the old saying. The arrival of this famous Spanish court was the most
impressive feature of the whole gorgeous pageant. The ladies, wearing
long velvet trains and white mantillas, entered the chapel one by one,
bowed before the altar, crossed themselves, and with consummate grace
and dignity, above all with perfect calm, made their way to their
places, where they spread out their trains and settled themselves like
so many brilliant birds of paradise. There was no noise, no confusion,
no crowding; it had all been calculated to a nicety. There was plenty of
time, and plenty of space for everybody; this above all else made for
the great distinction of the ceremony. The Chinese minister and
secretary, in their embroidered silk gowns, their mandarin caps and
peacock feathers, were the most picturesque figures in the diplomatic
tribune. Chief among the Grandees were the Knights of the Golden Fleece.
Patsy asked the name of one whose face seemed familiar.
“Is Pidal, Duke of Veragua,” said Jaime. “He receive the order on the
anniversary of 1892, as proof of worthy to be descendant of Columbus. He
is the elevator of the finest bulls in Spain; you will see them at the
next _corrida_.”
“Are all the seven Spanish Knights of the Golden Fleece here?”
“No, not Count Cheste. Has nineteen seven years, is more ancient of army
and of literature. It is a poet.”
The King’s clothes had been returned in plenty of time for the wedding;
care had been taken of them, they looked as good as new when, to the
music of the Lohengrin march, Don Alfonzo walked into the chapel,
leading the bride with one hand, the bridegroom with the other.
“It’s just like the opera,” Patsy whispered. “Wagner made no mistakes in
his stage directions; he knew all the traditions of the Bavarian Court,
and must have seen a royal wedding or two.”
The bride wore orange blossoms in her hair; the front of her satin dress
sparkled with diamonds, the train of white velvet, bordered with ostrich
feathers, hung from the shoulders and was carried by a page.
“Her code is three metres long,” the Don told us.
The bride knelt at the altar, made her first prayer, then crossed the
church, passing the three officiating cardinals in their arrogant
scarlet robes, to the prie-dieu where her mother knelt apart from all
the rest. She stooped, and raised the Queen’s hand to her lips. The
Queen, who wept openly throughout the ceremony, kissed her cheek; the
bride then rejoined the bridegroom, a kind looking, round-faced young
man, with thick brown hair. The ceremony was performed by the Archbishop
of Toledo, Cardinal primate of Spain, a subtle-faced old man with silver
hair and benevolent manners. The King knew his mass perfectly; he kissed
his prayer-book and crossed himself at all the proper times, and
throughout the service prompted the bridegroom, who seemed ill prepared
and had evidently not been so well drilled.
“_Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa!_” the King struck his breast
three times with his clenched fist, as he said the words.
“What do you suppose Don Alfonzo’s _maxima culpa_ is?” murmured Patsy.
“I don’t believe he has had much chance to commit one. Villegas might
say it is his not liking to pose. Some old fogy might say it was his
habit of riding his horse up the palace stairs. I would not give a fig
for a young man in his position who didn’t do that; it is a time-honored
custom of gay young princes! It wasn’t _his_ fault that he was born a
king; he can’t be expected to forfeit all the fun he might otherwise
have enjoyed as heir to the throne!”
While the Archbishop knotted the white satin scarf, symbol of the
marriage tie, about the young couple’s shoulders, Don Jaime hurried us
down to the gallery to see the cortége pass from the chapel to the
private apartments. Our halberdier, Pedro, had kept us a place opposite
the chapel door. The gallery was lined with these superb guards. They
stood shoulder to shoulder, their steel halberds flashing in the
sunlight that streamed through the glass sides of the gallery.
“The _alabardaros_,” Don Jaime explained, “are a particularity, all must
be of so great length.” He added that they all held rank two grades
below what they had held in the army; that the soldiers had been
sergeants and the general formerly a field marshal.
The fateful music of Mendelssohn’s march thrilled through the gallery,
the waiting crowd behind the halberdiers swayed at the sound as
wind-flowers shaken by the wind.
The wedding party came out of the chapel behind four mace bearers,
stalwart men in black velvet, with gold maces over their shoulders.
“The Infanta Isabel, the King’s aunt, _es muy Española_!” she is very
Spanish--whispered Jaime as a gray-haired, hearty-looking woman passed,
bowing and smiling.
“I like her,” said Patsy; “she looks a thoroughly good sort; she has
twice been heir to the throne, before the birth of her brother Alfonzo
XII, and again after his death, before our Don Alfonzo was born. Trying,
wasn’t it? She seems to be the most popular of the elder members of the
family.”
The Infanta Eulalia is not so well known as her sister, the Infanta
Isabel, because she has been little in Spain and prefers to live in
Paris. She looked very much as she did when she was in Chicago, at the
time of the World’s Fair, very elegant, very graceful, more
cosmopolitan, less _Española_ than her sister.
The Queen walked with Don Alfonzo. She wore a long ash colored dress, a
white lace mantilla, a diamond diadem, and the finest pearls I ever saw.
She neither bowed nor smiled.
In the clear sunlight of the gallery, at a range of ten feet, one saw
the dreadful look of suffering in her face. It must have been a trying
day for her. Her eldest daughter, Princess of the Asturias, had died
only a year before, leaving four little children: _her_ marriage had
been so unpopular that it nearly caused a revolution, and there had been
none of the rejoicing and merrymaking her sister, the Infanta Maria, was
enjoying. Besides this recent grief, what bitter memories must have
surged up in the Queen’s heart. Her own marriage and all of the tragedy
and suffering that it held. Hers had been a state marriage; her
bridegroom met her at the altar with a heart still sore for his adored
Mercedes, his first wife dead in the first year of their marriage. Then
came her husband’s early death, after a cruel, lingering illness; the
summoning together of the ministers, to whom she announced that there
was still hope of an heir, for besides her three daughters, she was
again with child: the birth of that child, Alfonzo XIII, one of the very
few who have been born King, twenty years of passionate devotion to the
care of the delicate boy’s health, his education, his religious
training. Twenty years of intense, unresting effort to keep the throne
for her son,--all this among a people to whom she was ever “the
Austrian,” is still the Outlander. And now, after all that she has done,
another woman is to usurp her place. Her son will marry within the year
a woman who has been bred a Protestant.
As she passed, without a look at the people, it seemed that for once the
mask of the Queen had dropped from the grief-ravaged face of the woman.
The young people were in the gayest mood. Don Alfonzo nodded and smiled
to right and left, the bride and bridegroom came along, laughing and
talking together, like any other happy young couple. There was youth and
hope in their faces; they were still far from the stereotyped bow, the
dreadful mechanical smile of the elder royalties.
“_Felicidad eternal!_” said Don Jaime, as the bride passed us.
“A good word,” Patsy echoed it as the doors closed behind the wedding
party. “Eternal felicity, may they be as happy as if they had not been
born in the shadow of a throne.”
[Illustration: DETAILS FROM “THE SURRENDER OF BREDA.” _Velasquez_]
XI
THE PRADO
_Por las calles de Madrid_
_se pasea un valenciano_
_con un clavel en la boca_
_y una rosa en cada mano._
Through the streets of Madrid
A Valencian was straying
With a pink in his mouth
And a rose in each hand.
Little Don Luis the Valencian took the pink from his mouth, when he met
Villegas coming up the steps of the Prado Museum. “I was going away,” he
said, “but I will turn back with you. Anything for an excuse not to go
to work!”
“Work!” Villegas fairly snorted! “You call painting work, when it is the
only thing you like to do? Caramba! There are some things in this world
hard to understand!” Villegas was disappointed. He had waited an hour at
the studio for Luz, who never came for her sitting; this was quite
natural the day after the court ball.
The head porter met us at the door; any of the famous painters whose
pictures hang in the room of the great portraits might have been glad to
have him for a sitter. He was a handsome man of the grave Castilian
type, with a big, square black beard and skin like alabaster. He wore a
broadcloth overcoat down to his heels and a gold laced cap.
“These are my friends,” Villegas introduced us. “You will give them any
help they may need.”
The porter bowed gravely and we all followed Villegas into the Museum.
He had come to make his morning rounds, and little Don Luis offered to
be our guide while he looked over his mail.
“I was too discouraged to paint to-day,” said Don Luis, “so I came for
help to the great artists, whose work is here. They seem to hold out
their hands to me, and say: ‘we have travelled the road you find so
hard; we, too, have known discouragement and despair!’ I always go away
from the Museum as from the company of my best friends, full of courage
and hope.”
“The way I feel, after seeing a play of Shakespeare’s,” murmured Patsy.
“Clever work discourages you; great work puts heart into you, makes you
feel you can go home and do something as good, that you might even have
done that.”
Villegas, who loves the pictures under his care as if they were his
children, is not satisfied with the Prado, and is always hoping they may
some day have a museum worthy of them.
“The three arts should be united, as they were in Greece,” he said.
“Oh, for a building that should be as a perfect casket for the two
jewels, painting and sculpture. Other museums may illustrate the history
of art better than the Prado, none possesses more masterpieces of
painting!”
“He has performed miracles since he became Director,” said Don Luis;
“not only in the care and hanging of the pictures, but against the risk
of fire. He has put in all the latest fire extinguishing apparatus. He
is right, though, we must have a new building, and, it appears to me, he
will get it for us!”
The Prado was built for a Natural History Museum, and the light in many
rooms, especially on the upper floor, is very bad. Many valuable
pictures cannot be shown for want of space, others can hardly be seen
for lack of light. In spite of these drawbacks, the Prado is the most
delightful Museum I know. It soon became to us, as to Don Luis, a second
home. The first impression is of an immense hospitality; there is no
entrance fee to pay; the Museum is free to all. Then the guardians are
all so kind and, nearly all, so good-looking. The man who takes your
umbrella or walking stick treats you with courtesy and respect, not, as
in some galleries, as if you were a criminal or a lunatic bent on poking
holes in the canvases.... Every museum has its climate or atmosphere;
the climate of the Prado is genial and cordial beyond compare.
The first impression we received of the pictures was a great joy that
there are so many surprises among them. A few of the Velasquez and the
Murillos we knew already, but as a whole the collection is less familiar
than any other I have ever seen. The vast majority of the pictures were
new to us. No work of art that has become well known through endless
copies and reproductions can make the impression these undreamed-of
splendors make. As Patsy said, “they hit you hard like love at first
sight!”
Last, but not least, the Prado is comfortable! It has wood floors, and
is properly warmed. You can spend a morning there without that fear of
catching cold that haunts you in the chill marble-paved galleries of
Italy.
In the long hall of the Spanish School, Villegas joined us. We were
looking at a portrait of Marianna of Austria, the second wife of Philip
IV.
“This is a copy of the Velasquez made by his son-in-law, Maza,” said Don
José. “It formerly passed as a replica by Velasquez himself.”
“And how do you know now that it is not?” asked Patsy.
“You shall see.” Don José called an attendant, and ordered that the copy
be carried into the
[Illustration: THE TIPPLERS. _Velasquez_]
Velasquez room and placed beside the great original.
“Observe that it lacks the extraordinary silvery tone peculiar to
Velasquez and, besides, is too accurate a copy! Velasquez would never
have had patience to copy mere accidents of brush-marks, or kinks in the
folds of the dress, if he had been copying one of his own pictures. He
would preserve the tone, the spirit, the pose of the original, but he
would not go seeking to make the same strokes with his brush. The very
mechanical accuracy helps to prove this a copy made by a faithful pupil;
thus it is!”
The sixty-seven Velasquez pictures are all together in one room. They
are admirably hung, in the chronological order they were painted, so
that you can follow the painter’s work from the beginning to the end.
The impression produced is of a wonderful living autobiography. Every
picture is a page on which you may read some momentous event in the
artist’s life. You trace his development from the Adoration of the
Kings, the earliest picture, to St. Anthony the Abbot visiting St. Paul,
perhaps the latest. It is an autobiography that cannot be read at a
glance. In that first visit, made in the company of artists to whom the
Velasquez room is holy as Mecca to the Mahommedan, I was introduced to
the genius who, for the next six months, I was to study and try to
understand.
“Why did Velasquez paint so many pictures of fools, dwarfs and
gabaloonzy men?” Patsy asked. We were looking at the portrait of El
Primo, the dwarf, holding in his tiny hands a big book, looking out from
under his slouch hat and long feather with the humpback’s sharp, uncanny
eyes.
“Because he could always get one of them to sit for him when the royal
sitters disappointed him,” sighed Villegas; “they had more time than the
courtiers, and were perhaps the most vigorous and characteristic
subjects for painting of all the people he lived among.”
We passed on to the idiot Child of Vallecas. The poor, vacant face seems
to flicker at you from the canvas, the weak, wasted hands with the pack
of cards never took hold of anything, not even life itself, save with a
faltering grasp. At first, when you begin to study Velasquez, you feel
it monstrous that his genius should have been wasted on such ridiculous
deformities; in the end you accept them all, for the sake of the genius
that has immortalized them.
“Look at that hand!” said Villegas, as we were standing before the
portrait of Montañez, the sculptor. “How it is painted! With nothing,
you may say--zip-zap, two strokes of the brush, and it is a
[Illustration: DUKE OF OLIVARES. _Velasquez_]
hand. To create something out of nothing--colossal!”
“That is a good copy,” said J. A canvas, still wet, stood on an easel
near the Montañez.
“Ah, yes--you may say so. That is made by an American--a certain Hibson;
he has talent if you will; he will arrive! notice what I say, that man
will go far.”
In Spanish G is pronounced H. The “Hibson,” of whom Villegas foretold
great and serious things, the new star on the artistic horizon, in an
earlier incarnation, achieved fame as the creator of the Gibson Girl!
“I saw that effect of sky this morning. Velasquez painted that
background on a day like this.”
We were standing before the portrait of the Duke de Olivarez, with the
bare blue plains of Castile and the snow-capped Guaderrama behind him.
You feel the keen, clear air with the bite of the wind from the snow
mountains, as you look at that picture of the Duke on his prancing
war-horse of the best Arabo-Velasquez breed!
“Look at that dog! It is nothing, painted with nothing, when you look
close at it; take two steps backwards, and it is everything.”
It was the dog in the Meninas, one of the details Villegas never failed
to look at as he passed.
“That is a canine dog,” said Patsy. “Dogs in pictures almost always
have a human expression. These of Velasquez look as dogs must look to
each other; it is as if they were painted by one of themselves!”
The Meninas has a separate room to itself. Look at the picture long
enough, and the illusion seizes you that you are really looking into a
room of the gloomy old palace of the Alcazar, the Court of Philip IV,
where Velasquez lived and worked the greater part of his working life.
You can walk into that room where he stands at work before a big canvas,
look over his shoulder, see the portrait he is painting of the King and
Queen; you can even touch him on the arm that supports his palette.
“He paints pictures no longer,” cried little Don Luis the Valencian.
“Like a god he creates a world with light and atmosphere, plains and
mountains. Into that world he puts kings and queens, buffoons and
beggars.”
“And soldiers and horses!” said Villegas, stopping before the “Surrender
of Breda,” a great spacious picture with a gray-blue sky, and room
enough in it for all the sublimity of victory, the tragedy of defeat. In
the background the distant town of Breda still smokes from the
besiegers’ shells. In the nearer distance, marching up the hill, is a
company of the victorious soldiers armed with the long lances that give
the picture its nickname. The men’s faces are grave, they show no
exultation to the group of the defeated enemy standing opposite to them.
In the foreground Justino de Nassau, the defender of Breda, offers the
key of the city to the victorious general Spinola. De Nassau’s knee is
slightly bent--it is a stubborn knee and hard to bend--as he holds out
the key. Spinola has neither hand free to take it; one holds his baton,
the other is laid in what seems almost an embrace, on De Nassau’s
shoulder. “Take back your key,” he seems to say. “To-day it was our turn
to win; to-morrow it may be yours.”
What was it Grant said to Lee about needing the horses for the spring
plowing? There you have the magnanimous spirit of Velasquez’s “Surrender
of Breda” in a nutshell.
“My friend,” said Villegas to a stout German artist, who was working
away in grim earnest at a copy of the “Lances”; “your color is too hot,
remember the cool silver-grays; always try for them!”
“_Ach Gott_, you have said it!” cried the poor man, squinting from his
copy to the original; “why could I not myself before have seen it?” Then
he broke into profuse thanks to the Herr Director, who hurried on to
escape them.
“I have a plan,” said Villegas, “for a new arrangement of this room.”
We had passed into the long gallery of the Spanish School, from which
the Velasquez room opens. “Here, opposite this entrance, I shall hang
the Titian portrait of Charles V on his war-horse; it is too much
sacrificed where it is now. Near this I shall hang some Tintorettos and
some Grecos. In this way it will be possible to trace the influence of
each of these masters on the other: the influence of Titian on
Tintoretto, of Tintoretto on Greco, of Greco on Velasquez.”
The head porter, who had come hurrying up to Villegas, now delivered his
message.
“They have telephoned from the Palace that the King of Portugal will be
at the Museum in half an hour.”
These sudden entrances of royalty upon the scene added enormously to the
interest of our life in Madrid. The marriage of the Infanta, the
betrothal and the marriage of the King brought more royal visitors to
Madrid that season than usual, and they all came to the Prado. The
Museum has for them an especial attraction apart from the artistic
interest. The Prado contains portraits of the ancestors of most of the
royal personages in Europe, and they are naturally interested in seeing
their family portraits. The collection begun by Charles V, and
constantly added to by his descendants, is essentially a royal
collection. Isabel II generously
[Illustration: VENUS AND CUPID. _Velasquez_]
gave the pictures to the Spanish nation. How generously that gift is
shared with the artists and art lovers of all nations, every visitor to
the Prado knows.
Villegas hurried off to prepare for the visit of Don Carlos, the King of
Portugal, and little Don Luis, still glad of an excuse not to go back to
work, offered to take me to see Don Carlos the Bohemian. We found him in
a big barrack of a lumber-room smelling of paint, turpentine and
varnish, at the top of the Prado. He was at work on a copy of the
disputed portrait of Don John of Austria. He threw down his palette and
ran to meet Don Luis, rumpling up his hair with desperate hands.
“Was I mad to undertake it?” he cried. “It is the fourth Antonio Moro I
have copied. Not another, not for a million.”
“Not for a million, no; what couldst thou do with it? But for--well,
something else--yes, as many as thy grand duke will find room for in his
museum!”
“The work that accursed Fleming put into a picture. I tell thee it is
brutal to work so hard; he had the patience of a saint!”
“Or a Coello or a Pantoja. It is not a Moro! Thou hast some patience
thyself; it is not bad, thy copy!” Don Luis looked critically at it; “a
little crude. How many glazes hast thou given it?”
“Only eight.”
“Ah! thou seest? thou wilt get the tone soon. There is nothing wrong
with the drawing; the worst of the work is over with that.”
“Blessed be thy mouth!”
Don John, the Conqueror of Lepanto, is a young man standing with the
lion of Alcazaba at his side. He wears a shirt of mail the rings as fine
as those of a lady’s purse, and every ring is painted. The fringe of the
cushion is painted thread by thread, you can almost count the hairs in
the moustache.
“How can you know where to begin?” I asked. The copying of this
life-sized full length, painted with the detail of a miniature, seemed a
desperate undertaking.
“I know how the devil worked! I studied and studied him till I got his
secret; ah, there is no one like him; he is a despair! See, first I draw
everything in black, white and gray, down to the last detail, then I get
my tone with a series of thin glazes. Each one must be quite hard and
dry before I give it the next. It takes a lifetime, you may say!”
A delightful copy of the Velasquez portrait of little Prince Baltasar
with the gun and the dog stood against the wall. “Thou hast a good thing
there,” said Don Luis; “and once Velasquez was hard for thee to copy!”
[Illustration: DON BALTAZAR CARLOS. _Velasquez_]
“How he baffled me! Now I have learned as much of his secret as a man
can learn; rather twenty-five Velasquez than one Moro. This is the last,
if I live to finish it!”
I told Don Carlos about the King of Portugal. “He always comes to the
Prado when he is in Madrid,” he said. “He is a fair painter himself, for
a king. There is a portrait of his worth seeing in the Museum of Modern
Arts.”
“I think he once complimented thee on a copy thou wast making?” said Don
Luis.
“Perhaps he did,” growled Don Carlos. He smoothed out his towsled hair
and went back, grumbling still, though less violently, to his work.
Somehow the energy of despair had become the energy of courage; little
Don Luis the Valencian with the pink in his mouth had turned the water
of drudgery to the wine of work!