sitting with one of these accommodating gentlemen at a sidewalk table
sipping an apéritif—a delicious French vermouth supplemented by olives
stuffed with anchovies. Bootblacks were making their customary rounds of
the patrons, and the men were having their shoes cleaned. Since I had
been walking about a great deal, mine were appearing rather scuffed, and
I stretched my feet out.
My companion looked at me appealingly. “I beg of you, Señora, not here.”
“Why not?”
But the boy had already brought his little shoe rest, begun spitting on
my oxford and rubbing with energy and enthusiasm. Embarrassed, my escort
rose and moved away, but, interested in the boy’s novel methods, I kept
my eyes on my shoes and was unaware of anything out of the ordinary.
As soon as he had finished I glanced up. There must have been
twenty-five men gathered in front of the café, all looking fixedly and
intently at this unusual spectacle. When I opened my purse to pay the
boy, he doffed his cap with the most gracious gesture. “Señora, this is
my pleasure.”
The crowd outside applauded loudly and I felt my face growing hot. Not
until they had drifted off did my protector return, wan and pale and
extremely agitated. “You see what you’ve done, you see? It will be the
joke of Spain! You are the friend of Professor Portet! It is a
reflection on him and on his family! You cannot do these things!”
I realized then that I had to be more circumspect.
Portet, who after all was Ferrer’s successor, was watched wherever he
went by the secret service, and soon pointed out that I too had a
shadow—the man who sat constantly at the little, round, marble-topped
table across from my hotel. He said I should always have this individual
or one of his mates with me. They were on eight-hour duty, and if I were
to go in for any night life I would have three separate ones over the
twenty-four hours.
These government agents were to give a regular report of whom I was with
and where I went, and, in a sense, they also looked after me, although
Portet was never without a revolver in his pocket. In Spain a breath of
dampness, and pop—open went the umbrellas all over the place. Once on
the way to a benefit for the Belgians Portet and I were waiting for the
tram when a spatter of rain came up. His spy rushed to hold an umbrella
over him while mine ran after my hat which the wind had saucily blown
off my head. Or, if I were taking a train alone, my daytime attendant,
having already been in conference with the hotel proprietor, would
appear at the ticket office and explain to the clerk where I wanted to
go. Had he spoken English I would have doubtless enjoyed his
conversation, but Portet warned me it was beneath my dignity even to nod
good morning to such a creature.
The frequent friendly attentions of our spies could not draw a word of
approval from Portet, though on one occasion they performed a real
service. Stopping en route at the American Express Company to get some
money, we set out to see a part of the old city new to me. Only a few
blocks from the banks and modern shops were center pumps from which
women were carrying the water to their homes in tall earthen jugs, in
just the same primitive manner as centuries ago. The houses in the
red-light district were approached by outside stairways along which were
niches enclosing receptacles for holy water, and into these the patrons
dipped their fingers religiously, crossed themselves, and entered.
While we were walking through one of the narrow streets, high-walled on
either side, suddenly and without reason I felt alarmed, and at the same
moment Portet put his hand in his pocket. I glanced behind to find our
two familiar guarding shadows gone; I sensed danger ahead, but I, too,
tried to act as though everything were all right, as though there were
nothing to worry about. We strolled in the same leisurely way to the
corner. There in a flash down another street we caught a quick glimpse
of struggling figures in the distance. In a moment they disappeared.
We proceeded to our destination—a little café fronting the
Mediterranean. As we sat admiring it, I was startled by the sight of our
two spies approaching, one of them holding a long, jagged-edged knife. I
could not understand his excited words, but his pantomime was so
graphically descriptive of a life-and-death struggle that my flesh began
to creep and shivers ran up and down my backbone. He paused, bowed, and
held out the knife, obviously offering it to me.
Portet, looking very incensed, pulled out his revolver, showed it to the
man, and ordered him off. When both had retired, abashed, Portet
translated briefly, “He says he has saved your life—that robbers saw you
get money at the American Express this morning, and that he knew they
were going to attack you. He followed and grabbed the knife away from
them. I told him this was unnecessary. The thieves would have got as
good as they gave! I can take care of you.”
I thought I ought at least to have given the man a reward, but not
Portet, the revolutionary, who was furious at the presumption. He was
always angry at them. When he came to lunch with me Palm Sunday, the
hotel proprietor leaned over the table confidentially and said, “The
government agent wishes to speak to you.”
Portet shouted, “If he comes near, I’ll shoot him! The hound, the worm,
the dog! How dare he?”
“Can’t we find out what he wants?” I suggested.
The proprietor returned, “Nothing, Señor, except to ask whether you and
the Señora are attending the bullfight this afternoon. His time is up at
four o’clock, but if you are going to the _plaza de toros_, he will be
glad to stay on duty another eight hours.”
We went; he came right along and saw the spectacle at government
expense.
The cement-like benches of the large amphitheater were crowded to full
capacity. The people were gesticulating, chattering volubly as though
awaiting something unusual or something good eagerly anticipated.
Overhead the monotonous, gray sky seemed like a huge tent, it was so
regular and colorless, but every little while a patch of blue appeared.
The disposition of the onlookers changed with the same unexpectedness
from gladness and joy almost instantaneously into impatience or wrath;
at one moment they clapped and praised the matador, at the next they
insulted and vilified him.
Most of my Spanish friends hoped I would like a bullfight, although
Portet, who thought it barbaric, told me it would probably shock me;
every foreigner who saw one simply shut his eyes in horror when some
poor old skeleton horse was so gored that its intestines fell out and
then were pushed back for its re-entry into the arena. If I were going
to be conspicuous by showing my feelings, the populace might turn upon
me, and, jokingly, he suggested following the example of Alfonso XIII,
who had given his English bride a pair of opera glasses with perfectly
black lenses because she was so open and frank at displaying her
emotions. She had stood and stared blankly at them all the time, and
thus got through her first bullfight.
I promised to be careful, and watched with the naked eye.
The bull came out snorting with passion and vigor, glaring around the
arena with a great noble sweep of his head. Suddenly he saw a color he
did not like, something inimical. He lunged towards it, and then a
medieval-looking figure danced before him with a cape to confuse him. He
forgot his original enemy and rushed at the red thing. Another gyrating
figure distracted his attention and angered him to wheel towards the new
adversary, make another plunge, and again be met by a flash of color.
Over and over and over again this happened. The poor bull’s vitality was
finally worn down, not from direct combat, but because of the many
bewildering forces that were there to destroy him—the fluttering capes,
the kaleidoscopic shapes, the swift-thrown banderillas, and the gleaming
lances of the picadors. Then, when he was bleeding and utterly spent,
the hero stepped out with a sword to kill him. He was dragged out,
sombreros whirled into the arena, shrieks and shouts arose, the band
played, a great victory had been achieved.
Within no time, even before another bull appeared, vendors came along
with baskets of hot sandwiches made from the barbecued meat of the one
just killed.
Not a single word would Portet let me say until we were entirely out of
hearing; you could talk freely in Spain against the Church or the
priests, but this sacred institution must not be criticized. Passing
through my mind was the thought that a bullfight was symbolic of the
struggle of the working classes. Strikes, picketing, jails exhausted
their energy until they too charged blindly this way and that, always
missing the main issue.
Many of my holidays were spent more happily than this. I never tired of
the wooded mountains which sheltered Barcelona, most of them having some
religious significance. Portet and I went up the funicular to the top of
Tibidabo, the exceeding high place where the devil tempted Jesus,
showing him in a moment of time the world spread out before him.
Another glorious spring day we twisted up the thirty miles of road to
Montserrat, the mountain riven in two at the Crucifixion. It was the
quaintest sight to one coming from a land of subways and elevators to
watch the donkeys laden with packs on their backs of vegetables, eggs,
and butter, and to see their owners straggling beside up and down the
hills, masters of at least themselves if not of their donkeys. The
breeze blew more chill as we ascended the final slope to the huge
monastery at the top. Afterwards night fell, and the moon shone over the
huge boulders of towering rocks, and the whispering wind swung from mass
to mass and echoed back again whence it came. It was an evening of
enchantment.
On making other sorties into the country I perceived an innate
intelligence in the most ignorant peasant. The average one could not
tell the names of the simplest plants or flowers, but one look from the
eye, one tone of the voice, was comprehended in a flash. Even the gypsy
children in the outskirts of Barcelona, with their little dirty feet and
tattered clothing, who danced weird dances and flattered strangers for
pennies, had a natural brightness beyond belief.
But this intelligence was not being directed, and one reason was
inherent in the rebellious nature of the Catalan; he would have
preferred no system of government at all if that had been possible, for
he was restless and tumultuous under restraint.
When I saw children leading the blind about the streets day after day, I
asked, “Don’t they have to be in school? Isn’t education made compulsory
by the Government?”
I was laughed at. “If the Government sent our children to school, we
would know it was the wrong sort of school.”
Parents who could afford it, however, were willing enough to have them
go to Ferrer’s schools. Two thirds of the Spanish people had not been
able to read or write before his time. The teacher, who worked
constantly all the year round, averaged about sixteen dollars a month.
“He is hungrier than a schoolmaster” was a household axiom.
Since Ferrer’s first school had opened fourteen years previously, some
forty-six had begun to operate, and, in addition, most towns of any size
had at least one rationalist school which was maintained by the workers
and also used Ferrer’s texts. The groundwork was then being laid for the
children of yesterday to become the leaders in today’s fight. The pupils
I saw at near-by Sabadella, at Granada, and at Seville, were being
taught the processes of life from the cell up, and their instructors
were really trying to give them a scientific instead of a theological
attitude.
Because of the long mental and physical isolation imposed upon them by
the Church, which controlled all education, five thousand towns and
villages could be reached only by trails and tracks. The Church had
objected to having roads built because, once transportation were made
more accessible, women could more easily leave their homes in the
country and go to the city where evil awaited them—their morals were
being safeguarded by cow-paths.
Most of Spain was a gaunt, denuded, tragic country with vast, desolate
steppes and red, impoverished soil which gave the feeling it had been
soaked in human blood for centuries. Certainly the spilling of blood had
been a matter of indifference in Spanish history. In a sense the whole
people were lawless, hostile to rulers. Every child knew the evils of El
Caciquismo. Some Spaniard has said, “Democracy, Republicanism, or
Socialism have in reality little to do in our country, for we do not
willingly accept either king, president, priest, or prophet.”
The worker in Catalonia had small faith in government, no matter what
the brand, and kept straight to the one issue—revolution through
economic action, chiefly the general strike. He did not look upon the
Government as a vague, mysterious something for the deeds or blunders of
which no one could be blamed; he demanded that those in authority should
give accounting for the results of their authority. He never forgot a
wrong, and usually those responsible paid the bill. I sometimes thought
his “attempts” were carried out more from a spirit of revenge and
individual hatred than as a social protest.
At the head of the Rambla was a great square, the Plaza de la
Constitucion, and there each day from five to six the populace took its
airing. Thousands of feet had so worn the pavement that it needed
replacement. One noon the square was torn up. Nobody could walk there
for twenty-four hours, the workmen were busy, ropes were placed across
both ends of the promenade, and a huge sign was erected, “No trespassing
allowed. By Order of the Government.”
Loiterers gathered to look at the proclamation. They began talking,
their gestures growing more and more vehement, until finally they pulled
down the ropes and deliberately trod on the fresh concrete. They were
not going to be forbidden by the Government! The entire job had to be
done over again, and I noticed the next night six mounted police were
guarding all four sides. But nobody seemed to give either incident the
slightest attention.
Catalans were a race of individualists, each a law unto himself. Their
most marked characteristics were independence and personal dignity. Even
Pepet, the waiter at my hotel, knew how to use his freedom. Sometimes he
calmly left the dining room and went down the street for a shave while
we were having our soup. He eventually returned for the following
course, happy and clean, his absence unreproved.
Whenever the conversation of the guests interested him, Pepet entered in
quite as naturally as though he were sitting and being served instead of
serving. In any other country this would have been resented as
insolence, but here every courtesy and respect was shown to him just as
he showed it to others. If you said you were going to go by a certain
tram to a certain place to be there at three in the afternoon, he
interrupted, “Pardon me, Señora, you do not need to be there until
four-thirty, and it is much better to go by this other route.”
Like the rest I said, “Right, Pepet, we shall take your advice.”
With the expulsion of the Jews from Spain vanished the driving force for
commercial initiative, a quality, fortunately or unfortunately, greatly
lacking in the country. Pérez Galdós said:
The capital defect of the Spaniards of your time is that you live
exclusively the life of words, and the language is so beautiful that
the delight in the sweet sound of it woos you to sleep. You speak
too much. You lavish without stint a wealth of phrases to conceal
the poverty of your actions.
I did not believe this entirely true, but without doubt the Spanish had
a maddening habit of procrastination. It was “Sí, Sí, Señora, assuredly,
certainly,” all gracious promising—and then nothing happening. To an
American this was especially aggravating, because he was always in a
constant hurry; he expected to see and know the whole of Spain in a
month. But the Spaniard was not to be rushed. When asked what time it
was, he might reply, “Perhaps four hours more of the sun.”
This defiance of clocks and the absence of strain and bustle pleased me
personally. A story was told of a Spaniard going to seek his fortune in
South America. After finding a position to his satisfaction he worked
three hours and then suddenly asked for his pay. When his employer
requested the cause of his abrupt leave-taking, he exclaimed angrily,
“Do you think I’m going to spend all my life working for you?”
Don Quixote truly represented the Spanish temperament. The strong
enthusiasm which was shown for a project and the still stronger
imagination which not only saw the matter begun but also finished, was
Spanish to the last degree. The knight of La Mancha thought nothing of
invading cities and fighting giants, but it ended in thinking about it.
“I consider all that already done.”
Spanish character, so paradoxical, so attractive, and often so difficult
to understand, fascinated me. I could exhaust myself in
adjectives—fickle, impetuous, rich-souled, ascetic, passionate,
realistic, individualistic. Courtesy and ceremony were second nature to
the Catalans of Barcelona, supposed to be the most dangerous and lawless
city in Europe, where thousands of anarchists gathered and plotted and
where bombs were thrown wrapped up in flowers.
I remember how on the suburban trams going high into the mountains,
sellers of hot and cold omelets ran up and down the station platforms.
Anybody who bought one, before eating it himself, offered it to all the
passengers in the car, even though they might be carrying their own
lunches.
To accept, however, was a shocking breach of good form. The offerer
protested that you must take it, and you had to think fast for a
plausible excuse. “My friends are waiting for me to dine with them,” or
“I’ve just had something at the last station.” You must never, never,
never accept.
Havelock used to tell of a grave error he had once made when traveling
in Spain. When he had admired a piece of jewelry, the lady to whom it
belonged had removed it promptly and thrust it upon him, saying, “I am
honored to give it to you.” She had been so insistent that, though
thoroughly uncomfortable, he had taken it—the very worst thing he could
have done. Soon it disappeared from his effects, but what was his
surprise on his next encounter with the lady to find her wearing it
again with no sign of discomposure. Her servants had been so indignant
that one of them had immediately stolen it back.
Spanish men were not only courteous to women but also to each other,
having no hesitancy at showing their regard and affection. Even the
beggars addressed each other in the most high-flown phrases, “Your
Highness,” or “Your Grace.” One might ask, “Where is Your Excellency to
sleep tonight?”
“Under the bridge, My Lord.”
They lacked that poverty-in-the-soul look that existed in the same class
in other countries. Assuming the condition of one tattered and ragged
specimen to be temporary, I questioned him, “What do you do ordinarily?”
“I saunter, I idle, I loaf.”
“But what work do you do?”
He drew himself up with the utmost hauteur, and said proudly, “I do not
work. I am a beggar.”
Doing business with the Spaniards required a knowledge of finesse quite
foreign to the average American. I, for example, saw a basket in a shop
window which I felt I really must have. My escort and I went into the
store. Since the proprietor did not speak English, all I could do was
gaze longingly, take it in my hand, and ask my companion, “How much do
you suppose this is?” He made no answer, but pointed to something else
on the wall, and we left without learning the price. I thought he was a
terribly stupid person.
The next day I passed the same place with Portet, and I begged, “Oh, do
come in and ask how much that basket is. I want to buy it.”
He smiled at me indulgently. “You know in our country we cannot just go
into places and find out prices. This man is a craftsman. We will talk
to him.”
The proprietor and his wife shook hands with us and brought the best
wine from the cellar. Then the former said, “The Señora was here
yesterday. Tell us about her.”
“She comes from North America,” answered Portet.
“Tell us about North America.”
After forty minutes of this, during which I kept one eye on the wicker
container but was unable to divert the conversation to it, we said,
“_Hasta la vista_,” and bowed our way out.
A week later Portet and I, following the lodestone of my particular
basket, sought the shop once more. Relations had now been established,
and we were entitled to ask about it. But we still could not demand
outright, “How much does it cost?” We must say, “This basket must be
worth so and so,” making the figure higher than it should be.
“Oh, no, no, no, no!” the proprietor protested. “It is not worth that.
My humble hands fashioned it. It is hardly worth anything.”
He endeavored to make me accept it for nothing. I had to refuse and once
more try to make him take more than its value. Never was there such a
juggling before we finally arrived at the exact amount of pesetas.
On my departure from the country I had to break through a similar
punctilio. I spent about seven weeks in Barcelona and was never
presented with a hotel bill—none for lodging, for laundry, for meals, or
for extras such as coffee. The day was coming when I must go back to
France, and I did not want too much Spanish money with me—just enough to
take me to the border. From there I had already purchased my tickets for
England.
Each time I mentioned _cuenta_ to the proprietor, bowing and turning up
his palms he answered, “Sí, Sí, Señora,” until finally, on my last
morning, I marched resolutely up to the desk and said, “I shall miss my
train if I have to go to the American Express to get more money. You
really must tell me how much I owe.”
He went upstairs. I waited. Finally he descended, his hair standing on
end. He threw the reckoning down on the table with a most vindictive
look. I glanced at it. The total was very low; it could barely have
covered the cost of the food.
“I have been humiliated!” he exclaimed dramatically.
“Whatever is the matter?” I questioned.
“We are living in the most hellish country on earth!”
“Why, what’s happened?”
“A lady comes all the way from North America. She visits us, she stays
here, we like her, and I must present her with this sordid bill!”
Some day when the fighting is over I shall return again to Spain.
_Chapter Fourteen_
O, TO BE IN ENGLAND
When I reached London it was spring, and beautiful as only spring in
England can be. I longed to get out into the country and, through the
kindness of Dr. Alice Vickery, was soon lodged in a private home in
Hampstead Gardens next door to her quaint, ivy-covered, red-brick house.
In the large garden in back we often had tea under the blossoming apple
trees. There, dressed in gray or purple, with white collar and a wisp of
lace not quite a bonnet on her head, she entertained the young and
modern women of England who were working for reforms of no matter what
kind. Still, at the age of eighty, she was alert upon all questions of
the day, busily engaged in writing leaflets or articles pointing out the
weak spots in social programs.
Dr. Vickery was so full of the living side of Neo-Malthusianism that I
could ill afford to forego one possible hour with her. Often when we
found ourselves alone in her drawing room I sat at her feet and heard
the story of the pioneer Malthusians, what they had had to undergo, and
what they had accomplished. For my benefit she brought out of her attic
a veritable treasure of the early days—old circulars, pamphlets, and
letters now, I am afraid, destroyed.