"Thursdays three in the year there be,That shine more bright than the sun's own ray—Holy Thursday, Corpus Christi,And our Lord's Ascension Day."
"Thursdays three in the year there be,
That shine more bright than the sun's own ray—
Holy Thursday, Corpus Christi,
And our Lord's Ascension Day."
Cadiz, like Valencia, carries thepasosin the Corpus procession. In Seville, where the street displays of Holy Week are under the charge of the religious brotherhoods, orcofradias, Corpus Christi gives opportunity for the clergy and aristocracy to present a rival exhibition of sanctified luxury and magnificence.
But it is in beautiful belated Granada that the Corpus fête is now at its best. A brilliantly illustrated programme, whose many-hued cover significantly groups a gamboge cathedral very much in the background, and a flower-crowned Andalusian maiden, draped in a Manila shawl, with a prodigious guitar at her feet, very much in the foreground, announces a medley of festivities extending over eleven days. This cheerful booklet promises, together with a constant supply of military music, balcony decorations, and city illuminations, an assortment of pleasures warranted to suit every taste—infantry reviews, cavalry reviews, cadet reviews, masses under roof and masses in the open, claustral processions, parades of giants, dwarfs, andLa Tarasca, a charity raffle in the park under the patronage of Granada's most distinguished ladies, the erection of out-of-door altars, the dispensing of six thousand loaves of bread among the poor (from my experience of Granada beggars I should say the supply was insufficient), a solemn Corpus procession passing along white-canopied streets under a rain of flowers, three regular bull-fights with the grand masters Guerrita, Lagartijillo, and Fuentes, followed by a gloriously brutalcorrida, with young beasts and inexperienced fighters, cattle fair, booths, puppet shows, climbing of greased poles, exhibition of fine arts and industries, horse racing, polo, pigeon shoot, trapeze, balloon ascensions, gypsy dances, and fireworks galore.
But even faithful Granada shared in the strange catalogue of misfortunes which attended Corpus last year. The rains descended on her Chinese lanterns, and the winds beat against her Arabic arches with their thousands of gas-lights. On the sacred Thursday itself, the Andalusian weather made a most unusual demonstration of hurricane and cloudburst, with interludes of thunder and lightning. Great was the damage in field, vineyard, and orchard, and as for processions, they were in many places out of the question. Even Seville and Cordova had to postpone both parades and bull-fights. But this was not the worst. In Ecija, one of the quaintest cities of Andalusia, an image of the Virgin as the Divine Shepherdess, lovingly arrayed and adorned with no little outlay by the nuns of the Conception, caught fire in the procession from a taper, like Seville's Virgin of Montserrat in the lastSemana Santa. TheDivina Pastorabarely escaped with her jewels. Her elaborate garments, the herbage and foliage of her pasture, and one of her woolly sheep were burned to ashes. In Palma de Mallorca, a romantic town of the Balearic Isles, a balcony, whose occupants were leaning out to watch the procession, broke away, and crashed down into the midst of the throng. A young girl fell upon the bayonet of a soldier marching beneath, and was grievously hurt. Others suffered wounds which, in one case at least, proved fatal. The Opposition journals did not fail to make capital out of these untoward events, serving them up in satiric verse with the irreverent suggestion that, if this was all the favor a reactionary and ultra-Catholic government could secure from Heaven, it was time to go back to Sagasta.
The ecclesiastical Toledo, seat of the Primate of all Spain,is one of the Spanish cities which still observe Corpus Christi as a high solemnity, and Toledo is within easy pilgrimage distance of Madrid. I had already passed two days in that ancient capital of the Visigoths, ridding my conscience of the sightseers' burden, and I both longed and dreaded to return. The longing overcame the dread, and I dropped in at theEstacion del Mediodíafor preliminary inquiries. I could discover no bureau of information and no official authorized to instruct the public, but in this lotus-eating land what is nobody's business is everybody's business. There could not be a better-humored people. The keeper of the bookstand abandoned his counter, his would-be customers lighting cigarettes and leaning up against trucks and stacks of luggage to wait for his return, and escorted me the length of the station to find a big yellow poster, which gave the special time-table for Corpus Thursday. The poster was so high upon the wall that our combined efforts could not make it out; whereupon a nimble little porter dropped the trunk he was carrying, and climbed on top of it for a better view. In that commanding position he could see clearly enough, but just when my hopes were at the brightest, he regretfully explained that he had never learned to read. As he clambered down the proprietor of the trunk, who had been looking on with as much serenity as if trains never went and starting bells never rang, mounted in turn. This gentleman, all smiles and bows and tobacco smoke, read off the desired items, which the keeper of the bookstand copied for me in a leisurely, conversational manner, with a pencil lent by one bystander on a card donated by another.
There is really something to be said for the Spanish wayof doing business. It takes time, but if time is filled with human kindliness and social courtesies, why not? What is time for? Whenever I observed that I was the only person in a hurry on a Madrid street, I revised my opinion as to the importance of my errand.
As I entered the station again on the first of June at the penitential hour of quarter past six in the morning, I was reflecting complacently on my sagacity as a traveller. Had I not bethought me that, even in the ecclesiastical centre of Spain and on this solemn festival, there might be peril for a stranger's purse? What financial acumen I had shown in calculating that, since my round-trip ticket to Toledo before had cost three dollars, second class, I could probably go first class on this excursion for the same sum, while two dollars more would be ample allowance for balcony hire and extras! And yet how prudent in me to have tucked away a reserve fund in a secret pocket inaccessible even to myself! But why was the station so jammed and crammed with broad-hatted Spaniards? And what was the meaning of that long line of roughs, stretching far out from the third-class ticket office? Bull-fight explained it all. Even reverend Toledo must keep the Corpus holy by the public slaughter of six choice bulls and as many hapless horses as their blind rage might rend. Worse than the pagan altars that reeked with the blood of beasts, Spain's Christian festivals demand torture in addition to butchery.
There were no first-class carriages, it appeared, upon the Corpus train, and my round-trip ticket, second class, cost only a dollar, leaving me with an embarrassment of riches. Pursing the slip of pasteboard which, to my disgust, was stampedin vermilion lettersCorrida de Toros, I sped me to the train, where every seat appeared to be taken, although it lacked twenty minutes of the advertised time for departure; but a bald-headed philanthropist called out from a carriage window that they still had room for one. Gratefully climbing up, I found myself in the society of a family party, off for Toledo to celebrate the saint-day of their hazel-eyed eight-year-old by that treat of treats, a child's first bull-fight. When they learned that I was tamely proposing to keep Corpus Christi by seeing the procession and not by "assisting at the function of bulls," their faces clouded; but they decided to make allowance for my foreign idiosyncrasies.
The train, besieged by a multitude of ticket-holders for whom there were no places, was nearly an hour late in getting off. The ladies dozed and chattered; the gentlemen smoked and dozed; little Hazel-eyes constantly drew pictures of bulls with a wet finger on the window glass. Reminded again by my handbag literature that Toledo is a nest of thieves, I would gladly have put away my extra money, but there was never a moment when all the gentlemen were asleep at once.
It was after ten when we reached our destination, the boy wild with rapture because we had actually seen a pasture of grazing bulls. A swarm of noisy, scrambling, savage-looking humanity hailed the arrival of the train, and I had hardly made my way even to the platform before I felt an ominous twitch at my pocket. The light-fingered art must have degenerated in Toledo since the day of that clever cutpurse of the "Exemplary Tales." Turning sharply, I confronted a group of my fellow-worshippers, who, shawled and sashedand daggered, looked as if they had been expressly gotten up for stage bandits. From the shaggy pates, topped by gaudy, twisted handkerchiefs—a headdress not so strange in a city whose stone walls looked for centuries on Moorish turbans—to the bright-edged, stealthy hemp sandals, these were pickpockets to rejoice a kodak. Their black eyes twinkled at me with wicked triumph, while it flashed across my mind that my old hero, the Cid, was probably much of their aspect, and certainly gained his living in very similar ways. There were a full score of these picturesque plunderers, and not a person of the nineteenth century in sight. Since there was nothing to do, I did it, and giving them a parting glance of moral disapproval, to which several of the sauciest responded by blithely touching their forelocks, I pursued my pilgrim course, purged of vainglory. At all events, I was delivered from temptation as to a questionablepesetain my purse—my pretty Paris purse!—and I should not be obliged to travel again on that odious bull-fight ticket.
We were having "fool weather," blowing now hot, now cold, but as at this moment the air was cool, and every possible vehicle seemed packed, thatched, fringed with clinging passengers, I decided, not seeking further reasons, to walk up to the town. And what a town it is! Who could remember dollars? So far from being decently depressed, I was almost glad to have lost something in this colossal monument of losses. It seemed to make connection.
Between deep, rocky, precipitous banks, strongly flows the golden "king of rivers, the venerable Tajo," almost encircling the granite pedestal of the city and spanned by ancient bridges of massy stone, with battlemented, Virgin-niched, fierce oldgates. And above, upon its rugged height, crumbling hourly into the gritty dust that stings the eye and scrapes beneath the foot, lies in swirls on floor and pavement, blows on every breeze and sifts through hair and clothing, is the proud, sullen, forsaken fortress of "imperial Toledo." Still it is a vision of turrets, domes, and spires, fretwork, buttresses, façades, but all so desolate, so dreary, isolated in that parched landscape as it is isolated in the living world, that one approaches with strangely blended feelings of awe, repugnance, and delight.
On we go over the Bridge of Alcántara, wrought æons since by a gang of angry Titans—the guidebooks erroneously attribute it to the Moors and Alfonso the Learned—with a shuddering glance out toward the ruins of feudal castles, here a battlemented keep set with mighty towers, there a great, squat, frowning mass of stone, the very sight of which might have crushed a prisoner's heart. Up, straight up, into the grim, gray, labyrinthine city, whose zigzag streets, often narrowing until two laden donkeys, meeting, cannot pass, so twist and turn that it is impossible on entering one to guess at what point of the compass we will come out. These crooked ways, paved with "agony stones," are lined with tall, dark, inhospitable house fronts, whose few windows are heavily grated, and whose huge doors, bristling with iron bosses, are furnished with fantastic knockers and a whole arsenal of bolts and chains.
The King of the GypsiesThe King of the Gypsies
The King of the Gypsies
Gloomy as these ponderous structures are, every step discloses a novelty of beauty,—a chiselled angel, poised for flight, chased escutcheons, bas-reliefs, toothed arches, medallions, weather-eaten groups of saints and apostles gossipingin their scalloped niches about the degeneracy of the times. The Moors, whose architecture, says Becquer, seems the dream of a Moslem warrior sleeping after battle in the shadow of a palm, have left their mark throughout Toledo in the airy elegance of the traceries magically copied from cobwebs and the Milky Way. That tragic race, the Jews, have stamped on the walls of long-desecrated synagogues their own mysterious emblems. And Goths and Christian knights have wrought their very likenesses into the stern, helmeted heads that peer out from the capitals of marvellous columns amid the stone grapes and pomegranates most fit for their heroic nourishment. But all is in decay. Here stands a broken-sceptred statue turning its royal back on a ragged vender of toastedgarbanzos. Even the image of Wamba has lost its royal nose.
You may traverse whispering cloisters heaped with fallen crosses, with truant tombstones, and severed heads and limbs of august prophets. Cast aside in dusky vaults lie broken shafts of rose-tinted marbles and fragments of rare carving in whose hollows the birds of the air once built their nests. Through the tangle of flowers and shrubbery that chokes the patios gleam the rims of alabaster urns and basins of jasper fountains. Such radiant wings and faces as still flash out from frieze and arch and column, such laughing looks, fresh with a dewy brightness, as if youth and springtime were enchanted in the stone! And what supreme grace and truth of artistry in all this bewildering detail! On some far-off day of the golden age, when ivory and agate were as wax, when cedar and larch wood yielded like their own soft leaves, the magician must have pressed upon them the olive leaf, the acacia spray, the baby's foot, that have left these perfect traces.And how did mortal hand ever achieve the intricate, curling, unfolding, blossoming marvel of those capitals? And who save kings, Wambas and Rodericks, Sanchos, Alfonsos, and Fernandos, should mount these magnificent stairways? And what have those staring stone faces above that antique doorway looked upon to turn them haggard with horror? City of ghosts! The flesh begins to creep. But here, happily, we are arrived in thePlaza de Zocodovér, where Lazarillo de Tormes used to display his talents as town crier, and in this long-memoried market-place, with its arcaded sides and trampled green, may pause to take our bearings.
Evidently the procession is to pass here, for the balconies, still displaying the yellow fronds of Palm Sunday, are hung with all manner of draperies—clear blue, orange with silver fringes, red with violet bars, white with saffron scallops. Freed from sordid cares about my pocket, I give myself for a little to the spell of that strange scene. Beyond rise the rich-hued towers of the Alcázar, on the site where Romans, Visigoths, Arabs, the Cid, and an illustrious line of Spanish monarchs have fortified themselves in turn; but Time at last is conqueror, and one visits the dismantled castle only to forget all about it in the grandeur of the view. From the east side of theZocodovérsoars the arch on whose summit used to stand theSantisimo Cristo del Sangre, before whom the Corpus train did reverence. And here in the centre blazed that momentous bonfire which was to settle the strife between the old Toledan liturgy and the new ritual of Rome; but the impartial elements honored both the Prayer Books placed upon the fagots, the wind wafting to a place of safety the Roman breviary, while the flames drew back from the other,with the result that the primitive rite is still preserved in an especial chapel of the cathedral.
A gloriousplaza, famed by Cervantes, loved by Lope de Vega, but now how dim and shabby! On the house-fronts once so gayly colored, the greens have faded to yellows, the reds to pinks, and the pinks to browns. The awning spread along the route of the procession is fairly checkered with a miscellany of patches. I pass the compliments of the day with a smiling peasant woman, whose husband, a striking color-scheme in maroon blanket, azure trousers, russet stockings, and soiled gray sandals, offers me his seat on the stone bench beside her. But I am bound on my errand, and they bid me "Go with God." I select a trusty face in a shop doorway and ask if I can rent standing room in the balcony above. Mine honest friend puts his price a trifle high to give him a margin for the expected bargaining, but I scorn to haggle on a day when I am short of money, and merely stipulate, with true Spanish propriety, that no gentlemen shall be admitted. This makes an excellent impression on the proprietor, who shows me up a winding stair with almost oppressive politeness. A little company of ladies, with lace mantillas drooping from their graceful heads, welcome me with that courteous cordiality which imparts to the slightest intercourse with the Spanish people (barring pickpockets) a flavor of fine pleasure. Because I am the last arrival and have the least claim, they insist on giving me the best place on the best balcony and are untiring in their explanations of all there is to be seen.
The procession is already passing—civil guards, buglers, drummers, flower wreaths borne aloft, crosses of silver andcrosses of gold, silken standards wrought with cunning embroideries. But now there come a sudden darkness, a gust of wind, and dash of rain. The ranks ofcofradiastry in vain to keep their candles burning, the pupils from the colleges of the friars, with shining medals hung by green cords about their necks, peep roguishly back at the purple-stoled dignitary in a white wig, over whom an anxious friend from the street is trying to hold an umbrella. The Jesuitseminaristasbear themselves more decorously, the tonsures gleaming like silver coins on their young heads. The canons lift their red robes from the wet, and even bishops make some furtive efforts to protect their gold-threaded chasubles. Meanwhile the people, that spectral throng of witches, serfs, feudal retainers, and left-overs from the Arabian Nights, press closer and closer, audaciously wrapping themselves from the rain in the rich old tapestries of France and Flanders, which have been hung along both sides of the route from a queer framework of emerald-bright poles and bars. The dark, wild, superstitious faces, massed and huddled together, peer out more uncannywise than ever from under these precious stuffs which brisk soldiers, with green feather brushes in their caps, as if to enable them to dust themselves off at short notice, are already taking down.
All the church bells of the city are chiming solemnly, and the splendidcustodia, "the most beautiful piece of plate in the world," a treasure of filigree gold and jewels, enshrining the Host, draws near. It is preceded by a bevy of lovely children, not dressed, as at Granada, to represent angels, but as knights of chivalry. Their dainty suits of red and blue, slashed and puffed and trimmed with lace, flash through the silvery mistof rain. Motherly voices from the balconies call to them to carry their creamy caps upside down to shield the clustered plumes. Their little white sandals and gaiters splash merrily through the mud.
A flamingo gleam across the slanting rain announces Cardinal Sancha, behind whom acolytes uplift a thronelike chair of crimson velvet and gold. Then follow ranks of taper-bearing soldiers, and my friends in the balcony call proudly down to different officers, a son, a husband, a blushingnovio, whom they present to me then and there. The officers bow up and I bow down, while at this very moment comes that tinkling of silver bells which would, I had supposed, strike all Catholic Spaniards to their knees. It is perhaps too much to expect the people below to kneel in the puddles, but the vivacious chatter in the balconies never ceases, and the ladies beside me do not even cross themselves.
The parade proceeds, a gorgeous group in wine-colored costume carrying great silver maces before the civic representation. The governor of the province is pointed out to me as a count of high degree, but in the instant when my awed glance falls upon him he gives a monstrous gape unbecoming even to nobility. The last of the spruce cadets, who close the line, have hardly passed when the thrifty housewife beseeches our aid in taking in out of the rain her scarlet balcony hanging, which proves to be the canopy of her best bed. But the sun is shining forth again when I return to the street to follow the procession into the cathedral.
Already this gleam of fair weather has filled theCalle de Comerciowith festive señoritas, arrayed in white mantillas and Manila shawls in honor of the bull-fight. Shops have beenpromptly opened for a holiday sale of the Toledo specialties—arabesqued swords and daggers, every variety of Damascened wares, and marchpane in form of mimic hams, fish, and serpents. The Toledo steel was famous in Shakespeare's day, even in the mouths of rustic dandies, whose geographical education had been neglected. When the clever rogue, Brainworm, in one of Jonson's comedies, would sell Stephen, the "country gull," a cheap rapier, he urges, "'Tis a most pure Toledo," and Stephen replies according to his folly, "I had rather it were a Spaniard." But onward is the glorious church, with its symmetric tower, whose spire wears a threefold crown of thorns. The exterior walls are hung, on this one day of the year, with wondrous tapestries that Queen Isabella knew. An army of beggars obstructs the crowd, which presses in, wave upon wave, through the deep, rich portals in whose ornamentation whole lifetimes have carved themselves away.
Within this sublime temple, unsurpassed in Gothic art, where every pavement slab is worn by knees more than by footsteps, where every starry window has thrown its jewel lights on generations of believers, one would almost choose to dwell forever. One looks half enviously at recumbent alabaster bishops and kneeling marble knights, even at dim grotesques, who have rested in the heart of that grave beauty, in that atmosphere of prayer and chant, so long. Let these stone figures troop out into the troubled streets and toil awhile, and give the rest of us a chance to dream. But the multitude, which has knelt devoutly whileSu Majestadwas being borne into theCapilla Mayor, comes pouring down the nave to salute the stone on which—ah me!—on which the Virginset her blessed foot December 18, 666, when she alighted in Toledo cathedral to present the champion of the Immaculate Conception, St. Ildefonso, with a chasuble of celestial tissue. The gilded, turreted shrine containing that consecrated block towers almost to the height of the nave. A grating guards it from the devout, who can only touch it with their finger tips, which then they kiss. Hundreds, with reverend looks, stand waiting their turn—children, peasants, bull-fighters, decorated officers, refined ladies, men of cultured faces. The sound of kissing comes thick and fast. Heresy begins to beat in my blood.
Not all that heavenward reach of columns and arches, not that multitudinous charm of art, can rid the imagination of a granite weight. I escape for a while to the purer church without, with its window-gold of sunshine and lapis-lazuli roof. When the mighty magnet draws me back again, those majestic aisles are empty, save for a tired sacristan or two, and the silence is broken only by a monotone of alternate chanting, from where, in theCapilla Mayor, two priests keep watch withEl Señor.
"He will be here all the afternoon," says the sacristan, "and nothing can be shown; but if you will come back to-morrow I will arrange for you to see even Our Lady's robes and gems."
Come back! I felt myself graying to a shadow already. Of course I longed to see again that marvellous woodwork of the choir stalls, with all the conquest of Granada carved amid columns of jasper and under alabaster canopies, but I was smothered in a multitude of ghosts. They crowded from every side,—nuns, monks, soldiers, tyrants, magnificent archbishops,the martyred Leocadia, passionate Roderick, weeping Florinda, grim Count Julian, "my Cid," Pedro the Cruel, those five thousand Christian nobles and burghers of Toledo, slain, one by one, at the treacherous feast of Abderrahman, those hordes of flaming Jews writhing amid the Inquisition fagots. I had kept my Corpus. I had seen the greatest of allautos sacramentales, Calderon's masterpiece, "Life is a Dream."
"On a single one of the Virgin's gold-wrought mantles," coaxed the sacristan, "are eighty-five thousand large pearls and as many sapphires, amethysts, and diamonds. I will arrange for you to see everything, when Our Lord is gone away."
But no. I am a little particular about treasures. Since Toledo has lost the emerald table of King Solomon and that wondrous copy of the Psalms written upon gold leaf in a fluid made of melted rubies, I will not trouble the seven canons to unlock the seven doors of the cathedral sacristy. Let the Madonna enjoy her wealth alone. I havepesetasenough for my ticket to Madrid.
XIX
THE TERCENTENARY OF VELÁZQUEZ
"It is a sombre and a weeping skyThat lowers above thee now, unhappy Spain;Thy 'scutcheon proud is dashed with dimming rain;Uncertain is thy path and deep thy sigh.All that is mortal passes; glories die;This hour thy destiny allots thee pain;But for the worker of thy woes remainThose retributions slowly forged on high."Put thou thy hope in God; what once thou wertThou yet shalt be by labor of thy sonsPatient and true, with purpose to atone;And though the laurels of the loud-voiced gunsAre not with us to-day, this balms our hurt—Cervantes and Velázquez are our own."—Duke of Rivas:For the Tercentenary.
"It is a sombre and a weeping skyThat lowers above thee now, unhappy Spain;Thy 'scutcheon proud is dashed with dimming rain;Uncertain is thy path and deep thy sigh.All that is mortal passes; glories die;This hour thy destiny allots thee pain;But for the worker of thy woes remainThose retributions slowly forged on high.
"It is a sombre and a weeping sky
That lowers above thee now, unhappy Spain;
Thy 'scutcheon proud is dashed with dimming rain;
Uncertain is thy path and deep thy sigh.
All that is mortal passes; glories die;
This hour thy destiny allots thee pain;
But for the worker of thy woes remain
Those retributions slowly forged on high.
"Put thou thy hope in God; what once thou wertThou yet shalt be by labor of thy sonsPatient and true, with purpose to atone;And though the laurels of the loud-voiced gunsAre not with us to-day, this balms our hurt—Cervantes and Velázquez are our own."—Duke of Rivas:For the Tercentenary.
"Put thou thy hope in God; what once thou wert
Thou yet shalt be by labor of thy sons
Patient and true, with purpose to atone;
And though the laurels of the loud-voiced guns
Are not with us to-day, this balms our hurt—
Cervantes and Velázquez are our own."
—Duke of Rivas:For the Tercentenary.
The celebration, as planned, was comparatively simple, but enthusiasm grew with what it fed upon. The Knights of Santiago held the first place upon the programme, for into that high and exclusive order the artist had won entry by special grace of Philip IV. Even Spain has been affected by the modern movement for the destruction of traditions, and certain erudite meddlers, who have been delving in the State archives, declare that there is no truthin the following story, which, nevertheless, everybody has to tell.
The legend runs that Velázquez became a knight of St. James by a royal compliment to the painter ofLas Meninas. This picture, which seems no picture, but life itself, eternizes a single instant of time in the palace of Philip IV, that one instant before the fingers of the little Infanta have curved about the cup presented by her kneeling maid, before the great, tawny, half-awakened hound has decided to growl remonstrance under the teasing foot of the dwarf, before the reflected faces of king and queen have glided from the mirror, that fleeting instant while yet the courtier, passing down the gallery into the garden, turns on the threshold for a farewell smile, while yet the green velvet sleeve of the second dwarf, ugliest of all pet monsters, brushes the fair silken skirts of the daintiest of ladies-in-waiting, while yet the artist, so much more royal than royalty, flashes his dark-eyed glance upon the charming group.
But if Velázquez looks prouder than a king, Philip proved himself here no uninspired painter. Asked if he found the work complete, the monarch shook his head, and, catching up the brush, marked the red cross of St. James on the pictured breast of the artist. So says the old wives' tale. At all events, in this way or another, the honor was conferred, with the result that on the three hundredth birthday of Velázquez, June 6, 1899, dukes and counts and marquises flocked to the Church ofLas Señoras Comendadoras, where the antique Gregorian mass was chanted for the repose of their comrade's soul.
By the latest theology, the "Master of all Good Workmen" would not have waited for this illustrious requiembefore admitting the painter to "an æon or two" of rest, but the Knights of Santiago have not yet accepted Kipling as their Pope.
On the afternoon of the same day theSala de Velázquezwas inaugurated in theMuseo del Prado, taking, with additions, the room formerly known as theSala de la Reina Isabel, long theSalon Carréof Madrid, where Raphaels, Titians, Del Sartos, Dürers, Van Dycks, Correggios, and Rembrandts kept the Spanish Masters company. Portico and halls were adorned in honor of the occasion; the bust of Velázquez, embowered in laurels, myrtles, and roses, was placed midway in the Long Gallery, fronting the door of his own demesne; but the crown of thefiestaconsisted in the new and far superior arrangement of his pictures. The royal family and chief nobility, the Ministers of Government, the Diplomatic Corps, and delegations of foreign artists made a brilliant gathering. The address, pronounced by an eminent critic, reviewed what are known as the three styles of Velázquez. Never was art lecture more fortunate, for thisMuseo, holding as it does more than half the extant works of the great realist, with nearly all his masterpieces, enabled the speaker to illustrate every point from the original paintings. A rain of aristocratic poems followed, for a Spaniard is a lyrist born, and turns from prose to verse as easily as he changes his cuffs. As Monipodio says, in one of Cervantes' "Exemplary Tales": "A man has but to roll up his shirt-sleeves, set well to work, and he may turn off a couple of thousand verses in the snapping of a pair of scissors." These Dukes of Parnassus and Counts of Helicon did homage to the painter in graceful stanzas, not without many an allusion to Spain's troubled present. If only, as one sonneteersuggested, the soldiers ofLas Lanzashad marched out from their great gilt frame and gone against the foe! A programme of old-time music was rendered, and therewith theSala de Velázquezwas declared open.
To this, as to all galleries and monuments under State control, the public was invited free of charge for the week to come. The response was appreciative, gentility, soldiery, ragamuffins, bevies of schoolgirls with notebooks, and families of foreigners with opera glasses grouping themselves in picturesque variety, day after day, before the art treasures of Madrid, while beggars sat in joyful squads on the steps of the museums, collecting the fees which the doorkeepers refused.
During these seven days, artistic and social festivals in honor of Velázquez abounded, not only in Madrid, but throughout Spain. Palma must needs get up, with photographs and the like, a Velázquez exposition, and Seville, insisting on her mother rights, must arrange a belated funeral, with mass and sermon and a tomb of laurels and flowers, surmounted by brushes, palette, and the cloak and helmet of the Order of Santiago. In the capital theCirculo de Bellas Artessumptuously breakfasted the artists from abroad. The dainties were spiced with speeches, guitars, ballet, gypsy songs and dances, congratulatory telegrams, and a letter posted from Parnassus by Don Diego himself. Two valuable new books on Velázquez suddenly appeared in the shop windows, and such periodicals asLa Ilustración,Blanco y Negro,La Vida Literaria, andEl Nuevo Mundovied with one another in illustrated numbers, while even the one-cent dailies came out with specials devoted to Velázquez biography and criticism. The Academy of San Fernando rendered a musicalprogramme of Velázquez date, the Queen Regent issued five hundred invitations to an orchestral concert in the Royal Palace, and there was talk, which failed to fructify, of a grand masquerade ball, where the costumes should be copied from the Velázquez paintings and the dances should be those stepped by the court of Philip IV.
The closing ceremony of the week was the unveiling of the new statue of Velázquez. Paris owes to Fremiot an equestrian statue of the painter, who, like Shakespeare in his Paris statue, is made to look very like a Frenchman, but the horse is of the most spirited Spanish type. A younger Velázquez may be seen in Seville, at home among the orange trees, and thePalacio de la Biblioteca y Museos Nacionalesin Madrid shows a statue from the hand of Garcia. Still another, an arrogant, striding figure, was standing in the studio of Benlliure, ready for its journey to the Paris exposition. The tercentenary statue, by Marinas, is also true to that haughty look of Velázquez. It represents him seated, brush and palette in hand, the winds lifting from his ears those long, clustering falls of hair, as if to let him hear the praises of posterity. Little he cares for praises! That artist's look sees nothing but his task.
The unveiling took place late on Wednesday afternoon, in front of theMuseo del Prado, where the statue stands. A turquoise sky and a light breeze put all the world in happy humor. The long façade of theMuseowas hung with beautiful tapestries. Handsome medallions bore the names of painters associated in one way or another with Velázquez—Herrera el Viejo, his first master in Seville; Pacheco, his second Sevillian teacher and his father-in-law; Luis Tristan ofToledo, for whom he had an enthusiastic admiration; El Greco, that startling mannerist, whose penetrating portraiture of faces, even whose extraordinary effects in coloring were not without influence on the younger man; Zurbarán, his almost exact contemporary, enamored no less than Velázquez himself of the new realism emanating from the great and terrible Ribera; Murillo, whose developing genius the favored Court painter, too high-hearted for envy, protected and encouraged, and Alonzo Cano, the impetuous artist of Granada, to whom, too, Velázquez was friend and benefactor.
Spanish colors and escutcheons were everywhere. In decorated tribunes sat the royal family and the choicest of Madrid society, with the members of theCirculo de Bellas Artes, who were the hosts of the day, and with distinguished guests from the provinces and abroad. Romero Robledo, as President of the Society of Fine Arts, welcomed the Queen, closing his brief address with the following words: "Never, señora, will your exalted sentiments be able to blend with those of the Spanish people in nobler hour than this, commemorating him who is forever a living national glory and who receives enthusiastic testimony of admiration from all the civilized world." Their Majesties drew upon the cords, the two silken banners parted, and the statue was revealed to the applauding multitude. While the royal group congratulated the sculptor, the ambassadors of Austria and Germany laid magnificent wreaths, fashioned with a due regard to the colors of their respective nations, at the feet of Velázquez. The eminent French artists, Carolus Duran and Jean Paul Laurens, bore a crown from France and delighted the audience by declaring that "the painter of the Spanish kingwas himself the king of painters." Nothing since the war had gladdened Spain more than the presence and praises of these two famous Parisians; the reverence of Madrid for Paris is profound. The tributes of Rome and London excited far less enthusiasm. Still more wreaths, and more and more, were deposited by a procession of delegates from the art societies of all Spain, headed by Seville, the bands playing merrily meanwhile, until that stately form of bronze seemed to rise from out a hill of laurels, ribbons, and flowers.
This is the first Velázquez celebration which has had universal recognition. The painter was hardly known to Europe at large until the day of Fernando VII, who was induced by his art-loving wife, Isabel of Braganza, to send the pictures from the royal palaces, all those accumulated treasures of the Austrian monarchs, to the empty building, designed for a natural history museum, in thePrado. This long, low edifice is now one of the most glorious shrines of art in the world. It is a collection of masterpieces, showing the splendors that are rather than the processes by which they came to be. There is only one Fra Angelico, but there are ten Raphaels and four times as many Titians. In the Netherlands, no less than in Italy, the Spanish sway gathered rich spoils. There are a score of Van Dycks, threescore of those precious little canvases by Teniers, while as for Rubens, he blazes in some sixty-four Christian saints, heathen goddesses, and human sinners, all with a strong family resemblance. But although the Italian and Flemish schools are so magnificently represented, the wealth of Spanish painting is what overwhelms the visitor. Here are four rooms filled with the works of Goya—whose bones, by the way, arrived in Madrid from France for finalsepulture a few days before the celebration. Little more heed was paid to this advent than to that of the United States ambassador, who, it may be noted, was not presented to the Queen until the Velázquez jubilee was well over. But as for Goya, this unnoised entry was appropriate enough, for he, whom De Amicis has called "the last flame-colored flash of Spanish genius," used, during his later life, to make the long journey from Bordeaux to Madrid every week for no other purpose than to gloat upon the Sunday bull-fight, coming and going without speech or handshake, only a pair of fierce, bloodthirsty eyes. This fiery Aragonese painted bull-fights, battles, executions, and Inquisition tortures with blacks that make one shudder and reds that make one sick. He painted the brutal side of pleasure as well as of pain, filling broad canvases with dancing, feasting peasants—canvases that smell of wine and garlic, and all but send out a roar of drunken song and laughter.
Gypsy Tenants of an Arab PalaceGypsy Tenants of an Arab Palace
Gypsy Tenants of an Arab Palace
Goya lived in the day of Charles IV, whose court painter he was, and against whom this natural caricaturist must have borne a special grudge, so sarcastic are his portraits of the royal family; but his genius is allied to that of Velázquez's powerful contemporary, Ribera. TheMuseo del Pradohas abundant material for a Riberasala, since it possesses no less than fifty-eight of his works, but the official put in charge of it would probably go mad. The paintings are mercifully scattered and, well for such of us as may be disposed to flight, can be recognized from afar by their dusks and pallors—ascetic faces gleaming out from sable backgrounds, wasted limbs of naked saints tracing livid lines in the gloom of caverns, and, against an atmosphere dark as the frown ofGod, the ghastly flesh of tortured martyrs, and dead Christs drooping stiffly to the linen winding-sheet. One is appalled at the entrance of the Long Gallery by the two vast, confronting canvases of Prometheus, less a Titan than a convulsion of Titanic agony, and of Ixion, crushed not only beneath the wheel, but under that cold, tremendous blackness of hell made actual. Far down one side of the hall they stretch, those paintings upon paintings of torment, emaciation, the half-crazed visionary, and the revolting corpse. But there is no escape from Ribera, he who
"taintedHis brush with all the blood of all the sainted."
"tainted
His brush with all the blood of all the sainted."
Turning back to the Spanish cabinets that open from the vestibule we come upon a piteous San Sebastian, the blanched young form bound fast and already nailed by arrows to the ebon-hued trunk of a leafless tree. Descending the staircase to theSala de Alfonso XII, we must pass an attenuated old anchoress, whose sunken face and praying hands have the very tint of the skulls that form the only ornaments, almost the only furniture, of her dreary cave. We may as well brave the terrors of this first half of the Long Gallery, where El Greco's livid greens will at least divert attention, and where, opposite the collection of Riberas, wait the gracious Murillos to comfort and uplift.
Yet Ribera, ruffian though he was, is not solely and exclusively a nightmare artist. He could give sweetest and most tranquil color when he chose, as his "Jacob's Dream" here testifies, with the dim gold of its angel-peopled ladder; and for all the spirit of bigotry that clouds his work, there isCatholic fervor in these pictures and masterly truthfulness up to the point where the senses need the interpretation of the soul. There is more than anatomy, too, in these starved old saints; there is the dread of judgment. Ribera depicts supernatural terror, where Goya shows the animal shock of death.
Another Spanish phase appears in Zurbarán. In his most effective work we have not Goya's blood color, nor Ribera's blacks, nor the celestial violets of Juan de Joanes, but the grays of the monastic renunciation, the twilight that is as far from rapture as from anguish. His gowned, cowled, corded figures pass before the eye in the pale tints of the cloister. The shadow of cathedral walls is over them. ThePradohas been strangely indifferent to Zurbarán, who is far more fully represented in the galleries of Andalusia; but it has in its baker's dozen two important and characteristic works, both visions of San Pedro Nolasco. In one the entranced saint, whose figure might be carved in stone,—stone on which ray from stained-glass window never fell,—gazes upon an angel, whose vesture, crossed by a dark green scarf, is flushed with the faintest rose. In the second the sombre cell is illuminated for an instant by the apparition of St. Peter the Apostle, head downward, as in his crucifixion, his naked form dazzling against a vague redness of light like a memory of pain.
One glance at a wall aglow with Madonna blues reminds us that Spanish sacred art does not culminate in Ribera nor in Zurbarán. The Christian faith has had almost as pure, poetic, and spiritual an utterance in the land of the Inquisition as in Italy itself. This is not Murillo's hour; it is the triumph of Velázquez and the realists that Spain is celebratingto-day; but none the less it is a joy of joys to walk by the Murillos on the way to the laurelled bust and the crowdedsala. These are the pictures that are rather in heaven than earth. Where Mary, divine in her virginal loveliness, is not upborne among the golden clouds, the radiant-plumed angel kneels on her cottage floor and the wings of the descending dove beat whiteness through the air. Here is realism and more. The Mater Dolorosa has those luminous sea-blue eyes of Andalusia, but they tell of holy tears. The Crucified is no mere sufferer, but the suffering Son of God, and the crown of thorns, while dripping blood, haloes his brows with the redemption of the world.
The genius of Velázquez dwelt not above the earth, but upon it, in the heart of its most brilliant life. He was no dreamer of dreams; he "painted the thing as he saw it," and with what sure eyes he saw, and with what a firm and glowing brush he painted! Hissalasurrounds us at once with an atmosphere of brightness, beauty, elegance, variety, delight. His work is so superb, so supreme, that, like perfect manners, it puts even the humblest of us at our ease. We are not artists, but we seem to understand Velázquez.
Of course we don't. No knight of the palette would admit it for an instant. What can the rabble know of the mysterious compoundings and touchings from which sprang these splendors of color that outshine the centuries? Young men with streaming hair are continually escorting awed-looking señoras about the room, discoursing with dramatic vehemence on the "periods" of the Master's work. As a youth at Seville, they explain, Velázquez had of necessity taken religious subjects, for the Church was the chief patronof art in Andalusia; but his natural bent even then displayed itself in tavern studies and sketches of popular types, as the "Water-seller of Seville" and the "Old Woman Frying Eggs." Of his early religious pieces the archbishop's palace of Seville keeps "San Ildefonso Receiving the Chasuble from the Hands of the Virgin," and the National Gallery of London secured "Christ in the House of Martha," but "The Adoration of the Kings" hangs here at our right as we enter the Velázquezsala. A little stiff, say these accomplished critics, with a suggestion of the dry manner of his master, Pacheco, but bear you in mind that this is the production of a youth of twenty. It is obvious, too, that Andalusians, not celestial visions, served him as models.
A longing to see the Tintorets and Titians, those starry treasures of the dark Escorial, drew him to Madrid at twenty-three. Here he was fortunate in finding friends, who brought his portraits to the notice of Philip IV, a dissolute boy ruled by the Count-Duke Olivares. Youth inclines to youth. Velázquez was appointed painter to the king at the same salary as that paid to the royal barber, and henceforth he had no care in life but to paint. And how he painted! His first portraits of Philip show a blond young face, with high brow, curled mustache, the long Hapsburg chin, and eyes that hint strange secrets. Again and again and again Velázquez traced those Austrian features, while the years stamped them ever more deeply with lines of pride and sin—a tragic face in the end as it was ill-omened in the beginning. But the masterpiece of Velázquez's twenties is "The Drunkards," a scene of peasant revelry where the young are gloriously tipsy and the old are on the point of maudlin tears. Here it is,LosBorrachos, farther to the right. In looking on it one remembers that a contemporary realist, in the Protestant island which has often been so sharp a thorn in Spain's side, likewise crowned the achievement of his springtime by a group of topers, Prince Hal and Falstaff and their immortal crew.
Not the influence of Rubens, who spent nine months in Spain in 1628-29, painting like the wind, nor a visit to the Holy Land of Raphael and Michael Angelo could make Velázquez other than he was. This "Vulcan's Forge," which we see here, painted in Italy, is mythological only in the title. Back he came at the royal summons, to paint more portraits—Philip over and over, on foot, on horseback, half length, full length, all lengths; the winsome Infante Baltasar, as a toddling baby with his dwarf, as a gallant little soldier, hunter, horseman, and in the princely dignity of fourteen, when he had but three more years to live; the sad French queen, the king's brother, the magnificent Olivares, the sculptor Montañes, counts, dukes, buffoons. Within these twenty years Velázquez produced his two most famous works of religious tenor—"Christ Bound to the Column," a "captain jewel" of the London National Gallery, and that majestic "Crucifixion" before which Spaniards in thePradobare their heads. But the crown of this period isLas Lanzas, or "The Surrender of Breda," which holds the place of honor on the wall fronting the door. It is vivid past all praise, and nobler than any battle scene in its beauty of generosity. The influence of Italy had told especially on Velázquez's backgrounds. The bright, far landscapes opening out beyond his portrayed figures, especially those on horseback,—and hishorses are as lifelike as his dogs,—give to thesalaan exhilarating effect of free space and wide horizons.
In 1650 he made his second visit to Rome, where he portrayed Pope Innocent X. Nine years of glorious work in Spain remained to him. Still he painted the king, even at his royal prayers, for which there was full need, and the young Austrian queen, who had succeeded the dead mother of the dead Baltasar. On that happy left-hand wall of thesalashines, in all its vigorous grace, the "Mercury and Argos," but if the hundred eyes of Argos are ready to close, their place is supplied by the terrible scrutiny of a row of portraits, embarrassing the boldest of us out of note-taking. How those pairs of pursuing black eyes, sage and keen and mocking, stare the starers out of countenance! The series of pet dwarfs is here, old Æsop, and Menippus, and the sly buffoon, "Don Juan of Austria." Of these two wonder-works,Las Meninas, "The Maids of Honor," has a room to itself, and thusLas Hilanderas, "The Weavers," becomes the central magnet of this returning wall. A saint picture and even a coronation of the Virgin cannot draw the crowds from before this ultimate triumph of the actual—this factory interior, where a group of peasant women fashion tapestries, while a broad shaft of sunshine works miracles in color.
And this, too, is Spanish. Cervantes is as true a facet of many-sided Spain as Calderon, and Velázquez as Murillo. With all the national propensity to emotion and exaggeration, Spaniards are a truth-seeing people. The popularcoplasare more often satiric than sentimental. They like to bite through to the kernel of fact, even when it is bitter. Velázquez, with his rich and noble realism, is of legitimate descent.
XX
CHORAL GAMES OF SPANISH CHILDREN