Part 19 (1/2)

[Sidenote: 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 bona 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 cla.s.ses 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.

[Sidenote: 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.” Wis.h.i.+ng 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 pa.s.sage in the capital, the heart and brain of the Castiles. ”_Senor, 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 lords.h.i.+p 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. ”_Senor_,”

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 c.o.c.ker and the doctrine probabilities, is exactly the event which is the least likely to come to pa.s.s. 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.

[Sidenote: 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'imprevu_, 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 ma.s.ses 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.

[Sidenote: 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 pa.s.sion, 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.

[Sidenote: BULL FESTIVALS.]

These sports, which recall the b.l.o.o.d.y 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 ident.i.ties, which are observable between these combats and those of cla.s.sical 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 circ.u.mstances, 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.

[Sidenote: FIESTAS REALES.]

By the way, our boxing, baiting term bull-_fight_ is a very lay and low translation of the time-honoured Castilian t.i.tle, _Fiestas de Toros_, the feasts, festivals of bulls. The G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses 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 finis.h.i.+ng 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 fas.h.i.+onable 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 s.e.xes, 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 aesthetic treat, as the Italian Opera is in England, and both are rather expensive amus.e.m.e.nts; 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 200_l._ to 300_l._, 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 surpa.s.sing pomp, etiquette, and magnificence, and has succeeded to the _Auto de Fe_, 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.

[Sidenote: 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 a.s.sailed 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 fas.h.i.+ons 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 G.o.d-father, a first-rate grandee of Spain, who pa.s.ses 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.

In 1833 a gentle dame, without the privity of her lord and husband, inscribed his name as one of the champion volunteers. In procuring him this agreeable surprise, she, so it was said in Madrid, argued thus: ”Either _mi marido_ will be killed--in that case I shall get a new husband; or he will survive, in which event he will get a pension.” She failed in both of these admirable calculations--such is the uncertainty of human events. The terror of this poor _heros malgre lui_, on whom chivalry had been thrust, was absolutely ludicrous when exposed by his well-intentioned better-half, to the horns of this dilemma and bull. Any other horns, my dearest, but these! He was wounded at the first rush, did survive, and did not get a pension; for Ferdinand died soon after, and few pensions have been paid in the Peninsula, since the land has been blessed with a _charte_, const.i.tution, liberty, and a representative government.

[Sidenote: CHARLES I. AT A BULL-FIGHT.]

One anecdote, where another lady is in the case, may be new to our fair readers. We quote from an ancient authentic chronicler:--”It will not be amiss here to mention what fell out in the presence of Charles the First of Blessed Memory, who, while Prince of Wales, repaired to the court of Spain, whether to be married to the Infanta, or upon what other design, I cannot well determine: however, all comedies, playes, and festivals (this of the bulls at Madrid being included), were appointed to be as decently and magnificently gone about as possible, for the more sumptuous and stately entertainment of such a splendid prince.