VENTA EATING.
All the operations of cookery and eating, of killing, sousing in boiling water, plucking, et cætera, all preparatory as well as final, go on in this open kitchen. They are carried out by the ventera and her daughters or maids, or by some crabbed, smoke-dried, shrivelled old she-cat, that is, or at least is called, the “tia,” “my aunt,” and who is the subject of the good-humoured remarks of the courteous and hungry traveller before dinner, and of his full stomach jests afterwards. The assembled parties crowd round the fire, watching and assisting each at their own savoury messes, “Un ojo á la sarten, y otro á la gata”—“One eye to the pan, the other to the real cat,” whose very existence in a venta, and among the pots, is a miracle; by the way, the naturalist will observe that their ears and tails are almost always cropped closely to the stumps. All and each of the travellers, when their respective stews are ready, form clusters and groups round the frying-pan, which is moved from the fire hot and smoking, and placed on a low table or block of wood before them, or the unctuous contents are emptied into a huge earthen reddish dish, which in form and colour is the precise paropsis, the food platter, described by Martial and by other ancient authors. Chairs are a luxury; the lower classes sit on the ground as in the East, or on low stools, and fall to in a most Oriental manner, with an un-European ignorance of forks;[8] for which they substitute a short wooden or horn spoon, or dip their bread into the dish, or fish up morsels with their long pointed knives. They eat copiously, but with gravity—with appetite, but without greediness; for none of any nation, as a mass, are better bred or mannered than the lower classes of Spaniards.
VENTA EATING.
They are very pressing in their invitations whenever any eating is going on. No Spaniard or Spaniards, however humble their class or fare, ever allow any one to come near or pass them when eating, without inviting him to partake. “Guste usted comer?” “Will your grace be pleased to dine?” No traveller should ever omit to go through this courtesy whenever any Spaniards, high or low, approach him when at any meal, especially if taking it out of doors, which often happens in these journeyings; nor is it altogether an empty form; all classes consider it a compliment if a stranger, and especially an Englishman, will condescend to share their dinner. In the smaller towns, those invited by English will often partake, even the better classes, and who have already dined; they think it civil to accept, and rude to refuse the invitation, and have no objection to eating any given good thing, which is the exception to their ordinary frugal habits: all this is quite Arabian. The Spaniards seldom accept the invitation at once; they expect to be urged by an obsequious host, in order to appear to do a gentle violence to their stomachs by eating to oblige him. The angels declined Lot’s offered hospitalities until they were “pressed greatly.” Travellers in Spain must not forget this still existing Oriental trait; for if they do not greatly press their offer, they are understood as meaning it to be a mere empty compliment. We have known Spaniards who have called with an intention of staying dinner, go away, because this ceremony was not gone through according to their punctilious notions, to which our off-hand manners are diametrically opposed. Hospitality in a hungry inn-less land becomes, as in the East, a sacred duty; if a man eats all the provender by himself, he cannot expect to have many friends. Generally speaking, the offer is not accepted; it is always declined with the same courtesy which prompts the invitation. “Muchas gracias, buen provecho le haga á usted,” “Many thanks—much good may it do your grace,” an answer which is analogous to the prosit of Italian peasants after eating or sneezing. These customs, both of inviting and declining, tally exactly, and even to the expressions used among the Arabs to this day. Every passer-by is invited by Orientals—“Bismillah ya seedee,” which means both a grace and invitation—“In the name of God, sir, (i.e.) will you dine with us?” or “Tafud’-dal,” “Do me the favour to partake of this repast.” Those who decline reply, “Heneê an,” “May it benefit.”
AN EVENING AT A VENTA.
HONESTY AND ANTIQUITY IN A VENTA.
Supper, which, as with the ancients, is their principal meal, is seasoned with copious draughts of the wine of the country, drunk out of a jug or bota which we have already described, for glasses do not abound; after it is done, cigars are lighted, the rude seats are drawn closer to the fire, stories are told, principally on robber or love events, the latter of which are by far the truest. Jokes are given and taken; laughter, inextinguishable as that of Homer’s gods, forms the chorus of conversation, especially after good eating or drinking, to which it is the best dessert. In due time songs are sung, a guitar is strummed, for some black-whiskered Figaro is sure to have heard of the “arrival,” and steals down from the pure love of harmony and charms of a cigar; then flock in peasants of both sexes, dancing is set on foot, the fatigues of the day are forgotten, and the catching sympathy of mirth extending to all, is prolonged until far into the night; during which, as they take a long siesta in the day, all are as wakeful as owls, and worse caterwaulers than cats; to describe the scene baffles the art of pen or pencil. The roars, the dust, the want of everything in these low-classed ventas, are emblems of the nothingness of Spanish life—a jest. One by one the company drops off; the better classes go up stairs, the humbler and vast majority make up their bed on the ground, near their animals, and like them, full of food and free from care, fall instantly asleep in spite of the noise and discomfort by which they are surrounded. This counterfeit of death is more equalizing, as Don Quixote says, than death itself, for an honest Spanish muleteer stretched on his hard pallet sleeps sounder than many an uneasy trickster head that wears another’s crown. “Sleep,” says Sancho, “covers one over like a cloak,” and a cloak or its cognate mantle forms the best part of their wardrobe by day, and their bed furniture by night. The earth is now, as it was to the Iberians, the national bed; nay, the Spanish word which expresses that commodity, cama, is derived from the Greek καμαι. Thus they are lodged on the ground floor, and thereby escape the three classes of little animals which, like the inseparable Graces, are always to be found in fine climates in the wholesale, and in Spanish ventas in the retail. Their pillow is composed either of their pack-saddles or saddle-bags; their sleep is short, but profound. Long before daylight all are in motion; “they take up their bed,” the animals are fed, harnessed, and laden, and the heaviest sleepers awakened: there is little morning toilette, no time or soap is lost by biped or quadruped in the processes of grooming or lavation: both carry their wardrobes on their back, and trust to the shower and the sun to cleanse and bleach; their moderate accounts are paid, salutations or execrations (generally the latter), according to the length of the bills, pass between them and their landlords, and another day of toil begins. Our faithful and trustworthy squire seldom failed for a couple of hours after leaving the venta to pour forth an eloquent stream of oaths, invectives, and lamentations at the dearness of inns, the rascality of their keepers in general, and of the host of the preceding night in particular, although probably a couple of dollars had cleared the account for a couple of men and animals, and he himself had divided the extra-extortion with the honest ventero.
These Spanish venta scenes vary every day and night, as a new set of actors make their first and last appearance before the traveller: of one thing there can be no mistake, he has got out of England, and the present year of our Lord. Their undeniable smack of antiquity gives them a relish, a borracha, which is unknown in Great Britain, where all is fused and modernized down to last Saturday night; here alone can you see and study those manners and events which must have occurred on the same sites when Hannibal and Scipio were last there, as it would be very easy to work out from the classical authors. We would just suggest a comparison between the arrangement of the Spanish country venta with that of the Roman inn now uncovered at the entrance of Pompeii, and its exact counterpart, the modern “osteria,” in the same district of Naples. In the Museo Borbonico will be found types of most of the utensils now used in Spain, while the Oriental and most ancient style of cuisine is equally easy to be identified with the notices left us in the cookery books of antiquity. The same may be said of the tambourines, castanets, songs, and dances,—in a word, of everything; and, indeed, when all are hushed in sleep, and stretched like corpses amid their beasts, the Valencians especially, in their sandals and kilts, in their mantas, and in and on their rush-baskets and mattings, we feel that Strabo must have beheld the old Iberians exactly in the same costume and position, when he told us what we see now to be true, το πλεον εν σαγοις, εν ὁις περ και στιβαδοκοιτουσι.
THE VENTORILLO.
The “ventorrillo” is a lower class of venta—for there is a deeper bathos; it is the German kneipe or hedge ale-house, and is often nothing more than a mere hut, run up with reeds or branches of trees by the road-side, at which water, bad wine, and brandy, “aguardiente,” tooth-water, are to be sold. The latter is always detestable, raw, and disflavoured with aniseed, and turns white in water like Eau de Cologne, not that the natives ever expose it to such a trial. These “ventorillos” are at best suspicious places, and the haunts of the spies of regular robbers, or of skulking footpads when there are any, who lurk inside with the proprietress; she herself generally might sit as a model for Hecate, or for one of the witches in Shakspere over their cauldron; her attendant imps are, however, sufficiently interesting personages to form a chapter by themselves.