I saw everything in Granada as quickly as I could, for the town is cold and the people are uncouth, and have a habit of looking upon the foreigner as their legitimate prey. Extortion, robbery, cheating, and imposition are rampant. To get about at all one must strew the ground with pesetas. Difficulties are made specially by the guides, in order that the silver key may be produced as often as possible. Being in a hurry to get away, I took a little man and bade him take me everywhere at once. But I told him if he took me to see a Murillo I would put my navaja into him. (I have seen 7,482 Murillos, all genuine, in Spain, and I am getting a little tired of them.) My little man took me everywhere; but every five minutes he turned round and exclaimed, ‘Aqui es costumbre dar una propina,’ which meant, ‘Here it is customary to give a tip.’ That wretched little man made me give pesetas to gardeners, servants, coachmen, doorkeepers, officials, watchmen, porters, and every person, male and female, who happened to be in the places or grounds I visited. And I know as well as possible that he afterwards returned and went ‘whacks’ with the lot. I protested once or twice, and tried to make him ashamed of himself, but he swore by all the saints that it was ‘costumbre.’ He admitted that it was an imposition, but he insisted that the people were paid no wages, and so had to live on what visitors gave them. When I had finished with him, however, I read him a long moral lecture, and gave him to understand that he must not take all the people who were not born in Granada for idiots. I’m afraid my protests were in vain. The motto of Granada will still remain, ‘Aqui es costumbre to fleece the foreigner.’
That which filled me with the greatest astonishment in Granada, after the Alhambra, was the way in which all the dogs of the town attended mass in the cathedral. Quite half the ladies who came in and knelt down brought dogs with them. The dogs didn’t sit still, but went on excursions into the different chapels, and visited the altars, and certainly, when there, their actions could not be interpreted as showing reverence or respect. I stood petrified to the spot when I saw a big retriever who came in with an old lady deliberately ascend the steps of the high altar, and sniff at the calves of the officiating priests. Nobody took any notice, except a little acolyte, who pulled the dog’s tail and then patted his head. Several cats being also in the sacred edifice, there were times when some of the dogs left off sniffing around and joined in a merry scamper after a startled tom, who fled and leapt for refuge on to some upper portion of an altar, and looked down and spat at his enemies. I have been in a good many cathedrals, but I never saw dogs enjoy so much liberty in one before. The people of Granada are exceptionally devout, which made me wonder all the more at the custom. But to admit dogs is the custom, and, being the custom, I suppose nobody thinks anything of it.
After the Alhambra, the great Mosque of Cordova is the most beautiful thing in Spain. Built by the Moors in 796, it still stands a monument of their glorious architecture. Charles V., in 1526, allowed a portion of it to be destroyed to make room for an ugly cathedral in the centre of it. When he saw the act of vandalism that the priests had persuaded him to permit he was deeply grieved, and exclaimed, ‘You have built here what you or anyone might have built anywhere, but you have destroyed what was unique in the world!’ You can imagine how beautiful it must be for the man who knocked down half the Alhambra to build himself a hideously ugly drab-stone palace to be grieved at its partial destruction. This mosque is the finest type in Europe of a temple of Islam. It is a forest of beautiful marble pillars, supporting the most exquisite Moorish arches. I spent a whole day in the mosque with an intelligent little Italian, who knew every nook and corner of it.
When you get to Cordova you are never sure that you will see the mosque. You may not find it. Cordova is built on the principle of the maze at Hampton Court, but there is no nice kind gentleman on a raised platform to extricate you from the labyrinth of lanes. Even the inhabitants occasionally get lost, and wander up this street and down that for hours until they accidentally get to their homes again. Many of the dogs in Cordova have their owners’ names and addresses on their collars. This is a great help to the inhabitants. When a Cordovan gets lost he waits about and looks on all the dogs’ collars who run past him. When he sees a dog who has his (the lost inhabitant’s) street on its collar, he follows him, and is so guided home.
These things are not romances, but facts. Every street is exactly alike, and every street is crossed and recrossed by dozens of other streets, and they all wind in and out, and they are all about three feet wide—some of them are not two feet wide. Woe betide the stranger who ventures out alone, and does not know enough Spanish to ask to be guided home again! He may spend a week easily in trying to find his way back to the hotel.
The hotel in Cordova is one of the best in Spain, and is always crammed with foreigners. The best time to study the guests is at table d’hôte. I have always my ears and eyes open then. I am much amused by a young Frenchman who has been to London, and is entertaining the other French guests with an account of the marvels he has seen there. The English live entirely on mutton-chops and beefsteaks, and always have sauce out of bottles. They even put this sauce, which is black, over their pudding and into their tea. On Sundays the English have no dinner. They only have tea and cold meat. The French ladies hold up their hands and cry out that never will they venture into such a horrible country. The Frenchman then sends them into fits by describing the feet and boots of English young ladies. Their feet are enormous, and they wear big cloth boots with no heels to them. Many girls of only sixteen already have the gout. Englishmen drink beer out of pewter pots in the highest society. The Prince of Wales, even at his grand dinners at Marlborough House, always has beer in a pewter pot by his side.
Near the Frenchman who has been to London and gathered so much information sit an extraordinary family, who are the wonder of the hotel. There is an old gentleman who speaks nothing but English, and is married to a widow who speaks nothing but French, with two daughters by a former husband who speak nothing but German. It is the oddest family arrangement that I ever came across in my life.
Then there is a Russian gentleman who is three feet high and four feet across. His head is a big dumpling with two eyes and something that with the aid of a powerful magnifying glass you make out to be a nose. By way of compensation he has a mouth that goes right across his face and turns round each corner. His body is a larger dumpling, and for legs he has two boiled jam rolls.
We sit down 150 at table d’hôte, and 149 people leave off eating and sit in blank amazement when this little Russian commences operations upon an orange. With a series of snorts and a couple of wriggles he gets the peel off. He then puts the orange between his teeth and forces it into his mouth by hitting it hard with both his fists. During this operation the people opposite and on either side are continually ducking their heads to avoid squirts of orange-juice in the eye.
As soon as the little Russian succeeds in closing his mouth he goes black in the face, and remains so for about two minutes. At the end of this time there is a loud gurgle; then the great mouth slowly opens, and calmly and passively the owner allows the pulp from which the juice has been extracted to fall upon his plate in portions. Horrible as this description may sound, it falls far short of the actual truth.