Delectable Seville--Don Juan Scapegrace--The Women in Black--In the
Triana Suburb--The City of the Seven Sleepers--Guide-Book
Boredom--Romance and Reality--The Prosaic Manchester Man--King
Ferdinand Puzzling the Judges--Mortification by Proxy--Some Notable
Treasures--Papers and Politics--The Porcelain Factory--"The Lazy
Andalusiennes"--About Cigars--The Gipsy Dance.
There are but three spots in the world of which I had formed mental
pictures from my reading, that rose to the level of anticipation when I
came to visit them. Venice was one of these, Naples another, and
Seville, delectable Seville, the third. There is a Spanish proverb which
declares, "Who hath not seen Seville hath not seen a marvel," and I am
prepared to own that who doth not believe that proverb is an unenviable
sceptic. At first sight the city is a disappointment. Glance at it from
the railway and you will have no wish to stop. But alight and remain
there a few days, and you will find it hard to drag yourself away. The
place grows upon you. Each hour reveals new charms; there is a
fascination in the very atmosphere; and in the end you will catch
yourself exclaiming that the pearl of Andalusia is the fairest gem in
the Spanish crown--would be a priceless ornament to any crown.
The setting of the jewel is not worthy of it--a great plain covered with
greyish grass; clumps of tall, brown-blossomed agave; a sky metallic in
its lustre, blazing and intense; a dim streak of azure on the horizon
indicating the far sierra, and, creeping lazily through the flat, a
dull, yellow river. But the city itself! Verily, it is a marvel--a
grotto of serene mysteries in a granary of plenty, the true city to
cultivate the gay science and savour the delicate relishes of bliss.
Don Juan--I mean the Don Juan of the Tenorio family, linked to fame by
Tirso de Molina, Glück, and Mozart, not the hero of Byron's poem--was
born here, lived here, and lies under an ivy-clad sarcophagus in the
gardens attached to the Duke de Monpensier's palace. No sweeter nook of
earth could he have chosen for life's dreary pilgrimage, which he made
as little dreary as he well could, if one-half that is said and sung of
him be true. He was a sad scapegrace, and no pattern to the rising
generation; his back knew no sackcloth, and his shoes no peas; but he
died penitent. His tomb, a chaste thing in marble and brass, ought to be
as attractive for pilgrims of the Wertherian school as the monument to
Abélard in the Père-la-Chaise.
Threading the puzzling maze of Seville streets, one might fancy that all
the ladies here had been in love with the wanton rascal, and were still
in mourning for him. The dress of womankind of the better class is
invariably black; their tiny feet, coffined in dainty shoes, peep from
under a pall of black skirts; black mantillas float over billows of inky
hair, while black eyes flash with the melancholy fire of funeral torches
over the tremulous tips of black fans. Why they patronize black (which
is a conductor of heat) in this hot climate I cannot for the life of me
make out. Certainly it is not because of sympathies solemn or
lugubrious; for the character of these lissom damsels of Seville is the
reverse of gloomy. There is no taint of Inquisitorial days in their
souls. They are grave only externally, and all that is coquettish,
winning, and womanly within. If they hang out the undertaker's emblems
it can only be through love of the rule of contraries, for they are arch
in every step and glance, and bring sunshine with them into shady
places. They are fond of seeing and being seen; they cannot be looked on
as mutes, for they carry a fan, which in Spain is equivalent to a
semaphore; why then will they persevere in wearing this sepulchral
raiment? I flatter myself I have discovered two reasons, either of which
will answer--first, to typify their remorse for all the hearts they have
broken; and, next, because it is very becoming.
The women of the lower classes do not confine themselves to the same
severity of taste. They are as amorous of glaring colours as negresses.
Cross the iron bridge over the Guadalquivir, here a slow current of
chocolate and milk, and go into the Triana suburb where Tatterdemalion
holds court. There you will meet gowns of printed cotton of the
liveliest hue--gowns that flaunt violent pinks and gamboges, but never a
violet or a pearl-grey, much less a black. These daughters of the people
generally adorn their braided dark hair, which is thick and silky enough
to drive a Parisian belle into agonies of jealousy, with a few bright
natural flowers, and sport cheap trinkets and ear-rings, and fling gay
kerchiefs over their shoulders. The men are as true to the native
costume as the women. That abomination, the stove-pipe hat, seldom
shocks the æsthetic mind. The head-gear is the wide round hat with low
crown and inward-turned brim. The large blue or brown cloak, with
parti-coloured lining, is almost universally worn as in Madrid, but with
this difference: in Madrid the tail of it is held before the mouth as if
there was an epidemic of toothache; in Seville, it drapes full and free.
The Andalusian jacket--broidered with tags, and short so as to show the
scarlet waist-sash--tight trousers, and shoes of untanned leather, are
likewise common. A tidy active working-suit this Andalusian suit is, but
it must no more be argued that the men who wear it are tidy and active
and addicted to hard work than that the women who wear black are going
to a burial-service. No; Seville is the most deliciously idle place in
creation, and the Sevillanos are the most deliciously idle people.
The _vis inertiæ_ is cultivated here as a science; the Castle of
Indolence is somewhere in the vicinity; the central offices of the Lazy
Society are situated in the Calle de las Sierpes. The natives take to
lotus-eating naturally. Pure effect of climate. The Seven Sleepers were
born in Seville, and their descendants still have their torpid being in
the city. It was never meant for the bustle of trade or the whirr of
machinery. It is the place of all others to read Theocritus, 'mid bowers
dipping their leaves into plashing fountains, to eat fruit, listen to
distant music, blow languid wreaths of perfumed smoke, and shut one's
eyes to have visions of fair women. It is the veritable opium-eater's
Paradise.
Of deliberate design, I abstain from writing of the public buildings and
monumental curiosities of Seville. All that can be had by those who
choose in the exhaustive guide-books of Richard Ford and Henry O'Shea.
To my thinking, nothing can be more insufferable than the statistics of
architecture, the bald jargon of styles plateresque and ornaments
charrigueresque, the raptures over chancels and transepts and ogee
windows, the precise accounts of such a bell, which would turn the scale
at so many hundredweight, and such a spire, which is three yards and a
quarter taller than the York Column, with the everlasting scraps of
poetry from the treasury of ready-made quotations interlarded between.
It is worse even than the cant of criticism which Laurence Sterne
castigated with honest pen. Hugo was a genius, and even Hugo was almost
unequal to saving "Notre Dame de Paris" from the dead weight of
architectural detail which cumbered its spirit.
Let us look at Seville without the guide-book or guide, walk through its
labyrinth of narrow paved streets with mind open to receive, and mark
the features of the East side by side with those of the West. Those
flat-roofed buildings with greeneries on the summit, those jealous
balconies and windows with their iron trellis-work, those cool inner
spaces with tesselated floors and surrounding of marble pillars of which
we catch glimpses through the metal fret-work of the private doors--how
Moorish they are! The sights and sounds, the ragged and bronzed beggar
urchins, the hawkers of lemons and water, the strings of donkeys and
mules in fringed blinkers pattering along under huge net or straw
panniers, crammed with fruit, or charcoal, or tiles, or cork-wood--how
characteristic, how utterly un-Frankish! That lolling clown, with legs
dangling over the tawny sheared sides of a diminutive donkey, is a study
in himself. Then the melodious street-cries, the lively braying and
whinnying, and the perpetual tinkling of the collar-bells worn by all
four-footed beasts that pass, except nobody's dog and the rich man's
horse--what a pleasant concert they make!
If you wish to change the scene, roam through the plazas, with their
marble water-basins and orange-trees; go to the Duke de Montpensier's
garden, with its wealth of myrtles and fern palms; wander to the
river-side and look at the ships lading or unlading; or ascend the
Giralda, the old mosque steeple from which the muezzin called the
faithful to prayer, and take in the comely mass of colour beneath in one
broad sweep. Then the changing sky that canopies this "fragment of
heaven let fall upon earth!" The riot of clouds when the elements war,
and after the midday heats the genial rain pours down as if the blue
expanse overheard were a lake--how fervent and cordial! At night, when
the city streets are crowded with groups in conversation; when the
fragrant, flower-garlanded patios are visible by mystic lights pendent
from gilt chandeliers, like votive lamps before a shrine; when
caballeros pay court to their lady-loves through gratings as caballeros
are licensed only to pay court in Spain; when plaintive songs, with a
reminiscence of the desert about them, are chanted in monotonous cadence
to the accompaniment of a guitar--how grateful it all is to him who is
not lost to the sense of poetry! Imperceptibly one yields himself to the
associations of the bygone, and imagination takes wing. As the night
ages and silence enwraps the scene--a silence only broken by the deep
boom from a clock-tower or the voice of the sereno, the Spanish
watchman, hobbling along with his lantern swinging from his pike and his
bunch of keys from his girdle, singing out the hours--the effect is
stronger; and I confess, while roaming in such a frame once, I so lost
myself to the present that I should not have been surprised if I had met
the Knight of La Mancha and the three gallants of the _Canard à Trois
Becs_ in mocking whispers at his heels, or Figaro himself on a
serenading excursion; but with the last puff of my cigar died out the
ideal and returned the real. I hastened back to my hotel, which might
once have been a Moorish palace, and there, to make the assurance doubly
sure that this was the nineteenth century, sat in an American
rocking-chair a gentleman in a tweed suit, reading _Galignani's
Messenger_ and drinking pale ale.
That gentleman was not a poet; he was an English tourist. It was the
period before the Holy Week, with its world-renowned solemnities,
celebrated with a pomp second only to that of Rome in her heyday, and
drawing strangers in swarms from every point of the compass. If I
expected to enjoy an intellectual chat with that gentleman I was
mistaken.
"Only fancy!" he began; "the landlord has been here, and the beggar says
we'll have to pay double for board and lodging if we don't clear out
before the 5th of April."
To my explanation that a time of deep interest was at hand, and that
accommodation would be at a premium, Manchester (I felt instinctively he
must be a commercial traveller and in the dry-goods line) continued:
"Yes, I know: bull-fights, Italian opera at the San Fernando, races, fat
women, talking seals, peep-shows, whirligigs--all the fun of the fair.
By Jove! I've half a mind to hang on."
He had not heard of the grand open-air religious processions from Palm
Sunday to Good Friday, nor of the uniquely pathetic service of the
_Tenebræ_, nor of the gorgeous jubilance of Easter Sunday. Some enemy to
Seville spread the rumour that the Republic had set its face against
such ceremonies as mere gauds and vanities, customs more honoured in
the breach than the observance, and that this year they would not be
held. But Seville would not have it so; she would not relinquish her
chance of enjoying a religious raree-show and fleecing the foreigner for
any Republicans. The civil governor issued a proclamation comforting the
lieges by the pledge that now, as ever, the Holy Week would be grandly
kept, kept in a way worthy of cultured Seville, and cultured Seville
rubbed her hands with glee. Crowds were expected to flock in, and the
master of the hotel intended to act royally by them--that is, exact
tribute from them whilst they were at his mercy. Seville meant to be
awfully devout during Passion Week, and awfully jolly the week after. On
Easter Sunday there was to be a bull-fight, one of the finest in Spain,
between the greatest of living toreadores and some bulls of choicely
savage breed. The annual fair, which was represented to me as a revel of
glowing and changing tints in dress--a treat not to be missed by the
artist on any account--was to be held in the middle of April, and
speculative committees were busy over the details of race-meetings,
balls, fireworks, and merry-making generally.
I pressed the representative of the mart of cotton not to depart. But he
was obdurate to arguments touching on the æsthetic. For him the sacred
Biblico-traditional drama of "The Seven Dolours of the Virgin Mary" had
no attraction. He preferred fireworks and the learned pig.
"No," he added, as if musing; "on second thought, I shan't. Bull-fights
I can see at Madrid; and the only race-meeting worth attending, I'm
told, is that at the place where the sherry is manufactured."
"Surely," I ventured, with artless good-nature, "you will wait to
patronize Mr. Spiller, who is advertised as skater-in-ordinary to the
Duke of Edinburgh. It will be something to boast of, that you saw him
gliding and gyrating before the astonished natives, whose only idea of
ice is in the shape of creams, dyed a delicate amber, and tinctured with
essence of lemon. Then, again, your countryman, old Tom Price, the Batty
of the Peninsula, has pitched his tent on the Alameda of Hercules. He's
not to be missed."
"Tom Price--bah! You should go to Astley's, in the Westminster Bridge
Road, my boy. That fairly takes the cake. I'm off!"
He went, and I was not sorry; but the spell was broken. I was guest of
an inn. My elysian train of reverie had been smashed up; the genius of
dry-goods had evicted poetry under circumstances of aggravated
harshness; before the stamp of the elastic-sided boot of Manchester,
Pedro the Cruel and Alonso the Wise, Murillo and Luca Giordano, Maria de
Padilla and Leonora de Guzman, "el Rey Chiquito" Boabdil and the heir of
Columbus--all had melted into thinnest of air.
Inexorable duty called me elsewhere before the Holy Week solemnities, so
that I have no opportunity of describing them _de proprio visu_, and I
do not care to rehearse twice-told tales. But whilst I was in Seville I
wandered to and fro and made good use of my leisure, hearing and seeing
as much as most visitors. Of those things which remain imprinted on my
memory I may repeat some without incurring--at least so I trust--the
imputation of boring the reader. There was a basin in the gardens of the
Alcázar, where I was wont to sit beneath the shade of the foliage in
the strong heats of noon. There is an anecdote concerning it which
impressed me mightily. King Ferdinand was here one day, and was sore
perplexed by an affair of state. He required a just and astute judge to
decide some vexed question of the first importance. Walking up and down
he unconsciously picked an orange, cut it in twain, and flung one half
into the water, the cut side downwards. Suddenly an idea struck him. The
monarch sent for a judge, and asked what was that floating before him.
"An orange," was the answer.
Irritated, he dismissed him, summoned another, put the same question,
and received the same reply. This went on until at length one authority,
before answering, drew the fruit towards him with the branch of a tree,
picked it out of the water, and gave the true reply:
"Half an orange!"
There is a sound moral at the core of this orange.
There are five-and-twenty parish churches in Seville and two thousand
priests; but, as too often happens on the Continent, the women were
vastly more attentive than the men to observances of devotion. I made
the acquaintance of a wealthy burgess, a dealer in curiosities, who
asked me round to his shop to inspect some of the charming peasant
costumes of Murcia, now fast falling into disuse--and a grievous pity it
is. It was Friday when I visited him, and he was gobbling pork-chops.
"What! you a Christian, you a son of the Church!" I exclaimed.
"Ah! señor," he apologized; "forgive me! I am very frail, but my wife is
_so_ good a Christian. I reverence that woman. She has gone to Mass
without breaking her fast, and when she returns she will only take one
small cup of chocolate."
But all the burgesses of Seville are not like to him who practised
mortification by proxy. The gentlefolk are pious, and the commonalty are
not irreligious. Cheerfulness and sobriety are the rule; gambling and an
idleness excused by the enervating influences of the too generous sun
are the predominating vices, as elsewhere in Southern Spain.
I saw few ebullitions of temper, much hospitality among the poor, no
downright thievishness, but the irresistible tendency to pass bad
money--which is accounted a venial failing in the Peninsula.
The Cathedral is a superb pile, and occupies the site of an ancient
mosque. The stained-glass windows are so many captive rainbows.
Pretermitting talk about dimensions and the like, I may note some few of
the remarkable features which are most apt to be recalled by the
stranger. Foremost among these are the stone pulpit from which St.
Vincent de Ferrer preached; the slab over the remains of Ferdinand, son
of Christopher Columbus, whereon are inscribed the words (referring to
his illustrious father), "A Castilla y á Leon Mundo Nuevo Dió Colon,"
and a Crucifixion by a Mexican negro, who was never known to paint any
other subject. It is a peculiarity of artists of the Spanish school, in
representations of the Sacrifice on Calvary, to use three nails and
place the wound on the right side; Italians use four, and place it on
the left. In the Capilla Real is the figure of the "Vírgen de los
Reyes," the patron of Seville, a gift from St. Louis of France,
surmounted by the identical crown with which the brow of the canonized
monarch was pressed, and enclasped as to the throat by a diamond
necklace valued at ninety thousand duros, presented by Doña Berenguela,
the mother of St. Ferdinand. Among the treasures in the relicario of the
sacristy is a massive gold group made of ore brought by Columbus from
America, consisting of two figures sustaining a globe, the globe alone
weighing fifteen pounds. Passing under a horseshoe arch, in a dusty
corridor beside which is preserved the shrivelled mummy of an ungainly
alligator sent by the Sultan of Egypt to Alonso the Wise when seeking
his daughter's hand, the Chapter Library is reached. The prizes of this
collection are the manuscripts of the discoverer of the New World and
the book, "_Tractatus de Imagine Mundi_," which he took with him on the
caravel when he first crossed the Atlantic. There are marginal notes to
it in his own minute and legible handwriting, in one of which he lays
down this apothegm of sad wisdom: "No one is secure from adversity."
There are no especially beautiful pictures by Murillo--especially, I
say, for all of his are beautiful--in the Cathedral, but the church of
La Caridad contains two masterpieces: the "Miracle of our Lord feeding
the Multitude," and that of "Moses bringing the Living Water from the
Rock of Horeb." The latter is full of diversity of expression underlain
by a thrill of mad eagerness brought out with a terrible truth. Another
famous picture is the "Descent from the Cross" of Campana. This was
painted in 1548, and was so natural that Murillo was never weary of
resting in rapt contemplation before it, and on his death-bed asked to
be buried at its feet in the church of Santa Cruz. He had his wish. But
the dogs of war came panting that way. Soult entered Seville, pulled
down the church, desecrated the master's grave, and stole all of his
canvas he could lay his sacrilegious paws upon to grace the Louvre. The
Spaniards do not love the French, nor is it astonishing.
Among the delights of Seville one of the chief must not fail to be
enumerated--no shrieking newsboys shove latest editions into the face of
the lounger. This is not a reading people; for a woman to know how to
read was accounted immoral so late as the beginning of this century.
There are some papers at Seville, nevertheless; among others, _El
Oriente_, devoted to Carlism, and _La Legitimidad_, which advocated the
interests of the ex-Queen Isabella's son and heir; but they have little
to say. In the lack of suicides, stabs in the dark, and
pronunciamientos, they are driven to fill up their space with extracts
from the almanac and lists of letters thrown into the Post Office
without prepayment. Some countryman must have caught the local disease,
for in one list given in _La Legitimidad_ it was notified that two
envelopes had been indolently committed to the box without stamps, one
addressed to "Miss Mary, Hyde Park," and the other to "Monsieur" (an
evident misprint for "Mister") "Francis O'Mahony, Shankerhill."
It may be a surprise to some that Carlism had its adherents, but
wherever the Church is powerful there Carlism exists, and as the Church
is particularly powerful amongst the weaker sex, the Spanish women are
almost universally Carlists. Many a ferocious Intransigente, who spouts
fire and brimstone, and death to kings and priests in the clubs, has to
sing very small when he comes home, for the Señora dotes on Don Carlos
and works slippers for the father confessor. In Seville I should say the
Intransigente element is feeble; it is strongest, perhaps, in the
municipality (which, by the way, issued an edict secularizing the
cemetery of San Fernando), because this party of action is always on the
watch and pushes itself into office; but the immense majority of the
business folk are monarchical, only they wish to have the Prince of the
Asturias, not Don Carlos, for their monarch, and all the gentlefolk,
without exception, are anti-Republican. I had proof of this at the
theatre, where "La Marsellesa," a comedy intended to glorify the advent
of the Republic, was played. The speeches in favour of Federalism very
often fell flat, and occasionally were hissed, while the satirical hits
at "social liquidation" and the like were uncommonly relished.
I have dwelt on indolent Seville. Surely there must be some industries
pursued in this metropolis of the _dolce far niente_. They are not many.
There is a cannon-foundry and a copper-foundry, but more in keeping with
the associations of the radiant district is the porcelain factory. An
Englishman, Mr. Charles Pickman, bought one of the convents sequestered
in 1836, and has transformed it into a factory, where he turns out some
capital imitations of the ancient glazed tiles. Seldom has a hive of
industry been reared in nobler building or on more lovely site, nestling
in gardens enamelled with flowers, wealthy in fruit-trees, and on the
banks of a river. Some may consider it profanity that potters' wheels
spin and buzz in an edifice once consecrated to religion; but labour is
prayer, and sanctifies of itself. A number of healthy, handsome girls
are busily engaged colouring and burnishing the ceramic ware which is
fashioned in the old cloisters; and their joyous songs over their work
cannot be very displeasing to the spirits of the pious brethren who
preceded them in the locality, if there be any ground for the belief
that the shades of the dead are permitted to haunt the spots they
tenanted in the flesh. There are in those songs reminiscences of Bizet's
_Carmen_. These Andalusian lasses have to thank the Englishman for
giving them the opportunity of earning their bread and olives honestly,
and they have the happy look of independence. Their full-blooded
complexions would shame our pale Lancashire factory hands. They can
hardly realize how lucky they are to ply such a neat trade in an
atmosphere of freshness and sweet odour, under a dome of sapphire.
Another institution to go over is the great Government tobacco-factory,
close by the Cathedral, where no less than five thousand women are
employed. The sight is the workwomen. The process of cigar-making is as
uninteresting as that of diamond-polishing, and yet one goes to witness
both with far more anxious anticipation than to inspect what is far more
remarkable--the making of a pin. The building in which the manufactory
is carried on is a world in itself--an imposing oblong block, with a
railed enclosure in front. Being Government property, it is guarded by
soldiers, and the stranger is apt to take it, at first sight, for a
gigantic barrack. The name of the king in whose reign it was erected
(one of the Ferdinands) is still outside. The Republic has not ordered
it to be erased, as a French Republic would have done before this. At
Madrid I noticed the same delicacy, or forgetfulness, if you prefer it;
the monogram and crown of Isabella were untouched on the lamp-posts in
the most revolutionary quarters. The interior of the building consists
of long whitewashed halls, divided into colonnades by rows of pillars,
from which spring vaulted ceilings. The women are seated at low tables
about two feet from the ground, in parties of half-dozens. They were
there of every age, from the tawny hussy of sixteen to the fully
developed matron with her infant tumbling in a cradle beside her, and
the wrinkled hag with her iron-grey locks bound with a gay bandana.
Poor, but merry and impudent withal, they were; and some of the
sprightly hoydens, with sprays of lilac and rosebuds in their
magnificent ebon hair, were a little too ready with a wink. There is a
tradition that they smoke, not dainty cigarettes, but full-flavoured
cigars; in any case, they are carefully searched before leaving to see
that they do not smuggle out any trabucos for personal consumption or as
gifts to their favoured swains. They were dressed invariably in lively
cotton prints, with short shawls of red, or crimson, or saffron, or
other hue outvying the tulip in garishness. To be shockingly frank, not
one of them was conspicuously pretty; they had brilliant eyes and teeth,
but all had an ill-fed, dried-up appearance, even those who were
inclined to flesh. The Spanish woman, after a certain age, has a
tendency to get fat without passing through the buxom stage;
connoisseurs pretend that this is the combined effect of rancid oil and
sweetstuff. But it is not gallant to dive into the secrets of female
nature. Very assiduously these "lazy Andalusiennes" bent to their tasks,
picked and sorted the leaves, rolled the cigars into shape, clipped
them, gummed the ends, and packed them into bundles tied with smart
ribands of silk; for they are paid by the piece, and the bull-fighting
season is near, and they must save the price of a seat at the corrida on
Easter Sunday, come what will. The cigars are assorted in boxes
according to their shape and size, their brand and their strength, the
latter being indicated by the words "claro," "claro colorado,"
"colorado" (which is the medium flavour), "colorado maduro" and "maduro"
as they advance in five gradations from mild to strong. Leaving the
cigar-hall, I was shown into the cigarette-hall, where a number of
quieter girls, with shallow boxes of tobacco-dust almost as fine as
snuff before them, were rolling the paper cylinders exactly as it is
done by smokers, but with fingers surer and nimbler. In another hall the
cartuchos, or packages to hold cigarettes and tobacco, were made. They
were ready printed and cut, waiting to be put on a wooden frame, turned
over, and pasted. One child of ten was pointed out to me as the quickest
in the lot. Her small hands flew over her work with a rapidity that
dazzled. She had need to be expeditious, poor wean, for she received
just one farthing for every hundred packages she made!
There are others besides the tantalizing tile-makers and the saucy
cigarreras who are rebellious to the drowsy influences of clime, and
profanely work--the gipsies and the beggars. There are some of the
former here, though not so many as in the pages of Murray. The
excessively dirty and extremely picturesque race, with parchment skins
and high cheek-bones, is dying out. A few stray members of the tribe
remain in the remotest and raggedest part of the transpontine suburb,
and shear mules, cope horses, and do tinkering jobs generally, filling
in their spare time with petty larceny. Their women shuffle cards and
tell fortunes. A splendid people they are, those gipsies--in Borrow's
book and on canvas. In private life their society is not to be courted.
If you do not want to see them, they are sure to turn up; if you do, as
I did, you must look for them, and not always with success. I came
across but one during my stay in Spain--a yellow girl who was eager to
exhibit her palmistry at my expense in the immense coffee-house under
the Fonda de Paris at Madrid--and she left a strong impression on my
mind of having been own sister to a persuasive prophetess who once
cozened me of half-a-crown on the towing-path at Putney at the 'Varsity
boat-race on the Thames. Your hopes of assisting at a gipsy dance at
Seville will be disappointed. If you give a courier two pounds sterling,
he may be able to improvise you one; a pack of filthy, bony men and
women will execute epileptic saltatory movements before you--not the
Esmeralda dance, but lewd swaying of the body from the hips, and
vehement contortions; and finally one creature will throw her
handkerchief at your feet. A well-bred caballero will fill the
handkerchief with shining dollars, and hand it back to her with a bow.
This dance is work, downright hard work; but it is a dance for money.
Mammon, not Terpsichore, is the genius to whom worship is paid. The
mendicants toil as hard at their trade as those dancing gipsies. I
counted fifty-seven in a short morning walk--some robust and some
well-dressed, with the well-acted meekness of genteel poverty. The
cripples, the deformed, the adults with baby arms and the jumping
Billy-the-Bowls could not be paralleled out of South Italy. From the
assortment could be furnished Burns's "Holy Fair" and the Pattern in
"Peep o' Day" twice over, with something to leave. They are all
past-masters and mistresses in the art of petitioning; they are
professors of physiognomy like Lavater, and can tell at a glance a face
which ought to belong to a charitable mortal; and then, what a command
they have of the gamut of lungs, from the whine, the wheedle, and the
snuffle, to the unctuous, droning prayer or the fierce malediction!
Still--beggars, gipsies, heat, and laziness to the contrary
notwithstanding--Seville is delectable, and a marvel in its gardens and
groves, its flowers and fruit, its fountains and fish-pools, its soft
climate and soft people, its languorous repose and silvery tinkles to
prayer. Seville is romance. Shall it ever be mine again to lie beneath
the shade of its secular orange-trees, and blink at clustering shafts
of marble tipped with silver sun-rays, and dream dreams? As I write,
methinks to my ear rises the cry of the guardian of the night, the last
I heard as I left, half warning, half supplication: "Ave Maria
Purissima, las diez han dado."
END OF VOL. 1.
BILLING & SONS, PRINTERS, GUILDFORD.
FOOTNOTES:
[A] In fair play to Santa Cruz, it is right to state that he believed
this female to be a spy, who, under the pretence of Carlism, was willing
to "betray the volunteers of God and the King, and carried despatches to
the enemy sewn up in her dress." Still, the idea of a minister of
religion ordering a woman to be shot does not recommend itself, although
the woman may have justly deserved her fate.
[B] The Duke de Sanlucar is an O'Shea. I hope he is a relative of mine;
for kinship with a grandee, however distant, is something to brag about.
We always speak of our exalted connections. One never hears me dropping
a syllable of a cousin of mine who was a bounty-jumper in the United
States, agent-in-advance to a nigger-minstrel troop, and subsequently
drove a butcher's cart in Brooklyn. He was a fearful, but most
fascinating ruffian.