"From Madrid to Heaven, and in Heaven a little window for
looking back to Madrid."--_Popular Saying._
Few foreigners can understand the sentiment of Spaniards for their
capital. Madrid is the crown city of Spain, not by manifest destiny,
but by decree of Philip II, who, as his nature was, better loved the
harsh Castilian steppe, baked by summer suns and chilled by
treacherous winds, than the romantic sierras and gracious river
valleys where earlier royal seats had been established. If in Madrid
the desert blossoms like the rose, it is a leafless rose, for the city
has no suburbs. It lacks both the charm of environment so potent in
Granada and Seville and the charm of ancient story, which these share
with those other bygone courts--Toledo, Valladolid, Valencia,
Saragossa. It is not a vital organ of modern European civilization,
like artistic Paris or strenuous London. And yet it is more
cosmopolitan, and hence less distinctively Spanish than other cities
of the Peninsula. It is devoted to the bull-fight and the lottery,
abounds in beggars and prostitutes, does not take naturally to
commerce, and is sadly behindhand with popular education. Yet
Madrilenos cannot be persuaded that the skies behold its equal, and
even over the Anglo-Saxon stranger its fascination gradually steals.
In the first place, the mirth of the home life beguiles the serious
foreigner. Spanish households have a pleasantness quite their own. All
the natural vivacity and kindliness of the people find free play at
home, where servants sing and children prattle, ladies chatter and
gentlemen jest, all in an atmosphere of ease, leisure, and spontaneous
sociability. The father is not preoccupied with business, the mother
has never dreamed of belonging to a woman's club, the children have
little taste for reading, and few books to read. So talking is the
order of the day, and, Sancho Panza! how they talk! Lingering half the
morning over the _desayuno_ of thick, cinnamon-flavored chocolate,
into which are dipped strips of bread, two-thirds of the afternoon
over the _almuerzo_, a substantial repast of meat and vegetables,
fruit and _dulces_, and all the evening over the _comida_, where soup
and the national dish of _puchero_ are added to the noontide bill of
fare, they chatter, chatter, chatter, like the teeth of Harry Gill.
Still, as of old, Spaniards are temperate in food and drink. "It's as
rare to see a Spaniard a drunkard as a German sober," wrote Middleton
three centuries ago. They use more water than wine, and although they
have a grand appetite for sweets, they take them in comparatively
simple forms. The national lack of enterprise is conspicuous even
here, for dearly as the Spaniard dotes on chocolate and sugar, Madrid
does not make her own chocolate creams, but imports them from Paris to
sell, when they are too hard to eat, at a price too high to pay.
But smoking and talking are indulgences which Madrilenos carry to
excess. Lounging on the balcony, a gayly painted case of paper
cigarettes at hand, they will pass hours in bantering their wives,
whom they worship much as they worship the images of Mary, delighting
to dress them in fine clothes and glittering trinkets, and expecting
in return, it is said, their pardon for a multitude of sins. And when
my lord saunters forth to "rest" in one of the iron chairs that line
the promenades, or in a cafe window, or at an open-air table before
one of the frequent stalls of cooling beverages, the women of the
house flock together in some airy corner, stitching away on their
endless embroideries, and receiving, with "a million kisses" and a
chorus of shrill welcomes, the mantilla-veiled ladies who come to
call.
If the afternoon is frying hot, it is just possible that the
gallivanting don will bethink himself to send home a tray of
_horchata_, a snowy, chilly, puckery refreshment, eaten by aid of
wafers in the form of little tubes that look and taste much like
wrapping paper. This treat gives fresh animation to the emulous
tongues. The slightest neighborhood incident, as recounted in such a
group, takes on a poetic vividness and a dramatic intensity, and when
it is all told over again at the dinner-table, excitement waxes so
high that long after the dishes and cloth have been removed the family
may still be found seated around the board, flashing a thousand lights
of suggestion and surmise on that dull bit of scandal. The husband
cannot cease from discussion long enough to read the evening paper,
nor the wife to send the little ones to bed, and midnight may find the
three generations, from grandfather to four-year-old, still talking
with might and main.
Accustomed guests come at once to the dining room, ready to contribute
their share to the lively clash of voices, or to take part in one of
the characteristic games of a Spanish family circle, as lottery. In
this favorite pastime, victory, including a goodly handful of coppers,
falls to him whose checked and numbered square of pasteboard is most
quickly filled with beans. These are placed on the squares called by
the bag-holder, who draws numbers haphazard from his sibylline sack.
When the small hours come in, the company may adjourn to the sala for
dancing and music, but conversation under cover of these gushes on
more impetuously than ever--the Castilian art of arts.
One of the chief graces of the _tertulias_ consists in their
informality--their frank simplicity. Even on a saint day--a day
consecrated to the saint whose name some member of the family
bears--while all the nearer friends drop in for congratulation, with
perhaps a gift of flowers, in case of a lady, or sweetmeats for a
child, the _tertulia_ requires no further exercise of hospitality than
an open door and a feast of words. There is more blithesomeness, for
_hay santo en casa_ (there is a saint in the house), but no more
parade, with its preliminary fret and fuss.
The streets of Madrid, too, have a curious fascination. In the morning
hours there is the picturesque confusion of the market. The donkeys
are unladen here, there, and everywhere, and the sidewalks and squares
promptly dotted over with bright little heaps of delicious Toledo
cherries, Valencian apricots, Murcian lemons, and all the greens of
the season. The peasant women, squatted among their lettuces and
cucumbers, seem much more interested in gossiping with their neighbors
than in securing customers. Babies tumble about, crushing the pinks
and roses, and cabmen good-naturedly pick their way as best they can
among these various vegetable and human obstacles. Venders of books,
too, like to pave the street with rows of open volumes, whose pages
are soon dimmed with dust, and artisans, especially cobblers, set up
their benches just outside their doors, and add the click of their
hammers to the general din.
In the early afternoon the shady side of the street is lined with the
outstretched forms of workingmen, taking the indispensable siesta.
Some rest their black pates on arm or folded jacket or bag of tools,
but plenty of bronzed laborers slumber peacefully all prone on the hot
paving, with not so much as a cabbage leaf for a pillow. Beggars lie
along the stone benches of the _paseos_ and parks, cabmen sleep on
their cabs, porters over their thresholds, and I once turned away from
a church I had come far to visit, not having the hardihood to waken
the verger, who, keys in hand, was snoring like an organ, sprawled
across half a dozen granite steps.
As the cool of evening approaches, the overcrowded houses of the poor
pour forth entire families into the street, where supper is cooked and
eaten, and all manner of domestic operations carried on. Before every
door is at least one black-eyed baby, in a little wooden cage
something like a churn, with rim running under the armpits, so that
the child, safe from straying or falling, may be left to his own
devices. As darkness deepens, out come the stars and the _serenos_.
These latter, in Madrid, no longer cry fair weather, but they hold the
keys of the houses--an arrangement that I never learned to take
seriously.
Returning from visit or theatre in the evening, I found it difficult
to say with requisite solemnity to the driver, "Would you be so kind
as to shout for Celestino?" The driver promptly roars, "Celestino!"
and twinkling lights come bobbing toward us from far and near, but no
Celestino. "He's in the wineshop," suggests Isidro, whose charge
begins three houses above. "He's eating iron," asserts Pedro, in the
phrase describing those colloquies which a Spanish suitor carries on
with his divinity through the grating. Then we all chorus,
"Celestino!" and again, "Celestino!" and again, "Celestino!"
At this a cloaked figure comes running across the square, waving a
lantern over his head and vociferating jocund apologies: "I regret it
extremely. I am stricken with sorrow. But at the first call I was
wetting my lips at the fountain, and at the second I was pausing to
exchange four words only with the lady of my soul, and at the third I
said _Vamos!_ and at the fourth--look you, I am here." So he unlocks
the door and lights the stairway with his lantern until I have
ascended the first flight, when he cheerily calls out, "_Adios!_" and
shuts me into darkness which I am expected to illuminate for my
further climb by striking matches.
Madrid streets are by no means altogether delectable. Some are broad
and well kept, but others are narrow, dirty, and malodorous. Worst of
all, to my own thinking, is the Madrid stare, which, hardly less
offensive than the Paris stare, is more universal. It is amusing to
see how fearlessly a matron of eighteen sallies forth alone, while
many Madrid spinsters of fifty would not go a block unattended. Nor
are annoyances confined to staring. Even in reputable shops a woman
soon learns to be on her guard, when her attention is especially
called to book or picture, lest it prove "a silliness."
Madrid is better than the cities of Andalusia, and worse than the
cities of northern Spain, in its treatment of women. A young Spanish
girl cannot walk alone, however sedately, in Seville, without a
running fire of salutations--"Oh, the pretty face!" "What cheeks of
rose!" "Blessed be thy mother!" "Give me a little smile!" And even in
Madrid, Spanish girls of my acquaintance have broken their fans across
the faces of men who tried to catch a kiss in passing.
In Madrid, as almost everywhere in Spain, begging is a leading
industry. So many beg from laziness or greed that it is easy to lose
patience, the most essential part of a traveller's Spanish outfit. The
ear is wearied by the everlasting drone and whine: "Oh, dear lady, for
the love of God! All day my children have had no bread. Give me five
_centimos_, only five _centimos_, and Heaven will pay you back. Lady!
lady! lady! lady! Five _centimos_, in the name of all the saints!" And
the eye is offended by the continual obtrusion of ulcers, cripplings,
and deformities. No less than Seville and Granada, Madrid abounds with
child beggars. There were two jolly little cripples on the Prado, who
used to race, each on his one leg, to overtake me before I should
reach the Museo steps. Another boy, on whose face I never saw a smile,
sat at the corner of a street I daily passed, holding out two
shapeless blocks of hands. By the gate of the Buen Retiro was
stationed a blind man, with a girl wean on his knee. It was pathetic
and amusing to see him feeding her the supper of bread and milk, for
the spoon in his groping hand and the pout of her baby mouth often
failed to make connection.
The prevalence of eye disease in Spain is probably due to sun, to
dust, and to generations of poverty. The pounding of a blind man's
stick upon the pavement is one of the most common city sounds. The
charitable may often be seen leading the blind across the streets. I
tried it myself once with an imperious old woman, who clung to the
curbstone some twenty minutes before she could muster courage for the
plunge, lecturing me fluently all the time on the dangers of a rash
disposition. There are, of course, many cases of fraud--cases where,
when the day's work is over, the blind see and the lame walk. One of
the popular _coplas_ has its fling at these:--
"The armless man has written a letter;
The blind man finds the writing clear;
The mute is reading it aloud,
And the deaf man runs to hear."
Yet it is certain that among the beggars of Madrid is a heartrending
amount of genuine misery. One day I passed an aged _ciego_, sitting on
a doorstep, in the Alcala, his white head bowed upon his breast in
such utter weariness of dejection that I paused to find him a copper.
But better charity than mine came to comfort that worn heart. A lame
old peanut woman limped up to him, with the pity of the wretched for
the wretched. She drew from her apron pocket a coin which I had rarely
seen--_dos centimos_, two-fifths of a cent in value. An Austrian, who
had lived in Spain four years, told me he had never once encountered
that paltry piece of money. But she could not spare it all. "Hast thou
one _centimo_ for change, brother mine?" she asked. And the blind
man's sensitive fingers actually found in his lean leather purse that
tiny metal bit, which only the poorest of the poor ever see in
circulation. He gravely kissed the coin she gave and made with it the
sign of the cross on brow and breast, saying, "Blessed be this gift,
my sister, which thy mercy has bestowed on a man of many troubles! May
our Mother Mary keep for thee a thornless rose!"
"And may God, who sends the cold according to our rags, lighten all
thy griefs! Rest thou in peace," she replied.
"Go thou with God," was his answer.
Begging was a recognized and licensed industry in Madrid a year ago,
though a bill of reform, whose fate I have failed to learn, was then
under consideration. A mother would gather her brood about her and go
forth for her day's work. They beg up and down their accustomed beat
during the morning, eat as their gains allow, lie down in the dust
together for the afternoon siesta, and rise to be diligent in business
during the hours of fashionable promenade. They stop pedestrians,
chase carriages, press into shops to torment the customers at the
counter, and reach beseeching palms through the open windows of cafes.
Gentlemen escorting ladies are their peculiar victims, for well they
know that many a man who never gives under other circumstances is
ashamed to seem ungenerous under survey of starry eyes.
There is only one phrase that will shake off the professional beggar,
"May God aid you!" On hearing this he makes it a point of religious
honor to fall back. But as I could not use that formula without
feeling myself something between a shirk and a hypocrite, I had to get
on as best I could with the ineffectual, "Pardon me, my brother," to
which should properly be added _Por Dios_ (for God's sake).
The Spanish mendicant knows nothing of the Anglo-Saxon feeling, "To
beg I am ashamed." No Rare Ben Jonson has thundered in his ears:--
"Art thou a man? and sham'st thou not to beg?
To practise such a servile kind of life?
Why, were thy education ne'er so mean,
Having thy limbs, a thousand fairer courses
Offer themselves to thy election.
Either the wars might still supply thy wants
Or service of some virtuous gentleman,
Or honest labor: nay, what can I name,
But would become thee better than to beg?"
From the Spanish point of view, on the contrary, it is manual labor,
not beggary, that stains the escutcheon. A German lady of my
acquaintance said to a strongly built man who was pleading for alms,
"If you will carry my bag up these stairs, I will gladly pay you."
Deeply insulted, he folded his cloak about him with hidalgo dignity,
saying, "Madame, I am a beggar, not a laborer." Certain monasteries
send out brothers, with plates and bags, on a daily begging
round--brothers who may belong to the first families of Spain. The
Church is often cited as indorsing mendicancy. Extolling almsgiving as
a prime virtue, and itself maintaining a vast number of charitable
institutions, it has not yet assimilated modern methods of relief.
A favorite story for children, used as supplementary reading in the
schools, is called "The Medal of the Virgin." This is, in fact, a
Roman Catholic version of "Fortunatus's Purse." Its small heroine,
Mary of the Angels, is an orphan, defrauded by a miser of her rich
inheritance and treated with barbarity by the uncle and aunt for whom
she is an uncomplaining drudge. But once, in festive hour, they give
her five _centimos_, which this generous innocent promptly bestows on
a beggar woman, who holds a baby in her ragged arms. In return, the
beggar gives the child a queer, old-fashioned mite of a coin, which
turns out to have the Wall Street quality of heaving up a little
mountain of gold above itself every hour or two.
Mary of the Angels sallies forth for a tour of the country, pouring
handfuls of gold into the laps of the beggars who sit at the church
doors and city gates, until she is escorted wherever she goes by an
army of the halt and blind singing her praises. At last, having given
away such Pyrenees of gold that not a beggar could be found in all the
land for a century to come, the footsore little philanthropist begs
the Virgin to relieve her of the coin. The Madonna descends in a beam
of light, the Christ Child smiling from her arms, yet in the radiant
group Mary of the Angels recognizes the objects of her earliest
charity. "For I," explains the Madonna, "am the holy beggar from
heaven. The poor of the earth give me their tears and prayers, and for
such alms do I hold out my hand to all the sorrowful."
Yet the progressive element in Spain is all the more ashamed of the
beggars because they are not ashamed of themselves, and a few years
may see Madrid swept as clear of mendicancy as is San Sebastian
to-day.
Madrid is such an easy-going city that one hardly realizes at first
how well it performs certain of its functions. Its water supply, for
instance, is excellent, although when one sees the picturesque groups,
with those same clay water-jars over which Rebecca smiled on Jacob,
lingering about the gray stone fountains, one expects a patriarchal
flavor in the liquid. The tramway service of Madrid, everything
radiating from the _Puerta del Sol_, is most convenient, although
electricity is a little slow in coming to the relief of horse-flesh.
The shops, fairly well stocked, gild commerce with Spanish graces. You
accept a chair, you pass the courtesies of the day, the gentleman who
serves you, often with cigar in mouth, is seldom sure as to just what
goods he has on hand, and is still more rarely dogmatic as to their
price.
The tug of war, however, comes in getting them delivered. Ten days
before quitting Madrid I bought at one of the best of the _librerias_
a number of books, including several illustrated catalogues of the
Velazquez sala. These last were pretty trifles bound in white
parchment, and as I intended them for gifts, I wanted fresh copies.
"You wish them clean, all of them?" asked the proprietor, with an
accent of surprise. I replied that I did, and would moreover be
obliged if he could fit them with envelopes ready for mailing.
Envelopes he had none, but he promised to tie them up in separate
parcels. "And books and bill will come without fail this afternoon?"
He looked pained to the heart. "This very morning, senora. You will
find them awaiting you on your return." On the third day I sent a
note, and on the fifth a boy arrived with the bulk of my purchase, but
no catalogues nor bill. I explained to the lad, who smilingly besought
me to give myself no concern, that I was on the point of leaving the
city for good, and preferred not to go away in debt; but the days
passed, and my inability to extort that reckoning became the jest of
the household. At last, driven to desperate measures, I went
through noonday heat to the store, and actually found that
procrastinating bookseller scattering cigar ashes over a little heap
of catalogues, while he contemplated the pictures of each copy in
turn. "Behold, senora," he exclaimed, as serenely as if not ten
minutes had elapsed since our parting, "here I have for you immaculate
booklets, stainless, faultless, such as will rejoice those fortunate
friends to whom you have the amiability to send them. And I am this
instant about to prepare them for the post with inviolate security."
[Illustration: "CHRIST OF THE SEVEN WORDS"]
I expressed my obligations, but entreated him to draw up the account
and let me settle it then and there, as I was within twenty-four hours
of departure. "And in travelling," I added apologetically, "it is
difficult to send back money." At the obnoxious word he flung up hands
and eyebrows. "Senora!" I left the shop, feeling vaguely that I had
been guilty of a flagrant indelicacy, as well as black ingratitude.
The catalogues, very slightly wrapped, arrived on the morrow, just in
time to be thrust into my shawl strap, and I paid the bill amid the
final agitation, so unfavorable to arithmetic, of porters and
farewells.
I had worse fortune in trying to subscribe for a certain popular
periodical. I went to the office in the designated business hours, to
find that, of the three men who should have been there, one had
already gone, one had not arrived, and the third had "stepped out for
a little rest." The janitor left in charge, a sympathetic person who
could not read nor write, thought if I would return on Sunday at my
luncheon hour, there might be somebody there qualified to receive my
subscription and address, but, he sagely added, "in this world we are
sure of nothing."
Madrid possesses the _Biblioteca Nacional_ with valuable manuscripts
and something like one million books, handsomely housed, where
arrangements are made for over three hundred readers, but here, as in
the other Spanish cities, public libraries in the American sense of
libraries largely used by the general public are practically
non-existent. The bookstores, too, except for the latest Spanish
publications, leave much to be desired. As a rule, one can get only
the most meagre information concerning texts and editions of the
national classics, and the supply of new French novels or new German
plays is far less complete than the stock of Paris gloves and German
cutlery. This last, so canny have the honest Teutons grown, is usually
engraved _Toledo_.
In variety of weather, however, Madrid surpasses all expectations,
furnishing the sultriest heat, the chilliest cold, the dustiest dust,
and the most prodigious crashes of thunder and lumps of hail to be
found in the meteorological market, and all these within a few hours
of one another. But what with fans, _braseros_, balconies,
_horchaterias_, an army of street waterers, and, most essential of
all, an inexhaustible fund of good humor, the Madrileno contrives to
live on friendly terms with his climate, although he dares not lay
aside his cloak before "the fortieth of May."
Apart from bull-fights and riots, those rages of excitement that seem
to indicate a periodical fevering of the southern blood, the Madrileno
takes his pleasures with a dignified simplicity. The city is
exceedingly rich in open squares, well-shaded parks, and long reaches
of green promenade, and here, with several dozen cigarettes and a few
coppers for water and _agraz_, he wiles the hours away, chatting with
friends and admiring the ladies who roll past in spruce landaus. Over
the gate of the social paradise of Madrid it must be written, "No
admittance except in coaches," for a carriage seems essential to high
life. Liveried coachman, rather than powdered butler, is the _sine qua
non_. During the hot season this outdoor parade is in gay career at
midnight, and whole families, babies and nurses included, may be seen
gathered in festive knots around small refreshment tables, within
sound of fountain spray and garden music. There are open-air concerts,
and concerts in smoke-beclouded halls, greensward dances, and dances
stepped on cafe tables among disordered clusters of bottles and
glasses, and there is always the theatre, on which your Spaniard
dotes.
In the winter season there is opportunity to enjoy classic drama at
the _Teatro Espanol_, where the Bernhardt of Spain, "La Guerrero,"
supported by her grandee husband, Mendoza, holds sway. When I saw them
they were using short farces of Cervantes and Lope de Rueda for
curtain raisers to a romantic drama by Tirso de Molina and a modern
society play by Echegaray. I saw them, too, in Zorrilla's singular
dramatic version of "Don Juan," the only play allowed in Spanish
theatres on the night of All Saints.
From March to November, however, the _Teatro Espanol_ is closed, and
there is little doing at the _Teatro Real_, an aristocratic temple of
Italian opera. During the summer season the theatrical opportunities
of Madrid are mainly limited to the popular _zarzuelas_, or operettas,
four of which are usually given in an evening. Each theatre offers a
new programme of these every night, but there is little of literary
interest except, now and then, a taking trifle from the pen of
Hartzenbusch or Echegaray.
The Madrid theatre recks naught of early risers. The opening
vaudeville is seldom under way before nine o'clock; the house is
cleared after each performance, and often the encores and repetitions
prolong a popular _zarzuela_ quite beyond the hour limit. On the other
hand, if the audience is small, the opening piece may be cut down to
the merest outline. I remember one such occasion when the boxes were
so empty and the farce so familiar that the orchestra fairly chaffed
the actors off the stage. "Enough, enough! Thou mayst withdraw!"
chanted the lyric lover to an intruding servant. "And so mayst thou,"
called out a voice from among the violins. "I've told my passion to
the stars," continued the actor in his most mellifluous tenor, making
the distant love of the Spanish stage to a lady who was smiling
frankly on the audacious fiddler. "Poor stars!" interpolated this
worthy so sympathetically that everybody laughed, the singer wound up
his transports in the shortest possible order, and the remaining
scenes were hardly more than pantomime. But such was the universal
good nature and indifference to business exactitudes, that neither
artists nor ticket-holders took this curtailment of their rights in
umbrage.
Among the excellences of Madrid must be counted her _museos_. The
_Armeria_, with its plumed and steel-clad warriors, all at tourney, is
no mere lumber room of wicked old iron, as might have been expected,
but a new canto of the "Faery Queene." The _Museo Naval_ still smells
of the boundless brine and Isles of Spicery. The _Museo Arqueologico
Nacional_ sweeps one, as on the magic carpet of Alhambra legend,
through the entire tragedy of Spain. Here are the successive leaves of
her strange picture-book--scratched, prehistoric flints, grass-woven
Iberian sandals, rudely sculptured shapes in sandstone grasping wine
cups that suggest whole Rubaiyats, Phoenician anchors, bronze tables
of Roman laws, Moorish arabesques, mediaeval altars, modern wares and
fineries, while barbaric spoils of Peruvian idols, Mexican
feather-shields, sacrificial stones, and figures of forest lords speak
to the imagination of that vast colonial empire which rose out of a
dream to melt again like very dreamstuff, leaving "not a rack behind."
These I have seen, but there are twice as many more Madrid museums
which I had not time to see, and which, I am told, are no less rich in
rarities and no less effective in pictorial beauty of arrangement.
Of the art galleries, who can say enough? The supreme _Museo del
Prado_ so magnetizes pilgrim feet that it is hard to spare even a few
hours for the _Academia de Bellas Artes_, with its grand Murillos and
calm Zurbarans, or the _Museo de Arte Moderno_, with its succession of
canvases depicting scene upon scene of death, decay, murder,
execution, starvation, battle, torture, frenzy. Whatever is most
horrible in the story of the Peninsula--Juana the Mad staring at her
husband's coffin, the bloody fall of the betrayed Torrijos and his
band, the nobles of Portugal doing shuddering homage to the exhumed
corpse of Inez de Castro, all that moves disgust, distress, dismay,
seems flaunted here. The technique is French, but the subjects are
Spanish. Many of the pictures have historical dignity and
faithfulness, a few reproduce the modern national types, with a
preference for bull-fighters and anarchists over fishermen and
peasants, but one misses the spiritual beauty that went hand in hand
with the spiritual terror of the older art. Do the Spanish painters of
to-day derive only from Goya and Ribera?
The old-time popular ceremonies are fast fading out of Europeanized
Madrid. Even the Christmas mirth is waning, though still on _Noche
Buena_ the _Plaza Mayor_ is close set with booths, and the Infanta
Isabel, _muy Madrilena_ that she is, makes a point of driving through
and heaping her carriage with fairings. On Twelfth Night, too, there
are a few small boys to be seen scampering about the streets, looking
for the arrival of the Magi. Every year drops something of the
mediaeval heritage, and it has fallen to my lot to chronicle the
passing of one of Madrid's most ancient and comfortable rites. The
principal saint days of June, July, and August are preceded by
_verbenas_, or evening fairs, chief among these being the _Verbena de
San Juan_, on Midsummer Night. Many a baby has a grand frolic this
evening, rocked back and forth on his mamma's knees, laughing eyes to
laughing eyes, while she dips her head to his and tickles his little
neck with kisses in time to the ancient ditty:--
"Recotin, recoton!
The bells of St. John!
There's a festival on.
Recotin, recotin, recoton!"
Far along the _Prado_ gleam the busy fires over which are merrily
bubbling the oiliest and brownest of _bunuelos_. The rows of lighted
stalls, which have sprung up like mushrooms on either side of the
promenade, present to the revelling, roving, shifting throng an
amazing variety of tawdry knickknacks, ingeniously devised to meet no
human want. As we drove slowly up and down, enjoying the scene, while
beggars ran beside the carriage and hawkers darted out upon us with
shrill cries, the "American girl" of our little group strove earnestly
to find "something to buy."
The most useful and convenient article for a traveller that could be
discovered was a pasteboard bull's head on a long stick, but her
chaperon, mindful of trunk dimensions, discouraged this purchase so
effectively that Little Boston gracefully made herself amends by
presenting us all with images of St. John. These scandalously
represented the Baptist as a ballet girl in short cotton-wool skirts
and gilt ribbons, waving a banner with one hand and leading a
two-legged lamb with the other.
As midnight drew near, carriages and foot-folk all pressed toward the
stately Cybele fountain. It seems that there was once, in the _Puerta
del Sol_, a magic spring whose waters, sprinkled at Midsummer Midnight
on the most unlikely head, insured a wedding within the year. Trams
and cabs, riots and bloodshed, drove the precious charm away to the
_Prado_, even to this same Cybele fountain, which for many generations
has continued to work bridal miracles. So recently as 1898, as soon as
the clock in the tower of the stately Bank of Spain struck midnight,
with wedding cadences lingering in its peal, eager feet went splashing
through the broad marble basin, and the enchanted water, thrown by
handfuls and cupfuls far out over the crowd, sparkled even on bald
pates and wigs.
But alas for Madrid and her Midsummer Night's Dream! Some prosaic
person got wet and tattled to the Alcalde. So when in natural
agitation, on our only Verbena of St. John, we had persuaded the
compassionate coachman to drive as close as close might be to the
fountain, we encountered a bristling, unromantic railing, and outside
of this a grim circle of police, frowning menace on that disconcerted
host. Every moment more carriages, with veiled ladies and rheumatic
gentlemen, dashed up, and the indignant crowd surged forward to the
very buttons of authority. But midnight chimed in vain. One desperate
graybeard vaulted over the railing, only to be hustled back with
contumely. In general, however, that great press of people remained as
meek as the lions of Cybele's chariot--a lack of spirit only to be
accounted for by remembering that this midnight company was made up of
the shamefaced and rejected, such an assemblage of blighted beings as,
now that the last spell is snapped, earth will never see again. Even
the decorous Cybele laughed in her marble sleeve.
So passes the old Madrid; but there is a new Madrid, of which a word
still waits to be said.