A concert and ball at Senhor Pacheco’s.--Curious assemblage in his
long pompous gallery.--Deplorable ditty by an eastern
dilettante.--A bolero in the most rapturous style.--Boccharini in
despair.--Solecisms in dancing.
The mules galloped back at so rapid a rate, and their conductors bawled
and screamed so lustily to encourage their exertions, that half my
recollections of the Escurial were whirled out of my head before I
reached my old quarters at the Cruz de Malta. I had quite forgotten,
amongst other things, that I had actually accepted a most pressing
invitation to a concert and ball at Pacheco’s this very evening.
Pacheco is an old Portuguese, immensely rich, and who had been immensely
favoured in the days of his youth by his august countrywoman, Queen
Barbara, the consort of Ferdinand the sixth, and the patroness of
Farinelli. He is uncle to madame Arriaga, her most Faithful Majesty’s
most faithful and favourite attendant, and a person of such worship,
that courtiers, ministers, and prelates, are too happy to congregate at
his house, whenever he takes it into his head to allow them an
opportunity.
Though I had been half petrified by my cold ramble through the Escurial,
under the prior’s still more chilling auspices, I had quite life enough
left to obey Pacheco’s summons with alacrity; and as I expected to dance
a great deal, I put on my dancing-dress, that of a maxo, with ties and
tags, and trimmings and buttons, redecilla and all.
I must confess, however, that I felt rather abashed and disappointed,
upon entering Pacheco’s long pompous gallery, to find myself in the
midst of diplomatic and ministerial personages, assembled in stiff gala
to do honour to Achmet Vassif, whose musicians were seated on the carpet
howling forth a deplorable ditty, composed, as the Armenian interpreter
informed me, by one of the most impassioned and lovesick dilettantes of
the east; no strain I ever heard was half so lugubrious, not even that
of a dog baying the moon, or owls making their complaints to it.
I could not help telling the ambassador, without the smallest
circumlocution, that his tabor and pipe people I heard the other day
accompanying a dulcimer, were far more worthy of praise than his vocal
attendants; but this truth, like most others, did not exactly please;
and I fear my reputation for musical connoisseurship was completely
forfeited in his excellency’s estimation, for he looked a little glum
upon the occasion. What surprised me most, after all, was the patience
with which the whole assembly listened for full three-quarters of an
hour to these languorous wailings.
Amongst the audience, none bore the severe infliction with a greater
degree of evangelical resignation than the grand inquisitor and the
archbishop of Toledo; both these prelates have not only the look, but
the character of beneficence, which promises a truce to the faggot and
pitch-barrel; the expression of the archbishop’s countenance in
particular is most engagingly mild and pleasing. He came up to me
without the least reserve or formality, and taking me by the hand, said
with a cheerful smile, “I see you are equipped for a dance, and have
adopted our fashion; we all long to judge whether an Englishman can
enter (as I hear you can) into the extravagant spirit of our national
dances. I will speak to Pacheco, and desire him to form a diversion in
your favour, by calling off these doleful minstrels to the rinfresco
prepared for them.” And so he did, and there was an end of the concert,
to my infinite joy, and the no less delight of the villa mayors and
sabbatinis, with whom, without a moment’s farther delay, I sprang forth
in a bolero.
Down came all the Spanish musicians from their formal orchestra, too
happy to escape its trammels; away went the foreign regulars, taking
vehement pinches of snuff, with the most unequivocal expressions of
anger and indignation. A circle was soon formed, a host of guitars put
in immediate requisition, and never did I hear such wild, extravagant,
passionate modulations.
Boccharini, who led and presided over the Duchess of Ossuna’s concerts,
and who had been lent to Pacheco as a special favour, witnessed these
most original deviations from all established musical rule with the
utmost contempt and dismay. He said to me in a loud whisper, “If _you_
dance and _they_ play in this ridiculous manner, I shall never be able
to introduce a decent style into our musical world here, which I
flattered myself I was on the very point of doing. What possesses you?
Is it the devil? Who could suppose that a reasonable being, an
Englishman of all others, would have encouraged these inveterate
barbarians in such absurdities. There’s a chromatic scream! there’s a
passage! We have heard of robbing time; this is murdering it. What!
again! Why, this is worse than a convulsive hiccup, or the last rattle
in the throat of a dying malefactor. Give me the Turkish howlings in
preference; they are not so obtrusive and impudent.”
So saying, he moved off with a semi-seria stride, and we danced on with
redoubled delight and joy. The quicker we moved, the more intrepidly we
stamped with our feet, the more sonorously we snapped our fingers, the
better reconciled the sublime Effendi appeared to be with me. He forgot
my critiques upon his vocal performers: he rose up from his snug
cushion, and nodded his turbaned head, and expressed his delight, not
only by word and gesture, but in a most comfortable orientalish sort of
chuckling. As to the rest of the company, the Spanish part at least,
they were so much animated, that not less than twenty voices accompanied
the bolero with its appropriate words in full chorus, and with a glow of
enthusiasm that inspired my lovely partners and myself with such energy,
that we outdid all our former outdancings.
“Is it possible,” exclaimed an old fandango-fancier of great
notoriety--“is it possible, that a son of the cold north can have learnt
all our rapturous flings and stampings?”--“The French never _could_, or
rather never _would_,” observed a Monsieur Gaudin, one of the Duke de la
V----’s secretaries, who was standing by perfectly astounded.
Who persecute like renegades? who are so virulent against their former
sect as fresh converts to another? This was partly my case; though my
dancing and musical education had been strictly orthodox, according to
the precepts of Mozart and Sacchini, of Vestris and Gardel, I declared
loudly there was no music but Spanish, no dancing but Spanish, no
salvation in either art out of the Spanish pale, and that, compared with
such rapturous melodies, such inspired movements, the rest of Europe
afforded only examples of dullness and insipidity. I would not allow my
former instructors a spark of merit; and at the very moment I was
committing solecisms in good dancing at every step, and stamping and
piaffing like a courser but half-broken in at a manège, I felt and
looked as firmly persuaded of the truth of my impudent assertions as the
greatest bigot of his nonsense in some untried new-fangled superstition.
Success, founded or unfounded, is everything in this world. We too well
know the sad fate of merit. I am more than apt to conjecture we were but
very slightly entitled to any applause; yet the transports we called
forth were as fervid as those the famous Le Pique excited at Naples in
the zenith of his popularity.
The British and American ministers, who were standing by the whole time,
enjoyed this amusing proof of Spanish fanaticism, in its profane mood,
with all the zest of intelligent and shrewd observers. Pisani, the
Venetian ambassador, inclined decidedly to the southern side of the
question. He was bound, heart and soul, by a variety of silken ties to
the Spanish interest, and had almost forgotten the fascinations of
Venice in those of Andalusia. Consequently I had his vote in my favour.
Not so that of the Duchess of Ossuna, Boccharini’s patroness. She said
to me in the plainest language, “You are making the greatest fool of
yourself I ever beheld; and as to those riotous self-taught hoydens,
your partners, I tell you what, they are scarcely worthy to figure in
the third rank at a second-rate theatre. Come along with me, and I will
present you to my mother, the Countess of Benevente, who gives a very
different sort of education to the charming young women she admits to
her court.”
I had heard of this court and its delectabilities, and at the same time
been informed that its throne was a faro-table, to which the initiated
were imperatively expected to become tributaries. The sovereign, old
Benevente, is the most determined hag of her rout-giving, card-playing
species in Europe, of the highest birth, the highest consequence, and
the principal disposer, by long habit and old cortejo-ship, of Florida
Blanca’s good graces.
Notwithstanding the severe regulations against gambling societies, most
severely enforced at Madrid; notwithstanding the prime minister’s
morality, and the still higher morality of his royal master, this great
lady’s aberrations of every kind are most complaisantly winked at; she
is allowed not only to set up under her own princely roof a refuge for
the desolate, in the most delicate style of Spanish refinement, for the
kind purpose of enchanting all persons sufficiently favoured by fortune
to merit admission to her parties, by every blandishment and
languishment the most seductive eyes of Seville and Cadiz she had
collected together could throw around them; but so sure as the hour of
midnight arrived, and Florida Blanca (who never fails paying his devoirs
to the countess every evening) had made his retiring bow, so sure a
confidential party of illuminati, of unsleeping partners in the
gambling-line, made their appearance, heavily laden with well-stored
caskets.
Now came the tug of play, and hope, and fear in all their thrilling and
throbbing alternations; but, to say truth, I was so completely jaded and
worn-out that I partook of neither, and was too happy, after losing
almost unconsciously a few dobras, to be allowed to retire; old
Benevente calling out to me, with the croak of a vulture scenting its
prey from afar, _Cavallero Inglez, a mañana a la misma hora_.