Correspondence
A Letter from Madrid
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] Sm,—While the air is thick with peace talk among nations, the individuals of one country continue with undiminished relish to enlarge • on the national defects of another. Some visit Spain to rush away and write a book about it all. Others come to stay and so far forget themselves as to carry their racial conceits into the very homes of their polite but indig- nant hosts. Experience will tend to cure this habit. Perhaps Madrid is not the most suitable place for the early training of your plain hash-on-Wednesday Englishman, deprived of cricket and the company of young women. More limited still is the scope it has to offer the conventional aspirant to social amenities of the tea and bridge-party order. Let him have his whack of sour wine up-country. Let him be burned brown and dry by the Andalusian summer sun and well bitten by bed bugs in the village fauna. Then when he can discover unmoved that his landlady in times of stress does pawn his evening clothes and when his ear no longer flinches at the oaths of a friendly priest he will be able to take his place in the scheme of things. He need no longer be ashamed of being an Englishman from England.
Popular legend has a great deal to answer for. The legend of the hideousness of Englishwomen will be hard to kill. No less a distortion of the reality is seen in the fable of the creature with flashing eyes, jealous' and bold in love and much addicted to cigarettes, commonly supposed• to abound in Spain. The two types complete a phantasy calculated to make mutual understanding difficult. The legendary type, the Carmen of Bizet's opera, a gipsy, is as exotic here as a palm- tree in Kew Gardens. 'Quiet and -unassuming, dreading lest
she be deemed aught but feminine, the Spanish woman does not smoke and_in spite of the example of the Court and its Queen, eyes askance the foreign woman who does. Gentle,
faithful and unselfish, her ideal is , to live up to the role assigned to her by tradition. If her hand as it rocks the
cradle could but learn to rule, the regeneration that General Primo de Rivera talks about but has failed to achieve would become a fact. The problem of Spain's future remains a problem of the home.
After the first flush of married bliss, the Spanish woman gets well down to the business of a purely domestic life.
This, with the rearing of a large family, is her interest, her one task in life. Her functions are typified by the bate or dressing-gown made by her own hands which she dons soon after her honeymoon to relinquish only on rare at-home days and when she shops and goes to Mass. More often than not family ties straiten her resources and limit her horizon. Sacrifices are made forimpoverished relatives astonishing to the more matter-of-fact Northern people. She faces the dull round of her domestic duties with no illusions but buoyed up by her sense of duty to her parents and her love as wife and mother. The latter usurps only too often the former for want, alas ! of trust in her husband's faithfulness, and the romance of her life centres in the passion for her children. From them she refuses to be parted by pleasure, nurse or school. Here is her strength and here is the nation's weakness, for indulgence is inevitable and spoils the making of fine citizens.
A baby a year is a serious business at best. It is now com- plicated by the high cost of living and the advent of the servant problem. Not many years ago the condition of the female servants was akin to serfdom, and even to-day they are often required to work a double shift. Irregular are the habits and hours of the Spanish family. The late luncheon paves the way for dinner at ten p.m., and the washing-up comes near midnight. Servants are mostly untrained and their wages poor, but to-day these at least are forthcoming, whereas not so long ago a lump sum on her wedding day, if it came at all, was all the domestic drudge drew for many a year's hire. The Government have recently put their foot down, pointing out that the long hours will not do and that even cooks and maids require a day of rest. A syndicate of servant girls has been formed, and their inspectors are begin- ning to make house-to-house calls of inquiry. The large family depending on cheap and tractable labour is beginning to meet with grave difficulties. But the thrifty housewife, robbed by her cook on every purchase, will soon have to break with suburban tradition and sally forth—basket on arm, dread thought !—to do her own marketing. The husband will be forced to renounce his habits of unpunctuality and conform to regular meal-times. Even the children at no distant date may submit and consent to be put to bed early.
Social life in the capital has of late years become more and more restricted. Dinner parties and similar entertainments are confined to the foreign colonies and the diplomatic corps. Many an Englishman can score ten years' residence in Madrid without a glimpse of a Spanish hostess across a dinner-table. Sometimes bitter complaints are made by those whose lavish hospitality elicits no response beyond a gracious acceptance. To do justice to his foreign guest nothing less than a banquet must be prepared by a Spanish host, and the strain on the household is more than the housewife cares to face, a constant change of servants and other deficiencies adding to the difficulties. She knows, too, that her husband dislikes intro- ducing to her any member of his own sex, and is warned by her confessor against new ways, new ideas from abroad as being unsuitable for the southern temperament. A quiet life is a protection against these dangers.
The influence of the priest over the convent-bred Spanish woman remains all-powerful. Remove this influence and the only form of discipline to which especially the younger woman submits goes with it. The places of worship in Madrid are attended every day by thousands untrained to obey any com- mands but those of Mother Church. A thousand masses, well attended, are said daily. Who would deny that as the guide of many in their youth and the solace of a large number in heir old age, the influence is salutary beyond measure ? The Interference, however, by priests and members of the monastic 'orders is strongly resented by many of the men and friction 'frequently results. A strange incident, the protagonists of which belong to well-known families of Madrid, arising out of the advice given by a highly respected Jesuit Father, appeals in a striking manner to popular imagination. A young gill dismissed the man to whom she had become engaged, and It :became known that she had been counselled to do so by the 'Jesuit Father who apparently disapproved of his mode of life, Several young bloods, the fellow's boon companions, decided to set a trap to get even with the Padre. Late one night, from the address of a house of Uncertain reputation, a message arrived for him to proceed there in haste. Young So-and-so— the dismissed suitor=was described as having been taken ill suddenly and in need of spiritual ministration, The Jesuit, obedient to duty, set off, and on arrival was admitted to a hall where a number of young men and women intent on " fun " had assembled. The Padre was shown into an Adjoining room where the youth, feigning sickness or perhaps ill indeed, had been left reclining. The door closed behind hind. But-befori long the Jesuit, his stern features unmoved, passed out again saying quietly : " You should have sent for me sooner. It is too late." He spoke truly. The man had died. The Church was vindicated.
Every Spanish maiden prays to Saint Anthony, murmuring 'daily before his image : " San Antonio bendito, dame salud; &nem y un buen marido"—" Blessed San Antonio, grant me health, money and a good husband."—I am Sir, &c.,
YOUR MADRID CORRESPONDENT.
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