"Nuestro país es el país de las anomalías" says the critic De Larra, and the first step in Spain strikes this note. She is a land of violent contrasts; level plain and broken sierra, elysian garden of Andalusia and tractless wastes of Castile, frosty Burgos and sunny Seville. She is the home of the hidalgo and home of the strongest existing democracy between man and man, only equaled by early Rome. It was in Burgos we first noticed what we later saw frequently, the labrador who drove his master's carriage, enter the inn with him and sit at the same table to eat, master and man alike in their dignity. She has a peasantry beyond praise for its virile industry, and she has a class of city loafers the idlest that ever encumbered a plaza. Cradle of exalted mystics and mother of realistic painters, this land of racy personalities never allows one's interest to flag.
We spent a week in Burgos, and not once did the sun shine. The cold was piercing. At the corner of every street a biting wind seized and buffeted one about; besides being on a mountain, there are still higher mountains near, and snow has been known to fall in June. Wind and cold, however, were soon forgotten once inside the Cathedral. Our first visit was within the hour of arrival, at dusk when details were hidden. The great temple rose around us mysterious and awe inspiring. Though almost with the first breath of wonder came a sense of bewilderment,—what was this heavy wall rising some thirty feet in the center of the church, that hid the altar and blocked up the nave so that only an encircling aisle was left free? So confusing was it I could not at first tell by what door we had entered, where was the east, where was the west end?
Books of travel all tell of this placing of the choir, or coro, in the nave of Spanish cathedrals, but one can read them and imagine nothing like the reality. I had pictured an open platform running down the center of the church, whereas high walls are built round the coro as well as round the capilla mayor, thus making a smaller church within a larger one. Wherever the inner church opens on the other, they have placed a towering metal screen called a reja. A narrow passageway, fenced by an open rail, usually runs from the altar enclosure to the coro, and the people gather close to this, under the transept-crossing tower; thus, practically, the priest at the altar and the canons chanting in the choir are separated by the congregation. It is hard to make the picture clear. I feel that no explanation can prevent this arrangement of Spanish cathedrals coming as a surprise to the traveler.
The evening of our first visit, we wandered round in the dusk bewildered by the blocking coro, and at length entered the chapel of St. Anne, where a service was going on. The side chapels of Burgos are churches in themselves, they often belong to private individuals, this of St. Anne being, for instance, the property of the Duke of Abrantes. It was now crowded with people of all kinds,—officers in uniform, a few ladies in hats but the bulk of the women in black veils. From a small balcony on one side the litany was sung.
Before the altar was what appeared to be a black covered bier, so I thought we must have stumbled on some special service for the dead. This would account for so large a gathering on a weekday, for at first one fails to grasp the every-day religious attitude of the Spaniard. Looking closer at the bier before the lighted altar a human figure was outlined under the dark pall. How displeasing, I thought, not to use a coffin!
Suddenly the head of this recumbent figure unmistakably moved. With a shiver I looked round me. No one appeared to notice what was to me so terrifying, yet they were gazing over the bier at the altar. Strange visions floated through my imagination, made up of memories of Charles V's funeral before his death, and of contorted accounts of Spain and her ways. Perhaps it was not an unusual custom here, thus morbidly to sample beforehand one's own funeral service. Then, as the litanies continued, now the solo from the choir, now the full-voiced responses of the people, I realized these sweet evening melodies could hardly be the dirges of a burial. The supposition of a living corpse was too bizarre in the midst of this composed crowd.
I fastened my eyes on the round head of the bier, and again it moved, but this time so thoroughly moved that the mystery was solved. With a breath of relief I knew this was indeed a quiet evening service and what had seemed a bier was merely one of the many marble tombs before the altars of old churches, covered over with a dark mantle as they sometimes are. What I had imagined the round head of a corpse, or future corpse, was the veil-draped head of a living woman, seated on a higher chair than usual between the tomb and the lighted altar. So ended my first and only romantic episode in Spain.
I mention it as showing with what vague notions of terror the average English-speaking tourist enters this harmless land. He comes full of the prejudices inherited from the days of the Invincible Armada, when a Spaniard was to an Englishman his satanic majesty incarnate, and this in an age of which Froude himself, the enthusiastic chronicler of Drake, says: "Perhaps nowhere on earth was there a finer average of distinguished and cultivated society than in the provincial Castilian cities."
Strange how tenaciously we cling to disproved ideas, I thought, as the next day we examined the beautiful tomb of Bishop Acuña which had caused my fright. Spain is as safe to-day as any civilized country. Yet we met two Californian ladies traveling with pistols, about as needed here as firearms in the lanes of Surrey or the brigand-infested hills of Massachusetts. Little by little the traveler who keeps an open mind learns that the cruel and morbid Spaniard of the popular fancy has no existence except in his imagination. Unfortunately there will always be some travelers here who see the heads on death biers move and carry away the gruesome tale to swell the old prejudices, who will not wait long enough nor look deep enough to find their living corpse a noble old bishop in alabaster who has lain in peace some hundred years.
Every day of our week in Burgos found us several times in the Cathedral. I used to arrive for the High Mass at nine, though before daybreak until nine there had been many services in the side chapels; it is still the custom with most Spaniards to kneel in recollection every morning. Strangely enough, I soon grew reconciled to the clumsy coro. It enabled the people to approach close to the altar in a peaceful secluded spot. Here at Burgos one can kneel on the altar's very steps, beside the big sanctuary lamp and the silver candlesticks that rise higher than a man. The onlooking tourist, who often spoils Italian churches for those who go to pray not to sightsee, in Spain is not permitted his ill-timed liberty. He can wander freely through the outer cathedral, but during the Mass, he cannot enter this inner temple unless he conforms to the accustomed usages. All must kneel at the moment of the Elevation or else leave. The lesson was taught us soon, for when the first morning in Burgos a lady near by in the chancel inadvertently began to read in her guide book, a verger in red plush cloak, bearing an authoritative silver staff, approached, and kindly but firmly showed her out.