Spanish Theatre; Old and Modern Drama; Arrangement of
Playhouses--The Henroost--The Fandango; National Dances--A Gipsy
Ball--Italian Opera--National Songs and Guitars.
[Sidenote: THE THEATRE.]
Having seen a bull-fight, _the sight_ of Spain, those who only wish to
pass time agreeably cannot be too quick in getting their passports viséd
for Naples. A pleasant _country_ life, according to our notions, in
Spain, is a thing that is not; and the substitute is but a Bedouin
Oriental makeshift existence, which, amusing enough for a spurt, will
not do in the long run. Nor is life much better in the _towns_; those in
the inland provinces have a convent-like, dead, old-fashioned look about
them, which petrifies a lively person; nay even an artist when he has
finished his sketches, is ready to commit suicide from sheer Bore, the
genius of the locality. Madrid itself is but an unsocial, second-rate,
inhospitable city; and when the traveller has seen the Museum, been to
the play, and walked on the eternal roundabout Prado, the sooner he
shakes the dust off his feet the better. The maritime seaports, as in
the East, from being frequented by the foreigner, are a trifle more
cosmopolitan, cheerful, and amusing; but generally speaking, public
amusements are rare throughout this semi-Moro land. The calm
contemplation of a cigar, and the _dolce far niente_ of _siestose_ quiet
indolence with unexciting twaddle, suffice; while to some nations it is
a pain to be out of pleasure, to the Spaniard it is a pleasure to be out
of painful exertion: existence is happiness enough of itself; and as for
occupation, all desire only to do to-day what they did yesterday and
will do to-morrow, that is nothing. Thus life slips away in a dreamy,
listless routine, the serious business of love-making excepted; leave
me, leave me, to repose and tobacco. When however awake, the _Alameda_,
or church-show, the bull-fight, and the rendezvous, are the chief
relaxations. These will be best enjoyed in the Southern provinces, the
land also of the song and dance, of bright suns and eyes, and not the
largest female feet in the world.
The theatre, which forms elsewhere such an important item in passing the
stranger’s evening, is at a low ebb in Spain, although, as everybody is
idle, and man is not worn out by business and money-making all day, it
might be supposed to be just the thing; but it is somewhat too expensive
for the general poverty. Those again who for forty years have had real
tragedies at home, lack that superabundance of felicity, which will pay
for the luxury of fictitious grief abroad. In truth the drama in Spain
was, like most other matters, the creature of an accident and of a
period; patronised by the pleasure-loving Philip IV., it blossomed in
the sunshine of his smile, languished when that was withdrawn, and was
unable to resist the steady hostility of the clergy, who opposed this
rival to their own religious spectacles and church melodramas, from
which the opposition stage sprung. Nor are their primitive mediæval
Mysteries yet obsolete, since we have beheld them acted in Spain at
Easter time; then and there sacred subjects, grievously profaned to
Protestant eyes, were gazed on by the pleased natives with too sincere
and simple faith even to allow a suspicion of the gross absurdity; but
everywhere in Spain, the spiritual has been materialised, and the divine
degraded to the human in churches and out; the clergy attacked the
stage, by denying burial to the actors when dead, who, when alive, were
not allowed to call themselves “_Don_,” the cherished title of every
Spaniard. Naturally, as no one of this self-respecting nation ever will
pursue a despised profession if he can help it, few have chosen to make
themselves vagabonds by Act of Parliament, nor has any Garrick or
Siddons ever arisen among them to beat down prejudices by public and
private virtues.
[Sidenote: ANCIENT DRAMA.]
Even in this 19th century, confessors of families forbade the women and
children’s even passing through the street where “a temple of Satan” was
reared; mendicant monks placed themselves near the playhouse doors at
night, to warn the headlong against the bottomless pit, just as our
methodists on the day of the Derby distribute tracts at turnpikes
against “sweeps” and racing. The monks at Cordova succeeded in 1823 in
shutting up the theatre, because the nuns of an opposite convent
observed the devil and his partners dancing fandangos on the roof.
Although monks have in their turn been driven off the Spanish boards,
the national drama has almost made its exit with them. The genuine old
stage held up the mirror to Spanish nature, and exhibited real life and
manners. Its object was rather to amuse than to instruct, and like
literature, its sister exponent of existing nationality, it showed in
action what the picaresque novels detailed in description. In both the
haughty Hidalgo was the hero; cloaked and armed with long rapier and
mustachios, he stalked on the scene, made love and fought as became an
old Castilian whom Charles V. had rendered the terror and the model of
Europe. Spain then, like a successful beauty, took a proud pleasure in
looking at herself in the glass, but now that things are altered, she
blushes at beholding a portrait of her grey hairs and wrinkles; her flag
is tattered, her robes are torn, and she shrinks from the humiliation of
truth. If she appears on the theatre at all, it is to revive long
by-gone days--to raise the Cid, the great Captain, or Pizarro, from
their graves; thus blinking the present, she forms hopes for a bright
future by the revival and recollections of a glorious past. Accordingly
plays representing modern Spanish life and things, are scouted by pit
and boxes as vulgar and misplaced; nay, even Lope de Vega is now known
merely by name; his comedies are banished from the boards to the shelves
of book-cases, and those for the most part out of Spain. He has paid the
certain penalty of his national localism, of his portraying men, as a
Spanish variety, rather than a universal species. He has strutted his
hour on the stage, is heard no more; while his contemporary, the bard of
Avon, who drew mankind and human nature, the same in all times and
places, lives in the human heart as immortal as the principle on which
his influence is founded.
[Sidenote: MODERN STAGE.]
In the old Spanish plays, the imaginary scenes were no less full of
intrigue than were the real streets; then the point of honour was nice,
women were immured in jealous hareems, and access to them, which is
easier now, formed _the_ difficulty of lovers. The curiosity of the
spectators was kept on tenter-hooks, to see how the parties could get at
each other, and out of the consequent scrapes. These imbroglios and
labyrinths exactly suited a _pays de l’imprévu_, where things turn out,
just as is the least likely to be calculated on. The progress of the
drama of Spain was as full of action and energy, as that of France was
of dull description and declamation. The Bourbon succession, which
ruined the genuine bull-fight, destroyed the national drama also; a
flood of unities, rules, stilted nonsense, and conventionalities poured
over the astonished and affrighted Pyrenees: now the stage, like the
arena, was condemned by critics, whose one-idead civilization could see
but one class of excellence, and that only through a lorgnette ground in
the Palais Royal. Calderon was pronounced to be as great a barbarian as
Shakspere, and this by empty pretenders who did not understand one word
of either;--and now again, at this second Bourbon irruption, France has
become the model to that very nation from whom her Corneilles and
Molières pilfered many a plume, which aided them to soar to dramatic
fame. Spain is now reduced to the sad shift of borrowing from her pupil,
those very arts which she herself once taught, and her best comedies and
farces are but poor translations from Mons. Scribe and other scribes of
the vaudeville. Her theatre, like everything else, has sunk into a pale
copy of her dominant neighbour, and is devoid alike of originality,
interest, and nationality.
[Sidenote: SPANISH TRAGEDY.]
It was from Spain also that Europe copied the arrangement of the modern
theatre; the first playhouses there were merely open covered
court-yards, after the classical fashion of Thespis. The _patio_ became
the _pit_, into which women were never admitted. The rich sat at the
windows of the houses round the court; and as almost all these in Spain
are defended by iron gratings, the French took their term, _loge
grillée_, for a private box. In the centre of the house, above the pit,
was a sort of large lower gallery, which was called _la tertulia_, a
name given in those times to the quarter chosen by the erudite, among
whom at that period it was the fashion to quote _Tertulian_. The women,
excluded from the pit, had a place reserved for themselves, into which
no males were allowed to enter--a peculiarity based in the Gotho-Moro
separation of the sexes. This feminine preserve was termed _la cazuela_,
the stewing pan, or _la olla_, the pipkin, from the hodgepotch
admixture, as it was open to all ranks; it was also called “_la jaula de
las mugeres_,” the women’s cage--“_el gallinero_,” the henroost. All
went there, as to church, dressed in black, and with mantillas. This
dark assemblage of sable tresses, raven hair, and blacker eyes, looked
at the first glance like the gallery of a nunnery; that was, however, a
simile of dissimilitude, for, let there be but a moment’s pause in the
business of the play, then arose such a cooing and cawing in this
rookery of turtle-doves,--such an ogling, such a flutter of mantillas,
such a rustling of silks, such telegraphic workings of fans, such an
electrical communication with the Señores below, who looked up with
wistful glances on the dark clustering vineyard so tantalizingly placed
above their reach, as effectually dispelled all ideas of seclusion,
sorrow, or mortification. This unique and charming pipkin has been just
now done away with at Madrid, because, as there is no such thing at
Covent Garden, or Le Français, it might look antiquated and un-European.
The theatres of Spain are small, although called Coliseums, and
ill-contrived; the wardrobe and properties are as scanty as those of the
spectators, Madrid itself not excepted; when filled, the smells are
ultra-continental, and resemble those which prevail at Paris, when the
great people is indulged with a gratis representation; in the Spanish
theatres no neutralizing incense is used, as is done by the wise clergy
in their churches. If the atmosphere were analysed by Faraday, it would
be found to contain equal portions of stale cigar smoke and fresh garlic
fume. The lighting, except on those rare occasions when the theatre is
illuminated, as it is called, is just intended to make darkness visible,
and there was no seeing into the henroosts towards which the eyes and
glasses of the foxite pittites were vainly elevated.
[Sidenote: THE BOLERO.]
Spanish tragedy, even when the Cid spouts, is wearisome; the language is
stilty, the declamation ranting, French, and unnatural; passion is torn
to rags. The _sainetes_, or farces, are broad, but amusing, and are
perfectly well acted; the national ones are disappearing, but when
brought out are the true vehicles of the love for sarcasm, satire, and
intrigue, the mirth and mother-wit, for which Spaniards are so
remarkable; and no people are more essentially serio-comic and dramatic
than they are, whether in _Venta_, _Plaza_, or church; the actors in
their amusing farces cease to be actors, and the whole appears to be a
scene of real life; there generally is a _gracioso_ or favourite wag of
the Liston and Keeley species, who is on the best terms with the pit,
who says and does what he likes, interlards the dialogue with his own
witticisms, and creates a laugh before he even comes on.
[Sidenote: NATIONAL DANCES.]
The orchestra is very indifferent; the Spaniards are fond enough of what
they call music, whether vocal or instrumental; but it is Oriental, and
most unlike the exquisite melody and performances of Italy or Germany.
In the same manner, although they have footed it to their rude songs
from time immemorial, they have no idea of the grace and elegance of the
French ballet; the moment they attempt it they become ridiculous, for
they are bad imitators of their neighbours, whether in cuisine,
language, or costume; indeed a Spaniard ceases to be a Spaniard in
proportion as he becomes an _Afrancesado_; they take, in their jumpings
and chirpings, after the grasshopper, having a natural genius for the
_bota_ and _bolero_. The great charm of the Spanish theatres is their
own national dance--matchless, unequalled, and inimitable, and only to
be performed by Andalucians. This is _la salsa de la comedia_, the
essence, the cream, the _sauce piquante_ of the night’s entertainments;
it is _attempted_ to be described in every book of travels--for who can
describe sound or motion?--it must be seen. However languid the house,
laughable the tragedy, or serious the comedy, the sound of the castanet
awakens the most listless; the sharp, spirit-stirring click is heard
behind the scenes--the effect is instantaneous--it creates life under
the ribs of death--it silences the tongues of countless women--on
n’écoute que le ballet. The curtain draws up; the bounding pair dart
forward from the opposite sides, like two separated lovers, who, after
long search, have found each other again, nor do they seem to think of
the public, but only of each other; the glitter of the gossamer costume
of the _Majo_ and _Maja_ seems invented for this dance--the sparkle of
the gold lace and silver filigree adds to the lightness of their
motions; the transparent, form designing _saya_ of the lady, heightens
the charms of a faultless symmetry which it fain would conceal; no cruel
stays fetter her serpentine flexibility. They pause--bend forward an
instant--prove their supple limbs and arms; the band strikes up, they
turn fondly towards each other, and start into life. What exercise
displays the ever-varying charms of female grace, and the contours of
manly form, like this fascinating dance? The accompaniment of the
castanet gives employment to their upraised arms. _C’est_, say the
French, _le pantomime d’amour_. The enamoured youth persecutes the coy,
coquettish maiden; who shall describe the advance--her timid retreat,
his eager pursuit, like Apollo chasing Daphne? Now they gaze on each
other, now on the ground; now all is life, love, and action; now there
is a pause--they stop motionless at a moment, and grow into the earth.
It carries all before it. There is a truth which overpowers the
fastidious judgment. Away, then, with the studied grace of the French
danseuse, beautiful but artificial, cold and selfish as is the flicker
of her love, compared to the real impassioned _abandon_ of the daughters
of the South! There is nothing indecent in this dance; no one is tired
or the worse for it; indeed its only fault is its being too short, for
as Molière says, “Un ballet ne saurait être trop long, pourvu que la
morale soit bonne, et la métaphysique bien entendue.” Notwithstanding
this most profound remark, the Toledan clergy out of mere jealousy
wished to put the bolero down, on the pretence of immorality. The
dancers were allowed in evidence to “give a view” to the court: when
they began, the bench and bar showed symptoms of restlessness, and at
last, casting aside gowns and briefs, both joined, as if
tarantula-bitten, in the irresistible capering--Verdict, for the
defendants with costs.
This _Baile nacional_, however adored by foreigners, is, alas! beginning
to be looked down upon by those ill-advised señoras who wear French
bonnets in the boxes, instead of Spanish mantillas. The dance is
suspected of not being European or civilized; its best chance of
surviving is, the fact that it is positively fashionable on the boards
of London and Paris. These national exercises are however firmly rooted
among the peasants and lower classes. The different provinces, as they
have a different language, costume, &c., have also their own peculiar
local dances, which, like their wines, fine arts, relics, saints and
sausages, can only be really relished on the spots themselves.
[Sidenote: PRIVATE DANCES.]
The dances of the better classes of Spaniards in private life are much
the same as in other parts of Europe, nor is either sex particularly
distinguished by grace in this amusement, to which, however, both are
much addicted. It is not, however, yet thought to be a proof of _bon
ton_ to dance as badly as possible, and with the greatest appearance of
_bore_, that appanage of the so-called _gay_ world. These dances, as
everything national is excluded, are without a particle of interest to
any one except the performers. An extempore ball, which might be called
a _carpet_-dance, if there were any, forms the common conclusion of a
winter’s _tertulia_, or social meetings, at which no great attention is
paid either to music, costume, or Mr. Gunter. Here English country
dances, French quadrilles, and German waltzes are the order of the
night; everything Spanish being excluded, except the _plentiful want_ of
good fiddling, lighting, dressing, and eating, which never distresses
the company, for the frugal, temperate, and easily-pleased Spaniard
enters with schoolboy heart and soul into the reality of any holiday,
which being joy sufficient of itself lacks no artificial enhancement.
Dancing at all is a novelty among Spanish ladies, which was introduced
with the Bourbons. As among the Romans and Moors, it was before thought
undignified. Performers were hired to amuse the inmates of the Christian
hareem; to mix and change hands with men was not to be thought of for an
instant; and to this day few Spanish women shake hands with men--the
shock is too electrical; they only give them with their hearts, and for
good.
[Sidenote: MORRIS DANCES.]
The lower classes, who are a trifle less particular, and among whom, by
the blessing of Santiago, the foreign dancing-master is not abroad,
adhere to the primitive steps and tunes of their Oriental forefathers.
Their accompaniments are the “tabret and the harp;” the guitar, the
tambourine, and the castanet. The essence of these instruments is to
give a noise on being beaten. Simple as it may seem to play on the
latter, it is only attained by a quick ear and finger, and great
practice; accordingly these delights of the people are always in their
hands; practice makes perfect, and many a performer, dusky as a Moor,
rivals Ethiopian “Bones” himself; they take to it before their alphabet,
since the very urchins in the street begin to learn by snapping their
fingers, or clicking together two shells or bits of slate, to which they
dance; in truth, next to noise, some capering seems essential, as the
safety-valve exponents of what Cervantes describes, the “bounding of the
soul, the bursting of laughter, the restlessness of the body, and the
quicksilver of the five senses.” It is the rude sport of people who
dance from the necessity of motion, the relief of the young, the
healthy, and the joyous, to whom life is of itself a blessing, and who,
like skipping kids, thus give vent to their superabundant lightness of
heart and limb. Sancho, a true Manchegan, after beholding the strange
saltatory exhibitions of his master, in somewhat an incorrect ball
costume, professes his ignorance of such elaborate dancing, but
maintained that for a _zapateo_, a knocking of shoes, none could beat
him. Unchanged as are the instruments, so are the dancing propensities
of Spaniards. All night long, three thousand years ago, say the
historians, did they dance and sing, or rather jump and _yell_, to these
“_howl_ings of Tarshish;” and so far from its being a fatigue, they kept
up the ball all night, by way of _resting_.
The Gallicians and Asturians retain among many of their aboriginal
dances and tunes, a wild Pyrrhic jumping, which, with their shillelah in
hand, is like the Gaelic Ghillee Callum, and is the precise Iberian
armed dance which Hannibal had performed at the impressive funeral of
Gracchus. These quadrille figures are intricate and warlike, requiring,
as was said of the Iberian performances, much leg-activity, for which
the wiry sinewy active Spaniards are still remarkable. These are the
_Morris_ dances imported from Gallicia by our John of Gaunt, who
supposed they were _Moorish_. The peasants still dance them in their
best costumes, to the antique castanet, pipe, and tambourine. They are
usually directed by a master of the ceremonies, or what is equivalent, a
parti-coloured fool, Μωρος; which may be the etymology of
_Morris_.
[Sidenote: GADITANIAN GIRLS.]
These _comparsas_, or national quadrilles, were the hearty welcome which
the peasants were paid to give to the sons of Louis Philippe at Vitoria;
such, too, we have often beheld gratis, and performed by eight men, with
castanets in their hands, and to the tune of a fife and drum, while a
_Bastonero_, or leader of the band, clad in gaudy raiment like a
pantaloon, directed the rustic ballet; around were grouped _payesas y
aldeanas_, dressed in tight bodices, with _pañuelos_ on their heads,
their hair hanging down behind in _trensas_, and their necks covered
with blue and coral beads; the men bound up their long locks with red
handkerchiefs, and danced in their shirts, the sleeves of which were
puckered up with bows of different-coloured ribands, crossed also over
the back and breast, and mixed with scapularies and small prints of
saints; their drawers were white, and full as the _bragas_ of the
Valencians, like whom they wore _alpargatas_, or hemp sandals laced with
blue strings; the figure of the dance was very intricate, consisting of
much circling, turning, and jumping, and accompanied with loud cries of
_viva!_ at each change of evolution. These _comparsas_ are undoubtedly a
remnant of the original Iberian exhibitions, in which, as among the
Spartans and wild Indians, even in relaxations a warlike principle was
maintained. The dancers beat time with their swords on their shields,
and when one of their champions wished to show his contempt for the
Romans, he executed before them a derisive pirouette. Was this
remembered the other day at Vitoria?
But in Spain at every moment one retraces the steps of antiquity; thus
still on the banks of the Bætis may be seen those dancing-girls of
profligate Gades, which were exported to ancient Rome, with pickled
tunnies, to the delight of wicked epicures and the horror of the good
fathers of the early church, who compared them, and perhaps justly, to
the capering performed by the daughter of Herodias. They were prohibited
by Theodosius, because, according to St. Chrysostom, at such balls the
devil never wanted a partner. The well-known statue at Naples called the
Venere Callipige is the representation of Telethusa, or some other Cadiz
dancing-girl. Seville is now in these matters, what Gades was; never
there is wanting some venerable gipsy hag, who will get up a _funcion_
as these pretty proceedings are called, a word taken from the pontifical
ceremonies; for Italy set the fashion to Spain once, as France does now.
These festivals must be paid for, since the gitanesque race, according
to Cervantes, were only sent into this world as “fishhooks for purses.”
The _callees_ when young are very pretty--then they have such wheedling
ways, and traffic on such sure wants and wishes, since to Spanish men
they prophesy gold, to women, husbands.
[Sidenote: GIPSY DANCE.]
The scene of the ball is generally placed in the suburb Triana, which is
the Transtevere of the town, and the home of bull-fighters, smugglers,
picturesque rogues, and Egyptians, whose women are the premières
danseuses on these occasions, in which men never take a part. The house
selected is usually one of those semi-Moorish abodes and perfect
pictures, where rags, poverty, and ruin, are mixed up with marble
columns, figs, fountains and grapes; the party assembles in some
stately saloon, whose gilded Arab roof--safe from the spoiler--hangs
over whitewashed walls, and the few wooden benches on which the
chaperons and invited are seated, among whom quantity is rather
preferred to quality; nor would the company or costume perhaps be
admissible at the Mansion-house; but here the past triumphs over the
present; the dance which is closely analogous to the _Ghowasee_ of the
Egyptians, and the _Nautch_ of the Hindoos, is called the _Ole_ by
Spaniards, the _Romalis_ by their gipsies; the soul and essence of it
consists in the expression of certain sentiment, one not indeed of a
very sentimental or correct character. The ladies, who seem to have no
bones, resolve the problem of perpetual motion, their feet having
comparatively a sinecure, as the whole person performs a pantomime, and
trembles like an aspen leaf; the flexible form and Terpsichore figure of
a young Andalucian girl--be she gipsy or not--is said by the learned, to
have been designed by nature as the fit frame for her voluptuous
imagination.
[Sidenote: OPERA IN SPAIN.]
Be that as it may, the scholar and classical commentator will every
moment quote Martial, &c., when he beholds the unchanged balancing of
hands, raised as if to catch showers of roses, the tapping of the feet,
and the serpentine, quivering movements. A contagious excitement seizes
the spectators, who, like Orientals, beat time with their hands in
measured cadence, and at every pause applaud with cries and clappings.
The damsels, thus encouraged, continue in violent action until nature is
all but exhausted; then aniseed brandy, wine, and _alpisteras_ are
handed about, and the fête, carried on to early dawn, often concludes in
broken heads, which here are called “gipsy’s fare.” These dances appear
to a stranger from the chilly north, to be more marked by energy than by
grace, nor have the legs less to do than the body, hips, and arms. The
sight of this unchanged pastime of antiquity, which excites the
Spaniards to frenzy, rather disgusts an English spectator, possibly from
some national malorganization, for, as Molière says, “l’Angleterre a
produit des grands hommes dans les sciences et les beaux arts, mais pas
un grand danseur--allez lire l’histoire.” However indecent these dances
may be, yet the performers are inviolably chaste, and as far at least as
ungipsy guests are concerned, may be compared to iced punch at a rout;
young girls go through them before the applauding eyes of their parents
and brothers, who would resent to the death any attempt on their
sisters’ virtue.
During the lucid intervals between the ballet and the brandy, _La caña_,
the true Arabic _gaunia_, song, is administered as a soother by some
hirsute artiste, without frills, studs, diamonds, or kid gloves, whose
staves, sad and melancholy, always begin and end with an _ay!_ a
high-pitched sigh, or cry. These Moorish melodies, relics of auld lang
syne, are best preserved in the hill-built villages near Ronda, where
there are no roads for the members of Queen Christina’s _Conservatorio
Napolitano_; wherever l’académie tyrannizes, and the Italian opera
prevails, adieu, alas! to the tropes and tunes of the people: and
now-a-days the opera exotic is cultivated in Spain by the higher
classes, because, being fashionable at London and Paris, it is an
exponent of the civilization of 1846. Although the audience in their
honest hearts are as much bored there as elsewhere, yet the affair is
pronounced by them to be charming, because it is so expensive, so
select, and so far above the comprehension of the vulgar. Avoid it,
however, in Spain, ye our fair readers, for the second-rate singers are
not fit to hold the score to those of thy own dear Haymarket.
[Sidenote: MUSIC IN VENTAS.]
The real opera of Spain is in the shop of the _Barbero_ or in the
court-yard of the _Venta_; in truth, good music, whether harmonious or
scientific, vocal or instrumental, is seldom heard in this land,
notwithstanding the eternal strumming and singing that is going on
there. The very masses, as performed in the cathedrals, from the
introduction of the pianoforte and the violin, have very little
impressive or devotional character. The fiddle disenchants. Even
Murillo, when he clapped catgut under a cherub chin in the clouds,
thereby damaged the angelic sentiment. Let none despise the genuine
songs and instruments of the Peninsula, as excellence in music is
multiform, and much of it, both in name and substance, is conventional.
Witness a whining ballad sung by a chorus out of work, to encoring
crowds in the streets of merry old England, or a bagpipe-tune played in
Ross-shire, which enchants the Highlanders, who cry that strain again,
but scares away the gleds. Let therefore the Spaniards enjoy also what
they call music, although fastidious foreigners condemn it as Iberian
and Oriental. They love to have it so, and will have their own way, in
their own time and tune, Rossini and Paganini to the contrary
notwithstanding. They--not the Italians--are listened to by a delighted
semi-Moro audience, with a most profound Oriental and melancholy
attention. Like their love, their music, which is its food, is a serious
affair; yet the sad song, the guitar, and dance, at this moment, form
the joy of careless poverty, the repose of sunburnt labour. The poor
forget their toils, _sans six sous et sans souci_; nay, even their
meals, like Pliny’s friend Claro, who lost his supper, _Bætican olives
and gazpacho_, to run after a Gaditanian dancing-girl.
[Sidenote: THE GUITAR.]
In venta and court-yard, in spite of a long day’s work and scanty fare,
at the sound of the guitar and click of the castanet, a new life is
breathed into their veins. So far from feeling past fatigue, the very
fatigue of the dance seems refreshing, and many a weary traveller will
rue the midnight frolics of his noisy and saltatory fellow-lodgers.
Supper is no sooner over than “après la panse la danse,”--some muscular
masculine performer, the very antithesis of Farinelli, screams forth his
couplets, “screechin’ out his prosaic verse,” either at the top of his
voice, or drawls out his ballad, melancholy as the drone of a
Lincolnshire bagpipe, and both alike to the imminent danger of his own
trachea, and of all un-Spanish acoustic organs. For verily, to repeat
Gray’s unhandsome critique of the grand Opéra Français, it consists of
“des miaulemens et des hurlemens effroyables, mêlés avec un tintamare du
diable.” As, however, in Paris, so in Spain, the audience are in
raptures; all men’s ears grow to the tunes as if they had eaten ballads;
all join in chorus at the end of each verse; this “private band,” as
among the _sangre su_, supplies the want of conversation, and converts a
stupid silence into scientific attention,--ainsi les extrêmes se
touchent. There is always in every company of Spaniards, whether
soldiers, civilians, muleteers, or ministers, some one who can play the
guitar more or less, like Louis XIV., who, according to Voltaire, was
taught nothing but that and dancing. Godoy, the Prince of the Peace, one
of the most worthless of the multitude of worthless ministers by whom
Spain has been misgoverned, first captivated the royal Messalina by his
talent of strumming on the guitar; so Gonzales Bravo, editor of the
Madrid _Satirist_, rose to be premier, and conciliated the virtuous
Christina, who, soothed by the sweet sounds of this pepper-and-salted
Amphion, forgot his libels on herself and Señor Muñoz. It may be
predicted of the Spains, that when this strumming is mute, the game will
be up, as the Hebrew expression for the ne plus ultra desolation of an
Oriental city is “the ceasing of the mirth of the guitar and
tambourine.”
In Spain whenever and wherever the siren sounds are heard, a party is
forthwith got up of all ages and sexes, who are attracted by the
tinkling like swarming bees. The guitar is part and parcel of the
Spaniard and his ballads; he slings it across his shoulder with a
ribbon, as was depicted on the tombs of Egypt four thousand years ago.
The performers seldom are very scientific musicians; they content
themselves with striking the chords, sweeping the whole hand over the
strings, or flourishing, and tapping the board with the thumb, at which
they are very expert. Occasionally in the towns there is some one who
has attained more power over this ungrateful instrument; but the attempt
is a failure. The guitar responds coldly to Italian words and elaborate
melody, which never come home to Spanish ears or hearts; for, like the
lyre of Anacreon, however often he might change the strings, love, sweet
love, is its only theme. The multitude suit the tune to the song, both
of which are frequently extemporaneous. They lisp in numbers, not to say
verse; but their splendid idiom lends itself to a prodigality of words,
whether prose or poetry; nor are either very difficult, where common
sense is no necessary ingredient in the composition; accordingly the
language comes in aid to the fertile mother-wit of the natives; rhymes
are dispensed with at pleasure, or mixed according to caprice with
assonants which consist of the mere recurrence of the same vowels,
without reference to that of consonants, and even these, which poorly
fill a foreign ear, are not always observed; a change in intonation, or
a few thumps more or less on the board, do the work, supersede all
difficulties, and constitute a rude prosody, and lead to music just as
gestures do to dancing and to ballads,--“_que se canta ballando_;” and
which, when heard, reciprocally inspire a Saint Vitus’s desire to snap
fingers and kick heels, as all will admit in whose ears the _habas
verdes_ of Leon, or the _cachuca_ of Cadiz, yet ring.
[Sidenote: THE LADIES SINGING.]
The words destined to set all this capering in motion are not written
for cold British critics. Like sermons, they are delivered orally, and
are never subjected to the disenchanting ordeal of type: and even such
as may be professedly serious and not saltatory are listened to by those
who come attuned to the hearing vein--who anticipate and re-echo the
subject--who are operated on by the contagious bias. Thus a fascinated
audience of otherwise sensible Britons tolerates the positive presence
of nonsense at an opera--
“Where rhyme with reason does dispense,
And sound has right to govern sense.”
In order to feel the full power of the guitar and Spanish song, the
performer should be a sprightly Andaluza, taught or untaught; she wields
the instrument as her fan or _mantilla_; it seems to become portion of
herself, and alive; indeed the whole thing requires an _abandon_, a
fire, a _gracia_, which could not be risked by ladies of more northern
climates and more tightly-laced zones. No wonder one of the old fathers
of the church said that he would sooner face a singing basilisk than one
of these performers: she is good for nothing when pinned down to a
piano, on which few Spanish women play even tolerably, and so with her
singing, when she attempts ‘Adelaide,’ or anything in the sublime,
beautiful, and serious, her failure is dead certain, while, taken in her
own line, she is triumphant; the words of her song are often struck off,
like Theodore Hook’s, at the moment, and allude to incidents and persons
present; sometimes they are full of epigram and _double entendre_; they
often sing what may not be spoken, and steal hearts through ears, like
the Sirens, or as Cervantes has it, _cuando cantan encantan_. At other
times their song is little better than meaningless jingle, with which
the listeners are just as well satisfied. For, as Figaro says--“ce qui
ne vaut pas la peine d’être dit, on le chante.” A good voice, which
Italians call _novanta-nove_, ninety-nine parts out of the hundred, is
very rare; nothing strikes a traveller more unfavourably than the harsh
voice of the women in general; never mind, these ballad songs from the
most remote antiquity have formed the delight of the people, have
tempered the despotism of their church and state, have sustained a
nation’s resistance against foreign aggression.
[Sidenote: MOORISH GUITARS.]
There is very little music ever printed in Spain; the songs and airs are
generally sold in MS. Sometimes, for the very illiterate, the notes are
expressed in numeral figures, which correspond with the number of the
strings.
The best guitars in the world were made appropriately in Cadiz by the
Pajez family, father and son; of course an instrument in so much vogue
was always an object of most careful thought in fair Bætica; thus in the
seventh century the Sevillian guitar was shaped like the human breast,
because, as archbishops said, the _chords_ signified the pulsations of
the heart, _à corde_. The instruments of the Andalucian Moors were
strung after these significant heartstrings; Zaryàb remodelled the
guitar by adding a fifth string of bright red, to represent blood, the
treble or first being yellow to indicate bile; and to this hour, on the
banks of the Guadalquivir, when dusky eve calls forth the cloaked
serenader, the ruby drops of the heart female, are more surely liquefied
by a judicious manipulation of cat-gut, than ever were those of San
Januario by book or candle; nor, so it is said, when the tinkling is
continuous are all marital livers unwrung.
However that may be, the sad tunes of these Oriental ditties are still
effective in spite of their antiquity; indeed certain sounds have a
mysterious aptitude to express certain moods of the mind, in connexion
with some unexplained sympathy between the sentient and intellectual
organs, and the simplest are by far the most ancient. Ornate melody is a
modern invention from Italy; and although, in lands of greater
intercourse and fastidiousness, the conventional has ejected the
national, fashion has not shamed or silenced the old airs of
Spain--those “howlings of Tarshish.” Indeed, national tunes, like the
songs of birds, are not taught in orchestras, but by mothers to their
infant progeny in the cradling nest. As the Spaniard is warlike without
being military, saltatory without being graceful, so he is musical
without being harmonious; he is just the raw man material made by
nature, and treats himself as he does the raw products of his soil, by
leaving art and final development to the foreigner.
[Sidenote: ENGLISH EXAMPLE.]
The day that he becomes a scientific fiddler, or a capital cotton
spinner, his charm will be at an end; long therefore may he turn a deaf
ear to moralists and political economists, who cannot abide the guitar,
who say that it has done more harm to Spain than hailstorms or drought,
by fostering a prodigious idleness and love-making, whereby the land is
cursed with a greater surplus of foundlings, than men of fortune; how
indeed can these calamities be avoided, when the tempter hangs up this
fatal instrument on a peg in every house? Our immelodious labourers and
unsaltatory operatives are put forth by Manchester missionaries as an
example of industry to the _Majos_ and _Manolas_ of Spain: “behold how
they toil, twelve and fourteen hours every day;” yet these
philanthropists should remember that from their having no other
recreation beyond the public or dissenting-house, they pine when
unemployed, because not knowing what to do with themselves when _idle_;
this to most Spaniards is a foretaste of the bliss of heaven, while
occupation, thought in England to be happiness, is the treadmill doom of
the lost for ever. Nor can it be denied that the facility of junketing
in the Peninsula, the grapes, guitars, songs, skippings and other
incidents to fine climate, militate against that dogged, desperate,
determined hard-working, by which our labourers beat the world hollow,
fiddling and pirouetting being excepted.
[Sidenote: PHILOSOPHY OF THE CIGAR.]