. Spain is a terra incognita to naturalists, geologists, and every branch of ists and ologists. The material is as superabundant as native labourers and operatives are deficient. All these interesting branches of inquiry, healthful and agreeable, as being out-of-door pursuits, and bringing the amateur in close contact with nature, offer to embryo authors, who are ambitious to book something new, a more worthy subject than the decies repetita descriptions of bull-fights and the natural history of ollas and ventas. Those who aspire to the romantic, the poetical, the sentimental, the artistical, the antiquarian, the classical, in short, to any of the sublime and beautiful lines, will find both in the past and present state of Spain subjects enough, in wandering with lead-pencil and note-book through this singular country, which hovers between Europe and Africa, between civilisation and barbarism; this is the land of the green valley and barren mountain, of the boundless plain and the broken sierra, now of Elysian gardens of the vine, the olive, the orange, and the aloe, then of trackless, vast, silent, uncultivated wastes, the heritage of the wild bee. Here we fly from the dull uniformity, the polished monotony of Europe, to the racy freshness of an original, unchanged country, where antiquity treads on the heels of to-day, where Paganism disputes the very altar with Christianity, where indulgence and luxury contend with privation and poverty, where a want of all that is generous or merciful is blended with the most devoted heroic virtues, where the most cold-blooded cruelty is linked with the fiery passions of Africa, where ignorance and erudition stand in violent and striking contrast.

Here let the antiquarian pore over the stirring memorials of many thousand years, the vestiges of Phœnician enterprise, of Roman magnificence, of Moorish elegance, in that storehouse of ancient customs, that repository of all elsewhere long forgotten and passed by; here let him gaze upon those classical monuments, unequalled almost in Greece or Italy, and on those fairy Aladdin palaces, the creatures of Oriental gorgeousness and imagination, with which Spain alone can enchant the dull European; here let the man of feeling dwell on the poetry of her envy-disarming decay, fallen from her high estate, the dignity of a dethroned monarch, borne with unrepining self-respect, the last consolation of the innately noble, which no adversity can take away; here let the lover of art feed his eyes with the mighty masterpieces of Italian art, when Raphael and Titian strove to decorate the palaces of Charles, the great emperor of the age of Leo X., or with the living nature of Velazquez and Murillo, whose paintings are truly to be seen in Spain alone; here let the artist sketch the lowly mosque of the Moor, the lofty cathedral of the Christian, in which God is worshipped in a manner as nearly befitting His glory as the power and wealth of finite man can reach; art and nature here offer subjects, from the feudal castle, the vasty Escorial, the rock-built alcazar of imperial Toledo, the sunny towers of stately Seville, to the eternal snows and lovely vega of Granada: let the geologist clamber over mountains of marble, and metal-pregnant sierras, let the botanist cull from the wild hothouse of nature plants unknown, unnumbered, matchless in colour, and breathing the aroma of the sweet south; let all, learned or unlearned, listen to the song, the guitar, the Castanet; let all mingle with the gay, good-humoured, temperate peasantry, the finest in the world, free, manly, and independent, yet courteous and respectful; let all live with the noble, dignified, high-bred, self-respecting Spaniard; let all share in their easy, courteous society; let all admire their dark-eyed women, so frank and natural, to whom the voice of all ages and nations has conceded the palm of attraction, to whom Venus has bequeathed her magic girdle of grace and fascination; let all —sed ohe! jam satis– enough for starting on this expedition, where, as Don Quixote said, there are opportunities for what are called adventures elbow deep.

The following account of the rivers of Spain would do credit to the pen of Robertson: —

‘There are six great rivers in Spain, – the arteries which run between the seven mountain chains, the vertebras of the geological skeleton. These six watersheds are each intersected in their extent by others on a minor scale, by valleys and indentations, in each of which runs its own stream. Thus the rains and melted snows are all collected in an infinity of ramifications, and carried by these tributary conduits into one of the six main trunks, or great rivers: all these, with the exception of the Ebro, empty themselves into the Atlantic. The Duero and Tagus, unfortunately for Spain, disembogue in Portugal, thus becoming a portion of a foreign dominion exactly where their commercial importance is the greatest. Philip II. saw the true value of the possession of Portugal, which rounded and consolidated Spain, and insured to her the possession of these valuable outlets of internal produce, and inlets for external commerce. Portugal annexed to Spain gave more real power to his throne than the dominion of entire continents across the Atlantic. The Miño, which is the shortest of these rivers, runs through a bosom of fertility. The Tajo, Tagus, which the fancy of poets has sanded with gold and embanked with roses, tracks much of its dreary way through rocks and comparative barrenness. The Guadiana creeps through lonely Estremadura, infecting the low plains with miasma. The Guadalquivir eats out its deep banks amid the sunny olive-clad regions of Andalucia, as the Ebro divides the levels of Arragon. Spain abounds with brackish streams, Salados, and with salt-mines, or saline deposits, after the evaporation of the sea-waters. The central soil is strongly impregnated with saltpetre: always arid, it every day is becoming more so, from the singular antipathy which the inhabitants of the interior have against trees. There is nothing to check the power of evaporation, no shelter to protect or preserve moisture. The soil becomes more and more baked and calcined; in some parts it has almost ceased to be available for cultivation: another serious evil, which arises from want of plantations, is, that the slopes of hills are everywhere liable to constant denudation of soil after heavy rain. There is nothing to break the descent of the water; hence the naked, barren stone summits of many of the sierras, which have been pared and peeled of every particle capable of nourishing vegetation; they are skeletons where life is extinct. Not only is the soil thus lost, but the detritus washed down either forms bars at the mouths of rivers, or chokes up and raises their beds; they are thus rendered liable to overflow their banks, and convert the adjoining plains into pestilential swamps. The supply of water, which is afforded by periodical rains, and which ought to support the reservoirs of rivers, is carried off at once in violent floods, rather than in a gentle gradual disembocation. The volume in the principal rivers of Spain has diminished, and is diminishing. Rivers which were navigable are so no longer; the artificial canals which were to have been substituted remain unfinished: the progress of deterioration advances, while little is done to counteract or amend what every year must render more difficult and expensive, while the means of repair and correction will diminish in equal proportion, from the poverty occasioned by the evil, and by the fearful extent which it will be allowed to attain. The rivers which are really adapted to navigation are, however, only those which are perpetually fed by those tributary streams that flow down from mountains which are covered with snow all the year, and these are not many. The majority of Spanish rivers are very scanty of water during the summer time, and very rapid in their flow when filled by rains or melting snow: during these periods they are impracticable for boats. They are, moreover, much exhausted by being drained off, bled, for the purposes of artificial irrigation. The scarcity of rain in the central table-lands is much against a regular supply of water to the springs of the rivers: the water is soon sucked up by a parched, dusty, and thirsty soil, or evaporated by the dryness of the atmosphere. Many of the sierras are indeed covered with snow, but to no great depth, and the coating soon melts under the summer suns, and passes rapidly away.’

Here we have a sunny little sketch of a certain locality at Seville; it is too life-like not to have been taken on the spot: —

‘The sunny flats under the old Moorish walls, which extend between the gates of Carmona and La Carne, are the haunts of idlers and of gamesters. The lower classes of Spaniards are constantly gambling at cards: groups are to be seen playing all day long for wine, love, or coppers, in the sun, or under their vine-trellises. There is generally some well-known cock of the walk, a bully, or guapo, who will come up and lay his hands on the cards, and say, ‘No one shall play here but with mine’ —aquí no se juega sino con mis barajas. If the gamblers are cowed, they give him dos cuartos, a halfpenny each. If, however, one of the challenged be a spirited fellow, he defies him. Aquí no se cobra el barato sino con un punal de Albacete– ‘You get no change here except out of an Albacete knife.’ If the defiance be accepted, vamos alla is the answer – ‘Let’s go to it.’ There’s an end then of the cards, all flock to the more interesting écarté; instances have occurred, where Greek meets Greek, of their tying the two advanced feet together, and yet remaining fencing with knife and cloak for a quarter of an hour before the blow be dealt. The knife is held firmly, the thumb is pressed straight on the blade, and calculated either for the cut or thrust, to chip bread and kill men.’

Apropos of Seville. It is sometimes called we believe La Capital de Majeza; the proper translation of which we conceive to be the Head Quarters of Foolery, for nothing more absurd and contemptible than this Majeza ever came within the sphere of our contemplation. Nevertheless it constitutes the chief glory of the Sevillians. Every Sevillian, male or female, rich or poor, handsome or ugly, aspires at a certain period of life to the character of the majo or maja. We are not going to waste either space or time by entering into any lengthened detail of this ridiculous nonsense: indeed, it is quite unnecessary; almost every one of the books published on Spain, and their name at present is legion, being crammed with details of this same Majeza – a happy combination of insolence, ignorance, frippery, and folly. The majo or Tomfool struts about the streets dressed something like a merry Andrew with jerkin and tight hose, a faja or girdle of crimson silk round his waist, in which is sometimes stuck a dagger, his neck exposed, and a queer kind of half-peaked hat on his head. He smokes continually, thinks there is no place like Seville, and that he is the prettiest fellow in Seville. His favourite word is ‘Carajo!’ The maja or she-simpleton, wears a fan and mantilla, exhibits a swimming and affected gait, thinks that there’s no place like Seville, that she is the flower of Seville – Carai! is her favourite exclamation. But enough of these poor ridiculous creatures. Yet, ridiculous in every respect as they are, these majos and majas find imitators and admirers in people who might be expected to look down with contempt upon them and their follies; we have seen, and we tell it with shame, we have seen Englishmen dressed in Tomfool’s livery lounging about Seville breathing out smoke and affecting the airs of hijos de Sevilla; and what was yet worse, fair blooming Englishwomen, forgetful of their rank as daughters of England, appearing à la maja on the banks of the Guadalquivir, with fan and mantilla, carai and caramba. We wish sincerely that our countrymen and women whilst travelling abroad would always bear in mind that they can only be respected or respectable so long as they maintain their proper character – that of Englishmen and Englishwomen; – but in attempting to appear French, Italians, and Spaniards, they only make themselves supremely ridiculous. As the tree falls, so must it lie. They are children of England; they cannot alter that fact, therefore let them make the most of it, and after all it is no bad thing to be a child of England. But what a poor feeble mind must be his who would deny his country under any circumstances! Therefore, gentle English travellers, when you go to Seville, amongst other places, appear there as English, though not obtrusively, and do not disgrace your country by imitating the airs and graces of creatures whom the other Spaniards, namely, Castilians, Manchegans, Aragonese, &c., pronounce to be fools.

THE NORMANS IN SPAIN

‘In the ninth century, the Normans or Northmen made piratical excursions on the W. coast of Spain. They passed, in 843, from Lisbon up to the straits and everywhere, as in France, overcame the unprepared natives, plundering, burning, and destroying. They captured even Seville itself, September 30, 844, but were met by the Cordovese Kalif, beaten, and expelled. They were called by the Moors Majus, Madjous, Magioges (Conde, i. 282), and by the early Spanish annalists Almajuzes. The root has been erroneously derived from Μιyος, Magus, magicians or supernatural beings, as they were almost held to be. The term Madjous was, strictly speaking, applied by the Moors to those Berbers and Africans who were Pagans or Muwallads, i. e. not believers in the Khoran. The true etymology is that of the Gog and Magog so frequently mentioned by Ezekiel (xxxviii. and xxxix.) and in the Revelations (xx. 8) as ravagers of the earth and nations, May-Gogg, “he that dissolveth,” – the fierce Normans appeared, coming no one knew from whence, just when the minds of men were trembling at the approach of the millennium, and thus were held to be the forerunners of the destroyers of the world. This name of indefinite gigantic power survived in the Mogigangas, or terrific images, which the Spaniards used to parade in their religious festivals, like the Gogs and Magogs of our civic wise men of the East. Thus Andalucia being the half-way point between the N. and S.E., became the meeting-place of the two great ravaging swarms which have desolated Europe: here the stalwart children of frozen Norway, the worshippers of Odin, clashed against the Saracens from torrid Arabia, the followers of Mahomet. Nor can a greater proof be adduced of the power and relative superiority of the Cordovese Moors over the other nations of Europe, than this, their successful resistance to those fierce invaders, who overran without difficulty the coasts of England, France, Apulia, and Sicily: conquerors everywhere else, here they were driven back in disgrace. Hence the bitter hatred of the Normans against the Spanish Moors, hence their alliances with the Catalans, where a Norman impression yet remains in architecture; but, as in Sicily, these barbarians, unrecruited from the North, soon died away, or were assimilated as usual with the more polished people, whom they had subdued by mere superiority of brute force.’

If the Moors called the Norsemen Al Madjus, which according to our author signifies Gog and Magog, the Norsemen retorted by a far more definite and expressive nickname; this was Blue-skins or Bluemen, doubtless in allusion to the livid countenances of the Moors. The battles between the Moors and the Northmen are frequently mentioned in the Sagas, none of which, however, are of higher antiquity than the eleventh century. In none of these chronicles do we find any account of this raid upon Seville in 844; it was probably a very inconsiderable affair magnified by the Moors and their historians. Snorre speaks of the terrible attack of Sigurd, surnamed the Jorsal wanderer, or Jerusalem pilgrim, upon Lisbon and Cintra, both of which places he took, destroying the Moors by hundreds. He subsequently ‘harried’ the southern coasts of Spain on his voyage to Constantinople. But this occurred some two hundred years after the affair of Seville mentioned in the Handbook. It does not appear that the Norse ever made any serious attempt to establish their power in Spain; had they done so we have no doubt that they would have succeeded. We entertain all due respect for the courage and chivalry of the Moors, especially those of Cordova, but we would have backed the Norse, especially the pagan Norse, against the best of them. The Biarkemal would soon have drowned the Moorish ‘Lelhies.’