When first she went to San Sebastian, the fashionable mid-summer watering resort of Spain on the west coast near the northern border, she appeared like a modern Gainsborough duchess. Her stylishly cut gowns worn with grace and perfect naturalness were offset by great hats which were much in vogue at that time and which resemble the picturesque Gainsboroughs. She is a woman who can carry any amount of tasteful dressing, but her own preference seems to be toward simplicity.
A more elegant woman one rarely sees anywhere in the world. The eye of the Spanish people, quick and sensitive to taste and beauty instantly caught all these details, and even if her nature, disposition and character were not as they are, she would still be idolised for her beauty alone.
At Seville, in the south of Spain, where beauty is worshipped even more than in the north the people went mad over her on her very first ride through the streets--from the railroad station to the Alcazar, as the ancient Moorish palace there is called. Throughout southern Spain--Andalusia--there is a Moorish strain noticeable in the people. The women are of the swarthy type, with large lustrous eyes, hair of ebony, and deep passionate natures that one senses almost tangibly. As with most people of this type and character, the opposite type makes a tremendous appeal to them. The golden beauty of the fair young Queen took Seville by storm. To this day, and probably for all time, she is and will be known in the south as the “Idol of Andalusia.”
One small detail which pleased the Andalusian people greatly was her donning the _mantilla_ on appropriate occasions. The _mantilla_ is a lace scarf, sometimes white and sometimes black, which is worn over the head by women in place of a hat Any lace scarf, however, is not a _mantilla_, and there are certain precise ways of wearing this typically Spanish headdress. To be exact, there are thirteen different ways of adjusting it, each way adapted to a particular occasion. For example, the Sevillano will wear a black _mantilla_ low over her head at a funeral, and a white _mantilla_ high over her head,--the elevation being accomplished by the aid of a huge amber comb,--at a bull fight or in a slightly different arrangement for a wedding. The art of adjusting the _mantilla_ is almost as difficult to acquire as the use of castanets or some of the Andalusian dance steps. It is seldom that one not of Spanish blood can wear a _mantilla_ becomingly at all, but on Queen Victoria Eugenie it looks quite natural. A peculiar thing about Andalusian women is that they are so altogether charming in the _mantilla_ that not one in a thousand can wear any kind of a dress hat, even one strictly _à la mode_ and direct from Paris. The women of Southern Spain and the _mantilla_ seem peculiarly adapted to go together. The cost of a _mantilla_ by the way is as much as of the most fashionable Paris hats. Ordinary ones frequently cost from thirty to fifty dollars, and specially good ones as much as one hundred dollars.