Seville orange

“ Still—beggars, gipsies, heat, and laziness to the contrary notwithstanding—Seville is delectable, and a marvel in its gardens and groves, its flowers and fruit, its fountains and fish-pools, its soft climate and soft people, its languorous repose and silvery tinkles to prayer. Seville is romance. Shall it ever be mine again to lie beneath the shade of its secular orange-trees, and blink at clustering shafts of marble tipped with silver sun-rays, and dream dreams? ”

“ The houses in sight were painted in light colours that Seville favours as a rule: colours like the gay tints of women’s dresses—cream, rose, green, orange, violet, but not the fearful brown of Cadiz or Madrid, or the crude white of Jérez. There were orange-trees in sight, bearing fruit; running fountains and laughing girls, holding their shawls close. From all sides come the sound of [Pg 17] the mules’ bells. André could not then imagine any other place in which to live but—Seville. ”

“ Once in a while a village is seen dreaming like Sleeping Beauty among the flower groves. For a long stretch agaves and cacti fringe the track. Finally Seville sends forth her messengers in the shape of blossoming rose-gardens and orange groves laden with their ripe golden fruit. An ancient mangolia stretches a rosy blossom branch towards us, lingering on in its old age in this scene so full of yearning life. Tall slim palms nod to us, and yet new children of Flora crowd upon us to bring us Seville and spring’s friendly welcome. ”

“ The native country of the orange is believed to be somewhere on the northern border of India. A wild orange, the supposed parent of the cultivated species, both sweet and bitter, occurs in Garhwāl and Sikkim, as well as in the Kāsia (see COSSYA) country, the valleys of which last are still abundantly productive of excellent oranges. [See Watt, Econ. Dict. ii. 336 seqq.] It is believed that the orange first known and cultivated in Europe was the bitter or Seville orange (see Hanbury and Flückiger, 111-112) . ”

“ The fragrant white or pinkish flowers have five sepals, five petals, and branched stamens. The fruit has a leathery rind, containing large spindle-shaped cells filled with watery juice. As the fruit takes some months to ripen, it occurs on the tree at the same time as the next year’s blossoms. There are two chief varieties or sub-species, the sweet or China orange, and the bitter, bigarade or Seville orange, but the Mandarin and Tangerine oranges are sometimes ranked as a distinct species. The principal orange-growing sections [142] of the United States are Florida, Louisiana and California. ”

“ One morning she entered his cell with Maria, carrying a basket, from which she produced, with shy pleasure, a few golden oranges. "Look, señor," she said, "they are good to eat now, for the blossoms are out. [#] I gathered some to show you;" and filling both her hands with the luscious wealth of the orange flowers, she flung them carelessly down on the mat beside him. In her eyes they were of no value compared with the fruit.
[#] The people of Seville do not think the oranges fit to eat until the new blossoms come out in spring.
With Carlos it was far otherwise. ”

“ In many, especially those belonging to the houses of the wealthy, are to be found shrubs, orange trees, and all kinds of flowers, and perhaps a small aviary, so that no situation can be conceived more delicious than to lie here in the shade, hearkening to the song of the birds and the voice of the fountain.
Nothing is more calculated to interest the stranger as he wanders through Seville, than a view of these courts obtained from the streets, through the iron-grated door. ”

“ The best-known firms use almost exclusively the Seville (Spain) bitter orange, which has comparatively little pulp and consists mainly of rind, the substance most desirable for the making of good marmalade. Messina and Palermo "bitter" oranges, although not considered as good as those of Seville, are also used, but command a much lower price. With the exception of a very few firms who buy and "pulp" oranges at Seville and ship the pulp to England for preparation and canning by English [439] factories, marmalade manufacturers buy the raw material in open market. ”

“ At Alcala, the nearest town to Seville, and which may be called its bake-house—since almost all the bread generally used there is made at Alcala—we stopped to change horses; and, not long after leaving this town, upon reaching the brow of a ridge, Seville, queen of Andalusia, was seen amidst her orange groves, swaying her sceptre over a dominion of luxuriance and beauty, and{45} circled by the broad glittering waters of the Guadalquivir. ”

“ There is not an object on which the eye rests in which an artist would not find a subject for a sketch. What a picture might be made of yonder donnas, with their mantillas and graceful lace veils, as, accompanied by their duenna, they ascend the steps of that magnificent church! No women are lovelier than those of Seville,—long may they keep their graceful costume! How picturesque is yon group of gipsies by the fountain—the man in his striped mantle of many hues leaning over the back of his ass, as he talks to the dark-eyed girl with scarlet blossoms wreathed in her raven-black hair! ”

“ The garden was a little paradise, in which nature and art seemed to outvie each other in offering attractions to eye, ear, and taste. Lopez, who, with his daughter, had visited the Great Exhibition in Paris, had brought back ideas of French magnificence to add new adornments to a place which, for beauty and elegance, had before been unrivalled in Seville. Exotics from various countries blended with the splendid plants indigenous to Andalusia, making the parterres one flush of brilliant hues. ”

“ Chaffering with an itinerant vendor of fish stood an old woman, wrinkled and bent. From her coarse dress, arms bare to the elbow, and the strong scent of garlic which hung about her, the dame might rather have been deemed a denizen of one of the [Pg 28] low purlieus of Seville, than the servant of an aristocrat. The old crone, who used much gesticulation in speaking, was so eager about her bargaining that she did not notice the approach of Lucius Lepine. The colloquy between her and the hawker had probably lasted for some time, as both parties looked heated and angry. ”

“ In winter Seville has a quieter, but perhaps not less potent charm. Winter often brings with it a succession of cool clear days, when the sky is of a serene, almost transparent blue, with golden sunsets. The white lines of flat-roofed houses seen against the blue of the evening sky have the soft light and colouring of opals, while the distant hills of the horizon are faintly purple. ”

“ Go to the suburb of Triana, and in the Church of Santa Ana there is the sweetest Madonna and Child, in which we find a new suggestion in the joy of the Mother in her Babe, a human attitude, making the picture something more than mere illustration. And we notice a delicate care for beauty found very rarely in Seville, perhaps never as perfectly as in the work of this painter. ”

“ Every house, small and large, has a lovely gate of ironwork as delicate as lace, through which one sees a beautiful inner patio or marble courtyard filled with waving trees and beautiful plants. Often in the centre a splendid fountain plays. Seville is an old city of the Moors. Their handiwork is everywhere. In these houses that one passes the Moors lived their Eastern life before they were driven out by the reconquest of Spain, and so beautiful is the climate, so clear the atmosphere, that everything stands to-day just as it stood hundreds of years ago. ”

“ No one has ever painted ecstasy with quite the facility of Murillo. And in the Museum, where the Capuchin Series and other famous pictures are gathered, you can learn all that is essential to his art; his happy Saints swim before you in mists{132} of luscious colour; cherubs flutter around as they minister to beggars clad in rags carefully draped; Virgins, garbed in the conventional blue and white, their feet resting upon the crescent moon, vanish into luminous vapour, their robes rustle in the air, and their sun-lighted faces repeat the very complexion of Seville. ”

“ There is no female eye in Seville can support the glance of hers,—so fierce and penetrating, and yet so artful and sly, is the expression of their dark orbs; her mouth is fine and almost delicate, and there is not a queen on the proudest throne between Madrid and Moscow who might not and would not envy the white and even rows of teeth which adorn it, which seem not of pearl but of the purest elephant’s bone of Multan. She comes not alone ”

“ Seville presents an odd aspect to the stranger between the hours of three and six P. M. During this hot interval the streets and shops are deserted, everybody, even to the beggars, being under cover and asleep.
MOST of the peasant girls in the vicinity of Spanish cities contrive to keep a bit of flower-garden for their own personal purposes. She is a thriftless lass indeed, who has not at least one fragrant double red rose in tending, or some other red-flowered shrub. From Christmas on through the spring fête-days of the Church, they reap their tiny harvests. ”

“ The climate has something to do with this, perhaps. The energy goes out of you in Seville. You saunter and put your hands in your pockets, and so in time the very laziness of the life begins to bore you. If I hadn’t heard so much about Seville it is quite possible I should have been enchanted with it. But I have heard its praises sung on the top note all my life, and so I was disappointed.
The people and the patios are the most interesting things in Seville. ”

“ And Seville is the queen of Andalusia, of noble birth, proud and beautiful. Distinctly feminine in her subtle, indefinable charm, like a woman she changes with her surroundings, and her mutability adds to her fascination. We never fathom nor quite know her, for she is one being as she slumbers in the first chalky light of morning, another, in the resplendent nakedness of noontide, overarched by the indigo firmament, and yet another, in the happy laughter of evening when her mantle has turned purple and her throbbing life is more felt than seen. ”

“ From hence alone can a correct idea be formed of the size and splendour of Seville. The eye, from this elevation, embraces the whole extent of the city, its long narrow streets, wide circuit of walls, its gateways, magnificent public buildings, and spacious plazas, its verdant orangeries, and its house-top flower-gardens. Beyond the busy city, a fruitful plain extends for several miles in every direction; on one side bearing luxuriant crops of corn and olives, on the other, giving pasture to countless herds of cattle; the lovely Guadalquivír winding through and fertilizing the whole. ”

“ Seville is the home of religious art. The habit of her painters was serious; in their profound religious sense, in their adherence, almost brutal at times, to facts, as well as in those interludes of sensuous sweetness that now{112} and again, as, for instance in the art of Murillo, burst out so strangely like an exotic bloom, they reflect the temper of Spain. It is contended sometimes that these pictures in Seville are wanting in dignity, wanting in beauty. But are we not too apt to confine beauty to certain forms of accepted expression? Surely any art that has life; has dignity, has beauty ”

“ 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. ”

“ In Seville, perhaps to a greater extent than in any city, even in Spain, the country of passionate individualism, art is the reflection of the life and temper of the people; and to understand Seville we must know her painters. As we look at the pictures of the Spanish primitives, at the emphatic canvases of Juan de las Roelas and Herrera, for instance ”

“ To the great disappointment of travellers and antiquaries, white [259] wash reigns supreme at Seville; the houses have a new coat of it three or four times a year; this gives them a look of cleanness and neatness, but effectually prevents any investigation of the remains of the Arabic and Gothic sculptures which formerly adorned the place. Nothing can be less varied than this network of streets, where the eye sees but two tints—the indigo of the sky and the chalky white of the walls on which the azure shadows of the neighbouring buildings are thrown ”

“ Alcala had now reached the place where the narrow lane in which stood the posada in which he had passed the night opened into the highway leading directly to Seville. He was now on the road along which, ten minutes previously, had passed the herd of fighting-bulls destined for the arena. Alcala saw the print of their hoofs in the dust; he noticed at no great distance the gleam of their horns above the cloud raised by their tramping and that of their mounted conductors. Alcala had been near enough to hear that defiant roar of the monarch of the herd that had thrilled on the ear of Lucius. ”

“ Roelas anticipates Murillo, not altogether unworthily, giving us, with less originality, but with much sweetness, an expression of that mood of religious sensuousness that is one phase of Spanish painting. Seville is the single home of Roelas; [A] here we may see his pictures in the Cathedral, in the Museum, and in many of the churches. His art is unequal in its merit. ”