A THOUSAND AND ONE FIGHTS

Evening Star, Issue 21819, 7 September 1934, Page 12

A THOUSAND AND ONE FIGHTS

THE STORY OF JUAH BELMONTE SPAIN’S GREATEST TERERO He stumped upon a wooden leg and thrust a bill into my hand outside an hotel in Madrid. He was dressed in the faded glory of a banderillero, and in a spate of whining Spanish he begged me to buy tickets for a forthcoming bullfight. His scarred and hungry face, as well as the wooden stump for a leg, roused my compassion. I gave him a few pesetas. “ Gracias, senor,” was all he said, and hurried away to the nearest wine shop, an out-of-work, unwanted bullfighter. That is how I visualise the bullfighter when the “ blood and sand ” literature of te-day, which is still so popular, comes into my hands (writes W. J. Makin, in 1 John o’ London’s Weekly ’). For the bull-fighter has gone into the library. He has doffed the cloak of the corrida and become a philosopher at large. Like Gene Tunney, he has a taste for metaphysics as well as for the blood of the arena. In.his turn the poet and writer has entered the bullring. If Mr Ernest Hemingway, ■in ‘ Death in the Afternoon,’ has not yet tried his hand with a sword he is at the moment hunting wildebeest© in East Africa. But one South African friend, Roy Campbell, author of ‘The Flaming_ Terrapin,’ confessed to me that he desired nothing better than to achieve the superb skill of the espada. He sincerely believes the sword to be mightier than the pen. To the literature of the bullring now comes another book. It is ‘ Belmonte, the Matador,’ by Henry Baerlein. Henry Baerlein is a Manchester-horn writer whose books have hitherto been confined to the Balkans. Now he has entered the turbulent arena of Spain, and given us a really excellent, biography of the greatest man who ever entered the bullring. . _ They still speak affectionately in Spain to-day of Juan Belmonte. It has been said that the revolution saw the end of the best bullfighters, and that nowadays youthful Spain prefers to watch football. From my own experience I would say that bullfights are as popular as ever. Only the brilliance of men such as Juan Belmonte is dim against the bungling methods of the modern espada. . , The little bent man, the subject of this biography, is now some forty-two years of. age. Six years ago he was wounded at Barcelona, and announced his retirement. He began in the slums of Seville. Now he is a wealthy land and cattle owner in Andalusia. Belmonte made bullfight history before the decadence set in. He also made a considerable fortune, being paid as much as £20,000 for a single month’s fighting in Mexico and South America. For the most part Mr Baerlein has delved into the mass of romantic histories about Belmonte which may_ be bought for a few pesetas in the neighbourhood of most bullrings in Spain. Here as an example is the prose-fight of one Don Modesto, who writes an article, ‘ The Phenomenon,’ concerning this under-sized, spindle-legged Knight of the Rueful Visage: — “ . . . When he was born, seeing that the mould was broken out of which the good toreros had been fashioned, the Creator took some clay between His fingers, hastily modelled it into the form of a man, breathed into it from His august lips, and exclaimed as He finished the work: ‘ There you have a torero 1’ ' That piece of clay, modelled by the Supreme Architect, fell into Triana, and being baptised had the name of Juan Belmonte. He is ugly, very ugly, with bowed shoulders, rather bandy-legged, and with, an excessive chin. But, gentlemen, he was made by God, and when he begins with the cape and when he unfolds his marvellous muleta he reminds us of his divine origin. Belmonte, I say, is a phenomenon.” It is all rather like a modern sporting writer’s description of Don Bradman at the wicket. But this is mild prose compared with other journalistic descriptions of “ The Phenomenon.” One Spanish writer says “he arrests time.” Before long he- had _ entered into that dictionary of superlatives confined usually to film stars. He became Belmonte el Tragico, the Genius of his Race—Cervantes, Goya, Belmonte; lie was Blessed J uan the Dominator, Saint Juan of Triana, Saint Juan of the Revelation, and when he stepped upon American soil he was Jack the Earthquake Cataclysm, Cataract, Inundation, and Universal Flood.

When Juan Belmonte was first pointed out to me in an hotel in Madrid I cpuld -not believe his reputation. The man had a pale face, slight, build, and a limp. His hip joints have never functioned properly. , When he walks his back is humped and the pale face twisted with pain. He. is pure Spanish, and not a gipsy like so many other bull-fighters. But see him fighting in the ring and the bent little man is transformed. His feet move with the agility of a boxer’s. His body is as lithe and elas-t tic as a dancer’s. He rises on his toes until he seems double his height, and the flash of his sword means a clean death to the, bull. It is Belmonte who adopted that* style of in-fighting which is the real art. No one works in a closer circle. It is all clever footwork, and when he waves his cloak and the bull dashes forward it is only by inches that he is missed. There is a great thrill in watching Belmonte. He has not escaped unscathed. He used to bo wounded several tinies during a season. But, as Mr Hemingway has said —and one goes back to ‘ Death in the Afternoon ’ for the most brilliant descriptions—Belmonte broke the traditional , methods of bull-fighting because of his smallness, his lack of strength, and his feeble legs. Big bulls were always difficult for Belmonte, although easier for his strong rival, Joselito. So they deliberately bred smaller bulls for Belmonte, who could then do wonderful things with rapier and cloak. The rivalry between these two great bull-fighters ended when Joselito v,'as killed in the ring on May. 16, 1920.

“ I don’t think death wants me,” Belmonte once said. “ I am too old. I am forty. Death has a certain cruel refinement in such matters. It wants young men like Joselito, full of joy and with long life ahead of him.” .In this hot-blooded and hectic biography Mr Baerlein traces Belmonte’s early days, when he used to swim the Guadalquivir River at night to practise. by moonlight and risk his life in forbidden bull pens, his wanderings in Prance and Portugal, his efforts to earn enough money to keep his genial but unreformed father’s crowd of children out of the workhouse. Those first fights by a naked boy in the moonlight against the cows have become enshrined in the romantic history of Belmonte. ■ • Ho swam across the river with his shirt tied round his .head, and when he got among the cows he used the shirt as a muleta. These were Miura

cows, the carefully-selected mothers of the formidable Miura breed. Naturally, as a cow does not fight in the ring, she may acquire the knowledge that the cloth is not a portion of the matador who waves it._ . . .It was the case with those Miuras whom the naked boy engaged. He fought them one by one, as he could separate them from the herd. That moonlit scene, the slimness of the boy, the wrath of those dim figures with the gleaming, cruel horns —has made one of the writers on Belmonte say that this should have been painted by the brush of Zuloaga. Mr Baerlein asserts that Belmonte does not seek the intellectuals; the intellectuals seek him. If so, he is not the only public idol who fails to recognise his own portrait. I believe Belmonte was most sincere when he confessed that before a fight he was frankly scared. “If I am like other men, then all the world is composed of cowards,” he says. “I have witnessed too many tragedies to go into mortal battle with a light heart. The two or three hours that precede a combat are like hell for me. lam frankly frightened, and cold chills run up and down my spine. And friends who conic around at those times with tragic stories got thrown out. I put up a brave front and boast loudly, just to drown out the fear whispering in my heart. I don’t want to hear it. I’m frightened.” I: think we may leave this portrait of a bull-fightor at that..