too far if you will,” the Argentino acknowledged; “but it’s a sign of
progress--things will adjust themselves. I saw the cathedral too; that’s
a joy forever. I hardly knew the old city--expensive buildings are
springing up everywhere in the _art nouveau_ style, pandemonium in
stone, an echo of the ‘greenery-yallery Grosvenor Gallery’ nonsense, the
tag end of the ‘æsthetic’ movement. Big granite buildings with window
frames, whole façades even, carved into flowers. Lilies, poppies, what
you like. No more idea of architecture, of style, of subordinating parts
to the whole, than--than----”
“That comes of progressive republican ideas,” growled Don Luis; for once
our cheerful Valencian was out of sorts.
“You have no sympathy with them?” I asked.
“Frankly, I have never had time to occupy myself with such matters,” Don
Luis confessed. “I don’t know if a Republic is good for the arts or not.
The Republicans I know are all barbarians. They come to the Prado; I
hear them say to the guides,
[Illustration: THE DOGARESSA. _Villegas_]
‘Are these dingy old pictures all you have to show?’ I once took a
Chilian to Rome. When he saw the Sistine Chapel he was furious. ‘Why do
the writers deceive us?’ he said, ‘we have better chapels in
Valparaiso.’ Suppose Don Alfonzo should order a hundred portraits of
himself--people might laugh but nobody could stop him. If the President
of the Argentine ordered twenty, or five, or even one portrait of
himself, and paid for it out of the public money, would you reëlect
him?”
“Art is a luxury,” the Argentino began.
“Ah, there’s your mistake, it’s a prime necessity, it is the great
civilizer!” Don Luis was roused. “North Americans are not so ignorant of
art as South Americans,” he added, remembering there were two present.
“They are the great buyers now. Villegas’ Baptisimo is in New York, and
now his Dogaressa has gone to Washington.”
Here Patsy plunged into the talk and reminded Don Luis of the Age of
Phidias, the painters of the Dutch and Venetian Republics. The great
periods of art had little to do with the form of government under which
they flourished. Art was a rare and wonderful flowering of the human
intelligence, the fairest flower on the tree of life. It depended on the
development of the race, not the will of the ruler.
“That may be,” said the Argentino, “but if we are ever again to have a
great art, the artist must be protected, his trade must be taken as
seriously as the baker’s or the plumber’s. If art is the fine flower of
civilization, it must in its very nature be the costliest of
products--so to most people it seems a luxury.”
“Is religion a luxury, is poetry a luxury? Is anything that lifts the
ideals, or stimulates the imagination a luxury?” cried Don Luis,
passionately.
The old arguments were brought forward and threshed out, the discussion
became heated; meanwhile Villegas worked on steadily. On the flat bare
canvas a dim foreshadowing of what would be Angoscia’s perfect face grew
and grew under his hands. While the others talked about art he was at
work upon his latest masterpiece, the portrait of Angoscia.[5]
This was our last visit to the dear studio in the Pasaje del Alhambra,
where for six months J. had worked, where we had all been so happy
together. Our stay in Madrid was drawing to a close; we counted the
hours now as misers count gold.
“The picture the Czar bought is of the same subject as this,” said J.,
pointing to The Death of the Matador.
The wounded matador lies on a litter in the chapel of the bull-ring. An
old priest stands at his head, reading the prayers for the dying. A
group of gorgeously dressed bull-fighters stand about him, their eyes
fixed on their comrade’s pale face. At the back of the picture an
opening in the wall gives a glimpse of the crowded arena, where the
spectators are watching the great game of death, unconscious that a few
feet away one of the heroes of the _corrida_ is dying, gored to death by
the last bull.
While I was looking for the last time at the picture, Don Jaime came
into the studio with a stranger, an immense man, deep in the chest,
broad in the shoulders, small in the hips. His head was scarred, so were
both his hands. He wore his hair brushed down on his forehead. At the
first glance he looked like a priest, at the second like a prize
fighter.
“Jaime has kept his word,” whispered J., “that is--the most famous
matador in the world.”
“That is something I have seen more than once,” said the matador,
looking at the picture. “In my time there was a mass before every
_corrida_, when the priests carried the oils of the extreme unction in
procession. I stopped that; it took the heart out of a man.”
The matador came nearer the picture, studied it carefully, taking now
the attitude of one figure, now of another. “_Muy bien!_” he said,
nodding his great head in approval.
“You cannot know,” said the Argentino to me, “how good that picture is.
No one who is not familiar with the ways of _torreros_ can know. See the
one who crosses himself, and bends his knee--it is exactly their manner.
See the civil guard in the corner explaining to the other how the
accident happened--look at his hand, it tells the story.”
“How many bulls have you killed?” asked Patsy of the matador.
“In twenty-five years I killed three thousand five hundred bulls.”
“Were you ever afraid?”
“I was afraid many, many times. On those occasions I never put my faith
in the Virgin, but rather in my legs and ran as fast as I could. The
bull, however, is the noblest of animals and the bravest. He never makes
a cowardly attack from behind; he is so frank! He is terrible, though; a
man needs nerve to face him when he comes into the ring pawing the earth
and bellowing.”
“Will you tell me about the bull that was the hardest of all to kill?”
asked Patsy.
The matador’s face changed: “He was a white bull,” he said, slowly, “and
he didn’t want to fight. When he first came in, he put his muzzle in my
hand. He followed me about like a little
[Illustration: THE DEATH OF THE MATADOR. _Villegas_]
dog. I led him with the cloak wherever I wanted him to go. Yes, that was
the hardest bull of all to kill.”
J., who had been looking at the matador ever since he came into the
studio, nodded his head as if satisfied.
“He’s the man,” he said. “I had forgotten the name; I remember the face.
I saw you kill a bull in Cadiz once. I wonder if you remember it? The
bull put his head down to charge, and you put your foot between his
horns, stepped on his head, ran along his back and jumped down behind.”
“Ah, that happened at Cadiz? No, I don’t remember. The Cadiz audience is
the best in Spain, the most intelligent, the most sympathetic; it has
the best knowledge of the art. It is not like the Madrid audience, that
must sit in judgment and criticise. The American audience is good,
especially the Mexican. Yes, the Americans have a real understanding of
the art.”
“Have you ever been wounded?” asked Patsy.
“Often; twice badly. Once I spent three months in bed; that was not
amusing, I can tell you. The bull’s horn went through my thigh and
wrenched the muscles apart. I recovered though. The wound of the bull’s
horn is a good wound; one either recovers from it, or dies quickly.”
“Have you any scholars?” asked Patsy.
“No,” sighed the matador. “My art is one that does not allow of
disciples. A man cannot be trained to it if he has not the gift. It is
an inspiration, like poetry.” He sighed. “It is five years since I
retired. It seems twenty-five.”
He was silent a few minutes, looking down as if distressed; then he
brushed back his hair with a spirited gesture and glanced again at the
picture.
“Most of us end that way,” he confessed. “I have escaped to become an
alderman and interest myself in the hygiene of the city that once
criticised me!” Then to Villegas: “It was kind of you to ask me to see
Pastora Imperio; I have not seen her since she was a child. Her father
used to make my professional clothes. They tell me she is a great
dancer.”
Villegas had arranged that Imperio should dance for us at the studio.
The others had seen her often and were never tired of talking about her.
“Until I saw Imperio dance,” said Patsy, “it was always a mystery to me
why Herod had John the Baptist’s head cut off to satisfy the whim of a
dancing girl. Now I quite understand it.”
While they were discussing her, Imperio walked into the studio with her
mother, followed by her brother Dionisio and another youth, each
carrying a guitar; behind them came attendant nymphs with sisters or
mothers, the inevitable chorus that keeps time with hand clapping, foot
patting, and encourages the performance with cries of _ollé_, _ollé_,
and _andar_.
The two studios had been made miraculously neat and tidy. They smelled
of turpentine and beeswax. Gil and Cisera had been at work half the day
preparing for the fandango. They had spread two tables in the inner
studio where J. worked; one with tea and cake for us, the other with
sandwiches, sliced sausages, and manzanilla, a thin, white wine, for the
performers.
First we had songs; the curious long-drawn chanted wailing songs of
Andalusia that have more of the East than of the West in them. To our
ears they were a trifle monotonous but to the Spaniards, to the
Andalusians especially they were tremendously moving. Dionisio, a
strange-looking youth of eighteen, with odd slate-colored eyes and a
lovely smile, threw back his head and wailed out couplet after couplet.
“This I tell to you; to see my mother, I would give the finger from
my hand--but the finger I need the most to use.
“My stepmother beat me because I prayed for my mother; my father
turned me out of doors. Where can I go to be a little warm?”
There was a shadow walked behind me. It was the spirit of my
mother. It said to me, “to give thee life, I gave my life.”
“_Ay de mi!_” cried Imperio and shivered.
“I am in prison on account of a bad woman. Tell the jailer when I
am dead not to unbar the door, for even dead, I would not see her.”
“_Virgin!_” sighed Dionisio’s mother.
Imperio repeated the words slowly to me, line by line. I can see her
now! her burning green eyes fixed on mine, her face that made all the
other faces seem expressionless in comparison. She was at once
immortally young and immemorially old. Her face was young, the spirit
that looked from those marvellous eyes was immemorially old. The grace
of her wild chaste dance is world old and has come down from the ages. I
despair of making any one imagine her! Small, lithe, graceful as a young
tigress from the jungle, now laughing like a child, now brooding like
the world spirit.
When I could not understand what she said she was furious;--I must have
had a bad teacher, she herself would teach me Spanish. When she arrived
with her mother she was demurely dressed in a pretty white frock like
any other young Andaluz. Her short, thick black hair was curiously
arranged in curls on either side of her face, held in place by
tortoise-shell combs set with turquoises. I gave her a pair of crimson
peonies I had bought from the old flower woman at the corner. These
evidently decided the color of her dress. After a while she disappeared
behind the vast canvas of the Death of the Matador, that takes up the
whole end of the studio, and from this improvised dressing room she soon
reappeared in a scarlet moreen skirt, and a manton de Manila draped
gracefully _a la maya_, about her lithe figure. She had stuck the
peonies in the curls on either side of her pale face.
Dionisio and the other lad began to play a strange droning, wailing
chant; the chorus clapped hands keeping time. Imperio sat watching till
she caught the right rhythm, then she sprang to the dance, the castanets
on her fingers. What it all meant, I cannot begin to tell. It seemed the
primitive expression of the joy, the pain, the mystery of life. As she
made “the charm of woven passes,” like Vivian--only Vivian was bad, this
child was virginal and pure--the combs dropped out, the short, black
hair clung about her face and neck, the color surged to her cheeks; she
seemed as one filled with the divine fury of the dance; a pythoness, a
Bacchic priestess, might have looked like this. We had seen in Granada,
in the Gypsy King’s cave, somewhat similar dances given by very old
women and little girls of ten or eleven. These were as the past and the
future. Imperio made the dance part of a glowing, splendid, breathless
present. Life called to life, the life blood in our veins danced in time
with those wonderful gestures of arms, of feet, of the whole perfect
body of the creature. I believe she drew power from us, that it was all
give and take. She gave us youth and the dance, the dance which is the
natural expression of the lust of life; and we gave her the elixir of
our sympathy. Suddenly she stopped and broke forth into song--singing a
long panegyric of Seville:--
“_Ay Sevillia, la poblacíon mas hermosa del mundo emtiero, la
ciudad que yo amo mas que mi madre._”
Ah Seville town the most delightful in the entire world, city that
I love better than my mother.
The flexibility of her body was unbelievable. I can see now the little,
little hands held over her wild head, the fingers snapping rhythmically,
for the castanets were soon thrown away and her fingers themselves
marked the measure to which she danced; the impatient tapping of the
feet, the wild leaps in air when she seemed to grow taller, to tower
above us and her own original self, and finally the abandon of her last
pose, the final attitude; the head thrown back, the red lips parted,
the gasping breath coming from between the small perfect teeth, the left
arm down, the right arm thrown above her head, her whole body quivering
with the ecstacy of the dance--it was worth coming to Spain--just to see
one of Pastora Imperio’s poses!
“I have never seen dance any gel as Imperio,” Jaime exclaimed. “More
gracious, great spirit in her _figure_ (he meant face) always smiling!”
“There’s something half dramatic, half religious about this,” said
Patsy--“like David’s dancing before the Ark or like the Pyrric dance,
don’t you think?”
“Maybe,” Don Jaime agreed, “I have not seen La Davide, nor the other
dancer, La Pyrrique, you speak of. In Spain the dance is according to
the region; in Madrid, the madrileña, in Seville the sevilliana, in La
Mancha the manchego, and so on. The base of all our Spanish dances is
oriental; this is rather correct, any lady may see it. Imperio dances
with the entirety of the corpe. The French dance with toes, feet, and
legs only.”
“Who taught you to dance?” I asked Imperio, “your mother, was it not?”
“Nobody!” she exclaimed proudly. “I have danced since I was eight years
old.”
“She see her mother dance every day since she were born. She imitate her
dancing as her walking, but do not know--each of them have their own
manner.”
“That dance is as old as Eve,” said the Argentino, “Imperio adds the sum
of her own personality to it, and it is new again.”
“Will Imperio dance to-night?” I asked.
“Always at the Kürsaal after middlenight,” said the Don. “How a pity you
cannot go Missis. There are some French and English performers would not
please ladies.”
“Ask her to tell you about her doll,” said Villegas; “her mother says
that she still plays with it on rainy days when she has to stay at
home.”
“Don’t you think Imperio dances better in the studio than in the
Kürsaal?” Patsy asked.
“_Claro!_” the mother smiled and agreed with him.
“_Natural_,” said Villegas, “we are all _Sevilliani_, born in the same
parish, baptised from the same font in the cathedral. When I first came
to Madrid--to copy Velasquez--I was just sixteen years old
then--Imperiou’s mother was the first dancer in Spain. How is it? Have
you forgotten the dance you gave before Queen Isabel at the palace?”
The grave, fat, middle-aged woman said she remembered something of the
dance.
“Well, show us how it went.”
“Yes, little mama,” said Imperio kindly, “show us how you danced before
the Queen.”
The old dancer rose with a curious action springing with one step from
her chair to the first position of the dance. Then with a noble
solemnity she danced the same dances, only not with the same spirit as
Imperio; that would have been incongruous. She danced with the most
magnificent and splendid dignity as became the mother of a family. Patsy
was right, so might David have danced before the Ark. Little saucy
Imperio sat by and encouraged.
“_Viva tu madre, ollé ollé!_” she cried, clapping her little hands.
Dionisio nodded kindly to his mother, looking at her with eyes that were
her very own. The gentle mother, so long relegated to the second place,
danced and rejoiced in the tardy attention and applause of the company.
“Isn’t it time for refreshments?” asked Patsy. “They all look as if they
needed something to eat.” We adjourned to the inner studio where the
dancers and musicians fell upon the good things with the appetite of
demigods and heros. Imperio seeing that I was not eating anything, came
across the room holding between a small thumb and finger a thin slice
of sausage which she offered me, which I made out to eat.
Don Jaime seemed in a dream, he had felt the dance deeply; Patsy tapped
on the shoulder. “Wake up,” he said, “have you forgotten where you are?”
“It is like the lotus,” sighed the Don, “it make you forget all the
world.”
Imperio had changed her dress again; the fandango, the very best
_fiesta_ of all we saw in Spain, was over.
“Show us my portrait, Maestro,” she said, pointing to a veiled picture
on an easel.
Villegas threw back the curtain and showed us a second Imperio standing
with one hand raised above her head, one held behind her back, a red
matador hat upon her short curls, the emerald fire in her eyes. Patsy
stared at the picture, then at Imperio, once more a demure child in a
white frock as she was when she came into the studio, save for an added
touch of color in her cheeks.
“To the life!” cried Patsy.
Villegas rubbed his fingers over the canvas; “It needs a little scraping
down,” he said, “a little repainting, the color is too thick. It is like
her, yes? _Quien sabé!_ She is different from the
[Illustration: IMPERIO. _Villegas_]
rest. When she falls in love and marries she will be like the others.
You have seen, I have tried to paint the first dancer of Spain in her
flower.” Then he went with the dancers to the door.
“Villegas says,” Patsy quoted him, “‘that an artist should leave behind
him a true picture of his own time; that he should be like a phonograph,
preserving the character of his own period to posterity. The matador and
the dancing girl are two of the most characteristic figures of the Spain
of his day; he has painted both supremely well: he seems to be doing the
thing he set out to do!’”
* * * * *
All too soon after the _fiesta_ came the day we had fixed to leave
Madrid. Not till then did I realize the strength of the spell Spain had
laid upon me. We were going to Rome--even that could not console me--for
the spell of Spain, so dark, so noble, so tremendous, is not to be
shaken off once you have yielded to it.
The promise the child made so lightly, “to see Spain, and tell the other
children what it is like,” has yet to be kept. I did not begin to see
Spain, I have told but a halting story of what I did see. It was enough
to make me love Spain, to love the Spaniards. They are more like us
Anglo-Saxons than any people I have lived among. Villegas says, “In
every one of us Spaniards there is a Sancho Panza, and a Don Quixote.”
That is as true of us as it is of them.
Several of our friends came to the station to see us off as is the
pleasant custom of a land where people are rich, because they have time
to be kind. Lucia, hospitable to the last, came followed by Gil carrying
a great net basket with a roast capon, some _torrones_, and a bottle of
Valdepeñas. Engracia, the lovely soft-eyed, willful beauty of Madrid,
brought us chocolates from Paris, a characteristic gift, for she is a
true Cosmopolitan: _mi paisano_, Robert Mason Winthrop, Secretary of the
American Legation, who had been endlessly kind and added in a thousand
ways to the interest of our life in Madrid, brought a bunch of wonderful
Spanish carnations.
Don Jaime and Patsy were both more cast down at parting than either
wished the other to realize.
“Come and see us in America, Don,” said Patsy, “We will give you the
time of your life.”
“Though I would like to take another climate,” said the Don, “I have not
the _dinero fresco_, fresh money as you say. I have not the habitude to
spend very mooch to voyage; I could not justificate the emprize at
present.”
“Where is Villegas?” asked J.
“There he comes,” said little Don Luis, the Valencian, “bearing the
flowers of San José.”
Villegas was hurrying along the platform with a great sheaf of
annunciation lilies in his arms.
“_Adios, adios_,” we cried from the window as the train began to move.
“No, no!” came a cordial chorus from the platform.
“_Hasta otra vista._”
* * * * *
_BOOKS BY MAUD HOWE_
ROMA BEATA
_Letters from the Eternal City_
_With illustrations from drawings by John Elliott and from
photographs. 8vo. Cloth, gilt top in box, $2.50 net_
No aspect of the Roman kaleidoscope escaped her notice, and for the Pope
and peasant her comprehension and sympathies were alike quick and
ready.--_Boston Herald._
This is a clever book, and an engaging one. The author has observed
Italians and Italian life with an intelligence no less sympathetic than
acute. By temperament as well as by training she was fitted to
appreciate the glamour of Italy--that embodied romance of nature, art,
and history. In these sketches, marked by humor, discrimination, and
womanly grace and gentleness, she does much to draw the reader under the
spell which she herself has felt so deeply.--_New York Tribune._
Sparkles with humor and runs over with unique and entertaining
experiences such as could not possibly fall to the lot of the ordinary
tourist. A dozen illustrations, from Mr. Elliott’s drawings and from
photographs, add a decorative touch to this tempting volume.--_Dial_,
Chicago.
TWO IN ITALY
_With six full-page illustrations from drawings by John Elliott.
Crown 8vo. Cloth, gilt top in box, $2.00 net_
A book of delightful rambling sketches of Italian life. There is hardly
another American so capable of interpreting Italian life and
character.--_Chicago Tribune._
The stories are full of humor and color, picturesque bits of real life,
touched by a skilful hand.--_Philadelphia Telegraph._
Not since the publication of Howell’s “Venetian Days” have we had books
by an American so full of Italian sunshine and so soft with Italian
atmosphere as are the writings of Mrs. Elliott.--_Chicago Interior._
LITTLE, BROWN, & CO., _Publishers_, BOSTON
FOOTNOTES:
[1] James Freeman Clarke’s “Seven Great Religions.”
[2] The other day a Moroccan embassy to the German Emperor asked for
his help against the too drastic rule of Morocco’s new masters, the
French, on the strength of that old kinship. Blood is thicker than
water. The blue eyes of William of Hohenzollern may have looked with
something akin to sympathy into the blue eyes of the Berber hillmen
when he went hunting among them on his famous shooting trip to Morocco,
the beginning of so much diplomatic palaver!
[3] (Mr. White’s good offices eventually won a public expression of
gratitude from the head of the German Government.)
[4] The Crown Prince of Portugal and his father, Don Carlos the King,
were killed in the winter of 1908. The dreadful murder was curiously
glossed over by the newspapers as a “political crime,” and outside of
Portugal at least has apparently been quickly forgotten. The boy was a
sweet-faced youth with charming manners. I cannot think of him without
remembering the superstition that “whom the gods love die young.” As I
look back at those fabulous fêtes in the light of the dreadful double
regicide, there seems something curiously suggestive and characteristic
in the representatives sent by the different monarchs to the King of
Spain’s wedding. It must be an openly accepted fact that there is great
risk in attending such a celebration. The Kaiser thriftily sent his
uncle, the Czar sent another uncle, Russia, Germany, Austria, Italy,
all sent old men, uncles or cousins of the sovereign, whose lives
were not particularly valuable. England (so like England) sent the
King’s only son; Sweden sent the heir to the throne, and Portugal,
unsuspicious, trustful in the character of its solid, serious,
law-abiding people, sent the heir to the throne. The countries that
have suffered most from the assassins of Anarchy--Austria, Russia, and
Italy--risked only a small counter on the dreadful hazard.
[5] The picture is owned by Miss Dorothy Whitney of New York.
End of Project Gutenberg's Sun and Shadow in Spain, by Maud Howe Elliott