In Quest of El Dorado

by Stephen Graham

CHAPTER II EN ROUTE FOR CADIZ

Travelling by way of Rouen and Chartres to Burgos and Toledo, and by way of Bordeaux to Cordoba and Cadiz prompts certain comparisons—Spain is grander than France; France has more life.

The note of the Gothic is aspiration out of stone, but that of the Moorish is barbaric splendor within stone. The asceticism of stone reigns at Durham, at Rouen, and is somehow transfigured into the loveliness of doves' plumage at Chartres, but in the Spanish cathedrals speaks chiefly gold. It is the same at Burgos, gilded with some of the first gold of Mexico, as it is at the cathedral of Toledo; architecturally unremarkable but interiorly oppressed with riches. As you enter by the old doors it is not so much into the presence of God as into the power of the Church.

Spain is the most faithful son of the Church and France the most reprobate. France, like the prodigal, may nevertheless be nearer to salvation. France is germinative, and, if cynical, yet eternally curious, whereas Spain is incurious. Spain does not want to know. She is the last of the democracies of Europe to rebel. Probably the state of society in Spain could not be defined as a democracy.

The great ports of Spain are, however, different in temperament from the cities of the interior. Boisterous Bilbao in the north and Barcelona in the south are insurgently democratic. In these is a revolutionary movement pointing against Church and Monarchy. In these there is an energy, a commercial hustle, a will to power, which reminds one of the cities of Northern Italy.

Geographers, map-makers of Europe, seem very much at fault in the way they print the names of Spanish towns. The faint print usually reserved for villages is used for Santander and Bilbao. But these are great and stirring cities with modern buildings which for beauty and strength of design can be compared only with the architecture of the greater cities of the United States. Again, how absurd it is to print Bayonne and Biarritz in large type and indicate San Sebastian, their neighbor across the Spanish frontier, in faint italics. San Sebastian is a magnificent city and a most beautiful resort. You can see Spain there, in the season, at its grandest.

But one would not have been surprised to find Toledo printed fine, for there truly, famous though it be in history, we have an obscure, unchanging seat of the past. Toledo is more truly Spain than is Bilbao or Barcelona. It is the Spain that was. Toledo is a close-packed, mountain-built city of winding, narrow, shady ways and high, overhanging, ancient houses. It reminds one of the Saracen villages high up on the cliffs above the sun-bathed Riviera. It was Moorish and Jewish before it was Spanish, famous throughout the Middle Ages for its steel. They try to sell you Toledo swords in a score of little shops to-day. And, in the past, has not Toledo steel pushed its way through the vitals of innumerable duelists? And Spanish mail, Spanish armor, Spanish shields and Spanish swords have had an immense repute. It was the southern counterpart of Swedish steel. But Solingen has gone on and made domestic cutlery for the teeming populations of industrialism whilst Toledo still makes swords. Toledo has no street-cars. Toledo has no cinema. It has no Cable office. Its hotels, spacious and quaint, have no rooms with bath, no room telephones. There are barber shops, but the poles do not revolve. Nothing revolves.

There is a pack of some of the most persistent beggars I have seen. Blasco Ibañez says they live on the English and American tourists who visit the Cathedral, and he sneers at the tourists' stupidity and credulity. But if the tourists ceased to come the beggars would not cease to be. This beggary is a disgrace to a rich country like Spain. That small boys should rush in to beg the sugar you have left over from your morning cup of coffee is unseemly and out of keeping with the otherwise stately ways of the people. In Spain thousands beg who could quite well be earning a living, and the mendicancy of these defeats the case of the paralyzed, the blind, the aged, from whom few would otherwise turn away.

In Toledo, however, lurks the great Cathedral, like some strange, rare monster of the past. It is horribly cramped, and seems to be trying to hide its vast, aged form from modern gaze. There lies the dust of kings, emperors, archbishops; undisturbed, unprovoked. It seems the low notes of the organ should never swell to anything clamorous and new. All is hushed as you walk around; gloom of unlighted centuries is upon you.