_Brittany; Spain_
America is a country without tradition, and the large cities of Europe
are too cosmopolitan to impress one with the fact of fixed manners and
morals. But not so in the provinces. From ’81 to ’86, I lived in
Concarneau, on the Breton coast, and made a trip of several months into
Elche, Spain. I felt as if I had suddenly plunged back into the Middle
Ages. The superstitions, manners, customs, and dress, as well as ideas,
of both those places, were unchanged from centuries ago.
Around the part of Concarneau where the poor live is a wall built by
Vauban; inside is a fortress with the sea making a moat. The bridge,
which could originally be drawn up, is now stationary, but the doorway
for a passage is still there. On the other side is the ferry to Pont
Aven. Inside the inclosure the streets are narrow and paved, with little
houses on either side. Outside is the smart part of the town. The
beauties of the sea, and, as usual, the low cost of living, brought the
artist to Concarneau.
My studio was a wheat loft, and any peasant was a model for a few cents.
We painted them in their native dress, which was picturesque enough,
and, besides, no virtuous Breton woman would allow you to see her hair,
so that it was obvious that the coif stayed on. These headdresses gave
them a distinctly mediæval air, and each town has a certain style, more
fixed than the laws of the Medes and Persians, so that you can tell
immediately where a woman comes from. Underneath this white coif, which
is always beautifully laundered and starched, is a tight cap which holds
the hair, and this, I think, is seldom removed. The remainder of the
costume (which makes them look like Noah’s Ark women) is a heavy woolen
skirt and a double-breasted blouse. This is held together by a huge
shawl pin of brass, and under no circumstances can they be persuaded to
use buttons. Of course there are stockings and sabots.
Blanch Willis Howard wrote her book called _Guenn_ in my studio and it
afterward became one of the popular novels of the day. I think she
greatly exaggerated the romantic quality of the artist who fell in love
with his model, however, as all the Breton peasants I ever saw washed
below the chin only twice in their lives—once when they were born and
once when married.
The peasants dance all day long. Every day seems a fête day, and the
celebrations are always held in the market place. The dance starts with
a procession, with a man at the head playing a _biniou_, an instrument
(the same in every Celtic country) very much like a bagpipe. They
serpentine, as do the college boys of to-day, and whirl madly, couple by
couple, with nothing but a clatter of sabots. The virtue lies not in the
grace or time, but in keeping it up the longest.
The Bretons seine their fish (sardines) in a long net with large corks
at the top and weights at the bottom. Myriads of forty-ton boats start
out before sunrise, making a picturesque sight with their few feet of
deck and large fore and aft sails, originally dyed brilliant colors, but
always faded to lovely tones of rose, gray, and tan. The sails drop at
the fishing grounds, they let out their nets, and the men begin to row,
while one, the boss, stands in the stern to throw the bait. This
imported egg of cod is called “_rogue_,” and as he throws it from side
to side the play of his body in action is more beautifully Greek than
anything in all Europe. Whenever I saw this I wondered if Christ might
not have performed his Miracle of the Fishes in somewhat the same way.
The catch is enormous. I have seen a net sink, breaking a manila rope
the size of my thumb. When the boat comes in it looks as if it were
entirely full of shiny fifty-cent pieces in a flutter, and every scoop
of the bucket is one of pure silver. When cooked in that flapping
condition, in beef drippings, and served with a boiled potato, they come
nearer to being perfect human food than anything I know of.
Georges Pouchet, the ichthyologist, used to come to the Vivier in
Concarneau to study the fish forms. He was a friend of Pasteur, and they
were studying mammals as a basis for the investigation of the human
body. I lunched with him in his bachelor lodgings during the Salon every
year. He had an original way of entertaining. The invitations were
always written and very formal. I was always received by the same
manservant; lunched with him alone and upon the same menu. We had but
one dish. The servant brought in a bowl fully two feet across, full of
écrevisses; then bread, wine, and a basin with a towel and fresh water.
He said it was necessary to wash while eating these shellfish. Of course
we finished off with coffee and a smoke.
Pouchet was an intimate friend of Alfred de Musset and told me much
about him. The poet had many fads inherited from the days of swords,
pistols, snuff, and powdered hair. For instance, he would under no
circumstances accept copper money; in fact, he would not touch the metal
in any form. Toward the end of Musset’s life he frequented a certain
café in Paris—used it as a club. He would go there to write his letters,
read his paper, etc., and with him would be a quiet man in plain
clothing whom you would not notice. At a certain time in the evening he
would make a gesture to the waiter, who would serve him with two
carafons—one of brandy and one of absinthe. He would pour them together
in one glass and, looking at them, take out of his buttonhole his button
of General of the Legion of Honor, and put it in his waistcoat. He would
then down the mixture at once; the quiet man would approach and take him
to his carriage. No one but a Frenchman could have done this; he would
not get drunk as a member of the Legion!
Sitting one time with Pouchet and a well-known authoress, discussing
sex, he said:
“You make a mistake, mademoiselle, there are four sexes. Male—Mr.
Simmons; female—your charming self; neuter”—pointing to a stuffy judge
way down the room; “and potentially male or female. This sex can be
recognized by the human hair. It is long in the men and short in the
women. Let us call it the professorial sex.” Women’s rights, divorce
laws, etc., were then unknown in France, so this was quite an advanced
idea.
The last time I saw Pouchet was in New York. He was about sixty-three
years old. We were lunching at the Players and I asked:
“What brings you to America?”
“To study the question of tonsils.”
“Are American tonsils different from European?” I asked.
“Oh no! We are interested in the tonsils of other mammals—of the whale.”
Just before he went back to France I asked him what conclusion his
investigation had brought forth.
“A matter of great importance,” he answered. “The fact that the tonsil
is of no importance.”
I have since heard this disputed, but I thought it very interesting that
these learned men should work so long and so hard for such a result.
The British artists passed by Concarneau and went on to Pont Aven, where
there were ready-made landscapes for the water-colorists. Truth to tell,
they were frightened by the bigness of the coast and left it to the
French and Americans, who formed a very happy crowd, all living at the
Hotel des Voyageurs. There was Thaddeus Jones, who has since painted a
portrait of the Pope; Alexander Harrison, the famous marine painter;
Frank Chadwick; Howard Russell Butler; M. Brion; Emile Renouf; Paul
Dubois, the sculptor; and Bastien Le Page. Bastien was the first in
importance in the Concarneau older set, being almost the father of the
Realistic movement. He was a quiet, well-bred person, swift at repartee,
and could write as corking a letter to the press as Whistler.
One day I caught him painting a sketch of the little stone church on the
shore at the edge of the town, something we had all tried. He was
drawing and painting, with meticulous care, every slate on the roof,
each with its little lichen. I brought the subject up, after dinner,
when we were sitting on the sidewalk having our coffee.
“M. Bastien,” I said (no one ever called him Le Page) “we have all been
taught by Le Febvre, Boulanger, Cabanel, and Durand to _ebaucher_ our
subject broadly and put in only the details that are absolutely
necessary. I saw you to-day painting every slate on that roof for its
own sake. How about it?”
He laughed.
“I have tried all these different methods, but none of them got me what
I saw; so now I do everything as truthfully as I am able, then take my
picture to Paris, where, in my studio, away from nature, I can consider
it broadly and remove all the unnecessary detail.”
“Yes,” said Harrison, “but when we younger men see your picture in the
Salon we don’t think you have done what you say you do.”
He threw his hands in the air.
“_Helas! Helas! Sacré Nom de Dieu! Vous avez raison._ I am so much in
love with it when I see it in my studio that I cannot bear to touch it.”
Bastien was born in Domremy, which was probably the reason he made such
an admirable painting of Jeanne d’Arc, now in the Metropolitan Museum.
He told us the details of the work. There was no one model, except for
the body, and he used several to carry out his ideal of the head. You
feel that she is a working girl and not a pretty peasant by Bougereau.
Albert Wolff wrote a stinging criticism of it, commenting on the charm
of the figure and the excellence of the drawing and painting, but saying
that the visions in the air were idiotic. Bastien replied that the
visions were not supposed to be those of a learned man like Wolff or,
indeed, his own, but those born in the brain of Jeanne d’Arc, an
uneducated girl of sixteen, whose only knowledge of kings and queens was
of the figures of the saints she had worshiped in church.
He handled this canvas in quite an original way, and not a very
successful one. It was painted in two pieces, so that it could be easily
carried to the orchard where he worked. When finished, he and the
village cobbler sewed them together by hand, with the best linen thread
and cobbler’s wax. They then stretched it and hammered the joining,
which was filled with white and siccatif and scraped down. When it was
firm and dry, he went over it so there should be no question of the
surface, and repainted it, and, as he said, “I wager anything that that
crack does not show in a thousand years.” Alas, it is plainly evident in
the Metropolitan to-day, and the repainting must have changed, as the
color and tone where the crack is are all wrong.
Bastien was one of the most lovable men I ever met, bright, smiling,
with a certain undercurrent of sadness—the mark of tuberculosis was upon
him then. I remember one day attempting to tell him the meaning of an
American negro song he had learned from one of the boys, but he refused
to listen, not wishing to be disillusioned.
“No, no, Simmons, I do not wish to have it explained. I know what it
says. It is a pathetic song of a lover mourning for one he has lost.”
And he rendered it in a voice that would have brought tears to the eyes
of the average audience.
“Ze lobstere in ze lobstere pot
Ze bluefish in ze panne;
Zey suffere, oh, zey suffere not;
What I suffere for my Marie Anne.”
Poor Bastien! He was gone the next year.
It is almost impossible to speak of Bastien without mentioning that
young woman, made famous by the remark of Gladstone that she had written
the best book of the year, the woman who meant so much in his life—Marie
Bashkirtsev. Fresh from the hands of her maid, she was a fascinating
blond “vamp,” but in about twenty minutes the charms began to go. Her
hair became unruly, buttons refused to do their duty, and slipper
strings burst. She had beautiful feet and was inclined to wear her shoes
too small. I once sent her a message saying that I would give her a
sketch for one of her slippers. She replied:
“I know the value of a new pair of slippers, but I do not know the value
of one of your pictures.”
On the apartment mantelpiece of Bojidar Karageorgivitch was a semicircle
of shoes, a slipper in the center, and two bell jars covering riding
boots at either end—all belonging to his cousin Marie. Borjidar was a
charming person; the son of a king, his mother a Russian princess and
second in line for the Serbian throne. His brother Nicolas was a
weakling, and Peter, the king, was no good. Slight, pointed beard, and
aquiline nose, he looked more the fashionable Frenchman than anything
else. Like Pierre Loti, he was smitten with the divine Sarah, who
visited him at Concarneau and left her painting materials behind.
Borjidar always seemed to be surrounded with a halo of romance. One day
we were sitting out on the pavement and some one mentioned thumb-nails.
It is said that the larger the white moons, the greater the aristocrat.
This royal prince had no moon at all, thus indicating no ancestry; but
if the sign is true, it is not strange, since his grandfather had been
an ignorant butcher who had jumped the throne. Through his mother he had
a delightful touch. Years later I met Bojidar in Paris, and what do you
suppose he was doing? Such a brave, fine thing! He was selling jewelry,
which he designed himself, to the English snob and really making good at
it. Many people like to buy from the son of a king.
There came to Concarneau a young girl, wide eyed, eager, temperamental,
thirsting for a knowledge of life, but knowing about as much of it as
the bird just out of the egg. She was alone and studying Art. She asked
of the women folk the meaning of marriage, and wanted to be chaperoned
until she had made up her mind whether to take the big step or not. Not
so long after her enlightenment, she announced her wedding, and with
none other than the now well-known writer—Havelock Ellis. Ellis seems to
me an example of a man who took up one subject, stuck to it, and
absorbed it thoroughly—a procedure almost always destined for success
when accompanied by brains. Some years after, I visited the Ellises in
England. There had been no children from the union, but the one-time
timid and childish wife had developed into a charming woman, and,
strange to say, a full-fledged raiser of blooded stock. She it was who
tended the wants of the baby bulls and colts, was in at the births and
deaths of the animals; while Havelock sat by the warmth of his very
delightful fireplace, smoking his pipe and probably mulling over the
psychological effect of all this on the feminine mind. Anyway, I had a
delightful time and, upon his refusal to help her, I held the head of a
baby calf while she slipped a dose of oil down its throat, oblivious to
the fact that I was ruining a beautiful new pair of white flannel
trousers.
Halfway between Concarneau and Pont Aven (that place of predigested food
for artists and ready-made motifs) at the summit of a rise in the road,
is the Rocking Stone. It is twenty feet in diameter, almost spherical in
shape, and so poised by the glacial period upon another buried stone,
that, if pressed at a certain angle, it rocks. The legend is that the
stone gained this quality at the hands of the comtesse of the château,
whose husband went to the Crusades and left her, a bride, to his dearest
friend to take care of. This he proceeded to do by trying to make her
his mistress; he was rebuffed and became her enemy. Upon her husband’s
return from the wars, this so-called friend rushed ahead to meet him and
told him his wife had betrayed him. The count drew his sword, walked
ahead to meet her, and accused her of the infidelity. She placed her
hand on the stone and said:
“God is my witness that it is a lie and, if I am chaste, will move this
stone.”
Thereupon, she touched it ever so lightly, and it rocked!
It was a habit of the peasants and fishermen to take their sweethearts
to this place to see if they could move the bowlder. On such
superstitions does the virtue of a woman hang.
* * * * *
It was very dramatic, the way I first saw Spain. A cold and beastly
night, changing into a hot day; third-class carriage and no coffee; the
first sight out of the car window in the morning a dusty plain. It could
have been an alkali desert in the West. In no sense like the Italians or
French, the Spanish are haughty, silent, laconic, dignified, morose, and
lonely, like their plains with every now and then a brilliant patch of
green. Here and there would be a castle and, clustered around its feet,
tiny houses. Human beings lived there! Farther on, bands of sheep or
goats, and a herder whom one could imagine a Moorish horseman with a
tall spear. There was a Don Quixote at every turn. At last, the plain
stretched and widened until there was a hill line like the horizon of
the ocean. Suddenly, the two horns of a snail stuck up, getting larger
and larger, until the animal seemed to be creeping toward us out of the
distance. A cloudless sky, vast stretches, with no sign of human
habitation anywhere—and the horns of the snail suddenly changed into the
towers of a building—the Cathedral at Bourgos!
At Madrid I saw Titian for the first time; the ones in the Louvre are of
no importance. On one side of a narrow gallery in the Prado will be a
Titian, and on the other side a Velasquez. The former looks five hundred
years old, and the latter very modern, the difference being due,
apparently, to the surface of the canvas; also the movement in my day
was toward Velasquez—the free brush work and the blond note. There is
one marvelous canvas of his here; no one ever did anything like it. He
had painted Phillip, the king, dozens of times, and did the dwarfs and
ladies of the court. Evidently the queen was tired of these, and said to
him one day:
“I want a picture for myself. Do just as I say. Paint my daughter in her
new gown, the fool, dog, and parrot, and the king and myself looking at
you while you do it.”
A large order, but see what he has done! He stands in the center with
his canvas; at one side the infanta, a squat dwarf, and the dog, while
the king and queen are seen at the back in a doorway, with the
background of a garden. Of great value to us is his palette, which he is
holding in his hand, plainly showing what colors he used—red, yellow,
black, and white.
Upon arriving at Elche (from the Roman Illici) under whose walls
Hamilcar Barca, the uncle of Hannibal, died fighting, I realized I had
quietly stepped back four or five hundred years in the history of the
world.
One could almost forgive the superstitious and general ignorance of the
Mediæval Age when one realizes the beautiful things that have been
bequeathed to us. Nothing could be more fascinatingly romantic or more
un-Yankee than the Sereno—the man appointed by the city to go about at
night announcing the time and the weather. His name, meaning “serene,”
comes from the fact that the weather is nearly always clear. In fact,
during all the time that I was in Spain there was only one day when I
saw a cloud in the sky, and I am afraid I should have missed that if my
attention had not been called to it by a proud native.
On these clear blue evenings you would go to bed amid a profound silence
and just be dozing off into a half dream, when away down the street
would come to your ear two or three weird little notes, faint and far
away, seeming to be part of a song or the cry of a bird. Perhaps you
would go back to sleep, and again it would seem only five minutes, but
in reality it would be a half hour—would come the sound, this time
nearer and much more distinct. Each repetition would be louder, until
you would hear the “toc, toc, toc,” of his stick, stopping now and then
as he banged on the door of some heavy sleeper who had paid the Sereno
to wake him. Perhaps he wanted to make a train—or was it “reasons of
love”?
Then right under your window would come the song, “Eleven
o’clock—Serene,” beginning loud and finally disappearing into the night.
[Illustration: Las do-ze y Me-di-a Se-ra-no.]
The Spanish nature is a mixture of politeness and cruelty. There is
something to excite the blood every day. I have seen them gather
together all the stray dogs and give them poison, then heap them up at
the corners of the street. Those that are not dead escape and run away
howling, and the great sport is to jerk them up on a rope, hurling them
high in the air. Everyone thinks this a splendid game and the children
yell with glee. But as to the manners—those of an illiterate farmer are
better than the average clubman’s of New York. If a Spaniard offers you
anything three times, you must accept it, and then offer him something
three times so that he may accept. I remember a farmhand hailing an
old-fashioned coach which ran from Elche to Alicante. Boarding it
slowly, he raised his hat to everyone, saying:
“Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Will you permit me?” Rolling a
cigarette, he was suddenly struck with a thought, and, turning, offered
the tobacco to the coach in general. In a café, if you sit down beside
anyone—peasant, priest, or dude—he offers you a drink. The third time
you are obliged to accept. The same formula is gone through with in
every situation in life (like the Arabian who must always walk with a
guest to the limit of his property), but I rather think democracy is
doing away with it.
There is no art among the provincial people of Spain. In fact, I do not
know any place where there is such an utter indifference to it. Once the
hotel keeper came into my bedroom and saw a water color I had done
hanging on the wall. It was a careful rendition of the passageway in
front of my room. There were the tiles on the floor, the plaster walls
with the door halfway down, and, at the end, beneath a window, stood a
large jar (exactly like the one in which I imagine the Forty Thieves
were concealed) full of pampas grass. I should have thought a child
would have recognized it. But mine host said, politely:
“One of your artistic results from our river?”
“No,” emphatically.
“Oh, then it is the cathedral?”
I gave it up. Had I been a sensitive man, I think I would have stopped
painting then and there.
The Church is the doctor, lawyer, teacher, amanuensis, and theater. The
festivals are more beautiful than I have seen anywhere. From May to
October there is never a cloud in the sky, and during this time is held
the Fiesta de la Vieja Negra. The ceremony takes place in the public
square, and at midnight of that July night the roofs of the town are
crowded with people while the sky looks like an inverted bowl of black
over their heads. The legend is that the little Virgin, only three feet
high and carved out of dark wood, landed in a boat on the shores of the
Mediterranean. In her hand was a scroll which directed that she be drawn
inland by two white oxen and that where they lay down must be built a
temple. This is the Cathedral of Elche, the roof of which is of blue
tiles and glitters like an amethyst or turquoise. The procession of the
fiesta begins at twelve o’clock and proceeds in stately fashion to the
square. Everything connected with the Virgin herself is
black—black-robed priests, black casket and draperies—with all else a
blaze of light and color. I was much affected and ready to fall on my
knees and become a Roman Catholic. The mayor, in evening clothes, awaits
her, carrying in his hand a black velvet flag about ten by twelve feet,
with no insignia. When the procession stops he walks solemnly forward,
all alone, across the square. When directly in front of the Virgin he
raises the flag in his hands and, amid dead silence, waves it slowly in
her face, back and forth. The third time the staff snaps and down falls
the flag at her feet. There is a wild yell of: “Fiesta! Fiesta!”
Everyone believes a miracle has happened.
The story is that when the Vieja was first installed, a Moorish
Chieftain jeered at her and waved his flag in her face, wherefore she
caused it to break in his hand, and he fell down converted. Now year
after year the miracle is repeated. I was told that the flagpole is cut
to the center on one diameter and gauged, when turned, to break at the
right moment.
The fiesta of Elche takes place within the cathedral. I was fortunate
enough to be able to witness the ceremony from a small window just below
the dome and hundreds of feet above the people. The first part is the
cleansing of the temple of the Jews. A large crowd in rags and
gabardines, with beards, evidently false, attempt to come in, but are
fallen upon by the audience, flagellated, and flung out of the church.
All having quieted again, a most dramatic thing happens. Suddenly,
seemingly, the whole dome (a part twenty-five feet in diameter) begins
to move and slowly come down. From my seat I could now and then see the
operation of the windlass, but to the people below it must have looked
like the petals of a water lily detaching themselves and opening into a
golden flower. The stamens held two men angels with golden wings and
wearing costumes hundreds of years old, so beautiful that I did not
notice the colors. I have never seen any fabric so wonderful except the
old Breton communion lace and the costumes of the Javanese dancers. The
pistil had, for a stigma, a cherub—as far as they could see below—in
empty air. He was a beautiful ten-year-old boy held only from behind by
a gilded shaft of steel with two little places for his feet. As he
descended and came about opposite me, he fainted away, but the two men’s
arms flashed out to hold him, so that it was not noticed below. Then the
angels scatter the pollen—little bits of gold leaf—all over the church,
and as this is supposed to be very holy and of great curative value,
everyone strives to pick up a piece. The boy angel, supposedly come down
from heaven, delivers to the Virgin the palm branch which is symbolic of
a productive year. Just at this moment a tiny sparrow (not on the
program) circled our heads like a soul in flight. The angels begin to
rise, are carried to the dome, the petals of the huge flower close, and
the whole ceremony seems to have been but a figment of the imagination.
One’s point of view of the human race out of doors becomes exactly
reversed upon going from Brittany to Spain. In the former country one
sees the head, with the coif, as a white spot against a background of
green; and in the latter the head is black against the landscape. The
ideas of modesty are also exactly reversed; for a Breton peasant to show
her hair means that she is not virtuous, while the Spanish constantly go
about with the head uncovered. The Spanish have no sense of privacy;
they stare on every occasion and do not hesitate to go into anyone’s
home without knocking—there are no locks on the doors, so one cannot
prevent this. They never pull down the shades from any desire of
seclusion, and rather think it taking away their privileges if anyone
else does. A beautifully dressed woman and daughter will pass you with
downcast eyes, but if you turn quickly you will probably see them
standing perfectly still, facing you and gaping. The children go about
naked, and used to climb upon the grill of our veranda to stare at us
and beg to taste our food.
A few days after my son was born I noticed something peculiar in the
actions of the midwife and the women about. They kept wailing:
“Poor little heathen. He will not live. He will not live. Seven-months
child. Condemned to the fires of hell.”
To tell you the truth, I did not care much at that time whether or not
he did live, but for the sake of the nerves of the household, my own
included, I was forced to ask them to explain.
“Why, he is a heretic!” they said.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“He is not baptized.”
“Do you want to baptize him?” I asked, rather jokingly.
“Will you let us? Oh, Medica, Medica, run, run! We will baptize the
little heretic!”
I was in for it, so went to my friend Don Paco, who was a very wealthy
and influential man, and asked what I had to do.
“Oh, _you_ have nothing to do,” he replied. “You do not count. Only the
godfather matters, and that will be I.”
His duty, besides officiating at the ceremony, was to promise to do his
utmost to keep the child in the Catholic faith.
Well, I got into the church by fighting, to see one of the worst-looking
babies you ever saw held up, entirely naked, by the medica, while four
or five big priests crossed the different parts of his body with holy
oil—changing a Concord Unitarian into a Roman Catholic! Truly, the
reclamation of a heretic. After the baptism they did acknowledge my
existence, for I rode in the carriage with Don Paco and the medica, who
held the baby. The godfather had to get us out of the church by striking
women right and left—a woman does not count for thirty cents in Spain.
We rode in a four-seated carriage with two horses, and a brass band
going before us. The crowd was so dense (more than twenty-five hundred
people on that small street alone) that we could proceed only at the
slowest walk, and at that we broke the arm of a small boy who was pushed
under the horses’ hoofs.
Back at the hotel, the landlord was so overcome at the advertisement
that he almost lost his head, giving us a wonderful feast—downstairs for
the band and upstairs for the dudes, priests and contessas, the last
having been invited by Don Paco and come from far away for the occasion.
I learned afterward that one of the reasons for all this excitement over
my child was that Don Paco had told that both parents lived in
California (their El Dorado), and somehow they had gotten the idea that
I owned most of the state. One little touch that reconciled me for all
the trouble the baby’s christening had caused me—the doctor, one of the
first in Spain, who had brought him into the world presented me with a
bill charging ten cents a visit and five cents whenever we called upon
him.
My exit from Spain was not so romantic as my entrance; in fact, it was
in the nature of a flight. Walking into Alicante one day, I was grabbed
by the American consul, who said:
“Get your family and bring them here as quickly as you can; I cannot
explain, as I must not speak English any more.”
Cholera had broken out, in spite of every precaution to keep it from
coming over the border from France, where there was an epidemic. If we
did not get out immediately, it would mean three months in Elche,
surrounded by troops, and the possibility of contracting the dread
disease. I shall never forget the misery of that journey. As usual, I
had very little money. It took us sixty hours to make the trip, and we
landed at Concarneau at 3 A.M. in a blinding snowstorm.
I think I spoke of the politeness of the Spanish farmer. Not so the
dude. We had started third class, but had been driven out by the number
of people to the second and finally the first class. Upon changing to
the last, I saw the train was about to start and was all crowded except
one compartment, marked “Reserved,” which I opened and entered. There
were four well-dressed Spaniards lying down with their feet upon the
seats, occupying the amount of space legally allowed for eight people.
They looked up, saw the woman and baby, rolled over, and did not move. I
explained politely and asked for a seat. Not a move. I then pushed one
of them over and stood on him while I made room for my family, folded my
arms, and waited for these people who kill, assassinate, and duel to
come forward. There were many oaths and much talk about “wishing I had
my sword,” etc., but not a shut fist.
Just before we got to Irun, which is the last town before you cross the
border into France, I got into conversation with a very well-bred
Spaniard. He pointed to a little house at San Sebastian, way below on
the seashore, and told me it was his and that he had just arrived home
from South America and had seen his family for the first time in three
years. He then spoke of his impatience at having been kept such a long
time in quarantine in France.
“But you are going away again?” I asked.
“Oh, I left an important parcel in Irun and am going back to get it,” he
answered. Then, pointing to a bit of red worsted tied to his umbrella,
he continued, “This was put on by my wife, who knows how forgetful I am,
so that I may be sure and not pass the border.”
While we were talking, he suddenly looked out of the car window with a
wild exclamation:
“My God, we have passed Irun!”
In spite of the red worsted reminder, he had gone over the border again
into France and would have to spend another three weeks in quarantine!