Having grown familiar with the orderly streets of Cordova by day, it was quite without fear that we took a night ramble. Not a soul was astir. What were they doing, these cloistered people? It was as deserted as Stamboul at night, more lonely even, for here was not a single yellow cur to bay the moon, nor the iron beat of the watchman's staff; and though like the Orient in some aspects, these streets were far too orderly and the houses too spotless. Perhaps there lay the source of the indefinable fascination; this was neither East nor West, but a place stranded in time, made by circumstances that never will be repeated. The Oriental influenced the Spaniard deeply, a psychological as well as a racial influence. I often felt that the dignified gravity which so distinguishes a Spaniard from his fellow Latins is a trait acquired unconsciously from his Arab neighbors: nothing like it is found except among races whose ancestors dwelt in the desert. Also the excessive generosity and hospitality of the Spaniard are oriental virtues, just as the Andalusian procrastination and acceptance of fate are oriental failings. We too often forget that there were generations when, religious hatred quieting down, the two peoples lived side by side in friendly consideration. If the Christian gained from the Moslem, the Moor in Spain was influenced no less potently by the standards of the European. He became a very different being from his brother in northern Africa. He learned to gather libraries, to express himself in buildings where he translated his nomad carpet into colored stucco; much of his traditional jealousy was laid aside and Moorish ladies appeared at the tournaments to applaud their Moorish cavaliers who tilted with the same rules of romantic chivalry as the Christian knights. Moslem civilization could even boast some femmes savantes. The stimulus of the two opposing races gave Spain just the impetus she needed, and the conqueror lost with his very victory. When all men think the same way without the spur of competition, inaction and ill-health are sure to follow. Perhaps the upholders of law and order need not worry too much to-day over the anarchists and socialists in the commercial districts of Spain: is not the health of a nation quickened by struggle?
The soul of a Spanish city is always the Cathedral, and Cordova has what it called one, but it is no more a Christian church than the Caaba at Mecca. The canons in Charles V's time tore out the center of the Mosque and built a Plateresque-Gothic capilla mayor and coro. It was an ignorant thing to do, and when the Emperor saw their work he exclaimed in disgust, "You have built here what anyone might have built elsewhere, but you have destroyed what was unique in the world!" Nevertheless, those old canons had some excuse. They felt that they could not pray in a proper Christian manner under the low, oppressing roof of Islam. Instead of "Christe Eleison," it was "Allah illal allah, ve Mahommed recoul" that came to their lips in abominable heresy, so in desperation they put up the incongruous enclosure and tried to shut Islam out.
A building every one of whose stones has been laid in earnest faith, seems to have a spirit that will never desert it, let the ritual change as it may. Santa Sophia is Christian in spite of eight thousand Mussulmans prostrated there on the 27th of Ramazan: the Gregorian chant still echoes in Westminster Abbey. So here the canons' efforts were in vain, the Mezquita makes heretics of us all, we turn to the Mihrab as the holy of holies, not to the High Altar.
The Mihrab is a dream of art, the mosaics are richer and softer in hue than an eastern rug. Leo, the Christian Emperor on the Bosphorus, sent Byzantine workmen to teach the Caliph this art. The enclosing carvings have the distinction of being in marble, not in the customary plaster, also a Christian innovation. "Let us rear a mosque which shall surpass that of Bagdad, of Damascus, and of Jerusalem, a mosque which shall become the Mecca of the West," said the founders in the eighth century; and there is a tradition that the Caliph himself worked an hour a day with the builders. It is truly "unique in the world," for nothing was ever like these myriad aisles, forty in one direction crossed by twenty in another, with nine hundred short pillars of every kind of marble—green, red, gray, brown, fluted white—holding up the roof. These pillars are baseless and only thirteen feet in height; and arches of an ugly red and yellow spring in two tiers from column to column. The effect is incredibly original and eccentric,—a veritable forest of pillars. The fatalist spirit of Mohammed, the acceptance of life's limitation, is insistent here, the desert Arab's attitude of adoration, forehead prone to earth, is forced on you: to kneel with upraised face is impossible under so low a roof; were there the usual hanging balls and roc's eggs, even the Inquistor-General himself would have genuflected toward Mecca! As I wandered about the Mezquita, the two creeds seemed to formulate themselves more distinctly for me: one, soaring and idealistic, channel for the loftiest aspirations of the soul, the other a magnificent step forward from the lower forms of worship about it in the East, nevertheless limited, so far and not beyond, not cleaving to the impossible, to the unattainable. "Be perfect even as your Father in heaven is perfect" was not taught by Mohammed. Islamism is a very noble average, and perhaps because men in general are the average, it may seem better to satisfy them. Christianity is a religion for the chosen souls of humanity, only by aiming at the impossible can the best in man develop. The majority of us are not chosen souls, hence we have the bitter inconsistencies between the theory and the practice of our faith to-day; and yet, once the vision of the unspeakable soul-paradise of the mystic has been conceived of, to rest satisfied with an average religion is impossible. Islam makes men happy with a dreaming bliss that veils the sun, Christianity bids you look up at the sun whether it blinds you or not, and here and there arise souls that can bear the vision and help weak eyes to see.
When we left the Mosque, the obsession of the East still continued in the courtyard, where about the fountain sat groups of idlers only wanting the fez and turban for completion. Once the Mezquita opened on this court, there was no dividing wall, the trees planted in symmetrical lines carried on the rows of columns within, and an absolutely enchanting sight it must have been to look from this orange grove far into the dim interior of the Mosque, lighted every evening with some five thousand hanging lamps.
All tourists in Spain go to Granada, so they know the confusing station of Bobadilla where trains from north, south, east, and west, meet and exchange passengers; the journey from there on to Granada gives a beautiful glimpse of Andalusia; picturesquely set towns, scattered white villas, olive groves, even in winter the grass as green as spring. As apples, in the Basque provinces, and carrots at Toledo, so here oranges were piled up in masses. The last thirty miles of the journey were through the historic vega, a veritable garden of Eden in fertility. Before we reached Granada it was dark and above the city was rising an early moon as big as one in a Japanese print. The proprietor of the Pension-Villa Carmona in the Alhambra grounds was there to meet us, and we soon rattled off for the long drive up to the Moorish citadel.
A night arrival at Granada enhances the romantic effect. It is mysterious to turn in from the noisy streets of the town at the Carlo Quinto gate and under the heavy foliage of elm trees slowly to mount the Alhambra hill; there is a gurgle and rush of running water on every side, one has the feeling of being in a thick Alpine forest. The horses mount slowly, wind and turn, pass through various gates and at length you are in the small village of the citadel, and in three minutes can walk right into the Caliph's palace. Spain cannot show many such beautiful northern parks, with a growth of ivy and a shimmer of arrow-headed leaves under the elm trees where nightingales sing in season.
It was Ford I think who started the statement which most guide books have gone on repeating that the Duke of Wellington planted these elms ("the Duke" occupies more space in Murray's Hand-book than los Reyes Católicos themselves!) He may have planted some, but a certain old book of travels, yellow with age, tell us that just these same elm trees were growing and just the same kind of songster singing in 1789. "The ascent toward the Alhambra," wrote the Rev. Joseph Townsend in that year, "is through a shady and well watered grove of elms abounding with nightingales whose melodious warbling is not confined to the midnight hour; here, incessant, it is equally the delight of noon."
This part of Granada is charming. But the city below is so dirty and ill-conditioned that it would spoil the Alhambra for a long stay. Even in the darkness on the night of our arrival it was easy to discern what a different aspect it had from most Spanish towns, which, while they are often poor, are frugally clean and self-respecting. In Granada the people appeared ill-tempered, if you paused anywhere, diseased children gathered in a persistent begging circle, and the fierce copper-colored gypsies were so diabolically bold in glance and act that they made a walk in any of the suburbs too dangerous to be repeated. We had often turned off the beaten track in the Asturias, in Galicia, and Castile, without the least fear, but Granada will remain for me the one thoroughly disagreeable, frightening spot in Spain.
Described as the Alhambra has been, it would be fatuous to try it again. I can only give superficial personal impressions. There is no use in disguising that this style of architecture disappointed me enormously. I could admire its extreme elegance, the details of the artesonado ceilings, the ajimez windows, I could acknowledge it was fairy-like, a charming caprice, exquisite jewel-box work: as a whole it left me quite cold. It was too small, it lacked height, there was no grandeur about it,—and all so newly done up with restorations! The first visit gave me an effect of trumpery, and even after I had seen it daily for two weeks, I could not forget that these mathematically correct designs, one yard very like the next, were imprinted by an iron mold on wet plaster. This was skilled artisan's work, not the intellectual thought of the architect; here was no cutting of enduring, masculine stone with the individual freedom of genius. Decorations of Cufic mottoes are effective, but they can never compete with a Parthenon frieze, with a Chartres or Santiago portal. Fantasy was here, not imagination; again I felt the bound limit of Islam.