New Madrid, Missouri

“ I think there is something almost tragic in this fact that the entire society of Madrid cannot support the very moderate charges of the one first class hotel in the city. When one thinks of the dozens of luxurious stopping-places in London, New York, and Paris—always crowded by a mob of vulgar people with their purses overflowing, it seems actually cruel that the vieille noblesse of the Spanish capital have no money for the simple establishment they admire with child-like extravagance. The old actor does so delight in pomp—of even the mildest variety ”

“ Consequently, it is generally stated that the title of Madrid-Alcalá will die out with the present bishop, and that the next will simply be the Bishop of Madrid.
Madrid
The city of Madrid is new and uninteresting; it is an overgrown village, with no buildings worthy of the capital of a kingdom. From an architectural point of view, the royal palace, majestic and imposing, though decidedly poor in style, is about the only edifice that can be admired. ”

“ New Madrid was a famous trading-station and river town in the old days, and the long continued series of earthquakes in those bottoms that startled the country from 1812 during several years were known by the name of the town the Spanish had settled. ”

“ Madrid.—The province of Madrid lies between the Sierra de Guadarrama on the north and the Tagus on the south. The city, which now contains almost 400,000 inhabitants, was a third or fourth-rate town until Charles V., and after him Philip II., chose it for the capital of Spain, in place of either Toledo or Valladolid. Its recommendations seem to have been its central position, and the absence of any strong traditions of ancient constitutional liberties, such as might hamper the sovereign in developing his new despotism. ”

“ Madrid (522) , since 1561 the capital of Spain, on the Manzanares, a mere mountain torrent, on an arid plateau in New Castile, the centre of the peninsula; is an insanitary city, and liable to great extremes of temperature; it is regularly built, sometimes picturesque, with great open spaces, such as the Prado, 3 m. long; fine buildings and handsome streets. It contains the royal palace, parliament and law-court houses, a university, magnificent picture-gallery, many charitable institutions, and a bull-ring. The book-publishing, tapestry weaving, and tobacco industries are the most important. ”

“ Now, it really seems difficult to comprehend on what principle a New Madrid locator could treat as land authorized to be sold, and as public land, that very land which the President of the United States was forbidden so to treat. ”

“ Away in the pretty rural districts, in the little villages amid the woods and the mountains, with their score or so of houses and their little chapel with its tinkling old bell and its poverty-stricken curate, the hard-working, simple-minded men are too proud and too honest to ask for more than a pinch of tobacco for the cigarillo. The maidens are comely, and as chaste as—can reasonably be expected.
Madrid is worth visiting—not for its bull-fights, which are disgusting proofs of man’s natural brutality, but for its picture gallery. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Madrid is not a city. It is only a town. But such a town!—such streets! such shops! such horses! such carriages! such drives! such promenades! and over all the everlasting gaiety and insouciance of a people whose grand motto in all things mundane is this, ‘We have only one life—let us make the best of it and worry about nothing.’ Your true Spaniard never hurries and never worries and never frets. He inherits the dignity and the fatalism of the Moors, who have left their mark not only on the architecture of the cities, but upon the character of the citizens. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Except for that dreaded pneumonia, I believe the air of Madrid is not so pestilential as it has been reported. Public opinion is beginning to veer in favor of it, just as the criticism which has pronounced Madrid commonplace and unpicturesque because it is not obviously old, is now finding a charm in it peculiar to the place. Its very modernity embodies and imparts the charm, which will grow as the city grows in wideness and straightness. ”

“ After dinner I wandered about the streets, past the great old houses of the nobles in the Calle de los Caballeros, empty now and dilapidated, for every gentleman that can put a penny in his pocket goes to Madrid to spend it; down to the river which flowed swiftly between high banks. Below the bridge two Moorish mills, irregular masses of blackness, stood finely against the night. Near at hand they were still working at a forge, and I watched the flying sparks as the smith hammered a horseshoe; the workers were like silhouettes in front of the leaping flames. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And there is something in extreme slowness of motion, that is entirely opposed to business and duties,—a quick step, and a necessary one, are closely allied; but the street population of Madrid, with few exceptions, merely saunter; and wherever you reach an open space, especially the Puerta del Sol,—a small square in the centre of the city,—hundreds of gentlemen are seen standing, with no other occupation than shaking the dust from their segars. ”

“ 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 Prado is the evening gathering-place of the fashionable Madrileños, and the p. 140tree-shaded promenade, from seven o’clock onwards, affords the most animated sight. An astonishing number of people collect here. In the crossways which intersect the carriage-drive, all the families of the city walk to enjoy the cool of the evening. The Madrileños are seen at their finest here. The majos, resembling plates of fashion in their tight, faultless clothes, stand about in groups admiring the ladies who roll past in landaus, for carriages are essential to fashionable Madrid. ”

“ Madrid streets are by no means altogether delectable. Some are broad and well kept, but others are narrow, dirty, and malodorous. Worst of all, to my own thinking, is the Madrid stare, which, hardly less offensive than the Paris stare, is more universal. ”

“ The existence of this new Republic was inaugurated by striking the fetters from the slaves in Porto Rico. This beneficent measure was followed by the release of several thousand persons illegally held as slaves in Cuba. Next, the Captain-General of that colony was deprived of the power to set aside the orders of his superiors at Madrid, which had pertained to the office since 1825. The sequestered estates of American citizens, which had been the cause of long and fruitless correspondence, were ordered to be restored to their owners. ”

“ The diligence enters on the outside road, which is of modern construction, and can only pass through the old gates and the narrow and circuitous lanes by means of cutting places for the form of the hubs to pass. It was a relief to escape from the heat, and glare, and dust of Madrid, and find oneself in the elevated, fresh, and invigorating atmosphere of this old city, with its shaded terraces and huts, protected from the sun’s rays by tall, substantial, Moorish-like houses, with clean courts, not unlike those of Seville ”

“ 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. ”

“ An Alameda by day--chairs stacked until busy night-time So bare and uninviting are her environs--and she has no suburbs--that Madrid never retires outwardly as other cities for her picnics and holidays, but crowds more closely together in the Buen Retiro. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Both the trams and all streets and avenues are plainly marked with large clear signs, and the pleasant compactness of the city makes it easy to find one’s way about. The centre of life and activity is the Puerto del Sol—Gate of the Sun—an oval plaza which Spaniards fondly describe as “the busiest square in the world.” There is no doubt at all that it is the noisiest; with its clanging trams, rattling carriages, shouting street vendors, and ambulant musicians.
These latter, with the beggars, form to my mind the greatest plague of Madrid ”

“ We have conquered the world. Madrid is ours. Madrid is our home. A cheer for Madrid! And you, provincial youths, who at nightfall on an autumn day, sad and lonely, unearth and air your impotent longing for the capital,—you who feel yourselves to be poets, musicians, painters, orators, who despise your village, who will not speak to your parents, who weep with ambition and dream of suicide,—burst with envy, all of you, as we are now bursting with pleasure. ”

“ Madrid is larger than Chicago; but Chicago is a great city and Madrid a great village. The pulsations of life in the two places resemble each other no more than the beating of Dexter's heart on the home-stretch is like the rising and falling of an oozy tide in a marshy inlet.
There is nothing indigenous in Madrid. There is no marked local color. It is a city of Castile, but not a Castilian city, like Toledo, which girds its graceful waist with the golden Tagus, or like Segovia, fastened to its rock in hopeless shipwreck. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”