"This periodical explosion of freedom and folly."--BECQUER: _El
Carnaval_.
Having re-formed our concept of a Spaniard to admit the elements of
natural vigor and determined diligence, we were surprised again to
find this tragic nation, whose fresh grief and shame had almost
deterred us from the indelicacy of intrusion, entering with eager zest
into the wild fun of Carnival. Sorrow was still fresh for the eighty
thousand dead in Cuba, the hapless prisoners in the Philippines, the
wretched _repatriados_ landed, cargo after cargo, at ports where some
were suffered to perish in the streets. Every household had its tale
of loss; yet, notwithstanding all the troubles of the time, Spain must
keep her Carnival. "It is one of the saddest and most disheartening
features of the situation," said a Spaniard to us. "There is no
earnestness here, no realization of the national crisis. The
politicians care for nothing but to enrich themselves, and the people,
as you see, care for nothing but to divert themselves."
Yet we looked from the madcap crowd to the closed shutters, keeping
their secrets of heartbreak, and remembered the words of Zorrilla,
"Where there is one who laughs, there is ever another who weeps in the
great Carnival of our life."
The parks of San Sebastian were gay with maskers and music, tickling
brushes and showers of _confetti_, on our last day there, but the
peculiar feature of the festivity in this Basque city is "the baiting
of the ox." On that Carnival-Sunday afternoon we found ourselves
looking down, from a safe balcony, upon the old _Plaza de la
Constitucion_, with its arcaded sides. The genuine bull-fights, which
used to take place here, have now a handsome amphitheatre of their
own, where, when the summer has brought the court to San Sebastian,
the choicest Andalusian bulls crimson the sand of the arena. But the
_Plaza de la Constitucion_, mindful of its pristine glory, still
furnishes what cheap suggestions it can of the terrible play. The
square below was crowded with men and boys, and even some hoydenish
girls, many in fantastic masks and gaudy dominos, while the tiers of
balconies were thronged with eager spectators. A strange and savage
peal of music announced that "the bull" was coming. That music was
enough to make the hereditary barbarian beat in any heart, but "the
bull"! At the further corner of the _plaza_, pulled by a long rope and
driven by a yelling rabble, came in, at a clumsy gallop, an astonished
and scandalized old ox. Never did living creature bear a meeker and
less resentful temper.
At first, beaten and pricked by his tormentors, he tore blindly round
and round the _plaza_, the long rope by which he was held dragging
behind him, and sometimes, as he wheeled about, tripping up and
overturning a bunch of the merrymakers. This was a joy to the
balconies, but did not often happen, as the people below showed a
marvellous dexterity in skipping over the rope just in time to escape
its swinging blow. Sometimes the poor, stupid beast entangled his own
legs, and that, too, was a source of noisy glee. But, on the whole,
he was a disappointing and inglorious ox. He caused no serious
accident. Nothing could ruffle his disposition. The scarlet cloaks
waved in his eyes he regarded with courteous interest; he wore only a
look of grieved surprise when he was slapped across the face with red
and yellow banners; tweaks of the tail he endured like a Socrates, but
now and then a cruel prod from a sharp stick would make him lower his
horns and rush, for an instant, upon the nearest offender. The
balconies would shout with the hope of something vicious and violent
at last, but the mobile crowd beneath would close in between the ox
and his assailant, a hundred fresh insults would divert his attention,
and indeed, his own impulses of wrath were of the shortest. To the end
he was hardly an angry ox--only a puzzled, baffled, weary old creature
who could not make out, for the life of him, into what sort of red and
yellow pasture and among what kind of buzzing hornets his unlucky
hoofs had strayed.
Finally he gave the enigma up and stood wrapped in a brown study among
his emboldened enemies, who clung to his horns and tail, tossed
children upon his back, tickled his nostrils with their hat brims, and
showered him with indignities. The balconies joined in hooting him out
of the _plaza_, but he was so pleased to go that I doubt if human
scorn of his beastly gentleness really interfered with his appetite
for supper. He trotted away to that rude clang of music, the babies
who were dancing to it on their nurses' arms not more harmless than
he. And although that worrying half hour may have told upon his
nerves, and his legs may have ached for the unaccustomed exercise, no
blood was to be seen upon him. It was all a rough-and-tumble romp,
nothing worse, but the balconies would have liked it better had it
been flavored with a broken leg or two. A few sprawlings over the rope
really amounted to so little. But the _toro de fuego_ was to come
there Tuesday evening, and when this blazing pasteboard bull, with
fireworks spluttering all over him from horns to tail, is dragged
about among the throng, there is always a fine chance of explosions,
burnings, and even of blindings for life.
But Carnival Tuesday found us no longer in sunny San Sebastian. We
were shivering over a _brasero_ in storied Burgos, a city chill as if
with the very breath of the past. And the Spanish _brasero_, a great
brass pan holding a pudding of ashes, plummed with sparks, under a
wire screen, is the coldest comfort, the most hypocritical heater,
that has yet come my way.
Our Monday had been spent in a marvellous journey through the
Pyrenees, whose rugged sublimities were bathed in the very blue of
Velazquez, a cold, clear, glorious blue expanding all the soul. These
are haunted mountains, with wild legends of lonely castles, where
fierce old chieftains, beaten back by the Franks, shut themselves in
with their treasure and died like wounded lions in their lairs. We
passed fallen towers from whose summits mediaeval heralds had trumpeted
the signal for war, ruined convents whence the sound of woman's
chanting was wont to startle the wolves of the forest, mysterious
lakes deep in whose waters are said to shine golden crowns set with
nine precious pearls--those ducal coronets that Rome bestowed upon her
vassals--craggy paths once trod by pilgrims, hermits, jugglers,
minstrels, and knights-errant, and shadowy pine groves where, when
the wind is high, the shepherds still hear the weeping ghost of the
cruel princess, whose beauty and disdain slew dozens of men a day
until her love was won and scorned, so that she died of longing.
We had reached Burgos at dusk and, without pausing for rest or food,
had sallied out for our first awe-stricken gaze up at the far-famed
cathedral towers, then had ignominiously lost our way over and over in
the narrow, crooked streets and been finally marched back to our hotel
by a compassionate, though contemptuous, policeman. My artist comrade
was fairly ill by morning with a heavy cold, but she would not hear of
missing the cathedral and sneezed three or four enraptured hours away
in its chill magnificence. As we came to know Spanish and Spaniards
better, they would exclaim "_Jesus, Maria y Jose!_" when we sneezed,
that the evil spirit given to tickling noses might take flight; but
the Burgos sacristan was too keen to waste these amenities on
stammering heretics. What we thought of the cathedral is little to the
purpose of this chapter. In a word, however, we thought nothing at
all; we only felt. It was our first introduction to one of the monster
churches of Spain, and its very greatness, the terrible weight of all
that antiquity, sanctity, and beauty, crushed our understanding. Like
sleepwalkers we followed our guide down the frozen length of nave and
aisles and cloisters; we went the round of the fifteen chapels,
splendid presence-chambers where the dead keep sculptured state; we
looked, as we were bidden, on the worm-eaten treasure-chest of the
Cid, on the clock whose life-sized tenant, Papa-Moscas, used to scream
the hours to the embarrassment of long-winded pulpiteers, on the
cathedral's crown of fretted spires whose marvellous tracery was
chiselled by the angels, and on the "Most Holy Christ of Burgos," the
crucified image that bleeds every Friday.
Fulfilled with amazement, we searched our way back to the hotel
through the sleety rain, ate a shivering luncheon at the "_mesa
redonda_," that "round table" which is never round, and agreed to
postpone our anticipated visits to the haunts of the Cid until a less
inclement season. For of course we should come back to Burgos. The
proud old city seemed to fill all the horizon of thought. How had we
lived so long without it? That the stormy afternoon was not favorable
to exploration mattered little. We peeped down from our balconies into
the ancient streets, half expecting the exiled Cid to come spurring
up, seeking the welcome which we, like all the craven folk of Burgos,
must refuse him.
"With sixty lances in his train my Cid rode up the town,
The burghers and their dames from all the windows looking down;
And there were tears in every eye, and on each lip one word:
'A worthy vassal--would to God he served a worthy lord!'
Fain would they shelter him, but none durst yield to his desire.
Great was the fear through Burgos town of King Alphonso's ire.
Sealed with his royal seal hath come his letter to forbid
All men to offer harborage or succor to my Cid.
And he that dared to disobey, well did he know the cost--
His goods, his eyes, stood forfeited, his soul and body lost.
A hard and grievous word was that to men of Christian race;
And since they might not greet my Cid, they hid them from his
face."
Meanwhile the streets were a living picture-book. Muffled cavaliers,
with cloaks drawn up and hats drawn down till only the dance of
coal-black eyes, full of fire and fun, was visible between, saluted
our balcony with Carnival impertinence. Beggars of both sexes, equally
wound about with tattered shawls, reached up expectant hands as if we
were made of Spanish pennies. A funeral procession passed, with the
pale light of tapers, the chanting of priests, with purple-draped
coffin, and mourners trooping on foot--men only, for in Spain women
never accompany their dead either to church or grave. A troop of
infantry, whose dapper costume outwent itself in the last touch of
bright green gloves, dazzled by, and then came a miscellany of
maskers. It was rather a rag-tag show, take it all in all--red devils
with horns, friars extremely fat, caricatures of English tourists with
tall hats and perky blue eye-glasses, giants, dwarfs, tumblers, and
even a sorry Cid mounted on a sorrier Bavieca. But the climax of
excitement was reached when a novel bull-fight wheeled into view. It
was a stuffed calf this time, set on wheels and propelled by a merry
fellow of the tribe of Joseph, if one might judge by his multi-colored
attire. With white hood, black mask, blue domino, garnet arms, and
yellow legs, he was as cheery as a bit of rainbow out of that sombre
sky. All the people in sight hastened to flock about him, policemen
left their beats, and servant maids their doorways, an itinerant band
of gypsy girls ceased clashing their tambourines, the blind beggar
opened his eyes, and the small boys were in ecstasies. For over an
hour the populace played with that mimic bull in this one spot under
our windows, good-humored _caballeros_ lending their scarfs and cloaks
to delighted urchins, who would thrust these stimulating objects into
the calf's bland face and then run for their lives, while the motley
Mask trundled his precious image in hot pursuit behind them. We were
reminded of the scene months after by an old painting in the Escorial,
depicting an almost identical performance. Spain is not a land of
change.
But that teeth-chattering cold, "_un frio de todos los demonios_,"
eased our farewells to Burgos, and night found us dividing the
privileges of a second-class carriage with two black-bearded
Castilians, who slept foot to foot along the leather-cushioned seat on
the one side, while we copied their example on the other. I started
from my first doze at some hubbub of arrival to ask drowsily, "Is this
Madrid?" "Be at peace, senora!" cooed one of these sable-headed
neighbors, in that tone of humorous indulgence characteristic of the
dons when addressing women and children. "It is twelve hours yet to
Madrid. Slumber on with tranquil heart." So we lay like warriors
taking our rest, with our travelling rugs, in lieu of martial cloaks,
about us, until the east began to glow with rose and fire, revealing a
bleak extent of treeless, tawny steppe.
We had only a few days to give to "the crowned city" then, but those
sufficed for business, for a first acquaintance with the _Puerta del
Sol_ and its radiating avenues, a first joy in the peerless _Museo del
Prado_, and a brilliant glimpse of Carnival. We found the great drive
of the _Prado_, on Ash Wednesday afternoon, reserved for carriages and
maskers. Stages were erected along one side of the way, and on the
other the park was closely set with chairs. Stages and chairs were
filled with a well-clad, joyous multitude, diverted awhile from their
pretty labors of shooting roses and showering _confetti_ by the
fascinating panorama before their eyes. The privileged landaus that
held the middle of the road were laden with the loveliest women of
Castile. Carriages, horses, and coachmen were all adorned, but these
showy equipages only served as setting to the high-bred beauty of the
occupants. The cream of Madrid society was there. The adults were
elegantly dressed, but not as masqueraders. The children in the
carriages, however, were often costumed in the picturesque habits of
the provinces--the scarlet cap and striped shawl of the Catalan
peasant, the open velvet waistcoat, puffed trousers, and blue or red
sash of the Valencian, the gayly embroidered mantle of the Andalusian
mountaineer, the cocked hat and tasselled jacket of the gypsy. Moors,
flower girls, fairies, French lords and ladies of the old regime, even
court fools with cap and bells, were brightly imaged by these little
people, to whom the maskers on foot seemed to have left the monopoly
of beauty. The figures darting among the landaus, in and out of which
they leaped with confident impudence, were almost invariably
grotesques--smirking fishwives, staring chimney-sweeps, pucker-mouthed
babies, and scarecrows of every variety. Political satires are sternly
forbidden, and among the few national burlesques, we saw nowhere any
representation of Uncle Sam. He was hardly a subject of the King of
Nonsense then.
Squeaking and gibbering, the maskers, unrebuked, took all manner of
saucy liberties. A stately old gentleman rose from his cushion in a
crested carriage to observe how gallantly a bevy of ladies were
beating off with a hail of _confetti_ and bonbons an imploring
cavalier who ran by their wheels, and when he would have resumed his
seat he found himself dandled on the knees of a grinning Chinaman.
Sometimes a swarm of maskers would beset a favorite carriage,
climbing up beside the coachman and snatching his reins, standing on
the steps and throwing kisses, lying along the back and twitting the
proudest beauty in the ear or making love to the haughtiest. This
all-licensed masker, with his monstrous disguise and affected squeal,
may be a duke or a doorkeeper. Carnival is democracy.
Meanwhile the inevitable small boy, whose Spanish variety is
exceptionally light of heart and heels, gets his own fun out of the
occasion by whisking under the ropes into this reserved avenue and
dodging hither and thither among the vehicles, to the fury of the
mounted police, whose duty it is to keep the public out. One
resplendent rider devoted his full energies for nearly an hour to the
unavailing chase of a nimble little rogue who risked ten of his nine
lives under coaches and in front of horses' hoofs, but always turned
up laughing with a finger at the nose.
Yet this jocund day did not set without its tragedy. A hot-tempered
Madrileno, abroad with his wife, resented the attentions paid her by
one of the maskers and shot him down. The mortally wounded man was
found to be a physician of high repute. This was not the only
misadventure of the afternoon, a lady losing one eye by the blow of a
flying sugar-plum.
Our next night journey was less fortunate than our first, though it
should be remembered that our discomforts were partly due to our
persistency in travelling second-class. The carriage had its full
complement of passengers, and each of our eight companions brought
with him an unlawful excess of small luggage. Valises, boxes, bundles,
sacks, cans, canes, umbrellas wedged us in on every side, while our
own accumulation of grips, shawl-straps, hold-alls, and sketching kit
denied us even the relief of indignation. We all sat bolt upright the
night through in an atmosphere that sickens memory. Not a chink of
window air would those sensitive _caballeros_ endure, while the smoke
of their ever puffing cigarettes clouded the compartment with an
uncanny haze that grew heavier hour by hour. Conversation, which
seldom flagged, became a violent chorus at those intervals when the
conductor burst in for another chapter of his serial wrangle with a
fiery gentleman who refused to pay full fare. Every don in the
carriage, even to the chubby priest nodding in the coziest corner, had
an unalterable conviction as to the rights and wrongs of that
question, and men we had supposed, from their swaying and snoring,
fast asleep, would leap to their feet when the conductor entered,
fling out their hands in vehement gestures, and dash into the midst of
the vociferous dispute. Lazy Spaniards, indeed! We began to wish that
the Peninsula would cultivate repose of manner. Our tempers were
sorely shaken, and when, in the pale chill of dawn, we arrived at
Cordova, sleepless, nauseated, and out of love with humanity, we had
every prospect of passing a wretched forenoon.
Thus it is I am inclined to believe we lay down under an orange tree
and dreamed a dream of the "Arabian Nights." Or perhaps it was only
another freak of the Carnival. At all events, a cup of coffee, and the
world was changed. Cordova! A midsummer heat, a land of vineyards and
olive groves, palms and aloes, a white, unearthly city, with narrow,
silent, deathlike streets, peopled only by drowsy beggars and by
gliding maskers that seemed more real than this Oriental picture in
which they moved, high walls with grated, harem-like windows, and an
occasional glimpse, through some arched doorway, into a
marble-floored, rose-waving, fountain-playing patio, enchanted and
mysterious, a dream within a dream. Cordova is more than haunted. It
is itself a ghost. The court of the Spanish caliphs, at once the Mecca
and the Athens of the West, a holy city which counted its baths and
mosques by hundreds, a seat of learning whose universities were
renowned for mathematics and philosophy, chemistry, astronomy, and
medicine, and within whose libraries were treasured manuscripts by
hundreds of thousands, a star of art and poetry, it ever reproaches,
by this lovely, empty shadow, the Christian barbarism that spurned
away the Moors.
The insulted Mosque of Cordova well-nigh makes Mohammedans of us all.
Entering by the studded Door of Pardon into the spacious Court of
Oranges, with its ancient trees and sparkling quintette of fountains,
one passes onward under the Arch of Blessings into a marble forest of
slender, sculptured pillars. The wide world, from Carthage to
Damascus, from Jerusalem to Ephesus and Rome, was searched for the
choicest shafts of jasper, breccia, alabaster, porphyry, until one
thousand four hundred precious columns bore the glory of rose-red
arches and wonder-roof of gilded and enamelled cedar. More than seven
thousand hanging lamps of bronze, filled with perfumed oil, flashed
out the mosaic tints,--golds, greens, violets, vermilions,--of
ceiling, walls, and pavement. All this shining sanctity culminated in
the Mihrab, or Prayer-Niche, an octagonal recess whose shell-shaped
ceiling is hollowed from a single block of pure white marble. This
Holy of Holies held the Koran, bound in gold and pearls, around
which the Faithful were wont to make seven turns upon their knees, an
act of devotion that has left indisputable grooves in the marble of
the pavement.
[Illustration: AN ARAB GATEWAY IN BURGOS]
The Christian conquerors splashed whitewash over the exquisite
ceiling, hewed down the pillars of the outer aisles to give space for
a fringe of garish chapels, and even chopped away threescore
glistening columns in the centre to make room for an incongruous
Renaissance choir, with an altar of silver gilt and a big pink
retablo. We could have wandered for endless hours among the strange
half-lights and colored shadows of that petrified faith of Islam,
marvelling on the processes of time. It is claimed that the Arab
mosque rose on the site of a Roman temple, whence Mahomet drove forth
Janus, to be in his own turn expelled by Christ. The race of those who
bowed themselves in this gleaming labyrinth has fared ill at Spanish
hands. Even now a Moor, however courteous and cultured, is refused
admission to certain Castilian churches, as the Escorial.
How did we ever part from Cordova, from her resplendent, desecrated
mosque, her stone lanes of streets, her hinted patios, the Moorish
mills and Roman bridge of her yellow Guadalquivir? It must all have
been a morning dream, for the early afternoon saw us tucked away in
another second-class carriage speeding toward Granada.
We were in beautiful Andalusia, _la tierra de Maria Santisima_. The
green slopes of the Sierra Morena, planted to the top with olive
groves, watched the beginnings of our journey, and banks of strange,
sweet flowers, with glimpses of Moorish minarets and groups of
dark-faced, bright-sashed peasants, looking as if they had just
stepped down from an artist's easel, beguiled us of all physical
discomforts save heat and thirst. When the sun was at its sorest, the
train drew up at a tumble-down station, and we looked eagerly for the
customary water seller, with his cry of "Water! Fresh water! Water
cooler than snow!" But it was too warm for this worthy to venture out,
and our hopes fastened on a picturesque old merchant seated in a shaft
of cypress shade beside a heap of golden oranges. Those juicy globes
were a sight to madden all the parched mouths in the train, and
imploring voices hailed the proprietor from window after window. But
our venerable hidalgo smoked his cigarette in tranquil ease,
disdaining the vulgarities of barter. At the very last moment we
persuaded a ragged boy in the throng of bystanders to fetch us a
hatful of the fruit. Then the peasant languidly arose, followed the
lad to our window, named an infinitesimal price, and received his coin
with the bow of a grandee. He was no hustler in business, this
Andalusian patriarch, but his dignity was epic and his oranges were
nectar.
We shall never know whether or not we had an adventure that evening. A
wild-eyed tatterdemalion swung himself suddenly into our compartment
and demanded our tickets, but as all the Andalusians looked to our
unaccustomed view like brigands, we did not discriminate against this
abrupt individual, but yielded up our strips of pasteboard without
demur. A swarthy young Moor of Tangier, the only other occupant of the
carriage, sharply refused to surrender his own until the intruder
should produce a conductor's badge, whereupon the stranger swore in
gypsy, or "words to that effect," wrenched open the door and fled,
like Judas, into the outer dark. The Moor excitedly declared to us
that our tickets would be called for at the station in Granada, that
we should have to pay their price to the gate-keeper, and that our
irregular collector, hiding somewhere along the train, would be
admitted by that corrupt official to a share in the spoils. Moved by
our dismay, this son of the desert thrust his head through the window
at the next stop, and roared so lustily for the conductor and the
civil guard that, in a twinkling, the robber, if he was a robber,
popped up in the doorway again, like a Jack-in-the-box, and rudely
flung us back the tickets. Thereupon our benefactor, if he was a
benefactor, solemnly charged us never, on the Granada road, to give up
anything to anybody who wore no gilt on his cap.
More and more the purple mountains were folding us about, until at
last we arrived at Granada, too tired for a thrill. Mr. Gulick's
constant care, which had secured us harborage in Madrid, had provided
welcome here. Content in mere well-being, it was not until the
following afternoon that tourist enterprise revived within us. Then we
somewhat recklessly wandered down from the Alhambra hill into the
heart of the People's Carnival, a second Sunday of festival given over
to the enjoyment of the lower classes. The grotesque costumes were
coarser than ever and the fun was rougher. The maskers cracked whips
at the other promenaders, blew horns, shook rattles, and struck about
them with painted bladders, but the balconies were bright with the
bewitching looks of Andalusian beauties, each vying with the rest in
throwing the many-colored _serpentinas_, curly lengths of paper that
crisp themselves in gaudy fetters about their captives. A single
business house in Granada claimed to have sold over a million of
these, representing a value of some ten thousand dollars, during
Carnival week. Southern Spain was grumbling bitterly against the
Government and the war taxes, and in Seville, where a tax is put on
masks, the Carnival had been given up this year as last; but Granada
would not be cheated of her frolic. Our study of this closing phase of
the Carnival was cut short by the recollection that it was, above all,
the _fiesta_ of pickpockets. Finding ourselves, on the superb _Paseo
del Salon_, in the midst of a hooting, jostling, half-gypsy mob,
rained upon with _confetti_, called upon in broken French and English,
pressed upon by boys and beggars, and happening to catch sight of the
stately bronze statue of Columbus which the women of Granada had
recently stoned because, by discovering America, he brought all the
Cuban troubles upon Spain, we took the hint of the wise navigator's
eye and decided that we two stray Yankees might be as well off
somewhere else. "Feet, why do I love you?" say the Spaniards; and so
said we, suiting the action to the word.