Chapter III: Front Matter (3)

Near Caen is a lovelier town, “Dinan, where the Conqueror slept.” Here history’s scroll seems to loosen, displaying an enchanting pastoral of the ages; there lies the simple, old hamlet by the river, just as it might have looked when William the Norman and Harold, son of Goodwin, camped there together, a little less than one thousand years ago. Then, back of the river on the bluff, later a securely walled town appeared, but now the old fortifications have turned into charming parks and playgrounds, girding the loveliest of French villages; and on a summer day in fair France one can feel sure that though much of life is at cross-purposes, all is not vanity: old moats may make the loveliest of gardens; old warriors, the gentlest of heroes.

_The Grandniece of the Grand Inquisitor_

I have a fair daughter formed like a
golden flower.—_Sappho._

The Spanish Inquisitor is one character of the past who has been spared the mockish attentions of writers of historical romance. But he, too, has suffered from the _on dit_ of history, history as she is taught. However, he had his day. Once as the impersonation of “correct sentiment,” he dealt his decrees from a palace and had the double honor of representing Church as well as State. As times grew gentler, the Inquisition was directed against books rather than men. Now, certainly, something may be accorded to those who dispose of polemic literature, even though they be as innocent as earthworms of their ultimate use to humanity; therefore, let us try to look upon the Grand Inquisitor, Miguel de Carpio, as a Spanish gentleman of an exceedingly old school—as a man perhaps much less bloodthirsty than some of the good and perfect knights, though abominably technical regarding certain points. As theatre-goers we are in the gentleman’s debt, for it was he who educated his nephew, Lope de Vega de Carpio, who in his turn was a positive factor in the development of the modern drama.

Lope Felix de Vega de Carpio was of a mental mixture that has more than passed away; it has been relegated to the incomprehensible,—at once a graceful poet and a soldier, a past master of euphuism and a coarse dramatist; an officer of the Church; “a servant of the Inquisition” or a “familiar of the holy office,” as he fluently termed it (an honorary escort of the victim to the stake); finally, chaplain of the monastic order into which he retired; and, unquestionably, the most voluminous of writers.

But his most poetic gift to the world was his love-child, Sister Marcela de Felix of the Convent of the Ladies of the Trinity at Alcala. Of all his children, legitimate or illegitimate, this daughter, by the lady who inspired the best of his sonnets, was to him dearest. He takes little Marcela to live with him as soon as ever his wife dies, and dedicates a drama to the little girl; so does another poet. She seems to be her father’s comrade, for when she is only eleven years old he uses her to get back some letters that he has written to one of his various mistresses; but when a relative of the husband of this mistress makes improper overtures to Little Marcela, Lope de Vega rises like a man “in spite of his age and holy orders,” and chastises the villain.

At sixteen, to the little maid comes a craving for an exalted purity, a reaction of her beautiful soul from its coarse, immoral surroundings. Being a woman, her ideal also calls for a lover, but he must be pure and more beautiful than any one she has ever known, and he must love her as she will him, “better than life.” It is the Age of Faith. Her bridegroom awaits; she leaves her father to join him.

Of course, there are braver, fuller, happier lives than a nun’s, and there always have been. But during the Age of Faith, in a religious house, there was always a haven of rest for the idealist, while now it sometimes seems he has not where to lay his head.

It was not in the Middle Ages that the king said, “If poets will be poets, why, let them starve.” Then, on the contrary, the public fed a vagabond population of vagabond singers who sang a certain grace into the Romance languages; for the devotees of various abstractions there was the refuge of holy orders. After taking up the religious life, if they had force enough to arrange the conditions around them to fit their desires, they might safely follow their various bents, for good or ill, undisturbed by care for the future, their bodies being insured against want, their souls against punishment. In Spain, particularly, really great men and successful ones continued to take holy orders even up to the eighteenth century.

In his prime, Calderon exchanged the position of superintendent of the royal theatre for royal chaplain, but after a few qualms on the point he continued to write plays on much the same order as before, only they were performed by priests. Since Calderon was really orthodox the arrangement seems natural enough; as a playwright he had baffled with the public till he was fifty-one years old; in the church at least he was relieved from the dictates of public tastes. There it was that he probably wrote his beautiful “Magic Magician.”

I am not a Ruskinite. I would not, if I conveniently could, domesticate the thirteenth century in the nineteenth; but I do believe in a sympathetic attitude toward history, as toward present life, and for the same reasons I would not turn the light of the twentieth century in upon the gloom of the sixteenth, with the idea of getting a clear picture. I for one do not feel that a convent was the saddest place for Sister Marcela. That power which decrees the fall of nations had its hand upon Spain. Wars, the Americas, the religious houses and the Inquisition, had fed on the flower of the nation too long. The times were out of joint. It seemed beautiful to little Marcela to lose such a world and gain a soul. Being a poet, the heroic side of the church appealed to her; in her intensity she joined the barefooted order of the Trinity. How did her father part from her? He was a poet, too—did he give her up with holy joy and homely sorrow?

In his way, Lope de Vega was a really religious man, for he lived in close touch with his God—the literal, limited, jealous god of a fanatic, it is true. Would you see its exact image, as shown on the Market Place? Then read “The Marriage of the Soul to Divine Love,” a broadly realistic drama, in which Lope de Vega supposes the bridegroom to be the Savior. It was acted on the great Square of Valencia on the occasion of the marriage of Philip III, the dramatist himself being the clown in the cast.

But, too, this vulgar “familiar of the holy office” can be tender. Listen to these lines, dedicated to his little dead son:—

“Holy angels and blest,
Through these palms as ye sweep,
Hold their branches at rest,
For my babe is asleep.

“And ye Bethlehem palm trees,
As stormy winds rush
In tempest and fury,
Your angry noise hush;—
Move gently, move gently,
Restrain your wild sweep;
Hold your branches at rest,—
My babe is asleep.

“My babe all divine,
With earth’s sorrows oppressed,
Seeks in slumber an instant
His grieving to rest;
He slumbers,—he slumbers,—
Oh hush, then, and keep
Your branches all still,—
My babe is asleep!

“Cold blasts wheel about him,—
A rigorous storm,—
And ye see how, in vain,
I would shelter his form;—
Holy angels and blest,
As above me ye sweep,
Hold these branches at rest,—
My babe is asleep!”

What did he whisper to this living child as she parted from him? “Heard melodies are sweet; but those unheard are sweeter.”

When, in the confident phrase of her father, Marcela de Carpio “espoused the eldest son of God,” her mystic nuptials called forth the truest “song-feast” ever held. The herald of old might bid the poets appear and compete for a monarch’s pleasure. Order a tournament of song, indeed! Mahomet was profound enough to go to the mountain. When the beautiful love-child of Lope de Vega and Micaela de Luzan took the veil, the ceremony was graced by all the dignity and circumstance which the Church could lavish in outward expression of the passion and fervor of the forceful old days of her power.

All the poets of the day, great and small, seemed to have been summoned to this marriage feast, and all the poets of the day, great and small, vainly tried to transcribe the living poem their eyes beheld when that fair bride of Christ passed before them in a transport of ecstasy.

At that time many great ladies were taking the veil with equal pomp and state, but no such tribute was paid them. What an absolutely inexplicable power is personality! Marcela de Carpio never published a line, and at this time had probably never written one. How did these minor poets recognize this fair daughter of Sappho? Was she “formed like a golden flower”? What a wonderful people are poets! But listen, for Sister Marcela’s bridal song is with us yet, she pipes so clear and sweet: