The Barber of Seville

“ In Spain and Italy the barber is often the one brilliant man in his town; his shop is the place where gossip circulates, and where many a pretty intrigue is contrived.
Men of culture are often the friends of barbers. Buffon trusted to his barber for all the news of Montbard. Moliere spent many long and pleasant hours with the barber of Pezenas. Figaro, the famous barber of Seville, was one of the most perfect prototypes of his trade. Jasmin was of the same calling as Gil Bias, inspired with the same spirit, and full of the same talent. ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The successors of the sainted king made their home in the Alcazar, and adapted themselves to an environment created by their traditional foes. The personality which looms largest in the history of the city is that of Don Pedro I., surnamed the Cruel, or, by his few admirers, ‘the Justiciary.’ What Harun-al-Rashid is in the story of Bagdad is this ferocious monarch in the annals of Seville. Countless are the tales, the ballads, and traditions of which he is the subject. ”

“ 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 ”

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[Pg 66]
"Are these bulls bound for the circus?" inquired the Englishman with interest.
The driver nodded his head. "Ay, not one of them will be alive this evening," observed the peasant. "The poor brutes would not go on so proudly towards Seville if they knew what is before them."
"Danger awaits others besides them," muttered Lucius Lepine.
"Ay, señor," observed the herdsman, misunderstanding the drift of the words; "other folk may go as blindfold as these bulls to their death, strong and gay in the morning, dragged in the dust before night. ”

“ Why they patronize black (which is a conductor of heat) in this hot climate I cannot for the life of me make out. Certainly it is not because of sympathies solemn or lugubrious; for the character of these lissom damsels of Seville is the reverse of gloomy. There is no taint of Inquisitorial days in their souls. They are grave only externally, and all that is coquettish, winning, and womanly within. If they hang out the undertaker's emblems it can only be through love of the rule of contraries, for they are arch in every step and glance, and bring sunshine with them into shady places. ”

“ At a short distance in front of the procession appeared a group of seven gigantic figures, male and female, whose dresses, contrived by the most skilful tailors and milliners of the town, regulated the fashion at Seville for the ensuing season. A strong man being concealed under each of the giants and giantesses, the gaping multitude were amused at certain intervals with a very clumsy dance, performed by the figures, to the sound of the pipe and tabor. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Certainly this picture is more Italian than Spanish.
As the years passed, and art in Seville grew older, many painters trod in the steps worn by these others. It is not possible, nor is it necessary, to wait to look at their pictures; too often they exaggerate the faults of the masters they copied, and by a slavish repetition of accepted ideas—the inevitable fault of the age—they weakened still further native art. ”

“ It was night, and the studio of Murillo, the most celebrated painter in Seville, was now as silent as the grave. A single lamp burned upon a marble table, and a young mulatto boy, whose eyes sparkled like diamonds, leaned against an easel. Immovable and still, he was so deeply absorbed in his meditations that the door of the studio was opened by one who several times called him by name, and who, on receiving no answer, approached and touched him. Sebastian raised his eyes, which rested on a tall and handsome negro. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He walked leisurely, and whensoever he happened to move any thing faster his bones rattled like a pair of snappers. His voice was weak and hollow; his beard bushy and long, for he never trimmed to save charges, though he pretended it was so odious to him to feel the barber’s hands all over his face that he would rather die than endure it. One of the boys cut his hair. In fair weather he wore a thread-bare cap, an inch thick in grease and dirt, made of a thing that was once cloth, and lined in scurf and dandruff. His cassock, some said, was miraculous, for no man knew what colour it was of ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ He smokes continually, thinks there is no place like Seville, and that he is the prettiest fellow in Seville. His favourite word is ‘Carajo!’ The maja or she-simpleton, wears a fan and mantilla, exhibits a swimming and affected gait, thinks that there’s no place like Seville, that she is the flower of Seville—Carai! ”

“ I wonder now what he'll receive for sticking his bull!"
"Nothing but honour," said an onion-merchant who was one of the guests. "Folk say that there is some fair donna of Seville mixed up with the business."
"Then Don Alcala de Aguilera is a greater idiot than I took him for!" exclaimed the ironware manufacturer. "I can imagine a man's selling his blood to support himself and his family; every soldier [Pg 48] does that, and if he get a cannon-ball instead of promotion, one can only say that the poor fellow has had the worst of the bargain. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Groups of people were passing to the different churches, but these groups consisted almost entirely of priests or women; by far the larger portion of the male population of Seville were drawn [Pg 63] towards a centre of stronger attraction,—that centre was, as Lucius well knew, the Plaza de Toros. Thither, in an hour or two, gay carriages would be bearing their smiling occupants to gaze on scenes at which the bravest Briton might shudder. Already little streams of people were flowing forth from winding street and narrow lane, clad in holiday attire, eager to secure good places. ”

“ It is something of this that we realise as we see the thirty or forty of his pictures that are in Seville, gathered together for the most part in the Museo de la Merced, where the light is so much better than it is in the Cathedral and in the churches, though there certainly his pictures seem to be more fittingly at home. Each picture is so true to life, and yet without life.{129} Look at his Saints, all are portraits, faces caught in a mirror that seems to sum up the old world of Spain. Contrast these Saints with the Saints of Murillo. ”

“ If you read Hans Sloane on the remains he found round about the old city of Seville, your sense of romance is satisfied, but the cold facts taken from the archives of Seville in Spain speak of a little handful of poor people struggling with an exuberant nature. Here, as I write, there comes to me the smell of very poor tobacco, only fragrant in the open air, and looking up I see a negro woman in leisurely fashion digging up the weeds among the grass of what will, some day I hope, be a lawn under the coconut palms. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Men who had preserved no sense of honour, no scruple of conscience, men who might have robbed a church or murdered a brother, demeaned themselves as though they preserved some self-respect still. It is a peculiarity of the Spanish race that, to a certain extent, even the poorest appear to be gentlemen born. The beggar has his dignity; the picker of pockets his grace. Alcala had to encounter no insolent banter, no brutal jests, when he found himself amongst the scum of Spanish society in the common prison of Seville. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”