Iberian Reminiscences. Fifteen years' travelling impressions of Spain and Portugal

Front matter

IBERIAN REMINISCENCES. 7 London Chapman id. Hall , Limited IBERIAN REMINISCENCES FIFTEEN YEARS' TRAVELLING IMPRESSIONS OF SPAIN AND PORTUGAL. By A. GALLENGA. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I. LONDON: CHAPMAN AND HALL (limited). 1883. CHABLES DICKBNS AND EVANS. CBY8TAL PALACE PBESS. TO ANNA GALLENGA, THIS RECORD OF SPANISH TRAVEL, OF WHICH SHE OFTEN SHAEED THE GOOD AND BAD WITH EQUAL CHEERFULNESS, Is affectionately HeiJtcateD BY THE AUTHOR. PKEFACE. At the time my book "A Summer Tour in Russia" came out in print, an anonymous letter reached me through my publishers. It was the merest scrawl. It said : " I hope Spain will be the next work you write." And the work on Spain is now written. This is not the first time my half-formed resolution has been determined by the promptings of an unknown and benevolent, or known and insignificant, counsellor.

Nor am I the only human being influenced by similar suggestions. The mere germ of a thought springs up in our brain ; it acquires growth and development ; it becomes the subject of long and anxious deliberations ; till decision hangs on so nice a balance that any feather's weight may sink the scale. Long residence in Spain at various intervals during fifteen years (1865-1879) had made me familiar with almost every part of the Iberian Peninsula. Spain was thrown open before me as a vast theatre, all alive with the performance of a play of which the whole nation constituted the dramatis personœ, and of which I, with others of my calling, filled the pit and galleries. " If I have learnt nothing about the country," I reasoned ; " if I have gained no insight into the people's character, it was certainly not from lack of good opportunities.

Why should I not turn to some purpose such knowledge as I may have acquired ? " So I reasoned : the anonymous letter came, and my mind was made up. There is little fear of Spain ever being a subject destitute of interest for English readers. It has been observed, I hardly remember when or by whom, " that there can never be any real progress for Europe,

Preface

. VIII till she stands on better legs." "Whatever thought may grow up in the head — which is Germany ; whatever impulse may come from the heart — France ; on whatever action the arms — England and Russia, may be bent, there will never be harmony in the system, till the vital principle has reached those nether extremities — those three Southern Peninsulas — by the aid of which the tour of the globe was first accomplished. We will say nothing here about Greece or Italy. There were in those two countries fallen nations which have lately been roused into new existence, but which had sunk tco deeply to be able soon to rise to a greatness commensurate either with their own conceit, or with their neighbours' expectations and wishes. In their case there were death and revival ; a long night of foreign bondage; a pale dawn of bravely asserted, but not thoroughly achieved independence.

Europe had deposed them ; Europe has restored them. They have as yet no self -won life of their own. But Spain is self-standing by the mere fact of her geo graphical position. There is no instance of her ever altogether losing the mastery over her own destinies, or of her not striving to regain what was lost by her own strenuous exertions, even against all odds and under the most sinister circumstances. If her period of decline came so soon ; if she has sunk now to so low a level, it was her own fault. Alone she did it. Even since the days of Philip II. — that king who " with all his faults was very Spanish" — Spain was undone by her noblest instincts ; by her virtues exaggerated into vices ; by a loyalty degenerating into servility ; by a religion roused into fanaticism ; by an adventurous spirit maddened into Quixotism; by a chivalrous valour begetting a blind worship of militarism ; above all things, by that superlative conceit which made her uuable to distinguish between defensive and offensive pride.

It was by a too sure assertion of her titles to the highest rank that Spain sank to the very lowest. The day of disenchantment came at last. The French invasion made Spain fully aware of her faults ; it laid open before her the abyss of abjection into which she was plunged ; and then, by a reaction worthy of her ancient days, she stood up to help herself with that daring to which heaven and earth never fail to bring help. With England at her back, she re conquered her independence and aspired to freedom. But

PREFACE.

. IX then, unfortunately, by a natural but fatal revulsion of feel ings, she no longer looked to herself for a reconstruction of her social order, or for a reawakening of her intellectual energies. She borrowed ideas and institutions from her neighbours. With all her hatred of the French, she french ified herself from head to foot. She echoed the French cries for Revolution, Constitution, Democracy. The result was half a century of alternate anarchy and tyranny ; a new Ministry every three months ; a revision of the Constitution every three years ; the rehearsal in a few months of all those mad pranks which have made the last ninety years of French history a time of the sublime interwoven with the ridiculous. With this difference, however, that in France it was by a foreign sword that the social knot, when hopelessly tangled, was twice cut (in 1814 and 1870), whereas in Spain no deus ex machind ever came from abroad ; and order was invariably brought back by some native "saviour of society."

Spain only succumbed to Napoleons of her own breeding. Though a mere tyro, and not a promising one, in the political school, Spain excelled her French mistress in militarism. A pronunciamiento may be looked upon as a " thing of Spain " par excellence. It is not impossible that this very militarism, which was for many years Spain's greatest bane, may have been the lance of Achilles healing the wounds itself inflicted. We may hope to have seen the last of Spanish pronunciamientos in 1874, when Alfonso II. was carried to the throne on the soldiers' bucklers. Since then Spain has been for seven years under the same Sovereign ; and it was for four years under the same Cabinet. The country has gone through a period of halcyon days ; its annals have been comparatively silent, as are those of all happy, peaceful, well-ordered communities.

Spain is growing rich ; extending her trade, reviving her traffic ; sounding the depth of that bottomless pit of her debt. She is at work, and enjoying the fruit of her work. Has Spain really turned over a new leaf ? This is a question to which nothing but the most intimate knowledge of the country and people can furnish an answer. To such knowledge I should be only too glad if my writings could contribute to any extent. It is not my purpose to write the history of the last fifty, or even the last fifteen years of Spanish revolutions. There is no patriot among the Spaniards

PREFACE.

X themselves that would not shrink from such a task in dismay and shame ; dismay at the difficulty, shame at the loathsome ness of the theme. It is one of those subjects about which "the least said the soonest mended;" from which it would equally be impossible to derive amusement or instruction. My only object is to give sketches of the country; to blend the description of localities with remarks on national peculiarities; to bring men and things of Spain before English readers. There is nothing appertaining to that country that may properly be considered extraneous to my subject ; nothing, perhaps, excepting Spanish politics ; and even these only in so far as it may be possible to dissociate the life of any country from its history, cause from effect, the past from the present. It would hardly be natural to expect that I should go with my memory over spots associated with recent events, and especially with occurrences of which I had myself been a witness, without allowing myself a passing allusion to them, and in some instances even dwelling upon them, as long as they may be expected to give the localities a peculiar interest, and set them forth in distinct prominence and relief.

Here and there some page of Spanish contemporary history ; a few short remarks upon Spanish politics and politicians, may unavoidably occur. But this was not intended as a historical or political work. It is merely a traveller's book : a companion to those who wish to go abroad ; a pastime to those who prefer staying at home. The Falls, Llandogo, Monmouthshire, April, 1883. CONTENTS OF YOL. I. Boost K. QUEEN ISABELLA (1865-1866).

Chapter I. Paris To Madrid

Spanish travelling — Ancient and modern — On the saddle — By stagecoach — By rail — The frontier — First glimpse into Spain — The country — The people — The Basques — The plain of Castile — Delights of a Spanish custom-house — Old gowns and new. In the year of grace 1865, the journey from Paris to Madrid, over a distance of 1,450 kilometres, or 966 English miles, could be accomplished in thirty-six hours. In older times, yet within living man's recollection, it was a feat not to be forgotten, and rather to be boasted of for a lifetime. You began by making your last will and testament, and depositing it in the hands of a trusty notary ; then you came down, in five days and five nights, by the rumbling diligence to the Pyrenean frontier, when the grand and truly epic part of your expedition properly began.

B VOL. I. Stage-coaches and post-chaises were indeed not unknown south of the Pyrenees, but men who had profited by French experience, and had heard some thing of Peninsular life, not unwisely looked upon the barrier of those mountains as the final boundary of the European world upon wheels. They entered Spain as they would have landed in Africa, and if they had put sufficient money in their purses, they hired or, better, purchased mules and horses, and with a whole caravan of men and beasts — not forgetting bread and wine, powder and lead — they rode over the plain of Castile as they would have done across the Libyan desert, relying on their own means of subsistence and defence, and giving their own tent the preference over the dingy posada. All this, which, with plenty of time and money at command, was undoubtedly the pleasantest way of travelling in Spain, was by this time and for ever at an end.

Since August, 1864, the railway had been open from the French to the Spanish capital, and the triumph of our "iron age" had equally been achieved throughout the length of the Peninsula, the various lines spreading out from the common centre of Madrid into several directions like the spokes of a wheel. This must be accounted progress, but in matters of social advancement it is always important to distinguish what is relative from what is absolute. A horse and a donkey can both walk and trot, but how ever much the two quadrupeds may be made to mend their paces, the inferior brute will never attain the speed of the nobler animal. As from the time that saddles and pillions fell out of fashion there were roads and roads, coaches and coaches, so there are now railways and railways. The Englishman who posted from any part of his own island to London and Dover at the rate of ten and even twelve miles an hour, soon found his speed reduced to a poor couple of leagues upon crossing the Channel ; and even that lumbering French diligence which greeted him at Calais, with its unwieldy trappings, quaint gear, elephantine team, and Noah's ark coupe, interieur, and rotonde, was some thing that became worse and worse at every stage, as he either advanced into the Southern Departments of France, or ventured across the borders over the Rhine, the Alps, or the Pyrenees.

Those five or six poor miles became four or three and even two. On very steep roads the power of horse flesh was eked out by relays of auxiliary bullocks. The reo'ularity and punctuality on which pedantic France and pragmatic Germany prided themselves, almost to the traveller's discomfort, became things unknown in more southern latitudes, till in Spain, as in Italy, it was often extremely difficult to know at what hour any B given vehicle would start, always impossible to guess at what hour it would arrive. The same proportions are maintained in our age, when steam and iron have superseded blood and muscle. We left Paris for Madrid at 8.15 by the evening — the only " through " — train, and reached Bordeaux at 7.5 in the morning; a very creditable stage of 578 kilometres, averaging 52 kilometres or 36 miles hourly.

We left Bordeaux at 8 a.m. and arrived at the frontier of the Bidassoa at 1.45 p.m., accomplishing 236 kilometres in 5h. 45m., so that the hourly rate, even in France, had fallen from 52 to 39 kilometres, or from 36 to 29 miles. Finally, from the Spanish frontier at Irun, leaving at 2.50 p.m., we travelled to Madrid in 18 hours, over a distance of 635 kilometres or 394 miles ; that is, at the rate of 21 miles an hour — allowing for a Spanish express about half the speed that a similar train usually averages in England, and keeping up about the same difference that existed between the respective countries in the palmy days of stage-coaches. The Spaniards, besides, true to their old traditions, scorn to be tied up to hours. Their trains, like their mail-coaches, always allow "lots of time" for the benefit of belated travellers ; they start and arrive at "no particular time."

Our train, which was due at Madrid at 8.3 in the morning, was not in before 10.40 by their own clock at the station ; and that for no reason in the world that we could discover, except the snail's pace we crept on at, now and then, and the un conscionable length of the stoppages at stations where the guard had no apparent business besides lighting his cigarette and enjoying a quiet chat with the hermit station-master. On we plodded uphill and downhill as if drawn by short-winded and broken-kneed engines, the very dogs rushing out of their kennels at some of the petty villages on the line, running along and barking at us, in front and rear and on both sides, and doubling round and round us as if we were some vile old patache with which they could run races at will. The tediousness -of the journey is not relieved by any remarkable beauty on the road.

The first step into Spain seems, indeed, to usher you into a land of Eden ; but as you advance, the country is all dreariness from end to end. We came through the flat monotonous extent of the Landes from Bordeaux to Bayonne ; we rushed into a number of short tunnels close to that last-named city ; we caught the first glimpses of the lower spurs of the Pyrenees ; we looked up at the beautiful valley of the smooth-flowing Adour, and advanced through the green pastures, lighted up by the warm southern sun, on to Biarritz, in sight of the calm Bay of Biscay, on to St. Jean de Luz and Hendaye. We were here at the last outposts of France, facing the first Spanish custom-house officers at Irun, across the estuary of the small Rubicon-like stream of the Bidassoa ; that little Rubicon with its grim dilapidated old fortalice of Fuenterrabia towering on the steep bank on the Spanish side, and the "Isle of the Conference" lying low at the water's edge, " like a dirty pocket handkerchief," as somebody observed ; a scene of un dying historical interest, from the days of Francis I. to those of Soult and Wellington — the theatre no less of warlike exploits than of treaties and alliances, the pomps and pageantries by which two nations, parted by mutual implacable animosity, strove to hit upon schemes of peace and amity, which only led to graver complications, and brought about more dangerous and disastrous collisions.

All the way across the line, and through the Basque provinces of Guipuzcoa, Biscay, and Alava, by St. Sebastian, Toloza, and Vittoria, our way lay through the gorges of verdant mountains, along the depression between the Pyrenees and the Cantabrian chain — a way wrought through Alpine difficulties by consummate engineering skill, the achievement of art enhancing at every step the sublimity of natural beauty. It was Sunday, in the afternoon, and the population of the towns, in their Sunday best, mustered in no very dense crowds at the stations ; a mixture of costume in which the European chimney-pot, the meagre French paletot, greatly, alas! outnumbered the more picturesque Basque slouching red cap— the boina, as they call it— the ample cloak, or capa, the manta, or blanket, and the black mantilla, the ladies' head-gear of old Spain.

These happy Basques, a finely-built, well-favoured mountain race, returned our gaze in all earnestness and with serene composure, happy in their Sabbath rest, quite at home in that idleness which best suits and becomes them. Ours was a short, and by no means a crowded train : we had left thousands of fugitives from Madrid, still lingering at Biarritz, at St. Jean, and the other places on that coast, loth yet to go back to their cholera-haunted streets. For no less than 80,000 in habitants, we were told, had fled from Madrid, and most of the remaining ones had barricaded themselves in their houses, and put the world in quarantine. Of those passengers who had crossed the border with us, the greater part were left at the various stations on the road; and when the train reached Madrid, my only fellow-travellers in the luggage-room were English ; one a brave lady who feared nothing and who travelled under my escort, or under whose escort I travelled ; the other a gentleman from Natal, taking Madrid as a first stage on his roundabout way to Scotland, where he was going to look for a wife.

So great was the dread with which the Asiatic scourge still struck the hearts of this brave yet life loving southern race ! It was deep night when we emerged from the mountain pass, and entered old Castile at Miranda, where supper awaited us at the station — rather in different fare, and worse wine, although the refreshment room there, as all along the line, was in French hands. From that hour, 9 p.m., till daybreak, we toiled across that dreary land of Castile, the most bleak and inhospitable of inhabited regions, hardly obtaining by moonlight glimpses of Burgos, Palencia, Valladolid, and other notable towns on our route. We had rain and a sprinkling of snow as we crossed the barren stony ridges between Avila and Escorial, on the skirts of the Guadarrama ridge. We were at Escorial after 9 a.m., and, as I said, arrived at Madrid two hours later.

Long and sorrowful were the trials of our patience at the Madrid custom-house. The contents of a box belonging to the lady who travelled in my company were overhauled by half a score of carabineros, or custom-house guards, who, in the scarcity of passengers, had leisure to turn all their attention to us, and who objected to one of the lady's silk dresses as " new." The lady pleaded guilty to the good condition of her garment, but contended that it had been put on and worn ; but the douanier, laying the written law before her eyes, urged that the dress bore no visible mark of having been at all in use. It looked as good as new and must needs be considered and paid for as new. The discussion about the subject was long and wearisome, though it was carried on with perfect temper and with the utmost politeness on both sides.

Old experienced gaugers were called up in consultation. My male fellow traveller and myself, as in knightly duty bound, took up the cudgels for the sex. But it was all in vain. The lady had either to give up her dress or to redeem it by a duty or fine of 150 reals (about a guinea and a half). The money was forth coming ; the dress was delivered up, and we were allowed to depart in peace after the loss of about an hour's time; a precious hour's time, let me tell you, which was like a year to poor creatures who had been tossed about in railway carriages for the space of what was to be thirty-six hours, but stretched out to something very like forty hours. The moral for ladies is : Never attempt to enter Spain with silk dresses in your boxes; not, at least, until they are so soiled and crumpled that your very ladies'-maids would not have them. To cleanliness and neatness of packing no mercy will be shown; for such things, it would seem, are beyond the good Spaniard's comprehension.

Chapter II. Isabella In The Country

Madrid and the cholera— Absence of the Court— The O'Donnell Government— Spanish parties — Spanish politics — The Queen at La Granja — Her character — Narvaez and O'Donnell — The Queen at El Pardo — The Camarilla— Father Claret and the Bleeding Nun — Clericalism and Liberalism — Bad weather — Gloomy forebodings — The Queen's return. Madrid used at all times to be designated as "a Court in the midst of a desert." It might safely, at the time of our arrival, bear the name of a desert in a desert. There was " nobody in town," although we were in mid November, and the season usually sets in before All-Hallows. The Queen's palace and those of the grandees exhibited nothing but long rows of blank shutters. We had the pick and choice of any apartments at the hotels. And the board and lodging houses about the Puerta del Sol had large placards of " Se Alquila " (to let) on each of the balconies, giving them the look of London tenements with a sale within in the premises.

The very beggars had disappeared, being probably off to the watering-places with their benefactors, and the remaining few appealed to us on the special plea that "now the Christians were out of town, it was for us to help them or they perished." Yet the cholera was over, or nearly so. But not the dread of it. The new cases hardly averaged a score in twenty-four hours, and the actual deaths might be told on a man's fingers. The authorities had even been deliberating on the expediency of sino-inw a " Te Deum," to return thanks for the town's DO ? deliverance from the ravaging scourge, and the per formance had only been put off in consideration of the rash confidence with which the mere announcement might inspire the thousands of fugitives still lingering on the Pyrenees and at the sea-shores, as it was feared that too sudden and too general an influx of fresh blood into the plague-stricken city might lead to a new outbreak of the disorder.

The Asiatic malady, however, was not the only, nor yet the main, cause of uneasiness. On the morning after my arrival, I called at my banker's, then busy with his lawyer, to whom he introduced me. The lawyer was a Member of the Cortes, a well-known politician, in later times filling various important offices in the Government. He had a true Spanish face, intensely bilious, with hollow eyes and sunken cheeks, narrow at the temples ; a high pointed brow, indicative of sharpness, tempered by a great development of the upper organs of veneration and self-esteem ; all noble instincts, yet apt to run into the extremes of bigotry and fanaticism. Upon hearing my name and errand, this gentleman clasped his hands together and raised them to heaven with a somewhat pantomimic effusion, exclaiming; " Dios mio ! what dire political tempests are preparing to burst on this devoted land, that the London Jupiter should send us one of his stormy petrels % " I was not sure whether the man was jesting or in earnest : but it was not long ere I perceived that a vague dread of impending evil was almost a normal state of men's minds in Spain at the time.

If you glanced at the papers, if you listened to your friend's talk, you would hardly go to bed at night ; for the great crisis, El Cataclismo, was inevitable, and you hardly knew what awakening awaited you in the morning. The chronic political disorders of the country, it was thought, were coming to a head, and no one would go surety that to-day or to-morrow might not bring about a catastrophe. Queen Isabella II. was then on the throne of Spam. She was thirty-five years old, had succeeded her father in 1833, and had been declared to be of age and allowed to consider herself her own and her country's mistress ten years later. At the head of her Government was now O'Donnell, a soldier who had been for several years disputing the supreme power with a rival soldier, Narvaez, and who had lately gained a permanent ascendency by his exploits in the Morocco War — a stupid war of which he, and a young officer, Prim, had won the laurels, and of which the im poverished but vainglorious nation was now painfully yet not grudgingly paying the expenses.

The party on which O'Donnell relied for support bore the name of " Union Liberal." It had sprung from one of the military revolutions which had become almost daily occurrences, and professed to have brought together all the shades of Progressist or Democratic opinions, that of Republicanism alone excepted ; and it had to contend against the Moderados, the followers of Narvaez, who called themselves Conservatives, and were, if anything, reactionists ; so that the Moderation of the one party was about as genuine as the Liberalism of the other. We were on the eve of a general election, and meetings had been held in the capital. But the destinies of the country were not supposed by any sane man to depend on the issue of popular suffrage, any more than they could be influenced by the result of parliamentary debates.

There was no fair contest between a well-regulated Government and a legal Opposition. There was endless factious plotting, occasional breaking out on the one side, and the constant pressure of the strong hand ; the threat, and sometimes the use of the sabre on the other. " Any other statesman than a soldier at the head of the Government," said my banker, a shrewd York shireman, " has become a sheer impossibility in Spain." On the occasion of the coming election, the O'Donnell Government had proclaimed their willingness to allow the amplest liberty of open discussion. They added, however, that their energy in checking any attempt at licence would be commensurate with their liberality. On the other hand, the Opposition held meetings, and passed resolutions to the effect that " the time of mere talk was at an end, and the moment for action had arrived."

What the Government understood by " energy " was simply the determination to insure a vast majority by fraud or force. What the Opposition called "action" was merely retraimiento, i.e. absten tion from voting. The ruling party compelled the electors to vote in their favour, in their firm con viction that the people could have no better representa tives than their noble selves ; and their adversaries kept away from the polls to have a pretext to declare that national representation was a delusion and a snare and to claim the right to look for redress to the only argument that remained — that of secret conspiracy or open revolt. With such a disposition of mind of the contending parties, what could one look forward to but the "great cataclysm " ? The different phases of this party warfare had hitherto had no other consequence than a change of Ministry.

It was a Narvaez turning out an O'Donnell ; an O'Donnell superseding a Narvaez. But now it seemed as if the current of public opinion was setting in a different direction.. I was at a club one evenings, where all the well-known leaders of political parties chanced to be brought together. " Look at us ! " said one of them, speaking out loudly before a large com pany. " Here we are, Moderados, Exaltados, Pro gresistas, y Compsania. There is not one principle in the whole world on which we do not disagree toto cœlo ; and yet there is one point on which we are fully and thoroughly of one mind, and that is — that there never can be rest or peace, or welfare in Spain, so long as Isabella II. is on the throne." The Queen whom these gentlemen seemed sure to turn out on such easy terms was, at that moment, lingering at her royal seat of La Granja de San Ildefonso, long after the time that her return to town had been formally announced ; a phenomenon that did not admit of a very ready explanation, for the sojourn of La Granja was little to the taste of Her Majesty, and it was with the greatest difficulty that in other years she could be prevailed upon to abide in that bleak spot through September.