John Augustus O'Shea

“ Honour to the manes of Uxem-Ali-Beck, Ambassador from the Shah of Persia, who came to Madrid in 1601, and fell in love there. He liked it. I fell in love ten times a day, but nobody would fall in love with me.
On a Sunday night at nine o'clock, I quitted the city, and on Tuesday morning I had my hair trimmed by a barber of Seville. The journey, like most long railway journeys, is one of infinite weariness to the flesh. The first-class carriages are roomy and well-padded, so that short travelling, except for invalids, is comfortable enough. ”

“ I ought not to be, and I do not desire to be, King, except of all Spaniards; I exclude nobody, not even those who call themselves my enemies, for a king can have no enemies. I appeal affectionately to all, in the name of the country, even to those who appear the most estranged; and if I do not need the help of all to arrive at the throne of my ancestors, I do perhaps need their help to establish on solid and immovable bases the government of the State, and to give prosperous peace and true liberty to my beloved Spain. ”

“ It is palpably colder, and yet we are far from the culminating point of the Pyrenean pass; straight saplings are not infrequent around, and here and there a lowly hut in a nook under some sheltering rock, both hut and rock hoary with snow, startles us with the reminder that human beings actually live here. The Basques, said Voltaire, are a people who sing and dance on the summit of the Pyrenees. Our ox-drivers do not sing, neither do our muleteers. This interminable glare is becoming very fatiguing to the eyes, and the higher we ascend the rarer are the refreshing little streaks of darker hue. ”

“ I am speaking now of fine days; but there are days when the sky is cloudy and the wind blows, and the waters in the Bay of Cadiz below surge up sullen and yeasty, and there are days when the rain comes down quick, thick, and heavy as from a waterspout, and the streets are turned for the moment into rivulets. But the effects of the rain do not last long; Spain is what washerwomen would call a good drying country. Beyond its neatness and tidiness, Puerto has other features to recommend it to the traveller. ”

“ No country of Europe so near to us is so little known. Yet in none is the soil fertilized by so much British blood. But this was in the bygone; and the yearly increasing swell of journeying-against-time tourists has not swept in tidal wave over the Peninsula. Even Spanish plays—and Spain can boast of one of the richest springs of dramatic literature in Europe—are comparatively sacred from the desecrating touch of the ruck of contemporary English stage adulterators. ”

“ The slave-trade still flourishes in Morocco. On the next page we meet two types of young Moorish females: one a peasant, taken surreptitiously as she stood in a horse-shoe archway; the other a lady of the harem, taken—no matter by what artifice. The peasant, swathed from tip to heel in white like a ghost in a penny booth, and shading her face with a cart-wheel of a palm-leaf hat looped from brim to crown, and with one extremity of its great margins curled, is a prematurely worn, weather-stained, common-looking wench, with a small nose and screwed-up mouth. ”

“ The alguazil beseeches the key of the toril from the Governor, receives it, turns it in the lock; and as the bull with dazed vision enters into the sunshine at one gate, he disappears at an amble through another.
The bull! What a noble specimen of his race!—broad-browed, clean-horned, and clean-limbed; high courage in his bloodshot orbs, his dilated nostril, and his lashing tail! On the right and left the quadrille arrange themselves, the picadores, each with a spike at the end of his long shaft, and a kerchief bandaging one eye of his horse ”

“ The Spanish debt is something frightful to think of; the productive forces of the country are not enough to cover it—bankruptcy is imminent. I do not know if I can save Spain from that calamity; but, if it be possible, a legitimate sovereign alone can do it. An unshakable will works wonders. If the country is poor, let all live frugally, even to the ministers; nay, even to the King himself, who should be one in feeling with Don Enrique El Doliente. If the King is foremost in setting the example, all will be easy. ”

“ At night, when the city streets are crowded with groups in conversation; when the fragrant, flower-garlanded patios are visible by mystic lights pendent from gilt chandeliers, like votive lamps before a shrine; when caballeros pay court to their lady-loves through gratings as caballeros are licensed only to pay court in Spain; when plaintive songs, with a reminiscence of the desert about them, are chanted in monotonous cadence to the accompaniment of a guitar—how grateful it all is to him who is not lost to the sense of poetry! ”

“ He can make maps and surveys of the neutral ground, and watch the guard mounting on the Alameda, or read the account of the siege in Drinkwater's days; and when he tires of the green cloth and its distractions, and of his own noble profession, he can throw a sail to the breeze in the unequalled Bay, or take a flying trip to Tarifa to sketch the beautiful from the living model, or go to Ceuta to see the Spanish galley-slaves and disciplinary regiments, forgetful of our own chain-gangs; or steam across to Tangier to riot in Nature and a day's pig-sticking. ”

“ He takes his straight keen-tempered sword and his cloak of offensive scarlet, and advances towards the bull. Now is the supreme trial, now is the time when men let their lighted cigarettes drop from their mouths and clench their teeth; now is the time when women close their fans and draw long breaths. Cucharra faces Toro at a yard's distance. They regard each other. Cucharra hides his sword under his cloak, and presents it to the bull. Toro lowers his head, shuts his eyes, and charges, but the toreador gracefully slips aside and saves his life by a turn of the heel. ”

“ The Sevillanos know that, and come to Cadiz when the heats make residence in their own city insupportable. Winter is unknown; skating has never been witnessed by Gaditanos, except when exhibited by foreign professors, clad in furs, who glide on rollers over polished floors; and small British boys who are fond of snowballing when they come out here are obliged to pelt each other with oranges to keep their hands in. One enthusiastic traveller compares it to a pearl set in sapphires and emeralds, but adds—lest we should all be running to hug the jewel—there is little art here and less society. ”

“ Still—beggars, gipsies, heat, and laziness to the contrary notwithstanding—Seville is delectable, and a marvel in its gardens and groves, its flowers and fruit, its fountains and fish-pools, its soft climate and soft people, its languorous repose and silvery tinkles to prayer. Seville is romance. Shall it ever be mine again to lie beneath the shade of its secular orange-trees, and blink at clustering shafts of marble tipped with silver sun-rays, and dream dreams? ”

“ So lax was the cordon on the day we crossed, that a brigade of Carlists, each man with a repeating rifle on his shoulder and two revolvers in his belt, might have gone into Spain and never have had their sight offended by a solitary French uniform.
The view from the comb of the hills, as grasped on a sunny day, repays all the toil and trouble of the ascent; and looking round, one begins to realize the fascination of mountain-climbing. ”

“ Observe to what the reasoning of those who frantically protest against the national pastime of Spain reduces itself. So far, I wish it to be understood that I am arguing with the intent of establishing a reductio ad absurdum. If coursing, hunting, shooting, and fishing are justifiable—and I hold that they are—then on the like grounds are cock-fighting and bull-fighting justifiable. The beasts on the earth, the birds of the air, and the fishes in the sea, are all created for man's use and benefit. To kill them is no crime, if the killing be not attended with the infliction of wanton pain. ”

“ Among Spanish wines I far prefer the full-bodied astringent sub-acidity of the common Val de Peñas, beloved of Cervantes. But the Queen of wines is sound Bordeaux. To that Queen, however, a delicate etherous Amontillado might be admitted as Spanish maid-of-honour, preceding the royal footsteps, while the syrupy Malaga from the Doradillo grape might follow as attendant in her train.
From wine to women is an easy transition. ”

“ Amadeus after his reign of five-and-twenty months had perchance left few partisans behind him, but assuredly no enemies. His principal fault, but that was fatal, consisted in his being a foreigner. It was universally vouchsafed that he was very brave, a true hidalgo in that respect, and if he had been removed in the orthodox method by revolution or the assassin, his name would have been garlanded with rosemary for remembrance. But Spanish pride was nettled to the quick at the cavalier way he had tossed back, with a shrug of the shoulders, the gift of a crown when he had tired of it. ”

“ Their beads returned to the pocket or the prayers finished, they laughed and jested, were frolicsome as schoolboys in their playhour, and the slightest tinkle of music set them dancing. Hospitable and fanatic, faithful and ignorant, temperate and dirty—such are some prominent traits in the character of the brave Basque people of the rural districts who wished to govern Spain, but who were Spaniards neither by race, nor language, nor temperament, nor feeling.
Taken all in all, they are a right manly breed, and, with education to correct inevitable prejudices, would be capable of great things. ”

“ EVERY other day—every other hour, I might almost say—a new rumour was born in Madrid. These rumours were usually figments, always exaggerations. If one were to inquire into their origin Don Fulano de Tal, the Man in the Street, was certain to have assisted as accoucheur. Alas! truth in Spain is coyest of sparrows, and to be caught must have not a grain but a whole bushel of salt shaken over its tail. Don Carlos was always turning up somewhere like a bad shilling. ”

“ An enlightened Moor might think the practices of the Peculiar People quite as strange, and question the infallibility of cure-all pills at thirteen-pence-halfpenny the box. The dead in Morocco are hurried to their graves at a hand-gallop. That, I submit, is no more unreasonable than many English funeral usages, such as incurring debt for the pomp of mourning. At Moorish weddings the bride is carried in procession in a palanquin to her husband's house amid a fantasia of gunpowder—the reckless rejoicing discharges of ancient muskets in the streets. ”

“ Motion is the sovereign remedy for the vagabond's disease, and lo! through the leafy barrier of the pollarded limes bordering the Green, jingle the bells of the tram-car with its trotting team of three abreast. Three mules, which bring my thoughts to Spain, and to a letter I have had from my publishers, satirically asking how soon they might expect the last pages of a promised book on the land of the Dons, the first line of which is not yet committed to paper. ”

“ Sometimes, in the morning, five hundred men or more—garrison artillery, engineers, and infantry—muster there, previous to marching to their posts; there is a banging of drums, a blowing of bugles, a bobbing vision of cocked-hats, and a roar of hoarse words of command—all the pomp and pride and circumstance of glorious war before the fighting begins. Sometimes, in the evening, a band plays, and the Alameda is the resort of fashion and of nursery-maids. ”

“ Your persistent drizzle is a terrible enemy to revolution. There is nothing like it for putting a damper on noisy out-of-door agitation. But the occasion is a great one, and though the clouds seem to have been transformed into tanks with bottoms pepper-castored with leaks, and never tire of the weary drip-drip, the citizens of Madrid bravely affront the weather and collect on the sloppy approaches to the Palace of the Congress to discuss the affairs of the commonwealth. ”

“ On such a day as this the first adventurers must have crossed from Africa to Europe. Hero might almost have swum across. Even Mr. Brownsmith of Eastchepe might rig a craft out of an empty sugar hogshead, set up his walking-stick for mast, tie his pocket-handkerchief to it for sail, and trust to the waves in safety—that is, if Mr. Brownsmith of Eastchepe had in him the heart of Raleigh, not of Bumble. Some men are born to be drivers of tram-cars, some to be captains of corsairs. The pioneer of navigation must have been cut out by nature to be a High-Admiral of bold buccaneers. ”