SPANISH LOVE
Spanish veins contain more Oriental blood than those of any other European nation; and to the present day Eastern methods of treating women cast their shadow on Spanish life. But the shadow is so light, and so much mitigated by the rosy hue of romance, that the “local colour” of Love in Spain presents an unusually fascinating spectacle, which countless literary artists have attempted to depict.
During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the Oriental shadow was much darker, and kept the women in extreme subjection and ignorance. “Their life,” says Professor Scherr, speaking even of the queens, “passed away in a luxurious tedium which dulled the sentiments to the point of idiocy. They were only crowned slaves. As an instance of their absolute deprivation of liberty may be cited the case of Elizabeth, wife of Philip II., who, when in 1565 she went to Bayonne to meet her mother, had to wait three days before the gates of Burgos before it was possible to ascertain the king’s decision whether the queen should pass through the city or around it.”
“Women of rank,” he continues, "lived in a seclusion bordering on that of a convent, if not surpassing it. For nuns were at least allowed to speak to male visitors behind bars, whereas married women were strictly forbidden to receive the visit of a man, except with the special permission of the husband. And only during the first year of their wedded life were they allowed to frequent public drives in open carriages by the side of their husband; subsequently they were only allowed to go out in closed carriages. Of cosy family life not a trace.... Even the table did not unite the husband and wife; the master took his meal alone, while his wife and children sat respectfully on the floor on carpets, with their legs crossed in Oriental fashion.
“The poor women, excluded from every refined social diversion, were confined to manual work, gossip with their duennas, mechanical praying, playing with their rosaries, and—intriguing. For the greater the subjection of women, the more does their cunning grow, the more passionate becomes their desire to avenge themselves on their tyrants. The Spaniards found this out to their cost. The most inexorable spirit of revenge, all the parade of ‘Spanish honour,’ bordering in its excess on clownishness, could not prevent the Spanish dames from loving and being loved.”
In course of time this Oriental despotism, with its fatal consequences to conjugal fidelity—as in France—has been greatly mitigated in Spain. In Pepys’s Diary, 1667, we read of an informant who told the writer “of their wooing [in Spain] by serenades at the window, and that their friends do always make the match; but yet they have opportunities to meet at masse at church, and there they make love.”
In an interesting book on Spain, written almost two and a quarter centuries after Pepys’s Diary—Mr. Lathrop’s Spanish Vistas—we still read concerning this ecclesiastic Love-making, in the Seville Cathedral: “Every door was guarded by a squad of the decrepit army, so that entrance there became a horror. These sanctuary beggars serve a double purpose, however. The black-garbed Sevillan ladies, who are perpetually stealing in and out noiselessly under cover of their archly-draped lace veils—losing themselves in the dark, incense-laden interior, or emerging from confession into the daylight glare again—are careful to drop some slight conscience-money into the palms that wait. Occasionally, by pre-arrangement, one of these beggars will convey into the hand that passes him a silver piece, a tightly-folded note from some clandestine lover. It is a convenient underground mail, and I am afraid the venerable church innocently shelters a good many little transactions of this kind.”
How greatly the facilities for falling in love and for making love have been increased in modern Spain is vividly brought out in the following citation from Schweiger-Lerchenfeld regarding the scenes to be witnessed every evening on the crowded promenade or Rambla at Barcelona:—
“Are these elegantly-attired ramblers one and all suitors, since they put no limit nor restraint on their whispered flatteries? No, that is simply the custom in Barcelona. The women and girls are beautiful, and though they are well aware of it, they nevertheless allow their charms to be whispered in their ears hundreds of times every evening—a freedom of intercourse which is only possible on Spanish soil.... And thus one of these adored beauties walks up and down in the glare of the lamps, and sweet music is wafted to her ears: ‘Your beauty dazzles me,’ whispers one voice; and another, ‘Happiness and anguish your eyes are burning into my soul.’ One compliments the chosen one on her hair, another on her figure, a third on her graceful gait. Young adorers feel a thrill running down their whole body if her mantilla only touches them; while mature lovers are contented with nothing less than a pressure of the hand. It is a picture that is possible, conceivable only in Spain.”
The same writer quotes some specimens of Spanish Love-songs, one of which may be transferred to this page—
“Échame, niña bonita,
Lágrimas en tu pañuelo,
Y los llevaré a Madrid
Que los engarce un platero.”
“Show me, my little charmer, the tear in your handkerchief; to Madrid will I take it and have it set by a jeweller.”
What a contrast between this modern complimentary and poetic form of Gallantry and the form prevalent in the good old times when lovers endeavoured to win a maiden’s favour by flagellating themselves under her window until the blood ran down their backs; and when, as Scherr adds, “it was regarded as the surest sign of supreme gallantry if some of the blood bespattered the clothes of the beauty to whom this crazy act of devotion was addressed!”
Nevertheless, the Spanish still have much to learn from England and America regarding the proper methods of Courtship; for, according to a writer in Macmillan’s Magazine (1874), the unmarried maiden of the higher classes, “like her humbler sister, can never have the privilege of seeing her lover in private, and very rarely, indeed, if ever, is he admitted into the sala where she is sitting. He may contrive to get a few minutes’ chat with her through the barred windows of her sala; but when a Spaniard leads his wife from the altar, he knows no more of her character, attainments, and disposition than does the parish priest who married them, and perhaps not so much.”
In one respect Spanish lovers have a great advantage over their unfortunate colleagues in France. There marriage is impossible without parental consent, whereas in Spain a law exists concerning which the writer just quoted says:—
“Should a Spanish lad and lassie become attached to one another, and the parents absolutely forbid the match, and refuse their daughter liberty and permission to marry, the lover has his remedy at law. He has but to make a statement of the facts on paper, and deposit it, signed and attested, with the alcalde or mayor of the township in which the lady’s parents dwell. The alcalde then makes an order, giving the young man the right of free entry into the house in question, within a certain number of days, for the purpose of wooing and carrying off his idol. The parents dare not interfere with the office of the alcalde, and the lady is taken to her lover’s arms. From that moment he, and he alone, is bound to provide for her: by his own act and deed she has become his property.” Should he prove false “the law comes upon him with all its force, and he is bound to maintain her, in every way, as a wife, under pain of punishment.”
Thus a Spanish girl is protected against perfidious lovers as well as is an English and American girl through the possibility of suing for breach of promise. If the short stories told in Don Quixote may be taken as examples, faithless lovers were very common in Spain at that time; which, doubtless, accounts for the origin of this law. The girls on their part erred by yielding too easily to the promises of the men; though they are partially excused by the great strength of their passions.
In his work on Suicide, Professor Morselli has statistics showing that more women take their life in Spain than in any other country; and he attributes this to the force of their passions, which is greater than in Italy, where the number of female suicides is considerably lower.
Thus Love has a more favourable ground in Spain than either in Italy or in France, notwithstanding certain restrictions. And the result shows itself in this, that all tourists unite in singing the praises of Spanish Beauty. Spain, indeed, unites in itself all the conditions favourable to Beauty: a climate tempting to outdoor life; a considerable amount of intellectual culture and æsthetic refinement; a mixture of nationalities, fusing ethnic peculiarities into a harmonious whole; and Love, which fuses individual complementary qualities into a harmonious ensemble of beautiful features, graceful figure, amiable disposition, and refined manners.