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| xardíns do Pazo de Oca turgalicia.com |
The Ulla River, which
divides La Coruña Province from that of Pontevedra, flows to the sea through a
winding valley proverbial for its gentleness and fertility. Nobles of this
valley in the eighteenth century were wealthy. Their zeal for domestic
extension and their ability to command it are shown in the palaces (pazos) they left, huge, lonely piles of
granite in which the stranger, with dull eyes and ears unkindled by memory,
reads little but the musty progress of decay and feels mainly the weight of the
pervasive silence into which his own footsteps and those of the wood-shod
caretaker, opening doors for him, break for a moment harshly. For an
appreciation of these buildings instinct with life, one must turn to the novels
of Pardo Bazán and Valle-Inclán.
In Los pazos de Ulloa the palace is
inhabited by a young man, the last in his line, a careless, untutored Nimrod
wholly under the influence of his treacherous steward, Primitivo. We see it
first as the new chaplain comes to it at evening.
‘No light shone in
the vast edifice, and the great central door appeared to be closed with stone
and mud. The Marquis turned towards a very low side door where at that moment
appeared a stout woman holding an oil lamp. After crossing dark hallways, they
penetrated into a kind of cellar with earthen floor and stone-vaulted roof
which, to judge by the rows of wine pipes backed up against the walls, must
have been the bodega. From here they quickly reached a spacious kitchen
illuminated by the fire which burned on the hearth, licking a black pole hung
from a chain. The high chimney hood was adorned with strings of sausages and
blood puddings, and with an occasional ham’.
Valle-Inclán concerns
himself with the life above stairs. In his Sonata
de otoño the palace mistress is dying, and the Marquis of Bradomín has left
his autumn shooting to be at her side.
‘Vaguely I called to
mind the Palace of Brandeso which I had visited as a child with my mother. Now,
years later, I was returning, summoned by the little girl with whom I had
played so often in the old, flowerless garden. My spirit heavy with memories, I
made my way under the sombre chestnuts, covered with dry leaves, which lined
the avenue. At the end appeared the palace, all its windows closed and the
panes gilded by the sun. I entered, and the great vestibule, dark and silent,
resounded with my footsteps against its broad flagstones. On oaken benches
polished with use sat farmers waiting to pay their yearly rent; beyond them
stood old wheat chests, the lids raised. The tenants rose, murmuring
respectfully, ‘A good afternoon and holy!’ and sank into their seats again.
Hastily I mounted the seignorial stair with its wide treads and balustrade of
rudely carved granite.
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| Pendellos en Lalín, 1926 foto de Ruth Matilda Anderson |
‘As poor Concha had a
cult for memories, she wished me to go through the palace with her, recalling
that other time when she and her sisters were pale little girls who came to
kiss me and lead me by the hand to play, sometimes in the tower, sometimes on
the terraces, or on the balcony which overlooked the garden and the road.
‘After how many
reasons had I returned to those formal parlours and family sitting rooms!’
Walnut-floored rooms, cold and silent, which kept throughout the year the smell
of sour autumn apples laid on the window mouldings to ripen, parlours with old
damask draperies, cloudy mirrors, and family portraits. In those chambers our
footsteps echoed as though in deserted churches, and when the doors slowly
opened on their ornate hinges, the darkness and silence beyond seemed to
breathe out the distant perfume of other lives. In the depths of mirrors, as in
an enchanted lake, the parlour stretched on and on into illusion, and the
people of the portraits, those founder-bishops, sad maidens, parchment-skinned
inheritors, seemed to live forgotten in a centennial peace.
‘Concha hesitated
where two halls crossed in a huge, round antechamber, dismantled except for
several old chests. On top of one a faint circle of light was cast by the oil
taper which burned there night and day before a Christ of livid flesh and
disheveled hair’.
With these images in
mind we enquired for a country pazo
and were told that that of Oca was generally open to visitors and easily
accessible from Santiago, being only three kilometers off the route of the
Orense bus. Every summer tourists went to see and photograph it, and only the
summer before a troop of actors had used it for filming the country scenes of
La casa de Troya.
We arose at a cold
hour and set out in a heavy mist while it was still night. Shortly after
crossing the Ulla River, we were put down at an intersection. It was then a
little after seven. The mist continued, thick and chilling, and the tavern to
which the bus driver directed us was invisible except for the black holes of
its doors and windows. As we drew nearer, its gray bulk showed the white
tracery of cement closing the irregular joints of granite rubble. The tavern
woman, black clad, apple cheeked, eased with a bench and a barrel our waiting
for the day to ripen. We should have liked her to ease it further with hot milk
and coffee, but the sole item on her breakfast menu was aguardiente. That Gallegan countrymen could stand up to it was
proved by the sticky, empty glasses left on the counter, but we did not command
the inner fortitude required for taking liquid dynamite at that hour and
keeping it down with dignity. We could better face the cold.
A little before nine
the fog dispersed and we set out for the palace. Beyond a scintillating wedge
of cornfield, bordered with dark, conical pines, lay the silver patch of a
river. A harp of eucalyptus cut against the green and blue of near and father
ridges. Presently from a narrow road, branching off the highway between deep
walls of rubble, came the chirrío of
a cart. Through it ran a clear, melancholy strain of song which ended in an aturuxo of such piercing timbre that it
knit up the whole valley and evoked reply from another walker in the hills.
In less than an hour
we had come to the pazo. Inside the
crenelated outer wall we walked down a long avenue of chestnuts, the trunks of
which, wound with ivy and set with moss-bedded ferns, were much leafier than
their branches. Our first view was that of a crenelated tower from which a
short wing turned. The main façade, low and long, faced a worn but still
grassy, ‘place of honour’, which on the opposite side was bounded with rubble
cottages joined into a long tenement behind a grapevine trellis. At the end
rose a chapel linked to the palace with a balustrade walk upon an arched wall
which bore white-flowering vines. The great centre door of the palace was
closed, and the long panes above gave only dull reflections of the sky or the
blank stare of wooden shutters closed within; in the lower story the wide
window spaces stood black behind iron grilles. Almost immediately, from a
balconied cottage opposite, came a pleasant-looking countrywoman, and before we
could speak our request to see the palace, she had the key out from under her
full apron. No, nobody was at home, she said; the Marquise of Camarasa, her
mistress, had not lived here in years. But we might enter the palace, at least
part of it, yes indeed. It was always in good order, for the Marquise, even
though she did not use it, would not have it neglected.
The woman opened a
narrow panel in one of the great doors and let us into a white-plastered
vestibule, built in the old manner, large enough to receive a lady’s litter or
a mounted horseman. Its flag-stones rang but slightly under our steps, for the
farther wall opened in a great arch to the loggia and the garden. Against a
side wall stood wooden benches with a certain air of the Empire in the turn of
their arms and backs. To right and left opened long, unplastered chambers,
roughly paved and ceiled with dark heavy beams. the left chamber, containing
piles of lumber, a workbench, and a lame Chippendale chair, seemed to be a
carpenter shop. in that opposite clothes were drying, and bean plants and ears
of corn were heaped on the floor. the inner wall of this chamber was lined with
stone bins in which high wooden doors stood open for receiving grain. holes at
the bottom, where it would be drawn out, were closed with a wooden slide and a
massive iron lock. Under one hole lay wooden utensils, the larger probably a
trough for pouring grain into a bin, and the smaller, a measure with its rake
for leveling grain precisely even.
The garden, confined
between the house wings and a row of sheds and stables, was too small for
mystery and age it wore with quiet grace. A low, clipped border surrounded and
old stone fountain in which the gaping mouths were dry. Between the wide paths
autumn lilies and modest daisies bloomed in neglected grass just out of the
shade cast by glossy-crowned camellias and magnolias; there were also a few
palm with short, hairy-barked trunks. Benches stood under trees and against
vine-hung walls in which, looking closely, we could see small, enigmatic doors.
The arched tops of eucalyptus trees rose above the farther wing, and against
them appeared a great finialed chimney which must have served the manorial
kitchen.
Over the loggia
spread the sun porch, its whole extent faced with French windows between
engaged Doric columns and behind a low balustrade. Our guide took us to it up a
wide stair, and we found its windows hung with curtains of while linen trimmed
with plain red borders and a central decoration or red coronet and monogram. In
the table cover natural-coloured linen was combined with red wool. Prints of
horses and their jockeys hung above the cane deck chairs, twenty or more, which
stood facing the windows, and pictures of dogs, very like Landseer's, hung
beside the tall clocks. We began her to feel the loneliness of the pazo. The clocks disagreed. The
flowerpots were dry. Everything of personal interest had been carried or put
away. There remained only the cold white bust of a goateed gentleman, surveying
with the lacklustre gaze of pupiless eyeballs the tidy bleakness in which he
had been abandoned.
The central hall on
this floor had its four corners walled off into closets with partitions boldly
painted in red and yellow. Each closet was a continent; its name appeared
within a cartouche on the door, Africa, Asia, Europa, America. The woman said
that the hall probably served as dormitory
in days when visitors used to descend in numbers, but we preferred to think of
the closets as playhouses for pale little girls and boys. Glancing into one, we
found it lined with shelves on which reposed glass decanters, goblets, and odd
pieces of porcelain.
Of coats of arms we
had so far seen only one, a small escutcheon on the face of the tower. Now,
however, after a short passage from the continental hall we found heraldry
ablaze. In the drawing-room a coat of arms supported by winged lizards with
barbed tails and set within a circle of shells and scrolls, all worked in high
relief and painted in gilt and barbaric colours, spread heavily at the centre
of the smooth white ceiling. Over the halls hung charges of the central coat
and other coats, rendered in flannel appliqué
on great panels (reposteros) of linen
crash. The effect was unbelievably baroque. Fishes, lions, shells, pine trees,
crenelated castles in read and other colours were surrounded with wreaths of
brilliant yellow, while at the panel corners were set red fleurs-de-lis. The
furniture was of Louis Fifteenth style, with upholstery of red damask. The
principal group held the stiff pattern of the Gallegan call (visita), in which the pieces are centred
round a small rug, the only one on the floor. At one side of the rug the sofa
hugged the wall; opposite it stood a table, and at each end sat two armchairs
accompanied by plump, poodle-like footstools.
Beyond the heraldic
drawing-room lay other parlours, immense, white walled, and scantily furnished.
In the farthest a French window gave on the balustraded passage upon the wall
leading to the chapel gallery.
When we came down to
the vestibule again, our guide's husband was driving his chariot from the farm
sheds across the garden. The body of this cart was of planks, and its wheels,
more open than those of Santiago, had one genuine, if much overgrown, spoke and
a rim supported by two bars at right angles to the spoke. Sorry black cows drew
the cart with a yoke strapped to crumpled horns which were covered with a white
fleece to keep them dry. The husband, an elderly man in dark cloth and
velveteen, was very amiable, and when he saw our interest in his carro chirrión, he volunteered to show
his plow.
Easily, on one
shoulder, he brought it from the carpenter shop and set it down in the
vestibule. The Gallegan plow, like the cart, has its prototype in the miniature
farmyard group of the Romans. It is made in separate pieces and can be taken
apart in less time than it takes to tell. The sheath (cama), spliced with iron straps to the beam (temón), ends in a point which is channeled through an upright bar (esteva) which, in turn, is tenoned into the
horizontal be (dental). These are the
essential parts. The rest are refinements: the tiny iron share (rella), shaped like a mule's footprint,
to put a cutting edge on the beveled bed front; the mouldboards (abeacas) angling out, one at each side
of the bed, to widen the furrow and turn the earth; and the upright brace (lieira) which with its wedges (pezcuños) is channeled through the
sheath and into the bed to govern the angle between sheath and bed and thereby
govern the furrow depth. The plowman bears on the handle (rabela) which is pegged into the upright bar, and the beam, as in
the cart, is hooked to the yoke with a stout pin.
However wide the
farmer sets the angle and however earnestly he bears down, his plow never
furrows the soil so deep as its best interest would require. In compensation
this implement has the virtue of being easily handled. Gallegan fields, in
these valleys of especial mildness and fertility, may not uncommonly have an
area of less than fifty square yards. Fancy trying to get in and out of a
pocket handkerchief like that with a steel plow and a tractor and to turn with
them at the end of a furrow! The Gallegan farmer is wise to keep to an
implement he himself can carry, over a stile or up and down a terraced and down
a terraced slope, and to the wise, slow animals who so cleverly second all his
moves and turns.
Crossing the 'place
of honour' and passing the chapel, we came on a large, rectangular pool held
within a wall of lichened stones surmounted with balls and merlons. Above the
mouldy path round the pool a tangle of myrtles reached out from the shade of
high eucalyptus toward the canopy of light which overhung the water. At one
end, beyond a balustraded bridge, stood a mill, the hum of its stones and the
wash of its paddles breaking cheerfully the stillness of this hidden Trianon.
The millstones we found grinding into a wooden frame instead of to the floor as
at Marín. It may have been in the
chamber above that the corn shelling was going on. Before a stout wooden trough
almost full of corn ears stood two girls beating alternately with short curved
bats. While the ears threshed madly from one end of the trough to the other,
kernels cracked from the cobs and fell through holes pierced in the trough
bottom. The chamber was fragant of the apples which filled a great sack of
striped ticking, and the girls seemed to enjoy their work. Laughing chatter
rose, as soon as we had gone, above the rhythmic sound of beating.
A granite table and
benches set for picnics on a terrace overlooking the pool offered little
invitation on this chill October day. They were covered with moss which also
flourished on the walls and carpeted the pavement so thick that our footsteps
hardly sounded. Returning towards the plaza, we heard a rush of water, and
there was the palace laundry, an open shed paved with stone and roofed with
tile. A clear, constant stream flowed through a large granite tank built with
beveled rims for rubbing linen. I asked the woman whether it was not hard
always in all weather to wash her clothes in cold water, and she returned,
astonished, in what then should she wash them?
Under her arm she
carried a distaff to which, without robbing her eyes of our strange movements
with the camera, she steadily applied herself. Back at the pazo we saw in a shed the yarn she had already spun, three skeins
of coarse, unbleached thread made from tow, another skein slightly better in
quality, and three balls of fine linen thread, bleached and lustrous. One
kilogram of the fine yarn would weave four metres of plain cloth, thirty-five
inches wide. The woman also showed us how the flax, rippled and retted, was
cleaned with scutching. The stalks were pounded with a wooden mallet against
stone, rubbed between the hands, and finally sawed and beaten with a wooden
swingle against an upright wooden brake. She was very proud of her brake,
scrolled from the middle down. After scutching, the fibres passed to hackling through
a hatchel, a phalanx of steel teeth set into a long wooden handle, and then,
pale and long, they were ready to spin.
Spindlefuls of thread
(mazarocas) were wound into skeins (marañas) on a wooden reel (sarillo) with bars made slightly concave
to keep the yarn from slipping. One of the bars was mounted in a
tongue-and-groove joint which could be broken when a skein was to be removed.
The skeins, after bleaching called meadas,
were bound into balls on a horizontally turning frame (devanadeira) - two pairs of crossed arms connected with uprights
which could be adjusted in sockets nearer or farther apart as the length of the
skein required.
Preoccupied with
these matters, we felt the camera for a moment unguarded, the precise moment in
which a young pig charged the tripod. Father, I caught surveying the
catastrophe with poorly disguised satisfaction. He would have the double
pleasure of adjusting the bent camera and of dictating the length of time
through which the adjustments should endure. The situation, he felt, was the
natural consequence of our getting up so early in the morning. No good ever
came of trifling, as we had lately been doing, with the delicate balance
between night and day.
text taken from
Ruth Matilda Anderson
Gallegan Provinces of Spain. Pontevedra
and La Coruña New York: The Hispanic Society of America, 1939
chapter XIX, pages 223-234
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