ADVENTURES IN AMERICA
It was during these years of travel in Europe that I was offered the
opportunity of going to America to represent the Throne of Spain at the
World’s Fair that was to be held in Chicago to commemorate the four
hundredth anniversary of Columbus’s discovery. I accepted the invitation
with joy. I had no longer my childish idea that if I could only take a
boat and sail to America I should be really “free”; but I had still in
my mind the household saying that I was “only fit for America,” and I
felt sure that I should like the great democracy, and I was eager to see
it. It was planned, also, that I should visit Cuba--in the usual
administrative hope that a Royal visitor might revive the loyalty of a
rebellious colony exasperated by misgovernment. The misgovernment was a
thing for which the Royal Family was as little to blame as the Cubans
themselves; but I was willing to be made use of, in one of the few ways
that royalty can be of use in a constitutional monarchy, and I prepared
to see--and be seen by--Cuba, too.
There were such stories in Spain of the dangers from yellow fever in the
colony that ladies-in-waiting were as reluctant to make the trip as the
sailors of Columbus; and though my husband took a large suite of
gentlemen, I found only one lady-in-waiting to go with me, and one maid,
a faithful old servant who had been in the family for thirty years. We
set out, in April, 1893, on board the _Reina Maria Cristina_ from
Santander, after the inevitable Te Deum in the cathedral of Santander, a
State dinner and reception, an illumination of the harbour, and a choir
in a tender to sing us off. There were more Te Deums and receptions and
illuminations at the Spanish ports and islands where we called; and at
one port we were met by the authorities with a black-bordered protest
against the suppression of the local _capitan general_. The paper was
signed by a “defence assembly.” The officials warned us that it would be
unwise for us to land. I insisted on it. They went away, and as soon as
I understood that they had gone for a police order I went ashore without
any escort except our suite, and walked through the crowded streets to
the cathedral. This proceeding aroused such a furore of popular
enthusiasm that I might have been another Jeanne d’Arc entering a
beleaguered town that she had relieved; and for the rest of my trip I
had no hesitation about putting aside the officials and trusting myself
to the people. At Las Palmas I got on so well that in the cathedral,
when the bishop was singing the Te Deum, the crowd forgot they were in
church and interrupted him with shouts of “Vive la Infanta!” As a matter
of fact, I have found that the danger to royalty comes not from
informalities of this sort so much as from the parade of bodyguards and
escorts that exasperate the unhappy people by personifying the power of
the social conditions that oppress them. It is usually on the most
impressive occasions that bombs are thrown.
We arrived outside the wonderful harbour of Havana early in May, and I
watched for the first sight of Morro Castle with curiosity. I had heard
from my mother that it had cost her grandfather, King Charles IV., such
an incredible sum to build that he had longed to see it, as he said, “if
only through a keyhole.” I understood that I was the first of the Royal
Family to look at it. Certainly, I was the last. And the fact that I
should probably be the last was the strongest impression that I got from
Cuba.
My first impression, of course, was of the heat. Immediately on my
arrival I was visited by a physician, who came to warn me of all the
diseases I might catch, and to tell me of all the things that I must do
and must not do to avoid them. It was terrifying to listen to him. I had
insisted on having cold drinks, and he was sure that cold drinks would
be fatal. I had been installed in the palace of the _capitan general_,
and I was going about on the marble floors in my stockinged feet to be
cooler. This also I was told was dangerous. “Well,” I said at last, “if
I don’t cool myself down, I shall surely die of the heat, anyway, so
what matter?” And I decided to do what I wanted and let my natural
vitality take care of the consequences. Because of this policy I made
what appears to have been a startling impression of energy on the
Cubans. There is nothing more popular than energy in a royal
person--perhaps because it is so unexpected. I had, for once, the good
luck to please by doing what I pleased.
The heat was so great on my first night in the palace that I could not
sleep, and being by no means fat, and my bed being without springs--just
the stretched canvas of a “petate” fastened on a bed frame--I ached with
the hard discomforts of it. At two in the morning I demanded a mattress.
My maid sent for one. After a half-hour of waiting a young aide-de-camp
appeared, in full uniform, and when I asked why _he_ had come, he
replied: “But it is I who have made your bed; if it is wrong, I must fix
it.” I roared. He explained that in order to have the bed prepared with
all possible care for me, it had been decided that an officer should
make it. I told him to send me a mattress, and go back to his sleep. My
maid, a simple old soul, was in a state of distraction. “My poor
Infanta! My poor Infanta!” she kept wailing. “What will become of her,
with no one but these stupid men to look after her!”
When the mattress arrived we arranged it ourselves, and I settled down
again; but it made the bed so much hotter that I could not sleep any
better than before; and I did not dare to make any more demands for fear
of disturbing the officer again. At seven in the morning a deafening
uproar of military music suddenly broke out in the _salon_ that
adjoined my bedroom, and my maid went wild with panic, crossing and
blessing herself and saying frantic prayers. I hurried into a
dressing-gown and opened my door on a German regimental band that had
received a cable from the Kaiser to serenade me with the traditional
“Guten Morgen,” and had marched at once on the palace as if they were
going to take a fortress, and were now blowing their trumpets and
beating their drums with an obedient diligence that seemed likely to
crack the walls. None of the palace servants had understood what this
was for; and these servants, by a horrible custom not uncommon in parts
of Spain, were convicts who wore leg-chains and worked in the palace as
in a prison, going about in livery and bare feet, and dragging their
chains on the marble floors. They were as bewildered as my maid, and
they were scuttling around as helplessly. As soon as I saw the uniforms
that the musicians wore I guessed what had happened; and, the noise
drowning my voice, I tried, by smiling and bowing, to reassure the
general panic. When the music stopped I got things straightened out, but
while it lasted we were a scene from a madhouse or a theatrical
burlesque. I went back to my mattress feeling that my first night in
Havana had not been too tame.
My day had been more successful, because of a curious accident that had
made my arrival almost triumphant. My maid, as we neared the shore, had
packed all my gowns but the one I had decided to wear--a striped gown of
blue and white, around the collar of which the dressmaker had put a red
edging. When I came on deck in it, some one protested at once: “But,
Your Royal Highness, that is the uniform of the insurgents!” It seemed
impossible, but it was so: they wore just such a blue-and-white stripe
with red facings. There was consternation. My trunks had been taken from
my state-room. We were nearing shore. No one seemed to know what to do.
And while we delayed, talking and arguing, the boat proceeded. It was
soon too late to do anything, and I said: “Never mind; it will not
matter. No one will notice it.”
But they did. They not only noticed it, but they supposed that I had
worn it purposely with I do not know what idea of pleasing the people or
showing that the Throne of Spain was above the quarrels of the factions
in the island. It aroused incredible enthusiasm. And after that
beginning I was received everywhere with the honours of a national hero.
Whenever I drove out my carriage was showered with pamphlets of loyal
congratulations and poems and panegyrics. At a bullfight given in my
honour, not having thought to bring a present for the torero when he
made his speech to me from the arena, I threw him one of my
finger-rings; he was offered huge sums for it, but refused to sell it,
as if it had been Aladdin’s. Everything I did was accepted as
admirable--whether I rode horseback at the military review when I wanted
the exercise, or received in my arms a little girl who slid down a sort
of fire-escape at an exhibition of the volunteer fire brigade, when I
was afraid that she might fall and break her neck in my honour if some
one did not catch her.
It was evident that I was making “a personal success.” But as soon as I
talked to men who knew the situation in Cuba, I was convinced that the
success was only personal. For too long had Spain been sending out
officials to Cuba who had no ambition but to fill their pockets at the
expense of the Cuban people; and the Cubans had made up their minds that
they would endure it no longer. In administrative circles, every one
who was candid confessed that “it was too late.” In Spain, the people,
though the victims of the same sort of corruption, had the consolation
of knowing that the government was their own; here the corruption was
imposed on them by a government in which they were not represented. In
Spain the army could be used to suppress armed rebellion; but here, the
army itself was so enfeebled by corruption, so badly led, so wasted by
yellow fever, that it was nearly useless. At a dinner to the influential
men of the colony I had to change the conversation several times in
order to avoid hearing Spain abused. Leaders of both political parties,
whether they were for or against Spain, were of the one mind: “It was
too late.” Cuba was determined to be free of a maladministration which
no sensible person could blame her for refusing to endure. All the
sensible people were aware, at last, that the conditions ought to have
been corrected, and one could only say to one’s self: “It’s too bad you
didn’t think of it sooner.” As we sailed away from the harbour of Havana
I was oppressed with the conviction that the Crown of Spain, in my
person, was saluting for the last time the Spanish flag flying over
that fortress. Cuba was gone.
Steaming northward, the weather turned delightfully cold, and I revelled
in it, reviving myself after the strenuously exhausting days of our
crowded week in Havana. When we picked up our pilot off Sandy Hook I was
on the upper deck, promenading happily in the chill wind in light
clothes, and the pilot remarked to one of the boat’s officers that it
“was dangerous for that young girl” to be exposed in such a way to such
weather. He was told that I was “the Spanish Infanta,” and he laughed
uproariously at the idea; and the more seriously the officer assured him
of it the more he enjoyed the joke. I saw him looking at me and
laughing, so I inquired what was the matter; and when I found out I was
slightly puzzled.
His amusement proved to be typical of my whole reception in the United
States. As one of the newspapers put it, they had expected a “big, dark
Spanish princess with a black moustache,” and it was with a tickled
surprise that they found me “like any of the girls you see walking down
Fifth Avenue.” Their pleased curiosity was reflected in the accounts
that the reporters gave of me. No conceivable personal detail escaped
them. One reporter even discovered that I had a gold crown on one of my
back teeth, and I was mystified to know how he could have seen it.
Surely my smile was not so broad as all that! I tried myself before a
mirror. No! By no possible grimace could I expose that tooth. I remained
mystified. I do still.
The amusement, however, was not altogether on their side. The newspapers
had not prepared me for this familiar but kindly tone of the American
Press; and the people of European countries had not the simple
benevolence of the curiosity that brought the smiling crowds to greet me
in the United States. The American young girl is the spoiled darling of
the nation, and they were all as willing to spoil me--and I was willing
to be spoiled--by their almost affectionate and chivalrous desire to
give me “a good time.”
I cannot pretend that I saw anything at all of the problems of
government in the country--nothing of the poverty, of the industrial
exploitation, of the inequalities of opportunity and the control by the
moneyed classes, of which we have since come to hear so much in all the
kingdoms and republics and democracies of this changing world. I was
merely a caller in the parlour. I knew nothing of the family life in the
house, much less of the difficulties below-stairs.
We did not land at New York, but at Jersey City, where a special train
was waiting to carry us to Washington. It would have taken us in Spain
twenty-four hours to go the distance; we covered it in five hours, and I
did not feel shaken. In Spain, if luncheon had been served us on the
train it would have been “to kill time”; here it was served us “to save
time.” One was struck at once by the busyness of the life and its
efficiency. We had been caught up by an organisation that transported
us, fed us, housed us, delivered us into the hands of a host or at the
doors of an entertainment, returned us to our hotel, took us on
excursions, provided us with drives, protected us from intrusion,
conducted us through crowds, intelligently, suavely, without any hitch,
comfortably, almost invisibly, with a foresight that seemed to provide
for every contingency that could happen, and to be prepared for any
change of plan that we could wish. And the spectacle of the life,
through which we hurried, had the same air of having conquered the
material agents of existence to the same end; namely, that every one
should get as much as possible done in a day with as little friction as
possible in the mechanical means of doing it.
From some of the Americans whom I have seen abroad I had not got a very
happy impression, and now I understood why. They had been out of their
element; they had left at home their reason for being. The women, for
example, were less conspicuously dressed than some I had seen in Paris,
and less nervously self-assertive; and the men were more easy and more
natural. They were not on the defensive among foreigners whom they felt
to be critical, or whom they desired to impress. They were not blatant
nor apologetic. They were happy, intelligent, hospitable, and altogether
engaging. I found no one with whom conversation was not instantly
possible; and the volubility of my conversations was a matter of amused
comment with our suite. The truth was that I was not only
sympathetically interested in all I saw and eager to talk about it, I
was also at once aware of the friendliness of the eyes that watched and
listened; and I talked, and my _vis-à-vis_ talked, without any
awkwardness of restraint.
There were no royal “monkey tricks” expected of me. I was unable to
dance--though I often longed to--because I was on an official visit, and
questions of precedence would have made it necessary for me to choose
the most important personage in the room as my partner, or take the risk
of offending him. And the most important person at a dance is not always
the best dancer. But I was not set apart on a dais as I would have been
at home--“always on a stand, like a harp,” as I used to complain--and I
enjoyed myself. I felt that I was really meeting the people whom I met.
I was not merely royalty; I was a sort of national guest, whom every one
tried to interest and entertain.
One accepted as an inevitable part of one’s public character the army of
reporters and photographers who surrounded us at every official
appearance. They were not intrusive; and having learned that I could not
give interviews they did not try to get any. The goodwill of the crowds,
who were as omnipresent as the newspaper men, was always delightful.
They gathered, of course, merely out of curiosity, but their stares were
not, as in other countries, either awed or inimical, or just curious.
They greeted you, as they might greet one of their own representatives,
with amiable smiles and cheers, waving their handkerchiefs. In the
thronged streets of the exposition they could not be held back by our
police escort, who struggled with them good-naturedly as they,
good-naturedly, pressed in upon us; and one could not help but accept
their pressure with a smile. It was all quite human and jolly and
inoffensive--a democratic crowd, democratically unrestrained in its
interest in everything and everybody. When I was complimented on the
popular impression which I seemed to make I could reply, quite
truthfully, that if the Americans liked me it must be because they could
see how I liked them. I liked them immensely.
They seemed all prosperous and all happy. We had no begging letters and
petitions for alms thrown into our carriage, such as would have
overwhelmed us at home. We did not meet any of those affected excesses
of deference to royalty which would have been so out of place in a
country where there is no Crown. If people crowded to see us, out of
curiosity, I could not complain; I was just as curious to see them. They
were not rude--and I hope I was not.
Any one who makes a royal visit to any country must see it
superficially; and if I wrote here that President Cleveland and his
beautiful wife were charming hosts, that the country around Washington
reminded me of England, that the lake front in Chicago (which was about
all of Chicago that I really saw) was handsome, that New York was New
York, and the Hudson River the Hudson River--I should not relieve my
mind of anything that even Lewis Carroll’s conversational walrus would
have cared to hear. And I should not interest even myself by writing it.
If I had come to America as a person distinguished by intellect instead
of merely by birth, I might have been very proud of the crowds that came
to see me; and my contact with American life might have been an
illuminating experience worth detailing. As it was, my apparent
popularity could mean nothing to me personally; and my experiences,
though pleasant, can mean nothing to any one else. Nothing had happened
to change my belief that my public life as a royal personage was a busy
futility. And when our steamship drew away from the shores of New York,
and all the farewells had been said, and the last cheers of the last
crowd had sounded, I was at once sad to watch a land recede that I felt
I should never see again, and glad to be alone with my own thoughts and
free to lay off my public character.
I suppose the truth is that I do not easily reflect the “collectif”
sentiment. I am not able sincerely to laugh or cry because others are
laughing or crying. And I return gladly to solitude, because it is only
in solitude that I seem to be myself.
As I have said before, this desire for solitude had been growing in me
for years. And for years I was held in royal circles by my desire to
establish a future for my sons. But my eldest son inherited the fortune
of the Duc de Montpensier, and my youngest the fortune of the Duchess;
and they became independent of me. The death of the Duc deprived me of
one of the few dear friends I had in the world, and broke the last of
the few sympathies that had made my life with my husband possible. We
had discovered no affection for each other. He had freed himself, in
all but name, from the marriage contract. We had never quarrelled; I
should say we were never sufficiently interested in each other to
quarrel. I decided that we should separate. And in spite of the
opposition of Royalty, who would have had me endure anything rather than
bring a scandal near the Crown, I forced the separation with the aid of
my husband’s relatives, who sympathised with me. I returned to my
mother’s home in Paris, the Palais de Castile, and it was one of the
happiest mornings of my life when I awakened there, alone, and free. I
could get no divorce, because divorce is not possible to any one in
Spain--least of all to an Infanta--but I was at liberty to live my life
in my own way, and that satisfied me.
When my mother died, I was able to get wholly clear of the formalities
of Court life, and I left the Palais to rent an apartment for myself
where I could live like a private person, with my maids, without even a
lady-in-waiting. I bought a few acres of land on the seashore of my
beloved Normandy, and built myself a summer cottage cooled by the happy
breezes that I had known as a child. And here I can say, and do, and
think, and write what I please, untroubled by the prohibitions of
crowned heads, who can enforce no command on me and impose no
punishment--except to deny me an entrance to Courts from which I have
been only too glad to escape.
When my first little book was about to be published, the King of Spain
wired me that I could not publish it without his consent. I repudiated
that control of my liberty, and they threatened to deprive me of my
title and the small income that comes with it. I was puzzled to know
what they would decide to call me, if not “the Infanta Eulalia”; and I
was interested to see if the King would set a precedent for depriving
the “inviolable” Royal Family of its titles and its property by
legislative enactment. He decided, wisely, to let the matter drop, and I
heard no more of it.
It is my final realisation of freedom that I celebrate now in these
pages. I have escaped, mind and body, from my gilded cage. It has taken
a lifetime, but it was worth it. I have no respect for anything in the
world except intelligence. I live in France because it is the most
intelligent of all the countries I have known. I have seen the world
waking to the fact that the rule of money is no better than the rule of
rank, except when it is more intelligent; and I can foresee the day when
the inequalities of property will have no more authority than the
inequalities of rank to oppress mankind. I read and write to keep my own
intelligence in health by exercising it. And I am afraid of no critic
except the one who may find my intelligence feeble, with a prison
pallor, in spite of its joy in its escape.