Seville

“ 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, all white like a city of marble, encircled by a diadem of gardens, groves, and avenues, surrounded by a landscape dotted with villas, lay open to the view in all the wealth of its Oriental beauty. ”

“ 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 ”

“ His worship of himself in the white bodies of women is true Seville. The constant shift of his deeds, like facets in the crystal of desire, is true Seville. His orgiastic use of blood, of mysticisms, his encounters with statues, necrophiles and ghosts—are Seville of the Semana Santa. His ultimate sinking into the peace of self-absorption is Seville. But the town is ampler, deeper. Don Juan conquers only women. Seville conquers Spain.
This is her ultimate secret. She too—like Córdoba, Toledo, Greco, Cervantes—is a living whole fused from the hostile elements of Spain. ”

“ The city is Moorish, but informed throughout with the spirit of Spain. In Cordova the Spaniard seems a stranger; in Seville he has assimilated and adapted all that was bequeathed by his onetime rulers till you might think the place had always been his. It is as though the glowing metal of Andalusian life and temper had been poured into a mould made expressly by other hands to receive it. Thus Seville has not died nor decayed like her rivals. Her vitality intoxicates the northerner. Valdés says, “Seville has ever been for me the symbol of light, the city of love and joy.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ I looked down at Seville from above. A Spanish town wears always its most picturesque appearance thus seen, but it is never different; the patios glaring with whitewash, the roofs of brown and yellow tiles, and the narrow streets, winding in unexpected directions, narrower than ever from such a height and dark with shade, so that they seem black rivulets gliding stealthily through the whiteness. Looking at a northern city from a tall church tower all things are confused with one another, the slate roofs join together till it is like a huge uneven sea of grey ”

“ Here am I, proud of the name of Englishman, thankful for having been brought up in the clearness of gospel light. I have been for a year in Seville, and I have never so much as shown to a Spaniard the New Testament in his own language, which I carry now on my person. Nay, the only man in this country for whom I have a feeling of friendship—the man whom I meet almost every day of my life—he knows nothing of the faith which I hold, save that he probably deems me a heretic, simply because I was reared in England. ”

“ No shade anywhere, on plaza, patio, or river bank; nothing but a blazing sun, making golden motes; the thinly leaved palms scarcely leaving a reflection on the hot earth.
It is the Fiesta of the Corpus Domini. The whole city of Seville is astir, the procession is passing, Don Pedro following bareheaded, attended by Don Juan de Mañara, Ferran de Castro, Don Garcia Padilla, and many others, under a gorgeous canopy, and so delicately fair and flaxen-haired does he look, he is more like a young saint than a king. ”

“ The general aspect of the population of Seville, differs greatly from that of Madrid. To begin with the upper ranks, there is something more eastern in the appearance of the ladies; they are more frequently seen veiled; their cheeks seem tinged with a hue of Moorish blood; and along with the fire of the Castilian eye, there is mingled a shading of oriental softness. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Seville's feast, rich with old traditions, is appropriate in this southern city. To linger each evening in the vast church lighted only by solitary candles against each pier, to wander behind the kneeling groups listening to the soaring voices of man and violin, to pause beside a certain tomb in the south transept where four mammoth figures of bronze, ungainly on close view but in a half light majestic, bear on their shoulders a bier which holds the remains of Cristóbal Colón,—such hours of loitering quicken the imagination and leave behind them memories of beauty. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Bullfights, gorgeous ecclesiastic spectacles, and dancing—these are the recreations of rich and poor alike in Seville to-day. In this city of pleasure you will see the majo, the Andalusian dandy, as he struts up and down the Sierpes—the only busy street of shops—spruce, self-conscious, casting fervent glances at the señoras accompanied by their duennas. Go into the meaner alleys and market streets, and you will see the very vagrants that Murillo painted, tattered wastrels who address one another as Señor, and hold licences to beg. ”

“ Like the criminals from the dungeon, all the fiercer passions of men were let loose, and who would have power to rule them?
If the prison of Seville had been suddenly filled almost to suffocation, it was nearly as suddenly emptied. There was nothing in it to tempt cupidity, nothing to retain the excited mob; and those who had been inmates of the gloomy abode were the most eager of the throng to rush forth into the free air. Robbers and murderers remembered that there might be palaces to plunder, and enemies to pursue. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ At eleven o'clock each night, four spacious buildings scarcely suffice for the masquerading population.
But the paddles have been battering for some hours the waters of the Guadalquivir, and we are approaching Seville, a city given to less turbulent propensities—where Pleasure assumes a more timid gait, nor cares to alarm Devotion—a partner with whom she delights, hand in hand, to tread this marble-paved Paradise. The passage between Cadiz and Seville, is composed of two hours of sea, and eight or nine of river. ”

“ A few hours later all Seville gathered to see a strange sight! There, on top of the prison tower, stood the five, brown-robed, bare-footed strangers, singing with all their might praises to the one true God! They were then taken and thrust into the darkest and deepest dungeon. But as solitary confinement was unknown then, they found that they had a congregation all ready to listen to them, and, as long as they stayed there, they never ceased to preach repentance to the prisoners. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Donna Antonia de Rivadeo, the wealthiest as well as the most beautiful heiress in Seville, was to be present at the gran foncion in the Coliseo. The lady would look on Alcala no longer as the drudging clerk, serving a foreign heretic, but as the chivalrous caballero of Andalusia, valiant as ever was knight who couched lance against the Moors in the time of Queen Isabella. The days of pinching poverty and humiliation would be ended at last; Alcala would spear his bull, and win his beautiful bride, and Teresa would receive at last the reward of her long faithful service. ”

“ It awoke a strong spirit of rivalry in all the churches of Seville. Fair devotees emptied their jewel cases in behalf of their favorite Madonnas—nothing was withheld which female pride could bestow on the object of its religious idolatry. So, for a time, all Seville was in a tumult of ambitious rivalry, and out of this was sure to come the most brilliant day of the holy week. I had not cared to go to this exhibition, but General Harrington had secured a balcony overlooking that of the Infanta and her suite. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Society in Seville takes its pleasure seriously, but the seriousness is not the dullness that attends the Englishman’s attempts at hilarity. The Spaniard is less demonstrative than the Frenchman, less mercurial than the Italian. Notwithstanding, the crowd at the races, at the battle of flowers, or watching the religious processions, or at the opera, is happy in its quiet intentness. The enthusiasm for bullfighting is perhaps the strongest visible emotion in Seville, the Alma Mater of the champions of the arena.{83} At the corrida the Sevillian allows himself to become excited. ”

“ All Spain is divided by civil war. Seville, his own Seville, is full of conspirators, awaiting the arrival of Don Enrique to declare for him; and the Black Prince, on whom he so confidently reckoned, remains absolutely deaf to his appeals.
Even were he willing to repent, he is for ever shut out from salvation in this world and the next. No church is open to him; no priest, however base, dare shrive him for his sins. He is as one accursed.
What those words were, traced by the dying hand of Blanche, no man yet knows—not his closest friends, and they are few ”