On the eve of All Saints, after we had driven over the worst road in
the world outside of Spain or America, we arrived at the entrance of
the cemetery where Baedeker had mysteriously said “some sort of fair was
held.” Then we perceived that we were present at the preparations for
celebrating one of the most affecting events of the Spanish year. This
was the visit of kindred and friends bringing tokens of remembrance and
affection to the dead. The whole long, rough way we had passed them on
foot, and at the cemetery gate we found them arriving in public cabs,
as well as in private carriages, with the dignity and gravity of
smooth-shaven footmen and coachmen. In Spain these functionaries look
their office more solemnly even than in England and affect you as
peculiarly correct and eighteenth-century. But apart from their looks
the occasion seemed more a festivity than a solemnity. The people bore
flowers, mostly artificial, as well as lanterns, and within the cemetery
they were furbishing up the monuments with every appliance according
to the material, scrubbing the marble, whitewashing the stucco, and
repainting the galvanized iron. The lanterns were made to match the
monuments and fences architecturally, and the mourners were attaching
them with a gentle satisfaction in their fitness; I suppose they were to
be lighted at dark and to burn through the night. There were men among
the mourners, but most of them were women and children; some were
weeping, like a father leading his two little ones, and an old woman
grieving for her dead with tears. But what prevailed was a community of
quiet resignation, almost to the sort of cheerfulness which bereavement
sometimes knows. The scene was tenderly affecting, but it had a
tremendous touch of tragic setting in the long, straight avenue of black
cypresses which slimly climbed the upward slope from the entrance to the
farther bound of the cemetery. Otherwise there was only the patience of
entire faith in this annually recurring visit of the living to the dead:
the fixed belief that these should rise from the places where they lay.
and they who survived them for yet a little more of time should join
them from whatever end of the earth in the morning of the Last Day.
All along I have been shirking what any right-minded traveler would feel
almost his duty, but I now own that there is a museum in Seville,
the Museo Provincial, which was of course once a convent and is now a
gallery, with the best, but not the very best, Murillos in it, not to
speak of the best Zurburans. I will not speak at all of those pictures,
because I could in no wise say what they were, or were like, and because
I would not have the reader come to them with any opinions of mine which
he might bring away with him in the belief that they were his own. Let
him not fail to go to the museum, however; he will be the poorer beyond
calculation if he does not; but he will be a beggar if he does not go
to the Hospital de la Caridad, where in the church he will find six
Murillos out-Murilloing any others excepting always the incomparable
“Vision of St. Anthony” in the cathedral. We did not think of those six
Murillos when we went to the hospital; we knew nothing of the peculiar
beauty and dignity of the church; but we came because we wished to see
what the repentance of a man could do for others after a youth spent in
wicked riot. The gentle, pensive little Mother who received us carefully
said at once that the hospital was not for the sick, but only for the
superannuated and the poor and friendless who came to pass a night or
an indefinite time in it, according to the pressure of their need; and
after showing us the rich little church, she led us through long, clean
corridors where old men lay in their white beds or sat beside them
eating their breakfasts, very savory-looking, out of ample white bowls.
Some of them saluted us, but the others we excused because they were so
preoccupied. In a special room set apart for them were what we brutally
call tramps, but who doubtless are known in Spain for indigent brethren
overtaken on their wayfaring without a lodging for the night. Here
they could come for it and cook their supper and breakfast at the large
circular fireplace which filled one end of their room. They rose at our
entrance and bowed; and how I wish I could have asked them, every one,
about their lives!
There was nothing more except the doubt of that dear little Mother when
I gave her a silver dollar for her kindness. She seemed surprised and
worried, and asked, “Is it for the charity or for me?” What could I do
but answer, “Oh, for your Grace,” and add another for the charity.
She still looked perplexed, but there was no way out of our
misunderstanding, if it was one, and we left her with her sweet,
troubled face between the white wings of her cap, like angel’s wings
mounting to it from her shoulders. Then we went to look at the statue of
the founder bearing a hapless stranger in his arms in a space of flowers
before the hospital, where a gardener kept watch that no visitor should
escape without a bunch worth at least a peseta. He had no belief that
the peseta could possibly be for the charity, and the poverty of the
poor neighborhood was so much relieved by the mere presence of the
hospital that it begged of us very little as we passed through.