Produced by Eric Eldred
CASTILIAN DAYS
By John Hay
Published November 1903
PUBLISHERS' NOTE
In this Holiday Edition of _Castilian Days_ it has been thought
advisable to omit a few chapters that appeared in the original edition.
These chapters were less descriptive than the rest of the book, and not
so rich in the picturesque material which the art of the illustrator
demands. Otherwise, the text is reprinted without change. The
illustrations are the fruit of a special visit which Mr. Pennell has
recently made to Castile for this purpose.
BOSTON, AUTUMN, 1903
LIST OF CONTENTS
MADRID AL FRESCO
SPANISH LIVING AND DYING
INFLUENCE OF TRADITION IN SPANISH LIFE
TAUROMACHY
RED-LETTER DAYS
AN HOUR WITH THE PAINTERS
A CASTLE IN THE AIR
THE CITY OF THE VISIGOTHS
THE ESCORIAL
A MIRACLE PLAY
THE CRADLE AND THE GRAVE OF CERVANTES
MADRID AL FRESCO
Madrid is a capital with malice aforethought. Usually the seat of
government is established in some important town from the force of
circumstances. Some cities have an attraction too powerful for the court
to resist. There is no capital of England possible but London. Paris is
the heart of France. Rome is the predestined capital of Italy in spite
of the wandering flirtations its varying governments in different
centuries have carried on with Ravenna, or Naples, or Florence. You can
imagine no Residenz for Austria but the Kaiserstadt,--the gemuthlich
Wien. But there are other capitals where men have arranged things and
consequently bungled them. The great Czar Peter slapped his imperial
court down on the marshy shore of the Neva, where he could look westward
into civilization and watch with the jealous eye of an intelligent
barbarian the doings of his betters. Washington is another specimen of
the cold-blooded handiwork of the capital builders. We shall think
nothing less of the _clarum et venerabile nomen_ of its founder if we
admit he was human, and his wishing the seat of government nearer to
Mount Vernon than Mount Washington sufficiently proves this. But Madrid
more plainly than any other capital shows the traces of having been set
down and properly brought up by the strong hand of a paternal
government; and like children with whom the same regimen has been
followed, it presents in its maturity a curious mixture of lawlessness
and insipidity.
Its greatness was thrust upon it by Philip II. Some premonitory symptoms
of the dangerous honor that awaited it had been seen in preceding
reigns. Ferdinand and Isabella occasionally set up their pilgrim
tabernacle on the declivity that overhangs the Manzanares. Charles V.
found the thin, fine air comforting to his gouty articulations. But
Philip II. made it his court. It seems hard to conceive how a king who
had his choice of Lisbon, with its glorious harbor and unequalled
communications; Seville, with its delicious climate and natural beauty;
and Salamanca and Toledo, with their wealth of tradition, splendor of
architecture, and renown of learning, should have chosen this barren
mountain for his home, and the seat of his empire. But when we know this
monkish king we wonder no longer. He chose Madrid simply because it was
cheerless and bare and of ophthalmic ugliness. The royal kill-joy
delighted in having the dreariest capital on earth. After a while there
seemed to him too much life and humanity about Madrid, and he built the
Escorial, the grandest ideal of majesty and ennui that the world has
ever seen. This vast mass of granite has somehow acted as an anchor that
has held the capital fast moored at Madrid through all succeeding years.
It was a dreary and somewhat shabby court for many reigns. The great
kings who started the Austrian dynasty were too busy in their world
conquest to pay much attention to beautifying Madrid, and their weak
successors, sunk in ignoble pleasures, had not energy enough to indulge
the royal folly of building. When the Bourbons came down from France
there was a little flurry of construction under Philip V., but he never
finished his palace in the Plaza del Oriente, and was soon absorbed in
constructing his castle in cloud-land on the heights of La Granja. The
only real ruler the Bourbons ever gave to Spain was Charles III., and to
him Madrid owes all that it has of architecture and civic improvement.
Seconded by his able and liberal minister, Count Aranda, who was
educated abroad, and so free from the trammels of Spanish ignorance and
superstition, he rapidly changed the ignoble town into something like a
city. The greater portion of the public buildings date from this active
and beneficent reign. It was he who laid out the walks and promenades
which give to Madrid almost its only outward attraction. The Picture
Gallery, which is the shrine of all pilgrims of taste, was built by him
for a Museum of Natural Science. In nearly all that a stranger cares to
see, Madrid is not an older city than Boston.
There is consequently no glory of tradition here. There are no
cathedrals. There are no ruins. There is none of that mysterious and
haunting memory that peoples the air with spectres in quiet towns like
Ravenna and Nuremberg. And there is little of that vast movement of
humanity that possesses and bewilders you in San Francisco and New York.
Madrid is larger than Chicago; but Chicago is a great city and Madrid a
great village. The pulsations of life in the two places resemble each
other no more than the beating of Dexter's heart on the home-stretch is
like the rising and falling of an oozy tide in a marshy inlet.
There is nothing indigenous in Madrid. There is no marked local color.
It is a city of Castile, but not a Castilian city, like Toledo, which
girds its graceful waist with the golden Tagus, or like Segovia,
fastened to its rock in hopeless shipwreck.
But it is not for this reason destitute of an interest of its own. By
reason of its exceptional history and character it is the best point in
Spain to study Spanish life. It has no distinctive traits itself, but it
is a patchwork of all Spain. Every province of the Peninsula sends a
contingent to its population. The Gallicians hew its wood and draw its
water; the Asturian women nurse its babies at their deep bosoms, and
fill the promenades with their brilliant costumes; the Valentians carpet
its halls and quench its thirst with orgeat of chufas; in every street
you shall see the red bonnet and sandalled feet of the Catalan; in every
cafe, the shaven face and rat-tail chignon of the Majo of Andalusia. If
it have no character of its own, it is a mirror where all the faces of
the Peninsula may sometimes be seen. It is like the mockingbird of the
West, that has no song of its own, and yet makes the woods ring with
every note it has ever heard.
Though Madrid gives a picture in little of all Spain, it is not all
Spanish. It has a large foreign population. Not only its immediate
neighbors, the French, are here in great numbers,--conquering so far
their repugnance to emigration, and living as gayly as possible in the
midst of traditional hatred,--but there are also many Germans and
English in business here, and a few stray Yankees have pitched their
tents, to reinforce the teeth of the Dons, and to sell them ploughs and
sewing-machines. Its railroads have waked it up to a new life, and the
Revolution has set free the thought of its people to an extent which
would have been hardly credible a few years ago. Its streets swarm with
newsboys and strangers,--the agencies that are to bring its people into
the movement of the age.
It has a superb opera-house, which might as well be in Naples, for all
the national character it has; the court theatre, where not a word of
Cas-tilian is ever heard, nor a strain of Spanish music. Even
cosmopolite Paris has her grand opera sung in French, and easy-going
Vienna insists that Don Juan shall make love in German. The champagny
strains of Offenbach are heard in every town of Spain oftener than the
ballads of the country. In Madrid there are more _pilluelos_ who whistle
_Bu qui s'avance_ than the Hymn of Riego. The Cancan has taken its place
on the boards of every stage in the city, apparently to stay; and the
exquisite jota and cachucha are giving way to the bestialities of the
casino cadet. It is useless perhaps to fight against that hideous orgie
of vulgar Menads which in these late years has swept over all nations,
and stung the loose world into a tarantula dance from the Golden Horn to
the Golden Gate. It must have its day and go out; and when it has
passed, perhaps we may see that it was not so utterly causeless and
irrational as it seemed; but that, as a young American poet has
impressively said, "Paris was proclaiming to the world in it somewhat of
the pent-up fire and fury of her nature, the bitterness of her heart,
the fierceness of her protest against spiritual and political
repression. It is an execration in rhythm,--a dance of fiends, which
Paris has invented to express in license what she lacks in liberty."
This diluted European, rather than Spanish, spirit may be seen in most
of the amusements of the politer world of Madrid. They have classical
concerts in the circuses and popular music in the open air. The theatres
play translations of French plays, which are pretty good when they are
in prose, and pretty dismal when they are turned into verse, as is more
frequent, for the Spanish mind delights in the jingle of rhyme. The fine
old Spanish drama is vanishing day by day. The masterpieces of Lope and
Calderon, which inspired all subsequent playwriting in Europe, have sunk
almost utterly into oblivion. The stage is flooded with the washings of
the Boulevards. Bad as the translations are, the imitations are worse.
The original plays produced by the geniuses of the Spanish Academy, for
which they are crowned and sonneted and pensioned, are of the kind upon
which we are told that gods and men and columns look austerely.
This infection of foreign manners has completely gained and now controls
what is called the best society of Madrid. A soiree in this circle is
like an evening in the corresponding grade of position in Paris or
Petersburg or New York in all external characteristics. The toilets are
by Worth; the beauties are coiffed by the deft fingers of Parisian
tiring-women; the men wear the penitential garb of Poole; the music is
by Gounod and Verdi; Strauss inspires the rushing waltzes, and the
married people walk through the quadrilles to the measures of Blue Beard
and Fair Helen, so suggestive of conjugal rights and duties. As for the
suppers, the trail of the Neapolitan serpent is over them all. Honest
eating is a lost art among the effete denizens of the Old World.
Tantalizing ices, crisped shapes of baked nothing, arid sandwiches, and
the feeblest of sugary punch, are the only supports exhausted nature
receives for the shock of the cotillon. I remember the stern reply of a
friend of mine when I asked him to go with me to a brilliant
reception,--"No! Man liveth not by biscuit-glace alone!" His heart was
heavy for the steamed cherry-stones of Harvey and the stewed terrapin of
Augustin.
The speech of the gay world has almost ceased to be national. Every one
speaks French sufficiently for all social requirements. It is sometimes
to be doubted whether this constant use of a foreign language in
official and diplomatic circles is a cause or effect of paucity of
ideas. It is impossible for any one to use another tongue with the ease
and grace with which he could use his own. You know how tiresome the
most charming foreigners are when they speak English. A fetter-dance is
always more curious than graceful. Yet one who has nothing to say can
say it better in a foreign language. If you must speak nothing but
phrases, Ollendorff's are as good as any one's. Where there are a dozen
people all speaking French equally badly, each one imagines there is a
certain elegance in the hackneyed forms. I know of no other way of
accounting for the fact that clever people seem stupid and stupid people
clever when they speak French. This facile language thus becomes the
missionary of mental equality,--the principles of '89 applied to
conversation. All men are equal before the phrase-book.
But this is hypercritical and ungrateful. We do not go to balls to hear
sermons nor discuss the origin of matter. If the young grandees of Spain
are rather weaker in the parapet than is allowed in the nineteenth
century, if the old boys are more frivolous than is becoming to age, and
both more ignorant of the day's doings than is consistent with even
their social responsibilities, in compensation the women of this circle
are as pretty and amiable as it is possible to be in a fallen world. The
foreigner never forgets those piquant, _mutines_ faces of Andalusia and
those dreamy eyes of Malaga,--the black masses of Moorish hair and the
blond glory of those graceful heads that trace their descent from Gothic
demigods. They were not very learned nor very witty, but they were
knowing enough to trouble the soundest sleep. Their voices could
interpret the sublimest ideas of Mendelssohn. They knew sufficiently of
lines and colors to dress themselves charmingly at small cost, and their
little feet were well enough educated to bear them over the polished
floor of a ball-room as lightly as swallows' wings. The flirting of
their intelligent fans, the flashing of those quick smiles where eyes,
teeth, and lips all did their dazzling duty, and the satin twinkling of
those neat boots in the waltz, are harder to forget than things better
worth remembering.
Since the beginning of the Revolutionary regime there have been serious
schisms and heart-burnings in the gay world. The people of the old
situation assumed that the people of the new were rebels and traitors,
and stopped breaking bread with them. But in spite of this the palace
and the ministry of war were gay enough,--for Madrid is a city of
office-holders, and the White House is always easy to fill, even if two
thirds of the Senate is uncongenial. The principal fortress of the post
was the palace of the spirituelle and hospitable lady whose society name
is Duchess of Penaranda, but who is better known as the mother of the
Empress of the French. Her salon was the weekly rendezvous of the
irreconcilable adherents of the House of Bourbon, and the aristocratic
beauty that gathered there was too powerful a seduction even for the
young and hopeful partisans of the powers that be. There was nothing
exclusive about this elegant hospitality. Beauty and good manners have
always been a passport there. I have seen a proconsul of Prim talking
with a Carlist leader, and a fiery young democrat dancing with a
countess of Castile.
But there is another phase of society in Madrid which is altogether
pleasing,--far from the domain of politics or public affairs, where
there is no pretension or luxury or conspiracy,--the old-fashioned
Tertulias of Spain. There is nowhere a kindlier and more unaffected
sociableness. The leading families of each little circle have one
evening a week on which they remain at home. Nearly all their friends
come in on that evening. There is conversation and music and dancing.
The young girls gather together in little groups,--not confined under
the jealous guard of their mothers or chaperons,--and chatter of the
momentous events of the week--their dresses, their beaux, and their
books. Around these compact formations of loveliness skirmish light
bodies of the male enemy, but rarely effect a lodgment. A word or a
smile is momently thrown out to meet the advance; but the long,
desperate battle of flirtation, which so often takes place in America in
discreet corners and outlying boudoirs, is never seen in this
well-organized society. The mothers in Israel are ranged for the evening
around the walls in comfortable chairs, which they never leave; and the
colonels and generals and chiefs of administration, who form the bulk of
all Madrid gatherings, are gravely smoking in the library or playing
interminable games of tresillon, seasoned with temperate denunciations
of the follies of the time.
Nothing can be more engaging than the tone of perfect ease and cordial
courtesy which pervades these family festivals. It is here that the
Spanish character is seen in its most attractive light. Nearly everybody
knows French, but it is never spoken. The exquisite Castilian, softened
by its graceful diminutives into a rival of the Italian in tender
melody, is the only medium of conversation; it is rare that a stranger'
is seen, but if he is, he must learn Spanish or be a wet blanket
forever.
You will often meet, in persons of wealth and distinction, an easy
degenerate accent in Spanish, strangely at variance with their elegance
and culture. These are Creoles of the Antilles, and they form one of the
most valued and popular elements of society in the capital. There is a
gallantry and dash about the men, and an intelligence and independence
about the women, that distinguish them from their cousins of the
Peninsula. The American element has recently grown very prominent in the
political and social world. Admiral Topete is a Mexican. His wife is one
of the distinguished Cuban family of Arrieta. General Prim married a
Mexican heiress. The magnificent Duchess de la Torre, wife of the Regent
Serrano, is a Cuban born and bred.
In one particular Madrid is unique among capitals,--it has no suburbs.
It lies in a desolate table-land in the windy waste of New Castile; on
the north the snowy Guadarrama chills its breezes, and on every other
side the tawny landscape stretches away in dwarfish hills and shallow
ravines barren of shrub or tree, until distance fuses the vast steppes
into one drab plain, which melts in the hazy verge of the warm horizon.
There are no villages sprinkled in the environs to lure the Madrilenos
out of their walls for a holiday. Those delicious picnics that break
with such enchanting freshness and variety the steady course of life in
other capitals cannot here exist. No Parisian loves _la bonne ville_ so
much that he does not call those the happiest of days on which he
deserts her for a row at Asnieres, a donkey-ride at Enghien, or a
bird-like dinner in the vast chestnuts of Sceaux. "There is only one
Kaiserstadt," sings the loyal Kerl of Vienna, but he shakes the dust of
the Graben from his feet on holiday mornings, and makes his merry
pilgrimage to the lordly Schoen-brunn or the heartsome Dornbach, or the
wooded eyry of the Kahlenberg. What would white-bait be if not eaten at
Greenwich? What would life be in the great cities without the knowledge
that just outside, an hour away from the toil and dust and struggle of
this money-getting world, there are green fields, and whispering
forests, and verdurous nooks of breezy shadow by the side of brooks
where the white pebbles shine through the mottled stream,--where you
find great pied pan-sies under your hands, and catch the black beady
eyes of orioles watching you from the thickets, and through the lush
leafage over you see patches of sky flecked with thin clouds that sail
so lazily you cannot be sure if the blue or the white is moving?
Existence without these luxuries would be very much like life in Madrid.
Yet it is not so dismal as it might seem. The Grande Duchesse of
Gerolstein, the cheeriest moralist who ever occupied a throne, announces
just before the curtain falls, "Quand on n'a pas ce qu'on aime, il faut
aimer ce qu'on a." But how much easier it is to love what you have when
you never imagined anything better! The bulk of the good people of
Madrid have never left their natal city. If they have been, for their
sins, some day to Val-lecas or Carabanchel or any other of the dusty
villages that bake and shiver on the arid plains around them, they give
fervid thanks on returning alive, and never wish to go again. They
shudder when they hear of the summer excursions of other populations,
and commiserate them profoundly for living in a place they are so
anxious to leave. A lovely girl of Madrid once said to me she never
wished to travel,--some people who had been to France preferred Paris to
Madrid; as if that were an inexplicable insanity by which their
wanderings had been punished. The indolent incuriousness of the Spaniard
accepts the utter isolation of his city as rather an advantage. It saves
him the trouble of making up his mind where to go. _Vamonos al Prado!_
or, as Browning says,--
"Let's to the Prado and make the most of time."
The people of Madrid take more solid comfort in their promenade than any
I know. This is one of the inestimable benefits conferred upon them by
those wise and liberal free-thinkers Charles III. and Aranda. They knew
how important to the moral and physical health of the people a place of
recreation was. They reduced the hideous waste land on the east side of
the city to a breathing-space for future generations, turning the meadow
into a promenade and the hill into the Buen Retiro. The people growled
terribly at the time, as they did at nearly everything this prematurely
liberal government did for them. The wise king once wittily said: "My
people are like bad children that kick the shins of their nurse whenever
their faces are washed."
But they soon became reconciled to their Prado,--a name, by the way,
which runs through several idioms,--in Paris they had a Pre-aux-clercs,
the Clerks' Meadow, and the great park of Vienna is called the Prater.
It was originally the favorite scene of duels, and the cherished
trysting-place of lovers. But in modern times it is too popular for any
such selfish use.
The polite world takes its stately promenade in the winter afternoons in
the northern prolongation of the real Prado, called in the official
courtier style _Las delicias de Isabel Segunda,_ but in common speech
the Castilian Fountain, or _Castellana,_ to save time. So perfect is the
social discipline in these old countries that people who are not in
society never walk in this long promenade, which is open to all the
world. You shall see there, any pleasant day before the Carnival, the
aristocracy of the kingdom, the fast young hopes of the nobility, the
diplomatic body resident, and the flexible figures and graceful bearing
of the high-born ladies of Castile. Here they take the air as free from
snobbish competition as the good society of Olympus, while a hundred
paces farther south, just beyond the Mint, the world at large takes its
plebeian constitutional. How long, with a democratic system of
government, this purely conventional respect will be paid to blue-ness
of blood cannot be conjectured. Its existence a year after the
Revolution was to me one of the most singular of phenomena.
After Easter Monday the Castellana is left to its own devices for the
summer. With the warm long days of May and June, the evening walk in the
Salon begins. Europe affords no scene more original and characteristic.
The whole city meets in this starlit drawing-room. It is a vast evening
party al fresco, stretching from the Alcala to the Course of San
Geronimo. In the wide street beside it every one in town who owns a
carriage may be seen moving lazily up and down, and apparently envying
the gossiping strollers on foot. On three nights in the week there is
music in the Retiro Garden,--not as in our feverish way beginning so
early that you must sacrifice your dinner to get there, and then turning
you out disconsolate in that seductive hour which John Phoenix used to
call the "shank of the evening," but opening sensibly at half past nine
and going leisurely forward until after midnight. The music is very
good. Sometimes Arban comes down from Paris to recover from his winter
fatigues and bewitch the Spains with his wizard _baton._
In all this vast crowd nobody is in a hurry. They have all night before
them. They stayed quietly at home in the stress of the noontide when the
sunbeams were falling in the glowing streets like javelins,--they
utilized some of the waste hours of the broiling afternoon in sleep, and
are fresh as daisies now. The women are not haunted by the thought of
lords and babies growling and wailing at home. Their lords are beside
them, the babies are sprawling in the clean gravel by their chairs. Late
in the small hours I have seen these family parties in the promenade,
the husband tranquilly smoking his hundredth cigarette, his _placens
uxor_ dozing in her chair, one baby asleep on the ground, and another
slumbering in her lap.
This Madrid climate is a gallant one, and kindlier to the women than the
men. The ladies are built on the old-fashioned generous plan. Like a
Southern table in the old times, the only fault is too abundant plenty.
They move along with a superb dignity of carriage that Banting would
like to banish from the world, their round white shoulders shining in
the starlight, their fine heads elegantly draped in the coquettish and
always graceful mantilla. But you would look in vain among the men of
Madrid for such fulness and liberality of structure. They are thin,
eager, sinewy in appearance,--though it is the spareness of the Turk,
not of the American. It comes from tobacco and the Guadarrama winds.
This still, fine, subtle air that blows from the craggy peaks over the
treeless plateau seems to take all superfluous moisture out of the men
of Madrid. But it is, like Benedick's wit, "a most manly air, it will
not hurt a woman." This tropic summer-time brings the halcyon days of
the vagabonds of Madrid. They are a temperate, reasonable people, after
all, when they are let alone. They do not require the savage stimulants
of our colder-blooded race. The fresh air is a feast. As Walt Whitman
says, they loaf and invite their souls. They provide for the banquet
only the most spiritual provender. Their dissipation is confined
principally to starlight and zephyrs; the coarser and wealthier spirits
indulge in ice, agraz, and meringues dissolved in water. The climax of
their luxury is a cool bed. Walking about the city at midnight, I have
seen the fountains all surrounded by luxurious vagabonds asleep or in
revery, dozens of them stretched along the rim of the basins, in the
spray of the splashing water, where the least start would plunge them
in. But the dreams of these Latin beggars are too peaceful to trouble
their slumber. They lie motionless, amid the roar of wheels and the
tramp of a thousand feet, their bed the sculptured marble, their
covering the deep, amethystine vault, warm and cherishing with its
breath of summer winds, bright with its trooping stars. The Providence
of the worthless watches and guards them!
The chief commerce of the streets of Madrid seems to be fire and water,
bane and antidote. It would be impossible for so many match-venders to
live anywhere else, in a city ten times the size of Madrid. On every
block you will find a wandering merchant dolefully announcing paper and
phosphorus,--the one to construct cigarettes and the other to light
them. The matches are little waxen tapers very neatly made and enclosed
in pasteboard boxes, which are sold for a cent and contain about a
hundred _fosforos._ These boxes are ornamented with portraits of the
popular favorites of the day, and afford a very fair test of the
progress and decline of parties. The queen has disappeared from them
except in caricature, and the chivalrous face of Castelar and the heavy
Bourbon mouth of Don Carlos are oftener seen than any others. A Madrid
smoker of average industry will use a box a day. They smoke more
cigarettes than cigars, and in the ardor of conversation allow their
fire to go out every minute. A young Austrian, who was watching a
_senorito_ light his wisp of paper for the fifth time, and mentally
comparing it with the volcano volume and _kern-deutsch_ integrity of
purpose of the meerschaums of his native land, said to me: "What can you
expect of a people who trifle in that way with the only work of their
lives?"
It is this habit of constant smoking that makes the Madrilenos the
thirstiest people in the world; so that, alternating with the cry of
"Fire, lord-lings! Matches, chevaliers!" you hear continually the drone
so tempting to parched throats, "Water! who wants water? freezing water!
colder than snow!" This is the daily song of the Gallician who marches
along in his irrigating mission, with his brown blouse, his short
breeches, and pointed hat, like that Aladdin wears in the cheap
editions; a little varied by the Valentian in his party-colored mantle
and his tow trousers, showing the bronzed leg from the knee to the
blue-bordered sandals. Numerous as they are, they all seem to have
enough to do. They carry their scriptural-looking water-jars on their
backs, and a smart tray of tin and burnished brass, with meringues and
glasses, in front. The glasses are of enormous but not extravagant
proportions. These dropsical Iberians will drink water as if it were no
stronger than beer. In the winter-time, while the cheerful invitation
rings out to the same effect,--that the beverage is cold as the
snow,--the merchant prudently carries a little pot of hot water over a
spirit-lamp to take the chill off for shivery customers.
Madrid is one of those cities where strangers fear the climate less than
residents. Nothing is too bad for the Castilian to say of his native
air. Before you have been a day in the city some kind soul will warn you
against everything you have been in the habit of doing as leading to
sudden and severe death in this subtle air. You will hear in a dozen
different tones the favorite proverb, which may be translated,--
The air of Madrid is as sharp as a knife,--
It will spare a candle and blow out your life:--
and another where the truth, as in many Spanish proverbs, is sacrificed
to the rhyme, saying that the climate is _tres meses invierno y nueve
infierno,--_three months winter and nine months Tophet. At the first
coming of the winter frosts the genuine son of Madrid gets out his capa,
the national full round cloak, and never leaves it off till late in the
hot spring days. They have a way of throwing one corner over the left
shoulder, so that a bright strip of gay lining falls outward and
pleasantly relieves the sombre monotony of the streets. In this way the
face is completely covered by the heavy woollen folds, only the eyes
being visible under the sombrero. The true Spaniard breathes no
out-of-doors air all winter except through his cloak, and they stare at
strangers who go about with uncovered faces enjoying the brisk air as if
they were lunatics. But what makes the custom absurdly incongruous is
that the women have no such terror of fresh air. While the hidalgo goes
smothered in his wrappings his wife and daughter wear nothing on their
necks and faces but their pretty complexions, and the gallant breeze,
grateful for this generous confidence, repays them in roses. I have
sometimes fancied that in this land of traditions this difference might
have arisen in those days of adventure when the cavaliers had good
reasons for keeping their faces concealed, while the senoras, we are
bound to believe, have never done anything for which their own beauty
was not the best excuse.
Nearly all there is of interest in Madrid consists in the faces and the
life of its people. There is but one portion of the city which appeals
to the tourist's ordinary set of emotions. This is the old Moors'
quarter,--the intricate jumble of streets and places on the western edge
of the town, overlooking the bankrupt river. Here is St. Andrew's, the
parish church where Isabella the Catholic and her pious husband used to
offer their stiff and dutiful prayers. Behind it a market-place of the
most primitive kind runs precipitately down to the Street of. Segovia,
at such an angle that you wonder the turnips and carrots can ever be
brought to keep their places on the rocky slope. If you will wander
through the dark alleys and hilly streets of this quarter when twilight
is softening the tall tenement-houses to a softer purpose, and the
doorways are all full of gossiping groups, and here and there in the
little courts you can hear the tinkling of a guitar and the drone of
ballads, and see the idlers lounging by the fountains, and everywhere
against the purple sky the crosses of old convents, while the evening
air is musical with slow chimes from the full-arched belfries, it will
not be hard to imagine you are in the Spain you have read and dreamed
of. And, climbing out of this labyrinth of slums, you pass under the
gloomy gates that lead to the Plaza Mayor. This once magnificent square
is now as squalid and forsaken as the Place Royale of Paris, though it
dates from a period comparatively recent. The mind so instinctively
revolts at the contemplation of those orgies of priestly brutality which
have made the very name of this place redolent with a fragrance of
scorched Christians, that we naturally assign it an immemorial
antiquity. But a glance at the booby face of Philip III. on his
round-bellied charger in the centre of the square will remind us that
this place was built at the same time the Mayflower's passengers were
laying the massive foundations of the great Republic. The Autos-da-Fe,
the plays of Lope de Vega, and the bull-fights went on for many years
with impartial frequency under the approving eyes of royalty, which
occupied a convenient balcony in the Panaderia, that overdressed
building with the two extinguisher towers. Down to a period
disgracefully near us, those balconies were occupied by the dull-eyed,
pendulous-lipped tyrants who have sat on the throne of St. Ferdinand,
while there in the spacious court below the varied sports went
on,--to-day a comedy of Master Lope, to-morrow the gentle and joyous
slaying of bulls, and the next day, with greater pomp and ceremony, with
banners hung from the windows, and my lord the king surrounded by his
women and his courtiers in their bravest gear, and the august presence
of the chief priests and their idol in the form of wine and wafers,--the
judgment and fiery sentence of the thinking men of Spain.
Let us remember as we leave this accursed spot that the old palace of
the Inquisition is now the Ministry of Justice, where a liberal
statesman has just drawn up the bill of civil marriage; and that in the
convent of the Trinitarians a Spanish Rationalist, the Minister of
Fomento, is laboring to secularize education in the Peninsula. There is
much coiling and hissing, but the fangs of the ser-pent are much less
prompt and effective than of old.
The wide Calle Mayor brings you in a moment out of these mouldy shadows
and into the broad light of nowadays which shines in the Puerta del Sol.
Here, under the walls of the Ministry of the Interior, the quick,
restless heart of Madrid beats with the new life it has lately earned.
The flags of the pavement have been often stained with blood, but of
blood shed in combat, in the assertion of individual freedom. Although
the government holds that fortress-palace with a grasp of iron, it can
exercise no control over the free speech that asserts itself on the very
sidewalk of the Principal. At every step you see news-stands filled with
the sharp critical journalism of Spain,--often ignorant and unjust, but
generally courteous in expression and independent in thought. Every day
at noon the northern mails bring hither the word of all Europe to the
awaking Spanish mind, and within that massive building the converging
lines of the telegraph are whispering every hour their persuasive
lessons of the world's essential unity.
The movement of life and growth is bearing the population gradually away
from that dark mediaeval Madrid of the Catholic kings through the Puerta
del Sol to the airy heights beyond, and the new, fresh quarter built by
the philosopher Bourbon Charles III. is becoming the most important part
of the city. I think we may be permitted to hope that the long reign of
savage faith and repression is broken at last, and that this abused and
suffering people is about to enter into its rightful inheritance of
modern freedom and progress.
SPANISH LIVING AND DYING
Nowhere is the sentiment of home stronger than in Spain. Strangers,
whose ideas of the Spanish character have been gained from romance and
comedy, are apt to note with some surprise the strength and prevalence
of the domestic affections. But a moment's reflection shows us that
nothing is more natural. It is the result of all their history. The old
Celtic population had scarcely any religion but that of the family. The
Goths brought in the pure Teutonic regard for woman and marriage. The
Moors were distinguished by the patriarchal structure of their society.
The Spaniards have thus learned the lesson of home in the school of
history and tradition. The intense feeling of individuality, which so
strongly marks the Spanish character, and which in the political world
is so fatal an element of strife and obstruction, favors this peculiar
domesticity. The Castilian is submissive to his king and his priest,
haughty and inflexible with his equals. But his own house is a refuge
from the contests of out of doors. The reflex of absolute authority is
here observed, it is true. The Spanish father is absolute king and lord
by his own hearthstone, but his sway is so mild and so readily
acquiesced in that it is hardly felt. The evils of tyranny are rarely
seen but by him who resists it, and the Spanish family seldom calls for
the harsh exercise of parental authority.
This is the rule. I do not mean to say there are no exceptions. The
pride and jealousy inherent in the race make family quarrels, when they
do arise, the bitterest and the fiercest in the world. In every grade of
life these vindictive feuds among kindred are seen from time to time.
Twice at least the steps of the throne have been splashed with royal
blood shed by a princely hand. Duels between noble cousins and stabbing
affrays between peasant brothers alike attest the unbending sense of
personal dignity that still infects this people.
A light word between husbands and wives sometimes goes unexplained, and
the rift between them widens through life. I know some houses where the
wife enters at one door and the husband at another; where if they meet
on the stairs, they do not salute each other. Under the same roof they
have lived for years and have not spoken. One word would heal all
discord, and that word will never be spoken by either. They cannot be
divorced,--the Church is inexorable. They will not incur the scandal of
a public separation. So they pass lives of lonely isolation in adjoining
apartments, both thinking rather better of each other and of themselves
for this devilish persistence.
An infraction of parental discipline is never forgiven. I knew a general
whose daughter fell in love with his adjutant, a clever and amiable
young officer. He had positively no objection to the suitor, but was
surprised that there should be any love-making in his house without his
previous suggestion. He refused his consent, and the young people were
married without it. The father and son-in-law went off on a campaign,
fought, and were wounded in the same battle. The general was asked to
recommend his son-in-law for promotion. "I have no son-in-law!" "I mean
your daughter's husband." "I have no daughter." "I refer to Lieutenant
Don Fulano de Tal. He is a good officer. He distinguished himself
greatly in the recent affair." "Ah! otra cosa!" said the grim
father-in-law. His hate could not overcome his sense of justice. The
youth got his promotion, but his general will not recognize him at the
club. It is in the middle and lower classes that the most perfect
pictures of the true Spanish family are to be found. The aristocracy is
more or less infected with the contagion of Continental manners and
morals. You will find there the usual proportion of wives who despise
their husbands, and men who neglect their wives, and children who do not
honor their parents. The smartness of American "pickles" has even made
its appearance among the little countesses of Madrid. A lady was eating
an ice one day, hungrily watched by the wide eyes of the infant heiress
of the house. As the latter saw the last hope vanishing before the
destroying spoon, she cried out, "Thou eatest all and givest me
none,--maldita sea tu alma!" (accursed be thy soul). This dreadful
imprecation was greeted with roars of laughter from admiring friends,
and the profane little innocent was smothered in kisses and cream.
Passing at noon by any of the squares or shady places of Madrid, you
will see dozens of laboring-people at their meals. They sit on the
ground, around the steaming and savory _cocido_ that forms the peasant
Spaniard's unvaried dinner. The foundation is of _garbanzos,_ the large
chick-pea of the country, brought originally to Europe by the
Carthaginians,--the Roman _cicer,_ which gave its name to the greatest
of the Latin orators. All other available vegetables are thrown in; on
days of high gala a piece of meat is added, and some forehanded
housewives attain the climax of luxury by flavoring the compound with a
link of sausage. The mother brings the dinner and her tawny brood of
nestlings. A shady spot is selected for the feast. The father dips his
wooden spoon first into the vapory bowl, and mother and babes follow
with grave decorum. Idle loungers passing these patriarchal groups, on
their way to a vapid French breakfast at a restaurant, catch the
fragrance of the _olla_ and the chatter of the family, and envy the
dinner of herbs with love.
There is no people so frugal. We often wonder how a Washington clerk can
live on twelve hundred dollars, but this would be luxury in expensive
Madrid. It is one of the dearest capitals in Europe. Foreigners are
never weary decrying its high prices for poor fare; but Castilians live
in good houses, dress well, receive their intimate friends, and hold
their own with the best in the promenade, upon incomes that would seem
penury to any country parson in America. There are few of the nobility
who retain the great fortunes of former days. You can almost tell on
your fingers the tale of the grandees in Madrid who can live without
counting the cost. The army and navy are crowded with general officers
whose political services have obliged their promotion. The state is too
much impoverished to pay liberal salaries, and yet the rank of these
officers requires the maintenance of a certain social position. Few of
them are men of fortune. The result is that necessity has taught them to
live well upon little, I knew widows who went everywhere in society,
whose daughters were always charmingly dressed, who lived in a decent
quarter of the town, and who had no resources whatever but a husband's
pension.
The best proof of the capacity of Spaniards to spread a little gold over
as much space as a goldbeater could is the enormous competition for
public employment. Half the young men in Spain are candidates for
places under government ranging from $250 to $1000. Places of $1500 to
$2000 are considered objects of legitimate ambition even to deputies and
leading politicians. Expressed in reals these sums have a large and
satisfying sound. Fifty dollars seems little enough for a month's work,
but a thousand reals has the look of a most respectable salary. In
Portugal, however, you can have all the delightful sensations of
prodigality at a contemptible cost. You can pay, without serious damage
to your purse, five thousand reis for your breakfast.
It is the smallness of incomes and the necessity of looking sharply to
the means of life that makes the young people of Madrid so prudent in
their love affairs. I know of no place where ugly heir-esses are such
belles, and where young men with handsome incomes are so universally
esteemed by all who know them. The stars on the sleeves of young
officers are more regarded than their dancing, and the red belt of a
field officer is as winning in the eyes of beauty as a cestus of Venus.
A. subaltern offered his hand and heart to a black-eyed girl of Castile.
She said kindly but firmly that the night was too cloudy. "What," said
the stupefied lover, "the sky is full of stars." "I see but one," said
the prudent beauty, her fine eyes resting pensively upon his cuff, where
one lone luminary indicated his rank.
This spirit is really one of forethought, and not avarice. People who
have enough for two almost always marry from inclination, and frequently
take partners for life without a penny.
If men were never henpecked except by learned wives, Spain would be the
place of all others for timid men to marry in. The girls are bright,
vivacious, and naturally very clever, but they have scarcely any
education whatever. They never know the difference between _b_ and _v._
They throw themselves in orthography entirely upon your benevolence.
They know a little music and a little French, but they have never
crossed, even in a school-day excursion, the border line of the ologies.
They do not even read novels. They are regarded as injurious, and
cannot be trusted to the daughters until mamma has read them. Mamma
never has time to read them, and so they are condemned by default.
Fernan Caballero, in one of her sleepy little romances, refers to this
illiterate character of the Spanish ladies, and says it is their chief
charm,--that a Christian woman, in good society, ought not to know
anything beyond her cookery-book and her missal. There is-an old proverb
which coarsely conveys this idea: A mule that whinnies and a woman that
talks Latin never come to any good.
There is a contented acquiescence in this moral servitude among the fair
Spaniards which would madden our agitatresses. (See what will become of
the language when male words are crowded out of the dictionary!)
It must be the innocence which springs from ignorance that induces an
occasional coarseness of expression which surprises you in the
conversation of those lovely young girls. They will speak with perfect
freedom of the _etat-civil_ of a young unmarried mother. A maiden of
fifteen said to me: "I must go to a party this evening _decolletee,_ and
I hate it. Benigno is getting old enough to marry, and he wants to see
all the girls in low neck before he makes up his mind." They all swear
like troopers, without a thought of profanity. Their mildest expression
of surprise is Jesus Maria! They change their oaths with the season. At
the feast of the Immaculate Conception, the favorite oath is Maria
Purissima. This is a time of especial interest to young girls. It is a
period of compulsory confession,--conscience-cleaning, as they call it.
They are all very pious in their way. They attend to their religious
duties with the same interest which they displayed a few years before in
dressing and undressing their dolls, and will display a few years later
in putting the lessons they learned with their dolls to a more practical
use.
The visible concrete symbols and observances of religion have great
influence with them. They are fond of making vows in tight places and
faithfully observing them afterwards. In an hour's walk in the streets
of Madrid you will see a dozen ladies with a leather strap buckled about
their slender waists and hanging nearly to the ground. Others wear a
knotted cord and tassels. These are worn as the fulfilment of vows, or
penances.
I am afraid they give rise to much worldly conjecture on the part of
idle youth as to what amiable sins these pretty penitents can have been
guilty of. It is not prudent to ask an explanation of the peculiar
mercy, or remorse, which this purgatorial strap commemorates. You will
probably not enlarge your stock of knowledge further than to learn that
the lady in question considers you a great nuisance.