The Story of Seville

One of the sights of modern Seville is the Fábrica de Tabacos, a factory where a large number of women and girls are employed. The building is a handsome one, in the baroque style, in the Calle de San Fernando. The cigarreras work in overcrowded rooms. On public holidays they don their smartest dress, and are to be seen at the romerias and dances.

A survival of the ancient potter's art in Seville is the factory of La Cartuja, in Triana, owned by the English firm of Prickman and Sons. The works supply almost the whole country with china, and examples of antique Spanish majolica may be seen here. La Cartuja was once a convent. The church should be seen; it has a fine door in the Mudéjar style.

Campaña's paintings in the Church of Santa Ana, in Triana, may be inspected after a visit to La Cartuja. Near this church are the streets inhabited by the Gitanas. The SS. Justa and Rufina, mentioned elsewhere in these pages, made pottery in this quarter in the Roman days.

The custom of selling drinking water in the streets is common almost everywhere in Spain. Velazquez painted the familiar figure of the water-seller, who is to be seen to-day in the calles of Seville, crying agua fresca. The water is carried on the men's shoulders, in graceful Oriental jugs of earthenware.

Sometimes one hears the sound of the drum and the dulcinea, a pipe played with one hand, and used to provide music for village dances in many parts of Spain. The music proceeds from a man, who is accompanied by a led bullock, and it announces that tickets may be bought for a lottery in which the prize is a horse. Piano organs enliven the streets, playing popular dance music, and these seem to have superseded the performances of guitarists.

Time can scarcely hang heavily upon the visitor to 'the diadem in Andalusia's crown.' Days may be spent in the noble Cathedral, dreamy hours passed in the scented garden of the Alcázar, or by the Guadalquivir, where the bulbul still sings as in the Moorish days. Each time one climbs to the summit of the Giralda, a fresh beauty in the prospect of the sunny, white city and the glowing plain fascinates the vision. The picture gallery should be visited more than once; and there are so many works of art in the churches, monasteries and public buildings that one is never at a loss for pleasant recreation or serious study.

Delightful, too, are the cool evenings in the plazas, or the gardens, when the sinking sun sheds its beams on the stately Cathedral and the proud Giralda. The storks sail homewards far overhead in the glow of the rising moon; a chorus of birds dies away in the tangled banks of the Guadalquivir. Brief night succeeds the twilight; day dawn soon appears, and the hawks flash from their eyries in the Giralda, and the mule bells begin to jingle in the sunlit streets.

The quay, which stretches from the Triana Bridge to the Delicias, forms a pleasant promenade. By the Golden Tower there are seats under the trees, and the kiosks of the refresco sellers, who dispense orange-water, lemonade and sarsaparilla to the sailors and the girls from the tobacco factory. Adjoining that part of the quay where English vessels are loaded with iron brought upon a tramway, there is a little booth for the sale of refreshments. It is kept by a young Spaniard and his wife, named José. The boothkeeper has made several trips to England in trading vessels, and he speaks English very fairly. José has a 'connection' among the British sailors, who come to his pavilion for rum, whisky and other drinks beloved of English tars. He possesses a great regard for England and the English, and among his customers José is often addressed as Johnson.

Near the Golden Tower there is another house of call used by seamen. In the window you will see advertisements of British beverages, and announcements in several European languages. Ships from Liverpool, Glasgow and Cardiff are often anchored in this part of the Guadalquivir, and now and then there is an English yacht in the port.

The fishermen of Seville have a curious method of taking shad. They work a cross-line under water from two boats on opposite sides of the river. The line is armed with hooks, baited with pieces of meat. Now and then, the fishermen haul up a fish. But the Guadalquivir is heavily netted and fished, and the shad are not very plentiful in this reach. There are some very big eels in the river, which can be caught with a rod and line from the banks.

As the pescadores slowly scull their boats down the river, they sing strange Andalusian melodies, with a kind of yödel. Their voices reach far along the stream on still days. The men are hard-working, and their catches scarcely repay them for their patience and labour in the burning sun.

Along the quay, and at every point of entrance to Seville, there are customs' officers in uniform, with swords at their sides. The consumo is not a popular character in Spain. Peasants and small traders resent the tax upon the produce which they bring into the markets, and many attempts are made to evade paying the duty. At Córdova I heard a violent altercation between a peasant and a consumo, who demanded duty upon a live pigeon.

Spain is the land of officials in uniform. Down the Guadalquivir you will see armed men who protect the wooden breakwaters. Then there are four grades of police, the consumos, and the watchmen, all of them provided with weapons.

The quaint, irregular thoroughfares of Seville, its palm trees and olive gardens, its Morisco remains, its hidalgos and doñas, its brightness and gaiety, and its blue skies will not soon be forgotten by those who pass a short time within its ancient walls. Lord Byron praises the city as the most beautiful in Spain. It is certainly charming, but there are towns in the Peninsula more antiquated in aspect, and more picturesque in their surroundings. Still, the Andalusian capital possesses a strong fascination, and few persons will dispute, in the main, the truth of Byron's lines in the first canto of Don Juan: —

'In Seville was he born, a pleasant city,Famous for oranges and women – heWho has not seen it will be much to pity,So says the proverb – and I quite agree;Of all the Spanish towns is none more pretty,Cadiz, perhaps – but that you soon may see; —Don Juan's parents lived beside the river.A noble stream, and call'd the Guadalquivir.'

Since the days of Cervantes, the aspect of the city and the manners and customs of its inhabitants have not undergone any profound change. The monumental buildings remain, and the cry of the watchman and the notes of the guitar are still heard by night in the tortuous alleys, and under the palm trees of the plazas. The careless, merry Sevillanos continue to love the dance, the song, the bull fight and the theatre more than science and literature. We may see the types sketched by the great satirist in The Jealous Estremaduran, if we will but enter one of the fashionable cafés during the evening. It would be unfair to say that Sevillian society is composed entirely of adventurers, but they are a distinctive class in the pleasure-loving capital. 'In the city of Seville,' writes Cervantes, 'is a class of idling, lazy people who locally go by the common name of "the children of the ward"; they are considered as foragers on the public; they are the sons of rich parents, not of the nobility; always well-dressed, fond of pleasure, extravagant and expensive, plunging themselves and their parents in debt; always feasting and revelling; every way bringing discredit on society, defrauding and injuring their creditors.'

The stranger will not be in the city many hours before he notices a curious device on public buildings, official uniforms and elsewhere. This is the node, or knot (el nodo), which forms a part of the coat-of-arms of Seville. The knot is in the centre of an ornamental circle, and on one side of it are the letters NO and on the other DO. This legend in full is No madeja do, or, No me ha dejado, which means: 'It has not deserted me.' The symbol of the nodo was adopted after the fealty of the muy leal city to Alfonzo X.

CHAPTER XIV

The Alma Mater of Bull-fighters

'The Arabs were much given to bull-fighting, and highly skilled in the lidia, whether mounted or on foot.' – Sanchez de Nieva, El Toréo.

SEVILLE is so renowned in the annals of the great Spanish sport of bull-fighting, that I propose to devote a chapter to a brief history and description of the 'science of tauromachia,' or the recreation of the lidia. Mr. Leonard Williams, in The Land of the Dons, is somewhat apologetic to his readers for introducing three chapters upon the bullfight and its history; but such is the enthusiasm exhibited for the pastime, that Mr. Williams states that thirty chapters, instead of three, would scarcely be disproportionate to the importance in which the corrida is esteemed by the Spanish nation. While making personal confession that I am not an aficionado, or enthusiast, of the art of bull-fighting, I will endeavour to convey to the reader a conception of the influence of the sport upon the Andalusian public, from which the moralist and sociologist may draw their conclusions.

There is an odour of Pharisaism in the British fox-hunter's denunciation of the bull fight on the score of cruelty to animals. But in defence of the hunter, it may be pointed out that he rarely sacrifices the life of his steed in order to be in at the death of a fox, and that he would certainly scorn to torture a worn-out and decrepit horse by riding it till it dropped with a ruptured heart. In bull-fighting there is no pity shown for horses. The emaciated beasts, upon which the picadores, or spearmen, are mounted, are urged at the bull, and serve as a target for its terrible horns until they are no longer able to stand upon their legs. Even when ripped open, or otherwise wounded, the bleeding, terrified creatures are sewn up, or have their wounds plugged with tow, and are again lashed and spurred to the attack.

Surely it is impossible to defend this element of the corrida. The Spaniard does not attempt to do so; he cannot easily understand the point of view that calls for such defence. All over Spain domestic animals used in the service of man are treated mostly with callous insensibility to their sufferings, and often with cruelty that appals and disgusts the stranger. What does it matter whether an old, used-up horse goes to the knacker or into the bull ring to end its days? In Spain there is no sentimental bond between the aged, faithful, hard-working horse and its owner. The horse or mule is a mere beast of burden and of draught, to be worked as hard as possible, half-fed, cursed, abused, and at all times beaten, goaded and kicked.

It would seem that a long training in warfare, the effect of harsh rule, and the terrible example of the Inquisition form a trinity of evil that has made the mass of the Spanish people indifferent to the spectacle of certain kinds of pain. That this apathy to the sufferings of human beings and brutes is compatible with strong physical courage is a fact well supported by examples in the histories of nations and individuals. It is also true that the humane man can be exceedingly courageous. Cruelty in sport has, however, characterised other European countries than Spain, which in this matter may be said to stand where we stood, ethically speaking, in the days of bull-baiting, cock-fighting and badger-drawing. The English crowd that went to see an unhappy victim of nervous irritability ducked in a dirty pond, for the offence of nagging at the goodman, was on the same level of civilisation as the mob in Spain that enjoyed the sport of arming blind men with swords, turning pigs loose among them, and urging the sightless to hack at the pigs, with the result that the men frequently injured one another instead of the porkers.

So far, then, as bulls and horses are concerned, we can only expect to find blunted feeling in Spain. And I am not sure that we need expend much sympathy upon the bull of the arena. In the ordinary fate he has to die, and it is probable that he would prefer to live the life of a fighting bull than bear the yoke and drag the cumbrous cart along dusty, scorching high roads. At all events, the bull reared for fighting has a placid existence until he is 'warrantable'; and in the excitement of his short contest with men he may suffer much less pain than we imagine. And as for the matadores, the heroes of the populace, the favourites of the aristocracy, – well, it is their affair if they and their attendants choose to risk their lives to make a Seville holiday. The human performers in the drama are not forced to fight. If one falls, he is not flogged till he rises to face the bull again, and when injured he is tended at once by skilful surgeons.

This is really all that one can say in reply to the charge of cruelty, and it is little enough. Bull-fighting is specifically a Spanish sport, and efforts to introduce it into other countries have failed. British and American visitors to Seville are frequently to be seen at the Plaza de Toros; and at Algeciras and La Linea, the soldiers of the British garrison, and the people of Gibraltar, are the principal supporters of the bull rings. Throughout Spain the word toro creates keen interest in all classes of society. The State, the Church and the aristocracy support the recreation of the corrida. Most of the bull rings have their chapels attached, where the performers receive the sacrament and a priestly blessing before entering the perilous arena. Ladies of the highest birth are among the breeders of fighting bulls; even some of the clerics rear beasts for the pastime, and attend the exhibitions of tauromachia. The passion for the sport is deep and apparently ineradicable in the people of Spain. Isabel the Catholic, after witnessing a sanguinary display in the ring, endeavoured to suppress bull-fighting. But not even the popular Queen could divert her subjects' interest from the absorbing sport. Moral suasion and attempted legislative methods are alike futile. The people demand the bull fight. In the very midst of war's alarms, and during civil trouble, the plazas de toros were thronged with enthusiastic spectators. Jovellanos, Charles III., Señor Castelar, and Señor Ferreras, the editor of El Correo, are among those who have protested against bull-fighting. 'Spain pays no heed to any of these agitators,' writes Mr. Leonard Williams, 'but continues unmoved the proud traditions of the arena. The superb bull ring inaugurated not long ago at Barcelona was consecrated by the clergy in procession, on the very day on which a novel of the naughty Tolstoi was thrust upon the list librorum expurgatorum.' In Spain the schoolmaster is a bankrupt, while the famous bull-fighter receives five thousand pesetas for killing two or three bulls. There are sociological inferences to be drawn from this fact.

Bull-fighting of the Past

There is no doubt that encounters between men and bulls are of ancient origin in the Peninsula. The Moors are said to have brought bull-fighting into Spain, and there is historical proof that exhibitions of daring in worrying and attacking bulls were one of the chief recreations of the Moorish feast days. During times of truce between Moslems and Christians, displays of tauromachia were arranged by the rival leaders, and knights of both sides took part in the ring. The great Cid distinguished himself in fights with fierce bulls, and his horsemanship in the arena was widely admired. In these early days of the sport, the tournament, or lidia, was celebrated in the largest plaza of the towns. Raised seats were erected for the cavaliers and ladies, and the fêtes were attended almost entirely by the higher classes of Andalusian and Castilian society. The combatant of the bull was mounted on a plucky Arabian horse, and armed with a lance, called the rejón, a weapon about five feet in length. At a signal the bull was let loose. The knight charged the beast, and endeavoured to thrust his spear-head into the neck. An expert performer sometimes killed his bull at the first thrust. When hurled from his steed by a charge of the bull, the knight was bound by the rules of the ring to face the brute on foot, with a sword. Vassals assisted their master by essaying to draw the attention of the bull, and at the right moment the knight plunged his steel into the animal's neck.

Such combats appear to have been held in Andalusia as early as the eleventh century. In one of Goya's bull-fighting sketches, we may see a Moor, with a cloak on the left arm, and a dart in the right hand, practising the suerte de banderilla. In the fifteenth century bull-fighting was recognised as the chief national sport. In 1567 Pius V. issued a threat of excommunication for all rulers who permitted bull-fighting within their realms, and for all priests who witnessed the shows. Fighters who fell in the ring were denied burial with Christian rites. The Bull of the Pope was utterly disregarded. Nobles continued to erect bull rings and to arrange corridas. The Church then exercised wonted discretion. A decree came from Salamanca that priests of a certain order might be present at bull fights, and the institution of the lidia was made semi-sacred and wholly respectable.

At Valladolid, Charles I. engaged and killed a bull in the public arena. Succeeding kings and the flower of the nobility yearned to graduate in the art of bull-fighting. The sons of hidalgos resorted to the slaughter-houses of the towns to practise with cloak and sword the feints and passes of the matador. A valorous bull-fighter won his way to women's hearts and to the favour of princes. In 1617 the Pope issued a Bull announcing that the Virgin was conceived immaculately and was as pure as her divine offspring. The announcement threw Seville into a frenzy of delight. Archbishop de Castro gave a splendid service in the beautiful Cathedral. Guns boomed from the ramparts of the city, and all the church bells clanged and pealed. In the bull ring, Don Melchor de Alcázar, a friend of Velazquez, arranged a special display. The Don, with his dwarf and four immense negroes, gave a remarkable show of their daring to a host of spectators.

Upon the day that Fernando VII. abolished the University of Seville, he established an academy of bull-fighting in the city. The building was constructed with a small ring for the practice of students in the art of tauromachia, and contained stables, bedrooms, and other apartments. From that time Seville was regarded as the classic home of bull-fighting, and many of the most valiant fighters were trained in that city. Then arose the professional matador, or espada, the swordsman who faces the bull single-handed, when it has been worried and incensed by the picadores and the banderilleros.

Two of the first paid matadores were the brothers Juan and Pedro Palomo. They were succeeded by Martiñez Billon, Francisco Romero and his son Juan, and José Delgado Candido, who was killed on the 24th of June 1771. The original Plaza de Toros of Seville was constructed in 1763, and from that date until the end of the century several bull rings were built in Andalusia and Castile.

'Andalusia,' write the authors of Wild Spain 'has always been, and still remains, the province where the love of the bull and all that pertains to him is most keenly cherished, and where the modern bull fight may to-day be seen in its highest perfection and development. It provides the best bull-fighters and the most valued strains of the fighting bull. It may be added that the Andalusian nobility were the last of their order to discontinue their historic pursuit; and when, during the darker days of this sport, the Royal order of the Maestranza de Sevilla was created by Philip V., it was conceded in the statutes that members of the order could hold two corridas with the long lance annually outside the city walls. Three gentlemen subsequently received titles of exalted nobility of this order in respect of brilliant performances with the lance.' José Candido, usually known as Pepe Hillo, brought about a great revival of the corrida after the Bourbons had sought to discountenance the sport of the nobility. Pepe Hillo is the title of a drama concerned with the valiant exploits of the celebrated master among matadores. Hillo, though he was said to be illiterate, drew up the rules of the sport, and even to-day he is regarded as one of the highest authorities upon the art of the bull fight.

According to Mr. Leonard Williams, Francisco Romero, of Ronda, in Andalusia, was 'the first great exponent of the modern toreo.' Romero was put to shoemaking, but he abandoned that homely trade for the profession of bull-fighter, acting first as a page to the knights who encountered the bulls. It was Romero who introduced the pass of fluttering the cloak, or red cloth, in the face of the bull, and then, at the fitting opportunity, thrusting the sword into the creature's neck. Most of the reputed matadores are of Sevillian birth. In the days of Romero and his son, Juan, who died at the age of one hundred and two, there lived the famous Sevillian toreros, the brothers Palomo, Manuel Bellón, Lorenzo Manuel, Joaquin Rodriguez, and Pepe Hillo, or Illo.

Among the Andalusian schools of bull-fighting Ronda was renowned for daring, and Seville for coolness. The intrepidity of the Sevillian bull-fighters was remarkable. The salto del trascuerno, or jump across the head of the bull, was one of their favourite feats. Mr. Williams tells us that the most redoubtable of all the toreros of Seville was one Martin Barcaiztegui, called Martincho, a cowherd of Guipuzcoa. Martincho was a pupil of the famous José Leguregui, and his bravery excelled that of his trainer. 'His favourite accomplishment was to mount upon a table, when his legs were closely fettered with massive irons. The whole was then set opposite the toril. The bull, emerging, sighted the table, covered with a crimson cloth, and charged it, when Martincho would leap along his back from head to tail, and alight in perfect safety. The table, one presumes, went flying into splinters. On a certain occasion, at Zaragoza, Martincho, seated in a chair, killed a bull by a single thrust, using his hat as a muleta.'

Martincho died in 1800, having survived the dangers of the arena. He lived for a time with the artist Goya, who has drawn his friend in several of his bull-fighting pictures. Costillares and Pepe Hillo were also celebrated for their reckless daring in the bull-fighting exhibitions of Seville. These heroes retired from the ring before Godoy influenced Maria Luisa to suppress the corrida. For three years there was no bull-fighting in Spain. Upon the revival of the sport under Joseph Bonaparte, Pedro Romero was appointed chief instructor of Ferdinand's academy of tauromachia at Seville. This matador died at Ronda in 1839. During his public career, he killed no less than 5,600 bulls.

Bull-fighting of the Present

Montes now comes into prominence among the famous toreros of Andalusia. Francisco Montes fought for the first time at Madrid in 1832. He attracted the notice of Candido, of the academy of bull-fighters at Seville, and he was accepted as a pupil and granted a pension of six reales per day. Montes introduced the modern style in the art of the torero. He wrote a treatise on bull-fighting, entitled: El arte de torear á pie y á caballo. 'Considered to be the torero's very bible for the infallible wisdom of its precepts.'

The matador of to-day is the idol of the populace; but he is not so honoured by persons of noble birth as in the earlier times of bull-fighting. Luis Mazzantini is perhaps the greatest living torero. Guerrita has retired. Antonio Fuentes and Reverte are accomplished bull-fighters. Montes died of injuries received in the ring, in the year 1850, at the age of forty-six.

To show the favour formerly extended to the torero, we may quote the story of Lavi and Queen Isabel II. Lavi was a Romany by birth, and a bold matador of his day. During a royal corrida, the gipsy pluckily tore out the moña, or bunch of ribbons in the bull's neck, and advanced towards the Queen. 'Here,' he cried, 'this is the first moña your majesty has had the honour of receiving at my hands!'