royal palace in which Charles IV. signed the decree handing the crown of
Spain to Ferdinand. A few days later he withdrew his abdication
privately at the instigation of General Monthion, Murat’s chief of the
staff, and shortly afterwards left Aranjuez for the Escorial, from
whence, on the 25th April following, he set out for Bayonne, to lay the
crown at the feet of the Emperor of the French. The king died at Rome in
1819; Ferdinand, having spent six years at Valençay, where he was
virtually a prisoner of the French, was restored to the throne of Spain.
During the nineteen years of his reign Ferdinand VII. and the coarse,
ignorant vulgarians who composed the camarilla by which he surrounded
himself, spent much of their time at Aranjuez. Here the vast conspiracy
was hatched against the Constitution, which led to the battle between
the militia and the citizens in 1822; and here the worthless monarch
intrigued until his death to re-establish absolutism, and restore the
old rotten order of things which the nation had shed its best blood to
wipe out.
The nearness of Aranjuez to Madrid and the beauty of its situation has
always made it a favourite residence of the Spanish royal family. The
town itself, which has a population of some ten thousand inhabitants, is
composed of wide streets and large squares, and many noble families
possess villas in the neighbourhood. The interior of the palace, which
reveals an incongruous jumble of modern innovations adapted to the
architecture and decoration of bygone generations, is filled with a
large assortment of works of art, some possessing a very high order of
merit, and others very little. The celebrated staircase which faces the
principal entrance is magnificent. It leads to the _Saleta_, a room
embellished with a granite chimney-piece and chandeliers of rock
crystal and bronze, and containing several paintings by the famous
Italian artist Luca Giordano, who is known in Spain by the name of Juan
Jordán. Other pictures by Giordano, painted on white silk damask, are to
be seen in an adjoining apartment. In the Oratory is a superb altar,
with an agate inlaid table, and Titian’s ‘Annunciation of the Virgin.’
Next to the Oratory is the Hall of Ambassadors, a modern apartment, with
a ceiling painted in 1850 by Vicente and Maximino Camarón. The walls of
the queen’s study in the same suite are covered with white damask, and
the room is furnished with twelve chairs and a carved mahogany table of
the time of Charles IV.
The ball-room and the dining-room, even the Moorish room, in which
Rafael Contreras has revived the beauties of the Alhambra, are surpassed
by the music-room, which is the finest saloon in the palace. Here all
the decorations are Chinese in character, worked out and enamelled with
great skill; and the chandelier, which is in one piece, is an exquisite
specimen of workmanship. The walls of this room are entirely covered
with large porcelain plaques, representing in high relief groups of
beautifully modelled Oriental figures. The looking-glasses, made at La
Granja, with their frames composed of fruits and flowers, enhance the
effect. Joseph Gricci, who modelled and painted the music-saloon, was
one of the artists brought over from Naples by Charles III. in 1759,
when he established in Madrid the factory of Buen Retiro. In addition to
this superb porcelain, the palace boasts a bedstead of splendidly carved
lignum-vitae, and some pictures by Bosch (Jerome van Aeken), a painter
of the sixteenth century, who is almost unknown outside Spain. These
canvases represent fantastic subjects and allegories in the style of
Breughel, and were highly praised by the critics of his time.
The Convent of San Pascual was founded by Charles III., and the theatre
in the town owed its inception to the same monarch. The convent church
contains only a few valuable pictures, but it is rich in marble and
beautifully carved wood. The convent library possesses many ancient
manuscripts, and the convent grounds are famous for their beauty, but
the gardens of the royal palace are the crowning glory of Aranjuez.
That most entertaining author and indefatigable dispenser of Testaments,
George Borrow, travelled in Spain at a time when royalty was battling
for its very existence. He found the country dangerous and desolated,
and the country homes of its kings fallen into a state of neglect. When
he was in La Granja, the palace of San Ildefonso was shut up, and the
town which surrounds the patrimony of the Crown of Spain was practically
deserted. He had no better luck in Aranjuez. He admits the beauty of the
district, but he describes the place as in a state of desolation; he
recalls the fact that Ferdinand VII. spent his latter days in its palace
surrounded by lovely señoras and Andalusian bull-fighters, and
quotes--perhaps with more sentiment than sympathy--the words of
Schiller:
‘The happy days in fair Aranjuez
Are past and gone.’
‘Intriguing courtiers no longer crowd its halls,’ he reflects; ‘its
spacious circus, where Manchegan bulls once roared in rage and agony, is
now closed, and the light tinkling of guitars is no longer heard amidst
its groves and gardens.’ One feels as one reads these passages that
Borrow was not at his best as a moralist. One prefers him when he is
describing in his lively, absorbing manner his personal experiences, and
is glad to learn that he disposed of eighty Testaments in desolate
Aranjuez, and that he ‘might have sold many more of these Divine books’
if he had remained there a longer period.
But we are sorry that Borrow did not see the Palace Gardens in April or
May, when the view from the Parterre is one of almost unsurpassed
loveliness. The Reina, Isla, and Principe Gardens are furnished with a
multitude of bridges, grottoes, fountains, and cascades, bordered and
surrounded by an exuberance of plants and flowers from England, France,
and the East, all bathed by the waters of the Tagus, and made musical
with the notes of myriad birds. ‘The Nightingale that in the Branches
sang’ returns in his thousands every spring, and we hear ‘The melodious
noise of birds among the spreading branches, and the pleasing fall of
water running violently.’ Here are Oriental trees, palms, and the cedars
of Lebanon, and interspersed with them are the first elms introduced by
Philip II. into Spain from England, which grow magnificently under the
combined influence of heat and moisture. The impressionable and
responsive Edmondo de Amicis writes of Aranjuez:
‘The interior of the royal building is superb, but all the riches
of the palace do not compare with the view of the gardens, which
seem to have been laid out for the family of a Titanic king, to
whom the parks and gardens of our kings must appear like terrace
flower-beds or stable-yards. There are avenues as far as the eye
can reach, flanked by immensely high trees, whose branches
interlace as if bent by two contrary winds, which traverse in every
direction a forest whose boundaries one cannot see; and through
this forest the broad and rapid Tagus describes a majestic curve,
forming here and there cascades and basins. A luxurious and
flourishing vegetation abounds between a labyrinth of small
avenues, cross roads, and openings; and on every side gleam
statues, fountains, columns, and sprays of water, which fall in
splashes, bows, and drops, in the midst of every kind of flower of
Europe and America. To the majestic roar of the cascade of the
Tagus is joined the song of innumerable nightingales, who utter
their plaintive vibratory notes in the mysterious shade of the
solitary paths. Beyond the palace, and all around the shrubberies,
extend vineyards, olive-groves, plantations of fruit trees, and
smiling meadows. It is a genuine oasis, surrounded by a desert,
which Philip II. chose in a day of good humour, almost as if to
temper with the gay picture the gloomy melancholy of the Escorial,
and in which one still breathes the atmosphere, so to speak, of the
private life of the kings of Spain.’
The Jardines de la Reina are of minor importance, but the Jardines de la
Isla, comprising the four divisions which are known as Parterre, La
Estatuas, Isla, and Emparrado, are filled with natural and created
beauties. In the Isabel II. Garden is a bronze statue of the queen,
erected to commemorate the political events of 1834. It is surrounded by
a handsome iron railing, and completed by eight stone seats and as many
marble vases mounted on pedestals. The Jardines de Principe, a much more
modern preserve, are divided into four departments, and bisected by
avenues that lead to the various small squares and to the Princesa,
Apollo, Blanco, and Embajadores Avenues, the last of which terminates in
the little Pabellones Garden of the time of Ferdinand VI. In addition to
these princely gardens there are the English Garden, remarkable for its
carved rock supporting a well-modelled swan; the Chinese Garden with its
banana plantations; and the Garden of the Princess, acquired in 1535,
and adorned in 1616 with a mechanical clock, decorated with twelve
bronze figures that play on bronze trumpets. On the banks of the swiftly
flowing river are the paddocks of the Crown, where camels and llamas
roam, and a stud farm, where are bred English and Spanish blood horses
and the beautiful cream-coloured animals of the Aranjuez stock.
The auxiliary palace called the Casa del Labrador, or Labourer’s
Cottage, built by Charles IV., is a remarkable structure, being a
series of boudoirs, _à petit Trianon_, worthy of a Pompadour. The
ceilings are painted by Zacarias Velazquez, Lopez, Maella, and other
artists, and the walls of the back staircase are decorated with scenes
and figures of the time of Charles I. At the top of the staircase is
figured a balcony, on which are leaning the handsome wife and children
of the painter, Z. Velazquez. The gilded bronze balustrade of the main
staircase contains gold to the value of £3000, and the marbles over the
doors are very fine. On the ground-floor of the building, which is
composed of three stories, are thirteen statues by Spanish sculptors. In
the centre of the hall is a marble figure representing Envy, and around
the apartment are twenty busts of Carrara marble. Among the treasures of
the palace are many Japanese vases and bronzes of great artistic value,
marble busts of Minerva and Mars, a group representing a sacrifice in
honour of Venus, and an enormous, beautifully carved mahogany fountain.
The decorations consist of platinum, artistically worked pavements of
Buen Retiro porcelain, and the most gorgeous silk embroideries and
tapestries bordered with gold; while the furniture includes priceless
chandeliers, Sèvres vases, candelabra, and clocks. A chair and table in
malachite, a present from Prince Demidoff to the ex-Queen Isabella of
Spain, is valued at about £1500. The apartment known as _Retrete_ is
adorned with a composition resembling marble in the Moorish style and
Etruscan low relief, and furnished with crimson coverings bordered with
gold, while all the appointments of the hall, the capricious clocks and
floral stands of bronze and glass, the table of rock crystal, and the
wealth of marbles, all contribute to the magnificence of this so-called
_Casa del Labrador_.
V
MIRAMAR
The most modern of the many royal residences in Spain is the palace
which the queen-mother built for herself and her young family in the
most easterly province on the northern coast of the Peninsula. Queen
Maria Cristina had been Regent for three years when in 1889 she
determined to make a home between the mountains and the sea in a spot
far removed from the etiquette and stress of the capital and from the
sad memories which were associated with the ancient palaces of Castile.
Her Majesty spent her first summer holiday at Miramar, the capital of
Guipuzcoa in 1894, and here, overlooking the Bay of Biscay, Alfonso
XIII. was brought up among and in the heart of his own people. Here he
was prepared by a rigorous course of study to assume the duties of the
high destiny to which he was born, and here also he learnt to ride and
shoot, to swim and handle a boat, and to excel in every form of manly
sport. At San Sebastian the dignity and restraint of royalty is largely
relaxed, and the English visitor realises more clearly than in any other
part of the country how intensely democratic is the Spaniard at heart.
The King of Spain is more in touch with the masses of his people than
the ruler of any other European nation. He is an anointed sovereign and
the most august personage in the land; but he is a Spaniard, he belongs
to his people, he is one of themselves. In Madrid court etiquette keeps
the sovereign at a different altitude from his subjects, but here he
rides and drives abroad, generally unattended, and sets an example of
princely amiability and unaffected kindliness which distinguishes all
ranks of the Spanish nobility. The line of demarkation between the
nobles and the people is so clearly defined that it never has to be
emphasised. In their relations there is no unbending on the one side,
there is no servility on the other. A grandee of Spain does not imperil
his dignity by joining the cotillon at the Casino; a duchess can drink
tea at the crowded tables of a public café without taking thought of
appearances.
In San Sebastian the sovereign is not the High and Mighty Señor Don
Alfonso XIII. of Bourbon and Austria, Catholic King of Spain, but
rather is he ‘_le chevalier Printemps_,’ and the respect with which he
is everywhere greeted is based as much in affection for his person as in
deference to his exalted station. In all the festivities and social
functions of the fashionable watering-place, His Majesty takes a
prominent part; and although roulette is forbidden at the Casino while
Royalty is at Miramar, no other restriction is imposed upon the gaiety
of the town by the king’s presence. Don Alfonso is president of the
Yacht Club and of the Horse Show; he distributes the athletic
championship prizes, and is among the guns at every important shoot; the
homely, merry festival of the Urumea would be incomplete without him;
his attendance in the Avenida de la Libertad is as necessary as the
sunshine to the Carnival of Flowers. The queen-mother’s handsome team of
four Spanish mules is to be met with every day in the neighbouring
country, and the king’s motor car is a familiar object of the landscape
between San Sebastian and Biarritz. It was from San Sebastian that he
motored to the bright little French town to make his formal request for
the hand of Victoria Eugénie of Battenberg, and it was to Miramar that
he brought his affianced bride to present her to the queen-mother and
the Spanish people.
If the Spanish coast had been searched from one end to the other, it
would have been impossible to have found a more picturesque spot than
the bay of San Sebastian, where the blue billows from the North Atlantic
bring their long journey to an end on a stretch of the most golden sands
in Europe. During the summer months the crested rollers, following one
another with the regularity and precision of Highland regiments at the
quickstep, sweep through the narrow channel between Santa Clara and
Mount Orgullo, and, making the semicircle of the Concha, break their
formation at the private landing-stage beneath the royal palace of
Miramar, and fall out about the rocky base of Mount Igueldo. Seen from
the royal yacht, the _Giralda_, which always lies in the bay when the
royal family are in residence at Miramar, the town of San Sebastian lies
in the base of a crescent, the horns of which are tipped with the old
light tower at one extremity and the castle of La Mota at the other.
Behind the town Mount Ulia raises its wooded height in the middle
distance, and beyond it, as far as the eye can see, the white-capped
sentinels of the Pyrenees complete the view. One can sip one’s
chocolate on the terrace of the restaurant which crowns Mount Ulia, and
gaze on San Sebastian spread out like a panorama in the valley, or watch
the sunlight reflected from the white cliffs of France, or try to make
out the sword-cut in the coast-line by which the tide flows, as through
the neck of a bottle, into the inland sea, which laps the very
door-steps of Pasajes and divides it into the two sections of San Juan
and San Pedro. There are seasons when the Bay of Biscay is the
incarnation of elemental fury, when the inviting natural harbour of San
Sebastian is a death trap for any vessel that flies to it for shelter.
When the south and south-west winds are blowing at the end of September,
and the hurricane is driving the raging billows of the Atlantic before
it; when even whales are caught by the stampeding waters and tossed like
weeds on the sandy bosom of the Concha; when the roof of the Royal
Nautical Club is swept by the waves, and the breakwater at the mouth of
the Urumea crumbles before the ferocity of the gale; then is this
north-east coast of Spain _anathema maranatha_ to those that go down to
the sea in ships. But by the end of September, the holiday season in San
Sebastian is over, and the holiday-makers are distributed over every
country in Europe. The Court is removed to Madrid, the Palace of Miramar
and the Casino are closed, the _Giralda_ seeks a surer anchorage, and
the fishing-fleet is safely berthed in the land-locked harbours of
Pasajes.
The construction of the Royal Palaces of Madrid absorbed over a quarter
of a century, and a whole army of labourers were twenty years on the
Escorial before it was ready for occupation by Philip II. Five hundred
men built the royal residence of Miramar in four years. Two architects
collaborated in its construction--Mr. Selden Wornum, who laid down the
general plan, and Señor Goicoa, who was in charge of the building
operations and revised the plans as the work proceeded. The materials
used, with the exception of some special tiles, which had to be brought
from England, are Spanish, the marble and stone having been brought from
the provinces of Guipuzcoa, Valladolid, and Burgos; the iron for the
different stages from the ‘Altos Hornos’ and ‘Vizcaya’ factories of
Bilbao, and the metal work from Eibar.
The real Casa de Campo de Miramar is composed of three departments: the
palace, the offices, and the stables and coach-houses. The palace is a
three-storied building, in the style of an English country house. On
the ground-floor, at the entrance, is a spacious central gallery, which
extends nearly the whole length of the palace, dividing it into two
parts. On the right are the king’s study, the library, the oratory, the
reading-room and the dining-room, which is rectangular, and boasts a
magnificent balcony. On the left are the hall, the official reception
rooms, and the billiard-room. Between the study and the library is a
large drawing-room. On the first floor are the apartments of the king
and queen and the old playroom of his Majesty, all communicating with
each other by a terrace which overlooks the sea and the garden. From the
king’s room a tower is reached, which is surmounted by a flag-staff. The
rooms occupied by the royal servants are on the upper floor. A long
gallery connects the main building with the house in which are lodged
the chief officials of the palace, and the stables, which are fashioned
on the most modern English pattern, form a separate building.
Over the principal entrance are three beautifully carved shields: one
with the arms of Spain, another with those of the king, and the third
with those of the queen. In the construction of the palace, the chief
considerations have been comfort and convenience. Every most modern
improvements, both scientific and æsthetic, have been employed to attain
this end. The furniture is elegant, and harmonises perfectly with the
decoration of the rooms; the tapestries, paintings, porcelains, all the
objects of art, in fact, which are found there in great profusion, are
in the most exquisite taste; while the park by which Miramar is
surrounded is probably the best cultivated domain in the possession of
the Crown. The telegraph links up the palace with the whole world; and
the telephone connects it with the royal palace and the Government
Offices at Madrid. At the extremity of the grounds of the Royal
residence, which have been built over the road, and continued to the
water’s edge, is the private landing-stage which his Majesty always uses
in going to and from the _Giralda_. On most days during the San
Sebastian season, the king is to be seen in the Bay, and he is always
one of the most interested spectators of the races during the regatta
week.
In a little volume of this kind, which is intended as an album and
pictorial souvenir of the palaces of which it treats rather than an
illustrated handbook, little attention has been given to the cities in
which these royal residences are situated, or the country by which they
are surrounded. But a few lines may be added here about San Sebastian,
which in most respects is different from other Spanish cities, even from
the capitals of the other Basque provinces. San Sebastian is kept
spotlessly clean, its municipal management is perfect, and its beggars
are conspicuous by their absence. The modernity of the town is due to
the firing of the place after the siege of 1813, when the only part that
escaped was the bit of old town, situated near the little _Port des
Pêcheurs_, under the shadow of Mount Urgull. The broad, even, regular
streets of the new town, which is bisected by the handsome Avenida de la
Libertad, are flanked by splendid shops and hotels that would do credit
to any European city. The whole place wears an aspect of smiling
prosperity, and its life during the holiday season is one continuous
round of hearty, innocent gaiety. Cricket, it must be admitted, has not
yet been naturalised in Spain, and the golfer must cross the border to
Biarritz to indulge in his favourite game, but every other sport that
the average Englishman affects can be enjoyed here. The bathing from the
beach is the best and safest in the world, and the lover of picturesque
scenery has a paradise of varied landscapes and sea pieces within
walking distance of the town. There is lawn tennis in the new recreation
grounds, and pelota matches, at one or other of the courts, are played
daily; while, for those who care for bull fighting, there is a _corrida_
every Sunday afternoon during the season.
VI
EL ALCAZAR
SEVILLE
The beautiful Moorish palace of the Alcazar at Seville, unlike the more
famous Alhambra of Granada, is still a royal palace, though only
occasionally the residence of their Catholic Majesties. The upper floor,
containing the royal apartments, is always kept ready for these
illustrious tenants, and in consequence is rarely accessible by the
tourist and sight-seer. The palace proper is one of a group of buildings
known as the Alcazares, which is surrounded by an embattled wall, and
includes several open spaces and numerous private dwellings. Immediately
inside the wall are two squares called the Patio de las Banderas and
Patio de la Monteria. At the far end of the former is the office of the
governor of the palace, and to the right of this is an entrance whence a
colonnaded passage called the Apeadero leads straight through to the
gardens, or, by turning to the right, to the Patio del Leon. On one side
this latter square communicates with the Patio de la Monteria; on the
other side is the palace of the Alcazar itself. I hope this will make
the rather puzzling topography of the place a little more intelligible.
Whether or not the Roman ‘Arx’ stood on this spot, as tradition avers, I
cannot pretend to say. But there is no room for doubt that a palace
stood here in the days of the Abbadite amirs, and that this building was
restored and remodelled by the Almohades. To outward seeming the Alcazar
is as Moorish a monument as the Alhambra. In reality, few traces remain
of the palace raised by the Moslem rulers of either dynasty, and the
present building was mainly the work of the Castilian kings--especially
of Pedro the Cruel. But though built under and for a Christian monarch,
it is practically certain that the architects were Moors and good
Moslems, and that their instructions and intentions were to build a
Moorish palace. Historically, you may say, the Alcazar is a Christian
work; artistically, Mohammedan.
The actual palace occupies only a small part of the site of the older
structures, and incorporates but a few fragments of their fabrics.
Since Pedro the Cruel’s day, so many sovereigns have restored,
remodelled, and added to the building, that it is far from being
homogeneous, though we can hardly agree with Contreras that it is ‘far
from being a monument of Oriental art.’