Peter, and Paul, have their anniversaries on its closing days, and the
shortest nights of the year are given up to the riotous eating of
fritters in their honor. I am afraid that the progress of luxury and
love of ease has wrought a change in the observance of these festivals.
The feast of midsummer night is called the Verbena of St. John, which
indicates that it was formerly a morning solemnity, as the vervain could
not be hunted by the youths and maidens of Spain with any success or
decorum at midnight. But of late years it may be that this useful and
fragrant herb has disappeared from the tawny hills of Castile. It is
sure that midsummer has grown too warm for any field work. So that the
Madrilenos may be pardoned for spending the day napping, and swarming
into the breezy Prado in the light of moon and stars and gas. The Prado
is ordinarily the promenade of the better classes, but every Spanish
family has its John, Paul, and Peter, and the crowded barrios of Toledo
and the Penue-las pour out their ragged hordes to the popular festival.
The scene has a strange gypsy wildness. From the round point of Atocha
to where Cybele, throned among spouting waters, drives southward her
spanking team of marble lions, the park is filled with the merry
roysterers. At short intervals are the busy groups of fritter merchants;
over the crackling fire a great caldron of boiling oil; beside it a
mighty bowl of dough. The bunolero, with the swift precision of
machinery, dips his hand into the bowl and makes a delicate ring of the
tough dough, which he throws into the bubbling caldron. It remains but a
few seconds, and his grimy acolyte picks it out with a long wire and
throws it on the tray for sale. They are eaten warm, the droning cry
continually sounding, "Bunuelos! Calientitos!" There must be millions of
these oily dainties consumed on every night of the Verbena. For the more
genteel revellers, the Don Juans, Pedros, and Pablos of the better sort,
there are improvised restaurants built of pine planks after sunset and
gone before sunrise. But the greater number are bought and eaten by the
loitering crowd from the tray of the fritterman. It is like a vast
gitano-camp. The hurrying crowd which is going nowhere, the blazing
fires, the cries of the venders, the songs of the majos under the great
trees of the Paseo, the purposeless hurly-burly, and above, the steam of
the boiling oil and the dust raised by the myriad feet, form together a
striking and vivid picture. The city is more than usually quiet. The
stir of life is localized in the Prado. The only busy men in town are
those who stand by the seething oil-pots and manufacture the brittle
forage of the browsing herds. It is a jealous business, and requires the
undivided attention of its professors. The _ne sutor ultra crepidam_ of
Spanish proverb is "Bunolero haz tus bunuelos,"--Fritterman, mind thy
fritters. With the long days and cooler airs of the autumn begin the
different fairs. These are relics of the times of tyranny and exclusive
privilege, when for a few days each year, by the intervention of the
Church, or as a reward for civic service, full liberty of barter and
sale was allowed to all citizens. This custom, more or less modified,
may be found in most cities of Europe. The boulevards of Paris swarm
with little booths at Christmas-time, which begin and end their lawless
commercial life within the week. In Vienna, in Leipsic, and other
cities, the same waste-weir of irregular trade is periodically opened.
These fairs begin in Madrid with the autumnal equinox, and continue for
some weeks in October. They disappear from the Alcala to break out with
renewed virulence in the avenue of Atocha, and girdle the city at last
with a belt of booths. While they last they give great animation and
spirit to the street life of the town. You can scarcely make your way
among the heaps of gaudy shawls and handkerchiefs, cheap laces and
illegitimate jewels, that cumber the pavement. When the Jews were driven
out of Spain, they left behind the true genius of bargaining.
A nut-brown maid is attracted by a brilliant red and yellow scarf. She
asks the sleepy merchant nodding before his wares, "What is this rag
worth?"
He answers with profound indifference, "Ten reals."
"Hombre! Are you dreaming or crazy?" She drops the coveted neck-gear,
and moves on, apparently horror-stricken.
The chapman calls her back peremptorily. "Don't be rash! The scarf is
worth twenty reals, but for the sake of Santisima Maria I offered it to
you for half price. Very well! You are not suited. What will you give?"
"Caramba! Am I buyer and seller as well? The thing is worth three reals;
more is a robbery."
"Jesus! Maria! Jose! and all the family! Go thou with God! We cannot
trade. Sooner than sell for less than eight reals I will raise the cover
of my brains! Go thou! It is eight of the morning, and still thou
dreamest."
She lays down the scarf reluctantly, saying, "Five?"
But the outraged mercer snorts scornfully, "Eight is my last word! Go
to!"
She moves away, thinking how well that scarf would look in the Apollo
Gardens, and casts over her shoulder a Parthian glance and bid, "Six!"
"Take it! It is madness, but I cannot waste my time in bargaining."
Both congratulate themselves on the operation. He would have taken five,
and she would have given seven. How trade would suffer if we had windows
in our breasts!
The first days of November are consecrated to all the saints, and to the
souls of all the blessed dead. They are observed in Spain with great
solemnity; but as the cemeteries are generally of the dreariest
character, bare, bleak, and most forbidding under the ashy sky of the
late autumn, the days are deprived of that exquisite sentiment that
pervades them in countries where the graves of the dead are beautiful.
There is nothing more touching than these offerings of memory you see
every year in Mont Parnasse and Pere-la-Chaise. Apart from all beliefs,
there is a mysterious influence for good exerted upon the living by the
memory of the beloved dead. On all hearts not utterly corrupt, the
thoughts that come by the graves of the departed fall like dew from
heaven, and quicken into life purer and higher resolves.
In Spain, where there is nothing but desolation in graveyards, the
churches are crowded instead, and the bereaved survivors commend to God
their departed friends and their own stricken hearts in the dim and
perfumed aisles of temples made with hands. A taint of gloom thus rests
upon the recollection and the prayer, far different from the consolation
that comes with the free air and the sunshine, and the infinite blue
vault, where Nature conspires with revelation to comfort and cherish and
console.
Christmas apparently comes in Spain on no other mission than that
referred to in the old English couplet, "bringing good cheer." The
Spaniards are the most frugal of people, but during the days that
precede their Noche Buena, their Good Night, they seem to be given up as
completely to cares of the commissariat as the most eupeptic of Germans.
Swarms of turkeys are driven in from the surrounding country, and taken
about the streets by their rustic herdsmen, making the roads gay with
their scarlet wattles, and waking rural memories by their vociferous
gobbling. The great market-place of the season is the Plaza Mayor. The
ever-fruitful provinces of the South are laid under contribution, and
the result is a wasteful show of tropical luxuriance that seems most
incongruous under the wintry sky. There are mountains of oranges and
dates, brown hillocks of nuts of every kind, store of every product of
this versatile soil. The air is filled with nutty and fruity fragrance.
Under the ancient arcades are the stalls of the butchers, rich with the
mutton of Castile, the hams of Estremadura, and the hero-nourishing
bull-beef of Andalusian pastures.
At night the town is given up to harmless racket. Nowhere has the
tradition of the Latin Saturnalia been fitted with less change into the
Christian calendar. Men, women, and children of the proletariat--the
unemancipated slaves of necessity--go out this night to cheat their
misery with noisy frolic. The owner of a tambourine is the equal of a
peer; the proprietor of a guitar is the captain of his hundred. They
troop through the dim city with discordant revel and song. They have
little idea of music. Every one sings and sings ill. Every one dances,
without grace or measure. Their music is a modulated howl of the East.
Their dancing is the savage leaping of barbarians. There is no lack of
couplets, religious, political, or amatory. I heard one ragged woman
with a brown baby at her breast go shrieking through the Street of the
Magdalen,--
"This is the eve of Christmas,
No sleep from now till morn,
The Virgin is in travail,
At twelve will the child be born!"
Behind her stumped a crippled beggar, who croaked in a voice rough with
frost and aguardiente his deep disillusion and distrust of the great:--
"This is the eve of Christmas,
But what is that to me?
We are ruled by thieves and robbers,
As it was and will always be."
Next comes a shouting band of the youth of Spain, strapping boys with
bushy locks, crisp and black almost to blueness, and gay young girls
with flexible forms and dark Arab eyes that shine with a phosphorescent
light in the shadows. They troop on with clacking castinets. The
challenge of the mozos rings out on the frosty air,--
"This is the eve of Christmas,
Let us drink and love our fill!"
And the saucy antiphon of girlish voices responds,--
"A man may be bearded and gray,
But a woman can fool him still!"
The Christmas and New-Year's holidays continue for a fortnight, ending
with the Epiphany. On the eve of the Day of the Kings a curious farce is
performed by bands of the lowest orders of the people, which
demonstrates the apparently endless naivete of their class. In every
coterie of water-carriers, or mozos de cordel, there will be one found
innocent enough to believe that the Magi are coming to Madrid that
night, and that a proper respect to their rank requires that they must
be met at the city gate. To perceive the coming of their feet, beautiful
upon the mountains, a ladder is necessary, and the poor victim of the
comedy is loaded with this indispensable "property." He is dragged by
his gay companions, who never tire of the exquisite wit of their jest,
from one gate to another, until suspicion supplants faith in the mind of
the neophyte, and the farce is over.
In the burgher society of Castile this night is devoted to a very
different ceremony. Each little social circle comes together in a house
agreed upon. They take mottoes of gilded paper and write on each the
name of some one of the company. The names of the ladies are thrown into
one urn, and those of the cavaliers into another, and they are drawn out
by pairs. These couples are thus condemned by fortune to intimacy during
the year. The gentleman is always to be at the orders of the dame and to
serve her faithfully in every knightly fashion. He has all the duties
and none of the privileges of a lover, unless it be the joy of those
"who stand and wait." The relation is very like that which so astonished
M. de Gramont in his visit to Piedmont, where the cavalier of service
never left his mistress in public and never approached her in private.
The true Carnival survives in its naive purity only in Spain. It has
faded in Rome into a romping day of clown's play. In Paris it is little
more than a busier season for dreary and professional vice. Elsewhere
all over the world the Carnival gayeties are confined to the salon. But
in Madrid the whole city, from grandee to cordwainer, goes with
childlike earnestness into the enjoyment of the hour. The Corso begins
in the Prado on the last Sunday before Lent, and lasts four days. From
noon to night the great drive is filled with a double line of carriages
two miles long, and between them are the landaus of the favored hundreds
who have the privilege of driving up and down free from the law of the
road. This right is acquired by the payment of ten dollars a day to city
charities, and produces some fifteen thousand dollars every Carnival. In
these carriages all the society of Madrid may be seen; and on foot,
darting in and out among the hoofs of the horses, are the young men of
Castile in every conceivable variety of absurd and fantastic disguise.
There are of course pirates and Indians and Turks, monks, prophets, and
kings, but the favorite costumes seem to be the Devil and the
Englishman. Sometimes the Yankee is attempted, with indifferent success.
He wears a ribbon-wreathed Italian bandit's hat, an embroidered jacket,
slashed buckskin trousers, and a wide crimson belt,--a dress you would
at once recognize as universal in Boston.
Most of the maskers know by name at least the occupants of the
carriages. There is always room for a mask in a coach. They leap in,
swarming over the back or the sides, and in their shrill monotonous
scream they make the most startling revelations of the inmost secrets of
your soul. There is always something impressive in the talk of an
unknown voice, but especially is this so in Madrid, where every one
scorns his own business, and devotes himself rigorously to his
neighbor's. These shrieking young monks and devilkins often surprise a
half-formed thought in the heart of a fair Castilian and drag it out
into day and derision. No one has the right to be offended. Duchesses
are called Tu! Isabel! by chin-dimpled school-boys, and the proudest
beauties in Spain accept bonbons from plebeian hands. It is true, most
of the maskers are of the better class. Some of the costumes are very
rich and expensive, of satin and velvet heavy with gold. I have seen a
distinguished diplomatist in the guise of a gigantic canary-bird,
hopping briskly about in the mud with bedraggled tail-feathers,
shrieking well-bred sarcasms with his yellow beak.
The charm of the Madrid Carnival is this, that it is respected and
believed in. The best and fairest pass the day in the Corso, and gallant
young gentlemen think it worth while to dress elaborately for a few
hours of harmless and spirituelle intrigue. A society that enjoys a
holiday so thoroughly has something in it better than the blase cynicism
of more civilized capitals. These young fellows talk like the lovers of
the old romances. I have never heard prettier periods of devotion than
from some gentle savage, stretched out on the front seat of a landau
under the peering eyes of his lady, safe in his disguise, if not
self-betrayed, pouring out his young soul in passionate praise and
prayer; around them the laughter and the cries, the cracking of whips,
the roll of wheels, the presence of countless thousands, and yet these
two young hearts alone under the pale winter sky. The rest of the
Continent has outgrown the true Carnival. It is pleasant to see this gay
relic of simpler times, when youth was young. No one here is too "swell"
for it. You may find a duke in the disguise of a chimney-sweep, or a
butcher-boy in the dress of a Crusader. There are none so great that
their dignity would suffer by a day's reckless foolery, and there are
none so poor that they cannot take the price of a dinner to buy a mask
and cheat their misery by mingling for a time with their betters in the
wild license of the Carnival.
The winter's gayety dies hard. Ash Wednesday is a day of loud merriment
and is devoted to a popular ceremony called the Burial of the Sardine. A
vast throng of workingmen carry with great pomp a link of sausage to the
bank of the Manzanares and inter it there with great solemnity. On the
following Saturday, after three days of death, the Carnival has a
resurrection, and the maddest, wildest ball of the year takes place at
the opera. Then the sackcloth and ashes of Lent come down in good
earnest and the town mourns over its scarlet sins. It used to be very
fashionable for the genteel Christians to repair during this season of
mortification to the Church of San Gines, and scourge themselves lustily
in its subterranean chambers. A still more striking demonstration was
for gentlemen in love to lash themselves on the sidewalks where passed
the ladies of their thoughts. If the blood from the scourges sprinkled
them as they sailed by, it was thought an attention no female heart
could withstand. But these wholesome customs have decayed of late
unbelieving years.
The Lenten piety increases with the lengthening days. It reaches its
climax on Holy Thursday. On this day all Spain goes to church: it is one
of the obligatory days. The more you go, the better for you; so the good
people spend the whole day from dawn to dusk roaming from one church to
another, and investing an Ave and a Pater-Noster in each. This fills
every street of the city with the pious crowd. No carriages are
permitted. A silence like that of Venice falls on the rattling capital.
With three hundred thousand people in the street, the town seems still.
In 1870, a free-thinking cabman dared to drive up the Calle Alcala. He
was dragged from his box and beaten half to death by the chastened
mourners, who yelled as they kicked and cuffed him, "Que bruto! He will
wake our Jesus."
On Good Friday the gloom deepens. No colors are worn that day by the
orthodox. The senoras appear on the street in funeral garb. I saw a
group of fast youths come out of the jockey club, black from hat to
boots, with jet studs and sleeve-buttons. The gayest and prettiest
ladies sit within the church doors and beg in the holy name of charity,
and earn large sums for the poor. There are hourly services in the
churches, passionate sermons from all the pulpits. The streets are free
from the painted haunters of the pavement. The whole people taste the
luxury of a sentimental sorrow.
Yet in these heavy days it is not the Redeemer whose sufferings and
death most nearly touch the hearts of the faithful. It is Santisima
Maria who is worshipped most. It is the Dolorous Mother who moves them
to tears of tenderness. The presiding deity of these final days of
meditation is Our Lady of Solitude.
But at last the days of mourning are accomplished. The expiation for sin
is finished. The grave is vanquished, death is swallowed up in victory.
Man can turn from the grief that is natural to the joy that is eternal.
From every steeple the bells fling out their happy clangor in glad
tidings of great joy. The streets are flooded once more with eager
multitudes, gay as in wedding garments. Christ has arisen! The heathen
myth of the awakening of nature blends the old tradition with the new
gospel. The vernal breezes sweep the skies clean and blue. Birds are
pairing in the budding trees. The streams leap down from the melting
snow of the hills. The brown turf takes a tint of verdure. Through the
vast frame of things runs a quick shudder of teeming power. In the heart
of man love and will mingle into hope. Hail to the new life and the
ever-new religion! Hail to the resurrection morning!
AN HOUR WITH THE PAINTERS
As a general thing it is well to distrust a Spaniard's superlatives. He
will tell you that his people are the most amiable in the world, but you
will do well to carry your revolver into the interior. He will say there
are no wines worth drinking but the Spanish, but you will scarcely
forswear Clicquot and Yquem on the mere faith of his assertion. A
distinguished general once gravely assured me that there was no
literature in the world at all to be compared with the productions of
the Castilian mind. All others, he said, were but pale imitations of
Spanish master-work.
Now, though you may be shocked at learning such unfavorable facts of
'Shakespeare and Goethe and Hugo, you will hardly condemn them to an
Auto da fe, on the testimony even of a grandee of Spain.
But when a Spaniard assures you that the picture-gallery of Madrid is
the finest in the world, you may believe him without reserve. He
probably does not know what he is talking about. He may never have
crossed the Pyrenees. He has no dream of the glories of Dresden, or
Florence, or the Louvre. It is even possible that he has not seen the
matchless collection he is boasting of. He crowns it with a sweeping
superlative simply because it is Spanish. But the statement is
nevertheless true.
The reason of this is found in that gigantic and overshadowing fact
which seems to be an explanation of everything in Spain,--the power and
the tyranny of the House of Austria. The period of the vast increase of
Spanish dominion coincided with that of the meridian glory of Italian
art. The conquest of Granada was finished as the divine child Raphael
began to meddle with his father's brushes and pallets, and before his
short life ended Charles, Burgess of Ghent, was emperor and king.
The dominions he governed and transmitted to his son embraced Spain, the
Netherlands, Franche-Comte, the Milanese, Naples, and Sicily; that is to
say, those regions where art in that age and the next attained its
supreme development. He was also lord of the New World, whose
inexhaustible mines poured into the lap of Europe a constant stream of
gold. Hence came the riches and the leisure necessary to art.
Charles V., as well as his great contemporary and rival, Francis I., was
a munificent protector of art. He brought from Italy and Antwerp some of
the most perfect products of their immortal masters. He was the friend
and patron of Titian, and when, weary of the world and its vanities, he
retired to the lonely monastery of Yuste to spend in devout
contemplation the evening of his days, the most precious solace of his
solitude was that noble canvas of the great Venetian, where Charles and
Philip are borne, in penitential guise and garb, on luminous clouds into
the visible glory of the Most High.
These two great kings made a good use of their unbounded opportunities.
Spain became illuminated with the glowing canvases of the incomparable
Italians. The opening up of the New World beyond seas, the meteoric
career of European and African conquest in which the emperor had won so
much land and glory, had given an awakening shock to the intelligent
youth of Spain, and sent them forth in every avenue of enterprise. This
jealously patriotic race, which had remained locked up by the mountains
and the seas for centuries, started suddenly out, seeking adventures
over the earth. The mind of Spain seemed suddenly to have brightened and
developed like that of her great king, who, in his first tourney at
Valladolid, wrote with proud sluggishness _Nondum_--not yet--on his
maiden shield, and a few years later in his young maturity adopted the
legend of arrogant hope and promise,--_Plus Ultra._ There were seen two
emigrations of the young men of Spain, eastward and westward. The latter
went for gold and material conquest into the American wilds; and the
former, led by the sacred love of art, to that land of beauty and
wonder, then, now, and always the spiritual shrine of all
peoples,--Italy.
A brilliant young army went out from Spain on this new crusade of the
beautiful. From the plains of Castile and the hills of Navarre went,
among others, Berruguete, Becerra, and the marvellous deaf-mute
Navarrete. The luxurious city of Valentia sent Juan de Juanes and
Ribalta. Luis de Vargas went out from Seville, and from Cordova the
scholar, artist, and thinker, Paul of Cespedes. The schools of Rome and
Venice and Florence were thronged with eager pilgrims, speaking an alien
Latin and filled with a childlike wonder and appreciation.
In that stirring age the emigration was not all in one direction. Many
distinguished foreigners came down to Spain, to profit by the new love
of art in the Peninsula. It was Philip of Burgundy who carved, with
Berruguete, those miracles of skill and patience we admire to-day in the
choir of Toledo. Peter of Champagne painted at Seville the grand
altar-piece that so comforted the eyes and the soul of Murillo. The wild
Greek bedouin, George Theotocopouli, built the Mozarabic chapel and
filled the walls of convents with his weird ghost-faces. Moor, or Moro,
came from the Low Countries, and the Carducci brothers from Italy, to
seek their fortunes in Madrid. Torrigiani, after breaking Michael
Angelo's nose in Florence, fled to Granada, and died in a prison of the
Inquisition for smashing the face of a Virgin which a grandee of Spain
wanted to steal from him.