The reader, pampered by the brilliant excitements of our American
promenades, may think this spectacle of the gay world of Seville dull;
but he ought to have been with us a colder, redder, and sadder evening
when we had the Delicias still more to ourselves. Afterward the Delicias
seemed to cheer up, and the place was fairly frequented on a holiday,
which we had not suspected was one till our cabman convinced us from his
tariff that we must pay him double, because you must always do that in
Seville on holidays. By this time we knew that most of the Sevillian
rank and riches had gone to Madrid for the winter, and we were the more
surprised by some evident show of them in the private turnouts where
by far most of the turnouts were public. But in Spain a carriage is a
carriage, and the Sevillian cabs are really very proper and sometimes
even handsome, and we felt that our own did no discredit to the
Delicias. Many of the holiday-makers were walking, and there were
actually women on foot in hats and hobble-skirts without being openly
mocked. On the evening of our last resort to the Delicias it was quite
thronged far into the twilight, after a lemon sunset that continued to
tinge the east with pink and violet. There were hundreds of carriages,
fully half of them private, with coachmen and footmen in livery. With
them it seemed to be the rule to stop in the circle at a turning-point a
mile off and watch the going and coming. It was a serious spectacle,
but not solemn, and it had its reliefs, its high-lights. It was always
pleasant to see three Spanish ladies on a carriage seat, the middle one
protruding because of their common bulk, and oftener in umbrella-wide
hats with towering plumes than in the charming mantilla. There were no
top-hats or other formality in the men’s dress; some of them were on
horseback, and there were two women riding.
Suddenly, as if it had come up out of the ground, I perceived a tram-car
keeping abreast of the riding and walking and driving, and through all I
was agreeably aware of files of peasants bestriding their homing donkeys
on the bridle-path next the tram. I confess that they interested me more
than my social equals and superiors; I should have liked to talk with
those fathers and mothers of toil, bestriding or perched on the cruppers
of their donkeys, and I should have liked especially to know what passed
in the mind of one dear little girl who sat before her father with her
bare brown legs tucked into the pockets of the pannier.