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POOR FOLK IN SPAIN
_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_
MODERN FRENCH PAINTERS
With 20 Illustrations in colour and 24
in black and white. Crown 4to. 21_s._ net.
MOTHER AND CHILD
Drawings by BERNARD MENINSKY. With
letterpress by JAN GORDON. Crown 4to.
15_s._ net.
THE BODLEY HEAD
[Illustration: SPANISH COURTYARD]
POOR FOLK IN SPAIN
BY JAN AND CORA GORDON
ILLUSTRATED BY THE AUTHORS
JOHN LANE THE BODLEY HEAD LIMITED
VIGO ST.:::::::: LONDON
_First published 1922_
_Printed in Great Britain by Richard Clay & Sons, Ltd., Bungay,
Suffolk._
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I. LONDON 3
II. JESUS PEREZ 7
III. THE FRONTIER 17
IV. MEDINA DEL CAMPO 29
V. AVILA 40
VI. MADRID 51
VII. A HOT NIGHT 60
VIII. MURCIA--FIRST IMPRESSIONS 70
IX. MURCIA--SETTLING DOWN 81
X. MURCIA--BLAS 90
XI. MURCIA--THE ALPAGATA SHOP 95
XII. MURCIA--BRAVO TORO 98
XIII. AN EXCURSION 109
XIV. VERDOLAY--HOUSEKEEPING 123
XV. VERDOLAY--SKETCHING IN SPAIN 133
XVI. VERDOLAY--CONENI 142
XVII. VERDOLAY--THE INHABITANTS 147
XVIII. VERDOLAY--THE DANCE AT CONENI'S 156
XIX. MURCIA--THE LAUD 161
XX. ALICANTE 169
XXI. JIJONA--THE FIESTA 185
XXII. JIJONA--TIA ROGER 200
XXIII. JIJONA--A DAY'S WORK 207
XXIV. JIJONA--THE GOATHERDS 218
XXV. MURCIA--AUTUMN IN THE PASEO DE CORVERAS 226
XXVI. LORCA 244
XXVII. MURCIA--LAST DAYS 260
XXVIII. THE ROAD HOME 268
LIST OF PLATES
_To face page_
SPANISH COURTYARD _Frontispiece_
CARTERS IN THE POSADA 70
A MURCIAN BEGGAR WOMAN 78
GIRL SINGING A MALAGUEÑA 220
THE VALENCIAN JOTA DANCED BY THREE COUPLES 222
POOR FOLK IN SPAIN
CHAPTER I
LONDON
We had tasted of Spain before ever we had crossed her frontiers. Indeed,
perhaps Spain is the easiest country to obtain samples from without the
fatigue of travelling. The Spaniard carries his atmosphere with him:
wherever he goes he re-creates in his immediate surroundings more than a
hint of his national existence. The Englishman abroad may be
English--more brutally and uncompromisingly English than the Spaniard is
Spanish--yet he does not carry England with him. He does not, that is,
re-create England to the extent of making her seem quite real abroad;
there she appears alien, remote, somewhat out of place. So, too, neither
the Russian, the German, the Dane, the Portuguese, the Italian, nor the
American can carry with him the flavour of his homeland in an essence
sufficiently concentrated to withstand the insidious infiltration of a
foreign atmosphere. To some extent the Scandinavian countries, Norway
and Sweden, have this power; but Spain is thus gifted in the greatest
measure. These three countries seem to possess a national
unconsciousness which fends them off from too close a contact with lands
which are foreign to them; perhaps one might almost accuse them of a
lack of sensitiveness in certain aspects....
However, be the reason what it may, we had gathered some experience of
Spain in Paris before, and in London during the war. What we had tasted
we had liked, and so when in our low-ceilinged attic refuge in London we
gazed out upon a sky covered with flat cloud, as though with a dirty
blanket, and wondered how we might escape in order to seek for our
original selves--if they were not irretrievably lost--we thought of
Spain. I think that we went to Spain to look for something that the war
had taken from us. It was as though the low ceiling of our room, and the
low-lying sky, shut us in with something which was not altogether true;
indeed, we feel that many years must pass before the dissipation of this
curious sensation of unreality which the war had stamped on to every
one, except the most callous.
It is now clear that peace is the normal condition of the human race. In
the olden days this was not the case, but the tendency has been
changing, and to-day we increase our powers during times of peace, and
our powers fall from us during the disorganizations of war. The artist,
who is the barometer of social change, was attuned to peace. In peace he
exercises important functions. But with the sudden outbreak of war the
whole foundation of his being was suddenly torn away. When war broke out
Art for the artist seemed almost meaningless. In the face of a human
catastrophe who could paint pictures? Nero may have fiddled while Rome
was burning, but it must have been a poor meaningless tune that he
played, some popular jingle, a Roman variation of "Ta-ra-ra-Boom-de-Ay."
We had come at last to a peace which still carried on its breezes all
the poisons of war, and we, at least, felt an imperative need of escape
to some place where the war had not been; to some place where perchance
life had carried on a not too distorted existence since 1914.
Spain drew us to her more than did Scandinavia. Romance certainly had a
finger in it; the sun perhaps two fingers--for we are undoubted
sun-worshippers; the music of Spain, which had attracted us in Paris,
causing Jan to abandon the banjo for the guitar, added an appeal; and I
think an exhibition of Spanish landscapes by Wyndham Tryon at the
Twenty-One Galleries settled the matter. We had been in Majorca before
the war, and this combined with our experience of Spaniards in Paris had
fixed in our minds a belief in a simplicity and courtliness of the
Spanish people which we hoped would be very soothing. Finally, two
houses were offered by a friend rent free for the whole of the summer,
together with introductions which would smooth the way. We then packed
up painting materials, stamped clothes into a trunk, worried a strangely
assorted collection of packages down our narrow and twisted staircase
into a cab, and so--hey, for the Sun, southward!
Perhaps the reader should be warned that this is not properly a book
about Spain in the true sense of the word; it is a book about ourselves.
We are inclined to doubt if, in the true sense of the word, a book can
ever be written about a country. Curiously enough the native scarcely
perceives his country at all as long as he is living in it. When he
travels he may come to a clearer vision, but then scarcely perceives
with truth the country in which he is travelling. We might say that by
travelling he makes out of the foreign land a sort of inverted image of
his home. What he relishes abroad is probably what is lacking, what he
dislikes abroad is perhaps more perfect in his own country. And thus his
vision of abroad makes, as it were, a mould, and, if one could pour into
it a substance which would reproduce the exact reverse as one makes a
cast, one might procure a fairly faithful image of his unconscious
judgment of his own land. So perhaps if this book could be turned inside
out it might be found that, after all, stripped of its unessentials, we
have been writing a book, not about Spain, but about England. Indeed, we
have been writing about England already--romance, sun, an interesting
national music, the guitar, and national unconsciousness are not assets
to be found here in any overwhelming quantities. We must then deny that
we are trying to write a book of any authority; we do not even assert
that our facts are correct, even though they are as we saw them; we
admit a mental astigmatism which we cannot avoid and which may have
twisted actual happenings or hearings as much as optical astigmatism may
twist a straight line.