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.

Now and Then

Then: what Nathaniel saw

Now: it has changed a bit, I agree.

The discrepancy between these two images is not due to Nathaniel's bad drawing skills: the fountain apparently did look different back then.  It had clearly been in the wars, in every sense. According to Nathaniel, when he saw it you couldn't even tell what those four fragmented, beaten-up Cupids were meant to be riding on.

Looking at the modern photo we can see the basin and central column rising from it aren't much altered, but the Cupids and their dolphins(?) have been heavily restored, and there has clearly been a significant rebuild at the top.  Even in Nathaniel's day, when the little statue surmounting the fountain was so damaged the Christ child had vanished altogether, there was  a visible difference in colour between the lower part of the fountain and the upper: so it seems the lower part is much older. The original design is perhaps impossible to guess.  Would an earlier age have chosen to place the vaguely erotic symbols of Cupids and Melusines beneath a statue of the Virgin?   I can't say.  Anyway, as Nathaniel described it:

"This little antique monument charms, by the quaint symmetry of its design and proportions, and perhaps even by the terribly mutilated state of the four fragments of Cupids, which, riding on the necks of the same number of animals so maltreated as to render impossible the discovery of their race, form projecting angles, and support the basin on their shoulders. Four mermaids, holding up their tails, so as not to interfere with the operations of the Cupids, ornament the sides of the basin, which are provided with small apertures for the escape of the water; the top being covered by a flat circular stone, carved around its edge. This stone,—a small, elegantly shaped pedestal, which surmounts it,—and the other portions already described, are nearly black, probably from antiquity; but on the pedestal stands a little marble virgin, as white as snow. This antique figure harmonises by its mutilation with the rest, although injured in a smaller degree; and at the same time adds to the charm of the whole, by the contrast of its dazzling whiteness with the dark mass on which it is supported. The whole is balanced on the capital of a pillar, of a most original form, which appears immediately above the surface of a sheet of water enclosed in a large octagonal basin."

"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.

We don't like the clergy much, unless they're made of stone

He is rambling round this dark and probably echoing interior.  Vaulted stone is overhead. To describe what he sees he is using precise terminology, not all of which is penetrable, e.g. "The transept has no lateral naves."

This conveys nothing to me, and there is much more like it, so my eye quickly skims down to his next illustration.

Now, this I like.  This says gloom, and grandeur, and gothic. The pygmy human figures give scale to its magnificence while the strong Spanish sunlight plummets into the space beyond like a waterfall into a subterranean cavern.  Young ladies at home in Victorian parlours could sigh over this and wistfully imagine themselves as nuns, gliding about in a holy way with sexily downcast eyes.

Nathaniel would probably have taken a second look at a nun, but in general seems to find the clergy unimpressive, because here he drops in one of his little asides about a couple of quarrelling bishops:

"Don Pedro Fernandez de Frias, Cardinal of Spain... was, it is affirmed, of low parentage, of base and licentious habits of life, and of a covetous and niggardly disposition. These defects, however, by no means diminished the high favour he enjoyed at the successive courts of Henry the Third and Juan the Second. The Bishop of Segovia, Don Juan de Tordesillas, happened by an unlucky coincidence to visit Burgos during his residence there. The characters of the two prelates were not of a nature to harmonise in the smallest degree, and, being thrown necessarily much in each other's way, they gave loose occasionally to expressions more than bordering on the irreverent. It was on one of these occasions, that, the eloquence of the Cardinal Bishop here interred being at default, a lacquey of his followers came to his assistance, and being provided with a palo, or staff, inflicted on the rival dignitary certain arguments ad humeros—in fact, gave the Bishop of Segovia a severe drubbing. The Cardinal was on this occasion compelled to retire to Italy."

So much for undignified dignitaries.  But soon he comes across a clergyman he really does like - a carving decorating an arch.  It is a cowled head, perhaps meant to represent St. Francis :

"The attention is instantly rivetted by this head: it is not merely a masterpiece of execution. Added to the exquisite beauty and delicate moulding of the upper part of the face, the artist has succeeded in giving to the mouth an almost superhuman expression. This feature, in spite of a profusion of hair which almost covers it, lives and speaks. A smile, in which a barely perceptible but irresistible and, as it were, innate bitterness of satire and disdain modifies a wish of benevolence, unites with the piercing expression of the eyes in lighting up the stone with a degree of intellect which I had thought beyond the reach of sculpture until I saw this head. Tradition asserts it to be a portrait of Saint Francis, who was at Burgos at the period of the completion of the cathedral; and who, being in the habit of examining the progress of the works, afforded unconsciously a study to the sculptor."

He draws it, as you see: but by the time the head has passed through his hands and those of the artist who transferred his work into etchings, I can't see what's so great about it. Nor can I find the original in google images. Has it gone?

"Grace, symmetry, grandeur and lightness"

LETTER IV.

ARRIVAL AT BURGOS. CATHEDRAL.

" Nothing can exceed the beauty of this front taken as a whole."

We are finally at Burgos, admiring its cathedral.  Well no, more than that: we're examining it with the judicious and discerning eye of a man of taste.

For comparison, I include here a link to tripadvisor's site on the same historic edifice.  On the day I visited it a tourist had left the comment "Interesting.  As cathedrals go, this is a nice example..."

Yes, well, that's about what my own response would be, but Nathaniel does it all in a bit more depth.  He analyses the cathedral's layout, sketches its history and speaks with knowledgeable enthusiasm of it - or of parts of it, anyway.  Something a bit tragic apparently happened to the centre tower, which fell down and was completed by several architects in a later style.  The style is not exactly bad, but it is different: "Taken by itself, the tower is, both externally and internally, admirable, from the elegance of its form, and the richness of its details; but it jars with the rest of the building."

Dammit. Only six out of ten for you, Centre Tower! About the West Front (above) though he has no reservations whatever:

"Here nothing is required to be added, or taken away, to afford the eye a feast as perfect as grace, symmetry, grandeur, and lightness, all combined, are capable of producing. Nothing can exceed the beauty of this front taken as a whole."

"Grace, symmetry, grandeur and lightness".  It seems these are the qualities that combine to make an outstanding piece of Gothic architecture.  And apparently it's so satisfying because it starts off very solid and simple, only becoming ornamental at the first story; is then even more richly adorned at the third level; and from there the two beautiful towers rise...

"connected by a screen, which masks the roof, raising the apparent body of the façade an additional story. This screen is very beautiful, being composed of two ogival windows in the richest style, with eight statues occupying the intervals of their lower mullions. A fourth story, equally rich, terminates the towers, on the summits of which are placed the two spires. These are all that can be wished for the completion of such a whole. "

Looking at the picture above...yes, I can sort of see what he means.


"They are, I imagine, not only unmatched, but unapproached by any others, in symmetry, lightness, and beauty of design. The spire of Strasburg is the only one I am acquainted with that may be allowed to enter into the comparison...."

But he quickly adds that even the spire at Strasbourg doesn't quite equal Burgos anyway. Granted it's twice as big, and yet still possesses an airy lightness, but "the symmetry of its outline is defective, being uneven, and producing the effect of steps. And then it is alone, and the absence of a companion gives the façade an unfinished appearance. For these reasons I prefer the spires of Burgos."

(You can compare them by going to this site dedicated to the Cathedral of Strasbourg. And to be honest, I think he's right.)

And we have learned a new word: "ogival", meaning ...pointy-arched.