Read Ebook: My Spanish Year by Whishaw Ellen M

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Ebook has 525 lines and 85925 words, and 11 pages

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.

But these are the little tragedies that lie beneath the surface, and we must not dwell on them, for we have not done yet with the trousseau of our Carmencita.

Space for the unknown bridegroom's initials had as usual been left on all the house linen when it was made, but in this case only the Count's coronet had to be worked, and a heavy strain on girlish invention was thus avoided, for there is not much variety about a coronet, while it takes a good deal of imagination to vary an initial several dozen times.

Oddly enough, my admiration of some beautiful stitching in this heraldic ornament seemed to upset Carmencita's equanimity, and in an instant her sunny smile and gay chatter turned into a tempest of sobs and tears.

I was pretty sure that the theatrical outburst was provoked by a more or less conscious desire to play up to the situation and to be consistent to the last: for Carmencita, as I have hinted, had already made me her confidante, and Spaniards are born actors. She would feel better all her life for having dramatically rounded off the play to her audience of one, and I would not spoil the climax by any lack of sympathy.

"True, true, my child," I answered, "you are indeed a martyr, but it is to duty. Think of the season in Madrid that you will be able to share with your sisters--the theatres, the receptions, the dances! With your birth and the Count's wealth you will certainly be received at Court, and what higher destiny could be offered to you than to take Pura and Dolores away from this dreary village into all the delights of the capital? Have courage, my noble girl, and crush the dictates of your heart for their sake, and, believe me, happiness will be yours."

"True, Do?a Elena; how beautiful an ideal you put before me! And I hear that Manolo has gone away and will not be back for six months, so what should I gain by refusing to marry the Count? And it would make a terrible scandal. And then, have you seen my wedding dress? It is too lovely for words! Do you know, it has a train two yards long! Cesar insisted; he says I am so little I must have a train to give me presence. I have never worn a long dress in my life, and I am so afraid I shall stumble over it. How dreadful if I made myself ridiculous in the church, before all Ronda! Do?a Elena, did you have a train two yards long to your wedding dress, and did you find it difficult to manage?"

The melodrama was over, Carmencita was once more all smiles and merriment, and my suggestion that she should put the wedding dress on and practise walking up and down the patio in it for my benefit sent her and all her companions into screams of laughter. She had made her little oblation to the god of love, and now was ready to enjoy to the full the material fruits of her sacrifice.

She made me promise that I would come to her house and accompany the wedding party to the church, which is only a few yards from the ancestral home of the Campos Abandonados. I told her she had better let me efface myself in the back of the church, because I had no wedding garment in my suit-case and should do the party no credit.

"Don't be absurd," she retorted, kissing me affectionately. "You look like a Duchess with a black mantilla over your white hair, and if you haven't got yours here, Mamma shall find one for you."

Who could resist the pretty creature? And she meant every word of it, at any rate while she was speaking. But she really was sincere in her desire that I should be there as an intimate friend, not a mere acquaintance, and when I arrived shortly before two o'clock on the eventful afternoon I found little ten-year-old Lola, otherwise Dolores, waiting for me at the door, having been ordered by the bride to see that I was taken special care of, "because being a foreigner I might not know exactly where to go, and thus might fail to enjoy myself."

Such consideration really surprised me. Carmen might well have been excused for forgetting, on this great day of her life, that one of her guests was a foreigner; yet she had not only planned for my pleasure, but, as I found, had asked more than one of her old friends to look out for me and see that I was placed where I could have a good view of the ceremony before the side altar of the Virgen del Carmen, at which she had worshipped throughout her short life.

This image of the Virgin of the Carmen has no particular artistic merit, but Carmencita was promoted to being her "lady-in-waiting" when she left school, and had taken great pride in keeping "her" Virgin's wardrobe in perfect order; and to-day she had gone very early to Mass and had dressed the image, for the last time, in the festival robe of eighteenth-century brocade and the tulle veil she had herself embroidered to present to her Virgin on her first communion. She had also filled the silver vases with the tall stiff bouquets which are so much admired here, and had offered quite a number of gilded wax candles for a blessing on her marriage.

And now she stood before the altar--her own altar--with her first long dress trailing behind her and placed her helpless-looking little white hand in that of the stout, common-place man, over thirty years her senior, whose word was henceforth to be her law , and who had already made it evident that he would be a jealous husband. It may, however, be remarked that marital jealousy is regarded by many Spanish wives as rather a compliment than otherwise, as showing that their husbands think them worth being jealous of.

The ceremony was soon over, and while the bride and bridegroom, the bride's parents and godparents, and her brothers and next sister, went into the sacristy with the priest to sign and witness the register, little Lola slipped her hand into mine.

"Carmencita told me to take you to our house now," she said. "I am too little to witness for her, and she was afraid you would go away, and she wants you to see her dance in her wedding dress before she leaves with Cesar."

She led me out of the church and along the badly paved street, which was lined with spectators anxious to see the new Countess whom they had known from a baby.

"There are only two carriages," said Lola, "mamma's and Cesar's. Can you believe it? Carmencita has to come home all alone with Cesar in his carriage! She cried last night, and so did Pura and I, we all cried together. Fancy having to be left all alone with that horrid old man! Do you know, she is afraid he will kiss her, and his ugly blue nose will disarrange her hair. That is the only thing she is afraid of--being alone with him."

A Spanish girl is never, under any circumstances, left alone with her fianc?, until she is actually married to him. There is always a mother, or an aunt, or some other female relative present to superintend the love-making. Small wonder that stolen interviews at the grating, with no listeners but the moon, have their charm. And perhaps the happiest marriages are those which come to pass, sometimes after years of parental opposition, between lovers whose courtship began thus. They at least have a chance of getting to know each other, free from the restraint of the chaperone whose attentive ear makes all real confidence impossible.

Two great seventeenth-century mirrors in handsome carved frames painted red and gold had been brought downstairs and hung on two pillars opposite each other, and Lola made straight for one of these the moment we came in, to see, she said, if they reflected properly, but really to study her own appearance.

Her further confidences were cut short by the arrival of her father and mother in their ancient family coach, with leather curtains in place of windows, drawn by two great black mules whose bells jingled so loudly and the brass of whose harness was so bright as almost to hide the deplorable state of the leather. The portly Marchioness had barely time to recover her breath after the exertion of getting out, and to take up her post of honour in the patio, before the bride and bridegroom appeared, he almost as fat and short-winded as his mother-in-law, she looking extremely pretty with a flush on her olive cheeks and her usually sombre heavy-lidded eyes alight with excitement and pleasure at the openly expressed admiration of the crowd all along the road from the church.

The instant they came in the whole place burst into life, for every corner was invaded by the number of guests who had been invited and the still greater number of those who had not. The well-to-do friends and relations were followed by the poor ones, then came the household servants, old and young, with their friends and relations, and then everybody, without distinction, who wanted to see the bride and wish her joy. And as these last seemed to be half the town, for a short time we were packed like sardines, while the new little Condesa, standing at her mother's side, was receiving resounding kisses on both cheeks from every woman, child, and old man in the crowd, the young men being apparently the only ones who might not claim the privilege.

And here I cannot refrain from digressing to tell a little tale about King Alfonso.

"Pardon me, Se?or," she stammered, divided between her desire not to lose a possible peseta and the difficulty of reconciling a refusal with her natural courtesy; "I fear--to-day--it is impossible--we--we," and then, with a brilliant inspiration, "we do not sell to foreigners."

"Oh, that's all right," said the King, "I am a Spaniard by birth and education, and my present address is the Alcazar of Seville."

The conclusion of the purchase may be left to the imagination.

I have never been able to manage more than two of these luscious sweets at a time, and little Lola became quite distressed when her sixth invitation to eat more and still more of the sugary delicacies proved unavailing.

"I know what you will like," she said at last, "I am sure you will like that, for our North American friend said it was the best thing in Ronda. It is time to hand those trays now, so I will run and get mine for you."

And the next moment Lola was at my side again, pressing upon me slices of raw smoked ham, to be offered and eaten with the fingers, just as is done with dainties at wedding parties in Constantinople and Beyrout to-day.

Undoubtedly the Andalucian acorn-fed hams are excellent, but it was rather a shock to have to start upon ham, and raw ham at that, when one had already eaten too many sweetmeats.

To eat raw ham with one's fingers, as all the ladies round me were doing quite simply and naturally--throwing the fragments that remained on the floor under their chairs--may seem peculiar to our notions of table etiquette; but nobody would laugh at these "country manners" who saw, as I did, the innate courtesy that lay beneath. That the bride at a fashionable wedding should have told off one of her sisters to show special attention to an elderly lady of no particular importance, simply and solely because "being a foreigner she might feel strange," illustrates the traditional courtesy of well-bred Spaniards. And perhaps this funny little incident will explain to some of my readers why I love the real Spain and the real unconventionalised Spaniard.

The whole thing is essentially Oriental, and it needs only the glance of an eye or the turn of a hand to convert the graceful movements of ladies in a drawing-room into an exposition of sensuality.

I am not sure whether I shall take another sweetheart now, Or wait and look about me through the summer.

When I am on my death-bed, Child of my heart, Seat thyself at my bed-head, Child of my heart. Bring me a good veal cutlet, Two fowls and a nice beefsteak, And if this does not seem to thee enough Bring me anything else that occurs to thee."

Proceedings became increasingly lively as the afternoon advanced, though the decorum was never relaxed. It got hotter and hotter, and the air grew suffocating under the awning, but there was no pause in the dancing. As soon as one couple of girls ended another stepped out, and sometimes half a dozen were dancing together. All the grown-up girls wore high combs and white mantillas, which never seemed to become disarranged, and quantities of natural flowers on their heads and breasts, chiefly jessamine blossoms pulled off their stems and fastened together to form large rosettes--another survival of Arabic customs. One would have expected to see the floor strewn with the flowers as the dancing went on, but I knew that every girl had spent at least an hour arranging her head-dress before she started for the wedding, and had taken good care that everything was firmly fixed. And then, however lively the dancing may be, it is always graceful, and there is never a jerky or violent movement, which accounts for these elaborate head-dresses being as neat at the end as they are at the beginning.

Everything must finish some time, and presently the bridegroom, who had never come near the ladies since he and his wife entered the house, appeared at the entrance of the inner patio, his nose rather bluer than usual, and smelling strongly of smoke, to tell Carmencita that it was time to change her dress for the train.

The two younger sisters were still crying when they came downstairs an hour later with the bride in her travelling dress, a really charming arrangement of white muslin and blue ribbons, but Carmencita's face was almost hidden under an overwhelming straw hat covered with immense roses.

"Isn't my hat enchanting?" she whispered in my ear; "you know it is the first hat I ever had in my life, and Cesar actually ordered it for me from Gibraltar! Isn't he an angel? And we are going to Madrid, and then to Paris, and he is going to buy me ever so many more! But don't tell anybody; I want to pretend I am quite accustomed to wearing a hat."

The fascinating novelty carried her through all the adieux and safe into the carriage with her bridegroom, and the last we saw of Carmencita was her laughing face as she straightened the monstrosity, which she had almost knocked off against the carriage door as she got in.

This happened to some Spanish acquaintances of mine one summer. They had booked everything except the children's lunch and such trifles as they could take in their hands, and they arrived at the village where they and we were to spend the holidays late at night and dead tired, without any luggage at all. The neighbours set to work and improvised beds for the smallest children, and the mothers, aunts, and sisters sat in rocking-chairs all night.

"What else is to be done?" they said philosophically; "this sort of thing always happens if you go to the baths in the fashionable season, when everybody wants to be there at once."

None of them were at all cross or depressed, although they were very grateful when we provided a mattress or two for the tired babies to be put to bed on.

Most Spaniards have extraordinarily loud voices. Of course it is usual in any country to shout at a foreigner under the impression that he will understand better if you deafen him to begin with. But in Spain it is not only the foreigner who is bawled at, for Spaniards all shout at each other in the bosoms of their families to such a degree that when I first came to live here I got the impression that they were continually quarrelling. Men and women alike have this unpleasant habit, and although many of them are aware what a noise they make and remark that it is a bad custom, they seem constitutionally incapable of lowering their voices.

When I am almost driven crazy with the strain on my ears I pretend to be puzzled at what is said, and politely remark--

"I am stupidly ignorant of Castilian, but I shall understand better if you will kindly talk a little slower."

"Slower" is a euphemism for "lower," and the request never fails to elicit a pleasant smile and a comment on the shrillness of Spanish voices, in a half whisper. But in two seconds habit holds sway again, and the din rises higher and higher until one feels that one's only refuge is flight unless one wishes to qualify for Bedlam.

The first year we were there the women all wore heavy serge gowns right down to their feet, mostly edged with a broad frill of the same material. Strange to say, one of them managed to swim, and to swim well, in this most unsuitable garment. Her husband, who was lame and could only walk with a stick, also swam well. He used to fling his stick ashore as soon as he was in the water to his waist, and he and his wife would swim out to the old boat, her flowing robe ballooning largely behind her. Later on we came to know them and their family, and the eldest son, a nice boy of about sixteen, told us as politely as he could how dreadfully shocked the Spanish ladies had been that first summer at our indelicate bathing garments, consisting of blouses with short sleeves, knickers, and a skirt to the knees. No doubt our by no means modern bathing dresses surprised them, although we had no idea of it at the time, for that year even the men wore long trousers, sometimes trimmed with little frills round the ankles, while coats covered their arms to the wrists. True, the men so attired did not attempt to swim, but bobbed up and down with their wives and daughters, all holding on to the rope for dear life and never moving an inch from where the bathing-man had put them, until he returned, when he thought they had been in long enough, with sheets to envelop the ladies and bring them to shore again.

Yes, all the ladies were carefully wrapped in sheets when they came out, although no human eye could discern the form so carefully hidden under their voluminous draperies. The only creatures who were allowed to expose any part of their anatomy to direct contact with the water were the babies. They, poor little miseries, were carried down stark naked to the water's edge and handed over to the bathing-men. These, no doubt with the best intentions, would take the screaming mite in one hand and dip it head first into a good big wave, using their free hand to disengage the frantic clutch of the terrified creatures when they came up in an agony of fright from their ducking and found themselves, choked and blinded by the salt water, turned upside down for a second dip. Three times was this brutality repeated every day, and if the piteous cries grew less the third time, the parents, watching the proceedings from the shore, would congratulate themselves that the child was beginning to enjoy his bath.

Infant mortality is always high in Spain. In summer, I understand, it is higher than at any other time, and I do not wonder at it.

That first summer the lame Don Basilio and his wife were the only swimmers except ourselves. But the next year several schoolgirls begged him to teach them to swim, and as the season went on and they made progress in the new accomplishment the flowing skirts were exchanged for trousers, and the trousers gradually grew shorter until a reasonable amount of bare leg was displayed. One or two of the girls managed to swim out to the boat before their twenty-one baths came to an end, and indeed the mystic number was treated with unusual disrespect that year, and the limit often far exceeded.

And the following year, when we arrived rather later in the summer than usual, we found all the girls wearing bathing costumes which gave their limbs free play as they swam, and the old boat was the daily rendezvous of a crowd of laughing and chattering young people, scrambling on board and diving off again with as much energy as if they had been English.

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