This is Richard Ford's chapter on 'la corrida' in his book 'The Spaniards and Their Country.' It might be the best ever description of what we - but not the Spanish - call a bullfight. At least as it was back in 1845.
This account is not for the squeamish
There are several points I could make but will confine myself to these:-
The 'corrida' is very much a minority interest these days. Regarded by the aficionados as a cultural event, not a 'sport'. Reviewed in the Arts section of newspapers
It's astonishing to read Ford's comment that things used to be even crueller
Nowadays the event isn't as gruesome as it was in Ford's day, though much of what he describes remains true, both of the Spanish and of foreigners and their attitudes.
Some of the things described below don't take place these days. I've never heard of the 'half-moon', for example,
Specifically, horses are well padded now and are rarely injured, let alone killed in their dozens.
And 'very brave' bulls are pardoned and allowed to leave the arena alive
CHAPTER XXII: The Bull-fight
When the appointed much-wished-for hour is come, the Queen or the Corregidor takes the seat of honour in a central and splendid box, the mob having been previously expelled from the open arena; this operation is called the despejo, and is an amusing one, from the reluctance with which the great unwashed submit to be cleaned out. The proceedings open at a given signal with a procession of the combatants, who advance preceded by alguaciles, or officers of police, who are dressed in the ancient Spanish costume, and are always at hand to arrest any one who infringes the severe laws against interruptions of the games. Then follow the picadores, or mounted horsemen, with their spears. Their original broad-brimmed Spanish hats are decorated with ribbons; their upper man is clad in a gay silken jacket, whose lightness contrasts with the heavy iron and leather protections of the legs, which give the clumsy look of a French jackbooted postilion. These defences are necessary when the horned animal charges home. Next follow the chulos, or combatants on foot, who are arrayed like Figaro at the opera, and have, moreover, silken cloaks of gay colours. The matadores, or killers, come behind them; and, last of all, a gaily-caparisoned team of mules, which is destined to drag the slaughtered bulls from the arena. As for the men, those who are killed on the spot are denied the burial-rites if they die without confession. Springing from the dregs of the people, they are eminently superstitious, and cover their breasts with relics, amulets, and papal charms. A clergyman, however, is in attendance with the sacramental wafer, in case su majestad may be wanted for a mortally-wounded combatant.
Having made their obeisances to the chief authority, all retire, and the fatal trumpet sounds; then the president throws the key of the gate by which the bull is to enter, to one of the alguaciles, who ought to catch it in his hat. When the door is opened, this worthy gallops away as fast as he can, amid the hoots and hisses of the mob, not because he rides like a constable, but from the instinctive enmity which his majesty the many bear to the finisher of the law, just as little birds love to mob a hawk; now more than a thousand kind wishes are offered up that the bull may catch and toss him. The brilliant army of combatants in the meanwhile separates like a bursting shell, and take up their respective places as regularly as our fielders do at a cricket-match.
The play, which consists of 3 acts, then begins in earnest; the drawing up of the curtain is a spirit-stirring moment; all eyes are riveted at the first appearance of the bull on this stage, as no one can tell how he may behave. Let loose from his dark cell, at first he seems amazed at the novelty of his position; torn from his pastures, imprisoned and exposed, stunned by the noise, he gazes an instant around at the crowd, the glare, and waving handkerchiefs, ignorant of the fate which inevitably awaits him. He bears on his neck a ribbon, “la devisa,” which designates his breeder. The picador endeavours to snatch this off, to lay the trophy at his true love’s heart. The bull is condemned without reprieve; however gallant his conduct, or desperate his resistance, his death is the catastrophe; the whole tragedy tends and hastens to this event, which, although it is darkly shadowed out beforehand, as in a Greek play, does not diminish the interest, since all the intermediate changes and chances are uncertain; hence the sustained excitement, for the action may pass in an instant from the sublime to the ridiculous, from tragedy to farce.
The bull no sooner recovers his senses, than his splendid Achillean rage fires every limb, and with closing eyes and lowered horns he rushes at the first of the three picadores, who are drawn up to the left, close to the tablas, or wooden barrier which walls round the ring. The horseman sits on his trembling Rosinante, with his pointed lance under his right arm, as stiff and valiant as Don Quixote. If the animal be only of second-rate power and courage, the sharp point arrests the charge, for he well remembers this garrocha, or goad, by which herdsmen enforce discipline and inculcate instruction; during this momentary pause a quick picador turns his horse to the left and gets free. The bulls, although irrational brutes, are not slow on their part in discovering when their antagonists are bold and dexterous, and particularly dislike fighting against the pricks. If they fly and will not face the picador, they are hooted at as despicable malefactors, who wish to defraud the public of their day’s sport, they are execrated as “goats,” “cows,” which is no compliment to bulls; these culprits, moreover, are soundly beaten as they pass near the barrier by forests of sticks, with which the mob is provided for the nonce; that of the elegant majo, when going to the bull-fight, is very peculiar, and is called la chivata; it is between 4 and 5 feet long, is taper, and terminates in a lump or knob, while the top is forked, into which the thumb is inserted; it is also peeled or painted in alternate rings, black and white, or red and yellow. The lower classes content themselves with a common shillelah; one with a knob at the end is preferred, as administering a more impressive whack; their instrument is called porro, because heavy and lumbering.
Nor is this bastinado uncalled for, since courage, address, and energy, are the qualities which ennoble tauromachia; and when they are wanting, the butchery, with its many disgusting incidents, becomes revolting to the stranger, but to him alone; for the gentler emotions of pity and mercy, which rarely soften any transactions of hard Iberia, are here banished altogether from the hearts of the natives; they now only have eyes for exhibitions of skill and valour, and scarcely observe those cruel incidents which engross and horrify the foreigner, who again on his part is equally blind to those redeeming excellencies, on which alone the attention of the rest of the spectators is fixed; the tables are now turned against the stranger, whose aesthetic mind’s eye can see the poetry and beauty of the picturesque rags and tumbledown hamlets of Spaniards, and yet is blind to the poverty, misery, and want of civilization, to which alone the vision of the higher classed native is directed, on whose exalted soul the coming comforts of cotton are gleaming.
When the bull is turned by the spear of the first picador, he passes on to the two other horsemen, who receive him with similar cordiality. If the animal be baffled by their skill and valour, stunning are the shouts of applause which celebrate the victory of the men: should he on the contrary charge home and overwhelm horses and riders, then—for the balances of praise and blame are held with perfect fairness—the fierce lord of the arena is encouraged with roars of compliments, Bravo toro, Viva toro, Well done, bull! Even a long life is wished to him by thousands who know that he must be dead in twenty minutes.
A bold beast is not to be deterred by a trifling inch-deep wound, but presses on, goring the horse in the flank, and then gaining confidence and courage by victory, and “baptized in blood,” à la Française, advances in a career of honour, gore, and glory. The picador is seldom well mounted, for the horses are provided, at the lowest possible price, by a contractor, who runs the risk whether many or few are killed; they indeed are the only things economised in this costly spectacle, and are sorry, broken-down hacks, fit only for the dog-kennel of an English squire, or carriage of a foreign Pair. This increases the danger to his rider; in the ancient combats, the finest and most spirited horses were used; quick as lightning, and turning to the touch, they escaped the deadly rush. The eyes of those poor horses which see and will not face death, are often bound over with a handkerchief, like criminals about to be executed; thus they await blindfold the fatal horn thrust which is to end their life of misery.
The picadors are subject to most severe falls; the bull often tosses horse and rider in one ruin, and when his victims fall with a crash on the ground exhausts his fury upon his prostrate foes. The picador manages (if he can) to fall off on the opposite side, in order that his horse may form a barrier and rampart between him and the bull. When these deadly struggles take place, when life hangs on a thread, the amphitheatre is peopled with heads; every feeling of anxiety, eagerness, fear, horror, and delight is stamped on their expressive countenances; if happiness is to be estimated by quality, intensity, and concentration, rather than duration (and it is), these are moments of excitement more precious to them, than ages of placid, insipid, uniform stagnation. Their feelings are wrought to a pitch, when the horse, maddened with wounds and terror, plunging in the death-struggle, the crimson seams of blood streaking his foam and sweat-whitened body, flies from the infuriated bull still pursuing, still goring; then are displayed the nerve, presence of mind, and horsemanship of the dexterous and undismayed picador. It is in truth a piteous sight to see the poor mangled horses treading out their entrails, and yet gallantly carrying off their riders unhurt. But as in the pagan sacrifices, the quivering intestines, trembling with life, formed the most propitious omens—to what will not early habit familiarise?—so the Spaniards are no more affected with the reality, than the Italians are with the abstract “tanti palpiti” of Rossini.
The miserable horse, when dead, is dragged out, leaving a bloody furrow on the sand, as the river-beds of the arid plains of Barbary are marked by the crimson fringe of the flowering oleanders. A universal sympathy is shown for the horseman in these awful moments; the men rise, the women scream, but all this soon subsides; the picador, if wounded, is carried out and forgotten—“los muertos y idos no tienen amigos”—a new combatant fills up his gap, the battle rages—wounds and death are the order of the day—he is not missed; and as new incidents arise, no pause is left for regret or reflection. We remember seeing at Granada a matador cruelly gored by a bull: he was carried away as dead, and his place immediately taken by his son, as coolly as a viscount succeeds to an earl’s estate and title. Carnerero, the musician, died while fiddling at a ball at Madrid, in 1838; neither the band nor the dancers stopped one moment. The boldness of the picadors is great. Francisco Sevilla, when thrown from his horse and lying under the dying animal, seized the bull, as he rushed at him, by his ears, turned round to the people, and laughed; but, in fact, the long horns of the bull make it difficult for him to gore a man on the ground; he generally bruises them with his nose: nor does he remain long busied with his victim, since he is lured to fresh attacks by the glittering cloaks of the Chulos who come instantly to the rescue. At the same time we are free to confess, that few picadors, although men of bronze, can be said to have a sound rib in their body. When one is carried off apparently dead, but returns immediately mounted on a fresh horse, the applauding voice of the people outbellows a thousand bulls. If the wounded man should chance not to come back, n’importe, however courted outside the Plaza, now he is ranked, like the gladiator was by the Romans, no higher than a beast,—or about the same as a slave under the perfect equality and man rights of the model republic.
The poor horse is valued at even less, and he, of all the actors, is the one in which Englishmen, true lovers and breeders of the noble animal, take the liveliest interest; nor can any bull-fighting habit ever reconcile them to his sufferings and ill-treatment. The hearts of the picadors are as devoid of feeling as their iron-cased legs; they only think of themselves, and have a nice tact in knowing when a wound is fatal or not. Accordingly, if the horn-thrust has touched a vital part, no sooner has the enemy passed on to a new victim, than an experienced picador quietly dismounts, takes off the saddle and bridle, and hobbles off like Richard, calling out for another horse—a horse! The poor animal, when stripped of these accoutrements, has a most rippish[?] look, as it staggers to and fro, like a drunken man, until again attacked by the bull and prostrated; then it lies dying unnoticed in the sand, or, if observed, merely rouses the jeers of the mob; as its tail quivers in the last agony of death, your attention is called to the fun; Mira, mira, que cola! The words and sight yet haunt us, for they were those that first caught our inexperienced ears and eyes at the first rush of the first bull of our first bullfight.
While gazing on the scene in a total abstraction from the world, we felt our coat-tails tugged at, as by a greedily-biting pike; we had caught, or, rather, were caught by a venerable harridan, whose quick perception had discovered a novice, whom her kindness prompted to instruct, for e’en in the ashes live the wonted fires; a bright, fierce eye gleamed alive in a dead and shrivelled face, which evil passions had furrowed like the lava-seared sides of an extinct volcano, and dried up, like a cat starved behind a wainscot, into a thing of fur and bones, in which gender was obliterated—let her pass. If the wound received by the horse be not instantaneously mortal, the blood-vomiting hole is plugged up with tow, and the fountain of life stopped for a few minutes. If the flank is only partially ruptured, the protruding bowels are pushed back—no operation in hernia is half so well performed by Spanish surgeons—and the rent is sown up with a needle and pack-thread. Thus existence is prolonged for new tortures, and a few dollars are saved to the contractor; but neither death nor lacerations excite the least pity, nay, the bloodier and more fatal the spectacle, the more brilliant is it pronounced. It is of no use to remonstrate, or ask why the wounded sufferers are not mercifully killed at once; the utilitarian Spaniard dislikes to see the order of the sport interrupted and spoilt by what he considers foreign squeamishness and nonsense, “Ah que! no vale nã,”—“Bah! the beast is worth nothing;” that is, provided he condescends to reply to your disparates with anything beyond a shrug of civil contempt. But national tastes will differ. “Sir,” said an alderman to Dr. Johnson, “in attempting to listen to your long sentences, and give you a short answer, I have swallowed two pieces of green fat, without tasting the flavour. I beg you to let me enjoy my present happiness in peace and quiet.”
The bull is the hero of the scene; yet, like Satan in the Paradise Lost, he is foredoomed. Nothing can save him from a certain fate, which awaits all, whether brave or cowardly. The poor creatures sometimes endeavour in vain to escape, and have favourite retreats, to which they fly; or they leap over the barrier, among the spectators, creating a vast hubbub and fun, upsetting water-carriers and fancy men, putting sentinels and old women to flight, and affording infinite delight to all who are safe in the boxes; for, as Bacon remarks, “It is pleasant to see a battle from a distant hill.” Bulls which exhibit this cowardlike activity are insulted: cries of “fuego” and “perros,” fire and dogs, resound, and he is condemned to be baited. As the Spanish dogs have by no means the pluck of the English assailants of bulls, they are longer at the work, and many are made minced-meat of:—
“Up to the stars the growling mastiffs fly
And add new monsters to the frighted sky.”
When at length the poor brute is pulled down, he is stabbed in the spine, as if he were only fit for the shambles, being a civilian ox, not a soldierlike bull. All these processes are considered as deadly insults; and when more than one bull exhibits these craven propensities to baulk nobler expectancies, then is raised the cry of “Cabestros al circo!” tame oxen to the circus. This is a mortal affront to the empresa, or management, as it infers that it has furnished animals fitter for the plough than for the arena. The indignation of the mob is terrible; for, if disappointed in the blood of bulls, it will lap that of men.
The bull is sometimes teased with stuffed figures, men of straw with leaded feet, which rise up again as soon as he knocks them down. An old author relates that in the time of Philip IV. “a despicable peasant was occasionally set upon a lean horse, and exposed to death.” At other times, to amuse the populace, a monkey is tied to a pole in the arena. This art of ingeniously tormenting is considered as unjustifiable homicide by certain lively philosimious foreigners; and, indeed, all these episodes are despised as irregular hors d’œuvres, by the real and business-like amateur.
After a due time the first act terminates: its length is uncertain. Sometimes it is most brilliant, since one bull has been known to kill a dozen horses, and clear the plaza. Then he is adored; and as he roams, snorting about, lord of all he surveys, he becomes the sole object of worship to ten thousand devotees; at the signal of the president, and sound of a trumpet, the second act commences with the performances of the chulo, a word which signifies, in the Arabic, a lad, a merryman, as at our fairs. The duty of this light division, these skirmishers, is to draw off the bull from the picador when endangered, which they do with their coloured cloaks; their address and agility are surprising, they skim over the sand like glittering humming-birds, scarcely touching the earth. They are dressed in short breeches, and without gaiters, just as Figaro is in the opera of the ‘Barbiere de Seviglia.’ Their hair is tied into a knot behind, and enclosed in the once universal silk net, the retecilla—the identical reticulum—of which so many instances are seen on ancient Etruscan vases. No bull-fighters ever arrive at the top of their profession without first excelling in this apprenticeship; then, they are taught how to entice the bull to them, and learn his mode of attack, and how to parry it.
The most dangerous moment is when these chulos venture out into the middle of the plaza, and are followed by the bull to the barrier. There is a small ledge, on which they place their foot, and vault over, and a narrow slit in the boarding, through which they slip. Their escapes are marvellous, and they win by a neck; they seem really sometimes, so close is the run, to be helped over the fence by the bull’s horns. The chulos, in the second act, are the sole performers; their part is to place small barbed darts, on each side of the neck of the bull, which are called banderillas, and are ornamented with cut paper of different colours—gay decorations under which cruelty is concealed. The banderilleros go right up to him, holding the arrows at the shaft, and pointing the barbs at the bull; just when the animal stoops to toss his foes, they jerk them into his neck and slip aside. The service appears to be more dangerous than it is, but it requires a quick eye, a light hand and foot. The barbs should be placed to correspond with each other exactly on both sides. Such pretty pairs are termed buenos pares by the Spaniards, and the feat is called coiffer le taureau by the French, who undoubtedly are first-rate perruquiers. Very often these arrows are provided with crackers, which, by means of a detonating powder, explode the moment they are affixed in the neck; thence they are called banderillas de fuego. The agony of the scorched and tortured animal makes him plunge and bound like a sportive lamb, to the intense joy of the populace, while the fire, the smell of singed hair and roasted flesh, which our gastronome neighbours would call a bifstec à l’Espagnole, faintly recall to many a dark scowling priest the superior attractions of his former amphitheatre, the auto de fe.
The last trumpet now sounds, the arena is cleared, and the matador, the executioner, the man of death, stands before his victim alone; on entering, he addresses the president, and throws his cap to the ground. In his right hand he holds a long straight Toledan blade; in his left he waves the muleta, the red flag, or the engaño, the lure, which ought not (so Romero laid down in our hearing) to be so large as the standard of a religious brotherhood, nor so small as a lady’s pocket-handkerchief, but about a yard square. The colour is always red, because that best irritates the bull and conceals blood. There is always a spare slayer at hand in case of accidents, which may happen in the best regulated bull-fights.
The matador, from being alone, concentrates in himself all the interest as regards the human species, which was before frittered away among the many other combatants, as was the case in the ancient gladiatorial shows of Rome. He advances to the bull, in order to entice him towards him, or, in nice technical idiom, citarlo á la jurisdiccion del engaño, to cite him into the jurisdiction of the trick; in plain English, to subpoena him, or, as our ring would say, 'get his head into chancery'. And this trial is nearly as awful, as the matador stands confronted with his foe, in the presence of inexorable witnesses, the bar and judges, who would rather see the bull kill him twice over, than that he should kill the bull contrary to the rules and practice of the court and tauromachian precedent. In these brief but trying moments the matador generally looks pale and anxious, as well he may, for life hangs on the edge of a razor, but he presents a fine picture of fixed purpose and concentration of moral energy. And Seneca said truly that the world had seen as many examples of courage in gladiators, as in the Catos and Scipios.
The matador endeavours rapidly to discover the character of the animal, and examines with eye keener than Spurzheim, his bumps of combativeness, destructiveness, and other amiable organs; nor has he many moments to lose, where mistake is fatal, as one must die, and both may. Here, as Falstaff says, there is no scoring, except on the pate. Often even the brute bull seems to feel that the last moment is come, and pauses, when face to face in the deadly duel with his single opponent. Be that as it may, the contrast is very striking. The slayer is arrayed in a ball costume, with no buckler but skill, and as if it were a pastime: he is all coolness, the beast all rage; and time it is to be collected, for now indeed knowledge is power, and could the beast reason, the man would have small chance. Meanwhile the spectators are wound up to a greater pitch of madness than the poor bull, who has undergone a long torture, besides continued excitement: he at this instant becomes a study for a Paul Potter; his eyes flash fire—his inflated nostrils snort fury; his body is covered with sweat and foam, or crimsoned with a glaze of gore streaming from gaping wounds. “Mira! que bel cuerpo de sangre!—look! what a beauteous body of blood!” exclaimed the worthy old lady, who, as we before mentioned, was kind enough to point out to our inexperience the tit bits of the treat, the pearls of greatest price.
There are several sorts of toros, whose characters vary no less than those of men: some are brave and dashing, others are slow and heavy, others sly and cowardly. The matador foils and plays with the bull until he has discovered his disposition. The fundamental principle consists in the animal’s mode of attack, the stooping his head and shutting his eyes, before he butts; the secret of mastering him lies in distinguishing whether he acts on the offensive or defensive. Those which are fearless, and rush boldly on at once, closing their eyes, are the most easy to kill; those which are cunning—which seldom go straight when they charge, but stop, dodge, and run at the man, not the flag, are the most dangerous. The interest of the spectators increases in proportion as the peril is great.
Although fatal accidents do not often occur (and we ourselves have never seen a man killed, yet we have beheld some hundred bulls despatched), such events are always possible. At Tudela, a bull having killed seventeen horses, a picador named Blanco, and a banderillero, then leapt over the barriers, where he gored to death a peasant, and wounded many others. The newspapers simply headed the statement, “Accidents have happened.” Pepe Illo, who had received thirty-eight wounds in the wars, died, like Nelson, the hero’s death. He was killed on the 11th of May, 1801. He had a presentiment of his death, but said that he must do his duty.
Every matador must be quick and decided. He must not let the bull run at the flag above 2 or 3 times; the moral tension of the multitudes is too strained to endure a longer suspense; they vent their impatience in jeers, noises, and endeavour by every possible manner to irritate him, and make him lose his temper, and perhaps life. Under such circumstances, Manuel Romero, who had murdered a man, was always saluted with cries of A la Plaza de Cebada— "To Tyburn.” The populace absolutely loathe those who show the smallest white feather, or do not brave death cheerfully.
There are many ways of killing the bull: the principal is when the matador receives him on his sword when charging; then the weapon, which is held still and never thrust forward, enters just between the left shoulder and the blade-bone; a firm hand, eye, and nerve, are essential, since in nothing is the real fancy so fastidious as in the exact nicety of the placing this death-wound. The bull very often is not killed at the first effort; if not true, the sword strikes a bone, and then it is ejected high in air by the rising neck. When the blow is true, death is instantaneous, and the bull, vomiting forth blood, drops at the feet of his conqueror. It is indeed the triumph of knowledge over brute force; all that was fire, fury, passion, and life, falls in an instant, still for ever. The gay team of mules now enter, glittering with flags, and tinkling with bells; the dead bull is carried off at a rapid gallop, which always delights the populace. The matador then wipes the hot blood from his sword, and bows to the spectators with admirable sang froid, who fling their hats into the arena, a compliment which he returns by throwing them back again (they are generally “shocking bad” ones); when Spain was rich, a golden, or at least a silver shower was rained down—ces beaux jours là sont passés; thanks to her kind neighbour. The poverty-stricken Spaniard, however, gives all he can, and lets the bullfighter dream the rest. As hats in Spain represent grandeeship, so these beavers, part and parcel of themselves, are given as symbols of their generous hearts and souls; and none but a huckster would go into minute details of value or condition.
When a bull will not run at the fatal flag, or prays for pardon, he is doomed to a dishonourable death, as no true Spaniard begs for his own life, or spares that of his foe, when in his power; now the media luna is yelled for, and the call implies insult; the use is equivalent to shooting traitors in the back: this half moon is the precise Oriental ancient and cruel instrument of houghing cattle; moreover it is the exact old Iberian bident, or a sharp steel crescent placed on a long pole. The cowardly blow is given from behind; and when the poor beast is crippled by dividing the sinew of his leg, and crawls along in agony, an assistant pierces with a pointed dagger the spinal marrow, which is the usual method of slaughtering cattle in Spain by the butcher. To perform all these vile operations is considered beneath the dignity of the matador; some, however, will kill the bull by plunging the point of their sword in the vertebrae as the danger gives dignity to the difficult feat.
Such is a single bull-fight; each of which is repeated eight times with succeeding bulls, the excitement of the multitude rising with each indulgence; after a short collapse new desires are roused by fresh objects, the fierce sport is renewed, which night alone can extinguish; nay, often when royalty is present, a ninth bull is clamoured for, which is always graciously granted by the nominal monarch’s welcome sign, the pulling his royal ear; in truth here the mob is autocrat, and his majesty the many will take no denial; the bull-fight terminates when the day dies like a dolphin, and the curtain of heaven hung over the bloody show, is incarnadined and crimsoned; this glorious finish is seen in full perfection at Seville, where the plaza from being unfinished is open toward the cathedral, which furnishes a Moorish distance to the picturesque foreground. On particular occasions this side is decorated with flags. When the blazing sun setting on the red Giralda tower, lights up its fair proportions like a pillar of fire, the refreshing evening breeze springs up, and the flagging banners wave in triumph over the concluding spectacle; then when all is come to an end, as all things human must, the congregation depart, with rather less decorum than if quitting a church; all hasten to sacrifice the rest of the night to Bacchus and Venus, with a passing homage to the knife, should critics differ too hotly on the merits of some particular thrust of the bull-fight.
To conclude; the minds of men, like the House of Commons in 1802, are divided on the merits of the bull-fight; the Wilberforces assert (especially foreigners, who, notwithstanding, seldom fail to sanction the arena by their presence) that all the best feelings are blunted—that idleness, extravagance, cruelty, and ferocity are promoted at a vast expense of human and animal life by these pastimes; the Windhams contend that loyalty, courage, presence of mind, endurance of pain, and contempt of death, are inculcated—that, while the theatre is all illusion, the opera all effeminacy, these manly, national games are all truth, and in the words of a native eulogist “elevate the soul to those grandiose actions of valour and heroism which have long proved the Spaniards to be the best and bravest of all nations.”
The efficacy of such sports for sustaining a martial spirit was disproved by the degeneracy of the Romans at the time when bloody spectacles were most in vogue; nor are bravery and humanity the characteristics of the bull-fighting Spaniards in the collective. We ourselves do not attribute their “merciless skivering and skewering,” their flogging and murdering women, to the bull-fight, the practical result of which has been overrated and misunderstood. Cruel it undoubtedly is, and perfectly congenial to the inherent, inveterate ferocity of Iberian character, but it is an effect rather than a cause—with doubtless some reciprocating action; and it may be questioned, whether the original bull-fight had not a greater tendency to humanise, than the Olympic games; certainly the Fiesta real of the feudal ages combined the associated ideas of religion and loyalty, while the chivalrous combat nurtured a nice sense of personal honour and a respectful gallantry to women, which were unknown to the polished Greeks or warlike Romans; and many of the finest features of Spanish character have degenerated since the discontinuance of the original fight, which was more bloody and fatal than the present one.
The Spaniards invariably bring forward our boxing-matches in self-justification, as if a tu quoque could be so; but it must always be remembered in our excuse that these are discountenanced by the good and respectable, and legally stigmatised as breaches of the peace; although disgraced by beastly drunkenness, brutal vulgarity, ruinous gambling and betting, from which the Spanish arena is exempt, as no bull yet has been backed to kill so many horses or not; our matches, however, are based on a spirit of fair play which forms no principle of the Punic politics, warfare, or bull-fighting of Spain. The Plaza there is patronised by church and state, to whom, in justice, the responsibility of evil consequences must be referred. The show is conducted with great ceremonial, combining many elements of poetry, the beautiful and sublime; insomuch that a Spanish author proudly says: “When the countless assembly is honoured by the presence of our august monarchs, the world is lost in admiration at the majestic spectacle afforded by the happiest people in the world, enjoying with rapture an exhibition peculiarly their own, and offering to their idolised sovereigns the due homage of the truest and most refined loyalty;” and it is impossible to deny the magnificent coup d’œilof the assembled thousands. Under such conflicting circumstances, we turn away our eyes during moments of painful detail which are lost in the poetical ferocity of the whole, for the interest of the tragedy of real death is undeniable, irresistible, and all absorbing.
The Spaniards seem almost unconscious of the cruelty of those details which are most offensive to a stranger. They are reconciled by habit, as we are to the bleeding butchers’ shops which disfigure our gay streets, and which if seen for the first time would be inexpressibly disgusting. The feeling of the chase, that remnant of the savage, rules in the arena, and mankind has never been nice or tender-hearted in regard to the sufferings of animals, when influenced by the destructive propensities. In England no sympathy is shown for game,—fish, flesh, or fowl; nor for vermin—stoats, kites, or poachers. The end of the sport is—death; the amusement is the playing, the fine run, as the prolongation of animal suffering is termed in the tender vocabulary of the Nimrods; the pang of mortal sufferance is not regulated by the size of the victim; the bull moreover is always put at once out of his misery, and never exposed to the thousand lingering deaths of the poor wounded hare; therefore we must not see a toro in Spanish eyes and wink at the fox in our own, nor
“Compound for vices we’re inclined to
By damning those we have no mind to.”
It is not clear that animal suffering on the whole predominates over animal happiness. The bull roams in ample pastures, through a youth and manhood free from toil, and when killed in the plaza only anticipates by a few months the certain fate of the imprisoned, over-laboured, mutilated ox.
In Spain, where capital is scanty, person and property insecure (evils not quite corrected since the late democratic reforms), no one would adventure on the speculation of breeding cattle on a large scale, where the return is so distant, without the certain demand and sale created by the amphitheatre; and as a small proportion only of the produce possess the requisite qualifications, the surplus and females go to the plough and market, and can be sold cheaper from the profit made on the bulls. Spanish political economists proved that many valuable animals were wasted in the arena—but their theories vanished before the fact, that the supply of cattle was rapidly diminished when bull-fights were suppressed. Similar results take place as regards the breed of horses, though in a minor degree; those, moreover, which are sold to the Plaza would never be bought by any one else. With respect to the loss of human life, in no land is a man worth so little as in Spain; and more English aldermen are killed indirectly by turtles, than Andalucian picadors directly by bulls; while, as to time, these exhibitions always take place on holidays, which even industrious Britons bouse away occasionally in pothouses, and idle Spaniards invariably smoke out in sunshiny dolce far niente. The attendance, again, of idle spectators prevents idleness in the numerous classes employed directly and indirectly in getting up and carrying out this expensive spectacle.
It is poor and illogical philosophy to judge of foreign customs by our own habits, prejudices, and conventional opinions; a cold, unprepared, calculating stranger comes without the freemasonry of early associations, and criticises minutiae which are lost on the natives in their enthusiasm and feeling for the whole. He is horrified by details to which the Spaniards have become as accustomed as hospital nurses, whose finer sympathetic emotions of pity are deadened by repetition.
A most difficult thing it is to change long-established usages and customs with which we are familiar from our early days, and which have come down to us connected with many fond remembrances. We are slow to suspect any evil or harm in such practices; we dislike to look the evidence of facts in the face, and shrink from a conclusion which would require the abandonment of a recreation, which we have long regarded as innocent, and in which we, as well as our parents before us, have not scrupled to indulge. Children, l’age sans pitié, do not speculate on cruelty, whether in bull-baiting or bird’s-nesting, and Spaniards are brought up to the bull-fight from their infancy, when they are too simple to speculate on abstract questions, but associate with the Plaza all their ideas of reward for good conduct, of finery and holiday; in a land where amusements are few—they catch the contagion of pleasure, and in their young bias of imitation approve of what is approved of by their parents. They return to their homes unchanged—playful, timid, or serious, as before; their kindly, social feelings are uninjured: and where is the filial or parental bond more affectionately cherished than in Spain—where are the noble courtesies of life, the kind, considerate, self-respecting demeanour so exemplified as in Spanish society?
The successive feelings experienced by most foreigners are admiration, compassion, and weariness of the flesh. The first will be readily understood, as it will that the horses’ sufferings cannot be beheld by novices without compassion: “In troth it was more a pittie than a delight,” wrote the herald of Lord Nottingham. This feeling, however, regards the animals who are forced into wounds and death; the men scarcely excite much of it, since they willingly court the danger, and have therefore no right to complain. These heroes of low life are applauded, well paid, and their risk is more apparent than real; our British feelings of fair play make us side rather with the poor bull who is overmatched; we respect the gallantry of his unequal defence. Such must always be the effect produced on those not bred and brought up to such scenes. So Livy relates that, when the gladiatorial shows were first introduced by the Romans into Asia, the natives were more frightened than pleased, but by leading them on from sham-fights to real, they became as fond of them as the Romans. The predominant sensation experienced by ourselves was bore, the same thing over and over again, and too much of it. But that is the case with everything in Spain, where processions and professions are interminable. The younger Pliny, who was no amateur, complained of the eternal sameness of seeing what to have seen once, was enough; just as Dr. Johnson, when he witnessed a horse-race, observed that he had not met with such a proof of the paucity of human pleasures as in the popularity of such a spectacle. But the life of Spaniards is uniform, and their sensations, not being blunted by satiety, are intense. Their bull-fight to them is always new and exciting, since the more the toresque intellect is cultivated the greater the capacity for enjoyment; they see a thousand minute beauties in the character and conduct of the combatants, which escape the superficial unlearned glance of the uninitiated.
Spanish ladies, against whom every puny scribbler shoots his petty barbed arrow, are relieved from the infliction of ennui, by the never-flagging, ever-sustained interest, in being admired. They have no abstract nor Pasiphaic predilections; they were taken to the bull-fight before they knew their alphabet, or what love was. Nor have we heard that it has ever rendered them particularly cruel, save and except some of the elderly and tougher lower-classed females. The younger and more tender scream and are dreadfully affected in all real moments of danger, in spite of their long familiarity. Their grand object, after all, is not to see the bull, but to let themselves and their dresses be seen. The better classes generally interpose their fans at the most painful incidents, and certainly show no want of sensibility. The lower orders of females, as a body, behave quite as respectably as those of other countries do at executions, or other dreadful scenes, where they crowd with their babies. The case with English ladies is far different. They have heard the bull-fight not praised from their childhood, but condemned; they see it for the first time when grown up; curiosity is perhaps their leading feature in sharing an amusement, of which they have an indistinct idea that pleasure will be mixed with pain. The first sight delights them; a flushed, excited cheek, betrays a feeling that they are almost ashamed to avow; but as the bloody tragedy proceeds, they get frightened, disgusted, and disappointed. Few are able to sit out more than one course, and fewer ever re-enter the amphitheatre—
“The heart that is soonest awake to the flower
Is always the first to be touched by the thorn.”
Probably a Spanish woman, if she could be placed in precisely the same condition, would not act very differently, and something of a similar test would be to bring her, for the first time, to an English boxing-match. Be this as it may, far from us and from our friends be that frigid philosophy, which would infer that their bright eyes, darting the shafts of Cupid, will glance one smile the less from witnessing these more merciful banderillas.
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