A Late Capital--The Gambling Mania--A French Rendezvous--The Duke
de Fitzpepper--The Morality of Passing Bad Money--Spanish
Compliments--Men in Pickle--A Licentious Ballet--Federal
Manners--Prim's Artifice--Nouvilas Goes North--A Carlist
Proclamation--Don Alfonso--Midnight Oil--Castelar's Circular.
Madrid is not an early capital--natural effect of the climate. In the
middle of the day the blinds are let down, the shops are shut, the
streets are empty--everybody who can at all manage it is taking the
siesta. The business of sunlight is at a standstill. The few hours thus
stolen from the day are religiously made restitution of to the night,
which is undoubtedly the most agreeable period for a stroll. Pleasure is
in full swing, the promenades are alive, flirtation is methodically
practised in the Spanish way--that is, through an intervening
lattice--theatres and ball-rooms contribute to the programme of
diversion, the coffee-houses (where chocolate is mostly consumed) are
packed to the door-posts, and the business of gaslight is prosecuted
with a desperate concentration of energy and a brooding perseverance.
The business of gaslight, unfortunately, is high play. That is one of
the social curses of Spain. Everybody gambles, to the sentries in the
guard-house, the patients in the hospitals, the felons in the gaols.
Such is the overwhelming dominion of this national passion that I should
not be surprised at reading of a condemned man on his way to the garrote
craving a hand of cards with the executioner to distract him from his
sorrows. Strained the situation was at this crisis, and in all the clubs
the cards were thrown on the tables with a fever as of men seeking some
relaxation from the fierce game of politics; but, as I had opportunity
to assure myself afterwards, this was nothing exceptional. The fever for
play as high as the pocket can allow, often higher, is normal. The
foreigner--and all foreigners provided with the slightest credentials
are most graciously made free of the clubs--soon takes note of that.
The Fornos, the Suizo, and other coffee-houses were transformed into
debating-forums, and sometimes I frequented them to catch what was going
on; but my haunt of predilection was a restaurant patronized by French
refugees. They had brought with them the Gaulish gaiety, and it was
instructive to see Communists, fugitive aristocrats, bagmen with the
asphalte of the boulevards still clinging to the soles of their boots,
and steady old settlers in Madrid foregathering in friendly
forgetfulness of differing shades of political coats. One of the three
Marquesses de Fonvielle and de Coutuly, of the _Temps_, amongst other
journalists, used to drop in regularly. De Coutuly has since strayed
into diplomacy. Touching journalists who wander into that luxurious
labyrinth, the representative of the _New York Herald_, at Madrid, a
painstaking gentleman with a certain cleverness, Russell Young,
subsequently became United States' Minister to China. Prizes of this
class, which rain upon Continental and American publicists, seldom fall
to the lot of their brethren of the British press, unless they get into
Parliament or boldly single themselves out from the anonymous herd.
Then they are sometimes promoted to a Consulship in an insalubrious
region, where they have every facility for studying the manners of the
buck-nigger, and the customs of the lively sand-fly. Far and away the
most interesting customer of this restaurant was the Duke de Fitzpepper,
a tall, dark, strong man with curly black hair, a boisterous voice, and
a bold laugh. He had to quit France on account of an affair of honour.
He had been in the Imperial Navy, had a squabble with his captain, and
resigned his commission that he might send him a challenge. They met
with the customary duelling swords, but de Fitzpepper made a mistake. He
ran his antagonist through. I know naught of the merits of the quarrel,
but to my insularly uneducated mind it appeared that the gallant
nobleman experienced inadequate remorse at having the blood of a
fellow-creature on his soul. Perhaps I am hyper-sensitive, but when de
Fitzpepper used to boast "_Je me connais dans le flingot_," it sent a
thread of cold water creeping down my spine, not from fear but from
aversion. Yet it was impossible to keep aloof from him for long, he was
such a joyous, dashing, carry-your-outworks pattern of a musketeer.
Evil associations corrupt good manners, I suppose, which must be the
excuse for a Frenchman with whom I entered into conversation in this
mirthful caravanserai. I happened to show him a coin which had been
passed upon me, an escudo, which would be worth a sovereign if it were
not counterfeit.
"What a shame!" he exclaimed as he fingered it. "What are you going to
do with it?"
"Nothing," I said. "It's useless to me."
"Lend it to me, pray."
I gave it to him, and the following night he asked me what commission I
would allow him. He had passed the bad escudo in his turn. I was
indignant, and accused him of having been guilty of a dishonest act. I
would touch none of the proceeds of his crookedness.
"Nonsense!" he said, astonished. "I got rid of it in a hell. They're all
rogues there when they have a chance."
I submit to the casuists that this was a very nice case of conscience.
Winning money at cards is not earning it. He who seeks to win it is
demoralized, and it is to his advantage and the advantage of society
that he should be discouraged in his pernicious foolishness. Therefore,
q.e.d., it was commendable to palm that base coin upon him. I was
unequal to deciding the question off-hand, so I elected to take not a
real of the Frenchman's equivocal profit. But if the Frenchman was to
blame, was I not responsible in the first instance, as having afforded
him the means of cheating his neighbour? When the casuists shall have
elucidated this riddle to their satisfaction, perhaps they will oblige
by telling me how many thousand angels could alight on the point of a
needle.
Morality is at a low ebb in Madrid, or rather the moral code is
regulated by notions peculiar to the latitude. So with habits. A man
must be "native and to the manner born," before he can affect competency
to interpret them. For example, when a Madrileño asseverates that his
house is yours, or that his equipage which you so much admire is at your
disposal, he does not intend that you should take up your residence
with him there and then, or hold his coachman at your beck. It is simply
a form of etiquette, a mode of speech, as of the Englishman of past
generations who challenged you to mortal combat and subscribed himself
"your obedient humble servant." You will be guilty of a grave solecism
if you imitate that American to whom the grandee remarked with effusion
that the stud which captivated his taste was his own, his very own.
"Thanks," said Brother Jonathan; "I'll take the roan and the chestnut
to-day and call for the others to-morrow!"
Although a man may tender you fraudulent coinage with a brazen front, he
may be keen in honour, and resent an insult to his sister with a
knife-stab; although he may intrigue for a Government place with a slimy
self-abasement, under circumstances the same being may go forth
unflinchingly and sacrifice himself on the altar of his country. Spain
is the home of paradox. The beggar is addressed as "your worship,"
mutiny is a venial offence, bribery of officials is a recognised
prescription. At the very epoch of which I write, the murderers of Prim
were stalking about the capital; it was a town-crier's secret who they
were and who was the personage who was their employer, yet none had the
temerity to denounce them. And in the saladero, or the "salting-tub," as
the prison was called, it was notorious that there were malefactors who
gave lessons in forgery, and who positively utilized their cells as
convenient head-quarters from which to prey on the unwary public. Their
plan was to write to somebody of position, whose name they had lighted
on in a directory, and inform him that they had often heard speak of him
as a citizen of integrity, and felt that they might trust him; they were
singularly situated, immured for a debt of a few duros, and yet in the
vicinity of his residence they were cognizant of an immense buried
treasure; if he would only send them the trifle needful to pay off that
debt and cover their fare to his town, they would take him with them to
the site of the secret hoard, and repay him with interest for his
kindness. This transparent ruse actually told with hundreds of dupes.
How the _auri sacra fames_ will deprive sane men of sense! He would be
a spendthrift of sympathy who would waste his sympathy upon them.
I had been under the impression that Spain was a deeply religious
country. The impression was illusive. It may be fanatically religious in
parts, but too often the educated classes rail at religion. As comes to
pass when inordinate demand has been made on credulity, a reaction
arises, and those whose faith was implicit yesterday become the scoffing
heretics of to-day. The tide has turned, and it is no unfrequent
occurrence to hear a Spaniard declare he is not a Christian, whose
fathers would have perhaps burned at a stake the wretch who would have
dared to utter such a profanity. This is very bad. One extreme is as
wicked as another. If the Scylla of stupid superstition was dangerous,
the Charybdis of arrogant scepticism is destructive. This is essentially
a Roman Catholic country, yet never have I seen anywhere, in the lands
where Roman Catholicism is disliked and contemned even, the ceremonies
and institutions of the Church treated with more undisguised ribaldry. I
went to the Novedades, a popular theatre in a humble quarter of the
town in the vicinity of the Calle de Toledo, to see what the piece on
the occasion, "El Triunfo de la República," was like. I got in as a
"Carlist ballet" was being danced; two men were dressed to represent two
famous cabecillas, Saballs and a colleague, two others to represent the
Carlist priest, Santa Cruz, and a monk of the party. Santa Cruz was
bulky as Friar Tuck, leered from under his scoop hat, drank wine,
reeled, toddled, fell, and kicked up his heels as the wild Mabille
quadrille music was played; and high was the content and noisily
expressed the delight of the audience. The four women who took part in
the Terpsichorean orgie wore the robes of nuns, and must have belonged
to the order of Sisters of Shame, if to any. They had blue hoods, white
bands across their foreheads and bosoms, red crosses wrought on their
habits, and trailing skirts of white. Their dancing was not voluptuous;
it would be a misnomer to let it down with so mild an epithet; it was
grossly indecent. They exposed their limbs, and the audience was
ecstatic at the sight. Not a murmur of censure was to be heard. And
this bacchanalian riot, too obscene for any self-respecting house of
ill-fame, was supposed to be held in a church. The scenery showed a
mockery of ecclesiastical architecture and pious pictures. As a dramatic
effort, "El Triunfo de la República" was very poor. Zorilla was
caricatured as a fox (a play upon his name), and Sagasta as a
devil-fish, and the apotheosis revealed the Genius of Spain waving a
flag lettered with the words, "Viva la República Federal!" The flag was
welcomed with vehement cheers, in affirmation that those who looked on
and admired the burlesque of ministers of the national faith were all
stout Federal Republicans, corresponding somewhat to the Communists of
the Paris of two years before.
These Federals, I own, I do not like. A deputation of them from the
provinces arrived one of these evenings, and put up at the Fonda de
Paris. They were scrubby louts, smoked between the courses although
ladies were at table, which, however, could be condoned, as it was
Spanish. But they also wore their hats. That irritated one guest, and he
called to a waiter to bring him a hat which he would find on a peg
outside. Having been handed his head-gear, he clapped it on, and said
that was all he wanted. The hint was not lost. The boors dined in a room
by themselves during the rest of their stay. And yet these Federal
Republicans profess to respect public opinion; but by the phrase must be
understood the opinion of those who agree with them. The Intransigentes,
on whose support they depend, have arms in their hands, and will try to
keep them. Only one man was ever able to disarm them, and he was
assassinated. If Prim did not know the Spanish mind intuitively, and as
no other man ever knew it, even he would not have succeeded. After the
promiscuous distribution of arms to the multitude had been made from the
windows of the storehouses in Madrid at the close of 1868, he tried
every means to get them back, but to no purpose. Promises of rewards to
those who would give up the guns were useless; threats and coaxings were
in vain. At last Prim hit on a notable scheme. At a review he publicly
insulted the corps he was so long trying to disembody; he either rode
past them without noticing them, or made remarks on their appearance
the reverse of complimentary. The officers threw up their commissions in
dudgeon; they had served the cause of the people faithfully, and were
not to be treated with contempt; they would no longer carry arms for
such ungrateful friends. It was just what Prim wanted.
While Madrid was thus seething and bubbling as if it were on the verge
of boiling over, and the great question of elections for the new Cortes
to determine the future "permanent" style of administration was being
mooted, the Carlists were plucking up heart and maturing their designs.
They fancied they would soon have the nation before them the _nudum et
coecum corpus_ of Sylla's description--defenceless and blind.
Nouvilas, one of the numberless generals of Spain, was ordered to the
north. At a Republican meeting before his departure, he promised that he
would take his five sons with him to fight against the Carlists. At the
same meeting he declared himself the uncompromising enemy of all
dictatorships, and warned those who expected that he would use his power
in that sense not to make a mistake. He was a soldier, not a politician,
and the day that the Republic would be consolidated, and peace secured,
he would retire into private life. It did not seem as if peace were
shortly to be secured. There was a proposition to raise fifty battalions
of free corps to crush the insurgents. The only difficulty in the way
was the loan for their armaments. The battalions were to be organized by
provinces, and each was to be composed of 900 men (making a total of
44,100), and to be officered from the reserve. The proposition of itself
was sufficient to wake the fools out of their paradise. These Carlists
were not to be underrated. If they could do nothing else, they could
issue proclamations. They were great at these. They promised to give the
army the "licencia absoluta" which some soldiers demanded from the
Republic at Barcelona. One Ramon V. Valcarces, commandant-general of the
province of Lugo, was exceedingly anxious that the Galicians should come
out to conquer or die. He told them that the national banner of their
legitimate King waved triumphantly in the provinces of Catalonia,
Castile, Leon, the Asturias, and the Vasco-Navarre, which was a piece of
bounce--legitimate, may it be called?--on his part; and added
scathingly that the Government at Madrid was in the hands of a group of
adventurers, who called themselves Spaniards and Liberals. Those
impostors would raise the taxes until it would be impossible to pay
them, would sell the Antilles and persecute religion.
Tidings were wafted to us mysteriously that the brother of the
legitimate King, H.R.H. Don Alfonso, of Bourbon and Lorraine, had held a
review of the forces of Saballs at Vidra, in Catalonia. His Royal
Highness was accompanied by his wife, the Doña Maria. His Royal Highness
wore flesh-coloured riding breeches with black stripes, jack-boots, a
zamarra or sheep-skin upper garment, and a flat white cap of the make of
those used by Scotch shepherds. Doña Maria wore a cap of the same kind,
with a gold tassel coquettishly falling over her left shoulder. The
august pair were mounted, and the lady, who chivalrously accompanied her
husband, witched the Carlists with noble horsemanship. Don Alfonso was
surrounded by a brilliant staff, conspicuous amongst whom was a son of
that Don Enrique of Bourbon who was shot in a duel by the Duke of
Montpensier.
The "only court" did not lack a moidering liveliness. Of nights I
usually leant by my balcony overlooking the Puerta del Sol, and watched
the frail sodality of the Moon prowling about in charge of the
superfluous duenna, the while the brawl of palaver, the cries of "água
fresca," or of the last edition of the _Correspondencia_, the "theeah"
in such wise cadenced, or the boom of the watchman's voice came floating
upwards, before I sat me down to a hard spell of work, sifting grain
from chaff, and committing my thoughts to paper, a moistened towel round
my temples, and a pot of black coffee at my elbow. The sun was usually
ogling the fountain in the Plaza before I had finished.
The burden of work imposed upon the correspondent who desired to be
loyal to duty was weighty on occasion. For example, late on the 26th of
February the official journal came out with a lengthy circular from Don
Emilio Castelar, to the representatives of Spain abroad. The object was
to obtain the recognition of the Republic by Powers other than the
United States and Switzerland. I saw the importance of sending a
translation of this pregnant State paper at once, and shut myself up in
my room with a supply of pens, ink, and paper, and the indispensable
coffee-pot. I was not an accomplished Spanish scholar, but with the aid
of a youthful groundwork in Latin, a fair knowledge of Italian, a
familiarity with French, and a dictionary, I succeeded in turning out a
full, accurate--nay, I will say a vivid--rendering of this historic
composition before I unlocked my door, and transmitted it to London
within twelve hours. Spanish is not difficult. If Italian is the
daughter of Latin, Spanish is the son. And with energy and mother-wit,
one can do much.
Castelar's was a brilliant and sustained effort; but it read more like
an essay by Macaulay than a diplomatic holograph. It was splendid, but
it was not official. It lacked crispness, and dealt in excessive
rhetoric from the phrase in an opening paragraph where it spoke of Spain
assuming a place in the Amphictyonic council of Europe, to the closing
sentence. The fall of the Monarchy was traced to the hour when the
institution solemnly ceded its own country to the foreigner (alluding to
the pitiful abdication of Charles IV. in favour of his "friend and ally"
Napoleon, at Bayonne in 1808). True, attempts had been thrice made since
to revive the old system with a new spirit, but they had failed; in
1812, the Democratic Monarchy; in 1837, the Parliamentary Monarchy; in
1869, the Elective Monarchy. The former order of things disappeared
through inherent domestic causes; the Republic appeared of its own
virtue, by the law of necessity. In 1869 the Constituent Cortes had
proclaimed a Monarchy for three fundamental reasons: firstly, because it
corresponded with the traditions of the Spanish people; secondly,
because they believed it would secure liberal principles; and thirdly,
because it would harmonize their form of government with that existing
in nearly every part of Europe. The trouble was where to find the
monarch. They had no dynasty typifying religious and national principles
united to modern spirit like that of England, no princes like those who
had built up the unity of Italy and of Germany on battlefields; their
sovereign houses presented no stability. They had to look outside for a
king, at the double risk of disturbing the peace of Europe and wounding
the national sentiment. They found him in the scion of an illustrious
line, united to France by the war of 1859, to Prussia by the war of
1866, to Great Britain by the establishment of parliamentary rule in
Italy. But the national sentiment of Spain was against him. It left him
in a solitude that was asphyxia. At last he renounced a crown of which
he only felt the weight on his brow and not the dignity in his soul.
When he left, this Government came not by violent revolution, but by
logical evolution. The Republic was not provisional, but definitive. (As
if there were any finality in politics!) The Cortes which had proclaimed
it were the most permanent estate in the nation, inasmuch as when others
melted away they remained. It was the same Cortes which undertook the
national defence in the epic years from 1808 to 1814, which abrogated
the rights of Don Carlos to the ancient crown, and which sanctioned the
dethronement of the Bourbons. Spain owed the change she had effected to
no cosmopolitan influences or agitations. She sought autonomy, not
Utopianism; she coveted no conquest, but she wished to show that she was
living, not dead; that she was still great, but not with the greatness
of ruin, like the empires buried under the valleys of Asia.
There was an excellent thickset gentleman in Madrid, a literary
pluralist, who combined the offices of "own correspondent" to several
London journals. He was a diligent "snapper-up of unconsidered trifles,"
who would never set even the Manzanares on fire. He met me after I had
despatched my version of Castelar's circular, and was cooling my aching
brain on the shady side of the Puerta del Sol.
"Did you read that thing of 'Musica's'?" he said. ("Musica" was the
nickname of the silver-tongued professor-politician.)
"Yes; lovely and long and flimsy as a rainbow," I remarked.
"I think you ought to send an epitome of it to London."
"I shall not."
"Well, I may tell you Chose is sending the whole of it on," he
continued.
Chose was a most formidable rival.
"Who translated it for him?" I asked.
"As it is very important I am getting my sons to do it. Indeed, he asked
me."
"And you never told me."
"Ah! you see, he has a reputation to sustain."
"And I have a reputation to make."
"I'll let you have a _précis_ to-morrow."
"No, thanks," I answered, turning on my heel.
The thickset gentleman looked mighty blank when he gazed on the paper a
few days after with my translation covering nearly two columns of small
type, nor did his astonishment lessen when I confided to him that it had
been made for me by the Man in the Moon.