Spanish Highways and Byways

"Ah, it is four years. Of course, I was much younger then. Yes, yes! It might not please me now. Quien sabe? And yet – I beg your pardon – I think I shall go next Sunday in Madrid, on my way to Paris. It is so weary in London on the Sundays. It was always colder Sunday, and there was not even a café. There was nowhere to go. There was nothing to do. Why is that good? At the bull-fight one feels the joy of life. Is it more religious to sit dull and dismal by the fire? I had no use for the churches. Walking is not amusing, unless the sun shines and there is something gay to see. I do not like tea, and I do not care for reading. Spaniards like to laugh and be merry, and when there is nothing to laugh for, life is a heaviness. There is no laughter in a London Sunday. I hope Paris will be better, though I believe there are no bull-fights there as yet. You are not pleased with me, but let me tell you why I love the corrida. It is not for the horses, you remember. I have sometimes looked away. But why should I pity the bulls, when they are mad with battle? They do not pity themselves. They are glad in their fury, and I am glad in seeing it. But I am more glad in the activity and daring of the men. When they run risks, that is what makes me cheer. It is not that I would have them hurt. I am proud to find men brave. And I am excited and eager to see if they escape. Do you not understand? If you would go yourself – just once – no? Is it always no? Then let me tell you what is the best of all. It is to stand near the entrance and watch the people pass in, all dressed in their holiday clothes, and all with holiday faces. It is good and beautiful to see them – especially the ladies."

The most attractive qualities of our young Spaniard were his mirth and courtesy. His merriment was so spontaneous and so buoyant that his grace of manner, always tempered to time and place and person, became the more apparent. His humor dwelt, nevertheless, in the borderlands of irony, and it was conceivable that the rubs of later life might enrich its pungency at the cost of its kindliness. He was excellent at games (not sports), especially the game of courtliness (not helpfulness). The letter was not posted, the message slipped his memory, the errand was done amiss, but his apologies were poetry. He made a pretty play of the slightest social intercourse. We would open our Baedeker at the map which we had already, in crossing Spain, unfolded some hundred times. He would spring as lightly to his feet as if his mighty bulk were made of feathers, and stand, half bowing, arching his eyebrows in appeal, spreading out his hands in offer of assistance, but not venturing to approach them toward the book until it was definitely tendered him. Then he would receive it with elaborate delicacy of touch, unfold the creased sheet with a score of varied little flourishes, and restore the volume with a whole fresh series of gesticulatory airs and graces. The next instant he would peep up from under his black lashes to detect the alloy of amusement in our gratitude, and drop his face flat upon the table in a boyish bubble of laughter, saying: —

"Ah! But you think we Spaniards make much of little things. It is true. We are best at what is least useful."

Light-hearted Andalusian though he was, he had full share of the energy and enterprise of young manhood. Like the dons of long ago, he was equipping himself for the great Western adventure. Despite his Spanish wrath against America, she had for him a persistent fascination. All his ambitions were bent on a business career in New York, the El Dorado of his imagination. But it was no longer, at the end of the nineteenth century, a case of leaping aboard a galleon and waving a Toledo blade in air. The commercial career demands, so he fancied, that its knight go forth armed cap-a-pie in the commercial tongues. Thus he had spent four years of his youth and half of his patrimony in London and Berlin, and now, after this hasty visit home, purposed to go to Paris, for a year or two of French. This unsettled life was little to his liking, but beyond gleamed the vision of a Wall Street fortune.

Yet even now, at the outset of his task, a frequent lethargy would steal over his young vigor. It was curious to see, when the March wind blew chill or the French verbs waxed crabbed, how all his bearing lost its beauty. There was a central dignity that did not lapse, but the brightness and effectiveness were gone. His big body drooped and looked lumpish. His comely face was clouded by an animal sluggishness of expression. Foreign grimaces twisted across it, and something very like a grunt issued from beneath his cherished first mustache. His sarcasm became a little savage. He would sit for hours in a brooding fit, and, when an inexorable call to action came, obey it with a look of dreary patience older than his years. It was as if something inherent in his nature, independent of his will, weighed upon him and dragged him down. The Spain at which he gibed and from which he would have cut himself away was yet a millstone about his neck. He was in the heyday of his youth, progressive and determined, but the torpid blood of an aged people clogged his veins. Spain will never lose her hold on him, despite his strongest efforts. His children may be citizens of the great Republic, but he must be a foreigner to the end. He must wander a stranger in strange cities, puzzling his Spanish wits over alien phrases and fashions and ideals, unless, indeed, his spirit loses edge, and he drifts into chill apathy of disappointment on finding that his golden castles in America are wrought of that same old dream-stuff which used to be the monopoly of castles in Spain.

But it is best to leave ill-boding to the gypsies. Good luck may take a liking to him, if only for the music of his laugh. For even if blithe heart and courtly bearing bring no high cash value in the modern business market, they may smooth the road to simple happiness. Moreover, a Spaniard dearly loves a game of chance, and at the worst, our fortune-seeker will have thrown his dice. His may seem to the Yankee onlooker but a losing play, and yet – who knows? "He who sings frightens away his ills." God's blessing sails in summer clouds as lightly as in costly pleasure yachts. Out of a shaft of sunshine, a cup of chocolate, and a cigarette, this Andalusian immigrant, though stranded in an East Side tenement, may get more luxury than can be purchased by a multi-millionaire.

IX

A BULL-FIGHT

"I wish no living thing to suffer pain." – Shelley: Prometheus Unbound.

From our first crossing of the Pyrenees we were impressed, even beyond our expectation, with the Spanish passion for the bull-fight. The more cultivated Spaniards, to be sure, are usually unwilling to admit to a foreigner their pleasure in the pastime. "It is brutal," said a young physician of Madrid, as we discussed it. "It is a very painful thing to see, certainly. I go, myself, only two or three times a year, when the proceeds are to be devoted to some religious object – a charity or other holy work."

No sight is more common in streets and parks than that of a group of boys playing al toro– one urchin charging about with sticks fastened to his shoulders for horns, or with a pasteboard bull's head pulled over his ears, and others waving scarlet cloths and brandishing improvised swords and lances. It is said that in fierce Valencia youths have sometimes carried on this sport with knives for horns and swords, the spectators relishing the bloodshed too well to interfere. Not easily do such lads as these forgive the little king for crying, like the sensitive child he is, the first time he was taken to the bull-ring.

The corridas de toros, although denounced by some of the chief voices in Spain, are held almost a national shibboleth. Loyal supporters of the queen regent will add to their praises the sigh, "If only she loved the bull-fight!" Cavaliers and ladies fair reserve their choicest attire to grace these barbarities. It is a common saying that a Spaniard will sell his shirt to buy a ticket to the bull-ring, but whatever the deficiencies of the inner costume, the dress that meets the eye is brave in the extreme. It is recently becoming the fashion for caballeros, especially in the north of Spain, to discard those very fetching cloaks with the vivid linings – cloaks in which Spaniards muffle their faces to the eyebrows as they tread the echoing streets of cities founded some thousand or fifteen hundred years ago. But for a good old Spanish bull-fight, the good old Spanish costumes are out in force, the bright-hued capas and broad sombreros, and for the ladies, who also are beginning to discard the customary black mantilla for Parisian headgear, the exquisite white mantillas of early times and the largest and most richly decorated fans.

It is in such places as the grim Roman amphitheatre of Italica, whose grass-grown arena has flowed so red with martyrdoms of men and beasts, that one despairs most of Spanish ability to give up the bull-fight. It is in the air, in the soil, in the blood; a national institution, an hereditary rage. "But it is the link that holds your country bound to barbarism. The rest of the world is on the forward move. I tell you, the continuance of the bull-fight means the ruin of Spain," urged a gigantic young German, in our hearing, on his Spanish friend. The slight figure of the Madrileño shook with anger. "And I tell you" he choked, "that Spain would rather perish with the bull-fight than survive without it." Isabel la Católica, who earnestly strove to put down these savage contests, wrote at last to her Father Confessor that the task was too hard for her. The "Catholic Kings" could take Granada, unify Spain, establish the Inquisition, expel Moors and Jews, and open the Americas; but they could not abolish bull-fighting. Nor was Pius V, with his denial of Christian burial to all who fell in the arena, and his excommunication for princes who permitted corridas de toros in their dominions, more successful. The papal bull, like the bulls of flesh and blood, was inevitably overthrown.

Spanish legend likes to name the Cid as the first torero.

"Troth it goodly was and pleasantTo behold him at their head,All in mail on Bavieca,And to hear the words he said."

In mediæval times the sport was not without chivalric features. Knights fought for honor, where professionals now fight for pesetas. When the great Charles killed a bull with his own lance in honor of the birth of Philip II, the favor of the Austrian dynasty was secured. The Bourbons looked on the sport more coldly, but as royalty and nobility withdrew, the people pressed to the fore. Out of the hardy Spanish multitude rose a series of masters, – Romero the shoemaker, who, in general, gave to the art its modern form; Martincho the shepherd, who, seated in a chair with his feet bound, would await the charging brute; Cándido, who would face the bull in full career and escape by leaping to its forehead and over its back; Costillares, who invented an ingenious way of getting in the death-stroke; the famous Pepe Hillo, who, like Cándido, perished in the ring; a second Romero, said to have killed five thousand six hundred bulls; Montés the brick-layer, and a bloody band of followers. Andalusia is – alas! – the classic soil of the bull-fight, as every peasant knows, and Seville the top of Andalusia.

"I have a handsome lover,Too bold to fear the Devil,And he's the best toreroIn all the town of Seville."

The extravagance of the popular enthusiasm for these fiestas de toros is often ridiculed on the stage, where dramas dealing with bull-fighting, especially if they bring in the heroes of the arena, Pepe Hillo, Romero, Costillares, are sure to take. One zarzuela represents a rheumatic old aficionado, or devotee of the sport, trying, with ludicrous results, to screw his courage to the point of facing the bull. Another spends its fun on a Madrid barber, who is likewise a brain-turned patron of the ring. Disregarding the shrill protests of his wife, he lavishes all his time, love, and money on the corridas and encourages his daughter's novio, an honest young paper-hanger, to throw over his trade and learn to torear. After two years of the provincial arenas, the aspirant, nicknamed in the ring The Baby, has nothing but torn clothes and bruises to show for his career, and his sweetheart, eager to recall him from the hazardous profession, vows a waxen bull, large as life, to the Virgin, in case he returns to papering, with its humble security and its regularity of wages. Mary hears. On that great occasion, The Baby's début at Madrid, the barber, who has just been lucky in the lottery, rents for him a gorgeous suit of second-hand finery, but in the Plaza de Toros not even a rose-and-silver jacket can shield a quaking heart. The Baby is a coward born, and from the first rush of the first bull comes off with a bloody coxcomb, crying out his shame on the shoulder of his Pilar, who shall henceforth have him all her own.

The little artist and I went into Spain with the firm determination not to patronize the bull-fight. Half our resolution we kept, – her half. Wherever we turned we encountered suggestions of the corrida. Spanish newspapers, even the most serious, devote columns to Los Toros. Bull-fighting has its special publications, as El Toril and El Toreo Cómico, and its special dialect. On the morning after a holy day the newspapers seem actually smeared with the blood of beasts. In the bull-fight season, from Easter to All Saints, corridas are held every Sunday in all the cities of southern and central Spain, while the smaller towns and villages butcher as many bulls as they can possibly afford. The May and June that I passed in the capital gave me a peculiar abhorrence of the Madrid Sunday, – that feverish excitement everywhere; the rattle of all those extra omnibuses and cars with their red-tasselled mules in full gallop for the Plaza de Toros; that sense of furious struggle and mortal agony hanging over the city all through the slow, hot afternoon; those gaping crowds pressing to greet the toreros, a gaudy-suited company, on their triumphal return in open carriages; that eager discussion of the day's tragedy at every street-corner and from seat to seat along the paseos, even at our own dainty dinner table and on our own balconies under the rebuking stars. At this strange Sabbath service the Infanta Isabel, whose mother's birth was celebrated by the slaying of ninety-nine bulls, is a regular attendant, occupying the royal box and wearing the national colors. A French bull-fighter, visiting the Spanish capital, was invited by the Infanta to an audience and presented with a diamond pin. Not even the public mourning for Castelar could induce Madrid to forego the corrida on that Sunday just before his burial. Past the very senate-house where his body lay in state rolled the aristocratic landaus, whose ladies displayed the gala-wear of white mantillas.

But the Sundays were not enough. Every Catholic feast-day called for its sacrifice. Granada could not do fitting honor to Corpus Christi with less than three "magnificas corridas." The royal saint of Aranjuez, Fernando, must have his pious birthday kept by an orgy of blood. At the fiesta of Christ's Ascension all Spain was busy staining his earth with the life-stream of His creatures. Valladolid was, indeed, ashamed to have torn to death only seven horses, but Segovia rejoiced in an expert who sat at his work and killed his bulls with drawing-room ease. Bordeaux improved the occasion, with aid of two celebrated Spanish espadas, by opening a French Plaza de Toros, and Valencia had the excitement of sending to the infirmary one torero with a broken leg and another with a crushed foot. Such accidents are by no means uncommon. A matador was mortally wounded in the Valencia ring that summer, a banderillero was trampled at the Escorial, and those favorite stabbers, Reverte and Bombita, were themselves stabbed by avenging horns.

If there is a temporary dearth of saint days, Spanish ingenuity will nevertheless find excuse for corridas. Bulls must bleed for holy charity, – for hospitals, foundling asylums, the families of workmen out on strike. If the French squadron is at Cadiz, hospitality demands a bull-fight. In the interests of popular education, an historical corrida was arranged, with instructed toreros to display the special styles of bull-killing that have prevailed from the Cid to Guerrita. Again, as a zoölogical by-play, an elephant was pitted against the bulls. This, too, had precedent, for did not Philip IV once keep his birthday by turning in among the horned herd a lion, a tiger, a camel, and a bear, "all Noah's ark and Æsop's fables"? A bull of Xarama vanquished them every one and received the gracious reward of being shot dead by Philip himself.

It was on a Wednesday afternoon, at one of the three grand corridas of the Seville Feria, that I became an accomplice in this Spanish crime. Our friends in Seville, people of cultivation and liberal views, had declared from the first that we could have no conception of Spanish life and character without sharing in the national fiesta. "We ourselves are not enthusiasts," they said. "In fact, we disapprove the bull-fight. We regard it as demoralizing to the community at large. It is, nevertheless, a thing scientific, artistic, heroic, Spanish. Besides, a large portion of the proceeds goes to charity. We do not attend the corridas, except now and then, especially when we have foreign guests who wish to see them. Before going they all regard bull-fighting as you do, as an atrocity, a barbarity, but invariably they return from the Plaza de Toros filled with delight and admiration. They say their previous ideas were all wrong, that it is a noble and splendid spectacle, that they want to see it again and again, that they cannot be too grateful to us for having delivered them from prejudice."

I winced at the word. I have a prejudice against being prejudiced, and to the bull-fight I went.

My yielding came too late for securing places in a box or in any part of the house from which one can make exit during the performance. Our gory-looking tickets admitted us to the uppermost row of high, whitewashed, stone seats of the circus proper, where we were soon inextricably wedged in by the human mass that formed around and below us. The hour of waiting passed merrily enough. The open amphitheatre, jammed to its full capacity of fourteen thousand, lay half in brilliant sunlight and half in creeping shadow. Above us arched the glowing blue sky of Seville, pricked by the rosy Giralda, and from time to time a strong-winged bird flew over. The great arena, strewn with yellow sand, was enclosed by a dark red barrier of wood, about the height of a man. This was encircled, at a little distance, by a more secure and higher wall of stone. The concourse was largely composed of men, both roughs and gentles, but there was no lack of ladies, elegantly dressed, nor of children. Two sweet little girls in white-feathered hats were just in front of us, dancing up and down to relieve the thrills of expectancy. White mantillas, pinned with jewels, bent from the boxes, while the daughters of the people dazzled the eye with their festival display of Manila shawls, some pure white, some with colored figures on a white ground or a black, and some a rainbow maze of capricious needle-work. The rich-hued blossoms of Andalusia were worn in the hair and on the breast. The sunny side of the circus was brightly dotted by parasols, orange, green, vermilion, and fans in all the cardinal colors twinkled like a shivered kaleidoscope. The men's black eyes glittered under those broad sombreros, white or drab, while they puffed their cigarettes with unwonted energy, scattering the ashes in soft gray showers over their neighbors on the seats below. The tumult of voices had a keener note of excitement than I had yet heard in Spain, and was so loud and insistent as often to drown the clashing music of the band. The cries of various venders swelled the mighty volume of noise. Water-sellers in vivid blouses and sashes, a red handkerchief twisted around the neck, on the left shoulder a cushion of folded carpeting for the shapely, yellow-brown jar, and a smart tin tray, holding two glasses, corded to the belt, went pushing through the throng. Criers of oranges, newspapers, crabs, and cockles, almond cakes, fans, and photographs of the toreros, strove with all the might of their lungs against the universal uproar.

"Crece el entusiasmo;Crece la alegría;Todo es algazara;Todo es confusión."

A tempest of applause marked the entrance in a box above of a popular prima donna, who draped a resplendent carmine scarf over the railing before her seat. Immediately the complete circuit of the rail was ablaze with color, cloaks and shawls instantly converting themselves into tapestry.

At last two attendants entered the arena, walked up to a hydrant in the centre, fastened on a hose, and watered the great circle. They pulled out the hydrant and raked sand over the hole. Simple as these actions were, a dreadful quiet fell on all the circus.

A trumpet blared. Mounted alguaciles, or police, tricked out in ancient Spanish costume, on blue saddles, and with tall blue plumes in their hats, rode in and cleared the arena of all stragglers. A door opened, and forth issued the full circus troupe, making a fine show of filigree, and urging their wretched old nags to a last moment of equine pride and spirit. Amid roars of welcome, they flaunted across the sanded enclosure and saluted the presiding officer. He dropped the key of the toril, that dark series of cells into which the bulls had been driven some hours before. An alguacil caught the key and handed it to the torilero, who ran with it toward a second door, ominously surmounted by a great bull's head. Then there was a twinkling of the pink stockings and black sandals. Most of the gay company leaped the barrier, and even the chulos who remained in the ring placed themselves within convenient distance of the rail. Some of the picadores galloped out, but a few awaited the coming charge, their long pikes in rest. The door on which all eyes were bent flew open, and a bellowing red bull rushed in. The fierce, bloodthirsty, horrible yell that greeted him checked his impetuous onset. For a few seconds the creature stood stock-still, glaring at the scene. Heaven knows what he thought of us. He had had five perfect years of life on the banks of the Guadalquivír, – one baby year by his mother's side, one year of sportive roving with his mates, and then had come the trial of his valor. He had found all the herdsmen gathered at the ranch one morning, and, nevertheless, flattered himself that he had evaded those hateful pikes, garrochas, that were always goading him back when he would sally out to explore the great green world. At all events, here he was scampering alone across the plain. But promptly two horsemen were at his heels, and one of these, planting a blunt garrocha on his flank, rolled the youngster over. Up again, panting with surprise and indignation, he felt a homesick impulse to get back to the herd, but the second horseman was full in his path. So much the worse for the horseman! The mettlesome young bull lowered his horns and charged the obstacle, only to be thrown back with a smarting shoulder. If he had yielded then, his would have been the quiet yoke and the long, dull life of labor, but he justified his breed; he charged anew, and so proved himself worthy of the arena. Three more years of the deep, green river-reeds and the sweet Andalusian sunshine, three years of free, far range and glad companionship, and then the end. His days had been exempt from burden only to save his wild young strength for the final tragedy. One summer morning those traitors known as decoy-oxen, with bells about the neck, came trotting into the herd. The noble bulls, now at their best hour of life, the glory of their kind, welcomed these cunning guests with frank delight and interest, and were easily induced to follow them and their tinkling bells across the rich pastures, along rough country roads, even to the city itself and the fatal Plaza de Toros. The herdsmen with their ready pikes galloped behind the drove, and everywhere along the way peasants and townsfolk would fall in for a mile or two to help in urging the excited animals onward to their cruel doom.