“In your country, Señora,” Candalaria said when we first met, “you have the largest of everything of the world. Is it rivers? The Mississippi. Is it a cataract? Niagara. Is it mountains? The Andes. Your fortunes are also the largest. Where we count in millions of reals, you count in millions of duros.”
It was Candalaria who presented me to Doña Emilia Pardo de Bazan, one of the leading Spanish novelists, a gray-haired woman with a powerful face. Doña Pardo Bazan spoke with me about the position of women in Spain.
“I look for nothing from the women of my country,” she said; “whatever is done to improve their position must be done by men. Our laws are good. Women have a right to enter some of the universities and some of the professions, but they take no advantages of these privileges. It is the fear of ridicule that keeps them back.”
I told her that we used to hear a great deal about the fear of ridicule in the old days at home, and that it had been proved a bugbear. She went on to say that she had been asked to help form a woman’s club and had refused; she knew it would be of no use, because it would be laughed at.
At the reception where I met Doña Pardo Bazan I was introduced to a pretty Marquesa Fulano and her prettier daughter. “Tell me,” I said to the Marquesa, “the title of Doña Pardo Bazan’s most important book.”
“I do not know it,” was the answer; “she writes for gentlemen, not for ladies. I will enquire, if, among the many books she has written, there is one that you could read.”
Though I never saw the Marquesa again, I read La Tribuna, one of the writer’s strongest novels, and I know the Marquesa and I should not agree about what books a woman may with advantage read. I know, too, that everything is to be looked for from the women of Spain, for whom Doña Pardo Bazan—I have heard her called the foremost literary woman in Europe—has done so much.
I asked Jaime how many children Candalaria had.
“Eleven,” he said; “that gives me eleven to remember in my will. To whom God sends no children, the devil sends nephews and nieces.”
The carnival Candalaria had timed her visit for, was well worth seeing. It was a famous year in Spain for pageants of all sorts. The King’s engagement and approaching marriage put everybody in a good-natured, money-spending mood. Great enthusiasm was expressed for what was always spoken of as “the English alliance.” Whenever the King gave his ministers the slip, and ran off in his automobile to see the Princess Ena at San Sebastián, everybody was delighted.