to Alicante by sleeping at Xativa, a lovely city of palms and rushing fountains with a mountain background, but the inn so disgusting we could not stay. Alicante, on the other hand, had no attraction except its excellent hotel, with dry sheets, bearable smells, no garlic, and butter. The whole district is burnt, tawny, and desolate beyond words—houses, walls, and castle alike dust-colour, but the climate is delicious, and a long palm avenue fringes the sea, with scarlet geraniums in flower. With Elche we were perfectly enraptured—the forests of palms quite glorious, many sixty feet high and laden with golden dates; the whole place so Moorish, and the people with perfectly Oriental hospitality and manners. We spent four days there, and were out drawing from eight in the morning to five in the afternoon; such subjects—but I lamented not being able to draw the wonderful figures—copper-coloured with long black hair; the men in blue velvet, with mantas of crimson and gold and large black sombreros.
“It was twenty-three hours’ journey here, and no possible stopping-place or buffet. But as for Miss Wright, she never seems the worse for anything, and is always equally kind and amiable. She is, however, very piano in spirits, so that I should be thankful for a little pleasant society for her, as it must have been fearfully dull having no one but me for so long.
“We were disappointed with Murcia, though its figures reach a climax of grotesque magnificence, every plough-boy in the colours of Solomon’s temple. But though we had expected to find Cordova only very interesting, it is also most beautiful—the immense court before the mosque filled with fountains and old orange-trees laden with fruit, and the mosque itself, with its forest of pillars, as solemn as it is picturesque.”
To Mary Lea Gidman.
“Seville, Feb. 10.—The dirt and discomfort of the railway journey to Cordova was quite indescribable, but the mosque is glorious. It is so large that you would certainly lose your way in it, as it has more than a thousand pillars, and twenty-nine different aisles of immense length, all just like one another. We made a large drawing in the court with its grove of oranges, cypresses, and palms, and you would have been quite aghast at the horrible beggars who crowded round us—people with two fingers and people with none; people with no legs and people with no noses, or people with their eyes and mouths quite in the wrong place.
“The present King (Amadeo) is much disliked and not likely to reign long. Here at Seville, in the Carnival, they made a little image of him, which bowed and nodded its head, as kings do, when it was carried through the street, and all the great people went out to meet it and bring it into the town in mockery; and yesterday it was strangled like a common criminal on a scaffold in the public square; and to-day tens of thousands of people are come into the town to attend its funeral.
“The Duchesse de Montpensier, who lives here, does a great deal of good, but she is very superstitious, and, when her daughter was ill, she walked barefoot through all the streets of Seville: the child died notwithstanding. She and all the great ladies of Seville wear low dresses and flowers in their hair when they are out walking on the promenade, but at large evening parties they wear high dresses, which is rather contrary to English fashions. Miss Wright’s bonnet made her so stared at and followed about, that now she, and her maid also, have been obliged to get mantillas to wear on their heads instead, which does much better, and prevents their attracting any attention. No ladies ever think of wearing anything but black, and gentlemen are expected to wear it too if they pay a visit.
“I often feel as if I must be in another state of existence from my old life of so many years of wandering with the sweet Mother and you, but that life is always present to me as the reality—this as a dream. There is one walk here which the dear Mother would have enjoyed and which always recalls her—a broad sunny terrace by the river-side edged with marble, which ends after a time in a wild path, where pileworts are coming into bloom under the willows. I always wonder how much she knows of us now; but if she can be invisibly present, I am sure it is mostly with me, and then with you, and in her own room at Holmhurst, whence the holy prayers and thoughts of so many years of faith and love ascended.”
To Miss Leycester.
“Seville, Feb. 13.—Ever since we entered Andalusia it has poured in torrents, but even in fine weather I think we must have been disappointed with Seville. With such a grand cathedral interior and such beautiful pictures, it seems hard to complain, but there never was anything less picturesque than the narrow streets of whitewashed houses, uglier than the exterior of the cathedral, or duller than the surrounding country. Being Carnival, the streets are full of masks, many of them not very civil to the clergy—the Pope being led along by a devil with a long tail, &c. Every one speaks of the Italian King (Amadeo) as thoroughly despised and disliked, and his reign (in spite of the tirades in his favour in English newspapers) must now be limited to weeks; then it must be either a Republic, Montpensier, or Alfonso. Here, where they live, the Montpensiers are very popular, and they do an immense deal of good amongst the poor, the institutions, and in encouraging art. Their palace of San Telmo is beautiful, with a great palm-garden. When we first came, we actually engaged lodgings in the Alcazar, the great palace of the Moorish kings, but, partly from the mosquitoes and partly from the ghosts, soon gave them up again.”
“Algeciras, Feb. 25.—Though we constantly asked one another what people admired so much in Seville, its sights took us just a fortnight. Our pleasantest afternoon was spent in a drive to the Roman ruins in Italica, and we took Miss Butcher with us, who devotes her life to teaching the children in the Protestant school, for which she gets well denounced from the same cathedral pulpit whence the autos-da-fé were proclaimed, in which 34,611 people were burnt alive in Seville alone!
“What a dull place Cadiz is. Nothing to make a feature but the general distant effect of the dazzling white lines of houses rising above a sapphire sea. We had a twelve hours’ voyage to Gibraltar. I was very miserable at first, but revived in time to sketch Trafalgar and to make two views in Africa as we coasted along. At last Gibraltar rose out of the sea like an island, and very fine it is, far more so than I expected, though we have not seen the precipice side of the rock yet. As we turned into the bay of Algeciras, numbers of little boats put out to take us on shore, and we are so enchanted with this place that we shall remain a few days in the primitive hotel. Our sitting-room opens by large glass doors on a balcony. Close below is the pretty beach with its groups of brilliant figures—Moors in white burnooses, sailors, peasants in sombreros and fajas. Across the blue bay, calm as glass, with white sails flitting over it, rises the grand mass of the Rock, with the town of Gibraltar at its foot. All around are endless little walks along the shore and cliffs, through labyrinths of palmito and prickly pear, or into the wild green moorlands which rise immediately behind, and beyond which is a purple chain of mountains. It is the only place I have yet seen in Spain which I think the dear Mother would have cared to stay long at, and I can almost fancy I see her walking up the little paths which she would have so delighted in, or sitting on her camp-stool amongst the rocks.”
“Gibraltar, March 2.—It was strange, when we crossed from Algeciras, to come suddenly in among an English-talking, pipe-smoking, beer-drinking community in this swarming place, where 5000 soldiers are quartered in addition to the crowded English and Spanish population. The main street of the town might be a slice cut out of the ugliest part of Dover, if it were not for the numbers of Moors stalking about in turbans, yellow slippers, and blue or white burnooses. Between the town and Europa Point, at the African end of the promontory, is the beautiful Alameda, walks winding through a mass of geraniums, coronillas, ixias, and aloes, all in gorgeous flower: for already the heat is most intense, and the sun is so grilling that before May the flowers are all withered up.
“I am afraid we shall not be
