Having thoroughly taken in the beauty and the tradition of this

architectural gem, with its fortress-like outer walls, its strangely

dwarfed nave, and its lofty Gothic transepts, we resumed our triumphal

progress along the road travelled by Columbus four hundred and

twenty-eight years before—I say triumphal advisedly, for all down the

one narrow ill-paved street of Palos, Conchita was bowing and smiling

like a young princess at the people who ran out to greet her when they

caught the sound of our approaching wheels. One understood that not many

carriages drive through the village nowadays, but mere curiosity would

not account for the cordiality of her reception.

From Palos to La Rabida the road is good and well kept, and at one point

it is really very pretty, winding through a pine wood, between the trees

of which we see the Arabic _Tapia_ of the monastery walls gleaming rosy

pink in the afternoon sun on their eminence above the estuary.

The inherent lack of common sense which characterises all Spanish

administration is exemplified by the very existence of this road. In

1893 the fourth centenary of the discovery of America was marked by a

tremendous celebration organised by what is called the Columbian Society

of Huelva. The monastery was proclaimed a “national monument,” which

means that its upkeep is henceforth a national charge, and no further

voluntary effort to preserve it will ever be made, or even expected.

An overpowering column with a statue of Columbus on top was set up at

a cost, I have been told, of 80,000 pesetas (£3200)—a large sum to be

raised by subscription in Spain—which was designed and erected by the

architect to the Government. A landing-stage was built on the bank of the

estuary for holiday-makers coming from Huelva, and a broad road, wide

enough for half a dozen carriages to drive abreast, was made from the

landing-stage up to the monastery, and carried on thence to join the road

to Palos, as I have said. Extensive repairs and restorations were begun

in the building, and the slopes round it were laid out as gardens, which

were to be a glory of indigenous and American flowers and foliage—as well

they might in a climate where everything grows at such a rate that the

blossoming of Aaron’s rod would hardly be a miracle here.

But alas! the great column, ludicrously out of place alongside of the

monastery walls, all weathered and mellowed by time, has never been

finished; and worse than that, it was jerry built with what may have

been left, after the celebration was concluded, of the 80,000 pesetas

subscribed by a confiding public, and now, twenty-one years after the

first stone was laid, this national monument to Spain’s greatest hero

is surrounded by a rough paling labelled in large letters _Peligro_

(Danger), and one passes it hastily by, wondering whether the statue of

Columbus will fall on one’s innocent head from the lofty height which

makes its details indiscernible.

A peal at the monastery door—the door by which Columbus entered—brings

forth an unshaven porter, who turns one loose to wander at will in the

empty cloisters, but reappears in search of his _pourboire_ when he hears

one’s steps returning. No photographs or even picture post-cards are to

be obtained here, no printed papers or books relating to the building,

there are no seats to be found in the whole of the monastery save some

tiled recesses in the chapel walls—all is empty and desolate, with the

unmistakable air of a place seldom visited and quickly left.

The broad new road down to the water serves no possible purpose, for

no conveyance of any kind can be procured nearer than Moguer, and for

visitors with time and energy to make the journey there on foot a path

from the landing-stage to Palos would have served every purpose. A

forlorn rowing-boat was moored to the steps where we went down, but its

owner could not be found. It was kept there, our coachman told us, in

case any one wanted to row to Huelva, several miles away up the mouth of

the Odiel. “But,” he added scornfully, “who wants to row to Huelva when

they have come in a carriage from Moguer?”

La Rabida is a monument of misspent public money. I was told that in

summer people make up water parties from Huelva, but they must all bring

their own refreshments, for not so much as a cup of coffee can be got

at the monastery. One thought what a Mecca for Americans, and indeed

for all other pilgrims, this spot could be made, were it in hands more

appreciative and more sensible than those of the Spanish bureaucracy.

One pictured a gay little hotel down below, far enough removed from the

monastery not to jar on its old-world peace, but near enough to offer

comfort and convenience to the pilgrim, whether he came by land or sea.

One provided the sunny refectory, now empty save for those inferior

fancy pictures of Columbus which annoyed Conchita Pinzón, with a library

of books dealing with the history of the place and of the voyages of

Columbus and his companions; one saw the friars’ cells, now closed and

smelling of shut windows, furnished and available for students to live

and work in; and one installed a service of motors from Seville and

Huelva to the landing-stage, so that every tourist who came to Seville

might take a day’s run to Moguer, Palos, and La Rabida, as a necessary

part of his Andalucian trip.

But alas! a heavy shower woke me from my dream of what ought to be in

this lovely corner of a lovely land. The sky had darkened while we

were exploring the melancholy monastery, and depressed, silent, and

grieving over its wasted opportunities I drove away from La Rabida, my

last glimpse of Columbus on his shaky monument showing us the Admiral

tottering to a fall, as sad and gloomy as the gathering clouds banked up

over the Atlantic whose conquest he achieved.

[Illustration: THE FIFTEENTH-CENTURY BANNER OF OUR LADY OF GRANADA.]

CHAPTER XIV

The Convento de la Luz—The Poor Clares and the

Conceptionists—Our Lady of Montemayor—A fortified religious

house—The _ribats_ of Spain—The ancient refectory—Arabic

inscriptions in the Nun’s Chapel—The Portocarreros—Family

tombs—A night at San Juan—The shyness of the nun—An early

start—Mossen Bethancourt and the Canary Isles—The beginning of

the floods.

“You who are so interested in everything old should not leave Moguer

without seeing the _Convento de la Luz_,” said Conchita as we drove back

from La Rabida. “I will take you there to-morrow morning if you like,

before you start for the train. Formerly no one except the clergy could

enter any part of the convent, for it belonged to the Poor Clares, and

you know how rigidly closed the Order is. But now they are all dead,

and the convent has been sold or let or lent by the Duke of Alba to

the Conceptionists—the teaching branch, not the closed one—and the

Reverend Mother lets me take in visitors at any time. All the aristocracy

of Moguer send their daughters to be educated there, and they have

free classes for the poor as well. It enlivens our circle having the

Conceptionist nuns there instead of the Poor Clares.”

She went on to tell me that the convent had become hopelessly

impoverished, though it was once one of the wealthiest in the district.

The Clares seem to have lived like private ladies, each with her little

suite of rooms, bedroom, sitting-room, and kitchen, and even her own

share of the walled garden. Each had her own woman servant, who lived not

in the convent but in the town, coming in and out daily to attend to her

mistress’s wants. Anything less like the accepted idea of monastic life I

never heard of; and when I saw the bright sunny little flats partitioned

off by the nuns for their private convenience, I wondered still more how

such a conception of asceticism could have lasted down to the end of the

first decade of the twentieth century.

“Reverend Mother says,” pursued Conchita, “that the one Poor Clare who

still lived when the Archbishop of Seville sanctioned the transfer to the

Conceptionists, was the tiniest creature she ever saw, quite imbecile

from age, and withered and shrunk up just like a doll. They had been

gradually dying off one by one, until this little old woman was the only

inhabitant of the convent, which is so large that it contains a dormitory

a hundred feet long, while the central patio is a hundred feet square.

There are many beautiful objects of art there even now, and they say

that formerly it was a perfect treasure-house. No one knows when it was

built, but the Pinzóns’ ancestors, the Portocarreros, whose monuments you

will see there, were very rich, and they always protected the convent.

What date was that? Oh, I don’t know, but it was before the discovery of

America; and of course after that, when everybody grew rich, the convent

got more gifts than ever. But you can fancy what went on in later years,

when the Poor Clares were getting older and more helpless every day, and

more dependent on their servants. They say that those women never went

in without securing some valuable work of art to carry off and sell,

though where they sold them no one knows, for they were never offered in

Moguer. Of course not! No one _here_ would buy valuables robbed from the

nuns. Well, that is all over now, and no one will steal what is left. The

Conceptionists are not poor at all (though of course they always want

money for their free classes) and they take great care of the pictures

and tiles, and everything else that those bad servants could not carry

away.”

Truth to tell, I did not expect to find much that would interest me in

the _Convento de la Luz_, imagining from Conchita’s account that it

would be a fifteenth-century building of the type so frequently found

in this part of Spain. The wealthy and powerful families of Arcos and

Medina Sidonia set the fashion at that time of lavishing their riches

on building and restoring convents and monasteries, and of course every

great noble with plenty of money followed their example. Too often the

gold which poured into Andalucia after the discovery of America was

spent on barbaric display of carved and gilded woodwork, chased silver,

and costly draperies, more conspicuous for their money value than for

their beauty: and I confess that I rather disliked the idea of spending

a couple of my few hours at Moguer in visiting such a monument, when I

might have driven out to the hermitage of Our Lady of Montemayor. For Our

Lady of Montemayor had been worshipped as far back as the ninth century,

when Palos de la Frontera was an outpost of the Spanish Christians, who,

although they forgot their language during the many centuries of Moslem

rule, steadily maintained their religious beliefs.

But it was impossible to refuse the invitation of my kind and courteous

little friend, and I agreed to go with her to the convent next morning

instead of making an expedition into the country.

What then was my delight at finding in the _Convento de la Luz_ an almost

perfect survival of the fortified religious houses which the Moslems

called _ribats_—outposts built to defend the frontier, and garrisoned by

men of a semi-religious order, sworn to this particular form of military

service. Whether the Order was originally instituted in Andalucia by

the Christians (Mozarabs) who remained in occupation of their lands and

castles when Spain was conquered by the Mohammedans, no one seems to

know, though the existence of La Rabida itself, and of various other

places bearing the same name, in which Mozarabic remains are seen,

suggests that _ribats_ were established here long before the Almoravides

founded their empire over Morocco and Spain, in a _ribat_ on the river

Niger in the first half of the twelfth century.

Be that as it may, I saw at once that the _Convento de la Luz_ was

built for such a fortress, while the church with its massive walls

and buttressed ramparts could never have been intended for other than

Christian worship.

So much for the outside. The only break in the enclosing walls is where

an opening has been made to give easier access from the street. One sees

that formerly the nuns had to come out and cross a courtyard to speak

with callers at the gate, and one can understand that this would hardly

suit the comfort-loving old ladies who were the last of this branch of

their Order.

A Sister opened a heavy door giving on a cloister which borders all four

sides of the great central court, and led us through an archway six feet

deep into a large hall. This was the refectory in the days when a hundred

Poor Clares occupied the convent, but now it is the nuns’ reception-room,

and here the mothers of pupils, rich and poor, sit and discuss with

the Superior and the heads of the classes the tastes, talents, and

idiosyncrasies of their girls.

It is a very lofty, chapel-like hall, whose vaulted roof would suggest a

thirteenth-century architect, but for the tiny windows, placed so high up

that one sees that the first thought of the builder was security against

attack. And we know that after 1257, when this district was conquered by

Alfonso X., there was no need to build fortified religious houses. We

sat on brick benches left in the thickness of the wall and faced with

iridescent tiles of the rich green colour introduced by the Arabs out of

compliment to Mahomet’s banner; and as I watched a ray of sun from one of

those lofty windows lighting up the gilded halos in a fifteenth-century

painting of the Last Supper, I wished the walls could speak and tell us

the true history of the convent. Even the origin of its name is lost.

The townspeople call it _de la Luz_, but they do not know why, and the

earliest mention of it in Andalucian history, which is in 1349, describes

it as “The convent of Santa Clara at Moguer.”

More than one of the earliest crucifixes existent in Andalucia is known

as “_Nuestro Señor Cristo de la luz_” (Our Lord Christ of light), and

such works of art, be it remembered, are necessarily Mozarabic, because

the Mozarabs were the only Christians in this part of Spain previous

to 1248. There is a fine one in the Nuns’ Chapel of this convent, the

advocation of which has been forgotten. Perhaps the last little Poor

Clare, had she not been in her dotage when the convent was taken over by

its present occupants, could have told them that this was “Our Lord of

Light,” whose prototype had been worshipped here for about a thousand

years.

This may seem a bold statement to those who suppose that the Christians

suffered persecution during the rule of Islam in Spain. But recent

research has proved that so far from this being the case, the Christians

as a rule were treated with kindness and consideration, as long as they

refrained from showing open disrespect for the alien religion. And here

in Moguer is the material corroboration of conclusions deduced from

scattered references to the condition of the Mozarabs which are found in

the writings of the time, both Arabic and Christian. For the walls of

the Nuns’ Chapel (screened off by a stone grille with Arabic tracery from

the church restored by the Portocarreros) are lined with ancient wooden

choir stalls, on each arm of which is carved a lion’s head and an Arabic

inscription in Kufic characters of the style used in Cordova in the tenth

century. These certainly were not placed here after 1257, at which date

the African character was in use all over Moslem Spain, and as certainly

such stalls never were used in Moslem worship.

It was interesting to retrace the course of history from that time

to this. Here was the evidence of the upholding of their faith by

the native Christians for century after century, during the whole of

which they were practically cut off from Rome and isolated from their

co-religionists elsewhere. A painting of the Virgin of Guadalupe,

surrounded by worshippers in thirteenth-century costumes, seemed to bring

us into direct contact with the period when Andalucia was conquered by

San Fernando of Castile, and her “few remaining loyal priests” were

confirmed in their houses and offices by that wise monarch. In the church

were life-size alabaster effigies of the noble family of Portocarrero,

nine men and women in fifteenth-century dress, at the foot of the high

altar. Burial in that sacred spot was the privilege granted to Don

Pedro Portocarrero, Lord of Moguer, his wife Doña Elvira Alvarez, and

their heirs for ever, in acknowledgment by a grateful Church of their

benefactions to the convent of Santa Clara and the monastery of San

Francisco, which last comparatively modern edifice is now falling into

ruin in the shadow of the imperishable walls of the Mozarabic foundation.

Above us hung a lamp made of silver brought from the New World by Martin

Alonso Pinzón, although his tomb, as Conchita regretfully admitted, is

not to be found here. And by my side was the young daughter of those

ancient houses, who proudly told me that she too inherited the right to

be buried at the foot of the high altar when her time came.

Truly this Columbus country has more than ordinary interest for the

traveller in Spain, and as I remarked at the beginning of my attempt to

describe it, it is a pity to be misled by the guide-books into visiting

La Rabida by boat from Huelva instead of by diligence from San Juan del

Puerto. Because, in the first place, if the weather be bad you cannot

get to La Rabida by water at all, and, in any case, as the estuary there

is very wide and much exposed to wind and to the Atlantic waves, a trip

of two hours each way is apt to be unpleasant to all except first-rate

sailors. And because, in the second place, even though you are a good

sailor and get to La Rabida in ideal weather, you will certainly not

have time to go on to Palos and Moguer and get back to Huelva before

nightfall, since you will have no option but to walk from La Rabida.

And, as I hope I have shown, Palos and Moguer have attractions for the

artist and the archæologist, as well as for the pilgrim to the shrine of

Columbus.

For my own part, although I was obliged to catch the afternoon train

from San Juan in order to go on to the mines of Tharsis on the day that

Conchita first introduced me to the Convent de la Luz, I shamelessly

threw over all my other engagements on the return journey, and went

straight back to Moguer.

Not quite straight back, though, come to think of it, for the diligence

was crowded when I reached San Juan, and as it was impossible to get any

other conveyance, or even a donkey to ride, I had to spend the night

there, since it was pouring with rain and I dared not attempt the walk to

Moguer in the dark, through mud up to my ankles.

The only room I could get was at the one inn in the place, an

establishment consisting of two rooms and my bedroom, which opened off

the kitchen. It literally _opened_ off it, for the door had no kind

of fastening, and the landlady’s niece put a chair against it on the

outside, as the only means of preventing my toilet operations being

performed in public. The whole place was streaming with damp, and

flood-marks were plainly to be seen on the walls of my bedroom. There

was no food to be had except _puchero_, and the landlady was quite

grateful when I told her I could dine off the remains of the excellent

lunch provided by my hosts at Tharsis, for she had no one to send out for

supplies.

The poor little place was clean, the people inspired me with such

confidence that the keyless door did not trouble me in the least, and I

slept from the time I went to bed till 6 a.m. Then I got up and dressed

by the light of a candle, for the diligence was to start at seven, and

I intended to walk on and cross the trestle bridge before it picked me

up. Heavy rains had swollen the rivers everywhere, and I reflected with

dismay on the remarks of my travelling companion on the condition of that

bridge when we drove over it the week before.

It was still almost dark when I left the village behind me, and through

the gloom a blazing wood fire shone invitingly alongside of the railway

line, from the cottage of a family in charge of the level crossing. The

wife ran out and begged me to come in and warm myself, full of wonder

and commiseration at the hard fate—whatever it might be—that compelled a

_señora de edad_ (“a lady advanced in years”) to take the road on foot so

early in the morning.

I had to explain that the English of all ages have a curious fancy for

walking in the dark, and after a few minutes’ pause, filled up by the

family’s ejaculations at my remarkable activity, I pursued my way across

the rickety bridge, watching a pale yellow gleam gradually appearing in

the east, and wondering whether it meant that the sun would come out

presently. The river was higher than ever. As a rule the Rio Tinto is a

stream of wonderful colours, coppery green and bronze and orange, which

turn to molten gold in the sunshine; but now the flood-water had so

completely swamped the rest that it looked more like a sea of liquid mud

than the “dyed river.” It seemed to me doubtful whether the bridge would

hold up another twenty-four hours, and I knew that the part of wisdom

would be to turn round and go back to Seville by the next train. But I

was bent upon another visit to the convent at Moguer, and still more bent

upon getting the photographs which the Mother Superior had given me leave

to take, and I could only hope that the yellow streak in the east might

mean a day without rain and a diminished flood to-morrow.

I got my photographs, between showers, and one of them would have been

made quite charming by the graceful figure of the nun who showed me

round, leaning over the well-head to raise the bucket from the water far

below. But when she realised that she was in the picture she fled behind

the camera, and nothing would induce her to pose for me.

“_Por Dios!_” she cried; “I cannot go out into the world in a photograph!”

The rain began again in the evening, and I heard it pelting on the

windows as I sat with the Señora de Pinzón and her daughter round the

cosy _camilla_, talking of friends in common. We are apt to think a

brazier rather an insufficient means of warming a room on a chilly

night, but when we have sat an hour or so with our toes under the round

petticoated table close to the pan of charcoal, we find ourselves

suffused from head to foot with a warm glow which is by no means to be

despised. It was late when I took my leave of the family to whom I owed

so much of the enjoyment of my trip, and I had to get up about 4 a.m. to

catch the early diligence to the station. I was anxious to get across

the estuary as soon as possible, and I had given special orders to secure

my seat in the bus beforehand.

“You will not mind letting yourself out,” said the landlady cheerfully,

when I bade her good-night. “I have told the driver to send a man down

for your luggage at five o’clock. He will tap at your window when he

comes, and you will find the key in the door. We do not get up so early

if we can help it, and we know you are a lady who can be trusted to shut

the street door after her.”

I don’t suppose there was much to steal in the _fonda_, but whatever

there was I could have taken it had I chosen, when I left Moguer next

morning, and I thought it was just as well that the Señora de Pinzón had

a stout iron grille at the entrance to her apartments upstairs, with all

their valuable historical contents, if this was the usual way of speeding

the parting guest. I got up at four, boiled water to wash in on my spirit

stove, drank hot coffee out of my thermos flask, and packed my things

ready to start at five. But five struck, and 5.15, and 5.30, and no one

came from the diligence, and at last in despair I unlocked the street

door, left it on the latch, and hurried up the hill in the rain and

darkness to the coach office. There was the coach ready to start, and the

driver was taking his early _aguardiente_ in the drink shop hard by, but

there was no one to fetch my luggage, and when I got hold of the coachman

he said he had heard nothing about it, and had no one to send.

“But the landlady told me she gave special orders last night, and that

you promised to have me fetched at five o’clock.”

“She didn’t tell me, for I was not at the office. Had she told me I

should have been at the _fonda_ before now. She must have told the other

driver, who takes turns with me to go to the station. What is to be done?

Can you not carry your own bag to the coach if I wait here for you?”

“I certainly can not. And meanwhile the _fonda_ door is open for thieves

to enter, and the inmates may be murdered in their beds. Why not fetch it

yourself and earn my peseta instead of my giving it to some one else who

does not deserve it half so much? I should be greatly obliged to you, and

you will get your tip at the station just the same, besides your peseta

now.”

“_Andando!_ (Come along!) Certainly I can do with a _pesetita_ as well as

another man.”

And, telling an old woman in the shop to mind his meek and dejected

horses, he set off with me to the inn, shouldered my belongings, shouted

a “good-morning” outside the landlady’s room which must have roused

everybody within from the sleep they were so desirous of prolonging, and

banged the street door as we went out with a noise loud enough to wake

the town.

“They thoroughly deserve it,” said he as we hurried off together. “What

disgraceful discourtesy to allow a lady like your honour to leave the

_fonda_ unattended! _Gracias à Dios_ that I was on the spot to make good

their short-comings. You will send for me next time you come to Moguer,

Señora, and you shall not have to complain of negligence again!”

I certainly shall remember him, for I never saw a prompter “quick change

act” from supine indifference to my plight to eager courtesy than was

effected by him on the mention of the magic word “peseta.”

It continued to rain heavily; we ploughed in pitch darkness through a sea

of mud, and the diligence rocked and rolled in the ruts all down the long

hill to the river. But I was so well entertained by the conversation of

my only fellow-passenger that we got into San Juan and pulled up at the

station before I realised that we had crossed the perilous bridge safe

and sound.

He was, he said, going to meet a connection of his family recently

arrived in Seville, Señor Bethancourt, who held a high diplomatic

position in one of the South American republics. His relative’s career,

said the homely-looking countryman, had been most romantic. He came of a

very old family of French origin, had left his home in Moguer when quite

a lad, had been shipwrecked and cast up on the estate of a wealthy man

who took him into his employ, and eventually made him a partner in the

business and allowed him to marry his only daughter.

“But he has never forgotten his family at Moguer,” concluded my friend,

“and although I am only related to him through my wife, he has lately

written to me saying that he was coming to Spain, and inviting me to meet

him in Seville.”

I may not have got the details of the romance quite right, but there was

no doubt about the great man’s loyalty to those he had left behind him,

and all through the drive the name of Bethancourt rang in my ears, while

I tried in vain to recall what I had previously known of the family.

On looking them up among the multifarious notes which I have a genius for

making and forgetting, I found that here was another of Moguer’s links

with Spanish history.

In 1344 Pope Clement VI. gave the Lordship of the Canaries, then known as

the Fortunate Isles, to Don Luis de la Cerda, a grandson of Alfonso X.,

with the title of Prince, and instructions to conquer and Christianise

them. One would have thought that the islands should be conquered before

they were given away, but it seems to have been the custom for the Popes

to give away what they did not possess. Some historians assert that

Alfonso XI., sovereign lord of the islands, was not best pleased at their

being presented to his cousin, and wrote a letter to the Pope which

to the frivolous modern eye seems to have been couched in a somewhat

satirical vein, for he “thanked His Holiness for having made the gift,

although it was in his (the writer’s) sovereign dominion.”

Don Luis de la Cerda, however, did not benefit by the somewhat dubious

rights conferred on him, for he went off to France, his mother’s native

land, and was there killed in battle two years later, never having

visited the Canaries at all; and the next we hear of the Fortunate Isles

is that after some vicissitudes they came in the course of a business

transaction into the hands of “Mossen Juan de Betancur,” a French

gentleman who carried out his enterprise to such good purpose that the

people gave him the title of king.

This was in 1417, and meanwhile a good deal of highly profitable traffic

had been going on between the “idolaters” of the islands and Seville and

other Andalucian ports, including, it would seem, our little Palos and

Moguer. Efforts were again being made to convert them, some Franciscan

friars had established themselves there, and now Pope Martin V. appointed

“Mossen” Bethancourt’s cousin, Don Mendo, as Bishop of the Rubicon, which

seems to have been the name given to the diocese, and he came to Seville

to swear obedience, as his suffragan, to the Archbishop.

Twenty years later, the commerce with the Canaries becoming presumably

more and more lucrative, it was discovered that a great mistake had been

made in allowing a Frenchman to acquire the lordship of the islands,

and an armed force was sent over from Spain to dispossess Mossen Juan’s

son, who now reigned in his stead, on the pretext of misgovernment and

disrespect to the friars, who were busy making “new Christians” of

“Mossen Menaute” Bethancourt’s subjects.

Mossen Menaute, according to the chroniclers, was not strong enough to

fight the Spaniards, but he came pretty well out of the business, for he

sold his rights, lock, stock, and barrel, to the Count of Niebla, one of

the Medina Sidonia family, and with the proceeds he established himself

at Moguer. When his guiding hand was removed, the prosperous trade which

had aroused the cupidity of the powers in Spain so quickly declined that

the Canary Isles became a source of expense rather than of profit, and

changed hands time after time in the next half-century; while “Mossen

Betancur” flourished on his new estate, and founded the family with which

my travelling companion was so pleased to claim connection.

I got back to Seville none too soon, for the rain which drove me away

from Moguer continued and increased, until all the Andalucian rivers

overflowed. The railway from Seville to Huelva was under water, and the

Columbus country isolated. In the matter of the shaky bridge, however,

good came out of evil, for it became so much shakier in consequence of

the floods that the authorities were forced at last to take action, and

now pilgrims to La Rabida may drive there _viâ_ Moguer and Palos with

quiet minds, for there is no longer any imminent danger of the diligence

toppling over into the river.

CHAPTER XV

The Guadalquivir—Arabic gardens—“Bird’s milk”—Wild

camels—Tartessian cattle—The city of Hercules—The foundations

of Tharsis—Subterranean galleries—The “Labyrinth”—A careful

father—The potters’ suburb—The City of the Poles—Triana

under flood—Rising wells—A tower of refuge—Villages under

water—Humours of the inundated—Governmental neglect—A night of

terror—The gallant priest—King Alfonso feeds the hungry—The

“Economical Kitchen”—Honours for the English ladies.

The Guadalquivir seems to be known to the English chiefly by Byron’s

references to it, and unluckily he rhymes it with “river,” which was

convenient for him, but not for the tourist who takes Byron for his

guide to the pronunciation. For the Guadalquivir is the _Wady al kabir_

of the Arabs (the great river) and the name is still pronounced with

the accent, as in Arabic, on the last syllable. Thus when the traveller

asks his way to the “Gwaddlequiver,” the native is at a loss for his

meaning. Baedeker might usefully see to this; and while he is about it he

might also mention that Granáda has the accent on the second syllable.

For when a traveller in a hurry asks for the train to “Grannader” the

porters are apt to get confused and put him into the first train for any

town the name of which is accented on the first syllable—_e.g._ Málaga.

This actually happened in the case of an acquaintance of ours, who

was rather deaf and did not know a word of Spanish. He found himself

at Málaga instead of “Grannader,” and his language was vigorous and

picturesque. All this waste of time, temper, and money might have been

avoided had Baedeker instructed his readers how to pronounce the Spanish

for pomegranate.

[Illustration: “THE ENGLISH ECONOMICAL KITCHEN.”]

Since time began Seville seems to have been the victim of floods.

The catchment area of the Guadalquivir is enormous, since with its

tributaries it drains practically the whole of Andalucia, from the Sierra

Morena in the north to the Sierra Nevada in the south. From Cordova the

river runs through vast plains, mostly alluvial soil of great fertility.

So rich is this soil that the Arabs used to say that bird’s milk could

be got from the gardens round Seville, meaning that there is nothing

that will not grow there with sufficient care and attention. The Arabic

historians assure us that, nine centuries ago, there were twenty thousand

farms and villages between Cordova and Seville, all living by agriculture

and gardening; and although the number is obviously exaggerated,

there can be no doubt that the whole of the riparian plain was highly

cultivated. At that time the great river and its tributaries were so

carefully dyked and dammed for purposes of milling and irrigation, that

floods were far less frequent than now.

But the local archives show that within a century after the Christians

became rulers of Seville the irrigation system was falling into decay,

and the bed of the river was rapidly silting up. Now hardly a trace

remains of the system of hydraulics inherited from Egypt, or perhaps

inherited from Tartessus, for the Tartessians too constructed admirable

water-works. To-day, chiefly for lack of water, most of the valley of the

Guadalquivir is a waste of rough pasture, a swamp in winter and a desert

in summer, ranged over by herds of half-wild cattle when the spring and

autumn showers have raised a crop of coarse grass; the resort of birds

of every description, the dwelling-place of boar, deer, hares, and other

wild creatures, great and small, and the safe refuge of a herd of wild

camels, never approached and seldom seen unless by the passenger or crew

of some river steamer when they come down to the water at dawn. Thus they

were once observed by a friend of mine, who took them for cattle until

the sun rose suddenly and she saw their humps. After that she was always

on the look out for them, and saw them again not long after, near enough

and for long enough to count sixteen of them, old and young.

The origin of this herd of wild camels is unknown, but it seems clear

that they have a good deal of vitality. For generations the marsh men

used to shoot the young and sell their flesh as venison in the towns;

yet the herd continued to breed in its secret places in the wilds, and

now that the shooting of them is strictly prohibited it is increasing—a

testimony to the immense extent of the waste lands as well as to the mild

climate of this province. What the camels do when the valley is flooded

no one knows, but they must go to some place of refuge, for every one

knows what happens to the cattle if they are caught by the flood.

Some years ago a ten months’ drought was broken by a terrific

thunderstorm which in one night raised the Guadalquivir many feet. A

friend of ours had some eight hundred cattle herded on the Isla Mayor, a

large island in the river about half-way between Seville and San Lucar.

They were caught by the flood water, although it did not rise high enough

to sweep them away. Next morning over four hundred of them lay dead, not

from drowning but from the sudden chill, which their frames, weakened by

the long drought and by struggling against the rush of water, were unable

to resist.

In Tartessian times the cattle of the famous breed of Geryon, afterwards

dedicated to the new deity adopted by the Tartessians and known as

Hercules, used to feed in the valley of the Guadalquivir, or river

Tartessus. But their pasturage area cannot have been anything as large

as it is now, for we are told that the river was like a great lagoon

then, and contained a chain of islands, great and small, on which the

Tartessian cattle fed and bred, to the great profit of their owners.

There must have been, however, plenty of shallows and elevations formed

by the ever-growing alluvial deposits of the river, for Strabo tells us

that twice every day, when the tide came up from the sea, the Tartessian

cattle of their own accord left the lower pastures and took refuge on the

higher ground of the islands.

In the annals of a sixteenth-century Sevillian writer I find a note

to the effect than when Hercules first came up the Guadalquivir he

discovered Seville itself lying on an island in the middle of the

river, and called it the City of Poles, because it was built on piles.

Afterwards, say our non-critical chroniclers, Hercules and his “brother”

Atlas decided to build the “great city” on the highest point of the same

islands, and replaced the “poles” by more solid material.

Down to the seventeenth century these ingenuous legends were so firmly

believed by the Sevillians that no sceptic dared risk a broken head by

disputing them. And indeed to this day we see three granite monoliths on

the precise spot indicated as that chosen by Hercules, after consultation

with Atlas, for the erection of his temple. They are still commonly

known as the Columns of Hercules, although half a century or so ago an

intelligent municipality, for no apparent reason, elected to change the

name of the street to Marmoles, which means not granite but marbles.

With the gradual spread of knowledge the legend of Hercules and the city

he built here became discredited, until after the seventeenth century

it was dismissed as a ridiculous myth without any foundation. But the

silly “common” people went on calling their monoliths “The Pillars of

Hercules,” because, as they could not read or write, the antiquarian

discussions of the Sevillian professors did not affect their traditional

beliefs.

And now comes the point of my story. Three or four years ago a worthy

man of business, who knew nothing and cared less for any of the theories

of the learned gentlemen who decided what was or was not to be believed

in Seville, began to dig for his own purposes near the place which

tradition marks as chosen by Hercules for the site of his city. And to

his annoyance he found one layer of ancient buildings below another,

until he had got some twenty-seven feet down below the level of the

present street of Marmoles, in his search for firm foundations on which

to build new shops. Here he found subterranean galleries, man high and

wide enough for two men to walk abreast, built of stone and of that

indestructible cement which seems to have been the secret of Tartessus,

together with small broken columns of the same granite and the same

cutting as those three of Hercules, twenty of whose forty feet still

project from the top of this same hill. And now it seems clear that this

was the lost city of Tharsis, whose site has so long been a mystery.

Subterranean galleries, the purpose of which has not yet been discovered,

are found beneath all this quarter of Seville. One begins to see that

the sixteenth-century Heraclean legend may have had some foundation in

fact, and that the worshippers of Hercules or his forerunner Geryon may

literally have substituted these galleries of masonry for the perishable

foundations of the prehistoric “lake-dwellings” built on poles. This view

is supported by Don Carlos Cañal, Deputy to Cortes, who wrote a book on

_Prehistoric Seville_ twenty years or more ago, before the discoveries in

Crete had revolutionised the science of archæology.

Some portions of the Tartessian galleries still exist in a state of

perfect preservation; but these are under the highest part of the town,

where floods could never have come, and I think must have been built for

some of the mysteries of the Tartessian sun-worship, relics of which one

finds elsewhere. Others, at a lower level, seem as if they must have been

intended to afford free passage to the water of the river.

One most interesting and perfectly accessible gallery is unluckily

private property, and it is exceedingly difficult to get permission to

visit it. I have done so three times, thanks to the insistence of a

priest as keen about archæology as I am. But it was sorely against the

grain of the owner.

He is a middle-aged gentleman who has never in his life ventured down

the staircase which was built to give access to the labyrinth, as

it is called, when it was accidentally discovered in the sixteenth

century. On my first visit I went down the twenty-seven feet to the

floor level of the galleries with the owner’s son, an intelligent lad

keenly interested in the strange place. Although it is pitch dark, it is

perfectly ventilated through invisible openings to the upper air, the

outlets of which have long been lost sight of, and we easily made our

way from one circular chamber to another by the light of candles along

the barrel-shaped passages, which are of convenient width and more than

a man’s height, and I was delighted at finding such an opportunity for

study at my own door, as it were.

But alas! I had reckoned without my host. Before we had been there ten

minutes that gentleman began to shout from the head of the stairs for us

to come back—

“You have been down there quite long enough. You will get lost in the

dark. You will catch pneumonia in the cold and the damp. Come up! Come

up! I insist! I command! My son, why do you not obey me? I will not have

you catch pneumonia. You have had more than time to see everything. There

is nothing to see. For thirty years I have lived here and I have never

gone down. The place is of no importance whatever. You must come up at

once.”

Not for a moment did he stop shouting. At first the boy told me to

pretend I did not hear, and to pay no attention to his father’s

protestations, but very soon he said he dared not remain longer, and

that if I would come up now he would take me down again the day after

to-morrow, by which time he would talk his father over into letting us

stay below as long as we wished.

Again, alas! With much protest I was allowed to go down again the day

after to-morrow, as arranged, but the shouts to “come up!” were more

continuous and more insistent than ever, and little work could be done.

Once more, some months later, I wrung a reluctant permission from the

owner to take down a distinguished architect, but the only time we were

allowed to enter the sacred precincts was at eight in the morning, when

the friendly son, uninformed of our visit, was safe in bed. Two ancient

female servants were sent down to see that we did not get into mischief,

while for a whole hour the owner shouted that if we had any regard for

our health we would not linger in that dangerous darkness.

When next I saw the boy, who was anxious to have the place scientifically

studied, he told me that his father was determined to refuse all further

applications for permission to visit this almost unique survival of a

vanished civilisation.

“And to make quite sure that I shall not open the door when he is out of

the way,” said the lad, “he now keeps the key in his pocket all day and

sleeps with it under his pillow.”

Such is the encouragement given to archæologists in Seville.

It seems clear that the inhabitants of a town built on the principle of

a prehistoric lake-dwelling, but having solid stone galleries instead of

piles for its foundations, would have little to fear from floods. And

it is the case that from the dawn of Spanish history until after the

reconquest in 1248 we find nothing to suggest any serious trouble of

the kind. But from then onwards we hear more and more of the increasing

ravages wrought by the water, and these can only be attributed to

persistent neglect of the hydraulic engineering works which the Seville

Arabs and Mozarabs had carried to such perfection.

Triana, the potters’ suburb of Seville from time immemorial, although

now to some extent protected by wharves, lies considerably below the

level of even a moderate flood. Probably in old times it was all built on

galleries and arcades, and even now the main street has ancient arcades

on either side for some little distance. The road between has risen so

much that one column, perhaps Roman, is only three or four feet high, and

when the floods come the water quickly fills the ground-floor rooms to

the ceilings. It is possible that this is an actual relic of the “City

of the Poles,” although of course rebuilt again and again until only the

idea of the primitive part remains.

Triana is always the first quarter to be flooded and the last to be

cleared when the river overflows, for the sewer outfalls are below the

flood-level, and it seems impossible to close them against the weight of

the flood water—moreover, when they are closed, the rain has no outlet

and pools in the streets. Some day perhaps the petition of the 10,000

Trianeros, repeated year after year for goodness knows how long, will be

attended to by the authorities in Madrid, and then the old river-bed (_la

madre vieja_), which has been silted up for centuries, will be cleared

out and used to carry off the flood water. But this obvious remedy has

not yet been applied by the wisdom of the Ministers who rule Spain, and

the terror that seizes upon all who live below the flood-level when heavy

rains set in is a thing to be remembered.

In February 1912 we were living in a modern house in a low-lying part

of Seville, some little way from the river. The ground floor of the

house had been artificially raised about five feet above the level of

the street, but if the river had risen two or three inches above the

twenty-seven feet that it had reached the night before it began to go

down, the whole street would quickly have been flooded, and we, like

Triana, would have had to be fed by boat. All that night a violent

thunderstorm raged, to add the finishing touch to our panic; for there

was nothing now between Seville and the river save some improvised

barriers hastily erected with sixty hours of incessant labour by the

soldiers of the garrison, and against these the water was already

streaming with force.

But our case, though serious enough, was nothing like so critical as that

of many others, for it was at any rate not likely that the water would

actually come into our house. A friend of mine, like scores of residents

in Seville, has in her house a well of brackish water, and all these

wells are fed in some way from the river bed. My friend knows that it is

only the walls of the new wharves, built during the last twenty years or

so, that keeps her well from overflowing whenever the river rises even a

few feet. And once the wells in that part of the town overflow from the

river, nothing can check the ingress of the water, for the whole district

lies far below flood-level. Day and night for a week she kept on taking

soundings, until during the last night, that of the thunderstorm, the

water in the well at last began to rise, one metre ... two metres ...

three metres.... By daybreak, notwithstanding all her prayers and vows

to the Virgin, it was within six feet of the top, and was still rising

rapidly.

“And then,” said she, “at the last moment Our Lady answered my prayers.”

The storm ceased, the sun came out, and before the tide turned at midday

the flag was flying on the Torre del Oro to tell panic-stricken Seville

that the river was going down. Indeed the change came only just in time,

for the flood was within an ace of overlapping the frail temporary

barriers which alone kept the water out of the main part of the town.

By that time Triana, on the opposite bank, had been for six days under

water, with from six to nine feet of it in every single house. The

whole of the river valley, from Cordova down to the mouth, was one vast

inland sea. In the riverside villages hardly a house was above water.

Algaba, the first village above Seville, was entirely submerged, and

about 750 out of the 800 inhabitants, having nowhere else to go, were

huddled together in the ancient tower which, the villagers say, was built

expressly as a refuge when the river rises. Imagine 750 people shut up

for a week in one small tower! As soon as it was possible to row against

the subsiding stream, I went up with a boat-load of good Samaritans to

carry help to some families we knew, and I shall never forget what I saw.

The fields were feet deep in silt, the spring crops ruined, the streets

a mass of indescribable filth, the poor cottages, generally trim and

sweet with frequent whitewash, were banked up with stinking mud. But the

blazing February sun was streaming down on all the misery; gay-coloured

clothes, blankets, mats, curtains, beds and bedding, were hung out to

dry, the women were all hard at work with their whitewash and scrubbing

pails, and an astonishing spirit of courage and philosophy pervaded the

whole place.

From the moment they could get across the ferry, three families had been

tramping into Seville—about a mile and a half of road, mostly under

water—to get rations from the “English” soup kitchen, and it was to

verify their incredible tales of distress that we had rowed up.

“Yes, it was quite true that there was hardly anything to eat. It was

also true that there was no work at present, and thus the supplies of

rice, garbanzos, and haricot beans given by the Señores were more welcome

than words could say. But the good sun was shining and everything would

soon dry up, and then the rich Señors Fulano and Mengano, who owned all

the land round about, would have to employ every hand they could get to

sow the fields over again, for they certainly would not lose a whole

season’s crops, and they would have to pay good wages too, for there

would be work for every able-bodied man from Seville to Cordova. And

thus, if God pleased, good might soon come out of their present misery.”

One of the more prosperous women, who had a loft above her cottage—a

great rarity in this single-storeyed village—and thus had been able to

save her furniture, insisted on giving us hot coffee before we left,

and indignantly refused to be paid for it. “It was the least she could

do when we had been so good to them,” she said, and she had a brazier

burning so that we should not feel the damp of the room, which she had

just finished whitewashing before we came.

We felt ashamed to demur at sitting for ten minutes in the kitchen,

reeking with damp, where the family had to live, but we were shivering

with cold before we could decently take our leave, and since then I have

always wondered why the whole village did not die of fever and ague,

instead of being noted for their excellent health.

The cheerfulness with which the disaster was met at Algaba was even more

striking at Triana. Here those whose houses had two or three storeys

all took refuge on the upper floors, and were fed from boats for the

six days during which the suburb was under water. Rations for all were

provided by the authorities, and no one here need have starved, although

the organisation of supplies for some ten thousand people in this quarter

alone, besides several thousands more in flooded streets on the outskirts

of the town itself, was a task of no small difficulty. Every one fared

alike, getting only bread and the plainest fare, but in sufficient

quantities to keep body and soul together if each took no more than his

fair share. Very few could get ferried through the flooded streets to the

bridge into Seville, and indeed for a day or two wheeled traffic over

the single bridge was forbidden, save to convey food, for the water was

nearly up to the top of the arch, and the whole structure was threatened.

Had the bridge gone, all Triana must have starved, for no boat could

cross that raging torrent.

Few lives were lost, though house after house in the oldest and poorest

quarters fell in, and in one case a whole family was shut up in an old

building without a window to the street, and when they were discovered

three days later two of the children were dead from cold and hunger. For

it was very cold during those grey, sunless days. But the rescue work was

as well organised as the commissariat, and the young vicar of the parish,

Don Bernardo Guerra, who was working like a man, became the hero of the

imprisoned Trianeros. He himself seemed quite unaware of his popularity;

indeed, he said his people were angry with him because, “although he was

working at relief so many hours a day that he had hardly time to eat or

drink or sleep or pray, it was impossible to supply a hundredth part of

their needs.”

“But now that the sun is shining again, things are going better,” he

said. “Indeed, even during the worst of the bad week it was surprising

how a fitful gleam of sunshine enlivened the inundated people. The

Trianeros have a gaiety of spirit peculiarly their own, which never

deserts them for long, and it was curious to see how it came out among

the hundreds of refugees housed in our new school buildings. It was

also very noticeable how the women preserved even there their habits of

cleanliness and decency. None of them had more privacy than they could

obtain by hanging up shawls and sheets to separate one family from

another, and yet most of them contrived to keep their own little places

tidy and comparatively comfortable. The gipsies, it is true, looked as

if they were picnicking in a rag fair, but they kept together at one end

of the big class-rooms, apart from the other refugees. And you would

have smiled to see the girls dressing their hair as if for a _fiesta_,

and even dancing while the young men sang to a guitar which one of them

had saved from the wreck of his home. It was difficult to believe—when

the sun shone for a few moments—what desolation there was outside. But

when night fell the suffering was at its worst. The authorities managed

to keep water, gas, and electric light going in the streets, but in the

houses the fittings were all under water, and the darkness accentuated

the distress. And then the pistol shots going off for help, and the

difficulty of locating the sound along the flooded streets, and the fear

of arriving too late to save lives ... it was an experience one would not

forget in a century.”

Don Bernardo stopped speaking, with a look in his liquid-brown eyes as of

one who sees a nightmare.

“But you did always get there in time?” I gently prompted; “what about

the affair in the Calle Evangelio? I saw it mentioned in the papers. They

said you got an ovation.”

“The papers talk a lot of nonsense,” said the priest, smiling once more.

“It was nothing, and what credit there was is not mine. Now about those

mattresses? How many more can you provide from the English Relief Fund?

We are to get fifteen hundred from the Government grant, they tell me,

but not until the money is paid, and I am wondering if it will come

before next summer. Meanwhile the hundred sent by the English ladies

have been a great boon, and there were also sixteen from a Spanish lady.

But we want a thousand at once, for families who have lost everything

and now are sleeping on the floors of houses which were under water a

week ago. _Ay de mi de mi alma!_ And all this suffering would have been

prevented if the Government had agreed to the protective work on the old

river bed last year!”

“But I want to know about the affair in the Calle Evangelio,” I

persisted, and Don Bernardo, always courteous, could not refuse to tell

me.

“It was nothing—there were many such incidents. I was in bed. Tired?

Well, perhaps; we do not sleep much just now. Suddenly I heard pistol

shots, several, fired quickly one after the other, so I knew the danger

was imminent. I ran to my window to call the boatman, who was supposed

to be at my service day and night, but the poor fellow was tired out,

and a long way off, at the far end of this long street. I could make

out his boat, tied to a balcony. I guessed he had fallen asleep, or

perhaps, for we are all human, was inside the house getting a drink. Do

not blame him. Those who had stayed out all day in the cold wind and

soaking rain knew well how pardonable was his lapse from duty. If there

had been a cart or even a donkey I should have taken it without asking

permission. But it was the middle of the night. I dared not wade; I am

not tall, and the water was over three feet deep in my street. And then

one of my neighbours, excellent fellow, roused like myself by the shots,

offered to take me on his back. He is a fisherman, strong in the legs

and much taller than I. Understand that he asked no reward; indeed, he

refused payment from the funds that I hold for relief. He carried me on

his shoulders to the boat, and the boatman came out quickly, very much

ashamed. My fisherman began to rate him, but I said, ‘Save your breath

to help row, for I fear we may arrive too late.’ We all three rowed

very hard, and the current seemed like a giant’s hand dragging back our

boat. You see the embankment of the railway to Huelva causes the flood

water to eddy in our streets. I do not understand engineering, but every

one in Triana knows that the embankment is our ruin. It was planned by

engineers in Madrid, and the protest of those who knew the river was not

attended to. The poor people of Triana curse the embankment every time

there is a flood, and this time they would have gone and torn it down

with their own hands if they could have got to it without being drowned

on the way. Well, we reached the Calle Evangelio at last. The shots were

fired from a house with two storeys, and all the inhabitants had been

living on the upper one since the flood began. The water was six feet

deep in the street, and it was quite dark. We got them all into the boat

from a balcony, except one man. He had to jump, for just as he was ready

to climb over the rail the whole front of the house seemed to melt away.

It had been undermined by the water, and fell in all at once. Yes, I

suppose the poor people might all have been drowned, had the good God

not woke the fisherman in time to go to their rescue. I was responsible

in a certain sense, but I could not have got there in time but for him.

Therefore, such credit as there was, should have been given by the

papers to him, not to me.”

On the last and worst day of the floods the King came to Seville with

the Minister of Public Works; and then the poor Trianeros were glad they

had not pulled down the railway embankment, for the first thing His

Majesty did was to steam off along that line, across the waste of waters,

to visit a village which lay with little more than its roofs above the

flood. I watched the engine with its single carriage crawl over the

bridge and along the embankment, very slowly, for there was no knowing

what unseen damage might have been done by the turbid yellow flood below

the rails and sleepers.

Everybody thought that as the King and the Minister had now seen for

themselves the intolerable injury that the piece of bad engineering was

inflicting on Seville, the necessary authority for the work on the old

river bed would be given immediately. That was a year and nine months

ago, and Don Bernardo and his colleagues have been making ceaseless

efforts ever since to get the matter attended to. But we have had three

different Ministries in power during these twenty-one months, and none of

them has had time to think of such trifles as protecting the third most

important port in Spain from devastating inundations. During November

1913 the port had twice to be closed to navigation, owing to the height

of the flood water, and it would not be difficult to calculate how much

money has thus been lost to the town, though no one who has not seen

Triana flooded can estimate the cost in fear and anxiety to the fathers

who cannot earn bread for their children, and the mothers who watch in

hourly dread of the irremediable ruin of their homes.

But no one blames the King. They know it is no fault of his, for they saw

him in Triana that February day in 1912, going from house to house in a

cart or a boat and hoisting up provisions with his own hands, in baskets

slung down from the balconies, and they watched him standing ankle deep

in water at the rise of the bridge, insisting on visiting the streets

that had suffered most.

“God knows no one street had suffered more than another,” said the

journeyman potter who told me this, “for all were under water alike.

‘What a terrible disaster!’ said the King. His gentlemen tried to hold

him back, for they had to follow where he led, and they did not want to

get their feet wet. But they might as well have tried to hold the river

back. He is a _King_! He gave two thousand pesetas then and there, and

he sent twenty thousand more from Madrid as soon as he got back. But the

best thing of all was the King’s Kitchen. He ordered free hot meals to be

served at his expense every day and all day as long as the flood lasted,

to every Trianero who chose to ask for them—no recommendations required,

no religious conditions. The King said no one was to be asked a question:

everybody who was hungry was to have a meal in his kitchen. It saved many

lives. True, we all had bread from the Town Council, but we fathers could

not take our share while the children were hungry, and we were weak from

long fasting, for you must understand that many of us had been out of

work for a month, owing to bad weather, before the river overflowed. What

a bad time God gave us this winter! But, thank God, there is work for all

Triana now, for there are so many houses to be repaired and rebuilt that

we cannot make bricks fast enough, and the masters have had to raise our

wages.”

Soup kitchens, or as the Sevillians call them, “Economical kitchens”

(_cocinas economicas_), are little used here in times of public distress.

It never seems to occur to the wealthy Sevillian ladies that with a very

little trouble and organisation they could easily start private soup

kitchens in their own houses, if only for the friends and relations of

their numerous _ménages_. Of course, when the floods came, a soup kitchen

was the first idea that occurred to some members of the English colony,

and within twenty-four hours of the inundation of Triana, Mr. Keyser, our

Consul, together with myself and a few other ladies, had collected enough

money among our personal friends to supply two hundred rations a day for

a fortnight.

The distribution took place in our house, because our patio happened to

be the most convenient for the purpose, and all our servants, like those

at the Consulate, worked double tides throughout the fortnight, so that

none of the Relief Fund should be spent on extra hands. At first we only

intended to feed families connected with the English business houses, but

we soon found that it was impossible to lay down hard-and-fast rules.

One afternoon a man who had been waiting an hour for what might remain

after the privileged people were fed, dropped in a dead faint on the

floor, and it took half an hour to bring him round. After that we ladled

out our soup as fast as we could to every white-faced shivering creature

that presented himself, without asking for his subscriber’s card, not

wishing for a repetition of the fright that seized us when the man

fainted, for on that occasion it looked for a while as if our very small

amount of red tape was to cost a life.

We got up to five hundred rations a day before we closed our soup

kitchen, and even then had money left to buy the hundred mattresses and

pillows that were so useful to the Triana priest—and all for a little

over £60 in English money. True, the mattresses were very cheap, for a

maker of them contributed to the relief by selling us all that we asked

for considerably below cost price—a practical form of charity that

greatly appealed to the people. But if we had spent £6000 instead of

£60 we could not have met with more gratitude. It was not so much the

quantity or the quality of the soup, our parish priest explained. It was

having it ready at the precise moment when it was wanted, for the thing

was put in hand very promptly, and we got in ahead even of the King’s

Kitchen. Strange though it may seem to English people, accustomed to

organised charity, no other private individual or private association in

Seville adopted this simple means of providing hot meals at a minimum of

cost.

But we had no idea of the fame we were acquiring—indeed, we had no time

to think of how our modest effort might strike the public. So we were

surprised and amused when the editor of a local weekly paper sent round

his photographer to get an illustration for an article on the “noble

initiative of the English ladies.” We told him we preferred to remain

in retirement with our kettles. But he pointed out that a photograph of

our truly “economical” kitchen would encourage the ladies of Seville to

go and do likewise when another occasion should arise; and after that we

could not of course refuse to be immortalised with our tin pots about us,

if only to show how easily five hundred people could be fed from a dozen

petroleum tins boiled on gas rings. And having got his photograph and

published his little article, our philanthropic editor proceeded to offer

each of our helpers a copy of the photograph at three times the market

price!

Another pretty speech brought further evidence, were it wanted, of the

popular feeling towards the young Queen. We set aside a little of our

money to redeem pawn-tickets in the case of two or three families who

had been comparatively well-to-do before the floods and now only needed

respectable clothing to obtain good employment again, and, of course,

this was to be obtained much more cheaply by taking their own garments

out of the Mont de Piétè than by buying new for them.

One of the poor women said with tears in her eyes as she handed me a

sheaf of the depressing little papers—

“Oh, Señora Elena, you are like the Queen!”

I smiled at the remark, for although it has long been the fashion for

Spanish gallants to tell English girls they resemble the Queen when they

want to offer the greatest flattery, I could not imagine how even the

most fervent gratitude could find any resemblance between an old woman

with white hair and the beautiful young Queen.

“Not in face, Señora, although you too are _muy guapa_ (very attractive),

but in generosity with the pawn-tickets. Have you not heard what the

Queen did in that way? A very poor woman of Triana threw a whole bundle

of tickets into the Queen’s carriage one day when she was driving through

Triana, and instead of being vexed, the Queen sent down to Juana’s house

after she got back to the palace to see if it was true that she had sold

everything. And it was quite true, and the Queen redeemed her tickets and

afterwards many more for other women, when she learnt of cases of great

distress for which the women were not to blame. I wish the rich knew how

helpful it is to redeem our pawn-tickets, for many of our clothes and

especially our boots are very good when we ‘put them away,’—indeed, if

they are not good the Mont de Piétè will not give us anything for them.”

Nor was this the end of the compliments paid us; for a few days later our

man-servant came to tell me that he had been asked for the full names,

family and baptismal, of all the English ladies who had helped to serve

the soup, the same having been requested by a popular performer of

“Flamenco” songs at a certain music-hall.

“But I refused to tell him,” said our man proudly. “Having been in

England with the Señores and knowing English customs, I informed him that

compliments in your country had to be paid in a roundabout way, and that

if your names were mentioned he would offend instead of pleasing.”

“But what in the world did he want to know our names for?” I asked,

completely mystified.

“_Por Dios_, Señora! Don’t you know that a couplet in praise of the

English economical kitchen is sung every night at the Blankblankblank,

along with one about the King’s Kitchen and the brave deeds of Don

Bernardo Guerra? Señora! That song has been the most popular item in the

programme for many nights past, and for that reason Pepito wanted to

improvise a second couplet giving all the ladies’ names. But don’t be

anxious: I assure you I refused with quite sufficient coldness to make

him understand that he was taking a liberty.”

The joke of it was that the Blankblankblank is a well-known café chantant

in Seville which has been for years a stone of offence to Mrs. Grundy,

both the English and the Spanish variety, and well-behaved members of

society like ourselves would not have set foot inside it for worlds. Of

course our disapproval, even if they had been aware of it, would not have

troubled the café chantant people at all, but we felt rather as if those

black sheep were heaping coals of fire on our respectable heads, when

we learned that songs about our civic virtues were delighting crowded

houses every night. But at any rate we were in good company, with the

King on one side and the parish priest on the other.

And thus on a note of comedy closed our part in the tragedy of the

greatest floods ever known in the long annals of the devastation wrought

century after century by the Guadalquivir.

PART IV.—SPRING

CHAPTER XVI

Popular monarchs—King Alfonso and the washerwoman—Royal

charity—No bull-fight required—Reaction against the bull-ring—A

monarchical republican—The guardian of the polo ground—The

King introduces the Queen—A loyal old gardener—The grief of

Enriqueta—The King at Ronda—A lucky donkey-driver—Careful

rioters—_Viva el Rey!_

I am often asked by visitors whether the English Queen is popular in

Spain, and I always wonder why such a question should occur to them. How

could she fail to be popular, with youth, beauty, and a kind heart to

give an extra gilding to her crown?

As a matter of fact, the longer one lives in Spain and the more one sees

of the peasantry and the working classes in general, the more delightful

tales one hears of the private dealings of the King and Queen and the

rest of the royal family with the “common” people; and as very few of

these have been published in the English papers, it seems worth while

to put them on record before they are forgotten. I do not vouch for

their literal truth, but I hardly think such stories would be current

coin unless they had some foundation in fact, and in any case the people

believe them to be true, and thus they illustrate the popular feeling

towards the Royalties.

[Illustration: GOING HOME FROM THE MARKET.]

Perhaps the story of King Alfonso and the washerwoman is already a

chestnut, although I have never seen it in print. It dates from the days

when motors were comparatively in their infancy, and the young King kept

his entourage in a state of chronic nervousness by his devotion to the

new machine, which in the opinion of the timid might run away or blow

up at any moment. One winter afternoon the King did not return at the

time he was expected, and there were serious thoughts of sending out a

detachment of the Civil Guard with an ambulance in search of the errant

motor. When His Majesty appeared, his lateness was explained by his

having picked up a lame old laundress laden with clean linen, some little

way out of Madrid, and taken her in his motor to the residence of her

employers before he came home.

Possibly this may be one of Ben Trovato’s stories, but I can myself quite

believe it, having heard at first hand of many other incidents showing

the same impulsive kindness to the poor and lowly, and the same disregard

of convention and regal state.

Not only the King and Queen, but also the Queen-Mother and other members

of the royal family have at one time or another picked up unfortunates

who had met with accidents in the streets, and conveyed them to their

homes or to a hospital. On one occasion Queen Christina sat for half an

hour on a bench in the park at Madrid, while her motor took an unlucky

cyclist to hospital. He was a student who had cut his head badly, and

the Queen herself directed her servants to lay him as comfortably as

possible on the cushions, after binding up his wounds with her own hands.

The Infanta Isabel, aunt of King Alfonso, recently delighted the crowd

by an action which is less common now than it was a century ago. True,

the vehicle was a fashionable motor, instead of a great royal coach as

formerly, but the inspiration was the same.

The Princess on her afternoon drive met a procession carrying the

Viaticum from one of the minor churches to a dying person. She got out

of her motor, made the priest get in with his sacred burden, and herself

walked to the sick man’s house in the procession behind the Host,

carrying a lighted candle. She is a great favourite in Spain, especially

among the amateurs of the bull-ring, for her devotion to the national

sport is so warm as to compensate them for the unconcealed distaste of

some other members of her family.

The King and Queen seldom go to a bull-fight, although when they do

appear at one the fact is so freely advertised, and photographs of their

Majesties are so widely circulated by those interested in maintaining

the “sport,” that probably the outside world believes that they are

devoted to it. It is of course impossible that those who love horses and

are themselves skilled in horsemanship should have any sympathy with an

entertainment in which the mangling of horses is an essential feature,

although a King and Queen may sometimes have apparently to condone what

they cannot approve. But their real feeling may be judged from a little

incident which I had from an excellent authority—the private secretary

of the man to whom the King spoke.

The occasion was a visit from their Majesties to a certain town which

is renowned for its bull-fights, and has the reputation of producing

the best _toreros_ in Spain. The Alcalde presented his programme of

festivities for the King’s approval, and, pointing out one or two vacant

dates, asked—

“When would you like to have the bull-fight, sir?”

The King replied that he and the Queen had come for a holiday, and did

not wish to have every day filled up in advance; “and therefore,” said

his Majesty, “when I want a bull-fight I will ask for it.”

The Court spent a whole month in that town, and no bull-fight took place.

Of course this, like everything else in Spain, is a political question.

The Reactionaries, true to their principles, support existing

institutions, while the Conservatives, Liberals, Radicals, Republicans,

both reforming and revolutionary, Socialists, etc., all combine to

denounce what they regard as one of the main factors in the _atraso de

España_ (the backwardness of Spain).

Foreigners who object to the bull-fight must bear in mind that an

immense amount of money is sunk in it, by the owners of large estates

who breed the bulls, in the building and upkeep of the bull-rings, and

in the very costly apparatus of the show, and it is only natural that

capitalists should fight for the institution in which their money is

invested. When foreigners indignantly ask why the King does not put a

stop to the barbarous “sport,” if it be true that he dislikes it, they

do not realise that a constitutional King, however radical a reformer

he may be, cannot by a stroke of the pen destroy the vested interests

of a great and powerful section of the community. To suggest that King

Alfonso should arbitrarily close all the bull-rings would be something

like proposing that the King of England should, _propio motu_, close all

the music-halls, regardless of the rights of the shareholders. And the

bull-fights can at any rate plead a venerable antiquity. Their origin

is not certainly known, but it is possible that they date from the days

of the Liby-Tartessians, when Minos ruled and encouraged bull-fights in

Crete.

What is new is the reaction against the ring, which is spreading with

encouraging rapidity. One of the greatest virtues of Isabel II., in the

opinion of her time, was that she “was very fond of the bulls,” and

even now old ladies and gentlemen of that unlucky Queen’s generation

speak of her affection for the bull-fight as one of her redeeming

qualities. Whereas not the least of King Alfonso’s acknowledged claims

on the respect and sympathy of the Radical and Republican sections of

his subjects (and these include the mass of the working classes) is his

obvious preference for other and more manly forms of sport.

The republicanism of the peasant is a curious and interesting study, and

I always love to draw him out on the subject. One day when I was digging

in the mountains a heavy shower came on, and I took shelter with my

workmen in a chambered tomb that we had been clearing. How the subject of

the Monarchy came up between them I did not notice, for I was absorbed

in a dramatic shifting of the storm-scene as I saw it framed by a rough

opening in the rock where a fallen stone had revealed the existence of

our burial cave. The hills had been purple, almost black, against the

thunderclouds, when suddenly there was a rift in the overcast sky, a

streak of sunshine shot out, and through the pouring rain a great sheet

of silver appeared like magic on the distant hillside, where an instant

before all had been unrelieved gloom. It was only a patch of grey rock,

but it was transformed by a cascade of rain-water from the peaks above

into a thing of ethereal beauty which vanished as quickly as it had

appeared.

A small boy—a goat-herd in his Sunday best on his way to a fair in the

neighbouring town—had taken shelter with us in the cave, and at the

men’s request had been singing the local songs in a shrill treble for my

benefit; and when my thoughts began to wander from the company to that

glorified hillside, he was wailing a love-song of which I could not make

out a word. It was rather a shock to me to be brought back to earth by

hearing the gentlest and most courteous of my two diggers remark that he

wished he had the King and the Alcalde of the town together in the cave,

so that he might throttle them both.

He explained that the Town Council owed him a considerable sum of money

for a contract carried out by his father (recently dead) and himself,

and his view was that if the King really was up to his work he would long

ago have made an end of corruption and jobbery, and would have replaced

the existing bureaucracy with honest men, who would pay poor labourers

what they owed them instead of buying motors for their private amusement.

And as the King had not done this, let him be throttled, or if not that,

at least let us have a republic and make him the President of it.

Poor Ramón! He was suffering from a bad attack of political indigestion,

and no wonder, for the unpaid bill, amounting to some hundreds of

pesetas, meant a very heavy loss to a young man who had to support a

widowed mother and various young brothers and sisters. I gave him a note

of recommendation to the Alcalde, whom I knew to be rather better than

most of his class, and I hope he got his money when the next pay-day

came. But I sadly pondered over the state of Spain, administered on a

system which poisons every limb of the body politic and makes it almost

impossible for the local authorities to pay their workers and at the same

time meet the demands of the blood-suckers who live without working,

while they pull the strings that make the office-holders dance to their

piping.

In a country where politics permeate and pollute everything it is not

easy to keep clear of them, but I have heard many little anecdotes of the

King and Queen which fortunately are free from that taint; and if most of

them relate to Seville, my excuse must be that most of my life in Spain

has been spent in that city.

About a mile outside the town there is a large expanse of meadow land

alongside the Guadalquivir, known as the Tablada, which has played a part

many times in Andalucian history.

Here grazed the long-horned Tartessian cattle mentioned in the last

chapter. Here Julius Cæsar reviewed the native militia when the natives

of Hispalis enlisted under his banner after refusing to open their gates

to Varro, the lieutenant of Pompey. Here the offspring of Witiza, the

last legitimate King of the Visigoths, grew rich as they cultivated the

fertile plain and built ships to carry on that profitable trade with the

East which made Ishbiliyah rich under the rule of Witiza’s descendants,

who amicably intermarried with Arab princes and ruled the land under

nominal subjection to the Sultans of Cordova. Here the Northmen, ten

centuries ago, after sailing up the river, were repulsed when they

tried to set fire to the town. Here Saint Fernando set up his camp when

he besieged Seville in 1248 and spent a year and a half in the vain

endeavour to effect an entrance through the imperishable walls which were

first built somewhere about the time that Minos brought bull-fighting

into fashion.

True the Carthaginians conquered Tharsis, sacked and destroyed the city

of their rivals the Greco-Tartessians (who in recent centuries had twice

possessed themselves of Cadiz), and even deprived Tharsis of its name,

adding it to that of Cadiz by way of an extra jewel in the Gaditanian

crown. But the encircling wall defied their vengeance, and although they

may have made a breach here and there they could not destroy it, for the

“cob” of pre-Roman Spain is as hard as stone, and luckily for posterity

the Carthaginians did not know the uses of dynamite.

Unless aided from within, none of her enemies ever got into Seville until

the walls fell into disrepair. Even Marshal Soult would hardly have

found the siege of Seville such a farce as he did, but for the ruinous

condition into which Spanish neglect had allowed the fortifications to

decline. True he did not have to encamp on Tablada to starve the town

into surrender, as did Saint Fernando, but the inhabitants had time

to hide a good many of their treasures, artistic and other, in the

subterranean vaults and galleries which have existed since Tharsis was

built, before the French general battered down their gates.

The plain of Tablada is now a busy place, for right across it a great

canal is in course of construction, which, coupled with a further

deepening of the channel of the river, will open Seville, some fifty

miles inland, to steamers of over 10,000 tons and make it the principal

port in Spain, except perhaps Barcelona.

But part of this plain is devoted to sport of different sorts, and here a

polo ground is laid out when the Court comes to Seville. Thus here, as in

Moguer, my little anecdotes are linked to a thread of history, and this

long digression has more object than at first appears.

A certain old man had been appointed gatekeeper to the entrance to the

Tablada sports ground, because his son, a _torero_, had been killed in a

bull-fight and the bulls destined to die in the Seville ring are always

enclosed in a field at Tablada a day or two before the fight. He was a

conscientious old man and never deserted his post, even when all the town

turned out to receive the King and Queen on their arrival from Madrid.

They had an exceptionally enthusiastic reception that year, because

King Alfonso had recently granted a large piece of ground from the

Alcazar gardens to give access, light, and air to a poor quarter packed

away behind the lofty walls of the palace; and it was a good deal of a

sacrifice on the part of the old man to go out to Tablada at the usual

time instead of shouting _Vivas_ with his friends at the station first:

but he had his reward in a little-expected shape.

A few days after the arrival of the Court, word was sent to our friend

that he must be extra careful to admit no unauthorised persons to the

enclosure, because their Majesties would be driving out in the course of

the afternoon to see the polo ground preparatory to a match fixed for the

next day. So when a young man whom he did not know galloped up, slightly

dishevelled from riding fast in a stiff wind, the gatekeeper flatly

refused to open the gate, saying in explanation that the King and Queen

were coming.

“Do you know the King?” inquired the rider.

“No; nor the Queen either,” answered the old man, “and I only wish I did,

for my grandchildren plague the life out of me every day asking whether

I have seen her and whether she is as beautiful as everybody says.”

“Well, now you will be able to tell them,” said the horseman, “for here

she comes.”

Up drove the Queen, and the old man thereupon became aware that his

interlocutor—as of course my readers have guessed—was the King himself,

for he proceeded to tell her of the conversation in a way that made her

laugh heartily.

“And now that you have seen the Queen, what shall you tell your

grandchildren? Is she as beautiful as everybody says?” asked the King in

the best of humours, for, as all the world knows, nothing pleases him

more than these spontaneous evidences of the admiration bestowed on his

wife.

“More, more, a thousand times more,” stammered the old man, quite abashed.

The royal cortége waited while the Queen asked about the children, how

many there were, what were their ages, and why they lived with their

grandfather. And on hearing how they had been orphaned and were dependent

on his modest earnings at the gate, the King gave him a bank-note—which

could not have been less than twenty-five pesetas, for that is the

smallest paper money, and may have been more—telling him to let the

children have a feast of cakes and chocolate by which to remember the

Queen.

It is pretty to see the real affection inspired by this brilliant young

couple even in the humblest of their entourage.

While the piece of ground given to the town was being cut off from the

palace gardens, there was for a week or more a long space by the new road

which was open to the world at large, for although the work was pressed

on with all speed, a high and strong wall had to be built, and that could

not be run up in a moment. It was January, and very cold for Seville,

and one day when I walked round the gardens I missed the oldest of the

gardeners, who with his chubby, cheerful daughter are particular friends

of mine.

It appeared that old Toro was crippled with a serious chill, and could

only just hobble across from his cottage to the place where the building

was going on, where he was acting as watchman until the new wall was

finished.

“How has he managed to get ill just now?” I asked, for he was a sturdy

old fellow whom no amount of work ever seemed to tire.

“It is because he has been up for several nights, keeping guard over

there,” explained his daughter. “The Town Council put on two extra

policemen, but my father thought they were not enough to make sure that

no bad characters got in in the dark, for it is a long piece of road as

you see, and he was not going to have bad characters in His Majesty’s

garden if _he_ could help it.”

“Well done, Toro,” said I; “I know how loyal he is to the King, and I

hope he will get a handsome tip for his extra care.”

“Oh no, he didn’t do it for that, it is purely voluntary; and anyhow

he won’t get anything, because the Señor Marqués (the Governor of the

Alcazar) doesn’t know anything about it. You may be sure my father is

not going to tell him. And please, Doña Elena, don’t say anything to my

father about it, for he would be angry with me for telling you. He feels

he is only doing his duty.”

One admires the King whose kindness to his employés secures such

unselfish affection, and one admires the high ideal of duty which leads

an old man nearer seventy than sixty to stop out of doors all night for

a week at a stretch to guard his royal master’s garden. I do not know

if Toro’s devotion ever reached the King’s ears, but I fear not, for

the last time I saw chubby Enriqueta she was in tears because, owing to

extensive alterations in that same garden, the house she and her father

had lived in for so many years was to be pulled down and they had to seek

a new abode outside of the precincts.

She cheered up, however, as I led her back to talk about the royal

family, always her favourite subject of conversation.

She adores the little Prince of Asturias, and related with pride how she

had long ago heard him talking in English to his pony. “He was hardly

four years old, and yet he could already talk in a language I did not

understand!”

But her most cherished recollection relates to a day of alarms and

excursions when, owing to some political crisis, the Court left Seville

at a few hours’ notice, a day or two earlier than had been intended.