who is not worthy of him. Though we are poor, Señora, our family is an
old one; there is none more respected in Segovia. After all the
sacrifices we made for Juan to keep on the little shop that was my
father’s,--to marry beneath him, it was unworthy, it was ignoble!” The
tears came to her eyes again. Here was Castilian pride, indeed.
We had come to Madrid meaning to keep house for six months or more. We
soon found that a furnished apartment at a moderate price in Madrid is
as rare as a roc’s egg. We spent several days driving up and down the
streets of the quarter where we wished to live, looking up at the
houses. A large sheet of blank paper hung at the end of a window or
balcony means unfurnished apartments to let, in the middle, furnished.
We could find nothing available. It seemed as if we must give up our
plan of passing the winter in Madrid. Then came the great invitation.
Our old friends Don José and Doña Lucia Villegas asked us to share their
large comfortable home. When we found they really wished us to accept
this unparalleled hospitality, J. and I moved over to their delightful
apartment, and Don Jaime found a modest hotel for Patsy.
The Villegas’ house is opposite the handsome new National Museum on the
Paseo Recoletos, a wide avenue laid out in the grand style of the Champs
Elysées.
Madrid is a modern capital; at first it seemed as if we had left
picturesque Spain behind us and come to a modern European city, a
little like Paris, a little like Brussels, and not at all like the Spain
we knew. Then, as we began to learn our way about the city, we found
that beside the new Madrid, with its splendid boulevards, its
conventional new houses and cafés, its air of prosperous business, there
was an old Madrid, full of quaint corners and picturesque buildings.
The palace of the King stands at the edge of this old Madrid, boldly
planted on the high land above the river, where the old Moorish Alcazar
once stood, a magnificent situation for a royal palace. The façade
fronts and dominates the city; the rear looks out on vast stretches of
royal demesne.
“This looks more as a palace should look than any I ever saw,” said
Patsy. We had driven over one sharp clear morning to see Guard-mounting.
“All grand and white and shining. The sort of a palace where lovely
princesses with golden hair always live in poetry,--sometimes even in
history.”
On the right of the palace is the noble Plaza de Armas, where, besides
the guards pacing up and down their beat, there was a continual coming
and going of all sorts and conditions of men. In a sheltered corner,
under the very palace windows, two boys were playing at marbles. This
was all in keeping with what we had seen and heard of the democratic
character of the people. At one end of the Plaza, the long narrow
arches of the peristyle frame a stupendous view. Behind the palace runs
the river Manzanares; beyond lies the royal park of the Casa de Campo,
with its masses of green trees, broken here and there by the glint of a
lake, or the spire of one of poor Isabel Second’s expiatory chapels.
Beyond the park, the bare plains of Castile sweep grandly to the north,
rising to the stern snow-capped range of the Sierra Guaderrama.
It was all dearly familiar, because Velasquez has painted that blue-gray
landscape, that silver light sometimes hardening to steel, those snow
mountains, not once, but many, many times, as the background of his
pictures.
“The Manzanares is not much of a stream compared to the Guadalquiver,”
said Patsy. “That must be the bridge the Frenchman meant, when he
advised the King of Spain either to sell his bridge, or to buy a river!”
He pointed to a big handsome bridge, curiously out of proportion to the
size of the meagre river.
Not far from the palace, along the river bank, was a gorgeous,
tremulous, swaying mass of color,--scarlet, blue, orange, every tint of
the rainbow.
“That,” said Patsy, “looks like the Field of the Cloth of Gold. Those
might be the fluttering pennons of Leon and Castile, Navarre and
Aragon.”
“Don’t look too closely, or you will lose the illusion. That is the
drying ground, where Pedra’s mother and the other washerwomen of Madrid
hang out their clothes.”
“Standards of heroes, standards of heroines, what’s the odds? They _are_
heroines. I stood and watched them yesterday, their petticoats kilted up
to their knees, rubbing and scrubbing and singing at their work.”
A young American artist painted an admirable picture of the drying
ground with its many-colored garments not long ago. He worked in summer,
close to the river when the water was low, and caught a fever that put
an end to all his painting!
Fronting the palace is the large oval Plaza del Oriente, with a good
equestrian statue of Philip IV, surrounded by a circle of quaint marble
statues of Visigothic and Spanish kings and queens, from Berenguela to
Isabel the Catholic.
“We know Philip IV better than all the rest of them put together!” Patsy
exclaimed, as we walked round the royal group. “Thanks to the genius for
making a likeness of that young man shown by Velasquez, whom he engaged
as his _valet de chambre_ at a salary of eleven dollars a month. Philip
young, thin and cadaverous, Philip old, fat and blowsy; I know his face
as well as I know my own. People who want to be remembered by posterity
should be very polite to the painters and sculptors--even to the
writers--of their day. Strange they don’t realize it!”
Madrid was gay with Christmas bustle; streets and shops were crowded;
Pedra was busy with the presents that poured into the house for Lucia
and Villegas. From Granada came a cask of oil, from Malaga a small
barrel of grapes, from Jerez a cask of olorosa, from Tangiers a box of
oranges, from Seville a flagon of cologne, the finest in the world,--it
smells of fresh orange blossoms.
One morning, a few days before Christmas, I heard a strange hob-gobbling
noise outside in the passage. I opened my door; there was Pedra, flushed
and out of breath with the effort, trying to get two large speckled
turkeys up the terrace stairs.
“_Miré_,” she said, “observe these fine birds, Señora, a present from
the country. I shall mix a dish of corn meal and hot water for them,
that will be the food of luxury, fattening besides. Poor animals! they
shall live well until Cisera wrings their necks.”
Cisera, the Tuscan cook, followed the procession up the terrace stairs,
and felt the larger turkey.
“In a week,” she said, “he will be fit to kill, perhaps sooner.”
When the turkeys had been fed with the food of luxury, Pedra showed me
another gift that had just come for Villegas. “Don José will like this
more than all the rest, you will see!” she said.
Villegas is the Director of the Prado Museum. What Pedra called the best
present was a “testimonial,” with his photograph and a complimentary
address signed by all the employees of the Prado. He gave the dreadful
thing with its impossible plush frame the place of honor, and hung it up
himself in the hall.
Cisera killed the larger turkey, and stuffed it with pistacchio nuts for
the Christmas eve dinner-party. As we were all sitting together, waiting
for the last guest to arrive, Gil, the melancholy Gallegan man-servant,
threw open the door and announced:
“The Bohemian Gentleman.”
A big blond man with dancing blue eyes and a ruffled shirt came in,
followed by Pedra, carrying in her upraised hands a tray with two
enormous hams (she looked like the picture of Titian’s daughter with the
fruit).
“A good Christmas!” the Bohemian made Lucia a grand bow. “I have brought
you a pair of hams from Prague!”
“The best hams in the world,” Villegas patted one of them. “I was afraid
you had forgotten this year!”
“They should be good; the pigs were raised on
[Illustration: DETAIL FROM “THE MAIDS OF HONOR.” _Velasquez_]
my father’s farm, and, I was assured, were fed on nothing but milk.”
Before the turkey made its appearance, Villegas had discovered that
among his guests were people of seven nationalities, and that four
languages were being spoken at the table.
“This,” he said, “is the Tower of Babel.” The name stuck for as long at
least as that hospitable house was our home.
“What,” I asked Don Jaime who sat beside me, “is the Bohemian
gentleman’s name?”
“Of baptism or of family?”
“Both, particularly of family.”
“Ah!” the Don relapsed into Spanish, “nobody can pronounce it; it begins
with a cough and ends with a sneeze. He is called Don Carlos the
Bohemian, because he comes from Bohemia. He copies royal portraits in
the Prado for the Archduke Eugenio of Austria; no one has made such
copies of Velasquez since Villegas left off painting them!” The Bohemian
saw we were speaking of him, for he looked over at us.
“This lady, whose name I did not catch,” he said, “is an American?”
“Oh, no!” cried little Serafita, who gives music lessons to the Infanta;
“she is English, Yankee, from New York.” In Madrid, American means South
American, unless the contrary is stated.
I asked Serafita, a sparkling Andaluz with a drop of Hebrew blood in her
veins, if many of her pupils worked seriously. “Only a few,” she said,
“more give up their music when they marry. It is the same with their
other studies. The women I know drop their reading and studies when they
leave school. If one cannot talk with them about the fashions or the
last ball, they have nothing to say. You North American women can speak
on every subject. Our women are not less clever, but our men do not wish
us to be improved, for they know that we are naturally more intelligent
than they themselves, and if our minds were cultivated they believe we
would not be content always to stay at home.”
Villegas had lately sat for his photograph, and as Lucia wished opinions
on the likeness, the photographs were handed round the table. When they
came to Don Jaime he counted them, and told me that there were twelve,
and all alike, adding with a sigh that if there were only twelve
Villegases, all alike, and he could dine with all of them, he could then
be sure of twelve such dinners a year!
Before Villegas came to Madrid, and took Don Jaime under his wing, the
Don often had no dinner--so he confided to Patsy. One does not exactly
dine when one spends two cents a day for food. “Under such
circumstances,” the Don said, “it is best to invest all your money in
bread of the day before; it costs less than fresh bread, and goes
farther.”
While we were still at table, there came a tremendous ringing at the
door-bell. There was a lull in the conversation as Gil opened the front
door. “A message and a box from the bedchamber of the King for Don
José!” cried a loud voice in the hall outside.
“Put down the box. Don José is dining,” Gil replied firmly.
“Give him the message then as I give it to thee. Here are the pantaloons
of his Majesty the King. They must be returned by the fifteenth of the
month, when his Majesty wishes to wear them.”
We looked at each other in astonishment.
“I am painting the King’s portrait,” said Villegas; “as he is not very
fond of posing they have sent me the clothes to work from before the
next sitting.”
“The Infanta’s wedding is on the eighteenth,” said Lucia; “perhaps they
are wanted for that. Be sure nothing happens to them at the studio.”
It was nearly twelve when the Bohemian, the first to make the move, rose
to go. They keep late hours in Madrid, even later than in Paris. Don
Carlos was reproved for breaking up the party so early.
“I promised,” he said by way of excuse, “to be at the Countess Q’s for
midnight mass.”
“I should not have thought that _misa del gallo_--cockcrow mass was
exactly in your line!” said Don Jaime. “You grow devout with years!”
“Ah, well--I know the music will be good, they will give selections from
Carmen. Besides, I promised I would stay and help them out with the
supper and dance after the mass.”
Just then Gil brought in a curiously shaped old bottle covered with dust
and cobwebs.
“Try this before you go,” said Villegas; “it is Trafalgar 1805, the year
of the great vintage of Jerez and of the great battle.” He himself
poured out the wine, with greatest care not to shake the bottle.
“It is good enough,” said the Bohemian, with another of his grand bows,
“to drink to Doña Lucia’s health, and,” raising his glass, “to the
portrait of the King.”
“The portrait of the King!” We drank the toast standing.
The next morning we walked over to the studio with Villegas and Lucia,
Gil following with the box from the bedchamber of the King. As we left
the Tower of Babel, Cisera came running after us.
“Don José, you have forgotten your brushes;” she put a bundle of
paint-brushes done up in a newspaper into his hand. Villegas tucked
them in his pocket and thanked Cisera; it is her privilege to wash the
brushes, and she allows no one else to touch them. The studio is in the
Pasaje del Alhambra, rather a picturesque place for Madrid, not more
than half a mile from the house. Though it was late, after ten o’clock,
the streets were very uncomfortable on account of the floods of water
pouring through them. The extreme dryness of the soil and the air makes
it necessary to flush the streets twice a day! A pair of wild looking
gypsy girls were standing by one of the corners, watching the water
pouring from the hydrant. The taller girl was very handsome, the shorter
one seemed older, and had an ill-tempered face, with a head shaped like
a snake’s. They stood gaping at us with the dazed look of country people
unused to a city. They were so poorly dressed I rather thought they
would beg of us.
“What a type!” said Villegas, looking at the handsome girl, a beauty
with rough black hair hanging over the eyes, and a half fierce, half shy
expression.
“What character in that head, eh?”
“She has exactly the face you have been looking for,” said Lucia. “Ask
her to come to the studio and pose.”
They spoke to the handsome girl, who seemed to agree. At this the elder
girl caught her by the arm and dragged her back.
“No, no, you shall not go!” she cried. “Do you know what he will do? He
will look you in the eyes fixedly, fixedly, like this, and while he is
looking at you, he will suck your blood!” At this the two took to their
heels and ran for dear life.
“You see how difficult it is to get models in Madrid!” Villegas laughed.
“One is driven here, by force, to paint portraits!”
We were passing a house in a garden where an old retired General and his
old wife sat opposite each other on the porch in large covered invalid
chairs, keeping a sharp lookout on all passers-by. They were both deaf,
and imagining other people heard no better than they, talked quite
audibly about the people in the street.
“There goes Villegas, the painter,” said the wife. “He seems amused
about something.” (Don José had laughed to tears over the gypsy’s
warning). “What do you suppose his servant is carrying in that big box?”
“What ridiculous curiosity,” growled the General; “isn’t it the same old
box?”
“No, I never saw it before. I wonder what he _has_ got in it!”
As we reached the corner of the Barquillo, Villegas exclaimed: “There’s
the Novio. He must have been ill, he looks rather pale; I haven’t seen
him for a week.” The novio, a pallid young man in a plaid suit, stood in
a protected angle of the side-walk, looking up at a window at the top of
a high house where a roguish girl’s face looked out from between the
curtains. The young man was talking with his fingers in the deaf and
dumb language.
“He talks so fast I cannot read what he says,” said Villegas. “But one
can guess; one has either heard or said such things oneself, is it not
so?”
At the opposite corner the old flower woman, who sat stooping and
huddled under her black shawls like the eldest of the Fates, chose from
her stock a white hyacinth and silently handed it to Villegas, who gave
her a coin, took the flower and walked briskly on. The old woman sat up
a little straighter, after he had passed, and set her flowers in better
order. It is characteristic of Villegas that people always sit up
straighter and put their affairs in better order when he has passed
their way.
Angoscia, the glove-maker of Granada, who takes care of the studio, and
serves as a draped model, opened the studio door: it is almost
impossible in Madrid to get either male or female models to pose for the
nude. Angoscia is a pretty young woman with an almost perfect face,
beautiful hands and feet, but with a tendency to grow stout.
“You have been eating maccaroni again!” said Lucia.
“No, no, I swear by the Virgin I have not. I eat nothing, I starve
myself, I am hungry always.”
“Or _torrones_. You are much fatter than before Christmas; that comes of
giving you a holiday!”
Poor Angoscia, looking worthy of her name--it means anguish--made a
diversion by asking what we had brought in the box. Lucia, with her
help, then unpacked a fine cocked hat, a red and blue military coat and
waistcoat, a pair of short white cloth knee breeches, the belt linings
and pockets of heaviest satin, a dainty sword and sword belt. Angoscia
drew the damascened Toledo blade, pretty as a toy, cruel as death, from
its sheath; it glinted in the sun and flashed its reflection in her soft
brave eyes. Everything in the box was most carefully packed, each silver
button and bit of silver lace separately wrapped in black tissue paper
to keep it from tarnishing. At the very bottom of the box was a long
thin morocco case. This I opened, gave a scream, and almost dropped the
case that contained the ensign of the Order of the Garter. The garter
was of dark blue velvet bordered with gold. The letters were separate,
of very thick gold, attached by invisible rivets to the velvet. After
the legend “Honi Soit Qui Mal Y Pense” the velvet strap was heavily
embroidered in gold thread, the tab and buckle were finely chased gold.
“A beautiful piece of work!” Villegas turned it over in his hand and
nodded approval. How all good workmen feel a good piece of work!
“Edward the Black Prince was made the first knight of the Order of the
Garter after Crécy, when he brought the great ruby back from Spain,”
said J.
“Where is it worn?” That was a serious question. By this time the
clothes were on the mannikin, the palette was set, Villegas unrolled the
great sheaf of brushes, and was ready to go to work.
“On the left leg below the knee,” said J. There was some argument on the
point, finally settled by appeal to a Van Dyke portrait in the Prado.
“They have forgotten the shoes!” cried Angoscia.
“There is nothing remarkable about them: any low evening pumps will do
till the next sitting,” said Villegas.
“Mariano Benlliure has a pair!” cried Jaime, and went off in a cab to
borrow them. He came back with two pairs of patent leather pumps nicely
fitted on wooden lasts.
“Mariano must be very rich,” said Jaime. “I will pawn the pair you don’t
use, send him the ticket, and when he wants to wear them he can redeem
the shoes.”
At last the mannikin was dressed with the King’s clothes and put in the
right pose and Villegas got to work. He did not like to paint from the
mannikin; he said it looked too stiff, and would spoil the portrait, but
that it would be impossible to put the King’s clothes on a model!
“If Don Alfonzo had only given me a sitting instead of going hunting
to-day!” he sighed, squeezing more yellow ochre on his palette to paint
the garter; “I should like to have gone into the country too!”
“A hundred years from now who will care whether the King went hunting
to-day or not? Somebody may be glad that you stayed in your studio and
worked.”
“_Quien sabé?_” sighed Villegas.
“He is never satisfied!” said Lucia.
“The day he is satisfied, he will be finished!” laughed J. Villegas, who
likes company when he works, and can endure a dozen people talking in
the studio without listening to a word that is said, went steadily on
with his painting, laying on the bold, firm strokes of color in a manner
all his own.
In those days there was much to do in Madrid about the Infanta Maria
Teresa’s wedding. The trousseau and presents were exhibited in the great
dining-hall of the palace. The jewels given by the King, Queen Maria
Cristina, and the bridegroom, Prince Ferdinand of Bavaria, were said to
be fabulously fine. There were fifty dresses with shoes to match, among
other items, and all the rest of the outfit was on the same scale. The
bridegroom and his parents arrived in Madrid some days before the
wedding. His mother, the Infanta Paz, was the sister of the bride’s
father, Alfonzo XII, so it was a family affair and a deal of
entertaining went on in the palace of the King. Prince Max of Bavaria,
the bridegroom’s father, took little part in the merrymaking, but
slipped off whenever he could to the hospitals to have a look at the
interesting cases, and compare notes with his confrères, the surgeons.
The story was told of his coming home late to lunch one day, and saying
to the guests invited to meet him, “I have made such a successful
operation this morning; cut off a man’s leg. It all went well; the
patient stood it admirably!”
“Even royalties are becoming emancipated,” said Patsy; “they have
practically gone on strike. Can you blame a man for refusing to spend
his life standing round waiting on the chance that he may be wanted to
fill a throne? Here you have a royal explorer, like the Duke of Abruzzi,
and a royal surgeon, like Prince Max, real professionals, not amateurs;
what are we coming to next?”
We were driving along the gay crowded Calle Acalá, on our way to the
wedding.
“They have a fine day,” Patsy went on. “I saw a few icicles on the
fountain of Cebele this morning, but they’re all melted now. At home we
should call this mild weather for January; here they act as if it were
ten below zero.”
Every carriage or automobile we passed was hermetically sealed; not a
crack of a window was left open, and the Madrileños were muffled in furs
to the eyes. The climate of Madrid is not half so black as it is
painted; half the bronchitis and lung troubles we hear about come from
too much wrapping up and too little fresh air! The only open carriages
to be seen in Madrid at this season belong to the royal family. They set
a good example in that direction, at least.
The chapel royal of the palace, where the wedding took place, leads from
the glass enclosed gallery that surrounds the courtyard at the second
story, and communicates with the bedchamber of the King and the other
private apartments. Each door is guarded day and night by two tall
halberdiers, in whose hands lies the safety of the King. They are picked
men, the very flower of the army, the type of Spanish soldier history
and romance have made familiar. They look as fierce, proud, and terrible
as the men who marched with Cortes. The young officer in lovely white
broadcloth uniform and shining feathered helmet, who took us in charge
at the palace door, delivered us over into the hands of a halberdier in
a cocked hat and short clothes, who led us through the gallery, empty
save for the guards pacing up and down. The four men on duty at the
chapel door stood like breathing statues; they never moved their eyes;
they hardly seemed to wink. Though they were relieved every fifteen
minutes, as long as flesh and blood can stand the strain, one of the big
handsome fellows fainted, before his quarter of an hour was over.
Our halberdier--his name was Pedro--led us up a private stairway covered
with a blue Aubusson carpet, sprinkled with roses and lilies so lifelike
that you could almost pick them, then to a little, dark, secret stair
leading to the grated balcony, where we were to sit, as if in a private
stage box, and see the royal wedding. We were spectators, not guests, as
only the Court and the diplomatic circle were admitted to the floor of
the chapel. Don Jaime soon joined us; he had made the unprecedented
sacrifice of getting up at ten o’clock, so that he might tell us who all
the great personages were.
“To the left sit members of Government and his wifes. Next Greats of
Spain”--usually called Grandees--“Major-domos-de-semana, Gentilhombres,
_corps diplomatique_, authorities, mayor and members of city, dames of
court, generals, chamberlains, suite of bridegroom.”