Would that Toledo were but the mausoleum of regrets and memories. There is a dignity and charm in noble widowhood, a grandeur in unobtrusive poverty. But such is not her portion. She has become the home of the most shameless and persecuting beggary it has been my lot to see. All over Italy and Spain beggars thrive in the sun of winter and in the shade of summer. But here they are worse than a plague of mosquitoes. Castillian good-nature, a grand manner in money matters, and courtesy, vanish at Toledo, where a sullen discourtesy and importunate mendicity reign. The people reverse every notion travels in North Spain and Old Castille had led me to form of the Spaniards, of their kindliness, of distinguished honesty, and of disinterestedness. The Toledans regard the foreigner with the eye of the bird of prey. The instant his foot touches their ground they pounce upon him, and he knows neither rest nor freedom from their mercenary and dishonest attentions till the train carries him away from their mean little station. It is not safe to ask a question of even a well-dressed Toledan. If he tells you to take the right instead of the left, he is sure to ask you either for a tip or alms. But you may rest assured he regards himself entitled to one or the other. All the boys of whatever class, bourgeois or artizan, coming out from the Institute with sachels slung over their shoulders, or running errands, well-shod and clothed, along the streets, at the sight of a foreigner shriek out “Un canki sou” if they imagine they know French, and “cinco centimes” when they are content with Castillian. If you take no notice, they will pursue you in a vituperative procession, and not scruple to fling their caps, ay, even stones at you. Other Spanish towns are proud and noble in their decay, Toledo is unhappily degraded and brutalised. She has no commerce, no stir, no money. She has no communication with the outer world except through the travellers who briefly pass her way, and upon whose exploitation she lives. She has no standard of civilisation. Her object is to make every foreigner pay for every step he takes along her rude and inhospitable pavements. The people have no desire whatever to make a good impression, no pride in the hope that the stranger shall go away and speak them fair in remote parts. They neither want his good opinion nor his sympathy; but they want as much of his money as they can get. The ill-will is general. Canons, citizens, sacristans, guides, interpreters—all appear to be in a secret league to multiply difficulties and exact tips. Only the common women, all over Spain the cream of the race, retain something of Spanish good-nature and courtesy. If Spain should ever be redeemed and lifted once again to her old position as a nation of the earth—for now she is but a squalid and disorderly province—it will be due to the persistent amiability and kindliness of the women of the people. These want nothing but intelligence to make them the equals of the French, and here the intelligence is only dormant. It would take so little to develop it, and they are so unconsciously the better half, in such pathetic and humble ignorance of their superiority to their pretentious mates. So little love have the people for anything that is graceful, or charming or pleasant, that the guitar-players would not dream, as they wander down the dark romantic streets at night, of thrumming their guitar for mere pleasure. They must be paid a real (2-1/2d.) before they will play a single air, and then of the shortest, and if you wish them to continue you must continue producing reals at intervals. I have not heard any good playing here, and the music is of the vulgarest, but such as it is, in a dead town without a single distraction or break in the night’s monotony, one would gladly pay a peseta to hear undisturbed a little Toledan music. But no. They have no artistic desire to please before receiving payment. Their mean terror is of playing a bar that shall go unpaid for, and for this reason they stop in the middle of an air and spoil their effect.
But perhaps we should not grumble, great a blot on an impressive landscape and down streets that have not altered since the spurred and belted centuries, as this grasping and mendicant race is.[13] With a different people Toledo must surely have changed her physiognomy, and taken on a more civilised and prosperous air. And though this would be her gain, it would assuredly be our eternal loss. The city as it stands is one of the oldest and most interesting of Europe. Coming straight to it from Nuremberg, a painter has told me that Nuremberg seemed new and artificial beside it. The streets, so terrible for the modern shod foot, could not well be other than they are, taking into consideration the fact that the town is built upon seven rocky peaks 1820 feet above the sea. Perched so high, one has no right, even in the face of electric light, with which we could better dispense, to expect comfortable circulation. As a matter of fact, you do not circulate. You tumble down, and you climb up; you twist round high-walled passages the natives call streets and seem to understand, and your walk is little better than an undignified limp. The feet of the people through the influence of centuries, no doubt, appear to be impervious to the lacerating effect of pointed stones, and you have nothing to do but rise superior to the sensation of pain if you can; if not, to groan in private. But you are so well repaid by every step you take, that you have no claim upon sympathy.
Was ever city so strongly placed, so superbly fortressed as Toledo must have been in Roman, Gothic and Moorish days? We need nothing but her gates to tell us this, though all her great successive walls have been thrown down. Let us gather from her historian of the beginning of the last century, Dr Francisco Pisa, some idea of the town’s features after the Christian conquest, since we can only hope to seize fragmentary notions of the splendours of Moorish rule, and the rudest suggestion of Gothic sway. The life of the city then, as now, spread from the Zocodover, word of inexplicable charm, said to be Arabian and to signify “Place of the Beasts.” To-day even it offers us quite a fresh and startling study of the famous picaresca novel. Down the picturesque archway, cut in deep yellow upon such a blue as only southern Europe can show at all seasons, a few steps lead you to the squalid ruin where Cervantes slept, ate and wrote the Ilustre Fregona. So exactly must it have been in the days Cervantes suffered and smiled, offering to his mild glance just such a wretched and romantic front. In the courtyard muleteers and peasants sit about, and above runs a rude wooden balcony, in the further corner of which was Cervantes’ room, where he sat looking down upon the beasts being fed and watered, cheerfully writing, we may imagine, in the din of idle clatter, in the dense and evil atmosphere of an age and land when the nose was not an inconvenience. If he were no more comfortable than I presume the guests must be to-day, he cannot have suffered more in the prison of Argamasilla, or in slavery to the Turk. Stepping upon the Plaza, there would not now be much that is novel to shock his eye beyond the dress. The Plaza has preserved its old triangular form, two sides straight, and the third curved, with the single broad path that leads to the Alcázar. The shops still run inside the rough arcade that makes the circuit of the place, and loafers and gossips loll upon the stone benches, while water-laden mules amble by, and girls, effective and unimaginably graceful, with well-dressed heads and brilliant eyes, in groups saunter into view, carrying on their hips earthen amphoras, which they have filled at the public fountain. These are features that have not changed since the grave sweet humourist trod this broken pavement. Visit it in the dropping twilight, when the early stars are out, and you will find it alive with promenaders, uniforms in excess among the males. Priests, soldiers and beggars abound, and dwelling on the dulness of Toledo, it can be no
