Wanderings in Spain

by Théophile Gautier

We just now mentioned the adoption by the upper classes of the French style of dress; but the man of the people does not, luckily, study Parisian fashions. He has still kept the pointed hat with a velvet brim, adorned with silk tassels, or the one of stunted form with a wide flap, like a turban, the jacket ornamented at the elbows, the cuffs, and the collar, with embroidery, and pieces of cloth of all colours, and which vaguely reminds you of the Turkish jackets, the red or yellow sash, the breeches furnished with filigrane buttons, or with small coins soldered to a shank, with the leather gaiters open up the side to let the leg be seen; the whole being more striking, more gorgeous, more flowered, more dazzling, more loaded with tinsel and gewgaws, than the costume of any other province. You see also many other costumes known by the name of vestido de cazador (hunter's dress), made of Cordova leather and blue or green velvet, and ornamented with aiglets. It is considered highly fashionable to carry a cane (vara) or white stick, four feet long, slit up at the end, and on which the person carrying it leans negligently when he stops to speak to any one. No majo possessing the least respect for himself would ever dare appear in public without a vara. Two handkerchiefs, with their ends hanging out of the jacket pockets, a long navaja stuck in the sash, not in front, but in the middle of the back, constitute the height of elegance for these coxcombs of the people.

This costume so pleased my fancy, that my first care was to order one. They took me to Don Juan Zafata, a person who had a great reputation for national costumes, and who had as great a hatred for black dress-coats and frock-coats as I have. Seeing that my antipathy coincided with his own, he gave free course to his sorrow, and poured into my breast his elegies on the decline of art. With grief that found an echo in myself did he remind me of the happy time when foreigners dressed in the French fashion would have been hooted through the streets and pelted with orange-peel; when the toreadores wore jackets embroidered with gold and silver, which were worth more than five hundred piécettes; and when the young men of good family had trimmings and aiglets of an enormous price. "Alas! sir, the English are the only persons who buy Spanish clothes now," said he, as he finished taking my measure.

This Señor Zapata was, with respect to his clothes, something like Cardillac with respect to his jewels. He was always sorely grieved at having to give them up to his customers. When he came to try on my suit, he was so delighted with the splendid appearance of the flower-pot he had embroidered in the middle of the back on the brown cloth ground, that he broke out into exclamations of the most frantic joy, and began to commit all sorts of extravagances. But all at once the thought that he should have to leave this chef-d'œuvre in my hands put a stop to his hilarity, and his features suddenly became overcast. Under the pretext of making I know not what alteration, he wrapped the garment up in a handkerchief, gave it to his apprentice, for a Spanish tailor would think himself dishonoured if he carried his own parcels, and casting at me a fierce, ironical look, hurried away as if a thousand demons were pursuing him. The next day he came back alone, and, taking from a leathern purse the money I had paid him, he told me that it grieved him so much to part with his jacket, that he preferred to return me my duros. It was only after I had observed that this costume would give the Parisians a great idea of his talent, and create him a reputation in Paris, that he consented to let me have it.

The women have had the good taste not to discard the mantilla, the most delicious style of head-dress for the display of Spanish features; gracefully enveloped in their black lace, they go about the streets and public walks, with nothing on their heads but the mantilla, and a red pink at each temple, and glide along the walls, while skilfully using their fans, with the most incomparable grace and agility. A bonnet is a rare thing in Granada. The women of fashion have, it is true, some jonquil, or poppy-coloured thing, carefully put away in a bonnet-box, to be kept for grand occasions; but such occasions, thank Heaven, are very rare, and the horrible bonnets only see the light on the saint's day of the Queen, or at the solemn sittings of the Lyceum. May our fashions never invade the city of the caliphs, and may we never see realized the terrible menace contained in the two words, "Modista Francesa," painted in black at the entrance of a public square! Persons of a grave character will, doubtless, think us very futile, and ridicule our grief about the extinction of the picturesque, but then we are of opinion, that patent leather boots and mackintoshes contribute very little to civilization, and we even look upon civilization itself as a thing far from desirable. It is a melancholy spectacle for a poet, an artist, and a philosopher, to see both form and colour disappear from the world, lines become confused, tints confounded, and the most disheartening uniformity invade everything, under the pretext of I know not what progress. When all things are alike, there will be no further need for travelling, but, by a happy coincidence, that will be the very time when railways will be in full activity. What will be the good of making a long journey at the rate of ten leagues an hour, to go and look at a number of streets lighted, like the Rue de la Paix, with gas, and full of well-to-do citizens? We do not think that it was for this that Nature modelled each country in a different shape, supplied it with plants peculiar to itself, and peopled the world with races dissimilar to each other in conformation, colour, and language. It is giving a bad interpretation to the meaning for which the world was created, to wish it to force the same livery on men of every climate; and yet this is one of the errors of European civilization: a coat with long narrow tails makes a man look much uglier than any other costume would, and keeps him quite as barbarous. The poor Turks of Sultan Mahmoud have certainly cut a fine figure since the reform made in their old Asiatic costume, and the progress of knowledge among them has been prodigious indeed!

In order to reach the parade, you must go along the Carrera del Darro and cross the Plaza del Teatro, where there is a funereal column raised to the memory of Joaquin Maïquez by Julian Romea, Matilda Diez, and other dramatic artistes: the façade of the Arsenal, a structure of bad taste, besmeared with yellow and decorated with statues of grenadiers painted mouse-grey, looks on the square.

The Alameda of Granada is certainly one of the most agreeable places in the world; it is called the Saloon, a singular name for a parade; fancy a long walk furnished with several rows of trees of a verdancy unique in Spain, and terminating at each end by a monumental fountain, the top basins of which support on their shoulders aquatic gods, curious by their deformity, and delightfully barbarous. These fountains, contrary to the custom of such constructions, throw out the water in large sheets, which, evaporating in the form of fine rain and mist, spreads around a most delicious coolness. In the side walks run streams of crystalline transparency, encased in beds of different coloured pebbles. A large parterre, ornamented with jets of water and crowded with shrubs and flowers, myrtles, roses, jasmines, with all the riches, in fact, of the Granadian Flora, occupies the space between the Saloon and the Xenil, and stretches as far as the bridge constructed by General Sebastiani at the time of the French invasion. The Xenil runs from the Sierra Neveda in its marble bed, through woods of laurel of the most incomparable beauty. Glass and crystal form comparisons too opaque and too thick to give a true idea of the purity of the water which, but the evening before, was still flowing in sheets of silver on the white shoulders of the Sierra Neveda. It is like a torrent of diamonds in a state of fusion.

The fashionable world of Granada assemble on the Saloon, between seven and eight in the evening; the carriages follow along the road, but they are for the most part empty, as the Spaniards are very fond of walking, and in spite of their pride, deign to use their own legs. Nothing can be more charming than to see the young women and young girls pass to and fro in little groups, dressed in their mantillas, with their arms bare, real flowers in their hair, satin shoes on their feet, and a fan in their hand, followed at some distance by their friends and sweethearts, for, as we have already said, when speaking of the Prado at Madrid, it is not customary in Spain for the women to take the arms of the men. This habit of walking alone gives them a bold, elegant, and free deportment unknown to our women, who are always hanging to some arm or other. As artists say, they carry themselves beautifully. This perpetual separation of the men from the women, at least in public, already smacks of the East.

A sight of which the people of the North can have no idea, is the Alameda of Granada at sunset. The Sierra Neveda, whose denticulated ridges face the city on this side, assumes the most unimaginable hues. Its whole steep and rugged flank and all its peaks, struck by the light, become of a rose-colour, dazzling to behold; ideal, fabulous, shot with silver, and streaked with iris and opal-like reflections, which would make the freshest tints on the artist's palette appear thick and dirty: the hues of mother-of-pearl, the transparency of the ruby, and veins of agate and advanturine that would defy all the fairy jewellery of the "Thousand-and-one Nights," are to be seen there. The hollows, crevices, anfractuosities, and all the places which the rays of the setting sun cannot reach are of a blue colour which vies with the azure of the sky and sea, with the lapis-lazuli and the sapphire; this contrast of hue between light and shade produces a wonderful effect: the mountain seems to have put on an immense robe of shot silk spangled and bordered with silver; little by little, the bright colours disappear and turn to violet mezzotintos, darkness invades the lower ridges, the light withdraws towards the summit, and all the plain has long since been in obscurity, while the silver diadem of the Sierra still shines out in the serenity of the sky, beneath the parting kiss sent it by the sun.

The company take a turn or two more and then disperse, some going to take sherbet or agraz at the café of Don Pedro Hurtado, where you get the best ice in Granada, and others to the tertulia at their friends' and acquaintances' houses.