Spaniard

“ Every layman in Castile might make a king, every clerk a pope. The Spaniard’s contempt for his peninsular neighbours finds its emphatic utterance in another: Take from a Spaniard all his good qualities, and there remains a Portuguese.
We may too, I think, remark how a nation will occasionally in its proverbs indulge in a fine irony upon itself, and show that it is perfectly aware of its own weaknesses, follies, and faults. This the Spaniards must be allowed to do in their proverb, Succours of Spain, either late, or never. ”

“ The clear atmosphere of Spain, in which distant mountains seem to be close at hand, is also the atmosphere of Spanish literature. The Spaniard may have little subtlety of insight or critical judgment, but he has a directness of vision that has manifested itself in bigotry, brutality, and cynical satire, as well as in keen humour, straight-forwardness, and dignity of character. ”

“ If Spain has produced one of the lowest characters in history, she has also produced one of the highest. That man was every inch a Spaniard who, maimed, diseased, and poor, broken down by long captivity, and harassed by malignant persecution, lived nevertheless a life of grandeur and beauty fit to be a pattern for coming generations,—the author of a book which has had a wider fame than any other in the whole range of secular literature, and which for delicate humour, exquisite pathos, and deep ethical sentiment, remains to-day without a peer or a rival. ”

“ With much elegance of form, his meagre person shows that he is the denizen of a dry climate, which, every Spaniard will tell you, gives a peculiar compactness of structure to all its products: the wheat of Spain makes more bread, its beef and mutton are more nourishing, its wines have more body, and the men more enduring vigor than those of other countries. Certain it is that Spanish troops have often proved great marchers; yet of all nations they have the slenderest legs, and indeed they never use their own when they can substitute those of horse, mule, or burro. ”

“ Few peoples respect themselves more than the Spanish, and they look for respect from others. “The sensitive Spaniard bristles up like a porcupine against the suspicion of a disdain.” They do not forget that they were once the greatest people in Europe, and they regard it as an accident that the march of modern civilization has left them behind, being, indeed, too mechanical for their pride to adopt. And still the golden rule for the traveller in Spain is never to be in a hurry or never to show that he is in a hurry, for by doing so he will increase delays and defeat his object. ”

“ The Spaniard had become a hero to himself; sufficient in and for himself; realising his superiority and wrapping it about with a mantle of haughty exclusiveness. He had learned to rely upon himself and had justified his confidence by victory, hardly won and dearly bought; he was a Spaniard—verbum sat. But he had been more than patriot; he had been a Paladin of the Faith; a Knight of the Cross; a Soldier of Christendom, Champion of the Holy Catholic Church. ”

“ The seal of Spain is upon everything that she has touched. The Spaniard has left his religion, language, and social creed all over the New World south of the Rio Grande, and his mark can be traced upon face, laws and landscape. ”

“ The courteous Spaniard conceals his contempt for the foreigner, but were he privileged to read the numerous sketches, scenes, and saunterings published yearly of Spain, he would have some scope for legitimate amusement. A faint remonstrance has indeed been heard in the Peninsula against the idea of Spanish grandees lying in wait at dark corners to rob a French journalist of his fortune. But mostly they are content to let the foreigner continue in his ignorance. For stern and melancholy Spain retains her secret, and is not to be won from her Oriental impenetrable mystery by any wiles. ”

“ I have never admired the Spaniard as a race; but at this moment I felt a thrill of admiration and respect for those men, most of them bronzed and battered veterans, who could look into the face of death and meet him unafraid and undismayed. ”

“ Two Spaniards can drive fifty Indians before them, but I hear that a dozen of these Englishmen can take a ship with a hundred Spaniards on board. It is wonderful. They look something like our oppressors, but they are fairer, and their eyes are blue; and they look honest, and have not that air of pride, and arrogance, which the Spaniard never lays aside. ”

“ As a geographical and political fact, Spain dates from the earliest times, and the Spanish people gather within themselves the blood and the traditions of the three great continents of the Old World—Europe, Asia and Africa—united to produce the mighty Spaniard of the 15th and 16th centuries. ”

“ But in Spain nobles are common and excite no overwhelming awe. The Spaniard, most democratic of Europeans, clamours for realism, and nothing pleases him more than a literal transcript of the life about him. The manners and customs of good society do not entertain him, and the genero chico concerns itself almost exclusively with the lower classes. The bull-fighter is, of course, one of the most usual figures; and round him are gathered the lovers of the ring, inn-keepers, cobblers and carpenters, policemen, workmen, flower-sellers, street-singers, cigarette girls, country maidens. ”

“ For the same writer the Spaniard was noted as a man in a high-crowned hat with narrow brim, a ruff about his neck, a doublet with short and narrow skirts and broad wings at the shoulders, ruff-cuffs at his hands, breeches narrow and close to his thighs, hose gartered, shoes with rounded toes, a short cloak and a long sword. In all of those points we may take it that the Spaniard differed from the Englishman as observed by this observant one. Even in our own days we may catch something of those national fashions. ”

“ If there were any thing in the Spanish character to work upon, for good or evil, the influence of such a decided national pastime 113would be more distinctly pronounced. But the senseless pride of the Spaniard,—pride with nothing to be proud of; pride with idleness, ignorance, and poverty; pride of the meanest and most contemptible sort,—is the warp and woof of Spanish character, and there is hardly any thing more in them than there would be in a nation of peacocks. ”

“ It is a common saying that a Spaniard will sell his shirt to buy a ticket to the bull-ring, but whatever the deficiencies of the inner costume, the dress that meets the eye is brave in the extreme. It is recently becoming the fashion for caballeros, especially in the north of Spain, to discard those very fetching cloaks with the vivid linings—cloaks in which Spaniards muffle their faces to the eyebrows as they tread the echoing streets of cities founded some thousand or fifteen hundred years ago. ”

“ He must create Spain within himself. The first stage of his endeavor was that of the intense crystallizations which made Spain’s siglos de oro. These saints and sinners are not fragments: they are entire forms of Spanish energy. And the elements which they personify exist in every Spanish soul. If, therefore, Spain was to be unified within each Spaniard, La Celestina must be equated with Saint Teresa, Quixote and Amadis with Lazarillo and the Cid.... Although the energic sum of all these forces might in each individual soul add up to zero! ”

“ For to the ordinary traveller, with red book and camera, the Spaniard will hardly disclose his true nature, and remains an impenetrable mystery; not that the foreigner often realizes the existence of the unsolved riddle, the Spaniard presenting a sufficient number of striking aspects to make a swift superficial impression. The best guides to Spain are still Ford’s “Gatherings,” and a thorough acquaintance with “Don Quixote,” a fluent knowledge of Spanish, and, lastly, the advice of Spaniards, since as Sancho sagely observed, “más sabe el necio en su casa que el cuerdo en casa ajena.” ”

“ and for which the very name of a Spaniard is reckoned to be frightful and terrible to all people of humanity, or of Christian compassion; as if the kingdom of Spain were particularly eminent for the produce of a race of men who were without principles of tenderness, or the common bowels of pity to the miserable, which is reckoned to be a mark of generous temper in the mind. ”

“ It is this ever-present consciousness of a great tradition, which we may call an understanding of “good manners,” meaning by this the art of beautiful living, finding its expression as it does in the common life of the people, that makes it true that, though the Spaniard belongs to the Past, he belongs also to the Future. He has the qualities which younger nations now are striving to gain. ”

“ In Spain there are two kinds of women: the mother and the prostitute. And both are mothers. The land is sensuous in its air, its flowers. The Spaniard is not sensuous at all. In the nineteenth century, a group of romantic Spanish poets endeavored to sing of Spain as had the Germans and the English. No more frustrate coldness exists in all the literature of failure. “Kennst du das Land wo die Citronen bluehen” could never have been written by a Spaniard about Spain. For the Spaniard is as abstract in{248} his bodily lusts as he is concrete in his ideals. ”

“ Everywhere we observe groups of graceful, hooded women, men swathed in red sash, striped cloak, and yellow shirt, looking out keenly from beneath the sombrero's shade. The Spaniard seems to delight in gaudy hues. Mules are clad in gay trappings, and the houses are painted in bright colours; yet everywhere, too, we see dirt, decay, and sloth, and are repelled by abominable smells. ”

“ The character of the Spaniard, as one gradually learns to know it, not from a brief visit spent tourist fashion in hurrying from one city to another, but from living among the people, sharing their common life and entering into their spirit, is a very positive character. ”

“ Away runs the Englishman, as if he was bewitched, and became frighted and amazed, to the governor Spaniard, and tells him they were all undone, for there were strangers landed upon the island, he could not tell who. The Spaniard pausing a while, says to him, “How do you mean, you cannot tell who? They are savages to be sure.”—“No, no,” says the Englishman, “they are men in clothes, with arms.”—“Nay then,” says the Spaniard, “why are you concerned? If they are not savages, they must be friends; for there is no Christian nation upon earth but will do us good rather than harm.” ”

“ The Spaniard weaves no glamour about facts, apologises for nothing, extenuates nothing. Lo que ha de ser no puede faltar! If you must have an explanation, here it is. Chew it, Englishman, and be content; you will get no other. One result of this is that Circumstance, left naked, is to be seen more often a strong than a pretty thing; and another that the Englishman, inveterately a draper, is often horrified and occasionally heart-broken. The Spaniard may regret, but cannot mend the organ. His own will never suffer the same fate. ”

“ Trifles give rise to a torrent of sonorous language, but in matters of importance a word or a gesture suffices. The Spaniard combines a solemn bearing and steadfastness with a considerable amount of cheerfulness. Nothing disquiets him; he philosophically takes things as they are; poverty has no terrors for him ”

“ If this is so, certainly the Moors, and France, and Italy have wrought some of their most original works in Spain; and it can hardly be said that the great Spanish discoverers and conquerors, painters, philosophers, and poets of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries were not original, whether they were influenced by Moors, Frenchmen, or Italians. [45] But, indeed, the Spaniard more readily repels than assimilates, it is his virtue and his defect; he remains isolated and alone, difficult to convince, impossible to govern. ”

“ The Spaniard is temperate by temperament, by custom and by heredity. The climate of Spain is antagonistic to strong drink, and the Spanish character revolts against the abuse of it. It would not be too much to say that the Spaniard regards a drunken man with much the same feelings as an Englishman looks upon the Spanish national sport of bull-fighting. ”

“ The city is certainly not lively, and the Spaniard is generally grave, but he is warm-hearted and hospitable, and must not be studied at a distance, nor condemned with precipitancy. He is, no doubt, susceptible and pundonoroso, but is rich in noble qualities. ”

“ But Christian knights who were handsome and gallant might love and woo Moorish maidens who were beautiful; and, as a writer has intimated, love became the business and war the pastime of the Spaniard in Andalusia. Spain was unconsciously inbibing the soft, sensuous charm of the civilization she was exterminating; and the peculiar rhythm of Spanish music, and the subtle picturesqueness which makes the Spanish people unique among the other Latin nations of Europe, came, not from her Gothic, nor her Roman, nor her Phenician ancestry, but from the plains of Arabia ”

“ The Oriental influenced the Spaniard deeply, a psychological as well as a racial influence. I often felt that the dignified gravity which so distinguishes a Spaniard from his fellow Latins is a trait acquired unconsciously from his Arab neighbors: nothing like it is found except among races whose ancestors dwelt in the desert. ”

“ The Spaniard is certainly very courteous by nature, and although generally shy of foreigners, most anxious to please them when he finds them chez lui, and to send them away with good impressions both of his country and of himself. ”