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Gautier Théophile
Wanderings in Spain

CHAPTER XIII
SEVILLE

Seville – The Cristina – The Torre del Oro – Italica – The Cathedral – The Giralda – El Polbo Sevillano – The Caridad and Don Juan de Marana

There is a Spanish proverb, very frequently quoted, on Seville:

 
"Quien no ha visto a Sevilla
No ha visto a maravilla."
 

We confess, in all humility, that this proverb would strike us as more correct if applied to Toledo or Granada rather than to Seville, where we saw nothing particularly marvellous, unless it was the Cathedral.

Seville is situated on the banks of the Guadalquiver, in a large plain, whence it derives its name of Hispalis, which, in Carthagenian, means a flat piece of ground, if we may believe Arias Montano and Samuel Bockhart. It is a vast, straggling town, of very recent date, gay, smiling, and animated, and must really appear a charming place to Spaniards. It would be impossible to find a more striking contrast to Cordova. The town of Cordova is dead; it is an ossuary, a catacomb in the open air, on which Neglect is slowly sprinkling its white dust; the few inhabitants whom you meet at the corners of its narrow streets look like apparitions which have mistaken the hour. Seville, on the contrary, is full of all the petulance and busy hum of life; the sound of gaiety floats over her at every instant of the day; she hardly allows herself time to take her siesta. She cares little for yesterday, and still less for to-morrow; she exists altogether for the present. Memory and Hope are the consolation of those who are unhappy, and Sevilla is happy. She enjoys herself, while her sister, Cordova, wrapt in silence and solitude, appears to be dreaming mournfully of Abderama; of the great captain and all his departed glories, brilliant meteors in the nights of the Past, while all she now possesses are ashes.

To the great disappointment of travellers and antiquaries, whitewash 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; for in warm countries the shadows are blue instead of being grey, so that the objects appear to be lighted up on one side by the moon, and on the other by the sun; the absence, however, of all sombre tints produces a general appearance of life and gaiety. Doorways closed with iron gates allow you to look through and see the patios ornamented with columns, mosaic pavement, fountains, flower-pots, shrubs, and pictures. As regards the external architecture, it offers no particularly remarkable feature; the houses are rarely more than two or three stories high, and you hardly meet with a dozen façades that are interesting in an artistic point of view. The streets are paved, like those of all Spanish towns, with small pebbles, but, on each side, there is a kind of pavement consisting of tolerably large flat stones on which the crowd walks in single file. If a man and woman meet, the man always makes way for the woman with that exquisite politeness which is natural to Spaniards, even of the very lowest classes. The women of Seville quite deserve the reputation for beauty which they enjoy; they are almost all alike, as is always the case in pure races of a well-defined type; their long eyes, opening to the temples, and fringed with long brown lashes, produce an effect of black and white which is unknown in France. When a woman or young girl passes you, she slowly drops her eyelids, and then suddenly opens them again, shoots at you a look so searching that you are perfectly unable to bear it, rolls the pupil of her eye, and then again drops the lashes over them. The Bayadere, Amany, when dancing the Pas des Colombes, was the only person who could convey the slightest notion of the murderous glances which the East has bequeathed to Spain; we have no terms to express this play of the eyes; the word ojear is wanting in our vocabulary. These glances, which are so full of vivid, sudden brilliancy, and which almost embarrass strangers, have, however, no particular signification, and are cast upon the first object that presents itself; a young Andalusian girl will look with the same passionate expression at a cart passing along, a dog running after its tail, or a group of children playing at bullfights. The eyes of the people of the north are dull and meaningless in comparison; the sun has never left its reflection in them. Their canine teeth are very pointed, and, as well as all the rest, rival in brilliancy those of a young Newfoundland dog, and impart to the smile of the young women of Seville an Arabic savage expression, which is extremely original. Their forehead is high, round, and polished; their nose is sharp and slightly inclining to the aquiline. Unfortunately, their chin sometimes terminates by a too sudden curve of the divine oval of the upper part of their face. Their shoulders and arms are somewhat thin; this is the only imperfection which the most fastidious artist could find in the women of Seville. The delicacy of their articulation, and the smallness of their hands and feet, are all that can be desired. Without any sort of poetical exaggeration, there are women in Seville whose feet an infant might hold in its hand. The Andalusian beauties are very proud of this, and wear shoes to correspond. There is no very great difference between these shoes and the slippers worn by the Chinese women.

 
"Con primor se calza el pié
Digno de regio tapiz."
 

is a compliment as common in their songs as the tint of the rose or the lily is in ours.

The said shoes, which are generally of satin, hardly cover their toes, and appear to have no heels, the latter being covered with a small piece of ribbon, of the same colour as the stocking. A little French girl, seven or eight years old, could not put on the shoe of an Andalusian of twenty. Accordingly, there is no end to their jokes about the feet and shoes of the ladies of the north. "A boat with six rowers, to row about in the Guadalquiver, was made out of the ball shoe of a German lady." "The wooden stirrups of the picadores might do for shoes for an English beauty," – and a thousand other andulazades of the same kind. I defended, as well as I could, the feet of our fair Parisians, but I only met with incredulous listeners. Unfortunately, the women of Seville have only remained Spanish as far as the head and feet, the mantilla and the shoe, are concerned; the coloured gowns à la Française are beginning to obtain the superiority over the national robe. The men are dressed like plates of fashions. There are some, however, who wear small white dimity jackets, trousers to correspond, a red sash, and Andalusian hat; but this is rare, and, besides, the costume is not very picturesque.

The favourite walks are the Alameda del Duque, where the audience stroll during the time between the acts at the theatre, which is close at hand: and also, more especially, the Cristina. It is a most charming thing to see, between seven and eight o'clock in the evening, all the beauties of Seville, in little groups of three or four, parading up and down here, and showing themselves off to the best advantage, accompanied by their lovers, present or future. They have something peculiarly nimble, active, and brisk about them, and prance along, rather than walk. The celerity with which the fan is opened and shut in their hands, the searching power of their glance, the assurance of their bearing, and the undulating suppleness of their figure, give them a physiognomy which is especially their own. There may be women in England, France, and Italy, of a more perfect and regular style of beauty, but there are assuredly none who are prettier or more piquant. They possess in a high degree the quality called by Spaniards la sal, and which is some thing that it is difficult to explain to Frenchmen. It is a mixture of nonchalance, vivacity, bold repartees, and infantine manners; a grace, a pungency, a ragoût, as painters express it, which may be found without beauty, and which is frequently preferred to it. Thus, a person says to a woman in Spain, "How salt, salada, you are!" and there is no other compliment like that one.

The Cristina is a superb promenade, on the banks of the Guadalquiver, with a saloon paved with large stone flags, and surrounded by an immense white marble sofa with an iron back. It is shaded by Eastern plane-trees, and has a labyrinth, a Chinese pavilion, and plantations of all kinds of northern trees, such as ashes, cypresses, poplars, and willows, of which the Andalusians are as proud as the Parisians would be of aloe-trees and palms.

At the approaches to the Cristina, pieces of rope, dipped in brimstone, and rolled round posts, are always kept burning in order that the smokers may light their cigars, and not be bored by boys with coals, pursuing them with the cry of Fuego; an annoyance which renders the Prado of Madrid insupportable.

But delightful as this promenade was, I preferred the banks of the river itself, where the prospect was always animated and constantly changing. In the middle of the stream, where the water was deepest, were anchored merchant schooners and brigs, their tapering masts and airy rigging standing out in clear black lines from the light background of the sky. In all directions, smaller craft were seen crossing and recrossing each other. Sometimes a boat would bear down the stream a number of young men and women, playing the guitar and singing coplas, whose rhymes were dispersed by the wanton wind, while the promenaders applauded from the banks. The view was beautifully terminated, on this side, by the Torre del Oro, a kind of octagon tower with three receding stories, and Moorish battlements: it laves its base in the waves of the Guadalquiver, near the landing-place, and shoots up into the blue air from the midst of a forest of masts and cordage. This tower, which the learned pretend to have been constructed by the Romans, was formerly connected with the Alcazar by means of walls, which have been pulled down to make room for the Cristina, and, in the time of the Moors, supported one end of the iron chain which defended the passage of the river, while the other end was fastened to stone piers on the opposite side. It is said to derive its name of Torre del Oro from the fact of the gold which was brought in the galleons from America having been kept there.

We used to go and walk here every evening, looking at the sun as it set behind the Triana suburbs, which are on the other side of the stream. A most noble-looking palm raised in the air its leafy disk, as if to salute the sinking luminary. I was always exceedingly fond of palms, and I can never see one without feeling transported into a patriarchal and poetical world, in the midst of the fairy scenes of the East, and the magnificent pictures of the Bible.

As if to bring us back to a feeling of reality, one evening, as we were returning to the Calle de la Sierpe, where our host, Don Cæsar Bustamente, whose wife had the most beautiful eyes and the longest hair in the world, resided, we were accosted by some fellows very well dressed, with eye-glasses and watch-chains, who asked us to come and rest ourselves and take some refreshment at the house of some persons muy finas, muy decentes, who had deputed them to invite us. These worthy individuals seemed, at first, very much struck at our refusing, and, imagining that we had not understood them, entered more explicitly into details; but, seeing that they were merely losing their time, they contented themselves with offering us cigarettes and Murillos, – for, you must know, Murillo is the pride and also the curse of Seville. You hear nothing but this one name. The smallest tradesman, the most insignificant abbé, possesses, at least, three hundred specimens of Murillo in his best days. What is that daub there? It is a Murillo, vapoury style. And that one. A Murillo, warm style. And the third, yonder? A Murillo, cold style. Like Raphael, Murillo has three styles; a fact which allows of all kinds of pictures being attributed to him, and gives a most delicious scope to amateurs desirous of forming collections. At the corner of every street, you run against the angle of a picture-frame: it is a Murillo worth thirty francs which some Englishman always buys for thirty thousand. "Look, Señor Caballero, what drawing! what colouring! It is the very perla, the perlita of pictures!" How many pearls, not worth the frames and the ornaments, were shown to me! How many originals that were not even copies! This does not, however, prevent Murillo from being one of the first painters in Spain, and in the whole world. But we have wandered rather far from the banks of the Guadalquiver; let us return to them.

A bridge of boats unites the two banks, and connects the suburbs with the town. You cross it in order to visit, near Santi-Pouce, the remains of Italica, the birthplace of the poet Silius Italicus, and the emperors Trajan, Adrian, and Theodosius: there is a ruined circus, whose form is still tolerably distinct. The cellars where the wild beasts were confined, the dressing-rooms of the gladiators, as well as the lobbies and rows of benches, can be made out with the greatest facility. The whole is built of cement, with flint-stones embedded in it. The stone coating has probably been torn away to serve in more modern edifices, for Italica has long been the quarry of Seville. A few chambers have been cleared out, and afford a shelter during the great heat of the day to herds of blue pigs, who run grunting between the visitors' legs, and are now the only inhabitants of the old Roman city. The most perfect and most interesting vestige of all this splendour that has for ever disappeared, is a large mosaic, which has been surrounded by walls, and represents Muses and Nereids. When it is revived with water, its colours are still very brilliant, although the most valuable stones have been torn out from motives of cupidity. Among the rubbish, some fragments of very tolerable statues have likewise been found, and there is no doubt that skilfully directed excavations would lead to important discoveries. Italica is situated about a league and a half from Seville, and the excursion there and back may be easily made with a calessin in an afternoon, unless you are a furious antiquary, and wish to examine, one by one, all the old stones suspected of an inscription.

The Puerta de Triana, also, has pretensions to Roman origin, and derives its name from the emperor Trajan. Its appearance is very stately; it is of the Doric order, with coupled columns, and is ornamented with the royal arms and surmounted by pyramids. It has its own alcade, and serves as a prison for gentlemen.

The Puertas del Carbon and del Aceite are worthy of a visit. On the Puerta de Jeres is the following inscription:

 
Hercules me edifico,
Julio Cesar me coesco,
De Muros y torres altas
El rey santo me gano
Con Garci Perez de Vargas.
 

Seville is surrounded by a continuous line of embattlemented walls, flanked at intervals by large towers, many of which are at present in ruins, and also by ditches, almost entirely choked up. These walls, which would not afford the least protection against modern artillery, produce, with their denticulated Arabic embrasures, a very picturesque effect. They are said to have been begun, like all other walls and camps that ever existed, by Julius Cæsar.

In an open square, near the Puerta de Triana, I beheld rather a singular sight, consisting of a family of gipsies encamped in the open air, and composing a group that would have sent Callop into ecstasies. Three stakes, in the form of a triangle, made a kind of rustic hook, which supported over a large fire, scattered by the wind into tongues of flame and spirals of smoke, a saucepan full of strange and suspicious ingredients, like those which Goya knows so well how to cast into the caldrons of the witches of Barahona. By this apology for a fireplace was seated a bronzed, copper-coloured gitana, with a curved profile, naked to her waist, – a fact which proved her to be completely devoid of anything like coquetry: her long, black hair fell, like a quantity of brushwood, down her thin, yellow back, and over her bistre forehead. Through the dishevelled locks sparkled a pair of those large oriental eyes, of mother-of-pearl and jet, which are so mysterious and contemplative that they elevate into poetry the most degraded and brutal physiognomy. Around her sprawled two or three screeching children, as black as mulattoes, with large bellies and shrunk limbs, which made them look more like quadrumans than bipeds. I do not think that little Hottentots could be more hideous or more dirty. This state of nakedness is nothing uncommon, and shocks nobody. You often meet beggars, whose only covering consists of a piece of old counterpane, or a fragment of very equivocal drawers; I have seen, wandering about the public squares of Granada and Malaga, young rascals of twelve or fourteen years of age, with less clothing on them than Adam had when he left Paradise. The Triana suburbs are particularly frequented by individuals in this costume, for they contain a great number of gitanos, whose opinions with regard to a free and easy style of dress are very advanced; the women pass their time frying different articles of food in the open air, and the men employ themselves in smuggling, clipping mules, horse-jobbing, and the like, when they are doing nothing worse.

The Cristina, the Alameda del Duque, Italica, and the Moorish Alcazar, are, no doubt, all very curious; but the true marvel of Seville is its Cathedral, which is a surprising edifice, even when compared to the Cathedrals of Burgos and Toledo, and the Mosque at Cordova. The chapter who ordered it to be erected, summed up their plans in this one phrase: "Let us raise a monument which shall cause Posterity to think we must have been mad." This was, at any rate, a good, broad, sensible way of settling matters, and the consequence was, that the artists, having full scope for the exertion of their talents, worked wonders, while the canons, in order to accelerate the completion of the edifice, gave up all their incomes, only reserving what was barely sufficient to enable them to live. O thrice-sainted canons! may you slumber softly under the shade of your sepulchral flags near your beloved Cathedral!

The most extravagant and most monstrously prodigious Hindoo pagodas are not to be mentioned in the same century as the Cathedral of Seville. It is a mountain scooped out, a valley turned topsy-turvy; Notre Dame at Paris might walk about erect in the middle nave, which is of a frightful height; pillars, as large round as towers, and which appear so slender that they make you shudder, rise out of the ground or descend from the vaulted roof, like the stalactites in a giant's grotto. The four lateral naves, although less high, would each cover a church, steeple included. The retablo, or high altar, with its stairs, its architectural superpositions, and its rows of statues rising in stories one above the other, is in itself an immense edifice, and almost touches the roof. The Paschal taper is as tall as the mast of a ship, and weighs two thousand and fifty pounds. The bronze candlestick which contains it is a kind of column like that in the Place Vendôme; it is copied from the candlestick of the Temple at Jerusalem, as represented in the bas-reliefs on the Arch of Titus, and everything else is proportionally grand. Twenty thousand pounds of wax and as many pounds of oil are burnt in the cathedral annually, while the wine used in the service of the Sacrament amounts to the frightful quantity of eighteen thousand, seven hundred and fifty French litres. It is true that five hundred masses are said every day at the eighty altars! The catafalque used during the Holy Week, and which is called the monument, is nearly a hundred feet high! The gigantic organs resemble the basaltic colonnades of Fingal's Cave, and yet the tempests and thunder which escape from their pipes, which are as large in the bore as battering cannon, are like melodious murmurs, or the chirping of birds and seraphim under these colossal ogives. There are eighty-three stained glass windows, copied from the cartoons of Michael Angelo, Raphael, Dürer, Peregrino, Tibaldi, and Lucas Cambiaso; the oldest and most beautiful are those executed by Arnold de Flandre, a celebrated painter on glass. The most modern ones, which date from 1819, prove how greatly art has degenerated since the glorious sixteenth century, that climacteric epoch of the world, when the human plant brought forth its most beautiful flowers and its most savoury fruit. The choir, which is Gothic, is decorated with turrets, spires, niche-work, figures, and foliage, forming one immense and delicately minute piece of workmanship that actually confounds the mind, and cannot now-a-days be understood. You are actually struck dumb in the presence of such stupendous efforts of art, and you interrogate yourself with anxiety, as to whether vitality is withdrawing itself more and more, every century, from the world. This prodigy of talent, patience, and genius, has, at least, preserved the name of its author, on whom we are able to bestow our tribute of admiration. On one of the panels to the left of the altar the following inscription is traced: "Este coro fizo Nufro Sanchez entallador que Dios haya año de 1475." (Nufro Sanchez, sculptor, whom may God protect, made this choir in 1475.)

Any attempt to describe, one after the other, all the riches of the cathedral, would be an absurd piece of folly; it would require a whole year to see it thoroughly, and even that would not be sufficient; whole volumes would not so much as contain the catalogue of the various remarkable objects. The sculptures in stone, in wood, and in silver, by Juan de Arfe, Joan Mellan, Montañes, and Roldan; the paintings by Murillo, Zurbaran, Pierre Campana, Roëlas, Don Luiz de Villegas, the two Herreras, Juan Valdes and Goya, completely fill the chapels, sacristies, and chapter-house. You are crushed by all kinds of magnificence, worn out and intoxicated with chefs d'œuvre, and do not know which way to turn; the desire to see everything, and the impossibility of doing so, cause you to experience a sort of feverish giddiness; you wish not to forget a single thing, and you feel every moment, that some name is escaping you, some lineament is becoming confused in your brain, some particular is usurping the place of another. You make the most desperate appeals to your memory, and lay strict injunctions on your eyes not to let slip a single glance; the least rest, even the time necessary for eating and sleeping, appears a robbery you are committing on yourself, for you are hurried on by imperious necessity; you will shortly be obliged to leave the place; the fire is already blazing under the boiler of the steam-boat; the water boils and hisses, and the chimney emits its volumes of white smoke. Tomorrow you will quit all these marvels, which, in all probability, you are not destined ever to behold again!

Being unable to mention everything, I will confine myself to mentioning the Saint Anthony of Padua, by Murillo, which ornaments the chapel of the baptistry. Never was the magic of painting carried to a greater length. The saint is kneeling in a state of ecstasy in the middle of his cell, all the poor details of which are rendered with that vigorous reality which characterises the Spanish school. Through the half-open door is seen one of those long, white, arched cloisters, so favourable to reverie. The upper portion of the picture, which is inundated with white, transparent, vapoury light, is occupied by groups of angels, of the most truly ideal beauty. Attracted by the force of his prayers, the infant Jesus is descending from cloud to cloud, to place himself between the arms of the saint, whose head is surrounded by rays of glory, and who is leaning back in a fit of celestial delight. I think that this divine picture is superior to that of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary in the Academy of Madrid, superior to Moses, superior to all the Virgins and Children by the same master, however beautiful and pure they may be. Whoever has not seen the Saint Anthony of Padua, does not know the finest production of the Sevillian painter; he is like those who fancy they know Rubens, and have never beheld the Antwerp Magdalene.

Every style of architecture is to found in the Cathedral of Seville. The severe gothic, the style of the renaissance, that which the Spaniards term plateresco, or jewellery-work, and which is distinguished by a profusion of incredible ornaments and arabesques, the rococo, the Greek and Roman styles, are all there without a single exception, for each age has built its chapel or retablo, after its own peculiar taste, and even now the edifice is not completely finished. Many of the statues which fill the niches of the portals, and represent patriarchs, apostles, saints, and archangels, are made of baked earth only, and placed there temporarily. On the same side as the courtyard de los Naranjeros, on the top of the unfinished portal, rises the iron crane, as a symbol that the edifice is not yet terminated, and that the works will be resumed at some future period. This kind of gallows is also to be seen on the summit of the church at Beauvais, but when will the day come, when the weight of a stone slowly drawn up through the air by the workmen returned to their work, shall cause its pulley, that has for ages been rusting away, once more to creak beneath its load? Never, perhaps; for the ascensional movement of Catholicism has stopped, and the sap which caused this efflorescence of cathedrals to shoot up from the ground, no longer rises from the trunk into the branches. Faith, which doubts nothing, wrote the first strophes of all these great poems of stone and granite; Reason, which doubts everything, has not dared to finish them. The architects of the Middle Ages were a race of religious Titans, as it were, who heaped Pelion on Ossa, not to dethrone the Deity they adored, but to admire more closely the mild countenance of the Virgin-Mother smiling on the Infant Jesus. In our days, when everything is sacrificed to some gross and stupid idea or other of comfort, people no longer understand these sublime yearnings of the soul towards the Infinite, which were rendered by steeples, spires, bell-turrets, and ogives, stretching their arms of stone heavenwards, and joining them, above the heads of the kneeling crowd, like gigantic hands clasped in an attitude of supplication. Political economists shrug their shoulders with pity at all these treasures lying idle without returning anything. Even the people are beginning to calculate how much the gold of the pyx is worth: they who once scarcely dared to raise their eyes on the white sun of the host, whisper to themselves that pieces of glass would do quite as well to decorate the monstrance as the diamonds and precious stones; the church is, at present, hardly frequented by any one save travellers, beggars, and horrible old hags, atrocious dueñas clad in black, with owl-like looks, death's-head smiles, and spider hands, who never move without a rattling, as if of rusty bones, medals and chaplets, and, under pretence of soliciting arms, murmur atrocious propositions concerning raven tresses, rosy complexions, burning glances and ever-budding smiles. Spain itself is no longer Catholic!

The Giralda, which serves as a campanila to the cathedral, and rises above all the spires of the town, is an old Moorish tower, erected by an Arabian architect, named Geber or Guever, who invented algebra, which was called after him. The appearance of the tower is charming and very original; the rose-coloured bricks and the white stone of which it is built, give it an air of gaiety and youth, which forms a strange contrast with the date of its erection, which extends as far back as the year 1000, a very respectable age, at which a tower may well be allowed to have a wrinkle or two, and be excused for not being remarkable for a fresh complexion. The Giralda, in its present state, is not less than three hundred and fifty feet high, while each side is fifty feet broad. Up to a certain height the walls are perfectly even; there are then rows of Moorish windows with balconies, trefoils, and small white marble columns, surrounded by large lozenge-shaped brick panels. The tower formerly ended in a roof of variously coloured varnished tiles, on which was an iron bar, ornamented with four gilt metal balls of a prodigious size. This roof was removed in 1568, by the architect, Francisco Ruiz, who raised the daughter of the Moor Guever, one hundred feet higher in the pure light of heaven, so that his bronze statue might overlook the sierras, and speak with the angels who passed. The feat of building a belfry on a tower was in perfect keeping with the intentions of the members composing that admirable chapter, of whom we have spoken, and who wished posterity to imagine they were mad. The additions of Francisco Ruiz consist of three stories; the first of these is pierced with windows, in whose embrasures are hung the bells; the second, surrounded by an open balustrade, bears on the cornice of each of its sides these words – "Turris fortissima nomen Domini;" and the third is a kind of cupola or lantern, on which turns a gigantic gilt bronze figure of Faith, holding a palm in one hand and a standard in the other, and serving as a weathercock, thereby justifying the name of Giralda given to the tower. This statue is by Bartholomew Morel. It can be seen at a very great distance; and when it glitters through the azure atmosphere, really looks like a seraph lounging in the air.