Spanish Highways and Byways

by Katharine Lee Bates

"Christ of the Seven Words"

I expressed my obligations, but entreated him to draw up the account and let me settle it then and there, as I was within twenty-four hours of departure. "And in travelling," I added apologetically, "it is difficult to send back money." At the obnoxious word he flung up hands and eyebrows. "Señora!" I left the shop, feeling vaguely that I had been guilty of a flagrant indelicacy, as well as black ingratitude. The catalogues, very slightly wrapped, arrived on the morrow, just in time to be thrust into my shawl strap, and I paid the bill amid the final agitation, so unfavorable to arithmetic, of porters and farewells.

I had worse fortune in trying to subscribe for a certain popular periodical. I went to the office in the designated business hours, to find that, of the three men who should have been there, one had already gone, one had not arrived, and the third had "stepped out for a little rest." The janitor left in charge, a sympathetic person who could not read nor write, thought if I would return on Sunday at my luncheon hour, there might be somebody there qualified to receive my subscription and address, but, he sagely added, "in this world we are sure of nothing."

Madrid possesses the Biblioteca Nacional with valuable manuscripts and something like one million books, handsomely housed, where arrangements are made for over three hundred readers, but here, as in the other Spanish cities, public libraries in the American sense of libraries largely used by the general public are practically non-existent. The bookstores, too, except for the latest Spanish publications, leave much to be desired. As a rule, one can get only the most meagre information concerning texts and editions of the national classics, and the supply of new French novels or new German plays is far less complete than the stock of Paris gloves and German cutlery. This last, so canny have the honest Teutons grown, is usually engraved Toledo.

In variety of weather, however, Madrid surpasses all expectations, furnishing the sultriest heat, the chilliest cold, the dustiest dust, and the most prodigious crashes of thunder and lumps of hail to be found in the meteorological market, and all these within a few hours of one another. But what with fans, braseros, balconies, horchaterias, an army of street waterers, and, most essential of all, an inexhaustible fund of good humor, the Madrileño contrives to live on friendly terms with his climate, although he dares not lay aside his cloak before "the fortieth of May."

Apart from bull-fights and riots, those rages of excitement that seem to indicate a periodical fevering of the southern blood, the Madrileño takes his pleasures with a dignified simplicity. The city is exceedingly rich in open squares, well-shaded parks, and long reaches of green promenade, and here, with several dozen cigarettes and a few coppers for water and agráz, he wiles the hours away, chatting with friends and admiring the ladies who roll past in spruce landaus. Over the gate of the social paradise of Madrid it must be written, "No admittance except in coaches," for a carriage seems essential to high life. Liveried coachman, rather than powdered butler, is the sine qua non. During the hot season this outdoor parade is in gay career at midnight, and whole families, babies and nurses included, may be seen gathered in festive knots around small refreshment tables, within sound of fountain spray and garden music. There are open-air concerts, and concerts in smoke-beclouded halls, greensward dances, and dances stepped on café tables among disordered clusters of bottles and glasses, and there is always the theatre, on which your Spaniard dotes.

In the winter season there is opportunity to enjoy classic drama at the Teatro Español, where the Bernhardt of Spain, "La Guerrero," supported by her grandee husband, Mendoza, holds sway. When I saw them they were using short farces of Cervantes and Lope de Rueda for curtain raisers to a romantic drama by Tirso de Molina and a modern society play by Echegaray. I saw them, too, in Zorrilla's singular dramatic version of "Don Juan," the only play allowed in Spanish theatres on the night of All Saints.

From March to November, however, the Teatro Español is closed, and there is little doing at the Teatro Real, an aristocratic temple of Italian opera. During the summer season the theatrical opportunities of Madrid are mainly limited to the popular zarzuelas, or operettas, four of which are usually given in an evening. Each theatre offers a new programme of these every night, but there is little of literary interest except, now and then, a taking trifle from the pen of Hartzenbusch or Echegaray.

The Madrid theatre recks naught of early risers. The opening vaudeville is seldom under way before nine o'clock; the house is cleared after each performance, and often the encores and repetitions prolong a popular zarzuela quite beyond the hour limit. On the other hand, if the audience is small, the opening piece may be cut down to the merest outline. I remember one such occasion when the boxes were so empty and the farce so familiar that the orchestra fairly chaffed the actors off the stage. "Enough, enough! Thou mayst withdraw!" chanted the lyric lover to an intruding servant. "And so mayst thou," called out a voice from among the violins. "I've told my passion to the stars," continued the actor in his most mellifluous tenor, making the distant love of the Spanish stage to a lady who was smiling frankly on the audacious fiddler. "Poor stars!" interpolated this worthy so sympathetically that everybody laughed, the singer wound up his transports in the shortest possible order, and the remaining scenes were hardly more than pantomime. But such was the universal good nature and indifference to business exactitudes, that neither artists nor ticket-holders took this curtailment of their rights in umbrage.