The Story of Seville

by Walter M. Gallichan

In 1605 Don Quixote was published, in a quarto volume, by Juan de la Cuesta of Madrid. Within seven months the book had reached its fourth edition. W. H. Prescott, in his essay on 'Cervantes,' states that two editions were issued in Madrid, one in Valencia, and one in Lisbon. Yet the author was not relieved of the burden of poverty. Fame sounded his name far and wide. But he had sold the copyright of his romance. And although his reputation was established beyond all doubt, he does not appear to have been in a position to obtain worthier remuneration for his labours. What is perhaps more strange, the leading incidents of his life were scarcely known in Spain when his first biographer, Mayans y Siscar, essayed a history of the great writer's career. Seven towns claimed him as a native when Tonson, in London, issued the first English edition in 1738.

'If Cervantes, like his great contemporary, Shakespeare, has left few authentic details of his existence,' writes Prescott, 'the deficiency has been diligently supplied in both cases by speculation and conjecture.'

In 1616 Cervantes fell sick of a dropsy. He was then in the sixty-ninth year of his age. After a brief illness, the genius expired, receiving the extreme unction as a devout Catholic.

In the Calle de Santa Clara in Seville is the Casa de los Marqueses de Castromonte, a house mentioned by Cervantes in his novel, La Española Inglesa ('The Spanish-English Lady'). This novela relates the adventures of a Cadiz maiden, who was carried to England by one of the Earl of Essex's captains in 1596.

We must now quit the stately Casa Pilatos, with its great literary traditions, and briefly note a few more of the writers who are associated with Seville. One of these is the novelist Cecilia Boehl von Faber, of German descent, who wrote under the nom de plume of Fernán Caballero. This gifted authoress wrote several novels of social life in Spain, in which she did not flinch from attacking faulty institutions. She had even the courage to condemn the national pastime of bull-fighting, an institution that very few Spaniards have ventured to call in question. Fernán Caballero lived in the street that bears her pen-name, and a tablet will be found upon the house which she occupied.

Mateo Aleman, author of Guzman de Alfarache, who is sometimes ranked next to Cervantes, lived in the parish of San Nicolas. Alberto Lista, the poet, also resided in Seville.

Lord Byron was here in August 1809. In a letter he writes:—

'We lodged in the house of two Spanish unmarried ladies, who possess six houses in Seville, and gave me a curious specimen of Spanish manners. They are women of character, and the eldest a fine woman, the youngest pretty, but not so good a figure as Donna Josepha. The freedom of manner, which is general here, astonished me not a little; and in the course of further observation, I find that reserve is not the characteristic of the Spanish belles, who are, in general, very handsome, with large black eyes, and very fine forms.' ...

The elder of the two ladies presented Byron with a tress of her hair, measuring about three feet in length, and begged a lock of his lordship's hair in return.

I have already mentioned Blanco White, who was born in Seville, and wrote Letters from Spain, in the name of Leucadio Doblado. His reminiscences should be read for the pictures of Sevillian society, in the early part of this century. White's Life, by J. H. Thorn, was published in London, in 1845.