Spanish Highways and Byways

The street rabble of Ronda was the rudest and fiercest we encountered anywhere in Spain. Several times our guide wheeled suddenly to confront some gypsyish lad, creeping up behind us with stone all ready to throw, and when, at a glint of sunset through the stormy clouds, we tried to slip out unattended to the neighboring alameda, with its far-sweeping prospect of folded mountain ranges and its vertical view of gorge and rushing river, the children actually hounded us back to the hotel. Their leader was a scrofulous boy, with one cheek eaten away, who had been taught to press his face so closely upon strangers that, in fear of his open sore, they would hastily give money to keep him back. He was a merry scamp and got a world of sport out of his sickening business, laughing at the top of his voice to see himself "avoided like the sun."

Although the tempest had lulled by evening, Ronda, still inhospitable, would not let us sleep. All up and down the window-grated street sounded, from midnight to morning, a tinkling of guitars. It was, forsooth, St. Joseph's Day, and every Don José, every Doña Josefa, every little Pepe, every pretty Pepita, must be saluted by a serenade. All Andalusians are musical, taking much pleasure, moreover, in one of their own bits of philosophy, "The poorest player has his uses, for he can at least drive the rats out of the house." Rats or no, we left Ronda by the morning train.

Our carriage was crowded with several Spaniards and a "Jew-Gib," who, without saying "oxte ni moxte," assumed full charge of us and our belongings for the journey. This unceremonious but really helpful escort put every one of his fellow-travellers through a sharp catechism as to birthplace, business, destination, and the like. Our turn came first of all. "You are English?" "We speak English." "Ha!" He fell into our own vernacular. "Came about three thousand miles to Spain?" "Across the channel." He chuckled with prompt appreciation of the situation and mendaciously translated to the carriage at large, "The ladies are distinguished Londoners, on their way to visit relatives in Seville," whereat the Andalusians smiled sleepily upon us and asked permission to smoke. We consented cheerfully, as our Spanish sisters had taught us that we should. "I like it," one pallid señora had said on an earlier trip. "It makes me sick, yes, but men ought to be men."

We were journeying toward the very palace of the sun, with gray ranks of olive trees standing guard on either hand. "And posted among them, like white doves, could be seen now and again a few mills where the bitter olive is wont to pour its juice." Orange plantations and hedges of the bluish aloe, fig trees, palms, and all manner of strange, tropical flowers gladdened our approach to Seville. And when, at last, we saw from afar the world-praised Giralda, the Moorish bell-tower of the cathedral, soaring pink into a purple sky, we felt as if we were really arrived in fairyland.

Our friendly Gib put his tall figure between us and the howling press of swarthy porters and cab-drivers, scolded, expostulated, threatened, picked out his men, beat down their prices, called up a policeman to witness the bargain and take the number of our cab, raised his hat, and vanished into grateful memory.

Six weeks in Seville! And six weeks in a Seville home, where evening after evening the gay youth of Andalusia laughed and sang, danced and rattled the castanets, and cast about our wondering Western souls strange witcheries from which we shall never more go free. It was all as Oriental as a dream. The Sultana of the South lifted her gleaming coronet of domes and pinnacles above such a kingdom of idle, delicious mirth as has permanently unfitted us for considering it important to do our duty. Our hereditary bits of Plymouth Rock were melted up in that fervent heat. Right or wrong? "Where there is music, there can be no harm." True or false?

"In this world, my masters,There's neither truth nor lie,But all things take the colorOf the glass before the eye."

Only six weeks, and yet we shall ever go homesick for Seville, for her palm trees and orange gardens, her narrow streets like lanes of shadow, her tiled and statued patios, with caged birds singing answer to the ripple of the fountain, the musical midnight cry of her serenos, "her black and burning eyes like beacons in the dark," her sighing serenaders, "lyrical mosquitoes," outside the grated window or beneath the balcony, her fragrances of rose and jessamine, her poetic sense of values. A homeless Andalusian, dinnerless and in rags, strums on his guitar, a necessity which he would not dream of selling for such a mere luxury as bread, and is happy. There is always sun to sleep in. There are always piquant faces and gliding forms to gaze after. What more does a mortal want? Exquisite Seville! No wonder that her exiled sons still sing, after years of "comfortable living" in foreign cities: —

"When I am missing, hunt me downIn Andalusia's purple light,Where all the beauties are so brown,And all the wits so bright."

Yet the old Arabian enchantment casts a glamour which the Anglo-Saxon vision dimly recognizes as such and faintly strives against. To the clear survey all is not charm. Grace, mirth, and music, on the one hand, are offset by ignorance, suffering, and vice on the other. Many evil things were told us, and some ugly things we saw, but to look on Andalusia is to love her, even while realizing that to live with her would put that love to a very stringent test.

The lordly Guadalquivír, for instance, so fair to see from the picture-making summit of the Giralda, as he lingers through his blooming Paradise, forgetful of the ocean, is not altogether goodly.

"Ay, ay, the black and stinging flies he breedsTo plague the decent body of mankind!"

The Andalusian leisure was a perpetual delight to us. A typical Seville shop reaches far along the street front, with many open doors, and a counter running the full length. Here ladies sit in pairs and groups, never singly, to cheapen fans and mantillas, while the smiling salesmen, cigarette in hand, shrug and gesticulate and give back banter for banter as gayly as if it were all a holiday frolic. Scraps of the graceful bargaining would float to our ears.

"Is the quality good?"

"As good as God's blessing."

Among the tempting wares of Seville are Albacete knives, with gorgeous handles of inlaid ebony, tortoise, or ivory. The peasant women of Andalusia so resent the charge of carrying these knives in their garters that the Seville gamin dodges offence by asking them in an unnecessarily loud voice if they carry garters in their knives. The irascible dames do not stand upon fine points of rhetoric, however, and when the small boy has delivered his shot, he does well to take to his heels. We once saw one of these sturdy women, while a line of soldiers, bristling with steel, was holding a street, seize a gallant son of Mars by the shoulder and swing him, amid the laughter of his comrades, out of her path as if he were a cabbage. Nobody knew how to stop her, and she trudged serenely on, her broad back to those helpless bayonets, down the forbidden way.

The beggars of Seville are gentler than those of Ronda and Granada, but hardly less numerous. Mendicant figures are thick as Guadalquivír mosquitoes in my memory of Andalusia. Some of those pitiful children will haunt me till I die. There was a forlorn urchin, with filmy, frightful eyes, to be seen in all weathers crouching on one side of the road leading up to the Alhambra, so dull and dreary a little fellow that he hardly grasped the coppers when they were thrust into his weakly groping hands, and hardly stayed his monotonous formula of entreaty for his other monotonous formula of thanks. There was an idiot child in Seville – a mere lump of deformity – that would rush out upon the startled stranger with an inarticulate, fierce little yell, clutching at charity with a tiny, twisted claw. He seemed the very incarnation of childish woe and wrong. Almost every hand dived into pocket for him, and he was probably worth far more to his proprietors than his rival on the street, a crafty little girl, with the most lustrous eyes that painter ever dreamed. They were not blue nor gray, but a living light in which both those colors had been melted.

The economists, who say so firmly that "nothing should ever be given to mendicant children," can hardly have had the experience of seeing Murillo's own cherubs, their wings hidden under the dirt, fluttering about the car windows at Andalusian stations. I have it still on my conscience that I occasionally gave away my comrade's share of our luncheon as well as my own. She was too young and too polite to reproach me, but too hungry to be comforted by the assurance that I reproached myself. Sometimes a foreign traveller, very sure of his Spanish, would attempt remonstrance with these small nuisances. I remember one kindly Teuton in particular. Commerce had claimed him for its own, but the predestined German professor shone out of his mild blue eyes. A ragamuffin had mounted the car steps to beg at the window, and Mein Herr delivered him such a lecture that the youngster clung to his perch, fascinated with astonishment at the novel doctrine, until the train was in alarmingly swift motion.

"This is a very bad habit of thine. I told thee so a month ago."

"Me, sir?"

"Thee, boy. When I passed over this road last, thou wert begging at the windows, to my shame if not to thine. Tut, tut! Go thy ways. Look for work, work, work."

"Work, sir?"

"Work, boy. And when thou hast found it, love it, and do it with a will. Learn to read and write. Wash thy face and change thy customs, and when thou art richer than I, then will I give thee a peseta."

Mendicancy is bred of ignorance, and in the seventeen and a half millions that make up the population of Spain, more than twelve millions do not read nor write.

Seville sight-seeing is no brief matter. You must climb the Giralda, walk in the parks, view the yellowed fragments of the ancient city wall, visit the tobacco factory, shop in Las Sierpes, buy pottery in Triana, see the gypsy dances in the cafés, attend the Thursday rag-fair, do reverence to the Columbus manuscripts in the Biblioteca Columbina, look up the haunts of Don Juan, Figaro, Pedro the Cruel, and explore the curious "House of Pilate," which, tradition says, was built by a pilgrim noble after the Jerusalem pattern. You must lose your heart to the Alcázar, the Alhambra of Seville, a storied palace embowered in fountain-freshened gardens of palm and magnolia, oranges and cypresses, rose and myrtle, with shadowy arcades leading to marble baths and arabesqued pavilions. You must follow Murillo from gallery to gallery, from church to church, above all, from the Hospital de la Caridad, where hang six of his greatest compositions, to the Museo Provincial, where over a score of the Master's sacred works, lovely Virgins, longing saints, deep-eyed Christ-Childs, rain their sweet influence. And first, last, and always, there is the cathedral. We had been stunned at Burgos, blind to all save the Moorish features of Cordova, almost untouched by the cold splendors of Granada, but to Seville, as later to Toledo, we surrendered utterly. Beauty, mystery, sublimity – these are Seville cathedral. Five centuries have gone to the rearing and enriching of those solemn aisles and awful choir. The colossal structure, second in size only to St. Peter's, is a majesty before which Luther himself might well have trembled. Within a Spanish cathedral one begins to understand the mighty hold of Roman Catholicism on Spain. "I love," says Alarcón, whose jest and earnest are as closely twined as fibres of the same heart, "the clouds of incense which rise to the cupola of the Catholic temple, amid the harmonies of the holy organ. (For this I am not a Protestant.)" And elsewhere, writing of his childhood, he speaks of receiving in the cathedral of Guadix all his first impressions of artistic beauty, – beauty of architecture, music, painting, processional splendors, tissue of gold and silver, cunning embroideries and jewel-work, his first sense, in short, of poetry. And all these impressions were inextricably blent with his first yearnings of holy aspiration, his first passion of mystical devotion. But not even Seville cathedral could win over our full sympathy. Too heavy were the faces of the priests who "sang the gori gori," too selfish that wigged and jointed doll, "Our Lady of Kings," with her sixty gorgeous mantles, a few of which would have clothed all the poor of Andalusia. Who shall draw the line between faith and superstition?

But let not the tourist suppose he can escape his tyrant Baedeker even at the top of the Giralda. There are excursions that must be taken to points of interest outside the city. Most imperative of all is the trip to the ruined Roman amphitheatre of Italica, guarded by the mighty names of Scipio Africanus, Trajan, Hadrian, and Theodosius. Off we start, a dozen strong, in a great, open carriage, all the women-folk with fans and veils and with flowers in the hair. We rattle past the cathedral, over the bridge to Triana and out into the sweet-breathed country, passing many a picturesque group on the road, – these two peasants, for example, with their yellow-handled knives thrust into scarlet girdles, tossing dice under a fig tree. Our meditations among the crumbling blocks of that savage play-house would perhaps interest the reader less than our luncheon. Such Andalusian dainties as we swallowed, – cold soups like melted salads, home-made fig marmalade, cinnamon pastes of which the gypsies know the secret, and sugared chestnuts overflowed by a marvellous syrup wherein could be detected flavors of lemon peel, orange peel, and a medley of spices! In that scene of ancient bloodshed, of the lion's wrath and the martyr's anguish, we ate, drank, and were merry, but our banquet tasted of ghosts.

VI

PASSION WEEK IN SEVILLE

"All that was gracious was bestowed by the Virgin, and she was the giver of all that human creatures could ask for. God frowned, while she smiled; God chastised, but she forgave; this last notion was by no means a strange one. It is accepted with almost absolute faith among the laboring classes of the rural parts of Spain." – Galdós: Marianela.

Holy week throngs Seville to overflowing. The devout no longer scourge themselves in public, sprinkling the pavements with their blood, but Spaniards flock from all Andalusia, from Madrid, and even from the northern provinces to the sunny city on the storied Guadalquivír. Hotel charges run from twelve dollars a day up to incredible figures; a mere bed in a lodging house costs its three dollars, four dollars, or five dollars a night, and fortunate are those who enjoy the hospitality of a private home.

The ceremonies opened Sunday morning with the procession of palms. We had been told by our cathedral guide the day before that this procession would take place at seven or half-past seven at the latest, and had asked the maid to call us at half-past six. As the chiming bells should have warned us, her knock was an hour tardy, but when, breakfastless and eager, we reached the cathedral a few minutes after eight, there was as yet no sign of a procession. Mass was being said in the Sagrario and in several chapels, and the morning light poured in through the rich-colored windows upon groups of kneeling figures before every shrine. The women wore black mantillas, for, although this most graceful of headdresses is losing credit on the fashionable promenades of Seville, and is almost never seen in open carriages, Holy Week demands it of all the faithful.

We asked a white-robed young chorister when the procession would form. He answered with encouraging precision, "In twenty minutes." We roamed about for a half hour or more through those majestic spaces, beneath those soaring arches, aspiration wrought in stone, until by chance in that shifting multitude we came face to face with our guide of the day before. We asked how soon the procession would form. He said, "In twenty minutes," and we went home for coffee.

When we returned the procession was streaming out of the cathedral into the street of the Gran Capitán. It was simple and all the more attractive for that simplicity. The colors of standards and vestments were mainly purple and gold, and the long, yellow fronds of palm, blown by the fresh breeze from the river, gleamed brighter than the sheen of candle or of mitre. Turning the corner, the procession, now facing the beautiful Giralda, entered by the ample Door of Pardon, still incrusted with its Arabic decorations, into the Court of Oranges, whose ripe fruit gave new touches of gold to the picture.

Venders of palm were stationed in every sheltered corner, selling their wares, more than twice the height of a man, at fifteen cents the frond, while boys, darting about with armfuls of olive, were glad to take a cent the branch, and not have the best of their leafy store filched from them by sly old women, more intent, like the rest of us, on getting a blessing than deserving it.

Through the multitude the glittering palms and purple robes swept on back into the cathedral, where the silent and remote archbishop, an image of gold in his splendid apparel, shed his benediction not only over the proud palms, but over every spray of "little gray leaves," like those of Gethsemane. These blessed palms, sprinkled with holy water and wafting strange fragrances of incense, would be carried home and kept in myriad balconies all the year through, to protect the house from "the all-dreaded thunder-stone."

That Sunday afternoon at five o'clock we were leaning out expectantly from our host's best balcony. With the constant Spanish courtesy, he had betaken himself, with the children of the household, to a less commanding balcony below, and his eldest son had considerately withdrawn, accompanied by his fiancée, to a mere speck of a balcony above. This left a dozen of us, Spanish, English, and American, to enjoy as good a view as the city afforded of the processional tableaux.

The oblong Plaza de la Constitución, the scene in days gone by of many a tournament, auto de fe, and bull-fight, is bounded on one side by the ornate Renaissance façade of the city hall, and on the other, in part, by the plain front of the court-house, before which criminals used to be done to death. Private dwellings, with their tiers of balconies, one of which had fallen to our happy lot, cross the wider end of the plaza, while the other opens into the brilliant street of Las Sierpes, too narrow for carriages, but boasting the gayest shop windows and merriest cafés of all the town.

The plaza, always animated, fairly rippled with excitement this Palm Sunday afternoon. The grand stand, erected in front of the city hall, was filled, although many of the camp-chairs and benches placed in thick-set rows on the farther side of the line of march were not yet rented. Thursday and Friday are the days that draw the multitudes. The crowd was bright with uniforms, most conspicuous being the spruce white-edged, three-cornered hats and dark-blue, red-faced coats of the civil guard. Venders of peanuts, peanut candy, macaroons, caramels, and all manner of dulces swung their baskets from one sweet-toothed Spaniard to another, while wisely the water-seller went in their wake, with the artistic yellow jar over his shoulder. One young pedler was doing a flourishing business in crabs, the customers receiving these delicacies in outstretched pocket handkerchiefs.

Busy as our eyes were kept, we were able to lend ear to the explanations of our Spanish friends, who told us that the church dignitaries, after the procession of palms, took no official part in the shows of Passion Week, although many of the clergy belonged, as individuals, to the religious brotherhoods concerned. The church reserves its street displays for Corpus Christi. These brotherhoods, societies of ancient origin, and connected with some church or chapel, own dramatic properties often of great intrinsic value and considerable antiquity.

For days before Holy Week one may see the members busy in the churches at the task of arranging groups of sacred figures, vested as richly as possible in garments of silk and velvet, with ornaments of jewels and gold, on platforms so heavy that twenty-five men, at the least, are needed to carry each. These litters are escorted through the principal streets and squares of the city by their respective societies, each brotherhood having its distinctive dress. It is customary for every cofradia to present two pageants – the first in honor of Christ; the second, and more important, in honor of Mary, to whom chivalrous Spain has always rendered supreme homage; but sometimes the two tableaux are combined into one.

After long watching and waiting we saw, far down Las Sierpes, the coming of the first procession. A line of police marched in advance to clear the road. Then appeared a loosely ordered company of fantastic figures in blue capes and blue peaked caps, absurdly high and reaching down to the shoulder, with holes cut for the eyes. From beneath the capes flowed white frocks, and the gloves and sandals were white. These "Nazarenes," who looked like a survival of the Carnival, conducted in silence a litter upon which was erected an image of the crucified Christ, with face uplifted as if in prayer.

The pageant halted before the doors of the city hall to greet the Alcalde, who rose from his red velvet chair and bared his head. Men uncovered, and people stood all along the route, but acclamations were reserved for Our Lady of the Star. Her attendant troop was dressed like the preceding, with a star embroidered in white on the shoulder of the blue tunic. Her litter was ablaze with candles and laden with flowers; her outsweeping train was upborne by four little pages, and a brass band followed her with unceasing music.

Sunset colors were in the sky before the procession of the second brotherhood arrived. At last, far down the Sierpes, the dusk was dotted with the gleam of many tapers, and above these, most impressive in the dim distance, glimmered a white figure high upon the cross. As the pageant drew near, waves of incense rolled out upon the air. The crash of trumpets and deep boom of drums announced that Our Lady of the Angels was advancing upon the same platform with her Son, for music in these Passion Week processions is always a sign of the presence of the Virgin. The brothers of this retinue wore black, save that their peaked caps were purple.

As twilight gathered, a company of strange dark shapes bore past in solemn hush the Most Holy Christ of the Waters. The Saviour hung upon the cross, an angel receiving in a golden cup the blood from his wounded side. Then her great banner of white and blue heralded the approach of Our Lady of the Utter Grief, who passed with her accustomed pomp of lights and music, holding to her eyes a handkerchief said to be of the most exquisite lace.

Night had fallen when, at eight o'clock, a maid left on vigil called us all from the dinner table to see the beautiful procession of white-robed figures conducting Our Father Jesus of the Silence. The figure of Christ, resplendent in gold and purple, stood before Herod, whose mail-clad soldiers guarded the prisoner. The Roman costumes were so well copied, and all the postures and groupings so startlingly natural, that vivas went up all along the crowded square. As the banner of the Virgin saluted the Alcalde, her attendants let fall their long white trains, which swept out quite six yards behind, reaching from one brother to the next and yielding a wonderfully fine effect in the slow march. Our Lady of the Bitterness, toward whom leaned the tender look of St. John, was robed in superb brocade, so precious that her train, which stood stiffly out behind, was guarded by a soldier with drawn sword.

This closed the ceremonies of Palm Sunday, and the throng, catching one from another the blithe, sweet Andalusian melodies, went singing softly through the darkness on their various ways.

After Palm Sunday a secular quiet fell upon Seville, not broken until Wednesday. At five o'clock this March afternoon it was still so hot that few people were rash enough to move about without the shelter of parasols. Sevillian priests, sombre-robed as they were, sauntered cheerily across the plaza under sunshades of the gayest hues, orange, green, azure, red, and usually all at once, but the shamefaced Englishmen flapped up broad umbrellas of an uncompromising black. There was a breezy flutter of fans on the grand stand, the water-sellers had to fill their jars again and again, and the multitude of smokers, puffing at their paper cigarettes to cool themselves, really brought on a premature twilight.