My Spanish Year

by Ellen M. Whishaw

The greater the crowd in front, the better the dancers are pleased; indeed, I remember some girls telling me one year that they had had a tremendous success over-night, “for there were so many people watching them that some of the invited guests had tried to get through to the caseta no less than three times in vain.” And these are the girls who would lose their reputations if they were seen in the street alone in the daytime, or even two sisters together, without a chaperone! Mysterious indeed are the social customs of Spain!

I have already written of fireworks. If these are good even in villages, it may be supposed that they are considerably better in wealthy Seville. The only wonder is that the whole street of the Reál is not set alight every night of the Fair, for the fireworks always end with the dangerous traca, a chain of crackers laid from tree to tree the whole length of the canvas street, and the crackers seem to explode actually into the casetas. And alongside of the footpath is a double or treble row of carriages, whose horses seem to be merely bored with the squibs and other noisy and fiery arrangements which explode under their noses. It is sheer good luck that no terrible accident has yet occurred. But no one protests, although every year people mildly remark that it is horribly dangerous and very disagreeable to have sparks falling all over the footpaths. In the matter of fireworks Andalucian laissez faire is peculiarly apparent.

At midnight the fun of the Fair is in full swing. Merry-go-rounds are numerous and highly popular, and each one has its steam organ or mechanical piano grinding out popular airs long since done to death in the streets. There is one in particular, called “Serafina,” which for years has had a vogue equal to that of “Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay” in England when we were young, and it is just as fatuous a tune with even more fatuous words, if that be possible. This nightmare pursues us all along the street of the gipsies, and that of the toy stalls, and that of the bourgeois casetas to the right of the Reál. The only place where it is not heard is at the top of the Reál, where are the casetas of two of the principal clubs. Here all the curtains are carefully closed lest any profane eye should see the glories within, and military bands play valses and rigodones—a quite peculiarly dull form of quadrille—for the amusement of the alta aristocracia.

Why these clubs should go to the trouble of receiving guests behind drawn curtains in the Prado instead of in their handsome club-houses in the town does not appear. There certainly is nothing in these entertainments of the traditional spirit of the Fair, the essence of which is that all the amusement should go on in full view of the public. One of their morning receptions is, however, quite delightful. This is the children’s ball, which begins at 10 a.m. and ends before lunch. It is attended by a crowd of fascinating babies in fancy dress, all Spanish—the boys as toreros, majos (the Andalucian “nut” of a bygone day), bandits, and what not, the girls in miniature mantillas, Manila shawls, or gipsy dress, and their innocent vanity makes the Reál charming when they drive up and down after the party in their mothers’ carriages, pretending to be quite grown up.

A Manila shawl is the gala dress of every working woman who can manage to buy or hire one for the Fair. In some cases they are heirlooms, handed down from mother to daughter. Just as the mantilla is the survival of the Moslem veil among the well-to-do, so this shawl, like the black one worn every day, is the survival of the veil among the poor. As late as the seventeenth century, Spanish women still covered their faces; indeed, in the Provinces of Cadiz, Malaga, and Granada there are even now villages where the women leave only one eye exposed when they go out, especially to Mass. Decrees were issued by more than one king, forbidding this “pagan” veiling of the female face, on the ground that it tended to immorality by rendering the charms thus concealed irresistible to the opposite sex. The ladies retaliated by refusing to come out of their houses at all if they were compelled to expose themselves in that “indecent” fashion (I quote from contemporary writers); but at last a compromise was arrived at. They still covered their faces when they appeared in the street, but it was with transparent embroidery and lace, thus observing the letter of the law but most effectually violating the spirit. We owe a certain debt of gratitude to those ladies, whose strong sense of propriety gave birth to the mantilla, the prettiest head-dress ever invented by woman.

When we first came to Spain in 1902 fashionable ladies were doing their best to suppress the mantilla, on the ground that it was ridiculous to keep up a “national costume” in Spain when all civilised countries had adopted Paris fashions; and at one time it really seemed as if it would soon cease to be worn by any woman who had money enough to buy a hat. Fortunately, however, these women were in a minority, for here hats are only bought by the rich, and are very expensive. The simpler form of lace head-dress known as the velo, which is worn for the Mass, and by middle-aged women out of doors, had happily not begun to fall into disuse outside of Madrid and Barcelona, even among the well-to-do, notwithstanding the crusade against the more conspicuous mantilla. And then at the psychological moment came the young English Queen, with all a foreigner’s admiration of the beautiful head-dress. The first portrait of her that was sold at a price within the means of the masses showed her beauty enhanced by the typical drapery of exquisite lace, and “She puts it on as if she were a Spaniard,” said the people, for the arrangement of the mantilla is subject to strict rules, and no foreigner can hope to penetrate those mysteries unaided. This saved the mantilla. It soon became apparent that Her Majesty intended to wear it on every suitable occasion, and naturally all fashionable female Spain followed suit, to the delight of everybody except the milliners.

In the last Seville Fair there were more mantillas than hats, and if it was a shock to artistic sensibilities to see them in motors, it was at any rate a great deal better than not seeing them at all, as was almost the case six or seven years ago. One year about that time we had a caseta, to which came a good number of English and American visitors. All these ladies wore mantillas, and were delighted to have the chance (for the mantilla, it should be said, is only worn en grande tenue), and our Spanish friends agreed to stand aloof from the then prevailing fashion and leave their hats at home when they came to dance in the caseta de los ingleses. If there was a little self-consciousness among the Englishwomen—one or two of them said the first day that they felt rather like being at a fancy ball—it disappeared when we read the local papers next morning. For there in large type was an article on the decline of the mantilla and a poetical paragraph thanking, in almost pathetic terms, the foreign ladies for wearing “with peculiar grace” the lovely head-dress which Andalucians now seemed to despise.

We never found out who the writer was; he called himself “John-a-dreams” and begged us not to try to pierce his incognito when we wrote to invite him to the caseta he had been good enough to praise. But we were pleased to find that our adoption of the mantilla was regarded as a compliment to Spain, and now we and our friends follow the Queen’s example and wear it as often as we can. Apart from all other considerations, the festival mantilla and its humbler relative the velo, for common wear, are not only universally becoming, but are also very economical, for although a good piece of lace costs as much money as a Paris hat to begin with, it lasts for years and never goes out of fashion.

Our caseta that year fulfilled its duty well. We had the light carefully arranged to fall becomingly on the girls’ faces, and we had a platform raised extra high for them to dance on. We said that if the object of the caseta was to show off the Señoritas we might as well set the stage with special regard to its purpose. And no less than three engagements were the outcome, one of which at least has led to what seems to be a very happy marriage.

As for me, I have come back to the point from which I started. The summer, autumn, and winter are past, and the April Fair has come and gone. My Spanish year is over and the bride’s new year has begun, with the scent of roses, jessamine, and orange blossom, the murmur of fountains, and the warble of the nightingales among the elms up the hillside at Granada. For that is where girls who wear mantillas go for their honeymoon, and where good tourists go when they die.