PHILANTHROPY--POSITION OF WOMEN--MARRIAGE CUSTOMS
Travellers complain somewhat bitterly of the increase in the numbers and
the importunity of beggars in Spain; but wherever monks abound, beggars
also abound, and the long-unaccustomed sight of the various religious
habits naturally brings with it the hordes of miserable objects who
afford opportunities for the faithful to exercise what they are taught
to believe is charity--loved of God. This, however, is more especially
the case in Granada, or those favoured spots affected by the rich
tourist, who has not always the same opinion about indiscriminate
charity as the native Spaniard. In old days, the wise policy of Charles
III. had reduced very greatly the swarm of beggars. A certain number of
terrible-looking objects--the fortunate possessors of withered limbs,
sightless eyeballs, or other disqualifications for honest work--still
ostentatiously displayed their badges of professional mendicancy, and
lived, apparently quite comfortably, on the alms of the passers-by. But
the enormous competition which has since sprung up in this "career"
must interfere a good deal with its lucrativeness.
There is no poor law as yet in Spain. Philanthropy is left to voluntary
effort; but the list of charities is so great, and so widely spread over
the whole country, that one would think wholesale beggary would be
superfluous. Madrid is divided into thirty-three parishes, each having a
board of _Beneficéncias_, the Government holding a fund which these
boards administer. The Queen is the President of the whole. Each board
has its president and vice-president--generally ladies of the
aristocracy--a treasurer, vice-treasurer, secretary, and vice-secretary,
and a body of visitors; accounts are rendered monthly to the governing
board, whose vice-president presides in the name of the Queen. There are
also the confraternities of St. Vincent and St. Paul, the members of
which are gentlemen and ladies who work independently of each other.
These, however, have no established funds, but depend on voluntary
subscriptions and gifts. Both these associations visit the poor in their
own homes. The Pardo and the San Bernadino are societies and homes for
benefiting men, women, and children; they have been founded by ladies.
For boys there is the School of the Sacred Heart, and the Christian
Brothers. The School of San Ildefonso belongs to the _Ayuntamiento_, and
has secular masters. There is a small asylum, with chaplaincy attached,
for architects. Santa Rita is a reformatory for boys in Carabanchel,
under a religious brotherhood. For girls there is the Horfino, the
Mercédes Asylum--founded in memory of and kept up by the rents of Queen
Mercédes--Santa Isabel and San Ildefonso, the French St. Vincent de
Paul, San Blas, on the same lines as the Mercédes, Santa Cruz, the
Inclusa, and the Spanish Vincent de Paul. For fallen girls there are the
Adorers of the Blessed Sacrament, the Ladies of the Holy Trinity, and
the Oblates of the Holy Redeemer.
In all parts of the country branches of these or similar institutions
abound. None are more liberal to the funds of these voluntary charities
than the bull-fighters, who, if they make large fortunes, never forget
the class from which they sprang, and are most generous in their
donations. When occasion demands an extra effort, a _fiesta_ is given at
the Plaza de Toros, and the whole of the profits go to the charity for
which it has been held. No doubt these schemes have their faults in
operation, and Galdós in some of his popular novels does not fail to
hold up--not exactly for admiration--the fashionable ladies who think
it "smart," as we should say, to join these boards and societies, and
talk with much unction of their public good works and the statistics of
their pet societies, while neglecting the poor and the needy at their
own doors, or trying to send into "Homes" those who have no desire or
need to go there if a little Christian charity were only shown them by
their neighbours. Nevertheless, there is a large amount of organised
philanthropy in Spain to-day, and it appears to be of a wise and
efficient kind. One should not forget to mention also the workshops for
the lowest orders, established by the Salerian Fathers, to which the
attention of the Government has been called by late events.
The general position of women in Spain and their influence in public
life cannot be described as of an advanced order. As a rule, they take no
leading part in politics, devoting themselves chiefly to charitable
works, such as those already named. There is, as we have seen, a general
movement for higher education and greater liberty of thought and action
amongst women, and there is a certain limited number who frankly range
themselves on the side of so-called "emancipation," who attend
socialistic and other "meetings"--a word which has now been formally
admitted into the Spanish language--and who aspire to be the comrades of
men rather than their objects of worship or their playthings. But this
movement is scarcely more than in its infancy. It must be remembered
that even within the present generation the bedrooms allotted to girls
were always approached through that of the parents, that no girl or
unmarried woman could go unattended, and that to be left alone in the
room with a man was to lose her reputation. Already these things seem to
be dreams of the past; nor could one well believe, what is however a
fact, that there were fathers of the upper classes in the first half of
the last century who preferred that their daughters should not learn to
read or write, especially the latter, as it only enabled them to read
letters clandestinely received from lovers and to reply to them. The
natural consequence of this was the custom, which so largely prevailed,
of young men, absolutely unknown to the parents, establishing
correspondence or meetings with the objects of their adoration by means
of a complaisant _doncella_ with an open palm, or the pastime known as
_pelando el pavo_ (literally plucking the turkey), which consisted of
serenades of love-songs, amorous dialogues, or the passage of notes
through the _reja_--the iron gratings which protect the lower windows of
Spanish houses from the prowling human wolf--or from the balconies. Many
a time have I seen these interesting little missives being let down past
my balcony--how trustful the innocents were!--to the waiting gallant
below, and his drawn up. Only once I saw a neighbour, in the balcony
below, intercept the post, and I believe substitute some other letter.
Cruel sport!
Perhaps born of this necessity of making acquaintance by fair means or
foul comes the custom, which appears to savour of such grossly bad
manners to us, of a man making audible remarks on the appearance of a
girl he has never seen before as she passes him in the street. _Ay! que
buenos ojos! Que bonita eres! Que gracia tienes!_ and the like. Far
from giving offence, the fair one goes on her way, perhaps vouchsafing
one glance from those lovely eyes of hers, with only a sense that her
charms have received their due tribute--not much elated, perhaps, but
certainly by no means offended; nor, indeed, was offence intended. The
fixed stare, which to us would mean mere ill-bred ignorance, is only
another ordinary tribute to the passing fair one from the other sex.
Marriage customs have changed much in the last few decades, and even
civil marriages are now not wholly unknown. In old days, if the ceremony
was performed in church, the bride and all the ladies must be attired in
black, for which reason the fashionable world established marriages in
the house, where more brilliant costumes might be displayed. These
generally take place in the evening, and the newly married couple do not
leave the house, unless the new home happens to be close by. In any
case, honeymoon tours are, or were, unusual. The _velada_ is the
ceremony in church, which must take place before the first child is
born, to legalise the marriage, but it does not necessarily immediately
follow the other ceremony. At it the ring is given. When the two
ceremonies take place at the same time it must be in the morning,
because the bride and bridegroom partake of the Holy Sacrament fasting.
From the description of a _boda_ in Galicia, in one of Pardo Bazan's
novels, it would seem that the bride there wears white, even at the
church. The wedding is a portentous affair, lasting all day from early
morning, and the bride and bridegroom remain in the house. Fernan
Caballero devotes some pages in _Clemencia_ to showing how preferable is
the Spanish custom of "remaining among friends" to that of the newly
married couple, as she says, "exposing themselves to the jeers of
postilions and stable-boys." Yet the English custom is in fact gaining
ground, even in conservative Spain.
Although marriages are often made up by the parents and guardians, as in
France, without any freedom on the part of the bride at least, custom or
law gives the Spanish woman much more power than even in England. A girl
desiring to escape from a marriage repugnant to her can claim protection
from a magistrate, who will even, if necessary, take her out of her
father's custody until she is of age and her own mistress. More than
that, if a girl determines to marry a man of whom her parents
disapprove, she has only to place herself under the protection of a
magistrate to set them at defiance, nor have they the power to deprive
her of the share of the family property to which by Spanish law she is
entitled. I do not know if these things are altered now,--one does not
hear so much of them,--but I know of several cases where daughters have
been married from the magistrate's house against the wishes of their
parents. In one case, the first intimation a father received of his
daughter's engagement was the notice from a neighbouring magistrate that
she was about to be married, and in another, a daughter left her
mother's house and was married from that of the magistrate to a man
without any income and considerably below her in rank. In all these
cases, the contracting parties were of the upper classes.
While on this subject, I must mention what seems to us the barbarous
manner in which infants are clothed and brought up, though the English
fashions of baths, healthy clothing, and suitable food are now largely
followed amongst the upper classes. When the King was still an infant a
great deal of his clothing came from England, and he was brought up in
the English method. This probably set the fashion, and the little ones
playing in the Park now are much like those one is accustomed to see in
London. But among the poor, and even some of the bourgeois class, the
old insane customs prevail, and it is not surprising to hear that the
death-rate among infants is extraordinarily high. From its birth the
poor child is tightly wrapped in swaddling clothes, confining all its
limbs, so that it presents the appearance of a mummy, swathed in coarse
yellow flannel, only its head appearing. So stiffly are they rolled up
that I have seen an infant only a few weeks old propped up on end
against the wall, or in a corner, while the mother was busy. There is a
superstition, too, about never washing a child's head from the day it
is born. The result is really indescribable. When it is about two years
old, a scab, which covers the whole head, comes off of its own accord,
and after that the head may be cleansed without fear of evil
consequences. Some English servants who have married in Spain set the
example of keeping their infants clean, and, therefore, healthy, from
the first, and, seeing the difference in the appearance of the children,
a few Spanish women have followed suit; but it requires a good deal of
courage to break away from old traditions and set one's face against the
sacred superstitions of ages--and the mother-in-law!
One wonders, not that Spanish men grow bald so early, and not bald only,
but absolutely hairless, but that they ever have any hair at all; for
after all the troubles of their infancy their heads are regularly
shaved, or the hair cut off close to the skin all the summer. On the
principle of cutting off the heads of dandelions as soon as they appear,
as a way of exterminating them, the surprising thing is that the hair
does not become too much discouraged even to try to sprout again. Funny
little objects they look, with only a dark mark on the skin where the
hair ought to grow in summer, and at most a growth about as long as
velvet in the winter, until they are quite big boys! The girls generally
wear their hair so tightly plaited, as soon as it is long enough to
allow of plaiting at all, that they can scarcely close their eyes.
Young Spanish women, however, have magnificent hair; though they, too,
grow bald when they are old, in a way that is never seen in England.