Warning to Ladies--The Hotel Parliament--An Anglo-Spanish
Mentor--The Evil Genii of the Monarchy--The Curses of
Spain--Government and Religion Affairs of Climate--The Carlists,
Norwegians, and English, all Republicans!--Notions on Heredity--The
Five Spanish Parties--The Army the Lever of Power--The
Student-Cæsar--Order _versus_ Republic--The Chained
Colours--Dorregaray's Appeal to the Soldiers--Influence of the
Church--Wanted: a Benevolent Despot.
In the first line, it may be generous to warn ladies (if any of the
gentler sex there be among my readers) to skip this chapter. There will
be no indelicate disclosures--not that indelicate disclosures would bar
the inquisitiveness of some females, judging by the ingenuity with which
they intrigue for seats at the trials in the Divorce Court, and the
avidity with which they devour "spicy," that is scandalous, details; but
matter of a political, speculative, and quasi-philosophical nature is to
be discussed, and I fear me much it will be dry and prosy.
A shady little room in one of the upper stories of the Fonda de Paris
was used as reading-room. It was thickly carpeted, the walls were
covered with oil paintings in massive ornamented frames, and on the
tables were placed curious jars, antique candlesticks, bronze
statuettes, damascened daggers, and what is known as the merchandise of
_bijouterie_ and _vertu_. There were few papers there, and but one book,
a Spanish Army List in gorgeous green velvet cover with gilt clasps. In
fact, it was more of an auctioneer's private show-room than _cabinet de
lecture_, for the Brothers Fallola were dealers in _bric-à-brac_, and
could not forego the chance of poking their wares under the notice of
their customers. The Italian is first cousin to the Hebrew.
We held a grave Parliament of our own in this little room, and there I
made the acquaintance of an English settler in Spain--an elderly
gentleman who had been engaged in mining. He was well educated, had
travelled widely, was pronounced in his views, and as he expressed them
with candour and was possessed of a high order of intelligence, I
listened to him with attention. Indeed, we all accepted him as Mentor.
He indoctrinated me into the knotty catechism of Spanish politics.
Broadly speaking, he maintained that the monarchy was its own greatest
enemy. It had fallen because of its indifference to public opinion.
Among its evil genii were the pastrycook Marforio, Father Claret, and
Sister Patrocinio. The birth of a daughter to Ferdinand VII., fault of
nature, was the primal fatality. As Count O'Neil remarked when he heard
the natal salute stop at the nineteenth cannon-shot, unhappy Spain was
doomed, because of the gender of the newly-born, to be over-shadowed
with the pall of grief and mourning. But the primal error was the
unnatural marriage of Isabella to her cousin, Don Francisco. Never was
there a more ill-assorted union. A woman of ardent temperament and
strong fibre was allied to a feeble nonentity without sap or spirit. Had
she become the spouse of a man like Victor Emmanuel, things might have
gone better.
Spain was a grand country, he held, one of the richest in creation in
minerals, forests, vineyards, orchards, silk and flocks. The people were
a people that improved upon intercourse, and had some grand qualities.
But the curses of Spain were the ignorance of the masses, the greed of
the professional politicians, and the varying ascendancy of some one
man's power in the army.
"Was the country ripe for its existing form of government?" I asked.
"Government," said he, "like religion, is very much a matter of birth
and training, or, to put it more briefly, of climate. The circumcision
of Judaism, the ablutions of Mahometanism, are the simple useful
dictates of some wise man skilled in sanitary science. People of warm
southern natures crave light and colour and music in worship; in colder
lands, with dispositions hardier and less imaginative, they are
satisfied with severe forms----"
"I know all those theories about religion," I interrupted, "but I am
anxious to have your judgment on government."
"Identically the same--affair of climate. Those who have to brave
privations and work hard for a living are Republicans; the Swiss, for
example, the Norwegians, and the Carlists."
"The Carlists! I thought they were Royalists."
The Mentor laughed as he said, "Royalists! why, they are the only
Republicans in this land. Have you not heard of their fueros? They
reject the tax of blood--they will have no unwilling soldiers taken from
their midst. So Republican are they that they will not tolerate a Bishop
in their ecclesiastical organization, strict Catholics though they
profess themselves. He of Seo de Urgel is the nearest Bishop to their
territory, and his diocese is properly in Andorra."
"But the Norwegians are Monarchists," I ventured.
"In name only, as the English are. There is no more democratic
administration in the world than that of king-ruled Norway; and in
England you are likewise a Republic--that is, you enjoy Republican
freedom, only you choose to call the President a Queen. The Queen is but
a figure-head, the vivified Union Jack. The Prime Minister, that is to
say the elect of the people, not the Queen, sways the genuine wand of
power."
"And the House of Lords, the most Conservative hereditary legislature in
Europe, how do you account for its existence in this British Republic?"
I hazarded as a clincher.
"An accident, my dear sir," he replied, as he pulled at his cigarette.
"Like that puff of smoke, it has no power; it is but vapour, and like
vapour it will disappear some day, to be succeeded by a Senate on the
French or American model. Life-peerages can be justified; the hereditary
principle has been tried and found wanting. The male offspring of a
jockey are not necessarily skilful horsemen; the son of a fencing-master
may be an awkward butter-fingers; the daughter of a _prima ballerina_
may be a cripple."
I passed that figure of speech about the vapour, though disciplined
vapour drives a locomotive. But I urged, "Do you not believe in blood?
Would you place the descendant of a line of brave and cultured men, with
traditions to look back upon, on the same level with Bill Sykes or a
Bosjesman? Is a game-cock a dunghill? Is a thoroughbred a
plough-horse?"
"R-o-t, rot, my dear sir," said Mentor, with an irritating coolness. "Of
game-cocks I know nothing; but as far as your horse argument goes, I am
prepared to meet you. Care is taken that the mare shall be mated with
the proper sire, so that the qualities long worked up to, by judicious
crossing, shall not be lost or deteriorated; but there is no such
selection in the case of a lord; he follows his own figary, and his
figary is usually money, to regild a faded shield. Blood, sir, has less
to do with those things than education and the associations of
childhood. Send an earl's son to St. Giles', and he will grow up a saucy
gutter-boy; send a burglar's son to Eton, and he may develop into what
is conventionally recognised as a gentleman."
There was no arguing down our Mentor on this point, so the subject was
changed, and he tried to disintegrate the ingredients in the very mixed
dish of Spanish parties--a complete olla podrida. There were five
factions in the distracted State, two schools of Monarchists and three
of Republicans. These were--1st, the Alfonsists, or those who wished
that the son of the deposed Queen should be raised to the throne; 2nd,
the Legitimists or Carlists (embracing a large body of the clergy); 3rd,
the Republicans of long standing, who were actually in power; 4th, the
ex-Monarchists--the neo-Republicans or Radicals, who sometimes called
themselves Progresistas, and favoured the United Republic; and 5th, the
Intransigentes, or the Irreconcilables, the extreme of the extreme, who
clamoured for a Federal Republic.
"As example of that ignorance of the masses of which I spoke," said
Mentor, "the mob of Madrid is fiercely Federal, which proves that it
does not know what Federalism is; for one of the first results of
Federalism would be to reduce this capital to the plane of a third-rate
provincial town. Federalism is Spanish dismemberment. If such a system
were adopted, you would have a Royalist North, a Red Republican
Catalonia, and a pauperized Castile, politically piebald. Catalonia is
Federal, in which Catalonia writes itself down ass, for that province is
manufacturing, and with the downfall of protection its prosperity must
depart."
"Is there any chance of Amadeus being coaxed back?"
He laughed a laugh that embarrassed me.
"A kick is not soon forgotten, for it is always an insult even when
administered with an embroidered slipper."
"What do you think of the situation at the moment?" (This was in the
first week of March.)
"Madrid," he answered, "is a hot-bed of political intrigue, and a
complicated intrigue is in act of being developed at present. This, I
take it, is a fair estimate of the situation. The men in office are
controlled by fears of the violent Republicans outside, whom they are
powerless to keep under; and the Radicals are anxious to get into office
to restrain these same violent Republicans, but hesitate because of the
apprehension that they have not sufficient material force behind them.
They would fain climb, but that they fear to fall. Thus, as you
perceive, the disorganization of the army is at the bottom of all the
difficulties, for that it is which leaves the mastery with the dreaded
Intransigents. Those, the 'partisans of action' as they are aptly
called sometimes, have more energy than either the Ministry or the
Radicals, and if this dilly-dallying goes on much longer they may make a
bold attempt to get the reins into their own hands. The Radicals are
opposed to a dissolution of the Assembly because they fear the Reds
would command the polls at the new elections, and go in for sweeping
changes on the model of their predecessors in Paris. The present
Ministers have not the vigour to check the manoeuvring that would
bring about such an occurrence, and the Radicals believe that they only
could oppose and beat down the fanatics of Communistic proclivities.
There are cynics, however, who sneer at patriotic affirmations, and
whisper that loaves and fishes have more to do with them than love of
country."
I reflected that patriotism of that order was not an exclusively Iberian
production, but that possibly the cynics were disappointed politicians
themselves.
"The state of the army," resumed Mentor, "is the question after all. A
great portion of the rank and file are violently Republican, and one
cause of insubordination is that the privates do not believe in the
Republicanism of their officers. Of course, the object of the Ministry
in raising the proposed battalions of volunteers, is less to put down
Carlism than to have a force to fall back upon in case of the army
giving itself furlough. I have reason to know that one Minister at least
is very uneasy on account of the want of discipline of the troops, and
urges upon his colleagues that their first labour should be devoted to
repressing all signs of disorder. But the fight for place at Madrid has
more interest for them, and the army is melting away. When Ministers
make up their minds to a rigorous supervision of the soldiery, there may
be no soldiers to supervise."
It dawned upon me that Spaniards, although enjoying the reputation of
being quick with lethal weapons under the spur of sudden passion, were
very slow in taking ordinary resolutions. "Mañana" is the watchword of
the nation: a favourite proverb is twisted into "Never do to-day what
you can possibly put off till to-morrow." As a French writer wittily
observed, the chariot of State in Spain is fashioned of tortoise-shell
and drawn by snails.
"What do you think of Castelar?"
"Castelar!" echoed the Mentor, with a shoulder-movement of compassionate
irony, "honest, but weak. He is too good, too single-minded, too
amiable, too much of a student to play the Cæsar. Picture to yourself a
doctrinaire who can quote Aristotle in the Chamber, while his country is
travelling the road to ruin. Poor Señor Castelar is not the coming man."
"And where may we look for him?" I asked.
"Quien sabe? At this moment he may be waxing his moustache in the
Balearic Islands, or sipping chocolate in the coffee-house on the
ground-floor."
That coffee-house was always full at the juncture. Indeed, to one who
had not been made stoical by familiarity with excitements, the tokens of
the atmosphere were portentous. Congress often sat under the protection
of an armed guard. The crowds in the streets were always large. The talk
was of bloodshed; but I had grown so sceptical that I would hardly
believe in bloodshed in Madrid until what looked a liquid red had been
chemically analyzed and proved to be blood. We had false alarms every
other night, and shops were shut for an hour or two; but we got no
nearer to revolution than the discussions of sundry excited parliaments
over the marble-topped tables. There Spaniards flushed purple, and
gesticulated violently over their temperate glasses of sweetened water.
What a blessing this is not a whisky-drinking country!
"No," continued the Mentor; "Castelar is the least of all fitted to
govern Spain. This people requires to be ruled by stern will and strong
grip. The result of handing it over to a weak administration is
palpable. Of all nations of the world, Spain is least prepared for
Republicanism, and the theoretical Republicans who essayed to control
her, in an evil moment for themselves, must before this have discovered
the gross blunder they have made. The Republic is a splendid word; but
Order is a word more wholesome. The present so-called rulers are
incapable of preserving order. They sowed the wind when they taught the
soldiers to be malcontent under the Monarchy, because an army was an
artificial need in a free nation. Now that the soldiers are taking them
at their word, they are reaping the whirlwind. They promised Spain
liberty, and Spain, from every indication, is about to enjoy a spell of
license. Heaven knows how it will all end; but those who have acutely
watched changes like this in other countries are not slow to tell us
that we shall have anarchy first to the full."
"And then?" I inquired, "for anarchy is no remedy. It is never final.
What shall we have after that?"
"Perhaps a Conservative Republic, but more likely an iron despotism, the
dominance of some successful General who has the knack of answering his
opponents by ordering their heads to be sliced off."
"Is not that General as likely as not to come from the Carlist camp?" I
demanded.
Mentor shook his head in a decisive negative. "No," he said; "outside
the northern and a portion of the eastern provinces, Carlism has no
solidity."
"But may not the name of Dorregaray, who has crossed the frontier again,
turn out to be a spell-word? They tell me he distinguished himself in
the war with Morocco."
"Yes," assented Mentor, "he commanded a regiment of galley-slaves
there."
"And," I continued, "in Cuba at the outbreak of hostilities he was to
the fore."
"True, true; but I would not give that," and he snapped his fingers,
"for the fidelity of such as Dorregaray. He served under Don Carlos in
the civil war from 1836 to 1840, and that did not hinder him from
donning a uniform under Isabella. Cosas de España! Have you never heard
of Piquero? His action is a pretty fair criterion of the political
morality of your ordinary ambitious Spanish soldier."
No, the man's name was new to me.
"Well, he commanded the regiment of Malaga when Ferdinand VII. returned
from France and was made absolute monarch. General Piquero, as soon as
he got wind of the decree of absolutism, thought he would be first to
curry favour at Court, and sent an address to the palace, praying that
his regiment might have the honour of wearing chains emblazoned on the
colours in testimony of attachment to the King. The prayer was
magnanimously acceded to, and the chains were absolutely borne on the
colours for years. Yet not very long afterward this Piquero, this mean,
fawning cur, changed front and became a yelping hungry mastiff of
democracy. I don't anticipate Dorregaray would play that part."
"Anyhow," I persisted, "the Carlist General has sent forth a manifesto
in his self-assumed capacity of commander-in-chief of the Vascongadas
and Navarre to the soldiers of the Spanish army. He calls upon them to
lay down their arms, promising them free discharges if they desire it,
but promotion, decorations, and rewards if they join his standard. What
do you think of that?"
"I do not blame him," said Mentor. "In thus tempting the army, he is
only doing as every military chief who has ever lifted himself to power
by a pronunciamiento has done. The sergeants and corporals are
invariably lured with the bait that they shall be made captains and
lieutenants, the common soldiers that their pay and rations shall be
increased. Such men as go over to Dorregaray only act as too many of
their predecessors have acted. In this instance they have an excuse;
they can say, 'We were Royalist soldiers a few weeks ago; we are
transformed into Republican soldiers now. Our will was never consulted.
We are Royalist still, therefore we rally to Don Carlos, who represents
the principle of Monarchy.' They could say this, but I am far from
thinking they will. Spaniards of the rank and file do not chop logic; it
is the non-commissioned officers who initiate mutinies for purposes of
personal advancement; the private is a machine, not a thinking bayonet."
In response to my inquiry as to the influence which remained to the
Church, my Mentor shook his head, and said outside the hilly regions
where Carlism prevailed, and the remote rural districts, it was next to
null, save among the more comfortable class of women. The common
Spaniard took his faith as he would his heritage; he was a Christian
because his fathers were so before him--it was an affair of family--and
his calling himself a Christian, which signifies Christian exclusively
of the Roman Catholic persuasion, is a survival of the thoughts
bequeathed by the Saracenic occupation. He who was not a Christian was a
"Moro," and to this day the Jew or the Protestant is a Moor, tarred with
the same brush as the turbaned Islamite.
"The Church," concluded Mentor, "is not to blame if it bums incense and
assaults Heaven with prayers for such a change of Government as will
bring money to its coffers. If the Republic last, the Church will be
separated from the State, and every congregation will have to pay its
own minister. That would be frank, at all events; but so long as there
is a State religion, the ministers of which are supposed to be paid, it
is a scandal not to pay them, and their reverences are perfectly right
to turn Carlist or Alfonsist."
After these discussions in the reading-room I sometimes felt as if I had
been endeavouring to unravel the Schleswig-Holstein tangle. Was I not
right in warning off the ladies? Truly, Spanish politics are confusing.
My usual reflections upon them resolved themselves into the uneasy
conviction that they were a Lincoln morass overlaid by a London fog,
and that it would be a joy to have some thousands of Will-o'-the-Wisp
guides prisoned to the chins in the quagmire, and replaced by one
benevolent despot bearing the light with strong, sure grasp.