Read Ebook: My Spanish Year by Whishaw Ellen M

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Ebook has 525 lines and 85925 words, and 11 pages

PAGES

PART I

SUMMER 1-64

PART II

AUTUMN 65-149

WINTER 150-241

PART IV

SPRING 242-312

FACING PAGE

"A SUMMER AFTERNOON IN THE PATIO" 1

THE CHURCH WHERE CARMENCITA WAS MARRIED 21

IN THE FLOUR MARKET 37

PINE CONES AND PRICKLY PEARS 43

AN ANCIENT GATEWAY 48

IN THE KEEP OF ARCOS CASTLE 65

A PREHISTORIC WEIR 87

"A SADDLE FOR FEMININITY" 97

RUSTIC LOVERS 108

A FUNERAL VESTMENT OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY 117

POSED FOR THE PHOTOGRAPHER 134

THE DANCE OF THE SEISES IN SEVILLE CATHEDRAL 150

THE BRIDEGROOM'S DOOR 183

THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY BANNER OF OUR LADY OF GRANADA 199

"THE ENGLISH ECONOMICAL KITCHEN" 216

GOING HOME FROM THE MARKET 242

A REST AT THE FORD 261

THE COLUMBUS MONUMENT 281

DRESSED FOR THE FAIR 299

MY SPANISH YEAR

Life in the patio--Locked doors and lovers--The uses of the grated gate--Courting under difficulties: the keyhole and the crack--Manolo and Carmencita, a romance in real life.

The great event to which the whole creation moves in the eyes of a Spanish se?orita--not being a resident in Madrid--is the annual fair in the capital town of her province. This generally takes place in the spring, and therefore, for her, the spring is the end and not the beginning of the year, looked forward to with increasing excitement through autumn and winter, while to that young lady summer is but the beginning of the long year which has to be lived through until spring and LA FERIA, in capital letters, comes round again.

I, like the Spanish se?orita, will begin my Spanish year with the summer, if not exactly for the same reason, for one akin to it. The great heat of summer, with its dust, mosquitoes, and flies, is the most trying time in all the twelve months in this country, as the spring is the most enjoyable; and wise people keep the best to the last.

Let it not be supposed, however, that summer in Spain has no compensations. They are many and various, and not the least among them is the life of the patio, which begins in June and ends in September.

We may take it for granted that when the sister connives at her brother's late hours, it is not to enable him to gamble at his club or drink more than is good for him at the caf?. It must be a love affair that enlists pretty Amparo's sympathies and keeps her out of her bed to all hours. She has probably been listening to the professions of devotion of her own forbidden lover until long after midnight, and thus all her sympathies are with Manolo, who also has lost his heart without permission from the parents.

Meanwhile the maid-servants have their own sweethearts to attend to, and, failing a second window, it might seem difficult to get into communication, for the daughters of the respectable poor are as strictly chaperoned as the se?oritas, and a girl would lose her character if she had an "evening out," unless under the wing of her mother or some female friend of mature years. But love laughs at locksmiths, and a friend of mine told me how he learnt by personal experience the way in which the courting is managed in such cases, after the street door is closed.

He was going home along the main street of the country town in which his father lived. The night was dark and the street lamps few and dim, and he stumbled over something soft lying along the pavement in front of the door of a large house. A sibilant whispering relieved his first fear that an assassin's knife had been at work. It was a young man lying full length on the ground, with his lips at the crack under the door, talking to his sweetheart, who lay on the floor inside, while another maid-servant and her lover had possession of the keyhole, and the se?orita in the grated window modestly pulled the curtain to hide herself from my friend's glance when she heard his footsteps approach.

These be the amenities of summer. In winter fewer lovers are to be seen about the streets, because bad colds and stiff necks are apt to be caught by young men--even though wrapped in the voluminous cloak so dear to romance--who stand for many hours out of doors "eating iron" with their feet in a puddle, staring up at the beloved in the balcony of the first floor whereon she resides from October to June. Indeed, I know of one love affair that was broken off, never to be renewed, because the girl took offence at the prolonged absence of her admirer, who, poor fellow, was in bed with influenza and unable to get the sad intelligence conveyed to his goddess at her window.

So Manolo rose from his bed of sickness to read in the local paper that "the aristocratic and affluent Se?or Conde de las Patillas Blancas had asked the hand of the exquisitely beautiful young Se?orita Carmen Perez y Dominguez, daughter of the Marquises of Campos Abandonados"--literally "deserted fields," but perhaps best paraphrased into the familiar English title of Bareacres.

As Manolo well knew, this was the end. For not only is the mother in Spain absolute mistress in the matter of her daughter's marriage, but Carmencita herself, once she had shed the conventional tears over the loss of her lover, was perfectly well aware on which side her bread was buttered. Both these young people were intimate friends of mine, and if I had consented to act as go-between when I went to congratulate Carmencita on her engagement, and incidentally provoked a torrent of tears by remarking on Manolo's fortunate recovery, it is just possible that she might have made a fresh effort to get her own way. But it is the part of wisdom not to meddle with Spanish love affairs, which are seldom or never quite what they seem, and in her inconstant little heart Carmencita certainly thanked me for refusing to carry any messages. As for Manolo, he consoled himself by marrying an heiress a year or so after, and disappears from this veracious history.

Social life in a mountain town--Moslem traditions--The etiquette of betrothal--Wedding presents--The trousseau--Little tragedies of Spain--Dramatic Carmencita--Compensations for the Countess.

If I were to describe the scene of the wedding where it actually took place, it is just possible that some of those concerned, if they happened to see this book, might recognise themselves. I will therefore transfer it to the picturesque mountain town of Ronda, which, although frequented by tourists, and boasting two really comfortable hotels, still preserves some peculiar local customs.

Of these perhaps the most noticeable is the Moslem tradition of the separation of the sexes. The numerous travellers, both native and foreign, who spend a day in the town on their way to or from Algeciras in the spring or autumn, have as yet made no impression on the conservatism of the Ronde?os, and one has only to stroll up and down the Paseo de la Merced on a Sunday night in summer to see that social customs in Ronda are quite unaffected by contact with the outer world.

Ronda with its wonderful Tajo, through which the Guadalevin rushes in a torrent during the winter rains, was provided with electric light when I first visited it ten or eleven years ago. At that time the power used to fail ignominiously in the summer, at which season all the water of the shrunken river has to be turned into the irrigation channels, as has been the legal right of the numerous market gardeners in the valley from Arabic times. Now steam has been brought in to supplement the water-power, and the lighting of the principal hotels, and above all of the Paseo, is as brilliant as any one can desire.

In summer it is too hot to stroll about with comfort in the daytime, and the youth of both sexes had little opportunity of contemplating each other's charms at that season until artificial light came to the rescue. Now, especially on a Sunday night, the whole town crowds into the Paseo, where under powerful arc lights the young people can admire each other to their hearts' content.

One of the curious customs of the place is that all the pretty girls march up and down, from two to six or seven together, while their portly mothers and aunts sit and fan themselves on the stone benches and chairs ranged along both sides of the walk. The young men also march up and down, also in groups, but carefully confining themselves to either side of the broad space in the centre occupied by the girls. Each town in Spain is socially a law to itself, and it seems to be contrary to Ronda etiquette for the men to walk with the girls under any condition whatever, although in other places the presence of a duenna makes it quite correct.

Engaged couples may enter the Paseo together but they must not join in the promenade. They may only sit under the trees with the mother or the aunt, and console themselves for their enforced retirement by squeezing each other's hands under cover of the shadows cast by the overhanging boughs. But if the girl happens to come late, her fianc? gets a chance to show himself. Then he may walk up and down as much as he pleases in the midst of the swarm of girls, pretending to be looking for his sweetheart. I watched Carmencita's elderly lover at this performance one Sunday night, and every time he got well into the focus of one of the arc lamps he stopped short with the light full on him, glancing this way and that with assumed anxiety as to the whereabouts of the lady, although he knew, and she knew, and all their friends and acquaintances knew, that his charmer would not appear till the band began to play at ten o'clock.

So when I heard that Carmen was finally engaged I knew it would not be long before I received an invitation to the wedding, which came in due course, printed in silver on a highly glazed card. It was not strictly speaking an invitation at all, for it merely set out at full length the names and titles of the bride and bridegroom and their parents , and announced the day and hour of the wedding without "requesting the pleasure of my company." The opposite side of the card contained an identical announcement on the part of the bridegroom.

On the day before the wedding I went, by Carmencita's special request, to see her trousseau, which to the Andalucian bride is even more exciting than the wedding presents.

As soon as her tiny hands can hold a needle, the Spanish se?orita is taught by the nuns at her school to sew in this dainty fashion, and from her earliest childhood she devotes the fruits of her labours to furnishing her trousseau; for here the bride brings all the house linen as part of her dowry, and long before she is old enough to have a lover her careful mother will provide the huge quantities of fine linen and lace, and the pounds of embroidery silk and cotton which are required for the proper plenishing of one of those great carved chests in which the daughters of the house have stored their wedding outfits for centuries past.

If the daughter passes out of her teens without being married the chest will be full long before it is required, and indeed sometimes it is never needed at all; for unless a girl is rich, or of distinguished family, or, if poor, remarkably beautiful, it is quite likely that no one will ever ask for her hand.

And sometimes poverty descends on the family, and the daughters, orphaned and penniless when already past their youth and unable to earn any sort of a living, are reduced to selling one by one all the produce of so many years of industry to satisfy the claims of hunger, or, if the old house has been sold, to pay the rent of some wretched little room which in their prosperous days they would hardly have given to a maid-servant. I have witnessed pathetic scenes when ladies of gentle birth have come to me in the dusk of evening to ask if I will buy some dainty embroidery or delicate pillow lace "to help a friend who has lost her money." And to the end they will try to salve their hurt pride by keeping up this transparent fiction, holding the bedspread or pillow-case upside down, in the hope that until they have left with the money in their pockets I may not notice that the initials worked on it are their own.

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