Metador

BELMONTE, THE MATADOR -- Henry Baerlein--Smith & Haas ($3.50).

"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 marvelous muleta he reminds us of his divine origin. . . ."

So wrote Don Modesto of Madrid, most feared of bullfight critics, after seeing Juan Belmonte for the first time. For the 15 years (1912-27) of Belmonte's ring career all Spain proudly echoed Don Modesto's opinion. Biographer Baerlein goes even further, puts Belmonte on a level with Cervantes and Goya. Readers who liked Ernest Hemingway's Death in the Afternoon will want to read this rambling Hispanophile book about Spain's No. 1 modern matador.

Juan Belmonte, born in Seville, was the rickety son of an easygoing shopkeeper, whose shiftless ways landed his family in the poorhouse before his son's fame brought him better fortune. Juan was a puny child, and his legs were never any good, but when he and his cronies play-acted as matadors he was acknowledged the best. It was dangerous play: they swam the Guadalquivir at night, climbed into a bullpen and played the bulls naked, using their shirts as matadors' capes. Banderillero Calderon took Belmonte under his wing, taught him everything he knew, made him walk every day to strengthen his feeble legs, carrying an iron rod. From the very beginning of his career Belmonte was frequently hurt: his bad legs made it impossible for him to run fast; he always let the bull pass him too close for comfort, sometimes too close lor safety. He served a rough apprenticeship in the ring, fighting wherever and for whatever he could. With his first profits he rescued his family from the poorhouse.

Though Belmonte was beginning to be acclaimed in 1912, a bullfight in Valencia that year paid him only 80 pesetas; ni 1927 an afternoon in the same place netted him 35,000. Credited with revolutionizing the art of bullfighting, Belmonte made it more dangerous. He worked closer to the bull than his predecessors, and he went to the bull wherever it happened to be (previously certain parts of the arena had been considered impossibly dangerous for the matador). While he fought with what bullfight fans speak of as "emotion," he aroused even more emotion in the gasping spectators. ". . . He avails himself of no advantage in the fight and at the end of it the horns go past him at the same two millimeters distance as at the beginning, for he does not use his legs." In contrast with his friendly rival Joselito, who in the course of killing 1,557 bulls was badly gored only four times (the last time fatally), Belmonte never passed through a season without at least one bad wound.

A curious Englishman called on the famed Belmonte to watch him prepare be fore a fight. "The first thing that Bel monte undressed and then dressed was the repulsive wound extending through his jaw and to his nose; then he took off the lower part of his pajamas and exposed some open sores which he had on his thighs, some souvenirs of lessons in the art of fighting closely . . . but when he laid the upper portion of his body bare . . . there was such a criss-cross of old wounds and new ones that the Briton fled." But Belmonte is still alive. Prudent, he saved enough money to buy a ranch in Andalusia, with his Peruvian wife lives there now, a retired national idol at 42.

The Author. In spite of his name and his southern-European style of writing, Henry Baerlein was born in the very Brit ish spot of Manchester, on April Fool's Day 59 years ago. But Manchester could not hold him long. World-wide traveler, his particular provinces are the Near East. Mexico, Spain, the republics of Central Europe. He speaks many languages fluently, some like a native. (In Albania his glibness brought him under suspicion of being a Jugoslav spy.) Author Baerlein says of himself: "Henry Baerlein has this resemblance to a happy country in tint he is rather devoid of history. . . ." Other hooks: The House of the Fighting Cocks, Over the Hills of Ruthenia, The March of the 70,000, Mariposa, Dreamy Rivers (TIME, Dec. 29, 1930).

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