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Title: The Magic of Spain

Author: Aubrey F. G. Bell

Release date: September 7, 2016 [eBook #53001]

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MAGIC OF

SPAIN ***
 Contents.
Index: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J,
K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V,
W, Z
(etext transcriber's note)

THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

THE MAGIC
OF SPAIN
BY AUBREY F. G. BELL

Or vous aurez loisir

Cheminant en Espagne
Bien que maintes montagnes
Il vous faudra monter.
Pilgrims’ Song.

LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD,

NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY. MCMXII.
WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES.
 NOTE

T
HIS is rather a collection of stray notes on Spain than a connected
study—of notes from many pleasant hours of Spanish literature and
travel, but perhaps of too individual an interest to appear without
some apology. No reference will be found to those great social and
political problems which disturb Spanish life. To fill the idler moments of a
Spanish holiday, and possibly to help the reader to feel that “parfum du
terroir” which pervades Spain, is the unambitious object of these pages.
Better still, if he turns from them in dissatisfaction to authoritative writers
on Spanish life and letters, and to the magic-land of Spanish literature itself.
For permission to reprint some of these short essays in slightly altered form
the author has to thank the Editors of the Morning Post, the Outlook, and
the Queen.
 PREFACE

I
T is not easy in a few words to account for the strange Oriental spell
that Spain has exercised over many minds nor to explain the potency of
its attraction. For indeed the great Peninsula possesses a special spice
and flavour. It has not the immemorial culture of Italy, nor the pleasant
smiling landscapes of France with her green meadows and crystal streams.
The old Iberia, that dura tellus, has a peculiar raciness. Its colour is often
harsh and crude; many of its districts are barren and discomfortable. The
bleak and rocky uplands and the ragged sierra ridges cut the country into
sharp divisions and cause it to be thinly and variously populated. On those
uplands the breath of the wind is often icy and the sun strikes with a biting
force. Great parched and desolate plains extend treeless and unprotected
two thousand feet above the sea. The villages at distant intervals are of the
colour of the soil, and scarcely to be distinguished from a mass of yellow-
brown rocks. Morning and evening a string of mules may be seen outlined
on the horizon, for the peasants set out in bands to till their distant fields; or
a shepherd with his flock of sheep, or goats, relieves the strange monotony
of this dust-laden windy desert. Nothing could be sadder or less harmonious
than the peasants’ harsh and strident singing, the very peculiarity of which
has, however, a piquancy and charm. Hard too is their language, with its
clean gutturals, far rougher and manlier than the musical sister-tongue of
Italy. All points to a like conclusion, that this is no country of comfort and
soft languorous delight, but of a quaint and forcible originality, where the
most jaded mind may be braced and inspirited and find a fresher and more
stirring life.
In Spain the sharpness of contrasts precludes any feeling of weariness or
satiety. There are regions of luxuriant growth and African sun bounded by
mountains of eternal snow. Through the plain a river glides among orange
groves and grey olives; in the shaded patios of the city silver fountains keep
the air cool and fresh, and on the coldest night in winter the temperature is
still some degrees above the freezing-point. Yet here, in the most fiery heat
of summer, we may lift up our eyes to the hills and look on the snowy sierra
against the deep blue of the sky; and if a shower, in this region of little rain,
falls upon the low-lying districts, it adds but another coat of whiteness to
the neighbouring range. It is indeed a strange and fascinating land, a Land
voll Sonnenschein and fierce blinding light, yet a land of shrill, piercing
blasts and icy air, a land of many various elements both of climate and
population. It is no wonder that its inhabitants are of a character strongly
individual and preserve the original Iberian strain. A racy pithiness of
speech is theirs. In no country are proverbs more common, and a string of
them can indeed form a peasant’s conversation, pungent as the rosaries of
red piments that hang on the balconies of farms.
It was in Spain that the rogue-story, the novela de pícaros, originated,
and the Spanish novelists of the last thirty years have given free rein to the
local types of various parts of Spain. Nowhere has provincialism continued
to be so clearly marked. In other countries better communications have
corrupted the local manners into a conformity of excellence. In Spain the
nature of the country, with its rough mountain barriers and turbulent
unnavigable rivers, still protects originality and keeps the character of the
provinces distinct, and the native of Andalucía continues to despise the
native of Galicia and to be ridiculed by the native of Castille. This does not
make for material prosperity, but it constitutes a country of the picturesque
and unexpected, a country where imagination is not dead, and where the
artist and poet find their true home. Not the least attraction to them perhaps
is the Spanish improvidence and absence of method, and the gay living
from hand to mouth. An unwary traveller in the wilder districts may easily
find himself half-perishing from scarcity of food, and lost in an intricate
labyrinth of ways between far-distant villages. “A bad thing, sirs, it is to
have a lack of bread,” sang the poet of the twelfth-century Poema del Cid.
The hardy peasant of the poorer regions lives scantily from day to day on
the product of the niggard soil, won by patient labour. The peasant in more
fertile parts does not necessarily fare better, but he labours magnificently
less. The deliberate method of prosperity and success is held in small
esteem. The mighty Empire of Spain was in fact the affair of a generation
only. From the time of Philip II. onwards the Spanish Empire might aptly be
compared with the Cid’s corpse, for, though by its prestige and the favour
of heaven it might continue to reap fresh victories, it was nevertheless
irrevocably dead and awaiting dissolution. And it is the improvidence of
Spain that has charmed the foreigner. For, eager as he is to admire its poetic
aspects, in his inmost soul he often regards himself as incomparably
superior, and hurries home to civilization with a sheaf of curious details
negligently gleaned.
The courteous Spaniard conceals his contempt for the foreigner, but were
he privileged to read the numerous sketches, scenes, and saunterings
published yearly of Spain, he would have some scope for legitimate
amusement. A faint remonstrance has indeed been heard in the Peninsula
against the idea of Spanish grandees lying in wait at dark corners to rob a
French journalist of his fortune. But mostly they are content to let the
foreigner continue in his ignorance. For stern and melancholy Spain retains
her secret, and is not to be won from her Oriental impenetrable mystery by
any wiles. Unchanging and impassive, her cities seem to mock the stranger,
and the roughness of the intervening wildernesses discourages him. But he
returns again and again to this remote and mediæval country, that in his
practical eyes should be so rich and is so poor. The repulses he receives
whet his curiosity and increase his ardour. Yet Spain is not, in spite of its
many tourists, a country of foreign colonies. To the Englishman this fact
brings a striking novelty, for he may visit Switzerland and Italy and France
and scarcely leave the atmosphere of England, but in Spain he will find no
difficulty in following Bacon’s advice to the traveller in foreign countries to
“sequester himself from the company of his countrymen.”
 CONTENTS
PAGE
Note v
Preface vii
I. Spanish Character—
i. Some Stray Opinions 17
ii. Vain Generalities 25
II. Travelling in Spain 47
III. On the Spanish Frontier 57
IV. Eskual-Erria—
i. Basque Country 66
ii. Basque Customs 72
V. In Remote Navarre 80
VI. Spanish Cities 85
VII. In Old Castille 92
VIII. The Desert and the Sown 97
IX. The Coast of Catalonia in Autumn 104
X. An Eastern Village 108
XI. Off the East Coast of Spain 112
XII. The Judging of the Waters 120
XIII. Seville in Winter 125
XIV. From a Seville Housetop 129
XV. February in Andalucía 134
XVI. Some Characteristics of Spanish Literature 142
XVII. The Poem of the Cid—
i. A Primitive Masterpiece 153
 ii. Valencia del Cid 157
XVIII. A Prisoner of the Spanish Inquisition—
i. Novedades 163
ii. Salamanca University 165
iii. In a Valladolid Dungeon 169
iv. Ex forti dulcedo 178
XIX. The Modern Spanish Novel—
i. Revival. Fernán Caballero 185
ii. 1870-1900 191
iii. In the Twentieth Century 201
XX. Novels of Galicia 214
XXI. Novels of the Mountain
i. “Savour of the Soil” 222
ii. “On the Heights” 231
XXII. Castilian Prose 239
XXIII. Toledo and El Greco 244
Index: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S,
T, U, V, W, Z 259

THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

 I

SPANISH CHARACTER

I.—Stray Opinions

T
O collect a mass of isolated and contradictory opinions concerning
the Spanish is a comparatively simple task, although it is difficult or
impossible to derive from them a consistent picture of Spanish
character. To Wellington they are “this extraordinary and perverse
people,” to whom to boast of Spain’s strength was a natural weakness.
“Procrastination and improvidence are their besetting sins,” says Napier,
and of their conduct in the Peninsular War: “Of proverbially vivid
imagination and quick resentments, the Spaniards act individually rather
than nationally, and, during this war, what appeared constancy of purpose
was but a repetition of momentary fury generated like electric sparks by
constant collision with the French.” “The Spaniards are perfect masters of
saying everything and doing nothing.” They have dignified sentiments and
lofty expressions, but taken with their deeds these are “but a strong wind
blowing shrivelled leaves.” “In the arrangement of warlike affairs
difficulties are always overlooked by the Spaniards, who are carried on
from one phantasy to another so swiftly that the first conception of an
enterprise is immediately followed by a confident anticipation of complete
success.” Though they are “hasty in revenge and feeble in battle,” they are
“patient to the last degree in suffering.” To the peasants he allows “a
susceptibility of grand sentiments.” They “endure calamity, men and
women alike, with a singular and unostentatious courage. But their virtues
are passive, their faults active, and, instigated by a peculiar arrogance, they
are perpetually projecting enterprises which they have not sufficient vigour
to execute.” “To neglect real resources and fasten upon imaginary projects
is peculiarly Spanish.” A French writer of the same period, General Marbot,
contents himself with observing that the Spanish “ont beaucoup conservé
du caractère des Arabes et sont fatalistes; aussi répétaient-ils sans cesse ‘Lo
que ha de ser no puede faltar,’ ” but adds that “ils ont un mérite immense,
c’est que, bien que battus, ils ne se découragent jamais.” Turning to earlier
centuries we find that in Livy and Strabo the Spaniards are obstinate,
unsociable, silent, dressed in black, despisers of death, very sober. In the
centuries of Spain’s greatness the comments naturally thicken, although
they are often not easily reconcilable. To an Italian, Paolo Cortese, at the
beginning of the sixteenth century the Spanish are, in a shower of epithets,
“ambitious, good-natured, curious, greedy, contentious, tenacious,
magnificent, suspicious, sly.” Another Italian, Paolo Tiepolo, later draws a
distinction[1] between those who have travelled and those who have not left
Spain, those former being “per la maggior parte avvisati, diligenti,
tolleranti.” In Pepys we read of the “ceremoniousness of the Spaniards,”
and that “the Spaniards are the best disciplined foot in the world; will refuse
no extraordinary service if commanded, but scorn to be paid for it as in
other countries,” and of “the plain habit of the Spaniards, how the King and
Lords themselves wear but a cloak of Colchester bayze, and the ladies
mantles in cold weather of white flannell.” To a learned Spaniard, Masdeu,
they are, to quote but a few of his judgments, “lively, swift in conception,
slow and thoughtful in coming to a resolution, active and effectual in
carrying it into execution. They are the stoutest defenders of religion, and
masters in asceticism.” “Their disinterestedness and honesty in commerce is
known to all. They are frugal at table, especially averse from any excess in
drinking. In conversation they are serious and taciturn, not giving to biting
speech, courteous, affable, and pleasant; they hate flattery, but they respect
others and look to be respected themselves. They speak with majesty, but
without affectation. They are generous, serviceable, kindly, and have a
pleasure in conferring benefits, and they exalt things foreign more than their
own. They have envy, pride, and a love of glory, but with noble, redeeming
qualities. In their attire they are neat and moderate; when they go abroad
they are dressed well and smartly, but with a befitting gravity.” “They spend
with magnificence and extravagance.” A French traveller, Mme. d’Aulnoy,
[2] in the seventeenth century, says of the Spanish that “Nature has been
kinder to them than they are to themselves; they are born with more wit
than others; they have a great quickness of mind join’d with great solidity;
they speak and deliver their words with ease; they have a great memory;
their style is neat and concise, and they are quick of apprehension; it is easie
to teach them whatever they have a mind to; they are perfect masters in
Politicks, and when there is a necessity for it they are temperate and
laborious.”... “They are patient to excess, obstinate, idle, singular
philosophers; and, as to the rest, men of honour, keeping their words tho’ it
cost them their lives.” She considers their greatest defect to be a “passion
for revenge,” and speaks of “their fantastick grandeur.” A short account by
an Englishman in 1701, has little good to say of the Spanish, except that
they “have an incomparable Zeal to plant the Catholick Religion.” He notes
their sluggishness, their immorality, and it is, moreover, impossible to
distinguish a Spanish Cavalier from a Cobler, while most of their houses are
“of earth and like Mole-hills, but one storey high.” They have an “esprit
orgueilleux,” and treat strangers “de turc à maure,” says a Frenchman of the
same period,[3] so that the Englishman may have had some slight, some
turc à maure experience in Spain. Another Englishman,[4] half a century
later, writes that the Spanish are “generous, liberal, magnificent, and
charitable; religious without dispute, but devout to the greatest excess of
superstition.”... “If they have any predominant fault it is perhaps that of
being rather too high-minded; hence they have entertained, at different
times, the most extravagant conceits.”... “Their cloaths are usually of a very
dark colour, and their cloaks almost black. This shows the natural gravity of
the people.”... “There are no soldiers in the whole world braver than the
Spanish.” Reclus, in his estimate of the Spanish, has boldly allowed the
contrasts and contradictions of Spanish character to stand side by side. They
are “apathetic in daily life, but of a quick resolution, persistent courage and
unwearying tenacity. They are vain, but if any one has a right to be so, they
have. In spite of their pride they are simple and pleasant in their manners.
They esteem themselves highly, but they are equally ready to recognize the
merit of others. They are very swift and keen to lay a finger on the weak
side or the vices of other people, but never bemean themselves by despising
them. They have a great store of seriousness, a rare firmness of character.
They are contented with their lot and are fatalists. A mixture of superstition
and ignorance, common-sense, and subtle irony; they are at times ferocious,
though naturally of a magnanimous generosity, fond of revenge, yet
forgetting injuries, fond of equality, yet guilty of oppression.” The verdicts
of modern Spanish thinkers have been mostly pessimistic.[5] Spaniards in
the twentieth century have been busily occupied with analytical
introspection, the result of their national misfortunes and injured pride.
They prefer to speak atrociously of themselves than that foreigners should
speak of them only moderately well. Señor Mallada holds[6] his
countrymen to be “idle, unpractical dreamers.” In Spain, says Ángel
Ganivet,[7] “there are many who have no will, hay muchos enfermos de la
voluntad”—there is a lack of concentration, that is of persistent
concentration, and a lack of proportion, of the power to consider more than
one idea, more than one aspect of a question. So Azorín complains that
“there is plenty of insight and rapid vision, but no co-ordination of ideas or
steady fulfilment or will.”[8] In a book by Ricardo León[9] we read that the
Spanish are hostile to their rulers, whoever they may be, and of the evils of
el Caciquismo. But the author sees little hope of change in a country where
men live between two extremes, “two fires, two fanaticisms,” either
reactionaries or demagogues; where the currents of activity and passion are
unregulated, where thought is either stagnant or enmeshed in a gossamer
woof of subtle distinctions, and the golden mean of common-sense is not
attained. The inhabitants of Alcalá are “strong, hard, brave, and stubborn,
rigorous in their virtues and their vices, violent in their loves and hates,
tenacious alike of good and of evil.” To counterbalance their clear
intelligence, greatheartedness, quick imagination and eloquence they have
serious defects, “and especially a certain unrestfulness of spirit, a nervous
irritability which prevents them from living in peace or comfort with
themselves or with others, a true Spanish failing, peculiarly attached both of
old and at the present day to that harsh, turbulent, strongly original
character of the race which has never allowed us rest, but kept us
perpetually at strife, taking umbrage at our very shadows.”... “While there
were infidels to fight, strongholds to defend, vows to fulfil, or even when
there were civil wars and vigorous smuggling and bands of brigands,” there
was scope for the virtues and vices of a people “born and bred for action
and passionate deeds,” “fashioned in battle”; but “on the advent of the
moderate customs of modern times” they find themselves “out of their
natural atmosphere, idle, poor, disconcerted, cramped.” And this is the
tragedy of Spain to-day—a great-hearted people in the toils of civilization.
In Pérez Galdós’ “El Caballero Encantado,” the spirit of Spain thus
addresses one of her sons: “The capital defect of the Spaniards of your time
is that you live exclusively the life of words, and the language is so
beautiful that the delight in the sweet sound of it woos you to sleep. You
speak too much; you lavish without stint a wealth of phrases to conceal the
poverty of your actions.”[10] In an earlier book[11] Señor León deplores the
fashion prevailing in Spain “to depreciate all that is Spanish, and to bestow
great praise on all that is foreign. A wave of moral cowardice and utilitarian
baseness is passing over Spain.” But Spanish character is not permanently
weakened nor shorn of its dignity and independence, the eclipse is but
temporary and, indeed, partial, not affecting the humbler classes. The spirit
of Spain will revive, as in “El Caballero Encantado,” when it is being
carried from the death-bed to the grave,[12] and may be aptly likened, as by
Don Rafael Altamira, to the waters of the Guadiana which, after flowing for
a space underground, return once more to the surface.

II.—Vain Generalities.
“And indeed,” wrote Pepys, “we do all naturally love the Spanish and
hate the French,” and if, since his day, we have learned to love the French,
the character of the Spanish has not ceased to attract and interest
Englishmen. Yet any attempt to generalize concerning Spanish character
would seem a vain and foolish task, since Spain is the country of Europe
which has most stringently preserved its local differences of race and
language, and it is still true, as in Ford’s time, that “the rude agricultural
Gallician, the industrious manufacturing artisan of Barcelona, the gay and
voluptuous Andalucian, the sly vindictive Valencian are as essentially
different from each other as so many distinct characters at the same
masquerade,” and the Basque[13] and andaluz, for instance, are as far apart
as Frenchman and Spaniard. It is possible to take the various ingredients,
Castilian pride,[14] Catalan thrift,[15] Andalusian imagination, Gallegan
dullness,[16] the grimness of Navarre, the stubbornness of Aragon,[17]
Valencian or Murcian cunning, and, tying them into a convenient bundle, to
speak of the Spanish as proud, thrifty, etc., or, in a more pessimistic key, as
haughty, avaricious, untruthful, stolid, cruel, obstinate, malicious. But,
though such a judgment is notoriously false, a few qualities may perhaps be
attributed to the whole of Spain as in some measure common to her various
peoples. Foremost among these qualities are independence and personal
dignity. The Spaniards are a nation of individualists, each a law unto
himself, and they are thus as a nation frequently misunderstood and their
pride has not suffered them to correct errors concerning them, while at the
same time it would perhaps be difficult to find in any other nation so great a
number of individuals whom one may admire and respect. The dramatist
Don Jacinto Benavente has said[18] that in Spain “each of us would like to
be the only great man in a nation of fools, the only honest man in a tribe of
knaves,” and speaks of “our unbridled individualism.” No one is a more
thorough individualist than Don Pío Baroja, and the principal character of
his novel, César ó Nada, declares that the Spanish, “as individualists
require, more than a democratic, federal organization, an iron military
discipline.” “Democracy, Republicanism, Socialism have in reality little
root in our country.... Moreover we admit no superiorities and do not
willingly accept king or president, priest or prophet.” It is this refractoriness
which has made the Spanish so hard a people to govern, and wrought
permanent mischief to their prosperity as a nation. They would seem to
have still to learn the true dignity of loyalty and service. Every Spaniard, of
however humble a position, considers that he is well qualified to criticize
the measures of his rulers, and still more the fancied measures that he
chooses to attribute to them. Thus in a Republic every citizen would believe
himself to be capable of conducting the affairs of the nation better than the
President, as Sancho was convinced that he could govern his island as well
or better than any; nevertheless Spaniards are inclined to acquiesce in a firm
unquestioned authority with a kind of heroical submission, accepting its
decisions as they accept the inevitable decrees of fate, and for this reason an
old-established system of government, such as the Monarchy, is infinitely
the best suited to the Spanish temperament. No doubt they would prefer to
have no system of government, if that were possible, being restive and
tumultuous under restraint. On one occasion a Spanish chauffeur while
driving his mistress considered that he had been insulted by a passer in the
street and, leaving mistress and motor, proceeded to punish the offender till
the police interfered.[19] And if the Spanish find it difficult to work
harmoniously under the orders of others, it is no easier for them to maintain
a joint authority; they can never co-operate for long, their political parties
and commercial unions rapidly fall asunder like the seeds of a pomegranate.
Similarly one may see at a glance of any Spanish crowd that it is not a fused
mass but a collection of units remaining aloof and separate; if the individual
gains, the State suffers, and Spanish politics sometimes have an air of
cramping angularities and crude ambitions. But this individualism and
independence has its nobler and more pleasant side, for even in extreme
poverty and distress, dignity and an accompanying courtesy, honesty, and
sobriety,[20] rarely desert the Spaniard. Each is king in his own house, be it
miserable attic or merely the space of sun that his shadow covers; mientras
en mi casa me estoy rey me soy. The following dialogue bears intrinsic
evidence of its nationality, it could not belong to any country but Spain: “Is
your worship a thief?”—“Yes, to serve God and all good people.”[21] Thus
personal dignity and individual pride may be said to be the dominant notes
of Spain. So the beggars in the street address one another as Sir, señor, lord,
and if you cannot give them an alms for the good of your soul you must at
least give excuses—perdone Vd. por Dios. While we admire this
independence we cannot help seeing that it is a false dignity, which prefers
to starve, like one of the characters in Pérez Galdós’ Fortunata y Jacinta,
because “mi dinidá y sinificancia no me permiten—my dignity and
importance do not allow me,” to accept employment. The fair outward
show given to garret poverty is pathetic, but it is liable to deceive and to
create distrust. Mme. d’Aulnoy remarked that the Spanish “bear up under
this Indigency with such an air of gravity as would cheat one.”
In Love’s Labour’s Lost Don Adriano de Armado says to Moth that he is
“ill at reckoning; it fitteth the spirit of a tapster,” but to Moth’s observation,
“You are a gentleman and a gamester, Sir,” he answers well-pleased, “I
confess both; they are both the varnish of a complete man” (todo un
hombre). The Spanish have ever shown themselves to be ill at reckoning,
they are careless of details and have indeed an Oriental incuriousness of
facts and figures; in no country is it more difficult to obtain accurate returns
or consecutive statistics. Against all drudgery the Spanish temperament
rebels[22]; they act by impulse, in disconnected moments without
persistency; their concentration is of instants,[23] without consequence; and
it has been observed that “Spain has developed her life and art by means of
spiritual convulsions.” What is said in one of Pérez Galdós’ novels[24] of
Narváez might with truth be applied to many Spaniards: “He has a great
heart and a great intelligence, but they manifest themselves only by fits and
starts, by impulses, por arranques.” There is plenty of intelligence among
Spaniards but little continuity of judgment; no perseverance. They are
enthusiastic for a project and, their thoughts outrunning action, they see the
matter begun, in progress, finished, so that their very keenness prevents
accomplishment, and finally nothing is done. Don Quixote, we remember,
thought little of the winning of a kingdom and cutting off a giant’s head:
“all that I consider already done, que todo esto doy ya for hecho.” Or
sometimes their intelligence mars their labour and, not content with doing a
simple thing simply, they spoil it by being a little too clever, or decide a
matter too readily by a swift judgment that may happen to be false. The
Spanish are a people of immense and abiding energy,[25] but their energy is
often dormant or misdirected. Two Spaniards in the twentieth century have
been seen to converse with so fierce an intensity that it seemed over and
over again in the course of a protracted and loud discussion that they must
come from words to blows; and the matter in dispute, conducted with a heat
that would have exhausted less energetic natures, was whether it was right
or wrong to expel the Moriscos from Spain at the beginning of the
seventeenth century. Yet it is not certain that the Spanish can be called
unpractical; they are often idle, indifferent, aloof from the events of daily
life, but when a matter truly interests them, they would seem to be
sufficiently shrewd and practical. King James I. of Aragon aimed an
accusation at the Castilians which has often been applied to all Spaniards:
“You do nothing without extravagance.[26]” But a fundamental ingredient
of Spanish character is realism and clear vision; it is their birthright of
transparent subtle air and unclouded skies. They are keen to detect all
falseness and hypocrisy, and display a shrewd insight into character; but
their study has been ever of persons rather than of books and things,[27] so
that they may act extravagantly themselves even while they are the first to
see another’s extravagance, keenly practical, it may be said, in the affairs of
others, strangely abstract and improvident in their own. Their realism, if it
drives them by reaction into a barren love of words and visions of
impossible ideals, expresses itself in a directness which is very
characteristic of all classes of Spaniards, in the pregnant brevity of
countless proverbs, in concentrated intensity at a given moment, in humour
and satire and a strong love of ridicule. Their proverbs show a thriftiness
and practical good sense very different from the prudence that enriches, but
equally far removed from the romantic view of Spaniards sometimes held
by foreigners. In noble lines Calderón has said of life that it is “a shadow, a
fantasy, and the greatest good is of small worth, since all life is a dream and
dreams themselves a dream”:—
 ¿qué es la vida? Un frenesí.
¿qué es la vida? Una ilusión,
una sombra, una ficción,
y el mayor bien es pequeño,
que toda la vida es sueño
y los sueños sueño son;

but we may doubt whether the following lines of Lope de Vega are not as
truly Spanish in spirit:—

Nada me parece bien,

Todos me son importunos.—
¿Teneis dineros?—Ningunos.—
Pues procurad que os los den.

“I see no good in anything; all men weary me.—Have you money?—None

—Then see that you get some given you.”[28] An almost harsh flavour of
originality is found in Spanish humour, a sly and malicious irony, a biting
wit, full of gaiety and good-humour, but of great force and directness. Their
courtesy is proverbial, and it is not simply a superficial politeness, brittle as
glass, but goes to the very core of the man. A knowledge of Spain would
seem to show that the mere forms of politeness have no little effect in
maintaining the dignity of a nation. The Spaniard, writing from his own
house, speaks of it as esta su casa, this your house, and to a tradesman he
will sign himself, “Your sure servant, who kisses your hands” (S.S.S.,
Q.B.S.M. which is shorter than the corresponding English, “Yours
faithfully”); mere forms, it will be said, but forms that show the spirit and
betray the lordly and generous magnificence of the men who once ruled the
world, and of whom Bacon wrote: “I have marvelled sometimes at Spain,
how they clasp and contain so large dominions with so few natural
Spaniards.” As a kind of magnificent disregard of human life has earned for
Spaniards the charge of cruelty, so their attitude towards time has led many
to look upon them as lazy and utterly unbusinesslike.[29] “The Spartans and
Spaniards have been noted to be of small dispatch,” says Bacon, and this
procrastination and delay was as prominent in the spacious times of Spain’s
greatness as at the present day. We need but think of the endless trailing
procedure of Inquisition trials, or of books waiting on the frontier for
inspection with a man hired to dust them once a month. In ordinary life it is
due perhaps rather to indifference and disdain than to an innate
sluggishness; in official transactions formalism, and the inability to co-
operate with others often bring matters to an intricate pass of papers, from
which there is no issue but by a patient and slow unravelling. Even to-day a
rigid centralization carries the pettiest affair to Madrid for settlement, and
lays upon the Prime Minister a crushing load of work. Etiquette is carried to
excess, and there are in Spain many “formal natures,” men who would
perish upon a ceremony rather than come to a quick and common-sense
conclusion. But the true defect of Spanish politics is that they have a
tendency to become abstract, with many excellent formulas and catchwords,
but divorced from reality, a kind of up-to-date scholasticism. Sometimes
they appear to be a game of dialectics, carried on by a few skilful players,
sometimes a “rushing splendour of rhetoric,” carrying away many.
Spaniards are fond of what Butler calls “that idle and not very innocent
employment of forming imaginary models of the world and schemes of
governing it.” Spanish politicians, says Señor Pérez Galdós, “live in a world
of rituals and formulas, recipes and expedients. The language has filled with
aphorisms and mottos and emblems. Ideas become stereotyped, and
contemplated actions go seeking to embody themselves in words and
cannot make their choice of them.”[30] It would seem indeed that reality has
shown itself so angular and hard-featured to the Spanish that they gladly
make efforts to escape from it. While no nation shows so great a courage,
endurance and patient endeavour in misfortune and defeat, they are not
equally successful in success, they are often spoilt by prosperity and
become weak, dissolute and frivolous; they must have something to fight,
and fall when they no longer press against opposition. This may account for
the fact that the poorer classes are still, as in Ford’s time, “by no means the
worst portion of the population.” The peasants are courteous, intelligent,
patient, energetic and persevering: their praises have been sung by many
writers.[31] But a pathetic fatalism and apathy prevail, and a great bitterness
against those in authority. Pobreza nunca alza cabeza, poverty never raises
its head, they say, la cárcel y la cuaresma para los pobres es hecha, prison
and Lent are for the poor; they look for no bettering of their lot, but for pan
y paciencia y muerte con penitencia—bread and patience and death with
repentance. But it must be said that the fault is not only of those “on top,”
but of those also who, brooking no superiorities of any kind,[32] thus reduce
differences between man and man to the brutal divisions of wealth and
poverty and make life a race for riches. It remains true, however, that the
peasants of Spain are ground down by taxes,[33] and work incessantly only
to hover on the fringes of starvation; todo sea por Dios, they say, and
content themselves with the observation that honesty and riches do not fit
into one sack—honra y provecho no caben en un saco. There is a certain
elemental hardness in the Spanish which helps them to support hardships
stoically and, indeed, to be scornful of modern comforts and luxury. Their
indifference towards disquiet and discomfort and noisy uproar[34] often
dismays the foreigner, but it is not that they are inconsiderate of the feelings
of others, they have a deep sensitiveness and refinement, but they have not
been enervated and rendered over-sensitive by a luxurious civilization.
Their climate, with its harsh extremes of cold and heat,[35] produces a
people like that of León’s Alcalá de los Zegríes, “rigorous in their virtues
and their vices, violent in their loves and hates.” They go easily to
extremes; Spanish intellects are apt to be either totally undeveloped, or else
over-subtle in nice distinctions, and action in the same way, when it comes,
comes with violence and excess, like the rivers of Spain which, parched all
summer, pour down after rain in rushing torrents. The charges of cruelty
and fanaticism, the bull-fight and the auto-de-fé, have fixed themselves
upon the Spanish. They are by nature inflexible and uncompromising, and
like to carry out their principles without looking to the many delicate shades
of grey between white and black. But they are not by nature cruel; they
support bodily sufferings with courage and inflict them upon others as the
lesser of two evils, burning the heretics to prevent the spread of their
heresy; and indeed to men convinced that these “pertinacious schismaticks”
were to burn for ever and ever in another place, a touch of fire in this life
could hardly seem an excessive punishment.[36] Cruelty to animals on the
roads of Spain is extremely rare, and at the bull-fights[37] it is only fair to
observe that, while the foreigner’s attention is directed to the sufferings of
the horses, the whole mind of the Spaniard is bent on intricacies of the
conflict between man and bull, and nice passes which escape the foreigner.
[38] The autos-de-fé and the Inquisition have cast over Spain a reputation
for fanaticism and obscurantist bigotry. But the Spanish, while eager
supporters of their faith, are too independent to bow down for long to a
Clerical predominance; they cannot be called a priest-ridden nation.[39] Ni
buen fraile por amigo, ni malo por enemigo, says one of their proverbs—
make no friend of a good monk, nor enemy of a bad; and again, Haz lo que
dice el fraile no lo que hace—follow the monk’s precept, not his example.
They believe uncompromisingly in the Roman Catholic religion, but have a
ready eye for the faults of its ministers; they love and reverence the Church
as a refuge from reality, but continue to be realists in their mysticism. The
Church in Spain has done noble work, but it has been a retreat more than a
morality, encouraging hollow shows rather than love of truth,[40] patience
and submission rather than enterprise and a persistent search for remedies.
The anti-Clericals complain that the influence of the priest in the family is
excessive, but when the women are kept in a semi-Oriental seclusion, while
the men chatter together in street and casino and café, as still happens in
many parts of Spain,[41] it is but natural for the women to turn from the
discomfort and isolation of their homes to the magnificent ceremonies of
the Church.[42] The Spaniards are naturally inclined to generosity and a
love of magnificence, but, their poverty preventing, this too often
degenerates to shams and hollowness. To poverty and the proud
concealment of poverty, much of the feeling of suspicion which prevails in
Spain may be attributed. A large number of Spaniards may be said to be
well-to-do in the street, poverty-stricken in the home. The family in
Pereda’s Bocetos al temple which chooses without a moment’s hesitation to
live on potatoes in order to be able to dress luxuriously, is no solitary
instance, and in Madrid many live in bare rooms who drive abroad in
carriages. The Spanish are more careful of outward show than any other
nation. The universal neatness and soldierly smartness of their dress must
excite admiration. But watch a poor man fold and refold the brilliantly lined
outer edge of his capa that the more worn portions of the velvet may not
appear—the capa which may itself cover a multitude of sins (la capa todo
lo tapa) that recalls the passage in Shakespeare:—
“Armado: The naked truth of it is I have no shirt. I go woolward for penance.
Boyet: True, and it was enjoined him in Rome for want of linen.”

Or follow a smart officer through the streets to his house. The position and
entrance of the house will not prepare you for its decreasing splendour as
you climb stair after stair to the bare rooms where he lives. There is much
that is postizo, false and artificial, in the exterior view, as Spaniards will
themselves bitterly confess. Appearances must be maintained. So Bacon
says that “It hath been an opinion that the Frenchmen are wiser than they
seem and the Spaniards seem wiser than they are,” and many of their
houses are built not to live in but to look on. Hence, partly, a disquieting
element of mistrust, of “suspicions that ever fly by twilight” foreign to the
frank and open nature of true Spaniards. “Of every Spanish undertaking,”
writes Señor Benavente in 1909, “it may be said as of the famous Cortes
that it is ‘dishonoured while yet unborn.’ The result is that he who is jealous
of his good name shuns contact with all business affairs like pitch, and the
affairs fall into the hands of men who are untroubled by scruples.... All
these suspicions and distrusts are a sign rather of our poverty than of our
morality. There is so great a scarcity of money that it becomes unintelligible
that any one who has the handling of it should fail to keep a part for
himself.... We are, moreover, so firmly attached to old-fashioned ideas of
nobility—rancias hidalguías—that, in spite of our pressing need of money,
we still consider its acquisition contemptible; so we prefer to seek it by
subterranean channels as if it were a crime to seek it in the light of day.”
Suspicion of new things has ever been at once the strength and the
weakness of Spain.[43] In the nineteenth century this suspicion expressed
itself in patriotism carried to its extreme logical conclusion. Were
Napoleon’s reforms of a nature to benefit Spain in an inestimable degree?
To the Spaniard they were the tyrannical and insidious measures of a
usurper. Was his brother Joseph intelligent, well-intentioned, conciliatory?
To the Spaniard he was ever the squint-eyed drinker, Pepe Botellas, and it
was idle to insist that he did not squint, and did not drink. Was King
Amadeo an enlightened, courageous, and self-effacing ruler? To the
Spaniard he was an intruder, to be treated with neglect, insolence or disdain.
This distrust may have been foolish and harmful to the interests of Spain,
but it was in many respects noble and admirable. To-day, however, we have
rather the reverse side of the picture, a pessimism about all things Spanish,
and a foolish tendency to imitate things foreign. Beneath his outer capa of
haughty pride the Spaniard is keenly aware of his limitations; he has no
confidence in his own actions or in his country, or, rather, his confidence is
merely momentary and is never sustained. It is, no doubt, a sign not of
progress but degeneracy to exchange the Spanish capa, peculiarly suited to
a climate of hot sun and cold air, for English overcoats or the becoming
mantilla for the newest fashion in Parisian hats. It is not necessarily a sign
of progress to exchange old-fashioned Spanish piety for the latest shades of
scepticism, or to leave the simple life of an hidalgo in the provinces for the
idler, dissipated life in the only capital and court. The desire to be very
modern is at present a good thing in Spain, yet it need not consist in casting
aside old traditions and diffidently rejecting Spanish customs that are
excellent. This exalting of foreign customs and depreciation of their own
which has been frequently observed of Spaniards, is due rather to an
inverted pride than to humility; at the beginning of the nineteenth century it
was considered a mark of culture in Spain to despise things Spanish and to
worship things French, but all the time the Spanish believe at heart in
themselves,[44] they praise foreign countries with their lips, but continue to
place Spain first, and if they imitate, they cast a peculiarly Iberian flavour
over their imitations. The late Bishop Creighton, looking at Spain
historically, remarked that it “leaves the curious impression of a country
which never did anything original—now the Moors, now France, now Italy,
have influenced it.” If this is so, certainly the Moors, and France, and Italy
have wrought some of their most original works in Spain; and it can hardly
be said that the great Spanish discoverers and conquerors, painters,
philosophers, and poets of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries
were not original, whether they were influenced by Moors, Frenchmen, or
Italians.[45] But, indeed, the Spaniard more readily repels than assimilates,
it is his virtue and his defect; he remains isolated and alone, difficult to
convince, impossible to govern. New political and social theories from
France are spread in Spain, but they there serve progress less than disquiet
and the rancour of those who have not towards those who have. The
reforms needed by Spain will not be furthered by riots and disorder, and the
demagogues who encourage them are perhaps less patriotic than they
profess to be. For Spain needs peace, long periods of tranquillity in which
to develop her resources and to learn the more difficult task of maintaining
in prosperity that strength and independent nobility of character which have
shone out so clearly in misfortune. The conclusion then, if so desultory a
study warrants a conclusion, is that the Spanish are a fundamentally noble,
courteous, and independent people, energetic and brave, with a natural
tendency to grandeur and generosity, whom poverty often leads to hollow
display and the consequent suspicion and distrust. They will be at immense
pains to “bear up under their indigency,” but have a greater consideration
for the semblance than for the reality and substance of well-being, for
artificial show, supported by infinite care and ingenuity, than for a more
solid prosperity, based on serious effort. Their realism, throwing into relief
the apparent pettiness of daily life, causes them to dream dreams and weave
fragile abstract palaces of fair-sounding phrases; they have not that useful
quality of accuracy, an understanding of the value and importance of details
and gradual effort, of pennies and minutes: they will smite a stone in twain
at a great blow, but the idea that it might be pierced by drops of water saepe
cadendo is foreign to them, and often they aim at a million and miss a unit.
They are a nation of strongly original characters, acting on impulses and
intermittently, and thinking in extremes; often failing in the face of
prosperity, but proud, resolute, and patient in misfortune; often
magnificently imprudent, but never despicable, except to those whose
worship is of riches and success; an admirable but discomfortable people,
not adapting itself readily to modern conditions, but ever to be reckoned
with as an energetic, vital force, not bowing permanently before defeat.
 II

TRAVELLING IN SPAIN

I
T was, of course, Samuel Johnson who said, “There is a good deal of
Spain that has not been perambulated,” and the remark still holds good
for those who, like Don Quixote, wish to “go seeking adventures.” The
brigand stories, “got up,” as Ford would say, “for the home market,” are
now slightly exploded, and few travellers expect to find at every turn—

“Cent coupe-jarrets à faces renégates

Coiffés de montéras et chaussés d’alpargates.”

Yet even to-day few foreigners realize that they may cross and recross the
Peninsula from north to south and from east to west in perfect security.
They will meet with no cloak-and-sword episodes; their adventures must be
of another order. It is true that the Spaniard can use his knife, but the knife
comes into play in quarrels of cards and love and jealousy, in which the
passing traveller can have no part. Those, however, who measure culture by
comfort, and wish to journey as consistent first-class passengers through
life, should certainly narrow their Spanish travels to the round of a few
cities—
“Erret et extremos scrutetur alter Iberos,”

and, however rapid and conventional, a journey that includes the Alhambra,
the Mosque of Córdoba, the Cathedrals of Seville, Toledo, and Burgos,[46]
and the picture-galleries of Seville and Madrid, can scarcely be said to have
been in vain. But to know Spain and the Spaniards it is necessary to go
further afield, to the small towns and villages of Andalucía and Castille, for
here, rather than in the larger towns, is to be found the true spirit of the race.
Some five thousand villages are still to be reached only by bridle-paths, and
in these there has been little change since Cervantes went his rounds
collecting taxes; so that for those who care to leave the beaten track there
still remain many unexplored districts, and much first-hand knowledge to
glean of the country and its inhabitants. To many, no doubt, Spain is the
country of dance and song and sun-burnt mirth, of the flutter of fans and the
flash of dark eyes; the country of the bull-fight and the white mantilla and
carnations in the hair; of Roman ruins and Moorish palaces set in groves of
myrtle and orange; of—

“Cloaked shapes, the twanging of guitars,

A rush of feet and rapiers clashing,
Then silence deep with breathless stars,
And overhead a white hand flashing.”

and if any shadows fall across the picture they are those of the brigand and
the priest-inquisitor. Then comes the inevitable reaction. Those who visit
Spain find that it is for them indeed un pays de l’imprévu. The former
image in their mind soon perishes, and they cry out upon this “ciel
insalubre,” this—

“pays endiablé;
Nous y mangions, au lieu de farine de blé,
Des rats et des souris et pour toutes ribotes
Nous avons dévoré beaucoup de vieilles bottes.”

But, to judge from many books published about Spain, most European
countries would seem to have entered into a league to look upon the
Peninsula solely as a land of a poetical unreality, its inhabitants divided into
inquisitors, monks, brigands, and conspirators, lending—
“the colour of romance
To every trivial circumstance.”

A well-balanced and accurate account of the country is singularly rare. It is

true that in some respects Spain has changed little since the sixteenth
century, but, on the other hand, during the twentieth century, while she has
been making laborious progress, foreign ideas of Spain have remained
stationary, with the prejudices and fixed opinions of fifty years ago. No
error or exaggeration concerning Spain is too ridiculous to be affirmed and
readily believed, and those who take no thought to study the Peninsula in
quiet days save as a land of vague romance, when trouble occurs are
officious with wise criticisms and stern common-sense, based on ignorance.
Quite recently the hysterical visions of prisoners tortured in Spanish
dungeons, and of priestly cruelty and greed, might persuade one that Mr.
Kipling’s “Little Foxes” was written not before, but after, the events of
1909 in Spain. One forgets that it is of Ethiopia, not Spain, that Mr.
Lethabie Groombride, M.P., exclaims, “What callous oppression! The dark
places of the earth are full of cruelty!” Like the natives of Ethiopia, the
courteous Spaniards are “much pleased at your condescensions;” but they
too have a sense of humour, and note with amusement the ignorance of
nations which declare that Spain’s chief need is more education and culture.
For the traveller who wishes to explore the remote parts of Spain, and to
escape from Spanish trains, the simplest method is to proceed on horseback.
Walking and bicycling and motoring are possible in the North, and
especially in the Basque Provinces, where the inns are good and the roads
excellent. But in most parts of Spain they are practically impossible; the
roads are too stony or too dusty even for walking, and, moreover, in fifty
kilometres you may find hardly one inn. There remains the diligencia—
coche, tartana, diabla, call it what you will—but a single experience of it
will probably be sufficient. It rolls and lurches heavily to the loud,
continuous shouting of the driver to his horses: Caballo-allo-allo-allo,
Mula-ula-ula-ula. The traveller, if he has the misfortune to be in the
interior, is beaten against the wooden sides, the windows rattle, the bells
jingle, the vehicle sways slowly on its way, groaning and complaining of
the breadth, as well as the length, of the road[47]—nosotros tambien
llegaremos, si Dios quiere, as a driver said when passed by more rapid
travellers, “if it is the will of Heaven.” Occasionally at a country railway
station may be seen a boy who is a pillar of dust or mud. He is the zagal of
the diligencia, who runs by its side through dirt and mire, urging on the
horses, or stands to rest on the step at the back. Sometimes the diligencia
descends into river-beds, usually dry; and after much rain it is apt to stay
there, and darkness falls and the frogs croak mockingly, while more mules
are fetched to help in the work of extrication. Often it proceeds by night,
throwing strange, fantastic shadows in the narrow streets of sleeping
villages. The driver must undergo not only extremes of heat and cold, but is
often in danger of snowdrifts and swollen torrents and rocks from the hill-
sides. A Navarrese innkeeper, an old soldier of Santa Cruz, introduced a
driver of a diligencia as “the bravest man of my acquaintance.” Spanish
travellers accept all these discomforts with a marvellous, fatalistic
resignation and equanimity; but even a pedestrian will go further and fare
better in an afternoon than a traveller in diligencia during a whole day. Still,
as a unique experience, a diligencia drive must be undertaken; and the
driver is good company, sparing time from the loud praise and blame meted
out to his mules to bestow pithy comments on the living and the dead—

“The crosses in the mountain pass,

Mules gay with tassels, the loud din
Of muleteers, the tethered ass
That crops the dusty wayside grass,
And cavaliers with spurs of brass
Alighting at the inn.”

The inns, mesones, ventorrillos, ventas, posadas, paradores, are still

much the same as in the times of Cervantes, moderately clean,
immoderately uncomfortable, bare alike of furniture and food.[48] Still to
your first inquiry the answer is, “Hay de todo, we have everything,” still to
your further inquiry the abstract todo shrinks to nada. But for an
understanding of the Spanish people, nothing is more interesting and one
may add, more pleasant than to listen to their talk as they sit round some
great inn fire of crackling scented twigs burning on the stone floor of the
court and kitchen. The discomfort and hardships of travel in remote parts of
Spain are repaid in flowing measure. Here a solitary peasant is seen
ploughing land so precipitous and steep that the stones rattle down as he
advances; there the mules stand hour by hour at the plough while the
peasants—in this case servants on some great estate—play cards, the large
earthenware botijos of water standing ready to their hand; or a group of
workers in the fields stand shivering in early morning round a great
common puchero, dipping their spoons in turn, and in turn raising the bota
high above their heads to drink; or one has a glimpse of some peasant’s
dress[49] of brilliant colouring, of some ancient vanishing costume of
leather or velvet, silk embroidery or silver buttons—at every turn some
quaint custom, some curious picturesque scene and colour appears, and the
talk of the peasants is a delight. The two most successful English travellers
in Spain were beyond doubt, Ford and Borrow. They won the respect of all
classes of Spaniards, and saw practically the whole of Spanish life three-
quarters of a century ago. Borrow describes himself on one occasion as
“dressed in the fashion of the peasants of the neighbourhood of Segovia in
Old Castile, namely, I had on my head a species of leather helmet or
montera, with a jacket and trousers of the same material.” And Ford says:
“In all out-of-the-way districts the traveller may adopt the national costume
of the road, to wit, the peaked hat (sombrero gacho), the jacket of fur
(zamarra).” But without the peaked hat, now almost extinct, or Borrow’s
leathern helmet, a few changes of dress and especially what Ford calls “a
graceful and sleeveless Castilian manta” or rather capa, excellently suited
to the climate, will bring many advantages. For to the ordinary traveller,
with red book and camera, the Spaniard will hardly disclose his true nature,
and remains an impenetrable mystery; not that the foreigner often realizes
the existence of the unsolved riddle, the Spaniard presenting a sufficient
number of striking aspects to make a swift superficial impression. The best
guides to Spain are still Ford’s “Gatherings,” and a thorough acquaintance
with “Don Quixote,” a fluent knowledge of Spanish, and, lastly, the advice
of Spaniards, since as Sancho sagely observed, “más sabe el necio en su
casa que el cuerdo en casa ajena.” The traveller in Spain may in the heat of
summer listen to the silver plashing of fountains in marble patios, and feel
the coolness of snowy Sierras; he may in early morning gather frozen
oranges to be eaten later beneath a burning sun; but it is this sun which with
the cold winds tends to limit his wanderings to a brief period of spring or
autumn. Martial indeed says—

“Aestus serenos aureo franges Tago

Obscurus umbris arborum.”

but under the fierce Castilian sun—and there are said to be 3600 hours of
sunshine in the year—the imagination produces no golden tints in the
Tagus, and trees are few. Comfort the traveller will scarcely find, but
serviceableness and courtesy on all sides. If he is wise, he will, however,
imitate the Spaniards not only a little in their dress, but greatly in their
manners. He will arm himself with an inalienable fund of patience. He will
be courteous even while chafing at delay. His courtesy will never go
unanswered. “La cortesía tenerla con quien la tenga, Courtesy to him who
has it,” as one of Calderón’s characters says. Money often obtains much,
but the offer of a cigarette or a cigar is often not less effective. Without a
courteous manner the money will be treated as an insult and the cigar
refused. Calderón says again: “El sombrero y el dinero son los que hacen
amigos, Raising the hat and money make most friends.” Few peoples
respect themselves more than the Spanish, and they look for respect from
others. “The sensitive Spaniard bristles up like a porcupine against the
suspicion of a disdain.” They do not forget that they were once the greatest
people in Europe, and they regard it as an accident that the march of
modern civilization has left them behind, being, indeed, too mechanical for
their pride to adopt. And still the golden rule for the traveller in Spain is
never to be in a hurry or never to show that he is in a hurry, for by doing so
he will increase delays and defeat his object. He must learn the Spanish
proverb thoroughly—Paciencia y barajar, “Patience, and shuffle the
cards.” Patience and courtesy he will find to be above rubies. The Spaniard,
so sensitive and excitable, remains unmoved by delays and petty official
tyrannies which drive an Englishman into a kind of despair and fury of
impatience.[50] But the lower officials in Spain are apt to be ignorant and
self-important, very official, and curt inquiries only remind them that they
represent the whole majesty of the Law and the State; they multiply their
shrugs and inscrutable No se puede’s. On the other hand, a polite speech,
though it occupy several of the few minutes that the traveller may have to
spare, is in Spain time well spent and performs miracles;—if, that is, he still
persists in considering the value of time, and has not found it simpler to
accept the less accurate methods of the Spaniard. For he may ask in a
cathedral, “When is Mass going to be celebrated?” and the answer is, “No
sé, Señor; Cuando vengan los canónigos”—when it is the good pleasure of
the Canons to appear; or he may ask in a station, “When does the train
start?” and must not be surprised if the answer is again, “No sé, Señor.” He
had best content himself once and for all to breakfast at five-o’clock tea,
and will find consolation in the thought that here at least there is no
unseemly rush and strain, in this original and exquisite land of To-morrow
—Mañana por la mañana.
 III

ON THE SPANISH FRONTIER

T
HE Bidasoa, in the last part of its course, divides Spain from France.
It further divides Basque from Basque. It has thus a local and an
historic interest. It is the scene of smuggling between French and
Spanish Basques and, as a frontier river, it has seen many a quaint
and solemn episode in the past—the passage of Wellington’s troops, for
instance, in 1813, or the exchange in boats of Francis I. against two
hostages (his sons) in 1526, the King showing an eager haste to win across
the river and reach the friendly inhabitants of St. Jean de Luz[51] and the
sheltering walls of Bayonne. But it is the passing beauty of the whole
Bidasoa valley that attracts the visitor, the loveliness of the river and the
hills and the villages by the river. The Bidasoa is beautiful during its whole
course from where it rises near the village of Maya, a little mountain stream
running swiftly through woods of oak and chestnut. At times the hills break
abruptly down, the water lies deep and dark-green beneath, and there is a
look of Ullswater about both hills and river. A little above Endarlaza the
road leaves the river, and from here may be had a glimpse of the Bidasoa of
unrivalled beauty. For it runs in a long, irregular stretch, irregular for the
rough backbones of hill covered with boulders and bushes of box. At each
hill-ridge one might expect the river to bend and vanish, but still it appears
beyond. Nearer the village of Vera it contracts to a narrower flow, and the
water lashes over rocks, magnificently white and green. The river is known
to fishermen as well as to smugglers and Carlists and lovers of Nature.
Certainly the wisest travellers, before passing on to the bleak uplands of
Castille, will stay to explore this little strip of green country, with its fresh
woods and valleys and villages full of state and ancientry. Vera, in a sunny
hollow, has an especial fascination. The vine-covered balconies and
projecting roofs keep the houses in shade, and on two sides is the rustle and
flow of water. The houses stand on different levels, several storeys of them
mounting roof above roof from the river to the church. They are curious in
their sculptured stone, their quaint carved buttresses, their nail-studded