Gatherings From Spain

Without implicitly following the advice of these Spaniards of better intention than taste, no man of research will undervalue any assistance by which his objects are promoted, even should he be armed with a captain-general’s passport, and a red Murray. Meagre is the oral information which is to be obtained from Spaniards on the spot; these incurious semi-Orientals look with jealousy on the foreigner, and either fence with him in their answers, raise difficulties, or, being highly imaginative, magnify or diminish everything as best suits their own views and suspicions. The national expressions “Quien sabe? no se sabe,” – “who knows? I do not know,” will often be the prelude to “No se puede,” – “it can’t be done.”

DIFFICULTIES OF SIGHT-SEEING

These impediments and impossibilities are infinitely increased when the stranger has to do with men in office, be it ever so humble; the first feeling of these Dogberries is to suspect mischief and give refusals. “No” may be assumed to be their natural answer; nor even if you have a special order of permission, is admission by any means certain. The keeper, who here as elsewhere, considers the objects committed to his care as his own private property and source of perquisite, must be conciliated: often when you have toiled through the heat and dust to some distant church, museum, library, or what not, after much ringing and waiting, you will be drily informed that it is shut, can’t be seen, that it is the wrong day, that you must call again to-morrow; and if it be the right day, then you will be told that the hour is wrong, that you are come too early, too late; very likely the keeper’s wife will inform you that he is out, gone to mass, or market, or at his dinner, or at his siesta, or if he is at home and awake, he will swear that his wife has mislaid the key, “which she is always doing.” If all these and other excuses won’t do, and you persevere, you will be assured that there is nothing worth seeing, or you will be asked why you want to see it? As a general rule, no one should be deterred from visiting anything, because a Spaniard of the upper classes gives his opinion that the object is beneath notice; he will try to convince you that Toledo, Cuenca, and other places which cannot be matched in Christendom, are ugly, odious, old cities; he is ashamed of them because the tortuous, narrow lanes do not run in rows as straight as Pall Mall and the Rue de Rivoli. In fact his only notion of a civilized town is a common-place assemblage of rectangular wide streets, all built and coloured uniformly, like a line of foot-soldiers, paved with broad flags, and lighted with gas, on which Spaniards can walk about dressed as Englishmen, and Spanish women like those of France; all of which said wonders a foreigner may behold far better nearer home; nor is it much less a waste of time to go and see what the said Spaniard considers to be a real lion, since the object generally turns out to be some poor imitation, without form, angle, history, nationality, colour, or expression, beyond that of utilitarian comfort and common-place convenience – great advantages no doubt both to contractors and political economists, but death and destruction to men of the pencil and note-book.

HOW TO BE ADMITTEDOFFICIAL CORRUPTION

The sound principles in Spanish sight-seeing are few and simple, but, if observed, they will generally prove successful; first, persevere; never be put back; never take an answer if it be in the negative; never lose temper or courteous manners; and lastly, let the tinkle of metal be heard at once; if the chief or great man be inexorable, find out privately who is the wretched sub who keeps the key, or the crone who sweeps the room; and then send a discreet messenger to say that you will pay to be admitted, without mentioning “nothing to nobody.” Thus you will always obtain your view, even when an official order fails. On our first arrival at Madrid, when but young in these things of Spain, we were desirous of having daily permission to examine a royal gallery, which was only open to the public on certain days in the week. In our grave dilemma we consulted a sage and experienced diplomatist, and this was the oracular reply: – “Certainly, if you wish it, I will make a request to Señor Salmon” (the then Home Secretary), “and beg him to give you the proper order, as a personal favour to myself. By the way, how much longer shall you remain here?” – “From three to four weeks.” – “Well, then, after you have been gone a good month, I shall get a courteous and verbose epistle from his Excellency, in which he will deeply regret that, on searching the archives of his office, there was no instance of such a request having ever been granted, and that he is compelled most reluctantly to return a refusal, from the fear of a precedent being created. My advice to you is to give the porter a dollar, to be repeated whenever the door-hinges seem to be getting rusty and require oiling.” The hint was taken, as was the bribe, and the prohibited portals expanded so regularly, that at last they knew the sound of our footsteps. Gold is the Spanish sesame. Thus Soult got into Badajoz, thus Louis Philippe put Espartero out, and Montpensier in. Gold, bright red gold, is the sovereign remedy which in Spain smooths all difficulties, nay, some in which even force has failed, as here the obstinate heads may be guided by a straw of bullion, but not driven by a bar of iron. The magic influence of a bribe pervades a land, where everything is venal, even to the scales of justice. Here men who have objects to gain begin to work from the bottom, not from the top, as we do in England. In order to ensure success, no step in the official ladder must be left unanointed. A wise and prudent suitor bribes from the porter to the premier, taking care not to forget the under-secretary, the over-secretary, the private secretary, all in their order, and to regulate the douceur according to each man’s rank and influence. If you omit the porter, he will not deliver your card, or will say Señor Mon is out, or will tell you to call again manaña, the eternal to-morrow. If you forget the chief clerk, he will mislay your petition, or poison his master’s ear. In matters of great and political importance, the sovereign, him or herself, must have a share; and thus it was that Calomarde continued so long to manage the beloved Ferdinand and his counsels. He was the minister who laid the greatest bribe at the royal feet. “Sire, by strict attention and honesty, I have just been enabled to economise 50,000l., on the sums allotted to my department, which I have now the honour and felicity to place at your Majesty’s disposal.” – “Well done, my faithful and good minister, here is a cigar for you.” This Calomarde, who began life as a foot-boy, smuggled through the Christinist swindle, by which Isabel now wears the crown of Don Carlos. The rogue was rewarded by being made Conde de Sª. Isabel, a title which since has been conferred on Mons. Bresson’s baby – a delicate compliment to his sire’s labours in the transfer of the said crown to Louis Philippe – but Spaniards are full of dry humour.

SPANISH IGNORANCE

In the East, the example and practice of the Sultan and Vizier is followed by every pacha, down to the lowest animal who wields the most petty authority; the disorder of the itching palm is endemic and epidemic, all, whether high and low, want, and must have money; all wish to get it without the disgrace of begging, and without the danger of highway robbery. Public poverty is the curse of the land, and all empleados or persons in office excuse themselves on dire necessity, the old plea of a certain gentleman, which has no law. Some allowance, therefore, may be made for the rapacity which, with very few exceptions, prevails; the regular salaries, always inadequate, are generally in arrear, and the public servants, poor devils, swear that they are forced to pay themselves by conniving at defrauding the government; this few scruple to do, as all know it to be an unjust one, and that it can afford it; indeed, as all are offenders alike, the guilt of the offence is scarcely admitted. Where robbing and jobbing are the universal order of the day, one rascal keeps another in countenance, as one goître does another in Switzerland. A man who does not feather his nest when in place, is not thought honest, but a fool; es preciso, que cada uno coma de su oficio. It is necessary, nay, a duty, as in the East, that all should live by their office; and as office is short and insecure, no time or means is neglected in making up a purse; thus poverty and their will alike and readily consent.

Take a case in point. We remember calling on a Spaniard who held the highest office in a chief city of Andalucia. As we came into his cabinet a cloaked personage was going out; the great man’s table was covered with gold ounces, which he was shovelling complacently into a drawer, gloating on the glorious haul. “Many ounces, Excellency,” said we. “Yes, my friend,” was his reply – “no quiero comer mas patatas, – I do not intend to dine any more on potatoes.” This gentleman, during the Sistema, or Riego constitution, had, with other loyalists, been turned out of office; and, having been put to the greatest hardships, was losing no time in taking prudent and laudable precautions to avert any similar calamity for the future. His practices were perfectly well known in the town, where people simply observed, “Está atesorando, he is laying up treasures,” – as every one of them would most certainly have done, had they been in his fortunate position. Rich and honest Britons, therefore, should not judge too hardly of the sad shifts, the strange bed-fellows, with which want makes the less provided Spaniards acquainted. Donde no hay abundancia, no hay observancia. The empty sack cannot stand upright, nor was ever a sack made in Spain into which gain and honour could be stowed away together; honra y provecho, no caben en un saco o techo; here virtue itself succumbs to poverty, induced by more than half a century of mis-government, let alone the ruin caused by Buonaparte’s invasion, to which domestic troubles and civil wars have been added.

A QUESTION OF DAYS

To return, however, to sight-seeing in Spain. Lucky was the traveller prepared even to bribe and pay, who ever in our time chanced to fall in with a librarian who knew what books he had, or with a priest who could tell what pictures were in his chapel; ask him for the painting by Murillo – a shoulder-shrug was his reply, or a curt “no hay,” “there is none;” had you inquired for the “blessed Saint Thomas,” then he might have pointed it out; the subject, not the artist, being all that was required for the service of the church. An incurious bliss of ignorance is no less grateful to the Spanish mind, than the dolce far niente or sweet indolent doing nothing is to the body. All that gives trouble, or “fashes,” destroys the supreme height of felicity, which consists in avoiding exertion. A chapter might be filled with instances, which, had they not occurred to our humble selves, would seem caricature inventions. The not to be able to answer the commonest question, or to give any information as to matters of the most ordinary daily occurrence, is so prevalent, that we at first thought it must proceed from some fear of committal, some remnant of inquisitorial engendered reserve, rather than from bonâ fide careless and contented ignorance. The result, however, of much intercourse and experience arrived at, was, that few people are more communicative than the lower classes of Spaniards, especially to an Englishman, to whom they reveal private and family secrets: their want of knowledge applies rather to things than to persons.

UNCERTAINTY OF SPANISH THINGS

If you called on a Spanish gentleman, and, finding him out, wished afterwards to write him a note, and inquired of his man or maid servant the number of the house; – “I do not know, my lord,” was the invariable answer, “I never was asked it before, I have never looked for it: let us go out and see. Ah! it is number 36.” Wishing once to send a parcel by the wagon from Merida to Madrid, “On what day, my lord,” said I to the potbellied, black-whiskered ventero, “does your galera start for the Court?” “Every Wednesday,” answered he; “and let not your grace be anxious” – “Disparate– nonsense,” exclaimed his copper-skinned, bright-eyed wife, “why do you tell the English knight such lies? the wagon, my lord, sets out on Fridays.” During the logomachy, or the few words which ensued between the well-matched pair, our good luck willed, that the mayoral or driver of the vehicle should come in, who forthwith informed us that the days of departure were Thursdays; and he was right. This occurred in the provinces; take, therefore, a parallel passage in the capital, the heart and brain of the Castiles. “Señor, tenga Usted la bondad– My lord,” said I to a portly, pompous bureaucrat, who booked places in the dilly to Toledo, – “have the goodness, your grace, to secure me one for Monday, the 7th.” – “I fear,” replied he, politely, for the negocio had been prudently opened by my offering him a real Havannah, “that your lordship has made a mistake in the date. Monday is the 8th of the current month” – which it was not. Thinking to settle the matter, we handed to him, with a bow, the almanack of the year, which chanced to be in our pocket-book. “Señor,” said he, gravely, when he had duly examined it, “I knew that I was right; this one was printed at Seville,” – which it was – “and we are here at Madrid, which is otra cosa, that is, altogether another affair.” In this solar difference and pre-eminence of the Court, it must be remembered, that the sun, at its creation, first shone over the neighbouring city, to which the dilly ran; and that even in the last century, it was held to be heresy at Salamanca, to say that it did not move round Spain. In sad truth, it has there stood still longer than in astronomical lectures or metaphors. Spain is no paradise for calculators; here, what ought to happen, and what would happen elsewhere according to Cocker and the doctrine probabilities, is exactly the event which is the least likely to come to pass. One arithmetical fact only can be reckoned upon with tolerable certainty: let given events be represented by numbers; then two and two may at one time make three, or possibly five at another; but the odds are four to one against two and two ever making four; another safe rule in Spanish official numbers; e. g. “five thousand men killed and wounded” – “five thousand dollars will be given,” and so forth, is to deduct two noughts, and sometimes even three, and read fifty or five instead.

CERTAINTY OF BULL-FIGHTS

Well might even the keen-sighted, practical Duke say it is difficult to understand the Spaniards exactly; there neither men nor women, suns nor clocks go together; there, as in a Dutch concert, all choose their own tune and time, each performer in the orchestra endeavouring to play the first fiddle. All this is so much a matter of course, that the natives, like the Irish, make a joke of petty mistakes, blunders, unpunctualities, inconsequences, and pococurantisms, at which accurate Germans and British men of business are driven frantic. Made up of contradictions, and dwelling in the pays de l’imprévu, where exception is the rule, where accident and the impulse of the moment are the moving powers, the happy-go-lucky natives, especially in their collective capacity, act like women and children. A spark, a trifle, sets the impressionable masses in action, and none can foresee the commonest event; nor does any Spaniard ever attempt to guess beyond la situacion actual, the actual present, or to foretell what the morrow will bring; that he leaves to the foreigner, who does not understand him. Paciencia y barajar is his motto; and he waits patiently to see what next will turn up after another shuffle.

There is one thing, however, which all know exactly, one question which all can answer; and providentially this refers to the grand object of every foreigner’s observation – “When will the bull-fight be and begin?” and this holds good, notwithstanding that there is a proviso inserted in the notices, that it will come off on such a day and hour, “if the weather permits.” Thus, although these spectacles take place in summer, when for months and months rain and clouds are matters of history, the cautious authorities doubt the blessed sun himself, and mistrust the certainty of his proceedings, as much as if they were ir-regulated by a Castilian clockmaker.

THE SPANISH BULL-FIGHT

CHAPTER XXI

Origin of the Bull-fight or Festival, and its Religious Character – Fiestas Reales – Royal Feasts – Charles I. at one – Discontinuance of the Old System – Sham Bull-fights – Plaza de Toros – Slang Language – Spanish Bulls – Breeds – The Going to a Bull-fight.

OUR honest John Bulls have long been more partial to their Spanish namesakes, than even to those perpetrated by the Pope, or made in the Emerald Isle; to see a bull-fight has been the emphatic object of enlightened curiosity, since Peninsular sketches have been taken and published by our travellers. No sooner had Charles the First, when prince, lost his heart at Madrid, than his royal father-in-law-that-was-to-be, regaled him and the fair inspirer of his tender passion, with one of these charming spectacles; an event which, as many men and animals were butchered, was thought by the historiographers of the day to be one that posterity would not willingly let die; their contemporary accounts will ever form the gems of every tauromachian library that aspires to be complete.

BULL FESTIVALS

These sports, which recall the bloody games of the Roman amphitheatre, are now only to be seen in Spain, where the present clashes with the past, where at every moment we stumble on some bone and relic of Biblical and Roman antiquity; the close parallels, nay the identities, which are observable between these combats and those of classical ages, both as regards the spectators and actors, are omitted, as being more interesting to the scholar than to the general reader; they were pointed out by us some years ago in the Quarterly Review, No. cxxiv. And as human nature changes not, men when placed in given and similar circumstances, will without any previous knowledge or intercommunication arrive at nearly similar results; the gentle pastime of spearing and killing bulls in public and single-handed was probably devised by the Moors, or rather by the Spanish Moors, for nothing of the kind has ever obtained in Africa either now or heretofore. The Moslem Arab, when transplanted into a Christian and European land, modified himself in many respects to the ways and usages of the people among whom he settled, just as his Oriental element was widely introduced among his Gotho-Hispano neighbours. Moorish Andalucia is still the head-quarters of the tauromachian art, and those who wish carefully to master this, the science of Spain par excellence, should commence their studies in the school of Ronda, and proceed thence to take the highest honours in the University of Seville, the Bullford of the Peninsula.

FIESTAS REALES

By the way, our boxing, baiting term bull-fight is a very lay and low translation of the time-honoured Castilian title, Fiestas de Toros, the feasts, festivals of bulls. The gods and goddesses of antiquity were conciliated by the sacrifice of hecatombs; the lowing tickled their divine ears, and the purple blood fed their eyes, no less than the roasted sirloins fattened the priests, while the grand spectacle and death delighted their dinnerless congregations. In Spain, the Church of Rome, never indifferent to its interests, instantly marshalled into its own service a ceremonial at once profitable and popular;13 it consecrated butchery by wedding it to the altar, availing itself of this gentle handmaid, to obtain funds in order to raise convents; even in the last century Papal bulls were granted to mendicant orders, authorising them to celebrate a certain number of Fiestas de Toros, on condition of devoting the profit to finishing their church; and in order to swell the receipts at the doors, spiritual indulgences and soul releases from purgatory, the number of years being apportioned to the relative prices of the seats, were added as a bonus to all paid for places at a spectacle hallowed by a pious object. So at the taurobolia of antiquity, those who were sprinkled with bull blood were absolved from sin. Protestant ministers, who very properly fear and distrust papal bulls, replace them by bazaars and fancy fairs, whenever a fashionable chapel requires a new blue slate roofing. Again, when not devoted to religious purposes, every bull-fight aids the cause of charity; the profits form the chief income of the public hospitals, and thus furnish both funds and patients, as the venous circulation of the mob thirsting for gore, rises to blood heat under a sun of fire, and the subsequent mingling of sexes, opening of bottles and knives, occasion more deaths among the lords and ladies of the Spanish creation, than among the horned and hoofed victims of the amphitheatre.

It is a common but very great mistake, to suppose that bull-fights are as numerous in Spain as bandits; it is just the contrary, for this may there be considered the tip-top æsthetic treat, as the Italian Opera is in England, and both are rather expensive amusements; true it is that with us, only the salt of the earth patronises the performers of the Haymarket, while high and low, vulgar and exquisite, alike delight in those of the Spanish fields. Each bull-fight costs from 200l. to 300l., and even more when got up out of Andalucia or Madrid, which alone can afford to support a standing company; in other cities the actors and animals have to be sent for express, and from great distances. Hence the representations occur like angels’ visits, few and far between; they are reserved for the chief festivals of the church and crown, for the unfeigned devotion of the faithful on the holy days of local saints, and the Virgin; they are also given at the marriages and coronations of the sovereign, and thence are called Fiestas reales, Royal festivals – the ceremonial being then deprived of its religious character, although it is much increased in worldly and imposing importance. The sight is indeed one of surpassing pomp, etiquette, and magnificence, and has succeeded to the Auto de Fé, in offering to the most Catholic Queen and her subjects the greatest possible means of tasting rapture, that the limited powers of mortal enjoyment can experience in this world of shadows and sorrows.

AN INVOLUNTARY CHAMPION

They are only given at Madrid, and then are conducted entirely after the ancient Spanish and Moorish customs, of which such splendid descriptions remain in the ballad romances. They take place in the great square of the capital, which is then converted into an arena. The windows of the quaint and lofty houses are arranged as boxes, and hung with velvets and silks. The royal family is seated under a canopy of state in the balcony of the central mansion. There we beheld Ferdinand VII. presiding at the solemn swearing of allegiance to his daughter. He was then seated where Charles I. had sat two centuries before; he was guarded by the unchanged halberdiers, and was witnessing the unchanged spectacle. On these royal occasions the bulls are assailed by gentlemen, dressed and armed as in good old Spanish times, before the fatal Bourbon accession obliterated Castilian costume, customs, and nationality. The champions, clad in the fashions of the Philips, and mounted on beauteous barbs, the minions of their race, attack the fierce animal with only a short spear, the immemorial weapon of the Iberian. The combatants must be hidalgos by birth, and have each for a padrino, or god-father, a first-rate grandee of Spain, who passes before royalty in a splendid equipage and six, and is attended by bands of running footmen, who are arrayed either as Greeks, Romans, Moors, or fancy characters. It is not easy to obtain these caballeros en plaza, or poor knights, who are willing to expose their lives to the imminent dangers, albeit during the fight they have the benefit of experienced toreros to advise their actions and cover their retreats.