Romantic Spain Volume I Part 12

I have dwelt on indolent Seville. Surely there must be some industries pursued in this metropolis of the _dolce far niente_. They are not many.

There is a cannon-foundry and a copper-foundry, but more in keeping with the a.s.sociations of the radiant district is the porcelain factory. An Englishman, Mr. Charles Pickman, bought one of the convents sequestered in 1836, and has transformed it into a factory, where he turns out some capital imitations of the ancient glazed tiles. Seldom has a hive of industry been reared in n.o.bler building or on more lovely site, nestling in gardens enamelled with flowers, wealthy in fruit-trees, and on the banks of a river. Some may consider it profanity that potters' wheels spin and buzz in an edifice once consecrated to religion; but labour is prayer, and sanctifies of itself. A number of healthy, handsome girls are busily engaged colouring and burnishing the ceramic ware which is fashioned in the old cloisters; and their joyous songs over their work cannot be very displeasing to the spirits of the pious brethren who preceded them in the locality, if there be any ground for the belief that the shades of the dead are permitted to haunt the spots they tenanted in the flesh. There are in those songs reminiscences of Bizet's _Carmen_. These Andalusian la.s.ses have to thank the Englishman for giving them the opportunity of earning their bread and olives honestly, and they have the happy look of independence. Their full-blooded complexions would shame our pale Lancashire factory hands. They can hardly realize how lucky they are to ply such a neat trade in an atmosphere of freshness and sweet odour, under a dome of sapphire.

Another inst.i.tution to go over is the great Government tobacco-factory, close by the Cathedral, where no less than five thousand women are employed. The sight is the workwomen. The process of cigar-making is as uninteresting as that of diamond-polishing, and yet one goes to witness both with far more anxious antic.i.p.ation than to inspect what is far more remarkable--the making of a pin. The building in which the manufactory is carried on is a world in itself--an imposing oblong block, with a railed enclosure in front. Being Government property, it is guarded by soldiers, and the stranger is apt to take it, at first sight, for a gigantic barrack. The name of the king in whose reign it was erected (one of the Ferdinands) is still outside. The Republic has not ordered it to be erased, as a French Republic would have done before this. At Madrid I noticed the same delicacy, or forgetfulness, if you prefer it; the monogram and crown of Isabella were untouched on the lamp-posts in the most revolutionary quarters. The interior of the building consists of long whitewashed halls, divided into colonnades by rows of pillars, from which spring vaulted ceilings. The women are seated at low tables about two feet from the ground, in parties of half-dozens. They were there of every age, from the tawny hussy of sixteen to the fully developed matron with her infant tumbling in a cradle beside her, and the wrinkled hag with her iron-grey locks bound with a gay bandana.

Poor, but merry and impudent withal, they were; and some of the sprightly hoydens, with sprays of lilac and rosebuds in their magnificent ebon hair, were a little too ready with a wink. There is a tradition that they smoke, not dainty cigarettes, but full-flavoured cigars; in any case, they are carefully searched before leaving to see that they do not smuggle out any trabucos for personal consumption or as gifts to their favoured swains. They were dressed invariably in lively cotton prints, with short shawls of red, or crimson, or saffron, or other hue outvying the tulip in garishness. To be shockingly frank, not one of them was conspicuously pretty; they had brilliant eyes and teeth, but all had an ill-fed, dried-up appearance, even those who were inclined to flesh. The Spanish woman, after a certain age, has a tendency to get fat without pa.s.sing through the buxom stage; connoisseurs pretend that this is the combined effect of rancid oil and sweetstuff. But it is not gallant to dive into the secrets of female nature. Very a.s.siduously these "lazy Andalusiennes" bent to their tasks, picked and sorted the leaves, rolled the cigars into shape, clipped them, gummed the ends, and packed them into bundles tied with smart ribands of silk; for they are paid by the piece, and the bull-fighting season is near, and they must save the price of a seat at the corrida on Easter Sunday, come what will. The cigars are a.s.sorted in boxes according to their shape and size, their brand and their strength, the latter being indicated by the words "claro," "claro colorado,"

"colorado" (which is the medium flavour), "colorado maduro" and "maduro"

as they advance in five gradations from mild to strong. Leaving the cigar-hall, I was shown into the cigarette-hall, where a number of quieter girls, with shallow boxes of tobacco-dust almost as fine as snuff before them, were rolling the paper cylinders exactly as it is done by smokers, but with fingers surer and nimbler. In another hall the cartuchos, or packages to hold cigarettes and tobacco, were made. They were ready printed and cut, waiting to be put on a wooden frame, turned over, and pasted. One child of ten was pointed out to me as the quickest in the lot. Her small hands flew over her work with a rapidity that dazzled. She had need to be expeditious, poor wean, for she received just one farthing for every hundred packages she made!

There are others besides the tantalizing tile-makers and the saucy cigarreras who are rebellious to the drowsy influences of clime, and profanely work--the gipsies and the beggars. There are some of the former here, though not so many as in the pages of Murray. The excessively dirty and extremely picturesque race, with parchment skins and high cheek-bones, is dying out. A few stray members of the tribe remain in the remotest and raggedest part of the transpontine suburb, and shear mules, cope horses, and do tinkering jobs generally, filling in their spare time with petty larceny. Their women shuffle cards and tell fortunes. A splendid people they are, those gipsies--in Borrow's book and on canvas. In private life their society is not to be courted.

If you do not want to see them, they are sure to turn up; if you do, as I did, you must look for them, and not always with success. I came across but one during my stay in Spain--a yellow girl who was eager to exhibit her palmistry at my expense in the immense coffee-house under the Fonda de Paris at Madrid--and she left a strong impression on my mind of having been own sister to a persuasive prophetess who once cozened me of half-a-crown on the towing-path at Putney at the 'Varsity boat-race on the Thames. Your hopes of a.s.sisting at a gipsy dance at Seville will be disappointed. If you give a courier two pounds sterling, he may be able to improvise you one; a pack of filthy, bony men and women will execute epileptic saltatory movements before you--not the Esmeralda dance, but lewd swaying of the body from the hips, and vehement contortions; and finally one creature will throw her handkerchief at your feet. A well-bred caballero will fill the handkerchief with shining dollars, and hand it back to her with a bow.

This dance is work, downright hard work; but it is a dance for money.

Mammon, not Terpsich.o.r.e, is the genius to whom worship is paid. The mendicants toil as hard at their trade as those dancing gipsies. I counted fifty-seven in a short morning walk--some robust and some well-dressed, with the well-acted meekness of genteel poverty. The cripples, the deformed, the adults with baby arms and the jumping Billy-the-Bowls could not be paralleled out of South Italy. From the a.s.sortment could be furnished Burns's "Holy Fair" and the Pattern in "Peep o' Day" twice over, with something to leave. They are all past-masters and mistresses in the art of pet.i.tioning; they are professors of physiognomy like Lavater, and can tell at a glance a face which ought to belong to a charitable mortal; and then, what a command they have of the gamut of lungs, from the whine, the wheedle, and the snuffle, to the unctuous, droning prayer or the fierce malediction!

Still--beggars, gipsies, heat, and laziness to the contrary notwithstanding--Seville is delectable, and a marvel in its gardens and groves, its flowers and fruit, its fountains and fish-pools, its soft climate and soft people, its languorous repose and silvery tinkles to prayer. Seville is romance. Shall it ever be mine again to lie beneath the shade of its secular orange-trees, and blink at cl.u.s.tering shafts of marble tipped with silver sun-rays, and dream dreams? As I write, methinks to my ear rises the cry of the guardian of the night, the last I heard as I left, half warning, half supplication: "Ave Maria Purissima, las diez han dado."

END OF VOL. 1.

BILLING & SONS, PRINTERS, GUILDFORD.

FOOTNOTES:

[A] In fair play to Santa Cruz, it is right to state that he believed this female to be a spy, who, under the pretence of Carlism, was willing to "betray the volunteers of G.o.d and the King, and carried despatches to the enemy sewn up in her dress." Still, the idea of a minister of religion ordering a woman to be shot does not recommend itself, although the woman may have justly deserved her fate.

[B] The Duke de Sanlucar is an O'Shea. I hope he is a relative of mine; for kinship with a grandee, however distant, is something to brag about.

We always speak of our exalted connections. One never hears me dropping a syllable of a cousin of mine who was a bounty-jumper in the United States, agent-in-advance to a n.i.g.g.e.r-minstrel troop, and subsequently drove a butcher's cart in Brooklyn. He was a fearful, but most fascinating ruffian.