IRKSOME DUTIES OF A PRINCESS
It is in life as it is in travelling, that you go sometimes with such
unreflecting interest in the mere passing-by of the incidents of Time
that you arrive unaware of your destination, and look back with dismay
on the change and the distance. It was so I went from the democracy of
our French class-room to the estate of Royalty in Spain. The mere
journey itself was an excitement; and it was at once, even in France,
almost a Royal progress, because of the number of Spanish ladies who had
come to Paris to conduct my mother to the Court, to say nothing of the
other people who had attached themselves to our suite for various
reasons of their own.
At the seaport of San Jean de Luz a Spanish warship awaited us, with the
sailors on the yards, the colours flying, and the cannon firing a
salute. This seemed to me very jolly, and I watched with curiosity; but
I must have been a little withdrawn from it in my mind, for I remember
noticing with amusement how much more excited for us my governess was
by the crowds and the spectacle. It is usually the looker-on who most
enjoys these pomps. The Royalty must preserve the dignity of effigies to
endure the stares. And I was disappointed because I was not free to move
about and be unconscious; because I could not be spoken to by those who
were outside the circle of attendants; because the personages who were
allowed to greet me all made the same congratulations with a formality
that wearied.
Even on board the ship I could not go about and see the sailors. I had
to remain in the Royal cabins, or move with the others among the
standing salutes of officers who could not speak or be spoken to. We had
lost the freedom of private persons; we had become like commanding
officers in a world governed by the army regulations of Court etiquette;
we could not go anywhere without sending word ahead so that life might
be put on parade for us. Our meals were ceremonies. We attended a very
long and formal Mass that was celebrated for us on board. And I
remember, as my one real pleasure on the ship, that I had to sleep in a
saloon on a billiard-table, where a mattress had been spread for me,
because there were not enough Royal cabins to accommodate us all.
But as soon as we arrived at the Spanish port of Santander I forgot
everything in the excitement of a reception that amounted to a carnival.
With a staff of officers and dignitaries in uniform, and a troop of
cavalry as escort, we were driven in an open carriage, drawn by four
horses, through streets of which I could not see the fronts of the
houses--they were so covered with the reds and yellows of flags and
bunting that were dazzling in the vivid sunlight of Spain. There were
crowds on the pavement, in the windows, on the balconies, and even on
the house-tops; and they pelted us gaily with flowers tied in nosegays
with weighted stems so that they might be accurately thrown. They threw
at us doves with their feet tied to long strings, so that they could
flutter but not escape. We warded off the flowers with our parasols, and
standing up in the carriage I caught at the doves, while my mother, who
feared nothing in the world, kept crying out, in a nervous terror, that
she would faint if one of the birds touched her with its flutterings.
She had the sort of horror of them flying that one has of bats. And this
excited me. And the more excited I became, the more the crowd laughed
and cheered and pelted us. If Spain were going to be all like that, I
should be happy. It seemed impossible that these could be the same
people who had driven my mother away with hisses. The realisation that
they were truly the same made it seem, for the moment, that we were all
playing a part in a spectacle without sincerity. The thought worried me
as it passed.
We were being driven to the cathedral of Santander, where a Mass was to
be celebrated and the _Te Deum_ sung in thanksgiving for our return; and
there, at the church door, the bishop in his robes waited for us under a
canopy borne on poles by four young priests--the sort of canopy that he
walks under in processions of the _Corpus Christi_, when he carries the
Host through the streets. My mother, my two sisters, and I were taken
under this canopy with him, as if we were something sacred; and we were
solemnly escorted, by priests and acolytes, with music and singing and
candles and incense, up the aisle to the sanctuary, where four
throne-like chairs had been prepared for us before the altar. As I
watched the priests and the people, I wondered whether they were
sincere in this appearance of accepting us as sanctified by some sort of
divine right.
From the cathedral we were taken to an official reception at the Mairie,
and then to the Royal train that my brother had sent to bring us to
Madrid; and we were started on our railroad journey with cheering and
congratulations, in great state, among officers of the Court and
personages of the Government. It was a journey that lasted all night,
and the train was stopped at every station so that we might smile and
bow to the crowd. At first I enjoyed it; it was exciting. But when it
grew dark and I was tired and wanted to sleep, I found I had to wake up
to be shown to the people, who came even in the middle of the night to
see us pass. I rebelled. My mother insisted. “Very well,” I said, “I’ll
make silly faces at them, and they’ll think you have an idiot for a
daughter.” My mother was furious, but she knew that I would do it, so
she left me alone, and I slept.
I had learned that we were not going direct to Madrid, but to the palace
of the Escurial, in the mountains, a little distance from the capital.
It was not considered wise that my mother should go to Madrid, because
her presence there might encourage
[Illustration: THE KING’S STUDY IN ESCURIAL]
the formation of a party in her favour as a rival to her son, and
because it was necessary to avoid any appearance that the King was
taking directions from her in affairs of State--in short, because the
men who had recalled my brother were willing to have my mother and her
children in Spain, but were not willing to have her rule there. This
fact, for me, rather took away the sweet odour of sincerity from the
incense that had been burned for us; but it did not seem to make any
difference to my mother, who accepted such considerations as matters of
course.
My brother met our train at a station some distance from Madrid, and we
had a little family reunion that was very happy. He was so glad to have
us and we to have him. My mother insisted that he must scold me for
threatening to make faces at the people, but he laughed and would not.
He joked and chatted gaily with me, as we used to in the old school days
that seemed already so far away; and he promised that in a little time
he would be able to have us with him in Madrid, where we should be very
jolly together.
He accompanied us to the Escurial, which we approached from the
mountains, so that we looked down on it. It was built in a square, with
a wing coming out of one side like a handle. “What a funny palace!” I
said. “It is the shape of a frying-pan.” My brother told me that this
was intentionally so; that Philip II. had dedicated the palace to St.
Lorenzo, who had been martyred on a gridiron; and the shape of the
building was designed to remind the kings that if they were wicked they
would be fried in hell. I enjoyed with him the charming _naïveté_ of the
symbolism. He was no more illiberal than I about his religion. Indeed, I
think he was the only King of Spain who did not constantly go to
confession.
Half of the Escurial was a monastery and a school, where the monks
taught; for Philip II. had been fanatically religious, and he had lived
there as “Brother Philip,” even while he conducted the war in the
Netherlands and sent the famous Armada against England. The tombs of the
Royal family were all here--to make it more cheerful--and new tombs were
waiting for us, the daughters of Queen Isabella, so that I might regard
my own sepulchre. I regarded it with amusement, because it seemed to me
a childishness to make a daily bugaboo of death.
It appeared that we were not put in our tombs immediately after dying.
We were placed first in the crypt, in a chamber called the _pudridero_,
until decay had reduced our bodies to bones; and my brother whispered to
me that in the _pudridero_ reserved for Infantas so little care had been
taken during the revolution that the bones had been mixed up together,
and he had had to have them sorted for burial as best he could, rather
haphazard. The thought of the poor Infantas in their fine tombs, with
the bones of each in the tomb of another, set us laughing again. I
thought that the Escurial was a very pretentiously funny place, and I
enjoyed the tour of it with my brother as a great joke.
Next morning, before I was up, an important-looking officer in a
gorgeous uniform of red and gold came bowing with dignity into my
bedroom, and spoke something in Spanish. I could not understand what he
wanted, and I tried to make him understand that I did not want _him_. He
kept repeating himself deferentially, but with the air of a dignitary
who knew his rights, until I ordered him out of the room with a gesture
that he could not mistake. He went, much offended, and I hurried to my
mother’s room to ask her who he was. She explained that he was an
important Court official; that his sole duty in life was to carry slops
from my wash-table--which was upholstered in red and gold to match his
uniform; that this was a privilege which he valued highly, and that I
had probably hurt him very much by denying him the right. I was
indignant that any man of intelligence should be doing anything so
absurd. My mother did not sympathise; it was an affair of Court
etiquette. I refused to have a man coming to my room. She insisted that
I must. “Very well,” I said, “if he ever comes in there again, I’ll beat
him with something.” And although my mother was angry with me, he never
did come in again.
This proved to be a sample of much of the formality that made life
difficult at the Escurial. We had not only, now, the ladies-in-waiting
to be with us always; as soon as we came out of our bedrooms in the
morning we had ushers also to precede us everywhere; and if we crossed a
hall a guard accompanied us and waited at the door. The Escurial is one
of the most magnificent of palaces, with huge rooms of state as high as
chapels, richly furnished and hung with tapestries and paintings. I
found these rooms excellent to skip in, since all the furniture was
arranged along the walls, as in ball-rooms; but I had to make friends
first with the ushers, to persuade them to stand aside and let me play,
otherwise, I suppose, I should have had to skip in a procession, with an
usher marching in his uniform solemnly ahead of me and a lady-in-waiting
behind!
I had no studies here and no playmates; my sisters were older than I,
and they did not like my active games. I soon found the Escurial
depressing. It was chilly in the mountains after sunset, and there was
no way of heating the palace in those days except with fireplaces, that
might as well have been burning out of doors. The view from the windows
was desolate, for there were no trees, and the hills were bare. I saw no
visitors but personages speaking Spanish, who came to see my mother
formally; and to these we children were shown to satisfy curiosity. They
all congratulated us on being back in the land where we had been born. I
wondered why they expected _that_ to make us so happy. After all, I did
not remember being born there. As for the Escurial, it was picturesque,
no doubt; it was magnificent; it was as historic as a public museum;
and if I had been a tourist, sightseeing, I might have admired it as
much as tourists do Versailles. But I do not think that even a tourist
would be happy if he had to live permanently imprisoned in the
magnificent discomforts of the palace of Versailles--especially if his
only recreation was to skip in the Hall of Mirrors under the eyes of a
uniformed museum guard.
Then there came to us a formidable relative, a princess to whom her
royalty was a religion; and a new trouble began for me. I offended her
unconsciously with every word--and, when I was not speaking, with every
action. It appeared to her that I had not at all the manners of a
princess, nor the mind. She set herself to instruct and counsel me,
severely.
She tried to impress it on me that, with my brother on the Throne, every
word I uttered had importance; that it would be weighed and studied and
repeated. Therefore I must not express opinions of any sort about public
affairs, or personages, for fear I should say something that might be
used to make difficulties for my brother. It was a duty that we owed the
Crown to have no opinions at all, except about matters that could have
no public bearing or affect the popularity of the King.
Similarly, we could have no special friends, for fear of arousing
jealousies that might embarrass the Throne; and in order to avoid even
the appearance of having favourites, we must not show any special
sympathy or antipathy for any person. We must be the same to all, and
unvarying in our manner from day to day, so as to avoid comparisons. It
was a duty that we owed the Crown. We must perform all our social and
religious duties and observe all the etiquettes of Court life to the
same end--that no act of ours, either of omission or commission, should
make difficulty for the King. We must not only avoid the occasion of
scandal, but we must efface ourselves so efficiently that even the most
innocent gossip could not find its source in us. It was a duty that we
owed the Crown. I must not say that I found the view from the Escurial
desolate; it might be construed into an offensive criticism of the
country. I must like everything and everybody, unless the King expressed
a wish to the contrary in a particular instance. It was a duty that we
owed the Crown.
At first she bewildered me with the sort of fright that comes on a child
confronted by a dictatorial schoolmaster and a new lesson to learn. She
talked and talked, and I did not understand her. Then I began to think
her absurd, because her pomposity was stupid, and her self-importance
made me smile. When she told me that every word I uttered would be
weighed and repeated, I thought to myself, “No! People can’t be so silly
as that! Or if there are such people, why worry about them? It isn’t
worth the thought.” And the idea that I must not have opinions or
friends was repulsive to me, because it was a restraint of spirit that
would cramp me. After hearing it all from her, over and over, again and
again, I decided that she was not a very clever person, and that she had
exaggerated trifles. I knew that my brother would not expect such things
of me, and I decided to pay no attention to her.
But the difficulty is that, no matter how liberal-minded a King may be,
many of the people who devote themselves to the servilities of Court
life are inevitably narrow; and though my brother had been recalled to
the throne because he was a Liberal, his Court could not be so. My
sisters and I, having been educated in France, were suspected of
Republican tendencies of mind that would be as offensive as bad table
manners in the Court. The clerical influence, though it was not strong
with my brother, was very strong with my mother, and the ladies and
gentlemen-in-waiting, and the nobility in general; and I suppose it was
evident that I was not a pattern of young devoutness. I spoke Spanish so
clumsily that my brother had laughed at it and advised me that it would
be unwise for me to attempt to speak it to visitors until I was more
proficient. I did not know what was going on about me, but I imagine it
was for such reasons as these that it was decided my mother should take
us to the palace of the Alcazar in Sevilla, where we could learn Spanish
and be purged of foreign habits of thought. And there, too, my mother
would be still farther away from influencing the politics of the
capital.
So, within a few months, we left the Escurial for the Alcazar, and I
went from the chilly monotony of a Northern Court to the oppression and
ennui of an Oriental harem. Even yet, if the sun shines too brightly and
the summer day is hot, I am overcome with melancholy--as a Russian who
has been in prison in Siberia might be when he sees the snow fall.
Those endless, idle, unhappy days!
As we drove to the palace from the railway station I noticed that the
street windows of the houses were all barred. Thieves, then, must be
very bold in Sevilla? I was told: No; the bars were not in the windows
to keep burglars out, but to keep the young girls in, and to allow them
to speak safely with their future husbands, who came courting below in
the streets. How picturesque! Since I had never been allowed to speak to
a man alone, even through a grating--unless it was a priest in a
confessional--I did not feel sorry for the young women of Sevilla. I did
not understand that the bars were symbolical. I stared at the
flat-roofed Southern houses and the barbaric colours of the costumes,
and the crowds that did not cheer us as we drove by, but sang in chorus
to the accompaniment of unseen guitars, and uttered sudden shrieks with
sad, impassive faces, like Arabs, to express their joy. And the gates of
the Alcazar closed on us without any ominous echo to my ears.
The Alcazar is a Moorish palace of great beauty, with walls and ceilings
all covered with intricate patterns of carving and bright colours, so
that it was like coming to live in a palace of the Arabian Nights. The
inner courtyards are Oriental, cooled by fountains. The garden around
the palace is Oriental, in tiny squares and flower-beds, with short
paths, and no place for one to run. And around the garden the high wall
is Oriental, a true harem wall, over which one could not see. In all the
rooms of the palace there is not one door; and when we had hangings put
up in the Moorish arches of our bedroom doorways the servants were
surprised. They did not understand the desire for privacy. Sentinels and
guards were on duty everywhere; a man even walked all night under my
bedroom windows; and whenever we went into the gardens the trumpets were
sounded--Heaven only knows why!
It was a life in which there was nothing to do, nothing to see--a life
designed for Southern women who are content to loll about on cushions
and grow fat. We were not expected to go out at all, except in
carriages, with an escort, down staring streets, and, indeed, it would
have been impossible to walk through the crowds that gathered. I could
not ride horseback without a lady-in-waiting to go with me; and all the
ladies were too fat to ride, even if they had known how. The best
exercise I could get in the garden was to jump the flower-beds--to the
amazement of everybody--or to skip up and down in one place
mechanically. It was as much worse than the Escurial as the Escurial had
been worse than the Palais de Castile; and when it came home to me that
this, now, was to be my life for ever, I felt that I should go mad.
Every afternoon my mother gave audiences to the ladies of Sevilla; but
what good was that? Even with us children they did nothing but curtsy,
and kiss the hands, and look at us, awed, as if we were not human. They
could not say anything to us, and we did not know what to say to them.
Generals came to salute my mother, and remained for dinner; and every
day one officer of the guard had luncheon with us; but we girls were not
allowed to speak to men, except to exchange formal words of greeting
under the eyes of the governess.
One day, the governess being absent, I got into conversation with an
officer at the table, innocently, when he had been speaking about “the
bath of Maria Padilla” in our garden. It was a large stone bath that had
been built by Pedro the Cruel for this Maria
[Illustration: GARDENS OF THE ALCAZAR, SEVILLE]
Padilla when she had lived at the Alcazar; and I had longed to have it
filled with water so that I might use it. The officer told me that once,
after Maria Padilla had bathed there, Pedro the Cruel, in a jest, had
invited a courtier to drink some of the water to show his devotion, and
the courtier replied, “I’m afraid if I tried the sauce, I might get a
taste for the partridge.” I thought this very clever of the courtier,
and I repeated the story to my governess, after dinner, and she was
horrified. It was the last opportunity I got to speak with the officer.
And I did not get the bath. Indeed, at that time it was difficult to get
a bath of any sort, except a sponge bath, piecemeal. The
ladies-in-waiting declared that it was sinful to bathe; and when I
laughed at that they argued that it was indelicate to take off all one’s
clothing at once. (I imagine that their antipathy to bathing must have
come from the feeling against the Moors, who had so long been the
conquerors in Sevilla, since it was part of their religion to bathe.) I
finally got my way by persuading a doctor to give orders that I must
have cold baths for my health.
These, then, were some of the material restrictions of our life. The
mental restrictions were even more hopeless. There were no books to be
had. If I wrote a letter, it had to be read by the lady-in-waiting to
whom I gave it to post. We had an old professor to give us lessons in
Spanish, and we studied painting and music, and acquired the ornamental
accomplishments and fundamental ignorances of young ladies who are not
expected to have minds and not allowed to develop any. Religious
instruction went on always. We heard Mass in the palace every day, and
we should have had to go to confession and communion every day, too, if
I had not insisted that I would not go oftener than once a month. My
sisters were both most devout, and they did not sympathise with my
rebelliousness. When I complained of the imprisonment of our lives, they
counselled me, affectionately, to bow to the will of God and to accept
with pious resignation the trials to which Providence had appointed us.
I should have been happier, no doubt, if I could have done so; but
Providence had also appointed for me a temperament that made resignation
impossible, and I continued to obey the will of God by chafing and
complaining and struggling to escape.
With the arrival of March came a new horror of heat; and as the summer
progressed it seemed impossible to live through each new day. The sun
was unendurable. The soldiers on guard had to be changed every quarter
of an hour, and many of them were taken from their posts fainting. The
birds fell dead from the trees in the garden. The air was full of an
odour of melting asphalt, and even at night the pavements would be so
hot that they would burn the soles of the shoes. Indoors the sealing-wax
would melt on your writing-desk. And the mosquitoes! To study, or to
write, we had to sit under mosquito bars, or we would be so pestered
that we could not work. I was unable to eat. I lived on lemon and water,
ill with the heat and with longing for the cool, green freedom of our
country summers in Normandy--with the grey-blue skies and the grey-green
fields, and the shade of the deep, hedge-hidden byways. How I yearned
for them! As one yearns for the comfort of health in the semi-delirious
miseries of fever! I would say to myself, “Oh, if Spain would only have
another revolution!”
Then one of my sisters, who was less robust than I, became seriously
prostrated. They were afraid that I, too, might collapse, because I
would not let them give me food. My mother had quarrelled with my
brother about some political differences, and she wished to take us to
France; but since the King was unmarried, and one of us--or one of our
children--might inherit the throne, it was not permitted to us to leave
Spain, for fear of foreign influences. We were prisoners for life! It
was decided that we should join our brother in Madrid, and our mother
should go away to France without us. I was never to live with her again,
but I parted from her without anxiety, since at last I had my wish--to
be with my brother.