There was still a lingering fondness for the deposed Isabella among the lower orders. They looked upon her as a good sort, one of the old stock, prayerful, and affable. She was accustomed to enter wayside cabins, and get into homely chat with the peasants. The Italian woman never did that. Alphonse Daudet's description of Isabella as a stout queen, who by her massive jaws and high complexion resembled a coarse-rinded blood-orange, would not be endorsed by these humble yearners after the bygone. Indeed, they regarded her as one who had been a type of beauty in her time, and was still a type of good-nature, and were forgiving to her peccadilloes, she was so devout. Of course I must not be understood as speaking here of Spanish partisans of the Republican idea. They had no more pity for the creatures tainted with Royalty than the Polynesian for his leprous kinsman—but they were comparatively few.
Great Britain, at that period, was represented by Mr. Austin Layard, and the United States by General Daniel Sickles. The British Envoy was in a dilemma; he did not know how far he would be justified in recognising the newly-proclaimed Republic; if he received visits of ceremonial it would be an unpardonable breach of courtesy not to return them; in short, to use a very graphic locution of the masses, he was waiting to see how the cat jumped, and cheerfully submitted to a diplomatic catarrh which confined him to his room. I went to visit him, when we had an interesting dialogue on some recently exhumed relics of antiquity and exquisite bits of crockery-ware. Mr. Layard impressed me as more taken up with concerns of Nineveh and Wardour Street than of la haute politique. But, as he frankly acknowledged, he was not free to act until he had received his instructions from Downing Street. Though there is no written pact to the effect, the rule is that Russia, Germany, Austria—the Great Powers in short—shall only act in conjunction, and after having exchanged confidential notes, when eventualities arise affecting all their interests, such as this in Madrid; and—another consideration besides—was there really any Government yet? It was only provisional. It could hardly be supposed that any of the Great Powers would refuse to bow to the will of the Spanish people; but what was its will? That was a question that could not be admitted to be definitely settled.
The United States had struck the key-note—had recognised the infant Republic, while the Prime Minister, Señor Figueras, was waiting for the chorus of acclamation from the "robust voices" of those Great Powers which deliberate before they act. The United States are a fast-trotting buggy; but these Great Powers in this miserable, played-out old Continent are slow coaches. Not that there were not deliberations in the White House before General Sickles was authorized to use his discretionary power in signing the baptismal certificate of this Republic of accident. General Sickles was undoubtedly clever; he had experience in his time as a journalist, an advocate, and a soldier. It was his opinion that Spain had found in the Republic the means of establishing her power and prosperity on a solid basis. During the crisis, he kept his Government informed of what was passing, and to his demand transmitted by cable in the dawn of Wednesday, the 14th of February, an answer was returned within twenty hours, permitting him to exercise his judgment as he thought proper. He imagined that a Federal Republic, on the pattern of that of the United States, with provincial legislatures in Catalonia, Aragon, Andalusia, and so on, and a National Congress in Madrid, was the panacea for the ills of Spain, and that that would be sufficient to dissolve all antagonisms of race, custom, and feeling, and amalgamate them into one accordant patriotic sentiment. The General was over-hopeful in the estimation of others, who knew Spain as well as he; but he acted rightly according to his views, and ably according to his gifts—only it was to be hoped the General would use his influence to dissuade his Government from offending its friends and brothers of Spain by proposing anew a transaction that would lead to the abandonment of Cuba—an awkward mission with which he was once charged. Surely if a diplomatic representative could quietly talk the influential personages of the nation to which he was accredited into a zeal for the abolition of slavery in Porto Rico, he could quietly talk the influential personages of his own nation into letting Spanish territory alone. A pompous man this American Minister, active, talkative, and on cordial terms with himself. He hobbled about on his cork leg, leaning on the arm of his handsome Spanish wife, the second. There was a legend in Madrid that the General had lost his limb in a duel about a lady; there had been a question of petticoats in his career once, but it never entered into the minds of those simple Madrileños that a soldier without a breastful of decorations might have been wounded, as he had been, on the battle-field.
The United States were friendly; but France, Republican France, what was she doing? Why did she delay to move? She, at least, ought to have had some fellow-feeling for another Republic without Republicans. The truth was, M. Thiers could not come to any decision without consulting his Council of Ministers. His action was not quite so unfettered as that of President Grant. This was the more to be regretted that Señor Olózaga recognised the Republic of mob acclamation—that of the 4th September, 1870, in Paris—without hesitation. The same compliment was felt by Spaniards to be due to the Republic of accident.
On the 20th of February, Señor Castelar took a course that might give a galvanic shock to the world of diplomats, but which was worthy of a bold Republican prophet. Since the mountain would not come to Mahomet, Mahomet went to the mountain. In plainer words—but has not one an excuse for being figurative when speaking of Señor Castelar?—the Minister for Foreign Affairs determined to take the bull by the horns (pardon this figure for the sake of its aptness in Spain). The representatives of the Great Powers did not call on him; he called on them. His coy advances were met with frigid politeness. A Madrid paper asserted that "an important and friendly conference" had been held between the Minister and Mr. Layard, which, to say the least, was a suggestio falsi. Mr. Layard, as an English gentleman, could not but have received his visitor in a friendly manner; but he kept within the strict line of his very delicate duties with a studious discretion. Señor Castelar saw plainly that events had not prepared the way and made straight the path of the new Republic towards recognition. The Great Powers could not be found fault with, if they were slow to admit to the brotherhood of nations a Republic which had already exhibited within its fortnight's existence what may be literally called two dictatures (those of Señores Rivero and Martos), the abdication of power by a majority, two provisional and two "permanent" Governments, a cabinet of conciliation, and a cabinet of homogeneity, not to mention a round of permutations in the civil governorships of Madrid, and the captain-generalcy of New Castile, and in the commands of the armies of the North and Catalonia.
From the country poured in felicitations to the Republic from hamlet and city, tumid with a rampant joy. These documents emphatically protested that the majority of the population was Republican. Yet talk confidentially to any Spaniard, not actually a Republican propagandist, and not one of the ignorant lower classes of the towns—an average, intelligent, middle-class Spaniard—and he would tell you there were no Republicans in Spain. The thorough frankness with which Spaniards speak of their own country, its divisions and its national faults, is phenomenal. "We are very foolish," they own with a charming candour, but the foreigner had better not chime in with them. They will fire up in an instant. If they are foolish, it is no business of his; Spanish quarrels are conducted precisely on the principles of those between man and wife. The outsider who interposes in them must be prepared to wipe a bloody nose.
But the doctrines of Republicanism were producing their effects in the army nevertheless, and the first of these was a tendency to demoralization. The troops at Barcelona fraternized with the working men, and raised cries for the Republic and for their own liberation from service. They desired individual as well as national independence. In that they were but logical. The Republicans out of power inveighed against standing armies as a monstrosity, a relic of effete Monarchical tyranny. The argument was now used against the Republic; the bird of freedom was menaced by a shaft plumed from her own wing. If discipline were once generally relaxed in the army, which is the salt of Spain, then farewell security and come chaos. That was the chief peril in the way. A man, in the highest meaning of the word, one born to command, was wanted to save the country. He was looked for in vain. Prim had left no successor.
In forming my opinions on Spain and the Spaniards, I was aided not a little by the good offices of a shrewd but eccentric American dentist, named Maceehan, who had left Pennsylvania at so remote a date that nobody could recollect it. Long as he had been absent from his native country, he retained its accent, its peculiarities, and evergreen patriotism, and on each recurring 4th of July gave a lavish banquet in honour of American Independence in a restaurant decked with star-spangled banners, and had the privilege of making all the magnates of the capital, soldiers, ministers, courtiers, nobles, poets, and painters, clink their glasses as he sang "Yankee Doodle." Long as he had been in Madrid, he could not speak Spanish correctly, and his mistakes fed the clubs with side-splitting anecdotes. He was the soul of hospitality, and garrulous as a jay. He was in the secrets of the wire-workers, and had a novel process of extracting information as he extracted teeth. As his patient sat in the chair of torture he plied him slyly with interrogatories, and learned what he wanted, but he never betrayed confidences. In his way he was as proud as the proudest Spaniard of them all. Emilio Castelar came to him once with an agonizing toothache. Maceehan laid hold of the offending fang with his forceps. Castelar shrieked and clutched at his hand.
"You have got the wrong tooth!"
"Caramba!" said the Pennsylvanian, lowering his instrument. "So you have come here to teach me my business. I will thank you to leave the room, señor."