TO R. W. CHURCH.
The Alhambra, Granada, November 2, 1880.
It is time that you should be thanked for the notes you kindly sent us. They will come of use later. You will wish to know what we have been doing for the past month, only a month by the almanac, for we left England October 1, and Paris on the 6th, the latter being the date we count from. So that there is not yet quite a month of travel, yet it seems a long while, as if stored with a year’s memories. And the weather throughout has been superb. One cold day in Paris, and some cool nights between Bordeaux and Madrid; and then, even at Madrid, we had summer rather than autumn weather, until, ascending from Malaga to this higher region, the cool and fresh air which comes down from the snow-flecked Sierra Nevada makes the sunshine pleasant and wraps desirable at nightfall.
A few midday hours served for Orleans, and we went on to Blois. You know how very charming that is, and you may imagine Mrs. Gray’s delight at the castle, also at Chambord, to which we drove. Two nights there and three at Tours. The cathedral charmed us; also the old houses and ruined bits and towers. We passed Amboise, and went from Tours to Chenonceaux and back by railway,—a bijou to be enjoyed; but the next day’s excursion to Lôches had a much deeper and more varied interest. By traveling over night to Bayonne and passing Biarritz at sunrise, a noble sunrise and morning, with the Atlantic on one side and the Cantabrian Pyrenees on the other, we gained the privilege of a daylight journey from Irun to Burgos. It is far more picturesque and striking than I had supposed. A day at Burgos was a treat, as you may suppose. Leon lay out of our track and demanded night hours and night changes too severe and too formidable for a couple ignorant of Spanish and impatient of couriers. So we went on overnight to Madrid (night travel being inevitable); and here we had a warm, sunny, busy, and most enjoyable week, some pleasant home-friends for companions, as also a charming Spanish family, M. and Mme. Riaño, whom we had met at our minister’s, Lowell, at London. She is a daughter of Gayangos and had an English mother; is a charming mixture of Spanish and English and everything that is bright and good. Then there was a raree-show not to be matched out of Spain: the royal family with the infanta going to church in state, the grand procession kindly going and returning under our windows. The Armeria and, still more, the Archeological Museum were full of the Old World things we Americans dote on. And then the great picture-gallery, supplemented not a little by the Academia San Fernando. Add to these the pictures at Seville, and imagine the treat we have had. I shall leave all this for Mrs. Gray to expatiate upon next winter.
We now know Murillo, and rank him next to Titian, and in feeling and delicacy much above him. He could paint something besides Spanish-girl Madonnas, lovely as they are, and Spanish beggars, where he had only to copy from the streets; and whoever has not seen St. Elisabeth of Hungary, the Roman Senator and his Wife, the Guardian Angel, Moses striking the Rock, and its companion, the Loaves and Fishes, and the St. Antony of Padua, down to whom the Infant Christ lightly floats, encircled with child angels, has not yet seen the works of Murillo. Then Velasquez, most noble, and Zurbaran and Ribera, and Cano, Morales, and Moro, and others whom I never knew aught about before. At Toledo we passed two days and three nights, well filled with sights of Old World things hardly touched by the later ages; and there is the grandest of cathedrals; and yet the interior of that of Seville is rather more satisfying. These three, Burgos, Toledo, Seville, I should place in this ascending order, or bracketing the latter two.
A journey overnight brought us at sunrise into Andalusia, at Cordova, which we passed (to take on the way from Granada), and so to Seville for breakfast, three happy, sunny, busy days there, and then to Malaga, two days, and then on to this place, which we reached after dark, and are now enjoying our second day in.
There are two hotels up here, under the Alhambra walls, and we are at one of them. Yesterday the road which rises to the crown of the hill was crowded with people of the town below, going up to the cemetery with flowers and lamps and candles and drapery, to ornament the tombs and graves of relatives, which here is done on All Saints’ Day, and we saw the curious sight by day and walked up again in the evening, when all was alight, and in a chapel a sort of requiem service performing. We will not describe the Alhambra. I fancied I should think the work finical; but you are carried away by it. But of most interest was our visit to the Cathedral of Granada this morning and to the Capilla Real, to see all the relics and contemporary memorials of Ferdinand and Isabella, their effigies, sword, sceptre, etc., their noble tombs, more rich and beautiful, I think, than those of the Constable and his wife at Burgos, and then to descend into the vault and see their rude iron coffins, which have not been desecrated nor molested, and also those of Philip I. and his poor wife Joanna. (Let us tell you, some day, of a modern Spanish picture, at Madrid, of her and her husband’s coffin, which she wearily had carried with her.) All this, and what we see here on the spot of the Moorish life, and what we saw at the cathedral, gives a vivid reality that nothing else can.
And here my sheet is full and my gossip must be cut short, with short space to add the kindest remembrances and love which my wife joins in sending to you and yours and daughters.
TO J. D. HOOKER.
Hôtel St. Romain, Paris, November 14, 1880.