The Carnival--About Kissing Feet--Mummers and Masquers--The Paseo
de Recoletos--The Writer is taken for Cluseret--Incongruity in
Costume--Shrove Tuesday--Panic on the Prado--A Fancy Ball--The
"Entierro de la Sardina"--Lenten Amusements--A Spanish
Mystery--"Pasion y Muerte de Jesus"--Of the Stage Stagey--Critical
Remarks.
Simultaneously with the Ministerial crisis we were tortured by the
throes of the Carnival, which was a trial too great for a Republic so
young. But the weather came to the aid of the powers that were, and
prevented the festival from rising to a height of merriment when it
might become tumultuous. The opening day was one of leaden skies and
moist pavements in the forenoon, of little patches of ultramarine above
and little eruptions of noise below in the afternoon. There is one
consolation on a wet day--you can conveniently make inspection of the
extremities of dear womankind. I no longer elevate my eyebrows at the
Spanish formula of compliment to the mistress of one's affections--"I
kiss your feet." Anyone could kiss them with pleasure; they are so tiny,
shapely, and sylph-like. There surely are the "little mice" of
Suckling's ballad! Atalanta must have had ankles like those revealed
under the lifted skirts of the doncella yonder, Cinderella such another
pair of arched insteps. But one cannot contemplate them for ever, bitten
by the statuary's mania for the symmetric though he be.
On the second morning, there was a light grey fog, like the smoke after
gunpowder, on the square called "The Gate of the Sun." I have tasted the
joys of Carnival elsewhere--at Rome in Papal times and at Paris in
Imperial times--but never did the tomfoolery like me less. Muggy
weather, miserable Carnival. No showers of _confetti_, no procession of
the _boeuf gras_ even. Here and there the orchestras of the theatres,
clad in the cast-off finery of the supernumeraries thereof, parade the
streets, and make dissonance with their instruments. Very German-bandish
this dissonance sounds, with a variety of horror thrown in liberally in
the shape of tambourines and triangles. One corps of mumming musicians
is dressed as Zouaves; another might be directors of a Funeral Company,
so sad their garments; a third is got up in a costume semi-nightshirt,
semi-dressing-gown; all send out agents to tout for _backsheesh_. That
is their great point of resemblance. The masquers are few in the
streets, and, such as they are, wear their motley as if for pay, not for
pastime. They are of the usual order, Pierrots, Polichinelles, and
cavaliers, with no wigs, with powdered wigs, and with curly wigs, and
with vizors hideous or ghastly, or simply droll and grotesque. Among the
latter are some which might have been designed by Dykwnkyn for a Drury
Lane pantomime; but the individual who carried off the palm of burlesque
was an equestrian I met in the Plaza Mayor, looking like one of the men
in armour of a Lord Mayor's show with bonneted head-gear, astride of a
pot-bellied Clydesdale. Perhaps he may have been caricaturing "the
ingenious gentleman" of La Mancha. My most grateful anticipation of
Spain was, that it was behind the age, and was in no hurry to overtake
it. But this did not hold good in Madrid, and dear womankind with the
tiny feet was the culprit. She disfigured herself at that epoch with an
enormous bustle on which a Barbary ape might conveniently rehearse a
bolero. Well, we have had our Grecian bends, our crinolines and
crinolettes, our pull-backs and Piccadilly limps. Fashion spells despot
everywhere, and dear womankind will cheerfully obey its dictates, even
though she have to blur her cheeks with patches, distort her spine, or
tightlace herself into consumption.
In the afternoon a long procession of carriages (mostly hired) traverses
the Calle de Alcalá and the promenade to the left of the fountain where
Cybele is sculptured driving a pair of meekest ox-like lions; the folk
in the carriages are not wildly joyous in their dissipation, nor are the
horses that draw them restive with excitement. Everything is dull,
consequently respectable; orderly, consequently dreary. The Foresters'
_fête_ at the Crystal Palace is more hilarious. No shafts of delicate
raillery are shot by cherry lips; no peal of silvery laughter rings
out. The Carnival is "stale, flat, and unprofitable," except to those
mumming musicians who have paid sixteen shillings for the license to beg
during the three mock-mirthful days. I survey the scene from a window in
the Paseo de Recoletos, and get all my enjoyment out of the cynical
remarks of a monstrously fine Burgundian lady, who criticises the
dresses of her Spanish sisters as they glide by. The dresses are very
tasteless, but the Frenchwoman's remarks are very ill-natured, and
ill-nature is gratifying when your neighbour is its object. A friend
enters and claps me on the back.
"Do you know, old fellow, that that stormy petrel of the Revolution,
Cluseret of the Commune, is said to be in Madrid?"
"Never! What brings him here?"
"_Said_ to be, was my expression," he added. "As a fact, I don't believe
he is here, but they take you for him. That is how the tale of his
arrival has got into the papers."
The Burgundian lady turns. "Cluseret!" she ejaculates; "absurd! I have
seen Cluseret; he is much taller and much handsomer than this
gentleman!"
I bowed to hide my face, which was what Mr. Whistler might have called a
symphony in black and red, frown and blush. I have since thought what a
caustic retort I might have made if I had said politely, "And, it is to
be hoped, much more well-bred." But I said nothing, for the same reason
that Dr. Johnson gave once to Boswell--"I had nothing ready, sir."
The panorama underneath is duller now; occasionally a foolish horseman
canters by, covered as to his person and his charger's quarters with a
flowing roquelaure of sheeny green satin; or a black-haired damsel trips
it by, with features concealed by sky-blue mask, and proportions by an
outer vesture of a painfully bright gamboge colour. I wonder is her hair
her own, and are her eyes black. Most likely they are--night eyes are
the rule here--the fair (that is the dark) sex are all going to
purgatory if the French couplet be authority:--
"Les yeux noirs
Vont au purgatoire."
Again fanciful reflection is broken in upon by the thrumming of guitars,
the shrill squeak of fifes, and the eternal whirr and jingle of the
tambourines and triangles, and I descend and make my way through the
fast-thickening crowds to my hotel. There, where the company, like the
waiters, is polyglot; where a noble, white-bearded English gentleman is
sandwiched between a little German professor and a Diputado to the
Congress, where French journalists sit by young American exquisites, who
are picking up notions in Europe, and mere tourists who have come to
"do" Spain in thirteen days are listening to the experiences of a mining
engineer from the West Riding of Yorkshire, who has been in the country
for thirteen years; the gossip, unlike the fun without, is fast and
furious. But as it is all of politics, and I gave the reader a dose of
that in the last chapter and may have to repeat it anon, I turn to the
windows and scan the ever-animated, always-varying picture on the Puerta
del Sol. Ladies in veils white and black, as of Genoa and Milan
respectively, pass and re-pass, gilt missals in their hands. They will
be at the masked balls to-night, for this, as I have said already, is
the home of paradox, where the announcement of the church in which the
Quarant'ore, or Forty-hours' Exposition of the Sacrament, is being held,
is printed in the same column with the theatrical advertisements. Over
the way stand a group in the national "capa." Why do they not wear
slouched and plumed beavers? To me a chimney-pot hat surmounting a cloak
is as dire an outrage on poetic association as a Venetian bravo with a
quizzing-glass. It offends the sense of fitness. What if the Madrileños
were to take to the Ulster-coat? It would make a capital Carnival
disguise at all events. But the cloak, is it not mysterious,
brigandish--tragic, if you will? Mark that loosely-built, tawny man of
dare-devil aspect on the edge, bending intently towards the excited
speaker in the middle. Something has discomposed him, for his cheeks
purple. There is an agitated flutter under the cloak, and its folds are
flung back. You expect to be startled by the blade of a stiletto, and
out comes a soiled pocket-handkerchief! It is as if Jupiter Tonans were
to threaten a thunderbolt and compromise with a sneeze.
The third day of the Carnival, Shrove Tuesday, was all that could be
desired, sunny, sprightly, bustling. The streets palpitated with
merrymakers walking, riding, or driving, most of them handsomely
dressed; the music--good, bad, and indifferent--was unceasing; the
legions of roysterers attired themselves in every conceivable vagary of
costume, even to the cheap resource of a chintz dressing-gown. They were
cheerful, but in a business-like matter-of-fact way, and as they
promenaded twirled corncrakes, jingled tin cans, and tootled horns. Few
women disgraced themselves by appearing in men's clothes. Madrid is more
continent than Paris; and, to its credit be it recorded, there was
neither drunkenness nor horse-play. In the afternoon the scene in the
Prado was kaleidoscopic in variety and beauty and motion; it had in it
the gay element of the true Carnival, and those who had held aloof
before or had been deterred from sharing in the _fête_ by the
inauspicious natural weather or by nervousness owing to the unsettled
condition of the political weather, came out fresh, frolicsome, and bent
on making up for lost time. Some of the dresses were luxurious, and
triumphantly bore the test of sunshine, which is inexorable for what is
worn or seedy or imitation. And yet there seldom was a time to which the
stereotyped figure of speech about dancing on a volcano more strikingly
applied. Electricity was in the air; the troops were under arms; the
Deputies were consulting under the protection or the threat (as the
balance of feeling might incline) of canister-stuffed cannon, and it was
quite within the range of the possible that before nightfall the cavalry
might be fetlock deep in blood, and the carnage of the Dos de Mayo be
repeated--a worse carnage, for the Spaniards who fell then were patriots
slain gloriously fighting against the foreigner, and now they would be
Spaniards killed by brothers.
The stream of pleasure was in its full force and flow when a strange
murmur followed by a succession of slight screams arrested the attention
of the merrymakers. Faces were turned inquiringly towards the point
whence the sounds came; the faces grew serious as a carriage was noticed
breaking from the ranks and driving smartly down a side-street, they
were overspread with alarm as other carriages filed off, and then, quick
as a cloud overcasts the sun, a curtain of gloom fell upon the moving
multitude. There was a halt as if by general consent, a dead silence, a
thrill of trepidation, and a rapid rush and scurry hither and thither to
shelter. Trailing skirts were caught up, vizors were thrown aside,
grey-bearded patriarchs tore off their wigs and spectacles, the fiddling
and singing came to an abrupt ending, and were replaced by curses and
shrieks; all order and courtesy were cast to the four winds of heaven.
It was a perfect tragi-comedy; a mixture of the terrible, the risible,
the ominous, the rococo. I never saw transformation so sharp. It was as
if there was no room for any less ignoble feeling in the lately jocose,
bantering throngs than self-preservation. Drivers lashed their horses
and mules and galloped off furiously; equestrians careered towards all
points of the compass; those on foot bolted into every hall-way that
stood ajar, or disappeared down the nearest openings; shrubs and flowers
were trampled upon, and in a span shorter than it takes to recount it,
the avenue of the Prado was a desert. It was fierce wholesale scamper
and stampede. The roadway and parks were strewn with fans, masks,
pocket-handkerchiefs, gloves and slippers; the entire company of
masquerading Arabs, Prussian officers, Morris dancers, Inquisitors, and
troubadours had taken incontinent flight, most of them breathless and
white; the ladies in their varied characters of gipsies, grisettes,
Galician nurses, and Court coquettes had all scudded off in such a
dismayed flutter that they had forgotten to swoon, and forfeited the
finest of opportunities of breaking into hysterics. They were really
frightened. I sought refuge (from what I knew not, whether earthquake,
hurricane or revolution) in a thick clump of bushes at the side of the
Paseo, where I stumbled over a panting make-believe toreador, and a
curious wire-woven article of ladies' dress, which latter I appropriated
as trophy. By-and-by, as no fresh cry of alarm was raised, the
bull-fighter crawled out, and I took heart of grace to return to the
centre of the town, where I learned that the scare was groundless. It
had its origin in the glitter of the bayonets of some soldiers returning
from their duties at the Palace of the Congress. Madrid was timid as a
sick girl. It struck me that if there had been genuine cause for the
panic, and that a charge had been made or a volley with lead fired,
there would have been unequalled scope for a picture of the type of
Gérôme's "Duel after the Bal Masqué," but on a more liberal
scale--Polichinelle pierced by a bayonet-thrust, the floured face of
Pierrot streaked with blood, and poor Jack Pudding sprawling in the
death-agonies in the gutter.
The festivities were prolonged to the small hours of the night, or
rather of the morning, none the less vigorously for the passing
fear-spasm in the Prado; the masked balls at the theatres were packed
with guests who enjoyed themselves, or fancied they did, which is as
much as one can reasonably expect in this mundane sphere sometimes.
The "Marseillaise" from a vibrating brass band might be heard, nay
almost felt, crashing through the glass-doors and bursting in a cataract
of sound through the drapery at the entrances of the café on the
ground-floor of the Fonda de Paris at the hour when honest burgesses
should be _tête-à-tête_ with the pillow.
On Ash Wednesday, which rose rainily, there was an augmentation in the
average of headaches, and a rise in the rates for apothecary's stuff.
The pious revellers went (with an interval for washing and change of
clothes) from the ball-room to the churches to receive the ashes.
"Remember, man, thou art but dust, and unto dust thou shalt return,"
says the priest, and smears their foreheads with the cinders of last
year's palm-branches. Another custom, peculiar to the date, the
"entierro de la sardina," was duly observed by those wicked rogues, the
non-pious revellers. The sardina is not the fish, but a portion of the
intestines of a pig, which is laid to earth with pseudo-lamentation in
token of _carne vale_, farewell to flesh-meat for forty days. With a
lugubrious affectation of grief the funeral pageant passed. It was very
profane--an undissembled mockery of a religious procession. A banner
striped pink and yellow and inscribed "á los Cubanos" was carried in
front by a fellow in West Indian negro dress with blackened face. Next
came a troop of blackened acolytes, two by two, and then a canopy such
as is borne over the Host, which canopy was held in travesty of homage
over a beer-keg. A sacrilegious choir, chanting a parody of a Gregorian
hymn, paced behind, and a gigantic blackguard, the _serpent du village_,
supplied a droning accompaniment from a bassoon. A blackened
high-priest, with a conical black hat and a cope bee-barred black and
yellow, closed the burlesque train and made believe to read a mass-book
through his pantomimic goggles. There was an attendant who rang a
funeral bell, another who tapped a muffled drum, and a third who swung
right under the nostrils of the onlookers a censer containing ground
resin made vile to the smell by some fetid compound. Occasionally the
profane rascals halted for a pull at a goat-skin of wine.
There are some queer customs, the undeniable relics of paganism, in
Spain. On Christmas-eve the streets are paraded by men rattling pots,
just as the Romans used to celebrate the row that was made in Olympus to
hide the birth of Jupiter from Saturn. In the Basque provinces they
honour the Virgin Mary under the name of Astarte, a clear loan from the
worship of Venus. As I am treating of queer customs, it is worth
chronicling that the Republicans entered the churches as soon as their
favourite Government was proclaimed and frantically rang the bells. A
Bishop took care to exorcise the Republican demon next day by carefully
sprinkling the bells with holy-water.
For all the Lent, the treacherous and trying weather, the wars and
rumours of wars, Madrid enjoyed herself, ate, drank and made merry,
flirted and gambled. The Opera, a cosy well-frequented resort of the
fashionable set, was open, and gave the _Creation_ and _L'Africaine_,
and the usual repertory of musical masterpieces of which I plead
profound technical ignorance redeemed by passionate fondness. The
soprano was that plump goddess with the dimpled double chin, fair-haired
Marie Sass. The orchestra was one of the finest I had ever heard, and
the chorus in personal appearance one of the ugliest I had ever seen,
and that, I can assure the reader, is saying much. The Zarzuela, a
play-house devoted to opera-bouffe--the sacred lamp of burlesque was not
trimmed--presented "Golden Dreams," a beautiful piece with plot and fun
not cumbered with that scenic sumptuousness which is trying to edge
acting ability off the boards elsewhere.
The respectable theatres in Madrid shut their doors on the Fridays in
Lent, and respectable theatre-goers remain at home. It is not the
correct thing to be seen pleasure-hunting on a day of mortification and
white meats. But actors must live, as well as in London. Those who are
connected with high-priced houses and are decently paid can afford to
lose one night in the week. But there are poorer followers of the
Thespian art who are in very bad case indeed, owing to this tribute to
religious scruple. If we are to be virtuous, well and good: but let us
be virtuous in earnest. We have bull-fights on the Sundays in Lent. Why
may we not enjoy the singing of Marie Sass in _Norma_ on a Lenten
Friday? This thin distinction between what is right and what is not--so
thin that men of the cold north cannot make it out--comes under the
category of those indigenous peculiarities which surpass all
understanding. Anyhow, it presses rather heavily on the humble votaries
of the sock and buskin who are attached to the middle-class houses, and
who are docked of one night's salary in every week of the seven in the
penitential season, in order that the proprieties of a public which is
not particular to a shade as to how it observes the Sabbath may be
respected. The low theatres--the Romea, where the Republic is glorified;
the Alhambra, where heels are kicked up and lewd songs are rolled forth;
the Capellanes, where monks and nuns are caricatured, have reason on
their side, at all events. They dare to be logical in their contempt for
the Church, and keep open all the year round, on Friday as on Sunday, in
the time of fasting as of feasting.
The Teatro Martin is not a low theatre nor yet is it a high-priced one.
The actors there are not rich, but the audience has some pretensions to
delicacy of taste. What is the lessee of the Martin to do during the
Lent? To rob his treasury of one night's receipts and cheat his patrons
of one night's enjoyment? That would be the last crime any spirited and
enterprising lessee would dream of committing--if he could avoid it.
From this dilemma the gentleman of the Teatro Martin has discovered an
escape. He opens his house on Fridays, but he converts it into a temple;
he reconciles amusement with religion; he produces a Passion Play! I
went to see it for the special reason that it was my privilege once to
describe the Passion Play in the Bavarian Highlands, and I was anxious
to compare one representation with the other, and, if possible, to renew
my emotions of the past.
The house was tolerably full, except the boxes, which were unoccupied,
save one by a sedate family party. Devout folk of the Latin race are
famous for the interest they take in the spectacular. They admire the
pomps of religion; and this Passion Play, which was almost a function,
had evidently brought many to the theatre who are seldom seen there on
ordinary occasions. I thought I could detect a pious bearing in the
pittites. The well-to-do persons--male and female--who sat patiently on
the mouldy benches looked serious, as if they had come to assist at a
sacrifice. There were old ladies there, I could almost take my word, who
are more often to be encountered, with morocco-bound prayer-books in
their shrivelled hands, creeping to early service. The gallery was
packed, and the gods, for gods, were gentlemanlike. There was nothing in
the aspect of the house meriting description--it was roomy, ill-lit,
full of draughts and dust--one of those houses we know so well. The
scene-painter, if the act-drop was a fair sample of his powers, was a
victim to colour-blindness; the orchestra showed a Republican freedom in
its scorn for the trammels of time and tune; but the prompter in his
hooded box, full in the middle of the range of footlights, was the
feature of the show. He had a very distinct voice--so distinct was it
that every sentence he directed to the actors rebounded from the flats,
came back in sibilant echo, and ascended to the gods. I have no
intention of giving an analysis of the piece; to speak the sad truth, it
did not come up to my expectations. Ober-Ammergau spoiled me for
exhibitions of the kind. I could not screw up my enthusiasm, tried I
ever so hard. That which charmed in Bavaria had no charm in Spain. The
stately panorama which was put before the awe-struck spectator in that
valley of the Ammer was not visible here. The blue sky overhead and the
eternal hills in sight above the walls of the simple wooden structure;
the music so tender and solemn; the clear-browed peasants losing their
identity in the fervid rendering of their parts; the enraptured
attention of the auditory, whose lips moved in prayer sometimes, and
whose eyes sometimes brimmed with tears, as if the scenes they watched
were real--those were things to be remembered. They were the points that
helped to make an impression in Bavaria, that dispelled prejudice and
replaced it with a pleased satisfaction which insensibly swelled to
admiration; but they were wanting in this stuffy play-house. No illusion
was possible. One never lost the consciousness that he was looking on at
a stage-play acted for money by indifferent stage-players. There was a
smell of paint and tobacco-smoke about. Then there was the voice of that
irrepressible prompter, the shaven faces of the hungry supernumeraries
who played the Roman soldiers, the gas-rakes, the shaky wings, the mark
of the trap-doors from which devils with a family likeness to the imps
of pantomime spring up to-night, and the statue of the Commander may
emerge to-morrow night, the scenes that would not run smoothly in the
grooves, and the stiff stereotyped exits and entrances. Everything was
of the stage, stagey. One could not get rid of the notion that Caiaphas
had dined on puchero with its flavour heightened by garlic. It was very
palpable that the Apostle Peter wore a wig and a beard of tow. Mary
Magdalen had an air of operatic resignation, and was troubled with the
arrangement of her drapery. There was a layer of pearl-powder on the
Virgin's cheeks.
I shall not bore the reader with an essay on mysteries and
miracle-plays; neither, as I have said, shall I attempt to analyse this
sacred drama, in seven acts, of "The Passion and Death of Jesus;" but I
shall take the liberty of giving an epitome of some notes, pencilled on
the spot, in the intervals of interruption by that loud prompter. The
_Pasion y Muerte de Jesus_ (that is the Spanish title) is written by Don
Enrique Zumel, who appears to have fathered as many pieces as Lope de
Vega, but whose pieces are not quite so well known. It was brought out
for the first time in this self-same Teatro Martin on the 3rd of March,
1871. It is in verse, and has some literary merit. In the main incidents
it resembles the Bavarian play, which does not deviate noticeably from
the Bible narrative. It is unnecessary, therefore, to go over the
incidents of its various acts. The Greek chorus to be remarked at
Ober-Ammergau is absent. The tableaux from the Old Testament prefiguring
events in the New are absent also. The first Act opens with a dialogue
between Magdalen and some women of Jerusalem. The Saviour, with the
Apostles, enters on the scene almost immediately after. Magdalen's
garments are rich with spangles; her mantle is scarlet; she has flowers
in her luxuriant tresses, and looks a vain creature. The Saviour is
personified by an actor with a singular likeness to Joseph Mayer, the
Bavarian Christus. Pale, clean-chiselled face, long black locks
smoothed over, downcast eyes, a meek demeanour generally--the
characteristics are identical. The voice of this man, who essayed so
awful a _rôle_, was low and sweet; and, to give him his due, he moved as
if he was filled with respect for his dangerous part. The Virgin comes
on the scene in the same Act. She is clad in blue nun-like raiment. The
people who filled up the background wore sandals, and had white towels,
swathed in folds like those of the turban, round their raven-black hair.
The entry into Jerusalem was shown, the Saviour being mounted on a white
ass. The orchestra here woke up, and played a joyous strain to a chorus
commencing--
"Con palmas y oliva
Y alegre cantar
Y pintados florea
De lindos colores
Hijas de Judá
Llegad! Llegad!"
and terminating with a hosannah to the Redeemer. The only anachronisms
in dress that impressed me in this first Act were a silk net with which
one young person of Jerusalem confined her rebellious hair, and a strip
of black velvet which another had fastened round her throat, bringing
out the whiteness of her skin by contrast. In the second Act Caiaphas
speaks of Jesus as the fomenter of a "thousand conflicts between Church
and State." The Last Supper is pictured after Leonardo da Vinci, and
Judas comes into relief, a sullen scowler, who overdoes his part thus
early. In the garden scene in the third Act the figure of Jesus in
prayer is shown with a ray of _luz Dumont_, the lime-light of our London
stage, playing upon it! I left my seat after this, and loitered outside
till the Crucifixion scene was on. At Ammergau it was appallingly
impressive; here it was sensational purely. The drama wound up with the
bursting open of the sepulchre. I came away free from any desire to
witness Don Enrique Zumel's production again. Without absolutely
shocking one's feelings on a subject which should be sacred and
approached reverently, if at all, his Passion Play offended fine taste
throughout because of the obtrusive staginess of its action, get-up, and
surroundings. Still the actors were occasionally applauded, and the
audience left in a contented mood.
But the provisional rulers took care that those under their guardianship
should have stronger pabulum than spoon-meat.
Napoleon I., unless the tale be a legend, used to order a new coat of
gilding to be laid on the dome of the Invalides when the people of Paris
chafed under his tyranny. That gave them something to talk
about--supplied a sensation of twenty-four hours. The Spanish Republican
governors are working on the same principle. _Panes et circenses_ was
the charter of the Roman plebs, "pan y toros" is that of the plebs of
Madrid. I do not know how it is with the bread, but the rulers let the
lieges have bulls galore to occupy their minds. There are grand corridas
for professionals and amateurs. Nor is bull-fighting the only pastime
provided for the populace; cock-fighting, with game-birds from the
Canary Islands, is also carried on every Sunday morning in a pit
constructed for the purpose, mains are scientifically fought, and money
is prodigally squandered. All countries have their peculiarities. In
some, people go racing on the Lord's Day; in others they are content
with getting drunk in the bosoms of their families.
* * * * *
NOTE BY MY VERY LEARNED AND AMIABLE ACCOMPLICE, DR. DANN.--That great
writer on Spanish folk-lore, Mesonero Romanos, better known as "El
curioso parlante," who flourished some fifty years since, seems utterly
ignorant of the record of the "entierro." His account only goes to show
that Spain is the most conservative country of Europe. A huge "sardina"
placed on the top of a bier is carried by a number of fellows in
carnival costume, each of them having on his head a cone of immense
height, somewhat resembling the dunce's cap that was formerly such a
usual thing in English village-schools. In front, and at the back of the
procession, appears a crowd of young men and of girls from the slums of
Southern Madrid, in three groups, called "coros," or choirs. There is
the "coro de mancebos," or young men's choir; the "coro de doncellas,"
or girls' choir; and the "coro de inocentes," or innocents' choir. The
_locus in quo_ is that part of the south of the Spanish capital which
extends from the Vistillas de San Francisco to the Church of San
Lorenzo; for, in contradistinction to Paris, the South of Madrid is
almost exclusively inhabited by what M. Gambetta used to call the new
social strata, while Mr. Bright spoke of them many years ago as the
_residuum_. In connection with the sardina, and rising on the same
coffin, a figure of "Uncle Marcos" is carried, somewhat similar in form
to the stuffed Guy Fawkeses which are carried about in the streets of
London on the 5th of November. When the procession has reached the
Puente Toledana, the figure of Uncle Marcos is burnt on a funeral pile,
and the sardina is buried in a ditch prepared on purpose. While all this
is going on, songs intended to be parodies of the Catholic Church hymns
and canticles are chanted by the accompanying choirs, and altogether the
performance is, for all practical purposes, a parody of the Church
processions so frequent in Spain and all Southern countries. When it is
all over, a good many of the actors indulge in libations. Not
unfrequently the burial of the sardina is followed by a free fight, and
half a dozen dead or wounded are the outcome of the battle. Disgusting
as the whole performance may appear, more especially the blasphemous
simulacre of religious worship, it must be admitted in palliation that
the very idea of mocking the rites of the Catholic, Apostolic and Roman
Church never so much as enters the minds of the performers, who would
repudiate with the utmost indignation the notion of intentionally
placing themselves outside the pale of the Church, and violating the
"buenas costumbres" by what they are doing.