Spanish Inns: Why so Indifferent--The Fonda--Modern
Improvements--The Posada--Spanish Innkeepers--The Venta: Arrival in
it--Arrangement--Garlic--Dinner--Evening--Night--Bill--Identity
with the Inns of the Ancients.
[Sidenote: INNS--WHY SO INDIFFERENT.]
Having thus, and we hope satisfactorily, discussed the eatables and
drinkables of Spain, attention must naturally be next directed to those
houses on the roads and in the towns, where these comforts to the hungry
and weary public are to be had, or are not to be had, as sometimes will
happen in this land of “the unexpected;” the Peninsular inns, with few
exceptions, have long been divided into the bad, the worse, and the
worst; and as the latter are still the most numerous and national, as
well as the worst, they will be gone into the last. In few countries
will the rambler agree oftener with dear Dr. Johnson’s speech to his
squire Boswell, “Sir, there is nothing which has been contrived by man,
by which so much happiness is produced, as by a good tavern.” Spain
offers many negative arguments of the truth of our great moralist and
eater’s reflection; the inns in general are fuller of entertainment for
the mind than the body, and even when the newest, and the best in the
country, are indifferent if compared to those which Englishmen are
accustomed to at home, and have created on those high roads of the
Continent, which they most frequent. Here few gentlemen will say with
Falstaff, “Shall I not take mine ease in mine inn?” Badness of roads and
discomforts of _ventas_ cannot well escape the notice of those who
travel on horseback and slowly, since they must dwell on and in them;
whereas a rail whisks the passenger past such nuisances, with comet-like
rapidity, and all things that are soon out of sight are quicker out of
mind; nevertheless, let no aspiring writer be deterred from quitting the
highways for the byeways of the Peninsula. “There is, Sir,” as Johnson
again said to Boswell, “a good deal of Spain that has not been
perambulated. I would have you go thither; a man of inferior talents to
yours, may furnish us with useful observations on that country.”
[Sidenote: CONTINENTAL INNS.]
Why the public accommodations should be second-rate is soon explained.
Nature and the natives have long combined to isolate still more their
Peninsula, which already is moated round by the unsocial sea, and is
barricadoed by almost impassable mountains. The Inquisition all but
reduced Spanish man to the condition of a monk in a wall-enclosed
convent, by standing sentinel, and keeping watch and ward against the
foreigner and his perilous novelties;[7] Spain thus unvisited and
unvisiting, became arranged for Spaniards only, and has scarcely
required conveniences which are more suited to the curious wants of
other Europeans and strangers who here are neither liked, wished for,
nor even thought of, by natives who seldom travel except on compulsion
and never for amusement; why indeed should they? since Spain is
paradise, and each man’s own parish in his eyes is the central spot of
its glory. When the noble and rich visited the provinces, they were
lodged in their own or in their friends’ houses, just as the clergy and
monks were received into convents. The great bulk of the Peninsular
family, not being overburdened with cash or fastidiousness, have long
been and are inured to infinite inconveniences and negations; they live
at home in an abundance of privations, and expect when abroad to be
worse off; and they well know that comfort never lodges at a Spanish
inn; as in the East, they cannot conceive that any travelling should be
unattended by hardships, which they endure with Oriental resignation, as
_cosas de España_, or things of Spain which have always been so, and for
which there is no remedy but patient resignation; the bliss of
ignorance, and the not knowing of anything better, is everywhere the
grand secret of absence of discontent; while to those whose every-day
life is a feast, every thing that does not come up to their conventional
ideas becomes a failure, but to those whose daily bread is dry and
scanty, whose drink is water, every thing beyond prison-fare appears to
be luxury.
In Spain there has been little demand for those accommodations which
have been introduced on the continent by our nomade countrymen, who
carry their tea, towels, carpets, comforts and civilization with them;
to travel at all for mere pleasure is quite a modern invention, and
being an expensive affair, is the most indulged in by the English,
because they can best afford it, but as Spain lies out of their
hackneyed routes, the inns still retain much of the same state of
primitive dirt and discomfort, which most of those on the continent
presented, until repolished by our hints and guineas.
[Sidenote: THE FONDA.]
In the Peninsula, where intellect does not post in a Britannic britzcka
and four, the inns, and especially those of the country and inferior
order, continue much as they were in the time of the Romans, and
probably long before them; nay those in the very vicinity of Madrid,
“the only court on earth,” are as classically wretched, as the hostelry
at Aricia, near the Eternal City, was in the days of Horace. The Spanish
inns, indeed, on the bye-roads and remoter districts, are such as render
it almost unadvisable for any English lady to venture to face them,
unless predetermined to go through roughing-it, in a way of which none
who have only travelled in England can form the remotest idea: at the
same time they may be and have been endured by even the sick and
delicate. To youth, and to all men in enjoyment of good health, temper,
patience, and the blessing of foresight, neither a dinner nor a bed will
ever be wanting, to both of which hunger and fatigue will give a zest
beyond the reach of art; and fortunately for travellers, all the
Continent over, and particularly in Spain, bread and salt, as in the
days of Horace, will be found to appease the wayfarer’s barking stomach,
nor will he who after that sleeps soundly be bitten by fleas, “_quien
duerme bien, no le pican las pulgas_.” The pleasures of travelling in
this wild land are cheaply purchased by these trifling inconveniences,
which may always be much lessened by _provision_ in brain and basket;
the expeditions team with incident, adventure, and novelty; every day
and evening present a comedy of real life, and offer means of obtaining
insight into human nature, and form in after-life a perpetual fund of
interesting recollections: all that was charming will be then
remembered, and the disagreeable, if not forgotten, will be disarmed of
its sting, nay, even as having been in a battle, will become a pleasant
thing to recollect and to talk, may be twaddle, about. Let not the
traveller expect to find too much; if he reckons on finding nothing he
will seldom be disappointed; so let him not look for five feet in a cat,
“_no busces cinco pies al gato_.” Spain, as the East, is not to be
enjoyed by the over-fastidious in the fleshly comforts: there, those who
over analyze, who peep too much behind the culinary or domestic
curtains, must not expect to pass a tranquil existence.
[Sidenote: THE FONDA.]
First and foremost among these refuges for the destitute comes the
_fonda_, the hotel. This, as the name implies, is a foreign thing, and
was imported from Venice, which in its time was the Paris of Europe, the
leader of sensual civilization, and the sink of every lie and iniquity.
Its _fondacco_, in the same manner, served as a model for the Turkish
_fondack_. The _fonda_ is only to be found in the largest towns and
principal seaports, where the presence of foreigners creates a demand
and supports the establishment. To it frequently is attached a café, or
“_botilleriá_,” a bottlery and a place for the sale of liqueurs, with a
“_neveria_,” a snowery where ices and cakes are supplied. Men only, not
horses, are taken in at a _fonda_; but there is generally a keeper of a
stable or of a minor inn in the vicinity, to which the traveller’s
animals are consigned. The _fonda_ is tolerably furnished in reference
to the common articles with which the sober unindulgent natives are
contented: the traveller in his comparisons must never forget that Spain
is not England, which too few ever can get out of their heads. Spain is
Spain, a truism which cannot be too often repeated; and in its being
Spain consists its originality, its raciness, its novelty, its
idiosyncrasy, its best charm and interest, although the natives do not
know it, and are every day, by a foolish aping of European civilization,
paring away attractions, and getting commonplace, unlike themselves, and
still more unlike their Gotho-Moro and most picturesque fathers and
mothers. Monks, as we said in our preface, are gone, mantillas are
going, the shadow of cotton _versus_ corn has already darkened the sunny
city of Figaro, and the end of all Spanish things is coming. _Ay! de mi
España!_
Thus in Spain, and especially in the hotter provinces, it is heat and
not cold which is the enemy: what we call furniture--carpets, rugs,
curtains, and so forth--would be a positive nuisance, would keep out the
cool, and harbour plagues of vermin beyond endurance. The walls of the
apartments are frequently, though simply, whitewashed: the uneven brick
floors are covered in winter with a matting made of the “_esparto_,”
rush, and called an “_estera_,” as was done in our king’s palaces in the
days of Elizabeth: a low iron or wooden truckle bedstead, with coarse
but clean sheets and clothes, a few hard chairs, perhaps a stiff-backed,
most uncomfortable sofa, and a rickety table or so, complete the scanty
inventory. The charges are moderate; about two dollars, or 8_s._ 6_d._,
per head a-day, includes lodging, breakfast, dinner, and supper.
Servants, if Spanish, are usually charged the half; English servants,
whom no wise person would take on the Continent, are nowhere more
useless, or greater incumbrances, than in this hungry, thirsty, tealess,
beerless, beefless land: they give more trouble, require more food and
attention, and are ten times more discontented than their masters, who
have poetry in their souls; an æsthetic love of travel, for its own
sake, more than counterbalances with them the want of material gross
comforts, about which their pudding-headed four-full-meals-a-day
attendants are only thinking. Charges are higher at Madrid, and
Barcelona, a great commercial city, where the hotels are appointed more
European-like, in accommodation and prices. Those who remain any time in
a large town bargain with the innkeeper, or go into a boarding-house,
“_casa de pupilos_,” or “_de huespedes_,” where they have the best
opportunity of learning the Spanish language, and of obtaining an idea
of national manners and habits. This system is very common. The houses
may be known externally by a white paper ticket attached to the
_extremity_ of one of the windows or balconies. This position must be
noted; for if the paper be placed in the _middle_ of the balcony, the
signal means only that lodgings are here to be let. Their charges are
very reasonable.
[Sidenote: CHANGES IN SPANISH INNS.]
Since the death of Ferdinand VII. marvellous improvements have taken
place in some _fondas_. In the changes and chances of the multitudinous
revolutions, all parties ruled in their rotation, and then either killed
or banished their opponents. Thus royalists, liberals, patriots,
moderates, &c., each in their turn, have been expatriated; and as the
wheel of fortune and politics went round, many have returned to their
beloved Spain from bitter exile in France and England. These travellers,
in many cases, were sent abroad for the public good, since they were
thus enabled to discover that some things were better managed on the
other side of the water and Pyrenees. Then and there suspicion crossed
their minds, although they seldom will admit it to a foreigner, that
Spain was not altogether the richest, wisest, strongest, and first of
nations, but that she might take a hint or two in a few trifles, among
which perhaps the accommodations for man and beast might be included.
The ingress, again, of foreigners by the facilities offered to
travellers by the increased novelties of steamers, mails, and diligences
necessarily called for more waiters and inns. Every day, therefore, the
fermentation occasioned by the foreign leaven is going on; and if the
national _musto_, or grape-juice, be not over-drugged with French
brandy, something decent in smell and taste may yet be produced.
[Sidenote: THE POSADA.]
In the seaports and large towns on the Madrid roads the twilight of café
and cuisine civilization is breaking from La belle France. Monastic
darkness is dispelled, and the age of convents is giving way to that of
kitchens, while the large spaces and ample accommodations of the
suppressed monasteries suggest an easy transition into “first-rate
establishments,” in which the occupants will probably pay more and pray
less. News, indeed, have just arrived from Malaga, that certain
ultra-civilized hotels are actually rising, to be defrayed by companies
and engineered by English, who seem to be as essential in regulating
these novelties on the Continent as in the matters of railroads and
steamboats. Rooms are to be papered, brick floors to be exchanged for
boards, carpets to be laid down, fireplaces to be made, and bells are to
be hung, incredible as it may appear to all who remember Spain as it
was. They will ring the knell of nationality; and we shall be much
mistaken if the grim old Cid, when the first one is pulled at Burgos,
does not answer it himself by knocking the innovator down. Nay, more,
for wonders never cease; vague rumours are abroad that secret and
solitary closets are contemplated, in which, by some magical mechanism,
sudden waters are to gush forth; but this report, like others _viâ_
Madrid and Paris telegraph, requires confirmation. Assuredly, the spirit
of the Holy Inquisition, which still hovers over orthodox Spain, will
long ward off these English heresies, which are rejected as too bad even
by free-thinking France.
[Sidenote: THE POSADA.]
The genuine Spanish town inn is called the _posada_, as being meant to
mean, a house of _repose_ after the pains of travel. Strictly speaking,
the keeper is only bound to provide lodging, salt, and the power of
cooking whatever the traveller brings with him or can procure out of
doors; and in this it diners from the _fonda_, in which meats and drinks
are furnished. The _posada_ ought only to be compared to its type, the
_khan_ of the East, and never to the inn of Europe. If foreigners, and
especially Englishmen, would bear this in mind, they would save
themselves a great deal of time, trouble, and disappointment, and not
expose themselves by their loss of temper on the spot, or in their
note-books. No Spaniard is ever put out at meeting with neither
attention nor accommodation, although he maddens in a moment on other
occasions at the slightest personal affront, for his blood boils without
fire. He takes these things coolly, which colder-blooded foreigners
seldom do. The native, like the Oriental, does not expect to find
anything, and accordingly is never surprised at only getting what he
brings with him. His surprise is reserved for those rare occasions when
he finds anything actually ready, which he considers to be a godsend. As
most travellers carry their provisions with them, the uncertainty of
demand would prevent mine host from filling his larder with perishable
commodities; and formerly, owing to absurd local privileges, he very
often was not permitted to sell objects of consumption to travellers,
because the lords or proprietors of the town or village had set up other
shops, little monopolies of their own. These inconveniences sound worse
on paper than in practice; for whenever laws are decidedly opposed to
common sense and the public benefit, they are neutralized in practice;
the means to elude them are soon discovered, and the innkeeper, if he
has not the things by him himself, knows where to get them. On starting
next day a sum is charged for lodging, service, and dressing the food:
this is, called _el ruido de casa_, an indemnification to mine host for
the _noise_, the disturbance, that the traveller is supposed to have
created, which is the old Italian _incommodo de la casa_, the routing
and inconveniencing of the house; and no word can be better chosen to
express the varied and never-ceasing din of mules, muleteers, songs,
dancing, and laughing, the dust, the _row_, which Spaniards, men as well
as beasts, kick up. The English traveller, who will have to pay the most
in purse and sleep for his _noise_, will often be the only quiet person
in the house, and might claim indemnification for the injury done to his
acoustic organs, on the principle of the Turkish soldier who forces his
entertainer to pay him teeth-money, to compensate for the damage done to
his molars and incisors from masticating indifferent rations.
[Sidenote: SPANISH INNKEEPERS.]
Akin to the _posada_ is the “_parador_,” a word probably derived from
Waradah, Arabicè, “a halting-place;” it is a huge caravansary for the
reception of waggons, carts, and beasts of burden; these large
establishments are often placed outside the town to avoid the heavy
duties and vexatious examinations at the gates, where dues on all
articles of consumption are levied both for municipal and government
purposes. They are the old _sisa_, a word derived from the Hebrew
_Sisah_, to take a sixth part, and are now called _el derecho de
puertas_, the gate-due; and have always been as unpopular as the similar
_octroi_ of France; and as they are generally farmed out, they are
exacted from the peasantry with great severity and incivility. There is
perhaps no single grievance among the many, in the mistaken system of
Spanish political and fiscal economy, which tends to create and keep
alive, by its daily retail worry and often wholesale injustice, so great
a feeling of discontent and ill-will towards authority as this does; it
obstructs both commerce and travellers. The officers are, however,
seldom either strict or uncivil to the higher classes, and if
courteously addressed by the stranger, and told that he is an English
gentleman, the official _Cerberi_ open the gates and let him pass
unmolested, and still more if quieted by the Virgilian sop of a bribe.
The laws in Spain are indeed strict on paper, but those who administer
them, whenever it suits their private interest, that is ninety-nine
times out of a hundred, evade and defeat them; they obey the letter,
but do not perform the spirit, “_se obedece, pero no se cumple_;”
indeed, the lower classes of officials in particular are so inadequately
paid that they are compelled to eke out a livelihood by taking bribes
and little presents, which, as _Backshish_ in the East, may always be
offered, and will always be accepted, as a matter of compliment. The
_idea_ of a bribe must be concealed; it shocks their dignity, their
sense of honour, their “_pundonor_:” if, however, the money be given to
the head person as something for his people to drink, the delicate
attention is sacked by the chief, properly appreciated, and works its
due effect.
[Sidenote: THE VENTA.]
[Sidenote: THE VENTA.]
Another term, almost equivalent to the “posada,” is the “_meson_,” which
is rather applicable to the inns of the rural and smaller towns, to the
“_hosterias_,” than to those of the greater. The “_mesonero_,” like the
Spanish “_ventera_,” has a bad reputation. It is always as well to
stipulate something about prices beforehand. The proverb says, “_Por un
ladron, pierden ciento en el meson_”--“_Ventera hermosa, mal para la
bolsa_.” “For every one who is robbed on the road, a hundred are in the
inn.”--“The fairer the hostess, the fouler the reckoning.” It is among
these innkeepers that the real and worst robbers of Spain are to be met
with, since these classes of worthies are everywhere only thinking how
much they can with decency overcharge in their bills. This is but fair,
for nobody would be an innkeeper if it were not for the profit. The
trade of inn-keeping is among those which are considered derogatory in
Spain, where so many Hindoo notions of caste, self-respect, purity of
blood, etc., exist. The harbouring strangers for gain is opposed to
every ancient and Oriental law of sacred hospitality. Now no Spaniard,
if he can help it, likes to degrade himself; this accounts for the
number of _fondas_ in towns being kept by Frenchmen, Italians, Catalans,
Biscayans, who are all _foreigners_ in the eye of the Castilian, and
disliked and held cheap; accordingly the inn-keeper in Don Quixote
protests that he is a _Christian_, although a _ventero_, nay, a genuine
old one--_Cristiano viejo rancio_; an old Christian being the common
term used to distinguish the genuine stock from those renegade Jews and
Moors who, rather than leave Spain, became _pseudo-Christians_ and
publicans.
The country _Parador_, _Meson_, _Posada_, and _Venta_, call it how you
will, is the Roman stabulum, whose original intention was the housing of
cattle, while the accommodation of travellers was secondary, and so it
is in Spain to this day. The accommodation for the _beast_ is excellent;
cool roomy stables, ample mangers, a never-failing supply of fodder and
water, every comfort and luxury which the animal is capable of enjoying,
is ready on the spot; as regards _man_, it is just the reverse; he must
forage abroad for anything he may want. Only a small part of the barn is
allotted him, and then he is lodged among the brutes below, or among the
trusses and sacks of their food in the lofts above. He finds, in spite
of all this, that if he asks the owner what he has got, he will be told
that “there is everything,” _hay de todo_, just as the rogue of a
_ventero_ informed Sancho Panza, that his empty larder contained all the
birds of the air, all the beasts of the earth, all the fishes of the
sea,--a Spanish magnificence of promise, which, when reduced to plain
English, too often means, as in that case, there is everything that you
have brought with you. This especially occurs in the _ventas_ of the
out-of-the-way and rarely-visited districts, which, however empty their
larders, are full of the spirit of Don Quixote to the brim; and the
everyday occurrences in them are so strange, and one’s life is so
dramatic, that there is much difficulty in “realising,” as the Americans
say; all is so like being in a dream or at a play, that one scarcely can
believe it to be actually taking place, and true. The man of the
note-book and the artist almost forget that there is nothing to eat;
meanwhile all this food for the mind and portfolio, all this local
colour and oddness, is lost upon your Spanish companion, if he be one of
the better classes: he is ashamed, where you are enchanted; he blushes
at the sad want of civilization, clean table-cloth, and beefsteaks, and
perhaps he is right: at all events, while you are raving about the
Goths, Moors, and this lifting up the curtain of two thousand years ago,
he is thinking of Mivart’s; and when you quote Martial, he and the
ventero set you down as talking nonsense, and stark staring mad; nay, a
Spanish gentleman is often affronted, and suspects, from the
impossibility to him, that such things can be objects of real
admiration, that you are laughing at him in your sleeve, and considering
his country as Roman, African, or in a word, as un-European, which is
what he particularly dislikes and resents.
These _ventas_ have from time immemorial been the subject of jests and
pleasantries to Spanish and foreign wits. Quevedo and Cervantes indulge
in endless diatribes against the roguery of the masters, and the misery
of the accommodations, while Gongora compares them to Noah’s ark; and in
truth they do contain a variety of animals, from the big to the _small_,
and more than a pair, of more than one kind of the latter. The word
_venta_ is derived from the Latin _vendendo_, on the lucus a _non_
lucendo principle of etymology, because provisions are _not_ sold in it
to travellers: old Covarrubias explains this mode of dealing as
consisting “especially in _selling_ a cat for a hare,” which indeed was
and is so usual a venta practice, that _venderlo á uno gato por liebre_
has become in common Spanish parlance to be equivalent to _doing_ or
taking one in. The natives do not dislike the feline tribe when well
stewed: no cat was safe in the Alhambra, the galley-slaves bagged her in
a second. This _venta_ trait of Iberian gastronomy did not escape the
compiler of Gil Blas.
[Sidenote: RECEPTION AT THE VENTA.]
Be that as it may, a _venta_, strictly speaking, is an isolated country
inn, or house of reception on the road, and, if it be not one of
physical entertainment, it is at least one of moral, and accordingly
figures in prominent characters in all the personal narratives and
travels in Spain; it sharpens the wit of both hungry cooks and lively
authors, and ingenii largitor _venter_ is as old as Juvenal. Many of
these _ventas_ have been built on a large scale by the noblemen or
convent brethren to whom the village or adjoining territory belonged,
and some have at a distance quite the air of a gentleman’s mansion.
Their walls, towers, and often elegant elevations glitter in the sun,
gay and promising, while all within is dark, dirty, and dilapidated, and
no better than a whitened sepulchre. The ground floor is a sort of
common room for men and beasts; the portion appropriated to the stables
is often arched over, and is very imperfectly lighted to keep it cool,
so that even by day the eye has some difficulty at first in making out
the details. The ranges of mangers are fixed round the walls, and the
harness of the different animals suspended on the pillars which support
the arches; a wide door, always open to the road, leads into this great
stable; a small space in the interior is generally left unincumbered,
into which the traveller enters on foot or on horseback; no one greets
him; no obsequious landlord, bustling waiter, or simpering chambermaid
takes any notice of his arrival: the _ventero_ sits in the sun smoking,
while his wife continues her uninterrupted _chasse_ for “small deer” in
the thick covers of her daughters’ hair; nor does the guest pay much
attention to them; he proceeds to a gibbous water-jar, which is always
set up in a visible place, dips in with the ladle, or takes from the
shelf in the wall an _alcarraza_ of cold water; refreshes his baked
clay, refills it, and replaces it in its hole on the _taller_, which
resembles the decanter stands in a butler’s pantry: he then proceeds,
unaided by ostler or boots, to select a stall for his beast,--unsaddles
and unloads, and in due time applies to the _ventero_ for fodder; the
difference of whose cool reception contrasts with the eager welcome
which awaits the traveller at bedtime: his arrival is a godsend to the
creeping tribe, who, like the _ventero_, have no regular larder; it is
not upstairs that he eats, but where _he_ is eaten like Polonius; the
walls are frequently stained with the marks of nocturnal combats, of
those internecine, truly Spanish _guerrillas_, which are waged without
an Elliot treaty, against enemies who, if not exterminated, murder
sleep. Were these fleas and French ladybirds unanimous, they would eat
up a Goliath; but fortunately, like other Spaniards, they never act
together, and are consequently conquered and slaughtered in detail;
hence the proverbial expression for great mortality among men, _mueren
como chinches_.
[Sidenote: ARRANGEMENT OF THE VENTA.]
Having first provided for the wants and comforts of his beast, for “the
master’s eye fattens the horse,” the traveller begins to think of
himself. One, and the greater side of the building, is destined to the
cattle, the other to their owners. Immediately opposite the public
entrance is the staircase that leads to the upper part of the building,
which is dedicated to the lodgment of fodder, fowls, vermin, and the
better class of travellers. The arrangement of the larger class of
_posadas_ and _ventas_ is laid out on the plan of a convent, and is well
calculated to lodge the greatest number of inmates in the smallest
space. The ingress and egress are facilitated by a long corridor, into
which the doors of the separate rooms open; these are called
“_cuartos_,” whence our word “quarters” may be derived. There is seldom
any furniture in them; whatever is wanted, is or is not to be had of the
host from some lock-up store. A rigid puritan will be much distressed
for the lack of any artificial contrivance to hold water; the best
toilette on these occasions is a river’s bank, but rivers in unvisited
interiors of the Castiles are often rarer even than water-basins. It is,
however, no use to draw nets in streams where there are no fish, nor to
expect to find conveniences which no one else ever asks for, and those
articles which seem to the foreigner to be of the commonest and daily
necessity, are unknown to the natives. However, as there are no carpets
to be spoiled, and cold water retains its properties although brought up
in a horse-bucket or in the cook’s brass cauldron, ablutions, as the
albums express it, can be performed. What a school, after all, a _venta_
is to the slaves of comforts, and without how many absolute essentials
do they manage to get on, and happily! What lessons are taught of
good-humoured patience, and that British sailor characteristic of making
the best of every occurrence, and deeming any port a good one in a
storm! Complaint is of no use; if you tell the landlord that his wine is
more sour than his vinegar, he will gravely reply, “_Señor_, that cannot
be, for both came out of the same cask.”
[Sidenote: VENTA GARLIC.]
The portion of the ground-floor which is divided by the public entrance
from the stables, is dedicated to the kitchen and accommodation of the
travellers. The kitchen consists of a huge open range, generally on the
floor, the _ollas_ pots and culinary vessels being placed against the
fire arranged in circles, as described by Martial, “multâ villica quem
coronat _ollâ_,” who, as a good Spaniard would do to this day, after
thirty-five years’ absence at Rome, writes, after his return to Spain,
to his friend Juvenal a full account of the real comforts that he once
more enjoys in his best-beloved patria, and which remind us of the
domestic details in the opening chapter of Don Quixote. These rows of
pipkins are kept up by round stones called “_sesos_,” _brains_; above is
a high, wide chimney, which is armed with iron-work for suspending pots
of a large size; sometimes there are a few stoves of masonry, but more
frequently they are only the portable ones of the East. Around the
blackened walls are arranged pots and pipkins, gridirons and
frying-pans, which hang in rows, like tadpoles of all sizes, to
accommodate large or small parties, and the more the better; it is a
good sign, “_en casa llena, pronto se guisa cena_.” Supper is then
sooner ready.
The vicinity of the kitchen fire being the warmest spot, and the nearest
to the flesh-pot, is the _querencia_, the favourite “resort” of the
muleteers and travelling bagsmen, especially when cold, wet, and hungry.
The first come are the best served, says the proverb, in the matters of
soup and love. The earliest arrivals take the cosiest corner seats near
the fire, and secure the promptest non-attendance; for the better class
of guests there is sometimes a “private apartment,” or the boudoir of
the _ventera_, which is made over to those who bring courtesy in their
mouths, and seem to have cash in their pockets; but these out-of-the way
curiosities of comfort do not always suit either author or artist, and
the social kitchen is preferable to solitary state. When a stranger
enters into it, if he salutes the company, “My lords and knights, do not
let your graces molest yourselves,” or courteously indicates his desire
to treat them with respect, they will assuredly more than return the
compliment, and as good breeding is instinctive in the Spaniard, will
rise and insist on his taking the best and highest seat. Greater,
indeed, is their reward and satisfaction, if they discover that the
invited one can talk to them in their own lingo, and understands their
feelings by circulating _his_ cigars and wine _bota_ among them.
At the side of the kitchen is a den of a room, into which the _ventero_
keeps stowed away that stock of raw materials which forms the foundation
of the national cuisine, and in which garlic plays the first fiddle. The
very name, like that of monk, is enough to give offence to most English.
The evil consists, however, in the abuse, not in the use: from the
quantity eaten in all southern countries, where it is considered to be
fragrant, palatable, stomachic, and invigorating, we must assume that it
is suited by nature to local tastes and constitutions. Wherever any
particular herb grows, there lives the ass who is to eat it. “_Donde
crece la escoba, nace el asno que la roya._” Nor is garlic necessarily
either a poison or a source of baseness; for Henry IV. was no sooner
born, than his lips were rubbed with a clove of it by his grandfather,
after the revered old custom of Bearn.
[Sidenote: DINNERS IN THE VENTA.]
Bread, wine, and raw garlic, says the proverb, make a young man go
briskly, _Pan, vino, y ajo crudo, hacen andar al mozo agudo_. The better
classes turn up their noses at this odoriferous delicacy of the lower
classes, which was forbidden per statute by Alonzo XI. to his knights of
_La Banda_; and Don Quixote cautions Sancho Panza to be moderate in this
food, as not becoming to a governor: with even such personages however
it is a struggle, and one of the greatest sacrifices to the altar of
civilization and _les convenances_. To give Spanish garlic its due, it
must be said that, when administered by a judicious hand (for, like
prussic acid, all depends on the quantity), it is far milder than the
English. Spanish garlic and onions degenerate after three years’
planting when transplanted into England. They gain in pungency and
smell, just as English foxhounds, when drafted into Spain, lose their
strength and scent in the third generation. A clove of garlic is called
_un diente_, a tooth. Those who dislike the piquant vegetable must place
a sentinel over the cook of the venta while she is putting into her
cauldron the ingredients of his supper, or Avicenna will not save him;
for if God sends meats, and here they are a godsend, the evil one
provides the cooks of the venta, who certainly do bedevil many things.
[Sidenote: RECEPTION AT THE VENTA.]
Thrice happy, then, the man blessed with a provident servant who has
foraged on the road, and comes prepared with cates on which no Castilian
Canidia has breathed; while they are stewing he may, if he be a poet,
rival those sonnets made in Don Quixote on Sancho’s ass, saddle-bags,
and sapient attention to their provend, “_su cuerda providencia_.” The
odour and good tidings of the arrival of unusual delicacies soon spread
far and wide in the village, and generally attract the _Cura_, who loves
to hear something new, and does not dislike savoury food: the quality of
a Spaniard’s temperance, like that of his mercy, is strained; his
poverty and not his will consents to more and other fastings than to
those enjoined by the church; hunger, the sauce of Saint Bernard, is one
of the few wants which is not experienced in a Spanish venta. Our
practice in one was to invite the curate, by begging him to bless the
pot-luck, to which he did ample justice, and more than repaid for its
visible diminution by good fellowship, local information, and the credit
reflected on the stranger in the eyes of the natives, by beholding him
thus patronised by their pastor and master. It is not to be denied in
the case of a stew of partridges, that deep sighs and exclamations _que
rico!_ “how rich!” escape the envious lips of his hungry flock when they
behold and whiff the odoriferous dish as it smokes past them like a
railway locomotive.
Nor, it must be said, was all this hospitality on one side; it has more
than once befallen us in the rude _ventas_ of the Salamanca district,
that the silver-haired _cura_, whose living barely furnished the means
whereby to live, on hearing the simple fact that an Englishman was
arrived, has come down to offer his house and fare. Such, or indeed any
Spaniard’s invitation is not to be accepted by those who value liberty
of action or time; seat rather the good man at the head of the _venta_
board, and regale him with your best cigar, he will tell you of _El gran
Lor_--the great Lord--the Cid of England; he will recount the Duke’s
victories, and dwell on the good faith, mercy, and justice of our brave
soldiers, as he will execrate the cruelty, rapacity, and perfidy of
those who fled before their gleaming bayonets.
But, to return to first arrival at _ventas_, whether saddle-bag or
stomach be empty or full, the _ventero_ when you enter remains unmoved
and imperturbable, as if he never had had an appetite, or had lost it,
or had dined. Not that his genus ever are seen eating except when
invited to a guest’s stew; air, the economical ration of the chameleon,
seems to be his habitual sustenance, and still more as to his wife and
womankind, who never will sit and eat even with the stranger; nay, in
humbler Spanish families they seem to dine with the cat in some corner,
and on scraps; this is a remnant of the Roman and Moorish treatment of
women as inferiors. Their lord and husband, the innkeeper, cannot
conceive why foreigners on their arrival are always so impatient, and is
equally surprised at their inordinate appetite; an English landlord’s
first question “Will you not like to take some refreshment?” is the very
last which he would think of putting; sometimes by giving him a cigar,
by coaxing his wife, flattering his daughter, and caressing Maritornes,
you may get a couple of his _pollos_ or fowls, which run about the
ground-floor, picking up anything, and ready to be picked up themselves
and dressed.
[Sidenote: VENTA EATING.]
All the operations of cookery and eating, of killing, sousing in boiling
water, plucking, et cætera, all preparatory as well as final, go on in
this open kitchen. They are carried out by the ventera and her
daughters or maids, or by some crabbed, smoke-dried, shrivelled old
she-cat, that is, or at least is called, the “_tia_,” “my aunt,” and who
is the subject of the good-humoured remarks of the courteous and hungry
traveller before dinner, and of his full stomach jests afterwards. The
assembled parties crowd round the fire, watching and assisting each at
their own savoury messes, “_Un ojo á la sarten, y otro á la gata_”--“One
eye to the pan, the other to the real cat,” whose very existence in a
_venta_, and among the pots, is a miracle; by the way, the naturalist
will observe that their ears and tails are almost always cropped closely
to the stumps. All and each of the travellers, when their respective
stews are ready, form clusters and groups round the frying-pan, which is
moved from the fire hot and smoking, and placed on a low table or block
of wood before them, or the unctuous contents are emptied into a huge
earthen reddish dish, which in form and colour is the precise
_paropsis_, the food platter, described by Martial and by other ancient
authors. Chairs are a luxury; the lower classes sit on the ground as in
the East, or on low stools, and fall to in a most Oriental manner, with
an un-European ignorance of forks;[8] for which they substitute a short
wooden or horn spoon, or dip their bread into the dish, or fish up
morsels with their long pointed knives. They eat copiously, but with
gravity--with appetite, but without greediness; for none of any nation,
as a mass, are better bred or mannered than the lower classes of
Spaniards.
[Sidenote: VENTA EATING.]
They are very pressing in their invitations whenever any eating is going
on. No Spaniard or Spaniards, however humble their class or fare, ever
allow any one to come near or pass them when eating, without inviting
him to partake. “_Guste usted comer?_” “Will your grace be pleased to
dine?” No traveller should ever omit to go through this courtesy
whenever any Spaniards, high or low, approach him when at any meal,
especially if taking it out of doors, which often happens in these
journeyings; nor is it altogether an empty form; all classes consider it
a compliment if a stranger, and especially an Englishman, will
condescend to share their dinner. In the smaller towns, those invited by
English will often partake, even the better classes, and who have
already dined; they think it civil to accept, and rude to refuse the
invitation, and have no objection to eating any given _good_ thing,
which is the exception to their ordinary frugal habits: all this is
quite Arabian. The Spaniards seldom accept the invitation at once; they
expect to be urged by an obsequious host, in order to appear to do a
gentle violence to their stomachs by eating to oblige _him_. The angels
declined Lot’s offered hospitalities until they were “pressed
_greatly_.” Travellers in Spain must not forget this still existing
Oriental trait; for if they do not greatly press their offer, they are
understood as meaning it to be a mere empty compliment. We have known
Spaniards who have called with an intention of staying dinner, go away,
because this ceremony was not gone through according to their
punctilious notions, to which our off-hand manners are diametrically
opposed. Hospitality in a hungry inn-less land becomes, as in the East,
a sacred duty; if a man eats all the provender by himself, he cannot
expect to have many friends. Generally speaking, the offer is not
accepted; it is always declined with the same courtesy which prompts the
invitation. “_Muchas gracias, buen provecho le haga á usted_,” “Many
thanks--much good may it do your grace,” an answer which is analogous to
the _prosit_ of Italian peasants after eating or sneezing. These
customs, both of inviting and declining, tally exactly, and even to the
expressions used among the Arabs to this day. Every passer-by is invited
by Orientals--“_Bismillah ya seedee_,” which means both a grace and
invitation--“In the name of God, sir, (_i.e._) will you dine with us?”
or “_Tafud’-dal_,” “Do me the favour to partake of this repast.” Those
who decline reply, “_Heneê an_,” “May it benefit.”
[Sidenote: AN EVENING AT A VENTA.]
[Sidenote: HONESTY AND ANTIQUITY IN A VENTA.]
Supper, which, as with the ancients, is their principal meal, is
seasoned with copious draughts of the wine of the country, drunk out of
a jug or _bota_ which we have already described, for glasses do not
abound; after it is done, cigars are lighted, the rude seats are drawn
closer to the fire, stories are told, principally on robber or love
events, the latter of which are by far the truest. Jokes are given and
taken; laughter, inextinguishable as that of Homer’s gods, forms the
chorus of conversation, especially after good eating or drinking, to
which it is the best dessert. In due time songs are sung, a guitar is
strummed, for some black-whiskered Figaro is sure to have heard of the
“arrival,” and steals down from the pure love of harmony and charms of a
cigar; then flock in peasants of both sexes, dancing is set on foot, the
fatigues of the day are forgotten, and the catching sympathy of mirth
extending to all, is prolonged until far into the night; during which,
as they take a long siesta in the day, all are as wakeful as owls, and
worse caterwaulers than cats; to describe the scene baffles the art of
pen or pencil. The roars, the dust, the want of everything in these
low-classed ventas, are emblems of the nothingness of Spanish life--a
jest. One by one the company drops off; the better classes go up stairs,
the humbler and vast majority make up their bed on the ground, near
their animals, and like them, full of food and free from care, fall
instantly asleep in spite of the noise and discomfort by which they are
surrounded. This counterfeit of death is more equalizing, as Don Quixote
says, than death itself, for an honest Spanish muleteer stretched on his
hard pallet sleeps sounder than many an uneasy trickster head that wears
another’s crown. “Sleep,” says Sancho, “covers one over like a cloak,”
and a cloak or its cognate mantle forms the best part of their wardrobe
by day, and their bed furniture by night. The earth is now, as it was to
the Iberians, the national bed; nay, the Spanish word which expresses
that commodity, _cama_, is derived from the Greek καμαι. Thus
they are lodged on the ground floor, and thereby escape the three
classes of little animals which, like the inseparable Graces, are always
to be found in fine climates in the wholesale, and in Spanish _ventas_
in the retail. Their pillow is composed either of their pack-saddles or
saddle-bags; their sleep is short, but profound. Long before daylight
all are in motion; “they _take up_ their bed,” the animals are fed,
harnessed, and laden, and the heaviest sleepers awakened: there is
little morning toilette, no time or soap is lost by biped or quadruped
in the processes of grooming or lavation: both carry their wardrobes on
their back, and trust to the shower and the sun to cleanse and bleach;
their moderate accounts are paid, salutations or execrations (generally
the latter), according to the length of the bills, pass between them
and their landlords, and another day of toil begins. Our faithful and
trustworthy squire seldom failed for a couple of hours after leaving the
_venta_ to pour forth an eloquent stream of oaths, invectives, and
lamentations at the dearness of inns, the rascality of their keepers in
general, and of the host of the preceding night in particular, although
probably a couple of dollars had cleared the account for a couple of men
and animals, and he himself had divided the extra-extortion with the
honest _ventero_.
These Spanish venta scenes vary every day and night, as a new set of
actors make their first and last appearance before the traveller: of one
thing there can be no mistake, he has got out of England, and the
present year of our Lord. Their undeniable smack of antiquity gives them
a relish, a _borracha_, which is unknown in Great Britain, where all is
fused and modernized down to last Saturday night; here alone can you see
and study those manners and events which must have occurred on the same
sites when Hannibal and Scipio were last there, as it would be very easy
to work out from the classical authors. We would just suggest a
comparison between the arrangement of the Spanish country _venta_ with
that of the Roman inn now uncovered at the entrance of Pompeii, and its
exact counterpart, the modern “_osteria_,” in the same district of
Naples. In the Museo Borbonico will be found types of most of the
utensils now used in Spain, while the Oriental and most ancient style of
cuisine is equally easy to be identified with the notices left us in the
cookery books of antiquity. The same may be said of the tambourines,
castanets, songs, and dances,--in a word, of everything; and, indeed,
when all are hushed in sleep, and stretched like corpses amid their
beasts, the Valencians especially, in their sandals and kilts, in their
mantas, and in and on their rush-baskets and mattings, we feel that
Strabo must have beheld the old Iberians exactly in the same costume and
position, when he told us what we see now to be true, το πλεον εν σαγοις, εν ὁις
περ και στιβαδοκοιτουσι.
[Sidenote: THE VENTORILLO.]
The “_ventorrillo_” is a lower class of _venta_--for there is a deeper
bathos; it is the German _kneipe_ or hedge ale-house, and is often
nothing more than a mere hut, run up with reeds or branches of trees by
the road-side, at which water, bad wine, and brandy, “_aguardiente_,”
tooth-water, are to be sold. The latter is always detestable, raw, and
disflavoured with aniseed, and turns white in water like Eau de Cologne,
not that the natives ever expose it to such a trial. These
“_ventorillos_” are at best suspicious places, and the haunts of the
spies of regular robbers, or of skulking footpads when there are any,
who lurk inside with the proprietress; she herself generally might sit
as a model for Hecate, or for one of the witches in Shakspere over their
cauldron; her attendant imps are, however, sufficiently interesting
personages to form a chapter by themselves.
[Sidenote: SPANISH ROBBERS.]