feel ashamed to plead guilty to a predilection and preference for the pig.” And wherever one travels in the peninsula, one is met by the local dish, which is, indeed, rather a dinner than a dish; and when one has become used to it, it is both satisfying and exquisite. The puchero, or stew, would have delighted the heart and stomach of Huckleberry Finn, whose gastronomic prejudices, it will be remembered, favoured a “barrel of odds and ends” in which “things get mixed up and the juice kinds of swaps around and things go better.” The chief ingredients of the national puchero are bacon, beef, fowl, according to the state of the larder, cooked in one mass with garbanzos, a bean of peculiar size and tenderness and flavour, cabbage, carrots, gourd and long-pepper, a sausage or two being thrown in by way of make weight. The puchero is amenable to unending expansion, according to the status of the householder. Where the means are straightened, it consists of meat and garbanzos only, but the wealthy housewife adds to it a hundred delicious tit-bits; and if the juice that “kinds of swaps around” is sometimes a trifle over-seasoned, the general result is, as a rule, delicious. Dumas has left it on record that he suffered from hunger in Spain. I can only suppose that the supply of puchero was insufficient for his requirements. I cannot believe that the dish deprived him of his appetite. Then, again, the Spaniards are great people for sweets; they are, indeed, masters of this branch of the culinary art, and their preserved fruits and quince jelly seems to form an indispensable complement to the dinner table; while their fruits and vegetables, their oranges, Malaga grapes, asparagus and artichokes are famous in song and story.
In one field of enterprise, and that, curiously enough, the one in which their late antagonists, the Americans, claim pre-eminence over the civilised world, viz., in the journalistic arena, Madrid is ahead of New York, England, and Paris. In influence the press of Spain is second to none; in variety it is equal to that of Paris; and in La Correspondencia de España, Madrid has invented a newspaper which has no counterpart in any other city in the world. It is supposed that nobody can retire to rest before reading the latest edition of this “night-cap of Madrid,” as it is commonly styled; and it is certain that few people in the capital, who profess to take a lively interest in the world’s doings, ever go to bed until they have perused it. It is innocent of politics, and almost contemptuous of parties. The object of its wealthy originator and proprietor is not to propagate views, but to give news. Nothing in Spain, or out of it, which reaches Madrid is omitted from La Correspondencia, of which there are three editions published during the day, the last of which appears somewhere between ten o’clock and midnight. Nobody takes it for its views, or its special articles, although the mania of the moment has seized its millionaire proprietor, and compelled him to adopt something of the movement of contemporary journalism, but for its news it is read by everybody in Madrid. Its advertisement charges are, consequently, very high; and also, consequently, it has its imitators. But they do not prosper.
Although the Spaniard has an enormous capacity for enjoyment, his popular pastimes are not numerous. Bull-fighting, as I shall explain, is meat and drink to him, and it is something more, because it is his horse-racing, cricket, football, and the prize-ring rolled into one. It is his National sport. Horse-racing is creeping into popularity; but although all Madrid attends the meetings at the Hippodrome, and ladies don their most gorgeous gowns to do honour to the sport, it is doubtful if it will imperil the strong position which the bulls hold in the affections of the people. After bull-fighting, the only other universal amusement is the guitar and the dance. The upper classes affect polo and tennis; in the Basque provinces Pelota rouses enthusiasm, and cock-fighting is still practised amongst the lower classes in most of the Spanish towns; but these must be classed in “side-shows” in the gallery of their general recreations.
A MILK STALL.
A widespread and entirely erroneous impression prevails in this country that the Spanish national dances are indecent. People who entertain this notion may dispense with it as soon as possible. Londoners are frequently given the opportunity of witnessing Spanish dancing at the Alhambra by Otero, or Guerrero, or that even more splendid exponent of the art, Consuelo Tortajada. I was present one evening at London’s Alhambra, when the last-named was dancing the “Malagueña”—a variety to which the description “poetry of motion” may be applied with full justice—and a spectator remarked to me: “Very fine, very fine indeed, but you should see it danced in Madrid. You wouldn’t recognise it for the same thing.” And his look was more meaningful than his words. Although he was not aware of it, he had informed me that he had never been to Madrid, or at least had never witnessed the Andalucian dance on the stage of a theatre there; and I suspect that if I had displayed a craving for further information, I should have been assured that Spanish women generally are ladies of flexible ethics, who indulge in cigarettes. I believe that by paying for the edifying spectacle, certain gipsy dances of the Hindoo “nautch” variety can be witnessed in the gipsy quarter of Seville; but the Spaniard leaves these exhibitions to the English and American tourists, who call it “studying the life of the country,” or “gaining experience.” Those shows have no more connection with the national dances than has burglary with the marriage service. In the streets outside the cafes, and in the theatres, the dances of Spain are as irreproachable as a pas de seul by Miss Topsy Sinden.
In the Spanish theatre, with the exception of the leading playhouses in the larger cities, the two, and even more shows a night system is an ancient and universal practice. The pieces are short, and the charges for admission are not based on the idea of so much a seat, but so much a piece. Each item costs the spectator fivepence, and the audience is constantly being changed and renewed during the evening. Variety is the spice of the entertainment; and in the provincial towns, where the theatres are always well patronised, a constant change of bill is maintained. Madrid alone supports no less than nineteen theatres; and Madrid, let it be remembered, is a city with under half-a-million inhabitants. At the same rate, London would have over two hundred.
If one could extend the list of amusements without fear of being thought irreverent, I should be inclined to include the saints’ festivals in this category. Although these religious observances are conducted with sincere devotional decorum, they provide, as they do in all Roman Catholic countries, the excuse for, as well as the main feature of, a general holiday. I have seen many festival crowds in Spain, and the good humour, the innocent happiness and universal sobriety that characterise them, is to an Englishman acquainted with English holiday-makers, as novel as it is delightful. The festival of San Isidro del Campo, the tutelary saint of Madrid, is the principal festival of the Madrilenian year, and is religiously celebrated by all the lower classes and the peasants
