Majesty is relating my morning’s excursion, and a very pleasant one it
was, too. Now I am well acquainted with every feature of your city. On
the way I spoke to several peasants and to a soldier. They all
understood me, Roumanian is so like Italian. You could not expect me to
content myself, could you, with official accounts and interpretations of
this country? The coachman had no idea who I was, so I could converse
freely with him all the time.”
That evening one of Molière’s plays was performed in the Palace. After
the performance the Prince came up to me.
“Molière is a fine fellow,” he said. “So genuinely witty and caustic.
But I prefer Shakespeare to all the other great geniuses of the world. I
know the English language almost as well as my own and love it. No
language can express humour and terse irony better. Do you know I often
write to my mother in English? When you come to Italy you will hear so
much about me that is untrue that I am delighted that you should have
seen me abroad.”
In this respect the Prince of Naples was mistaken, as I believe that the
best experience one can have of a person, more especially if that person
happen to be a Prince, is acquired by observing him in his own land; and
when, a few years later, I met the Prince suddenly and unexpectedly, I
discovered in him many qualities that he had not had an opportunity of
displaying in Roumania.
It was on a sultry afternoon. Pisa slept in a haze of mellow light and
the grass lay yellow around the Campo Santo and the tall white
Cathedral. We had wandered from the Church to the Baptistery, and were
about to enter the Campo Santo when a stern official interposed.
“It is impossible to visit the Campo Santo to-day. The Prince of Naples
is in Pisa and is coming here. The Campo Santo is closed to travellers
and visitors.”
In great distress we remained assembled in a group trying to convince
the man that we would not disturb the Prince, that we only wanted to see
Oscagna’s frescoes, and would move about as softly as mice. He refused
even to listen to us, and we were making up our minds to give up all
idea of seeing the frescoes, though we could not tell when we might
return to Pisa, when all at once I recognised one of the royal
aides-de-camp who was coming towards us. I explained our position to
him, he gave an order, and in another moment we had entered the
forbidden precincts. From tomb to tomb, from inscription to inscription
we strolled, keenly alive to the calm glory of the place. The roses were
in full bloom on the plot of holy earth brought from Jerusalem, and a
soft silence, steeped in the profound drowsiness of the summer air, lay
upon the place.
Suddenly the sharp sound of bugles and military music burst upon the
ancient, dreamy Campo Santo. The strains of the royal march echoed
through the slender marble colonnades. I remembered hearing the Prince
of Naples whistle that same national anthem which now ushered him into
our view. How unchanged and yet how different he seemed amid that
brilliant cortège in the attitude of one now ready to condescend and
bestow favours. On recognising us, he bade us follow, and going from
tomb to tomb as we had done, he awoke the very soul of history, here
with a quotation, there with a remark, touching with his fine nervous
hands the rusty old chains which still bear testimony to the days when
Pisa was a port and mirrored her beauty on the bosom of the faithless
sea....
For a Prince so accomplished and so singularly original, for a sovereign
as learned and wise as he is, disdainful of light pleasures and
pursuits, a spouse was needed who would herself bring strength and
talents to the royal house.
“I will not marry a doll or a stick. I will not make a match to suit
popular desires or general custom, but a marriage that will bring me
complete happiness, because if I am happy so will be my parents and the
nation. And if I find the wife of my dreams, and if your poetic ideals
approve my choice, I wish you to be the first to congratulate me,
remember that....”
Thus had the Prince spoken at Bucharest on the March evening that had
preceded his departure, and the Queen laughed as I promised. When the
Princess of Naples, a radiant bride, came out of the church amid songs
and flowers leaning on her husband’s arm, and receiving eager
congratulations from every side, a friend of mine, a lady whose exalted
position made the task easy, stepped forward and congratulated the
Prince in my name.
For one instant only he remained confounded, then in a flash he
remembered and answered:
“Yes, my ideal is beautiful; indeed she is quite right,” and with all
his heart in his voice he fervently returned his thanks.
I met Queen Elena of Italy in Naples before she became a Queen. My
family had been closely associated with the princely family of
Montenegro, and long before that Florentine morning her sweet, pensive
face had been familiar to me. I had heard about the wild Tchernagora,
where she was educated and where she herself gave lessons to her little
sisters, and was the joy of her father’s house. Therefore, when I gazed
at the pallid countenance, the sleepy black eyes whose glances thrilled
into life whenever her husband stooped towards her or spoke, as I
watched her listening somewhat despondently while in the new Etruscan
Museum a professor versed in the mysteries of that ancient race
delivered a most interesting speech--it appeared to me that a mystery
greater than the spells written in that language whose secret is for
ever dead, lay in the slim person of the Tchernagora maiden who had so
recently become an Italian Princess, passing from the eagle’s nest to a
halcyon land.
After the speech was delivered the Princess rose; there was a kind of
graceful apathy in her movements which spoke more of Oriental ease than
mountain sturdiness, but the moment she opened her lips the energy of
her forefathers was to be detected in the luminous orbs of black velvet
shining between the dark lashes.
“Oh, is not Florence lovely? I am trying to discover which Italian town
I love most. But directly I stay two or three days in one, I am
unfaithful to the one I have just left. Italy is to me an ocean of
flowers, pictures, and smiles. But is it not sad that no way can be
found to decipher these Etruscan inscriptions? How awful to think that a
whole race can thus perish completely!” The Princess shuddered. “In our
dear Tchernagora we believe that as long as a song survives the
remembrance of a nation cannot be lost--I mean a song of heroism,
relating some brave deed. But the Etruscans have left more than a song,
they have left statues, urns, arms, records of their customs, the tombs
where their kings lie in glistening array, yet to us they are quite dead
because not a record from them ever crosses the ages to reach our
souls.... It really seems true that the human word contains the only
real life.”
Elena of Italy and Montenegro stood there amidst the remnants of
Etruscan civilisation and art. She seemed taller than the other ladies
present, and her pale face shone, while through the open windows the
Florentine breeze brought the perfume of roses and the murmur of the
busy city. All the vigour and promise of Spring quivered through the
hall, avoiding the soulless urns and statues to centre round the
daughter of the Minstrel Prince, of the Warrior-Singer, Nicholas of
Montenegro.
[Illustration:
_Photo by Franzen, Madrid_
QUEEN MARIA CHRISTINA AND KING ALFONSO XIII. OF SPAIN]
QUEEN MARIA CHRISTINA AND KING ALFONSO XIII. OF SPAIN
As one follows the rocky road that leads to Madrid, through plains
desolate and bereft of trees or verdure, leaving far behind one the
green softness of the Guipujera provinces and the fairness of Burgos,
that weird old city clad in its mantle of foliage, haunted of a moonlit
night by the phantom of the national hero, the marvellous warrior, Cid
Campeador, a sense of loneliness akin to terror fills the soul. On each
side of the railway stretch grey stones and brown earth far as the eye
can reach, and the wandering herds, whose slow steps alone disturb the
dreary solitude, have difficulty in finding a morsel of grass or wild
herb to graze upon. And when through the thick folds of the morning mist
the Escurial with its numberless turrets bursts suddenly upon the view,
the sight is by no means calculated to relieve the imagination or dispel
the mournful impressions created on the way. How black and how menacing
a mountain can look only those can realise who have gazed upon the dark
slopes and darker summit that towers above that melancholy palace. Of
course, at the very first glance, it is easy to infer that not a single
room can exist within that palace whose walls, floor and ceiling are not
over-shadowed by its high neighbour the Sierra. Indeed, from earliest
times the mountain appears to have cherished the impossible ambition of
entering the building, and in the meantime cast upon pavement, court and
garden signs, as it were, of mute wrath, like the distant aspect of a
thundercloud before the storm speaks from within its folds.
Notwithstanding all the pains that a modern Spanish monarch (one of the
Bourbon dynasty) took to lighten the gloomy atmosphere of the Escurial
salons by placing in them gay furniture and tapestry worked in bright
and varied colours, the forbidding presence of Philip II. still lurks
behind its high wooden doors. It was he who built the palace in one of
the few rare moments of cheerfulness and grace known to that grim
potentate. On the eve of the Battle of St. Quentin’s, in which his
troops overcame the French army, he swore that if the Spaniards proved
victorious he would build a huge convent dedicated to St. Lawrence, the
Saint under whose patronage he had placed the fate of the campaign. Now
as St. Lawrence was a martyr, and had been burnt to death on a gridiron,
the king tried to give the cloister the appearance of that instrument of
torment by building eleven courtyards separated by as many suites of
cells and apartments; each of these was to represent one of the rods of
the gridiron, and the courts were meant to symbolise the space between
the rods, while the King’s own suite of chambers formed the handle.
Almost the whole line of sovereigns belonging to the Austrian dynasty
have borne some affinity for this strange abode, where amidst dismal
prayers and cruel designs were spent the days of the most illustrious
among them, Philip the Second. Into every corner of the land they poured
as it were, like an ocean of lead and blood, the dread sensation of
their invisible presence. Unseen by the people, who knew only that the
King of Spain lived surrounded by an etiquette whose strict laws had
changed him from a living human being into a shadow bowed down by his
own grandeur, the throne came to be surrounded more by awe than love.
Scenes of horror and fear formed around it an atmosphere as funereal and
heavy as the odours of the dim _Pudrideiro_, where after death the
monarch’s corpses were preserved till the slow drops of water falling
upon them achieved the work of destruction. These awful images may well
typify a race whose last representative, pale, haughty, and worn out by
generations of terrible ancestors, appear to be kept from dropping like
a faded leaf only by the pride which still survives in their clear and
languid blue eyes.
From such memories, well in keeping with the landscape of brown earth
and grey stones, from such gruesome associations, does Madrid--lively
and beautiful Madrid--rouse the traveller as, dazed by the din and the
sunlight, he rolls through her indolent and crowded streets. Who would
think longer of Philip II. or remain pondering over the painful past?
Mirth and noise, the bustle of impatient tradesmen, the slim figures of
_toreros_ in their everyday garb, the rich equipages of the wealthy and
the merry laugh of the poor, these express in outward appearance what
Madrid means to her happy children, and why they deem their own city
fair above every other in the world. At any hour of the day or night,
whatever be the season or the weather, the streets are ever full to
overflowing, and, carried on by the torrent of wild enjoyment and eager
movement, the mind of the calmest, the gravest person retains only the
power necessary to ask in a timid _sotto voce_ manner: “Who cooks their
dinners for them, who looks after the children, the little ones that
they are obliged to leave at home?”--for the idea that there can be any
one left in the houses seems preposterous. As to the habit in Madrid
society of driving to the Castellana every afternoon, it is so
inveterate that one day when I had desisted from following the universal
example, because I could not tear myself away from a thrilling book, all
our friends left cards, feeling sure that one of us must be ill, if not
both. There is something touching, in many ways worthy of perfect
approval, in the fact that at the hour of the Angelus, with just the
same hasty, elastic step, the same buoyant exuberance, the whole
population, not an individual excepted, rushes for a few moments into
the ever-open churches to pray.
Over the chaos and turmoil of faces, carriages, screams, chatter,
clatter and patter, like a great white bird the Royal Palace spreads its
long wings. One is rather bewildered to find it has an air as modern as
the furniture in the Escurial, nay, even more up-to-date. And it is
needful to remember how unchanged are the traditions still revered
behind the massive walls, or one would experience a sense almost of
disappointment since the grandeur of the Spanish monarchy seems
inseparable from the legends of the Camerera major--the dreaded Court
officers and severe Court dames--and the Court of Spain could no longer
boast of being the strictest Court in Europe if it did not remain
faithful to all its terrible rules. In some details the stern etiquette
has had to be modified, as fear of ridicule overcame the dread of losing
the lustre which centuries alone can bestow. But to this day the visitor
ascending the tall flight of stairs leading to the upper hall is told
that after the first ten steps he must take his hat off, and the ladies
who accompany him must bow, because from that spot he is supposed to
perceive a fold or stray glimmer of one of the three sacred banners
which belonged to the three ancient orders of chivalry in Spain. He also
learns, if his guide knows anything of the usages of the Court, that all
grandees have a right to enter the Palace unbidden and at any hour to
ask for an interview with the monarch, who calls every grandee his
cousin; and that no nobleman has the right to bear his titles on
succession until the King has given him permission to do so. This takes
place only after a very curious and intricate ceremony, at which all the
other grandees are present, wearing their traditional robes and huge
feathered hats, which they hold in their hands till the King, after
having questioned the new Duke or Count as to the origin and merits of
his forefathers, tells him to don his headgear, while the grandees
gathered around him do the same, and all stand with heads covered in the
presence of their sovereign--a privilege very dear to the Spanish
nobility.
To atone for the absence of feudal grandeur, the Royal Palace of Madrid
abounds in art treasures, reminding one that the Bourbon ancestor of the
present King was grandson to the French monarch whose taste for
splendour and elegance in his surroundings was so remarkable. That the
young Sovereign belongs to the Latin race is quite apparent in the cut
of his clear features, the vivacity of his glance, and the eagerness
with which he follows the scenes that come under his eyes. Were it not
for his thick lips, a characteristic feature in the Hapsbourg family, it
would be difficult to remember that his mother is an Austrian
archduchess, and calls her son “Bubb” (little boy) exactly as does every
other Viennese mother, be she noblewoman or shopkeeper.
The task which lay before the Queen of Spain in rearing her child was a
hard one. From the very moment of his birth the infant came into the
world a King, and his first screams were respectfully checked by his
nurses with the soft remonstrance “Will your Majesty deign to be quiet?”
The Royal mother had to struggle against the wild desire which possessed
the Spanish nation to approach their Sovereign, and yet try to make the
baby understand how dear he was to them. She insisted in keeping him
away as much as possible from the places and pursuits that would recall
his rank to him; she wished his childhood to be as happy as that of any
ordinary mortal, and yet she might not lose sight of the necessity of
teaching him the privileges and duties of a Sovereign.
Books on almost every subject the human mind can refer to have been
written, but a really useful, comprehensive book dealing with the
education it would be fitting to bestow on a Prince does not exist, nor
will it ever be written, since cases must always vary according to race
and climate. For instance, the Austrian Empire needs a ruler taciturn,
courteous, and grave, who shows himself to his subjects on rare
occasions, and with a few simple words will thread his way through all
the conflicts astir in the different countries gathered under his
sceptre. An Emperor of Russia must appear strong as iron, speak in tones
of absolute self-control and self-reliance, and never seem to ask for
advice. Somewhat mystical and melancholy, the King of the young Italian
realm should love eloquence, travelling, Parliamentary discussions, and
be ever on the move, like the ideals of the fair land which stands
between the two seas. King Edward VII. gives us the example of a true
British Monarch, and acts well up to the standard required to make him
take a high place in the history of his country.
The demands of the Spaniards as to what they expect their King to be and
do for them are numerous and varied as they are difficult to define.
King Alfonso XII., the father of the present King, seems to have
satisfied them in many ways, and in speaking of the deceased Monarch
they always say: “He was not only a perfect Spaniard but a perfect King
of Spain”--though why and how he should have succeeded in obtaining this
double title at once they themselves would perhaps be embarrassed to
explain. This much I have been able to infer: that a real Spaniard must
be lively, love bullfights, _tressilio_, and his pride, spend money
lavishly, be familiar with the haughty and haughty with the familiar;
and that a King of Spain has to imitate a real Spaniard in order to
become a perfect King. Yet in this very imitation lies the danger he
incurs, because, while he is exactly like all other Spaniards around
him, he might forget, or allow them to forget, that he is King; if the
temptation took hold of him to remind them of the fact, he would
instantly lose the above-mentioned qualities. Now it appears that King
Alfonso XII. could with wonderful success play both parts in turn, or
even in the same moment, and his son is expected to resemble him. His
Austrian mother had many a time to fight with her own instincts and the
principles dearest to her heart when she felt this desire of the nation
rise behind her child’s footsteps to urge him on. But the young King of
Spain is a real Spaniard, and every inch a real King. A few touches of
Hapsbourg dignity blend with the Bourbon grace and render his slight
figure and youthful face attractive, although he cannot truthfully be
called handsome.
Traces of the enormous wealth and luxury of the ancient Kings of Spain
are to be found in the long range of Royal stables, where one may spend
many interesting hours. Besides the great number of gala carriages
panelled with ivory, ebony and gold, or painted by the greatest artists
of their time, the horses, of high pedigree and quick blood, belonging
to the King, the Queen Mother and the Infantas, attract our admiration;
while stablemen and grooms in bright liveries stand like statues before
each stall, keeping watch over the noble animals and ready at an
instant’s notice to saddle the hunter or cob under their charge. A hall
vast as that of a museum is full of harness of all sorts, old and new,
to be used either on ordinary occasions or for pageants. Here we saw the
bright red lace and blue fringe which adorned the mules dear to poor
young Queen Mercedes, and her small saddles reminded us how the
beautiful Princess loved to gallop at full speed under the shadow of
the trees in the Royal parks. She died on the morning of her eighteenth
birthday, and the roar of the cannons intended to salute the joyful
anniversary echoed round the Palace where she lay in state, with the
delicate bloom that settles on the face of those who go down to an early
grave.
But however unhappy the fate of Queen Mercedes may have been, no heroine
in the history of Spain, except Ximena, appeals so strongly to the
imagination as Juana la Loca, Mad Queen Joan, mother of the Emperor
Charles V., who was married to Philip the Fair, so called from his
handsome face and graceful bearing. He was chivalrous, kind and brave,
and Juana adored her husband. When she saw the pallor of his last hour
settle on his countenance, when she found that no fond embrace could
warm his chilly hands, she lost her reason. Her grief vanished and her
senses became steeped in delusions. Sinking on her knees before her
husband’s corpse she began screaming with all her might, uttering in
turn words of endearment and menace. “Wake, wake! My noble Lord, my
spouse, my King! Who dares to say thou art dead? Thy falcon and palfrey
await thee in the court below, while menials loiter here and trouble me
with trifling tales. Thou canst not die. How should Death dare to touch
thy forehead, thy golden hair, thy hand whose strength can lift the
heaviest sword, thy breast that never yet quailed beneath the weight of
heavy armour? Wake, and we will send to dark dungeons those who dare to
speak such dreadful words. Am I not thy Queen, mistress of this Palace
and this land? Should I have permitted Death to enter my dominions and
take thee from me, my King?”
For days she repeated these wild words while her ladies and courtiers
entreated her to believe the truth. At last she consented to have the
corpse laid in a coffin and travelled with it by her side, from palace
to palace, from cloister to cloister, without allowing it to be buried.
Sometimes she would stop the long train of knights and dames and then
the coffin would be taken down and Queen Joan would stand beside it in
the dusty road expecting the dead to awaken. The wind blew her raven
hair around her face and the sun scorched her delicate skin, but nothing
awoke her from her dream. One day her people in pity took advantage of a
deep torpor into which she had fallen to carry off the coffin and
deposit it in its tomb; when the Queen awoke she did not miss it but
went on imagining her husband lay beside her in the great black coach
she had ordered to be made for herself. Black leather cushions deck the
interior, and even the window panes are sprinkled with black spots, so
that it recalls the famous chariot in which Pluto stole away Persephone
while she was gathering the first spring flowers with her companions.
This fantastic carriage of Juana la Loca is still to be seen in Madrid,
and Queen Maria Christina and King Alphonse were surprised to hear that
I longed to mount up into the funereal vehicle if only for a moment.
“I do not care even to think of it,” said Maria Christina, “though of
course I am not greatly interested in Queen Joan.”