Touring in 1600: A Study in the Development of Travel as a Means of EducationBates, E. S. (Ernest Stuart)
History
Touring in 1600: A Study in the Development of Travel as a Means of Education
Bates, E. S. (Ernest Stuart)
Europe -- Description and travel; Europe -- Social life and customs; Travel -- History
Guicciardini, however, says nothing about the misbehaviour of Spanish
women by which the next three or four generations of travellers are
invariably shocked, with one exception, that of Lady Fanshawe, who saw
much to admire in them and nothing to condemn, and had she seen what
the men saw there is no doubt whatever her scorn would have been very
pronounced. According to the men, neither the Italian fashion of the
men restraining the women, nor the transalpine fashion of the women
restraining themselves, was used in Spain. But it must be remembered
that the male tourist tends to see the womenfolk of the country he
visits nearer their worst than their best.
Too warm a welcome was not a fault into which the males fell. In Madrid
a Protestant might feel safe, and in centres of international trade,
such as Medina del Campo, free from insult; at Burgos there was even
courtesy, and at Barcelona civility, although it went hand in hand with
robbery. But for the most part, it was needful to be both callous and
plucky. In particular, the traveller must take care to get his hair cut
short at Vittoria at the latest. French and many Germans as well as
English wore their hair long, and nothing laid them open to insult, and
even injury, so much as that; if they were clean-shaven as well, it was
taken as certain that they carried effeminacy to extremes; neither were
they the last to hear of it. "Rogue" and "thief" were ordinary terms,
even after a hair-cut, and when the queen was a German, one of her
countrymen, a man who could be trusted not to give offence, had to buy
a new hat at Toledo because the one he was wearing bore too many traces
of cow-dung; at Seville he was stoned.
Yet considering the average elsewhere, the individual Spaniard stood
to gain by comparison; one of the most prejudiced and illiterate of
the tourists admits being treated with great courtesy, and there is a
general agreement that the standard of honesty was remarkably high. It
is amusing, too, to notice what disconcerting answers were sometimes
received by the gentlemen from abroad who thought that the peasantry
of a Roman Catholic and poverty-stricken country only needed to be
questioned in order that the pitiable state of their mind should become
apparent, even to themselves.
To one question, why extreme severity should be reserved for heretics,
the reply was that heresy was the only crime which had not the excuse
of giving pleasure; while another who was asked why a saint's day
should be honoured so highly and Sunday practically ignored, pointed
out that the saint's day came but once a year and Sunday every week.
So, too, it came as a surprise to the Protestant to find Spanish nuns
neither neurotic, depressed, nor prim, but bright and attractive, and
their education "infinitely beyond all our English schools."[63]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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