It was not the weather for fans in Madrid, where it rained that cold
rain every afternoon, and once the whole of one day, and we could not
reasonably expect to see fans in the hands of ladies in real life so
much as in the pictures of ladies on the fans themselves. In fact, I
suppose that to see the Madrilenas most in character one should see them
in summer which in southern countries is the most characteristic season.
Theophile Gautier was governed by this belief when he visited Spain in
the hottest possible weather, and left for the lasting delight of the
world the record of that _Voyage en Espagne_ which he made seventy-two
years ago. He then thought the men better dressed than the women at
Madrid. Their boots are as “varnished, and they are gloved as white as
possible. Their coats are correct and their trousers laudable; but the
cravat is not of the same purity, and the waistcoat, that only part of
modern dress where the fancy may play, is not always of irreproachable
taste.” As to the women: “What we understand in France as the Spanish
type does not exist in Spain... One imagines usually, when one says
_mantilla_ and _senora,_ an oval, rather long and pale, with large dark
eyes, surmounted with brows of velvet, a thin nose, a little arched,
a mouth red as a pomegranate, and, above all, a tone warm and golden,
justifying the verse of romance, _She is yellow like an orange._ This
is the Arab or Moorish type and not the Spanish type. The Madrilenas are
charming in the full acceptation of the word; out of four three will be
pretty; but they do not answer at all to the idea we have of them. They
are small, delicate, well formed, the foot narrow and the figure curved,
the bust of a rich contour; but their skin is very white, the features
delicate and mobile, the mouth heart-shaped and representing perfectly
certain portraits of the Regency. Often they have fair hair, and you
cannot take three turns in the Prado without meeting eight blonds of all
shades, from the ashen blond to the most vehement red, the red of the
beard of Charles V. It is a mistake to think there are no blonds in
Spain. Blue eyes abound there, but they are not so much liked as the
black.”
Is this a true picture of the actual Madrilenas? What I say is that
seventy-two years have passed since it was painted and the originals
have had time to change. What I say is that it was nearly always
raining, and I could not be sure. What I say, above all, is that I
am not a Frenchman of the high Romantic moment and that what I chiefly
noticed was how beautiful the mantilla was whether worn by old or
young, how fit, how gentle, how winning. I suppose that the women we
saw walking in it were never of the highest class; who would be driving
except when we saw them going to church. But they were often of the
latest fashion, with their feet hobbled by the narrow skirts, of which
they lost the last poignant effect by not having wide or high or slouch
or swashbuckler hats on; they were not top-heavy. What seems certain is
that the Spanish women are short and slight or short and fat. I find it
recorded that when a young English couple came into the Royal Armory the
girl looked impossibly tall and fair.
The women of the lower classes are commonly handsome and carry
themselves finely; their heads are bare, even of mantillas, and their
skirts are ample. When it did not rain they added to the gaiety of the
streets, and when it did to their gloom. Wet or dry the streets were
always thronged; nobody, apparently, stayed indoors who could go out,
and after two days’ housing, even with a fire to air and warm our rooms,
we did not wonder at the universal preference. As I have said, the noise
that we heard in the streets was mainly the clatter of shoes and hoofs,
but now and then there were street cries besides those I have noted.
There was in particular a half-grown boy in our street who had a flat
basket decorated with oysters at his feet, and for long hours of the day
and dark he cried them incessantly. I do not know that he ever sold them
or cared; his affair was to cry them.