Haverty, Viardot and rivals in print

I am slowly coming round to the view that our boy may have been a bit full of himself. I do not think Nathaniel suffered from lack of self-belief.  Do these sound like the words of a man diffident about offering his own opinions?

"I had read of Toledo being in possession of the finest church in Spain,—and that in the book of a tourist, whose visit to this town follows immediately that to Seville. Begging pardon of the clever and entertaining writer to whom I allude, the Cathedral of Toledo strikes me as far from being the finest in Spain; nor would it be the finest in France, nor in England, nor in other countries that might be enumerated, could it be transported to either."

So take that, Martin Haverty, you, you - tourist!  Because it was Martin Haverty, an Irish journalist, who Nathaniel here claims had recklessly and foolishly preferred the Cathedral of Toledo to that of Seville: and what's more he compounded the offence by saying so in print in a book about his travels in Spain - a year or two earlier.

Thus annoyingly pipping our boy at the post, travel-writing-about-Spain-wise.

All of which makes me wonder, was Nathaniel consulting Haverty's book as he went on his own tour? Or did he read it afterwards, snorting contemptuously at its opinions? Possibly ripping out pages, screwing them into balls and slam-dunking them into a wastepaper basket?

Or did Haverty's book in fact give him the bright idea of turning his letters to Mrs C-----r and his assorted Spanish sketches into solid cash?

Sadly I don't know.  All I know is, he had clearly read the "clever and entertaining" Haverty's book, otherwise he wouldn't have patronised its judgment quite so...so..patronising-gittishly.

(You can read about Haverty here, and his book Wanderings in Spain is available free as an e-text in Google books.)

Indeed, so eager is Nathaniel here to show his opinion on cathedrals is better than anyone else's in the world  that he actually misrepresents what the harmless Haverty wrote. In fact it was:

"I shall proceed at once to enumerate the principal curiosities of Seville, and begin with the Cathedral, one of the finest in the world, and unrivalled by any one in Spain, except by that of Toledo."

See, Nathaniel?  See what he's saying there?  Haverty is extolling the cathedral of Seville.. Seville is the one he considers - as you yourself do - to be among the finest in the world: and not Toledo, which he merely thinks is the only other one in Spain that is even close.

Calm down, dear.

As for Viardot and his input in Nathaniel's work, I shall save it for another post.

"She's the best of her kind, but her kind is not the best."

We are on our way out of the cathedral at Burgos, pausing at the door for a final, lingering, critical glance:

... "not forgetting to enjoy, as we leave the church, a long gaze at its elegant and symmetrical proportions. It may be called an unique model of beauty of its particular sort, especially when contemplated without being drawn into comparison with other edifices of a different class. Catalani is said, on hearing Sontag's performance, to have remarked that she was "la première de son genre, mais que son genre n'était pas le premier." Could the cathedral of Seville see that of Burgos, it would probably pronounce a similar judgment on its smaller rival."

Angelica Catalani, singer: (1780-1849)

Come again, Nathaniel - Catalani? Sontag?

Okay, Wikipedia tells me who Catalani was, the famous Italian soprano on the left. "Sontag" presumably is Henriette Sontag, a rival songstress Catalani damned with faint praise: her remark translates something like "she's the best of her kind, but her kind is not the best."

He's recalling the judgment of a famous but faded soprano who was already in her sixties as he journeys confidently through Spain, pronouncing so robustly on its architectural charms.  (We know, he doesn't, that the old lady singer he quotes will still outlive him by three years.)

So: the Cathedral of Burgos is very lovely, and if he hadn't already seen the one at Seville Nathaniel would have have been utterly bowled over by it.  As it is, yes, perfectly charming, but - he has seen better.

So we turn our backs on the Cathedral of Burgos and head across the hot stones of the square towards the Ayuntamiento.  This is the Town Hall, and in itself not interesting enough to detain jaded aesthetes like us:

 "The building, like other town-halls, possesses an airy staircase, a large public room, and a few other apartments, used for the various details of administration; but nothing remarkable until you arrive at a handsomely ornamented saloon, furnished with a canopied seat fronting a row of arm-chairs. This is the room in which the municipal body hold their juntas."

We are heading there because surprisingly, the Town Hall of Burgos is where we shall find the remains of Spain's greatest hero - a man whose fame reached even 20th century Hollywood.

We are going to pay our respects at the grave of El Cid.