of religious feeling in the Spanish character which it would take a
great deal to uproot, but it must be a wide-spirited and enlightened
faith which will retain its hold over the people, who are everywhere
breaking their old bonds and thinking for themselves.
CHAPTER XIV
PHILANTHROPY - POSITION OF WOMEN - MARRIAGE CUSTOMS
Travellers complain somewhat bitterly of the increase in the numbers and
the importunity of beggars in Spain; but wherever monks abound, beggars
also abound, and the long-unaccustomed sight of the various religious
habits naturally brings with it the hordes of miserable objects who
afford opportunities for the faithful to exercise what they are taught
to believe is charity - loved of God. This, however, is more especially
the case in Granada, or those favoured spots affected by the rich
tourist, who has not always the same opinion about indiscriminate
charity as the native Spaniard. In old days, the wise policy of Charles
III. had reduced very greatly the swarm of beggars. A certain number of
terrible-looking objects - the fortunate possessors of withered limbs,
sightless eyeballs, or other disqualifications for honest work - still
ostentatiously displayed their badges of professional mendicancy, and
lived, apparently quite comfortably, on the alms of the passers-by. But
the enormous competition which has since sprung up in this "career"
must interfere a good deal with its lucrativeness.
There is no poor law as yet in Spain. Philanthropy is left to voluntary
effort; but the list of charities is so great, and so widely spread over
the whole country, that one would think wholesale beggary would be
superfluous. Madrid is divided into thirty-three parishes, each having a
board of _Beneficéncias_, the Government holding a fund which these
boards administer. The Queen is the President of the whole. Each board
has its president and vice-president - generally ladies of the
aristocracy - a treasurer, vice-treasurer, secretary, and vice-secretary,
and a body of visitors; accounts are rendered monthly to the governing
board, whose vice-president presides in the name of the Queen. There are
also the confraternities of St. Vincent and St. Paul, the members of
which are gentlemen and ladies who work independently of each other.
These, however, have no established funds, but depend on voluntary
subscriptions and gifts. Both these associations visit the poor in their
own homes. The Pardo and the San Bernadino are societies and homes for
benefiting men, women, and children; they have been founded by ladies.
For boys there is the School of the Sacred Heart, and the Christian
Brothers. The School of San Ildefonso belongs to the _Ayuntamiento_, and
has secular masters. There is a small asylum, with chaplaincy attached,
for architects. Santa Rita is a reformatory for boys in Carabanchel,
under a religious brotherhood. For girls there is the Horfino, the
Mercédes Asylum - founded in memory of and kept up by the rents of Queen
Mercédes - Santa Isabel and San Ildefonso, the French St. Vincent de
Paul, San Blas, on the same lines as the Mercédes, Santa Cruz, the
Inclusa, and the Spanish Vincent de Paul. For fallen girls there are the
Adorers of the Blessed Sacrament, the Ladies of the Holy Trinity, and
the Oblates of the Holy Redeemer.
In all parts of the country branches of these or similar institutions
abound. None are more liberal to the funds of these voluntary charities
than the bull-fighters, who, if they make large fortunes, never forget
the class from which they sprang, and are most generous in their
donations. When occasion demands an extra effort, a _fiesta_ is given at
the Plaza de Toros, and the whole of the profits go to the charity for
which it has been held. No doubt these schemes have their faults in
operation, and Galdós in some of his popular novels does not fail to
hold up - not exactly for admiration - the fashionable ladies who think
it "smart," as we should say, to join these boards and societies, and
talk with much unction of their public good works and the statistics of
their pet societies, while neglecting the poor and the needy at their
own doors, or trying to send into "Homes" those who have no desire or
need to go there if a little Christian charity were only shown them by
their neighbours. Nevertheless, there is a large amount of organised
philanthropy in Spain to-day, and it appears to be of a wise and
efficient kind. One should not forget to mention also the workshops for
the lowest orders, established by the Salerian Fathers, to which the
attention of the Government has been called by late events.
The general position of women in Spain and their influence in public
life cannot be described as of an advanced order. As a rule, they take no
leading part in politics, devoting themselves chiefly to charitable
works, such as those already named. There is, as we have seen, a general
movement for higher education and greater liberty of thought and action
amongst women, and there is a certain limited number who frankly range
themselves on the side of so-called "emancipation," who attend
socialistic and other "meetings" - a word which has now been formally
admitted into the Spanish language - and who aspire to be the comrades of
men rather than their objects of worship or their playthings. But this
movement is scarcely more than in its infancy. It must be remembered
that even within the present generation the bedrooms allotted to girls
were always approached through that of the parents, that no girl or
unmarried woman could go unattended, and that to be left alone in the
room with a man was to lose her reputation. Already these things seem to
be dreams of the past; nor could one well believe, what is however a
fact, that there were fathers of the upper classes in the first half of
the last century who preferred that their daughters should not learn to
read or write, especially the latter, as it only enabled them to read
letters clandestinely received from lovers and to reply to them. The
natural consequence of this was the custom, which so largely prevailed,
of young men, absolutely unknown to the parents, establishing
correspondence or meetings with the objects of their adoration by means
of a complaisant _doncella_ with an open palm, or the pastime known as
_pelando el pavo_ (literally plucking the turkey), which consisted of
serenades of love-songs, amorous dialogues, or the passage of notes
through the _reja_ - the iron gratings which protect the lower windows of
Spanish houses from the prowling human wolf - or from the balconies. Many
a time have I seen these interesting little missives being let down past
my balcony - how trustful the innocents were! - to the waiting gallant
below, and his drawn up. Only once I saw a neighbour, in the balcony
below, intercept the post, and I believe substitute some other letter.
Cruel sport!
Perhaps born of this necessity of making acquaintance by fair means or
foul comes the custom, which appears to savour of such grossly bad
manners to us, of a man making audible remarks on the appearance of a
girl he has never seen before as she passes him in the street. _Ay! que
buenos ojos! Que bonita eres! Que gracia tienes!_ and the like. Far
from giving offence, the fair one goes on her way, perhaps vouchsafing
one glance from those lovely eyes of hers, with only a sense that her
charms have received their due tribute - not much elated, perhaps, but
certainly by no means offended; nor, indeed, was offence intended. The
fixed stare, which to us would mean mere ill-bred ignorance, is only
another ordinary tribute to the passing fair one from the other sex.
Marriage customs have changed much in the last few decades, and even
civil marriages are now not wholly unknown. In old days, if the ceremony
was performed in church, the bride and all the ladies must be attired in
black, for which reason the fashionable world established marriages in
the house, where more brilliant costumes might be displayed. These
generally take place in the evening, and the newly married couple do not
leave the house, unless the new home happens to be close by. In any
case, honeymoon tours are, or were, unusual. The _velada_ is the
ceremony in church, which must take place before the first child is
born, to legalise the marriage, but it does not necessarily immediately
follow the other ceremony. At it the ring is given. When the two
ceremonies take place at the same time it must be in the morning,
because the bride and bridegroom partake of the Holy Sacrament fasting.
From the description of a _boda_ in Galicia, in one of Pardo Bazan's
novels, it would seem that the bride there wears white, even at the
church. The wedding is a portentous affair, lasting all day from early
morning, and the bride and bridegroom remain in the house. Fernan
Caballero devotes some pages in _Clemencia_ to showing how preferable is
the Spanish custom of "remaining among friends" to that of the newly
married couple, as she says, "exposing themselves to the jeers of
postilions and stable-boys." Yet the English custom is in fact gaining
ground, even in conservative Spain.
Although marriages are often made up by the parents and guardians, as in
France, without any freedom on the part of the bride at least, custom or
law gives the Spanish woman much more power than even in England. A girl
desiring to escape from a marriage repugnant to her can claim protection
from a magistrate, who will even, if necessary, take her out of her
father's custody until she is of age and her own mistress. More than
that, if a girl determines to marry a man of whom her parents
disapprove, she has only to place herself under the protection of a
magistrate to set them at defiance, nor have they the power to deprive
her of the share of the family property to which by Spanish law she is
entitled. I do not know if these things are altered now, - one does not
hear so much of them, - but I know of several cases where daughters have
been married from the magistrate's house against the wishes of their
parents. In one case, the first intimation a father received of his
daughter's engagement was the notice from a neighbouring magistrate that
she was about to be married, and in another, a daughter left her
mother's house and was married from that of the magistrate to a man
without any income and considerably below her in rank. In all these
cases, the contracting parties were of the upper classes.
While on this subject, I must mention what seems to us the barbarous
manner in which infants are clothed and brought up, though the English
fashions of baths, healthy clothing, and suitable food are now largely
followed amongst the upper classes. When the King was still an infant a
great deal of his clothing came from England, and he was brought up in
the English method. This probably set the fashion, and the little ones
playing in the Park now are much like those one is accustomed to see in
London. But among the poor, and even some of the bourgeois class, the
old insane customs prevail, and it is not surprising to hear that the
death-rate among infants is extraordinarily high. From its birth the
poor child is tightly wrapped in swaddling clothes, confining all its
limbs, so that it presents the appearance of a mummy, swathed in coarse
yellow flannel, only its head appearing. So stiffly are they rolled up
that I have seen an infant only a few weeks old propped up on end
against the wall, or in a corner, while the mother was busy. There is a
superstition, too, about never washing a child's head from the day it
is born. The result is really indescribable. When it is about two years
old, a scab, which covers the whole head, comes off of its own accord,
and after that the head may be cleansed without fear of evil
consequences. Some English servants who have married in Spain set the
example of keeping their infants clean, and, therefore, healthy, from
the first, and, seeing the difference in the appearance of the children,
a few Spanish women have followed suit; but it requires a good deal of
courage to break away from old traditions and set one's face against the
sacred superstitions of ages - and the mother-in-law!
One wonders, not that Spanish men grow bald so early, and not bald only,
but absolutely hairless, but that they ever have any hair at all; for
after all the troubles of their infancy their heads are regularly
shaved, or the hair cut off close to the skin all the summer. On the
principle of cutting off the heads of dandelions as soon as they appear,
as a way of exterminating them, the surprising thing is that the hair
does not become too much discouraged even to try to sprout again. Funny
little objects they look, with only a dark mark on the skin where the
hair ought to grow in summer, and at most a growth about as long as
velvet in the winter, until they are quite big boys! The girls generally
wear their hair so tightly plaited, as soon as it is long enough to
allow of plaiting at all, that they can scarcely close their eyes.
Young Spanish women, however, have magnificent hair; though they, too,
grow bald when they are old, in a way that is never seen in England.
CHAPTER XV
MUSIC, ART, AND THE DRAMA
One is apt to forget how much the history of music owes to Spain. The
country was for so long considered to be in a state of chronic political
disturbance that few foreigners took up their abode there, except such
as had business interests, and for the rest the mere traveller never
became acquainted with the real life of the people, or entered into
their intellectual amusements. It is quite a common thing to find the
tourist entering in his valuable notes on a country which he has not the
knowledge of the world to understand: "The Spaniards are not a musical
people," and remaining quite satisfied with his own dictum. Yet Albert
Soubies, in his _Histoire de la Musique_, says, in the volume devoted to
Spain: "Spain is the country where, in modern times, musical art has
been cultivated with the greatest distinction and originality. In
particular, the school of religious music in Spain, thanks to Morales,
Guerrero, and Victoria, will bear comparison with all that has been
produced elsewhere of the highest and most cultivated description. The
national genius has also shown itself in another direction, in works
which, like the ancient _eglogas_ - the contemporary _zarzuelas_ of Lope
de Vega and Calderon - and the _torradillas_ of the last century shine
brilliantly by the verve, the gaiety, the strength, and delicacy of
their comic sentiment.... The works of this class are happily inspired
by popular art, which in this country abounds in characteristic
elements. One notes how much the rhythm and melody display native
colour, charm, and energy. In many cases, along with vestiges of Basque
or of Celtic origin, they show something of an Oriental character, due
to the long sojourn of the Moors in this country."
As regards this pre-eminence, it is enough to remember that Spain was
anciently one of the regions most thoroughly penetrated by Roman
civilisation. It is not too much to say that this art has never sunk
into decadence in Spain. During the sixteenth century the archives of
the Pontifical chapel show the important place occupied by Spanish
composers in the musical history of the Vatican, and among the artists
who gained celebrity away from their own country were Escoledo, Morales,
Galvey, Tapia, and many others. To the end of the seventeenth century a
galaxy of brilliant names carried on the national history of Spanish
music, both on religious and secular lines; and though in the eighteenth
and part of the nineteenth centuries there was a passing invasion of
French and Italian fashion, the true and characteristic native music
has never died out, and at the present time there is a notable musical
renaissance in touch with the spirit and natural genius of the people.
A Royal Academy of Music has, within recent times, been added to the
other institutions of a like kind, and native talent is being developed
on native lines, not in imitations from countries wholly differing from
them in national characteristics. Spaniards are exacting critics, and
the best musicians of other countries are as well known and appreciated
as their own composers and executants. Wagner is now a household word
among them, where once Rossini was the object of fashionable admiration.
The national and characteristic songs of Spain have been already
referred to. They are perfectly distinct from those of any other nation.
There is about them a dainty grace and pathos, combined frequently with
a certain suspicion of sadness, which is full of charm, while those
which are frankly gay are full of life, audacity, and "go," that carry
away the listeners, even when the language is imperfectly understood.
The charming songs, with accompaniment for piano or guitar, of the
Master Yradier, are mostly written in the soft dialect of Andalucia,
which lends itself to the music, and is liquid as the notes of a bird.
The songs of Galicia are, in fact, the songs of Portugal; just as the
Galician language is Portuguese, or a dialect of that language, which
has less impress of the ancient Celt-Iberian and more of French than
its sister, Castilian, both being descendants of Latin, enriched with
words borrowed from the different nations which have at one time or
another inhabited or conquered their country.
The guitar is, of course, the national instrument, and the songs never
have the same charm with any other accompaniment; but the Spanish women
of to-day are prouder of being able to play the piano or violin than of
excelling in the instrument which suits them so much better. The
Spaniard is nervously anxious not to appear, or to be, behind any other
European nation in what we call "modernity," a word that signifies that
to be "up-to-date" is of paramount importance, leaving wholly out of the
question whether the change be for the better or infinitely towards the
lower end of the scale.
The records of Spain in art, as in literature, are so grand, so
European, in fact, that it is much if the artists of to-day come within
measurable distance of those who have made the glory of their country.
Nevertheless, the modern painters and sculptors of Spain hold their own
with those of any country. After the temporary eclipse which followed
the death of Velasquez, Ribera, and Murillo - the eighteenth century
produced no great Spanish painter, if we except Goya, who left no
pupils - Don José Madrazo, who studied at the same time as Ingres in the
studio of David, began the modern renaissance. He became Court painter,
and left many fine portraits; but, perhaps, as Comte Vasili says, "La
meilleure oeuvre de Don José fut son fils, Federico; de même que la
meilleure de celui-ci est son fils Raimundo."
Raimundo Madrazo and Fortuny the elder, who married Cecilia Madrazo,
Raimundo's sister, have always painted in Paris, and have become known
to Europe almost as French artists. Fortuny, by his _mariage Espagnol_,
became the head of the Spanish renaissance. Unfortunately, he has been
widely imitated by artists of all nations, who have not a tithe of his
genius, if any. Pradilla, F. Domingo, Gallegos, the three Beulluire
brothers, Bilbao, Gimenez, Aranda, Carbonero, are only a few of the
artists whose names are known to all art collectors, and who work in
Spain. Villegas has settled in Rome. The exhibition of modern Spanish
paintings in the London Guildhall last year (1901) was a revelation to
many English people, even to artists, of the work that is being done at
the present day by Spanish painters, both at home and in Paris and Rome.
In sculpture, also, Spain can boast many artists of the highest class.
The drama in Spain has in all times occupied an important place. The
traditions of the past names, such as Calderon, Lope de Vega, Tirso de
Molina, Moreto, and others, cannot exactly be said to be kept up, for
these are, most of them, of European fame; but in a country where the
theatre is the beloved entertainment of all classes, and perhaps
especially so of the poor or the working people, there are never wanting
dramatists who satisfy the needs of their auditors, and whose works are
sometimes translated into foreign languages, if not actually acted on an
alien stage. It would be impossible and useless to give a mere list of
the names of modern dramatists, but that of Ayala is perhaps best known
abroad, and his work most nearly approaches to that of his great
forerunners. His _Consuelo_, _El tejado de Vidrio_, and _Tanto por ciento_
show great power and extraordinary observation. His style, too, is
perfect. Señor Tamago, who persistently hides his name under the
pseudonym of "Joaquin Estebanez," may also be ranked amongst the leaders
of the modern Spanish drama, and his _Drama Nuevo_ is a masterpiece.
Echegaray belongs to the school of the old drama, whose characteristic
is that virtue is always rewarded and vice punished. His plays are very
popular because they touch an audience even to tears, and he has several
followers or imitators. The comedies of manners and satirical plays are
generally the work of Eusebio Blasco, Ramos Carrion, Echegaray the
younger, Estremada, Alverez, though there are others whose names are
legion. Echegaray is really a man of genius. A clever engineer and
professor of mathematics, he was Minister of Finance during the early
days of the Revolution. His first play took the world of Madrid by
surprise and even by storm. _La Esposa del Vengador_ had an
unprecedented success, and at least thirty subsequent dramas, in prose
and in verse, have made this mathematician, engineer, and financier one
of the most famous men of his day. His art and his methods are purely
Spanish. I have already referred to the phenomenal success of Perez
Galdós's _Electra_ within the last few months. It must, however, be
ascribed chiefly to the moment of its presentation rather than to any
superlative merit in the drama. It is well written, which is what may be
said of almost all Spanish plays, for the language is in itself so
dignified and so beautiful that, if it be only pure and not disfigured
by foreign slang, it is always sonorous and charming. To the state of
the popular temper, however, and the coincidence of the political events
already referred to must be ascribed the fact that a piece like
_Electra_ should cause the fall of a Government, and bring within
dangerous distance the collapse of the monarchy itself. The excitement
which it still produces, wherever played, is now in a great part due to
the foolish action of some of the bishops and the fact that individual
clerics use their pulpits to condemn it, and attempt to forbid its being
read or seen.
Spain is not particularly rich in great actors, although she has always
a goodly number who come up to a fair standard of excellence. The great
actors of the day in Madrid are MarÃa Guerrero and Fernando Diaz de
Mendoza. They obtained a perfect ovation during the last season in the
play, _El loco Dios_, of Echegaray - a work which gives every opportunity
for the display of first-class talent in both actors, and which led to a
fury of enthusiasm for the popular dramatist, which must have recalled
to him the early days of his great successes.
Since the beginning of the eighteenth century, Spain has had three great
Academies, which, even in the troublous times of her history, have done
good work in the domains of history, language, and the fine arts; but it
is since the Revolution that they have become of real importance in the
intellectual development of the nation, and other societies have been
added for the encouragement of scientific research and music. The
earliest of her academies was that of language, known as the Royal
Spanish Academy. It is exactly on the lines of the Académie Française.
Founded in 1713, its statutes were somewhat modified in 1847, and again
in 1859. There are only thirty-six members, about eighty corresponding
members in different provinces of Spain, and an unlimited, or at least
undetermined, number of foreign and honorary correspondents. Besides the
Central Society in Madrid, the Royal Spanish Academy has many
corresponding branches in South America, such as the Columbian, the
Equatorial, the Mexican, and those of Venezuela and San Salvador. The
existence of academies of language in the South American States does not
appear to effect much in the way of maintaining the purity of Castilian
among them, for South American Spanish, as spoken at least, is not much
more like the original language than the South American Spaniard is like