Chapter IV: Granada (2)

In this hall a temporary chapel was set up, and mass was celebrated, on the taking of the city by the Spaniards.

Crossing the Hall of the Two Sisters, we enter the beautiful Mirador de "Lindaraja," the most charming and elegant of all the apartments in the palace. Through three tall windows, once filled with coloured crystals, we look down into the pretty Patio de Daraxa, which, like the chamber, does not derive its name from an imaginary sultana, but from a word meaning "vestibule." It is a delightful garden, where shade is always to be obtained between the closely planted cypresses, orange, and peach trees, rising between twin hedges of box and bushes of rose and myrtle. In the centre is a seventeenth-century fountain. Here you will always find some artist committing to canvas his impressions of one of the fairest gardens men have fashioned for themselves.

The rooms on the other side of the patio were built by Charles V., and include the Tocador de la Reina, or Queen's Boudoir, a prettily decorated belvedere affording an entrancing view. It was in this room that Washington Irving took up his quarters. Théophile Gautier slept sometimes in the hall of the Abencerrages, sometimes in that of the Two Sisters, and was impressed by the eerieness of the palace at night. Yet there is not a manor-house in England or a château in France that is not more suggestive of the spectral and uncanny than these gilded halls and open courts. However, everyone has his own preconceptions of the weird and the picturesque.

From the Patio de Daraxa we enter the very interesting Baths, ably restored by the late Don Rafael Contreras. The Sala de las Camas, or chamber of repose, is among the most brilliantly decorated rooms in the palace, yet, as elsewhere in this neglected pile, the gilding is being suffered to fade and the tiling in the niches, I noticed, is loosening and breaking up. From a gallery running round the chamber, the music of the odalisques was wafted down to the sultan reclining in one of the divans below. He must have been in no hurry to leave this spot, where he dreamily puffed at his hubble-bubble and watched the play of the fountain. The light came from apertures in the superb artesonado ceiling. Without, on a stone seat, the eunuchs mounted guard and preserved their lord's repose from interruption. The actual baths are contained in two adjacent chambers. A staircase ascended to the Hall of the Two Sisters above, for the use, not improbably, of the ladies of the harem. On leaving the baths you may follow the tunnel across the uninteresting Patio de la Reja and beneath the Tower of Comares, to the Patio del Mexuar.

No visitor to the Alhambra must omit to walk round the outer wall or enceinte, and to inspect the towers. The Torre de las Damas, a fortified tower dating from the time of Yusuf I., was inhabited by Ismaïl, the brother of Mohammed V., and marked the palace limits on this side. It contains a tastefully decorated hall. Adjacent to it is a beautiful if gaudy little Mohammedan mihrab or oratory, approached through a private garden. Here was the house of Anastasio de Bracamonte, the esquire of the Conde de Tendilla, to whom was assigned the custody of the Alhambra at the Reconquest. The Puerta de Hierro, a little further on, was restored at the same time, and faces the gate and path leading to the Generalife. Passing the Torre de los Picos, we reach the Torre de la Cautiva, which contains a beautiful chamber, over which a lovely rosy tint is diffused by the tiles and stucco. The Torre de las Infantas, built by Mohammed VII., is a perfect example of an Oriental dwelling-house. Through the usual zigzag vestibule you reach a hall with a fountain in the centre and alcoves in three of the sides. The decoration is perhaps over elaborate. The towers on the other side of the enceinte were, as I have said, intended mainly for defence. Near the ruinous Torre del Agua, at the south-east extremity, a viaduct crosses the ravine from the Generalife, and some of the water precipitates itself over the brow of the hill in a mass of vivid living greenery. Further on, towards the Gate of Justice, is the Torre de los Siete Suelos, through which Boabdil is said to have made his last exit. It is supposed to extend far underground, and to contain much buried treasure. So at least Irving was told by the inhabitants, or possibly told them! Hence issues the Belludo, the spectral pack, which traverses the streets of Granada by night--also according to legend. This story of the Wild Huntsman crops up, in one form or another, in every part of Europe. There are the Dandy Dogs in Cornwall, the Wild Huntsman in Germany, Thibaut le Tricheur in the valley of the Loire, the Chasseur Noir of Fontainebleau, and so on. Folk-lore of this sort is easily fabricated. Foreigners in search of the picturesque ask the natives of such a place as this if ghosts do not haunt the ruins. The guide, anxious to please, says "Doubtless!" The foreigner goes on to tell him of spectres that affect this particular class of building at home; and the guide readily devises a local version of the yarn for the benefit of the next stranger. I have found that the peasantry in most European countries hear of their local traditions and folk-lore first through the medium of books. And these remarks apply with especial force to the people of Latin countries, whom, contrary to the received opinion, I know to be less imaginative and less superstitious than northerners. It is natural that the gloomy forests of Germany and Sweden, rather than the sunlit plains of Andalusia, should generate dark fancies.

Strictly speaking the Generalife, the Trianon of the Moorish kings, is a more beautiful place than the Alhambra, though it has no architectural merit. It became the property at the Reconquest of a Christianized Moor, Don Pedro de Granada, who claimed to be descended from the famous Ben Hud, and from whose family it passed into the possession of the Marquises of Campotejar. The approach lies along a magnificent avenue of cypresses and tall shrubs. Arrived at the entrance you are admitted by a very comely damsel, and allowed to wander about the lovely gardens by yourself and to stay there all day if you like. At the far end of the first court is a poor collection of portraits, among which is one--No. 11--absurdly supposed to be a portrait of Ben Hud (died about 1237), though the person is dressed in the costume of the fifteenth century. This is the portrait which English travellers, and even the usually correct Baedeker, persist in mistaking for Boabdil's.

The gardens of the Generalife are beyond all praise. Water bubbles up everywhere, and moistens the roots of gorgeous oleanders, myrtles, orange trees, cedars, and cypresses--the tallest trees in Spain. Beneath one of these--that to the right as you reach the head of the first flight of steps--the sultana is alleged to have kept her tryst with Hamet, the Abencerrage. Not a bad place, this, for a lovers' meeting. You rise from one flower-laden terrace to another till you reach the ugly belvedere--scribbled all over with idiots' names--whence you obtain a ravishing view of the Alhambra, the city, the Vega, and the mountains. The hours spent in the Generalife Gardens will be remembered as among the pleasantest of one's lifetime.

It may be, as a French writer states, impossible to tickle the surface of Granada without discovering Moorish remains, but certainly, outside the Alhambra, very few are to be seen above ground. The most conspicuous of them in the lower town is, on the whole, the Casa del Carbon, a dilapidated structure with a bold horseshoe archway which confronts you as you cross the Reyes Catolicos near the Post Office. The house is now used as a coal depot, but beneath the thick coating of grime you may discern the traces of graceful decorative work. The building is said to have been a corn exchange in Moorish days. More interesting are the vestiges of the ancient walls that girdled the oldest quarter, _el viejo Albaicin_. They were built in great part by Christian captives--perhaps by those whose chains are hung up on the walls of San Juan de los Reyes at Toledo. The Moors of Granada grew embittered by their reverses, and treated their Christian subjects harshly. The martyrs whom the monument on the Alhambra hill commemorates are not merely the creatures of pious imagination. There is an ugly story, too, of an unfortunate monk accused of heretical doctrines, who took refuge at Granada and was burnt at the stake by the Moslems.

Two of the old gatehouses on this side of the city are still standing. They are massive crenellated towers, pierced with round-headed archways. I do not consider them entrancingly picturesque; they form the northern entrances to the Albaicin quarter, which is now a perplexing congeries of squalid houses, formless convents, and churches tottering to their fall. Whatever interest its antiquity may excite is lost in disgust at its wretchedness. On the outskirts dwell the gipsies--mostly in semi-underground burrows, and left very much to themselves by the local authority. These are the poor creatures who are dragged out to bore visitors with their wearisome dances, the fee charged for which goes almost entirely into the pockets of the guides. The gipsies of Spain are not nomadic. There are people in Granada who wish they were.

In the Albaicin the Zirite sultans had their palaces, one of which was called the House of the Weathercock, from the bronze figure of a horseman that surmounted it and served as a vane. Washington Irving has written a story about it. Fragments of all these ancient buildings are incorporated with modern houses, and may be identified by those who care to take the trouble. Romantic legends (of the precise nature of which I am ignorant) cluster round the Casa de las Tres Estrellas, possibly because it affords ingress to a subterranean passage leading no man knows whither. But I do not think you will be tempted to linger long in this odoriferous, wormeaten quarter. You may be said to have escaped from it when you reach the picturesque Carrera de Darro, the embankment of that narrow stream facing the Alhambra. Here may be seen a Moorish bath at one of the private houses, and--much more delightful to the artist--a broken Moorish bridge, the Puente del Cadi, to which a path led down from the Torre de las Armas. Against the little church near this point you will notice a white corner house with a handsome doorway in the Renaissance style. At the angle of the house is a balcony, bearing the odd inscription, "Esperandola del Cielo" ("Waiting for it from Heaven"). The words are accounted for by the following story: The house was built by Hernando de Zafra, the astute secretary of Ferdinand and Isabella, and the negotiator of the capitulation of Granada. He suspected his daughter of a love affair with an unknown cavalier. To satisfy his doubts he surprised her one day, and found his page assisting the lover to escape by the window. Baulked of his prey the enraged father turned upon the lad. "Mercy," implored the page. "Look for it in Heaven!" answered the Don, as he hurled his daughter's accomplice after her lover into the street below. There are those who say that De Zafra had no daughter, and that he has been libelled in this matter. But the episode is more probable than the foreign-made yarns about the Alhambra.

The rivers of Granada are more spoken of than seen. At the foot of the Alhambra the Darro disappears, its channel through the town having been roofed over at different epochs. Till the middle of the last century the houses of the Zacatin looked at the back upon the stream, as may be seen from a picture by Roberts in the South Kensington Galleries. There was a local proverb which said "Ugly as the back of the Zacatin," an evidence of the persistent confusion of the ugly and the picturesque. This part of the stream is now covered by the Reyes Catolicos Street. The famous Zacatin--a lane-like thoroughfare, like those we have seen in Seville--was once the principal street in Granada, and seems to have been full of animation in Gautier's time. That brilliant Frenchman speaks of meeting there parties of students from Salamanca, playing as they went on the guitar, triangles, and castanets--truly a singular mode of taking one's walks abroad, such as even the Spaniards of the 'thirties and 'forties must have marvelled at exceedingly. Are we to understand by this remarkable passage that the alumni of Salamanca formed processions like those of the Salvation Army, whenever they met by chance in the public street, or that, like the fine lady of Banbury Cross, they were determined to move nowhere without a musical accompaniment? At all events, the Zacatin is quiet enough nowadays. It still contains some of the best shops in the town and is one of the few comparatively shady walks outside the precincts of the Alhambra. It leads you to the far-famed Plaza de Bibarrambla, with the name of which we have been familiarized by Byron's rendering of the Spanish ballad, "Ay de mi, Alhama!" The square, like so much else in Granada, has been so completely modernized that nothing remains to recall the days when the sultans here assisted at pageants and tournaments, wherein Christians often took part. It is edifying to learn that Spanish knights, forbidden in their own country to cut each other's throats, often resorted hither to do so, by gracious permission of his Moorish Majesty.

We are now in the neighbourhood of the second great sight of Granada--the Cathedral with its adjoining buildings. The church called the Sagrario is an eighteenth-century structure immediately adjoining the west front of the Cathedral, on the south side, which served for a time as the metropolitan church of Granada. The interior is sombre, heavy, and Churrigueresque--a style which, it always strikes me, might have been devised by an undertaker accustomed to a high-class business. One of the chapels, however, is interesting. It contains the bones of "the magnificent cavalier, Fernando del Pulgar, Lord of El Salar," as the inscription records. This gallant knight, during the last siege of Granada, penetrated into the city with fifteen horsemen, and nailed a paper bearing the Ave Maria on the door of the mosque. This brave exploit earned for him and his descendants the right of remaining covered in the Cathedral and before the king. In Philip II.'s time the Marqués del Salar, the representative of the family, was fined for appearing covered before the High Court of Granada. He appealed to the king, invoking the privilege conferred on his ancestor. "Not so," replied Philip; "you may wear your bonnet in the presence of the king, but not in the sacred presence of Justice." With the fine was built the staircase in the Audiencia in the Plaza Nueva.

Behind the Sagrario is the mausoleum of Ferdinand and Isabella--the Capilla Real--a temple peculiarly sacred in the eyes of all good Spaniards. The two great sovereigns lie here in the heart of the city which they recovered for Christendom, even as many great soldiers have caused their remains to be buried on the sites of their greatest victories. The chapel, founded in 1504 and completed in 1517, is a noble example of late Gothic. The exterior is very simple, the decoration consisting mainly of two highly ornate balustrades, surmounting each of the two stages. The well-known devices and monograms of the founders are interwoven with the decoration. Through a portal flanked by the figures of heralds we enter the chapel--plain, bright, and airy. The chancel is railed off by a magnificent grille of gilt ironwork, wrought by Maestre Bartolomé of Jaen, in 1522. Between this and the altar are the superb tombs of Ferdinand and Isabella, and of their daughter Joanna and her husband, Philip I. The former is ascribed to a Florentine sculptor, Domenico Fancelli.

The recumbent effigies of the Reyes Catolicos are full of expression and majesty. Both wear their crowns, and Ferdinand is in full armour. At the angles of the tomb are seated figures, and the sides are sculptured with medallions and escutcheons and the figures of angels and saints. The figures of the unhappy Joanna and her Flemish consort are less lifelike, and the decoration is much more florid. It must be admitted that the Renaissance character of these sepulchral monuments contrasts rather oddly with the Gothic surroundings. The kneeling statues of the founders at the sides of the altar are believed to be actual likenesses. The reliefs on the retablo, by Vigarni, represent the surrender of Granada and the subsequent baptism of the Moors. In the former, both the sovereigns are shown, in the company of Cardinal Mendoza, receiving the keys from Boabdil; in the latter, we note that the candidates for baptism are so many that the rite is being administered by means of a syringe.

Beneath the tombs is the vault containing all that was mortal of the makers of Modern Spain. The sacristan thrusts a lighted taper forward into the gloomy abode of death, and you are able to distinguish five coffins--those of Ferdinand and Isabella, Philip, Joanna, and the Infante Miguel. Philip's coffin, it will be remembered, was carried about by his lovesick widow till she had to be parted from it by force. The coffins are rude, bulging, and almost shapeless. One only, that of Ferdinand, can be identified, and this only by the simple letter F upon it. Might not this stand as well for Felipe?

The sacristan next shows you the treasury of the chapel. Among the relics are the crown, sceptre, and mirror of Isabella, her missal beautifully illuminated, and the standard embroidered by her that floated over the city. A casket is shown which was filled with jewels which she pawned to procure funds for Columbus's first voyage of discovery. Few investments have proved more profitable, as far as material wealth is concerned. You may also see Ferdinand's sword, rather interesting to those curious in ancient weapons.

The Royal Chapel is quite independent of the immediately adjacent Cathedral. The chaplains have a right of way across the Cathedral transept to the Puerta del Perdon, a privilege deeply resented by the chapter. Once when the Archbishop wished to visit the chapel, his attendant canons were refused admission. The irate prelate caused the chaplains to be arrested for this affront, and a long lawsuit followed. But all this happened a long time ago, and it is to be hoped that the two bodies of clergy now live upon good terms with each other.

A very beautiful arch, richly and tastefully adorned with statues, admits to the Cathedral. This church, described by Fergusson as one of the finest in Europe, was begun by Diego de Siloe, about 1525, and not completed till 1703. The exterior is far from corresponding to the majesty of the interior, though the Puerto del Perdon, already referred to, on the north side, is a beautiful piece of work. The impression produced on entering the Cathedral is rather similar to that experienced on entering St. Peter's. There is an atmosphere of loftiness, luxury, and cold purity--like that clinging to the finest classical works. This is certainly the triumph of Spanish Renaissance architecture. The effect is, of course, utterly different from that of the grand old Gothic fane of Seville. Like all Renaissance churches, as it seems to me, it lacks the devotional atmosphere. The nave, as usual, is obstructed by the choir--where, by the way, Alonso Cano was buried. The dome above the chancel is sublime, the daring of the arches wonderful. The altar is completely insulated by the ambulatory.

Before it are the grand sculptured heads of Adam and Eve by Cano. His also are seven of the frescoes decorating the upper part of the dome. The others are by his pupils. The Cathedral contains much of this irascible and wayward artist's best work. In the chapel of San Miguel is a "Virgen de la Soledad," in whose human beauty and pathos his genius finds its highest expression. In the chapel of Jesus Nazareno, Cano's "Via Crucis" does not suffer by comparison with three works of Ribera and a "St. Francis" by El Greco. The artist's studio may be seen in one of the towers flanking the west front of the Cathedral. He was a native of Granada, and a lay canon of the chapter. He died in poverty at his house in the Albaicin quarter, aged 66 years, on October 5, 1667. He was a man of hasty but not ungenerous temper, and in some of his phases of character recalls Fuseli. Justice has hardly been done to his great talent, of which he himself seems to have entertained an exaggerated estimate.

The minor churches of Granada are not of very great interest. The church of San Geronimo was built by the Great Captain as a mausoleum for himself and his wife, but such of his remains as escaped the ghoulish spoliation of the French have been transported to Madrid. The church is no longer used as a place of worship. The retablo is remarkable, and in it may be traced the dawning of Siloe's ambition to create a true Spanish Renaissance style. The church of San Juan de Dios, not far off, is filled with tawdry rubbish, petticoated crucifixes, etc. Here is buried the titular saint, a Portuguese, Joao de Robles, who in the seventeenth century devoted himself with so much energy to the sick and suffering that his contemporaries esteemed him mad. You may see the cage in which he was confined at the hospital founded by Isabella the Catholic on the arid, ugly Plaza de Triunfo, near the Bull Ring. A column in the middle of the square marks the spot where Doña Mariana Pineda was publicly garrotted in 1831. This lady is the great heroine of Granada. She perished a victim to the reactionary tendencies then prevalent in Spain. Spaniards were then crying "Hurrah for our chains!" and Doña Mariana's house was known to be a rendezvous of the Liberals of Granada. On raiding her house the police discovered a tricolour flag. This was evidence enough, and in the thirty-first year of her age this beautiful and accomplished woman suffered a shameful death. A few years later, when the nation had recovered its sanity, the magistrate who had condemned her was shot, and her remains were transported with great pomp to the Cathedral, where they have been interred close to Alonso Cano's. A monument has also been raised to her memory in the Campillo Square.

There is another story connected with the Triunfo worth telling, though it is not very well authenticated. The remains of royal personages on their way to the Capilla Real were here identified by the officers of the court. The Duke of Gandia was present on such an occasion, and was so impressed by the evidences of mortality when the coffin was opened that he vowed he would never again serve an earthly master. He entered the Society of Jesus, and after his death was canonized under the name of St. Francis Borgia. The story is a curious and suggestive one, as also is that of the duke praying that his wife might die if it were for his soul's good. St. Francis Borgia has always seemed to me an extreme example of other-worldliness.

A dusty road through most uninviting surroundings leads to the Cartuja, or Charterhouse, founded in 1516 by the Great Captain. The cloisters are painted with scenes of the martyrdom of the Carthusian monks in London by the minions of Henry VIII.

The church is an extraordinary edifice. Its style is damnable, but it is gorgeous and dazzling to a degree which compels admiration. The doors of the choir are exquisitely inlaid with ebony, cedar, mother-of-pearl, and tortoiseshell. The statue of Bruno is by Cano. In the sanctuary behind the altar coloured marbles, twisted and fluted, are combined in extravagant magnificence. Some of the slabs are richly veined with agate, and the hand of nature has traced some semblances of human and animal forms. In the adjoining sacristy are some wonderful inlaid doors and presses. They must surely be the finest works of their kind in the world. It is strange that so much genius for detail and so much costly material should have been combined to produce so tasteless a building.

Outside this church there are not many places in the vicinity of Granada worth a visit. The church of Sacramonte looms rather prominently in the landscape, and you are to some extent rewarded for the trouble of a pilgrimage thither by the fine view of the city. The hill contains some caves in which, in the year 1594, one Hernandez professed to have discovered certain books written in Arabic characters on sheets of lead. The find was reported to the archbishop, Don Pedro Vaca de Castro, who examined the books and declared them to contain the acts of the martyrs, Mesito and Hiscius, Tesiphus and Cecilius, put to death by the Romans and buried in the caves. His grace's pronouncement was not considered final, and theological opinion was sharply divided on the subject for many years. At last the continuance of the controversy was forbidden by Papal decree. It seems that doubt is now thrown even on the existence of the martyrs. The church built over the place of their supposed sepulchre was for a time famous as a shrine of pilgrims. The usual rock worn away by the kisses of the devout is shown. There is a superstition that a person kissing the stone for the first time will be married within the year, if single, and released from the conjugal tie if already married. As divorce does not exist in Spain it is to be hoped that few discontented Benedicts have recourse to this stone.

St. Cecilius, at all events, was known to fame before the alleged discovery of his grave; for in the Antequeruela quarter an oratory dedicated to him existed throughout the Moorish domination, and was the only Christian place of worship within the city. I do not think that any trace of it is to be detected now. In that part of the city is the Casa de los Tiros, where you must apply for tickets for the Generalife; it is worth seeing on its own account, and it is the repository of the sword of Boabdil, which seems to have more claims to authenticity than most of the relics of the Little King. Descending towards the Puerta Real we pass the Cuarto de Santo Domingo, a private villa in which is incorporated all that remains of an Almohade palace. Near by, against the church of Santo Domingo, is an exceedingly picturesque little archway where one can fancy a bravo waiting, stiletto in hand. The Campillo, in the centre of which rises the statue of Mariana Pineda, is a quiet little square enough, referred to (as the Rondilla) by Cervantes as a resort of adventurers and desperadoes. These gentry are now more likely to be found in the immediately adjacent Alameda, outside the hotel of the same name, where the cafés and tables spread in front of them seem exceedingly well patronized.

Following the Genil, and leaving the unimpressive monument of Columbus and Isabella to the left, you reach, after a walk overpoweringly fatiguing in summer, the little Ermita de San Sebastian. This was a Moorish oratory in old days, and outside it took place the surrender of the keys by Boabdil on the memorable 2nd of January, 1492. If you go farther on--and I doubt if you will be tempted to--you will come to a very old Moorish palace called the Alcazar Genil, now the property of the Duke of Gor. Here, says Simonet, were lodged the Christian princes and knights who so often found an asylum at the court of Granada. In the gardens are tanks once used, it is believed, for mimic naval fights. In the same direction, I understand, is Zubia. Here Isabella the Catholic, reconnoitring the city during the siege, narrowly escaped capture by a Moorish patrol. She concealed herself behind a laurel bush, which is still pointed out. Another instance of the small chances that determine the fate of kingdoms! To commemorate her escape the queen built near by a convent, which has long since disappeared.

You may return to the city by the Puerta Verde, near the Bab-en-Neshti or Puerta de los Molinos, through which the Spaniards entered after Boabdil's submission.

Apart from the Alhambra and the Cathedral buildings, it will have been seen that Granada has not many claims on the stranger's interest. Considering the expectations formed of it after reading Prescott and Irving, most English people will pronounce it to be a disappointment. From certain points of view it remains the pleasantest place for a protracted stay in Andalusia during the summer. It is only when you come to it from Seville or Cordova or Cadiz, that you realize how cool, in comparison, is this city on the plateau between the snow-clad mountains. Even before the sun has gone down, you can dine very pleasantly in the open, hearkening to the splash of the fountains, and inhaling the fragrance of the rose. There is no need here, as at Seville, to shut yourself, till nightfall, within walls three feet thick. By night we stroll across the Plaza of the Alhambra, and see the white city gleaming with a shimmer reflected in the luminous sky above. Granada resumes her aspect of an Oriental city beneath the crescent moon riding triumphant over Andalusia.