I infinitely prefer the gentle-voiced old men—of whom there is also an army—who offer soft balls of puppies for sale; and, when they are refused, tenderly return the cherished scrap to their warm pockets. The swarm of impish newsboys are hard to snub, too: Murillo has ingratiated them with one forever—their rags and their angelic brown eyes in rogues’ faces.
But I find no difficulty at all in refusing the beggars. These are of every age, costume and infirmity; and enjoy full privilege of attacking citizen or stranger, without intervention of any kind by the police. A Spanish lady naïvely explained to me that they had indeed tried to deal with the beggars; that the government had once deported them one and all to the places where they were born—for of course none of them came originally from Madrid! But, would I believe it, within a week they were all back again? Perhaps I, as a foreigner, could not understand how the poor creatures simply loved Madrid too passionately to remain away.
I assured the señora gravely I could understand. In fact, it seems to me entirely normal to be passionately attached to a place that yields one a tidy income for nothing. No, rather for the extensive development and use of one’s persuasive powers. Imagination, too, and diplomacy must be employed; and sometimes the nice art of “coming down.” The monologue runs like this:
“Good afternoon, gentleman. The gentleman is surely the most handsome, the most kind-hearted, the best-dressed, and most polite of all the world. If the gentleman could part with a peseta—nine-pence—to a brother in deepest woe, God would reward him. God would give him still more elegant health and more ravishing children. If he has no children, God would certainly send him some—for only half a peseta, oh, gracious gentleman. To a brother whose afflictions could not be recited from now till the end of the world, so multiple, so heartrending are they. I am an old man of seventy, oh, most beautiful gentleman—old as the gentleman’s illustrious father, may Mary and the angels grant him long life! Only twenty centimos, my gentleman—God will give you a million. Ten centimos—five!... Caramba! a curse on your hideous face and loping gait. There is no uglier toad this side of hell!”
One thing beggars can choose with proficiency: their language. In Madrid they would be less disgusting were it not for their loathsome diseases and deformities. The government is far too poor to isolate them in asylums, so they continue to possess the streets and the already overcrowded Gate of the Sun.
From this plaza the principal thoroughfares of the city branch off in a sort of wheel, and mules, goats and donkeys laden with every imaginable sort of burden pass to and fro at all hours of day and night. Shops there are, of course, of various kinds; and cafés crowded round the square; but the waiters carry the trays on their heads, and the whole atmosphere is that of a mediæval interior town rather than a modern cosmopolitan city.
To be sure, in Alcalà, the principal street off the Puerta del Sol, there are clubs and up-to-date restaurants; but only men are supposed to go to the restaurants, and in the clubs they look ill at ease and incongruous. The life of the Spaniard is inalienably the life in the streets, where you will find him at all hours, strolling along in his clothes of fantastic cut and colour or sitting at a café, drinking horchatas—the favourite beverage, made from a little nut. His constant expression is a steady stare; varying from the dreamily absent-minded to the crudely vulgar and licentious.
The widely diversified ancestry of the Spanish people is keenly interesting to follow out in the features of the men and women of today; among no race is there greater variety of type, though it is four hundred years since the Moors and Jews were driven out, and new blood has been practically excluded from Spain. Yet one sees the Moorish and Jewish casts as distinct today as ever they were; to say nothing of the aquiline Roman or the ruddy Gothic types from the far more ancient period.
In names, too, history is eloquent: we find Edwigis, Gertrudis, and Clotilde of the Gothic days; Zenaida and Agueda of the Moorish; Raquel, Ester of the Jewish. I think that in no language is there such variety or beauty in women’s names. Take, for example, Consuelo, Amparo (Succour), Luz—pronounced Luth and meaning Light—or Felicitas, Rosario, Pílar, Soledad, and a wealth of others as liquid and as significant.
It is hard to attach them to the rather mediocre women one sees in the streets on their way to mass: dressed in cheap tailored frocks, a flimsy width of black net over their heads. The mantilla is no longer current in Madrid, except for fiestas and as the caprice of the wealthy; but this shoddy offspring of the mantilla—the inferior black veil—is everywhere seen on all classes of women. The Madrileña who wears a hat announces herself rich beyond recounting, and is charged accordingly in the shops. Needless to say, there is no such thing as a fixed price in any but the places of foreign origin.