Part 18

The objectionable processions began to march late in the afternoon of Palm Sunday, and it is hardly much of an exaggeration to say they went on marching night and day throughout the following week. They were so long that they took five or six hours to pass a given spot. Starting back in the narrow streets of the town, they passed down the _Sierpes_ which was lined with spectators' chairs, defiled before the City Hall, where the Mayor rose to salute each _paso_ in turn, then went on to the Cathedral,--entering by a west door, crossing before the altar, and leaving by the door near the Archbishop's palace. With each _paso_ marched the religious confraternity of its parish, a secular brotherhood of men belonging to all ranks, who are banded together for charitable work. The King belongs to one of these fraternities and when in Seville marches in line, but the year of our visit he was represented by the military governor of the province. The officers of the army also marched. Most of these brotherhoods wore Nazarene costume, in white, purple, or black, with the high-peaked head gear through which only the eyes showed. Some walked devoutly, others in disorder. Membership in religious brotherhoods is often hereditary, and it was touching to see a little child of four, in full regalia, marching with the grown men, planting his silver staff at each slow pace with the gravity of a majordomo. A band of music went with each fraternity, and the blare of brass instruments, the torches, the masked faces, make indeed a confused, wearying spectacle.

Most of the onlookers hired chairs for the week along the streets, on balconies, or in that most chosen spot, the square by the City Hall; the populace thronged to the Cathedral, where the procession could be seen free, and there the crowd was dense to suffocation, chiefly made up of the disorderly element from Triana. The chatter and movement made me ask, could this be a Spanish church, where irreverence is unknown? Everyone seemed oblivious of the Tenebræ in the _coro_. They buzzed and moved about in an unseemly scramble for seats, so that only faintest echoes of Jeremiah's gloriously intoned Lamentations could be heard. The sexton rose now and then from the noisy groups on the choir steps to extinguish one by one the candles on the big triangular candlestick, a noble object of bronze used only at this season. And I had looked forward for months to hearing, in this grand Gothic Cathedral, my favorite service of the church year, the solitary service that haunts one with its subtle beauty from one's childhood. The disappointment was keen, it gave just the final touch to my dislike of the _pasos_.

There were times when I tried to be just. Seeing the men lift their hats respectfully as each group went by, the women cross themselves with tears in their eyes, the babies look on in awed wonder, I tried to drop prejudice and to see the spectacle as does a southern Spaniard: the noisy scene is so associated with his earliest, tenderest memories that he cannot but look at it in a different way. One evening near me, a handsome young countryman,--moved out of all self-consciousness by the _Virgen santísima_ he so loved, in her wonderful robe and jewels, under a canopy richer than any earthly queen's,--this gallant young _majo_ stood forward suddenly from the crowd and, with his eyes fastened on the glittering mass, sang a _copla_ of praise with the heart-piercing note of the folk-song. So faultlessly artistic a moment made me look leniently on the _pasos_ for a time, warning me, "Lest while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also the wheat with them." But to be consistent in this home of untamed personalities is impossible! For soon a float of extravagant bad taste would go by; horses with tails of real hair; clumsy velvet robes hiding the excellent carving of the statues (and some of them are the work of the best sculptor of Seville, Montañés, whose portrait by Velasquez hangs in the Prado); worst of all the _Mater Dolorosa_, covered with inappropriate jewels, some willed her by former generations, others lent by rich Sevillian ladies of to-day, in her hand the lace handkerchief of a coquette: criticism would leap to full life again.

That the _pasos_ violated the quiet of the Cathedral, that they reeked of the baroque period of bad art, these are not the only complaints against them. They turn all Seville into a picnic week. We began to ask ourselves if this noisy excitement commemorated a solemn time, what would the following week of the Fair be like? The Andalusian can hold revelry with zest and vigor for fourteen unbroken days. Easter week was to open with the Italian opera and the first bull-fight of the year; there were to be three days of horse and cattle show, followed by three days of the grand _Feria_, when the whole province pours into Seville, and the nights are one glare of fireworks; _maja_ and _majo_ are then out in all their finery, and the families of the upper classes live in open booths on the fair grounds, where they pay visits and dance the national dances in public with the easy democracy of true Spaniards. Much as we hoped to see this typical feast, it began to dawn on us early in the week that there were limits to endurance. The hurrying crowds, the blocking of the streets, the noise of vendors, of clashing music, made the fatigue indescribable. Sleep at night was out of the question, noisy Triana roamed the streets; brass bands would sound, and in nervous excitement one would spring to the balcony. The hotels were packed to an uncomfortable extent. By Good Friday all desire to stay over for the Fair week was extinguished; we were very close to physical collapse. So, taking a night train, we slipped away from the turmoil to have a peaceful Easter Sunday in unspoiled Estremadura. There also they were having _pasos_, but _pasos_ of such simple devotion, humble, and primitive, that one knelt with the crowd in prayer as they passed.

Before this final, hasty desertion, however, I had dragged myself, worn out with a sleepless night, to the lengthy services in the Cathedral each morning. There, happily, was nothing to criticise. The Holy Week ceremonies customary to all Catholic Christendom, were carried through with dignity; only, since this was irrepressible Spain, there were some local additions, and most beautiful ones. Such was the waving of a huge flag, black, with a large red cross, like the banner of some military order, before the High Altar, while some special prayers were read; love of country and love of God seem so inextricably interwoven here. On Palm Sunday the Cathedral was filled with the stately white leaves, six and ten feet long, from the palm forest of Elche; each canon carried one and each verger; the priests and acolytes who served the Mass bore each his palm, and they waved and swayed around the altar in lovely symbolization of the Entry into Jerusalem twenty centuries before. Pictures like that never fade. A year later in Palestine, it rose vividly before me, while driving out to Bethany, when we passed some hundreds of humble Russian pilgrims tramping back from the Dead Sea, each of whom bore a palm. For in very reality they were following the route of entry into the Holy City. Seville Cathedral on Palm Sunday morning was not unworthy to be grouped with that moving scene. The excessively long Gospel was chanted in the customary different keys by three canons, one standing in the Epistle pulpit, one in the Gospel, and the third on a rostrum erected between the two. Near me several Spaniards of the artisan class followed in Latin every word of the lengthy chanting. The tourists present who knew not what was read, fretted and moved incessantly. No intelligent person should attend a Holy Week in either Seville or Rome without a special book, picked up anywhere for a couple of francs, in which the services are given in Latin and English, or Latin and French. Without the liturgy to voice these ceremonies, they must be weary hours indeed. And yet of the hundreds of visitors on this Palm Sunday, literally, not one followed with a book, and many perhaps held themselves competent to criticise what they had seen.

Expectant of the sensational, the tourists filled the great church on Holy Thursday morning, when the white veil was withdrawn: it was done so swiftly, at the opportune words of the Gospel, that there was nothing spectacular about it. Two days later, at the moment in the Mass when every bell in the city bursts out in joyous acclamation of the Resurrection, the black veil was rent; that we missed seeing. Some days before Holy Week a towering temple of wood, white and gilt, a hundred feet high, had been erected in the nave over the tomb of Columbus' son. This pseudo-classic temple, completely out of touch with the Gothic church, was to serve as the repository of the Blessed Sacrament on Holy Thursday, and it was for the center of such shrines that the old silversmiths of Spain, the de Arfe family, made their priceless silver _monumentos_. Such repositories are customary in all Catholic lands on Thursday of Holy Week, for in the midst of sorrow, the Church celebrates the foundation of the Sacrament that has brought joy and solace to mankind. She commemorates the events of the week chronologically. Before the altars are dismantled for Good Friday, she typifies by lights and flowers, her gratitude for that passover supper in the upper room. It is a general Catholic custom to visit a number of these lighted shrines on Holy Thursday, and in Seville this usage leads to one of the charming things of the week, like an oasis of peace in the midst of the arid _pasos_. Everyone pays these visits on foot. During two days not a carriage is allowed in the city, the King himself must walk. Their silk mantillas, black or white, draped high over their combs, wearing jewels and carrying flowers, the ladies of Seville went from church to church, to kneel in graceful groups around the exposed Host, and the men in frock coats and high hats stood in the rear, in simple attitudes of prayer: the Spaniard and the Mussulman are alike in their unconsciousness at their devotions. The next day all would wear deep mourning, but to-day is a feast of rejoicing. Each one goes in quiet composure, as if her mind dwelt on the hours of peace her communions had brought her. Again I felt the same impression that the Christmas midnight Mass had given me; that the imagination of this people was busy with the past event they were celebrating. Does not lack of comprehension of old usages often mean lack of the shaping power of the imagination?

From one parish church to another I followed these fascinating women. Here was true Seville, not seen in the Cathedral's tourist crowd, nor under Parisian hats on the _Paseo_. Wandering through the network of streets north of the _Sierpes_, I paused to look into the spotless patios distant as they ever seem from the fret of life. A touch of summer was in the air; the marble courtyards were decked with flowers, and one heard the notes of singing birds. Two dark-eyed ladies came out from a tranquil patio; they wore white mantillas in honor of their visits to the Blessed Sacrament. They set me dreaming of Seville in its summer aspect, when the skies are blue in the fragrant night. Nowhere on earth are women more alluring and essentially feminine, nowhere has man fashioned his house so fitly for charm and romance.

By chance, on Holy Thursday, I stumbled on another local usage, full of the same racial flavor. Returning from the Cathedral, where, amid a throng of sight seers, the Archbishop had carried the Host to the lighted _monumento_, I happened to drop into the Church of the Magdalena. It was filled with its own parishioners, since most Spaniards leave the Cathedral services of this crowded week to the visitors. Near the door were seated three separate groups of ladies and young girls, belonging unmistakably to the aristocracy; each wore a black mantilla,[31] and in their tight-fitting black gowns and long white gloves, they were indescribably elegant. They were the ladies in waiting of the various altars, their duties to tend them, and like the men's brotherhoods, to help in the charitable work of the parish. The Magdalena Church is dark, so on the table before these daughters of Eve stood a pair of high candlesticks, between which lay an open tray soliciting contributions for their special shrines or charities. Young beaux entered the church and as they passed the table, dropped a _duro_ or a paper bill in the different trays, according as they felt devotion to such and such an altar, or to judge by the glances that passed between the givers and receivers, as they felt devotion to its fair caretaker. Unexpected scenes like this, unmentioned in the guide books, give to this city its allurement, enhanced doubly because the actors are so unconscious of their picturesqueness.

And as unpleasant things fade away, leaving only the happier memories, two scenes stand out unforgettable in Seville's Holy Week: Eslava's "Miserere," echoing at midnight through the Cathedral whose name is fittingly the _Grandeza_, and that other picture, enchantingly Andalusian, the ladies in mantillas paying their silent visits to the Blessed Sacrament on Holy Thursday. The _pasos_ fade to a blurred background of pomp and glitter.

CADIZ

"Para que yo te olvidará Era menester que hubiera Otro mundo, y otro cielo, Y otro Dios que dispusiera."

CANTAR ANDALUZ.

--"The sea tides tossing free, And Spanish sailors with bearded lips, And the witchery and beauty of the ships, And the magic of the sea."

H. W. LONGFELLOW.

In the midst of the warm Seville winter the thought of sea breezes tempted us to Cadiz for a week. The hundred miles' run down there was through a charming corner of Andalusia, with orange groves, olive plantations, woods of stone pines, hedges of cactus, in the meadows herds of most royal bulls. It was the eighteenth of January, yet the fruit trees were in blossom, and over the streams floated a lovely white-flowering verdure. We passed Jerez, source of English sherry, where on our return to Seville we stopped some hours to see the bodegas and sample the native wine. As we neared the coast big pyramids of salt covered the marshes, telling of another industry; in fact, every part of Andalusia which I saw was well cultivated, despite the guide book laments over its backwardness.

Soon came whiffs of the sea air. The first view of Cadiz, set right out to sea, is very striking. Only a narrow strip of sand, eight miles long, connects it with the mainland, and as we skirted the coast, past San Fernando,--where there is a naval station and an astronomical observatory,--the compact, sturdy little city out in the Atlantic made a stunning picture; the sea so very blue, the town so dazzlingly white.

And inside the treble line of walls and moats that defend its one land-entrance, the "silver dish," as its citizens love to call it, has as individual a character as its distant prospect. It is miraculously clean, its streets seem swept and scrubbed like a Dutch village. Down these narrow lanes you catch the gleam of the sea to east, to north, to west. When it rains, Seville turns into a muddy distress, but well-drained Cadiz grows more proper still in wet weather. The patio of the rest of Andalusia is not found here, for being confined to its ledge of shells, the town could not spread itself about, but had to build itself up in the air. On top of the high houses, whose vivid green balconies add to the general air of trig neatness, are _miradores_, small towers formerly built by the merchants as look-outs from which they could spy their returning galleons. The view of Cadiz from a _mirador_ is like nothing else ever seen: the clean whiteness of hundreds of roof terraces, the church towers of colored tiles and a host of other _miradores_, made it seem like a second city in itself, suggestive of the Orient; a strange city set in the blinding blue circle of the ocean.

The town is almost surrounded by high sea walls, four miles of them, and on the Atlantic side the surf breaks in thundering eternity, throwing up spray twenty feet high. There is something splendidly plucky about Cadiz. One of the few spots in Europe forced to battle for her existence, with a devouring enemy at her door, she thrives and continues century after century. She is the oldest town in Spain, founded by Ph[oe]nician mariners more than a thousand years before the Christian Era.

"Ah when the crafty Tyrian came to Spain To barter for her gold his motley wares, Treading her beaches he forgot his gain, The Semite became noble unawares."

Spain has influenced them all, all the strangers, the heterogeneous throng, that have gone to the making of the Spanish race. Ph[oe]nician, Roman, Iberian, Goth, Jew, and Moor, she has imprinted on them all her own distinguishing mark, has breathed into them her own intense soul. For this psychological reason it is true to say that Seneca was a Spaniard, that the wonderful Jew Maimonides and the Moor Averroës, and the Gothic bishop, Isidoro, Doctor of the Church were all of them Spaniards. The Catalan, Ramón Lull rang out the national note with no uncertain sound, mystic hermit and active missionary. And with the centuries "christened in blood and schooled in sacrifice," the spirit grew more convincingly apparent: Domingo de Guzmán, Francisco Ximenez, Gonsalvo de Córdova, Luis de León, Iñigo de Loyola are very brothers with a like high fealty that tells what majestic mother nurtured them on her battlefield of ages.

Cadiz, the oldest spot in Spain, has known each of the conquering races in turn. She was four hundred years old when Rome was founded. She has had tremendous ups and downs of fortune; at her height during the age of the Cæsars, who saw her importance as key to Andalusia, then with the fall of Rome dropped into insignificance, her name almost forgotten. She rose again with the discovery of the New World, whose ships of treasure anchored off her ramparts. A strange outlook on the passing of power lies in the statement that in 1770 this town was a wealthier place than London. With the loss of the Colonies, Cadiz has sunk back to be a mediocre city in the world, but she is contented and self-respecting.

Though so remotely ancient, there is nothing of old architecture here. The ramparts have been turned into esplanades, where it is a joy to walk, for the views are beautiful past description; now across the bay to the mainland and the mountains of Ronda, and down on the quay of the town itself with its bay full of fishing boats; then to the north the eye seeks farther along the coast toward Palos whence three caravels, the Pinta, the Niña and the Santa María turned westward on a memorable third of August, 1492. On the other side of Cadiz is the ocean itself and I hope the enterprising town will some day carry the park along this western wall, where the rollers break so magnificently. Just past the public gardens, a narrow causeway leads to the lighthouse of San Sebastián, set well out to sea, a favorite walk for us at sunset time to watch the fishing boats with their high prows come sailing back to the harbor each evening. The sunsets we saw in Cadiz were flaming pink and gold and red like those of the world on the other side of the Atlantic; also we saw a sunrise exquisite as a dream. It was here the ancients first met the suggestive wonder of the open ocean, and their philosophers pondered over the phenomenon of the tides. They thought that subterranean animals or winds sucked them in; and the sun, they said, when it had sunk in the western ocean, returned to the east by subterranean passages,--guesses about as wise as some that we are making to-day on phenomena of the soul.

I do not know if it was just chance good fortune, but Cadiz will always be an exhilarating memory. Its air was so bracing, balmy yet full of vitality. The moral atmosphere seemed joyous and contented; a hurdy-gurdy would strike up below in the street with the bang of a tambourine, and from all the windows near, pennies would gayly rattle down. The people were courteous without second thought. A working man walked out of his way for ten minutes to direct us through the complicated streets, and then ran off with a laugh to avoid the fee; a shopman straightened eye-glasses and genuinely refused to be paid for so small a service; wonder of wonders when our luggage got carried in the wrong hotel diligence, the landlord refused to let us pay. Three such episodes of disinterestedness in one morning give one a pleasant impression of a place; and this town has presented itself to other travelers as happily. Byron, to whom this "renowned romantic land" as he called her, was eminently sympathetic, wrote to his mother, in 1809, "Cadiz, sweet Cadiz! it is the first spot in the creation. The beauty of its streets and mansions are only excelled by the loveliness of its inhabitants, the finest women in Spain."

Cadiz is enough of a place, with a bishopric and a garrison, to have the air of a capital; we noticed many men of the best hidalgo type, like those who stand behind Spínola in the "Surrender of Breda." In the park was an outdoor theater; children played _diavolo_; and nice little Spanish girls walked up and down with their English governesses. One could write or sew outdoors without exciting a glance of surprise. We used to spend hours under the palm trees of the _Alameda_ sewing and reading and watching the groups about us, for in spite of its being mid-winter, the air was warm enough for spending the day out-of-doors. Cleanliness and godliness: Cadiz can boast of excellent public institutions. The new hospital that faces the Atlantic breezes, and where only a fraction of a franc is paid daily, could well be envied by the rich of new world cities. Its poor house is noted, and it has a host of minor charities; a _Casa de Viudas_ for widows, a _Casa de Hermanos_, a _Casa de Locos_ for the insane, tended, as are the others, by alert, willing nuns. It is a public-spirited little city, with a school of music and art, an _Instituto_ whose physical laboratory is the best in Spain, two Public Libraries, for that of the Bishop is also open free to the people.

The tourist sights here are soon seen; the Capuchin church where Murillo painted his last picture, and where he fell from the scaffold, soon after dying in Seville from the accident. There are two Cathedrals, one so sacked by English bucaneers that there is little to be seen, and the other a quite dreadful eighteenth century affair. The dull _Museo_ has some good modern works, a bishop's head in profile by García y Ramos that is first rate art; and there is a triptych by a very early painter, Gallegos, the Spanish Primitive, which to my mind is more religious than the Murillos and the Zurbarans. It is a _Pietà_, and the eyes of the mourners are naïvely red from weeping, like Francia's _Pietàs_ in Parma.