The wedding—Our Lady of the Carmen: her lady-in-waiting—The ancestral house of the Campos Abandonados—The kissing habit in Spain—Muscatel and Manzanilla—Arabic sweetmeats—King Alfonso and the conventyemas—The bride’s dance—Mantillas and a hat—Good-bye to Carmencita.
The wedding—Our Lady of the Carmen: her lady-in-waiting—The ancestral house of the Campos Abandonados—The kissing habit in Spain—Muscatel and Manzanilla—Arabic sweetmeats—King Alfonso and the conventyemas—The bride’s dance—Mantillas and a hat—Good-bye to Carmencita.
This image of the Virgin of the Carmen has no particular artistic merit, but Carmencita was promoted to being her “lady-in-waiting” when she left school, and had taken great pride in keeping “her” Virgin’s wardrobe in perfect order; and to-day she had gone very early to Mass and had dressed the image, for the last time, in the festival robe of eighteenth-century brocade and the tulle veil she had herself embroidered to present to her Virgin on her first communion. She had also filled the silver vases with the tall stiff bouquets which are so much admired here, and had offered quite a number of gilded wax candles for a blessing on her marriage.
And now she stood before the altar—her own altar—with her first long dress trailing behind her (she had not stumbled over it, but had made a most dignified entrance) and placed her helpless-looking little white hand in that of the stout, common-place man, over thirty years her senior,whose word was henceforth to be her law (for a married woman in Spain has practically no civil rights), and who had already made it evident that he would be a jealous husband. It may, however, be remarked that marital jealousy is regarded by many Spanish wives as rather a compliment than otherwise, as showing that their husbands think them worth being jealous of.
The ceremony was soon over, and while the bride and bridegroom, the bride’s parents and godparents, and her brothers and next sister, went into the sacristy with the priest to sign and witness the register, little Lola slipped her hand into mine.
“Carmencita told me to take you to our house now,” she said. “I am too little to witness for her, and she was afraid you would go away, and she wants you to see her dance in her wedding dress before she leaves with Cesar.”
She led me out of the church and along the badly paved street, which was lined with spectators anxious to see the new Countess whom they had known from a baby.
“There are only two carriages,” said Lola, “mamma’s and Cesar’s. Can you believe it? Carmencita has to come home all alone with Cesar in his carriage! She cried last night, and so did Pura and I, we all cried together. Fancy having to be left all alone with that horrid old man! Do you know, she is afraid he will kiss her, and his ugly blue nose will disarrange her hair. That is the only thing she is afraid of—being alone with him.”
A Spanish girl is never, under any circumstances, left alone with her fiancé, until she is actually married to him. There is always a mother, or an aunt, or some other female relative present to superintend the love-making. Small wonder that stolen interviews at the grating, with no listeners but the moon, have their charm. And perhaps the happiest marriages are those which come to pass, sometimes after years of parental opposition, between lovers whose courtship began thus. They at least have a chance of getting to know each other, free from the restraint of the chaperone whose attentive ear makes all real confidence impossible.
The house of the Campos Abandonados in Ronda is one of the most perfect examples of its kind in Spain. To the right of the spaciouszaguan, as large as many a patio, are the stables, empty now, save for the Marchioness’s mules. The sixteen mangers are pure Arabic work, built into the wall, with a cusped arch over each. Passing these we get to the “modern” part of the house, which was renovated and “restored” in the prosperous sixteenth century, when gold poured into Spain from her new colonies across the Atlantic. Beyond this patio, the walls of which are covered with roses, jessamine, and other creepers planted in the ground, we get a glimpse of the inner one, cool and shady under its white awning. This is the summer sitting-room, furnished with easy-chairs and lounges all gay with bright calico covers, tables with work-baskets, photographs, and knick-knacks, and the other trifles which ladies of gentle birth all the world overcollect about them, books and newspapers only excepted, for it is a rare thing to see anything to read in a Spanish lady’s sitting-room.
This inner patio is all just as it was when the Arabs ruled in Ronda: columns, capitals, carved beams, round arches—nothing has been altered since the conquest of the old town by the Catholic kings. In the mountains it is the fashion to paint every brick within reach with a solution of red ochre, and the maids, in their desire to add a touch of extra glory to the place for the wedding, had painted the arches as well as the brick floors. On one side of the arch nearest the staircase is a stone roughly carved and springing from a base very much older than the Arab invasion, and this was left of its own yellow stone colour, so that its extreme age was apparent. For this is one of those Græco-Roman houses of which I have spoken, and each of the successive races who have inhabited it used the remains of their predecessors’ building and carving when they in their turn added to it. There was a third patio beyond this, from which one looked sheer down into the ravine 500 feet below, past arched openings giving light and air to subterranean chambers under the house, which are often said to be prison cells, but are in factmazmorrasfor the storage of corn, wine, and oil. Indeed, there still exist in one of these cellars, half built, half cut out of the rock, a number of enormous oil-jars, quite large enough for the Forty Thieves to hide in.
When I reached the house with Lola I found the inner patio transformed. Everything movablehad been taken away, and the arcades on all four sides had been filled with chairs: the piano had been pushed to one side, the whole centre of the court was bare, and the blind organist of one of the churches, a couple of guitarists and a man with abandurria(a tenor guitar) were busy tuning up, to the accompaniment of the shrill whistling of half a dozen canaries and the excited screams of the Marchioness’s pet parrot.
Two great seventeenth-century mirrors in handsome carved frames painted red and gold had been brought downstairs and hung on two pillars opposite each other, and Lola made straight for one of these the moment we came in, to see, she said, if they reflected properly, but really to study her own appearance.
“Carmencita was determined to have them brought down,” she told me: “Papaito[diminutive of Papa] objected because he says they are so old that the frames might get broken, and they have never been moved since they were made; but Carmen said shemustsee what she looked like, dancingseguidillasin her satin train, and Mamma said of course she should have what she wanted, now that she had been so good and obedient about marrying the Conde.Ay de mi de mi alma!I wonder what my husband will be like whenmyturn comes! I do hope he won’t be quite so old and ugly as Cesar.”
Her further confidences were cut short by the arrival of her father and mother in their ancient family coach, with leather curtains in place ofwindows, drawn by two great black mules whose bells jingled so loudly and the brass of whose harness was so bright as almost to hide the deplorable state of the leather. The portly Marchioness had barely time to recover her breath after the exertion of getting out, and to take up her post of honour in the patio, before the bride and bridegroom appeared, he almost as fat and short-winded as his mother-in-law, she looking extremely pretty with a flush on her olive cheeks and her usually sombre heavy-lidded eyes alight with excitement and pleasure at the openly expressed admiration of the crowd all along the road from the church.
The instant they came in the whole place burst into life, for every corner was invaded by the number of guests who had been invited and the still greater number of those who had not. The well-to-do friends and relations were followed by the poor ones, then came the household servants, old and young, with their friends and relations, and then everybody, without distinction, who wanted to see the bride and wish her joy. And as these last seemed to be half the town, for a short time we were packed like sardines, while the new little Condesa, standing at her mother’s side, was receiving resounding kisses on both cheeks from every woman, child, and old man in the crowd, the young men being apparently the only ones who might not claim the privilege.
The amount of kissing done in Spain is extraordinary. Children as a matter of course put up their faces to the merest stranger who speaks to them, middle-aged ladies on notoriously bad termswould think it a grave breach of courtesy not to kiss loudly on meeting and parting in an afternoon call, young girls embrace effusively in the most public places, fathers sit with their babies on their knees, mumbling their fat little hands by the hour together, and all the servants expect to be kissed by the ladies of the family when they start on or return from a journey—a most embarrassing custom if the mistress is an Englishwoman. More than once I have been in a shop when a woman has come in and put her baby on the counter, whereupon the shopman has left me to go and kiss the child, whom he probably had never seen before. Strangers will often stop short before a nice-looking child, and exclaim “Qué mono!” (what a pretty little thing) and bestow on it a couple of kisses that can be heard all down the street. Of late an attempt has been made in Madrid, at the instigation of the Queen, to stop this promiscuous kissing, and for one season at least it was the fashion to hang a label round the babies’ necks when out walking, on which was written, “Please don’t kiss me.” But there is no diminution of embraces outside of the capital.
As soon as every claimant to the cheeks of Carmencita had been satisfied, the uninvited guests went away almost as suddenly as they had come in, and the rest of the gathering moved on into the inner court, and turned their attention to tobacco, wine, and sweet cakes. The sons of the house and their friends carried round a tray of glasses in one hand and a bottle of Malaga, Manzanilla, or Muscatelin the other, and each guest was expected to empty his glass at once and replace it on the tray for the use of his neighbour. Then came the bride’s sisters and their friends with trays full of sweetmeats and pastry made of almond paste, cocoa-nut paste, chocolate, custard with a variety of flavourings, and other sweets of Arabic origin, with untranslatable names, the recipes for making which are carefully preserved in a few convents, whose inmates sometimes have little left to live on save what they can earn by the sale of their cakes. Among these there is a popular kind calledyemas, because made from the yolks of eggs (yemas). They look like the yolk of a hard-boiled egg, and are covered with transparent caramel of a surprising stickiness.
And here I cannot refrain from digressing to tell a little tale about King Alfonso.
The first time that he and the Queen came to Seville was when their first baby, the little Prince of Asturias, was a few months old. The King, whose active habits and disregard of ceremony are well known, went out on the morning after their arrival for a walk through what is called the “Moorish” quarter of the old town, a maze of narrow streets little visited by sight-seers. Here he stopped at a certain convent famous for its sweets, and asked the “mother” who opened the little grille in the street door for “a packet ofyemasfor his wife and child.” The good nun hesitated: she had not the remotest idea who her customer was, and the Mother Superior, she knew, had set aside all thebest of the last batch to send as an offering to the baby Heir to the Throne.
“Pardon me, Señor,” she stammered, divided between her desire not to lose a possible peseta and the difficulty of reconciling a refusal with her natural courtesy; “I fear—to-day—it is impossible—we—we,” and then, with a brilliant inspiration, “we do not sell to foreigners.”
“Oh, that’s all right,” said the King, “I am a Spaniard by birth and education, and my present address is the Alcazar of Seville.”
The conclusion of the purchase may be left to the imagination.
I have never been able to manage more than two of these luscious sweets at a time, and little Lola became quite distressed when her sixth invitation to eat more and still more of the sugary delicacies proved unavailing.
“I know what you will like,” she said at last, “I am sure you will like that, for our North American friend[4]said it was the best thing in Ronda. It is time to hand those trays now, so I will run and get mine for you.”
And the next moment Lola was at my side again, pressing upon me slices of raw smoked ham, to be offered and eaten with the fingers, just as is done with dainties at wedding parties in Constantinople and Beyrout to-day.
Undoubtedly the Andalucian acorn-fed hams are excellent, but it was rather a shock to have tostart upon ham, and raw ham at that, when one had already eaten too many sweetmeats.
“Don’t you likeham?” said poor Lola, her mouth drooping with disappointment. And then a brilliant idea struck her. She dumped her tray down on a vacant chair and ran off to the kitchen, returning in triumph with half of one of those iron-hard rolls known asroscas. This she thrust into my hand and planted a slice of ham on the top of it, saying with a sigh of relief—
“I know that is what you want, for the North American lady never would eat ham without bread. Iamso glad I thought of it, because only a few minutes ago Carmencita told me to be sure and get you everything you like until she has time to come and talk to you. But now we are going to dance, so she won’t have any time to spare yet.”
To eat raw ham with one’s fingers, as all the ladies round me were doing quite simply and naturally—throwing the fragments that remained on the floor under their chairs—may seem peculiar to our notions of table etiquette; but nobody would laugh at these “country manners” who saw, as I did, the innate courtesy that lay beneath. That the bride at a fashionable wedding should have told off one of her sisters to show special attention to an elderly lady of no particular importance, simply and solely because “being a foreigner she might feel strange,” illustrates the traditional courtesy of well-bred Spaniards. And perhaps this funny little incident will explain to some of myreaders why I love the real Spain and the real unconventionalised Spaniard.
Now the piano, the guitars, and the bandurria struck up theseguidillas, whereupon Carmen and her sister Pura at once stood up to dance. The object of the two mirrors became apparent, for at every turn of the dance the bride was able to see herself in a fresh attitude, and her childlike delight in the folds of her long train, as she watched it sweeping after and around her, was a pretty sight. She had the reputation of being the best dancer in her native town, and loud cries ofMuy bienandOlégreeted the conclusion of the performance.
All these dances consist of what are calledcoplas(couplets), because the movements of the dance were originally interludes in the singing of verses, often traditional, among which extempore references to the happenings of the moment are introduced. Thus when the girls dance without any singing, a series of movements follow in sequence, lasting twenty minutes or more, according to the number ofcoplasthat they may perform. To the uninitiated all the dances, and still more all thecoplas, seem to be pretty much alike, when danced by girls only. But when one sees these dances performed professionally by a man and a woman together, one realises that every step, every turn of the head, and every movement of the body and arms, has had its origin in a drama of passion, of coquetry, or of courtship. One also realises why it is not permissible for youths and girls to dance them together, save in the intimacy of a family gathering, and why even thenthe man must, so to speak, only play at taking part, snapping his fingers in response to the rattle of the castanets as the girl waves them over his head, and holding himself rigidly upright while his partner sways and bends as she whirls before and round him.
The whole thing is essentially Oriental, and it needs only the glance of an eye or the turn of a hand to convert the graceful movements of ladies in a drawing-room into an exposition of sensuality.
One understands therefore why Spanish ladies are so careful how they allow their daughters to dance even the apparently harmlessseguidillaswith men instead of girls for their partners.
The usual form of concerted performance is for the men to sing thecoplasand the girls to dance between each of them; and when Carmencita had finished her performance, the guitarists struck up the rattling chords that preface thePeteneras. After much pressing on the part of the girls, Carmencita’s eldest brother Paco, otherwise Francisco, was induced to sing, and here is a translation of his first and last verses, which he sang to the strange quavering air without tune or rhythm, and full of the odd intervals and curious turns and flourishes peculiar to this kind of music, while the spectators accompanied him with a fusillade of hand-clapping and shouts of applause which burst out at every pause.
“Mynoviahas deserted me,Child of my heart;Thinking that I should grieve for her,Child of my heart.I am not sure whether I shall take another sweetheart now,Or wait and look about me through the summer.When I am on my death-bed,Child of my heart,Seat thyself at my bed-head,Child of my heart.Bring me a good veal cutlet,Two fowls and a nice beefsteak,And if this does not seem to thee enoughBring me anything else that occurs to thee.”
“Mynoviahas deserted me,Child of my heart;Thinking that I should grieve for her,Child of my heart.I am not sure whether I shall take another sweetheart now,Or wait and look about me through the summer.When I am on my death-bed,Child of my heart,Seat thyself at my bed-head,Child of my heart.Bring me a good veal cutlet,Two fowls and a nice beefsteak,And if this does not seem to thee enoughBring me anything else that occurs to thee.”
“Mynoviahas deserted me,Child of my heart;Thinking that I should grieve for her,Child of my heart.
“Mynoviahas deserted me,
Child of my heart;
Thinking that I should grieve for her,
Child of my heart.
I am not sure whether I shall take another sweetheart now,Or wait and look about me through the summer.
I am not sure whether I shall take another sweetheart now,
Or wait and look about me through the summer.
When I am on my death-bed,Child of my heart,Seat thyself at my bed-head,Child of my heart.Bring me a good veal cutlet,Two fowls and a nice beefsteak,And if this does not seem to thee enoughBring me anything else that occurs to thee.”
When I am on my death-bed,
Child of my heart,
Seat thyself at my bed-head,
Child of my heart.
Bring me a good veal cutlet,
Two fowls and a nice beefsteak,
And if this does not seem to thee enough
Bring me anything else that occurs to thee.”
The wedding party thought this screamingly funny, and there were shouts ofOtra copla! Otra copla!(another verse) when he had finished. But he made a sign to his second sister Pura, and another to the musicians, and the dancing began again.
Thepetenerasare more dramatic and crisper in movement than theseguidillas, and the brother and sister did a great deal of rhythmical hand-clapping and stamping, curiously at variance with the sentimental refrain of the song. When it was over, Pura dropped into the nearest seat, panting and fanning herself vigorously, while Paco slipped away to join the men, who from first to last sat in the outer patio and seemed to take no interest in the proceedings within, except when occasionally one of them planted himself in the entrance to commend some girl whose dancing he admired.
Proceedings became increasingly lively as the afternoon advanced, though the decorum was never relaxed. It got hotter and hotter, and the air grew suffocating under the awning, but there was no pause in the dancing. As soon as one couple of girls endedanother stepped out, and sometimes half a dozen were dancing together. All the grown-up girls wore high combs and white mantillas, which never seemed to become disarranged, and quantities of natural flowers on their heads and breasts, chiefly jessamine blossoms pulled off their stems and fastened together to form large rosettes—another survival of Arabic customs. One would have expected to see the floor strewn with the flowers as the dancing went on, but I knew that every girl had spent at least an hour arranging her head-dress before she started for the wedding, and had taken good care that everything was firmly fixed. And then, however lively the dancing may be, it is always graceful, and there is never a jerky or violent movement, which accounts for these elaborate head-dresses being as neat at the end as they are at the beginning.
Everything must finish some time, and presently the bridegroom, who had never come near the ladies since he and his wife entered the house, appeared at the entrance of the inner patio, his nose rather bluer than usual, and smelling strongly of smoke, to tell Carmencita that it was time to change her dress for the train.
“Por Dios!” exclaimed the girl, “I had quite forgotten that I was going away. Come, Pura; come, Lola, one more set ofseguidillas: who knows when we shall dance together again!”
Sixteen-year-old Pura in her first mantilla, Lola with streaming hair and scanty petticoats little below her knees, and Carmencita with her two yards of train, made a very ill-assorted trio; but they didnot concern themselves about the general effect. They danced no less than sixcoplastogether, the last including some odd little jumps off the floor with both feet, quite the least graceful performance I had yet seen, and most inappropriate to a long train. And then, to a chorus ofOlé’sthe three stopped dancing, flung their arms round each other, burst into floods of tears over the imminent parting, and were all borne away sobbing by their mother and various sympathetic friends.
The two younger sisters were still crying when they came downstairs an hour later with the bride in her travelling dress, a really charming arrangement of white muslin and blue ribbons, but Carmencita’s face was almost hidden under an overwhelming straw hat covered with immense roses.
Now she was once more all smiles, and beamed impartially on everybody as she moved towards the great doors amid a perfect fusillade of explosive kisses. How they managed to reach her face under that hat I could not understand, but I heard her say several times, “Cuidado con mi sombrero” (Mind my hat), while she moved towards me; and as she embraced me I discovered why she was leaving her home smiling instead of in a flood of hysterical tears, as Spanish brides usually do.
“Isn’t my hat enchanting?” she whispered in my ear; “you know it is the first hat I ever had in my life, and Cesar actually ordered it for me from Gibraltar! Isn’t he an angel? And we are going to Madrid, and then to Paris, and he is going to buy me ever so many more! But don’t tell anybody; Iwant to pretend I am quite accustomed to wearing a hat.”
The fascinating novelty carried her through all the adieux and safe into the carriage with her bridegroom, and the last we saw of Carmencita was her laughing face as she straightened the monstrosity, which she had almost knocked off against the carriage door as she got in.
IN THE FLOUR MARKET.
IN THE FLOUR MARKET.