around to the confectioners' of an afternoon to eat sweetmeats,
especially sugared _higochumbos_ (the unripe prickly-pear boiled in
syrup), or the famed and fragrant preserve of budding orange-blossoms
known as _dulces de alzahar_; and the remainder of the time they while
away pleasantly in loitering on the Street of the Great Captain, or in
peering from their windows at whatever passes beneath. Throughout the
kingdom, it should be said, a most extraordinary persistence will be
observed in dawdling, strolling, and general contemplation. The Spaniard
appears to be born with his legs in a walking position, and with loaded
eyes that compel him to look out of the window whether he wants to or
not.
One of the more remarkable observations, finally, that I collected in
Cordova came from Manuel. It was his reflection as he gazed down from
the Desierta into the plain: "Ah, that was where John Dove (Juan Palom)
did such splendid things!" he sighed. "You don't know about John Dove?
Well, he was one of the _very greatest_ men Spain ever had; he was a
robber--and oh, what a beautiful robber!"
_ANDALUSIA AND THE ALHAMBRA._
I.
[Illustration: S]
Seville--why should we not keep the proper and more euphonious form,
Sevilla?--the home of that Don Juan on whom Byron and Mozart have shed a
lustre more enviable than his reputation, has been made familiar to
every one by melodious Figaro as well; and more lately Mérimée's Carmen,
veiled in the music of Bizet, has brought it into the foreign
consciousness again.
To me it is memorable as the place where I saw the jars in which the
Forty Thieves were smothered. Worried by a painfully profuse odor that
filled the whole street, one day I sought the cause, and found it in an
olive-oil merchant's _tienda_, where there were some terra-cotta jars of
the exact form given in the story-books, and afflicted with
elephantiasis to such a degree that one or two men could easily have
hidden in each. I am sure they were the same into which Morgiana poured
the boiling oil, though why it should have been heated is inexplicable:
the smell alone ought to have been fatal.
A prouder distinction is that Sevilla is the capital of Andalusia, that
gayest and most diversified province of Spain; the native ground of the
bull-fight and breeder of the best bulls; a region abounding in racy
customs and characteristics. The sea-going Phoenicians, who bear down on
us from so many points of the historical compass, found in Andalusia an
important trading field. Its mountains are still stored with silver,
copper, gold, lead, which have yielded steady tribute for thousands of
years. In its breadths of sun-bathed plain and orange-mantled slope the
ancients placed their Elysian Fields. Goth and Roman, Moor and Spaniard,
struggled for the mastery of so rich a possession; and meanwhile
Sevilla, the favorite of Cæsar--his "little Rome"--lay at the core of
the fruitful land, herself careless in the main as to everything except
an easy life, with plenty of singing and love-making. From climate and
history, nevertheless, from art and the mingling of antipodal races,
Sevilla received those influences which have shaped her into the bizarre
and eminently Spanish creation that she is--a visible memory of the
past, and a sparkling embodiment of the present. Society, amusement, and
religious awe are the controlling aims of the people, blended with
revolutionary politics, and great liveliness in their increasing
commerce. The songs of Andalusia pervade the whole kingdom; its
dances--_cidarillos_, _manchegas_, _boleros_, the _cachuca_, and the
wildly graceful _Sevillanas_--enjoy an equal renown.
To accept Sevilla without disappointment, however, a robust appreciation
is needed. Its squalors and splendors are impartially distributed.
Luxurious mansions are dropped down indiscriminately among mean abodes
and the homes of dirt. Poverty and showiness, supreme beauty and
grotesque ugliness, jostle each other at close quarters. It is a sort of
_olla podrida_ among cities; but the total result is exceedingly
curious, and piques the observation.
[Illustration: MAIN ENTRANCE TO THE CATHEDRAL, SEVILLA
From a photograph by J. Laurent & Co., Madrid.]
[Illustration: THE GIRALDA TOWER.
From a photograph by J. Laurent & Co., Madrid.]
The first of it that met our eyes was the Giralda tower of the
cathedral, rising in unique majesty above the unseen town, and as if
inspired with a fresher grace by its own fame. If the bronze female
figure of Faith on the summit could have spoken, it might have said: "In
all the range of view from this pinnacle there is nothing so fair as
Sevilla." The very next object of notice was a woman in the street, who
began begging from below the instant we set foot on the balcony for a
general survey. She gave us our money's worth of misery, but the supply
afterward proved too great for our demand. The mendicants of Sevilla are
much more daring and pertinacious than their craft elsewhere. They
call your attention with a sharp "tst, tst," as if you were hired to go
through life casually, stopping the instant they summon you. There was
in particular one energetic man who never failed to pounce upon us from
his lair, and place some few inches in front of us the red and twisted
stump from which his hand had been severed. He had seemingly persuaded
himself that our journey of several thousand miles was undertaken
principally to inspect this anatomical specimen. The amount of execution
he did with that mutilated member was enough to shame any able-bodied,
self-supporting person. With a single wave of it he could put us to
flight. The effect would not have been more instantaneous if he had
suddenly unmasked a mitrailleuse a yard from our noses. To assume
unconsciousness was futile, for, whichever way we turned, he was always
(it would hardly be correct to say "on hand," but) on time with his
fingerless deformity--he always placed it, with the instinct of a
finished artist, in the best light and most effective pose--getting it
adroitly between us and anything we pretended to look at.
I imagined the noble cathedral might afford a refuge from such attacks,
but every door was guarded by a squad of the decrepit army, so that
entrance there became a horror. These sanctuary beggars serve a double
purpose, however. The black-garbed Sevillan ladies, who are perpetually
stealing in and out noiselessly under cover of their archly draped lace
veils--losing themselves in the dark, incense-laden interior, or
emerging from confession into the daylight glare again--are careful to
drop some slight conscience-money into the palms that wait.
Occasionally, by pre-arrangement, one of these beggars will convey into
the hand that passes him a silver piece a tightly-folded note from some
clandestine lover. It is a convenient underground mail, and I am afraid
the venerable church innocently shelters a good many little transactions
of this kind.
[Illustration: THE "UNDERGROUND" MAIL.]
Nothing can surpass in grandeur, in solemn and restful beauty, the
hollow mountain of embellished stone which constitutes this cathedral.
It does not present the usual cross shape, but is based upon the oblong
form of an old mosque, originally formed somewhat like that at Cordova,
but now wholly gone, excepting for the unequalled Giralda, and a few
other minor muezzin towers. The Court of Oranges is another relic of the
mosque-builders, where clumps of polished leafage contrast their own
vivid strength with the energetic lines of flying-buttresses in the
background--a florid yet melancholy height of trellised stone. The
enclosing walls of the Orange Court, made of firmly cohering mud, or
_tapia_, are tipped with flame-pointed battlements. At their eastern end
rises the tall, square Giralda, with a serenity in its simple lines
expressing, like Greek temples, the satisfied senses controlled by an
elevated mind. The lower portion bears other impress of its Moorish
origin in variously patterned courses of sunken brick; but the whole
tower terminates in a filigree Christian spire of the sixteenth century,
with a row of queer rusty iron ornaments, imitating vases filled with
flowers, placed on the ledge above the belfry at the spire's base. Then,
as you continue the circuit on the east, you arrive opposite the apse
curve marking the chancel of the Chapel Royal; and here the wall is
moulded to the taste of Charles V.'s time, which affected Roman
simplicity and weight, adding to it a trace of feudal pomp in
high-relief coats of arms. On the third and south side a crumbling
frieze of deer's heads and flower garlands skirts the cornice above a
long plain front, the straight-ness of which our friend Whetstone,
clambering up on a low coping so as to squint along the side, and see if
the lines were perfectly true, admired more than anything else.
Afterward one reaches a corner where the work remains unfinished, and
the blackened trunks of incomplete pinnacles in graded ranks suggest the
charred fragments of a faith once all afire, now darkened and cold.
There is no all-dominating dome; but there are two or three bulbous
upheavals in the roof, some spindling turrets on the north, and a square
elevation in the middle revealing the form of the transept. The whole
top is ribbed with stone, serrated with ornate crockets, crowded with
bosses and small spires, or edged with a double balustrade mimicking in
its flame-points a thousand altar lights. Petrified rosettes and spiral
wreathings project from the sides in unchangeable efflorescence, and
great arches, furrowed around by concentric ripples of carving, and
sometimes overpeered by quaint terra-cotta heads, give entrance to the
interior of the gigantic marvel. And over all towers the Giralda to a
height of three hundred and fifty feet, surmounted by the Giraldillo
vane--a woman's form, which turns its twenty-five hundred-weight of
bronze from point to point at the slightest veering of the wind. But the
consummate wonder of this great fabric, under which prostrate ages seem
to crouch while lifting it to heaven, is the union of diverse styles and
spirits in its construction. The different schools conglomerated in such
an exterior give the cathedral a great and mysterious power of variety;
yet, decided though their contrasts are, the effect is not harsh. It
bears witness to the truth that the spirit of man when attuned to the
mood of sincere worship, however unlike its expression may be at
different epochs and through different races, will always make a certain
grand inclusive harmony with itself.
The coolness of the lofty and umbrageous aisles within is not penetrated
by the fiercest summer heats; but their religious twilight, though
inciting to a devout and prayerful sentiment, wraps in obscurity the
crowded works of art, the emblazoned _retablos_, the paintings of
Murillo, Campaña, and Morales, and the costly ornaments bestowed upon
the high altar, as well as those of some thirty side-chapels. In the
central nave, before a shrine at the choir-back, lies the tomb of
Ferdinand, son of Christopher Columbus. The colossal form of another
Christopher, the saint, lifts itself up the wall to a height of
thirty-two feet, near the Gate of the Exchange. Whoever looks upon St.
Christopher, to him no harm shall come during that day; hence this
worthy is a common object in Spanish cathedrals, and always painted so
large that no one who diligently attends mass can possibly miss seeing
him. A curious relic on the Chapel Royal altar is the Battle Virgin, a
small ivory image which King Ferdinand the Sainted always carried in war
firmly fixed on his saddle-bow. There, too, the King himself, embalmed,
is preserved in a chiselled silver case, to be uncovered and shown three
times a year with great pomp of military music. A life-size Virgin with
movable joints and spun-gold hair watches over him, but did not prevent
his crown from being stolen a few years ago. Not far away Murillo's San
Antonio hangs, the chief figure in which was also stolen, being cut out
in 1874, as many who read this will remember, and carried to New York,
where it was recovered. Innumerable other works and wonders there are,
and the sacristies contain great value of goldsmiths' products; but,
unless it be made a subject of long artistic study, the fundamental
charm of the cathedral consists in its general aspects, its mysterious
perspectives, its proportions so simple and grandiose; the isolated
pictures formed at almost any point by jewelled and candle-lit chapels
sparkling dimly through a permanent dusk, rainbowed here and there by
the light from old stained windows.
From the Giralda, which is mounted by inclined planes in place of
stairs, one looks down upon the glorious building as if it were
something belonging to a lower and different world. All around, beyond,
the mazy city flattens itself out in a confusion of white walls and
tiled roofs, that look like the armored backs of scaly monsters huddled
sluggishly in the powerful sunshine, with impossible streets among them
reduced to mere thin lines of shadow. The tawny river touches it;
palaces and gardens and abandoned monasteries fringe it. Quite near you
see the Tower of Gold--a surviving outwork of the Moorish
defences--which was formerly coated with orange-colored tiles on the
outside, while the inside furnished a repository for treasure brought
from the New World. A crenellated Moorish fortification rises up
dreamily at one point, but finding itself out of date, abruptly subsides
again. Farther out are the seven suburbs, including the gypsy and sailor
quarter, the Triana; and then the plains stretch into an immense area of
olive, gold, and white, reaching to mountains on the north and east. A
multitude of doves inhabit the spire, and there is almost always a hawk
sailing above it, higher than anything else under the cloudless sky. At
the base lives the bell-ringer, through whose stone-paved dining-room
and nursery, filled with his family, we had to pass in order to ascend.
Once, as we stood toward sunset in the high gallery where the bells are
hung in rectangular or arched apertures, we heard the _repique_ sounding
the Angelus. It was a furious explosion of metallic resonance.
Twenty bells on swinging beams, that throw the echoing mouths outward
through the openings, and two fixed in place within, of which Santa
Maria--profanely called The Fat One--is the largest: such is the battery
at command. They are not all used at once, however, for the Angelus. The
ringer and his two sons were satisfied with touching up Santa Catalina
(of a tone peculiarly deep and acceptable), St. John the Baptist, San
José, and one or two others. The whole brazen family have been duly
baptized, among them being San Laureano and San Isidoro, named after the
special patrons of Sevilla. One after another their tongues rolled forth
a deafening roar, in a systematic disorder of thunderous tones, while
the chief ringer went about unconcernedly with a smouldering cigarette
in his lips. One of his sons, after uncoiling the twisted rope around
the beam of San Laureano, thus getting it into violent motion, watched
his chance, sprung on to the beam, agile as a cat, and stood there while
it rocked, the bell under him swinging out at each turn, over the open
square below. It was three hundred feet, down to the pavement, and the
least slip would have sent him down to it like a handful of dirt. His
conception of what would please us, nevertheless, led him thoroughly to
unnerve us by repeating the performance several times.
"Why don't the high-priest, or whatever he is, go on and finish up this
church?" asked Whetstone of the guide. "Seems to me it's about time."
"The priest? He don't want to," was Vincent's answer, given with a
movement of the fingers meant to imply the receiving of money. "It make
too good excuse."
Our conductor, who I am sure was a sceptic, went on to declare that
within the last ten years ninety thousand dollars had been left by will
for carrying on the unfinished portion of the cathedral, but as yet no
movement to begin the work had been made. "Where all that money go?" he
asked, innocent curiosity overspreading his features, while his eye
gleamed with hidden intelligence.
"What do the people think of the priests?" one of us asked.
"The chimneys[7] will find out some time," he replied; adding, in the
proverbial strain common with Spaniards: "When the river comes down from
the mountains, it brings stones."
"By the river, you mean revolution? But you've had that before."
The conclusive answer to this was a maxim borrowed from the ring: "The
fifth bull is never a bad one" (meaning, "Success comes to those who
wait").
Our guide's English was put to a severe strain in the Alcazar, a palace
largely Oriental, with interiors that outshine the Alhambra in
resplendent color and gilding. There is, in particular, one round-domed
ceiling constructed with an intricacy of interdependent supports, cones,
truncations, dropping cusps, which is counterpoint made plastic; and in
its inverted cup-like cysts the burnished gold glows like clotted honey.
But, for all that, it does not equal the matchless Alhambra in
arrangement, variety, or poetic surroundings. The memory of King Pedro
the Cruel is closely connected with this Alcazar. From it he used to
make night sallies into the town, by means of what Vincent termed a
"soup-tureen passage," which brought him up through a trap-door
somewhere in the thick of his subjects. Pedro, who lived in the
fourteenth century, was a monarch of a severely playful disposition. He
used to have the heads of people that were obnoxious to him cut off, and
hung up over the lintel of his dressing-room door, where he could look
at them while he was putting in his shirt-studs, or whenever he felt
bored. In the extensive gardens, half Eastern and half mediæval, behind
the palace, among the box and myrtle planted in forms of heraldic
devices, among the palms and terraces and fountains, there run long
paths, secretly perforated in places for fine jets of water. These are
the traces of a still more ingenious amusement invented by Pedro. From a
place of concealment he would watch until the ladies of the court, when
promenading, had got directly over one of his underground--I mean
"soup-tureen"--fountains, then he would turn a faucet, and drench them
with a shower-bath from below.
There are other palaces in Sevilla, of which the Duke of Montpensier's
San Telmo is the chief, and a model of uninteresting magnificence, aside
from the valuable collection of old Spanish masters which it contains.
These pictures were sent to Boston for a loan exhibition during the last
revolution in Spain, in 1874; and although their aggregate worth is
easily surpassed by the pictures preserved at the public gallery of
Sevilla and at the Caridad Hospital, the Duke of Montpensier's
possessions embrace a masterly portrait of Velazquez, by himself
(repeated in the Museo at Valencia), and a charming "Madonna of the
Swaddling Clothes," by Murillo. San Telmo was formerly a nautical
college, having been founded by the son of Christopher Columbus.
[Illustration: A STREET CORNER.]
But the long succession of apartments through which the visitor is
ushered suggests no association with the former maritime prowess of
Spain; it is haunted rather by the failures and disappointments of its
owner, who, missing the throne on which his foot had almost rested,
lived to see his daughter, Queen Mercedes, die, and another daughter
mysteriously follow Mercedes into the grave after being plighted to the
reigning King. The grounds attached to the palace are very large, and
filled with palms, orange-trees, and other less tropical growths; and
they may be inspected, under the guidance of a forester armed with an
innocuous gun, by anybody who, after getting permission, is willing to
pay a small fee and tire himself out by an aimless ramble.
Sevilla, where Murillo was born and spent so many years of artistic
activity in the height of his powers, is the next best place after
Madrid for a study of the sweetest among Spanish painters. His house
still stands in the Jews' Quarter, and a few of his best works are kept
in the picture-gallery; among them the one which he was wont to call "my
picture"--"St. Thomas of Villanueva Giving Alms." Like the "Saint
Elizabeth" at Madrid, it is a grand study of beggary--vagabondism as you
may see it to-day throughout Spain, but here elevated by excellent
design, charming sympathy with nature, and the resources of a delightful
colorist, into something possessing dignity and permanent
interest--qualities which the original phenomenon lacks. Murillo is
pure, sincere, simple, but never profound; though to this he perhaps
approaches more nearly in his "St. Francis Embracing the Crucified
Saviour" than in any other of his productions. Like others of his
pictures in Sevilla, however, it is painted in his latest style, called
"vaporoso," which, to my thinking, marks by its meretricious softness of
hazy atmosphere, and its too free coloring, a distinct decadence. In the
church connected with the Caridad are hung two colossal canvases, one
depicting the miracle of the loaves and fishes, the other, Moses
striking the rock. This last is better known by its popular title, "The
Thirst," which pays tribute to its masterly portrayal of that animal
desire. In the suffering revealed by the faces of the Israelites, as
well as the eager joy of the crowd (and even of their beasts of burden)
on receiving relief, there is a dramatic contention of pain and
pleasure, for the rendering of which the naturalistic genius of the
artist was eminently suited--and he has made the most of his
opportunity. The representation is terribly true; and its range of
observation culminates in the figure of the mother drinking first,
though her babe begs for water; for this is exactly what one would
expect in Spanish mothers of her class, whose faces are lined with a
sombre harshness, a want of human kindness singularly repellent. Such a
picture is hardly agreeable; and it must be owned that, excepting in his
gentle, honest "Conceptions," and a few other pieces, Murillo shares the
earthiness of his national school, the effect of which, despite much
magnificence in treatment, is on the whole depressing.
[Illustration: FIGARO.]
The House of Pilate, owned by the Duke of Medina Celi, is quite another
sort of thing from San Telmo; a roomy, irregular edifice, dating from
the sixteenth century, but almost wholly Saracenic. The walls are
_repoussés_ in fine arabesques, and sheathed at the base with old
color-veined tiles that throw back the light in flashes from their
surface. These also enamel the grand staircase, which makes a square
turn beneath a roof described as a _media naranja_--natural Spanish
music for our plain "half-orange"--the vault of which is fretted cedar
cased in stucco. At the top landing is posted a cock in effigy,
representing the one that crowed witness to Peter's denial. Again, a
balcony is shown which stands for that at which Pilate washed his hands
before the people; and in fine, the whole place is net-worked with
fancies of this kind, identifying it with the scene of Christ's trial.
For it was the whim of the lordly founder to make his house the
starting-point for a Via Crucis, marking the path of Jesus on his way to
crucifixion, and these devices were adopted to heighten the
verisimilitude of the scene. In Passion-week pilgrims come to pray at
the several "stations" along the route to the figurative Calvary at the
end of the Via.