A certain Georgian dandy patronized the Hotel de Londres, where we were stopping, to excess. It was remarked that so long as he continues to spend his money so freely there, the bustling little German lady who keeps the house will never fail to make an annual profit. He is said to be very rich, and is a prince, of course. The gossips reported that he had a quarrel with his brother, and as the two were partners he was spending the money of the firm more freely than was prudent. But that is neither here nor there. We only asked the privilege of admiring his clothes and his poses. We were not responsible for his moral behaviour and would continue to admire him even if his reputation was twice as bad as it is.
He wore a different coat and a different dagger and a different shako every day, and they always matched. He had coats of white, blue, red, gray, brown, and a mixed colour like Irish homespun. The tunic that he wore under them was always of a colour to make a striking contrast. When his overcoat was red, it would be white, and when his overcoat was white, the tunic would be red. He must have had a large armoury of daggers and pistols, for he seldom wore the same ones, and we liked those with plain ivory handles the best. He was a moving picture unlike anything you can see outside of Georgia.
And then we had another prince with a good reputation, one of the best men in the province, a man of great wealth and eminent respectability, who was stopping at the hotel with his two little sons. The boys wore the national dress, like their father, and with the same dignity and grace. And we must not forget the Paderewski hair, which is quite fashionable among gentlemen of literary and musical taste. I do not know how they make it stick out as they do, but I have seen heads that a bushel basket would not cover. It is fine hair, too, not coarse and rough and vulgar. You see such bushy heads upon real, live, ordinary men frequently upon the streets, with the hair bulging out below shakos of lamb’s-skin like the curls of the Circassian beauty in the sideshow of a circus.
One would never tire of the fantastic costumes that are to be seen at every railway station. The men wear tall chimney-pot hats of Persian lamb-skin, which look very heavy and very hot, and you wonder how they can endure them in the summer weather. The hats must weigh several pounds, but if you ask the wearers they will tell you that the weight is nothing; and that, like the Irishman’s sheepskin coat, the fur keeps the heat out in summer as it keeps the cold out in winter.
Their long coats of homespun are of varied colours. We are accustomed to see the Cossacks at Buffalo Bill’s great moral show in dark gray coats, but the Georgians, whose costume is precisely similar in every particular, affect bright colours—reds and blues of various shades, grays, and browns, as well as whites and blacks, according to their taste, and some of them have their shakos of Persian lamb dyed the same shade as their coats. Many Georgian gentlemen wear beautiful cloaks of heavy cloth as thick as a board, with a pile heavier than that of plush and curled like Astrakhan wool. We were told that this material is homespun too, and it makes a stunning garment.
Every gentleman wears high top boots outside of his trousers, which are very loose and hang over his boot tops like the knickerbockers of an English school-boy. Sometimes the boots are embroidered in colours over the shin and down the calf of the leg. And every gentleman wears an arsenal in his girdle, consisting of richly mounted knives and pistols, which look very formidable, but I am told are seldom used.
A Georgian dandy is a great sight, and you see them everywhere in the Caucasus. The most perfect costume and the most becoming to their dark complexions, intensely black hair and beards, and their glowing black eyes is, I think, a pure white coat and a shako of white lamb’s-wool. And with that colour the Georgian gentleman usually wears a long dagger with an ivory handle and an ivory sheath and a revolver mounted to match; although other people might fancy a gentleman done up in scarlet, who is also worth looking at.
The costumes of the women are not so fancy as those of the men, and are mostly head dress and veil. They do not wear bright colours like their husbands and brothers, but chiefly black. The head dress is a little skull cap about an inch high made of black velvet, with the top embroidered in silver or gold braid. It is worn low on the forehead and over it a square of lace or chiffon hanging down over the shoulders to the waist, either embroidered or trimmed with edging all around. There is as much difference in the quality of the veil as there is in the incomes of the wearers. But it is the principal feature of the costume, and the effect is studied accordingly. Some of the veils are of Venetian point, others of Brussels lace, and you often see very fine examples, but most of them are from the local lacemakers or made at home.
The hair is dressed in four curls, two hanging down in front of the ears upon the breast and two down the back. As the glory of a Georgian woman is her hair, her curls are usually conspicuous and kept with great neatness. Sometimes they reach below the waist.
The rest of the costume is a jacket, either sleeveless or with slashed sleeves, a frill of lace or a silk handkerchief embroidered in bright colours around the neck and crossed upon the breast as a Quakeress would wear it, and from the waist in front hang two broad ribbons or strips of silk edged with a different colour, like an apron.