Spanish Highways and Byways Part 19

Turning back to the Spanish cabinets that open from the vestibule we come upon a piteous San Sebastian, the blanched young form bound fast and already nailed by arrows to the ebon-hued trunk of a leafless tree. Descending the staircase to the _Sala de Alfonso XII_, we must pa.s.s an attenuated old anch.o.r.ess, whose sunken face and praying hands have the very tint of the skulls that form the only ornaments, almost the only furniture, of her dreary cave. We may as well brave the terrors of this first half of the Long Gallery, where El Greco's livid greens will at least divert attention, and where, opposite the collection of Riberas, wait the gracious Murillos to comfort and uplift.

Yet Ribera, ruffian though he was, is not solely and exclusively a nightmare artist. He could give sweetest and most tranquil color when he chose, as his "Jacob's Dream" here testifies, with the dim gold of its angel-peopled ladder; and for all the spirit of bigotry that clouds his work, there is Catholic fervor in these pictures and masterly truthfulness up to the point where the senses need the interpretation of the soul. There is more than anatomy, too, in these starved old saints; there is the dread of judgment. Ribera depicts supernatural terror, where Goya shows the animal shock of death.

Another Spanish phase appears in Zurbaran. In his most effective work we have not Goya's blood color, nor Ribera's blacks, nor the celestial violets of Juan de Joanes, but the grays of the monastic renunciation, the twilight that is as far from rapture as from anguish. His gowned, cowled, corded figures pa.s.s before the eye in the pale tints of the cloister. The shadow of cathedral walls is over them. The _Prado_ has been strangely indifferent to Zurbaran, who is far more fully represented in the galleries of Andalusia; but it has in its baker's dozen two important and characteristic works, both visions of San Pedro Nolasco. In one the entranced saint, whose figure might be carved in stone,--stone on which ray from stained-gla.s.s window never fell,--gazes upon an angel, whose vesture, crossed by a dark green scarf, is flushed with the faintest rose. In the second the sombre cell is illuminated for an instant by the apparition of St. Peter the Apostle, head downward, as in his crucifixion, his naked form dazzling against a vague redness of light like a memory of pain.

One glance at a wall aglow with Madonna blues reminds us that Spanish sacred art does not culminate in Ribera nor in Zurbaran. The Christian faith has had almost as pure, poetic, and spiritual an utterance in the land of the Inquisition as in Italy itself. This is not Murillo's hour; it is the triumph of Velazquez and the realists that Spain is celebrating to-day; but none the less it is a joy of joys to walk by the Murillos on the way to the laurelled bust and the crowded _sala_.

These are the pictures that are rather in heaven than earth. Where Mary, divine in her virginal loveliness, is not upborne among the golden clouds, the radiant-plumed angel kneels on her cottage floor and the wings of the descending dove beat whiteness through the air.

Here is realism and more. The Mater Dolorosa has those luminous sea-blue eyes of Andalusia, but they tell of holy tears. The Crucified is no mere sufferer, but the suffering Son of G.o.d, and the crown of thorns, while dripping blood, haloes his brows with the redemption of the world.

The genius of Velazquez dwelt not above the earth, but upon it, in the heart of its most brilliant life. He was no dreamer of dreams; he "painted the thing as he saw it," and with what sure eyes he saw, and with what a firm and glowing brush he painted! His _sala_ surrounds us at once with an atmosphere of brightness, beauty, elegance, variety, delight. His work is so superb, so supreme, that, like perfect manners, it puts even the humblest of us at our ease. We are not artists, but we seem to understand Velazquez.

Of course we don't. No knight of the palette would admit it for an instant. What can the rabble know of the mysterious compoundings and touchings from which sprang these splendors of color that outs.h.i.+ne the centuries? Young men with streaming hair are continually escorting awed-looking senoras about the room, discoursing with dramatic vehemence on the "periods" of the Master's work. As a youth at Seville, they explain, Velazquez had of necessity taken religious subjects, for the Church was the chief patron of art in Andalusia; but his natural bent even then displayed itself in tavern studies and sketches of popular types, as the "Water-seller of Seville" and the "Old Woman Frying Eggs." Of his early religious pieces the archbishop's palace of Seville keeps "San Ildefonso Receiving the Chasuble from the Hands of the Virgin," and the National Gallery of London secured "Christ in the House of Martha," but "The Adoration of the Kings" hangs here at our right as we enter the Velazquez _sala_. A little stiff, say these accomplished critics, with a suggestion of the dry manner of his master, Pacheco, but bear you in mind that this is the production of a youth of twenty. It is obvious, too, that Andalusians, not celestial visions, served him as models.

A longing to see the Tintorets and t.i.tians, those starry treasures of the dark Escorial, drew him to Madrid at twenty-three. Here he was fortunate in finding friends, who brought his portraits to the notice of Philip IV, a dissolute boy ruled by the Count-Duke Olivares. Youth inclines to youth. Velazquez was appointed painter to the king at the same salary as that paid to the royal barber, and henceforth he had no care in life but to paint. And how he painted! His first portraits of Philip show a blond young face, with high brow, curled mustache, the long Hapsburg chin, and eyes that hint strange secrets. Again and again and again Velazquez traced those Austrian features, while the years stamped them ever more deeply with lines of pride and sin--a tragic face in the end as it was ill-omened in the beginning. But the masterpiece of Velazquez's twenties is "The Drunkards," a scene of peasant revelry where the young are gloriously tipsy and the old are on the point of maudlin tears. Here it is, _Los Borrachos_, farther to the right. In looking on it one remembers that a contemporary realist, in the Protestant island which has often been so sharp a thorn in Spain's side, likewise crowned the achievement of his springtime by a group of topers, Prince Hal and Falstaff and their immortal crew.

Not the influence of Rubens, who spent nine months in Spain in 1628-29, painting like the wind, nor a visit to the Holy Land of Raphael and Michael Angelo could make Velazquez other than he was.

This "Vulcan's Forge," which we see here, painted in Italy, is mythological only in the t.i.tle. Back he came at the royal summons, to paint more portraits--Philip over and over, on foot, on horseback, half length, full length, all lengths; the winsome Infante Baltasar, as a toddling baby with his dwarf, as a gallant little soldier, hunter, horseman, and in the princely dignity of fourteen, when he had but three more years to live; the sad French queen, the king's brother, the magnificent Olivares, the sculptor Montanes, counts, dukes, buffoons. Within these twenty years Velazquez produced his two most famous works of religious tenor--"Christ Bound to the Column," a "captain jewel" of the London National Gallery, and that majestic "Crucifixion" before which Spaniards in the _Prado_ bare their heads.

But the crown of this period is _Las Lanzas_, or "The Surrender of Breda," which holds the place of honor on the wall fronting the door.

It is vivid past all praise, and n.o.bler than any battle scene in its beauty of generosity. The influence of Italy had told especially on Velazquez's backgrounds. The bright, far landscapes opening out beyond his portrayed figures, especially those on horseback,--and his horses are as lifelike as his dogs,--give to the _sala_ an exhilarating effect of free s.p.a.ce and wide horizons.

In 1650 he made his second visit to Rome, where he portrayed Pope Innocent X. Nine years of glorious work in Spain remained to him.

Still he painted the king, even at his royal prayers, for which there was full need, and the young Austrian queen, who had succeeded the dead mother of the dead Baltasar. On that happy left-hand wall of the _sala_ s.h.i.+nes, in all its vigorous grace, the "Mercury and Argos," but if the hundred eyes of Argos are ready to close, their place is supplied by the terrible scrutiny of a row of portraits, embarra.s.sing the boldest of us out of note-taking. How those pairs of pursuing black eyes, sage and keen and mocking, stare the starers out of countenance! The series of pet dwarfs is here, old aesop, and Menippus, and the sly buffoon, "Don Juan of Austria." Of these two wonder-works, _Las Meninas_, "The Maids of Honor," has a room to itself, and thus _Las Hilanderas_, "The Weavers," becomes the central magnet of this returning wall. A saint picture and even a coronation of the Virgin cannot draw the crowds from before this ultimate triumph of the actual--this factory interior, where a group of peasant women fas.h.i.+on tapestries, while a broad shaft of suns.h.i.+ne works miracles in color.

And this, too, is Spanish. Cervantes is as true a facet of many-sided Spain as Calderon, and Velazquez as Murillo. With all the national propensity to emotion and exaggeration, Spaniards are a truth-seeing people. The popular _coplas_ are more often satiric than sentimental.

They like to bite through to the kernel of fact, even when it is bitter. Velazquez, with his rich and n.o.ble realism, is of legitimate descent.

XX

CHORAL GAMES OF SPANISH CHILDREN

"Thought and affliction, pa.s.sion, h.e.l.l itself, She turns to favor and to prettiness."

--SHAKESPEARE: _Hamlet_.

On one of my last afternoons in Madrid, I visited again my early haunts in the _Buen Retiro_, for a farewell sight of the children there at play. After all, it is one of the prettiest things to be seen in Spain, these graceful, pa.s.sionate, dramatic little creatures dancing in tireless circles, and piping those songs that every _nina_ knows, without being able to tell when or where or from whom she learned them. Only very small boys, as a rule, join the girls in these fairy rings, though occasionally I found a troop of urchins marching to a l.u.s.ty chorus of their own. One, which I heard in Madrid, but whose parrots are more suggestive of Seville, runs something like this:--

"In the street they call Toledo Is a famous school for boys, Chundarata, chundarata, Chundarata, chun-chun; Where all we lads are going With a most heroic noise, Chundarata, chundarata, Chundarata, chun-chun.

"And the parrots on their perches, They mock us as we go, Chundarata, chundarata, Chundarata, chun-chun.

'I hate my school,' whines Polly, 'For my master beats me so,'

Chundarata, chundarata, Chundarata, chun-chun."

Another, which came to me in fragments, is sung in playing soldier.

"The Catalans are coming, Marching two by two.

All who hear the drumming Tiptoe for a view.

Ay, ay!

Tiptoe for a view.

Red and yellow banners, Pennies very few.

Ay, ay!

Pennies very few.

"Red and yellow banners!

The Moon comes out to see.

If moons had better manners, She'd take me on her knee.

Ay, ay!

Take me on her knee.

She peeps through purple shutters, Would I were tall as she!

Ay, ay!

Would I were tall as she!

"Soldiers need not learn letters, Nor any schooly thing, But unless they mind their betters, In golden chains they'll swing.

Ay, ay!

In golden chains they'll swing.

Or sit in silver fetters, Presents from the King.

Ay, ay!

Presents from the King."

This ironic touch, so characteristically Spanish, reappears in many of the games, as in _A La Limon_, known throughout the Peninsula and the Antilles. I should expect to find it, too, in corners of Mexico, South America, the Philippines, wherever the Spanish oppressor has trod and the oppressor's children have sported in the sun. The little players, ranged in two rows, each row hand in hand, dance the one toward the other and retreat, singing responsively. With their last couplet, the children of the first line raise their arms, forming arches, and the children of the second line, letting go hands, dance under these arches as they respond.

1. "_A la limon, a la limon!_ All broken is our bright fountain.

2. "_A la limon, a la limon!_ Give orders to have it mended.

1. "_A la limon, a la limon!_ We haven't a bit of money.

2. "_A la limon, a la limon!_ But we have money in plenty.

1. "_A la limon, a la limon!_ What kind of money may yours be?

2. "_A la limon, a la limon!_ Oh, ours is money of eggsh.e.l.ls.

1. "_A la limon, a la limon!_ An arch for the lords and ladies.

2. "_A la limon, a la limon!_ Right merrily we pa.s.s under."

Another lyric dialogue, whose fun is spent on the lean purses of students and the happy-go-lucky life of Andalusia, must have originated since the overthrow, in 1892, of the leaning tower of Saragossa. The stanzas are sung alternately by two rows of children, advancing toward each other and retreating with a dancing step.

1. "In Saragossa --Oh, what a pity!-- Has fallen the tower, Pride of the city.

2. "Fell it by tempest, Fairies or witches, The students will raise it, For students have riches.

1. "Call on the students, Call louder and louder!

They've only two coppers To buy them a chowder.