I spent a pleasant week in Madrid, and I then went on to Seville. On three days a week there is an express train which does the journey of 350 miles in fifteen hours. This is fortunate, because the ordinary trains take twenty-four, and even this is fast in comparison with the trains on less frequented lines. The express journey was not without its interesting features. We stopped now and again for fifteen minutes or half an hour. When we stopped, everybody got out of the train and went into the buffet—passengers, guards, engine-drivers, porters, and all. We all sat down together, and ate and drank together; and then we all smoked cigarettes together round the fire. When it was time to start, we got up, stretched ourselves, and leisurely strolled back to the train, the guards and the engine-driver and the stoker being generally the last to turn out. It was very friendly and very nice; but as these stoppages of half an hour occur about every twenty minutes, the English traveller, unaccustomed to spend a day and a night in conversing with the engine-driver in a station waiting-room, begins to get impatient.
Our ‘civil guards,’ of course, went with us, their moustaches fiercely twisted and their rifles loaded. We still want this sort of protection on long railway journeys over lonely plains in Spain, because the brigands are not quite done away with yet. Only last year they stopped and robbed a train. The way in which the robbery is carried out is this: The brigands signal to the engine-driver to stop, and he does so, being generally ‘in’ with the brigands. Then these gentlemen, called in Spanish ‘Salteadores de caminos,’ or road jumpers, approach the carriage, raise their hats to the passengers, and, in the most polite language, request them to give up their money and jewels. The ‘guardias civiles’ are stopped from firing at the robbers by the affrighted passengers, as the rascals have previously explained that if they are fired at, they will shoot at the passengers in return.
The chief of the brigands last year addressed the passengers in these terms:
‘Ladies and Gentlemen,—Please deliver up your money and valuables of every description. We do not wish to put you to the indignity of a search, but shall rely upon your honour. But as soon as you tell us you have given up everything we shall search one passenger of each class. If upon either we find a single coin or a single valuable, we shall shoot one passenger in each compartment. Ladies and gentlemen, do not hurry yourselves. Our time is yours.’
You can imagine that, under these circumstances, there is very little kept back. The passengers beg and pray of each other to conceal nothing. As soon as a complete surrender has been made, the brigands raise their hats again, and bid the passengers farewell in these words, ‘Vaya ustedes con Dios!'—‘May you go with God!'—and, as the train moves off, they add, with beautiful and simple piety, ‘And may we all meet again some day in God’s big parlour!’
These dignified and solemn Spanish salutations are universal among the people, and are never omitted. Your beggar in Spain is a gentleman, and you address him always in formal and courteous language. ‘Brother,’ you say, when he importunes you, ‘may God put it into your heart to deprive me of the pleasure of your society!’ To your waiter, to the servant, to the boy who blacks your boots, your language must never be curt. At the table d’hôte in Spain, high-born gentlemen and the officers talk as much with the waiter as they do with each other. He joins in the general conversation; and I have heard an ex-Spanish Minister gravely discussing the political situation with the waiter who was handing round the dishes. Sometimes the guests agreed with the waiter, and sometimes with the ex-Minister.
A word about the accommodation for travellers in second-rate Spanish towns off the beaten track before I hurry away from the gayest and brightest capital in all Europe, and go on to Seville. English travellers are frightened from visiting many small Spanish towns by tales of bad accommodation, vile cooking, and uncivilized ways. My personal experience proves the contrary. In many places off the beaten track I was excellently housed and fed, and every Spaniard with whom I came in contact put himself out of his way to make my path one of roses. But I didn’t walk about rooms with my hat on; I didn’t cross the high altar in churches without bowing my knee; and I didn’t turn my nose up at all the dishes, and say ‘Faugh!’ and I didn’t call the servants and the proprietor ‘d.f.'s’ because they didn’t understand English. The English who come abroad do much to bring about the incivility with which they are sometimes treated. The off-hand, imperious, insular manner is not understood in a country where the beggars address each other as ‘Your excellency’ and ‘Your lordship.’ Instead of finding fault with everything Spanish, praise everything, say you like everything, and flatter instead of abusing your hosts, and you will find the Spaniards, from the highest to the lowest, vying with each other as to which can show you the greatest courtesy.
The courtesy of the servants in Spanish hotels is wonderful. Every waiter, every chambermaid, rises when you pass, and bows and remains standing till you are out of sight. Your coachman remains bareheaded while you get into your carriage. In country places all the drivers you meet on the road raise their hats and wish you all that is good.
In the best hotels a staff of servants sit on sofas on each landing waiting to attend to the summons of the guests. If you walk up and down your corridor for half an hour, every time you pass that sofa the servants will rise and remain standing till you have passed.
In little out-of-the-way towns at table d’hôte, if a lady comes into the room all the gentlemen at the table rise and bow to her, and remain standing until she is seated. When the table d’hôte is over, the men as they rise bow to those who still remain seated, and, in courtly phraseology, lay themselves at the feet of the company.