IT was with real regret we left Toledo, as one leaves some rare old book, only glanced at, but enticing months’ study. Notwithstanding the depressing gloom and stagnation of the old city, we loved it for its beautiful and precious monuments, and for the historic solemnity hanging round each. We liked the people too—Cabezas our invaluable guide; our hotel-keeper; Pepa, our bright little chambermaid; and the homely but respectful waiters, who were so slow to understand what we wanted, and so slow to bring it when understood. When you leave a Spanish Fonda there is none of that obsequious crowding round you that you find in France and England. Chambermaids and waiters never hover about you, hinting by their looks that they expect vails, but say simply “Adios, adios,” and go their ways.

But I especially dwell on the civility we met with at the Fonda de Leno, because we afterwards heard it so terribly abused. We were dining at the table d’hÔte at Granada, and a party of American travellers began talking of fondas in general, and of the fondas at Toledo in particular.

“I shan’t easily forget the boorishness of the landlord,” said one; “I really thought he would have turned us clean out-of-doors. Why, we civilly asked what there was for breakfast, and he said ‘Eel and chops,’ and turned on his heel without asking which we chose to have! And what cooking! everything tasted of tomatoes and garlic!”

“And what wretched rooms!” put in a young lady; “as bare of furniture as prisons.”

There were two young Frenchmen present who had also been at Toledo, and they now joined in the cry. They were starved, unhandsomely treated, badly housed, overcharged.

“But there is a comfortable hotel at Toledo,” I said; “we found very good food, moderate charges, and such civil people, at the HÔtel de Leno.”

There was a general exclamation of surprise.

“That is the very place we are complaining of!” they all said; and we compared notes with as much perplexity as amusement.

I don’t at all understand the usual tone taken by tourists in describing Spanish inns. We never found anything to complain of, and yet how few people admit the possibility of ladies travelling comfortably in Spain! Carry with you a tolerable supply of patience and gold pieces, you will do very well. Carry with you, also, always ready for use, a little courteous Castellano, which will often stand in good stead of many more costly things, such as time, money, and temper. Moreover, reverse the Micawber principle, and never expect anything to turn up, for that will save many a discomfort to yourself and others. The Spaniards are terribly slow and procrastinating, but the fact must be accepted as it is, and made the best of; as well expect an American to be lethargic as a Spaniard to be quick.

From Toledo to Cordova is a very long railway journey. You have to wait from seven o’clock in the evening till midnight to catch the down train from Madrid, which waiting might, of course, be easily avoided. Fancy waiting five or six hours at Didcot for the Leamington train! But maÑana, maÑana, all the good changes will take place in time!

We found the waiting at Castilejo not so bad as might be. Tourists had said to us with a shrug of the shoulders, “It is a terrible ordeal to go through, that waiting at Castilejo. There will, very likely, be neither fire nor light, and you will have to choose between a dark hole of a waiting-room, full of men smoking, or get into an empty railway-carriage and wait there.”

We certainly were agreeably surprised to find a blazing fire; a room that, if not exceptionally clean, was at least airy and wholesome; and instead of the crowd of smokers we had been led to expect, a young Madrid lady with her maid and dog, two or three respectable servant girls, and one elderly railway guard, who might have been Don Quixote, he was so grim and so gallant. The girls dropped off to sleep one by one; the guard puffed away his inoffensive little cigarette deep in thought, and we got out our books and amused ourselves very well. There was a livelier scene at the buffet just behind the waiting-room, for, when I went to beg an extra light and to ask for chocolate, I found a number of soldiers and peasants regaling on hot little bits of meat that came, as if by magic, from behind the counter.

The young woman in attendance was, as usual, civil but indifferent.

“Have you chocolate?” I asked.

“I don’t think we have, SeÑora,” she replied; “I’ll see by-and-by.”

“Have you chocolate?” I asked, when the by-and-by had come.

“I don’t think we have, SeÑora,” was the answer a second time; “I’ll see by-and-by.”

I waited a little while, and then repeated the question, always in the politest way possible. This time I added that the SeÑora with me was very tired, and sadly in need of refreshment, and that if there was chocolate to be had I should be very much obliged.

“The mistress of the Fonda is gone to bed, and I don’t know where she keeps the chocolate,” was the reply this time; ‘but I have sent to hear, and if there is any you shall be served.’

About two hours from the time of my first inquiry came two delicious little cups of chocolate, which, I am sure, we should never have got except by means of patience and pretty speeches. The traveller who has not a goodly supply of both these things would, I fear, fare very ill. After a time the sleepers woke up, and began to talk in very lively fashion. A smart young lady, who seemed to belong to the station, soon came in, wished everybody “buenas noches,” and sat down, evidently with the intention of being amused. The young lady and her maid did not hold aloof from the conversation, the grave-looking guard joined in occasionally, and the two English ladies were not excluded.

The young women, who wore black silk mantillas, and chignons as large as cocoa-nuts, were immensely inquisitive about English ladies in general, and ourselves in particular. When we had satisfied their curiosity, we talked of Cosas de EspaÑa, mantillas, fans, bull-fights, &c.

“Now, tell me,” I said to the young lady belonging to the station, “do you really like bull-fights or no? I have never heard the opinion of a Spanish lady on the subject.”

“That is, because foreigners make such a fuss about bull-fights,” she replied, archly; “people are afraid to speak their minds about it. For my part, I own that the sight is a horrid one, but it amuses me.”

“It don’t amuse me,” put in one girl; “I get sick and frightened, and want to come away.”

“Well,” added another, “it’s all very well for people to say they don’t like it; they go all the same. These English SeÑoras went, I’ll be bound; and yet they’ll go back to England and talk about us.”

My companion shook her head. I pleaded guilty.

“But,” I said in extenuation, “I only went to convince myself, with my own eyes, that the sport is so popular as travellers report. I couldn’t have believed it otherwise.”

Meantime train after train came and went, the train to Badajoz, the train to Alicante, the train to Saragosa, and, at last, the one which was to bear us to Cordova. There it came, creeping through the darkness with its big red eyes, like some monster of Eastern fable, but much more kindly, for it gave us what we needed—quiet, and sleep, and solitude. As usual, we found the ladies’ coupÉ empty, and, as usual, we curled ourselves up in our rugs, wished each other “good night,” and went to sleep.

There is a cant phrase about railways having done away with the poetry of travelling. Was ever such an absurdity uttered and believed in? I think if ever the poetry of travel was realised, it is now, especially at night and in Spain. You are whirled from region to region apparently by elemental fire alone. You pass through new, sweet, starry atmospheres, like a bird; you go to sleep, and never know under what strange or happy auspices you will awake. This beautiful moonlight landscape of tiny homesteads lying on the banks of a silvery river, of green meadows skirting snow-tipped mountains, and long lines of fir-trees pricking against a blue-black sky,—is it real or a picture only? These dreary table-lands that seem to stretch into infinity, these sloping olive-grounds, these sharp sierras, these alternating scenes of loveliness, and grandeur, and desolation, seem more like the phantasmagoria of dreams than anything else.

And then the aspects of human life, though fleeting, are yet so full of charm. You see faces that tell their own story, and in a moment they have vanished. You are let into little domestic scenes touching, or comic, or painful, or passionate, as the case may be. You cannot stop five minutes at a village station, or linger five minutes in a village waiting-room, without being moved to smiles or tears.

For my part I have never taken a railway journey, however short, that has not had some incident worth remembering; but in Spain, which is a collection of kingdoms, each rich in different sorts of interest, one is troubled, like the silk-merchant at Toledo, with the embarras de richesses. You see a hundred landscapes in a day you would fain remember. You see a hundred faces and hear a hundred things, that seem too characteristic to forget. But, like the changing colours of the sunset, these impressions melt one into the other, and, unless seized at the moment, are utterly lost. When day broke we found that we were traversing a mountainous region of olive-orchards and bare brown fields made ready for sowing, some no larger than a cottager’s garden, others covering acres. A tawny land is this Spain, as Shakespeare says, a gipsy among gipsies, and a Moor by complexion.

We were now in Don Quixote’s country,—such a dreary country, that every one should take Cervantes’ book to read on the way. Then La Mancha, though a mere waste of steppes, with here and there wretched mud-hovels, becomes enchanted ground, and every village named on the map, as sacred as Mecca. “Never let Don Quixote be out of our reader’s saddle-bags,” says the guide to Spain; “it is the best Hand-Book to La Mancha, moral and geographical; there is nothing in it imaginary except the hero’s monomania.”

What is more real than fiction after all?

The battle-fields of Spain are not more interesting than the spots immortalized by Cervantes’ marvellous novel, and one longs to make a pilgrimage to each. As we glide through the charmed region, how familiar do the names and aspects of places seem to us? We are near the village of El Toboso, where lived Dulcinea, whose real name was said to be Aldonza Corchuelo; we pass group after group of windmills, any of which are grim enough to appear like giants to a madman now; here the Don was knighted, there he did penance; amid those craggy heights of the Sierra Morena, he found Cardenio; there glides the stream in which beautiful Dorothea bathed her feet. New names, new faces, new associations, seem alone untrue, unreal, and out of place; and we live all day in Don Quixote’s country among Don Quixote’s friends; Dulcinea, the hospitable goatherd, the wicked little Duchess, the homely Maritornes, the curate and the niece, all are here; and we look across the brown lines of the table-land, and see, or seem to see, the Don himself, spare and spectre-like, followed by burly Sancho Panza, riding out in search of adventure.

There are some who say that Don Quixote should be eaten and drunk on Spanish ground, or its delicate flavour is wholly lost. For my part, I think if ever a book could bear translation and transportation, it is Cervantes’ novel of novels. There is nothing like it in any literature,—so new, so true, and so wonderful. What would life be without it? Take away the charms of style and the beauties of a language rare in beauties, and yet all remains that we most care for. Don Quixote, Sancho Panza, as creations, are too simple and too true to stand or fall by the ordinary test. Why, Don Quixote translated into a language as rude as that of Fighi islanders, would be every inch Don Quixote still, and of what other novel can so much be said? Few travellers will omit Cervantes’ Biography from their saddle-bags. He was the noblest of noble Spaniards, and his life shines like a diamond without one flaw. What a sad life, too! Even Don Quixote, the blossom of his riper intellect, brought no good fortune with it.

We leave La Mancha, and now the scene wholly changes. The air becomes soft and balmy; we see a garden of roses here, a cluster of palms there; white villages at the feet of green hills; sunny streams and golden sunshine everywhere. We are in Andalusia!

We had been recommended by our hotel-keeper in Madrid to the HÔtel Suisse, and, notwithstanding his recommendation, entered its walls with fear and trembling. The English gentleman’s words rang yet in our ears, “Don’t sleep at Cordova!” and we could hardly believe our eyes when we drove into a pretty Moorish court, with flowers and orange-trees and a fountain in the midst, and light galleries running round, all white and shining as if of marble. But, after all, this might be only the whitewashing of the sepulchre. We forbore any exclamation of surprise, and asked to see our rooms. A respectable-looking chambermaid led the way to three very well-furnished, clean, and airy rooms, in which we installed ourselves, feeling no longer any apprehension of discomfort.

Indeed, we found everything good at Cordova,—attendance, beds, and food; we had nice coffee or chocolate in our own rooms at seven o’clock, a breakfast of cold game, omelettes, cutlets, and fruit at mid-day, and an excellent table d’hÔte dinner in the evening. Of course, we did not get, or expect to get, anything like English dishes; but we found the Spanish ones eatable and nutritious, and quid multa? I only allude to this subject, because it is a fashion to rail against Spanish inns, and, I think, unjustly. The charges are not higher than in Paris or Vienna, and the accommodation, in most cases, very good. You are not mulcted largely in the matter of vails, and though the servants are slow, they are obliging, and we found them, at least, honest.

The dilatoriness is very amusing. For instance, on the eve of quitting Cordova, we rang for our bill, ordering, at the same time, a basket of provisions to take with us. The summons was answered pretty promptly, and we were assured that our orders should be obeyed forthwith. After waiting a good hour, we rang again, for we were to rise next morning at five o’clock, and wished to go to bed. This time another waiter appeared, who seemed, however, to have a clear notion of what we wanted; and vanished, promising to see to things himself. Another hour passed, no bill, no basket, no trace of either; and as it was now ten o’clock, a very late hour for travellers, we determined to countermand the order, and stand our chance of procuring provisions by the way. But the third ring was answered to more purpose.

First came the bill, borne by the head-waiter; secondly, came a pair of roast partridges, steaming hot; thirdly, a loaf of bread: then there was a solemn pause of about a quarter of an hour, at the end of which time we got our change, our basket with the remaining provisions, and quiet for the night! Fancy, a simple order like this requiring nearly three hours for its execution anywhere but in Spain!

The best plan is to carry about with you an amusing novel, and take it up whenever you have to wait for anything or anybody. Scolding does no good,—rather, I think, aggravates the evil. At least, we never found that we were worse off than other people who did scold.

But I must go back to the time of our arrival. Cordova is a brighter and more bustling place than Toledo, and more Oriental. The houses, the dress, the handicrafts, the tools, and the songs, are thoroughly Arab; the climate is soft, the sky clear and southern, and flowers are out as if it were June!

Here, too, one sees plenty of costume. The sheepskin jacket, the national sombrero, the brilliant sash, the beautifully-embroidered gaiters of Cordova leather. The women, for the most part, wear cheap cotton dresses that have evidently come from Manchester, but the mantilla and fan are always used at mass.

We were too late to see inside the Mosque that afternoon, and having looked longingly at its beautiful old walls, now mellowed to a deep orange by the setting sun, we strolled to the bridge. Never, I think, have I seen a picture more sweet and peaceful. The Guadalquivir (how Arabic does the word sound as pronounced here!) reflected an opal sky, that changed from violet to pink, and from pink to pale daffodil. The olive-clad slopes lay in tender shadow, and beyond river, and bridge, and roof, rose the dark ridge of the Sierra Morena. The air was so warm that we sat down by the river-side till the colours died out of the sky and landscape, and the grave and beautiful twilight enveloped all. Then we went home to our comfortable inn, and brought out our books, and read so much of the glories of Cordova, that we dreamed all night that we were living in the times of Haroun Al Raschid. Why describe what has been described so often and so well? In these days, when every one travels, and every one who does not travel, reads the experience of others, it would seem, then, useless to supplement Ford, and Borrow, and Gautier, and all the clever writers who have gone over the same ground. But it is impossible to write of Spain, and leave out Cordova, the Carthaginian capital, the rival of Cadiz in wealth and traffic, the birthplace of the Senecas, of Lucan, and of Averroes; alike the Athens and the Bagdad of the West; and the seat of a Caliphate, whose story reads like a page of the Arabian Nights. We can understand how the Moors came to love Andalusia, and make it their home, planting the palm, the orange, and the vine, building mosque, and palace, and tower, turning into a paradise the lovely land they had sought in exile. A thousand years ago, the Ommiad Caliphs, descendants of a lonely refugee, ruled in a splendid city containing a million of inhabitants, three hundred mosques, nine hundred baths, six hundred inns, and all the elegancies and refinements of the most graceful civilization the world has yet seen. The Arabian historian, Al-Makkari, describes, in glowing words, “the running streams, limpid waters, luxuriant gardens, stately buildings, magnificent palaces, throngs of soldiers, pages, eunuchs, and slaves of all nations and religions, sumptuously attired in robes of silk and brocade; crowds of judges and Katib, theologians and poets, walking with becoming gravity, through the magnificent halls, spacious ante-rooms, and ample courts of the palace;” and having gone on to describe the ruin that overtook all, adds, with true Mahomedan resignation, “There is no God but Allah, the great, the Almighty!” And what is Cordova now, once the learned, the luxurious, the aristocratic? “It withered under the Spaniard,” says Mr. Ford, with pardonable sarcasm, “and, rich and learned under Roman and Moor, is now a dirty, benighted, ill-provided, decaying place, with a population of about fifty-five thousand.” He says elsewhere, “Cordova, poetic Cordova! when seen from afar with its drooping palms, the banners of the clime, its Moorish towers, walls, and pinnacles, appears beautiful as in the days of the luxurious, high-bred Abderrahman.... Alas for poor Cordova!”

But the Mosque remains still, though how defiled and degraded! Many of the portals have been walled up; the beautiful seat of the Caliph is filled with all kinds of church finery; the walls, once so delicately and richly carved, are hidden by tawdry decorations. You feel inclined to cry out vengeance against the despoilers of a temple which Solomon’s could not have surpassed.

It is the most wonderful place, and one can understand what a grand religious conception the Moors must have had when inside this, their temple of temples. After all, the Mahomedans were much more tolerant and enlightened than the people they alternately ruled and served, and were Unitarians, pur et simple, praying to the universal God, in whose name never was raised a more fitting house of prayer.

To have seen the Mosque of Cordova forms an era in one’s life. It is so vast, so solemn, so beautiful. You seem to be wandering at sunset time in a large and dusky forest, intersected by regular alleys of tall, stately palms. No matter in what direction you turn your face, northward, southward, eastward, westward, the same beautiful perspective meets your eye, file after file of marble and jasper columns supporting the double horse-shoe arch. Nothing can be more imposing, and at the same time graceful, than this arrangement of transverse aisles; and the interlaced arches, being delicately coloured in red and white, may not inaptly be compared to foliage of a palm-forest, flushed with the rays of the setting sun. If so impressive now, what must this place have been in the glorious days of Abderrahman, the Al-Raschid of Cordova, when the roofs blazed with arabesques of red and blue and “patines of bright gold;” the floors were covered with gorgeous carpets, and the aisles swarmed with thousands of worshippers in their bright Eastern dresses? The richest imagination cannot ever paint the scene, the readiest fancy cannot embellish it, and only those who have imbibed the rich colours of the East can close their eyes and dream of it. When the dream is over, cast your eyes along the long lines of columns, and you will see where the shoulders of spectators and worshippers of ages have left an enduring mark—a touching sight!—and then go into the once exquisite Maksura or Caliph’s seat, and weep to see what becomes of beautiful things in Spain!

Words are not strong enough to condemn the desecration of such a temple,—a temple worthy of the purest religion the world will ever know. Let the Catholic services be celebrated within its walls, let the priests preach from its altars, let the people kneel on its floors—but why, in heaven’s name, should every exquisite relic of Moorish art, and every vestige of Moorish devotion, be ruthlessly destroyed? One marvels to see even the pillars and horse-shoe arches left intact—who knows for how long? And there are still some inlaid ceilings of thuya wood, and some fragments of arabesque stucco, as remarkable for richness of design and delicacy of work as any of the Alhambra. But to those who are curious in such things, I say—See them soon, or you will be too late. It is always a question of Now or Never in Spain.

It is curious that Cespedes, the Spanish Crichton, or, as some call him, the Spanish Michel-Angelo, wrote a learned dissertation, trying to prove that, where this glorious Mosque now stands, a temple once stood dedicated to Janus, erected by the Romans after the conquest of Spain. Cespedes was a native of Cordova (hijo de Corduba), and a man of whom she has every reason to be proud. He was a scholar, an antiquary, a poet, a painter, a critic. Look at his pictures “if ever you should go to Cordova.”

When you have seen the Mosque you will have seen all that the Spaniards have left there. There were formerly Roman antiquities of no ordinary interest, aqueducts, an amphitheatre, and monuments, of which not a trace remains. Will it be believed that, in making the prisons of the Inquisition, some statues, mosaics, and inscriptions were found, all of which were covered again by the holy tribunal as being Pagan.[7] Of the Aladdin-like palaces of Abderrahman, there is not a vestige; mediÆval Cordova, with its architecture, its arts, and its prosperity, is disappearing, bit by bit, whilst, like some physical manifestation of energetic disease, a large and splendid Plaza for bull-fights has sprung up!

A melancholy Italian acted as cicerone, and carried us to a lovely Eastern garden, just outside the town. Here were orange-trees bearing blossom and fruit, and the paler lemon, bosquets of myrtle and cistus making the air heavy with sweetness; clusters of gorgeous tropical flowers, crimson and yellow and purple; palm-trees glowing against the deep blue sky; ponds full of gold and silver fish, and everything lovely and gracious to both eye and senses.

Then we went to the market-place—a picturesque sight, for it was covered from end to end with heaps of the pretty hand-painted pottery of Andujar and Talavera. My friend was so enchanted with the taste displayed in this ware, both as to form and colour, that she bought a great quantity of it,—jugs, plates, cups, and basins, all shaped and coloured differently, and each piece costing no more than a few rials. This and lace from La Mancha—Don Quixote’s country—was all we found worth buying at Cordova; for the leather-work was not nearly so elaborate, and much costlier, than that so plentiful in Algiers. The lace is made of coarse thread, but is very pretty, and is used plentifully in Andalusia for decorating sheets and pillow-cases. We could but notice the extreme civility of the humble sellers of pottery in the market-place, and the impertinent nonchalance of the smart shopman who sold us the lace. The former, a well-to-do Andalusian peasant-woman, could not take too much pains about pleasing us, carried us home to her little house, in order to show us her stock-in-trade, introduced us to her daughter, and smiled alike whether we approved or no. The shopmen puffed away at their cigars, laughed and talked among themselves whilst attending to their customers, cared little whether we bought or no, and greeted us in quite a familiar fashion when we came away. Certainly the Spaniards play at business in a most amateur style, and can never be accused, as we are, of being a nation of shopkeepers. The ladies laugh and talk with the shopmen over their purchases; and if we may believe Mesonero and other satirists of the day, many a rendezvous is made under the pretext of “shopping.” You cannot take up a fashionable Spanish novel or play in which the ladies don’t talk of assignations and shops as if the one belonged to the other; and whilst the scrupulous way in which young girls are chaperoned wherever they go, would seem to hint at some danger lurking in their favourite occupation.

Young Spanish ladies never walk out unattended, and whenever Englishwomen chose to do so, their deviation from social orthodoxy is severely commented upon. Spanish ladies too, I have read somewhere, when promenading the streets en grande tenue, are flattered by the admiration, expressed or implied, of passers-by!—a notion so opposed to our English sense of delicacy that it is entertained with difficulty. Yet the bearing of the pretty, dark-eyed ladies we saw about us, coquetting with the fan, sweeping the ground with long trains only suitable for a ball or presentation, raising their skirts with ungloved jewelled hands, so as to show their pretty feet, go far to support the notion. A well-dressed English lady does not think of her dress; one cannot help seeing that a well-dressed Madrilenian does. She is very attractive, notwithstanding.

I would not advise any one to hurry away from Cordova, especially if he is an artist. The place is so picturesque in itself, and so full of poetic association, that a few days may well be devoted to it, especially in the beautiful autumn, when all kinds of glories are cast about hill, and tower, and river.