Ellen M. Whishaw

Life in the patio—Locked doors and lovers—The uses of the grated gate—Courting under difficulties: the keyhole and the crack—Manolo and Carmencita, a romance in real life.

The great event to which the whole creation moves in the eyes of a Spanish seÑorita—not being a resident in Madrid—is the annual fair in the capital town of her province. This generally takes place in the spring, and therefore, for her, the spring is the end and not the beginning of the year, looked forward to with increasing excitement through autumn and winter, while to that young lady summer is but the beginning of the long year which has to be lived through until spring and LA FERIA, in capital letters, comes round again.

I, like the Spanish seÑorita, will begin my Spanish year with the summer, if not exactly for the same reason, for one akin to it. The great heat of summer, with its dust, mosquitoes, and flies, is the most trying time in all the twelve months in this country, as the spring is the most enjoyable; and wise people keep the best to the last.

Let it not be supposed, however, that summer in Spain has no compensations. They are many and various, and not the least among them is the life of the patio, which begins in June and ends in September.

The patio is always spoken of as one of the peculiar charms of southern Spain, but how many of my readers, who have not visited the country, know exactly what it is? I myself, before I came here, had a vague idea that it was something in the nature of a yard, and I remember that on seeing a huge corral for cattle, attached to a farmhouse near Tarifa and so large as to be visible from the steamer as we approached Gibraltar, I asked whether that was a patio!

The Andalucian house of to-day is in essentials the direct descendant of the house built by the Greeks who colonised Andalucia, or Tartessus, as they called it, some six or seven centuries B.C. The pylon, now called the zaguan, is the vestibule leading from the street door direct into the peristyle, the open courtyard round which the house is built, now known as the patio. In the daytime the zaguan is open to the street, but entrance to the patio is barred by a large iron grille, which can only be opened from within. The Romans continued the Greek form of house, with slight structural modifications, and added the solarium, an open gallery or arcade intended for basking in the sun. This feature is common in the older houses of Andalucia to-day, although those of more modern construction lack it, and the inmates when they wish to sun themselves go up to the azotea, the flat brick roof on which the family washing is usually hung out to dry. The names azotea and zaguan are both Arabic, showing, were demonstration needed, that neither the Visigoths nor the Arabs made any essential alterations in the structure of the houses they found when they respectively conquered Andalucia.

The patio is a central court off which numerous rooms open, always including the summer dining-room and the summer kitchen, their winter counterparts being on the floor above. There is also a sala or reception-room, and in old houses this may have beautifully carved Arabic roof-beams, filled in with fine fifteenth- or sixteenth-century lustre tiles: for while the upper stories are frequently modernised and sometimes brought quite up to date in the matter of bathrooms, ample windows, and effective ventilation, the patio with the dark rooms surrounding it is very seldom reconstructed. It is only used as a refuge from the summer heat, and the architects of to-day wisely refrain from interfering with the shadowy lights and cool refreshing temperature which make life enjoyable even when the thermometer outside stands at 110 or more in the shade.

Great doors—sometimes of mahogany, cedar, or lignum-vitÆ four inches thick, studded with large brass or iron nails, and adorned with corner pieces, lock, key, and knockers, all richly wrought to match—shut off the zaguan from the street. All day long these stand open, as though inviting the passer-by to step in and admire the patio within, the whole of which can be seen through the cancela or iron grille already mentioned: but at night they are closed and secured with a huge iron bolt, often two or three feet long. The noise made by the closing of these doors at night, and the shrieks of the great bolts, which are never by any chance oiled, can be heard one after the other all along the street, and are liable to interfere a good deal with the beauty sleep of the stranger. But, unless there is a velada or a tertulia going on, the noise is all over by 11 p.m. or earlier, because custom requires that respectable houses should present blank faces to the moonbeams a full hour before midnight.

If you ask how this can be when every one knows that Spanish gentlemen make a practice of turning night into day at their cafÉs and clubs, I must call your attention to the postigo, a little low wicket opening in one of the great doors. The stern father, forgetful of his own youthful escapades, or determined that his son shall not follow in his footsteps, may order the door to be locked at eleven every night; but there is always a corruptible servant or a tender-hearted sister on the watch to lift the latch of the postigo and screen the young scapegrace from the paternal ire.

We may take it for granted that when the sister connives at her brother’s late hours, it is not to enable him to gamble at his club or drink more than is good for him at the cafÉ. It must be a love affair that enlists pretty Amparo’s sympathies and keeps her out of her bed to all hours. She has probably been listening to the professions of devotion of her own forbidden lover until long after midnight, and thus all her sympathies are with Manolo, who also has lost his heart without permission from the parents.

In these cases the soft nothings have to be breathed between the bars of the stout iron gratings which are placed outside every ground-floor window, not only as a precaution against malefactors, but, as a young Spaniard once told me, “to keep the girls in and the boys out.” To English ideas this seems a poor enough way to make love, but in some country towns even the grating is not considered sufficient protection for the youth and beauty within, and I know of one case in which the grandfather, a blue-blooded old aristocrat and a good deal of a martinet, had wire netting fixed all over the ground-floor windows to prevent his granddaughters being kissed between the bars! Such are the difficulties attendant on pelando la pava (plucking the turkey) or comiendo hierro (eating iron), as these grating courtships are called.

In old houses, no matter how large, it is not unusual to see only a single window, with its inevitable grating, on the ground floor of the street front—a survival of the Oriental idea of the seclusion of women, for down to the sixteenth century, in southern Spain, no windows at all opened on to the street. This one window, which generally lights the porter’s lodge, will be appropriated by the daughter of the house if she encourages a secret admirer. The servants are always on the side of romance, and will not hesitate to aid the lovers by every means in their power, so the old porter, who is supposed by his mistress to see that no illicit interviews go on after dark, finds no difficulty in taking a nap in his rocking-chair in the patio, while la niÑa, whom he has known and spoilt from her cradle, sits at his window and listens to the passionate whispers of her admirer in the street.

Meanwhile the maid-servants have their own sweethearts to attend to, and, failing a second window, it might seem difficult to get into communication, for the daughters of the respectable poor are as strictly chaperoned as the seÑoritas, and a girl would lose her character if she had an “evening out,” unless under the wing of her mother or some female friend of mature years. But love laughs at locksmiths, and a friend of mine told me how he learnt by personal experience the way in which the courting is managed in such cases, after the street door is closed.

He was going home along the main street of the country town in which his father lived. The night was dark and the street lamps few and dim, and he stumbled over something soft lying along the pavement in front of the door of a large house. A sibilant whispering relieved his first fear that an assassin’s knife had been at work. It was a young man lying full length on the ground, with his lips at the crack under the door, talking to his sweetheart, who lay on the floor inside, while another maid-servant and her lover had possession of the keyhole, and the seÑorita in the grated window modestly pulled the curtain to hide herself from my friend’s glance when she heard his footsteps approach.

These be the amenities of summer. In winter fewer lovers are to be seen about the streets, because bad colds and stiff necks are apt to be caught by young men—even though wrapped in the voluminous cloak so dear to romance—who stand for many hours out of doors “eating iron” with their feet in a puddle, staring up at the beloved in the balcony of the first floor whereon she resides from October to June. Indeed, I know of one love affair that was broken off, never to be renewed, because the girl took offence at the prolonged absence of her admirer, who, poor fellow, was in bed with influenza and unable to get the sad intelligence conveyed to his goddess at her window.

In this case the mother’s opposition had reached an acute stage, and the love-sick Manolo’s explanation fell into the wrong hands. Intimation was sent, as from Carmencita, that her legitimate fiancÉ was offended by Manolo’s attentions, and that they were therefore unwelcome: and as the unfortunate youth on his sick-bed had no means of getting into direct communication with his charmer, he had to sigh with such patience as he might until the weather improved and he could return to the window bars, and demand an explanation of that cruel message. Meanwhile Carmencita was told that Manolo’s absence was due to the attractions of a new novia: in which, seeing that these loves of the grating are taken up and dropped as easily as a travelling acquaintance, there was nothing inherently improbable. So she wept profusely at his supposed inconstancy, and when she learnt the truth adopted the last resource open to the heart-broken seÑorita—hysterics, and threats to refuse food (a mode of coercing the authorities in vogue among revolting daughters here long before it was adopted by the suffragettes), and to fling herself from the azotea into the patio below, unless she were allowed to write to Manolo and assure him of her undying devotion.

But alas! Manolo, although of good family, had no money and no prospects, whereas the distinguished SeÑor Conde de las Patillas Blancas,[1] although he had begun life as an assistant in a grocer’s shop, had gone to Cuba before the war with America had destroyed that mine of riches for Spaniards who knew how to make their account out of it, and having returned wealthy had revived a title to which he may or may not have had a legal claim. Thus he was now in every respect a most desirable parti for the fair Carmencita.

So Manolo rose from his bed of sickness to read in the local paper that “the aristocratic and affluent SeÑor Conde de las Patillas Blancas had asked the hand of the exquisitely beautiful young SeÑorita Carmen Perez y Dominguez, daughter of the Marquises[2] of Campos Abandonados”—literally “deserted fields,” but perhaps best paraphrased into the familiar English title of Bareacres.

As Manolo well knew, this was the end. For not only is the mother in Spain absolute mistress in the matter of her daughter’s marriage, but Carmencita herself, once she had shed the conventional tears over the loss of her lover, was perfectly well aware on which side her bread was buttered. Both these young people were intimate friends of mine, and if I had consented to act as go-between when I went to congratulate Carmencita on her engagement, and incidentally provoked a torrent of tears by remarking on Manolo’s fortunate recovery, it is just possible that she might have made a fresh effort to get her own way. But it is the part of wisdom not to meddle with Spanish love affairs, which are seldom or never quite what they seem, and in her inconstant little heart Carmencita certainly thanked me for refusing to carry any messages. As for Manolo, he consoled himself by marrying an heiress a year or so after, and disappears from this veracious history.

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CHAPTER II

Social life in a mountain town—Moslem traditions—The etiquette of betrothal—Wedding presents—The trousseau—Little tragedies of Spain—Dramatic Carmencita—Compensations for the Countess.

If I were to describe the scene of the wedding where it actually took place, it is just possible that some of those concerned, if they happened to see this book, might recognise themselves. I will therefore transfer it to the picturesque mountain town of Ronda, which, although frequented by tourists, and boasting two really comfortable hotels, still preserves some peculiar local customs.

Of these perhaps the most noticeable is the Moslem tradition of the separation of the sexes. The numerous travellers, both native and foreign, who spend a day in the town on their way to or from Algeciras in the spring or autumn, have as yet made no impression on the conservatism of the RondeÑos, and one has only to stroll up and down the Paseo de la Merced on a Sunday night in summer to see that social customs in Ronda are quite unaffected by contact with the outer world.

The heat of the day being over, and a cool west wind rustling the leaves of the avenues of planes, the purple peak of La Liba, which forms the clou of a charming picture, is suddenly blotted out as the electric light is switched on. In the matter of street lighting Spain is by no means behind the age. The Spanish love for a blaze of light out of doors probably accounts for the strides made by the electric lighting industry during the last few years. It is true that often even well-to-do people are still content to illuminate their houses with a cheap paraffin lamp, or even with a candil of brass with its tiny wick fed with olive oil. But once these lovers of display realised that a few arc lamps hung along the Paseo turned night into day, and that electricity would enable the gilded youth to display his new straw hat of the English shape, his beautiful red tie, and his shiny brown boots at least as well at midnight as at noon, the towns found money for street lighting without apparent difficulty, and now there is hardly a village, even in the plains where there is no water-power available, that is not lit by electricity. I have seen electric lamps at every street corner in a place to which there is no means of access save a mule track, and no contact with the outer world save a visit from the postman on his donkey two or three times a week, if there happen to be any letters to deliver.

Ronda with its wonderful Tajo, through which the Guadalevin rushes in a torrent during the winter rains, was provided with electric light when I first visited it ten or eleven years ago. At that time the power used to fail ignominiously in the summer, at which season all the water of the shrunken river has to be turned into the irrigation channels, as has been the legal right of the numerous market gardeners in the valley from Arabic times. Now steam has been brought in to supplement the water-power, and the lighting of the principal hotels, and above all of the Paseo, is as brilliant as any one can desire.

In summer it is too hot to stroll about with comfort in the daytime, and the youth of both sexes had little opportunity of contemplating each other’s charms at that season until artificial light came to the rescue. Now, especially on a Sunday night, the whole town crowds into the Paseo, where under powerful arc lights the young people can admire each other to their hearts’ content.

One of the curious customs of the place is that all the pretty girls march up and down, from two to six or seven together, while their portly mothers and aunts sit and fan themselves on the stone benches and chairs ranged along both sides of the walk. The young men also march up and down, also in groups, but carefully confining themselves to either side of the broad space in the centre occupied by the girls. Each town in Spain is socially a law to itself, and it seems to be contrary to Ronda etiquette for the men to walk with the girls under any condition whatever, although in other places the presence of a duenna makes it quite correct.

Engaged couples may enter the Paseo together (of course properly chaperoned) but they must not join in the promenade. They may only sit under the trees with the mother or the aunt, and console themselves for their enforced retirement by squeezing each other’s hands under cover of the shadows cast by the overhanging boughs. But if the girl happens to come late, her fiancÉ gets a chance to show himself. Then he may walk up and down as much as he pleases in the midst of the swarm of girls, pretending to be looking for his sweetheart. I watched Carmencita’s elderly lover at this performance one Sunday night, and every time he got well into the focus of one of the arc lamps he stopped short with the light full on him, glancing this way and that with assumed anxiety as to the whereabouts of the lady, although he knew, and she knew, and all their friends and acquaintances knew, that his charmer would not appear till the band began to play at ten o’clock.

Carmencita’s wedding was fixed for July, partly because the summer, when the boys are home from school and university, is the gayest time here, but mainly because propriety demands that the religious ceremony shall take place within quite a few weeks of that known as “asking for the hand”—in other words, the signing of the marriage contract. The noviazgo, which is not strictly speaking an engagement, but rather a protracted courtship which may or may not end in a wedding, sometimes goes on for years and is then broken off, without any blame attaching to the jilt, be he male or female. It is quite an understood thing that there is no moral obligation to marry as long as the hand of the lady has not been formally “asked.” But once this has been done, not by the lover but by some relative of the elder generation, the marriage is regarded as the necessary consequence, and a man or woman who declined to fulfil the engagement after that ceremony had been gone through would be mal mirado—badly looked at—which is more or less equivalent to being sent to Coventry.

So when I heard that Carmen was finally engaged I knew it would not be long before I received an invitation to the wedding, which came in due course, printed in silver on a highly glazed card. It was not strictly speaking an invitation at all, for it merely set out at full length the names and titles of the bride and bridegroom and their parents (and Spanish names and titles are as long as a Presbyterian sermon), and announced the day and hour of the wedding without “requesting the pleasure of my company.” The opposite side of the card contained an identical announcement on the part of the bridegroom.

On the day before the wedding I went, by Carmencita’s special request, to see her trousseau, which to the Andalucian bride is even more exciting than the wedding presents.

She received me in a dainty bata, a garment which is a cross between a tea-gown and a pinafore, with her hair loose and falling below her waist, and her eyes were so bright and her laugh so gay that I felt sure she was as contented as were her parents with the affluent future before her. She took me to the winter reception-rooms upstairs, which looked as if they were prepared for a sale of work. On a number of tables and chairs were displayed the presents—innumerable sofa cushions, embroidered night-dress cases, crocheted table-covers, antimacassars, lace d’oyleys, and so forth; with the more solid offerings of glass, china and plate from older relatives half lost to sight among the hand-made gifts from Carmencita’s schoolfellows and girl friends.

But the presents were completely eclipsed by the far more important personal outfit of the little bride. Trestle tables filled the middle of the long room from end to end, and looked something like reefs under the froth of breaking waves, so covered were they with house and table linen, towels and side-cloths edged with wonderfully complicated fleco morisco (“Arabic fringe”), and a fluff and foam of personal wear of fine lawn, lace, and muslin enough to last a lifetime, all made by Carmencita and her sisters and her friends, and all exquisitely embroidered with her initials in an endless variety of interlacing monograms. The wealthiest English or American bride might be proud to wear such lingerie as I saw there.

As soon as her tiny hands can hold a needle, the Spanish seÑorita is taught by the nuns at her school to sew in this dainty fashion, and from her earliest childhood she devotes the fruits of her labours to furnishing her trousseau; for here the bride brings all the house linen as part of her dowry, and long before she is old enough to have a lover her careful mother will provide the huge quantities of fine linen and lace, and the pounds of embroidery silk and cotton which are required for the proper plenishing of one of those great carved chests in which the daughters of the house have stored their wedding outfits for centuries past.

If the daughter passes out of her teens without being married the chest will be full long before it is required, and indeed sometimes it is never needed at all; for unless a girl is rich, or of distinguished family, or, if poor, remarkably beautiful, it is quite likely that no one will ever ask for her hand.

And sometimes poverty descends on the family, and the daughters, orphaned and penniless when already past their youth and unable to earn any sort of a living, are reduced to selling one by one all the produce of so many years of industry to satisfy the claims of hunger, or, if the old house has been sold, to pay the rent of some wretched little room which in their prosperous days they would hardly have given to a maid-servant. I have witnessed pathetic scenes when ladies of gentle birth have come to me in the dusk of evening to ask if I will buy some dainty embroidery or delicate pillow lace “to help a friend who has lost her money.” And to the end they will try to salve their hurt pride by keeping up this transparent fiction, holding the bedspread or pillow-case upside down, in the hope that until they have left with the money in their pockets I may not notice that the initials worked on it are their own.[3]

But these are the little tragedies that lie beneath the surface, and we must not dwell on them, for we have not done yet with the trousseau of our Carmencita.

She was only seventeen when her fate was decided, so her chest was not quite full; but fortunately there were enough nearly finished sheets and pillow-cases and so forth in those of her younger sisters to supply all deficiencies; and every afternoon through the weeks before the wedding the three little marquesitas and their girl friends had sat together in their cool patio under the orange and palm trees in the shade of the heavy canvas awning, stitching away for dear life, amid an incessant prattle about clothes and lovers, and a continual munching of chocolates flavoured with cinnamon.

Space for the unknown bridegroom’s initials had as usual been left on all the house linen when it was made, but in this case only the Count’s coronet had to be worked, and a heavy strain on girlish invention was thus avoided, for there is not much variety about a coronet, while it takes a good deal of imagination to vary an initial several dozen times.

Oddly enough, my admiration of some beautiful stitching in this heraldic ornament seemed to upset Carmencita’s equanimity, and in an instant her sunny smile and gay chatter turned into a tempest of sobs and tears.

“You are cruel, barbarous, DoÑa Elena, to remind me of all I am losing! How can you dream that I am consoled by being a rich Countess for the loss of the wealth of love lavished upon me by my adored Manolo? I am a martyr, a victim to the ambition of my parents! Even now at the last moment I think I shall declare that my heart is Manolo’s and I will never marry any but him! Madre mia de mi alma! how terrible is this life! Better that I had flung myself from the roof, as I wanted to do when they forbade me to see my Manolo: then I should have been spared this torment, this broken heart which will end by dragging me into the grave!”

I was pretty sure that the theatrical outburst was provoked by a more or less conscious desire to play up to the situation and to be consistent to the last: for Carmencita, as I have hinted, had already made me her confidante, and Spaniards are born actors. She would feel better all her life for having dramatically rounded off the play to her audience of one, and I would not spoil the climax by any lack of sympathy.

“True, true, my child,” I answered, “you are indeed a martyr, but it is to duty. Think of the season in Madrid that you will be able to share with your sisters—the theatres, the receptions, the dances! With your birth and the Count’s wealth you will certainly be received at Court, and what higher destiny could be offered to you than to take Pura and Dolores away from this dreary village into all the delights of the capital? Have courage, my noble girl, and crush the dictates of your heart for their sake, and, believe me, happiness will be yours.”

“True, DoÑa Elena; how beautiful an ideal you put before me! And I hear that Manolo has gone away and will not be back for six months, so what should I gain by refusing to marry the Count? And it would make a terrible scandal. And then, have you seen my wedding dress? It is too lovely for words! Do you know, it has a train two yards long! Cesar insisted; he says I am so little I must have a train to give me presence. I have never worn a long dress in my life, and I am so afraid I shall stumble over it. How dreadful if I made myself ridiculous in the church, before all Ronda! DoÑa Elena, did you have a train two yards long to your wedding dress, and did you find it difficult to manage?”

The melodrama was over, Carmencita was once more all smiles and merriment, and my suggestion that she should put the wedding dress on and practise walking up and down the patio in it for my benefit sent her and all her companions into screams of laughter. She had made her little oblation to the god of love, and now was ready to enjoy to the full the material fruits of her sacrifice.

She made me promise that I would come to her house and accompany the wedding party to the church, which is only a few yards from the ancestral home of the Campos Abandonados. I told her she had better let me efface myself in the back of the church, because I had no wedding garment in my suit-case and should do the party no credit.

“Don’t be absurd,” she retorted, kissing me affectionately. “You look like a Duchess with a black mantilla over your white hair, and if you haven’t got yours here, Mamma shall find one for you.”

Who could resist the pretty creature? And she meant every word of it, at any rate while she was speaking. But she really was sincere in her desire that I should be there as an intimate friend, not a mere acquaintance, and when I arrived shortly before two o’clock on the eventful afternoon I found little ten-year-old Lola, otherwise Dolores, waiting for me at the door, having been ordered by the bride to see that I was taken special care of, “because being a foreigner I might not know exactly where to go, and thus might fail to enjoy myself.”

Such consideration really surprised me. Carmen might well have been excused for forgetting, on this great day of her life, that one of her guests was a foreigner; yet she had not only planned for my pleasure, but, as I found, had asked more than one of her old friends to look out for me and see that I was placed where I could have a good view of the ceremony before the side altar of the Virgen del Carmen, at which she had worshipped throughout her short life.

THE CHURCH WHERE CARMENCITA WAS MARRIED.

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CHAPTER III

The wedding—Our Lady of the Carmen: her lady-in-waiting—The ancestral house of the Campos Abandonados—The kissing habit in Spain—Muscatel and Manzanilla—Arabic sweetmeats—King Alfonso and the convent yemas—The bride’s dance—Mantillas and a hat—Good-bye to Carmencita.

This image of the Virgin of the Carmen has no particular artistic merit, but Carmencita was promoted to being her “lady-in-waiting” when she left school, and had taken great pride in keeping “her” Virgin’s wardrobe in perfect order; and to-day she had gone very early to Mass and had dressed the image, for the last time, in the festival robe of eighteenth-century brocade and the tulle veil she had herself embroidered to present to her Virgin on her first communion. She had also filled the silver vases with the tall stiff bouquets which are so much admired here, and had offered quite a number of gilded wax candles for a blessing on her marriage.

And now she stood before the altar—her own altar—with her first long dress trailing behind her (she had not stumbled over it, but had made a most dignified entrance) and placed her helpless-looking little white hand in that of the stout, common-place man, over thirty years her senior, whose word was henceforth to be her law (for a married woman in Spain has practically no civil rights), and who had already made it evident that he would be a jealous husband. It may, however, be remarked that marital jealousy is regarded by many Spanish wives as rather a compliment than otherwise, as showing that their husbands think them worth being jealous of.

The ceremony was soon over, and while the bride and bridegroom, the bride’s parents and godparents, and her brothers and next sister, went into the sacristy with the priest to sign and witness the register, little Lola slipped her hand into mine.

“Carmencita told me to take you to our house now,” she said. “I am too little to witness for her, and she was afraid you would go away, and she wants you to see her dance in her wedding dress before she leaves with Cesar.”

She led me out of the church and along the badly paved street, which was lined with spectators anxious to see the new Countess whom they had known from a baby.

“There are only two carriages,” said Lola, “mamma’s and Cesar’s. Can you believe it? Carmencita has to come home all alone with Cesar in his carriage! She cried last night, and so did Pura and I, we all cried together. Fancy having to be left all alone with that horrid old man! Do you know, she is afraid he will kiss her, and his ugly blue nose will disarrange her hair. That is the only thing she is afraid of—being alone with him.”

A Spanish girl is never, under any circumstances, left alone with her fiancÉ, until she is actually married to him. There is always a mother, or an aunt, or some other female relative present to superintend the love-making. Small wonder that stolen interviews at the grating, with no listeners but the moon, have their charm. And perhaps the happiest marriages are those which come to pass, sometimes after years of parental opposition, between lovers whose courtship began thus. They at least have a chance of getting to know each other, free from the restraint of the chaperone whose attentive ear makes all real confidence impossible.

The house of the Campos Abandonados in Ronda is one of the most perfect examples of its kind in Spain. To the right of the spacious zaguan, as large as many a patio, are the stables, empty now, save for the Marchioness’s mules. The sixteen mangers are pure Arabic work, built into the wall, with a cusped arch over each. Passing these we get to the “modern” part of the house, which was renovated and “restored” in the prosperous sixteenth century, when gold poured into Spain from her new colonies across the Atlantic. Beyond this patio, the walls of which are covered with roses, jessamine, and other creepers planted in the ground, we get a glimpse of the inner one, cool and shady under its white awning. This is the summer sitting-room, furnished with easy-chairs and lounges all gay with bright calico covers, tables with work-baskets, photographs, and knick-knacks, and the other trifles which ladies of gentle birth all the world over collect about them, books and newspapers only excepted, for it is a rare thing to see anything to read in a Spanish lady’s sitting-room.

This inner patio is all just as it was when the Arabs ruled in Ronda: columns, capitals, carved beams, round arches—nothing has been altered since the conquest of the old town by the Catholic kings. In the mountains it is the fashion to paint every brick within reach with a solution of red ochre, and the maids, in their desire to add a touch of extra glory to the place for the wedding, had painted the arches as well as the brick floors. On one side of the arch nearest the staircase is a stone roughly carved and springing from a base very much older than the Arab invasion, and this was left of its own yellow stone colour, so that its extreme age was apparent. For this is one of those GrÆco-Roman houses of which I have spoken, and each of the successive races who have inhabited it used the remains of their predecessors’ building and carving when they in their turn added to it. There was a third patio beyond this, from which one looked sheer down into the ravine 500 feet below, past arched openings giving light and air to subterranean chambers under the house, which are often said to be prison cells, but are in fact mazmorras for the storage of corn, wine, and oil. Indeed, there still exist in one of these cellars, half built, half cut out of the rock, a number of enormous oil-jars, quite large enough for the Forty Thieves to hide in.

When I reached the house with Lola I found the inner patio transformed. Everything movable had been taken away, and the arcades on all four sides had been filled with chairs: the piano had been pushed to one side, the whole centre of the court was bare, and the blind organist of one of the churches, a couple of guitarists and a man with a bandurria (a tenor guitar) were busy tuning up, to the accompaniment of the shrill whistling of half a dozen canaries and the excited screams of the Marchioness’s pet parrot.

Two great seventeenth-century mirrors in handsome carved frames painted red and gold had been brought downstairs and hung on two pillars opposite each other, and Lola made straight for one of these the moment we came in, to see, she said, if they reflected properly, but really to study her own appearance.

“Carmencita was determined to have them brought down,” she told me: “Papaito [diminutive of Papa] objected because he says they are so old that the frames might get broken, and they have never been moved since they were made; but Carmen said she must see what she looked like, dancing seguidillas in her satin train, and Mamma said of course she should have what she wanted, now that she had been so good and obedient about marrying the Conde. Ay de mi de mi alma! I wonder what my husband will be like when my turn comes! I do hope he won’t be quite so old and ugly as Cesar.”

Her further confidences were cut short by the arrival of her father and mother in their ancient family coach, with leather curtains in place of windows, drawn by two great black mules whose bells jingled so loudly and the brass of whose harness was so bright as almost to hide the deplorable state of the leather. The portly Marchioness had barely time to recover her breath after the exertion of getting out, and to take up her post of honour in the patio, before the bride and bridegroom appeared, he almost as fat and short-winded as his mother-in-law, she looking extremely pretty with a flush on her olive cheeks and her usually sombre heavy-lidded eyes alight with excitement and pleasure at the openly expressed admiration of the crowd all along the road from the church.

The instant they came in the whole place burst into life, for every corner was invaded by the number of guests who had been invited and the still greater number of those who had not. The well-to-do friends and relations were followed by the poor ones, then came the household servants, old and young, with their friends and relations, and then everybody, without distinction, who wanted to see the bride and wish her joy. And as these last seemed to be half the town, for a short time we were packed like sardines, while the new little Condesa, standing at her mother’s side, was receiving resounding kisses on both cheeks from every woman, child, and old man in the crowd, the young men being apparently the only ones who might not claim the privilege.

The amount of kissing done in Spain is extraordinary. Children as a matter of course put up their faces to the merest stranger who speaks to them, middle-aged ladies on notoriously bad terms would think it a grave breach of courtesy not to kiss loudly on meeting and parting in an afternoon call, young girls embrace effusively in the most public places, fathers sit with their babies on their knees, mumbling their fat little hands by the hour together, and all the servants expect to be kissed by the ladies of the family when they start on or return from a journey—a most embarrassing custom if the mistress is an Englishwoman. More than once I have been in a shop when a woman has come in and put her baby on the counter, whereupon the shopman has left me to go and kiss the child, whom he probably had never seen before. Strangers will often stop short before a nice-looking child, and exclaim “QuÉ mono!” (what a pretty little thing) and bestow on it a couple of kisses that can be heard all down the street. Of late an attempt has been made in Madrid, at the instigation of the Queen, to stop this promiscuous kissing, and for one season at least it was the fashion to hang a label round the babies’ necks when out walking, on which was written, “Please don’t kiss me.” But there is no diminution of embraces outside of the capital.

As soon as every claimant to the cheeks of Carmencita had been satisfied, the uninvited guests went away almost as suddenly as they had come in, and the rest of the gathering moved on into the inner court, and turned their attention to tobacco, wine, and sweet cakes. The sons of the house and their friends carried round a tray of glasses in one hand and a bottle of Malaga, Manzanilla, or Muscatel in the other, and each guest was expected to empty his glass at once and replace it on the tray for the use of his neighbour. Then came the bride’s sisters and their friends with trays full of sweetmeats and pastry made of almond paste, cocoa-nut paste, chocolate, custard with a variety of flavourings, and other sweets of Arabic origin, with untranslatable names, the recipes for making which are carefully preserved in a few convents, whose inmates sometimes have little left to live on save what they can earn by the sale of their cakes. Among these there is a popular kind called yemas, because made from the yolks of eggs (yemas). They look like the yolk of a hard-boiled egg, and are covered with transparent caramel of a surprising stickiness.

And here I cannot refrain from digressing to tell a little tale about King Alfonso.

The first time that he and the Queen came to Seville was when their first baby, the little Prince of Asturias, was a few months old. The King, whose active habits and disregard of ceremony are well known, went out on the morning after their arrival for a walk through what is called the “Moorish” quarter of the old town, a maze of narrow streets little visited by sight-seers. Here he stopped at a certain convent famous for its sweets, and asked the “mother” who opened the little grille in the street door for “a packet of yemas for his wife and child.” The good nun hesitated: she had not the remotest idea who her customer was, and the Mother Superior, she knew, had set aside all the best of the last batch to send as an offering to the baby Heir to the Throne.

“Pardon me, SeÑor,” she stammered, divided between her desire not to lose a possible peseta and the difficulty of reconciling a refusal with her natural courtesy; “I fear—to-day—it is impossible—we—we,” and then, with a brilliant inspiration, “we do not sell to foreigners.”

“Oh, that’s all right,” said the King, “I am a Spaniard by birth and education, and my present address is the Alcazar of Seville.”

The conclusion of the purchase may be left to the imagination.

I have never been able to manage more than two of these luscious sweets at a time, and little Lola became quite distressed when her sixth invitation to eat more and still more of the sugary delicacies proved unavailing.

“I know what you will like,” she said at last, “I am sure you will like that, for our North American friend[4] said it was the best thing in Ronda. It is time to hand those trays now, so I will run and get mine for you.”

And the next moment Lola was at my side again, pressing upon me slices of raw smoked ham, to be offered and eaten with the fingers, just as is done with dainties at wedding parties in Constantinople and Beyrout to-day.

Undoubtedly the Andalucian acorn-fed hams are excellent, but it was rather a shock to have to start upon ham, and raw ham at that, when one had already eaten too many sweetmeats.

“Don’t you like ham?” said poor Lola, her mouth drooping with disappointment. And then a brilliant idea struck her. She dumped her tray down on a vacant chair and ran off to the kitchen, returning in triumph with half of one of those iron-hard rolls known as roscas. This she thrust into my hand and planted a slice of ham on the top of it, saying with a sigh of relief—

“I know that is what you want, for the North American lady never would eat ham without bread. I am so glad I thought of it, because only a few minutes ago Carmencita told me to be sure and get you everything you like until she has time to come and talk to you. But now we are going to dance, so she won’t have any time to spare yet.”

To eat raw ham with one’s fingers, as all the ladies round me were doing quite simply and naturally—throwing the fragments that remained on the floor under their chairs—may seem peculiar to our notions of table etiquette; but nobody would laugh at these “country manners” who saw, as I did, the innate courtesy that lay beneath. That the bride at a fashionable wedding should have told off one of her sisters to show special attention to an elderly lady of no particular importance, simply and solely because “being a foreigner she might feel strange,” illustrates the traditional courtesy of well-bred Spaniards. And perhaps this funny little incident will explain to some of my readers why I love the real Spain and the real unconventionalised Spaniard.

Now the piano, the guitars, and the bandurria struck up the seguidillas, whereupon Carmen and her sister Pura at once stood up to dance. The object of the two mirrors became apparent, for at every turn of the dance the bride was able to see herself in a fresh attitude, and her childlike delight in the folds of her long train, as she watched it sweeping after and around her, was a pretty sight. She had the reputation of being the best dancer in her native town, and loud cries of Muy bien and OlÉ greeted the conclusion of the performance.

All these dances consist of what are called coplas (couplets), because the movements of the dance were originally interludes in the singing of verses, often traditional, among which extempore references to the happenings of the moment are introduced. Thus when the girls dance without any singing, a series of movements follow in sequence, lasting twenty minutes or more, according to the number of coplas that they may perform. To the uninitiated all the dances, and still more all the coplas, seem to be pretty much alike, when danced by girls only. But when one sees these dances performed professionally by a man and a woman together, one realises that every step, every turn of the head, and every movement of the body and arms, has had its origin in a drama of passion, of coquetry, or of courtship. One also realises why it is not permissible for youths and girls to dance them together, save in the intimacy of a family gathering, and why even then the man must, so to speak, only play at taking part, snapping his fingers in response to the rattle of the castanets as the girl waves them over his head, and holding himself rigidly upright while his partner sways and bends as she whirls before and round him.

The whole thing is essentially Oriental, and it needs only the glance of an eye or the turn of a hand to convert the graceful movements of ladies in a drawing-room into an exposition of sensuality.

One understands therefore why Spanish ladies are so careful how they allow their daughters to dance even the apparently harmless seguidillas with men instead of girls for their partners.

The usual form of concerted performance is for the men to sing the coplas and the girls to dance between each of them; and when Carmencita had finished her performance, the guitarists struck up the rattling chords that preface the Peteneras. After much pressing on the part of the girls, Carmencita’s eldest brother Paco, otherwise Francisco, was induced to sing, and here is a translation of his first and last verses, which he sang to the strange quavering air without tune or rhythm, and full of the odd intervals and curious turns and flourishes peculiar to this kind of music, while the spectators accompanied him with a fusillade of hand-clapping and shouts of applause which burst out at every pause.

The wedding party thought this screamingly funny, and there were shouts of Otra copla! Otra copla! (another verse) when he had finished. But he made a sign to his second sister Pura, and another to the musicians, and the dancing began again.

The peteneras are more dramatic and crisper in movement than the seguidillas, and the brother and sister did a great deal of rhythmical hand-clapping and stamping, curiously at variance with the sentimental refrain of the song. When it was over, Pura dropped into the nearest seat, panting and fanning herself vigorously, while Paco slipped away to join the men, who from first to last sat in the outer patio and seemed to take no interest in the proceedings within, except when occasionally one of them planted himself in the entrance to commend some girl whose dancing he admired.

Proceedings became increasingly lively as the afternoon advanced, though the decorum was never relaxed. It got hotter and hotter, and the air grew suffocating under the awning, but there was no pause in the dancing. As soon as one couple of girls ended another stepped out, and sometimes half a dozen were dancing together. All the grown-up girls wore high combs and white mantillas, which never seemed to become disarranged, and quantities of natural flowers on their heads and breasts, chiefly jessamine blossoms pulled off their stems and fastened together to form large rosettes—another survival of Arabic customs. One would have expected to see the floor strewn with the flowers as the dancing went on, but I knew that every girl had spent at least an hour arranging her head-dress before she started for the wedding, and had taken good care that everything was firmly fixed. And then, however lively the dancing may be, it is always graceful, and there is never a jerky or violent movement, which accounts for these elaborate head-dresses being as neat at the end as they are at the beginning.

Everything must finish some time, and presently the bridegroom, who had never come near the ladies since he and his wife entered the house, appeared at the entrance of the inner patio, his nose rather bluer than usual, and smelling strongly of smoke, to tell Carmencita that it was time to change her dress for the train.

“Por Dios!” exclaimed the girl, “I had quite forgotten that I was going away. Come, Pura; come, Lola, one more set of seguidillas: who knows when we shall dance together again!”

Sixteen-year-old Pura in her first mantilla, Lola with streaming hair and scanty petticoats little below her knees, and Carmencita with her two yards of train, made a very ill-assorted trio; but they did not concern themselves about the general effect. They danced no less than six coplas together, the last including some odd little jumps off the floor with both feet, quite the least graceful performance I had yet seen, and most inappropriate to a long train. And then, to a chorus of OlÉ’s the three stopped dancing, flung their arms round each other, burst into floods of tears over the imminent parting, and were all borne away sobbing by their mother and various sympathetic friends.

The two younger sisters were still crying when they came downstairs an hour later with the bride in her travelling dress, a really charming arrangement of white muslin and blue ribbons, but Carmencita’s face was almost hidden under an overwhelming straw hat covered with immense roses.

Now she was once more all smiles, and beamed impartially on everybody as she moved towards the great doors amid a perfect fusillade of explosive kisses. How they managed to reach her face under that hat I could not understand, but I heard her say several times, “Cuidado con mi sombrero” (Mind my hat), while she moved towards me; and as she embraced me I discovered why she was leaving her home smiling instead of in a flood of hysterical tears, as Spanish brides usually do.

“Isn’t my hat enchanting?” she whispered in my ear; “you know it is the first hat I ever had in my life, and Cesar actually ordered it for me from Gibraltar! Isn’t he an angel? And we are going to Madrid, and then to Paris, and he is going to buy me ever so many more! But don’t tell anybody; I want to pretend I am quite accustomed to wearing a hat.”

The fascinating novelty carried her through all the adieux and safe into the carriage with her bridegroom, and the last we saw of Carmencita was her laughing face as she straightened the monstrosity, which she had almost knocked off against the carriage door as she got in.

CHAPTER IV

The “season of the baths”—Furnished apartments without beds—The amenities of the Balneario—Sea views at a discount—Bathing costumes: flounces and frills—The force of example—Happy swimmers.

The “season of the baths,” as the summer holidays are here called, is a very serious business indeed. In the fashionable seaside resorts such as San Sebastian, Santander, Malaga, etc., it is possible to get a comfortably furnished villa or flat for a few weeks, though only at a ruinous cost; but in the smaller places it was until lately difficult to get any accommodation at all outside of the Balneario or Hotel for Bathers, unless one took a so-called furnished house and sent the missing necessaries from one’s own home by carrier or train; for the furnishing in such houses generally consisted mainly of more or less rickety chairs.

Personal luggage, of course, goes with the traveller, but things which do not come into that category, and they are many, must be booked and paid for separately. What exactly constitutes personal luggage varies a good deal with the taste and fancy of the booking-clerk. At one station, for instance, they flatly refused to take my jamugas (a folding donkey saddle described on p. 66), and at another an obliging porter tied them on to my suit-case and they went through without difficulty. But speaking generally, nothing but portmanteaus, bags, and such like are admitted, with one notable exception. About bedding there is never any trouble. A mattress for each member of the party, with its pillows, sheets, and blankets, will all go as personal luggage, though, as the limit of weight is only 60 lbs. per head, you may have to pay a considerable sum for excess. You can also book your bed and bedding (which it is just as well to take with you to a “furnished house” at any of the smaller seaside places) together with other immediate necessaries, by grande vitesse, when it is supposed to travel by the same train as yourself, and to be accessible immediately on arrival. But if there happens to be a crowd at the departure station, it is as likely as not that the things booked by grande vitesse will be left behind.

This happened to some Spanish acquaintances of mine one summer. They had booked everything except the children’s lunch and such trifles as they could take in their hands, and they arrived at the village where they and we were to spend the holidays late at night and dead tired, without any luggage at all. The neighbours set to work and improvised beds for the smallest children, and the mothers, aunts, and sisters sat in rocking-chairs all night.

“What else is to be done?” they said philosophically; “this sort of thing always happens if you go to the baths in the fashionable season, when everybody wants to be there at once.”

None of them were at all cross or depressed, although they were very grateful when we provided a mattress or two for the tired babies to be put to bed on.

Travellers who want to see the Spanish bathing season in full swing may put up at the Balneario with which every little seaside resort is provided. But they must be prepared to get no sleep or rest as long as they stay there, for the noise is inconceivable. There will be anything from fifty to two hundred men, women, and children—but chiefly children—of all ages, and all agog to make the most of the seven, fourteen, or twenty-one days of bathing prescribed by the family physician. For be it known that we don’t bathe as we please in Spain, but under medical orders and strictly for the good of our health, and many people believe that all the virtue in salt water would be lost did they take one bath too many or too few. And from the moment they wake in the morning until the last frequenter of the hotel bar goes to bed some time in the small hours, the din of voices and the clatter of feet on the brick floors never ceases for one instant.

Most Spaniards have extraordinarily loud voices. Of course it is usual in any country to shout at a foreigner under the impression that he will understand better if you deafen him to begin with. But in Spain it is not only the foreigner who is bawled at, for Spaniards all shout at each other in the bosoms of their families to such a degree that when I first came to live here I got the impression that they were continually quarrelling. Men and women alike have this unpleasant habit, and although many of them are aware what a noise they make and remark that it is a bad custom, they seem constitutionally incapable of lowering their voices.

When I am almost driven crazy with the strain on my ears I pretend to be puzzled at what is said, and politely remark—

“I am stupidly ignorant of Castilian, but I shall understand better if you will kindly talk a little slower.”

“Slower” (mas despacito) is a euphemism for “lower,” and the request never fails to elicit a pleasant smile and a comment on the shrillness of Spanish voices, in a half whisper. But in two seconds habit holds sway again, and the din rises higher and higher until one feels that one’s only refuge is flight unless one wishes to qualify for Bedlam.

The children of the well-to-do—unlike those of the poor—are quite undisciplined, and are allowed to shriek and scream as they please. Their noise does not worry their parents, who take it as a matter of course, and it never occurs to them that it can annoy any one else. When dozens of children of all ages are collected together in a Balneario, the racket is such as might have inspired Dante with an idea for a tenth circle in his hell. If you suggest that some white-faced, heavy-eyed creature of two or three years old would be better in bed than in the hall of an hotel blazing with electric light at ten or eleven at night, its parents merely reply “No quiere” (He doesn’t want to), which is considered an entirely sufficient reason for letting their sickly infant sit up to all hours.

The children mostly dine at the table d’hÔte of the Balneario in small towns, and when the endless meal is at last over some one begins to thump dance tunes on a cracked piano, and the little girls from six to fourteen swarm into the general sitting-room and start dancing. When midnight approaches and the children drop asleep from sheer weariness, filling the benches and flopping across their parents’ knees, the grown-up young ladies and their attendant swains take the floor, and keep the fun going till 2 or 3 a.m. This is not one night but every night, and not in one Balneario but in every Balneario, throughout the month of August.

I once spent a day and a night in one of these hotels, which are often pretty and sometimes have beautiful sea views and other advantages which should make them really attractive out of the season, did they not all close as soon as it is over. For my sins I was at the Balneario of Our Lady of the Rosary in the height of the summer. I fled by the earliest train I could get next morning, and the landlord was most willing for me to go, for he had a married couple with three children ready to pack themselves into the tiny room I had engaged, which contained nothing in the way of furniture save a looking-glass, one chair, a small enamelled wash-basin, and one huge bed.

The last thing Spaniards seem to care about in the bathing season is the sea. The Balneario of Our Lady of the Rosary looked out right over the Atlantic, whose blue waves washed the foot of the low cliff on which the village stood. I never saw anything more lovely than the sunset over the sea the evening I was there, and the hotel dining-room opened on to a broad terrace supplied with numbers of chairs and tables at which people sat and sipped refrescos—a mild beverage consisting largely of sugar and water. Of all the people thus engaged I was the only one who turned to look at the sunset. And when after dinner I went out to the post office I found all the occupants of all the nice new houses built by themselves to live in during the brief bathing season, seated on uncomfortable chairs on the footway in the narrow, dirty street, and all with their backs to the sea. Their houses all had terraces running out to the edge of the water at high tide, like that of the Balneario, but as I strolled back to the hotel in the moonlight along the shore I noticed that there was not a single human being to be seen on any of these terraces. I had never imagined such a waste of opportunity, or such a strange idea of enjoying the sea. But I have been at a good many Spanish bathing-places since then, and have always been regarded as a harmless lunatic on account of my preference for sitting with my face to the sea instead of at my street door watching the passers-by.

The bathing at that village was excellent, the best, I think, that I have ever known, though a trifle dangerous for any but strong swimmers when a stormy day left a heavy roll and undertow. The Balneario, which had a monopoly of the bathing-houses for about half a mile of beach, provided a sufficiency of buoyed ropes, and a leaky old boat was anchored a hundred yards out all the summer in case of accidents. This boat was only accessible by swimming, there being no other anywhere within range, and it had no oars, so its precise use on an emergency does not appear. It filled and sank whenever the sea got up, but it was always dragged out, emptied, and replaced in position by the men in attendance, by the time the sea was calm enough for the visitors to bathe again.

Although we never stayed at the Balneario, we spent several summers in the village, where we took a little cottage and furnished it with what our Spanish friends thought very bad taste, for it contained plenty of books and tables and not a single pier-glass. Here we attracted a good deal of attention by sitting out at all hours, when the sun was not too blazing hot, under an awning rigged up on a sandhill facing the sea, where we watched with an amusement equal to their astonishment at our eccentricities, the amenities of Spanish families taking their baths.

The first year we were there the women all wore heavy serge gowns right down to their feet, mostly edged with a broad frill of the same material. Strange to say, one of them managed to swim, and to swim well, in this most unsuitable garment. Her husband, who was lame and could only walk with a stick, also swam well. He used to fling his stick ashore as soon as he was in the water to his waist, and he and his wife would swim out to the old boat, her flowing robe ballooning largely behind her. Later on we came to know them and their family, and the eldest son, a nice boy of about sixteen, told us as politely as he could how dreadfully shocked the Spanish ladies had been that first summer at our indelicate bathing garments, consisting of blouses with short sleeves, knickers, and a skirt to the knees. No doubt our by no means modern bathing dresses surprised them, although we had no idea of it at the time, for that year even the men wore long trousers, sometimes trimmed with little frills round the ankles, while coats covered their arms to the wrists. True, the men so attired did not attempt to swim, but bobbed up and down with their wives and daughters, all holding on to the rope for dear life and never moving an inch from where the bathing-man had put them, until he returned, when he thought they had been in long enough, with sheets to envelop the ladies and bring them to shore again.

Yes, all the ladies were carefully wrapped in sheets when they came out, although no human eye could discern the form so carefully hidden under their voluminous draperies. The only creatures who were allowed to expose any part of their anatomy to direct contact with the water were the babies. They, poor little miseries, were carried down stark naked to the water’s edge and handed over to the bathing-men. These, no doubt with the best intentions, would take the screaming mite in one hand and dip it head first into a good big wave, using their free hand to disengage the frantic clutch of the terrified creatures when they came up in an agony of fright from their ducking and found themselves, choked and blinded by the salt water, turned upside down for a second dip. Three times was this brutality repeated every day, and if the piteous cries grew less the third time, the parents, watching the proceedings from the shore, would congratulate themselves that the child was beginning to enjoy his bath.

To me it seemed more likely that he was beginning to die from it, and indeed a summer rarely passes without at least one or two small children coming to an untimely end at the Balnearios. But nothing can convince the mothers that such treatment is too violent for babies. They themselves took their first sea baths under those conditions, and so did their parents before them, and therefore it must be the right thing and produce good results in the long-run, no matter how the little one may suffer in health and nerves at the moment.

Infant mortality is always high in Spain. In summer, I understand, it is higher than at any other time, and I do not wonder at it.

That first summer the lame Don Basilio and his wife were the only swimmers except ourselves. But the next year several schoolgirls begged him to teach them to swim, and as the season went on and they made progress in the new accomplishment the flowing skirts were exchanged for trousers, and the trousers gradually grew shorter until a reasonable amount of bare leg was displayed. One or two of the girls managed to swim out to the boat before their twenty-one baths came to an end, and indeed the mystic number was treated with unusual disrespect that year, and the limit often far exceeded.

And the following year, when we arrived rather later in the summer than usual, we found all the girls wearing bathing costumes which gave their limbs free play as they swam, and the old boat was the daily rendezvous of a crowd of laughing and chattering young people, scrambling on board and diving off again with as much energy as if they had been English.

I always maintain that Spaniards only want a lead to induce them to adopt modern customs and conveniences, for no people are quicker or cleverer at imitating new modes once they see that they are an improvement on the old. The only difficulty is to make them see that any such novelty is an improvement, and that, I admit, is a difficulty. The Andalucians have a saying against themselves, that they are “muy amarrados À la cola del borrico”—very fast tied to the donkey’s tail—meaning that they go along in a stupid rut of inherited convention which they find it very hard to get out of.

I think, however, that the speedy adoption of swimming knickers in place of flowing skirts, and the rapid shortening of these same knickers as soon as practical experience proved their convenience, argue that the rising generation have more common sense and less conventionality than their elders, and promise well for the future of athletic sports in Spain. But all the same the young people, although they have learnt how to enjoy mixed bathing in the sea on summer mornings, still sit with their parents at their ugly street doors after dinner, turning their backs on the beauty of the sea, the sunset, and the moon, while they watch the passers-by and talk of lovers and frocks.

CHAPTER V

Travelling in Spain: four grades of trains but only one price—Ten miles an hour—Dangerous speed—Amusing the villagers—A slow night journey—Suppressing a raconteur—“Shall we go?”—Hot water while we wait—The paralytic—Taking a photograph—The beauty at the window—A discourteous custom—Empty minds—The toothpick—A gentleman of the old school—Hospitality at Antequera—A Spanish dinner table—Delightful memories.

Travelling in this country is really a trial to the patience. It is true that the main lines have now been made comfortable, with corridor carriages, well-cushioned seats, and good lighting on the night trains; but the unpunctuality and the purposeless delays all along the line make even a short journey tiresome and a long one intolerable, unless one resolutely determines only to look at the comic side of things.

There are four classes of passenger trains, and we may take the journey from Madrid to Seville as typical of the rest. This line is used by the King, the Court, and the governing classes generally, and is travelled by nearly every tourist who comes to Spain, for every one wants to see Seville, Cordova, and Granada, while naturally the capital, with its superlative picture gallery, is the objective of all foreigners interested in art.

The slowest of these trains is the mixto, a sort of cross between a passenger and a luggage train. The distance from Madrid to Seville is 358 miles, and the mixto does the journey in twenty-four hours and twenty minutes, or at the rate of nearly fifteen miles an hour, if it gets in punctually, which it seldom or never does. Next we have the correo or mail train, which nominally takes eighteen hours one way and nineteen the other—the more rapid journey being rather under twenty miles an hour. Then comes the expreso, which takes eleven and a half hours one way and twelve the other, travelling at the rate of about thirty miles an hour; and then the expreso de lujo, which does the journey in eleven hours and forty minutes, being a shade faster than the expreso. Both these last are trains de luxe, with dining-car and the wagon-lits Company’s carriages, and are usually pretty punctual. These trains, be it remembered, are running on one of the chief main lines of Spain.

On the branch lines nothing like these speeds are attained. On one of these, as I was told by a friend who often had to travel by it, the usual rate was ten miles an hour, and the district petitioned the railway to reduce the speed, which was considered highly dangerous. The petition was refused, on the ground that if the train went any slower it would come too expensive, on account of the increased coal consumption.

With true Spanish inconsistency the same fares are charged for all these trains except the trains de luxe, for which an excess of ten per cent. is levied on the first-class fares. On these trains there is no second-class, and on one of them only a single third-class carriage. The mixto is horribly uncomfortable, and the carriages of all classes are usually dirty, but one need not fear any rudeness or roughness from one’s fellow-travellers.

It was once my fate to travel by a mixto from a wayside station where I had missed the express after a long donkey ride across country. My men had never been there, but when it became evident that by no possibility could I catch the train I had intended, they declared, in their desire to reassure me, that there was a decent posada close to the station where I could comfortably spend the night. We arrived to find not even a cottage, but only a choza or hovel, built of stones and thatched with reeds, and a canteen consisting of the bar and a tiny room off it, where the railway people took their meals, for it was a junction of some importance, and several men were employed there. I had no alternative but to go on by the mixto, and I sat for seven mortal hours in that train, travelling in all eighty-four miles. It was about three in the morning when I reached a town which gave reasonable promise of possessing some sort of hotel, and at least half of that time we spent at stations, all lighted up and all crowded with villagers, just as if it were day.

I am bound to say that although the seats were so hard and so grimy, and the jolting of the train so incessant that sleep was impossible, I neither heard nor saw anything offensive, although my fellow-travellers were all men, and there was not one gentleman, in the conventional sense of the term, among the lot. One man, it is true, began a funny story which it was probably just as well that I did not understand, but before he came to the point his friends hushed him up, on the ground that they had heard it all before, whereupon the facetious person so promptly dropped asleep that I guessed he had been looking too long on the wine-cup before he started. Nothing was said to me, but I quite understood that the raconteur was silenced out of consideration for my presence.

The correo on the main lines is much better than the mixto; the first and second class even have corridor carriages, and these are roomy and comfortably cushioned. If time were absolutely no object—as indeed seems to be the case in Spain—one need not complain of the correo at all. But to people who prefer getting to their journey’s end to sitting in the train, the endless delays and the purposeless dawdling are intensely irritating. The train stops at every little station, apparently to amuse the villagers, for often no one gets either in or out, though there will be from twenty to a hundred loafers on the platform. After long waiting a guard is heard to inquire, “Shall we go?” (Vamonos?); some other official says, “Let’s go!” (Vamonos!); a third rings a bell and shouts, “My lords the travellers to the train!” (SeÑores viajeros, al tren!); some one blows a horn, the engine whistles two or three times, and we drift out as vaguely as we drifted in, ten, twenty, or thirty minutes before.

At one station on a very dull journey which I often have occasion to make, an extra delay seems to have been arranged to enable the wives of the stationmaster, the canteen keeper, and the one porter to obtain a supply of hot water from the engine boiler, for every time I travel that way I see a group of these ladies filling cans and buckets from a steaming jet which certainly is not let off anywhere else.

At another station we spend an interminable time watering the engine. This station is only half an hour from a junction where the train waits, according to schedule, for thirty minutes, and why the water cannot be taken in then, the demon of dilatoriness that presides over Spanish railways alone knows. This, like the distribution of hot water, does not occur only once in a way. I have been over the line eight times, for my sins, and have seen the same incidents every time.

Once our train waited an extra ten minutes while a poor paralysed old woman was conveyed in front of the engine from a train alongside of ours to the exit from the station, where a donkey awaited her. The porter carried her slung over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, head downwards. We all thought she was dead until we saw her hands waving and heard her shrill voice bidding the man shift her into an easier position, which he did, by no means unkindly. She was a very poor woman, and her old husband trudged after her, bearing a couple of worn pillows and a bag of food. It was clear that there was no money wherewith to tip that porter. No one grumbled at the time lost by our train, which was already close on an hour late, although she might just as well have been carried behind it and thus let us go on. They only said, “Poor creature! She seems very ill.” On the other hand, no one thought of producing pesetas or even coppers to alleviate her sufferings, though probably if I had been ready-witted enough to suggest it, most of my travelling companions would have contributed. Spaniards are curiously destitute of imagination in such cases, but when I have had the presence of mind to propose some such obvious charity as the above they have quickly followed suit, expressing admiration of our English initiative.

The funniest example of official indifference to the time table that I have seen occurred on a journey from Algeciras to Bobadilla. During a long pause at a wayside station one of our party got out to photograph a group of picturesque beggars—for on the Andalucian railways beggars are chartered libertines, permitted to climb up to the windows and pester the travellers for money. Before he had finished the bell rang for the train to start, but seeing how he was engaged the stationmaster politely turned to the guard.

“Wait a moment longer,” he said; “do you not see that the gentleman is taking a photograph?”

Let it not be supposed, however, that Spanish travellers find their slow trains such a trial as we do. The men chat, smoke, eat, drink, and sleep, and the women eat and sleep—the elder ones, that is. The younger ones spend most of their time standing at the window. This is a very favourite occupation of all Spanish travellers in first-class compartments. Directly the train slows into a station every window of the corridor carriage will be occupied by a more or less portly person of either sex, who thrust their heads and bodies out as far as they will go, to stare up and down at the exceedingly uninteresting crowd assembled to see the train come in. Except on Sundays and holidays, when the station is to the village what the fashionable promenade is to the town, the people who loaf on the platform are by no means the pick of the population, being merely those who have nothing else to do. But this does not seem to diminish the Spanish traveller’s interest in them, and he will block the windows till the very last minute, watching the village idiot or the diseased beggar until he is quite out of sight, as if all his hopes of happiness depended on getting the very last glimpse of the unpleasing spectacle.

The girls who travel have, it must be admitted, another object in planting themselves at the window while the train is in a station. They want not so much to see as to be seen, and faute de mieux, the open admiration of the village loafer helps to pass the time. On one occasion I travelled for many hours in company with the wife and daughter of a man whose office under the Government argued a good social position and a certain amount of cultivation. The mother talked of nothing but the excellence of the food in the town we had both been visiting, and the girl never spoke at all save to ask me at intervals where we were and how much behind time the train was now. At every station she planted herself in the window, and as she was strikingly handsome with unusually brilliant colouring, a group of yokels never failed to collect in front of our compartment, staring at her for all they were worth.

“I cannot imagine,” the mother once remarked to me, “why so many people stand there.”

“Well,” I said with perfect sincerity, “they probably do not often have any one so pretty as your daughter to look at.”

The mother bridled and smiled, and immediately told the girl what I had said.

After that our young beauty never left the window at all—presumably lest some admirer should miss the opportunity of gazing on her charms—from the moment the train drew into any station until it left again; and I calculated afterwards that she had stood three solid hours on end in the corridor, only varying her position to move to my window at the opposite end of the compartment when we stopped at a station where the platform was on that side.

This discourteous habit, common to men and women alike, of blocking the first-class carriage windows regardless of the comfort and convenience of the other passengers, is in some ways the most unpleasant feature of travelling in Spain. It is practically confined, however, to the well-to-do, and I am bound to say that on short journeys, where a little fatigue does not matter, I often prefer to travel second or even third class, so that I may get my fair share of the view and the air, which is impossible when travelling with Spaniards who can afford to pay the higher fares. On the other hand, as they seem quite unable to amuse themselves in other ways (for very few of them ever read in the train, or indeed in their own houses), perhaps one ought not to grudge them the delightful distraction and the wide enlightenment to be obtained by looking out of the carriage window.

In other ways many little courtesies are shown. Food, for instance, is always offered, even though you are at the moment unpacking your own lunch basket. This is as a rule a form, which means no more than the offer of his house, at such a number of such a street, which your travelling acquaintance will make you when he gets out at his station, well knowing that you and he will never meet again in this world. But sometimes the offer to share with you is quite genuine, as in the case of a stout Catalan commis-voyageur, who, after I had politely declined three times over to divide his lunch, having just finished my own before his eyes, took two elegant celluloid toothpicks out of his pocket, and laid one upon my knee, saying, “That at least you will accept!”

He afterwards told me that he “travelled” for a German firm which made celluloid ornaments, and I always regret that I returned his toothpick without reading the advertisement printed on it. I thought he might want it, and I knew I did not, but I believe he really did wish me to accept his gift—and take a note of his firm.

When one has the luck to make the acquaintance of a Spanish gentleman of the old school, one realises what a loss is inflicted on society by his retirement from the world, for men of his kind dislike the new aristocracy of wealth, and shrink from competing with the cursileria of the large towns as much as Don Quixote himself would have done.

On my way to Granada one lovely May day I had the rare good luck to travel with one of these gentlemen. I was accompanied by an old friend whom I had not seen for many years, and we congratulated ourselves on finding an empty compartment when we got into the train. Just before we started, however, a slim well-dressed man of forty or so clambered up the precipitous steps into the carriage, with a pot of carnations under each arm. This alone would have prepossessed one in his favour, for the male Spaniard of any class above the labourer usually thinks it degrading to be seen carrying anything in his hands, and leaves the parcels to be borne by his wife if there is no servant handy. Our man not only carried his own carnations, but was a great deal more careful of them than of his smart personal luggage, and finally, after asking permission, he wedged them up in the rack between his valise and mine, explaining that he had bought them at the last moment to take to his wife, and was anxious that they should come to no harm.

The ice thus broken, we soon got into conversation, and when he found that we were going to stop the night at Antequera he seemed quite delighted.

“That is my own town,” he said, “I can assure you that it is worth a visit, and I wish more foreigners knew how beautiful is the situation, and how many objects of interest it contains. There is also a quite passable hotel, and the people of Antequera have good manners, and do not worry tourists in the streets, although they see comparatively few English ladies, or—what is even of greater interest to them—English ladies’ hats.”

Most unluckily, he said, he would only be at home himself for quite a few hours, as he had to go on to Malaga early next morning, but he was deeply interested in archÆology, and on finding that my tastes lay in that direction, he said that, no matter what business he had to set aside, he must have the pleasure of showing me some very curious capitals of columns, recently unearthed from a fourteenth-century convent wall, the period of which he found himself unable to determine. I accepted the invitation with delight, for not only did I know by experience that great interest often attaches to objects “found in the convent walls,” but I knew it was the chance of a lifetime for my friend to see the interior of a Spanish gentleman’s country house.

Having fixed the hour for our call and given us his address, our friend proceeded to spread his belongings over three seats, for we were approaching a junction, and he explained that he did not mean anyone else to get in, as he had slept badly over-night and wanted a good nap.

The station was crowded and many people came and looked into our compartment, shook their heads at the much-engaged seats, and went off to stow themselves in the packed compartments elsewhere. Our friend smiled pleasantly, showing beautiful white teeth under a short fair moustache—for he was as blond as a Dane, with brown hair and blue eyes—and suggested that the stationmaster should put on another carriage when an insistent lady with several children tried, in vain, to force her way in against his polite resistance.

And when we were safe out of the station he pulled out his three seats to form a sofa, as is done when these compartments are converted into sleeping carriages at night, and calmly slumbered until we got to Bobadilla some three hours later. This is the Clapham Junction of southern Spain, and it was impossible for our fellow-traveller, for all his fine manners and general grand air, to appropriate our whole compartment any longer; but, as he remarked, he had had his sleep and now no longer required the extra seats. So other travellers were welcome to come in, and the more so because we should all three be getting out at the next station but one.

“You will require half an hour to secure your rooms at the hotel, and half an hour to rest,” he said as we parted, we in one omnibus and he in another, with many apologies for not being able to offer us his carriage, because his return was unexpected, and no one had come to meet him. “But I hope you will be able to reach my house conveniently by six o’clock, that I may present my wife and children to you, and show you my capitals in a good light.”

He had, of course, given us his card, but the name told us nothing except that he was not a man of title. So in the omnibus we took the opportunity of obtaining a little information about him. We found he was the Alcalde, or Mayor, which means that he was little short of a king in the town, for the Alcalde here holds a position social, political, and municipal, considerably higher than that of any Lord Mayor in England. In fact we have at home no authority with which the Spanish Alcalde can be compared, for he is appointed by the Government, and can make and unmake at will any of the numerous paid officials under him. Alcaldes therefore generally have as many enemies as friends during their term of office, but our Alcalde of Antequera seemed to have gained the affections of his townspeople, not by political favouritism, but by his personal qualities.

“He is the richest and the best man in the town,” said the respectable tradesman with whom we talked in the omnibus; “and I should not say that if it was not true, for he is a Conservative and I am a Liberal, and I lost my job at the Town Hall when they made him Alcalde, so I’ve kept a sharp look out for any mistakes he might make.”

At six o’clock, according to promise, we made our way to the Alcalde’s house, and were ushered by a smiling servant, evidently on the look out for us, across a patio blazing with geraniums and heavy with the scent of roses, heliotrope, and jessamine, through a long shady gallery with fine eighteenth-century furniture ranged along the walls, into a charming little reception-room, furnished with light-painted wood, and adorned with the usual window blinds, chair-backs, and table-covers of exquisite needlework, edged and inset with fine lace and embroidery.

To us here appeared our Alcalde leading his handsome wife and followed by his two good-looking children. We were a little late, and he apologised for the family being at dinner; but if we would come into the dining-room and “accompany” them at their meal, without ceremony and as friends, he and the SeÑora would soon have done eating and be ready to take us round their—and our—house and show us any little object of interest which might repay us for the trouble of looking at it.

Of course we agreed, while apologising for our unpunctuality, and regretting the disturbance we were causing in the family.

But when we entered the large and well-furnished dining-room, we found that the whole thing had been planned by our hospitable acquaintance in order to induce us to dine with him; for places had been laid for us and they had not even begun their dinner. So we had no alternative but to sit down and accept the admirably cooked dishes that were set before us, or feel that by not eating with the family we were compelling our friends to swallow their food in haste while they kept us uncomfortably waiting.

The table was well furnished with good silver and glass, and china bearing the Alcalde’s arms. A vase of choice roses stood in the centre, and family portraits hung round the walls. We really might have been at an English dinner party, save for the unceremonious attendance of women servants with silk kerchiefs on their shoulders and flowers in their hair, who casually strolled in and out with large dishes, which they always offered first to their master, then to their mistress, and afterwards to the guests. This is etiquette in old Spain, dating from the times when the food might perhaps be poisoned, and the host helped himself first to show that it could safely be eaten.

The dishes too, though tempting and well-cooked, were somewhat different from ours. First came a white soup thickened with vermicelli and having a strong flavour of fowl. Then a dish of frituras, a mass of milk sauce thickened with flour and minced ham, allowed to cool, then shaped into the form of pears, rolled in fine bread-crumbs, and fried with a skill which makes a dish of this kind one of the most appetising in the Spanish menu. Then came cold boiled fish, fresh from Malaga, served with a sauce made of yolk of egg and oil, and garnished with raw tomatoes, raw onions, and green and red pimientos, a kind of capsicum without any heat. A fowl followed, whose lack of flavour showed that it had been boiled in the soup; then the inevitable puchero or cocido, also boiled in the soup, and consisting of garbanzos, ham, bacon fat, beef, haricot beans, and the stems of an edible thistle. Then an excellent concoction of custard with tiny meringues floating on the top. After this, biscuits, fruit, quince cheese, fresh goat-milk cheese, and various sweetmeats. Red and white wine were on the table, and last of all came a cup of capital black coffee. This was the everyday fare of the Alcalde’s family, but not of the Alcalde. He told us that his stomach was delicate, and took nothing but a couple of poached eggs and a glass of hot milk—which amply accounted for his elegant slenderness, so unlike the enormous obesity that afflicts most Spaniards of his wealth and position after twenty years or so of the feeding above described.

What was most noteworthy in his house, however, was the daintiness and luxury of the dining-room appointments, for it is not unusual to find, even in the homes of well-to-do people, only just enough knives, forks, and plates to go round once, while flowers on the table or anywhere else in the house are unheard of. Perhaps the excessive scantiness of the cutlery and crockery have much to say to the absence of those invitations to lunch and dinner which are the current social coin with us. The idea that a pretty and well-found table adds to the comfort and refinement of life at home never seems to have occurred to the mass of middle-class Spain; and of course where the family share a tumbler and eat three or four courses off the same plate, a visitor at meals is not likely to be welcome.

No doubt there are many people in the position of our Alcalde who live as elegantly as he does, but it is a great exception to find oneself invited to take one’s place as a guest at their table; and his hospitality, the beauty of the town, the glorious mountain views all round, the wealth of wild flowers on the hills, and the many remains of ancient buildings, all combined to mark Antequera with a white stone in my friend’s and my memories.

We see now that, although the “offer of the house” on the part of a travelling acquaintance has become in ninety-nine cases out of one hundred degraded into the merest empty compliment, the root whence grew this flower of a fine courtesy thrives in the soil to which it is native. For there are still Spanish gentlemen whose hospitality is as graceful as it is instinctive, and who, when they tell you that at such-and-such a number of such-and-such a street “you have your house and a friend,” really hope and expect that if occasion offers you will take them at their word and accept their frank invitations.