The costume varies as to the quality of the material and the amount of embroidery according to the means of the wearer. The entire dress is notable for its refinement. Although we saw few of the dazzling beauties for which Georgia has always been famous, it is probably our own fault, or rather our misfortune. The best-looking women in any country are not in the habit of going to the railway stations or promenading in the parks. We noticed several ladies with beautiful and refined faces in the shops, and often passed them driving—sufficient to justify a confirmation of the stories we have heard about the clear olive complexions, the regular features, the Egyptian eyes, and the midnight hair, which are the gifts of the women of the Georgian race.
It’s a joke among the Russians that every Georgian is a nobleman and that your porter or drosky driver is certain to be a baron or perhaps a count. It is undoubtedly true that titles were once bestowed with lavish generosity by the Georgian kings, who paid their debts as well as rewarded merit by conferring rank promiscuously. A gentleman remarked the other day, however, that the only title worth taking off your hat to is that of a prince. Every large land owner is a prince. I do not know that it is necessary for him to have any given area. As a rule, a Georgian nobleman looks and dresses the part much more naturally than Russian or other European dukes and princes.
The national pride is equally amusing—pride of ancestry, pride of race, pride of costume, pride of children; and, as John G. Saxe wrote of a similar case, they are proud of their pride. To this characteristic we are indebted for much pleasure. It induces them to cling to their national costumes and even to the gilded daggers at their belts.
A striking illustration of this is found in a Georgian shrine opposite the Hotel de Londres, at the principal gateway to a pretty little park in Tiflis. There you can see a mosaic icon, representing a full-length figure of the Saviour in the most gorgeous variety of the Georgian costume. He is dressed in a long bowrka, or overcoat, faced or lined with ermine; under this a scarlet tunic and loose blue trousers, tucked into high-topped leather boots. He wears a green girdle into which a revolver and a dagger with beautifully enamelled handles are thrust; upon His breast are silver kilebi, the cases where cartridges are usually carried, and on His head is a tall nabadi, or stove-pipe hat, of black Persian lamb’s-wool—Jesus of Nazareth in the raiment of a Georgian dandy!
A Georgian Prince
Patriarch of the Georgian Church, Tiflis
The peasants seem to approve of it, notwithstanding the incongruity, and we loved to watch them from our windows, thousands every day, for the park is much frequented by workingmen at the noon and evening hours of rest. Every one who passes invariably kneels, crosses himself, and murmurs a prayer, and many kiss the glass that covers the feet of this Christ, who is clad according to the peasants’ dream of what the Redeemer should be.
The Georgian priests are fine looking, and the archbishop, or patriarch, who presides at Tiflis is as handsome and venerable an ecclesiastic as can be imagined. Some of the priests make themselves up to look like the Saviour, wearing their hair long and their beards trimmed as He is represented to look in the pictures. They are said to be rather illiterate, however. No educational qualifications are required for ordination. It is a popular saying that only lazy men go into the priesthood, but I do not think that all of them are lazy. I have seen many who look like men of energy and brains and devotion.