Spanish Life and Character.
[Footnote 120]
[Footnote 120: Impressions of Spain. By Lady Herbert. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1869.
Letters from Spain. By William Cullen Bryant. 12mo. New York: D. Appleton & Co.
Voyage en Espagne. Par M. Eugène Poitou. 8vo, pp. 483. Tours: A. Mame et Fila. 1869.]
Lady Herbert strikes the key-note of her narrative of Spanish travel about the middle of the book. "Catholicism in Spain," she remarks, "is not merely the religion of the people: it is their life." Precisely because she feels this life, and, despite her English common sense, sympathizes with the Spanish people in their strong religious sentiment, she describes them with a rare fidelity, and gives us, if not a highly colored, a very vivid picture. No traveller who is not a Catholic can paint Spain as she is. Mr. Bryant looked at the people with a kindly eye; but he did not understand them. From him, as well as from the common run of English and American tourists, we get mere surface sketches—pleasant enough to read, perhaps, but that is all. Protestant travellers see no more of the popular life and character than if they sailed over the country in a balloon. They find the diligences marvels of antiquated discomfort; the railways, miracles of unpunctuality and slowness; travel, a hardship which there is little attempt to alleviate. They find that in Spain no Spaniard is ever in a hurry, and no stranger is allowed to be so either. If they are kept shivering at a roadside station three or four hours in the midst of the night, waiting for some lumbering railway train, on a seatless, unsheltered platform, they get no commiseration from the surly officials but an exhortation to "paciencia." If government is bad and robbers are bold, the Spaniard goes on sipping his sugared water and repeats, "Paciencia, paciencia!" If the country is two or three generations behind the rest of Europe in all the appliances of material comfort, why, "Paciencia, paciencia!" That is the great panacea for all the ills of human life. These peculiarities, the wretchedness and extravagant charges of all the hotels, and the horrors of the Spanish cuisine, fill most of the travellers' journals. But Lady Herbert found a plenty of religious beauty underneath this dilapidated exterior. God and the church are so near to the people's hearts that the mixture of religion with the language and business of every day shocks a stranger at first as something irreverent. Pious traditions are familiar to every Spaniard from his cradle. They come up every hour of the day. They color every man's conversation, they affect, more or less intimately, everybody's conduct; nay, it is difficult sometimes to separate them from the Spaniard's faith, for he clings to a pious legend almost as stoutly as he holds to an article of the creed. The peasant woman plants rosemary in her garden, because there is a story that when our Lord was an infant the Blessed Virgin hung out his clothes upon a rosemary bush to dry. Red roses get their color from a drop of the Saviour's blood which fell on them from the cross. A swallow tried to pluck the thorns from the head of the crucified Christ, and therefore no Spaniard will shoot a swallow. The owl was present when our Lord expired, and since then has ceased to sing, his only cry being "Crux, crux!" Half the dogs in Spain are called Melampo, because that was the name of the dog of the shepherds who came to Bethlehem. Protestants may laugh at the credulity which listens to such legends, but to our minds there is the simplicity of real piety in the national belief, and we cannot think that God will be angry with the people if they believe a little too much in his honor. Protestants may sneer at the public reverence which is paid to sacred things, and call it a gross mark of superstition to show as much respect to the Blessed Sacrament as to a governor or a general in the army; but we confess our sympathies are with Lady Herbert when she describes the sentinels at San Sebastian presenting arms as he passes before the chapel door, or the shopkeeper who interrupts a bargain to rush out into the street and kneel down before the Viatacum, exclaiming "Sua maesta viene!" What a sweet flavor of real piety there is in the popular term for alms, "la bolsa de Dios," "God's purse!"—a purse, by the way, which is never empty. Beggars are treated with a tenderness that is felt for them nowhere else but in Ireland. The poor peasant may have little or nothing to give; but if he refuses, he begs pardon for doing so. There is no city without its charity hospitals, marvels of cleanliness, comfort, and order. There is hardly a town without its asylum, where religious mea or women tend the unfortunate, shelter the destitute, feed the hungry, and rear the orphan and the foundling. Convents have been depopulated and monastic orders banished throughout the kingdom, but the more active brotherhoods and sisterhoods are spared, and are doing magnificent work. The deserted convents, magnificent in their decay, speak eloquently of the zeal and piety of the people, whose greatest fault it is as a nation that they have trusted too much to weak and unworthy rulers. Every one of these religious monuments is the scene of some holy legend, and most of them are hallowed by incidents in the lives of saints, of whom Spain has been the birthplace and home of so many hundreds. Lady Herbert tells a significant story which shows how closely religion is bound up with the thoughts of the people. She was visiting the ancient palace of Toledo, when a peasant woman, sitting by the gate, asked the guide if the strange lady was an Englishwoman, "because she walked so fast." On being answered in the affirmative, she exclaimed, "Oh! what a pity. I liked her face, and yet she is an infidel!" The guide pointed to a little crucifix which hung from a rosary at Lady Herbert's side, whereat the peasant sprang from her seat and kissed both the cross and the visitor.
Spanish courtesy even has a religious flavor. Ask a Spaniard to point out the road, and nothing will do but he must go with you on your way, and pray God's blessing on your head when he leaves you. No matter how poor he may be, you must not offer money for such services; he will be either grieved or indignant, at what seems to him an insult. There is piety also in the Spanish reverence for age. If an old man passes the peasant's door at meal-time, he is offered a place at the table, and begged to ask a blessing on the repast.
There is, in fine, a lovable and engaging side to Spanish character from which we cannot but expect a great and beneficial influence upon the national destinies. Faith has its rewards even in this life, and we cannot believe that a nation which adhered so firmly to religion will be overthrown without some very grave offence of its own. The reverential tendency of Spanish character has no doubt overpassed, in political affairs, its legitimate barriers, and loyalty has done some mischief as well as good. Respect for legitimate authority has not always been distinguished from a fanatical devotion to the persons of bad or incompetent rulers. There is a great deal of truth, albeit much falsehood likewise, in Mr. Buckle's explanation of the causes of Spanish greatness and Spanish decay. Give the kingdom a great sovereign, like Charles V., and with an obedient and devoted people the nation may be raised to the pinnacle of greatness and prosperity. But no people which has not been taught to depend upon itself can long keep in the van. Greatness is not inherited with titles and possessions; weak rulers are sure to come sooner or later, and then the country finds that it leans upon a broken reed. Spain discovers now that she has suffered her kings to monopolize the responsibilities which ought to have been divided among the whole people, and their duties have not been fulfilled. The nation has slept a sleep of centuries in the comfortable confidence that government would take care of everything, do all the thinking, make all the needed improvements, and educate the country as a father educates his children. It seems to have been forgotten that this was a task which only those mighty geniuses who appear once in a century are strong enough to perform. An indolent, weak, and careless ruler under the Spanish system allows his people to lag behind in the struggle for national preëminence; a bad ruler plunges them into misery and disgrace. Spain has suffered terribly from both these afflictions; we do not believe, however, that her case is desperate. While there is much in the present condition of the kingdom to fill all thoughtful men with alarm, there is promise in the awakened activity of national life, and in the very spirit of revolution which is driving the liberal party into such lamentable excesses. It is dirty work to clean up the dust of three or four centuries. Great political changes are almost always accompanied by disorder; but when the uproar subsides, and new parties crystallize out of the fragments of the present tumult, when the people feel that to be great and prosperous they must use their own power, and cease to be fed with a spoon, we believe that there is so much faith and piety at the bottom of the Spanish heart, and so much real nobleness in the national character, that a brighter destiny will be within their reach than has beamed upon them since the days of Charles and Philip.
We have wandered far away from the volume with which we began our remarks, and left ourselves little room to praise Lady Herbert's narrative as it deserves to be praised. We shall content ourselves here with citing a description of a man who has occupied a prominent place in the recent history of Spain. We mean Father Claret, the queen's confessor:
"One only visit was paid, which will ever remain in the memory of the lady who had the privilege. It was to Monsignor Claret, the confessor of the queen and Archbishop of Cuba, a man as remarkable for his great personal holiness and ascetic life as for the unjust accusations of which he is continually the object. On one occasion, these unfavorable reports having reached his ears, and being only anxious to retire into the obscurity which his humility makes him love so well, he went to Rome to implore for a release from his present post; but it was refused him. Returning through France, he happened to travel with certain gentlemen, residents in Madrid, but unknown to him, as he was to them, who began to speak of all the evils, real or imaginary, which reigned in the Spanish court, the whole of which they unhesitatingly attributed to Monsignor Claret, very much in the spirit of the old ballad against Sir Robert Peel:
'Who filled the butchers' shops with big blue flies?'
He listened without a word, never attempting either excuse or justification, or betraying his identity. Struck with his saint-like manner and appearance, and likewise very much charmed with his conversation during the couple of days' journey together, the strangers begged at parting to know his name, expressing an earnest hope of an increased acquaintance at Madrid. He gave them his card with a smile! Let us hope they will be less hasty and more charitable in their judgments, for the future. Monsignor Claret's room in Madrid is a fair type of himself. Simple even to severity in its fittings, with no furniture but his books, and some photographs of the queen and her children, it contains one only priceless object, and that is a wooden crucifix, of the very finest Spanish workmanship, which attracted at once the attention of his visitor. 'Yes, it is very beautiful,' he replied in answer to her words of admiration; 'and I like it because it expresses so wonderfully victory over suffering. Crucifixes generally represent only the painful and human, not the triumphant and divine view of the redemption. Here, he is truly victor over death and hell.'
"Contrary to the generally received idea, he never meddles in politics, and occupies himself entirely in devotional and literary works. One of his books, Camino recto y seguro para llegar al Cielo, would rank with Thomas a Kempis's Imitation in suggestive and practical devotion. He keeps a perpetual fast; and, when compelled by his position to dine at the palace, still keeps to his meagre fare of 'garbanzos,' or the like. He has a great gift of preaching; and when he accompanies the queen in any of her royal progresses, is generally met at each town when they arrive by earnest petitions to preach, which he does instantly, without rest or apparent preparation, sometimes delivering four or five sermons in one day. In truth, he is always 'prepared,' by a hidden life of perpetual prayer and realization of the unseen."
For the rest, it is only necessary to add a word upon the admirable manner in which the American publishers have presented Lady Herbert's book to their patrons. It is beautifully printed upon thick, rich paper, and illustrated with excellent wood-cuts, and will easily bear comparison with the choice productions of the secular press, as a book for the parlor table and for holiday presents as well as for the library.