Letters from Spain

by Joseph Blanco White

LETTER VI.

Seville, —— 1801.

My residence in this town, after visiting Olbera, was short and unpleasant. The yellow-fever, which had some months before appeared at Cadiz, began to show itself in our large suburb of Triana, on the other side of the Guadalquivir. As no measures were taken to prevent communication with Cadiz, it is supposed that the infection was brought by some of the numerous seafaring people that inhabit the vicinity of the river. The progress of the malady was slow at first, and confined to one side of the street where it began. Meetings of all the physicians were convened by the chief magistrates, who, though extremely arbitrary in matters of daily occurrence, are, in Spain, very timid and dilatory on any extraordinary emergency. Unconscious of the impending danger, the people flocked to these meetings to amuse themselves at the expense of our doctors, who are notoriously quarrelsome and abusive when pitted against each other. A few of the most enlightened among them ventured to declare that the fever was infectious; but their voice was drowned in the clamour of a large majority who wished to indulge the stupid confidence of the inhabitants. The disease in the mean time crossed the river; and following the direction of the street where it originally appeared at Triana—now quite overrun by the infection—began its ravages within the ancient walls of our town. It was already high time to take alarm, and symptoms of it were shewn by the chief authorities. Their measures, however, cannot fail to strike you as perfectly original. No separation of the infected from the healthy part of the town: no arrangement for confining and relieving the sick poor. The governor who, by such means, had succeeded in stopping the progress of the fever would have been called to account for the severity of his measures, and his success against the infection turned into a demonstration that it never existed. Anxious, therefore, to avoid every questionable step in circumstances of such magnitude, the civil authorities wisely resolved to make an application to the archbishop and chapter, for the solemn prayers called Rogativas, which are used in times of public affliction. This request being granted without delay, the Rogativa was performed at the cathedral for nine consecutive days, after sunset.

The gloom of that magnificent temple, scarcely broken by the light of six candles on the high altar, and the glimmering of the lamps in the aisles, combined with the deep and plaintive tones of forty singers chanting the penitential psalms, impressed the throng of supplicants with the strongest feelings, which superstition can graft upon fear and distress.

When the people observed the infection making a rapid progress in many parts of the town, notwithstanding the due performance of the usual prayers, they began to cast about for a more effectual method of obtaining supernatural assistance. It was early suggested by many of the elderly inhabitants, that a fragment of the true Cross, or Lignum Crucis, one of the most valuable relics possessed by the cathedral of Seville, should be exhibited from the lofty tower called Giralda; for they still remembered, when, at the view of that miraculous splinter, myriads of locusts which threatened destruction to the neighbouring fields, rose like a thick cloud, and conveyed themselves away, probably to some infidel country. The Lignum Crucis, it was firmly believed, would, in like manner, purify the atmosphere, and put an end to the infection. Others, however, without any disparagement to the holy relic, had turned their eyes to a large wooden crucifix, formerly in great repute, and now shamefully neglected, on one of the minor altars of the Austin Friars, without the gates of the town. The effectual aid given by that crucifix in the plague of 1649 was upon record. This wonderful image had, it seems, stopped the infection, just when one half of the population of Seville had been swept away; thus evidently saving the other half from the same fate. On this ground, and by a most natural analogy, the hope was very general, that a timely exhibition of the crucifix through the streets, would give instant relief to the town.[27]

Both these schemes were so sound and rational, that the chief authorities, unwilling to shew an undue partiality to either, wisely determined to combine them into one great lustration. A day was, accordingly, fixed for a solemn procession to conduct the crucifix from the convent to the cathedral, and to ascend the tower for the purpose of blessing the four cardinal winds with the Lignum Crucis. On that day, the chapter of the cathedral, attended by the civil governor, the judges, the inquisitors, and the town corporation, repaired to the convent of Saint Augustin, and, having placed the crucifix upon a moveable stage covered with a magnificent canopy, walked before it with lighted candles in their hands, while the singers, in a mournful strain, repeated the names of the saints contained in the Catholic litany, innumerable voices joining, after every invocation in the accustomed response—Ora pro nobis. Arrived at the cathedral, the image was exposed to public adoration within the presbytery, or space reserved for the ministering clergy, near the high altar. After this the dean, attended by the chapter, the inferior ministers of the church, and the singers, moved in solemn procession towards the entrance of the tower, and, in the same order ascended the five-and-twenty inclined planes, which afford a broad and commodious access to the open belfry of that magnificent structure. The worship paid to any fragment of the true Cross is next in degree to that which is due to the consecrated host. On the view of the priest in his robes at one of the four central arches of the majestic steeple, the multitude, who had crowded to the neighbourhood of the cathedral from all parts of the city, fell upon their knees, their eyes streaming with tears: tears, indeed, which that unusual sight would have drawn from the weak and superstitious on any other occasion, but which, in the present affliction, the stoutest heart could hardly repress. An accidental circumstance heightened the impressiveness of the scene. The day, one of the hottest of an Andalusian summer, had been overcast with electric clouds. The priest had scarcely begun to make the sign of the cross with the golden vase which contains the Lignum Crucis, when one of the tremendous thunderstorms, so awful in southern climates, burst upon the trembling multitude. A few considered this phenomenon as a proof that the public prayers were heard, and looked upon the lightning as the instrument which was to disperse the cause of the infection. But the greatest number read in the frowns of the sky the unappeased anger of Heaven, which doomed them to drain the bitter cup that was already at their lips. Alas! they were not deceived. That doom had been sealed when Providence allowed ignorance and superstition to fix their dwelling among us; and the evils which my countrymen feared from a preternatural interposition of the avenging powers above, were ready to arise as the natural consequences of the means they themselves had employed to avert them. The immense concourse from all parts of the town had, probably, condensed into a focus the scattered seeds of infection. The heat, the fatigue, the anxiety of a whole day spent in this striking, though absurd, religious ceremony, had the most visible and fatal effect on the public health. Eight and forty hours after the procession, the complaint had left but few houses unvisited. The deaths increased in a tenfold proportion, and at the end of two or three weeks the daily number was from two to three hundred.

Providence spared me and my best friend by the most unforeseen combination of circumstances. Though suffering under an obstinate ague, Leandro—so he is called at our private club—had determined not to quit his college, at the head of which he was placed for that year. His family, on the other hand, had for some time resided at Alcalá de Guadaíra, a village beautifully situated within twelve miles of Seville. Alarmed at the state of the town, and unwilling to leave my friend to perish, either by the infection, or the neglect to which the general consternation exposed an invalid, I prevailed upon him to join his family, and attended him thither. This was but a few days before the religious ceremony which I have described from the narrative of eye-witnesses. It was my intention to have returned to Seville; but the danger was now so imminent, that it would have been madness to encounter it without necessity. Thus a visit which I meant for a week, was inevitably prolonged to six months.

For you, however, who love detail in the description of this hitherto little known country, my time was not spent in vain. Yet I must begin by a fact which will be of more interest to my old friend, Doctor ——, than yourself.

Alcalá de Guadaíra is a town containing a population of two thousand inhabitants, and standing on a high hilly spot to the northeast of Seville. The greatest part of the bread consumed in this city comes daily from Alcalá, where the abundant and placid stream of the Guadaíra, facilitates the construction of water-mills. Many of the inhabitants being bakers, and having no market but Seville, were under the necessity of repairing thither during the infection. It is not with us as in England, where every tradesman practically knows the advantages of the division of labour, and is at liberty, to consult his own convenience in the sale of his articles. The bakers, the butchers, the gardeners, and the farmers, are here obliged to sell in separate markets, where they generally spend the whole day waiting for customers. Owing to this regulation of the police, about sixty men, and double that number of mules, leave Alcalá every day with the dawn, and stand till the evening in two rows, inclosed with iron railings, at the Plaza del Pan. The constant communication with the people from all parts of the town, and so long an exposure to the atmosphere of an infected place, might have been supposed powerful enough to communicate the disease. We, certainly, were in daily apprehension of its appearance at Alcalá. So little, however, can we calculate the effects of unknown causes, that of the people that thus braved the contagion, only one, who passed the night in Seville, caught the disease and died. All the others, no less than the rest of the village, continued to enjoy the usual degree of health, which, probably owing to its airy situation, is excellent at all times.

The daily accounts we received from our city, independent of the danger to which we believed ourselves exposed, were such as would cast a gloom over the most selfish and unfeeling. Superstition, however, as if the prospect had not been sufficiently dark and dismal, was busy among us, increasing the terrors which weighed down the minds of the people. Two brothers, both clergymen, wealthy, proud, conceited of the jargon they mistook for learning, and ambitious of power under the cloak of zeal, had, upon the first appearance of the fever, retreated to Alcalá, where they kept a country-house. Two more odious specimens of the pampered, thorough-bred, full-grown Spanish bigot, never appeared in the ranks of the clergy. The eldest, a dignitary of the church, was a selfish devotee, whose decided taste for good living, and mortal aversion to discomfort, had made him calculate with great nicety how, by an economy of pleasure in this world, he might secure a reasonable share of it in the next. But whatever degree of self-denial was necessary to keep him from gross misconduct, he amply repaid himself in the enjoyment of control over the consciences and conduct of others.