The Story of Seville

by Walter M. Gallichan

'I am absolute King,' was the boast of the despotic Philip. His ambition was to attain power, to extend his kingdom beyond the seas, and to crush out heresy. Yet Tennyson's love-dazzled Mary is made to ask, as she gazes upon the face of the Spanish King, in a miniature painting:

'Is this the face of one who plays the tyrant?

Peruse it; is it not goodly, ay, and gentle?'

These gardens evoke reflections upon the ever-changing fate of Spain. We gaze at relics of the Moors, and remember the eight hundred years of that sanguinary history of the expulsion of the infidels. Yet everywhere there are traces of that mighty civilisation built up by Morisco knowledge and industry. The Mudéjar has touched the palace and the gardens with his magic wand. Fernando, Pedro, Philip, Carlos—all the Catholic sovereigns—preserved the Moorish style of decoration, and borrowed from the art of the hated race.

Passing under a handsome gateway, represented in one of our illustrations, we come to a fountain surrounded by a tiled pavement, and overshadowed by trees. Before us is the Pavilion of Carlos Quinto, with a fine ceiling and azulejos. This summer-house was built by Juan Hernandez in 1543. Turn to the left, and inspect the archway in the wall, and the curious mural paintings. We may then retrace our steps to the pavilion, and pass another tank and a grotto till we reach the maze and a tangled garden beyond it. This is the Garden of the Labyrinth. Further, we may not ramble.

In 1626 a theatre stood in the large patio near the Puerta del León, by which gate we must leave the Alcázar. The playhouse was of oval form, with three balconies, and one part of the theatre was reserved for ladies. The travelling actors who visited Seville preferred this theatre to any other in the city, as is shown by the archives of the palace. In the year 1691 the theatre was entirely destroyed by a great fire, and not a stone of the old building remains.

The singular mingling of Christian and Moorish architecture and adornment in the modern Alcázar is characteristic of Seville. We find the same mixture of styles in the Casa Pilatos and in other mansions of the city. Even the railway station at the termination of the Córdova line affords an example of the perpetuation of Morisco design and decoration. It is this Moorish influence that lends a strange interest to Seville. Some writers have declared that these mixed styles of architecture are anomalous. There is certainly an air of the grotesque in the combination of Mudéjar windows, cusped arches, columns, and azulejos, and Renaissance and Gothic features. But despite the element of incongruity, the effect is often pleasing, while the mingling of the styles is especially interesting from the historical point of view.

In our inspection of the Sevillian monuments we are able to estimate the enormous sway that the Moors exercised upon the Andalusian mind. That influence will probably endure for very many centuries to come. Spaniards may abhor the faith of Allah, and detest the children of Mahomet; but they have never refused to learn the arts of the Moors, nor to apply them to the building of sacred and secular edifices. In the poorest villages of Southern Spain we rarely fail to notice some trace or another of the Moorish builder.

The Orientalism of the Alcázar remains in spite of the pseudo-Moorish restorations and the Renaissance additions. It is perhaps an atmosphere, a suggestion, rather than the reality. Still, the pile is a very remarkable monument, and every stone of it has its tale to tell of memorable scenes and great events. One is tempted to linger hour after hour in the dreamy gardens, watching the gaudy butterflies and the peering, green lizards, and thinking of the bygone greatness of Seville.

Let us conjure one more illustrious figure to the view before we quit the palace grounds. Here the Emperor Charles V. roamed with his young bride, Isabella of Portugal. The portraits of Charles show a well-knit figure, and a good forehead, with the projecting lower jaw characteristic of his family. He was fond of music, and was accounted well cultured. Mr. Edward Armstrong tells us, however, in his Emperor Charles V., that the sovereign was a 'singularly bad linguist.' He knew only a few words of Spanish after he had ruled Castile and Aragon for two years. 'French was his natural language, but he neither spoke nor wrote it with any elegance.' The Emperor's knowledge of theology was scanty; and though he was a stern defender of the Catholic faith, he could scarcely read the Vulgate.