The Spanish
Figaro--Mustachios--Whiskers--Beards--Bleeding--Heraldic
Blood--Blue, Red, and Black Blood--Figaro’s Shop--The
Baratero--Shaving and Toothdrawing.
Few who love Don Quixote, will deem any notice on the Peninsular surgeon
complete in which the barber is not mentioned, even be it in a
postscript. Although the names of both these learned professors have
long been nearly synonymous in Spain, the barber is much to be
preferred, inasmuch as his cuts are less dangerous, and his conversation
is more agreeable. He with the curate formed the quiet society of the
Knight of La Mancha, as the apothecary and vicar used to make that of
most of our country squires of England. Let, therefore, every Adonis of
France, now bearded as a pard although young, nay, let each and all of
our fair readers, albeit equally exempt from the pains and penalties of
daily shaving, make instantly, on reaching sunny Seville, a pilgrimage
to the shrine of San Figaro. His shop--apocryphal it is to be feared as
other legendary localities--lies near the cathedral, and is a no less
established lion than the house of Dulcinea is at Toboso, or the prison
tower of Gil Blas is at Segovia. Such is the magic power of genius.
Cervantes and Le Sage have given form, fixture, and local habitation to
the airy nothings of their fancy’s creations, while Mozart and Rossini,
by filling the world with melody, have bidden the banks of the
Guadalquivir re-echo to their sweet inventions.
[Sidenote: SPANISH MUSTACHIOS.]
To those even who have no music in their souls, the movement from
doctors to barbers is harmonious in a land where beards were long
honoured as the type of valour and chivalry, and where shaving took the
precedence of surgery; and even to this day, _la tienda de barbero_, the
shop of the man of the razor, is better supplied than many a Spanish
hospital both with patients and cutting instruments. One word first on
the black whiskers of tawny Spain. These _patillas_, as they are now
termed, must be distinguished from the ancient mustachio, the
_mostacho_, a very classical but almost obsolete word, which the
scholars of Salamanca have derived from μυστἁξ, the upper lip.
Their present and usual name is _Bigote_, which is also of foreign
etymology, being the Spanish corruption of the German oath _bey gott_,
and formed under the following circumstances: for nicknames, which stick
like burrs, often survive the history of their origin. The free-riding
followers of Charles V., who wore these tremendous appendages of
manhood, swore like troopers, and gave themselves infinite airs, to the
more infinite disgust of their Spanish comrades, who have a tolerable
good opinion of themselves, and a first-rate hatred of all their foreign
allies. These strange mustachios caught their eyes, as the stranger
sounds which proceeded from beneath them did their ears. Having a quick
sense of the ridiculous, and a most Oriental and schoolboy knack at a
nickname, they thereupon gave the sound to the substance, and called the
redoubtable garnish of hair, _bigotes_. This process in the formation of
phrases is familiar to philologists, who know that an essential part
often is taken for the whole. For example, a hat, in common Spanish
parlance, is equivalent to a grandee, as with us the woolsack is to a
Lord Chancellor. It is natural that unscholastic soldiers, when dealing
with languages which they do not understand, should fix on their
enemies, as a term of reproach, those words which, from hearing used the
most often, they imagine must constitute the foundation of the hostile
grammar. Thus our troops called the Spaniards _los Carajos_, from their
terrible oaths and terrible runnings away. So the clever French
designated as _les godams_, those “stupid” fellows in red jackets who
never could be made to know when they were beaten, but continued to make
use of that significant phrase in reference to their victors, until they
politely showed them the shortest way home over the Pyrenees.
[Sidenote: THE BEARD.]
The real Spanish mustachio, as worn by the real Don Whiskerandoses, men
with shorter cloaks and purses than beards and rapiers, have long been
cut off, like the pig-tails of our monarchs and cabinet ministers. Yet
their merits are embalmed in metaphors more enduring than that
masterpiece in bronze with which Mr. Wyatt, full of Phidias, has adorned
King George’s back and Charing Cross. Thus _hombre de mucho bigote_, a
man of much moustache, means, in Spanish, a personage of considerable
pretension, a fine, liberal fellow, and anything, in short, but a bigot
in wine, women, or theology. The Spanish original realities, like the
pig-tails of Great Britain, have also been immortalised by fine art, and
inimitably painted by Velazquez. Under his life-conferring brush they
required no twisting with hot irons. Curling from very ire and martial
instinct, they were called _bigotes á la Fernandina_, and their rapid
growth was attributed to the eternal cannon smoke of the enemy, into
which nothing could prevent their valorous wearers from poking their
faces. This luxuriance has diminished in these degenerate times, unless
Napier’s ‘History of the Peninsular War’ be, as the Spaniards say,
written in a spirit of envy and jealousy against their heroic armies,
which alone trampled on the invincible eagles of Austerlitz.
As among the Egyptian gods and priests, rank was indicated by the cut of
the beard, so in Spain the military civil and clerical shapes were
carefully defined. The Charley, or Imperial, as we term the little tuft
in the middle of the under lip, a word by the way which is derivable
either from our Charles or from his namesake emperor, was called in
Spain _El perrillo_, “the little dog,” the terminating tail being
omitted, which however becoming in the animal and bronzes, shocked
Castilian euphuism.
[Sidenote: THE BIGOTE.]
In the mediæval periods of Spain’s greatness the beard and not the
whisker was the real thing; and as among the Orientals and ancients, it
was at once the mark of wisdom and of soldiership; to cut it off was an
insult and injury scarcely less than decapitation; nay, this nicety of
honour survived the grave. The seated corpse of the Cid, so tells his
history, knocked down a Jew who ventured to take the dead lion by his
beard, which, as all natural philosophers know, has an independent
vitality, and grows whether its master be alive or dead, be willing or
unwilling. When the insolent Gauls pulled these flowing ornaments of the
aged Roman senators, they, who with unmoved dignity had seen Marshal
Brennus steal their plate and pictures, could not brook that last and
greatest outrage. In process of time and fashion the beards of Spain
fell off, and being only worn by mendicant monks and he-goats, were
considered ungentlemanlike, and were substituted among cavaliers by the
Italian mostachio; the seat of Spanish honour was then placed under the
nose, that sensitive sentinel. The renowned Duke of Alva being of course
in want of money, once offered one of his bigotes as a pledge for a
loan, and one only was considered to be a sufficient security by the
Rothschilds of the day, who remembered the hair-breadth escape of their
ancestor too well to laugh at anything connected with a hero’s beard;
_nous avons changé tout cela_. The united Hebrews of Paris and London
would not now advance a stiver for every particular hair on the bodies
of Narvaez and Espartero, not even if the moustache reglémentaire of
Montpensier, and a bushel of Bourbon beards, warranted legitimate, were
added.
The use of the _bigote_ in Spain is legally confined to the military,
most of whose generals--their name is legion--are tenderly chary of
their Charlies, dreading razors no less than swords; when the Infante
Don Carlos escaped from England, the only real difficulty was in getting
him to cut off his moustache; he would almost sooner have lost his head,
like his royal English _tocayo_ or omonyme. Elizabeth’s gallant Drake,
when he burnt Philip’s fleet at Cadiz, simply called his Nelsonic touch
“singeing the King of Spain’s whiskers.” Zurbano the other day thought
it punishment enough for any Basque traitors to cut off their _bigotes_,
and turn them loose, like rats without tails, _pour encourager les
autres_. It is indeed a privation. Thus Majaval, the pirate murderer,
who by the glorious uncertainty of English law was not hanged at Exeter,
offered his prison beard, when he reached Barcelona, to the delivering
Virgin. Many Spanish civilians and shopkeepers, in imitation of the
transpyrenean _Calicots_, men who wear moustachios on their lips in
peace, and spectacles on their noses in war, so constantly let them
grow, that Ferdinand VII. fulminated a royal decree, which was to cut
them off from the face of the Peninsula, as the Porte is docking his
true believers. Such is the progress of young and beardless
civilization. The attempt to shorten the cloaks of Madrid nearly cost
Charles III. his crown, and this cropping mandate of his beloved
grandson was obeyed as Spanish decrees generally are, for a month all
but twenty-nine days. These decrees, like solemn treaties, charters,
stock-certificates, and so forth, being mostly used to light cigars;
now-a-days that the Moro-Spaniard is aping the true Parisian polish, the
national countenance is somewhat put out of face, to the serious sorrow
and disparagement of poor Figaro.
[Sidenote: SPANISH BLEEDING.]
As for his house and home none can fail finding it out; no cicerone is
wanted, for the outside is distinguished from afar by the emblems of his
time-honoured profession: first and foremost hangs a bright glittering
metal Mambrino-helmet basin, with a neat semicircular opening cut out of
the rim, into which the throat of the patient is let during the
operation of lathering, which is always done with the hand and most
copiously; near it are suspended huge grinders, which in an English
museum would pass for the teeth of elephants, and for those of Saint
Christopher in Spanish churches, where comparative anatomy is scouted as
heretical in the matter of relics; strange to say, and no Spanish
theologian could ever satisfy us why, this saint is not the “especial
advocate” against the toothache; here Santa Apollonia is the soothing
patroness. Near these molars are displayed awful phlebotomical symbols,
and rude representations of bloodlettings; for in Spain, in church and
out, painting does the work of printing to the many who can see, but
cannot read. The barber’s pole, with its painted bandage riband, the
support by which the arm was kept extended, is wanting to the threshold
of the Figaros of Spain, very much because bleeding is generally
performed in the foot, in order that the equilibrium of the whole
circulation may be maintained. The painting usually presents a female
foot, which being an object, and not unreasonably, of great devotion in
Spain, is selected by the artist; tradition also influences the choice,
for the dark sex were wont formerly to be bled regularly as calves are
still, to obtain whiteness of flesh and fairness of complexion: as it
was usual on each occasion that the lover should restore the exhausted
patient by a present, the purses of gallants kept pace with the venous
depletion of their mistresses. The _Sangrados_ of Spain, professional as
well as unprofessional, have long been addicted to the shedding of
innocent blood; indeed, no people in the world are more curious about
the pedigree purity of their own blood, nor less particular about
pouring it out like water, whether from their own veins or those of
others. One word on this vital fluid with which unhappy Spain is too
often watered during her intestine disorders.
[Sidenote: HERALDIC BLOOD.]
If the Iberian anatomists did not discover its circulation, the heralds
have “tricked” out its blazoning, as we do our admirals, with all the
nicety of armorial coloring. _Blue blood, Sangre azul_, is the ichor of
demigods which flows in the arteries of the grandees and highest
nobility, each of whose pride is to be
“A true Hidalgo, free from every stain
Of Moor or Jewish blood,”
[Sidenote: FIGARO’S SHOP.]
a boast which like some others of theirs wants confirmation, as it is in
the power of one woman to taint the blood of Charlemagne; and nature,
which cannot be written down by Debretts, has stamped on their
countenances the marks of hybrid origin, and particularly from these
very and most abhorred stocks; it is from this tint of celestial azure
that the term _sangre su_ is given in Spain to the elect and best set of
earth, the _haute volée_, who soar above vulgar humanity. _Red_ blood
flows in the veins of poor gentlemen and younger brothers, and is just
tolerated by all, except judicious mothers, whose daughters are
marriageable. _Blood_, simple blood, is the puddle which paints the
cheek of the plebeian and roturier; it has, or ought to possess, a
perfect incompatibility with the better coloured fluid, and an oil and
vinegar property of non-amalgamation. There is more difference, as
Salario says, between such bloods, than there is between red wine and
Rhenish. These and other dreams are, it is to be feared, the fond
metaphors of heralds. The rosy stream in mockery of _rouge_ croix and
_blue_ dragons flows inversely and perversely: in the arteries of the
lusty muleteer it is the lava blood of health and vigour; in the monkey
marquis and baboon baron it stagnates in the dull lethargy of a blue
collapse. Their noble ichor is virtually more impoverished than their
nominal rent-roll, since the operation of transmission of wholesome
blood from young veins into a worn-out frame, which is so much practised
elsewhere, is too nice for the _Sangre su_ and _Sangrados_ of Spain; the
thin fluid is never enriched with the calipash heiress of an alderman,
nor is the decayed genealogical stock renewed by the golden graft of a
banker’s only daughter. The insignificant grandees of Spain quietly
permitted Christina to barter away their country’s liberties; but when
her children by the base-born Muñoz came betwixt them and their
nobility, then alone did they remonstrate. Indifferent to the
degradation of the throne, they were tremblingly alive to the punctilios
of their own order. Those Peninsular ladies who are blues, by blood not
socks, are equally fastidious in the serious matter of its admixture
even by Hymen: one of them, it is said, having chanced in a moment of
weakness to mingle her azure with something brownish, alleged in excuse
that she had done so for her character’s sake. “_Que disparate, mi
Señora._” “What nonsense, my lady!” was her fair confidante’s reply;
“ten bastards would have less discoloured your blood, than one
legitimate child the issue of such a misalliance.”
To stick, however, to our colours; _black blood_ is the vile Stygean
pitch which is found in the carcasses of Jews, Gentiles, Moors,
Lutherans, and other combustible heretics, with whose bodies the holy
tribunal made bonfires for the good of their souls. Nay, in the case of
the Hebrew this black blood is also thought to stink, whence Jews were
called by learned Latinists _putos_, quia putant; and certainly at
Gibraltar an unsavoury odour seems to be gentilitious in the children of
Israel, not however to unorthodox and unheraldic nostrils a jot more so,
than in the believing Spanish monk. Recently the colour _black_ has been
assigned to the blood of political opponents, and a copious “_shedding
of vile black blood_” has been the regular panacea of every military
Sangrado. How extremes meet! Thus, this aristocracy of colour, in
despotical old Spain, which lies in the veins, is placed on the skin in
new republican America. Where is the free and easy Yankee would
recognise a brother, in a black?
[Sidenote: THE BARATERO.]
To return to Figaro. There is no mistaking his shop; for independently
of the external manifestations of the fine arts practised within, his
threshold is the lounge of all idlers, as well as of those who are
anxious to relieve their chins of the thick stubble of a three days’
growth. The house of the barber has, since the days of Solomon and
Horace, been the mart of news and gossip,--of epigram and satire, as
Pasquino the tailor’s was at Rome. It is the club of the lower orders,
who here take up a position, and listen, cloaked as Romans, to some
reader of the official Gazette, which, with a cigar, indicates modern
civilization, and soothes him with empty vapour. Here, again, is the
mint of scandal, and all who have lived intimately with Spaniards, know
how invariably every one stabs his neighbour behind his back with words,
the lower orders occasionally using knives sharper even than their
tongues. Here, again, resort gamblers, who, seated on the ground with
cards more begrimed than the earth, pursue their fierce game as eager
as if existence was at stake; for there is generally some well-known
cock of the walk, a bully, or _guapo_, who will come up and lay his hand
on the cards, and say, “No one shall play with any cards but with
mine”--_aqui no se juega sino con mis barajas_. If the parties are
cowed, they give him a halfpenny each. If, however, one of the
challenged be a spirited fellow, he defies him--_Aquí no se cobra el
barato sino con un puñal de Albacete_--“You get no change here except
out of an Albacete knife.” If the defiance be accepted, _Vamos alla_ is
the answer--“Let’s go to it.” There’s an end then of the cards, all
flock to the more interesting _écarté_; instances have occurred, where
Greek meets Greek, of their tying the two advanced feet together, and
yet remaining fencing with knife and cloak for a quarter of an hour
before the blow be dealt. The knife is held firmly, the thumb is pressed
straight on the blade, and calculated either for the cut or thrust.
The term _Barato_ strictly means the present which is given to waiters
who bring a new pack of cards. The origin is Arabic, _Baara_, “a
_voluntary_ gift;” in the corruption of the _Baratero_, it has become an
involuntary one. Our legal term _Barratry_ is derived from the mediæval
_Barrateria_, which signified cheating or foul play. Cervantes well knew
that _Baratar_ in old Spanish meant to exchange unfairly, to
thimble-rig, to sell anything under its real value, and therefore gave
the name of _Barrateria_ to Sancho’s sham government. The _Baratero_ is
quite a thing of Spain, where personal prowess is cherished, and there
is one in every regiment, ship, prison, and even among galley-slaves.
[Sidenote: FIGARO’S SHOP.]
The interior of the barber’s shop is equally a _cosa de España_. Her
neighbour may boast to lead Europe in hair-dressing and clipping
poodles, but Figaro snaps his fingers at her civilization, and no cat’s
ears and tail can be closer shaved than his one’s are. The walls of his
operating room are neatly lathered with white-wash; on a peg hangs his
brown cloak and conical hat; his shelves are decorated with clay-painted
figures of picturesque rascals, arrayed in all their Andalucian
toggery--bandits, bull-fighters, and smugglers, who, especially the
latter, are more universally popular than all or any long-tail-coated
chancellors of exchequers. The walls are enlivened with rude prints of
fandango dancings, miracles, and bull-fights, in which the Spanish
vulgar delight, as ours do in racing and ring notabilities. Nor is a
portrait of his _querida_, his black-eyed sweetheart, often wanting.
Near these, for religion mixes itself with everything of Spain, are
images of the Virgin, patron saints, with stoups for holy water, and
little cups in which lighted wicks burn floating on green oil; and
formerly no barber prepared for an operation, whether on veins, teeth,
or beards, without first making the sign of a cross. Thus hallowed, his
implements of art are duly arranged in order; his glass, soap, towels,
and leather strap, and guitar, which indeed, with the razor, constitutes
the genus barber. “These worthies,” said Don Quixote, “are all either
_guitarristas o copleros_; they are either makers of couplets, or
accompany other songsters with catgut.” Hence Quevedo, in his ‘Pigsties
of Satan,’ punishes unrighteous Figaros, by hanging up near them a
guitar, which tantalizes their touch, and moves away when they wish to
take it down.
[Sidenote: SPANISH SHAVING.]
Few Spaniards ever shave themselves; it is too mechanical, so they
prefer, like the Orientals, a “razor that is hired,” and as that must be
paid for, scarcely any go to the expensive luxury of an every-day shave.
Indeed, Don Quixote advised Sancho, when nominated a governor, to shave
at least every other day if he wished to look like a gentleman. The
peculiar sallowness of a Spaniard’s face is heightened by the contrast
of a sable bristle. Figaro himself is dressed much after the fashion in
which he appears on transpyrenean stages; he, on true Galenic
principles, takes care not to alarm his patients by a lugubrious
costume. There is nothing black, or appertaining to the grave about him;
he is all tags, tassels, colour, and embroidery, quips and quirks; he is
never still; always in a bustle, he is lying and lathering, cutting
chins and capers, here, there, and everywhere. _Figaro la, Figaro qua._
If he has a moment free from taking off beards and making paper cigars,
he whips down his guitar and sings the last seguidilla; thus he drives
away dull care, who hates the sound of merry music, and no wonder; the
operator performs his professional duties much more skilfully than the
rival surgeon, nor does he bungle at any little extraneous _amateur_
commissions; and there are more real performances enacted by the
barbers in Seville itself, than in a dozen European opera houses.
These Figaros, says their proverb, are either mad or garrulous,
_Barberos, o locos, o parleros_. Hence, when the Andalucian autocrat,
Adrian, when asked how he liked to be shaved, replied “Silently.”
Humbler mortals must submit to let Figaro have his wicked way in talk;
for when a man is fixed in his operating chair, with his jaws lathered,
and his nose between a finger and a thumb, there is not much
conversational fair play or reciprocity. The Spanish barber is said to
learn to shave on the orphan’s head, and nothing, according to one
described by Martial, escaped except a single wary he-goat. The
experiments tried on the veins and teeth of aching humanity, are
sometimes ludicrous--at others serious, as we know to our cost, having
been silly enough to leave behind in Spain two of our wise teeth as
relics, tokens, and trophies of Figaro’s unrelenting prowess. We cannot
but remember such things were, and were dearer, than the pearls in
Cleopatra’s ears, which she melted in her gazpachos. “A mouth without
molars,” said Don Quixote to Sancho, “is worse than a mill without
grinding-stones;” and the Don was right.
[Sidenote: WHAT TO OBSERVE IN SPAIN.]