to be a thorough Spaniard, still preserves these pretty weaknesses of
her youth. She vowed a chapel to her patron saint if her firstborn was a
man-child, and paid it. She has hung a vestal lamp in the Church of
Notre Dame des Victoires, in pursuance of a vow she keeps rigidly
secret. She is a firm believer in relics also, and keeps a choice
assortment on hand in the Tuileries for sudden emergencies. When old
Baciocchi lay near his death, worn out by a horrible nervous disorder
which would not let him sleep, the empress told the doctors, with great
mystery, that she would cure him. After a few preliminary masses, she
came into his room and hung on his bedpost a little gold-embroidered
sachet containing (if the evidence of holy men is to be believed) a few
threads of the swaddling-clothes of John the Baptist. Her simple
childlike faith wrung the last grim smile from the tortured lips of the
dying courtier.
The very names of the Spanish women are a constant reminder of their
worship. They are all named out of the calendar of saints and virgin
martyrs. A large majority are christened Mary; but as this sacred name
by much use has lost all distinctive meaning, some attribute, some
especial invocation of the Virgin, is always coupled with it. The names
of Dolores, Mercedes, Milagros, recall Our Lady of the Sorrows, of the
Gifts, of the Miracles. I knew a hoydenish little gypsy who bore the
tearful name of Lagrimas. The most appropriate name I heard for these
large-eyed, soft-voiced beauties was Peligros, Our Lady of Dangers. Who
could resist the comforting assurance of "Consuelo"? "Blessed," says my
Lord Lytton, "is woman who consoles." What an image of maiden purity
goes with the name of Nieves, the Virgin of the Snows! From a single
cotillon of Castilian girls you can construct the whole history of Our
Lady; Conception, Annunciation, Sorrows, Solitude, Assumption. As young
ladies are never called by their family names, but always by their
baptismal appellations, you cannot pass an evening in a Spanish
_tertulia_ without being reminded of every stage in the life of the
Immaculate Mother, from Bethlehem to Calvary and beyond.
The common use of sacred words is universal in Catholic countries, but
nowhere so striking as in Spain. There is a little solemnity in the
French adieu. But the Spaniard says adios instead of "good-morning." No
letter closes without the prayer, "God guard your Grace many years!"
They say a judge announces to a murderer his sentence of death with the
sacramental wish of length of days. There is something a little shocking
to a Yankee mind in the label of Lachryma Christi; but in La Mancha they
call fritters the Grace of God.
The piety of the Spanish women does not prevent them from seeing some
things clearly enough with their bright eyes. One of the most bigoted
women in Spain recently said: "I hesitate to let my child go to
confession. The priests ask young girls such infamous questions, that my
cheeks burn when I think of them, after all these years." I stood one
Christmas Eve in the cold midnight wind, waiting for the church doors to
open for the night mass, the famous _misa del gallo._ On the steps
beside me sat a decent old woman with her two daughters. At last she
rose and said, "Girls, it is no use waiting any longer. The priests
won't leave their housekeepers this cold night to save anybody's soul."
In these two cases, taken from the two extremes of the Catholic society,
there was no disrespect for the Church or for religion. Both these women
believed with a blind faith. But they could not help seeing how unclean
were the hands that dispensed the bread of life.
The respect shown to the priesthood as a body is marvellous, in view of
the profligate lives of many. The general progress of the age has forced
most of the dissolute priests into hypocrisy. But their cynical
immorality is still the bane of many families. And it needs but a glance
at the vile manual of confession, called the Golden Key, the author of
which is the too well known Padre Claret, confessor to the queen, to see
the systematic moral poisoning the minds of Spanish women must undergo
who pay due attention to what is called their religious duties. If a
confessor obeys the injunctions of this high ecclesiastical authority,
his fair penitents will have nothing to learn from a diligent perusal of
Faublas or Casanova. It would, however, be unjust to the priesthood to
consider them all as corrupt as royal chaplains. It requires a
combination of convent and palace life to produce these finished
specimens of mitred infamy.
It is to be regretted that the Spanish women are kept in such systematic
ignorance. They have a quicker and more active intelligence than the
men. With a fair degree of education, much might be hoped from them in
the intellectual development of the country. In society, you will at
once be struck with the superiority of the women to their husbands and
brothers in cleverness and appreciation. Among small tradesmen, the wife
always comes to the rescue of her slow spouse when she sees him befogged
in a bargain. In the fields, you ask a peasant some question about your
journey. He will hesitate, and stammer, and end with, "_Quien sabe?"_
but his wife will answer with glib completeness all you want to know. I
can imagine no cause for this, unless it be that the men cloud their
brains all day with the fumes of tobacco, and the women do not.
The personality of the woman is not so entirely merged in that of the
husband as among us. She retains her own baptismal and family name
through life. If Miss Matilda Smith marries Mr. Jonathan Jones, all
vestige of the former gentle being vanishes at once from the earth, and
Mrs. Jonathan Jones alone remains. But in Spain she would become Mrs.
Matilda Smith de Jones, and her eldest-born would be called Don Juan
Jones y Smith. You ask the name of a married lady in society, and you
hear as often her own name as that of her husband.
Even among titled people, the family name seems more highly valued than
the titular designation. Everybody knows Narvaez, but how few have heard
of the Duke of Valencia! The Regent Serrano has a name known and honored
over the world, but most people must think twice before they remember
the Duke de la Torre. Juan Prim is better known than the Marques de los
Castillejos ever will be. It is perhaps due to the prodigality with
which titles have been scattered in late years that the older titles are
more regarded than the new, although of inferior grade. Thus Prim calls
himself almost invariably the Conde de Reus, though his grandeeship came
with his investiture as marquis.
There is something quite noticeable about this easy way of treating
one's name. We are accustomed to think a man can have but one name, and
can sign it but in one way. Lord Derby can no more call himself Mr.
Stanley than President Grant can sign a bill as U. Simpson. Yet both
these signatures would be perfectly valid according to Spanish analogy.
The Marquis of Santa Marta signs himself Guzman; the Marquis of Albaida
uses no signature but Orense; both of these gentlemen being Republican
deputies. I have seen General Prim's name signed officially, Conde de
Reus, Marques de los Castillejos, Prim, J. Prim, Juan Prim, and Jean
Prim, changing the style as often as the humor strikes him.
Their forms of courtesy are, however, invariable. You can never visit a
Spaniard without his informing you that you are in your own house. If,
walking with him, you pass his residence, he asks you to enter your
house and unfatigue yourself a moment. If you happen upon any Spaniard,
of whatever class, at the hour of repast, he always offers you his
dinner; if you decline, it must be with polite wishes for his digestion.
With the Spaniards, no news is good news; it is therefore civil to ask a
Spaniard if his lady-wife goes on without novelty, and to express your
profound gratification on being assured that she does. Their forms of
hospitality are evidently Moorish, derived from the genuine open hand
and open tent of the children of the desert; now nothing is left of them
but grave and decorous words. In the old times, one who would have
refused such offers would have been held a churl; now one who would
accept them would be regarded as a boor.
There is still something primitive about the Spanish servants. A flavor
of the old romances and the old comedy still hangs about them. They are
chatty and confidential to a degree that appalls a stiff and formal
Englishman of the upper middle class. The British servant is a chilly
and statuesque image of propriety. The French is an intelligent and
sympathizing friend. You can make of him what you like. But the Italian,
and still more the Spaniard, is as gay as a child, and as incapable of
intentional disrespect. The Castilian grandee does not regard his
dignity as in danger from a moment's chat with a waiter. He has no
conception of that ferocious decorum we Anglo-Saxons require from our
manservants and our maidservants. The Spanish servant seems to regard it
as part of his duty to keep your spirits gently excited while you dine
by the gossip of the day. He joins also in your discussions, whether
they touch lightly on the politics of the hour or plunge profoundly into
the depths of philosophic research. He laughs at your wit, and swings
his napkin with convulsions of mirth at your good stories. He tells you
the history of his life while you are breaking your egg, and lays the
story of his loves before you with your coffee. Yet he is not intrusive.
He will chatter on without waiting for a reply, and when you are tired
of him you can shut him off with a word. There are few Spanish servants
so uninteresting but that you can find in them from time to time some
sparks of that ineffable light which shines forever in Sancho and
Figaro.
The traditions of subordination, which are the result of long centuries
of tyranny, have prevented the development of that feeling of
independence among the lower orders, which in a freer race finds its
expression in ill manners and discourtesy to superiors. I knew a
gentleman in the West whose circumstances had forced him to become a
waiter in a backwoods restaurant. He bore a deadly grudge at the
profession that kept him from starving, and asserted his unconquered
nobility of soul by scowling at his customers and swearing at the viands
he dispensed. I remember the deep sense of wrong with which he would
growl, "Two buckwheats, begawd!" You see nothing of this defiant spirit
in Spanish servants. They are heartily glad to find employment, and ask
no higher good-fortune than to serve acceptably. As to drawing
comparisons between themselves and their masters, they never seem to
think they belong to the same race. I saw a pretty grisette once stop to
look at a show-window where there was a lay-figure completely covered
with all manner of trusses. She gazed at it long and earnestly,
evidently thinking it was some new fashion just introduced into the gay
world. At last she tripped away with all the grace of her unfettered
limbs, saying, "If the fine ladies have to wear all those machines, I am
glad I am not made like them."
Whether it be from their more regular and active lives, or from their
being unable to pay for medical attendance, the poorer classes suffer
less from sickness than their betters. An ordinary Spaniard is sick but
once in his life, and that once is enough,--'twill serve. The traditions
of the old satires which represented the doctor and death as always
hunting in couples still survive in Spain. It is taken as so entirely a
matter of course that a patient must die that the law of the land
imposed a heavy fine upon physicians who did not bring a priest on their
second visit. His labor of exhortation and confession was rarely wasted.
There were few sufferers who recovered from the shock of that solemn
ceremony in their chambers. Medical science still labors in Spain under
the ban of ostracism, imposed in the days when all research was impiety.
The Inquisition clamored for the blood of Vesalius, who had committed
the crime of a demonstration in anatomy. He was forced into a pilgrimage
of expiation, and died on the way to Palestine. The Church has always
looked with a jealous eye upon the inquirers, the innovators. Why these
probes, these lancets, these multifarious drugs, when the object in view
could be so much more easily obtained by the judicious application of
masses and prayers?
So it has come about that the doctor is a Pariah, and miracles flourish
in the Peninsula. At every considerable shrine you will see the walls
covered with waxen models of feet, legs, hands, and arms secured by the
miraculous interposition of the _genius loci,_ and scores of little
crutches attesting the marvellous hour when they became useless. Each
shrine, like a mineral spring, has its own especial virtue. A Santiago
medal was better than quinine for ague. St. Veronica's handkerchief is
sovereign for sore eyes. A bone of St. Magin supersedes the use of
mercury. A finger-nail of San Frutos cured at Segovia a case of
congenital idiocy. The Virgin of Ona acted as a vermifuge on royal
infantas, and her girdle at Tortosa smooths their passage into this
world. In this age of unfaith relics have lost much of their power. They
turn out their score or so of miracles every feast-day, it is true, but
are no longer capable of the _tours de force_ of earlier days. Cardinal
de Retz saw with his eyes a man whose wooden legs were turned to
capering flesh and blood by the image of the Pillar of Saragossa. But
this was in the good old times before newspapers and telegraphs had come
to dispel the twilight of belief.
Now, it is excessively probable that neither doctor nor priest can do
much if the patient is hit in earnest. He soon succumbs, and is laid out
in his best clothes in an improvised chapel and duly sped on his way.
The custom of burying the dead in the gown and cowl of monks has greatly
passed into disuse. The mortal relics are treated with growing contempt,
as the superstitions of the people gradually lose their concrete
character. The soul is the important matter which the Church now looks
to. So the cold clay is carted off to the cemetery with small ceremony.
Even the coffins of the rich are jammed away into receptacles too small
for them, and hastily plastered out of sight. The poor are carried off
on trestles and huddled into their nameless graves, without following or
blessing. Children are buried with some regard to the old Oriental
customs. The coffin is of some gay and cheerful color, pink or blue, and
is carried open to the grave by four of the dead child's young
companions, a fifth walking behind with the ribboned coffin-lid. I have
often seen these touching little parties moving through the bustling
streets, the peaceful small face asleep under the open sky, decked with
the fading roses and withering lilies. In all well-to-do families the
house of death is deserted immediately after the funeral. The stricken
ones retire to some other habitation, and there pass eight days in
strict and inviolable seclusion. On the ninth day the great masses for
the repose of the soul of the departed are said in the parish church,
and all the friends of the family are expected to be present. These
masses are the most important and expensive incident of the funeral.
They cost from two hundred to one thousand dollars, according to the
strength and fervor of the orisons employed. They are repeated several
years on the anniversary of the decease, and afford a most sure and
nourishing revenue to the Church. They are founded upon those feelings
inseparable from every human heart, vanity and affection. Our dead
friends must be as well prayed for as those of others, and who knows but
that they may be in deadly need of prayers! To shorten their fiery
penance by one hour, who would not fast for a week? On these
anniversaries a black-bordered advertisement appears in the newspapers,
headed by the sign of the cross and the Requiescat in Pace, announcing
that on this day twelve months Don Fulano de Tal passed from earth
garnished with the holy sacraments, that all the masses this day
celebrated in such and such churches will be applied to the benefit of
his spirit's repose, and that all Christian friends are hereby requested
to commend his soul this day unto God. These efforts, if they do the
dead no good, at least do the living no harm.
A luxury of grief, in those who can afford it, consists in shutting up
the house where a death has taken place and never suffering it to be
opened again. I once saw a beautiful house and wide garden thus
abandoned in one of the most fashionable streets of Madrid. I inquired
about it, and found it was formerly the residence of the Duke of------.
His wife had died there many years before, and since that day not a door
nor a window had been opened. The garden gates were red and rough with
rust. Grass grew tall and rank in the gravelled walks. A thick lush
undergrowth had overrun the flower-beds and the lawns. The blinds were
rotting over the darkened windows. Luxuriant vines clambered over all
the mossy doors. The stucco was peeling from the walls in unwholesome
blotches. Wild birds sang all day in the safe solitude. There was
something impressive in this spot of mould and silence, lying there so
green and implacable in the very heart of a great and noisy city. The
duke lived in Paris, leading the rattling life of a man of the world. He
never would sell or let that Madrid house. Perhaps in his heart also,
that battered thoroughfare worn by the pattering boots of Ma-bine and
the Bois, and the Quartier Breda, there was a green spot sacred to
memory and silence, where no footfall should ever light, where no living
voice should ever be heard, shut out from the world and its cares and
its pleasures, where through the gloom of dead days he could catch a
glimpse of a white hand, a flash of a dark eye, the rustle of a trailing
robe, and feel sweeping over him the old magic of love's young dream,
softening his fancy to tender regret and his eyes to a happy mist--
"Like that which kept the heart of Eden green
Before the useful trouble of the rain."
INFLUENCE OF TRADITION IN SPANISH LIFE
Intelligent Spaniards with whom I have conversed on political matters
have often exclaimed, "Ah, you Americans are happy! you have no
traditions." The phrase was at first a puzzling one. We Americans are
apt to think we have traditions,--a rather clearly marked line of
precedents. And it is hard to see how a people should be happier without
them. It is not anywhere considered a misfortune to have had a
grandfather, I believe, and some very good folks take an innocent pride
in that very natural fact. It was not easy to conceive why the
possession of a glorious history of many centuries should be regarded as
a drawback. But a closer observation of Spanish life and thought reveals
the curious and hurtful effect of tradition upon every phase of
existence.
In the commonest events of every day you will find the flavor of past
ages lingering in petty annoyances. The insecurity of the middle ages
has left as a legacy to our times a complicated system of obstacles to a
man getting into his own house at night. I lived in a pleasant house on
the Prado, with a minute garden in front, and an iron gate and railing.
This gate was shut and locked by the night watchman of the quarter at
midnight,--so conscientiously that he usually had everything snug by
half past eleven. As the same man had charge of a dozen or more houses,
it was scarcely reasonable to expect him to be always at your own gate
when you arrived. But by a singular fatality I think no man ever found
him in sight at any hour. He is always opening some other gate or
shutting some other door, or settling the affairs of the nation with a
friend in the next block, or carrying on a chronic courtship at the
lattice of some olive-cheeked soubrette around the corner. Be that as it
may, no one ever found him on hand; and there is nothing to do but to
sit down on the curbstone and lift up your voice and shriek for him
until he comes. At two o'clock of a morning in January the exercise is
not improving to the larynx or the temper. There is a tradition in the
very name of this worthy. He is called the Sereno, because a century or
so ago he used to call the hour and the state of the weather, and as the
sky is almost always cloudless here, he got the name of the Sereno, as
the quail is called Bob White, from much iteration. The Sereno opens
your gate and the door of your house. When you come to your own floor
you must ring, and your servant takes a careful survey of you through a
latticed peep-hole before he will let you in. You may positively forbid
this every day in the year, but the force of habit is too strong in the
Spanish mind to suffer amendment.
This absurd custom comes evidently down from a time of great lawlessness
and license, when no houses were secure without these precautions, when
people rarely stirred from their doors after nightfall, and when a door
was never opened to a stranger. Now, when no such dangers exist, the
annoying and senseless habit still remains, because no one dreams of
changing anything which their fathers thought proper. Three hundred
thousand people in Madrid submit year after year to this nightly cross,
and I have never heard a voice raised in protest, nor even in defence of
the custom.
There is often a bitterness of opposition to evident improvement which
is hard to explain. In the last century, when the eminent naturalist
Bowles went down to the Almaden silver-mines, by appointment of the
government, to see what was the cause of their exhaustion, he found that
they had been worked entirely in perpendicular shafts instead of
following the direction of the veins. He perfected a plan for working
them in this simple and reasonable way, and no earthly power could make
the Spanish miners obey his orders. There was no precedent for this new
process, and they would not touch it. They preferred starvation rather
than offend the memory of their fathers by a change. At last they had to
be dismissed and a full force imported from Germany, under whose hands
the mines became instantly enormously productive.
I once asked a very intelligent English contractor why he used no
wheelbarrows in his work. He had some hundreds of stalwart navvies
employed carrying dirt in small wicker baskets to an embankment. He said
the men would not use them. Some said it broke their backs. Others
discovered a capital way of amusing themselves by putting the barrow on
their heads and whirling the wheel as rapidly as possible with their
hands. This was a game which never grew stale. The contractor gave up in
despair, and went back to the baskets. But it is in the official regions
that tradition is most powerful. In the budget of 1870 there was a
curious chapter called "Charges of Justice." This consisted of a
collection of articles appropriating large sums of money for the payment
of feudal taxes to the great aristocracy of the kingdom as a
compensation for long extinct seigniories. The Duke of Rivas got
thirteen hundred dollars for carrying the mail to Victoria. The Duke of
San Carlos draws ten thousand dollars for carrying the royal
correspondence to the Indies. Of course this service ceased to belong to
these families some centuries ago, but the salary is still paid. The
Duke of Almodovar is well paid for supplying the _baton_ of office to
the Alguazil of Cordova. The Duke of Osuna--one of the greatest grandees
of the kingdom, a gentleman who has the right to wear seventeen hats in
the presence of the Queen--receives fifty thousand dollars a year for
imaginary feudal services. The Count of Altamira, who, as his name
indicates, is a gentleman of high views, receives as a salve for the
suppression of his fief thirty thousand dollars a year. In consideration
of this sum he surrenders, while it is punctually paid, the privilege of
hanging his neighbors.