Wanderings in Spain

The first plate represents a money match, a poor young girl sacrificed by her avaricious parents, to a cacochymical and horrible old man. The bride looks charming with her little black velvet mask, and her basquina ornamented with deep fringe, for Goya represents Andalusian and Castilian beauty most marvellously; her parents are hideous with rapacity and envious misery, resembling in the most astounding manner sharks and crocodiles. The poor child is laughing through her tears, like the sun piercing an April shower. All around is a mere mass of eyes, claws, and teeth: the intoxicating effects of dress prevent the girl from yet feeling the whole extent of her misfortune. This is a subject which often returns to the point of Goya's pencil, and he always succeeds in producing very striking effects. Further on, we have el Coco, "Bogy," who frightens little children, and who would frighten many others of more mature age, for, with the exception of the ghost of Samuel in Salvator Rosa's picture of the "Witch of Endor," I do not know of anything more horrible than this goblin. Then, again, we see a number of majos whispering soft things to dapper young damsels on the Prado – handsome creatures with tightly-fitting silk stockings, little pointed slippers, which are only kept on the foot by the tip of the great toe, high-backed tortoiseshell combs, with open carving, and more lofty than the mural crown of Cybele; black lace mantillas, worn like a hood, and casting a velvety shadow on the finest black eyes in the world; short-skirted petticoats loaded with lead, the better to show off the rich form of the hips; beauty spots placed most murderously at the corner of the mouth, and near the temples; heart-breakers sufficient to break all the hearts in Spain, and large fans spread out like the tail of a peacock. There are also hidalgos in pumps and prodigious coats, with flat cocked-hats under their arms, and large bunches of seals and keys hanging on their stomach making their bows à trois temps, leaning over the backs of the chairs, in order to puff, like the smoke of their cigars, clouds of light-hearted madrigals into some thick mass of beautiful black hair, or leading about some divinity of more or less doubtful character, by the tips of their white kid gloves. In another page, again, you see a number of complaisant mothers, giving their too obedient daughters advice worthy of the Macette of Régnier, washing and greasing them to go to the witches' sabbath. The type of the "Complaisant Mother" is marvellously rendered by Goya, who, like all the Spanish painters, possesses a ready and profound sense of the ignoble. It is impossible to fancy anything more grotesquely horrible, more viciously deformed. Each of these frightful old shrews unites in her own person the ugliness of the seven capital sins; compared to them, the Prince of Darkness himself is pretty. Just fancy whole ditches and counterscarps of wrinkles; eyes like live coals that have been extinguished in blood; noses like the neck of an alembic, covered with warts and other excrescences; nostrils like those of the snout of a hippopotamus rendered formidable by stiff bristles; whiskers like a tiger's; a mouth like the slit in the top of a money box, contracted by a horrible and convulsive grin; a something between the spider and the multiped, which makes you feel the same kind of disgust as if you had placed your foot upon the belly of a toad. Such are Goya's works as far as the actual world is concerned, but it is when he abandons himself to his demonographic inspirations that he is especially admirable: no one can represent as he can, floating in the warm atmosphere of a stormy night, dark masses of clouds loaded with vampires, goblins and demons, or make a cavalcade of witches stand out with such startling effect from the sinister background of the horizon.

There is one plate especially which is altogether fantastic, and realizes the most frightful nightmare that ever any human being perceived in his dreams. It is entitled "Y aun no se van." It is frightful; and even Dante himself never reached such a degree of suffocating terror. Fancy a bare mournful plain, over which a shapeless cloud, like a crocodile that has been ripped open, creeps with difficulty along, and a large stone, the top of some tomb or other, which a shrivelled, thin figure is attempting to raise. The stone is, however, too heavy for the fleshless arms that support it, and which you feel are on the point of snapping, and falls to the ground in spite of all the efforts of the spectre and of other smaller phantoms, who are simultaneously stiffening their shadowy arms; many of these smaller phantoms are crushed beneath the stone, which has been raised for a moment. The expression of despair depicted on all these cadaverous physiognomies, in all these eyeless sockets, that see that their labour is useless, is truly tragic, and presents the most melancholy symbol of powerless labour, the most sombre piece of poetry and bitter derision ever produced on the subject of the dead. The plate called "Buen Viage," representing a flight of demons, pupils of the seminary of Barahona, who are winging their course with all possible speed towards some deed without a name, is remarkable for its energy and vivacity. It seems as if you actually heard all these membranes, covered with hair and furnished with claws like the wings of a bat, palpitating in the thick night air. The collection concludes with these words: "Y es ora" (It is the hour); the cock crows, and the phantoms disappear; for it is again day.

As to the esthetic and moral meaning of these works, what was it? We do not know. Goya seems to have given his opinion on the subject in one of his drawings, which represents a man with his head leant upon his arms, and a number of owls and storks flying around. The motto is, El sueño de la razón produce monstruos. This is true, but it is terribly severe.

The Caprichos are the only productions of Goya in the Bibliothèque Royale at Paris. He has, however, produced other works, – namely, the "Tauromaquia," a collection of thirty-three plates; "Scenes of the Invasion," which make twenty plates, and ought to make more than forty; the etchings after Velasquez and many others.

The "Tauromaquia" is a collection of scenes representing various episodes of the bull-fights, from the time of the Moors down to the present day. Goya was a finished aficionado, passing a considerable portion of his time with the torreros, so that he was the most competent person in the world to treat the matter thoroughly. Although the attitudes, positions, the defence and the attack, or, to speak technically, the various suertes and cogidas are remarkable for their irreproachable exactitude; Goya has invested the different scenes with his mysterious shadows and fantastic colouring. What strange and ferocious heads! What savage and odd dresses! What fury in the action! His Moors, treated somewhat in the manner of the Turks in the time of the Empire, as far as costume is concerned, have the most characteristic physiognomies imaginable – a stroke roughly scratched in, a black spot, a streak of light, is sufficient to form a personage who lives, who moves, and whose physiognomy remains for ever impressed upon your memory. The bulls and horses, although sometimes fabulous in their proportions, have an expression of life and vigour which is often wanting in the works of animal painters by profession: the exploits of Gazul, of the Cid, of Charles V., of Romero, of the Student of Falces, and of Pepe Illo, who perished miserably in the arena, are traced with a truthfulness altogether Spanish. Like the "Caprichos," the plates of the "Tauromaquia" are executed in aquatinta, touched with aquafortis.

The "Scenes of the Invasion" would afford matter for a curious comparison with the "Horrors of War," by Callot. They consist of one long series of persons hanged, heaps of dead being stripped of all they possess, women being violated, wounded persons being carried away, prisoners being shot, convents being sacked, a population in the act of flight, families reduced to beggary, and patriots being strangled; all represented with such fantastic accessories and so exorbitant an aspect as would lead any one to suppose that he was looking at an invasion of Tartars in the fourteenth century. But what delicacy, what a profound knowledge of anatomy, is displayed in all these groups, which seem to owe their existence to mere chance and the whim of the etching-needle! Does the antique Niobe surpass in depth of desolation and nobleness of expression that mother kneeling in the midst of her family before the French bayonets? Among these drawings, which admit of an easy explanation, there is one fearfully terrible and mysterious, the meaning of which, that we can dimly understand, fills you with horror and affright. It is a corpse, half-buried in the earth; it is supporting itself on its elbow, and, without looking at what it is writing, traces with its bony hand, on a paper placed near it, one word —Nada (nothingness) – which is alone worth the most terrible things Dante ever penned. Around its head, on which there is just enough flesh left to render it more frightful than a mere skull, flit, scarcely visible in the darkness of the night, a number of monstrous spectres, lighted up here and there by flashes of livid lightning. A fatidical hand holds a pair of scales, which are in the act of turning upside down. Can you conceive anything more sinister or more heartrending?

At the very conclusion of his life, which was a long one, for he was more than eighty when he died at Bordeaux, Goya improvised upon stone some lithographic sketches, entitled "Dibersion de España," and representing bull-fights. Even in these plates, traced by the hand of an old man, who had long been deaf, and who was almost blind, you can still perceive the vigour and movement of the Caprichos and the Tauromaquia. It is a most curious thing that these lithographs remind you very much of the style of Eugène Delacroix, in his illustrations to Faust.

In Goya's tomb is buried ancient Spanish art, all the world, which has now for ever disappeared, of torreros, majos, manolas, monks, smugglers, robbers, alguazils, and sorceresses; in a word, all the local colour of the Peninsula. He came just in time to collect and perpetuate these various classes. He thought that he was merely producing so many capricious sketches, when he was in truth drawing the portrait and writing the history of the Spain of former days, under the belief that he was serving the ideas and creed of modern times. His caricatures will soon be looked upon in the light of historical monuments.

CHAPTER VIII

VISIT TO THE ESCURIAL

Aridity and Desolation of the Country – First View of the Escurial – Sombre appearance of the building – The Church – The blind Cicerone – The Pantheon Pictures – Anecdote of Spanish Robbers.

In order to proceed to the Escurial, we hired one of those fantastic vehicles, of which we have already had occasion to speak, covered with grey cupids and other ornaments in the Pompadour style, dragged by four mules, and enhanced by the presence of a zagal in a tolerable masquerading suit. The Escurial is situated about seven or eight leagues from Madrid, not far from Guadarrama, at the foot of a chain of mountains. It is impossible to imagine anything more arid and desolate than the country you have to pass through in order to reach it. There is not a single tree, not a single house; nothing but a succession of steep declivities and dry ravines, which the presence of several bridges points out as the beds of different torrents, and here and there a long vista of blue mountains capped with snow or clouds. Such as it is, however, the view is not without a certain kind of grandeur; the absence of all vegetation gives an extraordinary degree of boldness and severity to the outline of the ground. In proportion as you proceed further from Madrid, the stones with which the way is thickly strewed become larger, and evince, more and more, an ambitious feeling of being taken for rocks. They are of a bluish grey, and appear, as they are scattered over the scale-like soil, like so many warts upon the wrinkled back of a centenarian crocodile; they form a thousand strange shapes upon the outline of the hills, which resemble the ruins of gigantic edifices.

Halfway on the road, at the summit of a pretty steep ascent, is a poor isolated house, the only one you meet in the course of eight leagues. Opposite it is a spring, from which a pure and icy stream trickles down, drop by drop; you drink as many glasses of water as the spring contains, let your mules rest a short time, and then set off again on your journey. Soon afterwards you perceive, standing out from the vapoury background of the mountains, and rendered visible by a bright gleam of sunshine, that Leviathan of architecture, the Escurial. At a distance, the effect is very fine; you would almost fancy it to be an immense Oriental palace, the stone cupola and the balls which terminate all the elevated points contributing very much to keep up the illusion. Before reaching it, you pass through a large wood of olive-trees, ornamented with crosses, quaintly planted on large blocks of rocks, and producing the most picturesque effect. On issuing from the wood you enter the village and find yourself before the colossus, which loses a great deal from being viewed closely, like all the other colossi in the world. The first thing that struck me was the great number of swallows and martins, wheeling about in immense swarms, and uttering a sharp, strident cry. The poor little birds appeared terrified by the death-like silence which reigned in this Thebaid, and were endeavouring to impart a little animation and noise to it.

Every one is aware that the Escurial was built in consequence of a vow made by Philip II. at the siege of Saint Quentin, when he was obliged to cannonade a church dedicated to St. Lawrence. Philip promised the Saint that he would make amends for the church of which he deprived him, by one that should be more spacious and more beautiful; and he kept his word more faithfully than the kings of this earth generally do. The Escurial, which was commenced by Juan Bautista and completed by Herrera, is assuredly, with the exception of the Egyptian pyramids, the largest heap of granite that exists upon the face of the globe; it is called, in Spain, the eighth wonder of the world, making, as each country has its own eighth wonder, at least the thirtieth eighth wonder now existing.

I am exceedingly embarrassed in giving an opinion on the Escurial. So many grave and respectable persons, who, I am happy to believe, never saw it, have spoken of it as a chef-d'œuvre and a supreme effort of human genius, that I, who am but a poor, miserable, wandering writer of feuilletons, am afraid that I shall appear to have determined to be original, and seem to take pleasure in contradicting the generally-received opinion. Despite of this, however, I declare conscientiously, and from the bottom of my heart, that I cannot help thinking the Escurial the dullest and most wearisome edifice that a morose monk and a suspicious tyrant could ever conceive for the mortification of their fellow-creatures. I am very well aware that the Escurial was erected for an austere and religious purpose, but gravity does not consist in baldness, melancholy in atrophy, or meditation in ennui; beauty of form can always be united to elevation of ideas.

The Escurial is arranged in the form of a gridiron, in honour of Saint Lawrence. Four towers, or square pavilions, represent the feet of this instrument of torture; four masses of building connect the pavilions with each other, and form the framework, while other cross rows represent the bars; the palace and the church are situated in the handle. This strange notion, which must have hampered the architect very much, is not easily perceived by the eye, although it is very visible upon the printed plan. If the visitor were not told of it, he most certainly would never discover it. I do not blame this symbolical piece of puerility, which suited the taste of the times; for I am convinced that when a certain model is given to an architect, so far from shackling him, it will, provided he has genius, prove of great use and assistance to him, and cause him to have recourse to expedients of which he would, otherwise, never have thought; but it strikes me that, in this case, he might have arrived at a far different result. Those persons who are fond of good taste and sobriety in architecture, must think the Escurial a specimen of perfection, for the only line employed in it is the straight line, and the only order the Doric order, which is the most melancholy and poorest of any.

One thing which immediately strikes you very disagreeably, is the yellow clayish colour of the walls, which you would almost imagine to be built of mud, did not the joints of the stones, marked by lines of glaring white, prove that this was not the case. Nothing can be more monotonous to behold than all these buildings, six or seven stories high, without a moulding, a pilaster, or a column, and with their small low windows, looking like the entrance to a beehive. The place is the very ideal of an hospital, or of barracks: its sole merit consists in its being built of granite, a species of merit which is of no value, since at the distance of a hundred paces the granite may be easily mistaken for the clay of which stoves are made in France. On the top is a heavy dwarfish cupola, which I can compare to nothing more aptly than the dome of the Val de Grâce, and which boasts of no other ornaments than a multitude of granite balls. All around, in order that nothing may be wanting to the symmetry of the whole, are a number of buildings in the same style, that is to say, with a quantity of small windows, and without the least ornament. These buildings are connected with each other by galleries in the form of bridges, thrown over the streets that lead to the village, which, at present, is nothing more than a heap of ruins. All the approaches to the edifice are paved with granite flags, and its limits marked by little walls three feet high, ornamented with the inevitable balls at every angle and every opening. The façade, which does not project in the least from the other portions of the building, fails to break the aridity of the general lines, and is hardly perceived, although it is of gigantic proportions.

The first place you enter is a vast courtyard, at the extremity of which is the portal of a church, presenting no remarkable feature, except some colossal statues of prophets, with gilt ornaments, and figures painted rose-colour. This courtyard is flagged, damp, and cold; the angles are overgrown with grass; you no sooner place your foot in it than you are oppressed with ennui, just as if you had a weight of lead upon your shoulders; you feel your heart contract; you think that all is over – that every joy is henceforth dead for you. At a distance of twenty paces from the door you smell an indescribable icy and insipid odour of holy water and sepulchral caverns, which is borne to you by a current of air loaded with pleurisy and catarrh. Although, outside, there may be thirty degrees of heat, the marrow freezes in your bones; you imagine that the warmth of life will never again be able to cheer the blood in your veins, which has become colder than a viper's blood. The air of the living cannot force its way through the immense thickness of the walls, which are as impenetrable as the tomb, and yet, in spite of this claustral and Moscovitish cold, the first object I beheld, on entering the church, was a Spanish woman kneeling on the ground, beating her breast with one hand, and with the other fanning herself with equal fervour. I recollect that her face had a kind of sea-green tint, which makes me shiver even now, whenever I think of it.

The cicerone who conducted us over the interior of the edifice was blind, and it was really most marvellous to see with what precision he stopped before the pictures, naming the subject of each one, and the artist by whom it was painted, without the least hesitation or mistake. He took us up to the dome, and led us through an infinity of ascending and descending corridors, which rivalled in complication the "Confessional of the Black Penitents," or of the "Château of the Pyrenees," by Anne Radcliffe. The old fellow's name is Cornelio; he was the merriest creature in the world, and appeared quite to take a delight in his infirmity.

The interior of the church is mournful and naked. Immense mouse-grey pilasters formed of granite, with a large micaceous grain like coarse salt, ascend to the roof which is painted in fresco, the blue, vapoury tones of which are ill suited to the cold, poor colour of the architecture; the retablo, gilt and sculptured in the Spanish fashion, with some very fine paintings, somewhat corrects this aridity of decoration, which sacrifices everything to some stupid notion or other of symmetry. The style of the kneeling statues of gilt bronze on each side the retablo, representing, I believe, Don Carlos and some princesses of the royal family, is grand, and the effect is very fine. The chapter which is opposite the high altar is an immense church in itself; the stalls which surround it instead of being florid and decorated with fantastic arabesques, like those at Burgos, partake of the general rigidity, and have no other ornaments than simple mouldings. We were shown the place where for fourteen years the sombre Philip II., that king born to be a grand inquisitor, used to seat himself; it is the stall that forms the angle, and a doorway cut through the thickness of the panelling communicates with the interior of the palace. Without pretending to possess any very fervent amount of devotion, I can never enter a Gothic cathedral without experiencing a mysterious and profound feeling, an extraordinary sentiment of emotion; but in the church of the Escurial I felt so crushed, so depressed, so completely under the dominion of some inflexible and gloomy power, that I was for the moment convinced of the inutility of prayer. The God of such a temple will never allow himself to be moved by any entreaties.

After visiting the church we went down into the Pantheon. This is the name given to the vault where the bodies of the kings of Spain are preserved. It is octagonal in form, thirty-six feet in diameter and thirty-eight feet in height, directly under the high altar; so that when the priest is saying mass, his feet are on the stone which forms the keystone of the vault. The staircase leading into it is formed of granite and coloured marble, and closed by a handsome bronze gate. The pantheon is lined throughout with jasper, porphyry, and other stones no less precious. In the walls there are niches with antique-formed cippi, destined to contain the bodies of those kings and queens who have left issue. A penetrating and death-like coldness reigns throughout the vault, and the polished marble glitters and sparkles in the flickering torchlight; it seems as if the walls were dripping with water, and the visitor might almost imagine himself to be in some submarine grotto. The monstrous edifice weighs you down with all its weight; it surrounds, it embraces, it suffocates you; you feel as if you were clasped by the tentacles of an immense granite polypus. The dead bodies contained in the sepulchral urns seem more dead than any others, and it is with difficulty that you can induce yourself to believe that they can ever possibly be resuscitated. In the vault, as in the church, the impression is one of sinister despair; in all this dreary place there is not one hole through which you can see the sky.

A few good pictures still remain in the Sacristy (the best have been transferred to the Royal Museum at Madrid). Among them are three or four specimens on wood of the German school, possessing a very uncommon degree of merit. The ceiling of the grand staircase is painted in fresco by Luca Jordano, and represents, allegorically, Philip II.'s vow and the foundation of the convent. The acres of wall in Spain painted by this same Luca Jordano, are something truly prodigious, and we moderns who lose our breath at the slightest exertion, find it a difficult task to conceive the possibility of such labours. Pellegrini, Luca, Gangiaso, Carducho, Romulo, Cincinnato, and many others have painted in the Escurial cloisters, vaults, and ceilings. That of the library is the work of Carducho and Pellegrini, and is a good sample of light, clear fresco colouring; the composition is very rich and the twining arabesques in the best possible taste. The library of the Escurial is remarkable for one peculiarity, and that is, that the books are placed on the shelves with their backs to the wall and their edges to the spectator; I do not know the reason of this odd arrangement. The library is particularly rich in Arabic manuscripts, and must contain many inestimable and totally unknown treasures. At present that the conquest of Algiers has rendered Arabic quite a fashionable and ordinary language, it is to be hoped that this rich mine will be thoroughly worked by our young orientalists. The other books appeared to be mostly works of theology and scholastic philosophy. We were shown some manuscripts on vellum, with illuminated margins ornamented with miniatures; but, as it was Sunday, and the librarian was absent, we could not hope for anything else, and we were consequently obliged to depart without having seen a single incunable edition; which, by the way, was a much greater disappointment to my companion than to myself, who, unfortunately, am not an enthusiast in the matter of bibliography, or anything else.