PRICES OF SHERRY.
The wine suffices in itself for sensual gratification and for intellectual conversation: all the guests have an opinion; what gentleman, indeed, cannot judge on a horse or a bottle? Whendifferences arise, as they will in matters of taste, and where bottles circulate freely, the master-hostdecides—
“Tells all the names, lays down the law,Que ça est bon; ah, goûtez ça.”
“Tells all the names, lays down the law,Que ça est bon; ah, goûtez ça.”
There is to him a combination of pleasure and profit in these genial banquets, these noctes cœnæque Deum. Many a good connection is thus formed, when an English gentleman, who now, perhaps for the first time, tastes pure and genuine sherry. A good dinner naturally promotes good humour with mankind in general, and with the donor in particular. A given quantity of the present god opens both heart and purse-strings, until the tongue on which the magic flavour lingers, murmurs gratefully out, “Send me a butt ofamantillado pasado, and another ofseco reanejo, and draw for the cash at sight.”
An important point will now arise, what is the price? That ever is the question and the rub. Pure genuine sherry, from ten to twelve years old, is worth from 50 to 80 guineas per butt, in thebodega, and when freight, insurance, duty, and charges are added, will stand the importer from 100 to 130 guineas in his cellar. A butt will run from 108 to 112 gallons, and the duty is 5s.6d.per gallon. Such a butt will bottle about 52 dozen. The reader will now appreciate the bargains of those “pale” and “golden sherries” advertised in the English newspapers at 36s.the dozen, bottles included. They aremaris expers, although much indebted to French brandy, Sicilian Marsala, Cape wine, Devonshire cider, and Thames water.
ADULTERATION OF WINES.
The growth of wine amounts to some 400,000 or 500,000arrobasannually. The arroba is a Moorish name, and a dry measure, although used for liquids; it contains a quarter of a hundredweight; 30 arrobas go to abota, or butt, of which from 8000 to 10,000 of really fine are annually exported: but the quantities of so-called sherries, “neat as imported,” in the manufacture of which San Lucar is fully occupied, is prodigious, and is increasing every year. To give an idea of the extent of the growing traffic, in 1842 25,096 butts were exported from these districts, and 29,313 in 1843; while in 1845 there were exported 18,135 butts from Xerez alone, and 14,037 from the Puerto, making the enormous aggregate of 32,172 butts. Now as thevineyards remain precisely the same, probably some portion of these additional barrels may not be quite the genuine produce of the Xerez grape: in truth, the ruin of sherry wines has commenced, from the numbers of second-rate houses that have sprung up, which look to quantity, not quality. Many thousand butts of bad Niebla wine are thus palmed off on the enlightened British public after being well brandied and doctored; thus a conventional notion of sherry is formed, to the ruin of the real thing; for even respectable houses are forced to fabricate their wines so as to suit the depraved taste of their consumers, as is done with pure clarets at Bordeaux, which are charged with Hermitages and Benicarló. Thus delicate idiosyncratic flavour is lost, while headache and dyspepsia are imported; but there is a fashion in wines as in physicians. Formerly Madeira was the vinous panacea, until the increased demand induced disreputable traders to deteriorate the article, which in the reaction became dishonoured. Then sherry was resorted to as a more honest and wholesome beverage. Now its period of decline is hastening from the same causes, and the average produce is becoming inferior, to end in disrepute, and possibly in a return to the wines of Madeira, whose makers have learnt a lesson in the stern school of adversity.
MANZANILLA.
Be that as it may, the people at large of Spain are scarcely acquainted with the taste of sherry wine, beyond the immediate vicinity in which it is made; and more of it is swallowed at Gibraltar at the messes, than in either Madrid, Toledo, or Salamanca. Sherry is a foreign wine, and made and drunk by foreigners; nor do the generality of Spaniards like its strong flavour, and still less its high price, although some now affect its use, because, from its great vogue in England, it argues civilization to adopt it. This use obtains only in the capital and richer seaports; thus at inland Granada, not 150 miles from Xerez, sherry would hardly be to be had, were it not for the demand created by our travelling countrymen, and even then it is sold per bottle, and as a liqueur. At Seville, which is quite close to Xerez, in the best houses, one glass only is handed round, just as only one glass of Greek wine was in the house of the father of even Lucullus among the ancient Romans, or as among the modern ones is still done with Malaga or Vino de Cypro; this single glass is drunk as achasse, and being considered to aid digestion, is called thegolpe medico, the coup de médecin; it is equivalent, in that hot country, to the thimbleful of Curaçoa or Cognac, by which coffee is wound up in colder England and France.
In Andalucia it was no less easy for the Moor to encourage the use of water as a beverage, than to prohibit that of wine, which, if endued with strength, which sherry is, must destroy health when taken largely and habitually, as is occasionally found out at Gibraltar. Hence the natives of Xerez themselves infinitely prefer a light wine called Manzanilla, which is made near San Lucar, and is at once much weaker and cheaper than sherry. The grape from whence it is produced grows on a poor and sandy soil. The vintage is very early, as the fruit is gathered before it is quite ripe. The wine is of a delicate pale straw colour, and is extremely wholesome; it strengthens the stomach, without heating or inebriating, like sherry. All classes are passionately fond of it, since the want of alcohol enables them to drink more of it than of stronger beverages, while the dry quality acts as a tonic during the relaxing heats. It may be compared to the ancient Lesbian, which Horace quaffed so plentifully in the cool shade, and then described as never doing harm. The men employed in the sherry wine vaults, and who have therefore that drink at their command, seldom touch it, but invariably, when their work is done, go to the neighbouring shop to refresh themselves with a glass of “innocent” Manzanilla. Among their betters, clubs are formed solely to drink it, and with iced water and a cigar it transports the consumer into a Moslem’s dream of paradise. It tastes better from the cask than out of the bottle, and improves as the cask gets low.
THE ALPISTERA.
The origin of the name has been disputed; some who prefer sound to sense derive it fromManzana, an apple, which had it been cider might have passed; others connect it with the distant town ofMansanillaon the opposite side of the river, where it is neither made nor drunk. The real etymology is to be found in its striking resemblance to the bitter flavour of the flowers of camomile (manzanilla), which are used by our doctors to make a medicinal tea, and by those of Spain for fomentations. This flavour in the wine is so marked as to be at first quite disagreeable to strangers. If its eulogistic consumers are to be believed, the wine surpasses the tea in hygæian qualities: none, say they,who drink it are ever troubled with gravel, stone, or gout. Certainly, it is eminently free from acidity. The very best Manzanilla is to be had in London of Messrs. Gorman, No. 16, Mark Lane. Since “Drink it, ye dyspeptics,” was enjoined last year in the ‘Handbook,’ the importation of this wine to England, which previously did not exceed ten butts, has in twelve short months overpassed two hundred; a compliment delicate as it is practical, which is acknowledged by the author—a drinker thereof—with most profound gratitude.
By the way, the real thing to eat with Manzanilla is thealpistera. Make it thus:—To one pound of fine flour (mind that it is dry) add half a pound of double-refined, well-sifted, pounded white sugar, the yolks and whites of four very fresh eggs, well beaten together; work the mixture up into a paste; roll it out very thin; divide it into squares about half the size of this page; cut it into strips, so that the paste should look like a hand with fingers; then dislocate the strips, and dip them in hot melted fine lard, until of a delicate pale brown; the more the strips are curled up and twisted the better; thealpisterashould look like bunches of ribbons; powder them over with fine white sugar. They are then as pretty as nice. It is not easy to make them well; but the gods grant no excellence to mortals without much labour and thought. So Venus the goddess of grace was allied to hard-working Vulcan, who toiled and pondered at his fire, as every cook who has an aspiring soul has ever done.
SPANISH INNS.
Spanish Inns: Why so Indifferent—The Fonda—Modern Improvements—The Posada—Spanish Innkeepers—The Venta: Arrival in it—Arrangement—Garlic—Dinner—Evening—Night—Bill—Identity with the Inns of the Ancients.
Spanish Inns: Why so Indifferent—The Fonda—Modern Improvements—The Posada—Spanish Innkeepers—The Venta: Arrival in it—Arrangement—Garlic—Dinner—Evening—Night—Bill—Identity with the Inns of the Ancients.
INNS—WHY SO INDIFFERENT.
HAVINGthus, and we hope satisfactorily, discussed the eatables and drinkables of Spain, attention must naturally be next directed to those houses on the roads and in the towns, where these comforts to the hungry and weary public are to be had, or are not to be had, as sometimes will happen in this land of “the unexpected;” the Peninsular inns, with few exceptions, have long been divided into the bad, the worse, and the worst; and as the latter are still the most numerous and national, as well as the worst, they will be gone into the last. In few countries will the rambler agree oftener with dear Dr. Johnson’s speech to his squire Boswell, “Sir, there is nothing which has been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced, as by a good tavern.” Spain offers many negative arguments of the truth of our great moralist and eater’s reflection; the inns in general are fuller of entertainment for the mind than the body, and even when the newest, and the best in the country, are indifferent if compared to those which Englishmen are accustomed to at home, and have created on those high roads of the Continent, which they most frequent. Here few gentlemen will say with Falstaff, “Shall I not take mine ease in mine inn?” Badness of roads and discomforts ofventascannot well escape the notice of those who travel on horseback and slowly, since they must dwell on and in them; whereas a rail whisks the passenger past such nuisances, with comet-like rapidity, and all things that are soon out of sight are quicker out of mind; nevertheless, let no aspiring writer be deterred from quitting the highways for the byeways of the Peninsula. “There is, Sir,” as Johnson againsaid to Boswell, “a good deal of Spain that has not been perambulated. I would have you go thither; a man of inferior talents to yours, may furnish us with useful observations on that country.”
CONTINENTAL INNS.
Why the public accommodations should be second-rate is soon explained. Nature and the natives have long combined to isolate still more their Peninsula, which already is moated round by the unsocial sea, and is barricadoed by almost impassable mountains. The Inquisition all but reduced Spanish man to the condition of a monk in a wall-enclosed convent, by standing sentinel, and keeping watch and ward against the foreigner and his perilous novelties;[7]Spain thus unvisited and unvisiting, became arranged for Spaniards only, and has scarcely required conveniences which are more suited to the curious wants of other Europeans and strangers who here are neither liked, wished for, nor even thought of, by natives who seldom travel except on compulsion and never for amusement; why indeed should they? since Spain is paradise, and each man’s own parish in his eyes is the central spot of its glory. When the noble and rich visited the provinces, they were lodged in their own or in their friends’ houses, just as the clergy and monks were received into convents. The great bulk of the Peninsular family, not being overburdened with cash or fastidiousness, have long been and are inured to infinite inconveniences and negations; they live at home in an abundance of privations, and expect when abroad to be worse off; and they well know that comfort never lodges at a Spanish inn; as in the East, they cannot conceive that any travelling should be unattended by hardships, which they endure with Oriental resignation, ascosas de España, or things of Spain which have always been so, and for which there is no remedy but patient resignation;the bliss of ignorance, and the not knowing of anything better, is everywhere the grand secret of absence of discontent; while to those whose every-day life is a feast, every thing that does not come up to their conventional ideas becomes a failure, but to those whose daily bread is dry and scanty, whose drink is water, every thing beyond prison-fare appears to be luxury.
In Spain there has been little demand for those accommodations which have been introduced on the continent by our nomade countrymen, who carry their tea, towels, carpets, comforts and civilization with them; to travel at all for mere pleasure is quite a modern invention, and being an expensive affair, is the most indulged in by the English, because they can best afford it, but as Spain lies out of their hackneyed routes, the inns still retain much of the same state of primitive dirt and discomfort, which most of those on the continent presented, until repolished by our hints and guineas.
THE FONDA.
In the Peninsula, where intellect does not post in a Britannic britzcka and four, the inns, and especially those of the country and inferior order, continue much as they were in the time of the Romans, and probably long before them; nay those in the very vicinity of Madrid, “the only court on earth,” are as classically wretched, as the hostelry at Aricia, near the Eternal City, was in the days of Horace. The Spanish inns, indeed, on the bye-roads and remoter districts, are such as render it almost unadvisable for any English lady to venture to face them, unless predetermined to go through roughing-it, in a way of which none who have only travelled in England can form the remotest idea: at the same time they may be and have been endured by even the sick and delicate. To youth, and to all men in enjoyment of good health, temper, patience, and the blessing of foresight, neither a dinner nor a bed will ever be wanting, to both of which hunger and fatigue will give a zest beyond the reach of art; and fortunately for travellers, all the Continent over, and particularly in Spain, bread and salt, as in the days of Horace, will be found to appease the wayfarer’s barking stomach, nor will he who after that sleeps soundly be bitten by fleas, “quien duerme bien, no le pican las pulgas.” The pleasures of travelling in this wild land are cheaply purchased by these trifling inconveniences, which may always be much lessened byprovisionin brain and basket; the expeditions team with incident, adventure, and novelty; every day and evening present a comedy of real life, and offer means of obtaining insight into human nature, and form in after-life a perpetual fund of interesting recollections: all that was charming will be then remembered, and the disagreeable, if not forgotten, will be disarmed of its sting, nay, even as having been in a battle, will become a pleasant thing to recollect and to talk, may be twaddle, about. Let not the traveller expect to find too much; if he reckons on finding nothing he will seldom be disappointed; so let him not look for five feet in a cat, “no busces cinco pies al gato.” Spain, as the East, is not to be enjoyed by the over-fastidious in the fleshly comforts: there, those who over analyze, who peep too much behind the culinary or domestic curtains, must not expect to pass a tranquil existence.
THE FONDA.
First and foremost among these refuges for the destitute comes thefonda, the hotel. This, as the name implies, is a foreign thing, and was imported from Venice, which in its time was the Paris of Europe, the leader of sensual civilization, and the sink of every lie and iniquity. Itsfondacco, in the same manner, served as a model for the Turkishfondack. Thefondais only to be found in the largest towns and principal seaports, where the presence of foreigners creates a demand and supports the establishment. To it frequently is attached a café, or “botilleriá,” a bottlery and a place for the sale of liqueurs, with a “neveria,” a snowery where ices and cakes are supplied. Men only, not horses, are taken in at afonda; but there is generally a keeper of a stable or of a minor inn in the vicinity, to which the traveller’s animals are consigned. Thefondais tolerably furnished in reference to the common articles with which the sober unindulgent natives are contented: the traveller in his comparisons must never forget that Spain is not England, which too few ever can get out of their heads. Spain is Spain, a truism which cannot be too often repeated; and in its being Spain consists its originality, its raciness, its novelty, its idiosyncrasy, its best charm and interest, although the natives do not know it, and are every day, by a foolish aping of European civilization, paring away attractions, and getting commonplace, unlike themselves, and still more unlike their Gotho-Moro and most picturesque fathers and mothers. Monks, as we said in our preface, are gone, mantillas are going, the shadow of cottonversuscorn has already darkened the sunny city of Figaro, and the end of all Spanish things is coming.Ay! de mi España!
Thus in Spain, and especially in the hotter provinces, it is heat and not cold which is the enemy: what we call furniture—carpets, rugs, curtains, and so forth—would be a positive nuisance, would keep out the cool, and harbour plagues of vermin beyond endurance. The walls of the apartments are frequently, though simply, whitewashed: the uneven brick floors are covered in winter with a matting made of the “esparto,” rush, and called an “estera,” as was done in our king’s palaces in the days of Elizabeth: a low iron or wooden truckle bedstead, with coarse but clean sheets and clothes, a few hard chairs, perhaps a stiff-backed, most uncomfortable sofa, and a rickety table or so, complete the scanty inventory. The charges are moderate; about two dollars, or 8s.6d., per head a-day, includes lodging, breakfast, dinner, and supper. Servants, if Spanish, are usually charged the half; English servants, whom no wise person would take on the Continent, are nowhere more useless, or greater incumbrances, than in this hungry, thirsty, tealess, beerless, beefless land: they give more trouble, require more food and attention, and are ten times more discontented than their masters, who have poetry in their souls; an æsthetic love of travel, for its own sake, more than counterbalances with them the want of material gross comforts, about which their pudding-headed four-full-meals-a-day attendants are only thinking. Charges are higher at Madrid, and Barcelona, a great commercial city, where the hotels are appointed more European-like, in accommodation and prices. Those who remain any time in a large town bargain with the innkeeper, or go into a boarding-house, “casa de pupilos,” or “de huespedes,” where they have the best opportunity of learning the Spanish language, and of obtaining an idea of national manners and habits. This system is very common. The houses may be known externally by a white paper ticket attached to theextremityof one of the windows or balconies. This position must be noted; for if the paper be placed in themiddleof the balcony, the signal means only that lodgings are here to be let. Their charges are very reasonable.
CHANGES IN SPANISH INNS.
Since the death of Ferdinand VII. marvellous improvements have taken place in somefondas. In the changes and chances of the multitudinous revolutions, all parties ruled in their rotation, and then either killed or banished their opponents. Thus royalists, liberals, patriots, moderates, &c., each in their turn, have been expatriated; and as the wheel of fortune and politics went round, many have returned to their beloved Spain from bitter exile in France and England. These travellers, in many cases, were sent abroad for the public good, since they were thus enabled to discover that some things were better managed on the other side of the water and Pyrenees. Then and there suspicion crossed their minds, although they seldom will admit it to a foreigner, that Spain was not altogether the richest, wisest, strongest, and first of nations, but that she might take a hint or two in a few trifles, among which perhaps the accommodations for man and beast might be included. The ingress, again, of foreigners by the facilities offered to travellers by the increased novelties of steamers, mails, and diligences necessarily called for more waiters and inns. Every day, therefore, the fermentation occasioned by the foreign leaven is going on; and if the nationalmusto, or grape-juice, be not over-drugged with French brandy, something decent in smell and taste may yet be produced.
THE POSADA.
In the seaports and large towns on the Madrid roads the twilight of café and cuisine civilization is breaking from La belle France. Monastic darkness is dispelled, and the age of convents is giving way to that of kitchens, while the large spaces and ample accommodations of the suppressed monasteries suggest an easy transition into “first-rate establishments,” in which the occupants will probably pay more and pray less. News, indeed, have just arrived from Malaga, that certain ultra-civilized hotels are actually rising, to be defrayed by companies and engineered by English, who seem to be as essential in regulating these novelties on the Continent as in the matters of railroads and steamboats. Rooms are to be papered, brick floors to be exchanged for boards, carpets to be laid down, fireplaces to be made, and bells are to be hung, incredible as it may appear to all who remember Spain as it was. They will ring the knell of nationality; and we shall be much mistaken if the grim old Cid, when the first one is pulled at Burgos, does not answer it himselfby knocking the innovator down. Nay, more, for wonders never cease; vague rumours are abroad that secret and solitary closets are contemplated, in which, by some magical mechanism, sudden waters are to gush forth; but this report, like othersviâMadrid and Paris telegraph, requires confirmation. Assuredly, the spirit of the Holy Inquisition, which still hovers over orthodox Spain, will long ward off these English heresies, which are rejected as too bad even by free-thinking France.
THE POSADA.
The genuine Spanish town inn is called theposada, as being meant to mean, a house ofreposeafter the pains of travel. Strictly speaking, the keeper is only bound to provide lodging, salt, and the power of cooking whatever the traveller brings with him or can procure out of doors; and in this it diners from thefonda, in which meats and drinks are furnished. Theposadaought only to be compared to its type, thekhanof the East, and never to the inn of Europe. If foreigners, and especially Englishmen, would bear this in mind, they would save themselves a great deal of time, trouble, and disappointment, and not expose themselves by their loss of temper on the spot, or in their note-books. No Spaniard is ever put out at meeting with neither attention nor accommodation, although he maddens in a moment on other occasions at the slightest personal affront, for his blood boils without fire. He takes these things coolly, which colder-blooded foreigners seldom do. The native, like the Oriental, does not expect to find anything, and accordingly is never surprised at only getting what he brings with him. His surprise is reserved for those rare occasions when he finds anything actually ready, which he considers to be a godsend. As most travellers carry their provisions with them, the uncertainty of demand would prevent mine host from filling his larder with perishable commodities; and formerly, owing to absurd local privileges, he very often was not permitted to sell objects of consumption to travellers, because the lords or proprietors of the town or village had set up other shops, little monopolies of their own. These inconveniences sound worse on paper than in practice; for whenever laws are decidedly opposed to common sense and the public benefit, they are neutralized in practice; the means to elude them are soon discovered, and the innkeeper, if he has not the things by him himself, knows where to get them.On starting next day a sum is charged for lodging, service, and dressing the food: this is, calledel ruido de casa, an indemnification to mine host for thenoise, the disturbance, that the traveller is supposed to have created, which is the old Italianincommodo de la casa, the routing and inconveniencing of the house; and no word can be better chosen to express the varied and never-ceasing din of mules, muleteers, songs, dancing, and laughing, the dust, therow, which Spaniards, men as well as beasts, kick up. The English traveller, who will have to pay the most in purse and sleep for hisnoise, will often be the only quiet person in the house, and might claim indemnification for the injury done to his acoustic organs, on the principle of the Turkish soldier who forces his entertainer to pay him teeth-money, to compensate for the damage done to his molars and incisors from masticating indifferent rations.
SPANISH INNKEEPERS.
Akin to theposadais the “parador,” a word probably derived from Waradah, Arabicè, “a halting-place;” it is a huge caravansary for the reception of waggons, carts, and beasts of burden; these large establishments are often placed outside the town to avoid the heavy duties and vexatious examinations at the gates, where dues on all articles of consumption are levied both for municipal and government purposes. They are the oldsisa, a word derived from the HebrewSisah, to take a sixth part, and are now calledel derecho de puertas, the gate-due; and have always been as unpopular as the similaroctroiof France; and as they are generally farmed out, they are exacted from the peasantry with great severity and incivility. There is perhaps no single grievance among the many, in the mistaken system of Spanish political and fiscal economy, which tends to create and keep alive, by its daily retail worry and often wholesale injustice, so great a feeling of discontent and ill-will towards authority as this does; it obstructs both commerce and travellers. The officers are, however, seldom either strict or uncivil to the higher classes, and if courteously addressed by the stranger, and told that he is an English gentleman, the officialCerberiopen the gates and let him pass unmolested, and still more if quieted by the Virgilian sop of a bribe. The laws in Spain are indeed strict on paper, but those who administer them, whenever it suits their private interest, that is ninety-nine times out of a hundred, evadeand defeat them; they obey the letter, but do not perform the spirit, “se obedece, pero no se cumple;” indeed, the lower classes of officials in particular are so inadequately paid that they are compelled to eke out a livelihood by taking bribes and little presents, which, asBackshishin the East, may always be offered, and will always be accepted, as a matter of compliment. Theideaof a bribe must be concealed; it shocks their dignity, their sense of honour, their “pundonor:” if, however, the money be given to the head person as something for his people to drink, the delicate attention is sacked by the chief, properly appreciated, and works its due effect.
THE VENTA.
THE VENTA.
Another term, almost equivalent to the “posada,” is the “meson,” which is rather applicable to the inns of the rural and smaller towns, to the “hosterias,” than to those of the greater. The “mesonero,” like the Spanish “ventera,” has a bad reputation. It is always as well to stipulate something about prices beforehand. The proverb says, “Por un ladron, pierden ciento en el meson”—“Ventera hermosa, mal para la bolsa.” “For every one who is robbed on the road, a hundred are in the inn.”—“The fairer the hostess, the fouler the reckoning.” It is among these innkeepers that the real and worst robbers of Spain are to be met with, since these classes of worthies are everywhere only thinking how much they can with decency overcharge in their bills. This is but fair, for nobody would be an innkeeper if it were not for the profit. The trade of inn-keeping is among those which are considered derogatory in Spain, where so many Hindoo notions of caste, self-respect, purity of blood, etc., exist. The harbouring strangers for gain is opposed to every ancient and Oriental law of sacred hospitality. Now no Spaniard, if he can help it, likes to degrade himself; this accounts for the number offondasin towns being kept by Frenchmen, Italians, Catalans, Biscayans, who are allforeignersin the eye of the Castilian, and disliked and held cheap; accordingly the inn-keeper in Don Quixote protests that he is aChristian, although aventero, nay, a genuine old one—Cristiano viejo rancio; an old Christian being the common term used to distinguish the genuine stock from those renegade Jews and Moors who, rather than leave Spain, becamepseudo-Christiansand publicans.
The countryParador,Meson,Posada, andVenta, call it how you will, is the Roman stabulum, whose original intention was the housing of cattle, while the accommodation of travellers was secondary, and so it is in Spain to this day. The accommodation for thebeastis excellent; cool roomy stables, ample mangers, a never-failing supply of fodder and water, every comfort and luxury which the animal is capable of enjoying, is ready on the spot; as regardsman, it is just the reverse; he must forage abroad for anything he may want. Only a small part of the barn is allotted him, and then he is lodged among the brutes below, or among the trusses and sacks of their food in the lofts above. He finds, in spite of all this, that if he asks the owner what he has got, he will be told that “there is everything,”hay de todo, just as the rogue of aventeroinformed Sancho Panza, that his empty larder contained all the birds of the air, all the beasts of the earth, all the fishes of the sea,—a Spanish magnificence of promise, which, when reduced to plain English, too often means, as in that case, there is everything that you have brought with you. This especially occurs in theventasof the out-of-the-way and rarely-visited districts, which, however empty their larders, are full of the spirit of Don Quixote to the brim; and the everyday occurrences in them are so strange, and one’s life is so dramatic, that there is much difficulty in “realising,” as the Americans say; all is so like being in a dream or at a play, that one scarcely can believe it to be actually taking place, and true. The man of the note-book and the artist almost forget that there is nothing to eat; meanwhile all this food for the mind and portfolio, all this local colour and oddness, is lost upon your Spanish companion, if he be one of the better classes: he is ashamed, where you are enchanted; he blushes at the sad want of civilization, clean table-cloth, and beefsteaks, and perhaps he is right: at all events, while you are raving about the Goths, Moors, and this lifting up the curtain of two thousand years ago, he is thinking of Mivart’s; and when you quote Martial, he and the ventero set you down as talking nonsense, and stark staring mad; nay, a Spanish gentleman is often affronted, and suspects, from the impossibility to him, that such things can be objects of real admiration, that you are laughing at him in your sleeve, and considering his country asRoman, African, or in a word, as un-European, which is what he particularly dislikes and resents.
Theseventashave from time immemorial been the subject of jests and pleasantries to Spanish and foreign wits. Quevedo and Cervantes indulge in endless diatribes against the roguery of the masters, and the misery of the accommodations, while Gongora compares them to Noah’s ark; and in truth they do contain a variety of animals, from the big to thesmall, and more than a pair, of more than one kind of the latter. The wordventais derived from the Latinvendendo, on the lucus anonlucendo principle of etymology, because provisions arenotsold in it to travellers: old Covarrubias explains this mode of dealing as consisting “especially insellinga cat for a hare,” which indeed was and is so usual a venta practice, thatvenderlo á uno gato por liebrehas become in common Spanish parlance to be equivalent todoingor taking one in. The natives do not dislike the feline tribe when well stewed: no cat was safe in the Alhambra, the galley-slaves bagged her in a second. Thisventatrait of Iberian gastronomy did not escape the compiler of Gil Blas.
RECEPTION AT THE VENTA.
Be that as it may, aventa, strictly speaking, is an isolated country inn, or house of reception on the road, and, if it be not one of physical entertainment, it is at least one of moral, and accordingly figures in prominent characters in all the personal narratives and travels in Spain; it sharpens the wit of both hungry cooks and lively authors, and ingenii largitorventeris as old as Juvenal. Many of theseventashave been built on a large scale by the noblemen or convent brethren to whom the village or adjoining territory belonged, and some have at a distance quite the air of a gentleman’s mansion. Their walls, towers, and often elegant elevations glitter in the sun, gay and promising, while all within is dark, dirty, and dilapidated, and no better than a whitened sepulchre. The ground floor is a sort of common room for men and beasts; the portion appropriated to the stables is often arched over, and is very imperfectly lighted to keep it cool, so that even by day the eye has some difficulty at first in making out the details. The ranges of mangers are fixed round the walls, and the harness of the different animals suspended on the pillars which support the arches; a wide door, always open to the road, leads into this great stable; a smallspace in the interior is generally left unincumbered, into which the traveller enters on foot or on horseback; no one greets him; no obsequious landlord, bustling waiter, or simpering chambermaid takes any notice of his arrival: theventerosits in the sun smoking, while his wife continues her uninterruptedchassefor “small deer” in the thick covers of her daughters’ hair; nor does the guest pay much attention to them; he proceeds to a gibbous water-jar, which is always set up in a visible place, dips in with the ladle, or takes from the shelf in the wall analcarrazaof cold water; refreshes his baked clay, refills it, and replaces it in its hole on thetaller, which resembles the decanter stands in a butler’s pantry: he then proceeds, unaided by ostler or boots, to select a stall for his beast,—unsaddles and unloads, and in due time applies to theventerofor fodder; the difference of whose cool reception contrasts with the eager welcome which awaits the traveller at bedtime: his arrival is a godsend to the creeping tribe, who, like theventero, have no regular larder; it is not upstairs that he eats, but whereheis eaten like Polonius; the walls are frequently stained with the marks of nocturnal combats, of those internecine, truly Spanishguerrillas, which are waged without an Elliot treaty, against enemies who, if not exterminated, murder sleep. Were these fleas and French ladybirds unanimous, they would eat up a Goliath; but fortunately, like other Spaniards, they never act together, and are consequently conquered and slaughtered in detail; hence the proverbial expression for great mortality among men,mueren como chinches.
ARRANGEMENT OF THE VENTA.
Having first provided for the wants and comforts of his beast, for “the master’s eye fattens the horse,” the traveller begins to think of himself. One, and the greater side of the building, is destined to the cattle, the other to their owners. Immediately opposite the public entrance is the staircase that leads to the upper part of the building, which is dedicated to the lodgment of fodder, fowls, vermin, and the better class of travellers. The arrangement of the larger class ofposadasandventasis laid out on the plan of a convent, and is well calculated to lodge the greatest number of inmates in the smallest space. The ingress and egress are facilitated by a long corridor, into which the doors of the separate rooms open; these are called “cuartos,” whence our word “quarters” may be derived. There is seldomany furniture in them; whatever is wanted, is or is not to be had of the host from some lock-up store. A rigid puritan will be much distressed for the lack of any artificial contrivance to hold water; the best toilette on these occasions is a river’s bank, but rivers in unvisited interiors of the Castiles are often rarer even than water-basins. It is, however, no use to draw nets in streams where there are no fish, nor to expect to find conveniences which no one else ever asks for, and those articles which seem to the foreigner to be of the commonest and daily necessity, are unknown to the natives. However, as there are no carpets to be spoiled, and cold water retains its properties although brought up in a horse-bucket or in the cook’s brass cauldron, ablutions, as the albums express it, can be performed. What a school, after all, aventais to the slaves of comforts, and without how many absolute essentials do they manage to get on, and happily! What lessons are taught of good-humoured patience, and that British sailor characteristic of making the best of every occurrence, and deeming any port a good one in a storm! Complaint is of no use; if you tell the landlord that his wine is more sour than his vinegar, he will gravely reply, “Señor, that cannot be, for both came out of the same cask.”
VENTA GARLIC.
The portion of the ground-floor which is divided by the public entrance from the stables, is dedicated to the kitchen and accommodation of the travellers. The kitchen consists of a huge open range, generally on the floor, theollaspots and culinary vessels being placed against the fire arranged in circles, as described by Martial, “multâ villica quem coronatollâ,” who, as a good Spaniard would do to this day, after thirty-five years’ absence at Rome, writes, after his return to Spain, to his friend Juvenal a full account of the real comforts that he once more enjoys in his best-beloved patria, and which remind us of the domestic details in the opening chapter of Don Quixote. These rows of pipkins are kept up by round stones called “sesos,”brains; above is a high, wide chimney, which is armed with iron-work for suspending pots of a large size; sometimes there are a few stoves of masonry, but more frequently they are only the portable ones of the East. Around the blackened walls are arranged pots and pipkins, gridirons and frying-pans, which hang in rows, like tadpoles of all sizes, to accommodate large or smallparties, and the more the better; it is a good sign, “en casa llena, pronto se guisa cena.” Supper is then sooner ready.
The vicinity of the kitchen fire being the warmest spot, and the nearest to the flesh-pot, is thequerencia, the favourite “resort” of the muleteers and travelling bagsmen, especially when cold, wet, and hungry. The first come are the best served, says the proverb, in the matters of soup and love. The earliest arrivals take the cosiest corner seats near the fire, and secure the promptest non-attendance; for the better class of guests there is sometimes a “private apartment,” or the boudoir of theventera, which is made over to those who bring courtesy in their mouths, and seem to have cash in their pockets; but these out-of-the way curiosities of comfort do not always suit either author or artist, and the social kitchen is preferable to solitary state. When a stranger enters into it, if he salutes the company, “My lords and knights, do not let your graces molest yourselves,” or courteously indicates his desire to treat them with respect, they will assuredly more than return the compliment, and as good breeding is instinctive in the Spaniard, will rise and insist on his taking the best and highest seat. Greater, indeed, is their reward and satisfaction, if they discover that the invited one can talk to them in their own lingo, and understands their feelings by circulatinghiscigars and winebotaamong them.
At the side of the kitchen is a den of a room, into which theventerokeeps stowed away that stock of raw materials which forms the foundation of the national cuisine, and in which garlic plays the first fiddle. The very name, like that of monk, is enough to give offence to most English. The evil consists, however, in the abuse, not in the use: from the quantity eaten in all southern countries, where it is considered to be fragrant, palatable, stomachic, and invigorating, we must assume that it is suited by nature to local tastes and constitutions. Wherever any particular herb grows, there lives the ass who is to eat it. “Donde crece la escoba, nace el asno que la roya.” Nor is garlic necessarily either a poison or a source of baseness; for Henry IV. was no sooner born, than his lips were rubbed with a clove of it by his grandfather, after the revered old custom of Bearn.
DINNERS IN THE VENTA.
Bread, wine, and raw garlic, says the proverb, make a youngman go briskly,Pan, vino, y ajo crudo, hacen andar al mozo agudo. The better classes turn up their noses at this odoriferous delicacy of the lower classes, which was forbidden per statute by Alonzo XI. to his knights ofLa Banda; and Don Quixote cautions Sancho Panza to be moderate in this food, as not becoming to a governor: with even such personages however it is a struggle, and one of the greatest sacrifices to the altar of civilization andles convenances. To give Spanish garlic its due, it must be said that, when administered by a judicious hand (for, like prussic acid, all depends on the quantity), it is far milder than the English. Spanish garlic and onions degenerate after three years’ planting when transplanted into England. They gain in pungency and smell, just as English foxhounds, when drafted into Spain, lose their strength and scent in the third generation. A clove of garlic is calledun diente, a tooth. Those who dislike the piquant vegetable must place a sentinel over the cook of the venta while she is putting into her cauldron the ingredients of his supper, or Avicenna will not save him; for if God sends meats, and here they are a godsend, the evil one provides the cooks of the venta, who certainly do bedevil many things.
RECEPTION AT THE VENTA.
Thrice happy, then, the man blessed with a provident servant who has foraged on the road, and comes prepared with cates on which no Castilian Canidia has breathed; while they are stewing he may, if he be a poet, rival those sonnets made in Don Quixote on Sancho’s ass, saddle-bags, and sapient attention to their provend, “su cuerda providencia.” The odour and good tidings of the arrival of unusual delicacies soon spread far and wide in the village, and generally attract theCura, who loves to hear something new, and does not dislike savoury food: the quality of a Spaniard’s temperance, like that of his mercy, is strained; his poverty and not his will consents to more and other fastings than to those enjoined by the church; hunger, the sauce of Saint Bernard, is one of the few wants which is not experienced in a Spanish venta. Our practice in one was to invite the curate, by begging him to bless the pot-luck, to which he did ample justice, and more than repaid for its visible diminution by good fellowship, local information, and the credit reflected on the stranger in the eyes of the natives, by beholding him thus patronised by their pastor and master. It is not to be denied in the case of astew of partridges, that deep sighs and exclamationsque rico!“how rich!” escape the envious lips of his hungry flock when they behold and whiff the odoriferous dish as it smokes past them like a railway locomotive.
Nor, it must be said, was all this hospitality on one side; it has more than once befallen us in the rudeventasof the Salamanca district, that the silver-hairedcura, whose living barely furnished the means whereby to live, on hearing the simple fact that an Englishman was arrived, has come down to offer his house and fare. Such, or indeed any Spaniard’s invitation is not to be accepted by those who value liberty of action or time; seat rather the good man at the head of theventaboard, and regale him with your best cigar, he will tell you ofEl gran Lor—the great Lord—the Cid of England; he will recount the Duke’s victories, and dwell on the good faith, mercy, and justice of our brave soldiers, as he will execrate the cruelty, rapacity, and perfidy of those who fled before their gleaming bayonets.
But, to return to first arrival atventas, whether saddle-bag or stomach be empty or full, theventerowhen you enter remains unmoved and imperturbable, as if he never had had an appetite, or had lost it, or had dined. Not that his genus ever are seen eating except when invited to a guest’s stew; air, the economical ration of the chameleon, seems to be his habitual sustenance, and still more as to his wife and womankind, who never will sit and eat even with the stranger; nay, in humbler Spanish families they seem to dine with the cat in some corner, and on scraps; this is a remnant of the Roman and Moorish treatment of women as inferiors. Their lord and husband, the innkeeper, cannot conceive why foreigners on their arrival are always so impatient, and is equally surprised at their inordinate appetite; an English landlord’s first question “Will you not like to take some refreshment?” is the very last which he would think of putting; sometimes by giving him a cigar, by coaxing his wife, flattering his daughter, and caressing Maritornes, you may get a couple of hispollosor fowls, which run about the ground-floor, picking up anything, and ready to be picked up themselves and dressed.