Books

Love at first sight

An Irish writer moves off the beaten tourist track only to discover the surprising city of Girona

Women Trav­ellers in Cata­lan Lands


The first time I vis­ited Spain, act­ing by the ad­vice of those who had told me that it was not a “nice” coun­try to travel in, and that the smaller towns were not “nice” for a woman alone to stop at, I went straight from Nîmes to Barcelona with­out paus­ing at Gerona. This was the first of sev­eral blun­ders caused by the er­ro­neous ideas peo­ple had given me of Spain and Spaniards, blun­ders from which I shall be glad if I can save oth­ers. […]

A very no­tice­able fea­ture of Span­ish travel will be met with as soon as the fron­tier is reached. Every train is met at each sta­tion by two mem­bers of the Guardia Civil, or Civil Guard, who must not be con­founded with the mil­i­tary or rural guard. A cou­ple of them al­ways trav­els in every train. They are a picked force and are a mag­nif­i­cent body of men. They are said-with truth, from all I could learn-to be quite in­cor­rupt­ible. Their pres­tige is im­mense, and two of them will dis­perse a crowd in an amaz­ingly short time. For it is well known that they will not pause long be­fore using their firearms, and if a mem­ber of the Civil Guard shoots, his right to do so is sure to be vin­di­cated af­ter­wards by his su­pe­rior of­fi­cers. Should trav­ellers ever re­quire help in a place where there is no Con­sul of their own na­tion­al­ity, they may apply to the Civil Guard.

The sec­ond time I vis­ited Spain, em­bold­ened by pre­vi­ous ex­pe­ri­ence of the coun­try, I took the op­por­tu­nity of stop­ping at Gerona.

I reached the place just be­fore dark, in time to get a glimpse of its fine po­si­tion and pic­turesque streets. There were no porters and no ob­se­quious tout from the hotel. In fact, I could not for some time dis­cover if there was an om­nibus, and it was not till a friendly Spaniard on the plat­form had vol­un­teered (in Eng­lish of sorts) to find the land­lord of the Fonda de los Ital­ianos that an el­derly per­son of en­gag­ing man­ners, speak­ing French with flu­ency, and by name J. An­to­nio La­soli, came for­ward and shoul­dered the bag­gage. It was a some­what steep drive to the hotel, which is in a cen­tral po­si­tion and ex­tremely com­fort­able, with spa­cious rooms, ex­cel­lent food and pleas­ant, at­ten­tive peo­ple.

Gerona is hard to beat, both as to its pic­turesque­ness and its ar­chi­tec­tural in­ter­est. The view of the river, over­looked by houses of all shapes and colour­ing, is fas­ci­nat­ing. [...] On quit­ting the hotel, one turns to the right. A few doors up, on the left, are the beau­ti­ful, but over-much re­stored twelfth cen­tury win­dows of a house which was for­merly a hotel. Con­tin­u­ing straight on the Cathe­dral soon comes into sight. […]

The naves of Span­ish Cathe­drals are par­tially filled up with the coro, which is screened off from the wor­ship­pers in the aisles by a high wall run­ning along it on both sides and at the west end, while an iron screen is placed across it at the east. [...] Speak­ing of Span­ish Cathe­drals in gen­eral, Street ob­serves that in the in­ter­nal arrange­ments of its choir and altar, West­min­ster Abbey closely re­sem­bles them. He be­lieves that coros were first placed in the naves of Cathe­drals about the six­teenth or sub­se­quent cen­turies. Street, in re­fer­ring to the span of the nave, says, “Had this nave been longer by one bay, I be­lieve that scarcely any in­te­rior in Eu­rope could have sur­passed it in ef­fect” […]

After see­ing the Cathe­dral, the clois­ters should be vis­ited. They are en­tered by a door on the north of the Cathe­dral, op­po­site to the south en­trance. Both the church and the clois­ters are peace­ful to a de­gree. No beg­gars, no sac­ristan, no chil­dren. A beau­ti­ful, solemn place, where hours could be hap­pily spent.

The peo­ple in the town were quite un­ob­tru­sive. I could wan­der about freely while hardly a head was turned to look after me, but di­rectly I asked for in­for­ma­tion it was given promptly and pleas­antly. [...]

San Pedro, quickly reached by de­scend­ing to a bridge across the stream, was well seen, with other fea­tures of the town, dur­ing the lit­tle walk I took be­yond the east end of the Cathe­dral, up the hill, be­tween nar­row walls to an open space over­look­ing the val­ley. [.. ]

The land­lord will gladly walk with vis­i­tors in the af­ter­noon to the mu­seum con­tained in the clois­ters, ob­tain­ing the key. […] Many an­cient re­mains must still lie buried in and around Gerona, and the au­thor­i­ties there seem anx­ious to pre­serve care­fully every­thing of value, which is a happy au­gury for the fu­ture.

Elizabeth Hawkins- Whitshed (Mrs. Aubrey Le Blond)

Intrepid, well-bred and dynamic are some of the adjectives that describe the personality of Elizabeth Hawkins-Whitshed (1860-1934), also known as “Mrs. Main”, “Mrs. Aubrey Le Blond” or simply “Lizzie Le Blond”. Born in Dublin but grew up in Killincarrick House, the estate that her parents owned in Greystones (County Wicklow), in the south-east of Ireland. In 1871, upon her father's death, she became an orphan and her education was temporarily overseen by her warden, the Lord Chancellor. However, at 18 she had already married one of the most celebrated Victorian soldiers and adventurers, Frederick G. Burnaby, with whom she had a son in 1880 before his death in combat in 1885 in Sudan. To recover from a lung condition, the physicians prescribed her a long convalescence in the Alps that proved truly life-changing, for once there she took to climbing, starting a remarkable mountaineering career that would convert her in one of the leading alpinists of her time. In the summer of 1882 she reached the summit of Mont Blanc and over the following years she completed many first-time ascents, sometimes in difficult winter conditions, which she described in seven books. Married twice, her affluent status allowed her to travel to Asia, North Africa and North America. In contrast to her earlier adventurous writings, the bland style of Cities and Sights of Spain, the guidebook to which the given extract on Girona is from, ran two editions in 1899 and 1904.

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