SPANISH SERVANTS.
CHAPTER X.
Spanish Servants: their Character—Travelling Groom, Cook, and Valet.
CHARACTER OF SPANISH SERVANTS.
DON QUIXOTE’S first thought, after having determined to ride forth into Spain, was to get a horse; his second was to secure a squire; and as the narrative of his journey is still an excellent guide-book for modern travellers, his example is not to be slighted. A good Sancho Panza will on the whole be found to be a more constant comfort to a knight-errant than even a Dulcinea. To secure a really good servant is of the utmost consequence to all who make out-of-the-way excursions in the Peninsula; for, as in the East, he becomes often not only cook, but interpreter and companion to his master. It is therefore of great importance to get a person with whom a man can ramble over these wild scenes. The so doing ends, on the part of the attendant, in an almost canine friendship; and the Spaniard, when the tour is done, is broken-hearted, and ready to leave his home, horse, ass, and wife, to follow his master, like a dog, to the world’s-end. Nine times out of ten it is the master’s fault if he has bad servants: tel maître tel valet. Al amo imprudente, el mozo negligente. He must begin at once, and exact the performance of their duty; the only way to get them to do anything is, as the Duke said, to “frighten them,” to “take a decided line.” It is very difficult to make them see the importance of detail and of doing exactly what they are told, which they will always endeavour to shirk when they can; their task must be clearly pointed out to them at starting, and the earliest and smallest infractions, either in commission or omission, at once and seriously noticed, the moral victory is soon gained. The example of the masters, if they be active and orderly, is the best lesson to servants; mucho sabe el rato, pero mas el gato; the rats are well enough, but the cats are better. Achilles, Patroclus, and the Homeric heroes, were their own cooks; and many a man who, like Lord Blayney, may not be a hero, will be none the worse for following the epical example, in a Spanish venta: at all events a good servant, who is up to his work, and will work, is indeed a jewel; and on these, as on other occasions, he deserves to be well treated. Those who make themselves honey are eaten by flies—quien se hace miel, le comen las moscas; while no rat ever ventures to jest with the cat’s son; con hijo de gato, no se burlan los ratones. The great thing is to make them get up early, and learn the value of time, which the groom cannot tie with his halter, tiempo y hora, no se ata con soga: while a cook who oversleeps himself not only misses his mass, but his meat, quien se levanta tarde, ni oye misa, ni compra carne. If (which is soon found out) the servants seem not likely to answer, the sooner they are changed the better; it is loss of time and soap, and he who is good for nothing in his own village will not be worth more either in Seville or elsewhere, so says the proverb.
CHARACTER OF SPANISH SERVANTS.
The principal defects of Spanish servants and of the lower classes of Spaniards are much the same, and faults of race. As a mass, they are apt to indulge in habits of procrastination, waste, improvidence, and untidiness. They are unmechanical and obstinate, easily beaten by difficulties, which their first feeling is to raise, and their next to succumb to; they give the thing up at once. They have no idea indeed of grappling with anything that requires much trouble, or of doing anything as it ought to be done, or even of doing the same thing in the same way—accident and the impulse of the moment set them going. They are very unmechanical, obstinate, and prejudiced; ignorant of their own ignorance and incurious as Orientals; partly from pride, self-opinion, and idleness, they seldom will ask questions for information from others, which implies an inferiority of knowledge, and still more seldom will take an answer, unless it be such a one as they desire; their own wishes, opinions, and wants are their guides, and self the centre of their gravity, not those of their employers. As a Spaniard’s yes, when you beg a favour, generally means no, so they cannot or will not understand that your no is really a negative when they come petitioning to be idle; at the same time a great change for the better comes over them when they are taken out of the city on a rambling tour. The nomad life excites them into active serviceable fellows; in fact the uncertain harum-scarum nomad existence is exactly what suits these descendants of the Arab; they cannot bear the steady sustained routine of a well-managed household; they abhor confinement; hence the difficulty of getting Spaniards to garrison fortresses or to man ships of war, from whence there is no escape.
As for what we call a well-appointed servants’ hall, the case is hopeless in Spanish field or city, and is equally so whether the life be above or below stairs. In the house of the middle or highest classes this is particularly shown in everything that regards gastronomics, which are the tests and touchstones of good service. In truth, the Spaniard, accustomed to his own desultory, free and easy, impromptu, scrambling style of dining, is constrained by the order and discipline, the pomp and ceremony, and serious importance of a well-regulated dinner, and their observance of forms extends only to persons, not to things: even the grandee has only a thin European polish spread over his Gotho-Bedouin dining table; he lives and eats surrounded by an humble clique, in his huge ill-furnished barrack-house, without any elegance, luxury, or even comfort, according to sound trans-pyrenean notions: few indeed are the kitchens which possess a cordon bleu, and fewer are the masters who really like an orthodox entrée, one unpolluted with the heresies of garlic and red pepper: again, whenever their cookery attempts to be foreign, as in their other imitations, it ends in being a flavourless copy; but few things are ever done in Spain in real style, which implies forethought and expense; everything is a make-shift; the noble master reposes his affairs on an unjust steward, and dozes away life on this bed of roses, somnolescent over business and awake only to intrigue; his numerous ill-conditioned, ill-appointed servants have no idea of discipline or subordination; you never can calculate on their laying even the table-cloth, as they prefer idling in the church or market to doing their duty, and would rather starve, dance, and sleep out of place and independently, than feast and earn their wages by fair work; nor has the employer any redress, for if he dismisses them he will only get just such another set, or even worse.
CHARACTER OF SPANISH SERVANTS.
In our own Spanish household, the instant dinner and siesta were over, the cook with his kitchen-man, the valet with the footman invariably stripped off their working apparel—liveries are almost unheard of—donned their comical velvet embroidered hats, their sky-blue waistcoats, and scarlet sashes, and were off with a guitar to some scene of song and love-making, leaving their master alone in his glory to moralize on the uncertainty of human concerns and the faithlessness of mankind.