FRIVOLOUS MADRID.

King Country Chronicle, Volume V, Issue 343, 8 March 1911, Page 7

FRIVOLOUS MADRID.

I Spanish Capital Devoted to 1 Gossip and Spending Money. The note of Mailriil is frivolity. It ,is a spendthrift town. Nowhere do i so many people of modest meant: I keep carriages, or at least hire them. | The automobile has supplied a new ! outlet to an old passion. Nowhere do so many people who i cannot afford to have a motor-dri- , ver, or to buy regular supplies of [ petrol (which is both dear and bad |in Spain), keep an automobile. | Therefore they turn out now and i again for a short run at high speed !to their own glorification and the I danger of the public. As for that public, it lives iu the streets a nd in a perpetual state of ■ brisk tall:. What London or Paris news comes through to Madrid, except telegrams i is mostly gossip. Important matters ; appear to interest the Madrileno | little. What did interest him was i when a young person appeared on J horseback in Hyde Park in a dircci toire costume. Madrid women dress well, even very well, and the charm of the Spanish ' woman is never denied. Modern Madrid is sometimes supposed to be modelled on modern Paris, but the ' writer's view is that there is no thing Parisian about Madrid, except the skin. Paris works desperately hard. is inlensfly interested in serious things and producers, thinkers, and men of intellectual and scientific eminence. .Madrid certainly docs not work hard, does not appear to be much interested in anything but frivolity, and few of her greatest men, even statesmen, arc much more than names. —"Times."