FRANCISCO DE QUEVEDO VILLEGAS
from the collection of his Grace the Duke of Wellington.
Indeed, sumptuary laws were already growing out of date, even in Spain; the courtiers copied the latest fashions from Paris, and the common people, more out of patriotism and mute resentment than anything else, made their cloaks longer and longer and their hats wider and wider. The long ends of the cloaks had to be put out of the way somehow, so they were thrown across the face to the opposite shoulder, and, what with the broadbrim over the brow and the cloak over the mouth, none of the face was seen but the eyes.
Spain during the greater part of the eighteenth century had the ill-fortune to be governed by foreign ministers, mostly Italians, and one after the other they tried to cut stubborn Spain to the same pattern as the rest of the world. The more they tried the more sulky and determined became the people, and it resolved itself into a national article of faith to resist all change; things Spanish being better than things elsewhere. When Philip's younger son, Charles III., came from Naples to rule them he brought with him his Neapolitan ministers. Grimaldi said that the Spaniards all looked like conspirators slinking about in the darkness with their covered faces. An attempt was made to light the streets with oil-lamps, but the people resented such a foolish foreign fad, and smashed the lamps as fast as they were put up. The offenders could not be identified with their covered faces and slouch hats, so the King was persuaded by the Marquis of Squillaci (Esquilache, as the Spaniards called him) to issue a new pragmatic. Its tone was more one of sorrow than of anger. The King was shocked for foreigners to see such a boorish fashion in his capital, and had determined that in future no long cloaks or round-brimmed hats were to be worn. Either a short cape or a skirted coat was allowed, and men might wear either their own hair or a wig, but they must cover it with a three-cornered hat and not a Chambergo, and the face must not be hidden in any way.
This order was proclaimed on the 4th of March, 1766, and police were posted in the principal places with shears to curtail cloaks and lop hat-brims. It happened that a man pursued by alguaciles for wearing the forbidden garments took refuge in the precincts of the church of the Trinity, where he was followed by the officers and beaten, in defiance of sanctuary. An infuriated crowd collected and overpowered the authorities, who were dismayed at the feeling evinced, and withdrew their men. For the next few days men all over Madrid ostentatiously flaunted their cloaks and broad-brims before the barracks and police posts, and there is no doubt that the feeling was taken advantage by politicians for their own ends to goad the people to fury against the Italian ministers. Matters came to a head on the 23rd of March, when a soldier attempted to seize a man with his face covered. A crowd, ready for mischief, collected immediately, and the authorities were overpowered. The mob swept up the Calle de Leon across the Calle de Alcalá to Squillaci's house (the famous "house with the seven chimneys") which they wrecked, although the minister had fled. With broad-brimmed hats on the top of poles they scoured the streets, making all men they met uncock their hats. Overpowering all resistance, they assembled before the palace. The guards used force in vain, and that night the capital was in the hands of the mob. The gaols were opened, houses wrecked, foreigners assailed and killed, the King's Walloon Guard especially being singled out for vengeance. Squillaci and Grimaldi had fled, and the Spanish ministers, either out of timidity or sympathy, practically sided with the rioters. The rising spread rapidly to the provinces, old grievances were raked up again, and a dangerous revolution was in progress, when the King surrendered unconditionally. People were to wear what they pleased, food and oil were to be reduced in price, and the Italian ministers were smuggled away, never to return.
That practically ended the fight for sumptuary control. Finery was triumphant in the long struggle, and the strong arm of authority was obliged to confess itself powerless to dictate on the question of personal adornment. Half-hearted attempts were made after this to interfere in sumptuary matters by Spanish sovereigns, but the effects of their decrees were hardly felt outside their own households. In 1780, for instance, a pragmatic as severe in form as ever was issued, minutely regulating the wearing of mourning and prohibiting mourning coaches, but little notice was taken of it after the first few weeks; and later still a curious mild little decree was issued by Charles IV. limiting the number of dishes which, according to custom, many officials were entitled to receive daily from the royal kitchens. It is a long drop from Alfonso the Wise to the silly dodderer who handed over his kingdom to Napoleon because his son had offended him; but the same feeling, almost the same phraseology, pervades the first pragmatic we have quoted and the last. Both deplore the lavishness and luxury of the people, and exhort them to correct the excess and superfluity which characterises their tables; and in both of them the King promises that he himself will rigidly conform to his own decree and reform the extravagance of his private repasts.
Custom, taste, and perhaps necessity, have done what five hundred years of "pragmatics" failed to do. The Spaniards are the most sober and frugal-feeding nation in Europe, and certainly do not exceed in the matter of gaudy or ostentatious raiment. The only traits left to them perhaps by the extravagant old fashions we have described, are their consuming love for driving about the streets in a fine carriage, however much they may stint in all else; and the grave stiff-necked dignity which a century of the golilla left behind it.
[[1]] Andres Muñoz' MSS., National Library, Madrid.
[[2]] "L'Espagne au 16me et 17me siècles," par Morel Fatio. Paris, 1878.