Wanderings in Spain

by Théophile Gautier

Neither the palette of the painter nor the pen of the writer possesses colours sufficiently bright, nor tints sufficiently luminous, to convey any idea of the brilliant effect that Cadiz produced upon us that glorious morning. Two unique tints struck our view; blue and white—the blue as vivid as turquoises, sapphires, or cobalt, in fact the very deepest azure that can be imagined, and the white as pure as silver, snow, milk, marble, or the finest crystallized sugar! The blue was the sky repeated by the sea; the white was the town. It is impossible to conceive anything more radiant and more dazzling—to imagine light more diffused, and, at the same time, more intense. In sober truth, what we term the sun in France is, in comparison, nothing but a pale night-lamp at the last gasp, by the bedside of a sick man.

The houses at Cadiz are much loftier than those in the other towns of Spain. This is explained by the conformation of the ground, which is a small narrow island connected with the continent by a mere strip of land, as well as from the general desire to have a view of the sea. Each house stands on tiptoe with eager curiosity, in order to look over its neighbour's shoulder, and raise itself above the thick girdle of ramparts. This, however, is not always found sufficient, and at the angle of nearly all the terraces, there is a turret, a kind of belvedere, sometimes surmounted by a little cupola. These aërial miradores enrich the outline of the town with innumerable dentations, and produce a most picturesque effect. Every building is whitewashed, and the brilliancy of the façades is increased still more by long lines of vermilion which separate the houses and mark out the different stories: the balconies, which project very far, are enclosed in large glass cages, furnished with red curtains and filled with flowers. Some of the cross streets terminate on the open space, and seem to end in the sky. These stray bits of azure charm you by their being so totally unexpected. Apart from this gay, animated and dazzling appearance, Cadiz can boast of nothing particular in the way of architecture. Although its cathedral, which is a vast building of the sixteenth century, is wanting neither nobleness nor beauty, it presents nothing to astonish, after the prodigies of Burgos, Toledo, Cordova, and Seville; it is something in the same style as the cathedrals of Jaen, Granada, and Malaga; it is a specimen of classic architecture only rendered more slim and tapering, with that skill for which the artists of the Renaissance were so famed. The Corinthian capitals, more elongated than those of the consecrated Greek form, are very elegant. The pictures and ornaments are specimens of overcharged bad taste and meaningless richness, and that is all. I must not, however, pass over in silence, a little crucified martyr of seven years old, in carved, painted wood, most beautifully conceived, and carried out with exquisite delicacy. Enthusiasm, faith, and grief are all united on the beautiful face, in childlike proportions and the most touching manner.

We went to see the Plaza de Toros, which is small, and reckoned one of the most dangerous in Spain. In order to reach it, you pass through gardens planted with gigantic palm-trees of various kinds. Nothing is more noble and more royal than the palm-tree. Its large sun of leaves at the top of its grooved column, glitters so splendidly in the lapis-lazuli of an eastern sky! Its scaly trunk, as slender as if it were confined within a corset, reminds you so much of a young maiden's waist, its bearing is so majestic and so elegant. The palm-tree and the oleander are my favourite trees: the sight of one of them causes me to feel a degree of gaiety and joy that is truly astonishing. It seems to me as if no one could be unhappy under their shade.

The Plaza de Toros at Cadiz has no continuous tablas. There are kinds of wooden screens, at certain intervals, behind which the toreros take refuge when too closely pursued. This arrangement struck us as presenting less security than that in the other bull-rings.

Our attention was directed to the boxes in which the bulls are confined during the fight: they are a kind of cages, formed of massive beams, and shut by a door which is raised like the shuttle of a mill or the sluice of a pond. It is the custom here to goad the bulls with sharp-pointed darts and rub them with nitric acid, in order to render them furious: in short, all possible means are employed to exasperate their natural disposition.

On account of the excessive heat, the bull-fights were discontinued; a French acrobat had arranged his trestles and tight-rope in the middle of the arena for a performance that was to take place the next day. It was in this circus that Lord Byron saw the bull-fight which he describes in the first canto of "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage;" the description is poetical, but does not say much for his knowledge of Tauromachia.

Cadiz is surrounded by a tight girdle of ramparts, which laces in its waist like a granite corset: a second girdle of shoals and rocks defends it from the attacks of the waves, and yet, some few years since, a frightful tempest rent in twain and threw down, in several places, these formidable walls, which are more than twenty feet thick, and immense masses of which still strew the shore here and there. The ramparts are furnished at intervals with stone sentry-boxes; you can walk on the glacis all round the town, from which there is only one gate leading to the mainland, and, as you go along, view, out at sea or on the roadstead, the boats, feluccas, and fishing-smacks coming, going, describing graceful curves, crossing one another, tacking about, and playing like so many albatrosses; on the horizon, they appear nothing more than a number of dove's feathers, carried through the air by the capricious breeze; some of them, like the ancient Greek galleys, have on each side of the cutwater at the prow a large eye painted so as to resemble nature, and which appears to watch over the vessel's progress, imparting to this part of it something that bears a vague resemblance to the human profile. Nothing can be more animated, more lively, and more gay than this view.

On the mole, near the gateway of the custom-house, the scene is one of unequalled activity. A motley crowd, in which every nation of the globe has its representative, is hurrying, at every hour of the day, to the foot of the columns, surmounted by statues, which decorate the quay. From the white skin and red hair of the Englishman, down to the bronzed hide and black hair of the African, including all the intermediate shades, such as coffee-colour, copper, and golden-yellow, all the varieties of the human race are assembled there. In the roads, a little further on, the three-deckers, the frigates, and the brigs ride proudly at anchor, hoisting every morning, to the sound of the drum, the flags of their respective nations; the merchantmen and steamers, whose funnels belch forth a bicoloured smoke, approach nearer to the shore, in consequence of their drawing less water, and form the first plan of this grand naval picture.

I had a letter of introduction to the commander of the French brig-of-war Le Voltigeur, then stationed in Cadiz Roads. On my presenting it, Monsieur Lebarbier de Linan politely invited me, and two other gentlemen, to dine on board his vessel, the next day about five o'clock. At four o'clock we were on the mole, looking out for a bark and a boatman to take us from the quay to the vessel, which it required fifteen or twenty minutes, at most, to reach. I was very much astonished at the boatman's demanding a douro instead of a piacetta which was the ordinary fare. In my ignorance of nautical matters, seeing the sky perfectly clear and the sun shining as on the first day of the creation, I very innocently imagined that the weather was fine. Such was my conviction. The weather was, on the contrary, atrocious, as I did not fail to perceive at the very first broadsides we encountered. There was a short, chopping sea, that was frightfully rough, while the wind was sufficient to blow our heads off our shoulders. We were tossed about as if we had been in a nutshell, and shipped water every instant. At the expiration of a few minutes we were enjoying a foot-bath, which threatened to become very speedily a hip-bath. The foam of the waves entered between my neck and the collar of my coat, and trickled down my back. The skipper and his two companions were swearing, vociferating and snatching the sheets and the helm out of each other's hands. One wanted this thing and the other that, and there was one moment when they were on the point of coming to fisticuffs. Our situation at last became so critical that one of them began to mumble the end of a prayer to some saint or other. Luckily we were now near the brig, that was calmly riding at anchor, and apparently looking down with an air of contemptuous pity on the convulsive evolutions of our little skiff. At length we came alongside, and it took us more than ten minutes ere we could succeed in catching hold of the man-ropes and scramble upon deck. "This is what I call being courageous and punctual," said the commander, with a smile, on seeing us climb up out the gangway, dripping with water, and with our hair streaming about us, like the beard of some marine deity. He then gave each of us a pair of trousers, a shirt, a waistcoat—in fact, a complete suit. "This will teach you," he continued afterwards, "to put faith in the descriptions of poets. You thought that every tempest must necessarily be accompanied with thunder, and waves mingling their foam with the clouds, and rain, and lightning darting through the murky darkness. Undeceive yourselves; in all probability, I shall not be able to send you on shore for two or three days."