^^ ^s-- A CORNER OF SPAIN BY MIRIAM COLES HARRIS AUTHOR OF "rUTLEDGE," ETC. BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY MDCCCXCVIII COPYRIGHT, 1898, BY MIRIAM COLES HARRIS ALL RIGHTS RESERVED CONTENTS CHAP. I. EN ROUTE .... II. GIBRALTAR .... III. FROM ALGECIRAS TO MALAGA IV. MALAGA V. LIFE IN A CONVENT . VL THE OLD FORTRESS VII. IN THE CONVENT GARDEN VIII. A SPANISH CURE . IX. SPANISH LIMITATIONS X. A MIGRATING FAMILY . XI. IN THE MALAGA MOUNTAINS XII. BEHIND THE SCENES IN THE MALAGA BULL RING XIII. A SPANISH MILK-ROUTE . XIV. BLOOD POWER XV. AN ANDALUSIAN COOK XVI. mXlAGA'S BISHOP . XVII. MALAGA'S MANNERS . XVIIL MATINAL XIX. IN THE SEVILLE BULL RING XX. AT THE SEVILLE FAIR . PAGE I lO 20 32 45 52 58 66 72 80 87 "3 123 127 131 139 149 158 16s 183 A CORNER OF SPAIN EN ROUTE A TROPICAL Christmas on Long Island, and a New Year's day in New York that might have passed muster for a Florida May-day, had only whetted our thirst for a Southern winter. This could not last long ; such weather was unseasonable ; we wanted to go where it was seasonable. A trip in Southern waters ; warm weather the second day out ; no fogs, no Banks to pass, none of the terrors of the North Atlantic, — that was our happy pro- gramme. We sailed out of the harbor on a balmy morning, strains of music and scent of I A CORNER OF SPAIN flowers filling the air. The Kaiser is a fine ship, the cabins are full of appliances for comfort, enough furniture for an ordi- nary sleeping-room, and as much free space for moving about as in an average New York drawing-room. We sat down to our first meal with a buoyant feeling that we had made a wise choice in taking the Mediterranean route; our fellow- voyagers' faces expressed the same happy conviction. Alas, before nightfall, we saw it all d'un autre (vil. To be brief, "the North Pole wasn't in it," as our jaundiced Western neighbor at table said. " Give me the North Atlantic every time. Give me Banks, fogs, icebergs. I know all about 'em, and I have n't expected any- thing else, but deliver me from 'trips in Southern waters ' crusted with icicles, from ' warm weather the second day out ' that cuts like a knife, and from all such 'tropical seas ' as these ! " P'or six dreadful days, no one, not even 2 f\ EN ROUTE the embittered Westerner, left his berth ; in all the abject misery of prolonged seasickness there was plenty of time to ask, Had the decision to leave home been such a wise one ? In the dead unhappy night the great waves broke on the deck over the cabin with the roar of artillery. With nerves grown wild listening to the racing of the screw, your imagination was not above dwelling upon possibilities of all kinds. Might there not be a secret bit of mechanism hidden by anarchist fiends in some innocuous-looking bale of merchandise in the hold, ticking its way out, till it struck the ship's hour of doom ? Might there not be some low-lying derelict stealthily coming towards us under cover of the inky blackness, to stab our good Kaiser under the fifth rib like another Joab and send us to the bottom ? Put- ting derelicts and dynamite and home- sickness out of the question, we were paying a high price for the subtle plea- sure of foreign travel and its mental 3 A CORNER OF SPAIN stimulus. The abandoned squalor and in- delicacy of a seasick cabin ; the crash- ing of crockery ; the rolling about of steamer-trunks, valises, medicine-chests ; the discomfort of unmade berths, and sore and bruised limbs ; the horror of cold scraps of food swallowed without lifting the head ; a dominant sense of degradation and disorder, — all this had to be paid for the coveted enlargement of experience, for gratifying the lust of change, for the sweetness of going where by nature and Providence we did not seem intended to go. Six, nearly seven days of this, and then the storm abated and the sea went down. Sick and wretched beings crawled on deck into the brilliant sunshine ; the deck stewards began their belated reign ; steamer-chairs and rugs became matters of interest. Late on Friday we passed in and out among the ravishing Azores, not near enough "to see the whites of our enemy's eyes," but quite close enough to 4 EN ROUTE admire the whiteness of his pretty houses, and the picturesqueness of his mountain roads, and to hear the roar of the great surf that beat upon his rocky sides. By this time the air was balmy, and from that on, " Southern waters " were no fiction. People walked about the broad decks without wraps and without hats in the equally exquisite sunlight and moon- light. We dined on deck, and lay in our steamer-chairs till all hours at night. Every day some new " stowaway " crept up and looked about; there was good music, there were pretty children, there were queer people to look at, and even pleasant ones to talk to. The jolly cap- tain rolled about and chaffed everybody. It was the very poetry of sea-going : never such stars, never such soft life-giving winds ; what one ate and drank was nec- tar and ambrosia, and one had the appetite of childhood to eat and drink it with. But it was not the second day out, as the prospectus said, and it was on the tenth 5 A CORNER OF SPAIN and not the eighth clay that we sighted Spain. We had lost all that by the storm. The first land we saw was the yellow Spanish coast, and then the African mountains loomed up on the other hand, and we found ourselves drawing towards the far-famed Straits. It was a pictur- esque entree into the Old World. The all -golden afternoon had not begun to wane as we passed through them, the great headlands of the African mountains rising on our right, and the low Spanish coast lying on our left, the sea as blue as the heavens and as smooth. Up on the bridge the captain had pointed out to us Trafalgar, then Tarifa, and on the other side Tangier and the Fez wildernesses, whose ranges of low hills the declining sun told off one by one in graduated haze. Our huge ship moved steadily on, its decks swarming with a holiday crowd, gay and eager. We began to wonder, like the French maid who wished she could be on 6 EN ROUTE the sidewalk and see herself ride by in the carriage, if we were not as interesting to the shore as the shore was to us. Everything became a little histrionic ; the rapture of the crowd as the Rock of Gi- braltar hove in sight was exaggerated, the singing of the men raising and then dropping the great anchor seemed done for effect ; everything was so out of the commonplace that we doubted it. Just at this point we were called down to dinner, a meal of supererogation for those who were to land at Gibraltar; and when we came up from it, the even- ing light shone upon the picturesque town climbing up the base of the Rock which was towering over our heads, and palm- trees, and stucco houses, and Moorish towers and stone ramparts mixed them- selves up confusedly. The crazy little steam-launch had come out to us ; the water was black with small boats ; men with Moorish things to sell, and boatmen, and couriers, climbed up the side of the 7 A CORNER OF SPAIN ship and boarded her. It was a precious 7neUc. Then in the midst of it all, we had to collect our wits and to pay our fees. The matter of fees is enough to take the romance out of a troubadour. It is a thing you cannot be forehanded about, even if you mean to be free-handed. It is a traveler's axiom never to fee your servant till you need no more service from him, as gratitude is a sense of favors to come. In the thickening twilight, therefore, we had to dispense the strange coin of which we had scarcely yet mastered the values, and gold and silver were of one com- plexion in the dimness. If the Teutons of the Kaiser were not satisfied, they did not tell us, and we left them with a brief feeling of duty done, only to fall into other complications be- fore we reached the shore. Every one who touched our luggage felt he had a claim upon us ; by the time we were half across the great stone quay at Gibraltar, 8 EN ROUTE now bathed in moonlight, we were hope- lessly compromised with three porters, two boatmen, and a courier from the Royal Hotel. It was all very distressing, but we were on dry land again, derelicts and dynamite were fears of the past, and the lights, the sentinels, the massive gateways, the narrow winding streets told us the dry land was the Rock of Gibraltar, and we were where we had never been before; a thing of itself to promise happiness. 9 II GIBRALTAR It is always wise to know some one who is at home in the place to which you go, even for a week. We had occasion, while we were at Gibraltar, to bless the friend who warned the American Consul of our coming, and asked him to look after us. By his grace we were delivered from the miseries of the Royal Hotel, which is as bad as the best hotel in a civilized city can well be. It seemed superficially clean, but a pervading smell of carbolic roused all sorts of suspicions in the mind. The bread was sour, the butter beyond belief ; and whatever vir- tue the rest of the food had was neutral- ized by the fact that you could not get it, for there was absolutely no service. lo GIBRALTAR Therefore when we found ourselves in- stalled in fine large rooms, the great win- dows of which commanded a sight of two continents, and all Gibraltar and its bay- to boot, and in a house immaculately clean, and where the food was thoroughly English and good, the service fair, and the price one third less than that of the hotel, we added to our tourist's credo an article expressing faith in the virtue of knowing some one who knows more than you do of the place you go to. Wheatley Terrace is the name of these long estab- lished lodgings, and seems as well known at the post office and shops as that of any hotel. Gibraltar not being Spain, nor yet geo- graphically England, one feels a certain bewilderment in straying about in streets bearing all sorts of English names, and swarming with all sorts of foreign people. Parcels Post brings you parcels delivered by a Spaniard who does not speak Eng- lish ; in the Moorish market you cannot II A CORNER OF SPAIN even buy an egg in your mother tongue, and you may as well give up finding your way about if you do not speak Spanish. Turbaned Moors, cut-throat looking Span- iards, Jews, Greeks, sunburned sailors of all the nations of Europe, mingle with British soldiers and American tourists in the narrow streets. English women driv- ing jaunty cobs, officers riding well-bred horses, artillery wagons, peasant funerals, donkeys staggering under heavy loads, mules with gay trappings, all jostle each other in the steep winding ways of this unique town, which is as picturesque as Italy and as clean as England, as old as Helen of Troy, and as smart as a French provincial city. Above you towers the Rock, gray and green, direct into the sky ; below you is a sea of roofs diversi- fied with palm-trees and gardens, and beyond spreads the blue bay dotted with sails, and across it the hills of Spain. You point in one direction and some one says airily, " Oh, that *s Africa," and in another, 12 GIBRALTAR " That ? Why, that 's the Mediterranean, don't you know," and observe casually of another blue strip that there goes the Atlantic. It mixes one up. Here is a seven-miles bit of Great Britain, from which you could throw a biscuit into Spain and a bomb into Africa, and where you have to put English stamps on your letters and can eat oatmeal "to your breakfast." It always seems a trifle dramatic on England's part to keep up Gibraltar at an expense of a million of dollars and more a year for the simple wages and subsistence of its five thousand men in uniform. Heaven knows what she spends annually on repairs and material and that sort of thing. (She has already sunk more than fifty millions sterling on the "plant.") It is like one of those great English estates where the lordly owner does not spend a fortnight a year, but where everything is kept up as though he were coming to-morrow. He can ill 13 A CORNER OF SPAIN afford to do it, but neither can he afford to forego the prestige. To be sure, Gibraltar is the lock of the Mediterranean, and John Bull has the key in his pocket. He likes to feel that, and to rattle it around with some other im- aginary keys and titles which he keeps there. He thinks that rattle awes the nations ; he has some old-fashioned ideas about human nature ; he has not quite as- similated its complex character. We are of a younger generation of actors ; we know the day of playing to the gallery is past. Apropos of galleries, those of Gibral- tar are the great sight ; there is where a good deal of the fifty millions ^erling has gone. The vast Rock is honeycombed with them, modern catacombs, but spick and span, and devoid of dead men's bones. The views from the embrasures are mag- nificent, the order and perfection of every- thing complete. It is all point device, from the guns up to the gunners, but 14 GIBRALTAR you never get over the feeling that it is a show place, and nobody will ever live in it, and it had better be given up before the family are quite beggared. A charming afternoon drive is through the Alameda to Europa Point. The Ala- meda is a beautiful endless garden, full of palm and orange and eucalyptus and all sorts of trees you are not likely to know, and all sorts of flowers that you are, but these last so exaggerated as to stagger you, "growed out o' knowledge; " a heli- otrope hedge eight feet high, geraniums the size of scrub-oaks, arbutilum waving their coral bells high in the air above you. The road to Europa Point winds in and out among barracks and government buildings and officers' quarters, all in perfect order, amid delicious verdure, and all commanding beautiful views of the sea. One would think it the very poetry of "soldiering" to be stationed here, w^ithin four days of London, and yet in a climate where the sunshine seems 15 A CORNER OF SPAIN eternal and the flowers bloom all the year, and where there is so little to do. But in point of fact the officers loath it, and with the men it is equally unpopular. Better fifty years of England than a cycle of Gibraltar. Socially Gibraltar does not equal Malta and some other garrison towns. The crack regiments are not sent here, I am told, and the flavor of life is insipid in consequence. The Hunt- ing Club has good sport, and there are capital covers. The meets, of course, are all in Spain, some of them very distant. One includes crossing the bay to Alge- ciras and "training " nearly an hour, but once there, the sport is said to be excel- lent. The nearer meets are across the Spanish lines beyond the cork woods ; the last one while we were there was sixteen miles off, a tiresome distance in that warm climate. There are tennis, and badmin- ton, and polo, and cricket, and rowing clubs, and two or three theatres ; the Garrison Library, in its beautiful garden, i6 GIBRALTAR is delightful ; the governor has to give two balls a year, bongri malgre ; there are subscription dances, and masquerades, and dinners, and teas ad itatiseam. But Gibraltar, sunny, picturesque, historic, — this magnificent monument of national resource, this museum of military device, this grand work of supererogation above and beyond all the requirements to which it can possibly be put, — is a beastly bore, a dismal hole, to the officers stationed here in it. But perhaps it is only their fagon de parley} The British lion seems to have laid his paw heavily on the Gibraltar cabman, who 1 It must be admitted the soft climate is enervating, far more so than any part of Spain we saw ; there is something in its situation under the Rock which makes the air insup- portably warm and stagnant. The other side of the Rock, Europa Point, seems fresh and invigorating by comparison, and Tangier, swept by strong ocean winds, is delicious even in midsummer. A second visit in the early spring increased this impression of Gibraltar, and one often heard casual allusions to " a touch of Rock fever," among the officers' families. None of them are very well or very happy there, and the wish of every one seems to be to get away. 17 A CORNER OF SPAIN is inevitably a Spaniard. He is the only- cabman in Europe who can be imposed upon. He never asks a poiir-boirc, and if you give him less than his due through ignorance of Spanish money or language, or of the code governing drivers of hack- ney carriages which H. B. M. has pasted up in his poor little vehicle, he rarely re- monstrates, but looks plaintively down at the insufificient coin in his palm, and al- most imperceptibly shakes his head. Two pesetas an hour is what he is entitled to receive for driving two people up the face of that stupendous rock. On even the gentlest declivities, seen at a little dis- tance, the horse looks like a fly crawling up a pane of glass. When you pay the man eighty cents for a drive of two hours you feel it is blood-money, and that you have certainly taken a year out of his horse's life. The road to Europa Point is no exception to this rule. The latter part of it is indeed precipitous. The views are beyond description beautiful as you i8 GIBRALTAR round the Point and climb up the Rock to the governor's cottage. Awhile after passing this, which in its shut-up condi- tion looks a cross between a bowling alley and a bathing-house, the cabman stops. He draws the line here, or perhaps H. B. M. draws it, and the rest of the climbing must be a personal matter. A sunny afternoon on this sheer height is most sweet and still ; leagues and leagues of blue Mediterranean stretch out to the horizon ; you see the faint outline of the African mountains, the purple of the nearer Spanish Sierras ; the gray Rock above mounts, as always, straight into the sky. You do not wonder so much that England does not want to give up Gi- braltar. 19 Ill FROM ALGECIRAS TO MALAGA It is foolhardy to travel in a country where you know nothing of the language ; and we had fool's luck on our first day's journey in Spain. The day before we had gone out to look for a Cook's office in Gi- braltar in which to buy our tickets. For- tunately one had been opened there within two weeks. It was very spic-and-span, and a pompous little Spaniard with white teeth told us he was sure travel in Spain would rapidly increase now that it was known there was a Cook's office in Gibraltar. I said I supposed they were established in all the principal cities. He confessed that Gibraltar and Madrid were the only places as yet blessed by this source of sweetness and light. This was bad news, 20 FROM ALGECIRAS TO MALAGA for there is worry avoided in buying your tickets from an English-speaking person, and in being able to ask questions about the route with a reasonable prospect of understanding the answers. The process of buying a railway ticket at a Spanish station is scarcely less complicated than that of buying a house and lot at home. The morning we lefj Gibraltar, we got to the ticket office half an hour before the boat was to start, having our tickets already in our pockets ; and notwithstand- ing, we were in grave danger of being left. Cook's agent was waiting for us, in a fine new uniform which included a baton. He marshaled us up to the desk where we were to show our tickets and to pay the extra weight on our trunks, which were left outside to be weighed. Three men, exclusive of little Cook and his baton, were engaged fifteen minutes in examining the already purchased tickets, in entering their numbers in a book, in marking and punching them, and in requiring our signa- 21 A CORNER OF SPAIN tures and assents to something important, what of course we did not know. Outside, a mob was assisting at the weighing of the two trunks. The welkin rang with their loud acclaim. What that was all about we did not know then, nor do we know now. After a long delay, the result of the weighing was announced ; there was more Spanish discussion and gesticula- tion, and then Cook's little man came and told me there was two dollars to pay, and I paid it. Leastways, I gave him an Eng- lish sovereign out of which to pay it. Then ensued the wildest uproar of all. All four men brandished their arms about and talked as if some one's life were in danger. I felt I had a right, to know whose, and considered that as I was paying a dollar for the English of Cook's man, I was entitled to ask him. He explained to me with gentle courtesy and in very broken English, that the ticket agent did not know whether he was justified in chan- ging an English sovereign. " But," said 22 FROM ALGECIRAS TO MALAGA the little man with dignity, "I tell him, I take the response." The ticket agent finally went to a chest of drawers and, unlocking one, with re- luctance counted out the change. All this time the other men watched him, and talked a good deal. Then the little Cook took the money and counted it out to me, and I put it away in my purse, as he assured me it was all right. I am sure I hope it was. I had no means of judging. Our hand luggage meanwhile had been put into a rowboat to be taken out to the ferry-boat which runs across the bay to Algeciras, where we were to take the train. The rowboat proved to be consecrate to some other use, and a great clamor ensued as the things were all fished up out of it by two or three porters, and carried to another boat, and dropped down into it. Fortunately we were the only passengers registering that morning, or we should never have got off. Meantime it began to rain furiously ; the 23 A CORNER OF SPAIN whole quay seemed under water in three minutes. So much time had been con- sumed, it seemed probable we should be left. But at last a boat was brought up to the wharf, and in a tropical deluge we went down some steps, and at a happy lurch of the rocking skiff were shot on board by the boatmen. Our baggage was covered with an old sail, but several men were also sheltered under it, and all the place left for us was in the stern of the boat, with a pool of water on the narrow seat, and standing-room in a lake. I pre- ferred to stand. I have never been exposed to so heavy a rain, and after we got outside the mole, the waves were high. As one huge one sent us up on its crest, I thought I was going overboard, and caught the arm of a man standing beside me. When we got down off the watery mountain into a quieter bit of sea, I looked at the man whose arm I was still grasping. I am afraid, if I had seen him on dry land and under circumstances of 24 FROM ALGECIRAS TO MALAGA less peril, I should have thought he was a middle-aged brigand. But he was so touched by this mark of confidence that his expression was benign. He of course could not speak English, but he managed by gesture to assure me that there was no danger and that he would look after us, which he continued to do, with un- obtrusive kindness, all through the long day's journey. If England would spend some of the money she wastes on projectiles in build- ing a pier at Gibraltar, travelers would be spared the discomfort of this primitive ferry ; but I suppose she is not obliged to concern herself with travelers. It was anything but pleasant, in a pouring rain, to bob up and down beside the little steam tug, waiting for «a favorable wave to precipitate us on board her ; and why our luggage was not spilled over into the sea, and soaked with salt as well as rain water, I do not know. It takes the tug half an hour to cross the bay. Our 25 A CORNER OF SPAIN spirits were very low ; the custom-house lay before us, and Cook's man had left us. We were on a deep black sea of Spanish, not an English-speaking craft in sight. After we left the boat, one of its officials led us, like dumb driven cattle, to the custom-house. The whole male popu- lation of Algeciras assisted at the exami- nation of our trunks. They stood looking on with unblushing interest, as tray after tray was taken out and put back, and they seemed disappointed when our keys were restored to us. We were then waved forward to the train, which was waiting for us patiently. It would have had to wait a good while, if there had been three or four more passengers. We had a compartment to ourselves, and were very comfortable. As soon as we were sheltered from the rain, it stopped and the sun came out gloriously. Our wet clothes and recent discomforts were for- gotten in the delights of the journey. We had made provision for being tired and 26 FROM ALGECIRAS TO MALAGA for amusing ourselves, but from nine, when we left terraced and picturesque Alge- ciras, till twilight settled down over the land as we drew near Malaga, there was not a moment when we were willing to turn from the windows of the carriage and to forego the landscape. The road from Algeciras to Bobadilla had then been open only a year or so. It is an EngHsh enterprise, and must have been built in the interests of civilization alone, for I should think there was not traffic or travel enough to pay for it; the outlay must have been enormous. There is much tunneling and difficult grading ; but labor in Spain is cheap, and the cost of running the road cannot be great. Peasant women wave the flags at the crossings ; a small dinner-bell is tinkled at the station when the train is to resume its leisurely route after a leisurely pause. Very rarely the engine makes a faint piping little whistle. The guard takes off his hat when he comes into the car- 27 A CORNER OF SPAIN riage to look at your ticket. It all seems child-like, and innocent, and sweet. The absence of rush and smoke, and shriek and cinder is Arcadian. The arrival of the train seems the event of the day at every station, and all the villagers are collected, as well as their dogs and don- keys, to gaze at it. Nobody appears to arrive or depart on it ; a very thin mail- bag is exchanged, and an occasional jug or basket would cover the sum of the in- voice of freight. The air grew cold as we ascended the mountains, and it was pitiful to see the blue peasants in their thin cotton clothes. But they evidently did not know they were cold and took no means to prevent it, such as stamping their feet or walking up and down in the sun, but stood about like sheep and looked at the train. They do not wear any costume, and save a gay handkerchief tied over the heads of the women, and a red scarf bound round the waists of the men, there is nothing to 28 FROM ALGECIRAS TO MALAGA distinguish them from the corresponding class in the American Far West or Far East. The very ill-fitting shoddy clothes of the men might have been made in Chatham Street, and the thin calico of the women's skirts been bought over the counter of any village store in New Eng- land. But they are picturesque for all that, with their swarthy skins and dark eyes ; and every group one sees is of interest, as is every inch of the road from Algeciras to Malaga. The first few miles out of Algeciras reminded us of the Roman Campagna ; if only an occasional peasant in sheepskin breeches and dan- gling coat and gay hat had been in sight, we might have believed we were looking our last across the plain upon the dome of St. Peter's rather than upon the Rock of Gibraltar. But Spain is very individual in its roughness and its grandeur, its rich- ness of vegetation, and its poverty of im- plement ; it is at once a brigand and a baby, a fanatic and a bull-fighter ; it is devout and 29 A CORNER OF SPAIN dissolute, contemptible and magnificent, but it is always and inalienably Spain. The scenery along this new railway is more continuously striking than almost any I remember. You go from one range of sierras to another ; you have scarcely subdued your raptures over one wild gorge than you come upon another cleft mountain and tumbling cascade which obliterates the first. Crags crowned with Moorish ruins, villages climbing up green hillsides, rugged mountains and sterile plains, paint each other out with rapid brush. Orchards of gray-green olives, and of pale pink almond blossoms, groves of eucalyptus, sentinels of cypress, palm, banana, and cork trees, — their foreign- ness is fast growing familiar. The poor little huts, into whose bareness you can look through unglazed windows and open doors, pinch your heart with pity, while the upturned face of some sunburnt happy boy swells it with pleasure. Poverty could go no lower than the dark, damp, sodden 30 FROM ALGECIRAS TO MALAGA hut ; nature could strike a note no higher than the divine sun and sky and soil of Andalusia. The names of the stations slip past you almost unheeded. In a land where there is no Baedeker and only two Cooks, you must beat your own music out. Castel- lar, Ximena, Gaucin, Ronda, Teba, " put strange memories in your head " from Moorish wars and the Marquis of Cadiz, down to the days of Sedan and poor Eugenie, forlorn Countess of Teba. Ron- da was worth a week, and we only gave it half an hour. At Bobadilla we left our pastoral railway, and took the train to Malaga. The scenery, till the dark came down and made an end of it, was more beautiful than that we had been watching all day, but enthusiasm has its limits, and a sunset effect through a mountain pass, a tinkling cascade, or a notable group of palms passed with languid comment. We " ate them as common things " now and did not try to characterize them. 31 IV MALAGA MALAGA seems the embodiment of the Spanish fate, fate meaning generally character. Here is a spot which seems designed by nature to be the health resort of Europe ; a perfect climate, absolutely faultless for eight months of the year ; a thermometer which does not vary five degrees Farenheit month in, month out ; an inexhaustible supply of the purest water ; fruits and vegetables in lavish abundance ; fish of all varieties and great excellence ; direct communica- tion with England, France, and Italy by sea, and railway connections of course. The city, in the Psalmist's language, is ** beautiful for situation." It lies in a rich valley about ten miles in extent, with 32 MALAGA mountains on three sides, which shelter it from all the cold winds, while on the south it is open to the sea. The near hills are green with verdure, while red and yellow, brown and gray mix in the coloring of the sterile masses of rock that rise beyond them into rough, lofty out- lines ; and beyond them again are the snow-white distant mountains. The sun- shine is absolutely unfailing ; an average of thirty-nine days of rain in the year makes the dryness of the air phenomenal. You find you must have had a sore throat all your life without knowing it ; breath- ing is a revelation ; digestion takes care of itself. The atmosphere is transparent, the sea and the sky of a marvelous blue ; the soil is generous, like the people; it looks like rocks and rubbish, but out of it grows tropical vegetation without any apparent moisture. Palm, banana, orange, eucalyptus, and cypress trees fill the gar- dens, olive and almond orchards cover the hills. All sorts of amiable flowers which 33 A CORNER OF SPAIN we cultivate at home, such as periwinkle, carnations, oxalis, and sweet alyssum wander over the rocks wild. The rose, with all its train of sweet summer flowers, walks through the entire year in rich abundance. And all this wasted, as far as the out- side world goes (and the inside pocket of the Malaga citizen). I suppose the poor little half-naked children in the narrow streets benefit by it ; and the better class of the Spanish population are none the worse for it, but they might be so much the better. Malaga in point of fact is an uninter- esting Spanish town with dirty streets and squalid surroundings. There is not an English chemist or grocer in the place. If you want things, you have to do with- out them. There are two lines of tram- ways in the city, in which the men smoke with the doors closed. The hackney car- riages are miserable affairs, and the pave- ments in the city so rough, you are shaken 34 MALAGA to insensibility before you get beyond them into the country. There is in this city of over 160,000 inhabitants one mail a day which arrives about seven p. m. and is not delivered till the following morn- ing. There is no postal money order sys- tem ; if you wanted things from France or England, you should not have come to Malaga. There are few sights to see, and there is nothing to buy. They have whitewashed out all the Moorish re- mains that were not too big for the brush, and while they should be commended for trying to keep clean, it is a pity they should not make more of the antiquity of their city, which was Phoenician before it was Roman, and Moorish before it was Spanish. The modern Malaga citizen of the better class seems to think very little of such distinction ; his ambition runs to local politics and to the mild amenities of Spanish social life. Several new avenues have been laid out at great expense along the sea, and the 35 A CORNER OF SPAIN Camino Nuevo, which goes up over the mountain, is like a bit of the Cornice Road. The Caleta, a large new portion of the city built out towards the east, is very pretty, all the houses commanding views of the sea, and being embowered in verdure. The Alameda is broad and long, and has fine trees, and ends near the port with a beautiful fountain which Charles V. ordered at Genoa for his huge misfit of a palace at Granada. It never got there, but after many adventures by land and sea, ended up in Malaga. The Calle de Marquis de Larios is really a leaf out of Paris, only the fine shops have nothing that is particularly pretty in them. The hotels are fairly comfortable. The theatres are said to be bad. There is a bull-ring, but bull-fights are a joy of the springtime, and had not yet begun. From all this it will be seen that there is not much to tempt the traveler away from the Riviera with its incessant amuse- ments and its natural beauties. But the 36 MALAGA Riviera is more or less damp in all parts ; the chill that falls at sunset is felt keenly, and there is a suspicion of malaria always. Here the transition from day to night brings no shock, and there is absolutely no malaria. The death-rate is very low, even under the evil conditions of squalor and starvation in which the lower class live. If Malaga could be generously brought up to the standard of the Rivi- era towns, it could not fail of popularity. Spain is not so worn out a field for the idle, and for the ill there is but one attrac- tion, and that is health, here more surely found than there. A corporal's guard of dull English people yearly come here with their invalids and take them home cured, but they do not spread the matter, having no interest in the enlargement of Malaga's borders, and not being by nature of a pro- selyting turn. Living here, of course, is cheap as com- pared with America or with France. The rent of a villa on the Caleta or an apart- 37. A CORNER OF SPAIN ment on the Alameda would probably be much less than corresponding quarters in any winter resort in Europe. On less favorite streets no doubt the rates would be much more moderate. Servants' wages are very low; the servants, however, as a rule, are not very good. The food is cheap ; the meat ought to be nothing, it is so poor, but no doubt it has a nominal price. The vegetables and fruit and fish, as I said, are fit for a prince's table, and so are the wines. Sweets are the Spanish passion, and in consequence the con- fectioners' shops are full of exquisite dainties. Even the men delight in eating bonbons. The society in a Spanish city uncon- taminated by tourists is worth studying. There are enough English settled here to take off the dreariness of absolute isola- tion. Spanish as a language can be super- ficially acquired in a short time, and a knowledge of the Spanish character with like ease in a like imperfect manner. 38 MALAGA Malaga no doubt is provincial, but so I should think is every town in Spain, save probably Madrid. The married women all wear the mantilla ; the young women dress in indifferent French style. (They wear the mantilla, of course, at church.) The beauty of the Malaguenas is much extolled. The way of living is simple. There is no dinner-giving, and the even- ing entertainments are of the simplest character. People pay each other visits in the evening as they did in New York forty years ago. The walk along the mole is the great meeting-place in winter, and in the summer all, even the children, stay on the Alameda till after midnight. The great people have villas in the sub- urbs where they go in the summer, and where they drive their friends in the win- ter. But as these are only a few miles away, the change of air cannot be very marked. The lives and loves of the young people are just such as we have always heard 39 A CORNER OF SPAIN they were, the guitar strumming, the love-making at the grated windows, the ogling on the mole, the murmured pas- sion on the moonlit Alameda ; nothing seems to be nineteenth century but the clothes, which have only an antiquity of two or three years. "Pelar lapava," "plucking the turkey" is Spanish slang for the flirting that goes on at the grating, where the lover stands on the pavement, and the fair one sits on the window-seat inside. The term had its origin generations ago, when a maid, being summoned repeatedly by her mistress, excused herself repeatedly by calling out that she was plucking the turkey, while in fact she was listening to the beguiling words of a lover outside. The story is not very funny, nor the ex- pression very suggestive, but it seems to have embedded itself in the language. Our Western "talking turkey" no doubt comes from it. The amorous ogling at the theatre and on the promenade re- 40 MALAGA minds one of one's schooldays, but with grown-up men and women in Spain this seems to be " how it takes them " still. Sometimes marriage is evolved out of this pastime, but usually it seems only a fash- ion suited to the sentimental southern character. When, however, the matri- monial idea enters into the matter, and the youthful pair decide they cannot be happy unless the turkey-plucking goes on in cetermim^ they do not act in the affair themselves. Contrary to the usages of other countries, they do not ask the father on either side, but it is to the madre that the delicate task is assigned. The mother of the young man goes to the mother of the young woman and asks the hand of her daughter for her son. Fancy the rashness of invoking the mother-in-law element at this early stage. An amusing part of Spanish etiquette, or the want of it, is the general use of the first name. A woman always keeps her own full name, adding her husband's in 41 A CORNER OF SPAIN a casual explanatory way. For instance, Miss Mary Smith having married Mr. John Brown, her ordinary visiting card would read Mary Smith DE Brown. That would suit the strong-minded ones of our own race who revolt at being merged in the existence of another. A Spanish woman is not called Donna or Senora till quite past middle life. You go out to return some visits and are em- barrassed to find you don't know for whom to ask at the door. You know you want a Maria Theresa, or a Concha, or a Pe- pita, charming young married women whom you have met when they called upon you, but you have no clue to their husbands' names. They use their cards as little as possible, and their titles not at all. They certainly make little pretense of any kind, but are simple, kindly, and sincere. The most original feature of the Span- 42 MALAGA ish matrimonial manner, however, is what is called "the deposit." That means, if a young girl wishes to marry a man of whom her parents disapprove, she cannot be forced to give him up. On the con- trary, she can force them into consenting to the marriage, if she is determined enough. If she has made a choice dis- pleasing to them any time after the age of sixteen, she has only to go to court and state her grievance, and the judge " deposits her," that is, he takes her from her father's house and places her in the care of some disinterested person. She is forbidden to hold communication with either lover or parent for a certain length of time, a few months generally, in aggra- vated cases perhaps a year or two. Con- vents are very convenient places in which to deposit such young persons, and the nuns not infrequently have an opportu- nity of seeing the perturbation and distress which they have escaped in leaving the naughty world themselves. If, the pro- 43 A CORNER OF SPAIN bation ended, the girl still adheres to her determination to marry the man she has chosen, no one can prevent her ; she can demand her doty and her parents have to submit. 44 V LIFE IN A CONVENT If all convents are like the one on the hill of Barcenillas, they are among the least gloomy places I have ever known. We had a pretty suite of rooms opening on a sunny corridor. The four great windows of this corridor looked into the cloister, where sometimes, through the blinds, we watched " a bevy of the maids of heaven " in their deep violet habits and white veils laughing and talking together in their hour of recreation, walking about among the trees of the garden with, if not the innocence, something very like the joy of the unfallen Eve. Our pretty rooms, a dining-room and two bedrooms, were on the front of the convent ; the eucalyptus trees, shedding 45 A CORNER OF SPAIN their bark in long thin strips, shivered their slender silver-green leaves before the windows. There was an avenue of them on each side leading down the steep decline towards the gate; a garden stretched in front between the two roads ; beyond the wall that shut off the convent grounds from the street, there were some low stucco houses and an olive orchard and some fields on one hand, and then, something more than a quarter of a mile away, the ground rose suddenly into a steep sugar-loaf hill, a "Calvary," crowned with a small white chapel, with white crosses marking the stations up it. On the other hand were the flat towers and low roofs of the Victoria, the church built on the spot where the Catholic Kings pitched their tent, and heard the first mass said after the surrender of the city. Behind the old church rose vine- clad hills, and beyond them ruddy rocks and gray bald heights grew gradually up into mountains; and above all this, the 46 LIFE IN A CONVENT glorious blue sky and the unfailing sun- shine of Andalusia. Within, all was pretty and dainty and scrupulously clean. The sunny windows of the corridor were ordinarily full of flowers, gentle and simple, — roses and jessamine and violets from the garden, — though it was January, or wild flowers from the mountain-side. Our tables were heaped with books from the convent library and from abroad. We did, as nearly as mortals can do, what we pleased. We were unmolested, unhurried, at ease ; and served for love and not for lucre. There were between thirty and forty nuns in the convent, and a large number of boarding scholars. The sisters taught, beside, a school for the poor, in the town. Education is very ill-provided for by the government, the teachers being underpaid, or not paid at all, for a year or two together. If it were not for the religious orders, it seems probable that none beside the rich would know how to read and 47 A CORNER OF SPAIN write in Spain. The course of instruction at the convent was fairly up to date, according to our standard. According to the Spanish, it was very advanced. The order being a French one, most of the studies were in French. The English classes made excellent progress. Span- iards are good linguists ; I met more than one man, who, never having been out of Spain, spoke English without an accent, and understood even the slang of it, and kept up with its current literature. The women are much less studious, but have natural aptitude for the languages. The young girls at the convent were quick- witted, but indolent. The Spanish parent is even more indulgent than the American, and the soft-heartedness of both fathers and mothers makes the despair of the nuns. The children's parloir was from one o'clock to three on Sundays ; at that hour the grounds would be gay with the bright- colored garments of Spanish mothers, 48 LIFE IN A CONVENT and sombre with black-bearded Spanish fathers. The tons of bonbons they brought ! And the kissing and the fon- dhng and the chattering ! The nuns have busy lives. The lay- sisters rise at half past four, the choir- sisters at five, and they go to bed at eight and nine respectively. They have two hours in all the long busy day for recrea- tion, when they are free to talk to each other, to wander about in their garden, and to forget their cares. Their dinner is at half past eleven, and their recreation hour is from twelve to one. At half past five they have supper, and from six to seven again they can talk and unbend. It is a wise rule that no allusion can be made in these hours to the vexations and burdens of the day, of which one may be sure there are plenty. They were the happiest-looking women, taken all together, that I have ever seen, eager and interested and gay. And as they were of many nationalities, it must 49 A CORNER OF SPAIN have been la grace d'etat and not a gift of nature. There were Spanish sisters, and English, and American, and German, and ItaHan, and French, — and yet with all the different characteristics of their many lands, and all the varied traditions of all the forty families from whence they came, I never saw, in the three months I stayed there, a sullen look, or heard an ungentle word. Whether I watched the lay-sisters hurrying about on their swift errands, or the choir-sisters in their work about the sanctuary, — guarding the chil- dren at their play, — bending over pianos teaching indolent pupils music, — correct- ing piles of copy-books, or marshaling girls from one class-room to another, it was always content, satisfaction with their lot, that their faces showed. It led one to think that the rule that made these all " to be of one mind in an house " must have been divinely inspired. St. Augus- tine wrote theirs out over fifteen hundred years ago, and with all the changes of 50 LIFE IN A CONVENT time and place it seems to work the same results. This order (that of the Assumption) has many foundations in Spain, notably two very important schools in Madrid. The sisters who teach have to pass the examinations and to hold the diplomas of the national schools in France, where the Mother House is (in Paris) and where they are all educated. The queen regent placed them, six or seven years ago, in charge of the public schools in Manila. They have also one or two foundations in Nicaragua, where, between revolutions and pestilences, their lives are in daily peril. Every three years they have to be recalled to France, to save them from the effects of the deadly climate, and fresh ones are sent out to fill their places. But they often plead to be left longer with their forlorn little charges, in that not quite, but very nearly, God-forsaken land. SI VI THE OLD FORTRESS The convent grounds extend over many acres. There is a small garden at one side into which the children's par loir opens. It is full of lovely flowers and palms ; vines hang from the wall, and orange-trees skirt it. There is on the other side the community garden, to which the children never go, where the nuns can be assured of quiet. There are fine trees in it, and a summer house, and pretty little walks. The rest of the grounds are quite uncultivated. In past times the whole place had been a fine estate ; there are terraces, and a miradory and cypress avenues, and a spring-house, and all sorts of remains of cultivation. But the foundation is rather a recent one, 52 THE OLD FORTRESS so that this vast garden cannot be civil- ised for a long while yet. But it is not half bad as it is. There is a path that leads through an avenue of cypresses along the ravine where the old spring- house stands, to an opening, whence (in January) you come upon the sight of the whole steep hillside covered with almond- trees in blossom. This almond orchard belongs to the convent, and is part of its great garden ; it extends up to the walls of the old Moorish fortress of Gibralfaro which we see dark against the sky from our windows. The almond blossoms come before the leaves ; it used to look like a fairy orchard. Then you skirt a deep ravine at your left, peopled with a grove of eucalyptus trees, and gradually you climb by the steep path to their very tops, and look down into them. The way is rough, but the wild flowers grow in diverting ranks on either hand, and you see more and more of the wide view as you rise, and presently you are at the 53 A CORNER OF SPAIN top; behind you is Malaga spread out on its wide green plain, its many-colored mountains rising beyond ; and before you, looking down over the steep cliff, lie the pretty suburbs of the city, and the mole with its ships, and the wide blue Mediter- ranean. What a delicious wind always blows up here ! What an exquisite color the sea always wears ! What a green are the trees below, what a tawny, rich yellow the near mountains, what reds and browns, what shades of gray ! The old fortress is at your right hand ; on your left, separated from it by a ravine, and overlooking the same view, rises a steep cone-shaped hill, the hill where the Marquis of Cadiz was encamped while the Moors still held the Fortress of Gibral- faro, and where during the siege of the city he entertained Queen Isabella and her ladies at a banquet, while the surly Moor looked out from his embrasure. " The tent of the marques was of great magnitude, furnished with hangings of 54 THE OLD FORTRESS rich brocade and French cloth of the rar- est texture. It was in the oriental style ; and, as it crowned the height, with the surrounding tents of other cavaliers, all sumptuously furnished, presented a gay and silken contrast to the opposite towers of Gibralfaro. Here a splendid collation was served up to the sovereigns ; and the courtly revel that prevailed in this chival- rous encampment, the glitter of pageantry, and the bursts of festive music, made more striking the gloom and silence that reigned over the Moorish castle. "The Marques of Cadiz, while it was yet light, conducted his royal visitors to every point that commanded a view of the warlike scene below. He caused the heavy lombards also to be discharged, that the queen and ladies of the court might witness the effect of those tremen- dous engines. The fair dames were filled with awe and admiration, as the mountain shook beneath their feet with the thunder of the artillery, and they beheld great 55 A CORNER OF SPAIN fragments of the Moorish walls tumbling down the rocks and precipices, " While the good marques was display- ing these things to his royal guests, he lifted up his eyes, and to his astonish- ment beheld his own banner hanging out from the nearest tower of Gibralfaro. The blood mantled in his cheek, for it was a banner which he had lost at the time of the memorable massacre of the heights of Malaga. To make this taunt more evident, several of the Gomeres displayed themselves upon the battlements, arrayed in the helmets and cuirasses of some of the cavaliers slain or captured on that occasion. The Marques of Cadiz re- strained his indignation, and held his peace ; but several of his cavaliers vowed loudly to revenge this cruel bravado, on the ferocious garrison of Gibralfaro/'^ The top of this sharp hill, the very apex of the cone, has been shaved off, and an 1 Conquest of Granada, ch. Iv. p. 320, 1. 10 : G. P. Put- Bam, i860. S6 THE OLD FORTRESS ancient Arab well, of the heaviest ma- sonry, and even with the ground, lies open to the sky. You lie face down and look over into it, and see nothing but profound blackness, but if you throw a pebble over you hear it finally splash into the water far, far below. Nobody ever comes here ; you scramble alone up the steep face of the hill. If it were in Italy, or anywhere save in Spain, guide-books would tell the story, and signboards would point the way, and men and boys would dog your path and mumble inac- curacies, and gather in your pennies. 17 VII IN THE CONVENT GARDEN Beside the old Arab well I sometimes met a tall slender boy who used to bring his flock of goats here to drink, scaling the steepest side of the ascent with an agility that he must have learned of them. He always greeted me with the grave and charming courtesy of a Spaniard. Sometimes he caught for me one of the delicious little kids, of which there were a dozen or twenty in his flock, and while he held it, I would try to pat it, strug- gling and wild. Perhaps the touch of my suede glove "put strange memories " in its white or kru head. We read in the Bible of the barbarous impiety of seeth- ing a kid in its mother's milk ; perhaps patting one with the skin of a near rela- 58 IN THE CONVENT GARDEN tive may be as unholy a practice. At all events, the pretty mignons did not relish my touch at all, while they submitted quietly to the brown bare hand of their young guardian. I met many types of Spanish life up on this wild outskirt of the convent garden. On the slope of the Marquis of Cadiz hill, towards the sea, there was a solitary peasant's hut, which was approached by a narrow crumbling path, full of rattling stones. Its awful poverty fascinated me. One failed to see how human beings could exist under such conditions. There was an anxious effort visible, though, to make the best of the means at hand ; stones were piled up to make a shelter for the wretched goat at night, and a solitary fig-tree had a little trench dug about it, which I saw a woman filling with water from a neighboring spring, bringing the water in a small gourd. There were two or three vines about a foot high, growing on the steep slope, 59 A CORNER OF SPAIN which she was irrigating in the same painful way. A Uttle patch of beans had burst through the stony soil, and gave promise of food later on. But re- splendent sunshine blazed overhead, dry purity filled the air, and the vast Mediter- ranean, dreamy and blue, spread limitless before the stolid, starved-looking being who grubbed about the roots of her piti- ful vines. There is the law of compensa- tion always to fall back upon. Once I met her towards nightfall ; the wind was rude and she looked blue and chill. Thinking how much bluer and chillier she would be before the morning sun came round again to warm her poor blood, I felt very sorry and gave her a peseta. No one could ever have given her one before, she looked so surprised and stupe- fied. After some dull consideration, she put it into her pocket, and went on with her work, and when I met her afterwards, she never looked expectant or gratified or interested. The long years of starvation 60 IN THE CONVENT GARDEN had done their work; neither pain nor pleasure took much hold upon her. I often saw men snaring birds up on this high wold. Their occupation was illicit ; they had no right to be there, but it is easier to wink at wrongdoing than to put it down, everywhere, and in Spain they always do the easiest thing. These lazy men, whose stock in trade is a net and some little snares which they pin in the ground, come up to this lonely spot and lie on the grass all day watching for their victims. They spread the net over the grass ; and for the smaller game they hang on a little pole a birdcage with a jocund singer in it, who lures the poor little birds to the fatal neighborhood. Beside the snares are little cups of seed and water; and when the pretty thing, after circling around many times, stoops to drink, the snare flies up and catches his tiny leg. Then there is fluttering and anguish ; and the lazy Spaniard lifts him- self up on his elbow, and, after a moment 6i A CORNER OF SPAIN of natural protest at the necessity, gets on his feet and goes to the sufferer, taking it in one hand, as he releases its leg with the other, and puts it, after examination, into the larger cage where the other dupes of the day are beating their wings against the bars. Sometimes two men will lie basking in the sun till nightfall, half asleep, beside the same net. Qui dorty di7ie. I think the siestas must have been the only dinner they got, as a whole cage- ful of the minute songsters would bring them in but a few sous. There seems a great affection for birds among the poor ; sometimes you see half a dozen or more tiny wooden cages hanging over the un- glazed window of a cabin where there seems no other attempt to make life amiable. Another habitui of the convent garden was Jacky, the convent dog. The nuns were strongly attached to him ; he was only an underbred yellow cur, but he had great intelligence and was of a high order 62 IN THE CONVENT GARDEN of piety. One day he followed me up to the top of the hill, trotting cheerfully along in advance. Now at the very bottom of the hill, on the other side, by the sea, stands the English chapel, to which I was bound. I was afraid to have Jacky accompany me ; I thought he might get into trouble with some dogs belong- ing to a peasant near the bottom of the hill, and I was also afraid he would follow me into the chapel and create a scandal among the staid English worshipers in that very bald temple. I took pains to sit down on a rock, and call him to me, and explain to him that I was going to an heretical place of worship to which he had no right to go, and where he would not be welcome. He looked intelligent, but I am afraid he did not understand that anybody living in the convent could be going to the wrong sort of church. He rubbed his sandy paws on my dress, licked my hand, and seemed to promise obedience when I pointed back to the 63 A CORNER OF SPAIN convent I went on, but in a few minutes found that Jacky had made a detour and was trotting on some yards in front. I wanted to send him back, but time pressed, and I had only time to get to church. When Jacky reached the turn that the path takes which leads to the highest point of the convent property, he went on ; my path turned to the left, down the hill towards the sea. A straggling cactus hedge separates the two estates which here join, but there is no fence. It was as wild as any other mountain-top. I hoped Jacky would not see me, but in a moment he did and came hurrying back to the invisible boundary line. There he stopped and watched me going down the mountain with grave solicitude. I then was tempted to see if I could make him forsake his principles and follow me, and I called him and coaxed him, but he did not stir. He stood still and gazed after me going my heretical way, but never a 64 IN THE CONVENT GARDEN sandy paw did he put down on secular ground. He had not lived in a convent for nothing. Then there was the convent donkey. We did not find him as sympathetic as Jacky, and he was as obstinate as any other donkey, and had to be blindfolded when he was needed to work the pump which raised water for the convent. He quite refused to go round and round the monotonous circle when he could see it. It was plain he had no vocation, but he was needed, et qtte voulez-vous ? So old Francisco, the gardener, put a bandage round his eyes and led him up to the wide platform that surrounded the pump, and harnessed him to it and started him on his round. He often shook his head and made restless gestures, but did not dare to rebel. Quite typical of the Protestant idea of monastic life. 65 VIII A SPANISH CURE The cabman turned up out of a steep and narrow street into a steeper and nar- rower one where assuredly the sun had never penetrated since the Moorish occu- pation. Two brass plates on a large house told us this was where to come to be cured. A motley crowd beset the door. In a small vestibule some thirty people were pressing close to a little window in the wall, behind which a man sat writing. Halt and maimed and blind, in all sorts of habiliments, mixed in with persons of a higher grade. Were all the former being treated free ? and what was the meaning of this beneficence } A few words with a Civil Guard un- deceived us. This was a government 66 A SPANISH CURE office to which every human being who wishes to live in Malaga must come once in so many months to get his license to do so. It was only an accident that it was in the house where the cure was established. Houses in Malaga seem to belong to a great many different people, and to be sold and let in parcels. Some friends told me that on one occasion, wishing to have another entrance to their place, they had arranged to buy a certain small house which adjoined their grounds, and faced the street. The negotiations were nearly completed, they were on the point of signing the papers, when they discovered that they had bought every- thing but "iYi^faqade of the house. That they could not have. It was quite out of the question, and the negotiations were declared at an end. It must be very tiresome to be obliged to read your title clear to your back stairs before you can go up and down them with confidence, and to be anxious lest you are (^1 A CORNER OF SPAIN not well fortified legally in the possession of your linen-closet. To find a favor- ite corner in your library slipping from your grasp, or a nursery closet sudden- ly brought into court, how unsettling ! Law in Spain is a terror to litigants. A lady told me, that in purchasing a piece of property, the largest room in the house, and it was a very large one, was crowded by the people who came to sign the deed. But to our cure. The odors of the mot- ley crowd in the vestibule penetrated to the house within. A smell of carbolic acid, mixed with all other essences known to science, filled the air. The noise of ma- chinery, and the darkness which is char- acteristic of all Spanish houses, added to the gloom. All that can be conceived of the horrible in dark plush and paper gar- nished the rooms. Heavy curtains hung at the windows and doors ; chairs too heavy to move stood against the walls. You were conducted from one room to 68 A SPANISH CURE another by servants in livery (at seven reals a day probably) ; to this room to wait till the doctor could see you ; to an- other in which he received you ; to a third in which he tested your lungs ; to a fourth in which, I should think, your heart, or some part of your anatomy that was not your lungs, was examined. The latest appliances for the discovery of disease were made as conspicuous as possible, and polished to the highest point. Never before had I felt how mortal I -was, how hedged in and encompassed with perils ; how surprising it was that I was alive. The treatment which was prescribed after a diagnosis revealing nothing amiss but general debility, was, inhaling arsenic and oxygen, and taking a compressed air bath on alternate days. This last misery consists in sitting for two or three hours in an iron cage about three feet square and about six feet high, and of an incredible thickness. Into this compressed air is pumped. After you 69 A CORNER OF SPAIN have entered, a horrid clanking noise ac- companies the screwing up of the door, which is done by two attendants ; you feel that you are past help. A pencil and paper are given to you by which to communicate with the outer world. If you are very ill and want to be let out, you must write your request on the paper and hold it up against a sort of port-hole, and if the doctor happens to be in sight, or an attendant, and can read the language in which it is written, you will, after an interval, be let out, — that is, if the machinery by which you are clamped in does not get out of order and refuse to work. I have seen the doctor standing on a chair and examining with an anxious face the roof of the iron cage where the door fastens on, and this while a patient was shut up in it. It may be that his anxiety was not that the door would not open, but I felt it might be. While in the cage the sound of the ma- chinery by which the air is forced in is 70 A SPANISH CURE most unpleasant ; you have a feeling that your head is being blown off. But then that is only imagination ; there is no dan- ger of your head being blown off, and you have only to reason with yourself about it, and to remember that nobody has ever been killed in this cage, what- ever may have been done in other cages. It is perhaps only imagination that makes you think you are cured after you have been incarcerated in it for the alter- nate days of many weeks ; but however that may be, most people do think so, and some really remarkable cures have been made. I knew a young Oxford man who had been brought to Malaga some three years before in apparently the last stage of consumption. He was considered en- tirely restored by this treatment, and seemed to be enjoying life as much as his fellows. Whether it was the cage and the compressed air, or Malaga and its incomparable climate, I do not know. 71 IX SPANISH LIMITATIONS One of their limitations seemed to be clothes-lines. It would be a good mission- ary enterprise to send a cargo of clothes- lines to southern Spain, now that the missionary spirit seems to be so ablaze. The poor people wash their clothes on the sidewalks in the city ; out of the town, at the brook or spring, if there is one ; but urban or suburban, the drying practice is the same. They hang them on the win- dowsill or balcony, or, lacking these, they stretch them on the ground, or lay them on the pavement. You are not infre- quently obliged to step over P6p6's shirt or stockings, or to pick your way through Pepita's aprons. They look, of course, as dingy as one would expect from such life- 72 SPANISH LIMITATIONS long contact with the dust of the city stones, and the red earth of the country brookside. A walk which I often took commands from one of its terraces the interior of several Spanish gardens of the better sort, and some of the lower, too. The same method prevails in both, and the clothes are generally dried as Provi- dence pleases ; in very few cases is pro- vision made for suspending them in the air by artificial means. Another limitation is in the matter of fuel, more stringent, even, than in thrifty France or impoverished Italy. The poor buy charcoal from bags carried on the backs of donkeys. This is weighed out by the dealer in scales about the size of those we use in the kitchen for measuring out flour and sugar. In the better houses of the middle class there is a sort of stove, with- out any chimney or pipe, of course, and in this there are little compartments, hold- ing a lump of charcoal, under a hole on which a saucepan is placed. If you need 73 A CORNER OF SPAIN two saucepans, you light coal in two of these compartments, and so on. The abjectly poor do not cook at all, but live on fruits and bread and on a sort of hot cake which they buy in the street. Early in the morning it is interesting to watch the stands of those who make what look like crullers ''while you wait," or flat cakes like corn-bread. At some of the little inns out on country-roads, you see the cooking done on the stones before the door, and it smells very good, though I doubt if it would taste so. In January there are generally some bitter days, when the thermometer goes down to forty-two degrees or thereabouts, and the poor half-naked people suffer greatly. Their windows are not glazed, and all the warmth they can get is from the ineffectual winter sun. When the sun goes down, therefore, they are in a bad way. About sunset you see the careful housewife bringing out to the door her pan of charcoal which she has arranged, 74 SPANISH LIMITATIONS with sticks and leaves for kindling, and which she lights and blows up into a blaze. The children stand gaping around her. When the charcoal is well ignited and the flame has gone down, she takes it inside and the children follow. Then the board shutter of the unglazed window is barred, as well as the door, and they all sit down at a round table which has a low shelf near the floor with a hole in the middle, in which they put the pan of coals. Then they place their feet on the shelf and thus they enjoy " their ain fireside." Fancy what it must be in the six-by-eight little cabin, with as many in- mates as there are feet in its dimensions, as dark as a pocket, and with an atmos- phere that you could cut with a knife. But while the pinching days in winter are few, the glorious sunshine of the whole year must often be lost by the sudden chill and the diseases engendered by exposure to the unusual cold. I have often seen young children in the streets 75 A CORNER OF SPAIN of Mdlaga with bare feet and bare heads, and, to be exact, clothed only in a thin cotton frock and cotton waist under it, when furs and flannels were necessary to Anglo-Saxons. They sit blue and be- numbed on the stone doorstep with not even the ceremony of the tattered cotton skirt between it and their tender flesh. I used to think, after these occasional cold days, that there was an increase of shabby hearses clattering over the rough stones. The death-rate is astonishingly low in the city, but it is not on account of the activ- ity of the board of health. Small-pox is always, not raging, but loafing about. " Oh, we always have more or less small- pox in Malaga," they tell you noncha- lantly. It seems to inspire no terror. About sunset, one day that winter, I was looking down from the mirador that commands at short range a little alley below the convent grounds. I saw a rat- tling old hearse draw up before the entrance to the nearest of the corrals or 76 SPANISH LIMITATIONS courts of which it is formed. An un- usual stir pervaded the court. Groups of children stood gaping in at the door of one of the little apartments. Women with handkerchiefs tied on their heads came in from the alley and gaped too. Inside the dark door which the children surrounded, I saw two candles burning. Finally a man in uniform came, and after a while, another. The first went into the room where the candles burned, and led out, with a gentle kindness of manner, an old woman whose cries rent the air ; then he went back and led out a younger one. Her hair was disheveled as if she had literally been tearing it when she was parting with her dead. I was deeply touched with the sight of all this misery ; it was so near to where I stood that I almost formed part of the scene. It was with no pleasant feelings that four or five days later I heard that small- pox was raging in the little court, and that it was a small-pox funeral at which I n A CORNER OF SPAIN had assisted. I found that it was not con- sidered a subject for uneasiness. No- thing was ever done about fumigating the court ; there was never the faintest odor of carbolic ; the clothes were washed and hung to dry on the window-sills ; the water was thrown out into the alley; fishmongers came crying down from the Calle de la Victoria ; women gossiped at the corner ; everything seemed to go on as before. The paternal government of the city offers free vaccination to all, but it does not supplement the insufficient intelligence of the poor by enforcing any rules of prevention or correction in the matter of disease. After a few days we heard that one pa- tient in this court, a young girl who was convalescent, had gone out for a walk, ^' as the sores were beginning to dry up." Not long after, we saw a boy of twenty sitting on the steps of the post office, which is in the heart of the town. He had his trou- sers rolled up above his knees, and was 78 SPANISH LIMITATIONS thoughtfully picking off scabs from his legs, and dropping them on the pavement. The young daughter of one of my Malaga friends was kneeling in the cathedral once, when a beggar came up to her and asked an alms, telling her, as an excuse for her importunity, that her child had just died of small-pox. The wife of the British consul told me that recently she was in a stationer's shop with a friend who was making some purchases. A child with a face disfigured by sores and with her head bound up was fingering the note-paper which the shopkeeper had taken down for them to look at. They glanced at her with a startled expression. "Oh," explained the man reassuringly, "she'll soon be all right. She's just had small-pox." They did not stop to look at the note- paper; the man probably never knew why they fled, but put it down to the general eccentricity of foreigners. 79 X A MIGRATING FAMILY The diligence was an hour and a quar- ter beyond its advertised time of starting. Maria and Francisco, who Hve in the con- vent lodge, carried our bags and wraps, and had gone on before to hold the dili- gence, if by any chance it should be on time. We found them waiting for us, sit- ting on the stone bench of a little shop shaded with vines. The woman within obligingly brought us out some chairs, and looked for no reward. It was a large open square in the sub- urbs, where we had gone to await the diligence. At a fountain women were filling their jars with water, while men and boys sat on the stone benches beside 80 A MIGRATING FAMILY it. The sun was warm, but the wind was cold. We looked across a green field to the cemetery, the great white gates of which stood out against a background of purple mountains. But they were closed, and we could not go there to pass the time. Before a wine-shop on the other side of the square some carts were being loaded ; they might be as interesting as gravestones, so we went across and joined a lot of peasants collected there, some sitting on their luggage, and some on the stones. One cart seemed to be taking only merchandise, a freight train as we should say, a goods train as our English friends would call it. The carts were two-wheeled affairs with round canvas tops, drawn by five or six mules each, harnessed one before the other. The wheels were enormous, eight or nine feet in diameter. The loading of the carts was skilled labor. This one seemed to contain the household effects of two or three migrating families ; pans, pots, 8i A CORNER OF SPAIN beds, chairs, were all lashed on by ropes. It was bound for Granada, and would be five days on the way, a dis- tance of seven hours by rail. A family around which our affections became entwined, in the hour we waited for the diligence, consisted of a father and mother and two daughters, one eight- een, the other ten. The father had a broken nose, but otherwise was fine-look- ing and tall. He had an air of distinc- tion. The mother had been handsome, her thick gray hair waved and was neatly combed, her face was bright with intelli- gence. She had not the smallest look of anxiety even in this ordeal of d^menage- mejtt ; in fact, they all seemed to take it as a most agreeable event. The elder daughter was a magnificent brunette, with masses of black hair growing low, a rich dark skin, a perfect nose, and very striking eyes and eyebrows. The lower part of her face, however, was too heav);, and her expression was occasionally re- 82 A MIGRATING FAMILY pellant. She looked a spoiled beauty, and her dazzling smiles were all reflec- tions of the admiring glances of the men around the cart. The younger girl, on the contrary, had a charming face, with as much regular beauty as her sister, in addition to a sweet intelligence. The traveling dresses of the three consisted of strait cotton gowns and aprons, and small woolen shawls, supplemented in the case of the two girls with a pink paper carnation stuck directly on the top of their heads. The elder girl had a dash of powder over her fine dark skin. (The use of powder is almost universal among Spanish women of all classes.) Their aprons seemed to serve the purpose of dressing-bags and luncheon-baskets. The beauty, however, had hers filled with a very commonplace cat and a litter of new- born kittens, — the fine-lady instinct to draw attention and provoke comment by means of pets. The men all had a word for the cats, and for their pretty mistress, 83 A CORNER OF SPAIN who sat down in a lazy way, and did no- thing to help her mother. The mother's apron revealed a curious collection of things when her husband came to ask her for some bread. There were stockings, and bottles, and a table- cover, and some photographs in frames, and some keys and a bowl, a lot of beans, and a pair of drawers, a crucifix, and a china saint ; and from the bottom she fetched out, in answer to her husband's request, a loaf and a half of bread. I won- dered whether she traveled with the cor- ners of her apron always clutched in her hand to sustain this not light weight, or whether in moments of relaxation, or at times of emergency, she took off the apron and tied it into a bundle. Finally the second cart was ready, and the women and children were drawn and pulled and pushed up into it, high up in the air, where they sat on heaps of lug- gage, with their heads against the canvas top, looking uncomfortable and unsteady. 84 A MIGRATING FAMILY The pretty little girl had been put in, showing through a very bad pair of shoes all ten toes, as she scrambled up to her place on a roll of matting. When it came to the beauty's turn, after a whispered consultation with her mother, they both declined to mount, and the cart started without them, with great shouting of Old mul^ ! on the part of the driver, and of vociferous good wishes on the part of the bystanders. I asked the two women if they were not going on the cart. "Oh, yes," they said, they were going to walk beside it and get in a little later, where there were no people ; they did not want to show their legs climbing up. That was all very well, but I doubt whether it was all Christian modesty ; it was possibly carnal pride because their shoes were not good. A paper carnation for the top of one's head costs less than a pair of shoes for one's feet. Shoes are stern and solid facts, with which it is difficult to deal airily. 85 A CORNER OF SPAIN We watched the cart climbing slowly up the steep ascent, and the two women walking beside it, till all were out of sight. It would take those poor people nearly as long to get to their destination as it would take us to get across the Atlantic ; it was to them as much of an enterprise, of a venture. By and by our laggard diligence came along, and we soon overtook them, the women still walking. We wished them good-by as we passed them, and they wished us that we might go on with God. 86 XI IN THE mXlAGA mountains We had the choice of places in the dihgence, and we chose the two seats beside the driver as giving us some pro- tection from the wind, and a good view of the mountains. Besides, we could ask questions of the driver, who seemed an intelligent sort of man. We went at a snail's pace with our six mules and our not full diligence. The road was a per- fect one, broad and hard and smooth as a table, but it was very steep. As we went up higher and higher, the pitch was very sharp, and the poor mules had to be admonished and incited with voice and whip, and even with kicks from the postil- ion, who ran along beside them and cursed himself hoarse at the worst places. By 87 A CORNER OF SPAIN and by we were looking down on all the world. Malaga was far off ; the cathedral tower was growing a little speck ; the blue, dreamy Mediterranean mixed with the blue sky as we gazed back at it. There was snow on the distant Sierra Nevadas, and a strong wind was blow- ing, but the splendid Spanish sunshine warmed the wind ; the snow was too far off to chill it. In summer, though, I am told, this road, without a tree to shade it, and with the sun beating down on its white flinty smoothness, is something to think of with awe. It was built fifty or sixty years ago by convicts, and they say that often the poor wretches would throw down spade and pick, and fling them- selves over the precipices, choosing death rather than life if it were to go on like this. Along the road at considerable inter- vals are low stuccoed cabins, where the workmen live who keep it in order. They wear a pretty uniform, brown jackets with 88 IN THE MALAGA MOUNTAINS red facings and silver buttons. They are paid seven reals a day (thirty-five cents) and have the little stuccoed cabin to live in, but they have to supply their uniforms and to support their families out of the thirty-five cents. Nevertheless the post is a desired one, and to get a man a place on the road is to do him a favor. The Spanish peasant may not work, but neither does he eat. They who want least are most like the gods, for they want nothing. The peasants of these mountains seem to want very little ; whether their indolence is the result of being half-starved, or their condition of starvation the consequence of their indo- lence, is a question. As we went up the mountain, we met troops of them with their mules or donkeys, looking like the coming of Bimam Wood to Dunsinane. Great fagots of dried weeds and branches on each side of the patient beasts swept the ground and nodded high in the air. These are for sale in the town for heat- 89 A CORNER OF SPAIN ing ovens and for purposes of kindling. Probably if a load nets a man a peseta, he thinks he has done well. It was early in the day when our driver took his first meal, which was wrapped in newspaper, each thing in a different parcel, a motley collection ; cold fried fish, radishes, some smoked meat, raisins, and figs. Before beginning he asked us to share the repast with him, though not expecting us to do so. Spanish etiquette is so stringent on this point that to every man who passed us on mule or donkey- back or afoot, he extended the same in- vitation, which they took as simply as if he had said good-morning. To the pos- tilion, however, it was more than a form ; I suppose it was in the bond, for of everything of which he ate himself, he cut a smaller portion and handed it down to the man, who munched the fish and the raisins while he trotted alongside the mules, and held the chunk of bread in his teeth while he ran forward to kick 90 IN THE MALAGA MOUNTAINS the leader, or dropped back to tighten a strap of the wheeler. We reached the Venta, where we were to spend the night, late in the afternoon. The diligence drew up at the door ; sev- eral soldiers were standing around it, some children and two or three women. It was a shock to us to see two black pigs trotting through the doorway before us, and to find a mule tied inside to a chain which hung from the rafters. Within, on the right of the big doors, which stood open, was a room where was a counter, and glasses, and kegs of liquor. On the left, the paved room ended in a chimney-piece, running nearly across the end, some twelve or fourteen feet wide. The rafters above were black with smoke, but the side-walls had been whitewashed. There was one window, high up, but it was closed with shutters, and all the light came from the door. There was a little fire on the stones in the middle of the chimney, a half-burned log and a couple 91 A CORNER OF SPAIN of smouldering crooked sticks. Around this three or four men were seated, A gun stood in one corner of the chimney ; the men were rough-looking peasants ; one had only straw sandals on his bare feet. Three hungry cats came pressing up close to us, and the two black pigs were fighting over some treasure in the corner. A blear-eyed and unlovely old woman made a place for us by the fire, and told a boy to get some more wood. We were sorry the diligence had gone on, for it could not have taken us to a worse place, we thought. The old woman said she had no room ready, but we might go and look at one she might perhaps arrange for us. It opened out of the one we were in. Wav- ing aside the pigs who were grunting and munching just at its entrance, she pushed open the door and took us in. On the stone floor in one corner lay a heap of rags ; in another, several bunches of onions. A toppling shelf held a pea- 92 IN THE MALAGA MOUNTAINS sant's shirt. There was a table piled with clothes and household utensils, and she rooted out from among them a pair of sheets, which she held up as an ear- nest of her ability to provide us with beds. There was no other furniture in the room. The window, which was not glazed, opened upon a farmyard where goats, donkeys, and pigs waded in deep filth. The sill of the window was not four feet from the ground. We went out of the room very quickly, and told her it was quite impossible for us to sleep in it. Wasn't there a place up- stairs } No, the soldiers had all the room there was up there. We told her she m7ist find us something better. Af- ter a while she came back and asked us if we would like to sleep at the house across the way. This we were willing to do, almost thankful. Anything to get away from the black pigs and the black- eyed soldiers and the cut-throat looking men who sat around the fire. The room 93 A CORNER OF SPAIN over the way had no glass in the window, and no covering on the stone floor, but those were mere trifles. They would put us up beds, and the matter was settled. Then we had to go back to the Venta to see about our dinner, for these were only lodgings. The old woman was awaiting us with a sinister look which deepened when we began to talk to her of food. What had she in the house ? "Oh, everything." Well, what .? Had she butter ? "Oh plenty. White butter, that is." We did not want lard, so we passed on to meat. What had she ? " Goat's meat," she said, though I have no doubt the goat was still in the enjoy- ment of life and liberty. No, we did not care for goat's meat. What else ? Our pertinacity seemed to make the situation serious. Her puckered old face grew wily. There was a cock, she said, that she might kill, but he was big and 94 IN THE MALAGA MOUNTAINS very old. She looked at us sharply as she dwelt upon his age and his tough- ness. I do not know what she would have said if we had told her to cook him for our dinner. He had probably done duty for a good many tired travelers be- fore us. I suppose, if he was accepted, he was never found, and the time spent in trying to catch him served as an ex- cuse for all sorts of shortcomings in the bill of fare. The bread we had looked at, and did not want to taste. It resolved itself into boiled potatoes, potatoes with their jackets on, as a protection against the grimy pot into which we saw them put, for we had followed the old woman into a dark little kitchen which adjoined the big room where the fire was, — and the men, and the black pigs, and the donkey tethered to the rafters. There was, instead of a stove, a bricked space with holes in it, and underneath were lit- tle apertures for coal. She put the pot over one of these holes, and got a few 95 A CORNER OF SPAIN embers from the smouldering fire in the big room, but the embers went out con- tinually, and there seemed no progress made. Other guests were arriving all the time; muleteers who wanted some- thing from the " bar " called her off con- tinually. We were in despair, for we were very hungry. She took all our im- portunities as if she were used to them, and said "presently" and that sort of thing, as other publicans of higher degree do. Rashly we resolved to go out and see if there were no other place where we could get some food. The sun was set- ting. We walked along the road with no hearts for the magnificent mountains and the resplendent sky. Down in the val- ley, far off, there were two or three little white villas in sight with cypresses around them, and terraces, but we knew they were closed, and only used in summer. At last, we came to a peasant's cabin, with its stuccoed side towards the road blank 96 IN THE MALAGA MOUNTAINS of windows. From a low door issued a woman with a shovel on the end of a long stick. An oven was built outside the hut, in which she proceeded to push loaves of bread to be baked. But they were not yet baked, alas ! We went into the door and looked at the interior. The floor was paved with very irregular cobble-stones. I never saw a street as rough, and very few as dirty. In one corner there was a little heap of ashes, and as the wall above it was much smoked, I followed the dis- coloration up to the ceiling, and found a hole in it. That was their " ain fireside." I pushed on into the other room, which was all the house contained. There were two indescribably dirty beds, and under one a very large black pig was rooting. We concluded to go back to the Venta and be thankful. The long walk in the keen mountain air, the lonely grandeur of the scenery, the gathering twilight, made us more philosophic and less criti- 97 A CORNER OF SPAIN cal. The old woman met us with the assurance that our dinner (the two pota- toes) was ready. Perhaps she had found something else ! Alas, no. We went in and sat down by the fire, which we tried to beguile a little boy to keep supplied with dried weeds and bits of stick. But he soon got tired and disappeared. Very few people in Spain like to work. Three people undertook that fire, and got tired and disappeared before we got our din- ner. The old woman placed a table for us. It was a small low table, and we brought it close up to the fire inside the chimney. Everybody in Spain uses low chairs, which are like dachshunds in the matter of legs ; after giving us a couple of these she went away for a cloth ; then for two soup-plates, which she washed before giving us. Each knife and spoon she seemed to bring from a separate source, one from a bureau-drawer, an- other from a high shelf; she went up stairs for the cup and saucer, and I have 98 IN THE MALAGA MOUNTAINS little doubt she brought them from be- tween the blankets of her bed. In the meanwhile the cold and dark- ness had increased the circle around the fire. A herd of goats came pattering in at the great open door. I was afraid they were going to join us, but they went through to the farmyard, and a boy shut the gates upon them. A man on a mule rode into the room, hitched his beast to the swinging iron chain, unwrapped the muffler about his neck, and came up to the fire to warm himself. There were a good many children, more or less dirty, swarming about. A soldier took the least one on his knee, and seemed kindly dis- posed towards it. Finally the repast was ready. The two potatoes and some ashy salt were placed before us. The nuns at the convent had insisted on putting up a basket of lunch- eon for us. We had thought it very un- necessary, but we opened it with eager interest now. What treasures it con- 99 A CORNER OF SPAIN tained ! We need not have ordered "dinner." Butter, French rolls, cold meat, sandwiches, chocolate, figs, raisins, cake, wine, biscuits, eggs, tea! But we had two days to stay in these wolfish mountains before we could get away ; we must husband our resources. Three of the hungriest cats I ever saw fastened themselves on the basket covers, and raged with desire to get at the food inside. There never were animals so famished as in these regions. Mongrel dogs with hollow sides, thin goats, ema- ciated cats, bony chickens, gaunt cows, ghastly horses, — if you were not so sorry for the people, you would weep for the animals. The children who pressed around us and watched us eating were not very pretty or interesting. There was one, however, a little girl of perhaps nine, holding a baby of six months in her arms, whose face attracted me. She had a dreary look, and was not over-confident like the others who crowded up to us. lOO IN THE MALAGA MOUNTAINS Upon questioning her, we found she was the little servant of the house ; she made the beds, she watched the children, she washed the dishes. Heavens ! It was bad enough to be the child of such a house, but to be the servant of it ! No wonder she looked dreary, poor mite. She did not know how long she had lived there ; she did not know if she was paid for what she did. I am afraid she was not very clever, but she had a sweet little fleeting smile when we talked to her, as if she would have liked to be a child if she could, and play. I think I never felt more sorry for any young creature. Poor little Concha ! We fed her with biscuits and cake, which she took with guilty looks around, feeling the unnaturalness of such prosperity. We meant to have given her some pesetas when we went away the next afternoon, but she was not to be found, and we had not confidence that they would reach her if we left them with the blear-eyed old landlady. Concha was not A CORNER OF SPAIN in luck that day ; I am afraid she never has been, and never will be. For that sort we ought to say our prayers. After we had eaten our dinner, and the table was taken away, we began to think of our lodging across the road. But the beds were not ready yet. They were taken over from the Venta piecemeal to be put up there. No one seemed to keep long at any work. The boy who was car- rying the beds stopped first to get a glass of anisetta for a newcomer, and then to do some other chore, and the young woman who should have been making the beds came over to sit by the fire and talk to the soldiers. There was no- thing for us to do but wait. The soldiers of whom I had been so much afraid proved to be our best friends, protectors without whom we should not have been safe in this remote wild place. They were Guardia Civile ; and what Spain lacks in other things she makes up in the protection of her suburban pop- 102 IN THE MALAGA MOUNTAINS Illation. These men told us by the fire- light about the service to which they belonged, and I heard a great deal of it afterwards from people I knew. There are 1600 of the service in the province of Malaga alone, this being considered a very dangerous neighborhood. They have districts allotted them, and day and night they patrol the roads, and guard the houses and property of the scattered population. The little white villas could not otherwise be inhabited, and the poor peasants in their stuccoed huts could not keep a goat or a pig. They are fine-looking men, the pick of the army ; they must pass a strict exami- nation, and have had a good record for a number of years. This branch of the public service is much sought after. I ventured to ask the pay. Three pesetas (sixty cents) a day, and a house. But out of this they supply their uniforms, and it is always insisted on that their appoint- ments be in order. I noticed that even 103 A CORNER OF SPAIN their boots were well blacked.^ One tall young fellow was rubbing between his slender hands a chain, which he was cleaning. He showed it to me, and ex- plained its use to handcuff a prisoner and bring him in, covered with a pistol. The guard's hands were so slender I should have thought these gyves that fitted him would have been too tight for an ordinary evil-doer. But the hands and feet of Spaniards of all classes are very small ; they really use them so little, it is pos- sible, is it not, that they are in process of absorption, and that three or four cen- turies hence this peninsula may be inhab- ited by a race of unhanded and unfooted beings. The Guardia Civile are naturally great favorites with the families whose property they protect ; they have the entree of all the kitchens, and the servants offer them the hospitality of the fire, and often, no 1 Their arms and ammunition are supplied them by the state. 104 IN THE MALAGA MOUNTAINS doubt, a surreptitious glass of wine and plate of oily dainty. In one case I know of, there had been much disturbance in the neighborhood, and after my friends came to their villa, the anxious mother of the family could not sleep at night for thinking about the brigands. So she made a requisition for two extra guards, and the paternal government gave them to her, to take her children out to walk, and to watch the house day and night. In consequence of these intimate rela- tions the guards know all the family his- tory of the neighborhood to which they are assigned, and are a little given to gossip, their only failing. One of those around the fire that night recognized my companion as a little girl he had once been detailed to take out to walk, and he was very much pleased that she recalled his name and face. The manners of these men, and of all the servants in Spain, are very free from constraint, and yet are not impertinent. I OS A CORNER OF SPAIN One would say it was a survival of the old Catholic feeling of equality before God. They are warm-hearted and they quickly attach themselves to the families they serve ; an easy simple relationship grows up between them. They have not aspirations, like our native and Irish underlings. You seldom see one of them in a distinctive dress ; the maids accom- pany their mistresses in the street, wear- ing a plain print skirt, a shawl, and a handkerchief tied over the head. The coachmen on the boxes of private car- riages have the same sort of cap which is worn by the drivers of cabs, and very often have not even that mark of their calling, but wear the sombrero general to the lower class. I should say the tie be- tween master and servant in Spain was much like that between the Southern slave-owner and his house-servants, before the war. Having got over my fear of them, the guards and the peasants around the fire 1 06 IN THE MALAGA MOUNTAINS were very interesting, and were civil after their lights. I shall always think our prejudice against the Spanish is based upon their physical differences from us. We mislike them for their complexion, which is swarthy, and for their features, which are forbidding. The treachery is a matter of coloring, and the cruelty, of outline. They are the kindest people in the world, and as honest as — ttotcs mitres, I have never been cheated by a trades- man in Spain, I have never been uncivilly treated by one. They are so slow and tiresome, I should not dare to say I have never been uncivil to them. But there was no incivility on either side that night. They were much interested in me and my furs. Each newcomer was told, " She is a North American," and as they have not the habit of disguising their curiosity, but are entirely children of Na- ture, they gazed at me for long spaces without removing their black eyes from my face for a moment. They inquired 107 A CORNER OF SPAIN into the nature and habits of the animals from which my furs were taken. One of the guards said, when I shivered at the strong wind blowing down the great chim- ney on my head, " Why is she so cold ? She comes from a colder place than this." My companion explained that in my coun- try they had better fires than here. Then they piled more weeds on, and we had five minutes of blaze, succeeded by ten of gloom. Finally we were told that our beds in the cottage opposite were ready, and we crossed the broad white road in a glory of moonlight which showed us the moun- tains lying like a sea below us, and entered our low dark room. It was so sharply cold that we had to ask for hot water to fill our India-rubber bags. That seemed a little thnig to ask, but I have seen a five-course dinner cooked with less expenditure of time and effort. First the water had to be sent for to the Venta ; all the water here is brought 1 08 IN THE MALAGA MOUNTAINS from a picturesque fountain a good way down the mountain, called "The Queen's Fountain," where Isabella once stopped to drink, and where the arms of Castile are still visible under many coats of whitewash. The men bring the water in earthen jars on the backs of mules, and it may well be believed it is not used lavishly for household purposes. Pro- bably it saves their lives that there is no water near their dwellings, for the contam- ination could not be other than certain, considering their habits. After the water was got, the fire had to be renewed ; weeds were hunted for outside and after long delay ignited, and then the blaze died down before the water, set on the ashy hearth in a little pipkin, had approached the boiling point. More weed - hunting, more striking of matches, more failure to get up any heat. This was repeated several times before the water was hot enough to put in the bags. All the water heated in this way 109 A CORNER OF SPAIN had an insufferable smell of smoke, and for our subsequent meals, when we wanted to make tea, it was the same. Our cot-beds were clean, I hope, but they were not comfortable. The pillow was always slipping off at the head, and the hot-water bag slipping out at the foot, and the blankets slipping down at the side. The darkness was profound, as was the silence. About two o 'clock the cold grew intense. A man came singing along with the bells on his mule jingling, and his heaw steps resounding on the flinty road. The moon, as I looked through a chink in the board shutter, was brilliant. I did not know whether to think of him as just going forth to his day's toil, or just coming back from it. In either case I felt sure he would not have sung so lustily if he had had an evil conscience, and I was grateful that he did not push open the door, to which there was no bolt or lock, and help him- self to a few of the pesetas in my purse, no IN THE MALAGA MOUNTAINS which would have saved him many weeks of hard work and given him much re- pose. Our breakfast was taken under many difficulties, and our luncheon was not more happy. While there were goats and pigs around our table in the Venta, there were cats and hens perching on it and on us in the cottage. Later, we went to ride on donkeys, and inspected a villa for the summer, far down in the valley. It was fascinating, with its terraces and cy- presses and olive orchards, but too low, the road leading to it frightfully steep, and the price charged for it exorbitantly high. The price, the man said, was two pesetas a day. That, we recognized by a gleam in his eye, was only the asking price. It could no doubt have been got for a peseta a day, and a civil guard or two thrown in. But I do not like to be in a valley when there is a mountain-top where I might be, and I concluded not to spend the summer there. Ill A CORNER OF SPAIN " There be women fair as she Whose verbs and nouns do more agree." Switzerland, though less of an experi- ence, has the advantage of more cleanli- ness and convenience. And though one would sacrifice a good deal to be where the blue Mediterranean and the white Sierras meet, optically, it is good not to be unclean, and it is better not to be starved, and it is best not to be " mur- dered and kidnapped and sold for a slave," as sometimes is said to happen in this land of Andalusia. 112 XII BEHIND THE SCENES IN THE MALAGA BULL-RING The dust lay thick on the properties of the bull-ring in Malaga, the March day on which we went through it. As the bulls do not fight their best till the spring fires their blood, it is generally late April or early May when they are brought from their wide sunny pastures to be penned in the dark toril for a night and a day before they are let loose in the arena. They are driven in by night from the farm where they are bred, a few miles out of the city. I am told by people who live in the Cal6ta (the pretty suburb of Malaga, where by the sea are many charming villas) that it is quite a thrilling sensation to hear, in the 113 A CORNER OF SPAIN dead of night, the ringing of the bells that announce the approach of the bulls for the next day's fight. First, far in advance of the cortege, come men on horseback, carrying torches and ringing bells, to clear the way and to warn of danger. Then on a wild gallop come the bulls, — each one guarded on either side by a tame bull, — detachments of mounted picadores flanking them. The rushing cavalcade, the ringing of the bells, the torches flaring in the darkness, the shak- ing of the ground under the many rapid- beating hoofs, they tell me, is quite dra- matic. When the bull-ring is reached, — it stands beside the sea, just outside the city limits, — there are fences which con- tract gradually up to the gate that leads into the toril. The wild creatures find their midnight gallop suddenly ended at this converging barrier. There is rarely any trouble in getting them in, I believe, for their guardians, the tame bulls, exert the same influence over them that shep- 114 THE MALAGA BULL-RING herd dogs do over the flocks they guard. The intelligence of these animals is won- derful, and the submission of the untamed brutes of the mountains no less so. In the rare cases when a bull has to be brought out of the arena, or when any- thing has gone wrong in the ring, one of these bulls will trot in and bring its re- fractory charge off the field in the "gen- tly firm" manner recommended by Miss Edgeworth. He seems to need only a cap and an apron to look an old bonne sent to bring a kicking, mutinous child back to the nursery. It is a pity that such intelligence should be slaughtered in the shambles or sacrificed in the ring ; for I suppose tame bulls and wild ones are recruited from the same ranks and are capable of the same education. Once in the toril, they must be incar- cerated in their several cells, and this I should think would be the least easy part of the programme. There are eight cells, perfectly dark but for a small latticed IIS A CORNER OF SPAIN trap at the top. Through this, which opens on the bridge above, their keepers deal with them at a safe distance, after they are got in. The door of each is opened by a rope when his hour of fate has struck and he is to be loosed into the ring. From this bridge the keepers let down his food during the night and day that he is in his " condemned cell ; " and from here, reaching down, they plunge into him the cruel long dart bear- ing a gay flaunting rosette which is to decorate him for his debut, and to pique him into greater vivacity when he makes his entree. I fancy the rosette is just now out of fashion : it is perhaps as bad form for a bull to wear a rosette as it was a few years ago for a girl to wear a necklace. None of the bulls I saw at Seville a month later had rosettes ; and a Seville bull is the glass of fashion and the mould of form. We saw the many stalls for the poor doomed horses, and the infirmaries for ii6 THE MALAGA BULL-RING the wounded ones who have escaped death at the horns of the bull in their first encounter, and who are being nursed up for a second, and it is to be hoped final one. For the managers are thrifty, and use up every shred of horseflesh left over from fight to fight. Therefore, it is best for the poor beast to be dead and done with it, when once he is enlisted. We went also through the many rooms in which the properties are kept. The plumed hats of the picadors were dusty and shabby, and I hope were renovated before the season opened ; the ponderous saddles and the armor of the picadors were hanging in dusty rows from the walls. The weight of one stirrup was as much as I could lift ; the spears were like Goliath's, each heavy as a weaver's beam. I scarcely remember all the paraphernalia we saw, roomful after roomful. After- ward we went to the hospital on the first floor, with its sickening array of cot- beds and medicine-chests and stretchers. 117 A CORNER OF SPAIN Except that human nature gets used to everything, I should think it would take the heart out of all the actors on the scene, to see this preparation for the possible. But there was one provision that touched me very much : it was the chapel. A chapel in a bull-ring ! — what could be more incongruous } And yet wheri one comes to think of it, what could be more humane, more Christian, if you will ? The Catholic Church does all it can to suppress the bull-ring ; it has a distinct quarrel with it. Any priest in Spain attending a bull-fight does it un- der penalty of excommunication. He is willfully committing a mortal sin. The best and most devout of the Catholic laity absolutely refuse to assist at these brutal scenes. But the multitude, the careless, the go-as-near-to-perdition-as- you-can-and-be-saved multitude go, and will go till Spain ceases to be Spain and the world is made over. The Church ii8 THE MALAGA BULL-RING knows this, and might as well issue an edict against earthquakes as against bull- fights. But she yearns over these poor small-souled children of hers, and with a motherly care provides for them what she can of eternal safety. There shall always be a priest in attendance behind the scene at every bull-fight, to absolve the dying, to administer the last rites, to say a word of hope, to hear a word of re- pentance. One remembers the hopeful epitaph on the tomb of the fox-hunting squire cut off in his sins : — " Between the stirrup and the ground He mercy sought and mercy found." I suppose the same charitable hope may cover the Andalusian as the Anglo- Saxon pleasure-seeker. I wanted to go through the chapel, into which I could only look from the staircase leading along the bridge above the toril to the infirmary. The keeper, however, tried the door and found it locked. The chaplain, he said, had the 119 A CORNER OF SPAIN key. It was but a poor sort of place, looking down from the stairway. There was a wooden altar, now bare of every- thing, and above it, in a ruddy haze, the fair face of the Blessed Virgin shone through a transparency. Poor wounded, careless-liver, brought in bleeding from the arena to breathe his last breath here, how that face would shine upon him from his far-past innocent youth ; how the " church-blest things " about him would bring back days of first commun- ion and confirmation and his mother's knee ! Perhaps the time between those happy days and this awful last one may not have been so very sinful as it looks to us, virtuous men and women of a more enlightened sphere. There may be good-living toreadors, perhaps, according to their lights, and salvable picadors, it is even possible. Heredity and surround- ings count for a great deal in a world where not more than one in sixty thou- sand lives up to his highest possibility. 120 THE MALAGA BULL-RING The Church, Hke a faithful mother whose wayward son roams nightly in for- bidden ways, waits up for him and trims the waning lamp and says her prayers, and very often is rewarded by receiving him into her arms at the eleventh hour. Whatever other faults we may find with Rome, we cannot say that she is narrow in the limits that she sets to the eternal mercy. Not even the Universalists them- selves, it seems to me, give wider hope. To the charity of alms, she adds the charity of prayers, — and prayers that seem to have no end, through hungry generation after hungry generation : — " Like circles widening round upon a clear blue river Age after age the wondrous sound is echoed on forever ; " prayers of saints that can never have an end, till all the world is redeemed and gathered about the feet of God. She only seems to shut out from hope the determinedly impenitent, the willful sin- ners, the lost ones who curse God and die, — who with intention and without 121 A CORNER OF SPAIN excuse refuse God's mercy through hfe and at death. Masses upon Masses she says for the Protestant dead ; hours upon hours her monks and nuns pray before the altar for the world that will not pray for itself ; confraternities that count their members by the million offer daily inter- cessions for the eternal safety of the careless ones who say no prayers at all, and for the blinded ones whose prayers she thinks have not reached far enough. The chaplain of the bull-ring perhaps might have told me some interesting things, but I did not meet him, and I could only speculate about his experi- ences with the victims of the national sport. In the old days, when it was a nobler one. Mass was said before every fight, and all who were to be exposed to danger assisted at it. That of course is forbidden now, for of nothing is the Church more careful than of any profa- nation of the Blessed Sacrament. 122 XIII A SPANISH MILK-ROUTE Every morning while I was at the convent I heard the tinkle of cow-bells under my window, and at last I had the curiosity to look out, and through the bars I saw the way they deliver milk in Andalusia. A slow procession of three men, two cows and two calves, winds up the road bordered by eucalyptus and palm and orange trees, and stops before the great door of the convent. A white-veiled lay-sister comes out with her pitcher, and into it is delivered, in quantity required, and direct from the source, that which a bountiful Providence designed for the nourishment of the defrauded calves. Their resentment must be great, as they hear the milky stream buzzing into the 123 A CORNER OF SPAIN convent pitcher. It seems an unnecessary cruelty to bring them. They have Httle straw muzzles over their mouths, and they are tied with ropes, each to the tail of its mother. The cows have ropes around their necks, and are led by the men. When the deliberate business is over, a few centimes are put into the hand of one of the men, the sister eyes critically the fluid in the pitcher, the convent door closes, and the procession winds its slow length down between the trees and out at the convent gate to serve milk to the next patron on the route. The men look as if they were not much more specula- tive than the cows ; the cows have a treadmill, middle-aged, rather careworn, though patient look. The calves had to me a sullen and resentful expression. One was an infant bull with a strong head and a marked personality of his own, and you wondered if he were not destined some day to draw the plaudits of an Andalusian crowd in 124 A SPANISH MILK-ROUTE the bull-ring that you could see from the hill in the convent garden. The other was only a little " common garden " red cow, who would probably amount to no- thing more distinguished than the prima- donna of a strolling company like the present ; but they both had the look of youthful resistance to monotony and bond- age, not to say short commons. There is something to commend in the Spanish method. The consumer gets pure milk, and the tinkle of a cow-bell is less offensive than a war-whoop at the base- ment door before dawn, and the rattle of milk- carts over the stony streets from four to eight a. m. For the producer there is also something to be said. If the " route " clears a peseta a day (twenty cents) it is probably considered a pay- ing concern. In a country where a good laborer can only earn seven reals (thirty- five cents) a day, the ground would be strewn with corpses if he could not sup- port his family on that amount of money. 125 A CORNER OF SPAIN The ground is not strewn with corpses, so he must do it. It is perhaps well to be satisfied with a peseta a day profit in a climate where a diurnal tomato, a bunch of raisins, and a lump of sour bread will support life. The adulteration of milk, and consequently of conscience, is pre- vented. Life is sweet, but it is also short. What does it matter whether a man leaves his children an inheritance to be taxed, and perhaps fought over, or only an air to breathe and a faith that " The saints will hear if men will call, For the blue sky bends over all." And the sky that bends over southern Spain seems always blue, and there is a saint, I should think, for every hour in every day. 126 XIV BLOOD POWER As I was waiting one day in a cab before a friend's house, I noticed a man come out of a hallway near, struggling with the weight of a heavy trunk which two women were helping him to drag out to the doorstep. It was an enormous trunk, and must have been very full, for even our driver, who was not above beat- ing his horse and swearing at people who got in his way, shook his head and groaned as he looked at it, and got off his box and bore a hand in lifting it up on the man's shoulders. The man first put a strap around his forehead, to which was at- tached, at the two ends, a sort of hassock or cushion which rested on his neck. The trunk, with great effort of the two 127 A CORNER OF SPAIN maids and the cabman, and the porter himself, was raised into position, while he bent his body almost double. His face, as I caught sight of it under the trunk, was very red. He started off in a stag- gering way, but after a little his pace steadied, and he went along quickly as far as I could see him. I was impressed by the sight, but there are so many im- pressive sights in Spanish streets that I acknowledge I forgot about him after he turned the corner. We drove to the Bishop's Palace, and while we were waiting at the door to know if his Grace would receive us, the poor man with the trunk on his bowed back passed us again. It was certainly fifteen minutes since we had seen him start with his load ; it had taken us ten to drive the distance, and it would be at a brisk pace that it could be accomplished on foot in fifteen, but it was rather a downhill road. He did not go fast now, and there was a suspicion of unsteadiness in his gait. His face had 128 BLOOD POWER turned from red to purple. He disap- peared down a narrow street, and I never saw him again. After that day I watched the poor beasts of burden with interest. They have stands like the cabmen, where you can always find one. They sit on their little stuffed cushions when out of work, and do not look discontented. I find they are employed in moving furniture. One Sunday a family was in the act of dhnd- nagement as I came from church ; they were leaving a house in the Caleta for one in town, and we met their various articles of furniture walking along the Cortina del Muelle in a ^/^^^/ manner ; here a washstand, there a dressing-table, and there again a pile of four or five well- packed drawers covered with napkins, and carefully balanced. But the thing I liked least was a huge wardrobe which "with lagging step and slow, brought up the rear. There are never by any chance two 129 A CORNER OF SPAIN men tackling the same load, so I take it these express companies are limited, and there are no partnerships. It may be a profitable calling, as profits go in Spain. The license cannot cost much, neither can the hassock, ct voila ! your plant. For everybody has to have clothes, and they cannot be reckoned as outlay ; neither can a shelter for your head at night. All outside the hassock and the license is clear profit. There is probably a good deal of competition, for there are plenty of horses such as they are, and donkeys and mules abound. What we call " horse power," the Spanish call "blood power." I suppose they do not reckon their bro- thers' blood in with the other sorts, — horse and mule and donkey. 130 XV AN ANDALUSIAN COOK Pilar was a young peasant woman. I do not know from what village she came, somewhere in the neighborhood of Mal- aga. She was paid three dollars a month, and she "found" herself. A chef m that happy land gets five dollars a month, but times were bad, and my friends had had for three years to content themselves with a woman cook. She cooked well, though, and cheerfully, and she prepared more meals in the twenty-four hours than any other cook I ever heard of. The children of the household were of various ages and sexes, and went to various schools, and needed their meals at sepa- rate hours. To be sure, the master of the house was keeping a strict Lent that 131 A CORNER OF SPAIN year, and only ate one meal a day, but that had to be in the middle of it, conse- quently it had to be cooked and served alone. Madame was delicate, and not only could not fast, but had to have very good and very nourishing food, and to have it very often during the day. There was room for no Spanish procrastination, I am sure, in Pilar's kitchen, but there must have been plenty of bonne volont^. She seemed to have identified herself thoroughly with the family, and to work with a zealous love for them all. There was, however, one of the many children for whom she had a special affection, a very delicate little maiden of two and a half. During the autumn this child had been desperately ill. The doctors gave no hope. Pilar in anguish prayed for her recovery, and promised the Bestower of life that if He would spare little Anita, she would, before the end of Holy Week, carry to the shrine on the top of the "Calvary" outside the town, one pound 132 AN ANDALUSIAN COOK of olive oil to be burned in His honor. She promised a great many prayers be- side, which she managed to get said, in the intervals of her frying and stewing and boiling. Well, the little girl, contrary to the doctors, began to mend, and finally was entirely restored to health. Pilar was most grateful, and said many Aves in thanksgiving. The winter was a busy one, and then Lent came and seemed no less busy in that big household. Pilar did not forget the pound of oil, but there never seemed a moment when she could ask a half day to go and carry it to the shrine. Holy Week came, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, — what should she do ! She could scarcely get away from her work even to go out to her parish church on Holy Thursday, to say a little prayer before the Repository where, throned in flowers and lighted with myriad candles, the Blessed Sacra- ment is kept till the morning of Good 133 A CORNER OF SPAIN Friday. As to going to seven churches and saying her prayers before each Repos- itory as other people did, that, alas ! was not "for the likes of her." She had a dumb deep-down feeling, however, that the good God knew, and that it would be all right. On her way back from her hurried prayer at the church, a procession passed which she watched for a moment. But this only proved painful, for it had begun to rain, and her pious southern soul was aflame with wrath that the image of the Blessed Redeemer should be exposed to the storm. "They don't care about wetting his dear curls," she cried, "as long as they can have a good procession." She shook her fist at the crowd, and came away in tears. Her mistress, a devout Catholic, tried to console her by reminding her that, after all, it was only an image and not the dear Lord she loved. Oh, she knew tJiat ; but it was cruel, but it was shameful ! She felt as a 134 AN ANDALUSIAN COOK mother would feel if the dress of her dead baby, or its little half-worn shoe were spoiled by the caprice or cold-heartedness of some one who had no feeling for it. Altogether Holy Thursday was not very consoling to Pilar, and the pound of oil grew heavier every hour. The next day. Good Friday, she had only time to go to church through the silent streets, where no wheels were heard, and say her prayers and look at the black, black altars and the veiled statues. That night, after her work was done, and the last baby had been served with its last porridge, she put her kitchen in hurried order, and stole out silently. She had bought the pound of oil at a little shop in the next street and, hiding it under her shawl, turned her steps towards Barcenillas. The night was black and tempestuous. A hot dry wind blew; occasionally a gust brought a few drops of rain, but more often it was only a roaring gale 135 A CORNER OF SPAIN which made the street-lamps blink, and whirled the dust around her. It was a long way to the suburb ; it was late ; there were few abroad, But no matter, the good Lord knew why she was out, and He would take care of her. There are no trams running in the days of Holy Week. From Holy Thurs- day till after the cathedral bells ring for first vespers on Holy Saturday, no horse is taken out of its stall, no wheels move in the streets of Malaga. It was nearly midnight when she got to Barcenillas. She crossed the silent plaza, passed through the gate, and began the ascent of the steep hill. There is a great broad road that winds up it, and at every " sta- tion " there is a lamp burning. She knelt at each as she reached it. But the place was very lonely ; the eucalyptus trees shook and whispered to each other, and the lamps were dim and flickered in the rough wind. The night before there had been processions all through the night, 136 AN ANDALUSIAN COOK crowds upon crowds going up the hill ; she would not have been lonely then. But she could not get away, because of little Josef's being ill and needing the water heated for his bath every hour. Yes, it would have been nicer last night, with all the priests, and all the chanting, and all the flaming torches. But the good God knew all about it, — why she did not come then, when she wanted to, — and why she came now, when she was afraid, and almost did not want to. Not that exactly ; she did want to, — only — oh, but then He knew; she would not worry, but she said her prayers with chattering teeth, and many furtive looks behind her. At last she reached the summit, where in a little chapel burned the light that could be seen for miles around Malaga. There a solitary brother knelt, saying his beads and keeping watch. She said her last prayers at the altar, and left the votive oil with the friar, who commended 137 A CORNER OF SPAIN her piety and was very kind. As she came out, the clouds broke and the Paschal moon shone through them, and the broad road led down with smooth ease towards the sleeping, silent city. Her steps made just as lonely echoes on the stones of the deserted streets, but she felt herself favored of heaven, as no doubt she was, and all her fears were gone. It was after three o'clock when she let herself in at the kitchen door ; and it was several weeks before her mistress learned, by accident, of the dolorous little pilgrim- age. 138 XVI Malaga's bishop The cathedral stands in a cluttered sort of square. The old mosque that once occupied the spot was turned into a Gothic church. Nothing of that re- mains but the portal of the Sagrario, very beautiful by contrast with the rest of the building. The plans were drawn (probably by Diego de Siloe) in 1528, but there have been a great many lions in the path of its completion, including that most august of destroyers, an earthquake. In fact, it is still unfinished, and its altered plans have made it mongrel and unsatis- factory as a whole. It is huge, but big- ness alone is not beauty. However, it is solemn and vast, and it is beloved of the people. All day they come straggling in 139 A CORNER OF SPAIN to say their prayers. Sometimes you will meet a group of brown and ragged fisher- men, redolent of their calling, who have come in from the near-by beach to give thanks for a good haul of fish, or to ask preservation during the darkness of the approaching night at sea. You see them kneeling, one at this altar, another at that, with serious and devout mien. Or there comes in alone at one of the great doors a quiet little child of five or six, with a straight cotton skirt down to her shoes, and a round old-womanish waist, a handkerchief tied over her head, her beads dangling from her tiny hands. She stands on tiptoe to dip her finger in the big b^niticvy crosses herself, and genu- flects, and then with sedate intelligence and a sweet piety makes her way across the vast marble spaces to the altars that she loves best, and says a prayer now at this one, now at that. Sometimes a couple of boys rush in pell-mell from their play. As they enter, 140 MALAGA'S BISHOP their faces grow serious, their bearing de- corous. They do not say many prayers, boys do not as a rule, but they are proba- bly none the worse for the breathing- space, and the bent knee, and the little decorum. As they go out at another door across the great stretch of worn marble pavement, there is not any relaxing of the tension till the heavy curtain falls behind them ; and then, down the huge flight of steps into the plaza, you hear a clattering of feet and a wild whoop, as they return to the world after their brief trajet across the consecrated precincts. It is not the fear of punishment ; nobody would **do anything" to them if they rioted in the sacred place. Spanish te^me is very lax in things ecclesiastic, as it is in most matters, — a light robe hanging loosely as befits the climate. But the love of God even more than the fear of Him is deeply rooted in the being of these children of the south. It is pretty to see them pressing up 141 A CORNER OF SPAIN to the side altars where low mass is be- ing said ; no music, no incense, nothing to attract them specially. They sit and kneel on the very steps ; one would think the priest would have to brush them away. It is not " mummery " to them either. You will see them slip down on their knees before the bell rings at the " Sanctus," showing they have been fol- lowing every word of the mass. It is touching to see them bow their little dark heads and cross themselves, when at the end of mass the priest gives the blessing. They kneel on while he says the brief "prayers after mass," and re- spond in childish treble to his " Pray for us, O holy Mother of God,"— " That we may become worthy of the promises of Christ." You almost feel sure that they are worthy of the promises of Christ, and in a fair way to enter into the kingdom shut against all who do not become as little children. 142 MALAGA'S BISHOP And there are old men and women, emaciated, ragged, wan, sitting on pave- ment or step, or dozing by the gate of the choir. The Andalusian poor have no firesides ; but what they lack in fire- sides they make up in altars ; the altar is their fireside. Across the square is the bishop's pal- ace. It is neither impressive nor inter- esting except as being the home of a very saintly man. All the people of Malaga, foes to the church as well as its friends, spoke in praise of this good man. He was a marques, the head of his family and the inheritor of a large fortune. All this he laid down ; another man took his title and place, and entered into the en- joyment of his houses and lands when he became an humble, nameless priest. Out of that position of obscurity, his sanctity and his marked ability after some years raised him to the hierarchy. He preached the Advent and the Lent in the cathedral that year we were in 143 A CORNER OF SPAIN Malaga. The Lenten subject was **The Catholic in the Modern World," or some- thing like that. The up-to-date-ness of the incisive, deep discourse was very striking, as well as the hushed silence of the crowded vast cathedral. The ser- mon was an hour long ; no one seemed to wish it shorter. We heard a good deal, too, about his charities. That winter was a hard one in Malaga ; the poverty was direr than ever before. The bishop gave up his carriage and gave the money to the poor, and went about on his many ways in the rattling old cabs of the city. I have more than once seen him in the selfsame broken-springed, battered old hack which we ordinarily used, with a driver much too big for it, who had a red face and a habit of swirling his whip about un- necessarily. I hope he curbed this in- clination when he had his Grace for a fare. One saw that economy ruled at the 144 MALAGA'S BISHOP palace ; everything that could be spared, people said, was given to the poor. It was bare, but clean, — so clean, the floors and windows seemed always being washed. In the court by which you entered there were several palms in green tubs, — plain tubs, no illusion. It was evident the good bishop did not give much thought to the decoration of his abode. There was one room, however, into which we were taken once, that looked as if it had had some thought and care bestowed upon it. It had a warm, furnished look, and the high windows opened upon a garden where flowers ran riot, as they do in Spain. The bishop's mother, old and feeble, lived with him, and his care for and devotion to her were as edifying as his charities or his austerities or any other of his virtues. I should judge that the state which his position called for was rather irksome to him, but as a true Spaniard he felt he ought to be punctilious in matters of etiquette. He 145 A CORNER OF SPAIN was in spiritual affairs, however, at every- body's beck and call, just as if he were not a high dignitary. There was, in Malaga, no priest who could hear confes- sions in English, and only two who could hear them in French, and one of these two was the bishop. So all the strag- gling foreigners who came to Malaga climbed up the great bare palace stairs and rang his bell and asked to be shriven, just as if he had not been his Grace. He always had a patient, gentle expression, as if he said, '' Oh, don't mind, it 's what I 'm here for." Orphanages, sisterhoods, all the myriad charities of the suffering city, were under his care, and called him father, and were pretty exacting children sometimes, I have heard. Something connected with one of his official duties as bishop interested me, as showing his self-forgetfulness and piety. Once, some revolution accom- panied by acts of a more than usually blasphemous and sacrilegious character 146 MALAGA'S BISHOP had made it necessary that all the altar- stones in the city should be reconsecrated. The ceremony of consecration — which is never intended to be renewed, but is ordinarily done once and forever — is of great length and of stringently exact detail. The laity do not assist at it. The bishop who consecrates must fast the day before, i. e., eat but one meal, and that at midday. Of course, on the day of consecration, he does not taste food or drink till the ceremonies are over. On this day the consecration of the first stone began in the very early morning, perhaps not long after dawn. At six in the evening, the last one was begun, and it was nearly nine o'clock when the bishop got home and first tasted food. He seemed quite to have forgotten the hour till he saw how fagged and worn the assisting priests looked. They were not fasting, but the long and rigorous service alone had exhausted them. He was contrite and self-re- 147 A CORNER OF SPAIN proachful that he had not more consid- ered them. Certainly fifteen or sixteen hours of continuous mental effort are rather a tax anywhere, but in limp and soft Andalusia it is almost an incredible strain. This was the only Spanish bishop I knew, but I have rather come to believe, since I have read an Essay of Cardinal Wiseman's on Spain, ^ that he was only one of many, and a fair sample of the rest. 1 " Essay on Spain," vol. v. of Works of Cardinal Wise- man. (P. O'Shea, New York, 1876.) If any one reading these superficial and hurried sketches should, by this allusion, be led to look up the volume mentioned, and read it, I should feel that my little book had an excuse for being, which otherwise I have doubted. 148 XVII Malaga's manners In the matter of manners, we found there were many points of difference from ours. The women do not shriek and shrill as ours do, but they are not as soft-voiced as the English, who breathe perpetual fog ; nor as piercingly swift in the flight of their words as the French. Their language, however, is softer than their voices ; they make a good deal of noise when they are massed. The names of the women testify the devotion of the land to the Mater Dei, — la tierra de Maria Santisima. All possible turns and twists are given to it, but it must be Maria, Maria, somehow Maria, most often with the Maria sunk in the particular mystery. Maria de las 149 A CORNER OF SPAIN Angustias (our Lady of Anguish), Marfa de la Concepcion, Marfa Inmaculata, Maria de Dolores, Maria del Pilar, Maria del Piedad, one meets familiarly as An- gustia. Concha, Conchita, Inmaculata, Dolores, Pilar, Piedad, and so on. In fact, in any class or family it is rather rare to meet with girls whose names do not suggest the devotion of the land. St. Joseph naturally shares with her in the affections of the household and gives an extra variation or two. Josefina is but one remove from Maria, and most of the boys have Jose if not Maria in their names. It is very pretty and wins rather than repels, as you get a little into the heart of the Spanish household. All the Marias and all the Joses, it is true, do not reflect honor on their patron saints, but neither do the Washingtons of our native land always turn out to be patriots. " He shoots higher who aims at the moon than he who only threatens a tree," and it seems better to have a 150 MALAGA'S MANNERS pious thought for your child, and to set before it a lofty model than to get it a name out of a novel, and to set it no model at all. It is difficult to tighten the Spanish up into any very formal social life. There is always a tendency to soften down into amiability and ease. They have strict rules of etiquette, but they slur them over as soon as they get to know you. There is one point, however, to which they hold tenaciously, and that is the length and depth of their mourning. Little children as young as three and four we saw were put in black, not only for parents and brothers and sisters, but for aunts and uncles. Half the children in Mdlaga looked as if they had been dipped in ink-bottles. Their bereaved elders wore the blackest black, the men as well as the women. The latter wore long black veils of a sort of soft grena- dine, pinned on the hair instead of the ordinary lace mantilla. There is really 151 A CORNER OF SPAIN a sentiment in the gloom and droop of this, — a contrast to the ornate and ugly French dciiil, crowned with be-feathered hats carrying long crape pennants of woe floating in the breeze, or, failing breeze, dragging to the ground. The Malaga woman wears plain and sad clothes, and her veil falls as if she mourned. In fact she does mourn, and her clothes are the true expression of what she feels. They are as a nation strong in their affections and constant. Family life is united and satisfying ; it means a good deal to them when death breaks it. The French dec- orate their grieving garb, and the English scarcely wear theirs at all ; the one race are too vivacious, and the other too healthy to mourn their dead as long as pensive and pious Spain. But the custom falls into the grotesque when a young girl comes down to receive you, three years after her father's death, pulling on a pair of long black gloves, and when a recent widower leaves at 152 MALAGA'S MANNERS your door a card as black as night. I have one before me now ; it disdains borders ; the face of the card is all black, the name and the address are in thin white text. It is very startling. Visiting is also sharply restricted after a death. The family, to the remotest branches, are expected to seclude them- selves absolutely for a month ; after that, there are innumerable grades of detach- ment from the world, or gradual resump- tion of its pleasures, according to the degree of kinship. If their manner of mourning is dis- tinctive, their festal mode strikes one as not less so. If you get an informal note of invitation that winds up like this : De V. At° S. S. Q. B. S. M. and then, beneath, your friend's (male friend's) name, it means that he is your devoted servant who kisses your hand, after having invited you to "this your house," at such an hour on such a day. 153 A CORNER OF SPAIN If you accepted his invitation and visited him for the first time, he would ceremo- niously welcome you to his house, which he would thenceforth allude to as your house, and would invariably style him- self your servant. Then of course he offers you anything among his posses- sions that you may admire. But no less "of course" you must not take it. He would inwardly be sadly disturbed if you did, but outwardly he would bear the bereavement with grave Spanish dignity. If a young girl met at an evening entertainment a young man whom she liked, she would flutter across the room to her father and whisper, " Go and offer him the house, papa, quick, quick, before he goes away." Of course she cannot offer it herself ; she would die rather, which is quite to her credit. There are many little odds and ends of habits of speech which are graceful. You apologize to the beggar to whom you refuse an alms, "Forgive me for 154 MALAGA'S MANNERS God's sake, my brother." If you ask a little boy his name, he will answer, "Juan," or Valentin, or whatever it may be, "to serve God and you." When you meet a man whom you know in the street, he takes off his hat and says, " At your feet, madame." Their hospitality is frank and gener- ous ; at the same time, if it is any gene to them, they will not, for mere good manners, do much for you. If they have taken a fancy to you, or are sorry for you, they cannot do too much. I saw the most unbounded hospitality shown to a young stranger whose mother had died suddenly while spending a month at one of the hotels. If she had been a sister, a child, she could not have been more tenderly cared for ; all homes were open to her to choose from. That she was not of their creed was no bar to their generous sympathy. Five o'clock tea has penetrated even to Malaga ; but it still is an exotic. Its 155 A CORNER OF SPAIN distinctive feature is the excess of deli- cious sweets, of which the men eat prod- igally. It would seem that young people could not meet together even at this hour without drifting away into a waltz, if there were any one to play for them. Or if there were no one to play, no piano, guitar, or zither, a thing inconceivable in a Spanish house, some child would be on hand to clap her castanets and dance the Malaquenas with grace and spirit. Once on the train going to Seville we were detained for a half hour, and some Malaga people whom we happened to know put their little girl of five on the seat of the compartment and made her dance the Cachucha to amuse us. The love of dancing seems to be more than a tradition with them, almost an inborn passion. I had expected to see among the char- acteristic things of the place the beauti- ful big pale green grapes which go here by the name of *' Malaga grapes," but I 156 MALAGA'S MANNERS found they did not grow in Malaga at all. From the time I heard that, I lost my interest in its commerce, and though I was taken through acres of warehouses and furlongs of factories, they did not in- terest me at all. I came to see churches and convents and the strange life of the streets and the odd customs of society. "When I goes a-troutin', I goes a-trout- inV and so I boldly flung back "the salmon" of Spanish commerce into the stream. I could see factories and ware- houses bigger and better at home. 157 XVIII MATINAL Some early morning drives from the convent to the distant EngHsh church in the Caleta gave me ghmpses that interested me, of the Ufe of the lower classes in the city. The people looked tired and sleepy, and as if it were an effort to get the wheels of a new day in motion. They sat about on doorsteps in very scant clothing and yawned. The housewives carried little pans of food to the venders of artificial heat on the corners of the streets, who for an infini- tesimal coin cooked it for them on long- legged stoves which they wheeled about from square to square. In the better quarters cows were being led from door to door and milked to suit customers. 158 MATINAL Sometimes I passed through an old market-place, — that of San Pedro de Al- cantara. A church stands in the square opposite the shabby, ancient market ; on the steps of the church those peasants too poor to hire a stall in the market spread their wares for sale. Not only on the steps, but on the flags of the street were women sitting by the pathetic httle store of things they had brought in from the country to sell, — some eggs, a speechless, melancholy hen, a pair of squawking, protesting ducks, a little heap of oranges, a basket of grapes, some bunches of onions and carrots. There were throngs of people passing in and out and making their purchases, all with a great deal of vociferation. One morn- ing, I saw on the steps of the church a plaintive-looking old woman hovering over her stock in trade. She looked hungry, anxious, pleading. It was so early I was sure her stock had not been depleted by sales : the stock was— three 159 A CORNER OF SPAIN tomatoes. Poor old being, — three toma- toes ! I wondered how many miles she had walked to bring them in. It was rather too early in the day for beggars ; at no time, however, are there very many in Malaga compared with towns more frequented by tourists. But there was one bright-eyed little boy who was always up betimes. He probably had some remote connection with Seville or Granada, and had heard what was to be got from foreigners. I had, though, only to make a horizontal sweep with my hand and say, " Forgive me, my brother," and he would fall back with a merry little pout and a coaxing ^' Manana ? " And *' to-morrow" he would run after me, pleading again. It was rather an odd experience, when I arrived at the English church for this early service on Sundays and high days, to be in my own person. The Congrega- tion, but for the whole winter that hap- pened to me. There are said to be over i6o MATINAL three hundred English in Malaga, and this chapel is the only Protestant place of worship in the city, I was led to con- clude from this that Protestantism is not making great strides in Malaga, though the " Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts" has rarely sent a better and more conscientious chaplain anywhere than there. At eleven o'clock there was a second service, to which thirty or forty people sometimes came. I remember another early morning church experience. A young American girl, a Catholic, who did not understand Spanish, wanted to make her confession before going away on a journey. I am sure there was not much on her soul, she was so pure and sweet, — only a lit- tle dust to be brushed away ; but she wanted to go, et que votdez-votis ? The bishop was absent, and there was only one other priest in Malaga who knew French. So to him a young Spanish i6i A CORNER OF SPAIN friend offered to lead her. It was a long way, and when they got to the church he was not at the altar, though it was his ordinary hour for saying mass. They looked at all the side altars ; he was not at any of them. It was an inconceivable situation ! The church was full, though it was not a fete day : a "blue Monday " if I remember right. They found a chair, and then the Spanish girl, with national vehemence, hurried to a lay-brother and told him it was insupportable, the father must come. It was impossible, the bro- ther said, he was in bed, he was threat- ened with pneumonia, he could not even say his mass that day. "No matter," she insisted with the cruelty of youth, "go and tell him the circumstances." The morning was cold for Malaga, the great stone church was damp and chilly, and the priest was very delicate. He had probably been sent to the monastery in Malaga to preserve his very valuable 162 MATINAL life, for he was one of the best preachers in his order, and a most saintly man. The young American, meanwhile, was engrossed in her prayers and oblivious of what was going on. The monastery was on the other side of the street ; pre- sently the lay brother came back from it and said mournfully, "He will come," and the young Spaniard made her way through the worshipers and whispered to her kneeling friend with subdued tri- umph, "He will come." And after quarter of an hour, he came. He was a tall, thin man, hollow-chested and stooping, with a very pale face, deep- set dark eyes, and a patient look that seemed to say, like the bishop's, "Oh, don't mind, it's what I'm here for." We left Malaga the next day, and I never heard what that morning's chill did for him. Another matinal snap-shot. A narrow, precipitous alley. I do not know how we got to such a squalid, closed-in place. 163 A CORNER OF SPAIN A priest came swinging by with rapid gait, probably on some sick-call ; he was absorbed in his thoughts and did not look to right or left. A group of nearly naked little children were sitting on the ground in the middle of the street, intent on some game. They did not look older than five or six. As the priest strode past they looked up, started to their feet, and ran lightly after him up the steep ascent, caught his hand, one after the other, and kissed it. He had not known they were there till he felt the touch of the warm little lips. He gave them a word of blessing and hurried on, and they turned back to their play with all seriousness, not even looking after him. It was all the work of a moment. 164 XIX IN THE SEVILLE BULL RING The Seville bull ring is over two hun- dred years old, very well built, and white- washed, like most things made by man's device in Spain. The bull-fight that I saw in Seville was, I believe, the best thing that Spain could do in the way of a bull-fight. It was the third and last day of the fair ; Seville is the social cen- tre of Spain ; the three days of the fair are the culmination of the social year in Seville, and the last fight is the culmina- tion of the fair. So, logically, it was the climax of a climax, and as such it was well to have been there, if one wanted to judge favorably of bull-fights. The day was perfect. April is the loveliest month in Seville, like early June at home; neither 165 A CORNER OF SPAIN too hot nor too cold. The whole town was gay with the fair, and all the gayest of the crowd seemed pushing their way towards the Plaza de Toros with us. There were open carriages with black- eyed women in the traditional bull-fight dress, yellow satin trimmed with black chenille fringe and a mantilla of the same chenille on the head ; there were drags and dog-carts driven by Spanish elegants, and filled with the haute 710- blesse of Seville; there were cabs with eager tourists in them ; there were trams stopping before the entrance and dis- gorging crowds of flushed and hurried heads of families, shepherding troops of little children in their holiday clothes ; there were dark peasants, oily mechanics, servant maids, hotel porters, pressing in at the gate where all have to enter, dividing, some above and some below, as indicated by the green or red or blue ticket that each held. There was a zeal about it all ; the air and the sunshine 166 IN THE SEVILLE BULL RING even were zealous, the light breeze was full of anticipatory thrills. We struggled up to our places in one of the best boxes; we had felt keenly afraid we were to be cheated out of it by some mysterious Spanish method. I do not know why, but travelers always are suspicious of the good faith of Spaniards, whereas generally I have found they are as dependable as other people who get their living out of the traveling public, — perhaps more so. Their methods are stupid, and they are hot-tempered and stubborn, but they seem to me honest. When we had got into our box and settled ourselves in our places, we looked around with delight. What a coup doeil! Imagine the vast white rim of the build- ing against a deep blue sky, and all the amphitheatre down to the barrier that shuts off the arena, ablaze with the color that goes to the clothing and the flesh of twelve thousand people; gay fans, parasols, dresses, hats, the white i 167 A CORNER OF SPAIN shirt fronts of men, the dark hair and pink cheeks of girls, — all with the slight movement and vibration of a living mass. And the great arena itself, what a glo- rious circle of color! It was a tawny, smooth ring of yellow sand of a rich and singular tint, brought from the neighbor- ing mountains. The wide, empty arena so resplen- dently colored, the massed brilliance of the throng that filled the amphitheatre from top to bottom, the white rim above that framed it, and over all the vivid blue of a cloudless sky, — struck me as un- approachably fine. No wonder that the Spaniard loves his bull-fight. So far it is to the credit of his eye and his taste that he does ; and one extends the credit a little further. The cntrada is beautiful. When all are wrought up to the highest point of expectancy, the gates in the barrier opposite the royal box open, and the gayly trapped procession winds in. Men on horseback with plumed hats ; the i68 IN THE SEVILLE BULL RING matadores in their beautiful dresses ; the picadores, carrying spears, riding their blindfolded horses ; the gayly decorated mules, with their bells jangling; the troop of men who manage them, dressed in snow-white blouses, — all this cortege winds through the dark gateway, and delights the eyes of the throng by pass- ing two or three times around the ring. Then a horseman rides forward out of the procession, and with a deep obeisance pauses before the royal box and asks for the key of the toril. The key is thrown down to him, and he catches it in his plumed hat which he holds out. This is the sign for all to withdraw from the ring but those who are to take part in the baiting of the bull. The mules trot off, shaking their bells, followed by their running drivers ; the men on horseback withdraw, and the gates close behind them. There is a sensational silence. All eyes are fixed on the door of the toril, 169 A CORNER OF SPAIN which differs in no way from the other doors of exit and entrance but by having a bull's head carved over it. A man goes up to it and unlocks it, and saves himself by jumping over the barrier as the wild creature rushes out from the dark cell in which he has been incarcer- ated for twenty-four hours. The door is quickly pulled shut from behind the barrier. Poor beast, he looks very be- wildered for a moment. He tosses up his head and gazes around, amazed at the strange scene and the glare of light. He catches sight of a picadore across the ring, sitting motionless on his blinded horse, always headed one way. All the side of the man toward the bull is plated with armor. It is a dastardly sort of business all through. The other side is never presented to the bull, nor does the bull have the least chance to get at it. He always goes straight for the horse with his head down, plunges his horns into the bowels of the creature and tosses 170 IN THE SEVILLE BULL RING him over. The chulas (the apprentices) then rush forward, and by waving flags before him draw off his attention from the prostrate horse and the picadore floundering in his heavy armor. A few moments, and this doughty knight is helped upon his legs, and if his horse is still alive and able to stand, he is put upon it and obliged to ride around the ring to be ready for another attack, as soon as the bull has dispatched the second horse, upon which he is now en- gaged. Something like fifteen minutes, I believe, is allotted to this part of the taurine drama. Some bulls do more rapid disemboweling than others, of course, but one may be sure the thrifty manager will never allow more than the allotted time for the slaughter of the horses he has bought and paid for. There were fourteen killed that day, and that was rather below the average. At the end of the fifteen minutes a bugle is sounded ; some of the picadores 171 A CORNER OF SPAIN ride away on their surviving steeds ; those whose horses are killed limp away on their feet. The matadores saunter in, dainty in silk and velvet, — the chulas with their banderillas in their hands come forward, and then the bull takes his chance of five minutes more or less of life at the hands of these tormentors. One's sympathies are all with the horses in the first act, and with the bull in the second and third acts. The skill of the men is perfect, and their courage ad- mirable, but they are twelve to one, and brain thrown in. Poor bull ! he has but a sorry chance for the few minutes' longer existence that he fights for. He is doomed, but then fortunately he does not know it. We saw six killed that sunny April afternoon, — six splendid bulls, black and glossy, and with courage and intelligence that deserved a better fate. I said six splendid bulls. But no, only five were " splendid." One of the sLx was a failure. Such a failure as comes from 172 IN THE SEVILLE BULL RING not wanting to fight. He was as grand to look at as the others, and he was not afraid. When they slammed the door of the toril behind him, and left him staring at the wide, glaring yellow ring, it did not seem to make him afraid or angry, only amazed. A great wonder seemed swelling in his breast ; where was he ? what did it all mean ? He lifted his head and walked forward, looking up at the serried ranks of Christians gazing down at him. I think he had a poetic na- ture, as bulls go. He seemed to wonder, speculate, yearn to know the deeps of fate. When he got to the centre of the huge arena, he caught sight of a horse bestridden by a valiant picadore. Some faint stirring of his animal nature dis- pelled for the moment his wondering trance. Bulls kill horses ; that was in his blood. He ran forward, put down his head, gored the horse, tumbled the rider. He was not afraid, but it did not amuse him ; he turned away. They 173 A CORNER OF SPAIN dragged another horse before him which he did not rise to cordially, but finally they nagged him into tossing horse and rider into the air. The crowd did not approve him ; the picadores began to dig their long lances into him, the chulas to wave their cloaks before his bewildered eyes. Even this only made him furious for the moment. When they let him alone, he subsided into peace again ; he simply had no use for the horses ; he was not a coward, but he was pacific, large-natured. This did not please the people. The chulas and the picadores had all they could do to keep him to his bloody work. When the horses had been withdrawn and the chulas and the matadores closed around him, it was pitiful ; they could not call up any anger that was permanent. He would rush at them, tear their flags, and then turn away. Three times dur- ing his probation he shook himself clear of their persecution, and trotted around 174 IN THE SEVILLE BULL RING the vast space, and with a wonderful in- telHgence stopped before the toril door and looked up to the crowd with a wist- ful appeal to be let out of this brutal field of blood. It was strange that he should know the toril door, the place is so huge, and the barrier so round and so monotonous. But again and again he came back and stood before it, the blood streaming from his wounds, the barbed banderillas shaking in his flesh as he ran. His look as he lifted his head to the crowd and stood imploring at the toril door will always trouble me. There was nothing that made his death to differ from the death of the others. There is a horrible monotony about their dying always. I mean in their death- throes. There are critical differences in the work of the matadores, of course; some give the fatal thrust more daintily, at which the crowd applaud. But always there is a sickening faint- ness that seems to overtake the poor 175 A CORNER OF SPAIN victims a few seconds after the fatal thrust has been given ; they lie down breathing hard, but holding their heads high, facing their foe. Sometimes one will stagger to his feet again and make an impotent rush at the brilliant, smiling matadore with his knife hid in the crim- son cloth he flaunts. But fate has been *' too many " for him. It is no use. He lies down again, a bloody froth oozing from his nostrils. There comes a shudder and a collapse, and your bull is dead. Well, when he is killed, the mules trot merrily in, shaking their gay bells and the red tassels with which they are be- decked, their white-bloused drivers run- ning behind them, and the dead bull is dragged off the field, as are the dead horses. These last look such pitiful shapes when the life is gone out of them. They are generally poor beasts to begin with, but the unknown attribute which we describe as life makes them such dif- ferent objects. In a moment, a rack of 176 IN THE SEVILLE BULL RING bones, a heap of hoofs and ribs. The bulls, too, look so poor and shapeless. What is life, after all? How much longer before the philosophers, who will not let us believe anything that we can- not understand, tell us what it is that goes out, the absence of which glazes in an instant the dead monster's eye, and dulls the gloss of his coat, and turns the glorious contour of his limbs into de- formity ? We ought to know such a simple thing as that, and to understand it thoroughly, thoroughly, before we be- lieve it. There was a mare in the ring that day, even more of a failure than the bull of which I have spoken. She was a de- licately formed creature ; even in her wretched plight one could see that she was well-bred. She had the remains of beauty, but she was no longer beautiful, alas. The chief thing left that showed her good blood was an exquisite sen- sitiveness, a quivering apprehension of 177 A CORNER OF SPAIN danger, intuitions that were as harrowing as experiences. It is possible that she had had experiences too ; she may have been a survival of yesterday's fight and have been wounded and patched up for to-day's ; but however that may be, she was wild with terror. Blindfolding did no good ; she knew everything that was com- ing to pass ; she was absolutely beyond control ; they could not drag her into place for the bull's attack. I have never seen anything more human and more harrowing than her terror. Two men pulled her forward by ropes, two others from behind prodded her on with lances. She vaulted, started aside, shuddered, eluded the on.-coming bull many times. The allotted moments of butchery were waning, the people were angry ; they cried "Altro! altro ! " not from tender- ness of heart, alas, but from a thirst for blood. So the poor frightened creature was withdrawn, and another and stupider was brought on, who was quickly dis- 178 IN THE SEVILLE BULL RING patched by the bull to the contentment of the multitude. I gave a sigh of relief ; the nervous, high-strung wreck of better days was safe, and would be turned out to die upon the hills, perhaps, in peace. I think I even said a prayer to that effect. But no. When the next bull was brought on, the poor, faded high-bred beauty was dragged out again. This time better preparations had been made, more ropes and more prods. The human intellect with brute force as an auxiliary was too much for mettle ; and amid cheers and hand-clapping the terrified creature was gored and tossed high in the air, falling lifeless on the tawny sand, dead once and for all, let us hope. Of the skill of the matadores one can- not say too much in praise. The hero on this occasion was Espartero. The two others, quite as skillful, perhaps, were Guerrita and Bombita. All three were the foremost men in their profession. 179 A CORNER OF SPAIN Their nerve and their skill were as per- fect as their dress, their bearing, and their grace. Guerrita was rather my favorite ; he is a slender, well-made, perfectly propor- tioned man of thirty-five or forty, agile as a deer, and with a deliberate grace of movement that seems to redeem the bloody work he does from some of its horrors. His features are regular, his expression is thoughtful, his face clean- shaven like a priest's. One scarcely knows whether to admire him most when vaulting over a bull in mid-career, or planting to a hair's breadth the hidden knife in the furious creature's spine, or standing with his g07'j'a dc torero in his hand, calmly bowing to the vociferous and excited multitude crowding to look down at him. One of the dramatic moments at a bull- fight is when the matadore "pledges " the bull to the chief person present. On the first day of the fair the personage was 1 80 IN THE SEVILLE BULL RING the Comtesse de Paris, and to her Es- partero "pledged" the three bulls which came to his share to slaughter. He killed them all, a merveille, with one stab each, and there was great acclaim. It was said the Comtesse would surely send him *' something very handsome." I hope she did, and that his family have it now to console themselves with, for in less than five weeks from that day he was instantly killed in the Madrid Ring. Peo- ple had assured me the whole thing was reduced to such a science that there was literally no danger ; that the courage of the matadores was a laughable fiction ; that a man was in about as much danger from a bull as a telegraph operator is from the electric current he works with. This is a very comfortable thought as you watch a bull-fight, but it is about as near to truth as a good many other thoughts with which we solace ourselves. That Espartero, the great master of his craft, died weltering in his blood in the ring i8i A CORNER OF SPAIN where he had had so many triumphs, proves the fallacy of such a theory. Your bull is an unknown quantity. You take your chance. One brute differs from an- other brute in fury. The wild creatures of the mountains cannot be trained to suit your game. You have to take them as they come. Some time ago a picadore was gored to death by a bull who went for him instead of the horse, the body of which always seems his objective point. It was found that the beast had some de- fect of vision, which caused him to plant his horns a foot or two higher than he meant to do. Therefore the matadore takes his chance, and it no doubt adds subtly to the pleasure of the crowd to know it is so grave a one. 182 XX AT THE SEVILLE FAIR There is a great family likeness in fairs. From the agricultural "county- fair" on flat and hot Long Island, reek- ing with bullocks and sunburned country people, to a charity bazaar at Sherry's, where every one is fainting with fatigue and yawning with ennui, they are alike disappointing and tame. " Who pleasure follows, pleasure slays." The attempt to be amused is too bald, the machinery used too cheap ; the methods are amateur methods, and not skilled ones. Cer- tainly they have been at it generations enough in Seville to have made their fete an industry of the place, but they have not succeeded in taking it out of the family of fairs and making it some- thing sui generis. 183 A CORNER OF SPAIN Seville is flat and hot, — they call it the frying-pan of Europe ; but the fair occurs in April, when the fire may be said scarcely to have begun to crackle. The houses and the hotels are congested from garret to basement with black-eyed Spaniards, gentle and simple ; the trains are overflowing, the narrow streets are jammed with pedestrians, the fine equi- pages of noble Sevillians and the heavy- laden mules of the in-coming peasants jostle each other through the crooked thoroughfares. Certainly all this is bright and amusing. I have no objection to Seville in fair-time, but to Seville's fair as a fair I have a great objection. It is nothing that prices are doubled during the time, for trams and cabs and hotels ; if all this made people happy, one would not mind for once. Sixty francs a day for two people in one small room at the Hotel de Madrid would be well spent in promoting the happiness of a nation or furthering their welfare even for three 184 AT THE SEVILLE FAIR days, if they were amused. But they are not. They come year after year, and they always think they are going to be amused, I am sure. The love of such pleasure seems inborn, and the belief in its attain- ment dies hard. The fair-grounds at Seville are of im- mense extent, — almost miles, I think. There are* acres and acres of bullocks and sheep and horses, and this quarter, of course, smells very nasty, and is not picturesque, as there are no trees, but either, according to the weather, a great deal of stifling dust or trampled mud. There are several great avenues laid out, and actually built upon every year. One is a sort of mercantile quarter, where are booths and restaurants and shows. An- other is devoted to the children ; cheap toys of every kind are for sale, and hun- dreds of whistles and trumpets wail the disappointments of as many little bour- geois Spaniards. There is nothing else to be bought that I heard of, nothing 185 A CORNER OF SPAIN characteristic except things to eat, and they are of a character you do not want to eat, and naturally cannot keep. The principal show of the place is the grand avenue where the high fashion of Seville elects to spend the afternoons and evenings of the three fair-days. Here are hundreds of what look like pasteboard houses painted yellow, without doors or glass in the windows, — decidedly pretty in design for the purpose. They vary in size, but are rather monotonous in color and form. Some of them have balconies, where pots of flowers stand and where vines have been hastily nailed up. Many of the entrances and the windows are draped with pretty chintzes, and the in- teriors are sometimes gracefully arranged with furniture brought out from the town, — pianos, lamps, clocks, vases of flowers, etc. It must be untold trouble. Con- tractors put up the booths, and take them down at the end of the fair and store them till the next year, but the fur- i86 AT THE SEVILLE FAIR niture seems to be brought by the family who leases or owns the booth. We drove through the grounds the day before the fair opened, and saw men and maid-ser- vants- superintending the unloading of carts, and an occasional head of a family casting anxious looks around, and evi- dently not enjoying that part of it. All the booths are numbered ; one walks along block after block of monot- onous edifices where nothing seems to be going on, people sitting about and looking bored, — no ela7i, no dash, no anything. Several large and handsome structures, all in the same style of archi- tecture and colored in the same manner, are put up or rented by the fashionable clubs of the city. These are quite the centres of gayety and fashion, they say. I did not see the gayety ; the fashion was probably incorporated in the persons of a few petits mattres who talked with languid voices to some smartly dressed but not beaming women on sofas. 187 A CORNER OF SPAIN The floor of each booth is several feet above the level of the ground, so that the occupants are on a stage in full view of the masses who drive and walk past all day long, and in the evening crowd up to the very steps to look on at the "enjoyment" of their betters. The booth of the Infanta was in no sense more private than those of less impor- tant people. The publicity of the whole thing seemed to me odious, and the stereotyped machine-made houses took away all possibility of picturesqueness. I had fancied tents put up on a green field gay with flags and hangings, — An- dalusian, individual, characteristic ; dark- haired beauties in mantillas flitting from one to the other ; Spanish lovers with lustrous eyes, touching the strings of guitar, mandolin, or zither; the sound of castanets half heard ; the rhythm of half-seen dancers from within ; the scent of jasmine and rose filling the air ; the soft glow of hanging lamps mixing with 1 88 AT THE SEVILLE FAIR the pale light of stars ; the moonbeams flickering through the trees. Seville, the home of dance and song ! Aye de mi Sevillia ! One more illusion gone. I have been to the home of dance and song, and what have I seen } Our visits in the day had been depress- ing, but we made light of that, thinking perhaps the evening view would do away with this impression. We all alighted from the tram, and entered what I must acknowledge was a magnificent avenue of lanterns. The street was very broad and of enormous length, and it was en- tirely arched by strings of lamps ; you walked under a canopy that glowed, and a multitude walked with you. But in such silence! You heard the tramp of feet on the pavement as it is heard at St. Peter's on Good Friday after vespers, when there is no music, and of course no speech. A most decorous crowd it was. I admit I should have liked a little indecorum, — a street fight, even, to vary 189 A CORNER OF SPAIN the monotony. The people were gen- erally of the lower and middle classes, — fathers carrjang babies, women trudging on behind, lads marching sulkily along, looking neither to the right hand nor to the left. I do not know how the grand monde got to their booths ; but evi- dently not by this splendid path of light, which we thought the best thing at the fair. The peasants did not wear costumes ; the women had print skirts, and shawls, and handkerchiefs over their heads ; the men, the worst-made common coats and trousers. Too often the girls wore cheap and gaudy hats and jackets that might have been bought in Third Avenue or the Bowery : in the length and breadth of the place, not a white cap, not a bodice, not a sabot. Two or three black Canton crape shawls, embroidered richly in old rose or yellow, worn with an air of inher- itance by bare-headed peasant women, were the only suggestions of a costume 190 AT THE SEVILLE FAIR that I saw. Of course, the women of the better class wore mantillas, but you always count on the peasants for color and picturesqueness in a crowd. Well, this sad-faced multitude were only on their way to the fair. When they were actually there, perhaps they would wake up and be jocund. Not in the least. They never woke up or did anything but pace from end to end of the long avenues, looking as if their legs ached, and as if they wished that it were time to go home. I went drearily from one tent to another, and at last I resolved to stop and centre my powers of analysis upon one booth which seemed to me about an average example of its class. There was dancing going on, and a good many people were collected outside, look- ing in. So while the rest of the party moved along I sat down in a chair, for which a man promptly invited me to pay twenty centimes. Having satisfied his claims, I tried to indemnify myself by 191 A CORNER OF SPAIN studying the Seville fair in an individual development. The scene in the booth before me was really pathetic. What an heroic attempt to be gay, to realize the traditions of the fair ! Around the sides of the room, on sofas and chairs, sat several elderly wo- men, whose well-worn, plain black silk gowns, thin hair, and awkward pose showed them to be no longer of a world where song and dance prevailed. It seemed a cruelty to bring them out of the obscure domesticity into which they fitted, and place them under this garish light. Some ungainly boys, compelled by the solemnity of the function, were wriggling uncomfortably on their chairs, and casting furtive glances out at the crowd. Two pretty young girls in deep mourning sat just by the entrance; they did not disguise their ennui, for not a cavalier of any kind had come near them. Before this inspiriting domestic group a dance was going on. At the piano was a 192 AT THE SEVILLE FAIR woman whose round and aged back only was presented to us, playing with vigor and spirit, and in excellent time, one of the Spanish dances. What vim, what determination, she put into it ! They should dance, their booth should be gay. Another, of heroic mould like herself, was dancing, — a woman of about thirty- five ; in her youth no doubt " a fine figger of a woman," but now, alas, rather stout, — and with her a somewhat pretty little girl of twelve in white muslin. The elder dancer wore a well-fitting gown of black satin and a white lace mantilla admirably put on, fastened with a red rose in her hair and three or four on her breast. She danced remarkably well, clapping her castanets with sharp pre- cision, moving with all the grace possible to such pronounced embonpointy and catching the very spirit of the music. With eye and murmured admonition she kept her rather lax little partner up to her work. But it was such hard work, — 193 A CORNER OF SPAIN such swimming against the current of fate, of feeling, of years ! It was mis- placed valor, a magnificent charge against the inevitable. It was a storming of the fortress of Pleasure, which never has been and never can be carried. Dear lady, if the gates open to you of them- selves, go in and thank the gods. *' I only know 't is fair and sweet, 'T is wandering on enchanted ground With dizzy brow and tottering feet," — but all must be in the nature of a gift and not a conquest. I wanted to put my arms around that middle-aged dancer of the Malaguenas, to take the castanets out of her hand, and tell her to go and do something that would give her some enjoyment, and I yearned to escort back to shelter those poor old black silk gowns which looked so *' out of it " under the electric light. I wanted, too, to turn the little boys adrift, and give them money to buy whistles and trumpets to make all the noise they lusted in the 194 AT THE SEVILLE FAIR humbler quarters of the fair. As to the two pretty girls in black, who sat like Sally Waters, "a-wishin' and a-waitin' for a young man," I longed to whisper to them to go home and sit in the chim- ney corner, — or w^hatever answers to the chimney-corner in Andalusian homes, — and to assure them that it was down in the book of Fate he would surely come to them there. I have never been more depressed by the mistaken efforts of my kind to be happy than I was that damp, warm night at Seville, sitting under the trees, and watching first the dancing in the booths, and then the crowd dragging past me as if it were Weary-Foot Common they were crossing, and not the land of Beulah. 195 (Cfe 6iterstbe j^ufi^ CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS, U. S. A. ELECTROTYl'KU AND PRINTED BY H. O. HOUGHTON AND CO. RARE BOOK COLLECTION THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT CHAPEL HILL Travel DP205 .H31