Romantic Spain Volume I Part 4

The Fornos, the Suizo, and other coffee-houses were transformed into debating-forums, and sometimes I frequented them to catch what was going on; but my haunt of predilection was a restaurant patronized by French refugees. They had brought with them the Gaulish gaiety, and it was instructive to see Communists, fugitive aristocrats, bagmen with the asphalte of the boulevards still clinging to the soles of their boots, and steady old settlers in Madrid foregathering in friendly forgetfulness of differing shades of political coats. One of the three Marquesses de Fonvielle and de Coutuly, of the _Temps_, amongst other journalists, used to drop in regularly. De Coutuly has since strayed into diplomacy. Touching journalists who wander into that luxurious labyrinth, the representative of the _New York Herald_, at Madrid, a painstaking gentleman with a certain cleverness, Russell Young, subsequently became United States' Minister to China. Prizes of this cla.s.s, which rain upon Continental and American publicists, seldom fall to the lot of their brethren of the British press, unless they get into Parliament or boldly single themselves out from the anonymous herd.

Then they are sometimes promoted to a Consuls.h.i.+p in an insalubrious region, where they have every facility for studying the manners of the buck-n.i.g.g.e.r, and the customs of the lively sand-fly. Far and away the most interesting customer of this restaurant was the Duke de Fitzpepper, a tall, dark, strong man with curly black hair, a boisterous voice, and a bold laugh. He had to quit France on account of an affair of honour.

He had been in the Imperial Navy, had a squabble with his captain, and resigned his commission that he might send him a challenge. They met with the customary duelling swords, but de Fitzpepper made a mistake. He ran his antagonist through. I know naught of the merits of the quarrel, but to my insularly uneducated mind it appeared that the gallant n.o.bleman experienced inadequate remorse at having the blood of a fellow-creature on his soul. Perhaps I am hyper-sensitive, but when de Fitzpepper used to boast "_Je me connais dans le flingot_," it sent a thread of cold water creeping down my spine, not from fear but from aversion. Yet it was impossible to keep aloof from him for long, he was such a joyous, das.h.i.+ng, carry-your-outworks pattern of a musketeer.

Evil a.s.sociations corrupt good manners, I suppose, which must be the excuse for a Frenchman with whom I entered into conversation in this mirthful caravanserai. I happened to show him a coin which had been pa.s.sed upon me, an escudo, which would be worth a sovereign if it were not counterfeit.

"What a shame!" he exclaimed as he fingered it. "What are you going to do with it?"

"Nothing," I said. "It's useless to me."

"Lend it to me, pray."

I gave it to him, and the following night he asked me what commission I would allow him. He had pa.s.sed the bad escudo in his turn. I was indignant, and accused him of having been guilty of a dishonest act. I would touch none of the proceeds of his crookedness.

"Nonsense!" he said, astonished. "I got rid of it in a h.e.l.l. They're all rogues there when they have a chance."

I submit to the casuists that this was a very nice case of conscience.

Winning money at cards is not earning it. He who seeks to win it is demoralized, and it is to his advantage and the advantage of society that he should be discouraged in his pernicious foolishness. Therefore, q.e.d., it was commendable to palm that base coin upon him. I was unequal to deciding the question off-hand, so I elected to take not a real of the Frenchman's equivocal profit. But if the Frenchman was to blame, was I not responsible in the first instance, as having afforded him the means of cheating his neighbour? When the casuists shall have elucidated this riddle to their satisfaction, perhaps they will oblige by telling me how many thousand angels could alight on the point of a needle.

Morality is at a low ebb in Madrid, or rather the moral code is regulated by notions peculiar to the lat.i.tude. So with habits. A man must be "native and to the manner born," before he can affect competency to interpret them. For example, when a Madrileno a.s.severates that his house is yours, or that his equipage which you so much admire is at your disposal, he does not intend that you should take up your residence with him there and then, or hold his coachman at your beck. It is simply a form of etiquette, a mode of speech, as of the Englishman of past generations who challenged you to mortal combat and subscribed himself "your obedient humble servant." You will be guilty of a grave solecism if you imitate that American to whom the grandee remarked with effusion that the stud which captivated his taste was his own, his very own.

"Thanks," said Brother Jonathan; "I'll take the roan and the chestnut to-day and call for the others to-morrow!"

Although a man may tender you fraudulent coinage with a brazen front, he may be keen in honour, and resent an insult to his sister with a knife-stab; although he may intrigue for a Government place with a slimy self-abas.e.m.e.nt, under circ.u.mstances the same being may go forth unflinchingly and sacrifice himself on the altar of his country. Spain is the home of paradox. The beggar is addressed as "your wors.h.i.+p,"

mutiny is a venial offence, bribery of officials is a recognised prescription. At the very epoch of which I write, the murderers of Prim were stalking about the capital; it was a town-crier's secret who they were and who was the personage who was their employer, yet none had the temerity to denounce them. And in the saladero, or the "salting-tub," as the prison was called, it was notorious that there were malefactors who gave lessons in forgery, and who positively utilized their cells as convenient head-quarters from which to prey on the unwary public. Their plan was to write to somebody of position, whose name they had lighted on in a directory, and inform him that they had often heard speak of him as a citizen of integrity, and felt that they might trust him; they were singularly situated, immured for a debt of a few duros, and yet in the vicinity of his residence they were cognizant of an immense buried treasure; if he would only send them the trifle needful to pay off that debt and cover their fare to his town, they would take him with them to the site of the secret h.o.a.rd, and repay him with interest for his kindness. This transparent ruse actually told with hundreds of dupes.

How the _auri sacra fames_ will deprive sane men of sense! He would be a spendthrift of sympathy who would waste his sympathy upon them.

I had been under the impression that Spain was a deeply religious country. The impression was illusive. It may be fanatically religious in parts, but too often the educated cla.s.ses rail at religion. As comes to pa.s.s when inordinate demand has been made on credulity, a reaction arises, and those whose faith was implicit yesterday become the scoffing heretics of to-day. The tide has turned, and it is no unfrequent occurrence to hear a Spaniard declare he is not a Christian, whose fathers would have perhaps burned at a stake the wretch who would have dared to utter such a profanity. This is very bad. One extreme is as wicked as another. If the Scylla of stupid superst.i.tion was dangerous, the Charybdis of arrogant scepticism is destructive. This is essentially a Roman Catholic country, yet never have I seen anywhere, in the lands where Roman Catholicism is disliked and contemned even, the ceremonies and inst.i.tutions of the Church treated with more undisguised ribaldry. I went to the Novedades, a popular theatre in a humble quarter of the town in the vicinity of the Calle de Toledo, to see what the piece on the occasion, "El Triunfo de la Republica," was like. I got in as a "Carlist ballet" was being danced; two men were dressed to represent two famous cabecillas, Sab.a.l.l.s and a colleague, two others to represent the Carlist priest, Santa Cruz, and a monk of the party. Santa Cruz was bulky as Friar Tuck, leered from under his scoop hat, drank wine, reeled, toddled, fell, and kicked up his heels as the wild Mabille quadrille music was played; and high was the content and noisily expressed the delight of the audience. The four women who took part in the Terpsich.o.r.ean orgie wore the robes of nuns, and must have belonged to the order of Sisters of Shame, if to any. They had blue hoods, white bands across their foreheads and bosoms, red crosses wrought on their habits, and trailing skirts of white. Their dancing was not voluptuous; it would be a misnomer to let it down with so mild an epithet; it was grossly indecent. They exposed their limbs, and the audience was ecstatic at the sight. Not a murmur of censure was to be heard. And this baccha.n.a.lian riot, too obscene for any self-respecting house of ill-fame, was supposed to be held in a church. The scenery showed a mockery of ecclesiastical architecture and pious pictures. As a dramatic effort, "El Triunfo de la Republica" was very poor. Zorilla was caricatured as a fox (a play upon his name), and Sagasta as a devil-fish, and the apotheosis revealed the Genius of Spain waving a flag lettered with the words, "Viva la Republica Federal!" The flag was welcomed with vehement cheers, in affirmation that those who looked on and admired the burlesque of ministers of the national faith were all stout Federal Republicans, corresponding somewhat to the Communists of the Paris of two years before.

These Federals, I own, I do not like. A deputation of them from the provinces arrived one of these evenings, and put up at the Fonda de Paris. They were scrubby louts, smoked between the courses although ladies were at table, which, however, could be condoned, as it was Spanish. But they also wore their hats. That irritated one guest, and he called to a waiter to bring him a hat which he would find on a peg outside. Having been handed his head-gear, he clapped it on, and said that was all he wanted. The hint was not lost. The boors dined in a room by themselves during the rest of their stay. And yet these Federal Republicans profess to respect public opinion; but by the phrase must be understood the opinion of those who agree with them. The Intransigentes, on whose support they depend, have arms in their hands, and will try to keep them. Only one man was ever able to disarm them, and he was a.s.sa.s.sinated. If Prim did not know the Spanish mind intuitively, and as no other man ever knew it, even he would not have succeeded. After the promiscuous distribution of arms to the mult.i.tude had been made from the windows of the storehouses in Madrid at the close of 1868, he tried every means to get them back, but to no purpose. Promises of rewards to those who would give up the guns were useless; threats and coaxings were in vain. At last Prim hit on a notable scheme. At a review he publicly insulted the corps he was so long trying to disembody; he either rode past them without noticing them, or made remarks on their appearance the reverse of complimentary. The officers threw up their commissions in dudgeon; they had served the cause of the people faithfully, and were not to be treated with contempt; they would no longer carry arms for such ungrateful friends. It was just what Prim wanted.

While Madrid was thus seething and bubbling as if it were on the verge of boiling over, and the great question of elections for the new Cortes to determine the future "permanent" style of administration was being mooted, the Carlists were plucking up heart and maturing their designs.

They fancied they would soon have the nation before them the _nudum et cc.u.m corpus_ of Sylla's description--defenceless and blind.

Nouvilas, one of the numberless generals of Spain, was ordered to the north. At a Republican meeting before his departure, he promised that he would take his five sons with him to fight against the Carlists. At the same meeting he declared himself the uncompromising enemy of all dictators.h.i.+ps, and warned those who expected that he would use his power in that sense not to make a mistake. He was a soldier, not a politician, and the day that the Republic would be consolidated, and peace secured, he would retire into private life. It did not seem as if peace were shortly to be secured. There was a proposition to raise fifty battalions of free corps to crush the insurgents. The only difficulty in the way was the loan for their armaments. The battalions were to be organized by provinces, and each was to be composed of 900 men (making a total of 44,100), and to be officered from the reserve. The proposition of itself was sufficient to wake the fools out of their paradise. These Carlists were not to be underrated. If they could do nothing else, they could issue proclamations. They were great at these. They promised to give the army the "licencia absoluta" which some soldiers demanded from the Republic at Barcelona. One Ramon V. Valcarces, commandant-general of the province of Lugo, was exceedingly anxious that the Galicians should come out to conquer or die. He told them that the national banner of their legitimate King waved triumphantly in the provinces of Catalonia, Castile, Leon, the Asturias, and the Vasco-Navarre, which was a piece of bounce--legitimate, may it be called?--on his part; and added scathingly that the Government at Madrid was in the hands of a group of adventurers, who called themselves Spaniards and Liberals. Those impostors would raise the taxes until it would be impossible to pay them, would sell the Antilles and persecute religion.

Tidings were wafted to us mysteriously that the brother of the legitimate King, H.R.H. Don Alfonso, of Bourbon and Lorraine, had held a review of the forces of Sab.a.l.l.s at Vidra, in Catalonia. His Royal Highness was accompanied by his wife, the Dona Maria. His Royal Highness wore flesh-coloured riding breeches with black stripes, jack-boots, a zamarra or sheep-skin upper garment, and a flat white cap of the make of those used by Scotch shepherds. Dona Maria wore a cap of the same kind, with a gold ta.s.sel coquettishly falling over her left shoulder. The august pair were mounted, and the lady, who chivalrously accompanied her husband, witched the Carlists with n.o.ble horsemans.h.i.+p. Don Alfonso was surrounded by a brilliant staff, conspicuous amongst whom was a son of that Don Enrique of Bourbon who was shot in a duel by the Duke of Montpensier.

The "only court" did not lack a moidering liveliness. Of nights I usually leant by my balcony overlooking the Puerta del Sol, and watched the frail sodality of the Moon prowling about in charge of the superfluous duenna, the while the brawl of palaver, the cries of "agua fresca," or of the last edition of the _Correspondencia_, the "theeah"

in such wise cadenced, or the boom of the watchman's voice came floating upwards, before I sat me down to a hard spell of work, sifting grain from chaff, and committing my thoughts to paper, a moistened towel round my temples, and a pot of black coffee at my elbow. The sun was usually ogling the fountain in the Plaza before I had finished.

The burden of work imposed upon the correspondent who desired to be loyal to duty was weighty on occasion. For example, late on the 26th of February the official journal came out with a lengthy circular from Don Emilio Castelar, to the representatives of Spain abroad. The object was to obtain the recognition of the Republic by Powers other than the United States and Switzerland. I saw the importance of sending a translation of this pregnant State paper at once, and shut myself up in my room with a supply of pens, ink, and paper, and the indispensable coffee-pot. I was not an accomplished Spanish scholar, but with the aid of a youthful groundwork in Latin, a fair knowledge of Italian, a familiarity with French, and a dictionary, I succeeded in turning out a full, accurate--nay, I will say a vivid--rendering of this historic composition before I unlocked my door, and transmitted it to London within twelve hours. Spanish is not difficult. If Italian is the daughter of Latin, Spanish is the son. And with energy and mother-wit, one can do much.

Castelar's was a brilliant and sustained effort; but it read more like an essay by Macaulay than a diplomatic holograph. It was splendid, but it was not official. It lacked crispness, and dealt in excessive rhetoric from the phrase in an opening paragraph where it spoke of Spain a.s.suming a place in the Amphictyonic council of Europe, to the closing sentence. The fall of the Monarchy was traced to the hour when the inst.i.tution solemnly ceded its own country to the foreigner (alluding to the pitiful abdication of Charles IV. in favour of his "friend and ally"

Napoleon, at Bayonne in 1808). True, attempts had been thrice made since to revive the old system with a new spirit, but they had failed; in 1812, the Democratic Monarchy; in 1837, the Parliamentary Monarchy; in 1869, the Elective Monarchy. The former order of things disappeared through inherent domestic causes; the Republic appeared of its own virtue, by the law of necessity. In 1869 the Const.i.tuent Cortes had proclaimed a Monarchy for three fundamental reasons: firstly, because it corresponded with the traditions of the Spanish people; secondly, because they believed it would secure liberal principles; and thirdly, because it would harmonize their form of government with that existing in nearly every part of Europe. The trouble was where to find the monarch. They had no dynasty typifying religious and national principles united to modern spirit like that of England, no princes like those who had built up the unity of Italy and of Germany on battlefields; their sovereign houses presented no stability. They had to look outside for a king, at the double risk of disturbing the peace of Europe and wounding the national sentiment. They found him in the scion of an ill.u.s.trious line, united to France by the war of 1859, to Prussia by the war of 1866, to Great Britain by the establishment of parliamentary rule in Italy. But the national sentiment of Spain was against him. It left him in a solitude that was asphyxia. At last he renounced a crown of which he only felt the weight on his brow and not the dignity in his soul.

When he left, this Government came not by violent revolution, but by logical evolution. The Republic was not provisional, but definitive. (As if there were any finality in politics!) The Cortes which had proclaimed it were the most permanent estate in the nation, inasmuch as when others melted away they remained. It was the same Cortes which undertook the national defence in the epic years from 1808 to 1814, which abrogated the rights of Don Carlos to the ancient crown, and which sanctioned the dethronement of the Bourbons. Spain owed the change she had effected to no cosmopolitan influences or agitations. She sought autonomy, not Utopianism; she coveted no conquest, but she wished to show that she was living, not dead; that she was still great, but not with the greatness of ruin, like the empires buried under the valleys of Asia.

There was an excellent thickset gentleman in Madrid, a literary pluralist, who combined the offices of "own correspondent" to several London journals. He was a diligent "snapper-up of unconsidered trifles,"

who would never set even the Manzanares on fire. He met me after I had despatched my version of Castelar's circular, and was cooling my aching brain on the shady side of the Puerta del Sol.

"Did you read that thing of 'Musica's'?" he said. ("Musica" was the nickname of the silver-tongued professor-politician.)

"Yes; lovely and long and flimsy as a rainbow," I remarked.

"I think you ought to send an epitome of it to London."

"I shall not."

"Well, I may tell you Chose is sending the whole of it on," he continued.

Chose was a most formidable rival.

"Who translated it for him?" I asked.

"As it is very important I am getting my sons to do it. Indeed, he asked me."

"And you never told me."

"Ah! you see, he has a reputation to sustain."

"And I have a reputation to make."

"I'll let you have a _precis_ to-morrow."

"No, thanks," I answered, turning on my heel.

The thickset gentleman looked mighty blank when he gazed on the paper a few days after with my translation covering nearly two columns of small type, nor did his astonishment lessen when I confided to him that it had been made for me by the Man in the Moon.

CHAPTER VI.

Warning to Ladies--The Hotel Parliament--An Anglo-Spanish Mentor--The Evil Genii of the Monarchy--The Curses of Spain--Government and Religion Affairs of Climate--The Carlists, Norwegians, and English, all Republicans!--Notions on Heredity--The Five Spanish Parties--The Army the Lever of Power--The Student-Caesar--Order _versus_ Republic--The Chained Colours--Dorregaray's Appeal to the Soldiers--Influence of the Church--Wanted: a Benevolent Despot.

In the first line, it may be generous to warn ladies (if any of the gentler s.e.x there be among my readers) to skip this chapter. There will be no indelicate disclosures--not that indelicate disclosures would bar the inquisitiveness of some females, judging by the ingenuity with which they intrigue for seats at the trials in the Divorce Court, and the avidity with which they devour "spicy," that is scandalous, details; but matter of a political, speculative, and quasi-philosophical nature is to be discussed, and I fear me much it will be dry and prosy.

A shady little room in one of the upper stories of the Fonda de Paris was used as reading-room. It was thickly carpeted, the walls were covered with oil paintings in ma.s.sive ornamented frames, and on the tables were placed curious jars, antique candlesticks, bronze statuettes, damascened daggers, and what is known as the merchandise of _bijouterie_ and _vertu_. There were few papers there, and but one book, a Spanish Army List in gorgeous green velvet cover with gilt clasps. In fact, it was more of an auctioneer's private show-room than _cabinet de lecture_, for the Brothers Fallola were dealers in _bric-a-brac_, and could not forego the chance of poking their wares under the notice of their customers. The Italian is first cousin to the Hebrew.

We held a grave Parliament of our own in this little room, and there I made the acquaintance of an English settler in Spain--an elderly gentleman who had been engaged in mining. He was well educated, had travelled widely, was p.r.o.nounced in his views, and as he expressed them with candour and was possessed of a high order of intelligence, I listened to him with attention. Indeed, we all accepted him as Mentor.

He indoctrinated me into the knotty catechism of Spanish politics.

Broadly speaking, he maintained that the monarchy was its own greatest enemy. It had fallen because of its indifference to public opinion.

Among its evil genii were the pastrycook Marforio, Father Claret, and Sister Patrocinio. The birth of a daughter to Ferdinand VII., fault of nature, was the primal fatality. As Count O'Neil remarked when he heard the natal salute stop at the nineteenth cannon-shot, unhappy Spain was doomed, because of the gender of the newly-born, to be over-shadowed with the pall of grief and mourning. But the primal error was the unnatural marriage of Isabella to her cousin, Don Francisco. Never was there a more ill-a.s.sorted union. A woman of ardent temperament and strong fibre was allied to a feeble nonent.i.ty without sap or spirit. Had she become the spouse of a man like Victor Emmanuel, things might have gone better.

Spain was a grand country, he held, one of the richest in creation in minerals, forests, vineyards, orchards, silk and flocks. The people were a people that improved upon intercourse, and had some grand qualities.

But the curses of Spain were the ignorance of the ma.s.ses, the greed of the professional politicians, and the varying ascendancy of some one man's power in the army.

"Was the country ripe for its existing form of government?" I asked.