MY MARRIAGE--IN MOURNING
I suppose that no one who has not lived at a Court will believe how
narrow in its interests the royal life can be. It is the life of a
little family isolated by an impervious etiquette from the immensities
of life that are about it. One can read, and hear, and be aware of the
life of the nation at second hand; one can not approach it intimately.
And the little family revolves upon itself, with its own gossip, its own
scandal, its own jealousies and ambitions, its own jokes, and its own
quarrels, in a kind of royal cloister, surrounded by invisible walls.
During those first years of my brother’s reign, laws were passed,
debates were conducted, the Liberals and Conservatives struggled
together for office, elections were held, revolts were put down. I heard
nothing of it. Or if I did, it made so little impression on my interest
that it made none on my memory. I remember that now the famous Premier
Sagasta would be at the palace daily, and now his famous rival,
Canovas; but that was politics merely; and politics were to us
princesses what business would be to the daughters of an American
millionaire.
The entourage that surrounded us in the palace of Madrid went with us to
the mountains when the Court removed to the summer palace of La Granja,
which is the Versailles of Spain, and modelled after Versailles. There
we fished and hunted and rode and made excursions like a house-party at
an English country seat. And when we went to Santander for the
sea-bathing, it was the same. The same people accompanied us, the same
routine of life engaged us, the same round of interests confined our
minds.
Contrary to the popular tradition about Courts, there was very little of
the scandal of which the “secret memoirs” of ladies-in-waiting have so
much. Conditions in Spain did not encourage such stories, particularly
among the aristocracy that came to Court. A Spanish lady would not even
receive a call from a man if her husband were not at home; she could not
walk alone in the streets; and, there being no divorce possible--and the
jealousy of the Spanish husband so deadly--if she were foolish enough to
engage in any love intrigues, the act would have to be too secret ever
to become a matter of gossip.
And there was nothing but such aristocracy at Court. We did not see--as
one would at a French Court, for example--judges, or lawyers, or
academicians, or artists, or professors, or great engineers of public
works, or even many military or naval officers, except the King’s aides.
Such men might be presented at audiences, but did not enter into our
social life. Nothing but aristocracy. These had few interests, and
therefore few topics of conversation. They shot rabbits and partridges,
but did not hunt. They did not talk of sports, since they played no
games--except card games that went on interminably, afternoons and
evenings. Sport, in those days in Spain, was an affair of the lower
classes wholly. They were fond of music, so we had _musicales_--and, of
course, dances. When we had clever foreign visitors who talked
entertainingly, the aristocrat was bored; the expression of ideas
wearied him. He had manners, presence, dignity, but no activity either
of body or mind.
The diplomats we had always with us, and they make one of the
traditionally brilliant circles of Court life; but I found, of all men
in modern Courts, the diplomats the most absurd. If the kings have had
their powers curtailed, the Court diplomats have lost theirs altogether.
They are a useless survival of the days when the relations between
nations depended on the feelings between Sovereigns, and the diplomats
intrigued and flattered to some purpose, by smoothing over
misunderstandings or exasperating offence. Nowadays, a Court diplomat
has no power except to deliver the message of his home Government. He is
not entrusted with secrets, any more than an errand-boy. And he is
usually stupid. If a family of position has a son who is not quite
bright, they say, “Put him in the diplomatic service.” He goes to a
foreign Court and devotes himself to attending royal funerals and
christenings and weddings and church services and Court functions, as
the “representative” of his Government--and, if he is a Russian or a
Southerner, he spends the rest of his time flattering the ladies whose
husbands have Government authority, in an attempt to obtain information
from them which their husbands have let fall.
Like the public warning, “Beware of Pickpockets,” in places of public
resort, the drawing-rooms of Court society should put up the sign,
“Beware of Diplomats.” The English representatives and the Scandinavians
are not so fond of intrigue, but too many of the others are the official
eavesdroppers and detectives of their Governments, and it is chiefly
simple women who are their victims--women who can be blinded by
pretended admiration and led into confidences that are indiscreet. It is
not an occupation for a clever man, and few clever men remain in it
long. The majority of those whom I have known were total idiots who
would swallow absurdly wrong information without blinking and convey it
eagerly to their home Governments without suspicion. I have tried it, to
find out. And I found the typical conversation of diplomats all in one
key of vanity: an assurance that when they were at one Court the king
showed them “special favours,” and when they were at another Court, the
same. It is a conversation that would weary a mistress of the Robes. It
can not add much intellectual stimulus to the life of royalty. I could
never see that it added any to mine.
Nevertheless, whether with diplomats or what not, these days moved along
for us very brightly. We young and active. My brother and his wife were
idyllically happy in their married life; and their happiness was
reflected in all around them. He was working with the prospect of
greater success to come with greater experience, living simply, taking
healthful exercise, using tact and patience, and keeping a cheerful
hope. Then, in the sixth month of his marriage, the heart was cut out of
it all by the death of his young Queen after a miscarriage that resulted
in blood-poisoning from some bungling of the doctors. They treated her
for typhoid fever and blundered about for weeks, till a putrefaction had
set in that no treatment could retard.
She was buried in the Escurial, and my brother would not leave the
palace. Every day he would shut himself up, for hours, in the crypt
where her tomb was; and when we tried to coax him away he would not
speak to us. It was midsummer and the heat was extreme, but he would not
leave her body to go to La Granja. He would not do anything but grieve,
in a silence that worried us more than the wildest outburst, neglecting
himself and his duties, taking no exercise, sunken in a mood of
passionate despair that seemed to have put him beyond our reach. He did
not sleep. We coaxed him to come out for a little fresh air in the early
mornings about five o’clock, and again in the evenings after sunset, but
it was months before I succeeded in getting him to ride on horseback.
The Spaniards do not understand a grief that is silent. He did not care.
He seemed to have lost interest in life entirely; and, as the months
passed, we were afraid that his health would be destroyed.
We knew that he was tubercular. It was hereditary in our family, and my
own lungs were affected; but royalty is not allowed to be ill, and we
had to struggle with the situation privately, in a way to keep the
knowledge of it from spreading beyond the inner circle of officialdom.
My sister Pilar, who was always delicate, had developed symptoms of what
was supposed to be some sort of skin disease, and the doctors ordered
her to a resort in the mountains, to take the baths. Soon after our
arrival there she became unconscious, and died, two days later, of
meningitis. For all this I now blame the state of medical practice in
Spain. In a country where education is wholly in the hands of the
religious orders, and the hospitals in the hands of the nuns, there
will be neither a good supply of medical students nor opportunities for
them to perfect their studies under conditions that are good. We had to
pay the penalty with the rest of Spain.
My brother never really recovered from this blighting of his life. He
took up his work again, at first listlessly and then as an escape from
himself; but the young and happy part of him was gone with his young
wife, and he had nothing left but the care and activities of his
position. He was only twenty years of age, though he seemed older. Since
there was no heir to the throne, the Government began immediately to
talk of arranging another marriage for him. He said he did not care, so
long as he was not bothered about it, and negotiations were at once
begun. It was a sad life for a charming man. He would have been much
happier if he had never been a king.
Meanwhile, he returned to us for companionship, and I began to hear a
great deal from him of his work and his plans. He had come to recognise
that the day of the warrior king was over, and he was occupied with
attempts to promote the industrial development of the country. He never
wore a uniform except when he attended the army manœuvres or took part
in some such military display, and he laughed at the kings who went
about as soldiers, always on parade. He saw to the founding of arsenals
for the manufacture of munitions of war, and he struggled to correct the
dishonesty in the expenditure of appropriations for the army and the
navy, but he was not in love with the show of military pomp.
He tried to persuade the grandees’ sons to enter the army as
officers--on the theory, as he said, that “occupation is the salvation
of a man”--but without success. The aristocracy of Spain is landed, but
too indolent even to oversee the administration of their estates; and
they called the Duc de Montpensier, contemptuously, “the orange-man,”
because he directed the exporting of his orange crop to England, instead
of letting it rot on the ground. Like so many aristocracies, they would
do anything for money except work for it. They were content to take
wealth and honour from the nation without making any return. In common
with the Court diplomats, they had almost lost their reason for being.
All the mines and many of the large manufacturing industries of Spain
are in the hands of foreigners, because the natives have no training for
such occupations. They have a hatred of foreigners that prevents them
from learning, and the King was always arguing against this hatred and
trying to devise means of overcoming it. He set the example himself of
going frequently abroad to study the improvements in foreign
countries--getting the sanction of the Parliaments for his journeys by
the simple expedient of letting them know, good-humoredly, that if they
did not give it he would go without it--and he came back with ideas
which he tried to apply. Spain was sadly lacking in railroads, and he
had maps and plans drawn up for building them, and worked to finance
them, but I do not recall with what success.
The great enemy of all such public works is the official dishonesty in
Spain, and with this my brother was always at war. I am told that the
corruption was not as bad during his reign as it was before. He fought
it particularly among the Customs officials and tax-gatherers, and such
collectors of the Government income, and he made himself much feared
among them. He worried about the excessive criminality in Spain,
interviewed judges, and tried to find out and ameliorate the conditions
that produced the crime. His influence was potent, because Spain will
accept a great deal from a Sovereign. I used to tell him that it was
lucky he looked like a Spaniard, for he had not the brain of one; and if
he had had my colouring, his ideas would have aroused antagonisms that
would have defeated him at every turn. He was, as I have said, supremely
tactful, and he had a patience that was incredible to me. He had not my
habit of saying what is in one’s mind, inopportunely. He could wait, and
speak in better time.
The arrangements for his second marriage he had left wholly in the hands
of my sister Isabel and her advisers, who were, of course, Clerical. It
was considered impossible for the King of Spain to marry a Protestant
princess; and, of the Catholic Royal families, the Italian princesses
were eliminated from the choice because of the quarrel between the
Italian Court and the Vatican. Negotiations were opened, therefore, with
the Court of Vienna, and a marriage was arranged between my brother and
the Austrian Archduchess Maria Cristina. It was celebrated about a year
after the death of his first wife. He had two daughters by this
marriage--both of whom have since died in childbirth--and a posthumous
son, the present King, born six months after my brother’s death.
He died in November, 1885, but it was not until the previous month,
October, that we had any idea he was seriously ill. It seemed impossible
that a man so active could be unwell. He had an energy both in work and
recreation that wore out everybody else. He lived with the most
healthful simplicity, from habit, eating in moderation, drinking no
wine, enjoying exercise without weariness, and taking cold baths that
one would not have thought a consumptive could endure. He showed no
signs of fever that I knew of. The doctors, if they had noticed any
alarming symptoms, did not speak of them to us; and we were only vaguely
aware that he had to be careful of himself. But in October he complained
of weakness, and the physicians suddenly told us that his lungs were
very bad. Even so, the matter had to be kept secret--for fear of
unnecessarily disturbing the business of the State. We went to the Pardo
to give him rest and treatment. And before
[Illustration: Courtesy of Collier’s
ALFONSO XIII OF SPAIN]
we had really accepted the thought that he was an invalid, he was taken
with a hæmorrhage of the lungs, cried out that he was choking, and died
almost with the words.
He was buried in the Escurial--where we had laughed together at the
tombs of the Infantas--among all the kings, who had become now only the
names of kings--no longer brothers, husbands, fathers--just dead
kings--as he had become.
His death was, I think, a great loss to the country, for the King of
Spain has much power under the Constitution, if he has the ability to
handle the instruments of his authority in a way to have his orders
carried out. And my brother had that suavity of will that wins its way
almost affectionately and puts stubbornness firmly aside when it can not
be won. Such a king, placed above the temptations of wealth, could
protect the poor from an industrial oppression from which they are too
often unable to protect themselves. And being of a liberal mind in his
religion, he could prevent the religious orders in Spain from using
their pulpit and sacred office for political ends.
His death seemed like the end of my own life to me. I had no longer any
interest or happiness in Spain. I had no friends there, except the Duc
de Montpensier and our little family. I found myself always a foreigner
when I went outside the palace. I could not understand the popular
religion, which is not Catholicism as it is known in other countries,
but only the outward form and name of Catholicism filled with
superstitions and fetishisms divorced from the moral purposes of
religion.
They have, for example, in Madrid, a popular feast called “_La Cara de
Dios_” (“The Face of God”), when there is exposed under glass, to be
kissed by the people, the handkerchief with which Christ is supposed to
have wiped the bloody sweat from His face on His way to Calvary, and
thereby to have imprinted on the fabric a portrait of His features,
which has been miraculously preserved. In front of the church where this
relic is set out, booths are erected and an all-night debauch of
drinking and dancing and brawling is begun. Between carouses the people
go to kiss “the Face of God,” return to their excesses, and only
interrupt them to make another pilgrimage to the relic. It seemed to me
that the whole religion of the common people was a sort of feast of “_La
Cara de Dios_,” that profited nobody but the keepers of the shrine. I
could not turn to such a religion for consolation in my grief. I could
not look forward to any happiness in a Court where only my love for my
brother had made the stupidities of our days endurable. I wanted to get
away.
But I could not get away unmarried. That was impossible. I was still
engaged informally to the Duc de Montpensier’s son, Antoine d’Orléans;
but now that my brother was gone I wished to break the engagement,
because I had only entered into it with the idea that such a marriage
would keep me near to him. My determination aroused an amazing alarm.
Members of the Government came to plead with me to hold the Duc’s
interest to the throne by marrying his son; if I refused, they were
afraid that he would enter politics again, to the extent even of making
another revolution. That was absurd. But it was not absurd that I was as
fond of the Duc as if he had been my father, and he wanted me for a
daughter-in-law. It was considered a necessity of State that I should
marry at once in order to protect the succession. I felt as my brother
had felt after the death of his first wife. I did not care.
In December, 1885, just a month after his death, the date of my wedding
was fixed, by Royal decree, for the following February. I remember that
soon afterwards I received a visit from a girl friend of my own age who
had come to say good-bye to me because she was entering a convent; and I
thought, as I spoke to her, how much happier she was than I. I felt very
sad, very depressed. I declared that I would only be married in
mourning. They cried out against it, that it would bring me bad luck.
What worse luck was left for me, I asked, except to die?--and I should
not mind that. They yielded to me; February 26th was set for my
wedding-day; but in the middle of the month I was taken ill of a fever
that proved to be diphtheria, and on the 26th I had been for several
days at the point of death; so I had a reprieve. It was a brief one. On
March 5th, I was well enough to be taken into the big sitting-room in
the evening, to sign the marriage contract before the necessary
witnesses; and on the following day, still very weak, I was married in
the Royal Chapel, with all the company dressed in deep mourning, and the
church draped in black as for a funeral. I went away on our honeymoon,
miserable, to the palace of Aranjuez; and, for once, I welcomed the
Court etiquette that required us to be accompanied by a lady and a
gentleman-in-waiting, since their presence saved me from a _tête-à-tête_
with my husband, for which neither of us had any inclination.
One reads a great deal, in histories, of the immoralities of kings. What
is one to expect of a man married in aversion to some foreign princess
whom he is forced to take into his life for reasons of State that do not
make her either beautiful to look at, or intelligent to talk to, or
congenial to live with? If people will not allow a king to enjoy even
the ordinary temptations to be virtuous, why should they exclaim if he
seeks, outside of marriage, the happinesses of personal intercourse that
are denied him in a wife? The fault is not in the kings. It is in the
conditions that have required kings to be more than human beings and
content with less than human beings. With the unfortunate queens it is
different; they are raised in a guarded confinement of etiquette from
which they can not easily escape; and they usually turn to religion and
the hope of a happier world to console them for the stupid cares and
gilded miseries that afflict them in this.
I was not religious, but fortunately I was not a queen, and when we
returned to Madrid I began to assert my freedom as a married woman by
getting clear of the formalities of Royalty. We did not return to the
palace, but took a small house, with a garden; and there I felt less
depressed, being occupied with domestic arrangements that were as
strange and exciting to me as Robinson Crusoe’s housekeeping--although
much of it was in the hands of the _grand maître_, of course. I found
that I had not the traditional Bourbon inaptitude for practical affairs,
nor my mother’s inability to understand the value of money.
I was told a story of her that amused me very much. Once, to reward some
service, she ordered one of her Ministers to pay a vast sum of money.
“But, your Majesty,” he protested, “it is a great deal.” “Not at all,”
she said. “See that it is paid.” So the Minister secretly sent out
instructions that the sum should be brought to him in coin, and he
stacked it on the Queen’s writing-table in piles. She asked, “What is
all this money for?” “That,” he said, “is the money that your Majesty
has ordered me to pay to So-and-so.” She cried, “Good heavens! Not all
that. You are giving him a fortune. Here; this is enough.” And she took
one of the piles and gave it to the Minister, and the rest was sent
back.
As soon as we were settled I got rid of the constant company of the
lady-in-waiting; I did not have her to live in the house; and this
created a sensation. I was the first Princess of Spain who had ever
demanded such liberty. I did not mind. I had the solitude of my little
garden to myself, and I could walk and read there in a happiness that
all the princesses would have envied if they could have known how
pleasant it was. Some of my other attempts at informality were not so
successful. One afternoon, while out walking with my husband without
either carriage or escort, I felt so ill that I could not walk back.
There was no vehicle to be had but a passing tramway-car, so we got into
that. We were recognised. All the passengers rose and stared and became
so excited that the driver--not knowing what accident had
happened--stopped the car. It was some time before we could make our
explanations, get the people seated, and get the car to go on; and the
ride home was too uncomfortable to be even amusing. I was indignantly
scolded for having been taken ill in such circumstances; and I never
tried again to ride in a tramway-car in Madrid. Silly nonsense!
We were still attending Court functions and receptions, and going to
dinners and luncheons at the palace; and on May 17th we were summoned
there to hear the official announcement of the “Capitan-General” that
“the King of Spain” had been born. It was at first intended to name him
Ferdinand, to avoid the unlucky XIII., but for the sake of his father’s
memory the name of Alfonso was demanded, and he was inscribed as
“Alfonso XIII., Leon Fernando Mario Isidro Santiago Pascual y Anton.”
(My mother complained that the names were too few. She had been
accustomed to give us at least a dozen each!) A month later the
Queen-Regent presented the King in the chapel, and then offered him to
the Blessed Virgin, in an extraordinary ceremony at the church of
Atoche, with Te Deums and Salves, and a Royal parade.
It was now almost midsummer, and I was resolved to get away. I had hoped
to return to Paris, but the Duc de Montpensier brought us word that the
Orleans family might be expelled from France, in which case we should
go to Switzerland for our summer. I was sorry for more than selfish
reasons, for I had had visits from my new relatives, and found them
charming. Late in June the good news came that, though the Comte de
Paris had been expelled and his property confiscated, the Government
would go no farther; and early in July my husband and I started with the
Duc and my mother-in-law to go through Paris on our way to join the
Comte and Comtesse de Paris in Tunbridge Wells.
I was leaving behind me many happy days, but many also that were so
unendurably sad that I was eager to be gone from the scenes that
recalled them to me. I was no longer a prisoner of State. I was still,
if you wish, “a ticket-of-leave man.” But no convict, released on good
behaviour, ever went out with more relief, even though he was still to
be subject to some State surveillance, and perhaps never to be wholly
free of the instinctive timidities of the mind that has been guarded.