Entering the city by the striking bridge of San Martin, you pass the picturesque ruin of the Baño de la Cava, where the too charming Florinda is supposed to have bathed for the doom of Don Rodrigo and the ruin of Gothic Spain. Rodrigo’s castle, of which not a trace now remains, was built on the high rock above, and indiscreet eyeshot sent down upon this sacred spot is said to have revealed to him a seductive vision of a beautiful bare limb. The ruin is probably that of a towered bridge, suggested by the big grey stone on the opposite bank. The spot is, however, romantic enough for any legend, and those who prefer tradition to fact will say, if Florinda did not bathe there, she ought to have done so. The view on this side is more beautiful than even on the other. A Spanish friend, whose privilege it is to paint Toledo in all her wild and sad enchantment, in a big house above the Puerta del Cambron, overlooking the wavy water-line from the bridge of San Martin and the exquisite diversity of orchard and meadow-land, has offered me many delightful moments of contemplation of this unique view from his broad terrace. It combines in the rarest form a light and smiling charm with a superb and matchless melancholy. From this point of entrance you twist up and down through the most mysterious streets of the world. Who designed them, who fashioned them? How came any town to be so built? Streets so narrow that hand may touch hand from either side, and soft converse be held through opposite windows; so rounded that an enemy advancing might fall upon you unperceived. How many lovely façades, alas! eaten away, a sullen magnificent protest against modern times, with divine arches showing here and there through miserable plaster! Everywhere Moorish faience, and curious Toledan doors in Arabian or Gothic porches, for all the world like the doors of palaces in fairyland, ornamented with huge carved iron nails. And when the doors stand open, glimpses of bright clean patios, with their gleaming bands of azulejos, their centre well and little stunted trees. All so dull, so still, so silent. Now and then you may chance to meet a woman following a mule laden with fruit and vegetable, which she sells from house to house, or a water-carrier, or an itinerant pedlar shouting the value and nature of his wares up to the balconies. Some of the street effects of grouping and colouring are of an indescribable witchery. Where will you match such a corner as that of the old palace of the Cardinal D. Pascual de Aragon, now a convent? Words are useless to convey an idea of its quaintness, the effect of pink and green, of iron balcony, of wrought stone, of broken façade and charming variety of line. These are things that even a painter can hardly hope to reproduce. And such corners abound in Toledo. The foot treads the very pavement of romance and legend, where everything is a gratification for the eye, and the dream of the mourner of departed centuries is remorselessly realised. Of commerce hardly a hint. Here and there an offer to supply daily wants of the simplest kind, and, in the Calle del Comercio, a few shop-fronts with belated appointments. The most interesting is that of Alvarez, the best maker of damascene. Murray’s guide-book recommends travellers to purchase this famous Toledo work at the Fabrica de Armas, the Government enterprise. This is wrong advice. The Fabrica produces inferior work, and charges twenty-five per cent. more than the private factories. Some of the work in Alvarez’s shop is exquisite, and, when you have entered his workshop behind, and watched the men slowly and carefully produce this minute art,
the wonder is not that it should be so expensive, but that it should not cost more. The Fabrica outside the town is only interesting to the lovers of steel. It is quite a vulgar and modern institution, dating from the days of Charles III., the bourgeois monarch, whom a Spanish writer contemptuously described as “an excellent mayor.” In the middle ages, the armourers worked in their own houses, and each master had a band of apprentices. They formed a corporation, and were exempt from taxes and duties in the purchase of materials for this art. The sword-makers of Toledo were a company of European importance, and even the mere sellers of daggers and blades were privileged citizens, whom the very sovereigns and archbishops respected. Toledan steel was renowned in France and England, as well as in Italy. On his way to captivity in Madrid, Francis of France cried, seeing beardless boys with swords at their sides, “Oh! most happy Spain, that brings forth and brings up men already armed.” The steel used by the espaderos of Toledo came from the iron mines of Mondragon in the Basque provinces. Palomario explains its peculiar excellence by the virtues of the sand and water of the Tagus. When the metal was red-hot, it was covered with sand, and, the blade then formed, it was placed in a hollow of sixty centimetres, and red-hot, was plunged into a wooden tank full of Tagus water. The most celebrated espadero of Toledo was Guiliano el Moro, a native of Granada, in the fifteenth century. He became converted after the surrender of Boabdil, and King Ferdinand being his sponsor, was also called Guiliano el rey. Cervantes mentions his mark, which was a little dog. Other great espaderos were—Joannes de la Horta, Tomás de Ayala, Sagahun, Dionisio Corrientes, Miguel Cantera, whose motto was opus laudat artificem, Tomás Ghya, Hortensio de Aguerre and Menchaca Sebastian Hernandez. The decline of Toledan steel is traced to the introduction of French costume; and though attempts have been made to revive it, the old art, in all its unrivalled beauty, has forever vanished.
Gone forever, too, all traces of the great Toledan palaces, except a wall, a doorway here and there, or maybe the degraded remains of a beautiful chamber or courtyard, or, as in the case of the house of the great family of the Toledos (to-day, the Dukes of Alba), just an impressive façade. But of the Villena palace nothing, of the Fuensalida nothing to give us to-day a definite notion of its former splendour. Nothing of the great houses of the Montemayors, the Ayalas, the Silvas, Maqueda, Cifuentes, Count Orgaz, and so many others who rivalled the mighty archbishops in power, and whose followers clashed steel so noisily once in these dim, deserted streets. Sadder still, beyond what remains of the Palacios de Galiana, in the king’s garden, little of Moorish beauty, nothing of their sway but floating, vaporous impressions and cherished suggestions, never absent, though ever vague and full of the mystery and charm of the uncertain and the elusive.