I Think He Does It Larger Justice
Than Modern Observers, Because He Escapes The Cumulative Obligation
Which Time Has Laid Upon Them To Find The Subjective Rather Than The
Objective Fulfilment Of Its Founder's Intention In It.
At any rate, in
March, 1623, James Howell, waiting as secretary of the romantic mission
the bursting of the
Iridescent love-dream which had brought Charles
Stutart, Prince of Wales, from England to woo the sister of the Spanish
king in Madrid, had leisure to write one of his most delightful
"familiar letters" concerning the Escorial to a friend in London.
"I was yesterday at the Escorial to see the monastery of St. Lawrence,
the eighth wonder of the world; and truly considering the site of the
place, the state of the thing, the symmetry of the structure, with
diverse other rareties, it may be called so; for what I have seen in
Italy and other places are but baubles to it. It is built among a
company of craggy hills, which makes the air the hungrier and
wholesomer; it is all built of freestone and marble, and that with such
solidity and moderate height that surely Philip the Second's chief
design was to make a sacrifice of it to eternity, and to contest with
the meteors and time itself. It cost eight millions; it was twenty-four
years abuilding, and the founder himself saw it furnished and enjoyed it
twelve years after, and carried his bones himself thither to be buried.
The reason that moved King Philip to waste so much treasure was a vow he
had made at the battle of St. Quentin, where he was forced to batter a
monastery of St. Lawrence friars, and if he had the victory he would
erect such a monument to St. Lawrence that the world had not the like;
therefore the form of it is like a gridiron, the handle is a huge royal
palace, and the body a vast monastery or assembly of quadrangular
cloisters, for there are as many as there be months of the year. There
be a hundred monks, and every one hath his man and his mule, and a
multitude of officers; besides there are three libraries there full of
the choicest books for all sciences. It is beyond all expression what
grots, gardens, walks, and aqueducts there are there, and what curious
fountains in the upper cloisters, for there be two stages of cloisters.
In fine, there is nothing that is vulgar there. To take a view of every
room in the house one must make account to go ten miles; there is a
vault called the Pantheon under the high altar, which is all paved,
walled, and arched with marble; there be a number of huge silver
candlesticks taller than I am; lamps three yards compass, and diverse
chalices and crosses of massive gold; there is one choir made all of
burnished brass; pictures and statues like giants; and a world of
glorious things that purely ravished me. By this mighty monument it may
be inferred that Philip the Second, though he was a little man, yet he
had vast gigantic thoughts in him, to leave such a huge pile for
posterity to gaze upon and admire in his memory."
III
Perhaps this description is not very exact, but precision of statement
is not to be expected of a Welshman; and if Howell preferred to say
Philip built the place in fulfilment of that vow at the battle of St.
Quentin, doubtless he believed it; many others did; it has only of late
been discovered that Philip was not at St. Quentin, and did not "batter
a monastery of St. Lawrence friars" there. I like to think the rest is
all as Howell says down to the man and mule for every monk. If there are
no men and mules left, there are very few monks either, after the many
suppressions of convents. The gardens are there of an unquestionable
symmetry and beauty, and the "company of craggy hills" abides all round
the prodigious edifice, which is at once so prodigious, and grows larger
upon you in the retrospect.
Now that I am this good distance away, and cannot bring myself to book
by a second experience, I feel it safe to say that I had a feeling of
St. Peter's-like immensity in the church of the Escorial, with more than
St. Peter's-like bareness. The gray colorlessness of the architecture
somberly prevails in memory over the frescoes of the painters invited to
relieve it in the roof and the _retablo,_ and thought turns from the
red-and-yellow jasper of altar and pulpit, and the bronze-gilt effigies
of kneeling kings and queens to that niche near the oratory where the
little terrible man who imagined and realized it all used to steal in
from his palace, and worship next the small chamber where at last he
died. It is said he also read despatches and state papers in this nook,
but doubtless only in the intervals of devotion.
Every one to his taste, even in matters of religion; Philip reared a
temple to the life beyond this, and as if with the splendor of the
mausoleum which it enshrines he hoped to overcome the victorious grave;
the Caliph who built the mighty mosque at Cordova, which outlasts every
other glory of his capital, dedicated it to the joy of this life as
against the gloom of whose who would have put it under the feet of
death. "Let us build," he said to his people, "the Kaaba of the West
upon the site of a Christian temple, which we will destroy, so that we
may set forth how the Cross shall fall and become abased before the True
Prophet. Allah will never place the world beneath the feet of those who
make themselves the slaves of drink and sensuality while they preach
penitence and the joys of chastity, and while extolling poverty enrich
themselves to the loss of their neighbors.
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