Spanish Highways and Byways

by Katharine Lee Bates

May all these rest in peace, and all who mourn for them be comforted! Yet thought drifts away to the poor and lowly, whose grief cannot find solace in procuring this costly intercession of the Church for the souls they love. It seems hard that the inequalities of life should thus reach out into death and purgatory. We used, during our sojourn in Granada, to meet many pathetic little processions on "The Way of the Dead." Over this hollow road, almost a ravine, the fortress walls, with their crumbling towers, keep guard on the one side, and the terraced gardens of the Generalife, with their grand old cypresses, on the other. And here, almost every hour of the day, is climbing a company of four rough men, carrying on their shoulders a cheap coffin, which perhaps a husband follows, or a white-haired father, or, hand in hand, bewildered orphan boys. The road is so steep that often the bearers set their burden down in the shadow of the bank-side, and fling themselves at full length on the ground beside it, thriftily passing from man to man the slow-burning wax match for their paper cigarettes. I remember more than one such smoking group, with a solitary mourner, hat in hand and eyes on the coffin, yet he, too, with cigarette in mouth, standing patiently by. All who pass make the sign of the cross, and even the rudest peasant uncovers his head. Very shortly the bearers may be seen again, coming down the hill at a merry pace, the empty box, with its loose, rattling lid, tilted over the shoulder now of one, now of another; for the children of poverty, who had not chambers of their own nor the dignity of solitude in life, lie huddled in a common pit after death, without coffin-planks to sever dust from dust.

A century ago it was usual to robe the dead in monastic garb, especially in the habit of St. Francis or of the Virgin of Carmen, and within the present generation bodies were borne to the grave on open biers, the bystanders saluting, and bidding them farewell and quiet rest:—

"'Duerme in paz!' dicen los buenos.

'Adios!' dicen los demás."

But now the closed coffin of many colors is in vogue. In the Santiago market we met a cheerful dame with one of these balanced on her head, crying for a purchaser, and up the broad flights of steps to the Bilbao cemetery we saw a stolid-faced young peasant-woman swinging along with a child's white coffin, apparently heavy with the weight of death, poised on the glossy black coils of hair, about which she had twisted a carmine handkerchief.

Very strange is the look of a Spanish cemetery, with its ranges of high, deep walls, wherein the coffins are thrust end-wise, each above each, to the altitude of perhaps a dozen layers. These cells are sometimes purchased outright, sometimes rented for ten years, or five, or one. When the friends of the quiet tenant pay his dues no longer, forth he goes to the general ditch, osario común, and leaves his room for another. Such wall graves are characteristically Spanish, this mode of burial in the Peninsula being of long antiquity. Yet the rich prefer their own pantheons, sculptured like little chapels, or their own vaults, over which rise tall marbles of every device, the shaft, the pyramid, the broken column; while a poor family, or two or three neighboring households, often make shift to pay for one large earth grave, in which their dead may at least find themselves among kith and kin. Spanish cemeteries are truly silent cities, with streets upon streets enclosed between these solemn walls, which open out, at intervals, now for the ornamented patios of the rich, now for the dreary squares peopled by the poor. Here in a most aristocratic quarter, shaded by willows, set with marbles, paved with flower beds, sleeps a duke in stately pantheon, which is carved all over with angels, texts, and sacred symbols, still leaving room for medallions boasting his ancestral dignities. A double row of lamps, with gilded, fantastically moulded stands, and with dangling crystals of all colors, leads to the massive iron door. What enemy has he now to guard against with that array of bolts and bars? Here are a poet's palms petrified to granite, and here a monument all muffled in fresh flowers. Here the magnificent bronze figure of a knight, with sword half drawn, keeps watch beside a tomb, while the grave beyond a rose bush guards as well. And here an imaged Sandalphon holds out open hands, this legend written across his marble scarf, "The tear falleth; the flower fadeth; but God treasureth the prayer."

There is a certain high-bred reserve about these costly sepulchres, but turning to the walls one comes so face to face with grief as to experience a sense of intrusion. Each cell shows on its sealed door of slate or other stone the name and age of its occupant, and perhaps a sentiment, lettered in gilt or black, as these: "We bear our loss—God knows how heavily." "Son of my soul." "For thee, that land of larger love; for me, until I find thee there, only the valley of sorrow and the hard hill of hope."

Most of the cells have, too, a glassed or grated recess in front of this inscription wall, holding tributes or memorials—dried flowers, colored images of saints and angels, crucifixes, and the like. Sometimes the resurrection symbol of the butterfly appears. In the little cemetery at Vigo we noticed that the flower-vases were in form of great blue butterflies with scarlet splashes on their wings. Sometimes there are locks of hair, personal trinkets, and often card or cabinet photographs, whose living look startles the beholder. Out from a wreath of yellow immortelles peeps the plump smile of an old gentleman in modern dress coat; a coquettish lady in tiara and earrings laughs from behind her fan; and a grove of paper shrubbery, where tissue fairies dressed in rose petals dance on the blossoms, half hides the eager face of a Spanish midshipman. Where the photographs have faded and dimmed with time, the effect is less incongruous, if not less pathetic.

The niches of children contain the gayest possible little figures. Here are china angels in blue frocks, with pink sleeves and saffron pantalets, pink-tipped plumes, and even pink bows in their goldy hair. Here is a company of tiny Hamlets, quaint dollikins set up in a circle about a small green grave, each with finger on lip, "The rest is silence." Here are two elegant and lazy cherubs, their alabaster chubbiness comfortably bestowed in toy chairs of crimson velvet on each side of an ivory crucifix. And here is a Bethlehem, and here a Calvary, and here the Good Shepherd bearing the lamb in His bosom; and here, in simple, but artistic wood carving, the Christ with open arms, calling to a child on sick-bed to come unto Him, while the mother, prostrate before the holy feet, kisses their shadow. One cannot look for long. It is well to lift the eyes from the niche graves of Granada to the glory of the Sierra Nevada that soars beyond, and turn from the patios of San Isidro to the cheerful picture of Madrid across the Manzanares, even though, prominent in the vista, rises the cupola of San Francisco el Grande. This is the National Pantheon, and within, beneath the frescoed dome, all aglow with blue and gold, masses are chanted for the dead whom Spain decrees to honor, as, so recently, for Castelar.

Near this church a viaduct, seventy-five feet high, crosses the Calle de Segovia; and, despite the tall crooked railings and a constant police patrol, Madrileños bent on suicide often succeed in leaping over and bruising out their breath on the stones of the street below. It is a desperate exit. The Seine and Thames lure their daily victims with murmuring sound and the soft, enfolding look of water, but Spaniards who spring from this fatal viaduct see beneath them only the cruel pavement. That life should be harder than stone! And yet the best vigilance of Madrid cannot prevent fresh bloodstains on the Calle de Segovia.