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Updated: June 29, 2025
As young ladies are never called by their family names, but always by their baptismal appellations, you cannot pass an evening in a Spanish tertulia without being reminded of every stage in the life of the Immaculate Mother, from Bethlehem to Calvary and beyond. The common use of sacred words is universal in Catholic countries, but nowhere so striking as in Spain.
The ladies, and a few of the younger men, did not appear disposed to let the gravity of their elders interfere with their own pleasures. The song and the dance, the pointed epigram and witty repartee, all the varied resourccs which Spaniards know so well how to bring into play, and which render a Spanish tertulia so agreeable, had been in turn resorted to.
She was an addition to the establishment since Mary's departure; but in her might be easily recognised the Tia, the individual who in Limenian households holds a position between companion and housekeeper. She introduced herself by the lugubrious appellation of Senora Dolores, and, receiving Mary with obsequious courtesy, explained that the Senor and Senora were at a tertulia, or evening party.
It was unendurable to be alone in her regrets and her longings. "Yes," she continued, "every night Senora Trespalacios will give a tertulia, and the officers will have military balls the brave young men; they will be so gay, so charming, so devoted, and in a few hours, perhaps, they will go into the other world by the road of the battlefield. Ah, how pitiful! How interesting!
Formerly all the ladies turned out to drive without bonnets or coverings of any sort on the head, but bowled along, seated in open carriages, in about the same style of evening dress they would appear in at a tertulia or the theatre, or, in fact, at a ball-room.
The old Countess of Montijo was so much given to open-handed hospitality, and it was so easy for any English person to obtain an introduction to her tertulia, that her daughter, the Empress Eugénie, used to call it the Prado cubierto "only the Prado with a roof on."
It is not customary for anything but the very lightest of refreshments to be offered at the ordinary tertulia, and this is one of its great charms, for little or no expense is incurred, and those who are not rich can still welcome their friends as often as they like without any of the terrific preparations for the entertainment which make it a burden and a bore, and without a rueful glance at the weekly bill afterwards.
As they walked toward the Paseo the Cuban said, "You must be very careful, liberty is a dangerous word; it is discussed only in private; in our tertulia you may speak." He held out a straight forward palm. "We shall be friends." Again in his room, Charles dwelt on Andrés, conscious of the birth of a great liking, the friendship the other had put into words.
The word tertulia simply means a circle or group in society; but it has come to signify a species of "At Home" much more informal than anything we have in the way of evening entertainment. The tertulia of a particular lady means the group of friends who are in the habit of frequenting her drawing-room.
Othman, more than any other the grounder of the Turkish dominion in Europe, reappears in our 'Ottoman'; and Tertullian, strangely enough, in the Spanish 'tertulia. The beggar Lazarus has given us 'lazar' and 'lazaretto'; Veronica and the legend connected with her name, a 'vernicle, being a napkin with the Saviour's face impressed upon it.
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