Madrid

“ Like Paris and Vienna, Madrid does not seem to awake until evening, and the tide of [Pg 343] life becomes the most active under the glare of gas-lights which are as numerous at midnight as the fireflies that float over a sugar plantation. The fine shops surrounding this brilliant square, which is the real geographical heart of Madrid, are more Parisian than Spanish. The large plate-glass windows present a tempting array of jewelry, laces, silver-ware and rich fancy goods, in a style and of a quality that would do no discredit to the Rue de la Paix or the Boulevard des Italiens. ”

“ To stay in Madrid is to undergo the most absorbing fatigue. The Madrileño lives with a speed that in Spain startles. The city never sleeps, never stays its chatter; its inhabitants are apparently so full of business that they turn day into night, yet no one seems to work. It thus comes about that the lover of Spain, who has become used to the untroubled content of happy Seville or the sleeping peace of Cordova and Toledo, can with difficulty find himself at home in Madrid. ”

“ From all the country around, the square white mass of the royal palace of Madrid is seen dominating over the entire city, the immense building appearing, in comparison with the smaller houses around it, like a whale among minnows. From its terraces it commands a superb view of wide plains, stretching like a yellow sea to the Guadarrama mountains on the far horizon. ”

“ Those who attain notoriety, those who find a purchaser, those who have grown rich at the expense of themselves, become in time the innkeepers, the landlords, the masters of Madrid, and forget the land of their birth. But we, the wayfarers, the lodgers,—we realize to-night that Madrid means exile, that Madrid is a bivouac, a prison, a purgatory. For the first time in the year we feel that neither the café, the theatre, the casino, nor the hotel is our house. More than that, we realize that our house is not our home. ”

“ The central point of Madrid is the Puerta del Sol—a bare, broad, irregular area off which nine thoroughfares diverge. Round it the day-god, greatest friend of Spain, pivots in glory. Now he floods one side with radiance, now he drops his cloth of gold over another. The Puerta del Sol is the focus of interest for the population. Thither the gossips repair, and there the affairs of the nation are discussed very often by those who have acted, act, or hope to act as leaders of the nation. ”

“ Madrid prides itself on being the spot at which all the avenues of the land converge equally, the exact centre of Spain being close beyond the city's confines, and marked—how appropriately—by a church! But Madrid is, notwithstanding, a national centre only in name. It enjoys a false luxury, while too many outlying provinces sustain a starveling existence. ”

“ What I long for is the Paschal feast, the Christmas Eve supper, my home, my relatives, my traditions, my memories, the former joys of my soul, the religion that was taught me when I was a child.
VI.
Ah, Madrid is an inn. On a night like this we come to know what Madrid is. Our capital is a floating population, heterogeneous, exotic, which can only be compared to the population of a free port, of a jail, of an insane asylum. Travellers journeying toward a future, to the fantastic kingdom of ambition, halt here as well as those who are journeying back from misery, from crime. ”

“ We dropped asleep in the rough, time-worn regions of Old Castile, and in the morning found ourselves amid the glare and bustle of reconstructed Spain, as it displays itself on the great square called the Gate of the Sun—a spot with no hint of poetry about it other than its name. Madrid adopts largely the Parisian style of street architecture, and has in portions a resemblance to Boston. The sense of remoteness aroused in the north here suddenly fades, though the traits that mark a foreign land soon re-assemble and take shape in a new framework. ”

“ Madrid is now the head-quarters of the national game, as it is of everything else. It is outwardly flourishing, it is adorned with statues, its parks are green, and its fountains spout gayly. Nevertheless, the impression it makes is melancholy. Beggary is importunate on its public ways. Palaces and poverty, great wealth and wretched penury, are huddled close together. Its assumption of splendor is in startling contrast with the desolate and uncared-for districts that surround it from the very edge of the city outward. ”

“ If in Madrid the desert blossoms like the rose, it is a leafless rose, for the city has no suburbs. It lacks both the charm of environment so potent in Granada and Seville and the charm of ancient story, which these share with those other bygone courts—Toledo, Valladolid, Valencia, Saragossa. It is not a vital organ of modern European civilization, like artistic Paris or strenuous London. ”

“ God—or profit—gave them energy. But Madrid is of no such beginning: Madrid is of the end. It is a consummation. It stands for the Spain that has annulled its motions.
Its greatness is but the stubborn Castilian will to remain and to hold all Spain in perfect equilibrium of forces. Madrid is the town of politicians, of social servants, of soldiers. It is a conservative town. It wants things as they are. From here goes forth the will to repress Barcelona, to exploit the Basques, to muzzle Unamuno, to tax Andalusia, to play at empire in Morocco. ”

“ After a while there seemed to him too much life and humanity about Madrid, and he built the Escorial, the grandest ideal of majesty and ennui that the world has ever seen. This vast mass of granite has somehow acted as an anchor that has held the capital fast moored at Madrid through all succeeding years. ”

“ One does not go to the Madrid in winter. The rooms are small and stuffy, and poorly adapted to restaurant purposes, but during the season of al fresco dining, the Madrid is all that there is of the most modish, a gathering place for the most exclusive society folk of Paris. One drives boldly up to the château and into an archway that leads through the building and brings one out upon the edge of a big courtyard picturesquely set with fine old forest trees under which men and women are dining at little tables. ”

“ At last we are in the heart of the kingdom.
Madrid, though not very large, is a brilliant city. Its prado where fashion saunters is beautifully laid out. It has a splendid museum, many churches, though none of them remarkable for beauty, and the vast palace of royalty, rich in furniture and objects of art. The houses and public buildings are lofty, the hotels many and excellent. Fountains spout in the open squares; crowds are buzzing through the streets or [794] discussing at the cafés, for politics absorb the life in Madrid. ”

“ The bull-ring enriches Spanish language as the racecourse enriches the English.
Madrid is very much like a volcano on the eve of an eruption. Day and night there is a seething mass of cloaked gentry promenading the streets and squares in the eager hope of something turning up. The Puerta del Sol is as much alive at two in the morning as our Mansion House corner is at two in the afternoon. When the Spaniards go to bed is a mystery. ”

“ Madrid, however, like all urban Spain, comes thoroughly to life only with the fall of night. Occasionally a special celebration carries her populace to some strange corner of the city, but the fixed rendezvous is the Paseo de Recoletos, a broader Alameda where reigns by day an un-Spanish opulence of shade enjoyed only by the chairs stacked house-high beneath the trees. There is nothing hurried about the congregating. ”

“ And so on, almost every item of the daily life of Madrid is shown by the writers of the day to be vicious, wasteful, and corrupt. Idlers crowd in the monasteries, and hosts of other idlers, sham students, poetasters, bullies, and beggars, depend for their daily sustenance upon the garlic soup and crusts which are doled out at the gates from the superfluity of the friars; and servants, with or without wages, but living slothfully upon their patron's food in tawdry finery and squalid plenty, pester the noble houses from stable court to roof. ”

“ But nearer Madrid are barren stony plains, parched and arid, broken occasionally by a patch of stunted stone pines, while here and there rises abruptly a conical hill, crowned with crumbling ruins, with a brown mud-built village at its base.
Madrid has no pretension to architectural beauty; save the glistening white palace, it has scarce a building worth inspection. It has an untidy, unfinished appearance, rendered all the worse by the fact, that half of every street is undergoing the process of demolition or reconstruction. ”

“ Through populous Madrid—a massive flesh—runs the artery of the calle de Toledo. The cobbled streets are moist with sweat of lives. The high walls rise, blind in a mood of siesta under the blazing sun. Winter presses like icy steel upon the open wound of Madrid’s poverty. But even in winter, the fever is there. It is damp in summer, in winter it is frozen. These streets have a cellar mood. Their stones seem porous with a fungus warmth or with a fungus odor. They are straight and steep—not gyring Moorish streets ”

“ Everything is exotic in Madrid; nothing is produced in or near the city which its daily consumption demands. Strawberries, butter, cheese, fruits, meats, each comes from some special region far away to this human hive located in the desert. The city adds to its other drawbacks that of being very unwholesome as a residence, and would die out from natural causes if its population were not constantly renewed from the several provinces. There is a native proverb to the effect that so subtle is the air of Madrid, it kills a man but does not put out a candle. ”

“ It is what can only be seen in Madrid! It is confounding. Then the servant took his hat, and conducted me to a grand building, high, and constructed like a species of church. In lieu of tapers and candles, one only sees lamps which light up like suns. This large room was furnished all around with seats, upon which I have seen more than a thousand women seated all in fête dresses, stiff as sticks, and ranged like vials on an apothecary’s shelves. ”

“ So you come from Madrid. Ah, how delightful{153} Madrid must be! I have never been there. Have no cash for the railroad. Cash! I wish I might see some! Well, Serafín, my boy, when it rains dollars you’ll get some. And are the streets in Madrid like—those—of Pontevedra? I suppose the pavements are of marble. Well, the people there go off to the other world, either raging or singing, don’t they? Well, then I do not envy the people in Madrid a bit. All are equal in the presence of death, sir. And you, what are you studying for? To be one of those who make viaducts, railroads, and tunnels? ”

“ An excursion of thirty-five miles, to a station of the same name, took us from Madrid to the Escurial, which the Spaniards in their egotism call the eighth wonder of the world. This vast pile of buildings, composed entirely of granite, and as uniform as a military barrack, is nearly a mile in circumference,—tomb, palace, cathedral, monastery, one and all combined. The wilderness selected as the site of the structure shows about as little reason as does that of the locality of Madrid; utter barrenness and want of human or vegetable life are its most prominent characteristics. ”

“ It was rather a bother, but it was fine to feel one’s self in the classic Madrid tradition of danger from pneumonia and to be of the dignified company of the Spanish gentlemen whom we met with the border of their cloaks over their mouths; like being a character in a capa y espada drama.
There was almost as little acted as spoken drama in the streets. I have given my impression of the songlessness of Spain in Madrid as elsewhere, but if there was no street singing there was often street playing by pathetic bands of blind minstrels with guitars and mandolins. ”

“ General Serrano at the head of a revolutionary army entered Madrid in triumph, followed four days later by General Prim. Their reception exceeded their wildest expectations. The city was on fire with revolt. The people greeted them with the warmest fervor, with shouts of welcome and rejoicing. They were hailed as the saviors of the nation, as the embodiment of Spain's hope for the future, and hourly their forces were increased by the addition of volunteers from all walks of life.
It is evident that Queen Isabella had not found Madrid a comfortable abiding place. ”

“ Yet she was not altogether sure, and on the way home, Pedro talked her out of her fears.
Happily they started toward Madrid, unaware [Pg 144] of the terrible plan which this jealous torero was beginning to lay.
On they drove through a flat land of many vineyards. They passed small white houses with tiled hats on, and a village cut out of the landscape by a lazy hand and colored carelessly. Soon they entered Madrid. [Pg 145]
Madrid is a modern city of tram cars and toots and traffic. In the summer time, Madrid is like a faded, old duchess, who clicks her fan and squats in the sun. ”

“ Late on the previous night I had arrived in the Spanish capital, and while Hambledon was at the Palace Hotel in the Plaza de Canovas I had gone to the Paix in the Puerta del Sol. I had been in Madrid only once before in my life, and as I walked through the gay thoroughfares I recalled that proud saying of the Madrileños: “De Madrid al cielo y en el cielo un ventanillo para ver á Madrid” (From Madrid to Heaven, and in Heaven a loophole to look at Madrid) . The Spanish capital to-day is indeed a very fine city, full of life, of movement, and of post-war prosperity. ”