Jesus of the Passion"Jesus of the Passion"
"Jesus of the Passion"
But opposite these stern warriors is a hollow square of boy princes, and of nobleniñoswhose visors hide their identitiesin long oblivion. The armor of these childish figures is daintily wrought, with tender touches of ruffs and cuffs, scallops and flutings and rosettes. Often only the upper half of the body is incased in steel, the slender legs playing the dandy in puffed trousers of striped velvet—scarlet, green, and buff—silk hose, and satin slippers. Little Philip III proudly displays a diminutive round shield, with a relief of battle scenes in gold. The plate armor of little Philip IV is stamped with lions and castles, eagles and spears. And his little son, Don Baltasar Carlos, bestrides a spirited pony and wears at the back of his helmet a tuft of garnet feathers.
ThePradogalleries abound in royal children. This sameinfante, Don Baltasar, is seen here in the foreground of a lonely landscape, with desolate blue hills beyond and driving clouds above. But all the more bright and winsome glows the form of the six-year-old horseman, the gold-fringed, pink sash that crosses his breast streaming out far behind with the speed of his fearless gallop. Supreme among thePradochildren, of course, is the little daughter of Philip IV, the central figure of the world-renownedLas Meninas. All in vain does her charming maid of honor kneel to her with the golden cup; all in vain does the dwarf tease the drowsy dog. The solemn puss, undiverted, will not stir from her pose nor alter the set of her small features until the artist, standing half disdainfully before his easel, gives the word. She has waited for it now hard upon two hundred and fifty years, but the centuries beat in vain against that inflexible bit of propriety.
Even the royal burial vaults beneath the grim Escorial have in their chill grandeur of marble halls an especial Panteon for babies, princely innocents whose lives are reckoned in monthsmore often than in years. Gold and blue and red brighten their great white sepulchre, and above the altar smiles the Christ Child, with the graven words, "Suffer the children to come unto me." But for Alfonso XIII a sombre sarcophagus waits in the haughtiest and gloomiest of all the Panteons, where only kings, and queens who were mothers of kings, may lie.
It is not royal childhood alone that is dear to this strange, romantic, monstrously inconsistent heart of Spain. The cruelty of Spaniards to horses and donkeys sickens even the roughest Englishman, yet almost every voice softens in speaking to a child, and during my six months in Spanish cities I saw nothing of that street brutality toward the little ones which forces itself upon daily notice in Liverpool and London. Spanish children are too often ill-cared for, but despite the abuses of ignorant motherhood and fatherhood, such vivid, vivacious, bewitching little people as they are! Enter a Spanish schoolroom and see how vehemently the small brown hands are wagged in air, how the black eyes dance and the dimples play, what a stir and bustle, what a young exuberance of energy! They race to the blackboards like colts out at pasture. They laugh at everything, these sons of "the grave Spaniard," and even the teacher will duck his head behind the desk for a half-hidden ecstasy over some dunce's blunder or some rogue's detected trick.
But their high spirits never make them unmindful of those courtesies of life in which they have been so carefully trained. There is an old-fashioned exaggeration about their set phrases of politeness. Just as the casual caller kisses the lady's feet, in words, and she reciprocates by a verbal kissing of his hand,so the school children respond to the roll call with a glib: "Your servant, sir." Ask a well-bred boy his name, and he rattles back, "Jesus Herrera y La-Chica, at the service of God and yourself." They learn these amenities of speech with their first lispings. I was much taken aback one day in Seville by a child of eighteen months. Not in the least expecting this infant, whose rosy face was bashfully snuggled into his young aunt's neck, to understand, I said to her, "What a fine little fellow!" Whereupon Master Roly-poly suddenly sat up straight on her arm, ducked his head in my direction, and gravely enunciated, "Es favor que Usted me hace"—"It is a compliment you pay me." I could hardly recover from the shock in time to make the stereotyped rejoinder, "No es favor, es justicia"—"No compliment, but the truth." To this Don Chubbykins sweetly returned, "Mil gracias"—"A thousand thanks," and I closed this uncanny dialogue with the due response, "No las merece"—"It does not merit them."
Servants, neighbors, passers-by, beggars, all prompt the children in these shibboleths of good manners, adorning the precept with example. "Would you like to go with us to the picture gallery this afternoon?" I once asked a laddie of artistic tastes at a boarding-house table. "Si, señora," he replied, whereupon several of the boarders, greatly scandalized, hastened to remind him, but in the gentlest of tones, of the essential addition, "con mucho gusto" to which we were bound to reply, "The pleasure will be ours." The girls, even more than the boys, are bred in these formal fashions of intercourse. Every morning they ask if you have rested well, and express grief or gratification, according to your response. In Mrs.Gulick's school, mere midgets of six and eight, returning from class, will not close the doors of their rooms if you are in sight, though perhaps seated at a reading table in the farther end of the corridor, lest they should appear inhospitable. On our return from Italica, a thirsty child of seven, heated to exhaustion with the sun and fun of that Andalusian picnic, refused to touch the anise-seed water which some good Samaritan had handed up to the dusty carriage, until the glass had been offered to every one else, driver included, leaving, in the sequel, little enough for her. On our midnight return from theFeria, this sameniñaof gentle memory, staggering and half crying with sleepiness, would nevertheless not precede any of her elders in entering the home door. "After you," she sobbed, with hardly voice enough to add, "And may you all rest well!" "The same to you," chorussed the adults, trooping by, and her faint murmur followed, "Many thanks."
"Shall I give you this fan when I go away," I asked her once, "or would you rather have it now to take to the party?" She wanted it then and there, but what she answered was, "I shall be best pleased to take it when you like best to give it."
You must beware of saying to a little Spanish maid, "What a beautiful rosebud in your hair!" Instantly the hand is busy with the pins. "It is at your disposal." You hastily protest, "A thousand thanks, but no, no, no! It is very well placed where it is." Off comes the flower, notwithstanding, and is fastened into your belt. For when the elder sister has insisted on giving you (until the next ball) those dancing slippers which you so rashly admired, and the sister'snoviowenthome the night before without his cloak, because you had approved its colors (although he sent his man around for it before breakfast), what can the children do but follow suit? Even their form of "Now I Lay Me" is touched with their quaint politeness:—
"Jesus, Joseph, Mary,Your little servant keep,While, with your kind permission,I lay me down to sleep."
"Jesus, Joseph, Mary,
Your little servant keep,
While, with your kind permission,
I lay me down to sleep."
The precocity of Spanish children is a recognized fact. An educational expert, a Frenchman who holds a chair in an English university, assured us that beyond a doubt Spanish children, for the first dozen years of life, develop more rapidly than any other children of Europe. Yet, although these clever little Spaniards are so punctiliously taught to put the pleasure of others before their own, they are treated with universal indulgence. Soldiers lining the curbstones on occasion of a royal progress will let the children press in beside them and cling to their valorous legs, until the military array seems variegated with a Kindergarten. My farewell glimpse of Toledo, on Corpus Christi Day, makes a pretty picture in memory. The red-robed cardinal, who had come to the station to take his train, was fairly stormed by all the children within sight, clamoring for his blessing. In vain the attendant priests tried to scatter the throng, and ladies of high degree, planting their chairs in a circle about the prelate, acted as a laughing body-guard. It was all of no avail. The little people danced up and down with eagerness, dodged under arms, and slipped between elbows. They knelt uponthe cardinal's very feet, rapturously kissing his red-gloved hand and clasping to their pinafores and blouses the sacred trinkets he distributed. And he, patting the bobbing black pates, wherever he could get a chance, smiled on the little ones and forbade them not.
The affection lavished on children in the household circle is often poetic and passionate. I observed one day a brusque young fellow of twenty-four, whom we had thought rather a hard, catch-penny sort of person, suddenly gather a four-year-old nephew to his heart and cover the dimpled face with kisses, while the look in his own black eyes was the look of a St. Anthony. I stood once in a crowded cathedral and lost all sense of the service in contemplation of an ugly manikin, with coarse features and receding forehead, who held a frail baby boy tight against his breast. This was a blue-eyed, fair-haired wean, with a serious, far-away expression, and from time to time, attracted by the gilt of the ceiling, he raised a tiny pink fore-finger and pointed upward, while the father's animal face, never turned away from the child, became transfigured with love and worship. He took the baby out, when it had fallen asleep upon his shoulder, and it was good to see that dense throng open and make a lane for him, every man, however brutal or frivolous his aspect, being careful not to jostle the drooping, golden head.
But Spanish children, so caressed and so adored, are nevertheless modest in their bearing, and fall shyly back before a stranger. I remember a beaming grandfather displaying to us two blushing little men, bidding them open their eyes wide that we might contrast colors, turn back to back that we might measure heights, and in various ways put their smallselves on show, all which they did in mute obedience, but at the word of release flew together, flung their arms about each other's necks, rolled under the nearest table, and curled up into the least possible bunch of bashful agony.
The pictures, frescos, and carvings of Spanish churches often reflect the looks of Spanish childhood. The Holy Family gives a wide range of opportunity, especially in the ministering cherubs. There is a crucifix in one of the twenty-two aisle chapels of Toledo cathedral, where three broken-hearted mites of angels, just three crying babies, are piteously striving to draw out the nails from the Sufferer's hands and feet. Many of the saint-groups admit of child figures, too, as the St. Christopher, which almost invariably appears as a colossal nave painting, "the Goliath of frescos."
It would be strange, indeed, if children were not beloved in the country of Murillo. Spain has let the most of his beggar-boy pictures go to foreign collections, but she has cherished his Holy Families and cherub-peopled Annunciations. Such ecstatic rogues as those Andalusian cherubs are! Their restless ringlets catch azure shadows from the Virgin's mantle; they perch tiptoe on the edges of her crescent moon; they hold up a mirror to her glory and peep over the frame to see themselves; they pelt St. Francis with roses; they play bo-beep from behind the fleecy folds of cloud; they try all manner of aerial gymnastics. But a charm transcending even theirs dwells in those baby Christs that almost spring from the Madonna's arms to ours, in those boy Christs that touch all boyhood with divinity. The son of the Jewish carpenter, happy in his father's workshop with bird and dog; the shepherd lad whose earnest eyes look toward his waiting flock;the lovely playmates, radiant with innocent beauty, who bend together above the water of life—from these alone might Catholic Spain have learned the sacredness of childhood. But Spain first showed Murillo the vision that he rendered back to her.
XIII
THE YOLK OF THE SPANISH EGG
"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 Madrileños cannot be persuaded that the skies behold its equal, and evenover 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 thedesayunoof thick, cinnamon-flavored chocolate, into which are dipped strips of bread, two-thirds of the afternoon over thealmuerzo, a substantial repast of meat and vegetables, fruit anddulces, and all the evening over thecomida, where soup and the national dish ofpucheroare 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 Madrileños carry to excess. Lounging on the balcony, a gayly paintedcase 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 café 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 ofhorchata, 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 totake 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 thetertuliasconsists 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, thetertuliarequires no further exercise of hospitality than an open door and a feast of words. There is more blithesomeness, forhay 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 picktheir 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 thepaseosand 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 theserenos. 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 driverpromptly 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 saidVamos!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 worsethan 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 fivecentimos, only fivecentimos, and Heaven will pay you back. Lady! lady! lady! lady! Fivecentimos, 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 poundingof 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 popularcoplashas 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."
"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 agedciego, sitting on a doorstep, in the Alcalá, 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 onecentimofor 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 seein 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 cafés. 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 addedPor Dios(for God's sake).
The Spanish mendicant knows nothing of the Anglo-Saxonfeeling, "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 coursesOffer themselves to thy election.Either the wars might still supply thy wantsOr service of some virtuous gentleman,Or honest labor: nay, what can I name,But would become thee better than to beg?"
"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 withbarbarity by the uncle and aunt for whom she is an uncomplaining drudge. But once, in festive hour, they give her fivecentimos, 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-jarsover 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 thePuerta 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 thelibreriasa number of books, including several illustrated catalogues of the Velázquez 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, señora. 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, señora," 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."
Christ of the Seven Words"Christ of the Seven Words"
"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. "Señora!" 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 theBiblioteca Nacionalwith 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 engravedToledo.
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 Madrileño 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 Madrileño 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 andagráz, he wiles the hours away, chatting with friends andadmiring 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 thesine 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 café 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 theTeatro Español, 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, theTeatro Españolis closed, and there is little doing at theTeatro Real, an aristocratic temple of Italian opera. During the summer season the theatrical opportunities of Madrid are mainly limited to the popularzarzuelas, 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 popularzarzuelaquite 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 hermuseos. TheArmería, 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." TheMuseo Navalstill smells of the boundless brine and Isles of Spicery. TheMuseo Arqueológico Nacionalsweeps 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-wovenIberian sandals, rudely sculptured shapes in sandstone grasping wine cups that suggest whole Rubaiyats, Phœnician anchors, bronze tables of Roman laws, Moorish arabesques, mediæval 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 supremeMuseo del Pradoso magnetizes pilgrim feet that it is hard to spare even a few hours for theAcadémia de Bellas Artes, with its grand Murillos and calm Zurbaráns, or theMuseo 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 onNoche BuenathePlaza Mayoris close set with booths, and the Infanta Isabel,muy Madrileñathat 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 mediæval 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 byverbenas, or evening fairs, chief among these being theVerbena 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:—
"Recotín, recotón!The bells of St. John!There's a festival on.Recotín, recotín, recotón!"
"Recotín, recotón!
The bells of St. John!
There's a festival on.
Recotín, recotín, recotón!"
Far along thePradogleam the busy fires over which are merrily bubbling the oiliest and brownest ofbuñuelos. 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 uponus 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 thePuerta 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 thePrado, 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 circleof 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.
XIV
A STUDY IN CONTRASTS
"Here you have them, the two Spains, unlike, antagonistic, squared for conflict."—Vida Nueva.
The world-old struggle between conservatism and advance is at its most dramatic point in Spain. The united forces of clericalism and militarism work for the continuance of ancient institutions, methods, ideas, and those leaders who do battle in the name of liberalism are too often nothing more than selfish politicians. But with all these odds against progress, it is making way. The mass of the people, kept so long in the darkness of ignorance and superstition, are looking toward the light. During my last week in Madrid I chanced upon two extreme expressions of these warring principles. The first was a royal and religious ceremony, the second a monster mass meeting,—the one intent on cherishing the past, the other clamoring at the gates of the future.
I was looking over theImparcialas I took my coffee one morning, when my eye fell on an item to the effect that there would becapilla publica en Palacioat ten o'clock. A traveller learns to jump at opportunity. Public service in the royal chapel promised to be of interest, and half-past nine found mewaiting, with a miscellaneous company of gentles and tatterdemalions, natives and foreigners, on the palace side of thePlaza de Armas, the expectant throng streaming far down the paved and covered way. We were well marshalled by soldiers, who kept the crowd in form of a long troop, and banded this by military lines, with gleaming bayonets. These bands, but a few feet apart, were effectual in preventing crowding and disorder, and when at last the doors were thrown open, a double rank of soldiers closed in before the portal as often as the entering file showed any tendency to press and hurry, and thus passed us through by small divisions, so that there was no unseemly struggling on the succession of bare, plain stairways that led to the upper galleries.
For "public service in the royal chapel," I was now to discover, does not mean that the public is admitted to the chapel itself. This is small, but very Spanish, with profusion of gilding, imposing altar, and frescoed saints, the characteristic splendor being tempered with a no less characteristic gloom, an effect enhanced by austere columns of gray marble. On days of public service, which are usually high feast days, three long galleries, forming three sides of a great quadrangle, are traversed by the court in passing from the royal rooms to the chapel door, and it is to these galleries only that the public is admitted. On such occasions the gallery walls are hung with richly colored tapestries from the magnificent collection of eight hundred pieces that enriches the royalTapiceria.
The instant I crossed the threshold these tapestries blazed upon the eye, so dazzling in their beauty that it was difficult to grasp the general situation. Civil Guards, in gala uniform, each armed with a pike taller than himself, were stationed atintervals of about six feet all along these tapestried walls, holding the carpeted way open for the passage of the royal and ecclesiastical party. The public hastened to fill in the spaces left between the guards, so that when the dignitaries paced the length of the three galleries, they walked between continuous human lines of mingled soldiery and spectators. We were of various ages, sizes, colors, and quite as picturesque, take it all in all, as the slowly stepping group on which our eyes were focussed.
A division of the royal escort, marching with drawn swords, preceded the Queen Regent, a slight and elegant figure in white and heliotrope, her mantilla pinned with diamonds. She walked in royal solitude, with a bearing of majesty and grace, but her face had a hard and almost sour look, which of itself might account for her unpopularity. The King and the younger Infanta did not take part in the day's ceremony, but the Princess of Asturias followed her mother, a fresh-faced girl, charmingly dressed in white and blue, with pearls and turquoises. A respectful step or two in the rear of her niece, yet at her side rather than behind, came in rich green silk adorned with emeralds the stout, gray-puffed, easy-going Infanta Isabel, her broad, florid face beaming with affability. The guards had passed stern word down the line for all hats to be off, but there was no sign of greeting, so far as I saw, from the spectators to the royal party, except as now and then some happy Spaniard bowed him to the dust in acknowledgment of a nod, as familiar as a wink, from this popular Infanta.
The occasion of this stately function was the elevation of the Papal Nuncio to the rank of cardinal. He passed in allpriestly magnificence of vestments and jewels, his red hat borne before him on a cushion. He was attended by the chief clerics of Court and capital, but even these gorgeous personages were outshone by the military and naval officers, whose breasts were a mosaic of medals, and whose headgear such erections of vainglory as to hush the crested cockatoo with shame. The Gentlemen of the Palace, too, were such peacocks in their glittering coats of many colors, their plumes and sashes, gold lace and silver lace, that the plump Ladies in Waiting, for all their pride of velvet, satin, and brocade, looked like mere hens in the wake of strutting chanticleers.
The American mind is ill prepared to do homage to the dress parades of European courts, and I laid by the memory to laugh over when I should have reached a place and hour where laughter would be inoffensive. As the Diplomatic Corps, in its varied costumes, came trooping on, twice a whisper ran along the gazing lines. "The Turk!" and the traditional enemy of Spain limped smilingly past, a bent, shrewd-faced old Mussulman, whose Oriental finery was topped by the red fez. "The Yankee!" and Spain's latest adversary strode by in the person of the newly arrived United States Minister, decorously arrayed in dress suit and a Catholic expression.
The chapel doors closed on this haughty train, and we, the invited public, cheerily proceeded to pass a social hour or two in chat and promenade and in contemplation of the tapestries. Even the Civil Guards unbent, dancing their babies, lending their pikes to delighted urchins, and raising forbidden curtains to give their womenkind furtive peeps into the royal apartments. Most astonishing was the maltreatment of thosepriceless tapestries. Small boys, unrebuked, played at hide and seek under the heavy folds, old men traced the patterns with horny fingers, and the roughest fellows from the streets lounged stupidly against them, rubbing dirty-jacketed shoulders over the superb coloring. The most splendid series displayed was from a master-loom of the Netherlands, illustrating the conquest of Tunis by Charles V—marvellously vivid scenes, where one beholds the spread of mighty camps, the battle shock of great armies and navies, and, like shrill chords of pain in some wild harmony, the countless individual tragedies of war. The scimitar of the Turk flashes down on the Spanish neck, while the upturned eyes are still too fierce for terror; the turbaned chief leans from his gold-wrought saddle to scan the severed heads that two blood-stained sons of the prophet are emulously holding up to his survey, hoping to recognize in those ghastly faces enemies of rank; white-robed women on the strand, their little ones clinging to their knees, reach arms of helpless anguish toward the smitten galley of their lords, who are leaping into the waves for refuge from the Christian cannonade.
I wondered how the Turkish Minister liked those tapestries, as his stooped-back Excellency passed in conference with a Chinese mandarin, who must have studied his costume from a teacup. For we had all been hustled into rows again to make that human lane through which the Royalties and the Reverends returned from their devotions. I was facing a quaint old tapestry of Christ enthroned in glory, with the beasts of the Apocalypse climbing over Him like pet kittens, and this so distracted my attention that I omitted to ask the amiable Infanta Isabel, who would, I am sure, have told anybody anything,what had taken place. But I read it all in theEpochathat evening—how her Majesty with her own august hands had fitted the red hat to the Nuncio's tonsured head, and how the new-made cardinal had addressed her in a grateful oration, praising her virtues as manifested in "the double character of queen and mother, an example rich in those peculiar gifts by which your Royal Grace has won the veneration and love of the noble and chivalrous Spanish people, the especial affection of the Father of the Faithful, and the respect and sympathy of all the world." For her and for the youthful monarch of Spain he invoked the favor of Heaven, and uttered a fervent hope that the cup of bitterness which this most Catholic nation had bowed herself to drink might be blessed to her in a renewal of strength and a reconquest of her ancient preëminence among the peoples of the earth.
The most significant expression of "new Spain" that I encountered in Madrid was a mass meeting—a rare and novel feature in Spanish public life. I blundered upon it as foolishly as one well could. The second day of July was the first anniversary of the founding of a daring Madrid weekly, theVida Nueva, to which, attracted by its literary values, as well as its political courage, I had subscribed. The sheet is usually issued Sunday, but as I was on the point of going out one Saturday afternoon myVida Nuevaarrived, accompanied by two non-committal tickets. They gave entrance to theFrontón Central, "only that and nothing more." I called one of the pretty señoritas of the household into council, and she sagely decided that these were tickets topelota, the Basque ball game, played in one or another of the various Madrid halls almost every summer afternoon. It seemed a little too consideratein theVida Nuevato provide for the recreation of its subscribers, but I was growing accustomed to surprises of Spanish courtesy, and tucked the tickets away in a safe corner. The folded newspaper rustled and whispered, and finally fluttered to my feet, but I was eager to be off, and, after the blind fashion of mortals, put it by.
It was my privilege to dine that day with two compatriots, and one of these, who knows and loves Spain better than many Spaniards do, began at once to tell me of that most unusual occurrence, a Madrid mass meeting, to take place this very evening. Of course we resolved to go, although my friend's husband was not in the city, and no other escort would countenance so harebrained an expedition. For the street to which this valiant lady led the way was choked with a flood of men surging toward an open door. The hall for the "meeting," a word which the Spanish language has fully adopted, was theFrontón Central, and admission was by ticket. Light dawned on my dim wits, and, while my two companions, with dignified and tranquil mien, stood themselves up against the outer wall, I besought a leisurely cabman, who insisted on waiting to pick up a little ragamuffin clamoring for a ride, to drive me in hot haste to my domicile. Here I searched out the tickets, put away only too carefully, and took a fleeting glance at theVida Nueva, which urged all "men of heart" to celebrate the eve of its anniversary by their presence at this mass meeting.
I had not realized that there were so many men of heart in Madrid. The street on my return was worse than before. The cabman objected strenuously to leaving us in these tempestuous surroundings, and, since there were only two tickets,we two elders of the trio agreed that the American girl was all too young for such an escapade, and forthwith despatched her, under his fatherly care, to the hotel. Then came the tug of war. We saw men fighting fiercely about the door, we heard the loud bandying of angry words, we were warned again and again that we could never get through the jam, we were told that, tickets or no tickets, ladies would not, could not, and should not be admitted; it was darkly hinted that, before the evening was over, there would be wild and bloody work within those walls. But we noticed a few other women in the throng, and decided, from moment to moment, to wait a little longer, and see what happened next. Meanwhile, we were almost unjostled in the midst of that excited, struggling crowd, often catching the words: "Stand back there! Don't press on the ladies! Leave room!" And when it came to the final dash we had well-nigh a clear passage. Our tickets gave access only to the floor of a big, oblong hall, closely packed with a standing mass of some ten thousand men; but a debonair personage in authority conducted us, with more chivalry than justice, to the reserved boxes in the gallery, where we occupied perfect seats,—for which other people probably held tickets,—in the front row, overlooking all the house.