If you must speak nothing but
phrases, Ollendorff's are as good as any one's. Where there are a dozen
people all speaking French equally badly, each one imagines there is a
certain elegance in the hackneyed forms. I know of no other way of
accounting for the fact that clever people seem stupid and stupid people
clever when they speak French. This facile language thus becomes the
missionary of mental equality, - the principles of '89 applied to
conversation. All men are equal before the phrase-book.
But this is hypercritical and ungrateful. We do not go to balls to hear
sermons nor discuss the origin of matter. If the young grandees of Spain
are rather weaker in the parapet than is allowed in the nineteenth
century, if the old boys are more frivolous than is becoming to age, and
both more ignorant of the day's doings than is consistent with even
their social responsibilities, in compensation the women of this circle
are as pretty and amiable as it is possible to be in a fallen world. The
foreigner never forgets those piquant, mutines faces of Andalusia and
those dreamy eyes of Malaga, - the black masses of Moorish hair and the
blond glory of those graceful heads that trace their descent from Gothic
demigods. They were not very learned nor very witty, but they were
knowing enough to trouble the soundest sleep. Their voices could
interpret the sublimest ideas of Mendelssohn. They knew sufficiently of
lines and colors to dress themselves charmingly at small cost, and their
little feet were well enough educated to bear them over the polished
floor of a ball-room as lightly as swallows' wings. The flirting of
their intelligent fans, the flashing of those quick smiles where eyes,
teeth, and lips all did their dazzling duty, and the satin twinkling of
those neat boots in the waltz, are harder to forget than things better
worth remembering.
Since the beginning of the Revolutionary regime there have been serious
schisms and heart-burnings in the gay world. The people of the old
situation assumed that the people of the new were rebels and traitors,
and stopped breaking bread with them. But in spite of this the palace
and the ministry of war were gay enough, - for Madrid is a city of
office-holders, and the White House is always easy to fill, even if two
thirds of the Senate is uncongenial. The principal fortress of the post
was the palace of the spirituelle and hospitable lady whose society name
is Duchess of Penaranda, but who is better known as the mother of the
Empress of the French. Her salon was the weekly rendezvous of the
irreconcilable adherents of the House of Bourbon, and the aristocratic
beauty that gathered there was too powerful a seduction even for the
young and hopeful partisans of the powers that be. There was nothing
exclusive about this elegant hospitality. Beauty and good manners have
always been a passport there. I have seen a proconsul of Prim talking
with a Carlist leader, and a fiery young democrat dancing with a
countess of Castile.
But there is another phase of society in Madrid which is altogether
pleasing, - far from the domain of politics or public affairs, where
there is no pretension or luxury or conspiracy, - the old-fashioned
Tertulias of Spain. There is nowhere a kindlier and more unaffected
sociableness. The leading families of each little circle have one
evening a week on which they remain at home. Nearly all their friends
come in on that evening. There is conversation and music and dancing.
The young girls gather together in little groups, - not confined under
the jealous guard of their mothers or chaperons, - and chatter of the
momentous events of the week - their dresses, their beaux, and their
books. Around these compact formations of loveliness skirmish light
bodies of the male enemy, but rarely effect a lodgment. A word or a
smile is momently thrown out to meet the advance; but the long,
desperate battle of flirtation, which so often takes place in America in
discreet corners and outlying boudoirs, is never seen in this
well-organized society. The mothers in Israel are ranged for the evening
around the walls in comfortable chairs, which they never leave; and the
colonels and generals and chiefs of administration, who form the bulk of
all Madrid gatherings, are gravely smoking in the library or playing
interminable games of tresillon, seasoned with temperate denunciations
of the follies of the time.
Nothing can be more engaging than the tone of perfect ease and cordial
courtesy which pervades these family festivals. It is here that the
Spanish character is seen in its most attractive light. Nearly everybody
knows French, but it is never spoken. The exquisite Castilian, softened
by its graceful diminutives into a rival of the Italian in tender
melody, is the only medium of conversation; it is rare that a stranger'
is seen, but if he is, he must learn Spanish or be a wet blanket
forever.
You will often meet, in persons of wealth and distinction, an easy
degenerate accent in Spanish, strangely at variance with their elegance
and culture. These are Creoles of the Antilles, and they form one of the
most valued and popular elements of society in the capital. There is a
gallantry and dash about the men, and an intelligence and independence
about the women, that distinguish them from their cousins of the
Peninsula. The American element has recently grown very prominent in the
political and social world. Admiral Topete is a Mexican. His wife is one
of the distinguished Cuban family of Arrieta. General Prim married a
Mexican heiress. The magnificent Duchess de la Torre, wife of the Regent
Serrano, is a Cuban born and bred.
In one particular Madrid is unique among capitals, - it has no suburbs.
It lies in a desolate table-land in the windy waste of New Castile; on
the north the snowy Guadarrama chills its breezes, and on every other
side the tawny landscape stretches away in dwarfish hills and shallow
ravines barren of shrub or tree, until distance fuses the vast steppes
into one drab plain, which melts in the hazy verge of the warm horizon.
There are no villages sprinkled in the environs to lure the Madrilenos
out of their walls for a holiday.
