Wanderings in Spain

I went to a few parties, or tertulias, but they did not offer any very peculiar features. The guests dance to the piano as they do in France, but in a still more modern and lamentable fashion. I cannot conceive why people who dance so little do not at once make up their minds not to dance at all. This would be much more reasonable and quite as amusing. The fear of being exposed to a charge of indulging in a bolero, a fandango, or a cachuca, renders the ladies perfectly motionless. Their costume is very simple compared to that of the men, who invariably resemble the plates of the fashions. I noticed the same thing at the Palace de Villa Hermosa on the occasion of a representation for the benefit of the Foundling Hospital, Niños de la Cuna, which was graced by the presence of the queen-mother, the little queen, and all the nobility and fashionables of Madrid. Women who could boast of possessing two titles of duchess and four of marchioness, wore such toilettes as a Parisian dressmaker going to a party at a milliner's would despise; Spanish women have forgotten how to dress in the Spanish fashion, and have not yet learned how to dress in the French style: if they were not pretty, they would frequently run the risk of appearing ridiculous. At one ball only did I see a lady with a rose-coloured short satin petticoat, ornamented with five or six rows of black blond, like that worn by Fanny Elssler in "The Devil upon Two Sticks;" but she had been to Paris, and it was there that she had learnt the mystery of Spanish costume. The tertulias cannot be very expensive. The refreshments are remarkable for their absence; there is neither tea, ices, nor punch. On a table in one of the rooms are a dozen glasses of perfectly pure water and a plate of azucarillos; but a man is generally considered as indiscreet and sur sa bouche, as Henri Monnier's Madame Desjardins would express it, if he pushes his Sardanapalism so far as to take one of the latter to sweeten the water. This is the case in the richest houses; it is not the result of avarice, but custom. Such, however, is the hermit-like sobriety of the Spanish, that they are perfectly satisfied with this regimen.

As for the morals of the country, it is not in six weeks that a person can penetrate the character of a people, or the habits of any one class. Strangers, however, are apt to receive certain impressions on their first arrival; which wear off after a long stay. It struck me that, in Spain, women have the upper hand, and enjoy a greater degree of liberty than they do in France. The behaviour of the men towards them appeared to be very humble and submissive; they are most scrupulously exact and punctual in paying their addresses, and express their passion in verses of all kinds, rhymed, assonant, sueltos, and so on. From the moment they have laid their hearts at some beauty's feet, they are no longer allowed to dance with any one save their great-great-grandmothers. They may only converse with women of fifty years of age, whose ugliness is beyond the shadow of a doubt. They may no longer visit a house in which there is a young woman. A most assiduous visitor will suddenly disappear, and not return for six months or a year, because his mistress had prohibited him from frequenting the house. He is as welcome as if he had only left the evening before; no one takes the least offence. As far as any one can judge at first sight, I should say that the Spanish women are not fickle in love: the attachments they form frequently last for years. After a few evenings passed in any house, the various couples are easily made out and are visible to the naked eye. If the host wishes to see Madame – , he must invite Mr. – , and vice versâ. The husbands are admirably civilized, and equal the most good-natured Parisian husbands; they display none of that antique Spanish jealousy which has formed the subject of so many dramas and melodramas. But what completely does away with all illusion on the subject is that every one speaks French perfectly, and, thanks to some few élégants who pass the winter in Paris, and go behind the scenes at the Opera, the most wretched ballet-girl and the most humble beauty are well known at Madrid. I found there, for instance, something that does not exist, perhaps, in any other place in the world: a passionate admirer of Mademoiselle Louise Fitzjames, whose name conducts us, by a natural transition, from the tertulia to the stage.

The internal arrangements of the Teatro del Principe are very comfortable. The performances consist of dramas, comedies, saynetes, and interludes. I saw a piece by Don Antonio Gil y Zarate, entitled "Don Carlos el Heschizado," and constructed entirely after the Shakspearian model. Don Carlos was very like the Louis XIII. of Marion de Lorme, and the scene of the monk in the prison is imitated from the scene of the visit which Claude Frollo makes Esmeralda in the dungeon where she is awaiting her death. The character of Carlos was sustained by Julian Romea, a most talented actor, who has no rival that I know, except Frederick Lemaître, in a totally opposite style: it is impossible for any one to carry the power of illusion further, or remain more true to nature. Mathilda Diez, also, is a first-rate actress; she marks all the various shades of a character with exquisite delicacy, and with an astonishing degree of nice appreciation. I have only one fault to find with her, and that is, the extreme rapidity of her utterance, which, however, is no fault in the opinion of Spaniards. Don Antonio Guzman, the gracioso, would not be out of place on any stage. He reminded me very much of Legrand, and, at certain times, of Arnal. Fairy pieces, also, with dances and divertissements, are sometimes played at the Teatro del Principe; I saw one of this description, entitled "La Pata de Cabra: " it was an imitation of "Pied de Mouton," that used to be played at the Théâtre de la Gaieté. The choreographic portions were remarkably poor; their first-rate danseuses are not even as good as the ordinary doubles at the Opera; but, on the other hand, the supernumeraries display a great amount of intelligence, and the "Pas des Cyclopes" was executed with uncommon neatness and precision. As for the baile national, such a thing does not exist. At Vittoria, Burgos, and Valladolid, we had been told that the good danseuses were at Madrid; in Madrid we are informed the true dancers of the cachuca exist only in Andalusia, at Seville. We shall see; but I am very much afraid that in the matter of Spanish dancers, we must depend upon Fanny Elssler, and the two sisters Noblet. Dolores Serral, who produced such a lively sensation in Paris, where I was one of the first to call attention to the bold passion, the voluptuous suppleness, and the petulant grace, which characterized her style of dancing, appeared several times at Madrid, without making the least impression, so incapable are the Spaniards now-a-days of understanding and enjoying the old national dances. Whenever the jota aragonesa or the bolero is danced, all the fashionable portion of the audience rise and leave the house; the only spectators left are foreigners, and persons of the lower classes, in whom it is always a more difficult task to extinguish the poetic instinct. The French author most in repute at Madrid is Frederick Soulié; almost all the dramas translated from the French are attributed to him. He appears to have succeeded to the popularity which Monsieur Scribe formerly enjoyed.

As we are now pretty well acquainted with theatrical matters, let us proceed to view the public buildings; they will not detain us long. The Queen's Palace is a square solid building of fine stones strongly put together, with a great profusion of windows, and a corresponding number of doors, Ionic columns, Doric pilasters, and all the other elements of what is termed architectural good taste. The immense terraces which support it, and the snow-covered mountains of the Guadarrama rising behind, relieve any tendency to sameness or vulgarity which its outline might otherwise present. In the interior, Velasquez, Maella, Bayen, and Tiepolo, have painted some of the ceilings in a more or less allegorical style. The grand staircase is very fine, and was considered by Napoleon to be superior to that at the Tuileries.

The building in which the Cortes meet is interspersed with Pæstumian columns, and lions in long perukes, exhibiting the most abominable want of taste; I doubt very much whether good laws can be made in an edifice of this description. Opposite the chamber of the Cortes, in the middle of the square, is a bronze statue of Miguel Cervantes. It is, doubtless, a very praiseworthy action to erect a statue to the immortal author of "Don Quixote," but I think they should have erected a better one.

The monument raised to the memory of the victims of the Dos de Mayo is situated on the Prado, not far from the picture-gallery. On perceiving it, I thought for a moment that I was suddenly transported to the Place de la Concorde, at Paris, and beheld, as if in some fantastic mirage, the venerable obelisk of Luxor, which, up to that time, I had never suspected of any taste for vagabondism. The monument is composed of a kind of grey granite cippus, surmounted by an obelisk of reddish granite, the tone of which is very similar to that of the Obelisk at Paris. It is a pity that the Spanish obelisk is not made of a single block. The names of the victims are engraved in golden letters on the sides of the pedestal. The Dos de Mayo is an heroic and glorious episode, which the Spaniards have a slight tendency to make the most of; you perceive engravings and pictures of it wherever you go. You will have no difficulty in believing that we Frenchmen are not represented in them as being very handsome; we look as frightful as the Prussians of the Cirque Olympique.

The Armeria does not come up to the ideas generally entertained of it. The Museum of Artillery at Paris is, beyond comparison, far richer and more complete. In the Armeria at Madrid there are very few entire suits, with the various portions of which they are composed belonging to one another; helmets of one period being stuck upon breastplates of another as well as of quite a different style. The reason given for this confusion is, that at the time of the French invasion all these curious relics were hidden away in lofts and other places, where they were so mixed up and jumbled together that it was subsequently impossible to reunite the different parts with any certainty. No degree of credit can therefore be placed in the description of the guides. We were shown a carriage of admirably-carved wood-work, said to be that of Joanna of Aragon, mother of Charles V., but it evidently could not be more ancient than the reign of Louis XIV. The chariot of Charles V., with its leather cushions and curtains, struck us as far more authentic. There are very few Moorish weapons: two or three shields, and a few yatagans form the whole collection. The greatest curiosities are the embroidered saddles, studded with gold and silver stars, and covered with steel scales; these are very numerous and of all kinds of strange shapes, but it is impossible to say to what period or to whom they belonged. The English admire very much a kind of triumphal hackney-coach made of wrought iron, and presented to Ferdinand somewhere about the year 1823 or 1824.

I may here mention some fountains of a very corrupt rococo style, but very amusing; the bridge of Toledo, a specimen of bad taste, very rich and highly ornamented with ovalos and chicory leaves, and a few strangely-variegated churches surmounted by Muscovite turrets. We will now direct our steps towards the Buen Retiro, a royal residence situated at the distance of a few paces from the Prado. We Frenchmen, who possess Versailles and Saint Cloud, and could formerly boast of Marly, are difficult to please in the matter of royal residences. The Buen Retiro strikes us as being the realization of the dreams of some well-to-do tallowchandler. It is a garden filled with the most ordinary but glaring flowers, and little basins ornamented with vermicular rustic rock-work, and small fountains like those we see in certain fishmongers' shops. It also contains pieces of green water, on which swim wooden swans painted white and varnished, besides an infinity of other marvels of a very ordinary description. The natives fall into ecstasies before a certain rustic pavilion built of small round blocks, the interior of which has rather strong claims to being considered Hindoo in style. The first Jardin Turc at Paris, the primitive and patriarchal Jardin Turc, with its kiosks and windows filled with small coloured panes, through which you saw a blue, green, or red landscape, was far superior both in taste and magnificence. There is also a certain Swiss cottage, which is the most ridiculous and absurd affair it is possible to imagine. At the side of this cottage is a stable, furnished with a goat and a kid both stuffed, and also with a sow of grey stone, suckling a litter of young pigs of the same material. A few paces from the cottage the guide suddenly leaves you, and opens the door in a mysterious manner. When, at last, he calls you and gives you leave to enter, you hear low rumbling of wheels and balance-weights, and find yourself in the presence of a number of frightful automatons, who are churning, spinning, or rocking, with their wooden feet, children equally wooden, and sleeping in carved cradles: in the next room is the grandfather ill in bed, while his medicine is standing on a table beside him. Such is a very accurate summary of the principal wonders of the Buen Retiro. A fine equestrian statue in bronze of Philip V., the pose of which resembles that of the statue of Louis XIV. in the Place des Victoires at Paris, makes up in some degree for all these absurdities.

The description of the Museum at Madrid would require a whole volume. It is rich in the extreme, and contains a very large number of the works of Titian, Raphael, Paolo Veronese, Rubens, Velasquez, Ribeira, and Murillo. The pictures are hung in an excellent light, and the architectural style of the building is tolerably good, especially in the interior. The Façade looks on the Prado, and is a specimen of bad taste, but taken altogether the building does honour to the architect, Villa Nueva, who drew the plans. After the Museum, the next place to be visited is the Cabinet of Natural History, containing the mastodon, or dinotherium giganteum, a marvellous specimen of the fossil world, with bones like bars of iron. It must at least be the behemoth mentioned in the Bible. The collection also contains a lump of virgin gold weighing sixteen pounds, a number of Chinese gongs, the sound of which, in spite of what people say, very much resembles that which is produced if you kick a copper, and a succession of pictures representing all the possible varieties which can be produced by crossing white, black, and copper-coloured races. I must not forget in the academy three admirable pictures by Murillo, – namely, the Foundation of Santa Maria Mayora (two pictures), and Saint Elizabeth washing the heads of persons afflicted with scurvy; two or three admirable Ribeiras; a Burial, by El Greco, some portions of which are worthy of Titian; a fantastic sketch by the same artist, representing monks performing different acts of penance, and surpassing the most mysterious and gloomy creations of Lewis or Anne Radcliffe; and a charming woman in Spanish costume, lying on a divan, by the good old Goya, that pre-eminently national painter, who seems to have come into the world expressly to collect the last vestiges of the ancient manners and customs of his country, which were about to disappear for ever.

Francisco Goya y Lucientes, was the last who could be recognised as a descendant of Velasquez. After him come Aparicio, Lopez, and others of the same stamp. The decadence of art is complete: the cyclus is closed! Who shall ever recommence it? Goya is, indeed, a strange painter – a most singular genius! Never was originality more decided – never was a Spanish painter more local. One of Goya's sketches, consisting of four touches of his graver in a cloud of aquatint, tells you more about the manners of the country than the longest description. From his adventurous kind of life, his impetuosity, and his manifold talents, Goya seems to belong to the best period of the art; and yet he was in some sort a contemporary, having died at Bordeaux in 1828.

Before attempting to judge his works, let us give a summary sketch of his biography. Don Francisco Goya y Lucientes was born in Aragon. His parents were not affluent, but their circumstances were sufficiently easy to offer no obstacle to his natural talents. His taste for drawing and painting was developed at an early age. He travelled, studied for some time at Rome, and returned to Spain, where he very soon made a fortune at the court of Charles IV., who conferred on him the title of Painter to the King. He was received at the Queen's, the Prince of Benavente's, and the Duchess d'Alba's; and lived in the same grand style as Rubens, Van Dyck, and Velasquez – a mode of existence so highly favourable to the development of picturesque genius. He had, in the neighbourhood of Madrid, a delicious casa de campo, where he used to give fêtes, and where he had his studio.

Goya was very prolific; he painted sacred subjects, frescoes, portraits, and sketches of manners, besides producing etchings, aquatints, and lithographic drawings. In everything he did, even in the slightest sketches, he gave proof of the most vigorous talent; the hand of the lion is evident in his most careless works. Although his talent was perfectly original, it is a strange mixture of Velasquez, Rembrandt, and Reynolds; reminding you in turns, or at the same time, of all these masters, but as the son reminds you of his ancestors, without any servile imitation, – or rather, more by a certain congeniality of taste than by any formal wish.

His pictures in the Museum at Madrid consist of the portraits of Charles IV. and his Queen on horseback: the heads are admirably painted, and are full of life, delicacy, and intelligence; a Picador, and the "Massacre of the Second of May," a scene from the French Invasion. The Duke d'Ossuna possesses several of Goya's works, and there is hardly a family of consequence that has not some portrait or sketch of his. The interior of the church of San Antonio de la Florida, where there is a fête which is pretty numerously attended, at the distance of half a league from Madrid, is painted in fresco by Goya, with that boldness and effect which characterize him. At Toledo, in one of the capitular rooms, we saw a painting of his, representing Jesus betrayed by Judas. The effect of night is such as Rembrandt would not have disowned; indeed, I should have attributed the picture to him, had not a canon pointed out to me the signature of the famous painter of Charles IV. In the sacristy of the cathedral at Seville there is also a picture of great merit by Goya, representing Saint Justine and Saint Ruffine, virgins and martyrs, who were both daughters of a potter, a circumstance that is indicated by the alcarazas and cantaros grouped at their feet.

Goya's mode of painting was as eccentric as his talent. He kept his colours in tubs, and applied them to the canvass by means of sponges, brooms, rags, and everything that happened to be within his reach. He put on his tones with a trowel, as it were, exactly like so much mortar, and painted touches of sentiment with large daubs of his thumb. From the fact of his working in this offhand and expeditious manner, he would cover some thirty feet of wall in a couple of days. This method certainly appears somewhat to exceed even the licence accorded to the most impetuous and fiery genius; the most dashing painters are but children compared with him. He executed, with a spoon for a brush, a painting of the "Dos de Mayo," where some French troops are shooting a number of Spaniards. It is a work of incredible vigour and fire; but, curious as it is, it is dishonourably banished to the antechamber in the museum at Madrid.

The individuality of this artist is so strong and so determined, that it is difficult to give even the faintest notion of it. Goya is not a caricaturist like Hogarth, Bunbury, or Cruikshank; Hogarth was serious and phlegmatic, as exact and minute as one of Richardson's novels, always impressing some moral lesson on the mind of the spectator; Bunbury and Cruikshank, so remarkable for their sly humour and their comic exaggeration, have nothing in common with the author of the "Caprichos." Callot might at first appear to be more like him, for Callot was half Spaniard, half gipsy; but Callot is distinct, delicate, clear, definite, and true to nature, despite the mannerism of his forms and the extravagant and braggart style of his costume; his most singular devilries are rigorously possible; his etchings are always remarkable for their strong light, for the minute attention to the various details in them is fatal to effect and chiaro-oscuro, which can only be obtained by sacrificing them. The compositions of Goya are enveloped in the deepest gloom of night, traversed merely by an unexpected ray of light, which brings out some pale outlines or strange phantoms.

Goya's works are a mixture of those of Rembrandt, Watteau, and the comical dreams of Rabelais; a strange union! Add to all this, a strong Spanish flavour, a strong dose of the picaresque spirit of Cervantes, when he drew the portraits of the Escalanta and the Gananciosa in Rinconete and Cortadillo, and even then you will only have an imperfect notion of Goya's talent. We will endeavour to explain it more exactly, if, indeed, it is possible to do so by mere words.

Goya's drawings are executed in aquatinta, touched up and picked out with aquafortis; nothing can be more frank, more free, and more easy. A single stroke expresses a whole physiognomy, and a trail of shade serves as a background, or allows the spectator to catch a glimpse of some landscape only half-sketched in, or some pass of a sierra, fit scenes for a murder, a witches' sabbath, or a tertulia of gipsies; but this is rare, for the background cannot be said to exist in Goya's works. Like Michael Angelo, he completely despises external nature, and only takes just sufficient to enable him to group his figures, and very often he composes his background of clouds alone. From time to time, there is a portion of a wall cut off by a large angle of shade, a hedge hardly indicated, and that is all. For the want of a better word, we have said that Goya was a caricaturist. But his caricatures are in the style of Hoffmann, where fancy always goes hand in hand with criticism, and often rises to the gloomy and the terrible. It seems as if all these grinning heads had been drawn by the talons of Smarra, on the wall of some suspicious alcove, lighted by the flickering of an expiring lamp. You feel transported into some unheard-of, impossible, but still real world. The trunks of the trees look like phantoms, the men resemble hyenas, owls, cats, asses, or hippopotamuses; their nails may be talons, their shoes covered with bows may conceal cloven feet; that young cavalier may be some old corpse, and his trunk hose, ornamented with ribbons, envelop perhaps a fleshless thigh-bone and two shrunk legs; never did more mysterious and sinister apparitions issue from behind the stove of Dr. Faustus.

It is said that Goya's caricatures contain certain political allusions, but they are few in number. They are directed against Godoy, the old Duchess de Benavente, the favourites of the queen, and some of the noblemen of the court, whose vices and ignorance they stigmatize. But you must seek their meaning through the folds of the thick veil with which they are covered. Goya executed, also, other drawings for his friend, the Duchess d'Alba; but they have never been made public, doubtless, on account of the ease with which they could be applied to the persons caricatured in them. Some of them ridicule the fanaticism, gluttony, and stupidity of the monks, while others represent subjects of public manners or witchcraft.

The portrait of Goya serves as a frontispiece to the collected edition of his works. He is represented as a man of about fifty, with a quick oblique glance, a large eyelid and a sly, mocking, crow's-foot beneath. The chin is curved upwards, the upper lip is thin, and the lower one prominent and sensual. The face is surrounded by whiskers of a description peculiar to natives of southern climates and the head is covered by a hat à la Bolivar. The whole physiognomy is that of a man of strongly-developed character.