THE GAIETY OF MADRID.--THE IMPERATIVENESS OF TEETOTALISM
THERE.--THE QUEEN AND THE ROYAL BIRTHDAY.--ROADS AND
RIVER-BANKS.--APROPOS OF BULLS.
There is no more stir at the railway-station of Madrid than at that of
Tunbridge Wells or Chelmsford; and as you rattle along the quiet
streets, you ask yourself--Can this be the capital of so many great
kingdoms? It is the fashion to represent Madrid as a dreary place, but,
on the contrary, its first aspect is eminently cheerful. The streets are
light and airy, the sky is generally without a cloud, and the population
is a gay and unique one. I suppose Madrid is the only capital in Europe
where the upper classes can be said to cling to anything like costume,
for certainly the long cloaks of the men, and the mantillas and fans of
the ladies, do merit the name of costume still. In Spain it is possible
for a man to be dainty about his dress, since every cloak can be lined
in different styles of luxury, with silk, with velvet, with fur, or with
brocade. The upper cape of the cloak is thrown over the left shoulder in
such a manner as to expose the lining; and as you walk along the
streets, you are lost in admiration of a dress so graceful, and think
regretfully of the orthodox great-coat worn in London, when a little
colour would be so pleasant to the eye. Put a Spanish cloak upon every
man in Fleet Street and Piccadilly, and how the bits of creamy fur, of
crimson silk, of purple velvet, of gold brocade, would enliven these
sober thoroughfares! But the Madrilenians are not a majestic race,
though so majestically equipped. Diminutive in size, sallow, shaven like
monks, one never dreams of calling the men handsome. At the same time
they have, for the most part, beautiful features and fine eyes. The
ladies, tripping about fan in hand, are pretty; but, like the men,
frail-looking and without dignity. Treacherous as is the climate, they
go about bare-necked, bare-headed, and with only a fan to shade them
from a dangerous sun. Yet one sees the same thing everywhere--whilst
the women wear tight-fitting clothes, and expose themselves to wind and
sun, the men are wrapped up like Arabs in the easiest, most sensible
dress possible. In England we are growing wiser, and we no longer kill
our young girls by making them wear tight stays, thin shoes, and
back-boards; but in Madrid--I suppose one of the unhealthiest places in
the world--it never seems to enter into any one’s head that what is
dangerous to a man is doubly so to a woman.
It will be easily understood why Madrid should be so unhealthy when a
little consideration is given to its site. Built on a plateau 2412 feet
above the sea, it is exposed to an African sun and a Siberian winter.
Like Rome it stands in a treeless desert; and the icy winds may blow
down from the chain of the Guadarrama, whilst the sun is scorching with
fiery powers. You may pass in a moment from a cold climate to a hot one
in Madrid; and at all times the air is so rarefied as to be terribly
trying. I enjoy excellent health as a rule, but the climate of Madrid
knocked me down in a day. I was tormented by a constant neuralgia; my
face swelled up so that I could hardly see out of my eyes; and I became
so languid that I could hardly set one foot before the other. Yet one
must not take stimulants. Never shall I forget the dismay with which an
English lady saw me take wine at dinner.
“Unless you are mad,” she said, “you will drink no wine here. When I
first came to Madrid I felt as you do, feverish, listless, utterly good
for nothing, and I tried a little _vin ordinaire_ as a remedy, but it
acted like a poison. My face became covered with a terrible eruption,
and if I had not abstained in time, I should have had the _colico_ of
Madrid. It is a terrible climate alike for body and mind, and thankful
enough shall I be to get away.”
Every one coughs everywhere. The men cover their mouths and keep on the
sunny side of the street, as if death lurked in a “shady place;” whilst
the ladies (would to heaven they did cover their mouths when the icy
wind blows from the mountains!), who go bareheaded, have a frightfully
fragile look. Indeed it is the very rarest thing to see a really
robust-looking person in Madrid. The curled darlings of society are
pale as spectres, the waiters and shopmen are thin and cadaverous; a
fresh, beautiful look of health one meets nowhere. I don’t think this
matter of climate is sufficiently taken into account by those who write
about Spain and the Spaniards; for there is no denying the fact that
since Madrid became the capital of this great country, its greatness
grew pale and wan. Bred in a hot-bed of consumption, of colic, and all
sorts of diseases, is it any wonder that the Madrilenian degenerates
both in body and in mind, till he no longer looks capable either of
mental or physical exertion? Wherever we found ourselves, at the Prado,
at a review, on the Puerto de Sol, or in the churches, we were always
looking at the sickly, lethargic population around us, with the
thought--Is this the stuff of which reformations and revolutions are to
be made?
And then the dire effects of the Inquisition must be taken into account.
Who can doubt that for some of the mental and physical debasement
witnessed in Spain at the present day the system of Ignatius Loyola is
alone responsible? Torture, enslave, terrify a dozen men and women, and
see what their children and children’s children will become? But whether
this reasoning may be received as a mere fancy or not, the fact remains
incontestable,--the upper ten thousand of Madrilenian population is the
most miserable-looking of any in the world. Of Madrilenian society we
had no experience, for, though we were furnished with letters of
introduction, more important objects claimed our time. It is the
greatest mistake to do two things at once, and having come to Madrid to
see and study the Velasquez Gallery, we had no inclination to neglect
this end for any other. As a substitute for personal experience, we read
Spanish newspapers, modern Spanish novels, and plays; and though, as far
as the latter goes, it was rather hard work, we felt the curriculum to
be instructive. Putting aside the charming stories of Caballero and
Trueba, the modern Spanish novel is a poor affair, and the play a poor
affair too; but any one who really wishes to be entertained and
instructed should read the social sketches of such writers as Don Ramon
Mesonero de Romanos, Pedro de Medrazo, and José de Larra, who describe
their country and countrymen with inimitable grace, satire, and
discrimination.
And the newspapers, what is to be said of them? I think this paragraph
might be headed,--“There are no newspapers in Spain;” for except as
mediums of advertisements and local gossip, they don’t exist. On first
installing ourselves in the comfortable Hôtel de Paris, we used to fly
eagerly to the reading-room, laying hands on _La Correspondencia de
España_, _La Gaceta_, _La Regeneracion_, &c., &c.; but very little did
they tell us excepting the small-beer chronicles of every nation under
the sun, and of Spain above all. Then there would be _feuilletons_ of
very inferior quality, long lists of advertisements for wet-nurses, and
invitations to the friends of the late Don or Doña So-and-so to attend
his or her funeral obsequies.
Of anything like political news, much less political discussion, there
was seldom a vestige.
But though the Government has succeeded in bridling the tongue of the
press, there is abundance of contraband talk in Madrid. No matter with
whom you converse, the topic is sure to be of bloody revolutions and
retributions unequalled in history. But mention the Royal name, and,
whether you are among aristocrats or peasants, you will see dark looks,
meaning shrugs of the shoulder, gestures significant of bitterest
meaning.
“It must come soon,” people say to you; “and the sooner the better,
though dire will be the coming of it. Never in history were such wrongs,
such hatred, such tyranny, to be washed out in blood. We can only watch
and wait.”
The acquaintance of a day,--nay, of an hour, is sufficient to warrant
all sorts of confidences on public matters from a Spaniard, and this
incautiousness, or rather candour, makes you forgive even his love of
the bull-fight. It is, indeed, a most consolatory fact, that it is but a
watching and waiting in Spain, and that underneath a semblance of
indifference burns and rages a wholesome desire of liberty.
“We are at the present moment enduring a tyranny of which foreigners
have no conception,” said a cultivated Spaniard to me, one day, in
English; “and yet, despite of all that is going on secretly among us, no
one can say when things will change. Change they must; we shall have
the French Revolution acted over again in the streets of Madrid.”[2]
Again: we were taken to see the graves of some young officers of high
family who were shot in prison during the disturbances of last year. A
respectable man of the lower ranks was standing near, and he said, with
tears in his eyes, but half-suppressed curses on his lips,--
“They were as innocent as new-born babes; though, thank God! this murder
won’t long want vengeance.”
It would be almost impossible to convey any idea of the bitterness and
hatred we found underlying the public mind at this epoch.
People gave us their confidences without any reason for doing so,
confidences which all amounted to one and the same thing--contempt of
the tyranny and resolutions to overturn the tyrants. “No one can tell
how uncomfortable it is to live in Madrid now,” said an English lady to
me one day. “It is the old fable of the sheep and the wolves over and
over again. We are constantly laying in stores for three or four weeks’
siege; but I’ve done it so often in vain that I have determined never to
do it again, and I daresay the consequence will be that a revolution
will come and find my larder empty.”
And yet how gay it was in Madrid! Though the north-east wind blew from
the mountains, ladies promenaded the streets bareheaded; and
Opera-house, Plaza de Toros, Prado, and every other haunt of amusement,
was crowded. We naturally tried each in turn. We saw a review on the
Queen’s birthday, went to the Opera, drove on the Prado, and, much
against my inclination, I spent twenty minutes at a bull-fight. The
review was a spiritless affair, every one had prophesied some sort of
outbreak on that day, but none came; and the Queen, who had been hissed
at the theatre a few days before, did not appear. The King took her
place, and very flushed and uncomfortable he looked. Not so le Père
Claret, the Queen’s confessor. As he descended the palace steps to his
handsome carriage drawn by four splendid mules, he looked quite
contented with the existing order of things,--which I suppose is but
natural,--and stepped along in his purple robes with as much dignity as
if he had been the Pope himself. This man’s history and position are so
extraordinary that one cannot but look after him with interest. By
turns, soldier, ecclesiastic, missionary, and bishop, he has won a
certain celebrity for his sermons and the publication of a coarse book
called _La Clave de Oro_, and he has also won the royal ear. His rival
in this latter respect is a nun, called Maria-Dolorès Patrocinio, abbess
of the convent of St. Pascual d’Aranjuez, who was tried and condemned
some time since by the tribunal, because she gave herself out to be the
subject of a miracle, pretending to have the wounds of Christ on her
hands. One can but pity the Queen, who has laid herself open to such
unmitigated obloquy by her favouritism. No young sovereign ever passed
through stormier ordeals than Isabella the Second. Pity that experience
has not taught her wisdom, and that by her own hand she has undone,
Penelope-wise, good deeds done in the gentleness of youth! There is a
little book called _The Attaché in Madrid_, which gives some highly
interesting sketches of the Spanish Court and capital during the
eventful July of 1854. It was a reign of terror, and the Queen was as a
shuttlecock driven hither and thither; but a Spanish mob is not a French
mob, and always showed some threadbare kind of respect for royalty. An
English writer on the affairs of Spain, says, “The Queen of Spain is
not unpopular with the bulk of her subjects” (which statement I doubt),
“and her great failing is, that feminine one to which Dr. Reaumur
attributes all Mary Queen of Scots’ errors, ‘_Sie konnte nicht ohne
Männer leben_.’” But it seems to me that it is faults of both heart and
head that have made the throne of Isabella the Second the bed of thorns
it is. If, despite a bad government, Spain is making undeniable
progress, who can doubt what she might be under a good? I think no one
who has had opportunity of studying her domestic history during the last
thirty years will be inclined to agree with Mr. Buckle’s sweeping
assertions. He despaired of the regeneration of Spain, but slow though
the process must be, it has undoubtedly commenced. In commerce, in
education, in literature, it has commenced; and who shall stem the flow
of that slow but inevitable tide?
The great hindrance is from the badness and uncertainty of the
government. There is no security in the land, without which there can be
no spirit of enterprise. Who can say what to-morrow will bring forth? “A
Spanish cabinet,” an English writer wittily says, “may be compared to a
Chili house, constructed on a calculation that an earthquake will occur
within the year.” All the best energy of the nation is spent upon the
unhealthy excitement of political transformations. It is like living in
an atmosphere overcharged with electricity. One moment, there is a
succession of lightning-flashes, all sorts of brilliant miraculous
heralds of a tempest that is to clear the air; then comes a growl of
thunder, an outburst of popular feeling in Barcelona or some distant
part; and all is hushed again for a short space, when the symptoms occur
again and again without coming to a crisis.
But this underlying suspense and unrest do not interfere with the gay,
out-of-door life of Madrid. The weather is always fine, and the Prado is
always crowded.
There is nothing livelier in Europe than this same Prado, with its crowd
of pretty ladies, picturesque cavaliers, dear little carriages for
babies drawn by spotlessly white lambs, nurses from Estramadura in
short, brown petticoats, embroidered with gold, water-sellers in
sombrero and leathern gaiters, and an infinity of equipages, costumes,
and cries, to distract the eye and ear of the foreigner. But if you are
tired of gaiety, in ten minutes you can get into a scene so peaceful and
quiet, that you might fancy yourself miles away from a capital. Drive
down to the green banks of the Manzanares, where a thousand peasant
women are beating linen in the afternoon sun. Their red and yellow
skirts, and plentiful black hair, make quite a picture, and their blithe
talk and singing never cease for a moment. Yet how tranquil and rustic
it is here! One has a superb view of Madrid, with its background of blue
and white mountains, palace and church and house-top flushing in the
light of the setting sun, whilst the hum of its busy life seems silenced
for a while. The river winds amid sloping banks of lustrous green,
lightly sprinkled with yellow foliage, and team after team winds its
sleepy way towards some village seen in the distance.
It sounds incredible, and yet it is true, that, within half-an-hour’s
drive of Madrid, the roads are impracticabilities for any carriage
having springs. I do not think there is a lane in Sussex, or in any
heavy land district of Suffolk, where you could be so jolted in a
tumbril as we were in a light cab just outside the Spanish capital. We
found the same state of things throughout our journey. I suppose there
is no functionary answering to that of our parish surveyor. No one seems
to mind having his bones rattled over the stones, as if he were a
“pauper whom nobody owns.”
I feel in duty bound to say a word about the Bull-fight, though let no
one shut this book, thinking that I am about to describe that horror of
horrors. Heaven knows, it is a sight that any one might make something
of, for added to the accessories of a burning blue sky, and a
picturesque assemblage of nine thousand people excited to the verge of
frenzy, there are all the savage elements of the human and animal nature
called into full play. But what I saw of “this bloody amphitheatre of
Rome, with spectators in hats and coats,” as Ford calls it, so sickened
me, that I never recur to the subject without repugnance. Before I left
England I was told by an educated Spaniard that bull-fights were going
out of fashion, and that his countrymen, at least those of the upper
classes, no longer attended them. But what did personal experience
teach me? It taught that Spanish ladies do go to bull-fights, and,
moreover, that they take with them their young children, who clap their
hands at the close of every bloody act, and watch the whole cruel drama
as eagerly as their elders.
To judge fairly of those horrid amusements, you should go behind the
scenes. There, in a dreary chapel, you see the _matadors_, the
_banderilleros_, and all the other wretched actors in the play, taken by
turns to confess and receive absolution at the hands of a priest. How
ghastly pale and craven they look in their tinselly dresses!--more like
culprits going to execution than the proud heroes of great feats.
Adjoining the chapel is a room fitted up as a hospital, which is too
often called into requisition; and from this you are led to the stables,
where stand wretched hacks, soon to be blindfolded and tortured to
death. These poor animals, it is said,--let us hope without truth,--are
often the discarded and superannuated favourites of gentlemen; but no
matter what they may have been, they are brought on the stage to be
gored by turns, and their blood and agony count for nothing.
The arena is by no means imposing till it is filled with spectators; and
the procession is tawdry enough. The dogs and mules which figure in it,
are alone worth looking at. The former are called into requisition to
madden any bull that does not show game, the latter to drag away the
dead horses and bulls. But as soon as the horrid play begins, the place
becomes a very _infernus_. Men and women vie with each other in noises,
screams, and cries; now it is some unfortunate _chulo_ who is the butt
of the whole assembly, because he has allowed the bull to attack the
horse too soon; now it is a _picador_, who gets praised by shouts,
clappings of the hand, and all sorts of uproarious applause; and now it
is the bull who becomes the pet of the moment for having skilfully
overturned horse and rider. If anything can be more unbearable than the
spectacle itself, it is the behaviour of the spectators. The noise is
deafening,--nay, maddening; and when the first act of the drama ended,
we rushed away too horrified to put our horror into words.
The wide street leading to the Plaza de Toros was so crowded with people
going to the bull-fight, that it was with some difficulty we could get
along. All Madrid seemed turning out for the sight, and yet it was a
weekly one; and, on this occasion, of no exceptional attractiveness. On
grand festivals there are extra bulls killed and far greater crowds; but
all who wish to know more about bull-fights, past and present, should go
to that fountain-head of knowledge on Spanish affairs, Richard Ford.[3]
There is one consideration apt to be overlooked by those who are
studying the subject, and that is, the hand-to-hand struggle between man
and brute. From the moment the show commences till its close every
player, whether he be chulo or banderillero, picador or matador, places
his life in peril--not for the love of sport, mind, but for the sake of
gain--and frequent occurrence of grave accidents, and the possibility of
fatal ones, may well account for the pale faces of these desperate
creatures. Only a few weeks before our arrival at Madrid, a well-known
matador had been killed at Seville, and the whole horrid scene was
described to us by an eye-witness. There was no show of sympathy made
for the man; but cries of “Brava, toro! Bravo, toro!” filled the arena
from end to end. The son of the murdered man took his father’s place!
For my part all my sympathies go with the bull. He, poor beast! is often
the most peace-loving creature in the world, and, anyhow, suffers ten
times more than the horse, which is not goaded into frenzy by shouts,
arrows, fire-works, sword-pricks, and dogs, but is allowed to die
quickly. The bull is tortured to the last as if he were a heretic.
Pitiful it is to see him crawl into some quiet corner to die, with what
regrets for his peaceful pastures, with what horror of his tormentors,
with what quivering agony in every nerve, Heaven alone knows!
It sounds incomprehensible, and yet it is quite true, that bull-fights
are often held for charitable purposes. A few years back a new church at
Madrid was to be built. A committee was formed for the purpose,
consisting of an archbishop, several bishops, noblemen, and others; the
land was given, and the building commenced. But some money was wanting,
and so they had a bull-fight, the proceeds of which helped them on a
little. Later, their necessities were even more pressing, and they tried
another bull-fight. This time, however, the owner of the bull-ring
refused to give them a benefit, and other means had to be tried.
Cruelty begets cruelty, and as if the appetite for blood were not
satisfied at the circus, the churches offer more in abundance. Anything
more revolting than the bleeding, bruised Christs and saints, cannot be
conceived. No shape nor symbol of suffering is left out of the dreary
catalogue till one comes away, sick with the ghastly blasphemies
witnessed on every side. This is all the sadder, since a real spirit of
religious fervour seems predominant; and the brighter side of Romanism
is never wholly hidden from the eyes of even the most superficial or
prejudiced observer.
And what has not Murillo done to beautify this Church of Spain, whose
annals are so stained with blood and tears?
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