II.—Vain Generalities.
“And indeed,” wrote Pepys, “we do all naturally love the Spanish and hate the French,” and if, since his day, we have learned to love the French, the character of the Spanish has not ceased to attract and interest Englishmen. Yet any attempt to generalize concerning Spanish character would seem a vain and foolish task, since Spain is the country of Europe which has most stringently preserved its local differences of race and language, and it is still true, as in Ford’s time, that “the rude agricultural Gallician, the industrious manufacturing artisan of Barcelona, the gay and voluptuous Andalucian, the sly vindictive Valencian are as essentially different from each other as so many distinct characters at the same masquerade,” and the Basque[13] and andaluz, for instance, are as far apart as Frenchman and Spaniard. It is possible to take the various ingredients, Castilian pride,[14] Catalan thrift,[15] Andalusian imagination, Gallegan dullness,[16] the grimness of Navarre, the stubbornness of Aragon,[17] Valencian or Murcian cunning, and, tying them into a convenient bundle, to speak of the Spanish as proud, thrifty, etc., or, in a more pessimistic key, as haughty, avaricious, untruthful, stolid, cruel, obstinate, malicious. But, though such a judgment is notoriously false, a few qualities may perhaps be attributed to the whole of Spain as in some measure common to her various peoples. Foremost among these qualities are independence and personal dignity. The Spaniards are a nation of individualists, each a law unto himself, and they are thus as a nation frequently misunderstood and their pride has not suffered them to correct errors concerning them, while at the same time it would perhaps be difficult to find in any other nation so great a number of individuals whom one may admire and respect. The dramatist Don Jacinto Benavente has said[18] that in Spain “each of us would like to be the only great man in a nation of fools, the only honest man in a tribe of knaves,” and speaks of “our unbridled individualism.” No one is a more thorough individualist than Don Pío Baroja, and the principal character of his novel, César ó Nada, declares that the Spanish, “as individualists require, more than a democratic, federal organization, an iron military discipline.” “Democracy, Republicanism, Socialism have in reality little root in our country.... Moreover we admit no superiorities and do not willingly accept king or president, priest or prophet.” It is this refractoriness which has made the Spanish so hard a people to govern, and wrought permanent mischief to their prosperity as a nation. They would seem to have still to learn the true dignity of loyalty and service. Every Spaniard, of however humble a position, considers that he is well qualified to criticize the measures of his rulers, and still more the fancied measures that he chooses to attribute to them. Thus in a Republic every citizen would believe himself to be capable of conducting the affairs of the nation better than the President, as Sancho was convinced that he could govern his island as well or better than any; nevertheless Spaniards are inclined to acquiesce in a firm unquestioned authority with a kind of heroical submission, accepting its decisions as they accept the inevitable decrees of fate, and for this reason an old-established system of government, such as the Monarchy, is infinitely the best suited to the Spanish temperament. No doubt they would prefer to have no system of government, if that were possible, being restive and tumultuous under restraint. On one occasion a Spanish chauffeur while driving his mistress considered that he had been insulted by a passer in the street and, leaving mistress and motor, proceeded to punish the offender till the police interfered.[19] And if the Spanish find it difficult to work harmoniously under the orders of others, it is no easier for them to maintain a joint authority; they can never co-operate for long, their political parties and commercial unions rapidly fall asunder like the seeds of a pomegranate. Similarly one may see at a glance of any Spanish crowd that it is not a fused mass but a collection of units remaining aloof and separate; if the individual gains, the State suffers, and Spanish politics sometimes have an air of cramping angularities and crude ambitions. But this individualism and independence has its nobler and more pleasant side, for even in extreme poverty and distress, dignity and an accompanying courtesy, honesty, and sobriety,[20] rarely desert the Spaniard. Each is king in his own house, be it miserable attic or merely the space of sun that his shadow covers; mientras en mi casa me estoy rey me soy. The following dialogue bears intrinsic evidence of its nationality, it could not belong to any country but Spain: “Is your worship a thief?”—“Yes, to serve God and all good people.”[21] Thus personal dignity and individual pride may be said to be the dominant notes of Spain. So the beggars in the street address one another as Sir, señor, lord, and if you cannot give them an alms for the good of your soul you must at least give excuses—perdone Vd. por Dios. While we admire this independence we cannot help seeing that it is a false dignity, which prefers to starve, like one of the characters in Pérez Galdós’ Fortunata y Jacinta, because “mi dinidá y sinificancia no me permiten—my dignity and importance do not allow me,” to accept employment. The fair outward show given to garret poverty is pathetic, but it is liable to deceive and to create distrust. Mme. d’Aulnoy remarked that the Spanish “bear up under this Indigency with such an air of gravity as would cheat one.”
In Love’s Labour’s Lost Don Adriano de Armado says to Moth that he is “ill at reckoning; it fitteth the spirit of a tapster,” but to Moth’s observation, “You are a gentleman and a gamester, Sir,” he answers well-pleased, “I confess both; they are both the varnish of a complete man” (todo un hombre). The Spanish have ever shown themselves to be ill at reckoning, they are careless of details and have indeed an Oriental incuriousness of facts and figures; in no country is it more difficult to obtain accurate returns or consecutive statistics. Against all drudgery the Spanish temperament rebels[22]; they act by impulse, in disconnected moments without persistency; their concentration is of instants,[23] without consequence; and it has been observed that “Spain has developed her life and art by means of spiritual convulsions.” What is said in one of Pérez Galdós’ novels[24] of Narváez might with truth be applied to many Spaniards: “He has a great heart and a great intelligence, but they manifest themselves only by fits and starts, by impulses, por arranques.” There is plenty of intelligence among Spaniards but little continuity of judgment; no perseverance. They are enthusiastic for a project and, their thoughts outrunning action, they see the matter begun, in progress, finished, so that their very keenness prevents accomplishment, and finally nothing is done. Don Quixote, we remember, thought little of the winning of a kingdom and cutting off a giant’s head: “all that I consider already done, que todo esto doy ya for hecho.” Or sometimes their intelligence mars their labour and, not content with doing a simple thing simply, they spoil it by being a little too clever, or decide a matter too readily by a swift judgment that may happen to be false. The Spanish are a people of immense and abiding energy,[25] but their energy is often dormant or misdirected. Two Spaniards in the twentieth century have been seen to converse with so fierce an intensity that it seemed over and over again in the course of a protracted and loud discussion that they must come from words to blows; and the matter in dispute, conducted with a heat that would have exhausted less energetic natures, was whether it was right or wrong to expel the Moriscos from Spain at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Yet it is not certain that the Spanish can be called unpractical; they are often idle, indifferent, aloof from the events of daily life, but when a matter truly interests them, they would seem to be sufficiently shrewd and practical. King James I. of Aragon aimed an accusation at the Castilians which has often been applied to all Spaniards: “You do nothing without extravagance.[26]” But a fundamental ingredient of Spanish character is realism and clear vision; it is their birthright of transparent subtle air and unclouded skies. They are keen to detect all falseness and hypocrisy, and display a shrewd insight into character; but their study has been ever of persons rather than of books and things,[27] so that they may act extravagantly themselves even while they are the first to see another’s extravagance, keenly practical, it may be said, in the affairs of others, strangely abstract and improvident in their own. Their realism, if it drives them by reaction into a barren love of words and visions of impossible ideals, expresses itself in a directness which is very characteristic of all classes of Spaniards, in the pregnant brevity of countless proverbs, in concentrated intensity at a given moment, in humour and satire and a strong love of ridicule. Their proverbs show a thriftiness and practical good sense very different from the prudence that enriches, but equally far removed from the romantic view of Spaniards sometimes held by foreigners. In noble lines Calderón has said of life that it is “a shadow, a fantasy, and the greatest good is of small worth, since all life is a dream and dreams themselves a dream”:—
¿qué es la vida? Un frenesí.
¿qué es la vida? Una ilusión,
una sombra, una ficción,
y el mayor bien es pequeño,
que toda la vida es sueño
y los sueños sueño son;
but we may doubt whether the following lines of Lope de Vega are not as truly Spanish in spirit:—
Nada me parece bien,
Todos me son importunos.—
¿Teneis dineros?—Ningunos.—
Pues procurad que os los den.
“I see no good in anything; all men weary me.—Have you money?—None—Then see that you get some given you.”[28] An almost harsh flavour of originality is found in Spanish humour, a sly and malicious irony, a biting wit, full of gaiety and good-humour, but of great force and directness. Their courtesy is proverbial, and it is not simply a superficial politeness, brittle as glass, but goes to the very core of the man. A knowledge of Spain would seem to show that the mere forms of politeness have no little effect in maintaining the dignity of a nation. The Spaniard, writing from his own house, speaks of it as esta su casa, this your house, and to a tradesman he will sign himself, “Your sure servant, who kisses your hands” (S.S.S., Q.B.S.M. which is shorter than the corresponding English, “Yours faithfully”); mere forms, it will be said, but forms that show the spirit and betray the lordly and generous magnificence of the men who once ruled the world, and of whom Bacon wrote: “I have marvelled sometimes at Spain, how they clasp and contain so large dominions with so few natural Spaniards.” As a kind of magnificent disregard of human life has earned for Spaniards the charge of cruelty, so their attitude towards time has led many to look upon them as lazy and utterly unbusinesslike.[29] “The Spartans and Spaniards have been noted to be of small dispatch,” says Bacon, and this procrastination and delay was as prominent in the spacious times of Spain’s greatness as at the present day. We need but think of the endless trailing procedure of Inquisition trials, or of books waiting on the frontier for inspection with a man hired to dust them once a month. In ordinary life it is due perhaps rather to indifference and disdain than to an innate sluggishness; in official transactions formalism, and the inability to co-operate with others often bring matters to an intricate pass of papers, from which there is no issue but by a patient and slow unravelling. Even to-day a rigid centralization carries the pettiest affair to Madrid for settlement, and lays upon the Prime Minister a crushing load of work. Etiquette is carried to excess, and there are in Spain many “formal natures,” men who would perish upon a ceremony rather than come to a quick and common-sense conclusion. But the true defect of Spanish politics is that they have a tendency to become abstract, with many excellent formulas and catchwords, but divorced from reality, a kind of up-to-date scholasticism. Sometimes they appear to be a game of dialectics, carried on by a few skilful players, sometimes a “rushing splendour of rhetoric,” carrying away many. Spaniards are fond of what Butler calls “that idle and not very innocent employment of forming imaginary models of the world and schemes of governing it.” Spanish politicians, says Señor Pérez Galdós, “live in a world of rituals and formulas, recipes and expedients. The language has filled with aphorisms and mottos and emblems. Ideas become stereotyped, and contemplated actions go seeking to embody themselves in words and cannot make their choice of them.”[30] It would seem indeed that reality has shown itself so angular and hard-featured to the Spanish that they gladly make efforts to escape from it. While no nation shows so great a courage, endurance and patient endeavour in misfortune and defeat, they are not equally successful in success, they are often spoilt by prosperity and become weak, dissolute and frivolous; they must have something to fight, and fall when they no longer press against opposition. This may account for the fact that the poorer classes are still, as in Ford’s time, “by no means the worst portion of the population.” The peasants are courteous, intelligent, patient, energetic and persevering: their praises have been sung by many writers.[31] But a pathetic fatalism and apathy prevail, and a great bitterness against those in authority. Pobreza nunca alza cabeza, poverty never raises its head, they say, la cárcel y la cuaresma para los pobres es hecha, prison and Lent are for the poor; they look for no bettering of their lot, but for pan y paciencia y muerte con penitencia—bread and patience and death with repentance. But it must be said that the fault is not only of those “on top,” but of those also who, brooking no superiorities of any kind,[32] thus reduce differences between man and man to the brutal divisions of wealth and poverty and make life a race for riches. It remains true, however, that the peasants of Spain are ground down by taxes,[33] and work incessantly only to hover on the fringes of starvation; todo sea por Dios, they say, and content themselves with the observation that honesty and riches do not fit into one sack—honra y provecho no caben en un saco. There is a certain elemental hardness in the Spanish which helps them to support hardships stoically and, indeed, to be scornful of modern comforts and luxury. Their indifference towards disquiet and discomfort and noisy uproar[34] often dismays the foreigner, but it is not that they are inconsiderate of the feelings of others, they have a deep sensitiveness and refinement, but they have not been enervated and rendered over-sensitive by a luxurious civilization. Their climate, with its harsh extremes of cold and heat,[35] produces a people like that of León’s Alcalá de los Zegríes, “rigorous in their virtues and their vices, violent in their loves and hates.” They go easily to extremes; Spanish intellects are apt to be either totally undeveloped, or else over-subtle in nice distinctions, and action in the same way, when it comes, comes with violence and excess, like the rivers of Spain which, parched all summer, pour down after rain in rushing torrents. The charges of cruelty and fanaticism, the bull-fight and the auto-de-fé, have fixed themselves upon the Spanish. They are by nature inflexible and uncompromising, and like to carry out their principles without looking to the many delicate shades of grey between white and black. But they are not by nature cruel; they support bodily sufferings with courage and inflict them upon others as the lesser of two evils, burning the heretics to prevent the spread of their heresy; and indeed to men convinced that these “pertinacious schismaticks” were to burn for ever and ever in another place, a touch of fire in this life could hardly seem an excessive punishment.[36] Cruelty to animals on the roads of Spain is extremely rare, and at the bull-fights[37] it is only fair to observe that, while the foreigner’s attention is directed to the sufferings of the horses, the whole mind of the Spaniard is bent on intricacies of the conflict between man and bull, and nice passes which escape the foreigner.[38] The autos-de-fé and the Inquisition have cast over Spain a reputation for fanaticism and obscurantist bigotry. But the Spanish, while eager supporters of their faith, are too independent to bow down for long to a Clerical predominance; they cannot be called a priest-ridden nation.[39] Ni buen fraile por amigo, ni malo por enemigo, says one of their proverbs—make no friend of a good monk, nor enemy of a bad; and again, Haz lo que dice el fraile no lo que hace—follow the monk’s precept, not his example. They believe uncompromisingly in the Roman Catholic religion, but have a ready eye for the faults of its ministers; they love and reverence the Church as a refuge from reality, but continue to be realists in their mysticism. The Church in Spain has done noble work, but it has been a retreat more than a morality, encouraging hollow shows rather than love of truth,[40] patience and submission rather than enterprise and a persistent search for remedies. The anti-Clericals complain that the influence of the priest in the family is excessive, but when the women are kept in a semi-Oriental seclusion, while the men chatter together in street and casino and café, as still happens in many parts of Spain,[41] it is but natural for the women to turn from the discomfort and isolation of their homes to the magnificent ceremonies of the Church.[42] The Spaniards are naturally inclined to generosity and a love of magnificence, but, their poverty preventing, this too often degenerates to shams and hollowness. To poverty and the proud concealment of poverty, much of the feeling of suspicion which prevails in Spain may be attributed. A large number of Spaniards may be said to be well-to-do in the street, poverty-stricken in the home. The family in Pereda’s Bocetos al temple which chooses without a moment’s hesitation to live on potatoes in order to be able to dress luxuriously, is no solitary instance, and in Madrid many live in bare rooms who drive abroad in carriages. The Spanish are more careful of outward show than any other nation. The universal neatness and soldierly smartness of their dress must excite admiration. But watch a poor man fold and refold the brilliantly lined outer edge of his capa that the more worn portions of the velvet may not appear—the capa which may itself cover a multitude of sins (la capa todo lo tapa) that recalls the passage in Shakespeare:—
“Armado: The naked truth of it is I have no shirt. I go woolward for penance.
Boyet: True, and it was enjoined him in Rome for want of linen.”
Or follow a smart officer through the streets to his house. The position and entrance of the house will not prepare you for its decreasing splendour as you climb stair after stair to the bare rooms where he lives. There is much that is postizo, false and artificial, in the exterior view, as Spaniards will themselves bitterly confess. Appearances must be maintained. So Bacon says that “It hath been an opinion that the Frenchmen are wiser than they seem and the Spaniards seem wiser than they are,” and many of their houses are built not to live in but to look on. Hence, partly, a disquieting element of mistrust, of “suspicions that ever fly by twilight” foreign to the frank and open nature of true Spaniards. “Of every Spanish undertaking,” writes Señor Benavente in 1909, “it may be said as of the famous Cortes that it is ‘dishonoured while yet unborn.’ The result is that he who is jealous of his good name shuns contact with all business affairs like pitch, and the affairs fall into the hands of men who are untroubled by scruples.... All these suspicions and distrusts are a sign rather of our poverty than of our morality. There is so great a scarcity of money that it becomes unintelligible that any one who has the handling of it should fail to keep a part for himself.... We are, moreover, so firmly attached to old-fashioned ideas of nobility—rancias hidalguías—that, in spite of our pressing need of money, we still consider its acquisition contemptible; so we prefer to seek it by subterranean channels as if it were a crime to seek it in the light of day.”
Suspicion of new things has ever been at once the strength and the weakness of Spain.[43] In the nineteenth century this suspicion expressed itself in patriotism carried to its extreme logical conclusion. Were Napoleon’s reforms of a nature to benefit Spain in an inestimable degree? To the Spaniard they were the tyrannical and insidious measures of a usurper. Was his brother Joseph intelligent, well-intentioned, conciliatory? To the Spaniard he was ever the squint-eyed drinker, Pepe Botellas, and it was idle to insist that he did not squint, and did not drink. Was King Amadeo an enlightened, courageous, and self-effacing ruler? To the Spaniard he was an intruder, to be treated with neglect, insolence or disdain. This distrust may have been foolish and harmful to the interests of Spain, but it was in many respects noble and admirable. To-day, however, we have rather the reverse side of the picture, a pessimism about all things Spanish, and a foolish tendency to imitate things foreign. Beneath his outer capa of haughty pride the Spaniard is keenly aware of his limitations; he has no confidence in his own actions or in his country, or, rather, his confidence is merely momentary and is never sustained. It is, no doubt, a sign not of progress but degeneracy to exchange the Spanish capa, peculiarly suited to a climate of hot sun and cold air, for English overcoats or the becoming mantilla for the newest fashion in Parisian hats. It is not necessarily a sign of progress to exchange old-fashioned Spanish piety for the latest shades of scepticism, or to leave the simple life of an hidalgo in the provinces for the idler, dissipated life in the only capital and court. The desire to be very modern is at present a good thing in Spain, yet it need not consist in casting aside old traditions and diffidently rejecting Spanish customs that are excellent. This exalting of foreign customs and depreciation of their own which has been frequently observed of Spaniards, is due rather to an inverted pride than to humility; at the beginning of the nineteenth century it was considered a mark of culture in Spain to despise things Spanish and to worship things French, but all the time the Spanish believe at heart in themselves,[44] they praise foreign countries with their lips, but continue to place Spain first, and if they imitate, they cast a peculiarly Iberian flavour over their imitations. The late Bishop Creighton, looking at Spain historically, remarked that it “leaves the curious impression of a country which never did anything original—now the Moors, now France, now Italy, have influenced it.” If this is so, certainly the Moors, and France, and Italy have wrought some of their most original works in Spain; and it can hardly be said that the great Spanish discoverers and conquerors, painters, philosophers, and poets of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries were not original, whether they were influenced by Moors, Frenchmen, or Italians.[45] But, indeed, the Spaniard more readily repels than assimilates, it is his virtue and his defect; he remains isolated and alone, difficult to convince, impossible to govern. New political and social theories from France are spread in Spain, but they there serve progress less than disquiet and the rancour of those who have not towards those who have. The reforms needed by Spain will not be furthered by riots and disorder, and the demagogues who encourage them are perhaps less patriotic than they profess to be. For Spain needs peace, long periods of tranquillity in which to develop her resources and to learn the more difficult task of maintaining in prosperity that strength and independent nobility of character which have shone out so clearly in misfortune. The conclusion then, if so desultory a study warrants a conclusion, is that the Spanish are a fundamentally noble, courteous, and independent people, energetic and brave, with a natural tendency to grandeur and generosity, whom poverty often leads to hollow display and the consequent suspicion and distrust. They will be at immense pains to “bear up under their indigency,” but have a greater consideration for the semblance than for the reality and substance of well-being, for artificial show, supported by infinite care and ingenuity, than for a more solid prosperity, based on serious effort. Their realism, throwing into relief the apparent pettiness of daily life, causes them to dream dreams and weave fragile abstract palaces of fair-sounding phrases; they have not that useful quality of accuracy, an understanding of the value and importance of details and gradual effort, of pennies and minutes: they will smite a stone in twain at a great blow, but the idea that it might be pierced by drops of water saepe cadendo is foreign to them, and often they aim at a million and miss a unit. They are a nation of strongly original characters, acting on impulses and intermittently, and thinking in extremes; often failing in the face of prosperity, but proud, resolute, and patient in misfortune; often magnificently imprudent, but never despicable, except to those whose worship is of riches and success; an admirable but discomfortable people, not adapting itself readily to modern conditions, but ever to be reckoned with as an energetic, vital force, not bowing permanently before defeat.
II
TRAVELLING IN SPAIN
IT was, of course, Samuel Johnson who said, “There is a good deal of Spain that has not been perambulated,” and the remark still holds good for those who, like Don Quixote, wish to “go seeking adventures.” The brigand stories, “got up,” as Ford would say, “for the home market,” are now slightly exploded, and few travellers expect to find at every turn—
“Cent coupe-jarrets à faces renégates
Coiffés de montéras et chaussés d’alpargates.”
Yet even to-day few foreigners realize that they may cross and recross the Peninsula from north to south and from east to west in perfect security. They will meet with no cloak-and-sword episodes; their adventures must be of another order. It is true that the Spaniard can use his knife, but the knife comes into play in quarrels of cards and love and jealousy, in which the passing traveller can have no part. Those, however, who measure culture by comfort, and wish to journey as consistent first-class passengers through life, should certainly narrow their Spanish travels to the round of a few cities—
“Erret et extremos scrutetur alter Iberos,”
and, however rapid and conventional, a journey that includes the Alhambra, the Mosque of Córdoba, the Cathedrals of Seville, Toledo, and Burgos,[46] and the picture-galleries of Seville and Madrid, can scarcely be said to have been in vain. But to know Spain and the Spaniards it is necessary to go further afield, to the small towns and villages of Andalucía and Castille, for here, rather than in the larger towns, is to be found the true spirit of the race. Some five thousand villages are still to be reached only by bridle-paths, and in these there has been little change since Cervantes went his rounds collecting taxes; so that for those who care to leave the beaten track there still remain many unexplored districts, and much first-hand knowledge to glean of the country and its inhabitants. To many, no doubt, Spain is the country of dance and song and sun-burnt mirth, of the flutter of fans and the flash of dark eyes; the country of the bull-fight and the white mantilla and carnations in the hair; of Roman ruins and Moorish palaces set in groves of myrtle and orange; of—
“Cloaked shapes, the twanging of guitars,
A rush of feet and rapiers clashing,
Then silence deep with breathless stars,
And overhead a white hand flashing.”
and if any shadows fall across the picture they are those of the brigand and the priest-inquisitor. Then comes the inevitable reaction. Those who visit Spain find that it is for them indeed un pays de l’imprévu. The former image in their mind soon perishes, and they cry out upon this “ciel insalubre,” this—
“pays endiablé;
Nous y mangions, au lieu de farine de blé,
Des rats et des souris et pour toutes ribotes
Nous avons dévoré beaucoup de vieilles bottes.”
But, to judge from many books published about Spain, most European countries would seem to have entered into a league to look upon the Peninsula solely as a land of a poetical unreality, its inhabitants divided into inquisitors, monks, brigands, and conspirators, lending—
“the colour of romance
To every trivial circumstance.”
A well-balanced and accurate account of the country is singularly rare. It is true that in some respects Spain has changed little since the sixteenth century, but, on the other hand, during the twentieth century, while she has been making laborious progress, foreign ideas of Spain have remained stationary, with the prejudices and fixed opinions of fifty years ago. No error or exaggeration concerning Spain is too ridiculous to be affirmed and readily believed, and those who take no thought to study the Peninsula in quiet days save as a land of vague romance, when trouble occurs are officious with wise criticisms and stern common-sense, based on ignorance. Quite recently the hysterical visions of prisoners tortured in Spanish dungeons, and of priestly cruelty and greed, might persuade one that Mr. Kipling’s “Little Foxes” was written not before, but after, the events of 1909 in Spain. One forgets that it is of Ethiopia, not Spain, that Mr. Lethabie Groombride, M.P., exclaims, “What callous oppression! The dark places of the earth are full of cruelty!” Like the natives of Ethiopia, the courteous Spaniards are “much pleased at your condescensions;” but they too have a sense of humour, and note with amusement the ignorance of nations which declare that Spain’s chief need is more education and culture.
For the traveller who wishes to explore the remote parts of Spain, and to escape from Spanish trains, the simplest method is to proceed on horseback. Walking and bicycling and motoring are possible in the North, and especially in the Basque Provinces, where the inns are good and the roads excellent. But in most parts of Spain they are practically impossible; the roads are too stony or too dusty even for walking, and, moreover, in fifty kilometres you may find hardly one inn. There remains the diligencia—coche, tartana, diabla, call it what you will—but a single experience of it will probably be sufficient. It rolls and lurches heavily to the loud, continuous shouting of the driver to his horses: Caballo-allo-allo-allo, Mula-ula-ula-ula. The traveller, if he has the misfortune to be in the interior, is beaten against the wooden sides, the windows rattle, the bells jingle, the vehicle sways slowly on its way, groaning and complaining of the breadth, as well as the length, of the road[47]—nosotros tambien llegaremos, si Dios quiere, as a driver said when passed by more rapid travellers, “if it is the will of Heaven.” Occasionally at a country railway station may be seen a boy who is a pillar of dust or mud. He is the zagal of the diligencia, who runs by its side through dirt and mire, urging on the horses, or stands to rest on the step at the back. Sometimes the diligencia descends into river-beds, usually dry; and after much rain it is apt to stay there, and darkness falls and the frogs croak mockingly, while more mules are fetched to help in the work of extrication. Often it proceeds by night, throwing strange, fantastic shadows in the narrow streets of sleeping villages. The driver must undergo not only extremes of heat and cold, but is often in danger of snowdrifts and swollen torrents and rocks from the hill-sides. A Navarrese innkeeper, an old soldier of Santa Cruz, introduced a driver of a diligencia as “the bravest man of my acquaintance.” Spanish travellers accept all these discomforts with a marvellous, fatalistic resignation and equanimity; but even a pedestrian will go further and fare better in an afternoon than a traveller in diligencia during a whole day. Still, as a unique experience, a diligencia drive must be undertaken; and the driver is good company, sparing time from the loud praise and blame meted out to his mules to bestow pithy comments on the living and the dead—
“The crosses in the mountain pass,
Mules gay with tassels, the loud din
Of muleteers, the tethered ass
That crops the dusty wayside grass,
And cavaliers with spurs of brass
Alighting at the inn.”
The inns, mesones, ventorrillos, ventas, posadas, paradores, are still much the same as in the times of Cervantes, moderately clean, immoderately uncomfortable, bare alike of furniture and food.[48] Still to your first inquiry the answer is, “Hay de todo, we have everything,” still to your further inquiry the abstract todo shrinks to nada. But for an understanding of the Spanish people, nothing is more interesting and one may add, more pleasant than to listen to their talk as they sit round some great inn fire of crackling scented twigs burning on the stone floor of the court and kitchen. The discomfort and hardships of travel in remote parts of Spain are repaid in flowing measure. Here a solitary peasant is seen ploughing land so precipitous and steep that the stones rattle down as he advances; there the mules stand hour by hour at the plough while the peasants—in this case servants on some great estate—play cards, the large earthenware botijos of water standing ready to their hand; or a group of workers in the fields stand shivering in early morning round a great common puchero, dipping their spoons in turn, and in turn raising the bota high above their heads to drink; or one has a glimpse of some peasant’s dress[49] of brilliant colouring, of some ancient vanishing costume of leather or velvet, silk embroidery or silver buttons—at every turn some quaint custom, some curious picturesque scene and colour appears, and the talk of the peasants is a delight. The two most successful English travellers in Spain were beyond doubt, Ford and Borrow. They won the respect of all classes of Spaniards, and saw practically the whole of Spanish life three-quarters of a century ago. Borrow describes himself on one occasion as “dressed in the fashion of the peasants of the neighbourhood of Segovia in Old Castile, namely, I had on my head a species of leather helmet or montera, with a jacket and trousers of the same material.” And Ford says: “In all out-of-the-way districts the traveller may adopt the national costume of the road, to wit, the peaked hat (sombrero gacho), the jacket of fur (zamarra).” But without the peaked hat, now almost extinct, or Borrow’s leathern helmet, a few changes of dress and especially what Ford calls “a graceful and sleeveless Castilian manta” or rather capa, excellently suited to the climate, will bring many advantages. For to the ordinary traveller, with red book and camera, the Spaniard will hardly disclose his true nature, and remains an impenetrable mystery; not that the foreigner often realizes the existence of the unsolved riddle, the Spaniard presenting a sufficient number of striking aspects to make a swift superficial impression. The best guides to Spain are still Ford’s “Gatherings,” and a thorough acquaintance with “Don Quixote,” a fluent knowledge of Spanish, and, lastly, the advice of Spaniards, since as Sancho sagely observed, “más sabe el necio en su casa que el cuerdo en casa ajena.” The traveller in Spain may in the heat of summer listen to the silver plashing of fountains in marble patios, and feel the coolness of snowy Sierras; he may in early morning gather frozen oranges to be eaten later beneath a burning sun; but it is this sun which with the cold winds tends to limit his wanderings to a brief period of spring or autumn. Martial indeed says—
“Aestus serenos aureo franges Tago
Obscurus umbris arborum.”
but under the fierce Castilian sun—and there are said to be 3600 hours of sunshine in the year—the imagination produces no golden tints in the Tagus, and trees are few. Comfort the traveller will scarcely find, but serviceableness and courtesy on all sides. If he is wise, he will, however, imitate the Spaniards not only a little in their dress, but greatly in their manners. He will arm himself with an inalienable fund of patience. He will be courteous even while chafing at delay. His courtesy will never go unanswered. “La cortesía tenerla con quien la tenga, Courtesy to him who has it,” as one of Calderón’s characters says. Money often obtains much, but the offer of a cigarette or a cigar is often not less effective. Without a courteous manner the money will be treated as an insult and the cigar refused. Calderón says again: “El sombrero y el dinero son los que hacen amigos, Raising the hat and money make most friends.” Few peoples respect themselves more than the Spanish, and they look for respect from others. “The sensitive Spaniard bristles up like a porcupine against the suspicion of a disdain.” They do not forget that they were once the greatest people in Europe, and they regard it as an accident that the march of modern civilization has left them behind, being, indeed, too mechanical for their pride to adopt. And still the golden rule for the traveller in Spain is never to be in a hurry or never to show that he is in a hurry, for by doing so he will increase delays and defeat his object. He must learn the Spanish proverb thoroughly—Paciencia y barajar, “Patience, and shuffle the cards.” Patience and courtesy he will find to be above rubies. The Spaniard, so sensitive and excitable, remains unmoved by delays and petty official tyrannies which drive an Englishman into a kind of despair and fury of impatience.[50] But the lower officials in Spain are apt to be ignorant and self-important, very official, and curt inquiries only remind them that they represent the whole majesty of the Law and the State; they multiply their shrugs and inscrutable No se puede’s. On the other hand, a polite speech, though it occupy several of the few minutes that the traveller may have to spare, is in Spain time well spent and performs miracles;—if, that is, he still persists in considering the value of time, and has not found it simpler to accept the less accurate methods of the Spaniard. For he may ask in a cathedral, “When is Mass going to be celebrated?” and the answer is, “No sé, Señor; Cuando vengan los canónigos”—when it is the good pleasure of the Canons to appear; or he may ask in a station, “When does the train start?” and must not be surprised if the answer is again, “No sé, Señor.” He had best content himself once and for all to breakfast at five-o’clock tea, and will find consolation in the thought that here at least there is no unseemly rush and strain, in this original and exquisite land of To-morrow—Mañana por la mañana.
III
ON THE SPANISH FRONTIER
THE Bidasoa, in the last part of its course, divides Spain from France. It further divides Basque from Basque. It has thus a local and an historic interest. It is the scene of smuggling between French and Spanish Basques and, as a frontier river, it has seen many a quaint and solemn episode in the past—the passage of Wellington’s troops, for instance, in 1813, or the exchange in boats of Francis I. against two hostages (his sons) in 1526, the King showing an eager haste to win across the river and reach the friendly inhabitants of St. Jean de Luz[51] and the sheltering walls of Bayonne. But it is the passing beauty of the whole Bidasoa valley that attracts the visitor, the loveliness of the river and the hills and the villages by the river. The Bidasoa is beautiful during its whole course from where it rises near the village of Maya, a little mountain stream running swiftly through woods of oak and chestnut. At times the hills break abruptly down, the water lies deep and dark-green beneath, and there is a look of Ullswater about both hills and river. A little above Endarlaza the road leaves the river, and from here may be had a glimpse of the Bidasoa of unrivalled beauty. For it runs in a long, irregular stretch, irregular for the rough backbones of hill covered with boulders and bushes of box. At each hill-ridge one might expect the river to bend and vanish, but still it appears beyond. Nearer the village of Vera it contracts to a narrower flow, and the water lashes over rocks, magnificently white and green. The river is known to fishermen as well as to smugglers and Carlists and lovers of Nature. Certainly the wisest travellers, before passing on to the bleak uplands of Castille, will stay to explore this little strip of green country, with its fresh woods and valleys and villages full of state and ancientry. Vera, in a sunny hollow, has an especial fascination. The vine-covered balconies and projecting roofs keep the houses in shade, and on two sides is the rustle and flow of water. The houses stand on different levels, several storeys of them mounting roof above roof from the river to the church. They are curious in their sculptured stone, their quaint carved buttresses, their nail-studded doors or rounded arches leading to the outer court, their crazy wooden balconies, their coats-of-arms, their inscriptions. At the very entrance of the Bidasoa stands Fuenterrabía, beneath gently sloping Jaizquibel. It is a little town of marvellous, narrow streets, steep and crooked, and overjutting houses carved in wood and stone. In front is a little bay, black with fishing-boats, and seen from across the water, Fuenterrabía’s clustered group of houses, yellow and brown and grey, crowned by the ancient church and tenth-century castle, is of a rare and enchanting beauty. Not only a narrow strip of river, but several centuries separate it from Hendaye opposite, with its shore on the Bidasoa and its shore on the sea, and its woods above the river, crowded in spring with daffodils. The sudden change from everything that is French to everything that is Spanish cannot but be surprising. It is due, no doubt, to the fact that beneath the French and the Spanish civilization and language, the people have an older language and civilization common to either side. The Basque spoken varies but little, being merely a little broader in Spain than in France. Mme. d’Aulnoy noticed the abrupt change wrought by a few yards of travel. “It’s certain, as soon as I past the little river of Bidassoa, I was not understood unless I spake Castilian; and not above a quarter of an Hour before I should not have been understood had I not spoke French.”[52] Obstacles and delays begin: “Here are Toll-gatherers who make you pay for everything you carry with you, not excepting your Cloaths. This Tax is demanded at their Pleasure and is excessive on Strangers.” Letters are no longer received in a well-ordered service: “There is in this country a very ill order touching commerce, and when the French carrier arrives at St. Sebastian, all the letters he brings are deliver’d to others who are good footmen and ease one another. They put their packets into a sack tied with rotten cords to their shoulder, by which means it oft happens that the secrets of your heart and family are open to the first curious body who makes drunk the Footpost.” Mme. d’Aulnoy is irritated by the unintelligibility of Basque: “This country called Biscaye is full of high mountains where are several iron mines.[53] The Biscays climb up the rocks as easily and with as great swiftness as stags. Their language (if one may call such jargon language) is very poor, seeing one word signifies abundance of things. There are none but those born in the country that can understand it; and I am told that to the end it may be more particularly theirs they make no use of it in writing: they make their children learn to read and write French and Spanish according to which King’s subjects they are.” “They are said to understand one another,” said Scaliger of the Basques, “but, for my part, I doubt it.” The most famous scene of peace witnessed by the Bidasoa was the meeting held in the Île des Faisans, or de la Conférence, a narrow island, now worn to a mere strip by the flow of the tide, between Philip IV. of Spain and Louis XIV. of France in 1660. It was a scene of lavish splendour and magnificence, and Velázquez, then in the last year of his life, superintended the decorations and assisted at the interview.[54] But most often we hear of the Bidasoa as a scene of strife and anxiety, escape and pursuit. The very river was an object of dispute between the Governments of France and Spain, until it was decided that the one half of it belonged to France, the other to Spain; in the centre of the bridge of Béhobie is the dividing line, marked in blue for France and red for Spain. Many a time has the sight of its waters, flowing swiftly to the sea, been welcomed by men in danger of life and liberty. Colonel Péroz[55] has graphically described his escape by swimming the river during the last Carlist war. On May 5, 1808, Marbot reached the Bidasoa, after riding day and night through hostile country to bring the Emperor (then at the Château de Marrac, near Bayonne) news of the Dos de Mayo rising at Madrid. At the beginning of November Napoleon himself crossed the frontier, and as he rode rapidly along the route d’Espagne and beneath the Church of Urrugne, with its ancient, sad inscription,[56] little thought that the enterprise upon which he was now engaged was to be a main cause in bringing him swiftly to the last hour that kills.
In the Middle Ages the pilgrims to the shrine of Santiago went through the Basque country and across the frontier in fear of their lives. The Basques were fierce and brave, and fond of plunder. In 1120 a Bishop was obliged to lay aside his episcopal robes, and taking with him only two servants and a guide who understood the “barbarous tongue of the Basques,” so passed through to Compostella. In later times the pilgrims would sing, as they left Irun,—
“Adieu la France jolie
Et les nobles fleurs de lys
Car je m’en vais en Espagne,
C’est un étrange pays,”
and would look back with sighs to the good cheer of France:
“Quand nous fûmes á Saint Jean de Luz[57]
Les biens de Dieu en abondance,
Car ce sont gens de Dieu élus,
Des charités ont souvenance.”
The older way into Spain was the Roman road from Dax to S. Jean Pied de Port and Roncesvalles—where, indeed, and not “by Fontarabia,” Charlemagne was attacked by the Basques;[58] but often this road was rendered impassable by war. In the middle of the 12th century the French Basque country passed, with the rest of Aquitaine, into the possession of the English Crown, and henceforth many were the battles and frontier raids between the Basques on either side. In 1296 we read of a truce in the quarrels between San Sebastian and “Fuent Arrabia,” and of an agreement made between them not to “send or take bread, or wine, or meat, or arms or horses, or other merchandise to Bayonne, or England, or Flanders while the war lasts between the King of France and the King of England.” On July 19, 1311, a peace is made between Bayonne and Biarritz (Beiarritz) on the one hand, and Laredo, Castro-Urdiales, and Santander on the other. A few years later we find the King of Castille writing to the King of England to complain of the seizure of the goods of his vassals of Biscay by the Seneschal of Aquitaine, “against all right and reason.” As often before and after “en ce temps avoit grand rancune entre le roy d’Angleterre et les Espagnols.” In 1352 a treaty is formed between “England and the people of the coast of Cantabria,” who were famous for their prowess in catching whales, as well as in frontier warfare, and came into rivalry with English fishermen. In 1482 “amicable intelligences” are concluded at Westminster between “Edward, by the Grace of God King of England and France and Lord of Ireland” and “the inhabitants of the noble and loyal Province of Guipúzcoa.”[59] During the 17th century the frontier raids continued, and in 1636 (as before in 1558) the town of St. Jean de Luz was taken and pillaged by the Spaniards. Up in the hills, near the little village of Sare, the Spaniards of Vera were defeated, and Sare still displays on the walls of its mairie the coat-of-arms given by Louis XIV. after the victory won by the bravery of its inhabitants, with the following inscription in Basque:—“Reward of courage and loyalty, given to Sare by Louis XIV. in 1693.”[60] In the Peninsular War, Sare and its mountain, La Rhune, played a prominent part, and many a vivid description, such as the following, occurs in Napier:—“Day had broken with great splendour, and three guns were fired as signal of attack from Atchuria. The French were driven from La Rhune, Sare was carried, and the enemy brushed away from Ainhoa and Urdax: “It was now eight o’clock, and from the smaller Rhune[61] a splendid spectacle of war opened upon the view. On the left the ships of war, slowly sailing to and fro, were exchanging shots with the fort of Socoa, and Hope, menacing all the French lines on the low ground, sent the sound of a hundred pieces of artillery bellowing up the rocks, to be answered by nearly as many from the tops of the mountains. On the right the summit of the great Atchuria[62] was just lighted by the rising sun, and fifty thousand men rushing down its enormous slopes with ringing shouts seemed to chase the receding shadows into the deep valley.” The description of the passage of the Bidasoa in October, 1813, is equally graphic: “From San Marcial seven columns could now be seen at once, moving on a line of five miles, those above bridge plunging at once into the fiery contest, those below appearing in the distance like huge, sullen snakes winding over the heavy sands.” The mountainous character of the frontier, causing Spain to be entered by one or two narrow passages, has indeed concentrated upon a few points a picturesque variety of traffic through the centuries—a historical pageant of soldiers, pilgrims, smugglers, Kings and Queens dethroned or released from imprisonment, wily agents, gorgeous ambassadors, fugitive politicians, exiled Jesuits, heretic missionaries, Carlist conspirators, with a large sprinkling of visitors and adventurers from many lands.