Letters from Spain

There is an extreme eagerness in the Catholic professors of celibacy, both male and female, to decoy young persons into the toils from which they themselves cannot escape. With this view they have disguised the awful ceremony which cuts off an innocent girl from the sweetest hopes of nature, with the pomp and gaiety, which mankind have unanimously bestowed on the triumph of legitimate love. The whole process which condemns a female “to wither on the virgin thorn,” and “live a barren sister all her life,” is studiously made to represent a wedding. The unconscious victim, generally in her fifteenth year, finds herself, for some time previous to her taking the veil, the queen—nay, the idol of the whole community which has obtained her preference. She is constantly addressed by the name of bride, and sees nothing but gay preparations for the expected day of her spiritual nuptials. Attired in a splendid dress, and decked with all the jewels of her family and friends, she takes public leave of her acquaintance; visits, on her way to the convent, several other nunneries, to be seen and admired by the recluse inhabitants; and even the crowd which collects in her progress, follows her with tears and blessings. As she approaches the church of her monastery, the dignified ecclesiastic who is to perform the ceremony, meets the intended novice at the door, and leads her to the altar, amid the sounds of bells and musical instruments. The monastic weeds are blessed by the priest in her presence; and having embraced her parents and nearest relations, she is led by the lady who acts as bride’s-maid to the small door next to the double grating, which separates the nuns’ choir from the body of the church. A curtain is drawn while the abbess cuts off the hair of the novice, and strips her of her worldly ornaments. On the removal of the curtain she appears in the monastic garb, surrounded by the nuns bearing lighted tapers, her face covered with the white veil of probationship, fixed on the head by a wreath of flowers. After the Te Deum, or some other hymn of thanksgiving, the friends of the family adjourn to the Locutory, or visiting-room, where a collation of ices and sweetmeats is served in the presence of the mock bride, who, with the principal nuns, attends behind the grating which separates the visitors from the inmates of the convent. In the more austere nunneries the parting visit is omitted, and the sight of the novice in the white veil, immediately after having her hair cut off, is the last which, for a whole year, is granted to the parents. They again see her on the day when she binds herself with the irrevocable vows, never to behold her more, unless they should live to see her again crowned with flowers, when she is laid in the grave.

Instances of novices quitting the convent during the year of probation are extremely rare. The ceremony of taking the veil is too solemn, and bears too much the character of a public engagement, to allow full liberty of choice during the subsequent noviciate. The timid mind of a girl shrinks from the idea of appearing again in the world, under the tacit reproach of fickleness and relaxed devotion. The nuns, besides, do not forget their arts during the nominal trial of the victim, and she lives a whole year the object of their caresses. Nuns, in fact, who, after profession, would have given their lives for a day of free breathing out of their prison, it has been my misfortune to know; but I cannot recollect more than one instance of a novice quitting the convent; and that was a woman of obscure birth, on whom public opinion had no influence.

That many nuns, especially in the more liberal convents, live happy, I have every reason to believe; but, on the other hand, I possess indubitable evidence of the exquisite misery which is the lot of some unfortunate females, under similar circumstances. I shall mention only one case, in actual existence, with which I am circumstantially acquainted.

A lively and interesting girl of fifteen, poor, though connected with some of the first gentry in this town, having received her education under an aunt who was at the head of a wealthy, and not austere, Franciscan convent, came out, as the phrase is, to see the world, previous to her taking the veil. I often met the intended novice at the house of one of her relations, where I visited daily. She had scarcely been a fortnight out of the cloister, when that world she had learned to abhor in description, was so visibly and rapidly winning her affections, that at the end of three months she could hardly disguise her aversion to the veil. The day, however, was now fast approaching which had been fixed for the ceremony, without her feeling sufficient resolution to decline it. Her father, a good but weak man, she knew too well, could not protect her from the ill-treatment of an unfeeling mother, whose vanity was concerned in thus disposing of a daughter for whom she had no hopes of finding a suitable match. The kindness of her aunt, the good nun to whom the distressed girl was indebted for the happiness of her childhood, formed, besides, too strong a contrast with the unkindness of the unnatural mother, not to give her wavering mind a strong though painful bias towards the cloister. To this were added all the arts of pious seduction so common among the religious of both sexes. The preparations for the approaching solemnity were, in the mean time, industriously carried on with the greatest publicity. Verses were circulated, in which her confessor sang the triumph of Divine Love over the wily suggestions of the impious. The wedding-dress was shewn to every acquaintance, and due notice of the appointed day was given to friends and relatives. But the fears and aversion of the devoted victim grew in proportion as she saw herself more and more involved in the toils she had wanted courage to burst when she first felt them.

It was in company with my friend Leandro, with whose private history you are well acquainted,35 that I often met the unfortunate Maria Francisca. His efforts to dissuade her from the rash step she was going to take, and the warm language in which he spoke to her father on that subject, had made her look upon him as a warm and sincere friend. The unhappy girl on the eve of the day when she was to take the veil, repaired to church, and sent him a message, without mentioning her name, that a female penitent requested his attendance at the confessional. With painful surprise he found the future novice at his feet, in a state bordering on distraction. When a flood of tears had allowed her utterance, she told him that, for want of another friend in the whole world to whom she could disclose her feelings, she came to him, not, however, for the purpose of confession, but because she trusted he would listen with pity to her sorrows. With a warmth and eloquence above her years, she protested that the distant terrors of eternal punishment, which, she feared, might be the consequence of her determination, could not deter her from the step by which she was going to escape the incessant persecution of her mother. In vain did my friend volunteer his assistance to extricate her from the appalling difficulties which surrounded her: in vain did he offer to wait upon the archbishop, and implore his interference: no offers, no persuasions could move her. She parted as if ready to be conveyed to the scaffold, and the next day took the veil.

The real kindness of her aunt, and the treacherous smiles of the other nuns, supported the pining novice through the year of probation. The scene I beheld when she was bound with the perpetual vows of monastic life, is one which I cannot recollect without an actual sense of suffocation. A solemn mass, performed with all the splendour which that ceremony admits, preceded the awful oaths of the novice. At the conclusion of the service, she approached the superior of the order. A pen, gaily ornamented with artificial flowers, was put into her trembling hand, to sign the engagement for life, on which she was about to enter. Then, standing before the iron grate of the choir, she began to chaunt, in a weak and fainting voice, the act of consecration of herself to God; but, having uttered a few words, she fainted into the arms of the surrounding nuns. This was attributed to mere fatigue and emotion. No sooner had the means employed restored to the victim the powers of speech, than, with a vehemence which those who knew not her circumstances attributed to a fresh impulse of holy zeal, and in which the few that were in the painful secret saw nothing but the madness of despair; she hurried over the remaining sentences, and sealed her doom for ever.

The real feelings of the new votaress were, however, too much suspected by her more bigoted or more resigned fellow-prisoners; and time and despair making her less cautious, she was soon looked upon as one likely to bring disgrace on the whole order, by divulging the secret that it is possible for a nun to feel impatient under her vows. The storm of conventual persecution, (the fiercest and most pitiless of all that breed in the human heart), had been lowering over the unhappy young woman during the short time which her aunt, the prioress, survived. But when death had left her friendless, and exposed to the tormenting ingenuity of a crowd of female zealots, whom she could not escape for an instant; unable to endure her misery, she resolutely attempted to drown herself. The attempt, however, was ineffectual. And now the merciless character of Catholic superstition appeared in its full glare. The mother, without impeaching whose character no judicial steps could be taken to prove the invalidity of the profession, was dead; and some relations and friends of the poor prisoner were moved by her sufferings to apply to the church for relief. A suit was instituted for this purpose before the ecclesiastical court, and the clearest evidence adduced of the indirect compulsion which had been used in the case. But the whole order of Saint Francis, considering their honour at stake, rose against their rebellious subject, and the judges sanctioned her vows as voluntary and valid. She lives still in a state approaching to madness, and death alone can break her chains.36

Such an instance of misery is, I hope, one of those extreme cases which seldom take place, and more seldom transpire. The common source of suffering among the Catholic recluses proceeds from a certain degree of religious melancholy, which, combined with such complaints as originate in perpetual confinement, affect more or less the greater number.

The mental disease to which I allude is commonly known by the name of Escrúpulos, and might be called religious anxiety. It is the natural state of a mind perpetually dwelling on hopes connected with an invisible world, and anxiously practising means to avoid an unhappy lot in it, which keep the apprehended danger for ever present to the imagination. Consecration for life at the altar promises, it is true, increased happiness in the world to come; but the numerous and difficult duties attached to the religious profession, multiply the hazards of eternal misery by the chances of failure in their performance; and while the plain Christian’s offences against the moral law are often considered as mere frailties, those of the professed votary seldom escape the aggravation of sacrilege. The odious diligence of the Catholic moralists has raked together an endless catalogue of sins, by thought, word, and deed, to every one of which the punishment of eternal flames has been assigned. This list, alike horrible and disgusting, haunts the imagination of the unfortunate devotee, till, reduced to a state of perpetual anxiety, she can neither think, speak, nor act, without discovering in every vital motion a sin which invalidates all her past sacrifices, and dooms her painful efforts after Christian perfection, to end in everlasting misery. Absolution, which adds boldness to the resolute and profligate, becomes a fresh source of disquietude to a timid and sickly mind. Doubts innumerable disturb the unhappy sufferer, not, however, as to the power of the priest in granting pardon, but respecting her own fulfilment of the conditions, without which to receive absolution is sacrilege. These agonizing fears, cherished and fed by the small circle of objects to which a nun is confined, are generally incurable, and usually terminate in an untimely death, or insanity.

There are, however, constitutions and tempers to which the atmosphere of a nunnery seems natural and congenial. Women of uncommon cleverness and judgment, whose strength of mind preserves them in a state of rational happiness are sometimes found in the cloisters. But the true, the genuine nun—such, I mean, as, unincumbered by a barbarous rule, and blessed with that Liliputian activity of mind which can convert a parlour or a kitchen into an universe—presents a most curious modification of that amusing character, the old maid. Like their virgin sisters all over the world, they too have, more or less, a flirting period, of which the confessor is always the happy and exclusive object. The heart and soul of almost every nun not passed fifty, are centred in the priest that directs her conscience. The convent messengers are seen about the town with lots of spiritual billets-doux, in search of a soothing line from the ghostly fathers. The nuns not only address them by that endearing name, but will not endure from them the common form of speech in the third person:—they must be tutoyé, as children are by their parents. Jealousy is a frequent symptom of this nameless attachment; and though it is impossible for every nun to have exclusive possession of her confessor, few will allow the presence of a rival within their own convent.

I do not intend, however, to cast an imputation of levity on the class of Spanish females which I am describing. Instances of gross misconduct are extremely rare among the nuns. Indeed, the physical barriers which protect their virtue are fully adequate to guard them against the consequences of a most unbounded intimacy with their confessors. Neither would I suggest the idea that nothing but obstacles of this kind keeps them, in all cases, within the bounds of modesty. My only object is to expose the absurdity and unfeelingness of a system which, while it surrounds the young recluses with strong walls, massive gates, and spiked windows, grants them the most intimate communication with a man—often a young man—that can be carried on in words and writing. The struggle between the heart thus barbarously tried, and the unnatural duties of the religious state, though sometimes a mystery to the modest sufferer, is plainly visible in most of the young captives.

About the age of fifty, (for spiritual flirtation seldom exhausts itself before that age,) the genuine nun has settled every feeling and affection upon that shifting centre of the universe, which, like some circles in astronomy, changes with every step of the individual—I mean self. It has been observed that no European language possesses a true equivalent for your English word comfort; and, considering the state of this country, Spanish would have little chance of producing a similar substantive, were it not for some of our nuns, who, as they make a constant practical study of the subject, may, at length, enrich our dictionary with a name for what they know so well without it. Their comforts, however, poor souls! are still of an inferior kind, and arise chiefly from the indulgence of that temper, which, in the language of your ladies’ maids, makes their mistresses very particular; and which, by a strange application of the word, confers among us the name of impertinente. The squeamishness, fastidiousness, and morbid sensibility of nuns, make that name a proverbial reproach to every sort of affected delicacy. As great and wealthy nunneries possess considerable influence, and none can obtain the patronage of the Holy Sisters (Mothers, they are called by the Spaniards,) without accommodating themselves to the tone and manners of the society; every person, male or female, connected with it, acquires a peculiar mincing air, which cannot be mistaken by an experienced observer. But in none does it appear more ludicrously than in the old-fashioned nun-doctors. Their patience in listening to long, minute, and often-told reports of cases; the mock authority with which they enforce their prescriptions, and the peculiar wit they employ to raise the spirits of their patients, would, in a more free country, furnish comedy with a most amusing character. Some years ago a very stupid practitioner bethought himself of taking orders, thus to unite the spiritual and bodily leech, for the convenience of nuns. The Pope granted him a dispensation of the ecclesiastical law, which forbids priests to practise physic; and he found himself unrivalled in powers, among the faculty. The scheme succeeded so well that our doctor sent home for a lad, his nephew, whom he has brought up in this twofold trade, which, for want of direct heirs, of which priests in this country cannot boast, is likely to be perpetuated in the collateral branches of that family. With regard to their curative system, as it applies to the souls, I am a very incompetent judge: the body, I know—at least the half-spiritualized bodies of the nuns—they treat exclusively with syrups. This is a fact of which I have a melancholy proof in a near relation, a most amiable young woman, who was allowed to drop into an early grave, while her growing disease was opposed with nothing but syrup of violets! I must add, however, that the wary doctor, not forgetting the ghostly concerns of his patient, never omitted to add a certain dose of Agnus Castus to every ounce of the syrup; a practice to which, he once told a friend of mine, both he and his uncle most religiously adhered when attending young nuns, with the benevolent purpose of making their religious duties more easy.

LETTER IX

Seville, – 1806.

As, in order to help my memory, I have been for some time collecting notes under different heads, relative to the customs, both public and private, which are most remarkable in the annual circle of Sevillian life, I find myself possessed of a number of detached scraps, which, though affording abundant matter for more than one of my usual dispatches, are much too stubborn to bend themselves into any but their original shape. After casting about in my mind for some picturesque or dramatic plan of arrangement, I had, most cowardly, I confess, and like a mere novice in the art of authorship, determined to suppress the detached contents of my common-place book, when it occurred to me that, as they were no less likely to gratify your curiosity in their present state than in a more elaborate form, a simple transcript of my notes would not stand amiss in the collection of my letters. I shall, therefore, present you with the following sample of my Fasti Hispalenses, or Sevillian Almanack, without, however, binding myself to furnish it with the three hundred and sixty-five articles which that name seems to threaten. Or, should you still find the title too ambitious and high-sounding for the mere gossip and prattle of this series of scraps, I beg you will call it (for I have not the heart to send out my productions not only shapeless, but nameless)

MEMORANDUMS OF SOME ANDALUSIAN CUSTOMS AND FESTIVALSJANUARY 20TH. SAINT SEBASTIAN’S DAY

Carnival has been ushered in, according to an ancient custom which authorises so early a commencement of the gaieties that precede Lent. Little, however, remains of that spirit of mirth which contrived such ample amends for the demure behaviour required during the annual grand fast. To judge from what I have seen and heard in my boyhood, the generation who lived at Seville before me, were, in their love of noisy merriment, but one step above children; and contrived to pass a considerable portion of their time in a round of amusements, more remarkable for jollity than for either show or refinement; yet unmixed with any grossness or indecorum. I shall give a specimen in a family of middle rank, whose circumstances were not the most favourable to cheerfulness.

The joy and delight of my childhood was centered in the house of four spinsters of the good old times, who, during a period of between fifty and sixty years, passed “in single blessedness,” and with claims to respectability, as ample as their means of supporting it were scanty; had waged the most resolute and successful war against melancholy, and were now the seasoned veterans of mirth. Poverty being no source of degradation among us, these ladies had a pretty numerous circle of friends, who, with their young families, frequented their house—one of the old, large, and substantial buildings which, for a trifling rent, may be had in this town, and which care and neatness have kept furnished for more than a century, without the addition or substitution of a single article. In a lofty drawing-room, hung round with tapestry, the faded remnants of ancient family pride, the good old ladies were ready, every evening after sunset, to welcome their friends, especially the young of both sexes, to whom they showed the most good-natured kindness. Their scanty revenue did not allow them to treat the company with the usual refreshments, except on particular days—an expense which they met by a well-planned system of starvation, carried on throughout the year, with the utmost good humour. An ancient guitar, as large as a moderate violoncello, stood up in a corner of the room, ready at a moment’s notice, to stir up the spirits of the young people into a dance of the Spanish Seguidillas, or to accompany the songs which were often forfeited in the games that formed the staple merriment at this season.

The games, in truth, which in England are nearly forgotten, even within their last asylums—ladies’ schools and nurseries,—were thirty years ago a favourite amusement in this country. That they have, at some period, been common to a great part of Europe, will not be doubted by any one who, like myself, may attach such importance to this subject as to be at the trouble of comparing the different sports of that kind which prevail in France, England, and Spain. I wish, indeed, that antiquarians were a more jovial and volatile race than I have found them in general; and that some one would trace up these amusements to their common source. The French, with that spirit of system and scientific arrangement which even their perfumers, Marchandes de Modes, and dancing-masters display, have already, according to a treatise now lying before me, distributed these games into Jeux d’action and Jeux d’esprit.

In marking their similarity among the three nations I have mentioned, I shall pass over the former; for who can doubt that romping (so I will venture, though less elegantly, to express the French action) is an innate principle in mankind, impelling the human animal to similar pranks all over the globe, from the first to the third of his climacterics? But to find that, just at the age when he perceives the necessity of assuming the demureness of maturity, he should, in different places and under a variety of circumstances, fall upon the same contrivances in order to desipere in loco, or to find a loop-hole to indulge himself in playing the fool, is a phenomenon which I beg leave to recommend to the attention of philosophers.

The jeux d’esprit, which I find to be used, with some slight variations, in France, England, and Spain, or, at least, in some two of those countries, are—The Aviary, or giving the heart to one bird, committing one’s secret to another, and plucking a feather from a third; at the risk of mistaking the objects of the intended raillery or gallantry, disguised under the name of different birds.—In The Soldier, the players being questioned by the leader about the clothing they mean to give a decayed veteran, must avoid the words yes, no, white, and black. The ingenuity displayed in this game is much of the kind that appears in some of our tales of the seventeenth century, where the author engaged to omit some particular vowel throughout his narrative.—Exhausting a letter, each player being obliged to use three words with the initial proposed by the leader. The English game, I love my love, is a modification of this: in Spanish it is commonly called el Jardin, the Garden.—La Plaza de Toros, or the Bull Amphitheatre, in French, L’Amphigouri, is a story made up of words collected from the players, each of whom engages to name objects peculiar to some trade.—Le mot placé, a refinement on Cross purposes, in Spanish Los Despropósitos, is a game in which every player in the ring, having whispered to his neighbour, on the right, the most unusual word he can think of, questions are put in the opposite direction, the answer to which, besides being pertinent, must contain the given word.—The stool of repentance, (Gallicè) La Sellette, (Hispan.) La Berlina, is, as my French author wisely observes, a dangerous game, where the penitent hears his faults from every one in company through the medium of the leader, till he can guess the person who has nettled him most by his remarks.