SEVILLE.
I spent a pleasant week in Madrid, and I then went on to Seville. On
three days a week there is an express train which does the journey of
350 miles in fifteen hours. This is fortunate, because the ordinary
trains take twenty-four, and even this is fast in comparison with the
trains on less frequented lines. The express journey was not without its
interesting features. We stopped now and again for fifteen minutes or
half an hour. When we stopped, everybody got out of the train and went
into the buffet--passengers, guards, engine-drivers, porters, and all.
We all sat down together, and ate and drank together; and then we all
smoked cigarettes together round the fire. When it was time to start, we
got up, stretched ourselves, and leisurely strolled back to the train,
the guards and the engine-driver and the stoker being generally the last
to turn out. It was very friendly and very nice; but as these stoppages
of half an hour occur about every twenty minutes, the English traveller,
unaccustomed to spend a day and a night in conversing with the
engine-driver in a station waiting-room, begins to get impatient.
Our ‘civil guards,’ of course, went with us, their moustaches fiercely
twisted and their rifles loaded. We still want this sort of protection
on long railway journeys over lonely plains in Spain, because the
brigands are not quite done away with yet. Only last year they stopped
and robbed a train. The way in which the robbery is carried out is this:
The brigands signal to the engine-driver to stop, and he does so, being
generally ‘in’ with the brigands. Then these gentlemen, called in
Spanish ‘Salteadores de caminos,’ or road jumpers, approach the
carriage, raise their hats to the passengers, and, in the most polite
language, request them to give up their money and jewels. The ‘guardias
civiles’ are stopped from firing at the robbers by the affrighted
passengers, as the rascals have previously explained that if they are
fired at, they will shoot at the passengers in return.
The chief of the brigands last year addressed the passengers in these
terms:
‘LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,--Please deliver up your money and valuables
of every description. We do not wish to put you to the indignity of
a search, but shall rely upon your honour. But as soon as you tell
us you have given up everything we shall search one passenger of
each class. If upon either we find a single coin or a single
valuable, we shall shoot one passenger in each compartment. Ladies
and gentlemen, do not hurry yourselves. Our time is yours.’
You can imagine that, under these circumstances, there is very little
kept back. The passengers beg and pray of each other to conceal nothing.
As soon as a complete surrender has been made, the brigands raise their
hats again, and bid the passengers farewell in these words, ‘Vaya
ustedes con Dios!'--‘May you go with God!'--and, as the train moves off,
they add, with beautiful and simple piety, ‘And may we all meet again
some day in God’s big parlour!’
These dignified and solemn Spanish salutations are universal among the
people, and are never omitted. Your beggar in Spain is a gentleman, and
you address him always in formal and courteous language. ‘Brother,’ you
say, when he importunes you, ‘may God put it into your heart to deprive
me of the pleasure of your society!’ To your waiter, to the servant, to
the boy who blacks your boots, your language must never be curt. At the
_table d’hôte_ in Spain, high-born gentlemen and the officers talk as
much with the waiter as they do with each other. He joins in the general
conversation; and I have heard an ex-Spanish Minister gravely discussing
the political situation with the waiter who was handing round the
dishes. Sometimes the guests agreed with the waiter, and sometimes with
the ex-Minister.
A word about the accommodation for travellers in second-rate Spanish
towns off the beaten track before I hurry away from the gayest and
brightest capital in all Europe, and go on to Seville. English
travellers are frightened from visiting many small Spanish towns by
tales of bad accommodation, vile cooking, and uncivilized ways. My
personal experience proves the contrary. In many places off the beaten
track I was excellently housed and fed, and every Spaniard with whom I
came in contact put himself out of his way to make my path one of roses.
But I didn’t walk about rooms with my hat on; I didn’t cross the high
altar in churches without bowing my knee; and I didn’t turn my nose up
at all the dishes, and say ‘Faugh!’ and I didn’t call the servants and
the proprietor ‘d.f.'s’ because they didn’t understand English. The
English who come abroad do much to bring about the incivility with which
they are sometimes treated. The off-hand, imperious, insular manner is
not understood in a country where the beggars address each other as
‘Your excellency’ and ‘Your lordship.’ Instead of finding fault with
everything Spanish, praise everything, say you like everything, and
flatter instead of abusing your hosts, and you will find the Spaniards,
from the highest to the lowest, vying with each other as to which can
show you the greatest courtesy.
The courtesy of the servants in Spanish hotels is wonderful. Every
waiter, every chambermaid, rises when you pass, and bows and remains
standing till you are out of sight. Your coachman remains bareheaded
while you get into your carriage. In country places all the drivers you
meet on the road raise their hats and wish you all that is good.
In the best hotels a staff of servants sit on sofas on each landing
waiting to attend to the summons of the guests. If you walk up and down
your corridor for half an hour, every time you pass that sofa the
servants will rise and remain standing till you have passed.
In little out-of-the-way towns at _table d’hôte_, if a lady comes into
the room all the gentlemen at the table rise and bow to her, and remain
standing until she is seated. When the _table d’hôte_ is over, the men
as they rise bow to those who still remain seated, and, in courtly
phraseology, lay themselves at the feet of the company.
At one _table d’hôte_ in a little town I was astonished to see a
gentleman sit down in his hat and cloak, and keep them on. I made
inquiries, and found that he was a Castilian grandee, and it was his
privilege to remain covered. The hat in Spain is the seat of dignity.
That is why you give your visitor’s hat the armchair of honour when he
calls upon you.
Seville is a place one longs to see until one has seen it, and then one
wonders why one wanted to see it so much. It is beautiful. I am a
Philistine, a Goth, a Vandal, a dreadful creature generally, but I am
always willing to admit beauty where it exists. I don’t prostrate
myself and worship simply because I am told it is the proper thing to
do, but anything that I like I become enthusiastic over. I can’t become
enthusiastic over Seville. It is quaint and old and picturesque and
pretty and lordly and interesting, and all that sort of thing, but you
soon get tired of it. The climate has something to do with this,
perhaps. The energy goes out of you in Seville. You saunter and put your
hands in your pockets, and so in time the very laziness of the life
begins to bore you. If I hadn’t heard so much about Seville it is quite
possible I should have been enchanted with it. But I have heard its
praises sung on the top note all my life, and so I was disappointed.
The people and the patios are the most interesting things in Seville.
Artists have painted the men and women of Andalusia in their national
costumes for countless ages, so that everyone is familiar with them.
Comic operas and ballets by the score have shown us the dark-eyed
lasses, with the coquettish comb and the mantilla, and the bright
flowers in their hair, casting melting glances from behind a fan. And
the songs about the Guadalquivir would bind up into a very big volume.
Every Englishman is therefore prepared beforehand for Seville. I was. I
got out at the station, and got into an omnibus that rattled my bones
over awful stones, and jerked me up in the air, and threw me down on the
floor, and reduced me to a living pulp; and, as soon as I was something
between a jam and a jelly, I began to look about me.
Seville is built on the regular Moorish system. Narrow streets and
houses close together to keep out the fierce heat of the sun. We go full
speed through streets that leave only half an inch on each side of the
bus. Foot passengers dash into doorways to shelter until we have passed.
We come to streets so narrow that the horses could not pass through,
let alone the bus; and so we dive up here and dive down there, and
describe a circle, in order to arrive at our hotel. There are certain
streets that carriages go up, and certain streets that they come down.
Nothing could pass! And there are no footways. An unskilful driver who
goes an inch to the right or the left chips a piece out of his vehicle
by knocking it against a house.
But one thing strikes the first comer and rivets his attention. Every
house, small and large, has a lovely gate of ironwork as delicate as
lace, through which one sees a beautiful inner patio or marble courtyard
filled with waving trees and beautiful plants. Often in the centre a
splendid fountain plays. Seville is an old city of the Moors. Their
handiwork is everywhere. In these houses that one passes the Moors lived
their Eastern life before they were driven out by the reconquest of
Spain, and so beautiful is the climate, so clear the atmosphere, that
everything stands to-day just as it stood hundreds of years ago. The
Moor is everywhere in this part of Spain. The people still dance the
Moorish dances and sing the Moorish songs, and the blood of the Moors
still lingers in their veins, the features of the Moors still survive,
and make the faces that one meets full of Eastern grace and beauty.
The country all round Seville is a garden of Eden. The orange-trees, the
palm-trees, and the almond-trees are everywhere. The hedges are the
prickly pear and the cactus. The landscape is African in its luxuriance,
and the golden sunshine floods the land with glory. But the roads! Oh,
ye gods, the roads! They ought to be impossible roads; but we drove over
them. They are in ruts a foot deep; they are in holes in which a man
might hide himself. They have not been swept for centuries. The mud
that was in heaps in the days of the Moors remains in heaps still. The
dogs and cats who died by the roadside in the days of the Moors have not
yet been buried. Once when I was in Seville it rained all night. The
next day we drove through a sea of liquid mud. Even the roadways in
front of the palaces of the rich are in great holes and full of ponds.
Carriages break down, horses break their legs, visitors disappear down
holes in the roadway. The Sevillians regret the circumstances; they
repair the carriages, buy new horses, make new friends, but they never
repair the roads. Some day the only way of getting about Seville will be
by balloon. Even now it is the safest way. So much has been done for
Seville by the past Moors; the present burgesses might at least keep the
roads in repair.
The Guadalquivir! Another of my lost illusions. Poets have sung it from
a distance--the poet who walks upon its bank holds his nose. The
Guadalquivir, out of the poetry books and the songs and the romances, is
a commonplace, dirty stream, about as romantic as the Thames at Barking
Creek, and not so clean.
The people and the patios and the climate make Seville, and the Santa
Semaña--the Holy Week!--brings thousands and thousands of people to the
marmalade city. It is a week of magnificent processions--a week of such
pomp and circumstance and magnificence and show as to be indescribable.
All the winter long people come to Seville because it is said to be a
beautiful place. During the month of the Santa Semaña they cram into
Seville to see a sight which no other town in the world can show.
English swarm in Seville. At the Hotel of the Tower of Babel we sit down
180 to _table d’hôte_. The eighty are English and American. We speak all
languages at this hotel. All day long it is a babel of French, English,
Italian, Spanish, German, Russian, Swedish, Dutch, and Portuguese. We
have magnificent entertainments at dinner-time. One evening a band of
fifty ‘Estudiantina’ play and sing and dance for our amusement. Another
evening we have professors of the guitar who serenade us. But this great
caravansera of foreigners spoils Seville for me. I might be at a big
hotel anywhere except in Spain. Everything is thoroughly un-Spanish. All
around one hears English and French, and people dress and give
themselves airs, and bring the customs and manners of London and Paris
and St. Petersburg to Seville, and so spoil it. It knocks the romance
out of the place to hear at every street corner, ‘Hullo, old fellow; how
are you?’ and ‘Oh, Jane, did you see that funny old lady?’ or ‘Bai Jove,
what a doosid pretty girl in that balcony!’ There are so many places in
Spain which are ugly and purely Spanish, that one feels annoyed to come
to a place which is pretty but cosmopolitan.
The great tobacco factory at Seville is one of the first sights the
stranger is taken to see. It requires a certain amount of courage for a
bashful man to run the gauntlet of 6,500 young ladies. Everybody in
Spain smokes cigarettes. Little boys begin at the age of eight, and from
that time the cigarette is rarely absent from a Spaniard’s lips. Many of
them die smoking. The consumption of cigarettes is naturally enormous,
and the bulk are manufactured in Seville. The Government factory gives
daily employment to about 7,000 people, and of these only a hundred or
two are men.
When you enter the enormous rooms crowded with girls dressed in bright
colours, the _coup d'œil_ is striking in the extreme. In one immense
low-vaulted room there are 1,500 girls. They sit in endless rows--about
twenty girls to a row--on either side of the room, all at little
tables, all rolling cigarettes. There is a blaze and blur of colour, a
babel of tongues. Every girl has a gay handkerchief about her
neck--every girl has a bright flower stuck in her hair. All along the
walls hang the gay outdoor dresses of the little cigarette-makers. As I
walk, blushing and nervous, down an endless avenue of flashing eyes, I
grow almost giddy. It is a sea of women’s faces, an undulating ocean of
flower-decked heads. One has to pick one’s way carefully down the
central avenue, for it is blockaded all along the line with cradles. The
married cigarette-makers are allowed to bring their babies with them to
the factory. They rock the cradle with one foot, while their busy
fingers roll the cigarette.
‘Silence!’ is called by the forewoman as the visitor passes down the
lines, but there is a ‘chut-chut’ every second from some dark-eyed wench
who points to a cradle and holds out her hand. It is the habit of
visitors to bestow occasional coppers on the babies, and so all the
young mothers are on the alert for the visitors’ charity.
The girls earn good wages. At many of the tables whole families are
working together. But the hours are long, and the atmosphere awful. The
damp, warm odour of the tobacco in the long, low-roofed rooms is in
itself almost stupefying. But there is no ventilation, and the
atmosphere is absolutely indescribable. Many of the girls smoke
cigarettes at their work. I was very glad to light one myself long
before I had done the round of the factory.
I have said that cigarette-smoking is universal in Spain. Nowhere does
the habit strike the foreigner more forcibly than at a funeral. Funerals
in Spain are conducted in a manner which is in the highest degree
original. When you die you are got rid of as soon as possible. The
Spaniards have the same horror of death surroundings as the Italians,
but they go a great deal further. As quickly as possible--sometimes
within an hour--the body is placed in an elaborate coffin made of metal,
and painted to imitate marble. Some of these ‘caskets’ are smothered in
gilt ornaments of a most elaborate character. All sizes are kept ready
at the great funeral establishments. The coffins open lengthways. The
lid is on hinges, and is locked with a key. The poorer people are buried
in wooden coffins, covered with various designs in coloured ribbons.
Children’s coffins are made in white and blue, and are decorated like a
bon-bon box. Coffins of this description are sold almost everywhere in
the South. You see them hanging up outside the shops by dozens.
I went over the premises of one of the biggest undertaking concerns in
Spain. It is a public company, and is called ‘La Funeraria.’ I never saw
such magnificence in my life. Some of the funeral cars are built in the
style of the great gilt and glass cars which figure in a circus
procession through a country town. The drivers and footmen are dressed
in gorgeous liveries that make you blink to look at them. Some of the
liveries that I was shown cost over £200 each. They positively blazed
with gold. A grand first-class funeral, with a retinue of footmen and
officials, is a perfect Lord Mayor’s show in itself.
As a rule, the corpse, even when so magnificently conducted to its last
home, is unattended by any relatives. Spaniards finish with their dead
when the church ceremony is over. Few corpses are accompanied to the
cemetery except by the undertaker’s men. But in ordinary cases the
coffin is placed in a yellow, open car, and driven up to the cemetery by
a gentleman in a short jacket and peaked cap. The driver smokes his
cigarette and cracks his whip as he hums his favourite tune. I have
seen dozens of these ordinary funerals in Spain, and they have always
filled me with amazement. The ridiculous always lives next door to the
sublime. The grotesque and the horrible are first cousins. More than
once I have with difficulty restrained myself from smiling at a Spanish
interment, so utterly out of keeping with English notions of decorum has
the final ceremony been.
I will describe two interments that I witnessed in one day at the great
cemetery at Seville. Four little barefooted boys arrive at the cemetery
gates. Between them they carry a little blue and white coffin. They jog
along, chatting and laughing, up the long avenue of trees. Presently
they see something which attracts their attention--a bird in a tree.
Down they drop the coffin by the roadside, and off they scamper across
the grass to the tree. They pick up stones and begin to throw them at
the bird. In the process they quarrel about something, and two of the
boys have a fight. In the meantime the coffin lies in the roadway. I
walk up to it, and through the glass let into the lid I see the dead
child’s face. It has been dead perhaps twelve hours, so the features are
unchanged, and it appears to be calmly sleeping. Several people pass me;
no one takes any notice of the coffin in the road. One old gentleman
nearly tumbles over it, and swears. It is evidently nothing unusual.
Presently these ragged boys, having arranged their little difference,
return, and pick up the coffin. Two of them have lighted cigarettes.
They carry their burthen right across the cemetery to a little house,
where two or three men with brass numbers on their caps are smoking
cigarettes. Here they show a paper, and one of the men, picking up a
spade, tells the boys to follow him. Off they go, jogging the coffin now
this way and now that, and I follow them.
We come to a long line of brick vaults. Some are empty; some are filled
up to the top with what I presume to be mould. The gravedigger turns
over the loose earth with his spade, and strikes a coffin here and
there. The vault is too full. He moves on to another bricked square,
pushes his spade in, and says there is just room. He digs a little hole
and lays the coffin flush with the top of the brickwork. Then he throws
a few spadefuls of earth over it from a mound close by, and the ceremony
is finished. There are thousands of these bricked squares in the
cemetery, and each contains a score of coffins. There is no stone over
the top, only the loose brown earth. Some of them are so full that the
earth has to be piled up to cover the coffin, and thus the coffin is
actually above ground.
This system of burying in bricked squares saves a lot of trouble. The
graves are always ready, and the dead can be brought to the cemetery and
put away at once. There is no necessity to order or select beforehand.
To understand this system you must see a Spanish cemetery. No written
words can convey a correct impression of its general peculiarities.
The next funeral arrives as I am leaving the cemetery. A car, driven by
a man smoking a cigarette, comes up. It is followed by a cab, from which
alights an old gentleman, also smoking a cigarette. The car pulls up at
the gate of the ‘depository,’ a little house in the grounds arranged for
the reception of people who have died too late to be buried that day.
The guardian of this house, cigarette in mouth, flings open the doors,
speaks to the gentleman, and then calls for somebody to come. A man with
a cigarette in his mouth now approaches. He and the car-driver lift out
the coffin and carry it into the house and lay it on the trestles. They
then light a candle at the head and foot, and come out and shut the
door. Off drives the car, the man lighting another cigarette, and the
gentleman to whom the corpse belongs strolls across the cemetery with
the gravedigger to choose ‘his place.’ The gravedigger turns up a little
earth in one brick square, and then in another. ‘Too full,’ says the
gentleman, puffing his cigarette. He goes from square to square, and
pokes at the loose earth with his stick. At last he settles on a square
which is only half full. ‘That will do,’ he says, and then he returns to
his cab and drives away.
I make inquiries of the keeper of the ‘depository.’ The body inside the
coffin is the gentleman’s wife. She died last night. She will be buried
to-morrow morning. ‘Will the gentleman return to see her buried?’ ‘Oh,
no; he has finished. He has left her here. The rest concerns us!’ We
find it difficult to understand this leaving the dead to be buried
without ceremony, and without a friendly watcher; but the Spaniards
think nothing of it. They bid their dead good-bye with the last prayer.
The interment is no ceremony at all to them. The dead are hurried out of
the house as soon as possible. Sometimes they are sent to the
undertaker’s ‘depository’ within a couple of hours of their decease, and
the friends see no more of them. This, with the Southern horror of a
corpse, one can understand. But the cigarette-smoking of hearse-drivers,
cemetery attendants, and gravediggers while handling the coffin, strikes
the foreign looker-on as, to say the least of it, lacking in ordinary
respect for the dead.
In many parts of Spain the death ceremonies are peculiar. The corpse is
elaborately dressed in its best, and has its hair beautifully done, and
a pair of new boots put on its feet. It is then got rid of as soon as
possible, and all the furniture in the room is taken out and sold, or
given away. Everything that can remind the family of the deceased is
removed. A notice of the death is not only inserted in the newspapers,
but in some cases placarded on the walls; and you are requested to go to
such and such a church on such and such a day, when a mass will be said
for the repose of the dead person’s soul.
Among the poor there is a very free-and-easy way of getting their dead
buried. One day, outside a great cemetery, I came upon three common
coffins lying on the ground near the gate. Seeing that the coffins were
occupied, I started back in horror, and asked what, in Heaven’s name,
such an exhibition meant. ‘Oh,’ said my Spanish friend, ‘they are poor
people who cannot afford to be buried yet. There is a little fee to be
paid. Someone will come by presently, and pay for the coffins to be put
away as an act of charity.’
Unburied coffins are bad enough, but what do you think of dead children
hung up outside the cemetery gates, waiting for some kind soul to pay
for them to be put into the earth? The sight is not uncommon in the
South of Spain, where every form and shape of beggary is rampant.
Sometimes the friends of a small corpse, instead of asking charity, will
smuggle it into the cemetery hidden under a cloak; and, when no one is
looking, drop it into one of the big square graves I have told you
about, and kick a little loose earth over it. There are plenty of
uncoffined dead under the loose earth in the great cemetery of Seville.
Burials alive are far more common in hot countries, where the burial
takes place within twenty-four hours after death, than they are in
England, where one gets, as a rule, a week’s grace. In Spain the body is
frequently removed to the undertaker’s shop a few hours after death. In
one of the largest of these establishments in Madrid, some years ago, an
extraordinary sight was witnessed. A gentleman was brought in his
‘casket’ one afternoon, and placed in the room set apart for that branch
of the business. The proprietor lived over his premises, and on this
especial evening was giving a grand ball. When the ball was at its
height, a gentleman in full evening dress suddenly joined the company.
He danced with the wife of the undertaker, and he danced with the
undertaker’s daughter, and seemed to be thoroughly enjoying himself.
The undertaker thought he knew his face, but did not like to be rude and
ask him his name; but by-and-by all the guests departed, and the strange
gentleman was the only one left. ‘Shall I send for a cab for you?’ said
the host at last. ‘No thank you,’ replied the gentleman; ‘I’m staying in
the house.’ ‘Staying in the house!’ exclaimed the undertaker; ‘who are
you, sir?’ ‘What, don’t you know me? I’m the corpse that was brought in
this afternoon.’ The undertaker, horrified, rushed to the mortuary-room
and found the coffin empty. His wife and daughter had been dancing with
a corpse. An explanation, of course, followed. The gentleman, who had
only been in a trance, had suddenly recovered, and hearing music and
revelry above, and having a keen sense of humour, had got out of his
coffin (the Spanish coffin closes with a lid, which is only locked just
previous to interment) and joined the festive party. He was quite
presentable, as in Spain the dead are generally buried in full evening
dress.
Writing about funerals in Spain reminds me of a curious ceremony in
connection with the burial of Spanish kings. The Pantheon in the
Escorial is their last home. Here they lie in splendid marble sarcophagi
in great niches, and you can walk about and see them all. Alfonso’s
sarcophagus is empty as yet. The late King’s body lies on a table in an
adjoining chamber--a chamber called El Pudridero, which is really a
place where the royal bodies are left to undergo the natural process of
decay which at last fits them to be placed in the ornamental arrangement
in the Pantheon. The ceremony to which I referred above took place at
the late King’s funeral. The body was brought in great state from Madrid
to the Escorial, a distance of thirty miles. The ‘intendant’ of the
royal palace was in charge of it. When the procession reached that gate
of the Escorial which is only opened to admit a dead sovereign, the
procession halted. The ‘intendant’ then went to the coffin and opened
it, and exclaimed in a loud voice, ‘Don Alfonso!’ then again still
louder, ‘Don Alfonso!’ and again, ‘Don Alfonso!’ He then turned to the
officials, and said, ‘Don Alfonso does not answer; he is dead!’ The
coffin was locked again, and the King passed on to his last home.
A note or two before I leave Seville. When I arrived in Seville, before
seeing the sights, I went to a barber’s shop to have my head shampooed
and to be shaved, and to be generally put straight after fifteen hours
in the train. I asked my ‘Figaro’ if he was the Barber of Seville. He
shook his head deprecatingly, and said, ‘No; but he was one of them.’ I
explained to him that I wanted to know if he was the immortal Barber of
Seville--that it was a mild joke. He said there were so many barbers in
Seville. He had never heard of Count Almaviva, but he knew a Rosina. She
was working in the great tobacco factory of Seville, and was very
pretty. I lost my patience. I cried, ‘Great heavens, man! you are a
barber of Seville, and you never heard of the Barber of Seville who is
in an opera known all over the world?’ The man thought for a little
while, and then exclaimed, ‘Ah! I know what you mean now. They show a
shop to tourists where a barber once lived who did something. But I
didn’t know it was true about him. The guides here make so many stories
for the tourists!’
I left the Barber of Seville sad and downcast. I had expected that all
the time he was shaving me he would be singing the best-known airs of
the opera. And he didn’t even know who Figaro was!
One more disillusion awaited me in Seville. One morning the waiter
brought me for my breakfast some marmalade. ‘Ah!’ I exclaimed,
‘Seville--Seville oranges! Of course, the marmalade here is excellent.’
‘Yes, señor,’ replied the waiter; ‘it is considered a great delicacy in
Seville, because we cannot get it here. This is the best Scotch
marmalade from London!’
The Andalusian dances are quite as interesting as the funerals. To see
the dances in perfection you have, when there is no _fête_ or country
festival on, to go to the cafés chantants, and these establishments in
Spain are only frequented by a low class of people. My companion and I
put our dignity in our pockets and went to the cafés, but we had a
slight difficulty in explaining to the young ladies of the
establishments that we were there to see them dance, and not to drink
bottles of Malaga and talk Spanish to them. The dancing of the
Andalusian girls is well worth putting up with a little bad company to
see. There is a good deal of the Oriental movement of the hips and arms
in it; in fact, both the song and the dance of the South are Moorish,
but there is also a grace and a coquettishness of a purely Spanish
character. When a man and woman dance together with the castanets, and
dance well, there is no prettier sight to be seen.
The men are all good dancers. The great dancer of Seville at the present
moment is a butcher, one José Fernandez, surnamed ‘El Chibo’ (the
little lamb). He has a fine shop on the Plaza, and is very well to do.
Unfortunately he could not dance for me because he had been having a
political discussion with a friend, and had received by way of argument
two bullets in the chest, and so was confined to the hospital. ‘El
Chibo’ is also one of the leading figures in the great procession of the
Holy Week. He takes the character of a Roman general. For this occasion
he has had made, at his own expense, a new and beautiful costume, for
which he has paid the trifling sum of 15,000 pesetas--say, £600. You may
guess that ‘El Chibo,’ the dancing butcher of Seville, is not a poor
man.
The gipsy dancing of Granada is different from the Andalusian dancing.
As it was not convenient for me to climb up the Alhambra Hill at night
and sit in a gipsy cave, I had the gipsy dancers brought down to a house
in the town by their captain, and paid for a private performance. The
guide-books say that it is a ‘disgusting exhibition.’ It isn’t exactly
the sort of thing a girl would take her mother to see; but ‘Honi soit
qui mal y pense.’ The gipsies dance ‘Old Africa’ and their other dances
without any thought of evil. They are not refined, and many of the
‘figures’ are coarse and suggestive, but the general effect is striking,
and dramatic, and picturesque. After the real Moorish dances of Africa
and the Spanish dances of Andalusia, these gipsy dances of Granada are
not worth going much out of one’s way to see. But the gipsies themselves
are interesting, and the old gipsy captain plays the guitar like an
angel. I tried to carry on a conversation in Romany with them, and I
found that, taking into account the difference of the Spanish and the
English pronunciation of the same word, they understood me very well
indeed. I stayed with the gipsies and their captain till eleven on
Saturday night, and on Sunday, at their special invitation, I went up
the hills and spent an hour in their home--a cave burrowed right into
the mountain, and fitted up in an exceedingly primitive style. The chief
of the party I spent Sunday with is nearly seventy-six, and a hale and
hearty old Gitano still. He told me that many years ago he danced with
his wife before the Prince of Wales, and he asked me if he was King of
England yet, if he was married, and how many children he had. I gave him
the desired information, and then he asked me, if I saw the Prince of
Wales when I went back to England, to give his best respects to his
Royal Highness. I promised that I would, should the opportunity occur. I
regret to say that up to the present moment it has not.