The Donkeys Bore A Part Literally Leading In
All The Rustic Equipages, And With Their Superior Intellect Found A Way
Through The Crowds For The String-Teams Of The Three Or Four Large Mules
That Followed Them In Harness.
Whenever we saw a team of mules without
this sage guidance we trembled for their safety; as for horses, no team
of them attempted the difficult passage, though ox-trains seemed able to
dispense with the path-finding donkeys.
To be sure, the horses abounded in the cabs, which were mostly bad, more
or less. It is an idiosyncrasy of the cabs in Madrid that only the open
victorias have rubber tires; if you go in a coupe you must consent to be
ruthlessly bounced over the rough pavements on wheels unsoftened. It
"follows as the night the day" that the coupe is not in favor, and that
in its conservative disuse it accumulates a smell not to be acquired out
of Spain. One such vehicle I had which I thought must have been stabled
in the house of Cervantes at Valladolid, and rushed on the Sud-Express
for my service at Madrid; the stench in it was such that after a short
drive to the house of a friend I was fain to dismiss it at a serious
loss in pesetas and take the risk of another which might have been as
bad. Fortunately a kind lady intervened with a private carriage and a
coachman shaved that very day, whereas my poor old cabman, who was of
one and the same smell as his cab, had not been shaved for three days.
III
This seems the place to note the fact that no Spaniard in humble life
shaves oftener than once in three days, and that you always see him on
the third day just before he has shaved. But all this time I have left
myself sitting in the cafe looking out on the club that looks out on the
Calle de Aleala, and keeping the waiter waiting with a jug of hot milk
in his hand while I convince him (such a friendly, smiling man he is,
and glad of my instruction!) that in tea one always wants the milk cold.
To him that does not seem reasonable, since one wants it hot in coffee
and chocolate; but he yields to niy prejudice, and after that he always
says, _"Ah, leche fria!"_ and we smile radiantly together in the bond of
comradery which cold milk establishes between man and man in Spain. As
yet tea is a novelty in that country, though the young English queen,
universally loved and honored, has made it the fashion in high life.
Still it is hard to overcome such a prepossession as that of hot milk in
tea, and in some places you cannot get it cold for love or money.
But again I leave myself waiting in that cafe, where slowly, and at last
not very overwhelmingly in number, the beautiful plaster-pale Spanish
ladies gather with their husbands and have chocolate. It is a riotous
dissipation for them, though it does not sound so; the home is the
Spanish ideal of the woman's place, as it is of our anti-suffragists,
though there is nothing corresponding to our fireside in it; and the
cafe is her husband's place without her. When she walks in the street,
where mostly she drives, she walks with her eyes straight before her; to
look either to the right or left, especially if a man is on either hand,
is a superfluity of naughtiness. The habit of looking straight ahead is
formed in youth, and it continues through life; so at least it is said,
and if I cannot affirm it I will not deny it. The beautiful black eyes
so discreetly directed looked as often from mantillas as hats, even in
Madrid, which is the capital, and much infested by French fashions. You
must not believe it when any one tells you that the mantilla is going
out; it prevails everywhere, and it increases from north to south, and
in Seville it is almost universal. Hats are worn there only in driving,
but at Madrid there were many hats worn in walking, though whether by
Spanish women or by foreigners, of course one could not, though a
wayfaring man and an American, stop them to ask.
There are more women in the street at Madrid than in the provincial
cities, perhaps because it is the capital and cosmopolitan, and perhaps
because the streets are many of them open and pleasant, though there arc
enough of them dark and narrow, too. I do not know just why the Puerta
del Sol seems so much ampler and gayer than the Calle de Alcala; it is
not really wider, but it seems more to concentrate the coming and going,
and with its high-hoteled opposition of corners is of a supreme
spectacularity. Besides, the name is so fine: what better could any city
place ask than to be called Gate of the Sun? Perpetual trams wheeze and
whistle through it; large shops face upon it; the sidewalks are thronged
with passers, and the many little streets debouching on it pour their
streams of traffic and travel into it on the right and left. It is
mainly fed by the avenues leaving the royal palace on the west, and its
eddying tide empties through the Calle de Alcala into the groves and
gardens of the Prado whence it spreads over all the drives and parks
east and north and south.
For a capital purposed and planned Madrid is very well indeed. It has
not the symmetry which forethought gave the topography of Washington, or
the beauty which afterthought has given Paris. But it makes you think a
little of Washington, and a great deal of Paris, though a great deal
more yet of Rome. It is Renaissance so far as architecture goes, and it
is very modern Latin; so that it is of the older and the newer Rome that
it makes you think.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 27 of 101
Words from 26684 to 27699
of 103320
