This old lady, the first time she saw me in a new (and rather expensive) dress, came up and fingered the silk very carefully, and walked round and round me with expressions of enthusiastic admiration, such as—
“Señora, how beautiful! How handsome you are in your new costume! Never have I seen you look so well and so fat!” (As in the East, stout women are greatly admired here.)
And to finish up with, she said—
“Señora, the material is excellent. What did you pay for the dress, and where did you get it? To-morrow I shall go to the shop and buy myself just such another!”
I am afraid I did not receive this proposal with enthusiasm; but after a while I became used to talk of the kind, for I discovered that old Maria had no more idea of copying my clothes than she had of making a trip to England, and merely intended to suggest that sincerest form of flattery which is found in imitation.
I have met with many odd incidents showing how in certain ways the most complete familiarity prevails between master and servant, although in others there is a gulf fixed which seems to be impassable.
Servants, male and female, who have been engaged in a house even for a short time, especially in the country, are made more or less free of it for the rest of their lives. They may go away to other situations, or marry and set up their own homes, but always when they come to see their former mistress they walk in as if the house belonged to them, and are treated as if they had a perfect right to be there. A laundress or charwoman will arrive with three or four small children at her heels, and these will sit about in the laundry or the patio all day, while the mother does her work. I am bound to say that the little things generally behave very well, being trained in the hard school of necessity, and as soon as they can walk and talk they begin to run errands for the household. They soon become useful in this way, for errands are innumerable here. Save in big country houses which depend largely on their own farms and fruit gardens for provisions, it is the exception to have a storeroom, and every pennyworth of household sundries, down to salt, pepper, and spices, is bought from day to day. As no attempt is made to furnish a list of requirements for the day’s meals when the cook goes to market, every item used in the cooking has to be got when it is found to be wanted—a system which accounts for much of the unpunctuality of meals in Spanish houses, and for the resultant national tendency to various forms of dyspepsia.
This of course does not apply to the poor, whose food is of the simplest. They eat bread and morcilla or chorizo (varieties of dried sausage highly flavoured with garlic) for their lunch, and puchero or cocido—of which more later on—for their dinner. In the towns they buy everything by the day, like their employers. But in the country they largely live on what they grow themselves, unless the whole family is engaged on the farm at a wage which includes food. And they thrive on bread, morcilla, and water, not even coffee being drunk by country cottagers, as I have discovered when accepting their hospitality on my archæological excursions. Thus they have no need to be continually running to the comestibles shop, like their town friends, which is just as well when the nearest town may be anything from two to ten miles away.
To return to the manners of Spanish servants. I was sitting one evening with friends over the after-dinner coffee when a picturesque creature in a purple garment of penitence, with a white handkerchief on her head, and a pair of twins in her arms, strolled in to tell the family that she had had a letter from her brother, a soldier in Morocco. They were all obviously interested, and while I listened to their sympathetic inquiries about the young man’s health and happiness, I finished my coffee and handed my cup for a fresh supply. The bearer of the twins broke off short in her talk on noticing that I refused sugar.
“Is it possible that the Señora drinks coffee without sugar? Never have I heard of such a thing. Is it not very unpleasant to the taste?”