William Nelson A Memoir 17

William Nelson A Memoir 17

The notes of Dr. Porter of Belfast have already furnished interesting

reminiscences of the interchange of experiences and observations between

William Nelson and himself as travellers in the East; and they are no

less available for information illustrating the impressions left on the

mind of the former by his Spanish tour. Dr. Porter thus writes:--“Mr.

Nelson spoke to me often, and with singular enthusiasm, of his travels

in Spain, and of all the wonders of art and architecture he saw there.

On one occasion, I remember well, after showing me some of the exquisite

models brought from the Alhambra, and also drawings of the Great

Mosque-Cathedral of Cordova, and of the Alkazar in Seville, he said:

‘All these are relics of the Moors, or imitations of their work. Where

did they get that marvellous style of architectural decoration? It is

unique. There is nothing like it, except in those countries where the

Moors were settled. The Greeks excelled it in pure taste and grandeur of

idea; the Egyptians in magnitude, as at Thebes and Ghizeh; the Assyrians

in vastness and perhaps splendour; but in beauty of ornament, in

delicacy of finish, in gorgeousness of interior decoration, the Moors

stand unrivalled. I often wonder how, where, and at what exact period

this Moorish style of architecture was conceived; in what way all its

details were elaborated. One sees it in the Great Mosque at Jerusalem,

in the old Arab tombs and the private houses of Damascus, in the mosques

of Cairo and Algiers, and above all in the glorious Alhambra. The Greeks

had their schools of architecture and art: where were the Arabs or Moors

taught? Their peculiar style, so far as I know,’ he added, ‘rose

rapidly, almost at a bound. We can scarcely discover any trace of

progress from rude beginnings, as in the Greek architecture. This has

ever been to me a most interesting and mysterious subject.’” Mr. Nelson

evidently thought and read not a little upon Moorish architecture, but,

like many another student, without arriving at any satisfactory result.

“How the wild tribes who came up from the desert of Arabia, and occupied

in succession the great cities of Syria, Egypt, northern Africa, and

lastly of Spain, attained to so much taste and splendour in architecture

seems a mystery.” Then he remarked: “When Arab rule ceased, architecture

declined in all those places, and has never been revived.” He remarked

more than once: “Were not the Arabs, especially those in the great

cities of the East, a literary people? Had they not a multitude of books

on the various departments of science and philosophy? Was not their

language capable of expressing the most profound thoughts? Did it not

give evidence of high cultivation?” The impress of their intellectual

influence, still manifest throughout Christian Spain, attracted his

notice on all hands, and especially in its ecclesiastical architecture.

The Moorish artists, he observed, had furnished the models on which,

after the conquest of Granada, the architects of Christian Spain

wrought. When conversing about the celebrated Cathedral of Cordova, he

said: “That appears to me to be one of the most remarkable buildings in

Spain, or perhaps in the world. It seems to be of purely Arab

architecture: in all respects like a mosque, and adapted originally for

the Moslem worship. Its internal decoration too is Arab, with the

flaring stripes on the walls of red and white paint, and the imitation

of red and white stones in the circular arches;” and he observed that he

had seen rude painting exactly resembling it in several of the private

houses and on the outside of the mosques in Damascus and Cairo. Nothing

different from ordinary usage, either in building or internal

decoration, escaped his keen observation; but his ignorance of the

language precluded him from that familiar intercourse with the people

which, when opportunity offered, he ordinarily turned to such good

account.

 

He was not unfamiliar with the beautifully illuminated mediæval Arabic

manuscripts. On one occasion, when looking over Silvestre’s “Universal

Paleography” with myself, he remarked on the rare beauty of the Arabian

illuminations, recalling his observation of them in an example shown to

him in one of the mosques at Cairo; and he noted that even now

illuminated manuscripts may be seen exposed for sale in the bazaars of

Damascus and Grand Cairo. Dr. Porter referred to the great interest that

he manifested in the work of the modern printing-press in the latter

city, and the eagerness with which he inquired about the character of

the books issued from the press set up there by the native Arabs. Dr.

Porter told him “that there were many on medical subjects, many on

interpretations of the Koran, on Mohammedan religion and morals, and one

work especially which greatly pleased the common people.”--“What one is

that?” he asked.--“The ‘Thousand and One Nights,’” was the reply. “You

can hear them in every _café_ throughout the East. Men act them

professionally, read and recite them; and those who frequent the _cafés_

always give them small presents in money.”

 

The lack of a colloquial knowledge of the native language was a source

of inevitable difficulty and trouble to the Spanish tourists; but in

spite of this Mr. Nelson’s observant habits were directed to some of the

local peculiarities of the native dialects, and Dr. Porter notes:--“He

appeared to take a great interest in the language of that part of Spain

which is to a large extent peopled by the descendants of the Moors. I

told him of many of the local names which are derived from the Arabic,

and gave him examples of the singular changes which have been made in

them to give them a Spanish form and sound. ‘That accounts,’ he said,

‘for the peculiar pronunciation of some of those names by the people in

the south of Spain, so very different from what would appear from the

spelling, and from what we in this country have been accustomed to

hear.’ He had noticed all this in his travels, and, as was his uniform

habit, tried to get at the root of everything.”

 

But modern Spain had also its historical associations for the English

traveller. In our own youthful days the war of the Peninsula and the

crowning victory of Waterloo were the prominent themes in popular

thought; and so William Nelson naturally turned from the exquisite

remains of Arabian art to muse on the battlefields of Talavera and

Albuera. After surveying the fortifications of Badajoz, he writes to his

friend Captain Chester: “I could not help asking myself, What good came

of all the blood shed on those two terrible battlefields, and of all who

perished in the frightful siege and assault of Badajoz? Why should

British blood have flowed like water for such a country and such a

people as the Spaniards?” He visited Gibraltar, and passed on to

Tangier; and as he notes the width of the strait and the features of the

great fortress, he considers its retention by England as no longer

desirable. He thus writes to his friend Captain Chester: “I took care by

the way to take a good look at that so-called _precious jewel_ of the

British crown, Gibraltar, wondering to myself what can be the use to us

of this gigantic fox-trap. The popular idea is that it commands the

straits; but these are about twenty-two miles in width, there is deep

water to the opposite coast, and the gun has still to be invented that

can carry to such a distance. They are just now engaged in mounting a

one hundred ton gun in a little fort that has been expressly built for

it; but where will ever be the enemy that will allow its ships or

ironclads to be brought within range of such a monster? There are to be

four guns of this calibre erected on the fox-trap.” He next discusses

its value as a coaling-station, and thus proceeds: “We have no fewer

than seven thousand troops of one kind and another immured within the

walls; and there is nothing for the common soldiers in the way of

amusement. Time hangs heavy on their hands, and they hate ‘Gip’ with a

perfect hatred.... I am unpatriotic enough to say that the fortress

ought to be given up, as it has never been, and never can be, I am

convinced, of any use to us. It cannot be said that it does more than

merely command the ground on which it stands and points that can be

reached by its guns.”

 

This was not William Nelson’s first visit to Spain; he had travelled

through it before alone, and remembered nothing but the pleasures of the

journey. But his experiences were different now, and he thus wrote to a

friend soon after his return: “I have come back from my trip a wiser if

not a better man; and the wisdom I have learned is that no one with a

party of ladies should attempt travelling in Spain without a courier.

We did not indulge in this luxury, and as none of us could speak

Spanish, and as it is a rare thing for a Spaniard to learn any language

but his own, the troubles that we fell into on this account were not

infrequent. Again: Spaniards as a rule have no conscience, and when they

have to do with parties travelling as we were, they fleece them most

unmercifully; and we were not spared by them, I assure you. I need not

say that the old Moorish cities of Spain are very charming, and that the

people of Spain are very interesting on account of their picturesque

costumes, and their being, as it were, an intermediate race between the

people of the Orient and the Occident (to use two words that are rather

grand).” It was characteristic of William Nelson’s transparent

guilelessness that it never occurred to him to make any secret of his

own blunders, or to conceal the mishaps which they involved. He gave a

most humorous account of the travellers’ perplexities--the luggage

persistently going one way and its owners another, till the ladies’

troubles culminated at Madrid, where the attractions of a court

reception and introduction to the state mysteries of the Palacio Real

were balked by the lack of all but their travelling costume.

 

A later tour, in 1886, took the traveller once more to Norway, on his

way to St. Petersburg and Moscow, in company with Mrs. Nelson, Florence,

and their expected son-in-law, Mr. S. F. MacLeod. On that occasion the

ancient capital of Norway, beautifully situated on a bay in the

Trondhjem Fiord, afforded him a special object of interest in its

curious old cathedral, the most remarkable ecclesiastical edifice in

Norway. It dates from 1033, and still retains singularly interesting

remains of the Romanesque work of the Northmen of the eleventh century.

But it is overlaid with many unsightly additions of a later date, well

calculated to excite the critical comments of one whose indefatigable

labours were so successfully directed to the removal of such incongruous

defacements from the ancient buildings in his own native city. Numerous

letters are available for the details of this later tour; but there is

not room in a brief memoir such as is now aimed at for more than a few

characteristic gleanings from the traveller’s tale. Some of his notes on

the architecture of St. Petersburg will come under notice in a later

chapter; but one literary comment must not be omitted here. Writing to

his friend, Captain MacEnery, he says: “The censorship of the press in

St. Petersburg is something terrible. All newspapers and periodicals in

all languages are subjected to its tender mercies. As an instance of

this, a copy of the _Scotsman_ posted to St. Petersburg came to us with

about three-fourths of a column blotted out, on account of some

statements that displeased the great authority as to what should or

should not be read by the subjects of the emperor. A copy of _Punch_

also reached us with a paragraph blotted out. It would make a grand

subject for a cartoon: the emperor of all the Russias surrounded by

countless thousands of armed men, and yet afraid of poor _Punch_!”

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER XI.