At Miranda we had ‘buffet’ again. It was a wonderful meal—real Spanish cookery, everything done in oil; but it was by no means bad. The wonderful thing about it was the way in which the passengers got through a meal of ten courses in fifteen minutes by the clock. It was one plate down and another up. The waiters actually galloped round the table piling plates full of soup, fish, entrée, joint, fowl, salad, pastry, cheese, and fruit before the astonished passengers. Heavens, how we ate! How we finished one plate and pushed it aside and seized the full one by our side! No changing knives and forks. It was just one wild waltz from dish to dish, and when the bell rang and we rushed out to the train we carried oranges and apples and figs and dates and biscuits in our hands. I had an indigestion five minutes afterwards which has lasted up to now, and which bids fair to remain with me until the end of my chequered career.
The rest of the journey was performed in the dark. The only bit of colour was made by our gens d’armes, who, with loaded rifles, accompanied the train, and were changed at each station. All trains in Spain carry two of these men—‘Civil Guards’ they are called—to protect the passengers in case of attack. These men, a picked body, without fear and without reproach, have cleared Spain of brigands. They are to Spain what the Irish constabulary was once to Ireland. They are unbribable, and have only one idea—duty. They are empowered to shoot at their own discretion, and they are trusted not to make a mistake. There is no arresting with them. A man taken red-handed, they put a bullet into. Spanish justice is slow—a man sent for trial knows there are a hundred ways of getting acquitted, and failing that of escaping from prison. So the Spanish Civil Guard executes its own justice in a speedy and summary manner. Murderers and brigands they kill first and try afterwards. These men have made Spain safe for the traveller for the first time for many hundreds of years.
Our halting-place was Burgos. Here we left the train, and began our first experience of Spanish towns and Spanish hotel life. We had been reading up our guide-books, and we alighted with doubt and dread. We were told that the hotels were bad, and that the people were difficult to deal with. But we had a little knowledge of the language, and we had determined to conform literally to Spanish customs and to observe the forms of Spanish etiquette, and so we hoped to fare better than the bulk of English travellers who, in print and out of it, have made such a parade of the drawbacks to a sojourn in Spain.
These Spanish customs are most interesting. They must be observed by anyone who wants to get on with the people. The usual British idea of looking upon natives as ‘a lot of foreigners’ won’t do here. If you insist upon being English and doing as you would in England you will have a very bad time among a people who are the proudest and the most sensitive in Europe. Cast your British prejudices to the wind, and try to be Spanish, and you will carry home with you pleasant memories which will last you all your life. We decided to be Spanish down to the ground, to treat every man as a grandee, and to praise everything we saw with all the adjectives we could find the Spanish for in our dictionary.
In the first place, we commenced to practise worshipping each other’s hats. The hat in Spain is elevated almost to the position of an idol. When anyone comes to see you, you place his hat in an armchair all to itself. You take it from him at the door. With loving care you bear it across the room, and then, with many flowery speeches, you deposit the sacred tile gently on the right-hand chair of honour. All Spanish sitting-rooms are arranged for this ceremony. They contain no furniture, as a rule, but a sofa, a console table, and some chairs, and this gives them a bare appearance, which is not decreased by the entire absence of a fireplace.
The sofa in the Spanish room is put against the wall in the right-hand corner. In front of it on each side are two chairs, one an armchair, and the other an ordinary one. The sofa and the four chairs are so arranged as to form three sides of a square. The sofa is for you and your guests, the armchairs are for their hats, and the smaller chairs for ornament. This ‘reception of the hat’ sounds like an exaggeration, but it is a ceremony which is observed with the greatest punctiliousness all through Spain. My companion and I practised it in our sitting-room for hours. First he knocked at the door and pretended to be a Spanish hidalgo, and I received him, took his hat and conducted it, walking backwards, to the armchair. Then I recited verses in its honour, kissed its brim, and bestowed titles upon it. Then he received me and my hat, and we buttered each other up in our best Spanish and bowed to each other till our backs ached. We very soon got perfect in the art of receiving gentlemen visitors, and, of course, that was all we wanted, as we were not likely to have any lady visitors.
When you go to a lady’s house there are terrible ceremonies to be gone through. When you rise to leave you are bound to say, ‘A los piés de usted’ (this last word is always written thus, ‘V.’ simply, in Spanish), ‘señora.’ ‘My lady, I place myself at your feet.’ Then the lady says, ‘Beso á V.’ (usted that V. means) ‘la mano, caballero.’ ‘I kiss your hand, sir.’ ‘Vaya V. con Dios que V. lo pase bien.’ ‘May you depart with God and continue well.’ Then you have to answer to that, ‘Quede V. con Dios.’ ‘May you remain with God.’ And so you go, your hat being handed to you as if it were a new-born baby.
The salutations and greetings and farewells among the common people are many of them very poetical. When I left my first Spanish hotel, the waiter and the chambermaid came out with the landlord to see us off. My companion and I laid ourselves figuratively at the chambermaid’s feet; we invoked all the blessings of Heaven on the landlord’s head, and, in accordance with Spanish etiquette, we expressed a hope that the waiter might remain with God. The group returned our adieux, and the little chambermaid made us a sweet reverence in the Andalusian manner (she was of Seville, was our ‘chica'), and said, ‘Good-bye, your lordships; may we all meet again some day in God’s big parlour.’ Now, I think that was very pretty—don’t you?
‘Chica’ means sweetheart. It is another pretty custom in Spanish inns to call the waitress ‘chica.’ It sounds odd at first to English ears—‘Sweetheart, bring me a glass of beer;’ ‘Sweetheart, a cup of chocolate;’ ‘Sweetheart, do you call these boots blacked, or have you given them to the dog to lick?’ When an inn is full, and everybody is shouting for his ‘sweetheart,’ the Englishman unused to the form of address, but knowing a little of the language, wonders what it means. But he soon drops into the habit, and addresses the dark-eyed Spanish muchacha as ‘chica,’ too.
Spain is saturated with Moorish manners and customs. The Eastern custom of clapping the hands, instead of calling the waiter or attendant, prevails everywhere. You never hear a sound of ‘Waiter!’ in a café, only here and there two sharp short claps of the hand. The effect is pleasing, and it saves your throat considerably.