In these cases the soft nothings have to be breathed between the bars of the stout iron gratings which are placed outside every ground-floor window, not only as a precaution against malefactors, but, as a young Spaniard once told me, “to keep the girls in and the boys out.” To English ideas this seems a poor enough way to make love, but in some country towns even the grating is not considered sufficient protection for the youth and beauty within, and I know of one case in which the grandfather, a blue-blooded old aristocrat and a good deal of a martinet, had wire netting fixed all over the ground-floor windows to prevent his granddaughters being kissed between the bars! Such are the difficulties attendant on pelando la pava (plucking the turkey) or comiendo hierro (eating iron), as these grating courtships are called.
In old houses, no matter how large, it is not unusual to see only a single window, with its inevitable grating, on the ground floor of the street front—a survival of the Oriental idea of the seclusion of women, for down to the sixteenth century, in southern Spain, no windows at all opened on to the street. This one window, which generally lights the porter’s lodge, will be appropriated by the daughter of the house if she encourages a secret admirer. The servants are always on the side of romance, and will not hesitate to aid the lovers by every means in their power, so the old porter, who is supposed by his mistress to see that no illicit interviews go on after dark, finds no difficulty in taking a nap in his rocking-chair in the patio, while la niña, whom he has known and spoilt from her cradle, sits at his window and listens to the passionate whispers of her admirer in the street.
Meanwhile the maid-servants have their own sweethearts to attend to, and, failing a second window, it might seem difficult to get into communication, for the daughters of the respectable poor are as strictly chaperoned as the señoritas, and a girl would lose her character if she had an “evening out,” unless under the wing of her mother or some female friend of mature years. But love laughs at locksmiths, and a friend of mine told me how he learnt by personal experience the way in which the courting is managed in such cases, after the street door is closed.
He was going home along the main street of the country town in which his father lived. The night was dark and the street lamps few and dim, and he stumbled over something soft lying along the pavement in front of the door of a large house. A sibilant whispering relieved his first fear that an assassin’s knife had been at work. It was a young man lying full length on the ground, with his lips at the crack under the door, talking to his sweetheart, who lay on the floor inside, while another maid-servant and her lover had possession of the keyhole, and the señorita in the grated window modestly pulled the curtain to hide herself from my friend’s glance when she heard his footsteps approach.
These be the amenities of summer. In winter fewer lovers are to be seen about the streets, because bad colds and stiff necks are apt to be caught by young men—even though wrapped in the voluminous cloak so dear to romance—who stand for many hours out of doors “eating iron” with their feet in a puddle, staring up at the beloved in the balcony of the first floor whereon she resides from October to June. Indeed, I know of one love affair that was broken off, never to be renewed, because the girl took offence at the prolonged absence of her admirer, who, poor fellow, was in bed with influenza and unable to get the sad intelligence conveyed to his goddess at her window.
In this case the mother’s opposition had reached an acute stage, and the love-sick Manolo’s explanation fell into the wrong hands. Intimation was sent, as from Carmencita, that her legitimate fiancé was offended by Manolo’s attentions, and that they were therefore unwelcome: and as the unfortunate youth on his sick-bed had no means of getting into direct communication with his charmer, he had to sigh with such patience as he might until the weather improved and he could return to the window bars, and demand an explanation of that cruel message. Meanwhile Carmencita was told that Manolo’s absence was due to the attractions of a new novia: in which, seeing that these loves of the grating are taken up and dropped as easily as a travelling acquaintance, there was nothing inherently improbable. So she wept profusely at his supposed inconstancy, and when she learnt the truth adopted the last resource open to the heart-broken señorita—hysterics, and threats to refuse food (a mode of coercing the authorities in vogue among revolting daughters here long before it was adopted by the suffragettes), and to fling herself from the azotea into the patio below, unless she were allowed to write to Manolo and assure him of her undying devotion.
But alas! Manolo, although of good family, had no money and no prospects, whereas the distinguished Señor Conde de las Patillas Blancas,[1] although he had begun life as an assistant in a grocer’s shop, had gone to Cuba before the war with America had destroyed that mine of riches for Spaniards who knew how to make their account out of it, and having returned wealthy had revived a title to which he may or may not have had a legal claim. Thus he was now in every respect a most desirable parti for the fair Carmencita.
So Manolo rose from his bed of sickness to read in the local paper that “the aristocratic and affluent Señor Conde de las Patillas Blancas had asked the hand of the exquisitely beautiful young Señorita Carmen Perez y Dominguez, daughter of the Marquises[2] of Campos Abandonados”—literally “deserted fields,” but perhaps best paraphrased into the familiar English title of Bareacres.
As Manolo well knew, this was the end. For not only is the mother in Spain absolute mistress in the matter of her daughter’s marriage, but Carmencita herself, once she had shed the conventional tears over the loss of her lover, was perfectly well aware on which side her bread was buttered. Both these young people were intimate friends of mine, and if I had consented to act as go-between when I went to congratulate Carmencita on her engagement, and incidentally provoked a torrent of tears by remarking on Manolo’s fortunate recovery, it is just possible that she might have made a fresh effort to get her own way. But it is the part of wisdom not to meddle with Spanish love affairs, which are seldom or never quite what they seem, and in her inconstant little heart Carmencita certainly thanked me for refusing to carry any messages. As for Manolo, he consoled himself by marrying an heiress a year or so after, and disappears from this veracious history.