Ellen M. Whishaw

A December festival—The “Mystery”—A holy war—The story of the Seises and their Dance—The Triduum of Carnestolendas—The real Don Juan—The Dancers of Corpus Christi—The defeat of Don Jaime de Palafox—The Christmas Ship—Marzapan and PolvorÓn—The Cock’s Mass on Christmas Eve—“Nativities”—The midnight “lunch” in the mansion—The “Good Night” of the poor.

Probably every one who takes any interest at all in Spain has heard of the famous Dance of the Seises before the high altar of Seville Cathedral on certain festivals, i.e. that of the Immaculate Conception of Our Lady in December, the Carnival in February, and Corpus Christi in June. But no one either in Spain or out of it can give definite information with chapter and verse about the origin of the dance, still less of the name.

THE DANCE OF THE SEISES IN SEVILLE CATHEDRAL.

(From the picture by Gonzalo Bilbao. By permission of the owner, the Earl of Rosebery, K.G.)

In Spanish the word seises, plural of seis, means “sixes,” and it is usual to conclude that the name was given because six little boys performed the curious old-world movements known as the “dance.” But as a matter of fact ten little boys take part, and one seventeenth-century writer speaks of twelve and another of seven, and although my impression is that these two figures were slips of the copyists, there is no evidence that the number ever was precisely six, as it must have been for that to be the origin of the name. It looks, therefore, as if the assumption that seises here means sixes (and why not Six instead of Sixes as if they were dice?) were one of those hasty philological generalisations based upon sound alone which constantly crop up to puzzle the conscientious historian.

Those who pin their faith to the obvious translation of the word as written to-day, suggest that originally there were only six dancing boys, and that the other four were the attendants of the Archbishop, placed by way of ornament at the four corners of the carpet on which the dance takes place—and a very beautiful old carpet it is, by the way. But here we meet with the objection that, whereas the corner boys are the tallest of the ten, those who attend the Archbishop are the smallest, and moreover that two and not four follow in his train. To us who know how great is the force of tradition in southern Spain, it is inconceivable that the Dean and Chapter, or the Archbishop, or even the Pope himself, should arbitrarily and for no apparent purpose, at a time which is not stated in any record, have added four more to the six boys whose number is supposed to have given the name to their dance. Nor is it probable that this particular dance should have been made numerically more important when all over Christendom the religious dances of the Middle Ages were dying out or were being deliberately suppressed by the Church.

The most rational explanation appears to be that of a friend of mine, a distinguished Orientalist, who propounded a theory that the dance is a survival of the Mozarabic ritual, and that the little “Seises” were originally the sais, or attendants on the priests, at the time when Arabic was the only language used in Seville, not only by the Moslems in their mosques, but by the Arabicised Christians who maintained their own forms of worship although they had forgotten their own tongue. Two little sais are seen in one of the illuminations of the CÁntigas of Alfonso the Wise (1252) in attendance upon a priest who is worshipping the image of Our Lady of the See (Sede—now over the high altar in the Cathedral), and they were provided with rations and education by a Bull of Pope Eugene IV. in 1438. But nowhere do we find any mention of their number, as we could hardly fail to do had it been limited to six; whereas nothing would seem more natural than the conversion of the Arabic sais into the Spanish seis, when Castilian was made the language of reconquered Andalucia by law of Alfonso the Wise.

But for the loss of the deeds and archives relating to the faithful Mozarabs of this diocese and their metropolitan Church of Saint Mary during the troubled half-century between 1200 and the reconquest in 1248, we might have known something about the true origin of the Seises, of the mediÆval fresco of “Our Lady of the Old Time,” and others of Mozarab tradition, of the celebrated Guilds and Brotherhoods which come out in procession in Holy Week, and of other curious details of Sevillian ritual touched upon in a later chapter.

I will take the festivals enlivened by the Dance of the Seises in their order, beginning with the Octave of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin (to give the feast its full official title), for this not only comes first in point of time, its vigil being on 7th December, when winter weather has hardly yet begun in this favoured clime, but it is in point of fact the greatest festival in the whole ecclesiastical year in Seville, which city from first to last was the self-constituted champion of this “Mystery.”

No one seems to know when the belief that Mary as well as her Son was born without human agency first began to gain ground in Seville, but Don Manuel Serrano, who has spent most of his life in the study of Sevillian Church history and art, believes he has evidence that her “sinless birth” was venerated from the fourth century onwards, and that St. Isidore, the “learned doctor” of Seville, found it in the primitive rite and transferred it to his own liturgy not very long before the Moslem invasion. And since the Isidorian or Sevillian ritual (Rito hispalense) was the one used here by the Mozarabs throughout the dominion of Islam until San Fernando replaced it by the Roman rite in 1248, Sevillian archÆologists have some ground for claiming that this see was par excellence “the land of the Blessed Virgin” (tierra de Maria Santisima) throughout its chequered history. At any rate, some evidence in favour of their claim is that the feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin does not figure in the Mozarab ritual of Toledo before the year 1300, whereas it seems to have been in full swing here in 1248, for Alfonso the Wise in his Chronicle refers to the use in Seville of the ritual of “Saint Isidre É de San Leadre” (SS. Isidore and Leander), which contains this feast.

The belief in the “Mystery” was by no means universally accepted after the reconquest even in Seville, whatever may have been the case among the faithful Mozarabs, but feeling did not wax really hot over it until the seventeenth century. Then the Franciscans and Jesuits combined to work for its acceptance by the whole Church, while the Dominicans controverted it, and Seville took the lead in what became almost a holy war. Extraordinary acts of devotion were witnessed, among the most remarkable being the selling of himself back into slavery by a freed slave, who gave the price of his own flesh and blood to the cult of the “Most Pure.” He and his fellow-negroes maintained an altar to the Conception in the church of Our Lady of the Angels, and it was for this that the freed slave desired to raise money. And a priest in an excess of ecstasy actually had the A.M. (Ave Maria) branded on his face.

The burning of a Dominican monastery was considered an intervention of Providence against those who “insulted” Our Lady by denying her miraculous birth, and it gave rise to serious rioting, only quelled at last by the ecclesiastical authorities placing over the door of the monastery the inscription, “Mary, conceived without sin.” To this period of storm and stress are to be assigned the numerous repetitions of the monogram A.M. (Ave Maria) seen over the doors of old houses in almost every town and village in Andalucia and other provinces where the controversy raged, and from this century dates the addition of an image of the Virgin to almost every one of the Holy Week processions, with its accompanying banner called the Sin Pecado, because embroidered with those words in testimony to Mary’s immaculate conception. And of this period too is a remarkable festival cope in the church of San Lorenzo at Seville, made of white brocade woven all over with the monogram A.M. and the initials S.P.O., so that on every fold it reads “Hail Mary! Born without original sin” (Ave Maria, Sin Pecado Original).

And now the ancient Dance of the Seises became one of the most brilliant features in the festival of the Conception. Hitherto, one gathers, no special pains had been bestowed upon the costumes of the boys, but in 1654 it was thought desirable to bring them “up to date.” One would give a good deal to know how they were dressed before this, for probably the costumes were traditional and centuries old in style if not material. But the wealthy and pious Sevillians had then as now but scant regard for relics of the past. The Chapter which thought it a great deed to remove the robes in which San Fernando was buried in 1252 and replace them with the costume of their own day (in which costume the embalmed corpse of the great general and saintly monarch is still displayed to the gaze of his worshippers three times in every year)—such a Chapter would be incapable of seeing anything worth preservation in the dancing-boys’ dress of, say, the thirteenth century. And they readily found a devout old couple to present a complete new set of “ornaments” for the festival of the Conception in the Cathedral, including costumes for the Seises.

The benefactors were Don Gonzalo NuÑez and his wife, DoÑa Mercia, who had recently returned from the Indies with a handsome fortune. He was old and crippled with gout and other ailments, but he was borne into the Cathedral on a carrying-chair to attend the octave of the feast from the 7th to the 14th of December 1654, and thus he was able to witness “the incredible delight of the entire city” at the splendid trappings provided for the popular ceremony by his own and his wife’s munificence.

No less than 150,000 ducats, or £40,000 of our money, did the pious pair set aside to endow the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, “in order to make it as splendid as that of Corpus Christi,” and they gave the money in their lifetime too, instead of bequeathing it by will so as to enjoy it themselves as long as they lived. There were new blue and white vestments for the priests, blue and white draperies for the pulpit, the reading-desk, and the Archbishop’s throne, blue and white banners, even cushions of blue and white for the Archbishop to kneel on in the choir and before the high altar. Now for the first time the little boys were given vestments of blue and white, “colours of the Mystery,” and so comprehensive was the scheme laid down by the generous Don Gonzalo that, as the archive says, “even the Singing Children called Seises” had “all their borders and fringes of equal cost and richness” with those of the Dean himself.

Nor were women entirely left out in this endowment, for it was ordered that “certain poor maidens” should be provided with dowries out of the £40,000, and these maidens were to walk in the processions throughout the Octave clad to match the Seises in white robes and hooded mantles of blue, such as Murillo was depicting then in his representations of the Virgin. DoÑa Mercia for her part endowed the Capilla de las Doncellas (Chapel of the Maidens) in the cathedral, and here until recent years the dowries provided by her husband and herself were annually distributed, and here portionless girls even now go to pray for good husbands, although unfortunately most of the endowment funds mysteriously disappeared in the last quarter of the nineteenth century.

One of the interesting details in this donation is the light it throws on the condition of the silk weaving industry of Seville in the seventeenth century. All the vestments, of whatever class, the altar and other hangings, the costumes of the Seises, and the dresses for the maidens, were to be “of the finest possible materials,” and they were “to be woven for the purpose in the city of Seville, which in such weaving does not give place either to Milan or Naples.” Such is the wording of the deed of gift. Had Don Gonzalo himself been a silk merchant we might have suspected prejudice in favour of his own manufactures; but not so, he had made his fortune as a general trader with the New World.

The silk industry of Seville dated from Arabic times, and appears to have been at its height in the eleventh century under the beneficent rule of the Abbadite kings, who brought civilisation and luxury here to a greater height than ever was attained in Cordova, always more distinguished for literature and science than for arts or industries. The Beni Abbad were Yemenite Arabs, and their family with many others of Yemenite descent (contrary to what is generally supposed) had peacefully established themselves side by side with the Christian natives in the eighth century. They had a full appreciation of the benefits of commerce and industry, for the Yemenites were not nomads like many other Arabs, but had developed, with the aid of their conquerors the Persians, a remarkable civilisation and art in their beloved capital, Sana, the traditional glories of which were still the theme of their poets several centuries after the Arab occupation of Spain. Thus we find in the silks, damasks, and brocades manufactured in Seville right down to the seventeenth century a curious Egypto-Persian influence in design, an influence which, strange to say, even now persists in the beautiful work done by Andalucian women, whether lace, embroidery, or drawn thread, and in the naÏve traditional birds and beasts painted on the pottery of Triana. So characteristic are these designs that it is easy to recognise the Seville school of art from the earliest Arabic times down to the present day, while the productions of the seventeenth century can be dated with tolerable accuracy by a new feature which then appeared, as a result of the Sevillian devotion to the “Immaculate.”

New, however, is hardly the correct word, for it had its root in the sacred lotus of Egypt, whose pointed leaves symbolised the flame of life, worshipped from prehistoric ages.

As far back as the thirteenth century this lotus or lily (azucena) had been adopted as their heraldic device by the knightly Order of Our Lady of Old Time, and in 1400 when they began to rebuild the Cathedral of Seville it was assumed as the heraldic arms of the Chapter. Now, in consequence of the general devotion to the “Mystery,” the device became known as the “Heraldic Arms of the Virgin,” and henceforth the jar or vase, with the two-branched lily springing from it, is ubiquitous in Andalucian design. The calix of the lotus flower turned into the vase, while the stamens and pistils grew into the two branches. Some artists indeed went so far as to paint the Virgin sitting on a water-lily with two stems, one of which had its root in the breast of St. Anna, her mother, and the other in that of St. Joachim, her father. We can hardly imagine that an idea so foreign to Western hagiology would have sprung up spontaneously after the Mozarab rite had been suppressed in favour of the Roman on the reconquest of Seville, whereas it would only be natural that the art of the Mozarabic Church should be influenced by Eastern ideas at the time when the members of that Church were in intimate contact with the Arabic civilisation and were practically isolated from the rest of Christendom. As for the Egyptian (or Coptic) tradition, the Yemenite Arabs would have brought it with them in the eighth century, when they came to Spain after their conquest of Egypt, and it would be reinforced by the close intimacy which existed in the eleventh century between the Fatimite Khalifs and the Abbadite court in Seville.

Thanks to Don Gonzalo NuÑez the celebration of the Immaculate Conception has been observed in Seville since 1654 with greater magnificence than anywhere else. The columns of the transepts and nave are draped from top to bottom with crimson velvet curtains, for which the merchants of Seville subscribed £17,000 towards the close of the century, the whole of the reredos and the high altar are covered with plates of chased silver, and the pyx is placed in a shrine of gold surrounded by a coronal of blazing diamonds, each as large as a small pea. This is raised high above the actual altar, and gleams dazzlingly through the dim light of the candles placed round it. When the bell rings for the Elevation, after the dance of the Seises is over, the red velvet curtains screening the Host are slowly drawn back; soft orchestral music fills the air; the Cardinal Archbishop steps forward to give the benediction, and the thousands of worshippers kneel in silent adoration. Then indeed one realises the extraordinary hold that the “Mystery” has taken upon the imagination of the people of Seville.

The little Seises, no matter what imps of mischief they may be at other times, comport themselves with great gravity on this occasion. Filled with honourable pride, convinced that their dance is the event towards which moves all the magnificent ritual of the whole Cathedral year, each small boy feels that everything depends on the perfection of his own performance. Should a single Seis err in the minutest detail, the whole stately dance would break up in confusion. For this “dance” is in truth a series of complicated arabesques traced by small feet upon a velvety carpet, each movement growing out of and depending upon those before and after. There are over two hundred musical settings, but there is only one rule for the dance, and a choir boy, however clever, has to practise it for a whole year before he can be promoted to the dignity of a Seis, the summit of his ambition. Indeed to be a Seis is something like winning a scholarship, for when he outgrows his costume and his voice begins to break, his future is taken care of by the Chapter, who train him for the priesthood if he has a bent that way, or apprentice him to some trade whereby he may eventually earn his living, unless, as frequently is the case, he be the son of parents able to give him a professional career.

Their dresses are still made after the seventeenth-century fashion, though somewhat modified, and, alas! no longer of “the best materials” to be obtained in Seville. The trunks of an earlier day have degenerated into knickerbockers down to the knee, but we still see the white shoes and the white stockings which once were trunk-hose, the round hats turned up at one side with feathers, doublets of white satin with strips of blue edged with gold, and streamers to match hanging from the shoulders, as once did the elegant cloaks of which these are the modest survival. For all the changes and diminished glories of their dress, the little Seises strike a ringing note from the past as they hurry across the broad aisle to the choir before their dance begins, eight of them passing along the railed-off gangway leading from the choir to the high altar, while the two smallest place themselves one on either side of the great carved reading-desk with its immense old missals, ready to take their place of honour behind the Cardinal-Archbishop when he moves from his throne to the altar. The tiny blue and white figures constitute an enchanting touch of childish insouciance among the sombre purples of the canons’ robes and the rich brown of the carved cedar stalls, the top of which they can hardly look over, for they are only seven or eight years old; and they stand first on one foot and then on the other through the long vespers intoned by the choir-men and the beneficed clergy, trying in vain to behave as if they were big boys not at all tired by the drone of phone and antiphone over their small heads.

At last evensong is over and their moment of moments comes. Preceded by the Pertiguero with his silver wand of office, in tie-wig, wide falling collar, and sixteenth-century robe of black serge, the Chapter marches in solemn procession down the railed gangway from the choir to the high altar, the Cardinal-Archbishop in his magnificent scarlet robe with a Seis at each side bringing up the rear. The dignitaries all kneel down beside broad wide-armed sixteenth-century chairs placed to the right at the foot of the altar steps, and remain on their knees throughout the dance; the orchestra strikes up and the Hymn of the Seises begins. It is never accompanied by the organ, but always by a string band composed of laymen, placed opposite the seats of the dignitaries, to the left of the altar steps. And this lay band suggests that the dance was initiated before organs were used in the primitive Spanish Church.

There is nothing Oriental either in the hymn or in the music of the dance which follows it; all is sweet, tender, and reverent as a religious ceremony performed by children in a church should be. But at the close of each couplet we are suddenly reminded of the East by the rattle of castanets held all this time hidden in the palms of the boys’ hands, and now played by them with a mastery of crescendo and diminuendo, that shows how the castanets may be made instruments of music, not merely of rhythmical noise. Here strikes the note of tradition once again, for the castanets are Oriental and must have been introduced into the Cathedral service, like the dance itself, by the Arabicised Christians of Seville under Islam.

The hymn has two verses and the dance is gone through twice; then the ten little boys run lightly up the steps, five on either side of the altar, make their reverence to the Elements shut away from sight in the golden pyx above the image of “Mary most pure”—a fine sculpture in wood by Martinez MontaÑes—and disappear into the sacristy at the back of that wealth of silver and brocade provided by the long-forgotten Don Gonzalo. But before the music of the Benediction begins half the congregation seated in the transept rise and hastily make their way to the Door of the Poles under the Giralda tower, for that is the way the Cardinal goes out to his palace across the square, and the pious Sevillians think an especial blessing will be their portion if they can intercept his passage and kiss his beautiful amethyst ring as he leaves the Cathedral after the Dance of the Seises in the Octave of the Immaculate Conception of Our Lady.

The next time the boys dance is during the three days of Carnival, and if we ask why this very secular occasion be chosen, the archives of the Chapter give us the explanation.

In 1682 there died in Seville one Don Francisco de Contreras de Chaves, Knight of the Order of Santiago, Gentleman of the King, Familiar of the Holy Order of the Inquisition, and one of the Veintecuatros (twenty-four), an order of nobility granted to Seville and Seville alone, in the thirteenth century. This distinguished individual was distressed at the vain and worldly amusements indulged in during the Carnestolendas (the Latin carnis tollendus), which are the three days in which meat is eaten in preparation for the forty of abstinence beginning with Ash Wednesday; and he fondly hoped that by introducing the Dance of the Seises into the Cathedral services of those three days, the tide of profane entertainment might be stemmed. So he willed that after his wife’s death all his “large fortune” should be bestowed on “the triduum of Carnestolendas” in order that these days should be celebrated in the Cathedral with as much pomp and magnificence as the Conception and Corpus Christi.

When his estate came to be cleared up it was found that thirteen thousand pesos escudos de plata (about £1260) were available for the purpose, and in testimony of gratitude to their generous benefactor the Chapter ordered all the minor clergy and dependants of “the holy House” to attend his funeral, half of them bearing yellow candles and half white, while the bier was covered with the pall used at interments of prebendaries. Further, a requiem Mass was celebrated in the church of San Francisco (now the Town Hall) where the defunct Inquisitor was buried, and the Chapter attended this in copes and birettas, and the Cathedral musicians sang the Mass, which was recited by three dignitaries, the sermon being preached by a fourth.

“In such wise,” says a contemporary writer, “the Chapter did honour to Don Francisco de Contreras for having left all his fortune to improve the worship of God, from whom he will have received his reward.”

Don Francisco died the same year as Murillo, but we are not told that the Chapter bestowed any such funeral honours upon him. Presumably they thought that having paid for his pictures they had done their duty by the artist, although he had devoted his life to the service of religion, painted thirty-two pictures of the Conception, and turned his back upon worldly honours and rewards lest he should offend the Holy Office by producing works other than religious.

The dresses provided for the Seises by the bequest of Don Francisco are of the same style and materials as those worn for the Conception, but where the latter are blue the Carnival garb is red, and these red and white costumes are worn also at Corpus Christi, which takes place early in June. There is, however, a notable difference between this ceremony and the two former ones, for whereas they take place within the Cathedral, that procession of Corpus goes out with the Host into the streets, passes the Town Hall where all the rank and fashion of the town assemble to receive it, on stands erected for the occasion, and makes a long round through the heart of the oldest part of Seville before returning with its sacred burden to the Mother Church.

The feast of Corpus Christi, although officially instituted in the thirteenth century, and probably a survival of one of those pagan ceremonies which the early Fathers, instead of quarrelling over, so wisely adapted to Christian worship, was not developed in its full splendour until 1613, and then the benefactor who endowed it was none other than that interesting historical character, Don Mateo Vazquez de Leca, Archdeacon of Seville, known in poetry and romance as “Don Juan.”

The only child of wealthy parents who died when he was yet a youth, he became a priest and was given a high place in the Chapter at the early age of twenty-three. It was not to be wondered at that, as a contemporary puts it, “as his age was short and his rents were long, his steps were not so well balanced as his ecclesiastical state demanded.” His palatial mansion indeed was conducted on lines more befitting a plutocrat than a priest, and his licentious life was the scandal of the town. But when he was thirty “Heaven pleased to warn him of the peril he was in,” by a miraculous intervention which has been erroneously attached to the name of Don Juan MaÑara, a contemporary of Murillo who gave much gold to the Hospital of the Caridad in Seville, and ordered “Here lies the worst man that ever lived,” to be inscribed upon his tombstone in the church of the Hospital. Thanks to this exhibition of posthumous humility, the adventure of Don Mateo has been attributed by the romancists to Don Juan MaÑara, instead of to the real hero, the Archdeacon, who really was a far more picturesque personality.

The year was 1600, the day that of the feast of Corpus Christi—and we need have no fear of error in the date, for the event figures in the archives of the Chapter. Don Mateo, more intent upon his personal elegance than his holy office, arrayed himself for the occasion in a beautiful brocade under-dress, trusting that its brilliancy of silk and gold thread would gleam through the diaphanous silk of his soutane and the transparent lace of his rochet. For he had his mind and his eye fixed upon a mysterious lady whom he had observed of late among the congregation in the Cathedral, and he hoped his handsome face and richly clad figure might win her favour on this day of religious and secular cheer. All through the protracted ceremony in the Cathedral and the slow progress of the long procession, he contrived to keep her in view, and when at length he was free to divest himself of his ecclesiastical garb and go where he would, he found her waiting for him outside the sacred building, and immediately tried to address her.

But the lady was very coy, notwithstanding her coquettish glances at the Archdeacon during the ceremony, and when he approached her she moved away so fast that he could not obtain even a glimpse of her face beneath the long black veil wrapped round her head and shoulders, nor could he overtake her although he followed her all through the centre of the town, into the Macarena and out round the city walls until she led him back again into the Cathedral.

Within the building it was now twilight, for the whole afternoon had been consumed in the pursuit, and the lady flitted from chapel to chapel, and altar to altar, until at length she paused before that of Our Lady of the Old Time. Don Mateo trembled, for this image had always been his especial devotion. But the flesh after so many years of self-indulgence was too strong for the spirit. He clasped the lady in his arms, forgetful of the sacred spot on which he stood, and tore off her veil, intent on seeing the lovely features of the woman who had defied him so long. One word was breathed into his ear, like a sigh from another world.

“Eternity!” was the word he heard, and down the long empty aisles it seemed to float away, only to rise again and roll out louder—louder until it sounded like thunder on the ears of the wretched priest.

And then with a horrible rattle of dry bones, the warm living body he held in his arms sank into a shapeless heap on the floor. That for which he had committed sacrilege was nothing but a withered and disintegrated skeleton.

From that moment the Archdeacon led a new life, and in his deep repentance he became the most devout of all the priests in the Chapter. He left his magnificent mansion and moved to a mean house in the alley of Santa Marta, under the shadow of the Cathedral; he devoted his whole fortune to pious and charitable uses; and he endowed with large rents for ever the feast of Corpus Christi, because on that day God had seen fit to rescue him from his life of sin. He gave for the feast no less than an hundred silver candlesticks, hangings and canopy for the high altar, and silver altars to carry in the procession through the streets. He gave a complete set of white vestments to be used only on that day, for all the Chapter, the minor clergy, the singers, musicians, and servants of the altar, including of course the Seises. He gave altar-frontals for the portable altars, hangings for the pulpit and the Cathedral cross, curtains for the silver shrine, and rich draperies for the platform on which the shrine with the pyx within is carried through the town. And he endowed the preachers, bell-ringers, illuminations, and procession—in short, everything relating to the festival, not excepting the Guild of Our Lady of the Pomegranate, which maintains an altar in the Chapel of la Granada (pomegranate) under the Giralda, and still preserves the weighty poles on which until recent times they carried the platform with the shrine, in the genuine old Arabic fashion.

From the earliest times the procession of Corpus Christi had been attended not only by the little Seises in their gala dress, but also by groups of men and women dancers similar in idea to the Giants and Bigheads which figure in the festival of Our Lady of the Pillar at Zaragoza, as described in Chapter XVII. These have now been suppressed for so long that few know what they once were, but I find a mention of the Giants in the year 1690, when the Civil Governor or Asistente, as he was then called, combined with the Archbishop, Don Jaime de Palafox, in a determined attempt to put down celebrations which they considered inconsistent with the dignity of the Church.

They knew very well that if the public became aware beforehand of what was intended it would be impossible to carry out their scheme, so nothing was said until six o’clock in the morning of the festival. Then the announcement was made that no group of Dancers should enter the Cathedral on pain of a fine of one hundred ducats for the leader of any such party, and fifty ducats and four years’ imprisonment for the bearer of any one of their banners. But the Archbishop and the Asistente reckoned without their host, for although the people, stupefied by this unexpected interference with their immemorial rights, remained quiet as if stunned by the blow, the lawyers of the Town Council (which provided funds for the “Dancers”) went straight to the Court of Justice, and presently the Archbishop was informed that he had no legal status in the matter, that the “Dancers” were immediately to take their accustomed places in the procession within the Cathedral, and the ceremony was to proceed in the usual order.

The Archbishop, furious at his authority being disputed, ordered that if the Dancers entered the Cathedral the procession should be at once withdrawn, and the Host in its magnificent silver Custodia (a replica in miniature of that erected in the “Monument” during Holy Week) should be taken back to its own place. But now the priests, friars, and other ecclesiastics turned against him, saying that they had been invited by the Chapter to attend the carrying forth of the Host among the people, and they could not leave the Cathedral until this sacred duty had been fulfilled.

Meanwhile the public, angry and disappointed, saddened by a quarrel over what they held sacred, and terrified lest the divine wrath should descend upon the city because the feast-day was not being honoured according to the ritual of their forefathers, collected in the Plaza de San Francisco, and clamoured for the procession to start, while the gentler and more timorous spirits knelt down all along the streets and prayed to God to remove the difficulties which had so suddenly and unexpectedly arisen.

At long last the Archbishop withdrew, his place being taken by a lesser dignitary, and the procession came out of the Cathedral with the Dancers in their usual places, followed by the Brotherhood of the Tailors (of whom more anon), the Capuchins, Mercenaries, Augustines, and Carmelite friars, the Tribunal of the Inquisition, the canons, and the Asistente, who could not dissimulate his indignation at the defeat of himself and the Archbishop, over which the whole town was rejoicing all along the route.

Don Jaime de Palafox then appealed to the King and the Pope, but all he got was an order that women should be excluded from the Dances and that no masks or other disguises should be worn by the Dancers in the Cathedral, no attempt being made to put a stop to the dances themselves, because “this kind of festival had always continued in Seville.” The Archbishop was charged neither to impede nor to embarrass the entry of the Dancers into the Cathedral, and he got a rap over the knuckles from the King for having tried “to introduce novelties.”

Don Jaime de Palafox was not the man to own himself beaten, and ten years later came the turn of the Seises. On June 18th of the year 1700 he got an order from the Pope to the Chapter to “suppress the abuse of the dances of the Seises,” apparently thinking he would thereby put an end to that traditional performance. The Dean, however, was as stout a fighter as Don Jaime himself. He represented to the Holy Father that the Hymn and the Dance of the Seises could not be fairly judged of by hearsay but must be seen to be understood, and he reminded the Pope that the first principle of the Council of Trent was that no judgment should be given in any dispute until both sides of the case had been heard. He stuck to his point until he obtained permission to take the Seises, costumes, castanets, and all, to Rome to dance before the Pope, and the final result was that the dance remained a recognised part of the ritual of the Cathedral of Seville, and has been performed at its appointed seasons without intermission ever since.

Thus it survives to-day, to the pious delight of all good Sevillians. But, as said the chronicler of the attempt to suppress it, “Only he who sees it can comprehend it, and it is worth seeing. For it is performed with the greatest seriousness and composure, with the result that it is one of the most remarkable things in this Holy Church, very far removed from irreverence, but rather an example of an especial respect to the Lord.”

About a week before Noche Buena—the Good Night—which is Christmas Eve, the grocers’ shops in Seville blossom out into still-life pictures, generally with a huge ship of wicker-work as the centre, having oars of Bologna sausages, a great ham as a sail, and a cargo of gold in the shape of oranges. Silver is represented by Tangerine oranges wrapped in lead paper, and vacant corners are filled up with a variety of sweetmeats, while the rigging consists of tinsel streamers. A banner of the national colours, of more or less expensive silk, flies of course over the whole, and this “flagship” is flanked by a squadron of lesser fry in every shape and form, but always of wicker-work. The whole fleet and its constituent parts are offered for sale at exaggerated prices, and the crew in every case consists of one or more bottles of wine.

These baskets of provender are bought for Christmas gifts, and if we may judge from the absence of any special attractions in other shops, they are the most popular kind of present, except marzapan cakes. Of these the confectioners offer a considerable variety, the majority in the form of bulls or dragons, but some representing the beloved ham, which is so favourite an article of food, while some, but these are the minority, are made in pretty and artistic rounds, diamonds, or floral forms. All consist of the same rich almond paste, and all are adorned with preserved fruits and bonbons. Several varieties of a kind of nougat called turrÓn also appear at Christmas and on two or three other great festivals, and some of them are delicious.

The marzapan cakes, like the turrÓn and the baskets of groceries, are all very expensive, which is not surprising in a country where even the locally made beetroot sugar is so heavily taxed that the consumer has to pay 70 centimes a pound for it. Thus the above dainties are only for the rich. The Christmas cake of the poor is called polvorÓn, and consists of a curious dry substance like extra short short-cake, made chiefly of almond flour, sugar, and white of egg. The Christmas polvorÓn is a large round cake, about half an inch thick, and it generally has a preserved orange in the middle, into which an artificial flower is stuck. It is always sold on a cardboard tray, because its consistency is such that it would otherwise fall to pieces of its own weight. Although it costs a mere trifle compared to the marzapan and turrÓn eaten in well-to-do houses, it is nevertheless of excellent flavour.

Indeed I doubt whether the workers do not prefer their polvorÓn to marzapan, if only because they get so much more of it for their money. It is customary to give a cake to your servants for Christmas, and I recollect that on one occasion, when talking over a projected kitchen-party with my cook, she politely gave me to understand that much as they had enjoyed the beautiful marzapan dragon of the previous Christmas, they would really prefer a polvorÓn this time, as the same expenditure on that class of cake would allow all their friends to cut and come again, instead of being limited to a mere mouthful, as had been the case with the five-dollar dragon of last year.

Whatever be the cake you give to the mÉnage, the best part of it will be set aside to offer to the master and mistress and their family. If it be a bull, the head and horns will be kept; if a dragon, the head and tail; and on the evening after the servants’ party, when your dinner is over, the cook will hastily don a white apron and knot her best silk handkerchief round her head, and will march into the dining-room bearing the remains of the cake with all its inedible decorations carefully rearranged to hide what has gone. This she will courteously offer to every one at table, pressing them to taste and see how rich a dish the SeÑores have provided for the delectation of those in their employ. And as often as not some talented member of the household will stand at the door meanwhile, and sing at the top of his or her voice an improvised couplet setting forth the generosity and amiability of his employers.

Of the actual giving of Christmas parties there is very little. Christmas trees are, of course, quite foreign to the soil, and I have never heard of a Christmas dance, outside of Madrid, save those given by foreign residents. But Christmas Eve is celebrated by high and low, and rich people at this time spend a good deal of money in what seems to us a singular and unpractical method of displaying their religious fervour. This consists in setting up a Nacimiento (Nativity), or representation of the birth of Christ, which is prepared in the private chapel of the house, if there is one, or in a principal reception-room, in as elaborate a form as the means of the family permit.

Even the poorest try to procure something of the kind for their children, and the necessary figures for it are sold in the streets and in the shops for a week or so before the great day, at prices varying from one centime to hundreds of pesetas. I have bought the whole scene modelled in coarse crudely painted clay by the vendor, for a peseta. The stable of such a Nacimiento has three little walls and no roof, the Virgin and St. Joseph kneel on either side of the Babe, two tiny plumes of pampas grass and some cocks and hens represent the rural surroundings which these artists imagine to be appropriate, and, regardless of the Bible story, the beloved St. John as a grown man will be found somewhere in the background. One cannot please a poor family more than by presenting them with a Nacimiento of this class. It will be set up in the place of honour on the chest of drawers, whose top is always devoted to their “saints”—appallingly bad images, as a rule—and family photographs; while, if the exiguous wages permit, one or more candles will be lighted in front of the treasure every night until the “Day of the Kings,” which is our Twelfth Night, a far greater festival to Spanish children than Christmas or New Year’s Day. And the smallest infant is taught that no sacrilegious finger is to be laid on the sacred toy.

The Nacimientos in rich houses are put up with an absolute disregard of cost (I remember seeing one of which a single figure cost £4), but the idea is the same—a plastic representation of the Nativity. Here, however, it is made the occasion of a social function, and it is curious to read in the papers on Christmas Day how a magnificent Nacimiento was set up over-night in the gorgeous chapel of the splendid mansion of the Dukes of Mengano or the Counts of Fulano, and how, after the Reverend Bishop of this or the learned Canon of that had read the Office and delivered an inspired address, the whole family adjourned to the dining-room at 1 a.m. and were regaled with “a succulent lunch,” which was “made the more agreeable by abundance of champÁn.”

In this country the press reports of functions of this kind are not sparing in their adjectives. The accounts are paid for like any other advertisement, and the rich hosts of the “new” nobility like to have value for their money just as much as do the wealthy merchants and financiers. As for the old rural nobility, they are mostly too much reduced in fortune for display at Christmas or any other time, and if they are still well off, their tastes and traditions are averse from newspaper celebrity, so that reporters have little chance of getting inside their grave old houses, still less of obtaining fees for advertisements in the shape of adulatory narratives of their religious observances.

In Seville all old customs still keep an extraordinary hold on the popular imagination. Of these one of the most curious is a religious ceremony called the “Cock’s Mass” (Misa del Gallo), which takes place on Christmas Eve. So strange is it and so archaic that at one time efforts were made to get the Pope to prohibit it; but the Franciscan Friars of the Monastery of San Buenaventura appealed to him in person; permission was given for a commission of the Brothers to perform the Cock’s Mass at the Vatican, and after hearing it for himself the Pope gave a special licence for its continuance in a slightly modified form.

San Buenaventura is the church to go to on Christmas Eve in Seville if one would hear the Cock’s Mass in its most refined form, with good singing and organ-playing; but for real local colour and a passionate fervour which overflows all the bonds of self-restraint, we must find standing-room, if we can, in the little chapel of San Antonio Abad, in the street called Alfonso XII., for this is the chosen resort of the poor, to whom their religion is as real as their daily bread.

The Mass begins on the stroke of midnight, but hours before that the little church will be occupied by silent worshippers, who kneel on the floor praying, with their eyes fixed on the high altar. Here is displayed the Nativity, and prominent among the figures is a donkey, the pride and glory of the congregation, because it is the only life-sized model of the kind to be seen in any church in Seville.

People drop in every minute or so to look at the Nacimiento, kneel for a short time in prayer, and then go out again to meet their friends and pass the time till the Mass begins. The streets are crowded, and every cafÉ and restaurant is full, for people go from one church to another to see the different Nacimientos, and few of them will get to bed before two or three in the morning; so the system must be sustained with coffee and cakes, or wine and ham, or aguardiente and crab claws, or cold water and roasted chestnuts or acorns, according to personal taste and depth of purse.

At midnight the Mass begins at San Antonio Abad with a clash of barbaric sounds, the small organ being reinforced by guitars, tambourines, castanets, triangles, and an Oriental instrument called a zambomba, which must be an inheritance from the most primitive times of Arabic music. This is made of coarse clay, and is in shape something like a flower-pot, with a waist in the middle and with no bottom. The wider end is covered with a tightly stretched parchment, through which is thrust a thin piece of cane, tightly tied underneath. The “music” is produced by wetting the hand and then rubbing the cane up and down, and the noise it makes is indescribable. If one can imagine a drum bellowing like a cow that has lost her calf, one would come somewhere near the sound of the zambomba: but it must be heard to be appreciated. The Andalucians love it, and if they can’t afford to buy a zambomba for the Noche Buena they will make one of a flower pot with a wet cloth stretched over it instead of the skin—a substitute which produces even weirder noises than the legitimate vessel.

This instrument of torture is not now often to be heard in the churches, and it is to be feared that even in San Antonio Abad it will soon cease to delight the Christmas Eve congregation; but when we first went to Seville it was still an essential part of the orchestra.

The whole of the Cock’s Mass is but a gradual leading up to the crowning act of the “Good Night”—the presentation of the Babe to be kissed by the worshippers. In most of the churches this is a solemn ceremony, and one feels how intensely in earnest are those who file past the altar steps to kneel before the image of the infant Saviour. The blazing lights that surround the image, the gorgeous vestments of the priests, the dim light of the side aisles whence the veiled worshippers glide out, kneel to kiss the foot of the little figure, and then disappear into the darkness again,—all this combines to make the Cock’s Mass in many of the churches a picturesque and emotional spectacle. In such churches there is only the organ, or perhaps a string band, and there is nothing archaic in the traditional Cock’s Mass save the name.

But in San Antonio Abad and other minor churches frequented mainly if not entirely by the poor, the Mass has quite another character.

In some of these the music begins as early as eleven, soft and low at first, and gradually increasing in tone and cheerfulness as time goes on and the church fills more and more. And the spirits of the people rise with the music, until some piece with a strongly marked rhythm strikes up, and the congregation seem to lose their heads altogether. They sway from side to side, keep time with their heads and hands, and finally break into step with their feet, completely carried away by excitement as the “Good Night” draws nearer and nearer to its climax.

They recover themselves when the bell rings for the elevation of the Host, and all kneel down, although they are so tightly packed that it is a gymnastic feat to get up again. There is a pause, as if they were taking breath, during the Benediction, and then, as the head priest takes his seat on the altar steps with the image of the Infant on his knee, the music bursts out again, organ, guitars, tambourines, zambombas, in a triumphant medley of sound without any particular form or rhythm, and the whole crowd moves simultaneously towards the Nativity, one step at a time, without the least pushing or shoving, but all resolved to adore their Christ, to see and touch “The Child” who is also “The Lord.”

It means a good deal to some of them: nothing less, indeed, than an augury for good or ill for the year to come. I heard one woman in the crowd tell another as they left the church one Christmas Eve that she would have good fortune now, for El NiÑo had looked up at her and smiled as she knelt to worship Him: and her naÏve confidence in the happy omen explained much that would otherwise have puzzled me in the demeanour of the crowd during the Cock’s Mass.

THE BRIDEGROOM’S DOOR.

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CHAPTER XIII

The Columbus country—The way to Moguer—A rickety bridge—An historical family—Blue eyes and honourable hearts—Fifteenth-century iron work—Martin Alonso PinzÓn, the friend of Columbus—His history as told by his descendant—Palos de la Frontera—The castle of the PinzÓns—The church of St. George—The Virgin of Columbus—The bridegroom’s door—La Rabida: what it is and what it might be.

February in southern Spain is already spring as a rule, but I visited the Columbus country in 1912, and in that unusual year the winter ran on well into the middle of February, a month which generally carpets the fields with blue iris, golden buttercups, and scarlet poppies. So my trip to Moguer, Palos de la Frontera, and La Rabida may come under the heading of Winter Sketches, and perhaps my readers will like to know that it is possible to explore these remote villages even in showery weather.

I started with the intention of doing a few days’ digging in a buried town on the banks of the Rio Tinto, on my way to the Tharsis copper mines, away up in the Sierra de Huelva, where I was going to see a little museum of objects found by the Company in their various shafts. But the weather, perfect when I left Seville, changed in the night, and I woke next morning to see a downpour of rain which put excavations out of the question—the more so because to reach my site I had to cross the Rio Tinto by a ford which is impassable after rain. So I left my jamugas and tools in the charge of the amiable landlady of the uncomfortable rooms I had been compelled to engage because there was no other within many miles of the ruins, and went on to Moguer, furnished with an introduction to the family of PinzÓn, lineal descendants of Martin Alonso PinzÓn, who with his two brothers accompanied Columbus on his epoch-making voyage from Palos de la Frontera to the Bahamas.

I left the train in a heavy shower at the wretched little station of San Juan del Puerto, a poverty-stricken village lying on the mud-flats of the Rio Tinto near its junction with the Odiel. This is the nearest station to Moguer, and people who want to see the district, which is very pretty as well as full of historical interest, should not be misled by the guide-books into taking any other route to La Rabida, for reasons which I will presently explain.

Moguer is only about a mile and a half from the station, and a diligence meets every train. It is true that it is not a luxurious conveyance, and sometimes if one does not rush to secure a seat one may find oneself left behind. So unless the trip is a sudden thought, as mine was, it is well to write to the landlady of the Fonda Almirante PinzÓn at Moguer, and she will not only send a carriage to the station, but reserve one of her few bedrooms for you, and add an extra dish to her simple dinner in view of your arrival. It is always advisable, when possible, to give notice of your coming to modest little hostelries like this.

The diligence was not crowded the day I first went to Moguer. In fact it contained, besides myself, only an old doctor and his young wife, and the village idiot from San Juan, who rode on the step outside until he realised that nothing was to be got out of the doctor or me by his whines, and then he dropped off and strolled back in the rain to his own place.

Not far out of San Juan there is a long low wooden bridge on trestles across the Rio Tinto, which here is very wide. It creaked and groaned a good deal as we crossed it, and the doctor remarked that it had been condemned long ago as unsafe by the Inspector of Roads, and every time he crossed it he wondered whether it would hold up till he got to the other side.

“Oh, Cayetano! How can you say so, when we have to return by the same road to-morrow!” shrieked his wife.

I looked at the turbid yellow water, already swollen with the rain. A bath in it would be highly unpleasant, even if it were nothing worse than a bath. But we got safely across, and rattled up a gentle rise into the pretty little town, where at every turn one meets reminders of the wealth and splendour that it enjoyed in the sixteenth century, when the gold that poured in from America enriched every one connected with those who adventured in the New World.

The Fonda del Almirante PinzÓn is established on the ground floor of the house belonging to the Admiral’s grandson, and when I was there the family, reduced in means like so many of the old nobility, were living on the floor above. Ever since the great days of their voyages with Columbus the head of the PinzÓns has been a sailor, and the Admiral whose name is given to the hotel distinguished himself in the Peninsular War, and quite recently a cruiser was sent to convey his remains to the national pantheon of illustrious mariners at San Fernando. And his son upheld and his grandson still upholds the traditions of a family which Charles V. honoured with a grant of nobility, and the same arms as those given to Columbus himself—the three historic caravels and the motto—

But the proudest boast of the PinzÓns, who were wealthy when their great ancestor first set sail for the unknown west, is that they have never soiled their hands with ill-gotten gains, and that one Admiral PinzÓn after another has held high posts under Government and has left office no richer than when he entered it. Honesty such as this, in a country where politics and office are universally regarded as a short road to a fortune, argues a standard of morality as lofty as it is rare. Sigismund Moret, the Liberal statesman who was three times intrigued out of the Premiership because he would not buy party support, died a poor man, and all the Spanish press united to proclaim the fact as the highest honour they could pay him. As yet it is vain to hope for the honest administration of public money, but we must trust that in the long-run the example of the PinzÓns and the Morets and their like will prevail. For it is one of the tragedies of Spain that her natural wealth, mineral and agricultural, is immense, and she only needs honest and common-sense administration to become one of the richest, instead of the poorest country in Europe.

This digression is excusable because in the Columbus country you meet the PinzÓns at every turn, and it is they and their like who some day will leaven the lump. It is usual to say that Spain will never rise because the dead weight of egoism and self-seeking lying on the top of the good dough underneath will prevent any sound morality from getting to the top. But qui vivra verra. I, personally, believe that cracks are spreading in the crust of administrative selfishness, and I hope before I die to see some such awakening here as took place in my own country when I was young, and English society suddenly began to realise that it had not fulfilled its whole duty to the poor by giving them blankets and beef-tea.

The little fonda with its grand name is not a place one wants to stay long at, for although clean the beds are somewhat hard, and the food is such as might be expected for five pesetas a day tout compris. But in the modest patio there is a large painting of the Virgin of Montemayor which belonged to the Admiral and his forbears. And in the simply furnished dining-room there is a beautiful wrought-iron well-head dating from the fifteenth century, in style and design identical with the pulpit in the little church of Palos de la Frontera, whence was read the decree of Isabel the Catholic calling on her lieges of the port to man and furnish the ships Santa Maria and NiÑa for the expedition into the unknown. These ships, according to the PinzÓns, were the property of Martin Alonso PinzÓn and his brothers, although in the lawsuit brought many years after by Diego, the son of Columbus, against the State a different account was given. The papers relating to that long quarrel have been the basis for much of what has been written about Columbus’ first expedition, so if my readers find the family traditions widely varying from popular histories of the period, they must remember that the PinzÓn point of view naturally differs from that of the other side in an unhappy lawsuit, and they may choose for themselves which story they will believe.

The day after my arrival at Moguer was bright and sunny, and the SeÑora de PinzÓn, after studying my credentials, allowed her young daughter Conchita (otherwise Maria de la ConcepciÓn) to join me in my expedition to La Rabida. This was really a great favour, for Spanish mothers never like to let their girls out of their sight until they are safely married. But Conchita had been educated by the Irish nuns of the Loretto at Gibraltar, and the SeÑora could not resist her appeal to be allowed to spend the day with me to practise her English, which she said she was afraid of forgetting. It seemed to make the dry bones of history curiously alive to go over the ground with that bright young creature and hear her continual references to “my ancestor Martin Alonso” as we drove along a pretty lane to the famous Palos, greeted by every man, woman, and child we met with a cordiality which showed in what esteem the family are held here.

“We never were very rich,” said Conchita, “although our vineyards and olive orchards formerly brought in a good deal more than they do now, so it was not our money that made my family popular here. No, it is what my ancestor did for Spain that is never forgotten. You see he lived here all his life, while Columbus was only a foreign visitor, who came to find ships and went away again. It is no wonder that the people remember my ancestor better than him.”

The intense pride of my little friend in her family history shone through every word she spoke. She expressed it more openly, perhaps, than an English girl would have done in her place, but I am bound to say I cordially sympathised with her. I am proud enough of my own ancestors, whose deeds made but the faintest mark on the history of their time. If they had helped to discover America there would have been no holding me!

Palos, the once famous port about half-way between La Rabida and Moguer, now lies high and dry, with a strip of pasturage between the village and the estuary. Even the little caravels of 1483 could now not anchor anywhere near the ruined castle, and the whole place seems to sleep away the days, resting on its fame in the past.

“The castle belonged to my ancestor,” said Conchita, pointing out a ruined wall on a slight eminence behind the little church. “There was only a tower left when Columbus came, and my ancestor’s residence was at Moguer. But the PinzÓns kept their vessels here, and it was here that Columbus came to look for Martin Alonso and talk to him about the voyage he wanted to make. He had made Martin Alonso’s acquaintance in Rome, where they were both studying navigation. You know it was a favourite study in those days with rich men who loved the sea. How ridiculous it is to say that Columbus came here by chance! You see what an out-of-the-way place it is. And if he had wanted to get to Huelva to visit his brother-in-law, as Washington Irving says, he would have been a fool to go to La Rabida, to which there is no road at all except this, while Huelva was on the main road. It says in our family papers that Columbus came to look for his friend Martin Alonso PinzÓn and discuss with him plans for the voyage, and Martin Alonso went with him to La Rabida. The story of his asking for food and drink at La Rabida is silly. As if my ancestor would have let him leave his house without giving him and his child a good dinner! It makes me angry to see that absurd picture at La Rabida of the porter giving bread and water to his little boy. It is quite modern and not at all well painted, I am glad to say!”

We had climbed up to investigate the ruined wall, melancholy relic of the strong fortress that gave Palos its importance as a frontier town (de la frontera) during the civil war between Moslems and Mozarabs in the ninth century, when all this district was in the hands of descendants of King Witiza, the last legitimate monarch of the Goths, whom for twenty-five years the Sultans of Cordova sought in vain to dislodge. From this eminence I could see that, before it silted up, the little harbour of Palos would have been a safe and convenient shelter from the west winds sweeping up the broad estuary.

“Two of the ships belonged to the PinzÓns,” said Conchita, “but the family were out of favour with the Catholic Kings—we have never found out why—and they could not lend them to Columbus without asking leave of the Queen, who had put an embargo on them by way of punishment for some unknown offence. When Columbus and my ancestor had well talked over the proposed adventure, they went to La Rabida to ask the Prior, Juan Perez de Marchena, to use his influence with Isabella to remove the embargo, so that Martin Alonso and his brothers might lend Columbus their ships. The PinzÓns could not go to the Court themselves, because they were in disgrace. I wish we knew why. The family papers tell us nothing, and there is only a vague tradition that it was something to do with religion. I cannot imagine what it could be, for the PinzÓns have always been good Catholics, and they had not long before restored or rebuilt part of this church, which as you see is very old indeed.”

While we talked we were sitting on a bench in the little church of St. George. On our left was the wrought-iron pulpit whence the call for volunteers was read; on the right was the ancient image of the Virgin which local tradition claims as the one which Columbus took with him on board the Santa Maria.

It is by no means improbable that local tradition is correct, for the image is mediÆval, and as such would have been the object of special adoration by the people of Palos then as now. Thus Martin Alonso PinzÓn, the lord of Palos, could do no greater honour to his friend Columbus, and find no surer way to calm the fears of the families of their crews, than by taking this venerated image as the patroness of the expedition. The ships were bound to come safe home again, the people of Palos would say, having their beloved Virgin on board.

Traditions about the patron image of a town do not grow up spontaneously, although as the centuries go by the original story becomes adorned and overlaid with the additions made to it by one generation after another. Without some foundation in fact, it is most unlikely that the statement that this was the image in question should have been made and accepted, and thenceforth handed on as a tradition by the people of Palos. Little was seen of Columbus at Palos after his return from his first voyage. The PinzÓns attribute this to the early death of Martin Alonso, said by historians to be due to his disappointment that Columbus should have obtained more honour and rewards than himself after his “base desertion” of the Admiral at Cuba. The family naturally ignore, if indeed they are not now ignorant of, all that was alleged against their ancestor in the lawsuit of Diego Colon. For them Martin Alonso’s death was brought about by the hardships he suffered and the illness he contracted when through stress of weather his ship was separated from that of Columbus, whom he never saw again until both the great navigators returned to Palos, one in the morning and the other in the evening of 15th March 1493, seven months and a half after they had left the little port together. Be this as it may, it must be admitted that PinzÓn and his brothers played an important part in the discovery of the New World, and that it was their great misfortune to be under a cloud at Court when favours and rewards were being showered upon the man whom they had so materially aided at the outset.

Perhaps if I had visited Palos with a descendant of Columbus instead of a daughter of the other house, the part played by PinzÓn would assume smaller proportions in my retrospect of that far-off time. But as things were, I felt as if I had got the story from the very actors themselves, and I could no more doubt that this was indeed the patron image which watched over the adventurers from the chapel set up on the Santa Maria by her owner, Martin Alonso PinzÓn, when he handed his ship over to Columbus as commander of the “fleet,” than I could doubt that Martin Alonso was more sinned against than sinning in the reports that were spread of his disappearance on the coast of Cuba.

And when Conchita took me out round the west end and down a flight of steps to the north door of the church, which is decorated with red and white brickwork of the style called “Mozarabic,” and told me that it was known as the “Door of the Bridegrooms” when the PinzÓns lived at the castle, and was only opened to admit the eldest son of the family on his wedding-day, I found myself quite able to accept her statement, regardless of various inherent improbabilities which afterwards suggested themselves.

Having thoroughly taken in the beauty and the tradition of this architectural gem, with its fortress-like outer walls, its strangely dwarfed nave, and its lofty Gothic transepts, we resumed our triumphal progress along the road travelled by Columbus four hundred and twenty-eight years before—I say triumphal advisedly, for all down the one narrow ill-paved street of Palos, Conchita was bowing and smiling like a young princess at the people who ran out to greet her when they caught the sound of our approaching wheels. One understood that not many carriages drive through the village nowadays, but mere curiosity would not account for the cordiality of her reception.

From Palos to La Rabida the road is good and well kept, and at one point it is really very pretty, winding through a pine wood, between the trees of which we see the Arabic Tapia of the monastery walls gleaming rosy pink in the afternoon sun on their eminence above the estuary.

The inherent lack of common sense which characterises all Spanish administration is exemplified by the very existence of this road. In 1893 the fourth centenary of the discovery of America was marked by a tremendous celebration organised by what is called the Columbian Society of Huelva. The monastery was proclaimed a “national monument,” which means that its upkeep is henceforth a national charge, and no further voluntary effort to preserve it will ever be made, or even expected. An overpowering column with a statue of Columbus on top was set up at a cost, I have been told, of 80,000 pesetas (£3200)—a large sum to be raised by subscription in Spain—which was designed and erected by the architect to the Government. A landing-stage was built on the bank of the estuary for holiday-makers coming from Huelva, and a broad road, wide enough for half a dozen carriages to drive abreast, was made from the landing-stage up to the monastery, and carried on thence to join the road to Palos, as I have said. Extensive repairs and restorations were begun in the building, and the slopes round it were laid out as gardens, which were to be a glory of indigenous and American flowers and foliage—as well they might in a climate where everything grows at such a rate that the blossoming of Aaron’s rod would hardly be a miracle here.

But alas! the great column, ludicrously out of place alongside of the monastery walls, all weathered and mellowed by time, has never been finished; and worse than that, it was jerry built with what may have been left, after the celebration was concluded, of the 80,000 pesetas subscribed by a confiding public, and now, twenty-one years after the first stone was laid, this national monument to Spain’s greatest hero is surrounded by a rough paling labelled in large letters Peligro (Danger), and one passes it hastily by, wondering whether the statue of Columbus will fall on one’s innocent head from the lofty height which makes its details indiscernible.

A peal at the monastery door—the door by which Columbus entered—brings forth an unshaven porter, who turns one loose to wander at will in the empty cloisters, but reappears in search of his pourboire when he hears one’s steps returning. No photographs or even picture post-cards are to be obtained here, no printed papers or books relating to the building, there are no seats to be found in the whole of the monastery save some tiled recesses in the chapel walls—all is empty and desolate, with the unmistakable air of a place seldom visited and quickly left.

The broad new road down to the water serves no possible purpose, for no conveyance of any kind can be procured nearer than Moguer, and for visitors with time and energy to make the journey there on foot a path from the landing-stage to Palos would have served every purpose. A forlorn rowing-boat was moored to the steps where we went down, but its owner could not be found. It was kept there, our coachman told us, in case any one wanted to row to Huelva, several miles away up the mouth of the Odiel. “But,” he added scornfully, “who wants to row to Huelva when they have come in a carriage from Moguer?”

La Rabida is a monument of misspent public money. I was told that in summer people make up water parties from Huelva, but they must all bring their own refreshments, for not so much as a cup of coffee can be got at the monastery. One thought what a Mecca for Americans, and indeed for all other pilgrims, this spot could be made, were it in hands more appreciative and more sensible than those of the Spanish bureaucracy. One pictured a gay little hotel down below, far enough removed from the monastery not to jar on its old-world peace, but near enough to offer comfort and convenience to the pilgrim, whether he came by land or sea. One provided the sunny refectory, now empty save for those inferior fancy pictures of Columbus which annoyed Conchita PinzÓn, with a library of books dealing with the history of the place and of the voyages of Columbus and his companions; one saw the friars’ cells, now closed and smelling of shut windows, furnished and available for students to live and work in; and one installed a service of motors from Seville and Huelva to the landing-stage, so that every tourist who came to Seville might take a day’s run to Moguer, Palos, and La Rabida, as a necessary part of his Andalucian trip.

But alas! a heavy shower woke me from my dream of what ought to be in this lovely corner of a lovely land. The sky had darkened while we were exploring the melancholy monastery, and depressed, silent, and grieving over its wasted opportunities I drove away from La Rabida, my last glimpse of Columbus on his shaky monument showing us the Admiral tottering to a fall, as sad and gloomy as the gathering clouds banked up over the Atlantic whose conquest he achieved.

CHAPTER XIV

The Convento de la Luz—The Poor Clares and the Conceptionists—Our Lady of Montemayor—A fortified religious house—The ribats of Spain—The ancient refectory—Arabic inscriptions in the Nun’s Chapel—The Portocarreros—Family tombs—A night at San Juan—The shyness of the nun—An early start—Mossen Bethancourt and the Canary Isles—The beginning of the floods.

“You who are so interested in everything old should not leave Moguer without seeing the Convento de la Luz,” said Conchita as we drove back from La Rabida. “I will take you there to-morrow morning if you like, before you start for the train. Formerly no one except the clergy could enter any part of the convent, for it belonged to the Poor Clares, and you know how rigidly closed the Order is. But now they are all dead, and the convent has been sold or let or lent by the Duke of Alba to the Conceptionists—the teaching branch, not the closed one—and the Reverend Mother lets me take in visitors at any time. All the aristocracy of Moguer send their daughters to be educated there, and they have free classes for the poor as well. It enlivens our circle having the Conceptionist nuns there instead of the Poor Clares.”

She went on to tell me that the convent had become hopelessly impoverished, though it was once one of the wealthiest in the district. The Clares seem to have lived like private ladies, each with her little suite of rooms, bedroom, sitting-room, and kitchen, and even her own share of the walled garden. Each had her own woman servant, who lived not in the convent but in the town, coming in and out daily to attend to her mistress’s wants. Anything less like the accepted idea of monastic life I never heard of; and when I saw the bright sunny little flats partitioned off by the nuns for their private convenience, I wondered still more how such a conception of asceticism could have lasted down to the end of the first decade of the twentieth century.

“Reverend Mother says,” pursued Conchita, “that the one Poor Clare who still lived when the Archbishop of Seville sanctioned the transfer to the Conceptionists, was the tiniest creature she ever saw, quite imbecile from age, and withered and shrunk up just like a doll. They had been gradually dying off one by one, until this little old woman was the only inhabitant of the convent, which is so large that it contains a dormitory a hundred feet long, while the central patio is a hundred feet square. There are many beautiful objects of art there even now, and they say that formerly it was a perfect treasure-house. No one knows when it was built, but the PinzÓns’ ancestors, the Portocarreros, whose monuments you will see there, were very rich, and they always protected the convent. What date was that? Oh, I don’t know, but it was before the discovery of America; and of course after that, when everybody grew rich, the convent got more gifts than ever. But you can fancy what went on in later years, when the Poor Clares were getting older and more helpless every day, and more dependent on their servants. They say that those women never went in without securing some valuable work of art to carry off and sell, though where they sold them no one knows, for they were never offered in Moguer. Of course not! No one here would buy valuables robbed from the nuns. Well, that is all over now, and no one will steal what is left. The Conceptionists are not poor at all (though of course they always want money for their free classes) and they take great care of the pictures and tiles, and everything else that those bad servants could not carry away.”

Truth to tell, I did not expect to find much that would interest me in the Convento de la Luz, imagining from Conchita’s account that it would be a fifteenth-century building of the type so frequently found in this part of Spain. The wealthy and powerful families of Arcos and Medina Sidonia set the fashion at that time of lavishing their riches on building and restoring convents and monasteries, and of course every great noble with plenty of money followed their example. Too often the gold which poured into Andalucia after the discovery of America was spent on barbaric display of carved and gilded woodwork, chased silver, and costly draperies, more conspicuous for their money value than for their beauty: and I confess that I rather disliked the idea of spending a couple of my few hours at Moguer in visiting such a monument, when I might have driven out to the hermitage of Our Lady of Montemayor. For Our Lady of Montemayor had been worshipped as far back as the ninth century, when Palos de la Frontera was an outpost of the Spanish Christians, who, although they forgot their language during the many centuries of Moslem rule, steadily maintained their religious beliefs.

But it was impossible to refuse the invitation of my kind and courteous little friend, and I agreed to go with her to the convent next morning instead of making an expedition into the country.

What then was my delight at finding in the Convento de la Luz an almost perfect survival of the fortified religious houses which the Moslems called ribats—outposts built to defend the frontier, and garrisoned by men of a semi-religious order, sworn to this particular form of military service. Whether the Order was originally instituted in Andalucia by the Christians (Mozarabs) who remained in occupation of their lands and castles when Spain was conquered by the Mohammedans, no one seems to know, though the existence of La Rabida itself, and of various other places bearing the same name, in which Mozarabic remains are seen, suggests that ribats were established here long before the Almoravides founded their empire over Morocco and Spain, in a ribat on the river Niger in the first half of the twelfth century.

Be that as it may, I saw at once that the Convento de la Luz was built for such a fortress, while the church with its massive walls and buttressed ramparts could never have been intended for other than Christian worship.

So much for the outside. The only break in the enclosing walls is where an opening has been made to give easier access from the street. One sees that formerly the nuns had to come out and cross a courtyard to speak with callers at the gate, and one can understand that this would hardly suit the comfort-loving old ladies who were the last of this branch of their Order.

A Sister opened a heavy door giving on a cloister which borders all four sides of the great central court, and led us through an archway six feet deep into a large hall. This was the refectory in the days when a hundred Poor Clares occupied the convent, but now it is the nuns’ reception-room, and here the mothers of pupils, rich and poor, sit and discuss with the Superior and the heads of the classes the tastes, talents, and idiosyncrasies of their girls.

It is a very lofty, chapel-like hall, whose vaulted roof would suggest a thirteenth-century architect, but for the tiny windows, placed so high up that one sees that the first thought of the builder was security against attack. And we know that after 1257, when this district was conquered by Alfonso X., there was no need to build fortified religious houses. We sat on brick benches left in the thickness of the wall and faced with iridescent tiles of the rich green colour introduced by the Arabs out of compliment to Mahomet’s banner; and as I watched a ray of sun from one of those lofty windows lighting up the gilded halos in a fifteenth-century painting of the Last Supper, I wished the walls could speak and tell us the true history of the convent. Even the origin of its name is lost. The townspeople call it de la Luz, but they do not know why, and the earliest mention of it in Andalucian history, which is in 1349, describes it as “The convent of Santa Clara at Moguer.”

More than one of the earliest crucifixes existent in Andalucia is known as “Nuestro SeÑor Cristo de la luz” (Our Lord Christ of light), and such works of art, be it remembered, are necessarily Mozarabic, because the Mozarabs were the only Christians in this part of Spain previous to 1248. There is a fine one in the Nuns’ Chapel of this convent, the advocation of which has been forgotten. Perhaps the last little Poor Clare, had she not been in her dotage when the convent was taken over by its present occupants, could have told them that this was “Our Lord of Light,” whose prototype had been worshipped here for about a thousand years.

This may seem a bold statement to those who suppose that the Christians suffered persecution during the rule of Islam in Spain. But recent research has proved that so far from this being the case, the Christians as a rule were treated with kindness and consideration, as long as they refrained from showing open disrespect for the alien religion. And here in Moguer is the material corroboration of conclusions deduced from scattered references to the condition of the Mozarabs which are found in the writings of the time, both Arabic and Christian. For the walls of the Nuns’ Chapel (screened off by a stone grille with Arabic tracery from the church restored by the Portocarreros) are lined with ancient wooden choir stalls, on each arm of which is carved a lion’s head and an Arabic inscription in Kufic characters of the style used in Cordova in the tenth century. These certainly were not placed here after 1257, at which date the African character was in use all over Moslem Spain, and as certainly such stalls never were used in Moslem worship.

It was interesting to retrace the course of history from that time to this. Here was the evidence of the upholding of their faith by the native Christians for century after century, during the whole of which they were practically cut off from Rome and isolated from their co-religionists elsewhere. A painting of the Virgin of Guadalupe, surrounded by worshippers in thirteenth-century costumes, seemed to bring us into direct contact with the period when Andalucia was conquered by San Fernando of Castile, and her “few remaining loyal priests” were confirmed in their houses and offices by that wise monarch. In the church were life-size alabaster effigies of the noble family of Portocarrero, nine men and women in fifteenth-century dress, at the foot of the high altar. Burial in that sacred spot was the privilege granted to Don Pedro Portocarrero, Lord of Moguer, his wife DoÑa Elvira Alvarez, and their heirs for ever, in acknowledgment by a grateful Church of their benefactions to the convent of Santa Clara and the monastery of San Francisco, which last comparatively modern edifice is now falling into ruin in the shadow of the imperishable walls of the Mozarabic foundation. Above us hung a lamp made of silver brought from the New World by Martin Alonso PinzÓn, although his tomb, as Conchita regretfully admitted, is not to be found here. And by my side was the young daughter of those ancient houses, who proudly told me that she too inherited the right to be buried at the foot of the high altar when her time came.

Truly this Columbus country has more than ordinary interest for the traveller in Spain, and as I remarked at the beginning of my attempt to describe it, it is a pity to be misled by the guide-books into visiting La Rabida by boat from Huelva instead of by diligence from San Juan del Puerto. Because, in the first place, if the weather be bad you cannot get to La Rabida by water at all, and, in any case, as the estuary there is very wide and much exposed to wind and to the Atlantic waves, a trip of two hours each way is apt to be unpleasant to all except first-rate sailors. And because, in the second place, even though you are a good sailor and get to La Rabida in ideal weather, you will certainly not have time to go on to Palos and Moguer and get back to Huelva before nightfall, since you will have no option but to walk from La Rabida. And, as I hope I have shown, Palos and Moguer have attractions for the artist and the archÆologist, as well as for the pilgrim to the shrine of Columbus.

For my own part, although I was obliged to catch the afternoon train from San Juan in order to go on to the mines of Tharsis on the day that Conchita first introduced me to the Convent de la Luz, I shamelessly threw over all my other engagements on the return journey, and went straight back to Moguer.

Not quite straight back, though, come to think of it, for the diligence was crowded when I reached San Juan, and as it was impossible to get any other conveyance, or even a donkey to ride, I had to spend the night there, since it was pouring with rain and I dared not attempt the walk to Moguer in the dark, through mud up to my ankles.

The only room I could get was at the one inn in the place, an establishment consisting of two rooms and my bedroom, which opened off the kitchen. It literally opened off it, for the door had no kind of fastening, and the landlady’s niece put a chair against it on the outside, as the only means of preventing my toilet operations being performed in public. The whole place was streaming with damp, and flood-marks were plainly to be seen on the walls of my bedroom. There was no food to be had except puchero, and the landlady was quite grateful when I told her I could dine off the remains of the excellent lunch provided by my hosts at Tharsis, for she had no one to send out for supplies.

The poor little place was clean, the people inspired me with such confidence that the keyless door did not trouble me in the least, and I slept from the time I went to bed till 6 a.m. Then I got up and dressed by the light of a candle, for the diligence was to start at seven, and I intended to walk on and cross the trestle bridge before it picked me up. Heavy rains had swollen the rivers everywhere, and I reflected with dismay on the remarks of my travelling companion on the condition of that bridge when we drove over it the week before.

It was still almost dark when I left the village behind me, and through the gloom a blazing wood fire shone invitingly alongside of the railway line, from the cottage of a family in charge of the level crossing. The wife ran out and begged me to come in and warm myself, full of wonder and commiseration at the hard fate—whatever it might be—that compelled a seÑora de edad (“a lady advanced in years”) to take the road on foot so early in the morning.

I had to explain that the English of all ages have a curious fancy for walking in the dark, and after a few minutes’ pause, filled up by the family’s ejaculations at my remarkable activity, I pursued my way across the rickety bridge, watching a pale yellow gleam gradually appearing in the east, and wondering whether it meant that the sun would come out presently. The river was higher than ever. As a rule the Rio Tinto is a stream of wonderful colours, coppery green and bronze and orange, which turn to molten gold in the sunshine; but now the flood-water had so completely swamped the rest that it looked more like a sea of liquid mud than the “dyed river.” It seemed to me doubtful whether the bridge would hold up another twenty-four hours, and I knew that the part of wisdom would be to turn round and go back to Seville by the next train. But I was bent upon another visit to the convent at Moguer, and still more bent upon getting the photographs which the Mother Superior had given me leave to take, and I could only hope that the yellow streak in the east might mean a day without rain and a diminished flood to-morrow.

I got my photographs, between showers, and one of them would have been made quite charming by the graceful figure of the nun who showed me round, leaning over the well-head to raise the bucket from the water far below. But when she realised that she was in the picture she fled behind the camera, and nothing would induce her to pose for me.

“Por Dios!” she cried; “I cannot go out into the world in a photograph!”

The rain began again in the evening, and I heard it pelting on the windows as I sat with the SeÑora de PinzÓn and her daughter round the cosy camilla, talking of friends in common. We are apt to think a brazier rather an insufficient means of warming a room on a chilly night, but when we have sat an hour or so with our toes under the round petticoated table close to the pan of charcoal, we find ourselves suffused from head to foot with a warm glow which is by no means to be despised. It was late when I took my leave of the family to whom I owed so much of the enjoyment of my trip, and I had to get up about 4 a.m. to catch the early diligence to the station. I was anxious to get across the estuary as soon as possible, and I had given special orders to secure my seat in the bus beforehand.

“You will not mind letting yourself out,” said the landlady cheerfully, when I bade her good-night. “I have told the driver to send a man down for your luggage at five o’clock. He will tap at your window when he comes, and you will find the key in the door. We do not get up so early if we can help it, and we know you are a lady who can be trusted to shut the street door after her.”

I don’t suppose there was much to steal in the fonda, but whatever there was I could have taken it had I chosen, when I left Moguer next morning, and I thought it was just as well that the SeÑora de PinzÓn had a stout iron grille at the entrance to her apartments upstairs, with all their valuable historical contents, if this was the usual way of speeding the parting guest. I got up at four, boiled water to wash in on my spirit stove, drank hot coffee out of my thermos flask, and packed my things ready to start at five. But five struck, and 5.15, and 5.30, and no one came from the diligence, and at last in despair I unlocked the street door, left it on the latch, and hurried up the hill in the rain and darkness to the coach office. There was the coach ready to start, and the driver was taking his early aguardiente in the drink shop hard by, but there was no one to fetch my luggage, and when I got hold of the coachman he said he had heard nothing about it, and had no one to send.

“But the landlady told me she gave special orders last night, and that you promised to have me fetched at five o’clock.”

“She didn’t tell me, for I was not at the office. Had she told me I should have been at the fonda before now. She must have told the other driver, who takes turns with me to go to the station. What is to be done? Can you not carry your own bag to the coach if I wait here for you?”

“I certainly can not. And meanwhile the fonda door is open for thieves to enter, and the inmates may be murdered in their beds. Why not fetch it yourself and earn my peseta instead of my giving it to some one else who does not deserve it half so much? I should be greatly obliged to you, and you will get your tip at the station just the same, besides your peseta now.”

“Andando! (Come along!) Certainly I can do with a pesetita as well as another man.”

And, telling an old woman in the shop to mind his meek and dejected horses, he set off with me to the inn, shouldered my belongings, shouted a “good-morning” outside the landlady’s room which must have roused everybody within from the sleep they were so desirous of prolonging, and banged the street door as we went out with a noise loud enough to wake the town.

“They thoroughly deserve it,” said he as we hurried off together. “What disgraceful discourtesy to allow a lady like your honour to leave the fonda unattended! Gracias À Dios that I was on the spot to make good their short-comings. You will send for me next time you come to Moguer, SeÑora, and you shall not have to complain of negligence again!”

I certainly shall remember him, for I never saw a prompter “quick change act” from supine indifference to my plight to eager courtesy than was effected by him on the mention of the magic word “peseta.”

It continued to rain heavily; we ploughed in pitch darkness through a sea of mud, and the diligence rocked and rolled in the ruts all down the long hill to the river. But I was so well entertained by the conversation of my only fellow-passenger that we got into San Juan and pulled up at the station before I realised that we had crossed the perilous bridge safe and sound.

He was, he said, going to meet a connection of his family recently arrived in Seville, SeÑor Bethancourt, who held a high diplomatic position in one of the South American republics. His relative’s career, said the homely-looking countryman, had been most romantic. He came of a very old family of French origin, had left his home in Moguer when quite a lad, had been shipwrecked and cast up on the estate of a wealthy man who took him into his employ, and eventually made him a partner in the business and allowed him to marry his only daughter.

“But he has never forgotten his family at Moguer,” concluded my friend, “and although I am only related to him through my wife, he has lately written to me saying that he was coming to Spain, and inviting me to meet him in Seville.”

I may not have got the details of the romance quite right, but there was no doubt about the great man’s loyalty to those he had left behind him, and all through the drive the name of Bethancourt rang in my ears, while I tried in vain to recall what I had previously known of the family.

On looking them up among the multifarious notes which I have a genius for making and forgetting, I found that here was another of Moguer’s links with Spanish history.

In 1344 Pope Clement VI. gave the Lordship of the Canaries, then known as the Fortunate Isles, to Don Luis de la Cerda, a grandson of Alfonso X., with the title of Prince, and instructions to conquer and Christianise them. One would have thought that the islands should be conquered before they were given away, but it seems to have been the custom for the Popes to give away what they did not possess. Some historians assert that Alfonso XI., sovereign lord of the islands, was not best pleased at their being presented to his cousin, and wrote a letter to the Pope which to the frivolous modern eye seems to have been couched in a somewhat satirical vein, for he “thanked His Holiness for having made the gift, although it was in his (the writer’s) sovereign dominion.”

Don Luis de la Cerda, however, did not benefit by the somewhat dubious rights conferred on him, for he went off to France, his mother’s native land, and was there killed in battle two years later, never having visited the Canaries at all; and the next we hear of the Fortunate Isles is that after some vicissitudes they came in the course of a business transaction into the hands of “Mossen Juan de Betancur,” a French gentleman who carried out his enterprise to such good purpose that the people gave him the title of king.

This was in 1417, and meanwhile a good deal of highly profitable traffic had been going on between the “idolaters” of the islands and Seville and other Andalucian ports, including, it would seem, our little Palos and Moguer. Efforts were again being made to convert them, some Franciscan friars had established themselves there, and now Pope Martin V. appointed “Mossen” Bethancourt’s cousin, Don Mendo, as Bishop of the Rubicon, which seems to have been the name given to the diocese, and he came to Seville to swear obedience, as his suffragan, to the Archbishop.

Twenty years later, the commerce with the Canaries becoming presumably more and more lucrative, it was discovered that a great mistake had been made in allowing a Frenchman to acquire the lordship of the islands, and an armed force was sent over from Spain to dispossess Mossen Juan’s son, who now reigned in his stead, on the pretext of misgovernment and disrespect to the friars, who were busy making “new Christians” of “Mossen Menaute” Bethancourt’s subjects.

Mossen Menaute, according to the chroniclers, was not strong enough to fight the Spaniards, but he came pretty well out of the business, for he sold his rights, lock, stock, and barrel, to the Count of Niebla, one of the Medina Sidonia family, and with the proceeds he established himself at Moguer. When his guiding hand was removed, the prosperous trade which had aroused the cupidity of the powers in Spain so quickly declined that the Canary Isles became a source of expense rather than of profit, and changed hands time after time in the next half-century; while “Mossen Betancur” flourished on his new estate, and founded the family with which my travelling companion was so pleased to claim connection.

I got back to Seville none too soon, for the rain which drove me away from Moguer continued and increased, until all the Andalucian rivers overflowed. The railway from Seville to Huelva was under water, and the Columbus country isolated. In the matter of the shaky bridge, however, good came out of evil, for it became so much shakier in consequence of the floods that the authorities were forced at last to take action, and now pilgrims to La Rabida may drive there vi Moguer and Palos with quiet minds, for there is no longer any imminent danger of the diligence toppling over into the river.

CHAPTER XV

The Guadalquivir—Arabic gardens—“Bird’s milk”—Wild camels—Tartessian cattle—The city of Hercules—The foundations of Tharsis—Subterranean galleries—The “Labyrinth”—A careful father—The potters’ suburb—The City of the Poles—Triana under flood—Rising wells—A tower of refuge—Villages under water—Humours of the inundated—Governmental neglect—A night of terror—The gallant priest—King Alfonso feeds the hungry—The “Economical Kitchen”—Honours for the English ladies.

The Guadalquivir seems to be known to the English chiefly by Byron’s references to it, and unluckily he rhymes it with “river,” which was convenient for him, but not for the tourist who takes Byron for his guide to the pronunciation. For the Guadalquivir is the Wady al kabir of the Arabs (the great river) and the name is still pronounced with the accent, as in Arabic, on the last syllable. Thus when the traveller asks his way to the “Gwaddlequiver,” the native is at a loss for his meaning. Baedeker might usefully see to this; and while he is about it he might also mention that GranÁda has the accent on the second syllable. For when a traveller in a hurry asks for the train to “Grannader” the porters are apt to get confused and put him into the first train for any town the name of which is accented on the first syllable—e.g. MÁlaga. This actually happened in the case of an acquaintance of ours, who was rather deaf and did not know a word of Spanish. He found himself at MÁlaga instead of “Grannader,” and his language was vigorous and picturesque. All this waste of time, temper, and money might have been avoided had Baedeker instructed his readers how to pronounce the Spanish for pomegranate.

Since time began Seville seems to have been the victim of floods. The catchment area of the Guadalquivir is enormous, since with its tributaries it drains practically the whole of Andalucia, from the Sierra Morena in the north to the Sierra Nevada in the south. From Cordova the river runs through vast plains, mostly alluvial soil of great fertility. So rich is this soil that the Arabs used to say that bird’s milk could be got from the gardens round Seville, meaning that there is nothing that will not grow there with sufficient care and attention. The Arabic historians assure us that, nine centuries ago, there were twenty thousand farms and villages between Cordova and Seville, all living by agriculture and gardening; and although the number is obviously exaggerated, there can be no doubt that the whole of the riparian plain was highly cultivated. At that time the great river and its tributaries were so carefully dyked and dammed for purposes of milling and irrigation, that floods were far less frequent than now.

But the local archives show that within a century after the Christians became rulers of Seville the irrigation system was falling into decay, and the bed of the river was rapidly silting up. Now hardly a trace remains of the system of hydraulics inherited from Egypt, or perhaps inherited from Tartessus, for the Tartessians too constructed admirable water-works. To-day, chiefly for lack of water, most of the valley of the Guadalquivir is a waste of rough pasture, a swamp in winter and a desert in summer, ranged over by herds of half-wild cattle when the spring and autumn showers have raised a crop of coarse grass; the resort of birds of every description, the dwelling-place of boar, deer, hares, and other wild creatures, great and small, and the safe refuge of a herd of wild camels, never approached and seldom seen unless by the passenger or crew of some river steamer when they come down to the water at dawn. Thus they were once observed by a friend of mine, who took them for cattle until the sun rose suddenly and she saw their humps. After that she was always on the look out for them, and saw them again not long after, near enough and for long enough to count sixteen of them, old and young.

The origin of this herd of wild camels is unknown, but it seems clear that they have a good deal of vitality. For generations the marsh men used to shoot the young and sell their flesh as venison in the towns; yet the herd continued to breed in its secret places in the wilds, and now that the shooting of them is strictly prohibited it is increasing—a testimony to the immense extent of the waste lands as well as to the mild climate of this province. What the camels do when the valley is flooded no one knows, but they must go to some place of refuge, for every one knows what happens to the cattle if they are caught by the flood.

Some years ago a ten months’ drought was broken by a terrific thunderstorm which in one night raised the Guadalquivir many feet. A friend of ours had some eight hundred cattle herded on the Isla Mayor, a large island in the river about half-way between Seville and San Lucar. They were caught by the flood water, although it did not rise high enough to sweep them away. Next morning over four hundred of them lay dead, not from drowning but from the sudden chill, which their frames, weakened by the long drought and by struggling against the rush of water, were unable to resist.

In Tartessian times the cattle of the famous breed of Geryon, afterwards dedicated to the new deity adopted by the Tartessians and known as Hercules, used to feed in the valley of the Guadalquivir, or river Tartessus. But their pasturage area cannot have been anything as large as it is now, for we are told that the river was like a great lagoon then, and contained a chain of islands, great and small, on which the Tartessian cattle fed and bred, to the great profit of their owners. There must have been, however, plenty of shallows and elevations formed by the ever-growing alluvial deposits of the river, for Strabo tells us that twice every day, when the tide came up from the sea, the Tartessian cattle of their own accord left the lower pastures and took refuge on the higher ground of the islands.

In the annals of a sixteenth-century Sevillian writer I find a note to the effect than when Hercules first came up the Guadalquivir he discovered Seville itself lying on an island in the middle of the river, and called it the City of Poles, because it was built on piles. Afterwards, say our non-critical chroniclers, Hercules and his “brother” Atlas decided to build the “great city” on the highest point of the same islands, and replaced the “poles” by more solid material.

Down to the seventeenth century these ingenuous legends were so firmly believed by the Sevillians that no sceptic dared risk a broken head by disputing them. And indeed to this day we see three granite monoliths on the precise spot indicated as that chosen by Hercules, after consultation with Atlas, for the erection of his temple. They are still commonly known as the Columns of Hercules, although half a century or so ago an intelligent municipality, for no apparent reason, elected to change the name of the street to Marmoles, which means not granite but marbles.

With the gradual spread of knowledge the legend of Hercules and the city he built here became discredited, until after the seventeenth century it was dismissed as a ridiculous myth without any foundation. But the silly “common” people went on calling their monoliths “The Pillars of Hercules,” because, as they could not read or write, the antiquarian discussions of the Sevillian professors did not affect their traditional beliefs.

And now comes the point of my story. Three or four years ago a worthy man of business, who knew nothing and cared less for any of the theories of the learned gentlemen who decided what was or was not to be believed in Seville, began to dig for his own purposes near the place which tradition marks as chosen by Hercules for the site of his city. And to his annoyance he found one layer of ancient buildings below another, until he had got some twenty-seven feet down below the level of the present street of Marmoles, in his search for firm foundations on which to build new shops. Here he found subterranean galleries, man high and wide enough for two men to walk abreast, built of stone and of that indestructible cement which seems to have been the secret of Tartessus, together with small broken columns of the same granite and the same cutting as those three of Hercules, twenty of whose forty feet still project from the top of this same hill. And now it seems clear that this was the lost city of Tharsis, whose site has so long been a mystery.

Subterranean galleries, the purpose of which has not yet been discovered, are found beneath all this quarter of Seville. One begins to see that the sixteenth-century Heraclean legend may have had some foundation in fact, and that the worshippers of Hercules or his forerunner Geryon may literally have substituted these galleries of masonry for the perishable foundations of the prehistoric “lake-dwellings” built on poles. This view is supported by Don Carlos CaÑal, Deputy to Cortes, who wrote a book on Prehistoric Seville twenty years or more ago, before the discoveries in Crete had revolutionised the science of archÆology.

Some portions of the Tartessian galleries still exist in a state of perfect preservation; but these are under the highest part of the town, where floods could never have come, and I think must have been built for some of the mysteries of the Tartessian sun-worship, relics of which one finds elsewhere. Others, at a lower level, seem as if they must have been intended to afford free passage to the water of the river.

One most interesting and perfectly accessible gallery is unluckily private property, and it is exceedingly difficult to get permission to visit it. I have done so three times, thanks to the insistence of a priest as keen about archÆology as I am. But it was sorely against the grain of the owner.

He is a middle-aged gentleman who has never in his life ventured down the staircase which was built to give access to the labyrinth, as it is called, when it was accidentally discovered in the sixteenth century. On my first visit I went down the twenty-seven feet to the floor level of the galleries with the owner’s son, an intelligent lad keenly interested in the strange place. Although it is pitch dark, it is perfectly ventilated through invisible openings to the upper air, the outlets of which have long been lost sight of, and we easily made our way from one circular chamber to another by the light of candles along the barrel-shaped passages, which are of convenient width and more than a man’s height, and I was delighted at finding such an opportunity for study at my own door, as it were.

But alas! I had reckoned without my host. Before we had been there ten minutes that gentleman began to shout from the head of the stairs for us to come back—

“You have been down there quite long enough. You will get lost in the dark. You will catch pneumonia in the cold and the damp. Come up! Come up! I insist! I command! My son, why do you not obey me? I will not have you catch pneumonia. You have had more than time to see everything. There is nothing to see. For thirty years I have lived here and I have never gone down. The place is of no importance whatever. You must come up at once.”

Not for a moment did he stop shouting. At first the boy told me to pretend I did not hear, and to pay no attention to his father’s protestations, but very soon he said he dared not remain longer, and that if I would come up now he would take me down again the day after to-morrow, by which time he would talk his father over into letting us stay below as long as we wished.

Again, alas! With much protest I was allowed to go down again the day after to-morrow, as arranged, but the shouts to “come up!” were more continuous and more insistent than ever, and little work could be done.

Once more, some months later, I wrung a reluctant permission from the owner to take down a distinguished architect, but the only time we were allowed to enter the sacred precincts was at eight in the morning, when the friendly son, uninformed of our visit, was safe in bed. Two ancient female servants were sent down to see that we did not get into mischief, while for a whole hour the owner shouted that if we had any regard for our health we would not linger in that dangerous darkness.

When next I saw the boy, who was anxious to have the place scientifically studied, he told me that his father was determined to refuse all further applications for permission to visit this almost unique survival of a vanished civilisation.

“And to make quite sure that I shall not open the door when he is out of the way,” said the lad, “he now keeps the key in his pocket all day and sleeps with it under his pillow.”

Such is the encouragement given to archÆologists in Seville.

It seems clear that the inhabitants of a town built on the principle of a prehistoric lake-dwelling, but having solid stone galleries instead of piles for its foundations, would have little to fear from floods. And it is the case that from the dawn of Spanish history until after the reconquest in 1248 we find nothing to suggest any serious trouble of the kind. But from then onwards we hear more and more of the increasing ravages wrought by the water, and these can only be attributed to persistent neglect of the hydraulic engineering works which the Seville Arabs and Mozarabs had carried to such perfection.

Triana, the potters’ suburb of Seville from time immemorial, although now to some extent protected by wharves, lies considerably below the level of even a moderate flood. Probably in old times it was all built on galleries and arcades, and even now the main street has ancient arcades on either side for some little distance. The road between has risen so much that one column, perhaps Roman, is only three or four feet high, and when the floods come the water quickly fills the ground-floor rooms to the ceilings. It is possible that this is an actual relic of the “City of the Poles,” although of course rebuilt again and again until only the idea of the primitive part remains.

Triana is always the first quarter to be flooded and the last to be cleared when the river overflows, for the sewer outfalls are below the flood-level, and it seems impossible to close them against the weight of the flood water—moreover, when they are closed, the rain has no outlet and pools in the streets. Some day perhaps the petition of the 10,000 Trianeros, repeated year after year for goodness knows how long, will be attended to by the authorities in Madrid, and then the old river-bed (la madre vieja), which has been silted up for centuries, will be cleared out and used to carry off the flood water. But this obvious remedy has not yet been applied by the wisdom of the Ministers who rule Spain, and the terror that seizes upon all who live below the flood-level when heavy rains set in is a thing to be remembered.

In February 1912 we were living in a modern house in a low-lying part of Seville, some little way from the river. The ground floor of the house had been artificially raised about five feet above the level of the street, but if the river had risen two or three inches above the twenty-seven feet that it had reached the night before it began to go down, the whole street would quickly have been flooded, and we, like Triana, would have had to be fed by boat. All that night a violent thunderstorm raged, to add the finishing touch to our panic; for there was nothing now between Seville and the river save some improvised barriers hastily erected with sixty hours of incessant labour by the soldiers of the garrison, and against these the water was already streaming with force.

But our case, though serious enough, was nothing like so critical as that of many others, for it was at any rate not likely that the water would actually come into our house. A friend of mine, like scores of residents in Seville, has in her house a well of brackish water, and all these wells are fed in some way from the river bed. My friend knows that it is only the walls of the new wharves, built during the last twenty years or so, that keeps her well from overflowing whenever the river rises even a few feet. And once the wells in that part of the town overflow from the river, nothing can check the ingress of the water, for the whole district lies far below flood-level. Day and night for a week she kept on taking soundings, until during the last night, that of the thunderstorm, the water in the well at last began to rise, one metre ... two metres ... three metres.... By daybreak, notwithstanding all her prayers and vows to the Virgin, it was within six feet of the top, and was still rising rapidly.

“And then,” said she, “at the last moment Our Lady answered my prayers.”

The storm ceased, the sun came out, and before the tide turned at midday the flag was flying on the Torre del Oro to tell panic-stricken Seville that the river was going down. Indeed the change came only just in time, for the flood was within an ace of overlapping the frail temporary barriers which alone kept the water out of the main part of the town.

By that time Triana, on the opposite bank, had been for six days under water, with from six to nine feet of it in every single house. The whole of the river valley, from Cordova down to the mouth, was one vast inland sea. In the riverside villages hardly a house was above water. Algaba, the first village above Seville, was entirely submerged, and about 750 out of the 800 inhabitants, having nowhere else to go, were huddled together in the ancient tower which, the villagers say, was built expressly as a refuge when the river rises. Imagine 750 people shut up for a week in one small tower! As soon as it was possible to row against the subsiding stream, I went up with a boat-load of good Samaritans to carry help to some families we knew, and I shall never forget what I saw.

The fields were feet deep in silt, the spring crops ruined, the streets a mass of indescribable filth, the poor cottages, generally trim and sweet with frequent whitewash, were banked up with stinking mud. But the blazing February sun was streaming down on all the misery; gay-coloured clothes, blankets, mats, curtains, beds and bedding, were hung out to dry, the women were all hard at work with their whitewash and scrubbing pails, and an astonishing spirit of courage and philosophy pervaded the whole place.

From the moment they could get across the ferry, three families had been tramping into Seville—about a mile and a half of road, mostly under water—to get rations from the “English” soup kitchen, and it was to verify their incredible tales of distress that we had rowed up.

“Yes, it was quite true that there was hardly anything to eat. It was also true that there was no work at present, and thus the supplies of rice, garbanzos, and haricot beans given by the SeÑores were more welcome than words could say. But the good sun was shining and everything would soon dry up, and then the rich SeÑors Fulano and Mengano, who owned all the land round about, would have to employ every hand they could get to sow the fields over again, for they certainly would not lose a whole season’s crops, and they would have to pay good wages too, for there would be work for every able-bodied man from Seville to Cordova. And thus, if God pleased, good might soon come out of their present misery.”

One of the more prosperous women, who had a loft above her cottage—a great rarity in this single-storeyed village—and thus had been able to save her furniture, insisted on giving us hot coffee before we left, and indignantly refused to be paid for it. “It was the least she could do when we had been so good to them,” she said, and she had a brazier burning so that we should not feel the damp of the room, which she had just finished whitewashing before we came.

We felt ashamed to demur at sitting for ten minutes in the kitchen, reeking with damp, where the family had to live, but we were shivering with cold before we could decently take our leave, and since then I have always wondered why the whole village did not die of fever and ague, instead of being noted for their excellent health.

The cheerfulness with which the disaster was met at Algaba was even more striking at Triana. Here those whose houses had two or three storeys all took refuge on the upper floors, and were fed from boats for the six days during which the suburb was under water. Rations for all were provided by the authorities, and no one here need have starved, although the organisation of supplies for some ten thousand people in this quarter alone, besides several thousands more in flooded streets on the outskirts of the town itself, was a task of no small difficulty. Every one fared alike, getting only bread and the plainest fare, but in sufficient quantities to keep body and soul together if each took no more than his fair share. Very few could get ferried through the flooded streets to the bridge into Seville, and indeed for a day or two wheeled traffic over the single bridge was forbidden, save to convey food, for the water was nearly up to the top of the arch, and the whole structure was threatened. Had the bridge gone, all Triana must have starved, for no boat could cross that raging torrent.

Few lives were lost, though house after house in the oldest and poorest quarters fell in, and in one case a whole family was shut up in an old building without a window to the street, and when they were discovered three days later two of the children were dead from cold and hunger. For it was very cold during those grey, sunless days. But the rescue work was as well organised as the commissariat, and the young vicar of the parish, Don Bernardo Guerra, who was working like a man, became the hero of the imprisoned Trianeros. He himself seemed quite unaware of his popularity; indeed, he said his people were angry with him because, “although he was working at relief so many hours a day that he had hardly time to eat or drink or sleep or pray, it was impossible to supply a hundredth part of their needs.”

“But now that the sun is shining again, things are going better,” he said. “Indeed, even during the worst of the bad week it was surprising how a fitful gleam of sunshine enlivened the inundated people. The Trianeros have a gaiety of spirit peculiarly their own, which never deserts them for long, and it was curious to see how it came out among the hundreds of refugees housed in our new school buildings. It was also very noticeable how the women preserved even there their habits of cleanliness and decency. None of them had more privacy than they could obtain by hanging up shawls and sheets to separate one family from another, and yet most of them contrived to keep their own little places tidy and comparatively comfortable. The gipsies, it is true, looked as if they were picnicking in a rag fair, but they kept together at one end of the big class-rooms, apart from the other refugees. And you would have smiled to see the girls dressing their hair as if for a fiesta, and even dancing while the young men sang to a guitar which one of them had saved from the wreck of his home. It was difficult to believe—when the sun shone for a few moments—what desolation there was outside. But when night fell the suffering was at its worst. The authorities managed to keep water, gas, and electric light going in the streets, but in the houses the fittings were all under water, and the darkness accentuated the distress. And then the pistol shots going off for help, and the difficulty of locating the sound along the flooded streets, and the fear of arriving too late to save lives ... it was an experience one would not forget in a century.”

Don Bernardo stopped speaking, with a look in his liquid-brown eyes as of one who sees a nightmare.

“But you did always get there in time?” I gently prompted; “what about the affair in the Calle Evangelio? I saw it mentioned in the papers. They said you got an ovation.”

“The papers talk a lot of nonsense,” said the priest, smiling once more. “It was nothing, and what credit there was is not mine. Now about those mattresses? How many more can you provide from the English Relief Fund? We are to get fifteen hundred from the Government grant, they tell me, but not until the money is paid, and I am wondering if it will come before next summer. Meanwhile the hundred sent by the English ladies have been a great boon, and there were also sixteen from a Spanish lady. But we want a thousand at once, for families who have lost everything and now are sleeping on the floors of houses which were under water a week ago. Ay de mi de mi alma! And all this suffering would have been prevented if the Government had agreed to the protective work on the old river bed last year!”

“But I want to know about the affair in the Calle Evangelio,” I persisted, and Don Bernardo, always courteous, could not refuse to tell me.

“It was nothing—there were many such incidents. I was in bed. Tired? Well, perhaps; we do not sleep much just now. Suddenly I heard pistol shots, several, fired quickly one after the other, so I knew the danger was imminent. I ran to my window to call the boatman, who was supposed to be at my service day and night, but the poor fellow was tired out, and a long way off, at the far end of this long street. I could make out his boat, tied to a balcony. I guessed he had fallen asleep, or perhaps, for we are all human, was inside the house getting a drink. Do not blame him. Those who had stayed out all day in the cold wind and soaking rain knew well how pardonable was his lapse from duty. If there had been a cart or even a donkey I should have taken it without asking permission. But it was the middle of the night. I dared not wade; I am not tall, and the water was over three feet deep in my street. And then one of my neighbours, excellent fellow, roused like myself by the shots, offered to take me on his back. He is a fisherman, strong in the legs and much taller than I. Understand that he asked no reward; indeed, he refused payment from the funds that I hold for relief. He carried me on his shoulders to the boat, and the boatman came out quickly, very much ashamed. My fisherman began to rate him, but I said, ‘Save your breath to help row, for I fear we may arrive too late.’ We all three rowed very hard, and the current seemed like a giant’s hand dragging back our boat. You see the embankment of the railway to Huelva causes the flood water to eddy in our streets. I do not understand engineering, but every one in Triana knows that the embankment is our ruin. It was planned by engineers in Madrid, and the protest of those who knew the river was not attended to. The poor people of Triana curse the embankment every time there is a flood, and this time they would have gone and torn it down with their own hands if they could have got to it without being drowned on the way. Well, we reached the Calle Evangelio at last. The shots were fired from a house with two storeys, and all the inhabitants had been living on the upper one since the flood began. The water was six feet deep in the street, and it was quite dark. We got them all into the boat from a balcony, except one man. He had to jump, for just as he was ready to climb over the rail the whole front of the house seemed to melt away. It had been undermined by the water, and fell in all at once. Yes, I suppose the poor people might all have been drowned, had the good God not woke the fisherman in time to go to their rescue. I was responsible in a certain sense, but I could not have got there in time but for him. Therefore, such credit as there was, should have been given by the papers to him, not to me.”

On the last and worst day of the floods the King came to Seville with the Minister of Public Works; and then the poor Trianeros were glad they had not pulled down the railway embankment, for the first thing His Majesty did was to steam off along that line, across the waste of waters, to visit a village which lay with little more than its roofs above the flood. I watched the engine with its single carriage crawl over the bridge and along the embankment, very slowly, for there was no knowing what unseen damage might have been done by the turbid yellow flood below the rails and sleepers.

Everybody thought that as the King and the Minister had now seen for themselves the intolerable injury that the piece of bad engineering was inflicting on Seville, the necessary authority for the work on the old river bed would be given immediately. That was a year and nine months ago, and Don Bernardo and his colleagues have been making ceaseless efforts ever since to get the matter attended to. But we have had three different Ministries in power during these twenty-one months, and none of them has had time to think of such trifles as protecting the third most important port in Spain from devastating inundations. During November 1913 the port had twice to be closed to navigation, owing to the height of the flood water, and it would not be difficult to calculate how much money has thus been lost to the town, though no one who has not seen Triana flooded can estimate the cost in fear and anxiety to the fathers who cannot earn bread for their children, and the mothers who watch in hourly dread of the irremediable ruin of their homes.

But no one blames the King. They know it is no fault of his, for they saw him in Triana that February day in 1912, going from house to house in a cart or a boat and hoisting up provisions with his own hands, in baskets slung down from the balconies, and they watched him standing ankle deep in water at the rise of the bridge, insisting on visiting the streets that had suffered most.

“God knows no one street had suffered more than another,” said the journeyman potter who told me this, “for all were under water alike. ‘What a terrible disaster!’ said the King. His gentlemen tried to hold him back, for they had to follow where he led, and they did not want to get their feet wet. But they might as well have tried to hold the river back. He is a King! He gave two thousand pesetas then and there, and he sent twenty thousand more from Madrid as soon as he got back. But the best thing of all was the King’s Kitchen. He ordered free hot meals to be served at his expense every day and all day as long as the flood lasted, to every Trianero who chose to ask for them—no recommendations required, no religious conditions. The King said no one was to be asked a question: everybody who was hungry was to have a meal in his kitchen. It saved many lives. True, we all had bread from the Town Council, but we fathers could not take our share while the children were hungry, and we were weak from long fasting, for you must understand that many of us had been out of work for a month, owing to bad weather, before the river overflowed. What a bad time God gave us this winter! But, thank God, there is work for all Triana now, for there are so many houses to be repaired and rebuilt that we cannot make bricks fast enough, and the masters have had to raise our wages.”

Soup kitchens, or as the Sevillians call them, “Economical kitchens” (cocinas economicas), are little used here in times of public distress. It never seems to occur to the wealthy Sevillian ladies that with a very little trouble and organisation they could easily start private soup kitchens in their own houses, if only for the friends and relations of their numerous mÉnages. Of course, when the floods came, a soup kitchen was the first idea that occurred to some members of the English colony, and within twenty-four hours of the inundation of Triana, Mr. Keyser, our Consul, together with myself and a few other ladies, had collected enough money among our personal friends to supply two hundred rations a day for a fortnight.

The distribution took place in our house, because our patio happened to be the most convenient for the purpose, and all our servants, like those at the Consulate, worked double tides throughout the fortnight, so that none of the Relief Fund should be spent on extra hands. At first we only intended to feed families connected with the English business houses, but we soon found that it was impossible to lay down hard-and-fast rules. One afternoon a man who had been waiting an hour for what might remain after the privileged people were fed, dropped in a dead faint on the floor, and it took half an hour to bring him round. After that we ladled out our soup as fast as we could to every white-faced shivering creature that presented himself, without asking for his subscriber’s card, not wishing for a repetition of the fright that seized us when the man fainted, for on that occasion it looked for a while as if our very small amount of red tape was to cost a life.

We got up to five hundred rations a day before we closed our soup kitchen, and even then had money left to buy the hundred mattresses and pillows that were so useful to the Triana priest—and all for a little over £60 in English money. True, the mattresses were very cheap, for a maker of them contributed to the relief by selling us all that we asked for considerably below cost price—a practical form of charity that greatly appealed to the people. But if we had spent £6000 instead of £60 we could not have met with more gratitude. It was not so much the quantity or the quality of the soup, our parish priest explained. It was having it ready at the precise moment when it was wanted, for the thing was put in hand very promptly, and we got in ahead even of the King’s Kitchen. Strange though it may seem to English people, accustomed to organised charity, no other private individual or private association in Seville adopted this simple means of providing hot meals at a minimum of cost.

But we had no idea of the fame we were acquiring—indeed, we had no time to think of how our modest effort might strike the public. So we were surprised and amused when the editor of a local weekly paper sent round his photographer to get an illustration for an article on the “noble initiative of the English ladies.” We told him we preferred to remain in retirement with our kettles. But he pointed out that a photograph of our truly “economical” kitchen would encourage the ladies of Seville to go and do likewise when another occasion should arise; and after that we could not of course refuse to be immortalised with our tin pots about us, if only to show how easily five hundred people could be fed from a dozen petroleum tins boiled on gas rings. And having got his photograph and published his little article, our philanthropic editor proceeded to offer each of our helpers a copy of the photograph at three times the market price!

Another pretty speech brought further evidence, were it wanted, of the popular feeling towards the young Queen. We set aside a little of our money to redeem pawn-tickets in the case of two or three families who had been comparatively well-to-do before the floods and now only needed respectable clothing to obtain good employment again, and, of course, this was to be obtained much more cheaply by taking their own garments out of the Mont de PiÉtÈ than by buying new for them.

One of the poor women said with tears in her eyes as she handed me a sheaf of the depressing little papers—

“Oh, SeÑora Elena, you are like the Queen!”

I smiled at the remark, for although it has long been the fashion for Spanish gallants to tell English girls they resemble the Queen when they want to offer the greatest flattery, I could not imagine how even the most fervent gratitude could find any resemblance between an old woman with white hair and the beautiful young Queen.

“Not in face, SeÑora, although you too are muy guapa (very attractive), but in generosity with the pawn-tickets. Have you not heard what the Queen did in that way? A very poor woman of Triana threw a whole bundle of tickets into the Queen’s carriage one day when she was driving through Triana, and instead of being vexed, the Queen sent down to Juana’s house after she got back to the palace to see if it was true that she had sold everything. And it was quite true, and the Queen redeemed her tickets and afterwards many more for other women, when she learnt of cases of great distress for which the women were not to blame. I wish the rich knew how helpful it is to redeem our pawn-tickets, for many of our clothes and especially our boots are very good when we ‘put them away,’—indeed, if they are not good the Mont de PiÉtÈ will not give us anything for them.”

Nor was this the end of the compliments paid us; for a few days later our man-servant came to tell me that he had been asked for the full names, family and baptismal, of all the English ladies who had helped to serve the soup, the same having been requested by a popular performer of “Flamenco” songs at a certain music-hall.

“But I refused to tell him,” said our man proudly. “Having been in England with the SeÑores and knowing English customs, I informed him that compliments in your country had to be paid in a roundabout way, and that if your names were mentioned he would offend instead of pleasing.”

“But what in the world did he want to know our names for?” I asked, completely mystified.

“Por Dios, SeÑora! Don’t you know that a couplet in praise of the English economical kitchen is sung every night at the Blankblankblank, along with one about the King’s Kitchen and the brave deeds of Don Bernardo Guerra? SeÑora! That song has been the most popular item in the programme for many nights past, and for that reason Pepito wanted to improvise a second couplet giving all the ladies’ names. But don’t be anxious: I assure you I refused with quite sufficient coldness to make him understand that he was taking a liberty.”

The joke of it was that the Blankblankblank is a well-known cafÉ chantant in Seville which has been for years a stone of offence to Mrs. Grundy, both the English and the Spanish variety, and well-behaved members of society like ourselves would not have set foot inside it for worlds. Of course our disapproval, even if they had been aware of it, would not have troubled the cafÉ chantant people at all, but we felt rather as if those black sheep were heaping coals of fire on our respectable heads, when we learned that songs about our civic virtues were delighting crowded houses every night. But at any rate we were in good company, with the King on one side and the parish priest on the other.

And thus on a note of comedy closed our part in the tragedy of the greatest floods ever known in the long annals of the devastation wrought century after century by the Guadalquivir.