The pillars of Hercules

The demeanour of men towards women could not fail to engage attention in the birthplace of chivalry, as among the orientals men and women salute in the same manner. It was some time before I could have said, “The women in Spain do not curtsey;” yet I should have been shocked to see a Spanish lady do so. I have been looking over a book entitled, “Travels in the land of Monkeys,” meaning England and France. It is uncertain whether the work is originally Spanish or Italian. I am satisfied that it is not Spanish, for it does not notice what a Spaniard could not have failed to set down in those lands—a different salutation for males and females. Can one imagine a Roman matron curtseying? A bobbing up and down of the body, a salutation with the legs, and no inclination of the head? Surely it was invented for quadrupeds. It has only a foreign name in English, and that too absurd to have been applied to the antic in its native tongue. A courtesy (courtoisie) is a thing courteous; and a curtsey was a step in a French dance. The ladies of Spain can dance, but cannot curtsey.[103] To salute—to reverence, requires that the noble parts of the body should be called into play. There is nothing so good that it may not be perverted, and the best then becomes the worst. Curtseying is now respectable because men have taken to nodding, and poking their hat with the forefinger. How great would their surprise be, if they heard that the dominion of the world may hinge on a form of salutation. “Language,”. said Ali, “is the mirror of the understanding; manners, of the man.” Bacon tells us that “Reason may affect the judgment, interest the conduct, but manners alone touch the heart.” It is by manners that the teaching of the child begins before he has learnt his letters. Manners are the curb on the passions. They are the guide of life from the cradle to the tomb, and by them you judge of the nation as well as of the man. A people’s history is written in a salutation. Alwakide, in the early days of Islam, records as an event, that a man receiving sentence of death had not saluted the judge.

In the secluded places of Spain, even yet, on the bell tolling at “oration,” whoever is walking, stops; whoever is seated, rises; the prayer concluded, each turns round and salutes those around him. What can be more impressive than this sudden and simultaneous act of adoration of a whole people, followed by a mutual expression of goodwill from man to man. This could not survive. From the forms of salutation meaning is not yet expelled. No one sends as a message, “Give my compliments.” It would be asked, “What compliments?” The Spaniard, like the Eastern, says, “I kiss such a one’s hand, or I lay myself at such a lady’s feet.” Our word compliment is equal to their word ceremony; and our compliments they render espressiones. These matters are, however, abridged. The espressiones are run up in an unintelligible articulation when spoken, and when written are reduced to a cypher. You may receive a letter ending “S. S. S. Q. S. M. B,”[104] and take it, as I once did, for a charade instead of a compliment.

Unlike the Eastern, the Spaniard has the word “thanks;” but it is not his sole resource in the embarrassment occasioned among some nations by every act or speech of civility. When one Spaniard says to another, “Do you please to eat with me?” the other does not say, “No, I thank you;” but, “may it do you good.” When he says, “This house is at your disposal,” the answer is not, “I thank you,” or “I am much obliged to you,” but “You know me to serve you.”

Civility and ceremony do not belong to particular classes. There is not a refined and a vulgar class. The humblest address each other with the forms of the highest. Two human beings do not require an introduction to know each other; they never pass without salutation. No one breaks bread in the presence of another, whatever the difference of rank, without an invitation to partake. The title of the pastrycook on his sign-board is no other than that of the king. The master is as courtier-like to his servant as to his equal. The beggar is not turned away, even from the door of a tavern, and when he is refused by a prince, it is with the words, “Pardon me, brother.”

“To the honour of Spain,” says even Borrow, “be it spoken, it is one of the few countries in Europe where poverty is never insulted, nor looked on with contempt. In their social intercourse no people exhibit a juster feeling of what is due to the dignity of human nature. I have said that it is one of the few countries in Europe where poverty is not treated with contempt: I may add, where the wealthy are not blindly idolized.”

Riches and poverty are deprived of their peculiar qualities; the first losing the value which they owe to exclusiveness, the other, sufferings contingent on privation. By the facile interchange which these habits have established, their circumstances are influenced no less than their minds, and the extremes of fortune are modified and equalised.

The earth may not be scientifically compressed into the rendering of its fatness. Man’s muscle may not be condensed into minted gain; but what is gathered from nature’s bounty is not refused to man’s wants. If Spain produces less from her soil than any other country of Europe, the Spaniard enjoys a larger share, and more equable distribution of the produce than any other people.

It may not be uninteresting to place beside this a passage descriptive of the Moors: it speaks of the law, but the remark is prompted by the practice.

“The acts of common charity or casual alms are almost of injurious obligation on a Mussulman; he dares not sit down to dinner without inviting those who are near him to partake of it, of whatever condition or religion they may be, and he cannot refuse assistance to any poor person who may apply to him, if he have the means. Hospitality is to be exercised towards every one who claims it,[105] without regard to religion.”—Ali Bey’s travels, i. 95.

It would require no further evidence than this, that in Spain is to be found domestic affection, attachment of servants and master, charitable dispositions, tenderness for the afflicted, and aid for the necessitous. A man here truly woos, not his wife only, but her relatives, if they are less fortunate than himself; and, when families fall into distress, they are supported with a generosity that is only outdone by the delicacy with which it is applied:—those who sink in the world, instead of losing caste are the more tenderly considered.

The mere habit of politeness is a possession greater than all a people has besides, and for the want of which there is no compensation; and that tone of voice, and those forms of address which in individuals are the sign of proper bringing up, are to a nation the source and stay of their good order and well-being. In Spain the term “politico” is still synonymous with polite. They have dignity, which we take for pride, and none of our so-called ease, which to them is vulgarity. Therefore did they beat France when all Europe was at her feet, and therefore will Spain live on when we shall have passed away—unless, indeed, we live long enough to teach them our civility.

Chateaubriand in 1805 anticipated the events of 1808. He said: “Spain, separated from other nations, presents yet to history an original character: the stagnation of manners may yet save her; and when the people of Europe are exhausted by corruption, she alone may re-appear with splendour on the scene of the world, because the foundation of manners is still undisturbed.”

Spain has been called a “fragment of Africa;” the Spaniards have been called “the Arabs of Europe.” They have proved alike inscrutable and indomitable to all who have attempted to study or subdue them; and so completely has that peninsula swayed in the events of our world, that you may calculate the ascent or the decline of great enterprises according to the estimation of her by its conductors. Marius, Pompey, Napoleon, failed through their misjudgment of Spain: by apprehending her, Cæsar won the diadem, Scipio saved his country, and Wellesley Europe.

Whenever Europeans have judged of Spain, they have been at fault; whenever they have acted upon her, they have failed; whenever they have administered nostrums to her, she has suffered. Madrid presents the features of European governments: Spain preserves the character of the Moorish people—the character that enabled them to expel the Moors, in after times the English, and more recently the French; and the capital is actually in arms against the spirit of the age. The familiar forms we see at Madrid, the glibness with which the diplomatist speaks of this thing and that, this party and that, paves the way to plans and schemes;—then intervenes the unknown element, the spirit of the Spanish people, and capsizes all the plots.

If Europe is the source of the evils of Spain, so is Spain the source of the dangers of Europe. As she cannot leave our follies alone until she be wise, so can we not leave her affairs alone till we be honest.

It requires little to secure the good will of a Spaniard: in fact, it is secured when he is not offended. A question addressed with deference will always meet a courteous answer, and a ready offer of service and assistance. If you ask a Spaniard your way, he will not be content with pointing it out to you: he will generally accompany you. If you exceed the strict bounds of civility, you lay him under an obligation; if you do less, you have done him a wrong, which as surely he will remember. A little kindness goes a great way; and the worst of injuries is mistrust.

An English merchant in this neighbourhood, having no money in his pocket, gave a handful of cigars to a beggar: the poorest Spaniard will be more gratified with a cigar than with money, as it is a compliment. Three years afterwards, this merchant was seized near his country-house by a band of robbers. While they were settling his ransom, they were joined by an absent comrade, who instantly dismounted and, approaching the Englishman, saluted him, and asked if he did not remember having given at such a place and time a handful of cigars to a beggar; then turning to his comrades he said, “This is my benefactor—whoever lays a hand on him lays it on me.”

On turning over the pages of a writer on Spain, I am reminded that the offer of the house is nothing more than an evidence of Spanish hollowness and insincerity. The offer of the house is a sign of civility, just as much as the words, “Your obedient humble servant,” and these words are just as much an evidence of our insincerity as the “offer of the house.”

It is the same thing with the offer of pot-luck. When first made, it is declined. But when the answer is, “No se meta usted in eso,” “Do not trouble yourself in that matter,” by which is implied that no engagement stands in the way, the offer is then again repeated and accepted. That there should be three questions put and answered, in reference to an invitation to dinner, will be construed into an evidence of a want of hospitality. Are we a people to judge of hospitality? A very hospitable person (in our way) I had once the misfortune to arouse to fierce indignation by selecting this term to show the perversion, in modern idioms, of classical terms, we applying the Latin word to a repast from which are excluded those to whom the Roman hospitality was offered—the poor and hungry.

Those who have travelled in the East will surely not say that the people of the East are inhospitable; yet the people of the East never invite you to dinner. In fact, hospitality is incompatible with invitations to dinner. Where every one is welcome, it is impossible that you should invite. You may invite a person for the sake of his company, and coming to you at the time of meals, he may eat with you; but he is not invited for the purpose of eating. The meal offered is, in fact, an obligation conferred, and must be felt as such by a person of delicacy, and will be accepted with the same measure as any other favour. Is not this the interpretation of the contempt of the Romans for the Parasites or the Dinner-hunters. In one of the Dialogues of Xenophon the difference is illustrated. Socrates being invited to supper, at first refuses, and only accepts after a due reluctance on his part, and as due a persistence on the part of Amphytria,—Xenophon taking care to point out that he had acted in this respect properly.

It is acknowledged, that the facility of intercourse in France, as contrasted with England, and the ease with which people may congregate and visit each other at the time of day when such meetings are most appropriate—the evening—arises from the absence of formal invitation; in other words, restriction on intercourse is the result of our fashion of hospitality.

A word is even misused with impunity, and here the mistake of a Latin term covers the perversion of a Christian maxim. The hospitality of the Romans was that of Judæa. The manners of Judæa are the matrix of Christianity. When Christ sent forth the seventy, he told them to carry no scrip, and to make no provision. Wherever they first entered (were received) there should they abide. They were to eat what was set before them (given them). Hospitality was the condition of the reception of the Gospel: shall it be needless for, or incompatible with, its maintenance? Those who, in Jewish Canaan or Judæa, had no place where to lay their head, shook off the dust from their feet, in testimony against those who received them not. In Christian England, the Apostles of the Saviour would be sent to the workhouse or put upon the treadmill.

I was here interrupted by a visit from a French merchant. The conversation turned upon the Spanish mercantile character. He said, there is no public credit in our sense, but there is real credit, for man trusts man. A great traffic had been carried on through the Basque provinces, during the Continental blockade: no books were kept; the recovery of debts by legal process was impossible; yet was it distinguished by the most perfect confidence, and entire absence of failures or embezzlement.

The statement was subsequently confirmed by Mr. George Jones, of Manchester, who managed the largest English concern in the Basque provinces during the war. He had no clerks. The goods were disembarked and put in warehouses. He could keep no regular accounts. The muleteers came themselves to get the bales, and all he could do was, to tell them what the bales contained, and to receive their own note of what they had taken in an amount of 300,000l., and there was but one parcel missing. Several years afterwards, a priest brought him fifty dollars, which was the value of the missing bale of goods, saying, “Take that and ask no questions.”

My visitor related to me the following anecdote:—A French merchant from Bordeaux, who had a house at Barcelona, where he resided, received, in the course of business, a large sum of money from a Spaniard at a time when he was much embarrassed in his affairs; he was therefore unwilling to receive the money, and yet fearful to refuse it, lest his credit should be shaken. Shortly afterwards, he failed and absconded. His creditor traced him to Gibraltar and thence to Cadiz. There he found him lying sick, without attendants, in a garret. On entering the room, the Spaniard sternly demanded his debtor’s books. Receiving them, he sat himself down and spent several hours examining them, referring to the Frenchman merely upon points where he wanted information. When he had completed his investigation he returned the books without comment, and departed. Shortly afterwards he returned, accompanied by a physician, and had his debtor removed to a comfortable apartment, and then addressed him thus: “I am satisfied that you have not been guilty of fraud; but you have done me a great wrong: had you been frank, I should have enabled you to hold your ground. Now that we are in the same boat, let me know how much will enable you to re-commence business.” The sum being specified, he said, “Well, you shall have it upon the condition that you pledge me your word of honour that you will not leave Spain without my permission.” The debtor was about to pour forth expressions of gratitude, when his creditor stopped him: “It is you,” said he, “who have rendered me a service;” and, unbuttoning his coat, showed him a brace of pistols, adding, “One of these was for myself.” My informant concluded: “I am the man, and it happened under this roof.”

Those who come to Spain to see something that belongs to her, would not wish her peculiarities to be diminished; those who wish to find in Spain what they can have in Paris or in London, had better stay away. In travel, profit and enjoyment always coincide, for none can profitably travel who do not go to seek out for things different from what they are accustomed to, and none can agreeably travel but those for whom it is an enjoyment to be and to feel like the people of the country in which they are. For my part, I should be as careful to possess completely the thought or the habit of a people as to master a problem of Euclid; and as careful to keep distinct in my mind the thoughts and customs of one people from those of another, as if they were medicines or chemical substances ranged upon a shelf. There is no difficulty in learning half-a-dozen different languages; but you could not learn one if you jumbled in every sentence the words of your own tongue, or converted the foreign one into your own syntax. If you did so, the knowledge of words would extinguish the faculty of speech, and this is what we do when we reason, in our own country’s fashion, on the thoughts of another;—keep these distinct and you can multiply existence as you can multiply languages. Then you can put yourself in the place of a Frenchman or Italian, and will know what, under any given circumstances, he will think or do; this you do not reason upon, and therefore are sure of.

This character of interest scarcely, indeed, presents itself amongst the people of Europe, on the one hand from their close resemblance, and on the other from the extinction of habits and traditional thoughts; but when you get into Spain, there it does present itself to whoever will discriminate it; the word of every peasant is not a reverberation of a proposition, but a record of centuries. To one who feels this, Spain will present the most interesting field of travel in Europe; to one who does not, the most gratifying. An English resident at Gibraltar told me that, by following a certain rule, he found travelling in Spain very agreeable, and recommended it to my adoption. He said, “I always address a Spanish peasant as if he were my equal.” “I do not require,” I replied, “your rule, for I feel myself honoured whenever a Spanish peasant condescends to speak to me.”

There is, however, a rule not only by which to make travelling pleasant, but to make life itself so, and that is, to seek for and see in others only what is good and profitable, in order to correct, or, at least, comprehend, that in ourselves which is useless or faulty; but this is not a rule.

Another weakness is the idea of being able to rate enjoyments or estimate hardships. It is not merely that the hardships and enjoyments are not equal in degree when similar in character, but very often they are reversed. A German coming to England will complain of the misery of hard beds. The English, but twenty years ago, would have made the same complaint: their habit is changed, their enjoyments are changed with them, or their fancied enjoyments are changed.

The climax in the picture which a writer draws of the sufferings of the Spanish nuns, is their having to go about bare-foot. Tell this in Scotland. To myself there cannot be a greater source of annoyance and vexation—there is nothing in which I have a greater sense of astonishment and surprise—than at nations wearing shoes and boots. The whole economy of the feet in Europe is something as disgusting as it is marvellous. We see the poorer orders clogging themselves with heavy shoes out of doors,[106] and the wealthier classes confining their feet and soiling their apartments in doors. Those who have lived in Scotland will understand the first, those who have lived in the East will apprehend the second.

In regard to cookery, costume, and forms of society, we have habits formed; and, surely, he is an unreasoning being who proceeds by means of those habits to estimate the habits of other nations: the consequence of attempting to do so is a vague uncertainty of spirit, which concentrates itself in his eye wherein he looks.

The useful traveller and the profitable observer will commence by a process the very opposite. He will set aside all attempts at comparison; he will eschew every thought and judgment; he will know he has to begin by lifting himself out of his own habits and modes of thought, in order to place himself in those of the country which he visits. He will do so by endeavouring to feel like them, which he never can do, if he presume for a moment to reason about them.

Imlac’s description of a poet had not proceeded to its close when the captive Prince of Abyssinia told him he had already said enough to convince him that no man on earth could be a poet; but Imlac’s catalogue of the qualifications of a poet extended no further than to acquirements and talents. The qualifications of a traveller are far more extensive; for while it is necessary for him to possess all the materials of which a poet ought to be possessor, while he ought to be gifted with the imaginative qualities in which lives the poet’s very essence, he should also have the scrutinizing eye of a philosopher, the analytical spirit of a metaphysician, and all these put together can only be of use when lifting him out of his times:—they restore to him the use of his own eyes and ears.