Note 82 — Chapter XI · MONTE VIDEO.

Lady Louisa Tennison, who, in her beautiful work Andalusia, &c., published by Bentley at the close of last year [1853], says:—

I know that I shall be accused of insensibility and want of taste, when I confess that my first disappointment on landing in Spain was the almost total absence of beauty amongst the Spanish women. Poets have sung of Spain’s ‘dark-glancing daughters,’ and travellers have wandered through the country, with minds so deeply impressed with the preconceived idea of the beauty of the women, that they have found them all their imaginations so fondly pictured, and their works have fostered, what I cannot help maintaining, is a mere delusion; one of the many in which people still indulge when they think and dream of Spain. The women of Spain have magnificent eyes, beautiful hair, and generally fine teeth; but more than that cannot be said by those who are content to give an honest opinion. I have rarely seen one whose features could be called strictly beautiful, and that bewitching grace and fascination about their figures and their walk which they formerly possessed, have disappeared with the high comb which supported the mantilla, and the narrow basquina, which gave a peculiar character to their walk. With the change in their costume, those distinctive charms have vanished. The gaudy colours which now prevail have destroyed the elegance that always accompanies black, in which alone, some years since, a lady could appear in public. No further proof of this is required than to see the same people at church, where black is still considered indispensable, and on the Alameda with red dresses and yellow shawls, or some colours equally gaudy, and combined with as little regard to taste. The men have likewise abandoned the cloak, and now appear in paletots and every variety of foreign invention: nor have they either gained by their sacrifices at the altar of French fashion. By no means distinguished in figure, none needed more the rich folds of the capa to lend them that air of grace and dignity which it peculiarly possesses.