SCRIBNER'S MAGAZINE VOL. XXII SEPTEMBER, 1897 NO. 3 SAN SEBASTIAN, THE SPANISH NEWPORT By William Henry Bishop ILLUSTRATIONS BY L. MARCHETTI SIGHT o'clock ! Not a very early hour, of a midsummer morning, but at San Sebastian it seems a little earlier than elsewhere. San Sebastian is a late sitting up place. Its nights are not "made for study and a brow of care," as the poet Willis says. It does not burn the midnight oil; but it burns, in ample supply, the festal rocket and red fire, and the arc and incandescent lights that shed around a radiance as bright as day. Consequently when one has watched so late he must sleep in the morning to make up for it. Last night, for instance, as well as I can recollect, I dined at nine o'clock, and then I went out to spend the evening. The dinner-hour is made very late, in order to devote to the promenade the cool of the afternoon, the sunset hours, when the sun goes down, with magnificent glow and twilight effects, between the island and the mountains, just across the front of the beautiful bay. I sat in one of the multitude of yellow chairs, or walked with the people, listening to the concert, on the Boulevard the Bulevar, as the Spanish form is-and then went to the concert in front of the Casino. The bands play alternately, and it is the custom to pass from one to the other. I stepped in to hear an act at the Teatro Principal. Or rather, I heard an entire piece, for the plays are short and completed within the hour; it is not necessary to spend the whole evening there, which is fortunate, as it is a stuffy kind of place and the companies are of but average merit. Next I went to the Casino, glanced at the periodicals in the reading-room, then at the gamingrooms-far less interesting than at Monte Carlo-tried to learn if there were any celebrities in the crowd taking refreshments on the terrace, and then went up to look at the dancing in the beautiful ball-room. When I left, at a passably late hour, the little tables in front of the Café de la Marina, on the Bulevar, were still occupied by people taking ices, and another ball was going on at the Cantabrian Club. Some of the feminine participants had come forth for a breathing spell, and were looking down in pleasing attitudes from its terrace on the second story. Those people will see the pale daylight dawn over the bay, for the Cantabrian Club is a most select association; it does not often give entertainments, and when it does they want to make the most of them. Eight o'clock is especially associated in mind with the return of the regiments from their drill-grounds, beyond the Queen Regent's summer palace, their bands play Copyright, 1897, by Charles Scribner's Sons. All rights reserved. ing at their head. They wheel at our corner in a precisely mathematical right angle, and away to their barracks in the old fortress on Mount Urgull. Their uniform, blue and red, might easily be mistaken for that of the French, except for the peculiar white cap, characteristically Spanish. They are small men, as a rule, young and even boyish-looking. One regards them now with the heightened interest we give to that over which a melancholy fate may be impending. For the destination of most Spanish troops now is Cuba, and, in the country itself, the war in Cuba is regarded as an almost hopeless affair. They hardly expect to reduce and retain their rebellious colony, but they say they must put forth all their efforts for the pundonor, the point of honor: they must not consent to the dismemberment of their territory. Surely there is less than usual in this kind of a motive to lighten the gloomy prospect of death in battle or by jungle fever. 66 66 Long before eight the newsboys had been crying the morning paper; and, indeed, while taking my coffee, I had often read many a column of it. The Voice!" they would cry. "The Voice!" The Voice of Guipúzcoa!" I wish I could accurately represent the lamenting and musical tone. Guipúzcoa is the province, and prosperous San Sebastian, population 28,ooo, its capital. There is hardly any such good plan for making an intimate acquaintance with a town as to read its local paper on the spot. It is better than guides, better even than intelligent friends, who insist on showing you only what is extraordinary in the place, whereas it is the ordinary and usual that are often the most novel to the stranger, and always the most abounding in real interest. This Voice is a good newspaper, even after American ideas, with plenty of local news. It tells who goes and who comes. Plenty of grandees of Spain among the arrivals. But there are plenty left to go elsewhere, too, for at Biarritz are registered, all at one time, not less than six dukes, with such famous names as those of Alba, Bejar, Fernan Nuñez, and Prim. San Sebastian and Biarritz supplemented each other, the residents of each country easily getting a complete change of air by going to the other. This would be the case even more but for the tedious custom-house delay at the frontier. On bull-fighting days excursionists pour over from France by thousands. The arena is but a step from the station, and, the spectacle finished, they storm the trains in a scene of wild animation. An effort to keep all these people and their money at home, by opening bull rings there, was the cause of the late tumults in the south of France, for the more humane French Government would not have it. Our newspaper announces the speedy coming of the foremost bull-fighters of Spain, Guerrita and Mazzantini, for the great functions about August 15th. It announces also the Señoritas Toreras, quite a new sensation in the field, a company of young girl bull-fighters, none of them more than seventeen years old. It says that the Queen Regent will visit, to-morrow, the cruiser lying in the harbor. We shall probably be able to see her. It says that the famous statesman, Castelar, is staying at the Villa Triana. Good! we must look out for him, on the promenade or the terrace of the Casino. It announces the Choristers of Clavé. This is a convention of popular singing societies, who come in a few days later, and fill the town with their banners and red Phrygian caps. They sing in the arena, devoting that place of blood for once to something worthier than the torture of poor animals. But it is mismanaged, and the choristers are exposed, under the open sky, to a heavy downpour of rain, and are soaked to the skin. One could wish that the Voice were not quite so bitter in its tone toward Cuba; but this very bitterness is a useful indication of the prevailing discouragement about the struggle. "If the worst comes to the worst," we find it saying, "let us leave only, to the Santa Maria -the Old Church negroes, who will inherit the island, a the gunner does not chance to forget it. smoking heap of ruins." However, it pitches into the Ayuntamiento, the municipal government, almost as fiercely. Its standing grievance is the lack of enterprise of the city fathers: they do not give fêtes enough; they do nothing whatever to draw in the strangers and increase the prosperity of the town. "Nothing is heard of, on all sides," it exclaims indignantly," but the sloth, the parsimony and criminal negligence of our local rulers." Again it essays biting sarcasm, and imagines a mock programme of public festivities as follows: 1. At daylight, grand procession of ash-carts and milkmen, going their rounds. 2. Firing of the mid-day gun-in case 4. 3. Grand procession of shop-girls, going to and from their work.-Unsurpassed display of fetching style and grace. Grand reading of the afternoon penny papers at the cafés. Economical diversion this, in no way deleterious to health." And so on and so forth. However valid these complaints may be, it is certain that San Sebastian is progressing at a rapid rate in spite of them. Its selection as a summer residence by the court, and the building of the villa for the Queen Regent, a few years ago, cannot fail of producing yet more extensive effects. There are but few villas as yet, but whole streets and whole quarters of six-story apartment houses, on the usual foreign |