THERE is no more stir at the railway-station of Madrid than at that of Tunbridge Wells or Chelmsford; and as you rattle along the quiet streets, you ask yourself—Can this be the capital of so many great kingdoms? It is the fashion to represent Madrid as a dreary place, but, on the contrary, its first aspect is eminently cheerful. The streets are light and airy, the sky is generally without a cloud, and the population is a gay and unique one. I suppose Madrid is the only capital in Europe where the upper classes can be said to cling to anything like costume, for certainly the long cloaks of the men, and the mantillas and fans of the ladies, do merit the name of costume still. In Spain it is possible for a man to be dainty about his dress, since every cloak can be lined in different styles of luxury, with silk, with velvet, with fur, or with brocade. The upper cape of the cloak is thrown over the left shoulder in such a manner as to expose the lining; and as you walk along the streets, you are lost in admiration of a dress so graceful, and think regretfully of the orthodox great-coat worn in London, when a little colour would be so pleasant to the eye. Put a Spanish cloak upon every man in Fleet Street and Piccadilly, and how the bits of creamy fur, of crimson silk, of purple velvet, of gold brocade, would enliven these sober thoroughfares! But the Madrilenians are not a majestic race, though so majestically equipped. Diminutive in size, sallow, shaven like monks, one never dreams of calling the men handsome. At the same time they have, for the most part, beautiful features and fine eyes. The ladies, tripping about fan in hand, are pretty; but, like the men, frail-looking and without dignity. Treacherous as is the climate, they go about bare-necked, bare-headed, and with only a fan to shade them from a dangerous sun. Yet one sees the same thing everywhere—whilst the women wear tight-fitting clothes, and expose themselves to wind and sun, the men are wrapped up like Arabs in the easiest, most sensible dress possible. In England we are growing wiser, and we no longer kill our young girls by making them wear tight stays, thin shoes, and back-boards; but in Madrid—I suppose one of the unhealthiest places in the world—it never seems to enter into any one’s head that what is dangerous to a man is doubly so to a woman.

It will be easily understood why Madrid should be so unhealthy when a little consideration is given to its site. Built on a plateau 2412 feet above the sea, it is exposed to an African sun and a Siberian winter. Like Rome it stands in a treeless desert; and the icy winds may blow down from the chain of the Guadarrama, whilst the sun is scorching with fiery powers. You may pass in a moment from a cold climate to a hot one in Madrid; and at all times the air is so rarefied as to be terribly trying. I enjoy excellent health as a rule, but the climate of Madrid knocked me down in a day. I was tormented by a constant neuralgia; my face swelled up so that I could hardly see out of my eyes; and I became so languid that I could hardly set one foot before the other. Yet one must not take stimulants. Never shall I forget the dismay with which an English lady saw me take wine at dinner.

“Unless you are mad,” she said, “you will drink no wine here. When I first came to Madrid I felt as you do, feverish, listless, utterly good for nothing, and I tried a little vin ordinaire as a remedy, but it acted like a poison. My face became covered with a terrible eruption, and if I had not abstained in time, I should have had the colico of Madrid. It is a terrible climate alike for body and mind, and thankful enough shall I be to get away.”

Every one coughs everywhere. The men cover their mouths and keep on the sunny side of the street, as if death lurked in a “shady place;” whilst the ladies (would to heaven they did cover their mouths when the icy wind blows from the mountains!), who go bareheaded, have a frightfully fragile look. Indeed it is the very rarest thing to see a really robust-looking person in Madrid. The curled darlings of society are pale as spectres, the waiters and shopmen are thin and cadaverous; a fresh, beautiful look of health one meets nowhere. I don’t think this matter of climate is sufficiently taken into account by those who write about Spain and the Spaniards; for there is no denying the fact that since Madrid became the capital of this great country, its greatness grew pale and wan. Bred in a hot-bed of consumption, of colic, and all sorts of diseases, is it any wonder that the Madrilenian degenerates both in body and in mind, till he no longer looks capable either of mental or physical exertion? Wherever we found ourselves, at the Prado, at a review, on the Puerto de Sol, or in the churches, we were always looking at the sickly, lethargic population around us, with the thought—Is this the stuff of which reformations and revolutions are to be made?

And then the dire effects of the Inquisition must be taken into account. Who can doubt that for some of the mental and physical debasement witnessed in Spain at the present day the system of Ignatius Loyola is alone responsible? Torture, enslave, terrify a dozen men and women, and see what their children and children’s children will become? But whether this reasoning may be received as a mere fancy or not, the fact remains incontestable,—the upper ten thousand of Madrilenian population is the most miserable-looking of any in the world. Of Madrilenian society we had no experience, for, though we were furnished with letters of introduction, more important objects claimed our time. It is the greatest mistake to do two things at once, and having come to Madrid to see and study the Velasquez Gallery, we had no inclination to neglect this end for any other. As a substitute for personal experience, we read Spanish newspapers, modern Spanish novels, and plays; and though, as far as the latter goes, it was rather hard work, we felt the curriculum to be instructive. Putting aside the charming stories of Caballero and Trueba, the modern Spanish novel is a poor affair, and the play a poor affair too; but any one who really wishes to be entertained and instructed should read the social sketches of such writers as Don Ramon Mesonero de Romanos, Pedro de Medrazo, and JosÉ de Larra, who describe their country and countrymen with inimitable grace, satire, and discrimination.

And the newspapers, what is to be said of them? I think this paragraph might be headed,—“There are no newspapers in Spain;” for except as mediums of advertisements and local gossip, they don’t exist. On first installing ourselves in the comfortable HÔtel de Paris, we used to fly eagerly to the reading-room, laying hands on La Correspondencia de EspaÑa, La Gaceta, La Regeneracion, &c., &c.; but very little did they tell us excepting the small-beer chronicles of every nation under the sun, and of Spain above all. Then there would be feuilletons of very inferior quality, long lists of advertisements for wet-nurses, and invitations to the friends of the late Don or DoÑa So-and-so to attend his or her funeral obsequies.

Of anything like political news, much less political discussion, there was seldom a vestige.

But though the Government has succeeded in bridling the tongue of the press, there is abundance of contraband talk in Madrid. No matter with whom you converse, the topic is sure to be of bloody revolutions and retributions unequalled in history. But mention the Royal name, and, whether you are among aristocrats or peasants, you will see dark looks, meaning shrugs of the shoulder, gestures significant of bitterest meaning.

“It must come soon,” people say to you; “and the sooner the better, though dire will be the coming of it. Never in history were such wrongs, such hatred, such tyranny, to be washed out in blood. We can only watch and wait.”

The acquaintance of a day,—nay, of an hour, is sufficient to warrant all sorts of confidences on public matters from a Spaniard, and this incautiousness, or rather candour, makes you forgive even his love of the bull-fight. It is, indeed, a most consolatory fact, that it is but a watching and waiting in Spain, and that underneath a semblance of indifference burns and rages a wholesome desire of liberty.

“We are at the present moment enduring a tyranny of which foreigners have no conception,” said a cultivated Spaniard to me, one day, in English; “and yet, despite of all that is going on secretly among us, no one can say when things will change. Change they must; we shall have the French Revolution acted over again in the streets of Madrid.”[2]

Again: we were taken to see the graves of some young officers of high family who were shot in prison during the disturbances of last year. A respectable man of the lower ranks was standing near, and he said, with tears in his eyes, but half-suppressed curses on his lips,—

“They were as innocent as new-born babes; though, thank God! this murder won’t long want vengeance.”

It would be almost impossible to convey any idea of the bitterness and hatred we found underlying the public mind at this epoch.

People gave us their confidences without any reason for doing so, confidences which all amounted to one and the same thing—contempt of the tyranny and resolutions to overturn the tyrants. “No one can tell how uncomfortable it is to live in Madrid now,” said an English lady to me one day. “It is the old fable of the sheep and the wolves over and over again. We are constantly laying in stores for three or four weeks’ siege; but I’ve done it so often in vain that I have determined never to do it again, and I daresay the consequence will be that a revolution will come and find my larder empty.”

And yet how gay it was in Madrid! Though the north-east wind blew from the mountains, ladies promenaded the streets bareheaded; and Opera-house, Plaza de Toros, Prado, and every other haunt of amusement, was crowded. We naturally tried each in turn. We saw a review on the Queen’s birthday, went to the Opera, drove on the Prado, and, much against my inclination, I spent twenty minutes at a bull-fight. The review was a spiritless affair, every one had prophesied some sort of outbreak on that day, but none came; and the Queen, who had been hissed at the theatre a few days before, did not appear. The King took her place, and very flushed and uncomfortable he looked. Not so le PÈre Claret, the Queen’s confessor. As he descended the palace steps to his handsome carriage drawn by four splendid mules, he looked quite contented with the existing order of things,—which I suppose is but natural,—and stepped along in his purple robes with as much dignity as if he had been the Pope himself. This man’s history and position are so extraordinary that one cannot but look after him with interest. By turns, soldier, ecclesiastic, missionary, and bishop, he has won a certain celebrity for his sermons and the publication of a coarse book called La Clave de Oro, and he has also won the royal ear. His rival in this latter respect is a nun, called Maria-DolorÈs Patrocinio, abbess of the convent of St. Pascual d’Aranjuez, who was tried and condemned some time since by the tribunal, because she gave herself out to be the subject of a miracle, pretending to have the wounds of Christ on her hands. One can but pity the Queen, who has laid herself open to such unmitigated obloquy by her favouritism. No young sovereign ever passed through stormier ordeals than Isabella the Second. Pity that experience has not taught her wisdom, and that by her own hand she has undone, Penelope-wise, good deeds done in the gentleness of youth! There is a little book called The AttachÉ in Madrid, which gives some highly interesting sketches of the Spanish Court and capital during the eventful July of 1854. It was a reign of terror, and the Queen was as a shuttlecock driven hither and thither; but a Spanish mob is not a French mob, and always showed some threadbare kind of respect for royalty. An English writer on the affairs of Spain, says, “The Queen of Spain is not unpopular with the bulk of her subjects” (which statement I doubt), “and her great failing is, that feminine one to which Dr. Reaumur attributes all Mary Queen of Scots’ errors, ‘Sie konnte nicht ohne MÄnner leben.’” But it seems to me that it is faults of both heart and head that have made the throne of Isabella the Second the bed of thorns it is. If, despite a bad government, Spain is making undeniable progress, who can doubt what she might be under a good? I think no one who has had opportunity of studying her domestic history during the last thirty years will be inclined to agree with Mr. Buckle’s sweeping assertions. He despaired of the regeneration of Spain, but slow though the process must be, it has undoubtedly commenced. In commerce, in education, in literature, it has commenced; and who shall stem the flow of that slow but inevitable tide?

The great hindrance is from the badness and uncertainty of the government. There is no security in the land, without which there can be no spirit of enterprise. Who can say what to-morrow will bring forth? “A Spanish cabinet,” an English writer wittily says, “may be compared to a Chili house, constructed on a calculation that an earthquake will occur within the year.” All the best energy of the nation is spent upon the unhealthy excitement of political transformations. It is like living in an atmosphere overcharged with electricity. One moment, there is a succession of lightning-flashes, all sorts of brilliant miraculous heralds of a tempest that is to clear the air; then comes a growl of thunder, an outburst of popular feeling in Barcelona or some distant part; and all is hushed again for a short space, when the symptoms occur again and again without coming to a crisis.

But this underlying suspense and unrest do not interfere with the gay, out-of-door life of Madrid. The weather is always fine, and the Prado is always crowded.

There is nothing livelier in Europe than this same Prado, with its crowd of pretty ladies, picturesque cavaliers, dear little carriages for babies drawn by spotlessly white lambs, nurses from Estramadura in short, brown petticoats, embroidered with gold, water-sellers in sombrero and leathern gaiters, and an infinity of equipages, costumes, and cries, to distract the eye and ear of the foreigner. But if you are tired of gaiety, in ten minutes you can get into a scene so peaceful and quiet, that you might fancy yourself miles away from a capital. Drive down to the green banks of the Manzanares, where a thousand peasant women are beating linen in the afternoon sun. Their red and yellow skirts, and plentiful black hair, make quite a picture, and their blithe talk and singing never cease for a moment. Yet how tranquil and rustic it is here! One has a superb view of Madrid, with its background of blue and white mountains, palace and church and house-top flushing in the light of the setting sun, whilst the hum of its busy life seems silenced for a while. The river winds amid sloping banks of lustrous green, lightly sprinkled with yellow foliage, and team after team winds its sleepy way towards some village seen in the distance.

It sounds incredible, and yet it is true, that, within half-an-hour’s drive of Madrid, the roads are impracticabilities for any carriage having springs. I do not think there is a lane in Sussex, or in any heavy land district of Suffolk, where you could be so jolted in a tumbril as we were in a light cab just outside the Spanish capital. We found the same state of things throughout our journey. I suppose there is no functionary answering to that of our parish surveyor. No one seems to mind having his bones rattled over the stones, as if he were a “pauper whom nobody owns.”

I feel in duty bound to say a word about the Bull-fight, though let no one shut this book, thinking that I am about to describe that horror of horrors. Heaven knows, it is a sight that any one might make something of, for added to the accessories of a burning blue sky, and a picturesque assemblage of nine thousand people excited to the verge of frenzy, there are all the savage elements of the human and animal nature called into full play. But what I saw of “this bloody amphitheatre of Rome, with spectators in hats and coats,” as Ford calls it, so sickened me, that I never recur to the subject without repugnance. Before I left England I was told by an educated Spaniard that bull-fights were going out of fashion, and that his countrymen, at least those of the upper classes, no longer attended them. But what did personal experience teach me? It taught that Spanish ladies do go to bull-fights, and, moreover, that they take with them their young children, who clap their hands at the close of every bloody act, and watch the whole cruel drama as eagerly as their elders.

To judge fairly of those horrid amusements, you should go behind the scenes. There, in a dreary chapel, you see the matadors, the banderilleros, and all the other wretched actors in the play, taken by turns to confess and receive absolution at the hands of a priest. How ghastly pale and craven they look in their tinselly dresses!—more like culprits going to execution than the proud heroes of great feats. Adjoining the chapel is a room fitted up as a hospital, which is too often called into requisition; and from this you are led to the stables, where stand wretched hacks, soon to be blindfolded and tortured to death. These poor animals, it is said,—let us hope without truth,—are often the discarded and superannuated favourites of gentlemen; but no matter what they may have been, they are brought on the stage to be gored by turns, and their blood and agony count for nothing.

The arena is by no means imposing till it is filled with spectators; and the procession is tawdry enough. The dogs and mules which figure in it, are alone worth looking at. The former are called into requisition to madden any bull that does not show game, the latter to drag away the dead horses and bulls. But as soon as the horrid play begins, the place becomes a very infernus. Men and women vie with each other in noises, screams, and cries; now it is some unfortunate chulo who is the butt of the whole assembly, because he has allowed the bull to attack the horse too soon; now it is a picador, who gets praised by shouts, clappings of the hand, and all sorts of uproarious applause; and now it is the bull who becomes the pet of the moment for having skilfully overturned horse and rider. If anything can be more unbearable than the spectacle itself, it is the behaviour of the spectators. The noise is deafening,—nay, maddening; and when the first act of the drama ended, we rushed away too horrified to put our horror into words.

The wide street leading to the Plaza de Toros was so crowded with people going to the bull-fight, that it was with some difficulty we could get along. All Madrid seemed turning out for the sight, and yet it was a weekly one; and, on this occasion, of no exceptional attractiveness. On grand festivals there are extra bulls killed and far greater crowds; but all who wish to know more about bull-fights, past and present, should go to that fountain-head of knowledge on Spanish affairs, Richard Ford.[3] There is one consideration apt to be overlooked by those who are studying the subject, and that is, the hand-to-hand struggle between man and brute. From the moment the show commences till its close every player, whether he be chulo or banderillero, picador or matador, places his life in peril—not for the love of sport, mind, but for the sake of gain—and frequent occurrence of grave accidents, and the possibility of fatal ones, may well account for the pale faces of these desperate creatures. Only a few weeks before our arrival at Madrid, a well-known matador had been killed at Seville, and the whole horrid scene was described to us by an eye-witness. There was no show of sympathy made for the man; but cries of “Brava, toro! Bravo, toro!” filled the arena from end to end. The son of the murdered man took his father’s place!

For my part all my sympathies go with the bull. He, poor beast! is often the most peace-loving creature in the world, and, anyhow, suffers ten times more than the horse, which is not goaded into frenzy by shouts, arrows, fire-works, sword-pricks, and dogs, but is allowed to die quickly. The bull is tortured to the last as if he were a heretic. Pitiful it is to see him crawl into some quiet corner to die, with what regrets for his peaceful pastures, with what horror of his tormentors, with what quivering agony in every nerve, Heaven alone knows!

It sounds incomprehensible, and yet it is quite true, that bull-fights are often held for charitable purposes. A few years back a new church at Madrid was to be built. A committee was formed for the purpose, consisting of an archbishop, several bishops, noblemen, and others; the land was given, and the building commenced. But some money was wanting, and so they had a bull-fight, the proceeds of which helped them on a little. Later, their necessities were even more pressing, and they tried another bull-fight. This time, however, the owner of the bull-ring refused to give them a benefit, and other means had to be tried.

Cruelty begets cruelty, and as if the appetite for blood were not satisfied at the circus, the churches offer more in abundance. Anything more revolting than the bleeding, bruised Christs and saints, cannot be conceived. No shape nor symbol of suffering is left out of the dreary catalogue till one comes away, sick with the ghastly blasphemies witnessed on every side. This is all the sadder, since a real spirit of religious fervour seems predominant; and the brighter side of Romanism is never wholly hidden from the eyes of even the most superficial or prejudiced observer.

And what has not Murillo done to beautify this Church of Spain, whose annals are so stained with blood and tears?