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Writing Type: Book
His comments about Paraguayan society
Keywords: Asunción customs and dress
Publisher: AMS Press Inc, New York
Archive: University of Warwick Library
Text: John Parish and William Parish Robertson, Letters on Paraguay, Volume 3, AMS Press Inc., New York, 1970.
p.142 Letter from WPR to Thomas Fair, Asunción.
It may naturally be expected that we should say something of the state of society in Assumption, the capital of an independent state, yet I assure you it is no very easy matter to do so. Gross immorality was so mixed up with primitive simplicity of manners; politeness and urbanity came before you so denuded of all the conventional forms and delicacy of expression which high civilization demands; the strongest feelings of devotion were so embued with a crazy superstition, very nearly akin to a mockery of what we conceive to be true religion, that the mixture formed altogether something very unlike whatever I have either seen or conceived of society in other parts of the world.
One of the most fashionable families of Assumption was that of Señor Jovellanos, the postmaster general. His wife was looked up to as an oracle by all the other dames of the place ; and his daughters, who were really handsome women were regarded with envy as the undisputed leaders of the haut ton in the capital. They did not muffle up so closely when they went abroad as (p.143) others were forced to do by their mothers ; they were not always to be found in a loose robe dechambre when at home; and they were able to converse in a sprightly and pretty fluent strain in Spanish, when visited by those who could not speak Guarani.
Shortly after my arrival in Assumption, I was invited by Señor Jovellanos to dinner; and, having accepted the invitation, I went on the following day as appointed, at the late and fashionable hour of two o'clock. Several friends were assembled for the occasion ; but at table I was placed between two of the Misses Jovellanos, young, blooming (for most of the females of Assumption were very fair), and without any doubt very pretty women. Guess, then, my confusion, to find at the dinner table that we were waited on by half a dozen boys and girls, little slaves, all perfectly, how shall I say it? Their liveries had cost nothing their shoes and stockings had cost nothing not one of them had dressed for dinner, they were, one and all, in statû naturae. At first I fidgeted in my chair, and threw furtive glances around; but seeing every one on either side of me, including my fair companions, (p.144) as composed as if the most rigid decorum had been studied, I gradually recovered my serenity, and learned thenceforward to know that whatever has become the custom of the country, is never even fancied by the people to have anything outré in it. I recollected Goldsmith's story of the nation with a fleshy excrescence under the chin. How we are, in truth, the creatures of habit ! I got so accustomed to these unclothed attendants, during my sojourn in Paraguay and Corrientes, that on my return to Buenos Ayres I thought there was a great deal of affectation in dressing out the same class there from top to too.
As the body was left loose and unconstrained by dress in Paraguay, so the conversation of all classes was the most unsophisticated in its construction. that can be imagined, quite of the Doric order. There was no circumlocution, no metaphoric subtilty, no figure of speech by which one thing was made to stand for another. ' On the dinner occasion I have mentioned, Mrs. Jovellanos gave me, before her daughters, a dissertation on "Buchan's Domestic Medicine " (it is translated into Spanish), which made my blood run cold, but which she went through with all (p.145) the volubility of a clever mother, in her fortieth year, who had reared a large family by dint of her constant application to the system of Buchan, and to which her daughters listened as gravely, through every detail, as if it bad been to one of Mrs. Chapone's letters on the improvement of the mind.
There was no police in Assumption ; and, what may appear somewhat strange, there was no occasion whatever for anything of the kind. In the principal and only street worthy of the name in the city, a long and continuous corridor, as has been mentioned, ran along one side of it. The principal shopkeepers and merchants inhabited this part of the town; and, on very warm nights of summer, this corridor constituted the common bed room, if I may so speak, of all those shopkeepers from whose houses the corridor projected. The portable beds of these worthy citizens were drawn out and ranged along the covered way; and it was a singular and a primitive sight to see them, as you passed along towards ten o'clock at night, preparing for, or already enjoying, their night's repose.
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