Complete Works of Ford Madox Ford, page 1014
So that I paid relatively little attention to the entry of the fifth bull though it was to be worked by the incomparable Lalanda … I sat there still with the remains of that nightmare heaviness; still with that desire to escape … The sun glared, the people shouted and coloured things moved over the great oval of swept sand … For I find that when I am at a merely dull fight my mind wanders–to the international complications of the day; to the financial ones of the hour; to the subject of my next book; to the minute to spare with which we shall catch the fast train back to Tarascon–or, if one is in St Sebastian, to Hendaye … For I am one of those rare beings who prefer to sit in a nearly empty smooth-rolling train to being thrown to heaven in an autobus constructed to carry twenty-seven and carrying forty-two….
And then suddenly my heaviness was gone–as if a crisis of indigestion had passed … Suddenly the movements below gave me pleasure … I had been on the point of saying: “Attending on bull-fights is a mug’s game” … All of a sudden I felt that I could sit on that hard stone for ever … Lalanda with his mysterious dignity was making to a matador near him a little movement with his hand. I had so little attended that I did not know what it was about…. But Lalanda moves his field with the smallest movements of his wrist whilst he stands apart as if he were a mediæval Italian prince, communing with himself, his arms folded, leaning against a little pillar of a colonnade whilst his courtiers tremble….
And suddenly … there again was bullfighting … You must repeat the word ‘suddenly’ all the time while you sit round the arena … But … Bullfighting … Your heart suddenly moves to a quicker beat; your pulse throbs … What a bull! What a devil … Black; light-footed as a cat … Hurling itself through the air … Weighing a ton of black iron; all of a piece and light as a feather; its tail swinging like the tail of Lucifer; its eyes on everything in the arena at once … A bull! … An animal that even Lalanda may be content to work….
You must remember than when such a matador–but indeed you could almost call him a toreador–when such a matador meets such a bull the interplay of the minds of beast and man is as rapid and as much in sequence as when two matchless swordsmen make sword play … You say with your mind: It will be now: tierce, tierce, quarte, tierce, quartequarte, quarte, tierce-tiercequarte–touché! And your breathlessness comes from the exact realisation of your prevision … It is logical … Why, the chess played by two masters might be a very slowed-down rendering of a bullfight!
For you have to remember that the whole encounter of bull and man is a long programme of strategy from the moment when the bull hurls himself into the arena to the moment when the mules trot swiftly away with him, the bells a-jingle … And with a royally right bull the matador knows just what is passing through the animal’s mind and what will pass through it in five minutes or in seven and a half … Dull bullfighting comes with a matador who cannot read the ball’s mind–or with a bull that does not run true to type … And here Lalanda saw a master-animal–one that would furiously attack everything that it saw, so that he had to arrange everything that it saw till the moment of the volapié … From the first lightning entry of that ferocious devil–and it has always seemed curious to me that the four fiercest of all animals–the bull, the stallion that is more terrible than the bull, the rhinoceros that is a charging castle, and M. Hitler, should all be vegetarians–so from that lightning entry one’s breathless mind and that of the thousands who also look on, is devoted to checking, not so much the perfection of bull and man–for when it is Lalanda and such a bull your mind may be at rest about that–but whether the ritual will exactly take place. Almost as it were you lose interest in the living beings and fix your attention on the run of the tragedy … I think that is why all idea of cruelty goes out of the affair in the minds even of men like myself who though my garden may he brought near to ruin by ants or snails cannot bring myself to kill either and who hate winning out in an argument … It is the intellectual character of the long duel that impresses you–the intellect of the bull with his immense resources and tremendous strength against that of the man armed with a tiny, thin steel rod. Of course if a clumsy picador–and all picadors, because of the Trade Union rules of this occupation are clumsy–if the picador fails to defend his horse you feel a momentary and passing sensation that there is cruelty … But nowadays, with the mattresses all round the animal the horse, at any rate in appearance, is seldom injured more than by the shock of the bull’s forehead … And for myself I have never felt the slightest anxiety about any of the human beings in the arena … I am perhaps callous but to see a man tossed or gored on the ground by the bull gives me almost no emotion at all … That may be because of 1914–1918 or perhaps it is because I have never seen a great matador killed … I remember that when I heard of the death of Maêra by tuberculosis I was more–and more prolongedly–grieved than at the death of any other being not a member of my family or a very intimate friend … And when, at the arrival of the time for the veronique, with a matchless bull and a Lalanda to go through it, that amazing and prolonged dance of butterflies was performed, impenetrably grave Lalanda with his back to his charging adversary, swinging the scarlet cape to right and left in his rear, with the rhythm of a flashing crinoline when a woman runs … why, that so passed out of the realm of human and animal possibilities that I felt that if Lalanda should slip and fall the bull would stand to attention, waving his fleuret and inviting his adversary to recover his feet…. And the knowledge that the bull wouldn’t, only added to my breathlessness…. But that is the impression, that of two courteous and engrossed duellists functioning in a fairy tale.
It is the fantastic and the unthinkable … Lalanda walking towards where we sat, without looking at what was behind him, as if he were humming a tune with a straw between his teeth and thinking out the words of a lyric–and with such a smile on his classical features–why … it was as if he were walking, a marine deity, to his wedding, through scarlet foam with a black attendant dolphin gambolling around him … And the countless thousands, the whole parti-coloured lining of that immense Roman bowl, thinking as I thought, feeling as I felt–to give me the infection of all their minds and the infinite satisfaction of being at one with one’s fellows over a supreme work of an incomparable art! … As if one should stand with a million of one’s fellows all unanimously gasping with overwhelmed admiration at their first sight of Cézanne’s “Baigneur.”
It is to have that feeling of unity in admiration that I go now and then to see a mise à mort–I a man who cannot bring myself to kill a snail and who when I have won out in an argument have a feeling of shame.
The rest of the afternoon was good enough…. When he had killed, Lalanda instead of proceeding round the ring and picking up the torrent of cigarettes, hats and fans, ran straight to the gate by which the bulls enter and came back, all flashing, with a large, black bird of a stocky fellow … Then you should have heard the applause–the crows flying overhead falling dead into the arena … Or they said in Nîmes that they did I did not see it. It was the gardian–the trainer of that unparallelled black thunderbolt who was said to be the brother of Lalanda, though I fancy I was misinformed … I have never seen a man so applauded–not even the Abbé Liszt in St James’s Hall had the equal of it …
It was certainly the greatest occasion that I ever saw of the sort. I suppose it was not so overwhelming a manifestation of admiration as that classic one which Mr Hemingway, I think, was privileged to be present at. Then Joselito–or I think it was Joselito for it was not in the genre of Maêra–purposely manœuvred himself whilst using the banderillos so near the barriers that it seemed impossible that he could escape the bull’s horns … and the whole audience unanimously stood up and shouted: “No; no! It is too dangerous” … But that display of Lalanda was good enough. My American companions were fortunate indeed to see it.
Dominguez, who killed the last bull, performed very soundly and satisfyingly. As a relative novice it was fitting that he should provide a sort of calm … And in it my New York friend explained to me the motive of Biala’s eccentric hissing of Chicuelo–which had been repeated when Dominguez in his turn touched the horn of his bull, though that draughtsman had been silent when Lalanda had done it … You see, Biala had been so infused with the idea, like myself, that this was a duel between courteous opponents that when the matadors went through that prescribed suerte it had affected a gallant spirit as if the more skilled of two participants in a meeting with rapiers should have spat in the weaker fighter’s face …
And curiously enough Dominguez was the only one of the three who killed his bull, dead, sur le pied, his sword going in as if effortlessly at the exact right spot and penetrating to the animal’s heart so that it fell as if struck by lightning … It is now years since I saw that done and then it was done by a great Mexican bull-fighter who had at first, owing to stage fright at his first appearance in Europe, made a hopelessly clumsy display with his first bull on a great occasion with both Maêra and Joselito in the ring. The audience was absolutely merciless to him and, when it came to the second mise à mort, they yelled at him that he should use his left hand since he had made such a mull with his right on the first occasion. He held up his bandaged left hand with an ineffable smile. Without any of us seeing it it had been transfixed by the first bull’s horn. Then he threw his handkerchief in front of the bull’s nose and slowly sat down on it with his back to the bull … To show that he was a brave man! in the position in which he had put himself–for though I have seen many matadors do the like never one so almost touched the animal’s muzzle–he had about an eighty per cent chance of death. Nevertheless the bull backed and he escaped … He made his evocatory speech previous to the mise à mort–it is called I think the brindis–with his cap trembling in his hand through nervousness; put his sword under his armpit as used to be done by the toreadors–who were hidalgos–and with almost no preliminary sighting–whereas when he had sighted his first bull his sword had trembled with his stage fright so that it had been hideous to see–laid the bull stone dead … He got the Toreador March from “Carmen” and the muzzle and the tail and everything in the way of plaudits from the audience that he could get….
I suppose that the matadors of today are so preoccupied with and so practice the muleta that they comparatively neglect the mise à mort itself. Or it may be that such a succession of veronicas as a great matador today puts up is too exhausting to let them be at their best for, let us say, a volapié, In any case, today, the thunderbolt death of the bull is rather rarely seen–and then usually at the hands of no very notable matador. I think it is rather regrettable, But of course the modern preliminaries to the killing are of an almost incredible beauty….
One of my American friends as we came away made under the black outer walls of that Roman building a remark that, curiously enough, exactly duplicated the remark by another young American whom I had taken with a party to a corrida some years ago. The one was from the neighbourhood of Washington Square, the other from Seattle … Each expelled the air from his lungs, took a deep breath and exclaimed: “I feel a better man.” Of course it may have been no more than an expression of relief that the utterer had not fainted during the long afternoon … But I think not.
I am not going to discuss the morality of the mise à mort, but I will tell three anecdotes and make a surmise….
I listened some years ago to the excited denunciation of his country delivered by two young men, the one English and the other American, to an aged Spanish retired diplomat … They said in effect “Stinking Spaniards,” relieving each other in turn for about a quarter of an hour.–We are of course the divinely appointed Lords and Censors of the world. We are taught that in our schools and believe it for the rest of our lives.–When they were completely out of breath the old man–he had been attached to the embassies both of the Court of St James’s and of Washington–bent a little deferentially and said:
“Yes, gentlemen, bull-fighting is a cruel sport. It is to be regretted that its survival should be … necessitated. But …” and he bowed to the English youth … “I read in your papers that every year in your country there are two hundred and fifty thousand prosecutions for cruelty to children and animals–but mostly to children. And,” bowing to the representative of Old Glory, “in your great country there are …” (I do not remember how many) “hundred thousand children of eight employed in coal mines.” He bowed again to both and in his reedy voice added gently:
“Perhaps if in your great Empires you had bull-fighting those expressions of Sadism would not be … necessitated. For you will not find in my country from here in San Sebastian to where Spain ends in the territory of one of your nations, a man or woman who will raise a hand to a child….”
“That,” said the unbeaten Englishman, “is a fine lot of punk. Isn’t it an acknowledged fact that you Dagoes and the South French sell all your girl children to brothels?”
Or again I happened one day to be talking about Maêra to a mixed company in England. I was explaining that the most amazing dexterities of the bull-fighter are not the most spectacular ones. A man who stands the direct charge of an infuriated bull and, not moving his feet from the ground which they occupy, avoids the charge merely by inclining his body aside and at the same time plants a couple of banderillos within a prescribed space of about half a circular foot on each side of the charging animal’s spine as it passes him–such a man will appear to be doing nothing spectacular….
I was interrupted by a roar of “By God …” A magnificent blond colossus with a dragoon’s moustache, a vast morning coat and a copper nose had sprung to his feet.
“By God,” he said, “put the slinking coward on my huntsman’s spare horse and send him over a line of country … But by God if I saw him in my field I would strip all the skin off his body with my whip … By God, I … Sticking children’s skewers into drugged cows … And by God … The Horses … By God, when I think of the horses…”
I will not discuss the morality of fox-hunting … I saw it described lately in a book–by I think a Hungarian–as the martyrdom of a small dog by two hundred and fifty drunkards filled to the teeth with brandy and forty couples of its brothers. But that gentleman is one of the finest masters of hounds that ever made a wide cast on a damp and foggy morning … And to avoid the accusation of Phariseaeism I will confess that I would give no little to be able once again to feel the glorious thrill of waiting, while the pheasants rocket overhead, outside a wood for his hounds to break cover … For undoubtedly fox-hunting is the sport of kings….
So I did not reply to him that, his country being in one of the Home Counties and his field averaging maybe a couple of hundred, and he hunting every day of the season except Sundays, probably as many horses are impaled on stake and binder hedges, break their knees or legs or backs and are shot, sold to the knackers, fed to the hounds or sold to be exported and butchered for human food in Belgium–in his country alone and in one season–than are badly injured by bulls in ten years in the whole of Provence and the Narbonnais too–from Nice to the Spanish border…. So I asked him instead if he had ever faced an infuriated cow.
He said:
“By God, every day of my life … Thousands of them … Any English child could …”
I said:
“It’s more than Maëra would …” I felt I must get a little of my own back. He answered however:
“I told you the coward’s cows are drugged, didn’t I? …” and stumped off. So I didn’t get much….
The other day I was in a mixed company of French and Anglo-Saxons making a little picnic. It was in the paradisaic panorama of a little bay by Cap Banat where the stone pines bend right over the tideless water and the Golden Islands rise out of a sheet of sapphire … It was such a scene as you would have thought would have softened the heart of the chief torturer of Ivan the Cruel …
And suddenly the English youth of whom I have spoken as calling the French stinking swine because they go to bullfights and put garlic in their sandwiches and give them away–that representative of a proud and ancient civilisation uttered a violent and startled objurgation and, brushing something like a golden leaf out of his American aunt’s hair, ground it violently with his heel into the sand….
You should have heard the regret in all those French voices that exclaimed simultaneously:
“Un scarabée d’or … Mais c’est un scarabée d’or …”
The golden scarab is one of the most beautiful, rarest and most innocent of all the bright and innocent things that God has made. That boy’s aunt wore a scarab on her finger–because even the ordinary scarab was venerated by the Egyptians as the symbol of Immortality. And this was the fabulous golden scarab that was one of the attributes of the God PHtah … Those poor bloody Wop-Dagoes, the Provençaux, must, in their corrupt blood, have a certain strain from the time when their ancestors, an effete fellaheen visited these shores, thousands of years ago, and worshipped beasts….
At any rate it was under the gaze of veiled and reproachful eyes–for those people would almost as soon contemplate killing their only child as of killing a golden scarab–that that scion of world-conquerors exclaimed above the little corpse of the emblem of Immortality:
“Didn’t know what it was … Haw … Always kill anything when you don’t know what it is … Might sting … Only prudence…”
It was of course a fine day and he had not yet sent the soul of anything before its Maker….
And that boy was one of the ornaments … I mean really one of the ornaments … of a venerated educational establishment that for hundreds of years has taught youth the languages of Sappho and Catullus and–for hundreds and hundreds of years–manners … and the humanities! I have said that before. But I repeat it again. Some educationalist in England chancing on this book might dip into it and read a few words; so he has twice as many chances of coming across this suggestion for the avoidance of wars….
