SPAIN AFTER THE WAR.*
This is in many respects the beat tourist's book on Spain that has been written since the Rev. J. H. Rose produced in 1875 and 1877 his volumes. Untrocklen Spain and Among the Spanish People. Mr. Rose travelled more among the byways of Spain than our authoress has done, and he looked at Spain and things Spanish with a man's eye ; while Spanish High- ways and Byways, both in that which it includes and that which it omits, is eminently a woman's book. There is no direct mention of politics or of economics. There is no fore- casting the political future of Spain, not even a surmise as to whether the spirit of Old or of the New Spain is likely to pre- vail in the near future. But, better than this, the writer brings before us Spain as it is to-day, with all its contradic- tions, paradoxes, and anomalies ; Spain with its kindliness and its high-bred courtesy, its poetry and undying charm, its brightness and intelligence ; Spain with its cruelties and its bigotry, its ignorance and its sloth, its intoxication of wordy eloquence, which does not lead to action, but rather serves to paralyse it ; which strives to hide its disgust at its impotence in the present by extravagant and impotent laudation of the past,—a Spain and a people whom we cannot help liking; on • Spanish Biyhwart and Byways. By Katharine Lee Bates. Illastzated with By Entrearnigs from Photographs. London : Macmillan St Co. [811. ed. net.)
whom foreigners who have been once admitted to their intimacy can never look back without feelings of grateful remembrance.
At first sight Mrs. Bates seems heavily handicapped in her endeavour to write a good book on Spain. She is an American of the United States, and she travelled in Spain just when the hearts of the people were at their sorest at the loss of all that remained to them of their vast Colonial Empire. Then she is strongly Protestant, and her special friends are among the leaders of the Protestant movement in Spain. She is enthu- siastic over Mrs. Gulich's endeavour to give an education tc Spanish girls after the model of that of the United States But in spite of these hindrances, she met with nothing but kindness from Spaniards of all ranks, and an eager response to her desire to understand them. The reason is that she did not rush into Spain equipped with only an imperfect acquaint- ance with the language. One of the most pathetic incidents of the book is the narrative of how she learnt Spanish in Paris from a nun who had been in Manila at the time of its capture by the Americans :—
'" Now truly, truly,' asks the pupil, were you not the least bit frightened that morning of the battle? '= Frightened P Oh no ! There were no guns between us and Paradise. From early dawn we heard the firing, and hour after hone we knelt before the altar and prayed to the Mother of God to comfort the souls of the brave men who were dying for is patria, but we were not frightened.' And when pressed still more closely, she replied : Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth. As with per- sons so with nations. Those that are not of His fold He gives over to their fill of vainglory and greed and power, but the Catholic nations He cleanses again and again in the bitter waters of defeat—ah ! in fire and blood ! Yet the end is not yet.' " We seem to hear across the centuries the echo of
Rivadeneyra's Tratado cle la Tribulacion, written after the defeat of the Great Armada. The spirit of Santa Teresa is not yet extinct in Spain, and it is still hard to measure the real strength of the reactionary forces there. But this sad- ness is not the prevailing tone of the book; on the contrary, it is brightly written. As Mrs. Bates had learned Spanish, she and her companions wisely lived with Spaniards as much as possible. She did not pass her whole time in hotels, nor deliver herself over to the tender mercies of the conventional hotel guides. She tried to see things with Spanish eyes, or at least impartially. Then she is a passionate lover of children and of children's games. She enjoys the poetry of Spanish
folk-lore songs, and translates them admirably. They who are not quite so fond of infants and their games may think that there is almost too much of this ; others will ask themselves
how it is that illiterate Spanish children can sing and delight in ballads like those on the death of General Prim, and on the death of Queen Mercedes, and others given in the chapter on" The Choral Games of Spanish Children," and that the result of our School Board, and even higher education, should be in poetry only the ditties of the music-halls. There is evidently something to be said on behalf of the older and lower civilisation.
Yet even in Spain old customs are beginning to die out. The Eve of St. John is no longer kept up in Madrid as it used to be. Our author set herself resolutely to see everything that is peculiarly Spanish. Thus she forced herself to witness a bull-fight, and describes well the brilliant glow of colour, and the catching, if savage, enthusiasm of the spectators ; but it aroused in her an indignant horror at the cruelty, which did not subside for weeks. Yet even here she tries to be fair to the Spaniards, and the chapter concludes with the following dialogue between herself and her host :— " Animals are only animals ; they are not Christians?— ' Who were the Christians in that circus P' I asked. How could devils have been worse than we P '—He half glanced toward the morning paper, but was too kindly to express his thought. It was not necessary. I had read the paper, which gave half a column to a detailed account of a recent lynching, with torture, in the United States."
More pleasing are her descriptions of the great Church festivals,—the Holy Week at Seville, the Feast of San Isidoro
at Madrid, and the Feast of Santiago at Compostella. The first is illustrated with reproductions of excellent photographs
of the celebrated pesos, the gorgeously clad effigies of scenes of the Passion, which are carried in procession through the streets. Through some strange carelessness of printer or binder, these and the other illustrations, which would bare
really assisted the reader if in their proper places, are scat- tered haphazard throughout the book, and are rendered com- paratively useless. This and a little padding are the only drawbacks to the full enjoyment of a work which gives the truest picture of Spain that we have seen for a long time. Two chap- ters may be especially selected as giving material for thought:
A Function in Granada," in honour of a young Spanish poet who died in St. Petersburg, and that on "The. Funeral of Castelar." The author brings out admirably the contrasts and contradictions of Spanish life and character; she does not search into the underlying causes which have produced this conflict and these contradictions. In literature and art she marks them thus : "Cervantes is as true a facet of many- sided Spain as Calderon, and Velazquez as Murillo." The ignorance and prejudice of Spanish women are often startling, but the intellectual ability of Spanish girls is acknowledged by all who have tried to teach them, and "so far as a stranger could see, education had enhanced in them the Spanish radiance and charm, while arming these with wisdom, power, and resource." Certainly "a circle of cultivated Spaniards is one of the most charming groups on earth." Somewhat long as the book is, we still regret that the writer was not able to carry out her contemplated journey to Saragossa, Barcelona, Valencia, and the Balearic Isles, and thus to see another side of many-sided Spain. This is a book to be read by all who wish to know Spaniards, and especially Spanish women and children, as they really are.
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