The pillars of Hercules

by David Urquhart

Amongst European countries, Spain is distinguished for the splendour of her church, and alone retains the Roman festivities of the bull-fight; and, no doubt, she is partly indebted to these for what she has retained of her ancient character. The men, when they enter the circus, the women when they pass the porch, drop the millinery and tailoring of Paris. What the bull-ring is for the one, the church is for the other; from the one, is inseparable the majo dress, from the other, the saya manta.

The wearing the mantilla at church, I have heard attributed to the despotic power of the priests over the women:—the chulos of the bull-ring, there exercise equal despotism over the men. Blanco White narrates that during the plague at Seville, and when religious fervour was, in consequence, at its height, a priest at Alcala “claimed and exercised a right to exclude from church such females as by a showy dress were apt to disturb the abstracted yet susceptible minds of the clergy. It should be observed, by the way, that as the walking dress of the Spanish females absolutely precludes immodesty, the conduct of this religious madman admits of no excuse or palliation. Yet this is so far from being a singular instance, that what sumptuary laws would never be able to accomplish, the rude and insolent zeal of a few priests has fully obtained in every part of Spain. Our females, especially those of the better classes, never venture to church in any dress but such as habit has made familiar to the eyes of the zealots.”

I was present at the festival of the patron saints of the place, and, throughout the whole population, saw not one coloured dress or one bonnet. The mantilla was worn in deference to the priests, who are to-day as powerful as they ever have been, and as despotic as they could ever wish to be.

A more perfect contrast there cannot be than between the cathedral and a fashionable tertulia. In the former nothing is to be seen but the black and glittering silk and the rich blonde: at the other no trace of Spain—not even in the music or the dances—no mantilla, no bolero, no fandango, no guitar, no castanet—nothing but the unmeaning quadrille, the shuffling heedless step, the Paris millinery, the false tints and kaleidoscope patterns:—everything commonplace and vulgar, or rather the bad imitation of vulgarity and commonplace. The conversation wanted even the compensation you meet with in Europe—stored memories, clever flippancy, and gladiatorial faculties. Thus a people who, had they remained themselves,[101] would have been, in their forms as in their character, an object of study and of admiration, are converted (the higher orders, I mean) into something which must inflict disappointment, if not inspire contempt.

What would a nation be without a flag? What is a nation without a costume? A flag is an emblem, a costume is a property. A flag designates and defies, a costume ennobles and preserves. A flag has come by accident, costume is the produce of a people’s taste. The Medes had a dress; the Persians, the Romans, the Egyptians had each a dress. To say, then, a dress, is to say a people. A costume is to a people like its mountains, its floods, and its lakes. The costume of its land and its fathers has been to every noble people like their tongue, their fame, their precepts, and their laws; in independence, giving dignity; in chains, none. The tyrant and the patriot alike know its worth. The wandering Israelite for two thousand years, has worn, concealed on his person, the proscribed garb of Judæa—a mystic shred, the emblem and promise of restoration. So late as the middle of the last century, the Parliament of England did not conceive its dominion secure until it had put down the Highland dress.

The last in Europe to retain one, the Spaniard has yet a costume. He is in the act of surrendering it, yet no foreign hordes cover the Peninsula and hunt down its inhabitants. Itself, with unnatural hands, tears it off and casts it away, and adopts in lieu of it a foreign garb—which, indeed, is no garb—for it belongs to no people, furnished forth not by a combination of the tastes of all the people of Europe, but by a concentration of their vulgarism. Have they changed with a purpose Ask them: they can give you no reason for what it means. “It is the fashion.”

I have a curious illustration before me, where I am correcting these pages. On the side of Benledi there is a vale, now, with the exception of a few fields, uncultivated below, and bare of trees above. In the wilderness, a burial-ground may be traced, the record of an extinct clan, the last having left the country forty years ago. Immediately above, a hollow in the rock is called, “The Deer’s Repose.” The antlered tribe has also disappeared—forests, deer, culture, and men are all gone. There are six families: the patriarch (still living) in his youthful days remembered twelve. None of the younger generation are married—at least, in their native valley.

While seeking into the causes of this decay, I found that they were changing their diet[102]—the last thing a nation changes. They had loaf-bread from Callender. I asked, “Do you like it better?” “No.” “Is it cheaper?” “No.” “Is it more healthy? Have you no time to knead your cakes? Do you not know how to spend your money?” “No! no!” At last out came—“It is the fashion.”

If the Stuarts of Glenfinlass had said, “It is the custom,” instead of “It is the fashion,” the families would not have fallen from twelve to six within one generation; the sheep would not have eaten up the deer and the forest.

A people with a phrase, “It is the custom,” can never be destroyed. A people with the phrase, “It is the fashion,” cannot be said to exist, for it has nothing of all it possesses that it can call its own. A people that can articulate such a phrase on the lips, has encouraged a power which, tyrannizing over heart and brain, rots the one and steals away the other.