Part 7 (1/2)
This _Bota_, from whence the terms _b.u.t.t_ of sherry, _bouteille_, and bottle are derived, is the most ancient Oriental leathern bottle alluded to in Job x.x.xii. 19, ”My belly ready to burst like new bottles;”
and in the parable, Matt. ix. 17, about the old ones, the force and point of which is entirely lost by our word _bottle_, which being made of gla.s.s, is not liable to become useless by age like one made of leather. Such a ”bottle of water” was the last among the few things which Abraham gave to Hagar, when he turned out the mother of the Arabians, whose descendants brought its usage into Spain. The shape is like that of a large pear or shot-pouch, and it contains from two to five quarts. The narrow neck is mounted with a turned wooden cup, from which the contents are drunk. The way to use it is thus--grasp the neck with the left hand and bring the rim of the cup to the mouth, then gradually raise the bag with the other hand till the wine, in obedience to hydrostatic laws, rises to its level, and keeps always full in the cup without trouble to the mouth. The gravity with which this is done, the long, slow, sustained, Sancho-like devotion of the thirsty Spaniards when offered a drink out of another man's _bota_, is very edifying, and is as deep as the sigh of delight and grat.i.tude with which, when unable to imbibe more, the precious skin is returned. No drop of the divine contents is wasted, except by some newly-arrived bungler, who, by lifting up the bottom first, inundates his chin. The hole in the cup is made tight by a wooden spigot, which again is perforated and stopped with a small peg. Those who do not want to take a copious draught do not pull out the spigot, but merely the little peg of it; the wine then flows out in a thin thread. The Catalonians and Aragonese generally drink in this way; they never touch the vessel with their lips, but hold it up at a distance above, and pilot the stream into their mouths, or rather under-jaws. It is much easier for those who have had no practice to pour the wine into their necks than into their mouths, but their drinking-bottles are made with a long narrow spout, and are called ”_Porrones_.”
[Sidenote: THE BOTA--WINE.]
The _Bota_ must not be confounded with the _Borracha_ or _Cuero_, the wine-skin of Spain, which is the _entire_, and answers the purpose of the barrel elsewhere. The _bota_ is the retail receptacle, the _cuero_ is the wholesale one. It is the genuine pig's skin, the adoration of which disputes in the Peninsula with the cigar, the dollar, and even the wors.h.i.+p of the Virgin. The shops of the makers are to be seen in most Spanish towns; in them long lines of the unclean animal's blown out hides are strung up like sheep carcases in our butchers' shambles. The tanned and manufactured article preserves the form of the pig, feet and all, with the exception of one: the skin is turned inside out, so that the hairy coat lines the interior, which, moreover, is carefully pitched like a s.h.i.+p's bottom, to prevent leaking; hence the peculiar flavour, which partakes of resin and the hide, which is called the _borracha_, and is peculiar to most Spanish wines, sherry excepted, which being made by foreigners, is kept in foreign casks, as we shall presently show when we touch on ”good sherris sack.” A drunken man, who is rarer in Spain than in England, is called a _borracho_; the term is not complimentary.
These _cueros_, when filled, are suspended in _ventas_ and elsewhere, and thus economise cellarage, cooperage, and bottling; and such were the bigbellied monsters which Don Quixote attacked.
As the _bota_ is always near every Spaniard's mouth who can get at one, all cla.s.ses being ever ready, like Sancho, to give ”a thousand kisses,”
not only to his own legitimate _bota_, but to that of his neighbour, which is coveted more than wife: therefore no prudent traveller will ever journey an inch in Spain without getting one, and when he has, will never keep it empty, especially when he falls in with good wine. Every man's Spanish attendant will always find out, by instinct, where the best wine is to be had; good wine neither needs bush, herald, nor crier; in these matters, our experience of them tallies with their proverb, ”mas vale vino _maldito_, que no agua _bendita_,” ”cursed bad wine is better than holy water;” at the same time, in their various scale of comparisons, there is good wine, better wine, and best wine, but no such thing as bad wine; of good wine, the Spaniards are almost as good judges as of good water; they rarely mix them, because they say that it is spoiling two good things. Vino _Moro_, or Moorish wine, is by no means indicative of uncleanness, or other heretical imperfections implied generally by that epithet; it simply means, that it is pure from never having been baptized with water, for which the Asturians, who keep small chandlers' shops, are so infamous, that they are said, from inveterate habit, to adulterate even water; _aguan el agua_.
[Sidenote: MONEY.]
It is a great mistake to suppose, because Spaniards are seldom seen drunk, and because when on a journey they drink as much water as their beasts, that they have any Oriental dislike to wine; the rule is ”_Agua como buey, y vino como Rey_,” ”to drink water like an ox, and wine like a king.” The extent of the _given_ quant.i.ty of wine which they will always swallow, rather suggests that their habitual temperance may in some degree be connected more with their poverty than with their will.
The way to many an honest breast lies through the belly in this cla.s.sical land, where the tutelar of butlers still keeps the key of their cellars and hearts--aperit praecordia Bacchus: nor is their Oriental blessing unconnected with some ”savoury food” previously administered. And independently of the very obvious reasons which good wine does and ought to afford for its own consumption, the irritating nature of Spanish cookery provides a never-failing inducement. The constant use of the savoury cla.s.s of condiments and of pepper is very heating, ”_la pimienta escalienta_.” A salt-fish, ham and sausage diet creates thirst; a good rasher of bacon calls loudly for a corresponding long and strong pull at the ”_bota_,” ”_a torresno de tocino, buen golpe de vino_.”
This digression on _botas_ will be pardoned by all who, having ridden in Spain, know the absolute necessity of them. The traveller will of course remember the advice given by the rogue of _Ventero_ to Don Quixote to take s.h.i.+rts and money with him. ”Put money in thy purse” said also honest Iago, for an empty one is a beggarly companion in the Peninsula as elsewhere. There is no getting to Rome or to Santiago if the pilgrim's scrip be scanty, or his mule lame: _Camino de Roma, ni mula coja ni Bolsa floja_.
[Sidenote: MONEY.]
Practically it may be said, that there is no paper money in Spain. Notes may be taken in some of the larger cities, but in the provinces the value of a man in office's promise to pay on paper, is not considered by the shrewd natives to be actually equal to cash; while they will readily give these notes to foreigners, they prefer for their own use the old-fas.h.i.+oned representatives of wealth, gold and silver, towards the smallest fraction of which they have the largest possible veneration.
Accounts are usually kept in _reales de vellon_ of royal bullion; and these are subdivided into _maravedis_, the ancient coin of the Peninsula: there are minor fractions even of farthings, consisting in material of infinitesimal bits of any metals, melted church bells, old cannon, &c., with names and values unknown in our happy land, where not much is to be got for a mite; in Spain, where cheapness of earth-produce is commensurate with poverty, anything, even to an old b.u.t.ton, goes for a _maravedi_, and we have found that in changing a dollar by way of experiment into small coppers in the market at Seville, among the mult.i.tudinous specimens of Spanish mints of all periods, Moorish and even Roman coins were to be met with, and still current.
The dollar, or _Duro_, of Spain is well known all over the world, being the form under which silver has been generally exported from the Spanish colonies of South America. It is the Italian ”Colonato,” so called because the arms of Spain are supported between the two pillars of Hercules. The coinage is slovenly: it is the weight of the metal, not the form, which is looked to by the Spaniard, who, like the Turk, is not so clever a workman or mechanist as devout wors.h.i.+pper of bullion.
Ferdinand VII. continued for a long while to strike money with his father's head, having only had the lettering altered: thus early Trajans exhibit the head of Nero. When the Cortes entered Madrid after the Duke's victory at Salamanca, they patriotically prohibited the currency of all coins bearing the head of the intrusive Joseph; yet his dollars being chiefly made out of stolen church plate, gilt and ungilt, were, although those of an usurper, intrinsically worth more than the _legitimate_ duro: this was a too severe test for the loyalty of those whose real king and G.o.d is cash. Such a decree was worthy of senators who were busier employed in expelling French tropes from their dictionary than French troops from their country. The wiser Chinese take Ferdinand's and Joseph's dollars alike, calling them both ”devil's head”
money. These bad prejudices against good coin have now given way to the march of intellect; nay, the five-franc piece with Louis-Philippe's clever head on it bids fair to oust the pillared _Duro_. The silver of the mines of Murcia is exported to France, where it is coined, and sent back in the manufactured shape. France thus gains a handsome per centage, and habituates the people to her image of power, which comes recommended to them in the most acceptable likeness of current coin.
[Sidenote: GOLD COINAGE.]
In Spain cash, ambrosial cash, rules the court, the camp, the grove; hence the extraordinary credit of three millions recently required for the secret service expenses of the Tuileries, and official enthusiasm and unanimity secured thereby in the Montpensier purchase. The whole decalogue is condensed at Madrid into one commandment, Love G.o.d as represented on earth not by his vicar the Pope, but by his lord-lieutenant, Don Ducat.
_”El primero es amar Don Dinero,_ _Dios es omnipotente, Don Dinero es su lugarteniente.”_
Thus grandees and men in Spanish offices, both governmental and printing ones, have preferred the other day five-franc pieces to the ribbons of the Legion of _honor_; nor, considering the swindlers on whom this badge of Austerlitz has been prost.i.tuted, were these worthy Castilians much out in their calculations, if there be any truth in the catechism of Falstaff.
[Sidenote: AVARICE OF SPANIARDS.]
The _gold coinage_ is magnificent, and worthy of the country and period from which Europe was supplied with the precious metals. The largest piece, the ounce, ”_onza_,” is worth sixteen dollars, or about 3_l._ 6_s._; and while it puts to shame the diminutive Napoleons of France and sovereigns of England, tells the tale of Spain's former wealth, and contrasts strangely with her present poverty and scarcity of specie: these large coins have however been so _sweated_, not by the sun, but by Jews, foreign and domestic, so clipped worse than Spanish mules or French poodles, that they seldom retain their proper weight and value.
They are accordingly looked upon every where with suspicion; a shopkeeper, in a big town, brings out his scales like Shylock, while in a village shrugs, _ajos_, and negative expressions are your change; nor, even if the natives are satisfied that they are not light, can sixteen dollars be often met with, nor do those who have so much ready money by them ever wish that the fact should be generally known. Spaniards, like the Orientals, have a dread of being supposed to have money in their possession; it exposes them to be plundered by robbers of all kinds, professional or legal; by the ”_alcalde_,” or village authority, and the ”_escribano_,” the attorney, to say nothing of Senor Mon's tax-gatherer; for the quota of contributions, many of which are apportioned among the inhabitants themselves of each district, falls heaviest on those who have, or are supposed to have, the most ready money.
The lower cla.s.ses of Spaniards, like the Orientals, are generally avaricious. They see that wealth is safety and power, where everything is venal; the feeling of insecurity makes them eager to invest what they have in a small and easily concealed bulk, ”_en lo que no habla_,” ”in that which does not tell tales.” Consequently, and in self-defence, they are much addicted to h.o.a.rding. The idea of finding hidden treasures, which prevails in Spain as in the East, is based on some grounds; for in every country which has been much exposed to foreign invasions, civil wars, and domestic misrule, where there were no safe modes of investment, in moments of danger property was converted into gold or jewels and concealed with singular ingenuity. The mistrust which Spaniards entertain of each other often extends, when cash is in the case, even to the nearest relations, to wife and children. Many a treasure is thus lost from the accidental death of the hider, who, dying without a sign, carries his secret to the grave, adding thereby to the sincere grief of his widow and heir. One of the old vulgar superst.i.tions in Spain is an idea that those who were born on a Good Friday, the day of mourning, were gifted with a power of seeing into the earth and of discovering hidden treasures. One place of concealment has always been under the bodies in graves; the hiders have trusted to the dead to defend what the quick could not: this accounts for the universal desecration of tombs and churchyards during Bonaparte's invasion. The Gauls growled like gowls amid the churchyards; they despoiled the mouldering corpses of the last pledge left by weeping affection; or, as Burke observed of their domestic doings, they unplumbed the dead to make missiles of destruction against the living. These hordes, in their hurried flight before the advancing Duke, also hid much of their ill-gotten gains, which to this day are hunted after. Who has forgotten Borrow's graphic picture of the treasure-seeking Mol? At this very moment the authorities of San Sebastian are narrowly superintending the diggings of an old Frenchwoman, to whom some dying thief at home has revealed the secret of a buried kettle full of gold ounces.
[Sidenote: CONCEALMENT OF CASH.]
Having provided the ”_Spanish_,” those metallic sinews of war, which also make the mare go in peace, a prudent master, if he intends to be really the master, will hold the purse himself, and, moreover, will keep a sharp eye on it, for the jingle of coin dispels even a Spanish siesta, and causes many a sleepless day to every listener, from the beggar to the queen mother.
[Sidenote: SPANISH SERVANTS.]
CHAPTER X.