Gatherings From Spain Part 22

The lower cla.s.ses, who are a trifle less particular, and among whom, by the blessing of Santiago, the foreign dancing-master is not abroad, adhere to the primitive steps and tunes of their Oriental forefathers.

Their accompaniments are the "tabret and the harp;" the guitar, the tambourine, and the castanet. The essence of these instruments is to give a noise on being beaten. Simple as it may seem to play on the latter, it is only attained by a quick ear and finger, and great practice; accordingly these delights of the people are always in their hands; practice makes perfect, and many a performer, dusky as a Moor, rivals Ethiopian "Bones" himself; they take to it before their alphabet, since the very urchins in the street begin to learn by snapping their fingers, or clicking together two sh.e.l.ls or bits of slate, to which they dance; in truth, next to noise, some capering seems essential, as the safety-valve exponents of what Cervantes describes, the "bounding of the soul, the bursting of laughter, the restlessness of the body, and the quicksilver of the five senses." It is the rude sport of people who dance from the necessity of motion, the relief of the young, the healthy, and the joyous, to whom life is of itself a blessing, and who, like skipping kids, thus give vent to their superabundant lightness of heart and limb. Sancho, a true Manchegan, after beholding the strange saltatory exhibitions of his master, in somewhat an incorrect ball costume, professes his ignorance of such elaborate dancing, but maintained that for a _zapateo_, a knocking of shoes, none could beat him. Unchanged as are the instruments, so are the dancing propensities of Spaniards. All night long, three thousand years ago, say the historians, did they dance and sing, or rather jump and _yell_, to these "_howl_ings of Tarshish;" and so far from its being a fatigue, they kept up the ball all night, by way of _resting_.

The Gallicians and Asturians retain among many of their aboriginal dances and tunes, a wild Pyrrhic jumping, which, with their shillelah in hand, is like the Gaelic Ghillee Callum, and is the precise Iberian armed dance which Hannibal had performed at the impressive funeral of Gracchus. These quadrille figures are intricate and warlike, requiring, as was said of the Iberian performances, much leg-activity, for which the wiry sinewy active Spaniards are still remarkable. These are the _Morris_ dances imported from Gallicia by our John of Gaunt, who supposed they were _Moorish_. The peasants still dance them in their best costumes, to the antique castanet, pipe, and tambourine. They are usually directed by a master of the ceremonies, or what is equivalent, a parti-coloured fool, ?????; which may be the etymology of _Morris_.

[Sidenote: GADITANIAN GIRLS.]

These _comparsas_, or national quadrilles, were the hearty welcome which the peasants were paid to give to the sons of Louis Philippe at Vitoria; such, too, we have often beheld gratis, and performed by eight men, with castanets in their hands, and to the tune of a fife and drum, while a _Bastonero_, or leader of the band, clad in gaudy raiment like a pantaloon, directed the rustic ballet; around were grouped _payesas y aldeanas_, dressed in tight bodices, with _panuelos_ on their heads, their hair hanging down behind in _trensas_, and their necks covered with blue and coral beads; the men bound up their long locks with red handkerchiefs, and danced in their shirts, the sleeves of which were puckered up with bows of different-coloured ribands, crossed also over the back and breast, and mixed with scapularies and small prints of saints; their drawers were white, and full as the _bragas_ of the Valencians, like whom they wore _alpargatas_, or hemp sandals laced with blue strings; the figure of the dance was very intricate, consisting of much circling, turning, and jumping, and accompanied with loud cries of _viva!_ at each change of evolution. These _comparsas_ are undoubtedly a remnant of the original Iberian exhibitions, in which, as among the Spartans and wild Indians, even in relaxations a warlike principle was maintained. The dancers beat time with their swords on their shields, and when one of their champions wished to show his contempt for the Romans, he executed before them a derisive pirouette. Was this remembered the other day at Vitoria?

But in Spain at every moment one retraces the steps of antiquity; thus still on the banks of the Baetis may be seen those dancing-girls of profligate Gades, which were exported to ancient Rome, with pickled tunnies, to the delight of wicked epicures and the horror of the good fathers of the early church, who compared them, and perhaps justly, to the capering performed by the daughter of Herodias. They were prohibited by Theodosius, because, according to St. Chrysostom, at such b.a.l.l.s the devil never wanted a partner. The well-known statue at Naples called the Venere Callipige is the representation of Telethusa, or some other Cadiz dancing-girl. Seville is now in these matters, what Gades was; never there is wanting some venerable gipsy hag, who will get up a _funcion_ as these pretty proceedings are called, a word taken from the pontifical ceremonies; for Italy set the fashion to Spain once, as France does now.

These festivals must be paid for, since the gitanesque race, according to Cervantes, were only sent into this world as "fishhooks for purses."

The _callees_ when young are very pretty--then they have such wheedling ways, and traffic on such sure wants and wishes, since to Spanish men they prophesy gold, to women, husbands.

[Sidenote: GIPSY DANCE.]

The scene of the ball is generally placed in the suburb Triana, which is the Transtevere of the town, and the home of bull-fighters, smugglers, picturesque rogues, and Egyptians, whose women are the premieres danseuses on these occasions, in which men never take a part. The house selected is usually one of those semi-Moorish abodes and perfect pictures, where rags, poverty, and ruin, are mixed up with marble columns, figs, fountains and grapes; the party a.s.sembles in some stately saloon, whose gilded Arab roof--safe from the spoiler--hangs over whitewashed walls, and the few wooden benches on which the chaperons and invited are seated, among whom quant.i.ty is rather preferred to quality; nor would the company or costume perhaps be admissible at the Mansion-house; but here the past triumphs over the present; the dance which is closely a.n.a.logous to the _Ghowasee_ of the Egyptians, and the _Nautch_ of the Hindoos, is called the _Ole_ by Spaniards, the _Romalis_ by their gipsies; the soul and essence of it consists in the expression of certain sentiment, one not indeed of a very sentimental or correct character. The ladies, who seem to have no bones, resolve the problem of perpetual motion, their feet having comparatively a sinecure, as the whole person performs a pantomime, and trembles like an aspen leaf; the flexible form and Terpsich.o.r.e figure of a young Andalucian girl--be she gipsy or not--is said by the learned, to have been designed by nature as the fit frame for her voluptuous imagination.

[Sidenote: OPERA IN SPAIN.]

Be that as it may, the scholar and cla.s.sical commentator will every moment quote Martial, &c., when he beholds the unchanged balancing of hands, raised as if to catch showers of roses, the tapping of the feet, and the serpentine, quivering movements. A contagious excitement seizes the spectators, who, like Orientals, beat time with their hands in measured cadence, and at every pause applaud with cries and clappings.

The damsels, thus encouraged, continue in violent action until nature is all but exhausted; then aniseed brandy, wine, and _alpisteras_ are handed about, and the fete, carried on to early dawn, often concludes in broken heads, which here are called "gipsy's fare." These dances appear to a stranger from the chilly north, to be more marked by energy than by grace, nor have the legs less to do than the body, hips, and arms. The sight of this unchanged pastime of antiquity, which excites the Spaniards to frenzy, rather disgusts an English spectator, possibly from some national malorganization, for, as Moliere says, "l'Angleterre a produit des grands hommes dans les sciences et les beaux arts, mais pas un grand danseur--allez lire l'histoire." However indecent these dances may be, yet the performers are inviolably chaste, and as far at least as ungipsy guests are concerned, may be compared to iced punch at a rout; young girls go through them before the applauding eyes of their parents and brothers, who would resent to the death any attempt on their sisters' virtue.

During the lucid intervals between the ballet and the brandy, _La cana_, the true Arabic _gaunia_, song, is administered as a soother by some hirsute artiste, without frills, studs, diamonds, or kid gloves, whose staves, sad and melancholy, always begin and end with an _ay!_ a high-pitched sigh, or cry. These Moorish melodies, relics of auld lang syne, are best preserved in the hill-built villages near Ronda, where there are no roads for the members of Queen Christina's _Conservatorio Napolitano_; wherever l'academie tyrannizes, and the Italian opera prevails, adieu, alas! to the tropes and tunes of the people: and now-a-days the opera exotic is cultivated in Spain by the higher cla.s.ses, because, being fashionable at London and Paris, it is an exponent of the civilization of 1846. Although the audience in their honest hearts are as much bored there as elsewhere, yet the affair is p.r.o.nounced by them to be charming, because it is so expensive, so select, and so far above the comprehension of the vulgar. Avoid it, however, in Spain, ye our fair readers, for the second-rate singers are not fit to hold the score to those of thy own dear Haymarket.

[Sidenote: MUSIC IN VENTAS.]

The real opera of Spain is in the shop of the _Barbero_ or in the court-yard of the _Venta_; in truth, good music, whether harmonious or scientific, vocal or instrumental, is seldom heard in this land, notwithstanding the eternal strumming and singing that is going on there. The very ma.s.ses, as performed in the cathedrals, from the introduction of the pianoforte and the violin, have very little impressive or devotional character. The fiddle disenchants. Even Murillo, when he clapped catgut under a cherub chin in the clouds, thereby damaged the angelic sentiment. Let none despise the genuine songs and instruments of the Peninsula, as excellence in music is multiform, and much of it, both in name and substance, is conventional.

Witness a whining ballad sung by a chorus out of work, to encoring crowds in the streets of merry old England, or a bagpipe-tune played in Ross-shire, which enchants the Highlanders, who cry that strain again, but scares away the gleds. Let therefore the Spaniards enjoy also what they call music, although fastidious foreigners condemn it as Iberian and Oriental. They love to have it so, and will have their own way, in their own time and tune, Rossini and Paganini to the contrary notwithstanding. They--not the Italians--are listened to by a delighted semi-Moro audience, with a most profound Oriental and melancholy attention. Like their love, their music, which is its food, is a serious affair; yet the sad song, the guitar, and dance, at this moment, form the joy of careless poverty, the repose of sunburnt labour. The poor forget their toils, _sans six sous et sans souci_; nay, even their meals, like Pliny's friend Claro, who lost his supper, _Baetican olives and gazpacho_, to run after a Gaditanian dancing-girl.

[Sidenote: THE GUITAR.]

In venta and court-yard, in spite of a long day's work and scanty fare, at the sound of the guitar and click of the castanet, a new life is breathed into their veins. So far from feeling past fatigue, the very fatigue of the dance seems refreshing, and many a weary traveller will rue the midnight frolics of his noisy and saltatory fellow-lodgers.

Supper is no sooner over than "apres la panse la danse,"--some muscular masculine performer, the very ant.i.thesis of Farinelli, screams forth his couplets, "screechin' out his prosaic verse," either at the top of his voice, or drawls out his ballad, melancholy as the drone of a Lincolnshire bagpipe, and both alike to the imminent danger of his own trachea, and of all un-Spanish acoustic organs. For verily, to repeat Gray's unhandsome critique of the grand Opera Francais, it consists of "des miaulemens et des hurlemens effroyables, meles avec un tintamare du diable." As, however, in Paris, so in Spain, the audience are in raptures; all men's ears grow to the tunes as if they had eaten ballads; all join in chorus at the end of each verse; this "private band," as among the _sangre su_, supplies the want of conversation, and converts a stupid silence into scientific attention,--ainsi les extremes se touchent. There is always in every company of Spaniards, whether soldiers, civilians, muleteers, or ministers, some one who can play the guitar more or less, like Louis XIV., who, according to Voltaire, was taught nothing but that and dancing. G.o.doy, the Prince of the Peace, one of the most worthless of the mult.i.tude of worthless ministers by whom Spain has been misgoverned, first captivated the royal Messalina by his talent of strumming on the guitar; so Gonzales Bravo, editor of the Madrid _Satirist_, rose to be premier, and conciliated the virtuous Christina, who, soothed by the sweet sounds of this pepper-and-salted Amphion, forgot his libels on herself and Senor Munoz. It may be predicted of the Spains, that when this strumming is mute, the game will be up, as the Hebrew expression for the ne plus ultra desolation of an Oriental city is "the ceasing of the mirth of the guitar and tambourine."

In Spain whenever and wherever the siren sounds are heard, a party is forthwith got up of all ages and s.e.xes, who are attracted by the tinkling like swarming bees. The guitar is part and parcel of the Spaniard and his ballads; he slings it across his shoulder with a ribbon, as was depicted on the tombs of Egypt four thousand years ago.

The performers seldom are very scientific musicians; they content themselves with striking the chords, sweeping the whole hand over the strings, or flourishing, and tapping the board with the thumb, at which they are very expert. Occasionally in the towns there is some one who has attained more power over this ungrateful instrument; but the attempt is a failure. The guitar responds coldly to Italian words and elaborate melody, which never come home to Spanish ears or hearts; for, like the lyre of Anacreon, however often he might change the strings, love, sweet love, is its only theme. The mult.i.tude suit the tune to the song, both of which are frequently extemporaneous. They lisp in numbers, not to say verse; but their splendid idiom lends itself to a prodigality of words, whether prose or poetry; nor are either very difficult, where common sense is no necessary ingredient in the composition; accordingly the language comes in aid to the fertile mother-wit of the natives; rhymes are dispensed with at pleasure, or mixed according to caprice with a.s.sonants which consist of the mere recurrence of the same vowels, without reference to that of consonants, and even these, which poorly fill a foreign ear, are not always observed; a change in intonation, or a few thumps more or less on the board, do the work, supersede all difficulties, and const.i.tute a rude prosody, and lead to music just as gestures do to dancing and to ballads,--"_que se canta ballando_;" and which, when heard, reciprocally inspire a Saint Vitus's desire to snap fingers and kick heels, as all will admit in whose ears the _habas verdes_ of Leon, or the _cachuca_ of Cadiz, yet ring.

[Sidenote: THE LADIES SINGING.]

The words destined to set all this capering in motion are not written for cold British critics. Like sermons, they are delivered orally, and are never subjected to the disenchanting ordeal of type: and even such as may be professedly serious and not saltatory are listened to by those who come attuned to the hearing vein--who antic.i.p.ate and re-echo the subject--who are operated on by the contagious bias. Thus a fascinated audience of otherwise sensible Britons tolerates the positive presence of nonsense at an opera--

"Where rhyme with reason does dispense, And sound has right to govern sense."

In order to feel the full power of the guitar and Spanish song, the performer should be a sprightly Andaluza, taught or untaught; she wields the instrument as her fan or _mantilla_; it seems to become portion of herself, and alive; indeed the whole thing requires an _abandon_, a fire, a _gracia_, which could not be risked by ladies of more northern climates and more tightly-laced zones. No wonder one of the old fathers of the church said that he would sooner face a singing basilisk than one of these performers: she is good for nothing when pinned down to a piano, on which few Spanish women play even tolerably, and so with her singing, when she attempts 'Adelaide,' or anything in the sublime, beautiful, and serious, her failure is dead certain, while, taken in her own line, she is triumphant; the words of her song are often struck off, like Theodore Hook's, at the moment, and allude to incidents and persons present; sometimes they are full of epigram and _double entendre_; they often sing what may not be spoken, and steal hearts through ears, like the Sirens, or as Cervantes has it, _cuando cantan encantan_. At other times their song is little better than meaningless jingle, with which the listeners are just as well satisfied. For, as Figaro says--"ce qui ne vaut pas la peine d'etre dit, on le chante." A good voice, which Italians call _novanta-nove_, ninety-nine parts out of the hundred, is very rare; nothing strikes a traveller more unfavourably than the harsh voice of the women in general; never mind, these ballad songs from the most remote antiquity have formed the delight of the people, have tempered the despotism of their church and state, have sustained a nation's resistance against foreign aggression.

[Sidenote: MOORISH GUITARS.]

There is very little music ever printed in Spain; the songs and airs are generally sold in MS. Sometimes, for the very illiterate, the notes are expressed in numeral figures, which correspond with the number of the strings.

The best guitars in the world were made appropriately in Cadiz by the Pajez family, father and son; of course an instrument in so much vogue was always an object of most careful thought in fair Baetica; thus in the seventh century the Sevillian guitar was shaped like the human breast, because, as archbishops said, the _chords_ signified the pulsations of the heart, _a corde_. The instruments of the Andalucian Moors were strung after these significant heartstrings; Zaryab remodelled the guitar by adding a fifth string of bright red, to represent blood, the treble or first being yellow to indicate bile; and to this hour, on the banks of the Guadalquivir, when dusky eve calls forth the cloaked serenader, the ruby drops of the heart female, are more surely liquefied by a judicious manipulation of cat-gut, than ever were those of San Januario by book or candle; nor, so it is said, when the tinkling is continuous are all marital livers unwrung.

However that may be, the sad tunes of these Oriental ditties are still effective in spite of their antiquity; indeed certain sounds have a mysterious apt.i.tude to express certain moods of the mind, in connexion with some unexplained sympathy between the sentient and intellectual organs, and the simplest are by far the most ancient. Ornate melody is a modern invention from Italy; and although, in lands of greater intercourse and fastidiousness, the conventional has ejected the national, fashion has not shamed or silenced the old airs of Spain--those "howlings of Tarshish." Indeed, national tunes, like the songs of birds, are not taught in orchestras, but by mothers to their infant progeny in the cradling nest. As the Spaniard is warlike without being military, saltatory without being graceful, so he is musical without being harmonious; he is just the raw man material made by nature, and treats himself as he does the raw products of his soil, by leaving art and final development to the foreigner.

[Sidenote: ENGLISH EXAMPLE.]

The day that he becomes a scientific fiddler, or a capital cotton spinner, his charm will be at an end; long therefore may he turn a deaf ear to moralists and political economists, who cannot abide the guitar, who say that it has done more harm to Spain than hailstorms or drought, by fostering a prodigious idleness and love-making, whereby the land is cursed with a greater surplus of foundlings, than men of fortune; how indeed can these calamities be avoided, when the tempter hangs up this fatal instrument on a peg in every house? Our immelodious labourers and unsaltatory operatives are put forth by Manchester missionaries as an example of industry to the _Majos_ and _Manolas_ of Spain: "behold how they toil, twelve and fourteen hours every day;" yet these philanthropists should remember that from their having no other recreation beyond the public or dissenting-house, they pine when unemployed, because not knowing what to do with themselves when _idle_; this to most Spaniards is a foretaste of the bliss of heaven, while occupation, thought in England to be happiness, is the treadmill doom of the lost for ever. Nor can it be denied that the facility of junketing in the Peninsula, the grapes, guitars, songs, skippings and other incidents to fine climate, militate against that dogged, desperate, determined hard-working, by which our labourers beat the world hollow, fiddling and pirouetting being excepted.

[Sidenote: PHILOSOPHY OF THE CIGAR.]

CHAPTER XXIV.

Manufacture of Cigars--Tobacco--Smuggling _via_ Gibraltar--Cigars of Ferdinand VII.--Making a Cigarrito--Zumalacarreguy and the Schoolmaster--Time and Money Wasted in Smoking--Postscript on Stock.

But whether at bull-fight or theatre, be he lay or clerical, every Spaniard who can afford it, consoles himself continually with a cigar, sleep--not bed--time only excepted. This is his _nepenthe_, his pleasure opiate, which, like Souchong, soothes but does not inebriate; it is to him his "Te veniente die et te decedente."

[Sidenote: SMUGGLED CIGARS.]

The manufacture of the cigar is the most active one carried on in the Peninsula. The buildings are palaces; witness those at Seville, Malaga, and Valencia. Since a cigar is a _sine qua non_ in every Spaniard's mouth, for otherwise he would resemble a house without a chimney, a steamer without a funnel, it must have its page in every Spanish book; indeed, as one of the most learned native authors remarked, "You will think me tiresome with my tobacconistical details, but the vast bulk of readers will be more pleased with it, than with an account of all the pictures in the world." They all opine, that a good cigar--an article scarce in this land of smoking and contradiction--keeps a Christian hidalgo cooler in summer and warmer in winter than his wife and cloak; while at all times and seasons it diminishes sorrow and doubles joy, as a man's better half does in Great Britain. "The fact is, Squire," says Sam Slick, "the moment a man takes to a pipe he becomes a philosopher; it is the poor man's friend; it calms the mind, soothes the temper, and makes a man patient under trouble." Can it be wondered at, that the Oriental and Spanish population should cling to this relief from whips and scorns, and the oppressor's wrong, or steep in sweet oblivious stupefaction the misery of being fretted and excited by empty larders, vicious political inst.i.tutions, and a very hot climate? They believe that it deadens their over-excitable imagination, and appeases their too exquisite nervous sensibility; they agree with Moliere, although they never read him, "Quoique l'on puisse dire, Aristote et toute la philosophie, il n'y a rien d'egal au tabac." The divine Isaac Barrow resorted to this _panpharmacon_ whenever he wished to collect his thoughts; Sir Walter Raleigh, the patron of Virginia, smoked a pipe just before he lost his head, "at which some formal people were scandalized; but," adds Aubrey, "I think it was properly done to settle his spirits."

The pedant James, who condemned both Raleigh and tobacco, said the bill of fare of the dinner which he should give his Satanic majesty, would be "a pig, a poll of ling, and mustard, with a pipe of tobacco for digestion." So true it is that "what's one man's meat is another man's poison;" but at all events, in hungry Spain it is both meat and drink, and the chief smoke connected with proceedings of the mouth issues from l.a.b.i.al, not house chimneys.

Tobacco, this anodyne for the irritability of human reason, is, like spirituous liquors which make it drunk, a highly-taxed article in all civilized societies. In Spain, the Bourbon dynasty (as elsewhere) is the hereditary tobacconist-general, and the privilege of sale is generally farmed out to some contractor: accordingly, such a trump as a really good home-made cigar is hardly to be had for love or money in the Peninsula. Diogenes would sooner expect to find an honest man in any of the government offices. As there is no royal road to the science of cigar-making, the article is badly concocted, of bad materials, and, to add insult to injury, is charged at a most exorbitant price. In order to benefit the Havanah, tobacco is not allowed to be grown in Spain, which it would do in perfection in the neighbourhood of Malaga; for the experiment was made, and having turned out quite successfully, the cultivation was immediately prohibited. The iniquity and dearness of the royal tobacco makes the fortune of the well-meaning smuggler, who being here, as everywhere, the great corrector of blundering chancellors of exchequers, provides a better and cheaper thing from Gibraltar.

[Sidenote: SMUGGLED CIGARS.]

The proof of the extent to which his dealings are carried was exemplified in 1828, when many thousand additional hands were obliged to be put on to the manufactories at Seville and Granada, to meet the increased demand occasioned by the impossibility of obtaining supplies from Gibraltar, in consequence of the yellow fever which was then raging there. No offence is more dreadfully punished in Spain than that of tobacco-smuggling, which robs the queen's pocket--all other robbery is treated as nothing, for her lieges only suffer.

The encouragement afforded to the manufacture and smuggling of cigars at Gibraltar is a never-failing source of ill blood and ill will between the Spanish and English governments. This most serious evil is contrary to all treaties, injurious to Spain and England alike, and is beneficial only to aliens of the worst character, who form the real plague and sore of Gibraltar. The American and every other nation import their own tobacco, good, bad, and indifferent, into the fortress free of duty, and without repurchasing British produce. It is made into cigars by Genoese, is smuggled into Spain by aliens, in boats under the British flag, which is disgraced by the traffic and exposed to insult from the revenue cutters of Spain, which it cannot in justice expect to have redressed.

The Spaniards would have winked at the introduction of English hardware and cottons--objects of necessity, which do not interfere with this, their chief manufacture, and one of the most productive of royal monopolies. There is a wide difference between encouraging real British commerce and this smuggling of foreign cigars, nor can Spain be expected to observe treaties towards us while we infringe them so scandalously and unprofitably on our parts.

[Sidenote: LIGHTING CIGARS.]

Many tobacchose epicures, who smoke their regular dozen or two, place the evil sufficient for the day between fresh lettuce-leaves; this damps the outer leaf of the article, and improves the narcotic effect; _mem._, the inside, the trail, _las tripas_, as the Spaniards call it, should be kept quite dry. The disordered interior of the royal cigars is masked by a good outside wrapper leaf, just as Spanish rags are cloaked by a decent _capa_, but l'habit ne fait pas le cigarre. Few except the rich can afford to smoke good cigars. Ferdinand VII., unlike his ancestor Louis XIV., "qui," says La Beaumelle, "ha.s.soit le tabac singulierement, quoiqu'un de ses meilleurs revenus," was not only a grand compounder but consumer thereof. He indulged in the royal extravagance of a very large thick cigar made in the Havanah expressly for his gracious use, as he was too good a judge to smoke his own manufacture. Even of these he seldom smoked more than the half; the remainder was a grand perquisite, like our palace lights. The cigar was one of his pledges of love and hatred: he would give one to his favourites when in sweet temper; and often, when meditating a treacherous _coup_, would dismiss the unconscious victim with a royal _puro_: and when the happy individual got home to smoke it, he was saluted by an Alguacil with an order to quit Madrid in twenty-four hours. The "innocent" Isabel, who does not smoke, subst.i.tutes sugar-plums; she regaled Olozaga with a sweet present, when she was "doing him" at the bidding of the Christinist camarilla. It would seem that the Spanish Bourbons, when not "cretinised" into idiots, are creatures composed of cunning and cowardice. But "those who cannot dissimulate are unfit to reign" was the axiom of their ill.u.s.trious ancestor Louis XI.

[Sidenote: LIGHTING CIGARS.]

In Spain the bulk of their happy subjects cannot afford, either the expense of tobacco, which is dear to them, or the _gain_ of time, which is very cheap, by smoking a whole cigar right away. They make one afford occupation and recreation for half an hour. Though few Spaniards ruin themselves in libraries, none are without a little blank book of a particular paper, which is made at Alcoy, in Valencia. At any pause all say at once--"_pues, senores! echaremos un cigarrito_--well then, my Lords, let us make a little cigar," and all set seriously to work; every man, besides this book, is armed with a small case of flint, steel, and a combustible tinder. To make a paper cigar, like putting on a cloak, is an operation of much more difficulty than it seems, although all Spaniards, who have done nothing so much, from their childhood upwards, perform both with extreme facility and neatness. This is the mode:--the _petaca_, Arabice Butak, or little case worked by a fair hand, in the coloured thread of the aloe, in which the store of cigars is kept, is taken out--a leaf is torn from the book, which is held between the lips, or downwards from the back of the hand, between the fore and middle finger of the left hand--a portion of the cigar, about a third, is cut off and rubbed slowly in the palms till reduced to a powder--it is then jerked into the paper-leaf, which is rolled up into a little squib, and the ends doubled down, one of which is bitten off and the other end is lighted. The cigarillo is smoked slowly, the last whiff being the bonne bouche, the _breast_, _la pechuga_. The little ends are thrown away: they are indeed little, for a Spanish fore-finger and thumb are quite fire-browned and fire-proof, although some polished exquisites use silver holders; these remnants are picked up by the beggar-boys, who make up into fresh cigars the leavings of a thousand mouths. There is no want of fire in Spain; everywhere, what we should call link-boys run about with a slowly-burning rope for the benefit of the public. At many of the sheds where water and lemonade are sold, one of the ropes, twirled like a snake round a post, and ignited, is kept ready as the match of a besieged artilleryman; while in the houses of the affluent, a small silver chafing-dish, with lighted charcoal, is usually on a table.

Mr. Henningsen relates that Zumalacarreguy, when about to execute some Christinos at Villa Franca, observed one (a schoolmaster) looking about, like Raleigh, for a light for his last dying puff in this life, upon which the General took his own cigar from his mouth, and handed it to him. The schoolmaster lighted his own, returned the other with a respectful bow, and went away smoking and reconciled to be shot. This urgent necessity levels all ranks, and it is allowable to stop any person for fire; this proves the practical equality of all cla.s.ses, and that democracy under a despotism, which exists in smoking Spain, as in the torrid East. The cigar forms a bond of union, an isthmus of communication between most heterogeneous oppositions. It is the _habeas corpus_ of Spanish liberties. The soldier takes fire from the canon's lip, and the dark face of the humble labourer is whitened by the reflection of the cigar of the grandee and lounger. The lowest orders have a coa.r.s.e roll or rope of tobacco, wherewith to solace their sorrows, and it is their calumet of peace. Some of the Spanish fair s.e.x are said to indulge in a quiet hidden _cigarilla_, _una pajita_, _una reyna_, but it is not thought either a sign of a lady, or of one of rigid virtue, to have recourse to these forbidden pleasures; for, says their proverb, whoever makes one basket will make a hundred.

[Sidenote: TIME LOST BY TOBACCO.]

Nothing exposes a traveller to more difficulty than carrying much tobacco in his luggage; yet all will remember never to be without some cigars, and the better the better. It is a trifling outlay, for although any cigar is acceptable, yet a real good one is a gift from a king. The greater the enjoyment of the smoker, the greater his respect for the donor; a cigar may be given to everybody, whether high or low: thus the _petaca_ is offered, as a polite Frenchman of La Vieille Cour (a race, alas! all but extinct) offered his snuff-box, by way of a prelude to conversation and intimacy. It is an act of civility, and implies no superiority, nor is there any humiliation in the acceptance; it is twice blessed, "It blesseth him that gives and him that takes." It is the spell wherewith to charm the natives, who are its ready and obedient slaves, and, like a small kind word spoken in time, it works miracles.

There is no country in the world where the stranger and traveller can purchase for half-a-crown, half the love and good-will which its investment in tobacco will ensure, therefore the man who grudges or neglects it is neither a philanthropist nor a philosopher.

A calculation might be made by those fond of arithmetic--which we abhor--of the waste of time and money which is caused to the poor Spaniards by all this prodigious cigarising. This said tobacco importation of Raleigh is even a more doubtful good to the Peninsula than that of potatoes to cognate Ireland, where it fosters poverty and population. Let it be a.s.sumed that a respectable Spaniard only smokes for fifty years, allow him the moderate allowance of six cigars a day--the Regent, it is said, consumed forty every twenty-four hours--calculate the cost of each cigar at two-pence, which is cheap enough anywhere for a decent one; suppose that half of these are made into paper cigars, which require double time--how much Spanish time and private income is wasted in smoke? That is the question which we are unable to answer.