Poor Folk in Spain

The road climbed up beneath high black cliffs. The other side of the valley was coloured orange and red upon which the sun was shining with all its force. The side of the hill was dotted with aloes, some having upright flower stems fifteen feet high in the air, around the flowers of which the bees were swarming in harmonious halos. A stately stone pine overshadowed a medley of old buildings which sprang from the top of a precipice out of which sprouted the weird branches of the prickly pear cactus. The road circled round the foot of this cliff, and still mounted till, making a full semicircle, it brought us on to a platform. On one side of the flat space was an open cistern into which led a pipe. From the pipe a deliberate trickle of water fell. Two women and two men sat about this pipe slowly filling their amphoras of Grecian form, while donkeys waited patiently in the background bearing panniers for the water-vessels on their backs. On the other side of the platform the monastery showed a high wall with a large gate leading into a courtyard from which arose the face of the church, painted a Cambridge blue.

We could find no bell. The water-carriers shouted instructions to us. The bell clanged with an empty sound, as though echoing through miles of untenanted corridors. We rang again. No response. We rang three or four times before we heard the sound of shuffling steps. A peep-hole, shaped like a cross, opened and an eye examined us. The door swung slowly open, revealing a small obsequious man dressed in peasant costume. Through passages we came into a cloister which was built around a small courtyard full of flowers. In the middle of the courtyard was a high statue of the Virgin. It was framed and almost hidden by a creeper which offered to it a tribute of gorgeous purple bell-shaped flowers. At the foot of the figure was stretched a large cat. A strange thought came to me that the cat did not bother itself about the Virgin other than as something which threw a grateful shadow.

The apologetic little peasant monk, who had let us in was evidently an underling. He murmured something about Brother Juan and went away.

Brother Juan came groaning along the corridor with rheumatic steps. He had a tiny head and large-framed body; dressed in peasant's clothes, white shirt, black cummerbund, short knee trousers, long white drawers to the ankle and sandals on bare feet. He was rather like a dear old gardener who has been in the family for years, and who has supported the teasings of generations of children. Age and a sweet nature had carved his face with horizontal wrinkles of kindliness; rheumatism and pain had crossed these with downward seams of depression.

Luis introduced the object of our visit. Brother Juan doubtingly shook his head. They did have visitors, yes, but those were always well-known to the monastery. Introductions would be necessary. But, in any circumstance, the Father Superior was in Murcia at the moment, and nothing could be done without him.

I, made conceited by the praise of the clerkly man in the carriage, then tried to charm Brother Juan by a series of apposite remarks in my most careful Spanish.

Brother Juan scratched his head.

"Doubtless, what the Señora says is very interesting." He raised his hands and eyes in pantomimed dismay. "But, oh, these languages! I can't understand a word!"

Brother Juan, groaning with rheumatism, led us to the gate. By some means an old woman dressed in black had joined us. As Juan was taking his leave of us his eyes suddenly lit up with a merry twinkle.

"If you will excuse me," he said to Luis, "it would be better, when you see the Father Superior, if the woman would dress rather less indecently. You see, we are monks and are not used to it."

We went down the hill accompanied by the old woman in black, who was chuckling at Brother Juan's last remark.

"If only the woman would ... he ... he ... we are monks and aren't used to it ... ho ... ho."

I was surprised. It had not seemed to me that I was indecent. I was wearing an ordinary English midsummer walking dress. Luis said:

"I think it was the opening at your neck that worried him. You see we haven't really taken up the open neck in Murcia as yet."

Directed by the old woman, we scrambled down steep paths to the bottom of the orange-coloured ravine, and up the other side past the aloes; we went through an olive grove, and again up a steep zigzag road to the second monastery. Here lived the clerkly man, but we did not know his name. This monastery began with a terra-cotta-coloured Gothic church with three tall towers and a cupola of blue glazed tiles, and rambled on up the ridge of a long hill to end in a tall building which looked like an overgrown Turkish bath. A grey building with a huge entrance door was pointed out as the pension of the monastery. We wandered into a large courtyard and to us came a fat priest wearing a biretta. He was courteous but firm.

"We have no room," he said.

But we remembered that the clerkly one had said that there was room. I suppose again my dress was the real objection.

We went back towards the village of the little Señor. On our way we again crossed the dusty road which led to La Luz. A carriage was driving along it. In the carriage were two priests. Luis said:

"There probably goes the Father Superior. Shall we ask him now?"

After a moment's hesitation we turned and strode up the hill. We had to walk fast to catch the carriage, but at last the driver, perceiving that we were following him, halted.

"No," said one of the priests, "we are not the Superior of La Luz. Indeed, at this moment he is behind you. There."

He pointed out an old man in the costume of a peasant, who, bent with age, was toiling up the hill aided by his staff. The Father Superior was still some distance away. Hastily, with a brooch, we pinned my blouse up close around my throat.

The Father Superior had the face of one designed to be an ascetic, but his expression was inscrutable. He was very suave. He felt honoured, he said, by the request of the Señors, but there was no room. Now Brother Juan had said that there was room.

Luis tried to urge the matter: he instanced our Red Cross work in Serbia. The Father Superior said it was very praiseworthy of us, but ... and bowing unfelt regrets he left us.

We went back to our little Señor.

He found for us a woman with the usual pound's weight of keys and conducted us to two bright red houses. Both were one story in height, but one was for three months' tenancy only. We decided to take the other. It was occupied to its limits by a Spanish family, so we took but the most cursory of glances into it. Then, our business settled, we said au revoir to the little Señor, who in Spanish fashion offered us his services whenever they should be needed.

We walked down a road and, in a short while, came to the village of Alverca. This was the first typical Spanish village we had passed through. It was long, stretched on the edge between the bare mountain and the fertile valley. The houses were low, one-storied for the most part, and the dust was all-prevalent. In the dusty street boys were playing football, which in Spain seems to be a summer game. In the middle of the village was a shop, which advertised itself as a Tobacco Agency, for tobacco is a Spanish government monopoly and can be sold only in licensed places. We went in to get a drink and to ask if by chance they had some tobacco, for all the while we were in Spain there was a famine of tobacco.

The inside of the shop was a curious mixture of the modern and of the very ancient. At one end of the counter was a modern brass beer machine, with carbonic acid gas cylinder—which gives to the tepid beer an extra fizz—pressure gauge and lead-lined sink. At the other end of the shop were huge jars four feet high, and nine or ten feet in circumference; amphoras of pale porous unglazed pottery, direct successors of the Grecian vase; small drinking pots of clay with short spouts for water or of glass with long spouts for wine, the latter in shape not unlike the brass drinking-vessels of Benares. Pendent from the ceiling hung candles two or three feet in length, for devotional purposes, and side by side with the candles were festooned strings of orange-coloured, highly flavoured sausages, which appeared very ominous. Some day one felt that one would be tempted by a Spanish friend to eat one of these sausages, and the fear of the experiment was always within us. Wine of a deep ruby tinged with brown filled a large glass barrel; wine which could be bought for one halfpenny a glass.

Inside the shop, leaning against the zinc bar, were two tramps; the one swart with three days' beard on his chin, dressed in a blue jean smock and soiled yellow velveteen trousers; the other leaner, more pallid, furtive: in spite of the heat of the day he was covered with a large black cloak.

They at once offered us their glasses of wine.

"Gracias. Buen aproveche," said we in customary refusal. They offered cigarettes to Jan and Luis. These, by courtesy, had to be accepted.

While we were drinking our tepid beer—fizzed up with the carbonic acid gas—Jan asked for and bought a box of matches. The Spanish matches, very bad, a government monopoly, are packed in a small cardboard box. This box is quite difficult to open. Whichever way you push it, like the well-known trick matchbox, the inside part seems to have two bottoms and no opening. The impatient traveller usually tears the box to pieces trying to get at the forty matches which are inside.

Jan asked for tobacco.

"There is not," sighed the fat woman.

Outside the shop the two tramps were waiting for us. The swart one peered quickly from left to right.

"We have tobacco," he said in a hoarse whisper. He snapped his fingers at his companion, who produced from beneath the cloak, furtively, a square orange packet.

"Good tobacco from Gibraltar," growled "Swart"; "will you buy?"

"No," said Luis.

The pallid man slid the tobacco beneath the cloak again. The two slouched off through the dust.

"That would be tobacco at each end and cabbage or other refuse in the middle," said Luis.

We turned towards the setting sun.

Murcia has a tramway system. Blue cars run all over the town and reach out into the country at several spots. We came to the terminus in this direction at Palma, on the road to Carthagena. The people of the village crowded about us in curiosity; but by this time we were becoming used to a publicity which is, as a rule, only reserved for Royalty.

As the tram carried us home—with several halts due to failure of the electrical supply—we noticed through an open door a delightful interior, decorated with the huge water-jars—on a raised step—with which beautiful specimens of old Spanish pottery were arranged.

The village of the little Señor had pleased us so much that we made arrangements to move out there as soon as possible; for the heat of Murcia was now unbearable and we were in consequence on the verge of being really ill

CHAPTER XIV

VERDOLAY—HOUSEKEEPING

The house in Verdolay had five large rooms, stone-floored, and was unfurnished. We decided to borrow all our friend's kitchen furniture, to wit, a table, three chairs, water-vessels, etc., and we bought for ourselves a large frying-pan. But the bed was a problem. Our friend's bed looked too good to knock about, so at last we determined on the planks which we had already, and four packing-cases on which to lay the planks. Antonio, always eager to help us, promised to find the packing-cases and to make all the arrangements about a cart. At this moment Antonio's wife Rosa was ill. He had invited us to a noble lunch, and upon the day following he had told us that the lunch had disagreed seriously with Rosa. She did not get better. "There is much fever with it," said Antonio. Marciana, our charwoman, of whom we will tell more later, was also working for Antonio, and would bring us news of Rosa's illness, which appeared quite serious for so slight a cause.

"We must look out for tummy-troubles," said I.

It is amazing what a lot a small amount of furniture appears when one is preparing to move. We had thought the cart much too big, but we had some difficulty in stacking into it all our material, including the guitar, of which the driver was told to take especial care.

We drove out to Verdolay in a tartana, passing on the road our cart of furniture. We noted that the driver had added above our load two huge bundles of straw colour. We wondered what they might be. We were to discover later.

The little Señor took us to the owner of our prospective abode. His house was full of children, and the study, where we signed a Spanish agreement, was festooned with swords, pistols and guns, while a large photograph of him in officer's uniform explained the meaning of this warlike equipment. The proprietor, Don Ferdinand—a most unmilitary looking man—received our money with aloof dignity; but said, after the transaction was over, that if we ever needed a friend we now knew where to look for him. Subsequently Don Ferdinand placed in the yard next to ours a large dog, which howled all night and prevented us from sleeping, but the friendliness which he had professed did not induce him to move it.

The cart of furniture had not arrived by the time we were in full possession of our new home. The front door led into a large entrada, from which one passed into an equally spacious kitchen, and then by a wide double door into the back yard. To the right and left of the entrada were rooms with windows, covered with a grille, looking on to the road. To the right of the kitchen the last room had a window looking into the yard.

Evening had come and still the cart delayed. Antonio had given us an introduction to a friend called "La Merchora." We found her in the village shop which she owned. Her shop was smaller than that in Alverca, but similar, save that she sold her beer in bottles and dispensed with the beer machine. The same bilious-looking sausage hung in festoons from the ceiling. She was like a fat, happy aunt to us, talked very fast, but was very proud of being able to understand what I said. She assured us that she would arrange things for us.

In the dusk we sat on the step of our empty house, and, illuminated by the light of a couple of candles lent by the little Señor, we ate provisions which we providentially had brought with us in the tartana. The cart arrived at about eight o'clock. The two large bundles had disappeared, but a certain amount of chopped straw scattered about amongst the furniture showed us what they had contained. The driver hesitated before accepting the tip which Jan offered him.

We set up the bed as best we could. We had intended to put the packing-cases upright, but the structure seemed rather unsafe; so we laid them flat, put two of the planks lengthways and the rest crossing. Unfortunately two of the packing-cases were much narrower than the others. This made the structure slope down about a foot at one end. We did not have time or surplus energy to alter this arrangement during our stay, with the result that in the morning we had as a rule slipped gently down so that our feet projected some distance beyond the end of the bed. Mosquitoes had threatened us during our meal, so that we rigged the net at once.

We had been warned by many travellers of the verminous condition of Spain. We had taken the chances of this house, which in truth had appeared reasonably clean. Nevertheless we went to bed with some anxiety. No sooner had we lain down and the candle was out, than the trouble began. It was as though we had been invaded by a hundred thousand bugs. We both tossed about and cursed our luck. Suddenly a piercing and prolonged sting made me clap my hand suddenly to the spot attacked. I had imprisoned something. I had experienced bugs in Serbia: this did not seem like a bug, but much larger.

"Jan," I exclaimed, "I've caught something. Strike a light." The match revealed a short piece of chopped straw. The carter, with his bundles of chaff, had provided us with as uncomfortable a specimen of an "apple-pie" bed as it has been my lot to experience. The chaff had sifted down through everything, and had impregnated both the cover of the mattress and the sheets with the fine spikes of straw. We spent the better part of the night picking the tiny irritants out of our bedding. Even the thought that the house had proved bugless was at that moment but a poor solace. In addition to our discomforts of that night, the house was almost unbearable from the heat. We had chosen our first residence with some lack of experience. The house, we discovered on the morrow, faced east and west, and not, as did the majority of the houses in the village, north and south. In consequence of this fact we suffered from the sun, which poured through the front door all the morning, and through the back door all the afternoon. It was almost impossible to open the windows on both sides, to allow a draught to pass through the house. And for the worst house in the village we were being charged forty pesetas a month by our friend, Don Ferdinand.

The discomforts of the night were added to by the cats, which chose our back wall for the most awesome serenades we have ever heard; and also by the plaintive baaing of a sheep tethered in an adjoining yard. We fell into an uneasy sleep about dawn, but were soon awakened by strange sounds which came from the kitchen. We listened, but could make nothing of them; they were strange hollow vocal sounds as though a small carpet was being beaten at irregular intervals. The front door was locked, the front windows barred; what had come in must have done so by the back, over the wall. What was it? Jan peeped through a crack of the door. On the kitchen floor was a flock of pigeons, which had come in to search the chaff, scattered by the previous night's unpacking, for grains of corn.

It was now about 5.30. We decided to rest for a while, in view of the failure of our sleep. A rousing thump, thump on the front door drew Jan once more from bed.

At the door was a brown-faced peasant, clad in black cotton, with bare sandalled feet. Spotted about the street were goats, their distended udders almost trailing on the ground.

"Milk," said the peasant. "Do you want milk? La Merchora sent me."

He took our milk-jug, selected a goat the udder of which seemed stretched almost to bursting, and milked the animal directly into the jug. He handed the jug of milk, hot and frothy, with a flourish.

"Three fat dogs and a little bitch," said he.

In such a hot country the milk keeps better inside the animal than outside. Milk shops in Spain therefore are usually quadruped, and there is never a question of inspector or of adulteration.

We made up our minds to get up. We did not know what other venders La Merchora had prepared for us.

We had scarcely finished our breakfast of tea, bread and chocolate, when another thump, thump on the door announced the arrival of another ascetically faced peasant, tall, clad in blue. With him was a pretty girl of about fifteen and a dusty, tilted donkey-cart.

"Vegetables and fruit," said the girl.

The man, having firmly fixed in his head that we knew no Spanish, grunted and made noises, strange though cheery, in his throat. The inside of the cart was piled with all manner of excellent things—tomatoes, green and yellow melons, berenginas, peaches, plums, pears, red peppers, cucumbers, potatoes, huge purple onions, and lemons.

We bought many things. The system of weights and measures is supposed to be that of the kilogramme, as it is in France, but the methods by which these weights are translated into practice in Spain is delightful. Evidently there is no inspection of weights and measures. One of the weights used by the tall man was a small axe-head, another was a lump of rock.

After the donkey-cart, a man stumpy enough to be almost a dwarf rode up to our steps. He was grim-visaged and paunchy; and said in a sour voice that he would fetch us water if we so wished. The price was one peseta a donkey-load, a donkey-load of water being four full Grecian vases (called cantaros) which were carried in panniers, on the top of which the old man sat and looked grumpily at the world, while the water gurgled and clucked cheerfully beneath him.

Then came a witch-faced woman with a disagreeable voice. She carried a huge basket and said she was the shopping woman of Verdolay. Verdolay had no market, nor could one buy there anything other than the few immediate necessities which La Merchora sold. This woman was equivalent to our country carriers. She walked to Murcia every day and returned with laden basket through the heated dust. For this work she demanded a small percentage upon the value of her purchases; probably she also extracted a small commission from the shops in which she dealt. We did not employ her much, as her temperament was not agreeable to us.

Last of all came a little old woman—with a face seamed like a kindly walnut—dragging an old grey donkey. On the donkey's back was a pair of time-worn panniers from which bulged a medley of fruit and vegetables. She was the donkey-cart's rival. I had forgotten to buy onions.

During our trip we had been bothered by the fact that at moments our uncertain Spanish would be displaced by the language we had last learned, Serbian. Instead of the Spanish sentence, quite against our wills Serbian would speak itself. This phenomenon is quite common, I believe, to those who learn several languages more or less imperfectly.

I now asked the old woman in unwished-for Serbian for onions. She struck an attitude of theatrical dismay.

"Señora," she exclaimed, "que es eso?"[12]

I repeated my desire, and again Serbian came out. The old lady shook her head, and seemed frightened. I got a strong hold over my tongue, and said slowly in Spanish:

"Tiene cebollas?"[13]

The old lady's face broke into a hundred wrinkles of delight.

"Ahe, Señora," she cried, "if you say 'cebollas,' I can understand that you want cebollas. But if you say something different from 'cebollas,' how can I know that you need cebollas?"

We walked round the corner to La Merchora's to discover what could, and what could not, be bought at first hand. La Merchora could supply us with olive oil, but not with vinegar. She sold beer, wine, lemonade and soda-water in siphons; dried sardines, very smelly; orange-coloured sausages; bread at a peseta the kilo; Dutch cheese, red pepper, chocolate and eggs. The last-named item on the list she said was scarce and variable in quality. I then asked her if it would be possible to find a maid in the village. The little Señor had said that servants were as plentiful as flies in June, but La Merchora said that they were as scarce as were the eggs. All the girls went off to Murcia, she said. There were several women in the little shop and a discussion began; they reviewed a list of the likely girls. A young woman came in, and said at once that her sister was out of a job. She would send her along. La Merchora was reluctant to tell us the correct price

to pay. I suppose she thought that she might be spoiling a beautiful piece of bargaining. Upon pressure, however, she admitted that the local price was about ten pesetas a month, this to include all the washing of linen, both house and personal.

We bought some of La Merchora's chocolate. She asked us if we would have Spanish or French flavouring. We naturally chose the Spanish variety. It was very cheap. It had a dusty consistency in the mouth, and tasted of chocolate not at all, but strongly of cinnamon. It was eatable, but not exciting; we consoled ourselves with the reflection that it was nourishing without temptations towards greediness and ate no other chocolate during our stay in Verdolay. Behind her shop La Merchora had a large yard, with outside stove for cooking. In the yard was a flock of turkeys and several pigs. A black and white terrier pup was having a game with the pigs, running about and pulling their tails with his sharp teeth.

Our house had inconveniences. There was, as far as we could see, no place to put household refuse, nor any means in the village of collecting it. The windows on the road commanded a view almost of the whole house, and if we left them open at once the curious were at the grilles, staring through at us. As we could not open the back door or windows during the afternoon, this meant that if we wished for privacy we had to live in semi-gloom. Nobody in Spain, however, tries to live other than in public; the people walked in and watched us as we were having our meals; walked round the house examining with interest the pictures which we hung on the walls to dry; and in time we became case-hardened to this semi-public life.

We had a siesta during the afternoon to make up for the sleep we had lost. At first we lay down without the mosquito-net, but the flies soon drove us to its protection. In the evening we called on the little Señor. He was a delicate and very likeable man, but his pretty wife showed a strong dislike for us, for which we could find no explanation save that perhaps she had been a pro-German during the war. We sat uncomfortably in a mixed atmosphere of liking and hate for some while, then, making our adieux, and followed by the setter-St. Bernard, we went home.

I think that we first discovered the lack of privacy while we were undressing. We had left the front windows open for air, and soon a crowd was watching our preliminaries to sleep. Luckily we discovered it early. Jan closed the shutters, upon which a number of boys sat down on our doorstep and sang serenades to us for several hours

CHAPTER XV

VERDOLAY—SKETCHING IN SPAIN

Sketching in Spain has inconveniences. In the summer the heat makes it imperative that the painter should be up with the dawn, for between eleven a.m. and four p.m. the heat and the brilliance of the light impose too great a strain on the eyes and the endurance. Under any circumstances we were almost forced to rise with the sun, for Milk and Vegetables both called before six.

Verdolay was an excellent spot at which to begin an acquaintance with Spanish scenery. There was a great variety of subject matter. The village itself was full of vividly coloured houses, and at the back was the wonderful old monastery of Santa Catalina. In the valley less than half a mile away were the huertas, or irrigated gardens, full of rich green. On the sides of the mountains were the olive terraces, which traced the architecture of the hills in a way to delight the painter's heart. Between the olives and the garden was the dusty cart road with its intermittent traffic, and the small dusty strung-out villages, the houses threaded on the road like beads on a necklace, especially that one called El Angel—though anything more arid and less angelic could hardly be imagined. In the hills themselves were fine ravines of strangely coloured ferruginous earths, orange, purple and blue; and the tops of the foothills were often crested with monasteries, like that of La Luz, which gave the scene a most romantic atmosphere. I clung more or less to the village, Jan wandered about the surrounding country or sat in the insufficient shadow of the olive trees near El Angel.

The first real inconvenience which we noted was that seldom did the best view possess a suitable piece of shade from which to paint it. Thus the artist's task was doubled; one had to find coincident scene and shadow. The apparently aimless wander of the artist looking for a subject usually excited the curiosity of the passers-by, so that either one was irritated by a series of remarks or became possessed of a small following of the curious. I use a square hole cut in a piece of cardboard in order to test the view and judge whether it would frame as satisfactorily as it promised to do. Whenever I placed this square to my eye one of my followers bobbed up his head and stared back at me through the hole, trying to fathom the mystery of my act. Once I had begun work I would become the centre of an excited conversation.

The first strokes of the brush aroused merriment. But often some onlooker astonished me by perceiving the object of my sketch long before the drawing was in any way clear. She (it was generally a she) would then be eager to exhibit her superior knowledge to the others. She would therefore dab her finger on to my painting to point out what she had perceived. This nuisance I fought by covering intrusive fingers with oil paint. By the time the overwise one had cleaned off the paint the drawing would be far advanced enough for the others to see for themselves what I was doing. As soon as I got well into the swing of work questions would begin.

"Why do you do this? Is it to make picture postcards from? Why isn't your husband with you? Are your father and mother alive? Do you like Spanish food? Have you got any children? If you have no children, as we have too many, would you like a baby to take away with you? Are you doing this for the cinematograph? Do you like painting? How old are you? Why haven't you put in So-and-so's house?" In this case the house in question was usually behind me.

These questions were asked in Murcian Spanish not very easy to understand with my small lack of acquaintance; and I had to take my attention off my painting in order to find suitable Spanish answers. I tried once not to answer, but my audience then demanded:

"Are you deaf? Can't you hear? Don't you understand what we say?"

All this was said with the most courteous of intentions, direct questioning being permissible in Spain. Chairs were generally brought out, one for me and others for the spectators. Nurse-maids with half-nude babies formed a large proportion of my audiences. The Spanish baby suffers from over nursing; it is carried remorselessly about from six in the morning till twelve at night; it is as a rule fretful and feverish both from the heat and from lack of sleep. Indeed Verdolay always shrilled with wailing children.

At about nine o'clock the Spaniard takes a morning snack. This consists of a slice of bread soaked with olive oil and a dried sardine, the smell of which was almost paralysing. With the perfect courtesy which marked all my peasant audiences, this would be offered to me before it was chewed loudly in my ear. When the heat was very great I would abandon my sketch as soon as the sardine stage arrived.

I was continually pestered by polite requests that So-and-so should be painted in. This often led to a lecture on composition and on the introduction of figures. If I did, however, paint in anybody the enthusiasm was enormous. People would run down the road shouting in at every cottage door:

"She has painted Enrico" (or Miguel or Maria) "into her picture."

Once while near the water-fountain I painted in the donkey of a water-carrier. For days afterwards Paco, the donkey-boy, grasped the passers-by and exclaimed with tears of joy in his voice:

"Ha pintado mi burro, mi burro."[14]

The water-fountain was one of the gathering places of the village. It was the end of a small iron pipe which writhed down from the hills.

There were generally three or four donkey-boys with cantaros, and a crowd of women with amphoras waiting their turns to wedge their pots beneath the small trickle which ran from the nozzle of the pipe. Old Grumpy spent the best part of his day there, sitting with sour face in the shadow of a small tree—his chief work was either waiting his turn or leaving his pots to fill themselves. A tall bank of prickly pear cactus made a background to the gay scene. Women came from dawn until midnight, and even from the villages of the valley, for water was very scarce and most of the water in the valley wells unfit for drinking. With their heavy cantaros balanced on a projecting hip, these women walked two miles or more beneath the sweltering sun; and they asked me if I liked painting.

Sometimes the ladies of the village stopped and made suitable remarks. One, a summer visitor, told me that she knew a very good painter—"very good indeed," she said with a gentle emphasis which revealed what she thought of my work. "Why, he painted things five times as big as these which you do."

As the sketch progressed my audiences were very eager to point out to me anything which I seemed to have forgotten. At this moment somebody always said that Uncle Pepe's or Aunt Conchas' house wasn't in the sketch. These houses were invariably out of sight or behind my back. The Spaniards had futuristic instincts. But once they knew

me, my friends would not have me criticized. One passer-by made some disparaging remark about the painting.

"We won't have our Doña abused," said the nurse-maids. "She is very clever. She knows lots more than you do; and plays the piano as well."

Sometimes I accompanied Jan out into the country, in the direction of La Luz or down into the huertas.

One day we were near La Luz and my interest was captured by a lemon and vine garden which was cultivated on terraces down the side of a baking ravine. The farmer's house with a red roof topped the hill. I sat down to paint. Presently the farmer with his wife and family clambered down into the ravine and climbed up the side to where I was sitting. Each time I returned the family came back and in awed silence watched the progress of the sketch.

It happened that the water of Verdolay was not very nice for drinking purposes, being full of minerals and salts, while that of La Luz was delicious. A poor woman, who did charing jobs for the farmer above-mentioned, was delighted to be allowed to carry us heavy cantaros full of La Luz water, a mile and a half, for the pay of fivepence a cantaro. One day after the sketch was finished she came in with a look of importance on her face.

"My Señora," she said, "is enamoured of the little painting which you have done of her house and farm. She wishes to buy the sketch."

I had had some experience of Spanish prices, so I said:

"These paintings are made to exhibit in England. It is of no use to tell you the price, because English prices and Spanish prices are different."

"But, Señora," said the woman, "my masters are very rich, excessively rich. They will pay any price that you like to ask."

But I suspected her protestations. The sketch was one of the best I had done in Spain. I was not very eager to part with it. But owing to her entreaties, against my better judgment, fixing a low price because of Spain, I said at last:

"Two hundred pesetas."[15]

Her mouth dropped open. For a moment she remained speechless with amazement. Then hastily crossing herself she gasped out:

"Madre Maria Sanctissima!"

Being a woman I was often asked to paint female portraits, but suspecting the monetary value which the people would put on paintings I refused. Jan overheard a red-faced, wealthy looking farmer discussing with his father on our doorstep the question of how much I was likely to ask for a portrait of the farmer's daughter.

Red Face: "I think we might offer her ten pesetas."[16]

The Grandfather: "Well, she is foreign, she might demand fifteen."

Red Face: "Even if she wishes twenty we might yet consider it; or perhaps twenty-five; but then we would have to think it carefully over."

Occasionally we would be asked into houses to examine pictures which the peasants believed to have value. In one house, a room was set aside as a small private chapel; it was full of painted plaster images covered with false jewels and tinsel; on the walls were oleograph reproductions of the Virgin by Spanish Old Masters, but one painting of the Murillo School probably had a real value. In another house we found a picture of Napoleon before which the inhabitants were burning a candle under the impression that the print represented an unidentified Saint. Maybe stranger personalities have been canonized before now.

Jan escaped from intimate touch with the people by making for the open country. He thus had fewer adventures than did I. Often, however, peasants spied him from the distance of a mile, and came to see what he was doing.

Once, when he had been painting on the cart-road near El Angel and had put a cart into his painting, a small boy followed him all the way home, shouting out to every one that he passed:

"That is a painter! He painted a cart and horse; just as it went along; all in a flash!"

We used to pin up our sketches on the wall of the house; because, as we intended to travel, we wished the sketches to become as dry as we could make them. This used to attract numbers of people, and usually the grilled window of our front room was occupied by a crowd of faces peering into the house. The fame of our picture exhibition spread over the country-side. People came from some distance to see the pictures; and if the front door was unlocked walked in, saluted us, and proceeded to go the round of the walls. At first we found this disconcerting, but with use much of our needless self-consciousness and desire for unessential privacy began to wear off.

As we left our front window open during the night for air, we were many times awakened by the voices of the picture-gazers who gathered at our window as soon as the day broke

CHAPTER XVI

VERDOLAY—CONENI

The peasant who came every morning with his daughter and donkey-cart full of vegetables and fruit at the dawn was rather like a genial bird of prey in features. This type is typically Spanish. There was something of the condor about him, though one can scarcely picture a condor with his welcoming smile or his kindly nature. He began with a fixed idea of our practical dumbness and deafness to the Spanish language. He was, we learned later, an exquisite dancer. We have heard tell of a well-known musician who has a dance for making the household beds, and another for digging potatoes, and so on, trying to bring æsthetics into the commonplaces of life. Coneni, for such was the peasant's name, tried to dance for us the fact that tomatoes were a halfpenny a pound or that a melon was sixpence. His pretty, demure daughter resorted to more practical measures, held up fruit as samples and condescended to calculate in pesetas and centimos instead of in "royals" and "little bitches."

But the manners both of Coneni and of his daughter were impeccable. I think that they overcharged us slightly, but that was the Spanish tradition. Certainly they did not overcharge us as much as they would have done had they not liked us, and later on they quieted their consciences by making us presents.

Coneni was one of the first of our picture admirers, but he had pre-Raphaelite tendencies, and always said that he supposed they would be better when we painted them out properly. He became eager that we should sketch in his market garden, and gave us elaborate topographical directions. So one day, shouldering our sketch-boxes, off we set.