Castilian Days. John Hay G.
king and lord by his own hearthstone, but his sway is so mild and so readily acquiesced in that it is hardly felt. The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resists it, and the Spanish family seldom calls for the harsh exercise of parental authority.
This is the rule. I do not mean to say there are no exceptions. The pride and jealousy inherent in the race make family quarrels, when they do arise, the bitterest and the fiercest in the world. In every grade of life these vindictive feuds among kindred are seen from time to time. Twice at least the steps of the throne have been splashed with royal blood shed by a princely hand. Duels
SPANISH LIVING AND DYING 35
between noble cousins and stabbing affrays between peasant brothers alike attest the unbending sense of personal dignity that still infects this people.
A light word between husbands and wives sometimes goes unexplained, and the rift between them widens through life. I know some houses where the wife enters at one door and the husband at another; where if they meet on the stairs, they do not salute each other. Under the same roof they have lived for years and have not spoken. One word would heal all discord, and that word will never be spoken by either. They cannot be divorced,--the Church is inexorable. They will not incur the scandal of a public separation. So they pass lives of lonely isolation in adjoining apartments, both thinking rather better of each other and of themselves for this devilish persistence.
An infraction of parental discipline is never forgiven. I knew a general whose daughter fell in love with his adjutant, a clever and amiable young officer. He had positively no objection to the suitor, but was surprised that there should be any love-making in his house without his previous suggestion. He refused his consent, and the young
36 CASTILIAN DAYS
people were married without it. The father and son-in-law went off on a campaign, fought, and were wounded in the same battle. The general was asked to recommend his son-in-law for promotion. "I have no son-in-law!" "I mean your daughter's husband." "I have no daughter." "I refer to Lieutenant Don Fulano de Tal. He is a good officer. He distinguished himself greatly in the recent affair." "Ah! otra cosa!" said the grim father-in-law. His hate could not overcome his sense of justice. The youth got his promotion, but his general will not recognize him at the club. It is in the middle and lower classes that the most perfect pictures of the true Spanish family are to be found. The aristocracy is more or less infected with the contagion of Continental manners and morals. You will find there the usual proportion of wives who despise their husbands, and men who neglect their wives, and children who do not honor their parents. The smartness of American "pickles" has even made its appearance among the little countesses of Madrid. A lady was eating an ice one day, hungrily watched by the wide eyes of the infant heiress of the house. As the latter saw the last hope vanishing before
SPANISH LIVING AND DYING 37
the destroying spoon, she cried out, "Thou eatest all and givest me none,--maldita sea tu alma!" (accursed be thy soul). This dreadful imprecation was greeted with roars of laughter from admiring friends, and the profane little innocent was smothered in kisses and cream.
Passing at noon by any of the squares or shady places of Madrid, you will see dozens of laboring-people at their meals. They sit on the ground, around the steaming and savory cocido that forms the peasant Spaniard's unvaried dinner. The foundation is of garbanzos, the large chick-pea of the country, brought originally to Europe by the Carthaginians,--the Roman cicer, which gave its name to the greatest of the Latin orators. All other available vegetables are thrown in; on days of high gala a piece of meat is added, and some forehanded housewives attain the climax of luxury by flavoring the compound with a link of sausage. The mother brings the dinner and her tawny brood of nestlings. A shady spot is selected for the feast. The father dips his wooden spoon first into the vapory bowl, and mother and babes follow with grave decorum. Idle loungers passing these patriarchal groups, on their way to a vapid French
38 CASTILIAN DAYS
breakfast at a restaurant, catch the fragrance of the olla and the chatter of the family, and envy the dinner of herbs with love.
There is no people so frugal. We often wonder how a Washington clerk can live on twelve hundred dollars, but this would be luxury in expensive Madrid. It is one of the dearest capitals in Europe. Foreigners are never weary decrying its high prices for poor fare; but Castilians live in good houses, dress well, receive their intimate friends, and hold their own with the best in the promenade, upon incomes that would seem penury to any country parson in America. There are few of the nobility who retain the great fortunes of former days. You can almost tell on your fingers the tale of the grandees in Madrid who can live without counting the cost. The army and navy are crowded with general officers whose political services have obliged their promotion. The state is too much impoverished to pay liberal salaries, and yet the rank of these officers requires the maintenance of a certain social position. Few of them are men of fortune. The result is that necessity has taught them to live well upon little, I knew widows who went everywhere in society,
SPANISH LIVING AND DYING 39
whose daughters were always charmingly dressed, who lived in a decent quarter of the town, and who had no resources whatever but a husband's pension.
The best proof of the capacity of Spaniards to spread a little gold over as much space as a goldbeater could is the enormous competition for public employment. Half the young men in Spain are candidates for places under government ranging from $250 to $1000. Places of $1500 to $2000 are considered objects of legitimate ambition even to deputies and leading politicians. Expressed in reals these sums have a large and satisfying sound. Fifty dollars seems little enough for a month's work, but a thousand reals has the look of a most respectable salary. In Portugal, however, you can have all the delightful sensations of prodigality at a contemptible cost. You can pay, without serious damage to your purse, five thousand reis for your breakfast.
It is the smallness of incomes and the necessity of looking sharply to the means of life that makes the young people of Madrid so prudent in their love affairs. I know of no place where ugly heir-esses are such belles, and where young men with
40 CASTILIAN DAYS
handsome incomes are so universally esteemed by all who know them. The stars on the sleeves of young officers are more regarded than their dancing, and the red belt of a field officer is as winning in the eyes of beauty as a cestus of Venus. A. subaltern offered his hand and heart to a black-eyed girl of Castile. She said kindly but firmly that the night was too cloudy. "What," said the stupefied lover, "the sky is full of stars." "I see but one," said the prudent beauty, her fine eyes resting pensively upon his cuff, where one lone luminary indicated his rank.
This spirit is really one of forethought, and not avarice. People who have enough for two almost always marry from inclination, and frequently take partners for life without a penny.
If men were never henpecked except by learned wives, Spain would be the place of all others for timid men to marry in. The girls are bright, vivacious, and naturally very clever, but they have scarcely any education whatever. They never know the difference between b and v. They throw themselves in orthography entirely upon your benevolence. They know a little music and a little French, but they have never crossed, even in a school-day
SPANISH LIVING AND DYING 41
excursion, the border line of the ologies. They do not even read novels. They are regarded as injurious, and cannot be trusted to the daughters until mamma has read them. Mamma never has time to read them, and so they are condemned by default. Fernán Caballero, in one of her sleepy little romances, refers to this illiterate character of the Spanish ladies, and says it is their chief charm,--that a Christian woman, in good society, ought not to know anything beyond her cookery-book and her missal.' There is-an old proverb which coarsely conveys this idea: A mule that whinnies and a woman that talks Latin never come to any good.
There is a contented acquiescence in this moral servitude among the fair Spaniards which would madden our agitatresses. (See what will become of the language when male words are crowded out of the dictionary!)