Ellen M. Whishaw

“ It is slow progress, certainly, but what of that, when at every fresh step fresh beauty is revealed, and all your way your guide, as he leads the sumpter mule with your inappropriate modern “grip” or suit-case in its panniers, entertains you with his discourse, or wakes the echoes with his song, for he sings most of the way, “to bring good luck.”
The worst of it is that nowadays one has to go a long way by rail and road before one reaches country remote enough for jamugas: one is lucky if half a charming tour can be covered on a donkey. ”

“ The door of San Miguel—opposite to the College, or cloister of that name, in which dwelt all the Mozarabic priests who still survived when San Fernando entered Seville—is thrown wide open as the procession approaches, and a wonderful shimmering effect of light and shade is produced when the waving palms borne by the clergy move out from the dimness of the Cathedral into the blazing sunshine of the street. But I never follow the palms; one only gets lost in the crowd, and misses all the best of the picture. ”

“ These are the common-places of Holy Week in Seville. They catch the eye of every visitor who has the slightest knowledge of or feeling for art; but long before the week is out, those who come merely to see something new are sick to death of the eternal repetition of the same thing—the “Brothers” or the “Nazarenes” in their voluminous robes and tall peaked hoods, the brass bands, the Civil Guard, the first paso draped with velvet or satin, and surrounded with silver candelabra and vases of flowers, with an image of Our Lord in the centre ”

“ For in spite of the exhilaration produced by the pure fresh April air with its brilliant sunshine, and the universal atmosphere of enjoyment, one never quite loses the feeling that it is a play, even though oneself be one of the players, and that all too soon the curtain will ring down on one of the prettiest scenes to be found in Spain if not in Europe.
I have been told that the really smart young lady has fourteen new dresses every year for the Fair. ”

“ Then all the minor discomforts will become but mere matter for laughter, with an arrière-pensée of satisfaction at the barrier they set up against the flood of cheap trippers which, but for them, might overwhelm our Peninsula. And if sometimes we hear a note of tragedy beneath the light chorus of our opera, it does but deepen the music, as the purple shadows in an Andalucian street throw up the golden glow that bathes the white-washed houses basking in the sun. ”

“ The only animals really shut in are the well-bred riding and carriage horses, which occupy wooden stables on the farther side of the Reál de la Feria. This is the street where are the fashionable casetas, where the fireworks are let off at night, and where horsemen and women display their skill in a game which may be called threading the maze, among the countless motors and carriages of all sorts and kinds, private and hired, most of which contain daughters in white mantillas and mothers in black, all intent on seeing and being seen by the crowd. ”

“ Either shake the dust of Spain off your feet and depart to some other land where the innkeepers realise that one contented guest will bring more money into their coffers than ten who depart in anger; or come with me right off the beaten track, and learn to know the real Spain, and to love, as I do, the real Spaniard.
Will he exploit the foreigner? He would rather give you the coat off his back than take a penny from you that he has not honestly earned; and he will do you all sorts of services with the native grace which has created the tradition that “every Spaniard is a gentleman.” ”

“ It was one of the most distressing experiences I have had in Spain. We elder people all sat round the room on chairs, sofas, and settees too heavy to move an inch from their appointed places, and one by one we were led into a small inner room where the mother, blind with crying, sat hunched up with her elbows on her knees and her head on her hands, giving loud utterance to her unrestrained grief. ”

“ No doubt there are many people in the position of our Alcalde who live as elegantly as he does, but it is a great exception to find oneself invited to take one’s place as a guest at their table; and his hospitality, the beauty of the town, the glorious mountain views all round, the wealth of wild flowers on the hills, and the many remains of ancient buildings, all combined to mark Antequera with a white stone in my friend’s and my memories. ”

“ For all the changes and diminished glories of their dress, the little Seises strike a ringing note from the past as they hurry across the broad aisle to the choir before their dance begins, eight of them passing along the railed-off gangway leading from the choir to the high altar, while the two smallest place themselves one on either side of the great carved reading-desk with its immense old missals, ready to take their place of honour behind the Cardinal-Archbishop when he moves from his throne to the altar. ”

“ This inner patio is all just as it was when the Arabs ruled in Ronda: columns, capitals, carved beams, round arches—nothing has been altered since the conquest of the old town by the Catholic kings. In the mountains it is the fashion to paint every brick within reach with a solution of red ochre, and the maids, in their desire to add a touch of extra glory to the place for the wedding, had painted the arches as well as the brick floors. ”

“ This is the mode of life imposed on the women throughout the whole year. But when April comes and the Fair begins, all these restrictions are thrown to the winds, the mothers escort their daughters to the Prado, and there, seated in the “reception-room” of a caseta or booth, with its wooden floor raised three feet above the ground to give a better view, they look on while their girls dance in full view of the public, hour after hour and night after night, for all the world as if they were professionals at a theatre. ”

“ A replica of the Pilarica [274] is borne through the streets, and the gorgeous procession of the Cathedral Chapter, the military, civil, and municipal authorities, all in their gala dress, the town band, and the devout of both sexes, carrying candles, is wound up by these singular survivals of some forgotten and probably pagan festivity. One of the fascinations of Spain is this intimate connection between the present and the past, with its picturesque and quite unintelligible jumble of the sacred and profane. ”

“ At 3.30 on Tuesday in Holy Week we have what is known as the Display of the Banner, another ceremony foreign to the ritual of Rome. Two priests kneel on the altar steps, while a third waves over them a voluminous banner of the same soft gauzy tafetán as the White Veil. The banner is of a dark green, so dark as to appear black in the dim Cathedral, where all the painted windows are shrouded with black curtains during this season of penitence. ”

“ Whatever be the cake you give to the ménage, the best part of it will be set aside to offer to the master and mistress and their family. If it be a bull, the head and horns will be kept; if a dragon, the head and tail; and on the evening after the servants’ party, when your dinner is over, the cook will hastily don a white apron and knot her best silk handkerchief round her head, and will march into the dining-room bearing the remains of the cake with all its inedible decorations carefully rearranged to hide what has gone. ”

“ 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 [241] delighting crowded houses every night. ”

“ No less than 150,000 ducats, or £40,000 of our money, did the pious pair set aside to endow the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, “in order to make it as splendid as that of Corpus Christi,” and they gave the money in their lifetime too, instead of bequeathing it by will so as to enjoy it themselves as long as they lived. There were new blue and white vestments for the priests, blue and white draperies for the pulpit, the reading-desk, and the Archbishop’s throne, blue and white banners, even cushions of blue and white for the Archbishop to kneel on in the choir and before the high altar. ”

“ I have already referred to the seclusion of women, the extreme privacy of domestic life, typified by the lace curtains which shroud every window on the street and are never drawn aside, the darkness of the rooms thus guarded from the intrusion alike of the sun and of the stranger’s eye, the strict surveillance exercised over young girls not only in the street but in their own homes—in short, the persistence of the Oriental tradition that the women belong to their men, not to themselves, and that no stranger has a right to look at and admire them. ”

“ 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. ”

“ At night the Eiffel Tower, or Pasadera, as it is called, is illuminated from top to bottom, the whole of the Reál is arched over with garlands of coloured electric bulbs, and every caseta vies with its neighbours in the lighting of the reception-rooms in which the girls, in their third new frocks, are to dance. For the display of youth and beauty is the main object of the social side of the Fair, which is in point of fact the marriage market of Seville. ”

“ Then indeed one realises the extraordinary hold that the “Mystery” has taken upon the imagination of the people of Seville.
The little Seises, no matter what imps of mischief they may be at other times, comport themselves [161] with great gravity on this occasion. Filled with honourable pride, convinced that their dance is the event towards which moves all the magnificent ritual of the whole Cathedral year, each small boy feels that everything depends on the perfection of his own performance. Should a single Seis err in the minutest detail, the whole stately dance would break up in confusion. ”

“ The summer, autumn, and winter are past, and the April Fair has come and gone. My Spanish year is over and the bride’s new year has begun, with the scent of roses, jessamine, and orange blossom, the murmur of fountains, and the warble of the nightingales among the elms up the hillside at Granada. For that is where girls who wear mantillas go for their honeymoon, and where good tourists go when they die. ”

“ 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. ”

“ When we took a house we were always asked what rent we paid, and when finally we bought the house in which we hope to end our days, all our Spanish friends asked us what the price was, and held up their hands in congratulatory amazement, exclaiming, “How cheap!” It is always a compliment to say you have made a good bargain, and if you wish to annoy, you have only to remark, “How they have cheated you!”
An old servant who lived with us for a good many years hoarded all her wages and spent nothing beyond the “tips” she received from visitors. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ For be it known that we don’t bathe as we please in Spain, but under medical orders and strictly for the good of our health, and many people believe that all the virtue in salt water would be lost did they take one bath too many or too few. And from the moment they wake in the morning until the last frequenter of the hotel bar goes to bed some time in the small hours, the din of voices and the clatter of feet on the brick floors never ceases for one instant. ”

“ The humble Spanish friends with whom I was travelling to their home at Algodonales—a mother and son—insisted on my taking the bedroom, although they gladly accepted my invitation to share the washstand. The mother said she could sleep on the catre with a pillow from my bed, and the boy on the floor alongside, with his head on my travelling-bag. Every other corner in the house was full for the fair, and even this modest accommodation could only be had for one night. Poor as it was, the bedding and the linen were clean, and we thought ourselves lucky to get a room at all. ”