Familiar Spanish Travels | Page 7

of things, the
Phoenicians must have been there and the Greeks, doubtless, if they
ever got outside of the Pillars of Hercules; the Romans, of course, must
have settled and civilized and then Christianized the province. It is next
neighbor to that province of Asturias in which alone the Arabs failed to
conquer the Goths, and from which Spain was to live and grow again
and recover all her losses from the Moors; but what the share of San
Sebastian was in this heroic fate, again I must leave the Basques to say.
They would doubtless say it with sufficient self-respect, for wherever
we came in contact that day with the Basque nature we could not help
imagining in it a sense of racial merit equaling that of the Welsh
themselves, who are indeed another branch of the same immemorial
Iberian stock, if the Basques are Iberians. Like the Welsh, they have the
devout tradition that they never were conquered, but yielded to
circumstances when these became too strong for them.
Among the ancient Spanish liberties which were restricted by the
consolidating monarchy from age to age, the Basque _fueros,_ or rights,
were the oldest; they lasted quite to our own day; and although it is
known to more ignorant men that these privileges (including immunity
from conscription) have now been abrogated, the custodian of the
House of Provincial Deputies, whom our driver took us to visit, was
such a glowing Basque patriot that he treated them as in full force. His
pride in the seat of the local government spared us no detail of the
whole electric-lighting system, or even the hose-bibs for guarding the
edifice against fire, let alone every picture and photograph on the wall
of every chamber of greater or less dignity, with every notable table
and chair. He certainly earned the peseta I gave him, but he would have
done far more for it if we had suffered him to take us up another flight

of stairs; and he followed us in our descent with bows and adieux that
ought to have left no doubt in our minds of the persistence of the
Basque _fueros._

V
It was to such a powerful embodiment of the local patriotism that our
driver had brought us from another civic palace overlooking the Plaza
de la Constitution, chiefly notable now for having been the old theater
of the bull-fights. The windows in the houses round still bear the
numbers by which they were sold to spectators as boxes; but now the
municipality has built a beautiful brand-new bull-ring in San Sebastian;
and I do not know just why we were required to inspect the interior of
the edifice overlooking this square. I only know that at sight of our
bewilderment a workman doing something to the staircase clapped his
hands orientally, and the custodian was quickly upon us in response to
a form of summons which we were to find so often used in Spain. He
was not so crushingly upon us as that other custodian; he was
apologetically proud, rather than boastfully; at times he waved his
hands in deprecation, and would have made us observe that the place
was little, very little; he deplored it like a host who wishes his
possessions praised. Among the artistic treasures of the place from
which he did not excuse us there were some pen-drawings, such as
writing-masters execute without lifting the pen from the paper, by a
native of South America, probably of Basque descent, since the
Basques have done so much to people that continent. We not only
admired these, but we would not consent to any of the custodian's
deprecations, especially when it came to question of the pretty salon in
which Queen Victoria was received on her first visit to San Sebastian.
We supposed then, and in fact I had supposed till this moment, that it
was Queen Victoria of Great Britain who was meant; but now I realize
that it must have been the queen consort of Spain, who seems already
to have made herself so liked there.
She, of course, comes every summer to San Sebastian, and presently
our driver took us to see the royal villa by the shore, withdrawn,

perhaps from a sense of its extreme plainness, not to say ugliness,
among its trees and vines behind its gates and walls. Our driver
excused himself for not being able to show us through it; he gladly
made us free of an unrestricted view of the royal bathing-pavilion,
much more frankly splendid in its gilding, beside the beach. Other
villas ranked themselves along the hillside, testifying to the gaiety of
the social life in summers past and summers to come. In the summer
just past the gaiety may have been interrupted by the strikes taking