Part 9
To the visitor to Spain, who has already seen Seville and Toledo and Cuenca, the city of Granada is not greatly impressive, or even deliberately interesting. The older streets are tortuous, narrow and noisy; but the modern part is as regular and unimaginative as only a modern city can be, with wide thoroughfares, spacious squares, and excellent pavements. This monotony is broken by the famous _Alameda_, which, with its rows of immense trees whose foliage meets and interlaces overhead, its handsome fountains, its garden filled with roses, myrtle and jessamine, and its glimpses of the snowy Sierra Nevada from amid the tropical vegetation, makes it one of the finest and most picturesque promenades in Spain. During the daytime the Alameda is deserted, but in the evening it is crowded with a laughing, bustling multitude; and, in the habit of keeping late hours, the people of Granada are every bit as fashionable as those of Madrid or Seville. Beggars there are--and where are they not in this land of mendicancy?--ordinary beggars and gipsies--the most persistent and irrepressible of beggars.
Where do they all come from, these hungry-looking, scowling, emaciated men and women, and these wretched, withered, whining children? From the _Albaycin_, the gipsy quarters on the face of the hill. The road is steep, and the streets are narrow, the houses dilapidated and unsavoury. The higher one climbs, the more miserable become the houses, the more wretched and ragged the people that sleep in the doorways or shuffle about the streets. Yet this is the Belgravia of the _Albaycin_. Further still, and the path grows so rugged and narrow, so full of boulders and holes, that it seems more like a cutting made by a mountain torrent than a street, and the dwellings are no better than hovels. We are miles from Spain, in an African village, and an evil specimen at that. The buildings are so many ruins with tiny doors--you pass through the doorway and find yourself in the court-yard of an Arabian house, surrounded by graceful, slender columns, surmounted by very light arches, and bearing those indescribable traceries which are the glory and the bewilderment of the Alhambra. One gazes from the bits of arabesqued walls to the morose wrinkled faces; from the delicate columns to the rags that serve to but half-clothe the women, and one’s mind refuses, or is incapable of reconciling these incongruities. The conditions of the houses and the people continue to grow more malodorous and repulsive as one proceeds; but if the visitor has a mind (and stomach) for high-class slumming, there is yet more to see.
For beyond the residential area, where hovels serve as dwelling-places, we come to the district of the cave-dwellers. The caves are dug in the earth in the side of the hills; caves
with a mud wall in front, with holes to admit the light, and cracks to serve as a means of ingress and exit for the people. They are mere dens, fit only for wild beasts; and the gitanos that swarm in them are little better than savages. Their numbers are unobtainable; their laws, if they have any, are unknown to the statute of any country. No one shall say how they exist,
or what they exist upon. The police dare not penetrate their fastnesses; the tax-collector never troubles them; nor doctor nor priest visits them. “Manners none, customs nasty” is the only description that can be applied to them. One reaches the gates of the gipsy quarter, but few people have any desire to go further. No sooner is the intruder espied from afar than the whole mountain-side vomits forth its pack of beggars--men, women and children--the blind, the lame and the halt, the diseased and the decrepit, all filthy, and all shouting for alms, and thrusting out their hungry palms. It is not dignified, I admit, but, in the circumstances, it is advisable to button up your dignity, with your other valuables, and take to your heels. Take the advice that Jack Bunsby gave to Captain Cuttle, when he was in his matrimonial fix, and bolt.
It is told of one of the gitani, to whom a man child was born, that he brought the baby to a priest in Granada, and asked that it might be christened. The old padre was delighted to find such a sign of awakening to moral consciousness in one of the outlawed people, and willingly acquiesced.
“And what do you wish to call your son?” he asked.
“Tiger!” promptly responded the proud father.
“Tiger?” protested the priest. “But you cannot name a child after a wild beast.”
“That is his name,” persisted the father. “The Pope, he is called lion (Leo), my son shall be tiger.”
And “Tiger” he was duly christened.
Seville.
There is an old German saying: “_Wein Gott lieb hat, dem giebt er ein Haus in Sevilla_,” which may be translated, “He whom God loves has a house in Seville.” Truly, there are few fairer, gayer, and more wholly desirable places of abode in Europe. It is at once a seaport town, situated on the banks of the Guadalquiver (“the great river”), fifty-four miles from the sea, and the centre of an exuberantly fertile district which produces olives, grapes, oranges, cork, and grain in perfection. The Sevillians proudly call their country “La Tierra de Maria Santisima,” of which Byron wrote:
“ ...All sunny land Of love! When I forget you, may I fail To--say my prayers!”
The sunshine reflected from the walls and the houses darts through the labyrinth of narrow streets, peers into fairy-like _patios_, and floods the orange trees, palms, and acacias that grow in every open space and square of the city. Here is all gaiety, and mirth, and roses which blossom all the year round in a climate which is claimed to be one of the most delightful in Europe. And the sun is in the blood of the people. They pursue pleasure as the serious business of life; bustle, love, and laughter fill their days and nights, and the air is ever abuz with soft sounds. I suppose that the English temperament, which is more like that of the Catalonians, would in time grow weary of the buoyant, light-hearted Andalusian nature, and the English resident in Seville would find himself complaining that he had
“ ... breathed too long awhile, Soft airs and perfumes, listened to soft sounds, And journeyed in soft paths beneath soft skies.”
But my visits to Seville have never been so far protracted as to afford me the opportunity of putting this surmise to the test. My impressions of the city are snapshots rather than etchings; they are slightly blurred and indistinct, but wholly delightful to reflect upon. Seville, like Venice and Rome, is a place that one goes to with one’s mind full of preconceived notions--unconsciously primed for disappointment and the disillusionment of reality. Yet I have never met anyone who confessed to being disappointed with Seville. After the modernity of Madrid, the prosperous and business-like alertness of Barcelona, and the sombre mediævalism of Toledo, the exhilarating sense of enjoyment that permeates the air of this “all sunny land of love” inspires one with a sympathy that makes the criticisms of the Madrileños seem as ill-natured slanders. Are these bright, laughing people, these spruce, graceful men, and entrancing women, vain, false, changeable, and given to gossip? Perish the thought! True, that is the opinion held in the capital; the Sevillians only half resenting the allegations, which they ascribe to jealousy. And their criticisms of the bodies, minds, and manners of the Madrileños are unprintable. In Madrid you hear, “The Sevillians! Ah, they can do nothing but make love!” And in Seville they declare that the Madrileños can make nothing--but mistakes.
But whatever the shortcomings of Seville may be, no town in the south of Spain receives more visitors. All sorts of people go there, with all sorts of motives. The artist goes to fill his portfolio with the picturesque forms and showy costumes of Majo and Maja. The lover of painting makes a pilgrimage there to see Murillo in all his glory. The seasons of the Church--Christmas, Holy Week, and Easter--attract thousands from
devotion or curiosity, the religious ceremonies of the place being of peculiar interest, and unrivalled, except in Rome. And not even in the Eternal City itself shall you see boys dancing before the high altar. This curious survival of a very ancient custom takes place at the festival of Corpus Christi--the _corps de ballet_, if one may so term it without offence, consisting of two rows of boys, from eight to ten years old, dressed like Spanish cavaliers of the mediæval age, with plumed hats and
white stockings. The dance they execute to the low music of violins is simple, dignified, and exceedingly graceful. When they break out all together into a lovely and harmonious chant, the effect upon the spectator is electrical; and even the use of the castanets does not rob the ceremony of its impressiveness. I am told that some two hundred years ago an Archbishop of Seville desired to suppress this dance, and the tumult that ensued among the people and the canons of the cathedral echoed even to Rome. The Pope was naturally curious to see the dance, and the boys were taken to Rome to dance and sing before his holiness. The Pope laughed, and did not express any disapproval; but, wishing to satisfy the canons without displeasing the Archbishop, decreed that the boys should dance until the clothes they had on were worn out, after which the ceremony might be considered as abolished. In two centuries these clothes are still in a state of excellent repair; and as only one part of the boys’ costumes are renewed at a time, they bid fair to last for ever.
Seville, which is always gay, and Spanish, and fascinating to the receptive visitor, is at its best at this festival of Corpus Christi. For days beforehand preparations are in progress, streets are swept, awnings are put up over all the streets and squares along which the procession is to pass, flowers are banked to make a background, chairs are placed in every available corner, and in the cathedral the columns are draped in gorgeous velvet cloths. On the day itself, thousands flock into Seville from the country and the neighbouring towns. The procession itself would appear a poor and ineffective spectacle to people who saw Alfonso XIII. ride from the Palacio Real to the Plaza de Toros in May last year, or Edward VII. pass from Westminster Abbey to Buckingham Palace. But the line of route is a sight to remember. Along it, on either side, one can observe the Andalusians in all their glory. As a beauty show, it is a display that in my experience has no equal. Every window and every balcony contains a picture of feminine loveliness. Every individual beauty composing it is a subject for the painter’s brush. Hardly less attractive is the sight of the soldiers lining the route, either on foot or mounted on Andalusian steeds, proud and graceful
as their riders, and beautiful as the señoritas, who gaze upon them with their big, black, lustrous eyes.
The streets of Seville, in comparison with those of Toledo or Córdova, are almost modern and relatively spacious. The most interesting of them all is the _Calle de Sierpes_, which no wagon is allowed to enter, and which is lined with cafés, clubhouses, and splendid shops. Many of the latter are semi-Moorish, and although you do not see a turbanned Mohammedan squatting in a small booth open to the street, you do see no end of shops which are practically in the street, the whole front wall (consisting of doors) being removed in the daytime. I have wandered for hours through the dazzling white streets, sniffing the diffused odour of oranges, and watching the handsome and picturesque peasantry as they revel through life. To the Englishman, no city in Spain presents more novel sights and historic contrasts. Having been successively a Phœnician, Greek, Roman, Gothic, Moorish, and Catholic city, it preserves traces and monuments of almost all these dynasties. At the suberb, Italica, the birthplace of three Roman emperors, the ruins of an ancient amphitheatre, with its various subterranean divisions for the gladiators and the wild beasts that appeared therein, may still be seen. Seville itself is Moorish in the arrangement of the streets and houses, and the Alcázar is the best preserved specimen of Moorish architecture in Spain. Adjoining it is the Christian Cathedral. In the streets the mediæval donkey grazes the modern tram-car. At the hotel sits an Englishman in a Moorish _patio_ reading the latest number of the _Times_.
These Moorish _patios_ are, of all the sights in Seville, the most interesting. One finds them at Malaga and Granada, at Córdova and Toledo, but one must come to Seville to see these pleasant courtyards at their best. Here are _patios_ of all sizes and grades of splendour, but always _patios_. In the finest of these square courtyards the floor is of marble, and the walls are inlaid with elegant mosaic. In the centre is a flower plot, or a fountain surrounded with flowers or statuary. Marble columns on each side support the inside projection of the upper story, which is sometimes provided with windows, while the _patio_ itself is open above to the sky at night, and covered during the daytime with an awning. To me these sweet shady spots were a source of increasing delight. Anything more exquisite after its kind--more perfectly ordered, delicately arranged, and beautifully kept up, than the court of a Sevillian gentleman’s residence, I have never seen; and the poorer classes follow suit with marvellous success and unanimity. There is no great outer door, as at Toledo, but cunningly-wrought and fairy-like iron gates, which only serve to set off an enticing picture of marble pavement, colonnade, and fountain, in a framing of palmitos, bananas, and lemon-trees, with here and there a coquettishly-perched cage of singing birds. The temptation to pry into these dainty interiors was irresistible.
I confess that I had been two days in Seville before I explored the cathedral. For one thing, there was so much to see all around that I had no temptation to make a definite excursion to any particular point of interest; and as somebody once remarked about a five-act tragedy, it was so easy not to go to the cathedral. Moreover, I had seen cathedrals in every town
that I had visited in Spain, and I was surfeited of them. I had stood in admiration before the magnificent pile, and gazed in wonderment at the famous rose-coloured Giralda; but it was not until the third day of my visit that I determined to “do” the cathedral. It has been said “there is not a more solemn
and beautiful temple in the world than the great cathedral at Seville.” It is so grand and solemn as to strike the visitor with amazement and awe. From the gay, colour-slashed streets of the city to the grand interior is but a step, but the effect is overwhelming. The sudden transition from the dazzling sunshine of the outer air produces a sensation of darkness; all is confused and indistinct; while the eye, instinctively seeking relief, looks upward to the clerestory, where, through the small windows, a feeble ray of daylight comes struggling in. By degrees, the magnificent proportions of the building reveal themselves, and their majestic grandeur almost oppresses the mind. Even Furguson allows Seville Cathedral to be “so grand, so spacious, and so richly furnished that it is impossible to criticise when the result is so splendid and imposing.” How, indeed, can one criticise a building whose decorations consist of paintings by Murillo, Juan Valdes Leal, Morales, Zurburan, Roelas, and Vargas, sculptures by Montanes and Alonso Cano, and whose painted glass, wood-carving, and embroidery, mural decoration, and metal work are the finest examples of the finest date in every branch of each art?
“The first view of the interior,” says Lomas, “is one of the supreme moments of a life-time. The glory and majesty of it are almost terrible. No other building, surely, is so fortunate as this in what may be called its presence. Nave, side aisles, and lateral chapels, all of singularly happy proportions, a vista of massive and yet graceful columns, a rightly dim religious light, gloriously rich stained glass, and an all-prevailing notion of venerable age--such is the sum of one’s first impressions.”
Gautier’s and De Amicis’ comparison of the interior of the mosque at Córdova to a marble forest, is in reality much more applicable to the interior of the Seville Cathedral. As one writer has said: “Vast height, dim light, gloom, and awe are
the characteristics of a forest primeval; and all these, absent in Córdova, are to be found in the Cathedral of Seville. But if this cathedral be compared to a petrified forest, it must be to a forest of giant trees. There is something supremely massive, colossal, mammoth, in the huge, high pillars of this building--something which makes one wonder, as do the Pyramids of Egypt, that human might should have sufficed to place these monstrous stones in an upright position, and in symmetrical rows. The Córdovan pillars are mere walking sticks in comparison, and the ceiling which they support only one quarter as high as that in the Seville Cathedral, which is the largest--and its tower the highest--in Spain. So vast is its interior space that, notwithstanding its ninety-three windows, a dim, mysterious twilight pervades every part all day long.” Yet, although Seville is the warmest and sunniest place in Spain, and this cathedral its coolest spot, the flock of worshippers is very small indeed. The number of priests who officiate at the thirty chapels and eighty-two altars, have been reduced from 133 to 100; but it seems as if to-day one quarter that number would suffice for all needful purposes.
The Alcázar, built on the ruins of the Roman Prætorium, was, in the design of its creators, the principal feature in the scheme of the city’s fortification. It was also the palace of the Moorish Kings, and is to-day the residence of the Spanish sovereign; but the exterior, with its masses of bare masonry and its embattled towers, still preserves the character of a mediæval castle. The Alcázar is in an excellent state of preservation, and its charms are bewildering; while its associations with the crisores and amours of three races of kings lend it an historic interest. The ornamentation of the rooms is superbly beautiful, and the variety of designs and colours, the gold and the gems, with which the walls are decorated, produce in the brain a feeling of tiredness and confusion. All that is marvellous in complicated design, all that is rich and exquisite in tone and material, all that genius and workmanship is capable of, has been enlisted in the beautifying of this palace of delight. One gazes from the friezes to the fairy-like columns, from the capricious arches to the bejewelled ceilings, from the secret doors to the lovely little windows, and in the mysterious gloom one feels again the thrill of exaltation and amazement that only love, or wine, or the spectacle of the sublime and the mysterious can beget. The Alcázar, taken in conjunction with its history, is a dose of artistic and imaginative intoxication that no living soul shall resist.
Seville is instinct of Bartolomé Esteban Murillo. Here is the house in which he lived, and the house in which he died: here in the picture gallery are over a score of his paintings, and here are the originals of the beggar-boys, which are admitted to be beyond praise. Here, too, in the centre of the _Plaza del Museo_, is the statue of the painter that was erected in 1866.
Everybody who visits Seville goes to the _La Fabrica de Tabacos_; and travellers who delight in the picturesque should not omit to make a call at _El Corral del Conde_, where the washerwomen follow their avocation. The crowd, the clatter of female tongues, the groupings, the attitudes, the draperies, and the babble of children, make up a scene which would move Mr. Beerbohm Tree to enthusiasm. The tobacco factory is, of course, an institution, and the women employed there are made famous by the opera of “Carmen.” The building is an enormous quadrangular edifice, and has 28 interior _patios_; and some 5,000 women and girls are engaged in the manufacture of cigars and cigarettes. The stories of the beauty and diablerie of these ladies that had been told me were strangely conflicting. From some I had gathered that they were a collection of alluring sultanas; while others had described them as plain, coarse, and unattractive. But I found them to be very much as I expected. They were not all Carmens, but the majority of them were something more than interesting, and many were downright beautiful. The architecture of the building makes accommodation for the workers in three vast rooms, and each room is sub-divided into three by three rows of pilasters. The girls work in dishabille, and silence is _not_ imposed. In order to obtain the maximum measure of freedom, they discard their finery, which is suspended on the walls, and forms an amazing mass of black and red, slashed with vivid streaks of white, purple, and yellow. A fancy dress warehouse could not present a braver display of colour, nor a _corps de ballet_ at rehearsal a sartorial exhibition of more engaging scantiness. The whole place is alive with colours and with sound. There is no noise but a kind of incessant buzzing. If these girls were English, their voices would produce a clatter; but the soft, singing accents of Andalusia, even when several hundred girls are talking altogether, sound harmonious and soothing. The amount of pay earned varies according to the capacity and industry of the workers, and the majority appear to be both busy and skilful. Some there are that look dull and sleepy; others, as we enter, are asleep with their heads pillowed on their arms, that are crossed on the table, but they are wakened by a nudge or a whisper; and even the most absorbed labourer finds time to give us a glance as we pass. It is said that the morality of the tobacco workers is a trifle loose--babies are numerous in _la Fabrica de Tabacos_. A friend who was with me remarked their presence to the manager: “There would seem to be more babies here than married women,” he said. “It is possible,” was the reply, “some married women are blessed with more than one.” We looked at our guide with questioning eyes, but he did not so much as smile.