As we wander from church to palace and alcázar of this ancient and beautiful capital, we are often reminded of the words of Cervantes in The Two Maiden Ladies: 'Seville is a city of Spain, of which you cannot fail to have heard frequent mention, considered, as it is, to be one of the wonders of the world.'
CHAPTER XIII
Seville of To-day
'To have seen real doñas with comb and mantle, real caballeros with cloak and cigar, real Spanish barbers lathering out of brass basins, and to have heard guitars upon the balconies.'—Thackeray, Cornhill to Cairo.
'MANY monuments, fine religious processions, splendid bull fights, and not much business,' was the pithy description of modern Seville given to me by an intelligent Basque señora, living in the Province of Santander. The picture is a good one. As to the monuments, we have seen that the city abounds with them. But it is not only the historic buildings, associated with the Romans, Goths, Berbers and Almohades, that lend the fascination of antiquity to Seville. The Andalusian features, the manners, the speech, the domestic habits, the music, songs and dances of the people remind us hourly, while in the city, of the Seville of a thousand years ago.
A spell of Orientalism, strange and seductive, comes upon the stranger, as he sits on the marble benches under the palms in the Plaza de San Fernando, watching the olive-skinned chicos at their evening pastime of mimic bull-fighting, or dancing, with quaint, slow movement of the feet and much swaying of the body, to a semi-barbaric accompaniment of clapping hands and a low chanting. The gaunt mules, with their Arabesque wool trappings and panniers, that pass slowly by, the water-sellers in their white garments and hemp-soled shoes, and the women with their black lace mantillas, which must surely be a survival of the Mohammedan veil, all serve to impress one with their suggestion of Moorish influence.
Electric lights and electric tramcars scarcely mar the charming illusions of the Oriental and the mediæval in the Seville of to-day. The tokens of modernity are subservient; they do not jar continually as in Madrid, perhaps the most commonplace of Spanish cities. In Seville you cannot forget the Moriscoes, and the part they played in the making of the city, the memories of Christopher Columbus, the art of Velazquez and Murillo, the romances of Cervantes, and the traditions of the Mother Church of Christendom. Every step causes reflection upon the past. You are carried back to the Middle Ages from the ringing of matin bells till the midnight cry of the watchman.
The costume of the Sevillian caballero—and remember that every man in Spain is a cavalier—has suffered, no doubt, in picturesqueness since the time of Don Quixote. But there is a real grace and a romantic charm in the winter capa, flung upon the shoulders, with one of its plenteous folds muffling the mouth, and another thrown back to show the gorgeous lining of amber, green, or crimson. One looks for the point of a scabbard, containing a good Toledan blade, below the cloak. It is not there, though the practice of carrying weapons still survives everywhere in the Peninsula.
Once only have I seen the sword carried by a civilian in Spain. Travelling from Córdova to Toledo by rail, I had as companion a young man who had provided himself with a cutlass and a revolver, in case of assault by robbers. The sword was thrust through the straps of his bag. Revolvers are frequently worn on a belt under the coat, and most of the working class carry the navaja, a knife with a long blade, a sharp edge, and a keen point.