LETTER XXVIII.
I know you will expect to hear something of the Ladies of Spain; but I must confess I had very little acquaintance among them: when they appear abroad in their coaches, they are dressed in the modern French fashion, but not in the extreme; when they walk out, their head and shape is always covered with a black or white veil, richly laced; and however fine their gowns are, they must be covered with a very large black silk petticoat; and thus holding the fan in one hand, and hanging their chapelets over the wrist of the other, they walk out, preceded by one or two shabby-looking servants, called pages, who wear swords, and always walk bare-headed.
I have already told you, that the most beautiful, indeed the only beautiful woman, I saw at Barcelona, was the Intendant's daughter; and I assure you, her, black petticoat and white veil could not conceal it; nor, indeed, is the dress an unbecoming one. Among the peasants, and common females, you never see any thing like beauty, and, in general, rather deformity of feature. No wonder then, where beauty is scarce, and to be found only among women of condition, that those women are much admired, and that they gain prodigious influence over the men.—In no part of the world, therefore, are women more caressed and attended to, than in Spain. Their deportment in public is grave and modest; yet they are very much addicted to pleasure; nor is there scarce one among them that cannot, nay, that will not dance the Fandango in private, either in the decent or indecent manner. I have seen it danced both ways, by a pretty woman, than which nothing can be more immodestly agreeable; and I was shewn a young Lady at Barcelona, who in the midst of this dance ran out of the room, telling her partner, she could stand it no longer;—he ran after her, to be sure, and must be answerable for the consequences. I find in the music of the Fandango, written under one bar, Salida, which signifies going out; it is where the woman is to part a little from her partner, and to move slowly by herself; and I suppose it was at that bar the lady was so overcome, as to determine not to return. The words Perra Salida should therefore be placed at that bar, when the ladies dance it in the high gout.
The men dress as they do in France and England, except only their long cloak, which they do not care to give up. It is said that Frenchmen are wiser than, from the levity of their behaviour, they seem to be; and I fancy the Spaniards look wiser from their gravity of countenance, than they really are; they are extremely reserved; and make no professions of friendship till they feel it, and know the man, and then they are friendly in the highest degree.
I met with a German merchant at Barcelona, who told me he had dealt for goods to the value of five thousand pounds a year with a Spaniard in that town; and though he had been often at Barcelona before, that he had never invited him to dine or eat with him, till that day.
The farrier who comes to shoe your horse has sometimes a sword by his side; and the barber who shaves you crosses himself before he crosses your chin.
There is a particular part of the town where the ladies of easy virtue live; and if a friend calls at the apartment of one of those females, who happens to be engaged, one of her neighbours tells you, she is amancebados y casarse a mediacarta; i.e. that she is half-married.—If you meet a Spanish woman of any fashion, walking alone without the town, you may join her, and enter into whatever sort of conversation you chuse, without offence; and if you pass one without doing so, she will call you ajacaos, and contemn you: this is a custom so established at Madrid, that if a footman meets a lady of quality alone, he will enter into some indecent conversation with her; for which reason, the ladies seldom walk but with their husbands, or a male friend by their side, and a foot-boy before, and then no man durst speak, or even look towards them, but with respect and awe:—a blow in Spain can never be forgiven; the striker must die, either privately or publicly.
No people on earth are less given to excess in eating or drinking, than the Spaniards; the Olio, or Olla, a kind of soup and Bouilli, is all that is to be found at the table of some great men: the table of a Bourgeois of Paris is better served than many grandees of Spain; their chocolate, lemonade, iced water, fruits, &c. are their chief luxuries; and the chocolate is, in some houses, a prodigious annual expense, as it is offered to every body who comes in, and some of the first houses in Madrid expend twenty thousand livres a year in chocolate, iced waters, &c. The grandees of Spain think it beneath their dignity to look into accounts, and therefore leave the management of their household expenses to servants, who often plunder and defraud them of great sums of money.
Unlike the French, the Spaniards (like the English) very properly look upon able physicians and surgeons in a very respectable light:—Is it not strange, that the French nation should trust their health and lives in the hands of men, they are apt to think unworthy of their intimacy or friendship?—Men, who must have had a liberal education, and who ought not to be trusted in sickness, if their society was not to be coveted in health. Perhaps the Spanish physicians, who of all others have the least pretensions, are the most caressed. In fevers they encourage their patients to eat, thinking it necessary, where the air is so subtile, to put something into the body for the distemper to feed upon; they bleed often, and in both arms, that the blood may be drawn forth equally; the surgeons do not bleed, but a set of men called sangerros perform that office, and no other; the surgeons consider it dishonourable to perform that operation. They seldom trepan; a surgeon who attempted to perform it, would himself be perhaps in want of it. To all flesh wounds they apply a powder called coloradilla, which certainly effects the cure; it is made of myrrh, mastic, dragon's blood, bol ammoniac, &c.—When persons of fashion are bled, their friends send them, as soon as it is known, little presents to amuse them all that day; for which reason, the women of easy virtue are often bled, that their lovers may shew their attention, and be bled too.—The French disease is so ignorantly treated, or so little regarded, that it is very general; they consider a gonorrhoea as health to the reins; and except a tertian ague, all disorders are called the calentura, and treated alike, and I fear very injudiciously; for there is not, I am told, in the whole kingdom, any public academy for the instruction of young men, in physic, surgery, or anatomy, except at Madrid.
Notwithstanding the sobriety, temperance, and fine climate of Spain, the Spaniards do not, in general, live to any great age; they put a prodigious quantity of spice into every thing they eat; and though sobriety and temperance are very commendable, there are countries where eating and drinking are carried to a great excess, by men much more virtuous than those, where temperance, perhaps, is their principal virtue.