The mother brings the dinner and her tawny brood of
nestlings. A shady spot is selected for the feast. The father dips his
wooden spoon first into the vapory bowl, and mother and babes follow
with grave decorum. Idle loungers passing these patriarchal groups, on
their way to a vapid French breakfast at a restaurant, catch the
fragrance of the olla and the chatter of the family, and envy the
dinner of herbs with love.
There is no people so frugal. We often wonder how a Washington clerk can
live on twelve hundred dollars, but this would be luxury in expensive
Madrid. It is one of the dearest capitals in Europe. Foreigners are
never weary decrying its high prices for poor fare; but Castilians live
in good houses, dress well, receive their intimate friends, and hold
their own with the best in the promenade, upon incomes that would seem
penury to any country parson in America. There are few of the nobility
who retain the great fortunes of former days. You can almost tell on
your fingers the tale of the grandees in Madrid who can live without
counting the cost. The army and navy are crowded with general officers
whose political services have obliged their promotion. The state is too
much impoverished to pay liberal salaries, and yet the rank of these
officers requires the maintenance of a certain social position. Few of
them are men of fortune. The result is that necessity has taught them to
live well upon little, I knew widows who went everywhere in society,
whose daughters were always charmingly dressed, who lived in a decent
quarter of the town, and who had no resources whatever but a husband's
pension.
The best proof of the capacity of Spaniards to spread a little gold over
as much space as a goldbeater could is the enormous competition for
pub-lic employment. Half the young men in Spain are candidates for
places under government ranging from $250 to $1000. Places of $1500 to
$2000 are considered objects of legitimate ambition even to deputies and
leading politicians. Expressed in reals these sums have a large and
satisfying sound. Fifty dollars seems little enough for a month's work,
but a thousand reals has the look of a most respectable salary. In
Portugal, however, you can have all the delightful sensations of
prodigality at a contemptible cost. You can pay, without serious damage
to your purse, five thousand reis for your breakfast.
It is the smallness of incomes and the necessity of looking sharply to
the means of life that makes the young people of Madrid so prudent in
their love affairs. I know of no place where ugly heir-esses are such
belles, and where young men with handsome incomes are so universally
esteemed by all who know them. The stars on the sleeves of young
officers are more regarded than their dancing, and the red belt of a
field officer is as winning in the eyes of beauty as a cestus of Venus.
A. subaltern offered his hand and heart to a black-eyed girl of Castile.
She said kindly but firmly that the night was too cloudy. "What," said
the stupefied lover, "the sky is full of stars." "I see but one," said
the prudent beauty, her fine eyes resting pensively upon his cuff, where
one lone luminary indicated his rank.
This spirit is really one of forethought, and not avarice. People who
have enough for two almost always marry from inclination, and frequently
take partners for life without a penny.
If men were never henpecked except by learned wives, Spain would be the
place of all others for timid men to marry in. The girls are bright,
vivacious, and naturally very clever, but they have scarcely any
education whatever. They never know the difference between b and v.
They throw themselves in orthography entirely upon your benevolence.
They know a little music and a little French, but they have never
crossed, even in a school-day excursion, the border line of the ologies.
They do not even read novels. They are regarded as injurious, and
cannot be trusted to the daughters until mamma has read them. Mamma
never has time to read them, and so they are condemned by default.
Fernan Caballero, in one of her sleepy little romances, refers to this
illiterate character of the Spanish ladies, and says it is their chief
charm, - that a Christian woman, in good society, ought not to know
anything beyond her cookery-book and her missal. There is-an old proverb
which coarsely conveys this idea: A mule that whinnies and a woman that
talks Latin never come to any good.
There is a contented acquiescence in this moral servitude among the fair
Spaniards which would madden our agitatresses. (See what will become of
the language when male words are crowded out of the dictionary!)
It must be the innocence which springs from ignorance that induces an
occasional coarseness of expression which surprises you in the
conversation of those lovely young girls. They will speak with perfect
freedom of the etat-civil of a young unmarried mother. A maiden of
fifteen said to me: "I must go to a party this evening decolletee, and
I hate it. Benigno is getting old enough to marry, and he wants to see
all the girls in low neck before he makes up his mind." They all swear
like troopers, without a thought of profanity. Their mildest expression
of surprise is Jesus Maria! They change their oaths with the season. At
the feast of the Immaculate Conception, the favorite oath is Maria
Purissima.
