Spanish Gravity the Jest of the English.—Sunday Evening described.—Society for the Suppression of Vice.—Want of Holidays.—Bull-Baiting.—Boxing.
One of the great philosophers here has advanced a theory that the nervous and electric fluids are the same, both being condensed light. If this be true, sunshine is the food of the brain; and it is thus explained why the southern nations are so much more spiritual than the English, and why they in their turn rank higher in the scale of intellect than their northern neighbours.
Spanish gravity is the jest of this people. Whenever they introduce a Spaniard upon the stage, it is to ridicule him for his pride, his jealousy, and his mustachios. According to their notions, all our women who are not locked up in convents, are locked up at home; guarded by duennas as vigilant as dragons, and husbands, every one of whom is as fierce as the Grand Turk. They believe, also, that a Spaniard thinks it beneath his dignity ever to laugh, except when he is reading Don Quixote; then, indeed, his muscles are permitted to relax.
I am writing upon Sunday evening, at the hour when in our cities the people are at the theatre or the bull-fight; when in every street and village the young are dancing with their castanets, and at every door you hear the viola. What is the scene in England at this time? All public amusements are prohibited by the dÆmon of Calvinism; and for private ones,—half the people seriously believe that were they to touch a card on a Sunday, they should immediately find the devil under the table, who is said to have actually appeared upon such an occasion to an old lady at Bath. The Savoyard, who goes about with his barrel-organ, dares not grind even a psalm-tune upon the sabbath. The old woman who sells apples at the corner of the street has been sent to prison for profanation of the Lord's day, by the Society for the Suppression of Vice; the pastry-cook, indeed, is permitted to keep his shop-window half open, because some of the society themselves are fond of iced creams. Yonder goes a crowd to the Tabernacle, as dismally as if they were going to a funeral; the greater number are women;—enquire for their husbands at the alehouse, and you will find them besotting themselves there, because all amusements are prohibited as well as all labour, and they cannot lie down like dogs, and sleep. Ascend a step higher in society,—the children are yawning, and the parents agree that the clock must be too slow, that they may accelerate supper and bed-time. In the highest ranks, indeed, there is little or no distinction of days, except that there is neither theatre nor opera for them, and some among them scruple at cards. Attempts have even been made to shut up the public ovens on this day, and convert the sabbath into a fast for the poor. And these are the people who ridicule Spanish gravity, and think they have reformed religion, because they have divested it of all that is cheerful, all that is beautiful, and all that is inviting.
Our peasantry have a never-failing source of amusement in the dance and the viola. Here the poor never dance; indeed, illegal dancing is a punishable crime, and if they do not dance illegally they cannot dance at all. This requires some explanation. Partly from custom, still more from the nature of the climate, there is no dancing here in the open air; the houses of the poor are too small for this diversion; they must therefore meet at some public house where there is a room large enough. The rich do this also; but dancing at a peso-duro a-head, and dancing at two reales, are very different things—the one is called a ball, the other a sixpenny hop. The rich may take care of their own morals—the police must look after the poor. These public dancing-rooms are excellent preparatory schools for the brothel, and the magistrates very properly endeavour to suppress them,—or should endeavour,—for the recent institution of a society for the suppression of vice, seems to imply that the laws are not executed without such assistance. Here I must remark, that if there be one thing by which the English are peculiarly distinguished from all other people in the world, it is by their passion for exercising authority and enacting laws. When half a score or a dozen men combine for any common purpose, whether to establish an insurance-office, to cut a canal, or even to set spies upon apple-women on a Sunday, they embody themselves into a company, choose out a representative committee and a president, and issue their resolutions with all the forms of a legislative body. It will be well if the slate does not one day feel the inconvenience of this taste for legislation.
Music is as little the amusement of the people as dancing. Never was a nation so unmusical. Perhaps the want of leisure may be the cause. They reproach the Catholic religion with the number of its holidays, never considering how the want of holidays breaks down and brutalizes the labouring class, and that where they occur seldom they are uniformly abused. Christmas, Easter, and Whitsuntide, the only seasons of festival in England, are always devoted by the artificers and the peasantry to riot and intoxication.
You may well conceive of what character the popular amusements needs must be, in a country where there is nothing to soften the manners or ameliorate the condition of the poor. The practice of bull-baiting is not merely permitted, it is even enjoined by the municipal law in some places. Attempts have twice been made in the legislature to suppress this barbarous custom: they were baffled and ridiculed, and some of the most distinguished members were absurd enough, and hard-hearted enough, to assert, that if such sports were abolished, there would be an end of the national courage. Would to Heaven that this were true! that English courage had no better foundation than brutal ferocious cruelty! We should no longer be insulted in our ports, and our ships might defy their buccaneering cruisers. Do not suppose that this bull-baiting has any the smallest resemblance to our bull-feasts.—Even these I should agree with the Conde de Norana, and with the Church, in condemning as wicked and inhuman; but there is a splendour in the costume, a gaiety in the spectacle, a skill and a courage displayed in the action, which afford some apology for our countrymen, whereas this English sport is even more cowardly than the bull-fights of the Portugueze.[20] The men are exposed to no danger whatever; they fasten the animal to a ring, and the amusement is to see him toss the dogs, and the dogs lacerate his nostrils, till they are weary of torturing him, and then he is led to the slaughter-house to be butchered after their clumsy and cruel method. The bear and the badger are baited with the same barbarity; and if the rabble can get nothing else, they will divert themselves by worrying cats to death.
But the great delight of the English is in boxing, or pugilism, as it is more scientifically denominated. This practice might easily be suppressed; it is against the laws; the magistrates may interfere if they please; and its frequency therefore, under such circumstances, is an irrefragable proof of national barbarity. Cudgel-playing, quarter-staff, broad-sword, all of which, brutal as such gladiatorial exhibitions are, might have given to the soldiers a serviceable dexterity, have yielded to this more brutal sport, if that may be called sport which sometimes proves fatal. When a match is made between two prize-fighters, the tidings are immediately communicated to the public in the newspapers; and paragraphs occasionally appear, saying the rival are in training, what exercise they take, and what diet, for some of them feed upon raw beef as a preparative.—Meantime, the amateurs and the gamblers choose their party, and the state of the betts appears also in the public newspapers from time to time: not unfrequently the whole is a concerted scheme, that a few rogues may cheat a great many fools.—When the combat at length takes place, as regular a report is prepared for the newspapers as if it were a national victory—the particulars are recorded with a minuteness at once ridiculous and disgraceful; for every movement has its technical or slang name, and the unprecedented science of the successful combatant becomes the theme of general admiration.
Yet, notwithstanding all the attention which these people bestow upon this savage art, for which they have public schools, they are outdone by savages. When one of the English squadrons of discovery was at Tongataboo, several of the natives boxed with the sailors for love, as the phrase is, and in every instance the savage was victorious.
